Recreate-68 versus the City of Denver

Preparing for police brutality
DENVER- Glenn Spagnuolo of RECREATE-68 held his own against Denver City Councilman Charlie Brown at a symposium held today at the University of Denver about the upcoming DNC in August. Asked whether providing instruction for the use of shields truly constitutes advocating non-violent protest, Spagnuolo told of the permanent injuries which Police inflicted at previous demonstrations like the FTAA, and he described Denver’s newly requisitioned equipment such as shotguns which fire long distance tasers (XREP) and ear-piercing weapons systems (LRAD). Councilman Brown stressed the importance of protecting the upcoming DNC, its delegates, its protestors, the people of Denver, and the reputation of Denver, from the threat of terrorism.

The City of Denver refuses to release its security plan, to preempt a timely legal challenge. According to Spagnuolo, the city is considering a mile wide perimeter around Pepsi Stadium. Spagnuolo also clarified that Recreate-68 is not calling for repeating the violence of the 1968 Chicago convention, but instead hopes to re-activate the public to the level of engagement it exhibited in 1968, when the same Democratic Party refused to heed the will of the people to stop funding the illegal war in Vietnam. As history repeats itself forty years later, the anti-war movement has yet to summon the courage of the American people.

A couple of Recreate-68 innovations: Doc’s Place, a 24-hour people’s health clinic, to provide free conventional and alternative medical care for all for the duration of the DNC, “to deliver the promise no candidate has: Healthcare for all.” AS WELL, Recreate-68 is planning large FOOD NOT BOMBS events, to feed the homeless of Denver, to counter the efforts of the city to sweep its streets of the homeless in advance of the convention.

There did appear to be a conflict about how best to secure Denver’s image with the eyes of the world upon it.

Glenn Spagnuolo comes to Recreate-68 with experience leading to arrest and acquittal in demonstrations in 2005 and 2007 against the Columbus Day parade. He’s worked with the South Africa’s anti-apartheid struggle, ACT-UP, and against the FTAA in Florida.

Most recently, Denver held a lottery to allocate the choice protest venues for the duration of the DNC. Recreate-68 received some locations and time slots, but lost the prime spot and prime time to another candidate: the Democratic Party! Oddly, although the Democrats are going to be center-stage at the convention hall, they applied, and won, the right to occupy the main protest stage adjacent the Pepsi Center on the first evening of the convention.

Cynthia McKinney and Cindy Sheehan together in Mexico City!

Below, we reprint 2 speeches made in Mexico City Friday, just yesterday, April 4, 2008. The speech Greed … by Cindy Sheehan, and another speech by Cynthia McKinney that is without title.

Cynthia McKinney
Segundo Encuentro Continental de los Trabajadores
Mexico City, Mexico, April 4, 2008

Brothers and Sisters in the Movement

I am happy to be here in Mexico City where the people all over Latin
America are on the move:

On the move for justice, self-determination, and peace.

I love that you have created a Power to the People movement with your
votes that is stronger than the mightiest military force on the
planet!

With the power of your vote you have taken your countries back.

Now, all we have to do is to count all the votes in the United States
and Mexico!

In the 2000 U.S. Presidential election, an estimated six million
people went to the polls and voted, but their votes weren’t counted.

In 2000, and again in 2004, Democrats helped to install Republicans
into power rather than fight for the victory that the voters had
given them.

As a result of this kind of collusion, the Democratic majority in our
Congress has failed to impeach Bush. They have failed to institute a
livable wage, stop the multiple wars the U.S. is fighting right now,
and they have failed to protect human rights anywhere in the world,
including even at home.

That’s why I left the Democratic Party.

I refused to become complicit in war crimes, crimes against humanity,
crimes against the peace, spying on the American people, and ripping
our Bill of Rights to shreds.

And so I declared my independence from the U.S. leadership that gave
us tax cuts for the wealthy and a country 53 trillion dollars in debt
and Hurricane Katrina.

To my brothers and sisters at this Conference and in the United
States, I say:

Hands off Haiti!

Hands off Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Argentina now making a claim for
the Falklands!

Hands off Venezuela and Ecuador!

No to Plan Mexico; No to Plan Colombia! Hands off Pemex!

And finally, it was on this date, 40 years ago, that Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. was murdered.

We now know that Dr. King was murdered as part of a conspiracy that
included his own government. Hatched in the bowels of the Pentagon,
where so many other regime change operations have been hatched, the
government of the United States launched regime change at home on
Black America. We blacks in the United States have long known the
pain and the consequences of having authentic leadership snatched
from us; of having someone else pick our leaders before we pick them
ourselves.

I am proud to join this international movement for
self-determination; for justice and for peace. Despite today’s
difficulties, we must never let our dream be deferred. We in the U.S.
gain inspiration from your successes here so we can carry the
struggle to every nook and cranny of the United States.

Que vivan los pueblos de america!

Cindy Sheehan -Key Note Speech “GREED”
Segundo Encuentro Continental de los Trabajadores
Mexico City, Mexico, April 4, 2008

First of all I would like to thank the International Labor Council and the Electrician’s Union for such a warm welcome and I would like to assure you all, my brothers and sisters that I represent millions of North Americans who are in solidarity with you, because we are also plagued with an illegitimate President!

Once, a couple of years ago, I was getting a pedicure in the deep south in the USA, of all places, and my pedicurist was a Latina from Mexico. She lived two hours from where she and her husband owned the shop and she left her young son home with her mother-in-law for six days a week, while she and her husband toiled at the shop. She was very sweet and sympathetic to my situation as a mother whose son was killed in Iraq, but she looked up from my feet at one point and asked me: “Why do you Americans have to have everything. If you all weren’t so greedy, I could still live in my country with my family.” Greedy? Hmm? Her earnest and passionate comment gave me much to think about.

Dictionary.com defines greed as the rapacious desire, especially for wealth or possessions

Greed is also one of the seven deadly sins and I know more than most Americans that the same twisted drive for, not just a fair share of prosperity, but ALL the prosperity is what caused my son’s death and, similarly, my nail persons’ need to have to leave the beloved country of her birth.

Greed is not what drives Latin Americans to try and cross the border to go north, existential necessity is; but corporate-capitalist greed is what makes the dangerous journey necessary. Building walls on the border is not the way to solve the immigration “problem” just as invading two countries and killing innocent civilians was not the way to solve the terrorism problem. Healing the systems of oppression that cause immigration is the way to solve the “problem.” People in Latin America want the right to not have to emigrate. Like my pedicurist, they want to be able to make a good living in their own countries.

