COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO- Like the term Military Intelligence, “police intelligence” is an oxymoron. At least that’s the old joke. Wednesday’s hearing about the CSPD’s undercover operation against the Colo. Springs Socialists reinforced the adage. The good news is that Metro VNI, that is, Vice Narcotics & Intelligence, doesn’t have much intelligence, as in smarts, haha, OR constructive data. The impetus of CSPD’s efforts to infiltrate local activists has been to track ANTIFA, a nefarious worldwide anti-fascist organization apparently. Lieutenant Mark Comte, who heads Metro-VNI, testified to what they know so far. ANTIFA members wear black and cover their faces. When protesters do that, they’re Antifa.
Tag Archives: Fascist
D’ya think ANTIFA might be a trap?
By all means shout down the fascists. Shout down white supremicists. Bash the alt-right. Do it in black bloc, if you must (and yes we must). March on, against, and over, capitalism. Declare yourself anti-fascist. Express solidarity with ANTIFA protests and counterprotests across the country. I would rethink, however, opening an Antifa franchise without knowing who elsewhere can now act IN YOUR NAME.
No one owns the ANTIFA brand. Like “black bloc”, it’s a tactic, not a movement. Except as this moment’s zeitgeist, the brand has indeed become a movement. The imperative to repudiate emboldened Nazis lacks for neither urgency nor legitimacy.
Antifa is horizontal like Occupy, no leaders. Its membership is fully self-nominated. Except where Occupy Wall Street offshoots offered local casts of characters, Antifa participants remain undercover. The problem becomes whose undercovers.
I fully support confronting fascists. I might quibble about picking fights with inarticulate Nazi cosplayers. Our corporations, the media, and the police who protect both are the full grown, authoritarian fascists.
I likewise support black bloc as an essential strategy for effective protest actions. I encourage picking fights with dogmatic nonviolence passivists who continuously thwart the potential of public demonstrations.
I support Antifa as I do Earth First, as I do ELF, or ALF the Animal Liberation Front, or Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Intifada if you’re begining to catch my drift. I stand with them without wearing a mask because my expression of support is my political right. I do not act as them, wearing a mask.
Antifa may be serving the establishment just fine by diverting youthful rebellion from directing its energy at STATE fascism. It may be suiting populist urges just fine too by allowing discontents to vent our disgust against punchable twits instead of the impregnable powers that be. Ideally those inclined to resist fascism will catch on to who really needs the pounding.
When that begins to happen however, some Antifa chapter (the media will call it a “cell”) in Reseda or Des Moines or Stuyvesant is going to commit an outrage of domestic terrorism and the Antifa brand will be blown. It may be government black ops conducting a false flag, or three percenters shy of a full load hoping to ignite a race war, or misguided revolutionaries jumping the gun. It won’t matter. “Antifa” will be declared a terrorist organization. Pardon the pun, that will be trump.
And while we know Antifa is not an organization, intelligence records will have mapped out who were the ringleaders and daredevils of concern to national security. Authorities may or may not round up suspected co-conspirators and charge them with racketeering. That’s not even my worry. Once discredited and forced underground, Antifa enthousiasts will recede into the woodwork. All the organizing, educating and networking will have come to naught.
I anticipate that my thoughts here are not going to find favor with my many friends currently marching behind the Antifa banner. But I know a number of idiots among them too, and worse, suspected moles bent on disrupting productive insurgencies.
Though Antifa in its character employs security culture stratagems, by design it’s one big back door. I know some comrades see that as essential to escalating a revolutionary force. I see the absence of a binding ideology to be its undoing.
How about we think outside the box too calculatedly provided to us by our anti-fa social engineers? That box is pre-addresed and postage due.
If you are anti-fascism or anti-capitalism, WHAT ARE YOU FOR?
BE THAT.
You can fly the Antifa banner but do it as an allied organization you are meanwhile building.
You can punch the same Nazis and blockade the same racists, and you can sell the establishment killer app for which you control the code.
The media is public enemy number one
You may want to disagree with everything the Trump says, but I’d like to see you argue that he’s wrong about the media being “the enemy of the American People.” President Trump is a maniacal clown, but the larconist corporate media is public enemy number one.
You fascist, loofah-faced, shit-gibbon!
When Donald Trump says he’s gotten no calls about the Dakota Access or Keystone XL pipelines saying “Apparently they’re not controversial” he’s trolling you. Making taunts with easily refutted falsehoods is the definition of trolling. But two billion smartphones can play that game, you just have to be as creative as Trump’s writers. However, don’t underestimate Madison Avenue specialists of the lowest common denominator. I know the Donald makes it look so easy, he’s insanely inane, but the selling of Cheetos and Trump bling detritus is a science. A Pennsylvanian senator is having a go, tweeting “Why don’t you come after me, you fascist, loofa-faced, shit-gibbon!” –an expression coined at an Anti-Trump demonstration in Scotland. Accordingly the corporate media is offuscating the Democrat’s name, Daylin Leach, likely because he’s an environmentalist. Let’s see if Trump bites.
Erdogan fakes coup in Turkey, purges army and supreme court, shuts down US air base to force extradition of rival
The military coup in Istanbul was not what the Turkish President’s tightly reined media, nor the West’s fascist controlled media, say it was. It was not a coup, it was a Reichtag Fire. Now Recep Erdogan is rounding up the “plotters”, most of them supreme court judges, who were the last checks and balances on his authoritarian ambitions. We’re supposed to believe jurists plotted with foot soldiers? Imagine you get a ransom note from kidnappers, but the person they say they’ve kidnapped is on Facetime with CNN assuring you he’s free! Imagine you’re the kidnapper and you see that! But you’re only a soldier, doing your compulsory military service, following orders to prevent rioters from storming a bridge, and you’re not watching television as your president calls citizens to take to the streets and attack the disloyal “rebels.” Meanwhile the officers ordered to give you the orders hop a helicopter to Greece because they know they are going to be the scapegoats. And get this: jet pilots who precision bomb Kurds and ISIS for lunch, can only lob lunchbox bombs upon the parliament and sundry official buildings. Now US pundits, speaking as former CIA officers, resting their laurels on having been advisors to countless military coups, are claiming the coup was “bungled”. Yeah? Do you think Turkish soldiers don’t know their capitol is in Ankara, not Istanbul? Former CIA director James Woolsey is among the pundits. Woolsey, we learn, has been in Turkey for the last six months. What is HE doing in Turkey? Now Erdogan has closed US use of Incirlik Air Base and he’s asking President Obama to extradite Fethullah Gülen, the Turkish expat whose is seen as Erdogan’s main political rival.
