Tag Archives: trial

Liberals and Labour

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The Labour Party of Britain has changed nothing at all from Tony Blair under PM Gordon Brown, just as the Democratic Party has changed nothing 7 years into the Bush presidency. Both still are corporate creations masquerading as popular parties of the common folk.

The latest political scandal in Britain shows that ‘The Labour Party’ should actually be called The Property Developer Party.

In the US we really no longer have even the semblance of a Labor Movement, after its stagnant and corrupted leadership has spent decades after long decades monetarily supporting The Property Developer Party aka as The Corporate Trial Lawyer’s Party, etc. Union dues promoting corporate views, in short.

There is nothing democratic at all about The Democratic Party so this strategy of top down nothing (voting DP candidates) has led all of us into the dead end alley of total corporate control over ALL. We now hardly have a hint of what alternative direction would be like.

Because of this labour misleader co-option, all real organizing of the US Labor Movement will now have to be essentially a totally illegal activity if it is to have any chance to succeed at all, and American (and British workers, too) have gotten way too soft for this sort of battle. It was always the industrial workers that were the backbone for tough fights anyway, and much of that base has been ‘outsourced’ to outside the national borders of ‘The Homelands’. So what we have today, is a Labor Movement where Starbucks’ and Borders’ clerks make up some of the more militant sectors of the Anglo-Saxon working class. Oops!!! I hope I didn’t scare anybody with that word?… working class…

Liberals are now not from Labour, but are from the middle class, and worry about their food intake (healthy or not?), bowel movements (regular or not?), and image (polite or not?) while ‘protesting’. They are non-violent, turn the other cheek types, and not picket sign carriers walking the line subject to the company’s goons coming their way. Liberals now come more from churches than they do from blue collar jobs, so they are not going to bruise it out ‘violently’ witht he companies, as actually ultimately this has to be done again for progress to be made on class issues.

US Labor is now isolated,tasered, jailed, and sick (due to worsening health care and job conditions, worsening diet, and worsening ‘entertainment’ options). The only help for this sad situation might just have to come from workers in foreign countries actually standing up to the corporate goon squads (US military) we now, in America, consider absolutely normal to have all around us?

OK, that’s all I got to be said about Liberals and Labour… I gotta go shopping now! I got some coupons I need to use. Workers United For Good Coupons!

Denver Veterans let their antiwar message be known

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Veterans for Peace march in Denver Veterans Day ParadeThe antiwar Denver veterans did march in this years Veterans Day Parade in that city, and it was the right thing to do. Instead of just ceding the event to the government and their jingoist lackey supporters, these veterans took the lead in the Antiwar Movement and showed the whole world that not all vets are militaristic flag waving nitwits, like so many connected to the military industrial complex are. Thank you, Denver antiwar vets! You inspire us.

Veterans and Peace

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Tomorrow is the annual Veterans Day Parade here in Colorado Springs and the local peace group, Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission, has decided to hide in the shadows rather than attend this event with a message for PEACE. In taking this cowardly stance, they are betraying those veterans that oppose the war that is turning US soldiers and Iraqis alike into cannon fodder so that the US military-industrial complex can continue to grow and profit.

Also, this parade is heavily subsidized by our tax monies. The pretense that it is a private event is patently false, since many military units often attend these events all around the country. In short, we pay money to the government that maintains the military, and the government then parades the military through the streets demanding that both the government and its military be backed up in support for its invasions, occupations, and destruction of foreign countries.

The Justice and Peace Commission not only is failing to show support for veterans by not taking a pro-PEACE message to this parade, but is also failing to support the right of ALL citizens to speak freely in this city with out being clobbered by the police when the message is Against War, and not for it. This group just does not have its act together at this time, which is a crying shame.

Bio-fuels destroy land

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We are living the end of cheap oil, and bio-fuels are being proposed by multinational corporations and the Pentagon as an ecologically sound alternative to fossil fuels. But are they really?

When we factor in the conditions of the already degraded landscape of modern industrial agriculture we can see that bio-fuels will accelerate the destruction of land without being able to put a significant dent in energy needs.

George Monbiot addresses this issue some in his commentary The Western Appetite for Biofuels Is Causing Starvation in the Poor World Or check out this United Nations report.

We must be careful when the mass wasters of natural resources get behind a supposedly GREEN ‘solution’. We must ask ourselves if their ‘reforms’ and solutions’ actually improve things, or will they just lead us deeper into the abyss of economic and ecological collapse the world now faces?

Turning those looking for work into felons

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The US government is beginning to make the Mexican-US Border into a supplier for the prisons by turning undocumented workers into declared felons.

No doubt, this is going to help employment in the US for all the pro military-industrial types, who can now maybe better weather the incoming economic crash some, by watching over jailed Mexicans while getting paid? What a way to breed racist Minutemen thugs, too! Welcome to Prison Nation. No doubt the meatheads of America will be thrilled to death with this new governmental welfare program for them.

The Kangaroo Trial of Lieutenant Colonel William Steele

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Saddam’s US jailer goes on trial What’s this about? Who is this man, Lieutenant Colonel William Steele, who now faces life in prison? What did he do?

