Tag Archives: Military

Daily Gaza fishing flotilla blockaded by Israeli Navy, no fishing to supplement carefully measured aid starvation diet

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Gaza fishermen being attacked by IDF gunboat with water cannon
The fishermen of Gaza are harassed daily by IDF gunships which shoot them outright when there are no Western witnesses present. The late Vittorio Arrigoni was one of the International Solidarity Movement who regularly accompanied fishing boats, forcing the Israelis to set aside their machine guns for water cannon when he was around. Of late activists have their own boat, the Oliva, to escort the fishing fleets. And today the Oliva was accompanied by another skiff commissioned by the Guardian. Their Jerusalem correspondent Harriet Sherwood tweeted the following adventure just now:

On boat heading out from Gaza port. Fishermen regularly fired on by Israeli military. Going to check.

Getting close to 3 mile limit for fishing. Israeli gunboat speeding towards us.

There are 7 boats in our group. 4 fishing boats, 2 press boats, 1 human rights group boat.

Israeli gunboat circling around. Siren sounding. Machine gun mounted at rear.

IDF coming very close. Sirens. Banking hard causing a lot of backwash for our small motor boat.

6 or 7 troops on bridge, all armed. We have cut our engines.

We are 2 or 2 and a half miles from shore so within fishing zone. IDF preventing us going further.

Phone signal going in and out. A 2nd IDF boat heading towards us.

Fishing boats are throwing lines. But very few fish this close to shore.

Guardian boat is flying under Barcelona FC flag….

Now 2 gunboats stopping us going further.

This is our GPS location: N31.5727176 and E034.37703. Can someone work out exactly how far we are from Gaza City?

Fishermen saying there are no fish. They want to go out another 50 metres. But that could provoke reaction. No boat willing to go first.

One fishing boat heading further out. But the guys are asking us (Guardian) to go in front for protection.

One IDF boat just circling our boats about 50m away. Other boat a bit further away.

A lot of resources devoted to a few tiny fishing boats.

Sea is calm today – except our little bit. Backwash creating lot of waves. They keep sounding siren. But we have all cut engines.

I’m told that the point of the IDF continually circling us is to create continuous waves and noise. Makes fishing harder.

One fishing boat just been swamped by backwash. They are giving up and going back to port.

One IDF boat appears to be heading away. The other coming closer.

Water canon military boat in distance. Maybe heading towards us. Hope not.

Both gunboats have moved off as water canon boat approaches.

Water canon boat maybe 200m away. Heading straight towards us. May have to put comms away for a bit.

Boats being water canoned. Very dangerous. The NGO boat almost went under.

Was mini hi-speed boat chase as we cut and run and the IDF chase.

IDF still firing on Oliva the human rights boat. They are trying to drown it says my translator.

We are keeping distance. Feel cowardly.

Amazing that the Oliva is still afloat.

We are within 3 mile limit so why is IDF doing this?

I will call them later to ask.

Other fishing boats yelling at us what are you still here. Go in, go in!

We are heading in. Water canon boat close behind.

All boats okay and heading back to port. No one hurt – but no fish either.

Water canon boat still firing its water into an empty sea.

Correction – one fishing boat passes and shows me its haul. 6 tiny ones. They are angry says my translator.

Water canon boat now firing on another group of fishing boats.

These fishermen are strangely euphoric – singing clapping dancing on their boats. Glad simply to survive I guess.

Back on dry land. 9.55am. Welcome back to safety says my translator, laughing ironically.

The Oliva, the water canoned boat, coming into port now with the other fishing boats.

The Oliva was rammed by the water canon boat and its engine damaged. The captain says all boats were within the 3 mile limit.

The fishing boats have gone back out. The Oliva’s captain is still bailing out his boat.

Captain says the engine fan is broken. It will cost around $4-500 to repair.

The gear is also damaged. This is the 3rd time the crew say.

Captain says they will go out again tomorrow if they can repair the engine. They have to find the parts, not easy in Gaza.

He says every time he goes out he expects to be attacked by water canon, live bullets, ‘whatever.’

That’s it from Gaza City port. I will be writing a piece for the Guardian and we have shot video. Over and out, as they say.

We’ll link to the Guardian article as soon as it’s out.

UPDATE: Rad the CPSGaza account.

IMF pick Christine Lagarde-Obamette updates beau mot Cherchez La Femme

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One of the boys, literally
IMF DSK replacement Christine Lagarde assumes leadership of the International Monetary Fund today, the world’s most powerful woman. Will she be the spoonful of sweetness to make austerity cuts go down? How’s your blood-sugar crashing on Obama? My guess is this fairy grandmother gambit will go down in Europe like an Obama Smurfette. To further my sexist analogy, imagine Lagarde the stereotypical bank loan officer, absolutely immovable. But Lagarde is personable, kindly, and maternal, and she’s willing to extend your loan, on the condition that you forfeit your house and all your possessions, and rent them from her. In the end you have nothing, but you don’t starve. By the way, the sheriff outside work for her. The IMF and the paramilitary riot police -that’s whose army. It’s a contract re-up you can’t refuse. That’s “austerity,” larceny with the improbably-legitimated veneer of usury, and it’s her last best offer.

Cherchez la femme or “get the woman”, used to be an investigative phrase meaning, find the extra-marital affair behind the political intrigue. The effect of this strategy was so absolute that it came to mean looking for the obvious. And so, isn’t the appointment of the silver-coiffed woman to front the severely PR-challenged, greed-saturated IMF, the obvious choice for a facelift?

Look at the IMF, an old boys network rivaled perhaps only by the World Bank. The solitary Lagarde is the next best thing to the superior exotic, one black man. They didn’t have one, and that novelty might be playing itself out already across the pond.

Augustin Carstens Fat BastardSpeaking of the New World, with Lagarde, the IMF avoided the challenger touted as the champion of emerging nations, Bank of Mexico nomineee and corpulence personified, Augustin Carstens. You might remember Carstens as the obesity-suited Fat Bastard from Austin Powers, who kept begging to be given Mini-Me for a snack.

What an unfortunately apt personification of the banking system Augusten Carstens would have been. Try to find a single photograph that wouldn’t have made the IMF aims plain: the bankers are licking their chops not only for your last penny, they want your ribs.

Mexicans have to brave illegal status in the United States to flee the economic policies enforced by their Fat Bastard.

ACLU and Shepard Fairey drape Lady Liberty in nationalism & jingo-freedom

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New ACLU promotional poster by Shepard Farley (sic) features Statue of LibertyIs “Freedom” the same thing as Liberty? Let’s see, ACFU? It has an unfriendly ring to it.
 
The American Civil Liberties Union commissioned this fundraising magnet from halftone-deaf one-note Obamartist Shepard Fairey, but somebody confused this for a Department Of Defense contract. “Leading Freedom Forward”? That’s USA’s imperialist catchphrase! Please note at the helm is Fairey’s first client: Obama.

Linguists have long lamented America’s abandonment of liberty for the nefariously vacuous “freedom.” Freedom is for Operations, Markets, CIA-funded Pro-Democracy [sic] ops, and O-wellian doublespeak. “The Price of Freedom” is the title of the Smithsonian’s military history exhibit. Now the ACLU jumps on the war-wagon? That’s the Statue of Liberty with a bullhorn, as a union organizer — you can tell by the clipboard, but they’ve draped her in a flag, literally. Can you imagine any national monument with less need to prove her patriotism? I would have preferred they had used blind Lady Justice in reference to nationalism, where her blindfolded could have been the Red, White and Blue. But that’s probably a too obvious fashion statement about fascism. Dear ACLU, where are you going with this?

