DENVER, COLORADO- Very interesting testimony Friday at the trial of sovereigns Stephen Nalty and Steve Byfield. The prosecution’s latest witness was FBI INFORMER Marshall Ringer. Not a sovereign citizen type turned by government agents, Ringer is a disgraced police officer hired by the FBI and inserted into the so-called “enterprise” to report its activities and propose courses of action conducive to arrests. Ringer calls himself a “self-employed security expert.” His handler FBI Special Agent Ryan English calls him an “embedded confidencial human source”. His targets gave him the title “Continental U.S. Marshall”. They hoped he would recruit like-minded sovereigns to the cause of correcting what they saw as a corrupt judicial system. Ringer’s FBI codename was “Earp”.
The accusations corruption hinged on the understanding that according to Article VI of the US Constitution, positions of public authority must take an oath secured by a bond. The “enterprise” had discovered that many Colorado judges and prosecutors and sheriffs and other elected officials didn’t have oaths or bonds on file. If this expectation was indeed a misconception, and Article VI is inapplicable, you’d think the remedy might be to tell the would-be reformers, “no, that is not a requirement, here’s why, etc.” Strangely that was never done. Neither to their person, in a handout, or to reporters looking into this sad case. An undercover would present an excellent opportunity to huddle with the enterprise and say “hey guys, I was looking into this oath stuff and discovered that according to such and such law, or ruling or whatnot, oaths and bonds are no longer mandatory, end of story!”
But “Earp” didn’t. Nobody did. Nobody has yet to spell it out, even in this courtroom. When the defendants have tried to put Article VI into the trial record, they’ve been refused. So the issue is certainly a curious one.
Instead of using an undercover to diffuse the oath-seekers by presenting the incontrovertible truth of their error, the FBI and the state prosecutors instead gathered evidence to ridicule their character. We’re told they met in trailerhomes, they struggled to cobble enough money together to give their marshall a pair of handcuffs. They dreamed of putting together a network of De Jure judges to replace the corrupt ones currently alas De Facto.
Tapes
You might think the taped conversations of the sovereigns would be damning. The defendants certainly seem to be embarassed by them, but they’re less incriminating than disarming. When “Earp” asked what was he to do with the officials he arrested, he was told, nothing, for now. Do not take any action on your own. Wait for instructions from the People’s Grand Jury. Every time “Earp” goaded his colleagues about what he could do, they’d tell him to wait until matters could be addressed democratically and judicially.
The most interesting information to come from the undercover testimony was about how the FBI wires up its informants. Colorado law requires that at least on person in a conversation consents to being recorded. As a result, every recording presented to the court begins with the person wearing the wire dictating this preamble: “This is confidential human source X, on such and such date, etc” before that informant gets out of his car or enters a meeting area.
This offers potential targets a remedy for how to avoid intrusive surveillance by authoritarian law enforcement agencies IN COLORADO. Before every meeting, have everyone say out loud: “I do not consent to being recorded.” In unison is fine. Then a leader can then ask: “Was that everyone?” To which everyone can answer in unison: “Yes.” Provided that everyone said it, that meeting cannot be recorded. Such a method not only invalidates a recording being used as evidence later, it makes the recording a crime and the agency undertaking it and in possession of it, cupabe. If an undercover continues with the recording, he’s committing a crime.
In the case of te sovereigns, and likely your scenario as well, the government’s criminal act will far exceed in severity what they thought they were recording you doing.
We’ve yet to learn how, but apparently this undercover was discovered by the defendants early in 2017. They outed him by accusing him of making recordings and giving them to the FBI. That’s when he extracted himself and the indictments and arrests happened immediately thereafter.
The Enterprise
However you may feel about these perhaps misguided judicial reformers, their adversaries are behaving every bit the corrupt villains they pretend not to be.
The accused called themselves the People’s Grand Jury, the Indestructible People’s Trust, The Colorado Supreme Court, the Continental US Marshalls, the De Jure whatnot, or simply We The People. There seems to be no end to the permutations but they never called themselves “The Enterprise”. Yet that is what their accusers call them. In fact, for the duration of the prosecution’s case, a posterboard has been left in the center of the courtroom, beneath the judge’s dias, from which the jury cannot look away, it’s titled The Enterprise, with photos of ten member now-defendants, like employees of the month, except with mugshots, ranked in order of their title or prominence. Another ten members didn’t warrant photos or arrest, yet are listed as culpable parties, guilty by association and without the chance to . You wonder if that is legal. It certainly is prejudicial. Never mind if the witness testimonies don’t add up, there is The Enterprise, like it’s a thing instead of a characterization fashioned by frame-up artists.
MONDAY UPDATE:
On Monday defendants were given one day’s recess to review the evidence for their defense, which being incarcerated has impeded. So FBI informer Marshall Springs will resume his testimony tomorrow. But the courtroom also heard that the prosecution plans to bring TWO MORE UNDERCOVERS to testify, plus two cooperative witnesses, one of whom is a co-defendant who’s taken a plea to turn STATE’S EVIDENCE.
So that makes THREE undercover officers infiltrating “the enterprise” of not much more than a dozen conspirators, two of whom have become so intimidated they’ve changed their minds about what they were trying to achieve.
The next few days should prove enlightening and heartbreaking because although prosecutors have been documenting what the defendants did, they haven’t demonstrated the acts were crimes,. As much as defendants conspired, organized and racketeered, they didn’t aim to make one cent profit, illicit or otherwise. To what offenses did the cooperative witnesses plead guilty and what accusations do they make toward their friends?
So Nalty and Byfield have the rest of the day to study the evidence against them. The jail has not provided the paper and pencils ordered by the judge. The jail hasn’t afforded the defendants access to the case evidence either. Nalty indicated today that he’d spent a sum total of 45 minutes with the electronic files. He asked for a break of four days to prepare for the rest of the trial.
Both are in Denver jail, though their legal papers were not transferred with them when the defendants are on loan from Adams and Arapahoe Counties respectively. All the defendants being charged with conspiracy are being detained in different jails to prevent them talking to each other. But the problem is they don’t have their case papers or filings, and are in Denver’s customary 22 hour lockdown in their cells, which inhibits using the jail computers which are confined to the jail law library.
Prosecutor Shapiro responded to the defendant’s complaints of the jail not providing paper and pencils by cavalierly handing them writing pads, which they grasped with handcuffed hands, with polite thankyous. Though Shapiro no doubt know they won’t be allowed to take these into the jail. Then he condescendingly bragged that he’d resolved that complaint by providing “brand new” pads to each defendant. Defendant Byfield’s pad had a couple sheets missing, so he immediately pointed out that his pad wasn’t new. I couldn’t help but burst out with a laugh.
The judge thought there was merit to Nalty’s complaint Both defendants have scant access to the jail computers necessary to see the evidence. By the prosecutor’s own admission, the “tens of thousands of pages” would have been prohibitive to provide on paper, and the “hours and hours of taped testimony” likewise can only be provided electronically.
Prosecutor Shapiro acquiesced to allowing the defendants one day to catch up, though it sounds like he is well aware that analyzing tens of thousands of pages and hours and hours of evidence would take longer than that. Shapiro told the judge he calculated the state had wiggle room to allow a one day delay and still finish with the case by Friday. Here’s what he calculated: The state figures to rest its case by Thursday afternoon. That should leave a day and a half, less closing arguments and jury instructions and jury deliberations, to finish the trial on Friday. The prosecutors’s case will have taken six and a half days, but Shapiro thought the extra day needed to look over the evidence could come out of the defense’s day planned for defense.
To help the defendants prepare, Shapiro volunteered a preview of the witnesses to expect to testify to close out their case. Coming up we have four Gilpin County administrators, but we have also two more government undercovers, and the two cooperating witnesses. One of them co-defendant Bryan Baylog.
DENVER, COLORADO- A heartbreaking scene unfolded yesterday when Denver Magistrate Kate Boland decided to impose a $10,000 bond on a domestic violence detainee, against the recommendations of the husband (victim), the public defender, and even the city prosecutor, who all wanted the 35-yr-old mother of five released on personal recognizance. Most critical, no consideration was paid to the family’s month-old infant who is breastfeeding. Neither by Boland, nor the downtown detention center, known for its systemic disrespect for the rights and needs of its inmates.
You might not care how poorly criminals or their children are treated, but the inmates of jails are suspects, not convicts. They are unconvicted detainees held on some officer’s probable cause. They’re suspected of a crime, but have a right to a fair trial (under the 6th Amendment) and a right not to be punished before conviction (under the 14th). Depending on who calls 911, they could be YOU.
For those reasons (and the Golden Rule and the social contract), jails have to show a semblance of concern for the still innocent lives disrupted in their care. Denver’s Van Cise-Simonet Detention Center has a famously outlandish record in that regard. Marvin Booker and Michael Marshall are two well known extremes to which Denver sheriffs deputies have disrespected inmates’ lives. A rare survivor, Jamal Hunter, was awarded $3.25 million for beatings he received there. Unfortunately his settlement was contingent on burying the evidence of broader misconduct, thanks Jamal.
Those cases have generated reviews and reforms, but abuses persist. Isn’t it amazing that after repeated court-ordered overhauls, the public could still be told “the detention cenver has no protocols for breastfeeding mothers.”
Magistrate Boland made no allowance for the accused mother to maintain her feedings. After the morning hearing, friends learned the jail didn’t care to accomodate the mother either. That afternoon Baby Thomas became ill and began vomiting, so the father brought the baby to the visitor’s lobby hoping emergency visits could be arranged. The jail said no, though after some persuading, a sergeant agreed to convey a breastpump to the mother if one was supplied. A device was purchased and submitted, but the jail recinded their offer. This time a charge nurse named “Monica” explained she was under no obligation to comply, that she’d called her boss at Denver General who confirmed it. Without a court order, she said, the jail had no further responsibility.
By now activists with Denver Court Support were agitating online about the plight of Baby Thomas. The jail was innundated with telephone calls. The sheriffs cleared the public lobby, cancelled visitations, and put the facility in lockdown in anticipation of a rally.
Nevermind feeding Baby Thomas, release his mother immediately. Activists had raised the monies needed to hire a bondsman to post the bond. The jail was urged to expedite the mother’s release once bond was posted.
Shouldn’t inmates be release when they’ve paid to have their freedom? This is where the Van Cise-Simonet’s disrespect is arbitrary, punitive, and universal. Time to process inmates, either intake or release, takes forever, or just feels like it. Denver’s Van Cise-Simonet Detention Center likes to take a MINIMUM of 11 HOURS for these proceedures.
The pretext for the first delay is “for fingerprints to clear”. Enough time for INTERPOL in Timbuktu to review your prints and give the all clear, because they can’t be expected to be standing at the fax machine at all hours of the day, the jailers explain.
That step is required before a bond can be posted. Once a bond is paid, an inmate’s release requires a second computer delay. Also commonly at least eleven hours. The jailers attribute that wait to “that’s how long the system takes.”
On occasion we’ve seen public pressure result in a shortening of the release time. The upshot is the the release time appears to be at the jail’s whim. In the case of our breastfeeding mother the jail wouldn’t budge.
Worse for Baby Thomas’ mother, someone new to the bonding desk re-initiated the print clearing process instead of terminating it. She had to wait another interminable cycle.
The mother was taken into custody on Monday, her prints cleared by Tuesday morning. After the hearing in Room 2300, where the $10,000 bond was set, the bondsman tried to pay but learned he had to wait. The aforementioned administrative error meant it wouldn’t be before WEDNESDAY morning when her bond could be posted. Everyone is awaiting her release STILL.
As it stands, the mother is supposed to be fitted with an ankle bracelet by 8pm today. That will make it more than 48 hours that she’ll have been in custody. Mothers under stress withheld from feeding infants can stop lactating in less than that time.
The specifics of this domestic violence case are few. A neighbor called the police because the mother was seen holding a knife. The police chose to charge the mother and take her into custody. Who knows what the whole story is. The Denver Court Support activists didn’t get involved to solve the couple’s problems. Because that’s beside the point.
A child shouldn’t have to be harmed while authorities sort this out. An infant deprived of breastmilk suffers a calculable detriment which this magistrate and this jail could minimize, if they cared.
It’s hard to imagine anyone cares at Van Cise-Simonet. The jail is notorious for inedible food and poor health standards. The 23-hour lockdown is standard in all pods. Right now we hear that inmates are sleeping three to four in a cell which has only bunks for two. The one or two extra sleep on the concrete floor. This of course in addition to the litigated sadism of the Denver jailers.
Last night, outside the door of the jail, the Denver sheriffs deputies eventually re-admitted visitors into the lobby at 8pm, but kept the activists outside. Then deputies lined up and started warning the father’s friends to “calm down”. That warning and the posture of the deputies was recognizable to activists –and to many African Americans– as the precursor to the use of tasers. The only option was to leave.
UPDATE: The mother wasn’t able to rejoin her children until 10PM Wednesday. The baby is okay, although no doubt impacted by the interrupted feedings. At a public meeting the next evening to address law enforcement accountability to the community, activists told officials about what happened. They were told by the Denver Sheriff Patrick Firman that the jail DOES HAVE A POLICY to handle breastfeeding and that he was very sorry his employees didn’t know to tell the complainant.
White supremacist mass-shooter Dylann Roof was brutalized by a fellow inmate of the Charleston County Jail and social media is applauding the news. Some are even trying to raise money for his attacker, Dwayne Stafford, who breached Roof’s protective custody area, unquestionably with inside help. Do you see nothing wrong with encouraging extrajudicial retribution when the justice system fails to give you blood? This is the essence of what drove lynch mobs to storm jails and courthouses. Dylann Roof, like George Zimmerman, and fellow murderous racists, are products of systemic racism, they’re not driving it. They should bear the full brunt of legal remedies, no more. The people’s fight against racism and violence is against the system. If we are wishing for equitable treatment of white and black suspects under the law, let’s cheerlead for more humane treatment for all, not equitable brutality. Let’s propose that all suspects detained by police be served burgers instead of lead bullets. We don’t have to like Dylann Roof, very likely schitzophrenic, but while Roof is in the custody and at the mercy of our court system he is entrusted to our care, to be treated as we would wish to be treated. I believe violence is a prerogative of individual human beings, a right measured by social contract. But where the machinery of law enforcement is concerned, I favor it be held to strict adherence. Someone punched George Zimmerman in the face for bragging about killing Trayvon Martin? I’m okay with that.
[Disclaimer: Jury duty is a service we owe our fellow citizens. It is a critical community responsibility. That said. If you really absolutely can’t. This instructional allows you to make an alternative civic contribution.]
Here’s how to get out of jury duty. GUARANTEED to work. I just did it and you can too, without getting into trouble, without feeling like you’re not being a responsible member of society, and while providing a laudable service to other prospective jurors in the courtroom, not least of all to the defendant.
Please note: This doesn’t work for civil trials. To get yourself out of adjudicating a civil dispute you need a pressing previous engagement. For criminal cases, this single spoken line will make defense attorneys love you but more to the point, city prosecutors will immediately wipe you from the list and hope you never show up to pee in their jury pool again.
I’m talking about being an apostle for “jury nullification”. That’s two words, and they’re fully legal. But please, please, do explain them or you really will be copping out. You have a constitutionally guaranteed right to talk about jury nullification. And where better than in front of prospective jurors about to take responsibility for a defendant’s fate?
Here’s how it works. Every jury selection involves “voir dire”, where attorneys question potential jurors to weed out difficult ones. During every voir dire the prosecution will ask “Is there anyone here who cannot follow what the judge instructs you to do?”
Take a deep breath, raise your hand, that’s your cue.
The prosecutor will likely elaborate, to pretend you may have misheard. “Does anyone think they don’t have to reach a verdict based on the judge’s expert instructions?”
The prosecutor may have already explained that jurors are often surprised to find their own interpretation of the law at odds with that of the judge. Regardless of personal feelings, the prosecutor will insist, jurors must weigh the evidence according to the law AS INSTRUCTED.
Your hand is still raised. You answer:
“Not really. The legal principle of jury nullification holds that it’s a citizen’s responsibility to consider their conscience in whether or not a law is applied or how it is applied.”
A foolish prosecutor will ask you to explain, and you can.
“Jury Nullification is the only way that people have changed repressive laws in this country. The decision to discard unfair or abusive laws is made by juries who refuse to enforce them. Jurors, for example, who came to feel that maybe it shouldn’t be illegal for slaves to run away from slave owners.”
At this point you are essentially contaminating the jury with a very subversive idea. Though you’ll be eliminated, the concept will hang in the back of the other jurors’ heads. If the prosecutor wants to hear more, or wants to debate, let them have it.
“The constitution guarantees us all the right to a trial by a jury of our peers. Not a jury composed of judges. Of peers. That’s us. Common citizens, like the defendant. A jury of peers are meant to provide parity against an abusive justice system or government.”
Very likely the jury orientation video or presentation in the jury assembly room will have mentioned that Thomas Jefferson considered the right to be a juror more valuable than the right to vote. You can invoke their own propaganda.
“If Thomas Jefferson valued the individual power of a juror over the power to vote in elections, you can bet he was talking about more than just walking into a jury box, doing what the judge told you, and walking out.”
At this point a prosecuting attorney might try to ostracize you by asking “does anyone else agree with this person?” Most will submissively shake their heads and frown, but quick thinking prospects will raise their hands too. If they do, and if they have grasped what you are saying, they too will be excused. You have essentially offered everyone the chance to escape this jury if they want to.
At worse, the slower thinkers will revisit your words as they spend the next hours and days getting to know the defendant. Very likely the prosecutor will be up at the bench, motioning for a fresh pool of jurors.
There is of course more you can say. You need only respond to what is asked, so as not to look like you’re being deliberate. Relax, the defense team will have their turn and they are CERTAIN to revisit the subject you’ve raised. The judge might prevent them from letting you ramble on, but make the most of it until that happens.
“Pot laws had to be relaxed when juries stopped convicting smokers of what they considered to be victimless crimes. Judges didn’t do that. Juries did.”
“And think about it: should poor people really be prosecuted if they have to shoplift food to feed themselves? Shouldn’t that be for a jury of poor people to decide?”
“And what if you realize that our prisons and jails are too full, and certainly too full of a disproportionate number of people of color? If police and judges are going to keep targeting certain people for convictions, how will we ever empty the jails? Thoughtful jurors can do it!”
“And the joy if it is, it only takes one juror on the jury to stand up for the defendant. Guilty verdicts require a unanimous vote. Just one juror can deprive the state of a conviction. That one juror who saves the defendant’s neck can be YOU!”
Don’t feel bad if the defense attorney doesn’t exploit you as much as you’d like. Keep in mind the defense attorney is incurring the wrath of the judge the longer you go on.
All US lawyers are forbidden to talk about jury nullification unless the subject comes up. Of course a defense attorney cannot ask a jury to disregard the law, but once you’ve brought up the legal concept, it’s their golden opportunity to kick the idea around.
OFF-STREET ACTIVISM floweth over with do-gooders begging for a seat at the table, literally, tables, where the powers-that-be want them. Street protest organizers are berated about providing forums for disenfranchised voices, as if indoor choir-singing yields redress of grievances. Leaders of disadvantaged communities mistake cis-gendered, white activists for their actual oppressors, because that’s easier than facing down the police. But the dynamic is disingenuous subterfuge and it’s not coming from the allies who matter. The people of Ferguson did not wait for white social justice groups to “make space” for their protest. You’d think the lesson of Ferguson is obvious.
Across non-Ferguson, religious community leaders and token spokespeople of color insist that they should monopolize local manifestations of anti-racism movements. Never mind that their call is for people to sit in church pews, meet with cops, vote, GOTV, petition, or join intra-city marches to nowhere, nowhere more than away from urban uprisings. In Denver I have never seen black resistance voices or leadership unwelcome at any rally no matter the subject. But I have seen tokenism at #BlackLivesMatter events used to discredit radicals and diffuse public outcry.
The making space argument certainly applies to entrenched nonprofit leadership but among militant voices it’s a laugh. If anyone is oppressing upstart minority voices it’s the seniority membership who don’t want unscheduled rocking of the boat. Reformist claptrap is the police state’s first line of defense.
“Black Lives Matter” must be shouted loudly even if your token black appointees won’t. Don’t mind the usual detractors peddling apolitical identity politics, let’s call them IDENTITY A-POLITICS, they’re a counter-revolutionary tactic to divide natural allies. This has been used against insurgents across the country, from Deep Green Resistance to Occupy, as fly-paper to waylay alliances or force effective organizations to go down the old rabbit holes occasioned by the usual novice errors.
Ferguson has shown the way. The anniversary of Mike Brown’s killing on August 9, 2014, correctly commemorates the public uprising not the policeman’s bullet. Unsurprisingly the early emphasis is being placed on ensuring crowd anger doesn’t get out of control. The eyes on the ball, whether blue or brown, focus on the racist police state.
The Black Lives Matter activists who interrupted Netroots Nation shared knowing themes through a people’s mic. Here’s a transcript of what they chanted until shut down by the speakers on stage.
If I die in police custody.
#BlackLivesMatter at #netrootsnation
If I die in police custody,
Do not let my parents talk to
Don Lemon, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson,
Or any of the motherfuckers
Who would destroy my name.
Let my parents know
That my sisters got this. If I die in police custody,
Say my name, say my name.
Say the name that I chose,
Not the one that I was given. If I die in police custody,
Make sure that I am remembered.
Make sure my sisters are remembered.
Say their names. Say their names. If I die in ICE custody,
Say that I am not a criminal.
Stop funding prisons and detention centers!
Shut ICE down and our county jails and our prisons,
Not one more deportation! If I die in police custody,
Know your silence helped kill me.
White Supremacy helped kill me.
And my child is parentless now. If I die in police custody,
Know that I want to live!
We want to live!
We fight to live!
Black Lives Matter!
All Black Lives Matter! If I die in police custody,
Don’t believe the hype, I was murdered!
Protect my family!
Indict the system!
Shut that shit down! If I die in police custody,
Avenge my death!
By any means necessary! If I die in police custody,
Burn everything down!
Because no building is worth more than my life.
And that’s the only way motherfuckers like you listen! If I die in police custody,
Make sure I’m the last person to die in police custody.
By any means necessary! If I die in police custody,
Do not hold a moment of silence for me!
Rise the fuck up!
Because your silence is killing us!
The year was 1960, and there was only one men’s prison in Colorado at that time, located at Canon City. There was a women’s prison that sat next to the men’s prison. There were three small satellites off the main prison: the ranch, dairy farm and garden. And there was the young men’s reformatory at Buena Vista, for a total of three prisons. In 1960 the population figures for Colorado was nearly two million people, in 2010 it was a little over five million; In a span of fifty years Colorado gained three million people. In 1960, it took 3 prisons to confine the convicts of two million people living in Colorado. By 2006 there were 30 prisons in Colorado, while adding only three million people to the population. Hold on here a minute; something doesn’t add up: 2 million people needed 3 prisons, now 5 million people need 30 prisons?!
