“Sovereignty”— But only for Amerika…

As reported in Talking Points Memo:

Congressional Sovereignty Caucus Launching Next Week
By Eric Kleefeld – June 19, 2009, 5:40PM

A new group is set to launch in the House of Representatives, made up of conservatives set on defending American POWER and interests against encroachment from international institutions: The Congressional Sovereignty Caucus.

Their kickoff meeting will be this coming Wednesday, featuring co-founders Reps. Doug Lamborn (R-CO) and Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI), plus Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) — and special guests Oliver North, Frank Gaffney and Doug Feith.
Rep. Lamborn declined to comment, but his office did point us to an opinion column he wrote last week, mainly targeted at the nomination of Harold Koh to be the legal counsel to the State Department, in which he explained the importance of American sovereignty.

“Sovereignty is vital for America because we are an exceptional nation,” wrote Lamborn, “one uniquely blessed with a vibrant Judeo-Christian heritage, as demonstrated both through its founding documents and by the witness of history. For any nation, and I believe especially for America, to give up any degree of control of its destiny to transnational bodies is irresponsible and wrong.”

Their first meeting sure will have an interesting line-up. North, for example, covertly sold weapons to the Khomeini regime in Iran and then wore his Marine uniform at a Congressional hearing in order to justify himself. And Gaffney has written opinion columns in which he’s raised suspicions that President Obama might not be a natural-born citizen, or could be a secret Muslim.

Seems some members of the RepubliKlan party can’t be bothered to learn the difference between “Nationalism” which by default would grant EVERY nation equal rights, and “Cold-blooded Imperialism”, such as practiced by North, Gaffney and Feith.

Also the “Founding Documents” which they insist gives Amerika exclusively to Christians.. oops “Judeo-Christians”.

My advice to Jewish Americans, who were deliberately excluded in the “Founding Documents” they mention: Stay clear of these freaks.

The only reason they include Judeo is the same reason as George Bush trying to say how much he really loves Mexican American Culture, and showing off how much Spanish he really doesn’t speak. Political Schmoozing, in other words.

For those unfamiliar with Yiddish, Schmooz is “con job” as practiced by a “Schmiel” (thief) in order to defraud a “Schmozl” who is somebody dumb enough to be Schmoozed.

Those documents also referred to Native Americans as “Savages” and to Black AMERICANS as only being worth 2/3 of a “real” person apiece.
(but of course they weren’t Racists, no sir!)
Ollie North and friends say that Amerika is also destined to rule the world.

Fat chance on that Ollie, and on behalf of the Marines you had MURDERED for political gain during the Beirut Peacekeeping mission, the ones whose killers received cash and weapons from you and your Coward Treasonous Comrades, before and after the murders took place, yeah, THOSE Marines, Ollie… I’ll once again say those same three words, Ollie “Semper Fi… BITCH!”

That goes for local supporters of the Imperialist Terror Regime Ollie and his comrades represent too.

Silly warmongers, space is for kids

Broadmoor Space Symposium
Once again the Colorado Springs peace community has the unique opportunity to protest the annual Space Symposium hosted at the Broadmoor. First, the event provides unparalleled access to the upper echelons of the US military industrial for-profit killing machine. And this year, their war-in-space theme is not even disguised: “Space as a Contested Environment.” Think they’re talking about Sputnik?

Leave space to NASA, not to baby killers

You can banner in front of weapons industry office buildings, you can have your progress blocked at their parking lots, but at the opening ceremonies of the Broadmoor Space Symposium, you can put your message directly in the faces of the war criminal bosses themselves.

Details to follow.

Even More Trollish “Logic”… Edited to remove Name..

So he-she-it doesn’t have a big steaming bowl of Purina Victim Chow to gnaw on.
Our newest Troll, who says he doesn’t consider our point of view worth anything but strangely spends more time here than one would spend on a Paying Job (and of course, he’s not getting paid for it, that would be ridiculous, Right?)
Says that because IDF hasn’t been Convicted of the Murders they’ve committed, the murders must not have happened or must not have been committed by the IDF Baby-Killers.

In much the same way, it’s within my lifetime that the Ku Klux Klan, a group allied now with AIPAC through their shaired connections in the Republican Party… murdered people frequently and often.

According to Unnamed troll, and his or her or IT’s much vaunted Logical Superiority, the Blacks, Hispanics, Indians, Hippies (that’s Us, Folks!) who were murdered and the hundreds of thousands of those who were merely Assaulted by the Klan were not, in fact, murdered or assaulted by the Klan.

Because the Klan wasn’t convicted of those crimes.

And very few individual Klansmen were ever convicted.

By the same logic, the Nazis at the beginning of 1945 hadn’t killed millions of people, because they hadn’t been CONVICTED OF KILLING ANYBODY

Of course the vast number of Dead wouldn’t be any indication that the murders had taken place, nor would the idea that the only heavily armed, well organized groups capable of Murdering all those people in all three instances cited, were, in order of appearance, The Nazis, The Ku Klux Klan … and now, the Rising Mogen–David on the Right Wing Murder Fringe, the IDF.

All you effectively anonymous trolls, hiding behind fake names and using the same IP address, you’re enabling Baby-killers. That makes you every bit as much responsible for the Murders they commit as the Coward Thugs who pulled the trigger on the kids.

I hope you really really don’t like it.

My sincerest prayer would be that one, at least, of you ChickenHawk Trolls would actually repent of your crimes and just, you know, Stop Doing Them.

Meanwhile, you haven’t answered the question…

Since the Victim Mentality IDF have called any criticism of their current Murder Spree to be “attacks” does that mean that you “volunteer” Trolls are in your own estimation ATTACKING Americans who oppose your Cowardly Murder Spree?

That would be, in your own estimation, your own words, a deliberate act of War against America.

One of the most outspoken Supporters of Murder, Karl Rove, says that Anybody, even an American, who opposes your murderous rampages both in Israel-Gaza-Lebanon AND in Iraq-Afghanistan-and-coming-soon-Iran is, in the view of Bush and Cheney and Rove and all their ChickenHawk Coward Supporters, A Terrorist.

That would leave us open to Non-Prosecution secret imprisonment, torture and even Death for talking back to Cowards like YOU.

What do YOU Trolls think?

Above and beyond what your Troll-Masters tell you to think or at least write, I mean.

We already know what they think, you’ve told us over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over ….

You endorsed the whole package of the Pentagon/White House/Knesset State Sponsored Terrorism, saying many times over that Terrorism committed by YOUR thugs is actually legal and legitimate.

The 19 young MEN who blew themselves up on 9/11 exhibited not merely more Courage than you or your “leaders” ever will, they had more honor and integrity.

Judged by your own “logic”…

IT demands proof…

Of anything WE write. Perhaps It should take the challenge…

  • Show US proof that YOU actually exist other than a Yahoo ID, Hotmail or gmail ID created yesterday.
    Many Commercial sites don’t even respond to such IDs because they’re effectively ANONYMOUS
    And are used many times for Spam and E-Mail Scam operations.
    And E-Bay doesn’t accept them as your actual Email identity.
    and the commercial sites that don’t accept your Bull-poo-poo Yahoo ID also turn it over automatically to SpamCop and other
    Anti-Spam World Wide Web databases.
  • What say, Eric, Tony, Marie?

    Should NMT subscribe to one of those databases?

    1) Did Someone Say Credibility?