Let me clarify my criticism of Shepard Fairey. He’s a brilliant artist. By “halftone-deaf one-note” I refer to the FANS of his Blue Period, circa 2008. My beef is that this work recalls Fairey’s iconic Obama poster, though obviously it wouldn’t be considered a “Shepard Fairey creation” if it hadn’t. But. Is it appropriate that the ACLU wants to promote itself and its vital uni-partisan cause, with a ubiquivisual trademark that screams Democratic Party? Thankfully ACLU’s legal team at least has not failed to recognize Obama’s DP as the current reigning champion of civil liberty oppression.

The least of teargas effects are tears

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Teargas has become a misnomer of course.What’s being used so liberally to suppress demonstrations, to be graphically specific, is vomit-inducing PUKE-GAS. It’s a nausea agent, a respiratory inhibitor, and except when used by the paramilitary police-state, “teargas” is prohibited chemical warfare.

Straight blogger confesses he’s lesbian

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Lesbian blogger PAULA BROOKS unmasked as straight manSo a retired Air Force man has to fess up that he was “Paula Brooks,” editor of the blog LEZ GET REAL. More critically, Bill Graber, 58, of Ohio, was a shill for fellow hoaxer Thomas MacMaster aka the Gay Girl In Demascus, whose wife Britta Froelicher has yet to be implicated directly, though she’s a Syria scholar at a Neocon leaning institution, and as supposed activists, their talking points are concern trollishly generic. With Graber unmasked, LezGetReal is being handed off to alternating erstwhile shill “Linda Carbonell”, who says she doesn’t use her married name La Victoire lest she jeopardize her husband‘s job with the government. “Victory?” Hello? Commenters are all LOL because LezGetReal still won’t get a real lesbian for an editor, and tittering because Graber and MacMaster flirted online, unknowingly middle-aged-man-on-man. Heehee, yeah, I don’t think so. MSM interviewers ponder that no one appeared to intend harm, but aren’t they missing a wooded Virginia campus for the trees? If psy ops programs were indeed coordinating trolls, what do you think the motley crew would look like? No doubt you’ve encountered your share already, a drearily uncreative bunch, frequently on the fringe of the military, with their fingers in many pies, the gay issue being not so distantly DoD-related.
 
“Paula Brooks” was one of the smelly loose ends of the Tom MacMaster Amina Arraf hoax, so I’m glad that someone smoked Graber out. But on the other hand I’m not.

I intended, with the title of this post, to lampoon the now repeated twist of lesbian bloggers turning out to be straight men. To get attention now, you’d have to be a straight blogger who is discovered to really be a lesbian. But then no one meant to bring this kind of attention to themselves, you’d think.

Maybe you’d be wrong. The worst element of this fraudulent blogger meme, is the seed of mistrust which increasingly poisons the internet. The only edge the established media had on the blogosphere was an inherent credibility, the indoctrination that if something is in print, it must be true. Though MSM journalism has been losing ground to the superior investigative output of the internet, hoaxes such as this work in their favor.

Although it’s been fun to unmask these frauds, and seek credit for the collar, the more attention paid to the story, the more eroded becomes the public trust. Yes, we’ve proven that the net will find you out, or more precisely CAN find you out. But what’s our success rate? It feels like 100%, but that counts only the identities we question. There’s no telling how many frauds remain undetected.

And worse, internet sleuths are slashing away at the very anonymity they cherish. To be a credible voice now, you have to be completely out, you have to show your papers basically. Who celebrates that?

We may think we’ve embarrassed MacMaster and Graber and Froelicher and La Victoire, but if they are indeed intelligence spoilers, they can go right back underground and on to the next alias.

Should we discount a Hasbara hand in this? Critics seem to be condemning MacMaster and Froelicher as anti-Israel, bolstering their Palestinian advocacy identities, but really without ground. In a video interview available online, Froelicher speaks about her gig with the AFSC and outlines her strategy for helping the Palestinians: make it so they have something to lose, she explains, so they’ll be less prone to violence and radicalism. Yeah. And MacMaster writing as Gay Girl Amina once posted her dream to learn Hebrew and live in the superior democracy Israel, just like your typical Syrian girl.

And if they are spoilers, then to be unmasked, to be the embodiment of fraudsters, fleshes out exactly what their handlers want, voices to distrust, to destabilize our common supply of information.

Navy Seals Death Squids

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It does seem unfair to conclude, after the US special forces operation to hunt and kill Osama bin Laden, that all Navy SEAL teams are death squads, but is it a logical fallacy? No one is now pretending there was any other objective but to kill the al-Qaeda leader and everyone who stood in our path, preferably unarmed. Now the latest revelation is that a duplicate assault team was kept at the ready. That’s how many executioners ready? The question becomes, are all Navy Seals trained to kill in cold blood? The answer could lay with the instructors at Fort Benning, the notorious “School of the Americas” where it used to be understood the death squads of South American dictators learned their trade, although now torture is taught at military camps and private contractor schools literally coast to coast, so isn’t that the problem? Torture being among other unsavory practices we say we do not do, while simultaneously forbidding revelations to come from Wikileaks.

When the Germans set their minds to liquidate civilians as their Operation Barbarossa drove toward Russia, they dedicated “special forces” called the “Einsatzgruppen” to do the deed. One because the task detracted from the forward advance, and two, because executing unarmed civilians proved a demoralizing task for the ordinary soldier. On the other hand, gathering noncombatants and shooting them in the back of the head didn’t require combat skills either, so the Einsatzgruppen were recruited from the police force of German cities like Hamburg, where the principle skill was exerting authority and pulling the trigger where others might flinch.

The Einsatzgruppen present vexing evidence for Holocaust deniers. Skeptics can point to inconsistencies about the function of gas chambers in the concentration camps, to suggest that the Nazis might have managed to work their prison laborers to death, but never intended to exterminate them. That argument fails when considering the role of the Einsatzgruppen, to hunt down Jewish civilians, take them to where no one is looking and shoot them. Prisoners of war, yes, and Slavs too, but by primary directive, the Jews.

When partisan acts of sabotage necessitated disciplinary retribution, the Germans had other squads to raze entire villages, these soldiers were chosen from the military brig or from convicts offered a military probation from civilian prison.

In either case the German Wehrmacht chose to match the criminal mindset to the crime. Though overwhelming in its savagery, WWII predated the “Free Fire Zone” where civilians are pretended to be adversaries and/or dismissed as collateral damage.

That’s not to say that today’s soldiers are all bad, many of them I’m sure are earnest peacekeepers determined to win hearts to Pax Americana. I’m sure your average Navy SEAL has rescued his share of kittens from trees.

So which is it, do the Navy SEALs train every member not to shy from shooting defenseless people at point-blank range, or are there designated specialists? Are those chosen based on excellence of performance, as the PR has it, or from among the sailors with disciplinary troubles? Because it’s looking like the bin Laden raid was not out of the ordinary, and no one’s defending it as such.

Bin Laden’s assassination offered a curious ray of hope for me when President Obama’s mission accomplished message was “justice has been served.” Might I dream that bankers and the world’s biggest criminals could feel a draft of discomfort at the idea that no one is untouchable, and the Commander in Chief’s idea of serving justice means a hail of bullets to whomever’s home he chooses.

Don’t worry, there are unspecial forces enough to go around. When Wikileaks released the video of unarmed Iraqis being gunned down by relentless, trigger-giddy helicopter crews, most soldiers acknowledged that such events were commonplace. In the US military, you don’t even have to be a specially rated soldier to rank as Einsatzgruppen.

In my 20-year experience with local policemen, owning two retail stores, soliciting their help with shoplifters, vandals, and whatever disturbances, I can honestly report that all were professional, competent, and very pleasant. That’s 100% of them, very nice people. I can also say that in my experiences protesting, those police-persons who arrested me were unwavering bastards. Also 100%. Not in any particular case the same officers, but statistically, if you compare the two absolute groups, they’re the same people.

Cartographic traces of Lake, Colorado

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Maybe like me you’re wondering how a landmark falls off the face of the earth, in particular Google Earth, assuming as we do that web crowdsourcing is archival, not perishable. A stagecoach watering hole in Kansas Territory, formerly Arapaho, was Hedinger’s Lake, between present day Limon and Hugo. Like the history of Colorado’s water, Lake became Lake Station, later a railway siding, today a creek.


