Protect and Serve …Who?


When the police show up at your door dressed like this, I assumed the ‘Protect” means for them not you. They have done a great job of selling America the “Protect and Serve” but do you really need it? In February 1955, the Los Angeles Police Department, through the pages of the internally produced BEAT magazine, conducted a contest for a motto for the police academy. The winning entry was the motto, “To Protect and to Serve” submitted by Officer Joseph S. Dorobek. In my seventy six years of life, I can count on one finger the times I’ve had to call the “Serve and Protect” guys. And that was only at the insistence of my Insurance agent who had refused to pay the claim until the police were notified.

It did not escape my attention, as I explained to my Insurance agent “Why call the police now? the burglars are already gone, along with my stuff. I’m sure most people fail to notice that the police only show up after a crime; Not before, so where then does the “Protect” come into the equation. It should also be noted; to this day, that the police have never caught the burglar or returned any of my stuff.

When I was ten years old, I and some of my friends went to the East-town theater, I saw my first Frankenstein move. That night when my mother told me to go upstairs and go to bed, I refused as I was sure Frankenstein was waiting up there under my bed to get me. I was so scared, I almost shit my pants. In my feverish state of mind, I even thought my mother was conspiring with Frankie so that he could get me. It took me a few years of growing up to figure out, Hollywood was about making movies and money, if they had to scare the shit out of a ten year boy, so be it.

The “Protest and Serve” police join a long list of groups and people who use the fear factors to promote their own agenda for their own benefit. And of course the police can protect you from most of them.

You might recall some of them; The black man is coming to rob you and take your white women, the brown man is coming to take your jobs, the government is coming to take your guns, the IRS is coming to get your money, the devil is coming to get you for sinning, but then of course you can purchase absolution from guess who?

And who among us could ever forget; “Reefer Madness” the propaganda film that was sure to send you out into the streets beginning a career of robbing and raping and those were only two of the milder things that could happen after just one puff. I’m sure the big pharmaceutical companies had much to do with this as they also had their fears of losing their addicted customers.

And of course the police were always there to protect you from all this mayhem and madness, all except the devil and IRS, these areas are covered by your local church and lawyers.

And then we come to the granddaddy of all fears; The “Terrorist” you might remember him? They were that group of rag tag guys we saw on Fox News, swinging on monkey bars somewhere over in Afghanistan. The “Terrorist” were primarily the responsibility of the US army and Geo Bush. But then we discovered some of those “Terrorist” hiding in something called a cell, here in America.

So now we would need to call in the local police departments to protect us. The Army was so appreciative of the police help, they gave much of their equipment to help protect us from this new threat. The police were always there to protect us no matter where that threat might come from.

As we saw on January 26th 2015, when this elite “Protect and Serve” police force, discover a 17 year old unarmed girl sitting in a car, in an alley on the east side of Denver, putting four bullets in her, resulting in her tragic death and suffering of all those who loved her.

It is heartbreaking to look into the eyes of this young woman, Jessica Hernandez and see her as a threat and to think she was murdered by the Denver Police Department with no repercussions to any of her killers. You might think I’m being too hard on the Denver Police Department. Well!

We have all seen those funeral processions as they wind their way to the graveyard escorted by the “Protect and Serve” police. Not quite sure why a deceased person needs protection or what the hurry is to get them in the ground but my question is; Did those same “Protect and Serve” police that murdered this young girl, also escort her hearse to the graveyard? This is just too difficult and emotional to think about.

Facebook advertisers can repost “likes” in your name so you don’t have to

Users of Facebook are accustomed to seeing friends listed in right-column ads, mentioned liking such-and-such a brand, or two or three. It’s understood that those friends at some point visited the brand’s page and clicked “like”, permitting that company, Amazon for example, to pay Facebook to advertise the “like” as frequently as it wishes. It’s also understood that when one “likes” a page, a post is simultaneously shared to herald the act and appears on the user’s wall unless that feature is turned off. What you may not know is that your initial timeline post can be reposted, in the center-thread, at the advertiser’s whim, perhaps limited to when you’re online, perhaps triggered when you log on, but not logged on your wall and thus unseen by you. Does it also boost the number of people pretended to be “talking about” that brand? Are 372,523 talking about Starbucks? That could include “you”, repeating yourself ad-maybe-nauseum.

Or maybe, for a premium, your original “like” is not shared simultaneously, but doled out as each of your friends comes online to guarantee one hundred percent reach. Who knows. As personalized as we know the ads can be, no doubt the algorithm is not calculated for clarity.

Do you remember which pages you’ve liked or not? Perhaps you clicked like to be able to comment on the page, or to monitor a monopolistic miscreant, or perhaps it was before Wells Fargo, Bank of America, or British Petroleum became persons and not-so-grata. Maybe now you’d rather not be said to like Chevron, Monsanto, or killer Coke. You can review your “likes” under INFO, then INTERESTS. Or you can check the list below. On each page, see if beside the LIKE button, you have the option to unlike, for example, Facebook.

Here’s a quick list of corporate brands which have fallen from fashion among those with fashion sense. You can click on each to check whether you are counted among their unpaid repeated endorsers.

Nike
Gap
Fox News
CNN
AT&T
Caterpillar
Disney
Walmart
Target
K-mart
Toys-r-us
Lowes
Ikea
Home Depot

And the fat merchants:
McDonalds
Burger King
Hardees
Carl’s Jr
Wendy’s
Taco Bell
KFC
Pizza Hut
Sonic
Chick-fil-A
Jimmy Johns
Subway
Outback
Dairy Queen
Dunkin Donuts
Krispy Kreme

US senator says bomb makers and their associates should be killed forthwith

Said Senator Dianne Feinstein to Fox News about an al-Qaeda suspect in Yemen: “I am hopeful that we will be able to, candidly, kill this bomb maker and kill some of these other associates. This, about a certain Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri about whom we have only intelligence hearsay to go on, based on an undetectable bomb, on which they say they detect his forensic signature, and about his friends, members they say of AL-QAEDA OF THE SAUDI PENINSULA or some such. What this means, for employees of GENERAL DYNAMICS or RAYTHEON OF SOUTHERN COLORADO for example, is that you don’t even have to possess a factory security ID to be suspected by Yemen, or our other Muslim adversaries, of making bombs that terrorize their innocents. Allah forbid they should commandeer armed drones, in preemptive self defense, to kill you and your now pants-pissing friends, candidly.
 
