Who killed Neda Agha-Soltan?

neda soltaniThe video footage is shocking. An attractive young woman watching the demonstrations in Tehran is struck by a sniper’s bullet and dies before several video cameras. The tragedy is projected unto Facebook and Youtube, with advocates hoping it will galvanize (American) public support for the brave reform movement in Iran. News accounts blame “Basij snipers” on the rooftops. Other protesters have been killed in confrontations with Iranian riot police, without the benefit of video witnesses, much like two million Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis et al. Poor 27-year-old bystander Neda Soltani stood at the quite improbable convergence of bullet and camera –correction– cameras. I don’t have to suggest the scene was staged; whether or not the triggerman was an American is immaterial.

Think about just the improbability of your seeing this video. When was the last time the mainstream press has circulated a snuff film? The average person is embarrassed to watch a person die. It’s exploitive. Even when America was fixated on beheaded hostages, our television gatekeepers refused to broadcast the footage. Many horrific war killing moments have found their way unto Youtube, which antiwar activists could only hope would find wider distribution, if only to bring home the inhumanity of our soldiers’ deeds. It never happens.

The western press is running with this story because it demonizes the apparently naked inhumanity of Islam. Muslims stone women, hang gays, look: the bastards shoot their own people arbitrarily. Curiously our media doesn’t make hay with the hapless victims of US snipers.

neda salehi agha soltanThe Neda Soltani snuff footage hit internet shores prepackaged with a smiling mug, and a name that translated means “the voice.” Could a casting director have picked a better title character to represent Iran’s repressed? The western press is even poised to outdo the Muslims in indignant piety, already lauding Neda as a martyr, whom we are informed should launch a thousand Shiite funeral processions. Western pundits compare Neda to the first Shiite martyr, the grandson of Mohammed himself.

Of course, also showing excessive Islamic sensitivity, western reporters readily dismiss the vanishing of Neda’s body, to the Muslim tradition of hasty burials. For the record, in case you missed it, Neda dies onscreen from an apparent gunshot. We do not see the bullet strike, nor now can anyone habeas corpus.

If the scenario was acted entirely, given the success with which the girl’s face is being made into an icon, young Neda’s life is probably as utterly expendable now as already depicted. You think you’re mourning Neda now, imagine her fate if this is a hoax.

OR the gunman could just as well have been a US black-op hit-man who had his eye on the videographers approaching innocent Neda. The US military has long admitted that special forces are already operating in Iran. If the Iranian forces are shooting civilian protesters, what’s the harm of helping them out where there’s a camera ready?

When we’re not meant to see it, the soldiers shoot the cameramen too.

It could be the work of Moussavi henchmen, who are our henchmen.

The Green Revolution, or TwitterTM Revolution, rebranded a “Social Media Revolution,” is a fabrication of the US pro-democracy agents working to destabilize Iran. They are hard at work in Cuba, in Venezuela, in Bolivia, and everywhere regimes threaten US globalization by enslavement. Remember the Orange Revolution? Any movement that is color-coded is the work of organizers reading US how-to manuals or attending OTPOR training seminars.

Where are the international voices decrying election fraud in Iran? No one other than the US and its stooges is asserting that populist leader Ahmadinejad did not win by a landslide. Only Iran’s urban middle class has taken to the streets of Tehran. And to protest what? Their minority standing in Iran?

The reformists in Iran are protesting democracy, not the failure of democracy. They are protesting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s hard line against irreligious western economic and colonial policies which traditionally benefit the secular urban elite. “Pro-Democracy” is neoliberal for pro-capitalist plunder.

See: Shah’s Son Backs Iranian Protesters.

Like the “dissidents” of Cuba, the Green greenback-seekers are marching on the CIA’s dime, and being meted the fate of foreign provocateurs. I have no doubt the majority are idealists and are well-intended, but like the Kurds who rose against Saddam Hussein, the US has set them up for slaughter, the sooner to motivate western support for military aggression against their evil regime.

Our media pundits point out that the protest banners are written in English, a sign that the Iranians are desperate to appeal to American viewers. They dismiss Iranian accusations of the demonstrations being US-backed as pure paranoia, and ignore the most simple explanation behind the English slogans, and the websites and networks amplifying the message to English speakers: these materials are being crafted by USAID advisers. This is a propaganda campaign aimed at Western ears, to call for regime change in Iran.

Neda’s Theme is tried and true: Jessica Lynch, Roxana Saberi, Euna Lee and Laura Ling, Neda Salehi Agha Soltan. Onward Christian Soldiers.

Neda Agha Soltan iranian martyr victim of US sniperThe American public won’t believe another fiction about Kuwaiti babies dumped from incubators, or of Belgian children impaled on the bayonets of the evil Hun. So Madison Avenue has upped the amperage. Today’s television armchair adjudicators have to see innocent young women snuffed on film before our eyes. Provided to us by a press too otherwise prurient to show us the mass of death we deal everyday.

The Iranians in the streets, and poor pretty Neda, are being sacrificed by heartless US strategists. I doubt even an errant Iranian bullet can match the American military for cruelty.

To think some of them live in our town…

Murdering coward Minutemen. This is one of their latest outrages. The robbery and murder of an American Latino family. Actually they left one survivor, but the father and his NINE year old daughter were mowed down in their own homes.

Michelle Malkin and Tancredo must be so very proud….

Shawna Forde, leader of Minutemen American Defense, is one of three individuals arrested June 12 by sheriff’s detectives in Pima County, Arizona, for the murder of a Mexican American man and his nine-year-old daughter.

Based in Washington State, Forde’s group is one of several border militia groups nationwide that refer to themselves as “Minutemen,” including also the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, of which Forde is also a former leader. Profiles of Forde and her nativist activities are available from the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League.

According to authorities, Forde and her two accomplices, Jason Eugene Bush and Albert Robert Gaxiola, broke into the home of Raul Flores and his family in Arivaca AZ on May 30th, apparently in the commission of a robbery. The invaders reportedly shot all three members of the Flores family who were present at the time, killing the father and daughter and leaving the mother wounded. While Bush is the suspected gunman in the shootings, investigators say Forde was the mastermind of the operation (KOLD). Nine-year-old murder victim Brisenia Flores is pictured here from the local Green Valley News:

The fellow who posted this didn’t include the picture mentioned.

The news report was from Washington State where Ms Forde’s bloc of the Terrorist Cartel have their headquarters.

More:

Forde’s mother tells the Everett WA Herald that she was not surprised to hear of her daughter’s arrest since she had previously talked of staging home invasions: “She sat here and said that she was going to start a group where they went down and start taking things away from the Mexican mafia…,” Forde’s mother recalled, “…She was going to kick in their doors and take away the money and the drugs.” Forde’s mother also says that her daughter called her a few hours after the shootings May 30 and reported that she was taking refuge in a “safe house” in Arivaca: “I’m in hiding,” Forde told her mother, “You won’t believe what is going down here…. The mafia, they are kicking down doors and they are shooting people and they are looking for me.”

Yep, they feel that if somebody is Mexican AMERICAN they’re entitled to take away anything the person has. Including his life and that of his daughter.

Interesting that they were also looking for drugs.

A glorified Dope Run. By people who say they’re into “Law and Order”.

June 6 — End the Siege of Gaza!

End the Siege of GazaFrom A.N.S.W.E.R.:
Saturday, June 6 marks the 42nd anniversary of the Israeli seizure of Gaza. Organizations and individuals in solidarity with the people of Palestine will be taking to the streets once again to demand: End the Siege of Gaza!

The world looked on in horror this past winter as Israel mercilessly starved and bombed the people of Gaza, killing around 1,400 Palestinians – at least one-third of whom were children. The Arab world now refers to the dark days from the end of December to mid-January “The Gaza Massacre.” Although the mainstream media no longer focuses on Gaza, the suffering continues there nonetheless. Using the pretext of combating terrorism, Israel has refused to allow in even one truckload of cement into Gaza. In other words, the city that was reduced to rubble still lies in rubble today.All these months later, people are still living in tents and are scarcely able to secure the necessities of life.

People of conscience around the world continue to raise their voices in outrage at this crime against humanity, and in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Gaza. We will also stand for all Palestinian people’s inalienable right to return to their homes from which they were evicted. Let your voice be heard.

Re-enacting and Celebrating Genocide… Just Like Skokie…

As immortalized in the classic Film “The Blues Brothers” where a group of dim-wits put on Historically Authentic Military Uniforms (of the SchutzStaffel) and marched through a largely Jewish suburb of Chicago.

So, on Territory Days, can those of us who are of Indian descent expect to see these guys celebrating the American Genocide?

cannon

wannabees...

