Tag Archives: History

Killbox circa Sinai Desert

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Remains of the Egyptian Army in the Sinai Desert 1967
Does this scene of carnage look familiar to you? I thought it was the infamous Highway of Death where US airplanes destroyed the Iraqi convoys retreating from Kuwait in 1990. No, this was twenty three years earlier, in the Sinai Desert on the first day of the 1967 Six Day War.

The Egyptians had been threatening to attack Israel, even though they were completely outclassed by Israel’s military. However Israel seized the opportunity to launch a preemptive attack and decimated Egypt’s air force the first day, and Egypt’s ground forces the day after.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the six day war and the resultant occupation of Palestine. In describing the human cost of that war, I heard an Israeli representative explain that Israel lost 552 soldiers, “quite heavy losses for Israel, if you consider per capita.” And the Arab casualties? “Hard to say. Around 15,000 or so.” Does that kind of ratio appear familiar? Even the phrasing? The lack of interest certainly does.

From Y to V- The CIA’s Otpor strategy to overthrow governments

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Since so many pacifists seem prone to accept at face value and fall for any rhetoric that appears to be supporting ‘peaceful’ means of protest, even when it is being pushed from the Pentagon and Washington DC, the following information is quite important. This is from Setting the Stage for Turmoil in Caracas…
—Repeating the East European experience in Venezuela—

The new imperial strategy includes something called “American Corners.” These “corners” are small offices set up by Washington throughout the target country that basically serve as mini-embassies. It is not completely clear what exactly these “corners” do, but inside you will find an array of information about the United States, including study abroad opportunities, English classes, and pro-U.S. propaganda. On top of this, the mini-embassies also organize events, trainings, and lectures for young students.

Interestingly, they seem to be very abundant in countries that Washington seeks to destabilize. The former Yugoslavian countries have a total of 22 American Corners, including 7 in Serbia. The Ukraine has 24, Belarus 11, Russia 30, even Iraq, with 11. By far the highest concentration of the “corners” is in Eastern Europe, where Washington has focused its destabilization efforts in recent years. [17]

There are at least 4 “American Corners” in Venezuela, the most for any Latin American country, and the U.S. also finances literally hundreds of organizations throughout the country to the tune of more than $5 million a year. [18] Together, these U.S.-funded organizations are working to implant the Eastern European experience in Venezuela. As reported by Reuters, the Venezuelan opposition is already learning the Serbian tactics to overthrow a regime from a retired U.S. army colonel named Robert Helvey.

“Helvey, who has taught young activists in Myanmar and Serbian students who helped topple the former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, is giving courses on non-violent opposition tactics this week at an east Caracas university,” said the article. “Neither Helvey nor the organizers of the Caracas seminar would give details of exactly what opposition tactics were being taught. But in his work in Serbia before Milosevic’s fall, Helvey briefed students on ways to organize a strike and on how to undermine the authority of a dictatorial regime,” reported Reuters. [19]

And more recently, in the university city of Mérida, history professor from Texas, Neil Foley, hosted an event sponsored by the U.S. embassy and the Venezuelan-American Center (Cevam), not an official “American Corner” but serving the same purpose. Foley, who has also spoken in various “American Corners” in Serbia, gave speeches in both Bolivia and Venezuela on “American values.” [20]

I attended one of Foley’s speeches and, as expected, it was a complete pro-U.S. propaganda campaign imposed upon the university students. The professor gave exactly the message that the U.S. Embassy had paid him to give, speaking wonders about American society and “American democracy.” According to Foley, the United States solves all of its problems by tolerance for others and an all-inclusive “dialogue,” between opposing parties. And sending a clear hint to the Venezuelan students, Foley implied that any government that does not live up to these standards “must be overthrown.” [21

Also, besides the full article (which is well worth reading) from where this excerpt came from, the additional following article is also of interest. Behind Venezuela’s “Student Rebellion”. Who’s pulling the strings?

G8- Why the protest?

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AMY GOODMAN: Explain what the Group of Eight are.
JOHN PERKINS: Well, the Group of Eight are the wealthiest countries in the world, and basically they run the world. And the leader is the United States, and it’s actually the corporations within these countries that run it. It’s not the governments, because, after all, the governments serve at the pleasure of the corporations.

In our own country, we know that the next two final presidential candidates, Republican and Democrat alike, are going to each have to raise something like half a billion dollars. And that’s not going to come from me and you. Primarily that’s going to come from the people who own and run our big corporations. They’re totally beholden to the government. So the G8 really is this group of countries that represent the biggest multinational corporations in the world and really serve at their behest.

All of commentary at… John Perkins (author of ‘The Secret History of American Empire;…’) interview by Amy Goodman Kind of an ‘Imperialism Made Simple’ for American university miseducated Bachelor Degree dunderheads, perhaps?

RU one of those credentialed? If so, write to us. You can be helped.

Sicko government goes after Michael Moore

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Amidst reports that the US medical debacle rivals the US occupation of Iraq as being the biggest boondoggle in the history of the universe, the film Sicko is being displayed at the Cannes Film Festival. And amidst reports that the US medical system is the most expensive in the industrialized world and delivers the worst care, Bush chooses to go after Michael Moore for exposing this to the American public. Sicko!

Why did the city police attack the pro-Peace group at the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade?

