Tag Archives: The Nation

See you in prison

Posted on by
Reply

Bush dictator quote from 2000Quietly, with little mention in the press, the National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive was signed in May 2007. This directive places all governmental power in the hands of the President in the case of a catastrophic emergency (as defined by him alone). It also allows him to take control of the private and nonprofit sectors. It effectively abolishes the checks and balances built into the Constitution and demolishes the Bill of Rights. This is, of course, necessary to keep us safe in case of a national disaster. The “Unitary Executive” would be able to act quickly and decisively, without any interference from those other two annoying branches of government, slow-moving and contentious as they are.

Our Constitution has never been about efficiency. The checks and balances built into it were created to keep any one individual or branch of government from having unilateral power. It lays the groundwork for a democracy, not for a well-oiled machine.

George Bush has shown extreme disdain for the Constitution, the very document he swore to uphold. He has vetoed only a handful of bills while in office, but he has attached signing statements to more than a thousand, clearly indicating scorn for Congress and his commitment to enforce only the laws he chooses. He has taken bills designed to protect the American public and has amended them to be used against us. Congress recently handed Zippy even more power by passing the Police America Act 2007. He has stripped us of our right to privacy, our right against unreasonable search and seizure, our right to due process. All in the name of the fighting terror.

We already know that President “Hyperbole” Bush is a master of exaggeration, if not outright prevarication. He and his oil buddy, Cheney, lied to get us into Iraq. They’ve lied to keep us in Iraq. Long ago they planned to get their hands on all of that beautiful unctuous black gold under the desert. They are not about to cede power to a successor until they’ve gotten the goods. What terrible national catastrophe is up his sleeve that will enable him to retain power?

I won’t speculate about what the catastrophe will be, but WorldNetDaily.com reported yesterday that the administration has been authorized to set up civilian prisons at military installations, something that has not been done in our country since the WWII Japanese internment camps. Under international law, internment camps are used in times of war to incarcerate large groups of people deemed to be enemies or “belligerents,” indefinitely and without trial, of course. Hasn’t Bush already warned us that if we are not with him, then we are with the terrorists? Read the handwriting on the wall.

When the occupant of the highest office in the land decides what the law is, singlehandedly, we no longer live in a democratic society. We live under a dictator, the Unitary Executive. While we were sleeping, Zippy the Monkey’s big dream of being THE Decider has been realized. We are basically living in an autocracy. The Founding Fathers are turning over and over in their graves. But few of the living seem to care.

Prepare yourself for the war with Iran. Prepare yourself for the impending terrorist attack. Prepare for the national catastrophe that will allow the Unitary Executive to suspend the 2008 election and stay in power indefinitely.

Just watch. He’ll do it. He’s the DECIDER. We gave him that power. And he’s willing and able to use it.

A few good men

Posted on by
2

We know we can’t trust our government to tell us the truth about the war in Iraq, or anything else. Nor can we trust the corporate-controlled media. But an opinion piece in today’s New York Times, written by 7 non-commissioned military men just returning from a 15-month tour of duty, provides some insight into America’s noble fight against the nation of Iraq.
 
Let’s hope that the pen is indeed mightier than the sword.

We’ve fallen! And we won’t get up!

Posted on by
3

There’s been much hand-wringing over the news that the United States lags behind 41 other nations with regard to life expectancy. Oh my, they say. How could the richest nation in the world be surpassed by lesser mortals? We’re #1! We’re #1!

We’re #1 alright. Thanks to our gluttony and laziness (with kudos to the food industry and the government), we have the highest rate of obesity on the planet. A third of adults over 20 are considered obese. Two thirds are overweight. We gorge ourselves on fast food. Know nothing about nutrition. Refuse to exercise. So, duh, we’ve got heart disease. High cholesterol. High stress. Depression. Anxiety. Addiction.

Thanks to our avarice, we also have record foreclosure rates. A negative savings rate. High expectations for our personal prosperity but an unwillingness to work for its attainment. Or, conversely, we are workaholics who spend our lives like rodents in a wheel, running to pointless exhaustion. The rest of the time we sit, slack-jawed in front of the TV or the computer, passively enjoying life from our Lay-Z-Boy deluxe armchairs. Not exactly Heidi in the Alps.

Many of the nation’s problems are tied to our lack of self-care and low standards for our own health and well-being. Quick to place blame, we are rarely the culprit. We rely heavily on others to slap expensive Band-Aids on the woes we’ve created for ourselves. We are Americans. We are entitled. To whatever we want. From whatever pocket.

What do we want? Whatever we want! When do we want it? NOW!

It’s a twisted existence we’re living. We are ruining ourselves. We are ruining the rest of the world. I’m overjoyed that our life expectancy isn’t the highest. I’ve already had enough and I’m only halfway there.

March on Washington Sept 15

Posted on by
1

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

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

It’s time to reform sex offender laws

Posted on by
5

The National Security Police State needs many different demons to be seen struggling against. Their holy trilogy of Satanic opponents is Drug Users, Terrorists, and Pedophiles.

In all three cases, all due process and logic just gets totally thrown to the wind when police lodge accusations of this type against oftentimes quite common people. Right Wing Christian retribution becomes the only law of the land then, as political McCarthyism becomes criminal McCarthyism. See Call to Reform Sex Offender Laws Now and note that America’s greatest living historian, Howard Zinn, is one of the signatories.

‘Save Darfur’ interventionists seem bloody ignorant about Africa, its culture, and its history- Save Lado, too, Comrades!

Posted on by
Reply

Free Tibet, Stop Genocide in Kosovo, Liberate East Timor, and now Save Darfur with that ‘genocide’ tag being thrown around again. And lots of vitriol against Arabs and China mixed in. There seems to be all sorts of poorly thought out comments and ill considered positions going around town concerning this issue of ‘Darfur’, currently in the national spotlight ala Paris Hilton.