It would be safe to assume that this growth in population were of people about to commit a crime, judging from the growth of new prisons compared to the population growth.
That’s quite a growth from 3 prisons to 30 prisons in 26 years; but then we didn’t have the “Prison Industrial Complex” in those years; Corporation private prisons. Their motto should read “If there are no prisoners; there is no profit”
If you and your family were out on a Sunday drive in 1960 and happen to drive by “Old Max” on Hi-way 50, you would have noticed a sign in front of the prison that advertised “Visitors Welcome” the sign went on to tell you that you could enter the prison for fifty cents on a guided tour at certain hours. This fifty cents was to go into a prisoner burial fund, for indigent convicts who died while imprisoned. They would then be buried in a pauper grave yard and sentence was complete due to death.
A few years later these tours were discontinued for fear that the prisoners might take the tourist hostage, also the Prison Administration had decided that it was better not to let the taxpayer see the condition of the prison they were paying for.
My wife and I decided to take the tour.
I had the feeling of a rat in the trap when the large steel door slammed shut behind us. After taking only a few steps, we left behind a warm sunny day and stepped into a dark gray world. The doom and gloom seemed to lurk at every corner, the guards in their towers, stared down at the tour, rifles at ready. We had the feeling that this tour, was a bad idea.
There was a guard about 70 years old who served as our tour guide, he wore a guard’s uniform and walked backwards as he pointed out the finer attractions of the prison; like the hole or the gas chamber. We were not allowed to go into these building as the old guard explained; we could be taken hostage.
However we were taken to the curio shop where the convicts were allowed to sell their hobby work, and it was here that the old guard gave us some stories on the history of Roy Best an ex-warden who was discovered with state cattle on his personal ranch and convicts were used as ranch hands. The old guard told how Warden Best would tell all newly arrived convicts: “While serving your sentence, you are allowed to make a dollar any way you can, Just make sure it’s not my dollar.” He also told a story of what happen when two convicts were caught in a homosexual act; they would be taken to the curio shop and handcuffed to a steel rail, they both would be made to wear a woman’s dress, for all the tours to see. It didn’t matter who was pitcher and who was catcher, they both had to wear a dress.
There were two yellow lines painted on the concrete about six feet apart, we were warned as tourists of all the harm and mayhem that could befall us if we stepped outside of the yellow lines and it was here that some of the tourist began thinking about what a mistake this was and could they get their fifty cents back. And of course the convicts were well aware of the rule of crossing the yellow line while a tour was in the prison or of talking to any of the tourists; it meant a certain trip to the hole. As the tour progressed through the prison, I noticed that many of the tourist heads kept bobbing down, making sure their feet didn’t touch the yellow line.
As we neared the end of the tour we came to where three convicts were waiting for the tour to pass before crossing the yellow line; There was an older lady with white hair near the front of the tour, when she saw those three convicts, (who were all dressed in white pants and shirts) she whispered to the old guard.
“Who are those men?”
The guard turned to look and then began to name the convicts.
The old woman stopped him and said ” No! I mean are they convicts or are they civilian employees?”
“They are convicts,” the guard replied, “they are allowed to wear white because they all work in the hospital.”
The gray haired lady then exclaimed with the most bewildering look on her face “my goodness! They look like anybody else”.
It’s been over fifty years since that white haired lady spoke those words, but her words are burned into my memory as if she had only spoken them yesterday.
What the white haired lady never realized is those convicts were sons, with mothers and fathers.
As all convicts are; they are the sons and daughters, the brothers and sisters, mother and fathers of us all.
Like that old white haired lady’s words “They looked like anybody else,” society looks at prisoners and sees them all the same, maybe that’s because they are all dressed the same or their mailing address is the same. They eat the same food and spend the long boring days together. It’s true that while you are a prisoner, the rules of a prison or jail apply to all, a sort of “One size fits all.” Yet the crime that sent these men and women to prison are as different as day and night.
Willie “The Actor” Sutton, a bank robber from back in the 40s use to dress up as a policeman when robbing a bank. Willie would never put any bullets in his gun; he wanted to make sure that no one was injured while robbing the banks, you might say Willie was a little different kind of criminal, but when he was in prison, he dressed like all the other convicts.
Back in the 50s the prison at Canon City had a rule: all prisoners shoes must have a “V” shaped notch cut into the heel. This was intended to make it easier for the guards to track escaped convicts. In theory the rule seemed pretty “air tight.” The drawback was that the convicts all knew about the notch, and would simply fill the notch or remove the heel. It took a few year for the guards to figure out why they weren’t finding any tracks of escaped convicts with a “V” notch in the heel.
The old white haired lady was right about one thing; they do look like everyone else. But the underlying problem that sent them to prison are very different.
From the New York Times: U.S. prison population dwarfs that of other nations.
“The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners. Indeed, the United States leads the world in producing prisoners, a reflection of a relatively recent and now entirely distinctive American approach to crime and punishment. Americans are locked up for crimes — from writing bad checks to using drugs — that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. And in particular they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations. Criminologists and legal scholars in other industrialized nations say they are mystified and appalled by the number and length of American prison sentences. The United States has, for instance, 2.3 million criminals behind bars, more than any other nation, according to data maintained by the International Center for Prison Studies at King’s College London.”
In reading the above and the complete 1700 word article you will not find the word ‘Corrections” used once.
Webster’s Dictionary: Correction; 1 a correction or being corrected, 2 a change that corrects a mistake; change from wrong to right or from abnormal to normal.
As you are reading this story you may have noticed that I do not use today’s language to describe prisons, convicts, guards and wardens, as “Correctional Facility”, “Correctional Officer”, “Superintendent” or “Inmate”. To call them “Correctional Facility’s or Correctional Officer” is the height of hypocrisy. The truth is the guards can’t correct the problems in their own lives let alone solve the many complex problems of the men and women they guard.
The word correction was introduced by the prison industrial complex to fool the public into thinking they were solving the problems of the people they were warehousing and collecting all of those tax dollars for.
Again! hold on here a minute; If they are correcting all the problems of these errant people? Then why are we building so many new prisons and filling them with men, women and children?
You might be asking yourself “How did America, end up with so many criminals? The truth is “We didn’t.” The American Prison Corporations quite simply found it very profitable to imprison citizens.
The Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) simple minded solution to the problem is to build more prisons and pass new laws which will produce more criminals for their prisons.
Looking to the CCA and their lobbyist is equivalent to hiring the fox to guard the hen house.
This all leads to a greater bottom line profit for the CCA but does little to solve the crime rate, the recidivism rate or help those prisoners who truly need help. And it certainly does not slow the growth of new prisons. “The breeding grounds of crime”.
Confronting Confinement, a June 2006 U.S. prison study by the bipartisan Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons, reports than on any given day more than 2 million people are incarcerated in the United States, and that over the course of a year, 13.5 million spend time in prison or jail. African Americans are imprisoned at a rate roughly seven times higher than Whites, and Hispanics at a rate three times higher than Whites. Within three years of their release, 67% of former prisoners are rearrested and 52% are re-incarcerated, a recidivism rate that calls into question the effectiveness of America’s corrections system, which costs taxpayers $60 billion a year. Violence, overcrowding, poor medical and mental health care, and numerous other failings plague America’s 5,000 prisons and jails. The study indicates that even small improvements in medical care could significantly reduce recidivism. “What happens inside jails and prisons does not stay inside jails and prisons,” the commission concludes, since 95% of inmates are eventually released back into society, ill-equipped to lead productive lives. Given the dramatic rise in incarceration over the past decade, public safety is threatened unless the corrections system does in fact “correct” rather than simply punish. For a copy of the complete report and the commission’s recommendations for reform, see
In the words of George Carlin; we add syllables to soften the meaning of words; From the Colorado Central Magazine; (The polite modern terms are inmate, not prisoner or convict as in historical years, and corrections officer instead of guard.)
The Huffington Post published an excellent piece yesterday by reporter Chris Kirkham describing how the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) wants to buy up state prisons, all under the guise of helping state governments deal with their budget shortfalls.
Called the Corrections Investment Initiative (sounds so positive, right?), it’s a sickening display of exploitive behavior — perhaps best underscored by the fact that the CCA stipulates in its “investment” overture that, as part of the deal, the states need to keep the prisons packed. Their language for it:
“An assurance by the agency partner [the state] that the agency has sufficient inmate population to maintain a minimum 90 percent occupancy rate over the term of the contract.”
In reading the above article I did not notice anything pertaining to correcting the prisoner’s problems that sent them to prison. I did read the words “Helping state governments deal with their budget shortfalls” Whenever someone comes to me and tells me they can save me money… But I have to spend money in order to save money, it’s right here I become suspicious of their motive, “Thank You, but, No Thanks'”
“The Corrections Corporation of America” and that white haired lady have something in common with one big difference; the white haired lady saw us all the same looking like anybody else but she had no motive for profit when she looked at us, she can be forgiven for her mistake.
“The Corrections Corporation of America” sees the prisoners also all the same; as a free labor force to manufacture goods in their prison industrial program. For the CCA it’s a win-win proposition, the taxpayer pays for housing their captive work force and then they again made a profit off the manufactured goods. It appears “The Corrections Corporation of America” has found a new way to reconstitute slavery. The only thing missing are the slave ships from Africa; we are already here so there is no need of the ships. However they will need to lobby the congress for new laws to insure the prisons are full of able bodied workers. And of course the lobbyists don’t work cheap; they have a large overhead in the moneys they must contribute to our elected legislator campaign fund.
The money travels from the taxpayer’s pocket to the government coffers, from the government coffers to “The Corrections Corporation of America” and then from their checking account back to the Colorado Legislator reelection fund, a vicious cycle that never ends. They are all so busy stuffing their pockets with the taxpayer’s money they have little left to correct the problems of the prisoners that got them the money in the first place.
In conclusion, with solutions; The unsuspecting, hardworking taxpayers have been taken for a ride for too long. It’s time we told the Prison Industrial Complex; “The Jig is Up.” It’s time for a revolution.
There is an old saying among the convicts; All the convicts in prison combined, never stole more money than one banker or corporation stole with one swipe of their pen. “While the poor man was out stealing a loaf of bread to feed his family, the banker was stealing the poor man’s house”.
One of the very best and clear examples I can give, happened right here in Colorado. For years and years the prisons have been filled with “Pot” smokers, the public was told; These are criminals, depraved drug addicts that will rob, steal and rape your daughter.
When the opposite was more true; ‘Pot” smokers are very relaxed, looking only for some Twinkies to munch on while watching cartoons.
And now that Colorado has de-criminalized marijuana, we are left with a bunch of taxpaying ‘Pot “smokers living normal lives, working and contributing to society. I’m sure that it’s not much consolation to all the men and women who suffered for years in prison, classified as a criminal, not to mention the families that were destroyed. Men and women who were filled with hate in this prison system, then released to commit a real crime.
Back in 1960, I was not taken as a hostage while touring the prison, but in 2015 we are all being held as hostage by the CCA (Private Prison Corp.) for our tax dollars.
You can help change that by contacting one of the local or national groups to end mass incarceration.
————– About the author: David Anderson is an ex-convict, who had escaped from “Old Max” twice. He was serving three life sentences for crimes of which he was innocent. It took seven years for these convictions to be reversed. He walked out of the prison on April 29th 1983.
Let’s all grab our pitch forks, run around and find something to kill. There now! that should make us all feel better about what happened. If you listen to moron politicians like Nikki Halley, then you are the sucker she is counting on. “Kill Dylann”, there! problem solved.
It was reported by some news media, that Dylann wanted to start a race war, because he lost a girl he liked to another boy who happen to be black. Guess Dylann wasn’t keeping up with current events, there is already a race war in progress. You need only look at the fact that he is still alive, after the horrific crime he is suspected of, while many, many black men, women and children are dead, committing no crime at all.
The number of these racially motivated crimes by the police are hidden for fear the citizens will see the true nature of their “Protect and Serve” law enforcement. Here are some facts;
1. The NRA; Since 1998, the NRA has spent $28.2 million on lobbying in Washington and employed between 16 and 35 lobbyists in any given year.
2. While The Bureau of Justice Statics does not provide the annual number of arrest-related deaths by race or ethnicity, a rough calculation based on its data shows that black people were about four times as likely to die in custody or while being arrested than whites.
3. Black men were more than six times as likely as white men to be incarcerated in federal and state prisons, and local jails.
4. While people of color make up about 30 percent of the United States’ population, they account for 60 percent of those imprisoned.
I could provide more facts and figures, they are there for anyone wishing to see the truth. As for Nikki and her comments; She is the worst of politicians, she is only appealing to the emotions of the moment.
According to a March 29, 2011 Congressional Research Service report, Congress has approved a total of $1.283 trillion for military operations, this taxpayer money was spent to protect Americans from the “Terrorist”, you know, that brown skinned man who lives in some foreign land. While at home, in the USA, the “Terrorist” is protected by the second amendment.
“There have been at least 70 mass shootings across the country, with the killings unfolding in 30 states from Massachusetts to Hawaii. Thirty-three of these mass shootings have occurred since 2006. Seven of them took place in 2012 alone, including Sandy Hook”.
Mass shootings toll exceeds 900 in past seven years, we can now add another 9 people to that list.
How many tax dollars have been spent keeping guns out of the hands of the “American Terrorist?” ZERO. The NRA has made sure of this with their control of congress. It should be noted that the NRA supports the supply of weapons to both the American and Foreign “Terrorist”.
The NRA like most of American Corporations sole function is to make money, and they have now militarized the police across US in their effort to control the mass population as they awake from a long slumber.
We need to look past the Dylann’s of America and see the culture that created him and then put a gun in his hands. Dylann serves only as a symptom of a greater disease.
Mexico’s and the USA’s prison system is run by thugs!
Capitalism has long created and enforced a thug-like prison system. I have recently been told the experience of someone in this system and which thousands of people do too. I am also reading The Trial by Franz Kafka and I was reminded of this experience. As I listened to this person in tears both of relief because he got out, but also because of complete fear for what happened to those not as lucky as him, I felt sorry for him because even if he was not put back in jail, he won’t be able to become anything else because of capitalism’s structure. And so here is his story and I hope that this will not be the fate of him, and that someday Mexico’s thug-jails will be gone as will the criminality produced by poverty in an alienating system like Capitalism.
“I was at a party and two friends went to a store and stole some alcohol. They went back to the party and continued listening to loud music. The police showed up and I tried to run. I would have gotten away but my brother was in the house and I couldn’t leave him.
The police caught us and lined us up against a wall where they began to hit us. They hit the girl with the butt of their gun on her head and she fainted. They hit us on the shoulders, the head and the face and they kicked us and stepped on us. My brother yells as they hit him and I scream at them to let him go but they continue punching us on the face and then they put us in the car. My brother is sixteen and so he gets lucky and is only kept over night. I, however, was there for three months.
My friend was sent to Topo Chico where they tied him up and hit him with wooden boards. They then soaked him and connected him to the light where he was electrocuted.
They are tied up for three months where they lie in their own filth and some are shot in front of all the other prisoners. My friend owes the Zetas 20,000 Pesos and the police will continue to hit him until he pays the Zetas.
Sometimes when the police shoot someone that is tied up, they offer a prisoner to take the blame in return for 20 years in prison but without being tied up in their own filth and without the daily starvation and blows.
Most of them are innocent but they get us on the street and they torture us to get money from us; which isn’t much and sometimes their parents are forced to accept the cruelty of which is bestowed upon their kids. Sometimes it’s 4,000, sometimes it’s 30,000 but if you don’t give them money, they torture you.
They get us to confess by putting us on a board and then a towel on our face which will become drenched with water and we’ll feel as if we’re drowning. We begin to get sick from the filthy cells. I have sores all over my skin and I can’t stop itching, but I almost forget it because of how happy I am to get out.
I got lucky but I’m sorry for others that don’t because they can’t afford the quota. We are all poor and we don’t receive decent educations because even the public education is expensive and so we resort to petty crime and then get caught… Sometimes, even those with money get caught.”
Mexico has thug-like prisons that are run by cops that are no better than the organized crime. In fact, the Zetas, a major cartel group, came from the Mexican police force. And by having this alienating system and prisons, it creates a circle of even more crime. Good luck to all of the youth trapped in this unjust system that is full of corruption and which many people cannot escape.
This weekend the General Assembly of Occupy Denver recognized that its intended occupation was actually a re-occupation, of lands to which original inhabitants lay claim. On Sunday the GA consensus voiced its solidarity with the American Indian Movement of Colorado who submitted a statement for ratification. It’s reprinted below via The Sole Reader:
COLORADO AIM’S CHALLENGE TO #OCCUPYDENVER
An Indigenous Platform Proposal for “Occupy Denver”
“Now we put our minds together to see what kind of world we can create for the seventh generation yet to come.”
John Mohawk (1944-2006), Seneca Nation
As indigenous peoples, we welcome the awakening of those who are relatively new to our homeland. We are thankful, and rejoice, for the emergence of a movement that is mindful of its place in the environment, that seeks economic and social justice, that strives for an end to oppression in all its forms, that demands an adequate standard of food, employment, shelter and health care for all, and that calls for envisioning a new, respectful and honorable society. We have been waiting for 519 years for such a movement, ever since that fateful day in October, 1492 when a different worldview arrived – one of greed, hierarchy, destruction and genocide.
In observing the “Occupy Together” expansion, we are reminded that the territories of our indigenous nations have been “under occupation” for decades, if not centuries. We remind the occupants of this encampment in Denver that they are on the territories of the Cheyenne, Arapaho and Ute peoples. In the U.S., indigenous nations were the first targets of corporate/government oppression. The landmark case of Johnson v. McIntosh (1823), which institutionalized the “doctrine of discovery” in U.S. law, and which justified the theft of 2 billion acres of indigenous territory, established a framework of corrupt political/legal/corporate collusion that continues throughout indigenous America, to the present.
If this movement is serious about confronting the foundational assumptions of the current U.S. system, then it must begin by addressing the original crimes of the U.S. colonizing system against indigenous nations. Without addressing justice for indigenous peoples, there can never be a genuine movement for justice and equality in the United States. Toward that end, we challenge Occupy Denver to take the lead, and to be the first “Occupy” city to integrate into its philosophy, a set of values that respects the rights of indigenous peoples, and that recognizes the importance of employing indigenous visions and models in restoring environmental, social, cultural, economic and political health to our homeland.
We call on Occupy Denver to adopt, as a starting point, the following:
1. To repudiate the Doctrine of Christian Discovery, to endorse the repeal of the papal bull Inter Caetera (1493) to work for the reversal of the U.S. Supreme Court case of Johnson v. M’Intosh 1823), and call for a repeal of the Columbus Day holiday as a Colorado and United States holiday.
2. To endorse the right of all indigenous peoples to the international right of self-determination, by virtue of which they freely determine their political status, and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural futures.
3. To demand the recognition, observance and enforcement of all treaties and agreements freely entered into `between indigenous nations and the United States. Treaties should be recognized as binding international instruments. Disputes should be recognized as a proper concern of international law, and should be arbitrated by impartial international bodies.
4. To insist that Indigenous people shall never be forcibly relocated from their lands or territories.
5. To acknowledge that Indigenous peoples have the right to practice and teach their spiritual and religious traditions customs and ceremonies, including in institutions of the State, e.g. prisons, jails and hospitals„ and to have access in privacy their religious and cultural sites, and the right to the repatriation of their human remains and funeral objects.
6. To recognize that Indigenous peoples and nations are entitled to the permanent control and enjoyment of their aboriginal-ancestral territories. This includes surface and subsurface rights, inland and coastal waters, renewable and non-renewable resources, and the economies based on these resources. In advancement of this position, to stand in solidarity with the Cree nations, whose territories are located in occupied northern Alberta, Canada, in their opposition to the Tar Sands development, the largest industrial project on earth. Further, to demand that President Barack Obama deny the permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline, proposed to run from the tar sands in Canada into the United States, and that the United States prohibit the use or transportation of Tar Sands oil in the United States.
7. To assert that Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their cultural heritage, traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions. They have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their intellectual property over such cultural heritage, traditional knowledge, and traditional cultural expressions. Further, indigenous peoples have the right to the ownership and protection of their human biological and genetic materials, samples, and stewardship of non-human biological and genetic materials found in indigenous territories.
8. To recognize that the settler state boundaries in the Americas are colonial fabrications that should not limit or restrict the ability of indigenous peoples to travel freely, without inhibition or restriction, throughout the Americas. This is especially true for indigenous nations whose people and territories have been separated by the acts of settler states that established international borders without the free, prior and informed consent of the indigenous peoples affected.
9. To demand that the United States shall take no adverse action regarding the territories, lands, resources or people of indigenous nations without the free, prior and informed consent of the indigenous peoples affected.
10. To demand the immediate release of American Indian political prisoner, Leonard Peltier, U.S. Prisoner #89637-132, from U.S. federal custody.
Finally, we also remind Occupy Denver that indigenous histories, political, cultural, environmental, medical, spiritual and economic traditions provide rich examples for frameworks that can offer concrete models of alternatives to the current crises facing the United States. We request that Occupy Denver actively utilize and integrate indigenous perspectives, teachers, and voices in its deliberations and decision-making processes.
“Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders and millions have been killed because of this obedience. Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves and the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem.”
–Howard Zinn
UPDATED– In a flurry of conflicting tweets, French Flotilla II member DIGNITE AL KARAMA made for the open sea, beyond the reach of Greek authorities currently detaining the AUDACITY OF HOPE, TAHRIR, LOUISE MICHEL, GUERNICA, JULIANO and others. Reporter Quentin Girard has been communicating the DIGNITY’s progress, its eight activists electing last night to complete their run all the way to Gaza.
The French vessel escaped Greece on a technicality, as a pleasure craft, the Dignity is not confined by the regulations being used to block the larger Flotilla participants. Aboard the Dignity with Girard, are Olivier Besancenot, Julien Rivoire, Omeyyaa Sedic, Nicole Kiil-Nielsen, Annick Coupé, Nabil Ennasr. (Both Coupé and Besancenot are registered on Twitter, but neither has communicated yet.)
Girard’s most recent tweets, translated:
July 5, 3:02
All is well thank you 🙂 but we were in an area where reception was bad.
July 5, 3:15
Despite what we can read, the Dignity is still in international waters. It will be there in one hour.
July 5, 7:41
The passengers of the Dignity have finally come to the decision (only now really) to go to Gaza.
