Forget thirteen stripes, we need only five: three for the aligned branches, (1) Executive, (2) Judicial and (3) Legislative, half of which is blue if it matters, and two invisible stripes for (4) the NSA and its colleagues, and for (5) Dick Cheney’s private VP branch and its corporate subsidiaries.
Three weeks after 9/11, I called back to make a follow-up appointment with my dermatologist, an Arab doctor working in a Border community in Texas. It turns out that the local hospital had fired him, though they said that a family emergency had been the reason he was no longer available.
Perhaps, that’s why these ‘doctor’s plots’ seem like such old hat from my own personal perspective. One minute my doctor was there, and the next minute he was just disappeared. Nobody asked any questions.
Cut to the recent hysteria whipped up in Britain, where the anti-immigrant/anti-terrorist witch hunt now centers around Muslim doctors, and their supposed underground network to kill people. At best, the attempted bombings of 2 airports seem to hinge only on the actions of 2 doctors, one from Iraq and the other from Lebanon. The rest that were arrested are not even closely involved with these 2 events, though they are being held never the less. But how much confidence can be placed that even the 2 doctors mentioned above did anything illegal? Do we trusty the Military/ Homeland Security apparatus that much to believe that they are incapable of fabricating the whole event? After all, these are the people that think it their right to hold people without lawyers and trials, and torture them in secret prisons around the globe.
Now, this ‘doctor’s plot’ hysteria has spread to Australia, and it is only a short matter of time ’till it comes our way here in the USA. How gullible will our population be? I’m afraid that it is not a very reassuring scenario.
I had a chance to hear newly elected John Morse tell some of his constituents the other evening about what it’s like to be a state senator. A number of us were there to confront him on his outspoken support for a very unpopular expansion of military training grounds. Literally the whole southeast corner of the state.
Shall I tell you how he came off? Affable, likeable, so there wasn’t the chance to parse his words.
Number one, state senators are paid a quite small salary and per diem, something around $30,000/yr, meaning he’s agreed to quite a sacrifice for the time he’ll be serving at the capitol. It’s true there aren’t too many who can make this sacrifice, and perhaps I’ll leave to your judgment, would.
John Morse told us that many legislators avoid having lunch with lobbyists as a matter of principle. Our Morse feels no such compulsion. Why not, he asks? He’s found that all sides have their lobbyists and as long as he courts them all, he’ll get all sides. And when he needs to know the other side, our freshman senator tells us he bluntly asks the lobbyist in fairness, to please lay out the counter-arguments.
Morse didn’t differentiate between special interests and un-special interests, which comprise most of us, who are not represented by any lobbyist there to buy his lunch.
Just what type of man is John Howard, Prime Minister of Australia? The answer is that he is the spitting public image of George W. Bush, our own lunatic president. In other words, he’s a bumpkin fool.
Here he is, pushing legislation to outlaw pornography and alcohol for all Australians. Just kidding. He’s just going to outlaw those baddies for aborigines! Aborigines face ban on alcohol and porn But only aborigines in one District! If they behave 1/2 of a year, then they can then drink and do pornography once again if Howard sez it’s OK!
Talk about blaming the victims for their problems, ay? What next? Requiring all Australian gays to wear condoms, while straights will not have that legal directive? With John Howard sniffing cane toad toxins, any ol’ thing might go down?
John Howard needs to be sent to Guantanamo for Australia’s protection it seems. He supports what Guantanamo is all about anyway, and there he can partake of the strict discipline he is in favor of for Australian aborigines and other moral defectives. He’s quite a bit defective himself.
Where does the ruling class get these guys? Tom Tancredo for President anybody?
Sitting in a puffy leather Barca-lounger, jacked full of Valium and Demerol, God Doctor enters the room. He squats down so that we are at eye level, introduces himself (as if I don’t know who he is..I’ve driven to Denver three times so far to see him), stares into my nearly blind eyes and says, “Did you take something or are your pupils always this huge?” Even in my half-drugged state I had the presence of mind to say, “I took a handful of ‘ludes before the surgery; I hope that was okay.” He stands up without a word and walks out of the room.
Shit. Here it comes. We are so sorry, Ms. Walden, but we can’t do your surgery. You are destined to stumble around, squinting, creating giant furrows in your brow that even Botox can’t touch, ignoring friends and family waving at you, generating hurt feelings and animosity everywhere you go. People! I am not unfriendly (okay, sometimes I am, but only to stupid and/or boring people and for that I won’t apologize). I am blind! I don’t see you. If I did….I might wave back. I really really might.
Fortunately, within moments, in comes a cute Asian scrub nurse in a blue surgical hair thing (I am wearing one too…which, I must say, totally proves my point that sexiness is very very very related to hair…more on this later). She takes me into a room, puts me under a huge frightening contraption which is going to make a completely computerized laser cut on my oh-so-thin cornea. THIS is the new technology. In the past, the corneal flap has been created by a blade and has been the source of nearly every resultant complication of laser surgery. The actual corneal correction has been done by laser. The cut…by a BLADE….like skinning a squirrel. This new technology is so precise….they are talking microns….MICRONS. Three MOTHER FUCKING MICRONS. Me likey the precision.
