Tag Archives: Spanish

Oprah’s doc busted!

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Sometimes US fantasy world just gets too funny and it’s worthy for a good laugh. Such is the case with Doctor Who… I mean ‘Doctor Phil’ and his intervention to supposedly save Britney Spears from herself.

He showed up at her hotel room after she got the word of the judge ruling against her and that she was subsequently losing custody of her kids to her ex! I guess this dimwit thought he was there to perform an exorcism, or some Catholic ritual of that sort?

Who knows, but this brilliant pontiff on all matters psych seems to need a psych GPS device himself to stay out of hysterically funny situations. Oprah’s doc is now busted by Britney’s mom in fact! Truth is funnier than soap opera it seems…

Next you know, ‘Phil’ will be intervening to save the Bush administration from itself! Imagine if he had shown up at the hotel after Dick Cheney had plugged his friend down in South Texas? Now that would have been rich!

Oopsssss….! There is breaking news on the Spanish language channels… Britney Spears has retreated to Rosarito, Mexico 25 miles or so south of Tijuana for ‘vacation’! What a great choice! The Mexican federal government just flew in troops to take the police over ther because they were being run by narcotic traffickers! How restful it will be for her there amongst the festivities then!

Maybe she can do some charity work or something until she gets herself back together? Either way, at least she will be safe from Dr. Phil.

Ancient Costa Rica for sale

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Denver-Art-Museum-LibeskindThe kids are still on Christmas break and are starting to show definite signs of cabin fever. To stave off a domestic implosion, we took a trip up to the Denver Art Museum yesterday. The DAM recently opened a spectacular addition designed by Daniel Libeskind, the architect chosen to rebuild the World Trade Center site. But I had an ulterior motive. I’d recently read about the DAMs 16,000-piece assemblage of pre-Columbian and Spanish Colonial art, including one of the world’s largest collections of Costa Rican artifacts, nearly 2,000 items, donated to the museum by Denver businessman, Frederick Mayer, and his wife. I wanted to check it out.

We’re planning a trip to Costa Rica. Although not much is known about pre-Columbian Costa Rica in comparison to the high cultures of Mexico and South America, recent excavations have uncovered numerous artifacts, including jade carvings. Jade is green and pretty and shiny, perfect for an art lover of my caliber, so I wanted to see it for myself. Call it a bit of research before hitting the craft markets in Sarchi!

Sure enough, Eric and I lost ourselves in a huge room filled with thousands of artifacts. Stone, ceramic, textiles, gold and, oh yes, jade. After an hour or so, we’d barely made a dent in the pre-Columbian collection. Vowing a subsequent visit to the Spanish Colonial galleries, we left to collect the kids before their art experience became Night-mare at the Museum.

As always, looking at ancient artifacts leads me into lofty reverie of past worlds and bare-chested warriors. But this time I couldn’t help but wonder about Jan and Frederick Mayer as well. Certainly amazement and appreciation for their commitment to art and to philanthropy. But really, how on earth had one couple managed to collect this much art from a small Central American country? And why aren’t many of the beautiful pieces residing in Costa Rica, teaching and providing inspiration to Costa Ricans? Especially because Costa Rican pre-Columbian history is not nearly as well-documented as that of its neighbors.

Costa Rica has taken significant measures to protect their natural environment from exploitation. Nearly 20% of the land is set aside for preserves, parks or refuges of some sort. But after my trip to the Denver Art Museum, I’m thinking that perhaps Costa Rica should endeavor to protect other national treasures, especially art created by the hands of largely unknown ancestors, from passionate and well-meaning American oilmen.

Jade museum Costa RicaI will visit the museums in San Jose and let you know how they measure up against the breathtaking Denver Art Museum, with its encyclopedic collection of pre-Columbian Costa Rican artifacts–and hopefully return with a few shiny jade replicas of my own!

The King of Spain is a royal asshole

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The international press has been reporting for everybody the spectacle of the King of Spain putting down Hugo Chavez with his comment ‘Why don’t you shut up, Little Boy?’ Why the King of Spain should be attending a summit meeting in Santiago, Chile is never questioned at all though?

Actually, the royal family of Spain is a royal group of royal assholes just like it is with the royal family of England. Can’t somebody chop off their heads please, since this is the 21st century, is it not? There is no need to have kings and queens around any more, not even for ceremonial purposes let alone having them attend summit meetings between countries while opening their big, royally stupid mouths.

It is also interesting to know that it is even against the law in Spain, a supposed democratic country of Europe, to insult the royal family. That being said, the King of Spain is a total asshole for sure. ( I hope they don’t try to put me in prison for 2 years for saying this. There would go my Spanish vacation!)

And they make fun of the laws of Thailand protecting their royal king asshole from cartoons, etc.? The Europeans need to clean up their own royal assholes first, it appears.

Dead Archbishop Juan Gerardi- Catholic saint from Guatemala

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Archbishop Juan Gerardi is a real Catholic saint. …unlike the Spanish fascist clergy that Pope Ratzinger has recently been beatifying. See Democracy Now’s report about who killed this archbishop? Was it really the US government behind this killing, too?

Gomez Molina, who is a School of Americas’ graduate COL Otto Perez Molina 1985, Command and General Staff College (Commandant’s List) Assassination, 1994: Chief of the G-2 (military intelligence) and on the payroll of the CIA, Perez Molina was in charge in 1994, when the General Staff was implicated in the assassination of Judge Edgar Ramiro Elías Ogaldez. (Allan Nairn, The Nation, 4/17/95) He also had assassinated, Archibishop Juan Gerardi.

Of course it was the US government who assassinated this decent Catholic, Archbishop Gerardi. Guatemalan General Perez Molina was a SOA graduate who assasinated the Guatemalan Catholic saint, Archibishop Juan Gerardi . Molina was a US employee. Now he runs for the presidency of Guatemala, and is a made in the US of America thug.

Archbishop Juan Gerardi will get no beatification from the current Pope, Ratzinger, who is a Nazi sympathizer of long standing. ‘ Pope Rat’ is now a cheerleader for the US government as once he was a cheerleader for Adolph Hitler.

