If we listen closely, there’s a small voice in the wilderness, calling out to us, warning of a coming transformation.
No, it’s not John the Baptist. It’s America’s honey bee, dying by the millions, prophesying the demise of the country’s fruit and vegetable supplies.
More than a hundred crops rely on bee pollination for survival, yet bees are dying off by the millions — 90% of the feral bee population has died — due to a mysterious condition called Colony Collapse Disorder. No doubt it is due to man’s interference with delicate natural goings-on, and his extreme disrespect for the Earth herself. The health of the planet is being sacrificed on the the altar of corporate ignorance and greed.
A really amazing documentary called Vanishing of the Bees is in the works. Check out the trailer here. Seriously, check it out.
If this war, and those to follow, global warming, environmental toxins, inaccessible health care, the credit collapse, the burning of the Constitution, the destruction of community, apocalyptic Christian Zionism, the lies and deceptions and ugliness and hate and greed of this current administration, and the next, aren’t enough to cause self-examination and a commitment to change, this may very well be the thing that gets our attention.
Albert Einstein said if honey bees become extinct, human society will follow in four years.
Pre-e-e-pare ye the way of desolation and death. . . .
Twenty four years and no cure, no cause, no answers. But billions of tax dollars to an established AID$ industry who refuse to look at the facts. More money has been spent on AIDS research than any other disease in the history of medicine, all with no results! Giving a weakened or compromised immune system a name, “AIDS”, is trickery. Telling us it is caused by an old and harmless retrovirus is dishonest. But treating immunodeficiency, whatever is causing it, with toxic chemo ARV drugs, that destroy DNA and bone marrow, is criminal! It’s time to get mad and get the word out and demand a reappraisal. Or accountability for the terror, stress, damage and destruction to many lives.
FACTS:
1. HIv has never been isolated as a pure virus, direct from human blood or tissue nor have control groups been used who are HIv “positive” and HIv “negative”. One must understand that HIv is a harmless passenger retrovirus, not a disease causing virus like HPV or HSV. (see 3 and 8.)
2. Isolation experiments, as recommended by the Perth Group and others, in the Presidential AIDS Advisory Panel Report of 2000, have never been done on control groups both with or without HIv. This is especially important since it is well known that thousands who test positive for antibodies for HIv remain healthy and thousands who have “AIDS” (by CDC definition) are not infected with HIv.
3. Kochs Postulates is and has been the widely accepted, time tested screen for determining whether an infectious germ or virus is causing disease. HIv fails all 4 (or 3 depending how you consider #4), of the postulates. A large effort must be undertaken to produce HIv in any quantities that are similar to disease causing virus. This is done by co-culturing HIv with leukemia cells in the lab (petri dish) or by adding growth stimulants. (See point 7 under “AIDS – Fact or Fraud”.)
4. HIv was first studied/discovered by Luc Montagnier as LAV around 1979. Montagnier admitted in 1990 that his LAV was probably benign. Robert Gallo stole Luc Montagniers work in approx. 1983 when Montagnier shared it with him. Gallo then claimed it as his own. He and the NIH were sued by the French government. Montagnier worked for the Pasteur Institute of Science. He also shared in the royalties. (see 13) Luc Montagniers LAV stood for Lymphademopathy Associated Virus. Part of the Pasteur Inst. charges in the initial lawsuit against Gallo were for Gallos claim that HIv was infectious. Regardless virus as causation of any kind of cancer, including lymphoma, is long proved false in the 70’s “Cancer Virus Program” through the Natl. Inst. of Cancer which is part of the NIH.
5. AIDS is nothing more than an acronym created by the CDC to create the categories of known diseases hypothesized as being “caused” by HIv. Suppression of the immune system however is not a disease and is caused by many things, which has led to much (purposeful?) confusion of the public. With a “positive” HIv antibodies test,(see 11,) or low T-cell count, or if in a risk group, and if showing symptoms of any one of 29 AIDS diseases as classified by CDC, any observation of those symptoms (see 19 for Africa) are now “AIDS-HIv” related and somehow deadly when most are not, all have other known causation and can be treated without antiretroviral drugs. All of this convoluted testing and categorizing adds to the numbers of HIv “positives” and then “AIDS” patient cases. Useful data for keeping the ARV drugs on the front line of treatment even though they are useless having been designed for cancer tumor therapy, and thus very harmful.
6. AZT, an ARV(antiretroviral), and other AIDS cocktails like HAART, are very toxic chemo CANCER drugs and destroy cells and terminate DNA chains. The initial trials of AZT based drugs showed wide evidence of harsh side affects, i.e. muscle wasting, organ failure, vomiting, diarrhea, destruction of bone marrow, yet FDA approved them on a fast track mandate in 1987. Many involved in the trials say these side effects were hidden. When AZT was created in 1964 it was deemed too toxic for use and was shelved. It is no “theory” that these drugs cause the very kinds of immune system destruction and breakdown that is deceitfully blamed on HIv. Admitted by the drug manufacturers themselves in their printed warnings. Why was this drug even thought to be useful for a “virus” when chemo therapy had never been used for virus treatment?
7. People who refuse AZT or the chemo drug cocktails after a “positive” HIv antibody test, remain healthy in most cases. (see risk groups #18) AIDS activists and counselors who are unaware of what HIv actually is, consistently fail to inform the “at risk” population that often call or visit them, that the HIv test is not a test for the virus. Or that the tests have disclaimers that say: “there is no recognized standard for establishing the presence or absence of antibodies to HIV-1 or HIV-2 in human blood”. And the viral load tests have the same disclaimers for what they are testing for. Besides, there is no proof of different specific HIv-1 or HIv-2 because HIv is a benign indistinguishable retrovirus.
8. The PCR (polymerase chain reaction) test is a desperate misleading attempt to detect DNA-RNA fragments of HIv retrovirus, in order to prove it is causing disease. Its inventor, Kary Mullis, rejects HIv as the cause of AIDS or anything else and says his test only amplifies and copies these fragments for study. No real disease causing cytotoxic virus needs this kind of help in it’s detection and purification.
9. HIv is non-cytotoxic.Therefore HIv cannot destroy the cells it infects. Nor can any retrovirus. In fact HIv is well known to virologists to be compatible with T-cells. Or most cells for that matter. This and transcriptease (the ability of retrovirus to insert themselves into cells RNA first, the reverse of cytotoxic virus) is the reason for their specific classification as retroviruses.
10. Real disease causing viruses can be vaccinated against in 95% of cases. But viruses are not always the cause of disease. As often in the case of scurvy, pellagra and weak immune system, it is a dietary and lack of proper exercise or nutrient problem/issue. The case of SMON in Japan was a similar search for a “virus” causation when finally the culprit was found to be a toxin. A toxin in the very drug that doctors were prescribing to SMON patients. This is what happens when “virus hunters” get carried away and take over research for professional recognition and monetary reasons. Or just plain stubbornness. Legionairres disease was a prime example of how the CDC/NIH missed a toxin causation completely and birthed a vaccine that did more harm than good. (Duesbergs “Inventing the AIDS Virus”)
11. The Western Blot HIv test is well known to give many false positives as many antibodies already in the body or other medical conditions (up to 70) can set off the non-specific protein strips in the test. All HIv diagnostic tests carry a disclaimer that the test is NOT to be used to determine the presence or absence of HIv antibodies. Regardless, presence of antibodies to HIv would mean the immune system has done it’s work and the body is protected. In reality based science anyway. In other words, it is impossible to be positive for HIv with these tests because a positive test really means you’re positive for the antibodies and negative for HIv! Thus the PCR tests and viral load(T-cell counts) became the new hope to detect fragments of HIv DNA/RNA or low immune response. (see 8, 16)
12. There are different standards of HIv positive in different states and countries! Why? If it’s a virus it’s a virus! One standard needed. But there is no “gold” standard test. Other than Kochs Postulates for virus and microbes which the CDC and NIH refuse to acknowledge or talk about or if they do they claim that Kochs method is outdated! That’s like saying the 2nd law of thermodynamics is useless.
13. Gallo/NIH received the patent on the HIv tests in the exact same week he announced the “probable” cause of AIDS in 1984. It made the NIH-CDC, Montagnier and Gallo, millions. He had no peer review and had not isolated pure HIv directly from any “infected” persons blood or tissue, at the time of announcement. He could only claim 40% of his “AIDS” patients had detectable HIv. Not anywhere close to claim HIv was infectious or the cause of AIDS by recognized science standards. But how did he determine his “AIDS” patients had HIv? By co-culturing HIv in the lab or with a growth additive. Why? Because retrovirus are weak non-cytotoxic passenger virus that do not multiply or destroy cells.
14. Gallo was involved in the Nixon “War on Cancer” program in the 70’s and helped the Natl. Inst. of Cancer to pressure Congress to fund the program with great promises of success to find retrovirus or any virus as the cause of cancer. But it failed. Luckily, the emerging AIDS “epidemic” helped to find NIH/CDC and the virus hunters a new program to keep and increase their funding and a disease for Gallos HTLV-3. At a time when Reagan needed a political solution, and as gay men were demanding an answer, HIv was acceptable because it erased blame from the gay community for the disease being a “lifestyle” or behavioral disease. But early in it’s announcements, the CDC claimed it was behavioral and called it GRID. Gay Related Immune Deficiency. This was a correct diagnosis as the first 5 cases were all same extreme sexual behavior, heavy drug use related causation. For the CDC, there was no money in a program for only gays. Thus heterosexuals had to be at risk as well. (see 18)
15. Testing people for HIv because they show “AIDS” related disease symptoms, with or without immune suppression, has become the standard line of reasoning though it is preposterous due to the falsity of the tests and absurdity of using other diseases as markers. (11) But the AIDS hysteria has swept through every corner of our medical professions, without a widely publicized critical analysis of testing procedures or reassessment allowed.
16. Low T-cell counts are misleading. A variety of illness, drug abuse, poor health/diet, colds, flu, disease are also responsible. Many athletic people have low T-cell counts and they can vary almost hourly. In people with detectable HIv (by PCR test), it has only been found to infect 1 in approx. 1000 T-cells, hardly enough to destroy immune response. Regardless monitoring the immune response is no way to detect specific disease. Laying in the sun will lower your T-cell count to under 200. http://www.aliveandwell.org/html/viral_load_tcell/viral_load.html
17. Gallo claims his electron micrograph pictures are of an HIv virus, but nothing can be found by other virologists that resembles a true concentrated virus titer. It is now known that Gallo forged these pictures and was investigated for it by the NIH.
18. “AIDS” has stayed within it’s risk groups, Gay and straight male intravenous drug users, heavy drug abusers, popper users (which causes Karposis Sarcoma), hemophiliacs, and the poor malnourished living in unsanitary conditions…. instead of spreading widely across the population as we’re led to believe. It is not sexually transmittable as claimed by the CDC and NIH, but this edict spread the risk to heterosexuals. With this false claim, and Americans ignorance of virology or HIv testing, funding for research and the following prescriptions for ARV’s was increased 1000 fold. HIv is an old retro-virus that has likely been with us for 100’s of years. Farrs law for dating virus proves this as HIv models exactly to Farrs test. The body’s DNA-RNA discards many cells and retro-virus everyday. Repeat: HIv is not sexually transmittable. It is a parinatally transmitted retrovirus.
19. AIDS related disease in South Africa was and still is occurring markedly in the overcrowded poor populations where malnutrition, common persistent parasitical diseases long vanquished from western populations, lack of health care, std’s infections and unsanitary environments persist. And this is true for the new countries AIDS is supposedly invading. To make matters worse, give them toxic chemo drugs on top of their persistent diseases and already compromised immune systems, and they will die. Many die of the common regional diseases regardless due to lack of health care services, known curative drugs, and of malnutrition. For instance, researchers who have examined the supposed massive deaths reported in Tanzania, find no such evidence. (Questioning AIDs in South Africa) And the CDC has now allowed themselves to categorize many common diseases in these areas as AIDS related, WITHOUT HIv testing, due largely to the expense of the HIv tests. (see Duesberg paper below) Of course they know the the testing is a hoax regardless. As a result, AIDS cases increase lending to the deception of a pandemic. All numbers the CDC and UNAIDS uses for HIv infection and AIDS cases are false and/or completely made up estimations and projections.
20. In fact now the NIH and CDC have admitted that they do not know how HIv causes destruction to the immune system (it doesn’t but the ARV drugs, immune suppressive behaviors, poverty, malnutrition do), and they are now factoring in a co-virus as a way out of their deception. A vaccine was promised in 2 years after the announcement of the “probable” cause HIv in 1984. No cure has ever been produced because no cure is needed or possible for a retro-virus (or passenger virus) that cannot cause disease. No vaccine because HIv isn’t a real disease causing virus.
21. Scurvy (citric acid deficiency), Pellagra (niacin deficiency), Beriberi (thiamine deficiency) , SMON (toxin in drug treatment), Zantac,Tagamet-Ulcers (bacteria, Tagamet, Zantac useless), Clioquinol-Diarrhea (toxin in Clioquinol treatment), Influenza (virus) , DES – Synthetic hormone( caused cervical cancer and sterility)…………all cases that were misdiagnosed or causations ignored by the medical/scientific profession at their specific occurrences in history to the detriment of the public. And in the cases where a drug was given and was causation, it was always to the profit of the pharmaceutical industry. In some cases the misdiagnoses, sickness and death went on for years.
Why isn’t an antibody test that’s verified by another antibody test good enough to say someone is infected with HIV?
The rationale for the use of antibody tests is that the immune system has the ability to detect foreign agents or viruses and to respond by producing antibodies that react with those agents or viruses. However, this rationale does not work in reverse. That is, the observation of an antibody reaction with a particular agent or virus does not prove that the antibody was produced in response to that particular agent or virus.
The problem with using antibodies alone to indicate infection with a particular agent or virus is twofold:
1. Antibodies can only be associated with a disease after it is shown that they are consistently generated after exposure to the pure virus. We are unaware that this has ever been accomplished with HIV.
2. Antibodies engage in indiscriminate relationships with a variety of agents or viruses. One could say that antibodies are “promiscuous,” that is, antibodies meant for one agent or virus may react with another agent or virus that is a perfect stranger. Or, to put it technically, there is ample evidence that antibody molecules, even the most pure (monoclonal antibodies) are not mono-specific, and that they cross-react with other, non-immunizing antigens.
“Classifying suppression or deficiency of the immune system, that long has had causation in many things, as a specific “syndrome” caused by a harmless retrovirus, is beyond comprehension and an insult to good medicine and science…unless you’re up to no good. But then treating an immune deficiency with poison chemo antiretroviral drugs, that destroy same immune system (bone marrow) and terminate DNA chains is criminal and insane! AIDS is an immune issue and should be treated as such. In fact, the acronym AIDS should be thrown away and banished from our vocabulary.”
