In talk reminiscent of how the US may militarily occupy Iraq and Afghanistan for decades, the US dominated and controlled UN military is now talking about how it may militarily occupy Darfur for 10 years. ‘Saving Darfur’ is now in march it seems, and it is now obvious just what this actually means. We can see other examples of ‘saved’ places, like Haiti, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, East Timor, Congo, and all don’t look too saved at all, but just occupied by military troops. Darfur mission may last 10 years: UNAMID general
This raises the issues of how a real Antiwar Movement can be organized, with much of the organizations we presently have full of supporters of war controlling leadership positions in these supposedly pro Peace groups? Almost all the ‘leadership’ consists of Democratic Party voters, who vote for candidates that promote US militarism. Further, under the guise of being saintly non-violent types, much of the membership continues to support the idea of their government called on to ‘do things’ with US troops, in places like Afghanistan and Darfur. We have a supposed antiwar movement at present, that wants to dote on ‘the troops’ even.
Yes, the UN says it may occupy Darfur for 10 years. What a disaster! God save Sudan and all of its peoples. And let’s get these thugs in dove’s feathers out of Haiti, too! It’s time to wake up about the UN, if only the pacifist liberals ever will?
The ‘Save Darfur’ saviors often said that they were not promoting military intervention, but they lied to us. We knew they were lying all the time. And in local Peace group after another, many have been conned into promoting US and European military intervention under the idea that that would help stop a genocide, a sad replay of how many liberals ended up encouraging a war against Yugoslavia, also supposedly to stop a genocide. What those liberals and lost Leftists ended up doing was actually help pave the road to a a very real and ongoing US genocide against the Iraqi people.
Congratulations, Bleeding Hearts with Oh such good intentions! Unable to successfully mobilize to stop the US wars against Somalia, Afghanistan, the Palestinians, and Iraq, you have now successfully helped enable yet more US and European militarism, and this time into Africa! How fulfilled you must feel now?
Of course the real genocides will keep going on because your own government, which you have been calling on to ‘do something’, is the actual cause of most of them. Is it really all that hard to figure out? Not really.
The PPJPC is heading toward a Saint Pat’s Day Massacre this year due to it’s undemocratic and cliquish administration’s misleadership. Several members have spent their time in unreported and undisclosed meetings behind doors with various businessmen, policemen, and municipal government officials, all this done without any real review of these people’s personal actions.
The PPJPC board does not have any membership control of its activities at all, since its membership meets only once a year, and possibilities to discuss and review the supposed leadership’s decisions are negligible. So what has been planned for this year’s parade after all these side manipulations behind the scenes?
IMO it looks like an ambush of pacifist leaning sheep and a bloody massacre by the pro-war city government is being headed towards blindly by the PPJPC. I certainly will not bring my family to this event this year, as the leadership of the PPJPC appears to be totally inept at analyzing what is being set in motion against them. They repeatedly show their ineptness in protecting antiwar people from being abused and attacked in this city.
To briefly review, the city finally dropped all charges against last year’s PPJPC victims of the city’s police attack and wolfishly began to court the PPJPC participation in the parade this year, under a revised set of rules and regulations. The new rule is that ‘social issues’ will now at last be allowed, but that the PPJPC will only be allowed 35 paraders in their contingent, as will all the other pro-military groups participating, who will have hundreds combined marching in a myriad of different pro-military formations.
Now here is the kicker. This small contingent of misled, naive, and gullible PPJPCers, will then get to run the gauntlet of the majority pro-military spectators, who have had one year of steady propaganda and misinformation against proPeace paraders of last year’s parade, from the city’s daily paper, all its Right Wing blogs, and all its pro-military groupings. This is an setup that should have been obvious to anybody with much a brain, but somehow the PPJPC office crowd and the churchly pacifist type liberals that run the show there, think that all is somehow A-OK and accepting of them, and this all of a sudden without any misgivings from the past! Talk about gullible!
It looks bad at this point, as the ‘positive thinking’ mindset has taken totally ahold of the clique running the PPJPC. This parade is not going to be very pretty, and this crowd of self-serving ‘leaders’ that has been making the decisions without any membership input, will have only themselves to blame for the probable debacle that will occur. If you do decide to go, just be sure to keep your kids safe from what ensues.
America is getting to be something like Czarist Russia, where conspiracy theories swirled about people’s minds big time. Many ordinary Russians back then thought that there were all sorts of conspiracies to control the Czar, who was seen as almost a national icon, saint, and benevolent dad all wrapped up together. Of course he was none of those things. Still, people believed that he was, and that there were conspiracies galore to hijack this good man away from the people.
In America today, conspiracy theories are becoming the IN THING among many sectors of the population. Many nice liberals seem to be prone to fall for the various veins of betrayal and conspiracy thought. Many claim that The Truth is Not Being Told, etc. Yes, but it never is in fact, but the conspiracy fan thinks that this is something new and is caused by a band of conspirators in high power.
Conspiracies are real. There are multiple real conspiracies flying around our country at this very moment, down to the dog track level. But the liberal conspiracy fan, like the Russian peasant of old, fixates on usually only one idea. This idea becomes sort of an obsessive compulsive disorder fixated on political dirt, so to speak. The liberal conspiracy fan sees contamination, and those who do not agree with them are idiots and even part of the conspiracy to deny the political betrayal seen by mainly an elite core group of believers.
The conspiracy theorist believes in devils, Satanic plots, and zombies, who are not informed actors on the scene as they see themselves to be. Over on counter punch. org there is an interesting examination of the current state of this phenomena. within antiwar circles
Most liberals are naive to other thinking or to the insightful speeches of the socialist black activists of the 60’s. Stokely Carmichael saw the powerlessness of the liberal that other moderate Negro leaders wouldn’t attempt or couldn’t see.
The Black Panthers saw through the petty liberal ideology that always sought cooperation with the capitalists, or as Stokely put it, the oppressors. He talked of liberals and peace activists rejection of violence as a means to achieve real change. Real change defined as eliminating capitalism which is the very root of our dilemma. Is it that the progressive/liberal ideology is largely bankrupt? That it goes nowhere often and deceives its followers into static worn out Gandhi-Goodman, no alternative strategies that always succumb to the real power that is the fascists source of control? Violence? Yes is the answer.
Less a massive armed militant mobilization and a clean break from the stink that is capitalism, there will never be a fair social system that works for the vast working class population. And a re-education of our children away from fascisms model and as to the truth about democratic socialism.
“What we want to do for our people, the oppressed, is to begin to legitimize violence in their minds. So that for us violence against the oppressor will be expedient. This is very important, because we have all been brainwashed into accepting questions of moral judgment when violence is used against the oppressor.”
The Pitfalls of Liberalism
by Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) (From the book; “Stokely Speaks – From Black Power to Pan Africanism”)
Whenever one writes about a problem in the United States, especially concerning the racial atmosphere, the problem written about is usually black people that they are either extremist, irresponsible, or ideologically naive.
What we want to do here is to talk about white society, and the liberal segment of white society, because we want to prove the pitfalls of liberalism, that is, the pitfalls of liberals in their political thinking.
Whenever articles are written, whenever political speeches are given, or whenever analysis are made about a situation, it is assumed that certain people of one group, either the left or the right, the rich or the poor, the whites or the blacks, are causing polarization. The fact is that conditions cause polarization, and that certain people can act as catalysts to speed up the polarization; for example, Rap Brown or Huey Newton can be a catalyst for speeding up the polarization of blacks against whites in the United States, but the conditions are already there. George Wallace can speed up the polarization of white against blacks in America, but again, the conditions are already there.
Many people want to know why, out of the entire white segment of society, we want to criticize the liberals. We have to criticize them because they represent the liaison between other groups, between the oppressed and the oppressor. The liberal tries to become an arbitrator, but he is incapable of solving the problems. He promises the oppressor that he can keep the oppressed under control; that he will stop them from becoming illegal (in this case illegal means violent). At the same time, he promises the oppressed that he will be able to alleviate their suffering – in due time. Historically, of course, we know this is impossible, and our era will not escape history.
The most perturbing question for the liberal is the question of violence. The liberals initial reaction to violence is to try to convince the oppressed that violence is an incorrect tactic, that violence will not work, that violence never accomplishes anything. The Europeans took America through violence and through violence they established the most powerful country in the world. Through violence they maintain the most powerful country in the world. It is absolutely absurd for one to say that violence never accomplishes anything.
Today power is defined by the amount of violence one can bring against one’s enemy – that is how you decide how powerful a country is; power is defined not by the number of people living in a country, it is not based on the amount of resources to be found in that country, it is not based upon the good will of the leaders or the majority of that people. When one talks about a powerful country, one is talking precisely about the amount of violence that that country can heap upon its enemy. We must be clear in our minds about that. Russia is a powerful country, not because there are so many millions of Russians but because Russia has great atomic strength, great atomic power, which of course is violence. America can unleash an infinite amount of violence, and that is the only way one considers American powerful. No one considers Vietnam powerful, because Vietnam cannot unleash the same amount of violence. Yet if one wanted to define power as the ability to do, it seems to me that Vietnam is much more powerful than the United States. But because we have been conditioned by Western thoughts today to equate power with violence, we tend to do that at all times, except when the oppressed begin to equate power with violence….then it becomes an “incorrect” equation.
Most societies in the West are not opposed to violence. The oppressor is only opposed to violence when the oppressed talk about using violence against the oppressor. Then the question of violence is raised as the incorrect means to attain one’s ends. Witness, for example, that Britain, France, and the United States have time and time again armed black people to fight their enemies for them. France armed Senegalese in World War 2, Britain of course armed Africa and the West Indies, and the United States always armed the Africans living in the United States. But that is only to fight against their enemy, and the question of violence is never raised. The only time the United States or England or France will become concerned about the question of violence is when the people whom they armed to kill their enemies will pick up those arms against them. For example, practically every country in the West today is giving guns either to Nigeria or the Biafra. They do not mind giving those guns to those people as long as they use them to kill each other, but they will never give them guns to kill another white man or to fight another white country.
The way the oppressor tries to stop the oppressed from using violence as a means to attain liberation is to raise ethical or moral questions about violence. I want to state emphatically here that violence in any society is neither moral nor is it ethical. It is neither right nor is it wrong. It is just simply a question of who has the power to legalize violence.
It is not a question of whether it is right to kill or it is wrong to kill; killing goes on. Let me give an example. If I were in Vietnam, if I killed thirty yellow people who were pointed out to me by white Americans as my enemy, I would be given a medal. I would become a hero. I would have killed America’s enemy – but America’s enemy is not my enemy. If I were to kill thirty white policemen in Washington, D.C. who have been brutalizing my people and who are my enemy, I would get the electric chair. It is simply a question of who has the power to legalize violence. In Vietnam our violence is legalized by white America. In Washington, D.C., my violence is not legalized, because Africans living in Washington, D.C., do not have the power to legalize their violence.
I used that example only to point out that the oppressor never really puts an ethical or moral judgment on violence, except when the oppressed picks up guns against the oppressor. For the oppressor, violence is simply the expedient thing to do.
Is it not violent for a child to go to bed hungry in the richest country in the world? I think that is violent. But that type of violence is so institutionalized that it becomes a part of our way of life. Not only do we accept poverty, we even find it normal. And that again is because the oppressor makes his violence a part of the functioning society. But the violence of the oppressed becomes disruptive. It is disruptive to the ruling circles of a given society. And because it is disruptive it is therefore very easy to recognize, and therefore it becomes the target of all those who in fact do not want to change the society. What we want to do for our people, the oppressed, is to begin to legitimize violence in their minds. So that for us violence against the oppressor will be expedient. This is very important, because we have all been brainwashed into accepting questions of moral judgment when violence is used against the oppressor.
If I kill in Vietnam I am allowed to go free; it has been legalized for me. I has not been legitimatized in my mind. I must legitimatize it in my own mind, and even though it is legal I may never legitimatize in in my own mind. There are a lot of people who came back from Vietnam, who have killed where killing was legalized, but who still have psychological problems over the fact that they have killed. We must understand, however, that to legitimatize killing in one’s mind does not make it legal. For example, I have completely legitimatized in my mind the killing of white policemen who terrorize black communities. However, if I get caught killing a white policeman, I have to go to jail, because I do not as yet have the power to legalize that type of killing. The oppressed must begin to legitimatize that type of violence in the minds of our people, even though it is illegal at this time, and we have to keep striving every chance we get to attain that end.
Now, I think the biggest problem with the white liberal in America, and perhaps the liberal around the world, is that his primary task is to stop confrontation, stop conflicts, not to redress grievances, but to stop confrontation. And this is very clear, it must become very, very clear in all our minds. Because once we see what the primary task of the liberal is, then we can see the necessity of not wasting time with him. His primary role is to stop confrontation. Because the liberal assumes a priori that a confrontation is not going to solve the problem. This of course, is an incorrect assumption. We know that.
We need not waste time showing that this assumption of the liberals is clearly ridiculous. I think that history has shown that confrontation in many cases has resolved quite a number of problems – look at the Russian revolution, the Cuban revolution, the Chinese revolution. In many cases, stopping confrontation really means prolonging suffering.
The liberal is so preoccupied with stopping confrontation that he usually finds himself defending and calling for law and order, the law and order of the oppressor. Confrontation would disrupt the smooth functioning of the society and so the politics of the liberal leads him into a position where he finds himself politically aligned with the oppressor rather than with the oppressed.
The reason the liberal seeks to stop confrontation – and this is the second pitfall of liberalism – is that his role, regardless of what he says, is really to maintain the status quo, rather than to change it. He enjoys economic stability from the status quo and if he fights for change he is risking his economic stability. What the liberal is really saying is that he hopes to bring about justice and economic stability for everyone through reform, that somehow the society will be able to keep expanding without redistribution the wealth.
This leads to the third pitfall of the liberal. The liberal is afraid to alienate anyone, and therefore he is incapable of presenting any clear alternative.
Look at the past presidential campaign in the United States between Nixon, Wallace, and Humphrey. Nixon and Humphrey, because they try to consider themselves some sort of liberals, did not offer any alternatives. But Wallace did, he offered clear alternatives. Because Wallace was not afraid to alienate, he was not afraid to point out who had caused errors in the past, and who should be punished. The liberals are afraid to alienate anyone in society. They paint such a rosy picture of society and they tell us that while things have been bad in the past, somehow they can become good in the future without restructuring society at all.
What the liberal really wants is to bring about change which will not in any way endanger his position. The liberal says, “It is a fact that you are poor, and it is a fact that some people are rich but we can make you rich without affecting those people who are rich”. I do not know how poor people are going to get economic security without affecting the rich in a given country, unless one is going to exploit other peoples. I think that if we followed the logic of the liberal to its conclusion we would find that all we can get from it is that in order for a society to become suitable we must begin to exploit other peoples.
Fourth, I do not think that liberals understand the difference between influences and power, and the liberals get confused seeking influence rather than power. The conservatives on the right wing, or the fascists, understand power, though, and they move to consolidate power while the liberal pushes for influence.
