Tag Archives: Latin

Float like a butterfly, sting like Al Gore

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Once-upon-a-time-Vice-president, Al Gore, now introduces himself at public appearances with a real knee-slapper: the man who won the 2000 election. The joke counts on the audience knowing about the rigged count in Florida, black box voting, Supreme court cronyism, etc, because Al Gore explains it no further. To me it’s like the Monty Python routine, nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more, know what I mean? Except the audience does know and does get it. Hahaha, say no more!

Well I don’t get it. A stolen election, a bitter aftermath, tragic consequences which compound every day, to Al Gore this is a joke?

If Al Gore, Emmy, Oscar and Nobel in hand, wants another shot at the helm, he’s got some ‘splaining to do.

Gore is being given credit for taking global warming seriously, but I’m not sure it reflects his taking responsibility for the problem. What’s he doing about it? He’s running around talking about it. Who does he think is responsible for it?!

Gore wants us to address global warming. Weren’t he and Clinton in charge once-upon-a-time? What did they do about it? The little boy who put his finger in the dike wouldn’t be so honored if the Nobel Committee had seen him laughing while the hole was being drilled.

Now Americans are looking to Al to be the Democrat’s Great White Hope, to step into the ring and trounce Bush and Co in the next election. Does Gore give you any sense that he wouldn’t do the same thing he did in 2000, graciously step aside while barbarians plunder the country, his finger on the alarm bell, a silent alarm meant not to alarm the burglars, pretending but probably knowing that really there are no first responders on the way. Gore is the ambulance driver waiting for roadside assistance, cracking jokes with the patient, both deluded that there’s another ambulance on the way, one dying, the other contemplating another run at a rescue.

Some chose their battles, holding themselves as would-be winners above the fray, had the fray mattered. Al Gore chose his battle in 2000 and it wasn’t the presidency, the fate of the world perhaps being merely academic. To the above-the-fray class I assure you it is. Now the man who would be king wants to weigh in again? Why?

My favorite sports analogy is prizefighting. They are surely the most courageous men who enter the ring knowing they bring no one but themselves to bear against the blows of their opponent. You want to be heavyweight champion of the world? No one”s going to do it for you.

General BetrayU.S. and Sen BetrayUs Salazar

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3/4 of the Senators took time off from their busy schedule mainly promoting and enabling Bush’s wars to condemn MoveON for running their tasteful ad about General BetrayU.S. I couldn’t help noting how our very own triangulating senator Ken here in Colorado voted on this one. See Senate Repudiates MoveOn

Pop goes the US housing bubble- pop goes Colorado’s, too

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First all, there is not just a US housing bubble that is ‘deflating’, there is also a world real estate bubble. It is well burst by now in Japan, and the bust of Japan’s over inflated housing market was one of the prime causes of the crash of that economy more than a decade ago. Japan still has not yet recovered.

Before the market burst in Japan, Americans were scared that they were being economically bypassed by Japan. Then as the US bubble fully inflated there has been American euphoria that our economy appeared so strong. Today there is mainly fear about the US economic future. Things look grim.

Though Colorado is not yet considered one of the US real estate’s metro ‘dead zones’ like Boston, Miami, San Diego, etc., we can see how the bubble has sprouted across the Colorado landscape. Everywhere, there is new ugly housing that has just recently been built on the outskirts of the major Colorado metropolitan areas. Easy come, easy go.

I think of these areas as instant slums. There are few trees, no community, and long commutes amongst and across this plasticized landscape. Meanwhile, there are FOR RENT signs in the older neighborhoods, as people foolishly went rushing off to buy that new, but inferior, housing in the slurbs..

They often bought it with money they just are not going to have, but thought that their ‘investment’ had to just go up, up, up! It doesn’t, and if people begin to lose their jobs they will soon go bankrupt and be unable to pay the mortgage. So much for ‘investment’…

Imagine a near future where many of these shoddy housing areas will be full of vacated properties. Houses that were poorly built in the first place, will begin to fall into quick disrepair. Pop goes the US housing bubble and pop shall go Colorado’s development bubble, too. This is a poor way to plan (if it can be called planning?) communities. Speculation (haste) makes waste, and the landscape will look even more bare than it does now while the development is still fairly new.

Even worse, the housing bubble was built on cheap gasoline and ample supply. That just is not going to be the case, and the US government effort to rob and control the remaining world supplies of underground petrol by military force, are just adding to the economic chaos we will have to soon endure.

Conspiracy theory is history of bastards

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The law has no problem accusing its challengers of being conspirators, the easier to convict and imprison them. There’s a young black man on death row in Texas who unwittingly drove a car from which a passenger leapt to commit murder. He had no foreknowledge of the crime, yet has been sentenced to death, tied to the homicide by conspiracy. There’s Jose Padilla, who’s been found guilty of conspiracy to support terrorism. No crime, no incident, no plan, no illegal act except conspiracy. This is the best they could get out of him after years of unconstitutional detention and psychologist-approved mind-crushing interrogation.

From the public side looking in however, none dare call what our rulers are doing as conspiracy. To look at the collusion, secret meetings, manipulating the economy, media talking-points, media black-outs, election fraud, non-transparent government, private sector grand larceny, and investigation cover-ups, and dare call it conspiracy, is to face being labeled a lunatic. Conspiracy theorists are called conspiracy nuts, but it’s the complicit media doing the name-calling.

The definition of conspiracy theory is also conveniently predefined to mean a plurality of theories, like so many implausible alternative versions of events. Leaving out the UFO-tabloid genre, every conspiracy theory I’ve ever studied, from Kennedy’s assassination to the truth behind 9/11, fits very neatly together. Secret LSD experiments and black helicopters: compare these to revelations emerging from FOIAs or whistle-blower leaks. What is too difficult to believe?

