Bored Oklahoma teens who shot a random jogger in the back are being tried as adults not juveniles because "it was an adult crime"; though killing while bored seems a juvenile crime by definition. So does immediately confessing a motive, "we were bored," to the police, it would seem to me. But there's more. Despite the confessions, it was not immediately clear who pulled the trigger as the three teens trailed their victim, Australian college baseball player Christopher Lane, in their car, then sped away to find a next target. But that didn't stop Oklahoma police from charging just TWO of the boys with first degree murder, bail denied, with the third considered an accessory. I've provided the mug shots to give you a hint. For which 15 and 16 year-old do you think the state of Oklahoma is seeking the death penalty? (Spoiler: YES) And the older accessory --17 but white-- gets bail and will be tried as a juvenile. Pundits deride African American leaders for not decrying the Lane murder like they did that of Trayvon Martin, presumably because the victim was white. But I'll ask where is the community outcry for young James Edwards and Chancy Luna, joy-killers they may be? Though I understand full well that other than the "doing it for fun" headlines, this event is unexceptional. Black children bear the brunt of law enforcement everyday, our prison system follows in the lynching tradition.
Tag: Poverty
US Court today declares legal discrimination through marriage benefits denied to be wrong; but is that all there is to it?
Here it is, society was discriminating all along against the Gay community by denying Gays certain benefits allowed married heterosexuals, and the US courts are beginning to rule that as having been wrong. We should applaud that! However, now the courts should also begin to rule it wrong that children are forced into poverty by economic discrimination against their usually, quite heterosexual parents. That's right! Just look some at the poverty statistics, Please. Now will anybody give a hoot that this is actually so in the US? ...that so many kids grow up now in impoverished households? The Christians that hate Gays so much should mobilize themselves to address the child poverty problem instead of continuing to try to fight Gays in order to maintain legal discrimination against the homosexual portion of our society. Society should not just accept child poverty as a natural. It is not. Laws mandating that children be allowed to grow up with adequate incomes for their welfare would change that. Think of an America where children actually have decent childhoods instead of ones warped by living always in poverty! We should join forces with all that are willing to fight to make it a better world for our children. Capitalism right now is not creating a very nice world for youth to find themselves in. See Appeals court: Denying federal benefits to same-sex couples is unconstitutional about the court ruling.
Holmes Sweet Holmes
For NMania1: Thanks for the Voice And for Bob Holmes: I love you Bob, I swear. But you deserve this. Don't feel too sad--I deserve much worse. Way back in May of this year, I promised this to a guy who "sold" me a free newspaper in Denver for a $1 suggested donation. He said he was a writer for the same paper, which addresses issues surrounding homelessness in the same city. He was interested in the state of those affairs in Colorado Springs, where I live, and, given that I've been in the free food biz for 26 years, and that I have, in fact been homeless myself, I had to think I was in a unique position to afford some perspective. I also posted an, (untitled ), bit on the same topic clear back on 12 April of 2010, wherein I promised a follow-up. Things have worked around to a moment where changes have taken place in both the homeless community of our town and in my schedule that render ripe the moment. A year and a half ago, I described a little of the circus-like scene in our town surrounding the homeless campers. Here' a bit more flesh, spiced with perhaps a bit more vinegar. Don't get all touchy, now. Colorado Springs has always been pretty friendly to street-runners, at least since 1984 when I got here. I got to know my way around when I hit town as a 20 year old apprentice electician and found work for the--ahem--generous wage of $6.00 an hour. Within a year, I had fallen in with some folks at Calvary Chapel downtown in the same building occupied by our town's token "liberal" free paper now. We gave away sandwiches and such, among some other, more ideologically driven activities. I've been in on this little pastime of mine in one capacity or another ever since, from various angles, and with variable motivation. (Spiritual vagaries aside, nothing is ever about just one thing). What I mean to point out is that I have been around long enough to have a little