Let us examine the period before civil rights legislation in the United States. There was a coalition of the labor movement, the student movement, and the church for the passage of certain civil rights legislation; while these groups formed a broad liberal coalition, and while they were able to exert their influence to get certain legislation passed, they did not have the power to implement the legislation once it became law. After they got certain legislation passed they had to ask the people whom they were fighting to implement the very things that they had not wanted to implement in the past. The liberal fights for influence to bring about change, not for the power to implement the change. If one really wants to change a society, one does not fight to influence change and then leave the change to someone else to bring about. If the liberals are serious they must fight for power and not for influence.
These pitfalls are present in his politics because the liberal is part of the oppressor. He enjoys the status quo while he himself may not be actively oppressing other people, he enjoys the fruits of that oppression. And he rhetorically tries to claim the he is disgusted with the system as it is.
While the liberal is part of the oppressor, he is the most powerless segment within that group. Therefore when he seeks to talk about change, he always confronts the oppressed rather than the oppressor. He does not seek to influence the oppressor, he seeks to influence the oppressed. He says to the oppressed, time and time again, “You don’t need guns, you are moving too fast, you are too radical, you are too extreme.” He never says to the oppressor, “You are too extreme in your treatment of the oppressed,” because he is powerless among the oppressors, even if he is part of that group; but he has influence, or, at least, he is more powerful than the oppressed, and he enjoys this power by always cautioning, condemning, or certainly trying to direct and lead the movements of the oppressed.
To keep the oppressed from discovering his pitfalls the liberal talks about humanism. He talks about individual freedom, about individual relationships. One cannot talk about human idealism in a society that is run by fascists. If one wants a society that is in fact humanistic, one has to ensure that the political entity, the political state, is one that will allow humanism. And so if one really wants a state where human idealism is a reality, one has to be able to control the political state. What the liberal has to do is to fight for power, to go for the political state and then, once the liberal has done this, he will be able to ensure the type of human idealism in the society that he always talks about.
Because of the above reasons, because the liberal is incapable of bringing about the human idealism which he preaches, what usually happens is that the oppressed, whom he has been talking to finally becomes totally disgusted with the liberal and begins to think that the liberal has been sent to the oppressed to misdirect their struggle, to rule them. So whether the liberal likes it or not, he finds himself being lumped, by the oppressed, with the oppressor – of course he is part of that group. The final confrontation, when it does come about, will of course include the liberal on the side of the oppressor. Therefore if the oppressed really wants a revolutionary change, he has no choice but to rid himself of those liberals in his rank.
Kwame Ture
(aka Stokely Carmichael)
Kwame Ture was born Stokely Carmichael on June 29, 1941 in Port of Spain, Trinidad, the son of Adolphus and Mabel Carmichael. He immigrated to the United States in 1952 with his family and settled in New York, New York. He graduated from the academically elite Bronx High School of Science in 1960 and made the decision to attend Howard University. Howard University conferred on him a Bachelor of Science Degree in Philosophy in 1964.
It was while in Washington that Stokely became deeply involved in the “Freedom Rides,” “Sit-Ins,” and other demonstrations to challenge segregation in American society. He participated with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Nonviolent Action Group (NAG). He later joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and was elected its National Chairman in June 1966. While in Greenville, Mississippi, he along with his friend and colleague Willie Ricks, rallied the cry “Black Power” which became the most popular slogan of the Civil Rights era. Consequently, he became the primary spokesman for the Black Power ideology. In 1967, he coauthored with Charles V. Hamilton, Black Power, the Politics of Liberation in America. That same year, Stokely was disassociated from SNCC and he became the Prime Minister of the Black Panthers, headquartered in Oakland, California. He soon became disenchanted with the Panthers and moved to Guinea, West Africa.
While residing in Africa, Stokely Carmichael changed his name to “Kwame Ture” to honor Kwame Nkrumah, who led Ghana to independence from Britain, and, Sekou Toure, who was President of Guinea and his mentor. For more than 30 years, Ture led the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party and devoted the rest of his life to Pan Africanism, a movement to uproot the inequities of racism for people of African descent and to develop an economic and cultural coalition among the African Diaspora.
In 1998, at the age of 57, Kwame Ture died from complications of prostate cancer. To the end he answered the telephone, “ready for the revolution.” His marriage to Miriam Makeba and Guinean physician Marlyatou Barry ended in divorce. He has one son, Bokar, who resides in the United States.
All around America there are bleeding hearted liberals running small businesses… small social service businesses. As a general rule, too, liberals don’t run businesses very well. They’re too damn dumbly soft and sweet, that’s why. So we can begin to understand why all these ‘reform groups’ (like the local area’s Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission.. for just one example) don’t make much profit for the people they claim to be serving (even as they keep them out in droves from their social advocacy groups, run as small ‘businesses’).
Here is the type of thing I am talking about,
…from an article appearing in The Nation…
‘Check off the boxes, copy the paragraph from two years ago, mail it in. As an election year approaches, I again face the piles of questionnaires that progressive organizations use to evaluate public officials. Environmentalists, feminists, campaign finance reformers, housing advocates and labor unions have all come to rely on these lists of our positions–often on issues that never even come up for a vote. It should come as no surprise that, for the most part, all we get out of this cumbersome process is a long line of “checklist liberals” who answer correctly but do little to advance the progressive causes that underlie the questionnaires.’
OK, OK! So the rest of the article is not very good, much like the liberal organizations themselves, and The Nation Magazine is not very good, either. It was still a good and insightful first paragraph of an article at least!
And the commentary reminded me of all those fund raising letters, free stamps with animal pictures on them, and ‘surveys’ to find out my learned opinions, etc. Reminds me of all the wasted time sitting in meetings where bleeding hearted liberals talk about running THEIR small businesses. You see? The bleeding hearted liberals are most always the ‘owners’ of small socially aware businesses calling themselves community’ groups, which these groups having small office staffs then try to run the group like it was a church or tiny corner store of some sort.
Yes, the small office staff always begin to behave as if they were real owners of the store, much in the same way that some convenience store minimum wage workers will try to stop a robber of some sort or other, by risking their own lives over pennies that supposedly belong to the stock owners instead. These small would be owners can snarl and bite quite hard if given an opportunity to do so. They often overpower the petty ‘robbers’ of their unit with their forceful indignations than can border on madness of sorts. Some times they get popped for being so dimwitted, too.
So what to do about all the PEACE and GREEN and SOCIAL JUSTICE groups’ ‘leaders’ acting in our name? They operate much as the Democratic Party does, which is to impede rather than progress the people forward.
The runners of these small businesses calling themselves ‘peace and justice’ outfits, most often see themselves not as an elected group of leaders for exploited workers struggling for justice and peace, but as a group of independent networkers and business operators, forcefully headed for making more profit for their own personal businesses, the social groups. They spend more time being angry at any of the lower levels of the ‘co-ops’ managed by themselves than at the power elites that cause the social injustice they are supposedly fighting against. When angered by the lower elements, their faces can become quite bulldog-like.
Recently a certain word has come into great popularity with this sort of manager owner of social cause… that word being the word SUSTAINABILITY. Why so popular this word, and with these people? It is because it strikes a chord with the small manager/owner and his small manager/owner mindset. They want to know if their small business is SUSTAINABLE and if their position as head of the operation is SUSTAINABLE most of all? SUSTAINABILITY is their biggest goal of them all. And now of course, corporate America wants to help them become SUSTAINABLE.
This sort of group run as a small business with paid staff who think themselves owners is a very huge impediment to any real social action taking place. The main technique of ‘the owners’ who are salaried is simply to eat up other people’s time. They know that they can out last them in energy by simply doing this, and can come out on top when actual decisions are to be made. In other words, they are well positioned to stifle.
Like owners of any corporation, ‘the owners’ of supposed social groups get paid real money for their time while the volunteers do not. Is this the model of a social action group that will get things done? Most certainly not. Unfortunately though, it is the model structure for liberals and their do-nothing liberalism everywhere today in America…. small groups with a paid ‘leader’ or two, spouting ‘good things’, and doing next to nothing besides appearing to be seeminglygood people.
At the recent meeting of the executive board of the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission, it was totally noticeable that nobody there had anything of a working class background. In fact, the idea of justice for workers is totally absent from this group with ‘justice’ in its name. Being so church-like, this group throws the word in as if it were a bone to the lower classes so next to being sweet dogs in the eyes of these nice people. They were about as working class in composition as the ACLU is!… to give an idea of what the meeting was actually like. Nobody was ‘angry’, just sad. Or happy when seemingly a crumb from real power is thrown in their direction. And at this meeting it had been.
The City of Colorado Springs was going to let the group march in the St Pat’s Day Parade! All Hallelujah, Jesus! But that is about more than this little essay can talk about for the time being. Just let it be said, that liberals running small businesses that should be action groups make my heart bleed. Bleeding hearted liberals make poor businessmen and the conservative business men will tear them to part. Antiwar groups should not be run like they are small businesses. Probably enough said at this point.
Today, I got a chance to listen in on as a local proponent of ‘the clash of civilizations‘ theory spouted his religious like beliefs. He wasn’t talking about how Christian America has to stop ‘Islamic fascism’. No, Joe was talking about the Democratic Party, and how its supposedly epic clash with Republican idiocy was the end all and be all issue in America.
Like all these true believers in the ‘clash of civilizations’, Joe is totally convinced that he is defending the true values of civilization from total barbarians. Substitute Republicans for Muslims, and one can get a true idea of how important this self view is to Democratic Joe as he apes the Republicans he despises so. He is a real player in the world of politics, and those who do not understand this ‘clash of civilizations’ are considered by him to be mere anarchists.
You see, anarchists reject the need to have the true organization needed by the defenders of civilization to defend themselves from the Republican barbarians, which is a ‘revitalized Democratic Party’. Anarchists are ignorant enablers to the conservatized defenders of ‘liberalism’ like Joe, just like liberals are ignorant enablers of ‘Islamic fascism’ to crazy Right Winged Christians like Pat Robertson, or Mitt Romney.
Listening to Joe is a little like listening to Glenn Beck talking about Muslims when Joe gets going about the nefarious Republicans and how we need to get the Democratic Party into fighting form to cut them bastards down to size! Joe sees himself as the only and most knowledgeable knight in the fight to defend civilization. The clash of civilizations is as real to Joe as it is to Samuel P. Huntington. In fact, it defines his total view of the universe.
Liberal Joe is a conservative, you see. He will always be fighting to make a corporate party the people’s party…. in order to fight against the corporate party… The Republicans. Now isn’t that weird?
Liberal Joe is a defender of civilization from the barbarian influence. He is all that stands between liberty and the backwardness of Republican retards and degenerates running our country. Liberal Joe is IT. He is all THAT. Liberal Joe is a Democrat Party hag till the day he dies, even if the DP is actually more like the Republican Party than anything else. That doesn’t register with Democratic Party Joe though.
Joe is a religious fanatic even as he spouts his secularist credentials. Democratic Party Joe is a true believer. Democratic Party Joe is faithful to the end because his religious belief defines his self view.
Let’s fact it. American liberals are a total bunch of perpetual losers. They are a perpetual loser machine, and the reason why is that they are completely addicted to the Democratic Party, an apparatus that is more undemocratic than any Diebold voting machine in Florida could ever be.
The head honcho of the Democratic Party Leadership Council was on TV last night, and he assured his audience that he ‘has good ties to both Hillary and Barrack’. Well no shit Sherlock!
And the stupid Green Party ‘democrats’ are waiting, waiting, waiting…. Yawn… they’re out cold already. Liberalism is stupid, stupid, stupid, and not even God himself could save the stupid American liberal from him/herself. All they know how to do is vote, vote, vote. Other than that, they are totally decommissioned folk. ‘Green’ or donkey liberals???… they all be damned.
There is no anger in America, just dull dazed whining liberals who ‘don’t like Dubya’. They are the perfect match for dull dazed reactionary retards, that just don’t like Hillary because she is a cold calculating whore. This dichotomy is ‘politics’ in The Empire.
Inflated liberals, deflated liberals???? It makes no difference. Poor souls, bless them as they sneeze out their good will. Liberals offer no change in the future because they can only leap ahead into yet another of their ‘Anybody but the Republicans’ campaign. Even if they were to ‘win’, the liberal will get another Republican simply because that’s what they deserve.
Liberals or conservatives, America is a dead place. There is no hope at all for such a vacuous nation. We can look into Iraq and see the mirror of America’s soul, our American colony. And at the heart of the matter is that the sitting on their thumbs liberal, who is America’s conscience…. the whiny do-nothing liberal can do nothing but whine and vote, wine and vote.
The liberal will always fail to materialize. The liberal will always fail. The liberal will always be unhappy with the result. The liberal cannot change, nor cannot make CHANGE.
Socialism does not equal tyranny, unlike the claims and demagoguery of the capitalists. A true democratic Socialism and fair market system is a natural course for human society. It is free of predatory and parasitic capitalist schemes to dominate and exploit everyone and everything. It is decentralization of power distributed to citizens, as opposed to the fascist model that benefits from centralization and concentration of power. It can disperse wealth and enrich citizens if they can be de-programmed of their false worship and idolization of wealth as success and exploitation as the norm.
And it doesn’t have to be an exact model of Marx or Engels or Trotsky or Lenin. But it should include the takeover of production from the fascists with community worker councils in control. And the shift away from enslavement of the worlds workers by the bankers and through globalisation. And control of currency back to the citizens. The capitalists are middlemen who get in our way of a just fair society that we have the ability to create. It is they who have created all of the false propaganda about Socialism. They who choke by way of embargoes, sanctions, and political disruption, any countries attempt toward a just socialist society. Their domination as a minority over the majority cannot and should not stand any longer.
Here’s a good read. Dated but still valid. Enjoy. Also enjoy the many thorough and insightful articles on www.wsws.org
Socialism and Democracy James P. Cannon gave the following talk to a meeting at the Socialist Workers Party’s West Coast Vacation School, September 1, 1957. It was first published in the Fall 1957 International Socialist Review.
Comrades, I am glad to be here with you today, and to accept your invitation to speak on socialism and democracy. Before we can make real headway in the discussion of other important parts of the program, we have to find agreement on what we mean by socialism and what we mean by democracy, and how they are related to each other, and what we are going to say to the American workers about them.
Strange as it may seem, an agreement on these two simple, elementary points, as experience has already demonstrated, will not be arrived at easily. The confusion and demoralization created by Stalinism, and the successful exploitation of this confusion by the ruling capitalists of this country and all their agents and apologists, still hang heavily over all sections of the workers’ movement.
Shakespeare’s Mark Antony reminded us that evil quite often outlives its authors. That is true in the present case also. Stalin is dead; but the crippling influence of Stalinism on the minds of a whole generation of people who considered themselves socialists or communists lives after Stalin.
Now, of course, the Stalinists and their apologists have not created all the confusion in this country about the meaning of socialism, at least not directly. At every step the Stalinist work of befuddlement and demoralization, of debasing words into their opposite meanings, has been supported by reciprocal action of the same kind by the ruling capitalists and their apologists. They have never failed to take the Stalinists at their word, and to point to the Stalinist regime in the Soviet Union, with all of its horrors, and to say: “That is socialism. The American way of life is better.”