First some back-story: 1750. When gold looked to become the carrot to drive white man’s Manifest Destiny, the Indian Territories of what would become Colorado were labeled simply the Gold Region.


Back in 1815, the West was still La Louisiane, and place names were native, French and Spanish. Taos was one of the oldest Spanish settlements, site of the First American Revolution, against the Spaniards, and another revolt when the US invaded. Camp de Baroney sits on the Arkansas River, eventually resettled as El Pueblo. And there’s La Fourche Republicaine, a fork of la Rivoire Missouri, soon to lead a prominent migration trail west.


By 1848, St. Vrain’s Fort and Grante Ft., Bent’s Fort, were already protecting Anglo trading interests. (Note by the way, Old Park and New Park, eventually to be become the “North” to South Park.)


By 1864, the Cheyenne and Arapaho found themselves bordered on the west by the “Military Department of Utah” and ceding their lands to the Kansas Territory. (On this map we can see Montana City, the original Denver City. Denver eventually overtook Auroria and the metropolis. Mineral Springs became Manitou and Colorado Springs at the foot of Pikes Peak.)

Note the curiously singular representation of a “Kansas Lake” depicted at the tip of the south fork of the Republican River, whose waters will originate in the later to be named Lincoln County, at whose heart will lie Lake, Colorado.

The Rocky Mountain region lost many lakes by the mid 1800s when beaver were hunted to near extinction and with them the beaver dams. Note just West of “Kansas Lake” lies Beaver Creek.


With the gold rush, settler trails crisscrossed the West, for wagon trains, stagecoach and mail carriers. Lake was a stage at the convergence of the Butterfield Overland Dispatch and Republican Fork Trails, where they crossed the Big Sandy Creek to join the Smoky Hill South and North Roads (after similarly named rivers which were starting points in Kansas) or the spartan Starvation Trail to Denver. Today’s I-70 follows Smoky Hill North.


Was Hedinger’s Lake the water which travelers sought at the end of the South Republican Fork Trail?


This 1868 Union Pacific map predicted the stops heading eastward from Denver to be Parkhurst, Beaver, which later became Deer Trail, and Coon Creek, which became Kit Carson, opposite Sand Creek.


By 1870, Kansas was a state and the Kansas Union Pacific RR reached Denver. (Beyond the mountains: North Park, Middle Park and South Park.)


By 1873, leaving for Denver from Fort Wallace, there were stops at Kit Carson, Aroyo, Lake, Agate (pronounced “A-Gate”) and Deer Trail. (Note: still no Colorado Springs.)


A map circa 1880s, shows Hugo, Lake, River Bend, Godfrey, Agate, Deer Trail, and Byers, named for the founder of the Rocky Mountain News, formerly Bijou.


When the Chicago Kansas and Nebraska Railroad sought a direct route to Colorado Springs, it decided to intersect the Kansas Pacific at a new stop called Limon and that was the end of Lake. At Limon the westbound trains performed what was called the “Limon Shuffle” where passenger and freight cars were separated depending on which were going to Denver and which to Colorado Springs.


Lake Station remained a stop for the Union Pacific, and on this map which accompanied the 1910 census, it’s gone, in favor of a late addition, Bagdad.

As trains no longer needed to take on water, and could reach their destinations more quickly, many stops were eliminated. This 1925 train Union Pacific train schedule lists only Cheyenne Wells, Kit Carson, Hugo and Limon before reaching Denver.


Lake is still marked on railroad maps, though there’s not even an access road to reach it.


On other maps it’s just Lake Creek, spanned by an impassable decaying bridge. It’s now a wetlands area that provides a bird sanctuary.


For the USGS, Lake still serves as namesake for the topographical map of the Lake Quadrangle.

To be continued…

No America, justice has not been done

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This didn’t always need explaining– lynching and body snatching are INJUSTICES. There used to be an understanding of what “taking the law into your own hands” meant. Killing someone outright doesn’t bring them to justice, and I’m not alone to assert that killing someone -even after a trial- is premeditated murder. We’re not hearing any such voices on the media unfortunately. Even in the days of mob lynching, the crowd once drained of its blood-lust would sober to the crime it committed, often masked. That said, the press has always responded with statements of pitiable glee. In Colorado, even the most gruesome lynchings, race-related and otherwise, prompted congratulatory editorials from the Colorado Springs Gazette, the Rocky Mountain News and the rest. However, political leaders were usually more careful not to be celebrating extra-judicial revenge killing.

Today even world leaders seem to be piling on with attaboys. Dispiriting really.

The facts emerging from bin Laden’s killing just get worse and worse. If Osama was indeed in a military-secured compound, a whole secured zone apparently, what reason could possibly be given for why every usual method would not be used to bring him into custody? Where was he going to go? Did we need to kill his entourage like we did Saddam Hussein’s sons? The fact that this raid is purported to have been planned for months makes the assassination all the more purposeful.

And then we learn his body was buried at sea, which the media uncritically recite is “in accordance to Islamic tradition” even as Muslims refute it. Besides of course suggesting that today’s raid was only Kabuki theater for disposing of OBL’s ten-year-dead corpse, conveniently making the body disappear makes dark humor of mocking Habeas Corpus. Where already America disregards the fundamental right of a trial of your peers.

Bin Laden’s colleagues are denied the jury of peers and instead judged through kangaroo military tribunals, patently illegal by international law. Lynching of course dispenses of even that formality.

But lynching victims of the earlier times were not deprived of their bodies. How dare the US declare itself judge, executioner AND God over Osama bin Laden’s remains?!

The pretext is that they don’t want a shrine made of wherever his family would have chosen to bury him. But of course, that will not be ours to decide. At the very least the site of bin Laden’s murder will already be a shrine for those in Islamabad. It will certainly be ironic if the WTC in New York City will be the most significant memory of Osama bin Laden’s deeds and become ground zero for his enormous fame worldwide.

With Gaddafi’s TV villain star rising, bin Laden should have seen this coming

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I’m sure they would rather have pulled Osama bin Laden from a hole for a 2012 October Surprise, but the US media narrative makers must have figured out that Mumbledore Gaddafi is not proving telegenic enough to upstage the king of Islamic villainy. Now US airstrikes are killing the Libyan dictator’s children and grandchildren, we can’t let a bogeyman win audience sympathy.
 
The good news for Pakistanis and Afghans is that US drones now have no reason to stalk their skies and Guantanamo can now release the foot-soldiers who’ve lost their leader. If “justice has been done” and the perpetrator of 9-11 has been neutralized, then it’s over, isn’t it? No apparently. Now we’re reminded al-Qaeda is much bigger than OBL, and yet we’ve executed him as if he bore responsibility, AND we’re told that the act may prompt retaliatory violence. So it’s solved what then? Targeted assassination brings no one to justice, it asserts vengeance and perpetuates the cycle. Which of course was OBL’s role all along.

Is it too much to hope that the special forces who found bin Laden’s compound were there to arrest him, to put him under US custody? Killing a person outright has never been considered bringing them to justice, as much as the media and political celebrities seem to be pretending. This was a murder, an extra-judicial targeted assassination, a revenge killing.

Because if Osama had indeed been living in the thick of a Pakistani military controlled zone, and US forces coordinated the operation with Pakistan, it would seem that he could have been apprehended. Our soldiers could have laid siege and at the very worse bin Laden might have killed himself. In such a case there would have been no need to kill the people who lived with him, also not convicted of any offenses.

Apparently an unnamed woman was killed as someone tried to use her as a “human shield.” The principle involved in such a maneuver is that you prevent someone shooting at you because they don’t want to kill an innocent. Apparently American culture’s willingness to sanction “collateral damage” has trumped the usual precaution of avoiding the killing of a person who is not targeted for assassination.