Here, this made in US thug, Guatemalan General Molina,, talks about how he will kill the people who opppose him. Guatemalan General Molina, made in the USA.

The US runs Guatemala with a ‘duro mano’ or ‘a hard hand’ who kills all opposition. He will rule with US government approval and support. He is the US man in control.

Pope Nazi Rat beatifies 500 of Franco’s Spanish fascist clergy

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It always seems incredible to me that Americans are mainly totally unaware of how the Catholic Church was a bedrock of support for the WW2 Nazis and fascists of all stripes. They still are. Vatican honors Spanish war dead but only the fascist backing clergy!

Masked crusader of illiterary legend

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America humiliates Mexico for the Zimmerman Telegram
All Pikes Peak Reads has chosen this year’s library recommendation: ZORRO! Did you know that was a work of literature? Dumas, you think? R.L.S.? This choice follows To Kill a Mockingbird, Frankenstein, Treasure Island, and Alice in Wonderland. All accessible to younger readers to be sure, and literary to boot. I have no argument with Isabel Allende’s Zorro [prequel], to entice the participation of Pikes Peak area adults, but what for the children? Charles Lamb? Harold Lamb? Did Zorro capture their prolific imagination? No, the kids get to read not the Legend of Zorro, but ABOUT the legend of Zorro. Great, so it’s not literature, at least it’s history. Is it?

Not even.

It turns out Zorro sprung from a post-WWI pulp serial The Curse of Capistrano written by screenwriter Johnston McCulley. The black mask and cape were added by Douglas Fairbanks in his 1920 portrayal, and the rest is [film] history. So Zorro is Tinseltown legend, and the historical setting inverts itself from there. The Hispanic colonial rule of California against which Zorro rebelled never existed in that too-rural territory. But it sure creates a convenient boogey man from which the United States can feel better liberating the early Californians. Zorro, in Spanish “The Fox” being the surrogate advance scout, extending justice over the objections of the despicable Spaniards until the cavalry can arrive. The adventure published on the heels of US belligerent fight-picking with Mexico. So much for history.

A Zorro legend lacks even for historical precursors. Robin Hood might be the closest example, except according to legend, Robin Hood was a man of the people, not a rich man robbing for the poor. Zorro’s Don Diego follows more the Alexander Dumas model of The Count of Monte Cristo, avenging having been usurped of his noble birthright. Since the Enlightenment and the suspicions it cast on the divinity of monarchist rule, official chroniclers have been tasked to remind the masses that a “fox” could never be more cunning than his betters unless he was of uncommon blood. Noble deeds can only be expected of noblemen, hence the term. This stereotype has always trumped the Puss in Boots or Horatio Alger stories coming from steerage. The Count begat Zorro begat Batman begat the Green Hornet begat the George Soros secret funding mystique. Now we even speculate that Robin Hood, had he existed, must have been a disenfranchised noble. Likewise Jack the Ripper. Common man can’t even get credit for crime.

To be clear, the oligarchs know their people won’t buy rule by divine right, but we do respect Darwin’s survival of the fittest. And certainly fitness and advantage are hereditary. Only those fit shall rule.

I extend this deference of heritage to my real life heros, but is it warranted? Che Guevara was from the privileged class and is lauded by the counter-culture as the most heroic revolutionary figure of our time. But ultimately, and conveniently, a tragic failure. On the other hand, the truly effective populist reformers of modern times have all been of ordinary birth. Counting backward, Morales, Chavez, Mandela, King, Lumumba, Castro, Gandhi, Mao, Lenin, Marx.

Would Zorro stand up as an Easop’s fable or does he subvert man’s self-wisdom? Gotham cannot fend off its criminal elements without super-just Richie-Rich Bruce Wayne, thankfully completely benign in his vigilante despotism and not the least bit a corrupted-absolutely Nero or perverted Gilles de Rais, donning a Blue[-blood] Beard to mask his nightly reconfiguration of injustice.

Pikes Peak Reads is part of Laura Bush’s unholy surge, the library extension of the Every Child Left Behind travesty devastating our education system. Even if the choice of reading about a fictional legend was made locally, it doesn’t surprise me. The third grade of our well-regarded elementary last year followed The Legend of Sleepy Hollow with a lesser known Washington Irving legend: Batman! The former coincided with a Discovery Channel premiere of Sleepy Hallow and the latter turned up at the megaplex, it was: Holy tie-in with the H.E.W. Batman! A new beginning!

I’ll eat Zorro’s hat if Isabel Allende’s precursor, Zorro, a new beginning, isn’t coming to the screen this year, or isn’t precursing a sequel, which would make it what, a cursor[y] Hollywood incarnation? Next year the Pikes Peak pick, left for the children to decide, will be the legend of another masked, caped crusader, a legendary Italian everyman, and ever too mortal, Mario of the Brothers franchise.

Immigrants are our friends, not our enemies

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Immigrant workers are our allies, not our enemies is a talk given by Garrett Brown of the Maquiladora Health and Safety Network that packs a lot of facts in it. One fact he mentions is that more than 1/2 of Mexicans are living on $3 or less a day income.

Do you really want to have the government tracking these immigrants down like they were mere dogs, and not human beings like you and your family are?

Also of note, is that 1 hour south of Douglas, Arizona, an American owned mine is out once again trying to destroy the miner’s union located there in a small Mexican town. The town where the mine is located is called Cananea, Sonora.

Below is some info about this, and once can also check out the film called Cananea, too, for some historical reference and background to this union struggle.
…………………………………
From: Garrett Brown (received today)

Dear Colleagues:
I am writing to see if anyone is, or knows of any, Spanish-speaking
occupational physician, occupational nurse or industrial hygienist who
would be available for a 4-day trip to Cananea, Mexico (just south of
the Arizona border) over the Columbus Day weekend (Oct. 5-8, 2007).

We are trying to put together a volunteer team, all expenses paid but
no fees, to conduct limited medical screenings and IH-related
interviews of some of the 1,300 copper miners who have been on strike
for 7 weeks against the giant Grupo Mexico conglomerate at the
historic Cananea mine where the 1910 Mexican Revolution began.

