The American Police State has your huddled asses yearning to breathe free

Posted on November 23, 2011 by Eric Verlo

ACLU and Shepard Fairey drape Lady Liberty in nationalism & jingo-freedom

Posted on June 29, 2011 by Eric Verlo

Is “Freedom” the same thing as Liberty? Let’s see, ACFU? It has an unfriendly ring to it.

The American Civil Liberties Union commissioned this fundraising magnet from halftone-deaf one-note Obamartist Shepard Fairey, but somebody confused this for a Department Of Defense contract. “Leading Freedom Forward”? That’s USA’s imperialist catchphrase! Please note at the helm is Fairey’s first client: Obama.

Linguists have long lamented America’s abandonment of liberty for the nefariously vacuous “freedom.” Freedom is for Operations, Markets, CIA-funded Pro-Democracy [sic] ops, and O-wellian doublespeak. “The Price of Freedom” is the title of the Smithsonian’s military history exhibit. Now the ACLU jumps on the war-wagon? That’s the Statue of Liberty with a bullhorn, as a union organizer — you can tell by the clipboard, but they’ve draped her in a flag, literally. Can you imagine any national monument with less need to prove her patriotism? I would have preferred they had used blind Lady Justice in reference to nationalism, where her blindfolded could have been the Red, White and Blue. But that’s probably a too obvious fashion statement about fascism. Dear ACLU, where are you going with this?

Let me clarify my criticism of Shepard Fairey. He’s a brilliant artist. By “halftone-deaf one-note” I refer to the FANS of his Blue Period, circa 2008. My beef is that this work recalls Fairey’s iconic Obama poster, though obviously it wouldn’t be considered a “Shepard Fairey creation” if it hadn’t. But. Is it appropriate that the ACLU wants to promote itself and its vital uni-partisan cause, with a ubiquivisual trademark that screams Democratic Party? Thankfully ACLU’s legal team at least has not failed to recognize Obama’s DP as the current reigning champion of civil liberty oppression.

Was Jesus a Muslim (tee-hee)?

Posted on September 29, 2010 by Eric Verlo

Listening to Islamic studies scholar Robert Shedinger taunt the CC audience with whether Jesus may have been a Muslim reminds me of the not-so-old joke about returning the Statue of Liberty to the French, because we’re not using her anymore. At his fundamental, Jesus espoused what we are accustomed to consider were basic Christian Values, but who are American Christians to lay claim to those anymore?

Islam, on the other hand, is a religion to suit the poor and oppressed, traditionally Jesus’ favorites. Unless we’re talking Embed Jesus.

Shedinger urged “constructive dialog” between Muslims and Christians, that each might learn of our common ideals. But his lesson would seem to be entirely for the Christians. All religions share the Golden Rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, although one might doubt Americans have given that much thought for awhile.

While many would argue that American religious hypocrisy has been growing fetid over the course of a centuries of imperialist invasions and wars, the Fundamentalist Christian/Moral Majority “WWJD” has taken a turn since 9/11 to mean bomb, maim and torture. Has the American Jesus become Un-Christian, or is this the New World Order Christianity?

In spite of what may be pious America’s best intentions, Capitalism has relegated its moral cover to doublespeak and subterfuge, American churchgoers to dupes, and US missionaries to unwitting cohorts to the deprivations of our businessmen, soldiers and loan officers.

The War on Islam isn’t being waged by Christianity Proper, but by the systemic greed of Western Capitalism, secular and godless, unless you count money to be divine. Capitalism may have Xmas, but it has no claim on Jesus.

Reenacting wars of colonial imperialism

Posted on May 18, 2009 by Eric Verlo

COLORADO SPRINGS, 1776. District 12 elementary school 5th graders reenacted a couple Revolutionary War battles, where the heretofore unstoppable Red Coats fought in vain to crush the American insurgency.

Aided by Awakening Councils of British Loyalists, the English troops threw overwhelming force against Colonial militias who would not fight fair.

Comprised mainly of army irregulars, dressed often as ordinary civilians, because they were, the “American” rebels would not renounce terrorist tactics, human shields and unconventional warfare.

British soldiers were conscripted from among the families who could afford neither education or apprenticeships to the skilled trades. Whereas their Tory collaborator were from the colonies’ wealthy landowners.

The British armies represented a coalition from client states of the empire, such as the Scottish Highlanders. These occupation forces supplemented their number with private contractor mercenaries, the professionally equipped, widely despised Hessians.

The Continental insurgency was accused of including foreign fighters.

British military superiority was overwhelming, wherever they concentrated their forces, the rebels withdrew. But there were never enough British soldiers deployed to hold the entire countryside.

