So long GOP, hello SOP

Posted on November 9, 2006 by Eric Verlo

Blue campaign mug The GOP is dead, long live the SOP.

That’s my take. If the Dems don’t immediately show the American people their determination to turn Bush’s machinations around, we’re going to see that Democrats and Republicans are the SOP, the Same Old Party.

I could be wrong, because the new congress is getting no help from the media. Post election headlines proclaim the Democratic landslide, but add that the stench of corruption persists over the Legislative Branch. When last did you hear Congress described so? Was Reagan the president? Was it when Congress was in the hands of Democrats? I bet if you close your eyes, you’re picturing Tip O’Neill.

The GOP is the party of big business and big media. It acts at the behest of corporations, and the corporate owned television networks. Naturally the talking heads on TV have to complain if anyone threatens to redo the undoings of the GOP.

The only liberal bias in the media is a presumed intellectual bias. The media personalities look like they’re smart enough that they must be progressive thinkers. That’s an interesting presumption, don’t you think? It’s based on an obvious truth. Smart, honorable people are humanitarian, compassionate, social reformers. The ugly truth is that media people are actually actors, courtiers, con-men and shills running a confidence scam. They are well paid and in the tax bracket of the usual GOP beneficiaries.

It’s fitting that the press and pundits and poll takers are already berating the new congress. It gives me a little optimism that the Dems may act.

Liberal Democrats, your votes will not be counted

Posted on October 31, 2006 by Tony Logan

Election fever is once again in the air. All around us we see Liberal Democrats with their yard signs and bumperstickers as the delirium builds. And once again, they will try for change by promoting their Tweedle Dees against the others guys’ TweedleDumbs. If there any content to be found, it is simply in that the Democratic Party ‘loyal oppositionists’ seem to have rather more polite candidates, as opposed to the ruder ones the Republicans run. All the election paraphernalia is generally without differentiating slogans, or even differentiating colors. Yet this is somewhat deceptive, as the opposing religious brethen have convinced themselves that this is a battle of socialism versus fascism! Yes, that’s what it is in fantasy land America. Sad to say, but both sides just go on simply ignoring that it is the corporate world that funds both these 2 political parties, and that the corporate world is not about to give up the charade that having both these parties dominating the electoral game provides.

Both groupings have constructed a paranoid view of the other. The Republicans are going to steal the vote at the machines again, shouts the liberal Democratic Party cadre. Bush is a Fascist! And the Republicans swear that Al Gore and the now silent, Michael Moore, are socialist devils. And well, Al Franken is a Judas socialist devil we suppose. The Democrats side with the ‘Islamo Fascists’, you see (if you are a true believing dittohead). So, now it is in quite in vogue to fascist-bait these days, no matter what angle you come from. Perhaps this is an Israeli idealogical import? If you’re not with us, you are against us… sort of a Moses style, religious world view. Both the liberal and conservative American religions love this stuff!

Well here’s the thing. Most people are not with either of these 2 religious camps anymore. The great American agnostic majority is beginning to form, and they don’t like the fact that their votes don’t count. The Repubilcan Right wants a Christian Republic declared, but Bush doesn’t deliver. The Democratic Party liberal wants the US out of Iraq and a stop to the bankrupting of our country through the Pentagon welfare system. And the Democratic Party hierarchy says NAY. Or whatever the sound a donkey makes? The corporations funding both parties want neither a theocracy, nor a society without ample, Pentagon based corporate welfare. So Liberal Democrats, your vote won’t count, just like the Right Wing Christian votes will not be counted, neither. Neither one of your two world views is the core values of your respective corporate funded political parties.

So why continue getting religion, if your vote won’t count, Liberals? Howard Dean, DP chair, already told you that it don’t make a difference if the Democrats do win. You heard it from the donkey’s mouth! Your votes will not be counted, and it has nothing to do with the Diebold machines. It has nothing to do with gerrymandering voter registration lists. It has nothing to do with fascism. It has all to do with corporations not listening to consumers. When you vote Demcoratic Party, you are consuming a corproate ideological product. Consider it yet another mass produced hamburger taken in. So you don’t like the secret sauce and complain to management. They are laughing at you, not changing their product line.

Big liberals going to pressure the corporate board of Democratic Party Unlimited in Gall? I just visited the Progressive Democrats of America website, and they are calling for … get this!… that the Democrats should CENSURE Bush and Cheney! Not jail him, nor even impeach him. What backbone, what pressure they apply! These liberal nuns at PDA want Dean to demand a slapping of Dick and Dubya’s wrists with the rulers! Oh such torture! Bush and Cheney must be shaking in their combat boots. lol. Well, Liberals, the Republicans will shoot you down just like so many quail! OOps, your own party will do it for them, won’t they? Ask Dean. The answer is there already.

So please get off your butts, and stop campaigning. Your vote will not be counted. Try something else.

Activism home grown

Posted on October 29, 2006 by Marie Walden

My siblings and I frequently talk about our “activist” upbringing. We grew up with parents who walked their talk. Our mom hung out with the radical nuns protesting around Rocky Flats. And I can’t remember a single Thanksgiving where we didn’t have a couple of homeless men sitting at our dinner table. Our parents introduced them by name and we were expected to be gracious and make interesting conversation.

Then there was Robin, a retarded young man who was obsessed with a pair of moccasins that we had in our front closet. My mom made a rule that the front door be always open so that Robin could come in for his moccasins any time he wanted. As a mother, I question the wisdom of this now but, at the time, we just accepted that at any time Robin might walk in and open our front closet. It wasn’t anything we worried about….just another one of mom’s people.

At the 1975 fall of Saigon, Divine Redeemer, our home church with hundreds of families, decided to sponsor a family fleeing Communist oppression. They asked that someone step forward to host a family of 8 people for several months. Guess who stepped forward? Much to our horror, my mom and dad did. We had 6 of our own children, aged 6 to 15, living in a small house and suddenly we had 16 people living under the same roof. They didn’t speak a word of English. We certainly didn’t speak Vietnamese. Our mom and their dad were able to communicate in broken French.

We reminisce about how our mom used to read little kid books to them, VERY LOUDLY, as though she could make them understand English if only she shouted. They used to stare at us and we back at them while she did this…all of us trying hard not to laugh.

Because my dad had been a part of the war in Viet Nam and a number of families we knew had been widowed during that war, we lost friends because of the choice we made to support this family. I didn’t understand this at all at the time. It’s taken many years for me to understand that to stand for something, anything, is to risk the wrath of those who don’t agree.

As kids, we remember it as crazy fun. We made Chef Boyardee pizzas and they chopped off the heads of weird little fish and made carrots look like flowers. We were all about the same age, they dressed weird, we dressed weird….we laughed and figured out how to communicate even without words. They showed us martial arts. We taught them to hula hoop. We laughed our asses off day after day.

Once, the 10-year-old girl, incredibly beautiful, her name was Ngoc (pronounced Nop), and I sat on the swing in the front yard. She placed her hand in front of my face, put up her index finger and said “Mot.” “Mo,” I said, knowing that she was counting. “Hai.” “Hi.” “Bah. Bon. Nam. Sau.” After she taught me to count to ten she grabbed my hand and rushed me into the living room where 15-20 people sat, always at the ready, listening to the Vietnamese singing American anthems, which was both lovely and hilarious since they didn’t really understand the words. “Ma cunry tis a vee. Swe lan a liverty.” Ngoc got everyone’s attention and suddenly 20 people were staring at me, a 14-year-old, not exactly at the age where I wanted a lot of scrutiny, and she said, encouragingly, “Mot.” I felt like throwing up but I understood that the stakes were high so with red cheeks I recited what I just learned. When I finished a loud roar went up….I swear there were even a few tears from the Vietnamese parents.

This family went on to become a success story. Ultimately, the boys, Phat, Dat and Loi, became Tony and Billy and Joey. They went to DU, studied engineering. Mom and Dad opened a successful restaurant on Federal Boulevard in Denver. The girls married Vietnamese men and carried on Vietnamese tradition on their new soil. Oddly, my two brothers married Asian women, one Vietnamese, one Thai.

This family had another baby after they came to the United States. They wanted to choose an American name to honor the country that had given them a second chance. They chose Helen. My mother’s name.