feel for the pulse of the thing, nothing more. When I'd written about all this earlier in the orphaned posting noted above I mentioned some stuff I'll not mention again, since you can go to that one to see, easily enough: http://hipgnosis21.blogspot.com/2010/04/so-colorado-springs-is-unusual-place-it.html . This follow up addresses the biggie. That's right IT HASN'T WORKED. I'm no prophet. God has yet to send me any memos. All I did earlier was interpret the writing on the wall that was there for anyone to see, in big scrawling, blocky letters. I think anyone looking could read them clearly enough, including Bob Holmes, if he hadn't been in his customary, red-faced, squinty-eyed, self-imposed insensate condition. That doesn't count for an honest mistake, Bob! Now, here's a little secret--sshhh! The camps are back. I can't speak for the general level of brain power amongst drunken, whacked out homeless guys, but even the blankest screen among my favorite crowd has developed an
Colorado Springs corruption detectives sniff desperation of lottery ticket clerks
You'd think Colorado Springs' many kleptocrats, considering our locale's famously embarrassing lower than average IQ, must be stupid enough to get caught. Other than the odd treasurer with a gambling habit, law enforcement is not going after them. Instead, according to an article in today's Gazette, local detectives are policing convenience store clerks, exposing the corruption of workers who have to tender anything over a five into a time-lock safe. A Colorado Lotto sting operation busted two out of twenty clerks surveyed this weekend who pretended their customers had losing tickets, and who later tried to redeem the tickets for themselves. One of the corrupted employees worked at the west side Farmcrest, now she's on the lam, so I have a personal interest in calling the sweep an entrapment. Obviously. In her shoes, a likely pretty awful daily grind, what might you have been tempted to do? Here's how it worked: the special Lotto detective, yeah, I carry a badge, hits random ticket outlets, equipped with a trick ticket which when fed into the Lotto equipment registers as a $100,000 winner. This is handed to each clerk under the pretext that the pretend-ticket-holder wants to know if his/her ticket is a winner. If it is, hurrays all around, the secret shopper leaves congratulated without further ado. If the clerk palms the ticket, inserts a bum ticket kept handy, and tells the mystery shopper theirs is a dud, the detective returns to the office to lay in wait for that clerk to visit in person to claim to the "prize". Now the story doesn't say that particular clerks were targeted based on flagged irregularities, or for having redeemed a suspicious percentage of winning tickets, or for having entered the same non-winning ticket at repeated intervals during the same work shift. Actuarial predictors could probably narrow the hunt, but there the prey becomes perhaps too crafty. Instead the mystery shoppers cast a wide net, sweetened with a $100,000 lure. You may think I'm too soft on a miscreant clerk betraying her fellow poverty-wage peers, those who tithe what they can't afford for the regular vicarious, virtual delusion that any successive investment in the lottery could deliver them into riches. Perhaps it's more obvious to her than to most that with lottery tickets the payoff is in holding the ticket, the dreams you entertain, before you confirm it's very very unlikely to be worth more than nothing. Perhaps she knows the only way you're going to quit the destructive habit is to lose the last umpteenth time. I know in Cripple Creek when I saw a slot machine paying out, or heard someone tell of returning from Las Vegas with a positive cash balance, I thought, oh no, that only encourages the idiots. Perhaps a lottery sales clerk gets to know her regular customers and knows how severely each cannot afford the deprivations which their gambling compels. Of course the Lotto secret shopper is not going to be confused for a regular. But who knows what
Howard Zinn disses civil obedience
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders and millions have been killed because of this obedience. Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves and the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem." --Howard Zinn
Temporarily embarrassed millionaires cursing guilty Casey Anthony, as theft of Social Security and Medicare begins
Thinking about the Tea Party Poor: "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." — John Steinbeck Think our judicial system is broke? It is, but not because it gave young Bad Mom Casey Anthony a chasmic benefit of the doubt. It's broken because of Walmart, Citizens United, and all the corporatist, anti-democratic rulings that guarantee that ordinary Americans no longer have recourse in the courts.
