The victims are civilian, most of them women and children, killed with disproportionate force, with the usual un-Islamic effort made to burn the bodies to cover it up. Hell, this could have been an all-American lone-GI “Kandahar Shooting Spree”, if you believe the DoD and don’t want to credit our US Special Forces Death Squads. If only the dead had been peed on or had trophy fingers removed, we’d know for sure. Now President Bashar Assad’s forces are reportedly preventing western “monitors” from either coming upon, or leaving the crime scene, to spin NATO’s nauseatingly regular calling card and frame Assad for the atrocity to justify Western intervention. Said Assad of last week’s massacre of Syrian civilians, it “was the work of monsters” which is codeword for Israelis and their habitual inhumanity toward non-Jewish Semites, but clearly now must include US standard practice as it pursues its global war on Islam.
Tag Archives: shooting
Spinning US atrocities, words matter: shooting sprees & shopping rampages
Headlines about Sunday’s midnight massacre in Kandahar transformed quickly from NATO FORCES RAID to become LONE GUNMAN KILLS 16, as the attributed sources shifted from Afghan locals on the scene to US military spokesmen. One might argue it’s in the interest of national security to attribute the murders in Balandi and Alkozai to a solitary stalker, to tamp the swelling anger of the Afghan populace, but what’s the truth? Making a rare concession, the NYT has revised its headline a 3rd time to read LONE SOLDIER SAID TO BE KILLER OF 16 AFGHANS, and the BBC puts “ACTED ALONE” in quotes. (UPDATE: AP adds “allegedly” and LA Times “apparently”)
Pundits stroke our soldiers’ egos by asking could one special forces soldier alone kill so many (?!), but more difficult to imagine is how a rogue fighter can equip himself and pass through multiple security defenses unobserved. Also doubtful is how and why a stealth assassin would burn the victims’ bodies as he moved about. Easier to believe is that damage control decided it best that one man take the fall for his comrades, God and country, probably the one too drunk to object.
US use of torture on POWs should stop
The U.S. has a long history of torturing its POWs. Torture of POWs is used by many other countries. However its use is denied by many U.S. authorities or government officials. The definition of torture put simply is to cause pain, emotionally, physically, or psychologically. Torture is used to terrify enemies, and hardly ever gains information.
Some examples of the U.S. A. military use of torture on P.O.W.s
Che Guevara
Che Guevara was murdered on October 9, 1967 in Bolivia. He was tortured and killed by Bolivian soldiers trained and equipped by CIA operatives. Che was told he was going to be killed by Felix Rodriguez. He was shot in the legs several times, and put into a dirty schoolhouse. His arms and feet were tied while he lay in the dirt. He lay by the bodies of his dead Guerrilla fighters. The USA tried to cover up his deliberate murder by shooting him in the legs to make it look like he died in battle. He was never given a trial. He was shot nine times.
Philippines war
The Philippine war was a war fought by Filipino revolutionaries and the USA. Waterboarding was one of the main techniques used by the CIA. It was used on Extra Judiciar prisoners.The department of Justice authorized this. Sleep Deprivation and de-sensorizing among other things was used. The use of solitary confinement and confusion is used frequently, prisoners are made to wear blindfolds to cause confusion and panic. Medical treatment is also refused. Bribery, and threats are used to force a confession.
Korean War
The Korean war was fought between South and North Korea. The US occupied the south, while the soviet troops occupied the North.
Vietnam War
Prisoners were put in Tiger cages. Lime was dumped on them, and water was dumped on them after.
Central America
In Nicaragua Somoza tortured people by putting them in cages with lions. Somoza was a dictator backed up by the US military. In Argentina children of communist parents were stolen, while their parents were tortured and killed.
School of The Americas
The CIA distributes an interrogation manual which shows torture techniques to use during interrogations. The manual was used by the CIA to train US-supported Latin American militaries at this school.
Abu Ghraib Prison
Torture has been recently used in Abu Ghraib prison, located in Iraq. Some of the main forms of torture used here are rape, sodomy, water boarding among many others. Military Intelligence has been present during these procedures, and highly encourages it. A prison guard said prisoners receive snake bites for minimum mis-behavior. In the AD. seg units prisoners are dumped into poop and pee.
Afghanistan war
The US invaded, tortured and suffocated thousands of POWs to death.
Officials claim that Torture must be used to gain information. During the presidency of George W. Bush some U.S government officials said that they believed water boarding was not a form of torture. In 2002 the Office of Legal Counsel stated that water boarding wasn’t a form of torture. The OLC said that the reason water boarding was not thought of as a torture was that “In order for pain or suffering to rise to the level of torture, that statute requires it to be severe & water boarding did not cause severe pain or suffering either physically or mentally.” Even though water boarding causes the victim to believe he/she is being drowned.
Torture hardly ever gains information but instead is used to terrorize people so they don’t resist, or to force a confession. Torture is used in interrogations by cops, being put in handcuffs that are to tight is also a less painful form of torture. During the st. Patrick Parade a couple of years ago the police stopped the parade and threw older people on the ground, an old lady was dragged across the pavement and put into handcuffs. She died a couple of months later.
People say that the US doesn’t torture people, because supposedly it is better than that.The fact of the matter is that the USA is the biggest user of torture in the world. It has and will continue to torture its POWs while everyone here says the USA government and military does not torture and has never tortures POWs.
In the Leigh of the Storm
“Because we all share an identical need for love, it is possible to feel that anybody we meet, in whatever circumstances, is a brother or sister. No matter how new the face or how different the dress or behavior, there is no significant division between us and other people. It is foolish to dwell on basic differences, because our basic natures are the same.” — Dalai Lama
So our little Occupy group met with Colorado Springs City Council member Tim Leigh the other night. He came to meet us at our regular haunt, graciously provided by independent local business the Cafe Corto.
Tim is an affable dude, and our meeting seemed to go well, at least in the sense that we were able to develop a rapport with him and come away with a sense of friendliness, if not friendship. Tim is a self-described member of the 1%, an appellation that derives from specific statistics involving wealth which has acquired connotations as a result of Occupy that Tim may not be so quick to embrace. Fact is, i really don’t know enough about the guy to decide for myself whether or not he deserves application of the darker connotations or not. The group at the meeting is as diverse as any formed in October’s Occupy crucible, and as has been characteristic of the movement in general, each in attendance holds individual interpretations of just what Occupy is, and what we mean to accomplish. Good ol’ Thomas, in the course of his regular series of uncontrolled and only marginally civil outbursts, vehemently denied we constitute a “movement.” Others sought mostly to find little political fulcra with which to pry at Tim’s scales, (in case he’s a shape-shifting alien, i suppose). None of this was surprising–we are a group dedicated to disruption of the entrenched, monied status quo, working within a rough framework of fairly aggressive expression worldwide, if nothing else.
Tim weathered the various clods of dirt whipped up by the wind as one might expect from either a politician, which label he denies, or a very rich real estate wheeler-dealer, which would be ludicrous to attempt to gainsay. I don’t have the motivation to dig up lots of facts about Tim Leigh’s business dealings, but we know well enough that his name is on an awful lot of buildings around town, and he lives on a tidy and isolated landscaped lot up on the Mesa, where the houses are all overpriced, the better to keep the riff-raff away. His house is almost certainly bigger than yours. No one is apt to be shocked by those minor revelations. In fact, his now predictable assertions to be “in the same boat” as we would be fairly ludicrous to the casual observer, except that i think he’s right on the money with that one, though perhaps not as he sees it. Thomas asserts that we are an issue-driven–something not a movement–and he’s right about issues, at least in part. Tim is himself in a political position and making plenty of sounds i recognized as definitively politician-like in spite of his disavowals of the label. Focus on issues seems to be relatively comfortable, and certainly easier than addressing the grand thematics that permeate Occupy to the chagrin of some of its more terrestrially grounded aspirants, as well as its critics. As a result our conversation with Tim was often siderailed into issue-oriented lulls, at least in my mind, though i acknowledge the importance of issues as well. I’m just a grand theme kind of guy.
Tim had a few disturbing things to say about a few issues, like his statement that fracking in eastern El Paso county is “inevitable.” He said a few intriguing things as well. I bet he already regrets toying with the notion of giving OCS a building. He even let slip his own secret fears that the whole economic system might collapse. One thing that immediately raised lots of hackles, oddly enough, was his bemused question about the religious orientation of us Occupiers. And there’s the rub. Or at least one big one.
I promised to eschew incidental reporting for a while, and i am. Really. This may seem like reporting, but it’s otherworldly speculation. I suppose Chet will handle specifics well enough. Tim demonstrated a bit of a dichotomy one comes across in the Occupy phenomenon by stressing issues and suggesting ways for us to work with the System to get things to work out our way. This response to Occupy crops up all the time, both externally and internally. I met with a foreclosure working group in Denver last weekend, and spoke with a “constituent advocate” in Senator Michael Bennett’s office last week. The dichotomy arose there as well. The thing is, lots of people, including lots of Occupiers, are trying to figure out how to work within the System, however it may manifest, to change Things for the better. This is the ground where one finds the crossover between Occupy here in America, and the Tea Party. Again, everyone has a different take, but many express the thing as a desire to return to the Constitution, or to reclaim the “American Dream,” “End the Fed,” get money out of politics, or whatever, within a range of tactical thinking from addressing Congress and local pols, through–well, shooting Congress and local pols.
On the other hand, there’s a big batch of us that see the problems Occupy engages as rather beyond systemic reach and veering into if not fully established as spiritual issues. Although some at our meeting took auto-umbrage at Tim’s query, i think he asked the question in good faith, (ahem), and had worked up a rather bemused state for himself about our expression and motivation. Tim, you see, is a “pragmatist,” he says. He works the old system like a farm pump, and out comes serviceable, if foul-tasting, water. We look like Jesus freaks or something, to him, idealistic apotheoses.
We esoteric Occupiers, as one might call us, don’t see any hope at all from within the System, or at best, very little. (I’m willing to entertain the possible viability of the U.S. constitution, for example, if only because of its inherent malleability). We aren’t especially interested in, for example, the slick approach of establishment solutions to the foreclosure crisis where the government throws grease on the banking cartels’ bone-grinding machinery, setting up programs that allow mortgage holders to continue to be pillaged, a little less uncomfortably. Or policies that allow politicians to bray like drunken mules over the reductions in increase (!) in toxic emissions over the next fifty years when we all know damn well that the rate of extinction of species will have the very cockroaches fighting over table scraps soon enough to make fifty years seem a shaky proposition. Or bullshit excuses about some XX-anianstani or another that’s supposed to be aiming another batch of invisible weaponry at us while cartel honchos hop on a plane for Jerusalem so they can watch the fireworks from there, and record their profit and loss at close quarters.
We don’t like the damn crooked, snaky, backstabbing, cheststabbing, competitive, might-give-you-a break-after-i-get-mine-otherwise-fuck-you-and-yours System, and really we figure that even if it sounds ridiculous to many we’ve come to a point where abolishing the System is the only way to save our now tenuous hold on viable life here on Earth. We don’t see much pragmatism in working within the System in an effort to abolish the System. In fact there’s some concern that the thing may collapse on your head, doing it that way. There’s a real sense of unobtainability in working inside the System, akin to the application of Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem i posted earlier. It really seems to us fringe thinkers that the best one can do by working within the System is to expose it’s inherent, indivisible, insuperable bankruptcy.