The theories share the same conspirators, because it’s the same conspiracy. They form the events which tell the same story. They represent the reexamination of modern history outside of the official narrative, because the authorized version omits what the ruling elite want you to understand of the dastard inhumanity of their hold on power.
Source materials for the history of our time

Jane Eyre, Bertha Mason and Grace Poole

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And there she lulled me asleep,
And there I dream’d—Ah! woe betide!
The latest dream I ever dream’d
On the cold hill’s side.
 
I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried—“La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!”
 
I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill’s side.

I’ve always been captivated by archetypes of the feminine pariah.
These are the vixens about which cautionary yarns are spun to bridle man’s lust by fomenting a distrust of his opposite sex. They especially served to poison the power of woman, particularly when it was derived from her sexuality.

Can it be coincidence that the promulgators of these literary tales were often gay?

Keats fleshed out a famous Circe of the middle ages, a woman who without mercy would seduce a knight to his death in the woods.

There are sirens of course, and la grande dame Delilah, and all forms of emasculating succubi. Another variant has been haunting me from gothic images in black and white which I remember from my youth, of the film Jane Eyre.

Do you remember poor Rochester? He was not free to love Jane owing to an entanglement kept secret, his wife, become mad, kept for her own safety locked on an upper floor. Her sudden offscreen cackle was one of the most haunting sounds ever.

I remember warning myself to avoid Rochester’s fate, that of caretaker to a self-destructive, utterly irrational woman, in the character of Bertha Mason.

Actually, I believe the mad woman is at the core of every romantic villainess. Why would a mate wish her suitor harm were she not insane? Excepting the entrepreneurial black widow, a woman can be sympathetic and maternal, like your mother, or she can be a femme fatale leading you to self destruction.

Charlotte Bronte humanized the cautionary stereotype, but externalized two malevolent wild cards — multiple personality and drink. I’d forgotten these elements until reacquainting myself with the plot just now. There was a second woman, Grace Poole, charged with looking after the mad wife. Grace however, was prone to drunken bouts. Bertha seized those opportunities to escape and wreak destruction.

Even when Bertha set the castle alight, Rochester fought through the fire to save her, losing his hand and his sight in the attempt. Whether you attributed her actions to insanity, or metaphysically to Rochester’s due for having lived the life of a rake, blame ultimately did not lie with Bertha, nor with careless Grace, herself a victim of a vice.

Would Rochester have been so honor bound to Bertha if her homicidal lunges had been ignited by her own intemperance? I wonder.

Unknown soldier

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CLICK TO ENLARGE -German Waffen SS soldierMy dad grew up in Norway under the occupation. He had a half-brother three years older about whom he was told nothing, who joined the Germans during the war and was killed at the Russian Front. My father wasn’t told when it happened, but remembers his mother getting the telegram.
 
We recently learned the brother’s name, and my uncle has recovered a photograph from the municipal archives.

His name was Martin. I have yet to see the new picture. This is a photograph which caught my eye some years ago, and which I kept, thinking it could be my family’s lost son, just as well as any other. It remains from captured German records, depicting an unnamed soldier, anyone’s. How likely is it that no-one survives to recognize this boy?

Martin was the product of my grandmother’s ill-fated first marriage. Her husband didn’t get along with her parents. He tried to poison her father, and in the attempt killed her mother. He was sent to prison, leaving my grandmother alone with the boy. When she began a new family, the older boy grew to become too much of a reminder of the deviant father, too much apparently for her new husband to bear. My grandmother was prevailed upon to send the boy away to be raised by relatives in the country. Martin disappeared before his half-siblings were old enough to remember him, traces of his memory effaced. My father remembers seeing a family picture which included a young Martin, to which my grandmother pretended, “that’s you.” And so one weekend a month, Gudmor would leave the family to visit her old aunt in the country. In later years my dad and his siblings figured out there was no such aunt. My grandmother died without telling the story.

It’s surmised that Martin grew up unwanted, ostracized by family and extended family, which may explain why on his seventeenth year, the Norwegian boy joined with the occupiers and enlisted with the Waffen SS, the German Army unit reserved for citizens of the occupied countries. He was sent to the Russian Front where he died in 1943.

My father called his younger brother yesterday, on a lark, though sometimes he is psychic. His brother was sitting in his car in Oslo, contemplating the photograph he’d just obtained of their lost brother. My uncle had also learned of Martin’s resting place, a cemetery for German soldiers in present-day Poland. They’re making plans to go visit his grave.

Iraq in large even numbers

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A common scene unseen by Americans
An uncelebrated milestone: this week marked the 1,000th mercenary death in Iraq. The casualty figure for US military soldiers moved up four in one blast to 3688. This week also saw the highest number of US troops in Iraq, 162,000. Counting the estimated 180,000 contractor-mercenaries that figure is 342,000.
 
Also this week: extrapolating from last year’s Johns Hopkins estimate for Iraqi deaths due to the US invasion, the current number of Iraqi casualties is estimated to be rounding ONE MILLION. One million Iraqi lives lost, in violent deaths, as a result of the US illegal war. One million Iraqis definitely better off with Saddam deposed.

Grandfather’s virility

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Art and Jean Hough
I like this picture of my grandfather. He passed away this summer and my sister and I looked through old family albums to choose a few photographs that might tell of his life.

Neither of us knew much about Grandpa’s youth, even about his character as my mom’s father. We’d only ever seen him as granddad to endless bursts of grandkids. He made his famous pancakes on sundays. His voice seemed always intoned with a cautionary chiding. “Oh, you wouldn’t want to do that.”

