Sept 11 – America Reaps What It Sows!

Posted on September 11, 2009 by NMT

A post-911 perspective by Black Liberation Army prisoner of war Jalil Muntaqim.

U.S. International Warfare Initiates World War III Human Rights During Wartime
By Jalil A. Muntaqim

In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, Americans have displayed their true colors of jingoism, a militaristic spirit of nationalism. Similarly, it was witnessed how the people of Iraq rallied in support of their President, Saddam Hussein, after the U.S. bombed to death 250,000 Iraqis, and continued devastation of that country with collateral damage of 1 million dead women and children. Hence, people rallying in support of their government and representatives is a common phenomenon when a country is attacked by an outsider. The U.S. has been foremost in the world extending foreign policy of free-market economy, to the extent of undermining other countries cultures and ideologies expressed as their way of life. Such conflicts inevitably positions the U.S. as the centerpiece, the bulls-eye for international political dissent, as indicated by demonstrations against the U.S. controlled IMF, WTO and World Bank conferences. The attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon did not occur in a vacuum. The people that carried out the attacks were not blind followers or robots with an irrational hatred of the U.S. peoples. Rather, this attack was part of an overall blowback to U.S. imperialist policy in support of zionist Israel and opposition to fundamentalist Islam.

There are essentially three primary world ideologies or world views: the capitalist free-market economy/democracy; the socialist production economy; and Islamic theocratic government, of which has been in competition for many decades. However, in the last 20 years the socialist economies has been severely subverted and co-opted by free-market economies, the ideals of American style democracy. This isolated, for the most part, Islamic theocratic ideology and system of government as the principle target of the U.S. in its quest for world hegemony. This reality of competing world views and economies is further complicated due to religious underpinning of beliefs that motivates actions, especially as they are expressed by U.S. and Western European christianity and Israel zionist judaism in opposition to Islam. From the struggles of the Crusades to the present confrontation, the struggle for ideological supremacy reigns, as the faithful continue to proselytize in the name of the Supreme Being.

When geopolitics are combined with religious fervor in the character of nationalist identity and patriotism, rational and logical thinking is shoved aside as matters of the moment takes historical precedents. It has often been said that “Truth Crush to the Earth Will Rise Again”. Since truth is relative to ones belief, can it be safely said that America has reaped what it has sowed? The American truth of capitalist christian democracy and its imperialist hegemonic aspirations has crushed both socialist and Islamic world views. It has extended its avaricious tentacles as the world police and economic harbinger of all that is beneficent, in stark denial of its history as a purveyor of genocides, slavery and colonial violence.

The U.S. was the first to use biological-germ warfare on people when it distributed blankets infected with smallpox to Native Americans; it has refused to apologize for Afrikan slavery acknowledging it engaged in a crime against humanity requiring reparations; it is the first and only country to use the atomic bomb on the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and intern thousands of Japanese and Italians in this country; it used carpet bombing and defoliates against the peoples of Vietnam; it has initiated embargoes, coup d’etats and assassinations against those it opposes, while propping-up right-wing military dictators; as well as continued military bombing of Vieques. In essence, the U.S. governments hegemonic goals has created the ire of millions of people throughout the world. While domestically, racial profiling, police killing and mass incarceration of Black and Brown people has eroded patriotic sentiments in opposition to white supremacy.

As America weeps and laments its loss, the public find itself joining the torn ranks of those whose heartaches beat opposing U.S. greed and international profiteering. The American public acquiesce to U.S. international folly has cause them to feel the economic pains of those who live daily in poverty. Indeed, Americans should brace for years of economic uncertainty, where the American ideal of freedom and liberty will resemble plight of those who live under the right-wing dictatorships the U.S. has supported. The tyranny suffered by others in the world as a result of U.S. imperialism, has come full circle to visit this country with the wrath of the U.S. own mechanization. Since the U.S. taught and trained right-wing military dictators in the School of the Americas, including the CIA training of Osama bin Laden in the Afghanistan proxy war against the Russians, it will be this same kind of terrorist activist that will be unleashed on American soil, as El-Hajj Malik Shabazz stated after the assassination of John Kennedy, a matter of the chicken coming home to roost. Therefore, American civil liberties and human rights are being garrotted by the yoke of the right-wing in the name of national security. The legalization of U.S. fascism was initiated with the war against political dissent (Cointelpro); the war against organized crime (RICO laws); the war against illegal drugs (plethora of drug laws) and now culminating in the war against terrorism with the American Joint Anti-Terrorist Taskforce and Office of Home Security, further extending police, FBI and CIA powers to undermine domestic civil liberties and human rights.

The U.S. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, recently stated that the U.S. need to create a new language in defining how to combat terrorism. This Orwellian propaganda in the media espouses the U.S. is venturing in a new type of warfare to defend the American way of life. However, what this double-speak propagates as a long-term and sustained initiative against terrorism is essentially a way of embellishing and enlarging U.S. counter-insurgency activity it has been engaged in since the advent of the Green Berets, Rangers, Delta Force and Navy Seals. The U.S. has been involved in counter-insurgency activity in Afrika, Latin America and Asia for decades. But due to the September 11, 2001, attack on U.S. soil, the government has seized the opportunity to offensively pursue left-wing revolutionaries and Muslim insurgents throughout the world. This U.S. military action extends and substantiates its position as the international police.

Since the establishment of the Trilateral Commission that initiated the process for the development of one world government, the U.S. has broaden its capacity to impose and enforce its will on oppressed peoples globally. The FBI and CIA has been operating in Europe, Afrika, Asia and Latin America establishing the long arm of U.S. law and order. Its bases of operations have conducted surveillance, investigations to arrest, prosecute or neutralize left-wing revolutionaries or Muslim insurgents. As the U.S. consolidates its political and economic influence throughout the world, it will seek to protect its overall hegemonic imperialist goals. After the Gulf War, and the air (bombing) campaign in Yugoslavia, the U.S. has employed its military might to ensure its foreign policy are achieved.

Because NATO has evolved into a European military entity that Russia is seeking to join, today, the U.S. has positioned itself beyond the mission of NATO. The U.S. now concentrates its military might in opposing Islamic countries (Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Afghanistan, Philippines, etc.) and those the U.S. deem as rogue nations (North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, etc.). The new military initiatives will be directed to towards Southeast Asia as the secondary target, as it continues to direct the Middle East conflict to preserve its oil investments and zionist interest. As the U.S. expand its imperialist military mission, as seen with committing military troops in Uzbekistan to also protect oil interest in the Caspian Sea, it has sought to redefine itself by targeting what it identify as the terrorist thereat wherever in the world it might exist. Hence, with the employment of conventional warfare combined with counter-insurgency tactical activities, the U.S. has pronounced itself as the military guardian of the world.

Although, the U.S. states its actions are in its self-interest, in terms of what is euphemistically defined as defending the free world, the truth of the matter is this action is a prelude to evolving one world government with the U.S. as its governing authority. Once the Peoples Republic of China becomes a full member of the WTO, and North Korea and Vietnam has been compromised, with Russia becoming an ally of NATO, the U.S. political-military influence in the world will be consolidated. The U.S. geopolitical strategy is not confined to the present crisis in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attack and targeting Osama bin Laden as the world’s nemesis. Rather, the U.S. strategy is to preserve its capacity to establish one world government as originally envisioned by the Trilateral Commission.

Nonetheless, there are some serious obstacles to this hegemonic goal, of which the world of fundamentalist Islam has become the principle target. Here, it should be noted that Islam condemns suicide or the mass killings of women, children and non-combatant males. Yet, the U.S., Israel, western Europe, Russia, India and China all view Islam as the enemy. Although, there are over 1.2 billion Muslims in the world, the current alliance of economic interest headed by the U.S., are united to vanquish what they consider the growing menace of fundamentalist Islam. It is with this understanding of U.S. geopolitics one is able to comprehend why the U.S. has redefine its military mission, as opposition to globalization and U.S. imperialism metamorph into a political struggle without borders or territorial imperatives.

The ideological struggle between capitalist free-market economy and Islamic theocratic determinates has exploded into an international conflagration of insurgency with the potential of initiating World War III. The Islamic fundamentalist movements throughout the world has the potential to test the U.S. military, political and economic resolve as the world’s leader and authority of an one world government. With over 1.2 billion adherents, Islam has become a formidable foe to contend with for ideological supremacy in the world’s geopolitics. Even without discussing the religious (moral and ethics) aspects that motivates the geopolitics of Islam in opposition to U.S. imperialist hegemony, the call for Jihad/Holy War against the U.S. presents a serious threat that could precipitate WW-III. Therefore, the U.S. find it necessary to redefine its military mission, develop new language to codify warfare and legitimize its international political and economic purpose. Yet, many of the world’s oppressed peoples’ have already experienced U.S. military counter-insurgency tactics (Ethiopia, Somalia, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Chile, Congo, etc.), including parts of the Islamic world. No matter how or why the U.S. attempts to persuade Americans that it is entering a new type of warfare, in reality it is more of the same, only extending the military arena to further protect its authority to establish one world government.

However, the U.S. is not the homogeneous country that people are deluded into believing exist. Rather, the U.S. has been held together due its ability to exploit the world’s resources and distribute (unequally) the profits amongst its citizens with its culture of conspicuous consumption. But, the recent attack on the U.S., and its aftermath may very well lead to the untangling and unraveling of the U.S. fabric as has been witnessed with the USSR and Yugoslavia. In understanding this true history of U.S. imperialism, outside and within its borders, essentially tells a story of why U.S. imperialism has been and will continue to be attacked.

Ultimately, the U.S. will eventually find itself at war with itself, as the ideology of a free democratic society will be found to be a big lie. This is especially disconcerting as greater restrictions on civil and human rights are made into law eroding the First and Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. As during the Vietnam conflict, internal contradictions of racism, poverty and inequality will be exacerbated as a result of the U.S. military campaign and domestic undermining of civil and human rights. It is expected that strife in America will eventually become violent dissolving any semblance of the illusion of America the Beautiful. In anticipation of U.S. progressive activist opposing this claimed war against terrorism, the federal government will pass new laws to severely restrict protest, demonstrations and dissent. In the ’60s, U.S. progressive activists evolved the slogan “Bring the War Home!” – the question is what will be the slogan this time, now that the war has been brought home?

Free the Land!!

Rock Creek Free Press available in COS

Posted on September 6, 2009 by Eric Verlo

The Rock Creek Free Press is available online, but if you want it in print, the DC monthly is available in Colorado Springs at the Bookman, 3163 W. Colorado. The September issue features a speech given by legendary Australian journalist John Pilger on July 4th in San Francisco.

Here’s the RCFP transcript:

Two years ago I spoke at “Socialism in Chicago” about an invisible government which is a term used by Edward Bernays, one the founders of modern propaganda. It was Bernays, who in the 1920s invented public relations as a euphemism for propaganda. And it was Bernays, deploying the ideas of his uncle Sigmund Freud, who campaigned on behalf of the tobacco industry for women to take up smoking as an act of feminist liberation calling cigarettes “tortures of freedom”. At the same time he was involved in the disinformation which was critical in overthrowing the Arbenz government in Guatemala. So you have the association of cigarettes and regime change. The invisible government that Bernays had in mind brought together all media: PR, the press, broadcasting, advertising and their power of branding and image making. In other words, disinformation.

And I suppose I would like to talk today about this invisible government’s most recent achievement, the rise of Barrack Obama and the silencing of much of the left. But all of this has a history, of course and I’d like to go back, take you back some forty years to a sultry and, for me, very memorable day in Viet Nam.

I was a young war correspondent who had just arrived in a village in the Central Highlands called Tuylon. My assignment was to write about a unit of US Marines who had been sent to the village to win hearts and minds. “My orders,” said the Marine Sergeant, “are to sell the American way of liberty, as stated in the Pacification Handbook, this is designed to win the hearts and minds of folks as stated on page 86.” Now, page 86 was headed in capital letters: WHAM (winning hearts and minds). The Marine Unit was a combined action company which explained the Sergeant, meant, “We attack these folks on Mondays and we win their hearts and minds on Tuesdays.” He was joking, of course, but not quite.

The Sergeant, who didn’t speak Vietnamese, had arrived in the village, stood up on a Jeep and said through a bullhorn: “Come on out everybody we’ve got rice and candies and toothbrushes to give you.” This was greeted by silence. “Now listen, either you gooks come on out or we’re going to come right in there and get you!” Now the people of Tuylon finally came out and they stood in line to receive packets of Uncle Ben’s Miracle Rice, Hershey Bars, party balloons, and several thousand toothbrushes. Three portable, battery operated, yellow, flush lavatories were held back for the arrival of the colonel.

And when the colonel arrived that evening, the district chief was summoned and the yellow, flush lavatories unveiled. The colonel cleared his throat and took out a handwritten speech,

“Mr. District Chief and all you nice people,” said the colonel, “what these gifts represent is more than the sum of their parts, they carry the spirit of America. Ladies and gentlemen there’s no place on Earth like America, it’s the land where miracles happen, it’s a guiding light for me and for you. In America, you see, we count ourselves as real lucky as having the greatest democracy the world has ever known and we want you nice people to share in our good fortune.”

Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, even John Winthrope sitting upon a hill got a mention. All that was missing was the Star Bangled Banner playing softly in the background. Of course the villagers had no idea what the colonel was talking about, but when the Marines clapped, they clapped. And when the colonel waved, the children waved. And when he departed the colonel shook the Sergeant’s hand and said: “We’ve got plenty of hearts and minds here, carry on Sergeant.” “Yes Sir.” In Viet Nam I witnessed many scenes like that.

I’d grown up in faraway Australia on a cinematic diet of John Wayne, Randolph Scott, Walt Disney, and Ronald Reagan. The American way of liberty they portrayed might well have been lifted from the WHAM handbook. I’d learned that the United States had won World War II on its own and now led the free world as the chosen society. It was only later when I read Walter Lippmann’s book, Public Opinion, a manual of the invisible government, that I began to understand the power of emotions attached to false ideas and bad histories on a grand scale.

Now, historians call this exceptionalism, the notion that the United States has a divine right to bring what it calls “liberty” to the rest of humanity. Of course this is a very old refrain. The French and British created and celebrated their own civilizing missions while imposing colonial regimes that denied basic civil liberties. However, the power of the American message was, and remains, different. Whereas the Europeans were proud imperialists, Americans are trained to deny their imperialism. As Mexico was conquered and the Marines sent to Nicaragua, American textbooks referred to an Age of Innocence. American motives were always well meaning, moral, exceptional, as the colonel said, “There was no ideology” and that’s still the case.

Americanism is an ideology that is unique because its main feature is its denial that it is an ideology. It’s both conservative and it’s liberal. And it’s right and it’s left. And Barack Obama is its embodiment. Since Obama was elected leading liberals have talked about America returning to its true status as, “a nation of moral ideals”. Those are the words of Paul Krugman, the liberal columnist of The New York Times. In the San Francisco Chronicle, columnist Mark Morford wrote,

“Spiritually advanced people regard the new president as a light worker who can help usher in a new way of being on the planet.”