The key demands of the strike are over workplace health and safety,
and the decision of Grupo Mexico to close the miners company-paid
health clinic. Grupo Mexico has vowed to break the union in Cananea —
which would be a historic defeat — as well as impose its demands on
the workers. The strike is being strongly supported by the United
Steel Workers (USW) union in the United States in a heartening display
of international solidarity.

The goal of the US team, which will partner with Mexican health
workers in Cananea, will be document as thoroughly as possible in a
short time the health problems experienced by both retired and active
miners; and to collect information on the working conditions in the
Cananea facility. The medical team will conduct the medical
evaluations and the IH team will conduct interviews with the workers.

A report will be issued following the visit to provide information to
the public in both Mexico and the United States about the working
conditions that provoked the strike and the needs of the miners.

Further details of the timing (not completely confirmed at this
writing) will be available in the next several days.

If you — or anyone you know — are potentially available for this
emergency, short-term but very important project, please contact
Garrett Brown at gdbrown@igc.org

In solidarity,
Garrett Brown
Coordinator, Maquiladora Health & Safety Support Network

Neo-liberal translations of Arabic

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Borat is a Jewish comedian in Muslim black faceDoes the Arabic at left mean anything to you? It could spell Tanzim Qaedat al-Jihad fi Balad al-Rafidin for all you know. Would that translate to “al-Qaeda in Iraq” if there was no such thing? AQI is a CIA coined term. Much as if the police searched your home, planted a stash, and labeled it “pot of your home.”

Al-Qaeda in Iraq is actually the dumbed down shorthand of al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia for Americans who wouldn’t know what Mesopotamia would have had to do with September 11. The lands of Mesopotamia would really suggest a Greater Iraq, inclusive of regions of Syria, Turkey and Iran. In which case, Jihadists advocating for the ancient territorial legacy of Iraq would not likely be fighting in Iraq at all. AND ACTUALLY, fi Balad al-Rafidin translates to “the country of the Two Rivers.”

Whether QJBR is a CIA invention, like the Jordanian who-never-was al-Zarqawi, will be for historians to decipher. Probably it’s a little of both. Regardless, AQI ends with “in Iraq” –only in America, land of few maps and sub-average education. We can’t even be told that Mexico is actually called Los Estados Unidos Mexicanos, lest US Americans get confused.

What liberties can our think tanks and intelligence manipulators take with Kufic script! The phrase above could just as well mean “I will wipe World Jewry off the face of the Earth!” as “Springtime for Hitler and Germany.” Or it could have meant “erase the illegitimate borders imposed on trans-Arabia by the Western powers bent on imposing an Israeli colony, by ruse of religion, in mock restitution for the Holocaust, the pogroms and the Spanish Inquisition, to give them a beachhead for Middle East oil.”

If I were to have a guess at the Arabic characters above, it would be “Sin Salida.”

‘Save Darfur’ interventionists seem bloody ignorant about Africa, its culture, and its history- Save Lado, too, Comrades!

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Free Tibet, Stop Genocide in Kosovo, Liberate East Timor, and now Save Darfur with that ‘genocide’ tag being thrown around again. And lots of vitriol against Arabs and China mixed in. There seems to be all sorts of poorly thought out comments and ill considered positions going around town concerning this issue of ‘Darfur’, currently in the national spotlight ala Paris Hilton.

One local activist recently claimed on his web site that the Sudanese government was a US puppet state. Talk about getting it totally backwards! The reality is it’s the independence of the Sudanese government from DC control that Another activist here in the Springs was cheer-leading Democratic Party Colorado Governor Ritter for taking steps to firm up the US campaign beginning an economic war against Sudan. Colorado will not do bizness with bad Africans! Oh, Whoopee, Guvnor! I’ll bet my bottom dollar that you will do business helping your political buddies commit GENOCIDE against Palestinians and Iraqis, though. Am I right?

Right now, the Colorado Springs pro-peace people seem to be stumbling around in the dark on many fronts. The police attack on the St Patrick’s Day parade participants has them stumbling, and the anemia of the national Pro Peace folk hasn’t helped either. So why not jump on the ‘Save Darfur’ bandwagon? It makes sense. I guess there is just not enough problems on the home-front at this time? So let’s go save some Black folk from the evil Arabs and Chinese! And we’ll be led by Dubya, who will correct his problems in Iraq by changing a letter and nuking Iran.

The Justice and Peace had ourselves up a booth at Juneteenth today. They placed us right next to our old buddies, the storm troopers under the command of Police Chief Liars Myers. We’re getting to be almost family at this point. And on our nice little table we had some lit about Saving Darfur.

No, nobody had brought any material saying it might be nice saving all of Africa by getting the US the fuck out of their. I felt in a genteel mood and just sat for a while chitchatting and smelling the bbq. The Gazette was Heiled as being so very generous for poor Black folk by having ‘given generously’ with the publicity. It felt so good, so why be contentious? I just couldn’t…

I had my sign ‘Stop US War on Somalia’ with me, but Aw Shucks. Why confuse folk still trying to decide whether the Dar is for the Fur, or the Fur is for the Dar? And every body’s Albanian is still not much up to par And what’s the national language of island nation of East Timor anyway? Uh sorry, I meant the half island nation of East Timor. Hey, why shouldn’t we demand liberation and independence for West Timor, too? And what’s the next half-island down the shore? The world is complex, but you can speed read it if you are a liberal interventionist, for sure! I would have felt like a simpleton with my sign at the picnic.

There were some pamphlets to help you out on this with Darfur on our table. Did you know that Darfur was once an independent nation? Until the British defeated them of course.

Believe me, you will never learn this sort of stuff from the ‘Save Darfur’ crowd. They just don’t know it. That’s right. Darfur was pasted onto Sudan by the British. Those who paste on may want to peel the paste on back off, though. For humanitarian reasons, no doubt. From Blair to Brown to Save Darfur!

By the way, I am thinking of starting up a Colorado Springs society to save the Lado people. Don’t know about them? Hey, they’re just right down the road from Darfur. And guess what? They are victims of genocide, too. Save Lado! Is it pronounced like in Spanish, or like ‘lad oh!’ in English? It’s always fun when nobody can pronounce the name of the place we’re headed to ‘intervene’ into. Makes it more fun to watch the TV news!