I’ve spent a lot of time over the past two decades “wasting” my time doing things that may or may not ever register on anyone’s radar. One of my inspirations has been Margaret Mead who said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” That’s what my family taught me….what I’d like to teach my own.

Tortured Logic- Thanks Gazette for opposing these attacks on our rights

Posted on October 23, 2006 by Tony Logan

‘Tortured Logic- Detainee Bill Undermines American Values’ says The Gazette opinion piece today. Congratulations to this paper for an excellent commentary. This editorial puts this newspaper far to the Left of the Colorado Democratic Party, whose Senator Salazar voted for this unconstitutional piece of legislation. And it puts them far to the Left of the Democratic Party candidate for the 5th Congressional District, Jay Fawcett. In the voter’s guide, this Democrat calls for a ‘global war on terrorism’, which only means that he will rubber stamp Bush’s plans to continue America’s constant warfare around the globe. Why are so many people who oppose the Iraq war planning to keep voting for these Right Wing Democratic Party creeps with their ‘get tough’ baloney? It is not opposing Bush to do so.

Thank you, Gazette, for surprising us for once, with this decent editorial that speaks tough against supporting continued US governmental terrorism, against those prisoners the US government has been taking away and hiding from public scrutiny. We hope you will continue to speak out consistently in the same vein, and begin to oppose all aspects of the militarism that plagues our country.

David Schultheis, World Class Dickhead

Posted on October 20, 2006 by Tony Logan

David Schultheis of Colorado Springs, Colorado State Representative of District 14, is a world class dickhead. Just four days after a family loses 3 children and has a fourth one severely injured in an automobile wreck, Schultheis wrote off to the Greeley Tribune, demanding to know if the the severely injured driver had proper documents or not. He inquired about her drivers license, insurance, and car registration, too, and all on the same day the third child died at the hospital!

You see, the family had a Hispanic last name, so that justifies this dickhead Anglo, in his own dickhead mind, to grill them publicly like that.

Schultheis was supported by Pastor Joy, of the Greeley for God ministry, no Spanish language services available, along with some other local Greeley folk allergic to Latinos. But the Hispanic community was appalled, along with any one else with even a speck of humanity about them.

Schultheis must be a student and associate of the so-called Jeff Henry (no relation to Patrick we are sure), local CS jefe of the racist Minutemen group. Speaking of that, a picture is worth a thousand words. I refer to the one picture, with Mayor Rivera passively sitting alongside Jeff Henry, that The Independent had in its previous edition. Beautiful shot, Indy! Rivera heads up a city council that allowed this hate group leader to hold a recruitment rally in a Colorado Springs police substation some few weeks back. So that’s why he is so content sitting next to this thug at a meeting about immigration ‘reform’, of all things. Jeff, can Rivera stay? You and David need to get togerhter and check out his papers first. lol… But I bet Lockheed will vouch for him.

David Schultheis, you got some stiff competition in the competition for Colorado Springs most eligible dickhead. But you win hands down. What a dickhead! Did you pay all your taxes and behave with your Page, Dave?

The absentee election reform solution

Posted on October 19, 2006 by Eric Verlo

Here is the Democratic Party plan to combat black box voting. Mail in your ballots. That’s the plan to overcome the GOP control over the registration of the voters, over the administration of the voting, over the programming of the electronic voting machines, over the electronic counting of the votes, over the poll taking at the voting centers, over the reporting of the voting results and over the concession by the losing party. The Democratic party plan to enforce an inviolate paper trail? Encourage the use of absentee ballots.

Sit down, it’s already too late to request an absentee ballot if you don’t have one already. And asking for an absentee ballot on the cusp of the deadline increases the chance that you will be struck from the list of voters permitted to vote on election day, as well as receive no ballot in the mail.

The call to encourage absentee ballots was not made very loudly, presumably so as not to diminish confidence in the voting process thereby losing more prospective votes than the Democrats could save. But in the end, whose purpose will that serve? How will we overcome GOP election fraud if we do not cry foul?

Election 2000 was rigged, as was 2002 and 2004. What are the indications that 2006 will be otherwise? Are there now fewer Diebold voting machines? Fewer Republican election officials?

The press reports that a landslide of voters are disenchanted with Bush and the war in Iraq. Yet it’s predicted that many of the candidates are neck and neck. It’s being forecast that Decision 2006 will be a tough call. Wow. Well. Kick in a few more bucks to your party. Is the election really going to be anybody’s call? Or is that anybody making the call already a Republican?

Is this really a democracy?

Posted on October 19, 2006 by Tony Logan

I sent in to get registered the last hour of the last day where I could vote this election coming up. But I don’t know why? Every round of this Tweedle Dee/ Tweedle Dum charade they call ‘democracy’ just leaves me feeling more and more alienated. Democracy is when power is contested, but there is no contest for power in America. The corporations run our society, and in fact, they run the world’s. So why do we keep going through this pretense that something will change depending on the result of our vote?

Eyes Wide Open Minus 279

Posted on October 11, 2006 by Tony Logan

Why don’t we reflect on the 279 US soldiers who lost their lives in Afghanistan, too? I think it simply because the AFSC/ Quakers almost universally vote Democratic Party. They don’t want the public to ‘reflect on the true costs of the Afghan war’ while most liberal Democratic Party voters continue to support such. And because of that, the Eyes Wide Open has its eyes sewed wide shut regarding Afghanistan. The AFSC, it seems, will have us only reflect on US troops who died in Iraq.

I have not been much of a backer of this top down AFSC bringing of Eyes Wide Open to Denver and Colorado Springs anyway. How top down? I would say that the main impetus for bringing this exibition to Colorado came from outside the state, and not from within. Discussion was very limited and completely shut off once the honchos had their thing going.

PLUS,this fetishist AFSC focus on the boots of US GIs is a reflection of the constant US nationalist fetishism that focuses on ‘supporting our troops’. They are not OUR troops and we should not be just focusing on the dead GIs’ boots and tags while relegating to the minimalist side the consideration of the deaths of the victims of these US troops. These troops were paid for by our taxes stolen and misused by the government, but they are not my troops. Nor yours, for that matter. So why do we memorialize them as if they were something so very much more special than their victims? Why, AFSC?

And this controlling top down organizing by the Quakers has me peeved. Who do they think they are to try to limit other points of view other than their own pacifist ones at these Fall antiwar events? If the Afghans and Iraqis try to kick the US out of their countries using armed force, then so be it. One gets a little tired of the constant US pacifist Christian messaging, pontificating to other people to non-violently resist their own US government’s violence. These sanctimonious people would have had the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto turning the other cheek to the Nazis even! Defintiely, nobody should feel obligated to not bring their own materials and posters to Eyes Wide Open just because the AFSC tells them not to. They have some damn nerve trying to censor off views other than those parallel with their own. Yes they do.

As an atheist, I will help set up this nominally antiwar exhibit. At least, it will be seen by the press as such. But we sure need a more secular antiwar movement in the future, with the ability to reach out to more than just the liberal church goers. The thing about liberal Christian pacifists, is that they demand that others not just reject the US warmaking but that they do it only for the same reasons that liberal pacifists do. They keep the antiwar movement small, by excluding the majority of people that actually might want to oppose US militarism for reasons other than religiosity.

Anyway, I remember the 279 US troops who have lost their lives in Afghanista. And what’s more, I remember the country of Afghanistan we have torn to shreds. Reflect on that, AFSC.

The ped-o-file

Posted on October 5, 2006 by Eric Verlo

You know those vilesome Democrats There must be a file somewhere to which political strategists turn if they need a media diversion.

Is it filled only with pedophiles?

Unpopular war? Bring in Michael Jackson. Really atrocious Zionist behavior? Reel in JonBenet’s wannabe. Congress renounces human rights? Paging Representative Foley.

Apparently Foley had been chasing congressional pages for some time and the GOP knew about it. That’s the point isn’t it?

The GOP lack of concern for the protection of America’s high school pages is less relevant to me than the Republican choice to play the Foley card now. They’re sacrificing one of their own, but look, suddenly the Republican congressman from Florida is not one of their own! According to Fox News, and the AP, Mark Foley is… a Democrat. And Hastert too! Look at that! Those dirty child-buggering Democrats! And right before an election!

