Ft Carson conducts pro forma town hall to clear way for environmental impact of proposed helicopter brigade

Posted on January 27, 2012 by Eric Verlo

OCCUPIED COLORADO SPRINGS- Ft Carson’s environmental PR team held what’s called a “draft Environmental Assessment,” prerequisite to their addition of a Combat Aviation Brigade to America’s “Best Hometown in the Army”. Except for a car-dealer and realtor giving their attaboys, the citizens comment section weighed solidly AGAINST expansion of war-making and war-training. In true pro forma, Garrison Commander McLaughlin shrugged off the opposition, stating that public input would be answered while the army proceeded as planned. And that’s where Occupy will have something to say.

The fundamental message from OCCUPY WALL STREET, and from the global movement at large, is that it’s the people who are in charge. Whatever corrupted system may have wielded the power to bring the world to the brink of chaos, the authority must be returned to the people. OCCUPY makes clear the people do not have to sit idly by while their rulers make decisions against their interests. OCCUPY reminds us the people will have a say in their own destiny.

An army hearing, about what it plans to do, in defiance of public outcry, is nothing that self-respecting citizens have to take sitting down. They didn’t, citizens came from as far as the Southeastern plains to present their testimonials, but after the citizen comment period ended, the holders of the meeting made certain to conclude that the Ft Carson expansion was advancing regardless. This inhospitalty even after almost uninterrupted patriotic fawning over Ft Carson’s soldiers and the role they play defending our liberty.

While everyone falls all over themselves to THANK A SOLDIER, let’s not confuse respect for deference. America is not ruled by a military junta. The Department of Defense is not our governing body. For all his authority and swagger, this camp commander does not overrule us citizens. WE are the boss of the army. We are his CHAIN OF COMMAND. When the people of Colorado Springs, the people of Colorado, or the people of the United States express our will, it’s the army’s role to say “SIR, YES SIR.”

I’m deeply troubled by an officer of the military who pretends that his fellow citizens are but a temporary impediment to his military plans. When a room full of citizens tells this commander that they don’t want helicopters over their airspace, I expect him to take heed. To do otherwise is purely insubordination of his superiors. All this patriotic militarism may be going to his head. This is a soldier after all, sworn to protect our constitution and America, meaning its people. DO YOU HEAR ME SOLDIER?

If you think I sound disrespectful, let me inform you that I’m a veteran too, of ANTIWAR actions. One of which involved a soldier of higher rank than this one, running up to me as I silently held a sign, and attacking me with his fists, knocking me over. CSPD policemen had to pull him off. I did not press charges, but I could have. That was not only assault. An officer of his stature knows it was worse than that: it was an attack on his chain-of-command. What incalculable gall, to presume to treat me as a subordinate upon whom he could visit his accustomed violence. On a citizen!

And that’s what’s got me worried, about where all this soldier-worship leads. Only a couple weeks ago, at a weekly sidewalk peace bannering, a fellow activist was approached by a soldier and sucker-punched in the face, right out of the blue, while his wife cheered from their car. Are you kidding me? This deference to soldiers has got to stop.

These are soldiers, and we’re right to thank them. Theirs is a thankless task. Well not thankless, they ask, and are given unending thanks. But theirs is a task no one wants, to have to dehumanize yourself, be made to kill, maim, torture, rape, often it turns out, exactly under orders. We’ve learned that soldiers are sometimes commanded to kill everyone in a 360 degree radius. “Free Fire Zones” mean to kill every living thing in sight. We learn too that pissing on your dead victims is taught as a coping mechanism, to dehumanize your adversary so as to suffer less PTSD and less guilt. And we’ve learned that the military has no followup plan to reintegrate their soldier-monsters to a life post-service. Homeless vets from Vietnam onward are a testimony to the incompatibility of war service in horror zones to a return to normal civilian life. When the army creates killer-thugs, it means to dispose of them in further war zones, it means for them to re-up, or die prematurely from DU exposure. Yes, soldiers are to be thanked, but kept at arm’s length, like Fukushima heroes, radioactive. By design, their duty rendered them untouchable, to them eternal thanks and goodbye, unless you are prepared to weather the propensity to antisocial violence and domestic abuse the veterans of fragile countenance bring back with them. Certainly we cannot elevate the more hardened professional killers, who know only means foul and heartless, to positions of authority above citizens.

It irks me to no end to be goaded by this camp commander, who after hearing the public speak, admonished us in the end that our protestations will amount to nothing. How dare he, this insubordinate would-be coup leader?

Shall OCCUPY remind you, America is ruled by its people. This is a Democracy. WE THE PEOPLE are in charge!

Yes it may look right now like the suits are in charge, the men behind you, patting your back, the men with businesses who profit from war-making. In other cultures they are known as war profiteers, and in other periods of history they are executed. Who should profit by war? Well another aspect about OCCUPY is that these business vultures have been put on notice their time has come. No sustainable model of global democracy has room for predatory warmongers who keep wanting to pull their fortunes from war.

The people will be in charge of this nation, not the military or its business enablers. And when the people say enough, it’s going to be the military’s place to do the people’s will. If the people say no helicopters, or not in my airspace, or stop with your immoral wars, the army better stop its posturing, or find itself in the brig. Thank you soldier, but stand down. When the people tell you to stand down soldier, you had better do it, on the double.

For my part I will not decline to press charges a second time against military careerists who overstep their authority. And I will not again brook one iota of insubordination from someone sworn to serve this country. We American citizens are in charge of what’s done in our name. Do you hear me soldier? Sir, Yes Sir? Wise move soldier.

Tea Partying with the Freak Brothers

Posted on January 13, 2012 by Steve Bass

Whew! These Occupy posts are far more difficult to pry from myself than their predecessors; the hands-on mechanics of putting the earlier stuff into practice in the present world, amongst the isolated pools of individuated consciousness we humans represent, each with his or her own vision of the whole, has been at the very least disorienting. I’ve lately revived an old motto i swiped from the good people at Oat Willie’s down in Austin, Texas: Onward Through the Fog! How odd is it that i’ve recently connected with some folks that hark back to that place in ways that are deeply surreal. Oat Willie’s and Fat Freddie will seem to be completely out of place in this bit, in which i mean to address the notion of cooperation amongst disparate factions, but not permanently i hope. By the end of this post, i hope to connect Occupy, The Tea Party, disparate passions, and yes, Hippies. It will be necessary to engage in some relatively surreal thinking.

Last night on a new Facebook page, “UNITE: OCCUPY,” (cap lock and all), i got into a conversation about this stuff started by a guy that asked whether anyone thought a joint event between Occupiers and Tea Partiers might be possible. Sure, i said, our Colorado Springs group had lots of Tea Partiers among its earliest enthusiasts, and although many have pulled away, there still exists a close association with many that veer sharply toward the Te Party camp, especially among Ron Paul supporters. The common ground Occupy shares with the Tea Party, at least t a grass root level, is substantial. There can be no doubt of the equally substantial differences. I suspect that it would take some pretty serious ideological barnstorming to bring the two camps together, but nothing prevents the groups from at least tentative discussion to find commonalities.

Tonight our Occupy group staged a talk by Tea Party stalwart, Constitutionalist Mike Holler. Mike seemed for all appearances to be an earnest and well-versed supporter of Constitutional “fundamentalism,” if you will. He peppered his talk with lots of my favorite quotes from my favorite founding fathers. He got a little testy about the revisionist history his kids bring home from college early on–perhaps indicative of one point of separation between Occupiers and Tea Partiers. Some of those are important. Occupy is international, where the Tea Party can display degrees of jingoism. I, personally, respect the earnest efforts of our Enlightenment founders, but recognize that they were flawed, and aver that their document was dated by racist, sexist, and elitist provisions and thinking that they might be excused from by noting their temporal milieu. We don’t have the same luxury. Occupy is legitimately grass root, supported by sweat and blood more than funded, where TP is, or at least became very quickly corporately funded “astroturf,” disingenuously proffering libertarian ideals as a smoke screen for corporate license to plunder. Occupiers are in my experience far more diverse than Tea Partiers. Socialist and Anarchist Occupiers are common, as are assorted races, genders, orientations, and religious persuasions, where Tea Partiers seem to my limited observation to be relatively homogeneously white Christian capitalist patriots. Mike interjected that both groups had been misrepresented by the media, and that seems likely to be so given that mainstream media seems content to misrepresent ’bout anything they report in this country, but Fox news and the rabid right like the Tea Party so much i have to wonder if he’s fallen victim to a personal soft spot.

Mike spoke eloquently enough in his effort to simplify the Constitution, focusing on issues of freedom, and state’s rights. He said very little with which i could find disagreement. He pointed out two major points of confluence between Occupy and the Tea Party–personal liberty, and a rally-cry, “No more Bailouts!” I suspect he fastidiously avoided some points he knew or at least feared might be contentious, like for example the ludicrous assertions i’ve heard often that environmental warnings from the scientific community stem from some kind of Satanic control scheme from the–well just whom is never too clear. The Vatican or something. Commies, i guess. That just maybe the best way for Tea Partiers and Occupiers to interact, though, for now, concentrating on the common aversion to what amounts to Fascism. Interacting from that perspective could exclude much conversation. It could put the Tea Party in the same position as the Occupy movement, after their Fascist sponsors withdraw in horror. Whatever. We Occupiers got on just fine with Tea Party Mike–“Mr. Constitution.”

Mike largely expressed notions we Occupiers could embrace. I suppose he could have done a bit of research and tailored his speech toward that end, but i think we just agree; he seemed a grassroot kind of guy, to me. He briefly alluded to schisms within the Tea Party, and there’s no sensible reason to avoid acknowledging the same within Occupy. Last night’s event was attended by Occupy people that have had such extreme altercations in their attempts to wrestle a semblance of ideological unity from a stubbornly liquid platform that it could easily enough have disintegrated into bedlam. I attended with my dear friend Thomas, with whom i often disagree. In fact, he and i often disagree so strongly that sometimes i feel like smacking him in back of the head. I expect he feels the same way about me at times. Maybe much of the time. Take note, war-mongers of the world: Thomas is a great guy, and even though we disagree with one another, sometimes strongly, neither of us has smacked the other in back of the head. Get it?

So here we were last night, disparate Occupiers engaging a Tea Party mouthpiece in a room full of people that have all experienced the vagaries of human interaction under a fairly pressurized circumstance over the past few months. No butterflies fluttered around the room, but no one worked up a bickering session, either. We worked together. All of us. One could recall the old adage that “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” but that would be devolution. I prefer to imagine that those with arguments present recognized the futility of scrapping amongst friends, if only below the radar of their Egos. Whether my nobler hopes for those pained souls in the room last night are valid or not, the assertions i made in these non-pages well before Occupy began remain true. The system we wrestle against is collapsing around our heads. And the solution is spiritual, to a far greater extent than it is temporal.

Fat Freddy is a comic book character that lives in Denver. Seriously. I met him a little while ago. (This only seems out of place, i promise.) Mr. Constitution Mike Holler expressed the opinion last night that our American republic, our constitutional federation of states, is in its final throes; that we are in a position where, ” it’s too late to save the country, but too early to start shooting.” Mike seemed tentative in expressing his hope that God might pull some kind of supernatural rabbit from his celestial hat to resolve our monumental national woes. I expect he feared perturbing the often non-Christian sensibilities of the Occupiers. He needn’t have worried quite so much–we may be largely skeptical of literal interpretations, but we’re pretty tolerant of that sort of thing. When i met Fat Freddy–an icon of counter-cultural activism important to me since childhood, an old-school Hippie with connection to the most famous and infamous of that crowd–he singled me out and pulled me aside to explain in some detail his expectation for a spiritual upheaval in coming days. Freddy’s taken up with the Urantia Book, a tome i’ve heard Christians disparage as devilish. I couldn’t see anything devilish about what he showed me. He earnestly explained his expectation for resolution. Soon.

We had come to Denver to talk about foreclosures and bank jiggery-pokery with another guy, and pulled up at Freddy’s house without knowing it. It just happened that way. These old Hippies like Tea Party fave, Ron Paul. (Follow along, now, i know it’s weird, and yeah, i know a lot of Occupiers don’t like Paul; i’m not sure about him myself). Also in attendance at that meeting was a woman i had been conversing with on line for quite a while in the context of Occupy. It took me nearly through the whole meeting to recognize her, because i knew her to live down in the Four Corners neighborhood of Colorado. She lives at Freddy’s now. This juxtaposition is so weird that now i’m expecting the Mad Hatter, or Lewis Carroll himself to pop up at some meeting quoting from Jabberwocky. Mike Holler holds out for resolution to the country’s woes in a traditional Christian context. My own suspicion, shared with J.B.S. Haldane, is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. But somewhere in the mix i am convinced that some divine Thing many of us think of as God is deeply interested in the little proceedings here on our little blue marble and that our interactions are subsequently and necessarily thus influenced.