And let’s be realistic, the BOMB MAKERS OF AMERICA is an awfully big fraternity at this point.

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.

The Wondrous Tale of Brer Lamborn, Brer FOX & Obama the Tar Baby. Uncle Remus and Racism in Colorado Springs.

COLORADO SPRINGS- If US Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO) remembered one thing from the Uncle Remus stories, it was not to touch that Tar Baby! You know, the one Brer Rabbit mistook for a cute black infant who would not tip his hat to his better. Or was that a Porch-Monkey? Colorado’s 5th District is unclear about the distinction if the local media and Fox News are to be believed. Either term refers to a poor person whose sticky problems become your “quagmire” if you ignore your natural prejudice to their skin color and you let them touch you. Can a representative of bigots be bothered to know if a racial slur is offensive? According to Lamborn, he can’t. More important, the congressman reiterates –as he professes his apology to people taking umbrage at racism he hadn’t intended to express– is: NOT TO TOUCH THAT OBAMA!
 
To be clear, Doug Lamborn hasn’t apologized to his constituents, he’s only claimed to have sent President Obama a letter, assuring all that Obama, the black untouchable, will have the grace to forgive him as “a man of character”.
 
And so this Uncle Remus tale simply goes on…

The story so far
Lamborn calls black US president a Tar-Baby, public outrage ensues, Gazette newspaper lends support to Lamborn’s excuse that Tar-Baby wasn’t used in racist sense. Protests held by NAACP, community groups and local progressives, all which Lamborn refuses to meet. Lamborn office erects sign NO PROTESTS.

ACT II: Lamborn office calls for his supporters to rally, presumably under the “no protest” sign. His office issues a press release: AP, Fox News, national and statewide outlets report before the fact that LAMBORN SUPPORTERS RALLY. Huffpo and Springs activists scramble to get images of said protest sanctioned despite “no protest” sign, find none. Local TV station KOAA which had depicted rally with a photo, hours before it was alleged to happen, omitted to mention photo was from file, conveniently unfocused and likely of a past year election event.

With every shenanigan, the theme resounds: the Colorado Springs establishment supports what Doug Lamborn said about Obama being a Tar Baby.

Racism in Colorado Springs
No one is in denial about the unsavory support behind Doug Lamborn. So does Colorado Springs support his bigotry?

Does the Tea Party shit in Acacia Park? You should see those clan gatherings, you can’t find a parking space for blocks, then it’s a sea of hate-filled white faces, with Doug Lamborn right there up front.

The comment section of every local media blog overflows with indignation that “Tar-Baby” is being construed to be racist. Commentators assert their preference for Freedom of Speech over Political Correctness.

BTW, Colorado Springs is as segregated as Chicago, with black neighborhoods, churches and schools. Many lives never cross the path of another of different ethnicity, so we’re blameless actually when we conclude there’s no racism here.

Except toward Hispanics, grouped conveniently with illegal immigrants, who don’t count, by definition, according to our favorite definition: legality. Same as used to apply to slaves.

The Pikes Peak region was a hotbed of clan activity in the 1930s, and obviously before that. At the turn of the century, the good folks of Limon had to hold up a lynching, make the poor young black boy wait hours in the November cold because hundreds wanted to come on the train from Colorado Springs to see 16-year-old Preston Porter burned alive at the stake.

Lynchings of Native Americans weren’t even recorded, being as they were, sanctioned as vermin control. It was seldom that white men distinguished themselves by speaking out in defense of Indians. Pikes Peak volunteers rode with Colonel Chivington to commit the Sand Creek Massacre.

Today downtown Colorado Springs boasts a lone statue of an African-American, a William Seymour, among the city notables immortalized in bronze. His is the only likeness made to take off his hat, outdoors, I kid you not.

Speaking of which, that was Tar-Baby’s offense.

Brer Rabbit and the Tar-Baby
Brer Rabbit was passing by the little black figure, and called out a friendly hello. But Tar-Baby wouldn’t answer when spoken to. When he wouldn’t even take off his hat, Brer Rabbit figured he’d teach him a lesson. Apparently, it’s not inappropriate to clobber some status of people if they’ve disrespected you.

Of course that was the only way Brer Fox’s plan was going to ensnare the rabbit, to mire him in the tar.

You might ask, how did Brer Fox know that Rabbit was going to mix it up with the Tar Baby? Would Rabbit have laid his hand on the baby if he’d been white? Would it have mattered if a white baby didn’t answer to his greeting?

Put aside that the Tar Baby expression became a racial slur in itself, the original Tar-Baby character impersonated an African-American child who didn’t show the expected deference to a rabbit.

The accompanying images reflect the changing visual representation of Tar-Baby. He makes his first appearance in an early chapter of the Uncle Remus Tales (as collected by Joel Chandler Harris) called “The Wonderful Tar-Baby Story.” Above is one of the original illustrations by artist A.B. Frost. There Brer Fox creates a “baby” made of tar to lure Brer Rabbit into his clutches.

The next images are from Disney versions. First the animated film SONG OF THE SOUTH, then the children’s books which followed.

Disney famously has not released Song Of The South after its theatrical run. The depictions were too ethnic, and Tar-Baby recalled the black-face entertainment that ought not to have so amused white audiences. Black-face is what passes for a negro face to whites. Similarly, a baby made of tar passes for a negro, but only in exaggeration. Oblivious to many, apparently, is that African-Americans are not by any approximation black. If Brer Fox had made a baby out of milk, would white people confuse its color for their flesh tone?

Disney rewrote the tale for its children’s book series, making the tar baby this time out of glue. Not only that, but they gave him ears to resemble a rabbit. This preempted confusing him for a human baby, black or white. Now Brer Rabbit could be seen taking him for his kin, which of course shifts the premise, and might puzzle some children to wonder why Brer Rabbit is so quick to come to blows.