I remember riding with Grandpa in his old Nash Rambler with carpet samples in the back, running errands about town. He might have talked about the furniture store he once had, I don’t remember. His kindness was unwavering. It never occurred to me that a grandparent could be otherwise.

So in preparation for the funeral my sister and I were let to fashion a remembrance of our grandfather from photographic whole cloth. My sister is an art director who is very adept at manipulating a mood. We’d be enlarging originals, many of our relatives had never seen, or seen clearly, into prints which could recreate fiction. From hundreds of pictures we could mold an arresting romantic figure which we hoped they’d recognize.

Indeed we found a shot of Grandpa and his young fiancée posed on the front fender of a touring car, pointed toward the barren hills of Bonnie and Clyde, a sunny day, the two smiling, perhaps self-consciously at each other.

There’s another of Grandpa alone, wearing an apron, standing over the kitchen sink. Doing the dishes we presumed, but the dark shadows and soft sunlight coming through the lace lent the scene the suggestion that Grandpa could turn around any second with an engagement ring.

There’s a picture of the two of them sitting in a modest living room, he on the armrest actually, leaning back and against his wife, both of them glowing with happiness. Above them hangs a picture of an angel, which a cousin noted, had always hung above one of the later bedrooms.

These were the standouts to me, in thinking about which might be my favorite, but I chose another. I have no idea whether it catches an authentic side of Grandpa or not.

Someone mentioned that Grandpa and Grandma were once featured in a magazine article about a typical young family or some such sort. Grandpa worked for Montgomery Wards and they moved each year, Grandma giving birth at each relocation. It was thought that this picture might have come from that photo shoot. The composition is unusual I think, a kitchen chair on the sidewalk in front of your home. But this picture reflects something I can imagine having been in Grandpa’s character. He was a dandy.

There’s his wife, looking uncomfortably like a sidekick, and Grandpa seated in her presence; not merely unchivalrous, but self-satisfied and unguarded. I accidentally cropped his shoes when I scanned the pictures in the hasty late hours before the showing, but I assure you the body language was consistent, a nattily dressed first fiddle, head of household, master of the manor. I think it’s very evident in his pose, and I wonder if he knew it wasn’t true.

My grandfather on my father’s side, a fiery nordic who died when I was younger, cut a formidable figure around the house. You had to be quiet when you got too near Gudfar, unless he was laughing, and it seemed that activities were scheduled around his nap schedule. In any case, I didn’t find out until much later in life that he didn’t wear the pants in that family.

Oh, he was the oppressive dominant male, certainly the decider, but the guidance was Gudmor. She brought wisdom to the table, and certainly the emotional wisdom. Gudmor was always quick to cry when family visits ran short, something I could not conceive my stern grandfather would ever do. Gudmor was also the person to whom everything mattered, and so the not-uncommon better half. This was nothing that I saw in my youth, it had to be told to me later. Sure enough I see my own personailty reflect that heritage.

So I wonder, about Grandpa Hough, if I mightn’t have gotten something of a similar predisposition from him? It would make sense, wouldn’t it, that my parent’s attraction might be based on the similarity of their expectations for each other?

I’m sure that my grandfather, the snappy dresser, was also the beneficiary of having a very strong wife. And suddenly I can see that in all the pictures. My memories of my grandparents, even their eulogies, recount the two as inseparable, indistinguishable after so many years, from one another, but it seems to me that Grandma was the action-taker. She made the rules and prompted the activity. I have plenty of memories of Grandma. I think what Grandma wanted mattered most. I’m not sure Grandpa had an opinion most of the time. I think it was his wife, the more engaging, more communicative, clear-headed, stronger half.

So here’s a picture of my grandfather, fingering his hat like it’s a nobleman’s cane, like it’s lighter than air in the hands of someone made to feel at the top of his game. Let to feel, most certainly.

Both my grandfathers survived their spouses. But by only a couple years. Grandpa Hough moved in with his son, regained his health for a short time, but never did come into his own. I wonder if he ever had.

Sisters speak out about all US war zones

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Loretto CommunityThey come together from different states, Benedictines, Dominicans, the Loretto Community, the Sisters of Charity, the Sisters of Mercy, the Sisters of St Francis, Pox Christi, the Christian Peacemakers, even a nun visiting from Guatemala, to pray a silent vigil at the gates of Peterson AFB in remembrance of the two greatest war crimes ever perpetrated, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Not only against the use of nuclear weapons, but all weapons, and not just to sit idly by in prayer. The sisters asked for inspiration and guidance to address the violence our country is directing in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Latin American and Colombia.

The heaviest words were for Iraq. Here is the latter part of the prayer ceremony:

We ask forgiveness for our complicity
in the violence now unleashed in the world
and we repent of the violence in our hearts.