    As in somebody who doesn’t even use a Real Name To Describe ITself, and keeps telling us that everything WE say must be outright Lies because IT has Imperial Military Sources which say that Invasions, Occupations and Mass Slaughter are actually manifestations of Freedom…

    And that IT considers and believes that anything which Gainsays the word of Professional Killers just could not possibly be true or worthy of consideration.

    It has also said in all of ITs many many “personalities” that we’re so stupid and crazy and Left Wing that we’re really not worth IT writing anything to us blah blah blah blah blah

    Kind of like Charlie Browns Teacher… wa woo wah wah wuh….

    But has “wasted ITs time” posting hundreds of links to Military Sources and their Propaganda Outlets like the New York Post and really Any Outlet Related To DumFox Noose NutWerx.

    All done, so it seems, from the Kindness of ITs heart.

    Of Course.

    2) In case IT didn’t catch the hint…

    IT has been not only CALLED a Liar IT has proven the point repeatedly that IT is a Liar or perhaps a loosely organized co-op of Liars working together.

    Funny how the only actual ISRAELIS who have had the courage to link to their writings are Peace Activists which IT has also spammed in ITs many “independent” personalities.

    I invite the Casual Reader or even the Serious Student of the issues to glance over to the left hand side of the screen and view ITs name repeated over and over, until you scroll through the pages to find where ITs “persona” has been seriously challenged and ITs name, National Identity, Faith, even ITs gender mysteriously changes… and so forth through it’s many incarnations.

    On the Right Hand Side of the screen you’ll notice a HUGE number of posts listed, 106,73,52 etc etc etc but THIS link you’re reading now is the most important of them all

    IT cyber-screams and cyber-wails that we’re not being “fair” to IT and that calling IT a liar is somehow censorship.

    IT has also not provided ANY proof or even Evidence that IT has done or written ANYTHING on the World Wide Web or in Newspapers, Broadcast Media or even College Publications other than what IT has written here.

    That last is Important because several of ITs “identities” claim to have gone to various Universities and to be officers in Various Military Services.

    Which would mean they I mean IT, if it were an officer in ANY Military Branch would have had to go to college.

    IT has not produced one single link to say, a Baccalaureate Thesis or even higher Graduate Student writings of any kind authored by IT.

    You will recognize IT by ITs hysteria in condemning us for exposing IT for what it and ITs enormous collection of plagiarized from other sources “Proof” that we’re all a bunch of Racist Anti-Semitic Hate-Speech Disseminators who

    aren’t worth ITs time and effort to reply to our ravings, (except IT has, hundreds and hundreds of times)

    3) Tell us, O Spammer-one… Do you have a Real Job?

    Because you’ve apparently been spending all your spare time HERE, telling us and, of course, our Readers who you claim we don’t have, that you’re a College Graduate, a Military Officer, Another Military Officer, Whatever the Latest Count of your Fake User Identities is…

    Surely somebody of such Education, Experience and Importance in the Community would actually have a REAL job somewhere, or like me be a disabled individual, who would STILL have to take time off for Physical Therapy, Doctors visits, trips to the Grocery Store, picking up the kids from school… You know, the type of Real Life activities most people engage in at least some of the time.

    Somebody with your Vast Experience in Middle East affairs, as you claim, SHOULD be shuttling between Washington, Tel Aviv, Amman, Rihyad, Cairo, Baghdad, Kabul….

    Brokering Peace talks, doing SOMETHING real about the Peace Process or, as we like to call it “The Washington Continuous War Because It’s Good For Our Corporate Profits” process.

    Which you’re apparently not actively involved in the War either, or at least not on a Personal Basis.

    Tony, Eric, Marie, myself, a few of the others who routinely post, well, ALL of the Others who routinely post, are actually REAL People.

    We’ve for the most part met each other, know each other…

    Even the Military Policeman who posted about somehow Redeeming His Soul by giving candy and cigarettes to a prisoner he was escorting to the Death-Camp at Bagram AFB is a Real Person.

    With a REAL Job.

    Even though neither he nor his job are very savory or honorable.

    So, Wazzup, Dawg?

    Troll “Logic”

    Foreign Government commits War Crimes. People tell them they are committing War Crimes. Foreign Government Call on Trolls across America to Refute the accusation using Nothing Other Than Information Provided by Same Government Agencies who commit the war crimes.

    Trolls present this “evidence” also known as “Propaganda” as positive proof that War Crimes Never Happened and that all the victims of the War Crimes Were Terrorists and therefore deserve to be killed.

    Even and especially the Babies.

    Then the Cheerleaders (“Trolls”) For the Baby-Killers complain bitterly that they’re not getting the Respect They (believe that they) Deserve.

    All suspects are Guilty until proven Innocent, and the proof of Innocence is supposed to come from the War Criminals who murder, torture or imprison them.

    Unless the War Criminals are the ones accused in which case they’re automatically innocent.

    Because they’re PIgs.

    Pigs and their supporters, like Our Trolls, are the same worldwide.

    If the Pigs are called Mossad, Gestapo, KGB, FBI, or even our own beloved CSPD, they’re all the same.

    The wear uniforms to make it more difficult for anybody to distinguish between “individual” Pigs and to provide testimony against them, and then DEMAND that we identify the Guilty PIGS absolutely.

    They tell US, civilians who they allegedly protect, that We have to earn THEIR respect, but that We have to Respect THEM automatically.

    And their Troll Cheerleaders are the same way.

    Ron & Don, why don’t you simply do what other people, such as the owner of this particular site, routinely do.

    You want to spread your propaganda, buy your own website or just go and Whine to Rush Limbaugh or some other Professional Right Wing Liar on HIS website about how those bad wicked naughty Leftists aren’t giving you the respect you so petulantly demand?

    Hey, you have MY picture and the name of the small town in which I dwell, and you have echoed the sentiment that people who oppose Your Mighty Empire should be killed or tortured, so you don’t have any reasons of Morality which you would accept as valid, why you wouldn’t hunt me down and kill me.

    It must be a lack of Personal Courage on your parts.

    Unlike the petulant whiny demands of you and your Pigs, I don’t say that respect is earned.

    However, Contempt from me has to be earned.

    And you two earned it, in spades.

    I’m sure you’ll post some more Propaganda from the safety of your moms’ basements in the gated communities, behind Heavily Armed guards, and call it courage.

    You’re really a couple of pathetic little boys.

    A little break for the AIPAC ChickenHawks Flooding the Site..

    Something more the War-mongering Freaks can bitch whine and snivel about, Welcome back, David Haddad errr “Mary”
     
    So, since unabashed ChickenHawks like Glenn Beck like to “donate” Tax Deductible stuff like free airtime on their “news” shows, and the USO is begging for money for the families of the troops…
    How, then, can the Recruiters claim in other (taxpayer funded) advertisements that the Military is a Good Career?
    A few background items, if you will.

    Glenn Beck, Chickenhawk, in 2007 participated in a “charity” Auction and one of the articles he donated (For a Tax Break…) a really really butt-ugly painting.

    The bidding on it at the point where I tuned in, was 3400 dollars.

    That means, for a few minutes of his time, about $10 worth of paint and a $30 canvass, he was getting a Tax Break to the tune of $3400.00

    And publicity for his show, which consists almost entirely of licking Government Boot for an hour at a time.

    He earns Is GIVEN his pay for Promoting The War and thus the very poverty/slash/hardship conditions the Military Personnel have to endure.

    An Establishment Media Whore like that then gets to Pretend that he gives a damn about the Soldiers, their wives and children/slash/widows and orphans…

    Gets paid to spew his drivel on the Air and then gets paid again by “donating” something to the USO.