I’ve been criticized, (by an Atheist that simply couldn’t tolerate discussion of Anything outside his Box), for attaching Undue significance to certain ordinary terms by targeted capitalization. Here in this very post, i’ve capitalized the terms, “System,” and “Things,” in order to attach significance to them that i don’t see as undue. I’m really not so sure what Tim Leigh, or even other Occupiers mean when we bandy those terms about in conversation so very casually. I strongly suspect, though, that their use is far more fluid and troublesome than we notice until we condemn our fellows for misstatements that only derive from failing to recognize one another’s usage. So let me explain that i am not restricting the Terms to ordinary usage involving mere political or financial systems or things, but expect them to be interpreted in a kind of supra-dimensional sense where the mundane is enfolded into a set batch of meaning we can’t really plumb so well.
The point is we need a new System if Things are going to work out for Us. Get it? I’ve often said that i’m part of the 100%. That includes Tim Leigh, whether or not we can trust him. It includes N-eeew-t Grinch-rich. I includes, say, Eric Holder the U.S. AG that has the sheer balls to hire on in his current capacity, straight off the payroll at Covington & Burling where he helped big bankers commit the crime of the millennium. No shit. There’s just no way to trust a guy like that. But we’re all in this boat together, alright, even if some of us are busy drilling holes in the bottom. This System where we steadily compete to see which of us can screw the most of us over simply isn’t working. And i don’t think we can come out any better if we simply rearrange the game board a little so we can screw Holder, instead.
A different Eric, this one a dear friend, says i oughtn’t to hesitate to speak “for Occupy” in the media, and expresses discomfiture when i say i can only speak for myself. But i can’t always speak for everyone. Not all Occupiers agree with the idea that a spiritually oriented reimagining of Human consciousness and interaction–a Paradigm Shift–is central to our focus. But it is, because no political ideology is apt to rescue us from ourselves. We humans have soundly fucked Things up. We have the wherewithal to fix our messes, but only if we completely and utterly rearrange our values. Sometimes we Occupiers still need some rearranging, too, and the business of demolition of our own hoary paradigms and approaches has been uncomfortable already. It’s not so likely to get much easier, either, but here we are at sea together. We’d best all put our drills away.
All these themes are in earlier posts, and i expect they’ll come up again. We esotericists could be wrong about it all. The huge body of science professionals warning of impending and serious environmental dangers could be completely wrong, or even manipulated by power-grabbing globalists, (though that would fall within the scope of this notion of System over system). Being wrong about the imminence of karmic backlash doesn’t negate the ethical reality that we just don’t do each other right. That we’re simply way to caught up with our own rather infantile egos. We really don’t think the numbers are to easily deniable, though, so even though we know this business of attempting to shift the consciousness and motivation of the entire species is absurdly grandiose and improbable, what else can we do? Do or die, it is. And when the whole Thing collapses, hopefully some of us will still be standing. If it does, and we are, Tim, Newt, and Eric are all welcome to stop by for a sandwich, if we still have one. Same goes for those Occupiers alienated by differences of opinion. In the meantime, we mean to fight the Dark aspects of the System tooth and nail, both from within and without.
Tea Partying with the Freak Brothers
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.
Report from the Right Front
I will be the first to point out, right now here in this forum, that I have a Texas-sized ego. I think I’m a reasonably smart guy, and not unlike any writer, that I have some things to say that are so danged important that I’m gonna say them. I’ll also point out that some others in the conversation, possibly including you, gentle reader, have the same handicap. The entire discussion ought to be undertaken with a salt shaker within easy reach ’cause everything anyone has to say ought to be taken with a liberal helping.
This post is an attempt to unravel a bit of a Gordian knot that has tied itself around the politics of “Occupy” movements around the world, and particularly here in Colorado Springs, Colorado, U.S.A. without hacking at it with f-bombs directed at the many possessors of equally large egos as mine, while openly acknowledging strong disagreements between some of us. Believe me, this is a difficult bit of unraveling and though I mean to avoid ad hominem attacks, I’ll not promise to eschew strong language. It’s also a bit of a news update, straight from the horse’s ass, so to speak. Sorry if it runs long or gets complicated; it’s a big hairy knot.
I am the guy that picked up the first no-camping ordinance violation in the city of Colorado Springs. I did this while participating in protests falling under the ill-defined aegis of a group called “Occupy Colorado Springs,” in solidarity with another ill-defined group called “Occupy Wall Street,” and other Occupiers all over the world. In case it’s unclear: there’s no such thing as Occupy Colorado Springs, (OCS). What happened is a few guys, boldly named at the top of the eponymous Facebook page like John Hancock at the bottom of that one famous page, finally got bent enough out of shape to do something about it so they set up a page, and a small camp down at Bijou and Tejon–Acacia Park. They were behind the Wall Street guys and liking what they were about, I came behind them.
There is no club membership, no charter, no bylaws, no nothing to define the Colorado Springs group that might in any way be construed to suggest the thing we are doing at Acacia Park is anything other than a gathering of a bunch of fully leaderless sovereign individuals that happen to share a common distaste at the state of human affairs extant in the world today. Anyone who has known me for any length of time, or has read any of the pages preceding this post will know that this is nothing new for me. I was and remain ecstatic at the development of public expression, both here and globally. I am a free actor in the business of protesting in general, and that involving the city’s no-camping ordinance in particular. I act as a sovereign, as a member of OCS whatever that means, as a citizen of the U.S.A., as a citizen of the World–a member of the human race, possessor of certain unalienable rights, whether those derive from God or not.
I decided to deliberately violate the city ordinance because I believe it exemplifies an aspect of the overall erosion of human rights here and across the globe that has precipitated such widespread uproar. I believe it directly attacks individuals’ right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that it is both superfluous and fully unnecessary. It’s just a mean-spirited dig at the weakest among us, a tactic akin to schoolyard bullying, which I maintain is motivated by the same spirit that allows the holders of power at the Federal Reserve and other powerful international and national bodies to gleefully grind the majority of the world’s citizenry to dust for no more than sport. I meant all along from well before the advent of any Occupations to have this conversation at a level previously unattainable to me, and now we will–that is, I and whomever cares to jump in during the proceedings. I control only my own actions and expressions.
There are some protesters at Acacia Park that have strenuously objected to my camping as I did. They are pleased to maintain the fine relationship with CSPD and with the Mayor’s office that has developed, and happy to have avoided the head-bashing, tear-gassing removals that have troubled some other Occupy outposts. Fearing a narrowing of focus from the general Occupy platforms, they asked me, and truly in some instances pleaded with me to abandon my course. Some attempted to tell me. They are happy to compromise, capitulate, appease, to utilize terms previously utilized by those members opposed to my individual action. I am not. I promise, I love every one of the crazy fools involved with the action at our little street corner whether we agree on this matter or not. I’ll mention this one more time: I am just one dude. Anyone that agrees with me here is also behaving of his or her own accord.
Our Mayor Bach is an asshole. I promised to avoid ad hominem here, and I’ll point out that this is not an attack but an observation, and only my opinion. Publicly, falsely and slanderously maligning the very civilized protesters of OCS for urinating on sidewalks while simultaneously locking park rest rooms which had previously been available to all manner of dope-shooting freaks, and possibly authorizing the operation of park sprinkler systems to douse protesters in below freezing temperatures are asshole moves. In my opinion. Mayor Bach is in error, but he’s only acting as seems best to him in each moment, now also capitulating, and allowing protesters a right to their freedom of speech.
We already have a freedom to speak in our country. My violation of the camping ordinance addresses a deeper, more fundamental set of freedoms mentioned so briefly in Mr. Jefferson’s Declaration, and to be found in all the keening of literature throughout all of history–blowin’ in the wind, one might say. This is not a narrowing of focus, but rather a telescopic lens by which I hope we can examine questions of such grand scale and difficulty that centuries after a bunch of homeless guys floated across the Atlantic to Plymouth, we still haven’t grasped them. failing to address the camping ordinance presenting itself so conveniently will flippantly sidestep the most essential key to all of this whole set of global protesting. We’ve all seen protesters on the street corner a million times. We’ve always compromised. It’s never worked.
Anecdotally speaking, it appears the major objection raised by detractors of the Occupy movement is that there has been no firm expression of goals, manifestos, or demands. It seems to me that this is the natural outcome of the complexity of the problems at hand. Although there are certainly individuals involved in skulduggery at, say, the FED, my view is that we face the necessity to alter a fundamental flaw in our very basis for human interaction. I’ll leave you to read my thoughts on that elsewhere in this blog, if you desire, both previous to this post and to come. Right now the Occupy movement is just an acknowledgement of discomfort with the extraordinarily stubborn status quo across all political and national lines, and a frame work within which discussion may take place. Planning and legal definitions will have to wait for some 7 billion Occupiers to chime in. The difficulty of hashing out the minor disagreements among players here in Colorado Springs may be an indication of how much work is involved with the big picture. Be patient. Unless you like the status quo. Most of us don’t.
For anyone out of the loop, including friends across the U.S. and abroad, here’s a bit of fact: I was arrested 18 October, around 2am MST for deliberately violating a city no-camping ordinance. The arrest was executed by my friends, the extra-fine members of the “HOTT” team of the CSPD, as we had previously discussed, (those guys are just as much in jeopardy from “Wall Street” as any of us; they are our brothers). I was simply driven, sans violence of any kind, or even cuffs or hard feelings, to the Gold Hills police station. We did a little paperwork and the fellas drove me to a friend’s place where I claimed a bit of much-needed rest. The HOTT team and I were completely cooperative with one another, and remain so. They did their jobs, I did mine. I had to wrestle with the question until some family matters came up, but I will not be camping under that no-camping sign again until at least my court date, 8 Nov at 1:30p MST. I can not, nor will I attempt to speak to the actions of any other sovereign actors who may follow my example, other than to toss out my opinion should it seem germane to me.
I hope we can all have this conversation in a civilized manner. I hope the whole world shows up at the courthouse that day. I hope all my friends known and unknown that can’t make it will pray, or chant, or beam love on fairy wings–whatever their fancy. I’m gonna need it. I think we all need it, that day and every other.
–Reprinted from Hipgnosis
Today’s Tom Sawyer
It’s 4am here and this occurred to me strongly enough just now to have me say it just now. For Vic, Ken and the rest of my Christian friends, as well as Michele, Kathryn, and others who get twitchy when I bring up the Bible.
I had breakfast with my friend Vic a little while ago and we had some of this conversation–I mean this conversation. The one we’ve been having if you’ve read any of this stuff around here, or if you’ve been to see me at my Facebook, or on the sidewalk or whatever. Vic is a Christian, and about as solid a practitioner as I’ve ever met. He “works” as a prayer director for one of the internationally influential untaxed Christian pseudo-businesses one might easily enough find scattered around town here in Colorado Springs. Years ago I lived in Lindale, Texas and I used to say Lindale was the buckle of the Bible Belt. Now that some of the big organizations down in Lindale have disappeared due to fraud and embezzlement and the like and some of the people I knew down in East Texas have moved to this very town I sometimes say America’s waistline has risen with age and the buckle has found a home in Colorado Springs.
Anyhow, Vic is an affable guy and a good friend and we had a good time over our platesful of arterial lubrication such as we Americans like to do at breakfast. He said he had read some here on these e-pages–I aaalmost cringed because of a certain propensity of mine. Then I remembered one of the axiomatic rules I’ve taught my kids since they started picking up English: “There’s no such thing as a bad word, only bad timing.” It’s time for this.