July 5, 8:19
TF1 should attempt to rejoin Dignity and embark.
July 5, 8:43
We’re moving again after a “media” pause on the high seas. 15 hours of sea left before I might go silent. Kisses!
July 5, 12:19
Into the night the DIGNITY continues its advance. In the distance, small lights.
July 5, 13:38
Not really enough beds for everyone, so I sleep under the stars on the upper deck. beautiful sky.
In their original French:
05.07 3:02
tout va bien merci 🙂 mais on était dans un endroit où ça captait mal.
05.07 3:15
Malgré ce qu’on peut lire le Dignité n’est pas encore dans les eaux internationales. Il y sera dans une heure.
05.07 7:41
Les passagers du Dignité viennent de prendre enfin (seulement maintenant vraiment) la décision d’aller jusqu’à Gaza
05.07 8:19
TF1 devrait tenter de rejoindre le Dignité et embarquer dessus
05.07 8:43
On bouge à nouveau après une pause “média” en haute mer. C’est parti pour 15h de mer, où je risque d’être silencieux. Des bises.
05.07 12:19
Dans la nuit le dignité avance toujours. Au loin, des petites lumières.
05.07 13:38
Pas vraiment de couchettes pour tout le monde, donc je dors à la belle étoile, sur le pont supérieur. Beau ciel
En route to Gaza, “Dignity” is appealing to the media
The French ship of the “freedom flotilla” sailing in international waters off the coast of Greece. The crew decided to go to Gaza.
By QUENTIN GIRARD special envoy on the “Dignity”
16 hours in Greece, somewhere in international waters, on Tuesday afternoon. After much discussion, the Dignity passengers finally made their decision. They will go to Gaza. A bit surreal moment where the middle of the sea, tossed by the waves, they set up banners and make an official statement.
When they left the industrial port of Salamina, Monday morning, they did not really know how far they try to go. There, as they finally arrived in international waters a little to 15 hours – after wet night in a small cove – they say they are determined. “We’re going to Gaza. The French and international community officially announced that they supported us regardless of our decision, “enthuses Julien Rivoire, one of the spokesmen of the campaign. “But to get there, we also need the media, as TV join us to show our work and safety issues,” he continues.
In the distance we see no island, not even a few freighters, these little black spots that usually reassuring scattered throughout the year. “We wanted to show that we could block the Greek blockade, says Julien Rivoire. It once was that we wondered what we were doing then. ”
Return to France? Impossible
That same morning, the discussion was intense as ever on the Dignity. What to do? Return to France? Impossible for them. Go to another country such as Tunisia symbolic to wait, to show that it is a stopover? Why not, it’s better, they say. But no. The only viable solution they think is necessary. Go to Gaza. “You have the dignity to the end represents French and international committees,” argues Olivier Besancenot.
“The important thing that determines the political feasibility, technical feasibility, must be as representative as possible and supported,” Nabil Esnari continues, President of the Association of Muslims in France. “We do not want to be seen as Islamic-leftist Khmer-green-act in our corner,” says the MP-Europe Ecology Nicole Kiil-Nielsen.
“My preference would be to go to Gaza without delay,” takes on Olivier Besancenot position as others. “Our protection is proof that we exist, we continue to move forward. We can not afford to become a ghost ship. ”
There remains the question of technical means. The Dignity is a small yacht of 15 meters long, categorized craft. It was originally one of the smaller boats in the fleet. He has no self to go off the ridge to Gaza. It would necessarily need to be refueled and water en route. Hence the difficulty that there will in the coming hours to coordinate the political ambitions and technical means.
A small creek, goats, and … Sea
But they want confident. The twelve passengers (1) are refreshed by their two days at sea after a week of pitfalls in Athens. Although the coup, the Greek landscapes provide a particular coloration to the adventure. In the capital locked up in meeting rooms to multiply the points and plan protests, the mood was serious and solemn. Not even have time to visit the Acropolis.
There hard to escape the Greek islands. On the night of Monday and Tuesday, the Dignity was anchored in a cove of a small island. In the morning, passengers were woken up by goats with bells tinkle merrily. A shepherd ran along the cliff, the whoop, some small white houses with blue shutters, of steep cliffs, the water so beautiful … “In the morning, you go through three stages,” said Olivier Besancenot. “First you wake up, you do not know where you are, then you look around you and you say,” oh yes, it’s beautiful. ” And just after you wonder what’s next meeting, what is the plan that will be put in place. ”
The Plan: Gaza, having embarked with TVs. Maybe he will change in the coming hours. Meanwhile, the Dignity vogue. Engine noise makes deaf. The smell of fuel oil a little drunk. In front, nothing. The sea, just the sea.
(1) On board were three crew members, eight activists – Olivier Besancenot addition there are Nicole Kiil-Nielsen, MP, Europe-ecology, Annick Coupe, spokesman for the union Solidarity trade union, or Nabil Ennasr, President the Collective of Muslims in France – and a journalist, the author of these lines.
A French ship with a few activists on board, including Olivier Besancenot and Annick Coupé, eventually left Athens and headed to Gaza despite the obstacles. The “flotilla to Gaza” is reduced to its simplest expression. The story of our special correspondent on the deck of “Dignity.”
By QUENTIN GIRARD special envoy on the “Dignity”
“The pins in the plastic, it will not be possible,” said Olivier Besancenot, in full session yourself. 11 hours on Monday, in a small Greek port. The Dignity Al Kamara, one of two ships of the French committee for Gaza, left at dawn the creek near the industrial town of Salamina, where he had hidden for three days. In another cove where he made a first step, the passengers – including Besancenot, so – try to install the satellite antenna to communicate with the outside world.
3 o’clock this morning, Julien Rivoire, a member of the NPA and a spokesman for the campaign called “Wake the captain, we’re back.” Between them and the small annex that links with the boat, watchdogs of the port or adjacent businesses. They bark violently at night. They fail to wake the whole neighborhood. Tunisian Omeyyaa Sedic and Julien Rivoire, equipped with the latest load required, can not pass. Latest in a series of tragicomic events that marked the week of the fleet. “We’re not James Bond, it is OSS 117” is trying to be amused Julien Rivoire finally climbing on Dignity.
Plaisance
Sunday evening, the decision was made. It was long in coming, interspersed with calls to Iniohos Hotel where the rest of the delegation. A consensus is emerging: the Dignity attempt to leave no matter what. This small yacht 13 meters long, having left France ten days ago, has a status of “craft” and is theoretically not subject to the same prohibition to start than other boats of the delegation.
On Friday, an American ship tried starting one. Saturday, the captain was imprisoned. It could several years in prison for having left without permission. After several announcements bullies, to show their determination and their will as strong as ever to go to Gaza to bring humanitarian assistance, the committees have defected last one after the other. Masters of Spanish ships and Canada have announced that they did not want to take as many risks as they were sure they could not be more than thirty meters. The former president of Greenpeace France, Alain Connan, captain of the main French ship Louise Michel, after long hesitation, agreed with this position, some attracted by the Greek jails.
He went to ask permission to start at the harbor. Refused of course. The passengers were then organized a demonstration on the deck of Louise Michel. They simulated a departure. They should all file a complaint for obstruction of freedom of movement in the afternoon.
Parano
5 o’clock this morning, the Dignity springs. The sun is not up yet. Some cargo ships moving in the distance. Around him, two or three carcasses that rust for too many years, the ferry may be ready to leave but which seem, at dawn, desperate still. Twelve boats, twenty-two different nationalities and several hundred passengers announced, the fleet is now reduced to three crew members, eight militants – Olivier Besancenot addition there are Nicole Kiil-Nielsen, MP europe-ecology, Annick Coupe, spokesman for the union Solidarity trade union, or Nabil Ennasr, president of the Collective of Muslims in France – and a journalist, the author of these lines.
The Dignity enters the channel. In the distance, lights, shadows indistinct, but no coastguard. Surprise among the passengers. They believed they were identified and a small star suddenly arise between two cargo ships to stop them. For two days, each gull, each fishing boat, each jet-ski with the big guys who spend every man piss in the night under the white lights of the port is an opportunity when paranoid.
To starboard there. A port, nothing. In the distance behind, already, the lights of Athens. The sun appears between two hills. After a week of failure or disruption, and the blows of fate have joined forces to keep them in port, for the first time the French committee actually managed something in Greece. They feel like defeat stress, even if they are tired, even if the tension is palpable at times between them, although discussions and waiting endlessly sometimes not.
Determination
Of course, they know that this little boat is not much. That Israel, obviously, has won the game this time and that the only issue that remains is to show that they have tried everything, it’s not a “fucking failure”, as stated Besancenot. Certainly they know that it is unlikely to go to Gaza, especially alone. Unless a Greek ship to join them. The committee led by Vengelis Pissias announced that they had a new, third, a “surprise” that the authorities do not know. But they have promised so many things since the beginning of last week …
The Dignity vogue. It will reach international waters in a few hours if not arrested by the Coast Guard before. There, passengers will make official statements. They expressed their determination against the blockade of Gaza and denounced the attitude of the international community against them. They then announce the next steps. If there is a sequel.
A year after the arrest of a murderer off the first convoy of Israel, a new international fleet prepares to sail to Gaza to try to break the blockade imposed on the Palestinian enclave. Unlike last year, two French ships involved in the operation.
The first of these ships, the “Louise Michel”, is currently in Greece. The second, “Dignity-Al Karama” sailed this morning from the Ile-Rousse in Corsica. I get on one of them and try to deliver on this blog Monde.fr the story of the expedition.
A campaign launched in October 2010
This project, called “A French boat to Gaza” would not be possible without the 600,000 euros of the money raised during the campaign launched in October under the leadership of the combined platform of French NGOs for Palestine and the National Collective for a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
Nearly 70 organizations (associations, political parties and unions) were involved in mobilization. From Lille to Marseille via Strasbourg, Toulouse or Alencon, speakers and activists around the country. Three-week tour in February. “It was a real success,” testifies Julien Rivoire, a member of the New Anti-Capitalist Party and the coordinating committee of the campaign. “It happened in the markets with a sound truck, banners, leaflets and a bank. In Toulouse, the Mirail, 600 euros were collected in two hours. It was during the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions. There was a particular climate, people were saying ‘it is possible to make a difference “.
SNOWBALL EFFECT
Driven by this momentum, mobilizing snowballed, quickly exceeding traditional activist circles. Events, exhibitions, film screenings or symbolic release of paper boats … In the end, more than 1,500 events are held across France. Donations tributary. “We never imagined that the movement would take on such a scale,” comments Maxim Guimberteau, communications officer of “A French boat to Gaza.”
“I feel that this campaign has awakened people. A real fervor has replaced the fatalism that had won many former activists involved in the pro-Palestinian,” observes Alain Bosc, and member of the Cimade Coordinating Committee of “A boat to Gaza”. Very relayed in associations, the initiative has been enthusiastically received in poor neighborhoods and in particular “to the French families of Arab origin, sensitive to the Palestinian question and the fate of the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip.”
90% of individual donations
Many structures such as the Christian Catholic Committee against Hunger and for Development (CCFD-Terre Solidarity) or the Christians of the Mediterranean have also mobilized their networks. An appeal, launched at the initiative of the Archbishop of Sens-Auxerre and bishops of Troyes and La Rochelle, was sent to all dioceses to encourage the faithful “to a special place in their personal prayer and a community for the second flotilla of freedom to achieve its objectives in the service of peace. ”
The result of all collected 600 000 euros, 90% of donations come from individuals. According to organizers, “most people participated at 5, 10 or 50 euros.” Added to the contributions of the signatory organizations, grants from several local and payment of the foundation “A world for all.” All support checks were made payable to the Movement against Racism and for Friendship between Peoples (MRAP), which opened a special account to centralize. “Everything was done in a transparent, ensures the collective. We have not accepted money from foreign countries or associations.”
46 PEOPLE IN FRENCH VESSELS
The funds raised were allocated to the purchase of two vessels, the formation of crews, and communications expenses. “Chartering vessels is what has been the most difficult in the end, recognizes Alain Bosc. We’re not owners, there have been some setbacks.”
Finally, 46 people are expected on board. Alongside the militants of the various associations involved in the campaign, carrying several personalities from the political or voluntary, as Olivier Besancenot (NPA), the Communist deputy in Le Havre, Jean-Paul Lecoq, MEP Nicole Kiil-Nielsen (EELV) the Breton sailor Jo Le Guen, or Julien Bayou, the collective “Out of colonialism.”
The “Dignity-Al Karama”, a 19-meter boat flying the French flag, left the waters of the Ile-Rousse to 11:15. It must join in the next ten to twelve days boats that make up the flotilla to Gaza.
“The entire fleet will sail next week from various Mediterranean ports,” Julien Rivoire told AFP a committee member coordinating the French countryside. Ships, including two freighters carrying medical supplies, “should reach the port of Gaza at the end of next week,” he added. Among them, a cargo bought a quarter of France and the rest of Sweden, Norway and France, making the “Dignity” the only boat in the fleet entirely French.
“We hope we can do it so as to breach the blockade,” said Omeyya Seddik, a passenger on the “Dignity”, reached by telephone by the AFP, for whom “joy is the feeling that dominates the time of departure. “This fleet is part of “the natural continuation of the revolution for freedom and democracy,” in Arab countries, said Seddik, of Tunisian origin.
Before taking off, a passenger on the boat at the stern hoisted a Palestinian flag and made the “V” for victory.
Here’s William Blum’s latest essay, on Lincoln Gordon, Brazil, Cuba, and the 2009 Nobel Laureate, reprinted from www.killinghope.org.
THE ANTI-EMPIRE REPORT
By William Blum, January 6, 2009
The American elite
Lincoln Gordon died a few weeks ago at the age of 96. He had graduated summa cum laude from Harvard at the age of 19, received a doctorate from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, published his first book at 22, with dozens more to follow on government, economics, and foreign policy in Europe and Latin America. He joined the Harvard faculty at 23. Dr. Gordon was an executive on the War Production Board during World War II, a top administrator of Marshall Plan programs in postwar Europe, ambassador to Brazil, held other high positions at the State Department and the White House, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, economist at the Brookings Institution, president of Johns Hopkins University. President Lyndon B. Johnson praised Gordon’s diplomatic service as "a rare combination of experience, idealism and practical judgment".
You get the picture? Boy wonder, intellectual shining light, distinguished leader of men, outstanding American patriot.
Abraham Lincoln Gordon was also Washington’s on-site, and very active, director in Brazil of the military coup in 1964 which overthrew the moderately leftist government of João Goulart and condemned the people of Brazil to more than 20 years of an unspeakably brutal dictatorship. Human-rights campaigners have long maintained that Brazil’s military regime originated the idea of the desaparecidos, "the disappeared", and exported torture methods across Latin America. In 2007, the Brazilian government published a 500-page book, "The Right to Memory and the Truth", which outlines the systematic torture, rape and disappearance of nearly 500 left-wing activists, and includes photos of corpses and torture victims. Currently, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is proposing a commission to investigate allegations of torture by the military during the 1964-1985 dictatorship. (When will the United States create a commission to investigate its own torture?)
In a cable to Washington after the coup, Gordon stated — in a remark that might have had difficulty getting past the lips of even John Foster Dulles — that without the coup there could have been a "total loss to the West of all South American Republics". (It was actually the beginning of a series of fascistic anti-communist coups that trapped the southern half of South America in a decades-long nightmare, culminating in "Operation Condor", in which the various dictatorships, aided by the CIA, cooperated in hunting down and killing leftists.)
Gordon later testified at a congressional hearing and while denying completely any connection to the coup in Brazil he stated that the coup was "the single most decisive victory of freedom in the mid-twentieth century."
Listen to a phone conversation between President Johnson and Thomas Mann, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, April 3, 1964, two days after the coup:
MANN: I hope you’re as happy about Brazil as I am.
LBJ: I am.
MANN: I think that’s the most important thing that’s happened in the hemisphere in three years.
LBJ: I hope they give us some credit instead of hell.1
So the next time you’re faced with a boy wonder from Harvard, try to keep your adulation in check no matter what office the man attains, even — oh, just choosing a position at random — the presidency of the United States. Keep your eyes focused not on these "liberal" … "best and brightest" who come and go, but on US foreign policy which remains the same decade after decade. There are dozens of Brazils and Lincoln Gordons in America’s past. In its present. In its future. They’re the diplomatic equivalent of the guys who ran Enron, AIG and Goldman Sachs.
Of course, not all of our foreign policy officials are like that. Some are worse.
And remember the words of convicted spy Alger Hiss: Prison was "a good corrective to three years at Harvard."
Mothers, don’t let your children grow up to be Nobel Peace Prize winners
In November I wrote:
Question: How many countries do you have to be at war with to be disqualified from receiving the Nobel Peace Prize?
Answer: Five. Barack Obama has waged war against only Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia. He’s holding off on Iran until he actually gets the prize.
Well, on December 10 the president clutched the prize in his blood-stained hands. But then the Nobel Laureate surprised us. On December 17 the United States fired cruise missiles at people in … not Iran, but Yemen, all "terrorists" of course, who were, needless to say, planning "an imminent attack against a U.S. asset".2 A week later the United States carried out another attack against "senior al-Qaeda operatives" in Yemen.3
Reports are that the Nobel Peace Prize Committee in Norway is now in conference to determine whether to raise the maximum number of wars allowed to ten. Given the committee’s ignoble history, I imagine that Obama is taking part in the discussion. As is Henry Kissinger.
The targets of these attacks in Yemen reportedly include fighters coming from Afghanistan and Iraq, confirmation of the warnings long given — even by the CIA and the Pentagon — that those US interventions were creating new anti-American terrorists. (That’s anti-American foreign policy, not necessarily anything else American.) How long before the United States will be waging war in some other god-forsaken land against anti-American terrorists whose numbers include fighters from Yemen? Or Pakistan? Or Somalia? Or Palestine?
Our blessed country is currently involved in so many bloody imperial adventures around the world that one needs a scorecard to keep up. Rick Rozoff of StopNATO has provided this for us in some detail.4
For this entire century, almost all these anti-American terrorists have been typically referred to as "al-Qaeda", as if you have to be a member of something called al-Qaeda to resent bombs falling on your house or wedding party; as if there’s a precise and meaningful distinction between people retaliating against American terrorism while being a member of al-Qaeda and people retaliating against American terrorism while NOT being a member of al-Qaeda. However, there is not necessarily even such an animal as a "member of al-Qaeda", albeit there now exists "al-Qaeda in Iraq" and "al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula". Anti-American terrorists do know how to choose a name that attracts attention in the world media, that appears formidable, that scares Americans. Governments have learned to label their insurgents "al-Qaeda" to start the military aid flowing from Washington, just like they yelled "communist" during the Cold War. And from the perspective of those conducting the War on Terror, the bigger and more threatening the enemy, the better — more funding, greater prestige, enhanced career advancement. Just like with the creation of something called The International Communist Conspiracy.
It’s not just the American bombings, invasions and occupations that spur the terrorists on, but the American torture. Here’s Bowe Robert Bergdahl, US soldier captured in Afghanistan, speaking on a video made by his Taliban captors: He said he had been well-treated, contrasting his fate to that of prisoners held in US military prisons, such as the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. "I bear witness I was continuously treated as a human being, with dignity, and I had nobody deprive me of my clothes and take pictures of me naked. I had no dogs barking at me or biting me as my country has done to their Muslim prisoners in the jails that I have mentioned."5
Of course the Taliban provided the script, but what was the script based on? What inspired them to use such words and images, to make such references?
Cuba. Again. Still. Forever.
More than 50 years now it is. The propaganda and hypocrisy of the American mainstream media seems endless and unwavering. They can not accept the fact that Cuban leaders are humane or rational. Here’s the Washington Post of December 13 writing about an American arrested in Cuba:
"The Cuban government has arrested an American citizen working on contract for the U.S. Agency for International Development who was distributing cellphones and laptop computers to Cuban activists. … Under Cuban law … a Cuban citizen or a foreign visitor can be arrested for nearly anything under the claim of ‘dangerousness’."
That sounds just awful, doesn’t it? Imagine being subject to arrest for whatever someone may choose to label "dangerousness". But the exact same thing has happened repeatedly in the United States since the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. We don’t use the word "dangerousness". We speak of "national security". Or, more recently, "terrorism". Or "providing material support to terrorism".
The arrested American works for Development Alternatives, Inc. (DAI), a US government contractor that provides services to the State Department, the Pentagon and the US Agency for International Development (USAID). In 2008, DAI was funded by the US Congress to "promote transition to democracy" in Cuba. Yes, Oh Happy Day!, we’re bringing democracy to Cuba just as we’re bringing it to Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2002, DAI was contracted by USAID to work in Venezuela and proceeded to fund the same groups that a few months earlier had worked to stage a coup — temporarily successful — against President Hugo Chávez. DAI performed other subversive work in Venezuela and has also been active in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other hotspots. "Subversive" is what Washington would label an organization like DAI if they behaved in the same way in the United States in behalf of a foreign government.6
The American mainstream media never makes its readers aware of the following (so I do so repeatedly): The United States is to the Cuban government like al-Qaeda is to the government in Washington, only much more powerful and much closer. Since the Cuban revolution, the United States and anti-Castro Cuban exiles in the US have inflicted upon Cuba greater damage and greater loss of life than what happened in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. Cuban dissidents typically have had very close, indeed intimate, political and financial connections to American government agents. Would the US government ignore a group of Americans receiving funds or communication equipment from al-Qaeda and/or engaging in repeated meetings with known leaders of that organization? In the past few years, the American government has arrested a great many people in the US and abroad solely on the basis of alleged ties to al-Qaeda, with a lot less evidence to go by than Cuba has had with its dissidents’ ties to the United States, evidence usually gathered by Cuban double agents. Virtually all of Cuba’s "political prisoners" are such dissidents.
The Washington Post story continued:
"The Cuban government granted ordinary citizens the right to buy cellphones just last year." Period.
What does one make of such a statement without further information? How could the Cuban government have been so insensitive to people’s needs for so many years? Well, that must be just the way a "totalitarian" state behaves. But the fact is that because of the disintegration of the Soviet bloc, with a major loss to Cuba of its foreign trade, combined with the relentless US economic aggression, the Caribbean island was hit by a great energy shortage beginning in the 1990s, which caused repeated blackouts. Cuban authorities had no choice but to limit the sale of energy-hogging electrical devices such as cell phones; but once the country returned to energy sufficiency the restrictions were revoked.
"Cubans who want to log on [to the Internet] often have to give their names to the government."
What does that mean? Americans, thank God, can log onto the Internet without giving their names to the government. Their Internet Service Provider does it for them, furnishing their names to the government, along with their emails, when requested.
