Tag Archives: Gazette

Colorado Springs future looking brighter

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Mark Lewis took this photo of Gazette editor and hillbilly blowhard Sean Paige holding court recently in Poor Richards restaurant to discuss his leaving the city daily
Colorado Springs has several attributes which make it a pleasant place to live. Our dry sunny climate of course, and Garden of the Gods, Manitou, The Broadmoor, Colorado College, the Smokebrush Foundation, to leave out quite a bit. Pikes Peak, the Olympic Training Center and NORAD separate us from other provincial backwaters only by giving us a sense that we are on the map.

Since Amendment 2 Colorado Springs has been on the map for our unpleasant demographic. The sagging mental acuity of the Pikes Peak area is something of legend, and lo, increasingly deserved. We owe this to the abundance of military employers, to the continuing influx of fundy revivalists and of course the standard American low expectations for education. But no entity has played a more detrimental role in shaping our pinheads than our city newspaper, the “libertarian” Freedom Communications Gazette. Since the demise/absorption of its competitor the COS Sun, the Gazette Telegraph has warped our city news with impunity.

And none have done it with more mean-spirit and Rush Limbaugh alacrity than Gazette Editorialist Sean Paige. Our own top-tier asshole.

And he’s leaving! Hurray! I wish it had been with tar and feathers. And it’s a rather selfish joy, because doubtless he’s moving somewhere. Wouldn’t it be more noble to know to where, so that instead of passing him off, we could give them a shout and prevent Paige from wreaking his cynical damage in their unsuspecting community?

I pledge allegiance…

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One of the most inspirational Colorado events of the last few weeks has been the protest in Boulder by high school students against the mandatory loyalty oath they are supposed to recite daily. I refer to the ‘Pledge of Allegiance’. In response, the local rag Gazette has begun a barrage of letters deriding these outstanding students as being monsters. Oh boo-hoo-hoo…

What an inspiration these kids are! Here, me and my fellow activists have politely gone through this ritual at School Board and City Council meetings while remaining all silent. Never mind that we are not one nation under god with liberty and justice for all and all that other baloney. We have watched the unfolding of the mandatory loyalty oath at each and every government meeting we have attended without saying anything.

Thank goodness that we have kids in America that are trying to call a halt to enforced pledges. We need to take up the cause alongside of them and at the next local Colorado Springs meetings I go to, I will. Thanks to the Boulder students for being our leaders.

D.C. Capitol police versus Colorado Springs police

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Charges Dismissed Against African-American Minister Targeted and Tackled by Capitol Police

Meanwhile, here in Colorado Springs the city continues to go after a woman with multiple medical problems needing multiple hospitalizations since the day they roughed her up at the annual city’s Saint Patrick’s Day Parade, even though she was not found guilty of any wrong doing at her first trial! Why?

The amazing thing about this effort to get Elizabeth Fineron convicted of something (this will be the third set of different charges the city has accused her of) is that the Colorado Springs police didn’t want to arrest her in the first place, they just wanted to rough her up, which they did by hauling her fast across the pavement. When she finally managed to struggle back up she was outraged and wanted to know if she was under arrest? The answer from the police was NO.

However, Elizabeth had just been deliberately humiliated by this police brutality in front of a large public crowd, and like the Reverend Yearwood Jr. in Washington D.C. had gotten upset by his rough treatment, Ms. Fineron was also upset, as any normal person would have been at that point. She did not feel that the police should just be allowed to treat her as if she was nothing more than a big bundle of trash to haul around at their free will, and demanded ‘to have her day in court’.

Still, the police refused to arrest her, at that time perhaps feeling some shame at what they had done to her? Elizabeth though, went from policeman to policeman stating that they had manhandled her for no cause at all, and that she wanted to be arrested alongside the other people being roughed up. They kept saying that she was not under arrest at all.

At last, one cop reluctantly told Elizabeth that if she tapped them with a finger they would call it assault and arrest her, though they wished she would just go away. Elizabeth’s response was simply to say NO… You guys beat me up, an elderly lady in poor health for no real reason at all, and now you want to act as if that was all right????… and she touched a cop with her finger tip… softly. Some arrest, huh? A real dangerous lady that the cops are now wasting our city tax money on for the umpteenth time to get her in the press… It is all very sad.

The city has decided not to retry 5 of the others their police roughed up, but goes after Elizabeth still, and Eric Verlo? As amazing as that seems?! Who can begin to try to understand their reasoning there? And all this time the Colorado Springs head cop, Richard Myers, has been playing with the Justice and Peace people as if the police is out to protect everybody? It just is not convincing at all, Police Chief.

At this point, not even the pro-war, Far-Out Right Wing Gazette editorial staff wants this idiotic attempt at prosecution to go on. Today, they came out with an opinion piece asking that no retrial of either Verlo or Fineron be launched. It was couched in their usual vile rhetoric, but still they thought it insanity to go through a trail again. They had the courage to take a position.

But where is the city council and mayor on this one? They like to talk nice, but have refused to speak out against city prosecution of the folk that police under their managerial direction roughed up. They are mum.

Shortly after St. Pat’s Day, the police had a riot in Los Angeles and beat up on people there, and even that notorious city not known for having their police under control disciplined some police for their actions. And now, the Capitol police admitted that they had gone wild taking down the Reverend Lennox Yearwood, Jr. as they did. What’s wrong with the city government and its officials here in Colorado Springs? It’s certainly not for lack of other municipal areas’ more positive examples that they act as they do.

