Tag Archives: Trump

How I nearly got arrested for holding a sign at Denver International Airport

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DIA, COLORADO- Last weekend I joined thousands across the country protesting Trump’s executive order restricting entry visas from seven predominantly Muslim countries. Spontaneous demonstrations had erupted at international airports nationwide on Saturday January 27. Denver’s airport was no exception but the lively gathering of sign holders was ultimately persuaded by police to leave the premises. Supposedly a permit was required to hold signs. Demonstrators the next day were quickly ushered outside, to rally instead between the terminal and adjacent lightrail station, where only a tiny fraction of travelers would see them. This much we knew as we monitored events online while we reconnoitered DIA from the short-term parking garage. We made our way swiftly to the International Arrivals doors at the north end of the main terminal WITH OUR SIGNS.

International Arrivals
The point was to reach immigrants, right? We walked to our intended protest spot unhindered and inconspicuous, because of course signs are not an unusual sight at an airport. Travelers who’ve been a long time away, in particular soldiers returning from deployment, are frequently greeted by family members holding signs. Often limo drivers have to page their corporate clients. We carried our placards with their message facing inward hoping they’d be mistaken for everyday signs. When we raised them above our heads we attracted immediate attention. They read “#NO MUSLIM BAN #NO REGISTRY, END WHITE PATRIARCHY” and “FIRST THEY CAME FOR THE MUSLIMS AND WE SAID: NOT TODAY MOTHERFUCKER.” Immediately a man with a “DIA Operations” cap informed us that we weren’t allowed to hold signs. We assured him the opposite was true. He called for backup.

We weren’t alone in front of International Arrivals. In addition to the families awaiting loved ones, there were a couple dozen law firm employees holding signs which read “Pro Bono Immigration Legal Services”. We surmised that their presence might have already been negotiated with DIA. Soon a couple of those lawyers approached us to announce loudly that the public protest was outside the building and that we could continue there unmolested. We thanked them for their assistance but urged that they also clarify publicly that we were within our rights to stay inside as well. I was upset that their gravitas, as lawyers, was seen as supportive of the authorities telling us to stop.

Police officers arrived in short order, a first one filming us with a digital point-and-shoot, then a second filming with a cell phone, both surely streaming to a command center. After six officers assembled, a sergeant approached us flanked by two DIA employees. She gave us our formal warnings. We were given instructions to “cease and desist” while we countered that we knew our rights. After a second warning we were assured that a third would mean our immediate arrest. We held our signs higher, all the while asserting their order was unlawful. The immigration lawyers huddled as far away from us as they could. Sgt. Virginia Quinones then got on her phone to consult somebody.

I recount this scene like it was a nail-biter, but of course we’ve held this standoff many, many times before. For activists with Occupy Denver, it’s become the routine. I was wearing an OD hoodie on this visit to DIA and I suspected whoever was on the line with Sgt Quinones had likely dealt with OD before. To be honest, this standoff too often does lead to arrest, so we were not proceeding without trepidation. Denver jail is an excreble experience. But it’s an unlawful arrest and that’s where we have to push back. As the sergeant kept talking, she and her entourage retreated. We stood our ground smiling and winked to each other. For onlookers however, the tension lingered. Several lawyers approached us to offer their cards, in case of arrest.

Intimidation
Though we were confident about asserting our rights, the six officers standing at the ready made it near impossible to entice other sign holders to join us. Our encourgements would be followed by the DIA operatives offering their advice to the newcomers. Nearly every newcomer opted to go outside. Only after hours of detente, with officers projecting a more relaxed inattentiveness, did we succeed in building a consensus of demonstrators.

In the meantime DIA operatives installed queue barriers to keep us from intermingling with the lawyers and family members waiting for international travelers. This strategy might also have meant to force us into the flow of passengers entering the nearby security check. We stood clear and even as our numbers grew, no obstruction occured.

One interesting fellow, a Mr. Gene Wells, wore a jacket with a message taped on its back. It read:

“D. TRUMP
IS A SMALL MAN
WHO CONTINUES
TO SHRINK
AS A PERSON”

with the letters diminishing in size every line. He was warned by DIA personnel that he could only wear his jacket outside. DIA operatives wouldn’t leave his side as he walked through the terminal, but abandoned their effort to intimidate him as he rejoined us at the arrivals door.

