Tag Archives: Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission

PPJPC drops justice & peace in favor of Judas kiss & Participatory militarism

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You don’t care what our neighborhood Pikes Peak Justice & Peace Commission has gotten its leash tangled around –I shouldn’t– but the latest is just too funny. FIRST, in November they sponsored an Israel-BDS protest to boycott a local Ahava outlet and promptly got two participants arrested. Wrongly of course, but the police were awaiting them with a letter fashioned for the occasion by the City Attorney giving the CSPD authority to drive the activists from the private property. Although planning had been kept on the QT, do you think the reception might have been due to monthly confabs which the PPJPC executive director keeps with city law enforcement? Later in debriefing, the director pronounced his incredulity that the “new policy” hadn’t been spelled out to him at the last meeting. So what kinds of things do the PPJPC & CSPD discuss? SECOND, just as the PPJPC fell for the Save Darfur intervention-as-peacemaking faketivism, then zipped it for Obama’s false hopetivism, now the pitiful dupes call their Muslim-Jewish-Christian “Evening in Jerusalem” gathering a THREE CUPS OF TEA PARTY! Would this be in deference to Greg Mortenson‘s Western Empire [school] building enterprise? That puts the PPJPC in the company of the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security, Mortenson’s biggest boosters. The next chance I get I will ask known J&P’ers I promise you — who are the Idiot Iscariots taking this tack? The PPJPC is soliciting donations from earnest yous and mes in the name of peace and justice, to advocate for forfeiting civil liberties and 3CoT’s participatory militarism.

On the AHAVA arrests, do we know who tipped off the cops? Not really, but we know the city’s actions didn’t spring from the media press releases which went out the day before. How much lead time do you figure is required to solicit a written policy from the city attorney’s office? Who had that kind of foresight?

The official word was that the “new policy” delineating which shopping centers might be major enough to be considered public spaces, and which were only average-sized neighborhood no-free-speech zones, was drafted to preempt populist petitioner Doug Bruce from assailing shoppers at will. But he prevailed against the trespassing charges pressed against him by Costco didn’t he. So that pretext doesn’t wash, and by no stretch of the law would a Costco parking lot be considered public.

There is already legal precedence for shopping centers not being considered the new town squares, and the state of Colorado has already put freedom-seekers aspiring to assemble in malls that they must abide by individual mall rules of conduct. At Chapel Hills mall is means, by permit, one at a time, no more than one day per quarter, no handouts, and a moratorium on all social causes over the holiday shopping period.

So a city-wide policy penned by their counsel giving explicit authority for police to remove activists from private property would seem redundant and by its intentional breadth, unconstitutional. But it gives cops-on-the-beat ground not to vacillate.

However CSPD learned about the J&P plans, wouldn’t it seem a crippling limitation to be meeting with the police on a regular basis to give them a heads up about any events that might concern them?

Keep in mind, the PPJPC executive director is avowedly protest-averse. He’s stated he doesn’t see the value to public demonstrations, and they certainly disrupt his ongoing strategy to ingratiate himself and his non-profit into the fabric of local conformist NGOs.

In the case of the Ahava boycott, though the protest was organized by a subcommittee of the PPJPC, toward the press the activists were told to identify themselves only as Middle East Peace Project. That was the PPJPC wouldn’t be tainted by any negativity which the action might draw. You’d think that choosing to distance yourself from motivated peace activists would be justification enough to pretend not knowing of their plans when the police are chatting you up for clues.

What good does it serve organizers if a parent organization is going to maintain plausible deniability but at the same time is helping law enforcement keep tabs on your plans.

There was nothing illegal about the plan to picket the Ahava store. There was nothing illegal about assembling on a shopping center parking lot which is open to the public. There is no need to alert the local police if the only result is that they will finagle a ruling by which you are prevented from exercising your constitutional guaranteed rights.

Tony, David Barsamian says hello

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The local Pikes Peak Justice & Peace Commission found a little more between the lines than they may have counted on from visiting scholar/lecturer David Barsamian. Although he preached the habitual Gandhian nonviolent civil disobedience, and putting faith in reforming electoral politics, some heresy emerged from the mix. Asked how he could cite 1984 with the authority of scripture, three times, but overlook how Orwell derided nonviolence as a tool of totalitarian control, Barsamian reminded the audience that Orwell joined the Spanish Civil War against Franco, believing that Fascist threat justified armed struggle. Barsamian then clarified that neither of the sainted NV Big 3, Gandhi, Mandela or MLK, completely eschewed violent resistance.

The PPJPC audience may be too far gone to appreciate the distinction. This was demonstrated by a rambling question/interjection by a PPJPC member luminary. Not only is the PPJPC nonviolent, it sanctions only nonviolent communication, to elaborate further, non-protest, and even non-talking about negative things. While she was thankful for David Barsamian informing his audiences, she felt what he was doing served to defeat the positive outlook necessary to float a new consciousness. There’s a growing world movement, apparently. What’s required, said she, was a concentrated focus on the positive. I paraphrase, but I lack the parochial school vocabulary.

Fortunately, Barsamian politely pooh-pooed that notion, though not with the ridicule I would have liked. Barsamian’s theme was about historical illiteracy, and while he could fault education and media for the sad state of US critical aptitude, he could offer just the usual intra-capitalism strategies of consumer boycotts and hope for turning our legislators around. For Barsamian, our task as activists is to spread understanding to the oligarchs. The corporate bosses have children too, how could they fail to recognize that the destruction of our planet will be their doom as well?

Barsamian could have found the answer in a parable he recited while illustrating another point. He asked the audience if we’d heard the story of the scorpion and the camel, a parable circulating in popular culture to vilify Islam.

The tale recounts a scorpion who asked a camel to ferry him across the river. The camel declined, certain the scorpion would sting him. After much pleading from the scorpion, the camel eventually decided to offer the benefit of the doubt, hoping his good deed would overcome the scorpion’s reputation. In the middle of the river, “Oy vay” Barsamian lampooned, the scorpion struck. Asked why he betrayed the camel, the scorpion replied “Welcome to the Middle East.”

Yes, it’s a despicable slander of the Arab, and by intentional extension, the Muslim character. Especially as you consider the original version of this tale, an ancient Sanskrit parable, which the Zionist propagandists are not foolish enough to quote in the original. When you pretend a universal truth damns an entire people, the racism is too obvious.

Originally the scorpion’s victim was a turtle, and the argument which won the turtle over was: why would the scorpion sting him in the middle of the river, were both would surely drown? After the backstabbing, the explanation given to the turtle was a moral that has enlightened mankind since ancient times, I’m certain everyone in the audience knew it. Quoth the scorpion: it is my nature.

You knew I was a scorpion when you took me on your back.

Who are the turtles today, thinking that corporations and capitalism can be turned by our altruism?

A last question came from an audience member who expressed their faltering hopefulness. In reply, Barsamian pointed to other milestones in history when dramatic relief was also more than the average person could have foreseen. 1958 in Cuba, 1788 in France and 1775 in the American Colonies. YES, thank you David Barsamian!

I’m guessing I’m going to regret not having yelled out to put the exclamation mark on where Barsamian puts his faith. Each of the events which he tenders to offer hope, was a VIOLENT REVOLUTION!

As to the cryptic title of this post. On every visit to the Springs, the indefatigable Barsamian witnesses a further disintegration of our local peace community. Not long ago, Tony caused an uproar with his boisterous complaints of the PPJPC’s misplaced piety. Perhaps David witnesses such fractures everywhere in the movement these days, the bristling tension growing between activists and the elders ascended into their delusions. Into such atmospheres Barsamian does not hold himself above the fray. To even the divisive Tony, for example he wished to convey his warmest regards.