Vic said he found some of the thoughts he’d come across here, “interesting,” and mused that I had a bone to pick with “organized religion,” which is true, but hasn’t really come up at hipgnosis just yet, I don’t think. I cringed a bit at having utilized terms like “motherfuckah” while discussing a Bible tidbit known as the Beatitudes from a longer passage known as the Sermon on the Mount. It’s one of those axiomatic rules for lots of Christians, and for many who’ve never set foot in a Christian edifice as well. One finds the passage, (from the book of Matthew, chapter 5, in the Bible, if you’re interested), hanging on wooden plaques and the like in people’s living rooms and over their toilets and chapel entrances all over the world, and I suppose in every tongue still in print. I felt a twinge of embarrassment at the time that I get now and then from writing strongly about such grand subject matter knowing well that I’m no saint myself. So I brushed my way by that one at the time, and we went on with breakfast, and with other portions of the Conversation. That’s why this is for Vic at the top of the page, not ’cause I mean to point him out as a prime exemplar or anything.
I have lots of Christian friends, and I often claim that very appellation amongst them, (though not so often amongst the “Romans”); some of them may now think of me as shooting my own foot as I continue. I also have friends that are occultist dope fiends. They’ll find this bit rather more amusing, I expect, but I’ll implicate myself with them too, when I get a round tuit. This is not about organized religion–it’s personal, you see, and directed at people I know, among others including myself where it applies, by which I mean, “where it applies.” Not, “where it applies unless it’s uncomfortable to apply it there like Mercurochrome or something.”
Christians are full of shit as a defining point–the idea of Christian full-of-shitness is all over the New Testament. Many if not most of them have not the merest clue about their own doctrine and those that do spend hours and hours at intricately complex and totally reducible discussions about irreducible complexity and such while ignoring the business of Love so central to their own foundations. (Recall my comments about pseudo-statements now, if you will). One of the so-called Ten Commandments reads, “Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain,” in that poetic old Frank Bacon English I love so much, (Exodus 20:7, if you give a damn). I’m not gonna dig out a Hebrew lexicon to make this point, and some translations say “misuse” or something instead of “take…in vain”. Whatever. You Christians quit tapdancing and think about this.
Just about any Christian will get at least a little uncomfortable if you say, “God damn it.” There are injunctions in their doctrine warning them away from curses, as well as oaths, unpiloted tongues, and “coarse language”. They don’t so often know the difference and figure this sort of thing for “taking the LORD’s name in vain.” Think about this: When a woman marries a man in most contemporary societies, she takes his name, though this is no longer so mandatory as it had been given the slow and incremental abandonment of the notion of women as property in vogue these days. If a woman, say, marries some patriarchal dude and then goes to work for some pimp on the side, she’s taken Dude’s name in vain. So when Christians do their little tapdancing around points in their own bedrock supposedly established by Gawd Himself and endorsed by His Only Begotten where they’ve not-quite-deliberately, (that’s a dance move called an NQD in the studios, BTW), failed even to drill for pylons, they join the Golden Calf Party, and according to their own lore will be consumed in the fires as they fall through the very fissure in that bedrock I describe here now.
This is the same sort of thing going on when a guy zips up his fly after reading about turning the other cheek and steps out to shoot his quota of Afghans for the day. Or votes a “hawk” into office at his 8-year-old’s school assembly room. Or works up a smokin’ hot head of steam about the crackhead that broke into his garage to feed a real live demon that lives in any crackhead’s pocket and gets real hungry and cranky, (snicker), when its belly is empty. And practicing the sort of bullshit Christianity that allows for this sort of Gene Kelly move is like sailing down the mighty Mississip’ on a flat Tom Sawyer raft made of the concrete that you ought to have been using to build your foundation instead. You’re already at the bottom of the river and the Water of Life is flowing right by your drowned bones.
I’ll be danged…the Sun is coming up over a fine Colorado Sunday morning and I’ve just come to wrapping up a genuine sermon, complete with brimstone. Who’da thunk it?
Pay attention Christian: The World doesn’t hate you because you bring Jesus up all the time. It hates you because you sully a beautiful thing. It hates you because you’re an abject hypocrite, the worst variety of an asshole! And they can smell it, even if they can’t articulate the thought. And none of this is wrong; the fact that it’s coarse is a separate matter. I may have blown my disguise for some…it’s ok, I’m still pretty clear with my own notion of where I stand, and this is for you at least as much as it’s for my own amusement. To paraphrase Gandhi, “I’d be a Christian if it weren’t for the God damn Christians.” That nor any of the above has nothing at all to do with whether I’m actually a Christian or not, nor does it have to do with “religion”, organized or otherwise. It’s about that personal relationship you guys keep talking about. It’s dysfunctional, Yo, and it’s up to you to straighten yours out while I worry about my own.
(Reprinted from Hipgnosis)
Will state of Georgia murder Troy Davis tomorrow in your name racist America?
The state of Georgia is about to murder the likely innocent Troy Davis in somebody’s name. By now you’ve probably been alerted that Davis is scheduled to be executed for the 1989 shooting of a Savannah policeman, despite witnesses having now recanted and another having implicated himself. Supporters are rallying to ask for clemency for Davis, arguing there is insufficient evidence to uphold the death sentence. So far Georgia’s obstinate. A stay of execution has just been denied. Any link to the state’s lion’s share of the nation’s black population behind bars? Or being second only to Mississippi in number of racial lynchings? Since 1882: 492 versus 539, out of total 3,446.
The lynching of Preston John Porter Jr. by a mob from Limon and Colo. Springs
A propos of, let’s
say, LYNCHING.
Colorado
state history records 175+ lynchings, of mostly cattle rustlers and horse thieves. Boosters laud our state’s few (5) racially-motivated lynchings, but in relation to Colorado’s small portion of African- Americans, the incident rate is not insignificant. What’s more, Colorado can tie any state for the worst race lynching ever, when in 1900, along the railroad tracks near Lake Station, black 16-year-old, 130 lb. Preston Porter Jr, innocent and probably mentally feeble, was burned at the stake by a cheering mob numbering over 300.
Lynching describes the physical act of hanging, stringing someone up without inexpedient formalities. In principal lynching means a death sentence without recourse to due justice. And of course, in practice the summary execution is often motivated by racial prejudice. I explain the obvious because today no one appears to acknowledge that US drones over Pakistan, Yemen, et al, are terminating lives based on mere suspicions of being enemies of the state, these are darker skinned lives, with the full enthusiasm of the American TV mob.
Out West, lynchings were rough justice. Everywhere else they were and are hate crimes. Colorado sidesteps having to include the killing of Native Americans as lynchings because those were massacres. One western memoir recounts that “lynch law” was as necessary to keeping peace in the Wild West as were Indian Massacres and shooting wolves.
Preston Porter was a young railroad worker accused of the rape and murder of 12-year-old Louise Frost. After having accused another African-American, three “Mexicans” and a Native American, enraged parties in Limon and Denver settled on Porter. After a week of interrogation, enhanced by trying hypnosis and reading his palm, they coerced a confession.
Next they let the victim’s father decide the manner of death. “Burnt at the stake” was his choice. The mob marched poor Preston to the site of the crime, near what was then Lake Station, and they used a rail for the stake. Preston had no coat but was made to wait for hours in the cold because crowds were delayed getting to the affair by rail from Colorado Springs.
The etching below is reprinted from the Denver Times newspaper article of November 17, 1900. It portrays Porter crying out for the Lord to forgive his tormentors. Don’t think the reporter reflected Porter’s act with sympathy. He wrote: “The great crowd shook with pure enjoyment of the situation.”

Here’s what happened next, as reported by the New York Times:
For an instant the body stood erect, the arms were raised in supplication while burning pieces of clothing dropped from them. The body then fell away from the fire, the head lower than the feet still fastened to the rail.
This was not expected, and for a few minutes those stolid men were disconcerted; they feared that the only remaining chain would give way. If this had occurred the partly burned human being would have dashed among them in his blazing garments. And not many would have cared to capture him again. But the chain held fast.
The body was then in such a position that only the legs were in the fire. The cries of the wretch were redoubled, and he again begged to be shot. Some wanted to throw him over into the fire, others tried to dash oil upon him. Boards were carried, and a large pile made over the prostrate body. They soon were ignited, and the terrible heat and lack of air quickly rendered the victim unconscious, bringing death a few moments later.
All told, the fire took 20 minutes to kill the young black victim.
How was Preston Porter’s ordeal unlike the targets of American aerial assassinations? Americans just heap on the fuel as they burn alive.
EPILOG:
Preston’s executioners left the rail at the site to serve as a warning to other coloreds. Fortunately there wasn’t any trace of it when I made a recent visit. But a docent at the nearby railroad museum knew exactly the incident I was asking about and dismissed me curtly, disgusted with my interest in the matter and refusing to offer any directions to the location. It hadn’t occured to me that Limon’s “native” residents would be related to Preston’s killers. Fortunately another local, not born-and-bred, overherd my inquiry and gave me a lift to a probable starting point.
It wasn’t hard to find. Lake Station was the train stop before the bend at Limon. Before trains, “Lake” was a stage for stagecoaches, providing water to the Butterfield Overland Dispatch heading to Denver. Later it became a “siding” where steam locomotives could take water. After water stops became unnecessary. Lake Station was demolished. Building foundations remain. Its namesake lake dried to wetland long ago.
Victim Louise Frost was returning to her home in Hugo when she was accosted as she drove her surrey across the Big Sandy River where the dry river bed was forded by the old wagon trail. The old trail refers to the famous Smokey Hill Trail which led aspiring prospectors to Colorado gold. Erosion has altered the topography of the dry river but Preston Porter was executed on a rise between the crossing and the railroad tracks.
There is no memorial for the black martyred teen. Nothing marks or commemorates the atrocity. There should and could be. The site of Preston Porter’s death lies adjacent to a protected wetands along the Big Sandy. There’s a nature walk which could easily incorporate a monument. If Limon would own up to the deed.

The Union Pacific Railroad track at Lake Station, looking Southwest toward Pikes Peak.
Navy Seals Death Squids
It does seem unfair to conclude, after the US special forces operation to hunt and kill Osama bin Laden, that all Navy SEAL teams are death squads, but is it a logical fallacy? No one is now pretending there was any other objective but to kill the al-Qaeda leader and everyone who stood in our path, preferably unarmed. Now the latest revelation is that a duplicate assault team was kept at the ready. That’s how many executioners ready? The question becomes, are all Navy Seals trained to kill in cold blood? The answer could lay with the instructors at Fort Benning, the notorious “School of the Americas” where it used to be understood the death squads of South American dictators learned their trade, although now torture is taught at military camps and private contractor schools literally coast to coast, so isn’t that the problem? Torture being among other unsavory practices we say we do not do, while simultaneously forbidding revelations to come from Wikileaks.
When the Germans set their minds to liquidate civilians as their Operation Barbarossa drove toward Russia, they dedicated “special forces” called the “Einsatzgruppen” to do the deed. One because the task detracted from the forward advance, and two, because executing unarmed civilians proved a demoralizing task for the ordinary soldier. On the other hand, gathering noncombatants and shooting them in the back of the head didn’t require combat skills either, so the Einsatzgruppen were recruited from the police force of German cities like Hamburg, where the principle skill was exerting authority and pulling the trigger where others might flinch.