A couple of travelers joined in before they had to catch a flight, they held signs they’d printed that morning at their AirBnB. We were joined by Quakers and even a former Denver Occupier. At most we numbered eight, compared to the hundred outside.

The protest outside
The protest outside was seen only by those travelers arriving or leaving by light-rail. And potentially by only half of those departing DIA through the B and C terminals, whose security check queue necessitated passing the windows facing the south. Perhaps. Most travelers approaching security aren’t lingering to take in the sights. The other half of passengers departing DIA go through the north security check, or over the walkway to Terminal A.

All arriving passengers, on the other hand, enter the main terminal from the north or using the underground train. They pass through the center of the main terminal before exiting at the baggage claims to the east and west. International arrivals enter the terminal from the north and proceed directly to parking or ground transport. If they are met by family they are very UNlikely to be riding the light-rail to downtown Denver.

While the protest outside did garner local television coverage, it was prevented from reaching immigrants or those awaiting arrivals, to convey the solidarity which those who opposed the Muslim Ban wished to express.

Inside our signs prompted a constant stream of public support. Passing travelers gave us thumbs up, high fives and thank yous. Muslims shook our hands and offered their heartfelt thanks. A couple gentlemen made speeches expressing their pubic appreciation of what we and the lawyers were doing.

Permits
The DIA operatives kept explaining that protesters need only apply for permits. The catch was that they required seven days advance notice. And of course activist do not expect permits to be granted.

One of the Quakers who joined us expressed confidence that her group would be granted a permit to protest at DIA. She explained to me that she was personal friends with the new Denver DA.

I told her applying for permits set a bad precedent. Asking for permission implies those rights are not already protected by the First Amendment. Permits also restrict others to the code of conduct agreed by those who signed permit agreements. Often permits are used to exclude public participation on public grounds temporarily reserved for the use of the permit holder.

Worse, the police can intervene when “others” aren’t abiding by the permit agreement, when they aren’t complying with police intrusion, or aren’t acquiescing to the authority of the permit holder.

Never the less, this Quaker wanted to inform me that as the anticipated holder of the permit at DIA, she wished to invite me to participate with her group. However, she anticipated that her church colleagues would be made most uncomfortable by my sign (which ended with the word “motherfucker”). So if I did choose to join, she was expressing her preference that I not bring my sign.

Attention National Mall: the Oppression of Women Belongs in a Museum

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Spotted in DC at the J21 Women’s March. Advocates are marching for a museum to highlight the history of the oppression of women, as a tool to relegate oppression to the past, instead of where Trump’s inauguration wants to take it.

It’s always been America First

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President Trump doesn’t want to complicate the argument by naming multi-nationals or offshore fortunes. Instead he implicates other nationalities as having usurped ‘Murcan interests. No more, he insists, “America First!” As if it hasn’t always been only ever that. American policy, foreign aid and wars have only ever served American purposes, and while big capital has reaped the benefits, its nationalist cover was wrapped in the Red White and Blue. Worse than Trump knowing nothing of history is the media’s eagerness to fill the vacuum with distortion. “America First” they decry, harks back to isolationist movements opposed to US entry into World War Two and before than The Great War and before that our Spanish American War of Expansion. Yeah, how about we call those isolationists what they were, pacifists and anti-imperialists?

Dear Trump: the arc of moral history does not bend toward your man-cave

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Donald Trump’s inauguration presents a timely opportunity to hammer at his crass misogyny. Slogan-wise, THE ARC OF HISTORY BENDS TOWARD EQUALITY gets my vote for spot-on feminist rejoinder. I also like HELL HATH NO FURY, YOU SORRY ILLITERATE! The latter has a better chance of becoming true. The women’s march planned on Day One of Trump’s presidency already confirms Shakespeare’s adage. So what about MLK’s truism, about the arc of the moral universe being long but bending towards justice? That’s the consolation that keeps liberals from despairing as they encounter endless setbacks. Is it true? The inevitability of progress is inexcusibly Western-centric. If you measure your arc with indigenous cultures at the baseline, the moral universe trips at monotheism and never recovers. Measured from the customary Dawn of Civ, Trump’s election as mankind’s exemplar ideal, now leader of the free world, is surely the most abrupt signpost to the contrary. We’re tracing the arc of a handbasket.