In a study done by the Economic Policy Institute in 2004, it was found that 5% of the US population owns 58% of the wealth and only 1.2% of the wealth is owned by 40% of our citizenry. I am sure if a similar study were done, this disparity would be much wider in these days of irresponsible corporate bailouts while Americans are losing their homes at the rate of 250,000 a month and the war economy has made the fat cats astronomical profits while robbing our communities of essential services and needed infrastructure improvements. The Milton Friedman model of disaster capitalism, which Naomi Klein exposes so well in her book, Shock Doctrine, is responsible for economic disaster from New Orleans to Baghdad and the basic underlying root sickness of this is greed.

Statistics can be easily manipulated as we know the statistics reporting the “success” of free trade agreements such as NAFTA are. Facts, numbers and experiential data cannot be so easily manipulated, though. In the years since the Clinton administration (with the support of my Congressional opponent, Nancy Pelosi) foisted NAFTA on our continent, both Mexico and the US have lost farmland and good paying jobs. Many of our manufacturing jobs have gone overseas to Indonesia or China and the Wal Martization of our cultures creeps up on us unchecked and corporations such as Wal Mart have been the main beneficiaries of NAFTA to the detriment of working class people in both countries.

What can we do to improve the situation and reclaim our prosperity from the control of the 21st Century Robber Barons and slave-traders?

First of all, “free” trade treaties should be replaced with fair trade agreements. Small business owners and workers should be protected from being crushed under the heels of multi-national corporations. Any agreement should have protection for workers. A worker who makes shoes, computers, cars, or grows crops should make the same livable wage in Mexico or China, as they would in America. There would be no incentive for off-shoring jobs or relocating manufacturing plants if workers in China made the same wages as workers in America.

All workers should be guaranteed the basic human right of being able to belong to a union. Unions elevate the conditions of workers and families and should remain a strong political force for good and not allow them selves to be beaten into submission or weakness by governmental or corporate pressure. (But aren’t the corporations and governments so intimately linked these days in their fascistic oppression of us average citizens?)

The fragile ecology of our planet must be protected in these agreements and the same standard of sustainability and environmental protections should be uniformly recognized and practiced globally.

Small farmers should be protected from the encroachment of “agri-giants” and their lands protected from the eminent domain of greed.

I know there are many more solutions and a comprehensive platform of “No human left behind” would guarantee the rights of all humans to safe and plentiful food and drinking water; shelter; good and free education; sustainable employment; security and safety from US corporate-militarism; and the basic rights that were guaranteed of: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

For far too long, the United States of America has greedily gobbled up too much of global wealth and resources and our chickens of greed and violence are coming home to roost. As alarming as these trends are, we North Americans are only slightly beginning to feel the ravages of what we have been manufacturing and exporting for years: death and destruction. A new paradigm of global sharing and caring must be implemented and today is the beginning.

Today, as we commemorate and mourn the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr who was assassinated 40 years ago in Memphis, Tn; and as I mourn the murder by the war machine of my son Casey, who was killed in Sadr City, Baghdad 4 years ago today—we must renew our commitment to peace and justice to honor their sacrifices and the sacrifices of others who have also gone before us. We just celebrated the birthday of Cesar Chavez who dedicated his life to the most marginalized and exploited of workers and I am constantly inspired by the devotion of people like Dr. King, Casey and Cesar Chavez andI hope that we all take inspiration to rededicate our lives to peace and justice.

We must build upon the coalition that we have gathered here in this beautiful and historic place to include every group that we are a part of. We can no longer say that we have to focus on “one” issue, because all the issues are the same. My country is waging deadly and lost-cause occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan and so many groups in my country say that we have to focus on bringing our troops home and not become “distracted” by other issues. Profound economic inequality and unchecked greed is the root cause of these occupations as it is the root cause of the occupation of Palestine by Israel and all the violence in the world’s hot-spots today.

In our coalition, we must educate our brothers and sisters that equalizing prosperity and neutralizing greed are the solutions to these acute problems.

I also stand here in solidarity with my brothers and sisters who are working in the Legitimate Government of Mexico to prevent the illegitimate government from privatizing PEMEX. The oil of Mexico belongs to the people of Mexico, and if I can’t be here with you all to block the crimes with my body then I will definitely be with you in spirit.

Thank you for allowing me to speak. It has been an honor to be here.

Mugabe and the British move to regain control over Zimbabwe

The world corporate press has been going non stop against 2 African governments the last couple of years. The targets have been the governments of Sudan and Zimbabwe. Why such attention given to these 2 African governments out of a continent full entirely of unsavory governments and dictators? Is it that the US and Western European elites have suddenly become a group of benevolent saints, only concerned with the welfare of the poor Black populations of their ‘Dark Continent’? One can’t really think so.

So let us take a brief historical look at Zimbabwe now, and see why the corporate press is so hot for regime change? One does not have to be in love with the 82 year old Mugabe, current head of the Zimbabwe state, to question why our attention is focused by others in his direction. Has this attention about ‘human rights’ been consistent, coming from the European and US governments and their servile press? Yeah, right…

Let us ask several questions, then… Has the corporate press informed the world public about the economic warfare being waged by the colonialists against their former colony, Zimbabwe? Well, why not? Zimbabwe is an economic basket case today, but the US and Europeans have made it so, as well as Mugabe himself, but that’s not what the corporate press wants the public to know. They are campaigning for regime change and not the welfare of Zimbabweans. The governments and their press want to gain back direct control over Zimbabwe, not save the people living there. Look for the likes of O’Reily and the other media whores at the Fox ‘News’ stable to be shedding crocodile tears on behalf of that population though, as the Murdoch press in England routinely does, too.

Another question, too? A lot of press has been given to the dangers of an anthrax terrorist attack on the US. Has any of the pro-military/ police state press ever informed the public that the largest case of anthrax terrorism directed against people happened in Rhodesia (the white racist Apartheid state ruling over Zimbabwe) just a while back? That’s right, the Whites of Rhodesia-Zimbabwe that were intimately connected with Great Britain, used anthrax against the Blacks of that country. It was the largest such biological warfare use of anthrax in world military history.

As somebody around back then, I don’t really remember the press ever giving much a shit about the affairs of Zimbabwe back then. Now, they can’t do anything else other than blab on and on about Zimbabwe, same as they do about the Darfur in Sudan. The British, French and US governments want control back over these 2 regions of Africa. And they want the general public to think that they are being good people if they help cheer lead for that effort. Go figure? I blame our pathetic educational system here for people being so naive and gullible. How ’bout you?

Click here to read more about the anthrax biological warfare of European colonialists against their Black neighbors in Africa. This info actually was writtten by a White Rhidesian racist, too.

US surge and urge to purge has stalled

The Mehdi Army militia of populist Iraqi Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has stropped the US push to war with Iran flat in its tracks, much as Hezbollah was able to stop and throw back Israel’s invasion of Lebanon back in 2006. What Israel and the US both lack in the Muslim World, is any popular Arab support what-so-ever for their policies in the region, all due to their repression and totalitarianism inside Arab and other Muslim countries. The Arab people want none of it and have made that clear to all for decades now.

