MP Jo Cox was no humanitarian. She was shill for neoliberal banking & war.

At best, murdered Member of Parliament Jo Cox was a humanitarian in the Hollywood celebrity mold. Syria, Darfur, etc. Her concerns for refugees or “pro-democracy” collateral ony promoted neoliberal interventionism. The British MP’s martyrdom while opposing the BREXIT was beautifully parlayed into a character assassination of its proponants. The corporate media was able to paint them as far right extremists, instead of a grassroots groundswell against continued subjugation to Europe’s banker class. MP Cox was a shill for the European Union mechanisms binding regional economies to unelected technocrats not representative governments. While the London establishment is morning the killing of their rising star, Jo Cox was no more than telegenic and young, a new face to sell their old same as the new world order.

Four Occupy tormentors unmasked


Occupy Colo. Springs held a NO WAR ON IRAN demo today, counter- protested by some soldiers who think any antiwar criticism of their mission fails to Support The Troops. (Horrifyingly curious don’t you think, that US soldiers would already consider war with Iran as their mission?!) Joining them it turned out, were four of OCS’s sneakiest saboteurs. I got them with one camera click! From right to ultra-right: Raven Martinez aka Briaunna Webbing aka Occupy Csprings, Michael Clifton aka Agent of Doubt, Ian Carman aka “Father” Ian, and Ryan Butler aka Ry King aka Lone Wolf.

My policy until now was not to dignify any of these Facebook twits with attention, but their rumor campaign against OCS has become so virulent and untrue, and their misdeeds are now tipping the balance. Today the entire intersection had to bear personal megaphone taunts, but I’ll say that the final straw was yesterday when I learned of misinformation they attempted to spread to the local news. Occupy CS’s hand was forced in issuing a public statement about accused-arsonist Kyle Lawrence, because someone asserted Kyle had joined a violent group that had sprung up in OCS. Uh, let’s get to the bottom of that one, shall we?

WARNING: OCCUDRAMA AHEAD. All of it boring, but these creeps need to crawl back under their mouse pads. Ignoring them hasn’t worked, and even though they crave attention, I’ll give that a try.

Exhibit A
Ryan Butler, Ryan King, Lucky Dog, Lone Wolf
At far right is RYAN BUTLER aka Lucky Dog, aka Lone Wolf. When he disrupted OCS GAs he went by “Ry King”.

The secretive Ryan Butler is half of the Clifton/Butler nerd team that hijacked the “Occupy Colorado Springs” Facebook Open Group. It’s got about 400 members, doesn’t represent Occupy at all, and is maintained as a launchpad for Tea Party occu-haters under the pretext of “free speech” as decided by its unlisted admins Ryan & Michael. The open group was originally created by authentic occupier Amber Hagen, who in her idealism let all participant have admin privileges. When Amber discovered that haters among the admins kept wrecking the page, she began to delete them. Michael Clifton once recounted at a meeting how he and Ryan scrambled over Skype to keep Amber from shutting them out. They hurriedly deleted Amber’s admin access, thus exiling her from her own group. This was the act that inspired Raven Martinez to do the same with the OCS Facebook community page, in all fairness I should say, to prevent others from doing it to her.

Ryan’s claim to fame in OCS came from a failed coup to share the spokesmanship monopoly held by occupothead Jason Warf, but I digress.

Ryan had to step away from OCS after legal trouble from a drunken poker game gone awry, which he tried to blame on authentic occupy vet RTG. Ryan has a criminal record of domestic violence and wears a gun in his home in violation of having lost his permit to carry. That much is not disputed. But Ryan refutes RTG’s version of the event: that Ryan pistol-whipped his ex-girlfriend, which enraged RTG and the two fought, trashing the house. Both face assault charges and Ryan’s ex has filed her usual plea to the court to dismiss any notion that Ryan abused her. Instead we are to believe Ryan tried to defend himself with a vice-grips laying about (leaves a strike pattern similar to a gun maybe), accidentally striking his ex.

I’ll add that my perspective doesn’t come from hearing RTG’s testimony, but rather from eavesdropping on private IMs sent by Ryan as he deliberated what to say by way of damage control. Anyway.

Entirely relevant here however is Ryan Butler’s favorite bragging right, his secret Fight Club-inspired “PLAN-B” CLUB (First rule of Plan-B, you don’t talk about Plan B, snore). Apparently “Plan B” is for Amendment Two fans who want an alternate plan “when the revolution fails.” Was this the pro-violence group to which Michael Clifton alluded in TV interviews? It had nothing to do with Occupy, didn’t come from Occupy, and if its membership is limited to Ryan’s friends, I’m guessing that pares it down to two: he and Clifton. Thus Clifton’s statement about his disassociation from proponents of violence was also facetious, because the above photo was taken upon their arrival at the counter-protest, they came together.

But how absolutely scurrilous to attempt to tarnish OCS with the suggestion that occupy was the breeding ground of their pro-gun Amendment Two fantasy life?!

Exhibit B
Michael Clifton, Agent of Doubt
Occupying more than the center of this photo is Michael Clifton, self-appointed videographer of the local occupy, known on Youtube and DIY newsites as “Agent of Doubt”.

Michael Clifton was a very early supporter of OCS, donating water and food as he documented its progress on Youtube, each segment introduced in his best impersonation of Alfred Hitchcock, minus the wit, or substance. Let’s say Clifton’s motives started out good, what would lead him last week to step forward and break the story about arsonist Kyle having a history with OCS, packaging his videos for best consumption by the local media?

Of course the answer is simple, and we’ve seen it before. Apparently 15-minutes of personal soundbite, TV attention converted to Youtube views, trumps any consideration for possible negative blowback for the movement. Clifton actually keeps distancing himself from OCS every time he alleges to speak authoritatively as an insider. It’s laughable if it wasn’t damnable, because this time the oaf said he quit when OCS members began to plan illegal strategies. Whaaat? –leaving listeners to infer that arson was among the strategies. What kind of tomfoolery insinuation is that?

Not surprisingly, once more Clifton is defending himself against accusations of being an informer or provocateur. I make no such charge. He’s an idiot. What can you do, Colorado Springs is full of them. Am I being too harsh? Read on.

In an earlier episode in front of City Council, Clifton famously declared himself an outsider to OCS so that he could take all the credit for a –he-thought– brilliant bit of investigative deduction regarding CSPD’s billing of man hours charged for policing OCS. Our friend had videotaped an OCS march you see, and noticed there weren’t any police officers in sight, ergo, the billings must have been fraudulent, yes, ignoring the possibility the cops were plain-clothed, or observing from a perimeter, or on call, etc. So like a flat-earther who draws conclusions based on only what he can see, our intrepid Sherlock declares the CSPD guilty of fraud, and… marches straight into the local office of the FBI to make the charge! The FBI, he reports, were only too happy to accept all his video footage into evidence!