After this first step, I am nearly blind. Kind over-sized women gently guide me to another dark room, put me on yet another comfortable chaise, pillow under my knees so there is no pressure on my lower back. Let the correction begin! Here’s where it gets a bit sci-fi. A soothing voice narrates as I am experiencing Laserium…on drugs…like at CU-Boulder back in the day.
You will see a green light within a white circle ….. Is there anybody out there? ..Try to focus on the green light even when it disappears… There is no pain you are receiving ……Then you will see flashing red lights…..A distant ship floats on the horizon……..Try to focus on the red light. It will appear to move, but that is an illusion…..You are only coming through in waves……Very very good, Marie…halfway there……Your lips move, but I can’t hear what you say…..Now you will see a series of dots…keep looking straight ahead…very good, Marie….When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse….Almost there, Marie. Keep looking straight ahead….Out of the corner of my eye.…Very very good. Now we will move to the next eye…I tried to look but it was gone…Marie, shift your shoulders a little to the left….I cannot put my finger on.…Very good, Marie…now focus on the green light again… a child is born, the dream is gone….We are done…you can relax now, Marie….I have become comfortably numb.
Within minutes of beginning, I am back in my Barca-lounger, drinking Gatorade, feeling no pain. Cute Asian nurse comes in…sees me with my wild blond hair everywhere and says, “Oh! I didn’t think you would look like that!” I have no idea what any of this means…maybe she thought my features were so average that I should have a June Cleaver haircut…..can’t really contemplate the comment but I still think it proves that hair is an important part of a woman’s appearance.
Okay…so I am 2 days out. 20/20…..I got glasses in second grade…have struggled with vision my whole life. Have been told by countless opthamologists that I’m not a candidate……Thin corneas, large pupils, astigmatism, poor vision.
If anyone out there is similarly afflicted, Dr. Jon Dishler in Denver….he brought this technology to Colorado…he holds patents on many treatments…..He is internationally known for Intra-Lasik. Usually $4600 for both eyes…through August…because of his 25th anniversity….$3000 for both.
I am not his marketing gal…he doesn’t even know my name…I just know the struggles that I’ve had…and if you have complicated vision, or you know someone who does….let me share this gift with you. I am COMPLETELY AMAZED. And happy as heck.
Occupational Hazard: False Allegations of Child Abuse Against Educators
By Brian Barrido, Esq. and Jay Mykytiuk
A school custodian was accused of sexual abuse by five girls. The charges were later dropped when the girls admitted that they had fabricated the story because the custodian had reported them for vandalizing a restroom. An Assistant Superintendent jumped off a bridge to his death after being accused of abusing a student. He had been cleared of any wrongdoing earlier that day.
A social studies teacher was accused of molesting a student during a school field trip. Eleven months later, his name was cleared when his accuser recanted. A nine year-old girl offered to pay each of her friends one dollar if they would accuse her teacher of abuse.
False allegations of child abuse against teachers and other school employees can be economically, emotionally, and financially devastating. It can lead to criminal prosecution and long jail terms. And it is a real phenomenon. One school administrator claims to receive 10-12 false accusations of abuse against teachers every year. Multiplied across the country, this number is staggering and disturbing.
Because crimes against children are so horrific, naturally accusers are taken seriously. What this means for accused teachers, is that they are usually presumed guilty—a presumption that can be very difficult to overcome. The most common motive of students who falsely accuse their teachers is to punish teachers who either disciplined them or give them poor grades. A false accusation of physical or sexual abuse will usually ensure that the targeted teacher is, at the least suspended or fired, and at worst, brought up on criminal charges. If an investigation is not properly handled, or the accused educator is not adequately represented by legal counsel, they may lose their careers and their freedom.
Some schools are addressing the issue before the problem arises. School handbooks advise teachers not to have any physical contact with students. Others discourage teachers from ever being one-on-one with a student in a classroom. But despite these precautions, educators remain vulnerable to abuse charges due to the nature of their positions.
The consequences of a guilty plea or conviction for physical or sexual abuse are potentially disastrous. Besides substantial jail time, the convicted abuser will lose his teaching license. If convicted of sexual abuse, one must register as a sex offender, and have their name and residence publicly posted. The convicted abuser will be barred from certain types of jobs, and will often be forced to undergo psychological treatment. This adds up to a steep price for simply choosing a career in education.
An educator accused of physical or sexual abuse against a child should seek counsel immediately. A competent attorney will investigate your case, gather character witnesses, and argue your case to the District Attorney. Your attorney should secure expert witnesses in the area of child psychology. In general, it is crucial that your attorney prepare a comprehensive legal strategy to combat the false accusations and prove your innocence.
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What if you had protested the Iraqi War? What if you were an Iraqi War vet who had recently spoken out publicly against an unpopular war? What if you had repeatedly protested The Iraqi War on a street corner near to the school where the accusations came about? What if you had spoken out at your city council’s meeting in front of the mayor and then been covered on multiple channels of the local news and had spoken out against a police attack on a pro-peace group at the local St Patrick’s Day Parade?