One local activist recently claimed on his web site that the Sudanese government was a US puppet state. Talk about getting it totally backwards! The reality is it’s the independence of the Sudanese government from DC control that Another activist here in the Springs was cheer-leading Democratic Party Colorado Governor Ritter for taking steps to firm up the US campaign beginning an economic war against Sudan. Colorado will not do bizness with bad Africans! Oh, Whoopee, Guvnor! I’ll bet my bottom dollar that you will do business helping your political buddies commit GENOCIDE against Palestinians and Iraqis, though. Am I right?

Right now, the Colorado Springs pro-peace people seem to be stumbling around in the dark on many fronts. The police attack on the St Patrick’s Day parade participants has them stumbling, and the anemia of the national Pro Peace folk hasn’t helped either. So why not jump on the ‘Save Darfur’ bandwagon? It makes sense. I guess there is just not enough problems on the home-front at this time? So let’s go save some Black folk from the evil Arabs and Chinese! And we’ll be led by Dubya, who will correct his problems in Iraq by changing a letter and nuking Iran.

The Justice and Peace had ourselves up a booth at Juneteenth today. They placed us right next to our old buddies, the storm troopers under the command of Police Chief Liars Myers. We’re getting to be almost family at this point. And on our nice little table we had some lit about Saving Darfur.

No, nobody had brought any material saying it might be nice saving all of Africa by getting the US the fuck out of their. I felt in a genteel mood and just sat for a while chitchatting and smelling the bbq. The Gazette was Heiled as being so very generous for poor Black folk by having ‘given generously’ with the publicity. It felt so good, so why be contentious? I just couldn’t…

I had my sign ‘Stop US War on Somalia’ with me, but Aw Shucks. Why confuse folk still trying to decide whether the Dar is for the Fur, or the Fur is for the Dar? And every body’s Albanian is still not much up to par And what’s the national language of island nation of East Timor anyway? Uh sorry, I meant the half island nation of East Timor. Hey, why shouldn’t we demand liberation and independence for West Timor, too? And what’s the next half-island down the shore? The world is complex, but you can speed read it if you are a liberal interventionist, for sure! I would have felt like a simpleton with my sign at the picnic.

There were some pamphlets to help you out on this with Darfur on our table. Did you know that Darfur was once an independent nation? Until the British defeated them of course.

Believe me, you will never learn this sort of stuff from the ‘Save Darfur’ crowd. They just don’t know it. That’s right. Darfur was pasted onto Sudan by the British. Those who paste on may want to peel the paste on back off, though. For humanitarian reasons, no doubt. From Blair to Brown to Save Darfur!

By the way, I am thinking of starting up a Colorado Springs society to save the Lado people. Don’t know about them? Hey, they’re just right down the road from Darfur. And guess what? They are victims of genocide, too. Save Lado! Is it pronounced like in Spanish, or like ‘lad oh!’ in English? It’s always fun when nobody can pronounce the name of the place we’re headed to ‘intervene’ into. Makes it more fun to watch the TV news!

I’m not making this up, so do the research on your own and let’s then get together and start a group (or 2 or 3) at Colorado College and get some sweet chickens (let me know if the use of ‘chickens’ here is not pc, like headless chickens) to help us out. What do you say? This is America, is it not? Anything can happen. We’re a good people for sure. So let’s do something for the Lado people right now! Start the propaganda, uh I meant ‘education’ going and we’ll get the troops in as soon as we can!

Meanwhile, let the conservatives increase the military budget a tad more, so that we’ll all then be ready to move into action together.

Save Lado!

Raul Castro’s daughter blasts homophobia

Posted on by
Reply

I thought that this news item was of note, so here it is in full. Walter Lippmann’s website is worth visiting, too. See below… Tony

Raul Castro’s daughter blasts homophobia

Havana, May 21 (EFE).- The daughter of acting Cuban President Raul
Castro spoke out in favor of tolerance and against gay-bashing on the
occasion of the International Day against Homophobia.

“The communications media have a big responsibility in the education
of the public, in developing a culture of respect for people due to
their sexual identity and sexual orientation,” said Mariela Castro,
the head of the National Sex Education Center, in remarks broadcast
Sunday by state television.

Castro attended an unusual film-debate held in the “23 y 12” hall in
Havana, where organizers showed the U.S. film “Boys Don’t Cry,” which
tells a story based on real events of the difficulties,
discrimination and violence to which a young transsexual woman was
subjected.

“Starting with the advances we have had on these matters in our
country, it’s that we (are) trying to better visualize the goal of
this international – and in this case national – day,” said the
sexologist.

Castro said that “homophobia and transphobia still exist in the world
in a very strong, very cruel, very distriminatory way against
homosexual, transsexual and transgender people in a general sense
and, above all, as a result of ignorance.”

The government of Fidel Castro, who provisionally handed over power
to younger brother Raul last July after undergoing major surgery, has
in the past displayed marked intolerance for homosexuals, imprisoning
gays and quarantining AIDS sufferers.

The National Sex Education Center, a teaching, research and
assistance institution created in 1989, has proposed in the Cuban
legislature a bill to legally recognize the sex changes undergone by
transsexuals, at the same time it has been pushing for some time an
awareness campaign in the state-controlled media.

The International Day against Homophobia was begun on May 17, 2005, a
decade after the World Health Organization removed homosexuality from
its list of mental illnesses.

Thirteen years after its first showing in movie theaters on the
island, on May 5, Cubans watched the first broadcast on local
television of the 1993 film “Fresa y chocolate” (Strawberry and
Chocolate), an allegory against intolerance and discrimination
against homosexuals. Recently, Cuban TV also showed “La mujer de mi
hermano” (My Brother’s Wife), which also deals with the theme of
homosexuality. EFE

=============================
WALTER LIPPMANN
Editor-in-Chief, CubaNews
writer – photographer – activist

Front Page


=============================

News from the Pope… again…

Posted on by
3

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

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

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

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

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

What does ‘Otpor’ have to do with Colorado Springs?