This defeat of US forces in Southern Iraq is temporary, yet it shows the difficulties that lie ahead in the planned US attempt at regime change in Iran. On the ground, the US can control nothing securely, whether it be in Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Somalia, or Afghanistan. That reality means that the only real US weapon is the pure terrorism of its air war. Down below, the US military is unable to communicate at all with the people it is hoping to subjugate and conquer. The US and European military forces cannot even communicate much at all with their hired local stooges, let alone the general population they are attempting to rule.

Let’s face it, the US is trying to re-colonize these areas of the world, and just as before, colonizing others does not go down well with the people subjected to imperialist control. Still, despite the temporary set back in the attempted Purge of current local Shia control over Southern Iraq, the US government (both parties) is determined to continue forward to attacking Iran, Syria, and Lebanon (again) in the near future. It will still be forward into the bog for our So-So ‘leaders’. A salute to General Dick!

African Union ugly iron fist of status quo

Multistate sponsored terrorism
Comoran and Tanzanian African Union soldiers in Mutsamudu beat a man suspected of collaborating with Mohamed Bacar, the renegade Anjouan leader. Tanzania, with the backing of the African Union, has retaken the small Isle of Anjouan, which has been rebel-held/ independent, depending on how you look as it, since 2001. Members of the African Union, like any collective of largely undemocratic governments, are threatened by independence movements. The UN is similarly flawed when compelled to act against popular uprisings within its member states, to preserve the power of their ambassadors’ regents.

Meester Vice-president, we’ve been friends a long time…

Dick ‘Shotgun’ Cheney is in the Middle East cheering up our government’s allies there.

‘Everything going by game plan, and American State terrorism is really healthy, Guys!’ YES! … Cheney in oil talks with Saudis

…You just gotta love these people, don’t you?

They remind me a lot of Saddam Hussein himself, who never for a minute lacked confidence. Maybe Cheney and The King will someday meet the same fate, though unfortunately I think they will go the way of Franco, Pinochet, and Richard Nixon instead. There’s such little real justice in the world, and it’s a shame.

I am firmly in favor of torturing to death Dick Cheney (for useful information, of course, therefore I can say such a thing, because the US Empire is such a grand democracy!) Gotta love our great people! Wave the flag! Pray for America and all that.

Barack Obama on Blackwater, the Democrats on Iraq

It is an insidious ruse to think that either of the 2 Democratic Party candidates are pledging to get the US out of Iraq. At least that is the conclusion reached by Jeremy Scahill, as he discusses why no presidential candidate plans on fully leaving Iraq Jeremy Scahill is the author of the bestselling Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army.

But even beyond Iraq, none of the 3 candidates plan to end the so-called ‘War on Global Terrorism’ or the ‘War on Drugs’. We have 3 war candidates to choose from if we decide to vote. Sure you can vote for Nader and/ or a Green Party candidate. But due to their late announcements, these are truly token candidacies and are not viable challenges to the Democratic and Republican parties. No democracy here, except for maybe Democracy Now being what we are kind of left with, along with a few non-Establishment blogs. etc. We are left with a voice on the margins but no vote.

Leaders of anti- Colombian government demo of March 6 assassinated

While attention is elsewhere, the US continues to wage war in South America and it does so using the terrorism of its death squads. And even more pathetic is the US media’s support for this war, as they spread misinformation and lies and blanket out real info about how the US government is waging this war, using murder and torture at will of its political opponents.

Example in point, is how the American media highlighted US coverage of pro- Colombian government demonstrations throughout Colombia against the FARC opposition group, yet ignored the massive demonstrations throughout the same country against the death squad arming, US backed Colombian government. Don’t expect to see much about how the Colombian government murdered the leaders of this demonstration, a mere week after they were held.

See the reportage, Organizers of Colombian march against death squads killed

Instead, the US media will continuously highlight the joint US-Colombian governments’ cooperative campaign to topple the current governments of Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia,and Nicaragua. The center of this campaign will be to bellicosely confront, threaten military intervention, and to try to organize coups to topple Chavez and Raul Castro, of Venezuela and Cuba respectively.

Right now, unfortunately, we have a ‘Peace Movement’ in the US that cannot really even find Mexico on a map, let alone the other countries of Latin America threatened by the bipartisan thugs in D.C. This US war against Latin America is heating up though, and we need to pay attention to what’s going on. The US government pulled the triggers that killed these organizers of peaceful demonstrations against the US government organized, Colombian death squads. And it will pull the trigger again and again in its ongoing efforts to control all of Latin America, if a real opposition to these wars is not begun to be built soon.

Colombia- the Pentagon’s South American mafia state

Colombia, quite simply, is the Pentagon’s South American mafia state. It’s government is headed up by a death squad kingpin with multiple connections to the cocaine trafficking trade that Washington, D.C. says it is supposedly fighting. And now, Colombia’s government has begun to act, with Pentagon OK, like Israel acts against Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza, and Turkey against Kurdish regions of Iraq.

In fact, more and more the Pentagon and Washington themselves are acting like international gangsters. Unfortunately, the military-industrial cartel offices in Northern Virginia are much better funded than any other gangsters the world has ever known.

The latest terrorism coming out of our nation’s military warehouse, was the Colombia excursion into Ecuador to shoot down, in their sleep, a political leader opposing the Colombian death squad gang headed by Uribe. This in the midst of negotiations to free prisoners held by the FARC. The Colombian government doesn’t want these prisoners to be released, but wants merely to continue their own death squad activities, sanctioned by the Democrats and Republicans alike, in DC.

Venezuela mobilizes forces to Colombia border (to counter joint Colombian-Pentagon threats)

The Colombian military attack inside Ecuador’s borders was Made in USA.

UN Secretary-General condones Israeli attacks on Palestinian civilians in Gaza

The international big business press continues to paint a false picture of a neutral United Nations, by quoting UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s comments that supposedly condemn Israeli for an ‘disproportionate and excessive use of force‘ in Gaza. In fact, these Israeli attacks on civilians are war crimes, and Ban Ki-moon’s remarks actually condone them by pretending a false neutrality, a neutrality that just isn’t there.

All Israeli use of force against defenseless Palestinian civilian neighborhoods is criminal, and the use of Israeli violence and terrorism cannot be artificially divided into non-excessive amounts and excessive amounts, as the UN Sec-Gen does in his game of playing neutral in the conflict.

The UN is now openly and fully under the control of the US and the Western European imperialist powers and is totally behind US war making world wide, as well as in Gaza. The UN and Ban Ki-moon is acting as US spoke voice for the Pentagon on almost a daily basis now, and are able to muscle other nations aside by various threats against them if they do not go along with US directives.