Religious nonviolence is a death cult

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Reading about the media/police snap to judgment on the Palmdale CA, Queen Marisol Girls prayer picnic, I had to wonder what behavior defines a “death cult.” Trotting off to the park to chant prayers and submit to a rapture sounds exactly like the nonviolence zealots I know. Pray fast and furious, but for God’s sake, don’t stay the sword!

Protest at discreet AFB for drones

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schriever-air-force-base-coloradoCOLORADO SPRINGS- Local non-confrontational peace activists held a protest today where they knew no one would see them, and to be doubly sure, they timed it so that no commuter traffic would be passing either. Schriever AFB administrates world GPS systems, critical for military drone attacks. Local protesters feel the drones are immoral, but shhh, don’t tell anybody!? 
 
?The action was the latest of the PPJPC antiwar pacification agenda to ensnare well intentioned students and exasperated members. The program, which holds civil disobedience at a reverential arms-length, comprises regular tutoring by liberation theologists, martyr eulogists, CIA-sewn “democracy movements” and AIPAC-directed “humanitarian campaigns.”

David Barsamian and a Vet For Peace

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Activist scholar David Barsamian visited Colorado Springs yesterday to speak on Afghanistan and raise money for the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission. Barsamian was his usual gracious and erudite self but the PPJPC can’t even embarrass themselves. At one point in his presentation, Barsamian talked of encountering a Vets For Peace participant, who’d been an active PPJPC member. “You remember Brian?” He asked the group, as if relating a greeting from an old friend. Blank stares all around. Barsamian scanned the room until his eyes reached Tony and I, demonstrably nodding our heads. “Of course you do” chided Barsamian, as he moved on. What a pathetic lot.

Activists have so far failed to construct a real American Antiwar Movement

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Despite the grass roots sentiment against all the bloodshed that Bush and now Barack Obama are engaged in, activists in the US have ever failed to construct a real Antiwar Movement. Do you consider that to be a harsh judgment on my part? Then please consider the fact that the US is moving towards the end of what will a decade long occupation of Afghanistan, and yet there has not been one antiwar demonstration, on even a local yet alone a national level, that has focused on opposing this!

As Barack Obama escalates US war making further and into one more new country, Pakistan, the misleaders of the so-called US ‘Peace’ Movement remain totally silent and inactive about it.

Further, there never was any public antiwar reaction to the occupation and demolishing of Somalia, the Israeli destruction of Lebanon in 2006, and also the US moves against Russia with its Georgian adventure at big time war starting, that boom-a-ranged back into the faces of the Republican Klan, absolutely not because the ‘Peace’ movement ever did or said anything in opposition to that war in Southern Ossetia. And even with the issue of blatant US use of torture, the opposition to government terrorism remains scant and ephemeral.

The US public is utterly demoralized and unaware of its own power, thanks to ‘Peace’ misleadership itself, which seems to believe that only tiny groups of religiously motivated New Agers can come together and only for the most milquetoast reasons. Let me illustrate with the local PPJPC (Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission) and their PPJPC May calendar of inactivity. Look at it and weep! They simply plan to not mobilize themselves against THEIR President. Sad to say, the national groups they affiliate with are about on the same wave length, too.

Instead of being leaders, the misleaders who call themselves ‘Peace’ activists are leaders in public apathy and not challengers of it. Instead of smashing the War State, they seem to want to be junior partners to it. They are about as alternative as National Public Radio, KRCC, and The not so Independent are here in the local area. In short, they are not opponents to war making at all.

Without an end to the permanent War State of our American ruling class, there will be no economic or political stability to build a future for us in America. In fact, without an end to this constant construction for the War machine, the Earth is headed for a Dead End. We are currently just sleep walking toward oblivion and there simply is no way to sugar coat that basic fact. Wake up, American Antiwar Movement. You have to organize yourselves, because,People… nobody else is going to do it for you. Join and work with Coloradans for Peace here in Colorado Springs.

Summer Peace Camp versus a Colombian Caribbean Vacation?

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Medellin
As usual, with summer coming up, my little girl wanted to know just how mad at her about her …uh… behaviors over the Winter I really was? She knows that if I had got really upset at her, I would be planning on sending her off to Vacation Bible School, otherwise known in our weird circles as the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission Summer Peace Camp. There she could learn about the cleansing effects of ‘non-violence’ as taught to her by some PPJPC version of ‘Mother Angelica’.

Too, she was really getting worried about being bored this summer and was not looking to going off to the family farm located right next to the Zetas’ paintball playground at Presa Marte Gomez, Tamaulipas and staring at the adobe (plaster) walls. So one night, as she watched Johnny Depp pirate around, I suggested maybe we too could go to Pirate Land- Cartagena, Colombia this summer, and fight crocodiles or something? So I said to her,

‘How about a vacation in Colombia this summer? There’s lots of family things to do down there!’

Her response to me was,

‘Sure, why not?’

That’s what I love about kids these days, they simply are open to anything. I told her then that if we do go to Colombia and live with the Caribbean Pirates that she would have to live off fried ants and guinea pig (cuy), since that’s all those poor people have to eat. That and aguardiente.

It just so happens that she has a boyfriend from Colombia who is a Pastuzo (Texas Aggie of Colombia) and that he has eaten cuy and says it is muy rico! The fried ants she kind of balks at though, but still, she was sufficiently excited at the thought of leaving the USA, that she had me rush off and buy us both one way tickets to Bogota! America, love it or leave it!

And that’s how it is that at long last, I will get to go on my Caribbean Vacation, that’s if we don’t spend too much time in the beautiful city of Eternal Spring, Medellin? I’m definitely looking forward to staying on for the Flower Festival there in early August!… Plus, you can simply just get lost in sightseeing in this under-appreciated city!

That’s Medellin in the picture above. It’s a Colombia emerald, a Colombia orchid, and a Colombian museo de oro… all rolled up into one! Honestly, it really does look like a nice place to spend some time on a family vacation. I’ll let you know how it works out! And then, there is always Mompox!

“As they sailed down to the coast the river had grown more vast and solemn, like a swamp with no beginning or end, and the heat was so dense you could touch it with your hands.”

from Gabriel Garcia Marquez – The General in His Labyrinth

General Simon Bolivar was headed to Mompox… As for us, when I have told people that we are headed for a vacation in Colombia this year, they look at me as if I had just told them I’m flying for Alpha Centauri instead. Oh well… But Mompox does sound like a rather relaxing place o me, though maybe the climate’s not quite right?

Onward Christian Cowards

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St. Patricks Day Parade 2009
You can hold forums attended by the faithful, or beat your breast where only the choir can hear, but when there’s a crowd, you’re a regular shrinking violet. The meek don’t inherit the earth, they inherit the dirt. Last Saturday the Colorado Springs PPJPC didn’t tell its members about the opportunity to participate in the city’s biggest parade. And it declined to lend Coloradans For Peace the green flags with which it had marched the year before. What exactly are local citizens supposed to think is happening in the local peace community?

Ft Carson is Burnt Acres not Green Acres

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Ft Carson fire of 2008For several years now Colorado Springs has watched in incredulous dismay as the Pentagon has tried to represent its local terrorism training center, Fort Carson, as being some sort of Green Acres to Coloradans. Incredibly, the local group of Democrats at the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission have done their part in playing part of the game with the military in this regard, as they held joint meetings with the military and even printed up some of their propaganda about being ‘Green’ in their quarterly newsletter.