Posted on by
Reply

You probably missed the notice, but Otpor will be at Colorado College this week and next, ‘organizing non-violence’ oriented people. Otpor claims credit for itself for supposedly non-violently bringing down Milosevic in Yugoslavia, though the real credit for this feat had more to do with the violence of an illegal war against Yugoslavia organized by the US and its European allies than any local student movement in Belgrade.

And it had more to do with the funds the US government channelled into Yugoslavia to illegally influence the national elections there. Many of these funds went to Otpor.

These days, Otpor ideology acts in many other countries where the US channels funds to subvert local autonomy. It has changed its name to ‘Canvas’ and receives much aid not only directly from the US government, but also from many a rich American think tank. Essentially, it is a Right Wing imperialist US government pushed campaign masquerading as a form of international Leftism. It’s symbols are a clenched fist, even as it plays on the image of being Gandhi-ist and nonviolent, which has become a semi mystical religious cult amongst many US campuses harboring hordes of American middle class student types. Very attractive cover to keep help hide its hidden agenda of backing US government propaganda campaigns and interventions in nations around the world. Imperialists posing as non-violent pacifists recruiting relatively naive and innocent students who often believe in the sugar coated rhetoric being spread. What results is a ‘non-violence’ working side by side with US military and economic subversion of other countries.

The US government in the ’70s and ”80s at one time pushed another camouflaged Right Wing group inside the US disguised as Leftism. The leader of that cult effort was a man named Lyndon LaRouche, who still plies his wares from time to time. To the utter discredit of the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission, this group a few months ago accepted for its newspaper a full page advertisement from this fascist who has many connections with US government and military high officials. A split off of this group operates in Mexico where it postures as being Far Left in a similar manner to how it has operated in the US. OTPOR in a way, is an extension of this type of covert government operation in private politics that Lyndon LaRouche got quite well known for at one time.

Wikipedia has done an excellent job in its coverage of Otpor, whose connections to US funding remain shadowy and hidden though it operates across the planet. Since they will have 2 of their operatives as Colorado College doing their thing, hopefully some of us will be there to challenge them on their real record this week.

Boys with toys endanger us all

Posted on by
2

Cover-up , cover-up, cover-up. A military plane doing Pentagon public relations in South Carolina crashes in a residential neighborhood and houses are hit, people below injured, and debris scattered everywhere. So what does the press do? They talk only of how the pilot lost his life!

Yes, and what happened to the people below? Don’t you think that worthy of report? These ‘air shows’ go on around the nation in a constant propaganda campaign for further militarizing US society, but they endanger us in city after city. They need to be stopped. That is part of ‘gun control’ and this ‘accident’ is as related as can be to what happened earlier in the week at Virginia Tech.

What a sick nation we are!

The United Nations is complicit with US war criminality and genocide everywhere

Posted on by
Reply

The United Nations is fully supporting US war crimes in multiple nations around our planet. It has become nothing less than a total satellite captured in the orbit of the US Pentagon. In Iraq, the UN has sat by without ever condemning the US genocide in that country, but rather participating in it. Over 2 million Iraqi casualties have been killed solely due to US interference against the Iraqi people over more than a decade and a half, and the role of the UN has been in total support of that.

There are currently over 4 million Iraqi refugees, 2 million inside and 2 million outside Iraq. The UN has little to say about that, and little relief offered to the victims. All its efforts go to help the US government intervene around the planet.

Jordan alone, with a population of a little over 5 million has taken in almost 1 million Iraqi refugees! That would be the equivalent relative to population as if the US had had to take in 60 million destitute refugees from some war zone! Syria, with a population of slightly less than 19 million, has had to take in an even greater number of Iraqi refugees from US violence than the almost 1 million in Jordan. And as the US and Israel are currently threatening Syria with attack alongside its ally Iran, the UN sits back nodding its head in acquiescence! Lest we forget, Syria was Iran’s ally while the US and its Arab client states were funding Saddam Hussein in its war upon Iran. It is the US that supported Saddam, not Syria or Iran, and the UN never did anything to stop him from killing hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of innocent Iranians. .

The situation is the same around the globe, as the UN everywhere is running backup for US foreign policy and the resulting mayhem and atrocities that follow in the wake of US war crimes. The United Nations is helping the US occupy Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Haiti as well as Iraq. These are all nations where the US violated international law and bombed, invaded and occupied these countries with its military. The United Nations has acted as an integral part of these war crimes, lending the support of the troops of its misnamed ‘Security Council’ at crucial intervals. In short, the United Nations has become the Pentagon’s whore, constantly pimped out to service America’s reactionary foreign policy.

We move to Africa, and the United Nations today is calling for occupation of Somalia with its troops instead of condemning the US-Ethiopian invasion of that country. The United Nations offers no security to the people’s of the world from US war crimes and genocides. In Africa, the countries of Rwanda and Congo can attest to that.

The UN rushes into action everywhere behind US military interventionism and it offers political cover for the US just to help perpetuate this criminality. With its history the United Nations can no longer hope to be reformed but instead should be impeached and dissolved the same as was done to its predecessor, The League of Nations.

The people of the world need to get the UN out of the nations it currently helps occupy on behalf of the US. We need an international body of nations, but the UN has defaulted on all its responsibilities, and is not acting as anything other than an agent of the richer imperial nations of the world, all bullied into line by US firepower. This is a body that can not be reformed any more, just as is the US 2 party system of corporate political control. It’s time we admit that the UN is complicit with all the US war crimes being committed and not innocently continue to back this organization as some possible alternative to the US government itself. It isn’t, and never will be.

