Town square Citizens Tribunal

It tolls for thee
At the prospect of our nation executing Zacarias Moussaoui for perpetrating his unforgivable evil, conspiring and lying, let’s invite the big league lawbreakers to consider turnabout is fair play.

Let’s hold a preliminary trial and sentencing for our current governing criminals, traitors and kleptocrats. In advance of being able to bring them to account officially, let’s give them a vision of what they can expect for their own fate. Remember the revolutionary tribunals of the French Revolution? Something like that, the wrath of the people, without the guillotine.

Plans are to hold a mock tribunal with accused to be tried in absentia and executed in effigy. The evidence has already been presented and tried in multiple tribunals around the world. The first charge is war crime: the crime against peace, and multiple counts of crimes against humanity. These crimes have already been proven. We will enumerate upon each for the sake of onlookers who may not be as familiar.

The other crimes are treason, based on the betrayal of this nation’s founding principles, its constitution and bill of rights. Support of the Patriot Act alone is treason. Likewise is support for illegal detention and torture. And election fraud.

Other capital offenses are war profiteering, influence peddling and selling one’s vote.

The accused are the leaders, accomplices, and all complicit in permitting these crimes. If Zacarias Moussaoui can be convicted, even executed for conspiring to participate in the alleged 9/11 plot, then our local military commanders, politicians, community leaders and corporate executives can be considered guilty of conspiracy to wage a war of aggression against the nation of Iraq, the ultimate war crime. All Republicans have conspired to betray this democracy.

We’ll get a permit from the city to use the park at the center of town. We’ll hire the park for two days. On the first day we’ll begin to build the scaffold and work overnight so to have it finished by the next midday. At night we will have bright work lights to illuminate our activity. If by noon we are still hammering at the scaffold through the first part of the tribunal, all the better.

The tribunal will begin at noon with the reading of the charges. Next we will read the list of accused. We will dispense with the usual suspects in Washington and focus exclusively on the persons within the jurisdiction of our citizen’s tribunal. Our region’s own culprits.

We’ll have a display with the list of national figures to be attended by a national tribunal.

Next a prosecutor will elaborate on the charges of war crimes. Then an attorney will speak in defense of each accused. At this point we will entertain nominations for further culpable parties and consider their defense. After which the verdicts will be read and sentences announced.

The judge might be a kangaroo teleconferencing from Cheyenne Mountain Zoo through video chat on a laptop. This will be entirely for theatrical purposes. As stated, war crimes have already been proved. The accused have continuously refused to repudiate their expressed public support for the illegal war. The charges of treason and racketeering are already self evident.

A mock hanging will be performed for each of the accused, reading their name and dropping the trap door. Executions will be videotaped and streamed online in real time and archived for friends and supporters to see.

Naturally this citizen’s tribunal will act only as a precurser to the veritable tribunals. Justice will eventually catch up with each and every of these greedy buggers.

Kerry 2004 deja vu

Speaking at IWY3 rally
Where are the Democrats on Anti-War? Why are they not standing at the forefront of this issue? The PPJPC held a well-attended Iraq War Year III rally in the park downtown and we saw not one politician in attendance.

Why do Democrats not recognize the visceral strength of the opposition to war? Americans may not vote in their own self interest for the simple matter of pride. Social issues are often too selfish for Americans to see themselves supporting. And the American Dream, if even just the Lotto, keeps Americans thinking about the interests of the priviledged as perhaps someday their own.

But the plight of the Iraqi people, a people we’ve terrorized and decimated, that’s a selfless cause. Americans join the world in their abject remorse for our actions. This is the issue which ignited the American populace in 2004. This is what can motivate the American voter again.

2.
In my humble opinion, knowing nothing about politics, I’d like to suggest that the Democrats have not a chance in hell in the next election unless they differentiate themselves from the reigning asshole party.

It’ll be Kerry all over again. Except this time I don’t think anyone will get too excited at the prospect of electing someone who’ll merely betray us.

Is there any reason to believe that there is any difference between Republicans and Democrats in DC? You can’t get Democrats there to move for impeachment, for censure, to investigate anything, to repudiate the Patriot Act, or to end the illegal war in Iraq. What good would it do necessarily to send Washington more Democrats to supplement the morally retarded ones they have already?

I don’t think you’re likely to entice Americans to support a party of do-nothings, especially when those losers are looking more like cohorts of the Republican kleptocrats.

Colorado Springs -1, Salazar 0

Well this is a fine developement for Colorado Springs. Arguably the highest profile progressive elected to a local post, city councilman and vice-mayor Richard Skorman, has resigned his position to become the regional liason for Senator Ken Salazar.
 
The announcement was made the same day that Salazar cast his vote with the majority to renew the Patriot Act. The same month that Salazar stood up to say he would not support a democratic effort to filibuster the Aleto nomination. The same year that Salazar voted for a budget which included draconian cuts to social services.

None of this is out of character for Colorado’s Ken Salazar. He began this term by endorsing the nomination of Alberto Gonzales to be Attorney General. Salazar has proven to be a foe of nearly every democratic issue. Now Colorado Springs has sacrificed a progressive voice to Salazar’s misguided moves.

Admittedly, Richard Skorman has behaved more like a centrist since he cut off his ponytail. Of course it was hard to know whether Skorman’s ineffectiveness on the city council was due more to the fact that the five other members where all part of the wacky right.

Will Skorman serve to catch Senator Salazar’s ear and realign him to the best interests of the Senator’s constituents, or will Skorman’s function be to ameliorate and apologize for Senator Salazar’s wacky rightist ways?

It’s already widely postulated that most democrats serve only to render the Neocon agenda more palatable to an incredulous American public. I think Richard Skorman is going to be playing that role.