This might point to Clifton’s real reason to declare he was not part of Occupy, because a GA consensus would have vetoed his FBI idea. OCS had recently endorsed a no-snitch policy, not on anyone, not even the city, and let’s face it, not least of all I’m guessing, TO the FBI.

Thus, however unwittingly, let’s call it witlessly, Clifton is an FBI informant in the very technical sense, isn’t he?

To put a fine point on it: everyone who’s participated in OCS activities recorded by Agent of Doubt Clifton, is now on record at the FBI, in not just the lossy Youtube segments available online, but the original hi-def digital sequences, in their entirety.

And while Agent Dork has been a stalwart companion to Occupy, if only for the videos which he converts into ad-views whose revenue he “contributes” to the Occupy movement by funding his own efforts to “promote” it, so far the sum of his efforts has been to give law enforcement and the local media evidence to build a case against Occupy. Thanks a ton Agent Dork. From here onward, your camera aught to record everyone giving you the finger!

Exhibit C
Department of Homeland Security Officer Ian Carman
I was tempted because of his sign to give Father Ian Carman a pass. Who’s to say a Department of Homeland Security employee shouldn’t consider himself part of the 99%? But after successive absences from GAs, then hiding among the haters, it might be time to take a close look at this very disruptive occupier.

Divisive behavior can be very subtle, so I’ll cut to the quick on Father Ian. He revealed to us that he worked for DHS because he wanted to explain that he had access to confidential files on certain occupiers, one of whom, supposedly a veteran, still had a very high security clearance, indicating he was likely still active duty, or perhaps in the intelligence service. Father Ian was asserting this about our high profile occupy star JWS, effectively trying to snitchjacket JWS. Come down on that whichever way you like.

Exhibit D

Raven Martinez writes on Facebook under the identity of her daughter, or the occunonymous Facebook user “Occupy Csprings”. Once a formidable OCS volunteer, Raven suddenly became my own personal raving critic. It’s been suggested that her fury bears the air of a woman scorned — I’ll delve into that further down, if I feel like it.

As reported above, the Tea Party mutiny of Amber’s Facebook OCS open group is what inspired Raven to hijack the OCS Facebook COMMUNITY PAGE. Raven might have done it with the best intentions, but did it utterly undemocratically and to everyone’s chagrin and condemnation. Here’s what happened.

Embattled by internal struggle against the very identity of mothership Occupy Wall Street, the OCS GA had adopted the moderating policy implemented by the New York OWS to thwart vanguards and saboteurs, but the Springs admins at that time were refusing to implement them. Admins were continuing to post political endorsements, conspiracy theories and statements critical of fellow occupiers. Further protocols were adopted by OCS to require admins to use their initials to identify who was responsible. Again this was ignored, and now many of the admins were refusing to attend the GAs.

One day Raven noticed important posts being deleted and snide comments being made about OCS protest actions, all being done by an admin who would not reveal his/her identity, and worst of all, in the name of Occupy Colorado Springs. An admin herself, Raven made the clever move of temporarily deleting all the other admin users on the chance that this one might be stupid enough to reveal himself by complaining about his suddenly lost access. The idiot took the bait, and turned out to be none other than OCS-permit-holder and self-important-leader Hossein Momsforpot. For shit. Well this left Raven with a dilemma. Who was going to believe that Hoss was anti-OWS? More critically, who among the admins she had deleted, could she reinstate without the risk that Hoss would convince them to reinstate his admin status with which he could then delete Raven? This was the lesson Raven had gleaned from the hijack perpetrated by Wolf & Agent Duh.

I neglected to mention that the earlier hijack was accomplished anonymously, with Ryan pretending that sole admin status was held by “his dog”. So with her hijack, Raven added her own innovation, Raven loudly proclaimed that she’d been shut out too! She planned to claim that her eventual “reinstatement” was the result of an omniscient AnonymousTM hacker who’d intervened for the betterment of the movement.

Raven’s problem was that I had just the day before publicly refused an admin appointment, and when she cavalierly let suspicions fall on occupier PJ, he promptly deleted himself. Funny story, no?

Well, although a number of very earnest admins felt slighted, oddly enough things worked out for the better after Raven’s purge because all the internal occuhating stopped, and a number of the admins who felt pushed out ultimately outed themselves as Ron Paul enthusiasts, conspiracy nuts, or single-issue MMJ addicts. In reality, no one was ejected from OCS, but having lost their control over the Facebook page, they chose to make kissoff statements and move on.

So Raven was able to coax PJ and me to share the admin responsibilities with her, and it’s a good thing too, because when Raven eventually turned against the broader OWS mission, she’ll say it was because of my personal agenda, Raven went and DELETED the Facebook page. She thought she’d done it, but Facebook has safeguards fortunately, PJ and I were alerted and able to save the 3,300 member page from oblivion.

And the rest is history in the making. Three of us administrate the community page now, we trust each other and our dedication to the values and goals of the original Wall Street occupiers, and the Facebook likes continue to rise.

Is that enough about Raven? Yes it is. She’s doing her best to vilify and destroy our efforts, but that’s as much as I want to say about her.

What the hell. Each of these four unsavory characters knows that I could say far more than I’ve divulged here. I’m already embarrassed enough to talk about them as I did, good grief. The personal attacks on me are based on nothing that I hadn’t written about on NMT, yet they persist via email and phone calls to everyone they can reach. Well, here’s my shot across the bow.

Uzi Landau doesn’t steal Palestinian homes because there is no such thing

Dr. Uzi Landau speaks to University of Colorado Denver, October 28
DENVER- Israeli PR envoy Uzi Landau addressed CU Denver students today, the majority of whom were antagonistic to his message. Denver policemen lined the walls, altar and choir loft, as Landau went on about the mortal threat which “extremist” Islam poses to Judeo-Christian civilization. Landau likened Iran to Nazi Germany and Ahmadinejad to Hitler, but had no comparison for the nefarious and subversive terror plots which Iran has been foisting on the free world. I’m thinking perhaps, like the CIA or Mossad?

Landau entered the room strangely like a Mafia don, flanked by an entourage of black coats and security. A well dressed man and a woman who an hour earlier had been loitering behind me as I protested outside, and whom I took to be Russian when I heard them speak to each other, now appeared as part of Landau’s party.