I’m not making this up, so do the research on your own and let’s then get together and start a group (or 2 or 3) at Colorado College and get some sweet chickens (let me know if the use of ‘chickens’ here is not pc, like headless chickens) to help us out. What do you say? This is America, is it not? Anything can happen. We’re a good people for sure. So let’s do something for the Lado people right now! Start the propaganda, uh I meant ‘education’ going and we’ll get the troops in as soon as we can!

Meanwhile, let the conservatives increase the military budget a tad more, so that we’ll all then be ready to move into action together.

Save Lado!

US Armada poised to strike Iran

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I found video images of our Persian Gulf Armada taunting the Iranians and restricting their movement. What would our flag waver, ass-kicker types do if some other country sent a navy to aim their guns at our shores? Indeed what did the English do when the Spanish mounted their celebrated Armada? I think the Iranians are showing incredible restraint.

America’s Colombian friends

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Horrrible testimony is coming out daily in Colombia about the American government’s Colombian friends, the Paramilitary death squads.

All of Colombia is following the continual unfolding of new scandal about the Colombian government and military’s deep connections with the paramilitaries. Check out the video some even though it is in Spanish. Your tax monies went to help make these atrocities happen, so don’t hide your eyes and ears away. Take a look.

America made this level of total criminality possible by funding the Colombian military for decades now. The techniques used by the death squads organized by the Colombian military rival the worst crimes of the Japanese and the Nazis during WW2. Still, our US corporate media keeps it all quite hidden away from the American public, and most Americans still continue to think that the US government is only there fighting drugs, if they think about Colombia at all.
…………
from ‘El Tiempo’ below which is the New York Times of Colombia….
…………
…Villalba assures that for the cutting up learning they used peasants who brought up together during the occupations of neighboring towns. “They were older people taken on trucks, alive, tied”, he described. The victims arrived to the estate on topped trucks. They were taken down with their hands tied and moved to a room, where they remained locked for several days, waiting for the training to start.

Then the “bravery instruction” came up: people were separated in four or five groups “and there they were cut into pieces”, Villalba told during the deposition. “The instructor told me: ‘You stand up here and secures the one who cuts’. Every time a town was occupied and someone is going to be cut, the ones doing that job must be provided with security”.

Men and women were taken out the rooms on their underwear. Still with their hands tied, they were taken to the place where the instructor awaited to start the first recommendations: “The instructions were to take off their arms, their head, to cut them alive. They came out crying and asked us not to hurt them, [they said] they had a family”.

Villalba describes the process: “The people were opened from the chest to the belly to take out the guts, the innards. Their legs, their arms, their heads were ripped off, with a machete or a knife. The rest, their remains, [were taken out] by hand. We, who were on instruction, took out the intestines”.

The training was compulsory, according to him, to “test [their] courage and learn how to disappear people”. During the month and a half Francisco Villalba says he was in the course, he saw cutting instructions three times. “They chose the students to participate. Once, one of them refused to do it. ‘Doble cero’ [a paramilitary chief] stood up and told him: ‘Come here, I can do it’. Then he ordered to cut him up. They made me to cut one girl’s arm. She was already taken her head and one leg out. She asked them not to do it, because she had two children”.

The bodies were taken to common graves at the same place, La 35, where it is estimated 400 people were buried….

much more, including video of the undercovering of the 10,000 PLUS bodies at El Tiempo.

Bush’s Funniest vs Hugo Chavez

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Now that Bush is back from Latin America, it’s time to post Bush’s Funniest Moments. And on to Argentina to see the rally where Hugo Chavez tore apart Dubya. This is a long video in Spanish, but watch the first 5 minutes at least to see the Argentinian Mothers of the Disappeared introduce Chavez. An education in itself.

And then we also learn that Bush took his charade to Guatemala talking up the supposed benefits of CAFTA and ‘free trade’, just several miles down the road from where a factory was full of Guatemalan children working in terrible conditions producing frozen broccoli for American school cafeterias and the US military. See Tuesday night’s Democracy Now on that one.

Our Prez is truly a winner! American Empire built on child labor and death squads certainly must have impressed Latin America. Another one of Bush’s funniest moments. ‘El perro que es’, in the words of the spokewoman of the Madres de los Desaparecidos.

America’s systematic abuse of its elderly

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Drove by another of those faceless, nameless, warehouses for America’s elderly the other day. Oh sure, they actually do have nondescript and meaningless names. My favorite idiotic name belongs to a warehouse for the elderly in Salem, Oregon called ‘Hidden Lakes’.

Hidden Lakes of Urine would be more to the point. I once even worked at a joint with about 1/3 rehab, 1/3 elderly, and 1/3 chronic psych patients that renamed itself ‘Squire Knights’, a name about as idiotic as its incoherent and non-workable mixture was. Administration really has no sense of the ironic at all.

Many of these sad places have human castoffs in their early sixties caring for even more castoff folk in their later seventies and early eighties. Youngsters do the grunt work. It used to be that Lawrence Welk reigned supreme in the halls at these forlorn joints. I’m scared that it will soon be Paul McCarthy and the Rolling Stones that will reverberate. A standing joke with my kid is where I accuse her that she will eventually throw me soon into the basurero, Spanish for the garbage can or nursing home. My mom threw my grandmother there, and my mom now fears that one of her sons will do the same with her. American life is deadly.

I hate these dank, Haldo filled places. Have you ever noticed that none of them ever seem to have much outside them either? Usually just an ugly parking lot, or a minimal pretense of rustic ambiance at best. Mainly its just army green garbage receptacles for soaked diapers full of pee and shit. Inside there is stale smell, and blank looks of hopelessness. It’s the killing fields of America, and immediately outside is just about as bad.

How sad it is that our elderly are turned into assembly line products for Medicare and insurance fraud, even when the fraud is not held as official. Wipe their asses and turn q2hours, and give a feed 3xdaily of gruel. That’s ‘life’ in the capitalist dead lanes of our country. It’s all very, very sad and unnecessary. I have tears in my eyes for America’s elderly. No crimes ttey ever might have committed deserve a punishment such as they so many ultimately get.