The sad thing about this, is that the city council and mayor have expressed a desire that the city not be put in a bad light but they are completely unwilling to do the things necessary so that the city does not stand out and be seen as being a more intolerant and disrespectful place nationally than is the norm. They want to have their cake and eat it, too. That’s certainly the message they are giving out by wasting tax monies on yet another trial. Or, actually it will be two trials this time, as both the prosecution of Eric Verlo and Elizabeth Fineron will have two separate trials. It’s all very crazy…

Stop wasting our city tax monies on this nonsense, and come up with some legislation that would demilitarize the annual city St Pat’s Day Parade. By continuing this prosecution with yet another trial, you are using tax money to promote the idea that marching soldiers, Hooter girls, and politicians downtown is A-OK And city monies are to be allowed to promote such, yet city monies will stamp down hard on any counter social message trying to come out alongside the business as usual stuff.

Not all this city is made up of intolerant people who want liberal ideas censored using city tax monies. Not all this city wants its police to be used to rough people up and then to harass them using the judicial system afterwards. Get with the times, for they have changed since you in the city council used our tax monies to pay John O’Donnell to organize your march of squads of soldiers in a supposed Iraqi War ‘victory’ parade through downtown from the same spot your police assaulted Elizabeth Fineron for expressing a counter social message.

Beware of Hillary Care!

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The local business idiots’ rag here in Colorado Springs (The Gazette) has been warning us all about something they call “Hillary Care’. It’s socialized medicine they scream!

The editors of the Right Wing chain mislabeled ‘Freedom Publications’ of which The Gazette is one sheet of, even hate enrolling the poorer of the nation’s children into a government paid health care plan. That would be the first step toward a World Communist government in their opinion. But just what is Hillary Care anyway? In fact, it’s the same thing it was the first time around, or in other words, it’s a sucker punch to the general public.

The original health care proposals by Bill Clinton and wide were a band aid meant to get infected, and infected the American public’s wound became. Things just got worse and the Clintons walked away playing like they were visionaries before their time. Hardly. What their proposals did was set into motion yet further cannibalization of American medical and nursing care by the insurance companies. And they sat by and sat by and sat by.

Hillary has no plan for a single payer system guaranteed by the government such as today vets and some senior citizens get, and a few kids under Chips programs, too. She is not going to propose that the nation be put under one umbrella of equal care equally applied. She is just as much for tiered care under corporate control as George W. Bush is. But she is running her campaign as if this were not true.

Do not get sucker punched by the Clintons again. If you vote for her thinking that at least she will reform the way medical care is delivered in the US you will be voting for change, all the while guaranteeing that it will not come in a way you will like or want. She wants insurance control over your health, not taking away their control over you and your family.

Here is a well written article about the Clintons’ proposals. What went wrong with the Clinton plan? Health Care non-reform the last time The answer is that nothing really went wrong from ‘the vision’ that the Clintons had back then. The insurance companies kept running the entire show.

After opposition to reform quickened as surely it had to, while still in office they dropped any opposition to the big medical corporations they might have ever had, just like it was one big hot potato for them. Hillary is not about to oppose the insurance companies today any more than back then, and is a poor, poor choice to hang hopes on for even the most meager reform of the US Lack of Health System. Vote for her if you want a dirty band aid to be applied while actually wanting and needing major surgery. Hillary is quite a little sugar pill.

President Ahmadinejad meets Jewish rabbis in New York

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President Ahmadinejad meets Jewish rabbis in New York. Did you miss seeing this article in The Gazette and/or on the national network news? Here it is on World Network News if you follow the link and scroll down a notch. He also met with Pacifist Christian leaders from The Friends, Mennonites, and other denominations, too.

Here is the text of the coverage…

President Ahmadinejad meets Jewish rabbis in New York
PRESIDENT – Thu, 27 Sep 07

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Monday afternoon met with a group of Jewish rabbis who gave him a silver grail as a sign of friendship.

The president is currently in New York to address the United Nations General Assembly.

The rabbis carried a placard which read, “I am Jewish not a Zionist.”

A senior rabbi of the group said that they considered the visit to New York of President Ahmadinejad as an exceptional opportunity and would never forget it.

He referred to the Iranian president as a person who made a distinction between Jews and Zionists.

“You understand us and make a distinction between the violent behavior of Zionists and the religious beliefs of Jews,” said the senior rabbi who called President Ahmadinejad “a pious man who is seeking to restore peace in the world and has humanitarian plans.” Appreciating the rabbis for their gift, President Ahmadinejad said he was happy to visit them.

“All people in the world have now understood that Judaism is different from Zionism,” said the president.

He added, “Zionists are a political group looking for taking advantage of the opportunities while Jews are the followers of the Moses who promoted peace and friendship.”

President Ahmadinejad stressed that there was no disagreement between the followers of Judaism, Christianity and Islam as they all pray the same God and are brothers.

The president said the future belongs to the monotheist faiths and that liars would be eliminated.

He stressed that all followers of divine faiths were responsible to promote monotheism and defend peace, justice and brotherhood.

From http://www.SpideredNews.com

Jena style legalized lynching is as American as apple pie, unfortunately

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Millions of people around our country are legally lynched by the legal system. Some live through it, but most have their lives damaged, destroyed, and otherwise taken away from them in part or in entirety.

The whole country knows this simple truth, but many people favor just that and keep the wheels of this legalized lynching machine constantly well oiled with their support.

Many are folk like our local rag, The Gazette, which for reasons of local political expediency ran a picture of Thursday’s march for The Jena 6 big on the front page. This is what keeps the paper in decent standing with the local NAACP chapter, which has a heavily military influenced leadership.

