Tag Archives: Water

Programmed obsolescence for iPhone? Apple has an app for that! iOS update.

Posted on by
1

Forget planned obsolescence, the digital age means manufacturers can trigger killer apps like a remote switch for the hangman’s trap door. Just poke a hole in your customer’s canteen if you want to bring them back to your watering hole.

Was Apple’s throttling of late model iPhones mentioned in the fine print which users approve every time they authorize a software update? I doubt it. First the suspicious timing of the dumbing of smart phones was dismissed as urban myth. Next sleuths learned that googles of “iPhone slow” spiked before launches of new models. Then someone benchmarked the IQ drops of the transformed dumb phones. Now Apple has been forced to admit it programed the slowdowns.

Apple says they had to hobble your phone to go easy on its aging battery. Imagine a car dealership progressively disabling cylinders in your car engine, to secretly save you on gas.

Essentially Apple is retiring your phone on a fixed income of energy while you consider its functionality still under contract to you, under your employ. Whose iPhone is it?

Forget Earth Day, apparently we have to save science, without which we wouldn’t have our environmental mess.

Posted on by
Reply

My sign read WE HAVE A POLITICAL SCIENCE PROBLEM because “science” is doing what it’s supposed to, serving its masters. By which I don’t mean politicians have coopted science. Repurposing science and technology to serve the people means an ideological challenge. Of course to anyone who’s attended a US college, “political science” means nothing. It’s a department that may as well be teaching underwater basket weaving to spiders. Absolutely useless and contrived. As neoclassical economics is to economics, which is all the US economics departments teach as well. To overcome capitalism will require a revolution first in US education, not genuflecting before the altar of science. Our “March For Science” felt like an evangelical revival, everyone sharing testimonies of how they’ve been saved by science, or the imperative to put our faith in science. As if it wasn’t science that delivered us into the dire circumstances that require the human community to mark Earth Day. Conservation, not science, is the only recourse we have for better stewardship of the environment. That went unsaid. Also left unsaid by everyone except the socialists: scientists need to spend less energy making weapons.

Colo. Springs police disperse March 26 anti-imperialism rally because it was easier than listening to socialists

Posted on by
3

Colorado Springs Socialists
COLORADO SPRINGS, CO- Local socialists assembled at City Hall on Sunday to “March Against Imperialism”. After a brief march and an half-hour rally while encircled by CSPD, the socialists were informed they were “free to carry on with their assembly” but whoever lingered would be issued a citation for having been in the street. Making no distinction for who had and who hadn’t, the police began handcuffing participants and the couple dozen others quickly dispersed. Five socialists were issued citations for “pedestrian in the highway” and “failure to disperse” while another was arrested and detained for failing to show an ID while filming the police. That person was taken to the downtown police station and held until officers finally informed her of the charges for which she was being cited, after which she identified herself. Throughout her detainment, multiple officers kept up a harassment of questions, refusing her requests that she contact her lawyer. CSPD never issued an order to disperse, a fact that is borne out by witness video. But in effect that is what the officers accomplished. They threatened the legal assembly with citations, for failure to disperse!

CSPD cruiser gunboat diplomacy

It made a funny scene. Around thirty self-declared socialists, blockaded by eight sometimes more CSPD cruisers, in a standoff that lasted until the police lost their patience. Socialists spoke against imperialism, the police officers being their main audience that quiet Sunday downtown. Immediately as the march had ended the police had announced that anyone stepping back into the street would be arrested, and so no one did. But a half-hour of speeches proved too much for the officers to bear and so they interjected again, this time to discuss the problem they had with what had happened earlier. We told those officers they were of course free to discuss such matters individually with whoever they considered a person of interest, BUT AFTERWARD, because they were otherwise interrupting our legal assembly. But the officers persisted in their interruption, deciding after the fact what charges to bring, regardless that they’d forgotten to provide the evidence to back them up. “See you in court” they laughed! We’ve heard that before.