We live right here. We have no choice but to manage things on a coarse, physical level; but we also live, i think, on an overlapping and less tangible plane, where we have more influence than we might ordinarily imagine. At the same time, things seem to occur herethere without our conscious direction. We’ll need to keep plugging away at things like grasping the Constitution, and taking on massive, quixotic quests like fighting banks and a world full of renegade, intransigent governments and power brokers, not to mention our own internal battles, as finely defined as within our own Souls. We’ll need to recognize the Truth in one another, even when it’s obscured by a bunch of worldly disagreement and fog. And so far as i can tell, were learning. Whatever that means.

Reprinted from hipgnosis.

Patrick Henry’s priest would’ve favored Give me liberty, or give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.

Posted on December 4, 2011 by Eric Verlo

Some juxtaposition, don’t you think? Patrick Henry’s call to arms Give me liberty or give me death mashed up with the Goddamn Serenity Prayer: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. It sure puts passivism into religious perspective. It’s the fog of the opiate of masses, with church as enforcer of nonviolence, keeping the people down in advance of the king’s Dragoons. What a mockery serenity makes of poor fools eager to feel self-respect for docile servitude. It calls to my mind the impoverished parents who cripple their young so to be more effective beggars. Or who sell their children into slavery. What cretinous vile beings. Their desperation to be pitied of course, but their fate to be repudiated, not accepted with whatever boat-non-rocking serenity.

From The War Inevitable, March, 1775, by Patrick Henry

They tell us, Sir, that we are weak – unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power.

Three millions of People, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Beside, Sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of Nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, Sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, Sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable; and let it come! I repeat, Sir, let it come!

It is in vain, Sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentleman may cry, Peace, Peace! – but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the North will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that Gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH!

If you don’t see Merry Christmas in the window, no, you don’t go in that store! The Star of David used to do that trick.

Posted on December 2, 2011 by Eric Verlo

This season’s War-On-Christmas email is pushing a holiday ditty whose refrain goes “If you don’t see Merry Christmas in the window, then you don’t go in that store.” Seems like it might be easier to mark those stores with a Star of David on the window, or would that be too obviously Nazi?
On the other hand, it is refreshing to see even Dumbfox recognize the imperative of targeting commerce to make your point heard. So, boycotts do work?

You can see the Christmas-lovers’ point of course. They’d prefer that merchants exploiting the Christmas purchasing season at least be paying lip service to Christmas and not the ever-looming Godless “Holiday” eclipse, supposed.

This song reminds us “it’s all about the little baby Jesus” and goes on to list all the things Christmas wouldn’t be without him. Of course, half the list traces back to pagan tradition, but what to Christian Holiday-goers know of that?

And the latter half goes back as far as they remember, as their grandmother and her grandmother before might remember, but no more. The commercial Christmas charts its provenance to the industrial revolution, the birth of consumer goods and marketing. Santa Claus as we recognize him stepped right off Coca-cola calendars of the last mid-century.

Christmas was the religious Trojan Horse to pitch the shopping holiday to reluctant hedonists. Now the same parishioners who don’t have an needle’s-eye chance to get to Heaven, feel like the can pay their tithes in Christmas presents.

Yes, I do think it’s funny that people who abhor the prospect of disruptive economic boycotts are willing to consider it at the drop of Santa’s cap. Unless of course they’re satisfied that making this video viral is a shot across the bow enough. I doubt their Christmas Spirit has any room for Lenten restraint.

Oddly enough, one of their potential boycott targets, and mine, has hung banners in its outlets to announce they will be open for Christmas, introducing a delectable dilemma. Starbucks says Merry Christmas in the window, so it’s exempt from this singing email picket, yet it disrespects Christmas by working through it. What do you do?

I answer that one unequivocally. Yes, boycott Starbucks. They fund Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories. That may be somewhat directly related to their celebrating Hanukkah not Christmas, but that’s NO KIND OF REASON to boycott a business. If you want to boycott a store because it’s not Christian, take it up with the Anti-Defamation League. Leave bigotry to the Zionists.

Birth Pains

Posted on November 13, 2011 by Steve Bass

Apologies to readers not at hand or interested so deeply in Colorado Springs’s silly affairs.

Last night , it appears more cops were called in to arrest or press charges against one of our own, Jack Semple, by one of our own, the identity of which latter individual seems muddled to some extent. It’s simple enough to determine that Jason W. and Kristie W. are the only individuals that have any sort of legitimacy, however dubious, for cop-calling, but we all know from experience that the cops possess a grasp of nuances like this one below a genuinely operable threshold. Some have been bandying about terms like “tyranny,” “hater'” and other such inflammations. I’ll note that, though Jack and Jason will serve as specific personifications for this piece, others have made alignments according to the differences described. More than one observer has noted the inanity of all this, both from here in Colorado Springs, and from afar. Holy mackerel.

Our unique, permitted status has presented problems left to fate at other Occupy locations. Jack Semple has, no doubt, insisted on performing behaviors of at least somewhat scurrilous foundation. To the best of my knowledge, no “rules,” or even “guidelines” have been adopted by the overall group “Occupy Colorado Springs, ” which i must insist on noting to be separate by definition if not in spirit from “Occupy Colorado Springs,” the permitted entity. Last Thursday, (9 Nov), a rather large and representative group of us agreed to adjust wording in our set of rules to reflect their nature as guidelines. Neither rules nor guidelines have been accepted by any consensus, to my knowledge. Jason has proffered the notion that other groups are more stringent in enforcement actions than ours has been, though no set of guidelines for either enforcement or encouragement have been adopted. Most of the sets of guidelines i have been able to dredge up from other sites online have been heavy on terms like”respect,” and “mindfulness.” Jason’s assertions that “the group” reached a consensus on the permit are unfounded, which i know because i myself with others in agreement objected to the permit on the grounds that the law it was meant to skirt is bad in the first place. There was and remains a group of like opinion in opposition to supporters of the permit–a predictable scenario, in light of the hasty disregard for consensus building at the start.

Jack has, in fact, “pushed the envelope” in his approaches both in GAs and in independent action, as have other group members, including at times, me. Jason has also pushed envelopes, and though his responsibility is unclear at certain points, he has it seems signed tickets and pressed charges in the two incidents involving mavericks in “his” tents. No small number of OCS participants have observed the detrimental effect of the behavior of both Jack and Jason. Jack has stubbornly insisted on proceeding without consensus, and given the leaderless, undefined nature of Occupy! worldwide and here, no real authority exists to prevent his behavior. Jason has stubbornly insisted on proceeding without consensus, and given the leaderless, undefined nature of Occupy! worldwide and here, no real authority exists to prevent his behavior. Hmm.

Jack has proceeded from his insistence on peace and love to his own occupation of places and resources to which his claim is at best undecided. There exist legitimate questions concerning what belongs to whom on our street corner, and it seems to me Jack’s self-installation as the Robin Hood of Acacia Park has been a detriment to his own stated motivation. At the same time, Jason’s insistence on a rather dictatorial approach based on his status as permitted signatory is at odds with the consensus model in general, and the overall spirit of Occupy!

Other than vituperative ad hominem attacks between both parties and their adherents, hardly communicative of either loving or peaceful sentiment, very few of the actual issues have been addressed. It must be granted that Raven, yet another aggressively expressive player in this little conflict, has the backing of fact in that those few consensus agreements to have been adopted have been soundly ignored by Jason, who must be named personally in this given that his name at the top of the permit and that he has apparently issued questionable edicts and instructions to “security” people. Some bits of definition have remained untouched to our detriment, for example, the fact that the tents in question were demonstrably in place well prior to the magical creation of the permitted entity, “Occupy Colorado Springs” by the City’s placing that name on the permit. Another example is Jason’s admonition to some complaining against his actions to come participate in the securing of the site. I can speak only for myself on this, but even though i have regularly helped build, supply, secure, clean, etc, i have not signed a waiver, so my welcome is in some ways disingenuous, leaving me to believe “permission” to enter tents is a matter of fiat. I’d love to spend regular nights at the Park, but as much as i’ve promised to do so, i’ve been stymied by the fact that it becomes necessary to abandon sleep entirely and pace the sidewalk all night, with no option for relief. I’ve found the prospect more detrimental to motivation than i’d initially imagined.

With or without this foundational uncertainty, it’s clear that the permit, or at least its handling in our group, has been the focus of a great deal of friction, as may well have been anticipated. The permit can be a good thing if utilized correctly. It allows us, for the time being, to Occupy the corner without fear of pepper gas wielding police bulldozing the site with their spiffy new urban assault vehicles we all know they simply must find some justification for owning. It’s also been the source of an authoritarianism bearing an awfully clear resemblance to at least one strong aspect of the problems that brought Occupiers to the streets in the first place. It’s also clear that the one truly solid consensus–to avoid calling cops in non-violent scenarios–has been ignored. There seems to be a lack of awareness of the fact that chair-swinging wrasslin’ moves and police action are no more prone to building consensus than impulsive disruption of group thought processes. The permit itself may well be a casualty of insistence on bad behavior from each quarter.

I simply can’t believe we in CSprings are the only Occupy outpost wrestling with these very fundamental matters, even if we have an unusual factor in the mix, especially with the introduction of a “security” guy from out of town crowing about tent-slashing escapades.

None of this will kill the Occupy Movement. We all seem to be in agreement that our time for ignoring the issues that brought us together has come to an end. The abrupt gathering of millions–no shit–of disgruntled citizens across the entire planet is an expression of the expiration of patience over an unjust, unkind, and self-servingly dictatorial status quo. A renewal of perseverance and, yes, patience while we learn to manage some very intractable problems with our common natures is necessary if we are to avoid actual bloodshed in this existentially unavoidable conflict. We’ll learn this, or we’ll die.

Practically speaking, no amount of voting or “telling” will solve the problems at hand. To an extent, events are proceeding in a predictable fashion. I suggest we consider with grave lucidity what a consensus process really is, and learn to abide by those few clear points of consensus at which we’ve come to agreement. Some discussion of broadening the list of permit-holders took place at the Thursday GA. If the permit holders in place are too burdened by liability to allow themselves to be governed by consensus, this question should be examined in detail, with consideration for alternatives. If the permit represents its own final word, then it seems unlikely consensus is attainable, and it will likely become a moot issue when it disappears, which will occur on our present course. If permit holders insist on arbitrary decision-making based on the dictates of the permit, we must recognize the equally sovereign nature of OCS (Permitted) in juxtaposition with OCS the leaderless movement gathered in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street. That is to say, if consensus is ignored, it is done so on an individual basis, and the permitted OCS separates itself from the Movement to the extent to which it is able. We’re still forced by the fact that we have no choice but to learn to cooperate. In the meantime, let us not neglect the many deeply compelling reasons for being together, or the various projects our self-identified membership have undertaken, particularly internal educational projects which appear especially crucial.

Nothing about this is going to be simple. We will not be solving the problems of the World in a couple of weeks from our Acacia Park vantage. These issues represent the selfsame internally conflicted bits of human nature that have caused us to develop the drastically and fatally flawed social constructs we have come together to oppose. Breathe deep, kids. Learn to love Jack Temple and his half-cocked impulses while he learns how to manifest peace and love without starting a fight. Learn to love Jason Warf, C.J., and Rick the Tent-Slasher as they learn whatever it is they’re learning. Learn to love even me as i continually throw thought-wrenches in the cogs. Turn your most critical eye inward, because as i well know of myself, the only way to change the world is to enlighten ourselves to our own flaws and start right there.

Or stock up on bullets. You can find me standing in the Light without any if they start to fly.

Defined:
http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/consensus?region=us
A start at the notion of consensus-building:
https://www.msu.edu/~corcora5/org/consensus.html?pagewanted=all
A couple sets of Occupy guidelines:
http://occupydc.org/about-us/guidelines/
http://c1ecolocalizercom.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/files/2011/10/occupyguidelines.jpg

George Who?

Posted on November 4, 2011 by Steve Bass

This is a paper from some time ago, well prior to the advent of Occupy events. Henry George wrote from a sensibility one rarely finds expressed so explicitly today. The modern reader should note that Christian underpinnings in no way disrupt either the reasoned logic or the passionate humanity behind George’s arguments. Follow the links! Many Occupiers have promoted education, the deeper aspects of which are rarely available in 3 page tracts….

For Eric Stephenson
16 February 2009

George Who?

It seems peculiar that in 2009 no one has heard of Henry George, if only for the fact that during his prime a hundred years past his was easily one of the most recognizable names on Earth. Just a journalist really, George’s hardscrabble upbringing, his early experience in the business world, and maybe just a little OCD inspired him to craft an entirely new approach to economic theory. Its publication very quickly garnered him international acclaim, respect, and supportive friendship from many of the greatest figures of his day. Many, encountering his work for the first time today, would no doubt label him a Commie, particularly given that George’s work followed Marx and Engels’ by three decades. This misinterprets George. His thinking split the difference between Adam Smith and the Communist theorists in many ways, sharing common ground with both camps but firmly establishing his own territory. His work deserves a second reading.

George was born in Philadelphia, September, 1839, to a family headed by a hardworking but low-budget printer. By providing the Church cut-rate printing services, George’s devout father enabled Henry to garner a relatively high-standard primary education from the Episcopal Academy. He left home after high-school seeking his own way, and after a brief period of adventuring, found himself in San Francisco where he joined the Printer’s Union, following in his father’s footsteps after all.