The Gazette wants to not endanger that constituency’s tolerance for the paper’s Business as Usual support for the US War Machine, but The Gazette editorial staff along with the whole US chain of Right Wing papers called ‘Freedom Publishing’, doesn’t care a damn about stopping legal lynching, whether in Jena, Louisiana or anywhere else. They really don’t want racial justice, they just want the social tranquility where Black folk accept their own political dominance by others.

In fact, the editorial staff at The Gazette are big proponents of continuing all the current legal injustice now totally codified in America’s courts. They are big proponents for ‘law and order’ when used against the lower classes, and against all Law and Order when directed at the fat cats who are primarily rich White men. The local NAACP will never get The Gazette and the fat cats they write opinions for to offer up any more than the most superficial posturing in regards to stopping the racist legal lynching that the Jena 6 case has brought to the fore.

Jena style legalized lynching is as American as apple pie, unfortunately. We need a new America where the legal system is taken away from the control of the super rich and then used by the exploited to stop the super rich’s theft of America’s wealth. We need a racially just America and the legal system as it currently is, is the biggest obstacle to obtaining that goal. It must be totally changed, transformed, and democratized, for as of today democratically controlled it most certainly is not.

Free the Jena Six Now! Stop Legalized Lynching of Black Americans Today!

Also, Prosecutorial Misconduct More Dangerous Than Racism
The Injustice in Jena

‘Freedom Communications’ tap dances for wiretaps

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The Gazette rag today took time out from its campaigning to increase global warming and campaigning to kill off more species of life to laud El Paso County for using wiretaps. See page A3 of Sept 17 ‘DA defends wiretapping’.

The county had 11 times the # of wiretaps of Denver in 2005, but only 3 times that county’s amount this year. There just seems to be a great need to listen in on people by the police here according to the District Attorney and Gazette police whore (oh, I”m sorry, I meant reporter), Kim Nguyen. Why the big need, Kim? Terrorism?

Meth is terrorizing the community, so civil liberties needed to be shedded from the citizenry, so says the great freedom communicators at The Gazette. I wonder if they got cops over tapping their foots out at the airport, too? Meth, homos, pedos, and Muslims. We need them wiretaps, foot taps, and loads of baloney from the police and press. Otherwise we won’t feel secure, now would we?

And we need those wiretaps, too, so that elderly ‘ St Pat’s Day parade participants can be stopped in their tracks and then charged with blocking the parade!

The Godzilla Mac

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Want to see the evolution of the Big Mac into The Japanese Mega Mac into the Chici Mac?

Actually, I think that burger should actually be named The Godzilla Mac instead… But that would imply that you might be eating too many calories, I guess? Is this Mega Mac- Chici Mac going to be made out of Kobe beef? And how many yen will we have to pay for one of these monsters? Be sure to scroll down at the site for the actual evolutionary pictures of these future Japanese Godzilla burgers.

Just last week, too, our editorial clowns at The Gazette here in Colorado Springs, themselves devolved back into the Newt Gringich/ Ronald Reagan dinosaur reigning era with a cartoon they printed once again making fun of America’s working poor and lower middle classes. It was the usual picture of starving poor in the Third World with a side by side picture of the overweight poor at home.

Ha-ha-ha… The pro-capitalist pigs of the Right Wing just love to laugh about how their junk food chains, 24/7 mega-stressed worker/servant schedules, and impoverished factory food supplies are causing working people to grow out like balloons, which of course leads to death by chronic disease instead of kwashkior. They got such a great sense of humor, these elitist fucks. Capitalism is such a great success! See?!!!

Not being a passifist I sometimes get the urge to go out and club these social Neanderthals with some of their own stupid golf clubs. Don’t worry though. I am making great progress in my anger control classes. Plus, I will be attending a 3 day forum this month about how to take up non-violence and become all Jesus-like. There, I will be hugging cops (CS police Boss Liars Meyers) and throwing flowers onto their police stun guns to the sound of meditationary-relaxation-Buddhist music and passifist Anababtist encantations.

Plastic Bags are just garbage

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Speaking of plastic whores, Alternet carried a great article The Great Plastic Bag Plague about the proliferation of plastic bags and possible solutions to it. They also linked to reusablebags.com.

Now, which is the greatest garbage here in Colorado Springs? Is it The Gazette or is it the blue plastic bag it always comes in? And is it any great ecological feat to pick up dog poop in this blue plastic bag, and then toss it at the ‘Freedom Publications’ editors? And is it better to get paper bags or plastic at the factory chain grocery stores when you go through the counter with your plastic food?

Personally, I think that we should do as Ireland seems to be doing. Let’s charge 10-25 cents for each plastic bag and use that fund for saving the ecology of our planet. Such simple remedies for many ecological problems lie all around us and are not being implemented simply because the population passively allows the corporate community to rule over the common folk.

Our US population likes to think of themselves as mainly being rebels, but in reality, a more inert, immobile and passive population could hardly be imagined. How easy it would be to drastically reduce the amount of garbage we throw away in this country! Plastic bags are just garbage and we should pass laws to control how much of this stuff gets poorly used and then discarded.

The Science of Fools

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hung jury is defeat for police and city bosses

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In the end, the decision by the defense attorney to let the police and parade organizers do all the talking is what got a hung jury. In short, it was the witnesses for the prosecution that did all the blabbing contrary to what the reactionary daily paper, The Gazette, would have wanted to image to the public. Only Elizabeth Fineron testified as a defendant and her testimony was quiet and reasonable. The prosecution witnesses came off as a little too slick at times, and quite a bit incompetent at others.

The Gazette editorial staff have consistently tried to paint the St Pat’s Day Parade proPeace group as loud and belligerent, and pushy with their message. And they have projected that the message of peace somehow was an endangerment to the public by being allowed with all the allowed (and encouraged) pro military messages at the parade. In this they echoed the argument by city officials and their parade organizers that push the anti-social message that War somehow is patriotic, while peace activists are to be taken as being dangers to the community and violent.