On a serious note. What happened Sunday could have a chilling effect on the nascent kick-ass Colorado Springs Socialists. Unwarranted police attention is an unhappy tradition for socialist organizers, from anarchists to trade unions. Sunday’s denouement confirms all their parents’ worst worries, the folly of declaring yourself to be a socialist in a regressive backwater like Colorado Springs. People were arrested? Handcuffed?! Now you’re on a police watch list! I remember my father’s alarm when he learned his college sophmore had a subscription to Mother Jones Magazine.

Fun as it was, Sunday’s event was essentially uneventful: no altercations, no property damage, not even rhetoric to threaten infrastructure. Minus any media attention, or much of an audience at all on a sleepy Sunday evening, these socialists were determined to parade their dissent where and how those around could see, and reaped more law enforcement than the circumstances required.

While you might say the outcome was predictable, it needn’t have been. Students from the wealthier Colorado College have free range on downtown streets, protesting racism or election outcomes on the street without arrests or citations. Every full moon CC students ride the length of downtown’s main street on bike, skate or skateboard, without even police escort. Sunday’s fledgeling socialist organization is a student club of the UCCS campus. UCCS is more working class, for many a commuter campus, and obviously isn’t shown any deference by city administrators.

Compared to the liberal arts curriculum of Colorado College. UCCS is considered more conservative. UCCS hosts business and military related classes. It even has a Brazil-esque Department of Homeland Security -um- Department. So I think it’s all the more admirable that UCCS has spawned a bonafide socialist group that dwarfs even their school’s Young Republican franchise. I’ve no doubt those socialists I met on Sunday will not be cowed by CSPD’s preemptive aggressions. Hopefully their more timid members will take heart.

Public protests are regularly given use of the streets, which like parks are considered traditional free speech zones. The Tea Party and Occupy took to the streets of Colorado Springs without incurring arrests. More recently people have marched for Black Lives Matter and for solidarity with Native Americans fighting oil pipelines. These have produced zero arrests.

In the meantime it will be important to debrief on what happened and unify the legal strategies. All defendants face the traffic offense of being a pedestrian on the highway [sic] and the misdemeanor of failure to disperse, no doubt tacked on to be a droppable charge as fodder for plea bargains. The recalcitrant videographer faces an added charge of misdemeanor interference for failing to produce her ID. They give her no extra credit for providing a pretext for interrogation because she wouldn’t say zilch without a lawyer present, except to explain where and when they were violating her rights. It used to be that cops had to read us our rights.

Police can issue all the tickets they want when there’s probable cause. They can’t threaten to issue tickets for the solitary purpose of disbanding a legal assembly. In the end, the only socialists who got citations were punished not for being in the street but for standing their ground in front of City Hall.

DAPL used helicopters to down drones, cut live feeds as Rosebud camp swept

Posted on by
2


Forty seven water protectors were arrested yesterday as militarized police cleared both Oceti and Rosebud camps along the Cannonball River in Standing Rock. Helicopters flew low, not to support the ground troops conducting tent to tent raids, but to interfere with resistance drones recording the spectacle. Drone operators report their links being jammed and their drones being forced into collisions if they were unable to avoid the Homeland Security choppers. There were many live feeds being broadcast from drones, long distance cameras and on the front lines. Once Oceti camp was cleared, one by one the feeds were interrupted and dropped. When connections resumed, viewers learned that Rosebud camp too was swept and cleared. Rosebud was on reservation land, not disputed treaty land, but BIA officers helped by militarized police evicted everyone.

Occupy allstar Caryn Sodaro breaches bank doors, allows water protectors to ask Denver Wells Fargo to defund DAPL

Posted on by
Reply

Glenn Morris, Caryn Sodaro
DENVER, COLORADO- At the behest of the beseiged Standing Rock encampment currently blocking the Dakota Access Pipeline, Denver water protectors held an unannounced rally on the capitol steps Friday morning and marched prompty to the Wells Fargo building several blocks north. Led by the American Indian Movement, and joined by allies, the predominantly Native American assembly intended to deliver a message to the major banking entity underwriting the Energy Transfer pipeline project. The action Friday was prompted by President Trump’s recent executive order to bypass legal restrictions holding up the drilling. Arriving at the bank, the hundred fifty marchers found all doors locked.