Wikipedia gives us some basic information about the charges this man faces. William H. Steele We learn what the legal charges consist of here, and what we find is that this man, like Guantanamo military chaplain James Yee before him, has done absolutely nothing worthy of being made into a criminal offense. James Yee was let go after a torturing Kafkaesque experience where the military threatened to destroy his life completely. William Steele will not be so lucky it appears.

So what did he supposedly do, this Lieutenant Colonel? It turns out that he gave Saddam Hussein a cigar and some hair color to cover up the gray hair while he was in jail! For this he is charged with aiding an enemy of the United States and was threatened originally with the death penalty!

Oh yes, there are other charges they used to stack the deck for conviction against this career officer. He was charged with flirting some with a female interpreter! And get this! He was charged with having porn on his computer! Oh, and it gets much worse…. He allowed some kids, that were thrown into this military prison, to call out on his own personal cell phone to notify family members of their arrest by the US storm troopers! What a beast!

I think we can see now why people like Yee and Steele have to be imprisoned. They are to be made into an example for others in the US military, that no compassion must be allowed with Muslim prisoners. Muslim prisoners are to be tortured, humiliated, and murdered, and not coddled as Steele is made out to have been doing.

What a contrast! Under the Bush Administration with active Democratic Party help, the US has put thousands of POWs in Afghanistan in air tight containers where they were suffocated, choked, and shot to death. They have hooded and tortured POWs at Guantanamo using isolation techniques of sensory deprivation. They have raped and sexually humiliated POWs at Abu Ghraib, along with using other forms of physical and psychological tortures. They have moved (‘rendered’) POWs to hidden torture centers around the globe using a hidden fleet of unmarked aircraft. But giving a cigar to Saddam Hussein in jail is now to be made into a capital offense, which in the infinite mercy of these Christian Crusaders will be turned into a mere life sentence in prison. All minds off Donald Rumsfield and Dickey Cheney… Who’s the guy who gave the cigar to Saddam? Get him! Give him LIFE!

This whole trial is an indecent charade, and shows how little support the government really does give the troops. Instead of support, they threaten and bully them just like they wish to do with the rest of the whole world. When you sign up with the military, you truly do sign a deal with the Devil. This is the real mistake that Lieutenant Colonel William Steele has made. Now he is to be scapegoated and made into an example for the other troops.

Bad guy! You showed a drop of compassion for our official enemy, the Muslims. For this you must be punished but good.

Mexico’s most corrupt political figure cheats again

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Poor Roberto Madrazo. He and his political party, the PRI of Mexico, together epitomize what corruption is all about. Corruption is like a bad habit with them that is endemic to how that party has always functioned and all that the PRI is about.

Roberto Madrazo is only the last gangster in a long line of PRI politicos who have enriched themselves, the gringos to the North, and a very few super rich Mexican industrialists at the expense of millions upon millions of common Mexican folk.

Madrazo thought he was owed the Mexican presidency through the deals he made within the top political class misleadership, but he in fact had become expendable for the other gangsters he had negotiated with. Just last year he wrote a book talking about this betrayal. He thought that Mexico itself had been betrayed by a cabal by this cabal not allowing him to get into Los Pinos, the Mexican White House. But he was the worst of the worst, and the stink of his campaign was just too much to make him desirable to the elites for becoming the front piece for the Mexican establishment.

Here is Madrazo’s latest escapade in the news. Mexico politician denies cheating It’s just too funny for words. In fact, it reminds us of some of the political clowns we have here in the USA.

Breaking note… a huge statue of Vicente Fox just put up hours earlier in Mexico was roped and then toppled down to the ground! We can do the same in the US if we try! If they put up a statue of Donald Rumsfield at Stanford University, it should be toppled, too!

The democracy that just isn’t

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One of the pillars of US mythology is that the US is the epitome and embodiment of evolutionary democracy. From ancient Greece to us. It is a belief that is more embedded in most Americans’ souls deeper than US believers’ Christianity is. It is the foundation of our country’s recidivistic nationalism, in fact. Such a pure and developed democracy makes us superior, goes the mythology.

All very pretty a picture, except the democracy just isn’t there. Money runs the USA show, and money is the antithesis of democracy and always has been. Few have big money, yet big money runs the national show, and it runs the show so that big money can make yet more money and make the mass of people yet more powerless to stop the big.

The little want to belong so hard. That is why they identify so often with the big, even when the big is kicking them in the teeth. That is why the average US Joe and Jane is so insistent that they are seeing democracy even when all reality shouts out that it is untrue. What little was had at the time of the American Revolution was high jacked by the slave owning class, and even after the Civil War the industrial class took over from them.

Today the corporate ruling class rules through a military-industrial combined that they rule over. Americans don’t control it, they just work for it. The politicians just work for it, too. Even the ‘winners’ at the democracy game do not direct the combined, they just get pushed around by it. They chortle and bray to get elected but do not dare rock the boat. Not that they would even if they could.

For the next 14 months, the propaganda system will go into high gear to convince us that you and I are the part of the democracy that works. For most they will succeed in convincing, for some few they will fail. And afterwards, things will go on exactly the same for we have the democracy that just isn’t. What are you planning to do about it? Will you continue to believe in it?

Gitmo spits its victims back out

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America has one upped Franz Kafka, whose book The Trial once was the model look at heartless and soulless, authoritarian bureaucracy.

“Someone must have slandered Joseph K,” begins Franz Kafka’s classic novel “The Trial,” “for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.”

