Tag Archives: Patriots

This September 11 in Colorado Springs

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All THEIR plans for continued warfare are predicated on the US as being some sort of grand victim in the world, but it is not. Once the Christian Right Wing claimed that their persecution of Jewish people around the globe was based on their perception that Jews had killed Christ. Now, they substitute Muslims for Jews, and claim that persecution of Muslims is due to Muslims having attacked the World Trade Towers on September 11, 2001.

Iraq is a Muslim country, therefore ‘Christian’ America attacked and continues to occupy it. Payback for September 11 many Americans still continue to think. In reality, the ‘Christian’ warfare is far more due to the ‘Christian’ corporations worshiping their stock portfolios more than they do God. It’s the dollar that counts, but they combine it with God as cover. They combine it with their supposed patriotism, too. But they are not patriots, these ‘Christian’ corporations. They are money makers for the super-rich, and job givers to those who have few real Christian scruples.

This September 11 in Colorado Springs, peace activists will be going out to where these ‘Christian’ corporations congregate in their profit making/ war making. In Colorado Springs, that site is the corner of Fountain and South Academy Blvd. There, one can find Boeing, Lockheed, Raytheon, Northrup Grumman, and a host of other lesser known corporations, but war making/ blood sucking/ profit making vampire corporations none the less. They have non-descriptive names like GTEC, Alliant (largest maker of depleted uranium munitions in the world), Intecom, BAE Systems, etc. These are all concentrated in 2 buildings at this single intersection in our city.

Many people go by, yet simply do not notice the presence of these war profiteers! This September 11 we plan to change that, and will vigil at this intersection from 10AM in the morning to 4PM in the afternoon. Our signs will concentrate on three points.

Here are the Merchants of Death…
Kids, Not Bombs!
Disarm Lockheed’s WOMD Now!

We hope you participate and have your participation help keep you from becoming depressed later about the propaganda you are likely to see and hear through the US corporate media on 9/11. It’s your chance to tell the public passing by on this busy intersection, just who you think are the real war mongers out there in our world. It is truly the American corporations that make a killing with their constant killing that fits the bill as for who is being the bloodiest war mongers these days. They are All American, but you will be more so, simply if you protest the bloodshed that they are causing.

See you there on 9/11! Be there and send a message that you don’t want more war against other countries. Enough is enough!

Cheney’s African quail hunt

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It’s Bombs Away time once again! America’s favorite dick is out quail hunting in Africa this weekend…

Oh My! The terrorists are everywhere and from everywhere! Last week it was Albanians arrested for trying to destroy a fort in New Jersey! This week it is a horrid plot by Guyanese to blow up one of New York City’s airports! And now look who they say they killed in Somalia. Foreign fighters from Britain, Pakistan, and Sweden were among those killed so says the Pentagon, and they were all taken out by Cheney’s aim during his weekend African quail hunt!

This would all be funny if it were just our imaginations. But it’s not! This is our new lives. Next week they will find Muslim Martians trying to poison our water supply, so President Bush should call in our Colorado Springs own once again so that Dr. James Dobson can help get the word out to patriots about this threat to our international security.

Call in the clowns and they will invoke and invent a clown-like threat to us all, it seems. I must be sure not to joke about any of this at the airport when my family flies out this week to visit relatives. Oh my God! Our last name is almost identical to the devil from Guyana trying to blow up the New York airport! And he’s still ‘at large’! I might just become part of this week’s comic plot episode even.

Stay tuned…. Terrorists are amongst us.

Clarifying a few terms…

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Because some have expressed disdain at the mere thought of being considered right wing apologists… aka people who wish to accommodate and justify right wing philosophy, here are a few things to remember: Catchwords and phrases, talking points, something you might see on a bumper sticker; using these will probably get you tagged as a right wing loon. And in at least some cases the tag would fit perfectly.

examples: Love it or leave it (one recently) The Police are always right, If you have done nothing wrong why would you fear the police?, Support Our Troops, These Colors Never Run.

Recycling myths like: left wing liberals were the reason we lost in Nam… FALSE. Right Wing planners like Westmoreland, Johnson, Nixon, Al Hague, and the “Super Patriots” who supported them, were much more of a coherent and consistent reason for the loss of the VietNam War by the United States. The new crop of such losers is causing America to be drawn into yet another defeat.