Another case in point to prove this is the UN Security Council falling in line with the US plans to aggressively attack Iran, both economically and militarily. The UN, just like it did with Iraq, is moving economic sanctions into place against Iran. This, once again, is support for criminally targeting civilians for murder by military forces led by the US. It is always the US military that enforces these supposedly UN made economic sanctions.

The UN is a dead body. It no longer acts as a world body, but rather as nothing more than camouflage for US imperialism. It is more than time for the US antiwar community to take a new look at the actual work of the UN in the world today, and to condemn its constant complicity and active involvement in US war crimes.

We need to abolish the United Nations and start over altogether once again in building a real world body of government free of control by the super power. This won’t be easy but still it must be done. The UN, as it is, is nothing more than an organization for the promotion of constant war. The military-industrial complex controls the UN as well as it controls the United States government.

Holding Iraq down for others to kick it

It’s been repeated we cannot pull US forces out of Iraq before we have established an Iraq military with which the Iraqis can defend themselves. Not a police force, not a constabulary or carabinieri, but a veritable army to defend Iraq against its neighbors. Unless we’re talking about Turkey.

It did sound surreal the first time they made the case, didn’t it? The US expends all that ordnance to destroy the Iraqi army, then we claim to need to build it up again. But Iraq has enemies besides just us, we’re told, so fair enough, we’ll defend them until they can do it themselves. But that doesn’t apply to Turkey.

Apparently, the US, and the Iraqi Puppet military role with respect to the Iraqi northern neighbor of Turkey, is to hold the region open to surgical strikes on select Iraqi malcontents. The Turkish incursions have the same elements of Israel’s excursions into Lebanon. They are facilitated by the US.

These extra-judicial posses, lynch mobs I suppose you could call them, are like the raids General Pershing used to conduct into Mexico in search of Poncho Villa. Complete violations of another nation’s autonomy. The US provides the equipment, the intelligence, often with advisors, and the diplomatic cover. When international outrage reaches critical mass, the US finally relents and expresses its concern that the offender show proper restraint. In Israel’s case, the US withheld its admonitions like an old man who’d lost his hearing aid. Watch if the same is not happening with Turkey.

Turkey’s beef with Iraq has to do with the longstanding effort on the part of the Kurdish minorities in Iraq, Iran and Turkey to call for an independent Kurdistan. Turkey does not want to lose its mountainous regions to the Kurds, and has suppressed its own Kurds by even criminal means. Turkey resists admitting responsibility for the Armenia Genocide lest comparisons be drawn to how it has been resolving its Kurdish problem.

Turkish General Haldun Solmazturk describes the latest Turkish incursion into Iraq on Voice of America as having dealt a blow to the PKK, the faction in the highlands of Iraq and Turkey which is fighting for Kurdish independence.

“Fatal would be too much to describe the potential effect,” he said. “But it would be a major blow. Because in any conflict you do not fight the people, you fight the minds and wills of the people. Such an operation will be a major blow on the will of the people.”

Mentally challenged unfit for insurgency

Indignity at the barrel of a gunUS disinformation forces in Iraq pointed recently to an insurgency so in its last throes, that it was desperate enough, and dastardly, sure enough, to press mentally retarded girls into service as suicide bombers. Soon enough our military was forced to recant that report. The young Iraqi women may have been bipolar, or depressed, but they didn’t have Down Syndrome, as cranial deformities caused by the bomb blasts had led the US forensics to conjecture. But the false accusation had its desired effect and there was worldwide condemnation of the Iraqi resistance. This story has irked me in both incarnations.

Namely, why in the name of the Special Olympics is it alright to presume the mentally handicapped could not rise to the challenge faced by their fellow insurgents?

That there would need to be suicide bombers is sad for anyone to contemplate. But a people oppressed by overwhelming military dominance have little recourse. The US drove the Japanese to resort to recruiting Kamikazis. The French pushed the Algerians to the most desperate efforts. The Soviets, the US and Israel have since left Afghans, Iraqis and Palestinians no option but “terrorism.” We don’t label carpet-bombing, detainment or torture as “terrorism,” but freedom fighters and their asymmetrical warfare is enough to terrorize us.

And so, to many Iraqis, maybe especially those orphaned by our invasion and occupation, to be a suicide bomber is to be put to the only strategy which may yet prove effective. Rocks thrown against tanks do nothing. Shots fired against armor-clad troops yield naught but a hail storm of higher caliber bullets. IEDs are now up against heavier mine-resistant vehicles. Civilians without access to artillery or high-tech triggering remotes have no choice but to deliver their angry message in person, guided and detonated by their brave partisan selves prepared to pay the price with their lives.

Of course a mentally disabled person cannot reasonably be considered to have understood enough to make such a profound sacrifice. But I’m surprised the PC crowd wouldn’t allow them the dignity to aspire to contribute to the cause of their fellow Iraqis. I’d venture to ask if their lives could have served a more honorable service. It must suck to be mentally handicapped in Iraq, considering the US has destroyed every semblance of health care service, and refuses to rebuild it. The US is killing the health-needy of Iraq, even as they accuse the insurgency of the exploitation/murder.

And which side cannot deny preying upon the retarded from which to recruit its troops? With casualties on the rise, American motives unmasked, the timetable interminable, and the prospect of surviving intact virtually null, who but the mentally challenged are signing up to “defend freedom” for Uncle Sam?

Ann Frank of Mesopotamia

Ann Frank, like Abu Tariq, would not have belonged to al-Qaida-in-the-Land-of-Two-Rivers eitherThe DoD CENTCOM PR Department reports having recovered the diary of an al-Qaeda leader (now killed). In it, he despairs the surge is working. Gosh, they think they can embed the insurgent dead?

In addition to cursing the usual “scoundrels, sectarians and nonbelievers,” the journal keeper complains about CLCs, or Concerned Local Citizens, who are taking up arms against them. We are to believe, I suppose, the terrorists share our own DoD’s predilection for acronyms, last year’s Awakening Forces having fallen from favor.

Is there a Western equivalent to al-Qaeda? Several? Beside state sponsored terror. For terrorism outreach, would CIA black-ops qualify? What about Blackwater? You know, an unaffiliated privately funded force, tasked with wreaking havoc, maintaining security, but the offensive variety. Successful American commando operations are generally kept under wraps. Probably the most notorious western covert agency would be the Mossad, the long retaliatory arm of the Israeli secret service.

The closest al-Qaeda comes to being identified with a nationality would be Afghanistan. The US retaliated against Afghanistan for the assumed al-Qaeda connection to 9/11. Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda sprung from mujahideen, Afghan resistance groups which fought against the Soviet invaders for the Taliban Islamist extremists.