Modern Nat Turner insures Dallas cops cannot assail Black lives with impunity
Was ANYBODY going to stop the unfettered lynching of people of color in America? Did President Obama ever deliver anything more than a eulogy? Few police officers are being convicted or even indicted. Videotaped killings of black men by lawmen have become so common, those disseminating the videos are being accused of harboring fetishes. People expressing offense online are being shamed for being clicktivists, though clearly the only fuels firing public outrage are the videos. Meanwhile Black Lives Matter spokespeople have become so jaded they ridicule the efficacy of street protests. And now everyone is condemning the lone direct action taker.
The killing of any human being is terrible, but the retaliatory killings of police in Dallas could have been prevented. Not by expecting minority communities to stomach further and unending extrajudicial assassinations, but by having police curb their racism and use of lethal force. Or of course by disbanding militarized police departments. Public officials can’t even broach that conversation. Do we expect the police state to dismantle itself?
Self-styled black revolutionary Micah Xavier Johnson, a typical PTSD-hardened Afghan vet, put “suicide by cop” to the service of his embattled community and avenged the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. He didn’t shoot their actual killers, but he didn’t hit innocents either. Johnson targeted America’s systemic enforcers of inequity, hitting twelve police officers, five of whom have now died.
Let’s note those cops weren’t “protecting the first amendment rights” of a spontaneous protest of the Sterling and Castile murders, but were harassing and detering demonstrations. The officers could have chosen not to, and hopefully, their comrades in other cities, molesting other legal assemblies, may now choose to stand down, because now authoritarian bullying has come in the line of fire.
There is poetic justice for those who would decry “Blue Lives Matter”. If they’re going to pretend it, let them feel the oppressive threat of violence which black lives bear. For one evening, in a small corner of Dallas, Texas, police brutality faced a comeuppance.
For now Johnson’s act is being condemned as an atrocity, as a massacre even, though obviously his victims 1) met every standard of belligerent adversary, 2) were armed, and 3) outnumbered him. Let’s concede that Johnson is a credit to his military training. He confirms how our soldiers could so murderously rapage through our war zones against lesser equipped combatants. Johnson’s motive echoes that which provoked US atrocities overseas, seeking revenge against civilians, exacting collective punishment for deadly IEDs.
If we acknowledge the violence with which African Americans are oppressed, and the mendacity of its apologists and enablers, can we condemn violent resistance? International law accords oppressed peoples the human right to resist.
Slave rebellion leader Nat Turner is recognized today as a hero, but was exhaustively vilified in his day because he killed slave owners, indescriminate of old or young. Whites retaliated and killed many more blacks. More violence follwed from abolitionsists and Jayhawkers, all of it lamentable. But slavery didn’t end because we willed it.
Because this era’s history is written with erasers, our victors’ primary tool, Micah Johnson will probably never be praised for heroism.
Johnson will join fellow effaced cop-killer Christopher Dorner. A previous African American reservist vet who was immolated alive, killed instead of being apprehended, lest an investigation benefit from his testimony about why he could no longer bear LAPD corruption in 2013.
From Dorner’s “manifesto”, before Michael Brown, Ferguson and Baltimore:
“Those Caucasian officers who join South Bureau divisions (77th,SW,SE, an Harbor) with the sole intent to victimize minorities who are uneducated, and unaware of criminal law, civil law, and civil rights. You prefer the South bureau because a use of force/deadly force is likely and the individual you use UOF on will likely not report it. You are a high value target.
“Those Black officers in supervisory ranks and pay grades who stay in south bureau (even though you live in the valley or OC) for the sole intent of getting retribution toward subordinate caucasian officers for the pain and hostile work environment their elders inflicted on you as probationers (P-1?s) and novice P-2’s. You are a high value target.
You perpetuated the cycle of racism in the department as well. You breed a new generation of bigoted caucasian officer when you belittle them and treat them unfairly.
Mikah Johnson’s last words we only know through the spin of Dallas police, the same people who decided not to wait him out, nor to smoke him or gas him out from hiding in a public parking garage, but instead to send a robot with a bomb and M.O.V.E. his ass like every other black nationalist revolutionary.
No, you murdurous assholes, Johnson didn’t “want to kill all white people.” He wanted to kill white cops. Just like Dorner, he wasn’t a threat to the public, he was a threat to the police state. You cops ensured Mikah Johnson didn’t live to dictate “confessions” and you even obliterated his body like Osama bin Laden. Drawn and quartered essentially, to preclude memorializers being able to center on an idol to build a resistance.
You and I may grapple with what to think of Johnson’s personal rampage, but the state knew immediately his was the selfless heroism they fear most. As with bin Laden, they knew his apprehension must be terminal.
Lest I be misunderstood, I do not promote armed insurrection, sedition or murder. I cannot. But I will not condemn Micah Johnson.
I need not agrandize him either. Taken without his revolutionary ideology, Johnson was an ordinary mentally wounded veteran like many others. Homicidal vets with PTSD are at the core of our epidemic of police brutality. Our law enforcement teams are full of OIF and OEF soldiers who got their start shooting up cars at checkpoints and acting out racist genocide to their heart’s content.
It’s not a new problem, the US has always had active warzones feeding veterans into homelessness for those who couldn’t cope and filling government jobs for those who thrived. Beside policemanship, a very common job for discharged soldiers has always been the post office. Rembember the rampaging gunman problem we used to call “going postal?”
America’s racism problem may be transcended by a succession of church services, but class struggle is not a hearts and minds operation. Fascist rule and its army of the rich are not going to be wished away by militant nonviolence. That’s as likely as counting on the tooth fairy.
Worrying that acts like Johnson’s will provoke increased authoritarian repression is an expression of privilege provided by someone aclimated to a tolerable status quo, clearly a white perspective for whom black lives matter not enough.
Until all of us share the plight of the average Syrian refugee, trapped in our capitalist frontier war zones, none of us are shouldering an equitable burden of the police state.