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The city police and parade organizers did not fully think out the consequences of their actions, but the attack on the peace group at the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade was not unintentional. In fact, it followed logically from the political direction given by the Colorado Springs city council and mayor.

The city police are employees under the control of the city council and mayor, and it is the city police on behalf of the city government itself, that gives out John O’Donnell his own permit each year to hold a parade. In all effects, John O’Donnell is merely a sub contractor for the city who is given a permit to issue yet even more permits, that simply allow and disallow who amongst the general public can participate in a city sponsored parade each year.

John O’Donnell has a long history of operating city promoted events in our city, and most of them have a highly charged social message of support for the wars waged by the US government. He takes positions on social issues, and they are almost always relatively in support of war, and many events he has helped organize have been fully funded by the city of Colorado Springs city government. Though some have only been partially underwritten.

In fact, less than 3 years ago, John O’Donnell, the city government, and the US military (US government) used large amounts of city and federal tax moneys to parade troops through Colorado Springs streets in support of the Republican Administration led US invasion and occupation of Iraq. They called this ‘supporting the troops’, and called the parade a ‘Welcome Back Home’ rally. Of course, we now know that the troops have been redeployed over and over from Fort Carson, and the public has slipped dramatically in its support of this US government war making. At that time, nobody appeared too much concerned to see the city government and federal government working through O’Donnell to parade for a partisan cause.

Because the city government and John O’Donnell are so intertwined in supporting the partisan cause of celebrating the constant US government wars and aggressions that destroy other nations, it is no surprise that the city police acted to thump peace partisans for entering into the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade. It was a natural reflex on their part, and to their credit, at least they did not get so totally out of hand and severely injure anybody they manhandled. That is the reason that the new police chief, Richard Myers can posture that ‘nobody got hurt’.

However, the city government and its police do hurt others when they take up partisan causes like supporting a US government war, and make no mistake about it, that is what they have been constantly doing. Driving down Cascade Ave. one sees the city tax money’s paid-for signs that say ‘Colorado Springs Supports the Troops’. Hint, hint… That means that the city government is supporting the Iraqi War. How clever the city government thinks it is to phrase their support for the Iraqi War in this manner.

In short, the city has a history of taking up the ‘social issue’ of supporting the US war on Iraq and uses the tax monies of all its citizens to do so. The annual military air shows each year are yet more ways that the city government uses tax monies and facilities to sponsor pro-war Pentagon fed propaganda. And through this steady city support of military aggression, now 7 people face criminal charges coming from a police action that could easily have led to no arrests, no threats, and no physical take-downs if the police had only had directions to use restraint, instead of heavy force.

To the city police, it seems natural to stop pro-peace participants from participating in city events. They have received no city government direction to do otherwise, and Mayor Lionel Rivera’s continued refusal to admit that the several police ambushes on us through the years have been totally totally uncalled for, only will lead to repeats of the same excessive use of police force in the months and years ahead. Too, he has repeatedly shown so far that the city government will refuse to accept that it has real bias in what events are allowed to parade through city streets. The bias is in favor of the military and war, and against peace advocacy by any public pro-peace assembly that would appear against war. The police are directed in their activities with this bias in effect no matter how much they might state that they are out there to protect us all. It will surprise no one that the police actually protect some more than others, and endanger many.

It is highly symbolic that John O’Donnell and the police decided to use the intersection of St Vrain and Tejon to have the police ambush us on St Patrick’s Day. This is the same intersection where the city and federal governments had him lead off the ‘Welcome Home Troops’ pro-war parade in June, 2004. They marched the troops with our tax monies around in a circle and then ended their pro-war demo at the same point. They had no problem with pushing social causes at that event at all. They do have a problem with us when we cross that fatal intersection calling for PEACE instead.

Mayor Lionel Rivera and his city police will do what they can do to try to stop us from participating in future city organized events. As it has been said already, we got roughed up for the message we carried, and not just for how we went about bringing it to the public. They will try to deny us the use of the public streets again unless policies are changed now.

The police and the mayor have refused to accept any blame for what was done St Patrick’s Day. To the credit of some of the city council members, others have done the opposite. Our thanks goes out to them for that.

We do want to work together with all to assure that all do have a way for public assembly without censure. Let the military march with kids in their camouflage khaki uniforms on, and let those that have the opposite message march alongside. The city belongs to both of our groups, and both of our groups pay tax dollars to open up city streets for public parades, and to close it off for other tax paying citizens who might even be against what the parades might seem to them to be about. After all, we don’t want the type of sectarian violence that the US military now has brought to the Iraqi people inside America itself. Do we? So city government needs to stop bias in what social causes it funds and endorses.

2003 police over-reaction under-revisited

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In March of 2003, as an invasion of Iraq loomed ever imminent, citizens of 800 cities worldwide mounted the largest peace rally in history. In Colorado Springs three thousand people assembled in Palmer Park to urge President Bush to chose diplomacy instead of war. The participants were peaceful, but the police incited frustrations by diverting traffic from Academy Boulevard which prevented drivers from seeing the anti-war banners and eventually used tear gas to prompt the crowd to disperse.