As I watch Americans gather in Lafayette Park near the White House to celebrate the news like some kind of sports victory, I wonder what masses across the seas would gather to celebrate. Would a targeted assassination of our president be received with similar jubilation?

Obviously an American leader would have more blood on his hands. An American Commander In Chief would be culpable by dint of his chain of command, by his public announcements and his stated objectives. Osama Bin Laden’s responsibility hasn’t even been demonstrated, except as a forgone conclusion by media pundits who question nothing of the narrative they’re fed.

The man-purse for behind enemy lines

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IDF Israeli Paratrooper bagA staple of army surplus stores since the days Banana Republic was the Starbucks of olive drab, the Israeli Paratrooper Bag was marketed as the Swiss Army Knife of handbags. Beside the ludicrous notion that an airborne assault fighter would shoulder a single-strapped man-purse, the red logo of a winged parachute raises another incongruity. For what pretext does a nation’s defensive force have “paratroopers?” I know the US/UK imperial powers label their entire military as being for defense, but they’ve got client states to dominate. Every nation’s special forces are now synonymous with SWAT, basically unconstitutional deployment of paramilitary forces against their own populations. Even if we grant governments this tool of repression, they don’t use parachutes. Paratroopers are the advance team for an invading army, dropped behind enemy lines to demolish another’s defenses against the main assault. And that’s why Israel is so unsuccessful in defending itself, it’s attacking.

Semper Fido Bitches

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Semper FidelisCOLO. SPRINGS– Tough crowd at this week’s antiwar bannering: the usual plentiful honks of support, but now intermittent servicemen heckling in crew-cutted indignation. And we haven’t yet inaugurated our WARMONGERS GO TO HELL banner. The best the driver of a white van-load of them could muster was “Semper Fi” so they must have been Marines because they shout it like it means “America! Fuck Yeah!” Are they taught it’s abbreviated Latin for Always Faithful? I believe Fidelis is the root of Fido.

Makes sense, doesn’t it? Man’s faithful companion, the original boot-licker.

Faithful to what honestly? Not the Constitution, or law, liberty or the will of the American People. The US military boot-licking dogs pledge an oath to big oil and the rest of the corporate monied interests. Semper Bitches.

Another soldier-driver asked me with smug arrogance, where was my sign that read “Support the Troops?” Huh? I don’t support the troops. Does he support baby killers, rapists, torturers, drone-pilot-cowards and snipers? WTF. We parted calling each other names. Hippie. Blimp-neck enabler. Dirty hippie. Moron.

Do the other branches of the Defense Department resent the Marines because they don’t have their own pithy Latin je-ne-sais-quoi –literally– to represent their own mistaken-self identity? The Navy and Air Force already have a Native American name, he-who-shoots-from-cover. US Army GIs can modify the USM slogan: Semper Fuckers.

In the struggle for Middle East land, Palestinian violence will always win

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Israel can build all the new settlements it wants, take heart, it only takes one horrific Tate-Labianca-like crime scene to curb the Zionist homecoming charade. Israel can terrorize Gaza to smithereens, the Palestinians have nowhere to flee. American Jews on the other hand, are not going to leave comfortable digs, to relocate to Jerusalem where their 11-month-old might be slashed to death in her crib. Such dastardly strategy comes at a price of course, against a military willing to defy international law and exact collective punishment for the deed of one zealot, but Israel knows that even its US billions in weapons cannot compete with one Palestinian knife that finds its mark.

Odd, isn’t it? On the battlefield, Goliath can slay an entire West Bank of Davids, but when the contest is holding ground, you can take it, but if you can’t convince your people to settle it, the land will revert to its rightful inhabitants.

I’ll leave you to decide if the murder of an Israeli settler family is off-limits. They’re moved unto properties appropriated from Palestinians, illegal settlement of occupied land, they’re ferried by armored SUVs in military convoys, their rooftops, front gates, walls and streets are guarded by soldiers, their neighborhoods buffered by “sterile zones” purged of all inhabitants, the persistence of their habitation is used to advertise for more settlers and demoralize the non-Jewish native population in waiting of cleansing. Are settlers “innocent civilians,” irrespective old or young age? Who is to blame for putting settler children into homes whose previous inhabitants have been put out on the street, who can only assail their walls with stones?

Remember too, it’s the Israeli settlers, more than the IDF soldiers, who routinely raid Palestinian homes, orchards and farms, killing their neighbors with impunity. Where does any settler get to pretend they should be considered an innocent civilian?

Arab Palestine is confronted with a slow death by attrition. Israel has never disguised its plan to ethnically purge the entire of what it calls Judea and Sumaria. What does it matter then, if resistance violence begets occupier retaliation, if this brazen home-invasion-family-murder provokes an avenging of deaths ten fold? The Russian Partisans paid fifty to one. The Gaza massacre was 300 to one. The Gilad Shalit prisoner ratio is tens of thousands to one, still well shy of US military disproportional force.

Peace activists want to curb armed resistance in favor of nonviolence, calculating that peace will come when Palestinian martyrdom awakens the Israeli conscience, or whichever comes first, Palestinian blood runs dry. This suits Israel of course, its Apartheid State needs the Palestinians gone, for Jews cannot forever pretend they have a Democray while subjugating an inferior untouchable class. So long as one Palestinian remains who fights back, Israel will never conquer Palestine.

Israel can plan all the settlement construction sites it wants, the more beautiful the better, in the end the people of Palestine can claim them in partial compensation.

The US-UN no-fly no-flee free-fire zone

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Forbidding flight is not a pun, but a cruel misnomer –a war crime too by the way– international law forbids shooting a fleeing adversary. Or does aerial flight apply to ground forces and naval vessels? So far enforcement of the Libyan No-Fly Zone extends to flight by tanks, ships, and Command & Control Centers, which may yet be taken to include the C&CC lobes of a dictatorial brain resisting regime change, even if that’s not the UN objective. The first night air-strike on Col. Al-Qaddafi’s home reminded me more of the opening act of Schock N’ Awe Baghdad, than what most expect of a UN peacekeepers’ NFZ. Iraq post Kuwait 1991? Bosnia less Herzegovina 1995? Please! New War Czar Obama trumpeted this declaration of a bombing war on Libya with the same speech Bush used to announce the 2003 Christian Jihad against Saddam Hussein (ongoing). The upside of getting to see a No-Fly Zone for what it is, a military bombing spree in the guise of a UN mission, is for all those humanitarian intervention “activists” who cried for a NFZ in Sudan and Somalia. But those assholes knew what it was obviously because they still never call for one to protect Gaza.

The Jews killed Harry Potter, if we’re to believe the latest Israeli travel PR

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Israeli girls pose around grave of 1939 victim of IrgunI’m mocking the mother of all anti-Semitisms, the original Christian dead horse, that Jews killed Jesus. So let’s be very clear, it was the Zionists who killed Harry Potter. And it wasn’t me how brought it up. Israeli tourism promoters have found another attraction to lure Western visitors, this time RK Rowling fans. Seriously, they’ve found a grave marked Harry Potter, albeit a namesake British soldier of the same age, who was killed in Hebron in 1939. APPARENTLY Potter fans are flocking to the military cemetery in Ramla regardless, if perhaps because the young soldier’s unsung death is tragedy enough. Press TV notes that another tombstone, for one William Shakespeare, is drawing less notice. Unmentioned is how Private Potter died. Charged with keeping the peace under the Palestinian Mandate, the British were fighting against the Irgun, the Zionist terrorist organization trying to drive Arabs from the land that was being claimed for Israel.