Democratic Guv Ritter betrays Colorado Labor-What a surprise!

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The Guv has just vetoed HB-1072, a Colorado bill that had already been passed in both houses of the Colorado State Government, and a bill he had promised the unions he would support. In doing this, he acted on behalf of the Republicans and business interests that want it to continue to be almost impossible to unionize work places in this state.

This veto was a total betrayal of the workers who voted for him, and believed his promise that he was pro-labor. He is not, and now has shown his true colors but only after he was elected by those in the Colorado Labor Movement who supported him with their votes, and in return got conned.

Workers would have been electing a union shop when they vote union if this legislation had been allowed to take effect. Now, if they vote to have a union, they don’t really get one since the current state law allows the losers of any employee vote to just opt out of paying dues, even as they still would benefit by any contracts negotiated to their benefit by the dues paying union workers in their workplace. This of course destroys the cohesiveness of those trying to present a solid front on behalf of the employees against the bosses, and as a result, makes it next to impossible to unionize.

The type of betrayal done by Democrat Bill Ritter is par for the course. Labor unions have been pumping billions of dollars through the years into the corporate Democrats, and as a result, is now so pitiful and debilitated in the US that essentially we have no functioning unions here in America. People don’t want to join the unions even if there is one around, simply because the laborcrats siphon off most of the dues to themselves, and into lobbying a political party, the Democratic party, that is pro business, and not pro worker. How stupid is that?

There is one bone thrown still tossed out by Ritter to the labor bosses of Colorado that spent union dues money in helping him get elected. They got a man with a Spanish last name, Don Mares, appointed to head up the Colorado Department of Labor. Oh Wow!

Mares is an attorney and vice president of the LAEF (Latin American Educational Foundation, and ex candidate for Denver mayor. The LAEF is a total corporate write-off and public relations group funded by the Coors Foundation, a major funder of Right Wing causes throughout the US. Some ‘labor’ rep Don Mares will make! The union hacks might as well throw their rank-and-filers’ union dues paying money to the wind as to keep funding these types of con artists. What losers they are, these trade union honchos lined up with the DP!

Governor Bill Ritter is just another case in point that the Democratic party sucks big time. Progressives need to stop wasting their time and money on these charlatans, and it sure is no way to rebuild the union movement in this state, or this country, to be trying to buy and lobby votes from the Democratic party politician scoundrels. All that good money wasted and for about next to total Zilch.

Patria, Socialismo, o Muerte!

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Patria, Socialismo, o Muerte! Do you recognize this sentiment? It is the slogan, ‘Live Free, or Die’ that New Hampshire has made famous as a symbolism of American determination, but in Venezuelan Spanish. Hey, the Dawn of Hope (Amanecer de la Esperanza) is there just like it was once when the American Colonies fought for their independence from the British throne.

This time, though, it is the hope for freedom from US imperialism that sparks such strong South American sentiment, rather like that former New Hampshire colony spirit of resistance. Venezuela is tired of their oppressive King George just as once the founders of this country were once tired of another King George. Venezuela today, Patria, Socialismo, o Muerte! Sixteen minutes in Spanish, but you’ll get the message, I am sure. Well worth the watch.

Fidel with Hugo Chavez

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The collection of CIA operatives down in South Florida are just waiting to celebrate the death of Fidel Castro with a big party, but oops!, Fidel’s dream of fully liberating Latin American from US imperialism lives on in the personage and politics of Hugo Chavez. The collection of rif-raf that will come to the Miami stadium to dance and sing about Fidel’s death when he passes away, are not representative of how most Latinos feel about Castro. To many millions he is a great hero. Fidel with Hugo Chavez is worth watching for the first 9 minutes even if you don’t speak a word of Spanish. Otherwise, well worth watching all 19 minutes as the later 10 minutes present a very interesting discussion of Venezuela in the world today.

The Sundance Film Festival vs pasty White Wing conformity

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In these days of anti-immigrant hysteria and pasty White Wing conformity of the Pat Robertsons, Ann Coulters, Cal Thomases, and Tom Tancredos amongst us, it is fantastic to have the Sundance Film Festival rewarding good movies about Spanish speaking immigrant experiences with their top prizes.

These films deserve a much broader audience than they are getting, and the stories they tell help humanize people that our government and its nutty allies are actively trying to dehumanize and oppress. Quinceanera won in 2006,and Padre Nuestro just won top prize this year. Can’t wait to see both.

Pizza Patron shows that Tancredoista Right Wingers have no good taste

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Patron means bossThe Right Wing are such ignorant nuts. Any decent red blooded American would be rushing down to the local Pizza Patron restaurante and trying out their chain’s pizzas with flair. Where else can one get a barbacoa pizza, a chorizo pizza, or chicken wings with limon y queso?

Hey! What about the one I make at home, too, with hamburger, tomates, onions, and nopalitos? And I suggest for all the nutty Right Wing racists now aghast with rage at Pizza Patron for accepting pesos when their pizzas are bought… How ’bout a pizza con sesos in the barbacoa for you taste-retarded, racist gringo types? They should give that one out free even, and help get y’alls, Conservative, gasoline powered brains recharged some! You dittoheads are in dire need for sure. Hey! Free pizza for the Gavachos, please!

Pizza Patron is even receiving death threats, and other assorted attentions from all the usual Right nutter sources. Not only are they accepting pesos, printing their menus in both Spanish and English, and sponsoring good Hispanic causes, but the owner also has an Arabic last name (he’s half Lebanese)! Now that’s just too damn much for the idiot American nationalistic Right to take. Right, Sir Tom? (Tom Tancredo is Colorado’s Congressional HouseNut serving his patria sin sesos.)

Let’s pass a law where only hamburgers can be served in restaurants for Homeland Security reasons, of course. And only if any vegetables are deep fried Tancredo style. I think even Taco Bell is too spicy and unAmerican for our Zieg Heil Right. Poor people. They are so challenged about everything, it seems.