But there was a trial in ‘The Trial’, and at Gitmo there is none. Eight men have recently been released from Gitmo, after being held all for 5 years or more without a trial! America the Beautiful…land of liberty….. Here are their stories.

An after thought, now. Shouldn’t these men at least be given American citizenship at this point if they wish, ICE (new name that La Migra goes by)? I bet they would have a story to tell their brainwashed American neighbors flying their flags.

D.C. Capitol police versus Colorado Springs police

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Charges Dismissed Against African-American Minister Targeted and Tackled by Capitol Police

Meanwhile, here in Colorado Springs the city continues to go after a woman with multiple medical problems needing multiple hospitalizations since the day they roughed her up at the annual city’s Saint Patrick’s Day Parade, even though she was not found guilty of any wrong doing at her first trial! Why?

The amazing thing about this effort to get Elizabeth Fineron convicted of something (this will be the third set of different charges the city has accused her of) is that the Colorado Springs police didn’t want to arrest her in the first place, they just wanted to rough her up, which they did by hauling her fast across the pavement. When she finally managed to struggle back up she was outraged and wanted to know if she was under arrest? The answer from the police was NO.

However, Elizabeth had just been deliberately humiliated by this police brutality in front of a large public crowd, and like the Reverend Yearwood Jr. in Washington D.C. had gotten upset by his rough treatment, Ms. Fineron was also upset, as any normal person would have been at that point. She did not feel that the police should just be allowed to treat her as if she was nothing more than a big bundle of trash to haul around at their free will, and demanded ‘to have her day in court’.

Still, the police refused to arrest her, at that time perhaps feeling some shame at what they had done to her? Elizabeth though, went from policeman to policeman stating that they had manhandled her for no cause at all, and that she wanted to be arrested alongside the other people being roughed up. They kept saying that she was not under arrest at all.

At last, one cop reluctantly told Elizabeth that if she tapped them with a finger they would call it assault and arrest her, though they wished she would just go away. Elizabeth’s response was simply to say NO… You guys beat me up, an elderly lady in poor health for no real reason at all, and now you want to act as if that was all right????… and she touched a cop with her finger tip… softly. Some arrest, huh? A real dangerous lady that the cops are now wasting our city tax money on for the umpteenth time to get her in the press… It is all very sad.

The city has decided not to retry 5 of the others their police roughed up, but goes after Elizabeth still, and Eric Verlo? As amazing as that seems?! Who can begin to try to understand their reasoning there? And all this time the Colorado Springs head cop, Richard Myers, has been playing with the Justice and Peace people as if the police is out to protect everybody? It just is not convincing at all, Police Chief.

At this point, not even the pro-war, Far-Out Right Wing Gazette editorial staff wants this idiotic attempt at prosecution to go on. Today, they came out with an opinion piece asking that no retrial of either Verlo or Fineron be launched. It was couched in their usual vile rhetoric, but still they thought it insanity to go through a trail again. They had the courage to take a position.

But where is the city council and mayor on this one? They like to talk nice, but have refused to speak out against city prosecution of the folk that police under their managerial direction roughed up. They are mum.

Shortly after St. Pat’s Day, the police had a riot in Los Angeles and beat up on people there, and even that notorious city not known for having their police under control disciplined some police for their actions. And now, the Capitol police admitted that they had gone wild taking down the Reverend Lennox Yearwood, Jr. as they did. What’s wrong with the city government and its officials here in Colorado Springs? It’s certainly not for lack of other municipal areas’ more positive examples that they act as they do.

The sad thing about this, is that the city council and mayor have expressed a desire that the city not be put in a bad light but they are completely unwilling to do the things necessary so that the city does not stand out and be seen as being a more intolerant and disrespectful place nationally than is the norm. They want to have their cake and eat it, too. That’s certainly the message they are giving out by wasting tax monies on yet another trial. Or, actually it will be two trials this time, as both the prosecution of Eric Verlo and Elizabeth Fineron will have two separate trials. It’s all very crazy…

Stop wasting our city tax monies on this nonsense, and come up with some legislation that would demilitarize the annual city St Pat’s Day Parade. By continuing this prosecution with yet another trial, you are using tax money to promote the idea that marching soldiers, Hooter girls, and politicians downtown is A-OK And city monies are to be allowed to promote such, yet city monies will stamp down hard on any counter social message trying to come out alongside the business as usual stuff.

Not all this city is made up of intolerant people who want liberal ideas censored using city tax monies. Not all this city wants its police to be used to rough people up and then to harass them using the judicial system afterwards. Get with the times, for they have changed since you in the city council used our tax monies to pay John O’Donnell to organize your march of squads of soldiers in a supposed Iraqi War ‘victory’ parade through downtown from the same spot your police assaulted Elizabeth Fineron for expressing a counter social message.

Stop Them From Beginning a Terrorist War Against Iran!

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Woolsey was eight of clubs in the Neocon deck of villainsThis Thursday at Shove Memorial Chapel, a terrorist will be addressing Colorado College students, for that’s what R. James Woolsey is.
 
This ex-director of the CIA and now current Chair of The Committee on the Present Danger (CPD) is one of the leading architects of the Iraq War and Occupation, and is perhaps the most prominent advocate for spreading this American-made disaster into Syria and Iran. In short, he advocates, and has advocated for the longest time, a continual regional war to help better loot Middle East oil for American corporations.