The American Freedom Fighters were assisted by France, home of “French Fries,” later called “Freedom Fries,” and the Statue of Liberty.

After eight long years of far flung military engagements, incurring an insurmountable national debt, the English conceded victory to the separatists in what became known as the American War of Independence.

EPILOG:

Playing the heavy in a reenactment of the US patriotic struggle against British occupation, was not so bad as playing a turncoat.

Most Americans look back and picture themselves having been Lexington Minutemen, or Kentucky Rangers or Continental Marines, but many of our forefathers fought against the patriots. The more ignoble among the collaborators were: Simcoe’s Queen’s Rangers, the Loyal Irish Volunteers, the New Jersey Volunteers, Brant’s Volunteers, Butler’s Rangers, Caldwell’s Company, Docksteader’s Rangers, DeLancey’s Brigade, Brewerton’s Company, the King’s Royal Regiment, the Loyal American Regiment, the Royal American Volunteers, the Queen’s Rangers, and Tarleton’s British Legion.

POSTSCRIPT:
Reports of atrocities were dismissed as enemy propaganda. Evidence emerges later of what happens when infantry are left to their own initiative. Witness: stretcher-bearers and wounded come upon a British patrol coming off the lunch-hour, and are put to the bayonet.

Sarah Palin poses with Statue of Liberty

Posted on October 19, 2008 by Eric Verlo

More fodder to welcome the GOP VP candidate to Colorado Springs on Monday morning. This is Sarah Palin poses with Statue of Liberty from whiterabbitcult.

Elsewhere:
PALIN-DROME:
THE SAME
BACKWARD

SARAH PALIN:
PIGOTRY IN LIPSTICK

And how did we miss these videos? Sarah Palin Remixed

and the Sextape

Tiananmen Square before Olympic spirit

Posted on August 2, 2008 by Eric Verlo

Beijing 2008 boycott
Human rights activists are crying foul about China’s role in Tibet and Burma. Here’s a illustrated time-line of the events which led to the totalitarian repression of the Tiananmen protests of 1989. Reprinted from Christus Rex.

Beijing Spring -A look back at the 1989 Spring that impacted a nation. Visit original website to see archival video footage from the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather.

April 15
Former Communist Party chief Hu Yaobang, a leading reformist, dies of a heart attack at the age of 73. Students at Beijing University put up posters praising Hu that indirectly criticize the opponents who forced his resignation following student demonstrations in 1986-87.

April 17
Thousands of students march in Beijing and Shanghai shouting “long live Hu Yaobang, long live democracy, long live freedom, long live the rule of law.”

April 18
2,000 students from Beijing bicycle into Tiananmen Square and protest before the Great Hall of the People. Included in their demands for democratic reforms is the repudiation of official campaigns against freedom of the press.

April 21
Crowds of up to 100,000 demonstators gather in Tiananmen Square to mourn Hu.

April 22
Students defy police orders to leave the square, while riots break out in the provincial capitals of Xian and Changsha. Official memorial ceremonies are held for Hu at the Great Hall of the People.

April 23
Beijing students announce a boycott of university classes.

April 24
Tens of thousands of students at Beijing universities go on strike, demanding a dialog with the government.

April 27
Bolstered by broad-based support, more than 150,000 students surge past police lines and fill Tiananmen Square, chanting slogans for democracy and freedom.

April 29
Government officials meet with student leaders, but independent student groups say they will continue a class boycott at 41 university campuses in Beijing.

May 2
6,000 students march in Shanghai.

May 4
100,000 students and supporters march on Tiananmen square to celebrate the 70th anniversary of China’s first student movement, while similar demonstrations are held in Shanghai, Nanjing and other cities. 300 journalists protest outside the official Xinhua News Agency.

May 9
Journalists petition the government for freedom of the press.

May 13
2,000 students begin a hunger strike in Tiananmen Square.

May 15
Government deadline for students to leave the square comes and goes. A welcoming ceremony for Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s state visit is moved to the airport.

May 16
Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators occupy the square.

May 18
One million people march in support of the hunger strikers. Li Peng, Premier of the State Council, issues a stern warning to student leaders and refuses to discuss their demands.

May 19
A tearful Zhao Ziyang, China’s General Secretary, makes a pre-dawn visit to weakened hunger strikers. Li also visits the students briefly. In the evening the students decide to end the hunger strike, but quickly change their mind when Li and President Yang Shangkun announce martial law. Zhao reportedly resigns or is ousted from power after failing to convince Li and others to compromise.

May 20, 1989
Chinese authorities ‘pull the plug’ on Dan Rather who is reporting live from Beijing.