March on DC with your own protest message, not one dictated by NGOs. Yes, you’ll need a banner and poles.

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Denver Womens March 2012Organizers of the post-inaugural WOMEN’S MARCH in Washington DC this weekend are telling participants not to bring poles for signs or flags, or even knapsacks. Ha ha ha. As you travel across the country to march, remember who’s making the real sacrifice. The march coordinators are paid. You are spending the time and expense because you have something to express. Bring it. The only reason organizers want you unequipped is so your [rogue] message won’t stray from theirs. Does that sound democratic? They also have a different goal than you. Their mission is to pull off a smooth event. Yours is to make history.

As a veteran of countless protest marches, national, regional and international, I encourage newcomers to stick to their nonconformist inclinations. Independent critical thinking is what led you to take action in the first place.

To begin, THIS IS YOUR MARCH.
Washington DC belongs to you. Inauguration Day and its aftermath belong to you. Just because someone squats a Facebook event on a day conducive to public gathering doesn’t give them dibs to call the shots. A stand-alone call to arms, such as MLK’s Million Man March or CodePink’s A Billion Rising, is another matter. Spontaneous uprisings against historic events are no one organization’s to control or temper. Especially if they begin with capitulations to the state.

Here’s the usual pattern. After a FB event goes viral, nonprofit activist groups jump in to offer their expertise, resources and manpower. The nonprofits thus dominate the details and the event originators have little ground to object. Thrilled to see “their” event succeed, these new-to-the-spotlight activists don’t know that street protest is anathema to nonprofits whose existential foundation is not to disrupt politics as usual. Falling into the trap of coordinating ineffective demonstrations is often blamed on newbie error, but in Washington DC, newbies making the newbie mistakes are employees of nonprofits seeded to pretend the event had a grassroots origin. What the NGOs are really doing is setting a prescribed burn, or backfire.

Backfire: a fire set intentionally to arrest the progress of an approaching fire by creating a burned area in its path, thus depriving the fire of fuel.

Bastards! Fortunately backfire has a further meaning, probably not unrelated to the sketchy forestry strategem.

Backfire: rebound adversely on the originator; have the opposite effect to what was intended.

Just as DC lobbyists monopolize your representatives, professional activists have staked out the capitol and squatted on what is the public’s only access to speak to power. Accept their invitation to come to DC. Thank them for their legal support, their logistics and water bottles, but you’ll handle your messaging thank you.

NOTES FOR NEXT TIME
(If you’d prefer not to dwell on criticism, please skip to the section on RULES. For me, these counterproductive “mistakes” set us back every time we give them a pass.)

1. Telling participants they can’t bring stuff like food or chairs! The event’s duration is being throttled to what can be endured between meals, without a pause for rest. Do you go to meetings without chairs? In the cold outdoors one can’t even sit on the ground.

2. Hiring private security contractors, “some identifiable, some undercover”. WTF? DC’s cops, National Guard, Secret Service, and “Shadow Teams” aren’t enough?

3. Coordinating with police. What? What?! To whom Black Lives Can’t Even Matter? Sorry no.

4. Stifling expression with limits on how to carry signs. Without sticks. “Flags but without poles.” Restricting marchers to signs reinforced with only cardboard tubing. Viewed from a perspective to show the numbers, the march will bear no legible message at all.

5. Telling marchers they must handcarry small bags. You’d think they don’t want marchers’ hands free to carry signs at all.

6. Stooping to a permit, as an excuse to self-police and make participants feel honor bound to unecessary concessions (the permit terms). You don’t need a permit for First Amendment activities. NGOs use permits to effectively reserve public areas and restrict their concurrent use by others. It’s a means to control public space.

7. Scheduling the march on the day after the main event, in time to disrupt nothing. Diluting the inherent outcry, expending from everyone’s discretionary resources to converge on DC. As a result we’ll have two mobilizations. Both massive, hopefully, intead of one which could have TIPPED THE SCALE.