The Einsatzgruppen present vexing evidence for Holocaust deniers. Skeptics can point to inconsistencies about the function of gas chambers in the concentration camps, to suggest that the Nazis might have managed to work their prison laborers to death, but never intended to exterminate them. That argument fails when considering the role of the Einsatzgruppen, to hunt down Jewish civilians, take them to where no one is looking and shoot them. Prisoners of war, yes, and Slavs too, but by primary directive, the Jews.
When partisan acts of sabotage necessitated disciplinary retribution, the Germans had other squads to raze entire villages, these soldiers were chosen from the military brig or from convicts offered a military probation from civilian prison.
In either case the German Wehrmacht chose to match the criminal mindset to the crime. Though overwhelming in its savagery, WWII predated the “Free Fire Zone” where civilians are pretended to be adversaries and/or dismissed as collateral damage.
That’s not to say that today’s soldiers are all bad, many of them I’m sure are earnest peacekeepers determined to win hearts to Pax Americana. I’m sure your average Navy SEAL has rescued his share of kittens from trees.
So which is it, do the Navy SEALs train every member not to shy from shooting defenseless people at point-blank range, or are there designated specialists? Are those chosen based on excellence of performance, as the PR has it, or from among the sailors with disciplinary troubles? Because it’s looking like the bin Laden raid was not out of the ordinary, and no one’s defending it as such.
Bin Laden’s assassination offered a curious ray of hope for me when President Obama’s mission accomplished message was “justice has been served.” Might I dream that bankers and the world’s biggest criminals could feel a draft of discomfort at the idea that no one is untouchable, and the Commander in Chief’s idea of serving justice means a hail of bullets to whomever’s home he chooses.
Don’t worry, there are unspecial forces enough to go around. When Wikileaks released the video of unarmed Iraqis being gunned down by relentless, trigger-giddy helicopter crews, most soldiers acknowledged that such events were commonplace. In the US military, you don’t even have to be a specially rated soldier to rank as Einsatzgruppen.
In my 20-year experience with local policemen, owning two retail stores, soliciting their help with shoplifters, vandals, and whatever disturbances, I can honestly report that all were professional, competent, and very pleasant. That’s 100% of them, very nice people. I can also say that in my experiences protesting, those police-persons who arrested me were unwavering bastards. Also 100%. Not in any particular case the same officers, but statistically, if you compare the two absolute groups, they’re the same people.
With Gaddafi’s TV villain star rising, bin Laden should have seen this coming
I’m sure they would rather have pulled Osama bin Laden from a hole for a 2012 October Surprise, but the US media narrative makers must have figured out that Mumbledore Gaddafi is not proving telegenic enough to upstage the king of Islamic villainy. Now US airstrikes are killing the Libyan dictator’s children and grandchildren, we can’t let a bogeyman win audience sympathy.
The good news for Pakistanis and Afghans is that US drones now have no reason to stalk their skies and Guantanamo can now release the foot-soldiers who’ve lost their leader. If “justice has been done” and the perpetrator of 9-11 has been neutralized, then it’s over, isn’t it? No apparently. Now we’re reminded al-Qaeda is much bigger than OBL, and yet we’ve executed him as if he bore responsibility, AND we’re told that the act may prompt retaliatory violence. So it’s solved what then? Targeted assassination brings no one to justice, it asserts vengeance and perpetuates the cycle. Which of course was OBL’s role all along.
Is it too much to hope that the special forces who found bin Laden’s compound were there to arrest him, to put him under US custody? Killing a person outright has never been considered bringing them to justice, as much as the media and political celebrities seem to be pretending. This was a murder, an extra-judicial targeted assassination, a revenge killing.
Because if Osama had indeed been living in the thick of a Pakistani military controlled zone, and US forces coordinated the operation with Pakistan, it would seem that he could have been apprehended. Our soldiers could have laid siege and at the very worse bin Laden might have killed himself. In such a case there would have been no need to kill the people who lived with him, also not convicted of any offenses.
Apparently an unnamed woman was killed as someone tried to use her as a “human shield.” The principle involved in such a maneuver is that you prevent someone shooting at you because they don’t want to kill an innocent. Apparently American culture’s willingness to sanction “collateral damage” has trumped the usual precaution of avoiding the killing of a person who is not targeted for assassination.
As I watch Americans gather in Lafayette Park near the White House to celebrate the news like some kind of sports victory, I wonder what masses across the seas would gather to celebrate. Would a targeted assassination of our president be received with similar jubilation?
Obviously an American leader would have more blood on his hands. An American Commander In Chief would be culpable by dint of his chain of command, by his public announcements and his stated objectives. Osama Bin Laden’s responsibility hasn’t even been demonstrated, except as a forgone conclusion by media pundits who question nothing of the narrative they’re fed.
The US-UN no-fly no-flee free-fire zone
Forbidding flight is not a pun, but a cruel misnomer –a war crime too by the way– international law forbids shooting a fleeing adversary. Or does aerial flight apply to ground forces and naval vessels? So far enforcement of the Libyan No-Fly Zone extends to flight by tanks, ships, and Command & Control Centers, which may yet be taken to include the C&CC lobes of a dictatorial brain resisting regime change, even if that’s not the UN objective. The first night air-strike on Col. Al-Qaddafi’s home reminded me more of the opening act of Schock N’ Awe Baghdad, than what most expect of a UN peacekeepers’ NFZ. Iraq post Kuwait 1991? Bosnia less Herzegovina 1995? Please! New War Czar Obama trumpeted this declaration of a bombing war on Libya with the same speech Bush used to announce the 2003 Christian Jihad against Saddam Hussein (ongoing). The upside of getting to see a No-Fly Zone for what it is, a military bombing spree in the guise of a UN mission, is for all those humanitarian intervention “activists” who cried for a NFZ in Sudan and Somalia. But those assholes knew what it was obviously because they still never call for one to protect Gaza.
Jeanne Assam, rogue private security shooter, friend of George W Bush, to be honored in Colo. Springs for being gay
T
hat’s it, my romance with the local GLBT community is over. Yes I had some qualms when my fey friends leaned hard on Gay Marriage when it was made a wedge issue in the election of 2004. Yes I rebuffed the campaign against Don’t Ask Don’t Tell because it implicitly encouraged military service in a time of US war crime. But I remained in the fold because I was reminded that equal rights for gays and lesbians are fundamental to the embrace of universal equality. Now my humanitarian tolerance is being tested by having to extend equality to moral-idiocy. Today I received an invitation to a GLBTA gala honoring former Colorado Springs lesbian Jeanne Assam, the most famous lesbian they could tap apparently. Famous for what? The name rang a bell. Assam was the disgraced police officer, redeemed New Life Church security volunteer, who preempted a presumed massacre by a teen abused-churchgoer come home to roost. He was bent on an armed rampage, but does that excuse Assam shooting him from a concealed position, without even an attempt at apprehension? Local GLBTA leaders think it does apparently, and maybe it’s no surprise then that they chose this photo to promote the event. Now I admit, next to preemptive war criminal George W. Bush, Jeanne Assam is an angel, even in sexuality-irrelevant Officer Unfriendly Ray-bans. But I say it’s time local GLBTA leaders give thought to showing equal consideration for the people of conscience community.
Palin signed off on Giffords shooting, grizzly lipstick plot to direct gunmen
AZ representative Gabrielle Giffords was one of twenty crosshairs on Sarah Palin’s checklist directing political assassinations.
Whether Jared Lee Loughner was a lone gunman, or in a TP or al-Qaeda cell, shouldn’t the DOJ investigate the grizzly mastermind who is inciting these acts? While they’re at it, Vice President Biden for illegally targeting Wikileaks’ Julian Assange, and Boss Obama who commands extrajudicial assassinations via military/CIA drones. If this was a GPS map of Pakistan the “unhinged shooters” would be Predator Drone operators.
Michael Moore tweeted these interesting links:
Dem Rep Giffords shot in head in Az. Sarah Palin had put CROSSHAIRS/ BULLSEYE on Giffords on her website! OUTRAGE!
When Rep Giffords voted in favor of health care bill, her office in Tucson was attacked & vandalized.
Palin “set gun sights on 20 Dems (including Giffords).” Palin site now seems 2 b 2 taking down crosshairs map!
In 2009, another gun nut showed up where Rep Giffords was speaking (at another Safeway) & dropped his gun
Giffords opponent held June event 2 “Shoot a Fully Automatic M16” to “Get on Target” & “Remove Gabrielle Giffords”
When Palin put crosshairs on a map w/ Rep. Giffords & 19 other Dem congressmen/women, she urged followers to “reload” & “aim” for Democrats.
Stunning admission by Tucson sheriff: Arizona “a mecca” of hate & bigotry which unhinges the unbalanced Wow.
Christina Green was the 9yr old killed. She was born on 9/11. Was on student council & only girl on baseball team.
If a Detroit Muslim put a map on the web w/crosshairs on 20 pols, then 1 of them got shot, where would he b sitting right now? Just asking.
Who’s pushing for a Colorado Springs mayor impervious to the will of voters?
COLORADO SPRINGS- News on the local election PR front: The Strong Mayor ballot measure is now being pitched as the “Elected Mayor” initiative. Perhaps quite a few voters in Colorado Springs might easily be convinced that we don’t have that already, rationalizing that Mayor Lionel Rivera could not possibly reflect the community’s best.
I ran into a friend of mine downtown this morning, working on a commercial shoot to interview supporters of the aforementioned mayoral reform. They were consulting people on the street, in theory, and he asked if I’d like to be interviewed.
I laughed, “you don’t want me, I’m absolutely against it.”
“You don’t want an elected mayor” he asked.
“I’d prefer an entire city council be held accountable to its constituents. How is that less democratic than a lone ‘elected’ mayor? Right now, the developers and business cronies have to back a whole council worth of officials. They want the ‘strong mayor’ scenario so they’ll only have to buy one vote.”
A chatty tv-blonde local-news type who might have been rethinking fitting me up for a microphone chimed in “Wow, I’ve never heard that perspective before.”
“Really?” I asked with earnestness meant to imbue my incredulity as a put-down.
“I’m from Denver” she answered by way of excusing her apolitical incuriosity, and she backed away.
Though it was a Denver Agency shooting the ad, a crew member immediately noted that one of the area’s wealthiest developers just passed by to get a coffee. As I left the scene, I clocked another tanned, linen-attired real-estate mogul on his cellphone, casually overseeing the shoot from the furthest table.
White cop cops manslaughter verdict for shooting Oscar Grant in the back
Family of killer cop victim Oscar Grant appealed for calm after officer given Involuntary Manslaughter verdict. How likely would it be that Oakland would riot with court having reaffirmed that police can murder with impunity?
GI quadruple amputee’s hobby: guns. Army needs a prosthetic for PTSD.
Wounded Army Specialist Brendan Marrocco was this weekend’s NYT front page testimonial to the resilience of US soldiers. The VA is finally acknowledging amputee-counts apparently, so we now learn that 988 veterans have lost limbs in Iraq and Afghanistan. Specialist Marrocco lost all four, but is learning to get around. He can walk for stints of up to 15-minutes, and his favorite pastime? Shooting guns.
With Daniel Pearl Act, US warns others to respect press freedoms, of WSJ only
President Obama signed off on the Daniel Pearl Freedom of Press Act, surrounded by friends and colleagues of the former WSJ reporter who was slain in pursuit of al-Qaeda, while infiltrating Pakistan as if working for one of America’s loudest War-on-Islam propaganda drummers wasn’t pushing it. Taking the theme of don’t-kill-journalists at face value however, are there provisions in the act to exclude the US and its allies?