May 28
About 80,000 people (mostly students from outside the capital) demonstrate but, unlike past rallies, few workers participate.

May 30
Students unveil their “Goddess of Democracy,” a replica of the Statue of Liberty, on the square. The government calls it an insult to the nation.

May 31
Farmers and workers stage the first of several pro-government rallies in Beijing’s suburbs.

June 1
The Beijing Municipal Government bans all foreign press coverage of the demonstrations.

June 3
Tens of thousands of troops advance on the city shortly after midnight, but are repulsed by residents who put up barricades. By the afternoon 5,000 troops appear outside the Great Hall of the People, but are again surrounded and stopped. In the final assault that evening, troops shoot and beat their way to the square.

Taping the beginnings of the massacre, correspondent Richard Roth is arrested.

June 4
Troops occupy the square and smash the “Goddess of Democracy” with tanks. The shooting continues with soldiers periodically firing on crowds gathered on the outskirts of the square. Residents set fire to more than 100 military trucks and armored personnel carriers. The government claims the “counterrevolutionary riots” have been suppressed. Meanwhile, riots break out in southwestern Chengdu.

Richard Roth is released and reports further on the night’s violence.

June 5
There are reports of clashes between rival military groups around Beijing. President Bush condemns the “bloody and violent” crackdown and orders a suspension of U.S. military sales and contacts with the Chinese government.

June 5, 1989
Richard Roth reports: one anonymous man stops a column of 18 tanks.

June 6
Foreign embassies advise their nationals to leave China. The government says 300 people were killed and 7,000 injured in the crackdown, but claims most of the dead were soldiers. There are more reports of clashes between military units. Six people are killed in Shanghai when a train runs through a barricade. The U.S. State Department announces that dissident Fang Lizhi and his wife have sought refuge in the U.S. Embassy.

June 7
Troops, responding to what they say is sniper fire, shoot into a foreign diplomatic compound. The United States and other governments order the mandatory evacuation of dependents of diplomatic personnel.

June 8
Premier Li Peng appears in public for the first time since the crackdown to congratulate troops.

June 9
China’s leader Deng Xiaoping appears for the first time since May 16. In a speech to military officers he blames the turmoil on counterrevolutionaries attempting to overthrow communism.

June 10
Beijing authorities announce the arrest of more than 400 people, including student and labor leaders.

June 11
The government issues a warrant for the arrest of Fang Lizhi and his wife, saying they committed crimes of “counterrevolutionary propaganda and instigation.”

June 12
The government bans all independent student and labor organizations and says police and soldiers should shoot all “rioters and counterrevolutionaries.”

June 13
The government issues a wanted list for 21 student activists who led the democracy movement.

June 14
China orders the expulsion of Associated Press reporter John Pomfret and Voice of America Bureau Chief Alan Pessin.

June 15
Three Shanghai men are sentenced to death for burning a train that ran over protesters. The nationwide arrest total reaches above 1,000.

June 17
A Beijing court sentences eight people to death for attacking soldiers and burning vehicles during the June 3-4 assault.

June 18
Politburo member Qiao Shi appears prominently in the official media, adding to speculation the party security man will replace Zhao.

June 20
The government nullifies all exit permits in an apparent attempt to stop fugitives from leaving the country.

Corporate Welfare Queens demand more war at Keystone family picnic Jun 23-25

Posted on June 21, 2008 by Tony Logan

“Integrating Air, Space, and Cyberspace Domains” is the theme of this year’s War in Outer Space crowd. Yes, these corporate Welfare Muthers will be bringing the kids to the summer picnic in Keystone Colorado next week. There’s so much to do at this Vail Resort property! I hear the food will be just marvelous! Space Warfare Symposium And the scenery!

My favorite Welfare Queen of them all is ATK where they give you a visual show at their web site that includes Space War craft, Pentagon sold fighter bombers buzzing The Statue of Liberty, and huge belts of ammo (their specialty in sales) for the hired mercenaries.

These Pentagon-fed Welfare Queens like to make you think that they are protecting ‘homeland security’, but they really are just selling the idea that they deserve to continue to be welfare recipients ….all the way to Mars and back! They are just pigs feeding at the trough.

Where’s the Justice and Peace paid staffers, too? The ‘Space War Symposium’ picnic will probably be able to hear their snoring all the way to Keystone! Another no-show for the paid supposed agitators it seems? They may well be too busy to come while occupying themselves trying to downsize the group, without giving up any of their own salaries, of course.