Forgive us, we pray

For initiating war         Forgive us, we pray
For believin in untruths         Forgive us, we pray
For resorting to torture         Forgive us, we pray
For wasting resources         Forgive us, we pray
For shattering innocence         Forgive us, we pray

For trampling diplomacy         Forgive us, we pray
For the death of US military in Iraq         Forgive us, we pray
For the Iraqi civilians killed         Forgive us, we pray
For trusting in weapons         Forgive us, we pray
For exporting arms         Forgive us, we pray

For needing to dominate         Forgive us, we pray
For failing to trust         Forgive us, we pray
For failing to act         Forgive us, we pray
For valuing oil over life         Forgive us, we pray

For failing to love         Forgive us, we pray
For our arrogance         Forgive us, we pray
For our pride         Forgive us, we pray
For our silence         Forgive us, we pray

Change our hearts

That we learn compassion         Change our hearts
That we practice mercy         Change our hearts
That we embrace nonviolence         Change our hearts

That we may act in justice         Change our hearts
That we love tenderly         Change our hearts
That we do your will         Change our hearts
That we will be peace         Change our hearts

March on Washington Sept 15

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Answer Coalition MARCH ON WASHINGTON Sept 15 2007A broad spectrum of national groups have united to mobilize for a massive fall anti-war mobilization called the Days of Action. Sept 15-21 will be a major showdown in Washington DC at the very moment that the Petraeus Report is released and Congress takes up spending over $100 billion to prolong the war. Led by veterans who have returned from Iraq, there will be seven days of actions to send a shockwave through Washington and the nation with the reverberating demand: End the War Now!

Sponsors of the march include:
The ANSWER Coalition; Ramsey Clark; Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation; USLAW; Mounzer Sleiman, Vice Chair, National Council of Arab Americans; Cindy Sheehan; Cynthia McKinney; Veterans for Peace (National); Garett Reppenhagen, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Chair of Board of Directors; Tina Richards, CEO of Grassroots America; Rev. Lenox Yearwood, CEO of Hip Hop Caucus; Code Pink; Father Roy Bourgeois and Eric LeCompte, School of Americas Watch; Kevin Zeese, Democracy Rising; Navy Petty Officer Jonathan Hutto, co-founder Appeal for Redress; Liam Madden, Pres., Boston Chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War and co-founder of Appeal for Redress; Malik Rahim, founder of Common Ground Collective, New Orleans; Howard Zinn, Author and Historian; Carlos & Melida Arredondo, Gold Star Families for Peace; Rev. Graylan Hagler, Ministers for Racial, Social and Economic Justice; Latino Movement USA; Hermandad Mexicana Nacional; Ron Kovic, Vietnam Veteran, author, Born on the 4th of July; Leonard Weinglass, Cuban 5 attorney; Michael Berg; National Lawyers Guild; Father Luis Barrios, Iglesia de San Romero de las Americas – UCC; World Can’t Wait; Frank Velgara, ProLibertad Freedom Campaign; Pam Africa, International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal

Americans and the Iraq War

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The impact the Antiwar Movement has made on Americans is skin deep so far. While at least 2/3 of Americans now dislike the Bush Administration, much of that rejection is because many feel that the current government has poorly managed a war they fully supported. See poll data

Despite the US government’s warfare against the Iraqi people that has gone on since 1991 and produced a total tragedy, only 1/3 of Americans feel that it was wrong to have been attacking that country in the first place.

Why has the American antiwar movement been so lackluster? I think that the main reason has been the demobilization of the US working class. In fact, much of the US working class has been largely co opted by the military and finds its employment somehow connected with continued support of the US war machine. You don’t see working class people attending protests much at all.

Another reason though has been the failure of leadership of the Peace Movement. It is dominated by store keepers, ex-monks, pastors, and nuns and ex-nuns, Mennonites and Quakers. There are also 2 other sectors of this movement whose presence is barely discernible by and large. The largest of the 2 are the college educated liberal types who think that voting for liberal Democratic Party politicians is the outer limit of what they will involve themselves in doing.

Last of the 3 main sectors of the essentially inert Peace camp is the anticapitalist Left, made up of Left Libertarians (Noam Chomsky, Znet, and crowd) and Marxists. The Left Libertairans have great analysis but no organizing ability, and are fairmly embedded in academia as professors, but are largely absent in the working population made up of ordinary citizens. And the Marxist Left, outside of the Workers World Party and its split off sister Party of Liberation and Socialism, has been mainly busy comtemplating their navels. But despite organizing many big demonstrations,the WWP is so sectarian that its national membership remains at several dozens.

Until there is a secular Left that resurects itself from the grave, the religious folks and DP addicts of voting only will continue to demobilize the American people. They will pray and they will vote, but they will not construct an activist movement that builds something different than church based organizations and the corporate Frankenstein called the Democratic Party. They will lobby and pray in fields where missile silos are located. They will pray in churches and vote for Democrats come election day along with attending an occasional forum and attending a military gate or other.

There is no easy solution to finding a way to resurrect the dormant American secular Left. Like the dormant Nazi Era German Left, we now largely are dependent on outside help. The problem is the American people themselves, ‘liberals’ and’ conservatives’ both. Both camps are totally immersed in LaLa Land.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Contrasting the Libertarians with UFPJ

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The Democratic Party-tied, United For Peace and Justice (the largest beginning of a kernel of a national US antiwar coalition), has been a disaster for those wanting truly to mobilize antiwar sentiment in the US. So has the Democratic Party-tied organization, MoveOn.

Meanwhile, the remnants of the old leadership of the US antiwar movement during the Vietnam Era continue to busy themselves talking in Marxist tongues and contemplating their own navels at Louis Proyect’s do-nothing site, Marxmail.

But what about the Libertarians? Check out John Walsh’s commentary, ‘Shaming the Official Antiwar Movement‘.

The OAS under Bush

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‘Orgies on the negotiating table’ by Colombian death squad leaders is in the news in Latin America.

A pretty picture of what the Organization of American States (OAS) located in Washington DC has actually deteriorated to, since they sponsored and secured the area where these criminals partied. And think that the US and its allies have a tough-on-crime attitude? How about a monthly $200 pension for death squad members who lay down their knives and stop dismembering peasants and other poor folk with?

Isn’t that nice? All part of the so-called War on Drugs, otherwise know as the daddy of the so-called ‘War Against Terrorism’.