But what’s the real story about this supposedly lean, green, terrorist cell near by? Are they out to save Mother Earth through the military-industrial complex as they claim? If you are a True Believer in this Pentagon propaganda offensive, then take a look at this news item then… Fort Carson fire consumes 6,500 acres

It turns out, not surprisingly, that the military dropping bombs during heir ‘exercises’ is what started this fire out. These boy toys are noted for being just like that, but burning money off through weaponry is the American economy and so this Blood Red group must expand! Nothing green about it except for the American dollars being consumed so stupidly. It’s simply time to stop this bombs away, burn Mother Earth away machine. If you care about ecology, get out and show your concern by protesting the continuous and constant US military presence here in Colorado Springs.

It takes a lot of nerve to try to pass the pentagon off as Green, humane, and Earth loving, doesn’t it? But these Pentagon lairs get a humongous propaganda budget from American taxpayers to do just that. If your military backed job depends on it,t hen you might be the type of dunce to buy into this hogwash? If not, it’s just another reason to be sick of what the total militarization of America is doing to us.

*** Note that the fire pictured was a wildfire from last year at Fort Carson and not this year’s fire.

When you don’t pay ‘war taxes,’ is it ‘peaceful nonviolence’ or more like smug self-righteous religious complacency?

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Pontius Pilate chief tax manMonday night I got asked out of the clear blue sky at a meeting of self described ‘Peace’ advocates if I paid taxes? I was kind of drowsy from shift work I had just finished doing, and didn’t really consider the fact that Jesus was asked just about the same question in his time, but by those he considered to be spies of the Roman Empire. I was being asked the question though from a self righteous and complacent ‘Quaker’ woman who was in the process of giving me her idea of a litmus test, for whether I would be allowed by her and her husband to be in one local antiwar grouplet here in Colorado Springs called the PPJPC?

I failed her test when I answered that I did indeed pay taxes (too much so IMO), and my statement that it was so was soon followed by a self righteous and complacent harangue about her opinion that the woman and her ‘leader’ husband did not pay ‘war’ taxes and that that was that and why did I not do as they do? The implication was that I should just shut up and let them run things in the group and keep my mouth shut up for good. Why? Well because I pay my taxes!

Further I was told at the meeting by the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission that I was not ever going to be considered a member of the group, no matter what. I was told that I gave neither time nor money to the group!, and that I was out of it in their eyes because I had written previously in the local press about how the leader of the group had called the cops on us for trying to hold a meeting to plan antiwar activities outside the locked doors of the group’s offices.

“All those bad things you said about us of the PPJPC!”

Locked out, because as members of the group we wanted some democracy inside an organization that has but one pretend membership meeting per year and is run by salaried office folk who want to be small business adminstrators instead of anything much else!

I have been told too that I must sign onto some sort of ‘adherence’ statement to the ‘non-violence’ aim of the group. Further the religious pacifists running the show have stated to the press that I and others, too, do not adhere to their Christian motivated ‘nonviolence’, implying to the police and press that we are time bombs about to go off! Meanwhile, they continually invite representatives of the police to ‘meetings’ with themselves so that they can supposedly make their events more ‘nonviolent’, I guess? A hug here, a handshake there, and let us know what you want us to do, Peace Officers?

So back to the question of whether it is peaceful nonviolence’ or self righteous complacency when one does pay taxes at this time of the year? Let us go to The War Resisters League and examine their understated list of the Consequences of War Tax Resistance some. What can happen if you just opt out and tell IRS to shove it? Here, these Christians tell you that you can go to jail but not to worry about it because almost nobody does (in the US). Go figure? To the feds it is more trouble to jail these few religious ‘resistoes’ than to just harass them in other ways. Why shoot down a gnat with an elephant gun?

However there are other consequences, including your right to travel freely outside the US terminated (one of local pacifist families has been confronting just such a restriction imposed most recently, as they were barred from visiting relatives in Canada). You can lose your income through a restriction coming about on licensing in the line of work you do. You can lose your property, much more of it than if you had actually paid those taxes to the government. That happens a lot per the War Resisters League, but they assure us that it all looks good on their own balance sheet of pros and cons! Well not on mine. Nor on Jesus’s balance sheet either! He was resurrected but I don’t know really whether that would happen to me if IRS decided to crucify?

But back to the case of the Quaker woman and her ‘leader’ husband who don’t pay taxes as they assured me that was the case. Her husband actually was in the military and supposedly gets some special pension for that, that I guess I am stupidly paying taxes for them to then lecture me about what a supposedly moral cretin I must be? Kind of a weird situation, ay?

But then again, let’s say that I’m wrong about that, and that these 2 Quakers get no income for that military ‘service’ at all? Where do they get their money from then? Stocks and bonds? Social Security? God? Plus, how can you draw a line between taxes for the military and taxes for other things, since Quakers do most often pay taxes for ‘other things’ and actually most just subtract some percent away (43%) from the taxes they in fact do pay to the government? Does that make it all Kosher then???

It really does not do anything at all from an individual angle, since the government just ‘garnishes’ the wages with interest added on directly from the salaries of religious protesters. However, non religious tax ‘protesters’ are often time not even given such benign treatment at all, since the government has codified well the idea that all ‘conscientious objection’ comes mainly about because ‘God forbids Believers to do something or other?’

No belief in God? Then you got no ‘Right’ to state morality coming from God as motivation, and no Right to really object, you damn atheists!

Does erecting this artificial accounting wall between supposedly taxes for good purposes and taxes for bad purposes help grind the War Machine down and then out? The AFSC (Quakers/ Friends) thinks it does, and is pushing to have 2 tax barrels put into Federal Law, where their religion’s membership can deposit funds into a ‘Peace’ Barrel, while the other religious folk can get the War Barrel! Is this really all that ‘peaceful non-violence’ comes down to in the concrete? Like it makes some dimes bit of difference to the government to separate ‘war taxes’ from a ‘Peace tax’?

Let’s say though, that you do not pay a cent to the government and some how keep them from garnishing your income with interest added in on top? That’s nice, and some few actually do just that and get away with it without being jailed. That is about as effective a route to fighting war as doing nothing though. To stop the war mass action is necessary, and not just becoming the one or two individuals here and there who sneak by the IRS.

So where does this Quaker couple now get their income from? Due to a successful career perhaps from stocks, and not a dime from military pensions or social security, they’re living off corporate dividends and previous savings not garnished by the government for ‘nonpayment’ of taxes? I can only speculate, however, I don’t think they have accomplished much at all, other than to make themselves smug in their religious complacency, as they drape themselves in flag and ‘peaceful’ Christian mantle for cops and other agents of the Roman Empire.

There are ways of resisting the War Machine but I do not think that trying to withhold tax monies is one of them? Neither did Jesus from what I gather from rather unreliable documentation, but he did try to evade the question of whether one should pay taxes with tricky ‘sayings.’ Ultimately that cleverness and not paying the tax are maybe the issues that got him the death penalty? I wasn’t there so I cannot really say.

Indian elephants fail to apply Gandhi’s theories of peaceful resistance

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elephant friendOK, this is a gratuitous commentary but don’t blame me for it, since I’ve merely overdosed on the religion from the Colorado Springs Justice and Peace Commission, a group supposedly dedicated to fighting US war making and not just for going to some sort of New Age Church on off days of the week. Wild elephants kill 3 in northeast India

Pacifists always are counselling others on non-violence, but rarely are under any direct attack of their own that they have to defend against. However, elephants are in a different situation and react normally rather than spiritually as Jesus perhaps would have done. Of course, stories have it that in the Temple he did not act nonviolently either? But that’s just the Bible so what do they really know about Jesus anyway?