They have cynically accepted the Stalinist definition and have obligingly advertised the Soviet Union, with its grinding poverty and glaring inequality, with its ubiquitous police terror, frame-ups, mass murders and slave-labour camps, as a “socialist” order of society. They have utilized the crimes of Stalinism to prejudice the American workers against the very name of socialism. And worst of all, comrades, we have to recognise that this campaign has been widely successful, and that we have to pay for it. We cannot build a strong socialist movement in this country until we overcome this confusion in the minds of the American workers about the real meaning of socialism.
After all that has happened in the past quarter of a century, the American workers have become more acutely sensitive than ever before to the value and importance of democratic rights. That, in my opinion, is the progressive side of their reaction, which we should fully share. The horrors of fascism, as they were revealed in the ’30s, and which were never dreamed of by the socialists in the old days, and the no less monstrous crimes of Stalinism, which became public knowledge later—all this has inspired a fear and hatred of any kind of dictatorship in the minds of the American working class. And to the extent that the Stalinist dictatorship in Russia has been identified with the name of socialism, and that this identification has been taken as a matter of course, the American workers have been prejudiced against socialism. That’s the bitter truth, and it must be looked straight in the face.
The socialist movement in America will not advance again significantly until it regains the initiative and takes the offensive against capitalism and all its agents in the labour movement precisely on the issue of democracy.
The authentic socialist movement, as it was conceived by its founders and as it has developed over the past century, has been the most democratic movement in all history. No formulation of this question can improve on the classic statement of the Communist Manifesto, with which modern scientific socialism was proclaimed to the world in 1848. The Communist Manifesto said:
““All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority.”
The authors of the Communist Manifesto linked socialism and democracy together as end and means. The “self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority” cannot be anything else but democratic, if we understand by “democracy” the rule of the people, the majority. The Stalinist claim—that the task of reconstructing society on a socialist basis can be farmed out to a privileged and uncontrolled bureaucracy, while the workers remain without voice or vote in the process—is just as foreign to the thoughts of Marx and Engels, and of all their true disciples, as the reformist idea that socialism can be handed down to the workers by degrees by the capitalists who exploit them.
All such fantastic conceptions were answered in advance by the reiterated statement of Marx and Engels that “the emancipation of the working class is the task of the workers themselves.” That is the language of Marx and Engels—“the task of the workers themselves”. That was just another way of saying—as they said explicitly many times—that the socialist reorganization of society requires a workers’ revolution. Such a revolution is unthinkable without the active participation of the majority of the working class, which is itself the big majority of the population. Nothing could be more democratic than that.
Moreover, the great teachers did not limit the democratic action of the working class to the overthrow of bourgeois supremacy. They defined democracy as the form of governmental rule in the transition period between capitalism and socialism. It is explicitly stated in the Communist Manifesto—and I wonder how many people have forgotten this in recent years—“The first step”, said the Manifesto, “in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy.”
That is the way Marx and Engels formulated the first aim of the revolution—to make the workers the ruling class, to establish democracy, which, in their view, is the same thing. From this precise formulation it is clear that Marx and Engels did not consider the limited, formal democracy under capitalism, which screens the exploitation and the rule of the great majority by the few, as real democracy.
They never taught that the simple nationalization of the forces of production signified the establishment of socialism. That’s not stated by Marx and Engels anywhere. Nationalization only lays the economic foundations for the transition to socialism. Still less could they have sanctioned, even if they had been able to imagine, the monstrous idea that socialism could be realized without freedom and without equality; that nationalized production and planned economy, controlled by a ruthless police dictatorship, complete with prisons, torture chambers and forced-labour camps, could be designated as a “socialist” society. That unspeakable perversion and contradiction of terms belongs to the Stalinists and their apologists.
All the great Marxists defined socialism as a classless society—with abundance, freedom and equality for all; a society in which there would be no state, not even a democratic workers’ state, to say nothing of a state in the monstrous form of a bureaucratic dictatorship of a privileged minority.
The Soviet Union today is a transitional order of society, in which the bureaucratic dictatorship of a privileged minority, far from serving as the agency to bridge the transition to socialism, stands as an obstacle to harmonious development in that direction. In the view of Marx and Engels, and of Lenin and Trotsky who came after them, the transition from capitalism to the classless society of socialism could only be carried out by an ever-expanding democracy, involving the masses of the workers more and more in all phases of social life, by direct participation and control.
Forecasting the socialist future, the Communist Manifesto said: “In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association.” Mark that: “an association”, not a state—“an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all”.
I say we will not put the socialist movement of this country on the right track and restore its rightful appeal to the best sentiments of the working class of this country and above all to the young, until we begin to call socialism by its right name as the great teachers did. Until we make it clear that we stand for an ever-expanding workers’ democracy as the only road to socialism. Until we root out every vestige of Stalinist perversion and corruption of the meaning of socialism and democracy, and restate the thoughts and formulations of the authentic Marxist teachers.
But the Stalinist definitions of socialism and democracy are not the only perversions that have to be rejected before we can find a sound basis for the regroupment of socialist forces in the United States. The definitions of the social democrats of all hues and gradations are just as false. And in this country they are a still more formidable obstacle because they have deeper roots, and they are nourished by the ruling class itself.
The liberals, the social democrats and the bureaucratic bosses of the American trade unions are red-hot supporters of “democracy”. At least, that is what they say. And they strive to herd the workers into the imperialist war camp under the general slogan of “democracy versus dictatorship”. They speak of democracy as something that stands by itself above the classes and the class struggle, and not as the form of rule of one class over another.
Capitalism, under any kind of government—whether bourgeois democracy or fascism or a military police state—is a system of minority rule, and the principal beneficiaries of capitalist democracy are the small minority of exploiting capitalists; scarcely less so than the slaveowners of ancient times were the actual rulers and the real beneficiaries of the Athenian democracy.
To be sure, the workers in the United States have a right to vote periodically for one of two sets of candidates selected for them by the two capitalist parties. And if they can dodge the witch-hunters, they can exercise the right of free speech and free press. But this formal right of free speech and free press is outweighed rather heavily by the inconvenient circumstance that the small capitalist minority happens to enjoy a complete monopoly of ownership and control of all the big presses, and of television and radio, and of all other means of communication and information.
But even so, with all that, a little democracy is better than none. We socialists have never denied that. And after the experiences of fascism and McCarthyism, and of military and police dictatorships in many parts of the world, and of the horrors of Stalinism, we have all the more reason to value every democratic provision for the protection of human rights and human dignity; to fight for more democracy, not less.
Socialists should not argue with the American worker when he says he wants democracy and doesn’t want to be ruled by a dictatorship. Rather, we should recognise that his demand for human rights and democratic guarantees, now and in the future, is in itself progressive. The socialist task is not to deny democracy, but to expand it and make it more complete. That is the true socialist tradition. The Marxists, throughout the century-long history of our movement, have always valued and defended bourgeois democratic rights, restricted as they were; and have utilized them for the education and organization of the workers in the struggle to establish full democracy by abolishing the capitalist rule altogether.
The right of union organization is a precious right, a democratic right, but it was not “given” to the workers in the United States. It took the mighty and irresistible labour upheaval of the ’30s, culminating in the great sit-down strikes—a semi-revolution of the American workers—to establish in reality the right of union organization in mass-production industry.
When it comes to the administration of workers’ organizations under their control, the social democrats and the reformist labour leaders pay very little respect to their own professed democratic principles. The trade unions in the United States today, as you all know, are administered and controlled by little cliques of richly privileged bureaucrats, who use the union machinery, and the union funds, and a private army of goon squads, and—whenever necessary—the help of the employers and the government, to keep their own “party” in control of the unions, and to suppress and beat down any attempt of the rank and file to form an opposition “party” to put up an opposition slate.
In practice, the American labour bureaucrats, who piously demand democracy in the one-party totalitarian domain of Stalinism, come as close as they can to maintaining a total one-party rule in their own domain. The Stalinist bureaucrats in Russia and the trade-union bureaucrats in the United States are not sisters, but they are much more alike than different. They are essentially of the same breed, a privileged caste dominated above all by motives of self-benefit and self-preservation at the expense of the workers and against the workers.
The privileged bureaucratic caste everywhere is the most formidable obstacle to democracy and socialism. The struggle of the working class in both sections of the now divided world has become, in the most profound meaning of the term, a struggle against the usurping privileged bureaucracy.
In the Soviet Union, it is a struggle to restore the genuine workers’ democracy established by the revolution of 1917. Workers’ democracy has become a burning necessity to assure the harmonious transition to socialism. That is the meaning of the political revolution against the bureaucracy now developing throughout the whole Soviet sphere, which every socialist worthy of the name unreservedly supports.
In the United States, the struggle for workers’ democracy is preeminently a struggle of the rank and file to gain democratic control of their own organizations That is the necessary condition to prepare the final struggle to abolish capitalism and establish democracy in the country as a whole. No party in this country has a right to call itself socialist unless it stands foursquare for the rank-and-file workers of the United States against the bureaucrats.
Capitalism does not survive as a social system by its own strength, but by its influence within the workers’ movement, reflected and expressed by the labour aristocracy and the bureaucracy. So the fight for workers’ democracy is inseparable from the fight for socialism, and is the condition for its victory. Workers’ democracy is the only road to socialism, here in the United States and everywhere else, all the way from Moscow to Los Angeles, and from here to Budapest.
Ask the average American if advertising influences kids decisions and they will say that YES IT DOES. Ask them if advertising influences their own decisions and the overwhelming majority will deny that advertising effects their decisions in the least. Nobody wants to think of themselves as childlike, so they give out this childlike response!
So it is election time. What do we see all the American children doing? We see them responding to ‘democracy’ marketing just like little children in front of an advertising for a ‘Happy Meal’. Barrack Obama is the young person’s candidate, the CHANGE guy, the ‘we can all get along together’ man. Hillary is the ‘women first’ candidate, the ‘stick by her man’ woman. All the Democrats are into ‘democracy’ marketing because liberals, like conservative American, are little tiny tots. Slick Willy was the ‘First Black President’ even! Al Bore is Mr. Environment (forget about all those toxic computer items he pushed for the longest time) and Jimmy is the Man of Prayer Peace Center Guy! Madelyn Albright is Ms. Stop the Genocide woman!
The Republicans are skilled at Mr Tough Guy, Mr, Protector, Mr Family Values stuff. Yes, I know that the family values are more like those family values of Ted Haggard, the Pope, and Pat Robertson, but still…. America has a lot of sick, sick, sick families out there that this marketing approach appeals to.
Ask yourself, does this marketing act add up to DEMOCRACY, capital letters? Or is it just Gunsmoke, brought to you by…? the Devil himself? You so smart that all this propaganda doesn’t influence you any? Add it all up then.
In a sure sign of how the Democratic Party is not a democratically run body at all, Hillary Clinton continues to seem to have a lock on the nomination.
Most Democratic Party voters simply do not want a return of the Clintons to power and certainly most voters as a whole do not want such. Yet the Clinton machine seems to be the ruling power in that party. Corporate money combined with undemocratic bureaucracy within the DP combine to overrule the people’s vote.
Let’s face it, Obama’s main appeal is simply that he is not a Clinton, and Edwards main ball and chain is that he was the VP candidate tied with Ketchup man Kerry. So that leaves it as to whether the Clinton machine can break Obama or not? I think the answer is that it can, and already has. Hillary Clinton has a lock on being the party’s ticket.
So where are all the Kucinich folk now? Where are those who always tell us that the only choice is the Democratic Party? They are stuck getting ready to tell us to return the Tweedle Dee to power as the Tweedle Dumb will seem just to horrid to imagine (to them). In short, liberals have already lost the election, and since they have put no effort into building a counter movement to corporate power in the electoral arena, their votes will not count except to be wasted on bringing slick Hillary to office. Once again, DP voting liberals will have helped build the charade and con that the US is a real democracy, when in fact it is not.
The second electoral tsunami wave is due to hit the American population today and unless you take intellectual cover from it, you are likely to drown in total shit. I’m talking about New Hamshire, its coverage, and what passes as analysis of the event.
And nobody is more sunk in this muck than American liberals who are praying for a liberal Saviour once again.
Why do the US ‘elections’ take so long to run? Answer; because the brainwash of the population must be so absolutely intensive and the party events in each state must be done with such fanfare to convince us all that something called democracy is actually occurring. The Big Lie must be pounded and pounded and pounded into each of us, over and over and over again.
In reality what is called democracy in the US is nothing more than the obtaining of the passive acquiescence of the population in ‘the process’… which is the process of being ruled by corporation picked leaders while being numbed into silence and obedience. That’s what is passed off to us as being democracy.
A real democracy would be a process not run for the giant herd of us by a corporate oligarchy. What we have today is a total charade of what the nation’s founders had in mind for the US. True, they wanted their own slave-owning selves firmly planted at the top over the herd but they couldn’t have imagined a society such as our own evolving as it has.
America has never really had much of a democracy, it being as flawed as Greek and Roman democracy ever was. Our present day rulers are firmly against democracy evolving for the common classes, and our neighbors have been bred like passive sheep to bah, bah, bah along with anything the wolves leading the herds might offer them.
I am not talking solely about the Republicans among the general population but also about the liberals that talk up a good song and dance, but then meekly follow the pack as the herd gets moved towards the slaughter house. Barack, Barack, barack…. along now.
The second wave of the propaganda tsunamis is about to hit us tonight. So prepare yourself for a giant wave of bullshit washing your way.
For about 8 years, the Green Party and Ralph Nader have off and on claimed to be building a political alternative to the Democratic Party. It was all a lie. Nader’s recent campaigning for John Edwards has exposed the fact that the Green Party (or Nader himself) has ever actually been any real alternative to the corporate governance system America is cursed with. See Nader Throws Support to Edwards, Blasts Clinton
To build such an alternative, a political party must participate in much more than just electoral campaigning. Neither Nader nor the Green Party have been doing much of that. Instead, they are just trying to participate in the horse race and they are losers for doing so.
Left Activism in America is still at Ground Zero and seems totally unwilling to do the work needed to construct a real political alternative to Corporate World. Until we begin to truly break with the Democratic Party nothing will ever be gained, and we will not be able to build any real defense to the wave of oppression that is coming our way full blast.
Unfortunately, once again the liberals are doing the same old ‘lesser of evil’ stuff. Either way (Dem or Repub), The People end up with nothing but the stick. How long are we going to follow leaders, like Nader, addicted to heading down the dead end alley?
One of the great US excuses for occupying Afghanistan with troops intermittently flowing forth from the neocon-controlled corporate press, was that American civilization was liberating Afghan women from their cruel men of the Taliban. It was a propaganda crumb thrown to church going liberals to try to appeal to their humanitarian interventionist tendencies. Save the Damsels in Distress… Holy Moly!
This ‘We Are Always the World’s Greatest Humanitarians’ argument was part of the package deal that came with the ‘Bringing Democracy’ to the Arabs’ routine. It was fed by previous routines about saving babies in Kuwait and stopping WOMD by Satan Saddam from being used against the poor Jews of Apartheid Israel, etc. and so on. These are long running themes by now in American ‘dialog’. We are a great people indeed!
In all of this, we Americans are supposed to see ourselves as saviours as we go about our daily business of allowing the corporate world to run amok in the world. Oh tax us more, please!
But here is another opinion about all of this spoon fed nonsense. A counter opinion. So how did it slip in?