"Access to some Web sites is restricted."
Which ones? Why? More importantly, what information might a Cuban discover on the Internet that the government would not want him to know about? I can’t imagine. Cubans are in constant touch with relatives in the US, by mail and in person. They get US television programs from Miami. International conferences on all manner of political, economic and social subjects are held regularly in Cuba. What does the American media think is the great secret being kept from the Cuban people by the nasty commie government?
"Cuba has a nascent blogging community, led by the popular commentator Yoani Sánchez, who often writes about how she and her husband are followed and harassed by government agents because of her Web posts. Sánchez has repeatedly applied for permission to leave the country to accept journalism awards, so far unsuccessfully."
According to a well-documented account7, Sánchez’s tale of government abuse appears rather exaggerated. Moreover, she moved to Switzerland in 2002, lived there for two years, and then voluntarily returned to Cuba. On the other hand, in January 2006 I was invited to attend a book fair in Cuba, where one of my books, newly translated into Spanish, was being presented. However, the government of the United States would not give me permission to go. My application to travel to Cuba had also been rejected in 1998 by the Clinton administration.
"’Counterrevolutionary activities’, which include mild protests and critical writings, carry the risk of censure or arrest. Anti-government graffiti and speech are considered serious crimes."
Raise your hand if you or someone you know of was ever arrested in the United States for taking part in a protest. And substitute "pro al-Qaeda" for "counterrevolutionary" and for "anti-government" and think of the thousands imprisoned the past eight years by the United States all over the world for … for what? In most cases there’s no clear answer. Or the answer is clear: (a) being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or (b) being turned in to collect a bounty offered by the United States, or (c) thought crimes. And whatever the reason for the imprisonment, they were likely tortured. Even the most fanatical anti-Castroites don’t accuse Cuba of that. In the period of the Cuban revolution, since 1959, Cuba has had one of the very best records on human rights in the hemisphere. See my essay: "The United States, Cuba and this thing called Democracy".8
There’s no case of anyone arrested in Cuba that compares in injustice and cruelty to the arrest in 1998 by the United States government of those who came to be known as the "Cuban Five", sentenced in Florida to exceedingly long prison terms for trying to stem terrorist acts against Cuba emanating from the US.9 It would be lovely if the Cuban government could trade their DAI prisoner for the five. Cuba, on several occasions, has proposed to Washington the exchange of a number of what the US regards as "political prisoners" in Cuba for the five Cubans held in the United States. So far the United States has not agreed to do so.
Notes
Michael Beschloss, Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes 1963-1964 (New York, 1997), p.306. All other sources for this section on Gordon can be found in: Washington Post, December 22, 2009, obituary; The Guardian (London), August 31, 2007; William Blum, "Killing Hope", chapter 27 ↩
ABC News, December 17, 2009; Washington Post, December 19, 2009 ↩
For more details on DAI, see Eva Golinger, "The Chávez Code: Cracking US Intervention in Venezuela" (2006) and her website, posting for December 31, 2009 ↩
You might imagine the multinational corporate media would blackout the talk of a 5th Socialist International. They are most determined to censor the issues which the world’s leftist parties are resolved to address. Where Obama 2008 and Copenhagen 2009 project a vacuum of ideological momentum, check out the Caracas Commitment.
The Caracas Commitment
November 25, 2009?
By Declaration from World Meeting of Left Parties?
November 19-21 Caracas, Venezuela
Political parties and organizations from Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Oceania commemorate and celebrate the unity and solidarity that brought us together in Caracas, Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, and from this libertarian city we would like to express our revolutionary rebelliousness. We are glad of and committed to the proud presence of the forces of change in a special moment of history. Likewise, we are proud to reaffirm our conviction to definitively sow, grow and win Socialism of the 21st century.
In this regard, we want to sign the Commitment of Caracas as a revolutionary guide for the challenges ahead of us. We have gathered with the aim of unifying criteria and giving concrete answers that allow us to defend our sovereignty, our social victories, and the freedom of our peoples in the face of the generalized crisis of the world capitalist system and the new threats spreading over our region and the whole world with the establishment and strengthening of military bases in the sister republics of Colombia, Panama, Aruba, Curacao, the Dutch Antilles, as well as the aggression against Ecuadorian territory, and the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.
We consider that the world capitalist system is going through one of its most severe crises, which has shaken its very foundations and brought with it consequences that jeopardize the survival of humanity. Likewise, capitalism and the logic of capital, destroys the environment and biodiversity, bringing with it consequences of climate change, global warming and the destruction of life.
One of the epicentres of the capitalist crisis is in the economic domain; this highlights the limitations of unbridled free markets ruled by private monopolies. In this situation, some governments have been asked to intervene to prevent the collapse of vital economic sectors, for instance, through the implementation of bailouts to bank institutions that amount to hundreds of billions of dollars. Said governments have been asked to stimulate their economies by increasing public expenditure in order to mitigate the recession and the private sector decline, which evidences the end of the supposedly irrefutable “truth” of neo-liberalism that of non-intervention of the State in economic affairs.
In this regard, it is very timely to promote an in-depth discussion on the economic crisis, the role of the State and the construction of a new financial architecture.
In summary, the capitalist crisis cannot be reduced simply to a financial crisis; it is a structural crisis of capital which combines the economic crisis, with an ecological crisis, a food crisis, and an energy crisis, which together represents a mortal threat to humanity and mother earth. Faced with this crisis, left-wing movements and parties see the defence of nature and the construction of an ecologically sustainable society as a fundamental axis of our struggle for a better world.
In recent years, progressive and left-wing movements of the Latin American region have accumulated forces, and stimulated transformations, throwing up leaders that today hold important government spaces. This has represented an important blow to the empire because the peoples have rebelled against the domination that has been imposed on them, and have left behind their fear to express their values and principles, showing the empire that we will not allow any more interference in our internal affairs, and that we are willing to defend our sovereignty.
This meeting is held at a historic time, characterized by a new imperialistic offensive against the peoples and governments of the region and of the world, a pretension supported by the oligarchies and ultraconservative right-wing, with the objective of recovering spaces lost as a consequence of the advancement of revolutionary process of liberation developing in Latin America. These are expressed through the creation of regional organizations such as ALBA, UNASUR, PETROCARIBE, Banco del Sur, the Sao Paulo Forum, COPPPAL, among others; where the main principles inspiring these processes are those of solidarity, complementarity, social priority over economic advantage, respect for self-determination of the peoples in open opposition to the policies of imperial domination. For these reasons, the right-wing forces in partnership with the empire have launched an offensive to combat the advance and development of the peoples’ struggles, especially those against the overexploitation of human beings, racist discrimination, cultural oppression, in defence of natural resources, of the land and territory from the perspective of the left and progressive movements and of world transformation.
We reflect on the fact that these events have led the U.S administration to set strategies to undermine, torpedo and destabilize the advancement of these processes of change and recuperation of sovereignty. To this end, the US has implemented policies expressed through an ideological and media offensive that aim to discredit the revolutionary and progressive governments of the region, labelling them as totalitarian governments, violators of human rights, with links to drug-trafficking operations, and terrorism; and also questioning the legitimacy of their origin. This is the reason for the relentless fury with which all the empire’s means of propaganda and its agents inside our own countries continuously attack the experiences in Venezuela, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Paraguay, as with its maintenance of the blockade against revolutionary and independent Cuba.
Part of the strategy activated by the U.S. Empire is evidenced by the coup in Honduras, as well as in other destabilizing initiatives in Central America, attempting to impose the oligarchic interests that have already left hundreds of victims, while a disgusting wave of cynicism tries to cover up the dictatorship imposed by the U.S. administration with a false veil of democracy. Along with this, it is developing a military offensive with the idea of maintaining political and military hegemony in the region, for which it is promoting new geopolitical allies, generating destabilization and disturbing peace in the region and globally through military intimidation, with the help of its allies in the internal oligarchies, who are shown to be complicit in the actions taken by the empire, giving away their sovereignty, and opening spaces for the empire’s actions.
We consider that this new offensive is specifically expressed through two important events that took place this year in the continent: The coup in Honduras, and the installation of military bases in Colombia and Panama, as well as the strengthening of the already existing ones in our region. The coup in Honduras is nothing but a display of hypocrisy by the empire, a way to intimidate the rest of the governments in the region. It is a test-laboratory that aims to set a precedent that can be applied as a new coup model and a way to encourage the right to plot against the transformational and independent processes.
We denounce the military agreement between the Colombian government and the United States administration strengthens the U.S.’s military strategy, whose contents are expressed in the so-called “White Book.” This confirms that the development of the agreement will guarantee a projection of continental and intercontinental military power, the strengthening of transportation capability and air mobility to guarantee the improvement of its action capability, in order to provide the right conditions to have access to energy sources. It also consolidates its political partnership with the regional oligarchy for the control of Colombian territory and its projection in the Andes and in the rest of South America. All this scaffolding and consolidation of military architecture entails a serious threat for peace in the region and the world.
The installation of military bases in the region and their interrelation with the different bases spread throughout the world is not only confined to the military sphere, but rather forms part of the establishment of a general policy of domination and expansion directed by the U.S. These bases constitute strategic points to dominate all the countries in Central and Latin America and the rest of the world.
The treaty for the installation of military bases in Colombia is preceded by Plan Colombia, which was already an example of U.S. interference in the affairs of Colombia and the region using the fight against drug trafficking and terrorism as an excuse. However, it has been shown that drug trafficking levels have increased in Colombia; therefore, the plan is no longer justified given that no favourable results have been obtained since its implementation, that would justify a new treaty with the U.S.
Today, the global strategy headed by the U.S. concerning drug trafficking is a complete failure. Its results are summarised by a rapid processes of accumulation of illegal capital, increased consumption of drugs and exacerbation of criminality, whose victims are the peoples of Latin America, especially the Colombian people. This strategy should be revisited and modified, and should be oriented towards a different logic that focuses on drug consumption as a public health issue. In Colombia, drug trafficking has assumed the form of paramilitarism, and turned into a political project the scope of which and persons responsible should be investigated so that the truth is known, so that justice prevails and the terror of the civilian population ceases.
We, the peoples of the world, declare that we will not give up the spaces we have managed to conquer after years of struggle and resistance; and we commit ourselves to regain those which have been taken from us. Therefore, we need to defend the processes of change and the unfolding revolutions since they are based on sovereign decisions made by the peoples.
Agreements
1. Mobilization and Condemnation of U.S. Military Bases
1.1.
To organize global protests against the U.S. military bases from December 12th to 17th, 2009. Various leftwing parties and social movements will promote forums, concerts, protest marches and any other creative activity within the context of this event.
1.2.
To establish a global mobilization front for the political denouncement of the U.S. military bases. This group will be made up by social leaders, left-wing parties, lawmakers, artists, among others, who will visit different countries with the aim of raising awareness in forums, press conferences and news and above all in gatherings with each country’s peoples.
1.3.
To organize students, young people, workers and women in order to establish a common agenda of vigilance and to denounce against the military bases throughout the world.
1.4.
To organize a global legal forum to challenge the installation of the U.S. military bases. This forum is conceived as a space for the condemnation of illegalities committed against the sovereignty and self-determination of the peoples and the imposition of a hegemonic imperialist model.
1.5.
To organise a global trial against paramilitarism in Colombia bringing testimonies and evidence to international bodies of justice.
1.6.
To promote a global trial against George Bush for crimes against humanity, as the person principally responsible for the genocide against the peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan.
1.7.
To promote a campaign for the creation of constitutional and legal provisions in all of our countries against the installation of military bases and deployment of nuclear weapons of mass destruction.
1.8.
To promote, from the different social organizations and movements of the countries present in this meeting, a political solution for the Colombian conflict.
1.9.
To organise solidarity with the Colombian people against the imperial aggression that the military bases entail in Colombian territory.
2. Installation and Development of a Platform of Joint Action by Left-Wing Parties of the World
2.1.
To establish a space of articulation of progressive and left-wing organizations and parties that allows for coordinating policies against the aggression towards the peoples, the condemnation of the aggressions against governments elected democratically, the installation of military bases, the violation of sovereignty and against xenophobia, the defence of immigrants’ rights, peace, and the environment, and peasant, labour, indigenous and afro-descendent movements.
2.2.
To set up a Temporary Executive Secretariat (TES) that allows for the coordination of a common working agenda, policy making, and follow-up on the agreements reached within the framework of this international encounter. Said Secretariat undertakes to inform about relevant events in the world, and to define specific action plans: statements, declarations, condemnations, mobilizations, observations and other issues that may be decided.
2.3.
To set up an agenda of permanent ideological debate on the fundamental aspects of the process of construction of socialism.
2.4.
To prepare common working agendas with participation from Latin America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Oceania.
2.5.
To organize solidarity of the people’s of the world with the Bolivarian revolution and President Hugo Chávez, in response to the constant imperial attacks.
2.6.
To commemorate the centenary of Clara Zetkin’s proposal to celebrate March 8th as the International Day of Women. The parties undertake to celebrate this day insofar as possible.
2.7.
To summon a meeting to be held in Caracas in April 2010 in commemoration of the bicentenary of our Latin American and Caribbean independences.
3. Organization of a World Movement of Militants for a Culture of Peace
3.1.
To promote the establishment of peace bases, by peace supporters, who will coordinate actions and denouncements against interventionism and war sponsored by imperialism through activities such as: forums, cultural events, and debates to promote the ethical behaviour of anti-violence, full participation in social life, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, acknowledgement of the cultural identities of our peoples and strengthening the framework of integration. This space seeks to raise awareness among all citizens in rejection of all forms of domination, internal or external intervention, and to reinforce the culture of peace. To struggle relentlessly for a world with no nuclear weapons, no weapons of mass destruction, no military bases, no foreign interference, and no economic blockades, as our peoples need peace and are absolutely entitled to attain development. Promote the American continent as a territory of peace, home to the construction of a free and sovereign world.
3.2.
To organize a Peace Parliament as a political space to exchange common endeavours among the world’s progressive and left-wing parliamentarians, and to know the historical, economic, legal, political and environmental aspects key for the defence of peace. Hereby we recommend holding the first meeting in February 2010.
4. Artillery Of International Communication to Emancipate Revolutionary Consciousness
4.1.
To discuss a public communication policy at an inter-regional level that aims to improve the media battle, and to convey the values of socialism among the peoples.
4.2.
To promote the creation and consolidation of alternative and community communication media to break the media siege, promote an International Alternative Left-wing Media Coordination Office that creates links to provide for improved information exchange among our countries, in which Telesur and Radiosur can be spearheads for this action.
4.3.
To create a website of all of the progressive and left-wing parties and movements in the world as a means to ensure permanent exchange and the development of an emancipating and alternative communication.
4.4.
To promote a movement of artists, writers and filmmakers to promote and develop festivals of small, short and full-length films that reflects the advancement and the struggle of peoples in revolution.
4.5.
To hold a meeting or international forum of alternative left-wing media.
5. Mobilize All Popular Organizations in Unrestricted Support for the People of Honduras
5.1.
To promote an international trial against the coup plotters in Honduras before the International Criminal Court for the abuses and crimes committed.
5.2.
Refuse to recognize the illegal electoral process they aim to carry out in Honduras.
5.3.
To carry out a world vigil on Election Day in Honduras in order to protest against the intention to legitimize the coup, coordinated by the permanent committee that emerges from this encounter.
5.4.
To coordinate the actions of left-wing parties worldwide to curb the imperialist pretensions of using the coup in Honduras as a strategy against the Latin American and Caribbean progressive processes and governments.
5.5.
To unite with the people of Honduras through a global solidarity movement for people’s resistance and for the pursuit of democratic and participatory paths that allow for the establishment of progressive governments committed to common welfare and social justice.
5.6.
To undertake actions geared towards denouncing before multilateral bodies, and within the framework of international law, the abduction of José Manuel Zelaya, legitimate President of Honduras, that facilitated the rupture of constitutional order in Honduras. It is necessary to determine responsibility among those who participated directly in this crime, and even among those who allowed his aircraft to go in and out Costa Rica without trying to detain the kidnappers of the Honduran president.
6. Solidarity with the Peoples of the World
6.1.
The Left-wing Parties of the International Meeting of Caracas agree to demand the immediate liberation of the five Cuban heroes unfairly imprisoned in American jails. They are authentic anti-terrorist fighters that caused no harm to U.S. national security, whose work was oriented towards preventing the terrorist attacks prepared by the terrorist counterrevolution against Cuba. The Five Heroes were subject to a biased judicial process, condemned by broad sectors of humanity, and stigmatized by a conspiracy of silence by the mainstream media. Given the impossibility of winning justice via judicial means, we call upon all political left-wing parties of the world to increase actions for their immediate liberation. We call on President Obama to utilize his executive power and set these Five Heroes of Humanity free.
6.2.
The International Meeting of Left-wing Parties resolutely demands the immediate and unconditional cessation of the criminal U.S. blockade that harmed the Cuban people so badly over the last fifty years. The blockade should come to an end right now in order to fulfil the will of the 187 countries that recently declared themselves against this act of genocide during the UN General Assembly.
6.3.
To unite with the people of Haiti in the struggle for the return of President Jean Bertrand Aristide to his country.
6.4.
We propose to study the possibility to grant a residence in Venezuela to Jean Bertrand Aristide, who was kidnapped and overthrown as Haiti’s president by U.S. imperialism.
6.5.
We express the need to declare a permanent alert aimed at preventing any type of breach of the constitutional order that may hinder the process of democratic change underway in Paraguay.
6.6.
We denounce the neoliberal privatizing advance in Mexico expressly in the case of the Electric Energy state-owned company, a heritage of the people, which aims through the massive firing of 45,000 workers to intimidate the union force, “Luz y Fuerza”, which constitutes another offensive of the Empire in Central and North America.
6.7.
To declare our solidarity with the peoples of the world that have suffered and are still suffering imperial aggressions, especially, the 50 year-long genocidal blockade against Cuba; the threat against the people of Paraguay; the slaughter of the Palestinian people; the illegal occupation of part of the territory of the Republic of Western Sahara and the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan which today is expanding into Pakistan; the illegal sanctions imposed against Zimbabwe and the constant threat against Iran, among others.
Caracas, November 21st, 2009
Declaration of Solidarity with the People of Cuba
The Left-wing Parties of the International Meeting of Caracas agree to demand the immediate liberation of the five Cuban heroes unfairly imprisoned in U.S. prisons. They are authentic anti-terrorist fighters that caused no harm to US national security, whose work was oriented towards preventing the terrorist attacks prepared by the terrorist counterrevolution against Cuba. The Five Heroes were subject to a biased judicial process, condemned by broad sectors of humanity, and stigmatized by a conspiracy of silence by the mainstream media.
Given the impossibility of winning justice via judicial means, we call upon all political left-wing parties of the world to increase actions for their immediate liberation. We call on President Obama to utilize his executive power and set these Five Heroes of Humanity free.
The International Meeting of Left-wing Parties resolutely demands the immediate and unconditional cessation of the criminal U.S. blockade that harmed the Cuban people so badly over the last fifty years. The blockade should come to an end right now in order to fulfill the will of the 187 countries that recently declared themselves against this act of genocide during the UN General Assembly.
Caracas, November 21, 2009
Special Declaration on the Coup D’état in Honduras
We, left-wing parties of Latin America, Africa, Europe, Asia and Oceania, present in the international encounter of left-wing parties, reject the coup d’état against the constitutional government of citizen’s power of the President of Honduras Manuel Zelaya Rosales.
Cognizant of the situation of repression, persecution and murder against the Honduran people and the permanent military harassment against president Manuel Zelaya Rosales, which represents a breach of the rule of law in the sister nation of Honduras:
We support the actions of the national resistance front in its struggle to restore democracy.
We demand and support the sovereign right of the Honduran people to call for a national constituent assembly to establish direct democracy and to ensure the broadest political participation of the people in public affairs.
We denounce the United States intervention and its national and international reactionary right-wing allies and their connection with the coup, which hinders the construction of democracy in Honduras and in the world.
We condemn and repudiate the permanent violation of political and social human rights as well as the violation freedom of speech, promoted and perpetrated by the de facto powers, the Supreme Court of Justice, the National Congress of the Republic, the Ministry of Defence and Security since June 28, 2009.
We reiterate our demand to international governments and bodies, not to recognize the results of the general elections to be held on November 29, 2009 in Honduras, due to the lack of constitutional guarantees and the legal conditions necessary for a fair, transparent and reliable electoral process, the lack of reliable observers that can vouch for the results of this electoral process, which has already been rejected by most international governments, bodies and international public opinion.
To propose and promote an international trial against coup plotters and their accomplices in Honduras before the International Criminal Court, for the illegal actions, abuses and crimes they committed, while developing actions aimed at denouncing to the relevant bodies and in the framework of the international law, the violation of the rights and the kidnapping of the legitimate president of Honduras Manuel Zelaya Rosales, because it is necessary to establish the responsibility of those who participated directly and internally in the perpetration of this crime.
We urge national and international human rights organizations to support these measures, to carry on the campaign of denunciation and vigilance with permanent observers in face of the renewed human rights violations, particularly the persecution and sanction through the loss of jobs for political reasons against the members and supporters of the resistance and president Manuel Zelaya.
We repudiate and condemn the attacks against the diplomatic corps of the embassies of the Federative Republic of Brazil and the Republic of Argentina, and the embassies of the member countries of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America (ALBA); and express our solidarity with the heroic work of the staff of these diplomatic missions, who have been victims of harassment and hostility by the coup plotters.
We agree to establish coordination among left-wing parties of the world to exert pressure to oust the de facto government and for the restoration of the constitutional president and the right of the Honduran people to install a national constituent assembly that allows for deepening direct democracy.
We urge governments, international bodies and companies to maintain and intensify economic and commercial sanctions to business accomplices and supporters of the coup in Honduras, and to maintain an attitude of vigilance, to break all relations that recognize the coup plotters and the de facto government officers, as well as to take migration control measures that hinder the movement of people who have the purpose of voting in another country where elections are held with the aim of changing the results through the transfer of votes from one country to the other.
We agree not to recognize the international and national observers of the electoral process who are aligned and conspire to attempt to give legitimacy to an electoral process devoid of legality and legitimacy. We demand that rather than observing an illegal and illegitimate process, the return of the state of democratic law and the constitutional government of citizen power Honduras President Manuel Zelaya Rosales is guaranteed.