Now, I KNOW somebody will point out that there are still American Indians alive today.

And say that therefore the Genocide and the attempted full-on Extermination of AMERICANS never happened.

Like the Smallpox Blankets,
or herding the Indians onto the U.S. version of the Warsaw Ghetto,
the mass slaughter of the American Bison (Buffalo, TaTonka…)
encouraged and enforced by the U.S. Army in a policy to starve out the plains tribes.

Colonels Custer and Chivington both making the statement that killing the women and children was necessary
because “nits make lice”
and killing off the men without slaughtering the women and children would be a waste of time,
you have to kill the Breeders.

And in a way, they’re almost right.

The bastards FAILED… we’re still here in spite of the Mass Murders.

By the same token, if they want to judge the U.S. Genocide as “false” on those grounds they would have to judge the Nazi Genocide as “false”

And they can dress up and pretend to be the perpetrators of the Racist Murders and laugh and joke and pretend that it was somehow righteous…

But there will be some, especially ME right here, right now….

Who will call you on it, and remind you that such displays are like these…

nazis

more nazis

klan

more klan

Might I remind gently that the largest actions the Klan has staged in the past three decades have been attempts to terrorize Native Americans and Immigrants by putting on Period Costumes

wannabees...

And marching through the towns, villages and neighborhoods where we live.

Like Old Colorado City… where I personally live.
Have a Nice Skokie/Selma/Birmingham…

High Country Earth First Denver Meeting

Earth First roadshowHigh Country Earth First is hosting the EF! ROADSHOW, in DENVER, May 25-26: Monday 2pm in Cheesman Park, and Tuesday 6pm at the Gypsy House.
 
Four ongoing EF! projects in Colorado: DENVER: Stop I-70 Expansion through North Denver; SAN LUIS VALLEY: Halt gas drilling in Baca National Wildlife Refuge: and WESTERN SLOPE: Red Cliff mine campaign and Feral Futures (May 24 – June 7).

From “Rockslide,” High Country Earth First!

The need for resistance in solidarity with the wild has never been louder or clearer than it is today; the EF! roadshow is a great tool for growing that resistance. There are countless examples to draw from in the story of radical movements before us: militant labor organizing tours, anti-fascist resistance recruitment and international speaking tours to build cross-border solidarity. The origin of Earth First! itself is credited to a few roadshows that kicked it all off in the early 1980s. We are building on this tradition; akin to a fellowship crossing Middle Earth to amass insurgents to face Mordor head-on.

List-serves and websites aren’t enough
This Roadshow’s primary intention is to strengthen our radical grassroots ecological network. For almost 30 years, we have been an organized voice bridging conservation biology with grassroots community organizing, road blockading and eco-sabotage. In the past 5 years we have seen numbers and experience-level in the EF! movement decline drastically. Yet, our place has never been more urgent. New groups are popping up across the country, but they are detached from many of the groups, history, and skills that came before them. We can’t afford to stumble and make the same mistakes over again.

We are at the tail end of a decade where corporate globalization rooted itself in the US and spread across the planet like a plague. And now that the reality of climate change is finally sinking into the mainstream consciousness, the same superpowers that pushed so-called ‘free trade’ policies to exploit wild nature more efficiently are promoting carbon trading in attempt to make a profitable industry out of the disasters they’ve created. The spineless Big Green environmental NGOs are scrambling for crumbs and cutting deals with the industry for shallow public relations victories. Earth First! must rise and recognize that it’s presence is a strong component of making the broader environmental movement truly effective. We are its spine, or as an EF! co-founder, Howie Wolke, has put it, we are the lions of a movement ‘ecosystem’. Our niche is critical, and its presence (or absence) is felt deeply by our surroundings.

We need to reconnect the multi-generational aspect of Earth First! that has fallen by the wayside in recent years. We need to broaden our network’s base—from radical rural grandparents to revolutionary urban youth. We need re-establish lost relationships with scholars and scientists who resonate with us. We need to re-inspire musicians and artists to contribute their passion to our battles.

When it comes down to it, solid movements are based on strong personal relationships; and real relationships don’t go very far over the internet. We need face-to-face interaction to build trust with—and support for—each other.

From EF! Here is a glimpse of ongoing local and national campaigns and projects related to EF!. They could all use your support in a variety of ways—from fundraising to showing up in person. Please contact the organizing groups directly to find out what they need most:

Northern California Redwood Defense
Since the fall of Maxxam/Pacific Lumber, forest defenders in the Redwoods have been directing attention on another logging empire: Green Diamond Resource Company (formerly Simpson). In the last 10 years they have clear-cut 52,000 acres of Northern California forests. They are killing off endangered Spotted Owls and have aspirations to sell off thousands of acres in Humboldt County for Salmon killing suburban development. We have set up multiple treesit villages to oppose the destruction, and we need your help TODAY.
www.efhumboldt.org

Appalachian Anti-Mountain Top Removal
The presence of coal plants are threats to the lives within both the human community and the mountain ecosystem. One of the most biologically flourishing areas of the world is being environmentally and socially impoverished by companies practicing mountain top removal. Mountain top removal clogs streams, destroys forests, threatens biodiversity and forces coalfield residents into the unjust choice between income and well-being.
www.blueridgeef.com

Stop I-69 in Indiana
I-69 is a NAFTA superhighway, already constructed from Canada to Indianapolis and projected to extend down into Mexico. This highway is intended for the mass transportation of goods and resources, to further exploit workers and the land, and to lessen companies’ accountability in terms of human and environmental rights. In 2008, they began construction of this road through southwestern Indiana, which will evict hundreds of rural families, destroy hundreds of acres of land, and devastate the habitats of countless species of animals, including the endangered Indiana Bat. www.stopi69.wordpress.com

Fight Development in the North Woods of Maine
The largest piece of undeveloped land east of the Mississippi is under attack. Plum Creek, the nation’s largest corporate landowner, is in the process of rezoning 20,000 acres of the Moosehead Lake region in Maine for luxury house and resorts, while trying to balance it off with a fraudulent conservation easement plan. This plan would still allow timber harvesting, commercial water extraction and the building of new infrastructure, among many other ecologically devastating practices. www.maineearthfirst.wordpress.com

Defend the Last Free-Roaming Wild Buffalo in Montana
The Buffalo Field Campaign (BFC) is the only group working in the field, everyday, to stop the slaughter and harassment of Yellowstone’s wild buffalo. Volunteers from around the world defend buffalo on their traditional winter habitat and advocate for their protection. Our daily patrols stand with the buffalo on the ground they choose to be on, and document every move made against them. Tactics range from video documentation to nonviolent civil disobedience. www.buffalofieldcampaign.org

Fight new Copper Mines and Roads in the Deserts of Arizona
Chuk’shon Earth First! is fighting the proposed Rosemont Copper Mine in the Santa Rita Mountains, which is greenwashing itself by claiming a need for increased copper extraction for the solar panel industry. The group is also opposing the expansion of I-10, part of the Department of Transportation’s “Corridors of the Future” program to increase capacity of global industrial commerce. The proposed I-10 Bypass would bisect wild/rural lands and facilitate more sprawl between Tucson and Phoenix. www.chukshonef.wordpress.com

Blue Mountain Biodiversity Project in eastern Oregon
Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project (BMBP) formed in 1991 to increase regional and national awareness of the Blue Mountains ecosystems, to ensure the protection for and reintroduction of diverse native wildlife species, to promote ecologically sound restoration and address the root causes of ecological and community instability. They have trained countless EF!ers is forest monitoring. They are one of the country’s premier grassroots ‘paper-wrenchers’, filing legal challenges that help make our blockades successful. They can be reached at 541-385-9167

Stop Florida Power & Light from trashing the Everglades
Everglades Earth First! (EEF!) have been battling FPL’s plans to build the country’s largest fossil fuel power plant in the Loxahatchee Basin; a headwaters to the remaining Everglades ecosystem. EEF! Is also challenging over 500 miles of new gas pipelines and 2 new Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) facilities. Get more details: www.evergladesearthfirst.org

Stop Gas Drilling in Western New York
There is a proposal on the table to begin one of the largest fossil fuel exploration projects in the country. This project would result hundreds of millions of tons of CO2 emissions, along with the impacts of pipelines, power plants, and new LNG storage facilities. Get in touch with Shale Shock: www.shaleshock.org

Bank of America, Stop Funding Coal!
A national campaign is well underway to stop Bank of America (BoA), who is the largest investor to Mountain Top Removal coal mining. The company recently offered lip-service to address their support for the coal industry, but have made no real steps towards cutting ties with King Coal. With BoA locations in cities across the U.S., this campaign can easily be supported in a decentralized fashion. Give ‘em hell! For more info: www.ran.org