1. HIv, like other viruses is harmless after antibody immunity. There is no known disease or virus that has re-emerged after a mature, healthy immune system created antibodies to it.(1) Testing positive for HIv means you have the antibodies and don’t have HIv. Unfortunately many different antigens are documented to set off the protein strips in the HIv tests which makes it difficult to lend any credibility to the tests. Thus the PCR test was invented.
2. HIv does not kill the T-cells it infects. In fact T-cells are compatible with HIv. Virologists know this for a fact. Abbot Labs used T-cells to grow HIv to make the protein strips for the Western Blot test.
3. HIv does not infect enough T-cells to cause AIDS. T-cells reproduce at the rate of 5% a day. HIv, after being destroyed mostly by antibodies produced, can only infect 1 in every 500 to one thousand T-cells. There is no virus in AIDS patients, only antibodies against virus. Gallo could never find any cytotoxic virus in T-cells.
4. HIv has no AIDS causing gene. HIv is no different in gene make up than other retrovirus. There are many retroviruses in the body all the time. If HIv can cause destruction of the immune system ( thus AIDS) then why don’t the other retrovirus? Or if the other retroviruses don’t cause AIDS, why does HIv? There is no genetic reason to explain why HIv causes AIDS.
5. There is no such thing as a slow virus. Gallo and Gajdusek gave HIv magical properties. Real virus cause specific disease and do so within days or a few weeks at most. (1) Herpes is not the exception as viremially it reproduces exponentially when active and passes Kochs Postulates. HIv does not. (Page 74 Duesbergs book IAV) And Herpes when first transmitted almost immediately shows its trademark sores. Gajdusek (NIH) had a history of claiming slow and dormant virus, but never in humans. Always in the lab. Also in his early work he gave retroviruses the ability to create more than one disease. All by correlation but never through proof. In fact he and Gallo and a few other retrovirologists seemed to always discover a retrovirus in the lab, then went looking for a disease.
6. HIv is not a new virus so HIv would not suddenly cause a new epidemic. New epidemics explode across populations. HIv has remained constant in populations and has been infecting every generation likely for centuries without causing AIDS. Farrs law is used for dating virus or microbe age and HIv models exactly to Farrs law. HIv then, is not sexually transmittable nor an epidemic. It is parinatally passed.
7. HIv fails all 4 Kochs postulates. A real disease causing virus or microbe must pass every one. The postulates are:1.) A virus or bacteria must be found in all cases of the disease, actively growing in large amounts call virus titer. HIv FAILS. 2.) Virus or germ must be isolated from the host and grown in pure culture. HIv FAILS HIv has only been grown substantially in the lab using a co-culture of leukemia cells and stimulated with chemicals, never directly from an HIv infected person in large quantities. 3.) The virus or bacteria must cause the same disease when injected into a new healthy host. HIv FAILS. 4.) The virus or bacteria must be isolated and found growing again in large amounts in the newly diseased host. HIv FAILS (failing 3 it cannot pass 4.)
8. AIDS has remained in its original risk groups for over 23 years. 97% AIDS patients made up of same risk groups. 3% risk group isn’t growing.
9. The CDC, WHO international profile of AIDS is inconsistent. U.S. and Europe = 90% male. Africa = 50/50 male female. U.S. and Europe fall 97% into risk groups. Africa = no risk groups.(the official UNAIDS line) The truth is the poor, malnourished living in crowded slums and shanty towns with no sanitation or clean water, or access to health care and continually fighting old parasitical diseases, are the most susceptible to immune deficiency disease, not HIv. They are the risk groups in poor overcrowded areas of developing countries. And CDC and UNAIDS have categorized all the old African diseases now as AIDS, whether HIv infection is present of not.
10. AIDS related disease occurs without HIv infection, and, most people with HIv antibodies, never develop AIDS related disease. What we see in this statement is evidence of no retrovirus in the first case or of a harmless retrovirus in the second case, that does nothing and has been cleared by immune response. Of course what is evident is that no one has HIv who has the antibodies present. If we can even verify that these antibodies are or have reacted to HIv proteins!!! And if it takes a polymerase chain reaction test to confirm that we can only find fragments of the DNA/RNA of HIv, not the HIv itself, then why is anyone worried about HIv??? Because we’ve been terribly misled by, as Duesberg calls them, the “virus hunters”.
Conclusion: HIv is not infectious nor sexually transmittable. With this information and finding of fact we should question any and all claims of disease that are supposedly caused by virus. Immediately what comes to mind are HPV, Hep B and HepC. These may be as harmless as HIv and treatment has been hyped to push people toward vaccinations that are untested and whose efficacy is not totally known.
Contrary to the hype it is encouraging, RECREATE-68 does not want to recreate the violent clashes of the 1968 Democratic National Convention. That would have to be up to the police. While we know the Chicago Seven (+1) and their cohorts did not go quietly, it is now also well admitted that the violence in 1968 was perpetrated by the Chicago police without provocation.
I don’t think anyone wants to relive that brutality again, especially as riot police today have much more debilitating and potentially lethal weaponry. Recent demonstrations, as in Seattle against the WTO and in Miami against the FTAA, have seen militarized police force used against a well intended, if obviously outraged, outcry.
Last week at a public debate against Denver City Councilman Charlie Brown, Recreate-68 event coordinator Glen Spagnuolo made clear that they are not interested in receiving a beating or permanent injury at the hands of overzealous police. Of course the catch-phrase “recreate 68” does titillate with accompanying slogans like “Do It in Denver,” but this is done to pique people’s interest, and it has accomplished that.
Recreate-68 is determined to get people engaged with the DNC, in the streets, instead of in front of their televisions as passive spectators to the usurping of their power. The Democrats are party to continued funding of the war, raiding the US treasury for the rich, denying Americans universal health care, taking away our civil liberties with the Patriot Act, and colluding with murder, torture and profiteering. If the American people go along with these crimes, they are accomplices. Too bad they are also the victims. Official channels do not permit people to raise their voices above a silent consent. The DNC in August, in Denver, is opportunity knocking in the streets.
When party organizations admonish you to work through the system, they perpetuate their power to deny progressive reforms. The will of the people has only ever expressed itself through protest. Democracy, Human Rights, Abolition, Suffrage, Child Labor, Civil Rights, Pacifism. We have only made these gains by collective action. A redress of grievances is what it’s called in the constitution. I can just hear Democratic representatives saying, “oh we can’t go that that far, we could never get elected if we advocated for such extremist reforms.” They are undoubtedly right, because real reform is always up to you. But as much as Obama can urge you to feel hopeful, “you” doesn’t mean you voting for a representative who is promising you in actuality nothing.
Recreate 68 is about recreating the sense of connectivity Americans held in 1968, when young and old put their bodies into the line of fire desperate to bring an end to the disastrous Vietnam War. The people’s movement of the sixties had been growing, led by men soon assassinated. Students were rioting in London and Paris, and Cassius Clay was suspended from boxing for having declared himself a conscientious objector. By 1968 people understood that nothing would change unless they did it themselves.
Today we are into the sixth year of the Iraq War and there is no American antiwar momentum to speak of. There are diverse projects on the internet and in sporadic protests, but the US effort is a pitiable movement compared to the public outcry overseas.
Particularly lacking are young people. You may say it is because there is no draft, but enough are still volunteering to fight. I rather think that the youthful opposition is absent because of No Child Left Behind. Our children are being educated to be uncritical thinkers, in particular, narcissists and apolitical bubble babies with no immunity to corporate misinformation. They may be cynical, and clever by half, to the extent that they lack a social conscience. As a result, their forever adolescent thinking that nothing can touch them keeps them civically disengaged until it is too late and they are indebted to the machine.
The youthful cynicism which the slick corporate media celebrates as hip irreverence keeps kids from caring for their fellow people, and certainly holds them from believing that anything they do can make a difference. Look at the average age of the typical social activists. They’re past middle age. Is this a coincidence?
Young Americans, even up to age thirty something, are so jaded to have become tragically ineffectual. Electoral politics might be the extreme of their participation, and look where it will get them, against fraudulent pollsters and rigged voting systems.
I’m curious about what will happen in Denver if Recreate-68 is able to mobilize the youth. Perhaps kids will only be able to express themselves as Grand-Theft-Auto and Half-Life have taught them, as our soldiers are doing, cast adrift in Iraq. In that case, the disembodied violence to which we carelessly expose them will have come home to roost. If Denver becomes a riot, it is a development I think we will need to face.
For my part, I hope we can recreate 68. Let’s break through the media moratorium on the social issues important to us. Let’s remind the TV populace that we want to hold at least our Democratic Party politicians accountable to listen to our needs. If the candidates will not, and we’ve already learned that someone like Dennis Kucinich cannot get the nomination, perhaps the party system is too phony to matter.
What if the Democrats are only shills for the Republicans in charge? I believe the Democratic convention might only be setting up a candidate to lose to John McCain. For example, do you think Americans are ready to elect a woman or a black man to the presidency? I’d like to think so too, but I have a feeling the media is prepared to inform us in November, “oh, so close but no cigar!” Who is suggesting that Americans are past the gender or race card? Is it the corporate media, tool of the rich white man? Since when did the average American TV viewer wise up? George W. Bush’s approval rating was already at a dismal low when Americans reelected him in 2004. This, even after televised debates showed unequivocally that Bush was the dunce everyone remembered from the back of their classroom. Even if Bush didn’t really win in 2004, as in 2000, at least there were enough dumb white voters to make it look legitimate. Are those constituents going to vote for an unexperienced, non-veteran non-white Obama? Those errant voters are still out there, you see them, they still have W-04 stickers on their cars. And the the black box vote counting, voter registration and poll both gate-keeping are still in the hands of Republicans.
If the Democratic Party really hopes to represent the people, it has to do much better. If the Democratic Party is not prepared to offer Americans a real alternative to the corrupt misrepresentation in Washington, we can find better entertainment with the charades of the WWWF. Should the Dems hear this from you? Is your representative listening or still asking you to show patience? Take him or her to the mat, in Denver, in August.
While US Marines were acquitted for the 2005 murder of the 24 Iraqi civilians, THE BATTLE OF HADITHA has hit the theatres in England. The Times Online and Time Out London review UK documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield‘s dramatization of the rampage. It opens in NYC on May 7.
Do you remember the lesson of Horton Hears a Who? No matter how small, everyone matters. Fox has brought the theme to the animated screen and not-unlikely bedfellows are seizing on the message. Under the revival tents, the anti-abortion preachers want you to glean something further from Horton: that the very life of a tiny embryo could depend on you, if only your inner elephant can be persuaded you hear its call.
Although, they’re are not talking about the embryos deliberately created en vitro by fertility clinics, terminated when too many have taken to the uterine wall. Nor babies miscarried, nor still-born. Do the pro-life Hortons not hear them?
Let’s agree that abortion is tragic, and shouldn’t be bandied about as a lifestyle choice like a Brazilian wax or a boob job. Personally I’d prefer our culture wasn’t so enthralled with promiscuity. Don’t encourage drinking if you can’t live with the car wrecks. Don’t paint sex as the ultimate of fulfillments if your society has set as acceptable norm a procreative age over a dozen years later than we are biological capable.
Fighting Fifth Avenue and mankind’s propensity to hedonism is doubtless harder than bringing the hammer down on a pregnant teen. Shouldn’t the church come down on immorality instead of its victims? Abortion is a hard choice, like any harsh dilemma. We euthanize cats and dogs when there become too many. A “domestic” animal designates those in man’s care, which live to serve us, and die according to our dinner plan. We ride our horses but leave them to the French to eat. To our credit we show a reluctance to face nature’s difficult choices.
Religious beliefs have been the ultimate causes of war, justifying killings in fanatical number, to this present day. Religion is always behind genocide. What is it about pre-infanticide that’s got zealots so indignant?
Is this about an egg and sperm’s right to wed? Or about the church’s prerogative to mandate pregnancy? I think to a large extent, it’s about enforcing puritanism, the better to reserve the sex drive for manipulating people. You can’t have your masses contentedly debauched, they must be repressed and thwarted, being lured by sex to get married and pregnant to breed the next batch of easily motivated worker/consumer drones.
I admire the Right to Life credo that all life is sacred. But is it? Right to Lifers remind me of pedigree animal rescue outfits, only THEIR breed is sacred enough worth saving. What about other forms of life? Owls? Whales, small fish? Are these pious folks practicing vegans, concerned not to exploit any living being? Do they feed themselves like the Buddhists monks who consume liquids through a strainer, careful not to swallow even a flea?
The pro-lifer’s concern is not for the human being small person, it’s only for the unborn baby. And it’s only for the unborn of their likeness, and more than likely from their neighborhood. Other cultures’ offspring are mere driving factors of overpopulation, unless they are our colonial suppliers of cheap labor.
And what about already born babies? Or babies -or tiny children- belonging to foreigners, right now being shot at by our troops? Where is the Right to Life alarm about people we are depriving of life? Horton’s lesson was that others matter, regardless of size. Would that mean not just little people? What of adult people being exploited, tortured or condemned to death, who is concerned for their right to life?
One of the charms of Dr. Seuss is that his myriad creatures represent an incalculable gamut of fantasy beings. Horton does not hear a baby elephant for example, he hears a WHO. The Whos of Whoville are not of his world at all, and might well inhabit a forth dimensional anthill as far as Horton can figure. Would this not be quite the humanitarian message for religious nuts preoccupied only for their own? Miserably too, they are not obsessed with precisely their own, but about YOUR own, whom they claim as theirs to save. Their daughters are having abortions, to the last, I can assure you that.
The your-baby demagogues are motivated by penance, for deed past or to come, but instead of flagellating themselves, they’re beating on your daughter. They are concerned for the right to life of her baby, to be conceived unprepared for and un-afforded. They stand for that baby’s right to the unending cycle of ill-parenting, vocational training, indebtedness, and life of servitude.
Dr. Seuss lived long enough to see the Religious Right’s interest in exploiting the Horton Hears a Sinner theme. Both Theodor Geisel and his widow publicly repudiated the holier-than-thou interpretation being used to agitate against abortion. But now his earthly voice is extinguished, and we can see Pro-Lifers don’t respect the dead either.
What type of allies does the US have in its fight against Latin America? See Severed hand confirmed death of second rebel chief. That’s more refined and able to deal with the testing equipment of the Pentagon to use hands, and not scalps, these days.
Put aside all the theory, propaganda, and nonsense about the supposedly horrible totalitarians Fidel and Hugo. Instead, just look at the company the US government keeps on its Latin American payroll. Terrorists. Death squad terorists. And governments that run them, like Uribe’s Colombian mafia. Cutting off hands for identification is a relatively benign activity for these terrorists.
The Smokebrush is feting the first anniversary of the Springs Culture Cast enterprise on Thursday night. I love the work Craig and Klayton are doing to illuminate our city’s culture scene. Every weekday the two assemble a four minute segment on local arts. I especially like when their delivery swerves into the theatrical, but I can’t laugh forever at their sledgehammer self-promotion.
Radio segway: “It’s time for the Springs Culture Cast:”
Underwriter credit: “Springs Culture Cast is brought to you by…”
Intro: “Welcome to the radio edition of Springs Culture Cast.”