Uncle Remus
Some will probably ask in earnest: are the Uncle Remus tales racist? No, but their context is complicated. The stories emerged from the plantation South, from storytellers who lived in slavery. The lessons imparted are universal, but the particulars were obviously crafted to help slaves come to terms with their unchallengeable fate. Shall I quote a few passages to see if you get the idea?

Brer Tarrypin, he lay back up dar, he did, des es proud ez a nigger wid a cook possum.
–chapter 10

He scrape it clean en lick it dry, en den he go back ter wuk lookin’ mo’ samer dan a nigger w’at de patter-rollers bin had holt un.
–chapter 17

Dey er mighty biggity, dem house niggers is, but I notices dat dey don’t let nuthin’ pass. Dey goes ‘long wid der han’s en der mouf open, en w’at one don’t ketch de tother one do.
-chapter 27

How about this wrenching bit from A Story of War?

Nigger dat knows he’s gwineter git thumped kin sorter fix hisse’f, en I tuck’n fix up like de war wuz gwineter come right in at de front gate.

From chapter 33: Why the Negro is Black:

ONE night, while the little boy was watching Uncle Remus twisting and waxing some shoe-thread, he made what appeared to him to be a very curious discovery. He discovered that the palms of the old man’s hands were as white as his own, and the fact was such a source of wonder that he at last made it the subject of remark. The response of Uncle Remus led to the earnest recital of a piece of unwritten history that must prove interesting to ethnologists.

“Tooby sho de pa’m er my han’s w’ite, honey,” he quietly remarked, “en, w’en it come ter dat, dey wuz a time w’en all de w’ite folks ‘uz black—blacker dan me, kaze I done bin yer so long dat I bin sorter bleach out.”

The little boy laughed. He thought Uncle Remus was making him the victim of one of his jokes; but the youngster was never more mistaken. The old man was serious. Nevertheless, he failed to rebuke the ill-timed mirth of the child, appearing to be altogether engrossed in his work. After a while, he resumed:

“Yasser. Fokes dunner w’at bin yit, let ‘lone w’at gwinter be. Niggers is niggers now, but de time wuz w’en we ‘uz all niggers tergedder.”

“When was that, Uncle Remus?”

“Way back yander. In dem times we ‘uz all un us black; we ‘uz all niggers tergedder, en ‘cordin’ ter all de ‘counts w’at I years fokes ‘uz gittin’ ‘long ’bout ez well in dem days ez dey is now.

But atter ‘w’ile de news come dat dere wuz a pon’ er water some’rs in de naberhood, w’ich ef dey’d git inter dey’d be wash off nice en w’ite,

en den one un um, he fine de place en make er splunge inter de pon’, en come out w’ite ez a town gal.

En den, bless grashus! w’en de fokes seed it, dey make a break fer de pon’,

en dem w’at wuz de soopless, dey got in fus’ en dey come out w’ite;

en dem w’at wuz de nex’ soopless, dey got in nex’, en dey come out merlatters;

en dey wuz sech a crowd un um dat dey mighty nigh use de water up, w’ich w’en dem yuthers come long, de morest dey could do wuz ter paddle about wid der foots en dabble in it wid der han’s.

Dem wuz de niggers, en down ter dis day dey ain’t no w’ite ’bout a nigger ‘ceppin de pa’ms er der han’s en de soles er der foot.”

And my favorite passage, called Turnip Salad:

“How many er you boys,” said he, as he put his basket down, “is done a han’s turn dis day? En yit de week’s done commence. I year talk er niggers dat’s got money in de bank, but I lay hit ain’t none er you fellers. Whar you speck you gwineter git yo’ dinner, en how you speck you gwineter git ‘long?”

“Oh, we sorter knocks ‘roun’ an’ picks up a livin’,” responded one.

“Dat’s w’at make I say w’at I duz,” said Uncle Remus. “Fokes go ’bout in de day-time an’ makes a livin’, an’ you come ‘long w’en dey er res’in’ der bones an’ picks it up. I ain’t no han’ at figgers, but I lay I k’n count up right yer in de san’ en number up how menny days hit’ll be ‘fo’ you ‘er cuppled on ter de chain-gang.”

“De ole man’s holler’n now sho’,” said one of the listeners, gazing with admiration on the venerable old darkey.

“I ain’t takin’ no chances ’bout vittles. Hit’s proned inter me fum de fus dat I got ter eat, en I knows dat I got fer ter grub for w’at I gits. Hit’s agin de mor’l law fer niggers fer ter eat w’en dey don’t wuk, an’ w’en you see um ‘pariently fattenin’ on a’r, you k’n des bet dat ruinashun’s gwine on some’rs.”

What about “nigger”?
When Russel Means writes of today’s economic and anti-democratic troubles, and addresses America’s newly impoverished middle class by saying Welcome to the Reservation, this is the wisdom I think he’s looking to impart. Welcome to niggerdom, Nigger.

With that word now struck from Huckleberry Finn, the concept of “nigger” becomes harder to grasp and can’t teach us its lesson.

Listen to Uncle Remus talk about what it means to be a lowest class being, beneath the interest of humanity, untouchable, as government functionaries like Doug Lamborn would prefer the underclass laborer remain.

It’s against the moral law for niggers to eat when they don’t work. AND
I ain’t handy with figures, but I lay I can count on one hand how many days it’ll be before [“knocking around” will land you niggers] in the chain-gang.

I suggest you reread that last passage of Uncle Remus in its original. Now I’ll try my hand at the last half of that phrase:

It’s against the moral law for niggers to eat when they don’t work, and when you see them apparently fattening on air, you can just bet that ruination is going on somewhere.

Local TV station KOAA lies for Lamborn fakes support rally for Tar-Baby slur

KOAA photo of alleged rally in support of Congressman Doug LambornToo harsh? OK, “Lies” suited an alliteration. “Fabrication” better describes the photo used by KOAA for their Aug 12 story Supporters of Lamborn rally at local office even though timestamp was hours before scheduled event.

Lest KOAA decide it needs to doctor the aftermath as well, we’ve secured a screenshot of their original story.