No 2010 Olympics
The Native Youth Movement and other First Nations groups in occupied Canada have called for full-scale resistance to the Winter Olympics proposed in British Colombia. The Olympics proposal includes a mess of development, ski-resorts and infrastructure on indigenous land. Learn more at: www.no2010.com

Root Force
This project is a research database and strategic think tank for direct action intended to target corporate/colonial infrastructure, such as: roads, dams, power plants, and mines. Their website offers background information on transnational companies, government agencies and their local affiliations across the United States. www.rootforce.org

What happens in Vegas, kills in Pakistan

ARMED UAS Conference May 12-13 in Las VegasHappening in Las Vegas this week: the Armed UAS Unmanned Aerial Surveillance Conference,
May 12-13, where military brass can catch up on the latest remote killing devices proving so, so popular with Pakistanis right now. (I heard a correspondent relate that the US drone attacks in Pakistan were making the people there “very, very, very, very angry.”) Wouldn’t what happens in Vegas –at a conference center or a climate controlled, video-console barcalounger at a base nearby— be akin to a terrorist training camp in the remote Hindu Kush mountains, where militants made plans to terrorize a civilian populace from afar?

Little Eichmann Country-Western anthem

Of course, that describes most of the Pseudo-patriotic crap infesting the airwaves now…

But there’s one I heard “that’s the way things were and still ought to be”

Like honoring our preachers, leaders, teachers and heroes and believing everything they said

Charlie Manson was a preacher. Preached Armageddon really really strong.
Cotten Mather was a Preacher who gets quoted a lot by the Reich Wing, (Like Chuck Norris and Dawg the Bounty Hunter, just another couple of Wannabe Pigs) whenever they say that America should be a Religious Dictatorship…

Who also said that Native Americans were a construct of Satan because we’re not specifically mentioned in Genesis, that we had no souls and should be exterminated.
And that the people who allowed their kids to play with dolls were practicing witchcraft and should be killed.
And the Kiddoes themselves

Imagine, if you will, somebody offing your rug-rats because you gave them a Teddy Bear or let them watch Mickey Mouse or Bugs Bunny….
And the Good Pastor Mather also owned Slaves.

Leaders? McCarthy, for instance, with all the Liars, Murderers and Thieves who were and are his Fellow Travelers, like Reagan, Nixon, Bush (all the Bush Klan), Billy Sunday who was one of Their Crowd and also a Nazi Sympathizer (and, leave us not forget, a Preacher), People who could feel at ease at a Country Club or a Klan Rally?

We should believe everything they said or say?

Really?

We’re supposed to (here in Colorado Springs) Revere and Honor “heroes” like Custer and Chivington and Palmer…

Racist SCUM who tried to wipe a whole race of Americans from the face of the world.

When Custer is quoted in the book (and film) Little Big Man as saying

It’s more important to kill the women and children, because if we let them breed there wouldn’t be any point killing the men

It’s an accurate representation of what the punk murdering bastard actually DID say.

And we’ve got an Idol of his disciple William Jackson Palmer parked right in the middle of a busy intersection.

By the way, Custer and Chivington and Palmer also believed in and quoted Cotten Mather…

And the “War on Christmas” loudmouths should remember this, Cotten Mather was a Puritan… whose family had been run out of England for criticizing their Religious Dictatorship and, importantly, pissing off King James by opposing the celebration of CHRISTMAS because it’s a Catholic holiday

I don’t remember the name of the singer, but it’s one of those redneck punks who offers to beat up on anybody who disagrees with him.

Yep, real Role Model for a working Civilization.

The kid who sings the song is (to me) a youngster. Mid twenties, maybe thirties.

No way in HELL could this dude remember anything at all about the 70s even.

Far Less the 40s, 50s and 60s that’s he’s so nostalgic about.

When Apartheid was the Official Law of the Land in 20 states. People of “color” could be arrested or even hanged for not stepping off the sidewalk to let the Master Race walk past.

THAT’S the way things were, and I for one actually remember some of it…

So, is the stupid bastard really sure “that’s the way it still should be”?

Or is he merely hoping that WE are simple-minded enough to believe that?

On a Nother News angle…

One of the Largest War Mongering corporations in Europe is having massive layoffs because the British are pulling out of Iraq.

Awwwwww….

Poor little “defense” Contractors who make all their money off KILLING BABIES.

Maybe they’ll have to get honest jobs or perhaps, you know, instead of investing Trillions of dollars and Euros in devising faster more efficient ways of Subjugating People or killing them when they resist…

Money supplied by the taxpayers of the nations in which they operate, virtually Tax Free themselves…

They could spend that money to, you know, BUILD a workable economy instead of Destroying the economy of the entire world.

Poetic Justice is when a War Contractor gets killed in an accident at one of his WarBucks Inc. “defense” plants.

UCSB Prof William Robinson pro-Semite

Putting down the Warsaw Ghetto uprising
Wouldn’t you think it bad form for Israeli militants to behave like Nazis, while immunizing themselves with the self-righteous indignation that any criticism of their actions can simply be dismissed as “anti-Semitic?” Photographs and confessions emerging from the IDF’s atrocities in Gaza just beg comparison the German Einsatzgruppen in Poland. Earlier this year UC Santa Barbara professor William Robinson forwarded an email photo essay to a UCSB listserv, the already much-circulated side by side comparison to the WWII atrocities. Two students complained, plagiarizing stock IDF lingo. Now the Anti-Defamation League wants Robinson to recant. With IDF propagandists pouring on the bullshit, let’s revisit the documents.

As has already been noted, Professor Robinson is a harsh critic of US foreign policy, and already a likely target for the goon squad enforcers of Western Capitalism. Not many of America’s actions are defensible, so Robinson has to be attacked by desperate means. Lucky for the lackey-jackals, Robinson chose to criticize Israel’s atrocities against the Palestinians of Gaza. Bingo!

The Israeli propaganda machine has armed aspiring Israel-defenders with a blanket rebuttal: just yell “ANTI-SEMITISM!” And what a load of crap that is. Much turns on the definition of “anti-Semitism.” It packs the punch of meaning someone who hates Jews, but the advocates of Zionism have expanded the definition into 3-D! Zionist apologist Nathan Sharansky has coined the 3D definition of ant-Semitism: demonization of Israel, double standards, and delegitimization. You don’t have to look closely to note that those points outline all the rebuttals of criticisms of Israel and any question of the legitimacy of the Zionist usurpation of Palestine.

The criticisms posed by those concerned for the fate of Gaza are the same expressed by a large portion of the Israeli Jewish population as well. But the US Israeli lobby, militantly Zionist, has the complicity of the US war-mongering corporate media, thus the IDF Megaphone protestations get traction. These are the same cheap shots leveled against Ward Churchill. By flooding the internet to create the sensation that the indignation was shared, the IDF spammers have been successful in slandering these dissenting academics.

Since we’re seeing this technique being slopped unto our comment forums, let’s examine the statement for which Robinson is being attacked. First we’ll present Robinson’s email. The next post will feature the ensuing letters of complaint, two from UCSB students, and third from the ADL.

Original Email
Here is Professor Robinson’s original email, including his attachment of the Judith Stone article. This accompanied the aforementioned photo essay he forwarded.

Subject: [socforum] parallel images of Nazis and Israelis
From: “William I. Robinson” …
Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2009 21:00:05

If Martin Luther King were alive on this day of January 19, 2009, there is no doubt that he would be condemning the Israeli aggression against Gaza along with U.S. military and political support for Israeli war crimes, or that he would be standing shoulder to shoulder with the Palestinians. I am forwarding some horrific, parallel images of Nazi atrocities against the Jews and Israeli atrocities against the Palestinians. Perhaps the most frightening are not those providing a graphic depiction of the carnage but that which shows Israeli children writing “with love” on a bomb that will tear apart Palestinian children.

Gaza is Israel’s Warsaw – a vast concentration camp that confined and blockaded Palestinians, subjecting them to the slow death of malnutrition, disease and despair, nearly two years before their subjection to the quick death of Israeli bombs. We are witness to a slow-motion process of genocide (Websters: “the systematic killing of, or a program of action intended to destroy, a whole national or ethnic group”), a process whose objective is not so much to physically eliminate each and every Palestinian than to eliminate the Palestinians as a people in any meaningful sense of the notion of people-hood.