Let me say, too, how I think this reflects on the congressional pages. We’re told these are the cream of the crop of America’s high school students. What kind of cream is it that rises to Washington eager to be playthings for politicians? Do we excuse their precociously licentious misbehavior as owed to being star-struck? What kind of high-gradepoint cream is that? Star-struck by pedophilic attention. Are our highschoolers so bright that they recognize immediately how to get ahead in Washington, selling your ass to your elders?

America’s Pirates

Posted on September 30, 2006 by Tony Logan

No, this is not about ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’, but about Microsoft and WalMart instead. Every year Forbes Magazine does its glowing presentation about the super-rich who rule us that really should be better called ‘Pirates of The United States of America’. Replace Johnny Depp with Bill Gates, perhaps, and have a great flick! Actually, a lot of liberal Democratic Party romantics already really seem to find him sexy, and if they flutter over Al Gore’s movie then certainly Bill Gates as pirate would be a blockbuster for them, if made into film. And YES go figure about some liberals’ personal taste? Throw in Hillary with Bill for yet more romance amongst the pirate super-rich. And the Democratic Party faithful will swoon.

So the gist of Forbes summary this year is that the top 400 people with big bucks gained another $120 billion over the last year. Yes, all through hard work. That gives these worthy pirates a total value of 1 and 1/4 triillion dollars. It broke my slide rule just calculating all that dough. Where did it come from, Folks? So hard to guess, ain’t it?

Hint, hint, hint, for the really thick. It came from theft. You got your pocket picked and still don’t know it! What could you do with an extra 1 and 1/4 trillion dollars those top 400 US pirates grabbed overall? And shoot, that’s not even talking about any Chinese, Japanese, Europeans, or dark seedy Arab pirates! How many pirates do you think the world’s poor can support? The Mexican poor support quite a few all alone, including ones’ called Hank, and another called Slim! And no doubt, America will turn out yet more next year.

Attention, All Pirates. Neiman Marcus’s Christmas catalog will be out soon! I hear there is even a yacht made out of solid diamonds for sale. How can it float, but it’s quite a sight to see? I love that catalog!

Senator McCain fake shining armor

Posted on September 24, 2006 by Tony Logan

Victim of Vietnamese
Do we assume because John McCain suffered mistreatment at the hands of the Vietnamese, that he empathizes with victims of torture? By presenting a false alternative to Bush’s torture bill, McCain is showing he may just want payback.

I’m not so sure we should believe that McCain was grossly mistreated by the Vietnamese. When he was shot down he was assaulted by angry people that did physically attack him. He was already injured at that point from the fall of his aircraft though.

Why did they attack him when he came down? The answer seems rather obvious, but this assault hardly can be called torture. It was rage at the American criminal that had been napalming and bombing those ‘Gooks’ down below.

As to his later imprisonment? He claims he was beaten and kept in solitary at times. There are hundreds of thousands of Americans who have suffered these abuses and much worse within America’s own jails. Nobody talks about this even as it goes on massively today in US prisons. I think we all know that rape is an epidemic in US prisons, and is actively encouraged by authorities as a form of control and torture of prisoners. Has McCain ever opened his mouth about this? I think not. He certainly was never threatened with it at the ‘Hanoi Hilton’.

McCain’s debriefing by the US military was set to make it publicly appear as if the Vietnamese were torturing American POWs on a routine basis. The reason for this is that the US was systematically doing much worse to the Vietnamese they held, and a loud campaign of denunciation of supposed Vietnamese abuse of the few Americans they held was meant to take the spotlight off what the US military did in mass to its captives. Returning US GIs were encouraged to join into this campaign with their stories, many of which might well have been coached.

The Pentagon actively pushed US POWs to voice claims that they were grossly mistreated. It became a major industry on the propaganda front. To this day, it is an urban Right Wing myth that huge numbers of returning veterans were spit upon and assaulted by hippie protesters. And the campaign suoppsoedly to aid ‘America’s POw/MIA’ went on for decades, even when it became quite preposterous. No campaign for the victims of US atrocities in SE Asia was ever begun though.

Let’s face it, many people lie and then even begin to believe their own lies. During the first Gulf War, I can’t count the number of Right Wing Americans that claimed to know Kuwaitis. I think we need to take McCains’s claims of being tortured with a big grain… make that a big rock of salt. The verifiable evidence is slim that he was tortured, to say the least.

My father-in-law was tortured by police though. He later died from complications related to that torture. Remember the so-called ‘Operation Cooperation’? It launched the decades long so-called drug wars. My wife’s dad was caught up in the militarization of the US-Mexican Border, thrown in jail, and then tortured. Acid was dropped into his eyes.
As a result, he walked around half blind the rest of his life.

In contrast, McCain is running for president as a Right Wing Republican. I think he is just an asshole and not a torture victim at all. He looks just fine though a little heavy from fine dining.

McCain hardly seems like a torture victim. He’s just your typical Right Wing ex-US-soldier type that wants to be publicly hailed as a hero, even though his activities as an imperialist trooper were dispicable. I can think of a jillion other ‘victims’ of torture out there whose claims of abuse I would take much more seriously. His claims to be a ‘compassionate conservative’ aren’t much more believeable than Bush’s.

Justice delayed, denied, for now

Posted on September 23, 2006 by Eric Verlo

Not to worry, not to worry. The Bush and GOP plan to indemnify themselves from responsibility for their war crimes will be to scant avail. Let them pass whatever bill they want.

It’s true, justice delayed is justice denied. And it is depressingly ungratifying to see criminals legislate themselves legitimacy. But the representatives at the United Nations have settled for this delay before.

Not long ago our nation was at war with the people of Vietnam. Our imperialist interventions eventually turned toward the people of Cambodia and Laos in illegal acts of aggression. There was absolutely no other nation powerful enough to bring us to account, and because of our veto power on the Security Council, any number of Nations United could not condemn us or stop us.

The U.N. delegates settled for delayed justice. They said, in effect, we may not stop you now, but that doesn’t make what you are doing right or legal. They agreed that there would be no statute of limitations for breaches of international law, neither should any nation be able to exclude itself from the law’s jurisdiction.

In 1968 the U.N. General Assembly made explicit the universal jurisdiction of the war crimes conventions. The Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity ensured that nobody could consider themselves beyond the reach of international rule of law.

Article 1, part (b) defines the universal illegality of war crimes, “even if such acts do not constitute a violation of the domestic law of the country in which they were committed.”

Article 4 reads that no nation’s laws can redefine what are understood to be war crimes, that “statutory or other limitations shall not apply to the prosecution and punishment of the crimes referred to in articles 1 and 2 of this Convention and that, where they exist, such limitations shall be abolished.”

The torturers and warmongers can delay their appointment with the hangman, but the scurryng around to jerrymander the law is a good sign. Bush and co are showing the discomfort of knowing that justice awaits.

The evolution debate ist tot

Posted on September 22, 2006 by Eric Verlo

Giant footprints in limestone We’re going to see the dinosaur tracks in Pinon Canyon this weekend. We’ll hike along the Pergatoire River which runs through southeastern Colorado and retrace a quarter mile long trail left by a brontosaurus.

At issue for my companions is what to make of theologians who would like us to believe that the Earth is only as old as The Bible says, something like 6,000 years. I’d like to contemplate that idea from the perspective of standing in a footprint made 150 million years ago. Supposedly.

Is carbon-dating flawed? Are scientists misleading mankind? It only matters if you want to believe that the christian bible is literally true. If the bible represents truth in the context of man’s understanding of the natural world at the time, then our new scientific understandings are not really suspect at all.

This is why Nietzsche wrote after Darwin’s theory, that God is dead. Is a discredited bible the Word of God or Man?

Infallibility
So who’s doing the arguing? Is it the Word-of-God people who want to refuse any contradictory evidence, or the scientists who couldn’t care a wit if their findings confirm or do not confirm church dogma? Bible adherents have chosen to take their stand against “evolutionary theory.” Because it can’t stand. Because it would make God’s word wrong.

“Theory” the Biblists decry, is as unreliable as it sounds. The inherent uncertainty of the scientific term insinuates that theory is more like wobbly fact. In Biblist lingo, theory becomes diametrically opposed to, and is perhaps the diabolical opposite of, fact. Hence the “debate.” Notice no one is scheduling debates over the theory of gravity or Pythagoras.