After a few minutes of rallying outside, a door suddenly opened and everyone rushed inside the atrium. That everyone included drummers, dancers, leaders, and television crews.

After a long rally and a round dance were held in the Wells Fargo atrium, another door leading to the bankteller counters miraculously opened and the group was able to rush in to the bank. Behind these miracles was veteran Occupy Denver activist Caryn Sodaro.

The security guards and police were unable to reach the open door in time, so within a minute the lobby was filled with water protectors making loud their demands. Eventually all the banners were gathered inside and multiple television cameras and reporters covered it all.

Occupy Denver has breached the Wells Fargo Building before, in 2011, for an allied action against the predatory bank. The original feat resulted in an arrest.

In the bank lobby, the water protectors chanted and walked in circles as leaders asked to speak to bank representatives. None appeared, and eventually DPD took to a megaphone and gave the gathering three minutes to leave. That was the cue for AIM leader Glenn Morris to spend well over three minutes telling the bank and the police that the water protectors would be back.

Caryn Sodaro
Caryn Sodaro urges water protectors to raise their voices so that bank officials can hear them from the upper floors.

Caryn’s feat on Friday was unheralded even as participants celebrated their victory. But that’s par for the course for the unsung agitator. Maybe it’s unwise to brag about it here. Nonesense. Activists deserve mythbuilding all the more when the adversarial media and moderate reformists refuse to credit radical actions. I’ve purposefully obfuscated the details of Caryn’s breach so that they remain Occupy Denver trade secrets. But let’s here give Caryn Sodaro her due. If the DPD can glean one lesson from their unsuccessful blockaid of marchers on Friday, it can be this: next time keep better eyes on Caryn!

Two arrested at Colorado Springs bank, asking Wells Fargo to divest from DAPL

Posted on by
Reply

Water Protectors Jerima King and Karyna
COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO- Water Protectors Jerima King (on left) and Karyna Lemus were arrested inside a downtown bank on Friday while trying to convey a message to Wells Fargo Bank to divest its interest in Energy Transfer’s controversial Dakota Access Pipeline. Protesters were denied entry into the Wells Fargo main location but marched to a nearby branch and entered its lobby before police were called. Several dozen Springs activists participated in coordination with protests at Wells Fargo banks across the country.

Protest outside Wells Fargo Bank
The bank doors were locked against the Water Protectors, who’d been asked to act in support of the Standing Rock encampment which is actively trying to block the construction.

Police threatening sitters with arrest
CSPD officers emerge to warn protesters that those who remain seated will be arrested. Before the protest had even begun, a CSPD paddy wagon was parked on the sidewalk next to the bank, to intimidate the activists. Earlier police officers circulated to tell everyone that they’d be allowed to enter, and be arrested if they wish. The police said they’d seen Facebook references to the desire to be arrested. They wanted to know specifics of what to expect to ensure that no one would have to be hurt getting arrested.

When the group tried to enter, the same officers blocked our way. They said “you can’t come in.” When I disagreed and pushed past them, they physically ejected me out the door. Then commanded me to rebove my foot from holding the door ajar.

So much for the pre-arrangements touted by those protesters who’d taken their council. Since there was no gameplan to discuss, meaning there was no way to tell the police what to expect, the police were effectively disseminating the warning that being arrested unpredictably would mean getting hurt. And there was never an intention to allow the demonstrators to enter the bank atrium, no matter how peaceful.

Jerima King and Karyna told they faced arrestThe new CSPD warning was conveyed to Karyna and Jerima. But everyone remained, whether seated or standing.

After a brief rally at the front door. The water protectors discussed visiting a Wells Fargo branch four blocks to the south. Over the bullhorn we feigned disbanding, thanking everyone for joining in, then going to our cars. Except we appeared to have left our cars, all of them, in the same direction. CSPD did not take note and we were able to reach the branch location and enter its lobby.