The defense attorney argued that no blame should fall to the police, they were merely as confused as the defendants were from the general chaos coming from basically an incompetent group of organizers. But this message was a false one actually, that merely was a defense lawyer strategy not to take on the police directly inside the courtroom.

In reality, the police had all the power to use discretion and avoid the excessive use of force to police the parade, but just did not do so since they were so gung ho and ready to bop the ProPeace people on behalf of the organizer and his agents.

There was no miscommunication at all, and 2 of the jurors were apparently able to sense that this was the case and decided to stand firm and hang the jury. They saw that the blocked street was the conspiracy of parade organizers themselves, and not the proPeace walkers. The other 4 jurors were impervious to common sense and allowed their own fixed prejudices and desires to bop proPeace people on the head, too, to prevail with their votes to convict. Nothing much was going to change their minds.

In short,the prejudices both for always supporting the police whether Right or Wrong, and also for those who supported the right to have both military and proPeace groups together in this city parade seemed to stay fixed throughout the testimony. Four of the jurors would probably have convicted the defendants as being guilty of conspiracy to commit murder if they had been asked to do so by police and prosecutors. Two of the jurors had the ability to say to themselves, ‘Just hold on now…this could have been done totally different at this parade.’

This desire by city bosses to squelch anything other than proWar and military based commentary at their city St Pat’s Day event has now caused them to allow the police to get away with roughing up a group of mainly elderly and infirm parade participants, and has helped squander hundreds of thousands of municipal tax monies in trying to get away with it. Will they just keep thumping away with more waste for their crusade by going for a new trial of these innocent individuals? Will they argue again that these 7 people conspired together to deliberately and to intentionally block this sponsored city parade? Will they just continue to look and act vicious and stupid by taking this same action once again, bringing in the lawyers to thump heads after having the police do so?

One thing is for sure… If The idiot editorial staff of The Gazette has their way, that’s just exactly what city officials will try to do. They will waste yet more tax monies in an effort to convince the public that proPeace people are violent, and proWar people are peaceful. And we will sink into having yet another Alice in Wonderland style trial taking place inside the city.

What would Lockheed want with their monies influencing the local scene as Colorado Springs major employer? And what would the Bush led Pentagon want? The police are there to do the bidding of these folk and not so much to ensure public safety of parade participants themselves. They are perfectly ready to make examples of any that would try to step out of line from public promotion of militarism inside the City of Colorado Springs. They call that defending the public safety. Isn’t that right, Police Chief ‘Liars’ Myers?

There is no war, Iraq is at peace

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Peterson AFB counter-protesters August 2007
There had been a few harassing phone calls to the organizers of the SISTERS WITNESS AGAINST WAR event this week, so the counter- protesters who showed up were not entirely unexpected. It has been ages since we’d seen the other side on the sidewalk however. (Even this year’s Pridefest was unmarred by the usual picketers.) The Gazette reporter arrived just as all the sisters were wrapping up unfortunately, so the only photographs of the Peterson Hiroshima vigil in the Gazette will be of this crew.

The noisy counterpoint to our silent vigil had an interesting take on Iraq, and shouted to us that we were misrepresenting the truth to the soldiers driving in and out of the base. “There is no WAR! The war is OVER! Iraq is at PEACE! Our troops there are PEACEmakers! Support the TROOPS!”

Counter-protesters close-up

The Gazette won’t have the photograph of the sisters, filling both sides of the Peterson entrance:

Click for a larger view

Senator Salazar and the Military Industrial Congressional Complex

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Trinidad reception for Senator SalazarBill Sulzman attended Ken Salazar’s public meeting in Trinidad yesterday addressing the Piñon Canyon expansion. This from Bill:
 
Salazar came across as a bumbling idiot. The questions he keeps asking are merely rhetorical. He doesn’t want answers. He just continues to hide behind them. The “crown jewel” remarks which are referred to in the Chieftain story went on at some length and were downright scary. He is a proud, card carrying member of the military, industrial congressional complex.

From Salazar: “You have to know that I believe that we in Colorado are the crown jewel of national security.”

And: “There was some communication from the army that they would be willing to provide contracting work that would mean about 107 jobs.”

More articles in Rocky Mountain News, Gazette, Fox21

Gazette spinning for Lamborn

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This table on the front page of the Gazette today purported to compare the postal expenditures of several Colorado congressmen. It accompanied the headline LAMBORN RACKS UP MAILING CHARGES.
Table purporting to compare mailing expenditures 
If you didn’t read the text, but glanced briefly at this list, might you conclude that GOP Representative Doug Lamborn spent LESS than his constituents? Can you see how they did that?
 
Although ranked in order of excess, the Gazette used improperly justified asterisks to skew the columns and make the lower figures appear bigger. When this wasn’t sufficient, they appended decimals. The Gazette elected further to use proportional- spacing to make Lamborn’s $41,691 look smaller even than Salazar’s $2,004.

‘Save Darfur’ interventionists seem bloody ignorant about Africa, its culture, and its history- Save Lado, too, Comrades!

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Free Tibet, Stop Genocide in Kosovo, Liberate East Timor, and now Save Darfur with that ‘genocide’ tag being thrown around again. And lots of vitriol against Arabs and China mixed in. There seems to be all sorts of poorly thought out comments and ill considered positions going around town concerning this issue of ‘Darfur’, currently in the national spotlight ala Paris Hilton.