Bob Holmes said he cares for Homeless PEOPLE
...but that homeless women breed like rabbits. And while I wasn't there at the rally at UCCS or however the hell they put it, it strikes me that it's incredibly unlikely that he used the PEOPLE noun to modify the "homeless" adjective. I've noticed a tendency among the Repub/Tea Potty "leaders" here to forget that part. So, Bob, it's like this bubba. Seriously. Your Pomar Foundation welcomed George W into town for a Blasphemy Session yesterday. Guess you're a supporter of his policies, yes? See, he and Your Party don't just kill people with bullets and bombs. Although I suspect that's your prefered method. No, they also kill people by manipulating economic systems to favor a very few wealthy at the expense of a very huge large humongous outrageously big majority of the people, many of whom suffer from such diseases of Society as a result thereof, as Homelessness. Your Heroic Lion-Heart Bush made and indeed, as a consultant still makes, for instance Mexico into a nightmare state. His puppet dictators there have, at the insistence of YOUR Right Wing fellow-travelers, destroyed Mexico's economy using the same techniques they're applying to the economy of the United States today. The fast answer is that the devastation Capitalism has wrought in Mexico in the past two decades has brought infant mortality up to American Standards. Seems with all that Socialized Medicine they were leaders in the hemisphere in Infant Survival rates. The U.S. has had a third world rate for a while and, thanks to the policies being visited on us by YOUR party, it's going to get worse. So, Bob, all those extra babies caused by among other things YOUR party's War on Contraception, it'll balance out by your War on Health Care manifesting itself by killing off a substantial percentage of those babies. I know you'll get comfort from that. Fewer scions of the Poor who will outshine your Demon Spawn in education thus shaming you when they realize you were lying about Poor people being inferior. Take, for instance, Mexico. In Latin America Mexico was a major star because they had a revolutionary system that outlasted the Soviet Union. PEMEX, Petroleo Mexico, the state-owned Oil industry, paid for among other things food subsidies and medical and dental and educational programs that put America quite frankly to shame. But, Capitalism can't survive without Universal Participation so something had to be done. All those U.S. and U.K. trillion dollar corporations, eating their own intestines over the thought that Mexican "PEASANTS" were denying them Their Sacred Right To Own Everything, Especially Shit They Don't Own like sovereign nations. Something had to be done! Those Bad Ol' Socialists were denying you the privilege of running other nations as though they were divisions of your Diseased Corporate System! HOW DARE THEY!?!!! Mexico had a higher rate of literacy than the United States, still does because you can't actually take away an education once it's been achieved, and your Privatize Everything bullshit artists have succeeded in trashing American Public
1/2 million in London in Pre-wedding drama
Demonstrating against cuts which force austerity on the poorest... but not on the richest. They've already (the protesters) once gotten their hands on Charles' car with him and lovely bride Camel-face errr his lovely camel Camilla, errr never mind over cutting education. Sound familiar? What that demonstrated was that the police tactic of "kettling" didn't work. Not if it's strategically outmaneuvered, instead of ONE or only several larger demonstrations, have a whole bunch of demonstrations all around the "kettle". Kettle the police in other words. While planning for his son's wedding. A huge Taxpayer Subsidized affair blatantly stating "Ha-Ha, we're rich, you're not, suck on it you Silly Peasants!" much like our own Self-Anointed Royals here in Colorado Springs. (Hi, Princess Lisa!) or Scott Walker in Wisconsin or the Emperor Brothers Koch. They attempted a "Let them eat cake" maneuver saying how the poor, wretched starving Royals had to "tighten their budget as well" for instance the newly created Princess will have to ride in a Previously Owned Rolls Royce! A, Qu'elle Horreur!!! Imagine the shame of the Royals being seing in public in a Used Car!!??? I personally believe Prince William will look quite handsome at the guillotine or, for the more impatient, being hoisted on several pitchforks at once. But the British Pigs at Scotland Yard are very worried.
Labor Rally In Austin commemorated Fallen Workers
For those who think Disabled Workers complain too much about how we're cast out by society, these are mock coffins carried to commemorate the ones who are now forever silent and can no longer complain about how deregulated workplaces, Union Busting TeaParty "heroes" like Don Blankenship and Scott Walker are literally killing us. The one killed every two and a half days statistic doesn't even touch the statistics about wages and health care and other compensation for our work, being cut off because the Koch-suckers in the Tea Party... Decided that their Bosses, the ones who funded and organized their "grass Astroturf roots" fake revolution are being "victimized" if they get a 4.9 point gain on their investments instead of a 5, and blaming the workers for demanding a fair wage and living standards. We're not allowed to demand a profit for selling OUR products and service, OUR labor, or even to be paid what it costs us to produce it... for THEM to enjoy. The TeaBags barely have time to turn from eating the flesh of our babies (figuratively) (ok, literally) long enough to tell us that we're "bums" for not wanting to support their Parasite Class. It doesn't reflect the workers seriously injured, every day, because in Texas, and soon the rest of the nation, "job killing" safety regulations and environmental regulations will be rolled back, even eliminated. The public lands? Hah! fully privatized, or soon will be. The Lazy God-Damned Republican parasites in Ohio voted not only to silence the workers but also to seize the public lands, even the state parks, deny the public access to them while they destroy them to extract every last drop of oil and lump of coal from "their' domain.