RULES ARE
Meant to be broken. Permit holders can enforce rules within the confines of their event area, with the assistance of authorities if needed, but not outside it. Organizer “rules” can’t be enforced on Metro, or on public streets, or along march route. DC police may pretend they have that authority but they don’t. Cops lie. Know your rights.

To hold a sign where it’s visible in a march, and big enough to where it can be seen among multitudes, you need poles.

BRING POLES.
There is no safety reason whatsoever, in Washington DC, for forbidding the use of sign poles. We’ve seen pole restrictions attempted at national conventions, in close-in urban areas with vulnerable storefront windows, but Washington’s boulevards and setbacked facades evolved with political marches. Demonstrations, parades and motorcades are everyday for DC. Your sign poles pose zero threat and you don’t have to relinquish them. Not Post-911, nor in the Age of Trump. If an NGO-deputized cop won’t allow your entry to their rally, their privatized-park, have someone wait with the contraband outside its bounds. Banners are best seen on the edges of rallies anyway. When attendance numbers reach overload, you’re golden. Move with the numbers. Otherwise wait and join in as the march departs from the rally.

What’s best for poles? Lengths of bamboo from garden nurseries. Bamboo is stiff, light, and utterly non-threatening. Eight footers will hold a banner above marchers’ heads while still allowing you to rest the poles on the ground when the march lags. Six foot lengths give you adequate leverage to keep the banner taut but are more work. Either are cheap and expendable. Bring extra. Bamboo are thin enough to hold reserve pieces bundled. You can grasp a bundle of three as readily as a single pole. Those extra poles can be allocated as you see other marchers in need.

Let’s rule out pipe, lumber and dowels for being too heavy. Broom handles are expensive. Wooden stakes are uncomfortable and too short, and apparently, too “pointy”.

Various widths of PVC are rigid enough to about eight feet. Steel electrical conduit can give you ten feet. Both are cheaply available at neighborhood hardware stores. The baggage holds of charter buses can’t accommodate pieces over eight feet.

Alternatives to fixed lengths poles would be telescoping poles such as hiking sticks or monopods. Usually these do not extend beyond five feet. Longer telescoping tool handles used for painting for example extend but won’t contract to shorter than five feet or so.

Sectional poles such as geodesic tent poles can be folded to different length permutations. Depending on the weight of your banner material, multiple tent poles may be required to provide sufficient stiffness.

The benefit of collapsible poles is that you can conceal them until you are ready. Provided you have a BAG.

BRING A BAG
There are plenty of ordinary reasons to need a bag. Lunch. Extra layers of clothing. Hat, sunglasses, bandana. Extra gloves, hand warmers, snacks, literature to share, stuff handed you at the rally.

As a banner holder you’ll need supplies like duct tape, markers and string to fix signs, and those aforementioned extra tent poles. Maybe a backup banner or gag props for an alternative photo op.

We bring bags to work, school and play. Who expects that a day traversing DC doesn’t call for a bag?

Don’t be fooled into believing that for safety reasons all bags must be clear plastic. DC surveillance can spot the excess heft of dangerous materials such as explosives or weapons, without having to see them. What they’re really looking for are items like ropes, carabiners, harnesses, goggles, which activists can use for nonviolent fun, to mix things up and entertain, provide media moments and get attention.

Besides which, clear bags will make for unsightly messy photos. Neither does your bag need to be restricted in size. Bring a backpack or knapsack. Leave your hands free to carry that sign!

The best reason for you to shoulder an ordinary opaque knapsack is to give cover for others to bring bags with necessities you overlooked. Cameras, accessories, extra socks, bullhorns, batteries, umbrellas etc.

There’s nothing so heartbreaking as a mass of people who’ve come from across the country to participate in a march that goes nowhere. An uneventful demonstration garners no press, wins no recruits, and only burns out those who thought they came to DC to effect change.

I watched half a million hispanic Americans assemble on the National Mall for Immigrant Rights. Many of those half million took a great risk marching in DC. It’s possible many as a result were deported. They could only follow the rules of course, received no media coverage, and accomplished fuck-all.

BRING CHAIRS
Come to DC with a demand, but bring more than the leverage of numbers. Carry with you the potential that you might LINGER. That’s the pressure the media can’t ignore.