The Israeli army is the fifth most potent military machine in the world and one that is backed by a propaganda machine that rivals and may well surpass that of the U.S., a machine that dares to make the ludicrous and obnoxious claim that opposition to the policies and practices of the Israeli state is anti-Semitism. It should be no surprise that a state founded on the negation of a people was one of the principal backers of the apartheid South African state not to mention of the Latin American military dictatorships until those regimes collapsed under mass protest, and today arms, trains, and advises military and paramilitary forces in Colombia, one of the world’s worst human rights violators.

Below is an article written by a U.S. Jew and sent to a Jewish newspaper. The editor of the paper was fired for publishing it.

Quest for Justice

By Judith Stone

I am a Jew. I was a participant in the Rally for the Right of Return to Palestine. It was the right thing to do.

I’ve heard about the European holocaust against the Jews since I was a small child. I’ve visited the memorials in Washington, DC and Jerusalem dedicated to Jewish lives lost and I’ve cried at the recognition to what level of atrocity mankind is capable of sinking.

Where are the Jews of conscience? No righteous malice can be held against the survivors of Hitler’s holocaust. These fragments of humanity were in no position to make choices beyond that of personal survival. We must not forget that being a survivor or a co-religionist of the victims of the European Holocaust does not grant dispensation from abiding by the rules of humanity.

“Never again” as a motto, rings hollow when it means “never again to us alone.” My generation was raised being led to believe that the biblical land was a vast desert inhabited by a handful of impoverished Palestinians living with their camels and eking out a living in the sand. The arrival of the Jews was touted as a tremendous benefit to these desert dwellers. Golda Mier even assured us that there “is no Palestinian problem.”

We know now this picture wasn’t as it was painted. Palestine was a land filled with people who called it home. There were thriving towns and villages, schools and hospitals. There were Jews, Christians and Muslims. In fact, prior to the occupation, Jews represented a mere 7 percent of the population and owned 3 percent of the land.

Taking the blinders off for a moment, I see a second atrocity perpetuated by the very people who should be exquisitely sensitive to the suffering of others. These people knew what it felt like to be ordered out of your home at gun point and forced to march into the night to unknown destinations or face execution on the spot. The people who displaced the Palestinians knew first hand what it means to watch your home in flames, to surrender everything dear to your heart at a moment’s notice. Bulldozers leveled hundreds of villages, along with the remains of the village inhabitants, the old and the young. This was nothing new to the world.

Poland is a vast graveyard of the Jews of Europe. Israel is the final resting place of the massacred Palestinian people. A short distance from the memorial to the Jewish children lost to the holocaust in Europe there is a leveled parking lot. Under this parking lot is what’s left of a once flourishing village and the bodies of men, women and children whose only crime was taking up needed space and not leaving graciously. This particular burial marker reads: “Public Parking”.

I’ve talked with Palestinians. I have yet to meet a Palestinian who hasn’t lost a member of their family to the Israeli Shoah, nor a Palestinian who cannot name a relative or friend languishing under inhumane conditions in an Israeli prison. Time and time again, Israel is cited for human rights violations to no avail. On a recent trip to Israel, I visited the refugee camps inhabited by a people who have waited 52 years in these ‘temporary’ camps to go home. Every Palestinian grandparent can tell you the name of their village, their street, and where the olive trees were planted. Their grandchildren may never have been home, but they can tell you where their great-grandfather lies buried and where the village well stood. The press has fostered the portrait of the Palestinian terrorist. But, the victims who rose up against human indignity in the Warsaw Ghetto are called heroes. Those who lost their lives are called martyrs. The Palestinian who tosses a rock in desperation is a terrorist.

Two years ago I drove through Palestine and watched intricate sprinkler systems watering lush green lawns of Zionist settlers in their new condominium complexes, surrounded by armed guards and barbed wire in the midst of a Palestinian community where there was not adequate water to drink and the surrounding fields were sandy and dry. University professor Moshe Zimmerman reported in the Jerusalem Post (April 30, 1995), “The Jewish children of Hebron are just like Hitler’s youth.”

We Jews are suing for restitution, lost wages, compensation for homes, land, slave labor and back wages in Europe. Am I a traitor of a Jew for supporting the right of return of the Palestinian refugees to their birthplace and compensation for what was taken that cannot be returned?

The Jewish dead cannot be brought back to life and neither can the Palestinian massacred be resurrected. David Ben Gurion said, “Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves…politically, we are the aggressors and they defend themselves…The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country…”

Palestine is a land that has been occupied and emptied of its people. It’s cultural and physical landmarks have been obliterated and replaced by tidy Hebrew signs. The history of a people was the first thing eradicated by the occupiers. The history of the indigenous people has been all but eradicated as though they never existed. And all this has been hailed by the world as a miraculous act of G-d. We must recognize that Israel’s existence is not even a question of legality so much as it is an illegal fait accompli realized through the use of force while supported by the Western powers. The UN missions directed at Israel in attempting to correct its violations of have thus far been futile.

In Hertzl’s “The Jewish State,” the father of Zionism said, “…We must investigate and take possession of the new Jewish country by means of every modern expedient.” I guess I agree with Ehud Barak (3 June 1998) when he said, “If I were a Palestinian, I’d also join a terror group.” I’d go a step further perhaps. Rather than throwing little stones in desperation, I’d hurtle a boulder.

Hopefully, somewhere deep inside, every Jew of conscience knows that this was no war; that this was not G-d’s restitution of the holy land to it’s rightful owners. We know that a human atrocity was and continues to be perpetuated against an innocent people who couldn’t come up with the arms and money to defend themselves against the western powers bent upon their demise as a people.

We cannot continue to say, “But what were we to do?” Zionism is not synonymous with Judaism. I wholly support the rally of the right of return of the Palestinian people.

Six Days in Fallujah if you missed the fun

Screenshot of Six Days in Fallujah first person shooter by AtomicAs virtual-gaming distributer Konami reconsiders its release of SIX DAYS IN FALLUJAH, gaming pundits ask “Is it too early to role-play the Second Battle of Fallujah?” To non-US-vets it’s known simply as “Fallujah,” as one would denote Lidice or Srebrenica, by name alone. I don’t know, when will it be appropriate to satiate the nostalgic veteran gamer’s appetite to reenact war crime?

The obvious sarcastic question would be to ponder if White Phosphorous is among the player’s arsenal. Likewise, in “free fire zones” where US rules of engagement permitted the shooting of anything that moved, do you accumulate points for killing the civilians or running them over with your tank?

It would be interesting to see how Atomic Games, neighbor of Blackwater, reenacts the raid on the Fallujah hospital, or the strafing of refuges trying to cross the river when US forces had blocked the infamous Blue Bridge. Are key episodes actionable, or do you sit by as the game cycles through the script, where women and very young children were let to pass to safety, but men and boys were forced to back to the city to be dispatched automatically as combatants.

Is there a game version of My Lai? Perhaps the entire manslaughter safari of the Tiger Force Unit in Vietnam. My guess is there would be plenty of takers. How about the Russian destruction of Chechnya, or the assault on the Warsaw Ghetto? Why not?

Until it becomes okay to blend hypothetical roleplay with real human tragedy, gamers will have to be satisfied with fictional scenarios like Grand Theft Auto and Chainsaw Massacre. I wonder if Amazon already has preorders for customers salivating at the first chance to replay the Manson LaBianca-Tate escapades, Ted Bundy’s cross-country trek, or if they’re jonesing over Iraq, the Haditha tea party and barbecue.

Swine flu pandemic, my ass

1976 swine flu epidemic mandated vaccinationDo you have an uneasy sense that someone’s trying to pull the wool over your eyes? Does the hullabaloo over a looming swine flu pandemic seem a bit overblown? The World Health Organization (WHO) has raised the pandemic alert level (a 6-point scale) to 4 and is considering moving it to 5 today, with only 7 confirmed deaths worldwide! Keep in mind that seasonal flu kills 40,000 every year in the US alone, so why the sudden grave concern?

I don’t claim to understand all the factors at play here, but one thing I do know: I am FAR more concerned that my government will use manufactured fear somehow to my detriment — likely another lost civil liberty or two and large profits or other benefits to a chosen few — than I am about contracting the demon swine flu.

A few facts to bolster your immune-to-bullshit system:

–Thus far, only 97 cases of so-called swine flu have been definitively identified worldwide, mostly in Mexico (26 confirmed, 7 deaths) and the U.S. (64 confirmed, no deaths). About 1600 suspected cases, including 159 deaths, are reported in Mexico. Sad as this is, it does not add up to a pandemic swine flu outbreak. We love to make this shit up for some reason. Remember the one million Americans who were supposed to die of swine flu in 1976? WHO has forgotten about them, I suppose, because they refused to become cooperative statistics.