    His equally Cowardly Loud-mouthed War-Monger Friend who bought the painting also got to take an equal tax deduction

    So far, that was $6800 dollars taken off their taxes,

    The Same Taxes Which Form The Basis For The Costs Of The War

    So they’re not only getting OTHER People to Fight for their Obscene profit Margins Ooops I was supposed to say “our Freedom”, thus putting the Soldiers and their families in dire financial straits…

    They’re Getting Paid To Sell the “necessity” of THEIR War to those of us who DO pay taxes, and thus PAY THEIR BILLS for THEIR War…

    On a show that gets Government Subsidies as well,

    And make a huge Show of Concern for those poor families of the Soldiers.

    The Soldiers who are being aggressively recruited even before they leave high school, whose Parents are being told several times an hour to support the decisions of their sons and daughters Sign The Papers Allowing Their Underage CHILDREN to drop out of school and join the Killing Machine.

    Because being an Imperial Storm Trooper is such a Good Economic and Educational Opportunity.

    It’s Payday today. because the 1st is on a weekend.

    Since the middle of the month Military families have been seeking donations to just feed the kids until the end of the month.

    People who get Food Stamps.

    That’s not a slur against the families or the soldiers themselves.

    The “Welfare Cadillac” Food Stamp Queen (who is invariably depicted as Black, although our Republican “Friend” tells us that the propaganda they put out is not Racist at all in any way, shape or form) Is And Always Was a Mythological Construct.

    People don’t get rich off being on welfare.

    Although the Right Wing Professional Liars, like for instance Glenn Beck, tell us that they do.

    Remember though, in the Information Age, their lies about How Righteous and Noble the War is, how we’re obviously Winning the War, how Everybody in the Army Loves The War, How Great a Career The Army is…

    Get shown simultaneously with advertisements begging for relief for their families, ads for the Army recruiting CHILDREN to quit school, give up any chance of a real educational opportunity, and Join The Storm Troopers… because they can’t retain enough of the soldiers who are already in their Glorious Wonderful Marvelous Career to keep fighting a war that was supposedly won 5 years ago.

    Excuse me, that last figure is inaccurate… it was 5 1/2 years ago.

    I wonder if the AIPAC Anti-Semitic types who post all these long letters that say “blah blah blah Israel is always right blah blah blah you’re ignorant to say otherwise blah blah blah how DARE you criticize people for being Babykillers blah blah blah”

    I wonder if they’re getting a tax-break for it, or maybe just making money from the “Defense” Industry which is supplyin’ the (Israeli Puppet) Army with the tools of the Trade?

    Or is it

    D) All Of The Above.

    Pardon, your hypocrisy is showing.

    Liability and the value of a human life…

    How much does one person or all of society owe for injuries, deaths or other damages caused by actions that an individual or the representatives of Society take?

    (I posted this on another forum, alfrankenweb.com. This hits at the core of a few issues that have been brought out in the forum recently.)

    For instance, this time last year, an Insurance Agency, Cigna, made the decision to allow a young lady to die, even though there was a transplant liver available for her, under the notion that she only had about a 50% chance of surviving such an operation.

    This mirrors the Terri Schiavo case, in several important ways.

    George Bush, Jeb Bush, Karl Rove, Pat Buchanan, Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, just a representative sampling of Republican “Leadership”… not only didn’t condemn the decision but some actually applauded it.
    (A Mirror doesn’t show the same image as a photograph, the orientation is that Left and Right are reversed.)

    Mrs Schiavo had, apparently, about a zero percent chance of survival or ever recovering from her coma.

    Richard Cheney, even though his company has surpassed Microsoft as the richest corporation in America and therefore the world, had a life prolonging surgery done, at Taxpayer Expense, even though:

    his age, condition and personal habits will nullify the surgery within a decade anyway…

    He has never contributed anything to Society in his entire sojourn on our planet…

    And has himself denied and been an accomplice to denying the same types of life-prolonging surgeries not only to his own employees but also to any Americans who weren’t smart enough to be born, like him, with silver spoons in our mouths.

    And he’s an accomplice to more than a Million murders.

    Then there’s the issue of Guns.

    The “Swimming Pool” analogy was brought up, and having car seats for kids too small to effectively be protected by seatbelts, and the issue of Seat-Belts themselves.

    But it’s the Insurance Underwriters who brought legislation that ordered the Seat Belt and Car Seat laws, also not allowing people to burn toxic waste in their backyards, or burn anything that will set their neighborhood on fire or even their own houses.

    Insurance companies = not social liberals.

    In Texas, which the Frightened Wing love to proclaim as their primary territory, you can’t operate a motor vehicle without Fiscal Responsibility. You either have to have 50,000 dollars in a bank account specifically set aside for the purpose, for each vehicle, for liability claims… or purchase insurance for each vehicle.

    If you own dogs which are prone to bite, your homeowners insurance goes up.

    If you have a history of driving like you’re stupid your car insurance premiums go up, AND you have to carry more liability coverage.

    Here’s where the disconnect begins… If you own a business,even if it’s a business like Construction which has a very high attrition rate among the workers (the ones who do the actual building both of the properties and the profits of the company) you DON’T have to carry basic Workman’s Compensation insurance. and there’s even moves afoot to Decrease employer contributions to Social Security, the ONLY disability insurance available to the vast majority of non-union Workers.

    You’re also not required to carry insurance on firearms in case you, your kids, your spouse etcetera decide to do something either deliberately evil or blatantly STUPID and get people killed.

    The “Poster Child Case” for this attitude was India v Union Carbide for damages done including Human Lives Lost (and yes, for those right wingers who hate being called Baby-Killers, a lot of the people killed or crippled for life were in fact infants.)

    The Right Wing argue that the judgment was excessive because the “Third World” meaning dark brown people would never in their lifetimes earn more than $30K (conveniently ignoring the FACT that these were the families of Union Carbide’s Corporate Slave Labor Poolerrr… “Valued Employees” yeah, that’s the ticket) and thus the value of their lives was not equivalent to the lives of American White Collar Workers

    They also, in cases of Capital Murder, or the global “war on terror” trot out the Old Testament law of “eye shall go for eye, tooth for tooth, stripe for stripe and life for life”

    So, here’s an interesting theory of how that would work.

    Say you’re responsible, through arrogance and ignorance, for your employee being crippled for life.

    The catfish-processing workers Mr Bush declared to not be worthy of any compensation for their Carpal Tunnel injuries, for instance, every person who was crippled by that policy and the practices of the Catfish farms and their processing plants, should be able to demand that one person in the corporate heirarchy or amongst the investors in those operations should be taken out, and made to stretch his hand out across a cement block, and have it smashed irreparably with a large heavy object.

    Because, you see, stripe shall go for stripe.

    That refers to the seriousness of a wound.

    The War on Terror, should have ended immediately at the time 3,000 of the people responsible had been killed.

    Oh, wait, me ams forgot, instead of going after the ones actually responsible the Bush-Cheney people chose to go after civilian targets.

    As Gilda Radner used to say, “never mind”.

    Instead of the Right Wing screaming and howling about the victims and their families at Bhopal being compensated at a rate of One Years Salary for one of the Office Workers who were their Overseers on the Union Carbide Plantation errr … Supervisors and managers… yeah, that’s the ticket… for each HUMAN LIFE LOST and for those who merely had injuries that would cripple them for life, less money than it would take to have their injuries treated at anything other than a Third World hospital.