George lived a poor man’s life–same as any tradesman at the height of the Robber Barons’ power–until an editor at the San Francisco Times came across a piece he had written and left lying around. He accepted an offered staff writing position at $50 a week, which seemed a princely amount compared with his father’s $800 a year. He traveled quite a bit for the Times, and in 1868 on assignment in New York City first encountered the squalid conditions surrounding and adjoining vaunted islands of luxury and power that would inform and undergird his writing for the rest of his life.

Having gained considerable respect as a newsman and a fair amount of seed-money, George and a partner, William Hinton, established the San Francisco Evening Post in 1871. George unabashedly used the paper as a human rights platform until 1877, when, some say, powerful railroad interests against whom he had written since his SF Times days shut the Evening Post down. Quickly landing a government post through highly-placed friendships he had developed, he used the leisure time it afforded to produce his magnum opus, Progress and Poverty, and published it in 1879. George moved to New York in 1880 and promptly left for England and Ireland, touring there to support Irish land support. By the time he returned, his life had changed forever. Progress and Poverty had made him a celebrity (de Mille 1-152).

George’s political economy laid out in his roughly 600 page book begins with his assertion that Smith’s approach established private land ownership as the foundation of economic and social structure, referring often to “the sacred rights of private property” (Smith, par. 1.11.79). So far few would argue, but George figured this skewed, and brazenly wrote that, “[t]he great cause of inequality in the distribution of wealth is inequality in the ownership of land. The ownership of land is the great fundamental fact which ultimately determines the intellectual and moral condition of a people….[I]t necessarily follows that the only remedy for the unjust distribution of wealth is in making land common property” (295, 391). He argued that as a foundational natural resource there is no basis for sequestering land in private hands. He proposed to hold land in common and allot it to users for as long as they needed, for whatever production they could derive from it, and the holder would pay tax, (rent), on its assessed value until relinquished. The holder and any capital or labor involved would keep whatever profit came from the working of the land, and the public would base taxation only upon the land itself. Note that this negates both income and capital gains taxes. (During George’s prominence, no federal income tax existed in the United States). George insisted the extensive system described philosophically in Progress and Poverty, and rather more technically in The Science of Political Economy, would adequately supply the government’s fiscal needs without additional taxes while simultaneously encouraging entrepreneurship and curtailing development of a landed class.

Marx, whose seminal works came before George, but close enough that both wrote from the surrounding milieu of the Industrial Revolution, addressed similar problems. He and those following took the matter to a deeper extreme, however, allowing for no private ownership of either property or capital. Marx expressed a well known hostility to capital. The familiar Communist adage, “Property is Theft,” represents a drastic condensation from Marx’s arguments that labor always seems to wind up on the short end of dealings with those holding either land or capital (Marx, chap. 6, par.2). Like George, Marx chafed at the inequities this arrangement produced, especially with the exacerbations of capital lording over labor, which industrial development had completely disassociated from the land producing the wealth. “The means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up,” says Marx, “were generated in feudal society,” (Marx, and Engels 1848, chap. 1, par. 21).The Communists implemented a far more radical seizure of all private property, including both land and capital, consolidating it under a central federal power (chap. 2, par. 75). Contrarily, George felt that capital deserved its due, and sought to rectify the problems he saw by implementation of a more enlightened “single tax.”

A few germane observations present themselves for discussion. Smith, George, and Marx all expressed notions we might call idealist—Utopian even. Each sought to solve timeless conundrums with an incredibly optimistic approach. Jaded 21st century readers might consider any one of them painfully naive, in retrospect. None of them had the advantage of the hindsight we enjoy, however, and fruitlessly denying the problems each pointed out in his broader work does not help at all. Smith wrote when, fresh from the collapse of European Feudalism, land served as the key to wealth of any kind, and still viewed as an unlimited resource for the grabbing. The vast inequities the Industrial Revolution had abruptly produced vexed George and the Communists. None of these could have predicted today’s technological, information based economies, with the problems they addressed dispersed over the entire planet. Today, the rate of separation between the “Haves” and the “Have Nots” poises to exceed the conditions affecting either set of writers.
George did not design a perfect system. Neither, as amply demonstrated by both history and current events, did Smith or Marx. Henry George thoughtfully and humanely addressed a terribly intractable matter in human affairs, however, and deliberately allowed for future thinkers to expand his work. His work deserves contemplation as we forge into a new century fraught with uncertainties. Our present crisis may help encourage just that.

Works Cited

De Mille, Anna George. Henry George: Citizen of the World. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1950.
George, Henry. Progress and Poverty: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Want with Increase of Wealth: The Remedy. 1898. New York, New York: The Robert Shalkenbach Foundation, 1979. 17 February 2009

Marx, Karl. Wage-Labor Capital. 1849. 17 February 2009

Marx, K. and Engels, F. Manifesto of the Communist Party. 1848. 17 February 2009

Smith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. 1776. Ed. Edwin Cannan. 5th ed. London: Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1904. 17 February 2009

United States Department of the Treasury. Fact Sheets: Taxes. 17 February 2009 (This link is obsolete).

All in

Posted on November 3, 2011 by Steve Bass

When i first set out to write this blog i had no intention of writing about geopolitics, or anything any bigger than my own little world, or to develop any sort of readership at all, let alone to kick up international interest. Who knew? Since the time i started, Adbuster’s Occupy movement has overtaken the whole world and i’ve become a part of it, along with apparently millions of fellow humans dissatisfied with aspects of the concentric and overlapping political systems that govern and control the minutiae of our daily lives. Occupy has struck a chord that resonates well beyond what seems to have been its original intent as well.

Adbuster asserts in its campaign web-page opener that, “we vow to end the monied corruption of our democracy,” speaking, one assumes of U.S. democracy, even though Adbusters is a Canadian publication founded by Kalle Lasn, an Estonian. Adbusters itself claims to be a, “global network of culture jammers and creatives,” and that their Occupy is, “[i]nspired by the Egyptian Tahrir Square uprising and the Spanish acampadas.” One should note that Adbusters is a non-profit organization with aspirations and effect well beyond the confines of the magazine at its core.

Many of my dear intrepid friends struggle mightily with the unavoidable nature of the movement in which we all participate. Occupy Colorado Springs, (OCS), has garnered a fair amount of attention both because of its early acquisition of a city permit to camp on the sidewalk, and for its fragmentary infighting. Strong personalities have clashed fairly spectacularly for what scale we’re dealing with here, and precisely the same arguments are on display at Occupy web-pages all over the U.S., as well as abroad. Here, many patriotic, nationally oriented players have concentrated on addressing the U.S. Constitution and the influence of corporate interests in Washington, D.C. politics. Others have been caught up in causes of personal concern as the “focus” of the overall movement has grown more and more diffuse. The bickering and difficulty in reaching consensus has been frustrating but, i suggest, not unhealthy or out of place.

Adbusters, following ques from the Middle East and Spain, deliberately set off a “leaderless” movement, and has fastidiously avoided taking hold of any sort of control of what has developed since, refusing even media interviews for fear of exercising undue influence. Occupy remains a leaderless movement. Various groups and individuals have issued lists of demands; the one linked there, “is representative of those participating on this [particular ‘Occupy Wall Street’ Facebook] page.” We Occupiers have much common ground, which has served well to bring us all together, and will continue to serve as we gather to discuss and bicker over issues and particulars. There is plenty to differentiate amongst us as well, on individual and other categorical bases, but we have recognized, more or less, an essential humanity that has us willing to stand in freezing temperatures if we live in the northern hemisphere, and subject ourselves to the slow, often painful process of learning to live together.

Some among us, as we have seen right here in Colorado Springs, are very uncomfortable indeed with the amorphous nature of the Movement. We have seen splintering, censorship wars, general Assemblies that devolve into shouting matches, and the development of personal animosities. These phenomena are repeated on a grander scale throughout the Movement while observers gloat over the imminent dissolution of Occupy unity. Neither we Occupiers nor the Movement’s detractors ought to be misled by these birth pains. Our situation as humans, or for that matter any other creature inhabitant of the Earth has been rendered fully untenable by humans competing for dominance. The upheaval we engage from our Colorado Springs street corner, or from squares in Manchester, Belgrade, Cairo, and etc. is the natural response of rats in a corner. Were it not for the fact that we humans indeed possess reasoning capacity beyond a rat’s we really would be screwed. Fortune, or Divine providence, or evolution, or whatever mechanism or mechanisms turn(s) out to be true has granted us the tools that, utilized with empathy at every turn may–just may–allow us to work our way out of the massive pickle in which we’ve put ourselves. Nothing about this will be easy, quick, or for most, especially comfortable.

The Movement is leaderless. This is an existential fact. No matter how strenuously individuals attempt to grab hold of reigns, or to turn them over to others, there is no authority behind the Movement other than the profound spiritual authority of its essential Idea. The financial disparities that we have focused on here in the U.S. are real, and the supra-national bodies that control our government with full directive power are the same bodies that separate people from power in every nation on Earth. Each issue that has arisen into the Movement’s overall consciousness, from derivative markets, to marijuana law, to camping on public property is part and parcel of the whole thing, which itself amounts to such a gigantic, lumpen juggernaut that we have a hard time gathering our thoughts around the whole thing at once. We must.

Many U.S. citizens, including some prominent in and around OCS, have expressed insistent nationalism. Muslims and Christians around the world have pushed religions agendas. Nationalism is by no means confined to the U.S.A. Our corporate, non-personal enemy and its personal, human operators are Global already, and use these divisions to our detriment! At a Colorado College faculty panel yesterday, much ado was made of income disparities and market finagling by Wall Street financiers. We can isolate our minds all we want, but we can not eliminate the fact that Wall Street, Fleet Street, Singapore, Hong Kong, the House of Saud, whatever, whatever, are already one indivisible entity, operating in opposition to any concern for overall humanity or household priorities for any of us as inhabitants of the planet, including the natural requirements of the controllers. The Idea of competition and profit has acquired an independent life of its own and has prevented even those at the top of the unwieldy pyramid from living lives connected to the most valuable prizes of all, which we humans have recognized throughout our history and recorded in odes, songs, and literature to be transcendent of politics and possessions. The statistics cited by those college economists, and the many Occupiers that mention them in speeches and lists of demands are quite real, and Americans might note that Kurdish, Nepali, and Palestinian Occupiers, for example, skew the stats we’ve been flailing our arms about here even further, and that “First World” exploitation is a very large part of this discussion, indeed.

There can be little doubt that the “Wall Street” entities in control of our various governments have planned for and directed events toward a “New World Order” for decades, if not centuries. Lots of justifiably paranoid conspiracy watchers all over the planet have done their best to alert their fellows to this alarming and unacceptable development for as long as it has been in the mix. The Vatican, a power with negative credibility in its adherence to its own doctrine, has offered itself up as a potential controller of a global banking scheme. Currently entrenched power-brokers will absolutely without question attempt to co-opt and control the current Movement. We humans are not interested in more of the same bullshit, plus the added benefit of still more bullshit! We occupiers are fully Sovereign, each in his or her own right. We are leaderless by design, which is the natural development of the abject failure of our leaders, and in fact of the failure of the very foundation of our interaction amongst ourselves that has developed without much direction for at least the 10,000 year span during which we have written about it. Those who resist this fact will find little more than inversely correlated discomfort in their resistance. One can deny the nature of a rhinoceros till one’s dying day, but the beast remains a rhinoceros, and the denier’s last day may well come on the day he encounters a rhinoceros.

Sovereign consensus building is not democracy. It’s something we humans have never attempted on the scale we Occupiers are attempting now. Broad-scale cooperation as a foundation is against an established competitive approach that we have fallen into by default for a long, long time. Voting one another into submission will not work, simply because we have let the cat out of the bag. We noble individuals are learning a brand-new thing, like it or not, because a rhinoceros has smashed the freakin’ house down. I, for one will not abandon the Liberty of my own Sovereignty, no matter who votes what, nor will i abandon the respect i hold for each other Sovereign in the entire mix. I recognize the differences between whatever groups or persons are in the whole wide world. Categorical observations are real, so far as they go; but i won;t be bound by them. I won’t be forced to fight against the 1% simply because i am a member of the 99%. Rather i will be fighting with every fiber of my being for the 100% of us who will ALL be trampled by the rhinoceros, in pretty danged short order, unless we ALL relinquish our insistence on control, avarice, and irresponsibility of all stripes.

Each of us has a part to play, a purpose to serve. Never abandon what you know. Work hard at open discussion. Don’t be embarrassed by frustrating moments or attempt to hide your own humanity. Withdraw for a moment if you need to to prevent overboiling passions. We’re all in this together. Be patient Brothers and Sisters; this is gonna hurt some….

OWS List of Demands:
www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=157161391040462
Adbusters:
www.adbusters.org/campaigns/occupywallstreet
NPR:
www.npr.org/2011/10/20/141526467/exploring-occupy-wall-streets-adbuster-origins
Middle Eastern origins:
www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2011/apr/09/libya-egypt-syria-yemen-live-updates
Acampadas:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13466977

Colonel Gaddafi meets his killer-to-be. Would you have shaken that hand? I’m talking about Obama’s.