The American occupiers in Iraq claim they are up against al-Qaeda in Iraq (our translation for al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia). That must be an insulting prospect to Iraqis who have reason and drive enough to mount their own insurgency. When US military spokesmen assure us that al-Qaeda is unpopular with Iraqis, it cannot fail but to be proved true. Otherwise the elusive terror network is conveniently like Harvey the [invisible] pink elephant. If the veracity of those doing the telling is beyond question, Harvey is everything they say, and being invisible, you wouldn’t be expected to see him.

If America was invaded, and our valiant citizens mounted a desperate insurgency, wouldn’t we find it odd to have our occupiers keep claiming they were fighting the Mossad? Or the-Mossad in America, or the-Mossad in the Land Between Two Oceans.

The Stiles Unit of Beaumont

The Stiles Unit of Beaumont… I actually worked there once… That’s where I saw torture being done on prisoners INSIDE THE US first hand.

“Cadarell Freeman was to leave prison in September 2000. He had walked into prison, but now he was deathly sick. He had lost 60 pounds. The inmate’s legs were so weak that he slumped in a wheelchair at the Stiles Unit near Beaumont as he waited for the bus that would ferry him to Huntsville and his freedom.

The vehicle came. From his chair, Freeman eyed the steps into the bus. The driver told Freeman that if he wanted out, he could crawl. A nurse eventually helped the dispirited inmate onto the bus. The next day, a guard pushed him through the front door of the prison in Huntsville, where Freeman’s mother was waiting. Luckily, his mother brought a wheelchair. The state kept the one Freeman had been issued by the prison’s medical system.”

Prison officials boast that the clinics in each of the state’s 105 prisons are inspected and licensed by national prison health-care agencies. But even prison system doctors question whether these inspections adequately measure the quality of medical care. After all, in 1996, when two-thirds of the men who died at the Stiles Unit had “improper” care, according to the state audit, the prison clinic earned passing grades from a national accrediting organization. Moreover, even these accreditation reports are kept secret under state law.

NOTE— The Stiles Unit is a concentration camp run buy The State of Texas. Here is what the medical care was like. Actually, it was much, much, much worse than this. Did I emphasize MUCH?

Becoming guinea pigs to avoid poor prison care
Ill inmates urge each other to join experiments

How bad is Stiles, a US torture center run by The State Of Texas?

‘Deadly inadequacies’ plague inmate wards
Gaps in evaluating care let some mistakes go unnoticed

An effort by inmates to tell the truth about the Stiles Unit… (BTW, I remember this sorry ass nurse named Connie)
Gaps in evaluating care let some mistakes go unnoticed

None of this is even a slight beginning to letting you know what this torture camp was really like. We need to stop torture in the US. Instead, our government is spreading this abuse around everywhere. It should be on your conscience as a human being to oppose this terrorism inside the US, and instead, I see little anger about it at all.

Tonight I sat through a meeting of the planning board and executive board of the Colorado Springs Justice and Peace Commission and wasted my time. Where is their anger and where is their energy? I saw nothing.

These are not the people that can stop any sort of injustice in the world, Eric. They are a waste of time and I am ashamed to be associated with them.

I think that we need a new group, and one that has some semblance of democratic functioning within it. It is as simple as that. They think that they are running a small business instead of a poltiical oppositional group, so this is not a group of people that provide any real leadership. They have no experience and will not fight strongly for much of anything.

What does this have to do with the Stiles Unit in Beaumont, Texas? Everything, as far as I am concerned.

911 Truth is Ground Zero for change

9/11 Truth is Ground Zero for change
If you cannot see the big lie, what can you be expected to comprehend in its true light? You cannot see the Federal Reserve, you cannot see the National Security State, you cannot see your lost rights or the national treasury sacked; but you can see, on your TV, two towers fall with the aid of detonations, WTC-7 fall all of its own by demolition, and every last bastard on TV telling you twas terrorism that done it. What can you change if you don’t see that you’re not up against al-Qaeda, you’re up against the Carlyle Group?

Dubya’s Show Trials

The more elderly generation might well remember Stalin’s Show Trials, or the Moscow Show Trials of 1936-37. These show trials brought by the Soviet Communist Party leader of the time, Joseph Stalin, weakened the country right before Hitler’s onslaught. As a result, millions upon millions more of Soviet citizens died that didn’t have to. These show trials of Stalin destroyed patriotic unity when it was most needed.

The supposed reason Stalin gave for the trials was to protect Soviet communism and Soviet citizens, though, and today we have the preparation under way for Dubya’s Show Trials to supposedly protect Americans from ‘terrorism’. Unfortunately for us Americans, George W. Bush seems to be just as big a dunderhead as Stalin once was. Out of these show trials from Guantanamo will only come misery, so why doesn’t the US population begin to speak up?

Why didn’t the Soviet citizenry oppose the Moscow show trials? The answer is similar to why Americans have remained so quiet post 9/11. The Moscow show trials followed a huge national tragedy caused by Stalin’s attack on the peasantry, which became a 1932 famine that killed around 5,000,000+ people. The Moscow show trials then were actually Stalin’s attempt to deflect blame from himself for this previous catastrophe just a few years before.

Similarly, trying 6 men tortured illegally at Guantanamo to then put at least some of them to death, is Bush’s effort to deflect attention away from his foreign policies which are destroying the financial and social stability of the US Empire and the US population itself. And like the Moscow show trials before, these modern day show trials by the US government will lead to greater strife in the immediate years ahead. There will be new ‘terrorist’ attacks, precisely because the Bush Administration and their Democratic Party enablers have done so damn much, most if it idiotically not well thought out at all.

Dubya’s show trials might well be the preparatory event for a coming world holocaust that might well dwarf what the world went through in WW2. Time will tell. But certainly none of our nation feels any safer now than they did in the immediate days following 9/11/2001, and murdering POWs after torturing them at the Guantanamo Concentration Camp will change none of that.

Europeans and US intervening in Darfur by way of Chad

After all those nice stories about how ‘something must be done’, the European Union is sending in its troops to Darfur by way of neighboring Chad. In so doing, it will be propping up a French maintained puppet dictator that is so unpopular, that even some of his own relatives are trying to overthrow him along with much of the population at large. Oh, Go blame it on the Arab horsemen and the Chinese, I suppose?

What is all this Chad, Darfur, and Sudan stuff really about to our Western ears? Does our ruling class now have soft hearts and now are turning to stop bad things going on in the big bad, world? Pretty comical notion I think. ‘Save the Blacks! Save the children!’ What noblesse oblige!