You do the math…
See Solidarity
Adam Kokesh, and other vets speaking out against the continued US occupation of Iraq, are being threatened by the top military brass and Bush Administration. Yet, it is striking in how unpopular the war has become, that the leader of the largest vet’s group in America, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, is now defending the right of these vets to protest this war without harassment from the Pentagon establishment.
Many politicians in local, state, and federal governments, feel that it is perfectly OK for soldiers to be forcibly paraded in pro war demonstrations paid by our tax monies, but that free speech for dissenters, including military dissenters, should be put down by any means at their disposal, including using attacks by police, dishonourable discharges of GIs, etc. This war will not be ended either by soldiers or civilians sitting back quietly and waiting for politicians to act responsibly. The politicians will act in the interests of the military-industrial complex instead, unless pressured by our continued protests.
We owe the antiwar vets all of our support. Together, patriotic vets and patriotic civilians can end this war by our actions and continued opposition to the politican’s war. Those dissenters in the military are an inspiration to us all, and together show that patriotism does reside in the ranks, even in a military full of people voluntary largely recruited by rank economic incentives.
The Peace Movement needs to do all it can to help defend from government persecution our friends, the antiwar vets of America. They are supporting the end to persecution of foreign peoples by our imperialist government often at great personal risk to themselves. May their ranks grow yet larger, as the world needs this as well as our own country itself. It is a case where patriotism becomes international solidarity, and international solidaritiy really is the patriotism of the future that the world needs more of now.
Cindy Sheehan has been grieving a long time, and this Memorial Day after the capitulation of the Democratic Party legislators in Congress was particularly rough. But it is more than that. The pain is made even worse by how inactive so many rank and file Democratic Party voters are in opposing this war.
At street vigils we see this, too. So many liberal minded folk wave and honk their horns in support of our vigil, but then it seems that they never get out of their cars to be the protesters, and not just the driver by-ers. After a while, this becomes disheartening.
We hope that Cindy gets her spirits back up and rejoins the activist antiwar movement after some family time off. She deserves the best, and she has given America her best. Here is her last commentary about how despairing she now feels. Many feel the same alongside her.
We are sad to see it be so, but when push comes to shove, the Democratic Party is not to be relied on. Cindy Sheehan tried to push the Democratic Party into action, but the corporate controllers resisted. She is not the first, and will not be the last to fail in such a project.
Good Riddance Attention Whore
by Cindy Sheehan
I have endured a lot of smear and hatred since Casey was killed and especially since I became the so-called “Face” of the American anti-war movement. Especially since I renounced any tie I have remaining with the Democratic Party, I have been further trashed on such “liberal blogs” as the Democratic Underground. Being called an “attention whore” and being told “good riddance” are some of the more milder rebukes.
I have come to some heartbreaking conclusions this Memorial Day Morning. These are not spur of the moment reflections, but things I have been meditating on for about a year now. The conclusions that I have slowly and very reluctantly come to are very heartbreaking to me.
The first conclusion is that I was the darling of the so-called left as long as I limited my protests to George Bush and the Republican Party. Of course, I was slandered and libeled by the right as a “tool” of the Democratic Party. This label was to marginalize me and my message. How could a woman have an original thought, or be working outside of our “two-party” system?
However, when I started to hold the Democratic Party to the same standards that I held the Republican Party, support for my cause started to erode and the “left” started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used. I guess no one paid attention to me when I said that the issue of peace and people dying for no reason is not a matter of “right or left”, but “right and wrong.”
I am deemed a radical because I believe that partisan politics should be left to the wayside when hundreds of thousands of people are dying for a war based on lies that is supported by Democrats and Republican alike. It amazes me that people who are sharp on the issues and can zero in like a laser beam on lies, misrepresentations, and political expediency when it comes to one party refuse to recognize it in their own party. Blind party loyalty is dangerous whatever side it occurs on. People of the world look on us Americans as jokes because we allow our political leaders so much murderous latitude and if we don’t find alternatives to this corrupt “two” party system our Representative Republic will die and be replaced with what we are rapidly descending into with nary a check or balance: a fascist corporate wasteland. I am demonized because I don’t see party affiliation or nationality when I look at a person, I see that person’s heart. If someone looks, dresses, acts, talks and votes like a Republican, then why do they deserve support just because he/she calls him/herself a Democrat?
I thought that this news item was of note, so here it is in full. Walter Lippmann’s website is worth visiting, too. See below… Tony
Raul Castro’s daughter blasts homophobia
Havana, May 21 (EFE).- The daughter of acting Cuban President Raul
Castro spoke out in favor of tolerance and against gay-bashing on the
occasion of the International Day against Homophobia.
“The communications media have a big responsibility in the education
of the public, in developing a culture of respect for people due to
their sexual identity and sexual orientation,” said Mariela Castro,
the head of the National Sex Education Center, in remarks broadcast
Sunday by state television.