That’s why it is more than black lives that matter. The middle class greivances of Occupy Wall Street are only a class removed from Black America’s suffering. We’re still talking about privileged Americans who support a grander racism that drives our global exploitation of all peoples.
I don’t have any faith that an arc of history bends toward justice in this corporate dark age. For my own sense of what’s right, it’s important to recognize Micah Johnson and Christopher Dorner for who they were, flawed, maybe very minor, aspiring Nat Turners, who wanted to strike against today’s slave masters and their brutal blue foremen.
A death in the Fremont County Jail
I have to write an article about how the Fremont County Sheriff Department, with the help of the Ku Kl/ux Kounty coroner, judges, prosecutors, Medical staff at the Jail and even Paramedics, killed a man named John Walter, beat him to death, for daring to insist that he needed health care. They broke nine of his ribs, witnessed by the Paramedics, and threw him back in his “medical observation” dungeon and left to die. Two years ago.
Now there’s a lawsuit for wrongful death. They murdered the guy for talking back and not a single pig is going to be even censured for doing it. Just a civil suit.
And I’m a witness. I don’t know how the lawsuit will come out, never am optimistic about it, and these same Fascist Police State minions did the same thing to me, minus going all the way to the death.
So here’s the deal-io … I’m going to publish it in the court of public opinion. It’s safer to be way out in the open about such things. Makes it harder for the Fascists to toss one into their cell and wham bam thank you ma’am you’d be just as totally disappeared as if you went into Abu Ghraib, Khandahar, Bagram AFB or Gitmo. It took Mr Walters family two years just to get the ball rolling. And Mr Walters physicians, the ones who had prescribed the medications the Jail Private Nursing Corporation denied to him. When they broke his ribs he had already lost quite a bit of weight in a matter of weeks.
The Chickenshit pigs who did it were probably Sgt Greene and Corporal Maas. Sick sadistic bastards who get sexually aroused by beating up on helpless victims.
Just like cops around the world and throughout history. Fascism in full bloom.
People who don’t like that, like my t-shirt published on cafe press says, “y’all can just line up and take turns helping yourselves to a Texas Size all you can eat buffet of Kiss My Liberal Ass”
Founding Fathers dumped Bill of Rights
Religious freedom was passed by popular vote but only after the Official Founding Fathers rejected the entire Bill of Rights, which is why they (ten out of 13, not complete) are the first Amendments to the constitution. Now we have neo-fascist pigs like , well, the entire Republican party wanting to make Muslims wear identification, be registered and monitored like Megan’s Law, all dark skinned persons denied immigrant or refugee status etc.
So much for freedom, respect of the constitution and the “Clearly Defined Original Intent” of the so called foundering (sic) (or maybe just “sick” (I get a little weird about midnight and isn’t it the last night of the full moon?)
Of course the unfounded fatherhood who are supposed to be all knowing made up less of the population than just any others. People who didn’t own land were excluded from any vote. Black people in slavery including those who were owned (and fathered) by such benign leaders as Jefferson. You would think such a great man would at least grant freedom and the vote to his own descendents but no…
Name 40 of the “founding fathers” whose intentions are to be the basis of all our law. Why that number, you may ask.
well, I might answer, there were 4 million people in the bounds of the original United States so 40 would be 1 percent OF one percent of the total population, counting everybody who were on the census…
Yeah, I made an arbitrary statistical standard. Sue me, it would cost more to haul away my chattel than you’ll get paid for it.
But I would bet the moot question won’t be answered unless the Wrong Wing learn how to use Wikipedia. Maybe they could just lift the names of the Rich Bastards who signed the Declaration of Independence.
Paupers, Indians, slaves, women of any race or social status, etc. were denied the voted. Maybe “protected from the brutal duties of suffrage and civic involvement”
A quick guess would put it that a Ten Percent minority elected the representatives.
And we still have the proud symbol of Fascism on our state seal.
U.S. SOLDIERS ARE READYING FOR A MASSIVE DEPLOYMENT
COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO- You thank them for their service. You support them, they’re only following orders. You know they’re not at liberty to divulge everything they do or WHERE. As their supporters you are complicit, but whatever. Now your soldiers are keeping a HUGE secret from you. They’re GOING TO WAR. You’d think that would be too controversial to be a state secret.
If you leave in a military town, near a base, fort or camp, you need only ask around. Pawn shops and car dealerships seem to have their finger on the pulse of troop movements for some reason. In Colorado Springs, everybody knows. Friends and neighbors have already deployed overseas to establish contractor services. Others in readiness training.
Of course the big secret for awhile has been Africa. American soldiers have been involved in covert operations across Africa which none are still allowed to talk about. Those aren’t undeclared wars, just police actions. This time, again, it’s Iraq. Going back. I shall return.
Are they waiting on Spring? Summer weather? The election? Commander in Chief Clinton? Likely.
It used to be soldiers didn’t talk about mobilization. “Loose lips sink ships” etc. Of course in those days the public knew the nation was at war. War had been declared on us, or a fascist belligerent attacked. Today when the US launches offensive wars, illegal wars they’re called in the Hague, its troop movements have to be extra covert. Or not, actually, when mobilization is prelude to Shock and Awe.
Troop sneakiness seems to be all about sneaking past the American pulbic. Sneaking past us to unknown conflict zones in Africa and Asia, sneaking past us to redeploy to Iraq. At some point those soldiers have to understand what they’re doing is not only unpopular, it’s likely wrong.
You prefer the face of friendly fascism
Even the Pope doesn’t want Trump. Uh, who is more status quo than the Pope?
When is the last time the corporate media was on your side? The fact that every news pundit opposes Donald Trump’s candidacy should indicate the real threat his election bid poses to the powers that be. Consider too that you are only seeing Trump through their lens. His lunacy and inanity are colored by their filter. What have you heard beside outlandish hyperbole? Is Trump a racist? In the hospitality business, most of his customers and his workforce cross the border. Fences? Bans? Trump is trolling, he’s saying whatever wins him attention over airwaves throttled and moderated by hostile gatekeepers. Neither Fox nor NPR want to consider Donald Trump “electable”. What does that say?!
What gets me is the left’s kneejerk alarm at Trump’s rise. As if the media’s clarion call rings for them. Alternative media is uncritically amplifying the mainstream fearmongering. Fortunately they’re all underestimating the American public.