Tell that to an Afghan child whose family has been blown away by Obama’s bombs. Or a Pakistani child whose house has been visited by one of Obama’s drones. Or a Palestinian child surveying the carnage in Gaza caused by American “smart” weapons, which, disclosed Seymour Hersh, were re-supplied to Israel for use in the slaughter, and I quote; “Only after the Obama team let if be known, it would not object.” The man who stayed silent on Gaza is the man who now condemns Iran.

In a sense, Obama is the myth that is America’s last taboo. His most consistent theme was never “change”, it was power. “The United States,” he said, “leads the world in battling immediate evils and promoting the ultimate good. We must lead by building a 21st century military to ensure the security of our people and advance the security of all people.” And there is this remarkable statement, “At moments of great peril in the past century our leaders ensured that America, by deed and by example, led and lifted the world; that we stood and fought for the freedoms sought by billions of people beyond our borders.” Words like these remind me of the colonel in the village in Viet Nam, as he spun much the same nonsense.

Since 1945, by deed and by example, to use Obama’s words, America has overthrown 50 governments, including democracies, and crushed some 30 liberation movements and bombed countless men, women, and children to death. I’m grateful to Bill Blum for his cataloging of that. And yet, here is the 45th (sic) president of the United States having stacked his government with war mongers and corporate fraudsters and polluters from the Bush and Clinton eras, promising, not only more of the same, but a whole new war in Pakistan. Justified by the murderous clichés of Hilary Clinton, clichés like, “high value targets”. Within three days of his inauguration, Obama was ordering the death of people in faraway countries: Pakistan and Afghanistan. And yet, the peace movement, it seems, is prepared to look the other way and believe that the cool Obama will restore, as Krugman wrote, “the nation of moral ideals.”

Not long ago, I visited the American Museum of History in the celebrated Smithsonian Institute in Washington. One of the most popular exhibitions was called “The Price of Freedom: Americans at War”. It was holiday time and lines of happy people, including many children, shuffled through a Santa’s grotto of war and conquest. When messages about their nation’s great mission were lit up; these included tributes to the; “…exceptional Americans who saved a million lives…” in Viet Nam; where they were, “…determined to stop Communist expansion.” In Iraq other brave Americans, “employed air-strikes of unprecedented precision.” What was shocking was not so much the revisionism of two of the epic crimes of modern times, but the shear scale of omission.

Like all US presidents, Bush and Obama have very much in common. The wars of both presidents and the wars of Clinton and Reagan, Carter and Ford, Nixon and Kennedy are justified by the enduring myth of exceptional America. A myth the late Harold Pinter described as, “a brilliant, witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.”

The clever young man who recently made it to the White House is a very fine hypnotist; partly because it is indeed extraordinary to see an African American at the pinnacle of power in the land of slavery. However, this is the 21st century and race together with gender, and even class, can be very seductive tools of propaganda. For what is so often overlooked and what matters, I believe above all, is the class one serves. George Bush’s inner circle from the State Department to the Supreme Court was perhaps the most multi-racial in presidential history. It was PC par excellence. Think Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell. It was also the most reactionary. Obama’s very presence in the White House appears to reaffirm the moral nation. He’s a marketing dream. But like Calvin Klein or Benetton, he’s a brand that promises something special, something exciting, almost risqué. As if he might be radical. As if he might enact change. He makes people feel good; he’s a post-modern man with no political baggage. And all that’s fake.

In his book, Dreams From My Father, Obama refers to the job he took after he graduated from Columbia in 1983; he describes his employer as, “…a consulting house to multi-national corporations.” For some reason he doesn’t say who his employer was or what he did there. The employer was Business International Corporation; which has a long history of providing cover for the CIA with covert action and infiltrating unions from the left. I know this because it was especially active in my own country, Australia. Obama doesn’t say what he did at Business International and they may be absolutely nothing sinister. But it seems worthy of inquiry, and debate, as a clue to, perhaps, who the man is.

During his brief period in the senate, Obama voted to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He voted for the Patriot Act. He refused to support a bill for single payer health care. He supported the death penalty. As a presidential candidate he received more corporate backing than John McCain. He promised to close Guantanamo as a priority, but instead he has excused torture, reinstated military commissions, kept the Bush gulag intact, and opposed habeas corpus.

Daniel Ellsberg, the great whistleblower, was right, I believe, when he said, that under Bush a military coup had taken place in the United States giving the Pentagon unprecedented powers. These powers have been reinforced by the presence of Robert Gates – a Bush family crony and George W. Bush’s powerful Secretary of Defense. And by all the Bush Pentagon officials and generals who have kept their jobs under Obama.

In the middle of a recession, with millions of Americans losing their jobs and homes, Obama has increased the military budget. In Colombia he is planning to spend 46 million dollars on a new military base that will support a regime backed by death squads and further the tragic history of Washington’s intervention in that region.

In a pseudo-event in Prague, Obama promised a world without nuclear weapons to a global audience, mostly unaware that America is building new tactical nuclear weapons designed to blur the distinction between nuclear and conventional war. Like George Bush, he used the absurdity of Europe threatened by Iran to justify building a missile system aimed at Russia and China. In another pseudo-event, at the Annapolis Naval Academy, decked with flags and uniforms, Obama lied that America had gone to Iraq to bring freedom to that country. He announced that the troops were coming home. This was another deception. The head of the army, General George Casey says, with some authority, that America will be in Iraq for up to a decade. Other generals say fifteen years.

Chris Hedges, the very fine author of Empire of Illusion, puts it very well; “President Obama,” he wrote, “does one thing and brand Obama gets you to believe another.” This is the essence of successful advertising. You buy or do what the advertiser wants because of how they make you feel. And so you are kept in a perpetual state of childishness. He calls this “junk politics”.

But I think the real tragedy is that Obama, the brand, appears to have crippled or absorbed much of the anti-war movement – the peace movement. Out of 256 Democrats in Congress; 30, just 30, are willing to stand up against Obama’s and Nancy Pelosi’s war party. On June the 16th they voted for 106 billion dollars for more war.

The “Out of Iraq” caucus is out of action. Its member can’t even come up with a form of words of why they are silent. On March the 21st, a demonstration at the Pentagon by the once mighty United for Peace and Justice drew only a few thousand. The out-going president of UFPJ, Lesley Kagen, says her people aren’t turning up because, “It’s enough for many of them that Obama has a plan to end the war and that things are moving in the right direction.” And where is the mighty Move On, these days? Where is its campaign against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? And what, exactly, was said when Move On’s executive director, Jason Ruben, met Barack Obama at the White House in February?

Yes, a lot of good people mobilized for Obama. But what did they demand of him? Working to elect the Democratic presidential candidate may seem like activism, but it isn’t. Activism doesn’t give up. Activism doesn’t fall silent. Activism doesn’t rely on the opiate of hope. Woody Allen once said, “I felt a lot better when I gave up hope.” Real activism has little time for identity politics which like exceptionalism, can be fake. These are distractions that confuse and sucker good people. And not only in the United States, I can assure you.

I write for the Italian socialist newspaper, Il Manifesto, or rather I used to write for it. In February I sent the editor an article which raised questions about Obama as a progressive force. The article was rejected. Why, I asked? “For the moment,” wrote the editor, “we prefer to maintain a more positive approach to the novelty presented by Obama. We will take on specific issues, but we would not like to say that he will make no difference.” In other words, an American president drafted to promote the most rapacious system in history, is ordained and depoliticized by important sections of the left. It’s a remarkable situation. Remarkable, because those on the, so called, Radical Left have never been more aware, more conscious of the inequities of power. The Green Movement, for example, has raised the consciousness of millions, so that almost every child knows something about global warming. And yet, there seems to be a resistance, within the Green Movement, to the notion of power as a military force, a military project. And perhaps similar observations can also be made about sections of the Feminist Movement and the Gay Movement and certainly the Union Movement.

One of my favorite quotations is from Milan Kundera,

“The struggle of people against power is [the] struggle of memory against forgetting.”

We should never forget that the primary goal of great power is to distract and limit our natural desire for social justice and equity and real democracy.

Long ago Edward Bernays’ invisible government of propaganda elevated big business from its unpopular status as a kind of mafia to that of a patriotic driving force. The “American way of life” began as an advertising slogan. The modern image of Santa Claus was an invention of Coca Cola.

Today we are presented with an extraordinary opportunity. Thanks to the crash of Wall Street and the revelation, for many ordinary people, that the free market has nothing to do with freedom. The opportunity, within our grasp, is to recognize that something is stirring in America that is unfamiliar, perhaps, to many of us on the left, but is related to a great popular movement that’s growing all over the world. Look down at Latin America, less than twenty years ago there was the usual despair, the usual divisions of poverty and freedom, the usual thugs in uniforms running unspeakable regimes. Today for the first time perhaps in 500 years there’s a people’s movement based on the revival of indigenous cultures and language, a genuine populism. The recent amazing achievements in Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, El Salvador, Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay represent a struggle for community and political rights that is truly historic, with implications for all of us. The successes in Latin America are expressed perversely in the recent overthrow of the government of Honduras, because the smaller the country, the greater is the threat of a good example that the disease of emancipation will spread.

Indeed, right across the world social movements and grass roots organization have emerged to fight free market dogma. They’ve educated governments in the south that food for export is a problem, rather than a solution to global poverty. They’ve politicized ordinary people to stand up for their rights, as in the Philippines and South Africa. Look at the remarkable boycott, disinvestment and sanctions campaign, BDS, for short, aimed at Israel that’s sweeping the world. Israeli ships have been turned away from South Africa and Western Australia. A French company has been forced to abandon plans to build a railway connecting Jerusalem with illegal Israeli settlements. Israeli sporting bodies find themselves isolated. Universities in the United Kingdom have begun to sever ties with Israel. This is how apartheid South Africa was defeated. And this is how the great wind of the 1960s began to blow. And this is how every gain has been won: the end of slavery, universal suffrage, workers rights, civil rights, environmental protection, the list goes on and on.

And that brings us back, here, to the United States, because I believe something is stirring in this country. Are we aware, that in the last eight months millions of angry e-mails, sent by ordinary Americans, have flooded Washington. And I mean millions. People are outright outraged that their lives are attacked; they bear no resemblance to the passive mass presented by the media. Look at the polls; more than 2/3 of Americans say the government should care for those who cannot care for themselves, sixty-four percent would pay higher taxes to guarantee health care for everyone, sixty percent are favorable towards Unions, seventy percent want nuclear disarmament, seventy-two percent want the US completely out of Iraq and so on and so on. But where is much of the left? Where is the social justice movement? Where is the peace movement? Where is the civil rights movement? Ordinary Americans, for too long, have been misrepresented by stereotypes that are contemptuous. James Madison referred to his compatriots in the public as ignorant and meddlesome outsiders. And this contempt is probably as strong today, among the elite, as it was back then. That’s why the progressive attitudes of the public are seldom reported in the media, because they’re not ignorant, they’re subversive, they’re informed and they’re even anti-American. I once asked a friend, the great American war correspondent and humanitarian, Martha Gellhorn, to explain the term “anti-American” to me. “I’ll tell you what anti-American is,” she said in her forceful way, “its what governments and their vested interests call those who honor America by objecting to war and the theft of resources and believing in all of humanity. There are millions of these anti-Americans in the United States, they are ordinary people who belong to no elite and who judge their government in moral terms though they would call it common decency. They are not vain; they are the people with a waitful conscience, the best of America’s citizens. Sure, they disappear from view now and then, but they are like seeds beneath the snow. I would say they are truly exceptional.” Truly exceptional, I like that.

My own guess is that a populism is growing, once again in America evoking a powerful force beneath the surface which has a proud history. From such authentic grass roots Americanism came women suffrage, the eight hour day, graduated income tax, public ownership of railways and communications, the breaking of the power of corporate lobbyists and much more. In other words, real democracy. The American populists were far from perfect, but they often spoke for ordinary people and they were betrayed by leaders who urged them to compromise and merge with the Democratic Party. That was long ago, but how familiar it sounds. My guess is that something is coming again. The signs are there. Noam Chomsky is right when he says that, “Mere sparks can ignite a popular movement that may seem dormant.” No one predicted 1968, no one predicted the fall of apartheid, or the Berlin Wall, or the civil rights movement, or the great Latino rising of a few years ago.

I suggest that we take Woody Allen’s advice and give up on hope and listen, instead, to voices from below. What Obama and the bankers and the generals and the IMF and the CIA and CNN and BBC fear, is ordinary people coming together and acting together. It’s a fear as old as democracy, a fear that suddenly people convert their anger to action as they’ve done so often throughout history.

“At a time of universal deceit,” wrote George Orwell, “telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

Thank you.

Common Dreams Quid Pro Toe

Posted on July 29, 2009 by Eric Verlo

How delighted I was to receive an email from Common Dreams, showing signs of skepticism finally at President Obama’s growing betrayal of American progressives. After censoring CD participants who criticize the Democratic Party for its capitulation to corporate centrism, even banning the persistent voices from its online discussions, the blogosphere giant now purports to have examined it stats and rediscovered its radical base. I’m thrilled that CD has met its enemy, and it is not us, but I wish their epiphany wasn’t about who’s left to tap for money.

How can we but surmise that Common Dreams enjoyed financial support from Obama’s Dems, for toeing the party line? They paid the bills, the dream was blue.

Now that Obama is in office, and his progressive supporters don’t have the charm of his new globalist friends, Common Dreams has to go back to stickball with the rest of us with no access. I’d be a lot more inclined toward sympathy for Common Dreams if it showed some remorse for having cast aside so many while it co-opted the common dream to make it about Barack Obama.

Here’s the fund raising letter from Common Dreams, saying all the right things, just like President False Hope himself.

July 24, 2009

Dear Friend of CommonDreams.org,

When Americans voted overwhelmingly for ‘Change’ last November 4th, I, like so many of you, was hopeful.

Hopeful that we’d bring our troops home. Hopeful for a major commitment to safe, renewable energy.

Hopeful that Wall Street and corporate lobbyists would no longer be able to treat our elected representatives like puppets on a string.

Hopeful that Guantánamo would be closed and the torturers would be prosecuted. That the post-9/11 trampling of our civil liberties would be reversed.

Hopeful that President Obama would rally the people around a bold, progressive overhaul of our sickly healthcare ‘system.’

Hopeful that the neglected investments in our people, our future, would begin again.

But frankly, seven months into the new administration, my hope is fading.

I have days when I think we’ll never overcome this system.

But I never have a day when I think about giving up.

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Two of the most popular articles on CommonDreams.org these past months were writings by longtime activists, Paul Hawken and Derrick Jensen.

Two tireless fighters against the system.

It was clear from the stats on our site that the words of these two progressive thinkers resonated with you, and with all of our readers.

Paul Hawken has been warning against the accelerating decline of Planet Earth for decades. As he said in his May 3 speech to graduates of the University of Portland, Oregon, “If you look at the science about what’s happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand the data.”

But he also spoke of hope: “. . . if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse.”

Last I checked, I still had a pulse.

Jensen’s prognosis for civilisation is even more sober. Still, even he urges us to resist – by voting, running for office, boycotting, organizing, lobbying, protesting. And, he says, “when a government becomes destructive of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we have the right to alter or abolish it.”