Thus Creationist Biblists have been challenging all comers to debate evolution in the court of public comprehension. There have been of course, science popularizers who’ve undertaken to educate the Biblists, perhaps hoping to create some middle ground. Pop-scientists such as Stephen Jay Gould engaged church dogma adherents to expand their understanding of the natural world. Meanwhile, actual scientists are laboring away, at science, working from the concepts of evolution into the further reaches. If these scientists look up at all, at the awkward “debate” conducted in their name, they wonder who gave those guys name tags? Who appointed them as apologists for scientific discovery and imbued them with authority to arbitrate and integrate scientific findings with church lore?

A debate between real scientists and creationists would look like an argument between a pediatrician and a fashion designer about what color pee should come out of the baby. It’s arguing apples and orange bowls. A debate about evolution is really between philosophers and theologians, because scientists aren’t debating anything. And the Biblists are the schoolchildren arguing they don’t want to learn their lessons, in fact they want to rewrite their lessons, and they want to debate their right to do so with linguists.

In trying to pick their fight, Biblists like to accuse scientists of arrogance. This is a false portrait, and comes perhaps from scientists not wanting to debate their findings with non-scientists. Why should they? You don’t argue football with someone that doesn’t know football from basketball. A scientist’s task is not to argue. A scientist makes a building block and moves on to the next. Where would we be if scientists only ever argued the validity of the single block. Build, concede its limitations, and move on. How can we build a two story house if someone on the committee perserverates on the first story being too speculative? Build the second story, if the first turns out to be flawed, we’ll start anew. Mankind still does not fully understand electricity. That doesn’t mean we can’t make telephones and phonographs and semiconductors and go to the moon in the meantime.

You might consider an architect full of excessive hubris for building towers higher than you yourself would ascend comfortably. You don’t understand the engineering, so he can’t build the skyscraper?

Intelligent Design
The theory of intelligent design offers a related illustration. I don’t have any doubt that many scientists would like to see our understanding of nature explained by an intelligent design. The problem is that science is not yet there, in fact it’s been pointing elsewhere. For now, we have to say, man’s knowledge through science cannot explain an intelligent design. Religious nuts are there, but for unscientific reasons. Intelligent Design may be true, but you can’t build anything with it. Scientists may want to build a 200 story building, but they don’t have the necessary blocks. Intelligent Design believers may be already want to dwell there, but you can’t start at the 200th floor and build downward.

There are a number of signs that evolution in practice is not as it appears. The GAIA concept offers to my mind a likely clue that there is a larger design at work. The idea that the fabric of nature on our planet might be governed by a cohesive unity, directly challenges the theory of random mutation by individuals. Could such scientific building blocks as proving GAIA lead to validating the biblical notion of Intelligent Design? Maybe that’s a possibility. Could it lead us to understand that Adam of Eden fashioned Eve from his own rib? Well, if you like, maybe that too. Right now I’d have to tell you that Adam’s rib is not my area of expertise and I’m certainly not prepared to debate it.

Wrestling with Steve Irwin

Posted on September 12, 2006 by Eric Verlo

A young friend reminded me today. “You know, I’m still really sad about the Alligator Guy.”

Me too. Steve Irwin’s death is sad, and a great loss, but I also feel we may be dishonoring Irwin to feel sad for him.

I wouldn’t pretend to speak for Irwin, nor certainly would I imagine that he wouldn’t have rather avoided the stingray’s barb. I will postulate however that the Alligator Guy died doing what he loved. I will speculate that while Irwin’s dangerous antics appeared effortless to us, no doubt he had a precise understanding of the odds and the risk.

An article written after his death quoted Irwin as having once joked with his producer: if ever one of his stunts proved fatal, “at least it will be on film.” I really have to believe that Steve Irwin braved the odds, and just as bravely met his fate.

I make this point because I think our culture is too ready to drown spiritual identity under the weight of a social mean. We can marvel at Steve Irwin’s individuality but we’ll discount his strength of character as soon as he is not around to surprise us again.

I asked my young friend about another of his heroes, Anakin Skywalker. Why ever would Anakin -with the power of The Force- have turned to the Dark Side?” He informed me: “Because he wanted Padme to live.” Really. Would his princess have accepted being saved if she knew that Anakin would sacrifice his soul?

To read any of Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey in George Lucas’ Star Wars tale is to be full of shit. I do so resent this typical reduction of the heroic character. Humanizing the protagonist these days seems to require diminishing the human potential. We’re not talking about a tragic flaw in the Greek sense, we’re talking about the consumer’s creed: I me mine.

In these capitalist times we love the dictum “everybody has his price.” It seems carved in stone like “absolute power corrupts.” I believe it’s not very far removed from the crippling Catholic indoctrination of guilt, that we are all born sinners. I reject that handicap. We each may have our weaknesses, our predilections, our tragic flaws, but we are also what we want to be, and we can be good.

2.
Muslims extremists, I believe, are similarly belittled. A suicide bomber willing to give his or her life for a cause is not by necessity brain-washed or waylaid. Selfless motives do not register with our Culture of Self. Insurgents rising in waves against American firepower, rise against our comprehension. The determination of the Vietcong porters along the Ho Chi Min trail was likewise not something we could easily fathom.

A pacifist friend of mine has a pact with his wife. Both like minded pacifists, they agreed never to resort to lethal force to protect one another. Neither wanted to be saved at the expense of the death of another human being. To act otherwise, while promising a less tragic outcome, would dishonor the path toward which both were committed.

Our culture does not want to honor people’s moral selves. It teaches that everyone, even Anakin, is turnable, as if there is no such thing as a moral compass. We preach morality but fear letting it inhabit individual peoples.

Steve Irwin was not perhaps a moral leader, but he was a hero. His heroism was his irrepressibly adventurous bravery. Now, it may be best for young minds to believe that Alligator Guy died instantaneously without suffering, but I read something more happened. Irwin’s companions say that after he was struck, they watched him pull the barb from his chest and look at it as he slowly lost consciousness. I don’t need to see the footage, but I’d like to face the reality of Steve Irwin’s death as he did. With curiosity and bravery.

The fundraising portent

Posted on September 1, 2006 by Eric Verlo

I don’t know, I got the same feeling before the last election…

In 2004 Bush was messing up. It was becoming plain as day what a smug, incompetent shyster he was. A landslide for anybody-but-Bush seemed virtually assured. And yet-

And yet you’d hear that Bush was still raising money, finding backers, hosting dinners for rich people ready to bet Bush was going to win again.

Who puts money on a losing horse? Especially people who know how to handle money. It wasn’t a good portent.

What do you think nowadays when you hear that Bush still raises thousands at a fundraiser? Are people giving money to the GOP as a thank you for the job Bush has done? The huge tax break for the rich for example, or the defense contracts, or the oil revenue windfall?

Really? Do you think so? They paid for those favors the last go-round. The GOP hasn’t backed a single bit of legislation that wasn’t for constituents who weren’t already big GOP contributors.

More certainly Bush is still able to raise money because the rich are angling for new mega-billion dollar favors to come. These people know that to earn money you have to spend money.

The most disquieting aspect about this fund-giving to the GOP is that the rich are counting on further GOP victories. They’re not in the business of throwing their money away. They’re not betting that the GOP will stay in power, they’re anteing up. If they thought the Democrats would be winning in November the rich would register their bribes with the Democratic party.

That Bush is holding closed-door affairs while on the public payroll is the least of his offenses. Throughout his presidency, Bush cannot have acted with more discourtesy toward our Constitution. He is guilty of impeachable offenses and it doesn’t take a judge to see it. Every solitary person who hosts a fundraiser for him, or who gives him money, is behaving so selfishly un-American, I’d call it treason.

It’s graft, it’s undemocratic, and it’s cynically counting that you and I will not be able to see through the media blackout on the issues, the rigged voting system, and the false two-party choice.

Are the fundgivers scared? It appears not a whit. That scares me. Big win for the Democrats in November? They don’t think so.

Bullshit making instructions

Posted on August 20, 2006 by Eric Verlo

Writing an column for Crank Magazine some years ago, I announced my intention to describe how to make a bomb. Crank Magazine took out a newspaper ad in the local daily to publicize the upcoming issue , mentioning the forthcoming bomb recipe. As a result we received letters and legal threats warning us not to reveal bomb-making secrets to the public at large.