–The virus at issue has nothing to do with swine. In fact, it hasn’t been seen in a single animal. And you can’t possibly get it from eating pork which I see as an unfortunate truth, because a good reason to stop eating pork would be a welcome silver lining to this “worldwide health crisis.”

–No existing vaccines can prevent this new flu strain. So no matter what you hear – even if it comes from your doctor – don’t get a regular flu shot. They rarely work against seasonal flu and certainly can’t offer protection from a never-before-seen strain.

–Speaking of this strain, it doesn’t seem to have come on naturally. According to the World Health Organization, this particular strain has never before been seen in pigs or people. And according to Reuters, the strain is a ‘genetic mix’ of swine, avian and human flu. Was it created in a lab? We don’t know yet, and I doubt we’ll find out anytime soon.

–The drug companies are getting excited, and that’s never a good thing. According to the Associated Press at least one financial analyst estimates up to $388 million worth of Tamiflu sales in the near future – and that’s without a pandemic outbreak. Imagine the payday when everyone begins to flip out!

–Let’s not forget that Tamiflu comes with its own problems, including side effects like nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, headache, dizziness, fatigue, cough — the very symptoms it purports to relieve! But, oh well, at least the drug company benefits financially from Tamiflu sales. No one benefits if we don’t take it, which makes the whole pandemic thing seem like a wasted opportunity.

–Vaccines for this flu strain won’t have to jump through all those annoying hurdles like clinical trials for safety and effectiveness (which, if you know anything about the FDA, are usually a waste of time anyway). That won’t, however, stop the government from mandating the vaccine for all of us – a very likely scenario. And if the vaccines are actually harmful — killing people, for example, which they certainly will be — the vaccine makers will be immune from lawsuits. D’ya suppose they could bottle up some of that fail-safe immunity for the rest of us?

“Swine flu” is endemic to a sick system created by pigs. Your best defense against swine flu – your only real defense in any manufactured health crisis situation – is a bullshit-proof immune system.

Capitalism is killing off nature itself

dodo extinctionMost people say that overpopulation is what’s destroying our Planet, but in reality, it is how the world population organizes its economic activity that is responsible.
 
In truth, most of us have no say about how the rich and powerful run their economic system, no more than the slaves of Rome could influence how the Roman Empire was run. We still live in a world run from the top down. Our large number is not the determinant part of the equation that just doesn’t add up very well for long term survival. Threat to European biodiversity ‘as serious as climate change.’

Republican-Democrat? It’s a Christian thing.

I have to delineate this in three different perspectives, that of Christians who don’t preach that God tells us to kill people, people who say they’re Christians and that God DOES say to kill and torture people, and people who don’t claim the name of Christ and say that God doesn’t tell us to kill and torture people.

Since the issue was raised, why Republican makes such a huge difference:

They not only are making Torture and Killing the major part of their platform for the mid-term elections but for the 2012.

I brought up Sarah Palin and Bobby Jindal because they’re both being considered as candidates

They also, like the entire leadership of their party and the only vocal members of their party, who are fortunately very loud in their screams for the blood of everybody who Is Not Them….

…claim to be the representatives of God on earth.

Literally.

I don’t listen to KVOR by choice, but the idiots who do like to play it REAL damn loud because that’s the only way they can convince anybody to listen to it.

and a loving God in His infinite mercy and wisdom failed to provide me with ear-lids.

Sarah Palin, for instance, is a lay-minister in the Assembly of God church.

Somehow the AOG has slipped a little in the past 40 years because they used to not allow their women to wear slacks… far less dressing like a crack whore.

Bobby Jindal, Gingrich, Vitter, the list goes on, Huckabee and Romney… aside from all of them being Chickenshit ChickenHawks who are all for killing people just as long as they don’t have to put themselves at risk to do it…

Claim to be Christians. So do the loudmouth rednecks on KVOR. Huckabee is a preacher. Romney took draft deferments because he was doing his Mormon missionary service. Gingrich converted to Catholicism so he could get an annulment from wife #2, thus wife #3 wouldn’t be judged as a whore. Kind of like Henry the Eighth.

He’s also considering a run for President in 2012.

All this in the name of God.

If the R’s hadn’t made these things their entire platform I would be entirely wrong to criticize them (almost) exclusively.

The Democratic Party doesn’t claim an exclusive right to speak for Christians…

Now, see, I AM a Christian, remember? It’s where I get the Brother part of my name.

That means I do have a horse in this race.

If I allowed the Christian version of the Taliban speak unchallenged on this or any other issue I would be betraying God.

And, like the boy scout oath, My Country as well.

A lot of Christians have about zero tolerance for outsiders telling them what’s wrong with with their version of what Christ said and did.

Let’s make that fair, eh? Those readers who are pagans, Buddhists, Jews, Muslim, Atheist, do YOU ever take it kindly when people tell you, speaking from THEIR faith, or the dogma thereof, what YOU as a pagan or Buddhist or Jew or Muslim or Atheist has to believe or how you’re supposed to act as representatives of your faith or lack thereof?

I didn’t think so.

Since I AM a Christian and not ashamed of Christ (although some of my fellow Christians make me queasy and uneasy) I am obliged to point these things out, not just “preaching to the choir” of people who agree with me but ESPECIALLY to Christians who don’t. I took His name, I have to stand against the Murderous blasphemy and to do it in His name.

Or be a collaborator and accomplice to their crimes, the ones they justify with their blasphemous use of God’s name.

The Republican Party are with a united voice claiming that any criticism of their policies is an attack against America and an attack against God.

I say that it is instead an affirmation in my faith and my patriotism to oppose placing my nation squarely in the wrong, and to oppose doing it in the Name of God.

That counts for the first perspective. Mine. And shared by millions upon millions of other American Christians who opposed the Republican agenda precisely on that ground.

The Republicans have a huge amount of available air time and their tame corporate press to spout their bullshit and they do it regularly.

That’s the second perspective and they express it … a LOT and very loudly. For them to deny it would be pointless and laughable.

The third is from non-Christians who have pointed out that God didn’t tell us to kill each other.

Here’s where the rubber meets the road (I’ve got a million unused cliches to tap into)

There’s a Fourth Perspective.

Just like a lot of Christians, and a lot of Atheists, and a lot of Other non-Muslims will say that Islam is a religion of purest hatred, and cite passages in the Koran which are based on very similar passages in the law of Moses…

A lot of non-Christians will say that God did teach murder and torture and other perversions.

And they’ll cite the same scriptures the Hate Freaks like Palin and Gingrich and Bush cited, and they’ll cite every “christian” who is Stupid Enough to follow them.

Follow them explicitly by tossing up the stiff-arm Salute and echoing their bullshit, or follow them implicitly by not opposing their murderous ways.

Cheney and other Perverted Torture Freak Scum…

There’s a standard, a psychological finding used to determine
when somebody is a serial killer, and determine whether he is
worthy of the death penalty.
The prosecution doesn’t actually NEED it in many cases, but they
always do the testing and make the determination.

It’s a level of sociopathy wherein one has a fetish for causing
pain, or even death, and becomes sexually aroused by it.

The same standard can be applied to torturers.

Those who do the “dirty work” themselves, and those who direct
their actions, such as George Bush and Richard Cheney.

Their clones John and Sarah as well, and those who, knowing the
bastards were engaged in these unholy perversions, supported them
anyway.

There’s another Legal standard, “accomplice before and/or after the fact”.

This has also been often used in Death Penalty cases, sometimes the
“first to squeal, gets the deal” will be the one who actually
pulled the trigger.

And get a life sentence while his partners in crime get the needle,
or the gas in California or the bullet in Utah.

The standards for determining “torture” and “war crimes” used to
convict the Nazis, and lately Saddam Hussein and many of his
friends and family, also convicts Richard Cheney and his
meat-puppet George Bush.

…and the people who support them.

People like Bobby Jindal and Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, the people
who VOTED for them.

I’m often told that this is overly harsh, people say stupid crap
like the Torturers keep us safe.

But the only way a Torturer can accomplish his job is if he or she enjoys it.

On an extremely basic sexual level.

Torture, like serial murder, is a vicious form of rape.

People tell me “How dare you say that! My son, daughter, husband,
father—whoever— works at Abu Ghraib or Khandahar or Guantanamo”

Hey, the fact that the Perverts are related to the whiners who say
that doesn’t make the Perverts any less guilty.

Your son or daughter works at one of the Torture Centers, your son
or daughter is a Rapist. It is EXACTLY that simple.

The Torturers keep us safe? Are you sure?