One local activist recently claimed on his web site that the Sudanese government was a US puppet state. Talk about getting it totally backwards! The reality is it’s the independence of the Sudanese government from DC control that Another activist here in the Springs was cheer-leading Democratic Party Colorado Governor Ritter for taking steps to firm up the US campaign beginning an economic war against Sudan. Colorado will not do bizness with bad Africans! Oh, Whoopee, Guvnor! I’ll bet my bottom dollar that you will do business helping your political buddies commit GENOCIDE against Palestinians and Iraqis, though. Am I right?

Right now, the Colorado Springs pro-peace people seem to be stumbling around in the dark on many fronts. The police attack on the St Patrick’s Day parade participants has them stumbling, and the anemia of the national Pro Peace folk hasn’t helped either. So why not jump on the ‘Save Darfur’ bandwagon? It makes sense. I guess there is just not enough problems on the home-front at this time? So let’s go save some Black folk from the evil Arabs and Chinese! And we’ll be led by Dubya, who will correct his problems in Iraq by changing a letter and nuking Iran.

The Justice and Peace had ourselves up a booth at Juneteenth today. They placed us right next to our old buddies, the storm troopers under the command of Police Chief Liars Myers. We’re getting to be almost family at this point. And on our nice little table we had some lit about Saving Darfur.

No, nobody had brought any material saying it might be nice saving all of Africa by getting the US the fuck out of their. I felt in a genteel mood and just sat for a while chitchatting and smelling the bbq. The Gazette was Heiled as being so very generous for poor Black folk by having ‘given generously’ with the publicity. It felt so good, so why be contentious? I just couldn’t…

I had my sign ‘Stop US War on Somalia’ with me, but Aw Shucks. Why confuse folk still trying to decide whether the Dar is for the Fur, or the Fur is for the Dar? And every body’s Albanian is still not much up to par And what’s the national language of island nation of East Timor anyway? Uh sorry, I meant the half island nation of East Timor. Hey, why shouldn’t we demand liberation and independence for West Timor, too? And what’s the next half-island down the shore? The world is complex, but you can speed read it if you are a liberal interventionist, for sure! I would have felt like a simpleton with my sign at the picnic.

There were some pamphlets to help you out on this with Darfur on our table. Did you know that Darfur was once an independent nation? Until the British defeated them of course.

Believe me, you will never learn this sort of stuff from the ‘Save Darfur’ crowd. They just don’t know it. That’s right. Darfur was pasted onto Sudan by the British. Those who paste on may want to peel the paste on back off, though. For humanitarian reasons, no doubt. From Blair to Brown to Save Darfur!

By the way, I am thinking of starting up a Colorado Springs society to save the Lado people. Don’t know about them? Hey, they’re just right down the road from Darfur. And guess what? They are victims of genocide, too. Save Lado! Is it pronounced like in Spanish, or like ‘lad oh!’ in English? It’s always fun when nobody can pronounce the name of the place we’re headed to ‘intervene’ into. Makes it more fun to watch the TV news!

I’m not making this up, so do the research on your own and let’s then get together and start a group (or 2 or 3) at Colorado College and get some sweet chickens (let me know if the use of ‘chickens’ here is not pc, like headless chickens) to help us out. What do you say? This is America, is it not? Anything can happen. We’re a good people for sure. So let’s do something for the Lado people right now! Start the propaganda, uh I meant ‘education’ going and we’ll get the troops in as soon as we can!

Meanwhile, let the conservatives increase the military budget a tad more, so that we’ll all then be ready to move into action together.

Save Lado!

Unpublished response to Gazette editor

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Gazette editorial supervisor Sean Page thinks he’s clever to admonish the St Patrick’s Day Seven for disturbing the peace. Unseemly for pacifists, he derides, haha. Ala Rodney King he asks: why can’t you give peace a chance?

Mocking us for being insufficiently peaceful for pacifists is like the bully chiding his prey for not taking their lumps. This isn’t about making peace with you or the police officers, it isn’t about keeping the peace in our community, AT ALL. The issue is bringing peace to war-ravaged Iraq and Afghanistan, et al.

I can turn the other cheek, as a matter of fact, but I don’t presume to do it for the Iraqi. Why should the innocent Iraqi or Afghan bear the brunt of your anything? I want you to stop persecuting THEM and I offer you no peace until you do.

Call me uncharitable, but I don’t want to make peace with mass murderers, baby killers and rapists, or those who would cover for them, excuse them or egg them on. The minute you put down your guns and put your pants back on is when I will lower my voice.

The real targets of perpetual US war making are China and Russia

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President Putin and Gorbachev have been in the news, both denouncing the US’s military expansionism and encirclement of Russia. Also in the news, is the increased US government interventionism into Africa. Assisting them in this effort, is the interventionist liberal Left that helps hype the US government case against ‘Arabs, China, and genocide’, linking all 3 into excuses for supporting their own government’s imperial interests in Africa.

China gets one third of its oil from Africa, and the US wants to lock that off. White American and British liberals want to help Blacks out, just not so much in the home countries. It’s a touchy feely thing for them, and especially also for the Hollywood types, that seem so drawn to the liberal interventionist cause. And liberal think tanks like the Carter Center and Bill Gates Foundation, too. Darfur is now celebrity cause #1, edging out Tibet, celebrity cause from the past.

Of particular comic interest, has been the Condi Rice response to Putin’s and Gorbachev’s remarks against NATO and the US government. Rice accuses them of being locked into prolonging the past’s antagonisms, and chides them for not still believing that the US Right Wing imperialists are just mighty good friends of Russia!