The Committee on the Present Danger is a Right Wing neo-con advocacy group made up from major business and political players in the military-industrial complex. Other infamous co-Chairs of the CPD are George Schultz and Joe Lieberman. It has a long record of supporting continuous warfare based supposedly on ideology, but more so on corrupt commercial and political self interest.

There is a lot of money to be made from The War, and the CPD has backed continual warfare since even when the Cold War was first begun 6 decades ago. Today, it wants us to engage in a ‘Holy War’ with the Muslim World to hide away their own military-industrial machine profit making.

Students, your Colorado College by inviting James Woolsey to address you, is encouraging you to accept the Iraq War, a new war with Iran, and the idea that a nuclear war is winnable under the leadership of the American corporate bloc. They are encouraging you to think that the advocacy of torture and terrorism is perfectly acceptable as real guidelines for American foreign policy.

We urge you to reject these ideas and to demonstrate with us against the presence of this war monger on your campus. We urge you to reject a regional extension of the Iraqi War into neighboring countries.

US out of Iraq and Afghanistan!
No War Against Iran!
Stop spreading US terrorism through a phony ‘war on terrorism!
Bring the Troops Home Now!
R. James Woolsey, Get Off This Campus!

James Woolsey is CIA, not a Green

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James Woolsey, ex CIA director under Clinton, is the managing director of Paladin Capital Group, which has multi Pentagon contracts supplying surveillance and military equipment.

They push themselves off as being eco friendly via company investment in the production of ethanol. See Go Ethanol.

You can get an idea of the type of pap that Woolsey will be spouting this week at Colorado College from this article, An interview with geo-green James Woolsey, former head of CIA. Woolsey and Paladin Capital Group is just the latest of the corporate fad where really odious corporations try to pass themselves off as being eco-friendly when they are the complete opposite. Continue reading →

Immigrants are our friends, not our enemies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why I don’t like ‘Ike’

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Many in the Colorado Springs Justice and Peace Commission seem enamored with Eisenhower, and even wear caps with ‘I Like Ike’ on them, and carry banners highlighting his one speech supposedly warning about the Military-Industrial complex.

Far from warning us of the dangers of this beast though, Eisenhower brought the beast home to bite America big. I cannot bring myself to ‘like Ike’ as they seem to do.

One aspect of ‘Ike’ was how he was the master of the witch hunt. Most know that Joe McCarthy rose and fell during Eisenhower’s time in office, but too many believe that it was ‘Ike’ that stopped him, and deny that ‘Ike’ made the McCarthy Era happen. If you read the wikipedia info on McCarthy, one will even discover that Robert Kennedy was an employee of Joe McCarthy. The Kennedy’s were in bed with this sick maniac, and so was Eisenhower.

Eisenhower finally had to make some distance from McCarthy, but in no way did he distance himself from witch hunting, red baiting, and homo baiting. Similarly, he gave one speech supposedly distancing himself from the Military-Industrial complex, but his entire career was based on feeding that machine, and enlarging it. To hold this one speech by him high up as being an important and defining one is insane. Will one day some liberal folk focus on some speech by George Dubya talking about the need for compassionate conservatism and enshrine that speech in myth, too? Let’s hope not.

During ‘Ike”s presidency, the US almost started a nuclear bombing and invasion of China, and these years were the coldest of the Cold War. Put simply, I don’t like Ike and there is little reason for any even moderately liberal person in the US to like him either. It’s time to put in their graves these two mistaken J&P banners quoting Eisenhower on one, and Henry Ford on another. Henry Ford, too, was an American fascist thug of a previous era like Ike. It is sad to see proPeace activists carrying quotes from these two Right Wingers.

These two banners should be thrown in the garbage can and never again be used here in Colorado Springs. If not done soon, I think I will make up some banner quoting Joseph Stalin on the need for Peace (Yes, he certainly spoke to that many a time) and carry it side by side with the ‘Ike’ and Ford ones. Maybe then????? these nice pacifist liberals might get the message about how dismaying their choice of wording on these two banners really appears? Who knows?

Academy Boulevard sounds off

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Demonstration against 911 profiteers
Unqualified success! Turnout was light -BUT- we sustained banners at all four corners of the intersection for the full duration of the event, so we received honks of encouraging from traffic flowing in every direction. Participants were able to come and go as their schedule allowed. We tied up five security vehicles, two private foot patrolmen, someone watching through binoculars, two photographers, and one D.o.D. auditor who came out to say “THANK YOU!” We demonstrated neither a security threat, nor a safety risk, but simply that fellow citizens who every day drive past this military-industrial-complex turned out to be squarely, and loudly, in the peace camp. We knew it, now the defense contractors know it. They heard it in the steady cacophony of car and truck horns!

911 profiteer protest -SW corner

People doing military service apologize to us because they’re stuck following orders. Can those who market death for a profit make the same excuse?