There was not room enough for everyone in the tiny lobby. Note the bullhorn.


Officers arrest the two water protectors who stayed behind after the bank employees locked the doors.


Water Protector Jerima King is led out in handcuffs.


El Paso County Green Party upstart Karyna Lemus is taken in handcuffs.


Arrestees were taken to CSPD HQ in a police van.

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

Posted on by
Reply

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?

All is fair in love and battlespace

Posted on by
1

US Navy brass are upset that a Chinese vessel pulled a US unmanned submarine drone from the South China Sea and kept it. That’s against the rules apparently, Admiralty, whatever. They point out the drone belongs to the National Oceanographic Office, the information it gathers is unclassified, and it’s piloted by civilians. Sorry but “civilian” is synonymous with “contractor” and the Navy needs to rename its underwater glider drones if it wants to pretend their function is oceanic research. The drone fished out by the Chinese is called a “littoral battlespace sensing” vehicle. It may be unarmed, but there’s nothing environmental, humanitarian, collegiate, or goodwill-tourish about BATTLESPACE. China has been asserting territorial claims in the South China Sea, so whose “battlespace” is it?

North Dakota police are using grenades against Standing Rock DAPL protesters

Posted on by
2


STANDING ROCK, ND- Morton County sheriff deputies have admitted using STING GRENADES against the Standing Rock water protectors on Nov 22, which are suspected to have caused the serious injury which may result in 21-year-old activist Sophia Wilansky losing her arm. Protesters were fired on with rubber bullets, stun grenades, tear gas, pepper spray, and high pressure water cannons filled with chemical agents. Protesters were falling on the icy grass when deputies fired a sting-ball grenade into the group. Ms. Wilansky’s elbow was struck which severed her artery and all nerves in her left arm.


After denying responsibility for the many injuries they caused and accusing the protesters of attempting to detonate a propane cannister, the sheriffs department admitted to using “Stinger Bombs”, more exactly, the Sting-Ball grenade, described in police manuals as “an explosive anti-riot device which hurtles a large number of small “stinging” rubber balls at rioters when ignited. May or may not contain riot control agents. Also known as stingball or stinger grenade.”

Rubber bullets can be aimed away from eyes and faces, though an explosive which propels rubber pellets cannot. Any pretense that deputies are avoiding injuring the public is betrayed by the fact that they are aiming their bullets at the faces, groins and kneecaps of protesters. Though media reports state that police are “throwing” these projectiles, witnesses claim all of these are in fact being FIRED on them with launch weapons. Witnesses also report that the stun grenades being against them have their ventilation holes covered with duct-tape. It’s presumed that the tape causes the grenades to explode with greater pressure.

DAPL buys ranchland to separate water protector campsites from oil pipeline.

Posted on by
Reply


STANDING ROCK SIOUX ENCAMPMENT, CANNONBALL, ND- Energy Transfer Partners have upped the ante by purchasing the Cannonball Ranch and the 1,500 ft easement which surrounds it, effectively forcing Camp Standing Rock to move south of the Cannonball River. Even though an injunction has halted construction and winter cold will forestall escavation until the spring, the North Dakota State Police are pressing for the closure of the camp’s northern outpost, manned to physically block further demolition of the sacred burial ground, and the National Guard are pressing for additional millions to finance their containment of the protests. In a private meeting on Monday, the tribal council signaled its willingness to meet law enforcement demands, under protest by activists at the blockade. While the indigenous gathering vows to resist through the winter, logistics are steadily stacking against it. Escalation will be hindered by the limited rivershore next to the Sacred Stone camp, and water protectors will now have to cross a river and several hills of National Guard defenses to reach the pipeline.

Enbridge Dakota Access Pipeline and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers stopped by who else but Standing Rock Sioux

Posted on by
1


Native American activists have been converging in North Dakota to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline which is encroaching without permission on tribal lands. They’ve delayed construction though the industry already secured an injunction against them. Their main complaint is that it threatens their water. Fittingly the first step authorities took against the growing protest was to take their water. Purportedly because some campers were allegedly endangering corporate surveillance planes with laser pointers.