When activists organize a protest rally, they send out press releases in hope the local media will cover the event. When an officeholder schedules an event, the media announce it beforehand, which of course helps attendance become self-fulfilling, then the story can air live, and then after the fact. An initial headline using the present-progressive tense instead of the future tense also leaves viewers to infer what will or did or was intended to happen, even if it doesn’t. Fair enough, at least that’s as fair as it gets for citizens fighting against entrenched corporate interests which own the news outlets.

But that’s insufficient advantage apparently for the home team. Colorado Springs local TV station KOAA figured it needed to conjugate the present-progressive tense with a visual.

The purported rally in support of Congressman Doug Lamborn –facing criticism for having called President Obama a “Tar-Baby”– was announced by local and national news outlets beforehand. No less than the AP and Fox News declared nationally that Colorado locals were rallying to their representative’s side. In advance. The media had only Lamborn’s word on it.

KOAA opted to extend the present-progressive conjugation to its visuals, using a blurry image of a gathering. One can’t even read the placards to know if they are Lamborn supporters or critics. Though the image was posted at 11AM, the text declares the Lamborn supporters “are rallying outside of his office this afternoon.” To judge by the shadows this photograph was taken in the morning.

To my mind, using an image as a placeholder might be alright if you place a note underneath identifying it as such. Without a followup, in effect you’ve pretended that the event occurred as depicted, even if it didn’t. If a picture is worth a thousand words, that makes how many lies?

News of the World crimes belong to Rupert Murdoch, News Corp, Fox News, Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal

The issue of Rupert Murdoch’s lawless news empire isn’t about phone hacking to break news, it’s about surveillance used for the same purposes as intelligence agencies, to control political climates, to effect outcomes based on what you have on the players. Does the FBI have to find evidence of malfeasance in the US to make Murdoch any less guilty? The important point to make is that News Of The World, is News Corp, is Rupert Murdoch, is News International, is Fox, is Dow Jones, is the Wall Street Journal. With the WSJ, Murdoch’s sway over the stock market may mean he dictates the editorial voice of all corporate media properties. Anyway, who can pretend the corporate kleptocracy isn’t a shared agenda? Murdoch may be just one rotten apple, but now everyone can see how rotten. Here’s a chance to wash him out.

If the ‘Left’ is serious about doing something credible to counteract the capitalist class, now is the time. Do the work of informing the public on how News Corp has been twisting the truth not just to sell papers and floor wax, but to promote an agenda of limitless greed at the expense of working and poor people. In reality, Rupert Murdoch is just one cog in a very large propaganda machine, but he is a significant dynamic that binds the corporatists and political right-wing together. Telling the plain truth about Murdoch at this time is the best weapon progressives have at their disposal.

The Angry Indian

Choice of NPR vs. FOX is like Obama vs. Bush, difference is only skin deep.

Petition mongers are hoping you’ll help pressure the White House Correspondents’ Association to assign the front row briefing room seat recently purged of Helen Thomas to the public-serving NPR instead of the right-wing FOX. I favor whoever will unmask the corporate choke hold on the media and government, not who’ll perpetuate the facade that policy is guided by public discourse.

“Give Helen Thomas’ former briefing room seat to NPR, which has provided public interest coverage for decades – not Fox, which is a right-wing propaganda tool, not a legitimate news organization.”

I’d not give the seat back to Helen Thomas, if she asked. Talk about a caricature to confine the purported extremes of the Left.

Fox News is the media’s Sarah Palin

Do you wonder how it is Fox News can retain its broadcasting license? While traditional news outlets scrupulously uphold a pretense of objectivity, Fox spews forth with unapologetic propaganda, often easily debunked. You’d think our government could prosecute Fox for abuse of the public airwaves, for propagating untruths, even treason. Is it that regulators must not be seen to pick on conservative voices, or that this comically-rendered caricature of the Right is better than a real critic? They may be unfunny clowns, but they’re our clowns.

Fox as a distinct role within the corporate media. As Palin to Obama, or Mel Gibson to the Israeli Lobby, they’re bogeymen meant to frighten in a calculated way.

Whistleblower prosecuted, Palin not charged

Email hackerHacker David Kernell blew the whistle on then-governor Sarah Palin’s illegal use of personal emails to evade the State of Alaska’s record-keeping requirements. For guessing her password and posting her emails in public, Kernell is found guilty of four felony counts, while Palin mocks the justice system from her pedestal on Fox News. From abuse of authority, influence peddling, to turning tricks for the oil industry, it’s not like obstructing justice didn’t fit her MO.

Veterans Day eleventh hour jeopardy

Well here’s a clever twist of a knife into a phrase. Had you heard the “eleventh hour” emphasis on Veterans Day before? What used to be two minutes of silence to commemorate the signing of the Armistice at 11am on 11.11.1918, in Fox News’ hands leaves their viewers to infer it also means awaiting an “eleventh hour” last ditch rescue. Pared with pictures of active duty soldiers standing at attention, and Afghanistan on our minds, the message is unmistakable: send in the cavalry.

Even the eleventh hour last minute idiom has been transformed. To act in the eleventh hour used to mean too late, but to the incorrigible can-do spirit of American procrastinators, it’s when the cavalry rides to the rescue.

As if the propaganda gift of Muslim Major Nidal Malik Hasan weren’t enough, the media tasked with home front public relations is lined up to exploit Veterans Day too. Like Memorial Day, the holiday is meant to celebrate the peace achieved through the sacrifice of our soldiers. Both days commemorate veterans, not active duty soldiers.

It may feel uncharitable to begrudge future veterans the honor, but this where it gets us to hoist aloft present-day soldiers: you wind up celebrating and their mission.

D. Lamborn don’t want to hear from U

Tomorrow brings another last chance to will America some health care. Representative Lamborn is back in town on Monday, asking his constituents to come let him know how to vote on health care reform, as if he were not already fully in every corporate pocket. Come on out, although Doug Lamborn cannot fail but deliver the TV coverage his backers expect. No doubt Lamborn was commissioned to gather his fellow teabaggers, to give the networks more grassroots backdrop for the so-called populist opposition to health reform. Come anyway. Shooting fish in a barrel is underrated. Mostly teabags know only the barest of talking points. They show up to show what good fan club members they are, for their favorite Fox, disinfotainment clowns.