Reporter: “Hi I’m Craig Richardson with Springs Culture Cast… ”
“…This segment of Springs Culture Cast was produced by Craig Richardson and Klayton Elliot Kendall.
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“For Springs Culture Cast, this is Craig Richardson.”
Most Americans exist completely apart from the natural order. We live in artificial dwellings, are transported by artificial means and “nourished” by artificial foods. We wear high heels, mask all body odors, prepare meals in toxic cookware, wrap our bodies in synthetic materials. We pop pills to feel better and lose ourselves in electronic black holes to assuage boredom. Many of us live lives of isolation, like lone wolves, instead of in community with our fellow human beings.
Some of the more visionary among us provide suggestions for improvement. No more plastic bags! Wear hemp clothing! Eat organic! Bike to work! Use crystals to deodorize! Give free hugs! Such solutions are mere band-aids on a gaping wound. They are unable to stem the flow of blood, but they somehow make us feel better.
My children are learning about the benefits of recycling. Period. The conversation should be expanded. Instead of taking our cans to the curb, why not vow never again to drink anything that comes in a can? Or, even better, any beverage besides water. Let’s teach our kids that canned and bottled beverages are inherently unhealthy for the body, as well as detrimental to the environment. With a more holistic approach, the need to recycle would become less urgent, and the children would be better educated and healthier.
A holistic solution to energy conservation and national obesity can be found in the home thermostat. Many of us have turned down the heat to conserve energy. Good for the planet, no question. From a more holistic perspective, is it natural for man to live in a tightly climate-controlled environment? It isn’t. But our bodies have adapted to this artificial reality over time and we feel impelled to preserve it. So while we may turn down the thermostat, we bundle ourselves up to maintain the status quo.
I like to keep my house cool, about 60 degrees. I wear t-shirts and drink ice water and my little kids, with barely an ounce of body fat amongst them, play in their underwear, completely impervious to the cold. Remember that human beings are not dependent on the environment to determine body temperature. It is set biologically and will be maintained naturally in nearly all situations. If the outside temperature is hot, we sweat and our metabolism slows down so our bodies don’t overheat. This makes us feel sluggish; hence, the lazy summer day and dog days of summer weather characterizations. If the outer temperature is cooler, the body maintains heat by increasing the rate of metabolism and converting fat to energy. We build a fire within. Not only do we get warmer, we get thinner and more energetic to boot! Over time our metabolic rates are reset at a higher level, and we no longer feel the cold. We are warmed by our own energy source, not by a polyester sweatshirt.
Think about what it means to live naturally, like cave men. Get familiar with the workings of the body. Ponder what the planet was before man imposed his artificial intelligence upon it. Then attempt to conform to that which is natural wherever you can. What is good for the body will be good for the mind and the spirit, and is bound to be good for the environment.
A friend of mine, Dave, is a 911 nut. I don’t mean he’s a nutcase, I simply mean he plays into the unfortunate stereotype painted by those trying to discredit conspiracy theorists.
I don’t know how to help him.
Dave’s life priority is to expose the truth about 9/11. He maintains the websites 911blimp and 911university. I saw Dave tonight at our precinct caucus. He rose to every opportunity to speak for or against candidates, always on the theme of questioning what really happened when September 11, 2001 was used to transform our nation into a “homeland” preoccupied with its security. Each time, Dave’s presentation was tempered by the precinct chairman’s reminder of a two minute time limit. Dave spoke with clarity and passion, although often part of his audience would deliberately ignore him. Between pitches Dave circulated around the room to hand out business cards and CDs. It was a tough sell but he kept at it.
Dave may as well have been Malthus warning the end is nigh, but he cheerfully explained to me that he would regret later if he didn’t speak out as much as humanly possible. Our government’s duplicity about 9/11 is ground zero for reassessing the dysfunction of our political system. I told him I thought he was absolutely dead on, but that people were still not ready to hear it. In fact I was certain they were growing more and more blind. This crowd in particular, buzzing about Obama, was hanging on desperately to a hope it was not about to be told was false.
Perhaps another round of non-representative leadership will bring Americans around to the stench of deceit that flew into high gear on 911. It doesn’t matter what theory you favor, the official theory stinks.
Dave doesn’t want us to get bogged down with weighing the conspiracies and pseudo-conspiracies. And here I think he’s on the right track. Dave told me tonight: “You don’t have to know how the magician sawed the lady in half, to know it was a trick.”
Here is a graph that I think illustrates world economic history quite well in a very simple way. It takes three countries and charts their portions of the world economy over 2 centuries. The three countries are the US, India, and China. See the graph Output and Outlook
Ignore the conclusion of the Harvard Professor, Greg Mankiw, as he glowingly quotes Michael Milken of the Wall Street Journal. Both these guys are American apologist buffoons who overlook the obvious about the graph they are looking at.
In 1820 India and China held almost 50% of the world’s economic output between themselves, whereas the US had less than 2% of it. But just about then the US was importing slaves ripped away from the African continent by European imperialism. As this stolen wealth in human slaves accumulated in the US and was used as labor in agricultural production, the US portion of world wealth shot up, and later not even the Civil War could brake it.
And then, European imperialism began to spread its hooks and tentacles toward India and China, where they began to colonize the 2 regions. Now you see the swing begin downward in the Chinese and Indian portions of world wealth as they were bled drier and drier by the Europeans, and in the case of the Chinese also by Japan.
It is only in the 1980’s where China, and a lesser extent India began to recover some. That was when both societies began to recuperate themselves some from the destructive effects of colonial occupation.
Since the end of WW2, the European countries and the US have had to discard colonialism and embrace neo-colonialism, where the looting of other countries is done primarily through economic structures (banks and lending institutions), and not military ones of direct occupation.
Now with the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations, we see the US Empire beginning to return to using the old methods of traditional colonialism by direct military occupation to loot other countries’ wealth to enrich its own treasuries. Or at least, this seems to be the current direction where US government is now trying to implement its foreign policies.
Direct colonization by occupation troops does not have a recent history of being successful though, except in the case of the construction of the Jewish Apartheid state of Israel. The US occupation of Iraq is somewhat an extension and outgrowth of the Jewish occupation of Palestine, while the occupation of Afghanistan is more a remote fortress garrison occupation than a direct colonization attempt of any sort.
So what we have is the US Empire today directing a kind of hybrid imperialism where traditional colonialism is fused with neo-colonialism, and then again with a sort of return to the old colonial style fortess enclave structures, like the British and Portugese used to specialize in.
But now, we are off some from the theme of the simple educational graph that we linked to.
UPDATE: The Gazette article is still among the top commented.
Here’s a string of the initial comments, in chronological order:
hmmmmm wrote:
Well this proves that if you break the law, and they did, and complain and whine enough then you can get off. Very disappointed in our DA on this one. quote “When you consider dragging an old woman across the street and not lifting her up, it’s really hard to see how that’s doing nothing wrong,” Verlo said. end quote. When this “old woman” refuses to get up and follow police orders, Yes they did nothing wrong. It’s called the law, and they broke it.
11/28/2007 7:44 PM MST on Gazette.com
csaction wrote:
No part of this trial was ever in the public’s interest and the city prosecutors were the last to see that. Some of the police used excessive force and that ruined their case. The parade rules weren’t applied to everyone equally, and that ruined their case. You aren’t guilty of obstructing the street when the police throw you down in the street. Explaining that you have a permit to march, just like the year before, is NOT failure to disperse. Allowing every politico in town to make a political statement EXCEPT those with a message of peace, is NOT equal protection under the law.
The strangest part of the city’s position, other than the obvious lame claim that they could get a conviction but decided not to, is Ms. Kelly’s apparent distrust of the legal system: “everything the police did was justified and there was probable cause for an arrest, but getting a conviction is another story”.
It is NOT another story IF the police did nothing wrong and there WAS probable cause for an arrest, and that’s ALL been decided by a jury of their peers when they couldn’t prove their case to 6 people in this town.
Is she suggesting that the jury system is wrong or that we, the people, are too stupid to see that the police and city are always right, no matter what they do? Does she think we can’t sit on a jury and decide the ruling based on the evidence, and get it right? The jury already got it right and the city wanted to intimidate the remaining 2 people with the threat of a trial, until the last minute, to stop them from suing for the police brutality, already proven to a jury.
11/28/2007 7:49 PM MST on Gazette.com
mananamaria wrote:
Apparently a jury couldn’t agree anyone broke the law in the first place. As far as I can tell, the threat to file charges against Verlo and Fineron, who both may or may no longer have pending lawsuits against the city and then dropping those is pretty telling. Besides did our finest not learn appropriat compliance tools that avoid the spectecals of dragging old women across a street and flagrantly threateniing people with tasers?
11/28/2007 8:03 PM MST on Gazette.com
jwstrue wrote:
CS, correction–they had a permit to march in a parade, not to interrupt the parade with a demonstration. In addition, Kelly is stating that another trial would be a waste of resources because the outcome would be the same…there is no insuation here.
11/28/2007 8:04 PM MST on Gazette.com
back2colorado4go wrote:
csaction, you have lost ALL credibility on these boards! And Manawhatever, you do not follow ANY of the facts about this. JWSTrue has it right. These people broke the law, and most people I know of agree that these people needed to be taught that what they did in public was a disgrace! The police PICKED THEM OFF OF THE STREET, and with resistance these people ended up hurting themselves! They are deceptive by lying for the permit and needed to be removed. No one, especially the children there to see the parade, needed to be subjected to these adults acting unruly and not listening to the police! You can protest many other ways without this sick little show! And I agree with the DA in one way though. For the little satisfaction we (the public) would get in prosecuting these people, it is not worth the cost and the publicity it would give these pathetic people in the process! And yes, juries are full of creepy people that let off murderers every day, so it is not so hard to see one that can’t decide this one! These people were LUCKY it was the police that dragged them from the streets after hearing how ticked some parade watchers were at these people when this happened! Way to teach our kids!!!
11/28/2007 8:21 PM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (4)
jwstrue wrote:
back2colorado4go, thanks for the support. Now we sit back and wait for jtrione to chime in…sometimes I think CS and jtrione are one in the same, maybe??
11/28/2007 8:50 PM MST on Gazette.com
tonytee wrote:
hey post person hummmmmm cops broke the law many times and have not been charged, people sometimes who break the law in history end up being heroes, sometimes the letter of the law is not always correct and golden, sometimes to make a difference in life you must break the law to make the world a better place to live and not not let the law become too powerful in trying to silence free speech.
11/28/2007 8:52 PM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (2)
pc12784 wrote:
CSaction, with the possibility of people like you in the jury pool, it is entirely reasonable to think that the jury would be too stupid to see that the police and city are right in this case. Your statement about excessive force still baffle me. If you don’t want to be dragged off the street by the police, MOVE when officers give you a lawful order to do so. It’s really quite simple. But JWS and back2colorado pretty much discredited everything you said in this thread anyway, so I rest my case.
11/28/2007 9:18 PM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (4)
lexiii wrote:
I wish they’d have gone ahead and prosecuted, but the county is trying to save money, and they are basically focusing on more important crimes, I think, which is a good thing.
However, I am not on the side of the protesters here, if there weren’t more important cases that need attention, I’d be screaming and hollering myself right now, but our jails are already over filled and we need the room for more violent offenders.
Even though they’re not going to be prosecuted, the stupid protesters still look stupid in the eyes of the public, that opinion will not change.
11/28/2007 9:37 PM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (4)
pastor wrote:
one thing I have learned about csaction is he is right and everyone else is wrong. Have anyone every read where he admitted he was wrong and said he was sorry. In his world the peace protest are always right and can do no wrong.
Here is an example of his world view “One more point: look at the list of issues that made the gazette change this blog. ALL rightwing issues. All rightwing hate speech. Vile, putrid, racist, sexist, Fox Noise, Rush Limpboy, dittohead, FotF issues. NONE leftwing.” ”
Mr. Rust, I see you like your peace activists stupid, brain addled, stoned hippies, with no fight in them, passively accepting any abuse from the enemies of the state. Or perhaps you like the theological activists looking for another martyrdom opportunity and willing to help any enemy nail them to the cross. Or perhaps activists that are just too stupid to see hypocrisy in the national (and local) theocracy proponents, or the threat that ALL theocrats represent to the peaceful majority. Sorry to disappoint. (not)” ” The theocratic party that wants to turn this nation into a theocracy, and is the Christian equivalent of an Islamic Republic, are who get criticized, along with the hypocrite, hate monger, adulterer, homophobe, foot tapping bathroom boys, and televangelist funditards. It has nothing to do with the religion and peaceful, loving followers of the Prince of Peace. It has to do with those straying from the message as much as the other Taliban, who want to turn back the clock on progress to created a biblical theocracy. It has to do with those that want to legislate “throwing the first stone”, battling those that want to legislate “thou shalt NOT throw the first stone”. The concept of the protection of targeted groups, is the application of that principle and those against it are NOT Christian, because it is the principle of their lord. BTW, preacher, I won’t cut you as much slack as the other guy. You know exactly what “Christian” Taliban means, you just defend them. I’ve explained this before and will not again.” all of these quotes are from him. FOR SOMEONE WHO BELIEVES CHRISTIAN ARE LIKE THE TALIBAN, WILL ALWAYS DEFEND HIS PEOPLE WHEN THERE ARE WRONG. So I am sure he will blame Christian for his friends getting in trouble, and that all of this is to silence his friends message.
11/28/2007 9:39 PM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
on the issues of the protester, they now know, if they disobey the police, they can get away with it by yell, that it is all the police fault. An make sure people like csaction spread their lies on line and in the newspaper, this is the normal blame the cops for our behavior.
11/28/2007 9:45 PM MST on Gazette.com
101abn wrote:
Once again, lazy DAs. I rest my case. Prosecuting the prostestors would probably cut in to the time they spend plea bargaining away other cases…
11/28/2007 10:10 PM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (2)
101abn wrote:
Neva Nolan. Nearly a HUNDRED COUNTS PLEA BARGAINED DOWN TO *TWO*. Did you watch the Channel 11 report on the clown with over a HALF DOZEN DUIs – INCLUDING KILLING A MAN – WHO LOST HIS DRIVER’S LICENSE, LEFT COURT, DROVE TO A LIQUOR STORE AND BOUGHT A BOTTLE OF BOOZE??? ALL FILMED AND CONFIRMED BY CHANNEL 11 NEWS CREWS. Our DAs are a BAD JOKE!
11/28/2007 10:26 PM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (3)
tonytee wrote:
actually lexiii i do not see the protesters as stupid in the eyes of the public, being one that is in the public i commend them for standing up for what they beleived in and taking it as far as they did, in this country too few people are sheep and will not step out and stand for what they beleive in that is why our country is in the dilemma it is in currently with politicians and fiancially, maybe more people need to step out of the box for what they beleive in instead of letting senior citizens do it for us, but maybe that is the only generation that has any guts left to stand up for something.