Clean Energy march opens DNC 2016

Posted on by
1

Clean Energy March, July 24, 2016
PHILADELPHIA, PA- Sunday’s successful march kickstarted public demonstrations against the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. Thousands called for environmental justice on the eve of the nomination of pro-fracking, pro-pipeline, pro-war-for-oil Hillary Clinton. The banner brought by Denver Occupiers “THINK OUTSIDE THE CONVENTION” dominated the photopress coverage, thanks to a great AP image carried around the world. It was a good thing too, because “Clean Energy” is a bit of a muddy concept, isn’t it?

The event was sponsored in part by the Sierra Club and Food and Water Watch, known to accommodate fracking as part of their Big Greens “let’s be realistic” about what what environmental actions can achieve. I’m not convinced that the average tree hugger has come to favor “clean” over the lesser-descript “green”, but energy industrialists cerainly like clean. They’re confident they’ve squarely branded it with natural gas. The clean coal industry is still making a play for it too.

Though the marchers on July 24 were unanimously against fossil fuels, participants may have been hoodwinked into believing they can reclaim the word “clean” from corporate advertizing and its captive media. I doubt it. This is the same argument for reasserting ownership of the American Flag from the America Fuck Yeah pro-war patriots. No. You retire the Swastika, you don’t rebrand it to mean something transformative. Someone pushing to rehabilitate the swastika is a Nazi.

Also typical of demonstrations coordinated by Big Greens, the march on Sunday didn’t go to the DNC. Instead it went Eastward, from City Hall for Independence Hall, for a rally in sweltering heat –and unshaded sun– that will incapacitate many participants from the next day’s march. The Big Greens know from their membership rolls that the average age is elderly.

Shit in a Sack

Posted on by
2

?Cell House Three with 'Dog Cages' on the second floor, left.
From the front page of the Pueblo Star-Journal and Sunday Chieftain?, Dated Sunday November 6, 1977. The banner headline on the front page cried out in large bold lettering: NEWSMEN TOUR PRISON AND VIEW “LIVING HELL” By Bill Gagnon.

Canon City- A three-man reporter-photographer team from The Pueblo Chieftain and Pueblo Star-Journal stepped out of the bright and warm summerlike weather here last week and into a medieval chamber of horror- Cellhouse 3 at the Colorado State Penitentiary.

?Once inside the grim building, they were stunned by the sight of humans caged in filthy cells and living under the most wretched conditions imaginable, denied even the most simple and basic necessities of life – soap, towels, soaks, clean clothing, blankets and sheets. Yes , they even are denied the necessary materials to scrub and clean their steel hovels.

?For 24 hours a day, seven days a week, these unfortunate creatures are kept locked in their filth-covered cages with nothing to do except learn to hate an indifferent and unthinking society that keeps them there.

?Treated and looked upon as subhuman beings, even medical and dental services available to them are mediocre and to the point they are almost nil. And letters sent to them by loved ones outside the high, gray walls sometimes is delayed for weeks at the prison before being delivered to them.

?While these conditions observed first hand by the Pueblo news team in the prison’s so called “punitive segregation” section made a grown man ill, they were compounded by those seen in the narrow and darkened steel barred isolation cells in the solitary confinement wing. There, faceless and silent occupants huddle and cringe in the darkness amid the pungent stench of filth within the close confines of these cesspools like cubicles, almost concealed from those outside.

?Those confined to this living hell in the infamous Cellhouse 3 are stripped of all human dignity and respect. An aura of frustration and despair hands heavy throughout this living example of man’s inhumanity to man.

?Yet, despite such barbaric treatment, some find an inner strength which turns to outrage and they cry out to the world; “You can’t do this to me; I am a man!” But few outside the walls hear, or want to hear them.

?But the voice of one of these tortured men, David Anderson, in the form of a letter sent to the editors of these newspapers describing the deplorable conditions in maximum security, was heard. And it resulted in the assignment of this news team to investigate the shocking allegations.