From the Guardian: Muslim Women: Damsels in Distress? The west should stop using the liberalization of Muslim women to justify its strategy of dominance by Soumaya Ghannoushi
Many liberals and Leftists support independence for Kosovo just as they have done previously with East Timor. In short, they have supported their own imperialist governments dividing up other countries, and this they call ‘supporting national self determination’!
Let’s face it though. The real reason the Western imperialist powers (NATO) went to war together back then against the government of Milosevic was to destroy the remnants of state socialism in Yugoslavia, and by doing so they split up the old multi-cultural Yugoslavia into many bits and pieces. The last battle was over Kosovo, where the US went to battle alongside allies and proponents of a Greater Albania together against the supporters of a Greater Serbia. Bombs away!
The collateral damage still remains, just as it does in Bosnia and throughout the former Soviet Union. Ethnic manipulation can get rather messy, USA, but of course, this is the preferred method of warfare for the US government, using one ethnic group against the next. We see it again and again and again. We see it in Afghanistan, Somalia, and Iraq.
So Kosovo’s Albanians demand ‘independence’ from Yugoslavia. They demand 2 ethnic Albanias then. Or rather, they demand (indirectly) confederation with Albania instead of with Serb dominated Yugoslavia. Should they get it? If so, will the Serb’s living within Kosovo demand an even smaller ‘state’? Yugoslavia will back that, but then should they, the Kosovar Serbs, get what they want? Is that, too, ‘national self determination’?
Kosovo demonstrates once again that a world where each national group demands an ethnic state of their own all the time will be a messy and continually contentious one. At one time, many American Blacks and groups supporting them against White racism toyed with the idea of demanding that a state like Mississippi or Alabama be made a Black country for ex-slaves to inhabit. In fact, throughout Canada and the US, indigenous groups have something like that already, called the ‘Indian reservations’. Where do we stop in supporting ‘national self determination’ then? Would America and its Black population have been better served by creating an ‘independent’ country back in the ’20s or ’30s in a Southern state? One doesn’t think so today.
Maybe Kosovo is the right place to stop splitting people up further. Instead of wars spent to do this why not support economic plans of peace that would unite Serb and Albanian within Kosovo? Is it really that hard to implement such a program? I thin not but the political will to start such a program is entirely absent, and no more so than in the imperialist countries themselves which continue to prefer to rule by divide and conquer.
NATO out of the Balkans NOW! US out of the Balkans NOW! Monery for economic assistance, not military occupation!
Zoe’s Ark is the French Christian group that decided to ship some kids from the Darfur region to France for adoption. These missionaries to ‘Save Darfur’ say that they thought those kids were orphans, and they are now themselves accused by the government of Chad as being kidnappers. Currently they are on a hunger strike saying that it was all an innocent mistake on their part.
These Christian religious people seem pretty convincing to us Westerners but here are the Muslim parents of the ‘orphans’ saying what happened. It seems that the children were not orphans at all but had very caring parents! Assuming that the Zoe’s Ark branch of the ‘Save Darfur’ herd were not deliberately committing a criminal act as they state they weren’t, then just what did they think they were doing in Chad?
Actually, they thought they were doing good deeds like the ‘Save Darfur’ advocates of US locally think they are doing right here in Colorado Springs when they advocate interventionism. But the Zoe’s Ark people were wrong and so are our local enthusiasts of this ‘Save Darfur’ cause.
It seems that Zoe’s Ark folk didn’t even know how to tell real orphans from kidnapped children in that region of the world! Yet the even more ignorant local advocates of ACTION on this issue know even less about Darfur, Chad, and Sudan than they do. How can they think they know so much about what is really going on in Darfur, as they most certainly think they do, when they actually know next to nothing?
Good intentions are all fine, but ignorance can get you into trouble especially when you arrogantly think that you should have the final word about the affairs of people totally different from you living on the other side of the world. Another example of this, was the good intentioned liberal woman who recently allowed one of her Sudanese kids to name a stuffed animal Mohammed. She got jailed for several weeks and run out of the country, and she was lucky for just that.
I know some of the Colorado Springs ‘Save Darfur’ liberals who go bananas advocating that we ‘push’ our government into intervening against the Sudanese government. To tell the truth, I don’t think these folk have a clue to what’s going on even in our own country let alone what’s happening in a remote region of Sudan. I’m sure I would NOT trust them to even be allowed to work for Child Protective Services- Colorado lest they make some major errors in judgment about kids and their parents equally as big as those made by members of Zoe’s Ark while in Chad and France.
Lessons here? Don’t stick your nose into the affairs of other peoples that you nothing absolutely nothing about. And don’t try to ‘sanction’ others when those economic sanctions actually are a form of waging war against them. Don’t ask your government to kick somebody else’s ass when your own government is made up of gangsters.
UPDATE: The Gazette article is still among the top commented.
Here’s a string of the initial comments, in chronological order:
hmmmmm wrote:
Well this proves that if you break the law, and they did, and complain and whine enough then you can get off. Very disappointed in our DA on this one. quote “When you consider dragging an old woman across the street and not lifting her up, it’s really hard to see how that’s doing nothing wrong,” Verlo said. end quote. When this “old woman” refuses to get up and follow police orders, Yes they did nothing wrong. It’s called the law, and they broke it.
11/28/2007 7:44 PM MST on Gazette.com
csaction wrote:
No part of this trial was ever in the public’s interest and the city prosecutors were the last to see that. Some of the police used excessive force and that ruined their case. The parade rules weren’t applied to everyone equally, and that ruined their case. You aren’t guilty of obstructing the street when the police throw you down in the street. Explaining that you have a permit to march, just like the year before, is NOT failure to disperse. Allowing every politico in town to make a political statement EXCEPT those with a message of peace, is NOT equal protection under the law.
The strangest part of the city’s position, other than the obvious lame claim that they could get a conviction but decided not to, is Ms. Kelly’s apparent distrust of the legal system: “everything the police did was justified and there was probable cause for an arrest, but getting a conviction is another story”.
It is NOT another story IF the police did nothing wrong and there WAS probable cause for an arrest, and that’s ALL been decided by a jury of their peers when they couldn’t prove their case to 6 people in this town.
Is she suggesting that the jury system is wrong or that we, the people, are too stupid to see that the police and city are always right, no matter what they do? Does she think we can’t sit on a jury and decide the ruling based on the evidence, and get it right? The jury already got it right and the city wanted to intimidate the remaining 2 people with the threat of a trial, until the last minute, to stop them from suing for the police brutality, already proven to a jury.
11/28/2007 7:49 PM MST on Gazette.com
mananamaria wrote:
Apparently a jury couldn’t agree anyone broke the law in the first place. As far as I can tell, the threat to file charges against Verlo and Fineron, who both may or may no longer have pending lawsuits against the city and then dropping those is pretty telling. Besides did our finest not learn appropriat compliance tools that avoid the spectecals of dragging old women across a street and flagrantly threateniing people with tasers?
11/28/2007 8:03 PM MST on Gazette.com
jwstrue wrote:
CS, correction–they had a permit to march in a parade, not to interrupt the parade with a demonstration. In addition, Kelly is stating that another trial would be a waste of resources because the outcome would be the same…there is no insuation here.
11/28/2007 8:04 PM MST on Gazette.com
back2colorado4go wrote:
csaction, you have lost ALL credibility on these boards! And Manawhatever, you do not follow ANY of the facts about this. JWSTrue has it right. These people broke the law, and most people I know of agree that these people needed to be taught that what they did in public was a disgrace! The police PICKED THEM OFF OF THE STREET, and with resistance these people ended up hurting themselves! They are deceptive by lying for the permit and needed to be removed. No one, especially the children there to see the parade, needed to be subjected to these adults acting unruly and not listening to the police! You can protest many other ways without this sick little show! And I agree with the DA in one way though. For the little satisfaction we (the public) would get in prosecuting these people, it is not worth the cost and the publicity it would give these pathetic people in the process! And yes, juries are full of creepy people that let off murderers every day, so it is not so hard to see one that can’t decide this one! These people were LUCKY it was the police that dragged them from the streets after hearing how ticked some parade watchers were at these people when this happened! Way to teach our kids!!!
11/28/2007 8:21 PM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (4)
jwstrue wrote:
back2colorado4go, thanks for the support. Now we sit back and wait for jtrione to chime in…sometimes I think CS and jtrione are one in the same, maybe??
11/28/2007 8:50 PM MST on Gazette.com
tonytee wrote:
hey post person hummmmmm cops broke the law many times and have not been charged, people sometimes who break the law in history end up being heroes, sometimes the letter of the law is not always correct and golden, sometimes to make a difference in life you must break the law to make the world a better place to live and not not let the law become too powerful in trying to silence free speech.
11/28/2007 8:52 PM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (2)
pc12784 wrote:
CSaction, with the possibility of people like you in the jury pool, it is entirely reasonable to think that the jury would be too stupid to see that the police and city are right in this case. Your statement about excessive force still baffle me. If you don’t want to be dragged off the street by the police, MOVE when officers give you a lawful order to do so. It’s really quite simple. But JWS and back2colorado pretty much discredited everything you said in this thread anyway, so I rest my case.
11/28/2007 9:18 PM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (4)
lexiii wrote:
I wish they’d have gone ahead and prosecuted, but the county is trying to save money, and they are basically focusing on more important crimes, I think, which is a good thing.
However, I am not on the side of the protesters here, if there weren’t more important cases that need attention, I’d be screaming and hollering myself right now, but our jails are already over filled and we need the room for more violent offenders.
Even though they’re not going to be prosecuted, the stupid protesters still look stupid in the eyes of the public, that opinion will not change.
11/28/2007 9:37 PM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (4)
pastor wrote:
one thing I have learned about csaction is he is right and everyone else is wrong. Have anyone every read where he admitted he was wrong and said he was sorry. In his world the peace protest are always right and can do no wrong.
Here is an example of his world view “One more point: look at the list of issues that made the gazette change this blog. ALL rightwing issues. All rightwing hate speech. Vile, putrid, racist, sexist, Fox Noise, Rush Limpboy, dittohead, FotF issues. NONE leftwing.” ”
Mr. Rust, I see you like your peace activists stupid, brain addled, stoned hippies, with no fight in them, passively accepting any abuse from the enemies of the state. Or perhaps you like the theological activists looking for another martyrdom opportunity and willing to help any enemy nail them to the cross. Or perhaps activists that are just too stupid to see hypocrisy in the national (and local) theocracy proponents, or the threat that ALL theocrats represent to the peaceful majority. Sorry to disappoint. (not)” ” The theocratic party that wants to turn this nation into a theocracy, and is the Christian equivalent of an Islamic Republic, are who get criticized, along with the hypocrite, hate monger, adulterer, homophobe, foot tapping bathroom boys, and televangelist funditards. It has nothing to do with the religion and peaceful, loving followers of the Prince of Peace. It has to do with those straying from the message as much as the other Taliban, who want to turn back the clock on progress to created a biblical theocracy. It has to do with those that want to legislate “throwing the first stone”, battling those that want to legislate “thou shalt NOT throw the first stone”. The concept of the protection of targeted groups, is the application of that principle and those against it are NOT Christian, because it is the principle of their lord. BTW, preacher, I won’t cut you as much slack as the other guy. You know exactly what “Christian” Taliban means, you just defend them. I’ve explained this before and will not again.” all of these quotes are from him. FOR SOMEONE WHO BELIEVES CHRISTIAN ARE LIKE THE TALIBAN, WILL ALWAYS DEFEND HIS PEOPLE WHEN THERE ARE WRONG. So I am sure he will blame Christian for his friends getting in trouble, and that all of this is to silence his friends message.
11/28/2007 9:39 PM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
on the issues of the protester, they now know, if they disobey the police, they can get away with it by yell, that it is all the police fault. An make sure people like csaction spread their lies on line and in the newspaper, this is the normal blame the cops for our behavior.
11/28/2007 9:45 PM MST on Gazette.com
101abn wrote:
Once again, lazy DAs. I rest my case. Prosecuting the prostestors would probably cut in to the time they spend plea bargaining away other cases…
11/28/2007 10:10 PM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (2)
101abn wrote:
Neva Nolan. Nearly a HUNDRED COUNTS PLEA BARGAINED DOWN TO *TWO*. Did you watch the Channel 11 report on the clown with over a HALF DOZEN DUIs – INCLUDING KILLING A MAN – WHO LOST HIS DRIVER’S LICENSE, LEFT COURT, DROVE TO A LIQUOR STORE AND BOUGHT A BOTTLE OF BOOZE??? ALL FILMED AND CONFIRMED BY CHANNEL 11 NEWS CREWS. Our DAs are a BAD JOKE!
11/28/2007 10:26 PM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (3)
tonytee wrote:
actually lexiii i do not see the protesters as stupid in the eyes of the public, being one that is in the public i commend them for standing up for what they beleived in and taking it as far as they did, in this country too few people are sheep and will not step out and stand for what they beleive in that is why our country is in the dilemma it is in currently with politicians and fiancially, maybe more people need to step out of the box for what they beleive in instead of letting senior citizens do it for us, but maybe that is the only generation that has any guts left to stand up for something.
11/28/2007 11:50 PM MST
just1voice wrote:
Tony I think you are way off base on that one. Its not that people arent willing to stand up for what they believe in or that they are sheep following the flock. The majority of them do it WITHIN the limits of the law so it doesnt make headlines like these clowns did. Have you gone out and asked the “public” their opinion on what these people did? I have and as Lexi said, they look stupid and will continue to think they are stupid even though they wont be punished for it.
Besides, I can think of several other ways to punish a business owner besides sending him to jail so that is something the public needs to consider.
11/29/2007 7:10 AM MST on Gazette.com
skiracer wrote:
Tony – not sure exactly how you are in the public eye as I have never heard of you outside these boards and can’t find any information on basic internet searches. Someone mentioned on another thread you ran for a public office and lost. With the skewwed view points you have shown throughout the threads on this website and the apparent lack of a marketing plan I can see why.
Maybe the senior citizens in these case were convinced/brainwashed in to thinking they were standing up for a good cause. Heck, my grandmother voted for Clinton the first time around because she thought he was handsome and someone came around to her nursing home and told everyone there what a great guy he was and how his moral standards would help improve their lives in the retirement community.
The problem with what they did is that they lied their way into the protest (privately funded and run) and then refused to leave when organizers asked them to and then police asked them to. Arguing that you have a permit is not leaving. Step to the side of the road and then show your permit. But since it was privately run it doesn’t matter. Your permit can be revoked at anytime at the organizer’s discretion.
As far dragging rather than carrying an old lady across the street. I am going to guess that she was pushing 200 lbs if not more. Has anyone here tried to carry a oddly shaped, limp sack of potatoes weighing this much before. Now add some squirming into the equation and you can see why they dragged this person off the straight. Besides, I would be willing to bet that should she have been carried off we would hear about her injuring either her arms or her ribs.
11/29/2007 7:38 AM MST on Gazette.com
skiracer wrote:
And regardless of the cost, the DA should be prosecuting those who break the law. The problem with our legal system is not that too many people are getting 2nd chances, it’s that too many people never even have to plea bargain or go to court because of lazy prosecutors.
The DA just lost my vote when up for re-election. If you didn’t have enough evidence say so, but to say that you are backing out because you don’t have faith in the system you are supposed to uphold on behalf of the people is a bunch of BS.