Posted on October 28, 2011 by Eric Verlo

Can you match this for a haunting image? There’s Colonel Gaddafi and President Obama, two years ago. I suppose the Tea Party would pretend they were pals. Why wouldn’t they be, both are misunderstood weirdos, both were espoused rescuers of their respective peoples. Where similarities end, the rivalry is epic. One the protector of Africa and the unaligned world, the other its despoiler. One perhaps rendered timid with age, bombed into submission, his own daughter killed by an extrajudicial US assassination attempt, the other his future killer. I look at this image and reflect on the author of the Little Green Book, ideology for the Libyan renaissance, whose recent pitiless murder was videotaped and televised from all angles. Others might look more soberly at President Barack Obama, skilled comfort giver, who we’ve come to see shows no reticence for killing thousands sight unseen, but here he’s looking his mark straight in the face. What’s Obama saying with that handshake? I’m not sure Obama’s eye contact is going to have the effect it used to.

CSPD acquires urban assault vehicle. What line have activist informants been feeding them?

Posted on October 23, 2011 by Eric Verlo

COLO. SPRINGS- This image just in from a reconnoiter of the downtown police garage. The CSPD has mobilized an urban assault vehicle, for, I don’t know what, keeping up with the Jones’s? Ever since Springs police decided that the Pikes Peak Justice & Peace Commission held gravitational pull over all political dissent in El Paso County, the CSPD holds weekly briefings with a PPJPC staffer, and of late they’ve added morning tete-a-tetes with an OCCUPY delegate from Acacia Park. What are those “representatives” telling them? That law enforcement needs bigger ammo? Would now be the time to suggest we call organizers who grease the mechanisms of oppression, however ill-conceived their intention, by a more appropriate term, RATS?

I can understand neighbors with differing opinions about whether cops need more helicopters, or K-9 intimidation duos, but how ever does the ordinary citizen rationalize that their police department needs riot equipment? To protect us from ourselves? We found out a couple years ago that the CSPD has a busload of their own people-suppression gear. Now we have an armored personnel carrier for cops? Because they can’t drag defenseless nonviolent protesters across the pavement without mechanization? The Acacia Park protesters have been happy to seek permits to set up their literature canopies and have organized community service cleanup actions to put a shine on their model compliance, meanwhile the police are arming up…

EPILOG:
Is this a political cheap shot? Yes. It’s trash talk. No argument. Why and when Colorado Springs took delivery of an armored vehicle is entirely conjecture. Maybe it’s the usual cost-plus profiteering scheme. That’s not really the point. The point is, what intelligence is CSPD getting from their de facto adversaries?

The sight of a new armored vehicle to use against civilians should be a major embarrassment to someone who considers themselves tasked with offering assurances to the city that all local protest will be inoffensive and dismissible.

The CSPD needs armor WHY? Not even crime here has ever escalated to a level which would require an armored assault by the police.

I was content to leave it at that, but oh well, some people need it explained.

It is not conceivable that anything public citizen advisers might have whispered at regular meetups would have prompted the CSPD to armor up. But what are the collaborators conferring with police about? We know the why, for a seat at the table, so what goals are they selling out?

It would be false praise to suggest the PPJPC had a role in bringing the armored UAV to town. But the PPJPC cannot escape responsibility for eroding the role and breadth of activism in this city. In particular for playing informant to the CSPD, for being the conduit of intimidation which the police want to push the other way, and for employing an executive director who has a personal resolve against confrontational activism. You won’t see him at protests, organizing protests, or promoting protests. You’ll see him keeping his meetings with other respectable nonprofit heads, and his appointments with the CSPD, and fielding their calls when they catch wind of other dissenters. No surprise that a once energetic PPJPC is now but a social justice knitting circle of communion takers.

Of course it’s worse, because Colorado Springs social circles are small enough that the CSPD only needs one snitch. Not that any illegal activities have been planned, certainly no violence, but the CSPD wants to keep tabs, and the PPJPC is happy enough to believe that if you have nothing to hide, then keeping city authorities informed shouldn’t threaten you.

For those who need this spelled out: civil disobedience is by definition illegal, and benefits incalculably from putting authorities on the spot. Giving them your game plan in exchange for not upsetting the apple cart does not favor those who are protesting the apple cart.

So what is whispered in these regular meetings with the police? Let’s imagine only the most innocent possibilities. Who’s new to town, who’s jumping on this national campaign, who’s retreating from the fallout from that recent action, what’s the scuttlebutt, what’s to these rumors, and what are CSPD’s concerns. It makes me nearly sick to think about. The relationship must be as with a lobbyist. The collaborator is enjoined to take responsibility for keeping the peace. Any surprises and it’s their rapport that suffers. Police embarrassed on the street? No cookie for you.

Occupy Colorado Springs organizers have fallen for the same bait, a quasi permitted stay in Acacia Park in exchange for daily updates with the police. A special relationship is how I believe it’s being billed. You’d probably call it a morning coffee with your boss, with info flowing his way, instructions coming yours.

If you are hoping to reform the system, thinking you have allies among the blimp-necks sworn to uphold it TO THE LETTER is probably wrongheaded.

The ugly arrangement at the PPJPC didn’t begin with Executive Director Steve Saint. The PPJPC sat down in 2003 after an antiwar rally was teargassed, to hash out a code of conduct agreement with the CSPD. Membership balked at such a prospect and the project was abandoned, but left the city with a paper trail with which to claim it believed it had cemented a deal and would consider further trouble to be a breach of the agreement. This came to light after the St Patrick’s Day Parade fiasco of 2007. An event which provoked the larges upsurge in participation in the PPJPC but rapidly dropped off with its failure to capitalize on the visibility.

I know a little about that because I was chairman in that aftermath, fighting an insubordinate staff who only slowly revealed their ulterior motives and stacked the board against me. The rationale? Public protests hurt alliances with other non profits. Being anti-military preempted cooperation with almost all the other social causes in an army town.

It’s of course a long story, but in the end you’ve got a career staff member determined to jettison antiwar efforts for the comfort of taking on the environment, poverty, and whatever causes get a Democratic president elected. Steve Saint very visibly put his name to the letter which invited Van Jones to come speak at Colorado College. Van Jones is as corporate a messenger as Barack Obama, with the same empty promises. This time instead of Hope, he’s selling Green. And it’s just as easy a sugar pill to swallow.

Did you know some disgruntled Dems have set about to form a Green Party? Guess who’s put himself at the center of scuttling that effort by neutering any grassroots platform? I take no pleasure in delivering this punch line.

Of course more than anything the antiwar movement suffered with Obama’s election. Now the hopeful are disillusioned and cynical, and who is the little PPJPC to revive that crowd? But the PPJPC backed Obama, stood in line to see him while their dissenters embarrassed them by protesting outside. Dissenters who ultimately had the police called on them for trying to have a meeting in front of the PPJPC office.

The PPJPC is fully co-opted, fine, but that the organization plays the role of informant to the police is untenable. A historically, unequivocally, uninterruptedly nonviolent activist community provides no grounds for the city police to escalate their crowd-control technologies, and it certainly doesn’t merit full-time paid informants trying to snitch on them.

Execution of anti-Western al-Gaddafi suggests he wasn’t strongman enough

Posted on October 22, 2011 by Eric Verlo

Gaddafi, Qadhafi, Zenga Zenga, dead dead I know very little about the dark side of Colonel Gaddafi. I’ve never seen him outside the filter of Western media. For all I know he emptied baby incubators, hid WMDs and ran rape camps. He wasn’t responsible for Lockerbie, the CIA knows that much. The deposed leader’s execution yesterday was nothing to celebrate. It was sad, brutal and shrouded in mystery. Hugo Chavez hailed Gaddafi as a fallen hero, and I’ve never had occasion to disagree with Chavez. Nor have I ever taken issue with George Galloway and he hated Gaddafi. Probably the aging revolutionary was both heroic and corrupt, eccentric and lunatic. Gaddafi was the most powerful protector of Africa, and the only leader to have apologized for Arab role in African slave trade. Naturally he had to be booted from the club.

Is the US only ever up against evil strongmen? Isn’t it obvious that any leader who opposes US hegemony has to be a strongman? Putin is as formidable as any former Soviet foe, and by comparison, Gaddafi was fey. He let down his guard, thought he could sell out to the New World Order and keep his nationalized oil. But the Capitalist jackals do not respect ideologues and will exploit it as weakness.

Captured alive, Gaddafi was brutally mobbed, although the predominant Arabic voices urged keeping him alive. Multiple video angles contradict the official statement that Gaddafi succumbed to crossfire. Video images seem to show special uniformed soldiers heading against the flow of Libyan fighters converging on Gaddafi after the fatal shots.

Was this a Mussolini moment? Hardly. To the last moment Gaddafi seemed incredulous that his people would betray him. I’m not really sure they did. He railed against the CIA and al-Qaeda backed “rebels” who were tearing Libya asunder. NATO’s strength undoubtedly tipped the balance, and Gaddafi’s demilitarization of Libya left him with insufficient defenses.

Looking at a video still of the final moments of Libya’s deposed leader, I’m reminded of the picture we once posted of Silvio Berlusconi’s bloodied face. We took it down I believe because it celebrated violence I suppose. I regret caving to whatever bastards took offense. Their timid sensibilities keep fascists like Berlusconi in power. Since that one glorious grasp at justice populi the Italian despot has stayed out of the public grasp, the Prince of Wales nearly didn’t it.

The Western press is pitching Gaddafi’s undignified death as a warning to all leaders who challenge white rule. I think it’s significance reaches much further. Summary execution at the hands of a mob. Could happen to the highest of the well heeled.

Occupy Denver recognizes Colo. AIM, mixes metaphor to Unoccupy America!

Posted on October 10, 2011 by Eric Verlo

This weekend the General Assembly of Occupy Denver recognized that its intended occupation was actually a re-occupation, of lands to which original inhabitants lay claim. On Sunday the GA consensus voiced its solidarity with the American Indian Movement of Colorado who submitted a statement for ratification. It’s reprinted below via The Sole Reader:

COLORADO AIM’S CHALLENGE TO #OCCUPYDENVER

An Indigenous Platform Proposal for “Occupy Denver”

“Now we put our minds together to see what kind of world we can create for the seventh generation yet to come.”

John Mohawk (1944-2006), Seneca Nation

As indigenous peoples, we welcome the awakening of those who are relatively new to our homeland. We are thankful, and rejoice, for the emergence of a movement that is mindful of its place in the environment, that seeks economic and social justice, that strives for an end to oppression in all its forms, that demands an adequate standard of food, employment, shelter and health care for all, and that calls for envisioning a new, respectful and honorable society. We have been waiting for 519 years for such a movement, ever since that fateful day in October, 1492 when a different worldview arrived – one of greed, hierarchy, destruction and genocide.

In observing the “Occupy Together” expansion, we are reminded that the territories of our indigenous nations have been “under occupation” for decades, if not centuries. We remind the occupants of this encampment in Denver that they are on the territories of the Cheyenne, Arapaho and Ute peoples. In the U.S., indigenous nations were the first targets of corporate/government oppression. The landmark case of Johnson v. McIntosh (1823), which institutionalized the “doctrine of discovery” in U.S. law, and which justified the theft of 2 billion acres of indigenous territory, established a framework of corrupt political/legal/corporate collusion that continues throughout indigenous America, to the present.

If this movement is serious about confronting the foundational assumptions of the current U.S. system, then it must begin by addressing the original crimes of the U.S. colonizing system against indigenous nations. Without addressing justice for indigenous peoples, there can never be a genuine movement for justice and equality in the United States. Toward that end, we challenge Occupy Denver to take the lead, and to be the first “Occupy” city to integrate into its philosophy, a set of values that respects the rights of indigenous peoples, and that recognizes the importance of employing indigenous visions and models in restoring environmental, social, cultural, economic and political health to our homeland.

We call on Occupy Denver to adopt, as a starting point, the following:

1. To repudiate the Doctrine of Christian Discovery, to endorse the repeal of the papal bull Inter Caetera (1493) to work for the reversal of the U.S. Supreme Court case of Johnson v. M’Intosh 1823), and call for a repeal of the Columbus Day holiday as a Colorado and United States holiday.

2. To endorse the right of all indigenous peoples to the international right of self-determination, by virtue of which they freely determine their political status, and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural futures.

3. To demand the recognition, observance and enforcement of all treaties and agreements freely entered into `between indigenous nations and the United States. Treaties should be recognized as binding international instruments. Disputes should be recognized as a proper concern of international law, and should be arbitrated by impartial international bodies.

4. To insist that Indigenous people shall never be forcibly relocated from their lands or territories.

5. To acknowledge that Indigenous peoples have the right to practice and teach their spiritual and religious traditions customs and ceremonies, including in institutions of the State, e.g. prisons, jails and hospitals„ and to have access in privacy their religious and cultural sites, and the right to the repatriation of their human remains and funeral objects.