Do you REALLY want to trust the future governance of our nation to
Perverts who get their rocks off to killing or hurting people?

They’re “only doing their jobs”? They’re not forced to take the
job. They seek out the job because it gives them an opportunity to
exercise Ultimate Control over another human being, and, because
they, like Bush and Cheney and Jindal and Gingrich, are physical
cowards… they have to have helpless victims.

They have to have their Gang back them up on everything.

They took the job not out of Patriotism or a sense of Duty, nothing
nearly that noble. They took the job because they enjoy doing it,
and some Dumbass Dubya appointee hired them to do it and gave them
immunity.

The only substantial difference between them and the dude strapped
to a table with a needle in his arm, THEY have the support of “our”
Government.

And enough people who are Stupid enough to support them unconditionally.

One other thing,..

A determination of somebody being a habitual killer is strengthened
if the person attributes his actions to God.

Like George and Sarah do…

And their good friend Erik Prince, the Murderer in Chief of the
Blackwater mercenaries does…

For those of you who do support those types of action, there’s an
excellent description from Professor Churchill:

Little Eichmanns.

Just following orders, right(wing)?

How long can the US and Mexico militarily occupy Ciudad Juarez?

Felipe CalderonCiudad Juarez is a city of 1,500,000 plus people directly opposite El Paso, Texas, and Presidente Fecal Calderon and his Gringo manager, US President Barack Obama, have occupied the city with 10,000 Mexican troops. In short, this is where and what the so-called ‘War on Drugs’ has ‘retreated’ to.

Sure military pacification works short term but not long term, as the examples of Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and Gaza so poignantly illustrate. So what happens when the troops are withdrawn, and they eventually must be? What happens then? See An Army Takeover Quells Violence in Mexico/ Drug Killings in Juarez Plummet, but Rights Complaints Surge

My guess is that they move on and occupy with troops yet other major cities in the years ahead. And eventually… voila! we have a situation much like that of Colombia. In other words, ‘the solution’ becomes the bigger problem.

Ludlow Massacre or unhappy incident?

Ludlow Tent Colony 1914
COLORADO COLLEGE- CC is holding a symposium on the 1914 Ludlow Massacre. Actually, it’s only called the Ludlow Symposium. True to Colorado Springs form, several among the audience want to call it an “incidence,” instead of a “massacre.” One of the participants, author Scott Martelle, is willing to oblige, explaining that if the militia hadn’t known that women and children were taking shelter beneath the tents which they were putting to the torch, then the soldiers were guilty only of criminally negligent homicide.

(*Note 4/12/09: this article has been revised in light of helpful comments offered by symposium participants. Also: Differences of opinion aside, I am remiss if I do not praise the scholars who were very generous with their time and encyclopedic memories to enrich this symposium.
1. CC’s own Professor David Mason authored an evocative narrative of lives caught up in the 1914 events, written in verse, entitled Ludlow.
2. Journalist Scott Thomas researched the most recent definitive account to date, the 2007 Blood Passion: the Ludlow Massacre and Class War in the American West.
3. Thomas Andrews, Associate Professor at CU Denver, enlarged the context in 2008 with his award winning Killing For Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War.
4. Zeese Papanikolas represented his authorative Buried Unsung: Louis Tikas and the Ludlow Massacre, written in 1984.)

Does it matter what it’s called, or with what certainty? The symposium is filled with public school system educators looking for an angle with which to approach Ludlow with their kids. One of them expresses her doubt about teaching about Mother Jones, having just heard from the panelists a probably too-nuanced assessment of the labor hero’s tactics. The political climate of our age can’t find any purchase with moral nuance.

I’m stuck thinking that in recording social history, scholars cannot avoid writing the victor’s narrative. In particular as regards the history of labor, because neither academics nor even middle class hobbyists in the symposium’s audience can look at the events from the perspective of the working class.

Even the scholar’s objectivity is middle class. The opinion was expressed by the panel that the Ludlow aftermath was one of the few occasions when the story was spun to the benefit of labor interests. But this does not account for why authors and educators find themselves having to resurrect the tale of Ludlow these many years later. When it occurred, Americans may have swallowed the hyperbole, but since that time they’ve internalized its internment, effaced by a corporate culture so as to have disappeared from even our school textbooks.

I think this may have been something of the question posed by symposium organizer Jaime Stevensen to the panel, when she asked how the authors insulated themselves from the fictions woven into their own perspectives of history. She didn’t get any takers.

The very concept that history adds up to only so much trivial pursuit, is inherently a view from the ivory tower. BLOOD PASSION by Scott Martelle Do the Ludlow scholars not recognize that common people today face the same foes as did the miners of Ludlow? With the added impediment of a corporate PR system erasing its malevolent deeds. Have not American unions been maligned to the point of extinction? Yet at the same time, capitalists have thoroughly reprised their Machiavellian ways. History can be a tool, not only for statecraft, but for the common American to protect his hard-fought democratic gains.

The United Mine Workers of America having successfully spun the deaths of the striking miner families as a “massacre” may have made an unmerited impact on the public’s sympathies, but likewise, deciding to call Ludlow “not a massacre” will be falsely charged as well. Is there a valuable lesson in unlearning that unbridled corporate greed can be unthinkably inhumane?

OUT OF THE DEPTHS by Barron BeshoarHistorians can fancy themselves objective to ambivalence, but is that a luxury their readers and in particular the schoolchildren can afford? As we witness today the gloves coming off of the globalisation taskmasters?

How I prefer the emotional truth of earlier chroniclers like Barron Beshoar, author of OUT OF THE DEPTHS, a 1942 account of Ludlow, whose preface included this gem:

“If the mine guards and detectives, the mercenaries who served as the Gestapo and the coal districts appear to be scoundrels who sold themselves and their fellowmen for a few corporation dollars, the author will consider them adequately presented.”

KILLING FOR COAL by Thomas AndrewsAt Colorado College the consensus of contemporary historical synthesis, embodied by CU Denver’s Thomas Andrews‘ excellent book KILLING FOR COAL, seems to conclude about Ludlow, “we may never know exactly what happened.” This may reflect the Factual Truth, but it does so at the expense of unrecorded oral accounts, by depreciating their traditional path to us through of folklore.

Buried UnsungAnother author made pains to debunk the lyrics “Sixteen tons, and what do you get, another day older and deeper in debt,” a cultural indictment of the “company store,” which was one of the grievances of the Ludlow strikers. He postulated that modern readers could be prone to let folklore color a predisposition against the company store. Perhaps a company store was in fact a convenience, derided because it was an arbitrary restriction against which human nature bucked. Trying to be helpful, another panelist suggested: “Imagine if the company store was 7-11, and you were told you could only shop there.” I believe both of these gentlemen are overlooking the much grosser complaint which the miners were protesting, that of insurmountable debt, systematically forced on them by their employers. That’s a phenomena on the rise today, if maybe not among college professors. Around the world, indentured servitude has never abated.

In our ivory tower we can debate which side, the union or the militia, fired the first shots on April 20. Who was at fault, seemed to be what that question would decide. At least panelist Anne Hyde had the presence of mind to lay some of the responsibility on the mine owners, who weren’t there of course, but whose stubborn greed played a not unsubstantial part in what the other panelists were attributing to “macho intransigence.”

That expression was in vogue to describe Cowboy presidencies. What an effete put down of militant activism. Are we to blame the striking miners for holding firm to their demands?

Thank goodness someone in the audience brought up recent efforts to deny the Sand Creek Massacre, which two panelists quickly weighed in to say “that was a real massacre,” discrediting Ludlow, obviously, and failing to grasp her point that indeed some Colorado Springs locals are rewriting Sand Creek as a battle, and not a massacre.

Another isolationist luxury has become to judge every action as it compares to a nonviolent ideal. It was noted that UMWA union leader John Lawson always recused himself from violent tactics. During the symposium’s opening reception, someone performed a song dedicated to the Ludlow martyr Louis Tikas, which lauded him for choosing to fight with words not guns, as if guns would discredit him.

I’ll play devil’s advocate and suggest that the miners fired the first shots. They saw Louis Tikas bludgeoned in the back of the head and then executed as he lay on the ground unconscious, they saw the National Guard move a machine gun into position above their tent city, and they probably began to fire at the soldiers lest a rain of bullets descend on miners’ wives and children before they had a chance to flee the camp.

The miners were asking that their union be recognized, that the Colorado eight hour work day be enforced, that the scales which determined their pay be verified, that their full hours be compensated, etc. The mine owners clung to their profits, and ordered the miners’ tent city, their only shelter and all their worldly possessions burned to the ground. Women and children were hiding in underground pits dug to escape the sniper fire which the mine guards sporadically aimed at the tents. The guards drove an armored car around the perimeter of the union camp, at all hours, for that purpose.