Because our forces have intimidated or outright killed I think what amounts to the high score of journalists in our war zones. If we’re concerned exclusively with reporters who’ve been decapitated, I’m sure those victims of our high caliber overkill outnumber Daniel Pearl too.
No, I suppose we’re only talking about protecting our journalists, the embeds, the only ones of which we approve. What have embeds proven to be but the new Army Press Corps? This is the same indemnity we claim for our soldiers. Try to shoot one of those and we obliterate entire clans based on rumors of who did it. If we capture someone alive, we put them on trial for combating us illegally. We dismiss laws of war that spell out that belligerents may only shoot at opponents shooting back. If they’re unarmed, or surrendering, or leaving the battle unarmed, or eating dinner with their family, they are not fair game. But we do it, and when journalists try to document our crimes we kill them.
Daniel Pearl worked for the WSJ. It’s the leading Neocon pro-war mouthpiece, only just ahead of the NY Times and the Washington Post, among newspapers with authority. If Pearl’s tracking of al-Qaeda didn’t help US intelligence outright, his reports were certainly serving the war propaganda machine.
When the Jewish community highlights the plot line that Pearl was killed because he was a Jew, it unveils a purposeful vaguarity the Israeli lobby likes to pretend is a distinction between American Jews and Zionists. The argument has it that all Jews may or may not support Israel, and yet critics of Zionism are accused of being anti-Semitic. Because, I’ll assert, AIPAC, the ADL and Simon Wiesenthal are determined to behave as if they have everyone’s support. Was Daniel Pearl a Zionist, he worked for it, and aimed to assail its declared arch-enemy under the pretext of journalist objectivity.
You can’t make the same accusation of the independent journalists being silenced wherever our military is operating. In our own country America is even keeping its own photo-journalists from being able to document the oil spill in the gulf.
The Daniel Pearl Act mandates that reports of inhibitions to journalists, especially if they are suspected of being systemic, be investigated and condemned with all the ensuing world police bells and whistles. I think that language smacks of the mandate to label “genocide” only where the US sees it.
Darfur, for example. Or the Balkans. Examples with which few fellow nations agree. To justify our interviention. Never Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, and of course I could go on.
This ACT is a political weapon of semantics to pretend right is on our side, Orwellian doublespeak to ordain preemptive drone attacks.
If President Obama had meant this legislation to address freedom of the press sincerely, he would have appended the names of all the journalists who we’ve killed, ourselves or by proxy. The list would have run into the footnotes, and it would have meant investigating ourselves. Not going to happen.
US inhumanity maxed at Azimuth Limit
“Light ’em all up. Come on, fire!” Watching the leaked combat footage of the helicopter gunships killing unarmed Iraqi civilians in 2007, I’m troubled by my own desensitized response. When I saw earlier leaked videos of an AH-64 vaporizing Iraqi farmers and a C-130 wreaking mayhem in Afghanistan, I remember my real shock at seeing a human life extinguished. This time not even flinch. “Just fuckin’, once you get on ’em just open ’em up.” Not at the brutality, nor the callousness of the play by play –even as the pilots targeted rescuers trying to help the wounded. I fault the Rules of Engagement that allowed the massacre, not the soldiers’ laughing swagger –as I hope they will not begrudge my unguarded satisfaction when eventually spectators will be treated to leaked footage of American soldiers taking some fire.
If you watched the video, perhaps you too were wishing that July 12, 2007 had recorded a massive setback for US troops in Iraq, at the height of the “surge” where a whole shitload of “dismounts” had been ambushed by IED explosions in a Baghdad square in the aftermath of a civilian massacre. Those who watched the 39-minute extended version I know were hoping to see a resolution like that, instead of an additional war crime of disproportional force and the targeting of civilians, a Hellfire missile attack on a building into which armed and unarmed men had entered, surrounded by passing innocents and rescuers scrambling to help.
There it goes! Look at that bitch go!
Patoosh!
Ah, sweet!
Need a little more room.
Nice missile.
Does it look good?
Sweet!
The Army has declared that no further inquiry will be made into the 2007 killing of the two Reuters journalists. Its FOIA requests long thwarted, even Reuters is not expressing outrage at this footage.
The corporate media is hoping to let this story fade on the fringe. Does this mean that more pilots and gunners might become emboldened to leak other trophy reels? It doesn’t take Nelson Ratings for news outlets to see that viewers are already clamoring for more combat snuff films.
We could grant amnesty in exchange for those who turn in the most degenerate sequences.
And pretend they’ll remain anonymous. Ultimately friends and relatives will be able to place identities with the radio voices. Speaking on one of the clearest channels is the young voiced HOTEL-26, who reported taking fire from the photographers and ID’d the “RPG” with started the whole engagement. Likewise the gunner on CRAZY HORSE-18 who responded “Alright, hahaha, I hit ’em….” is addressed “God damn it, Kyle.”
And then there’s the poor 30mm gunner in CRAZY HORSE-19 who assessed his work thus:
Oh yeah, look at that. Right through the windshield! Ha ha!
While chomping at the bit to fire upon the improvised ambulance, he was momentarily thwarted by a puzzling “Azimuth Limit” which prevented his shooting.
Bloggers are now abuzz to decode the Azimuth Limit which slowed the turkey shoot when none of the gunners were showing restraint. Azimuth is the angular measurement of an object’s distance clockwise from True North. On rifles it expresses the adjustment of a gunsight to its boresight. On aircraft it apparently has something to do with the angle of relation to the axis of the fuselage. Whatever it is, maybe we can ratchet military Azimuth Limits down flat, if that’s what it will take to stop our soldiers from blowing away civilians, journalists, children and their rescuers alike. The shooters can cuss and salivate all they want so long as their trigger mechanisms respect human life or at least balk at excessive carnage.
What doesn’t come across the audio is what the US soldiers on the ground are saying to themselves as they survey “that big pile of [unarmed] bodies,” in their palaver, the “dead bastards.”
UPDATE — the testimonials begin:
From Iraq war veteran Michael Prysner, co-founder of March Forward!
The harrowing Apache footage released by WikiLeaks gives us a stomach-turning glimpse of war. Seventeen minutes of cold-blooded massacre in a war of more than seven years. A brief clip of one Apache video; a quick look at one part of one mission. Hundreds of those missions take place every day.
The video came to light thanks to military whistleblowers who provided it to WikiLeaks together with supporting documents. Imagine if we had access to all such videos, the things we would see. Imagine all the Iraqis killed who have no one to uncover the truth about their deaths. Had the death of two Reuters news staffers not generated interest in this video, then the destruction of three families by hellfire missiles fired into an apartment building with no provocation, in a separate engagement also featured in the video, would have never been made public.
This massacre is a drop in a sea of blood. Many other such “incidents” will never be known.
Officers claimed there was “no question” that the pilots were responding to enemy fire; the video shows there is no question that they were not responding to enemy fire. They said that they had “no idea” how the journalists were killed; the video shows that they know very well how those journalists were killed. They were gunned down standing in a crowd of unarmed people.
After the slaughter of that group, the pilots beg for permission to kill the innocent passers-by who had come to the aid of one of the wounded, like any of us would have done if we saw our neighbor dying on the ground as we drove down the street. They kill everyone trying to help the dying journalist, and critically wound two children seen sitting in the front seat.We see a group of unarmed men mowed down by a machine gun designed to destroy armored vehicles. We see a vanload of good Samaritans obliterated for trying to help a dying victim. We see all this with the soundtrack of the pilots mocking the dead, congratulating each other and laughing about the massacre.
No wonder the U.S. military goes to such great lengths to keep such videos from us. They want us to see Iraq and Afghanistan through their lens, through their embedded reporters, filtered by censorship and restrictions. They know that, once the people of this country see the extreme racism and brutality behind these occupations, they will be repulsed by what their tax dollars are paying for.
The military brass and the White House politicians have tried to justify this senseless atrocity. “Cut the pilots some slack. This was in Baghdad. This was a battle zone”—that’s been their line. The pilots had been indoctrinated with the same colonial mentality. “That’s what they get for bringing their kids into battle,” one pilot says.
The father driving that van was not “bringing his kids into battle.” He was bringing them to school, driving down the street where they live. But the U.S. occupation has made all of Iraq a battle zone. To those pilots, to their commanders over the radio and to the generals in the Pentagon, every single person in Baghdad and in Iraq is “fair game.”
The pilots joked about the people they killed, laughed about U.S. military vehicles running over dead bodies, knowing that their commanders were listening and that they were being recorded. They were not acting out of character. This is the culture of the occupation. This is how these wars are being conducted.
Having seen this, one cannot honestly believe that these atrocities are committed day in and day out for the liberation of the Iraqi people.
The Pentagon’s talking heads and media lackeys are hard at work putting their spin on this story. It’s time to tell the truth. For more than seven years, the U.S. has unleashed criminal, unprovoked aggression against the people of Iraq, and they have been doing the same thing in Afghanistan for more than eight years.
The U.S. military presence in Iraq is a colonial occupation force. The only way forward is a complete, immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Iraq and Afghanistan. This government will not do that unless all of us who are outraged by these criminal acts stand up and demand it.
Iraq war veteran Josh Stieber, US Army Specialist, 1st ID, Bravo Company 2-16 in Baghdad (Rustamiyah) 2007-2008. Although he was not present at the scene of the video, he knows those who were involved and is familiar with the environment.
A lot of my friends are in that video. After watching the video, I would definitely say that that is, nine times out of ten, the way things ended up. Killing was following military protocol. It was going along with the rules as they are.
If these videos shock and revolt you, they show the reality of what war is like. If you don’t like what you see in them, it means we should be working harder towards alternatives to war.
?
Yeah look at those dead bastards. Nice.
Here’s the Wikileaks decrypted Apache AH-64 combat footage of 2007 collateral murder of Iraqi civilians including two journalists, wounding two children.
Wikileaks is tweeting the ensuing developments. Democracy Now has interviews recorded the day after July 12, 2007 by Big Noise Films.
We have individuals going to the scene, looks like possibly uh picking up bodies and weapons.
Let me engage.
Roger, hey, we need to stop that.
Can I shoot?
Request permission to engage.
Picking up the wounded?
Yeah, we’re trying to get permission to engage.
Come on, let us shoot!
They’re taking him.
We have a Black SUV err, Bongo Truck picking up the bodies.
Fuck.
Request permission to engage.
Engage.
Transcript from the Full video:
00:03 Okay I got it.
00:05 Last conversation Hotel Two-Six.
00:09 Roger Hotel Two-Six [Apache helicopter 1], uh, [this is] Victor Charlie Alpha. Look, do you want your Hotel Two-Two two el-
00:14 I got a black vehicle under target. It’s arriving right to the north of the mosque.
00:17 Yeah, I would like that. Over.
00:21 Moving south by the mosque dome. Down that road.
00:27 Okay we got a target fifteen coming at you. It’s a guy with a weapon.
00:32 Roger [acknowledged].
00:39 There’s a…
00:42 There’s about, ah, four or five…
00:44 Bushmaster Six [ground control] copy [i hear you] One-Six.
00:48 …this location and there’s more that keep walking by and one of them has a weapon.
00:52 Roger received target fifteen.
00:55 K.
00:57 See all those people standing down there.