6. To recognize that Indigenous peoples and nations are entitled to the permanent control and enjoyment of their aboriginal-ancestral territories. This includes surface and subsurface rights, inland and coastal waters, renewable and non-renewable resources, and the economies based on these resources. In advancement of this position, to stand in solidarity with the Cree nations, whose territories are located in occupied northern Alberta, Canada, in their opposition to the Tar Sands development, the largest industrial project on earth. Further, to demand that President Barack Obama deny the permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline, proposed to run from the tar sands in Canada into the United States, and that the United States prohibit the use or transportation of Tar Sands oil in the United States.

7. To assert that Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their cultural heritage, traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions. They have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their intellectual property over such cultural heritage, traditional knowledge, and traditional cultural expressions. Further, indigenous peoples have the right to the ownership and protection of their human biological and genetic materials, samples, and stewardship of non-human biological and genetic materials found in indigenous territories.

8. To recognize that the settler state boundaries in the Americas are colonial fabrications that should not limit or restrict the ability of indigenous peoples to travel freely, without inhibition or restriction, throughout the Americas. This is especially true for indigenous nations whose people and territories have been separated by the acts of settler states that established international borders without the free, prior and informed consent of the indigenous peoples affected.

9. To demand that the United States shall take no adverse action regarding the territories, lands, resources or people of indigenous nations without the free, prior and informed consent of the indigenous peoples affected.

10. To demand the immediate release of American Indian political prisoner, Leonard Peltier, U.S. Prisoner #89637-132, from U.S. federal custody.

Finally, we also remind Occupy Denver that indigenous histories, political, cultural, environmental, medical, spiritual and economic traditions provide rich examples for frameworks that can offer concrete models of alternatives to the current crises facing the United States. We request that Occupy Denver actively utilize and integrate indigenous perspectives, teachers, and voices in its deliberations and decision-making processes.

Submitted 8 October 2011

American Indian Movement of Colorado

P.O. Box 292, Sedalia, CO 80135

Genocide

Posted on October 6, 2011 by Steve Bass

When I was a young hoodlum, I plagiarized a bit of prose poetry with something like this at its core in order to make myself look cool. As an officially legal adult I’ve lost interest in how things look and have taken up a pursuit of how things Are. This is my take on the piece that my younger self recognized as valuable. That unknown poet, whose name is long lost to the mists of my long lost mind may well recognize a few of his or her words here. No harm intended, kind sir or ms. All the cells that may have stolen your work wholesale are long dead. I hope you like what my momentarily current self has done with the memory….

When I woke up this morning I pulled back the cover and in so doing scattered skin cells like chaff from wheat onto the floor.
I drank a bunch of hot-ass coffee and scalded my tongue–maybe the caffeine killed a few hundred thousand brain cells. Who knows?
I rode my bike to a demonstration, undoubtedly reaping a harvest of sorrow amongst the muscle cells in my anguished protesting protester’s legs.
When I arrived and put the rest of my body to protesting I met a friend and we hugged causing the deaths of multitudes of fleshly villagers in each of our respective bodies.
As the day progresses into evening I’ll meet others maybe loved ones maybe new acquaintances and we will joyfully kill one another’s cells ending their brief unnoticed lives ignominiously.
If it should fall out that we fuck–Genocide!
How is it that these most tender of acts expressing our humanity are so violent in their collatery? Does it matter? Are those cells not reborn in a new generation a new regeneration? Hark! I am born again yes born again.
I am born and born and born requiring the Universe to bear me. It’s the points on a line–I am born again at each indivisible moment. Infinite. There are no two points between which there are not infinite dimensionless points. I’ve been born again more times than there are numbers for as I wrote this.
You’ve committed murder in your own head while you read it. Surely this bit has killed some of your brains off too.
The beauty of it all is Infinite. Eternal. Undying.

(Reprinted from Hipgnosis)

Not a tribute to Steve Jobs, just a sad note. Nicola Tesla or Thomas Edison?

Posted on October 6, 2011 by Eric Verlo

I’m more than a reluctant adherent to Apple technology, and am personally saddened at the death of Steve Jobs. Was he only 56? I assumed by his accomplishment that he was decades older. But my sadness is probably selfishly motivated, as a suspect of Apple acolytes, believing that Apple’s fruitfulness was owed chiefly to its larger-than-life leader, so a return to Jobless Apple means no more candy. But Jobs wasn’t larger than life really, he seems to have led less than a life. The fact that Steve Jobs was unable to discuss his cancer for fear of rocking the markets and hurting his company’s stock value, betrays the preoccupation he had with the bottom line. One of the richest persons in the world, who’d influenced so many lives in an incredibly personal way, went to his death a mystery. And while convention may hold that’s it’s too early for heresies before the wake, accelerated Twitter lag means a post mortem enforced deference for Steve Jobs has probably already expired.

Was Steve Jobs a visionary? Only for business models. He appears to have been a workaholic dedicated to the singular goal of building a better mousetrap. I suppose to give him his due, he built some swell ones, even as we catch on very slowly that the promise of computers enhancing our productivity has resulted in compounded labors, not savings, the mouse in question was us.

The sum of Apple’s product line was basically a self-enforced electronic ankle bracelet.

Steven Spielberg probably meant to honor Steve Jobs by comparing him to Thomas Alva Edison. Interesting, because those of us more familiar with history know that’s probably accurate for reasons Spielberg did not intend. Edison was not an inventor, instead he jumped on the scientific discovery of electromagnetism and maintained a sweatshop of scientists to innovate applications. It’s well known that Steve Wozniak invented the first personal computer, his friend Jobs simply marketed it. The Woz went on to invent the universal remote, so we have to credit Jobs for having a vision beyond the barcalounger. No disrespect of Wozniak intended.

If the Woz had an Edison contemporary, it was Nicola Tesla, renowned mad scientist, robbed of the credit and profit for inventing Alternating Current. He was Edison’s nemesis actually, and Edison lobbied against AC for a national power grid in favor of his patents for Direct Current. Probably by now everyone has heard that Edison would rush to circuses when they had to publicly execute an elephant for insubordination. Edison would electrocute the animals to demonstrate the lethal properties of AC.

So how does all this relate to Steve Jobs, the secrets of whose proprietary technologies we have yet to explore? Whose industry record high profit margins were dependent on cheap Chinese labor, factories which suffered high rates of suicide? Even the most ardent Mac addicts had a hard time championing Apple’s iTunes direct attack on peer to peer file sharing.

Let’s be honest. Steve Jobs was a Hamiltonian elitist when it came to Open Source. The Mac was never intended for everybody, it was trickle down technology and where software designers gave you what they knew was good for you. Hard to argue with much of it, including Jobs’ personal crusade to free his users from porn. But the business model also resembled a table top jukebox, where users paid, through the nose if you figure the charges compounded, for every ounce of content. The Apple became a virtual parking meter bluenosed into your bank account. Following the Java model meant Jobs got you to pay for the apps themselves.

Imagine if Steve Jobs had applied his visionary acumen to the $99 Laptop Project to fight poverty and lift the third world into the information age. Yeah, hard to imagine. Maybe after his death secrets will leak out about a philanthropic visionary Steve Jobs. Too bad we never knew him.

As innovative as Jobs appeared, compared to PT Barnum innovation-retrograde Bill Gates, Apple technology may likely prove to be the DC that has holding the internet back from open source radical transcendence.

If it weren’t for the nonviolence sneaks

Posted on October 2, 2011 by Eric Verlo

In honor of Oct 2, the International Day of Nonviolence, which hardly any government of the world honors IN DEED, especially the league of NATO and USA’s coalition of the killing. I thought I’d perseverate further on the role nonviolent dogma plays in squashing dissent. Here’s my theme: If it weren’t for the nonviolence sneaks the antiwar movement of the 60s might have deposed the military industrial complex before it became supersized, privatized and above the law. Or not, but NV claptrap certainly got us nowhere.

If it weren’t for the nonviolence sneaks, Gaza might have been liberated already. Nonviolent kabuki demonstrations have spoiled attempted marches from Egypt, have scuttled would-be flotillas, have squeezed out real activists from sailing to Gaza’s rescue. Ask yourself, which brought more attention and sympathy for Palestinians, the Mavi Marmara or “The Audacity of Hope” which didn’t even show audacity enough to confront Greek harbor keepers? The Turkish activists on the Marmara were nonviolent, but not neurotically so. They might have expelled their Israeli boarders, but we have to pretend at least surprise at the brutality of Israel’s massacre. The US Boat on the other hand exchanged indignation over bullhorns without ever leaving the harbor, then stood down. Nonviolence doesn’t mean passivity, really?

If it weren’t for the nonviolence sneaks, the Palestinian’s right to defend their homeland from their occupiers would not be an issue. If Palestine was allowed to resist their invaders, Israel would stop trying to take it all.

If it weren’t for the nonviolence sneaks, Bush could not have stolen a second election and Americans wouldn’t have had to settle for hope instead of change.

If it wasn’t for the nonviolence sneaks with their ultimatums of passivity, who knows how soon the New World Order might have been prevented? It’s the nonviolence sneaks who are the most despicable provocateurs, alienating the 99% by ensuring public protest remain forever ineffectual.

If it weren’t for the nonviolence sneaks, antiwar movements would end war, social injustices would be righted, and greed brought to justice.

If it weren’t for the nonviolence sneaks who enforce public compliance, world governments would respect their people and couldn’t rule by fear.

If if wasn’t for the nonviolence sneaks, the public’s urgent will would be heeded, instead of dismissed for inconsequential whine it’s become.

Want a depressing laugh? See what’s passing for direct action strategy

Posted on October 2, 2011 by Eric Verlo

It begins: “Nonviolence is a great power which, when used correctly, can overturn empires.” You see the hole they’ve dug for themselves… For your reading enjoyment, here’s the entire of the Metta Center’s nonviolence page, unedited, gross assumptions, emphasized.

“Overturn empires” –WHICH? Can you name EVEN ONE? Apparently nonviolence has yet to be “used correctly.”

“that power” –Sorry, unproved.

“it’s our only option” –You wish, I guess. You and the forces of oppression.

“the most effective approach” –So you see the problem here. Every conclusion flows from a false assumption.

————————————

Nonviolence is a great power which, when used correctly, can overturn empires. You will be drawing on that power, the full extent of which comes into our hands when we adopt it deeply and consistently, not because it’s our only option but because it’s the option that allows us to preserve our humanity in the process of struggle, i.e. to not further create the problem we’re trying to solve. Just ends and nonviolent means are a powerful combination, and that becomes clearer the longer the struggle goes on. We also get closer to the full potential of nonviolence when we have trained ourselves to the point where nonviolence is practically a way of life, offering unyielding resistance to injustice but never hostility to the true well-being of any person. Nonviolence is strategically the most effective approach in any situation of oppression particularly; however, its full power comes out when we:

have set a determination to identify core issues for which we are willing to make great sacrifices (and compromises on everything else);

have a well developed program of self-improvement and constructive work, building the world we want without demanding that others give it to us;

have a strategic plan that can carry us forward for the long term, using constructive program whenever possible and active resistance when necessary.

—————————–

“great sacrifices” –Martyrdom, victimhood. “compromise” –Punked.

“self improvement and constructive work” –Blame the victim. Onus for change is apparently the responsibility of the oppressed.

I’m sick already. What follows is nothing better than bad religious dogma, based not on morals but psychological engineering. It’s textbook Dale Carnegie, How to Make Friends And Influence People. As if corporations were people.

You can almost smell the crap. What you have here are missionary opportunists seizing upon strife to convert the oppressed to their pie-in-sky-when-you-die spirituality. No different than trying to convert indigenous peoples instead of educating them. Or making drunkards sing church hymns before they get soup.

————————–

Points for Consideration:

I. Nonviolent Strategy Curve

Explanation:
Nonviolent strategies help to create a state of positive peace, restored relations and a higher image of the human being. There are times when conflict is necessary for this process. A nonviolent person will never shun conflict but will always use an opportunity to deepen his or her practice and connection with others.

This curve demonstrates how to create positive peace by advancing nonviolent strategies when relationships deteriorate and dehumanization increases.

II. Anger Under Discipline

Nonviolence is not passivity; it is a power in and of itself. There are three faces of power, according to Kenneth Boulding: threat power, exchange power and integrative power. Threat power is the power of a military force; exchange power is the power of money. Unlike military/threat or economic power, nonviolence is integrative power or love in action. In order to use its power on any scale–small or large–we must as Dr. King said, “harness anger under discipline for maximum effect.”

Anger, like other emotions, is a powerful force. But it does not need to be expressed in destructive or short-sighted action. Anger can be transformed into the fuel for nonviolent, constructive action with a long-term positive effect. What are some ways to “harness anger under discipline?”

1. Respect yourself and respect the goals of the movement by using the means that will achieve the end for the benefit of everybody (aka nonviolently).

2. Never humiliate another human being; all who watch and participate are potential allies, including perceived opponents.

3. Make your movement irresistible, not alienating, through education, professionalism, dialogue, restorative practices and nonviolence trainings.

4. Be willing to take on suffering and insult if necessary rather than inflict it onto others, at whatever the cost to yourself.

5. Be able to articulate clearly and effectively the goals of the movement and see the media as a way to persuade others to join your efforts. This takes reflection and serious strategic planning. Keep the message focused, clear and easy to understand.