Shocking Gag-Zette Headline!
Poverty spread in County since 2000. Oh My. The Gagzette is now recognizing that there are actual poor people in the city.And County. That's the shocking part of the news. For those who aren't in Colorado Springs, and don't know, that would sound like they've got their heads buried so far up their colons that they just didn't actually realize, well... that's part of it but not the whole story. The whole story is their journalistic commedy act is like Fox Lite and they steadfastly deny that the same market forces that concentrate the vast majority of the wealth into the hands of a tiny minority of the people, would just by a bizarre co-inky dink mean that the wealth is snatched from the hands of those who are subsequently labeled "The Poor" and "The Workforce" and "those scurvy beggardly welfare bums". Adam Smith with his "Invisible Hand" crap strikes again. Oh, and it happened during the reign of Emperor George the 2nd, aka the Chimpleton. Whose first act as president was to cut taxes for the richest, eliminated some corporate tax debt, cut regulatory "excesses" like the half measures which were designed to keep the Rich Bitch vermin from poisoning our land, water, air and food. The Supply Side his own daddy once called "Voodoo economics". But of course the GROWTH of poverty during this "free" market utopian experiment, couldn't possibly have been caused by it. Nope.
Pueblo Bank “refuses to take Bailout money” explained
What they don't tell you in the commercial, with the president of the bank loudly saying tough-talking anti-"socialist" trash... is that the money they're refusing to "take" is not money targeted to the bank itself, but the people whose mortgages are owned by the bank. The bottom line is that the money is specifically Targeted, "earmarked" to people the Banker considers not worthy of the title human, he would prefer the terms "deadbeat" or "Loan thief" to describe those at the bottom of the heap, those taken in by the slick-dick advertising promoted by, among others, officials of his bank. "Why didn't they read the anywhere between 8 and 21 page documents, mostly single spaced small-type sentences and paragraphs filled with phrases like "party of the second part agrees to indemnify party of the first part"? in the 25 minutes alloted to the sales pitch? OUR HIGHLY EXPERIENCED HIGH PRESSURE SALES AGENTS WHO HAVE DECADES OF TRAINING AND EXPERIENCE IN HANDLING COMPLEX FINANCIAL INSTRUMENTS DON'T SIGN ANYTHING WITHOUT READING IT COMPLETELY FIRST AND CONSULTING LAWYERS AND ACCOUNTANTS ON ANY ISSUE THEY FIND QUESTIONABLE! So why do these Peasants who have been held in wage-slavery for their entire lives without any hope of ever learning about Financial Instruments not be prepared and bring THEIR accountants and legal representatives, like we do? Let them eat Cake!" Yes, How DARE those Peasants ever dream of a better life, even though the bulk of Capitalist Propaganda is geared to telling them if they just work harder, longer hours, save more of their dwindling-in-value but seldom increased Minimum Wage to buy lots of stock in corporate enterprises, like those born to wealth did, they too could increase their wealth the same way those born to wealth did, minus of course the Work and Scrimping and Watching Their Families starve, die from lack of health care and forced to live in substandard Slum housing? Slumlords like Douglas Bruce are especially vicious with that line of attack. Also not very zealous of his own stance of Tort Limitations when it comes to TENANTS who owe money to their Lords of the Land. The slumlords, like the "freedom loving" banker will sic their Tame Pet Police and Judiciary on the poorest of the poor to recover whatever the Richest of the Rich consider to be their own just and due payments.