01:06 Stay firm. And open the courtyard.
01:09 Yeah roger. I just estimate there’s probably about twenty of them.
01:13 There’s one, yeah.
01:15 Oh yeah.
01:18 I don’t know if that’s a…
01:19 Hey Bushmaster element [ground forces control], copy on the one-six.
01:21 Thats a weapon.
01:22 Yeah.
01:23 Hotel Two-Six; Crazy Horse One-Eight [second Apache helicopter].
01:29 Copy on the one-six, Bushmaster Six-Romeo. Roger.
01:32 Fucking prick.
01:33 Hotel Two-Six this is Crazy Horse One-Eight [communication between chopper 1 and chopper 2]. Have individuals with weapons.
01:41 Yup. He’s got a weapon too.
01:43 Hotel Two-Six; Crazy Horse One-Eight. Have five to six individuals with AK47s [automatic rifles]. Request permission to engage [shoot].
01:51 Roger that. Uh, we have no personnel east of our position. So, uh, you are free to engage. Over.
02:00 All right, we’ll be engaging.
02:02 Roger, go ahead.
02:03 I’m gonna… I cant get ’em now because they’re behind that building.
02:09 Um, hey Bushmaster element…
02:10 Is that an RPG [Rocket Propelled Grenade]?
02:11 All right, we got a guy with an RPG.
02:13 I’m gonna fire.
02:14 Okay.
02:15 No hold on. Lets come around. Behind buildings right now from our point of view. … Okay, we’re gonna come around.
02:19 Hotel Two-Six; have eyes on individual with RPG. Getting ready to fire. We won’t…
02:23 Yeah, we had a guy shoot—and now he’s behind the building.
02:26 God damn it.
02:28 Uh, negative, he was, uh, right in front of the Brad [Bradley Fighting Vehicle; an tracked Armored Personal Carrier that looks like a tank]. Uh, ’bout, there, one o’clock. [direction/orientation]
02:34 Haven’t seen anything since then.
02:36 Just fuckin’, once you get on ’em just open ’em up.
02:38 All right.
02:40 I see your element, uh, got about four Humvees [Armored cars], uh, out along…
02:43 You’re clear.
02:44 All right, firing.
02:47 Let me know when you’ve got them.
02:49 Lets shoot.
02:50 Light ’em all up.
02:52 Come on, fire!
02:57 Keep shoot, keep shoot. [keep shooting]
02:59 keep shoot.
03:02 keep shoot.
03:05 Hotel.. Bushmaster Two-Six, Bushmaster Two-Six, we need to move, time now!
03:10 All right, we just engaged all eight individuals.
03:12 Yeah, we see two birds [helicopters] and we’re still fire [not firing].
03:14 Roger.
03:15 I got ’em.
03:16 Two-six, this is Two-Six, we’re mobile.
03:19 Oops, I’m sorry what was going on?
03:20 God damn it, Kyle.
03:23 All right, hahaha, I hit [shot] ’em…
03:28 Uh, you’re clear.
03:30 All right, I’m just trying to find targets again.
03:38 Bushmaster Six, this is Bushmaster Two-Six.
03:40 Got a bunch of bodies layin’ there.
03:42 All right, we got about, uh, eight individuals.
03:46 Yeah, we got one guy crawling around down there, but, uh, you know, we got, definitely got something.
03:51 We’re shooting some more.
03:52 Roger.
03:56 Hey, you shoot, I’ll talk.
03:57 Hotel Two-Six; Crazyhorse One-Eight.
04:01 Crazyhorse One-Eight; this is Hotel Two-Six. Over.
04:03 Roger. Currently engaging [fighting/shooting at] approximately eight individuals, uh KIA [Killed In Action], uh RPGs, and AK-47s.
04:12 Hotel Two-Six, you need to move to that location once Crazyhorse is done and get pictures. Over.
04:20 Six beacon gaia.
04:24 Sergeant Twenty is the location.
04:28 Hotel Two-Six; Crazyhorse One-Eight.
04:31 Oh, yeah, look at those dead bastards.
04:36 Nice.
04:37 Two-Six; Crazyhorse One-Eight.
04:44 Nice.
04:47 Good shoot.
04:48 Thank you.
04:53 Hotel Two-Six.
04:55 Hotel Two-Six; Crazyhorse One-Eight.
05:03 Crazyhorse One-Eight; Bushmaster Seven. Go ahead.
05:06 Bushmaster Seven; Crazyhorse One-Eight. Uh, location of bodies, Mike Bravo five-four-five-eight eight-six-one-seven [military map grid reference].
05:15 Hey, good on the uh…
05:17 Five-four-five-eight eight-six-one-seven [map grid reference]. Over.
05:21 This is Crazyhorse One-Eight, that’s a good copy. They’re on a street in front of an open, uh, courtyard with a bunch of blue uh trucks, bunch of vehicles in the courtyard.
05:30 There’s one guy moving down there but he’s uh, he’s wounded.
05:35 All right, we’ll let ’em know so they can hurry up and get over here.
05:40 One-Eight, we also have one individual, uh, appears to be wounded trying to crawl away.
05:49 Roger, we’re gonna move down there.
05:51 Roger, we’ll cease fire.
05:54 Yeah, we won’t shoot anymore.
06:01 He’s getting up.
06:02 Maybe he has a weapon down in his hand?
06:04 No, I haven’t seen one yet.
06:07 I see you guys got that guy crawling right now on that curb.
06:08 Yeah, I got him. I put two rounds [30mm cannon shells] near him, and you guys were shooting over there too, so uh we’ll see.
06:14 Yeah, roger that.
06:16 Bushmaster Thirty-Six Element; this is uh Hotel Two-Seven over.
06:21 Hotel Two-Seven; Bushmaster Seven go ahead.
06:24 Roger I’m just trying to make sure you guys have my turf [area], over.
06:31 Roger we got your turf.
06:33 Come on, buddy.
06:38 All you gotta do is pick up a weapon.
06:44 Crazyhorse this is Bushmaster Five, Bushmaster Four break. We are right below you right time now can you walk us onto that location over.
06:54 This is Two-Six roger. I’ll pop flares [drop flares]. We also have one individual moving. We’re looking for weapons. If we see a weapon, we’re gonna engage.
07:07 Yeah Bushmaster, we have a van that’s approaching and picking up the bodies.
07:14 Where’s that van at?
07:15 Right down there by the bodies.
07:16 Okay, yeah.
07:18 Bushmaster; Crazyhorse. We have individuals going to the scene, looks like possibly uh picking up bodies and weapons.
07:25 Let me engage.
07:28 Can I shoot?
07:31 Roger. Break. Uh Crazyhorse One-Eight request permission to uh engage.
07:36 Picking up the wounded?
07:38 Yeah, we’re trying to get permission to engage.
07:41 Come on, let us shoot!
07:44 Bushmaster; Crazyhorse One-Eight.
07:49 They’re taking him.
07:51 Bushmaster; Crazyhorse One-Eight.
07:56 This is Bushmaster Seven, go ahead.
07:59 Roger. We have a black SUV-uh Bongo truck [van] picking up the bodies. Request permission to engage.
08:02 Fuck.
08:06 This is Bushmaster Seven, roger. This is Bushmaster Seven, roger. Engage.
08:12 One-Eight, engage.
08:12 Clear.
08:13 Come on!
08:17 Clear.
08:20 Clear.
08:21 We’re engaging.
08:26 Coming around. Clear.
08:27 Roger. Trying to uh…
08:32 Clear.
08:35 I hear ’em co.. I lost ’em in the dust.
08:36 I got ’em.
08:41 I’m firing.
08:42 This is Bushmaster Forty got any BDA [Battle Damage Assessment] on that truck. Over.
08:44 You’re clear.
08:47 This is ah Crazyhorse. Stand by.
08:47 I can’t shoot for some reason.
08:49 Go ahead.
08:50 I think the van’s disabled.
08:53 Go ahead and shoot it.
08:54 I got an azimuth limit for some reason [gunner moved gunsight too far]
09:00 Go left.
09:03 Clear left.
09:15 All right, Bushmaster Crazyhorse One-Eight.
09:20 A vehicle appears to be disabled.
09:22 There were approximately four to five individuals in vehicle moving bodies.
09:28 Your lead Bradley should take the next right.
09:31 That’s cruising east down the road.
09:34 No more shooting.
09:38 Crazyhorse; this is Bushmaster Four. We’re moving a dismounted element [troops] straight south through the Bradleys [tanks].
09:44 I have your Elem- uh, Bradley element turning south down the road where the engagements were.
09:53 Last call on station’s uh Bradley element say again.
09:56 Roger this is Crazyhorse.
09:58 Your lead Bradley just turned south down the road where all the engagements [shooting] happened.
10:03 Should have a van in the middle of the road with about twelve to fifteen bodies.
10:11 Oh yeah, look at that. Right through the windshield!
10:14 Ha ha!
10:16 All right. There were uh approximately four to five individuals in that truck, so I’m counting about twelve to fifteen.
10:24 I would say that’s a fairly accurate assessment so far.
10:27 Roger that.
10:29 I want to just be advised Six, Bushmaster Six are getting mounted up right now.
10:35 Okay, roger. Hey, we can’t flex down that road towards that, uh, where Crazyhorse engaged.
10:43 So, uh, I don’t know if you want us to do so or stay put. Over.
10:46 Why can’t they go down there?
10:56 I think we whacked [killed] ’em all.
10:58 That’s right, good.
10:59 This is Hotel Two-Six.
11:03 Hey you got my dismounted element [troops] right there over to your left.
11:06 Roger, I see ’em.
11:11 Hey yeah, roger, be advised, there were some guys popping out with AKs behind that dirt pile break.
11:19 We also took some RPGs off, uh, earlier, so just uh make sure your men keep your eyes open.
11:26 Roger.
11:27 And, uh, Bushmaster ahead are, uh, Hotel Two-Six; Crazyhorse One-Eight.
11:33 Crazyhorse One-Eight; this is Hotel Two-Six.
11:35 Yeah Two-Six; Crazyhorse One-Eight.
11:37 Uh, location I have about twelve to fifteen dead bodies.
11:42 Uh, where else are we taking fire from?
11:48 Currently we’re not being engaged, ah, but just south of that location. Break.
11:55 You should see dismounted elements with Humvees [armored cars] moving to the east, over.
12:01 This is Crazyhorse One-Eight; we have elements in sight.
12:05 Bushmaster Three-Six.
12:07 I’m gonna get down a little lower.
12:09 All right.
12:10 I’m gonna come down a little lower and take a quick gander.
12:13 Roger that.
12:14 Six; this is four. We’re headed to the area where Crazyhorse engaged.
12:26 Bushmaster Six; this is Hotel Two-Six.
12:28 Request to go to the south to our original BP so if you flushed them to the south we will be there to uh intercept over.
12:39 Hey this is Bushmaster Seven; we’re coming up on B… on the ass end of the Brads [tanks].
12:54 Hey uh, Bushmaster Element; this is Copperhead One-Six break.
13:00 We’re moving in the vicinity of the engagement area and looks like we’ve got some slight movement from ah, the ah van that was engaged.
13:06 Looks like a kid. Over.
13:11 This is Bushmaster Seven, roger. Uh, we’re about a hundred meters behind you.
13:16 Got that big pile, to the right?
13:18 Roger, you gonna pull in here? Do you want me to push stuff so you can, uh, get clear of it?
13:21 Right on the corner?