Colorado Springs was one of only two peace rallies in the world where police used tear gas that day. Many Springs families with small children were caught with no way to escape the gas. After a subsequent review, the CSPD admitted it had overreacted. As part of a legal settlement with the people they had arrested, the department agreed to host a public meeting to discuss matters of police conduct with respect to a citizen’s right to assemble peacefully. The meeting would involve a panel discussion on the issues and would be videotaped for public broadcast and for purposes of training incoming police officers. After four years of legal wrangling, the meeting is finally scheduled to happen this Friday, May 4th, at the Senior Center on Hancock and Uintah.

What an unfortunate coincidence that the arrests this Saint Patrick’s Day happened before Friday’s citizen-police meeting. As we are now well familiar, on March 17 at the annual parade, forty five permit-holding participants were prevented from carrying peace banners in the Saint Patrick’s Day parade. Ten of them were brutally removed and seven of those were arrested; I was among them. The police and parade organizers still admit no wrongdoing, but bystander videos and photographs captured the police display of excessive force.

In the aftermath of the arrests, the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission has asked the Colorado Springs City Council to hold a public meeting to address police department policy with regard to what happened that day. As yet they’ve only agreed to meet in private, to acquaint themselves better with peace activists.

While we welcome a better acquaintance, the PPJPC is not interested in obtaining a permission slip to exercise our right to self expression. We are interested in every American’s natural rights and civil liberties. We hope to establish an understanding that our city police department will implement a policy to honor and respect those rights. For that purpose we are requesting a public meeting where Colorado Springs residents who were alarmed by the heavy handed law enforcement can voice concern and give their input. The meeting on Friday will only address the police misconduct of 2003.

The Saint Paddy’s Day Seven, as we are being called, currently face charges in Municipal Court for obstructing a public event. The American Civil Liberties Union has agreed to represent us because at play are violations of multiple amendment rights. The police use of illegal choke holds, menacing with a taser and reckless brutality causing physical injury fall under illegal search and seizure and citizenship rights.

We are called called the Seven but in reality we are the Saint Patrick’s Day Forty Five, because forty five of us were deprived our first amendment right to freedom of speech. The parade is described as a private event, but it is held on public property and is underwritten with public resources. “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

We are called the Saint Patrick’s Day Seven, but we are in reality the Saint Patrick’s Day Forty Thousand, who saw that day the attempted abridgment of a fundamental American right. A right which Americans aspire to extend to all people of all nations. Many of us watching that day had no idea we would have to fight for that right here.

The United Nations is complicit with US war criminality and genocide everywhere

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The United Nations is fully supporting US war crimes in multiple nations around our planet. It has become nothing less than a total satellite captured in the orbit of the US Pentagon. In Iraq, the UN has sat by without ever condemning the US genocide in that country, but rather participating in it. Over 2 million Iraqi casualties have been killed solely due to US interference against the Iraqi people over more than a decade and a half, and the role of the UN has been in total support of that.

There are currently over 4 million Iraqi refugees, 2 million inside and 2 million outside Iraq. The UN has little to say about that, and little relief offered to the victims. All its efforts go to help the US government intervene around the planet.

Jordan alone, with a population of a little over 5 million has taken in almost 1 million Iraqi refugees! That would be the equivalent relative to population as if the US had had to take in 60 million destitute refugees from some war zone! Syria, with a population of slightly less than 19 million, has had to take in an even greater number of Iraqi refugees from US violence than the almost 1 million in Jordan. And as the US and Israel are currently threatening Syria with attack alongside its ally Iran, the UN sits back nodding its head in acquiescence! Lest we forget, Syria was Iran’s ally while the US and its Arab client states were funding Saddam Hussein in its war upon Iran. It is the US that supported Saddam, not Syria or Iran, and the UN never did anything to stop him from killing hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of innocent Iranians. .

The situation is the same around the globe, as the UN everywhere is running backup for US foreign policy and the resulting mayhem and atrocities that follow in the wake of US war crimes. The United Nations is helping the US occupy Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Haiti as well as Iraq. These are all nations where the US violated international law and bombed, invaded and occupied these countries with its military. The United Nations has acted as an integral part of these war crimes, lending the support of the troops of its misnamed ‘Security Council’ at crucial intervals. In short, the United Nations has become the Pentagon’s whore, constantly pimped out to service America’s reactionary foreign policy.

We move to Africa, and the United Nations today is calling for occupation of Somalia with its troops instead of condemning the US-Ethiopian invasion of that country. The United Nations offers no security to the people’s of the world from US war crimes and genocides. In Africa, the countries of Rwanda and Congo can attest to that.

The UN rushes into action everywhere behind US military interventionism and it offers political cover for the US just to help perpetuate this criminality. With its history the United Nations can no longer hope to be reformed but instead should be impeached and dissolved the same as was done to its predecessor, The League of Nations.

The people of the world need to get the UN out of the nations it currently helps occupy on behalf of the US. We need an international body of nations, but the UN has defaulted on all its responsibilities, and is not acting as anything other than an agent of the richer imperial nations of the world, all bullied into line by US firepower. This is a body that can not be reformed any more, just as is the US 2 party system of corporate political control. It’s time we admit that the UN is complicit with all the US war crimes being committed and not innocently continue to back this organization as some possible alternative to the US government itself. It isn’t, and never will be.

Stop the war now and get the United Nations troops back to all their home countries. These troops are nothing more than mercenaries in the same vein that Halliburton’s are. They are not peacekeepers, but rather nothing more than another type of privatization of US military operations. Dissolve the UN Security Council Now and Help Save the World from US imperialism. The UN is no friend of anybody, other than friend to the rich and powerful corporate state creeps heading up the US government.