Altering or abolishing a government is not for the faint of heart.

But sitting idly, silently by while our planet, our government, and our society self-destruct is not for people like you and me.

Common Dreamers were so inspired by the words of these two writers, they forwarded them to thousands of others to read.

Thousands of people like you, who will use the information to help fuel the fight for truth.

The fight for what’s right.

The fight for what the majority of Americans say, in poll after poll, they want – and yet are being denied by a government that is bought and paid for by corporations and a tiny percentage of people who hold the vast majority of wealth in this country.

Jensen ends his article with a call to action: “We can follow the example of those who remembered that the role of an activist is not to navigate systems of oppressive power with as much integrity as possible, but rather to confront and take down those systems.”

The time to get confrontational is now.

Because tomorrow might be too late.

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If others can kill, Israel wants permit too

Posted on June 4, 2009 by Eric Verlo

June 6th is the 42nd anniversary of Israel’s seizure of Gaza. At right is a UK newspaper ad placed by the Anti-Defamation League, one of Israel’s myriad damage control engines, when UK students were calling to boycott Israel over its attacks in Gaza. 400,000 killed in Sudan, so Israel should get a pass on its 1,300 victims in Gaza? It sounds like the IDF expects allowances to be made for its periodic ethnic cleansing, permits maybe, like polluters trade carbon credits. The US Humane Society euthanizes 5.4 million dogs every year, no doubt it’s just a double standard to demonize Israel for bagging their 1,300 in Gaza.

Where there are fingers pointing at Sudan, there are Zionists diverting attention from their final Palestinian solution. No one’s crying GENOCIDE in Darfur, calling for military intervention against the Muslim regime but Israel, the US and George Clooney.

I just read an eyewitness recollection of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, published on this 20th anniversary, by a reporter who went on to fault China less for its human rights transgressions than for Chinese investments in Sudan and Iran. Sudan? IRAN? What was an evocative historical account began to smell of Zionist agitation… Of course the WSJ columnist turned out to be a “conservative” who also labels those who stand up for Palestinian rights as anti-Semites.

Swine Flu alarm raised to nincompoop

Posted on April 29, 2009 by Eric Verlo

There it is, health crisis confirmed. Today the WHO raised the pandemic alert level to five. Confirmed cases of Swine Flu H1N1 have now spread to ten countries and our health is in the hands of idiots. Conniving idiots. This morning President Obama announced the dreaded first US fatality, but declined to reveal specifics out of a concern for patient confidentiality. Through the day we learned that the US death wasn’t exactly representative of an accelerated infection rate. In reality the Swine Flu victim was a Mexican 23-month-old who’d been brought to the US for treatment. However, when CDC director Dr. Richard Besser was interviewed for the evening news, the alarm theme turned once again on the virus’s escalation with the death of the American child in Texas.

Though so far the US victims have suffered only mild cases, the CDC concludes on 4/29/2009:

“The more recent illnesses and the reported death suggest that a pattern of more severe illness associated with this virus may be emerging in the U.S.”

I find it loathsome that Right Wing Nuts are pointing the finger at Mexican immigrants, and I’m in favor of our hospitals attempting to help whoever they can. But I don’t think it’s fair to pretend that someone afflicted in Mexico, who comes to the US, should be counted as an example of the Swine Flu having spread within the US.

Wasn’t Barack Obama supposed to herald the expunging of at least the facade of duplicity from our policy makers? We do not want to close the US-Mexico border, we say, because it’s already too late, implying concern for relations with Mexican nationals. But hasn’t the border permanently closed to them already? It’s fortified by Minutemen vigilantes in fact? No, leaving the border open has everything to do with the products which US corporations are now producing in Mexico, both agricultural and industrial.

I have to admit I’m not surprised at the lies, there are innumerable reasons to obfuscate the truth, from protecting the pork industry, to boosting shareholder investment in pharmaceutical stock. But I didn’t expect the charade to be so incompetent.

Dr. Besser went on to repeat the instructions with which we are meant to arm ourselves against the pandemic. Are you comforted any by the “duck and cover” advice they have to offer? What to do in the even of a pandemic: 1) wash your hands often, 2) cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze, 3) stay home if you feel sick –I’ll interrupt to point out the obvious, this is not advice for staying well, it’s advice for not contaminating others with what you have– and 4) stay away from sick people. Is that how the health experts make themselves useful?

And what sick people might those be?

The other farcical component to this Keystone Docs epidemic is what’s passing for a description of the “flu.” Black Plague victims didn’t know what they were up against, and apparently neither do we. To my mind it would help immeasurably to know what exactly is the ailment. Oh, you know, flu-like symptoms, basically like the common cold, or a headache or sore throat, or mono or strep or a nondescript uneasy feeling, with a fever. When it comes to defining the flu, it’s as if medical science is in the Dark Age.

I omitted the last instruction: 5) If you think you might be ill, see your doctor.

Now, how many of us have doctors we can see, or are prompted to visit a doctor about a headache or a sore throat? I’m convinced that if this epidemic sweeps through before we can even guard our sneezes, it will be because few have access to medical help. Infections will go largely unreported because there’s no one to make a record of your ailment before the issue is settled about what insurance coverage you have. In El Paso County, budget cutbacks have left only a skeleton crew at the county health department. No one’s left to do the work of surveying the public health in these parts.

That is to say, the only agencies with manpower left, and the only health care generally available to the American public, are the morgues. That’s where and when this pandemic will be charted, if it materializes.

Thanks to Tamiflu, we may just avert the phantom menace entirely.

Gore says 2009 is Turning Point in Environment Battle- Isn’t that a bunch of complete nonsense?

Posted on April 21, 2009 by Tony Logan

al gore aglow The DP liberals over at the Common Dreams website are out there pushing Al Gore dope off on us once again.

To the liberal ‘Peace’crat voter, somehow they have remade in their own minds Al Gore out to be the MAX ‘Green’, who is then made to stand alongside that MAX ‘Peacenic’, Jimmy ‘Peanut Butter’ Carter, always the two out under the spotlight as neo Democratic Party Saints!

Here it is then… Gore: 2009 Turning Point in Environment Battle …WTF? Not hardly, Al. Not even by a long shot! What a dope! And what a Democratic Party hack!

If you’re not on CD’s no fly shun list feel free to write them about pee GREEN Al. I did, and my comment is listed at #5 on the list of comments. I wonder if it will be removed? (I’m hoping that CD has gotten away from that sort of thing though???)

Just in case, here below are my remarks about Al Gore there.
—————————————————————————–
Gore, wasn’t he the ‘environmentalist’ who administered 8 years of economic war against the children of Iraq? YES! Now I remember him! He also began the fencing off and militarization of The Border between the US and Mexico, too. He is some sort of Green for sure! He and his Administration friends, Silvestre Reyes and Madelyn Albright.

Wait, something about oil in Colombia, too? And here’s Al in March this year…

‘I’m not a reflexive opponent of nuclear. I used to be enthusiastic about it, but I’m now sceptical about it.’

Well, YES, Al! My you’ve changed! Or have you really?

‘Yes, there is [more appetite for nuclear power now]. And because of the carbon crisis there will be more nuclear plants built and some of those being retired will be replaced by others. I think it will play a somewhat larger role, but it will not be the main option chosen.’

YES, such scepticism!

‘. People have said for years that there are now completely different [nuclear] technologies. OK, but if you have a team of scientists that can build a reactor, and you’re a dictator, you can make them work at night to build a nuclear weapon. That’s what’s happened in North Korea and Iran. And in Libya before they gave it up. So the idea of, say, Chad, Burma, and Sudan having lots of nuclear reactors is insane and it’s not going to happen.’

Let’s go to war, Gore! It’s the ‘green’ thing to do and now I see what a great environmentalist you are! You’re against nuclear power in Iran and Chad and Burma! Of course, but here it will be an option, but just maybe not ‘the major option’?

(Remarks taken from a Leo Hickman interview with Gore for the UK Guardian)
——————————————————————————————

And a final comment about Al Gore not put on CD just yet from The Tennessee Center for policy Research a comment titled

Al Gore’s Personal Energy Use Is His Own “Inconvenient Truth”
Gore’s home uses more than 20 times the national average

He says he’s fixed all that up though, using his own company, Generation Investment Management. He hopes to turn a nice profit in the eco- Business World while saving the planet for the Democratic Party!

How are police an economic stimulus?

Posted on March 10, 2009 by Eric Verlo

A first application of stimulus funds went to rescue law enforcement jobs in Ohio. Barack Obama was on hand to herald their taking the oath. Are you wondering how policemen meet the criteria used to justify taxpayer monies supposed to stimulate growth and common wealth?

Aside from the obvious, raising income for municipal entities, through fees, court costs, and social services. More action for the penal system, much of that already a growing private sector.

There would also be the police function of assuring stability, which encourages confidence in business investment. Or is that getting ahead of our recovery narrative?

More police anticipates America’s rising unemployment, and rising unrest. When the public faces repossessions, foreclosures, padlocked factories, and a drastic reduction in the supply of even the basic needs, local police departments are going to be the front line government service to teach the “tough love.”

I found this looking for something else. (About Mayor Rivera)

Posted on March 7, 2009 by Brother Jonah

I couldn’t embed it but here’s the link to the video.

I was looking for something that came up in the inevitable angry political discussion on the City Bus yesterday.

Actually, nobody was angry with or against each other.

We’re all just a little teensy tiny itty bitty small bit P.O.’d about the “Lower Class” being bought and sold like so many hummm… what’s that Minor Piece in a chess game, you know, the ones that always get sacrificed to save or capture a Chessman of higher rank, oh yeah… Pawns…

But it seems Our Illustrious Mayor has once again applied his own foot to his own mouth…

On the subject of cutting bus routes.

The bus in question is to one of the medical districts.

Which is getting a large percentage of Budgetary axe.

The other parties to the conversation were a retired lady and a lady who makes her living as a Teacher.

The Mayor, allegedly (but, for some strange reason, I believe every syllable of it) His Dis-Honor has made what he thought was an unrecorded remark that he doesn’t really care what bus passengers think because “The only people who ride the bus are bums and alcoholics”

This was supposed to be posted to YouTube after having been caught on a cell-phone camera.

I haven’t found it, YET.

Strangely, I have a lot of confidence that I will, and I don’t doubt for a moment that His Dis-Honor said that, simply because he has a long and rich history of making disparaging remarks about the Lower Classes, who, unlike himself, actually do the Labor that provides the wealth of Our Nation and more directly, his own Portfolio.

AND, about the soldiers who came back with pieces missing, both of body and mind, from the War of Conquest which benefits, directly, His Stock Portfolio.

One of the ladies, the schoolteacher, is blind. I had located the information she wanted on the Bus Route and schedule changes she had tried to ask the bus driver about.

The bus is the one she and the other lady use to go between their homes and, well, Everywhere Else.

I, as usual, was going to a doctor’s appointment.

One of the other bus Route Cancellation, 3 of them in fact, involve getting within a half-mile of Peak Vista Health Care, the El Paso County Health Department, and a Memorial Health Systems facility across Parkside Drive from Peak Vista.

In other words, facilities that serve the Disabled and Poor.

It’s not really a coincidence that those two groups merge at several points.

Also, in an entry into Jonah’s Museum of Spectacularly Bad Ideas, it seems the budget crunch was made an order of magnitude Worse by the reversal of the usual order of the Financial Universe,

Instead of issuing Municipal Bonds and having OTHER PEOPLE invest in the City, the City has been using Our Tax Money to ~~GAMBLE~~ errr… “invest” in the Stock Market, under the tutelage of Our Own Resident Pre-Chimpanzee Douglas Bruce.

The one who makes Les Freres Bush et menages look like Intellectual Giants by comparison.

I wonders, yes I does, if these Parasite Class Heroes bought, with our money, a whole bunch of those Mortgage Notes?

They could sue me for “Definition of Character” and if they win they would get everything I own.

At a net loss of the vast majority of the costs of hauling it away.

I guess they’re used to losing investments anyway.

There is much grumbling among the Working Class to the tune of a Recall Election to unseat these vermin.

As usual, Jonah speaks only for Jonah, but I think we should take that idea and run with it.

Colorado Springs own cloud maker

Posted on March 5, 2009 by Eric Verlo

Last week’s POWER SHIFT 09, where 12,000 student environmentalists converged on Washington, culminated with a protest of a DC power plant which still produced 40% of its electricity from coal. A threatened largest act of mass civil disobedience pushed Washington legislators to order the plant converted completely to natural gas. What a contrast to the awareness level in our own Colorado Springs, where the city wraps around a single coal power plant which consumes two coal train loads a day, its billowing stacks, local moms describe to their kids, give it the name “cloud maker.”

From a Capitol Climate Action PDF:

Ten Problems with Coal

1. Coal Fuels Global Warming
Coal is the largest single source of global warming pollution in the United States. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has reported that global warming threatens human populations and the world’s ecosystems with intensifying heat waves, floods, drought, extreme weather, and by spreading infectious diseases. Furthermore, it is conservatively estimated that the climate crisis will place a $271 billion annual drag on the U.S. economy alone by 2025. According to the IPCC, the United States and other industrialized countries need to reduce global warming pollution by 25–40 percent by 2025 to avoid the most severe impacts of the climate crisis.

2. Coal Kills People and Causes Disease
According to the American Lung Association, pollution from coal-fired power plants causes 23,600 premature deaths, 21,850 hospital admissions, 554,000 asthma attacks, and 38,200 heart attacks every year. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that 12,000 coal miners died from black lung disease between 1992 and 2002.

3. Coal Kills Jobs
The coal industry is one of the least job-intensive industries in America. Every dollar we invest in coal is a dollar we can’t spend creating jobs in the clean energy economy. In fact, the country’s wind sector now employs more workers than the coal industry. Investing in wind and solar power would create 2.8 times as many jobs as the same investment in coal; mass transit and conservation would create 3.8 times as many jobs as coal.

4. Coal Costs Billions in Taxpayer Subsidies
The U.S. government continues to subsidize coal-related projects despite its impact on health, climate and the economy.

5. Coal Destroys Mountains
Many coal companies now use mountaintop removal to extract coal. The process involves clear-cutting forests, using dynamite to blast away as much as 800–1000 feet of mountaintop and dumping the waste into nearby valleys and streams. Mountain-top removal has leveled more than 450 mountains across Appalachia. Mountain-top removal destroys ecosystems, stripping away topsoil, trees, and understory habitats, filling streams and valleys with rubble, poisoning water supplies, and generating massive impoundments that can cause catastrophic floods.

6. Burning Coal Emits Mercury
Coal-fired power plants are the largest source of man-made mercury pollution. Mercury can interfere with the development of babies’ brains and neurological systems. Elevated levels of mercury in Americans’ blood puts one in six babies born in the United States at elevated risk of learning disabilities, developmental delays, and problems with fine motor coordination. Already 49 U.S. states have issued fish consumption advisories due to high mercury concentrations in freshwater bodies throughout the country, largely due to coal emissions.