CU Denver Auraria Campus in front of church

Due to the sudden snowfall, the campus closed for the afternoon. As a result, the turnout for Landau’s speech was sparse. The security detail of Denver and campus police officers which subjected attendees to metal detectors and bag searches, and kept vigil from the sidelines, would have been disproportionate even if all the seats had been filled. One got the impression that law enforcement were there to assure the audience stayed awake and respectful. Policemen could be seen conspicuously conferring about the seating area occupied by activist Glenn Spagnuolo and his colleagues. When Glenn rose and walked forward to queue for the microphone, a handful of the officers adjusted their positions accordingly.

Glenn was responsible for pulling together voices to oppose Uzi Landau’s appearance. Glenn had a personal connection to Landau, having worked in the occupied territories like Rachel Corrie, and knew the activist who was ultimately killed by a bulldozer working under orders of Uzi Landau. Subsequent to that event, Glenn was deported to Jordan.

When Glenn announced the protest against Landau’s visit, the CU organizers were faced with additional security costs, for which they had no budget. Attempts were made to negotiate calling off the protest. Ultimately the Israeli embassy fronted the funds for the added police.

You might ask, against whom were the officers protecting Uzi Landau? Considering audience members had already been search for weapons, were the police trying to prevent a citizen’s arrest?

The good news, Israeli PR envoy Uzi Landau is not a very good speaker. His heavy accent and habit of letting his voice trail off confident the audience is hanging on his words, makes Landau a fortuitous emissary for those cheering against a military attack upon Iran. The bad news is that landau is as far right as they come, and if he’s reaching sympathetic ears, there are too many racist Americans without any understanding of international law.

I was surprised to discover that this Israeli minister’s talking points were no more nuanced than the flack we receive at this website from IDF Internet Megaphone trolls. Landau reflected the same disrespect for the people from whom lands were taken, and are still being taken. He argued that soldiers must be permitted to target insurgents regardless the civilian casualties.

Landau spoke confidently without batting an eye about the plight of Palestinians. He justified increased Israeli settlements based on Israel’s better record of land stewardship, and of course, he argued that anti-Semitism nugget: why should there be any lands forbidden to Jews? Specifically, to paraphrase: “If Israel can be 20% Palestinian, why cannot the Occupied Territories be 20% Jewish?”

Because Israel then builds walls around settlements and claims more land.

To his credit, Uzi Landau was entertainingly pugilistic in his response to audience questions. Instead of ignoring comments being made out of turn, he took them on, so confident and self-righteous he was about Israel’s actions. Even in Gaza, even in the context of over 60 years of occupation. But to Landau, the Palestinian Problem is dismissed easily. Palestinians don’t exist. They didn’t exist, they didn’t accept the offers of statehood when given the chance, their opportunity past, they never were.

Landau accused his detractors of offering no facts. He, on the other hand, came equipped with facts. One fact of his, from history: Even before it was declared a Jewish nation by the UN, the land of Israel had been in continuous possession of the Jews. So called “Palestinians” only came to the area for the jobs the Israelis offered them.

One of the best questions posed had to do with borders. If G-d promised the holy land to the Jews, which land was that precisely, as defined by what borders? For example, the UN granted land to inaugurate the nation of Israel. It didn’t include Jerusalem, nor much of to what Israel is laying claim. Does the “promised land” encompass more than Israel has even now? What can be the expected boundaries of Israel’s assumed birthright?

Dr. Landau didn’t dwell long on this polemic, except to say with a smile: “that will depend on our neighbors.”

India terror suspect arrested then shot

chongkham sanjitA photographer in Manipur, India documented the arrest of terror suspect Chongkham Sanjit on July 23, and wound up witness to an execution. The pics are SFW: the death squad ducked their victim into the adjacent pharmacy. A red circle indicates the arrestee, the arrow in the photo below shows which way he is led to be killed.

chongkham sanjit

chongkham-sanjitNote the soldiers already blocking off the killing spot. The trigger man waits at far right in camouflage cap.

chongkham-sanjitSanjit is following cooperatively.

chongkham-sanjitAn officer pulls out his handgun.

chongkham-sanjit

chongkham-sanjit
Arrestee is suddenly pushed into vacated shop.

chongkham sanjitSanjit’s body is dragged from the shop.

chongkham sanjitDisplayed in military pickup truck, beside body of Rabina Devi, victim of the minutes earlier police crossfire.

Official story: Sanjit wounded four and killed bystander while resisting arrest.

Thunderous Silence From The Right…

When Glenn Beck, Darling Boychild of the Right Wing Lunatic Fringe, allowed an equally demented guest, former Osama bin Laden hunter extraordinaire Michael F. Scheuer, to say that America needed another 9/11, this time with WMDs, in order to force Americans to completely abandon liberty and the Democratic Process and reinstate their Master Richard Cheney as Dictator-for-life, trade all that went before for the safety of being abject slaves.
They’re willing, for their own political power, to give up perhaps millions of American Lives and a U.S. city or two.
That’s the Classic Definition of Terrorism.

“Only Osama can… [laugh] …can execute an attack which will force Americans to demand that their Government protect them effectively, consistently, and with as much violence as necessary.”

“If you want to understand what’s going on and if you would like to get to know some of the reasons for your losing the war against us, then read the book of Michael Scheuer.” — Osama bin Laden

and with as much violence as necessary But, you see the “as necessary” part is left entirely up to them.

Reactions to this literally Anti-American speech from the Far Right Lunatic Fringe? Not even.

No “Outrage!” segments on DumFox Noose Nutwerks. No cricket chirping. Nothing.

This from a Right Wing Blogger on Fark… posterized by a friend of mine to highlight the exact meaning behind what these jerkoffs are saying…

right after the election they were saying this

My friend also posted this comment to go along with it…

I just want one person on the Republican side of the ideological aisle to justify this. You see, a joke about Sarah Palin’s daughter has Republicans marching in the streets. How does that outrage equate when one of their own is openly hoping for a terrorist attack on TV?

Why are they not denouncing this in the strongest possible terms, with no modifiers?

Why indeed.

I think George Bush and Dick Cheney Rejoiced when the towers went down.

Their Regime was, in the words of Bush Daddy, “in deep doo-doo”.

Their friends and accomplices at Enron were being investigated, for the last time as it turned out, their ties to THAT massive ripoff of America was being mercilessly exposed… and an old family friend of Bush engineers an attack on American soil… and, thanks to among many, Michael F. Scheuer, never caught. How Convenient.

My sister the Air Force Sergeant was Horrified that I would say such a thing “How DARE you! Thinking he would get thousands of ‘His citizens’ KILLED like that?”

Well, Sis, he DOES consider us HIS property, although they only used the term “citizens” when spouting propaganda, and then he got thousands more of “His” citizens killed in Iraq, fighting for “his” oil.