Bump Clubs

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This one is good for when Others start chanting about how united the people were in World War 2, and everybody did his part for the War Effort, Bravely and Nobly, sacrificing all without complaint For The Duration.

In Detroit, where there were suddenly lots of jobs because of two factors: the men were getting drafted and the Military were buying up supplies, machines were the focus in MoTown at the hour.

People often wonder, (and this comes in to the thread of thought a little later) if things were so very bad in the South for blacks, why didn’t they just leave? The promised land up Nawth wasn’t as bad as the Southroners now was it?

The answer: no really available jobs. Escaping the Jim Crow south was not really an option, because what do you do when you get there? Starve?

But with the war, things changed on one front, there were suddenly not enough people to fill the jobs.
So an exodus of sorts, to the factories and foundries of the Promised Land.

Funny thing about a war, the government has to maintain xenophobia at a fever pitch, in order to keep the people hating the Enemy (wish I could write sound effects like crashing thunder, and a basso reverberation on the end of the Enemyeeeeee……) they had to be made to hate anybody different. Which isn’t so hard to do.

There is a distinct shade of Katrina in all of this.

The Government put up posters, everywhere, Why We Fight, Know The Enemy, Loose Lips Sink Ships, Lucky Strikes Green has Gone To War! (the last was kind of a stupid advertising exaggeration. The red dye they used in making the little target on the front of a pack of Lucky’s was strangely, a chemical which was used in making Olive Drab green paint. So the Army hogged the supply, Lucky Strikes parent corporation changed the color For The Duration, and the cigarette manufactures also hogged in with giving away in every box of C and K rations, a box of five cigarettes. Which they had lost their Far East and European market for anyway. Capitalism at it’s best)

There were posters the writers of which cynically called Know Your Gooks, telling the differences in facial structure and speech patterns between Chinese (good Gook) and dirty filthy sinister Japanese. MIND YOU the phrases in the past sentence WERE NOT MINE.

So, naturally, assisted much by the unnatural provocation of warmongering, there was resentment amongst the Good People of Detroit, directed against these people coming up with a strange accent, almost a different language, a radically different appearance, strange customs and who had a trained distrust of Whites.

And a lot of Southern Whites, who had shared the poverty of the south with the Blacks, just on the other side of the tracks. Sharing in a separate Apartheid kind of way.
And many had been told all their lives that the blacks were the reason for the poverty of the South.
Like so many now tell the story that Mexicans are the reason for the economy being so poor nowadays.

Which culminated in Race Riots. When people speak of the Detroit Ghetto Riots they usually mean the ones in the sixties. These were like 20 years earlier.

One of the myths spread around was that Blacks were deliberately and in an organized manner provoking whites by bumping them. You know, like when you get on a bus or train or trolley, and actually physically contact another human. You get 50 people jammed onto a bus made for 30 and somebody is going to be touching.
There were even whispers that the Blacks had formed Bump Clubs, and were keeping score on how many whiteys they bumped.

Kind of like now when you ride the bus and a couple of Spanish people will be talking to each other IN SPANISH and somebody will glare at them and say “They’re talking about us, you know they are”.
If you try to speak logically to this, by saying “Oh, you speak spanish, then, What exactly are they saying?”

“well, I don’t have to learn Spanish, they need to learn English, they come up here and live free and refuse to learn the language”

And it was that type of thing, the creation of the rumor of Bump Clubs, which was a spark to ignite a smoking smoldering pit of hatred.

So much for the myth of Unity. Shot down by the Myth of The Bump Club.

So when somebody mourns for the Everybody Rally Round the Flag days of world war 2, look him straight in his beady little eyes and say “Bump Clubs”.

It might not serve to educate him, but it will keep you from losing your mind. Sometimes it helps to focus.

Conservative Jews and Catholics- fraternal hypocrites

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For centuries the Catholics persecuted the Jews, but today they have an unholy alliance which allows the majority tendency in today’s Jewish faith, the Zionist Jews, to blame Muslims for being anti-Jewish pogromists. What’s involved? Silence and pretense, in short. The Catholic hierarchy gets to continually pretend that it never had anything to do with the fascist and Nazi crimes of genocide, while the Jewish Zionists get to pretend that they are threatened by a supposed Muslim tendency towards committing just exactly that same crime. All the while keeping their traps closed about the Catholic mainstream..

Look how quiet the Jewish community was when an ex-Nazi took over the Pope position. Look how loud they get when somebody innocuous like Jimmy Carter comes along to write a book most Zionists feel quite uncomfortable with because of some truths voiced. A Catholic archbishop in Slovakia this week talked about how lovely it was when the Nazis ruled his region and not a peep is heard from the world Jewish community. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were hauled off to concentration camps from Slovakia in that time frame. All the Jewish establishment’s hysteria is reserved instead for one man in Iran whose country the Israeli government wants to bomb back to the Stone Age on behalf of the US. One would think that it was Persians that persecute the Jews in pogroms for centuries, and not the Catholics and other Christian sects.

The Zionist refrain of…They want to drive us into the sea… has now morphed into they want to use a nuclear bomb on us, so we have to use one on them FIRST. All a bunch of garbage used to support US colonialism and imperialism in the Middle East, now entirely backed up by the Jewish Apartheid regime. Screaming loudly that Jews are supposedly under a danger of a Muslim anti-Jewish attack from Iran, Catholics and Jews get to unite to steal Muslim oil while pontificating about justice and freedom. Israel and Bush’s conservative Catholic supporters, united to launch their newest aggression against another Muslim country. No time to talk about the Pedophilic Church of Rome hierarchy, and no time to talk about the Zionist Jewish crimes against humanity in the Unholy Land. Just the total silence of the united fraternal hypocrites, conservative Catholics and Jews.

The US government just got to have Saddam Hussein hanged in a disgusting charade. What would have been much more just, would have been to have the Iranians hold these show trials, and then have them hang Hussein, Bush, Rumsfield, and others of their ilk afterwards. After all, these were the allies that initiated an unprovoked war against their country via iraq, that used chemical weapons on Iranians, and killed hundreds of thousands of Iranian citizens. And most of Jewish Israel applauded all this, and then has sat back smugly claiming to now feel threatened by this victim of their US sponsor- Iran.