6. Take time each day to take care of yourself spiritually. You need to be at your best when emotions and anger are running high. Take time to meditate and enjoy that you are working for a higher purpose.

III. Three Components Needed

Nonviolent struggle has three primary dimensions:

Constructive Programme: This means building the world you want without waiting for others to give it to you, e.g. alternative institutions, local economies, nonviolent leadership models.

Obstructive Program: This is what Dr. King called “non-cooperation with evil.” This includes tactics such as reverse and general strikes, marches, sit-ins, boycotts, etc.

Strategic Overview: In order to have the maximum effect, a movement needs to know when to switch between CP and OP, when to walk away from the police or when to allow for confrontation, etc.. Strategy can be strengthened by an overall commitment to nonviolence, a coherent message to share with those involved and those watching, and disciplined action.

IV. Learning

Take the time to watch other movements. Do not merely imitate but learn from them: understand what worked and why it worked. For instance, if protesters on Wall Street provoked a police struggle, how effective was it for an overall nonviolent goal and how might a different strategy work better?

Constantly assess and re-assess the situation in light of new information and new situations.

Stay in contact with other movements. Share the lessons with one another.

V. Tips for a Long-term strategy:

Sometimes in nonviolence we don’t get what we immediately set out to change, but in the long-term, the situation is more pliable, flexible and change comes more easily. Do not see short term failures as a failure of the method of nonviolence, and do not let anyone convince you that violence would be a better strategy to take. It isn’t. If one needs greater strength, one can “purify” one’s efforts. A simple way is to increase one’s commitment to nonviolence in thought and word. At this point, other practices such as meditation will be tools.

Statistics show that even if violence “works” in the short run, in the long term, it never makes a situation better. As Gandhi said, “violent revolution will bring about violent self-rule.”

The more comprehensive our nonviolence, the greater effect it can have. This means that instead of focusing all of our efforts on outward change, we can learn to deepen our awareness of how nonviolence works, not only on the level of the deed, but in our words and thoughts.

Nonviolence is a form of persuasion and dialogue, not a one-sided form of coercion. Respect the escalation curve model and always try to deescalate a conflict; avoid using the wrong strategy at the wrong time (this is where a strategic overview is essential).

Satyagraha is a last resort strategy for a discussion (looking for a win-win outcome) and can lead to the need for self sacrifice at the highest degree possible. Do not make this sacrifice before it is necessary e.g. promises of fasting unto death without first a willingness to try other strategies are always ineffective. Satyagraha is a method which “compels reason to be free.” We must be reasonable ourselves to awaken the reason of another; we must be willing to take risks and sacrifices (even to our ego) to open the heart of another.

(At Metta, we would like to change the slogan to “Create a New World! Stop the Machine! because in creating a new world, the machine dissolves more readily.)

That’s right, METTA CENTER can’t help themselves from second guessing the OCTOBER2011 slogan. It’s like antiwar detractors insisting message be FOR something instead of ANTI war. You can be AGAINST injustice, inequity, crime, greed, et al, without having to be on the hook for condescending an alternative.

Stage Magick

Posted on September 16, 2011 by Steve Bass

For Bruce McCluggage

Had some words with my friend Bruce yesterday–OK, lots of words. In fact, the Spirit moved me, so I was blasting words all over the place like that guy from the X Men, only with a gag instead of a visor. All the way toward the end of much conversatin’–and yes, Bruce held his end respectably in the face of my torrent–we came to a summation.

The idea is already on the pages here, so it’s important, and needing some flesh, but it’s also very simple. We all know we can’t prove a negative. Any third grade philosopher know this as an unshakable verity, right? So who will step up to prove that? No one, that’s who–we can’t do it, and mind you, I don’t hearsee that term coming from myself often. I’ll beat my kids senseless if I hear them using it. (Hi kids! Molto amore!). Hell the notion is generational. My totally outstanding 95 year old Granddad banned the word from his brood’s vocabulary, and he started his family during the Great Depression. But we can’t, and we know we can’t.

We can’t even prove that we can’t prove that we can’t prove a negative. We can add layers to our investigation to Eternity, and never can we prove a negative. And yet we know that we know that we know (&c.) that we can’t do it. What the Heellll!!? This is why: Reason breaks down at a point between proving and knowing right here for us to examine like a fascinating diamond, cut in some diabolically ingenious fashion to as to hide its facets from us like a tesseract or something. There’s math that explains this pretty succinctly. Look up Kurt Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem, (here’s a good start http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/goedel/). Godel, whose name I’ll be disrespecting til I figure out how to add an umlaut on this thing, wrote a bunch of High Math, way beyond my capacity, that shows us in terms even I can grok, that any closed system can never possibly contain all the tools necessary to fully describe itself. With me so far?

This shows us another Eternal Verity: Truth transcends Proof; and further–our ability to know does the same. Now, Bruce is a philosopher, and kind of a Christian, so this sort of shit doesn’t bother him like it may the Scientific Determinists that may read this. What we are gazing upon, through the lens of our little diamond, is an example of our ability to “jump out of the system”, and view it from outside, in some manner as indescribable as how we can know there’s no proving a negative. (Apologies to Doug Hofstadter for abusing an idea I came across in Godel, Escher, Bach. I’m about to depart from his comfort zone, I think. He did, give him mucho credit, respectably describe the idea within the closed system of those pages). This is an ability we share with God. This, I think, is why some tidbit of western scripture says, “Ye are gods,” (Psalm 82, for you skeptics; read it all and get some context before attempting to argue, please).

This whole line of thought is closely associated with the Ontological Argument as proof of God, if not fully dependent upon it, (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ontological-arguments/). For the uninitiated, this is a supremely brilliant bit of philosophical tomfoolery that attemtps to prove the existence of God by reason alone, in an orderly procession of thought utterly divorced from empirical evidence. If anyone would care to take it on, I’d love–no LOVE–to see a genuine debunking. It’s very slippery indeed, and feels for all the world like a stage magician pulling infinite decks of cards from his sleeves. But it’s irrefutable, in my stupid little mind. It jumps the system.

I’ll readdress the crap we’ve mulled over here, but this is good. Put simply–arithmetically, one might say–We can’t prove a negative>We know this>Truth is superior to proof>We are therefore superior to the closed system of All-There-Is>Only god is thus>We are gods. (Yes, I took a leap there at step 6. I only have so much attention span. Roll wit’ it for now, OK? It’s in the Ontological Argument if you feel like getting ahead of me). This is arithmetical, yes, and handily sums up my points from yesterday, Bruce and friends. But, as you’ve seen by now I guess, that doesn’t mean one can’t do a bit of Algebra, Trig, or (Meta)Physics with it.
***
Jeez, I hope you all enjoyed that. Please don’t burn me at the stake yet. There’s more. It’ll take a while to work around the mess of toroidal thinking here. See Bruce–I didn’t forget that part. I’m only human, even if we are all gods. Bear in mind all, that Nothing here is any more valuable than the opinion of one idiot house painter. And any of you who have read the stuff before this will know already: It’s all a bunch of bullshit.

(Reprinted from Hipgnosis)

Willie and Waylon and Some Other Guy: A story about weed, marriage, and Texas tall tales. Part I

Posted on September 15, 2011 by Steve Bass

I like telling the story of the time we went to Telluride with my brother David to catch the Bluegrass Festival there. Dave is a pretty dang famous fiddler, and this happened 13 or 14 years ago when his Freight Hoppers were riding a crest, having two then current Billboard Top 20 Americana list releases on Rounder, (Rounder is pretty much a ripoff, but that’s for another time). The Freight Hoppers were hot in Colorado, and their set would draw some 30, 000 festival-goers, with a respectable bevy of hairy Deadheads looking for an outlet following Jerry’s departure bouncing , flouncing and working their little Tai Chi dance up at the stage. Lots of really notable musicians liked them, too, and still do, actually.

Anyhow, we would meet up with Dave and the band at the festivals after winding through a long cattle-line setup, to get to the will-call desk and pick up our magic-rainbow all-access wristbands and hang out all weekend with all these niche-famous musicians, eating, drinking, being merry, smoking, and playing music together. That shit is great!

So one day we’re back stage chillin’ with Tony Furtado, (hi Tony—rock on!), and someone goes, “Is that Johnny Cash?” and sure enough, the Highwaymen had showed up to play an unscheduled set. We never made it away from whatever we were doing at the time to see them play, but not long later, as if they had come for no other purpose, Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson show up looking for my brother to tell him how much they dig his music. How cool is that!? Well, we all got to jawin’, and knowing a little about Willie I pulled a little fairly decent weed out of my pocket and offered it, but Willie said, “Oh, no thanks, son, put that away,” and busted out some G13 mutant weed or something, and sparked the stoniest joint I’ve ever smoked in my life, to this very day. What a day!

Now, Willie has always been a hero of mine. His heroes have always been cowboys, he says; mine have always been outlaws, and I always figured Willie for a true outlaw, to the core. I mean the guy runs for president on a platform built of pot smoke, with Ani DiFranco as his running mate. Go Willie! That’s why some things he’s said lately trouble me. I’ll get to that in a minute but the first order of business here is to retell that story one more time, (not that I won’t tell it again—it’s a great staple of mine at parties and such), and to let you in on a secret: It’s all bullshit! It never happened!

***

I am a teller of tall tales, a spinner of yarns, a slinger of bool-shyte. That’s what I do. I’m gonna do some now, here; it’s my schtick, and folks who know me will instantly recognize some of the regular phraseology of my everyday standup, right here on the page. Hi Tim! Hi kids! Hi Willie! Some will recognize little inside tidbits and feel special. They’ll pick out my little eddies and anticipate how I circle back around myself. Hell, if you’re reading you might just as well go ahead and start feeling all conspiratorial and special right now. I mean, this is certainly not USA Today. You can pretty much count on being in an exclusive number by this count.
So if this is a bit of improv by a bullshit artist, how do you know this isn’t all bullshit right now? I’ll let you in on another secret: it is! That’s right—it’s the Lying Cretin. Everything I say is a lie. The Lie is truer than the Truth. Willie and I will be burning one in Austin when I make it down that way in a few months and we’ll laaaugh and laugh about this whole thing, because he gets it, you know. This statement does not belong in the set of all true statements.

Wrap your head around that a spell. It can’t be done. And no side-winding tap-dance involving imaginary words like”pseudo-statement” allowed, either. This is True Lies. It’s a breakdown in reason, a blind spot in our panoramic window to Reality like that thing with the dots you learned in elementary school. You can not manipulate the notions here to fit your mind, though you may, just maybe, be able to manipulate your mind to fit the notions. OK, so I’ll admit we can’t prove the magick here, and maybe someday some mathematician will build a technical ladder up and out of Gödel’s pit, but, we can’t prove a negative, right? But let’s see ya prove that. And now follow it back to the beginning of this paragraph, the beginning of this rant, the beginning of everything you’ve ever read, heard, saw, sensed felt.

And, lo and behold, you find yourself “poised on the wave of explicit Presence, the clockless Nowever.” But don’t forget what kinda bullshit you’re reading.

(Reprinted from Hipgnosis)

I know where Congressman Lamborn is – because no one is telling OR asking. Re: media blackout on junkets to Israel

Posted on August 19, 2011 by Eric Verlo

Calls to Doug Lamborn’s office inquiring as to his whereabouts produces this charade: “Um, I don’t know. Let me ask. They don’t know. I’m not certain who would know. Could you hold please?” And we never get an answer. That his office won’t say, coupled with the media’s strange incuriosity, points to a self-enforced news moratorium on where a fifth of US congress is spending the August recess: as guests of Israel and the most powerful DC lobby. It’s been reported that a record 81 members are on an all-expense-paid junket to Israel, but their identities are a closely guarded secret. The US TV audience can be let to see their representatives give standing ovations to the Israeli prime minister, but visit Israel? The media blackout would have you think there’s something wrong with that.

Middle East peace groups and Palestinian rights organizations have had to painstakingly gather the information from stray news reports out of Israel, or from congressional offices reluctant to let it be know. So far 45 names are known to be on this year’s junket. Doug Lamborn is not on the list, but his office probably has a lower self-respect threshold for playing dumb.

You’d think with the recent furor about calling Obama a Tar Baby, that the media would want to be calling Lamborn to the hot seat. Apparently not. All that’s said is that he hasn’t surfaced to meet with constituents, or give interviews. Last week Lamborn issued a press release unrelated to his recent trouble, probably preplanned, in collaboration with fellow Colorado Congressman Tipton. Tipton, by the way, is among the officeholders known to be in Israel.

Lamborn vacationing in Israel would not be a far-fetched possibility. He attended the junket in 2007 and since then has acted on Israel’s behest in lobbying to drop charges against an accused Israeli spy, in removing legislation which prevented the US from relocating its Tel Aviv Embassy to Jerusalem, and this Spring Lamborn was made co-chair of the Israel Allies Caucus.

What a damn missed opportunity to press them on contacting Tar Baby Lamborn. It would appear that keeping the congressional Israeli lobbying junket on the QT outweighs making Lamborn squirm on camera to explain his non-racist remark. Never mind complicating the issue. What’s a racist WASP doing in the land of Apartheid racism? Well, of course, they’re absolutely related. Oooh, terrible timing. And Lamborn’s a Christian Zionist, so he “likes” Jews, but come the end times, he won’t touch them either.