More pictures at csaction.org.
Looking East toward Raytheon, Boeing, Northrop Grumman and 21st Century Tech

UPDATE: WEAPONS MERCHANTS ON ACADEMY LOOP

1050
DESE Research
Intecon
Lockheed Martin Corp
SYColeman, Suite 120

1150
Allied Signal Technical Corp, Suite 100
Aerospace Corporation, Suite 136
Alliant Techsystems, ATK Thiokol Propulsion
BAE Systems, Suite 111
L-3 Communications Corporation, Suite 240
Lockheed Martin Corp
Overlook Systems Technology, Suite 114
RS Information Systems
SDS International, Suite 119

1155
MITRE Corporation, Suite 212

1250
ANSER, Suite 223
Applied Research Associates, Suite 235
Boeing Company Integrated Defense Systems (IDS), Suite 134
CACI, Suite 202
Harris Corp, Suite 242
Lockheed Martin Corp
Scitor Corporation, Suite 208
System Technology Associates (STA), Suite 116

1330
21st Century Technology
ANSER, Inc., Suite 100
Applied Research Associates
Boeing-Autometric, Suite 330
DigitalNet , Suite 335
Dynetics, Suite 412
General Dynamics C4 Systems, Suite 160
Northrop Grumman Corporation
Raytheon, Suite 140
Schafer Corporation, Suite 450
Sigmatech, Inc. , Suite 120
Spectrum Astro Inc., Suite160
SYColeman, Suite 440
Teledyne Bown Engineering, Suite 350

1450
General Dynamics Electronics Systems & Advanced Information Systems

Military takeover of Southeast Colorado

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It was a disappointment to read about a potential betrayal of the rural folk who cherish their family farms and ranches and don’t wish to sell to the Army at Fort Carson, and again last week in Colorado Springs when only pro-military leaders and the Chamber of Commerce expounded on the need for expansion. What a terrible hoax to think anything connected with war business could be considered a “crown jewel” and “national security keystone.”

It is ironic that an area in Colorado, one of the most scenic and naturally beautiful states in the U.S., is being taken over by the military-industrial complex. Even though there was no chance to be heard last week, there are many folks, including former military, who question why a Fort Carson expansion should be considered necessary at all, much less for the health of our local and state economy.

What happened to tourism, health, fitness and agribusiness for which Colorado is a natural, and the great potential for jobs in the needed alternative-energy fields?

A moratorium on military expansion makes sense because of the growing sentiment that U.S. involvement in the Iraq war needs to end. With more taxpayers and legislators agreeing that we need to pull out of Iraq, isn’t there a possibility Fort Carson could be reduced in size, rather than enlarged? Instead of more battleground experience, we need to have people trained in renovation, rehabilitation of infrastructure and individuals, health and human services and educational endeavors.

If fear of terrorism is predominate, have you thought of telling the war-machine lobbyists in Washington that you don’t want your state to become a terrorist target by having so many of our strategic war components in such close proximity?

(Printed in Letters to the Editor in The Independent, Sept. 6)

COS military-industrial complex HQ

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Almost all of the defense industry giants earning the largest profits in this war on terror have offices in Colorado Springs.
Raytheon Northrop Grumman General Dynamics Lockheed Martin Mitre CACI BAE Intec
Here’s a cluster at the intersection of Academy and Fountain Blvds:
    Lockheed Martin, 1150 Academy Park Loop #1
    Boeing, 1330 Inverness #2
    Northrop Grumman, 1330 Inverness #3
    General Dynamics, 1330 Inverness #4
    Raytheon, 1330 Inverness     #5
    Mitre, 1155 Academy Park Loop
    Intecon, 1050 South Academy Boulevard
and the ill-reported Iraq War opportunists:
    Alliant Techsystems, 1250 Academy Park Loop (depleted uranium)
    BAE Systems, 1150 Academy Park Loop (armor)
    CACI International, 1250 Academy Park Loop (Abu Ghraib)
    L-3 Communications TITAN Group, 1150 Academy Park Loop (Abu Ghraib)

See you in prison

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Bush dictator quote from 2000Quietly, with little mention in the press, the National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive was signed in May 2007. This directive places all governmental power in the hands of the President in the case of a catastrophic emergency (as defined by him alone). It also allows him to take control of the private and nonprofit sectors. It effectively abolishes the checks and balances built into the Constitution and demolishes the Bill of Rights. This is, of course, necessary to keep us safe in case of a national disaster. The “Unitary Executive” would be able to act quickly and decisively, without any interference from those other two annoying branches of government, slow-moving and contentious as they are.

Our Constitution has never been about efficiency. The checks and balances built into it were created to keep any one individual or branch of government from having unilateral power. It lays the groundwork for a democracy, not for a well-oiled machine.

George Bush has shown extreme disdain for the Constitution, the very document he swore to uphold. He has vetoed only a handful of bills while in office, but he has attached signing statements to more than a thousand, clearly indicating scorn for Congress and his commitment to enforce only the laws he chooses. He has taken bills designed to protect the American public and has amended them to be used against us. Congress recently handed Zippy even more power by passing the Police America Act 2007. He has stripped us of our right to privacy, our right against unreasonable search and seizure, our right to due process. All in the name of the fighting terror.

We already know that President “Hyperbole” Bush is a master of exaggeration, if not outright prevarication. He and his oil buddy, Cheney, lied to get us into Iraq. They’ve lied to keep us in Iraq. Long ago they planned to get their hands on all of that beautiful unctuous black gold under the desert. They are not about to cede power to a successor until they’ve gotten the goods. What terrible national catastrophe is up his sleeve that will enable him to retain power?