Chairs, umbrellas, canopies, tents, enhance your stamina and protect you from the elements. The longer your protest runs, the more time there will be for latecomers to join in. That’s the momentum the state is worried about. Project that.

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” – Frederick Douglass

Douglass also said: “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” Your march organizers have promised their DC colleagues a toothless beast. It’s not what they tell their donors, nor how they phrased their invitation to you. You brought your physical body to DC to support the cause. Is it theirs to squander?

F U and the horseshit you rode in on

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Barack Obama is an impressive speaker and a figurehead to make you proud –if you’re not listening or paying attention to what he’s doing. How sickening the fawning over his last addresses and his supposed legacy. Obama was the antithesis of Dubya, now Trump. Obama was probably the world’s most palatable politician in recent memory, but what he said and did was no less nauseating. And damnable. I can sympathize with onlookers mourning the loss of America’s gloss coat. Trump is the ugly face that is Obama unmasked. The king is dead, long live the ugly disreputable can’t-bear-to-listen-to-him king. Frankly, it wasn’t long into his doublespeak that I couldn’t stand listening to President Obama either.

Finally a president too smart for daily intelligence briefings

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Is makes a funny headline: “Donald Trump says he doesn’t need daily intelligence briefing, says he’s smart enough already.” Haha. What Trump may really be saying is that he knows enough not to be made to listen to what the CIA dictates to be his world view. The presidency is probably enough of a bubble without the added insulation of daily briefings from spooks giving you their unsubstantiated take on Yellow Cake, WMDs, which regime is using chemical weapons BESIDES US, and whose neodemocracy needs an infusion of covert activity.

Whether you’re an America idiot or not, Trump is the candidate you deserve.

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It’s easy to say Donald Trump is the presidential candidate America had coming. The traditional exceptionalist xenophobe at last has a candidate crafted in their image. You want to ban all outsiders? Donald Trump has the solutions for you. But Trump doesn’t just speak to the simpletons. Trump is exactly what the doctor ordered for his critics too.

Trump shows us that sarcasm doesn’t translate over hostile media either.

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Sarcasm does’t work on the internet because the general comprehension level there doesn’t rise above dense. Owing to the same common denominator, Poe’s Law applies to the corporate media too, except the adage doesn’t come up when content isn’t crowdsourced. When the public has no hand in the content creation it has no reason to scrutinize a usage manual. Presidential election troll Donald Trump makes utterances everyday that pundits seize upon to discredit which are obviously sarcastic. But to recognize sarcasm as intended would mean conceding to the implicit truth at which he is digging. The US regime did birth ISIS. If both the justice department or the FBI are uninterested in investigating illegal official emails, the Russians may as well be called upon to check into them. If nuclear weapons are too big to detonate, we ought to stop producing them.

At Colorado Springs UCCS rally protest, Trump critics make his fans look smart.

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COLORADO SPRINGS, CO- While protesting Trump’s appearance at UCCS, I found myself on the worng side of the shouting match. Trump supporters were yelling “JAIL HILLARY” and their protesters were drowning them out with chants of “USA USA!” WTF. And our side was shouting “America is Already Great” but that’s what you’d expect from Colorado Springs white people.

Michael Moore, Nate Silver, Bernie MF Sanders, fake radicals, exit stage right.

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OK so the silver lining to watching the Hillary – Trump prizefight is that those cheering and jeering are showing their colors. If they’re on either party bandwagon we can dismiss them out of hand, I’m talking about those pretending to be left of middle. Michael Moore is now out, as usual shepherding for the Dems. Buh-bye. Statistician Nate Sliver, expending his infallible credibility to scaremonger for Hillary, sorry no. Bernie Sanders, thanks for activating a leftist base, but you sold it up the river. Begone now and good riddance.

All your friends who swear they’re greener than green, but have to support Hillary lest Trump win the election? Not greens. Those who proclaim they’re otherwise progressive, or true to their causes? Not true, they’re Dems. They’re why Americans never get beyond the lesser of evils. But- but- no buts, you’re the silent consent that enables war.