Stop the war now and get the United Nations troops back to all their home countries. These troops are nothing more than mercenaries in the same vein that Halliburton’s are. They are not peacekeepers, but rather nothing more than another type of privatization of US military operations. Dissolve the UN Security Council Now and Help Save the World from US imperialism. The UN is no friend of anybody, other than friend to the rich and powerful corporate state creeps heading up the US government.

A nasty little thought…

Posted on by
1

The Army is calling up 13,000 National Guard soldiers to Iraq.

I thought the “surge’ was supposed to be 20,000? Somebody’s not doing his math, or maybe the BigPigs are just LYING to us…

but that’s not the nasty little thought, although it swims around the edges of the Nasty Little Thought…

The National Guard, don’t the States have to pay for a significant part of their expenses, and the Federal Government therefore doesn’t pay all?

Wouldn’t that kind of “shoot skates under” the cap on war spending in Congress?

Because even though the individual states are required to pay for it, the Guard is ultimately under the command of the President….
_________________

St Patricks Day duplicity

Posted on by
5

The duplicity accusation is excusable for people who have never faced trying to voice dissent with urgency. You want to play the game by the rules? Go apply for a permit to march with a message of peace in a pro-war parade. Have the organizer tell you no. Hire a lawyer to write him a letter, threatening to sue if you are not permitted to join the parade. Receive his lawyer’s response. No. It’s a private affair, you are not invited. Have your lawyer write another letter, citing the legal precedence in parades in other cities that were sued successfully for discriminating against minority views. Receive another formal reply calling your bluff.

Okay. File papers with a court and sue the organizer. Six months, a year. Maybe win, maybe with a conservative judge, you lose. Take it all the way to the Supreme Court even. That used to mean that the nation’s best minds would apply themselves to serve justice. These days it can mean that George Bush is declared winner of an election he stole.

Meanwhile the war in Iraq, the cause in dire need of your message, rages on.

The courts do not favor the voice of dissent. Anyone who wants to run the battle for freedom of expression through the court system has money to burn, has a delirious notion of the nobility of our judicial system, and is completely out of touch with what the dissenting voices are raised against: injustice and bloody-murder.

The helpful citizen who wants to tell the eyewitness to a mugging that he must regulate his cries for help according to local noise ordinances is very plainly a jerk, and quite possibly a criminal.

Were we trying on St Patrick’s Day to call attention to the crime of war-making? Absolutely. Were we trying to change anyone’s opinion? Naw. We were crying out to the 70% of Americans who want peace and may be timid about expressing it. If you are among those who don’t think a crime is being committed, get out of the way unless you want to be counted an accessory to mass murder.

Shillelagh-bearing lepre-cons

Posted on by
1

lepre-con.jpgIf our local media coverage and relative lack of moral outrage on the part of the citizenry over the St. Paddy’s Day debacle has you a bit depressed (with today’s freedom-loving Gazette editorial calling the peace marchers “parade crashers” and “political zealots” serving as salt in our ever-deepening collective “rugburn”), check out the national blog The Daily Kos. They picked up Cara DeGette’s article which, thus far, has generated over 300 comments. Most of them biting and insightful and hilarious. An example:
 
Cops Are Thugs Get it?
I’m sure there is a perfectly good justification for dragging a 75-year-old woman down the street. Maybe their sunglasses were so dark, they thought she was black?
by Snarcalita on Mon Mar 19, 2007 at 11:14:23 PM PDT

Sure made me feel a lot better…..

How the Democratic Party supporter’s sectarianism holds back building the antiwar movement

Posted on by
Reply

John Walsh has just published an outstanding article at Counterpunch about how the sectarianism of the leadership of the national UFPJ (united for Peace & Justice) is holding back the construction of a much larger and more active antiwar movement.

The UFPJ is one of two national antiwar coalitions, and is dominated by Democratic Party supporters that refuse to work with others in a united manner. Control is what this ‘coalition’ is about, and central to that is their desire to use control to help elect Democratic party politicians who often go on to betray the antiwar cause.

As the Democratic Party continues to rot, some liberals just refuse to let go. Their grandparents believed that the DP was the party of change, as did their moms and dads. These liberals just refuse to deal with the basic reality that through the generations, all the ‘change’ the DP has brought has been from a net BAD to a net much WORSE. To these types, this addiction to the Democrats has been much harder to fight than even that of being addicted to food, alcohol, heroin, and tobacco.

Let’s be real. The UFPJ has failed to mobilize the American public into the streets in protest, where asses if they had this war would have already been over. The issue of stopping the US military from rambling along zonkers under the Bush Administration direction should unite us all, Libertarians, liberal Christians, Socialists, Anarchists, and the Democratic Party liberal voters, too. Unfortunately, each group has often acted as if they owned how opposition to Bush should be allowed to unfold. The net effect has been a diminished response to any action from the public at large.

The UFPJ has been about the worst of the sectarian offenders due to the obvious fact, that the Democratic Party leadership itself is not really antiwar, but just mildly anti-Republican instead. The UFPJ leadership is made up of liberal democratic Party voters who hope only to lobby to put the DP into offices, and not oppose very much the Democrats politicians already there. Letter writing, lobbying, and prayer are the type of strategies they most often want to engage in. That, and action that gets people arrested, such as sitting down in the middle of the street, or crossing onto military property or into recruitment offices. Working with non liberal Democrats to enlarge public protest rallies and marches is not anywhere much on their radar.

Unity, not sectarianism. And unity not just to elect Democratic party politicians, but unity to stop US militarism in its place and then to roll it back and out of American life altogether.

Mexico’s oil is running out so up goes the Border Wall

Posted on by
Reply

Americans are under the impression that Mexico is an extremely poor country. It is not. It is the world’s 5th largest oil producer, and the US economy’s 2nd largest foreign supplier of oil. Canada is #1, while Saudi Arabia comes in at #3. It’s per capita income is significantly higher than that of Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Turkey, and Argentina. China is considered an economic super power, yet Mexico has 4 times the per capita income of that country. Mexico even has the world’s 2nd largest oil field. There is only one problem though. Mexico’s oil reserves are running out.