This sort of line shows how determined that the US is to crush Russia, and is believable only to American six packers watching Fox for their propaganda feeds. And maybe some of the nitwits that work for the Gazette management team, perhaps? There, they are locked in a heroically stupid battle to convince their readers that the earth’s environment is being well protected by corporate interests. Good luck, Nitwits. lol…

Meanwhile at home in the proPeace camp, all seemed to be hypnotized by concentrating all their attention on just 2 things: Iraq and Darfur. That’s good prep for the coming elections for them no doubt. Then, the Media and the Democratic Party will turn that focus into trying to get us to cheer lead Hillary against Rudy, or some other such nauseating carnival. Activists around cheer leading a DP candidate will try to convince all the Peace Movement that the best hope for Darfur and Iraq will lie in voting into office the Democratic Party pushed Saviour.

All this makes one wanna weep, as the Pentagon, CIA, and legions of US/ British/ Israeli mercenaries continue their project of winning the destruction of China’s and Russia’s future in our new and drained corporate-led world ecological fall.

Mad Max beyond belief, and even Biblical in proportions. Yet another Great Flood perhaps is under way? This time with toxic and radioactive waters, too…

Thank you, Larry Small

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I was able to attend the city council meeting where I made the effort to correct some of the more recent baloney that The Gazette had published regarding the city’s pro-peace community. I stated that local peace activists were neither harshly unconciliatory towards the city government and its police, nor were we into a love fest with the new police chief, Richard Myers.

Further, I offered our thanks and appreciation for the concern offered to us by some on the city council, and thanked Larry Small, vice mayor of the city, in particular, for the remarks he had made 2 weeks previous. He had stated that he apologized if any of us paraders for PEACE had been harmed emotionally or physically, by actions taken at the St. Patrick’s Day parade by law enforcement.

On behalf of the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission, I was able to tell the city council that we were appreciative of these remarks by the vice mayor, and that it was indeed noticed by us all and that we were grateful for what had been said. Still, that 7 of us faced criminal charges, and that we were now totally aware of the role that John O’Donnell has constantly been used as pro-military organizer for city sponsored events. While we are appreciative of the role taken at conciliation by the city council and police, we still were unable to allow the city government to continue to hide behind the pretense that John O’Donnell was a mere private citizen and that we should somehow be considered as illegitimate gate crashers at a private event.

We ask that police be restrained in their use of unecessary force in the future.

The Jena 6

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Nooses were hung from this treeThe Jena 6 are a group of black High School kids who got into a fight with a White kid in a racist public school in a racist little town called Jena, Louisiana. Now they are receiving national attention since the police and the city government there decided to use the judicial system against these Black kids and charged them with attempted murder. Exaggerated criminal charges for a school yard brawl provoked by the racist actions of the ‘victim’.

We also live in a city here in Colorado Springs where the police, too, also have the approval of the city government to use the judicial system falsely and punitively against its own citizens. The fat cats at The editorial board of The Gazette think it aggressive and rude for us to point this out to other folk, and have sarcastically asked us ‘brutal’ local peaceniks (in their editorial today) to ‘Give Peace a Chance’.

Like the cheerleaders(The Gazette editorial staff) of a US war machine that has killed millions around the globe are at all convincing about any political issues they take up! Not hardly. They are warmongers instead. And they are just as insincere as have been the cops and their supporters on the Colorado Springs city council up to now.

Sorry, but it is the city government that has to control its police to make peace happen in this city. Instead, it seems that many amongst the powers to be like using the police as attack dogs against the pro-peace groups of our city? That’s why The Gazette fuels this sort of witch hunt mentality by feeding false information to the public and uses quotes both out of context and also minus portions of the actual content of what was said to their reporter. But back to the problems of Jena, Louisiana…..

Check out the local yokel paper there especially in the comments section after the article. Here is Znet’s article on the issue

Justice Now in Jena and Colorado Springs! Stop using the judicial system in a partisan manner that supports racism and war. Drop the false charges. Oh, and restore habeas Corpus and end the use of torture, too. Got that, Gazette? (If I had sent that in to their letters column they would have chopped it all up into incoherence. I know from my experience with them.)

The Gazette defends the minimum wage earner yet again

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OK, the title to this commentary is so ridiculous that it invites scorn from the word GO. And yet?… this is exactly the refrain that The Gazette seems to constantly revel in.

They like to preposterously present themselves and others in the most reactionary portions of the US business community as defenders of the low income population of our nation. And their absurd thesis is always that we should oppose an increase in the minimum wage because that increase would hurt those it the new legislation would intend to help!

It is such a comical argument and one that nobody with a low income will ever buy. Do they take this sector of the population to be as stupid as the business community is? They are not. So the argument is really intended to persuade the well-to-do themselves that they really are being noble by being the selfish and backward thugs they actually truly are.

The argument really is, that the rich by opposing the increase in minimum wage are not just hoods robbing the poor, but are actually wonderful and decent people trying to help the poor out instead. Don’t laugh, that’s truly how they try to convince themselves to see it! But it makes us in the ordinary population of wage earners roll over laughing in response to the self image that the well-off have of themselves. What a bunch of charlatan clowns, are they not? Taking from the bottom to give to the top is noble endeavor! It’s truly celebrating their supposed virtue in being selfish as their ideologue Queen, Ayn Rand, once proposed in her writings as being the psychological key to supposed capitalist liberty making.

The argument that no minimum wage is freedom for the poor is once again raised as mantra in The Gazette on page 2 of the Business section of the Sunday paper in an article by Fred Crowley, a brainless professor over at the UCCS. He has a young, intense, and portly photo of himself there, too. No doubt that he is fully convinced of his arguments as week as silly as they actually are. No doubt that he also intensely and fully opposes the approach that Hugo Chavez is taking now in Venezuela in regards to increasing the minimum wage there. It just got increased 20%. Oh the horrors, he must be lamenting!