?Note: the article also contained several photos of the conditions, and covered two full pages of the newspaper.

While I was confined there, Gerald Hayes, one of the prisoners, sat down in his cell, with an old razor blade, cut off his index finger.

With blood dripping from his hand, he scrawled a message on the wall of his cell “God! Help us, Convicts are people too.”

Gather round children, I’m about to tell you a true story. ?It happened nearly 40 years ago in the Colorado State Penitentiary. It happened in cell house three.

?Cell house three was isolated from the rest of the prison, it was built to house death row prisoners and other prisoners deemed problem prisoners.

?If you caused problems in cell house three, they would then send you to a special tier called the “Dog Cages” This was their jail within a jail within a prison. The “Dog Cages” was a 24/7 lock down in your cell. The only exception was when you were let out of your cell for an hour to take a shower. Some men lost their minds under those conditions. It was quite easy for a prisoner to become so confused after months, that he could not distinguish one day of the week from another.?

Many of the prisoners there committed self mutilation or suicide. In my efforts not to end up hanging from a dirty bed sheet as so many others, I chose humor as a means to hold on to my sanity.

?This is the story of one of those efforts.?

Since the beginning of time when we first started locking men in prisons, the prisoners have made knives for self protection. These homemade knives were called a “Shiv” or a “Shank” and over the years the prisoners found ingenious ways of hiding their “Shank” from the prison guards who were continually searching for the “Shank”.?

For many guards, finding a prisoners hidden contraband, made their day. And for some guards, finding a “Shank” was as near a sexual experience as they could get. They became ecstatic.?

With the hidden “Shank” and the prison guards lustful hunger to find it, I began to set up my plan.?

The chief “Shank” hunter of cell house three was well known; he was Lieutenant D. A. Davis, who was in charge of cell house three on the swing shift. Lt. D. A. Davis loved his job and the power he held over the prisoners lives, he never missed an opportunity to torment the prisoner with late delivery of their mail or medication, the two most important things to a prisoners.?

D. A. had on several occasions during the cold winter months, set the steam heater on the “Dog Cages” at the lowest setting, the control for the heaters were off tier in the control cage, there were many windows on the tier broken and snow would often blow onto the tier. Another little trick that seemed to give D.A. a lot of pleasure; when the food cart came to the cell house from the main dining room, he would let it set until the food was cold. He took joy in making the prisoners suffer, making sure to remind them he was in charge of every aspect of their lives’. ?

D.A. could also be cruel to the other prison guards. He was a Canon City hometown boy, who thought of the prison as their cottage industry, if a guard was from another city or another race ( D.A. was white) D.A. would made them also feel his wrath. guard Rodriquez had two strikes against him; he was Spanish from Pueblo.?D.A. was one of those spit and polish guards, sharp creases in his shirt and trousers, Lieutenant bars sparkling, I think he was afraid to sit down while in uniform for fear of wrinkling his trousers. He was an overweight heavy jowl bully with shifty eyes that seemed always searching as if his deeds would catch up with him.?

While Rodriquez was a complete opposite of D. A. in manner and dress.?

Rodriquez was a small quiet man, his uniform was always a little rumpled, in the several years I knew him, I never once saw Rodriquez mistreat a prisoner. He once confided to me that he thought being locked in a prison cell 24 hours a day was punishment enough and that he was not going to add to it. The empathy for the prisoners in his face was easy to see. He said that he had taken the job as a prison guard as a last resort only to take care of his family, after failing to gain employment in other areas. All the prisoners respected him for the kindness he showed them. Because of the way D.A. treated Rodriquez it could be said that he suffered as much abuse from D.A. as the prisoners did. ?

Rodriquez seemed always to have a slight smile whenever I made D.A. the brunt of one of my schemes, but he never said so with words. I think the enemy of our enemy can become our friend, it was Rodriquez who tossed the newspaper clipping ( Living Hell ) on my bunk one day, the news article was consider contraband and unavailable to the prisoners until I received that copy.