TRUMP IS NOT A FASCIST, he’s a conceited blowhard. Trump is not an idiologue, he’s an ignorant narcissist. Trump is not a dictator, he’s a spoiled bully. AT WORST Trump could run the White House like a syndicate thug. Is that worse or better for the American people? We’ve already got government lawlessness. Let’s unleash absolute power to fight society’s real criminals.
AT WORST Don Trump could order drone strikes on the legislature. At worst he could deploy death squads against Wall Street and Madison Avenue. A gangland don’s ego will only be threatened by his rivals. Those of us without power have nothing he needs. If Trump crowns himself tsar maybe we’ll see bankers and media moguls have their hats nailed to their heads.
The status quo’s worst nightmare could not help but benefit its have-nots. And the American People know it, hense Trump’s unwavering popularity. To our political sages, Trump’s support is incomprehensible. Hardly. Trump is not a populist, he’s dumbo Rambo. Probably more Rambo than Dumbo. Uh oh. No wonder everybody in Who’s Who is terrified the public beast will get its proxy.
Now Pope Francis has spoken out against Trump. Figureheads for established power don’t get any bigger than the Pope.
#VanillaISIS, Y’AllQaeda, YokelHaram, al-Shabubba waging YeeHawd. Har har there but for the grace of an IQ go you.
So where’s the solidarity? Yes the Bundy rancher insurrection is a fight for settler colonial privilege, Yes the hunter-soldierers are reenacting the Okies land rush of the Indian Territories. Yes this Cabelas militia is waging #YeeHawd against the gub’mint for every wrong reason. Such as, the God-given right to despoil the commons, and such as. But NO these paleoammosexuals are not “terrorists”. They can’t even pack their own lunch. What they are are dumbass carbon-bigfoots. Their hillbilly occupation is a sidearmed rebellion. That said, the camo-twits have declared war on the US government. That’s closer to the barricades than you’ve ever ventured.
Under cover of stupid, they’ve brought guns. It’s unbecoming but the strategy has averted a shutdown thus far. Guns speak truth to power in the language power understands. And the oafs are trying to protect the people’s land from the BLM. That’s your wet dream for stopping pipelines, fracking, and ecocide. Of course these yokels want to facilitate the plunder of nature, but that’s no different than the corporate media. They’re not villains, they’re the shills.
Please stop complaining that if these white privileged jerks were black they’d get the whipping they’d deserve. What are you, cheerleading for a violent authoritarian response?! Same as with rioting fratboys, you don’t have to love them, just don’t call for their smackdown. The police need to ease up with the heavy hand, not spread the brutality with equal opportunity.
Same as the drunk fratboys, these “patriots” have zero political awareness. They are no emergent right wing, they’re not fascists. The Bundy posse is to political movements what the Westboro Baptist Church was to activism. No resemblance. Poisoned apples to oranges.
Cliven Bundy, like Donald Trump, is a distraction from the real fascistm long firmly entrenched.
Of course these poachers should be run off public land, without a federal show of air suppremacy. Don’t echo the call for imperial airstrikes. Instead of igniting a Waco, let’s wait the yokels out, slap them with fines, expropriate their gear and put them in jail. Setting a forest fires should be severely punished. But don’t let me hear supposed anti-government social media pundits cry for the ass-kicking of these wannabe-brighter insurgents.
A regime which terrorizes the have-less with drones and death squads and war has no business defining what is and isn’t terrorism, least of all the push-back.
#NotMyRevolution #FuckYou. First they came for the dumb yokels, but I was not a dumb yokel so I said nothing. It’s not without irony that the point of Martin Niemoller’s lament escapes you.
Recognize the face? Benito Netanyahu.
You’ve seen that blustery fascist before. Blimp-necked, stone-faced. As Zionist war criminal Benyamin Netanyahu struts from one warmonger venue to another, isn’t he the spitting image of a much reviled sociopath of another era? Same first name approximately, same mission. Racism, war and genocide.
Je Suis a Goddamn Neoliberal Meme… Je Suis Charlie, Neda, Kony, Save Dafur
A million people mobilized in Paris, including 40 WORLD LEADERS!? How long have their limousines been queued? I usually brag that our corporate foes can’t manufacture consent in the streets, except when they do.
I AM NEDA, KONY 2012, SAVE DARFUR, now JE SUIS CHARLIE are purely neoliberal consolidations of public support. They’re televised Nurenburg rallies masked as spontaneous demonstrations. Add “I AM ___” to “______ Spring” and colored revolutions as dead giveaways of psy-op inspired counterrevolution.
With NYPD turning their backs on their mayor and Westboro Baptists making the protest of soldiers look unreasonable, the choices are narrowing for activists who want to define their struggle with tactics not splooged upon by the lumpen knee jerk Fascists.
A woman approached me yesterday at an anti police brutality demonstration in solidarity with Ferguson. She agreed with the cause, but wanted to know why we weren’t also speaking out for abused children, for example those thrown off bridges by deranged parents. While child abuse has its systemic causes, the answer highlights what differentiates insurgent demonstrations from the false. People take to the streets to challenge power, not to gang up with power to further its oppressive agendas.
Duh. Except the lure of popular causes seems to be irresistable to social justice types normally starved for public support. I saw the “Save Darfur” project twist and fracture my local peace community. Obama Lincoln 2008 had the same effect, another socially engineered bandwagon.
I’m not galled by the hypocracy of world leaders “marching” in Paris, pretending to stand for press freedoms. I’m upset my the millions of Frenchmen duped into attending their photo-op. Those millions of Frenchmen in the same street should have trampled the World Bank kapos underfoot, instead of pretending the corporate cabal were people too.
(Remember when I AM NEDA protests failed to tie a viral snuff vid to false accusations of election fraud in Iran?)
Little Jail Cell on the Prairie: behind the peabrained small dwelling movement
Humans can live in very small spaces, usually not by choice. Tiny Homes are essentially jail cells for serving house arrest. They present as tidy abbreviated domiciles, organized as one might a fascist closet. Photos set them in pastoral settings, though we all know the reality would look more like Kowloon. Stacked coffins would be the next permutation and then you really wouldn’t have to bother with plumbing.