And, his accomplices and friends at Enron were given 8 more years to complete their original job of stripping America bare.

How Very very very convenient.

But you read it here first, folks. Cause you KNOW the Right Wing NutJobs at DumFox and KVOR ain’t gonna tell you that they want Americans killed, by the millions if necessary.

Not in those exact terms. Or, not usually.

They DID for ten years publish exactly that kind of plan in the Project for the New American Century.

Immigrant Jewish State Foreign Minister rejects ‘Right of Return’

Two LiebermansThe Far Right Jewish State Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, is on a charm patrol in Europe right now, where his job is to try to convince Europeans that he is not Israel’s equivalent of Dick Cheney. It is doubtful that Avigdor can pull the wool over the eyes of even these enablers though. Lieberman: This government will reach peace with Palestinians

Yeah, right! (What dopes he plays us for!) Though here is the new immigrant to the Jewish State rejecting an Arab plan for Peace because he doesn’t believe in the ‘Right of Return’ for people who have lived in the area for hundreds of years! Lieberman: Right of return makes Arab plan unacceptable Wrong religion.

Lieberman talks of peace, has no plans for it, and represents that 2/3 of the Jewish population in Israel that currently lusts for war with Iran per what the polls state. The Israeli government feels that Obama should expand war from the countries of Iraq and Afghanistan, where he is continuing Bush’s wars and occupations, and start yet more conflicts with Sudan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iran. This is Lieberman’s idea of ‘Peace’. Lost in it all is any desire to drop the racism of the Jewish State regime.

Domination, Domination, Domination… but they need Charm, Charm, Charm. That’s where Barack Obama comes in. What a team they can be since Dubya just simply lacked that charm. So does Joe Lieberman in the photo. But Barack? Go figure??? Some find him to be absolutely charming! Why I just can’t figure out?

The Democrats ‘stimulus’ package aggravates the economic disaster instead of fixing it

stimulus-package.jpg ……. It really is too much to see all those liberals getting on the Republicans’ case for their opposition to the Democratic Party’s economic ‘bailout’ plans. Barack’s giveaways to the rich corporate sectors do not alleviate the economic collapse but just pile on to it. So do liberals really want to be left holding the bag and later get blamed by the Republicans for helping pass these government give outs to all the wrong folk built on increasing the Federal debt?

Donkeys have never been so dumb as these American ones seem intent on being! True, Liberals have never been much more than just marginally smarter than the Conservatives are in the US and we’re seeing that in how they have been suckered into supporting an entirely conservative response to the unfolding worldwide disaster now being advocated by their supposed modern day Abraham Lincoln liberal liberator, Barack Obama. However….a real economic rescue plan for Americans would have to be built on several key ingredients, and Barack Obama has used and dealt with none of them.

1) Startup of a new single payer medical system that takes the insurance companies, the hospital and nursing home chains, and the medical equipment/ pharmaceutical companies right out of the control box they presently enjoy, and sets the patient and community into the driving seat where they have always belonged.

2) Nationalizing bankrupt financial institutions and companies in key areas of production (banks, automobile industries, energy companies that pollute, steel, vital medical institutions, major retail outlets that are going under like Circuit City, etc.) and encouraging workers control (unionization).

3) Increasing funding of Social Security programs of all kinds with an emphasis on doing away entirely with privatized retirement schemes that privilege some workers at the expense of others.

4) Instituting national equalization of funding and national Federal funding of the Educational System, and doing away with unequal privatized educational schemes and unequal local funding of education.

5) An immediate defunding of the bloated military-industrial welfare scheme centered on government contracts for the Pentagon’s toys.

When none of these key ingredients for a real economic restart of this country are approached by the Democratic Party-sunk American liberal community, you have a pure recipe for eventual political disaster, as the Republican Far Right will eventually move themselves back into position to retake political power in the White House once again. The Democratic Party truly is a gigantic sink hole that destroys all hope for real change ever being on the agenda, as long as liberals defend the package that is not defensible as being any sort of progress. Why be such gluttons for punishment, Liberals? You need to dump the entire idea of giving support to the Obama package, and sooner is much better than later when the damage will already be set in concrete and done.

Salvation Army lives off government funding and pushes crazy religion too

Salvation Army kettleThe Salvation Army has steadfastly promoted itself as being a rather saintly organization and is out there every Christmas asking for your donations. Did you know that you already donate to them? That’s right! The Salvation Army, a religious charity, has received millions upon millions of government dollars to help spread their Far Right Wing brand of Christianity far and wide, but most surely off onto the homeless and more dependent populations of our country.

The Salvation Army has gotten much government money obtained through your taxes from all levels of government; local, state, and federal. It has gotten quite a bit of money from the government in Canada, too. Plus, many private corporations give special privilege to the Salvation Army, allowing them into areas with public access that they normally close off to almost all others. Every time you donate free items to the Salvation Army, the government is helping out their religious program by making the donation tax free. So there is a lot of government and major corporate assistance to this Right Wing Christian charity.

The Salvation Army no longer appears to be overtly turning away those who refuse to participate in the religious services at their shelters, but….. The need for Homeless service is nationally very poorly met, so there is still much pressure if you are in need of assistance to appear to fit in with any religious proselytizing done, simply to get any personal favoritism being dished out. And the Salvation Army is an rabidly anti-Gay, anti-Spanish speaking, and pro religious discrimination in their hiring practices. How bad can these Right Wing Christians get with their prejudices? MSNBC reports Salvation Army leader to lose job over marriage
Rules (which) require officers to only marry a person within the organization
Pretty bad, it would seem.

Why are the various government bodies helping promote this sort of stuff with tax monies pulled in from people with multiple religious and nonreligious points of view? By not providing adequate services run by government agencies for The Needy, government is promoting a need to go to these Right Wing Christian run shelters, too. The Christian lobbyists are always out to try to erase any separation of Church and State, and as a result, the Salvation Army keeps on kicking, though most people totally disagree with their brand of aggressive Religious nuttiness. Time to take these outfits off the government dole! There are simply many, many other ways to help The Needy out, and government should be forced to do their job, rather than you just dropping a buck or two into the kettle and going on your merry way.

Kashmir, Israel, India, LeT, and the Mumbai events

Many Indian government figures are beginning to point the blame towards an organization called LeT, or Lashkar-e-Taiba, as being behind the attacks on targets inside Mumbai, India. LeT is an organization of resistance to Indian control over a major portion of Kashmir, where the India government has terrorized the people there for decades now, in one of the longest, bloodiest and nastiest conflicts worldwide, if not the very worst of them.