11/29/2007 7:41 AM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (1)
pastor wrote:
The next’s round of the peace protester hand book is to bring a lawsuit against the city and police for false arrest. I hope that everyone who hand entry for parade take notice and when this group try to entry next time, they make it clear to them no anti-war message permitted in the parade. If you bring in you anti-war or peace message (joke because they seem to end up in some type of fight with someone) you will be removed. This will stop them from cause trouble again.
11/29/2007 7:57 AM MST on Gazette.com
iraqwarvet wrote:
I went to war to push peace and democracy on other nations. In this nation, or atleast in this city peace is considered hate speach. This city had no case, thats why they lost and are hanging their heads in defeat.
11/29/2007 7:57 AM MST on Gazette.com
iraqwarvet wrote:
This city is changing, just drive on Fort Carson one day, count how many anti-war, anti-Bush stickers you see on people’s cars. It will shock you. But you people on this blog will probably just call those troops “phoney soldiers” or “anti-americans” or “unpatriotic”. We appreciate that. Thanks for the support. Go when Physical Training (PT) ends at 8:30am, you’ll see these troops in their cars where their PT uniform with with what you people call “propaganda” on their car. I love an America where our troops have the right to free speach, which you call “hate speach”.
11/29/2007 8:03 AM MST on Gazette.com
erniezippreplat wrote:
Break the law get away scott free with the Colorado Springs DA. Whoever run against the current DA next time around gets the five votes in my family
11/29/2007 8:08 AM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (1)
lexiii wrote:
iraqwarvet, throwing yourself on the pavement during a family event isn’t speech, and it certainly isn’t peace.
If idiots want to stand up for peace, they need to be peaceable about it.
These protesters were no more peaceful than anyone else.
tonytee, the protesters were stupid. They acted like a bunch of tantruming toddlers. Grown men and women throwing themselves down like three year olds in front of little children, no less, because they were asked to leave and they didn’t want to leave.
Not only was that against their own message of peace, it was a bad example for the children concerning adult behavior, and it was completely inappropriate in the first place.
A family event is no place for a war protest, these selfish minded brainless old farts who think they’re still in the sixties need to grow up and find a more appropriate means of communication.
How can they send a message of peace when they, themselves, are not being peaceful?
11/29/2007 8:10 AM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (1)
smackermack wrote:
GUYS your anger is in the wrong place!! It is the CITY ATTORNEY – not the DA who decided this!!! Read the headline and the first Paragraph of the article!!!
11/29/2007 8:55 AM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
No one want to silence the peace protesters right to speak, but we believe that there is a time and place for it. An most people believe that the St. Patrick’s Day parade was not the right time and place. Most people also seem to believe that if a cop asked you move you move you do not act like a baby. But I also must remind everyone that the peace protesters hand book, when the police ask you to move you drop an make a scene, so that it is caught on film, the reason is so you can make the police look like the bad guy.
Iragwarvet I have a question for you since you agree with the anti-war groups. Is it ok to block soldier return from the war? Is it ok to delay the soldier meeting with their family? Is it ok to destroy railroad tracks and stop the return of the military equipment from the war?
11/29/2007 8:56 AM MST on Gazette.com
jwstrue wrote:
TONYTEE, taking a stand or speaking out for what you believe in is one thing. Causing a disturbance during a public family event is quite another.
2 other bits:
– This country is in dilemma (according to you) because of corrupt politicians…
– This country is in dilemma (according to you) because of imminent recession…
Neither has anything to do with “stepping out or standing for”.
You wouldn’t happen to be one of the individuals who ran for mayor last term, would you?
11/29/2007 9:02 AM MST on Gazette.com
rambone wrote:
pastor wrote: “No one want to silence the peace protesters right to speak, but we believe that there is a time and place for it. An most people believe that the St. Patrick’s Day parade was not the right time and place.”
Oh, but it was the right time and place for an old pickup to drive in the parade with juveniles in the back, lifting kegs, acting like idiots?
Was it the right time and place for the police to scare the living daylights out of young children as they drug that poor old lady across the street by the back of her shirt?
Were you even there pastor? I was, and it was terrible that these fine police had to act like they were imposing martial law.
11/29/2007 9:11 AM MST on Gazette.com
davidb wrote:
Eric Verlo and Elizabeth Fineron should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. According to their own statements, they intentionally and premeditatedly challenged the police that day. Attorney Kelly, you do NOT speak for the public on this one. Do your job!
11/29/2007 9:20 AM MST on Gazette.com
rambone wrote:
lexiii wrote: “These protesters were no more peaceful than anyone else.”
Were you there lexiii? Or its this just another story you want to weigh in on? I watched the whole thing, from the moment they walked out of Acatia Park, to when they got beat down 1 block away. Their signs were just peace symbols, they were not yelling into the crowd. One more thing, that pig that drug that lady across the street is lucky to be walking on two legs today. Pull off that act in front of my kids is enough to get me sent to prison.
11/29/2007 9:20 AM MST on Gazette.com
jwstrue wrote:
Iraqwarvet, actually if any one in a position of authority sees an active duty soldier driving around with this propaganda displayed on his/her POV–they will more than likely be ordered to remove it and potentially face administrative action.
The Uniform Code of Military Justice prohibits any type of slander against the Commander-in-Chief–in any form or fashion. While military members may disagree with the policies and procedures set forth by the Commander-in-Chief, they are prohibited by law from open criticism of those policies/procedures or the CIC himself.
Yes, military members can exercise freedom of speech–but only accompanied by certain restrictions as outlined in the UCMJ.
11/29/2007 9:22 AM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (1)
pastor wrote:
So it is ok for these people to act the way they did. So again it is the police fault for doing their job, an the protester are not responsibility for their actions. So when is it ok for the police to move someone who does not listen?
11/29/2007 9:27 AM MST on Gazette.com
lwirbel wrote:
Lexii, you still aren’t describing this event accurately. Some people, like the AIM Indians at Columbus Day in Denver, choose to get arrested and commit civil disobedience by symbolically blockading an event. Verlo and Fineron were parade participants who the parade marshall decided, after the fact, he didn’t want in the parade, who were removed from the parade. The courts have a very mixed record on the right of a parade organizer to set rules, particularly in an ex post facto way. St Patricks Day organizers in Boston and elsewhere have some limited rights to exclude in advance gay and lesbian marchers, but once they’re in a parade, you have only limited rights to take them out. What’s also relevant here is what the courts have said about Apple Computer’s right to define who is a journalist. The company wants to exclude some people in advance because it says, “they’re only bloggers.” The courts say, no, Apple, even if it’s your press conference, you do not have the right to decide who is a legit participant and who is not. The St. Paddy’s Day organizer was really bordering on the edge of legality when he decided to remove folks with peace shirts after allowing Bookman in (and like Rambone said, they weren’t yelling, just marching).
11/29/2007 9:31 AM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
Rambone if the police tell you to move out of the way, you listen and sort out the problem once you are off the street. You do not act like a little child. Rambone read your past posting you are some one who has a problem with Authorize and police. I was not there but people I know and trust were there an witness the whole thing from start to finished. They witness the police asking them to leave and witness the people not listen to the police officers.
11/29/2007 9:35 AM MST on Gazette.com
skiracer wrote:
Smackermack – My bad on the City Attorney vs the DA. Guess I heard DA used and skipped over the first few lines of the article on my reread after reading other comments. Regardless, the DA’s office should still be looking at this as Colorado Springs is in El Paso County, which is covered in the area he is responsible for. At a minimum a better reason/story/lie needs to be provided to the people of the city regarding why these charges were actually dropped. Saying you have evidence to convict but we are not going to is the same as saying we will chose which laws we are going to enforce.
As for the City Attorney (appointed by our wonderful all knowing and responsible City Council). You should be fired for either lying in your statements to the Gazette or for not upholding the law regardless of cost. If you have enough evidence a crime was committed and the police were correct in their actions you owe it to those of us who follow the law to uphold it as well as to the police officers who just had their name dragged through the mud because you are either a liar or lazy.
11/29/2007 9:36 AM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
Lwirbel my problem is how they acted once they were told by the police to leave. I do not agree with the message they were bring in the St. Patrick’s Day parade but that is my opion. I feel that there is a time and place for that message and this to me was not the right place. With that said, I still feel they were in the wrong once the police ask them to move out of the way. They had to two choices 1. to move out of the way and sort the mess out. 2. Do not listen to the police and risk getting in trouble. The choices was up to them.
11/29/2007 9:47 AM MST on Gazette.com
justanothervet wrote:
That is right . Every time the police or any authority figure tells you to do something than do it. No protesting allowed. No thinking allowed. Vote Republican.
BTW you can send your Tea Tax to the Queen care of the United Kingdom.
11/29/2007 9:47 AM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (2)
lwirbel wrote:
That’s the main difference between you and me. If there was a huge accident or similar crisis and the police were getting everyone to move, I’d high-tail it. If the police were asking me to do something that was clearly a violation of my rights, I would challenge them and ask for their badge number. Never kowtow to someone simply because they are in uniform.
11/29/2007 9:54 AM MST on Gazette.com
duncan wrote:
lwirbel, from your comments I can only conclude that you had no issue with the Valedictorian from Lewis Palmer giving her speech about faith AFTER deliberately misleading the event organizers about her intentions. Is that correct? Or are you blocking that piece of evidence out to make your case? I guess lies and deceit in the name of a “cause” are complete justification to getting ones message across.
rambone, your internet tough guy act is tired. By your own admission since you watched the whole thing you had your chance with “that pig” and you did nothing. I doubt there would have been any change if your kids were there or not. It sounds like you could have used it as an example to your kids of what not to do when they grow up.
11/29/2007 9:57 AM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (1)
rambone wrote:
Selective discipline? I had three short paragraphs to you. You chose to only comment on some short sighted belief that the police are the rule makers. These peace activist had the permits to be in that parade.
Act the way they did? You admit you were not there. Last I remember, he told me/she told me wasn’t admitted in a court of law. So why are you even making assumptions?
11/29/2007 10:00 AM MST on Gazette.com
lwirbel wrote:
Duncan, I actually know Erica from Lewis-Palmer and I have mixed emotions about it, I don’t think her case will stand up in court because of those deceptions, though her intention was partially admirable. I think this issue will stand up in a civil-suit court because the marchers were NOT engaged in deception. Bookman has always been an activist bookstore, and no great deception is involved in putting on green T-shirts. What about the Boston parade, if a bookstore known to be lesbian applied to the Catholic group to march, would it be deceptive to somehow have a lesbian sign on that float? I would say no.
11/29/2007 10:05 AM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
Iwirbel I have no problem with your statement “I would challenge them and ask for their badge number. Never kowtow to someone simply because they are in uniform.” But can you not do this by getting out of the way of everyone else, so that you are not causing a delay in the parade? by doing this are you not listen to the police and showing respect to them and everyone else.
11/29/2007 10:06 AM MST on Gazette.com
jwstrue wrote:
Quick question to someone in the know. What reason did the protesters use to apply for a permit under a business name that had nothing to do with their organization? Or is their organization called The Bookman?
11/29/2007 10:11 AM MST on Gazette.com
obxman wrote:
if the d.a.[could mean anything]had to pay for legal expenses in a failed prosecution,half these jokers would be out of a job.if civilians sue each other without merit,the losing party can be held liable for legal fees…..why not the government?!they don’t have to be right when they arrest you….you just have to be able to afford justice.
11/29/2007 10:33 AM MST
jwstrue wrote:
Come on Rambone…that’s like saying because airplanes crash, I have no respect for pilots and will never fly an airplane…you sound pretty libertarian to me. Perhaps you should relocate to one of those compounds in Montana or Utah. Be careful, you may need these guys some day…
lwirbel, most folks with common sense would not challenge authority while in the midst of a direct order–most folks would follow the appropriate complaint or challenge process. Sounds like you have the same problem as the protesters–there is a time and place for everything. When you are given instruction by a police officer–this is not the time to argue or challenge unless your desire is to be incarcerated. Yes, there are exceptions–but judgement and good sense is everything…
11/29/2007 10:35 AM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (1)
lwirbel wrote:
Jwstrue, Eric has had The Bookman in the parade (and MLK parade, etc.) for several years’ running, usually has a sign about peace on the van, etc. He said something to J&P members a couple days beforehand, saying “Anyone want to be with the float?” Before that time, none of the peace groups had even thought about applying for the parade, whether or not they’d be allowed. The Justice and Peace Commission often has a float in the Christmas parade every year, allowed by the sponsors, usually with an alternative-energy theme, but no one ever thought of applying for some of these other parades.
11/29/2007 10:39 AM MST on Gazette.com
just1voice wrote:
Rambone, ignorance is bliss isnt? Why dont you check the app requirements for applying to be a cop before opening your mouth and making yourself look like more of an idiot. As for the State Trooper, he sure as anything could have made your day a whole lot worse by holding you and calling social services to come and collect your child. Dont think he had the right? Go and find out. Then you could sit here and complain about how he held you againt your will, kidnapped your child and made you look like even worse of a father than you probably are.
11/29/2007 10:41 AM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (1)
jwstrue wrote:
Come on Rambone…that’s like saying because airplanes crash I have no respect for pilots and will never fly…you sound pretty libertarian to me. Perhaps you should relocate to a compound in Montana or Utah. Be careful, you may need these guys some day.
lwirbel, you may have the same problem as the protesters. There is a time and place for everything. Most folks, when instructed by a police officer to take some action, would comply and complain or challenge later. The only thing you will accomplish by direct rebellion is most likely incarceration. True, there are exceptions, but good sense and judgement apply here…
11/29/2007 10:44 AM MST on Gazette.com
just1voice wrote:
Here is the sad part of all of this. Hopefully everyone will live and learn. I guarentee you the parade organizer is amending his rules and regs and next he will not have this problem. I would imagine EVERY parade orgainizer is doing that so it is very unlikely that this “message of peace” they wanted to get out will not be seen again at any function like this. Why would you want someone hell bent on causing problems in your show anyway?
11/29/2007 10:44 AM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (1)
jwstrue wrote:
…sorry, didn’t mean to repeat myself–couldn’t see the first comments
11/29/2007 10:46 AM MST on Gazette.com
jtrione wrote:
(laughing) Some of these comments get so hilarious. Makes for entertaining reading. And, just to clarify JWS, CSAction and I are two different people. I would think our approaches to various topics and our facility with the language would distinguish us in several ways, but, alas, not clear enough.
I cannot comment definitively on the actions that day, as truthfully, I was not there. I do, however, know that the sentiment at the time which drove and continues to drive this debate was that from the early moments of the war, Colorado Springs and our illustrious police department were forever enshrined in history as “Thugs of Intolerance”. We, the citizenry, witnessed the teargassing of peaceful protesters early on in 2003 and made the nightly news across the country for same.
So, I could see why the perception, real or not, existed during this parade event. The message which seemed to come through loud and clear from city government and the police force was “How DARE you liberal freaks question the certitude of our celestially ordained Bush administration and its actions in the world ? We will use EVERY means legal and illegal to keep you silenced.” So, no, all the comments below that those on the right welcome free speech are, frankly, prevarication. Conservatives during this period fell into a mindset that they could shout down or silence any dissent as they claimed to have higher moral authority, e.g. Bill O’Reilly’s infuriating habit of cutting off the microphone of those who disagree. The Gazette’s infuriating habit of editing AP news stories during that time to remove any possible anti-war opinions.