Caracas, November 21, 2009
Special Decision
The international encounter of Left-wing Political parties held in Caracas on November 19, 20 and 21, 2009, received the proposal made by Commander Hugo Chavez Frias to convoke the V Socialist International as a space for socialist-oriented parties, movements and currents in which we can harmonize a common strategy for the struggle against imperialism, the overthrow of capitalism by socialism and solidarity based economic integration of a new type. We assessed that proposition in terms of its historical dimension which calls for a new spirit of internationalism and agreed, for the purpose of achieving it in the short term, to create a WORKING GROUP comprised of those socialist parties, currents and social movements who endorse the initiative, to prepare an agenda which defines the objectives, contents and mechanisms of this global revolutionary body. We call for an initial constitutive event for April 2010 in the City of Caracas. Furthermore, those parties, socialist currents and social movements who have not expressed themselves on this matter can subject this proposal to the examination of their legitimate directive bodies.
Doesn’t it strike you as a bit odd, that Arizona governor Bill Richardson withdraws his name from consideration for the Secretary of Commerce because of some unseemly quid pro quo scheme, yet it hadn’t stopped him from running for president? Where was the press to dig up the story when Richardson was still a potential Democratic presidential nominee?
It’s not as if the subject of corruption hadn’t come up. Greg Palast had exposed the governor in Armed Madhouse.
I like Palast’s extrapolation on Richardson’s ethnic heritage. To summarize, Richardson came by his Hispanic hyphen through his mom’s side. His dad was a Citibank executive, which qualifies Richardson to be a Citibank-American. As a partner in Henry Kissinger’s lobbying firm, Palast also terms him a Kissinger-American.
But what most interested Palast was the corrupt election of 2004, and how George Bush stole Arizona, under the nose of a supposedly Democratic governor. With Richardson momentarily in the spotlight, here’s an excerpt which Palast is circulating:
Bill Richardson – Kissinger-American
by Greg Palast, excerpted from Armed Madhouse
Henry Kissinger and Bill Richardson
January 5, 2009
Bill Richardson is out: Caught with his hand, if not exactly in the cookie jar, at least you could say his sticky finger were near it. I’m not surprised.
For years I’ve been investigating the second-most corrupt state in the USA (after Alaska). I like to check in on the enchanted state with my bud Santiago Juárez.
I knew it was not a polite question, but it was really bugging me, so I asked him, “Exactly how does a Mexican get the name William Richardson?”
Governor Richardson’s dad, Santiago explained, was a Citibank executive assigned to Mexico City. There he met Governor Bill’s mom, and-milagro!-a Mexican-American was born. Richardson gets big mileage out of his mother’s heritage, and that makes him, legitimately, a Mexican-American, a politically useful designation. But it’s just as legitimate to say that Richardson is a Citibank-American.
But Governor Richardson is more than that. Between leaving Bill Clinton’s cabinet where he was Secretary of Energy and grabbing a Hispanic-district seat in Congress, Richardson became a partner in (Henry) Kissinger and Associates. That would make Richardson a Kissinger-American as well.
In 2004, John Kerry won New Mexico-if you counted the votes. But they didn’t – and George Bush won the state and the presidency by just 5,000 ballots. Everyone was talking about the theft of Ohio by Republicans, but few noted that New Mexico was stolen as well. But one fact drove me straight nuts: In the end, this state and its damaged elections were in the hands of Richardson, A Democrat and a Mexican-American one at that.
In New Mexico the issue of uncounted votes is more than skin deep. Lots of Mexican-American votes don’t tally, but Citibank-American votes never get lost. Kissinger American votes always count. The story of America’s failed elections is not about undervotes. It’s about underclass. Disenfranchisement is class warfare by other means. It just happens that in New Mexico, the colors of the underclass are, for the most part, brown and red.
Class War by Other Means
As community organizer Santiago told me:
You take away people’s health insurance and you take their right to union pay scales and you take away their pensions-taking away their vote’s just one more on the list.
Some New Mexico Democrats have no trouble at the voting booth. In Santa Fe, you find trust-fund refugees from Los Angeles wearing Navajo turquoise jewelry and “casual” clothes that cost more than my car. Each one has a personal healer, an unfinished film script and a tan so deep you’d think they’re bred for their leather. They’re Democrats and their votes count. Voting-or at least voting that gets tabulated – is a class privilege. The effect is racial and partisan, but the engine is economic.
The second- and third-highest undervotes in New Mexico were recorded in McKinley and Cibola counties-85% and 72% Hispanic and Native. But the undervote champ is nearly the whitest county in New Mexico: DeBaca, which mangled and lost 8.4% of ballots cast. White DeBaca, whose average income hovers at the national poverty level, is poorer than Hispanic Cibola. No question, disenfranchisement gives off an ugly racial smell, but income is the real predictor of vote loss.
And what about those Bernalillo ghost voters for Bush? Those spirits are, it turns out, quite well-to-do, haunting the mesas west of Albuquerque where the real estate provides unobstructed views of Georgia O’Keeffe sunsets.
This was my third investigation in New Mexico in twenty years. The first time, the state’s Attorney General brought me in to go over the account books of Public Service of New Mexico (PNM), a racketeering enterprise masquerading as an electric company. Too young to understand what I wasn’t supposed to know, I proudly mapped out the sewerage lines of deceit connecting the gas drillers, water lords and political elite of New Mexico. The AG’s office handed me a nice check – which I took not as a reward, but as a payment to leave the state. After a decade away, I returned as a reporter, to look into prisons-for-pro?t out?t Wackenhut Inc. In September 1999, a company insider told me, Wackenhut was cutting costs at its New Mexico jails by sending guards alone into the cell blocks. Ralph Garcia of Santa Rosa, who’d lost his ranch to drought, took the $7.95-an-hour job guarding homicidal neo-Nazis and Mexican mafia thugs in the local Wackenhut lock-up. Inexperienced, untrained and alone, he was stabbed to death by inmates just two weeks after the insider’s warning. So that’s how Garcia became one more impoverished Chicano who lost his vote. No question, that’s not your typical case of voter disenfranchisement, but that’s the reality of the “Land of Enchantment.” New Mexico is the New America, where growing income inequality is creating a feudal divide between the prison-owning class and the prisoner-and-guard class.
Vote spoilage is the owning class’s weapon of choice.
Whose flag does Bill Richardson carry in the nouvelle class war? When I was checking out the New Mexico vote in 2005, my old friends Public Service of New Mexico hit the front page, sued by the State of California for conspiring with Enron to rig the California power market. It is still in court. It was a scam called “Ricochet.” Enron and PNM say it was not illegal. It played out about the time Garcia was walking the cell block. Where was Richardson? He was in Washington, Clinton’s Secretary of Energy, playing chubby cheerleader for PNM’s plan for “deregulation” of the energy market. Deregulation made PNM’s games possible-and Richardson’s employment by Kissinger inevitable.
Richardson, Ready for Takeoff
What about all those suspect spoiled votes in Hispanic and Indian precincts stuck inside the machines? Why didn’t this Mexican-American Democrat ask for a recount? It didn’t just slip Richardson’s little mind: He actively did everything in his power to stop a recount. I was told that it was Richardson himself who encouraged Secretary of State Vigil-Giron to reject the $114,000 payment from pissed-off Democrats and the Green Party. The Governor was too busy to speak with me about this.
Halting the 2004 recount wasn’t enough for Governor Bill, however. He demanded the legislature pass a “reform” law that would require anyone wanting a recount of a suspicious vote to put up a bond of over one million dollars. As a result, “free and fair elections” are now effectively outlawed in New Mexico. You can have a choice of a “free” election or a “fair” election, but not both. Want fair? Then you have to pay a million to recheck the ballots. In other words, it’s against the law to buy votes, but in New Mexico not against the law to buy the vote count.
On his phony reform law, Richardson was called out by a fellow Democrat, State Senator Linda Lopez-an act of indiscreet defiance that would not be forgotten by the Governor’s circle.
The centerpiece of the law signed by the Governor: Ms. Fox-Young’s proposal to require photo ID for new voters. Maybe the former Cabinet Secretary and United Nations Ambassador Richardson couldn’t imagine that photo IDs would be a problem for some voters. After all, Mexican-Americans in Little Texas may have trouble producing acceptable IDs, but it’s no problem at all for a Kissinger-American like Governor Richardson. The Governor and Jimmy Carter both have passports, they have credit cards and they have chauffeurs who will vouch for them.
Richardson wouldn’t speak with me about the 2004 vote fiasco. Instead, he busied himself with his space program. He announced the state would chip in $200 million to build a “spaceport” to land private rocket ships that will be launched beginning in 2009 by Richard Branson, the British billionaire. Passengers have already bought tickets for $200,000 each (round trip, they hope).
No doubt about it, the American ruling class has decided to rewire the circuits once again. But what comes after? What comes after the big CHANGE?
Certainly a Black man and his relatively young Black wife in the White House are going to look pretty world wide. What better way to promote The Empire than this? Especially when one considers that the other possibility was having Sarah Palin in there with her Clod… I meant Todd. The entire world is going to breathe a big sigh of relief…. at least initially. However…
We have to ask ourselves how long will this relief actually last? We might ask ourselves, just how long did Colin Powell’s and Ricardo Sanchez’s presence provide relief for American image in Iraq? A couple of years maybe? But then those alarming breakdowns in US image began to occur, Black and Brown faces not withstanding. For example, who is moaning about losing the pretty little Black face of Condaleeza Rice from the international scene? Not too many.
Yes, the Republican Elephant already had a whole lot of dark skin covering for the US imperialists’ image worldwide. Now it is the Donkey’s time. They’ll have White donkeys out there, too (like Joe Biden for one) but the Black ones are the ones that certainly will stand out. Everybody will be asking themselves, just what will the Black donkey bray out next? There’ll be a lot of curiosity at first, but then folk will notice that this donkey is about the same as the White donkeys.
Obama is most likely to begin with a blast of rhetoric and action about ‘winning’ the ‘Global War on Terrorism’ and by that, he will mean that he will be advancing the frontlines against the Chinese and Russians’ national interests. He will send more US troops into Afghanistan, and, Joseph Biden, Zionist leader and African ‘specialist’ on ‘Darfur’ will be mobilizing those US troops under AFRICOM command to save people (just like the Iraqis and Afghans were supposedly saved from themselves previously) in the exotic lands of Fureigners (foreign Fur-people of the Dar-land). Joe is a great humanitarian and no doubt about it, that Barack Hussein is, too. They will be ‘saving’ people almost everywhere, just like the Republicans did before them. And like the Republicans they will claim that this is what makes America so great!
On the home front it will be like a Hollywood cop movie, where Black cop and White cop move together in gunfire and action! Evil racist creeps (US Right Wingers) will snarl and growl in response, and it’ll all look good and bang-bang at first, but then it will begin to be noticed by some that the movie has no plot. The real plot will be that the no plot script beyond superficial ‘action’ will be the plot… the DP plot as usual. Cover for the big while pretending to be for the little. Hey! That’s the same script of the Republicans, too! The economy will continue its slide down hill and the only question will be at what velocity it goes?
Liberal wimps and the sensitive people will be held up to be esteemed once more again in our American Eden. Thugs, cons, and conmen will seemingly be on vacation at first. Then, all of a sudden, some astute Americans will begin to notice that the Donkeys and Elephants are still cooperating in that so heralded ‘bipartisan’ American manner still. They will notice that the US military is even growing bigger and more all encompassing than it was before. They will notice that there is still a war with out end still going on. And they will notice that Blacks are still more held in jails than in public government offices or universities or business boardrooms. And they will notice that despite all the announced change, it is merely that the American ruling class has only rewired the circuits of their control over the rest of us once again. Most won’t notice much at all. Some will begin to holler out for the Elephant to return once again to the White House on the hill.
I received a well written letter yesterday from an American Soldier. It was addressed to me, but I thought I’d post his arguments for general comment.
Mr. Verlo,
I stumbled upon your website by a pure stroke of accidental misfortune while searching for current news on the Fort Carson Installation.. My wife, my son and I are from Colorado, and I am an American Soldier. I am college educated and studied Middle-Eastern history, and I am well versed as it pertains to Mesopotamia, global-terror and global insurgencies.
I have deployed to Iraq twice and Afghanistan once. In 2003-2004 I served in Al-Fallujah and Ar-Ramadi in the Al-Anbar province, and in 2005-2006 in Tal’afar in the western Ninewah province with the 3d Armored Cavalry from Fort Carson (maybe you heard about the letter that Najim Abdullah wrote to George Bush about my unit?).
I spent seven months in Afghanistan training Afghani Security Forces, and would go back again to either country to serve for one reason only: to support my Soldiers. Although I am career-military, I do not now, nor did I ever support the Bush Administration or the pretenses under which we invaded Iraq. But, unfortunately, our elected officials thrust us into this mess, and we (Americans and American Military alike) are essentially left to deal with it. I am writing to you to comment on a few articles that you have authored, and provide my own opinions and citations.
First, in your article titled: “It’s in the Percentages”, you note that “apparently” 30% of Soldiers don’t have a high school education, 30% are returning with PTSD and 25% percent of their children are considered “special needs”. These are very interesting statistics, yet, you provided no citations. You go on to state that (and I quote): “I find it an absolute nightmare to imagine soldiers in positions of authority, making life and death decisions over others, who don’t know right from wrong, history from high stakes poker, or intelligence from drunken stupor. How do you reason with someone whose only motivation is their next beer?” and “It’s a war crime to subject civilian populations to rule by incompetents”. Again, very interesting. Here are some solid statistics for you, as well as citations. I chose to contrast military service members to college students in this case, but the same could be applied to any demographic (i.e., individuals who were recently laid off nation-wide, or illegal immigrants).
– 40% of college students who come from middle to upper class families engage in binge drinking on a regular (weekly) basis, as opposed to 26% of military personnel who have recently returned from combat tours overseas, where they suffered some sort of physical and/or emotional trauma (ABC news poll, 2007/2008). In addition, over 22,000 service members have called suicide hotlines in an attempt to get help (VA poll, 2008).
– 20% of college students engage in heavy drug use, as opposed to less than 5% of military personnel (ABC News Poll, 2007).
Here’s my favorite one:
3% of all college women report sexual assault at some point in their college career. In 2007, there were 2,212 reported cases of sexual assault on military installations by service members. In a military that exceeds roughly 2,000,000 people, that’s less than 1%.
Second, in your article titled: “Turning out to support fewer Troops”, you allude to Soldiers “riding in on a black cloud”. Hmmm, I’m not quite sure I understand that one. Is this a reference to the environmental damage we do with our vehicles, or the perceived “evil” that we bring with us because we are all, in fact, rapists, murderers and psychopaths?
Third, in your article titled: “Colorado Springs Military Community”, you state that (and I quote) “FIVE MAJOR MILITARY INSTALLATIONS ALREADY AND THE CITY AND COUNTY ARE BROKE”. El Paso County is broke? Since when? I would love to see a citation in reference to this one, because I have “Googled” it to no end and have found nothing that would lead me to believe anything but the contrary. The Colorado Springs Economic Development Corporation reports that: “Colorado Springs has a 3.1 million labor force within an hour radius, a Fast track permitting and planning program (30-60 days), 27 Fortune 500 Companies and a quality of life which is 70% the cost of coastal communities” (CSEDC 2008).
Sir, I have read your opinions on the media (many of which I share with you, by the way), so I would presume that you think this is a fabrication. Here’s the bottom line; the military presence in Colorado (the big, scary war-machine that we are) boosts the economy of the area due to its service members buying cars, houses (and paying taxes on their properties), shopping at local businesses, applying for and receiving loans from local banks, etc. There is no doubt in my mind that if the military left Colorado Springs, the city would continue to thrive, but the economy would noticeably decline anywhere that 30,000 people leave, military or not.
Fourth and final, in your article titled: “On Jan 14 let us not expand Fort Carson”, you state that more military in the area would make (and I quote) “Colorado Springs even more dependent on poor paying jobs, predatory businesses, and skyrocketing social problems. Only developers, car-dealers, pawn shops, strip clubs, liquor stores, social workers, jails and mortuaries benefit from a higher soldier population”. Wow, seriously? These are only issues tied to the influx of more military in the area? So, if 3,000 recently released convicted felons chose Colorado Springs as their new home, it would have less of an impact? Or how about 3,000 illegal immigrants, or 3,000 pregnant teenagers?
Well, let’s go ahead and analyze this a bit further. Developers and car-dealers will benefit from ANY new arrivals to the area, not just military. In reference to pawn shops and strip clubs, the owners of these businesses know exactly what they are doing by placing them outside of military installations. Service members are targeted by these establishments. That’s why they are placed where they are in the community. The same can be said for pay-day loan houses and used car dealerships on Powers and Academy blvd. But if you placed strip clubs next to colleges, would it still be the military that held the higher attendance record? It’s all about business strategy my friend, not the assumption that all military service members are sex-crazed, alcoholic lunatics.
Social workers, jails and mortuaries benefit wherever there are people with problems, criminals and people who have died. I suppose that again, it’s only military who fall into these categories. Ah yes, and our children are even more screwed up than we are. The fact that you said (and I quote): “The rest of us suffer increased crime and their children’s behavioral problems in our schools” vividly displays your utter incompetence and lack of any compassionate notion. You realize that less than 30% of military children who have been separated from a parent experience behavioral issues (USA Today poll, 2008)? The percentage of non-military children who experience behavioral issues as a result of a parent’s incarceration, or divorce, or even domestic abuse is almost twice as high.
Sir, I will be the first to admit that military service members are not perfect. But we are human beings, who are susceptible to the same things that civilians are. We are an easy target, because so many of us are returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan with severe problems, after having served in a war that has lost most of it’s public support (and rightly so).
What I have a hard time understanding is why people such as you exercise your freedoms of speech, protest, religion, etc, and then malign the very people who provide, protect and preserve those liberties? I am as anti-Bush as the average American left-wing protestor, but to blame service members for the actions of their elected leadership is immoral. You are essentially grouping us with Nazi’s, which is absolutely ridiculous. The Nazis’ goal was global domination, and they had no clearly defined rule of engagement. They knew that what they were doing was wrong, and did it anyway.
Does the US Military have people who behave in this manner? Absolutely, and they are dealt with within the justice system for their actions. We are in fact “just following orders” with our presence in the Middle-East. As I realize that this was also the defense of Nazi war criminals at Nurnberg, allow me to elaborate. The US military has clearly defined Rules of Engagement, and our greater mission is to stabilize an unstable region, not global control as conspiracy theorists would have everyone believe. Unless you have a solid understanding of counter-terror and counterinsurgency doctrine, you are in no position to presume anything about the US Military in the Middle-East (unless YOU have been there) other than the fact that we invaded Iraq under false pretenses. I’ll give you that one, and take it for myself as well.
Sir, have you ever held a young Iraqi child in your arms, returning him to his parents as they kiss you and your Soldiers’ cheeks, after he had been treated at a US facility because terrorists sodomized him and cut out his tongue? Have you ever looked straight into the eyes of a terrorist, who swore allegiance to Zarqawi and proclaimed himself a “holy warrior”, and seen pure evil? And while your medical personnel treated him for burns (which were sustained when he poured kerosene on a child and his father and attempted to set them on fire publicly, only succeeding to set himself on fire) he spoke perfect English and vowed to remember your name and kill your family? I presume you would view this as our fault, correct?
But here’s the difference between the American Soldier and everyone else: when it is our fault, we acknowledge it, and DO something about it. We help people, good and bad, bottom line. Do bad things happen? Of course. Are all Soldiers and Marines upright citizens? Of course not.. That’s why one Marine out of 30,000 threw a puppy off of a cliff, and four Soldiers out of 121,000 raped a 14-year old girl and killed her family. These actions were inexcusable and tragic, and the individuals in question were/are being dealt with. To generalize every American service member based on these isolated incidents vividly shows your lack of any rational thought.
So in closing, allow me to say that whether you care to acknowledge it or not, it is the MILITARY who grant and preserve liberties and who TRULY make a difference, not politicians, protestors, or half-minded anti-war bloggers. And understand (or don’t) why we are involved in the Global War on Terror, it is because it doesn’t matter whether or not you are white, black, Canadian, American, gay, straight, blind, deaf, or how many anti-Bush websites you manage or protests you attend, there are fundamentalist extremists who want to murder you and your family because you represent western culture.
I want this war to be over so badly that it consumes me at times. I do not want my son to have to see what I have seen as a result of a failed administration. Sir, we are human beings also, and I gladly serve to protect the liberty and freedom of individuals like you who don’t support me at all. So at your next rally, or the next article you write which slanders US service members, take a moment to reflect on your freedoms, and understand who it is that truly grants them. I wish you all continued health and happiness.
Here was a true bit of American folk wisdom, Harry McClintock’s everyman philosophy whose context was whitewashed for the sake of children and the Protestant work ethic. The original lyrics of the hobo’s nirvana, Big Rock Candy Mountain, where omitted or reformed, are reprinted in bold here.
BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN
Harry McClintock, circa 1890
One evening as the sun went down
And the jungle fires were burning,
Down the track came a hobo hiking,
And he said, “Boys, I’m not turning.
I’m headed for a land that’s far away
Besides the crystal fountains.
So come with me, we’ll go and see
The Big Rock Candy Mountains.
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains,
There’s a land that’s fair and bright,
Where the handouts grow on bushes
And you sleep out every night.
Where the boxcars all are empty
And the sun shines every day
And the birds and the bees
And the cigarette trees
The lemonade springs
Where the bluebird sings
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
All the cops have wooden legs
And the bulldogs all have rubber teeth
And the hens lay soft-boiled eggs.
The farmers’ trees are full of fruit
And the barns are full of hay.
Oh I’m bound to go
Where there ain’t no snow
Where the rain don’t fall
The winds don’t blow
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
You never change your socks
And the little streams of alcohol
Come trickling down the rocks. The brakemen have to tip their hats
And the railway bulls are blind.
There’s a lake of stew
And of whiskey too
You can paddle all around it
In a big canoe
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains,
The jails are made of tin.
And you can walk right out again,
As soon as you are in.
There ain’t no short-handled shovels,
No axes, saws nor picks,
I’m bound to stay
Where you sleep all day,
Where they hung the jerk
That invented work
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.
….
I’ll see you all this coming fall
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
…. The punk rolled up his big blue eyes
And said to the jocker, “Sandy,
I’ve hiked and hiked and wandered too,
But I ain’t seen any candy.
I’ve hiked and hiked till my feet are sore
And I’ll be damned if I hike any more
To be buggered sore like a hobo’s whore
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.”
My wife has been away for a month and when she returns, I plan to call out my troops to SURGE! Don’t laugh, if an old flake like John McCain can bait Obama about not being man enough to vote to SURGE, certainly I shouldn’t be an unpatriotic, limp wristed wimp like Brother Hussein. You know what I mean, Dudes?