How is it American elected officials are allowed to behave as agents of a foreign government would be one question, but the more glaring one would be why it is the media is complicit in keeping citizens in the dark?

Partial list of 81 US congressmembers on Israel junket over August recess, according to MoveOver AIPAC

Gus Bilirakis R-9 FL
Mo Brooks R-5 AL
Anne Marie Buerkle R-25 NY
Eric Cantor R-7 VA
Russ Carnahan D-3 MO
Kathy Castor D-11 FL
Steve Chabot R-1 OH (went last month)
Judy Chu D-32 CA
David Cicilline D-1 RI
Yvette Clarke D-11 NY
Mark Critz D- 12 PA
Scott DesJarlais R- 4 TN
Bob Dold R-10 IL (unconfirmed)
Jeff Duncan R-3 SC
Blake Farenthold R-27 TX
Stephen Fincher R-8 TN
Mike Fitzpatrick R-8 PA
Chuck Fleischman R-3 TN
John Garamendi D-10 CA
Kay Granger R-12 TX
Michael Grimm NY-13
Janice Hahn D-36 CA
Jaime Herrera Buetler R-3 WA
Steny Hoyer D-5 MD
Jesse Jr. Jackson D-2 IL
Hank Johnson D-4 GA
Kevin McCarthy CA-22
Gwen Moore D-4 WI
Bill Owens D-23 NY
Steven Palazzo R-4 MS
Ed Perlmutter D-7 CO
Tom Price R-6 GA
Tom Reed R-29 NY
Peter Roskam R-6 IL
Dennis Ross R-12 FL
Loretta Sanchez D-47 CA
David Schweikert R-5 AZ
Terri Sewell D-7 AL (not confirmed)
Adam Smith D-9 WA
Steve Southerland R-2 FLA
Betty Sutton D-13 OH
Scott Tipton R-3 CO
Allen West R-22 FL
Frederica Wilson D-17 FL
Kevin Yoder R-3 KS

The Wondrous Tale of Brer Lamborn, Brer FOX & Obama the Tar Baby. Uncle Remus and Racism in Colorado Springs.

Posted on August 15, 2011 by Eric Verlo

COLORADO SPRINGS- If US Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO) remembered one thing from the Uncle Remus stories, it was not to touch that Tar Baby! You know, the one Brer Rabbit mistook for a cute black infant who would not tip his hat to his better. Or was that a Porch-Monkey? Colorado’s 5th District is unclear about the distinction if the local media and Fox News are to be believed. Either term refers to a poor person whose sticky problems become your “quagmire” if you ignore your natural prejudice to their skin color and you let them touch you. Can a representative of bigots be bothered to know if a racial slur is offensive? According to Lamborn, he can’t. More important, the congressman reiterates –as he professes his apology to people taking umbrage at racism he hadn’t intended to express– is: NOT TO TOUCH THAT OBAMA!

To be clear, Doug Lamborn hasn’t apologized to his constituents, he’s only claimed to have sent President Obama a letter, assuring all that Obama, the black untouchable, will have the grace to forgive him as “a man of character”.

And so this Uncle Remus tale simply goes on…

The story so far
Lamborn calls black US president a Tar-Baby, public outrage ensues, Gazette newspaper lends support to Lamborn’s excuse that Tar-Baby wasn’t used in racist sense. Protests held by NAACP, community groups and local progressives, all which Lamborn refuses to meet. Lamborn office erects sign NO PROTESTS.

ACT II: Lamborn office calls for his supporters to rally, presumably under the “no protest” sign. His office issues a press release: AP, Fox News, national and statewide outlets report before the fact that LAMBORN SUPPORTERS RALLY. Huffpo and Springs activists scramble to get images of said protest sanctioned despite “no protest” sign, find none. Local TV station KOAA which had depicted rally with a photo, hours before it was alleged to happen, omitted to mention photo was from file, conveniently unfocused and likely of a past year election event.

With every shenanigan, the theme resounds: the Colorado Springs establishment supports what Doug Lamborn said about Obama being a Tar Baby.

Racism in Colorado Springs
No one is in denial about the unsavory support behind Doug Lamborn. So does Colorado Springs support his bigotry?

Does the Tea Party shit in Acacia Park? You should see those clan gatherings, you can’t find a parking space for blocks, then it’s a sea of hate-filled white faces, with Doug Lamborn right there up front.

The comment section of every local media blog overflows with indignation that “Tar-Baby” is being construed to be racist. Commentators assert their preference for Freedom of Speech over Political Correctness.

BTW, Colorado Springs is as segregated as Chicago, with black neighborhoods, churches and schools. Many lives never cross the path of another of different ethnicity, so we’re blameless actually when we conclude there’s no racism here.

Except toward Hispanics, grouped conveniently with illegal immigrants, who don’t count, by definition, according to our favorite definition: legality. Same as used to apply to slaves.

The Pikes Peak region was a hotbed of clan activity in the 1930s, and obviously before that. At the turn of the century, the good folks of Limon had to hold up a lynching, make the poor young black boy wait hours in the November cold because hundreds wanted to come on the train from Colorado Springs to see 16-year-old Preston Porter burned alive at the stake.

Lynchings of Native Americans weren’t even recorded, being as they were, sanctioned as vermin control. It was seldom that white men distinguished themselves by speaking out in defense of Indians. Pikes Peak volunteers rode with Colonel Chivington to commit the Sand Creek Massacre.

Today downtown Colorado Springs boasts a lone statue of an African-American, a William Seymour, among the city notables immortalized in bronze. His is the only likeness made to take off his hat, outdoors, I kid you not.

Speaking of which, that was Tar-Baby’s offense.

Brer Rabbit and the Tar-Baby
Brer Rabbit was passing by the little black figure, and called out a friendly hello. But Tar-Baby wouldn’t answer when spoken to. When he wouldn’t even take off his hat, Brer Rabbit figured he’d teach him a lesson. Apparently, it’s not inappropriate to clobber some status of people if they’ve disrespected you.

Of course that was the only way Brer Fox’s plan was going to ensnare the rabbit, to mire him in the tar.

You might ask, how did Brer Fox know that Rabbit was going to mix it up with the Tar Baby? Would Rabbit have laid his hand on the baby if he’d been white? Would it have mattered if a white baby didn’t answer to his greeting?

Put aside that the Tar Baby expression became a racial slur in itself, the original Tar-Baby character impersonated an African-American child who didn’t show the expected deference to a rabbit.

The accompanying images reflect the changing visual representation of Tar-Baby. He makes his first appearance in an early chapter of the Uncle Remus Tales (as collected by Joel Chandler Harris) called “The Wonderful Tar-Baby Story.” Above is one of the original illustrations by artist A.B. Frost. There Brer Fox creates a “baby” made of tar to lure Brer Rabbit into his clutches.

The next images are from Disney versions. First the animated film SONG OF THE SOUTH, then the children’s books which followed.

Disney famously has not released Song Of The South after its theatrical run. The depictions were too ethnic, and Tar-Baby recalled the black-face entertainment that ought not to have so amused white audiences. Black-face is what passes for a negro face to whites. Similarly, a baby made of tar passes for a negro, but only in exaggeration. Oblivious to many, apparently, is that African-Americans are not by any approximation black. If Brer Fox had made a baby out of milk, would white people confuse its color for their flesh tone?

Disney rewrote the tale for its children’s book series, making the tar baby this time out of glue. Not only that, but they gave him ears to resemble a rabbit. This preempted confusing him for a human baby, black or white. Now Brer Rabbit could be seen taking him for his kin, which of course shifts the premise, and might puzzle some children to wonder why Brer Rabbit is so quick to come to blows.

Uncle Remus
Some will probably ask in earnest: are the Uncle Remus tales racist? No, but their context is complicated. The stories emerged from the plantation South, from storytellers who lived in slavery. The lessons imparted are universal, but the particulars were obviously crafted to help slaves come to terms with their unchallengeable fate. Shall I quote a few passages to see if you get the idea?

Brer Tarrypin, he lay back up dar, he did, des es proud ez a nigger wid a cook possum.
–chapter 10

He scrape it clean en lick it dry, en den he go back ter wuk lookin’ mo’ samer dan a nigger w’at de patter-rollers bin had holt un.
–chapter 17

Dey er mighty biggity, dem house niggers is, but I notices dat dey don’t let nuthin’ pass. Dey goes ‘long wid der han’s en der mouf open, en w’at one don’t ketch de tother one do.
-chapter 27

How about this wrenching bit from A Story of War?

Nigger dat knows he’s gwineter git thumped kin sorter fix hisse’f, en I tuck’n fix up like de war wuz gwineter come right in at de front gate.

From chapter 33: Why the Negro is Black:

ONE night, while the little boy was watching Uncle Remus twisting and waxing some shoe-thread, he made what appeared to him to be a very curious discovery. He discovered that the palms of the old man’s hands were as white as his own, and the fact was such a source of wonder that he at last made it the subject of remark. The response of Uncle Remus led to the earnest recital of a piece of unwritten history that must prove interesting to ethnologists.

“Tooby sho de pa’m er my han’s w’ite, honey,” he quietly remarked, “en, w’en it come ter dat, dey wuz a time w’en all de w’ite folks ‘uz black—blacker dan me, kaze I done bin yer so long dat I bin sorter bleach out.”

The little boy laughed. He thought Uncle Remus was making him the victim of one of his jokes; but the youngster was never more mistaken. The old man was serious. Nevertheless, he failed to rebuke the ill-timed mirth of the child, appearing to be altogether engrossed in his work. After a while, he resumed:

“Yasser. Fokes dunner w’at bin yit, let ‘lone w’at gwinter be. Niggers is niggers now, but de time wuz w’en we ‘uz all niggers tergedder.”

“When was that, Uncle Remus?”

“Way back yander. In dem times we ‘uz all un us black; we ‘uz all niggers tergedder, en ‘cordin’ ter all de ‘counts w’at I years fokes ‘uz gittin’ ‘long ’bout ez well in dem days ez dey is now.

But atter ‘w’ile de news come dat dere wuz a pon’ er water some’rs in de naberhood, w’ich ef dey’d git inter dey’d be wash off nice en w’ite,

en den one un um, he fine de place en make er splunge inter de pon’, en come out w’ite ez a town gal.

En den, bless grashus! w’en de fokes seed it, dey make a break fer de pon’,

en dem w’at wuz de soopless, dey got in fus’ en dey come out w’ite;

en dem w’at wuz de nex’ soopless, dey got in nex’, en dey come out merlatters;

en dey wuz sech a crowd un um dat dey mighty nigh use de water up, w’ich w’en dem yuthers come long, de morest dey could do wuz ter paddle about wid der foots en dabble in it wid der han’s.

Dem wuz de niggers, en down ter dis day dey ain’t no w’ite ’bout a nigger ‘ceppin de pa’ms er der han’s en de soles er der foot.”

And my favorite passage, called Turnip Salad:

“How many er you boys,” said he, as he put his basket down, “is done a han’s turn dis day? En yit de week’s done commence. I year talk er niggers dat’s got money in de bank, but I lay hit ain’t none er you fellers. Whar you speck you gwineter git yo’ dinner, en how you speck you gwineter git ‘long?”

“Oh, we sorter knocks ‘roun’ an’ picks up a livin’,” responded one.

“Dat’s w’at make I say w’at I duz,” said Uncle Remus. “Fokes go ’bout in de day-time an’ makes a livin’, an’ you come ‘long w’en dey er res’in’ der bones an’ picks it up. I ain’t no han’ at figgers, but I lay I k’n count up right yer in de san’ en number up how menny days hit’ll be ‘fo’ you ‘er cuppled on ter de chain-gang.”

“De ole man’s holler’n now sho’,” said one of the listeners, gazing with admiration on the venerable old darkey.

“I ain’t takin’ no chances ’bout vittles. Hit’s proned inter me fum de fus dat I got ter eat, en I knows dat I got fer ter grub for w’at I gits. Hit’s agin de mor’l law fer niggers fer ter eat w’en dey don’t wuk, an’ w’en you see um ‘pariently fattenin’ on a’r, you k’n des bet dat ruinashun’s gwine on some’rs.”

What about “nigger”?
When Russel Means writes of today’s economic and anti-democratic troubles, and addresses America’s newly impoverished middle class by saying Welcome to the Reservation, this is the wisdom I think he’s looking to impart. Welcome to niggerdom, Nigger.

With that word now struck from Huckleberry Finn, the concept of “nigger” becomes harder to grasp and can’t teach us its lesson.

Listen to Uncle Remus talk about what it means to be a lowest class being, beneath the interest of humanity, untouchable, as government functionaries like Doug Lamborn would prefer the underclass laborer remain.

It’s against the moral law for niggers to eat when they don’t work. AND
I ain’t handy with figures, but I lay I can count on one hand how many days it’ll be before [“knocking around” will land you niggers] in the chain-gang.