Can we hope the Ukraine government snipers hit OTPOR & CIA provocateurs egging on the fascist suppremacists?
Protesters are being killed in Kiev, and revolutionaries enthusiasts are buying into the Western Media narrative. Even Democracy Now is parroting the theme, describing the demonstrations as opposing their government’s rejecting closer ties to the European Union. “Closer ties?” Ukraine was rejecting growing indebtedness to EU banks, favoring a bailout from Putin instead. Let’s remember that Senator John McCain jetted to Kiev to rally the uprising, seeing it as part of the rolling “freedom movement” not coincidentally encircling Russia, the former Soviets now no longer foe to Capitalism but rival. Unfortunate developments have led to government snipers firing at the “rebels” many of whom are dupes but many too are supremacist fascists not particularly misguided about US-EU hegemony. Perhaps we can find consolation in the hope that Ukrainian snipers were able to hit the OTPOR and CIA provocateurs coordinating the urban warriors.
I support all popular uprisings, but unfortunately US covert ops have picked up on our game. The only way to insulate rebellions against Western provocateurs is to build movements around political ideology they will not embrace. For the onlooker, ideology is also the means to discern destabilitation projects parading as protest. If the offending government is anti-Western-Capitalism, our counterinsurgency ops are there. Of course Socialist, Islamic, or non-World Bank client regimes are not imune to being authoritarian, but hardly more so than the Capitalist empire. Often US adversaries are forced to authoritarian measures by US covert ops working to destabilize them.
World Press Freedom Day is cover for US sponsored voices of destabilization
Remember the jokes-on-them cautionary tale about admen trying to sell the Chevy NOVA in Latin America, oblivious that “no va” means “doesn’t go?” in Spanish. You’d think Capitalism’s missionaries would know their “freedom” brand has already been unmasked. Translated it means “World Bank Compliant Fascist State” whose media is embed only. How ironic that capitalism in democracy’s clothing is heralding World Press Freedom Day. I suppose Russia and Iran are held as examples where the press isn’t free, although RT and PRESSTV are by far more reliable sources of news than anything in the “free” world. I most appreciated WPFD for the light it brought on its international supporters, bloggers who I might not have immediately known were sock puppets for western tentacles. Here’s someone in Colombia who depends “in great part on international co-operation” to fund her work.
The unconstitutional National Day of Prayer: yes, its advocates live here
Oh for God’s Sake. Is there no end to Colorado Springs’ dumbshittedness? The Colorado supreme court rules against the constitutionality of a national Day of Prayer, to the objection of, the National Day of Prayer Task Force, whose headquarters are HERE in Colorado Springs! Of course the annual proclamation is a violation of the separation of church and state, and the NDPTF doesn’t plan to appeal the decision, but they’ve put out the call for you to appeal it, and they want Governor Hickenlooper to defy the court. Who are these litigious theocratic fascists? Oddly the Gazette article paraphrased the group’s press release without attributing its statements to any spokesperson, perhaps the Gazette is embarrassed for them, you’d like to think. I shall not be surprised if next I learn that Colorado Springs submits an application everyday for its anti-intellectual prowess to be recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records.
Protest art: Fascists look better in color
Ron Paul is a hopey change bubble for white people, this time let’s burst it
RPtard – An American voter who’s peeing himself silly at the prospect of Ron Paul snatching the democracy movement for the Fascists, but who shortly will be rolled into the Republican Party like every other Teabag Libertarian antisocial supremacist before him.
Tea Partying with the Freak Brothers
Whew! These Occupy posts are far more difficult to pry from myself than their predecessors; the hands-on mechanics of putting the earlier stuff into practice in the present world, amongst the isolated pools of individuated consciousness we humans represent, each with his or her own vision of the whole, has been at the very least disorienting. I’ve lately revived an old motto i swiped from the good people at Oat Willie’s down in Austin, Texas: Onward Through the Fog! How odd is it that i’ve recently connected with some folks that hark back to that place in ways that are deeply surreal. Oat Willie’s and Fat Freddie will seem to be completely out of place in this bit, in which i mean to address the notion of cooperation amongst disparate factions, but not permanently i hope. By the end of this post, i hope to connect Occupy, The Tea Party, disparate passions, and yes, Hippies. It will be necessary to engage in some relatively surreal thinking.
Last night on a new Facebook page, “UNITE: OCCUPY,” (cap lock and all), i got into a conversation about this stuff started by a guy that asked whether anyone thought a joint event between Occupiers and Tea Partiers might be possible. Sure, i said, our Colorado Springs group had lots of Tea Partiers among its earliest enthusiasts, and although many have pulled away, there still exists a close association with many that veer sharply toward the Te Party camp, especially among Ron Paul supporters. The common ground Occupy shares with the Tea Party, at least t a grass root level, is substantial. There can be no doubt of the equally substantial differences. I suspect that it would take some pretty serious ideological barnstorming to bring the two camps together, but nothing prevents the groups from at least tentative discussion to find commonalities.
Tonight our Occupy group staged a talk by Tea Party stalwart, Constitutionalist Mike Holler. Mike seemed for all appearances to be an earnest and well-versed supporter of Constitutional “fundamentalism,” if you will. He peppered his talk with lots of my favorite quotes from my favorite founding fathers. He got a little testy about the revisionist history his kids bring home from college early on–perhaps indicative of one point of separation between Occupiers and Tea Partiers. Some of those are important. Occupy is international, where the Tea Party can display degrees of jingoism. I, personally, respect the earnest efforts of our Enlightenment founders, but recognize that they were flawed, and aver that their document was dated by racist, sexist, and elitist provisions and thinking that they might be excused from by noting their temporal milieu. We don’t have the same luxury. Occupy is legitimately grass root, supported by sweat and blood more than funded, where TP is, or at least became very quickly corporately funded “astroturf,” disingenuously proffering libertarian ideals as a smoke screen for corporate license to plunder. Occupiers are in my experience far more diverse than Tea Partiers. Socialist and Anarchist Occupiers are common, as are assorted races, genders, orientations, and religious persuasions, where Tea Partiers seem to my limited observation to be relatively homogeneously white Christian capitalist patriots. Mike interjected that both groups had been misrepresented by the media, and that seems likely to be so given that mainstream media seems content to misrepresent ’bout anything they report in this country, but Fox news and the rabid right like the Tea Party so much i have to wonder if he’s fallen victim to a personal soft spot.