Also contributing much to the American loss in VietNam was the courage and resourcefulness of the VietMinh, that’s Charley to some…

For those who don’t remember anything about it, these guys used a mix of primitive and modern technologies, small arms, improvised explosives and equipment taken from American, Australian, French and South Vietnamese soldiers, tactics which were also a mix of ancient and modern, to defeat the above named governments, even against a Shock and Awe campaign of greater magnitude than the one currently being played in Iraq.

Also like Iraq, there was never a war declared between the United States and The Democratic Republic (Hanoi).

Much as it pisses off those who see the POWs as uncompromising heroes, (some were) and the Hanoi Hilton as a hellhole, (it was) it should also be remembered that the Hanoi Hilton is about a standard in third world jails. And since the North Vietnamese didn’t do a “show trial” followed by an execution every time they captured an American airman, the treatment they accorded the Americans was one hell of a lot better than that accorded to the VietCong prisoners by the Saigon government.

a lot of Americans will scream loudly that American soldiers didn’t torture captured Charleys. Given the readiness these same people have shown to rationalize torture at Gitmo and worse places, i tend to doubt that. Probably not widespread but not nonexistent either.

But on the other hand, the Saigon government DID torture and summarily execute captured “terrorists” “rebels” “insurgents”.

Leave us remind everybody that the Americans captured in North VietNam and Cambodia and Laos had exactly the same legal status as the captured Charleys had in the South. No more, no less.

It was a combination of supporting an openly repressive government and the determination and resourcefulness of the “enemy” that dashed the American intervention in SE Asia.

The same things that are now dragging down America in South WEST Asia.

Empires are destined to fall, usually very soon after they are declared to be Empires. Such as the one declared by George Bush Senior when he proclaimed a New World Order, which is being dishonorably carried on by his son, King George the Incredibly Stupid.

Another talking point is that VietNam and Iraq were fought for American freedom.

They were not, nor has any war in which America has been engaged since 1814. To say otherwise is to propagate a myth, if you believe that myth, if you know it is false but say it anyway it is ramped up all the way to a Deliberate Lie.

The military did not fight for our freedom, they did not give us our freedom, or our rights, we do NOT OWE them our obedience, or the willing surrender of our rights.

Especially annoying (not to mention stupid) is the repeated attempt to make us believe that Freedom means we are free to do as we are told, to say only what we are allowed to say, and that we have some moral obligation to support the wars started by people who have anointed themselves our “Leaders”.

Some of my fellow Christians are of the strong delusion that God has commanded us to obey George Bush because he is supposedly “OUR” King.
This particular myth was also used by the Tories to denounce the Continental Congress and the rebels in the army during the Revolution.

It was shouted from pulpits across the Colonies by pastors, who, like Ted Haggard and Benny Hinn and Franklin Graham and Dobson… had sold their priesthood and their souls to a tyrant.

Here’s a quick formula to remember Shock and Awe = the use of fear as a weapon = Terrorism.

The proponents of Shock and Awe, like George and his supporters, are therefore Terrorists.

You don’t like that, try beating it out of me, and all the while try to forget that that too, is Terrorism.

When are ‘the troops’ going to support the rest of America?

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Antiwar protesters repeatedly get told they are not supporting ‘the troops’. Yesterday, in fact, a woman screaming out “You Bastards!’ at our peace vigil from her car, claimed that we were not supporting her husband who was one of ‘the troops’ in Iraq. Our standard refrain has always been, ‘Support The Troops, Bring Them Back Home Now!’ But I have another reply on my mind, and that is simply to ask the pro-war hecklers when are ‘the troops’ going to support us Americans?’ What do I mean by this?

Simple. You ‘troops’ are part of a war machine that is bankrupting the funding of social programs for the elderly, children, and needy in our society. You are fighting a war that most Americans no longer want, and that will put our children into debt for a long time to come. Yet you and your families continue to want you to be considered heroes, when you sign up and join the war machine and go after the preferential benefits that are yours for joining the government imperialist team. And many of you even have the nerve to get angry at us peace activists that want money spent in better ways than in just killing foreigners for corporate profit! That takes a lotta damn gall!