Army Career “opportunities”
We've seen the ads, "Join the Military and get job training that employers want".. yeah right. One of my friends in El Paso was at the time a Scout for the Third Herd, 3rd Armored Cavalry. Stationed at Ft Bliss but spent most of his time (between the constant wars in which America has been engaged, unofficially) in this patch of Hell called MacGregor Range sandwiched between the limits of Ft Bliss, Biggs Army Air Field, White Sands Missile Range and Holloman AFB. His take on it was the job opportunities using his training would be either working as a cop or a hitman. (Personal aside, I don't make any distinction at all between the two jobs.) A double-digit percentage of the unemployed in Colorado are veterans. That's about twice the percentage of the population who are veterans. The TeeVee college ads, trade schools actually, because the Wealthiest don't want to spring for a real academic education, they want to keep us firmly planted in the Servant Class, make promises to recently discharged Veterans that strongly echo the lies of the Military Recruiters. "get training the employers are looking for". You know, it would be a Hell of a lot easier for you to Skip The Army Bullshit and just go to college or trade school without their help. That way you don't have to Kill and possibly Die for the benefit of the very richest. Let them send their own sons and daughters into the fight. Like Bush, Cheney, Romney, the entire Limbaugh Family, all of them DIDN'T serve "our country" and they don't send THEIR nasty little piglets into the fray either. The Bush Twins actually went on a speaking tour Campaigning for their Coward Little Daddy but disguised as Promoting the Military Service as a "career opportunity". Essentially told high school kids to drop out from education and join the Killing Machine. Advice neither they nor the scions of their Fathers Accomplices took. Nor did their father or any of his accomplices. (Pretending to be a Fighter Pilot doesn't count, everybody ELSE who had the word "combat" in his MOS at the time got sent to VietNam, save for a very few, very privileged scions of the very rich... like GW) Face it, kids, you really DON'T owe it to America to join the Army. The United States has been in constant wars since the end of World War 2 and has not actually had a congressional declaration of war since December 8, 1941. Nor have ANY of those wars actually been about American or anybody else's "freedom". To the veterans of those wars, there's two different sides to that. The one told to you by the Government, saying how much they love and respect you. And those of us who actually respect you, America and ourselves enough to Not Tell You Those Lies. It's a hideous thought that your time and the killing in which you participated, and the lives of your comrades, was exactly that meaningless... that the blood shed and destruction wrought
G7 vow to cancel Haiti Debt…
30 years too late. Mighty white of them. Swiss courts delayed announcing their decision, hours before the Earthquake, to reinstate the money stolen from Haiti by the Dvalier family, with the help of the CIA and Pentagon, and Swiss banks along with other multinational banking Corporations, to the Duvaliers. Not to Haiti. One Swiss official said that it's customary to wait several weeks before announcing court decisions. My take on it is that G7 and Credite Suisse and the IMF and World Bank would have been perfectly content keeping Haiti twisting in the wind forever or until the Haitian People collectively sold themselves back into odious hateful humiliating Slavery with the condition that they every morning en-masse they would have to issue a sincere apology for ever declaring themselves to be a free people.
Child labor behind White Christmas
Child victims of American desperation
I like this last picture of Shaniya Davis, taken it appears, on the ordinary occasion of a new cellphone camera. The five-year-old's body was just recovered by North Carolina police. Her mother Antoinette Davis, 25, has been arrested on charges of selling her daughter into prostitution. Shaniya had only recently come under her mother's custody: The girl had only been living with her mother since last month. Her father, Bradley Lockhart, had previously raised the child but had agreed to let her live with her mother after she found employment and a place to live. A second photograph in keeping with the "hoping there is a special place in hell" theme is of little Fatima Ahmed, born in Fallujah with two heads, among other deformities she shares with other Iraqi newborn and stillborn, representing an alarming 15 fold increase in birth defects. Doctors attribute the probable cause as the depleted uranium and other exotic munitions employed by the American forces, but US military spokesmen urge caution in making a hasty judgement. Apparently as with smoking, and toxins with important industrial purposes, no causal link has yet to be established between DU, white phosphorous, other undisclosed agents and risks to human health.