Jewish Zionists get to push for a secular regime in the US, while pushing for a Jewish Apartheid theocracy in Israel for themselves. That is the core of their other hypocrisies of hugging up to their Catholic and Protestant fundy sponsors here in America. They want one thing for themselves (secular freedoms in the US), and another thing for others (religious and racial persecution administered by themselves in Israel/ Palestine upon others).

The Catholics want the ability to preach on moral issues to others, while whitewashing their church’s immorality on issues like abortion, priestly pedophilia, the Rwanda genocide’s Catholic participation, and their enthusiastic role in the Nazi ranks and other pogroms against Jews throughout their entire history. Today, the Jewish Zionists and Catholic conservatives march together in hatred of today’s other, the Muslim. They have become today’s, fraternal, colonial, imperialist hypocrites. The Catholic Church no longer serves Spanish imperialism against the Native Americans and Jews, but have united in a New Crusade together against the Muslim world on behalf of American imperialism. Oil for Moses and Christ, not gold robbed from murdered ‘Indians’. Religion in service to the Empire.

PPJPC Statement of solidarity in support of foreign-born workers

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The Pikes Peak Peace and Justice Commission (PPJPC) condemns the US Immigration & Naturalization Service (ICE-INS) for its Dec. 12 raids at multiple US facilities of the Swift & Co. that racially targetted Hispanic workers for arrest at their place of work. Over 1250 Hispanic workers were rounded up as if they were cattle and not human beings with rights and feelings. Families have been torn asunder, US-born children are being forced to leave for countries they have never known, and an atmosphere of racial intolerance and hatred is being promoted within our communities. This is not the proper role for our government and governmental agencies to be playing.

This raid comes in the context of a president whose foreign and domestic policies are increasing coming under fire for illegally promoting warfare, torture, and military occupations of other countries. It comes also in the context of an increasingly hostile use of laws against other minority groups within the US, such as Arabs and Muslims of varying nationalities, that also has undermined the basis of having a national culture respectful of all of our residents, whether citizens or not.

We at the Colorado Springs PPJPC, are unalterably opposed to reducing certain cultural groups within the US to second class residents subject to abusive, selective, and descriminatory application of US laws. We object to citizens being denounced in block, by federal agencies who allege before trials or convictions, that residents of one ethnic background are guilty as a group of criminal activity, such as “ID theft.” We object to the policy of holding immigrants looking for work in our country subject to criminal prosecution for trying to support their families as best as they can. Most come from countries where the US government has for decades intervened in a hostile and destructive manner. In short, we object and condemn the US government for further persecuting poverty stricken workers looking for a better life in what is a nation of previous immigrants. We condemn the Swift & Co INS raids.

May it also be pointed out, that in the case of Hispanic workers, the overwhelming majority of them are of indigenous Native American background, no matter that they currently speak Spanish as first tongue. To those Anglo-american citizens who shout at these foreign workers that they are breaking the law, and that they should be thrown in jail and never set foot again on Anglo terrain, the PPJPC hopes that they can examine their consciences, examine their souls, and open their hearts to having a more charitable attitude towards others.

Those immigrants with Native American blood were here first before Anglo ancestors chose it upon themselves to ‘illegally’ immigrate to the US shores, often murdering Native Americans and stealing their land and properties. Much of the US territory where Hispanics are now being racially profiled, was land peviously stolen from Mexico by war. It is utter hypocrisy for one racial and language group to call the US borders ‘their’ territory, and theirs alone.

Further, the PPJPC rejects the increased militarization of the US Southern Border, most underlined by the efforts to build a giant impenetrable wall there. This construction runs counter to the desires of the people most effected, citizens of both nations living on both sides of this border. Further, we reject the US govenment support for abusive regimes throughout Latin America. We reject the US war against the people of Colombia, and we reject the US’s imposition of repressive governments across Central America. All these actions create conditions of misery, and a need for people to flee their native lands.

Most of all, we reject the US governmental support to the repressive Mexican government, military, and police. Mexico is the country from which most of the undocumented workers were fleeing when they were caught up in the Greeley Colorado raids of the Swift & Co meat processing facilities. The PPJPC calls on our American government to dismantle US military schools of torture that train members of the repressive Mexican military, stop supporting Mexican government repression in Oaxaca and esewhere in that country, and demand that the Mexican and US governments seek justice for those murdered, tortured, and disappeared in Oaxaca, and elsewhere within Mexico.

The PPJPC, too, is concerned about National Security. But attacking immigrants and foreign nationals on US terrirtory is not the way to make our country more secure.

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Bush gives early Christmas gift to racists- turns INS loose on Latino workers

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With Bush’s press affairs going so badly for the Iraq Holy Christian Crusade againsts Arabs and Muslims, how to rally the kore Klan klowns around the flag once again? If the Middle East holy war for oil appears to be sputtering along on only one cylinder, why not jumpstart another holy crusade somewhere to distract people with? You know? What about the one that Anglo racists have going against the Spanish speaking? What a thought!

What a nice Christmas gift for the White, English speaking, America First, hate all the rest crowd, too! Turn INS loose in droves around the country at meatpacking plants! Kick America’s most exploited workers in the teeth, too! Fuck the unions! They thought they won a victory in Houston by raising Latino janitors salaries a dime or two in the SEIU Justice for Janitors effort. We’ll teach those mojados a lesson! Si, no se puede, pendejos! That’s the Bush way! He’s such a compassionate conservative.

And for the kids of the parents to be rounded up? Well Uncle Dubya has a nice lump of coal for them for Christmas! He’s a sweetheart, he is. And such great photo ops for the press! Anglo dittoshits just love to see those minorities hauled away in shackles! Their only regret is that more aren’t shot down like dogs.

In Greeley, Colorado alone, the INS goon squads hauled away over 300 from the Swift meatpacking plant there alone. Nationwide the total hauled off to be deported is sure to go over 1,000. See the map locator at the end of the Greeley paper’s article above to see where the other Swift plants are. Apparently Hyrum, Utah needed over 150 stormtroopers on hand to do the dirty work at that plant.