Is this the new compassionate conservatism in action? Oh No…. It’s the liberal Democrats once again! Working with Bush and Sarkozy all together! Oh, and it’s to ‘Stop Terrorism’, too. It’s all part of the ‘Global War on Everybody and Everything’, patent pending in Washington DC office (or is it in Alexander, Virginia?). We got such good ol’ soft hearts, we going to save the world once again.

OK, actually the news is keeping the news away from us on this one. Too early to announce yet. We have short attention spans and need to stay focused on CHANGE and DARFUR. Chad is, well it is, politically incorrect to think about. There will be no Chad displays at the local library quite just yet. Hold your breath! And whatever you do, VOTE! The System need you.

Chad president urges EU force to deploy
Chad’s President Urges European Peacekeeping Force to Quickly Deploy; PM Declares Curfew
…so many dead… so much suffering. But as Madelyn Albright would say… ‘It’s worth it.’ The European and US corporations must run Africa for themselves.

Polly put the kettle on

Greg Mortenson in KhandayThere is nothing more thrilling than being the wild one on the outer edge of the pack, seeing the horizon more clearly than those safely ensconced in the middle of the herd. It isn’t easy being a lonely maverick, relying on animal instinct to find hidden dangers, while other more domesticated souls happily munch nuggets of truth dispensed by politicians and mainstream media. But someone has to lead the way.

I thought I’d found an opportunity to indulge my inner maverick. I had high hopes that the Three Cups of Tea avalanche was hiding lots of neocon propaganda, a pitiful campaign to convince those of us with bleeding hearts that, indeed, our government is engaged in noble warfare against terrorism in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the training ground for Islamic fundamentalists determined to wipe out Western culture. After all, who would know the terrorist’s heart better than Greg Mortenson who has spent much of the past fifteen years in remote Himalayan villages developing relationships with local leaders and gaining an understanding of these tribal cultures?

Well, I’m disappointed to admit that, after finishing the book, I am smack in the middle of the Mortenson love fest. Other than forgetfulness, disorganization and a chronic lack of punctuality, I can find no fault with this man (I feel like Pontius Pilate). After the 9/11 attacks, the book gets a whole lot better. The writing, literally painful to read in the first half, begins to flow in such a way that you are not constantly mindful of the fact that you are reading.

Political intrigue, physical danger, unflinching bravery, and an uncanny ability to discern the good guys from the bad guys–always in pursuit of his mission of educating the rural poor–does make Mortenson seem larger than life. So much so that co-author David Oliver Relin stops mentioning his physical stature in every paragraph.

The complexity of tribal societies makes for interesting reading. Puppet governments in big cities have no standing in remote mountain villages. Tribal councils and religious leaders in Iran interpret and enforce the law. Mortenson makes an interesting distinction between warlords who take tariffs from opium smugglers to create private militias and commandhan who plow the profits into the people’s welfare. One bad, the other good. He makes few moral judgments of the mountain people and their ways, poppy production included. He saves his scathing indictments for the US government and its minions, and seemingly refuses to cooperate or be used by them in any way.

I hope I can find a front row seat tonight and catch Mortenson’s eye. I want to give him the oft-sought-but-ever-elusive Mango wink of approval. Some maverick, she.

James Woolsey and Eleana Benador- 2 US sponsors of Middle East terrorism

The US government and Pentagon have a broad and wide number of propaganda outlets around the world that masquerade as private companies that are doing humanitarian work, public relations work, and news reporting.

Eleana Benador, a woman of mysterious background, heads up something called Benador Associates, which is a semi clandestine US governmental outlet for Bush Administration war propaganda. Richard Perle and James Woolsey are the neocon shadows lurking behind this woman and her supposed ‘public relations firm’.

‘It was Mr. Woolsey and Mr. Rosenthal, she said, who helped her start her client list—first by becoming clients, then by introducing her to others. Mr. Woolsey was reluctant to tout his relationship with Ms. Benador. He said he had signed on to do a few speaking engagements and that he last saw her nine months ago. “I like Eleana, but I really just know her as someone who was committed to getting into this business and to set up some speeches,” he said.’

That was a brief and chatty excerpt from
SHE’S RICHARD PERLE’S OYSTER
by JOE HAGAN
NEW YORK OBSERVER
April 7, 2003

Many know that James Woolsey is an often voiced proponent of a 4th World War to reshape the Middle East, an ex CIA head, and a Messianic Right Wing Christian that works tirelessly to advance US Christian ideological and political control over the entire world. He is corporate America melded to Christian America melded to US governmental/ military America. Who then is exactly Eleana Benador?

Eleana Benador sponsors herself as Educated Woman, but she herself is sponsored by others. She and her ‘agency’ appear to be a product of the long time CIA and Israeli collaboration inside and against the Arab World. See their launch of something they call the Arab Broadcast Forum.

If you examine the Benador Associates web site some, one will begin to notice the Right Wing Lebanese connections there. The Right Wing Lebanese community is one that is thoroughly integrated into Israel’s military and spy operations. The US and Israel both hope to control Lebanon’s government with the aid of these Lebanese allies who themselves are an increasingly small minority of Lebanon’s overall population.

These Right Wing Arab sources dredged together by the IDF through the many years, are a backbone for the spread of US neocon propaganda inside the Arab World itself. It gives ‘Arab face’ cover to the ideology. The US government is now sponsoring all sorts of info wars within and into the Arab and Muslim worlds.

Following is the type of info war that Benador Associates specializes in… Neo-Cons planted the Iran story This is an info war serving Colorado Springs’ Fort Carson, NORAD, the Air Force Academy, multiple military contracting firms and the Woolsey family’s personal agendas. Oh, and did I mention again that Susan Woolsey sits on the Colorado College Board of Directors? She’s the VP there, and the US VPs’ daughters and wife graduated from CC. That would be Dick Cheney’s family members.

James Woolsey and Eleana Benador…. 2 US governmental sponsors of terrorism throughout The Middle East. Benador Associates and Colorado College? Yes, there is a connection there in who comes to town to try to feed us misinformation.

Fictional networks of global villainy

al-Cobra in Mesopotamia
Looking up villainous organizations on the web, I knew I was on to something when a Wikipedia article about a TV show terrorist network carried this disclaimer “The neutrality of this article is disputed.”

S.P.E.C.T.R.E. -SPecial Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion (James Bond, after SMERSH and behind FIRCO)

T.H.R.U.S.H. -Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity, formally WASP (Man from UNCLE)

C.H.U.M.P. -Criminal Headquarters for Underworld Master Plan (Lancelot Link)

S.C.U.M. -Saboteurs and Criminals United in Mayhem (James Bond animated series)

T.A.R.O.T. -Technological Accession, Revenge, and Organized Terrorism (James Bond game)

M.A.D. -Mean And Dirty (Inspector Gadget)

F.O.W.L. -Fiendish Organization of World Larceny (Darkwing Duck)

E.V.I.L. -Every Villain Is Lemons (Spongebob)

S.P.O.R.E. -Sinister People Organized Really Efficiently (Dr. Brain)

BIG O (Matt Helm)

KAOS (Get Smart)

GALAXY (Our Man Flynt)

COBRA (GI Joe)

AL QAEDA [IN IRAK] -Central Intelligence Agency or other members of the U.S. I.C. – DNI, USDI, NSA, NRO, NGA, DIA, INR, AFI, AI, NI, MCI, DEA, DHS, FBI.