The point of my article was not just to dispel the impression that bomb making was easy, but to argue the importance of the public’s access to that information. Several publishers had been hounded for their efforts to keep THE ANARCHIST’S COOKBOOK in print. The instructions are relatively simple to understand, but to execute them is another matter.

My point was illustrated by last week’s fantasy bomb plot. British and American authorities scared us with descriptions of dark skinned operatives sneaking aboard transatlantic flights armed with bottles of liquid bomb ingredients. If enough of us were conversant in basic chemistry, we could debunk such sky-is-falling wolf-crying. The Register has sorted out what it would take to successfully make an explosive from liquids smuggled aboard by airline passengers.

Several American columnists have now alluded to the Register article, but without the customary hyperlink. Perhaps they are still fearing to call attention to explicit chemistry instruction. I think that’s still playing gatekeeper with knowledge. Let the poorly-educated American public, too hung-over in highschool to have gotten anything out of early morning chemistry lab, understand what is required to make a bomb in an airplane lavatory: a miracle.

Medical malreporting

Posted on July 26, 2006 by Eric Verlo

I heard a report the other day about the new medicare prescription drug benefit choices and the donut hole trap for for many seniors.

Weak as the various plans are, several of them have lapses of coverage. You’re covered for several thousand dollars worth of medecine, but the next several thousand you have to pay out of pocket until coverage resumes again, and you begin again the next year.

They’re calling it the donut hole. On this report we heard from a couple senior citizens and the terrible financial troubles which come of overcoming the donut hole in their coverage.

The reporter said “no one knows how many people fall into the donut hole.”

Really now? That would have to be the least imaginative investigative reporting ever. Did the reporter think this donut hole is like a back street pot hole claiming its unwarry victims without rhyme or reason?

The reporter would be right about the unwarry victims, but that’s not some random neglected pot hole. That pot hole represents a windfall profit of billions of dollars for the insurance companies who before the medicare reforms had to pay it. They know exactly how many billions are now flowing their way. They know how many millions of people are affected, even their names and prescriptions, because they used to pay for those prescriptions.

What is the purpose of all the complicated medicare drug benefit options? To obscure the fact that each one is intended to screw the senior citizen, but they’ll be dead before they figure that out?

The various complicated plans are the result of the calculations of giant actuarial scenarios in which drug companies and insurers achieve maximum revenue. Trying to figure out which plan might work to your advantage is like pitting yourself against IBM’s Deep Blue. Pencil and legal pad against a supercomputer.

I had intended to remind readers on the onset of this article, and between each paragraph, that health care is free in every other developed nation. Prescriptions, house calls, open heart surgery, free.

Those countries don’t bother with health insurance businesses which skim a third of all health care costs. They don’t bother with kickbacks to corrupt politicians who pass legislation to benefit corporations over public citizens.

Other countries health care and medicines are free.

Do you understand why there need to be dozens of different drug plans, any of which can be discontinued immediately if they don’t suit the drug companies? Does it make sense? That each plan is so complicated you need a super computer to calculate your options?

They devise the plans with the aid of super computers with probability factors including your chances of getting away without paying an arm and a leg. Your chances? Known only to them.

You’re screwed. Unless you live in any other developed nation. Any.

Inured to war crime.

Posted on July 24, 2006 by Eric Verlo

US soldiers TOSS a bakery in Fallujah
In a recent harder-than-usual puff piece report, the Stars and Stripes described a day of hunting insurgents in Fallujah.

Nevermind that Fallujah was supposed to have been pacified, razed to the ground more precisely, and barricaded to such an extent that only residents with approved retina scans could get back in. Nevermind. Insurgents are planting IEDs again, they’re sniping at our soldiers again, and we’re conducting patrols to stop them again.

On this patrol, an Iraqi sniper keeps popping up in a particular neighborhood. Our intrepid soldiers have become upset with the shopkeepers on the block because not one of them will rat on who’s doing the sniping. One of the shops is a bakery.

Here’s what our GIs come up with their down-home plan. “Toss” the bakery.

They blast the business’s lock, or drive into the door with their Humvee, then “toss the place,” throwing everything to the floor including bread, flour and utensils. The strategy being that maybe the bakery will reconsider collaborating with our soldiers.

Here’s the deal. Are you interested? Expecting Iraqi civilians to take a side is not only bad form, it’s a war crime. The tactic which the Stars & Stripes article paints as affable American ingenuity, is in reality an action that comprises three distinct war crimes. Violations of a code to which the American public has become inured, perhaps because of our media’s repeated pandering.

1. Coercing civilians to be our military scouts is forced conscription, a war crime.

2. Meting out collective punishment is a war crime.

3. Destroying civilian food is a war crime.

Such actions have long been designated as war crimes by international consensus, based on centuries of abuse suffered by civilians at the hands of soldiers. Since forever war makers have improvised many cruelties to visit upon uncooperative peoples, two testaments later there are codes of conduct to stop each one.

B.
For the stubborn faint-of-mind: Yes, the Iraqis are supposed to adhere to the same laws and conventions. Yes, hiding behind non-combatants is a crime. But do you think their actions justify your commiting crimes?

Probably you remember a rule your mother taught you: Just because somebody else does it, doesn’t mean you have to.

Congress building lockdown

Posted on May 26, 2006 by Eric Verlo

Spotted on BagNews I spotted this schematic on BagNews. He put it together to suggest what thoughts might be foremost in a GOP legislator’s mind right now.

I’m wondering how many others are speculating about the chances that the lockdown at the Rayburn Building was orchestrated to cover for the removal of office files into the parking deck.

Let’s see: congressman thinks he hears gunshots and suddenly policemen are pointing their guns at everyone, including reporters.

Space Symposium protest 2006 part 2

Posted on April 5, 2006 by Eric Verlo

Day 1: Monday
On Monday we stood, nearly two dozen of us at the corner of Lake and Lake Circle, we sang our song to an Oscar Meyer melody, we held banners, we blew our whistles and we handed out our baloney sanwiches. And nearly got arrested.

The Broadmoor had cordoned off the majority of the sidewalk in front of their new Convention Center. Our protest was relegated to only the corner. True, it was a very visible corner, and we could offer flyers to nearly everyone walking to the Convention Center from the Broadmoor Hotel. But we thought we could accomplish a little more if we paraded our banners more visibly.

Dave Therault noted that all the Harris security personel were bunched up around us. Dave proposed a plan to excercise their legs a little. He suggested that he and I parade a banner along Lake Circle, walking in the marked bike lane adjacent to where the Broadmoor had blocked off our pedestrian sidewalk. Our banner would then be seen by the attendees inside the center, not just those milling about the entrance. Our banner read STAR WARS RESEARCH: A WELFARE SYSTEM FOR TECHNOLOGY.

Sure enough, as soon as we began we heard the security radios squalk. “Stop them” was the gist of the messages. A nearby guard told us to stop but we looked at him and asked why, while still moving forward. He responded with a smile. Each time we passed somebody with a radio, we could hear the supervisor ask why they were not containing us.

When we returned from our first pass, we added another person to our parade and another banner. It was a Henry Ford quote: TAKE THE PROFIT OUT OF WAR & WE’LL HAVE PEACE TOMORROW. This time more security officers joined us. When we returned we noted that they were now quite spread out.

On our third pass, the head of security came down himself. He approached us from the street, simply to tell us, in no uncertain terms and not calmly or with civility, to get back to where they were permitting us to stand. We answered that we didn’t work for him, actually and would proceed how we pleased. He repeated his command and threatened to call the cops and have us taken away. Certainly everything accelerated from there.

Suddenly we were surrounded by a half dozen policemen. They listened and interjected in calm terms that we were on Broadmoor property and had to do what the man said. We argued public thoroughfare, pedestrian right-of-way, to no avail. Dave diffused the confrontation, I assumed my role as hothead.

I wonder, I know why we are so vociferous in our condemnation of the military complex. What is it that drives their enthousiasm to stop us? We’re holding banners. They are killing babies, ruining lives and subjugating unsuspecting masses. We’re holding banners. Who should be the more indignant?