Yes, when are ‘the troops’ going to start to support the American people themselves? We want you back home alive where you won’t be helping bankrupt us civilians through the love of Halliburton and your own pride. Putting on your damn uniforms does not make you heroes, a class above us tax paying commoners. You went into the military thinking that the military pseudo socialism was the way to help yourselves out, but you bargained with the Devil and he may well take your heart and soul and your very life, too, if you are not very, very careful. Reconsider what you are doing.

Troops, help the rest of us Americans out, and support stopping the Iraqi war and occupation. True patriotism supports less militarism, less imperialism, and less money spent on you the troops, to the detriment of America itself. Troops and families of troops, speak out now against this thuggery you have become part of, and we wish you the best back home alive for those in other folk’s lands.

Stop the bloated war spending to help out the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the peoples of Haiti and Colombia, too. And most of all, to help out us, the people of America. America needs less of you ‘troops’ in prison guard, police, and military uniforms, not more. Patriots support more peace in the world, and less war. So do your part as you can. And try not to let the government dehumanize you, through the insane war the government has you fighting in.

Best wishes, from the antiwar community. But there is no way we are going to ‘support’ you by cheerleading the killing the government has you engaged in. Stop the constant wars. Our money for the people, not The Pentagon!

Bush ‘renders’ US citizen to Israel

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Israel extradites a dissidentFawaz Damra, a US citizen was stripped of his citizenship, held in jail for months for no crime what-so-ever, and finally ‘rendered’ to Israel 2 weeks ago, possibly to be tortured?. His crime? He was born a Palestinian.

He was deported to Israeli military forces without being allowed contact with either his family or his lawyer beforehand. He has 3 teenage daughters and a wife, all who are also US citizens. I bet they are really glad to enjoy the benefits of American citizenship? What a grand civics lesson they are receiving.

It is apparent to more and more American Muslims now, that it is barely legal to be a Muslim here. Muslims do not now have to wear a Crescent like the Star of David that Jews once had to wear for Germans, but that’s more due to advances in surveillance technology. But you really are taking your life in your hands as an American Muslim, to enter your place of worship or to make a charitable donation to a church cause. I bet the family of Damra are really impressed by what religious freedom us Americans have? How protected they must feel in being citizens, too.

Fawaz, upon immigrating to the US, became a moderate imam and headed up the Cleveland mosque. Just the type of person that the US people as a whole need most amongst us, to counter the threats of future terrorism. I’m sure that stripping this man of his citizenship and then deporting him into the custody of Israeli military torturers, is certainly going to do wonders for our National Security, the Bush neo-con Klan are so fond of barfing on about so continuously! They are brilliant strategists for sure!

It shouldn’t surprise us at all, I guess? The US was very good under the Democrats of FDR at turning back Jews trying to escape from the Nazis. But the Zionist Jews of Israel are now our Aryan Empires allies, and so things are the same as back then, yet so very topsy turvy. It is now the Jews that run the show and Arabs that are in ghettos. Looking over all this, of course, is the great Christian Church of imperialism.

Let me mention here, that my last name is really Arabic, though I am really totally Aryan. I wonder how I fit into the computers of our new national security state observation deck? But just for the record let me state, that I am still for jailing the terrorists that run our country. Oh how anti-US I must be with my Arab last name! How suspect my politics.

And to you fascistic dittohead thugs out there? Well, I am ashamed of the US. If you weren’t such ignorant backward bastards, so would you be, too. I wonder just how far out nutty this government terrorism against us will go? Let’s just say, I don’t think I can just go down to the airport and hop on a plane nowadays. But why should I leave? This is my country, and the Right Wingers should get out of it and Go to Hell, not me. They are nothing but traitors to everything decent, they are, and are not the real patriots out there, not in the least. All their good Americanism is a big fat sham, same as the good Germans back 90 years ago were with their ‘patriotism’..

To follow more the history of this case somewhat, go to the Cleveland newspaper’s coverage page on Fawaz Damra

Corporate America’s micro-management addiction

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Decades ago, while working as a Seattle garment cutter where Jimmy Hendrix’s brother once worked, I observed with awe and amazement a White man, overly dressed in coat and tie, stand directly behind the seated rows of bent over Oriental women with stopwatch in hand.

He was measuring each and every fraction of a second their motions as they sewed together cut parts of skiwear. He was part of the management team’s effforts to micro-manage the workers at this factory. He would write down his observations and then they would be mathematically calculated to squeeze these women out of every ounce of their energy, for the least pennies to be paid. My thoughts back then were, Good God Almighty! This micro-management of people is sick, sick, sick!