11/28/2007 11:50 PM MST
just1voice wrote:
Tony I think you are way off base on that one. Its not that people arent willing to stand up for what they believe in or that they are sheep following the flock. The majority of them do it WITHIN the limits of the law so it doesnt make headlines like these clowns did. Have you gone out and asked the “public” their opinion on what these people did? I have and as Lexi said, they look stupid and will continue to think they are stupid even though they wont be punished for it.
Besides, I can think of several other ways to punish a business owner besides sending him to jail so that is something the public needs to consider.
11/29/2007 7:10 AM MST on Gazette.com
skiracer wrote:
Tony – not sure exactly how you are in the public eye as I have never heard of you outside these boards and can’t find any information on basic internet searches. Someone mentioned on another thread you ran for a public office and lost. With the skewwed view points you have shown throughout the threads on this website and the apparent lack of a marketing plan I can see why.
Maybe the senior citizens in these case were convinced/brainwashed in to thinking they were standing up for a good cause. Heck, my grandmother voted for Clinton the first time around because she thought he was handsome and someone came around to her nursing home and told everyone there what a great guy he was and how his moral standards would help improve their lives in the retirement community.
The problem with what they did is that they lied their way into the protest (privately funded and run) and then refused to leave when organizers asked them to and then police asked them to. Arguing that you have a permit is not leaving. Step to the side of the road and then show your permit. But since it was privately run it doesn’t matter. Your permit can be revoked at anytime at the organizer’s discretion.
As far dragging rather than carrying an old lady across the street. I am going to guess that she was pushing 200 lbs if not more. Has anyone here tried to carry a oddly shaped, limp sack of potatoes weighing this much before. Now add some squirming into the equation and you can see why they dragged this person off the straight. Besides, I would be willing to bet that should she have been carried off we would hear about her injuring either her arms or her ribs.
11/29/2007 7:38 AM MST on Gazette.com
skiracer wrote:
And regardless of the cost, the DA should be prosecuting those who break the law. The problem with our legal system is not that too many people are getting 2nd chances, it’s that too many people never even have to plea bargain or go to court because of lazy prosecutors.
The DA just lost my vote when up for re-election. If you didn’t have enough evidence say so, but to say that you are backing out because you don’t have faith in the system you are supposed to uphold on behalf of the people is a bunch of BS.
11/29/2007 7:41 AM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (1)
pastor wrote:
The next’s round of the peace protester hand book is to bring a lawsuit against the city and police for false arrest. I hope that everyone who hand entry for parade take notice and when this group try to entry next time, they make it clear to them no anti-war message permitted in the parade. If you bring in you anti-war or peace message (joke because they seem to end up in some type of fight with someone) you will be removed. This will stop them from cause trouble again.
11/29/2007 7:57 AM MST on Gazette.com
iraqwarvet wrote:
I went to war to push peace and democracy on other nations. In this nation, or atleast in this city peace is considered hate speach. This city had no case, thats why they lost and are hanging their heads in defeat.
11/29/2007 7:57 AM MST on Gazette.com
iraqwarvet wrote:
This city is changing, just drive on Fort Carson one day, count how many anti-war, anti-Bush stickers you see on people’s cars. It will shock you. But you people on this blog will probably just call those troops “phoney soldiers” or “anti-americans” or “unpatriotic”. We appreciate that. Thanks for the support. Go when Physical Training (PT) ends at 8:30am, you’ll see these troops in their cars where their PT uniform with with what you people call “propaganda” on their car. I love an America where our troops have the right to free speach, which you call “hate speach”.
11/29/2007 8:03 AM MST on Gazette.com
erniezippreplat wrote:
Break the law get away scott free with the Colorado Springs DA. Whoever run against the current DA next time around gets the five votes in my family
11/29/2007 8:08 AM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (1)
lexiii wrote:
iraqwarvet, throwing yourself on the pavement during a family event isn’t speech, and it certainly isn’t peace.
If idiots want to stand up for peace, they need to be peaceable about it.
These protesters were no more peaceful than anyone else.
tonytee, the protesters were stupid. They acted like a bunch of tantruming toddlers. Grown men and women throwing themselves down like three year olds in front of little children, no less, because they were asked to leave and they didn’t want to leave.
Not only was that against their own message of peace, it was a bad example for the children concerning adult behavior, and it was completely inappropriate in the first place.
A family event is no place for a war protest, these selfish minded brainless old farts who think they’re still in the sixties need to grow up and find a more appropriate means of communication.
How can they send a message of peace when they, themselves, are not being peaceful?
11/29/2007 8:10 AM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (1)
smackermack wrote:
GUYS your anger is in the wrong place!! It is the CITY ATTORNEY – not the DA who decided this!!! Read the headline and the first Paragraph of the article!!!
11/29/2007 8:55 AM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
No one want to silence the peace protesters right to speak, but we believe that there is a time and place for it. An most people believe that the St. Patrick’s Day parade was not the right time and place. Most people also seem to believe that if a cop asked you move you move you do not act like a baby. But I also must remind everyone that the peace protesters hand book, when the police ask you to move you drop an make a scene, so that it is caught on film, the reason is so you can make the police look like the bad guy.
Iragwarvet I have a question for you since you agree with the anti-war groups. Is it ok to block soldier return from the war? Is it ok to delay the soldier meeting with their family? Is it ok to destroy railroad tracks and stop the return of the military equipment from the war?
11/29/2007 8:56 AM MST on Gazette.com
jwstrue wrote:
TONYTEE, taking a stand or speaking out for what you believe in is one thing. Causing a disturbance during a public family event is quite another.
2 other bits:
– This country is in dilemma (according to you) because of corrupt politicians…
– This country is in dilemma (according to you) because of imminent recession…
Neither has anything to do with “stepping out or standing for”.
You wouldn’t happen to be one of the individuals who ran for mayor last term, would you?
11/29/2007 9:02 AM MST on Gazette.com
rambone wrote:
pastor wrote: “No one want to silence the peace protesters right to speak, but we believe that there is a time and place for it. An most people believe that the St. Patrick’s Day parade was not the right time and place.”
Oh, but it was the right time and place for an old pickup to drive in the parade with juveniles in the back, lifting kegs, acting like idiots?
Was it the right time and place for the police to scare the living daylights out of young children as they drug that poor old lady across the street by the back of her shirt?
Were you even there pastor? I was, and it was terrible that these fine police had to act like they were imposing martial law.
11/29/2007 9:11 AM MST on Gazette.com
davidb wrote:
Eric Verlo and Elizabeth Fineron should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. According to their own statements, they intentionally and premeditatedly challenged the police that day. Attorney Kelly, you do NOT speak for the public on this one. Do your job!
11/29/2007 9:20 AM MST on Gazette.com
rambone wrote:
lexiii wrote: “These protesters were no more peaceful than anyone else.”
Were you there lexiii? Or its this just another story you want to weigh in on? I watched the whole thing, from the moment they walked out of Acatia Park, to when they got beat down 1 block away. Their signs were just peace symbols, they were not yelling into the crowd. One more thing, that pig that drug that lady across the street is lucky to be walking on two legs today. Pull off that act in front of my kids is enough to get me sent to prison.
11/29/2007 9:20 AM MST on Gazette.com
jwstrue wrote:
Iraqwarvet, actually if any one in a position of authority sees an active duty soldier driving around with this propaganda displayed on his/her POV–they will more than likely be ordered to remove it and potentially face administrative action.
The Uniform Code of Military Justice prohibits any type of slander against the Commander-in-Chief–in any form or fashion. While military members may disagree with the policies and procedures set forth by the Commander-in-Chief, they are prohibited by law from open criticism of those policies/procedures or the CIC himself.
Yes, military members can exercise freedom of speech–but only accompanied by certain restrictions as outlined in the UCMJ.
11/29/2007 9:22 AM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (1)
pastor wrote:
So it is ok for these people to act the way they did. So again it is the police fault for doing their job, an the protester are not responsibility for their actions. So when is it ok for the police to move someone who does not listen?
11/29/2007 9:27 AM MST on Gazette.com
lwirbel wrote:
Lexii, you still aren’t describing this event accurately. Some people, like the AIM Indians at Columbus Day in Denver, choose to get arrested and commit civil disobedience by symbolically blockading an event. Verlo and Fineron were parade participants who the parade marshall decided, after the fact, he didn’t want in the parade, who were removed from the parade. The courts have a very mixed record on the right of a parade organizer to set rules, particularly in an ex post facto way. St Patricks Day organizers in Boston and elsewhere have some limited rights to exclude in advance gay and lesbian marchers, but once they’re in a parade, you have only limited rights to take them out. What’s also relevant here is what the courts have said about Apple Computer’s right to define who is a journalist. The company wants to exclude some people in advance because it says, “they’re only bloggers.” The courts say, no, Apple, even if it’s your press conference, you do not have the right to decide who is a legit participant and who is not. The St. Paddy’s Day organizer was really bordering on the edge of legality when he decided to remove folks with peace shirts after allowing Bookman in (and like Rambone said, they weren’t yelling, just marching).
11/29/2007 9:31 AM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
Rambone if the police tell you to move out of the way, you listen and sort out the problem once you are off the street. You do not act like a little child. Rambone read your past posting you are some one who has a problem with Authorize and police. I was not there but people I know and trust were there an witness the whole thing from start to finished. They witness the police asking them to leave and witness the people not listen to the police officers.
11/29/2007 9:35 AM MST on Gazette.com
skiracer wrote:
Smackermack – My bad on the City Attorney vs the DA. Guess I heard DA used and skipped over the first few lines of the article on my reread after reading other comments. Regardless, the DA’s office should still be looking at this as Colorado Springs is in El Paso County, which is covered in the area he is responsible for. At a minimum a better reason/story/lie needs to be provided to the people of the city regarding why these charges were actually dropped. Saying you have evidence to convict but we are not going to is the same as saying we will chose which laws we are going to enforce.
As for the City Attorney (appointed by our wonderful all knowing and responsible City Council). You should be fired for either lying in your statements to the Gazette or for not upholding the law regardless of cost. If you have enough evidence a crime was committed and the police were correct in their actions you owe it to those of us who follow the law to uphold it as well as to the police officers who just had their name dragged through the mud because you are either a liar or lazy.
11/29/2007 9:36 AM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
Lwirbel my problem is how they acted once they were told by the police to leave. I do not agree with the message they were bring in the St. Patrick’s Day parade but that is my opion. I feel that there is a time and place for that message and this to me was not the right place. With that said, I still feel they were in the wrong once the police ask them to move out of the way. They had to two choices 1. to move out of the way and sort the mess out. 2. Do not listen to the police and risk getting in trouble. The choices was up to them.
11/29/2007 9:47 AM MST on Gazette.com
justanothervet wrote:
That is right . Every time the police or any authority figure tells you to do something than do it. No protesting allowed. No thinking allowed. Vote Republican.
BTW you can send your Tea Tax to the Queen care of the United Kingdom.
11/29/2007 9:47 AM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (2)
lwirbel wrote:
That’s the main difference between you and me. If there was a huge accident or similar crisis and the police were getting everyone to move, I’d high-tail it. If the police were asking me to do something that was clearly a violation of my rights, I would challenge them and ask for their badge number. Never kowtow to someone simply because they are in uniform.
11/29/2007 9:54 AM MST on Gazette.com
duncan wrote:
lwirbel, from your comments I can only conclude that you had no issue with the Valedictorian from Lewis Palmer giving her speech about faith AFTER deliberately misleading the event organizers about her intentions. Is that correct? Or are you blocking that piece of evidence out to make your case? I guess lies and deceit in the name of a “cause” are complete justification to getting ones message across.
rambone, your internet tough guy act is tired. By your own admission since you watched the whole thing you had your chance with “that pig” and you did nothing. I doubt there would have been any change if your kids were there or not. It sounds like you could have used it as an example to your kids of what not to do when they grow up.
11/29/2007 9:57 AM MST on Gazette.com
Recommend (1)
rambone wrote:
Selective discipline? I had three short paragraphs to you. You chose to only comment on some short sighted belief that the police are the rule makers. These peace activist had the permits to be in that parade.
Act the way they did? You admit you were not there. Last I remember, he told me/she told me wasn’t admitted in a court of law. So why are you even making assumptions?
11/29/2007 10:00 AM MST on Gazette.com
lwirbel wrote:
Duncan, I actually know Erica from Lewis-Palmer and I have mixed emotions about it, I don’t think her case will stand up in court because of those deceptions, though her intention was partially admirable. I think this issue will stand up in a civil-suit court because the marchers were NOT engaged in deception. Bookman has always been an activist bookstore, and no great deception is involved in putting on green T-shirts. What about the Boston parade, if a bookstore known to be lesbian applied to the Catholic group to march, would it be deceptive to somehow have a lesbian sign on that float? I would say no.
11/29/2007 10:05 AM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
Iwirbel I have no problem with your statement “I would challenge them and ask for their badge number. Never kowtow to someone simply because they are in uniform.” But can you not do this by getting out of the way of everyone else, so that you are not causing a delay in the parade? by doing this are you not listen to the police and showing respect to them and everyone else.
11/29/2007 10:06 AM MST on Gazette.com
jwstrue wrote:
Quick question to someone in the know. What reason did the protesters use to apply for a permit under a business name that had nothing to do with their organization? Or is their organization called The Bookman?
11/29/2007 10:11 AM MST on Gazette.com
obxman wrote:
if the d.a.[could mean anything]had to pay for legal expenses in a failed prosecution,half these jokers would be out of a job.if civilians sue each other without merit,the losing party can be held liable for legal fees…..why not the government?!they don’t have to be right when they arrest you….you just have to be able to afford justice.
11/29/2007 10:33 AM MST
jwstrue wrote:
Come on Rambone…that’s like saying because airplanes crash, I have no respect for pilots and will never fly an airplane…you sound pretty libertarian to me. Perhaps you should relocate to one of those compounds in Montana or Utah. Be careful, you may need these guys some day…
lwirbel, most folks with common sense would not challenge authority while in the midst of a direct order–most folks would follow the appropriate complaint or challenge process. Sounds like you have the same problem as the protesters–there is a time and place for everything. When you are given instruction by a police officer–this is not the time to argue or challenge unless your desire is to be incarcerated. Yes, there are exceptions–but judgement and good sense is everything…
11/29/2007 10:35 AM MST on Gazette.com
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lwirbel wrote:
Jwstrue, Eric has had The Bookman in the parade (and MLK parade, etc.) for several years’ running, usually has a sign about peace on the van, etc. He said something to J&P members a couple days beforehand, saying “Anyone want to be with the float?” Before that time, none of the peace groups had even thought about applying for the parade, whether or not they’d be allowed. The Justice and Peace Commission often has a float in the Christmas parade every year, allowed by the sponsors, usually with an alternative-energy theme, but no one ever thought of applying for some of these other parades.