Yes, it is predicted that Mexico may only have about 10 more years before its 2 major oil fields go dry. What then? It is a country of over 100,000,000 people, and its government gets over half of what it spends from its oil revenues. As a result, the national oil company, PEMEX, is billions upon billions in dept, even as it funds the nation. Mexico wants to join up with US prosperity, even as the US itself is running into problems finding new sources of cheap oil to float its own economy. And Mexico is in much worse shape in that regard.

In this desperate world of energy depletion we are now entering into, it’s all for one’s self, so up goes The Wall. A decade ago, the promises were made that all would enter into a new world of prosperity through NAFTA. Free flow of everything! But how quickly dreams built on mirages can fall. We are now in a war to steal the energy resources away from the people of Iraq and Iran, and there is not about to be any US elite misgivings, if they have to screw over the Mexicans in a few short years ahead. A brave new world awaits us.

A small note… wikipedia states that with current rates of consumption, the world’s oil reserves will run out in 32 years. Be sure to check your tire pressures .

Also of interest… Mexicans stage tortilla protest

US National Surveillance State issues out the national ID cards to us

Posted on by
Reply

There used to be a lot of worry about the government issuing a national identification card to all of us and then requiring us to carry it all the time so that they could monitor us, The People, all the time. Well now that they are actually slipping that noose half around our neck, the population of the US is without a bleep of protest against it. Maybe it is because the name of the national ID card sounds so familiar and appears as nothing much new? The national ID card is called a passport, and it will soon be required for all travel outside the US, even to Mexico and Canada.

What? Don’t think of the passport as a national ID card? Well that’s what it is becoming in graduated steps. When you apply for one, you are registering with the federal government. They already have a list of grading people on supposed ‘flight risk’, and it will be an easy task to meld this to the passport. And what’s to stop an ‘overland travel risk’ list from being added on now? After all, one can hijack a bus and do some major damage with it if one wants. All America must be protected from that, they will say.

These new passport requirements were slipped in by the Bush Administration without even the most minimal discussion and with zero protest within the House and Senate. Millions of people (Canadians, Americans, and Mexicans) who never had passports are now being herded into having to obtain one. Our whole county is being turned into a gated community, all under the excuse of bettering our own security. In fact, much of the North American continent is being turned into a high security zone, where people will travel between countries while under a secret surveillance pegged to their passports.

This secret surveillance does not now, and certainly will not in the future, have any due process as to who gets to go, and who is made to stop at the series of gates that will be put into effect. That will be a military decision, since the Department of Homeland Security and MIGRA really are part of the military model, not civilian one. If this reminds you of Palestinians within the areas controlled by Israel, then you get the picture of the model being used by this passport system of surveillance. It is all quite arbitrary and beyond the reach of legal rules and observations.

We are only now in the first steps of this new, comprehensive surveillance system being put into place. but the fact that we don’t even recognize much what is really being done is not promising for stopping and reversing course. All the blame for ‘inconveniences’ will be placed on Osama bin Laden, and not our own misleaders. We will be told that it is wartime and that our liberties must be compromised. We will be told that there are certain elements of our society that are high risk to the rest of us. Wait! Did I say we WILL be told that? We are already being told all this, and most of us nod our heads in acquiesence.

An Iron Curtain is Descending is a good article at the counterpunch site about the already occurring effects of this new surveillance system upon people. Check it out!

To: Bush and Gates Re: OUR Plan

Posted on by
1

Dear Messieurs Bush and Gates.
    Today you have once again proposed that anybody who does not support YOU and YOUR War have some obligation to put forth a better plan for victory in YOUR WAR.
   Also Mr Gates has presented the idea once again that LEGITIMATE PROTEST of YOUR WAR somehow emboldens YOUR enemies. Which would be an accusation of Treason, (a capital offense) against the majority of Congressmen and a majority of the people of the United States.

Apparently you are both somewhat confused about what exactly your legal status is.

Mr. Bush, you are at most an elected official. In a Democracy, or if you prefer, a Republic, THE PEOPLE are the ones who are the Decision Makers. You are our employee and NOT our master.

I realize that you have the mistaken notion that as a public employee you have no obligation to listen to the clearly expressed will of the people. You call it “leadership by polls”, and sneer at the prospect that mere mortals can criticize you or tell you what to do. You call yourself the Commander in Chief. Mr Bush, there are somewhat less than 2 million members of the Armed Forces in America. That means 298 million citizens of the United States are in fact Civilians, and therefore NOT under Your command.

   Now, Mr Bush, I realize that Laura will have to read this to you. I would ask Mrs. Bush to point out that 298,000,000 is substantially a larger number than 2,000,000.  In other words, as your Poppy used to say, YOU do the math.

      You and Mr Gates and Mr Cheney are OUR employees. WE are the deciders and WE have decided to support Our Other Employees, the Men and Women of the Armed Forces. Current and Future.

These men and women, and the children your ROTC and recruiters are grooming for future employment in the Armed Forces, have been placed in Harm’s Way by your stupid policies. Your policies are based on deliberate manipulation and deception of the American People, and the Congress, for more than 6 years now.

Apparently you don’t listen to polls. You keep repeating this, so I and others like me will have to repeat our reply: When the American People voted for President in 2000, more people voted against YOU. The only way you managed to attain office was by skillful manipulation of the electoral process by your family and their henchmen. Men like Mr Cheney and Mr Gates. You again failed to get a Majority of the votes in 2004, yet somehow you have represented that failure as a mandate from the people to allow you to lead us.

I know you can not read fast, so I am writing this very slowly… The people who you feel should obey you, are not going to obey you.