Two of the targets picked out in Mumbai seem to be the targets that LeT might well have chosen if they were in fact the organization behind these attacks. See ‘US intelligence points to LeT for Mumbai attacks’ The head of Mumbai’s anti-terrorism police (he died) and the offices of a Far Right Wing Jewish center were involved as targets, and both are connected to the use of torture on Muslim POWs in Kashmir (and elsewhere inside India) and the involvement of Israel giving support to the Indian government in their occupation of the Kashmir Homeland. See Israel to train Indian soldiers in Kashmir Yet, LeT seems to be saying that they were not involved in this attack. See Jamat-ud-Dawa (LET Political Wing) on Mumbai Attacks: “Not a Legitimate Tactic” By Evan Kohlmann, so who knows?

There are certainly many inside the Indian Hindu Far Right that are desperately wanting to use these attacks as further reasons to motivate their own desire for more pogroms against India’s Muslim communities. So now we have Kashmir mixed up with US imperialism, the Indian government, torture, Israel, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the so-called ‘Global War on Terrorism’. What a mess!

Is there any cure for Nervous Nelly Panic Disorder?

nervous nellyPoor liberal Nervous Nellies. They see plots everywhere! It must be quite scary for them don’t you think?

Somebody is always trying to take something away from them. Liberal Nervous Nellies are the exact flip image of the Paranoid Anti-Communist, who always sees a liberal socialist government plot ahead. So is there any cure for the American liberal’s Nervous Nelly Panic Disorder? It’s unseemly to be acting just like the Paranoid Anti-Communist Right Wingers do.

‘Once largely emblematic of the far Right, which saw black helicopters of the dreaded United Nations behind every mountain, Jews running everything, Communists working nefariously under every bed, fluoridation plots, an immigrant assault on the Anglo-Saxon gene pool, and a liberal cabal out to steal their assault hunting rifles, now the Left is awash in the same kind of fevered thinking.’

That was from The End Is at Hand (to Leftist Conspiracy Theories) by Dave Lindorff. An Obama win is not going to help, Dave. They need some Paxil instead. SHOCK!!!!!

As a long timer multi-faceted Inhabitor of Mental Wars (and Mental Wards) I know what I am talking about here, too, Dave. Don’t believe me???? Don’t believe me???? Heck I’ve even been married twice to Psychology Majors 2, Dave. Take it from me, Dave, this disorder is not over by a long shot. We need Paxil, put like Communist fluoride, into the drinking water of America before we can even begin to talk about a cure here, Dave. Believe me, PLEASE!????? There’s no plot!!!!!! No plot at all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Colorado Springs Gazette favorably headlines local Communist Party activity in our fair city!

This is, as all presidential election years are, a circus year of American comedy at its best! I mean, we got a gift from John McCain of his female Dan Quail, Sarah Pale In town even! Still, imagine my surprise to see today’s edition of our Far Right Wing daily paper (The Gagzette) with a prominent headline for our city’s only active Communist Party member, gus hall Vivian! She’s been the deliverer of the Communist Party’s national newspaper around town for years now (and a reporter for that paper, too!), but apparently our Gazette ‘reporters’, ‘editors’, and ‘newsmen’ are unaware of that!????? Go figure?

They probably are aware though, that Barack Obama is a Big Bad American Communist? I mean, we are dealing with world class geniuses over that at Freedom Communications, Inc… lol. I hope that they do not now inform the national crowd about Barack Obama’s connections to Colorado Spring’s Communist Movement, now that they are getting the real scoop about my friend Vivian, the CP reporter and paper deliverer?

OK, here’s the link to the Gazette’s pro- Communist Party activity, though you have to buy the paper’s hard copy to get the full effect, as their website really doesn’t give a good idea of how much they actually headlined their pro-CP coverage. I’ll be laughing through the next year over this one, you can bet on that! Campaigners on different sides, but have same passion

Go Vivian! I love you even if you are an evil commie! Give me a call so we can get together some! I’m not surprised that you are pushing for Obama.

Could it be that the Colorado Springs Gazette’s editors are Lenin’s useful idiots? For more about the American Communist Party, go to The Gus Hall Fan Club website …I know that our local paper would want you to do that! Go useful idiot team at our local Gagzette! Good work! I’m still not voting for Barack Obama though.

McCain won’t need on the job training, he’s almost dead in this election

beam me upThe funniest part of the debate was McCain saying that he won’t need any on the job training for being President unlike how Obama supposedly would. That’s right, John, clones of Bush/ Reagan do not need any on the job training at all. However, neither do clones of Clinton.

But how stupid could McCain get with using this line? People aren’t comparing Obama’s ‘experience’ as a political hack with that of Old Fart John, they are comparing Obama’s experience with that of Sarah Palin since they figure that such a decrepit tottering old fool probably won’t last his 4 year term. In fact, McCain looked so bad health wise in tonight’s debate that many folk will have trouble thinking that he could make it through even another year!

As to substance? Well there was little. Neither candidate had anything to say about the effects of deficit spending for the military plunging (that’s today’s Wall Street word) the world economy into the deep, yet they blabbed on about it for most of their time. And to the military and what wars to fight, Obama outflanked General McCain to the far right, saying that we must go aggressively into Pakistan and Afghanistan yet more than has already been done! He wants to invade Sudan, too, it seemingly appears. McCain says that Obama speaks big, but carries a small stick, where as with Viagra McCain it is the other way around. Hey, that’s differences for you!

Obama seemed to score a point or two on the theme of health care, simply because McCain’s approach was to say let the poor die in the streets and don’t bother business folk with such picayune affairs. Obama replied that he was not so eager to napalm the American public.

Who won the debate in this debate of losers? Why Obama did. McCain is too cloned from a one letter President who is sinking faster than Wall Street stocks. It’s the economy, W. Look for the gap between McCain and Obama to grow wider with John’s weak punches. The Republican campaign is now on life support and needs Cheney to start a nuclear war to possibly rally the flag waving public back into their camp of Fantasy. We’re on to new fantasies instead! Clintonism just turned Blacker! Oh joy!

Singin’ the Bail-out blues…

..except nothing that ugly could possibly be put to music..

There’s a massive effort from the Far Right to blame the Liberals, blame the Working poor (whispered rumors are that it’s those MINORITIES) when the evidence has been staring us right in the face for all this time.

Infomercials on how to Get Rich Without Trying filled the late-night, early morning TeeVee…

The loans that were defaulted, turns out that not only most but the Vast Majority of them were to people who were speculating.

Not people who were buying homes to actually, you know, LIVE in them.

The “Flip that house” show is still on HGTV…

Buy a house at a flexible rate, wait while the real estate value goes up, then sell it at a profit.

The Infomercials promised that you could do this with “little or even NO money down! How could you possibly lose?”