11/29/2007 10:39 AM MST on Gazette.com
just1voice wrote:
Rambone, ignorance is bliss isnt? Why dont you check the app requirements for applying to be a cop before opening your mouth and making yourself look like more of an idiot. As for the State Trooper, he sure as anything could have made your day a whole lot worse by holding you and calling social services to come and collect your child. Dont think he had the right? Go and find out. Then you could sit here and complain about how he held you againt your will, kidnapped your child and made you look like even worse of a father than you probably are.
11/29/2007 10:41 AM MST on Gazette.com
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jwstrue wrote:
Come on Rambone…that’s like saying because airplanes crash I have no respect for pilots and will never fly…you sound pretty libertarian to me. Perhaps you should relocate to a compound in Montana or Utah. Be careful, you may need these guys some day.
lwirbel, you may have the same problem as the protesters. There is a time and place for everything. Most folks, when instructed by a police officer to take some action, would comply and complain or challenge later. The only thing you will accomplish by direct rebellion is most likely incarceration. True, there are exceptions, but good sense and judgement apply here…
11/29/2007 10:44 AM MST on Gazette.com
just1voice wrote:
Here is the sad part of all of this. Hopefully everyone will live and learn. I guarentee you the parade organizer is amending his rules and regs and next he will not have this problem. I would imagine EVERY parade orgainizer is doing that so it is very unlikely that this “message of peace” they wanted to get out will not be seen again at any function like this. Why would you want someone hell bent on causing problems in your show anyway?
11/29/2007 10:44 AM MST on Gazette.com
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jwstrue wrote:
…sorry, didn’t mean to repeat myself–couldn’t see the first comments
11/29/2007 10:46 AM MST on Gazette.com
jtrione wrote:
(laughing) Some of these comments get so hilarious. Makes for entertaining reading. And, just to clarify JWS, CSAction and I are two different people. I would think our approaches to various topics and our facility with the language would distinguish us in several ways, but, alas, not clear enough.
I cannot comment definitively on the actions that day, as truthfully, I was not there. I do, however, know that the sentiment at the time which drove and continues to drive this debate was that from the early moments of the war, Colorado Springs and our illustrious police department were forever enshrined in history as “Thugs of Intolerance”. We, the citizenry, witnessed the teargassing of peaceful protesters early on in 2003 and made the nightly news across the country for same.
So, I could see why the perception, real or not, existed during this parade event. The message which seemed to come through loud and clear from city government and the police force was “How DARE you liberal freaks question the certitude of our celestially ordained Bush administration and its actions in the world ? We will use EVERY means legal and illegal to keep you silenced.” So, no, all the comments below that those on the right welcome free speech are, frankly, prevarication. Conservatives during this period fell into a mindset that they could shout down or silence any dissent as they claimed to have higher moral authority, e.g. Bill O’Reilly’s infuriating habit of cutting off the microphone of those who disagree. The Gazette’s infuriating habit of editing AP news stories during that time to remove any possible anti-war opinions.
Those who are intellectually HONEST cannot dispute that such a pervasive mentality existed in this country for the last six years. Given that framework, it is not difficult at all to see the anguish from the left at a system which tried strenuously to silence dissent. And, for those on the right who are unable, for a moment, to see the frustration from the left, then, I’m sorry, but you would have to be CLUELESS to forget the Cheney-isms where he called into question the patriotism of those who dared to dissent.
Dunno, gang, hopefully we’re moving in the right direction. Remember, the bulk of the blame for the lack of unanimity toward the war effort falls squarely at the feet of the Loser in Chief who was unable to make a cogent case for military action and failed miserably at being a leader. A “leader” is able to rally people to his cause, not just browbeat them into obeisance. So, yes, maybe these protesters broke the law. I haven’t a clue. But, if they did, don’t they answer to a higher moral authority than some law designed to stifle protests of the left ? I think so. jtrione@mac.com
11/29/2007 10:59 AM MST on Gazette.com
jwstrue wrote:
Thanks Jim for the clarification. I apologize, I was being sarcastic. For those who aren’t familiar, the distinction could be difficult because you both speak in dissertational formats and CS usually follows in support of your views…
Your comments are sometimes pretty hilarious as well…especially when the disdain for Christianity and the liberal arrogance shines through–all in good fun though.
11/29/2007 11:14 AM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
Hey Jim, how are you today, I would never confuse you with csaction (I know everything) you have always been respectful to me and other. I think you are off base here on this issue. I for one question those in leadership who are against the war,why? for declares we have lost, meeting with out enemies and using those who hate us talking points as their own. Those in political power who support the peace movement have done everything in their power to ensure our solider will lose this war in order to win this next’s elections. I agree that Bush has made mistakes which war time president have not. Right now we have a chance to win this war but instead of backend our troops and giving them the funds and equipment need to fight this war the democrat’s want to withhold money in order to keep theses peace protester happy and to make sure that we do not win this war.
11/29/2007 11:28 AM MST on Gazette.com
pondfrogz wrote:
Wow, it appears I missed quite a conversation. Have a good day all and remember, there’s no problem that a six-pack and a good game on TV can’t cure. Just my meaningless comment of the day before tackling my fiancees chore list from $%*# on my day off.
11/29/2007 11:30 AM MST
turdman wrote:
Rambone-You are as lame as Tony Boy. Whine, Whine, I got stopped and I want to complain because I got caught and it isn’t fair.
11/29/2007 11:32 AM MST on Gazette.com
turdman wrote:
Bottom line in this case is the protestors are cowards. They protested and were legally arrested for violating the law. Then they all complained because they got arrested for again, breaking the law. Now they will sue the city because they believe their rights were violated. This group is really no better than the Westborough Baptist bunch. I hope next year they go to Denver to protest one of their events, so they can get what they really deserve.
11/29/2007 11:39 AM MST on Gazette.com
just1voice wrote:
Rambone dont flatter yourself. It would take a lot more than your couch commando comments to get under my skin. I never said your opinion made you those things. However, your lack of knowledge does. That and endangering your own child, setting a horrible example, and your running your mouth makes you a bad father. Whats wrong did I get under your skin?
No Im not one of them but I would give just about anything to watch you go one on one with the officer that you call “a pig”. Then you could teach you kids something useful, like how not to get your tail whipped.
11/29/2007 11:46 AM MST on Gazette.com
jtrione wrote:
Hey, Pastor Roy. Well, respectfully, I will disagree on some points. How do you equate “protesting” with “wanting to lose the war” ? That seems quite the logical leap to me. And, for the record, I have never taken a position on bringing the troops home early — I’m ex-military and understand the difficult role they are playing which does not fit nicely in “bumpersticker arguments” one way or the other. As one who has worn the uniform, I often cringe at some MoveOn.org statements and positions as shortsighted and limited. But, I realize that we on the left, have our normal centrists and our own “lunatic fringe”. We have to somehow work with both to craft a clear, cogent message.
I, personally, have never seen withdrawal from Iraq as a viable option and agree that a permanent presence of 50K per year is likely for the next few decades. As far as the failures of this administration (arguably in the running for the top five worst since the founding of the republic), there are not enough electrons to waste on these blogs. Yet, what seems more telling to me are the HUGE legions of right-wingers who, TO THIS DAY, support this guy. How many Bush-Cheney stickers do we STILL see on cars here ? It boggles the mind. All I know is that it certainly attaches a ‘stain’ to conservatism that will last for quite some time. For the next few decades, “conservative” will be automatically linked to the policies and actions of the Bush Administration. Nice albatross, guys, heavy enough for ya ?
And, PR, the point of this article was whether or not the protesters were in the right or not. Perhaps, they are reflective of a sentiment, wholly pervasive at the time, now weaning somewhat, that TO EVEN QUESTION the actions of the Bush-Cheney elite was somehow tantamount to disrespect for this nation. “If you’re not with us, you’re with the terrorists.” Who thinks in such puerile, oversimplistic absolutes ? Republicans, that’s who. C’mon, to impugn the patriotism of Senator Max Cleland ? Seriously, how do they look themselves in the mirror in the morning ?
(laughing) I recall a comment at some point during all this when a secular progressive was asked about the disdain toward conservatives, especially religious ones, phrased as “you don’t need them to just be wrong, you need them to be evil”. As wrongheaded and awful as that statement appears, I think it’s dead-on. Perhaps where we liberals lose our footing is when we become unable to see the folks on the other side of the table as loving, compassionate humans who happen to be a bit misguided in their beliefs in our opinion. Maybe if we on the left felt that those on the right were truly championing our rights to hold (in their view) misguided beliefs, then protest incidents like these would be few and far between. But, when we feel that the cards are “stacked against us” by those in power and their representatives (the police), it’s easy to see the animus. jtrione@mac.com
11/29/2007 11:59 AM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
Can someone please explain to me what this has to do with art.
“Fake mug shots of President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other White House officials are on display at the main branch of the New York City Public Library, and the exhibit has caused quite a commotion.
About six manipulated photographs of members of the Bush administration made to look like mug shots are lining one of the landmark building’s hallways, with each current and former official holding a D.C. police date-of-arrest placard bearing the date they made “incriminating” statements about the war in Iraq, The New York Daily News reported.”
This is an perfect example of what is wrong with the peace movement and those who are against the war.
They love to Forcing their views on people by saying it is one thing and doing something else.
What does this have to do with the above story. The answer is both enter something under a different idea or name, but when there their used it to express a political view.
11/29/2007 11:59 AM MST on Gazette.com
csaction wrote:
Well, the parade arrests are still a hot topic on the ole blog. Where to start? It’s an amazing amount of misinformation but more importantly the correlation to those that would summarily convict us is 100% with those that know nothing about the basic facts. Disagree all you want; you would be amazed at how much I disagree what what was done, but understand this: the neocon tactic of revisionist reality (war is peace) doesn’t work when you want to battle videotape and photos with ill-informed subjective opinions. The city prosecutor couldn’t make that work and neither can you kids.
Glad to see Lexi prove she was the MIA tractor gurlie. Thanx. Glad to see preacher roid make no sense as usual. So on a day of great vindication, I’m glad to see those that hate peace lose a small battle.
To address as much as I have time for: “”whining and complaining” does not defeat prosecutors in court, Evidence does.
Elizabeth and Eric were not “PICKED OFF THE STREET” but pulled off their feet by Paladino, who emmbarrassed the department in 2003 with the “Dairy Queen Dozen” arrests outside the city limits.
There was no lie on the permit. We were invited back after walking in the 2006 parade. No subterfuge, and O’Donnell said he had no problem with our message. The problem was with the lie he was told by the same person who lied to police about the permit. http://csaction.org/StPatsDay/Odonnell.html
David B, all 7 were “prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law” in fact the charges were changed twice to make it easier, but the city didn’t make it’s case, so hung jury, then dropped charges. Patty Kelly is right that the outcome would be the same or they would loose outright with another trial. She wrong that the jury just didn’t get it. They did, except for the wife of the defense contractor who should have been recused at the start.
There are larger community issues of how private is a function held in the middle of Tejon and subsidized 50% for the cost of police? For such “private” events, does the 1st amendment apply, or does a permit void the constitution? If the constitution is voided by “private” events, does that mean our permit the next day, for our 4th anniversary rally mean that we could ban people we don’t agree with from Acacia Park? (like we would want to) http://csaction.org/31807/31807.html
In the end, when we have become a total fascist state and have no rights left, (while the American equivalent of the Germans in 1938 sleep) you won’t be able to find anyone who will admit they fought those fighting for rights and peace just like you can’t find anyone who will admit they voted for niXXXon.
In the end, this is a great conversation for our city to have and any city in America, because we need to understand our system in it’s superiority and not get in the way of it’s progress in the world. The lack of understanding of how our constitution works is appalling, but this is progress.
I guess we’ll see all of you at the 5pm press conference in front of the courthouse?
11/29/2007 12:00 PM MST on Gazette.com
hmmmmm wrote:
For someone who complains about being lied about, you sure post a lot only when it comes to your ridiculous protest where your people broke the law and got treated accordingly. Your people refused police orders, were subsequently moved, forcibly as you left no other option, after your “old lady” asked several officers what it would take to get arrested, and then appropriately charged. Where is the mis-information in that csaction? Your people are not martyrs, not worthy of anything but contempt. A full video of the incident shows the truth, and as much of a spin as you put on this, your people are still wrong. Next time, don’t expect any nicer treatment when you pull the same stunt.
11/29/2007 12:06 PM MST on Gazette.com
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hmmmmm wrote:
Rambone, are you speaking from experience on the gangbang comment little guy? Sure sounds like it. Maybe the aggressive defense of the police is a direct result of your ridiculous aggressive contempt for them. You opinion is ignorant. Nice racist photo by the way, Mark Fuhrman is still in Idaho if you need a place to move to.
11/29/2007 12:09 PM MST on Gazette.com
coloradogirl wrote:
I am a true believer in that life is just not fair sometimes. Justice does not ALWAYS prevail. I don’t think this was a vindication, just an abandonment of justice in the best interest of the situation.
I applaud the City Attorney for “giving up” so to speak. It’s like arguing over a $700 couch in divorce proceedings. You spend twice that to the attorney’s arguing over it. In the end, it’s just not worth it and the bigger person has to give up. Just like in this situation. The City Attorney didn’t want to waste anymore money on such frugal matters.
I personally was a witness to the groups display at the parade and I’m just as disgusted now as I was then. I wish we could send the protesters over to Iraq and let them protest there. Now THAT would be worth watching….
11/29/2007 12:32 PM MST on Gazette.com
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hmmmmm wrote:
Been here 20+ years, have a BS in computer related fields. I did military work in communications and do this job to defend the good people of my city from people like you. If you like I can send you the links for “aggressive” and “defense” definitions in great big letters and really small words so you can understand.
11/29/2007 12:52 PM MST
turdman wrote:
Rambone-Come on dude just having a little fun! I am just shocked is all. I mean I have never heard a grown man whine like a school girl. If you keep pushing out that lower lip of yours when you pout, you should put some sunscreen on so you don’t get a sunburn.
Can we still be friends?
11/29/2007 12:59 PM MST on Gazette.com
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jeep4fun wrote:
If protestors wish to protest they should apply for a permit through the city as any march is required to. For protestors to ruin what should be a community event for the purpose of enjoyment is simply silly. I believe parade organizers have the right to prohibit those groups (which this was)who wish to disrupt parade proceedings. The police acted appropriately in this instance. I grow tired of seeing idiots place the police department in a bad light due to their poor choices and actions. If you wish to truly disrupt a community event then you have to pay the piper. If you disagree with a particular event or view, request a permit from the city for your own event, but let our citizens truly enjoy the parades provided without divisive and inciteful actions and messages
11/29/2007 12:59 PM MST on Gazette.com
turdman wrote:
Hey Rambone,
Since your not doing very well on this blog today, maybe you can go down to the Gazette Telegraph office and protest this blog. I mean really, we must be violating your rights in some way. Maybe CSACTION can go with you and video tape the whole event. He can can then edit out the truth and you two can have a local TV station air your story. Maybe a lawyer can take your case and you could win millions by suing us. Maybe an officer will drive by and you could sue the city as well.