It’s billed as: Doug Lamborn’s Health Care Legislation Town Hall Meeting, on Monday, October 19 from 11:30am to 12:30pm. At the Stargazer Event Center, 10 S. Parkside Drive, off Pikes Peak.

Come early. The last time the conservative Lamborn threw a town hall, he overfilled the minuscule room hours before with Republicans only. This time the venue is giant, but it’s no surprise the date coincides with the latest tea party roll out. Expect ignoramuses in droves, made to go play outside by their fairy TV godparents, Becks, Limbaughs and Malkins. They’ll give KRDO the usual low common denominator that doesn’t turn heads in the Springs.

The health argument is growing simpler every time we do this. This disagreement isn’t between those who have insurance and those who do not. It’s between those who haven’t needed medical care, and those who have.

Insured or not, no one’s getting care.

The joke’s on the poor bastards agitating for the continuing privilege to pay the spiraling premiums. Most, I’ll bet, don’t actually have insurance. They cling to their right not to buy any. They would be adversely affected if reform passes as currently drafted. Can’t argue with that.

But wait ’til they need something from a doctor, even just to schedule a visit, or get a prescription. Chief among their recurring arguments is that the uninsured right now can walk into any hospital and get treated. They recite this anecdote either because they’ve done it, or their friend’s done it, or Rush keeps bellyaching about how everybody’s doing it. But they’re sure of it.

Of course, that can remedy a broken arm, or a burst appendix, but forget recurring treatments. If you are diagnosed with something that’s not going to kill you in the emergency room, they can wait. You can wait, at home, to let your ailment get the best of you. The end.

Plucky ACORN staff show compassion for demonstrably stupid crackers

Hannah Giles poses as hapless prostitute to defraud ACORN office
Congress has sadly overreacted to the Fox News video sting operation to discredit ACORN. Over the summer, most of the community activism offices did run the Giles/O’Keefe whore/pimp act straight out the door, but invariably some staff member was going to take pity on the inadvisably-dressed, street-smart-deficient pair.

What are you going to do, tell someone they’re too stupid to a) turn tricks b) mortgage a whorehouse c) traffic in child prostitutes?

Nor can you put the word out to all your offices to be on the lookout for two dopey white kids, dressed for success based on Quentin Tarantino characters, who appear to be trying to effect an undercover sting. Because that would be racial profiling. Community activists aren’t like the CIA, prepared to entrap the least idiot who voices aspirations to be an outlaw. Because American idiots abound.

I used to have a telephone number listed in the Yellow Pages under Science. Long story, but we’d get calls from uneducated white people looking for laboratory equipment, specifically beakers and measuring devices, for manufacturing Meth. Regularly. I didn’t tell them to get lost, or to turn themselves in. I referred them to the public library where a reference librarian would be able to redirect their wild hair with trained gentleness.

At yesterday’s Teabag Constitution Day Rally, I was reminded about interacting with idiots. There wasn’t an angry white person there who’d graduated high school. Someone was speaking about the constitution, and asked the crowd which amendment protected their right to free speech. The response was silent.

Arguments broke out between “patriots” and counter-protesters. Here’s how they devolved: “Have you read the Constitution?” “HAVE YOU?” “Have you?” “HAVE YOU?” “Have you?” Ad infinitum ignoratum.

The best sign was held aloft, directly in the center, by a young cracker daughter. It read, in giant, meticulously markered bold letters: LIEIR!

The is no talking sense with dumb bastards. You can only be nice, advise them to look things up, read, get an education. Why step on their dreams? If they think their best chances in life lay in prostitution and pimping, who are you to stand in their way. Their inglorious venture will be thwarted by law enforcement soon enough.

There is no License to Kill

“Licensed to Kill” was an Ian Fleming invention. His friend Richard Meinertzhagen dropped Fleming’s phrase for guests to infer he was a secret agent. RM’s routine of arriving at diner parties with a smoking gun reinforced whispers that he had been the inspiration for James Bond. Meinertzhagen turned out to be a flake, but the authority to play god is still coveted by espionage idolators. Federal statutes prohibit identifying covert CIA operatives, regardless what they’ve done. Is that the same thing? A mythical supra legem indemnity? Sorry Virginia, nemo est.

Okay, some today are above the law, notable examples being Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Woo, et al. The jury is still out on who will atone for the Bush Co crimes. But should the Neocon exemption cover assassination squads and torturers too?

The US Department of Justice is up in arms -Fox News probably more than anybody- having learned that defense lawyers for terrorist suspects in US custody, have shown their clients photographs of CIA and private contractor interrogators, to learn which of them might have engaged in harsh techniques defined by the rest of the world as torture.

The John Adams Project, run jointly by the ACLU and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, is an effort to document the US torture in Guantanamo and our secret prisons around the globe. The ACLU assures all indignant patriots that asking the detainees to identify their torturers is completely legal.

Researchers for the project have been snapping pictures outside the homes of retired and active, CIA and intelligence industry interrogators. No names have been released except Deuce Martinez, who’d already been outed by the NYT. Martinez was the agent responsible for interrogating Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, although accounts soft-pedal his participation in the harsher techniques.

That’s the pattern of exposes about torture, those named always claim to have left the room. A remarkably similar motif accompanied the account of CIA interrogator John Kiriakou.

Two well-known names were doctors who attended to the tortured, later opening a consulting firm to train CIA interrogators.
Dr. Jim Mitchell and Dr. Bruce Jessen specialized in maximizing harsh interrogation, and making sure the victim didn’t die.

The defense lawyers have circulated the photographs of 60 suspected perpetrators, but have named only Martinez so far. How are torturers and murderers to be brought to justice, if they are not unmasked?

Company wolves in nonpartisan clothing

Would you believe it? Not My Tribe is “nonpartisan!” We favor neither Republican or Democrat, although current usage presumes you are of course one or the other, it’s just that you’ve agreed not to show bias. Nonpartisan is not “non-aligned.” It does not mean you are neither. Nonpartisan has become more like “nondenominational.” Which means not of a specific religious adherence, but certainly belonging to one of them. And like nondenominational, isn’t it a ruse?