Not my three cups of tea

Attentive 
Pakistani CAI convertsI remember a time, not so long ago really, perhaps last month, when I was blissfully unaware of a wayward mountaineer named Greg Mortenson. After nearly reaching the summit of K2, and having lost his porter and his way on the descent, he limped, hungry and cold, into a tiny town in northeast Pakistan called Korphe. After several days spent recovering from his misadventure, Greg Mortenson stumbled from the village leader’s hut into the rarefied Himalayan air.

I am only halfway through the book Three Cups of Tea, One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace…One School at a Time which attempts to tell of Mortenson’s journey through Pakistan and Afghanistan, and his quest to build schools for impoverished children. A brave and noble mission no doubt.

I must say, however, that the book is the most poorly written of any I’ve read since my Fabio days. I imagine Mortenson’s adventure was dangerous and thrilling, likely rivaling fellow climber Jon Krakauer’s Everest adventure. Krakauer’s tale was a positively riveting account of the experience, and Into Thin Air remains one of my all-time favorite adventure stories. Three Cups of Tea, on the other hand, well, sucks. I say this not to be unkind, but because I am wondering how on earth it ended up on the New York Times bestseller list.

Here is but a small sample of the creamy pablum co-author David Oliver Relin dishes out:

…Why couldn’t the flag of crescent and star lead these children such a small distance toward “progress and perfection”?

After the last note of the anthem had faded, the children sat in a neat circle and began copying their multiplication tables. Most scratched in the dirt with sticks they’d brought for that purpose. The more fortunate…had slate boards they wrote on with sticks dipped in a mixture of mud and water. “Can you imagine a fourth-grade class in America, alone, without a teacher, sitting there quietly and working on their lessons?” Mortenson asks. “I felt like my heart was being torn out. There was a fierceness in their desire to learn, despite how mightily everything was stacked against them….I knew I had to do something.”

That something became a big something, and Greg Mortenson will share his story at Shove Chapel on January 15.

In Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson, besides being of impressive stature, a point made on every page of the book, is portrayed as little more than a socially stunted somewhat incompetent drifter. So how did this guy, who couldn’t find a decent ghost writer, suddenly become a master of self-promotion? A book tour, magazine covers, even promotional materials sent home in my child’s school backpack. It’s pretty amazing.

I am, as I said, only halfway through the book but I’ve not read anything about Mortenson’s mission of peace. Korphe’s village leader confided to him that, although he ran his fingers reverently over its pages, he couldn’t actually read his treasured Koran, and did not wish the same terrible fate on his children. Mortenson’s mission appears one of education and literacy. I found a copy of the book with a previous title, Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Fight Terrorism and Build Nations…One School at a Time. Vanquishing terrorism and nation building are the pet projects of neocons, aren’t they? I guess peace promotion is easier to market.

A final note. Greg Mortenson’s lecture at Shove Chapel is sponsored by the UCCS Center for Homeland Security. I really don’t get the connection. I feel like this guy is an unwitting pawn in some greater game. What that game is I don’t know. So I’ll finish the book, go to the lecture, and see if I can connect the dots.

Greg Mortenson’s own cup of tea

In his own words, Greg Mortenson is quite a bit more revealing about his motives in Pakistan. Pax Americana is definitely a subtlety lost on him.
 
Central Asian regions where CAI has financed constructionThis map is from the Central Asia Institute‘s own brochure. It shows the parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan where Greg Mortenson’s CAI has helped finance community building projects. I thought the shaded area formed an interesting buffer zone along the border to… CHINA! Is that region of greater interest peacewise than the war-torn borders facing Afghanistan or India?!

The current Independent features a cover story on Mortensen, to promote his Jan 15 Colorado College appearance. It turns out he’s as inarticulate as his dictation of Three Cups of Tea suggests. Here’s how Mortenson regards his unwitting Islamic accomplices:

…we bring in mullahs who support girls’ education. We have two ex-Taliban who are now teaching in our girls’ schools and have become some of our biggest proponents. It’s somewhat similar to an ex-smoker or an alcoholic who has changed and becomes very against smoking or drinking.

Here Mortenson describes how his schools convince Muslim communities to enroll their girls:

We even use good old-fashioned Western capitalism. We go and tell a mullah: If I want to marry a girl in your village, how many goats do I owe you? He might say five goats. If she has a fifth-grade education, how many goats would I then have to pay you? And the answer would probably be 15 to 20 goats. A goat is usually $30 to $40 each.

And then we tell the mullah: If all the girls are educated, just think of how much more wealth you’d have. Then you can see his eyes get bigger.

At least Mortenson is up front about the Capitalist invasion for which he plays scout. Evidently the untapped region’s girls are for sale, and once educated they’ll have value-added for mercantilism.

American society tends to glorify education for its own sake. What “education” is CAI providing to the Muslims exactly? Do CAI’s texts teach that secular culture is intent on the eradication of spiritual culture? Is the CAI curriculum simply favoring western indoctrination over an Islamist counterpart? I’ll let Mortenson show his hand:

perhaps the most controversial, is our Islamic studies for about two or three hours every week. It’s very tempered, and we include in that learning the differences between Sunni and Shia. We’ve also added what you might call religion studies, or learning about different faiths or religion.

In a monotheistic society you need that like emperor penguins need tap dancing lessons. Imagine the uproar if we tried to teach New Life Church kids that the faith of their parents was only one extreme of many! A good idea no doubt, but unlikely to provoke a peaceful reaction.

POSTSCRIPT
Our junior high student came home yesterday with three promotional pieces about Three Cups of Tea in advance of Mortenson making an appearance at her school. Do you wonder how he’s getting such press? One of the pamphlets instructs the children about how they can “Help Three Cups of Tea (3CT) surge:” (My emphasis, their slip of the forked tongue)

1. Recommend 3CT to at least one person or place: family, friend, colleague, book club, professor and teacher, student, and places of worship. It also makes a great gift! (You’ve got to be kidding me! 3CT practically screams you’re illiterate.)