Let me ask, did you also vote for Obama? Because shut the fuck up. Seriously, you obviously learned nothing from it. Show some humility and shut up. Why on earth would you expect to offer guidance on election matters? You are a fool. You are easily scared. You’re falling for it again.

Dem presidents won’t chose better supreme court justices than Repugs

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NOW we’re told the ultimate reason to prevent a Trump presidency is because he’ll appoint Supreme Court judges who will set progressive movements back for generations. You forget that President Obama’s latest nomination put the lie to that bugaboo. Put it to bed and burned it. Upon the fortuitous demise of one of the most corrupt justices ever, Antonin Scalia, who died literally, in bed with a crony patron, President Obama submitted for consideration as his replacement the conservative jurist Merrick Garland. Garland’s most notable legal achievement was to indemnify the US regime from charges of torture. I’m sure voters in 2008 elected Obama to uphold Democratic ideals not scuttle them. We’re being sold the same pitch with Hillary, really without any basis in fact, that a democrat will attempt to curb the Supreme Court’s antisocial conduct, as exemplified by the Thomas, Alito, Kennedy, Roberts cabal. The Garland nomination has also exposed the other lie, that Trump’s appointments could not be opposed. As we see with Garland still, SCOTUS nominees can be embargoed indefinitely.

Who wrote Melania Trump’s speech?

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Melania
Number one, Melania Trump did not plagiarize Michelle Obama, her speechwriter did. And that hack copied from the First Lady’s. So one speechwriter plagiarized from another. More probably they cribbed from the same citizenship pledge essay. I’m surprised pundits pretend to differentiate platitudes from longitudes. Has anybody checked to see if Michelle and Melania don’t have the same speechwriter? Or it’s a Dr. Carvell, Mr. Matalin dueling personality, we’ve seen that before. It wouldn’t take a bipolar disorder to support today’s conjoined parties. TWO, in 2016 the Bushes are rooting for the Clintons, even Karl Rove is pitching for the rival team. If bogeyman Trump wins anything, it will be the best bad actor Oscar, up against every black hat that’s ever troubled WWWF fans. That no one of stature will take the podium for Trump in Cleveland suggests his polling figures are as much of a hoax as he. Why is no one complaining that election 2016 showrunners are plagiarizing from previous lesser of evils season cliffhangers?

Cleveland cops only cared that Tunick’s 100 naked women were not marching.

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The Spencer Tunick naked women photo-op at the Cleveland RNC provided an interesting spectacle. One hundred nude women aimed large mirrors at the convention center to shine light on the retrograde sexism of the GOP. They also might have stroked Donald Trump’s ego with a news headline he’s sure to have appreciated: A HUNDRED NAKED WOMEN GREET TRUMP AT THE RNC. Leave it to the press to mistake petitioners for groupies. What happened next also illuminated exactly what’s wrong with orchestrated protest. Nothing. Nothing wrong.

Tunick sweated about getting arrested for his per-usual photo project “Everything She Says Means Everything.” He’d gotten permission from the property owners, and his mass nudity installations are not misunderstood to be gatherings of sex offenders, but the RNC cops did show up. Their visit shed light on the very element Tunick was missing.

Esquire Magazine described the brief artist v. officer cultural exchange:

As soon as the women get into place, a van pulls up with four cops. The driver says to one of Tunick’s assistants: “What’s going on here? I just wanted to make sure there was no marching. There’s not going to be any marching in my area.” Then, they shake hands, and he drives off.

There’s not going to be any marching in my area says a cop untrusted to shut down unpermitted protest. Because dissent was envisioned to get out of hand, the city of Cleveland decided to abridge it. My area, the cop bragged. What a shame no one had the clothes to challenge him.

Naked masses of people express what again? The philosophy escapes me. Naked supplicants remind me of how the ancient Greeks forbade their slaves to wear clothes lest they conceal themselves as citizens. Apropos to today’s nudes, Greek and Roman slaves were also shorn. Military detainees in modern times are still stripped to prevent their escape. By definition, naked people wield nothing. To uphold inequity, indeed to maximize inequity, leave the poor nothing.

To a middle class steeped in materialism, perhaps Spencer Tunic’s nudescapes commodify communal being-ness. I can’t help but think their sensationalization appeals to the prurient. To non-Americans this is FEMEN activism stripped to nudity.