7. There’s No Such Thing as “Clean Coal”
Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), or what the coal industry is marketing as “clean coal,” is a hypothetical technology that may one day capture carbon dioxide from power plants and store it underground. However, the scheme has never been successfully demonstrated at a commercial scale, is wildly expensive, and can’t deliver in time to help with the climate crisis. Nationwide, approximately $5.2 billion in taxpayer and ratepayer money has been invested in the technology, but a recent government report found that of 13 projects examined, eight had serious delays or financial problems, six were years behind schedule, and two were bankrupt. Even if engineers are able to overcome the chemical and geological challenges of separating and safely storing massive quantities of CO2, a study published recently shows that CCS requires so much energy that it would increase emissions by up to 40 percent of smog, soot, and other dangerous pollution.

8. Coal Kills Rivers
Last December, a billion gallons of toxic coal sludge broke through a dike at the Kingston Fossil Plant in Tennessee and flooded the Emory and Clinch Rivers, tributaries of the massive Tennessee River system. Within hours, ash laden with mercury, lead, arsenic, benzene, and other toxic chemicals had contaminated the river and fish were washing up dead on the shore. The spill, which was followed days later by another coal ash spill at a TVA facility in Alabama, soon became a national symbol of the reality of “clean coal” and led to hearings in Congress; legislation is pending to regulate coal ash as a hazardous waste. The TVA recently estimated the clean-up costs from this one spill to be up to $825 million, with higher costs possible as a result of a variety of pending civil suits against the TVA.

9. Coal Plants Are Expensive
Communities considering construction of new coal-fired power plants are seeing these impacts first-hand. During a recent debate over building a new coal-fired power plant in southwest Virginia, state officials estimated that building a new plant (which would employ just 75 people permanently), would cost 1,474 jobs as businesses laid people off to pay the higher electricity costs from a new coal plant. With the United States running a huge deficit, we’ve got to make sure that whatever investments we do make pack the biggest job-creation bang for the buck.

10. Acid Rain
Acid rain, a byproduct of burning coal, destroys ecosystems, including streams and lakes, by changing their delicate pH balance. It can destroy forests, devastate plant and animal life, and eat away at man-made monuments and buildings.

Mark 6TH YEAR of Iraq Occupation with profiteers Boeing, Lockheed, GD and KBR

Posted on February 27, 2009 by NMT

A.N.S.W.E.R.’s March 21 MARCH ON THE PENTAGON to mark the sixth year of the War in Iraq will be directed not only at the US Department of Defense, but at the war profiteers for whom 2007 was a record year, among them Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and KBR. In Colorado Springs the merchants of death can be visited on one corner.

On March 21, 2009,
March on the Pentagon and the Corporate War Profiteers

The March on the Pentagon on Saturday, March 21 is shaping up to be a dramatic and highly significant demonstration. Many thousands of people are coming to Washington, D.C. to make their voices heard.

March 21 will culminate in a dramatic direct action where hundreds of coffins—representing the multinational victims of militarism, Empire and corporate greed—will be carried and delivered to the headquarters of the Corporate War Profiteers and Merchants of Death.

From the Pentagon, we will march to the nearby giant corporate offices of Boeing Company, Lockheed Martin Corporation, General Dynamics and KBR (the former subsidiary of Halliburton).

The march will start close to the State Department in Washington, D.C. (assemble at 12 noon at 23rd St. and Constitution Ave. NW).

Please make an urgently needed donation today by clicking this link to donate online through our secure server, where you can also find information on how to donate by check.

These are the Corporate War Profiteers and Merchants of Death. They are the vultures who profit off the death and suffering of the people of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine, and off of the thousands of U.S. soldiers and marines who have died or been wounded in these wars of aggression. They are anti-worker and anti-union.

The march will be led by a large contingent of veterans and family members of veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and from earlier conflicts.

Militarism and Corporate Capitalism
We will march on their slick-and-shiny corporate offices that are located less than a mile from the Pentagon. Their location in the very shadow of the Pentagon speaks volumes about the intimate connection between militarism and corporate capitalism.

When the Pentagon brass retire, they rotate out of their Pentagon offices and directly into the Corporate boardrooms and office suites of the Death Merchants. It is a very cozy and very profitable relationship for the elites—in and out of uniform. They make the profits, others do the bleeding.

Last year was a great year for the Corporate War Profiteers and Merchants of Death. Profits soared even as the rest of the economy neared collapse. The CEOs of the four corporations that we will be visiting on March 21 received more than $319 million in compensation in 2007 alone (and remember, that’s just for four individuals). “We the People” paid the bill for the high tech weapons that were used against occupied people in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. The Corporate Executives laughed all the way to the bank while grieving parents and children buried their loved ones from Baghdad to Kabul to Gaza to Detroit.

A quick examination shows that the CEOs of the Military-Industrial Complex contributed to both the Democratic and Republican Party candidates in almost equal amounts. They favor a system that ensures that politicians will come and go every four years but the military machine—that fusion of industry, banks and the Pentagon brass—will remain as is.

We Need Jobs & Schools – Not War!
The same banks that are being bailed out to the tune of trillions of dollars even while they foreclose families who can’t pay their mortgage debts are double-dipping from the national treasury by making huge profits in their investments in Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and KBR.

War is just good business for these corporate executives. Every F-16 bomber, attack helicopter, cruise missile and Drone bomber is a source of profit. If the wars stopped they would be out of business.

The people of this country are fed up with the status quo. They want decent-paying jobs, and affordable health care and housing for all. Students want to study rather than be driven out by soaring tuition rates. People want a complete—not partial—withdrawal of ALL troops from Iraq. They want the war in Afghanistan to end rather than escalate. They are increasingly opposed to sending $2.6 billion each year to Israel.

People are coming to Washington, D.C. on March 21 from college campuses, high schools, and cities and towns throughout the United States.

It is time for real change. Unless the movement for change stays in the streets, the powerful corporate and banking interests will certainly dominate the politics of this country. That is unacceptable. That is a path toward endless war and occupation abroad, and a massive transfer of wealth to the already rich at home.

All out for March 21! Jobs Not War! Schools Not War! Occupation is a Crime!

From pentagonmarch.org:

Meet the Corporate War Profiteers and Merchants of Death

W. James McNerney Jr.
CEO of Boeing.

2007 Total Compensation: $19 million. Value of Boeing Stock Owned: $25.7 million

Facts about Boeing:
Boeing currently produces numerous jets and bombers, including the B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber and the F/A-22 Raptor, as well as multiple surface-to-air missiles and various bombs. Boeing also produces the bolt-on JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munition) that turns gravity bombs into “smart” munitions.

Boeing supplies Israel with various weapon systems, including the F-15 Eagle fighter jet and A-64 Apache attack helicopter, as well as numerous types of bombs and missiles. It was these weapons that helped to kill 1,017 Palestinians killed in the Israeli invasion of Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009.

In 2008, Boeing made $2,225,947 in campaign contributions. 58 percent of these contributions were to Democrats, and 42 percent were to Republicans. In 2008, they spent $16,610,000 on lobbying.

Despite massive profits, Boeing opposed raises for plant employees, and attempted to outsource union jobs so that the company could be “more flexible.”

Robert J. Stevens
CEO of Lockheed Martin

2007 Total Compensation: $37 million. Value of Lockheed Martin Stock Owned: $33.8 million

Facts about Lockheed Martin:
Lockheed Martin currently produces the F-117 Stealth Fighter that was used in the brutal “Shock and Awe” bombings of Iraq, as well as the F/A-22 Raptor fighter jet. They also produces various missile systems, including the Hellfire and Javelin, and various nuclear weapon designs. Lockheed supplies fighter jets and other weapon systems to Israel.

Lockheed’s 2008 first-quarter revenue was $9.98 billion–an increase of $700 million from the year prior. By 2015, the F-35 program alone could represent more than $16 billion in annual revenue for the company.

Lockheed’s former vice-president, Bruce Jackson, headed the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq.

In 2005, Lockheed received $65 million every single day of the year from the U.S. government. That year, Lockheed garnered $228 in federal tax money from every household in the United States.

In 2008, Lockheed made $2.6 million in political contributions—49 percent to the Democrats and 51 percent to the Republicans.

In 2004, Lockheed spent nearly $10 million on more than 100 lobbyists. From 2001-2005, only Philip Morris and GE spent more money lobbying Congress. By 2008, that number was $15.8 million.

Nicholas D. Chabraja
CEO of General Dynamics

2007 Total Compensation: $60 million. Value of GD Stock Owned: $154.2 million

Facts about General Dynamics:
General Dynamics currently produces dozens of weapon systems, which include the Stryker Armored Combat Vehicle and the M-1 Abrams Main Battle Tank series, as well as other highly devastating artillery systems and the Trident Nuclear Submarine.

General Dynamics has supplied Israel with various weapon systems, including the F-16 Falcon fighter jet.

In 2008, General Dynamics made $1,682,595 in campaign contributions—58 percent to the Democrats and 42 percent to the Republicans.

Also in 2008, General Dynamics spent $8,562,439 lobbying for government contracts.

Fueled by sales of business jets and military-combat equipment, General Dynamics reported a 32 percent jump in first-quarter profits for 2008, to $573 million. The backlog of work not completed far outpaced revenues, growing by 14 percent to nearly $50 billion.

Analysts think General Dynamics and Mr. Chabraja will do even better next year, noting the “upside potential” of the combat-systems group, which is benefiting from the U.S. Army’s restocking of equipment lost, damaged or worn by operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, in addition to a $12 billion backlog of orders for corporate jets.

William P. Utt
CEO of Kellogg Brown & Root.

2007 Total Compensation: $3.29 million. Value of KBR Stock Owned: $6.5 million

Facts about KBR:
There are roughly 14,000 KBR employees inside of Iraq that provide logistical support to the U.S. military. KBR has made billions off of “reconstruction” contracts within Iraq.

KBR is the largest non-union construction company in the United States. It has won many contracts with the U.S. government, including $100 million to build a U.S. embassy in Afghanistan, as well as $216 million for the construction of several base camps and training foreign troops from the Republic of Georgia.

Despite at least a dozen former employees alleging they had been raped by co-workers in Iraq and other employees saying co-workers regularly stole gold, artwork, and weapons, KBR remains in the Pentagon’s good graces. In mid-April, it received a 10-year, $150 billion contract to support the military overseas.

CEO William Utt called 2008 an “outstanding year,” saying KBR posted record profitability.

Despite many scandals and controversies, KBR reported that its first quarter net profits for 2008 more than tripled, from $28 million the previous year to $98 million.

ANSWER Coalition Responds to President Obama’s Iraq Speech of Friday, February 27

With his speech today, President Obama has essentially agreed to continue the criminal occupation of Iraq indefinitely. He announced that there will be an occupation force of 50,000 U.S. troops in Iraq for at least three more years. President Obama used carefully chosen words to avoid a firm commitment to remove the 50,000 occupation troops, even after 2011.

The war in Iraq was illegal. It was aggression. It was based on lies and false rationales. President Obama’s speech today made Bush’s invasion sound like a liberating act and congratulated the troops for “getting the job done.” More than a million Iraqis died and a cruel civil war was set into motion because of the foreign invasion. President Obama did not once criticize the invasion itself.

He has also requested an increase in war spending for Iraq and Afghanistan, and plans to double the number of U.S. troops sent to fight in Afghanistan.

President Obama has asked Congress to provide more than $200 billion for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars over the next two years, in addition to increasing the Pentagon budget by four percent.

Based on President Obama’s new budget, the Pentagon would rank as the world’s 17th largest economy—if it were a country. This new budget increases war spending. Total spending in 2010 would roughly equate to an average of $21,000 a second.

This is not the end of the occupation of Iraq, but rather the continuation of the occupation.

There is only one reason that tens of thousands of troops will remain in Iraq: It is because this is a colonial-type occupation of a strategically important and oil-rich country located in the Middle East where two-thirds of the world’s oil reserve can be found.

Obama’s speech was a major disappointment for anyone who was hoping that Obama would renounce the illegal occupation of Iraq. Today, the U.S. government spends $480 million per day to fund the occupation of Iraq. Even if 100,000 troops are drawn out by August 2010, that means the indefinite occupation of Iraq will cost more than $100 million each day. The continued occupation of Iraq for two years or three years or more makes a complete mockery out of the idea that the Iraqi people control their own destiny. It is a violation of Iraq’s sovereignty and independence.

It is no wonder that John McCain came out to support President Obama’s announced plan on Iraq. McCain was an supporter of former President Bush’s and Vice President Cheney’s war and occupation in Iraq.

Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld—the architects of regime change in Iraq—never had the goal of indefinitely keeping 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. They wanted to subdue the Iraqi people and exercise control with a smaller force. The Iraqi armed resistance prolonged the stationing of 150,000 U.S. troops.

Bush’s goal was domination over Iraq and its oil supplies, and domination over the region. This continues to be the goal of the U.S. political and economic establishment, including that of the new administration.

President Obama decided not to challenge the fundamental strategic orientation. That explains why he kept the Bush team—Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and Generals Petraeus and Odierno—on the job to oversee and manage the Iraq occupation. They will also manage the widening U.S. war in Afghanistan and the aerial assaults on Pakistan. There have been over 30 U.S. bombing attacks in Pakistan in the last two months.

We are marching on Saturday, March 21 because the people of this country are fed up with the status quo. They want decent-paying jobs, and affordable health care and housing for all. Students want to study rather than be driven out by soaring tuition rates. The majority of people want a complete—not partial—withdrawal of ALL troops from Iraq. They want the war in Afghanistan to end rather than escalate. They are increasingly opposed to sending $2.6 billion each year to Israel and want an end to the colonial occupation of Palestine.

the short end of the stick

Posted on February 11, 2009 by Marie Walden

hazelwood tally stick It was one of the greatest heists in history. The scene? London, 1660. The perpetrator? England’s King Charles the II. The loot? All the gold he could con out of the country’s goldsmiths, bankers and businessmen. The tool?

A tally stick.

Tally sticks were a brilliant invention, but they were also insidious as they formed the foundation for the fiat currency systems we still have today. One where the root of a currency’s value is in a promise from a faceless institution, and not in the actual value of an object.

Put into use about a thousand years ago, they were a common sense solution for a young gold-and-goods economy where gold was scarce. By the time of the heist they were used in everyday transactions.

Here is how it worked. When a loan was made, the debt was carved in a standard fashion on the surface of a small (preferably hazelwood) stick, and then the stick was split in half through the center of the carving. The longer end of the IOU was given to the purchaser, and its handle was called the “stock” — the root of the word’s use in today’s markets.

Even a mostly illiterate public could read the amount scratched into the wood, and the stick would only fit perfectly with its original other half. That way, when the debtor returned with the money (or goods) owed, the sticks would be matched and the debt would be “tallied.”

In that fundamental use, they worked perfectly. But of course, as is governments’ way, the King was tempted to stretch those bounds.

Charles II ruled at a time when royal power was still based on a divine mandate. His government and institutions — and indeed he himself — saw the king as the Chosen One, which was a real shame for him because it bound him to the laws of Christendom. And Christianity at the time still forbade lending or borrowing with usury (interest). When financing several failing wars against neighboring countries depleted royal coffers, Charles II needed some quick cash to continue living in kingly fashion.