Mike spoke eloquently enough in his effort to simplify the Constitution, focusing on issues of freedom, and state’s rights. He said very little with which i could find disagreement. He pointed out two major points of confluence between Occupy and the Tea Party–personal liberty, and a rally-cry, “No more Bailouts!” I suspect he fastidiously avoided some points he knew or at least feared might be contentious, like for example the ludicrous assertions i’ve heard often that environmental warnings from the scientific community stem from some kind of Satanic control scheme from the–well just whom is never too clear. The Vatican or something. Commies, i guess. That just maybe the best way for Tea Partiers and Occupiers to interact, though, for now, concentrating on the common aversion to what amounts to Fascism. Interacting from that perspective could exclude much conversation. It could put the Tea Party in the same position as the Occupy movement, after their Fascist sponsors withdraw in horror. Whatever. We Occupiers got on just fine with Tea Party Mike–“Mr. Constitution.”
Mike largely expressed notions we Occupiers could embrace. I suppose he could have done a bit of research and tailored his speech toward that end, but i think we just agree; he seemed a grassroot kind of guy, to me. He briefly alluded to schisms within the Tea Party, and there’s no sensible reason to avoid acknowledging the same within Occupy. Last night’s event was attended by Occupy people that have had such extreme altercations in their attempts to wrestle a semblance of ideological unity from a stubbornly liquid platform that it could easily enough have disintegrated into bedlam. I attended with my dear friend Thomas, with whom i often disagree. In fact, he and i often disagree so strongly that sometimes i feel like smacking him in back of the head. I expect he feels the same way about me at times. Maybe much of the time. Take note, war-mongers of the world: Thomas is a great guy, and even though we disagree with one another, sometimes strongly, neither of us has smacked the other in back of the head. Get it?
So here we were last night, disparate Occupiers engaging a Tea Party mouthpiece in a room full of people that have all experienced the vagaries of human interaction under a fairly pressurized circumstance over the past few months. No butterflies fluttered around the room, but no one worked up a bickering session, either. We worked together. All of us. One could recall the old adage that “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” but that would be devolution. I prefer to imagine that those with arguments present recognized the futility of scrapping amongst friends, if only below the radar of their Egos. Whether my nobler hopes for those pained souls in the room last night are valid or not, the assertions i made in these non-pages well before Occupy began remain true. The system we wrestle against is collapsing around our heads. And the solution is spiritual, to a far greater extent than it is temporal.
Fat Freddy is a comic book character that lives in Denver. Seriously. I met him a little while ago. (This only seems out of place, i promise.) Mr. Constitution Mike Holler expressed the opinion last night that our American republic, our constitutional federation of states, is in its final throes; that we are in a position where, ” it’s too late to save the country, but too early to start shooting.” Mike seemed tentative in expressing his hope that God might pull some kind of supernatural rabbit from his celestial hat to resolve our monumental national woes. I expect he feared perturbing the often non-Christian sensibilities of the Occupiers. He needn’t have worried quite so much–we may be largely skeptical of literal interpretations, but we’re pretty tolerant of that sort of thing. When i met Fat Freddy–an icon of counter-cultural activism important to me since childhood, an old-school Hippie with connection to the most famous and infamous of that crowd–he singled me out and pulled me aside to explain in some detail his expectation for a spiritual upheaval in coming days. Freddy’s taken up with the Urantia Book, a tome i’ve heard Christians disparage as devilish. I couldn’t see anything devilish about what he showed me. He earnestly explained his expectation for resolution. Soon.
We had come to Denver to talk about foreclosures and bank jiggery-pokery with another guy, and pulled up at Freddy’s house without knowing it. It just happened that way. These old Hippies like Tea Party fave, Ron Paul. (Follow along, now, i know it’s weird, and yeah, i know a lot of Occupiers don’t like Paul; i’m not sure about him myself). Also in attendance at that meeting was a woman i had been conversing with on line for quite a while in the context of Occupy. It took me nearly through the whole meeting to recognize her, because i knew her to live down in the Four Corners neighborhood of Colorado. She lives at Freddy’s now. This juxtaposition is so weird that now i’m expecting the Mad Hatter, or Lewis Carroll himself to pop up at some meeting quoting from Jabberwocky. Mike Holler holds out for resolution to the country’s woes in a traditional Christian context. My own suspicion, shared with J.B.S. Haldane, is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. But somewhere in the mix i am convinced that some divine Thing many of us think of as God is deeply interested in the little proceedings here on our little blue marble and that our interactions are subsequently and necessarily thus influenced.
We live right here. We have no choice but to manage things on a coarse, physical level; but we also live, i think, on an overlapping and less tangible plane, where we have more influence than we might ordinarily imagine. At the same time, things seem to occur herethere without our conscious direction. We’ll need to keep plugging away at things like grasping the Constitution, and taking on massive, quixotic quests like fighting banks and a world full of renegade, intransigent governments and power brokers, not to mention our own internal battles, as finely defined as within our own Souls. We’ll need to recognize the Truth in one another, even when it’s obscured by a bunch of worldly disagreement and fog. And so far as i can tell, were learning. Whatever that means.
Reprinted from hipgnosis.
Execution of anti-Western al-Gaddafi suggests he wasn’t strongman enough
I know very little about the dark side of Colonel Gaddafi. I’ve never seen him outside the filter of Western media. For all I know he emptied baby incubators, hid WMDs and ran rape camps. He wasn’t responsible for Lockerbie, the CIA knows that much. The deposed leader’s execution yesterday was nothing to celebrate. It was sad, brutal and shrouded in mystery. Hugo Chavez hailed Gaddafi as a fallen hero, and I’ve never had occasion to disagree with Chavez. Nor have I ever taken issue with George Galloway and he hated Gaddafi. Probably the aging revolutionary was both heroic and corrupt, eccentric and lunatic. Gaddafi was the most powerful protector of Africa, and the only leader to have apologized for Arab role in African slave trade. Naturally he had to be booted from the club.
Is the US only ever up against evil strongmen? Isn’t it obvious that any leader who opposes US hegemony has to be a strongman? Putin is as formidable as any former Soviet foe, and by comparison, Gaddafi was fey. He let down his guard, thought he could sell out to the New World Order and keep his nationalized oil. But the Capitalist jackals do not respect ideologues and will exploit it as weakness.