    You know, the hospitals the same Right Wingers say are so very inferior to Our System…

    Instead of that, for every life lost, starting from the CEO, the Board of Directors, on down, the Corporate Officers and shareholders, from the ones who own the most shares in the company on down, being taken out and asphyxiated in a Gas Chamber, just like their victims.

    I think the Right Wing would scream very loudly about something like that.

    Let’s turn it to a more pleasant subject.

    If you have a Swimming Pool you have to have insurance on it. And routine inspections and random inspections.

    If you don’t you get fined. That’s the way it is and even that wasn’t brought about by “Those Librul Elitist Latte-sippin’ Prius-Drivin’ Khaki pants-wearin’ sissy-boys” but instead as a cold, analytical business decision.

    So, since that was the standard argument trotted out to counter the notion that gun owners should be held responsible for their TOYS

    Let’s see the Masculinity Challenged Ones put their money where their mouths are.

    Or at least find out, because, you know, unlike the freaks hanging out at the local firing range or the gun shop, Insurance Companies hire persons called “Actuaries” who maintain statistics like the number of accidental drownings per number of swimming pools, the number of Automobile fatalities as compared to the number of automobiles, the number of dog-bites by breed,…

    Number of accidental and/or intentional gunshot wounds compared to the number and types of firearms…

    Go to an Insurance Company Website.

    And get the price quotes for Liability on your guns.

    You’ll be asked questions, answer them honestly.

    How many firearms you own.

    How much ammunition you typically keep on hand.

    Do you have a secured gun rack or safe for your firearms?

    Keep in mind that your idea of secure probably isn’t as stringent as that of people who actually keep track of such things and actually know what the hell they’re doing.

    Do you keep your ammunition inside your house?

    If you do, you’re storing EXPLOSIVES in the same area where your family lives.

    Buy some extra fire insurance, life insurance for every person in the house, and liability for your neighbors who might also perish or be seriously injured if you’re not SUPREMELY careful.

    How many children do you have living with you or who typically visit?

    How many of them are disabled and not as likely to survive without injuries if the Unthinkable Happens.

    Hell with that, it’s not Unthinkable, if you don’t THINK about this you have absolutely no business whatsoever owning firearms…

    Since bullets typically go through the wall of a house, even a BRICK wall, and into the neighboring house, get life insurance for each person living around you.

    Answer all the questions honestly…

    When you get through all the questions click the “Calculate your Liability” button or the “Calculate your Rate” button…. doesn’t matter which, and see what you’ll pay… IF YOU REALLY ARE HONEST AND ACTUALLY GIVE THREE QUARTERS OF A FAT RAT’S ARSE ABOUT ANYBODY.

    If you can’t afford the premiums you sure as hell can’t afford the potential liability.

    For those too lazy or not honest enough to go through that, if you shoot somebody, accidentally of course, BECAUSE I SIMPLY KNOW YOU WOULDN’T DO IT DELIBERATELY and the guy isn’t killed, just oh, let’s see, what’s a common occurrence with gunshot wounds, hey, I know, permanent brain damage where the person is on life support for the rest of his life…

    Or simply made paraplegic or quadriplegic… that happens a lot too.

    Your liability for his or her medical care could run into the MILLIONS, plus the cost of him to survive with as much normalcy and dignity as possible.

    What’s that you say? You DON’T HAVE a few million laying around?

    Hmmmm…….

    Iraqi POW sentenced for resisting US

    Hold your fucking horses of the Apocalypse! Can you believe this red, white, our colors don’t smell, shit? An Iraqi fighter is sentenced to hang for killing three US soldiers? We’re condemning normal acts of war because they make American crimes look bombastic in comparison? The crime committed in this case, is a military injustice.

    Why charge this Iraqi? For killing his US adversaries in 2006, or for showing unsportsmanlike behavior in how he killed them? Do we hold the same standard for our killers in uniform? Do we overlook the conduct of US predator/reaper drone virtual-pilots sniping at foreign civilians from video consoles stateside?

    The world has been shown that US soldiers can kill, rape, burn, torture, go on homicidal rampages, on duty or off, and pass go, and collect $200. Our private mercenaries are allowed to do worse apparently, and not even the Iraqi people can object.

    In fact, negotiations on the US lease agreement of occupied Iraq have stalled over the Iraqi demands to be able to hold US soldiers accountable for crimes they commit at least while not on official duty. Forget on. Those are war crimes. Those crimes will be accountable one day to a world court, and there’s no statute of limitations. Speaking of which, prosecuting an enemy for his right to defend himself and his homeland is in itself a war crime. The Iraqi insurgent resistance fighters and the Iraqi people are protected by the laws of war. Iraq is an occupied country, trying to fend off its invaders.

    To execute this Iraqi will be a further war crime, but what care we? In for a penny, in for 1.2 million Iraqis. Sue us.

    World news and the everyday teenager

    There wasn’t any conversation to speak of on the drive to school today, so I turned on the news. From the back a teen immediately interjected “Is that completely necessary?”

    I muted the sound and turned around, completely incredulous. “What?”

    “Is that completely necessary?” she repeated without a hint of what I hoped to have been mischievous insolence.

    “Not really.” Is all I could muster as I turned the volume back up and refocused my attention. I can’t say that listening to corporate propaganda is necessary, or even a good idea. But I am at an equal loss for how else to stay tuned to what’s happening around us. It’s a good thing my honest ambivalence tripped up the teaching moment I might have offered.

    There are probably far too many ways to get entangled in current affairs, but for children with school, sports, video games, television, play, music and the odd meal, there is no break for non-academic reality. One might argue that kids could be spared the complications of the world outside. I can hardly see the merit to that school of unthought. Especially as domestic politics have certainly invaded their education, the piss-poor vocational experience few are willing to admit that American schools have become.

    This drive-time comment came after an evening spent not being forced to attend a journalist’s lecture last night. It was off-putting enough to have to wait in the atrium apparently. Although, as dense as the economic principles might have been, I sorely regretted that all of the kids, especially the girls, had not witnessed Naomi Klein, about as apt a role model as any young woman could dream.

    So what if much would be above their head? Won’t they grow into it? Are there realities too shocking for children? Shouldn’t our challenge be to address those horrors, sooner than shield ourselves by pretending they do not exist? What a luxury that our children have even the choice to know how they are impacted.

    It’s one thing to expose kids to pictures of highway accidents, or television programs about serial killers, quite another in my opinion to complicate their understanding of societal malevolence. Can they not gleam from parental example that such obstacles do not render life hopeless? We cope. We blot out certain realities to pamper our own delusions. Is that a difficulty level beyond young people?

    There’s no doubt a fine line about forcing experiences on children, the morning news for example, but isn’t that to pretend that almost all their indoctrination isn’t involuntary? Can you think of any accomplished person who wasn’t pushed?

    We can be thankful our children aren’t experiencing household raids, aerial bombings, and marketplace bombers which take the lives of their friends and relatives. How sheltered do children need to be? Even if their Social Studies will eventually teach them Zinn or Chomsky, aren’t the lessons sabotaged by the context of isolation? How are children really to learn that they aren’t working in factories but for blood spilled by labor unions; that their grandparents aren’t destitute or dead owing to collective efforts which demanded more from their government? Pop culture has already lulled kids to the politics of nothing matters. Is there any wrong time to try to right that lie? Or do YOU believe that individuals have no power to participate in the global community?

    Does this presidential race look close?

    NekoTuesday’s presidential debate left me feeling nothing but awkward. Barack Obama sat half leaning in his chair, while his opponent shuffled toward whoever held the microphone like Neko the mouse-chasing screen saver kitten, except McCain flapped his arms like a penguin, and had about that much to say.