King Charles II turned to the trusted tally and the keen idea of selling his (government) tallies (debt) at a discount. That way he could allow his lenders to profit without charging interest — the basis for government debt being sold at a discount today.

And the King could issue advance tallies for emergency spending, an idea that proved all too tempting. He sold the tallies collected by his Exchequer (tax collector), essentially trading future tax receipts to the country’s goldsmiths (bankers) for quick cash.

The tallies were receipts for taxes to be paid later in the year. This is a crucial part of the story: they weren’t trading on the value of the objects being traded, but on the cost of waiting for a return and the government’s ability to collect taxes and stay honest. If the government is not honest, this is an outright Ponzi scheme, one where new debt issue could theoretically pay for passing bills. For a while.

The King realized that he’d stumbled onto something big. He could wage all the war he wanted and pay his bills with the gold he got for hazelwood. The King spent and spent, and the goldsmiths’ vaults filled up with more and more sticks.

Goldsmiths were handing out certificates for fractional gold reserves and inflating the young economy in a con all their own. And since the King played along with their early building of a banking system, they played along with the sticks-for-gold investment strategy.

Over time, the market got wise to the game. Buyers started attaching larger and larger discounts to the King’s debt to offset the perceived risk in loaning money to the King. The discounts prompted the King to issue even more tallies, promising out more future tax revenues just to meet his short-term spending desires. But remember only the discount was changing here. So the mountain of taxes to be redeemed in order to pay off his debts grew in comparison, soon overwhelming the King’s income.

By the time the whole Ponzi scheme came to an end, the King’s sticks were trading at a 10% discount (to put that into perspective, short-term T-Bills are currently trading with discounts of one-tenth of one percent or less). The payments on his newer issues trading at that discount soon outmatched all the Kingdom’s tax revenues, effectively bankrupting his Exchequer and threatening to put the monarchy in the poorhouse.

So with the stroke of a pen, the King simply declared those debts illegal and ceased payment.

With that single stroke he stole most of England’s gold — having already spent it — and forced the young economy to fall flat on its face. The King’s various creditors ended up on “the short end of the stick” and all credit in the country evaporated very nearly overnight.

Pretty scary, huh? I’m glad such a thing could never happen today.

NACA urges nonviolent bank terrorism

Posted on February 5, 2009 by Eric Verlo

The Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America is suggesting you take your mortgage company protest to the streets, their streets. Specifically the neghborhood where your predatory lender CEO lives. Let his kids meet your kids. Let them ask their daddy why your children are being put out on the street. NACA has listed online all the pertinent names and addresses to facilitate what they call the “Predators Tour,” a sort of involuntary Parade of Homes.

To fight eviction, NACA cautions victims to remain in their homes, and solicit legal help. But when it comes to changing mortgage lending policy, NACA promotes CONFRONTATION and ADVOCACY. They’re calling these posh neighborhood rallies: nonviolent bank terrorism.

NATIONAL CITY MORTGAGE
Peter Raskind, CEO
(216) 222-2000
peter.raskind@nationalcity.com
Net worth: $5 Million
Home value: $1 Million
19212 Shelburne Road, Cleveland, OH 44118

HSBC
Brendan Mcdonagh, CEO
(224) 544-6676
Net worth: $20 Million
Home value: $2.5 Million
1065 Fisher Ln, Winnetka, IL 60093

CERBERUS CAPITAL MANAGEMENT (GMAC)
Stephen Feinberg, CEO
(212) 891-2100
Net worth: $1 Billion
City Address: $19.75 Million
36 East 67th Street, New York, NY 10065
Weekend address: $1.1 Million
35 Craig Court, Stamford, CT 06903

GREENWICH FINANCIAL SERVICES
William Frey, CEO
(203) 862-3600
Bill@greenwichfin.com
Home value: $2.2 Million
10 Glenville Road, Greenwich, CT 06831

GOLDMAN SACHS
Lloyd Blankfein, CEO
(212) 902-1000
Lloyd.Blankfein@gs.com
Net worth: $350 Million
Vacation Home: $6.05 Million
121 Parsonage Lane, Sagaponack, NY 11962
City address: $26 Million
15 Central Park West 1617A, New York, NY 10023

MORGAN STANLEY
John Mack, CEO
(212) 761-4000
Net worth: $400 Million
Home value: $2.75 Million
6 Club Road, Rye, NY 10580
Vacation address 1: $7.8 Million
53 S. Beach Road, Wilmington, NC 28411
Vacation Address 2: $4.34 Million
54 S. Beach Road, Wilmington, NC 28411

BARCLAYS
Robert Diamond, CEO
(212) 412-4000
Net worth: $200 Million
Vacation address: $6.5 Million
3 Lincoln Way, Nantucket, MA 02554

CREDIT SUISSE
Robert Shafir, CEO Americas
(212) 325-2000
Net worth: $20 Million
Vacation home: $3.25 Million
354 Bluff Road, Amagansett, NY 11930

FORTRESS INVESTMENT GROUP, LLC,
Wesley Edens, CEO
(212) 798-6100,
Net Worth: $1.6 Billion
Country address: $1.88 Million
8 Oyster Pond Road, Edgartown, MA 02539
City Address: $7.23 Million
271 Central Park West, New York, NY 10024

The shipping news

Posted on January 22, 2009 by Marie Walden

The whining and hang-wringing about the “credit crunch” is getting on my nerves. It was this supposed crisis that led to the $700 billion bailout and we’re told every day that it must be solved quickly, no matter the cost, or we’re toast. But why? How many of us are actively seeking credit right now? Surely the developers and retailers want us to have lots and lots of it so we can keep hyper-consuming their goods; the bankers want us to have it so they can collect their interest and fees but, seriously, is free-flowing credit what the American public needs right now? Living beyond our means is what caused the credit meltdown in the first place!

Here’s a meaty statistic: the Baltic Dry Index, which measures the demand for global shipping capacity, dropped from 11,793 last May to, get this, an inconceivable zero. The complexity of the BDI is beyond the scope of this post but, suffice it to say, there are lots of cargo ships sitting at anchor today. The collapse of the BDI augurs a rapidly evaporating demand for foreign goods. Combine this with the massive deterioration in domestic consumption during the fourth quarter of 2008, and wager a guess as to the meaning of it all. We’re not buying anything and the world is following suit! So tell me, Wall Street wizards, why the continued hyperbole about a credit crunch?

How could our purchasing habits change so dramatically overnight? Currently, Americans own an estimated 250 million personal computers and 175 million iPods. There are 9 million mobile homes within our borders, approximately 102-130 million single-family homes, and countless million apartments. One could safely assert that there’s a home, an mp3 player and a personal computer for every man, woman and child in the United States. I’ll go on. Everyone has a television, a cell phone. Nearly everyone owns a car. Most have closets full of clothes they never wear, and we all have too many shoes. So when Barack Obama, Ben Bernanke or anyone else talks about freeing up the flow of credit, we should ask ourselves why.

Recently, through the dense economic fog came a thin ray of revelation: I may actually have enough stuff. Perhaps, just maybe, I can stop buying new stuff for awhile. I can keep my slightly dented iPod for yet another year. My Toyota with 90,000 miles is probably good for another road trip or two. I won’t move to a bigger house just yet, or buy the 52″ flatscreen Santa forgot to leave under the tree. I may have to forego the spring sales and make do with last summer’s tank tops, wrong color though they may be.

I don’t mean to minimize the hardship of doing without, but we are a nation of excess inventory. Somewhere in our stuffed dressers and overfull garages, there is room to accommodate a changed perspective.

Wall Street is telling us that all will soon be well. If we just give them hundreds of billions, they’ll take their cut and loan the rest to us so we can get back to “business as usual”. But what if we don’t cooperate with their economic “recovery” plan? What if we collectively turn our backs on Wall Street and Madison Avenue and live simply, buying what we need and paying as we go, stopping to share with others along the way?

Remember, our banks and investment companies built themselves toward inevitable failure during the economic boom. Don’t expect them to act nobly in the coming recession because they won’t. You can bank on that. So stop worrying about their silly market indices and their credit machinations. Let the Federal government give them another trillion pieces of worthless paper. Help them plaster their walls with negotiable instruments. Make them eat derivatives for breakfast, sell them short against the box and leverage them to outerspace. Leave them with their excess shipping capacity and their phantom dollar bills.

It’s time for the rest of us to disembark this sinking stinking ship for good.

US ruling class tries to put new lipstick on its pig

Posted on January 21, 2009 by Tony Logan

airplane crash wtc Banks crashed on the day of CHANGE that isn’t change, and the ruling class tried to put new lipstick on its pig. No major bank was spared the carnage as Bank of America’s shares plunged 29 percent; Citigroup’s 20 percent, and State Street Corp., which reported sharply lower earnings, saw its shares plummet 59 percent.

“The financial stocks got murdered,” said Jack A. Ablin, chief investment officer at Harris Private Bank in Chicago. “They were basically cut in half.” See the AP… Banks sink deeper into crisis on Obama’s first day Obama is now the newest lipstick to this pig, the same old US military-industrial-governmental complex.

Obama doesn’t have either a plan nor a clue. What he does have is the backing of the US ruling class elite and that is why he is in office today, and none of that has to do with a ‘new movement’ yet arising. All his (their) empty rhetoric is now about to come totally stripped off his Hawaiian toned body, and his groupies may now cheer but the final result will be quite grim for all soon to see. All that this Barack Brand Lipstick really has to offer is yet more and more attempted cosmetic sales for a decaying, disintegrating global economic system of war and poverty, racism and genocide.

There is no agenda for change in the making in the US of today. The population remains passively accepting of any sort of new cruelty offered up by its own ruling class to all others in the world, as somehow they still think that that will continue to salvage some sort of world for themselves by doing so? All we can do for the moment is wait and see if some new awakening will begin to come forth, though it appears that first total disintegrating disaster must gain the reign supreme.

Americans still just don’t want to change nor have CHANGE come about. And until they might, we will continue to plummet all into the abyss. Sorry, but one just cannot prettify much this new lipstick on the same old pig. It simply really is the same old stuff as before, and while we expect lots of prettifying of it in the press, some minor efforts to do away with some of the worst, and lots of talk, the reality of capitalist worldwide depression will soon hit. Then the real suffering will actually begin. We are in a complete economic down spin now and Pilot Barack will not be laying us down lightly into the Hudson River on this one.

Barack gives Bank of America ‘overdraft protection’ as he bankrupts the US public

Posted on January 16, 2009 by Tony Logan

The Republicans gave the banks hundreds upon hundreds of billions of dollars, but that was not enough. Barack, instead of spending money to help house the homeless, institute universal medical coverage, or better Social Security for the elderly and incapacitated, thinks Bank of America’s corporate owners need yet more of your tax monies! What a wild CHANGE in thinking here! He brings us visions of Barack Lincoln, freeing the corporate class from all responsibilities! Poor slaves.

I got ‘overdraft protection’ from Bank of America, and I went over about $2 on a Safeway debit card purchase with them. They charged me over $100 before I even knew about it. I had told them I didn’t want their ‘protection’, but they had given me it anyway. So I closed out with them, Bank of America not even having any local banks in the area. Now they call me twice a day with a recorded message and have screwed with my credit rating. That’s my overdraft protection’ plan from them…. phone harassment.

If somebody came and knocked repeatedly twice a day unsolicited on my front door, the police would go get them for this abuse. But Bank of America can bombard me with computerized phone calls 14 times a week, and nobody calls that a crime, except for me. The bastards. Why doesn’t Barack Obama give me ‘overdraft protection’ from the Bank of America criminals?

Bank of America though has been given much better and real overdraft protection by their cronies, Barack and Dubya, the DP and RP. Little accounting error? Then Dubya and Barack are stumbling all over themselves to rush multiple tens of billions to Bank of America to fix their small little banking ‘error’!

They could actually nationalize the damn Bank of America and that would be fine by me. Hey, why doesn’t our government do just exactly that? Nationalizing is what they do with many small folk who go to jail if they do not pay off money they steal from others through their ‘bad investments’. Heck, the cops never even give small crooks the option to return that money, it’s simply you have been ‘nationalized’ and now you spend the next 20 years with us! Where’s the respect for small time crooks who are merely emulating the Bank Of America Big Boys with their financial thefts? The ‘law’ is rather strange in America… Rob little and you are a Bad Boy. Rob BIG, and the government starts throwing other people’s money at you!

Bank of America bail-out agreed I didn’t agree, did you agree? You did if you voted for Barack Obama, Mr. and Mrs. DP ‘Liberal’. You’re always being led around on upper class leash by hooks in your noses, it rather does seem… Dupes.

Who is the economy calling stupid?

Posted on January 15, 2009 by Eric Verlo

Okay, I’ve had enough of our readiness to believe, about the economy, that nobody knows what’s going on. Nobody will tell you what’s going on, is what’s going on.

Even my deepest thinking friend tells me, “Eric, they really don’t know” (The game theorists, the would-be global axis shifters, don’t know.) He may be right, but that’s not who we’re talking about. Between those guys, and you and I, who have no clue about where the economy is going, is a hand-basket courier. That composite abstraction at the handlebars knows the destination, he’s being paid cost-plus for the delivery, and he knows enough to collect his fee in advance.

We thought “it’s the economy, stupid” was directed at George Bush the Senior. Who is/was stupid? I’m finding the syncronicity of Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill song “Isn’t it ironic?” superlatively ironic. The era when a mass audience un-learned the meaning of irony, was when the joke was really on us.

Today the accepted theme to describe the economy is: nobody knows. I recently heard the governor of Colorado speak to the need for budget cuts in these hard times. He introduced the subject of the economic downturn by explaining, almost as a throwaway foregone conclusion, “Nobody saw this coming.”

I thought, really? This is what Americans are satisfied to expect for leadership? Elected authority figures return our system to us, broken, with not a mea culpa, but mea confuso. And we buy it.

For me, this no-comprendo motif doesn’t play well in Adagio. Today DC’s new lawmakers want to know what’s become of the first half of the TARP bailout money, and the good-enough-for-primetime answer is “nobody knows.” Don’t you just want to stand up and beg your fellow audience members for a collective show of incredulity? “NOBODY KNOWS?!”

Whoever pocketed the 350 Billion, KNOWS.

From explanations of the graft in Iraq, we the television public KNOW that just one million dollars in t-bills weighs more than you can get past surveillance cameras.

From nighttime video of the economic collapse in Argentina, documentary footage viewers know it takes a continuous train of armored trucks to do a run on the banks before the public gets there.

By the way, I’m certain Billion is always capitalized, out of respect for its size.

“Nobody knows” where went the 350 Billion? No. Nobody who knows, intends to tell us.

Either way, we don’t get to know, but the distinction makes a difference, don’t you think? The excuse we’re given for not dwelling on this incongruity, nudge nudge wink wink, is that all misdirection is for the sake of consumer confidence.

To look behind the green curtain is to become dis-illusioned. If you explain the slight of hand, instead of building confidence, you throw fuel on consumer doubt.