Actually, most American pacifists I have known think that Jesus would merely have voted for the Democratic Party ticket if Jesus were to return as an American. When you see those morph computer images of ‘Barack Lincoln’, we should realize that Lincoln is just a stand-in for Jesus and/ or Gandhi here. It is against the Christian religion to morph Jesus with people like Barack, just like Muslims don’t allow pictures of Mohammed to be waved around to all. So Barack Obama morphed with Lincoln is allowed though, so they went with that. I’d rather see a herd of Indian elephants show up at the Grand Inauguration this Tuesday though, and resist in the manner they know how to do so well.

They wanted to ‘Save Darfur’ but are promoting using White Phosphorous on Gaza instead!

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olive treeIt seems that many of those who wanted to ‘Save Darfur’ are now actually out there supporting Israel and its daily bombardment of Gaza’s civilian population with thousands of half-ton explosives, cluster bomblets, and White Phosphorus shells, many if not most, made in the USA! What a puzzle?

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden is one of those notables since he’s been a long time Zionist and demander of increased US military aggression against Sudan, but the group of newly gung-ho genocide advocates against the Palestinians also includes Hillel, the largest Jewish student group around the world. They fairly recently made ‘Saving Darfur’ the major focus of their political work. Now they have returned to the ‘Saving the Jewish State’ theme by killing Palestinians which is their #1 cause once again. See their website for the position Hillel Endorses JCPA Support for Israel. Now check out their ‘Save Darfur’ campaign for calling for military intervention by principally the US and Britain into Africa. Never Forget. Save Darfur and never save Iraq, Afghanistan, or Somalia, let alone Gaza?

OK, let’s go on over to another US group advocating vocally to ‘Save Darfur’, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum down in Miami, Florida of all places. What are they up to? Just check on CONSCIENCE at their website to see if they have located any problems in the world today other than Darfur? Oops, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Congo, Gaza are all missing! Gaza civilians not a problem for them…. ??? Neither are Armenians, Native Americans, nor Black African slaves. What holocausts? I guess there was only one with maybe an add on of Darfur? I’m surprised, in fact. Well they are worried about the Chechens, too, it seems. Just to be fair…

There are many others out there who wanted to ‘Save Darfur’. Some of them are the local peace do-nothings at the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission here in Colorado Springs allied with United for Justice and Peace nationally, which has had many a member concerned about ‘Saving Darfur’. So much so that they actually held a rally or two to show their desire for more intervention by the US government. I remember seeing some of them in tears even.

Today I’m not sure where they have disappeared to? White phosphorus and Gaza just not their thing I guess? Neither is Somalia, Congo, Afghanistan, nor really even Iraq! Funny group of people. They never really seem to get it together to demonstrate for anything other than themselves? Always fundraising though. Got some money for their office people? Staff salaries are always important! They may or may not show up at the next rally against war? You never know with these folk?

What about the group Stop Genocide Now? What did you find other than their concern about Darfur? They claim to be the following…

‘Stop Genocide Now (SGN) is a grassroots community dedicated to working to protect populations in grave danger of violence, death and displacement resulting from genocide.’

Only Darfur seems to be where they have found this ‘population’ though. Go figure? ‘Genocide’ seems to be only in Darfur? That’s amazing!

OK, I’ll stop here. I think the reader has gotten the picture by now. ‘Save Darfur’ as a rallying point really is not about saving people that much by promoting peace in the civil wars of Sudan. There is another and rather well kept hidden agenda behind this campaign, and the fact that so many groups have a blind side about this hidden agenda they are supporting is quite telling.

For many of these folk, Darfur is on the back burner and blasting away at Gaza is primary. Don’t worry though, since they’ll all be back urging humanitarian intervention quite soon. Oh wait! Supporting the US-Israeli war on Palestinians is seen by many of these people as being humanitarian interventionism. Ain’t that right, Willy Pete? Where else will they go next?

“Because you have drowned others, you were drowned…” –Rabbi Hillel

Nonviolent vigils will be death of Gazans

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Venezuela Statue of Liberty throws a shoe!GAZA PROTESTS PROLIFERATE! Demonstrators are occupying Israeli consulates, storming embassies, harassing pro-Israeli rallies, and spilling blood on Zionist memorials. Not that anything is working so far. Meanwhile, in non-stories for the press, the usual non-confrontational passivists are lighting candles in memory of the slain. Are they anticipating, in their non-violent wisdom, the eminent extinction of the Palestinians of Gaza? Pacifists seem more comfortable to commemorate the ideological sacrifice of martyrs sooner than advocate for the survival of the endangered.

Others are not content to mourn Zionism’s ultimate triumph. Here’s the best analysis yet I’ve encountered for antiwar strategists.

Oslo protests

In Caracas, the protests have the support of the state. Venezuelan president Chavez expelled the Israeli Ambassador and called his nation’s Jews to repudiate Israel’s inhumanity in Gaza:

“Now I hope that the Venezuelan Jewish community speaks out against this barbarism. Do it. Don’t you strongly reject all acts of persecution?”

Here is the Free Palestine Alliance statement released January 9, 2008:

The Massacre Intensifies:

As we prepare this thirteenth FPA statement, the Zionist army was continuing what it does best the wholesale slaughter of children and unarmed civilians. As would be expected of the current state of affairs of the US-controlled international scene, the massacre of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip is continuing despite yesterday’s feeble UN Security Council resolution that calls for Israel to immediately stop its attack. Actually, the US-Zionist leadership went the other way — more and more attacks. The Israeli Zionist army was given additional orders to escalate the conquest as it enters into a third phase of obliteration. Simultaneously as the Israeli cabinet was giving orders for a higher kill and destruction ratio, the US Senate was not going to be outdone by Zionists. It had to add to its long and shameful record. So it secretly issued a fast-tracked resolution fully supporting the ongoing massacre and giving Israel the needed cover. We ask, is this Senate resolution in the best interest of the people of the US?

But is it not the legacy and norm of the US-Israeli alliance to discard the will of the people of the US and the world. Is it not their norm to discard any and all UN resolutions that may remotely disagree with their strategic plans? The examples are far too many to list, including both UN General Assembly and Security Council resolutions dating as far back as 1947.

Yesterday’s UN resolution was approved by 14 of the 15 nations that currently sit on the Security Council, with the US abstaining. As would be expected, the resolution did not address the deadly siege that has been imposed on the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, nor did it condemn outright the fascistic actions of the Zionist polity.

Sadly, Palestinian victims have now reached at least 800 murdered and more than 3,300 injured. And these numbers are certain to climb substantially. Yesterday alone, fifty Palestinians were found murdered under their destroyed homes, some with their bodies already beginning to decompose. The Red Cross reported finding 4 near-death children slumped near and over their decomposing dead mothers. These children, like many others, were reported by the Red Cross to have been left without rescue in starvation and thirst for four full days around their killed mothers due to attacks on rescue workers.

On the very same day the UN Security Council resolution was issued, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) that serves approximately 800,000 Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip decided that it was forced to fully halt its services. This decision came following the killing of one of UNRWA’s truck drivers, and due to the extreme conditions imposed by the Zionist army on relief workers. The UNRWA also strongly condemned the Israeli cover-up used to justify the bombardment of the Al-Fakhoura school that murdered and injured over 100 children and their parents.