See also, Colombia’s Civil War and the US

Goodbye, Jerry, Paul, and Tony

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They were all here with us so long, and now they have gone away. In the next year yet more of them will go away, too, and the corporate media will be ablaze with shouts about the glory of it all. Yet nothing has changed, nor will real change come with the US elections. The banality of corruption and decay of the US Empire will continue, with resistance mainly confined to the peoples of Iraq, Afghanistan, Latin America, and Somalia. We will go on shopping, though the price of gasoline will be a little higher. Short term local forecast?

More cloudy weather with gradually rising temperatures ahead. Local pressure confined mainly to a few individuals resisting as they can.

News from the Pope… again…

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I wonder if Bishop “vote republican or rot in hell” Sheridan is going to jump on this bandwagon, but the Pope has said that allowing Native Americans their own culture and religion would be a step backward, and made the preposterous claim that they were just “silently waiting and hoping for Christianity” to push them into the lowest levels of Latin American societies ooops I mean “liberate them from the slavery of having their own national identity” ooops again, I mean “from the slavery of their ignorance”

There hasn’t been much outcry from our Diocese about the fact that the Uber Rich buying up all the land bordering the National Forest and building an almost impenetrable fence of “No Trespassing-Private Property” to limit the Medicine People, including and especially Native Americans, from access to the Medicine Lands that were “given” to us by the Laramie Treaty and later reinforced by the Native American Religious Freedom Act of 1973.

Pretty fucking bad when we had to have an Act of Congress to affirm that the First Amendment provisions about Freedom of Religion actually applied to ALL citizens, even Native Americans.

But for the past few years the Army, at the behest of the Gated Community Rich Bitches like the ones at Cedar Heights (which is technically on Garden of the Gods treaty land) has been enforcing arbitrary rules which keep the people off the people’s land.

The rich folks have had the National Forest set aside as a publicly subsidized private playground for them and their snot-nosed brats.

Police Chief Richard ‘Liars’ Myers

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In the last week I have had 3 opportunities to see the new Colorado Springs police chief, Richard Myers, do his job as public relations head of the law enforcement division of the Springs City Government. Because of what I have seen of him in a little less than one week, I feel that Myers is totally deserving of having ‘Liars’ Myers become his new nickname.

Having testified at a city council meeting post the police attack on the peace contingent attending the city promoted St Patrick’s Day Parade, I received an invitation to attend a meeting held last week with Lionel Rivera, the mayor of our city, and other top officials of city government including the police chief, Myers, himself. This came about because I had stated at a city council meeting that I felt that the personal security of me and my family was endangered by the actions taken by the police at the St Pat’s Day Parade.

These police are employees of city government and receive their direction from city government, therefore I had informed the municipal government of Colorado Springs in my testimony, that I held them personally responsible for the uncalled on police assault on our peaceful group, and I asked them to take personal responsibility for what had happened. The assaulting actions of the police had threatened me and my family with physical harm and/ or unlawful arrest during that parade, and their behavior needed to be changed in the future for me and others to feel in any way safe.

At this meeting, Chief Richard Myers and others of the city government attending, had assured us of the pro-peace community, that the police and city government were only concerned that ALL citizens would have their safety assured (even us), and asked us to help work with them to help bring that about in the future. They made great effort to assure of us of their supposed sincere concern that we, too, be kept safe from assault by those who might disagree with us. They assured us that the altercation had been an embarrassment to the city, and that they had a desire to work together with us instead of against us in the future.

I must say, that this appeared to us as pretense on their part, since we had not been in the least endangered by anybody other than the police themselves at the parade. They ambushed us there, and seven of us continued to have our security endangered, since the city and the police insisted on pressing criminal charges on these seven of our friends, even though it was the police’s own use of uncalled force that was at issue. Never the less, we agreed with them to work together to stop this abuse of police force from further becoming an even more hardened pattern of local law enforcement in the future.

Some few hours later I then attended a projected forum held at a nursing home, that was to have been a part of conciliation court ordered as settlement for a previous attack by the police on a group of peaceful protesters at Palmer Park way back in the year 2003. The court had ruled against the city of Colorado Springs, where the police had tear gassed and assaulted people in an unlawful manner while protesting the beginning of the Iraqi War. The court had ordered that the police and the citizen plaintiffs against the police assault of 2003, hold a joint forum together in order that the police could help absolve themselves of their guilt in this uncalled for police attack on peacefully mobilized citizens, and extend a discussion to help assure that nothing similar would once again occur. Of course, it already had.

What happened at this planned court settlement forum, is that when the plaintiffs showed up to attend this event (most arriving from Boulder), the city of Colorado Springs and their police had taken it upon themselves to give themselves the power to have the final word in how this event would be condensed and edited for a later official release to the public. The plaintiffs said that this was contrary to what was agreed on previously through the court, and that they would not participate with a farce. Attendees from the local peace community then walked out, too, when the police and city encouraged us to take the plaintiffs place on the panel assembled for this forum. Talk about dishonesty here!

Actually only one fool answered the police/ city call to participate on the supposed peace community panel for this forum. The forum did not actually much get off at this point, and was terminated within minutes. Nobody from the peace community wanted to be tagged as scabbing on the plaintiffs who had been victims of the police back then.

Move to just three days later. The mayor and his police chief, Richard ‘Liars’ Myers, together had put on the tail end of the city government meeting agenda the official telling of the tales by the police ‘investigation’ of itself. They had not informed us of that, and had planned to pretty much be alone with the press to try and convict ( in the press) the Seven pro-peace folk facing criminal charges.