    Actually, did either candidate say much? McCain repeated his incoherent assurances, and Obama’s tack seemed deliberately to be not to outshine McCain. Spectators would probably delight in watching a best man win, but it seems Obama’s strategy is not to clobber the Bush poster boy, because Americans can’t help themselves from feeling for the underdog. Especially if he’s the Last White Hope.

    John McCain could fly a Navy jet through the IQ gap between the two candidates. But McCain’s flight record shows he couldn’t even navigate that without clipping a power line and leaving all of us in the dark. McCain is that unsuited for the job, any job except influence peddling and whoring in Rio. That’s not an exaggeration. He is that vacuous, that soulless, that traitorous, that cowardly, and that lacking in judgment. It does trouble me immensely that cohorts like Biden can’t help but temper their public criticism of McCain with reminders of how much they like him. It reminds me of Bush as drinking buddy.

    With his record of failure in his every endeavor, school, flying, captivity, corruption, infidelity, war-mongering, belonging to the GOP, being tainted by Bush, where does John McCain find traction with the American populace?

    How the hell is this contest anticipated to be close, except the issue of Americans resisting the idea of a black president?

    Here’s an explanation getting passed around the web:

    HOW RACISM WORKS:

    What if John McCain were a former president of the Harvard Law Review?

    What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating class?

    What if McCain were still married to the first woman he said ‘I do’ to?

    What if Obama were the candidate who left his first wife after she no longer measured up to his standards?

    What if Michelle Obama were a wife who not only became addicted to pain killers, but acquired them illegally through her charitable organization?

    What if Cindy McCain graduated from Harvard and Princeton?

    What if Obama were a member of the Keating-5?

    What if McCain were a charismatic, eloquent speaker?

    If these questions reflected reality, do you really believe the election numbers would be as close as they are?

    Hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis demand US get out of their country now!

    Multiple hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis rallied today demanding the end of US government control over their country. Major speakers called for the execution of US military dictator and puppet, Pervez Musharraf. Mammoth anti-Musharraf rally in Islamabad By what right does the US government have to be calling all the shots in this huge Muslim country?

    The people of Pakistan have rejected the US and the military dictatorship that the bipartisan gang of US criminals back. The US should immediately end its military operations in the region and withdraw our ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ back home, where they can be given productive jobs instead of being used as jailers and killers. These troops are bankrupting the US itself, even as they level entire regions of the globe.

    We have a duty here in Colorado to protest the Democrats and Republicans who run this international aggression against other peoples around the planet. What are you doing to help? Get the US out of Asia!

    Of note, the international imperialist press claimed that only several thousand people only had rallied! (Reuters said 20,000 and the BBC said 15,000) What a bunch of liars and cons they are as they cover up the news instead of reporting it.

    Thank you Obama’s Reverend Wright

    What a fantastic development, to have Barack Obama unmasked still early into the election, bursting the giddy bubble which his fans regard as the change Obama offers from Centrism/Neoliberalism/Neoconartistry. Obama is not only denouncing Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s statements. Obama is now telling Americans over-regulation is a problem, Obama is endorsing charter schools, Obama is conceding that some Republican policies are preferable to those of Democrats…

    Can you dispute any of the pronouncements of Obama’s Reverend? Even rephrased by critics, I found these criticisms are unassailable, if uncomfortably spirited. Here they are presented in an accusatory article on Barack Obama: WHAT DID HE KNOW AND WHEN?

    Racism is alive and well. Racism is the American way.

    Racism is how this country was founded, and how this country is still run.

    No black man can ever be President.

    No black woman will ever be considered for anything outside of what she can give with her body.

    America is still the number one killer in the world.

    We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns and the training professional killers.

    We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority. And believe it more than we believe in God.

    We supported Zionism shamelessly while ignoring the Palestinians, and branding anybody who spoke out against it as being anti-Semitic.

    We do not care if poor black and brown children cannot read and kill each other senselessly

    We started the AIDS virus, and now that it is out of control we still put more money in the military than in medicine. More money in hate than humanitarian concerns.

    We are selfish, self-centered ego egotists, who are arrogant and ignorant.

    The second to last statement may be extreme, but what’s to argue? Whether CIA labs produced an AIDs virus to arrest the exploding populations of Africa, or whether our exploitive capitalism / polluting industrialism / callous militarism / usurious enslavement systems precipitated the genocide over lands from which the developed nations need resources but not people, are either less murderous?

    One could split the same hairs about 9/11. Whether our government colluded with the hijackers to facilitate/exacerbate a false flag attack against the first world, or whether our world trade banking policies finally so enraged its victims to goad their desperate symbolic strike on our WTC, are we any the less responsible?

    Reverend Jeremiah Wright is absolutely right about all these points. In the tradition of MLK not by coincidence. Barack Obama is being compelled by the corporate mainstream to distance himself from what the American public knows are truths, and all the better. Those of us who know we need a change can see that Obama isn’t going to be it.

    “The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people. “God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.

    “We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye.

    We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”

    We will miss you Elizabeth

    Elizabeth poses with fellow arrestees the day after the 2007 St Patricks Day debacleWe will all miss Elizabeth. Despite the press, the city government , and The Gazette all dragging her name through the mud last year, me and my family will miss Elizabeth because she was a loving person who gave a lot of herself for, and to, others. This was the real Elizabeth, and not the fake ‘antiwar dissident’ that the killers amongst us wanted to be portrayed to the public.
     
    The sad truth about Elizabeth’s last days amongst us, was that she ran a foul of our pathetic US Medical System, which quite frankly killed her with its negligent and defective ‘care’ as it does millions of other older people. Like Elizabeth, these elderly that this business kills, are our friends, neighbors, and family. It makes one weep that we have to endure such a destruction of life and spirit at this sad and reactionary moment in our country’s history.

    Elizabeth knew what the world was about. She, earlier in life, had been a rather conservative though nominally liberal woman cruising through life. But somewhere, she began to question what she was seeing and living, and became a true American ‘dissident’.

    She hated the racism she saw around her when she was a teacher and resident in Chicago. She hated the endless and stupid wars that our government pushes with a passion. She grew to despise the American Medical System’s uncaring and thoughtless approach to the sick and aging. She grew to want a fundamental change to the society that she had had to live with all her life, and she began to work with others constantly to see that things might begin to change.

    Elizabeth was always welcome in our home, and she always welcomed us to hers. We knew her as one easily to anger, but one who was just as easy to forget and forgive. In fact, she was more likely to forgive others for their differences and bad habits than she was ever likely to bear an unnecessary grudge. That was the Elizabeth we knew and grew to love. We knew a loving and kind Elizabeth. We knew an Elizabeth who cared deeply about others.

    Elizabeth and Tony at Peterson AFB

    Thank you, Elizabeth, for your gifts to my daughter, who began to think of you as her adopted grandmother. In fact, you were just exactly that. And thank you for making the peace dog welcome always. This dog loved you, too. Yeah, she did. Ruf, ruf.

    I remember the time when we went up to Palmer Park and I was poo-pooing your concern for this highly trained (yeah, right!) dog who was leaning out the open window. I was paying your words no attention as I rambled on about some other esoteric and stupid political point. Then lo-and-behold, Ms. Beastley did jump out of the window of our moving car and rolled over entirely once or twice after hitting the ground, then looked up stupidly at us, and then promptly proceeded to run after the squirrel! I will remember that moment between us for a lifetime, Elizabeth. You always saw what others refused to see.