Today, I am a proud parent of a District 11 school kid. Everyday she comes home at 2:45, angry, hostile, and upset. Why is this? The kids at this ‘excellent’ facility are being micro-managed, that’s why . No time for recess, no time for play, no time for socialization. Every second is to count.

If you might ask, I am voting for recall. My only wish is that the whole bunch of them were being recalled on that School Board. Their micro-management of kids is sick! There is no kid left behind from it, either. At the school my kid goes to, the teachers don’t even much get the chance to teach. They have a computer called ‘Success Maker’ supposedly doing that. Computers can micromanage little kids better than humans can, I guess?

All the teachers and principals are part of this micro-management, too. Even their cheerleading for the school seems totally forced. Like a Toyota production circle almost! And the kids conduct in this repressive setting becomes quite coarse. Another manifestation of the US corporate zeal for micro-management of others. Little kids even! Every second must count. We must ‘rationalize’ education! Speedup the teachers!

Last week in the New York City metro area, ecoli@TacoBell.com shut down 6 stores. But what is the New York City municipal health inspectors concerns per another article online last week? That there were sales of armadillo meat and other exotics at ethnic markets going on that were not kosher enough for them. The ethnic markets are not being micro-managed by the Health Dept. like they should supposedly be. In city across city in the US, it is next to impossible to vend food like is done in every other country around the world. The food cannot be micro-managed like at McDonalds, Taco Bell, and Burger King by the ‘health’ bureaucracy. No way to stand stop watch in hand and measure productivity, etc. Uh, I meant sanitary conditions.

Pretty pathetic is it not? All those fast food joints have kids working without sick leave, and no health inspector ever is there to micro-manage the snot coming from them onto the food while at work sick. Got to spend more time micromanaging armadillo meat instead, and I guess cuy (guinea pig), too, which is available to South American immigrants in a park of one of their barrios in that city. In other cities, just try to vend even hot dogs around town! Food not Bombs gets harassed if they give away cooked food on the streets. Unhealthy. You guys are not going to get away from being totally micro-managed by corporate America! It’s for health reasons, the authorities will all announce. Shut up and eat your triple fat burger, Buddy.

Everything is micro-managed these days. The Iraq Study Group was micro-analyzing how they could micro-manage those savage Arabs and Kurds? How can ‘our’ oil be micro-managed in that faraway land? Bipartisan unity now. Democrats and Republicans all 100% behind the idea of corporate America micro-managing other peoples. Can they not micro-manage other people? No, they are addicts, are they not? They need Micro-Managers Anonymous.

At Safeway, the clerks are told what to say. At the hospitals, nurses are told what to say. At Wendy’s, management is taking away what to say and micro-managing that from the Exit 42 Corporation located in New Hampshire. At America On Line, what to say is not micro-managed on line by Americans on line, but by micro-managed Indians on line micro-managed in Quien Sabe, India! This corporate micro-management addiction is sick!

The in thing for business, is to violate labor law and micro-mange your break time, take it away, destroy it! It’s WalMarts specialty, and ask any nurse how management micro-manages them at the hospitals? Haven’t seen your nurse come by? They’re being micro-managed over at the desk by management. To see you in person they would need to have skates on. That would go with their bundle of equipment (cellphones, buzzers,sensors, etc.) that they have to carry around, like US soldiers on patrol. All a result of micro-management of their time by the corporation. Management must always be in contact!

Computers are used to program nurses these days, as they are other workers. Aw sure, those poor machines get programmed, too. But believe it, the machines program far more people than the other way around. Cash registers force the pace. Cameras are everywhere. Micro-management is in, big time. Satelites taking down your conversations on the ol’ cell phone even. All part of micro-management addiction by the business community. Real patriots, them! And it is sick, sick, sic, is it not? These efficiency and organization nuts need some major political metamucil!