2.
On the way out, walking into the Broadmoor neighborhood to retrieve one of our cars, I encountered a soldier walking the other way. He’d just parked his car perhaps and we crossed paths on this tree lined street. He wore a full dress uniform, lots of medals and a beret, and he carried himself with informal dignity. I was wearing a bright green t-shirt enblazoned with a large peace sign and my Camp Casey cap. I was carrying several rolled banners over my shoulder and walked like I was returning from the front line.

The soldier and I nodded to each other and smiled. I couldn’t help but feel we had communicated a solidarity. He has been doing his job, I have been doing mine, both on the periphery of those making the decisions. The war mongers aren’t the soldiers. The war mongers are the guys in suits, sporting golf tans. Our common adversaries. And boy are there a lot of them. Three more symposium days to go.

Day 2: Tuesday
In conjunction with the Space Symposium protest at the Broadmoor, CITIZENS FOR PEACE IN SPACE held a screening on Monday night in the WES room at Colorado College. We watched the new documentary CONVICTION, about the three Dominican sisters who served almost four years in Federal Prison for protesting at a Minuteman missile silo in 2002. It had screened the day before in Denver to an audience of 350. The director and producer were on hand to answer questions, as were sisters Ardeth, Carol and Jackie. On Tueday night CONVICTION was scheduled to screen again in Greeley, so CPIS decided to make a day trip out of the event and provide an entourage for the sisters.

On the way of course Bill scheduled protest actions at Lockeed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Buckley AFB and Minuteman silo N-8, the site of the sisters’ 2002 Plowshare action.

Noteworthy perhaps was the degree to which preparations were made in advance of our arrival. Even Aurora Community College, where we planned to park and disperse ourselves to three of the defense contractors in Aurora, was ready for us. Bill had mentioned receiving several telephone inquiries from the various police departments, they had been checking CSAction for details of our plans. When we arrived at each location, we found barriers had been installed at the entrance of every parking lot with a minimum of a half dozen security personel standing about. I cannot say they were there to greet us, because they were not. They stood off to the side, or backed up when we approached. They were keeping a healthy no-man zone between us. At Raytheon there were even people posted on the roof to watch us.

At Buckley Airforce Base we were read a letter of greeting from the security officer that sounded like our Miranda rights, although it was full of cautionary advisories should we consider trying to force our way past the security booth. Our only intentions had been to conduct a rally and listen to what several experts could tell us about the activities conducted at Buckley, particularly having to do with those huge golf balls. I wondered if the security detail which contained us had sufficient clearance to be hearing such information.

Here is perhaps why protesters have to expect NSA surveillance. Because we learn too damn much. If the military doesn’t trust its own officers with classified information, they certainly don’t trust us to keep it secret. And we’re willing to let anyone overhear us, maybe that could be a genuine national security risk. In this case, we spoke about NSA/Defense Department complicity in the presence of Buckley AFB part-time security guard contractors.

The highlight of the day was of course Minuteman silo N-8, where the sisters held a press conference to reporters from Denver and Greeley. It was an emotional event and hard to describe. Many of us had never stood so near to a weapon of mass destruction. In this case, mass-mass-destruction, many-many times more powerful than the bombs unleashed upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This missile carries payloads for thirty separate destinations. In light of the fall of the Soviet Union, the Minuteman missile’s purpose is obsolete. Strategically it can now serve only an offensive purpose. Technically its existence violates the non-proliferation treaties to which our nation is signatory. N-8 presents a very, very grave danger to humankind’s survival. It is not a toy.

We drove Northeast from Greely to reach N-8. We probably could have found a nearer missile if we wanted. There are 49 missile sites in Colorado, out of 500 sites nation-wide.

While we conducted our action, wrapping the gate with CRIME SCENE tape, marking the site with a poster designating it as a WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION, and an EVICTION NOTICE, a black helicopter circled. Apparently within just minutes of our leaving, several matte black SUVs arrived and removed our decorations.

Day 3: Wednesday
Was it because I hadn’t had any non-violence training? Is that why everyone jumped in to enforce a stand down from my assailant?

Our protest was just getting started, I was holding half of a banner in one hand and passing out fliers with the other when a very angry man zeroed right in. Maybe it was the bright green peace sign. He was jogging along Lake Circle and he had not even passed us. He shouted “I know people who died for you” and before I could answer, though I must not have looked sufficiently repentent, he repeated himself while leaping to clutch my collar and push against me to I don’t know where. I had time only to ask him if he knew that he was committing assault before the Police officers peeled him off and led him away for a discussion.

I regret not having requested that he be allowed to state his piece, minus the physical aggression, but instead we simply instructed the officers that there would be no need to press charges. I didn’t see it but eventually he must have jogged off. Our banner read BEWARE THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX, Dwight D. Eisenhower’s famous warning.

I am a non-violent person, even a pacifist, though perhaps I am not much of a verbal pacifist. I had no intention of matching this guy’s blows, but I had every intention to stand up to being pushed.

I would have liked to call him on his much mistaken, sentimentalist, flag-hugging, bullying world view. Jogging in the Broadmoor area, this red-shorted, military-coifed assailant had probably commanded some soldiers who had been killed. I do mourn their loss. But it sounds like he should have thrown his life into the ring instead of beating his breast about the sacrifice made by others. Who knows how voluntarily their lives were offered? It always amazes me to hear military commanders brag about the casualty rate faced by their units. When ships sink, we expect captains to go down with the ship. Why? Because we expect them to save the men for which they were responsible or die trying.

Am I being harsh? I didn’t try to knock him down. That’s what we’re protesting: people who are knocking others down, and calling it “defending our freedom.”

Day 4: Thursday.
The Broadmoor had the police explain that we would not be permitted to walk in the bicycle path as we had tried two days before. So this time we brought bikes. I got to the protest late, at nine am instead of eight, just as several of our participants had to be shuttled to the airport. So I was left to peddle my bike up and down Lake Circle alone. If ever I have felt like a big dweeb, this was it. And it got on the news.

There was too much wind to trail a banner. I had selected WILL YOUR CHILDREN SURVIVE YOUR WORK? Instead I waved a large peace pirate flag. The peace sign with crossbones beneath it. A peace sign Jolly Roger. Or symbol for poison. Either way it’s a message the war makers do not want to hear. If there was a symbol for what sunshine represents to vampires, maybe that would be appropriate too.

Our protest of the SPACE SYMPOSIUM had everything to do with the fact that space is being militarized out of sight of the American public. How can there be oversight in a democracy if the citizens aren’t told what is going on?

Each day we would see schoolbus-loads of kids parading through the symposium. The event is billed as something much more benign. But did we see any scientists? I doubt it. We only saw men with military haircuts, in uniform and out. I should say that I did see the odd Brit, and they often gave us a closely held thumbs up!

The flag I waved today was to demonstrate that the message of peace has been relegated to renegades. What a perfect example at the Broadmoor! The hotel had closed its sidewalks to keep our protest from being seen from the Convention Center windows. We had to use the bike paths in order to give our message visibility.

So I pedaled up the designated bike lane on one side and down the bike lane on the other. I had to navigate past hotel employees and delegates who were sometimes skirting the security cordons themselves. I had to steer around the security chief’s pickup as he alternated between following me around, or parking and calling out to me each time I would pass. He was counting my laps, starting at zero arbitrarily. At one point, having reached to ten, he held both hands out the window as if to signal to someone that he’d counted ten. I looked but couldn’t see who was supposed to be watching him. Every so often policemen would appear to loiter near to where I would pass, but they would only nod in greeting.

I stayed until past the lunch hour surge out of the center. A friend has informed me that the bicycle act was on the local KKTV news. “Broadmoor protester nearly arrested,” but I didn’t see their camera. Perhaps they were filming through a window in the center. I was busy catching the eye of the conventiongoers on the street. There were smiles and thumbs up, but mostly the attendees rushed past. There was also a “enjoy your freedom there buddy.” As if these very-well-paid guys in suits want to be paid credit for our freedom too. “Freedom can be hard work, actually” I told them.

Stopping arms in space

Posted on April 4, 2006 by Eric Verlo

It’s called the 2006 Space Symposium, and this year it is seeing a record number of attendees. But the participants are not space explorers, they’re arms manufacturers. Space exploration is for NASA I guess, the symposium is about coordinating the militarization of space. Near space. The space from which whoever owns the hardware can rain terror upon whoever is beneath.