2. Visit 3CT website…

3. Recommend 3CT for ‘One Book – One Read’ at http://www.loc.gov/loc/cfbook/one-book.html (please don’t).

4. Recommend 3CT as a University or college-wide… read http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/articles/070607/7summer.htm (YGTBFKM)

5. Ask bookstores without 3CT to stock the book, especially airport bookstores. (?)

6. Send 3CT with a personal note to your Senators and/or Representatives (US legislators, why?)

7. Write a ‘letter editor’ [sic] to suggest 3CT and to support education and literacy… to promote peace, economic development and prosperity. (Emphasis mine. Co-opting Muslim girls for Capitalism promotes peace how?)

8. Ask magazines, newspapers, or radio station [sic] to review 3CT (they suggest sending a copy)

9. Learn about the power of girls’ education… in What Works in Girls Education (by Neocon think tank author Barbara Hertz)

10. Learn about grassroots book promotion…

11. Suggest 3CT to Oprah: http://www.oprah.com/email/reach/email_showideas.jhtml

12. Suggest 3CT to C-Span 202-737-0580.

13. Write a book review on Amazon.com, bn.com… (No need, it’s getting slammed! Too bad my Junior High principle isn’t getting a clue. Are our teachers illiterate too?)

14. Start Pennies For Peace in your school, library, or place of worship… http://www.penniesforpeace.org

Billions for war, but apparently we need only pennies for peace.

Hopefully 3CT’s proceeds are going toward peace. (Marie reports their financials say it’s “up to 7%,” so hey, they do mean single-cent figures!) Perhaps Mortenson can earmark some of the Coins for Cultural Sensitivity.

POST-POSTSCRIPT
The Amazon reviews are uproarious! But 3CT trolls are loading the funniest with bad marks where it asks Do you find this review helpful, so you’ll have to look fast. I’ll reprint a couple below.

By the way, Three Cups of Tea, One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace… was originally released as Three Cups of Tea, One Man’s Mission to Fight Terrorism and Build Nations. It wasn’t selling the mission?

I’ll work up my own slipcover for Mortenson’s speaking engagement, with help from the comments below. Hopefully he’ll be good-natured enough to sign it:
Three Cups of Tedium: One Man’s Mission to be a Dhimmi
-A Condescending Westerner who attempt to “educate” Muslims.

(This is part 2 of 3 pieces: a review of the 3CT book, the promotion around the book tour, and Mortenson’s public appearance.)

Tel Aviv University Poll shows that 81% of Jewish population backs Jewish terrorism against Arabs fighting for freedom

Yes, the Jewish population of Israel is highly supportive of using terrorism against Arab leaders. In fact, 81% is the exact number found by a poll taken by the prestigious Tel Aviv University, and these 81% actually supported increasing the use of terrorism by Jewish military forces, not doing away with it or even just maintaining it at current levels!

Why does the Israeli Jewish community (as well as the US one) think that it is quite alright to do as they do? Simply because the US government is not only supporting Jewish terrorism itself, but is implementing and increasing their own use of terrorism and IDF style tortures throughout the Muslim World, too. The two groups feed off each other’s advocacy and use of criminality.

Poll: 81 percent of Israelis back increasing IDF targeted killings at Haaretz.com

Oh, and while there at Haaretz.com, be sure to click on the trailer of the Let’s Go To War and Pulverize Iran Before they Drive Jews Into The Sea film featured so promiently there. It’s pure ‘entertainment’, but will be taken as being news and important information by jingoistic meatheads around the US and Israel!

Stealing Muslim women from terrorists

What is Greg Mortenson teaching the children of Pakistan?I’m afraid my Neo Liberal roots are showing. Greg Mortenson is delivering a lecture at CC on January 15th and I hardly know how to object. I too believe that the fate of mankind depends on education.

However, where have I the right to hold such a belief system, mine, above others? You can call Islam a religion for uneducated poor people, and be mostly right, as indeed the same applies to all fundamentalist absolutists. But that is only to regard education in the liberal sense, with its belief that a secular utopia awaits man’s bettering himself through progress. Technology, medical advances, and the celebration of the individual lead mankind where exactly? To a healthier, more antiseptic life certainly, civil discourse often, but to chaos and nihilism so far, quickly.

Fundamentalist Luddite religious systems may not take man to the moon, but they do ensure spiritually grounded lives, full families, and the same for all foreseeable descendants. Which model is likely the more sustainable? If we posit that the greater percentage of mankind need such intellectual tethers, to whom do you entrust their guidance? Allah or Coca Cola?

The West may think it offers salvation to the women of Islam, but is it true? Are the middle class advocates of women’s rights prepared to take in their rescuees? A Muslim wife’s life is at the mercy of Muslim males, and we’ve been treated to horrific accounts. How do they compare to what capitalism has to offer? Those liberated from the Koran can look forward to the certainty of exploitation by globalization bosses be they man or woman, regulated by amoral corporations and corrupt officials, now without the comfort of leading lives of spiritual purpose.

Isn’t the jury still out on the West’s liberated women? They’re having fewer children, that’s for certain.

White knights like Mr. Mortenson offer a gift horse that indeed cannot deliver. Meanwhile of course our soldiers and free trade carpetbaggers quietly pile on inside. Mortenson’s book Three Cups of Tea has been requisitioned by the Defense Department and issued to our counter-insurgency forces, probably to teach the Hearts and Minds lingo, hopefully not worse.

Mortenson’s visit to Colorado Springs is being sponsored by a new department of UCCS, the Center for Homeland Security, I kid you not! It’s a major now offered by UCCS, established with funding from the Pentagon, staffed with retired military instructors, and chaired by career CIA officer Steve Recca. Look him up, his name is tied completely to CIA activities. As they say in the intelligence biz, he’s totally “mobbed up.”

The tag line to Mortenson’s book tour is to use education outreach as an alternative means to combat terrorism. While it is a refreshing change-up to our direct war making against terrorism, I can’t imagine behaving cavalierly toward Islam is going to endear us greatly. Osama didn’t want US feet on the ground in Saudi Arabia. Do Muslims in general want westerners building schools for their girls in Afghanistan and Pakistan? Could stealing their young women be seen as anything but a provocation for a terrorist response?

US government thanks Guantanamo prisoners for having themselves tortured- Have a good life!

It really takes the cake, does it not? The US government broke all international laws, tortured numerous innocent Prisoners of War for 4-5 years, and then releases these innocents without a note to anybody! Not even a ‘Good bye, So sorry’!

What a lawless goon squad we have for a government! See Ten Saudi Guantanamo inmates free

I wouldn’t look to see much of this story soon in the local Right Wing rag. They always pretend to be against big government and then back it all the way. That’s the calling card of The Gazette troop of editorial nitwits.

They love the suppression of individual freedoms and the War to Promote Terrorism. Anything to support big business and ‘defense’ contracting. A little torture here and there on innocent POWs bothers them not the least.