Religious events billing themselves as nondenominational are casting a big net hoping to lure other believers, making the implication that they need to escape their more demarcated sect. They’re after the heathen too, but make no mistake, that doesn’t mean they adjust their platform one iota.

Nonpartisan political groups cast themselves as aligned to neither major party. Laws governing nonprofits forbid party allegiance, but regulations don’t address the socio-political aims of their missions. Just as the term “nonprofit” describes just that entity’s balance sheets. It doesn’t reflect the nonprofit’s goals, from which sponsoring organizations definitely plan to profit.

The insurance company think tanks weighing in against health care reform are all nonpartisan non-profits. You can be a fully-owned research division and because you are neither particularly Republican nor Democrat, you can label yourself not of the fray.

Fox News although shamelessly willing to pervert “fair” and “balanced,” does not have the temerity to call themselves nonpartisan. It would expose the ruse. Propagandist Bill O’Reilly instead hides behind the less inobjective “independent.”

And so Not My Tribe is more accurately independent, because we keep company with neither corporate party, the left or the right.

Obviously are Left, Left, Left, and fully partisan. More akin to namesake Partisans who resisted the Nazi onslaught. Just as the capitalist wolves are corporate partisans in nonpartisan clothing.

2p, 2p and Honduras… and Mexico… and Nicaragua… and…

I don’t know if I’ve published this here or not or how I packaged it. But for background, the “p” stands for “piastre” a South VietNamese coin that was worth a little less than a quarter of a U.S. penny. This was the “Great Free Market Opportunity” our government was sending people to fight and die to defend. The way I heard it on some occasions it’s used to condemn the VietNamese people.”How nasty and vile and filthy they are” for living in such poverty.

But it was the VietNamese version of a washroom attendant, a little old granny lady… “Wipe your ass for you, GI… 2p, 2p do extra good job 2p, 2p…”

Yes, we were there, so it seems, to give the people such a wonderful Free Market and the opportunity to wipe our asses for less than a half a cent per “use”.

And to despise them for being so desperately poor.

I wasn’t there, my sources were, so what if you say it’s false?

Talk to them, those who are still alive that is.

Now there’s a war going on in Honduras, backed exclusively by U.S. and Canadian corporations, to topple a “Dictator” who was going to nationalize the resources of Honduras and make the U.S. and Canadian corporations pay more than the 3-4 dollars a day for the labor of the People of Honduras.

The police and military have been battling in the streets for a week now, busting the heads of “elitists” who are trying to “enslave” everybody in Honduras. They did this in a Military coup ahead of an election that the “Dictator” probably would have won.

That there’s no CIVILIANS out busting the heads of these “elitists” and “Communist Radicals” tells a far different story than you might hear on, say, Fox News or in the Colorado Springs Gazette.

In Nicaragua the goon-squads were called “Contras” and backed by the same people who bring us Fox News and the Gazette. They bombed and shot up schools, orphanages, churches and hospitals, and “our” government called them Heroes and Freedom Fighters.

In Mexico, the PAN party has been running the show for a while now. They took over from the “socialist radicals” in the PRI party and for the same reason as Honduras, and Nicaragua, and South VietNamese, to give the people “Freedom” and the unfettered “Free Market” and all the benefits of Capitalism.

Doug Lamborn and Tancredo and Michelle Malkin tell us so, thus, it must be true.

They also tell us that the economy in Mexico after two and a half terms of a PAN controlled “Free” government, so filled with opportunity… is somehow oh.. how does one make this sound logical… fueling a massive wave of Illegal Immigration into the United States. By people seeking to feed their families.

Record Numbers in fact.

My my my my my… give them all the Benefits of a Reagan-inspired Libertarian Free Market and their country falls to shit and more of the people have to flee poverty and come here to find work.

Like the KTEL commercials used to say “Now how much would you pay? BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE!”

They’re wanting to expand the same Corporate Free Market Rule all across the United States as well, promising us such wonderful Economic Freedom and Opportunity…

Wipe your ass GI, 2p, 2p…

With release of convicted Roxana Saberi, Iranian justice proves more fair than US

American TV reporter Roxana Saberi overstayed her welcome in Iran, despite the revocation of her press credentials, continuing to tape segments for pro-US-military propaganda outlets such as NPR and Fox News. She was detained, charged, convicted and sentenced earlier this year, which is more than the US has done for any of the detainees it has held for eight years, most of whom have turned out to be guilty of no crime, and all of whom the US also tortured. After much indignant hue and cry from the US, Iran has released Saberi to what may resemble the hero’s welcome given Jessica Lynch, another white girl rescued from uncivilized Islam. Will the US media bat an eyelash at the irony?

Italy’s emperor gets hauled down

berlusconi.jpg Silvio Berlusconi reminds one of an Italian version of the fascist-leaning Fox News owner, Rupert Murdoch. Both own the press and in Berlusconi’s case, he even bought the top political position in his country though Murdoch likes to stay in the shadows and just buy the politicians. But now Italy’s emperor gets hauled down to the ground by his wife! She accuses him of being the sugar daddy for a 17 year old girl… Oh Slick Willy!

PROFILE of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi

“That’s enough, I cannot remain with a man who consorts with minors,” Ms (Veronica) Lario was quoted as saying in La Repubblica.

“I read in the papers about how he has been hanging around a minor – because he must have known her before she was 18 – and how she called him ‘Grandpa’ and about their meetings in Rome and Milan.

“This is no longer acceptable. How can I stay with such a man?” La Stampa quoted her as saying.

She also said Mr Berlusconi had failed to attend his own daughters’ 18th birthday celebrations.
————————————————————————————————————–
Well there! One can see that the Big Conservative Values Man of Italy has certainly fallen a bit short in the eyes of his current wife in the personal morality department. One wonders what Pope Rat thinks of all this? Will Silvio be forgiven in the eyes of the Church, if not his wife’s?

This Italian telenovela just keeps getting funnier and funnier. We want to say Poor Italy, but we really can’t, because they at least eat much better than we do in the US. Now where is Monica these days?