Ultimately this climate erupted into the violent clash on April 20, 1914, in which the miners battled with the far better equipped soldiers. The casualties were 25 to 1. I call that a massacre.

ADDENDUM: Photographs from visit to the Ludlow Memorial.
Site of Ludlow Massacre, photographed 2009
LUDLOW MEMORIAL, COLORADO- Day three of the Colorado College Ludlow Symposium featured a bus ride to the site of the 1914 Ludlow Massacre, then on to Trinidad to the grave of Union leader Louis Tikas. A reporter for Colorado Public Radio interviewed the symposium panelists at the U.M.W.A. memorial grounds.

April 2009 Visit to Ludlow site
David Mason is interviewed by a freelance reporter for Colorado Public Radio.

April 2009 Visit to Ludlow site
Scott Martelle and Thomas Andrews are interviewed above the fatal cellar.

April 2009 Visit to Ludlow site

April 2009 Visit to Ludlow site

TRINIDAD, COLORADO- Masonic Cemetary.
April 2009 Visit to Louis Tikas grave site

April 2009 Visit to Louis Tikas grave site
Zeese Papanikolas spoke about his protagonist’s gravestone and its reference to Tikas as a “Patriot.”

April 2009 Visit to Louis Tikas grave site

April 2009 Visit to Louis Tikas grave site

Militant Fratricide, Say Shiboleth?

So I got onto this because of a comment posted supposedly proving that All Palestinians are evil because of one Arab-on-Jew act of violence which sounds a lot like it was instigated by the Jewish kids.

And I’ve pondered for the past day or so, Why doesn’t the commentator get upset about Jew-on-Jew violence?

I would say, you know, that the closer one is in kinship to ones attacker or victim, the more upsetting it is.
And I thought about “Say Shiboleth” which is from the Book of Judges. Fairly near the end. Chapter 12.

The Israelites in the Gilead were at war with the Israelites of Ephraim. When they had slaughtered so many in Ephraim, they were picking off the stragglers at a ford of the River Jordan.

The guards would challenge anybody to say “Shiboleth” which the Ephraimite accent would render as “sibolet”
Once identified as Ephraimites, the fugitives would be taken out and slaughtered.

There was a similar Kin-slaying between the tribe of Benjamin and the Rest of Israel. again in the book of Judges and in which the Benjaminites were almost exterminated.

This sort of thing happened all the Damn Time.

As Solomon lay dying, two of his sons divided the kingdom..

The Tribes of Judah and Levi formed the Kingdom of Judah and the other tribes formed the Kingdom of Israel.

At the time of the Assyrian Conquest, the time of the prophets Jonah and Isaiah, and several of the other prophets, All Of Whom are quoted extensively in the “Right of Return” rhetoric, when they said “Israel” these are the people who were meant.

That Israel would be restored. Neither Israel nor Judah had yet been subjugated.

Also, the Assyrians and their successors on the Imperial Scene Babylon and Persia…

DID NOT take the entire people out of the land. They took the aristocracy, the priests and the artisan class.

And the military.

They didn’t need MORE peasants in Babylon, they already had plenty of Poor Folk.

Sad thing about the Economic Crimes of Conquest and Slavery is people are sorted according to how much money they can bring to their new masters.

Dehumanization on the grandest of scales.

In between the division of the Kingdom and the Assyrian Conquest, there were fratricidal wars between Israelites and Judeans.

All… The… Damn… Time…

When the Persians allowed the Priesthood to go back to Judah and Israel, two of the most violent Hate Freaks in Jewish history were the leaders of the “return”.

Their names were Ezra and Nehemiah.

They basically re-conquered the people who had been left behind. The poor who had tended the land all the time the rich were in Babylon.

It was like, “Yeah, you guys took care of OUR land for US, thanks for your service, now get your stinkin’ arses off OUR land.. and by the way, we no longer considere you to be Pure Israelites because while the priesthood was away you intermarried with Other Tribes of Israel and with Gentiles”

True Racism at its finest. Hating your Own Cousins for not being “pure”.

But back to the axe-wielding “militant”. An axe isn’t a weapon of choice. You would have to be well trained in the Martial Arts to use it effectively as a weapon. A real “militant” out to do some terrorism would have some kind of weapon that’s EFFECTIVE.

But he was Palestinian, therefore he must be a Terrorist.

If a Jewish Israeli shoots or stabs or gets into a fistfight with another Jewish Israeli, why isn’t one or both of them called “Militant” or “Terrorist”?

Because it’s fratricidal, brother against brother?

The Palestinians are the closest relatives the Jews have in the entire world, more so than any other Arab group.
And proven through DNA.

More than that, so is everybody else, sprung from one source…

Anybody rising up and smiting his neighbor, friend, enemy, foreigner from the farthest reaches of the world, is smiting his Brother.
Those who don’t believe the Bible on that can believe the DNA.

Either we speak out against fratricide, matricide, parricide, whatever the feminine-specific term is for killing your sister, infanticide…

Or we join hands in common guilt with those who actually do the killing.

We take the Mark of Cain upon ourselves.

It’s one or the other, and can’t be both, and can’t be “neither”.

We can’t sit on that fence.
That fence won’t even support ONE person, far less the whole world.

Right Wing Comments, the gift that keeps on giving…

First we’ll get the indignant denials that the War is against Anybody Arabic or similarly dark-skinned and third world…
or that there’s anything Racist or White Man’s Burden about it…

That we’re really only fighting for their Rights and Freedoms…

Then we get some nudnik admitting that he actually enjoyed killing civilians.
That would be two comments in the Unexpurgated Face of War thread.

They say they “gave” us the right to dissent, but when mention is made of Pig Brutality against demonstrators or anybody else who is beaten, chained, falsely charged… for daring to talk back, and like at the St Paddies Day Massacre two years ago not ONE Uniform Clad person actually stood up for our rights…

Sure as shittin’ some RightWing Nutjob will post a comment that we deserved to get beaten down.

And so it goes.

Maybe some of the ones who whine about how we’re “wrong to criticize the Troops and “OUR” leaders and whatever…” instead of trying to force or coerce or cajole or shame US into being silent or cooperative with the Fascist Agenda, get in contact with your right wing freak buddies when they boast about killing civilians.

All the denials and protestations that “The Troops” never committed any atrocities get shot down not by our voice of reason, but by your Right Wing Heroes.

Kind of like Dr Laura Schlesinger, in order to deflect the ChickenHawk label she actually still deserves, offered her own son up as a sacrifice on the Altar to His Satanic Majesty Bush…

Then he posts youtube videos and pictures on his myspace page, and long rants about all the war crimes he was involved in.

The two Marines who killed a puppy by throwing it over a cliff, things like that.

People who don’t seek out their Big-Mouthed Comrades and order or shame THEM into silence have really no moral prerogative to try to tell us how wrong they think we are for simple stating and restating the facts…

Meanwhile, Right Wing Loose-Lip Loonie-toons, thank you.

Your comments are very much appreciated.

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.

Israeli soldiers admit targeting civilians

“That’s the beauty of Gaza. You see a man walking, he doesn’t have to have a weapon, and you can shoot him.” –One of the testimonies collected by the Rabin pre-military institute, surveying IDF soldiers about war crimes reported to have been committed in Gaza, in the Times Online article Israeli soldiers admit to deliberate killing of Gaza civilians.

Another:

“When we entered a house, we were supposed to bust down the door and start shooting inside and just go up storey by storey… I call that murder. Each storey, if we identify a person, we shoot them.”

There were also reports of military rabbis who distributed pamphlets which described the Gaza incursion as part of a greater religious war. Said one IDF soldier:

“All these articles had a clear message: we are the Jewish people, we have come to the land by miraculous means, and now we have to fight to remove the Gentiles who are getting in our way and preventing us from occupying the Holy Land… a great many soldiers had a feeling throughout this operation of a religious war.”

“Saddam and the Third Reich”… the REAL Connection.

Not the hype they’re promoting on the Hysteria International Channel, in an attempt to justify the violent conquest of Iraq to seize the assets of the country and turn them over to Exxon Mobil and other Corporate Partners of the CheneyBush Company.

Nope, the most solid connection is, once again, the Bush Family.

Their banking enterprises provided money laundering for both the Third Reich and for Saddam Hussein.

Since the Military Propaganda Committee are apparently going to try to drown us out, on this soon to be seventh year of the Invasion and Occupation OOOPSIE I was supposed to say “Liberation” , right?