American tv viewers outraged at rape of white blond woman by dark horde

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You’ll think I’m minimizing the rape of CBS reporter Lara Logan by of a mob of Egyptian “celebrants” at the height of the Mubarak-departure delirium, as reported so far, but I want to point out that hers is not even representative of the rapes suffered by the victims of America’s wars, crimes ongoing, tragedies unseen, unheralded and as a result -or not- eliciting scant sympathy from the American public. Yes it is embarrassing that white people care only about their own women, especially blonds. In fairness, the brown victims in other lands are kept from American view. Logan by the way is part of the apparatus which directs the media lens. Has Ms. Logan shown the humility to express concern for victims who cannot be airlifted to proper medical care, who may be victims of sex trafficking war zone gang rapes and have no rescuers? Perhaps as a media propagandist for US military enterprises, Ms Logan and her defense contractor husband will be opening their eyes to the millions of men, women and children whose lives are destroyed as a result of their livelihoods. The crime suffered by Lara Logan was as reprehensible as inexcusable, but it brings into sharp focus a dilemma I have: what fate worse than death do we wish on those who perpetuate America’s wars?

If you have to ask for whom the fat lady sings, it is not for Tahrir Square.

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–And to really mix my malaprops, she sings for them that bought her. If there was one variable which got away from the underdogs of Egypt’s Jan25 Revolution, it was who would referee the endgame. While Hosni Mubarak’s stunning defiance Thursday night looked like a Hail Mary pass hoping to provoke the protesters to mayhem, as a defensive strategy he was moving the goalposts. Anticipating a capitulation, the Tahrir Square demonstrators made clear it was the entire regime which needed ousting, no Suleiman, no Emergency Law, an inviolate list of demands. Mubarak’s insulting buffoonery focused the great beast’s wrath like a rodeo clown. When the announcement came he was stepping down, who could not help but raise a cheer, drowning out the earlier precautions. Mubarak played Egypt like a fiddle, as he burned it, while the fat lady of state media called the game over.

It’s not over until the fat lady sings
So opera advises American football, in reality a game governed strictly by elapsed time. The expression describes the mutual sense that every competition has a natural denouement. Actually another false notion, as this feeling is not often shared by the side fallen behind at the final score.

I’ve convoluted ask not for whom the bell tolls– and if you have to ask how much it costs–, Hemingway and Bugatti I believe, to stress the obvious, that Wagnerian sopranos are kept in furs by the wealthiest of patrons. As epic as might be your struggle, unless you transcend the stage to torch the theater, the status quo raises and lowers the curtain. Without seizing the state media, if even that had been possible, and without staging a narrative to compete with Mubarak’s Greekest of tragic high dives, the Tahrir Square revolutionaries became mere players to please the king.

How could we have missed the grand theatricality of Mubarak’s televised last stands, lighting and makeup dialed to Bela Lugosi? Anyone who knows to dramatize a campfire tale by holding a flashlight under his chin also knows they don’t do that for their profile pic.

In all three of his televised responses to the Jan25 reformers, Mubarak could be paraphrased to have said “over my dead body.” It was a road map his adversaries probably should have heeded. Where is Mubarak now? He’s not gone, he hasn’t even left Egypt. We are informed Mubarak has stepped down by the same henchmen who told protesters “all your demands will be met,” then meeting none.

We learn now that Egypt’s Supreme Council of the Military is trying to clear Tahrir Square. It’s outlawing those who would cause chaos and disorder, and forbidding labor unions to assemble or strike. It’s refusing to end Egypt’s emergency law, or to release the unknown thousand detained during the protests. What of Suleiman and the regime’s other cronies? We have only Mubarak’s doppelganger in an army cap. Field Marshall “Happy” Tantawi, takes to the microphone with no other agenda it appears than to restore Egypt its accustomed sonorous normalcy. If Tibetan throat-singing has an antecedent we can wager now it was Pharaoh throat-talking.

Dance with the one who brought you
A mantra worth cursing out, when Americans wonder why their elected representatives answer only to their biggest campaign donors. So why would Egypt’s Jan25 upstarts have banked on winning the cooperation of the army? I almost said “their” army, but it’s bought and paid for by Mubarak, actually by the same interests who buy US politicians. Deciding not to challenge the army spared lives, but it’s left the military regime in place. Regime unchanged.

There’s a problem when you harness the protection of the military without knowing the intentions of its leaders. You can win a nonviolent revolution against the schoolyard bully if you’ve got the deterrence of “My Bodyguard,” but when the army does that on a national scale it’s called a “bloodless coup.” I’d be curious to know if nonviolence cultists rank bloodless coups among behaviors they condone.

Egypt’s April 6 Youth Movement, chief instigators of the Jan25 uprising, attribute much of their organizing skill to training with OTPOR, the famously successful Serbian youth rebellion which ousted a Balkan despot. OTPOR is now a “pro-Democracy” consultant group that tours the world to awaken nascent freedom-seeking insurgents aspiring to popular uprisings. OTPOR refutes insinuations rising from the disclosure that it has accepted CIA funding, but curiously OTPOR is more often by happenstance advising malcontents in Venezuela, Bolivia, Equador, Iran, the usual outspoken rivals to US hegemony. What are they doing in Egypt? Had Hosni Mubarak gone rogue and we didn’t know it?

When pan-Arabists think of events in Tunisia and Egypt igniting popular uprisings across North Africa and the Middle East, there’s a line to draw between the common dictators and those more hostile to the West, whose rule is autocratic by necessity of having to defend against CIA and Mossad activities designed to foment instability.

Whether against anti-US foes or pro, it might be safe to say that OTPOR talks a good game, without having yet had a victory. They too deposed a dictator, but not his regime. The problem with OTPOR’s advice has to do with the end game.

I sat in on an OTPOR seminar once. They make a yearly visit to Colorado College to lecture for the nonviolence program. At the conclusion of one lecture I witnessed a tremendously telling aside, which emerged during the Q&A, and definitely wasn’t in the nonviolence syllabus. I wonder if the A6YM got the memo.

This presenter, a veteran of the student uprising that deposed Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, contended that after this victory for Democracy, etc, etc, after the attention span of the media had moved on, the same Milosevic cronies who’d been driven to the shadows, assassinated the opposition leaders and crept right back to power. His lesson, a mere thesis, which I paraphrase to reflect his muted emphasis: we should maybe have taken it one step further and made sure to kill the fuckers.

A6YM is still gambling they can separate the lower ranks of the army from the brass. If Robert Fisk’s report that Egyptian tank commanders refused January 30 orders to make a Tiananmen Square out of Tahrir, there may still be hope in such a strategy. But it certainly won’t work if no one will announce that it has worked. If a tyrant falls in the forest and no one hears, his rule doesn’t fall. The funeral cortege of Genghis Khan killed everyone in its path to keep word of his death from spreading across the empire until his successor could consolidate power. If you’re not going to push him off the cliff literally, perhaps Slavoj Zizek is right to say you’ve got to create a Tom and Jerry moment where despots like Mubarak see that there is no longer any foundation beneath him, where visualizing his own demise brings it upon himself. But can that be done without having director’s cut over the narrative?

What kind of farce are we perpetuating to pretend that Hosni Mubarak must be granted a dignified exit? What dignity commanded firing on unarmed protesters? Are we to pretend men who torture to retain their power can be cajoled to release it?

Instead, the Egyptian rebels find themselves with no ground beneath their feet, their “victorious revolution” now a meme being used to rally dissenters against America’s chief adversary Iran.

Poetry of Barack Obama invokes MLK but pays true homage to Rod McKuen

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Jesus what a bore! Remember when SNL lampooned Sarah Palin’s first prime time TV interview by reenacting it verbatim? They could do that with Obama’ humorless addresses, I think it would make great theater, but the joke’s already abysmally old. Maybe we need a drinking game where everyone paying close attention could drink the moment President Obama mouthed a phrase that wasn’t a cliche or platitude. Alright, not a drinking game.

At least George Bush punctuated his utterances with inanities, funny ones. We appreciate Sarah Palin for the same preposterous gaffs. Obama’s meaningless drone is similarly inane really, divorced from meaning but colorless.