Come Out in Force Tomorrow:

The people of the US have a moral obligation to turn out in massive numbers tomorrow, Saturday, from Washington, DC to San Francisco, Los Angeles and in between, to send a clear message that this campaign of murder must stop at once. In DC, we will be right there to send a message to the Bush administration, the incoming Barak administration, and to the entire US Congress. In San Francisco, where the United Nations took its first founding steps, we can highlight the charade of UN resolutions and international diplomacy, pointing to the double standards and outright racist behavior of the US and its allies. In Los Angeles and all other cities and towns, we can and must mobilize to join in protest in the largest possible numbers. This is the time to stand for what is moral and just. We cannot continue funding Israel while the people of the US are in dire need for funds right here to rescue homes and towns from collapse.

Rather than pay for the destruction of the Gaza Strip, let us pay for the construction of roadways, parks, and schools.

Rather than destroy thousands of Palestinian homes, let us fix the collapsing housing market and keep people in their own homes.

Rather than send more people homeless, let us protect folks from evictions and foreclosures.

Rather than kill doctors, nurses, and relief workers, let us build hospitals and provide health care to the millions without it.

This is our time to let Obama know that he could very easily stimulate both the economy and the morality of the US by stopping all funds used to kill babies and their mothers. Instead, we can invest these same funds in the education and upbringing of millions of impoverished children, right here in the US.

This is indeed our time, folks, and we must come out to lead the US Congress and administrations to the moral high ground. The interest of the US and its people is best served by supporting the construction of US infrastructure, housing, schools, hospitals, and by creating jobs at a living wage. Rather than kill Arab unionists, let us support strengthening unions and their demand for a respectable life and wages.

This is our time to show that Palestine is but a symbol for ALL just struggles. Struggles we all wage every day in various forms. The massacre against the Palestinian people should focus a very bright spotlight on what is wrong with US policies: US tax dollars are being sent to the Israeli army under US diplomatic cover, and are being used to boost corporations that manufacture military hardware, to conquer and destroy countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, rather than rescuing a failing nation from its impending economic depression.

Signs of Defeat:

We regard the UN Security Council Resolution as a fig leaf void of legitimacy. For one thing, it came 13 days following the massacre, and after more than 4,100 Palestinian casualties between killed and injured. It appears that key power-brokers at the UN had hoped that by waiting long enough (13 days) without action, the Zionists could in fact secure a political and military victory.

While the resolution attempts to provide a diplomatic cover for the Israelis and the US as a way out of their unattainable goals, it is nonetheless a clear indication that the ongoing conquest is unable to achieve any Zionist political gain. In fact, politically speaking, the US-Zionist-Arab regime tripartite axis is only achieving the very opposite of what they had intended through this massacre: (1) the Palestinians have achieved massive international, Arab, and Palestinian support; (2) the possibility for appointing a client regime in the Gaza Strip is non-existent; (3) the sustenance of the Abbas PA in its current formation has become very uncertain; and (4) the little legitimacy some Arab regimes have is that much more diminished.

To the extreme dismay of the US and Zionist leaders, the UN resolution demands an immediate stop to the attacks and the opening of all crossings; and it opens the gates for humanitarian aid. Hence, rejected by the Zionist leadership at once. Due to the weight of the pressure on US Arab allies, who could not under any circumstance return home empty-handed, the US had no choice but to abstain rather than give its usual veto — a way to give the US-supported despots a piece of paper to wave in the face of a sea of millions and millions in protest everywhere. Ironically, the gravity of the massacre made a full circle, compromising the stability of the alliance that is responsible for its implementation. The more violent the attack, the more stubborn the resistance, the more widespread the support, and the weaker the grip of despotic regimes.

Let us join the millions who have taken to the streets thus far, including today, in thousands of towns and cities in the world. There are those who are volunteering as doctors, nurses, and rescue workers, with many already killed and injured; there are those who are giving blood to hospitals and to the Red Cross and Red Crescent; those who are protesting; many are writing, painting, dancing and singing for freedom and liberation; and there are those who are holding sit-ins, and those who are giving flowers of appreciation to the Venezuelan government for their principled stance. All are out, and all are outraged.

Come and join!

Take your stand and come out tomorrow. Make it known that this massacre cannot continue!

All Out in Solidarity with the Palestinian People!

The Free Palestine Alliance

January 9, 2009

And this report from A.N.S.W.E.R. about Sunday’s march on DC:

From Washington, DC to San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Worldwide–Hundreds of Thousands March to Let Gaza Live!

On Sat., Jan. 10, hundreds of cities, and hundreds of thousands of people, responded to the call for an International Day of Emergency Action to support the people of Gaza. Outside the United States, marches took place in London, Edinburgh, Cairo, Athens, Kuala Lumpur, Beirut, Seoul, Mexico City, Jakarta, Montreal, Paris, Barcelona, Marseilles, Lyon, Oslo, Berlin, Bern, Karachi, Nablus, New Delhi, Amman, Sarajevo, Ramallah, Stockholm, and Tokyo. The protests continue to grow — today, another 250,000 took to the streets in Spain and more than 100,000 in Algeria.

In the U.S., the Day of Action was initiated on just one week’s notice by a call from the ANSWER Coalition, Muslim American Society Freedom, Free Palestine Alliance, National Council of Arab Americans, and Al-Awda – International Palestine Right to Return Coalition. In Washington DC, over 20,000 took to the streets in the freezing rain to demand, “Let Gaza Live!” The streets were so backed up that thousands of people in buses and cars were still arriving after the march had left Lafayette Park.

The demonstration began with a rally at the White House. Featured speakers included former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, who was just on a humanitarian relief mission attempting to bring supplies to Gaza when the boat she was on was intentionally struck by an Israeli military vessel; Mahdi Bray, Executive Director, Muslim American Society Freedom; Rev. Graylan Hagler, National President of Ministers for Racial, Social and Economic Justice; Mounzer Sleiman, Vice Chairman, National Council of Arab Americans; Ralph Nader; Paul Zulkowitz, Jews Against the Occupation; Brian Becker, National Coordinator, ANSWER Coalition; Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, attorney and co-founder, Partnership for Civil Justice; and others.

The spirited march then led to the Washington Post, where demonstrators denounced the paper for its biased pro-Israeli coverage of the massacre and its complete blackout of protest activities in the United States.

In San Francisco, 10,000 took part in the march and rally. The rally included a huge outpouring from the local Arab community, and energetic participation from Bay Area youth.

A crowd of 2000 demonstrators confronted a heavy police presence in downtown Orlando for the “Let Gaza Live: Florida Statewide March for Palestine” called by Act Now to Stop War and End Racism Coalition/Florida—just six days prior. The demonstration is the largest anti-war demonstration in Florida in more than a decade and certainly the largest ever protest in Florida calling for a free Palestine. Police tried to intimidate marchers by initially searching all bags, forcing protesters to remove sticks from signs, and denying the use of amplified sound. Organizers and protesters challenged and pushed back their unwarranted scare tactics, and the protest turned out to be a powerful success.

In Los Angeles, 10,000 people participated in a regional mass march and rally to “Let Gaza Live” at the Westwood Federal Building. Hundreds of Palestinian flags and signs reading “Stop bombing Gaza!” and “The real terrorists: U.S./Israel war machine!” lined all sides of the street and the lawn in front of the federal government headquarters. It was the largest protest and the first major march in Southern California since the Israeli bombing campaign and invasion began.

A funeral procession led the march with makeshift coffins draped with Palestinian flags, representing the hundreds of people killed by Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza. Hundreds of children followed, along with a huge, hand-made Palestinian flag, in a contingent organized by the Palestinian American Women’s Association.

The worldwide movement is continuing to grow with more protests today, Jan. 11. There will be countless other actions in the days to come. Today in New York City, the police carried out a violent assault against those marching in mid-town Manhattan in support of the people of Palestine. A number of people were injured and arrested.