Captured alive, Gaddafi was brutally mobbed, although the predominant Arabic voices urged keeping him alive. Multiple video angles contradict the official statement that Gaddafi succumbed to crossfire. Video images seem to show special uniformed soldiers heading against the flow of Libyan fighters converging on Gaddafi after the fatal shots.
Was this a Mussolini moment? Hardly. To the last moment Gaddafi seemed incredulous that his people would betray him. I’m not really sure they did. He railed against the CIA and al-Qaeda backed “rebels” who were tearing Libya asunder. NATO’s strength undoubtedly tipped the balance, and Gaddafi’s demilitarization of Libya left him with insufficient defenses.
Looking at a video still of the final moments of Libya’s deposed leader, I’m reminded of the picture we once posted of Silvio Berlusconi’s bloodied face. We took it down I believe because it celebrated violence I suppose. I regret caving to whatever bastards took offense. Their timid sensibilities keep fascists like Berlusconi in power. Since that one glorious grasp at justice populi the Italian despot has stayed out of the public grasp, the Prince of Wales nearly didn’t it.
The Western press is pitching Gaddafi’s undignified death as a warning to all leaders who challenge white rule. I think it’s significance reaches much further. Summary execution at the hands of a mob. Could happen to the highest of the well heeled.
DPD used riot gear in dead of night to arrest camp singing national anthem
DENVER- When Occupy Denver threatens to make a difference is when authorities have to shut it down. The sweep tonight is a good sign.
I’m not worried about Occupy Denver. I have a tent booked for this weekend, the police attack tonight will just raise occupancy rate is all. Now I’ll have to move up my check-in date to be assured a space. Colorado Police have already lost this engagement. The mere threat of arrest tonight only enlarged the protest, it didn’t frighten it off. Middle of the night arrests and tent-clearing are of little consequence. At height of the crowd strength, the police backed down. Tents will go up everywhere tomorrow. There’s not enough riot gear in the US to occupy the multitude of protest occupations. Denver state capitol here we come!
Gov Hickenlooper’s use of State Troopers to clear the capitol lawn in the middle of night probably preempted actions by other Occupy camps to draw police resources away. Next time how can they distract the popo legally? Follow Occupy Denver’s lead. Apparently peaceful, nonviolent free speech is enough to bring clampdown.
GA earlier in evening reaffirmed that movement is not about having messages heard, to be ignored per usual, but SHUTTING DOWN THE SYSTEM. It’s is not about speaking truth to power. Power already knows the truth. What it doesn’t know is extent of peoples’ determination. Denver GA wasn’t won over by voices content to keep occupation as daily sidewalk protests, lasting into winter, to usual no effect. You want protracted Wall Street protest? Antiwar vigils have been ongoing for 10 years…
Tents ARE key issue for all Occupy protests. What is your right to peaceably assemble if you can’t protect yourself from cold? Does 1st Amendment only apply in summer, during the day, and when authorities aren’t too bothered by your dissent? Thinking this movement is about getting your issues heard is to pretend #OccupyWallStreet means “Voice Off to Wall Street.” Nope. Tents are needed in Denver, Wall Street and everywhere because this movement needs to stop the system, not hector it until we lose energy & body temp.
The Denver Post doesn’t have a live camera from their building which overlooks the capitol and Occupy camp. They’re not press, they’re criminals. What they have is nominal, the view above actually, but a low rez surveillance webcam is poor excuse for a media outlet.
Those who think Occupy Denver should have decamped and gone home, are not thinking of the homeless -the fullest victims of Wall Street. Hopefully Occupy members who were praising the Denver Police so warmly in earlier GAs will stick around on sidelines at least to get lesson in police state. Of course all the members who chose to flee DPD intimidation will be welcomed back tomorrow. But voicing their next 2-cents worth? Not so much.
Police are people too, but they have a job to do. By coincidence it’s to stop you from stopping Wall Street. Yep it’s a dilemma. It’s probably no surprise that pro-fracking, pro-coal, pro-war, anti-immigrant, anti-union gov of Colorado would be against Occupy Denver. Issuing a warning of arrests to be made between 11-5am is extortion, threatening unlawful arrest is police state terrorism. Do we accept police raids tonight on Denver and Seattle camps? Protest is civil right, shelter is human right. Police state is fascist wrong.
Something to thing about: Whole crowds can be subdued by one tyrant with a gun, if they remain nonviolent. Numerical superiority counts where people have courage to act. When people say there’s strength in numbers, it’s not if you’re queued obediently to have your eye put out, or shot, or for rigged elections.
Colo. State Troopers are wearing riot gear to face Denver protesters, because post-curfew peaceful campers equals RIOT in Fascist police state.
Iraq & Afghanistan should have thought to require US to withdraw occupation every night. Military bases must violate some vagrancy law.
Cops sympathetic to 99% could have shown their mettle if they’d occupy their sick leave, occupy off-duty, occupy right to refuse unlawful orders. Otherwise state troopers are dumbasses and do not represent Colorado or 99%. I know by regulation cop IQ has max limit, didn’t know cowardice was also requisite.
Occupy Denver was won Oct 14 at 11:01PM, regardless what happens now. Threat of arrest enlarged crowd, didn’t shrink it. The movement’s momentum is proved.
Mid-night raid won’t matter. Cops wouldn’t face crowd at its largest, the Occupy protests have been emboldened past critical mass.
The 40 minute warning given to the protesters is actually the police giving themselves 40 minutes to shit their pants. The OWS juggernaut is on the move and the popo have chosen to side against 99%. Denver officers, you’re marching against the 99%. Occupy Denver will forgive you and blame your bosses. But you’ve probably heard of Anonymous’ motto.
Riot gear worn by Colorado police concedes conceit that Occupy Denver issue is illegal camping. OWS protest camp is free speech and assembly.
Gee, is it any surprise that in America the brown shirts would be white?
There he is in all his glory, an NYPD “White Shirt”, the now feared NYC police commanders, raring back and using both hands to club Occupy Wall Street marchers. Other footage shows a whole squad of white shirts swinging away. But “squad” is wrong word, that already denotes boys in blue. So what’s the Murder-of-Crows syntax for a gang of black-gloved White-shirts? Love it: a thug of whiteshirts.