Tunic’s remote “she says” transmission to the RNC, an aerial photobomb deploying no boots on the ground, there, recalls the fairytale emperor whose imaginary attire was woven of a similar lack of substance.

The NAFTA Three Amigos are about as funny as their Hollywood namesakes

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Barack Obama, Justin Trudeau and Enrique Pena Nieto telling their despairing citizens not to fear free trade –Martin Short couldn’t get a bigger laugh! And I think we’ve got a litmus test for professional integrity. The free trade isn’t cut and dry, principly because it’s too big a lie. The TPP is today’s turbocharged shakedown model and up until just recently the media refused to talk about, and never critically. Trumpish isolationism is a buggaboo by which conservative supporters are being labeled racists protectionist xenophobes. The media can harp on these things and be half right, but the real litmus test for unmasking patronizing condescention is the BREXIT. When amigo leaders, pundits and now counter-culture gadflies on the Comedy Channel are mocking the movement that broke the EU, you can be certain their moral character is being laid bare for you, and it’s rubbish. Now Donald Trump is making statements that the facist media can only pretend are extreme. He wants to withdraw from the TPP and he wants to renegotiate NAFTA. The media have buried Trump’s seven point plan with the spin that he’s likened the TPP to “rape”. Apparently that’s hyperbole, though exactly how unlike rape is it? Don’t say it trivializes sexual violence if you won’t honestly report how free trade, debt, “austerity”, and corporate hegemony ravage democratic economies.

A real democracy would elect Trump

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A friend of mine used to say “You know who has their finger on the pulse of America? Walmart.” Materialism on the cheap, zero social responsibility. It’s true of American television, fast food, urban planning, everything USA. We sell immediate gratification, that’s it. Success in America under declining capitalism has become courting only the lowest common denominator. I can wish it was otherwise, you can lecture it to death, but Cracker culture: insipid, racist, xenophobic culture is American culture. Love yourself, hate everybody who isn’t you. For many successive Me-Generations, narcissism is WHAT MAKES AMERICA GREAT. The American mass doesn’t want an Obama hued panel of multiculture-splainers saying America must be anything but stupid indulgent. An intelligencia’s repulsion at Donald Trump and his common denominator campaign goes without saying, but it can’t fault his sales pitch. Trump is tuned to win. Feel rueful about the lumpen masses, but you’re being undemocratic.

Donald Trump to pick turnkey running mate after the election: Dick Cheney

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It’s becoming obvious that Donald Trump is nothing but a spoiler, saying whatever pollsters can contrive as beyond the pale for any reasonable voter. Trump is a shoein for the populist vote yet he persists in alienating everybody. Even an idiot can pass for a candidate if he keeps his mouth shut. Trump is not even fool enough to be an idiot. No, he’s playing a carefully unscripted role as foil to Despicable Hillary. If in the unlikely event of the Democratic ship tanking beyond salvage, what will Trump do as president, a day job with a surfeit of non-bimbo obligations and a White House to which he can’t affix his logo? He’s going to delegate of course, and Trump’s no dummy so he’ll hire a vice president with a track record of success beyond all others. Dick Cheney performed for Dubya Bush and can do the same for Donald.

Putting Donald Trump into perspective

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If we must yield to Godwin’s Law in hyperbolizing about the less lesser of weasel presidential candidates, let’s agree that Trump is not Hitler, neither by villany, political accumen, IQ, nor charisma. If Trump is a Nazi he’s a dead ringer for Nazi blowhard Hermann Göring, self-aggrandizing Lord Fontleroy of the Luftwaffe, minus the hair.

Why is the New Yorker selling a bright eyed, androgynous Millennial Hillary?

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Cheaky Bastards. The New Yorker pulls Sy Hersh, and their covers are establishment all the way. There have been four Trump covers, as many for Hillary, and curiously none for the senator from Vermont. This week’s issue touts a resilient confident Hillary, conveyed oddly as a bright eyed baby-faced twenty-something scrapper. Remove the band-aid and her eyes are very wide apart. Inside, the same artist, propagandist recidivist Barry Blitt, rendered an editorial illustration of Bernie Sanders as Icarus falling, semi-naked, essentially the same unbecoming pose he gave coverboy Trump doing a belly flop to crash the GOP.