This sicko macho rhetoric from the military is on a par with their use of homosexual rape in Iraqi jails. It’s on a par with the US police using homosexual rape as a weapon in US prisons, too. It’s on a par with all the perversions and sadism coming down from the top shits at the White House, and backed up by the Top Democratic Party shits in Congress.
Let’s see? We have this giant do-nothing military industrial complex with literally millions taking home their government socialism pay checks for being office workers, techs, IT specialists, and wander in circle grunts, and they need this sort of sexual rhetoric about ‘SURGING’, and they want to purge those who won’t SURGE to keep their welfare checks a rolling?
The urge to SURGE is government pornography, that’s all. The reality is a raped Iraq and Afghanistan and nothing more. We need to purge the SURGE now!
While Obama was in Colorado Springs conservatively trying to do nothing that would upset anybody, McCain took the Right Wing offensive on tour to Colombia, where the US and Colombian governments set up his press photo op moment for him.
It was hugs all around with the death squad gangsters that run the Colombian government on behalf of the US government. They had on hand for McCain, the choreographed liberation of FARC held prisoners who we all must be very happy for, even as we all must totally ignore the fact that the Colombian government probably is now torturing the FARC POWs they took.
This time with Uribe, Colombia’s head death squad leader, was McCain’s way of stating to the American people that torture and death squads are A-OK with him, as if there were any doubts already on that issue. He wanted, no doubt too, to head off and embrace Uribe’s Peruvian equivalent, Alberto Fujimori, but Fujimori is now undergoing some difficult times. Instead of being the great liberator of the Peruvian people with his counter insurgency war there against the Sendero Luminoso, Peru is now trying Fujimori for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Uribe may well someday follow down the same path. His ties with he Colombia paramilitary death squads are becoming increasingly well documented, and his popularity is falling.
What does it say about McCain and his personal character, that he chose upon this Colombian trip at this particular moment to try to vitalize his sagging campaign? Both Obama and McCain, with the corporate media’s big helping hand, are in a big battle to defame the other’s character. What is so pitiful about Obama, is that he is unwilling and unable to mention the real issues of the other candidate embracing a Colombian government deeply discredited for being a group of murdering gangsters. And the American press is unwilling to cover these scandals so well documented in the press elsewhere. Instead, they are busy putting Ingrid Betancourt’s smiling face everywhere. She is certainly prettier though than the ugly faces of the 3 American ‘military contractors’ faces who were also FARC held prisoners.
What were these Americans doing in FARC jails, John? Barack, can you tell us either? Well I guess NO… What American war of interventionism in Colombia, Doh? It appears as there will be little change nor light ahead. Instead, we will continue to get US press-US government-McCain campaign coordinated photo op moments. And a few from the Obama Show, too.
America seems poised to possibly elect a law professor into the White House later this year. Funny that this legal specialist, who taught LAW for 10 years at the University of Chicago, has remained strangely silent as the US government instituted torture into its legal codes, eliminated Habeas Corpus, and trampled whole sale on the US Constitution.
I don’t remember a bleep of protest from this legal specialist during these recent times. Where were you Barack Obama? Your specialty is law, you hide that fact??? It’s because you kept so silent, is it not? You and your party are collaborators, aren’t you?
But this is not about Barack Obama and his loud silence. It is about America’s attitudes toward the police. It is about this deformed thing in America we call Justice. It is about how the people trust the police’s word, even though there is so much evidence that the police consistently fabricate testimony, fabricate evidence, and fabricate the supposed need for their own reproduction as a cancer upon our country… one that is growing, growing, growing., just like the military.
I opened up Parade in the Springs GagShit newspaper this morning to see the question posed, ‘Do we need more police?’ Shouldn’t the question actually be, ‘Don’t we need less police?’ or ‘Are we actually safer with this growing number of police plaguing the US?’ What would your answers be to these questions? Please tax me more, I want more jails?
I borrowed this phrase ‘the deformed thing we call Justice’ from Joe Bageant’s column titled Old Dogs and Hard Time Joe is the closest approximation we have today in America, to having a live Junior version of Studs Terkel on hand. His writings always seem to highlight the real working class issues in America, and I love reading him! Power to the People, Joe!
Here is my last question… Can we really have anything other than a deformed ‘justice’ in a country that hates the common person so much? We don’t respect the common people, for all they do is just work without being able to buy that much. How despicable is America’s attitude toward them.
Dominant elite culture thinks it a crime that poor people who work and consider them lowest on the totem pole! Shame on the common people for being so low and poor!, You Guys. It’s a crime these days to be working poor! Don’t you know it?
Yes, many in America really still want to imprison yet more of the poor and working class. For that, we need yet more police, yet more ‘law’, and yet more weaponry. These perverts… this lowe echelon of worker rabble… are seen to be like foreign Muslims almost. Show them no mercy! Yes, that’s what it’s like in America with this deformed thing the powers-that-are call Justice. ‘Justice’, in the opinions of the authoritarian elites, are them ordering the kicking around of the people who actually do the hard work. The poor are considered dumb louts for doing the work we all depend on! They deserve to be punished think so many of the self- righteous, wanna-be top A-holes!
Please attend the upcoming Fort Carson expansion town hall meeting at the Antlers Hilton on January 14. Let the pro-military, pro-business representatives know what you think about making Colorado Springs even more dependent on poor paying jobs, predatory businesses, and skyrocketing social problems. Only developers, car-dealers, pawn shops, strip clubs, liquor stores, social workers, jails and mortuaries benefit from a higher soldier population. The rest of us suffer increased crime and their children’s behavioral problems in our schools. Plus can you imagine the Army is going to use an expanded Ft Carson as pretext to seize Pinon Canyon for their maneuvers?
Has there ever been a city to prosper by hosting military bases? Colorado Springs is awash with Defense Department facilities and look where it’s got us! El Paso County is cutting services left and right. Soldiers reduce the tax base, they pay fewer taxes, they register their vehicles out of state, and their spouses require more social services. As a result, El Paso is scaling back its County Health Department. For starters they’re closing the STD clinic by next year. More soldiers = fewer STDs? I don’t think so.
Our despicable national government has just admitted that it destroyed the video taping of its use of torture on prisoners held at the Guantanamo concentration camp for US captured POWs. See article… CIA destroyed video of ‘waterboarding’ al-Qaida detainees
What a group of liars and hypocrites the Bush Administration has assembled at the head of power in the US. First they deny that torture is being advocated, then they say that certain torture methods are in their eyes not actual torture, and then they destroy the evidence of the torture actually already being used on POWs in their hands.
And our local governments follow this type of misleadership straight on down the line. Don’t believe that? Then go and try to get a municipal resolution passed stating local opposition to the US use of torture in our domestic jails and military concentration camps. See what the reaction would be like down at the city council meetings here in Colorado Springs?
Speaking of torture…. do you know that the El Paso County has its school police force equipped with taser guns at middle schools and high schools? Do you know that the city police of Colorado Springs has used these devices on people already, even as some divisions of the United Nations says there is strong evidence that these weapons are being used as instruments of torture in an increasing manner?
Just recently I saw the downtown post office flying the black POW/MIA flag that became so promoted by the US Right Wing post Vietnam War. Apparently the concern about POWs is pretty damn selective in the US.
When is the US public going to say enough is enough about our government using torture on US held POWs, as it has been doing? Are we all too damn scared now to have POW/MIA bumperstickers on our cars and/ or a flag that demands that all human beings have rights to ethical treatment… even if the US government authorities presume them guilty of some crime or other?
We need some symbols like this, and they need to be flown from government buildings in place of that garbage accusing the Vietnam government of torturing US soldiers in secret. The Right Wingers in charge of our municipality prefer to promote war and the use of torture on US held POWs instead of speaking out for human decency though. And currently this city hasn’t had enough local citizens oppose this city government-military-industrial complex led by Mayor Lionel Rivera and his corporate backers like Lockheed, et al.
The people who ordered destroyed the tapes of the water boarding of POWs held by the US military are war criminals and need to be jailed and tried for their crime of destroying evidence. And then they need to be jailed for ordering the torture of POWs in the first place. Are Americans proud to have a government like this? All of us should be deeply ashamed for not doing more to stop these thugs. Get out and make your voice heard! Go to the local government meetings held downtown and put some pressure on the local officials to stop going along with it all.
UPDATE: The Gazette article is still among the top commented.
Here’s a string of the initial comments, in chronological order:
hmmmmm wrote:
Well this proves that if you break the law, and they did, and complain and whine enough then you can get off. Very disappointed in our DA on this one. quote “When you consider dragging an old woman across the street and not lifting her up, it’s really hard to see how that’s doing nothing wrong,” Verlo said. end quote. When this “old woman” refuses to get up and follow police orders, Yes they did nothing wrong. It’s called the law, and they broke it.
11/28/2007 7:44 PM MST on Gazette.com
csaction wrote:
No part of this trial was ever in the public’s interest and the city prosecutors were the last to see that. Some of the police used excessive force and that ruined their case. The parade rules weren’t applied to everyone equally, and that ruined their case. You aren’t guilty of obstructing the street when the police throw you down in the street. Explaining that you have a permit to march, just like the year before, is NOT failure to disperse. Allowing every politico in town to make a political statement EXCEPT those with a message of peace, is NOT equal protection under the law.
The strangest part of the city’s position, other than the obvious lame claim that they could get a conviction but decided not to, is Ms. Kelly’s apparent distrust of the legal system: “everything the police did was justified and there was probable cause for an arrest, but getting a conviction is another story”.
It is NOT another story IF the police did nothing wrong and there WAS probable cause for an arrest, and that’s ALL been decided by a jury of their peers when they couldn’t prove their case to 6 people in this town.
Is she suggesting that the jury system is wrong or that we, the people, are too stupid to see that the police and city are always right, no matter what they do? Does she think we can’t sit on a jury and decide the ruling based on the evidence, and get it right? The jury already got it right and the city wanted to intimidate the remaining 2 people with the threat of a trial, until the last minute, to stop them from suing for the police brutality, already proven to a jury.
11/28/2007 7:49 PM MST on Gazette.com
mananamaria wrote:
Apparently a jury couldn’t agree anyone broke the law in the first place. As far as I can tell, the threat to file charges against Verlo and Fineron, who both may or may no longer have pending lawsuits against the city and then dropping those is pretty telling. Besides did our finest not learn appropriat compliance tools that avoid the spectecals of dragging old women across a street and flagrantly threateniing people with tasers?
11/28/2007 8:03 PM MST on Gazette.com
jwstrue wrote:
CS, correction–they had a permit to march in a parade, not to interrupt the parade with a demonstration. In addition, Kelly is stating that another trial would be a waste of resources because the outcome would be the same…there is no insuation here.
11/28/2007 8:04 PM MST on Gazette.com
back2colorado4go wrote:
csaction, you have lost ALL credibility on these boards! And Manawhatever, you do not follow ANY of the facts about this. JWSTrue has it right. These people broke the law, and most people I know of agree that these people needed to be taught that what they did in public was a disgrace! The police PICKED THEM OFF OF THE STREET, and with resistance these people ended up hurting themselves! They are deceptive by lying for the permit and needed to be removed. No one, especially the children there to see the parade, needed to be subjected to these adults acting unruly and not listening to the police! You can protest many other ways without this sick little show! And I agree with the DA in one way though. For the little satisfaction we (the public) would get in prosecuting these people, it is not worth the cost and the publicity it would give these pathetic people in the process! And yes, juries are full of creepy people that let off murderers every day, so it is not so hard to see one that can’t decide this one! These people were LUCKY it was the police that dragged them from the streets after hearing how ticked some parade watchers were at these people when this happened! Way to teach our kids!!!
11/28/2007 8:21 PM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (4)
jwstrue wrote:
back2colorado4go, thanks for the support. Now we sit back and wait for jtrione to chime in…sometimes I think CS and jtrione are one in the same, maybe??
11/28/2007 8:50 PM MST on Gazette.com
tonytee wrote:
hey post person hummmmmm cops broke the law many times and have not been charged, people sometimes who break the law in history end up being heroes, sometimes the letter of the law is not always correct and golden, sometimes to make a difference in life you must break the law to make the world a better place to live and not not let the law become too powerful in trying to silence free speech.
11/28/2007 8:52 PM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (2)
pc12784 wrote:
CSaction, with the possibility of people like you in the jury pool, it is entirely reasonable to think that the jury would be too stupid to see that the police and city are right in this case. Your statement about excessive force still baffle me. If you don’t want to be dragged off the street by the police, MOVE when officers give you a lawful order to do so. It’s really quite simple. But JWS and back2colorado pretty much discredited everything you said in this thread anyway, so I rest my case.
11/28/2007 9:18 PM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (4)
lexiii wrote:
I wish they’d have gone ahead and prosecuted, but the county is trying to save money, and they are basically focusing on more important crimes, I think, which is a good thing.
However, I am not on the side of the protesters here, if there weren’t more important cases that need attention, I’d be screaming and hollering myself right now, but our jails are already over filled and we need the room for more violent offenders.
Even though they’re not going to be prosecuted, the stupid protesters still look stupid in the eyes of the public, that opinion will not change.
11/28/2007 9:37 PM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (4)
pastor wrote:
one thing I have learned about csaction is he is right and everyone else is wrong. Have anyone every read where he admitted he was wrong and said he was sorry. In his world the peace protest are always right and can do no wrong.
Here is an example of his world view “One more point: look at the list of issues that made the gazette change this blog. ALL rightwing issues. All rightwing hate speech. Vile, putrid, racist, sexist, Fox Noise, Rush Limpboy, dittohead, FotF issues. NONE leftwing.” ”
Mr. Rust, I see you like your peace activists stupid, brain addled, stoned hippies, with no fight in them, passively accepting any abuse from the enemies of the state. Or perhaps you like the theological activists looking for another martyrdom opportunity and willing to help any enemy nail them to the cross. Or perhaps activists that are just too stupid to see hypocrisy in the national (and local) theocracy proponents, or the threat that ALL theocrats represent to the peaceful majority. Sorry to disappoint. (not)” ” The theocratic party that wants to turn this nation into a theocracy, and is the Christian equivalent of an Islamic Republic, are who get criticized, along with the hypocrite, hate monger, adulterer, homophobe, foot tapping bathroom boys, and televangelist funditards. It has nothing to do with the religion and peaceful, loving followers of the Prince of Peace. It has to do with those straying from the message as much as the other Taliban, who want to turn back the clock on progress to created a biblical theocracy. It has to do with those that want to legislate “throwing the first stone”, battling those that want to legislate “thou shalt NOT throw the first stone”. The concept of the protection of targeted groups, is the application of that principle and those against it are NOT Christian, because it is the principle of their lord. BTW, preacher, I won’t cut you as much slack as the other guy. You know exactly what “Christian” Taliban means, you just defend them. I’ve explained this before and will not again.” all of these quotes are from him. FOR SOMEONE WHO BELIEVES CHRISTIAN ARE LIKE THE TALIBAN, WILL ALWAYS DEFEND HIS PEOPLE WHEN THERE ARE WRONG. So I am sure he will blame Christian for his friends getting in trouble, and that all of this is to silence his friends message.
11/28/2007 9:39 PM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
on the issues of the protester, they now know, if they disobey the police, they can get away with it by yell, that it is all the police fault. An make sure people like csaction spread their lies on line and in the newspaper, this is the normal blame the cops for our behavior.
11/28/2007 9:45 PM MST on Gazette.com
101abn wrote:
Once again, lazy DAs. I rest my case. Prosecuting the prostestors would probably cut in to the time they spend plea bargaining away other cases…
11/28/2007 10:10 PM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (2)
101abn wrote:
Neva Nolan. Nearly a HUNDRED COUNTS PLEA BARGAINED DOWN TO *TWO*. Did you watch the Channel 11 report on the clown with over a HALF DOZEN DUIs – INCLUDING KILLING A MAN – WHO LOST HIS DRIVER’S LICENSE, LEFT COURT, DROVE TO A LIQUOR STORE AND BOUGHT A BOTTLE OF BOOZE??? ALL FILMED AND CONFIRMED BY CHANNEL 11 NEWS CREWS. Our DAs are a BAD JOKE!
11/28/2007 10:26 PM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (3)
tonytee wrote:
actually lexiii i do not see the protesters as stupid in the eyes of the public, being one that is in the public i commend them for standing up for what they beleived in and taking it as far as they did, in this country too few people are sheep and will not step out and stand for what they beleive in that is why our country is in the dilemma it is in currently with politicians and fiancially, maybe more people need to step out of the box for what they beleive in instead of letting senior citizens do it for us, but maybe that is the only generation that has any guts left to stand up for something.
11/28/2007 11:50 PM MST
just1voice wrote:
Tony I think you are way off base on that one. Its not that people arent willing to stand up for what they believe in or that they are sheep following the flock. The majority of them do it WITHIN the limits of the law so it doesnt make headlines like these clowns did. Have you gone out and asked the “public” their opinion on what these people did? I have and as Lexi said, they look stupid and will continue to think they are stupid even though they wont be punished for it.
Besides, I can think of several other ways to punish a business owner besides sending him to jail so that is something the public needs to consider.
11/29/2007 7:10 AM MST on Gazette.com
skiracer wrote:
Tony – not sure exactly how you are in the public eye as I have never heard of you outside these boards and can’t find any information on basic internet searches. Someone mentioned on another thread you ran for a public office and lost. With the skewwed view points you have shown throughout the threads on this website and the apparent lack of a marketing plan I can see why.
Maybe the senior citizens in these case were convinced/brainwashed in to thinking they were standing up for a good cause. Heck, my grandmother voted for Clinton the first time around because she thought he was handsome and someone came around to her nursing home and told everyone there what a great guy he was and how his moral standards would help improve their lives in the retirement community.
The problem with what they did is that they lied their way into the protest (privately funded and run) and then refused to leave when organizers asked them to and then police asked them to. Arguing that you have a permit is not leaving. Step to the side of the road and then show your permit. But since it was privately run it doesn’t matter. Your permit can be revoked at anytime at the organizer’s discretion.
As far dragging rather than carrying an old lady across the street. I am going to guess that she was pushing 200 lbs if not more. Has anyone here tried to carry a oddly shaped, limp sack of potatoes weighing this much before. Now add some squirming into the equation and you can see why they dragged this person off the straight. Besides, I would be willing to bet that should she have been carried off we would hear about her injuring either her arms or her ribs.
11/29/2007 7:38 AM MST on Gazette.com
skiracer wrote:
And regardless of the cost, the DA should be prosecuting those who break the law. The problem with our legal system is not that too many people are getting 2nd chances, it’s that too many people never even have to plea bargain or go to court because of lazy prosecutors.
The DA just lost my vote when up for re-election. If you didn’t have enough evidence say so, but to say that you are backing out because you don’t have faith in the system you are supposed to uphold on behalf of the people is a bunch of BS.
11/29/2007 7:41 AM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (1)
pastor wrote:
The next’s round of the peace protester hand book is to bring a lawsuit against the city and police for false arrest. I hope that everyone who hand entry for parade take notice and when this group try to entry next time, they make it clear to them no anti-war message permitted in the parade. If you bring in you anti-war or peace message (joke because they seem to end up in some type of fight with someone) you will be removed. This will stop them from cause trouble again.
11/29/2007 7:57 AM MST on Gazette.com
iraqwarvet wrote:
I went to war to push peace and democracy on other nations. In this nation, or atleast in this city peace is considered hate speach. This city had no case, thats why they lost and are hanging their heads in defeat.
11/29/2007 7:57 AM MST on Gazette.com
iraqwarvet wrote:
This city is changing, just drive on Fort Carson one day, count how many anti-war, anti-Bush stickers you see on people’s cars. It will shock you. But you people on this blog will probably just call those troops “phoney soldiers” or “anti-americans” or “unpatriotic”. We appreciate that. Thanks for the support. Go when Physical Training (PT) ends at 8:30am, you’ll see these troops in their cars where their PT uniform with with what you people call “propaganda” on their car. I love an America where our troops have the right to free speach, which you call “hate speach”.
11/29/2007 8:03 AM MST on Gazette.com
erniezippreplat wrote:
Break the law get away scott free with the Colorado Springs DA. Whoever run against the current DA next time around gets the five votes in my family
11/29/2007 8:08 AM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (1)
lexiii wrote:
iraqwarvet, throwing yourself on the pavement during a family event isn’t speech, and it certainly isn’t peace.
If idiots want to stand up for peace, they need to be peaceable about it.
These protesters were no more peaceful than anyone else.
tonytee, the protesters were stupid. They acted like a bunch of tantruming toddlers. Grown men and women throwing themselves down like three year olds in front of little children, no less, because they were asked to leave and they didn’t want to leave.
Not only was that against their own message of peace, it was a bad example for the children concerning adult behavior, and it was completely inappropriate in the first place.
A family event is no place for a war protest, these selfish minded brainless old farts who think they’re still in the sixties need to grow up and find a more appropriate means of communication.
How can they send a message of peace when they, themselves, are not being peaceful?
11/29/2007 8:10 AM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (1)
smackermack wrote:
GUYS your anger is in the wrong place!! It is the CITY ATTORNEY – not the DA who decided this!!! Read the headline and the first Paragraph of the article!!!
11/29/2007 8:55 AM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
No one want to silence the peace protesters right to speak, but we believe that there is a time and place for it. An most people believe that the St. Patrick’s Day parade was not the right time and place. Most people also seem to believe that if a cop asked you move you move you do not act like a baby. But I also must remind everyone that the peace protesters hand book, when the police ask you to move you drop an make a scene, so that it is caught on film, the reason is so you can make the police look like the bad guy.
Iragwarvet I have a question for you since you agree with the anti-war groups. Is it ok to block soldier return from the war? Is it ok to delay the soldier meeting with their family? Is it ok to destroy railroad tracks and stop the return of the military equipment from the war?
11/29/2007 8:56 AM MST on Gazette.com
jwstrue wrote:
TONYTEE, taking a stand or speaking out for what you believe in is one thing. Causing a disturbance during a public family event is quite another.
2 other bits:
– This country is in dilemma (according to you) because of corrupt politicians…
– This country is in dilemma (according to you) because of imminent recession…
Neither has anything to do with “stepping out or standing for”.
You wouldn’t happen to be one of the individuals who ran for mayor last term, would you?
11/29/2007 9:02 AM MST on Gazette.com
rambone wrote:
pastor wrote: “No one want to silence the peace protesters right to speak, but we believe that there is a time and place for it. An most people believe that the St. Patrick’s Day parade was not the right time and place.”
Oh, but it was the right time and place for an old pickup to drive in the parade with juveniles in the back, lifting kegs, acting like idiots?
Was it the right time and place for the police to scare the living daylights out of young children as they drug that poor old lady across the street by the back of her shirt?