The Plan:
Timing was needed for my plan to be successful; It needed to happen just after D.A came on duty for the 3:00 swing shift, and there would need for one of the prisoners to be out of his cell for a shower. When a prisoner is out of his cell for showering, is the only time he would have access to the exterior windows you see in the photo above.?

I had acquired a small 8 inch by 12 inch plastic bag, in the bottom of this bag I place a 8 inch wooden stick and then took a nice big healthy shit in the bag, adding a smidgen of water so as to make the mixture runny. I rolled up the bag tightly and then wrapped it again in an old newspaper so that the contents were not visible. When you felt this concoction of stick, plastic and paper it felt like there could be a “Shank” hidden within. ?

The Hide:
I tied a short string in the center of this concoction and had the prisoner out for his shower lower it out the exterior window so that it hung between the second floor and the first floor. The time was about 3:15 and D.A. had just came on duty. The guard tower just yards away from the cell house had a clear view of the exterior of the cell house and I was sure what his reaction would be when he spotted it hanging there outside the window.?The prisoner out for his shower waited until the tower guard was on the back side of the tower before he lowered the bag out the window and tied it off on the bars.?

And just as I had planned; The tower guard spotted the bag hanging there a few minutes later, the Tower guard took out his binoculars for a closer inspection of the bag. Ah Ha! what are those convicts up to now? and then the next step, the guard picked up his phone to call the cell house and alert them to the mysterious bag hanging out the window on the “Dog Cage” tier. I heard the cell house phone ring.?
The Jig is up! D.A. the “Shank Hunter” was on the job.?

D.A. hollered out Lock-Up! meaning for the prisoner out for his shower to go to his cell. The cell block door slid open and D.A. came walking in as if he were doing a head count of the prisoners. He walked casually to the end of the tier, not looking at the widow where the bag was tied, on his return trip his demeanor was much different as he excitedly jumped to the window and pulled the bag up, ripping the sting from the bars. Glancing around he darted for the tier door with his prize in hand….of course, I hollered out “D.A. Come Back Here With My Shit!?

The prisoners all locked in their cells exploded in laughter.

?D.A. was still not sure of his prize as Rodriquez later told me of what happen when D.A. entered the cage. He feverishly began ripping opening the bag and discovered the sack of shit, he threw the bag on the floor and it splattered up on his pants. His face turned beet red with embarrassment as he remarked to Rodriquez he didn’t want to hear any talk of this incident. D.A. began to wretch and struggled to keep from vomiting. Of course we prisoners knew that we would have some new punishments coming from D.A., but hearing the laughter was so therapeutic, there are those moments when suffering and punishment reach a point that we don’t care what happen to us. ?

D.A. took a short leave to go home and change his pants.?

When Rodriquez came on the tier, he walked right up to my cell with the biggest smile I had ever seen on his face, and said I know you did it David and it was beautiful! my reply was “What are you talking about?”

The Moral of the story; When Shit Happens… make sure you’re not the one holding the sack.

Human rights for even Anders Breivik

Posted on by
Reply

In retrospect, awarding the newly elected Barack Obama a Nobel Peace Prize was about as smartly ambitious as it gets. Everyone knows humanitarians don’t do it for the reward. A Nobel Prize is wasted if there’s not some eligible sociopath who might be influenced with the pressure to behave themselves. President Obama’s Nobel medal was an experiment in paying it forward. Who knows how much more bloodthirsty Obama might have gotten with his drones had not the Nobel committee tried to extort him with its higher expectations? The Nobel award givers took a lot of ribbing for their foolishness from those of us who weren’t idealist enough. AND SO IT COMES AS NO SURPRISE when Norway’s mass murdering overachiever Anders Breivik sued his jailers for abusing his human rights because he wasn’t getting sufficient visitors in his cushy prison suite, that the Norwegian supreme court would rule Breivik was right.

Of course they did. If you’re not going to give a death sentence to a crazed bigot who guns down 76 children, if you’re not going to throw him in a hole but instead give him a spacious accommodation, if instead of a life sentence you let him pursue university studies and limit his incarceration to twenty some years, then you don’t want to isolate your prisoner from human contact if it might appear even as a semblance of solitary confinement. Because lesser cultures do that.