Your policy has continually failed since the day you stole your job. It has specifically failed with respect to YOUR personal war against Saddam Hussein. You have, through a long series of Lies, unlawfully targeted the people and government of Iraq as the Enemy, and demanded that we do the same. You have had Mr Hussein killed. You have done what you said you wanted, i.e.; Killed Mr Hussein, been allowed to search for Weapons of Mass Destruction throughout Iraq, been allowed to install a New Puppet dictator in Iraq, taken the Oil Fields of Iraq to give to Mr Cheney and your other Henchmen in the petroleum industry.

    In the 4 years since the unlawful conquest and pillage of the nation of Iraq began, exactly zero none nada zip bupkas of your promised Glorious Victory have emerged. You have murdered more than 3,000 members of the Armed Forces. At the lowest count, you have Murdered 75,000 citizens of the nation of Iraq. The higher count of up to 300,000 Iraqis is disputed by you and your Lying cabinet and lying supporters.

     Your unofficial Spokes Freaks at the FOREIGN owned Fox Television Networks have made the threat, repeatedly, that people who oppose this systematic Murder and Theft and Deception that you have been doing for so long, should be rounded up and punished for their Patriotic defiance of your unlawful policies.

      Today, YOUR henchman Mr. Gates has used the same lie, that not supporting you is giving “aid and comfort” to the alleged Enemies .

These people did not declare war against the United States. The people of the United States did not declare them to be the enemies. YOU and your Chicken Hawk Cabinet and advisors did. By allowing your spokespersons, either the official ones like Cheney and Gates, or the unofficial ones like the employees of Mr Rupert Murdoch, to threaten Americans with nothing short of DEATH for opposing your murderous policies, is Terrorism.

Mr Gates and you, and the people at Fox Networks, and other corporate information media, know very well that threatening Americans with death or in fact any punishment for engaging in conduct which is not only Lawful, but mandated by Our consciences, is unlawful in and of itself.

       Perhaps you believe that Americans who oppose you have no resolve. To cling to that mistaken belief, you would have to neglect and ignore the fact that we have not been cowed into submission, We Have Not Backed Down, but instead grown stronger in our Resistance.

       Many of us are former members of the Military, like you, Mr Bush. However, most of the former military who oppose you, unlike you or any member of your cabinet, are actually combat veterans. The Congressmen you and Mr. Gates say are traitors, AND MAKE NO MISTAKE you have openly accused us of TREASON, are likewise Combat Veterans.

      The fact that we have been using every Lawful Means to resist and defy your so called “leadership” is not an indication of weakness on our parts, it is instead a strong resolve to not destroy our nation further by abandoning Rule of Law.

         This restraint has kept the Opposition to your Dictatorship from taking up arms against our fellow citizens, in spite of you and your henchmen making terroristic threats and in many cases actually carrying out such threats.

The time for such restraint is rapidly approaching its end. If you and your lapdogs insist on making war against The American People, you and your lap dogs will have to be restrained, by force if necessary.

     Your New Plan for Victory, which you have arrogantly commanded us to support or propose a better, is the same Old Plan, which you have insisted on following, at the cost of our National Treasure, in short our relatives and friends who are in the military. Also you have spent the National Treasury and any conceivable payments into that Treasury, for generations to come. You have taken away our ability to respond to Real National Threats, as opposed to Non-existent threats from people like the late Mr Hussein.

Your plan has been given 4 years to work, it is not working and, even though you and your goon squads and lying henchmen keep saying otherwise, We The People are capable of seeing that it has not worked, and will not work.

      We do not owe you a better plan. You owe us your respect, and your obedience to the People. You, and your cabinet, owe us your resignations. You owe our fellow citizens in the military your respect, for their lives and for their service.

You can no longer hide behind the lies that a dictatorship is somehow a guarantee of freedom.

    Your incompetent dictatorship is instead a guarantee of slavery, but ONLY if we fail in our real duties, to bring your dictatorship to an end.

The people who you and Mr. Gates threaten, are quite capable of forcibly ending that threat. Mr. Bush, Mr. Gates, I strongly caution you not to make the rash mistake of continuing in your terroristic campaign.

Is it Better without a bean than Green?

Posted on by
2

The hardcore American nut slogan of 40-50 years ago was “Better dead than Red”. Then they came up with “America, Love It or Leave It”. Dull. But now, the idiot American Right should have as their philosophical slogan, “Better without a bean than Green”!

That’s because their knee jerk support for a totally rapacious capitalism, will lead us into a world without even a tiny bean of anything left worth having. And they the Dittoheads truly do believe that it is Better to be Dead, than Green. Their theory is that Greens are like watermelons, with their concern about the environment only a thin green cover for their evil Red Marxist leanings.

The American Right is clueless about why others oppose capitalism, too. They see the entire Left part of the political spectrum as being equal to the thoughts and actions of Joe Stalin. MLK, Hillary Clinton, Mao, Trotsky, Al Gore, Jessie Jackson, Al Sharpton, Noam Chomsky, FDR all merge into one for them. They are pinko reds who hate the American way, and care more about owls and jumping mice than their fellow humankind. Global warming cannot be real, any more than the minimum wage should be allowed to exist. Both are socialism. Green is Red, and Red is Green. Simplicity for simpletons!

Let’s face it, the nutcase Right is right! Green is turning Red while many Reds iare now turning Green. It has to be, simply because capitalism destroys the environment. The evidence is now all in, and all pinkos do agree. Capitalism is bad for planetary health.

But Black is Green, too! Black being the color of Anarchism, which is another political ideology quite different than Marxism. And Social Democracy, too, is Green. In America, the Social Democrat is essentially a non European, Democratic Party liberal who wishes for trade unions and social programs to blunt the capitalism they still support, and add in the nationalism that is always the Social Democrat’s core belief. And we certainly cannot forget the religious anti-capitalists, too, whose belief is that socialism is best found through the teachings of Jesus. All these folk are Greens today, even as they stay on merely as dupes of the Red menace side of the political spectrum, at elast to O’Reilly, Pat Robertson, and Murdoch.