The better economists opposed the bailout. Hundreds of them signed a petition to tell us what’s going on is a heist. Under George Bush, bankers have been making off with the US treasury. What they couldn’t spend pay themselves to foist a war, or give themselves in tax cuts, they are having to abscond with under cover of an eleventh hour “bailout.”

The best of the honest economists, Paul Krugman, was given a Nobel Prize. At the same time, our president-to-the-rescue is saying he’d consider the advice of “even Paul Krugman,” like Krugman is a fringe opinion.

Do we empower the American public beast with a truer education about what’s happening to their finances, or do we narrow their peripheral foresight like the gangway to the abbatoire?

P.T. Barnum said no one ever went broke underestimating the American public. Barnum saw opportunity and he took it. I’ll bet he wasn’t satisfied to invest his winnings on the advice of the public’s broker.

The economy is tanking because the Bush investment banker free-for-all is over.

The cash heart of the consumer confidence fattened-calf is already in the bloody hands of the high priests. The American consumer is what’s being thrown off the wall. And the communal wealth of America’s middle class can’t be put together again because the pieces which formed Humpty Dumpty’s actual pre-confidence-ballooned size are going to come up missing.

Not missing, exactly. Look at the corporate jets, private skyboxes, enormous estates, private island kingdoms and advance ticket sales of quarter-million-dollar fares into space.

With much recent ballyhoo, George Bush set aside for protection some nature preserves in the Pacific. Unlike Yellowstone, or Yosemite, these parks of azure coral reefs are inaccessible. To you.

Barack Obama’s spread-the-wealth-around campaign lingo had nothing to do with the mad scramble to divvy the pot. Obama represents our non-insider’s reflexive grab for the fewer spoons. If Obama represents a wisening up at all.

Beyond buy low, sell high, here’s an example of how the scam worked: If a $100K house can be made seem worth $500K, a broker gets five times the commission, say $60K instead of $12K, and collects that money in cash. When the cows come home, you’ve got just a house, and let’s admit that value is arbitrary. But the broker is free and clear, his gleaning of a cash value done.

And actually, your house is not even worth the cost to build it. As the democratic capitalist apparatus downgrades, and the wealthy lose empathy for the lower classes, your house is worth just the value of the shelter it provides. Look at the concern they show for your health care. Your well-being, food and shelter wise, is worth only as much as the value you add to your landlord’s pleasure.

MLK: Why I am Opposed to the War

Posted on January 15, 2009 by NMT

“You’re too arrogant! And if you don’t change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power, and I’ll place it in the hands of a nation that doesn’t even know my name. Be still and know that I’m God.”

Sermon at the Ebenezer Baptist Church on April 30, 1967. Full text below.

The sermon which I am preaching this morning in a sense is not the usual kind of sermon, but it is a sermon and an important subject, nevertheless, because the issue that I will be discussing today is one of the most controversial issues confronting our nation. I’m using as a subject from which to preach,

“Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam.”

Now, let me make it clear in the beginning, that I see this war as an unjust, evil, and futile war. I preach to you today on the war in Vietnam because my conscience leaves me with no other choice. The time has come for America to hear the truth about this tragic war. In international conflicts, the truth is hard to come by because most nations are deceived about themselves. Rationalizations and the incessant search for scapegoats are the psychological cataracts that blind us to our sins. But the day has passed for superficial patriotism. He who lives with untruth lives in spiritual slavery. Freedom is still the bonus we receive for knowing the truth. “Ye shall know the truth,” says Jesus, “and the truth shall set you free.” Now, I’ve chosen to preach about the war in Vietnam because I agree with Dante, that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality. There comes a time when silence becomes betrayal.

The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one’s own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexing, as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we’re always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty. But we must move on. Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony. But we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for in all our history there has never been such a monumental dissent during a war, by the American people.

Polls reveal that almost fifteen million Americans explicitly oppose the war in Vietnam. Additional millions cannot bring themselves around to support it. And even those millions who do support the war [are] half-hearted, confused, and doubt-ridden. This reveals that millions have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism, to the high grounds of firm dissent, based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Now, of course, one of the difficulties in speaking out today grows the fact that there are those who are seeking to equate dissent with disloyalty. It’s a dark day in our nation when high-level authorities will seek to use every method to silence dissent. But something is happening, and people are not going to be silenced. The truth must be told, and I say that those who are seeking to make it appear that anyone who opposes the war in Vietnam is a fool or a traitor or an enemy of our soldiers is a person that has taken a stand against the best in our tradition.

Yes, we must stand, and we must speak. [tape skip]…have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam. Many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns, this query has often loomed large and loud:

“Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent?” Peace and civil rights don’t mix, they say.

And so this morning, I speak to you on this issue, because I am determined to take the Gospel seriously. And I come this morning to my pulpit to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation.

This sermon is not addressed to Hanoi, or to the National Liberation Front. It is not addressed to China or to Russia. Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. Nor is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they must play in a successful resolution of the problem. This morning, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the National Liberation Front, but rather to my fellow Americans, who bear the greatest responsibility, and entered a conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents.

Now, since I am a preacher by calling, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is…a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I and others have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed that there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both black and white, through the Poverty Program. There were experiments, hopes, and new beginnings. Then came the build-up in Vietnam. And I watched the program broken as if it was some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war. And I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money, like some demonic, destructive suction tube. And you may not know it, my friends, but it is estimated that we spend $500,000 to kill each enemy soldier, while we spend only fifty-three dollars for each person classified as poor, and much of that fifty-three dollars goes for salaries to people that are not poor. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor, and attack it as such.

Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hope of the poor at home. It was sending their sons, and their brothers, and their husbands to fight and die in extraordinarily high proportion relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in Southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with a cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same school room. So we watch them in brutal solidarity, burning the huts of a poor village. But we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago or Atlanta. Now, I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.

My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettos of the North over the last three years–especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through non-violent action; for they ask and write me, “So what about Vietnam?” They ask if our nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems to bring about the changes it wanted.

Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without first having spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence I cannot be silent.

Been a lot of applauding over the last few years. They applauded our total movement; they’ve applauded me. America and most of its newspapers applauded me in Montgomery. And I stood before thousands of Negroes getting ready to riot when my home was bombed and said, we can’t do it this way. They applauded us in the sit-in movement–we non-violently decided to sit in at lunch counters. The applauded us on the Freedom Rides when we accepted blows without retaliation. They praised us in Albany and Birmingham and Selma, Alabama. Oh, the press was so noble in its applause, and so noble in its praise when I was saying, Be non-violent toward Bull Connor; when I was saying, Be non-violent toward [Selma, Alabama segregationist sheriff] Jim Clark.

There’s something strangely inconsistent about a nation and a press that will praise you when you say, Be non-violent toward Jim Clark, but will curse and damn you when you say, “Be non-violent toward little brown Vietnamese children. There’s something wrong with that press!

As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1964. And I cannot forget that the Nobel Peace Prize was not just something taking place, but it was a commission–a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for the brotherhood of Man. This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances.

But even if it were not present, I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me, the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the Good News was meant for all men, for communists and capitalists, for their children and ours, for black and white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the One who loved His enemies so fully that he died for them? What, then, can I say to the Vietcong, or to Castro, or to Mao, as a faithful minister to Jesus Christ? Can I threaten them with death, or must I not share with them my life?

Finally, I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be the son of the Living God. Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of son-ship and brotherhood. And because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned, especially for His suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come today to speak for them.

And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond in compassion, my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak not now of the soldiers of each side, not of the military government of Saigon, but simply of the people who have been under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think of them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution until some attempt is made to know these people and hear their broken cries.

Now, let me tell you the truth about it. They must see Americans as strange liberators.

Do you realize that the Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1945 after a combined French and Japanese occupation? And incidentally, this was before the Communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. And this is a little-known fact, and these people declared themselves independent in 1945. They quoted our Declaration of Independence in their document of freedom, and yet our government refused to recognize them. President Truman said they were not ready for independence. So we fell victim as a nation at that time of the same deadly arrogance that has poisoned the international situation for all of these years. France then set out to reconquer its former colony. And they fought eight long, hard, brutal years trying to re-conquer Vietnam. You know who helped France? It was the United States of America. It came to the point that we were meeting more than eighty percent of the war costs. And even when France started despairing of its reckless action, we did not. And in 1954, a conference was called at Geneva, and an agreement was reached, because France had been defeated at Dien Bien Phu.

But even after that, and after the Geneva Accord, we did not stop. We must face the sad fact that our government sought, in a real sense, to sabotage the Geneva Accord. Well, after the French were defeated, it looked as if independence and land reform would come through the Geneva agreement. But instead the United States came and started supporting a man named Diem who turned out to be one of the most ruthless dictators in the history of the world. He set out to silence all opposition. People were brutally murdered because they raised their voices against the brutal policies of Diem. And the peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly rooted out all opposition. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by United States influence and by increasing numbers of United States troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem’s methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown, they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictatorships seemed to offer no real change, especially in terms of their need for land and peace. And who are we supporting in Vietnam today? It’s a man by the name of general Ky [Air Vice Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky] who fought with the French against his own people, and who said on one occasion that the greatest hero of his life is Hitler. This is who we are supporting in Vietnam today. Oh, our government and the press generally won’t tell us these things, but God told me to tell you this morning. The truth must be told.

The only change came from America as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept, and without popular support and all the while the people read our leaflets and received regular promises of peace and democracy and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow Vietnamese, the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps, where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move or be destroyed by our bombs. So they go, primarily women, and children and the aged. They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the towns and see thousands of thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers. We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have cooperated in the crushing of the nation’s only noncommunist revolutionary political force, the United Buddhist Church. This is a role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolutions impossible but refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that comes from the immense profits of overseas investments. I’m convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, militarism and economic exploitation are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be changed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth with righteous indignation. It will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say, “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war, “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

Oh, my friends, if there is any one thing that we must see today is that these are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. They are saying, unconsciously, as we say in one of our freedom songs, “Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around!” It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has a revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo, we shall boldly challenge unjust mores, and thereby speed up the day when

“every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the rough places shall be made plain, and the crooked places straight. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.”

A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies. This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing, unconditional love for all men. This oft misunderstood and misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of mankind. And when I speak of love I’m not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of John: “Let us love one another, for God is love. And every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us.”

Let me say finally that I oppose the war in Vietnam because I love America. I speak out against this war, not in anger, but with anxiety and sorrow in my heart, and, above all, with a passionate desire to see our beloved country stand as the moral example of the world. I speak out against this war because I am disappointed with America. And there can be no great disappointment where there is not great love. I am disappointed with our failure to deal positively and forthrightly with the triple evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism. We are presently moving down a dead-end road that can lead to national disaster. America has strayed to the far country of racism and militarism. The home that all too many Americans left was solidly structured idealistically; its pillars were solidly grounded in the insights of our Judeo-Christian heritage. All men are made in the image of God. All men are bothers. All men are created equal. Every man is an heir to a legacy of dignity and worth. Every man has rights that are neither conferred by, nor derived from the State–they are God-given. Out of one blood, God made all men to dwell upon the face of the earth. What a marvelous foundation for any home! What a glorious and healthy place to inhabit. But America’s strayed away, and this unnatural excursion has brought only confusion and bewilderment. It has left hearts aching with guilt and minds distorted with irrationality.

It is time for all people of conscience to call upon America to come back home. Come home, America. Omar Khayyam is right: “The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on.”

I call on Washington today. I call on every man and woman of good will all over America today. I call on the young men of America who must make a choice today to take a stand on this issue.

Tomorrow may be too late. The book may close. And don’t let anybody make you think that God chose America as his divine, messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world. God has a way of standing before the nations with judgment, and it seems that I can hear God saying to America,

“You’re too arrogant!

And if you don’t change your ways,

I will rise up and break the backbone of your power,

and I’ll place it in the hands of a nation that doesn’t even know my name.

Be still and know that I’m God.”

Now it isn’t easy to stand up for truth and for justice. Sometimes it means being frustrated. When you tell the truth and take a stand, sometimes it means that you will walk the streets with a burdened heart. Sometimes it means losing a job…means being abused and scorned. It may mean having a seven, eight year old child asking a daddy, “Why do you have to go to jail so much?” And I’ve long since learned that to be a follower to the Jesus Christ means taking up the cross. And my bible tells me that Good Friday comes before Easter. Before the crown we wear, there is the cross that we must bear. Let us bear it–bear it for truth, bear it for justice, and bear it for peace. Let us go out this morning with that determination. And I have not lost faith. I’m not in despair, because I know that there is a moral order. I haven’t lost faith, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. I can still sing “We Shall Overcome” because Carlyle was right: “No lie can live forever.” We shall overcome because William Cullen Bryant was right: “Truth pressed to earth will rise again.” We shall overcome because James Russell Lowell was right: “Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne.” Yet, that scaffold sways the future. We shall overcome because the bible is right: “You shall reap what you sow.”

With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.

With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.

With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.

With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when the lion and the lamb will lie down together, and every man will sit under his own vine and fig tree, and none shall be afraid because the words of the Lord have spoken it.

With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when all over the world we will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we’re free at last!”

With this faith, we’ll sing it as we’re getting ready to sing it now. Men will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. And nations will not rise up against nations, neither shall they study war anymore. And I don’t know about you, I ain’t gonna study war no more.

Meeting Senator-to-be Michael Bennet

Posted on January 10, 2009 by Eric Verlo

COLORADO SPRINGS- Governor Bill Ritter introduced his appointment to the US Senate, political novice Michael Bennet, to an audience of Springs Democrats today. Judging just by Bennet’s own words, this development is about as disappointing as it gets. Full report after this note:

Both men spoke predominantly about education, considering Michael Bennet current position as Superintendent of Denver Public Schools.

Before we contemplate Michael Bennet’s qualifications for the US Senate, let’s broaden the scope. Even though he lacks the experience of an elected office, his resumé reflects someone well connected in Washington DC and Denver. What appears to be a comforting pedigree could also cause skeptics to fear he’s a Beltway insider. Bennet’s previous work experience was as a lawyer, a mayor’s chief of staff, and a counsel to corporate investment raiders. It might be informative for us to wonder what qualifications did Bennet have in the first place, to be appointed to lead Denver Public Schools?

If that assignment smacked of a political payoff, for Bennet serving as aid to Denver Mayor Hinckenlooper during his ascendency, can we wonder if a similar incongruous motive was behind his startling promotion to the US Senate?

Okay, okay, so get this: Bennet described his legacy with the Anschutz Corp. thus: they were turn-around specialists! He explained that Anschutz took businesses which had been gutted or neglected by unscrupulous owners, and rehabbed them to provide jobs for thousands. Is that rather at odds with what asset strippers actually do? But this wasn’t a business savvy Republican crowd. This was an assembly of earnest Democrats who wanted to believe in honest politicians.

Despite having to cross the protesters outside, and having to face our placards at the meeting, neither speaker addressed the crisis in Gaza. The nearest either came was Bennet’s answer to a question about national security, in which he explained the need to draw troops down in Iraq and refocus our energies in Afghanistan.