Ok more stupid people packing guns…

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Malkin and her ilk are saying that if other people had been shooting then all would have been better.

BULL FUCKING SHIT.

bullets have a muzzle velocity about the speed of sound in pistols and revolvers. When a bullet hits a person unless the bullet has a really tiny mass and therefore less “terminal velocity” it will go right through that person and exit the other side at a speed only about 10 miles an hour slower than when it went in.

That’s the reason every municipality I can think of has a LAW against discharging a firearm within city limits. In London and other cities the Police can’t carry pistols, for THAT VERY REASON. Colorado Springs has a little recent history of that sort of stupidity, remember The Great Buffalo Hunt of ’05? The rifles were being discharged 3 blocks WEST of where I live now, and some of the bullets were ending up 3 or 4 blocks EAST of where I live.

Now imagine a gunfight happening in a crowded building… Where are all those bullets going, who is going to be hit by them?

Only the ones at whom the muzzles are pointed? I don’t think so…

Want more? On Military bases, the soldiers who carry their rifles around all day carry them UNLOADED. Sentries have to keep theirs loaded, but without a round in the chamber.

If you’ve ever been challenged by a sentry (I have) the first thing he does is chamber a round.

Holocaust Remembrance Day

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Today is a day chosen by the Jewish government of Israel in the ’50s as a day for remembrance of the millions of Jews who died in Europe during World War Two. The date was chosen because it corresponds to the day the Warsaw Ghetto uprising began, one of the most heroic efforts of resistance to tyranny in the history of all mankind.

The horror of the holocaust against the Jewish community occurred over 60 years ago, but humankind should never forget the victims. They were victims of the apathy of US and non fascist Europe, as well as the fascist movement itself. A horrrible attempt was made to totally eliminate Jewish culture and the Jewish people themselves, and the whole world lost out as well. We now all suffer from the lack of having the Jewish culture of that era still with us today.

May the Jewish victims rest in peace and let us move to stop yet more future Holocausts from occurring again, whether it be against the Jewish community or any other community as well.

Creating Terror in America

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

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

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

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

US Born Kids Face Deportations as Well

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

Kurt Vonnegut goes

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Kurt Vonnegut lectures at HarvardM and I just read Harrison Bergeron together two nights ago. I remembered the story from high school, where we also read Slaughterhouse Five to my father’s consternation. I like to think it was just the language he objected to.
 
My favorite essay of KV’s at In These Times was about governance guesswork.
 
Kurt Vonnegut could say it all and I don’t think he was through.

I just came across an excerpt someone posted from Jailbird:

“What could be so repulsive after all, during the Great Depression, especially, and with yet another war for natural wealth and markets coming, in a young man’s belief that each person could work as well as he or she was able, and should be rewarded, sick or well, young or old, brave or frightened, talented or imbecilic, according to his or her simple needs? How could anyone treat me as a person with a diseased mind if I thought that war need never come again–if only common people everywhere would take control of the planet’s wealth, disband their national armies and forget their national boundaries; if only they would think of themselves ever after as brothers and sisters, yes, and as mothers and fathers, too, and children of all other common people–everywhere. The only person who would be excluded from such friendly and merciful society would be one who took more wealth than he or she needed at any time.”

And this from an interview with Joel Bleifuss in 2003:

I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened, though, is that it has been taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d’etat imaginable. And those now in charge of the federal government are upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka “Christians,” and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or “PPs.”

To say somebody is a PP is to make a perfectly respectable medical diagnosis, like saying he or she has appendicitis or athlete’s foot. The classic medical text on PPs is “The Mask of Sanity ” by Dr. Hervey Cleckley. Read it! PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose!

And what syndrome better describes so many executives at Enron and WorldCom and on and on, who have enriched themselves while ruining their employees and investors and country, and who still feel as pure as the driven snow, no matter what anybody may say to or about them? And so many of these heartless PPs now hold big jobs in our federal government, as though they were leaders instead of sick.

What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they cannot care what happens next. Simply can’t. Do this! Do that! Mobilize the reserves! Privatize the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody’s telephone! Cut taxes on the rich! Build a trillion-dollar missile shield! Fuck habeas corpus and the Sierra Club and In These Times, and kiss my ass!

Kidnapped Iranian diplomat says that he was tortured by CIA

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Kidnapped from Baghdad, an Iranian doplomat now released says that he was tortured by the CIA for info before he was let go. There was once a time when most Americans would have believed that a story like this would have been a complete fabrication. But not any more. We now have a government acting purely like Mafia thugs and the story is entirely credible.

So too are charges from Iran that the US government and its military are engaging in terrrorist attacks against their country. The charge is that the US is actively working with various opposition groups that have a long history of using terrorist attacks to oppose the Iranian government. ABC had a recent report documenting and supporting these charges.

We must rally now to stop an extension of the Iraq war into Iran and Syria. It is clear that only mass revulsion and rage against our own US government can stop this continual war expansionism that Bush and his Democratic Party enablers are currently engaging in. Sitting back and hoping for a change in government almost 2 years away is idiotic. No change is about to come about unless the American pulbic begins to engage in street rallies and protests, instead of riding around in their cars going shopping all the time with their thumbs stuck up their rear ends.