Castro attended an unusual film-debate held in the “23 y 12” hall in
Havana, where organizers showed the U.S. film “Boys Don’t Cry,” which
tells a story based on real events of the difficulties,
discrimination and violence to which a young transsexual woman was
subjected.
“Starting with the advances we have had on these matters in our
country, it’s that we (are) trying to better visualize the goal of
this international – and in this case national – day,” said the
sexologist.
Castro said that “homophobia and transphobia still exist in the world
in a very strong, very cruel, very distriminatory way against
homosexual, transsexual and transgender people in a general sense
and, above all, as a result of ignorance.”
The government of Fidel Castro, who provisionally handed over power
to younger brother Raul last July after undergoing major surgery, has
in the past displayed marked intolerance for homosexuals, imprisoning
gays and quarantining AIDS sufferers.
The National Sex Education Center, a teaching, research and
assistance institution created in 1989, has proposed in the Cuban
legislature a bill to legally recognize the sex changes undergone by
transsexuals, at the same time it has been pushing for some time an
awareness campaign in the state-controlled media.
The International Day against Homophobia was begun on May 17, 2005, a
decade after the World Health Organization removed homosexuality from
its list of mental illnesses.
Thirteen years after its first showing in movie theaters on the
island, on May 5, Cubans watched the first broadcast on local
television of the 1993 film “Fresa y chocolate” (Strawberry and
Chocolate), an allegory against intolerance and discrimination
against homosexuals. Recently, Cuban TV also showed “La mujer de mi
hermano” (My Brother’s Wife), which also deals with the theme of
homosexuality. EFE
=============================
WALTER LIPPMANN
Editor-in-Chief, CubaNews
writer – photographer – activist
=============================
Darfur has become a cause celeb-re for many people in the imperialist countries of the US and Western Europe. They are demanding legislation that pushes for intervention by what are deemed ‘peacekeeper’ troops.
If you go to the rallies that demand ‘Save Darfur’, you hear speakers squarely putting the blame for the deaths in Darfur on Arabs and China. The solution of the ‘Save Darfur’ crowd? Send in the troops in to be controlled by the governments of the US and its European allies. The calls go out for legislation that would enable just that.
But who and what really is to blame for world hunger, including that in Darfur region refugee camps? What other possible solution to the crisis in Darfur would work, if not sending in the troops? There certainly is a crisis in Darfur and that is something worth working to alleviate.
How about campaigning for Food Aid instead of troop intervention? The Developed World only spends about $2 billion per year in world relief of hunger. That’s right! Only $2 billion for all the world. The slogan —Food Not Bombs— really is relevant here, yet the ‘Save Darfur’ activists seem oblivious to that? Instead, they blame Khartoum and China for all the problems in Darfur, and actually are demanding an economic war be engaged in against Sudan! That would work like Clinton’s sanctions did against the Iraqi people. That’s no solution at all but is a crime in the making instead.
How easy it would be to increase the food aid relief to $10 billion dollars from the current sad level of $2 billion. The US portion of that would be about $6 billion dollars. Instead, our government prefers to intervene with troops and bombs, and unfortunately there are many misguided activists that are campaigning for just that using Darfur as their excuse. Shame on them. Food, Not Bombs instead. Sending in the military is not the solution to the murders of civilians in Darfur, nor anywhere elsewhere for that matter. Lets call for Food Relief for all of Africa, and in a manner that does not destroy local food production, too. That’s the decent thing to do.
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.
I went to the Denver’s sparsely attended ‘Save Darfur’ rally today with signs made special for the rally. US OUT OF AFRICA, US/NATO OUT OF SUDAN, and STOP US WAR ON SOMALIA were 3 of them, and we used these to face the listeners that numbered about 150.
Some attending seemed to agree with our message, while others were rather hostile. As I passed out fliers my message was, ‘US OUT- NOT IN’. Many would ally with the Devil himself to try to stop the killing, and the huge number of deaths from this war is certainly horrifying with nobody in the antiwar community wanting the bloodshed to continue. However…
What is the context of this war? We have people calling on their government now committing genocides in Iraq, Palestine, and Afghanistan to come to the assistance of others suffering from fighting occurring in another country. I heard at the rally, many blaming China and Arabs for the mayhem in this one region of Sudan called Darfur. I saw not one sign and heard not one person other than our group mention what the US is doing now in Somalia. Nobody brought up the genocide in the Congo that has killed many more than in Darfur. Nobody but nobody had any sign calling for US OUT of IRAQ!
We had one sign that had the US flag on it and the word GENOCIDE, and then a short, short list of the genocides the US has been involved with. NATIVES, SLAVES, KOREANS, SE ASIANS, IRAQIS. We could not put the many other ones on a poster board sign. They would have included RWANDA, ANGOLA, ANGOLA, MOZAMIQUE, THE HORN OF AFRICA, THE CONGO, and others lesser known ones on the continent of Africa alone. The US has played a major role in all these genocides, yet many in arms about the Darfur massacres insist on trying to turn the US government into a peacekeeper!