    My daughter will remember you for the doll you gave her, the one that has a striking likeness to you. She cherishes that doll that you so kindly gave to her. My daughter cried with the news of your death, and we are so glad that we visited you at least one more last time before you passed away so suddenly. My daughter was ready to try to get you to play a game of Risk with her. She knew you would be a good one to try to keep her from taking over the world.

    At that last visit, I tried to cheer you up by saying how good you looked upon just then having escaped from the hospitals that had held you. However, you had this way of looking through others superficial chit-chat and reading the real truth in their minds. I saw it in your eyes then. I saw the despair on your face about what had been done to you by the surgeon, but by the time I realized what had been seen in your face I was already in the car.

    Elizabeth advocated for health care for allMy only regret is that I did not return to inside your apartment and give you the big hug that you needed right then, even if it was to be a hug given right in front of your other 2 friends who were with you at the moment. I thought to myself, aw… you need the rest and less people around at this time, more than the hug. I was wrong once again.

    Elizabeth, we will miss you. You were a good friend, and you talked the talk, and walked the walk. You were kind and had a heart of gold most of all. They tried to tear you down, but they never did, and that spirit is what we most will remember always about you. That, and the love you gave others. You made an impact on all our lives and without you around, we will find a big void.

    If there is a heaven, I have no doubt that you have already spoken to Jesus and have begun to argue politics with him right as I write. Give him Hell, Elizabeth! Somebody needs to hold him and his dad accountable, and you are the one with the spirit to do it, too.

    Our love…

    Reverse ChickenHawk…

    I know, I’ve written this theme before…
    Just sometimes it bears repeating.

    But there’s a certain consistency to the inconsistency of War Regime rhetoric.

    You’re allowed to SUPPORT killing, unconditionally, if you yourself are not one of those who kill and are, in turn, killed, but to OPPOSE killing you’re supposed to have experience in the mass murder that is War.

    Only murderers can say that murder is wrong, only rapists can say that rape is wrong, only thieves can say that stealing is wrong, everybody else has to STFU about it.

    There’s a catch to it, though… the screams of STFU! and “How Dare You TRAITORS speak against The Leader!” and other verbal diarrhea
    aren’t just directed against for instance, Jane Fonda… who did something her right wing counterparts wouldn’t do… she actually went to a war zone, to the DRVN, at a time when people like John McCain were carpetbombing Hanoi.

    But also against people who fit into the category of Actual Experienced Killers.

    A short (extremely) list would include
    Max Cleland, who was “swift-boated” before the term was invented,
    “Country” Joe McDonald,
    (“and it’s one, two, three,
    what are we fightin’ for?
    Don’t ask me,
    I don’t give a damn,
    next stop is VietNam”)
    John Kerry
    and the rest of the VVAW,
    and now the IVAW…

    Mothers and fathers who have lost sons and daughters are allowed to SUPPORT the war, but get a Gold Star Mom like Cindy Sheehan, questioning the war, How Dare She Dishonor the sacrifice of her son… Right?

    The Right Wing Freaks question her loyalty, her patriotism, her sanity and even her love for her son.

    People who have lost pieces of themselves “over there” are allowed and encouraged to PROMOTE the war(s) but if they OPPOSE it,

    Well, think “Born on the 4th of July”

    The Stupid Squad take to screaming that anybody who lost a leg or arm or ability to move should be proud to have done it… then if you don’t immediately apologize to them for not groveling to the War Regime in a timely manner, they spread outright LIES that somehow your injury was caused by your own incompetence.

    I’ve come to the unnatural conclusion that these guys are only happy if they’re bitching and whining… so, let’s make them happy…

    Satisfy their appetite for Things Which Make Them Scream Like The Bitches They Truly Are.

    Another log on that fire, just to build it up nice and HOT…

    I know the natural reaction of the ChickenHawk and the Reverse ChickenHawk is to scream that somehow They Gave Me the right to free speech, so how Dare I criticize them…

    If you fellas care to look over to the sidebar, (either one) you’ll see pictures of Noble Policemen “protecting” our rights that you “gave” us by beating on us for the so-called crime of actually using those rights.

    And, in that incident, while all the soldiers in the crowd wisely didn’t jump right in and help the pigs violently deny us the very existence of our rights…

    Not one of you stepped up and used your Uniform and the automatic level of influence it would give you… to actually DEFEND our rights.

    You never gave us our rights, not on the battlefields of the Imperial Warz, and certainly not on the Streets of America.

    US government covers for Pakistan’s dictator

    The murder of Benazir Bhutto has all the markings of being an assassination by the US backed Musharraf regime, which is an immensely unpopular dictatorship in the view of most Pakistanis.

    Because of his unpopularity, the US wanted to possibly slide Benazir Bhutto back into power. But now that she has been murdered, most probably by the dictatorship itself, the US government is playing alongside with Musharraf’s version of events and has now officially endorsed the script that al-Qaeda murdered Bhutto. CIA boss names Bhutto ‘killers’

    The world is not stupid and can see the blatant and open support the US government gives to Muslim country dictatorships. Gone is the US big lie that its foreign policy has the objective of bringing democracy anywhere to anybody. US government use of the Ethiopian dictator in his wars against the Somali people is another case of being naked in public. Today, the US government has about zero credibility in the eyes of most people around the planet. The US has no supposed moral high ground to stand on anymore.

    Public polls such a laugh

    Someone once related to me the definition of “polling.” It means the removal of a bull or steer’s horns. If we stick with the economists’ term of endearment for the general public, the great beast, the meaning of polling booths comes full circle. Polling is to take the sharp pointy bits from the common man’s arsenal. His power to vote.

    If you want to bank on what the public will decide, this being a democracy, tell the public what to decide! More effectively, tell the public what it itself has decided. That’s an easier sell. Black equals white, no? Well 70% of the American public believes black is white. Ergo it may as well be. What “is” if not what is believed to be so?

    Mainstream media’s infamous “some people say” mis-attribution not only represented what no-one indeed had said, it also implied that what some people say ought to include you, unless you want to hang with the wrong people. Polls go further. They tell us what some of US say, apparently. And not just some, but most.

    When we’ve become too guarded to have spin-doctors tell us what we just heard, a focus group will tell us what we have concluded ourselves we heard. Did Saddam Hussein have anything to do with 9/11? Polls show Americans believe he did. Ergo…

    What is this? Are we to believe democracy is about majority consensus concerning which is ass or hole in the ground?

    Never mind that the media can choose who they poll, depending on the conclusion they want drawn. But who is the media to tell an American public what to decide about a given news development? Imagine if they tried to tell you that inedible crap tastes good. Actually I’m not impartial about that one. Imagine if they dared to tell you what was funny on television!

    Laugh tracks on sitcoms break up the dead air between sometimes questionable jokes. Like professional laughers planted in a theater audience, they encourage the rest to laugh collectively, to share in the mirth at what must certainly have been funny. Since funny is subjective, and enjoyment is a matter of the spirit of the experience, it’s hard to argue that canned laughter doesn’t enhance the experience. No harm done, unless the jokes are really insensitive and mostly condescending put-downs. See the haunting Rodney Dangerfield sitcom parody sequence in Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers if you want to see a laughtrack off the tracks.

    We’re used to being led to laughter, being misled by shills to fall for the cardsharp’s con or the rigged auction, being fooled by phony customers who claim to be cured by snake oil salesmen or revival preachers, you’d think by now we could see through “focus groups” of dubious wits appearing to giving voice to our silenced participation, or see through polling figures pulled from thin air, actually straight from an advertiser or politician’s custom order of their wet dream for our submission.