9-11 has nothing on 2003

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I’m thinking about the buildup to the US invasion of Iraq, an unimaginable aggression that yielded unspeakable suffering, speakably unsurprising. Millions of people took to the streets in 2003, an unprecedented two thousand in this city, in a desperate renunciation of our government’s blood thirst. Today as the US war machine mobilizes to demolish Iran, I wonder what has changed, where is the outcry? Where are the double-decker buses rushing to the Gulf to put human shields between the US warships and the Iranian people, lest the cowboys dare bomb white people?!

But life was simpler in 2003. We had yet to learn what a drunken, swaggering half-wit would do at the helm of the most powerful military. A half-wit propped up by malicious connivers shifting capitalism’s ultimate human-life harvester into irreverse gear.

The media likes to talk about how 9-11 changed the world. Nine-eleven was America’s first taste of violence brought home, to the tune of a Madison Avenue catch phrase. As it turns out, it was the overture. The world didn’t change until 2003.

It was a buildup to be sure, of crooked deals in high courts, back room contracts, corporate election tampering, transnational suppression of sustainability, collapse of sovereignty and law serving the people’s discretion, and the incomprehensible judicial malfeasance of Guantanamo, culminating in a climax of lunacy and self-deception with Iraq. I believe shock and awe was the dawning of awareness of the new world order: unchecked capitalism bearing arms, baring its steel molars, its black gloves and crew-cutted vacant soul, with nothing any dedicated resistance can do about it.

What was becoming evident to globalization’s victims about the race to the bottom is that the push has become a shove and they’re already trying to throw the dirt in over us.

Take Caution…

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We have been blessed, so to speak, with a person identifying himself as a soldier commenting on our posts concerning the St Patrick’s Day Massacre. Everybody is welcome to comment, as long as they don’t threaten, or like you know, break laws in the hope of getting everybody else busted.
 
That’s one version of what is called in the French language Agents Provocateurs,

And I seriously don’t give a fat rat’s ass about people who have difficulties with the French Language, nation or people. “Enfants du France….”

Another version is (not that i could make accusations, as there is no proof.) would be for somebody from the Military Police, the CSPD, the District Attorney’s office for the 4th District, the Provost Marshall from Ft Carson or whoever, to come and make statements like us being misleading or flat out deceptive in our application for a permit at the parade.

They would not be above such actions, it is called a “fishing expedition” and while they wouldn’t be allowed, at least by a righteous judge and a good attorney, to do something like that in the courtroom, they would, will and do go on such “expeditions” BEFORE the case is filed or before the formal hearings begin.

This would lend whole new depth to the term “trolling” a forum or in this case a weblog.

Making no accusations, but you guys who do this, please realize that it is suspicious behavior. Eric has already announced, as has the ACLU, that this will be challenged in court.

People who post and say, “Man, you sure pulled one over on the pigs with that, right on dude” sound for all the world like somebody from the Other Side trying to get us to agree with it, in order to cast doubt on our actions in court.

If we were truly out to destabilize OUR country, trying to overthrow our nation, whatever… or were seriously into legitimate yet unlawful armed resistance, like for instance the Provos, such suspicions would be an invitation to Incisive Revolutionary Actions. The other, other IRA.

Since we are not, since our presence in the parade was indeed peaceful, legal, and within the bounds of morality and decency added on, that would leave no LEGITIMATE reason for people to attempt to makes us appear to contradict ourselves, entrap us or any other such naughty things.

However, the Police do have a long and rich history of such actions, and I would therefore encourage you all not to make statements or questions that call doubt onto The Truth.

The truth is, we had a permit to be in the parade.
We did not attempt to force a confrontation with anybody.
We did NOTHING illegal, immoral or questionable.
Our motives were, as always, to promote peace through EDUCATION.
This is always the policy of the peace movement.

Please refrain from making statements, or asking questions, even innocently, to the contrary. Once again, it would only make us look at you with suspicion. The CSPD has already assaulted us illegally. This is a part of a long pattern of such abuses against dissidents and dissent in America and Colorado Springs specifically.

We don’t pick fights with the police, they could kill us and at least some of the vocal asswipes who think they run our country would cheer them on or say it was OUR fault.

Out Whenever?

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I got to hand it to liberal Democrats, they are totally behind the idea of ‘Out of Iraq Now!’ That is when Out Now actually means December 31, 2007, almost 10 months away!

It reminds me of the debate about the meaning of the word ‘is’ and if Slick’s Monica blowjob constituted sex, or not. Now, we have the word ‘now’ meaning much later than it is usually meant, it seems? ‘Now’ is now to actually mean …then in 9 and 2/3 months away from today!

Maxine Waters has gotten ‘tough’ with Bush, and says she will not supplement Iraqi War funding (add to it), unless US troops are pulled Out Now (out in 9 2/3 months), that would surely only apply if there is no ’emergency’ with Iran to come along. Oh how very reasonable, Maxine. Certainly there will be no ’emergency’ with Bush and Dick in charge…. lol.

As to our very own Democratic Party Colorado Senator, Kenneth Salazar? He probably is worried still that Iraqi people might get hurt if we leave without removing their oil first? That’s the type of people many of these liberal Demnocrats truly are. Caring and responsible folk. And of course I’m being sarcastic now.