What makes this so reprehensible, is that they had spent, and would spend also with this report, much time accusing the St Pat’s Day Parade peace participants of having engaged in dishonesty and trickery. Further, they had repeatedly told us in our private meeting the week before supposedly aimed towards obtaining community-city government-police reconciliation, that none amongst themselves could comment on events relating to the St Pat’s Day Parade arrests. So what happens now?

Here, at the city council meeting where nobody from amongst us could counter until the day after, the new police chief, Richard ‘Liars’ Myers gave about 20 minutes of detail by detail comments before the public about the arrests. His account was so full of lies and distortions, that it would be impossible to even begin to detail them here.

Suffice it to say, that after pretending several days earlier to be holding a discussion with us where he and other police present told all of us that they could not comment or respond due to it somehow being counter to due legal process if they did so , that ‘Liars’ Myers then went ahead and did just that, and nobody in the city council saw fit to tell him that this was wrong and dishonest after having pretended that this was against police rules and regulations to enter comment about matters being currently discussed in court.

This is total sabotage of any effort to build public trust in the police. This is a new police chief whose only comments before the city council were lies, distortions, and denial of any police responsibility for their excess at the St Pat’s Day Parade. Instead of admitting that the police had used force when it was absolutely not necessary, he pointed the finger at the pro-peace participants who were roughed up and criminally charged. True, he did also point a finger, for a sec, at the official organizer of the event, John O’Donnell. This was supposed to impress the public as being even handed, it is supposed. Myers said that O’Donnell could have responded differently, which is as comical an understatement as any I have ever heard.

He whined about 35 cops on duty that day as not being enough. Oh brother! They could have policed that event with 3 police, and not 35 and the results would have been much, much better. What a self serving pile of nonsense we heard.

The most interesting part of the session was when several council members tried to figure out just who in the city was in charge of issuing the permit to John O’Donnell, supposed private organizer of this event, to hold the parade through downtown streets? The answer? Why the city police themselves. Go figure? It turns out that the city government of Colorado Springs is hiding behind their police who are hiding behind John O’Donnell, the contracted out organizer for the city, who then turns out to be directed by the city and city government regulations themselves! And then this circle of irresponsibility points their joint index finger at the private citizenry for being supposedly deceptive! It kind of takes the cake.

The city government of Colorado Springs is responsible to hold their police in check. They will not be able to do it hiding behind the phony smiles and lies of Police Chief Richard ‘Liars’ Myers. They should release to the public the official police transcripts of communications between them and parade organizers. There the truth stands, and it is not like the official smoke screen version at all. Meanwhile, there is little reason to pretend to work together with Police Chief ‘Liars’ Myers. He lost our confidence in him being an honest player in a little less than a week.

LA police attack peaceful May Day rally

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We are not alone in Colorado Springs of having a pattern of police abuse of citizens exercising their right to assemble peacefully. This Tuesday Los Angeles saw a police ambush of the predominantly Hispanic crowd during the May Day rally there.

See this youtube video for good footage of this May Day attack Also see Video as police go after cameraman and kick him to ground. And less one think that this police violence in LA is anything less than routine, then check out this video of the LA police in action in 2006.

However, there is city government condemnation in LA of what happened there May Day, unlike with how Colorado Spring’s city government is currently relating to how its police have acted in their attacks on peaceful citizens in events here.

150,000 march through downtown Chicago

Israel obstinate

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PLOMore nations gave formal recognition to the PLO, a terrorist group, than to Israel. Thus more people thought the Palestinian Liberation Organization had a “right to exist” than did Israel, a chunk of Arab land appropriated to make a Jewish State. To date Israel has rejected 70 UN resolutions against its actions. I think it bears repeating them, lest typifying Israel’s behavior as illegal, be dismissed as a rant.