Woe to the lowly in Rio
Despite the efforts of Oprah and the Obamas, it didn't take the International Olympic Committee long to eliminate Chicago from the competition to host the 2016 Summer Olympic Games. Expected to be one of the final two candidates, the city was ousted in the first round. I'm sure this intends a complex message to reach feeble American-warmonger-greedy-capitalist-bully-imperialist-fat-faced-consumer-run-amok ears, and one that I'm sure we'll not take time to understand. Okay, so, whatever. Congrats to Rio! But, no! Woe to the poor and marginalized of Rio is a more authentic sentiment. Olympic victory has put them all in harm's way, to be sure. According to the Geneva-based Centre of Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE), hosting the Summer Games is an excellent excuse to have a big ol' poverty crack down. COHRE has documented the following housing trends in Olympic host cities: evictions of tenants from low-rent housing; evictions resulting from gentrification; significant decreases in boarding-house stock; inflated real-estate prices; weakened legislation protecting tenants; criminalization of poverty; temporary or permanent privatization of public space; and temporary or permanent suppression of human rights and, particularly, freedom of assembly. Congrats to Chicago are in order.
Since the subject came up…
Some of our Anti-Worker friends have tried to point out the error of our collective way and convince us that the Boss-Man is only looking out for our best interest, and we should feel privileged to work for less than it costs us to survive, and raise our families, and one day perhaps retire... in other words, the amount it takes US to produce our labor. Since we'd then have to find some other ways to survive in anything more than Abject Poverty, we would not only be working essentially for free, for the One Master, we would have to subsidize it with outside labor. In Short, WE would be paying for the privilege of working, for King Soopers or whoever else. This reminded me of a story I once read, by a gentleman named Samuel Clemens. About a youth named Thomas Sawyer. Forthwith to the tale, then: He took up his brush and went tranquilly to work. Ben Rogers hove in sight presently--the very boy, of all boys, whose ridicule he had been dreading. Ben's gait was the hop-skip-and-jump--proof enough that his heart was light and his anticipations high. He was eating an apple, and giving a long, melodious whoop, at intervals, followed by a deep-toned ding-dong-dong, ding-dong-dong, for he was personating a steamboat. As he drew near, he slackened speed, took the middle of the street, leaned far over to starboard and rounded to ponderously and with laborious pomp and circumstance--for he was personating the Big Missouri, and considered himself to be drawing nine feet of water. He was boat and captain and engine-bells combined, so he had to imagine himself standing on his own hurricane-deck giving the orders and executing them: "Stop her, sir! Ting-a-ling-ling!" The headway ran almost out, and he drew up slowly toward the sidewalk. "Ship up to back! Ting-a-ling-ling!" His arms straightened and stiffened down his sides. "Set her back on the stabboard! Ting-a-ling-ling! Chow! ch-chow-wow! Chow!" His right hand, meantime, describing stately circles--for it was representing a forty-foot wheel. "Let her go back on the labboard! Ting-a-lingling! Chow-ch-chow-chow!" The left hand began to describe circles. "Stop the stabboard! Ting-a-ling-ling! Stop the labboard! Come ahead on the stabboard! Stop her! Let your outside turn over slow! Ting-a-ling-ling! Chow-ow-ow! Get out that head-line! LIVELY now! Come--out with your spring-line--what're you about there! Take a turn round that stump with the bight of it! Stand by that stage, now--let her go! Done with the engines, sir! Ting-a-ling-ling! SH'T! S'H'T! SH'T!" (trying the gauge-cocks). Tom went on whitewashing--paid no attention to the steamboat. Ben stared a moment and then said: "Hi-YI! YOU'RE up a stump, ain't you!" No answer. Tom surveyed his last touch with the eye of an artist, then he gave his brush another gentle sweep and surveyed the result, as before. Ben ranged up alongside of him. Tom's mouth watered for the apple, but he stuck to his work. Ben said: "Hello, old chap, you got to work, hey?" Tom wheeled suddenly and said: "Why, it's you, Ben! I warn't noticing." "Say--I'm going in a-swimming, I am. Don't you wish you could? But of course you'd druther WORK--wouldn't you? Course you would!" Tom contemplated the boy a bit, and said: "What do you call work?" "Why, ain't THAT
To think some of them live in our town…