The Darfur activists are demanding that US ‘take action’, that the federal legislature put pressure on Bush to be aggressive. One group actually had a score card on this, and listed Congressman Tom Tancredo as having an A+ along with Senator Ken Salazar. No surprise here at all, as Pelosi’s gang actually are trying to outflank Bush to the Right on demanding ‘action’. That’s right. Some Democrats like Democratic Party Congressman Donald Payne are now calling on Bush to start a bombing campaign on Khartoum! So much for the Darfur crowd as being ‘non-violent peacemakers’ we think. How sick is this? A Democratic Party Congressman and a ‘peace organization’ together calling on George W. Bush to initiate yet more military action on yet another country? All in the name of ‘stopping genocide’!
Well that’s enough for now, other than to further mention again that the head of the ‘Save Darfur Coalition’ is straight from the US State Department and the UN Security Council’s US support operations branch for occupying countries invaded by the US. Not satisfied with how few countries the US has invaded, occupied, and/or bombed he wants to try for yet more I guess? See this press puff piece about former US Ambassador Lawrence Rossin. He now heads up the ‘Save Darfur Coalition’! He’s going for another one it seems! Bombs away, Lawrence!
I was late coming to this country anthem. The chorus hit me today as I heard a succession of barefooted kids sing Jesus Take the Wheel solos at an elementary school talent show. Believe me the nuance was courtesy of cute soft voices timidly waivering off key. Last year it was Proud to be an American.
JTTW must be the current theme of our Christian nation, and could it be more horrifying? A bunch of Christians, driving too fast, in trouble, about to kill themselves and their babies and what do they want to do, shut their eyes, throw their hands up in the air and ask Jesus to step in. A touching show of faith to be sure, but as regards our nation’s deep trouble, the rest of us are in the bathwater. It was hands in the air that got us here; do you want to trust their crusader god to get us out?
Taking your hands off the wheel would be just fine if it meant scooting over and having a qualified driver take the wheel. Otherwise it simply means abrogating responsibility for dooming everyone because of your inattentive judgment, including a tragic misreading of spiritual guidance. It means burying your Master’s Talents instead of making something of them.
Jesus take the wheel from these dumbfos and take their licenses too. And their voter registrations.
The Democrats want a timetable to end the war, the President is threatening to veto any such measure. The media describes it as a power face-off. The Legislature has The Power of the Purse, the Executive Branch has The Veto. Bureaucratic weapons of equal strength we’re told. Ooooh. Are you sure? The power to cut off funding for the war versus the power to, to decline, to decline what funding the Congress does offer?
Whatever kind of false analysis is that? If Congress wants to give Bush something, yes he can refuse it. But then he gets how much of nothing? Why is the press suggesting that our representatives must negotiate against a veto?
Congress holds all the marbles. Bush has lost every last one he’s been given. Now we’re being told the Democrats must be careful how they authorize the next 100 billion lest Bush turn up his nose. No sir, that’s a false choice.
The power of the purse does not mean you’re stuck with the bill you’re given. It means you decide the purchase. The child in the cart can scream and threaten to hold his breath. Does the media think they are fooling anyone to advise that parents they must give in to that tactic? Go on Sonny, hold your breath.
Last night, watching Channel 11 News, I was taken back about how even local channels in conservative cities like The Springs are beginning to come unglued in their long term backing and pushing for the Iraqi War. Dick Cheney was calling the Democratic Party a bunch of wimps and stating he wasn’t worried in the least by their false and phoney opposition to Adminstration plans. He bets that they will fold their cards soon. So what did Channel 11 do?
They went out and interviewed the Fort Carson based troops and put those opinions side by side with Cheney’s. The GIs made it clear that they mainly opposed continued US military intervention in Iraq! That’s right, the Channel 11 news spotlighted what peace activists have been seeing in recent days, that many of the soldiers have become the most fervent supports of the Peace Movement. Just like with the Vietnam War, the US government has once again succeeded in losing the hearts and minds of its own troops. Why? Because unlike the government, the troops do have a conscience and they use it as their guide.
Well here’s some absolutely salacious news -that may not be the word I mean- on the much over-talked subject of the St Patrick’s Day parade. The PPJPC was accused of having crashed the parade, of having signed up under a false pretense, the BOOKMOBILE, even though we’d done the same thing a year before. But guess who really did crash the parade? The Hooters Girls!
Hooters was not among the registered parade participants, but marched with entry #56, the Colorado Springs Fire Department. But I guess nobody deemed the Hooters message of family-fun-in-orange-rayon to be either social or objectionable.
On a recent note, parade organizer John O’Donnell was just asked if the PPJPC would be permitted to march in next year’s parade. He said “no.”
There is a sad but funny commentary on Alternet titled, ‘The Iraq Debacle- Failure to Communicate?‘ I took a semester of Modern Standard Arabic ages ago and this article and the subsequent commentaries discuss the lack of available Arabic translators amongst ‘our troops’ and the various causes for that.
Following is my comment under one of the threads discussing this article.