Justice, isn’t it a beautiful thing.
11/29/2007 1:09 PM MST on Gazette.com
jtrione wrote:
So, Jeep4Fun, what I hear you saying is that some government functionary, probably a conservative Republican appointee, gets to decide who does or does not get to be included in an event for “our citizens” (your words)? Based on what set of criteria ? Who are those “special” citizens ? Thought we all had a right to peaceably assemble or to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Where do you find justification to abridge those rights or place boundaries on them ? Remember, if not expressly enumerated, then those rights reside in the people. Not in you, dear friend, or in local laws designed to limit speech. Talk about “special rights”. 😉
11/29/2007 1:20 PM MST on Gazette.com
jwstrue wrote:
Great points coloradogirl and jeep4fun….
11/29/2007 1:24 PM MST on Gazette.com
lwirbel wrote:
Jeepforfun, what you describe is not what the Constitution intended freedom of speech to mean. There are limits to allowing a soapbox speaker to stand on private property and say something. However, Mike the anti-abortionist has every right to show big pictures of foetuses on public land outside the World Arena, and it doesn’t do any good to say,
“He’s disturbing me because I’m going to see an entertainment event, Cirque de Soleil or Lee Ann Rimes or whatever.” James Madison and those writing the Bill of Rights wanted to make sure that freedom of speech WAS in your face, did NOT require a permit, and was bound to be incendiary and controversial. That’s the only way to protect it. Otherwise, our nation would be a larger version of Singapore.
11/29/2007 1:36 PM MST on Gazette.com
justhefacts wrote:
jtrione- This is not a “free assembly” issue. O’Donnell owns the right to the parade which means, he can deny access if he chooses. If the protesors want to make fools of themselves they can do it from the curb which is protected by the Constitution.
11/29/2007 1:38 PM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
Jim, I may be wrong, but my understanding on these parade, when you applied for permission to be in the event you must fill out paperwork with what type of display you are going to enter. So if this is the case can not the group in charge make it clear on their paperwork, what type of display is permitted and what type is not? So if this group next’s year make it clear to all involve what will be permitted and what will not be permitted, we may be able to avoide this problem next’s time.
11/29/2007 1:38 PM MST
csaction wrote:
Hmmm, if you are a cop, thank you for your service and sacrifice.
Now, post the video. No one on earth has sifted through this evidence more than I have and I know every second of video and every photo. The lawyers and cops don’t know this evidence better than I do. You don’t need to post 165 videos on YouTube like I have, just 1. The one that shows what you say it shows. Just 1 video. 1 photo. 1 piece of evidence. 1 thing to back up what you say. You all have the same burden of proof as I do, so pony up. http://youtube.com/profile_videos?user=csaction
Factual correction: Elizabeth asked several officers to arrest her, AFTER being dragged, because she had already gotten the punishment (not by a jury of her peers) but from Paladino, and wanted the rest of her day in court. She knew enough about it to know she had no recourse for the thousands in medical costs without the system’s protection, which she insisted on. (not contempt for the system, but admiration)
Jeep, we followed all rules and got a permit. We paid for a permit the next day in the park, and decided NOT to have our protest rally for the 4th anniversary the same day as the parade, which would have gotten us much more exposure with the thousands downtown. We decided to do both the parade with the peace message, welcomed the year before, and then the protest the next day. (4th year) Separate things with separate intentions. Everyone didn’t participate in both.
We did not make the police look bad and I don’t think the department looks bad. I think we’ve lost the PR battle, not them, and people (other than here) are capable of seeing that a couple of cops going too far does not a department make. The rest did their jobs with respect and professionalism and garnered admiration from us all.
We deal with cops all the time, and for those old gray beards like em, we’re talking 40 years of activism. I admire police, have 1 in my family, 1 was arrested at the parade and 1 testified for us along with photo evidence. I respect the new chief, and I’m pissed about the budget cuts. The rogues hurt the force, the majority are a credit.
11/29/2007 1:41 PM MST on Gazette.com
jwstrue wrote:
Jim, this was a community event–someone has to be in charge or it wouldn’t be an “organized” event. Jeep4fun is merely stating those in charge should have discretionary authority when it comes to eliminating participants who are suspect. In addition this was not the time for an assembly, whether peaceful or not. Compare this to a recent public democratic debate when a heckler became disruptive–was the heckler allowed to remain in the debate audience?
Just the fact this group applied under a separate entity makes them suspicious from the start (my opinion). Some would view this as a sneaky attempt to disrupt the event by attempting to hide their identity from the start.
11/29/2007 1:41 PM MST on Gazette.com
jtrione wrote:
Pastor, Loring said it beautifully when he said that the Framers did not intend for anyone to limit speech. That person, authorizing a placard or not, is, by definition, infringing on the rights of free speech. O’Donnell’s claim that he could restrict displays of “social advocacy” during the parade is the problem. He does not retain any such right.
On public streets, the public can say whatever it wants, tasteful or otherwise. During PrideFest, would it be legal to restrict Phelps and his Westboro Lunatics from marching around with their tacky signs ? Of course not. Did the Nazis march in Skokie during the 70’s ? Heck ya. Freedom comes with a price tag that says “everything you see or hear may or may not offend your sensibilities”. Tough noogies. Deal with it. So, however misplaced an anti-war protest might be during a civic event, it is well within the purview of what the Framers intended. Period. Stylistically is that the best forum ? Well, that’s a question worthy of debate.
11/29/2007 1:46 PM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
Iwirbel, this may shocked you and other but I am against those who do what do you call it “Mike the anti-abortionist has every right to show big pictures of foetuses on public land outside the World Arena, and it doesn’t do any good to say,” I believe this type of behavior does more wrong then good. I am against those who protest gay event with signs that use the f word or condemn them to hell, I am against those who hold signs calling our soldiers babe killer and such.
11/29/2007 1:55 PM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
Jim are you telling me that if I show up for the Gay Pride event and want to march down the street with signs that say they need to repent. I have the right to do it and they must let me into the event? I am using this example to get an understand of what you are saying. I was always under the impression that the group in charge off the event has the right to say who can be involved with the event and who can not.
11/29/2007 2:02 PM MST on Gazette.com
justhefacts wrote:
CSACTION-I do not like what you stand for; however, your last post is the most honest thing you have written in a long time. I disagree with you on when Fineron poked and begged the officer to arrest her.
My point is this; The officers were there legally and had ever right to remove Fineron and others from the event. Just because she got dragged across the street does not make it excessive force. Refusing to leave the area after being ordered is a crime and the officers had every right to arrest them. If the city decides not prosecute that is their loss. Obvious the police dept agreed that there was no use of excessive force used by the officers because nobody got disciplined. We all know the police dept disciplines their own people.
The only good thing out of this whole incident is that none of these protestors will even disrupt the parade again. Thay will have to wait for another Palmer Park incident to spew their lies.
11/29/2007 2:03 PM MST on Gazette.com
csaction wrote:
The 2 issues are the heart of the matter. jtrione and lwirbel are correct. Follow the logic path. If the laws of the land don’t apply to a “private” function or property, then I can grow pot across the street from any school where I own property. Of course not. It’s illegal, and my private ownership does not circumvent the law.
Mr. O’Donnell gets the nonprofit (disputed) rate for police protection just like we did, the next day, in Acacia park. Half off. $25 per hour per cop, for 2 at a time, which is $50 per hour.
Acacia Park is public property, andthat designation does not change, when it is rented out for an alloted time. Anyone that disagrees with us about this war (and there are still some) can show up and protest our rally. They usually do. They are always offered water and respect. Our permit does NOT give us the right to say “the 1st amendment of the constitution does not apply for you today, so shut up”. (we, of course, would never even try that)
In the middle of Tejon, closed to the public traffic, for hours, with 46 police subsidized for thousands by the city through the tax payers, Mr. O’Donnell’s permit CANNOT allow him to do what I describe above.
Further, he cannot be allowed to apply his “new and improved” constitutional protections for free speech to ban a message of peace, BUT have military guards, political candidates, political parties, labor unions, and many other political issues raised at the same place at the same time.
I don’t think it’s difficult to see how far this would go if we were to allow it. You either understand the beauty of what the founding fathers did, or you don’t. You have to listen to me disagree with you. The Cost? I have to listen to you. (giggle) It’s a great burden some days, but the nation needs us all to be strong. LOL.
11/29/2007 2:06 PM MST on Gazette.com
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iraqwarvet wrote:
I love hearing people tell protestor how to protest. Like lexii, telling these people that they must protest a certain way. Or Pastor Roy using a totally different subject to illustrate what he means and making no sense. These are the same people who if they lived back in the 1950’s and 60’s would be hitting and beating the nicely dressed black men sitting at the lunch counters. Lexii tell the truth, you hate freedom? Please leave my country then. I defend the rights of all Americans, while you spit on the constitution.
11/29/2007 2:12 PM MST on Gazette.com
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justhefacts wrote:
Pastor-The event coordinator can prevent anybody they want from entering their parade, event or gathering as long as they have a permit to close the street. If the protestor’s wants to stand on the street corner and display signs they have the right to do so as long as they are not on private property or impeding veh or ped traffic. Westboro never entered any event, they just stood on the outside and protested.
11/29/2007 2:12 PM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
OK, If I am holding a parade and I want it to be all about St. Patrick’s Day . An I make it clear no political message permitted, how is that stopping some one’ s1st Admen tent, because I am sure next’s year and maybe the next’s parade in town this will be happen. Why? To ensure we do not have another problem like this.
11/29/2007 2:16 PM MST
iraqwarvet wrote:
Hey Pastor Roy, I’ll help you out. Next Friday night in Manitou Springs, Iraq Veterans Against the War will be putting on a concert at The Ancient Mariner. How about you come down there and walk around the place with your pro-war banners. And Pro-War doesn’t mean Pro-troop. Hold high your “Death to all who are not Christian, White, and American” sign. I promise not to kick you out. And so will all the active duty troops and veterans of this war that will be at the show. Deal?
11/29/2007 2:16 PM MST on Gazette.com
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jtrione wrote:
And, yes, Pastor, that’s exactly what I’m saying. You have the freedom to walk down Tejon during PrideFest wearing a giant A-frame sign quoting pithy silly verses from some retarded book of allegory talking about how all the other right-wing zealots want to create a permanent second-class citizen status for GLBT people. That’s your right, hon, and many have fought and died for you to exercise that freedom. You might get some perplexed looks, but more likely than not, you’d get propositioned or invited for drinks and a party. Tough noogies. Deal with it. Price of freedom sort of thing.
11/29/2007 2:19 PM MST on Gazette.com
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pastor wrote:
Iragwarvet I reposted this just for you since I had a question for you.
pastor wrote:
No one want to silence the peace protesters right to speak, but we believe that there is a time and place for it. An most people believe that the St. Patrick’s Day parade was not the right time and place. Most people also seem to believe that if a cop asked you move you move you do not act like a baby. But I also must remind everyone that the peace protesters hand book, when the police ask you to move you drop an make a scene, so that it is caught on film, the reason is so you can make the police look like the bad guy.
Iragwarvet I have a question for you since you agree with the anti-war groups. Is it ok to block soldier return from the war? Is it ok to delay the soldier meeting with their family? Is it ok to destroy railroad tracks and stop the return of the military equipment from the war?
11/29/2007 8:56 AM MST on Gazette.com
11/29/2007 2:22 PM MST on Gazette.com
iraqwarvet wrote:
Hey Pastor, I counted 15 anti-war, Anti-bush bumperstickers today just driving through post going from gate 20 to the car wash near the B-street entrance. You should probably call the Post Commander and bring an end to this. But DOD Directive 1344.10 says they can, you know why? Because their Americans.
11/29/2007 2:24 PM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
Now Jim you last posting was an insult to me why did you have to act that way toward me. I do thank you for your stands .
11/29/2007 2:25 PM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
Iragwarvet sorry that is my 20th year of marriage dinner to one of most wonderful women in the world. Also I was not the posting about the soldiers getting in trouble. Oh by the way my nices husband had someone put one on his truck at night and he was very upset about it.
11/29/2007 2:28 PM MST on Gazette.com
iraqwarvet wrote:
Pastor Roy, again asking a black or white question. But, I’ll try to answer it for you. No, I don’t think its alright to block troops. So what now? What brillant thing do you have to say now?
Now I have a question for you, did you think black men trying to sit at a all white lunch counter in the late 50’s and early 60’s was a bad way to protest segregation or did they make a point? Maybe you should read Thoreau someday.
11/29/2007 2:30 PM MST on Gazette.com
justhefacts wrote:
CSACTION-Once again your mudding the water. Nobody is talking about your right to protest. You just can’t jump into a parade without permission. If the coordinator, holding the permit, decides they don’t want you to enter their parade they can exclude you from participation. If you choose to stand on the curb and spew then go for it.
If a war vet decided to get up on your stage during your permitted event in the park and take over the microphone he could be arrested. If you, the event coordinator, decided he was not welcome you have that right to exclude him.
Pretty simple stuff.
11/29/2007 2:30 PM MST on Gazette.com
iraqwarvet wrote:
Okay Pastor Roy, since you can’t make it, I’ll invite you to our next tower guard. You can bring your sign then, and its fine with us. Since it would be a good change, only two people actually had a problem with us 2 weeks ago. Or atleast only two people had the balls to come down to Acacia Park and say something. Pastor do you have the balls?
11/29/2007 2:34 PM MST on Gazette.com
iraqwarvet wrote:
Hey justthefacts, I’ll ask you the same question. Shouldn’t the black men in the 1950’s and 60’s been arrested for doing that illegal action of sitting at the white-only lunch counters? You probably think they should have been beating by the police and angry white men, right? Oh wait, thats what did happen…sound familiar?
11/29/2007 2:37 PM MST
justhefacts wrote:
Hey Pastor when you go to the show this weekend don’t forget your “Hillary in 08” poster.They probably wii have quite a few for rent there. You might be able to buy a Hillary shirt from them also.
11/29/2007 2:37 PM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
They were peace protester who say they have the right of free speech, and that blocked the soldiers coming back from Iraq from seeing their family. As one soldier was quotes as saying “ We all wanted to be the ones to remove these people from our post” These protester destroy the railroad tracks going into the base and the Dem. Governor and Dem. Mayor stopped the police from doing there job and removing these people.
11/29/2007 2:41 PM MST on Gazette.com
justhefacts wrote:
Pastor- Don’t forget your “Hillary in 08” poster when you go to Manitou this weekend. Bring money also, they will be selling Hillary and Bill shirts there.
11/29/2007 2:42 PM MST on Gazette.com
justhefacts wrote:
Vet-pick a fight with somebody else. Your comment has nothing to do with this blog.
11/29/2007 2:45 PM MST on Gazette.com
iraqwarvet wrote:
justthefacts, for your information since we are a 501(c)3 we don’t endorse any candidates, but personally I won’t vote for anyone who voted for this war. Please go read H.J. 114 from Oct. 12, 2002. Senator Clinton voted for it. Can’t do it. And none of us are Democrats. So try not to pigeon hole us
11/29/2007 2:46 PM MST on Gazette.com
iraqwarvet wrote:
Pastor, I read the news. I know what your saying and I didn’t agree with their actions. So what else do you got?