Those who are intellectually HONEST cannot dispute that such a pervasive mentality existed in this country for the last six years. Given that framework, it is not difficult at all to see the anguish from the left at a system which tried strenuously to silence dissent. And, for those on the right who are unable, for a moment, to see the frustration from the left, then, I’m sorry, but you would have to be CLUELESS to forget the Cheney-isms where he called into question the patriotism of those who dared to dissent.
Dunno, gang, hopefully we’re moving in the right direction. Remember, the bulk of the blame for the lack of unanimity toward the war effort falls squarely at the feet of the Loser in Chief who was unable to make a cogent case for military action and failed miserably at being a leader. A “leader” is able to rally people to his cause, not just browbeat them into obeisance. So, yes, maybe these protesters broke the law. I haven’t a clue. But, if they did, don’t they answer to a higher moral authority than some law designed to stifle protests of the left ? I think so. jtrione@mac.com
11/29/2007 10:59 AM MST on Gazette.com
jwstrue wrote:
Thanks Jim for the clarification. I apologize, I was being sarcastic. For those who aren’t familiar, the distinction could be difficult because you both speak in dissertational formats and CS usually follows in support of your views…
Your comments are sometimes pretty hilarious as well…especially when the disdain for Christianity and the liberal arrogance shines through–all in good fun though.
11/29/2007 11:14 AM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
Hey Jim, how are you today, I would never confuse you with csaction (I know everything) you have always been respectful to me and other. I think you are off base here on this issue. I for one question those in leadership who are against the war,why? for declares we have lost, meeting with out enemies and using those who hate us talking points as their own. Those in political power who support the peace movement have done everything in their power to ensure our solider will lose this war in order to win this next’s elections. I agree that Bush has made mistakes which war time president have not. Right now we have a chance to win this war but instead of backend our troops and giving them the funds and equipment need to fight this war the democrat’s want to withhold money in order to keep theses peace protester happy and to make sure that we do not win this war.
11/29/2007 11:28 AM MST on Gazette.com
pondfrogz wrote:
Wow, it appears I missed quite a conversation. Have a good day all and remember, there’s no problem that a six-pack and a good game on TV can’t cure. Just my meaningless comment of the day before tackling my fiancees chore list from $%*# on my day off.
11/29/2007 11:30 AM MST
turdman wrote:
Rambone-You are as lame as Tony Boy. Whine, Whine, I got stopped and I want to complain because I got caught and it isn’t fair.
11/29/2007 11:32 AM MST on Gazette.com
turdman wrote:
Bottom line in this case is the protestors are cowards. They protested and were legally arrested for violating the law. Then they all complained because they got arrested for again, breaking the law. Now they will sue the city because they believe their rights were violated. This group is really no better than the Westborough Baptist bunch. I hope next year they go to Denver to protest one of their events, so they can get what they really deserve.
11/29/2007 11:39 AM MST on Gazette.com
just1voice wrote:
Rambone dont flatter yourself. It would take a lot more than your couch commando comments to get under my skin. I never said your opinion made you those things. However, your lack of knowledge does. That and endangering your own child, setting a horrible example, and your running your mouth makes you a bad father. Whats wrong did I get under your skin?
No Im not one of them but I would give just about anything to watch you go one on one with the officer that you call “a pig”. Then you could teach you kids something useful, like how not to get your tail whipped.
11/29/2007 11:46 AM MST on Gazette.com
jtrione wrote:
Hey, Pastor Roy. Well, respectfully, I will disagree on some points. How do you equate “protesting” with “wanting to lose the war” ? That seems quite the logical leap to me. And, for the record, I have never taken a position on bringing the troops home early — I’m ex-military and understand the difficult role they are playing which does not fit nicely in “bumpersticker arguments” one way or the other. As one who has worn the uniform, I often cringe at some MoveOn.org statements and positions as shortsighted and limited. But, I realize that we on the left, have our normal centrists and our own “lunatic fringe”. We have to somehow work with both to craft a clear, cogent message.
I, personally, have never seen withdrawal from Iraq as a viable option and agree that a permanent presence of 50K per year is likely for the next few decades. As far as the failures of this administration (arguably in the running for the top five worst since the founding of the republic), there are not enough electrons to waste on these blogs. Yet, what seems more telling to me are the HUGE legions of right-wingers who, TO THIS DAY, support this guy. How many Bush-Cheney stickers do we STILL see on cars here ? It boggles the mind. All I know is that it certainly attaches a ‘stain’ to conservatism that will last for quite some time. For the next few decades, “conservative” will be automatically linked to the policies and actions of the Bush Administration. Nice albatross, guys, heavy enough for ya ?
And, PR, the point of this article was whether or not the protesters were in the right or not. Perhaps, they are reflective of a sentiment, wholly pervasive at the time, now weaning somewhat, that TO EVEN QUESTION the actions of the Bush-Cheney elite was somehow tantamount to disrespect for this nation. “If you’re not with us, you’re with the terrorists.” Who thinks in such puerile, oversimplistic absolutes ? Republicans, that’s who. C’mon, to impugn the patriotism of Senator Max Cleland ? Seriously, how do they look themselves in the mirror in the morning ?
(laughing) I recall a comment at some point during all this when a secular progressive was asked about the disdain toward conservatives, especially religious ones, phrased as “you don’t need them to just be wrong, you need them to be evil”. As wrongheaded and awful as that statement appears, I think it’s dead-on. Perhaps where we liberals lose our footing is when we become unable to see the folks on the other side of the table as loving, compassionate humans who happen to be a bit misguided in their beliefs in our opinion. Maybe if we on the left felt that those on the right were truly championing our rights to hold (in their view) misguided beliefs, then protest incidents like these would be few and far between. But, when we feel that the cards are “stacked against us” by those in power and their representatives (the police), it’s easy to see the animus. jtrione@mac.com
11/29/2007 11:59 AM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
Can someone please explain to me what this has to do with art.
“Fake mug shots of President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other White House officials are on display at the main branch of the New York City Public Library, and the exhibit has caused quite a commotion.
About six manipulated photographs of members of the Bush administration made to look like mug shots are lining one of the landmark building’s hallways, with each current and former official holding a D.C. police date-of-arrest placard bearing the date they made “incriminating” statements about the war in Iraq, The New York Daily News reported.”
This is an perfect example of what is wrong with the peace movement and those who are against the war.
They love to Forcing their views on people by saying it is one thing and doing something else.
What does this have to do with the above story. The answer is both enter something under a different idea or name, but when there their used it to express a political view.
11/29/2007 11:59 AM MST on Gazette.com
csaction wrote:
Well, the parade arrests are still a hot topic on the ole blog. Where to start? It’s an amazing amount of misinformation but more importantly the correlation to those that would summarily convict us is 100% with those that know nothing about the basic facts. Disagree all you want; you would be amazed at how much I disagree what what was done, but understand this: the neocon tactic of revisionist reality (war is peace) doesn’t work when you want to battle videotape and photos with ill-informed subjective opinions. The city prosecutor couldn’t make that work and neither can you kids.
Glad to see Lexi prove she was the MIA tractor gurlie. Thanx. Glad to see preacher roid make no sense as usual. So on a day of great vindication, I’m glad to see those that hate peace lose a small battle.
To address as much as I have time for: “”whining and complaining” does not defeat prosecutors in court, Evidence does.
Elizabeth and Eric were not “PICKED OFF THE STREET” but pulled off their feet by Paladino, who emmbarrassed the department in 2003 with the “Dairy Queen Dozen” arrests outside the city limits.
There was no lie on the permit. We were invited back after walking in the 2006 parade. No subterfuge, and O’Donnell said he had no problem with our message. The problem was with the lie he was told by the same person who lied to police about the permit. http://csaction.org/StPatsDay/Odonnell.html
David B, all 7 were “prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law” in fact the charges were changed twice to make it easier, but the city didn’t make it’s case, so hung jury, then dropped charges. Patty Kelly is right that the outcome would be the same or they would loose outright with another trial. She wrong that the jury just didn’t get it. They did, except for the wife of the defense contractor who should have been recused at the start.
There are larger community issues of how private is a function held in the middle of Tejon and subsidized 50% for the cost of police? For such “private” events, does the 1st amendment apply, or does a permit void the constitution? If the constitution is voided by “private” events, does that mean our permit the next day, for our 4th anniversary rally mean that we could ban people we don’t agree with from Acacia Park? (like we would want to) http://csaction.org/31807/31807.html
In the end, when we have become a total fascist state and have no rights left, (while the American equivalent of the Germans in 1938 sleep) you won’t be able to find anyone who will admit they fought those fighting for rights and peace just like you can’t find anyone who will admit they voted for niXXXon.
In the end, this is a great conversation for our city to have and any city in America, because we need to understand our system in it’s superiority and not get in the way of it’s progress in the world. The lack of understanding of how our constitution works is appalling, but this is progress.
I guess we’ll see all of you at the 5pm press conference in front of the courthouse?
11/29/2007 12:00 PM MST on Gazette.com
hmmmmm wrote:
For someone who complains about being lied about, you sure post a lot only when it comes to your ridiculous protest where your people broke the law and got treated accordingly. Your people refused police orders, were subsequently moved, forcibly as you left no other option, after your “old lady” asked several officers what it would take to get arrested, and then appropriately charged. Where is the mis-information in that csaction? Your people are not martyrs, not worthy of anything but contempt. A full video of the incident shows the truth, and as much of a spin as you put on this, your people are still wrong. Next time, don’t expect any nicer treatment when you pull the same stunt.
11/29/2007 12:06 PM MST on Gazette.com
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hmmmmm wrote:
Rambone, are you speaking from experience on the gangbang comment little guy? Sure sounds like it. Maybe the aggressive defense of the police is a direct result of your ridiculous aggressive contempt for them. You opinion is ignorant. Nice racist photo by the way, Mark Fuhrman is still in Idaho if you need a place to move to.
11/29/2007 12:09 PM MST on Gazette.com
coloradogirl wrote:
I am a true believer in that life is just not fair sometimes. Justice does not ALWAYS prevail. I don’t think this was a vindication, just an abandonment of justice in the best interest of the situation.
I applaud the City Attorney for “giving up” so to speak. It’s like arguing over a $700 couch in divorce proceedings. You spend twice that to the attorney’s arguing over it. In the end, it’s just not worth it and the bigger person has to give up. Just like in this situation. The City Attorney didn’t want to waste anymore money on such frugal matters.
I personally was a witness to the groups display at the parade and I’m just as disgusted now as I was then. I wish we could send the protesters over to Iraq and let them protest there. Now THAT would be worth watching….
11/29/2007 12:32 PM MST on Gazette.com
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hmmmmm wrote:
Been here 20+ years, have a BS in computer related fields. I did military work in communications and do this job to defend the good people of my city from people like you. If you like I can send you the links for “aggressive” and “defense” definitions in great big letters and really small words so you can understand.
11/29/2007 12:52 PM MST
turdman wrote:
Rambone-Come on dude just having a little fun! I am just shocked is all. I mean I have never heard a grown man whine like a school girl. If you keep pushing out that lower lip of yours when you pout, you should put some sunscreen on so you don’t get a sunburn.
Can we still be friends?
11/29/2007 12:59 PM MST on Gazette.com
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jeep4fun wrote:
If protestors wish to protest they should apply for a permit through the city as any march is required to. For protestors to ruin what should be a community event for the purpose of enjoyment is simply silly. I believe parade organizers have the right to prohibit those groups (which this was)who wish to disrupt parade proceedings. The police acted appropriately in this instance. I grow tired of seeing idiots place the police department in a bad light due to their poor choices and actions. If you wish to truly disrupt a community event then you have to pay the piper. If you disagree with a particular event or view, request a permit from the city for your own event, but let our citizens truly enjoy the parades provided without divisive and inciteful actions and messages
11/29/2007 12:59 PM MST on Gazette.com
turdman wrote:
Hey Rambone,
Since your not doing very well on this blog today, maybe you can go down to the Gazette Telegraph office and protest this blog. I mean really, we must be violating your rights in some way. Maybe CSACTION can go with you and video tape the whole event. He can can then edit out the truth and you two can have a local TV station air your story. Maybe a lawyer can take your case and you could win millions by suing us. Maybe an officer will drive by and you could sue the city as well.
Justice, isn’t it a beautiful thing.
11/29/2007 1:09 PM MST on Gazette.com
jtrione wrote:
So, Jeep4Fun, what I hear you saying is that some government functionary, probably a conservative Republican appointee, gets to decide who does or does not get to be included in an event for “our citizens” (your words)? Based on what set of criteria ? Who are those “special” citizens ? Thought we all had a right to peaceably assemble or to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Where do you find justification to abridge those rights or place boundaries on them ? Remember, if not expressly enumerated, then those rights reside in the people. Not in you, dear friend, or in local laws designed to limit speech. Talk about “special rights”. 😉
11/29/2007 1:20 PM MST on Gazette.com
jwstrue wrote:
Great points coloradogirl and jeep4fun….
11/29/2007 1:24 PM MST on Gazette.com
lwirbel wrote:
Jeepforfun, what you describe is not what the Constitution intended freedom of speech to mean. There are limits to allowing a soapbox speaker to stand on private property and say something. However, Mike the anti-abortionist has every right to show big pictures of foetuses on public land outside the World Arena, and it doesn’t do any good to say,
“He’s disturbing me because I’m going to see an entertainment event, Cirque de Soleil or Lee Ann Rimes or whatever.” James Madison and those writing the Bill of Rights wanted to make sure that freedom of speech WAS in your face, did NOT require a permit, and was bound to be incendiary and controversial. That’s the only way to protect it. Otherwise, our nation would be a larger version of Singapore.
11/29/2007 1:36 PM MST on Gazette.com
justhefacts wrote:
jtrione- This is not a “free assembly” issue. O’Donnell owns the right to the parade which means, he can deny access if he chooses. If the protesors want to make fools of themselves they can do it from the curb which is protected by the Constitution.
11/29/2007 1:38 PM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
Jim, I may be wrong, but my understanding on these parade, when you applied for permission to be in the event you must fill out paperwork with what type of display you are going to enter. So if this is the case can not the group in charge make it clear on their paperwork, what type of display is permitted and what type is not? So if this group next’s year make it clear to all involve what will be permitted and what will not be permitted, we may be able to avoide this problem next’s time.
11/29/2007 1:38 PM MST
csaction wrote:
Hmmm, if you are a cop, thank you for your service and sacrifice.
Now, post the video. No one on earth has sifted through this evidence more than I have and I know every second of video and every photo. The lawyers and cops don’t know this evidence better than I do. You don’t need to post 165 videos on YouTube like I have, just 1. The one that shows what you say it shows. Just 1 video. 1 photo. 1 piece of evidence. 1 thing to back up what you say. You all have the same burden of proof as I do, so pony up. http://youtube.com/profile_videos?user=csaction
Factual correction: Elizabeth asked several officers to arrest her, AFTER being dragged, because she had already gotten the punishment (not by a jury of her peers) but from Paladino, and wanted the rest of her day in court. She knew enough about it to know she had no recourse for the thousands in medical costs without the system’s protection, which she insisted on. (not contempt for the system, but admiration)
Jeep, we followed all rules and got a permit. We paid for a permit the next day in the park, and decided NOT to have our protest rally for the 4th anniversary the same day as the parade, which would have gotten us much more exposure with the thousands downtown. We decided to do both the parade with the peace message, welcomed the year before, and then the protest the next day. (4th year) Separate things with separate intentions. Everyone didn’t participate in both.