As the Democrats play their word games, the Iraqi and Afghan people continue to have to put up with foreign military occupation of their countries. Shame on these politicians for their continual bullshit. The word now should mean now, not some date in the future contingent on whatever taking place.

Out Whenever! What a catchy slogan NOT.

OUT NOW! and only when NOW! is truly now, not after Christmas.. whenever and whatever.

Same bait, same switch

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Troops needed to watch the Mexico borderWell looky who’s used the protect the border bait and switch before! Ninety years ago, same illegal immigration scare, same perp.
 
I happened across some posters used to recruit soldiers during WWI. Here they raise the Mexico bugaboo to ease worries that enlistment into the military would automatically mean duty in the trenches. “No More Men Are Needed” at the western front. Oh really?! It reminds me of something Air Force recruiters were telling Colorado College students on Thanksgiving 2005. US troops would be out of Iraq by Christmas. Potential enlistees need not fear being sent to Iraq because America was already pulling out. Public opinion had already forced their hand, they said, and we were pulling out.

That silence you hear is Al Gore, Slick Willie, and Jimmy Carter on Iraq

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Al is worried about Global Warming, Slick has not so recently been busy alongside George Senior with Tsunami relief, and Jimmy’s been re-writing the history he was part of and using bad words (no, not SCOTUM). All noble efforts without doubt, and all intended more to better public image manage the Democratic Party than to seriously deal with any real problems, like say… the Occupation and War Against Iraq. Hear, we have only deafening silence.

What’s with these guys? Cynics might say that it is merely that they support imperialism, rather than oppose it. What other reason could there be for being so nicely quiet for Bush and Cheney on the central issue of our time? It is so very difficult to posture that one opposes something, while supporting it at the same time. Better to keep mute, I guess? Too bad and so sad there is no Nobel Silence Prize to award Dear Al.

Imagine if these big liberal leaders had not been keeping silent all these years when they actually held office? Oops, they weren’t actually silent then, like now. Instead, they were pushing wars, I do believe. For Jimmy, those were the glory days when it was in to help Osama out. Heck, he was even pushing Apartheid back then. The forerunners of the Taliban were pushing for a sexual Apartheid in Afghanistan, and Jimmy and Osama did their part to hurry it along. Oh the fun times when Jimmy and Brzezinski were a team! So many have forgot…

And Slick and Al working together later on to protect the environment…NOT. Al practically invented computers and was always telling us what a great thing it was. And telling us about its toxicity to the environment.. well he forgot that small detail Really. Does anybody remember Al ever talking about environmental issues when he was VP? I’m getting old and maybe my memory has gone bad? Now he’s up for a Peace Prize no less. Who ever imagined that Norwegians were ever so damn wacky? Al and ‘peace’, what a bloody gore of a joke on us all.

OK, I admit that this is another thread about my obsessive disdain for the DP. But can you blame me really? Sorry to sound like su\ch a broken record. But this deafening silence hurts my ears.

When are ‘the troops’ going to support the rest of America?

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Antiwar protesters repeatedly get told they are not supporting ‘the troops’. Yesterday, in fact, a woman screaming out “You Bastards!’ at our peace vigil from her car, claimed that we were not supporting her husband who was one of ‘the troops’ in Iraq. Our standard refrain has always been, ‘Support The Troops, Bring Them Back Home Now!’ But I have another reply on my mind, and that is simply to ask the pro-war hecklers when are ‘the troops’ going to support us Americans?’ What do I mean by this?

Simple. You ‘troops’ are part of a war machine that is bankrupting the funding of social programs for the elderly, children, and needy in our society. You are fighting a war that most Americans no longer want, and that will put our children into debt for a long time to come. Yet you and your families continue to want you to be considered heroes, when you sign up and join the war machine and go after the preferential benefits that are yours for joining the government imperialist team. And many of you even have the nerve to get angry at us peace activists that want money spent in better ways than in just killing foreigners for corporate profit! That takes a lotta damn gall!

Yes, when are ‘the troops’ going to start to support the American people themselves? We want you back home alive where you won’t be helping bankrupt us civilians through the love of Halliburton and your own pride. Putting on your damn uniforms does not make you heroes, a class above us tax paying commoners. You went into the military thinking that the military pseudo socialism was the way to help yourselves out, but you bargained with the Devil and he may well take your heart and soul and your very life, too, if you are not very, very careful. Reconsider what you are doing.

Troops, help the rest of us Americans out, and support stopping the Iraqi war and occupation. True patriotism supports less militarism, less imperialism, and less money spent on you the troops, to the detriment of America itself. Troops and families of troops, speak out now against this thuggery you have become part of, and we wish you the best back home alive for those in other folk’s lands.

Stop the bloated war spending to help out the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the peoples of Haiti and Colombia, too. And most of all, to help out us, the people of America. America needs less of you ‘troops’ in prison guard, police, and military uniforms, not more. Patriots support more peace in the world, and less war. So do your part as you can. And try not to let the government dehumanize you, through the insane war the government has you fighting in.

Best wishes, from the antiwar community. But there is no way we are going to ‘support’ you by cheerleading the killing the government has you engaged in. Stop the constant wars. Our money for the people, not The Pentagon!