American barbeque and Fox assholes like Scissor Bills’ O’Reilly

FOX News
Ex-soldier bragged about Iraqi rape, deaths then celebrated at a barbeque from Reuters. “Iraqis were horrified by the crime, one of a series of incidents involving U.S. soldiers that strained relations with the Iraqi government. But the onset of Green’s trial three years later is not resonating with most Iraqis, observers there say. The incident was portrayed in the 2007 movie “Redacted” by director Brian De Palma, who complained the film was censored by the studio. Its graphic images shocked many viewers.”

From wikipedia we read that…

‘Commentator Bill O’Reilly has called for protests of Redacted and against Mark Cuban. O’Reilly claims that the film demeans American soldiers and may incite violence against them, and he has called on ticketholders to bring signs to Dallas Mavericks games and all theaters showing the movie, stating ‘Support the Troops’.[18] Mark Cuban has responded, saying “The movie is fully pro-troops. The hero of the movie is a soldier who stands up for what is right in the face of adversity… I think that the concept that the enemy will see these films and use it as motivation is total nonsense. We have no plans of translating these movies to Arabic or other middle eastern languages…It’s really easy to hate, its really hard to think issues through on their own merits. Anything that makes people think about issues is a good thing.”‘

You can see the film Redacted online for free and it is well worth it. Don’t let these right Wing creeps like Bill O’Reilly get away with what you can see or not see. It never got a chance at your local cinema but most good films never do either. There are just far too many American idiots like O’Reilly out there and unfortunately, many of them get their marching orders from Fox and Murdoch, if not their actual salaries like Master Scissor Bill himself does.

Cable TV’s History Channel sucks coal

The History Channel - Empires of Industry series - The Legacy of CoalNeed further proof that The History Channel is Fox News for the archives? From rewriting the Vietnam War to mythologizing Harry Truman, The History Channel is determined to paint the televised record askew. For example, even in light of the current climate crisis, you will not find a more glowing tribute to America’s monarch of energy, especially its potential for continuing to supply America’s energy needs.

Oh, that bad view from the Yad Vashem ‘museum’!

map
Yad Vashem is a Jewish State ‘Holocaust Museum’ with a bad view. It is a site set to ‘remember’ the slaughter of Jews in WW2 but it also sits with an actual physical view out over the local area where JEWISH Zionist TERRORISTS slaughtered their Arab Palestinian neighbors in the 1948 massacre at Deir Yassin …..Shhhh…. don’t mention it, please. Yad Vashem fires employee who compared Holocaust to Nakba

It seems that some Jews are considered more politically correct than others under the Jewish State ‘philosophy’? This Jewish employee just couldn’t close his eyes and pretend and for that, he had to be eliminated to create yet another victim for the Jewish Terrorist squads.

Yes, the Jewish State was founded through JEWISH TERRORISM, not Arab. Yad Vashem, the ‘Holocaust Museum’ wants us to forget and the US Christian Zionists never knew in the first place. Those Christians seemingly only get their ‘news’ from Fox… which likes to relay ‘news’ over from places like Yad Vashem.

Christian and Jewish Zionists united in a new Crusade to their Holy Land! That Jewish employee got in the way of it all. What a bad boy!

Tea Party Tax Revolt ignorance-mongers rally their usual Republican supporters

COLORADO SPRINGS- The corporate media led by Fox News, local talk radio led by KVOR, and the Gazette editorial page itself, herded their red sheep into Acacia Park today for lunch-time speeches full of hate, ignorance, and good old-fashioned unapologetic self-interest. They didn’t understand my sign, but knew enough to scowl.
Bunch of Republican dim wits who blame their troubles on the poor

Gazette representative Maria St. Louis-Sanchez was live-blogging the event, sitting on the ground beside the stage, which gave her an appropriate lack of perspective for the coverage she intended. For example, this online exchange:

12:33 [Comment From Guest] Is it basically an all white gathering?

12:34 Tough to tell. There seems to be a good mix of people here.

Oh my goodness. The crowd was ALL WHITE! With the lonely exception of deposed-councilman Ed Jones, who delighted the crowd when he proclaimed he was not an African American, he was an American, and derided those critics who would call him an “Uncle Tom.” The crowd cheered Jones, there were even chants exhorting him to run for governor. But if this had been nightfall, and one depression earlier, this is the mob that would have lynched him.

And I’m inclined to imagine that had Jones been Hispanic American, judging from the anti-immigrant rhetoric, they would have jumped him in broad daylight today.

tax day tea party white male

Richard Randall

These were ugly Americans, led by their representative uglies, hate-radio DJ Richard Randall, representative Doug “Porky” Lamborn, the illiterate Quixote Douglas Bruce and business-homophobe Ed Bircham. All pure archetypes of disgruntled white males.

The demographics in my estimation were all white, mostly male, with ugly carved into everyone’s faces from years of being disagreeable and bitter. And a plentiful predominance of pasty obesity.

Disaproval

Miss North Dakota in grips of axis of evil

Roxana SaberiEvery day there’s a scare story coming out of Iran. A couple days ago, it was announced that a western news correspondent, Roxana Saberi, has been detained in Iran. Can they do that? Apparently Iran isn’t a free country like the USA.

Except-

Except that in the USA, too, reporters for foreign news services are required to have press credentials. Saberi has been reporting in Iran for six years, although a year ago her press credentials were not renewed. Maybe because she was doing work for NPR and Fox. Could those be considered propaganda branches of the US State Department? Not only as mouthpieces for the US military, but agents of a belligerent power at that. If the US has called Iran part of the Axis of Evil, where does that leave our identity in Tehran’s eyes?

Even if the well-spoken former Miss America contender was relaying heartwarming stories, in the hands of Fox News or NPR, no doubt it doesn’t come out that way.

When the US finds foreigners reporting to Cuba, for example, without press credentials, they incarcerate them. For years.

So let’s be fair, Saberi is not even being labeled by Iran as a foreign agent. And though she did overstay her permit, she wasn’t being deported.