Murdering coward Minutemen. This is one of their latest outrages. The robbery and murder of an American Latino family. Actually they left one survivor, but the father and his NINE year old daughter were mowed down in their own homes. Michelle Malkin and Tancredo must be so very proud.... Shawna Forde, leader of Minutemen American Defense, is one of three individuals arrested June 12 by sheriff's detectives in Pima County, Arizona, for the murder of a Mexican American man and his nine-year-old daughter. Based in Washington State, Forde's group is one of several border militia groups nationwide that refer to themselves as "Minutemen," including also the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, of which Forde is also a former leader. Profiles of Forde and her nativist activities are available from the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League. According to authorities, Forde and her two accomplices, Jason Eugene Bush and Albert Robert Gaxiola, broke into the home of Raul Flores and his family in Arivaca AZ on May 30th, apparently in the commission of a robbery. The invaders reportedly shot all three members of the Flores family who were present at the time, killing the father and daughter and leaving the mother wounded. While Bush is the suspected gunman in the shootings, investigators say Forde was the mastermind of the operation (KOLD). Nine-year-old murder victim Brisenia Flores is pictured here from the local Green Valley News: The fellow who posted this didn't include the picture mentioned. The news report was from Washington State where Ms Forde's bloc of the Terrorist Cartel have their headquarters. More: Forde's mother tells the Everett WA Herald that she was not surprised to hear of her daughter's arrest since she had previously talked of staging home invasions: "She sat here and said that she was going to start a group where they went down and start taking things away from the Mexican mafia...," Forde's mother recalled, "...She was going to kick in their doors and take away the money and the drugs." Forde's mother also says that her daughter called her a few hours after the shootings May 30 and reported that she was taking refuge in a "safe house" in Arivaca: "I'm in hiding," Forde told her mother, "You won't believe what is going down here.... The mafia, they are kicking down doors and they are shooting people and they are looking for me." Yep, they feel that if somebody is Mexican AMERICAN they're entitled to take away anything the person has. Including his life and that of his daughter. Interesting that they were also looking for drugs. A glorified Dope Run. By people who say they're into "Law and Order".
Trickle-up Poverty, the DarkSide of Voodoo Reaganomics…
There's a Fake Arabian Nights story, about Aladdin. Seems he didn't get the hang of the Genie all that quickly, he had a few mishaps along the way. He rubs the lamp, tells Genie "Make me as rich as the Shah" Great big ball of smoke, and a "POOF!" noise... Aladdin looks around, he's still in the same place, wearing the same ragged clothes and the same empty money-pouch. Bewildered, he says "What the hell happened there?" And the old wino standing next to him says "Damned if I know, two minutes ago I was walking around my Palace and all of a sudden POOF!"
Delinquencia vs Los Evangelicos and those caught in between
I haven't yet written anything about my Nicaragua trip and I hesitated to do so without giving it some thought. Just what did I see when I was there and how to explain it to my fellow Americans... lol? This was my second trip to Central America and my first since 1985, when I came across a universe devastated by US-funded armed warfare. What had ensued in the 23 years since? What I found was a land full of delinquents (common street criminals), hordes of Bible toting Evangelicals (funded from the US), and those trapped in the 'crossfire' between these 2 groups of 'warriors'. Yes, it was almost a daily occurrence to be mugged by those carrying the Holy Book, or to be picked off by panhandlers, beggars, pick pockets, muggers, etc. In fact, we spent much time with the family of my friend, Rafa. The concerns of his sister, Coco, were about a man who pulls down his pants weekly or so, and shits in th middle of the street in front of the house! I saw on another occasion, a woman bathing herself nude in the median strip of a 4 lane highway! And on 2 separate occasions, saw live power lines fall into the middle of the street amidst children playing. The lines were left that way for a day or so, then duct taped!!! back up to fall once again the next week ahead! Amongst such chaos, come the sale people for Jesus in humble groups of head bowed youth talking it up for God. So what about all the people in between living in barrios of total neglect? What about the young people who did not want to be forced to choose between the 2 groups of religious fanatics and criminal gangs? The hordes of youth whose parents earn between $2-$7 a day? How to explain their world to you, Fellow American? I can't do it, so I have turned to a Nicaraguan group called Grupo Armado This work is called 'Deeds, Not Words' and captures the essence of a country sick to death of all the rhetoric of the Right Wing- US allied politicos. I encourage you to explore on youtube other videos of this group titled songs like 'Racist' or 'Nica (Nicaraguan) in Costa Rica'. You can get a feel for the rage the youth have about their prospects in Nicaragua through listening some to this Latin heavy metal group. I will write more soon about the further impressions I got in my journey with my daughter to Central America, Land of the Volcanoes. But the fear of the rampant crime by 'delinquents' runs rampant itself throughout all the countries of Central America. This is a result of US government foreign policy in the region more than any other reason. It has produced poverty and
Poverty beyond our comprehension
Income distribution according to religion
Income Distribution of U.S. Religious Traditions -PEW %Pop. Sample Religious Tradition
Who’s your daddy?