Afghanistan, Land of Accidents

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It seems that yet another ‘accident’ has occurred in Afghanistan. Whole weddings, whole schools and whole villages seem to routinely get demolished by ‘accidents’, yet this time an ‘accident’ has occurred to a US military chopper. As a result, at least 8 US soldiers have ‘accidentally’ lost their lives, while many more were ‘accidentally’ wounded. Afghanistan, Land of Accidents. We hope that the rest of the troops get ‘accidentally’ brought home, like yesterday.

What a parody of democrapcy the US is!

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I guess after today’s antiwar vigil out at Academy and Austin Bluffs I should be hailing how great US democracy is? But you know it’s really not. It’s a charade.

Instead of feeling great that I could protest in the freezing cold while thousands drove by, I am reminded of the saying that in the US, freedom of the press belongs to those who own the press. My press was a handwritten sign, and that’s all my pennies can buy.

Democrapcy in the US is for the corporations, and not for us. The common Joe and Jane are considered to be repugnant, even. You need at least a million dollars before you can even begin to play the penny slots within the US political system. Ted Rall writes about it well in ‘How America Marginalizes Millions‘. Make that hundreds of millions, Ted. The rich rule, and the rest are fools for letting it happen.

The rich really do suck, and for most of the rest of us they make life quite miserable. Why are so many lesser off defending their own unhappiness all the time? As they drove by me I wanted to know?

Putin- ‘nations are witnessing the almost uncontained (US) hyper use of force’

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Russia’s Putin has given notice that though the US government is the bull running amok in the world china shop, there are also other bulls inside, too. Don’t forget. Message to American people? If you don’t want to run into another mad bull, you’d better get your government under control soon.

Yes, and there are also more capitalist bulls in the world china shop today, than just the US and Russia. China also is aware of the raging US hyper use of force to rob the shop, so to speak. Americans learn litle from history, since they know little even of where places are on the map let alone other nuances of world society. China and Russia are not just going to sit by idle forever while US capitalist imperialism runs amok in the world stealing world resources for themselves.

WW1 and WW2 were begun because capitalist imperialist countries started to butt heads with each other over world resources and who would control them. Now that China and the exSoviet Union have been de-socialized, their governments see themselves strictly as nationalist entities whose national interests must be defended strictly through military and economic might. Same as how our corporate US ruling class is acting.

Time to get our government to pull out of rampaging through the Muslim countries like they own the place. Russian and China are not going to just sit it out forever passively watching from the sidelines, as they too have world interests to defend. Our national security is not served by starting WW3.

Is Iran Responsible, or the Bush family, for the destruction of Iraq?

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The American media and government have begun a campaign to blame Iran for the chaos and destruction that now exists in Iraq. The storyline goes that all would be OK, but only if the Shia were to behave.

The US public is pretty damn ignorant of anything that goes on in the Middle East, always has been, and there are no signs on the horizon to make anybody think that this will ever change. However this new line of total bullshit from our imperialist misleaders really is too much to take, even by the most demented American Right Winger.

Last I heard the US has suffered less than 5,000 casualties in 2 wars with Iraq. The Iranians though, suffered 1,000,000 casualties and $350,000,000,000 dollars in losses due to a war started by Sunni run Iraq and its Sunni Arab allies, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia in 1980. The US government of Ronald Reagan with George Bush Senior acting as the Dick Cheney of that era, solidly was behind the effort to ‘punish’ Iran for having overthrown the US backed despot, the Shah of Iran. Donald Rumsfeld, the Reagan and Bush emissary, was busy pumping Saddam’s hand in support late 1983, flat in the middle of that aggression against Iran.

In short, the Sunnis have screwed up Iraq for over 1/4 century now and screwed over Iran, too. And they could not have done the damage they did without the consistent complicity of the Bush family in support of that destruction. For more info (since they didn’t teach this history at your school), check out ‘Iraq Iran War’ over at wikipedia.

Win one for the Man(ning)!

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Peyton Manning signed photographYeehaw, Peyton won the Superbowl!
 
Lots of articles this week. Is football America’s religion? Unless you go to New Life Church, hell yeah! We worship. We sing. We dance. We praise. We repent. We are slain in the aisles. We are redeemed. We are brothers and sisters. We sit at the right hand of God. NO DOUBT.

I have to admit to being a rabid sports fan. I don’t know why. I can’t explain. But last night, when it became apparent that Peyton was gonna bring it home, I cried and cried. My kids gathered silently around me in an adorable show of compassion, not completely understanding but knowing that my tears were not tears of sadness.

I guess it’s about connection. I think it’s about dreams. Drama. Victory. Superiority. I honestly don’t know.

My ex-hub is a maniacal Northwestern University fan. He attended both undergrad and Med School there. Unfortunately, NW is an egghead school. No one, except Fisher DeBerry, wants to talk about what that means. It means NOT GOOD FOOTBALL. I’ll go no further.

In 1999, Northwestern won the Big Ten championship. I cannot tell you what an astounding feat this was with the likes of Michigan and Ohio State as competitors. It’s like Vandy winning the SEC. Dave and I, of course, went to Pasadena to see the Rose Bowl Parade (amazing) and the game against the USC (the University of Spoiled Children….better, the University of Low Class Jerks where OJ Simpson was an idol). Never a ruder crowd have we seen. No appreciation for the history. No appreciation for the record books. Just masses running around drinking beer being assholes.