Though we had hands raised hoping to be called upon, we otherwise kept silent and held our posters in full confidence that many among the assembled were in full agreement with our cause.

After their public addresses, Ritter and Bennet gave media interviews behind doors guarded by a short grey haired gentleman who kept his eyes on me. But this is an understatement. Throughout the public meeting, and afterward, this man maintained a steely confrontational gaze directly into my eyes, from across the room, or right beneath my nose. It’s a technique I recognized from Secret Service agents, except they don’t usually betray an angry scowl. This person was trying very hard to project an intimidating presence.

A few minutes after this photograph was taken, when the governor and his charge were about to emerge, this fellow walked straight up to me and began directing me to move out of the way. I assured him I was blocking no one’s path, but he simply repeated himself with amplified belligerence. I chided him about this being a PUBLIC library, and that I had no responsibility to him, and would certainly not be ordered around. Instead of negotiating, he reasserted his bossy authority. Ultimately, laughing him off turned out to be effective. Just as suddenly, he stepped back and let me be.

Jonathan was able to take these pictures of both Ritter and Bennet as they passed our signs: issues which they refused to address.

Here, Governor Ritter was accosted by Phyllis. I have no idea how he was eventually able to pull away.

Meanwhile, Tony had grown a spontaneous gathering outside, where we waived banners and posters to the appreciative honks of passing cars, and thank-yous from the Democrats leaving the meeting.

Our new friends, many of whom were homeless and victims of recurring incarceration, were thrilled to participate with us and beckon support from the passersby. A number of our allies were quite conversant on the issues and offered fantastic retorts to the occasional detractors. Not infrequently, to my continued surprise, we were accosted with pedestrians, inside the library and out, who would point to our signs and declare that every last vermin/scum/Palestinian needed to be eradicated before there would be peace in the Middle East.

Plans for a better turnout for this action suffered from the usual obstacle of being unable to reach the bulk of Colorado Springs’ peace activists. Many are still being kept deliberately out of the loop by the religious PPJPC passivists who’ve infected the local peace community.

Not surprisingly, the current PPJPC chairman did appear for the meeting, but not for the protest. He was attending as a Democratic Party member, and left when he couldn’t find a seat. Though publicly vocal about Palestinian issues, his support did not extend to putting the message before the US Senator about to represent us in DC.

US government slide rule of accounting

Posted on January 9, 2009 by Tony Logan

bunny suit The US government and its talking head corporate media clowns are real good at not ever admitting anything about anything. Smile, Smile, Smile! However, this is what the French press group Reuters has to say about the American economy and they do not use or put much faith in the standard US government slide rule to measure unemployment. Great Depression jobs parallel may not be far flung Notice how the statistics and data are now altered by the government. The US government has slid the data right on down from what its previous more honest accounting measured, to give all of us a falser sense of security.

How much unemployment will be seen in the next years ahead? The government and both capitalist parties want everybody to believe that throwing money at the rich who own the big enterprises will ‘stimulate’ the economy. Things don’t work that way though, since to revive the economy the ordinary people themselves are needed and not just the top governing and owning hacks of our society. It is not about ‘investment’ but work and the workers who do it. Work is what makes society move, not investment.

Capitalist society does not value work or workers though, and the elites consider those who work morons. Unfortunately many workers imitate the elites and consider themselves and those around them to be morons, too, for not being part of the owning class elite. Many workers actually begin to believe that they are worthless elements of society, and not the backbone of it!

There is certainly all kinds of work that needs to be done, but capitalist society does not pay for most necessary work but instead keeps it from happening. The only work that gets done mainly is work that can make profit for the owning elite, and not the work that should be done. Workers simply get turned away when they want to work, need to work, and could work if allowed to do so. Owners usually do not allow that unless forced to do so by the workers themselves to allow it to happen. That is always a nasty battle since this is a society run by capitalist owners, and not one that counters them.

Sadly most workers today do not think they have any power or could ever have such power, and their first reaction to increased unemployment is most likely be despair, depression, and increased self disrespect. Many families will begin to disintegrate and abuse will arise all around. Add to that the lies of the elites about what is really happening, and many will turn to violence and against all the wrong targets. The Left has a tough road ahead to try to counter the trend to come.

The US Union Movement is in total disarray and retreat and must be rebuilt from ground up. Everywhere the battle will be to get the Democratic Party lovers out of their positions where they brake rebellion, and then channel it into useless and unresponsive channels. We are in a period where it will not be the Republican Right that are the major enemies of organization, but instead the Democratic Party liberal centrists who are everywhere in positions funded from the top. There is a lot of work ahead, and it will be done only through dedicated and tough volunteers often working against paid staffers of supposedly do-good organizations that in fact do no good at all. This is true nowhere more than in the established but now utterly dysfunctional unions that exist.

Unemployment will go up, and capitalism does not automatically right itself like a sturdy boat in a strong sea might. Capitalism is more like a rotten vessel that will sink all onboard without a struggle to keep it from happening. These are just a few thoughts to measure against the corporate efforts to put a happy face on the current realities, when really there is little to be happy about.

A Modern Marvel.

Posted on December 19, 2008 by Brother Jonah

So the show that was just on, Modern Marvels, this evenings episode was Fast Food…

basically an hour long commercial for McDonalds praising them for all the wondrous Gifts of the Kroc Magi.

Yeah, whatever, but then there were a couple of really offensive commercials, of the official kind, breaking up the Love Fest for Sloth, Gluttony and Avarice…

One of them a nervous investor talking to his investment counselor, being told to not worry about the Rapid Death Spiral of The Global Economy, don’t panic, just keep investing, we’re the professional and we’ll get you through it Just Like Our Wall Street Professionalism Got America ~~through~~ into The Mess in the first damn place…

And the other was a Video Game much like the one you can find on the Army’s recruiting website or is it the Navy’s doesn’t matter, the one where your fantasy onscreen character is an Elite Forces Person going around blowing people away…. to suck young dumbasses into joining the “service”….

This one is most offensive, though, the game is a role-playing version of The Civil War.

That would be the AMERICAN Civil War, which lasted about a lot less than half the time the English Civil War did yet still managed to slaughter almost as many people.

So, you can drive to Mickey Dees, cause you’re too damn lazy to walk, you can buy enough grease to give a Blue Whale a massive coronary, drag it home, plop down on the couch and enjoy a few hours of slurping down the Fake Food and Graphically Fantasizing Killing Americans.

How’s THAT for Patriotism?

Turbine industry wants young new wife

Posted on November 13, 2008 by Eric Verlo

Alternative energy ventures, through the efforts of their lobbyists, can’t find the workforce they need in Ohio. While the area boasts one of the nation’s highest unemployment rates, many of those workers are from the decimated steel industry. NPR Morning Edition reported yesterday that would-be wind turbine manufacturer Rotek Inc, for example, doesn’t agree that United Steel Workers Union members are right for the job.

Unions assert that the jobs aren’t offering sufficient wages. NPR uncritically countered that “The starting salary with benefits at many wind turbine plants in Ohio can range to $30,000 a year.”

The NPR report left the impression that manufacturers wanted to move into the alternative energy field, but were being thwarted by the unreasonable expectations of US labor. This may be true. But an industry promising new poor jobs is no gift horse. Shouldn’t workers look it in the mouth before entrusting futures, communities and livelihoods to it?

NPR’s Julie Grant summarized the manufacturer objections with, thankfully, a some-people-say type attribution:

“the new companies, the ones already making part for wind turbines, say they don’t want burned out workers with low morale. What they need are workers open to spending a couple of years in training, who can think on their feet, and are excited to be part of the new economy they’ re helping to create.”

The “new economy they’re helping to create?” Would that be the new economy placing the employee as being working poor? What would a radio reporter herself think of a job that requires two years of training, at the employee’s expense, to yield a $30K salary? The workforce in question are already experienced steelworkers. The wind turbine jobs are steel manufacturing jobs. They’re not looking for high tech design positions.

Lobbyist group the Apollo Alliance, which NPR labeled a Clean Energy think tank, suggests the government should subsidize the training period.

So here I believe is the crux of what alternative energy investors are after. We can’t argue that low wages are here to stay. America’s new economy will no longer support the upward middle class American Dream of the Baby Boomers. So factory workers are going to work for half the pay, if they want work at all. But do they need to be trained to do it?

The wind turbine manufacturing industry is suggesting that its labor force needs two years of training, paid for by the US taxpayer. Does that make sense to you? You get the bill, the workers get subsistence wages, and the factory owners get free labor. For two years. Likely employees are not going to stick around for the promise of $30K/yr, so the two year transitions will last as long as the government subsidies allow.

Industrialists are always looking for low wage workers, even slave labor, when they can.

NPR cited the example of Rotek Inc. “Rotek one of 75 companies here that have started making parts for wind turbines.” The report mentions an $80 million investment, but implies that Rotek is a startup that requires subsidies, tax credits and willing partner-employees. NPR didn’t mention that Rotek is a subsidiary of Rothe Erde, of Dortmund, Germany ($15.3 billion, 55,000 employees), which is a subsidiary of the ThyssenKrupp Group, Essen, Germany ($68.7 billion, 191,000 employees) of Krupp infamy. Founder Alfred Krupp was tried in Nuremberg for using concentration camp labor in his factories during the war, some of them even prisoners of war.

Krupp was the chief architect of the Nazi armaments machine. Hitler even passed a law which established the Krupp family as a monopolist dynasty immune from inheritance tax. After Krupp’s conviction, a New York Banker succeeded in lobbying for a pardon for Alfred Krupp, and reversing the sentence that his industrial holdings be forfeited.

Brave New Chickens

Posted on November 10, 2008 by Brother Jonah

Not what you might think.

Actually it’s from a segment of “How It’s Made” on the Science Channel, coupled in with Aldous Huxley’s frequently banned book.

This one (I watched it today) was on Eggs.

And they proceeded to show what’s essentially a mechanized Egg Factory.

From time to time as I write this I’ll put in references to the book.

Civilization is sterilization, repeated 50,000 times between the ages of 5 and 6…

So they’ve got these hens, right, the basis of The Egg industry. A couple hundred thousand of them.

Raised in cages. Fed by a conveyor belt that delivers a mixture of feed that’s scientifically measured out for Maximum Egg Production.

Mesh floor so their droppings fall onto another conveyor belt.

All the cages identical, all the portions of the feed identical, the eggs as standardized as possible, the hens so identical they look like they’ve been cloned.

They lay their eggs, which roll out the cage onto yet another of those damned conveyor belts.

For the sake of literary diversity I’ll insert here, the hens looked like one huge Bokanovsky Group.

I’ll point out that one of the big commercial sponsors of the show is an Investment Banking group whose advertising- du-jour has thousands of Identical Looking factory workers (who aren’t the customers of the investment bank, no, we’re not THAT important to them) first at their identical, uniform “individual” workstations. Wearing of course uniforms. Sterile White Uniforms. Like the chickens, white. Sterile.

One wonders if they have a catheter arrangement where their droppings fall through the floor onto another conveyor belt…

Then that segues into the workers at the Cafeteria, at perfectly spaced, identical round white tables, (all of this As Seen From Above, so we’re literally “looking down on them”) eating identical meals, and I’d swear by the Lord God who made us all that they were eating in unison, coordinated just as surely as if they were marching.

Civilization is sterilization, repeated 50,000 times between the ages of 5 and 6.

The eggs are carried by the conveyor belts through various machines which measure them, by volume then by weight.

Machines that pick them up 5 dozen at a time and stack them quickly, efficiently, quietly, cleanly, then stacks them onto carts. Here one of the Human Intervention squads come in, identical looking workers wearing Sterile White Clothes pushing the carts onto conveyor belts which carry them into a refrigerated storage area.

Then they’re rolled, again by machines, this one triggered by a thermostat, and fed through some more sorting apparati.

A bright light is shone from behind them, and a computer reads the image to find each egg which is cracked, and mark it out for removal.

Another Worker Drone goes in with a scoop and efficiently as any machine, scoops the “tagged” eggs out.

Another computer imaging device spots which ones have traces of blood in the egg.

And the routine is once again repeated.

Then about 2 minutes more of the Glory Of The Machine being expounded…

Then the Narrator chirps much about how the chickens start laying eggs when they’re 7 weeks old, and have a productive cycle of about 52 months. Just under 4 and a half years.

Then they get a free, all expenses paid trip to the slaughterhouse.
The Narrator actually used that expression.

Which we’ve seen that mechanized, standardized operation as well…

From Hatch to Hatchet all Untouched by Human Hands.

Now, I’m sure some Industrial Apologist Type A-2 is going to give the same identical speech the Director of World Hatcheries gave to John the Savage in the book.

When John the Savage and Bernard Marx had, in a Rage Against the Machine action, interrupted the doping of a Bokanovsky Group, where they were being given their Soma rations, which triggered an Automated Security system where Soma in vaporized form was sprayed through vents in the walls and ceilings, and a Recorded Voice says “Friends, why are you being angry? Everybody belongs to everybody else, after all. ” and a couple of other Mass Calming subliminal messages they had repeated to them in their Hypnopædia sessions 100,000 times between the ages of 5 and 7…

Then Bernard and John the Savage and their friend are talking to the Director of World Hatcheries and it’s calmly explained to them, the DWH shows John the Savage copies of Shakespeare and the Bible and other Anti-social books, says the people were already so well conditioned that even if the books were given to them, they would simply dismiss it with one or more of the one-line platitudes they had been taught since childhood….

By the way, the “Hatcheries” means where Humans were grown in glass bottles until birth.

No mother, no father, just “Genetic Donors”.

The message? Conform or Else.

In the best of election outcomes…

Posted on November 1, 2008 by Eric Verlo

I’ve been fantasizing for decreasingly brief moments of late, about the outcome of this election. There’s still time to make a wish. Join me! It’s one thing to win the lotto, and another to have everyone win.

Let’s assume a Democratic landslide. It’s not improbable. In the wake of the Bush deluge, the economic and moral collapse of a once diffident cultural hegemony, in light of the investment bank highway robbery and the American legacy plunged into permanent war, couldn’t it be imagined that Americans might have wised up about Republicans? What are these Republicans after all but thieves? How can conservatism be taken to represent anything anymore but ignorant apologists for entrenched corruption?

I think it’s a lovely thought to imagine P.T. Barnum’s adage proving trump, that all Americans can’t stay fooled all the time. And so, what then? How to dispose of Republican stragglers intent on making a last stand with their authority?

We ride them out of town on a rail. Send them to Iraq with personal instructions to stand in for the boys coming home. Make them rebuild Iraq with their bare hands. Make them do, as we forced the Germans to do as we liberated Europe, to help clean the mass graves of the concentration camps. Grind their noses into their immoral mess. Hope they contract a conscience and die of it. That’s for starters.

The smug pencil pushers, GOP operatives who paid the lip service to tolerating torture, condoned what the other imbeciles about them didn’t realize was legislated against already in common law. My sympathies will run insufficient you dopey fiends.

Mine is a bloody fantasy. Blind complicity to mass murder, mass ignorance, mass apathy, amoral immorality, the norm slacker. No more.