Nothing new here…
Posted by: logansafi on Apr 9, 2007 7:14 PM
There’s nothing new here with our clownish military and our clown CIC. Nobody knew how to speak Albanian or Serbo Croat either, and God save us if they ever go into Darfur-Chad-Sudan! ‘Saviours’ without a clue they always are.
It is obvious why the US military is so in bed with Israel. Israel is the only country that has some Arab linguist ability, especially when you count their Falangist Lebanese killer friends.
MTA should be what this lingua franca should be called. Modern Torture Arabic. Good for use while stealing Iraqi oil.
Barack Obama’s people are courting us to promote their man on NMT. Have they been reading us? “Come to an appearance!” Maybe they’re counting on us being converted by mesmerism. Their man’s a grass-roots Howard Dean phenome they say, of whole cloth I say.
What a singularly unqualified candidate! He may be Dale Carnegie behind the podium but what’s Obama done beside give a speech at the DNC and win a barely contested senate seat? The poster child was key to the Jerry Lewis Telethon, but we didn’t expect him to run it.
If Barack Obama wants to govern, he could start now! He was elected to the Senate, isn’t there anything he can do there? What’s Obama going to do as president, campaign for Secretary General?
It’s not like there’s a shortage of legislating to do in DC right now. Where is Obama on any of the issues? Are his handlers cautioning him to stay away from the action lest he get hurt? Are they forgetting why he was put into the game to begin with?
Obama could be holding tight to Congress’s purse strings, or countering Bush’s inanities, or bringing public light to Valerie Plame or Sibel Edmonds. His office could be issuing subpeona after subpeona, or calling for impeachment. Or not, apparently. If a junior senator can’t rise above his seniors, whatever does he think he can do in the Executive Branch? We’re supposed to expect what from a president in Obama’s clothing?
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
Because some have expressed disdain at the mere thought of being considered right wing apologists… aka people who wish to accommodate and justify right wing philosophy, here are a few things to remember: Catchwords and phrases, talking points, something you might see on a bumper sticker; using these will probably get you tagged as a right wing loon. And in at least some cases the tag would fit perfectly.
examples: Love it or leave it (one recently) The Police are always right, If you have done nothing wrong why would you fear the police?, Support Our Troops, These Colors Never Run.
Recycling myths like: left wing liberals were the reason we lost in Nam… FALSE. Right Wing planners like Westmoreland, Johnson, Nixon, Al Hague, and the “Super Patriots” who supported them, were much more of a coherent and consistent reason for the loss of the VietNam War by the United States. The new crop of such losers is causing America to be drawn into yet another defeat.
Also contributing much to the American loss in VietNam was the courage and resourcefulness of the VietMinh, that’s Charley to some…
For those who don’t remember anything about it, these guys used a mix of primitive and modern technologies, small arms, improvised explosives and equipment taken from American, Australian, French and South Vietnamese soldiers, tactics which were also a mix of ancient and modern, to defeat the above named governments, even against a Shock and Awe campaign of greater magnitude than the one currently being played in Iraq.
Also like Iraq, there was never a war declared between the United States and The Democratic Republic (Hanoi).
Much as it pisses off those who see the POWs as uncompromising heroes, (some were) and the Hanoi Hilton as a hellhole, (it was) it should also be remembered that the Hanoi Hilton is about a standard in third world jails. And since the North Vietnamese didn’t do a “show trial” followed by an execution every time they captured an American airman, the treatment they accorded the Americans was one hell of a lot better than that accorded to the VietCong prisoners by the Saigon government.
a lot of Americans will scream loudly that American soldiers didn’t torture captured Charleys. Given the readiness these same people have shown to rationalize torture at Gitmo and worse places, i tend to doubt that. Probably not widespread but not nonexistent either.
But on the other hand, the Saigon government DID torture and summarily execute captured “terrorists” “rebels” “insurgents”.
Leave us remind everybody that the Americans captured in North VietNam and Cambodia and Laos had exactly the same legal status as the captured Charleys had in the South. No more, no less.
It was a combination of supporting an openly repressive government and the determination and resourcefulness of the “enemy” that dashed the American intervention in SE Asia.
The same things that are now dragging down America in South WEST Asia.
Empires are destined to fall, usually very soon after they are declared to be Empires. Such as the one declared by George Bush Senior when he proclaimed a New World Order, which is being dishonorably carried on by his son, King George the Incredibly Stupid.
Another talking point is that VietNam and Iraq were fought for American freedom.
They were not, nor has any war in which America has been engaged since 1814. To say otherwise is to propagate a myth, if you believe that myth, if you know it is false but say it anyway it is ramped up all the way to a Deliberate Lie.
The military did not fight for our freedom, they did not give us our freedom, or our rights, we do NOT OWE them our obedience, or the willing surrender of our rights.
Especially annoying (not to mention stupid) is the repeated attempt to make us believe that Freedom means we are free to do as we are told, to say only what we are allowed to say, and that we have some moral obligation to support the wars started by people who have anointed themselves our “Leaders”.