With the support of the United States, the Israeli military machine has expanded its invasion into urban areas of Gaza. The death toll among Palestinians is now nearly 900, with many thousands wounded. The injured and hungry of Gaza have no relief. We must do everything in our power to deepen and broaden this movement in the coming days.

Meeting Senator-to-be Michael Bennet

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COLORADO SPRINGS- Governor Bill Ritter introduced his appointment to the US Senate, political novice Michael Bennet, to an audience of Springs Democrats today. Judging just by Bennet’s own words, this development is about as disappointing as it gets. Full report after this note:

Both men spoke predominantly about education, considering Michael Bennet current position as Superintendent of Denver Public Schools.

Before we contemplate Michael Bennet’s qualifications for the US Senate, let’s broaden the scope. Even though he lacks the experience of an elected office, his resumé reflects someone well connected in Washington DC and Denver. What appears to be a comforting pedigree could also cause skeptics to fear he’s a Beltway insider. Bennet’s previous work experience was as a lawyer, a mayor’s chief of staff, and a counsel to corporate investment raiders. It might be informative for us to wonder what qualifications did Bennet have in the first place, to be appointed to lead Denver Public Schools?

If that assignment smacked of a political payoff, for Bennet serving as aid to Denver Mayor Hinckenlooper during his ascendency, can we wonder if a similar incongruous motive was behind his startling promotion to the US Senate?
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Okay, okay, so get this: Bennet described his legacy with the Anschutz Corp. thus: they were turn-around specialists! He explained that Anschutz took businesses which had been gutted or neglected by unscrupulous owners, and rehabbed them to provide jobs for thousands. Is that rather at odds with what asset strippers actually do? But this wasn’t a business savvy Republican crowd. This was an assembly of earnest Democrats who wanted to believe in honest politicians.

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Despite having to cross the protesters outside, and having to face our placards at the meeting, neither speaker addressed the crisis in Gaza. The nearest either came was Bennet’s answer to a question about national security, in which he explained the need to draw troops down in Iraq and refocus our energies in Afghanistan.

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Though we had hands raised hoping to be called upon, we otherwise kept silent and held our posters in full confidence that many among the assembled were in full agreement with our cause.

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After their public addresses, Ritter and Bennet gave media interviews behind doors guarded by a short grey haired gentleman who kept his eyes on me. But this is an understatement. Throughout the public meeting, and afterward, this man maintained a steely confrontational gaze directly into my eyes, from across the room, or right beneath my nose. It’s a technique I recognized from Secret Service agents, except they don’t usually betray an angry scowl. This person was trying very hard to project an intimidating presence.

A few minutes after this photograph was taken, when the governor and his charge were about to emerge, this fellow walked straight up to me and began directing me to move out of the way. I assured him I was blocking no one’s path, but he simply repeated himself with amplified belligerence. I chided him about this being a PUBLIC library, and that I had no responsibility to him, and would certainly not be ordered around. Instead of negotiating, he reasserted his bossy authority. Ultimately, laughing him off turned out to be effective. Just as suddenly, he stepped back and let me be.

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Jonathan was able to take these pictures of both Ritter and Bennet as they passed our signs: issues which they refused to address.

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Here, Governor Ritter was accosted by Phyllis. I have no idea how he was eventually able to pull away.

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Meanwhile, Tony had grown a spontaneous gathering outside, where we waived banners and posters to the appreciative honks of passing cars, and thank-yous from the Democrats leaving the meeting.

Our new friends, many of whom were homeless and victims of recurring incarceration, were thrilled to participate with us and beckon support from the passersby. A number of our allies were quite conversant on the issues and offered fantastic retorts to the occasional detractors. Not infrequently, to my continued surprise, we were accosted with pedestrians, inside the library and out, who would point to our signs and declare that every last vermin/scum/Palestinian needed to be eradicated before there would be peace in the Middle East.

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Plans for a better turnout for this action suffered from the usual obstacle of being unable to reach the bulk of Colorado Springs’ peace activists. Many are still being kept deliberately out of the loop by the religious PPJPC passivists who’ve infected the local peace community.

Not surprisingly, the current PPJPC chairman did appear for the meeting, but not for the protest. He was attending as a Democratic Party member, and left when he couldn’t find a seat. Though publicly vocal about Palestinian issues, his support did not extend to putting the message before the US Senator about to represent us in DC.

Arab dictator allies of US line up in support of Israeli terrorism against Gaza

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Silence. Or worse yet even, efforts to blame Hamas instead of Israel for the new slaughter in Gaza. That’s what the US allied Arab dictatorships imposed on the Arab world offer their people. Complicity. Many of these Sunni Arab elites (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, et cetera) are eager for the US to hammer the Shiite led Iranians, and have no solidarity at all with their own poor let alone the Palestinian poor of Gaza…. or Palestinians elsewhere for that matter. This is the opening battle of the war to bring about regime change in Iran for the Washington, D.C. rat class, and the Arab dictatorships controlled by the US government are fully behind the effort.

Meanwhile the corporate media in the US and Britain keep a tight lid on the spin of the actual news, all in support of their own imperialist ruling cabals. At least, the European Union and the United Nations have had the decency to tokenly oppose this slaughter by this Jewish/ Christian Corporate Alliance centered in the US, Great Britain, and Israel. Everybody around the globe pretty much knows who holds the big guns, and it is the US government and its immediate side kicks that do. Everybody realizes that there is always the big price to pay if one gets too out of line with what these gangsters want from them.

The US antiwar community, dominated by phony ‘Peace’crat types, are immobilized. It seems that the script promised by the ‘Peace’crats with an Obama victory were as false as they come. They all voted for Obama and now don’t know what exactly to do? Really going out and protesting against their rulers is something that might make them embarrassed and scares them no end. Locally, not a word from the office clowns of the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace De-Commission, with them only wanting to turn the other cheek from reality, though reality just keeps on beating them about their public face.

So now we know why the Arab World hates us so? It has to do with their own gang of thugs kept in power by the US government. The US and Israel have even turned the Arabs into hating the PLO, now that the leader of the PLO, Abbas, is totally controlled by our sorry leaders in Washington, D.C. What a mess! And the world keeps on just getting more and more dangerous, more and more messed up, day after day. Nobody has any ‘national security’ these days, thinks to the Democratic and Republican gangsters that almost all voting Americans backed in the last election.

This Israeli bombing of mainly children Arab youngsters living in the most horrible poverty and isolation in Gaza, is their work. Aren’t you proud you voted for this, if in fact you did? Haven’t heard a word from Obama, have you? What does he care if a community of overwhelmingly young children is shut off, starved to death, and then bombed? He’s not for change at all. He’s simply for allowing the Jewish community of Israel to be allowed to steal yet more land from the Arabs that owned it.

UN Ambassador speaks of the hidden genocide against the Somali people

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The UN envoy to Somalia, Ahmedou Ould Abdallah, has said there is a “hidden genocide” taking place in the country. Left unsaid is that it is the United States of America that is responsible for this genocide, but at least the reality of the massacre was broadcast to the world so that hopefully some action might be taken, Somalia facing ‘hidden genocide’ What does it say about the character of the American people what they have done to Somalia?

Here in Colorado Springs, there is a group of pacifist liberal voters for the Democratic Party organized in the so-called Pikes Peak Justice and Peace commission. They have agitated through public rallies for more US military intervention into Africa despite being nominally a ‘Peace’ organization. They have done this saying that more US intervention into Africa was necessary to stop genocide from taking place! So one asks what have they said about this genocide against the people in Somalia where their own US government has been responsible for? What have they done to stop it? The answer to both these questions is that they have totally ignored what was going on. It has been of no interest to them.