Buy a house with no money, sell it a week later, pay off the balance of your mortgage and use the rest as paper collateral, “Cash Instrument” on another loan, preferably two, and do the same thing over again.

“How could you possibly lose?”

ummm… maybe by following the instructions, yeah, that’s a fast way to lose.

NOW, How Much Would You Pay? BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE!

these “Cash Instruments” essentially a post-dated check backed by an extremely ætherial government guarantee of payment…

then get used as collateral for secondary and tertiary levels of loans.

Now, the Republican-controlled Congress, (until January 07), top heavy with Harvard MBAs and even Doctorates in Economics, and of course the Investment Banks and the Brokerage Houses, for some reason now they’re saying they’re the victims, that none of them had the experience or the intellect to spot a Pyramid Scam in the works.

Especially not when given a 15 year head start on spotting it.

They say they were forced to give loans to Poor Risk (meaning: underpaid Minorities) customers, but neglect to mention that most of those owner-occupant houses didn’t default.

They also weren’t “required by Federal Law” to push the bank guarantees off onto the Speculators, in fact, they seem to be complicit in those crimes.

And all these Financial Experts, especially those in Congress, like McCain, have had their Corporate Sponsors spend Large Money telling us how vigilant they were over our economy…

WELL, DUH!!

So the most they can claim is Not Guilty By Reason of Massive Incompetence.

But they come, not hat in hand, not humbly, but Arrogantly, demanding that we pay their bills, with no questions and no oversight.

Because, so they say, they’re the only ones who have the competence and experience to do it.

my yass.

We’ve just experienced the full measure of their “Competence”

Then there’s the little matter of that Federal Insurance on the mortgages.

It wasn’t there. Why was that insurance not there?

Two Words: Eye Rack.

Seems Mr Bush, whose Grandpoppy, Poppy and brothers are all Bankers, has had a little Fancy Finance Finagling going on to “pay” the bills on that mess.

It makes the Treasonous Actions of Reagan, North, Poindexter Bush Sr Secord and Casey look like a trial run.

Which essentially it was.

This time instead of funding the Cuba Libre, the Contras, the Medellin Cartel, the Taliban, Hizbollah and al Qa’eda, it goes directly into the American Taliban in other words BlackWater, Halliburton and other more highly organized Terrorist Groups.

But they’re going to blame the entire collapse on a relative handful of low-budget homeowners.

Eat the Rich.

Alaska’s REJECT PALIN rally

Sarah Palin with caribou kill
It has to be the item most hidden by the American media so far this year. They just do not want America to know that Alaskans turned out in mass to what has been described as the largest political demonstration in that state ever! They came out 1400 strong to show the US and the world that Sarah Palin is certainly not liked at all by many an Alaskan.

The Republican hate media tried to stop the large turnout. Alaska Women Rally Against Palin And Are Threatened That forked tongue, Right Wing hate radio scumbag kind of turned your stomach, didn’t he? Eddie Burke is kind of an Alaskan version of Rush Limbaugh, a loud mouthed thug who was forced to backtrack from his original calls to violence. He got slapped on the wrist for invoking violence against 2 women organizers of the rally, but his brand of hate will be back, because it’s popular with the Far Right nutters. Radio host suspended for airing anti-Palin protesters’ numbers

Community should learn to welcome immigrants

Imagine my surprise today, to open up The Gazette and see the Metro section of the paper with a column by opinion writer Barry Noreen titled “Community should learn to welcome immigrants.” I have read this paper for two years now and had not yet found any commentary by its opinion writers that I agreed with 100%. And here it was at last!

Noreen spotlighted the efforts of Megumi Nakamura and others in the community to befriend immigrants coming into the US, rather than to persecute them. Reminds me kind of the All- American holiday Thanksgiving even, where American immigrants made an annual meal to thank those that were kind and gave them assistance. For Megumi, everyday should be Thanksgiving American style, rather than persecution American style with ICE, which is the new name La Migra has given to itself.

One thing missing from the commentary though, was any thought that most immigrants are fleeing from countries that our own US government has Big Time helped mess up. Fact is, our own government is all over the world right now, messing up the lives of other peoples. It has been this way for decades now, too. So we should try to stop allowing government officials to do that so that maybe we would have less poor people entering our US Borders looking for a new life, for their families and their kids. And we should learn to welcome those that do enter meantime.

Barry Noreen, thank you for being brave and bucking the Far Right trend over at The Gazette. It was a brave thing to have written the column the way you did. Thanks.

A soulless candidate- Barack Obama

Anybody but McCain? Why? …McCain is liable to collapse The Empire and that would be a good thing. Still, it is rather bad politically to push for collapse of one’s own nation even if it might benefit the rest of the world. So we turn to Barack Obama and see what the man offers up to us for our possible votes? Would we be doing better to vote for Obama or cast a vote for one of the marginalized non-candidates instead? Or to not even ‘vote’?

OK, so we agree that McCain is a bad vote, right? To vote for McCain is to vote for Incompetent Imperialism, Incompetent Empire, to vote for an Empire without future. But what are we voting for if we vote for Barack Obama? Obama himself offers up the answer, but is it really the case, this ‘CHANGE’ he talks about?

We have some recent history to offer US some insight to this question. We have the 12 years of Reagan-Bush and the arrival of the Clinton team offering up the same mantra of ‘hope’. Clinton promised us something different than the Reagan Era but instead gave us only a minor and insipidly weak gap time between Reaganism and Dubya. In fact, he was prep for getting us to Dubya.

So along comes the new ‘Blacker’ version of Clintonism which is Barack Obama, and we have to have some parameters and guidelines to evaluate him with. These parameters must at least include race, sex, labor, immigration, health environment, and war. What is Obama planning for us in these areas of policy? What is this ‘CHANGE’ he talks about? Sadly, he only seems to be talking changing the incompetence level of the Dubya clique in governing The Empire.

Of the issues noted above, the question of war is by far the most dominant and important one. Bush gave us war, McCain is a continuation of that, but is Obama a negation of what the other 2 stand for concerning war and peace? Or is Barack Obama a soulless candidate who promises change, yet will do the exact same imperialist aggressions in a stealth manner?

The key to evaluating Barack Obama’s positions of war and peace can be summed up in the name of one country- IRAN. Sadly, the news is bad. Barack Obama has clearly signed himself and the Democratic Party as a whole on to a planned war with this country Iran. He has signed himself up to an extension of the Iraq war into yet more neighboring lands!

Let’s face it, the time to speak out against this planned US-Israeli aggression is now, not tomorrow. Barack Obama has done quite the opposite though. Barack Obama has made it entirely clear that he supports going to war with Iran and Syria, and thereby spreading even further the bloodshed to inside Lebanon, too.