The next year Northwestern barely missed another Big Ten Championship. They, instead, went to the Citrus Bowl. Again, Dave and I went. NW played the University of Tennessee, clad in unbelievably garish orange, speaking with heavy Southern drawls. Because the game was in Orlando, not too far from Tennessee, the crowd was comprised mainly of Vols fans. A pep rally was held on the eve of the big game, thousands of people clad in orange celebrating, partying, laughing. Peyton Manning, at the tender age of 22, stood at the podium and admonished the Vols fans to acknowledge NW’s accomplishments and to invite us to participate. It was a much different experience than we’d had at the Rose Bowl. Real people. Kind people. A classy Peyton Manning understanding the greater significance of football and history.

I am the same age as John Elway. So is Dave. We spent much of our married life loving the Broncos, living and dying by John’s performances and his screw ups. I remember Craig Morton. A great man but unable to move well. Enter John Elway. Bliss and pain. Our lives forever different.

John’s contemporaries are some of the best in NFL history. Dan, Joe, Troy, Boomer, Steve, Bernie, many more. John was stellar. He was amazing. He was bright and classy and visionary. Somewhat erratic in the beginning. Then just magic. Especially in the fourth quarter.

The Superbowl victory eluded John for years. Though he was one of the most accomplished QBs in history, he was diminished by the fact that he never won a Superbowl. Sure, he didn’t have much to work with but, in history, no one cares about that. When the Broncos won in Miami in ’99, I was there. I was overwrought. I was crying and laughing. I think the Rolling Stones performed at half time….I hardly remember. I just wanted John to have his scepter. And he did.

Peyton has had a similar experience. A first round draft pick, like Elway. An incredible record, like Elway. Victories. Accolades. Press. Passion. Love. But no Superbowl ring.

Dan Marino, possibly the greatest QB in NFL history, never brought home the big one. That will be his legacy. He will always be known as the great QB that never brought home the prize. I’m so glad that Peyton won’t have that monkey on his back.

Peyton! Peyton! Peyton!

Algonquin, Iroquois, Hmong, Montagnard, Pashtun, Kosovars, Bosnian Muslims, Kurds, Timorese

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What a tragic list. The list is actually much, much larger than the one I put here as the title of this thread, but the unifying theme is a simple one. It is a list of smaller national groupings that have cooperated in some way with major imperialist powers, usually with tragic results to themselves. It is a list of smaller cultural, racial, national groupings that have gotten historically used and buffeted by much larger powers, that themselves were acting in their own perceived interests within much larger world conflicts.

An interesting and poorly taught history, is the history of the conflicts between the Algonquin vs the Iroquois, French vs the British, then enter the Americans, too with their own internal conflicts. Much easier to teach are the fables of Pocahontas and that of ‘Thanksgiving’. How much brutal warfare for the Algonquin and the Iroquois as they tried to side with one group of Europeans against the other. Their efforts to survive were only minimally successful.

Then are the stories of the Hmong and Montagnards, who cooperated in one degree or another with the French and the US in their imperial efforts to dominate SE Asia. They did so in rebellion against their own domination within their regional societies by the more numerous Vietnamese, Lao, and Khmer peoples. But as a result, they became soon ‘strangers in their own land’, so to speak. Many ended up in far away exiles in the US and elsewhere.

And look what has befallen the Pashtun, used by the US and the US allied Arab dictatorships to battle against the exSoviet Union which backed different Norht Afghan groupings of other national backgrounds. Much more complicated than just blaming it on the Taliban or ‘Muslim extremism’, as the idiot US Right Wing does so.

The Kosovars remain with 60% unemployment years after Clinton/ Gore’s war. What have they gotten by cooperating with US imperial interests against their neighbors, the Serbs? Little, it seems. Would ‘independence’ bring any better? It is doubtful, since Serbia is unlikely to easily forget such an evil alliance between Albanian and American. And the Bosnian Muslim? He faces a backing that now is in a religious war against the very same religion backed just yesterday.

The Kurds? They had certainly legitimate reason to rebel against Saddam Hussein and the his Arab Sunni grouping. But now they are linked irremediably to the CIA and Pentagon, even as those same sinister forces back Kurd oppression next door in Turkey. Iraqi Kurdistan is now the better off section of Iraq, yet what a dangerous situation for the Kurdish people long term.

And the Timorese? Half of Timor remains part of Indonesia, and the other half is now an impotent pseudo state, dependent on the UN, Australia, and the US for its semi-starvation bound existence. Its 1,000,00 people are divided into an incoherent number of language, tribal, ethnic, and cultural groups, whose only field of unity is that most everybody is of Christian religion, legacy of Portuguese imperialism.

US/ Australian imperialism split off a Christian portion of Indonesia and mainly to help control better the oil resources for themselves, and not the people being manipulated. There can be little independent and local economy in such a miniscule and divided half of an island. Meanwhile, Indonesian Timor has more population, more economic activity, and is not a society that is essentially a colony dependent on White racist Australia. It is part of the Indonesian archipelago of 17,000 islands, and not a colonialist split off.

How sad the results most always are, when small national, ethnic, and cultural groupings get picked up and carried along in the power plays by various imperialist world powers. What will happen to the Balkans, will they ever be able to restabilize themselves now that imperialism has reentered into their affairs in such a major way? What will happen to the Kurds, Shia, and the Sunni/ What about all the ethnic groups of Afghanistan and Pakistan? All now victims of US power plays.