11/29/2007 2:47 PM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
Oh by the way I drove by the Guard tower that week and I counted about 15 people and that was including the homeless people hang out in the park. So yes I did go by, on both Sat and Sunday during the day and I counted about the same amount of people.
11/29/2007 2:48 PM MST on Gazette.com
iraqwarvet wrote:
justthefacts, haha! can’t answer the question so you run. You are sad.
11/29/2007 2:48 PM MST on Gazette.com
iraqwarvet wrote:
JusttheFacts, why don’t you just show up. Why do you have to get someone else to do your work? I don’t like Hillary and never voted for Bill. I don’t vote for people who use the military as nation-builders. Sound like a current President?
11/29/2007 2:51 PM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
Justefacts so much for peace love people inside the peace movement, I took it what he was trying to do was pick a fight with everyone who is against the peace movement, By trying to call us raciest.
11/29/2007 2:52 PM MST
pastor wrote:
Justefacts so much for peace love people inside the peace movement, I took it what he was trying to do was pick a fight with everyone who is against the peace movement, By trying to call us raciest.
11/29/2007 2:53 PM MST on Gazette.com
peanuts wrote:
So now it is politically correct to try people, WHAT AN INJUSTICE!
11/29/2007 2:53 PM MST on Gazette.com
iraqwarvet wrote:
JusttheFacts, my comment has nothing to do with this blog? What do you mean by that? Americans protested in the late 50’s and early 60’s by doing something illegal, if you know anything about history, black men sat at lunch-counters in the south which were labeled white-only. They were beaten by both the police and angry white men. It was illegal what these black men were doing. Their is some history for you, since obviously your still in grade school. Now, were the Black men back then justified for what they were doing, or should the white police and white men have continued doing what they were doing? Should the Black men have just been arrested?
11/29/2007 2:55 PM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
So that would leave FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Bush, Clinton, and Bush. You would not vote for.
11/29/2007 2:57 PM MST on Gazette.com
iraqwarvet wrote:
Pastor, I answered your question, why can’t you or justthefacts answer mine? I’m not saying your a racist, I’m just comparing the non-violent protests of the civil rights movement to what happened here on our streets of Colorado Springs, specifically what you people think is unjustifable behavior, since back then it was also considered unjustifiable behavior by the black men in the south. Whats your opinion?
11/29/2007 3:00 PM MST on Gazette.com
iraqwarvet wrote:
Pastor, again not black and white. I never said I’m anti-all wars. Just this one. Open your mind dude.
11/29/2007 3:02 PM MST on Gazette.com
rambone wrote:
hmmmmm wrote: “Been here 20+ years”
So this gives an implant like you the right to tell native born people like me were to go? I bet I got the California part right.
“BS in computer related fields”
I never heard of that degree. I that like,”I started but transfered when courses got tough”?
“defend the good people of my city from people like you”
Me, with no criminal record, military service, college educated? Yeah right, defend from people like me. Maybe what the people need is to be defended from rouge cops like you.
“for “aggressive” and “defense” definitions”
No thanks, but I would like the definition of the combined words. You know, the way you posted it earlier. Nothing over two syllables please, I don’t have all week for you to spell check.
11/29/2007 3:03 PM MST on Gazette.com
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iraqwarvet wrote:
Oh yeah, Pastor, I’m only 35. I don’t really remember FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, LBJ, or Nixon (even though I was two when he resigned).
11/29/2007 3:03 PM MST on Gazette.com
pastor wrote:
The issue is we have always been involved in nations building in one form or another.
11/29/2007 3:16 PM MST on Gazette.com
When Genghis Khan died, his body had to be returned from the battlefront to his birthplace in Outer Mongolia. Two factors determined how the Mongols decided to accomplish this. First, his successors hoped to keep word of the great Khan’s death from spreading panic across his empire, lest recently conquered vassals fall to the temptation of insurrection. Second, the Mongols were concerned not to be observed choosing their leader’s final resting place, to circumvent thieves trying to retrieve the treasures to be buried with him. Here’s the plan they developed: don’t let anyone see you.
But Genghis Khan’s escort could not disguise a cortege befitting the ruler of the then known world. Whoever came out of the woods or over the hill or out of the garden or along the trail to see the fantastic procession, was killed on the spot.
It’s thought that envoys were sent out to warn villagers away from their path. The Mongols also took care to pass through back roads where they would attract the least attention. They had no interest in a scorched earth policy on lands which belonged to them, whose prosperity paid their tribute and enhanced their Khan’s wealth.
IRAQ
American modern-day mercenaries in Iraq, sent out on missions in barely-armored white SUVs, face a similar imperative to quash witnesses who could report what they saw to forces better prepared to lay in ambush. To this end, the mercenaries post a warning on their vehicles that anyone coming too close will be shot. Trophy videos have found their way to the internet showing the shooting sprees this task sometimes has entailed. Men from AEGIS or BLACKWATER shoot approaching cars, even if their Iraqi drivers have not gotten close enough to read the printed warning.
It speaks to the volatility of Iraq, that our occupation forces, through the mercenaries they employ, find it better to annihilate bystanders sooner than administrate the lands and reap the rewards of protective stewardship.
The corporate press is already ablaze about the coming Bush speech timed to September 11, and say that the theme will be about Iraq.
That is not the most likely scenario though about what the theme of this speech will be about, coming as it is from the ‘decider’, the aircraft carrier flak jacket dressed strutter, and the man who has played so well, the role, of being Oily Dick Cheney’s vice president.
The Democratic Party, for their part, has done their part well to make Bush’s speech next week a success. They have already endorsed Bush’s plan through funding it, propagandizing for it, and to shaking the hands and hugging their supposed political opponents, The Republicans, in mass.
The Democrats are not about to now begin to oppose the American oil industry’s president either. They, too, dare not oppose Dick Cheney and his mannequin puppet, Dubya. They are not now about to start opposing the US attacking Iran.
Just like Saddam Hussein and his non-existent WOMD were made the fall guys for Bin Laden’s attack on the Pentagon and Trade Towers, Iran will now be blamed for the mess that The Klan have made of occupied Iraq. It’s their fault! Pakistan is to blame, too, for how bad the occupation of Afghanistan is going, and those mullahs in Iran are to blame for why the GIs are not beloved in Iraq. I’m surprised that Middle East Muslims are not blamed for the state of New Orleans today even! Hallelujah Jesus for miracles!
This all makes me think back of how ‘world Jewry’ was once cast as being the cause of all problems German. Those Jews back then looked quite dirty and sinister, just like Osama bin Laden looks today. Actually his most recent press photos look much better than the true picture of his long dead corpse does. But he is alive, of course. This we are never to doubt.
Alive for the Pentagon-fed, corporate press bullshitters to parrot to the dumbed down American public about how evil he is with his bad Muhammad pedophile role of constant American hating. Exactly as they are expected to do to get their Murdoch pay checks, these knaves, murderers, and lying Pentagon-fed media whores are doing their constant ‘patriotic’ part. Green light, yellow light, Red! All fall down, all put your hands over your hearts, and pray and Pledge Allegiance to the American flag… That’s the news tonight.
The Justice and Peace group here in Colorado Springs just marginally passed even doing anything in protest this 9/11! And most of the officer/office staff/ ministerial staff and church choir may not even go to this activity of protesting the local corporate war dogs! This attitude, too, on the eve of The Pentagon’s probable mobilization to bomb the total hell out of Iran!
The law has no problem accusing its challengers of being conspirators, the easier to convict and imprison them. There’s a young black man on death row in Texas who unwittingly drove a car from which a passenger leapt to commit murder. He had no foreknowledge of the crime, yet has been sentenced to death, tied to the homicide by conspiracy. There’s Jose Padilla, who’s been found guilty of conspiracy to support terrorism. No crime, no incident, no plan, no illegal act except conspiracy. This is the best they could get out of him after years of unconstitutional detention and psychologist-approved mind-crushing interrogation.
From the public side looking in however, none dare call what our rulers are doing as conspiracy. To look at the collusion, secret meetings, manipulating the economy, media talking-points, media black-outs, election fraud, non-transparent government, private sector grand larceny, and investigation cover-ups, and dare call it conspiracy, is to face being labeled a lunatic. Conspiracy theorists are called conspiracy nuts, but it’s the complicit media doing the name-calling.
The definition of conspiracy theory is also conveniently predefined to mean a plurality of theories, like so many implausible alternative versions of events. Leaving out the UFO-tabloid genre, every conspiracy theory I’ve ever studied, from Kennedy’s assassination to the truth behind 9/11, fits very neatly together. Secret LSD experiments and black helicopters: compare these to revelations emerging from FOIAs or whistle-blower leaks. What is too difficult to believe?
The theories share the same conspirators, because it’s the same conspiracy. They form the events which tell the same story. They represent the reexamination of modern history outside of the official narrative, because the authorized version omits what the ruling elite want you to understand of the dastard inhumanity of their hold on power.
My lover won’t talk to me if I refer to the garments of professional athletes as “outfits.” She doesn’t appreciate “costumes” either. Both terms fit to me, considering the theatricality of the performances and outcomes, involving rivalries that could not matter less.
The new Bronco look is distinguished by a curvy flank stripe, designed by the uniform’s manufacturer… NIKE! Bronco fans still argue it’s not product placement of the trademark Nike Swoosh. That’s a Bronco fan for you.
I’ll admit when a Bronco is standing up, or is at rest, the orange swoosh forms just an elongated crescent. The real genius of this design is that when the athlete is poised to strike or is in motion, either end of the slash serves to form America’s beloved Just Do It check mark.
Tell me the photo at right doesn’t reflect the real competing titans of the NFL: Adidas versus Nike.
Escaping tyranny by sailing to the New World was a temporary fix. A ghost has come back to haunt us. We have another King George.
In the past six years, George Bush has sought to accumulate all governing powers into one place, his grubby hands. Bush has repeatedly violated the Constitution’s command that the President “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” by breaking many and refusing to enforce others. The Constitution grants Congress the power to make laws; after both houses pass a bill, the President can only sign it or veto it. Bush, however, takes a different tack. He has vetoed just three bills, then quietly attached “signing statements” to more than 1,000 congressional laws, indicating his intent to follow only those parts with which he agrees. He flouts the law every chance he gets. Usually with a stupid grin on his face.
The King’s latest blatant power grab, the Protect America Act 2007 (PAA), revises the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). FISA was passed in 1978 in response to Tricky Dick and the FBI’s unlawful surveillance of critics of national policy and other political enemies. FISA required that a panel of judges grant permission to an administration to spy on individuals within the U.S. Surveillance would only be allowed if the judges could be convinced that the communications to be monitored were exclusively those of foreign powers and that there was no substantial likelihood that an American would be overheard. FISA was designed to protect us from the government, not the other way around.
Not surprisingly, this new act takes the power to approve spying out of the hands of the judges and gives it the the Attorney General. Currently the highly esteemed Alberto Gonzales. An old friend of the King’s. A known lackey. It also requires telephone companies to collect data and turn it over to the Feds. And, of course, grants them immunity from lawsuits. Our brave and noble Congress passed this bullshit legislation with nary a whimper. Behavior we’ve come to expect from our “representatives.”
Protect America, my ass. To say that this shocking theft of our freedom is to save us from terrorists, from Al Qaeda, is a frank lie. Terrorists are well-trained. They move with stealth. They have face-to-face meetings. They don’t call each other’s cell phones and chitchat about the latest and greatest plans. Our government is well aware of this. No, PAA is directed at us. The American public. Especially those of us who slander the dictator.
I’d like to ask you to look closely at the the photograph of ranchers assembled in Trinidad to reject the PCMS expansion and Senator Salazar’s support of the taking of their land.
(Salazar and the Army will only commit to say that no one’s land will be taken who doesn’t want to sell it. In the meantime, Army public relations can continue with their rumors that plenty are approaching them to sell, prompting the real ranchers to hedge their bets themselves, compounding the problem no one can get financing or investors because the big bets are on the Army getting the land in the end. So Salazar’s promise is empty and as devious as what actions will ensue. What, is he going to say he was just a good ol’ boy caught in the middle?)
I ask you, what do you see in the picture? Do you see farmers and ranchers and feed store workers getting together to fight a common cause? Do you see a social atmosphere where being a neighbor is redefined and strengthened? Sure. The first, or third, or tenth time. But how many times more must these people remobilize, taking time from their work, their livelihoods, most probably from the little leisure time they have? What’s going to come of the time and energy stolen from them?
When counties and regions face floods or hurricanes, the people come together, luckily for not too extended a duration. When it’s done, there’s disaster relief and efforts expended to see how to keep such calamity from visiting again. So what do you do about politicians, in this case in cahoots with the war business, from raining their greed upon the people? You weather it and then what? Can you dam it further upstream? Can you hire a better weather service to warn you when klepto-politicians are circling for another blow?
Each and every rancher in southeast Colorado has reason to despise Salazar. He’s robbing them of their lives. It’s time for the rest of us to be good neighbors and show our solidarity with them and oppose the traitorous senator ourselves. We don’t have to look far to find more reasons. It’s time to pile up the sandbags, hold fast to what’s dear to us and hang tight. When the onslaught subsides, let’s dam the door to Ken Salazar’s office and never let him back to our state. We’ll keep his homestead estate as partial recompense. Actually we have to charge Salazar and his cohorts with criminal mischief and sue him for the damage he’s done to the Southeast Colorado ranchers, for their lost wages, lost business, and sideswiped lives.
Actually, one can see from whence the tar and feather tradition comes. Right to the state line.
A friend of mine is a restauranteur who by his own admission doesn’t know much about wine. Never the less his wine rep was bringing over a bottle of Chateau d’Yquem for some occasion. I asked my friend if he’d read up on Sauterne vintages, the better to appreciate it. He looked at me quizzically. I persisted, thinking something along the lines of Tom Wolfe’s Painted Word, that you had to know about the theory of abstract art to appreciate what you saw. I didn’t get far because my friend was attuned to the un-abstract measure of his customer’s palate. Did they taste a distinctive quality? That was enough. You don’t need a text to appreciate pre-abstract art. Epicure likewise is not abstract.
Many aspects of our lives have become experiences of abstract quality. We may not prefer a fashion, but are happy enough with it so long as we believe others like it. A designer label says what we want about us, regardless whether we have a say about it. Marketing goes a long way to produce our appreciation. When we use the product we feel ourselves in the commercial. For some beverages, I’m certain the commercial has become the product. We begin enjoying the Coke from the first cold beads of condensation on the can, through the Shtffk of cracking the pop tab, until it’s down our throat. Right then we all know Coke doesn’t satisfy our thirst, because we already want more. It satisfies our craving to inhabit the Coke world.