He is a man without soul, a liar and a con, when he talks about bringing us a change from Bush’s foreign policy. He now leads the element of the Democratic Party that has totally acquiesced to the neo-con game plan. And they want war with Iran.

What we will get with Barack Obama, is a new administration with an improved international public image, that will then carry out the Dick Cheney agenda in the Middle East. This is just not a good vote or a good way to spend one’s activist energies, spreading the word to vote for such a soulless creature. We will get more war.

Sad to say, that leaves us with voting for one foe the marginalized candidates (Nader, McKinney, etc.), or just not voting in an election rigged from the beginning to not give us any real choices. We do not have a functioning democracy in the US. We do not have a democracy unless the people can have a voice in the government, and not just the corporate world running the entire show.

Barack Obama is a dead end. Or worse yet, like Clinton before, Obama is just a further bridge to increase the stranglehold of the Far Right on our nation’s affairs. He will do nothing to breakdown the Right’s total current control over power in America. Vote for him at your own risk then. Vote for him if you are into self-delusion?

The Republican crowd votes for what they want and get it. The Democratic party voters seem to doom themselves to always chasing a pot of gold to be found at the end of a delusional rainbow. What is to be gained by this?

Moving Pictures, or pathetic Gazette pseudo-journalism?

Today’s Sunday Gazette highlights its Iraq coverage with a huge headline titled, ‘Moving Pictures’. Below the headline in smaller print is the additional sub-headline, ‘Everyday Iraq Through a Humvee Window’. Our local paper has no shame at all, it seems, as it even brags about being ‘in bed with’ the American government occupation army of Iraq as it rides through the Baghdad suburban streets in super armored vehicles pointing high powered weaponry at the local kids !

What we get is not real reporting but Pravda style propaganda. Comical crap. We can expect no less from this Far Right Wing propaganda rag called The Gazette. Their paper is pure trash. The local community deserves much better.

Galileo still causes problems for some Romans

I was under the impression that the Catholic Church had solidly embraced modern science, like with supporting women’s rights, allowing married priests in, and in having a Papal and palpable understanding of how pedophilia works.

Further, I thought that those unhappy yesteryears of burning witches, burning Jews, and jailing scientists was completely forgiven and forgotten. but some just don’t forget, and some things don’t really change that much at all. There are still saints walking amongst us in far Right Wing circles always, angels accumulating on the tip of a needle’s head, and YES, even exorcisms and Holy Water!

See the protest of the Pope in Rome though. I never knew that Rome was a hot bed of atheism! Can’t they just leave Pope Rat alone?

The Science of Fools

I’m sure you missed it, since most of us have long since given up on reading the idiotic editorials of The Gazette, our Far Right Wing local daily paper. But there it was this Tuesday morning as they attacked the notion of giving our country’s children government guaranteed health care. Oh horror of horrors they said, ‘This will keep people from buying health insurance for the tiny tots!’

This all from a paper that has no problem with giving trillions of government funds to the military industrial complex. They call their ideology ‘Libertarian’, too! But what about the science of these fools, the Science of Libertarian Fools?

Well lets see…..? Just at the moment that scientists see an explosion of infectious disease epidemics as being likely in the near future (in fact they see it as already underway), these fools of The Gazette ignore scientific opinion. They don’t give a shit that the Medical System of the US if more full of holes than Swiss Cheese.

They pooh pooh the idea that there is such a thing as Global Warming, too. Or that there is any planetary ecological crisis currently underway! They practice the Science of Fools, Pretend Libertarianism, so they oppose strengthing medical coverage at the time it is most needed! That’s how they support ‘national security’. They ignore common scientific sense.

Speaking of ignoring science. The Gazette Gang of Editorial Clowns wrote their editorial against providing federal medical coverage for America’s children almost exactly 2 years after Katrina. That was when political clowns such as The Gazette always supports had completely ignored scientific advice calling to strengthen the levees of New Orlean, scientific advice that had been given for decades.

Ignoring that scientific advice led to the Great New Orleans Flood, which no doubt the ignorant a-holes at The Gazette consider to be God’s will. It wasn’t, but New Orleans got washed into the gutter because of dumb dicks like the Gazeete editorial writers that always support what they call “Free Enterprise,’ while condeming and ignoring realy important scientific opinion. Goodbye, New Orleans.

Boy that paper sucks! Every time The Gazette writes editorial comments on ecology, medicine, or anything at all dealing with science, they just are on Cloud Nine. They are lost dealing with Political Science, too. In fact, they are as corrupted as you can get.

The ‘free market’ doesn’t like science at all. It just gets in the way of maxing out making profits for the well-to-do. Our children deserve more, and they deserve guaranteed federal mandated medical coverage. This is the science that will stop the spread of disease. Big Business hates it. They prefer the Science of Fools instead.

PS- See where these unoriginal editorialists of The Gazette got their unoriginal opinion from. A Socialist Plot

How the Far Right targets Africa

Let’s face it, the US Antiwar Movement has had an abysmal record for mobilizing people to oppose the military-industrial complex. Over a decade and a half since the US first militarily attacked Iraq, the killing still goes on. And the record in regards to Africa is much worse, despite the fact that the US has a large African American population that should potentially be easy to mobilize support against US military interventionism on that continent.

For decades, the US used Portugal and South Africa as its subordinate clients in ruling Africa, much in the same way that it now uses Israel to help it rule the Middle East, but these regimes were ultimately forced to disassemble themselves. Now the US has a plan to bully into formation a new group of subordinate African client regimes. This is an interesting article about what led to the formation of AFRICOM, the new Pentagon command system or African interventionism. How the Far Right targets Africa In it, we discover the role of the Heritage Foundation.

If we don’t begin to pay some attention to what’s really going on in Africa, we will soon become bogged down there with US troops in the same way as has occurred quite recently in Muslim Asia and the Balkans in Eastern Europe.

Bush’s token roundup of ‘legal immigrants’

It didn’t make The Gazette, but Bush’s announced token roundup of 3 ‘legal’ immigrants yesterday is noteworthy for what it says about the great immigration ‘debate’ the Far Right wants us all to engage in. Their script goes that legal immigration is OK with them, but they just want us all to stop the undocumented from flooding our country with their ‘alien hordes’.

But just who are many of these ‘legal’ immigrants that the US government gives visas to? Do you really want them next door to you, instead of some nice foreign farmworker, janitor, or construction worker and their family, that the US likes to use then discard? If we knew the full details, I think that most of us would be more likely to support supposedly illegal immigration long before we would want to support US government sanctioned legal immigration.