There is no way that the world’s ecological problems can even begin to be halted while the world economy remains capitalist. One should ask themselves, is it truly better to be drive toward humanity not having even a bean, than to become non-capitalist Green? Capitalism can yet come up with still more tech, but better tech will not solve any of the real problems. It’s what you do with your ‘tech’ that makes the difference. lol… Get sexy, get Green! Go Red! Better Green than deadhead.

The underwhelming Barack Obama

Posted on by
8

The media is already pushing the delusion to liberal Democratic Party voters, that Barack Obama is their Great Black Hope in 2008. And today he announced he was a candidate for President. They are trying to pass him off as the antiwar candidate, same as Howard Dean was similarly imaged in that manner in 2004.

Not only is he not that, but his positions on almost everything are not liberal, neither. As Colin and Condo are to Dubya and Dick, Barack and Jesse are to Bill and Hillary. Yuck.

I encourage everybody to go to Obama’s website to get a glimpse of his mealy mouthed political approach. He is for education, but not a mention of supporting public schools versus privatization. He is for health care, but nothing about keeping abortion legal, nor anything about supporting a single payer comprehensive national health care system, where all are covered. He speaks out on immigration, but says not a word in opposition to the Border Wall being built. He says not a word about maintaining Social Security, but talks of ‘modernizing’ it. Hell with him. We know what ‘modernizing’ really means. It means cutting SS, that’s what.

Similarly, he blabs on about National Defense, supporting the police, being against sex offenders, crime, and meth. Bullshit is what it is. Pure bullshit. He is for a ‘phased withdrawal’ from Iraq, but not a word about Afghanistan. And what is a ‘phased withdrawal’ to this sort? Over 3 months, or over 10 years? Or over forever? Not a word about cutting our excessive military spending. Why not? This is no liberal speaking, but a mealy mouthed duplicitous worm. Yet another one the Democratic party has spun out.

In the weeks and months ahead, all of America will be encouraged to put their hopes in this man. He was already being touted as the only genuine antiwar candidate tonight on the national news. Lies, lies, lies/ liars, liars, liars. About all the Democrats are hashing up with Barack Obama, is a man to help neutralize the possibility of Condoleeza Rice starting a run for the presidency. That’s about all.

Obama at best would be a return to Clintonism, but this time with a black face in office playing the role of the Slick Willie. Liberals need a better vision than that to offer America, otherwise the slide down hill will continue. And most of all, liberals need a better political party than the Democratic Party. Stuck in that Yu-don’t-go of a vehicle, we will get a wreck of America.

What a demoralized America we have now, minus a genuine third, and anti-corporate, party.

Fat Cats and the minimum wage

Posted on by
Reply

The fat cats are all upset again! They just can’t tolerate the thought of even having a minmum wage, let alone raising it. Our local daily rag, The Colorado Springs Fat Cats, fatcopycatted from George Will’s recent Washington Post column and urged that no raise be given to the poor. Let the ‘free market’ do it, or let them starve if not. In fact, as far as the local CS Blue Bloods are concerned, if the ‘free market was to provide no employment to people at all, well the devil be damned for all they would care.

It is a true indicator of our paltry national political culture, that the national debate on minimum wage rates hinges on whether for the billionaires to throw a few pennies the way of the peasantry, or to just let them starve. Those who favor tossing the few pennies get to pose as the DP humanitarians vs those against, the RP scrooges.

Oh, I’m sorry. That’s not fair. Our local daily rag says that they are actually advocating tough love for the poor, and therefore have to oppose the raise in order to help the near destitute keep working at the current minimum wage. They say if there was an increase that the whole American economy would collapse, and that the poor would all lose their jobs at Walmart, Manpower, and McDonalds. Such compassion for the poor! That’s what it is, of course.

That’s the real reason the fat cats oppose the minimum wage, this they say. Yes, and Iraq had WOMD, too. These folk are so sincere in all their concerns they have for the rest of us!

Can you imagine the fat cats actually giving a damn about anything other than their stock portfolios? Oh Yes. Maybe they care some about their Lexuses and country club memberships. too. Let’s be fair.

Saddam Hussein’s last words

Posted on by
Reply

No news outlet made a fuss about them on our side of the Atlantic. Saddam’s last words. On Palestine.

Robert Fisk asserts that Saddam Hussein took many secrets to his grave, especially about American and British complicity in the very crimes for which he was tried. Fisk’s article discusses the intelligence he received from Washington, the chemical weapons he received from the UK and the financing he received from both. He recounts how Saddam attacked Iran at our urging, and how reports of his use of chemical weapons were noted and accepted here.

Saddam’s first interrogation and subsequent trial were both marked by media and military censoreship. Saddam had plenty to tell us, but was not allowed a forum. Now at least his last words were recorded. From the deposed leader of Iraq, here is what he said:

God is Great.
Palestine is for the Arabs.
The nation will be victorious.

Your own private post office

Posted on by
3

Have you seen the postal contract service centers cropping up at suburban strip malls? This is part of an ongoing congressional effort to privatize the entire USPS and divest it of the Postal Service Union. The Republicans want to convert the USPS civil service jobs into minimum wage jobs so that Republican contractors can pocket the savings. The new privatized post office jobs will provide no benefits, no security, no skills, and no upward mobility.

The national postal workers union has just signed a four year contract for its members, but feels their future is uncertain after that. Meanwhile it is responding to urban growth with outsourced contracts.