I won’t speculate about what the catastrophe will be, but WorldNetDaily.com reported yesterday that the administration has been authorized to set up civilian prisons at military installations, something that has not been done in our country since the WWII Japanese internment camps. Under international law, internment camps are used in times of war to incarcerate large groups of people deemed to be enemies or “belligerents,” indefinitely and without trial, of course. Hasn’t Bush already warned us that if we are not with him, then we are with the terrorists? Read the handwriting on the wall.

When the occupant of the highest office in the land decides what the law is, singlehandedly, we no longer live in a democratic society. We live under a dictator, the Unitary Executive. While we were sleeping, Zippy the Monkey’s big dream of being THE Decider has been realized. We are basically living in an autocracy. The Founding Fathers are turning over and over in their graves. But few of the living seem to care.

Prepare yourself for the war with Iran. Prepare yourself for the impending terrorist attack. Prepare for the national catastrophe that will allow the Unitary Executive to suspend the 2008 election and stay in power indefinitely.

Just watch. He’ll do it. He’s the DECIDER. We gave him that power. And he’s willing and able to use it.

American Cowards, a big herd

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An article by Conn Hallihan titled Death at a Distance: The US Air War indirectly highlights the political cowardice of the American people as a whole, the politicians of both the corporate parties that the American people have been glued to for so long, and the Pentagon itself. The article focuses on how the Americans are turning to using pilot less drones to bomb targets located in civilian areas.

This has certainly become the American Way, another cowardly war fought by technocratic cowards, directed by political cowards, and tolerated quiescently by a cowardly American population as a whole, that flat out refuses to up its level of currently minuscule protest against what is being done in its name.

This Wednesday I got a brief glimpse of the cowardly rats gathering together once again to move towards yet another expansion of the US military-industrial complex in something called Fort Carson Piñon Canyon expansion. Only the people directly effected by losing their ranches seem all that motivated to oppose yet more base, more bombs, more soldiers. The rest of the Colorado population appears to hardly give a rat’s ass about the issue, and that’s who was gathered inside the city government building to nod and pose for the cameras…rat’s asses. And the rat’s ass king who was there at this meeting has got to be Senator Ken Salazar.

What is the relationship between pilot less aircraft murdering children in foreign lands from way up high and this planned expansion of one of The Springs’ local bases? My short answer is that you are just another American coward if you don’t get out and try to fight these creeps on both issues. Many of you liberal do-nothing voters put Ken Salazar into office with your votes, and yet most of you haven’t the courage to get out and do anything to stop this King of political cowards from getting off the political hook for his constant double speak.

I’m not advocating that you do this, but Democratic Party liberals really ought to be burning down their local party HQ instead of voting for your creeps once again. Instead, you seem to be just another part of this long herd of American Cowards supporting continual war. Get off your asses and demand that America stop murdering kids in foreign lands with pilot less drones and by starving them and their parents. You don’t need this damn Fort Carson at all. Your vote doesn’t count so don’t use the fact that you vote to excuse your complicity through your constant inaction.

The Science of Fools

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I’m sure you missed it, since most of us have long since given up on reading the idiotic editorials of The Gazette, our Far Right Wing local daily paper. But there it was this Tuesday morning as they attacked the notion of giving our country’s children government guaranteed health care. Oh horror of horrors they said, ‘This will keep people from buying health insurance for the tiny tots!’

This all from a paper that has no problem with giving trillions of government funds to the military industrial complex. They call their ideology ‘Libertarian’, too! But what about the science of these fools, the Science of Libertarian Fools?

Well lets see…..? Just at the moment that scientists see an explosion of infectious disease epidemics as being likely in the near future (in fact they see it as already underway), these fools of The Gazette ignore scientific opinion. They don’t give a shit that the Medical System of the US if more full of holes than Swiss Cheese.

They pooh pooh the idea that there is such a thing as Global Warming, too. Or that there is any planetary ecological crisis currently underway! They practice the Science of Fools, Pretend Libertarianism, so they oppose strengthing medical coverage at the time it is most needed! That’s how they support ‘national security’. They ignore common scientific sense.

Speaking of ignoring science. The Gazette Gang of Editorial Clowns wrote their editorial against providing federal medical coverage for America’s children almost exactly 2 years after Katrina. That was when political clowns such as The Gazette always supports had completely ignored scientific advice calling to strengthen the levees of New Orlean, scientific advice that had been given for decades.

Ignoring that scientific advice led to the Great New Orleans Flood, which no doubt the ignorant a-holes at The Gazette consider to be God’s will. It wasn’t, but New Orleans got washed into the gutter because of dumb dicks like the Gazeete editorial writers that always support what they call “Free Enterprise,’ while condeming and ignoring realy important scientific opinion. Goodbye, New Orleans.

Boy that paper sucks! Every time The Gazette writes editorial comments on ecology, medicine, or anything at all dealing with science, they just are on Cloud Nine. They are lost dealing with Political Science, too. In fact, they are as corrupted as you can get.

The ‘free market’ doesn’t like science at all. It just gets in the way of maxing out making profits for the well-to-do. Our children deserve more, and they deserve guaranteed federal mandated medical coverage. This is the science that will stop the spread of disease. Big Business hates it. They prefer the Science of Fools instead.