Bill Sulzman has been running the Citizens for Peace In Space efforts for several years now. He has organized a splendid action this year in which we are calling for attendees to step out as whisleblowers. We are also admonishing the Defense Department for justifying the arms buildup in space as necessary for “defending freedom.” IT’S BALONEY we shout!

This is the summary of day one. Read about the ensuing days:
day two, a visit to Minuteman missile silo N-8,
day three, accosted by a rabid jogger at Broadmoor protest,
day four, bike path hijinks.

The Art of War was not written for common man

Posted on April 2, 2006 by Eric Verlo

I’d like to address Scott Ritter’s recent Alternet post where he criticises the anti-war movement for not schooling itself in the tactics of those who are pro-war. Among his recommedations were that the movement adopt a centralized command structure, which he was volunteering to advise.

My advice? The anti-war movement comes from the grassroots, by definition without central control. Neither Sun Tzu, nor other strategists wrote for the grassroots. Waging war was never in the interest of the common man. Sun Tzu’s advice was for leaders.

Would you say a grassroots mistrust of leadership might be warranted right now? We are betrayed by our politicians, almost to the last one. Now is not the time to cede authority to leadership, much less to send them to a Ritter seminar.

We have to hope that the anti-war movement soon develops a few leaders, or that current leaders grow some moral fortitude of their own. In the meantime can we do anything better than create a climate to foster ethical leadership?

To criticize the anti-war movement for not adopting the fighting strategies of its opponents is like criticizing Democrats for not raising money like Republicans. Where are the Democrats going to find greedy corporate felons who want to invest in social reform? Why should anti-war activists seek to dupe the American public about reasons to oppose war?

I say: stay the course, follow whatever inventive strategy will catch the public’s interest, appeal to your neighbor’s shared sense of humanity. Be it a pet project or an ego trip, do not shy from it, do it. Don’t let nay-sayers tell you that an expert will do a better job. Stopping war has always been an expertise unique to common, moral men.

Give it ALL back

Posted on January 4, 2006 by Eric Verlo

Jack Abramoff is indicted and suddenly everyone in Washington is scrambling to return whatever money he may have been known to have given them.

When we catch a shoplifter, they always offer to pay for what they’ve tried to take. We tell them it doesn’t work that way. What kind of a deterrent is that? You pay only if you get caught?

With lobbyist Jack Abramoff pleading guilty, to charges of what amounts to the bribing of government officials, suddenly all sorts of politicians are offering up the monies he contributed to them. Even President Bush returned something of what he’d received from Abramoff for the Bush reelection campaign.

Will these gestures suffice to reform these waylaid politicians-for-hire? No. Not at all. It don’t work that way.

Let’s see what else they might offer in atonement. Let’s see if they can offer to give it all back.

If they want to give the contributions back, they need to return more than just the monetary value of the goods and services they received. We don’t want their golf game in Scotland for example, we want what they gave of ours in exchange for that game.

The wayward politicos should rescind whatever vote they gave in exchange for Abramoff’s payments. Give that legislation back. Take it from the special interests and give it back to the people.

As well, the politicians should return their public office to whoever had run against them in the election. Their opponent might have won if the miscreant had not had the advantage of Abramoff’s contributions.

And last, where did the money go? It didn’t simply disappear. It went to the media companies in exchange for campaign ads. Shouldn’t the media conglomerates consider returning the dirty money? They knew where it was coming from.

This is no time to let each of these parties off the hook. It will not be enough that they return their bribes. Do we want to set an example, or do we want to accept government representatives selling out our system to the highest bidder?

What authoritarian rule looks like

Posted on December 30, 2005 by Eric Verlo

Several recent events have lead me to some dots that need connecting. The dots may seem wildly disparate: the kidnapping of peace workers in Iraq and Palestine, the recent NYT revelations of counter-protest tactics employed be the NYPD, and a French film about heavy-handed manipulation of political prisoners.

Part One: Les Yeux des Oiseaux
I saw a movie two decades ago called EYES OF THE BIRDS. It depicted a prison in Uruguay for enemies of the state. They were making preparations for an inspection by the Red Cross. The story told of repercussions suffered by the political prisoners as a result of the long anticipated visit.

A couple of recent news items made me recall the film. In an early scene the prison warden ordered one of his men to do something irrational. Without provocation the warden ordered a guard to begin shooting at the prisoners who were assembled in the yard. At the same time, the warden filmed how the prisoners reacted.

That night the prison staff studied the footage to determine who among the political prisoners were the troublemakers. They weren’t looking at who was the more provoked, who was the quickest to run for cover, or even who was the most defiant. They weren’t looking for the strongmen or cellblock Kapos, they were looking for the leaders. They noted who shielded the others with their own bodies, who shepherded fellow prisoners to cover, and who sought to defuse the chaos by urging everyone to remain calm.

Those persons were then sequestered from the rest of the population, kept from contact with the Red Cross inspectors, and promptly dispatched with bags over their heads and buried. The film was fictional, but based on many corroborated accounts from Uruguay’s long years of repressive rule and disparados.

Part Two: NYC undercover cops
A recent New York Times article describes how NYPD officers infiltrated a number of peaceful street protests to incite the crowds to react. Tactics like this are nothing new for union-busters. The Pinkerton Security Agency for example got its start by hiring thugs to disrupt early efforts to organize strikes.

But do we expect such behavior from our men in blue? They’ve sworn to protect and serve us “with honor!” It used to be against the law for law enforcement to infiltrate political organizations.

Here’s what the NYPD was doing. Perhaps so as not to risk charges of false arrest, the police would plant, not drugs, but arrestees! The police would confront a crowd of protesters and arrest their own undercover officers. Immediately one of the arrestees would reveal himself as being under cover. This would divert suspicion from the ones still playing the victims and serve to incite the crowd to anger. They were angry for having been infiltrated, and then for seeing several among them arrested without apparent provocation.

With the crowd sufficiently distracted from its non-violent mantras, uniformed officers could move in from the sidelines and make their selective arrests.

Three fake protestors From video taken by an IndyMedia reporter.
Number 36 cried out
“I’m under cover.”
The two behind him
pretended to be arrested,
only to be spotted later
at another protest site.
Real arrests followed.

Does this authoritarian maneuver resemble the M. O. used in Uruguay? To work, the perpetrators count on two things. First, that the heat of the moment will wrong-foot even the most defensive strategist. The tactic is after all nothing new.

That the targets feel the heat counts on a second, very cynical, assumption: that peace activists, like political dissidents, like freedom fighters, have a not easily repressed sense of humanity. They’ll betray their own goodness sooner than bear witness to injustice.

Probably you can see where I’m going with this.

Part Three: CPT Peace activists in the Middle East
When we hold vigils for the Christian Peacemaker Team members still held hostage in Iraq, we wonder how can those nasty insurgents threaten the lives of people who are so plainly on the side of the Iraqi people? It does seem particularly godless of those rebels doesn’t it? And absurd. I offer four thoughts.

A. Peace workers held in high regard
A friend of mine went to Iraq before the first Gulf War as a human shield to try to prevent the U.S. bombing campaign against Iraq. He wore a t-shirt which proclaimed his purpose there.

He told me that after a while, his journalist friends were begging to buy his t-shirt from him. So revered were the peace activists, they could walk into the worst areas in the middle of the night, and fear nothing. The few reporters and photographers who remained in Baghdad were so jealous of the access the peace workers had to ordinary Iraqis as a result of the deference shown to them.

B. Iraqi treatment of captured U. S. soldiers
Without exception, American soldiers captured by Iraqi forces have been returned to us safe and sound, neither hooded, tormented, tortured, nor humiliated. The extent of the “interrogation” of the captured supply line crew was to ask them to put truth to a lie: “had they been greeted with flowers and candy?”

Americans captured by Iraqis Footage banned in the US: Iraqis ask them “were you greeted with flowers and candy?”

Not far from there, Iraqi doctors were already trying to return the captured Jessica Lynch to the American lines, but American soldiers kept shooting at their ambulance, forcing them to turn back. (Later American doctors would accuse the dumb-founded Iraqis of having raped Jessica’s limp body. In fact Lynch had earlier been forceably sodomized by a fellow U.S. soldier.)