Yes, Dear Professor, the raise of the Venezuelan minimum wage violates all the supposed laws of economics that you and The Gazette preach so without end. How can Hugo Chavez not see that the economy must give profits to the rich and not to the poor? I guess such a nut deserves to be executed, does he not, Professor? He is a totalitarian trying to take liberty away!
Oh the humanity!

Instead of wishing well to Chavez and the poor of Venezuela, we should be listening to the concerns of The Gazette and Professor Crowley here at home. They just want to help the working poor out, by freezing their wages.

It’s nice to know that America is led by such an army of clowns like the editorial staff at The Gazette and the Economics Dept at UCCS when it comes to economic philosophy and economic planning. We should collect them all and shoot them out a giant cannon into areas where ‘The Terrorists’ are hiding! They would then roll over and die laughing. And then we could be nationally secure.

Sand Creek No Gun Ri

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This morning will be the dedication of the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site. The headline of today’s Gazette? “One man’s battle” about whether the 1864 slaughter was a massacre or a battle, and reporting the re-release of a 1925 first hand account written by Irving Howbert who, 61 years after the fact, did not recall the atrocities ascribed to his unit. Whatever kind of near sesquicentenial slap in the face is this? Do you think the prominent placement of this insult could have something to do with blurring America’s vision about current military massacres?

Normally respected Old Colorado City historian Dave Hughes is republishing the book, and wants to repaint the Sand Creek Massacre as, well, not a massacre at all. A quick recap: One early morning in 1864, 700 cavalry volunteers swooped into a village of 500 Arapaho and Cheyenne refugees, killing nearly 200 (the Gazette says 150) committing unmentionable atrocities, following the command “Kill or scalp all, big and little; nits become lice!”

I first heard Dave Hughes talk about the glories of war at, of all places, the traveling Vietnam War Memorial. It reflected a myopic immoral tide change I would never have been cynical enough to foresee, and it presaged our national sanction of the US war of aggression against Iraq and acceptable collateral damage. In the shadow of the traveling wall, remembering the 58,000 American dead, where not often enough did someone mention the millions of Vietnamese dead, Dave spoke of his immense pride of commanding his men, suffering the terrible casualties they did in Korea. The heavier the toll, the deeper his pride, the blustery commander was volunteering, if it weren’t for old-age, to do it again. I kid you not. Though he lost half his men to the battle, he would bravely venture more.

Downplaying massacres seems to be Hughes’ game. If you Google No Gun Ri, the now admitted deliberate massacre of hundreds of Korean refugees in 1950, here’s what do you’ll get: Dave Hughes on record standing up for the actions of American machine gunners. Here too, he wasn’t there, and relies on the recollection of soldiers who might have reasons to be blanking out on those parts. For shame. I know and like Dave Hughes, but he’s got a moral screw loose. And as we’ve seen in this town, that’s catching.

Elsewhere in the news, a play opens in London which retells the tragedy of Fallujah, in the actual words of participants on both sides. Authorities note 70 breaches of international conventions by the US forces. Soldiers like Dave Hughes can explain to themselves the necessity of sniping, gassing and obliterating hundreds of civilians in the regular conduct of war. Luckily wiser soldiers and statesmen before them have already addressed man’s bloodlust and agreed there are crimes that must never be rationalized.

Creating Terror in America

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We have an government active in creating a climate of terror inside its own borders. There is nothing really new about that, and today’s Gazette had an entire section of the paper dedicated to the Ludlow Massacre which occured decades ago, leaving a permanent stain on the state of Colorado that it may never completely erase.

The massacre was a Colorado national guard assault on immigrants in the middle of Colorado’s freezing winter, in an area located close to Trinidad in the Colorado town of Ludlow, where numbers of immigrant miners and their families including children were murdered down in cold blood and their tent city razed entirely to the ground. The assailants shouted racist anti-immigrant vitriol against the people they were murdering, much similar to the present day mindset pushed by the Right Wing twit Imus.

Imus certainly would have done much the same if he had lived back then, other than that he is in reality nothing more than an embittered and nasty old fart, given overloads of air time for no good reason that anyone can ascertain. But his airtime led to a hostile and racist environment, where the government of the United States itself can both abuse and use immigrants in America today. Yes, Bush’s Klan is now engaging in what can only be described as a terrorist campaign against the immmigrants living amongst us. See ‘Secret Immigration Raids in the D.C. Subway‘.

I am ashamed to be an American. Little has changed from our past history. We are a country with a nasty and violent past, as well as a country with a nasty and violent present. And just what happens to the children that fall victims to these witchhunts? Here is a link to a youtube video following an article about these children.

US Born Kids Face Deportations as Well

These children are living around us here in Colorado, too, as well as in Massachusetts and California. Act to help save them from governmental terrorism.

Bush’s token roundup of ‘legal immigrants’

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

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

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

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

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

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

Solidarity vs Disintegration?

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Moments of crisis always expose group weaknesses. Crises always create stress, and stress causes people to blame others and most espcially others that they have been working closely with in some shape or form. Suffice it to say, that in the 2 weeks since police attacked pro-peace participants in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade here in Colorado Springs, many of those who oppose the continued US government occupation of Iraq have been finger pointing and second guessing each other, and otherwise fighting amongst ourselves. We have not exactly distinguished ourselves by being first in the Solidarity Department.