PS- See where these unoriginal editorialists of The Gazette got their unoriginal opinion from. A Socialist Plot

Charges that might stick

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Paladino halts free expressionTo all supporters of the SPD7, please forgive our dropping our eyes from the ball. The city charged us with intentionally obstructing the parade, and we got caught up refuting the argument.
 
After the mistrial, we the defendants are now being led to understand that the city is pondering other charges, perhaps failure to disperse, perhaps resisting arrest. Fine. None of us failed to respond to a legal order, nor resisted arrest, even considering no one was being told we were being arrested. But that is to catch us up in another semantic argument.

Might I suggest charges that would have more traction?

If the city wants to find me guilty of trying to express myself, in a public place, in a parade run partially with public funds, policed by public law enforcement, they can find me guilty.

If the city wants to find me guilty of failing to stand idly by as friends and family were being dealt undue violence, in violation of the 4th Amendment, or with dignity, the 14th Amendment. Guilty.

Did we have the intention to march in that parade, as we had the year before, as we were permitted by the Bill of Rights, with every authority and respect accorded by law, to project our message of Peace On Earth to the 40,000 assembled there, most of whom, polls showed, would welcome seeing the sentiment spoken in public? Yes we did.

Does the city intend to show its citizenry and the rest of the country that freedom of speech, freedom from oppression, due process, and the enforcement of such rights don’t fly in Colorado Springs?

The travesty started with three opinionated dim-bulbs among the parade organizers, made worse by several violent police officers. If the city persists, they confirm that the blood-thirst, anti-American, anti-freedom, anti-civil-liberties conduct was endemic and systemic. As a resident of Colorado Springs, I’m going to do the patriotic thing and root that out.

I know what you did last spring

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Taking us down March 17 2007
We were able to obtain these prosecution photos during the trial. Officer Paladino has finally released Esther from a painful arm-bar. The sign (obscured by a balloon from the Chipotle parade unit passing beside us) reads KIDS NOT BOMBS.

Eric taken from the Bookmobile
Esther asks the police officers why they are initiating such violence.

Esther Kisamore is brought to the ground
Esther is then pulled by the arm to the ground for having interfered.

Elizabeth, whom the police pretended was the peace marcher seen sitting down, was still leaning into the Bookmobile trying to find her walking cane.

Hung jury is defeat for police and city bosses

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In the end, the decision by the defense attorney to let the police and parade organizers do all the talking is what got a hung jury. In short, it was the witnesses for the prosecution that did all the blabbing contrary to what the reactionary daily paper, The Gazette, would have wanted to image to the public. Only Elizabeth Fineron testified as a defendant and her testimony was quiet and reasonable. The prosecution witnesses came off as a little too slick at times, and quite a bit incompetent at others.

The Gazette editorial staff have consistently tried to paint the St Pat’s Day Parade proPeace group as loud and belligerent, and pushy with their message. And they have projected that the message of peace somehow was an endangerment to the public by being allowed with all the allowed (and encouraged) pro military messages at the parade. In this they echoed the argument by city officials and their parade organizers that push the anti-social message that War somehow is patriotic, while peace activists are to be taken as being dangers to the community and violent.

The defense attorney argued that no blame should fall to the police, they were merely as confused as the defendants were from the general chaos coming from basically an incompetent group of organizers. But this message was a false one actually, that merely was a defense lawyer strategy not to take on the police directly inside the courtroom.

In reality, the police had all the power to use discretion and avoid the excessive use of force to police the parade, but just did not do so since they were so gung ho and ready to bop the ProPeace people on behalf of the organizer and his agents.

There was no miscommunication at all, and 2 of the jurors were apparently able to sense that this was the case and decided to stand firm and hang the jury. They saw that the blocked street was the conspiracy of parade organizers themselves, and not the proPeace walkers. The other 4 jurors were impervious to common sense and allowed their own fixed prejudices and desires to bop proPeace people on the head, too, to prevail with their votes to convict. Nothing much was going to change their minds.

In short,the prejudices both for always supporting the police whether Right or Wrong, and also for those who supported the right to have both military and proPeace groups together in this city parade seemed to stay fixed throughout the testimony. Four of the jurors would probably have convicted the defendants as being guilty of conspiracy to commit murder if they had been asked to do so by police and prosecutors. Two of the jurors had the ability to say to themselves, ‘Just hold on now…this could have been done totally different at this parade.’

This desire by city bosses to squelch anything other than proWar and military based commentary at their city St Pat’s Day event has now caused them to allow the police to get away with roughing up a group of mainly elderly and infirm parade participants, and has helped squander hundreds of thousands of municipal tax monies in trying to get away with it. Will they just keep thumping away with more waste for their crusade by going for a new trial of these innocent individuals? Will they argue again that these 7 people conspired together to deliberately and to intentionally block this sponsored city parade? Will they just continue to look and act vicious and stupid by taking this same action once again, bringing in the lawyers to thump heads after having the police do so?

One thing is for sure… If The idiot editorial staff of The Gazette has their way, that’s just exactly what city officials will try to do. They will waste yet more tax monies in an effort to convince the public that proPeace people are violent, and proWar people are peaceful. And we will sink into having yet another Alice in Wonderland style trial taking place inside the city.