I had to revisit Obama’s Mubarak-steps-down speech to see if there was anything there. His usual podium bedside manner now hits me like chloroform. I’m not sure if Obama’s tennis ball red-state blue-state head swings aren’t calculated to hypnotize, or if the vacuity of his bombast is the prescribed anesthetic.

At first I was going to reprint the speech with the cliches highlighted. I opted to simply reformat it like a poem, putting the carriage return after each cliched platitude. I’ve parenthesized phrases which in Star Trek or ER scripts are called tech-speak, expository details whose particularities are actually irrelevant.

I’ve neither added, nor subtracted from this official transcript. I can hardly believe it myself.

There are very few moments in our lives where we have the privilege to witness history taking place.

The people of Egypt have spoken.

Their voices have been heard.

And Egypt will never be the same.

(By stepping down, President Mubarak)

responded to the Egyptian people’s hunger for change.

but this is not the end of Egypt’s transition. It’s a beginning.

I’m sure there will be difficult days ahead and

many questions remain unanswered.

But I am confident that the people of Egypt can find the answers,

and do so peacefully, constructively, and in the spirit of unity

(that has defined these last few weeks, for Egyptians have made it clear that)

nothing less than genuine democracy will carry the day.

Well, that’s just the opening paragraph. Obama follows it with more expository blah blah blah. He begins by crediting the nonviolence to Egypt’s military, instead of the incredible restraint of the student protesters.

The military has served patriotically and responsibly as a caretaker to the state and will now have to ensure a transition that is credible in the eyes of the Egyptian people.

You’ll note Obama is advising the military on appearances — very likely his definition of “meaningful.” He continues by listing the demands of the Tahrir Square demonstrators, without crediting them, as if this list was his own.

That means protecting the rights of Egypt’s citizens, lifting the emergency law, revising the constitution and other laws to make this change irreversible, and laying out a clear path to elections that are fair and free.

And then it’s a return to platitudes, encapsulating the admonition that Egyptian forums must give access to secular, “pro-democracy,” pro-Zionist pro-globalist concerns.

Above all this transition must bring all of Egypt’s voices to the table for the spirit of peaceful protest and perseverance that the Egyptian people have shown can serve as a powerful wind at the back of this change.

While he has you almost gagging Obama counterattacks with something to blow your drink through your nose. Obama promises to be the kind of friend to the newly free Egyptians that only the day before was supporting their oppressor Mubarak, and promising there’s more help where that came from.

The United States will continue to be a friend and partner to Egypt. We stand ready to provide whatever assistance is necessary and asked for to pursue a credible transition to a democracy.

And back to cliches:

I’m also confident that the same ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit that the young people of Egypt have shown in recent days can be harnessed to create new opportunity, jobs and businesses that allow the extraordinary potential of this generation to take flight.

Isn’t this the same war-on-the Future speech he’s peddling to his domestic audience?

I know that a democratic Egypt can advance its role of responsible leadership not only in the region but around the world.

Oh you can read the rest for yourself. I’m bored.

Egypt has played a pivotal role in human history for over 6,000 years. But over the last few weeks the wheel of history turned at a blinding pace as the Egyptian people demanded their universal rights.

Alright, one more interruption. Below Obama describes watching events of the Egyptian Revolution, AS IF it was a shared American experience. The irony of course is that he watched it on Al Jazeera, while the rest of America could and did not. They would be at pains to draw the same sympathetic conclusions as he. Obama comes off quite the perceptive, humanitarian bastard.

We saw mothers and fathers carrying their children on their shoulders to show them what true freedom might look like. We saw young Egyptians say, for the first time in my life I really count. My voice is heard. Even though I’m only one person, this is the way real democracy works. We saw protestors chant… ‘We are peaceful, again and again.’

We saw a military that would not fire bullets at the people they were sworn to protect. And we saw doctors and nurses rushing into the streets to care for the wound. Volunteers checking protestors to ensure that they were unarmed. We saw people of faith praying together and chanting Muslims, Christians, we are one. And though we know the strains of faith divide too many in this world and no single event will close that chasm immediately, these scenes show us that we need not be defined by our differences. We can be defined by the common humanity that we share.?And, above all, we saw a new generation emerge, a generation that uses their own creativity and talent and technology to call for a government that represented their hopes and not their fears. A government that is responsive to their boundless aspirations. One Egyptian put it simply — most people have discovered in the last few days that they are worth something, and this cannot be taken away from them anymore. Ever.

This is the power of human dignity, and it can never be denied. Egyptians have inspired us, and they’ve done so by putting the eye to the idea that justice is best gained through violence. For in Egypt it was the moral force of nonviolence, not terrorism, not mindless killing, but nonviolence, moral force that bent the arc of history toward justice once more. And while the sights and sounds that we heard were entirely Egyptian, we can’t help but hear the echoes of history, echoes from Germans tearing down a wall, Indonesian students taking to the streets, Gandhi leading his people down the path justice. As Martin Luther King said in celebrating the birth of a new nation in Ghana while trying to perfect his own, there’s something in the soul that cries out for freedom.

Those were the cries that came from Tahrir square and the entire world has taken note. Today belongs to the people of Egypt, and the American people are moved by these scenes in Cairo and across Egypt because of who we are as a people and the kind of world that we want our children to grow up in. The word ‘Tahrir’ means liberation. It’s a word that speaks to that something in our souls that cries out for freedom. And forever more it will remind us of the Egyptian people, of what they did, of the things that they stood for, and how they changed their country and in doing so changed the world. Thank you.

Remember the Maine? Egyptians will.

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Remember the Maine? In 1898 a popular uprising was threatening Spanish rule in Cuba. alright, it's actually the USS Baltimore, Flaccus Brothers Prepared Mustard The US Navy cruised to the rescue. The rescue of whom, we never got the chance to find out. An explosion aboard the USS Maine gave America the pretext to blame a Spanish torpedo. An America inflamed by a jingoist press declared war on Spain and promptly seized her colonies “to protect US interests,” by coincidence just as the indigenous populations were overcoming their colonizer and were about to win their freedom. Today a US attack fleet speeds toward Egypt. Washington asserts its mission is to evacuate US nationals if need be.

I’d like to imagine the amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge will position itself off Egypt’s coast to facilitate the Egyptian government’s stable transition to Democracy.

Perhaps the fleet intends to augment the security which Hosni Mubarak is deliberately destabilizing in Egypt. Perhaps they will offer medical care for Egyptian protesters denied access to Cairo hospitals if their wounds incriminate the government. Perhaps sophisticated Navy electronics will provide an alternate internet backbone if Mubarak tries cut his people off the web. Perhaps the US Navy can help jam the state television station still broadcasting lies to the broader population. I’m hoping our navy can erect a gallows prominently on the bow, to threaten Mubarak, speaking in the only language the despicable dictator might understand, an urgency he doesn’t feel from the peaceful protesters of Tahrir Square.

Possible?

Is it more likely to be a false flag like the Maine? Remember the USS Liberty? That was a US intelligence ship attacked in 1967 by unmarked Israeli planes, hoping that Egypt would catch the blame? There was more to that story and anyway it didn’t work out.

Remember whatever boat it was attacked/not-attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin Incident? That worked.

“Showing the Flag” doesn’t have to be false flag. Remember the USS Cole? Worked in Yemen. Traditional foreign policy teaches that gunboat diplomacy asserts military dominance. Actually it runs a calculated risk. It draws out indignation and a show of defiance. Because a military wants to flush out resistance sooner than being taken by surprise.

Remember the enterprising Marines in Iraq who drove around with a megaphone insulting the Prophet Mohammad? They repeated Jesus Killed Mohammad until every last proud Muslim to renounce their blasphemy was baptized in an obliteration of firepower.

Remember the Maine? Americans remember the Maine like it remembers the Alamo or 9-11. We have no idea. We have no sense of deja vu about the US spreading its forces in defense of empire. I’m really hoping this is not the equivalent of the Soviets sending their tanks into Hungary in 1956.