I suggest you reread that last passage of Uncle Remus in its original. Now I’ll try my hand at the last half of that phrase:

It’s against the moral law for niggers to eat when they don’t work, and when you see them apparently fattening on air, you can just bet that ruination is going on somewhere.

Stubby the tractor warns animal pals: move out now, Stubby’s ready to plow

Posted on August 14, 2011 by Eric Verlo

1963 Whitman Tell-a-tale book by Marion Borden, illustrated by Art Seiden My new favorite children’s book is a 1963 story by Marion Borden, about a little red tractor named Stubby who delays plowing the meadow until all of his wild animal friends have resettled to safety. It’s a comprehensive list, considering the reading level, of the biodiversity displaced by agriculture. How unwitting is the portrayal of man’s clueless arrogance? It’s suggested by the story’s presentation of farming as inherently natural as Manifest Destiny.

“Listen, all! Move out now! Stubby’s here, ready to plow!”

Mr. Rabbit poped out of his burrow. “Thank you, Stubby. I’ll tell my family,” he said.

And Mr. Rabbit, and his wife and four bunnies, seek another meadow in which to burrow.

The gentle relocation is joined by a woodchuck, a pair of song sparrows, a butterfly, two meadow mice, a chipmunk, a grass snake, grasshoppers, crickets, a grass spider, a long parade of ants, a box turtle, and a toad. But when Mrs. Meadowlark tells Stubby that her four babies have yet to learn to fly, the tractor delays his duties until they do.

Naturally Farmer Turnipseed fails to understand Stubby’s hesitation. He has the tractor checked for malfunctions. Fortunately the little meadowlarks grow strong enough to fly before the farmer becomes angry, and work resumes on the farm.

You wonder if children asked in 1963 whether all farmers have tractors as considerate as Stubby. Or whether man need depend on technology to show a requisite respect for nature.

Li’l Abner on the debt ceiling panic

Posted on August 1, 2011 by Eric Verlo

Patterned after GM president Charlie Wilson, who said: what's good for General Motors is good for America When the satiric cartoon Li’l Abner was made a musical on Broadway, robber baron General Bullmoose sang Bring back the good old days, lamenting the regulation of capitalism, pondering:
“How can you break the market?
How?
The SEC will not allow
…one little panic.”
Today with graft unregulated and un-policed, the American public is made to panic for every swindle, to extort from them bank bailouts, tax breaks for the rich, and now cuts to “entitlements” such as poverty class pensions and medical care.

The Li’l Abner strip may not have had the legacy of Pogo, or longevity of Gasoline Alley, but it was the Doonesbury of the 30s and up to the 70s. In the introduction to From Dogpatch to Slobbovia, a little compendium of Abner scenarios, cartoonist Al Capp said this about his artistic intentions:

“to create suspicion of, and disrespect for, the perfection of all established institutions. That’s what I think education is. Anybody who gets out of college having had his confidence in the perfection of existing institutions affirmed has not been educated. Just suffocated.”

Avid fans included Queen Elizabeth, Charlie Chaplin and John Steinbeck who wrote:

Capp is probably the greatest contemporary writer and my suggestion is that if the Nobel Prize committee is at all alert, they should seriously consider him.”

As a side note, the Broadway cast of Li’l Abner included the character Stupefyin’ Jones, played by Julie Newmar aka Catwoman, and Appassionata Von Climax, played by Tina Louise, Ginger of Gilligan’s Island –if you always wondered how the character Ginger could not have failed to be a real “movie star.” Tina Louise began her career on Broadway in the 50s and was age thirty-something when the TV series aired. Imagine green-lighting an actress of that age today to play a sex symbol, yet Louise became as yet TV’s most enduring sex symbol.

French boat Dignite Al Karama first of Gaza Freedom Flotilla 2 to leave port as Greeks try to dash US Audacity of Hope

Posted on June 25, 2011 by Eric Verlo

French humanitarian activists aboard LE DIGNITÉ-EL KARAMEH left Corisca today, bound for Greece, where they will join compatriots in sloop LOUISE MICHEL and the Freedom Flotilla II codenamed “Stay Human” which includes two cargo ships carrying aid to besieged Gaza. The departures of the US AUDACITY OF HOPE and the Canadian TAHRIR are threatened by private complaints of unknown origin, flagging the vessels as unseaworthy, causing Nation reporter Joseph Dana to declare Israeli assault on the Flotilla is well underway.

Aboard the DIGNITY headed for Gaza: Olivier Besancenot, Julien Rivoire, Omeyyaa Sedic, Nicole Kiil-Nielsen, Annick Coupe, Nabil Ennasr, and AFP reporter Quentin Girard.

The second French vessel, the LOUISE MICHEL, named for the famed leader of the Paris Commune.

Tweeting from the already sailing DIGNITY is Thomas Sommer.

Irish activists pose before embarking on “Staying Human” Flotilla 2.

Team Ireland’s MV SAOIRSE whose departure point is being kept secret to circumvent pressure being brought to bear on local port officials, as is happening with the US and Canadian vessels.

USBoatToGaza participants rehearse nonviolent training in anticipation of IDF commando intervention.

Both the Canadian and US organizers are insisting on a media moratorium on images of the TAHRIR and AUDACITY OF HOPE respectively, in hopes of limiting opportunities for sabotage efforts. There is of course the conflicting motive of circulating images as early as possible to have visuals with which to better promote and nurture media interest in the international aid effort.

The Canadian boat TAHRIR will be covered by Toronto journalist Jesse Rosenfeld and Haaretz reporter Amira Haas.

Kill Team shots were censored to keep you from seeing victim was so young

Posted on June 22, 2011 by Eric Verlo

Remember this damning photo, the American GI grinning as he posed with his haphazard victim? You saw the version with the Afghan’s identity obscured, and you thought it was bad enough. Not hardly. The USG pixelated the faces out of respect for the victims we were told — not to keep everyone from grasping how young was this victim, told to stand still while our soldiers lobbed a grenade his way and ducked for cover.

I just got an email from Pres. Obama

Posted on May 11, 2011 by Eric Verlo

I just got an email from President Obama. He wants me to lead. He says the politicians in Washington won’t do their job unless I do their job for them. At face value, that’s just weird. Are constituents to imagine that stump speeches fall by the wayside when the polls close and representatives develop amnesia from which only lobbyists can deliver them? Does anyone really believe that the public has to jump hoops for good governance? Who drinks crap-flavored Kool-Aid?

Pardon my disrespect. Yeah, Obama writes to me directly, and would you believe, often. He’s practically asking my advice on a daily basis, or that’s the impression he gives with his personable tone. Actually it’s strictly a one-way conversation, telling me what to do, offering gentle encouragement, and asking for money. It’s gotten so I can’t differentiate fund-raising from tax-collecting. I confess I’ve tired of inferring that if Obama is running low on fairy dust, it’s because I’m not clapping hard enough.

The problem is I think Obama is wearing thin with all this intra-constituent communication, and he’s delegating too much of the multi-tasks to Dumbama. In today’s letter, Obama wants me to solve an “Immigration Crisis,” his contribution? Boots on the ground.

Did Abraham Lincoln write the Gettysburg Address? That’s always the impression my teachers gave. No Civil Warmongering William Safire of his day laid claim to coining four score nattering nabobs. When did Americans decide their leaders needed ghostwriters? Why do we accept that an Ersatzbama can come across with the same winning sparkle? Because you know the president is not even reviewing these compositions either. He’s got ghost-readers on staff for that.

Alright, so we like our speeches peppered with wit, and we know not even the most luminous television hosts can tread water without a staff of gag-writers. Fine, if celebrities need personal assistants to hold their phones, we can’t begrudge a busy president his showbiz consultants.

But oh my goodness, why would we countenance forged personal emails?! Who wants a Notobama pretending to give us the inside scoop on the President’s daily thoughts? What kind of charade is that for a presidential parade?

And I ask you, have you yet heard Obama answer a simple question, and you’re left wanting to hear more? If I got an email that confided he didn’t believe the crap vetted for the corporate media, that would be a believable email. Instead we all get Minimebama email numbing us with what we know is the web’s potential for a ceaseless stream of digital drivel.

But I’m making quite an ignorant assumption, that we’re all getting the same stupid email. We assume the White House is spamming a consistent message, but maybe it’s highly customized, and for some reason, and I’d better take it to heart, they’ve pegged me as a big idiot.

Colo. College guest Donald Gregg: the man who hired the man who killed Che

Posted on April 13, 2011 by Eric Verlo

He administered OPERATION PHOENIX during the Vietnam War, the CIA counterinsurgency operation which sought to pacify Vietnam with the targeted assassination of thousands of potential insurgents. For Vice President George H. W. Bush’s office, he coordinated the funding of the illegal US covert war against Central America, aka, the IRAN-CONTRA scandal. Yes, he supervised both Felix Rodriguez and Luis Posada, each of CIA-state-sponsored-terrorism fame. But Colorado College introduced Donald P. Gregg only as former national security adviser and ambassador to Korea. And CC gave Gregg an honorary degree — with not a peep from the know-nothings they laud as their exemplary students.

I attended because I was insulted by the lecture’s title: “What do Ho Chi Minh, Saddam Hussein, and Kim Jung Il have in common?” the speaker further slandered the father of modern Vietnam by indulging to associate another villain to the list, that of Muammar al-Gaddafi. But gracefully Gregg acquitted himself by explaining that Ho Chi Minh had been misjudged, and thus perhaps there is call to engage even our most despicable adversaries in dialog, lest we repeat our mistaken policies, as Gregg believes we are doing in Afghanistan.

Not much objectionable with that. Actually, you can read Gregg’s address, it’s virtually word for word the introduction he wrote for a 2009 study of the CIA’s unheralded successes in Vietnam. To his credit, Gregg does not echo the ongoing theme that Vietnam was winnable.

Relating his more recent expertise about Korea, Gregg offers that Kim Jong Il is more than your common loon. Rather, Il is of unusually high intelligence, underrated by the US, driven despotic by his isolation.

Or driven mad by our offense, I’d add. I’m surprised Kim Jong Il tolerates that we name our ambassador in Seoul as the Ambassador to Korea, rather than to South Korea. How dare US-occupied Korea assert to represent the national identity of Korea? As in Vietnam, it’s the north doing the heavy lifting toward inevitable unification.

Gregg nearly had me convinced he was reformed until he added a forth bogeyman for comparison, Iran.

Iran mustn’t get nukes, etc, etc, Ahmadinejad unpredictable, can’t be trusted, etc.

Ho Chi Minh had been demonized Gregg said, based on a wrong-headed anti-Communist domino-theory mindset, yet Gregg is perfectly willing to be stuck to Capitalism’s current mindset against Islam.

Gregg made such winning arguments for tolerance, respect, diplomacy, and the integrity of the best intelligence officers, but isn’t that precisely the neo-liberal spiel? The CC audience lapped it up.

Here was the closest most of us will ever get to someone connected to the murder of Che Fucking Guevara, icon of the world struggle against Western oppression. That’s explaining the obvious, but I’d add, Che’s heroic stature is no more diminished even if only known as a t-shirt image to this crowd.

School-of-the-Americas-trained Rodriguez knew the stature of the hero he was cutting down, to this day he brags about wearing Che’s watch as a keepsake. Rodriguez returned from this assignment with a piece of notebook paper wrapped around the tobacco left in Guevara’s pipe.

Donald Gregg didn’t kill Guevara, but we might have asked him how many youthful Viet Cong he killed or had tortured, etc, how many aspiring Nicaraguan freedom fighters, or Burmese victims, or boys and girls of yet to be named regions, of the CIA’s yet unrevealed adventures in extrajudicial preemptive death-dealings.

All of this may be blood under the bridge, except that the undercurrent of this elder statesman’s lecture tour is beating the drum for confrontation with Iran.

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The Myth of Middle Ground

Tag Archives: Respect

Ft Carson conducts pro forma town hall to clear way for environmental impact of proposed helicopter brigade

Tea Partying with the Freak Brothers

Patrick Henry’s priest would’ve favored Give me liberty, or give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.

If you don’t see Merry Christmas in the window, no, you don’t go in that store! The Star of David used to do that trick.

Birth Pains

George Who?

All in

Colonel Gaddafi meets his killer-to-be. Would you have shaken that hand? I’m talking about Obama’s.

Execution of anti-Western al-Gaddafi suggests he wasn’t strongman enough

Genocide

If it weren’t for the nonviolence sneaks

Stage Magick

Willie and Waylon and Some Other Guy: A story about weed, marriage, and Texas tall tales. Part I

I know where Congressman Lamborn is – because no one is telling OR asking. Re: media blackout on junkets to Israel

The Wondrous Tale of Brer Lamborn, Brer FOX & Obama the Tar Baby. Uncle Remus and Racism in Colorado Springs.

Stubby the tractor warns animal pals: move out now, Stubby’s ready to plow

Li’l Abner on the debt ceiling panic

French boat Dignite Al Karama first of Gaza Freedom Flotilla 2 to leave port as Greeks try to dash US Audacity of Hope

Kill Team shots were censored to keep you from seeing victim was so young

I just got an email from Pres. Obama

Colo. College guest Donald Gregg: the man who hired the man who killed Che