I’ll point out once again because the Right Wing are kind of Stupid and forget easily, and I’ll type it Really Slowly because they can’t read very fast,…

The stated reasons for invading Iraq were straight up unadulterated Lies.

The Koalition of the Killing were NOT liberating Iraq, NOT even looking for the non-existent weapons of mass destruction, NOT fighting for freedom in any sense of the word.

But maybe the Uniform-Heads can repeat those lies often enough that at least they, themselves, will believe it.

Or maybe they understand that their stated reasons are Bullshit and just don’t give a damn.

In which case they and everybody who still supports the War are guilty of Murder.

Murder of Iraqi Civilians and American Soldiers and Koalition of the Killing Soldiers as well.

They have blood on their greedy claws and if they’re still proud of it, they should stop calling themselves Americans.

But they won’t and we all know it.

They’ll insist that everybody who doesn’t agree with their Conquest is somehow Anti-American.

I’d like to give them some credit, any credit I could think of, maybe that they’re drugged or brainwashed, but no, that wouldn’t be true.

They know they’re committing Evil and continue to do it, and rejoice in doing it.

They know they’re lying but continue to lie.

They know they’re baby-killing murdering coward scum, and that it violates every law of God and man, but they’ll continue doing it.

Happy Anniversary.

You have the blood of over 4700 Americans on your nasty little hands, and a literally countless number of Iraqi civilians.

From Columbine to Germany to Alabama

columbineThe Europeans have the same youth dissatisfaction with modern living as Colorado does, yet nobody does anything other than mouth off platitudes about how shocking it all is. Teen gunman dead after killing 15 at German school

And now to the Alabama ‘Reliable Metal’ shootings… 10 dead in Alabama killing spree Not at a high school, yet somehow quite the same.

Bible Code, Redux

So, it was on again today.

And this time, thanx to all the Mossad, Knesset and IDF name dropping that’s been going on, courtesy of our Trolls…

Some of the names were eerily familiar.

People in Netanyahu’s Koalition of the Killing government with his 22% “majority mandate”.

Nut Job after Nut Job saying how wonderful the Bible Code works, citing events they ‘discovered” in the code … after they happened of course…

And even a couple of Pentagoons and yeah, Troll, I know you think you have a handle on accuracy but I call the PentaGoons that deliberately.

Our Army is at least in their leadership every bit as thuggish and murderous as IDF.

It makes it difficult to tell which is the Master and which the Disciple in their Sick Sadistic relationship.

But the theme comes out, they want to take the so-called Proven Accuracy of their decoding of the Talmudic Matrix, and use it as Legitimate Foreign Policy.

And apparently, these demented Freaks actually have backing from some shadowy types from OUR government.

Let’s boil that down, shall we?

Why thank you, of course we shall.

There’s a politically backed movement to base Life and Death decisions, active in TWO Nuclear Armed governments,

On a Glorified Seance.

An Ouija Board.

Reading Tea Leaves.

The show was taped in 2004.

The people interviewed saying how much they would love to actually influence Official Policy both in Washington and Tel Aviv, are now close to the hearts of both governments.

One of the “ACCURATE” predictions involved the Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq.

You know the ones, the 500 metric tonnes (that’s more than a MILLION pounds, folks) of WMDs that it turns out didn’t exist in the first place.

OOOPS….

Apparently the Code didn’t predict that disastrous misstep.

Or the bit about the Syrians and Lebanese running the IDF out one more time when they invaded Lebanon again.

Just like the IDF got run out in 85.

Well well well well well…

But one thing predicted during the show, and welcomed with Loud Hosannahs from the Silly Ass proponents of the Bible Code, was the notion of WMDs in Iran…

I know the Country Song says the writer is too stupid to be able to tell the difference between Iraq and Iran.
Probably can’t tell the difference between the U.S. and Mexico or Russian and China or Germany and France either.
Bigots are like that…
But for those terminally confused types, that’s IRAN spelled with an “N” on the end of it and with nearly 4 times the prewar population of IRAQ spelled with a “Q” or alternately IRAK spelled with a “K”.

Remember always, gentle readers, and forget never, that these are the SAME “experts” that George Bush hired to give intelligent intelligence reports about Uranium, anthrax, Smallpox, Mousepox, Nerve Gas… In Iraq 6 years ago.

In other words, Lying Warmongering Sell-outs to God and the Whole Human Race.

Since both Washington and IDF still have prisoners in Torture Chambers across the globe being tortured and Murdered based on these DumbShit’s “expert testimony”…

That would cast a rather large shadow on every other aspect of their Continuing Terroristic War against everybody who doesn’t bow and worship the Washington-London-Tel Aviv REAL Axis of Evil.

How many more prisons filled up with their victims, how many graves?

How much more of the basic humanity and wealth of the world are going to be bombed out of existence based on their Lying Interpretation of “Code” which, by a bizarre coincidence, is manipulated to support their already predisposed an predetermined Plans of Conquest, Murder and Pillage?

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”…

Hysterical Revisionism Parte Veint..

Ok, so one of the first posts I made was on the subject of what I call amongst other things Jingoistic Bullshit.
Like Ward Churchill getting fired and the suggestion being made by local Right Wing Freaks that he be prosecuted and even EXECUTED for teaching that the U.S. Army committed deliberate Extermination campaigns against Americans and used Biological Warfare in doing so.

The reason I bring it back up is because our Latest IDF Apologist/Propagandist keeps using the same notion the Others did, that we’re somehow “ignorant” of Middle East History merely because we don’t cite the History Textbooks they use in the Tel Aviv Public Schools.

To bring it on down, lest I be accused of being “unhinged”, if I were to enter into a discussion on Recent European History and, let’s say, just for giggles, pointed out that the British Public School textbooks say that the IRA are a bunch of terrorists (U.S. textbooks say the same stupid shit) and the insinuation that the Potato Famine was caused not by the British Overlords shipping out ALL the grain produced in Ireland, (even though it’s documented in shipping records, number (daily)of hundreds of tons of wheat shipped to England on one page and number of Irish Children dead in a sidebar on the same page)

But if I were to cite EXCLUSIVELY British History Texts as approved by Her Majesty Bess2 as an accurate portrayal of Irish History I would not be Taken Seriously.
Especially if I were to Arrogantly demand that the English version be the ONLY version accepted as valid for the discussion.

At that point not only would I be a Jingoistic Nutter I would also be an “Arse”.

To make a further point, there’s a Texas History Society who did a special that gets repeated on the Hysteric Channel and National Geographic Channel about the Alamo.

Which is what I wrote thereof c. 2 years ago.

Seems that even though the only written accounts of what happened to David Crockett and the other “defenders” after the walls were breached, Were Written By Mexican Soldiers…

And that even though the one most in question with the Freaks is one that asserted that General Antonio Jose y Maria Lopez (de Santa Ana) ordered a War Crime to be committed… Declaring the Texians to be “Unlawful combatants” (sound familiar, Trolls? Right Wingers? anybody? … Bueller? … anybody?) and Killing the Prisoners.

Including but not limited to one Colonel David Crockett.

In spite of this being evidence of War Crimes committed by the person who wrote it, it’s called into question Because We Are Supposed To Believe The John Wayne Version Wherein Davy Crockett Died In Battle…

And if we don’t, we’re, And I can not possibly make shit like this up, it takes a truly demented soul to think of it “undermining the Global War On Terror” because Our Troops are engaged in a war with the Brown-skinned Hordes and if they were taught to question the History as Told By The U.S. Government, why, they might question the “Historical Fact” that Iraq was Invaded, Conquered and Occupied Errrrr… I mean “Liberated” yeah, that’s the ticket, Liberated because Saddam Hussein refused to give up his Weapons of Mass Destruction.

A story told by the same IDF and Likud people who tell us that they were and are perfectly justified in Invading, occupying and murdering the citizens of Gaza.

Now, Seventh Grade Tel Aviv Public School History, you know, you only are obligated to mark on the Examinations that the dates and names and locations you just learned to recite (like a whole class full of 13 year old humanoid Parrots) said this, that or the other thing about The Glorious History of The State of Israel.

Bringing it into serious discussions with Grown-Ups and demanding that it be the only source of information that YOU will allow into the discussion comes off as being very Arrogant and Pigheaded.

Especially if the discussion is based on a website that doesn’t actually belong to you.

The Ward Churchill Haters and the New Defenders of The Legend Of The Alamo, they’re fairly easy to spot as being Arrogant Ignorant Rednecks who, in the words of a pastor I once knew “Need Less beer and more Bible”

IDF Trolls, apparently paid Trolls, making similar assertions come off as being, well, of the Same Caste.