13:22 What’s that?
13:23 Got that big pile of bodies to the right, on the corner?
13:24 Yeah, right here.
13:25 We got a dismounted infantry and vehicles, over.
13:30 Again, roger.
13:31 And clear.
13:48 There’s the Bradley right there.
13:51 Got ’em.
14:00 Hotel two-six; are you uh at this grid over?
14:05 Yeah I wanted to get you around so didn’t you just get that one dude to scare them all away. It worked out pretty good.
14:11 I didn’t want those fuckers to run away and scatter.
14:12 Yeah.
14:15 Bushmaster Six; Hotel Two-Six. Roger, we linked up with our two element they are all mounted up in our trucks break.
14:23 We moved south so that we could ah possibly intercept personnel being flushed south. So we are vicinity Fifth Street.
14:30 And ah please line Gadins. Over.
14:37 Bring the trucks in, cordon this area off.
14:39 Can we move the Bradley forward so we can bring trucks in and cordon off this area.
14:44 If the Bradleys could take the south cordon, that could help out a lot.
14:53 Bushmaster or element. Which Element called in Crazyhorse to engage the eight-elem- eight-men team on top of a roof.
15:02 Bushmaster Six; this is Hotel Two-Six. Uh, I believe that was me.
15:07 They uh had AK-47s and were to our east, so, where we were taking small arms fire. Over.
15:20 Hotel Crazyhorse One-Eight.
15:26 Crazyhorse One-Eight; this is Hotel Two-Six.
15:28 Yeah Two-Six. One-Eight I just also wanted to make sure you knew that we had a guy with an RPG cropping round the corner getting ready to fire on your location.
15:36 That’s why we ah, requested permission to engage.
15:40 Ok, roger that. Tango mike.
15:46 Hotel Two-Six; do you understand me, over?
15:51 I did not copy last, uh, you got stepped on. Say again please?
16:00 They cordoned off the building that the helicopters killed the personnel on.
16:04 Don’t go anywhere else we need to cordon off that building so we can get on top of the roof and SSC the building. Over.
16:13 Hotel Two-Six; Crazyhorse One-Eight.
16:16 This is Hotel Two-Six.
16:19 Hey, whoever was talking about rooftops, know that all the personnel we engaged were ground level. I say again ground level.
16:27 Roger I copy ground level. Over.
16:30 One-Eight roger.
16:33 Can I get a grid to that one more time please?
16:36 Target twenty.
16:36 Roger.
16:40 You want me to take over talking to them?
16:42 S’alright.
16:46 Seven-Six Romeo Over.
16:49 Roger, I’ve got uh eleven Iraqi KIAs [Killed In Action]. One small child wounded. Over.
16:57 Roger. Ah damn. Oh well.
17:04 Roger, we need, we need a uh to evac [evacuate] this child. Ah, she’s got a uh, she’s got a wound to the belly.
17:10 I can’t do anything here. She needs to get evaced. Over.
17:18 Bushmaster Seven, Bushmaster Seven; this is Bushmaster Six Romeo.
17:20 We need your location over.
17:25 Roger, we’re at the location where Crazyhorse engaged the RPG fire break.
17:37 Grid five-four-five-eight.
17:46 Well it’s their fault for bringing their kids into a battle.
17:48 That’s right.
17:56 Got uh, eleven.
18:01 Yeah uh, roger. We’re monitoring [observing].
18:02 Sorry.
18:04 No problem.
18:07 Correction eight-six-one-six.
18:16 Looking for more individuals-south.
18:18 Bushmaster Six-Bushmaster Seven.
18:29 I think they just drove over a body.
18:31 Hey hey!
18:32 Yeah!
18:37 Maybe it was just a visual illusion, but it looked like it.
18:41 Well, they’re dead, so.
18:44 Bushmaster Six; Hotel Two-Six over.
18:56 Six; this is Four. I got one individual looks like he’s got an RPG round laying underneath him. Break.
19:05 Probably like to get…
19:10 Look at that.
19:12 Bushmaster Six; Hotel Two-Six over.
19:29 Bushmaster Six; Romeo Hotel Two-Six over.
19:44 Bushmaster Six; Hotel Two-Six over.
19:56 Hotel Two-Six; Bushmaster Seven colocated with Six.
20:08 Hotel Two-Six; Bushmaster Seven.
20:10 Bushmaster Seven; Hotel Two-Six over.
20:14 Roger, we got a little girl who needs to be evaced. What’s your location over?
20:22 On route Gadins, I am all the way to the south. So I am Gadins and Fifth Street.
20:28 I say again Gadins and Fifth Street, over.
20:40 Bushmaster Seven; Hotel Two-Six. Do you want us to push to your location?
20:55 Hey, uh, I need to get the Brads to drop rads I got a wounded little girl we need to take her off the maya.
21:04 Bushmaster Seven; Hotel Two-Six. Do you want us to move to your location over?
21:30 Bushmaster Six; Hotel Two-Six over.
21:34 Hotel Two-Six; this is Bushmaster Seven. Roger, come to our location.
21:39 Okay, roger, we’re coming up north on Gadins and then we will push east to your location.
22:06 Bushmaster elements be advised we have friendlies coming from the south to your location. Over.
22:13 All right, got ’em moving up from the south.
22:35 Bushmaster elements be advised we are coming up from the east.
23:49 Hey One-Two; follow me over. I’m going to try and get out of here as quickly as possible.
24:10 You guys all right back there?
24:13 Yeah, we’re with you.
24:35 Lotta guys down there.
24:37 Oh yeah.
24:37 Came out of the woodwork.
24:38 This is Operation, ah, Operation Secure.
25:16 Yeah we have fifty rounds left.
25:17 Yep.
25:19 Two-Six; Six Romeo over.
25:21 Two-Six; Romeo over.
25:23 Hey roger, what’s your current location over?
25:47 Six; speak it’s Romeo.
25:50 Three-Six Romeo; Six Romeo over.
25:52 Roger, at the six once it’s back on this guy.
25:56 Lost him.
26:00 What’s he got for us?
26:01 Stand by.
26:06 Hotel Two-Six; Crazyhorse One-Eight.
26:21 Hey, did you got action on that target yet over?
26:25 Speak to Charlie roger.
26:32 Hotel Two-Six; Crazyhorse One-Eight.
26:55 Bushmaster Six; Crazyhorse One-Eight.
26:59 Roger, you have traffic over.
27:02 Roger. Uh, just wondering if you had anything else you wanted us to drive on?
27:08 Yeah roger keep on, ah, for the time being over.
27:11 Six calls Six Romeo. Can you tell battalion that two civilian children casualties are coming back to SMI in the Bradley over.
27:26 Six calls Six Romeo.
27:29 Bushmaster Six Copper White Six.
27:32 Copperhead White Six; this is Bushmaster Six Romeo over.
27:36 Roger, that’s a negative on the evac of the two, ah, civilian, ah, kids to, ah, rusty they’re going to have the IPs [Iraqi Police] link up. They can put us over here. Break. IPs will take them up to a local hospital over.
27:50 Copy over.
27:54 One six oh.
28:08 … they’re all going to.
28:10 Say again?
28:12 Where all those dismounts [infantry] are going to?
28:18 Going into this hous-. Sorry
29:29 Three Six, Three Six; Bushmaster Six Romeo over.
29:37 Six Romeo, Six Romeo.
29:39 Roger, Bushmaster Seven wants an up on all personnel in your battalion over.
29:44 Roger.
30:08 …friendlies [US troops] on the roof.
30:10 Crazyhorse One-Eight; this is Bushmaster Four over.
30:12 Bushmaster Four; this is Crazyhorse One-Eight.
30:15 Roger, I can ah hear small arms fire from your engagement area at two zero zero zero ah about three hundred meters from that objective over.
30:27 Crazyhorse; from what I understand small arms fire at two zero zero zero degrees about two hundred meters.
30:39 Just to the southwest.
30:41 Yup.
30:49 Right about where we engaged.
30:51 Yeah, One of them with that RPG or whatever.
30:55 He’s got a weapon. Got an RK–AK 47.
30:58 Hotel Two-Six; Crazyhorse One-Eight.
31:02 Gonna lose him.
31:03 Crazyhorse One-Eight this is Hotel Two-Six over.
31:08 Roger, have another individual with a weapon.
31:10 Dammit, they’re in the same building.
31:12 Hey roger that, just make sure that ah, you’re firing from west to east over.
31:16 Just went in the building.
31:18 Crazyhorse Three and Four will be on their way.
31:21 The individual walked into the building previously past grid [map reference]. So there’s at least six individuals in that building with weapons.
31:30 We can put a missile in it.
31:31 If you’d like, ah, Crazyhorse One-Eight could put a missile in that building.
31:46 It’s a triangle building. Appears to be ah, abandoned.
31:51 Yeah, looks like it’s under construction, abandoned.
31:52 Appears to be abandoned, under construction.
31:56 Uh, like I said, six individuals walked in there from our previous engagement.
32:01 Crazyhorse One-Eight; this is Bushmaster Six Romeo. If you’ve PIDed [Positively IDentified] the individuals in the building with weapons, go ahead and engage the building over.
32:08 Crazyhorse One-Eight; will be coming up north to south engaging with Hellfire [missiles].
32:13 All right, I’m going to do manual.
32:17 All right, we’ve been cleared to engage with…
32:18 This is Bushmaster Six Romeo. Crazyhorse One Eight is going to be engaging north to south with Hellfire missiles over.
32:24 This is Hotel Two-Six. Roger.
32:26 All right, you ready?
32:27 No, I’m trying to get over to the November [target]. Trying to find the fucking…
32:33 This is Bushmaster Six. Has that RPG round been extended already or is it still live, over.
32:38 Looks live to me.
32:40 Let me know when you’re going to fire.
32:44 All right, I’m fucking having a brain fart. Where’s the man [manual] advancement?
32:48 You got one on the clutch on the bottom left on your left door.
32:54 Roger let me stand by.
32:57 Got it?
32:59 No.
33:03 All right.
33:09 Let me just put a kilo [Hellfire missile] in there.
33:12 Ok.
33:15 Got it?
33:21 Put a kilo in?
33:22 All right, let me get back.
33:26 I’m gonna come around, get some more distance.
33:27 Roger that, you’re clear.
33:33 Got more individuals in there.
33:36 You wanna hit from north to south or you wanna go from west to east? I don’t wanna fire with the friendlies [US forces] right there, you know.
33:41 Yeah, go north to south.
33:53 Right, come around, right.
33:56 I’m just gonna put one or two in, if they want any more.
34:09 Right.
34:12 Found the missile.
34:15 Roger, I’ll get you in this straight.
34:16 You’re clear.
34:17 I’m firing.
34:26 Target hit.
34:28 It was a missile.
34:29 Left.
34:32 You’re clear. I’m above you.
34:36 Crazyhorse One-Eight; was that explosion you engaging over?
34:38 Crazyhorse One Eight, roger. Engaging building with one hellfire.
34:46 Let’s come around and we’ll clear the smoke. We’ll fire one more.
34:50 Hey uh, we’re going to wait for the smoke to clear.
34:52 Yes Crazyhorse One Eight now. We’re going to put one more missile into the building.
34:57 Yeah, did it ah, go in the building? I see the wall knocked out of the way.
34:59 Yeah, it went in.
35:01 Bushmaster Six Romeo; this is Hotel Two-Six. Yeah roger, that was Crazyhorse engaging with one Hellfire over.