In Italy the fascists were blackshirts, in German they were brownshirts. Corporate America is white collar, so it’s armed enforcers are whiteshirts.
Sorry but Youtube is keeping the above video behind its sign-in wall. Gawker’s got it.
NYPD skinhead swaggers at thought that “my nightstick is going to get a workout tonight.”
Yer in the Army Now….
So much has been happening lately I’m afraid this will be a big confused mess, but what th’ hey, right?
The world is in a Meltdown. Hell that’s the reason I have time for this crap, ya know? This is NOT a surprise. We’ve all known it’s been coming for a looong time now, though it’s hard to nail down that specific moment when we knew. Maybe we always did. I’ll get to how I think we’ve known, and how we didn’t know we’ve know a different time. For now, a somewhat more imminent thought. Here’s one place to find a buncha bone-chilling stats http://www.theglobaleducationproject.org/earth/index.php . The numbers are everywhere. This is only one source, and far more officious, (don’t mess with me, I used that word on purpose), sources are available. YOU look ’em up. Anyone wanting to look fuckin’ stupid can tapdance around them til–well, til the Apocalypse–and they’re not gonna change, cause tapdancin’ won’t change it. If it was gonna, it woulda! I already put it more or less in a nutshell: WE’RE FUCK-ED!!
But we’re not. We’re still breathing, still eating, drinking, fucking, pumping out babies, and so on. I have two accidental children whom I love without bounds. I genuinely thought it would be rude, at best, to sire a new Person and foist all this bullshit upon him16 years ago when the pertinent romantic interlude took place. Maybe it is, in way, but in plenty of other ways life is as always a thing of such great, broad, deep beauty that I think all potential for its fulfillment ought to be pursued. (Don’t imagine I’ve converted to Catholicism or something–that though was rather more metaphysically driven, and you should put on a raincoat if it looks like rain. Or waders if it looks like–you know ;)) Look around, though. We’re ALIVE!! More than we know. And life shows us in every discrete packet of light entering our retinas that it will rise, no matter what. We can’t kill the Earth. I rather think she’d prefer us to work this out, but she’ll be fine. We can certainly destroy our ability to live here as Humans, though.
In Consider the Lilies, I started to explain what I’m up to here. Every time I approach that question, the answers that come to me sound more and more absurdly grandiose. Save the world? I mean, reeealy! when I was a young child, like in the 3rd grade or something, (no shit–ask Mom), I was politicized and set in a frame of mind opposed to fascism, oppression, and unkindness, for lack of a better term. Everyone knows this is the course of idealism, though, right? I got out in the “real” world and it struck me that one must make some pragmatic concessions to get by. Right? We all learn this, don’t we? Usually when it “strikes” us it’s like a brick in the head. It’s usually thrown at us by some cog in the Fascist machine.
If you’ve read the earlier posts, or caught my live rant, you’ve likely been puzzled by my carryings on about money being a bad metaphor. It’s outdated poetry, good for a time, now hopelessly outdated like that ridiculous, overwrought Victorian romance shyte you may have read in college or high school. (Leave them kids alone, teacher!). “All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling, ” wrote Oscar Wilde, and the old thing has gotten us a long way, in fact, it’s gotten us right here. Fucked. Or on the cusp of some spectacular event(s).
We live in a competitive world. Whichever doctrinal approach one embraces, whether scientifically mechanistic or holding out for divine fiat, it’s the scrabbling over game pieces that has us in this sinking boat. Everyone has to have a buncha shit they don’t need, in order to display for all the other poor losers how dominant they or their team has been in the Game. This isn’t a fuckin’ game anymore, though. Look at those numbers again. Do you really think a little half-assed reduction in increase in greenhouse gas emissions over the next 100 years or whatever is going to save the human race? Get real! Do you really think we might someday pay off our $23 trillion debt, or whatever it is? What’s that shit, anyways? To whom do we owe it? When did we sign that contract? Didn’t someone steal that from us last month? Do we really think we can survive a collapse of the oceans, the food chain, the watersheds, etc, etc, and so on?
I may be grandiose and ridiculous, but I can read the writing on the wall, in the sky, on the face of the Moon. We’re gonna need to stop fiddle-fuckin’ around and wrestle this shit to the ground, or we’re all gonna die. Our kids are gonna die. Our grandkids, if we live to see them, will be mutant freaks like Goldbloom’s fly monster, just like the poor fucked up three-eyed fish around Chernobyl and downstream of a BHP Billiton mine , (BHP: Broken Hill Properties. It’s only a secret if you close your eyes, kids). They’ll die miserably, and the Earth will breathe a sigh of relief, having fought off a pestilent Virus. Or we can CHANGE EVERYTHING.
I saw a panel discussion at the community college yesterday, (PPCC). A Bahai, a Buddhist, a Pagan, and a Christian philosopher walked into a bar and the bartender said, “What is this, a fuckin’ joke?” Oh–sorry. They actually sat behind a table and spoke as cogently as they were able, and we all took them fairly seriously, if with the standard portion of salt–you know it’s still all bullshit, right? A thematic keystone was the notion that we’re all One, that it’s all All-One. You’ll notice me playing that riff for all I can wring from it. It’s got a lot of Soul, and it sounds good. When I say we’re all gonna die, I don’t mean all us minor league players. The whole stadium is collapsing. It’s already collapsed in a lot of ways. Check out my friend Skip’s posts about the Federal Reserve. Don’t be tapdancing when you read. The Fascists will die with us. Their secret bunkers won’t do. Competition is over; the game pieces are reduced to Parker Bros. parts. Cooperative living is at hand.
Only LOVE will save us. That’s right, y’all.Think that’s hokey? Sure. It is. But that’s a view from the old game. I put this shit up because I believe it. I’m just as much like water as anyone else. I’d stay comfortably here at the lowest level if it seemed for one second to me like that might be an option. It does not. It is not. Change or die. Right now. Today. Look me up. I have a couple ideas, and I bet you do too, if you were to stop concentrating on that tapdance.
There are many, many more things to say about all this. Come back and see us, eh?
Viva la rivoluzione!
Viva l’Esercito dell’Amore!
(Reprinted from Hipgnosis)