It’s time for righteous indignation to stomp on the banal serial injustice minions. We don’t want them crowding our pursuit of happiness, constraining us with conservative red tape which is just administrativ-ese for chicken-shit cheese place-holding.

Republicans deserve foreshortened lives. Not the noose for most, of course, but a doctor’s prognosis that, by measure of how much life they’ve sucked out of other people, how much spirit they have wasted, how much suffering they have caused, how many rights they’ve denied, how much they’ve taken from others, that much should be debited from what they have been banking as their due for their patriotic allegiance.

An eye for an eye. A tooth for a denture denied to an uninsured American. That simple.

We used to damn just the Neocons, but they rode on the shoulders of the Republicans, among others. Isn’t it the hour of reckoning for the Red Blue Meanies?

Fantasy Option Two:
Speaking of Blue Meanies, What if the Republicans win next Tuesday? What then? Cancel the champagne, hold the tar and feathers.

If the Republicans and their anti-democry programs escape the tether of the public’s grasp, it’s curtains most certainly for the land of liberty. But as we fall into post-industrial decay, I wish this fate for the Dems. Every last ordinary registered Democrat must repudiate their pseudo-party. Make their representatives don the lapel pins of their masters. Democrat and Republican politicians are the same.

It pains me to imagine being told that the Republican machine wasn’t built in a day, that Democrats must knuckle down for the long haul to build a similar base. Quietly and patiently put their people into the right local offices, that they might too, someday, rig the election in the Democrats’ favor. But this begs a question the Dems will never resolve. Republicans from top to bottom are smug, selfish dogs. Unthinking brutes by definition. That’s what it takes to run a well-oiled graft machine. Look at your fellow Dems and tell me they will have the stamina and self-interest to work those lower echelons with dumb tenacity. Republicans have staffed the halls of bureaucracy because it suits their temperament. How is a do-gooder supposed to lie, cheat and steal, for a living, elbowing his fellow man?

Cutting edge technology of wind power

Posted on October 29, 2008 by Eric Verlo

You gotta love how wind power is the poster child for alternative energy. News segments about energy self-reliance begin with a depiction of wind turbines. Election ads about the imperative to invest in other energies, more wind turbines. Is energy from the wind a new technology? I’m not sure it isn’t actually the oldest, next to kindling wood. Wind might tie with the water wheel, another energy they’re lauding as alternative.

We’ve had windmills since man needed energy to push water against the tendencies of gravity. Man reversed the scheme when he needed to moving water to put muscle into his mechanical devices. Both came many millennium before steam and oil.

So what is the technology we need to invest in wind power, beside optimization of process, storage and transmission? Hahaha. The hurdle to overcome with wind power is the will to surround ourselves with windmills. Even if it means the quaint windmills of the Dutch lowlands, I’m not sure the public is prepared to despoil its open space, its peripheral view-shed, with lumbering omniscient propeller blades, squeaking when they need oiling.

What kind of landscape maintains its serenity with the constant grinding of wingless, flightless single-prop stick-planes going forever nowhere?

The call for alternative sources of energy is less about inaccessible technology. It’s about making compromises which we’ve already declined. Off-shore platform oil spills, no thank you. Nuclear reactors courting unthinkable cataclysm? No. Ungainly wind machines generating unceasing turbulence? Nimby. Coal. Choke. Clean Coal. Gag me with oxymoronic insolence.

The least palatable of all the unfortunate last resorts is the energy alternative never mentioned because it means less investment and fewer jobs. It’s the only remedy that doesn’t resemble a hammer to our environmental coffin nail, and it counters our consumer culture. Energy conservation. It may cast a cold shadow like a windmill, but isn’t it the only sustainable solution of the bunch?

If you don’t want a nuclear meltdown, nor large bird-slashing knives spinning your thinking space, nor toxin spewing coal, nor combustibles cooking the earth, why not invest your efforts in being personally energy independent. The logo for alternative energy should be a smart smiling face.

Jonah and the Obama Chinese food story

Posted on October 19, 2008 by Brother Jonah

(Editor’s note: Jonah posted this account yesterday on Alfrankenweb, which reached the Rec List on Daily Kos. Now I’m fielding emails and calls inquiring whether Jonah is real. Here are the Alfrankenweb posts, until Jonah can give us an update.)

OK, so this is the story as I finally got straight.

I was out scrounging scrap metal today, to get enough food money to last us through the weekend.

I came home and Miss Johnnie, my landlady, was crying and showing me a table full of food.

I thought one of our friends or my relatives had come over and bought for us.

But it was bought, according to the lady who owns the restaurant, by Barack Obama over the phone.

After the Obama Campaign Workers came to the door, and were listening to Miss Johnnie describe why she, a registered republican, was voting for Obama.

She showed a picture of her daughter Michelle the Marine who had been deployed to Iraq twice, and is still pending discharge because of the Stop Loss.

All her kids in fact.

And her late husband, who had died of Agent Orange from his service in VietNam.

About that time the campaign workers started making phone calls and she got to talk to Obama.

She was in tears while telling me all this so I got the story wrong at first.

She talked about the War, about the health care bill that got turned down because it was “too expensive” but the Rich Thieves got to take 16 times as much just because they had broken the economy with their wild schemes.

About the VA messing around with the repayment of the medical expenses she had borne by herself over the 12 years since her husband died, over nitpicky paperwork errors on Their Part.

About me being out against doctor’s orders scrounging scrap metal just to make it through til monday.

One of the volunteers was a Marine and a Nam Vet, so much for the notion that Veterans are all voting for McCain, (despite his continued votes to screw the veterans the same way the VA is messing up Miss Johnnie’s paperwork and payments)

Miss Johnnie, understandably, doesn’t talk without a great deal of emotion on those subjects.

So after the Volunteers left, about 20 minutes later a very large order of Chinese food charged to Obama came to the door.

The Delivery man is a recent immigrant and doesn’t speak English, so he called his boss, who confirmed it but said it was supposed to be a surprise.

Enough food to last until Monday.

I came in with this really pitiful half gallon of milk and about a meal worth of food and some cat food.. and she was crying and showing me all the food.

And said that Obama had bought it for us.

I didn’t get the story quite right the first time, so I thought he had been there in person.

Not quite, but you know how in the Churches people say “I’ll be there in spirit”?

He was there in a way that really counts.

McCain has a fake falsified made-up “Joe the Plumber” who turns out to be a white-collar person named Sam and not even a plumber…

Obama now has Miss Johnnie the Viet-Nam Widow and a Real Joe the Ex-Roofer with Busted Feet.

That’s why Obama wins.

He’s Real, his concern for the people is Real, and the people who supporting him, WE’RE real too.

…

Hell, I don’t know where to research it myself.

There’s been a flood of out-of-state volunteers past two days, because Ms Sarah was doing her Schtick at the baseball park to a tame crowd.

Tame as in no Nasty Obama Supporters being let through to ask all kinds of icky-poo questions.

I went in yesterday and mentioned at the welcome desk at Obama HQ about the FreakSquad chalking the death-threat or death-wish either one on the sidewalk essentially directly across the street from them.

The restaurant is “Coal Mine Dragon” at 1720 W Uintah, the Springs. The lady who runs it is Second Generation Chinese. She told Miss Johnnie that it was Obama paying the tab, and that it was supposed to have been secret.

If it was merely the Volunteers calling in the order, and the restaurant owner not getting it out clearly distinguished, that’s still great.

as to was he the one who spoke to her, he identified himself as such.

If he was a clever impostor doing a good imitation that’s more improbable.

Not much reason anybody would, especially as Obama wouldn’t tolerate it.

if he confirms it himself is the best proof I could think of.

…

Who has that kind of pull to hotline direct to Obama during a rally?

Congressman Mark Udall, that’s who.

He told Miss Johnnie about being a Marine himself, I had thought “damn, that sounds a lot like Mark Udall…”

And, sure enough…

…

Run the pack of clowns out of office.

There’s some tidying up to do, seems like a herd of Elephants has gone through the national living room, pooping on the floors, breaking stuff and drinking out of the toilet.

If I’m not mistaken, some poor clerk at the VA in Denver is going to have a rude surprise Monday morning.

Mark Udall is running on Workers Rights, and Veterans Affairs… very large issues here in Colorado.

The “Terror Connection” they’ve been trying to tar Obama with, with Udall it’s “the Department of Peace” and Labor Unions.

His opponent is making big talk from those same National Attack Ads just like with the “Daschle Democrats” Ads with the bobble heads…

Well, Daschle was proven RIGHT about Iraq.

Trying to paint Udall as a hippie-dippy doper (seriously, they’ve been using that angle) when he’s a Marine and a Nam Vet, I think they bit off a chunk of the wrong sandwich.

I don’t know what all the names of the meals are, one involved a lot of chicken and broccoli, mushrooms… oh man..

Another same recipe, stir fried, with steak in it.

Cabbage rolls and rice with more chicken in it…

I think I like this restaurant and plan to give them my patronage.

The bill came to just under $40 bux.

If you’re in Colorado, vote no on 47 and there’s two more Blatantly union busting amendments there.

Oh, there’s an attack ad on right now….

These freaks need to be slapped repeatedly, in fact I’ll start a thread about that…

…

I had to reboot the puter, knocked my keyboard connection loose.

We have one cat, Keenan, neutered male.

She built him cat-runs at three of the windows, we can’t let him outside because our next-door neighbor is a Confirmed Cat-Kicker.

Last summer she contracted Leishmaniasis, which is also called the Baghdad Boil, in Mesopotamia it’s spread by the bite of a flea…

They gave her Antibiotics for it, and for the Mycelin Resistant Staph Aureole that goes with it.

This has affected her inner ear, because the antibiotics were so strong.

At the time we thought it was her lymphatic cancer coming out of remission.

After her husband died, she was waiting on getting her Widow’s Pension, the VA wasn’t even acknowledging that her husband had died of Agent Orange.

It took a few years for that. That’s when she had the lymphoma.

She was out on the street while taking chemo.

Last year she started to try for her CHAMPVA benefits, so she could get meaningful health care.

The ones who come to the forum to blast “Socialized Medicine” don’t know the least part of what the hell they’re putting out, or putting down.

We had the paperwork and forms from the VA to take to the Air Force to get her Widowed Spouse ID card, to get the CHAMPVA started.

We rode the bus across town to Peterson AFB, they allowed her onto the base, but not me, made me get off the bus and wait outside.

Which I prefer anyway, when I left the Air Force, I LEFT.

The guards at the gate, they weren’t Air Force, didn’t have any insignia or rank or name tags, but I knew they weren’t SPs because the SPs are stone freaky about maintaining a spit-shined appearance.

Turns out they’re mercenaries, I thought at first Blackwater but it seems it’s a different group of Mercs.

All the same to me.

At the Admin building another Mercenary, not Air Force personnel, clerk told her that the VA was full of shit, everything changed with nine eleven, don’t you know there’s a war on yadda yadda and threatened to have her arrested.

This year we finally got her ID card, got her CHAMPVA started.

Any Vets reading this, be-the-hell-ware because this is what they’re fixin’ to do to YOU next if McInasane gets in power.

So she’s owed 11 years worth of reimbursement for all the medical care she had to pay for out of pocket, even with the next to worthless Colorado Indigent Care Program insurance (Look up “worthless” in the dictionary and right next to it will be a picture of CICP) one of those “Massive Entitlement Programs For Bums” that McCain bitches about.

She got some reimbursement but is owed about 5 times as much more.

They keep bouncing her claims back, saying the forms are “incomplete”.

Utter bullshit, because I went over their claim as to what information was missing, and it was all right there in the papers.

That’s why I believe somebody from Mark Udall’s office is going to give them a Nasty Note Monday.

That’s the status so far.

The Health Care meltdown in Colorado is almost as bad as it was in Texas when I left.

Privatized everything. Well, I can testify, it didn’t work in Texas, and it surely ain’t working in Colorado either.

…

I get SSI and Medicaid. Miss Johnnie gets a Widows pension and CHAMPVA.

I supplement it by repairing computers and selling them, and the Scrap Metal.

I’ve been making more money off the scrap metal than the computers though.

The internet is part of our Cable package.

And, it’s necessary for the repairs I do to the computers, otherwise we would have ditched that part and just used dial-up.

The past month I haven’t been able to scrap, doctor’s orders.

That drop in income brought us near the edge.

We have for vehicles three bicycles, two of them mine, and she can’t ride hers anymore because of some of her injuries.

And ride the bus for further transportation.

I don’t drive anyway, never learned because it would be too dangerous.

Trust me on that.

But I’ve been getting on fairly well using the bicycles.

Until last month.

On top of that, scrap prices are down, way down… and there’s more competition for what scrap there is.

This is what’s happening across America.

I find out on November 5th what exact kind of surgery is going to be needed, for the foot I thought was uninjured 16 years ago.

I do know part of it is going to involve removal of a bone, the Cuboid.

I won’t have a leg to stand on.

It would be really really cool, you know, if this situation were anywhere near being unique.

Fact is, it ain’t.

That’s why there’s this:

I’m not dancing with joy that McCain is going to lose…

I’m rejoicing that America now has a chance to WIN.

…

Thanks, but we’re getting there. You might need it yourself soon anyway.

Stocks are tanking like mad.

Gas prices are down to 3 a gallon but that’s mostly because so much business, small and large, has crashed that there’s a huge drop in actual consumption.

First law of economics, supply and demand.

There’s going to be money coming in, just a question of when.

We both know how to make money, just we aren’t going to try doing anything on credit, build from a cash-only base.

Johnnie used to be a business owner, she and her husband did custom printing. Before his illness got to him they had over a million in the bank.

That’s how quick a catastrophic illness can do you down.

“difficult” and “impossible” are two separate equations, if something is difficult that just means it’s possible.

It’s a challenge more than anything. I hope.

I’ve got good skills I can adapt, like these computer skills.

This one I’m using now I built up from parts I salvaged, part of the scrap metal deal.

Here in town there WAS a steady supply of one-off computers, like, HP would come out with the newest mainboard and all the HP employees would get a discount on the new one, and either sell the older ones cheap or donate them to the ARC or Goodwill. Here’s a really good business tip, something you might want to invest yourself into, a new mainboard combination comes out roughly every 6 months and the older one, the one that’s King of the Jungle today, is going to be only worth half of what it is today.
Same with all the parts.

And for all practical purposes, the best there is today, in 6 months will still be able to run any software package there is. Not much point in buying a brand new computer, unless you’re developing software specifically for the newest chipset. so I’m developing a base of people who will want to buy good computers, that’ll do whatever they want, just at an amazingly lower price than they would pay to HP or Dell.
it’s more a matter of timing your purchases than anything else.

Now HP is closing down most of their local operations here, moving some to Albuquerque and some to iirc Little Rock.

But I’ll adapt. Part of it is that I don’t have a huge monetary investment in anything, mostly my investment has been in skills.

At least we have a plan, and are getting, slowly to be sure, but it is building up, the means to implement the plan.

Dire straits are familiar territory for me. At least I know my way around.

There’s good coming onto the horizon.

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The Myth of Middle Ground

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