Notice the headline this week? America is NUMBER ONE in the world in number of citizens in jail. Highest in per capita percentage, too. 5% of the world’s population, with 25% of those micro-managed in jail. Oh, and it really is micro-management in US jails! See Jose Padilla? See those guys at Guantanamo? It’s no aberration, either. Go to jail, and they will micro-manage your ass. And I mean that literally, too. Go to the airport and pray, they’ll micro-manage you there, too. They got you coded, Dude. And in jail, well they got ot watch your ass. You might have some palmed Tylenol tabs up your rear a foot or two. Wouldn’t want you to get high from smoking the stuff! Now that’s true micro-management, is it not?

So what is the first thing that corporate America will say to you if you want to stop their addiction to micro-managing you? They will scream and whine and shout!

“That is socialism! Keep your liberty. Socialists want to micro-manage you, and you won’t have the freedom we allow you here! We’re against micro-management!”

Comical, is it not? Despite corporate America’s micro-management addiction, all this micro-management is to be done on you. Try to ask for it to be directed their way, and they scream and squeal like the pigs they are. They are pigs, too. They not only will micro-manage your ass, if they get a chance, but if perhaps you fall by the road side in illness or old age, they will micro-manage your processing down the conveyor belt and into the hole in the ground the funeral micro-management industry has prepared for you. They will micro-manage the prayer said in your last behalf, want it or not! Yes, the last prayer before God will process you, and then you will get micro-managed for eternity. Corporate America is just obeying God on this matter.

Corporate America is addicted to micro-management of your life, from birth to graveyard. The Christian’s God gets you then.

Is Iraq in ‘Civil War’?

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Our national debates often enter into surreal territories, and I got to say that I find the liberal sites to be almost as bad as the conservative ones when it comes to their examination of US militarism. Today finds the liberal sites, like Alternet and CommonDreams celebrating what a supposed advance forward it is that NBC started calling the situation in Iraq a civil war. The White House duly responded with, “Is not! Is not!”. So there, we now have lined up the two sides of the usual American idiocy, The Democrats versus the Republicans. Yawn…. But is the Iraq conflict in reality a ‘civil war’ like the liberals are now declaring it to be? I think not.

See, the liberal Democratic Party types don’t dare call the Iraq conflict what it really is, which is an imperialist war and colonial occupation Made in America. So they do the next best thing they can come up with, and that is to say that the US has troops centered in a country with a ‘civil war’ flaring up. Oh my! Despite ‘our’ good intentions, we’re in danger! Let’s cut and run!
This way of stupidly arguing this issue of war and peace with the Right, allows pro-warmongers to say, Look, the Iraqis need us to keep themselves from killing each other. Oh how humane we shall always be!

Liberals, this is no civil war at all. Can you imagine in our real American Civil War, would we have ever called it a Civil War if all the American cities, both South and North, had been occupied by a bunch of murderous imperial troops, from say Mongolia or Japan? And that these troops were causing the chaos between different sections of our own country’s population? See the simple difference between a real civil war, and an imperialist war? Apparently, the liberals have big trouble on that! Our American Civil War was a civil war, whereas the Iraqi chaos is not.

If one remembers this, the Vietnam War was once described by the American press as a civil war, too. The supposed good guys in South Vietnam were our friends, and the bad guys there were the commies. It was taught that South Vietnam was in a civil war where another country would not leave the South Vietnamese alone to solve their internal difficuties. That bad country was called North Vietnam. Just like then, the argument went that we had to occupy the country, simply because without us, the ‘civil war’ there would go much for the worse. Plus, another country, Iran… uh I mean North Vietnam, was wrongly entering into another country’s civil strife. and trying to turn it into a ‘civil war’! We had to save the South Vietnamese from foreign intervention into their civil war! Oh such tortured logic the warmongers must use.

Liberals refuse to tell the truth to people, back then and right now. They don’t go out and say that we have torn apart another society because we are an imperialist country that invaded and occupied their land. God forbid it if the liberals , who are such great flag waving patriots, would ever speak bad of the troops! Instead, the liberals have a tendency to revert to just moaning and groaning about, Why be over there in such a bad neighborhood? Look, there’s a civil war going on. Gotta go now! We’re getting hurt. Today, some liberal nuns were actually here in Colorado delivering food to our US soldiers! Poor soldier boys and girls. Get them out of harm’s way. They’re innocently in the midst of a ‘civil war’, and need some canned goods delivered to them! They’re starving! Bring them home and feed them better. Such nonsense makes me want to cry, but that’s what the liberal nuns were pushing today in Colorado.