Sugar is not an acquired taste, but wanting to be a Pepper is. Breakfast cereal feeds a pathetic sweet tooth. Cheap beer and the new soft-liquors feed conditioned desires.
Not only is the processed food industry relying on its talent to taylor our appetite, it undermines our reliance on our own senses. If something is not advertised, can it be of value? Ice cream flavored of cookies ‘n cream isn’t good enough unless they are Oreo brand cookies. Toffee must be Heath Bars, peanut butter must be Reeses. Except for regional salsas or steak marinades, products fade from the supermarket shelves if nt cross branded with a national identity. This has become an easier feat for the big guys because they’ve conglomerated so many diverse products, from babies diapers to tobacco.
The brand name is now the critical ingredient which we all taste with our imagination, crafted by ceaseless ad campaigns. A product’s advertising is itself a stipend paid to the media companies to ensure a brand stays on the public palate. Remember Oh Henry? Somebody lapsed in their payment.
Now the powerhouse food corps are using the same manipulative method to plant doubt in the consumer’s mind about their own ability to judge taste. (I remember an subscription tag line for GQ magazine to this effect: You don’t know fashion, let GQ tell you.) How could what you think tastes good, have any bearing on what they tell you tastes good?
With health food the fearful conglomerates caution, how do you know it’s really organic? But isn’t that the same assumption I threw at my friend? It’s true with processed food, we can’t taste BGH or Mad Cow spinal matter, or protein additives necessarily. But other factors like refined sugars, fats, or chemical pesticides we can detect. In the produce department, it’s not just a matter of stickers that say “organic” or higher prices or more easily blemished fruit, it’s the taste. Organic produce tastes fuller, richer, more pleasing, more satisfying.
Our own natural sense of taste tells us whether we are enjoying it or not. No textbook, afficionado’s article, or 30 second commercial need tell us what we think of that apple. Or what we think of the non-stickered apple which tastes like the floor cleaner we thought they used in the supermarket. That isn’t the floor we were smelling, it was the apples. If it weren’t for the antiseptic packaging, the inert food content and the slick marketing directing our taste buds, we’d realize the whole supermarket smelled of Union Carbide and Monsanto.
I wanted to hate Harry Potter’s latest movie but for one happy surprise: the villainous Dolores Umbridge, played not as a malignant Mimi Bobeck, but instead a spot-on incarnation of First Librarian/Educator guess who?! The First Lady played herself, a smiling headmistress pulling a no-child-left-behind clear-skies-initiative at Hogwarts to subvert the education process lest new skilled wizards graduate to jeopardize the duplicitous aims of the state ministry. With a saccharin plastic grimace and trademark twinkle in her eye, Ms Bush thwarted the young wizards’ magic lessons and exacted Kafka’s Penal Colony punishment on her unresisting subjects.
The unflinching First Lady caricature lent this Potter adventure a semblance of social commentary, but betrayed us thereafter, offering nothing else resembling Muggle/human nature or societal fabric to give a viewer insight into their own lives. Except maybe the ugly scarves at Christmas for comic relief. Otherwise Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was pure entertainment at the cost of two hours of your imagination on idle, but I’ve read no more than a page of Potter, so what do I know?
I also really don’t know enough about Dungeons & Dragons or Tolkien to be able to judge the genre. Is it enough to appreciate J.K. Rowling’s fanciful parallel world like an elaborate puzzle or computer fractal marvel? It’s not my resistance to trivial minutia, it’s that all the clever pieces form an intricate lattice holding up nothing. This is my usual rant against videogame storytelling, always swimming upstream against currents of obstacles, pocketing clues. It’s myth-telling void of any wisdom, natural or historical, unless you count history as keeping a bread crumb trail of Harry’s info quests.
The forces of darkness and light in Harry Potter’s Tatooine lack for every dimension except on/off amplitude, even there without shades of grey. The characters’ actions are driven by neither sociobiology nor mortality. Only at the film’s close does our young Jedi/Chosen One offer an afterthought about team spirit to buoy his friends as they contemplate the battle with evil coming in the next installment: “Unlike Voldemort, we have something to fight for.”
Really? To my mind, anticipating that great evil fights for no reason misjudges its relentless zeal. The misdirection echoes the New World Order fear-mongering against Moslem Evildoers, terrorists apparently who act “because they hate us.”
Surely this underestimates the selfishness or desperation that makes the real world go ’round, motives neatly incomprehensible to young altruist minds. Real evil is an infinitely more ruthless force which preys already on the Harry Potter generation outside the theater doors. That evil is systemic, its motive is greed, and it perpetrates dehumanization. Also like the movie’s corporate makers, it employs misdirection just like Dolores Umbridge Bush to neutralize Harry and his friends.
That said, Imelda Staunton’s flawless turn as our Cretin-in-Chief’s cretinous better half was gloriously, fearlessly in-somebody’s-face.
I thought that this news item was of note, so here it is in full. Walter Lippmann’s website is worth visiting, too. See below… Tony
Raul Castro’s daughter blasts homophobia
Havana, May 21 (EFE).- The daughter of acting Cuban President Raul
Castro spoke out in favor of tolerance and against gay-bashing on the
occasion of the International Day against Homophobia.
“The communications media have a big responsibility in the education
of the public, in developing a culture of respect for people due to
their sexual identity and sexual orientation,” said Mariela Castro,
the head of the National Sex Education Center, in remarks broadcast
Sunday by state television.
Castro attended an unusual film-debate held in the “23 y 12” hall in
Havana, where organizers showed the U.S. film “Boys Don’t Cry,” which
tells a story based on real events of the difficulties,
discrimination and violence to which a young transsexual woman was
subjected.
“Starting with the advances we have had on these matters in our
country, it’s that we (are) trying to better visualize the goal of
this international – and in this case national – day,” said the
sexologist.
Castro said that “homophobia and transphobia still exist in the world
in a very strong, very cruel, very distriminatory way against
homosexual, transsexual and transgender people in a general sense
and, above all, as a result of ignorance.”
The government of Fidel Castro, who provisionally handed over power
to younger brother Raul last July after undergoing major surgery, has
in the past displayed marked intolerance for homosexuals, imprisoning
gays and quarantining AIDS sufferers.
The National Sex Education Center, a teaching, research and
assistance institution created in 1989, has proposed in the Cuban
legislature a bill to legally recognize the sex changes undergone by
transsexuals, at the same time it has been pushing for some time an
awareness campaign in the state-controlled media.
The International Day against Homophobia was begun on May 17, 2005, a
decade after the World Health Organization removed homosexuality from
its list of mental illnesses.
Thirteen years after its first showing in movie theaters on the
island, on May 5, Cubans watched the first broadcast on local
television of the 1993 film “Fresa y chocolate” (Strawberry and
Chocolate), an allegory against intolerance and discrimination
against homosexuals. Recently, Cuban TV also showed “La mujer de mi
hermano” (My Brother’s Wife), which also deals with the theme of
homosexuality. EFE
=============================
WALTER LIPPMANN
Editor-in-Chief, CubaNews
writer – photographer – activist
If a limited number of policemen are charged with stopping an unruly crowd, you might excuse them having to scramble around to contain everyone. Perhaps they’d have to do what it takes to immobilize each arrestee and move on the the next.
Is that what you see in this picture?
I see four officers, among the forteen who were there, two of whom are fastening handcuffs on me. They are about to leave me laying next to Esther who was pushed down beside me, to wait in the middle of the street while they apprehend six others. Examine the pictures. The same two officers handled [mishandled] us while the other dozen filled out the paperwork. If they were trying to get us off the street, why leave us in the street?
I did not resist being pulled from the truck. Why was I not escorted straight away to the sidestreet?
The seven arrestees were cited for “failure to disperse,” not “resisting arrest.” Why then were we treated as if we were resisting? Why the choke holds, pressure holds, the bruises and abrasions? If I was following the policeman obediently, why then do I have a bruise the size of a boot on the back of my leg, an edge of which broke the skin, and a bruised rib cage that pains me to laugh or lie down? As the video evidence shows, and watchers can testify, and the shock of their children attests, we were treated with excessive force.
If an officer shows up on your doorstep, and arrests you for some crime, you don’t begrudge him his actions, he’s doing his job, a tough one. If he’s caught the wrong person, still, people make mistakes, it’s fine, everything will sort itself out, no harm done.
If he wrestles you to the ground, because he thinks you might be armed, because you might be somebody dangerous, again you can excuse him. It is a big responsibility, to protect and to serve. Even if you are hurt. You forgive him.
But if he knew you weren’t a threat, even knew you weren’t guilty, but still threw you to the ground, trying to flex his muscles, to demonstrate his authority in front of hundreds of onlookers, to humilate you and teach onlookers that they’d better not speak up themselves, that’s another story. That’s not an excusible miscalculation of law enforcement. That’s excessive force, that’s injustice. That’s criminal authoritarian jackboot thuggery. Let’s see how far that’s going to fly.
Somebody has just burglarized your place, they get caught, but then the police walk away with them, laughing about the whole ‘misunderstanding’. It’s even worse than that, since while the judge watches, the burglars ‘apologize’ to you for their crimes and then walk out the courtroom door with the loot!
Hey! Maybe these robbers are actually in with the police, you think. What else can one think, when the burglars admit they’re guilty of the crime, apologize to you, and then say they won’t let it happen again and will take measures to make sure you stay safe in the future! And the judge lets them off the hook for the theft! If you had taken $5 of food unauthorized from your local grocery, you might have gotten locked up for life!
How is it that American has come to coddle its criminals in such a manner? I know of more than a few cases, where after the criminals did bodily harm to some of our neighbors, they got off Scot free! Can you believe that? These folk sustained permanent injuries that they will have to suffer with the rest of their now destroyed lives, and the criminals get to go on about their business, laughing and boasting of what they have done!
It seems that there are now 2 sets of laws; one for the decent common fok, and another set of much cushy regulations for the criminals! Hard working people get the shaft while hardened lifetime criminals drive around with their stolen goods and thuimb their noses at the rest of us. Is this really America?
Look at this case from Washington DC for example. The powers that be practically are giving awards out for these crimes and to these criminals. Where is the concern for the victims here? And one of the criminals actually has the gall to say,
‘And it’s frustrating.’
Damn right it is, you need to be in jail, Pal. What has come to America when criminals like these 2 in DC continue to run loose? Doesn’t anybody care about stopping crime any more? Stop coddling these criminals!
Like the Wizard of Oz, Amazing George promises all, yet delivers a rabbit out of his hat. As we watched his State of the Union speech unfold hypnotized in front of our boob tubes, George told us all that it wasn’t right what we have now, that we needed to be empowered, and that we need to be informed consumers of health care. So he said he was going to simplify the health care billing system we all have horror stories about? Well NO. Instead he was going to tie our health care to the the Infernal Revenue System! What genius is that!
Most of America is so befuddled with this tax scheme called (by Dubya) a medical system reform, that few have actually commented on Bush’s proposals. This is a sign of not even taking the whole preposterous thing in the least bit seriously. Heck, who can figure out a health system actually being tied to a nation’s tax codes? Sick? Well now you’re also being tortured. Why not now make the deadline for choosing your health care plan AND paying your taxes, April 1, April Fool’s Day, Amazing George?
Lest we forget, this is Dubya’s 2nd foray into ‘health care reform’. The other rabbit out of the hat trick was to announce the HIPAA ‘medical privacy’ law in 2003. That one generated oodles of paper, oodles of ‘education’, oodles of administrators running in circles ‘implementing’ absolutely nothing, oodles of no enforcement of whateveritwas anyway, and oodles of non relevance to anything including guarding or protecting any sense of privacy we might ever have regarding our health, and the records of it that insurers and employers float about everywhere today, just as they did before the great privacy ‘reform’ took place.
Poof! Smoke and bluff. One step forward, and two steps back. Bush in charge of privacy, no less! Now, the doctor is protecting our health care, too? Too sickening for words.
WalMart may be as Chinese as rice these days, but there is still one product that’s made still in the US of A. Our government still leads the world in making refugees out of people. Let’s look at Iraq alone, where 2,000,000 have fled outside the country’s, and 2,000,00 more are internal refugees at ‘home’. Iraq’s population was only about 27,000,000. One out of seven then, have been made refugees by the violence of the US invasion and occupation.
Before that, when the US gave Afghanistan the Taliban and Osama, 1/5 of the population there had already become refugees. I don’t know how they can even do a count there now? It is hopeless, after decades of US warmaking there, to even try. And US war making in South America has made about 1,000,000 Colombians internal refugees, though that number may be down at moment. And who can forget how US foreign policy has kept 4,500,000 Palestinian refugees in place, and who can forget the refugees of SE Asia? Those of Central America? So many everywhere…. US made.
From time to time there are contenders to our throne, especially form locales like the Congo and Sudan. But the US has always been a leader in Africa at refugee making, too. The US heyday was back when it was supporting the South African and Rhodesian Apartheid regimes, as they waged wars across half the continent. Millions became refugees due to that US African foreign policy, in just Angola and Mozambique alone. And the US vs Russia in the horn of Africa? Well who can count them?
One strategy of the US to stop the iraqis from fighting the theft of their oil underground? Shoot! Well why not just make ALL THE COUNTRY refugees? Totally depopulate it then! Maybe that’s what’s really behind Bush’s hidden strategy, The Surge? Like a tsunamai wave on shore, all to wash all out to sea! Brilliant! Made in America, the 21st Century refugee. How proud can we be, with the American production of this product of our Great Society? Go for Iran, too?
If we listen closely, there’s a small voice in the wilderness, calling out to us, warning of a coming transformation.
Contrary to the hype it is encouraging, RECREATE-68 does not want to recreate the violent clashes of the 1968 Democratic National Convention. That would have to be up to the police. While we know the Chicago Seven (+1) and their cohorts did not go quietly, it is now also well admitted that the violence in 1968 was perpetrated by the Chicago police without provocation.
The Smokebrush is feting the first anniversary of the 
Here is a graph that I think illustrates world economic history quite well in a very simple way. It takes three countries and charts their portions of the world economy over 2 centuries. The three countries are the US, India, and China. See the graph 
My lover won’t talk to me if I refer to the garments of professional athletes as “outfits.” She doesn’t appreciate “costumes” either. Both terms fit to me, considering the theatricality of the performances and outcomes, involving rivalries that could not matter less.
I’ll admit when a Bronco is standing up, or is at rest, the orange swoosh forms just an elongated crescent. The real genius of this design is that when the athlete is poised to strike or is in motion, either end of the slash serves to form America’s beloved Just Do It check mark.
Escaping tyranny by sailing to the New World was a temporary fix. A ghost has come back to haunt us. We have another King George. 
Protect America, my ass. To say that this shocking theft of our freedom is to save us from terrorists, from Al Qaeda, is a frank lie. Terrorists are well-trained. They move with stealth. They have face-to-face meetings. They don’t call each other’s cell phones and chitchat about the latest and greatest plans. Our government is well aware of this. No, PAA is directed at us. The American public. Especially those of us who slander the dictator. 