The 3 immigrants arrested and jailed by the government are all 3 ex military in their respective South American countries, who were issued US visas based on they’re having been seen as being CIA assets at one time. Now, since they are giving the US bad press in Latin America, the US government is betraying these murderers, torturers, and war criminals they previously had welcomed with open arms to become your next door neighbors and mine.

But don’t for a minute be fooled. There are tens of thousands more of this type of ‘immigrant’ still living amongst us. I bet a good portion of the Vietnamese restaurants in this country have owners that came from such shady backgrounds as the 3 above did, for example.

So don’t be so quick to jump on the gun about the dangers of the supposed ‘illegal’ immigrant, as compared to the ‘legals’. Thank of who is doing the evaluation of who is to be made legal, and to who is then judging whom are to be made out to be criminals? A criminal government like the one running the US these days is likely to welcome their worst foreign criminal buddies into our country, while hunting down good people who would be true assets to America like they were mere wild animals we have to protect ourselves from.

Treat all the immigrants amongst us with dignity, whether they have paperwork are not. And let’s protest an immigration policy that routinely admits some of the world’s worst criminals to live amongst us, all with legal paperwork totally in order all the while mistreating immigrant families and often tearing them apart, like how was done to the slaves of old.

Tom Tancredo and Darfur

While nice sweet liberals like Rebecca Tinsley and Jody Williams are pushing for imperialist interventionism into Sudan for supposedly humanitarian reasons, it is interesting to see the company they keep on their Darfur rescue missions. They are long time Far Right reactionaries like Elliot Abrams, Kansas Senator Brownback, and our very own lovable Colorado prick, Tom Tancredo.

Tom, who is for Border Walls, deporting penniless undocumented workers looking for work, and committing US genocide against the Iraqi people, is also teaming up with the good hearted interventionist liberals who love NATO, the UN Security Council, European and African Union troopers under the Pentagon’s AFRICOM control. Both groups are united in desire to be ‘humanitarian’ it seems, by principally sending in the troops.

Check out ‘The Right’s Stuff in Africa‘ published on the counterpoint. org site. Tom Tancredo stars in this Darfur ‘benevolency’ as the article mentions.

Matt Sanchez, new star of the pornball Right

Liberalism is not the great refuge of the American homosexual, but rather it is the Far Right that is! All one has to do is get too old to sustain a Gay porn career, anounce that you regret your ‘liberal’ hedonistic past, and then it’s welcome open arms a head into a new life style with the nutster Christian Right, as a newly reformed ‘faggot’. God be praised!

Instead of sex with another man, you are now having sex with Ann Coulter and Condi Rice! Still a career whore at least… Check out Salon’s article on Matt Sanchez, new star of the pornball Right.

Now, to be a gay Christian you don’t need to even stay in the closet. In fact, it’s quite welcomed if you parade around town your sinful, and supposedly previous ‘liberalism’, in flamboyant drag. The drag show has never been more popular than it is now with conservatives. In fact, it seems to be the favorite act inside their Big Tent of sinners.

Objectivity on local radio

Dec 5 procession
This week some colleagues and I marched on our knees to the Colorado College president’s office to present signed petitions which asked that the college radio station carry a news program called DEMOCRACY NOW! (Exclamation theirs.) We’ve yet to receive a reply, but I wanted to explain our actions.

First of all, what is DEMOCRACY NOW? DN is a daily radio and television news show out of New York City that stands nearly alone in covering the stories which are being kept out of the corporate owned media. For example, every year the Colorado Springs Independent covers the year’s ten most censored stories. DN reports those and more, usually as they happen.

Do you know the story of Khaled al-Masri, the German Muslim who is currently being represented by the ACLU in a lawsuit against the CIA, for unlawful abduction, rendition, incarceration and torture? DN reported his story a year ago, after al-Masri found himself freshly drugged and dropped into a field in Macedonia. His story sounded so strange but had the ring of truth to it. Experts were planning to analyze strands of his hair to verify his account. It took more than a year before al-Masri was able to break national news. In between, how many extra-judicial abductions have been allowed to take place?

And the recent attention paid to the U.S. use of Napalm, and their use of White Phosphor as a chemical weapon? DN reported such incidences from the very first day the U.S. assault began.

Why KRCC? Because local community radio station is our great hope, and our first impediment.

By now it is widely accepted that FOX and the network media are mouthpieces for corporate moneyed interests. People of education turn to NPR and the NYT for example for what they believe is the balanced picture. But it’s not, and critical thinkers are beginning to see that the media has been playing a good cop bad cop psych-op routine. One side of the media plays the good cop, with its supposed liberal bias, but ultimately has the same agenda as its partner.

The local community looks to KRCC as a trusted advocate of objective news. But a growing number who supplement their news from the internet and from the Indy see that NPR really doesn’t cut it anymore. Have you heard NPR advancing the “Christmas” vs “holiday” war-on-Christmas canard? Elsewhere this story has been exposed as a concoction of the far right, but NPR is dutifully giving it legs.

Why go to the president of CC? Because KRCC station manager Mario Valdes has repeatedly rebuked everyone’s requests. Community members have been after him for years and his reply has been the same. Mr. Valdes has even slandered the effort by categorizing it as a small minority who want a political bias on KRCC. No one is asking for bias, just objectivity. And the number of people who’ve made this request has not been small. And it’s always been growing.

Plenty of public radio stations have adopted DN and can provide wonderful testimonies. They testify that DN beats out Morning Edition and All Things Considered in popularity. In some cases DN is their leading fund-raiser. While it might be hard right now to mount a large rally in front of the station to advocate for this change, it’s clear that if KRCC carried DN, and then threatened to take it away, crowds would protest en mass.

What next? Give station manager Mario Valdes the chance to argue for what values he stands when he opposes DEMOCRACY NOW. Let’s hear beyond the arguments which NPR advances to try to stem their eroding control over their affiliates. NPR has always fought the intrusion of a spoiler like DN in their line-up because it significantly hampers their editorial discretion.

Let’s schedule a townhall meeting, a public debate. To make it interesting public viewing, let’s make it a tag team debate. If Mr. Valdes is so concerned that Colorado Springs is such an uneducated community, too easily put off by issues of social justice and human rights, let’s cater to his mythical plebeian audience. The debate can be tag team, open to all, WWF rules!

Mr. Valdes will then get to see just how small is the group of DN advocates. As we’ll see how many people share Mr Valdes’ opinion against more objectivity on KRCC. Mr Valdes may bring the support and sympathy of many listeners, but how many will stand up next to him to argue against freedom of the press, Democracy Now’s many prestigious journalism awards, and the growing movement to reclaim the airwaves for the people?

Reprinted from MyKRCC.org