Were you even there pastor? I was, and it was terrible that these fine police had to act like they were imposing martial law.
11/29/2007 9:11 AM MST on Gazette.com
davidb wrote:
Eric Verlo and Elizabeth Fineron should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. According to their own statements, they intentionally and premeditatedly challenged the police that day. Attorney Kelly, you do NOT speak for the public on this one. Do your job!
11/29/2007 9:20 AM MST on Gazette.com
rambone wrote:
lexiii wrote: “These protesters were no more peaceful than anyone else.”
Were you there lexiii? Or its this just another story you want to weigh in on? I watched the whole thing, from the moment they walked out of Acatia Park, to when they got beat down 1 block away. Their signs were just peace symbols, they were not yelling into the crowd. One more thing, that pig that drug that lady across the street is lucky to be walking on two legs today. Pull off that act in front of my kids is enough to get me sent to prison.
11/29/2007 9:20 AM MST on Gazette.com
jwstrue wrote:
Iraqwarvet, actually if any one in a position of authority sees an active duty soldier driving around with this propaganda displayed on his/her POV–they will more than likely be ordered to remove it and potentially face administrative action.
The Uniform Code of Military Justice prohibits any type of slander against the Commander-in-Chief–in any form or fashion. While military members may disagree with the policies and procedures set forth by the Commander-in-Chief, they are prohibited by law from open criticism of those policies/procedures or the CIC himself.
Yes, military members can exercise freedom of speech–but only accompanied by certain restrictions as outlined in the UCMJ.
11/29/2007 9:22 AM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (1)
pastor wrote:
So it is ok for these people to act the way they did. So again it is the police fault for doing their job, an the protester are not responsibility for their actions. So when is it ok for the police to move someone who does not listen?
11/29/2007 9:27 AM MST on Gazette.com
lwirbel wrote:
Lexii, you still aren’t describing this event accurately. Some people, like the AIM Indians at Columbus Day in Denver, choose to get arrested and commit civil disobedience by symbolically blockading an event. Verlo and Fineron were parade participants who the parade marshall decided, after the fact, he didn’t want in the parade, who were removed from the parade. The courts have a very mixed record on the right of a parade organizer to set rules, particularly in an ex post facto way. St Patricks Day organizers in Boston and elsewhere have some limited rights to exclude in advance gay and lesbian marchers, but once they’re in a parade, you have only limited rights to take them out. What’s also relevant here is what the courts have said about Apple Computer’s right to define who is a journalist. The company wants to exclude some people in advance because it says, “they’re only bloggers.” The courts say, no, Apple, even if it’s your press conference, you do not have the right to decide who is a legit participant and who is not. The St. Paddy’s Day organizer was really bordering on the edge of legality when he decided to remove folks with peace shirts after allowing Bookman in (and like Rambone said, they weren’t yelling, just marching).
11/29/2007 9:31 AM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
Rambone if the police tell you to move out of the way, you listen and sort out the problem once you are off the street. You do not act like a little child. Rambone read your past posting you are some one who has a problem with Authorize and police. I was not there but people I know and trust were there an witness the whole thing from start to finished. They witness the police asking them to leave and witness the people not listen to the police officers.
11/29/2007 9:35 AM MST on Gazette.com
skiracer wrote:
Smackermack – My bad on the City Attorney vs the DA. Guess I heard DA used and skipped over the first few lines of the article on my reread after reading other comments. Regardless, the DA’s office should still be looking at this as Colorado Springs is in El Paso County, which is covered in the area he is responsible for. At a minimum a better reason/story/lie needs to be provided to the people of the city regarding why these charges were actually dropped. Saying you have evidence to convict but we are not going to is the same as saying we will chose which laws we are going to enforce.
As for the City Attorney (appointed by our wonderful all knowing and responsible City Council). You should be fired for either lying in your statements to the Gazette or for not upholding the law regardless of cost. If you have enough evidence a crime was committed and the police were correct in their actions you owe it to those of us who follow the law to uphold it as well as to the police officers who just had their name dragged through the mud because you are either a liar or lazy.
11/29/2007 9:36 AM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
Lwirbel my problem is how they acted once they were told by the police to leave. I do not agree with the message they were bring in the St. Patrick’s Day parade but that is my opion. I feel that there is a time and place for that message and this to me was not the right place. With that said, I still feel they were in the wrong once the police ask them to move out of the way. They had to two choices 1. to move out of the way and sort the mess out. 2. Do not listen to the police and risk getting in trouble. The choices was up to them.
11/29/2007 9:47 AM MST on Gazette.com
justanothervet wrote:
That is right . Every time the police or any authority figure tells you to do something than do it. No protesting allowed. No thinking allowed. Vote Republican.
BTW you can send your Tea Tax to the Queen care of the United Kingdom.
11/29/2007 9:47 AM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (2)
lwirbel wrote:
That’s the main difference between you and me. If there was a huge accident or similar crisis and the police were getting everyone to move, I’d high-tail it. If the police were asking me to do something that was clearly a violation of my rights, I would challenge them and ask for their badge number. Never kowtow to someone simply because they are in uniform.
11/29/2007 9:54 AM MST on Gazette.com
duncan wrote:
lwirbel, from your comments I can only conclude that you had no issue with the Valedictorian from Lewis Palmer giving her speech about faith AFTER deliberately misleading the event organizers about her intentions. Is that correct? Or are you blocking that piece of evidence out to make your case? I guess lies and deceit in the name of a “cause” are complete justification to getting ones message across.
rambone, your internet tough guy act is tired. By your own admission since you watched the whole thing you had your chance with “that pig” and you did nothing. I doubt there would have been any change if your kids were there or not. It sounds like you could have used it as an example to your kids of what not to do when they grow up.
11/29/2007 9:57 AM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (1)
rambone wrote:
Selective discipline? I had three short paragraphs to you. You chose to only comment on some short sighted belief that the police are the rule makers. These peace activist had the permits to be in that parade.
Act the way they did? You admit you were not there. Last I remember, he told me/she told me wasn’t admitted in a court of law. So why are you even making assumptions?
11/29/2007 10:00 AM MST on Gazette.com
lwirbel wrote:
Duncan, I actually know Erica from Lewis-Palmer and I have mixed emotions about it, I don’t think her case will stand up in court because of those deceptions, though her intention was partially admirable. I think this issue will stand up in a civil-suit court because the marchers were NOT engaged in deception. Bookman has always been an activist bookstore, and no great deception is involved in putting on green T-shirts. What about the Boston parade, if a bookstore known to be lesbian applied to the Catholic group to march, would it be deceptive to somehow have a lesbian sign on that float? I would say no.
11/29/2007 10:05 AM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
Iwirbel I have no problem with your statement “I would challenge them and ask for their badge number. Never kowtow to someone simply because they are in uniform.” But can you not do this by getting out of the way of everyone else, so that you are not causing a delay in the parade? by doing this are you not listen to the police and showing respect to them and everyone else.
11/29/2007 10:06 AM MST on Gazette.com
jwstrue wrote:
Quick question to someone in the know. What reason did the protesters use to apply for a permit under a business name that had nothing to do with their organization? Or is their organization called The Bookman?
11/29/2007 10:11 AM MST on Gazette.com
obxman wrote:
if the d.a.[could mean anything]had to pay for legal expenses in a failed prosecution,half these jokers would be out of a job.if civilians sue each other without merit,the losing party can be held liable for legal fees…..why not the government?!they don’t have to be right when they arrest you….you just have to be able to afford justice.
11/29/2007 10:33 AM MST
jwstrue wrote:
Come on Rambone…that’s like saying because airplanes crash, I have no respect for pilots and will never fly an airplane…you sound pretty libertarian to me. Perhaps you should relocate to one of those compounds in Montana or Utah. Be careful, you may need these guys some day…
lwirbel, most folks with common sense would not challenge authority while in the midst of a direct order–most folks would follow the appropriate complaint or challenge process. Sounds like you have the same problem as the protesters–there is a time and place for everything. When you are given instruction by a police officer–this is not the time to argue or challenge unless your desire is to be incarcerated. Yes, there are exceptions–but judgement and good sense is everything…
11/29/2007 10:35 AM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (1)
lwirbel wrote:
Jwstrue, Eric has had The Bookman in the parade (and MLK parade, etc.) for several years’ running, usually has a sign about peace on the van, etc. He said something to J&P members a couple days beforehand, saying “Anyone want to be with the float?” Before that time, none of the peace groups had even thought about applying for the parade, whether or not they’d be allowed. The Justice and Peace Commission often has a float in the Christmas parade every year, allowed by the sponsors, usually with an alternative-energy theme, but no one ever thought of applying for some of these other parades.
11/29/2007 10:39 AM MST on Gazette.com
just1voice wrote:
Rambone, ignorance is bliss isnt? Why dont you check the app requirements for applying to be a cop before opening your mouth and making yourself look like more of an idiot. As for the State Trooper, he sure as anything could have made your day a whole lot worse by holding you and calling social services to come and collect your child. Dont think he had the right? Go and find out. Then you could sit here and complain about how he held you againt your will, kidnapped your child and made you look like even worse of a father than you probably are.
11/29/2007 10:41 AM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (1)
jwstrue wrote:
Come on Rambone…that’s like saying because airplanes crash I have no respect for pilots and will never fly…you sound pretty libertarian to me. Perhaps you should relocate to a compound in Montana or Utah. Be careful, you may need these guys some day.
lwirbel, you may have the same problem as the protesters. There is a time and place for everything. Most folks, when instructed by a police officer to take some action, would comply and complain or challenge later. The only thing you will accomplish by direct rebellion is most likely incarceration. True, there are exceptions, but good sense and judgement apply here…
11/29/2007 10:44 AM MST on Gazette.com
just1voice wrote:
Here is the sad part of all of this. Hopefully everyone will live and learn. I guarentee you the parade organizer is amending his rules and regs and next he will not have this problem. I would imagine EVERY parade orgainizer is doing that so it is very unlikely that this “message of peace” they wanted to get out will not be seen again at any function like this. Why would you want someone hell bent on causing problems in your show anyway?
11/29/2007 10:44 AM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (1)
jwstrue wrote:
…sorry, didn’t mean to repeat myself–couldn’t see the first comments
11/29/2007 10:46 AM MST on Gazette.com
jtrione wrote:
(laughing) Some of these comments get so hilarious. Makes for entertaining reading. And, just to clarify JWS, CSAction and I are two different people. I would think our approaches to various topics and our facility with the language would distinguish us in several ways, but, alas, not clear enough.
I cannot comment definitively on the actions that day, as truthfully, I was not there. I do, however, know that the sentiment at the time which drove and continues to drive this debate was that from the early moments of the war, Colorado Springs and our illustrious police department were forever enshrined in history as “Thugs of Intolerance”. We, the citizenry, witnessed the teargassing of peaceful protesters early on in 2003 and made the nightly news across the country for same.
So, I could see why the perception, real or not, existed during this parade event. The message which seemed to come through loud and clear from city government and the police force was “How DARE you liberal freaks question the certitude of our celestially ordained Bush administration and its actions in the world ? We will use EVERY means legal and illegal to keep you silenced.” So, no, all the comments below that those on the right welcome free speech are, frankly, prevarication. Conservatives during this period fell into a mindset that they could shout down or silence any dissent as they claimed to have higher moral authority, e.g. Bill O’Reilly’s infuriating habit of cutting off the microphone of those who disagree. The Gazette’s infuriating habit of editing AP news stories during that time to remove any possible anti-war opinions.
Those who are intellectually HONEST cannot dispute that such a pervasive mentality existed in this country for the last six years. Given that framework, it is not difficult at all to see the anguish from the left at a system which tried strenuously to silence dissent. And, for those on the right who are unable, for a moment, to see the frustration from the left, then, I’m sorry, but you would have to be CLUELESS to forget the Cheney-isms where he called into question the patriotism of those who dared to dissent.
Dunno, gang, hopefully we’re moving in the right direction. Remember, the bulk of the blame for the lack of unanimity toward the war effort falls squarely at the feet of the Loser in Chief who was unable to make a cogent case for military action and failed miserably at being a leader. A “leader” is able to rally people to his cause, not just browbeat them into obeisance. So, yes, maybe these protesters broke the law. I haven’t a clue. But, if they did, don’t they answer to a higher moral authority than some law designed to stifle protests of the left ? I think so. jtrione@mac.com
11/29/2007 10:59 AM MST on Gazette.com
jwstrue wrote:
Thanks Jim for the clarification. I apologize, I was being sarcastic. For those who aren’t familiar, the distinction could be difficult because you both speak in dissertational formats and CS usually follows in support of your views…
Your comments are sometimes pretty hilarious as well…especially when the disdain for Christianity and the liberal arrogance shines through–all in good fun though.
11/29/2007 11:14 AM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
Hey Jim, how are you today, I would never confuse you with csaction (I know everything) you have always been respectful to me and other. I think you are off base here on this issue. I for one question those in leadership who are against the war,why? for declares we have lost, meeting with out enemies and using those who hate us talking points as their own. Those in political power who support the peace movement have done everything in their power to ensure our solider will lose this war in order to win this next’s elections. I agree that Bush has made mistakes which war time president have not. Right now we have a chance to win this war but instead of backend our troops and giving them the funds and equipment need to fight this war the democrat’s want to withhold money in order to keep theses peace protester happy and to make sure that we do not win this war.
11/29/2007 11:28 AM MST on Gazette.com
pondfrogz wrote:
Wow, it appears I missed quite a conversation. Have a good day all and remember, there’s no problem that a six-pack and a good game on TV can’t cure. Just my meaningless comment of the day before tackling my fiancees chore list from $%*# on my day off.
11/29/2007 11:30 AM MST
turdman wrote:
Rambone-You are as lame as Tony Boy. Whine, Whine, I got stopped and I want to complain because I got caught and it isn’t fair.
11/29/2007 11:32 AM MST on Gazette.com
turdman wrote:
Bottom line in this case is the protestors are cowards. They protested and were legally arrested for violating the law. Then they all complained because they got arrested for again, breaking the law. Now they will sue the city because they believe their rights were violated. This group is really no better than the Westborough Baptist bunch. I hope next year they go to Denver to protest one of their events, so they can get what they really deserve.
11/29/2007 11:39 AM MST on Gazette.com
just1voice wrote:
Rambone dont flatter yourself. It would take a lot more than your couch commando comments to get under my skin. I never said your opinion made you those things. However, your lack of knowledge does. That and endangering your own child, setting a horrible example, and your running your mouth makes you a bad father. Whats wrong did I get under your skin?
No Im not one of them but I would give just about anything to watch you go one on one with the officer that you call “a pig”. Then you could teach you kids something useful, like how not to get your tail whipped.
11/29/2007 11:46 AM MST on Gazette.com
jtrione wrote:
Hey, Pastor Roy. Well, respectfully, I will disagree on some points. How do you equate “protesting” with “wanting to lose the war” ? That seems quite the logical leap to me. And, for the record, I have never taken a position on bringing the troops home early — I’m ex-military and understand the difficult role they are playing which does not fit nicely in “bumpersticker arguments” one way or the other. As one who has worn the uniform, I often cringe at some MoveOn.org statements and positions as shortsighted and limited. But, I realize that we on the left, have our normal centrists and our own “lunatic fringe”. We have to somehow work with both to craft a clear, cogent message.
I, personally, have never seen withdrawal from Iraq as a viable option and agree that a permanent presence of 50K per year is likely for the next few decades. As far as the failures of this administration (arguably in the running for the top five worst since the founding of the republic), there are not enough electrons to waste on these blogs. Yet, what seems more telling to me are the HUGE legions of right-wingers who, TO THIS DAY, support this guy. How many Bush-Cheney stickers do we STILL see on cars here ? It boggles the mind. All I know is that it certainly attaches a ‘stain’ to conservatism that will last for quite some time. For the next few decades, “conservative” will be automatically linked to the policies and actions of the Bush Administration. Nice albatross, guys, heavy enough for ya ?
And, PR, the point of this article was whether or not the protesters were in the right or not. Perhaps, they are reflective of a sentiment, wholly pervasive at the time, now weaning somewhat, that TO EVEN QUESTION the actions of the Bush-Cheney elite was somehow tantamount to disrespect for this nation. “If you’re not with us, you’re with the terrorists.” Who thinks in such puerile, oversimplistic absolutes ? Republicans, that’s who. C’mon, to impugn the patriotism of Senator Max Cleland ? Seriously, how do they look themselves in the mirror in the morning ?
(laughing) I recall a comment at some point during all this when a secular progressive was asked about the disdain toward conservatives, especially religious ones, phrased as “you don’t need them to just be wrong, you need them to be evil”. As wrongheaded and awful as that statement appears, I think it’s dead-on. Perhaps where we liberals lose our footing is when we become unable to see the folks on the other side of the table as loving, compassionate humans who happen to be a bit misguided in their beliefs in our opinion. Maybe if we on the left felt that those on the right were truly championing our rights to hold (in their view) misguided beliefs, then protest incidents like these would be few and far between. But, when we feel that the cards are “stacked against us” by those in power and their representatives (the police), it’s easy to see the animus. jtrione@mac.com
11/29/2007 11:59 AM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
Can someone please explain to me what this has to do with art.
“Fake mug shots of President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other White House officials are on display at the main branch of the New York City Public Library, and the exhibit has caused quite a commotion.
About six manipulated photographs of members of the Bush administration made to look like mug shots are lining one of the landmark building’s hallways, with each current and former official holding a D.C. police date-of-arrest placard bearing the date they made “incriminating” statements about the war in Iraq, The New York Daily News reported.”
This is an perfect example of what is wrong with the peace movement and those who are against the war.
They love to Forcing their views on people by saying it is one thing and doing something else.
What does this have to do with the above story. The answer is both enter something under a different idea or name, but when there their used it to express a political view.
11/29/2007 11:59 AM MST on Gazette.com
csaction wrote:
Well, the parade arrests are still a hot topic on the ole blog. Where to start? It’s an amazing amount of misinformation but more importantly the correlation to those that would summarily convict us is 100% with those that know nothing about the basic facts. Disagree all you want; you would be amazed at how much I disagree what what was done, but understand this: the neocon tactic of revisionist reality (war is peace) doesn’t work when you want to battle videotape and photos with ill-informed subjective opinions. The city prosecutor couldn’t make that work and neither can you kids.
Glad to see Lexi prove she was the MIA tractor gurlie. Thanx. Glad to see preacher roid make no sense as usual. So on a day of great vindication, I’m glad to see those that hate peace lose a small battle.
To address as much as I have time for: “”whining and complaining” does not defeat prosecutors in court, Evidence does.
Elizabeth and Eric were not “PICKED OFF THE STREET” but pulled off their feet by Paladino, who emmbarrassed the department in 2003 with the “Dairy Queen Dozen” arrests outside the city limits.
There was no lie on the permit. We were invited back after walking in the 2006 parade. No subterfuge, and O’Donnell said he had no problem with our message. The problem was with the lie he was told by the same person who lied to police about the permit. http://csaction.org/StPatsDay/Odonnell.html
David B, all 7 were “prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law” in fact the charges were changed twice to make it easier, but the city didn’t make it’s case, so hung jury, then dropped charges. Patty Kelly is right that the outcome would be the same or they would loose outright with another trial. She wrong that the jury just didn’t get it. They did, except for the wife of the defense contractor who should have been recused at the start.
There are larger community issues of how private is a function held in the middle of Tejon and subsidized 50% for the cost of police? For such “private” events, does the 1st amendment apply, or does a permit void the constitution? If the constitution is voided by “private” events, does that mean our permit the next day, for our 4th anniversary rally mean that we could ban people we don’t agree with from Acacia Park? (like we would want to) http://csaction.org/31807/31807.html
In the end, when we have become a total fascist state and have no rights left, (while the American equivalent of the Germans in 1938 sleep) you won’t be able to find anyone who will admit they fought those fighting for rights and peace just like you can’t find anyone who will admit they voted for niXXXon.
In the end, this is a great conversation for our city to have and any city in America, because we need to understand our system in it’s superiority and not get in the way of it’s progress in the world. The lack of understanding of how our constitution works is appalling, but this is progress.
I guess we’ll see all of you at the 5pm press conference in front of the courthouse?
11/29/2007 12:00 PM MST on Gazette.com
hmmmmm wrote:
For someone who complains about being lied about, you sure post a lot only when it comes to your ridiculous protest where your people broke the law and got treated accordingly. Your people refused police orders, were subsequently moved, forcibly as you left no other option, after your “old lady” asked several officers what it would take to get arrested, and then appropriately charged. Where is the mis-information in that csaction? Your people are not martyrs, not worthy of anything but contempt. A full video of the incident shows the truth, and as much of a spin as you put on this, your people are still wrong. Next time, don’t expect any nicer treatment when you pull the same stunt.
11/29/2007 12:06 PM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (1)
hmmmmm wrote:
Rambone, are you speaking from experience on the gangbang comment little guy? Sure sounds like it. Maybe the aggressive defense of the police is a direct result of your ridiculous aggressive contempt for them. You opinion is ignorant. Nice racist photo by the way, Mark Fuhrman is still in Idaho if you need a place to move to.
11/29/2007 12:09 PM MST on Gazette.com
coloradogirl wrote:
I am a true believer in that life is just not fair sometimes. Justice does not ALWAYS prevail. I don’t think this was a vindication, just an abandonment of justice in the best interest of the situation.
I applaud the City Attorney for “giving up” so to speak. It’s like arguing over a $700 couch in divorce proceedings. You spend twice that to the attorney’s arguing over it. In the end, it’s just not worth it and the bigger person has to give up. Just like in this situation. The City Attorney didn’t want to waste anymore money on such frugal matters.
I personally was a witness to the groups display at the parade and I’m just as disgusted now as I was then. I wish we could send the protesters over to Iraq and let them protest there. Now THAT would be worth watching….
11/29/2007 12:32 PM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (1)
hmmmmm wrote:
Been here 20+ years, have a BS in computer related fields. I did military work in communications and do this job to defend the good people of my city from people like you. If you like I can send you the links for “aggressive” and “defense” definitions in great big letters and really small words so you can understand.
11/29/2007 12:52 PM MST
turdman wrote:
Rambone-Come on dude just having a little fun! I am just shocked is all. I mean I have never heard a grown man whine like a school girl. If you keep pushing out that lower lip of yours when you pout, you should put some sunscreen on so you don’t get a sunburn.
Can we still be friends?