Here is a Denver paper slideshow of the pigshow at Greeley

To add insult to injury, the INS cops decided to loudly and publicly accuse the rounded up with being all involved in Identity Theft crimes. How better to make Spanish speaking people really be labelled hardened criminals amongst Anglos than to throw this stuff into the stew? So our latest messages from the authorities is, Don’t be Muslims and pray in airports and don’t be talking Spanish in public, if you know what’s good for you, that is.

Since Democrats are also on board this Holy Crusade, we can expect much more of this tax paid hatemongering ahead of us. Our political representatives from both parties suck totally on immigration issues. They both entirely support this sort of witchhunt against the working poor, all under the guise of ‘keeping our borders safe’ and ‘protecting the native workforce’.

Reimagining Guernica and Oaxaca

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Mickey Mouse bombs defenseless civiliansThe Smokebrush Gallery has an exhibition of art running through November 19 at its gallery located under the bridge at 218 W. Colorado, on the theme of Pablo Picasso’s epic work in honor of a city destroyed by the Spanish fascists. That city was Guenica, Spain. I enjoyed some of the art I saw during the opening last Friday, and the prices were quite reasonable if one has the desire and money to purchase something there. There was one large painting of Disney Surreal that I liked which was only $200. A total bargain. It would definitely be an attention getter in somebody’s living room, say.

In similar vein to this exhibit, is yet another online video about the events in Oaxaca, which is a surreal montage of video shots mixed with some quite surreal grunge? music. Very effective in communicating the horrors of Mexican government repression in a style that Picasso would certainly have approved of. Check out the sight, and especially the sound, of Reimagining Oaxaca.

Oaxaca- the people continue to battle back

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Viva La Lucha PopularWhat a turnaround. The Mexican and US elites have underestimated the people’s will to resist in Oaxaca. People arrived from around the country in support of the embattled local population, and the result was a massive demonstration Sunday of possibly up to half a million people. The demonstration was said to stretch for 3 miles along the highway entering the city!
 
Here in the US, this was not really reported on, even though a tiny proPRI demo earlier in the week received exaggerated US media attention. The Gazette, for example, had a big article about this pro sicario action that made it seem huge, when it was certainly not that in the least. There is more great footage of this struggle online.

The turnaround for the people began when the students on the campus successfully beat back a military attack on their stronghold at the university on November 2. This film coverage is entirely in Spanish, but it is obvious what is going on. Once again, we can see that self-defense includes being able to respond in non-pacifist resistance. See the population’s necessary response to military attacks

Blood diamonds

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Before it was a movie title, it distinguished a type of diamond. Blood Diamond was a diamond industry term, a Scarlet Letter, to characterize an uncertain, perhaps blood-tainted, provenance. To be specific, a diamond bought from a rebel controlled region of the third world where the diamonds are traded illegally, meaning outside the market share of the diamond cartel, because a diamond sold without profiting the traditional diamond merchants is an illegal diamond. Don’t you find that odd?

The price of diamonds is kept artificially high as a result of the diamond cartel. By a tradition of laws, the Antwerp merchants have managed to make anyone else’s trading of diamonds illegal, enforcing their monopoly. If you were to discover a diamond mine and did not want to do business with the Antwerp monopoly, you’d be considered an international criminal. In the turmoil of a civil war, if you seized a mine, by definition owned by one of their partners, the cartel would label your merchandise bloody.

The diamond cartel/monopoly is reeling, so we hear, from the Hollywood release of the movie Blood Diamonds. Not because it enlightens the public about the diamond market, but because the movie embellishes upon the unpalatable stigma of blood diamonds. Diamond sellers are worried that their business will be tarnished by their own ugly creation, in this case the severed limbs of the people of Liberia forced to work in the diamond mines by feuding rebels. The merchants are selling those same diamonds after all, it only depends on who sold which to whom.

Therefore the industry is stepping up its reassurances that showroom products are guaranteed not to be blood diamonds. There are stamps of authenticity, for example, which would be lacking on blood diamonds. Really? Do you imagine they hold huge bonfires to destroy contraband diamonds like so much unwanted weed? A blood diamond captured from diamond smugglers becomes a plenty-fine diamond, once again profitable to the cartel. The logic being that the diamonds were confiscated, thus no money went to reward their bearers, thus no bloodletting was given a monetary encouragement.

Even if this was true, it doesn’t address what blood diamonds are about.

The diamond cartel was a fortuitous monopoly to grow out of a few merchants’ control of the then known diamond mines. It’s a throwback legacy of the early trade monopolies granted by kings to encourage exploration and trade. The Portuguese were once given the exclusive right to trade around the horn of Africa, then later around the horn of America. The advantage was held later by the Spanish, the Dutch and the English. The Dutch East India Trading Company was a corporate example, the Hudson Bay Fur Trading Company another. We’ve long since outgrown the need to grant exclusives to conquering explorers. Except for diamonds.

The diamond monopoly upholds diamond prices which is sort of in everybody’s interest, the everybody who owns a diamond. Unregulated, it’s calculated that diamonds would lose half their value, maybe more were diamonds to lose their “a diamond is forever” allure.

There’s another common interest which I’ll address in a moment.

For now, imagine the cartel/monopoly concept if it had been granted for automobiles. Daimler Benz would be producing expensive cars for the wealthy and Henry Ford’s Model-T would be a blood-car. Only the rich would be driving cars and policemen would be chasing the poor in illegal vehicles.

Today’s monopolies are granted through patents and copyrights. Artificial rights which ensure high prices and that the poor are left out. As this applies to medicines and technology, the price differential becomes inhumane. Aids drugs are a tragic example.

The other important reason we tolerate the diamond monopoly is to maintain stability for the ownership class within the globalized economy. Diamonds are one of the few commodities which compete with a global currency. Drugs are another. The movement of value, as represented by diamonds, can fuel economic activity outside the control of banks and regulatory agencies. Commodities represent real value, as compared to currency which represents but a representation. As a result, diamonds which are easily concealed from government tax collectors, can readily be used to fund counter-government activities such as rebellions and emancipations. Bad for business.