# 1. General Assembly Resolution 181 (1947): the 1947 Partition plan of Palestine and the creation of Israel.
# 2. General Assembly Resolution 194 (1947): Palestinian Refugees have the right to return to their homes in Israel.
# 3. Resolution 106 (1955): condemns Israel for Gaza raid.
# 4. Resolution 111 (1956): condemns Israel for raid on Syria that killed fifty-six people.
# 5. Resolution 127 (1958): recommends Israel suspend its no-man’s zone’ in Jerusalem.
# 6. Resolution 162 (1961): urges Israel to comply with UN decisions.
# 7. Resolution 171 (1962): determines flagrant violations by Israel in its attack on Syria.
# 8. Resolution 228 (1966): censures Israel for its attack on Samu in the West Bank, then under Jordanian control.
# 9. Resolution 237 (1967): urges Israel to allow return of new 1967 Palestinian refugees.
# 10. Resolution 242 (1967): Israel’s occupation of Palestine is Illegal.
# 11. Resolution 248 (1968): condemns Israel for its massive attack on Karameh in Jordan.
# 12. Resolution 250 (1968): calls on Israel to refrain from holding military parade in Jerusalem.
# 13. Resolution 251 (1968): deeply deplores Israeli military parade in Jerusalem in defiance of Resolution 250.
# 14. Resolution 252 (1968): declares invalid Israel’s acts to unify Jerusalem as Jewish capital.
# 15. Resolution 256 (1968): condemns Israeli raids on Jordan as flagrant violation.
# 16. Resolution 259 (1968): deplores Israel’s refusal to accept UN mission to probe occupation.
# 17. Resolution 262 (1968): condemns Israel for attack on Beirut airport.
# 18. Resolution 265 (1969): condemns Israel for air attacks for Salt in Jordan.
# 19. Resolution 267 (1969): censures Israel for administrative acts to change the status of Jerusalem.
# 20. Resolution 270 (1969): condemns Israel for air attacks on villages in southern Lebanon.
# 21. Resolution 271 (1969): condemns Israel’s failure to obey UN resolutions on Jerusalem.
# 22. Resolution 279 (1970): demands withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon.
# 23. Resolution 280 (1970): condemns Israeli’s attacks against Lebanon.
# 24. Resolution 285 (1970): demands immediate Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon.
# 25. Resolution 298 (1971): deplores Israel’s changing of the status of Jerusalem.
# 26. Resolution 313 (1972): demands that Israel stop attacks against Lebanon.
# 27. Resolution 316 (1972): condemns Israel for repeated attacks on Lebanon.
# 28. Resolution 317 (1972): deplores Israel’s refusal to release.
# 29. Resolution 332 (1973): condemns Israel’s repeated attacks against Lebanon.
# 30. Resolution 337 (1973): condemns Israel for violating Lebanon’s sovereignty.
# 31. Resolution 347 (1974): condemns Israeli attacks on Lebanon.
# 32. General Assembly Resolution 3236 (1974): affirms the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people in Palestine to self-determination without external interference and to national independence and sovereignty.
# 33. Resolution 425 (1978): calls on Israel to withdraw its forces from Lebanon.
# 34. Resolution 427 (1978): calls on Israel to complete its withdrawal from Lebanon.
# 35. Resolution 444 (1979): deplores Israel’s lack of cooperation with UN peacekeeping forces.
# 36. Resolution 446 (1979): determines that Israeli settlements are a serious obstruction to peace and calls on Israel to abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention.
# 37. Resolution 450 (1979): calls on Israel to stop attacking Lebanon.
# 38. Resolution 452 (1979): calls on Israel to cease building settlements in occupied territories.
# 39. Resolution 465 (1980): deplores Israel’s settlements and asks all member states not to assist its settlements program.
# 40. Resolution 467 (1980): strongly deplores Israel’s military intervention in Lebanon.
# 41. Resolution 468 (1980): calls on Israel to rescind illegal expulsions of two Palestinian mayors and a judge and to facilitate their return.
# 42. Resolution 469 (1980): strongly deplores Israel’s failure to observe the council’s order not to deport Palestinians.
# 43. Resolution 471 (1980): expresses deep concern at Israel’s failure to abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention.
# 44. Resolution 476 (1980): reiterates that Israel’s claim to Jerusalem are null and void.
# 45. Resolution 478 (1980): censures (Israel) in the strongest terms for its claim to Jerusalem in its Basic Law.
# 46. Resolution 484 (1980): declares it imperative that Israel re-admit two deported Palestinian mayors.
# 47. Resolution 487 (1981): strongly condemns Israel for its attack on Iraq’s nuclear facility.
# 48. Resolution 497 (1981): decides that Israel’s annexation of Syria’s Golan Heights is null and void and demands that Israel rescinds its decision forthwith.
# 49. Resolution 498 (1981): calls on Israel to withdraw from Lebanon.
# 50. Resolution 501 (1982): calls on Israel to stop attacks against Lebanon and withdraw its troops.
# 51. Resolution 509 (1982): demands that Israel withdraw its forces forthwith and unconditionally from Lebanon.
# 52. Resolution 515 (1982): demands that Israel lift its siege of Beirut and allow food supplies to be brought in.
# 53. Resolution 517 (1982): censures Israel for failing to obey UN resolutions and demands that Israel withdraw its forces from Lebanon.
# 54. Resolution 518 (1982): demands that Israel cooperate fully with UN forces in Lebanon.
# 55. Resolution 520 (1982): condemns Israel’s attack into West Beirut.
# 56. Resolution 573 (1985): condemns Israel vigorously for bombing Tunisia in attack on PLO headquarters.
# 57. Resolution 587 (1986): takes note of previous calls on Israel to withdraw its forces from Lebanon and urges all parties to withdraw.
# 58. Resolution 592 (1986): strongly deplores the killing of Palestinian students at Bir Zeit University by Israeli troops.
# 59. Resolution 605 (1987): strongly deplores Israel’s policies and practices denying the human rights of Palestinians.
# 60. Resolution 607 (1988): calls on Israel not to deport Palestinians and strongly requests it to abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention.
# 61. Resolution 608 (1988): deeply regrets that Israel has defied the United Nations and deported Palestinian civilians.
# 62. Resolution 636 (1989): deeply regrets Israeli deportation of Palestinian civilians.
# 63. Resolution 641 (1989): deplores Israel’s continuing deportation of Palestinians.
# 64. Resolution 672 (1990): condemns Israel for violence against Palestinians at the Haram Al-Sharif/Temple Mount.
# 65. Resolution 673 (1990): deplores Israel’s refusal to cooperate with the United Nations.
# 66. Resolution 681 (1990): deplores Israel’s resumption of the deportation of Palestinians.
# 67. Resolution 694 (1991): deplores Israel’s deportation of Palestinians and calls on it to ensure their safe and immediate return.
# 68. Resolution 726 (1992): strongly condemns Israel’s deportation of Palestinians.
# 69. Resolution 799 (1992): strongly condemns Israel’s deportation of 413 Palestinians and calls for their immediate return.
# 70. Resolution 1397 (2002): affirms a vision of a region where two states, Israel and Palestine, live side by side within secure and recognized borders.
# 71. General Assembly Resolution ES-10/15 (2004): declares the wall built inside the occupied territories as contrary to international law and asks Israel to demolish it.

Why should Bush and Blair be telling Sudan what to do?