35:10 Yeah roger, I got a November [target] if you want.
35:12 Fire away.
35:13 You want us to fire?
35:18 You ready?
35:19 Yep.
35:20 Bushmaster Six Romeo. They are going to engage ah, with one more Hellfire in that building.
35:24 Uh shit, why I do I have AP flashing on there? [warning on helicopter display]
35:47 We’re not even going to watch this fucking shit?
35:49 Till next one. It won’t come around, I need a little more distance.
35:53 Still want me to shoot?
35:57 You guys, following hot.
35:59 Roger.
36:13 You are clear.
36:14 Roger.
36:16 You going to bring up the missile?
36:18 Roger.
36:19 And firing.
36:20 Come down? There you go.
36:23 Fire.
36:24 All right.
36:28 I’ve got, ah BACKSCATTER [warning on helicopter display].
36:30 All right, come around.
36:32 Roger.
36:34 Coming around left, backscatter.
36:49 Firing.
36:53 There it goes! Look at that bitch go!
36:56 Patoosh!
37:03 Ah, sweet.
37:07 Need a little more room.
37:09 Nice missile.
37:11 Does it look good?
37:12 Sweet!
37:16 Uh, you ready?
37:18 Roger.
37:30 There’s a lot of dust.
37:36 Crazyhorse One-Eight; this is Hotel Two-Six. Was there a BDA [Battle Damage Assessment]?
37:40 This is Crazyhorse One-Eight. Stand by, engaging with another Hellfire.
37:43 All right.
37:45 You’re clear.
37:47 Lemme know when I’m clear.
37:50 Roger that.
37:59 He wasn’t.
38:02 Hotel Two-Six; Crazyhorse One-Eight.
38:07 Crazyhorse One-Eight.
38:09 Roger, building destroyed. Engaged with three hellfire missiles.
Gaza aid convoy united in El-Arish, but Egypt still moving the goalposts
JAN 5 PressTV update below.
Viva Palestina’s aid convoy was augmented by 47 additional vehicles impounded on a previous convoy run, bringing the total to 220, most ambulances. Why does Gaza need more ambulances, you might well ask.
It’s a question everyone is too polite to ponder. The answers are simply too cynical: because aid is being restricted to medical supplies, and because someone keeps shooting at ambulances. BTW the full Goldstone Report is now available online.
Press TV reports
DC Sniper John Allen Muhammad was early post-911 Muslim Avenger
What morbid fortuity that as President Obama heads to Fort Hood to commemorate the victims of renegade Nidal Malik Hasan, preparations are being made for the execution of another Islamic avenger, the Beltway sniper. As Americans satiate their blood lust against Muslims in the person of John Allen Muhammad who is scheduled to die tonight by lethal injection, perhaps comparisons to Major Hasan will draw attention to the ideological motives behind the 2002 shooting spree. We don’t have to like them, but it would obviously pay us to listen.
Not to excuse the Washington DC killings, nor suggest that the Gulf War veteran and convert to Islam is any less a cold-blooded murderer, but TV crime shows have painted he and accomplice Lee Boyd Malvo as sadistic serial killers, completely burying the sociopolitical elements which tie the snipers to the Global War On Terror/Islam, the legacy of the African American struggle, and its extreme incarnation as the Black Liberation Army.
Muhammad maintains his innocence, primarily because the evidence implicating him remains circumstantial. He was convicted on the strength of partner Malvo’s testimony, and recently lost a Supreme Court appeal. In his testimony, Malvo described three phases to Muhammad’s murderous plans. First was to be the sniper killings, which the two calculated could claim six victims a day. Phase two involved plans to murder a policeman and set bombs at the site of his funeral, to claim an unprecedented toll of police casualties. With money extorted from the government in return for a cessation to the killings, Muhammad and Malvo planned to retreat to Canada, where they planned to build a Utopian community for other disenfranchised African American men, where they would be trained for bigger and more numerous missions against the US.
While I can understand US public figures having to distance themselves from Muhammad, I’m not sure why the organizations speaking out for US political prisoners weren’t showing their solidarity for his motives. Were Muhammad’s ambitions much different from the freedom fighters of the EZLN? Does the rejection of Muhammad reflect the post 9/11 pallor of insurrection in word only?
The case against Major Hasan proceeds apace with the usual unofficial press leaks. I heard reporters site sources who don’t want to be identified by name, in deference to the legal constraints of the ongoing investigation. The accusations they make against Hasan, however, for the benefit of the media outlets, reflects not a concern for Hasan’s due process, but rather their fear for getting themselves in trouble. But the media is eating it up.
Major Abu Nidal Hasan to meet Jack Ruby
So who was the Fort Hood shooter, do we know? The media’s got the back story all lined up for it to be Nidal Malik Hasan, he has three names like all assassins (and sound bites), and now the Army is trotting out witnesses to point their fingers at the Muslim Major. Addressing reports of multiple gunmen, the Army says “there was only one shooter.” Although five of the victims may have fallen to friendly fire. So there was a “friendly shooter?” Which one was Hasan?
I’m thinking the multiple shooter stories came out of the Army deciding the shooter was Hasan, but witnesses insisting it was another soldier. Sooner than contradict what they’d seen with their own eyes, Investigators and victims agree to disagree, until a uniform narrative can be worked out.
With a mess of dead soldiers, all dead by PTSD, who the hell cares which killed which? But poor Major Hasan’s name had the right evildoer pedigree, with an Abu Nidal ring to it, which could bring Americans to a boil.
What’s going on right now, by the way, big picture wise? Is the American public vacillating about sending more troops to Afghanistan? It took a 9/11 surge of Muslim-hating to send our invaders off in the first place.
The Army must have shit bricks when it turned out that Hasan was still alive. The fall guy they’d chosen wasn’t dead. It’s hard to pin the tale on someone who can still tell. But who am I kidding? Either we’re going to see a Jack Ruby pay a visit to Hasan in the hospital, the end, or the military’s going to control Mr. Hasan with its usual heavy hand. And that’s the New World Order MO. I can already see Jose Padilla being shuttled between tortures and deprivations, losing his mind as the government confounds him with accusations.
Hasan is already as cooked as Padilla. No matter what happened, we’ll see confusion and confession and absolutely no access to civilian lawyers or the press. Hasan is this year’s American Taliban, the caricature John Walker Lind painted as America-hating wuss.
The Army’s having nobody think this is PTSD. Did you see the JAG lawyer on CNN, ruling out PTSD because Hasan was an officer?
Antiwarriors can laud the shooting as “fragging” but it’s not. Fragging means to kill your superior officer. At Fort Hood, the only dead were grunts.
Antifada antiwarriors can hope this was Islam striking back, hitting Americans with their own MO. But where was the collateral damage? Where were the wives and children, the innocents among the dead soldiers? Nope, none of those. The evidence indeed points to a principled Mujahadeen who wanted to kill only the US killers, or the soon to be deployed killers.
The Fort Hood shooter might have been sparing the readying soldiers the horrors of Afghanistan, and the DU poison they’d bring back to their families.
The real story is that this is what PTSD looks like, and it may have played out as Russian Roulette, it wouldn’t matter who pulled the trigger. But of course the big worry for the Pentagon is that this sort of thing could be infectious. The expression “going postal” doesn’t have to morph very far to become going PTSD.
In Vietnam, the GIs started fragging their lieutenants. In Afghanistan and Iraq, in the age of the suicide bombers, the American rebel is killing himself.
War on Islam brought home to Ft Hood
Says President Obama of the Fort Hood shooting that claimed 12 US soldiers: “It is horrifying that they should come under fire at an Army base on American soil.” Where does Obama think we are killing our adversaries? On their home soil, actually the majority of them in their own homes, with their family members.
According to Army spokesmen at Ft Hood, the shooter has been identified as an Islamic-named man, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, himself now slain. Confusion persists among witnesses that there may have been several shooters, in part because the civilian police officer who shot the shooter was himself then killed.
How convenient the shooter bears a name that infers an al-Qaeda sleeper cell operative, and not a corn-fed PTSD case gone postal. Twelve soldiers lay dead, among them the killer. How do you know which it was. We have only the Army’s word, the Army which misreports, whether it’s fired a missile, whether it’s raped a village, or whether a whole truckload of female US soldiers has been blown to bits, but the Army believes it more prudent to tell the public about it one gal at a time. So why believe the Army?
I’m not going to suggest that Major Hasan’s body was kept on ice for just such an eventuality, but I do believe he is among the November 6 casualties of Ft Hood, and he may not be the triggerman at all. I believe the Army might have looked over the mess and decided that Hasan would make a far better villain than a good old Baptist jock. Who’s going to know the difference? This would certainly explain why witnesses and wounded cannot agree on who did the shooting.
His very Muslim name notwithstanding, the FBI is already telling the press that the Ft Hood killings were not terrorism. In an act of sheer Zionist defiance, NPR is second guessing that statement. They believe everything else they’re told, but when the government want to make sure that the public isn’t roused to acts of racist violence, NPR decides to be skeptical. In news reports tonight, they’re letting the audience decide for itself, if Major Hasan’s suicidal gunman mission wasn’t an act of terrorism.
Change that Works as viewed by the very dim light of a thousand points
I read there were demonstrators at Texas A & M to greet President Obama as he arrived to participate in a community service symposium honoring former president George Herbert Walker Bush. I’ll admit I was surprised they were run of the mill teabaggers. Where was the indignant left, protesting LOUDLY at the dubious priority of this whistle stop, while health care reform withers in DC? So far, SNL survived a fact-check on a satiric Obama checklist, except: Kissing up to the Bushes. If the Saudi King shows up for some fealty, I just know Obama is going to hold his hand.
Was this event so important an honor to Bush 41 that it required a presidential visit? Not significant enough however, to draw Junior Bush to attend the ceremony?
Dubya defenders suggest it is too early in Obama’s term for the immediate predecessor to make an appearance with the sitting president. They overlook an unprecedented extenuating factor, the event was celebrating Bush 43’s dad.
The sight might have pushed us all over the edge to see Obama palling around with the Bush dynasty in abeyance, who should all be persons of interest in prosecutions of high crimes and misdemeanors.
Wasn’t it sickening enough to see Obama fawn over the “Thousand Points of Light?” Where was Obama when the rest of world could read H.W. Bush’s lips, teacups of bull pucky. At the Bohemian Grove they quote Bush 41 to the tune of Tiptoe Through the Tulips. TPOL is code for Let them eat light.
Seeing Obama and Daddy Bush together reminded me of Dana Carvey’s flattering portrayal of the senior Bush, before the 2000 election. Bush is hunting with his attention deficit son, and for a brief shining moment he considered accidentally shooting Dubya for the good of the nation, except that Barbara would be too upset. The fantasy practically redeemed the real Poppy Bush in my eyes, forgetting he went on to profiteer with the Carlyle Group and other crony deals. Now Obama is reconciling us against our will.
The thousand points of light was just Republican’s consolation prize for Americans who began losing their jobs. Minus the federal middle class jobs to administrate the service projects. FDR looked after the jobless by creating a welfare bureaucracy that boosted the middle class. Bush had nothing to offer but a road map of the stars. Make yourself useful, yada yada.
Now Obama is picking up the tune. Where in the hell are his constituents to say, by change, Obama, we didn’t mean spare change. Get up there with some handcuffs and make a presidential citizen’s arrest, or get off the stage. The fraternizing is making us nauseated.