Some of my fellow Christians are of the strong delusion that God has commanded us to obey George Bush because he is supposedly “OUR” King.
This particular myth was also used by the Tories to denounce the Continental Congress and the rebels in the army during the Revolution.
It was shouted from pulpits across the Colonies by pastors, who, like Ted Haggard and Benny Hinn and Franklin Graham and Dobson… had sold their priesthood and their souls to a tyrant.
Here’s a quick formula to remember Shock and Awe = the use of fear as a weapon = Terrorism.
The proponents of Shock and Awe, like George and his supporters, are therefore Terrorists.
You don’t like that, try beating it out of me, and all the while try to forget that that too, is Terrorism.
This from the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission this morning…
Anyone who wishes to register a complaint with the police regarding the St. Patrick’s Day parade incident (you don’t have to be an arrestee to do so) please pick up a complaint form at police headquarters. Also, we ask anyone who considers him or herself a witness (having seen the incident) and who has pictures which help establish what happened to please call police headquarters and say what you saw. We suggest the latter since the media is implying that all the calls being received by police are supportive of police behavior and of the removal of peace marchers from the parade. Thank you.
The police are hearing mostly praise for their unconscionable actions over the weekend. Typical Colorado Springs. Please call in or file a complaint if you feel that they overstepped their bounds. Whether or not you were a witness. You’ve seen the pictures. You know what happened. Peace activists are getting some attention from the media…Let’s make sure we don’t miss an opportunity to advocate for peace and for civil liberties in our own community.
We live in wonderland times. Many might have heard about deep ecology and might even be supporters of it. But what about shallow ecology? Well it turns out that both terms were founded by the same man, Arne Naess, and despite the greater familiarity with the term ‘deep ecology’, there are many more advocates of ‘environmentalism’ that are into shallow ecology, than deep.
And to be even more comprehensive, we are also into having a plethora of what should be called shallowest ecology advocates. These are kind of like the plethora of anti Iraq War peace folk we have, who are noteven really shallow peace in their views, but shallowest peace. People like Hillary and Wesley (Clark) for examples. But who are the shallowest ecology advocates amongst us? In Colorado Springs, we might say that Richard Skorman is, the former vice mayor of the city.
I did not attend, but word has it that Poor Richard’s owned by Skorman, actually last week invited a Dupont exec up to us as ‘green’ and envormental friendly! To attend, one would have had to plump down some $10 I believe? to hear such nonsense espoused. Did anybody actually go? Please write if you did. As Steve Martin once said, ‘comedy is never pretty’ and this event must of been truly ugly. Wish I had made it for the laughs, if nothing else.
I did attend another shallowest ecology event, though, that was the free talk last night at Colorado College by Matthew Simmons, who I discovered afterward, was energy advisor to Bush at one time. Heck, ignorant me. I thought of him as just being an author who wrote some about Peak Oil Theory, not as exec and Bushie. And that’s why I attended the talk.
Simnmons gave a pretty good brief overview of Peak Oil theory to an audience of quite a few doubters. A radicalizing topic when the subject is actually understood, but that was what wierd about the meeting; there was no sense of energy, no sense of rage, no sense of realization that the world is facing a catastrophe in the near future. It was a shallow ecologist preaching to an audience full of more than a few far shallowest ecology people.
Peak Oil theory posits that cheap and available world oil is peaking at this point, and the world is going to face an increasingly tight cut off of energy resource flow in the years ahead. This will happen while we are all currently having our needs poorly met, through a capitalist production and distribution economy based on high energy resource waste and continual anarchist expansion. In other words, we are coming upon tight times ahead, while our world economy is a waste,toss, and run one. We’re running towards a brick wall.
My announcement to the audience about the March 17-18 antiwar activities ahead in our city, was followed by a further brief comment about how the US military was a major waster of energy and was acting as pirates around the globe looking to loot remaining energy supplies. Matthew Simmons then instead of addressing what I had just said, only commented that the military leaders were now beginning to show interest in the Peak Oil ‘question’, and that he was happy by that. Well, la-de-la-da! It was Peak Oil turned into shallowest ecology like gold turned to lead in front of my very own eyes. Peak Oil in a puff.
So I now have an energy formula to produce new critical masses of Shallowest Ecology? Just put Colorado Springs local Richard Skorman, any Dupont exec (preferably racial minoprity or woman), Matthew Simmons in his Twilight (partial name of his book, Twilight in the Desert), Dick Cheney, and Al Gore all together into a giant green bag. And then shake hard! Then listen to whatever pops out of their mouths. That is Shallowest Ecology in its purest essence. We’re in big trouble.
How many times have we heard the sorry and hateful Right Wing Christian refrain, that ‘We hate the sin but love the sinner’? Much more honest would be a retort to these people, that ‘we hate the lie, and don’t particularly respect you liars’.
When the British Anglican Church appointed an openly homosexual man to be a bishop, the Nigerian Archbishop Akinola, leader of 18.5 million church sheep, decided to split the entire world Anglican Church last year. Many Episcopalians in the US used their own homophobia to follow along. So just what were they supporting?