What to say when the US spent all that time previous to the invasion, arming and training Kurds in the North of Iraq? When they take orders from DC, Iraqi Kurds are not fighting a ‘civil war’ then? But if they free lance like the Shia and the Sunni are currently doing, well that’s ‘civil war’? No? That’s nonsense. Iraq is still a conflict where ethnic tensions are being provoked by foreign powers. There is a simple name for doing that, too. It is called IMPERIALISM, not ‘civil war. The US is an imperialist country as is Britain. Imperialism often times picking on weaker countries, not countries that can better fight back. So the first cousin of American imperialism is COLONIALISM. Iraq is in the center of a colonial war, not civil war, Olbermann. I center on this liberal, because he is the point man of the Democrats within the media at this time. It is he that is pushing this use of ‘civil war’ to describe the battlefield that his government has made in the Middle East. LOL. Well he would say, at least, that Bush is not ‘his’ government. But then again, both Iraqi Shia and Sunni agree on one thing. This is not a ‘civil war’, but a warfare forced on them by colonial occupiers. My Fellow Americans, this is an imperialist war and a colonial war. It’s kind of shameful for us continually putting the guilt on the Iraqis on this matter.

The sheer nature of imperialism, is that the imperial power always uses one sector of the colony against another. It only gets called civil war, when the imperial country doesn’t klike the way things are spinning out of its control. Then they can withdraw, and say, “Oh those primitive people. They hate each other. They are always in a civil war”. I’m waiting for the day when NBC and Olbermann start calling the Middle East wars of the US for what they are. What they really are. That’s right. I’m waiting to hear the righteous Olbermann to start calling the foreign policy of the US, IMPERIALISM. But Democratic Party motivated liberals and their liberalism can’t be depended on too much.

The Silent Death

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Malachi Ritscher 1954-2006, his own obituaryI have tried to write this commentary all day, yet each time I began, depression overtook me. On November 3, less than 3 weeks ago, a man set himself ablaze in Chicago to protest the US government’s wars. In effect, he was protesting against the American people too, for allowing these wars to be continued over and over again.
 
At age 52, Malachi Ritscher certainly had seen his country repeatedly ignore the suffering that its politicians and generals were inflicting on the other peoples of the world. He had been an antiwar protester for years, and yet the American people seemed little to have changed during his lifetime.

He hoped to help change all that with the dramatic sacrifice of his life. That decision and action, as gruesome and horrible as his death certainly was, is not alone what has me depressed though. It is simply that we have failed him once again, even though through his efforts he hardly could be said to have failed others, as he tried repeatedly to change the horrible society we live in through less dramatic means.

So why have we not hear about this courageous and totally desperate act? That is quite simple. The corporate media decided to keep it secret from us. Yet word begins to leak out, and IndyMedia is now helping inform people about what was done by Malachi to try to move us out of our pathetic cynicism and apathy. Word is being whispered here and there about what Malachi did, and the secret will come back to haunt those who kept it silent.

What was the media’s excuse to hide this man’s sacrifice away from us all? Simple. They treated his protest of our society’s war making and criminality, as if it was merely the action of a suicidal madman killing himself because of personal depression. No protest there, doesn’t mean anything what he did! How sorry are they, these assholes, to decide for us the meaning of this man’s actions! How much more does it say about their own motivations, than about Malachi Ritscher’s? How sick and controlled we have become for this silence and censorship to be let stand? How sad, that even this act of setting oneself on fire, fails to move us. Or at least to move those in the corporate world that control information flow and news.

It makes me yet more ill to think that the decision to keep this man’s protest hidden from us, was made principally to not effect the US mid-term elections that were to be happening a couple of days later. How petty, how disgraceful, the real reasons and real motivation of the US media to not broadcast news of what Malachi had done to himself. Malachi took his final action out of self sacrifice, and his drive to make a statement, simply in order to try to move our country into action to stop the Iraqi madness. Keep it local, keep the meaning of it distorted, all so that Bush and his minions might fare better at the polls! That was the counter response from the media. Make Malachi look sick and deranged, instead of a very decent human being. That’s what makes me so very depressed. I’m depressed because the US seems so hopeless, and this sad event just goes to underline our societal decay, yet once again.