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Bush and Blair have begun to order Sudan around. Do this or we will wage war on you. But why on earth do some of us seem to think that Bush and Blair have the right to intervene in Sudan? Don’t tell us that it is to stop genocide, PLEASE! The simple call to make is to just demand that the US, British, and any other colonialists just stay altogether out of Sudan’s affairs. And stay out of the affairs of all of Africa, too.

If you are worried about genocide, then do something about your own damn governments role in causing genocides around the planet first. Get them out of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, as well as Eastern Europe. That”s the best way to be spending your time, Liberals. Otherwise you end up in bed with people like John Negroponte. You should be ashamed of yourselves for calling for imperialist intervention into other countries’ affairs. There is nothing humanitarian or progressive about that at all.

Out of Congo and into Sudan?

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Today’s news has John Negroponte, the US point man for its interventions in Africa, getting the Sudanese government to allow US proxy troops into the Darfur region. Meanwhile, in Congo, US proxy troops under the UN Security Council command, have decided to stay one month longer in that country. And meanwhile, the scandal of US directed torture and invasion continues to unfold in the news coming from the Horn of Africa, as well over a hundred thousand Somalis have been forcerd to flee for their lives from the capital of Somalia alone.

The US and its forces are now all over the continent of Africa ‘directing the traffic’ of war, and clueless George and his neocon gang haven’t the beginning idea of how to bring about any long term stability anywhere in that region. That’s where the US antiwar movement should help, by simply demanding that the US and its European allies vacate ALL their African activities. That’s the long term solution for Africa’s problems, and the sooner the better. The majority of Latin Americans want the US to stay out of their political, military, and economic affairs, and so do the majority of Africans.

How the US and its allies stole children in El Salvador

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Many Americans are somewhat aware that the Argentinian allies of the US once stole babies from mothers that they had imprisoned, tortured, and then murdered. Those babies were then given to families of the leaders of the Argentinian military and government itself! This is an international scandal that still effects how many people perceive Argentinian society to this very day. It is a horrible legacy of the Dirty War that the US and its ally, the Argentinian government, waged on the Latin American Left.

In El Salvador, as in Guatemala and Honduras, too, the allies of the US engaged in the same sort of war crime; the stealing of children from their parents. Some of these children ended up in the US, others in Europe, and others were found dead, or inside El Salvador with families other than their natural ones. The New York Times has a recent story about one such child that as an adult has just relocated her natural family with the help of an organization called Pro-Busqueda. Check out their website for more info on their work.

Obama’s chance in hell

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Barack Obama’s people are courting us to promote their man on NMT. Have they been reading us? “Come to an appearance!” Maybe they’re counting on us being converted by mesmerism. Their man’s a grass-roots Howard Dean phenome they say, of whole cloth I say.

What a singularly unqualified candidate! He may be Dale Carnegie behind the podium but what’s Obama done beside give a speech at the DNC and win a barely contested senate seat? The poster child was key to the Jerry Lewis Telethon, but we didn’t expect him to run it.

If Barack Obama wants to govern, he could start now! He was elected to the Senate, isn’t there anything he can do there? What’s Obama going to do as president, campaign for Secretary General?

It’s not like there’s a shortage of legislating to do in DC right now. Where is Obama on any of the issues? Are his handlers cautioning him to stay away from the action lest he get hurt? Are they forgetting why he was put into the game to begin with?

Obama could be holding tight to Congress’s purse strings, or countering Bush’s inanities, or bringing public light to Valerie Plame or Sibel Edmonds. His office could be issuing subpeona after subpeona, or calling for impeachment. Or not, apparently. If a junior senator can’t rise above his seniors, whatever does he think he can do in the Executive Branch? We’re supposed to expect what from a president in Obama’s clothing?

Bush’s token roundup of ‘legal immigrants’

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It didn’t make The Gazette, but Bush’s announced token roundup of 3 ‘legal’ immigrants yesterday is noteworthy for what it says about the great immigration ‘debate’ the Far Right wants us all to engage in. Their script goes that legal immigration is OK with them, but they just want us all to stop the undocumented from flooding our country with their ‘alien hordes’.

But just who are many of these ‘legal’ immigrants that the US government gives visas to? Do you really want them next door to you, instead of some nice foreign farmworker, janitor, or construction worker and their family, that the US likes to use then discard? If we knew the full details, I think that most of us would be more likely to support supposedly illegal immigration long before we would want to support US government sanctioned legal immigration.

The 3 immigrants arrested and jailed by the government are all 3 ex military in their respective South American countries, who were issued US visas based on they’re having been seen as being CIA assets at one time. Now, since they are giving the US bad press in Latin America, the US government is betraying these murderers, torturers, and war criminals they previously had welcomed with open arms to become your next door neighbors and mine.

But don’t for a minute be fooled. There are tens of thousands more of this type of ‘immigrant’ still living amongst us. I bet a good portion of the Vietnamese restaurants in this country have owners that came from such shady backgrounds as the 3 above did, for example.

So don’t be so quick to jump on the gun about the dangers of the supposed ‘illegal’ immigrant, as compared to the ‘legals’. Thank of who is doing the evaluation of who is to be made legal, and to who is then judging whom are to be made out to be criminals? A criminal government like the one running the US these days is likely to welcome their worst foreign criminal buddies into our country, while hunting down good people who would be true assets to America like they were mere wild animals we have to protect ourselves from.

Treat all the immigrants amongst us with dignity, whether they have paperwork are not. And let’s protest an immigration policy that routinely admits some of the world’s worst criminals to live amongst us, all with legal paperwork totally in order all the while mistreating immigrant families and often tearing them apart, like how was done to the slaves of old.