Do you think your experience at the post office will change if it’s staffed by unskilled workers watched over fast food restaurant type supervisors? The whole city loses with inferior services, but that’s not the worst of it. Fewer dollars into the labor pool means workers who have less to spend around town. A community of poverty wage workers can’t support anything more than cable, pizza and Lotto tickets. It perpetuates poverty which means less education, less productivity, lower expectations, more crime and richer Republicans in their gated communities.

Oaxaca to Greeley with Will Brad in between

Posted on by
1

I’ve been posting about Oaxaca for some time now, and in the beginning I believe that those who saw these posts were thinking… What’s Oaxaca have to do with us and our lives in Colorado Springs?

In fact, I had gone earlier to the local weekly, CS Indy, and they had shown zero interest in allowing me to write about Mexican events for them, or for anything on the issue to really be published there. Apparently they needed the space for more important things, like their puff piece this last issue on the newly elected Republican Congressman, Doug Lamborn, titled laughingly, ‘Rarin’ to go’.

Oh, yeah! This must be some sort of reach out to lost members of Ted Haggard’s flock, I guess? That’s the only explanation I can come up with for the publisher and editor of that paper to be running such crap. I doubt that they can outdo The Gazette though in this sappy style of …uh… ‘reporting’. I’m worried about these liberal souls over there at the Indy. I’m even scared that they may become born again evangelical pastors or some such?

But back to the world of reality. Many in Colorado began to pay more attention to Oaxaca when Gringo photographer Brad Will was shot down there like a dog. He was busy filming events for the rest of the world to be able to see, and that is just too dangerous to allow to happen freely. Some folk began to take notice of events in far off Oaxaca, though most thought of Brad as being way braver than they could ever be as Americans. And they thought more foolhardy, too.

Cut to events in Greeley and across the nation this week, as Bush sent in the INS troops to take people’s minds off his failures as US Commander in Chief in Iraq and Afghanistan. Over 1200 human beings rounded up and shackled for doing America’s nastiest work, working in slaughter houses. Families are being split asunder, children may have to permanently relocate to countries they have never known, and all of us get to ponder how more threatened we are becoming from the horde of American uniformed brownshirts, blueshirts, and khakishirts everywhere around us. Merry Christmas from Uncle Damn and Scrooge Dubya.

Even though so many folk in Greeley apparently supported rounding up their neighbors (this can be seen from the Greeley papers website where these racists post their tripe), now they are getting a quick lesson of what Oaxaca is all about. Oaxaca is about American forced trade policies (NAFTA) that have destroyed people’s livelihoods across much of Mexico, and how many of those people had to leave their homeland because of the American government’s actions just to get the same shaft here!

And in Greeley, Colorado, it’s how one’s personal racism and hatred can lead to destroying the lives of others. Not a pretty scene, as many Anglo kids go back to school and see their schoolmates being disappeared in front of their eyes. What a lesson in American citizenship for them, without doubt.

They then return home to see many of their supposedly Christian parents cheerleading for INS. Some of these parents will then be lining up for the jobs of the people victimized by this witchhunt, just like so many Germans profited from the stolen property of their Jewish neighbors once. We are a nation of immigrants, but some just go bad after a generation or two living here.

Check out the video Documentary of Oaxaca at the web site of the friendsofbradwill.com. You’ll have to punch into ‘videos’ once you reach this site. Its a lengthy documentary (28 min) , but it gives about as good and authentic of an explanation of the connections between Colorado’s world and the world of Oaxaca that might be found online right now. Well worth the time. And if you are still interested about Brad Will, scroll down to the other video called ‘I like the cops’, where Brad can be seen singing (he’s no Dylan, and I mean that in the best sense, too) and strumming the guitar while showing his love for the Men in Blue. Three minutes, and he got it all down about right.

Malachi (the man in Chicago who set himself on fire to protest the US slaughter in Iraq) and Brad, two examples of American sacrifice that inspire us. True American heroes, both in their own ways. Both trying to bring our country back to some sense of reality. Compare them to Doug Lamborn and Ted Haggard, perhaps? Oh, and compare Brad to the Men in Blue.

The land developer loan default racket

Posted on by
Reply

Did you read about the developer who had to default on a 5.3 million dollar loan for a project in Denver? What of that? Poor guy has to give back his $5.3M play toy if he can’t pay for it, is that what you’re thinking? He bit off more than he could chew maybe? Hardly.

Particular real estate schemes vary in their complexity, but here’s what happens in a nutshell. Developer sets up a Limited Liability Corporation to shield himself and his colleagues from financial risk. This entity receives financing from the banks and passes the money on to the participants, the brokers, builders, and management. This pays for the land, the labor and the overhead, being the developer’s cut. Whom the developer chooses as participants might also be considered his cut, since the money goes to who he says.

The point is, the money goes. By the time the project is defaulted to the tune of $5.3M, the money is already spent. By that I mean the money is already earned/gleaned/pocketed. It’s not like defaulting on an auto loan and having your car repo’d. Sure the banks get to repossess the project, but the profit’s already been squeezed from it. The bank will put the property on the market, sell it for a fraction of what it’s worth, and take a loss. Their loss is applied against the bank’s income, so in essence since they pay less in taxes, the taxpayers pay for that deficit. The national deficit grows by an amount that the developer and his friends have pocketed. Some of it went for laborers and materials and local fees, certainly, but the management percentage, that’s theirs. And whoever provided the labor, or sold the materials, or received the fees won too.

And who buys the project from the bank? The next developer, who gets to do another number on us all.

I’ve seen developers at city meetings, tanned, one hand in their pocket of some loose fitting slacks, soft leather loafers, big smile, they’re the top of the food chain and they know it. But I don’t think there’s any harm in looking closer at how they prey on our economy, on you and I. And if you should chance upon one of them standing on some open space conversing with a partner holding blueprints, and he has to cross the road to get to back to his LX, I’d say give him a scare at least. He may know how to beat the system, but has he got your number?