Indeed Iraqis have shown a greater sense of compassion and humanity than our feeble representatives have ever shown them. From cluster bombs to DU to acceptable collateral damage to Free-Fire Zones to Kill Boxes to indiscriminate savagery to dehumanizing protocol. Americans have proven to be as barbaric as the Iraqis are cultured and forgiving.

What about the suicide bombers and the beheadings? The Iraqis are a divided people, and they have been driven to desperation. Execution by beheading, so horrifying to us, is more commonplace in their traditions. And then again, all may not be what it appears…

C. The mysterious beheading of Nick Berg
Nick Berg was a young do-gooder who traveled to Iraq on his own dime to try to take part in the reconstruction. He supported the war apparently, but it would be hard to paint him as an opportunist or profiteer. Nick Berg went to Iraq without a contract, nor much prospect for getting one. He went there to help.

The last people to see Nick Berg alive were CIA, a fact they denied at first. Nick was being detained by the U.S. military before his disappearance into the hands of his executioners. Though he was horribly decapitated on a video distributed all over the world, no reporter is quite ready to say who did it. Behind Nick Berg in the video, the figures under the robes did not look quite right.

The U.S. military immediately said the voice on the tape was that of AL-ZARQAWI. Robert Fisk, one of the most respected and senior reporters of Middle East affairs is not prepared to say that he even believes there exists such a person as Al-Zarqawi.

The timing of Nick Berg’s beheading was also very strange. World outrage was at an all time high from the photos just out of Abu Ghraib prison. Nick Berg’s gristly death seemed to provide a counterpoint to Lindy England’s sorry pose.

If I were suggesting that U. S. Forces were behind the Nick Berg execution, the case has been made by many already, I would be going off track. It certainly reflected poorly on the insurgents. But making the other side look bad is no clever trick. We trained Central Americans to do it all the time. Take off your uniform, dress up like rebels, and make it look like they massacred the village and not you.

When the Iraqi police in Basra apprehended two British black-ops this summer and then refused to release to them to British custody, the British forces immediately organized a prison break by driving a tank into the police station. They rescued the captured brits before they would be made to explain why they were dressed up like insurgents and what they were planning to do with a carload of live Improvised Explosive Devices!

It is suggested that those who killed Nick Berg took Abu Ghraib off the front page. I would suggest that the abduction of westerners serves a motive more closely related to the Uruguayan – NYPD gambit.

Why aren’t these hostages taken from the ranks of American soldiers? Some of the hostages have been contractors, and I’m sure many of their abductors have been criminals. Large ransoms are being paid for these hostages, it stands to reason that organized crime wants a piece of it. And whether these abductions are sanctioned or renegade, they achieve the same result, for whomever.

For the most part, the highest visibility hostages have always been people sympathetic to the cause of righteousness. It makes the insurgent/resistance fighters look bad, but more importantly I bet it makes them feel bad. Whichever it is, the Iraqi people probably scramble as desperately as we do to save the lives of the hostages.

D. British aid workers kidnapped in Gaza
Peace workers go to Palestine for one purpose, to save Palestinian lives. Palestinians are being shot left and right by Israeli soldiers, it is only when they are accompanied by western volunteers that the Israelis are deterred from shooting them and that Palestinians have a chance of being permitted through checkpoints so that they can reach medical care, or so that their children can reach school unmolested.

Activists Rachel Corrie and Tom Hurndall died putting themselves between Palestinian civilians and Israeli rifles. Activists brave tough Israeli travel restrictions to get into the occupied territories so that they can try to save innocent lives.

Certainly only the most heartless of Palestinians could be threatening the lives of these altruist activists. Maybe the Israeli military is counting on the fact that most Palestinians will not be heartless enough to sit idly by.

If there are Palestinians who believe the kidnap scenario, perhaps they are trying to contact resistance members whom they believe might have some influence. Perhaps resistance members themselves are hurriedly trying to ferret out possible miscreants in their ranks.

Regardless of who is in possession of the captives, the Israeli military is no doubt studying everyone’s movements very carefully. Normally a resistance network has to communicate between cells very sparingly. But with the clock ticking, with international pressure, and the life of a selfless non-combatant at stake, resistance fighters might eshew the risks of disclosing their activities in their effort to facilitate the search for an unjustly jeopardized fellow human being.

What does Palestine have to do with Iraq?
More on that another time. It is fashionable to argue that the liberation of Iraq was less about democracy and more about oil. What are you now paying for gas? This war is even less about oil than it is about global dominance. In the Middle East our colonial presence is called Zionism.

Could the Americans be orchestrating the kidnapping of sympathetic westerners in an Uruguayan style provocation of the Iraqi resistance? Have our other military actions been any less dastardly?

Let’s pause for a moment of silence for the hostages. May both sides unite to save the lives of the captive Christian Peacemaker Team, and of Kate Burton and her parents in Palestine. And please Lord, may too many Iraqis not jeopardize their own lives trying to help save a handful of ours.

Veteran’s Day parade, part 1

Posted on November 7, 2005 by Eric Verlo

Prussian charge
I should say that I had never watched a veteran’s parade, I think. Wasn’t it supposed to be a parade of veterans? This was a parade of mostly active duty soldiers and soldiers-to-be. It was very disturbing.

There was a flatbed trailer, there may have been several of these interspersed, on which stood a current war hero. He straddled the platform, his hands on his hips, striking a valiant pose, his chin held high and to the side. A large placard read: recipient of medal so-and-so.

There were marching bands, real young faces. I hoped that as excited as they were to be in the parade, that they weren’t thinking of joining the military.

I had just met a gentleman looking for legal advice for his daughter who’d recently signed up. She was a promising musician in high school, she played the coronet. A recruiter had told her that the army was in desperate need of musicians. They needed her for their marching band. The recruiter assured her that she wouldn’t have anything to do with the fighting, but that she could serve her country in its hour of need, by offering to do something that she loved. She signed on.

No sooner was she through boot camp that she learned she was being sent to Iraq. She and her fellow musicians were told: leave your instruments at home, you won’t need them.

Among the marching bands was a band called the Rampart Regiment, (actually Rampart High School’s marching band, and state champions). But their uniforms were terribly unfortunate. They were black, a sort of turn of the century look with high hats, and a large black feather. They looked like Prussians, or what we would recreate in our minds if we were trying to visualize those mercenary Hessians! Their outfits hearkened to a day when the uniforms meant to intimidate.

Does anyone remember what distinguished the aggressive from the defensive soldiers in the last world wars? The Allies had the frumpy uniforms because they didn’t mind being seen as sympathetic. The aggressive soldiers are the ones who want to scare the bejezus out of their enemies. This has been true since warfare began.

White hat versus black hat, it’s true for cowboys and hackers. Good guys and bad guys.

What was Rampart thinking to dress their band looking like black draped raiders? They look like Cossacks about to swing down and slice you in the back as you try to flee from them.

What business do we have trying to glorify the terror of war?

I was horrified too by what appeared to be den mothers, preening their little kids in their little uniforms, to salute the passing soldiers. These were not just boy scout uniforms but miniature military outfits. I couldn’t help but think these kids were wishing that someday they too could be featured in the parade.

At that point I noticed there weren’t any wheelchairs in the parade. Top be sure many of the WWII vets may not be so ambulatory nowadays, but their disabilities were concealed by the antique cars from which they waved. Why couldn’t something like that have been arranged for the wounded Iraq war vets?

There weren’t any crutches or wheelchairs or homeless drunkards which comprise the largest contingent of Vietnam vets. Now we’re learning it’s even more true for the Gulf Gar vets. And there were no mentally addled vets with bandaged heads to symbolize their injuries.

And certainly the Veterans For Peace and the Iraq Veterans Against the War were denied permission to participate.

Then there was something most disturbing of all: a guy in army fatigues, youngish, stocky, probably a drill sergeant but uncharacteristically casual, and he was working the crowd. In nonchalant fashion, he was rallying both participants and spectators with a call and response routine.

“God bless America” he would shout. “God bless America” the crowd answered. I was reminded of something Bismark had famously said in the 19th century: “God protects fools, drunkards, and the United States of America.”

There we were, this veteran’s day, a day to honor veterans, ignoring the veterans altogether. An active duty soldier rallying soldiers and the families of soldiers: “God bless America.” “God bless America.”

Over and over. “God bless America.” “God bless America.”

We will need it.

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