It is the mainstay of both standard American law and the afternoon talk show and TV judge programs. It is the sad and sick concentration on tracking down the biological dad and making him pay.... literally. It is the cornerstone of a society that takes no real responsibility itself in taking care of its own children...' Who's the daddy? You're going to have to pay!' I wonder always at how sick we have become as a group when watching these sick shows that concentrate so much on opening the envelope with the official DNA analysis results of who's the daddy? Men start to clap when the tests clear them, and women weep, too, if they have not succeeded in putting some man or other into officially sanctioned financial bondage. And to listen to the sanctimonious talk show host, TV judge, or real judge dispensing that moral condemnation at the fingered 'dead beat'. It's sick to think of children being raised in such demented sickness passed off as being justice. Rich dad, rich kid. Poor dad, poor kid. Government demanding that the wallet be grabbed, even as the government itself takes about ZERO responsibility in doing what it should be doing for kids. So little love going around... so much... 'Who's your daddy?' Pity the children. Don't they deserve not having The State doing this to their dads. Dads that have to be forced to pay are certainly not going to be happy and loving dads. Especially when there is no other involvement in the kids lives due to often times the government mandating that there be little or no involvement. 'Who's your daddy?' asks the government. We need to get the government to stop forcing kids into poverty and to stop haranguing dads. We need a government that makes cities safe for children and that funds real education and not just the pretense of it. We need a government that covers all children with full health care benefits. We need a government that stops stealing from the kids to fund police, soldiers, and the industries that profit off war and excessive prisons. We need a government that cares for the people, children included, and that doesn't just steal off them. 'Who's their daddies?' I don't care who they biologically are. I care about them all and it makes me sick to see a government treat the kids, sick, and elderly as bad as ours is doing and plans to continue doing. 'Who's the biological dad? You should be ashamed for wanting to know. It makes no difference, Uncle Sam.
Perspective on poverty for children
The minimum wage and Colo Spgs establishment.
You know those signs all over downtown and every park in the city, that say not to give money to panhandlers? Written by people who are supposedly Experts in the area of homelessness. I personally have had people approach me and hand me money. I couldn't work out a mechanism within my psyche to go up to strangers and ask for any kind of help. But the money came in handy. I bought food with it mostly, fuel for my camp stove, feed the machines at the laundromat to have clean clothes and bedding. I believe that even for the most addicted amongst the homeless, at least some of the money actually goes on their needs and not just cigarettes, whiskey and wild wild women. So here's my theory, to have posted around downtown, and maybe even use their fonts and printing style, (not to deliberately mislead them, you understand) but since these posters they have put up are subsidized by the City meaning everybody who has bought non-food items anywhere in the confines of the City, they are legitimately as much our property as the Fascists, right? Just don't put anywhere in there that these suggestions, to quickly follow, don't actually physically originate in their tiny little brains. Bring their logic forward a few steps, and expose it for what it is. If somebody is homeless, the consensus is that it is because of mental, emotional or substance problems. The only solution for these problems are for the "outpatients" to seek professional help and counseling. Giving them money or feeding them outside of that sphere of treatment would only enable them to continue in poverty. So giving them a job, for instance, would give them more money to waste on their habits. So employers who hire them, and don't insist that they have a permanent address, and don't insist on screening any and all of their employees for personality disorders, substance abuse and so forth, are harming them rather than helping them. So the logical conclusion: Hire the homeless, but don't pay them anything until they get help. That last would seem to be in contradiction of Jesus and Moses said about "If you owe your worker his wages, and you have the pay in hand, you should not let the sun set without paying him" and "a workman is worthy of his hire". Which you might think would cause a problem in the "Faith Based Initiative" crowd, but apparently hasn't made any trouble in their souls yet. The Marion House soup kitchen is remarkably, in light of the recent condemnation for the Catholic church, one of the least restrictive aid agencies in the city. Also by publishing my intent to do this before starting, I have a legitimate defense if they come with their "conservative" legalistic whining that it is deceptive and a violation of their intellectual property.