Hillary may be the presumptive head of the US empire but Trump is its asshole

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Billionaire reality TV villain Donald Trump is bringing his presidential candidacy roadshow to Denver JULY 1ST. Like the rhetoric of the Westboro Baptist Church, Trump’s utterances don’t warrant rebuttal. But unlike the lone Fred Phelps family espousing their gutteral homophobia, The Donald has followers. Some see Trump as an underdog challenging the empire’s vetted candidate. Some may be provocateurs staining his campaign with violence. What is certain however is that popular enthusiasm for Trump echoes his hate speech and dumbfuckery. If zenophobic bigotry congeals into a white power movement, that’s the specter of fascism that begs a swift preemptive beatdown. Trump can tramp his celebration of brute ignorance wherever he wants, it’s a free country, but local communities need not welcome his fan base aping the white thug’s antisocial behavior.
 
Friday July 1. Western Conservative Summit, Colorado Conventional Center, Denver. Be there!

I’m pretty sure PRIVILEGE is voting for a warmongering sociopath to feel good about having a first woman president.

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Oh, really, so it’s “privilege” to support Bernie Sanders because he will take votes away from Hillary and thus enable a Trump presidency? Is it privilege to vote for Trump just for the entertainment value of seeing what the blowhard will do? Who is the only candidate with a direct record of mass murder and banksterism? I’ll assert it’s wildly privileged to inaugurate Hillary Clinton, just as you did Barack Obama, for the token victory of a first whatever, at the cost of giving the US regime a public mandate for more war and imperialism. Remember how we used to believe the world didn’t hate us ordinary Americans, just our fraudulently elected president? Now you want to elect the Bush-est of evils. Privilege is knowing the most formidable military in the world will kill untold thousands of darker-skinned others for the sake of your security.

Sorry Rage, Trump Ain’t the Machine

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Immortan DonaldThere’s news from Cleveland, about to host the 2016 RNC Republican National Convention. Rage Against the Machine is planning a reprise of the show they PUT ON for DNC 2008 where they harnessed teen angst against America’s dystopian future (thus against its corporate party conventions) but FOR Barack Obama.

In 2008 the House of Bush was already falling. Now it’s 2016 and this time Immortan Joe is the ascendant Donald Trump apparently. Because Trump is a thought-criminal and troll racist, it seems that all pop, sub, and call-out culture agents agree that the next US president must not be Trump. I find it not in the least ironic that the machine thinks so too.

Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello is scheduling an encore performance of Denver’s DNC 2008, another counter-subversive star turn for the Democratic Party. In 2008 Rage quelled unrest to smooth the reception for Change Double-Agent Barack Obama. The corporate TM Rebels want to do the same for Hillary, this time directing their indignation at social injustice provocateur Donald Trump.


In 2008, Rage harnessed teen and counterculture angst and hitched it tightly to a stake in the mosh pit, a political assembly agitated but meant to go nowhere. Rage threw a free performance which drew thousands from the streets, as if a Rage concert memory would match the excitement of a protested convention. Of course those who were waylaid will never know. Even seasoned activists fell for the lure because Rage promised afterward to lead their stadium audience straight to the Pepsi Center to confront Obama and the DNC.


Not what happened. RAGE appointed Iraq Veterans Against the War as their favored antiwar agitants, whose MO has always been commemorative not rebellious, crowd participation encouraged only under a strict chain of cammand. With the IVAW, Rage members led the audience on stations of the cross “march” across downtown Denver exhausting protest energy and converting participants into spectators. It looks like Morello intends to do the same thing for Cleveland.

And I have no doubt they’ll succeed. Already social justice movements are feeding the trolls as if Donald Trump wasn’t merely another Westboro blowhard. Radicals from Antifas to Zapatistas think Trump is the face of US Fascism and must be stopped. Trump does spout ignorance and racism, though he hasn’t bombed or executed anyone. Does Trump embolden American racists and zenophobes or is that the machine’s framing?

Must Trump’s idiocies be rebutted? Must, for example, the Westboro Baptist Church be counterprotested? Normally everyone gets the wisdom of not feeding the trolls.