Malachi Ritscher posterHis friends have organized a campaign to get news of his death out to the press. Write to the local rags and see if it helps since all we can do is keep trying? It is a shame that with Malachi Ritscher gone, we have one activist less. We have one genuine human being less. We have one less person who cares about others. He tried to change things, and many of us do care. It’s just that neither our press, nor our politicians, nor our economic elites care. It is common folk like Malachi Ritscher that actually do concern themselves most often about others in the world and not just themselves. And they desperately try to find ways to make a change possible. They are the true patriots, not the war mongers.

Everyone has a profile

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TV iconThe 80s cult TV show Max Headroom depicted a post-apocalyptic world dominated by television networks as corporate overlords. There was direct democracy, you could vote right on your television, but only for who should win a contest or whether a condemned man should die. Think electronic lynch mob.
 
In this big-brother-televises-all world, there was a curious identity concept for describing people who lived off the grid. They were called Zeros and they lived literally outside the confines of the physical city infrastructure. (So difficult it was to conceive of how a person could escape oversight.) Little was known about their personal details, hence, they were zeros.

This was quite different from being unknown. Zero denotes something, specifically the absence of it. (The Latin numeral system stalled for lack of a zero.) In Max Headroom a Zero was a person about which suspicion was cast, due to the absence of the expected accumulation of data. An empty file was a flag, basically. You could choose to keep you cards close to your chest, but you would be watched more closely as a result.

I think the Zero anonymity dilemna is a fine example of the difficulty we face today in wrestling our privacy from the information merchants. It used to be patriots feared that our social security numbers would be used to track our personal records. This would have been true when the thought of synthesizing phone books by surnames was too daunting. But number-crunching has now well exceeded that kind of challenge. Computers can sort and group any number of variables, there is no need for a single unique SS number. A person’s name, birth date and birthplace provide specificity enough. Add to that the cloud of extra information: whereabouts, financial activity, utilities, phone and computer records, etc.

By the time you accumulate clouds of data for millions of people, patterns appear and the statistical laws of actuarial science, which have always served the insurance industry so well, begin to make the anomalies stand out. An analyst would be able to deduce quite a few things about you to which you are probably oblivious yourself. But most of all they can spot when someone is trying to manipulate their data footprint. And seeing that action in itself adds to your profile.

While to call an information-insurgent a Zero would be insufficiently descriptive, it makes the point. If you don’t have any phone on record, information analysts do not conclude that you lack a phone. If there’s a bill you’re not paying, or something you’re overpaying, there’s a probable hypothesis analysts will draw. The information industry is not in the business of knowing nothing.

Religious Bigotry, Nationalism, and Racism

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Religious Bigotry, Nationalism, and Racism are the core ingredients of patriotism worldwide. Oh, I know, some will say that Peace is Patriotic, and other such liberal claptrap. But we all know what Patriotism really means; it means my religion before all others, my country before all others, my race before all others.

Got to thinking about this while writing the last commentaries about that certain racist Colorado Springs State rep dissing Hispanics, and the blown away Fort Carson trained snipers coming back in bags from Iraq.

Got to thinking about this at the last city council meeting, where all assembled are forced into prayer and a pledge of allegiance before the city council meeting can be allowed to begin. It is a loyalty oath where it is demanded of one that we show our patriotism. But I’m not a patriot, and proud of that, too, and do not think that I will participate in standing up next time I go to this government function. I will opt out instead. Instead, I don’t think that the home team is special, nor that the home religion is special, nor that the White race of European background is better than others. I don’t like patriots. I’m not one myself, and with good reason.

What can be done?

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Knee-jerk patriots accuse critics of US actions of having nothing to suggest by way of alternatives. Indeed pseudo-rivals like the Democrats aren’t speaking any differently than the GOP.

But the answers have been out there and they are quite simple. Noam Chomsky does not take credit for them, but summarized them recently. Here’s what he suggests our country can do to try to redeem itself with the world community:

1) accept the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court and the World Court;

2) sign and carry forward the Kyoto protocols;

3) let the UN take the lead in international crises;

4) rely on diplomatic and economic measures rather than military ones in confronting terror;

5) keep to the traditional interpretation of the UN Charter;

6) give up the Security Council veto and have “a decent respect for the opinion of mankind,” as the Declaration of Independence advises, even if power centres disagree;

7) cut back sharply on military spending and sharply increase social spending.