But Americans have nothing on the educated Egyptians. Whatever America’s gunships have in mind, the Arab world has seen it. Jan25 organizers continue to defy media expectations about the movement losing steam. Attendance keep rising, yesterday pro-Mubarak citizens were proclaiming their changed allegiance. Today the labor unions are recognizing the imperative of launching a general strike, and protesters are venturing outside of the central demonstrations, threatening government buildings and facilities.

With every successive day of victories for the Democracy-seeking demonstrators of Tahrir Square, I have every confidence that the Egyptians will outwit this latest US envoy convoy.

The US favors me over Democracy. Who am I?

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Hosni Mubarak ObamaI imprison without charges,
I torture, I assassinate,
I overlook police brutality,
I kill foreign journalists,
I kill innocent civilians,
I lie about how many.
I spy on my people,
I violate civil liberties,
I impose emergency law,
I persuade with propaganda of a complicit state media,
I preside over a despised single party system,
I rule with military might,
I ally with tyrants & racists,
I steal from the people,
I provide for my cronies,
I ignore public protest,
I promise meaningful reform, when I have to,
I deliver meaningless.
Who am I?

Answers: Guantanamo, Quantico, drones, Houston PD, Al Jazeera reporters, collateral damage, no body counts, warrant-less wiretaps, free-speech zones, Patriot Act, corporate MSM, phony twin corporate parties, military industrial complex, privatization, banks, unpopular wars, change, false hope.

Jeanne Assam, rogue private security shooter, friend of George W Bush, to be honored in Colo. Springs for being gay

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That’s it, my romance with the local GLBT community is over. Yes I had some qualms when my fey friends leaned hard on Gay Marriage when it was made a wedge issue in the election of 2004. Yes I rebuffed the campaign against Don’t Ask Don’t Tell because it implicitly encouraged military service in a time of US war crime. But I remained in the fold because I was reminded that equal rights for gays and lesbians are fundamental to the embrace of universal equality. Now my humanitarian tolerance is being tested by having to extend equality to moral-idiocy. Today I received an invitation to a GLBTA gala honoring former Colorado Springs lesbian Jeanne Assam, the most famous lesbian they could tap apparently. Famous for what? The name rang a bell. Assam was the disgraced police officer, redeemed New Life Church security volunteer, who preempted a presumed massacre by a teen abused-churchgoer come home to roost. He was bent on an armed rampage, but does that excuse Assam shooting him from a concealed position, without even an attempt at apprehension? Local GLBTA leaders think it does apparently, and maybe it’s no surprise then that they chose this photo to promote the event. Now I admit, next to preemptive war criminal George W. Bush, Jeanne Assam is an angel, even in sexuality-irrelevant Officer Unfriendly Ray-bans. But I say it’s time local GLBTA leaders give thought to showing equal consideration for the people of conscience community.

Egypt passes point of no return, for Mubarak and besieged pro-democracy

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Point of no return in Egypt. Mubarak is overseeing crimes from which he will not be able to walk away. Pro-Democracy demonstrators cannot leave Al Tahrir Square. Not because it is barricaded and besieged by plain-clothed “Pro-Mubarak protesters” but because activists who go home face immediate arrest by the secret police. Even as thugs harass the protesters, unhindered by the Egyptian army, Human Rights Watch expresses most concern for the protest organizers who are vulnerable to infiltrators facilitating their abduction or assassination by sniper. Here’s an illuminating first hand account from an activist who writes as Sandmonkey:
 
UPDATE 3/3 AM: Colleagues report Sandmonkey apprehended ferrying medical supplies to Al Tahrir Square. First an inspiration, now his statement is prophetic. UPDATE 3/3 tweets: “I am ok. I got out. I was ambushed & beaten by the police, my phone confiscated, my car ripped apart & supplies taken” and “Please don’t respond to my phone or BBM. This isn’t me. My phone was confiscated by a thug of an officer who insults those who call.”

EGYPT, RIGHT NOW!
Thursday, 3 Feb 2011

I don’t know how to start writing this. I have been battling fatigue for not sleeping properly for the past 10 days, moving from one’s friend house to another friend’s house, almost never spending a night in my home, facing a very well funded and well organized ruthless regime that views me as nothing but an annoying bug that its time to squash will come. The situation here is bleak to say the least.

It didn’t start out that way. On Tuesday Jan 25 it all started peacefully, and against all odds, we succeeded to gather hundreds of thousands and get them into Tahrir Square, despite being attacked by Anti-Riot Police who are using sticks, tear gas and rubber bullets against us. We managed to break all of their barricades and situated ourselves in Tahrir. The government responded by shutting down all cell communication in Tahrir square, a move which purpose was understood later when after midnight they went in with all of their might and attacked the protesters and evacuated the Square. The next day we were back at it again, and the day after. Then came Friday and we braved their communication blackout, their thugs, their tear gas and their bullets and we retook the square. We have been fighting to keep it ever since.

That night the government announced a military curfew, which kept getting shorter by the day, until it became from 8 am to 3 pm. People couldn’t go to work, gas was running out quickly and so were essential goods and money, since the banks were not allowed to operate and people were not able to collect their salary. The internet continued to be blocked, which affected all businesses in Egypt and will cause an economic meltdown the moment they allow the banks to operate again. We were being collectively punished for daring to say that we deserve democracy and rights, and to keep it up, they withdrew the police, and then sent them out dressed as civilians to terrorize our neighborhoods. I was shot at twice that day, one of which with a semi-automatic by a dude in a car that we the people took joy in pummeling. The government announced that all prisons were breached, and that the prisoners somehow managed to get weapons and do nothing but randomly attack people. One day we had organized thugs in uniforms firing at us and the next day they disappeared and were replaced by organized thugs without uniforms firing at us. Somehow the people never made the connection.

Despite it all, we braved it. We believed we are doing what’s right and were encouraged by all those around us who couldn’t believe what was happening to their country. What he did galvanized the people, and on Tuesday, despite shutting down all major roads leading into Cairo, we managed to get over 2 million protesters in Cairo alone and 3 million all over Egypt to come out and demand Mubarak’s departure. Those are people who stood up to the regime’s ruthlessness and anger and declared that they were free, and were refusing to live in the Mubarak dictatorship for one more day. That night, he showed up on TV, and gave a very emotional speech about how he intends to step down at the end of his term and how he wants to die in Egypt, the country he loved and served. To me, and to everyone else at the protests this wasn’t nearly enough, for we wanted him gone now. Others started asking that we give him a chance, and that change takes time and other such poppycock. Hell, some people and family members cried when they saw his speech. People felt sorry for him for failing to be our dictator for the rest of his life and inheriting us to his Son. It was an amalgam of Stockholm syndrome coupled with slave mentality in a malevolent combination that we never saw before. And the Regime capitalized on it today.

Today, they brought back the internet, and started having people calling on TV and writing on facebook on how they support Mubarak and his call for stability and peacefull change in 8 months. They hung on to the words of the newly appointed government would never harm the protesters, whom they believe to be good patriotic youth who have a few bad apples amongst them. We started getting calls asking people to stop protesting because “we got what we wanted” and “we need the country to start working again”. People were complaining that they miss their lives. That they miss going out at night, and ordering Home Delivery. That they need us to stop so they can resume whatever existence they had before all of this. All was forgiven, the past week never happened and it’s time for Unity under Mubarak’s rule right now.

To all of those people I say: NEVER! I am sorry that your lives and businesses are disrupted, but this wasn’t caused by the Protesters. The Protesters aren’t the ones who shut down the internet that has paralyzed your businesses and banks: The government did. The Protesters weren’t the ones who initiated the military curfew that limited your movement and allowed goods to disappear off market shelves and gas to disappear: The government did. The Protesters weren’t the ones who ordered the police to withdraw and claimed the prisons were breached and unleashed thugs that terrorized your neighborhoods: The government did. The same government that you wish to give a second chance to, as if 30 years of dictatorship and utter failure in every sector of government wasn’t enough for you. The Slaves were ready to forgive their master, and blame his cruelty on those who dared to defy him in order to ensure a better Egypt for all of its citizens and their children. After all, he gave us his word, and it’s not like he ever broke his promises for reform before or anything.