Well it turns out, the Nigerian Archbishop was supporting new legislation in Nigeria that would throw people in prison for five years if they openly showed in any way that they were gay! What a loving example of Christianity the archbishop is, NOT.
How absolutely shameful and backward can Right Wing Christianity get? Ask Adolf and Pope Ratzinger, I guess? Though not Episcopalians, they might shed some light on where following Holy Scripture their way might ultimately lead? Not much has really changed it seems. Christian religious hatred is making a big comeback worldwide and this is sad news.
The Guv has just vetoed HB-1072, a Colorado bill that had already been passed in both houses of the Colorado State Government, and a bill he had promised the unions he would support. In doing this, he acted on behalf of the Republicans and business interests that want it to continue to be almost impossible to unionize work places in this state.
This veto was a total betrayal of the workers who voted for him, and believed his promise that he was pro-labor. He is not, and now has shown his true colors but only after he was elected by those in the Colorado Labor Movement who supported him with their votes, and in return got conned.
Workers would have been electing a union shop when they vote union if this legislation had been allowed to take effect. Now, if they vote to have a union, they don’t really get one since the current state law allows the losers of any employee vote to just opt out of paying dues, even as they still would benefit by any contracts negotiated to their benefit by the dues paying union workers in their workplace. This of course destroys the cohesiveness of those trying to present a solid front on behalf of the employees against the bosses, and as a result, makes it next to impossible to unionize.
The type of betrayal done by Democrat Bill Ritter is par for the course. Labor unions have been pumping billions of dollars through the years into the corporate Democrats, and as a result, is now so pitiful and debilitated in the US that essentially we have no functioning unions here in America. People don’t want to join the unions even if there is one around, simply because the laborcrats siphon off most of the dues to themselves, and into lobbying a political party, the Democratic party, that is pro business, and not pro worker. How stupid is that?
There is one bone thrown still tossed out by Ritter to the labor bosses of Colorado that spent union dues money in helping him get elected. They got a man with a Spanish last name, Don Mares, appointed to head up the Colorado Department of Labor. Oh Wow!
Mares is an attorney and vice president of the LAEF (Latin American Educational Foundation, and ex candidate for Denver mayor. The LAEF is a total corporate write-off and public relations group funded by the Coors Foundation, a major funder of Right Wing causes throughout the US. Some ‘labor’ rep Don Mares will make! The union hacks might as well throw their rank-and-filers’ union dues paying money to the wind as to keep funding these types of con artists. What losers they are, these trade union honchos lined up with the DP!
Governor Bill Ritter is just another case in point that the Democratic party sucks big time. Progressives need to stop wasting their time and money on these charlatans, and it sure is no way to rebuild the union movement in this state, or this country, to be trying to buy and lobby votes from the Democratic party politician scoundrels. All that good money wasted and for about next to total Zilch.
There used to be a lot of worry about the government issuing a national identification card to all of us and then requiring us to carry it all the time so that they could monitor us, The People, all the time. Well now that they are actually slipping that noose half around our neck, the population of the US is without a bleep of protest against it. Maybe it is because the name of the national ID card sounds so familiar and appears as nothing much new? The national ID card is called a passport, and it will soon be required for all travel outside the US, even to Mexico and Canada.
What? Don’t think of the passport as a national ID card? Well that’s what it is becoming in graduated steps. When you apply for one, you are registering with the federal government. They already have a list of grading people on supposed ‘flight risk’, and it will be an easy task to meld this to the passport. And what’s to stop an ‘overland travel risk’ list from being added on now? After all, one can hijack a bus and do some major damage with it if one wants. All America must be protected from that, they will say.
These new passport requirements were slipped in by the Bush Administration without even the most minimal discussion and with zero protest within the House and Senate. Millions of people (Canadians, Americans, and Mexicans) who never had passports are now being herded into having to obtain one. Our whole county is being turned into a gated community, all under the excuse of bettering our own security. In fact, much of the North American continent is being turned into a high security zone, where people will travel between countries while under a secret surveillance pegged to their passports.
This secret surveillance does not now, and certainly will not in the future, have any due process as to who gets to go, and who is made to stop at the series of gates that will be put into effect. That will be a military decision, since the Department of Homeland Security and MIGRA really are part of the military model, not civilian one. If this reminds you of Palestinians within the areas controlled by Israel, then you get the picture of the model being used by this passport system of surveillance. It is all quite arbitrary and beyond the reach of legal rules and observations.
We are only now in the first steps of this new, comprehensive surveillance system being put into place. but the fact that we don’t even recognize much what is really being done is not promising for stopping and reversing course. All the blame for ‘inconveniences’ will be placed on Osama bin Laden, and not our own misleaders. We will be told that it is wartime and that our liberties must be compromised. We will be told that there are certain elements of our society that are high risk to the rest of us. Wait! Did I say we WILL be told that? We are already being told all this, and most of us nod our heads in acquiesence.
An Iron Curtain is Descending is a good article at the counterpunch site about the already occurring effects of this new surveillance system upon people. Check it out!