We did not make the police look bad and I don’t think the department looks bad. I think we’ve lost the PR battle, not them, and people (other than here) are capable of seeing that a couple of cops going too far does not a department make. The rest did their jobs with respect and professionalism and garnered admiration from us all.
We deal with cops all the time, and for those old gray beards like em, we’re talking 40 years of activism. I admire police, have 1 in my family, 1 was arrested at the parade and 1 testified for us along with photo evidence. I respect the new chief, and I’m pissed about the budget cuts. The rogues hurt the force, the majority are a credit.
11/29/2007 1:41 PM MST on Gazette.com
jwstrue wrote:
Jim, this was a community event–someone has to be in charge or it wouldn’t be an “organized” event. Jeep4fun is merely stating those in charge should have discretionary authority when it comes to eliminating participants who are suspect. In addition this was not the time for an assembly, whether peaceful or not. Compare this to a recent public democratic debate when a heckler became disruptive–was the heckler allowed to remain in the debate audience?
Just the fact this group applied under a separate entity makes them suspicious from the start (my opinion). Some would view this as a sneaky attempt to disrupt the event by attempting to hide their identity from the start.
11/29/2007 1:41 PM MST on Gazette.com
jtrione wrote:
Pastor, Loring said it beautifully when he said that the Framers did not intend for anyone to limit speech. That person, authorizing a placard or not, is, by definition, infringing on the rights of free speech. O’Donnell’s claim that he could restrict displays of “social advocacy” during the parade is the problem. He does not retain any such right.
On public streets, the public can say whatever it wants, tasteful or otherwise. During PrideFest, would it be legal to restrict Phelps and his Westboro Lunatics from marching around with their tacky signs ? Of course not. Did the Nazis march in Skokie during the 70’s ? Heck ya. Freedom comes with a price tag that says “everything you see or hear may or may not offend your sensibilities”. Tough noogies. Deal with it. So, however misplaced an anti-war protest might be during a civic event, it is well within the purview of what the Framers intended. Period. Stylistically is that the best forum ? Well, that’s a question worthy of debate.
11/29/2007 1:46 PM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
Iwirbel, this may shocked you and other but I am against those who do what do you call it “Mike the anti-abortionist has every right to show big pictures of foetuses on public land outside the World Arena, and it doesn’t do any good to say,” I believe this type of behavior does more wrong then good. I am against those who protest gay event with signs that use the f word or condemn them to hell, I am against those who hold signs calling our soldiers babe killer and such.
11/29/2007 1:55 PM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
Jim are you telling me that if I show up for the Gay Pride event and want to march down the street with signs that say they need to repent. I have the right to do it and they must let me into the event? I am using this example to get an understand of what you are saying. I was always under the impression that the group in charge off the event has the right to say who can be involved with the event and who can not.
11/29/2007 2:02 PM MST on Gazette.com
justhefacts wrote:
CSACTION-I do not like what you stand for; however, your last post is the most honest thing you have written in a long time. I disagree with you on when Fineron poked and begged the officer to arrest her.
My point is this; The officers were there legally and had ever right to remove Fineron and others from the event. Just because she got dragged across the street does not make it excessive force. Refusing to leave the area after being ordered is a crime and the officers had every right to arrest them. If the city decides not prosecute that is their loss. Obvious the police dept agreed that there was no use of excessive force used by the officers because nobody got disciplined. We all know the police dept disciplines their own people.
The only good thing out of this whole incident is that none of these protestors will even disrupt the parade again. Thay will have to wait for another Palmer Park incident to spew their lies.
11/29/2007 2:03 PM MST on Gazette.com
csaction wrote:
The 2 issues are the heart of the matter. jtrione and lwirbel are correct. Follow the logic path. If the laws of the land don’t apply to a “private” function or property, then I can grow pot across the street from any school where I own property. Of course not. It’s illegal, and my private ownership does not circumvent the law.
Mr. O’Donnell gets the nonprofit (disputed) rate for police protection just like we did, the next day, in Acacia park. Half off. $25 per hour per cop, for 2 at a time, which is $50 per hour.
Acacia Park is public property, andthat designation does not change, when it is rented out for an alloted time. Anyone that disagrees with us about this war (and there are still some) can show up and protest our rally. They usually do. They are always offered water and respect. Our permit does NOT give us the right to say “the 1st amendment of the constitution does not apply for you today, so shut up”. (we, of course, would never even try that)
In the middle of Tejon, closed to the public traffic, for hours, with 46 police subsidized for thousands by the city through the tax payers, Mr. O’Donnell’s permit CANNOT allow him to do what I describe above.
Further, he cannot be allowed to apply his “new and improved” constitutional protections for free speech to ban a message of peace, BUT have military guards, political candidates, political parties, labor unions, and many other political issues raised at the same place at the same time.
I don’t think it’s difficult to see how far this would go if we were to allow it. You either understand the beauty of what the founding fathers did, or you don’t. You have to listen to me disagree with you. The Cost? I have to listen to you. (giggle) It’s a great burden some days, but the nation needs us all to be strong. LOL.
11/29/2007 2:06 PM MST on Gazette.com
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iraqwarvet wrote:
I love hearing people tell protestor how to protest. Like lexii, telling these people that they must protest a certain way. Or Pastor Roy using a totally different subject to illustrate what he means and making no sense. These are the same people who if they lived back in the 1950’s and 60’s would be hitting and beating the nicely dressed black men sitting at the lunch counters. Lexii tell the truth, you hate freedom? Please leave my country then. I defend the rights of all Americans, while you spit on the constitution.
11/29/2007 2:12 PM MST on Gazette.com
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justhefacts wrote:
Pastor-The event coordinator can prevent anybody they want from entering their parade, event or gathering as long as they have a permit to close the street. If the protestor’s wants to stand on the street corner and display signs they have the right to do so as long as they are not on private property or impeding veh or ped traffic. Westboro never entered any event, they just stood on the outside and protested.
11/29/2007 2:12 PM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
OK, If I am holding a parade and I want it to be all about St. Patrick’s Day . An I make it clear no political message permitted, how is that stopping some one’ s1st Admen tent, because I am sure next’s year and maybe the next’s parade in town this will be happen. Why? To ensure we do not have another problem like this.
11/29/2007 2:16 PM MST
iraqwarvet wrote:
Hey Pastor Roy, I’ll help you out. Next Friday night in Manitou Springs, Iraq Veterans Against the War will be putting on a concert at The Ancient Mariner. How about you come down there and walk around the place with your pro-war banners. And Pro-War doesn’t mean Pro-troop. Hold high your “Death to all who are not Christian, White, and American” sign. I promise not to kick you out. And so will all the active duty troops and veterans of this war that will be at the show. Deal?
11/29/2007 2:16 PM MST on Gazette.com
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jtrione wrote:
And, yes, Pastor, that’s exactly what I’m saying. You have the freedom to walk down Tejon during PrideFest wearing a giant A-frame sign quoting pithy silly verses from some retarded book of allegory talking about how all the other right-wing zealots want to create a permanent second-class citizen status for GLBT people. That’s your right, hon, and many have fought and died for you to exercise that freedom. You might get some perplexed looks, but more likely than not, you’d get propositioned or invited for drinks and a party. Tough noogies. Deal with it. Price of freedom sort of thing.
11/29/2007 2:19 PM MST on Gazette.com
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pastor wrote:
Iragwarvet I reposted this just for you since I had a question for you.
pastor wrote:
No one want to silence the peace protesters right to speak, but we believe that there is a time and place for it. An most people believe that the St. Patrick’s Day parade was not the right time and place. Most people also seem to believe that if a cop asked you move you move you do not act like a baby. But I also must remind everyone that the peace protesters hand book, when the police ask you to move you drop an make a scene, so that it is caught on film, the reason is so you can make the police look like the bad guy.
Iragwarvet I have a question for you since you agree with the anti-war groups. Is it ok to block soldier return from the war? Is it ok to delay the soldier meeting with their family? Is it ok to destroy railroad tracks and stop the return of the military equipment from the war?
11/29/2007 8:56 AM MST on Gazette.com
11/29/2007 2:22 PM MST on Gazette.com
iraqwarvet wrote:
Hey Pastor, I counted 15 anti-war, Anti-bush bumperstickers today just driving through post going from gate 20 to the car wash near the B-street entrance. You should probably call the Post Commander and bring an end to this. But DOD Directive 1344.10 says they can, you know why? Because their Americans.
11/29/2007 2:24 PM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
Now Jim you last posting was an insult to me why did you have to act that way toward me. I do thank you for your stands .
11/29/2007 2:25 PM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
Iragwarvet sorry that is my 20th year of marriage dinner to one of most wonderful women in the world. Also I was not the posting about the soldiers getting in trouble. Oh by the way my nices husband had someone put one on his truck at night and he was very upset about it.
11/29/2007 2:28 PM MST on Gazette.com
iraqwarvet wrote:
Pastor Roy, again asking a black or white question. But, I’ll try to answer it for you. No, I don’t think its alright to block troops. So what now? What brillant thing do you have to say now?
Now I have a question for you, did you think black men trying to sit at a all white lunch counter in the late 50’s and early 60’s was a bad way to protest segregation or did they make a point? Maybe you should read Thoreau someday.
11/29/2007 2:30 PM MST on Gazette.com
justhefacts wrote:
CSACTION-Once again your mudding the water. Nobody is talking about your right to protest. You just can’t jump into a parade without permission. If the coordinator, holding the permit, decides they don’t want you to enter their parade they can exclude you from participation. If you choose to stand on the curb and spew then go for it.
If a war vet decided to get up on your stage during your permitted event in the park and take over the microphone he could be arrested. If you, the event coordinator, decided he was not welcome you have that right to exclude him.
Pretty simple stuff.
11/29/2007 2:30 PM MST on Gazette.com
iraqwarvet wrote:
Okay Pastor Roy, since you can’t make it, I’ll invite you to our next tower guard. You can bring your sign then, and its fine with us. Since it would be a good change, only two people actually had a problem with us 2 weeks ago. Or atleast only two people had the balls to come down to Acacia Park and say something. Pastor do you have the balls?
11/29/2007 2:34 PM MST on Gazette.com
iraqwarvet wrote:
Hey justthefacts, I’ll ask you the same question. Shouldn’t the black men in the 1950’s and 60’s been arrested for doing that illegal action of sitting at the white-only lunch counters? You probably think they should have been beating by the police and angry white men, right? Oh wait, thats what did happen…sound familiar?
11/29/2007 2:37 PM MST
justhefacts wrote:
Hey Pastor when you go to the show this weekend don’t forget your “Hillary in 08” poster.They probably wii have quite a few for rent there. You might be able to buy a Hillary shirt from them also.
11/29/2007 2:37 PM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
They were peace protester who say they have the right of free speech, and that blocked the soldiers coming back from Iraq from seeing their family. As one soldier was quotes as saying “ We all wanted to be the ones to remove these people from our post” These protester destroy the railroad tracks going into the base and the Dem. Governor and Dem. Mayor stopped the police from doing there job and removing these people.
11/29/2007 2:41 PM MST on Gazette.com
justhefacts wrote:
Pastor- Don’t forget your “Hillary in 08” poster when you go to Manitou this weekend. Bring money also, they will be selling Hillary and Bill shirts there.
11/29/2007 2:42 PM MST on Gazette.com
justhefacts wrote:
Vet-pick a fight with somebody else. Your comment has nothing to do with this blog.
11/29/2007 2:45 PM MST on Gazette.com
iraqwarvet wrote:
justthefacts, for your information since we are a 501(c)3 we don’t endorse any candidates, but personally I won’t vote for anyone who voted for this war. Please go read H.J. 114 from Oct. 12, 2002. Senator Clinton voted for it. Can’t do it. And none of us are Democrats. So try not to pigeon hole us
11/29/2007 2:46 PM MST on Gazette.com
iraqwarvet wrote:
Pastor, I read the news. I know what your saying and I didn’t agree with their actions. So what else do you got?
11/29/2007 2:47 PM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
Oh by the way I drove by the Guard tower that week and I counted about 15 people and that was including the homeless people hang out in the park. So yes I did go by, on both Sat and Sunday during the day and I counted about the same amount of people.
11/29/2007 2:48 PM MST on Gazette.com
iraqwarvet wrote:
justthefacts, haha! can’t answer the question so you run. You are sad.
11/29/2007 2:48 PM MST on Gazette.com
iraqwarvet wrote:
JusttheFacts, why don’t you just show up. Why do you have to get someone else to do your work? I don’t like Hillary and never voted for Bill. I don’t vote for people who use the military as nation-builders. Sound like a current President?
11/29/2007 2:51 PM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
Justefacts so much for peace love people inside the peace movement, I took it what he was trying to do was pick a fight with everyone who is against the peace movement, By trying to call us raciest.
11/29/2007 2:52 PM MST
pastor wrote:
Justefacts so much for peace love people inside the peace movement, I took it what he was trying to do was pick a fight with everyone who is against the peace movement, By trying to call us raciest.
11/29/2007 2:53 PM MST on Gazette.com
peanuts wrote:
So now it is politically correct to try people, WHAT AN INJUSTICE!
11/29/2007 2:53 PM MST on Gazette.com
iraqwarvet wrote:
JusttheFacts, my comment has nothing to do with this blog? What do you mean by that? Americans protested in the late 50’s and early 60’s by doing something illegal, if you know anything about history, black men sat at lunch-counters in the south which were labeled white-only. They were beaten by both the police and angry white men. It was illegal what these black men were doing. Their is some history for you, since obviously your still in grade school. Now, were the Black men back then justified for what they were doing, or should the white police and white men have continued doing what they were doing? Should the Black men have just been arrested?
11/29/2007 2:55 PM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
So that would leave FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Bush, Clinton, and Bush. You would not vote for.
11/29/2007 2:57 PM MST on Gazette.com
iraqwarvet wrote:
Pastor, I answered your question, why can’t you or justthefacts answer mine? I’m not saying your a racist, I’m just comparing the non-violent protests of the civil rights movement to what happened here on our streets of Colorado Springs, specifically what you people think is unjustifable behavior, since back then it was also considered unjustifiable behavior by the black men in the south. Whats your opinion?
11/29/2007 3:00 PM MST on Gazette.com
iraqwarvet wrote:
Pastor, again not black and white. I never said I’m anti-all wars. Just this one. Open your mind dude.
11/29/2007 3:02 PM MST on Gazette.com
rambone wrote:
hmmmmm wrote: “Been here 20+ years”
So this gives an implant like you the right to tell native born people like me were to go? I bet I got the California part right.
“BS in computer related fields”
I never heard of that degree. I that like,”I started but transfered when courses got tough”?
“defend the good people of my city from people like you”
Me, with no criminal record, military service, college educated? Yeah right, defend from people like me. Maybe what the people need is to be defended from rouge cops like you.