11/29/2007 12:59 PM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (1)
jeep4fun wrote:
If protestors wish to protest they should apply for a permit through the city as any march is required to. For protestors to ruin what should be a community event for the purpose of enjoyment is simply silly. I believe parade organizers have the right to prohibit those groups (which this was)who wish to disrupt parade proceedings. The police acted appropriately in this instance. I grow tired of seeing idiots place the police department in a bad light due to their poor choices and actions. If you wish to truly disrupt a community event then you have to pay the piper. If you disagree with a particular event or view, request a permit from the city for your own event, but let our citizens truly enjoy the parades provided without divisive and inciteful actions and messages
11/29/2007 12:59 PM MST on Gazette.com
turdman wrote:
Hey Rambone,
Since your not doing very well on this blog today, maybe you can go down to the Gazette Telegraph office and protest this blog. I mean really, we must be violating your rights in some way. Maybe CSACTION can go with you and video tape the whole event. He can can then edit out the truth and you two can have a local TV station air your story. Maybe a lawyer can take your case and you could win millions by suing us. Maybe an officer will drive by and you could sue the city as well.
Justice, isn’t it a beautiful thing.
11/29/2007 1:09 PM MST on Gazette.com
jtrione wrote:
So, Jeep4Fun, what I hear you saying is that some government functionary, probably a conservative Republican appointee, gets to decide who does or does not get to be included in an event for “our citizens” (your words)? Based on what set of criteria ? Who are those “special” citizens ? Thought we all had a right to peaceably assemble or to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Where do you find justification to abridge those rights or place boundaries on them ? Remember, if not expressly enumerated, then those rights reside in the people. Not in you, dear friend, or in local laws designed to limit speech. Talk about “special rights”. 😉
11/29/2007 1:20 PM MST on Gazette.com
jwstrue wrote:
Great points coloradogirl and jeep4fun….
11/29/2007 1:24 PM MST on Gazette.com
lwirbel wrote:
Jeepforfun, what you describe is not what the Constitution intended freedom of speech to mean. There are limits to allowing a soapbox speaker to stand on private property and say something. However, Mike the anti-abortionist has every right to show big pictures of foetuses on public land outside the World Arena, and it doesn’t do any good to say,
“He’s disturbing me because I’m going to see an entertainment event, Cirque de Soleil or Lee Ann Rimes or whatever.” James Madison and those writing the Bill of Rights wanted to make sure that freedom of speech WAS in your face, did NOT require a permit, and was bound to be incendiary and controversial. That’s the only way to protect it. Otherwise, our nation would be a larger version of Singapore.
11/29/2007 1:36 PM MST on Gazette.com
justhefacts wrote:
jtrione- This is not a “free assembly” issue. O’Donnell owns the right to the parade which means, he can deny access if he chooses. If the protesors want to make fools of themselves they can do it from the curb which is protected by the Constitution.
11/29/2007 1:38 PM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
Jim, I may be wrong, but my understanding on these parade, when you applied for permission to be in the event you must fill out paperwork with what type of display you are going to enter. So if this is the case can not the group in charge make it clear on their paperwork, what type of display is permitted and what type is not? So if this group next’s year make it clear to all involve what will be permitted and what will not be permitted, we may be able to avoide this problem next’s time.
11/29/2007 1:38 PM MST
csaction wrote:
Hmmm, if you are a cop, thank you for your service and sacrifice.
Now, post the video. No one on earth has sifted through this evidence more than I have and I know every second of video and every photo. The lawyers and cops don’t know this evidence better than I do. You don’t need to post 165 videos on YouTube like I have, just 1. The one that shows what you say it shows. Just 1 video. 1 photo. 1 piece of evidence. 1 thing to back up what you say. You all have the same burden of proof as I do, so pony up. http://youtube.com/profile_videos?user=csaction
Factual correction: Elizabeth asked several officers to arrest her, AFTER being dragged, because she had already gotten the punishment (not by a jury of her peers) but from Paladino, and wanted the rest of her day in court. She knew enough about it to know she had no recourse for the thousands in medical costs without the system’s protection, which she insisted on. (not contempt for the system, but admiration)
Jeep, we followed all rules and got a permit. We paid for a permit the next day in the park, and decided NOT to have our protest rally for the 4th anniversary the same day as the parade, which would have gotten us much more exposure with the thousands downtown. We decided to do both the parade with the peace message, welcomed the year before, and then the protest the next day. (4th year) Separate things with separate intentions. Everyone didn’t participate in both.
We did not make the police look bad and I don’t think the department looks bad. I think we’ve lost the PR battle, not them, and people (other than here) are capable of seeing that a couple of cops going too far does not a department make. The rest did their jobs with respect and professionalism and garnered admiration from us all.
We deal with cops all the time, and for those old gray beards like em, we’re talking 40 years of activism. I admire police, have 1 in my family, 1 was arrested at the parade and 1 testified for us along with photo evidence. I respect the new chief, and I’m pissed about the budget cuts. The rogues hurt the force, the majority are a credit.
11/29/2007 1:41 PM MST on Gazette.com
jwstrue wrote:
Jim, this was a community event–someone has to be in charge or it wouldn’t be an “organized” event. Jeep4fun is merely stating those in charge should have discretionary authority when it comes to eliminating participants who are suspect. In addition this was not the time for an assembly, whether peaceful or not. Compare this to a recent public democratic debate when a heckler became disruptive–was the heckler allowed to remain in the debate audience?
Just the fact this group applied under a separate entity makes them suspicious from the start (my opinion). Some would view this as a sneaky attempt to disrupt the event by attempting to hide their identity from the start.
11/29/2007 1:41 PM MST on Gazette.com
jtrione wrote:
Pastor, Loring said it beautifully when he said that the Framers did not intend for anyone to limit speech. That person, authorizing a placard or not, is, by definition, infringing on the rights of free speech. O’Donnell’s claim that he could restrict displays of “social advocacy” during the parade is the problem. He does not retain any such right.
On public streets, the public can say whatever it wants, tasteful or otherwise. During PrideFest, would it be legal to restrict Phelps and his Westboro Lunatics from marching around with their tacky signs ? Of course not. Did the Nazis march in Skokie during the 70’s ? Heck ya. Freedom comes with a price tag that says “everything you see or hear may or may not offend your sensibilities”. Tough noogies. Deal with it. So, however misplaced an anti-war protest might be during a civic event, it is well within the purview of what the Framers intended. Period. Stylistically is that the best forum ? Well, that’s a question worthy of debate.
11/29/2007 1:46 PM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
Iwirbel, this may shocked you and other but I am against those who do what do you call it “Mike the anti-abortionist has every right to show big pictures of foetuses on public land outside the World Arena, and it doesn’t do any good to say,” I believe this type of behavior does more wrong then good. I am against those who protest gay event with signs that use the f word or condemn them to hell, I am against those who hold signs calling our soldiers babe killer and such.
11/29/2007 1:55 PM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
Jim are you telling me that if I show up for the Gay Pride event and want to march down the street with signs that say they need to repent. I have the right to do it and they must let me into the event? I am using this example to get an understand of what you are saying. I was always under the impression that the group in charge off the event has the right to say who can be involved with the event and who can not.
11/29/2007 2:02 PM MST on Gazette.com
justhefacts wrote:
CSACTION-I do not like what you stand for; however, your last post is the most honest thing you have written in a long time. I disagree with you on when Fineron poked and begged the officer to arrest her.
My point is this; The officers were there legally and had ever right to remove Fineron and others from the event. Just because she got dragged across the street does not make it excessive force. Refusing to leave the area after being ordered is a crime and the officers had every right to arrest them. If the city decides not prosecute that is their loss. Obvious the police dept agreed that there was no use of excessive force used by the officers because nobody got disciplined. We all know the police dept disciplines their own people.
The only good thing out of this whole incident is that none of these protestors will even disrupt the parade again. Thay will have to wait for another Palmer Park incident to spew their lies.
11/29/2007 2:03 PM MST on Gazette.com
csaction wrote:
The 2 issues are the heart of the matter. jtrione and lwirbel are correct. Follow the logic path. If the laws of the land don’t apply to a “private” function or property, then I can grow pot across the street from any school where I own property. Of course not. It’s illegal, and my private ownership does not circumvent the law.
Mr. O’Donnell gets the nonprofit (disputed) rate for police protection just like we did, the next day, in Acacia park. Half off. $25 per hour per cop, for 2 at a time, which is $50 per hour.
Acacia Park is public property, andthat designation does not change, when it is rented out for an alloted time. Anyone that disagrees with us about this war (and there are still some) can show up and protest our rally. They usually do. They are always offered water and respect. Our permit does NOT give us the right to say “the 1st amendment of the constitution does not apply for you today, so shut up”. (we, of course, would never even try that)
In the middle of Tejon, closed to the public traffic, for hours, with 46 police subsidized for thousands by the city through the tax payers, Mr. O’Donnell’s permit CANNOT allow him to do what I describe above.
Further, he cannot be allowed to apply his “new and improved” constitutional protections for free speech to ban a message of peace, BUT have military guards, political candidates, political parties, labor unions, and many other political issues raised at the same place at the same time.
I don’t think it’s difficult to see how far this would go if we were to allow it. You either understand the beauty of what the founding fathers did, or you don’t. You have to listen to me disagree with you. The Cost? I have to listen to you. (giggle) It’s a great burden some days, but the nation needs us all to be strong. LOL.
11/29/2007 2:06 PM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (1)
iraqwarvet wrote:
I love hearing people tell protestor how to protest. Like lexii, telling these people that they must protest a certain way. Or Pastor Roy using a totally different subject to illustrate what he means and making no sense. These are the same people who if they lived back in the 1950’s and 60’s would be hitting and beating the nicely dressed black men sitting at the lunch counters. Lexii tell the truth, you hate freedom? Please leave my country then. I defend the rights of all Americans, while you spit on the constitution.
11/29/2007 2:12 PM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (1)
justhefacts wrote:
Pastor-The event coordinator can prevent anybody they want from entering their parade, event or gathering as long as they have a permit to close the street. If the protestor’s wants to stand on the street corner and display signs they have the right to do so as long as they are not on private property or impeding veh or ped traffic. Westboro never entered any event, they just stood on the outside and protested.
11/29/2007 2:12 PM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
OK, If I am holding a parade and I want it to be all about St. Patrick’s Day . An I make it clear no political message permitted, how is that stopping some one’ s1st Admen tent, because I am sure next’s year and maybe the next’s parade in town this will be happen. Why? To ensure we do not have another problem like this.
11/29/2007 2:16 PM MST
iraqwarvet wrote:
Hey Pastor Roy, I’ll help you out. Next Friday night in Manitou Springs, Iraq Veterans Against the War will be putting on a concert at The Ancient Mariner. How about you come down there and walk around the place with your pro-war banners. And Pro-War doesn’t mean Pro-troop. Hold high your “Death to all who are not Christian, White, and American” sign. I promise not to kick you out. And so will all the active duty troops and veterans of this war that will be at the show. Deal?
11/29/2007 2:16 PM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (1)
jtrione wrote:
And, yes, Pastor, that’s exactly what I’m saying. You have the freedom to walk down Tejon during PrideFest wearing a giant A-frame sign quoting pithy silly verses from some retarded book of allegory talking about how all the other right-wing zealots want to create a permanent second-class citizen status for GLBT people. That’s your right, hon, and many have fought and died for you to exercise that freedom. You might get some perplexed looks, but more likely than not, you’d get propositioned or invited for drinks and a party. Tough noogies. Deal with it. Price of freedom sort of thing.
11/29/2007 2:19 PM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (1)
pastor wrote:
Iragwarvet I reposted this just for you since I had a question for you.
pastor wrote:
No one want to silence the peace protesters right to speak, but we believe that there is a time and place for it. An most people believe that the St. Patrick’s Day parade was not the right time and place. Most people also seem to believe that if a cop asked you move you move you do not act like a baby. But I also must remind everyone that the peace protesters hand book, when the police ask you to move you drop an make a scene, so that it is caught on film, the reason is so you can make the police look like the bad guy.
Iragwarvet I have a question for you since you agree with the anti-war groups. Is it ok to block soldier return from the war? Is it ok to delay the soldier meeting with their family? Is it ok to destroy railroad tracks and stop the return of the military equipment from the war?
11/29/2007 8:56 AM MST on Gazette.com
11/29/2007 2:22 PM MST on Gazette.com
iraqwarvet wrote:
Hey Pastor, I counted 15 anti-war, Anti-bush bumperstickers today just driving through post going from gate 20 to the car wash near the B-street entrance. You should probably call the Post Commander and bring an end to this. But DOD Directive 1344.10 says they can, you know why? Because their Americans.
11/29/2007 2:24 PM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
Now Jim you last posting was an insult to me why did you have to act that way toward me. I do thank you for your stands .
11/29/2007 2:25 PM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
Iragwarvet sorry that is my 20th year of marriage dinner to one of most wonderful women in the world. Also I was not the posting about the soldiers getting in trouble. Oh by the way my nices husband had someone put one on his truck at night and he was very upset about it.
11/29/2007 2:28 PM MST on Gazette.com
iraqwarvet wrote:
Pastor Roy, again asking a black or white question. But, I’ll try to answer it for you. No, I don’t think its alright to block troops. So what now? What brillant thing do you have to say now?
Now I have a question for you, did you think black men trying to sit at a all white lunch counter in the late 50’s and early 60’s was a bad way to protest segregation or did they make a point? Maybe you should read Thoreau someday.
11/29/2007 2:30 PM MST on Gazette.com
justhefacts wrote:
CSACTION-Once again your mudding the water. Nobody is talking about your right to protest. You just can’t jump into a parade without permission. If the coordinator, holding the permit, decides they don’t want you to enter their parade they can exclude you from participation. If you choose to stand on the curb and spew then go for it.
If a war vet decided to get up on your stage during your permitted event in the park and take over the microphone he could be arrested. If you, the event coordinator, decided he was not welcome you have that right to exclude him.
Pretty simple stuff.
11/29/2007 2:30 PM MST on Gazette.com
iraqwarvet wrote:
Okay Pastor Roy, since you can’t make it, I’ll invite you to our next tower guard. You can bring your sign then, and its fine with us. Since it would be a good change, only two people actually had a problem with us 2 weeks ago. Or atleast only two people had the balls to come down to Acacia Park and say something. Pastor do you have the balls?
11/29/2007 2:34 PM MST on Gazette.com
iraqwarvet wrote:
Hey justthefacts, I’ll ask you the same question. Shouldn’t the black men in the 1950’s and 60’s been arrested for doing that illegal action of sitting at the white-only lunch counters? You probably think they should have been beating by the police and angry white men, right? Oh wait, thats what did happen…sound familiar?
11/29/2007 2:37 PM MST
justhefacts wrote:
Hey Pastor when you go to the show this weekend don’t forget your “Hillary in 08” poster.They probably wii have quite a few for rent there. You might be able to buy a Hillary shirt from them also.
11/29/2007 2:37 PM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
They were peace protester who say they have the right of free speech, and that blocked the soldiers coming back from Iraq from seeing their family. As one soldier was quotes as saying “ We all wanted to be the ones to remove these people from our post” These protester destroy the railroad tracks going into the base and the Dem. Governor and Dem. Mayor stopped the police from doing there job and removing these people.
11/29/2007 2:41 PM MST on Gazette.com
justhefacts wrote:
Pastor- Don’t forget your “Hillary in 08” poster when you go to Manitou this weekend. Bring money also, they will be selling Hillary and Bill shirts there.
11/29/2007 2:42 PM MST on Gazette.com
justhefacts wrote:
Vet-pick a fight with somebody else. Your comment has nothing to do with this blog.
11/29/2007 2:45 PM MST on Gazette.com
iraqwarvet wrote:
justthefacts, for your information since we are a 501(c)3 we don’t endorse any candidates, but personally I won’t vote for anyone who voted for this war. Please go read H.J. 114 from Oct. 12, 2002. Senator Clinton voted for it. Can’t do it. And none of us are Democrats. So try not to pigeon hole us
11/29/2007 2:46 PM MST on Gazette.com
iraqwarvet wrote:
Pastor, I read the news. I know what your saying and I didn’t agree with their actions. So what else do you got?
11/29/2007 2:47 PM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
Oh by the way I drove by the Guard tower that week and I counted about 15 people and that was including the homeless people hang out in the park. So yes I did go by, on both Sat and Sunday during the day and I counted about the same amount of people.
11/29/2007 2:48 PM MST on Gazette.com
iraqwarvet wrote:
justthefacts, haha! can’t answer the question so you run. You are sad.
11/29/2007 2:48 PM MST on Gazette.com
iraqwarvet wrote:
JusttheFacts, why don’t you just show up. Why do you have to get someone else to do your work? I don’t like Hillary and never voted for Bill. I don’t vote for people who use the military as nation-builders. Sound like a current President?
11/29/2007 2:51 PM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
Justefacts so much for peace love people inside the peace movement, I took it what he was trying to do was pick a fight with everyone who is against the peace movement, By trying to call us raciest.
11/29/2007 2:52 PM MST
pastor wrote:
Justefacts so much for peace love people inside the peace movement, I took it what he was trying to do was pick a fight with everyone who is against the peace movement, By trying to call us raciest.
11/29/2007 2:53 PM MST on Gazette.com
peanuts wrote:
So now it is politically correct to try people, WHAT AN INJUSTICE!
11/29/2007 2:53 PM MST on Gazette.com
iraqwarvet wrote:
JusttheFacts, my comment has nothing to do with this blog? What do you mean by that? Americans protested in the late 50’s and early 60’s by doing something illegal, if you know anything about history, black men sat at lunch-counters in the south which were labeled white-only. They were beaten by both the police and angry white men. It was illegal what these black men were doing. Their is some history for you, since obviously your still in grade school. Now, were the Black men back then justified for what they were doing, or should the white police and white men have continued doing what they were doing? Should the Black men have just been arrested?
11/29/2007 2:55 PM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
So that would leave FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Bush, Clinton, and Bush. You would not vote for.
11/29/2007 2:57 PM MST on Gazette.com
iraqwarvet wrote:
Pastor, I answered your question, why can’t you or justthefacts answer mine? I’m not saying your a racist, I’m just comparing the non-violent protests of the civil rights movement to what happened here on our streets of Colorado Springs, specifically what you people think is unjustifable behavior, since back then it was also considered unjustifiable behavior by the black men in the south. Whats your opinion?
11/29/2007 3:00 PM MST on Gazette.com
iraqwarvet wrote:
Pastor, again not black and white. I never said I’m anti-all wars. Just this one. Open your mind dude.
11/29/2007 3:02 PM MST on Gazette.com
rambone wrote:
hmmmmm wrote: “Been here 20+ years”
So this gives an implant like you the right to tell native born people like me were to go? I bet I got the California part right.
“BS in computer related fields”
I never heard of that degree. I that like,”I started but transfered when courses got tough”?
“defend the good people of my city from people like you”
Me, with no criminal record, military service, college educated? Yeah right, defend from people like me. Maybe what the people need is to be defended from rouge cops like you.
“for “aggressive” and “defense” definitions”
No thanks, but I would like the definition of the combined words. You know, the way you posted it earlier. Nothing over two syllables please, I don’t have all week for you to spell check.
11/29/2007 3:03 PM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (1)
iraqwarvet wrote:
Oh yeah, Pastor, I’m only 35. I don’t really remember FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, LBJ, or Nixon (even though I was two when he resigned).
11/29/2007 3:03 PM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
The issue is we have always been involved in nations building in one form or another.
11/29/2007 3:16 PM MST on Gazette.com
Nobody cares. And that is just plain stupid. The prisoners in the US’s gulag of prisons are treated like pieces of crap and denied adequate medical care, and they in turn get sick, get worse, and even come back out into the communities with their jail bred diseases.
Then who gets the bug? The get tough on crime nitwit does. The families of the get tough on time nitwits do. We all do, simply because bad jails with bad or nonexistent medical care breed infectious diseases that later pass into the communities.
Alternet published an article touching on this issue which is educational about the tough on crime nit wit mind set that gets us all more endangered instead of made safer. For Women Behind Bars, “Health Care” Can Be Deadly
Magistrate Boland made no allowance for the accused mother to maintain her feedings. After the morning hearing, friends learned the jail didn’t care to accomodate the mother either. That afternoon Baby Thomas became ill and began vomiting, so the father brought the baby to the visitor’s lobby hoping emergency visits could be arranged. The jail said no, though after some persuading, a sergeant agreed to convey a breastpump to the mother if one was supplied. A device was purchased and submitted, but the jail recinded their offer. This time a charge nurse named “Monica” explained she was under no obligation to comply, that she’d called her boss at Denver General who confirmed it. Without a court order, she said, the jail had no further responsibility.
Last night, outside the door of the jail, the Denver sheriffs deputies eventually re-admitted visitors into the lobby at 8pm, but kept the activists outside. Then deputies lined up and started warning the father’s friends to “calm down”. That warning and the posture of the deputies was recognizable to activists –and to many African Americans– as the precursor to the use of tasers. The only option was to leave.
[Disclaimer: Jury duty is a service we owe our fellow citizens. It is a critical community responsibility. That said. If you really absolutely can’t. This instructional allows you to make an alternative civic contribution.]
The year was 1960, and there was only one men’s prison in Colorado at that time, located at Canon City. There was a women’s prison that sat next to the men’s prison. There were three small satellites off the main prison: the ranch, dairy farm and garden. And there was the young men’s reformatory at Buena Vista, for a total of three prisons. In 1960 the population figures for Colorado was nearly two million people, in 2010 it was a little over five million; In a span of fifty years Colorado gained three million people. In 1960, it took 3 prisons to confine the convicts of two million people living in Colorado. By 2006 there were 30 prisons in Colorado, while adding only three million people to the population. Hold on here a minute; something doesn’t add up: 2 million people needed 3 prisons, now 5 million people need 30 prisons?!
Mexico’s and the USA’s prison system is run by thugs!
This weekend the General Assembly of Occupy Denver recognized that its intended occupation was actually a re-occupation, of lands to which original inhabitants lay claim. On Sunday the GA consensus voiced its solidarity with the American Indian Movement of Colorado who submitted a statement for ratification. It’s reprinted below via 
No doubt about it, the American ruling class has decided to rewire the circuits once again. But what comes after? What comes after the big CHANGE?
Here was a true bit of American folk wisdom, Harry McClintock’s everyman philosophy whose context was whitewashed for the sake of children and the Protestant work ethic. The original lyrics of the hobo’s nirvana, Big Rock Candy Mountain, where omitted or reformed, are reprinted in bold here.
My wife has been away for a month and when she returns, I plan to call out my troops to SURGE! Don’t laugh, if an old flake like John McCain can bait Obama about not being man enough to vote to SURGE, certainly I shouldn’t be an unpatriotic, limp wristed wimp like Brother Hussein. You know what I mean, Dudes?
Please attend the upcoming