    Televised football is the fascist pageant

    Offensive projectileI’ll tell you, this is the heart of the beast. Colorado Springs may be the apex of US religio-military nonsense, but the American beast is television, the rotten core of which is Fox TV, and its absolute poisoned heart is televised football.

    Football is crass, violent, anonymous, uniformed, incorporated and a perfectly trivial distraction from all else. Nothing new, but I’d like to offer this impression.

    For starters, have you noticed, the camera coverage of the cheerleaders is from exactly the angle a pervert would ask? In uncouth parlance it’s called “upskirt.” How do you suppose the camera bearers excuse themselves panning across the cheerleaders at bare thigh level? It’s neither a spectator POV, nor that of any athlete, unless he’s Chucky, strolling well wide to receive the cheerleaders. When the girls leap on and off the shoulders of their male counterparts, the cameras explicably-enough climb to male shoulder level.

    Of course it’s not a matter of impolite cameramen getting up from their knees. The cameras today float on wires like surveillance robots to produce tailor-made angles. Being my point I suppose.

    Thanks to these robots, the audience is afforded action shots without precedence. As a result, we can follow the action practically outside the context of what’s taking place. It’s great isn’t it? Who cares what bones are getting crunched outside the frame, follow the ball. The action is violent but without consequence. Athletes are expected to defy physics for cameras themselves liberated from constraint. Catch without thought to how you’ll land. The players are so jacked up on painkillers and adrenaline that the impacts will register only later. Off camera.

    That’s how we fight wars, isn’t it? Eye on the bouncing ball, all damage is collateral, the players expendable.

    Players jump all over themselves enthusiastically after successful plays, but lo, have been forbidden to posture victoriously in the end zone. The unsportsmanlike penalty is unpopular and proving difficult for the athletes to avoid. I can tell you what that’s about. The rich white man doesn’t mind his gladiators amping themselves for a challenge, but he’ll be damned if he has to witness what will almost always be a black man crowing about his superiority. Rich white men can propagate rap music to the masses like crack cocaine, but they’re not about to abide the braggadocio themselves. When did acting too-big-for-your-britches become unsportsmanlike behavior? When it proved to make heroes of the likes of Muhammed Ali. Who went to jail sooner than go to Vietnam.

    The media coverage is equally restrictive about which athletes it acquaints with viewers. Do you think Peyton Manning is the only charismatic quarterback, or rather the only safe spokesman? The videotaped segments of players introducing themselves have become completely stilted in formality. Post-game interviews mandate that athletes wear some official headgear which casts their features in shadow, preserving their anonymity. They remain monosyllabic gladiator brutes who otherwise wear helmets, increasingly now with visors like so many Power Ranger Storm Troopers.

    The talking heads attendant to the bowl games, whether ex-athletes or sportscasters, were all wearing the Neocon uniform, the black suit, and new for 2008, a four button jacket buttoned to the top like a veritable military uniform. Only Brent Musburger had enough clout to decline the odd conformity. Black used to denote caretakers. Fully buttoned suits were for tailors and soldiers. History has never looked fondly on soldiers who wore black.

    America’s Most Wanted

    Clear Channel has announced it will be donating the use of electronic billboards across the country for posting mugshots of America’s Most Wanted, presumably to speed up the apprehension of dangerous criminals. Side effect: having to live under the gaze of smirking killers. Elevating fear-mongering to outdoor advertising heights.

    Were John Wayne Gacy or Ted Bundy or that cannibal in Wisconsin ever featured on America’s Most Wanted? Have any active serial killers ever been targeted for capture? Who are the real public enemies which would merit a public’s vigilance? It’s bad enough to have to see the mugshots in the newspaper, or on the wall in the post office. Now commuters have to look up at ugly lawbreakers who’ve made the big time like Pia Zadora over Sunset Avenue?

    The face of legally blind patriotism

    Prosthetic eye with Marines emblemGunnery Sergeant Nick Popaditch lost his eye in the assault on Fallujah. His new glass prosthetic features a holographic emblem of the US Marine Corps.
     
    This Veterans Day, Sergeant Popaditch was awarded a medal for pioneering an innovative combat technique. Presuming an ambush, Popaditch called in an airstrike, then drove his tank forward under cover of the C-130 gunship before its firestorm had subsided. As a result Popaditch was injured, but in his words: “(We were) just inflicting a devastating number of casualties on the enemy, and we did it in a way that no one had ever done before.”

    This is the same tank commander immortalized on magazine covers in 2003 smoking his cigar as he assisted in toppling Saddam’s statue in Firdos Square. Articles told later of Popaditch’s tank named “Carnivore” storming Fallujah in retaliation for the contractors killed by jubilant Iraqis. Now he’s grabbing attention with his Few-The-Proud cornea. When we recoil at WWII accounts of the Death’s Head Regiment and other unthinkably morose nomenclature and regalia of the enthusiastic Nazis, can we fathom the imaginative horrors of our own X-Box-born killers?

    Popaditch acted courageously by venturing into an ordnance maelstrom to certain injury. But whose kind of hero?

    Columbus Day terrorism in Denver

    Oh my, those bad ol’ protesters blocked yet another parade! This time in Denver. When will this terrorism stop?
     
    Of course, unlike here in Colorado Springs with the St. Patrick’s Day Parade this year, the people in Denver actually did try to block the parade (see: transformcolumbusday), had the desire to do it, and carried their terroristic plan out. Whoaaaa…… They should have more respect for genocide which Columbus remains a remarkable current symbolic figure for. Especially in Colorado where so many Injun killers’ descendants live and continue to act genocidally in their politics. Right, James (Woolsey)?

    Today, the buffalo roam the plains no more, and military profiteers advocate future genocides. But we must not tolerate the terrorists that want to scalp pale faced liars and cons. They must not be allowed to block the parade route! Long Live Columbus and His Kids, the Colorado business community! Now let’s get down to business and bomb Iran! And hand those arrested Injuns some blankets… it gets cold at night in Colorado.

    Unlawful Combatant Private Contractors

    Private contractors illegal enemy combatants
    Here’s a rare photo of some private security contractors in Iraq. In the wild west they were called guns for hire. Incorporated they became Pinkertons and so continued a long tradition of reviled professional soldiers, Hessians, Swiss Guards, Gurkhas, usually associated with totalitarian regimes, not democracies.

    Our government and media won’t use the term mercenaries, but they do perseverate on not having any official means to restrain their dogs of war. APPARENTLY Iraq law doesn’t touch them, ALAS, neither does American military law. We benefit from their ruthless methods but bear no responsibility DEAR GOD when someone catches them/us at it.

    Bush and Co are eating their cake and having it in everybody’s faces as well. No accountability for our private contractor mercenaries? What is our own definition of UNLAWFUL ENEMY COMBATANTS? Not that it’s any excuse to lock irregular soldiers away without due process, or to deny anyone their human rights, but certainly asymmetric warriors fit the bill for illegal combatants.

    Can you believe that our diplomats and upper echelon will not go anywhere without these mercenary escorts? They’re confined to the Green Zone until Blackwater is cleared of its latest shooting spree. What about US soldiers as escorts? Our generals and statesmen do not trust our own troops for their safety. These private hired killers are the US Praetorian Guard, and our leaders claim they fall under no one’s authority?

    What this administration and the press and every talking head war monger pay careful attention to ignore is that international law has jurisdiction over all their crimes. When you hear some military expert pensively mulling over with great dismay the untread gray area of indemnified private contractor actions. It’s silly subterfuge. International war conventions, Geneva Article 47 for example, have without ambiguity codified and condemned mercenaries and war criminals alike.