People’s Republic of Higher Education

Posted on February 12, 2008 by Eric Verlo

Fair enough, the Berkeley City Council is being asked to reconsider whether it really meant to tell US Marine Corps recruiters to go fuck themselves. I hope it’s just a chance to say it again.

Maybe the People’s Republic of Berkeley is due for a new honor. Keeper of the Flame of Freedom. The United States of Berkeley. It used to be the joke to send the Statue of Liberty back to the French, because America wasn’t using it. How about we install Lady Liberty off the shores of Berkeley? They’re showing the temerity to claim her. Berkeley is standing up for everything America used to. What do you make of the vociferous accusations of treason being leveled at Berkeley in the name of patriotism? What fault can you find with the clear headed resolutions being pronounced by their City Council?

The only thing which differentiates Berkley from the rest of the country is level of education. I wouldn’t want to be caught poking fun at, much less belittling, someone smarter than me, especially for taking a more principled stand than I -err- me. You can tease them about inarticulate athletic ability, but the last thing you’d want to do is to presume to correct a grammarian.

How are dumbfuck Americans like Move Forward America so easily goaded to speak derisively of their own who know better? It’s one thing to question authority, another even to be skeptical in general. But Berkeley isn’t filled with the social engineers who’ve got a boot on your throat, it’s full of students, your children, who you sent to acquire an education. Not your education in fact, a better education. A world view beyond your own, a comprehension you were not afforded. That’s Berkeley.

Berkeley is not unique, though perhaps it has the highest visibility. Regionally there are other college towns that fit the leftist stereotype. Boulder and Ann Arbor for example. These are home to progressive populations, teachers, students and alumni which color the demographics significantly to affect the local politics. Why are better educated people always leftists? A dolt could only hope to chance upon the inspiration to ask himself such a doozy.

This dolt would ask the reverse: AS left EQUALS education, SO less-left MUST EQUAL less-education.

Why aren’t more college campuses like Berkeley? What’s going on that our educational institutions are producing idiots to mock the product of real education? It’s a terrible portent.

The Cloverfield al-Qaeda Witch Project

Posted on December 22, 2007 by Eric Verlo

“Whatever it is, it’s winning.”

Our Lady Liberty beheaded, smoke and ash circa 9/11, Cloverfield would seem to know what it’s insinuating. So this is The Blair Witch Terrorist Project, where there’s nothing in focus but black void, and we’re to fear what? The unknown? Kids are afraid of it already, it’s called the dark. I’d be afraid of fearing the unknown: that was the Dark Age.

The marketing campaign should offer this caveat:

As the media conglomerate Hollywood studio behind this movie, in the interest of full disclosure, I am an agent for WHATEVER (where “whatever” is defined as totalitarian oppression by reign of fear). Thus it is my interest, and that of WHATEVER’s, to make you believe we are winning. After all, winning is simply the act of convincing you, by deed or by decree, that your protectors have lost. In effect you must come to see that your upstream is obsolete, and of the necessity to fall in with new masters. Whether or not it is true, it will become true. That is how another is victorious, how the conqueror vanquishes you.

You’ve seen this presumably pompous routine from prizefighters. It’s the same unspoken intimidation from athletes to chess grand masters: the psych-out. You’ve lost the match before stepping into the ring, do not fool yourself otherwise.

Military propaganda fliers say it from the sky: resistance is futile. I’m Psych-Ops baby! I’m a ruse permitted by the conventions of war, so long as I’m not perfidy: I can’t lie and tell you an armistice has been signed, but I can mislead you into thinking you’re surrounded. The clever propaganda convinces you it will be easier for you if you lay down your gun. Easier for us too. We can shoot you but it’s a lot more effective to conquer you en masse, that you survive to resume your peacetime task in what becomes our labor pool.

Look at this Cloverfield promo. (Ignore for the time being what you might have gleaned from their viral marketing campaign that this is a movie about a Godzilla-esque hydrant who takes the head of the Statue of Liberty for a game on kick the can around Manhattan.) Can you think of anything more chilling than the Statue of Liberty with her head torn off, dark gaping slashes across her back, leaving vulnerable every American’s liberty?

I can.

Imagine headless American zombies who don’t know right from wrong, up from down from a hole in the ground, running from every sudden noise, every unexpected voice they don’t recognize, even and especially, in another language or praying to another God, anything that deviates from their norm or the accepted behavior they believe will not displease their masters. These zombies will be insisting that you run and cower as they do, lest you draw wrath and misfortune upon all. Or be treated as a deviant about whom they have been warned.

NPR movie critic Bob Mondello in his review of I AM LEGEND tried to insinuate that its zombies reflected the terrorists we fear, being as they were determined to destroy America for nefarious zombie-terrorist reasons. What a crock. We are the zombies.