What would Lockheed want with their monies influencing the local scene as Colorado Springs major employer? And what would the Bush led Pentagon want? The police are there to do the bidding of these folk and not so much to ensure public safety of parade participants themselves. They are perfectly ready to make examples of any that would try to step out of line from public promotion of militarism inside the City of Colorado Springs. They call that defending the public safety. Isn’t that right, Police Chief ‘Liars’ Myers?

The J&P fails to argue its case in court

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For weeks now, I have had a sense of impeding doom as the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission has consistently failed to adequately argue the case of the Saint Patrick’s Day Seven police attack in the court of public opinion. The issue of how the city used its police force in a brutal manner to suppress the citizens right to express their opinions in public was not put forth in a strong manner, but rather increasingly was replaced with a love fest with the police chief, orchestrated by a religious pacifist contingent that only has seeked to underline its eternal commitment to turning the other cheek.

This meek and defeatist attitude about defending antiwar speech has now been extended into the court room, as the St Pat’s Day 7 seem headed towards losing their criminal case. They have allowed the ACLU lawyer to not argue their issues for them, all the while watching like meek sheep before the slaughter. So far, the desire to have their day in court has been taken away from them by their own lawyer!

Instead of arguing that the police acted in an unreasonable manner and with undue force, the attorney for the defense has said that the police were in an untenable situation, absolving them of any responsibility for what happened. What an astounding weak defense, as the St Pat’s Day 7 lawyer has absolved the city and its police force of all blame for the attack on his own defendants! Instead, he has confined the defense to only insisting that the ‘volunteers’ for the city contracted organizer of the event, John O’Donnell, had acted in an untrained and indisciplined manner, and that John O’Donnell himself had seemingly tried to cover up that fact.

But where is the obvious here? Did the police have to follow orders from the city contracted parade organizers without being obligated to use any of their own discretion? No they did not, but that is not being argued in the court by the defense lawyer. He just cedes the issue entirely, though it seems rather obvious that a little bit of police initiated discussion would have gone a long way before pulling out the heavy use of physical police force. Instead, he has weakly allowed the gloating cops involved to just act like it was their natural right to have attacked his defendants in they way that they did! And that the defendants probably brought about their own problems…

This case has also always centered on the role of John O’Donnell, and whether or not the City of Colorado Springs would be allowed to divorce itself entirely away from its relationship with him. Because neither the defense lawyer nor the Justice and Peace Center has made the slightest effort to expose this man’s incestuous relationship as city organizer of pro-military events for the city, they have allowed the man to posture as an innocent private person solely concerned with the ‘security’ of parade participants, and not as a suppressor of one point of political view to the favor of cheerleading the other political point of view, which is the pro-war point of view.

He has done this through consistent backing from the city government with tax monies taken from all the citizenry. This should all along have been the main defense argument, both in and out of court. Instead, in all cases, both the defense lawyer and many in the J&P have referred to him as being ‘good people.’ In fact, he is practically a paid employee of the City of Colorado Springs, who directs their police force even though a ‘private’ citizen and not a police official, and organizes major city events under the complete guidance of city government. And an official who suppresses free speech against war that he finds objectionable while allowing pro-military views to proliferate.

The J&P has not been arguing its case before the court in the trial, and has been weak at doing so in general. Today is going to be the last day of the trial, and hopefully the jurors can see through the obscurantist trial proceedings to understanding the real issues not being discussed there. And upon doing that, that they can find the defendants not guilty??? That is now a big ‘IF’.

Unfortunately, the defense lawyer has let a scenario be presented where it appears natural that when the police say jump, that the defendants should have jumped through the hoops IMMEDIATELY. And that by not doing so was in fact, only their way of blocking the parade route,which is what they, in fact, are charged with doing. In short, the St Pat’s Day 7 are seemingly being hung by their own lawyer.

PS- I had thought not to write any more here but am doing so now because of the importance of this trial event. I think it’s important that a true picture be presented of what is now transpiring in court here on this particular blog.

Day in court for police brutality

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The recent CS Independent update on the St Patrick’s Day Seven left the unfortunate impression that police brutality has become a less significant component of the events that day. In reality our lawyer wants his defendants to answer for our guiltless actions without demeaning ourselves making counter accusations of excessive force.

While the upcoming trial concerns only the specific accusation that we seven intended to obstruct the parade that day, in fact the actions of the accused were most certainly influenced by the repressive manner of the police. If our lawyer is unable to raise the issue of the unnecessary violence, the attempted humiliation, the illegal physical coercion and reckless injury at our trial this week, a remedy will most certainly require further legal action.

The CSPD learned nothing from their misdeeds at the 2003 anti-war protest. Now that people recognize my face from the parade incident, I find myself besieged by accounts of police brutalization of the city’s homeless and less fortunate.

If the Saint Patrick’s Day Seven are making too much fuss for your taste, please consider that it has less to do with our treatment suffered at the hands of the police. We stand for all Americans who expect their civil liberties to be respected, particularly those who may not have a parade audience in broad daylight to insure they will be treated with civility. Somehow we must impress upon the CSPD to adopt a culture of respect for the dignity of all the people it serves.

The ACLU has chosen to defend us because the police should not conduct themselves as if they have the license to curb free speech and inhibit the freedom to assemble. And certainly not by means of force.