    Unpublished response to Gazette editor

    Gazette editorial supervisor Sean Page thinks he’s clever to admonish the St Patrick’s Day Seven for disturbing the peace. Unseemly for pacifists, he derides, haha. Ala Rodney King he asks: why can’t you give peace a chance?

    Mocking us for being insufficiently peaceful for pacifists is like the bully chiding his prey for not taking their lumps. This isn’t about making peace with you or the police officers, it isn’t about keeping the peace in our community, AT ALL. The issue is bringing peace to war-ravaged Iraq and Afghanistan, et al.

    I can turn the other cheek, as a matter of fact, but I don’t presume to do it for the Iraqi. Why should the innocent Iraqi or Afghan bear the brunt of your anything? I want you to stop persecuting THEM and I offer you no peace until you do.

    Call me uncharitable, but I don’t want to make peace with mass murderers, baby killers and rapists, or those who would cover for them, excuse them or egg them on. The minute you put down your guns and put your pants back on is when I will lower my voice.

    Miscalculating non-violent for non-litigious

    Not wanting to tell us his name
    (Clarification: Esther has just been thrown to the ground. Eric is not on the ground by choice, and Elizabeth is about to be pulled away.)

    In the aftermath of our dashed efforts at the St Patrick’s Day parade and the abrupt violence which shocked everyone, the seven arrestees took a conciliatory tact to reflect on the actions and reactions of that day before leveling recriminations. The issue after all was about promoting peace, not fighting back. Where did being gracious get us?

    The police seized the opportunity to announce they’ve received no complaints about their manner, going so far even to solicit bystander videos as if to suggest that the documentation will support their conduct.

    Though we’d given plenty of interviews, our quiet tone gave the local newspapers leeway to print untruths about what happened that day. The Gazette has now suggested the marchers acted to disrupt the festivities, to obstruct the parade, in a fashion intended to provoke arrests.

    The Independent has been able to hide behind offering only the Police Department’s account, that the peace marchers were attempting to participate “without a permit,” and that to an “untrained eye” what might appear to have been a “chokehold” was actually a “pressure-compliant hold.”

    Even the local internet jackasses have jumped in on the action to chide us for duplicity in obtaining our permit, giving an uncritical platform for parade organizer John O’Donnell to cry foul.

    Well GOD-DAMNIT are you fascists in for a surprise! This treatment is more of exactly what we received on the parade route. And just like the policemen who thought they could set an example and brutalize us unto a side street, this disrespect is not going to stand.

    Here’s where it’s going to get you.

    Mr. O’Donnell and his partners in City Hall are going to face a civil lawsuit for violating the 1st Amendment rights of 46 marchers. They will face another lawsuit for conducting a public event which discriminated among the participants. You want to throw an all-white, good ol’ boy, pro-war parade these days, you better say so. You can’t of course, and O’Donnell and COS will never put green lipstick on one of these again.

    I’m not saying the St Patrick’s Day Parade shouldn’t feature a Marine recruiter’s blow-up doll, or crew-cutted uniformed Pee-wee Killers for Christ, or Hooters sex-workers for gracious sakes. I’m just saying that you’ve got to allow room for another community aesthetic as well.

    The Colorado Springs Police Department will face charges for violating the 4th Amendment rights of the seven arrestees, and of three more who were brutalized, with a measure of the 9th Amendment thrown in for the indignity. In the meantime we’ll explore what degree of police brutality is actually sanctioned by the city. I don’t care how much you may hate criminals, all persons have a right to be protected from physical abuse.

    We may lobby for special rehab for certain of the policemen. I’d like to see that Officer Erwin “Jimmy” Paladino is not given the authority to remove a kitten from a tree before he’s had counseling.

    The Gazette will be charged with slander, plain and simple. You don’t call a 65-year-old woman’s injuries “rugburn” and think you’re going to chuckle your way to market. Ms. Fineron and myself will have our day in court, we’ll demonstrate our actions were not premeditated and for discrediting our integrity we’re going after Hillbilly Gazette editor Sean Paige. Slam-dunk what an asshole.

    The Independent’s slander is embarrassing. Michael de Yoanna needs to cover both sides of a story. Our permit was on the books, thank you very much. Quoting a police blotter to say we had no permit, without noting the error, is deliberately misleading. And let me say something about that “chokehold.” Two of our marchers, the very two in fact who were choked, were both corrections department veterans. Both knew precisely the illegality of how they were being handled, and calmly told their respective assailants as much.

    The videotapes and pictures will bear out these facts. Perhaps this is the reason that the television media coverage was fairly balanced from the start.

    Wanted for questioningSpecial note
    The police will need the identity of this man that he can be charged with assault upon Elizabeth Fineron, leading to her fall and subsequent dragging across the pavement. As the Gazette put it, What a drag.

    Complaints
    Let’s say a word about complaints to the police. If you want to complain about the police conduct, you’ll find they don’t have forms for that purpose. They walk you straight in to see an internal affairs officer and he’ll sit and interrogate you without the aid of a lawyer, or a tape recording that you can keep. Best to write a letter describing your complaint and send it in.

    Capitalism- the culture of disrespect to the individual

    One of the most comical aspects of those who defend capitalism, is their idiotic notion that anti-capitalists hate the rights of the individual, while capitalism is supposedly supportive of the dignity of the individual. How patently absurd!

    Capitalism is an inherently authoritarian system where most of us get reduced down to a payroll number or code. And if you get sick, see what I mean exactly. Instead of having a name you will then have a patient ID number. Fall in, Number Not #1. Check the wrist band. Follow doctor’s orders, please. At work, do as you are told. We need you to work Tues. night shift, Number Whatever. Be on call on Thursday. Hold up you wrist , Patient #9.

    All of our society works to dehumanize the individual. Many identify with this and if you try to assert your dignity as a human being, many other human beings will resent you for it, since they themselves have totally internalized their assigned lack of dignity as individuals under capitalism. How dare you do otherwise?! Who do you think you are?

    Children at school, or elderly in the nursing home? Get used to musical chairs, musical beds. Take the Colorado Sap Test and be good. Chew your mush, I got no time. And to think that this is labelled the culture that frees the individual within each and everyone of us? Bizarro World thinking that our society is the epitome of freedom!

    Capitalism enhances indiviualism they say! And then they talk of ‘collateral damage’. What a disrespectful to the individual and baldfacel lie. What nonsense. What a pile of total crap. Repeat it a billion times over, and perhaps you might buy it? Without the capitalist you have no freedom, and you have no dignity they chant like mantra. Of course, we all feel the absolute contrary. We see the lack of dignity given people daily in our lives. Capitalism tries to squash the dignity of people at every step. Only money is allowed to buy it. The dollar rules over the people everywhere. And yet they repeat otherwise.

    I guess I am writing about this because today I saw the brute force of the police state against the dignity of the elderly. What is there much to say, when you see the police throw elderly, with physical handicaps, to the ground? I had a handicapped parking space permit in my car, while the police were assaulting the person who needed it, my friend and passenger in my car. Such utter and complete disrespect to the dignity of the individual, as they tore off this friend’s clothing by dragging her across the pavement without a thought in the world to the dignity they hoped to destroy. And to think that most in our society cling on to the fantasy, that only through supporting an authoritarian economic system can the individual be protected? What fools our delusions can make us. What cold blooded killers to dignity some become. I hate this culture of disrespect. The capitalist and his portfolio are the antihesis to human freedom.