The New Colossus

Posted on April 25, 2007 by Eric Verlo

I met an otherwise conservative old gentleman yesterday with a refreshing answer to the immigration question. Said he: “I’d welcome them!”

“This nation was built on immigration, we’re all immigrants -except the Native Americans- and I believe there’s room for plenty more. There’s obviously work so let them come.”

That’s the kind of empathy I think is necessary before we can address the real problem of immigration: what is driving refugees to cross our borders?

If Iowans suddenly started flooding into Kansas, only the most self-centered xenophobe would conclude it was for Kansas’ superior character. The rest would wonder, what is happening in Iowa to drive all those people from their homes? What industry is destroying the farms and businesses leaving Iowans no choice but to move off? More than likely it would be the same culprits that are at work in Mexico.

Big Agra and the usual multinationals, aided by the traditional ruling elite, have been raping Mexico and Central America for years, forcing the populations to move north, not for greener pastures, but any pasture at all. Mexicans are not coming to America because they want to be Americans. They do not embrace American culture, even our language. They are a displaced people. Let’s welcome them into our system and together we can address what powers are at work which have stolen their homelands. The forces are multinational, but the tools are American. They are the World Bank and friends. Our government.

It wasn’t always thus. I chanced to look up Emma Lazarus’ poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty where there are more words than form the fabled phrase we know by heart. To me they reflect a grand ideal that today serves only to inflate the American sense of self-importance. Time to go back to school lest The New Colossus (Mother of Exiles) become like the old.

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Conspicuous accountancy

Posted on January 20, 2007 by Eric Verlo

The General Accounting Office says they don’t have enough manpower to audit the Iraq reconstruction contracts. So much money has been spent, and so much of it has vaporized, that there isn’t staff enough to follow it.

I ask you, imagine the white-collar power to abscond with that loot!

Granted it takes less effort to bury a needle in a haystack than it takes to find it, but we are not talking about needles. If so much money missing, let’s look for contractors with accountancy muscle enough to have hauled it off. Like a polar bear gone missing at the zoo, at first it’s inexplicable, but we know it would take a pretty conspicuous baby stroller.

If you don’t have the accountants to trace billions of diverted funds, hire them from the contractors who have them. Lots of accountants were needed to devise, execute and cover-up the heist. Where are they?

When David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear, with mirrors it’s said, he didn’t do it alone. You and I could say we didn’t have the staff to go out there in the grass and find his un-magical cohorts. But Mr. Copperfield has the staff. Their resumes probably laud their skills for mirror holding.

Spika’s sledgehammer

Posted on April 2, 2006 by Eric Verlo

Tonight was Gwyn Coleman’s Art Wars III at the historic City Auditorium, a great success as usual, everyone on the youthful side of the Colorado Springs art community was there. Spika had a performance piece in the show, and here’s what Spika did, the big goof.

Early in the evening Spika and an assistant painted a huge mural on stage of the United States in neon red against a black background. At the center of the red map was a yellow circle with a blue outer ring, over which was a green hazmat symbol.

Just before his performance piece which he called Metaxis, Spika led a robed figure [his wife dressed in burlap and darkened skin] resembling a Middle Eastern Muslim of irrelevant gender. She sat before the symbol at the middle of the America mural. Spika stood centerstage before a blacklight clad only in a pair of black shorts.

To a recording of Bob Dylan singing Masters of War, Spika rolled up his shorts into the sides of the waistband so that his attire resembled that of Jesus or Tarzan or Captain Underpants. Then Spika began to rub fluorescent red paint all over his legs and bare feet.

Spika wiped his hands on the front of his shorts, a repetitive move which looked uncomfortably indulgent until we saw that he was cleaning his hands for the next color. Then Spika covered the upper half of his body with blue paint. By this time the soundtrack had progressed to Jimmy Hendrix’s Star Spangled Banner. Spika rubbed the blue into his face and poured what remained of the blue paint over his hair.

Now Spika wrapped a skirt of white stripes around his waist. These were strips of white paper suspended on a wire waistband. Then he draped a similar shawl of white paper stars over his shoulders. Having made a living flag of himself, Spika donned a yellow crown of spikes, whatever it is that the Statue of Liberty wears, greatly amplified and struck a pose. Once the applause subsided, Spika walked over to the robed figure at the center of the America mural.

We were not sure as he turned his back to her, if he wasn’t bending to take a crap on the Muslim, but instead he sat between her legs. Then Spika slowly reclined into the arms of his robed non-westerner to create …a pieta, and the crowd went wild.

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