What got Saberi arrested was buying a bottle of wine, which is illegal in iran. Try to buy an illegal controlled substance in America and then cry about how authorities seem to be picking on you.

4/18 UPDATE!
Ms. Saberi has been sentenced to eight years for spying. American Media take heed. Some people are prepared to call you on your so-called Fifth-Estate objectivity. If it talks like a propagandist, even if it walks like an innocuous beauty pageant contestant, it’s an agent of the state. In this case, a world bully with Barack Obama’s smile painted across its grill.

Obama reneging on promises to pull US troops out of Iraq

LiarObama won the presidency based on the fact that most Americans found him to be credible on his promise to get US troops out of Iraq, whereas they didn’t think John McCain had any commitment to do so. They got tricked and it appears that Obama today will merely restate the Bush promise to the Iraqi puppet government to get US troops out of Iraq by January 1, 2012. Look for numerous press reports to misstate that Obama is actually going to do nothing new in a manner similar to this one… Obama to Announce U.S. Troop Withdrawal in Iraq …Read the details and you can see that it is basically the Bush plan gift re-wrapped for more liberal Democratic Party voters acceptance of it!

What can be seen by this continued glue to the Bush program in regards to Iraq, is that the Democrats have no confidence that Iraq will not fall into a fight for power the minute US troops leave. The puppet government is that unstable, and in fact there are real and credible fears that civil war might now break out even with US troops still inside the country. Simply put, Barack Obama is fearful of changing Bush’s game plans for Iraq, so he’s sticking to the basic Republican program and sugar coating for his unmotivated Democratic Party constituency.

Yes, the Democratic Party ‘Peace’crats have kept the lid on all protest coming from their groups nationwide. The national coalition of these votes, the UFPJ (United for Peace and Justice) are refusing to unite with ANSWER in calling for Spring demonstrations. They simply really don”t want them with Abraham Obama in office…. he’s going to free the White Middle Class liberals from their slavery under Rush Limbaugh and Fox News!

Not only is Obama sticking with the Bush program directly promising to keep US troops in Iraq until 2012, he continues to carry out the Bush-Cheney game plan by expanding occupation in Afghanistan, and aggressively threatening Iran and Syria with war. Add to that the Democratic Party in no way has changed from giving Israel green light to continue their ethnic cleansing program against the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and elsewhere (inside Israel itself). Meanwhile the ‘Peace’crats stand around with their thumbs up their asses and mumbling CHANGE… SPARE CHANGE, PLEASE. It’s very sad to see people debase themselves in this manner.

One can only feel sorry for the Iraqi population, too. They have no guarantee that the US under Barack Obama as CIC will actually stick to the promises to get out by 2012. All sorts of excuses to justify the idea that that cannot be actually done when the time comes can be made up under the usual fire of events, and Barack Obama is just the man in the US Presidency to do just exactly that. Three years from now? Well the US under this plan most likely will still be inside Iraq like glue. The US government and military simply didn’t build all their forts and Embassy Closed Gates without a desire to stick around. Barack is their guy, and when stability begins to crumble with his limited pull out, you can pretty much guess that the ‘plans’ will get changed once again. It’s simply stupid to trust the Democratic Party with much of anything other than their own going plans to collaborate with the Republican Party in running the World on behalf of American corporate power.

Also see… Orwell in Babylon- Obama’s Non-Withdrawal Withdrawal Plan ….By CHRIS FLOYD at antiwar.com

Collapsing Mexico

villa and zapataCollapsing Mexico was not the intent of Lawrence Summers, Obama’s new US Secretary of Treasury, but he has pulled it off BIG! Mexico’s economy today is shedding hundreds of thousands of badly needed jobs and is providing negative economic growth to its continually growing population rather than any positive numbers. Lawrence Summers is the architect of that catastrophe, so let’s review his US-Mexican resume some for those who are unaware of it. And let’s see what might be in store for Mexico’s neighbor, the USA?

Lawrence Summers was Clinton’s offerer of the US government’s move to tie Mexico into the NAFTA con, and point man to convince the Mexican PRI dictatorship, led by Ernesto Zedillo, to totally tie their country’s economic and political cart to an elephant and a donkey from the North. The carrot was a ‘giant bailout’ loan offer of billions of US treasury dollars (>$55 billion to be more exact). Many of Mexico’s PRI tied business men jumped at the opportunity and headed towards behind the scenes funding of the actual setting up of an American style 2 party con game, instead of the holding tight to the one party regime they had been supporting for so many decades. The final result was an acceptance of the billions coming from the US and a turn to setting up the Vicente Fox-PAN into the Mexican White House (Los Pinos). National debt to the US was set as something to worry about in the future, meanwhile they planned to ride high on the hog short term, and they did.

But now the US sowed genetically altered corn is coming come to roost, as Mexico has become caught totally tied to the US economy as the international collapse of all the world markets is underway. Mexicans are returning from the US because they cannot find jobs in the collapsing US economy, and returning under-aware of Mexico’s collapsing economy. A dark storm is beginning to brew, and just last weekend several hundred thousand people demonstrated in the capital against their US government enforced upon them government. John Ross, America’s foremost commentator on Mexican politics, writes of the unfolding situation this week in his commentary When (Mexican) Millionaire Mummies Mourn
Davos vs. Belem; Swine vs. Pearls

Why should Americans care about any of this? Isn’t the US collapsing world economies (China, Japan, Russia, European, and so on),one on top of the other anyway? What’s so special about what the US con-omy is doing to Mexico? Well…….? It is simply the fact that Mexico and the US are so intimately tied to each other and have been for centuries now. Wither Mexico, wither Latin America as a whole, too? It’s a volatile brew that is being stirred. BANG!

Keep an eye on Mexico as the economic downturn continues. The US government is losing its authority to direct…. to direct the people of Mexico in their own internal affairs with the collusion of their corrupt death squad loving elites who follow the order of our US elites. Don’t believe for a second that this development will not impact our own political turmoil ahead. Mexico will always be the key ‘foregin’ society for Gringolandia, and its just South of our ‘Homeland Security’. We are in this mess our corrupt capitalists have created for the common folk all of us together, and it has become a brewing Cauldron, Presidente Calderon.