Meanwhile, while we have been throwing stones against each other over our interpretation of local events, the real world goes on. The US is moving to further spread the multiple wars it is already engaging in, into yet more and more countries. We face the almost immediate possibility that our government will soon drop its new generation of atomic toys onto yet one more country, most probably Iran. We have a country that has dissolved habeus corpus, and where a prisoner tortured for 5 years pleaded guilty last week, just to try to escape yet further torture while being held criminally at Guantanamo by our government. We have a country where its top ‘justice’ official, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, stands accused of lying to its top elected officials, accused of doing such by his second in command, no less. The real world, and its real events, goes on.

Unfortunately, I have found it hard to write much about these events of the last 2 weeks, simply because fellow bloggers online with me here at Not My Tribe have chosen to attack me and Brother Jonah instead of focusing on the real events taking place around the planet. Instead of closing lines in solidarity with those that oppose the US government war making, these fellow bloggers online at NMT have chosen to get themselves upset about the supposed misdeeds of me and Jonah.

Oh horrors of horrors! We talk out against capitalism in ‘tirades’, smother free speech of others, and hand out ‘provacative’ signs that endanger others just trying to have a nice stroll downtown! How nasty Brother Jonah and I have been, it seems? We even drove off a nice young man named Steve, who just wanted to express his solidarity with our cause, he said, though he opposed our methods sadly enough.

Quite frankly, I am ashamed of all of this nonsense from these fellow bloggers, one of who chose to remove himself as a contributor. I have been to multiple vigils in the last 2 weeks that have expressed solidarity with immigrants under the multiple attacks and ’roundups’ of them and their families, and vigils in opposition to the US government and its continual wars. Tomorrow, I will go to Denver and try to find a way to help organize with others, future protests against the new agressions the US government is out organizing. And Monday, it will be to attend yet another vigil against the US War Against Iraq, and also to try to get together a city wide rally to support the 7 people now facing criminal charges post St Paddy Day’s police attack. But this fellow blogger was so ashamed of what we had been doing and writing here, that he felt it necessary to stop being a co-contributor at NMT, no less! He is not with us now, because we were too ‘Either you are with us, or Against us’ for him. Shame on you, Brother Jonah for behaving so badly that this co-blogger felt this way!

Another co-blogger, also is angry about our actions engaged in recently. What better time to fight and accuse her co-bloggers here at NMT, than when she finds herself in agreement with The Gazette, in agrement that her fellow peacenics didn’t properly know how to behave themselves with the better class of people at the St Pat’s Day affair? Shame on us! But where was I now? I’m missing from photos she says! Something sinister must have been happening? Where were you, Tony?, she asked!

Solidarity versus disintegration? This is always the question when push comes to shove. It is the question that always turns up during difficult strikes. Which side are you on? Oh, but these co-bloggers say that is too much like Dubya to ask that question now! After all, the Prez too said that you are either with us, or against us. Our co-bloggers though now shout out, that we should be both with you and against you when push comes to shove! That way we can sway with how well the corporate press is manipulating the Average Janes and Joes amongst the general city population. And that way, they will not feel so extremist as to hold any one view very firmly with their co-bloggers, who are so horrible manipulative, it does seem.

All of this nonsense and accusations that has been put online recently against Brother Jonah and I is totally repulsive and shameful. It truly detracts from anybody’s desire to read us. What a mess and I apologize. Solidarity versus disintegration? I hope that Not My Tribe can get its act together, and not disintegrate? Disintegration at this moment would be particularly sad. It would happen under the pretense of being discussion though. That’s hardly what has been going on, and Solidarity would be much better.

John O’Donnell, the city’s organizer of St Patrick’s Day parade, now caught in his own lies and hypocrisy

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John O’Donnell says that his ‘rules’ prohibit social statements from being made by participants, so he had to have city police assault pro peace parade participants and then have us expelled from the parade. John and the City of Colorado Springs government and police are totally in bed together on this one, and it pays to see just what O’Donnell and the city government have been doing and saying in the past. Check it out below.

Thank God we have the internet to help expose liars and hypocrits like the Colordo Springs city police spokepeople (police blotter), the Gazette editors, and John O’Donnell. See just what John O’Donnell actually means when ordering folk to not make any social statements at St Pat’s Day.

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Fort Carson veteran is St. Pat’s grand marshal
Sgt. Wong returned from Iraq in January

Sgt. Robert Wong, a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, has been named grand marshal of the 22nd annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade Saturday, March 12 in Old Colorado City.

Fort Carson selected Sgt. Wong, who was the post’s Soldier of the Quarter for 2004, at the request of the Parade Committee for O’Donnell & Associates, a promotional firm that org-anizes the annual parade.

Hailing from Baltimore, Md., the sergeant is with the 759th Military Police Batallion, which returned from Iraq in January. A contingent of 10 soldiers, all sergeants, will escort him during the parade, according to Parade Committee Chair John O’Donnell.

“We are delighted to have Sgt. Wong as the Grand Marshall,” O’Donnell said. “As a representative of all of the active duty troops at Fort Carson, he serves as a reminder of all of the active members of the armed forces here and abroad. By honoring Sgt. Wong, we hope to honor our military family and friends who can not be with us during this joyful family event.”

To become Soldier of the Quarter, a soldier must be nominated by his own unit, and is then evaluated against nominees from other units, according to Lt. Justin Journeay of Fort Carson’s public affairs office.

More than 110 entries are scheduled for this year’s parade, including bands, floats, dancers, politicians and riding groups. Starting at noon, the parade will go east on Colorado Avenue from 27th to 17th Street.

The festivities will begin March 12 in Bancroft Park with the “5K on St. Patrick’s Day” Race at 10 a.m. The Children’s Fun Run will begin at 11 a.m. Runners can register online at http://www.csgrandprix.com, at the Runners Roost (107 E. Bijou) or on the day of the race at 9 a.m.

from Westside Pioneer article/press releases