“for “aggressive” and “defense” definitions”
No thanks, but I would like the definition of the combined words. You know, the way you posted it earlier. Nothing over two syllables please, I don’t have all week for you to spell check.
11/29/2007 3:03 PM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (1)
iraqwarvet wrote:
Oh yeah, Pastor, I’m only 35. I don’t really remember FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, LBJ, or Nixon (even though I was two when he resigned).
11/29/2007 3:03 PM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
The issue is we have always been involved in nations building in one form or another.
11/29/2007 3:16 PM MST on Gazette.com
The Labour Party of Britain has changed nothing at all from Tony Blair under PM Gordon Brown, just as the Democratic Party has changed nothing 7 years into the Bush presidency. Both still are corporate creations masquerading as popular parties of the common folk.
The latest political scandal in Britain shows that ‘The Labour Party’ should actually be called The Property Developer Party.
In the US we really no longer have even the semblance of a Labor Movement, after its stagnant and corrupted leadership has spent decades after long decades monetarily supporting The Property Developer Party aka as The Corporate Trial Lawyer’s Party, etc. Union dues promoting corporate views, in short.
There is nothing democratic at all about The Democratic Party so this strategy of top down nothing (voting DP candidates) has led all of us into the dead end alley of total corporate control over ALL. We now hardly have a hint of what alternative direction would be like.
Because of this labour misleader co-option, all real organizing of the US Labor Movement will now have to be essentially a totally illegal activity if it is to have any chance to succeed at all, and American (and British workers, too) have gotten way too soft for this sort of battle. It was always the industrial workers that were the backbone for tough fights anyway, and much of that base has been ‘outsourced’ to outside the national borders of ‘The Homelands’. So what we have today, is a Labor Movement where Starbucks’ and Borders’ clerks make up some of the more militant sectors of the Anglo-Saxon working class. Oops!!! I hope I didn’t scare anybody with that word?… working class…
Liberals are now not from Labour, but are from the middle class, and worry about their food intake (healthy or not?), bowel movements (regular or not?), and image (polite or not?) while ‘protesting’. They are non-violent, turn the other cheek types, and not picket sign carriers walking the line subject to the company’s goons coming their way. Liberals now come more from churches than they do from blue collar jobs, so they are not going to bruise it out ‘violently’ witht he companies, as actually ultimately this has to be done again for progress to be made on class issues.
US Labor is now isolated,tasered, jailed, and sick (due to worsening health care and job conditions, worsening diet, and worsening ‘entertainment’ options). The only help for this sad situation might just have to come from workers in foreign countries actually standing up to the corporate goon squads (US military) we now, in America, consider absolutely normal to have all around us?
OK, that’s all I got to be said about Liberals and Labour… I gotta go shopping now! I got some coupons I need to use. Workers United For Good Coupons!
Everywhere in the US liberals want the United Nations to get involved and send in the ‘UN peacekeepers’, even though the UN Security Council is totally controlled by the American government.
And let’s face it, at times the UN troops act in some ways like the US troops do in Afghanistan and Iraq. And in some ways even worse! Like many of the ‘peacekeepers’ having sex with minors in areas under their control.
Why are liberals so enchanted about having UN troops being sent into a country? The UN is a total mess and totally under the control of the US. Isn’t it time to stop calling or desiring for the UN to do the US’s mop up operations?
Even as the US spreads its intentional genocide into Somalia, there are naive US liberals vocally demanding that the US intervene yet more into Africa, to supposedly stop genocide, they say!
Somalia’s main market for the whole country just burned down yesterday, a direct result of the war that the US unleashed on the country by its bombings of the country and then using Ethiopian troops as the US proxy army. Fire engulfs main Somali market US military contractors the Ethiopians are, so to speak. It is a made-by-the-US genocide that is slowly unfolding in that country.
Cry for the Somali people which the UN itself has says is now has the worst humanitarian crisis at this time in Africa. I have yet to see many (if any?) US pacifist antiwar activists demanding that the US get its butt out of Africa. What the hell are they waiting for?
We need to stop now with all our confusion and mobilize. It seems that the national, state, and local antiwar coalitions are led by folk addicted to solely staring at their own navels. At times, they appear to have entirely forgotten that the US is waging a total planetary war and just seem to be on Cloud Nine with their religous dogmas.
WE… CAPITAL LETTERS… are the problem, not the Bush gang all by itself. I have sat through 2 excruciatingly silly soul trips by local followers of this creed in the last few days about the importance of using only non violence. Religious paralysis and delusions that we have a democratic system where voting matters at this point gives people the excuse to do so little. Just get out of the house and talk to your neighbors and get them to make up some signs and do something together. It’s nonviolent! Then do it, please.
US Out of Africa Now! US citizens out of their king-super-boxes now! And please stop all this nonstop drivel about peaceful non-violence all the meanwhile sitting on your collective asses! Non-violence hardly worked in Myanmar, but at least the Buddhist monks got out and tried.
The US pacifists still are in church though. LITERALLY. Or in little group get togethers talking about much of nothing except the importance of being non-violent. Meanwhile, their opponents are entirely too violent yet the pacifists are out to lunch giving out hugs and love to them. Or ignoring their pro-war opponents’ activities altogether.
Hillel, the US’s most prominent student Zionist group, is actively pushing for US intervention against and into Sudan. On their web site which passes itself off as progressive and green, you will not find any concern for the people of Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, Somalia, or Afghanistan. All these being countries currently being torn apart by US interventions into their affairs.
Instead, Hillel is all into encouraging the notion that US and British imperialism is a benign humanitarian thing for the peoples of Sudan to experience, just as so many other colonized and semi-colonized peoples have. Onward Christian and Jewish soldiers, I guess?
One local activist who is often times connected with the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission through his work at Springs Action Alliance, is now celebrating Hillel’s work over at the University of Colorado in Boulder. There some students have erected a ‘shanty town’ to ‘call attention to Darfur’. Some of these folk were Hillel sutdents for sure.
The Springs Action Alliance’s most recent newsletter called our attention to this ‘shanty town’ constructed by a few students over at the UC at Boulder. This activist is concerned about Darfur. Good. He wanted us to know about this ‘shanty town’ build for us to try to get our support for intervention into Sudan.
I guess though that this individual has forgotten about the segregated shanty towns of White Apartheid South Africa that Zionist groups like Hillel enouraged Israel and the US to accept for decades? He, and other local liberal Darfur fetishists seemingly are blind to the allies they sometimes keep, it seems. They focus on Darfur alongside at many times a rather mixed crowd, Zionists included. These Zionists of today want us to forget about Apartheid shanty towns, and to think that Muslims are putting people into shanty towns instead of Christian Whites, or Jews.
These liberals that push us to become more concerned about Darfur don’t seem to understand that we already are concerned about the violence there. We don’t need Hillel to ‘inform’ us of the problem. We don’t need the Carter Center folk either. We, too, are concerned with all the dying that is going on in that region of Sudan.
We don’t need Zionist backed construction of fake ‘shanty towns’ at UC-Boulder to prompt our interest. We are against the continued bloodshed in that sad region of Sudan, Darfur, with or without Zionists and Israel pushing the issue.
Unlike the Zionists, both Jewish and Christian in the US, we don’t primarily hold the mainly Muslim government of Sudan to be alone responsible for the killing that has occurred there. We also don’t think that an increase in US-British govenrment directed intervention is the solution to what decades of British colonialism in the region has brought about.
More Imperial directed colonialism is not the solution to problems accruing from several centuries of European colonialism, even if it comes disguised as UN or African Union intervention instead of directly Brit and American.
Hillel and Darfur? How sweet their concern for Africa certainly is. It’s just not very sincere though. Instead, it’s little more than a propaganda tool they hope to use to gain support for more Israeli ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians off more of the Palestinian’s land.
Who are they really going to fool long term here? Their concern about any killing going on in Sudan is nothing more than a distracting device, to help keep people’s attention away from Israel’s own crimes committed with the help of the US government. If they want to worry about shanty towns, then worry some about those refugee camps both Israel and the US have created all over the Middle East. Until then, their concern about shanty towns in Sudan rings a little too false to me.
Many in the Colorado Springs Justice and Peace Commission seem enamored with Eisenhower, and even wear caps with ‘I Like Ike’ on them, and carry banners highlighting his one speech supposedly warning about the Military-Industrial complex.
Far from warning us of the dangers of this beast though, Eisenhower brought the beast home to bite America big. I cannot bring myself to ‘like Ike’ as they seem to do.
One aspect of ‘Ike’ was how he was the master of the witch hunt. Most know that Joe McCarthy rose and fell during Eisenhower’s time in office, but too many believe that it was ‘Ike’ that stopped him, and deny that ‘Ike’ made the McCarthy Era happen. If you read the wikipedia info on McCarthy, one will even discover that Robert Kennedy was an employee of Joe McCarthy. The Kennedy’s were in bed with this sick maniac, and so was Eisenhower.
Eisenhower finally had to make some distance from McCarthy, but in no way did he distance himself from witch hunting, red baiting, and homo baiting. Similarly, he gave one speech supposedly distancing himself from the Military-Industrial complex, but his entire career was based on feeding that machine, and enlarging it. To hold this one speech by him high up as being an important and defining one is insane. Will one day some liberal folk focus on some speech by George Dubya talking about the need for compassionate conservatism and enshrine that speech in myth, too? Let’s hope not.
During ‘Ike”s presidency, the US almost started a nuclear bombing and invasion of China, and these years were the coldest of the Cold War. Put simply, I don’t like Ike and there is little reason for any even moderately liberal person in the US to like him either. It’s time to put in their graves these two mistaken J&P banners quoting Eisenhower on one, and Henry Ford on another. Henry Ford, too, was an American fascist thug of a previous era like Ike. It is sad to see proPeace activists carrying quotes from these two Right Wingers.
These two banners should be thrown in the garbage can and never again be used here in Colorado Springs. If not done soon, I think I will make up some banner quoting Joseph Stalin on the need for Peace (Yes, he certainly spoke to that many a time) and carry it side by side with the ‘Ike’ and Ford ones. Maybe then????? these nice pacifist liberals might get the message about how dismaying their choice of wording on these two banners really appears? Who knows?
Four years ago, the US socialist Left was awash in hope for finally finding some cheap breakthrough to out flanking the 2 corporate political parties. They had decided that the Green Party was the road to Nirvana for them, and thought that this sad electoral vehicle might somehow be used to disassemble DP-voting liberals away from their cherished fetish, the Democratic Party.
Their hopes were based solely on their own desires, ignoring the reality that Democratic Party based liberalism still maintained complete ideological and organizational control over the Green Party bureaucracy at the top. Ralph Nader tried his best by refusing to go along with gluing the Green Party to merely helping elect another Democratic Party president. The official Green Party candidate, David Cobb, did the opposite, and ran a non-campaign for US president which completely set back the Greens chances of ever making any political impact at all.
This was what the Democratic Party wanted for the Green Party to do. By that time many card carrying liberals now just wanted The Green Party to just go away entirely, and David Cobb was the man to accomplish that. The Green Party under his wing set out like bulldogs to disappear themselves politically.
This time around, there is now no Green Party doing anything. They don’t even have to run the so called ‘safe states’ non-campaign of David Cobb this presidential race. Nobody takes the Green Party seriously anymore, and the repentant DP-voting liberals are safely back to waiting to cast their votes for a Hillary or a John once again. They chant ‘Anybody but a Republican!’ while voting for Democrats that are no different than the Republicans.
As to the socialists? They, too, are totally out of it. The Labor Movement has been split and socialists have largely ignored activating themselves through focusing on antiwar activism instead. There is not a Green Party vehicle to try to magically reach electoral Nirvana with either. Internationally, the socialist Left is in full retreat, too.
The Socialist Left has put itself in the political dead zone along with the Green Party itself. For almost 35 some odd years they have largely absented themselves from focusing on doing work to stop US militarism, and it shows. Why is the Green Party dead, dead, dead right now? For the same reason that the Socialist Left is. Neither has made opposing US militarism its priority political work. Instead, both went chasing political rainbows instead.
A political movement in this country that doesn’t make opposing the constant war making of the bipartisan US corporate government its central activity, just runs out of life. That’s what happened to The Greens. The fact is, that US militarism and how to go about stopping it is the central question of our time.
See Joshua Frank’s, The End of the Green Party? for more commentary about the Green Party’s disappearance act.
An article by Conn Hallihan titled Death at a Distance: The US Air War indirectly highlights the political cowardice of the American people as a whole, the politicians of both the corporate parties that the American people have been glued to for so long, and the Pentagon itself. The article focuses on how the Americans are turning to using pilot less drones to bomb targets located in civilian areas.
This has certainly become the American Way, another cowardly war fought by technocratic cowards, directed by political cowards, and tolerated quiescently by a cowardly American population as a whole, that flat out refuses to up its level of currently minuscule protest against what is being done in its name.
This Wednesday I got a brief glimpse of the cowardly rats gathering together once again to move towards yet another expansion of the US military-industrial complex in something called Fort Carson Piñon Canyon expansion. Only the people directly effected by losing their ranches seem all that motivated to oppose yet more base, more bombs, more soldiers. The rest of the Colorado population appears to hardly give a rat’s ass about the issue, and that’s who was gathered inside the city government building to nod and pose for the cameras…rat’s asses. And the rat’s ass king who was there at this meeting has got to be Senator Ken Salazar.
What is the relationship between pilot less aircraft murdering children in foreign lands from way up high and this planned expansion of one of The Springs’ local bases? My short answer is that you are just another American coward if you don’t get out and try to fight these creeps on both issues. Many of you liberal do-nothing voters put Ken Salazar into office with your votes, and yet most of you haven’t the courage to get out and do anything to stop this King of political cowards from getting off the political hook for his constant double speak.
I’m not advocating that you do this, but Democratic Party liberals really ought to be burning down their local party HQ instead of voting for your creeps once again. Instead, you seem to be just another part of this long herd of American Cowards supporting continual war. Get off your asses and demand that America stop murdering kids in foreign lands with pilot less drones and by starving them and their parents. You don’t need this damn Fort Carson at all. Your vote doesn’t count so don’t use the fact that you vote to excuse your complicity through your constant inaction.
Gordon Brown has met the Bush-Cheney team and it is to be more of the same. Despite some empty rhetoric about world poverty and rethinking British role in Iraq, Brown has deliberately refused to order British withdrawal from Iraq.
Instead, Bush and Brown are ordering United Nations troops into Sudan, 26,000 of them in total at a cost of $2 billion dollars a year. What a miserable and stupid way to spend money which could have gone to improve the lives of the Sudanese instead of policing them. Yes, but that would not have increased imperial control over the region.
Gordon Brown is showing herself to be the Hillary Clinton equivalent for Great Britain, which is a lesson about how liberalism everywhere is nothing much more than a pillar and cornerstone of Empire. A lot of hope was put in getting Blair out of office as is the case in the US with the hope that change will come with merely getting Bush out of the presidency. The Democrats offer no more than the Labor Party has offered with Brown. Just more of the same.
If you are for an end to US imperialism running the world, it will take more than elections of liberals to get it done. Liberalism just does the run around but the Empire is kept running. Those who hope for change are just conned.