Then Mubarak made his move and showed them what useful idiots they all were.

You watched on TV as “Pro-Mubarak Protesters” – thugs who were paid money by NDP members by admission of High NDP officials- started attacking the peaceful unarmed protesters in Tahrir square. They attacked them with sticks, threw stones at them, brought in men riding horses and camels- in what must be the most surreal scene ever shown on TV- and carrying whips to beat up the protesters. And then the Bullets started getting fired and Molotov cocktails started getting thrown at the Anti-Mubarak Protesters as the Army standing idly by, allowing it all to happen and not doing anything about it. Dozens were killed, hundreds injured, and there was no help sent by ambulances. The Police never showed up to stop those attacking because the ones who were captured by the Anti-mubarak people had police ID’s on them. They were the police and they were there to shoot and kill people and even tried to set the Egyptian Museum on Fire. The Aim was clear: Use the clashes as pretext to ban such demonstrations under pretexts of concern for public safety and order, and to prevent disunity amongst the people of Egypt. But their plans ultimately failed, by those resilient brave souls who wouldn’t give up the ground they freed of Egypt, no matter how many live bullets or firebombs were hurled at them. They know, like we all do, that this regime no longer cares to put on a moderate mask. That they have shown their true nature. That Mubarak will never step down, and that he would rather burn Egypt to the ground than even contemplate that possibility.

In the meantime, State-owned and affiliated TV channels were showing coverage of Peaceful Mubarak Protests all over Egypt and showing recorded footage of Tahrir Square protest from the night before and claiming it’s the situation there at the moment. Hundreds of calls by public figures and actors started calling the channels saying that they are with Mubarak, and that he is our Father and we should support him on the road to democracy. A veiled girl with a blurred face went on Mehwer TV claiming to have received funding by Americans to go to the US and took courses on how to bring down the Egyptian government through protests which were taught by Jews. She claimed that AlJazeera is lying, and that the only people in Tahrir square now were Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. State TV started issuing statements on how the people arrested Israelis all over Cairo engaged in creating mayhem and causing chaos. For those of you who are counting this is an American-Israeli-Qatari-Muslim Brotherhood-Iranian-Hamas conspiracy. Imagine that. And MANY PEOPLE BOUGHT IT. I recall telling a friend of mine that the only good thing about what happened today was that it made clear to us who were the idiots amongst our friends. Now we know.

Now, just in case this isn’t clear: This protest is not one made or sustained by the Muslim Brotherhood, it’s one that had people from all social classes and religious background in Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood only showed up on Tuesday, and even then they were not the majority of people there by a long shot. We tolerated them there since we won’t say no to fellow Egyptians who wanted to stand with us, but neither the Muslims Brotherhood not any of the Opposition leaders have the ability to turn out one tenth of the numbers of Protesters that were in Tahrir on Tuesday. This is a revolution without leaders. Three Million individuals choosing hope instead of fear and braving death on hourly basis to keep their dream of freedom alive. Imagine that.

The End is near. I have no illusions about this regime or its leader, and how he will pluck us and hunt us down one by one till we are over and done with and 8 months from now will pay people to stage fake protests urging him not to leave power, and he will stay “because he has to acquiesce to the voice of the people”. This is a losing battle and they have all the weapons, but we will continue fighting until we can’t. I am heading to Tahrir right now with supplies for the hundreds injured, knowing that today the attacks will intensify, because they can’t allow us to stay there come Friday, which is supposed to be the game changer. We are bringing everybody out, and we will refuse to be anything else than peaceful. If you are in Egypt, I am calling on all of you to head down to Tahrir today and Friday. It is imperative to show them that the battle for the soul of Egypt isn’t over and done with. I am calling you to bring your friends, to bring medical supplies, to go and see what Mubarak’s gurantees look like in real life. Egypt needs you. Be Heroes.

Mubarak supporters demonstrate with camels, whips, swords and police IDs

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At least Hosni Mubarak knew better than to deploy US military hardware against the pro-democracy demonstrators of Al Tahrir Square. The thug astride this camel was pulled off his mount, but nonviolent organizers intervened before the victims of his whip could exact retribution. The protesters released their captives to the Egyptian Army, to what fate it is unknown. The army showed its hand I believe when it did not act against the Mubarak thugs who hurled stones and heavy objects from the otherwise-guarded rooftops surrounding the square, hurling Molotov cocktails into the midst of the peaceful mass, even some aimed at the national museum.

Happy Birthday MLK Jr, human rights leader, now a ninnied corporate brand

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Does this need repeating every Martin Luther King Day? It’s all I can do to resist meeting my compatriots at the MLK breakfast this morning with signs to decry their tomfoolery. MLK was a man of action not sleep walking. He wanted to march against war, not with it, holding wind chimes. To host remembrances of MLK in the context of peaceably enabling military imperialism, you’d have King remembered as a Army chaplain. MLK knew complicity when he saw it.

US vexed Swiss will support peace not peacekeeping or peace enforcement

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In a Dec 2, 2008 diplomatic cable released by Aftenposten, the US ambassador to Switzerland reports that US-Swiss relations “lack the natural intimacy and trust” because, he laments:
 
“U.S. and Swiss soldiers never fought side-by-side in a war, no Swiss town felt an emotional bond to the U.S. for a past liberation or economic assistance program,” which creates the vexing obstacle that the Swiss Army won’t lend their knives to NATO or other USG non-multilateral projects:
 
“The Swiss military is limited by law to participating only in peace support operations (PSOs) — as opposed to peacekeeping or peace enforcement –“ I’ll interrupt here to highlight the distinction which the historically-neutral, tri-lingual, direct-democracy Swiss nation makes, perhaps like the Inuit and their fabled hundred words for snow. Americans are sold only one kind of peace, which has to be kept and enforced. We have only one word for peace and it’s not peace.

Palin signed off on Giffords shooting, grizzly lipstick plot to direct gunmen

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Assassination checklist for Tea Party political opponentsAZ representative Gabrielle Giffords was one of twenty crosshairs on Sarah Palin’s checklist directing political assassinations.
 
Whether Jared Lee Loughner was a lone gunman, or in a TP or al-Qaeda cell, shouldn’t the DOJ investigate the grizzly mastermind who is inciting these acts? While they’re at it, Vice President Biden for illegally targeting Wikileaks’ Julian Assange, and Boss Obama who commands extrajudicial assassinations via military/CIA drones. If this was a GPS map of Pakistan the “unhinged shooters” would be Predator Drone operators.

Michael Moore tweeted these interesting links:

Dem Rep Giffords shot in head in Az. Sarah Palin had put CROSSHAIRS/ BULLSEYE on Giffords on her website! OUTRAGE!

When Rep Giffords voted in favor of health care bill, her office in Tucson was attacked & vandalized.

Palin “set gun sights on 20 Dems (including Giffords).” Palin site now seems 2 b 2 taking down crosshairs map!

In 2009, another gun nut showed up where Rep Giffords was speaking (at another Safeway) & dropped his gun

Giffords opponent held June event 2 “Shoot a Fully Automatic M16” to “Get on Target” & “Remove Gabrielle Giffords”

When Palin put crosshairs on a map w/ Rep. Giffords & 19 other Dem congressmen/women, she urged followers to “reload” & “aim” for Democrats.

Stunning admission by Tucson sheriff: Arizona “a mecca” of hate & bigotry which unhinges the unbalanced Wow.

Christina Green was the 9yr old killed. She was born on 9/11. Was on student council & only girl on baseball team.

If a Detroit Muslim put a map on the web w/crosshairs on 20 pols, then 1 of them got shot, where would he b sitting right now? Just asking.