Something very similar to this has taken place on the national level at the United for Peace and Justice ‘Peace’crat group, and all their local affiliates. What does that say about the character of the American liberal community? It really says to the general public that their supposed ‘protestations’ for ‘Peace’ should be taken with a big grain of salt. It also says that when these same people get onto the band wagon talking about genocide in regions of Sudan where the US government is itching to get further involved for multiple reasons all having absolutely nothing to do with stopping any sort of mayhem, that one should also weigh their inaction about not caring the least about people in Congo and Somalia, not to mention the continent of Africa as a whole. After all, the US government has been responsible for the destruction that is now causing this genocide in Somalia, but the liberal ‘Peace’crat voice is on MUTE.

The best we in the US can do to stop world genocides from taking place, is simply to understand the negative role ALL Us government intervention plays in creating world war zones. Their is not a positive role the US military has to play as long as we have a government run by the military-industrial-government complex. To call on this complex to do nice and decent things is just absolutely the worst thing to do. The call should be to eliminate this monstrous danger to the world, not advocate for its use somewhere or other.

UN Ambassador Abdallah’s voice will be ignored by the Powers that caused the hidden and silent genocide to occur in the first place unless other voices rise up and speak out. You won’t win many friends at the ‘Peace’crat groups for doing so, but doing so is a necessity. The US government is responsible for multiple genocides around the world taking place and we must move against the ‘Peace’ groups that barricade action from forming against these policies of Pentagon slaughtering. It’s time to get to work and demand better than what the liberal Democrats will ever have to offer.

US and Britain are starving Zimbabwe to death

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zimbabwe currencyThe so-called US government’s ZIMBABWE DEMOCRACY AND ECONOMIC RECOVERY ACT passed in 2001, began the US/ British efforts to starve Zimbabwe to death in a form of war called “Economic Sanctions.” This was a process similar to how the Clinton Administration began to kill off Iraq with economic sanctions that served to soften that country up for the Bush Administration invasion and subsequent occupation of that country, now to be managed once again by a Democratic Party presidency under Barack Obama.

The results in Zimbabwe have been equally as appalling as to what has been done to Iraq as inflation now runs at 231,000,000%! That’s right, you read that correctly. See BBC’s report Zimbabwe inflation hits new high

The background can be read about, too, at newzimbabwe.com… Economic sanctions undermine Zimbabwe’s economy, where one can find out about the role the International Monetary Fund played in beginning the warfare against Zimbabwe’s now starving people.

That’s right, and as people are starving to death in Zimbabwe due to the British and US government war against that country,there are those liberal fools who, ignoring the lessons of Somalia, Congo, and Zimbabwe, actually want the British and US governments to increase their military interventionism into Sudan! They call that humanitarian, too! In fact, our own local Colorado Springs ‘Peace’crats of the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission are just some of those people, who call for interventionism even as they parade themselves off as pacifists. Not heard one word from them about Zimbabwe though. And mums the word for them about Afghanistan and Somalia, too, countries which are in similar dire straights due to US government imposed wars.

The US Antiwar Movement needs to wake up to where the wars are on fast, and to who’s the government pushing this stuff (their own). I’m from Texas and though I like the group ‘Asleep at the Wheel’, but when you see DP voting liberals driving while as asleep at the wheel as the local pacifists are, then it just makes one want to throw up IMO. Very sad, because the people of Zimbabwe, as elsewhere, certainly need some coherent support for their liberation. And I don’t just mean from Mugabe either, but from the US government and all its vampirish European government allies, too.

‘Peace’crats refuse to be ‘United for Peace and Justice’

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United for Peace and Justice is the national group that pretends to be the leadership for ‘Peace’ inside the US, yet they cannot even bring themself to speak out against the US war upon the people of Afghanistan! I call them ‘Peace’crats because they talk about PEACE in the abstract all the time, yet remain totally tied to the Democratic Party and do not actively oppose the war of US occupation of Afghanistan or speak out forcefully against it! They don’t want to embarrass Barack Obama and the Democratic Party and that is important to them above all else.

Go to the UFPJ website and see what I am talking about? Didn’t see the mention of Afghanistan there, did you? Go to their ‘Ongoing Campaigns’ link and then link again and check out their mealy mouthed, non-opposition to withdrawal from the US War waged against Afghanistan. Is this what you call an antiwar position? Peace? I call it their UFPJ Democratic Party apologist line of crap. On it, you will read this sort of BS…

What is the US responsibility to Afghanistan? How have US interest over the past few decades, including support for the Taliban, contributed to the destabilization of Afghanistan? How do we best fulfill our obligations to the Afghan people? What is the role of the US peace movement in advocating US tax-dollars to be used in ways that promote peace, stability, and international cooperation? What nonmilitary solutions can we offer?’ YES, and blah, blah, blah. No call for US withdrawal from Afghanistan here! Barack Obama is against it, that’s why.

Here on the local Colorado Springs scene the local ‘Peace’crats are even worse. Most of them play so dumb they would not admit to being able to find Afghanistan on a map and be proud about that, too! Their folk do have the local police telephone # handy, in case anybody would like to bring the subject up? That would be trespassing! And at the national fan club for the ‘Peace’crats, a website called ‘CommonDreams’, well they just target your computers ISP address and keep you from reading their comments, or commenting on what they are pushing. Afghanistan is best kept off the list of hot topics to discuss these days now that Barack Obama’s Democratic Party team is in the process of taking over fighting the US War on Afghanistan away from the Dubya crowd.

YES, the ‘Peace’crats refuse to be ‘United for Peace and Justice’. They’re only united for the Democratic War Party when push comes to shove. Afghanistan? Please don’t mention it!

See Ann Wright in action or at the PPJPC

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DNC arrest-bushCOLORADO SPRINGS- The PPJPC is collecting money to bring noted antiwar activist Ann Wright to Colorado Springs. They’re hoping to have her speak for a fundraiser. I’ve had a chance to meet the retired colonel/diplomat in person a number of times. You can too, with no fund-raising necessary. Go to an action.

The first time I met Wright was in Crawford Texas when a delegation from Colorado Springs joined Cindy Sheehan’s encampment outside George Bush’s ranch. Ann Wright and Medea Benjamin were the primary organizers behind Sheehan’s “Camp Casey” PR coup. When our group convened our own Camp Casey at Nevada Avenue and Dale Street, Wright was our liaison to the continued national effort.

Most recently we ran into Wright at the DNC in August. Ann Wright brought the white faceless masks to the Denver demonstrations. She spoke at the rallies and participated in several marches. Even now, whether the issue is closing Guantanamo or saying no to the Fed, you’ll see Wright’s squad with their masks, representing the faceless victims of America’s destructive imperialism.

While I look forward to Ann Wright’s upcoming visit, I think it is unfortunate that local energy for activism be dissipated with an in-house lecture. What would Wright rather see us doing? Hopefully she can illuminate the hole into which the PPJPC is burying its head. Perhaps a study of her successes can show that a nonviolent ethos need not limit one’s actions to the avoidance of confrontation.

What Joe Lieberman says about Obama’s ‘new’ regime?

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bush-lieberman-pinObama Wants Lieberman To Remain In Democratic Caucus The Huffington Post frames their thoughts along the lines of whether to have Lieberman ‘punished’ or not? But that is wrong. The real question is whether the 2 parties will have any differences between them at all, and Obama is answering that clearly by saying that it is not necessary?

The Obama presidency will in many ways be a modern day updated version of the Gerald Ford Administration. What happened with Gerald Ford was that he was a criminal inside the Nixon group (Nixon’s Vice President, in fact), who Nixon worked out an agreement with the Democratic Party and Gerald Ford himself, to have Ford be put into the White House and grant him a pardon for the crimes he had committed. YES, burglarizing other people’s papers is a felony and Nixon was a felon, but no charges were ever brought against him! And even worse, no criminal charges were ever brought against any of those most responsible for the entire chain of US government atrocities delivered across SE Asia over so many years.

Well, we now have the Barack Obama return of the Democratic Party to White House power, and Barack’s stance on Joe Lieberman is an indicator that no admittance of any criminal charges will ever be brought against the Bush Klan, an Administration that oversaw torture used against POWs, illegal invasions of other peoples’ countries, and many, many war crimes against civilian populations. His ‘let’s let bygones be bygones’ attitude towards Joe Lieberman underscores the direction he will take towards the criminality of the entire Bush collection of gangsters.

What moral bankruptcy here! How easy it would be for Barack Obama to state that YES the Democratic Party must stand for something different and Joe Lieberman is not that! Here is a man who supposedly ran on CHANGE and no change is obviously what we are getting…. JOE LIEBERMAN underlines that in spades. The ‘new’ regime in fact is not a new regime, but the very same old one that was there in place 8 years ago. That regime itself committed untold murders directed against the Iraqi people, and in fact, prepped the Bush Administration to do the dirty work it did. And all along, Joe Lieberman was there as part of that gang of Democrat-Republicans responsible.

Joe Lieberman also underlines the bankruptcy of those who have tried to turn Al Gore into some sort of cult figure. Her in the local ‘Peace’crats group, the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission, they even had study sessions about the ‘Thoughts’ of Gore! At Common Dreams, a ‘Peace’crat group that has now censored me from being able to read even their website let alone post comments there, worship of Al Gore ‘thought’ is a steady feature. How easy it seems for these ‘Peace’crats to forget that Joe Lieberman was exactly who Al Gore chose to run alongside him in 2004. But Democratic Party tied voters are a rather shameless lot I think, and a rather thoughtless crew to boot.

No, there will be no prosecution of any of the major US war criminals for their crimes, and Barack Obama is playing his role as the modern day Gerald Ford to the hilt. The news will just keep getting worse and worse and worse in this regard. This is no regime CHANGE at all, and we have not gotten US troops withdrawn from their detrimental role throughout the entire world at all. The same gangs are still ruling over us, and Barack Obama is now head to the troop. No criminal charges, just pardons will rule the day.

Christian Love Video

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crossMonks brawl at Jerusalem shrine. This reminds me of when some of our local liberal Christian ‘Peace’ monks called the police on us for trying to meet to plan antiwar activities at their Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission Shrine in downtown Colorado Springs. I wonder now how their new smaller shrine will be doing now that it has reopened.
 
Barack Obama HQ moved into their previous larger shrine. It certainly figures….

PPJPC office now only hoping for peace

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old PPJPC officeCOLORADO SPRINGS- They couldn’t endorse Obama as the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission, so the leadership closed their office and let the Obama campaign move in. The proverbial jury can now only pin its hope that the Democrats will promise peace, but the PPJPC office is no longer in the business. The staff and board have abandoned its membership, who represented a profound core of the local peace community.

PPJPC exits stage left, lily-livered left

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COLORADO SPRINGS- Oh How Sad! After a long and storied legacy, the Pikes Peak Justice & Peace Commission is closing its doors. Why now –a time of rising injustice and vanishing peace on every continent?! Technically they’ve only announced divestment of their goods in order to move into a tiny office, but the PPJPC is also postponing all activity until after the election. The next event planned is a victory celebration of “regime change” even though the presumptive new regime has promised escalations of war in Asia, Africa and South America, and continued economic class war at home. And it gets worse.

The bastards, literally bastards not by coincidence I’m sure, have gutted the famed peace organization of its activities, of its participants, of its reputation, legacy and potential and now they’re selling off its possessions.

These include the group’s “memorabilia,” as if PPJPC’s aims weren’t still outgoing. Wouldn’t you think the causes still cry out for those materials? All the tools and equipment gathered over the years are now being demobilized. The posters, banners, puppets, flags, props, costumes, made by activists, for the good fight. Are you kidding me?!

And the PPJPC library, an extensive collection of books about social justice and nonviolence are being scattered to the wind of the same garage sale. These books, painstakingly assembled for the cause and donated by so many members so that the PPJPC office would have a permanent reference library are now being sold to defray the costs of moving. And keeping the staff.

For what? Administrating the liquidation? Have PPJPC members been asked to contribute more and more, chiefly so that the organization can be dismantled and slipped into a coma? To keep the staff paid? When the PPJPC membership at large figure out that they’ve been subsidizing their own deliberately paralyzing iv-drip, they are going to invent their own choice words for these soft-spoken traitors.

I’D SUGGEST someone attending the going-out-of-the-peace-making-business-sale if only to rescue the materials we’ll need to keep up the fight. If it didn’t mean giving more money to the usurpers! That’s extortion, taking our money to reclaim what we donated already! What unmitigated passive aggressive violence.

These paid staff manipulated the tendency of all small groups to take the road most traveled. Specifically, to hush up in the perceived interest of self-preservation. This manifests itself among a minority in the PPJPC who follow a cultish spiritual belief that the only way to stop a wayward wagon is to throw yourself under the wheel. Eventually it’s hoped the driver will stop out of pangs of conscience. Other concerned passengers, who might want to gesticulate or address the driver, are scolded for not giving the sacrificial sheep the opportunity to incubate their guilt bomb in peace.

These self-appointed arbiters of “pacifism” take the “peace” in J&P to mean a quiet, undisturbed, reverential, leave-me-in-peace, peace. It’s the “nonviolent” dogma that has been used to defuse slave uprisings for millennia. It’s the traditional disservice which religion deals in its role to make the oppressed accept their mistreatment at the hands of their oppressors. While we might concentrate on religion’s role in starting wars, we overlook their constant undermining of justice.

Do I have something personal at stake in this unraveling development? I most certainly do! Over the past years, I joined a number of energetic activists in raising the visibility of the local peace movement. We gave it a public signature and a heretofore elusive acclaim, which was bringing in much more public participation. What became of the green peace campaign? Jettisoned. Abandoned. Cast off by the staff and select members who didn’t want an expanded interest in their activities. What are we left to conclude about people who espouse a concern to invite community, but shun populist appeal? Hypocrites is the most polite I can muster.

I’m so sorry to have left the organization to such vultures. I owe my fellow members quite an apology.

American death squads and torture in Somalia

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somaliaWhy are Americans so uninterested in what their government does in their name in Somalia? We certainly have shit loads of good liberal folk running around in circles demanding that the US government intervene militarily in Sudan, do we not? But we have a virtually total silence about what the US is doing to the Somali people. More blowback from the war on terror Why is that?

One local example is how the church folk over at the Colorado Springs so-called Justice and Peace Center have never shown any signs of interest in helping fight to stop this US war which is becoming genocidal in nature. It’s off their hypocritical lips altogether. They just received a $1600 grant from a local church, but don’t look to see any of that money put to uncovering the plight of Somalians for people here in Colorado Springs. It will all go to talking about their supposed commitment to ‘non-violence’ and love of Gandhi. Wonder if they would act the same if they were Somalians in their US-Ethiopian invaded Homeland? One rather doubts it.

Here are pictures of All American troops in Somali, in an all Black country, fucking it all up. Now the US government has Black African mercenaries doing most of the dirty work for them.