Lesser capitalist flagship states isolate, execute and torture. I so appreciate that Norway wants to set a high bar, but I despair that the land of Guantanamo and waterboarding and indefinite detention and ILLEGAL detention and rendition and extrajudicial assassination and no habeus corpus can’t even see this bar to reach it.

Earth Day, Hour, Minute now Memory. KRCC’s Democracy Now, Then, Was.

Posted on by
Reply

FrackedRemember Earth Day? It became Earth Hour, then I think Earth Minute. If there was an Earth Second you and I missed it. With every chance for commemorative environmental actions squeezed out by the newest condensed schedule, the Earth Moment became a void. Now for Earth Day we do nothing. We reflect in acquescence. It’s become another holiday, minus the time off, which is not ironic. Our uninterrupted industry on Earth Day is fitting. Earth Day is like Valentine’s Day. Happy Earth Day! 🙂

Earth Day
Who were those assholes who decided a whole day was too much for consumer culture to spare in reflection, potential enlightenment and transcendence? Those reformist subverted all hope of drawing popular support to the movement. They’re the same moderates who think people need warm cookies to be attracted to a revolution. They are the same Sunday schoolers who think protest must be made safe for picnic goers and their children.

These “innovations” appear well meaning, if naive, but sometimes outside-the-box thinking falls outside of all effectiveness. What passes for unschooled, so consistently, is very likely shepherded by handlers as clever as fox.

The function of subversives used to belong to the anti-establishment. The dark side is using them much more effectively. Rooting them out is depicted as fingerpointing by the Left, which initiates the circular firing squads. And we’re played for idiots.

So let me tell you about my Earth Day.

Democracy Now
My Earth Day featured a visit by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now. She came to Colorado College to speak on behalf of her program and her most recent book which is a twenty year retrospective about the social movements she’s covered. Amy spoke in the tiniest of lecture halls which was full because it was tiny.

Because guess what? The public radio station on which the program used to appear didn’t promote the event. The community radio station which streams her for now isn’t on the air as yet. Word only spread through a student organization on campus. Thus the audience was kept small. Amy’s previous appearance filled a venue much larger, and the one before that filled the school’s largest. Someone shrunk Democracy Now’s local reach by a combination of destructive intent on the part of CC’s regents and a lack of vigilence on the part of her local station KRCC and its supporters.

Not only did the cretinous traitors at KRCC sabotage the potential of Amy’s personal appearance, the event was put into the hands of a strange new student association dedicated to the project of nuturing communication between two Colorado Springs campuses: Colorado College and the Fucking U.S. Air Force Academy. Because apparently the two vocational vectors have things to share with one another.

So two students, one from each school, introduced Amy and before they did they spoke about the importance of people going into civil life collaborating with those heading into military leadership. As if.

These two insipid dwarf-people introduced DEMOCRACY NOW, the flagship news program of the PACIFICA Radio Network, dedicated to a media independent of corporations who profit from war.

The two representatives were clueless, as were their faculty sponsors, and of course they were applauded by liberals who probably think that the educated liberal arts students will have a chance to infect or soften the warmonger mentality of the military academy.

Except it’s of course the reverse. This exchange normalizes the jerk-off war lovers by giving them a seat at the table of academia as if Air Force Academy professors and students have anything to do with university level education.

Amy of course was gracious and didn’t offend her oblivious hosts or their audience. One can only hope the audience was patronizing, but probably not. Instead we’re all thankful for what civic engagement and communty building there is, regardless if it’s subverted by the poisonous outreach of the military state.

Too many do-goodests among us haven’t a clue we are carrying water for the purveyors of contaminants. They fracked Earth Day right under our noses. Where our shouting mouths are supposed to be.

Have a Nice Earth Day! 🙂

Turkey: where Europe hides its refugee internment concentration camp slums. And this time, Arbeit Nicht Macht Frei.

Posted on by
Reply


The European Union has made a deal with Turkey to return escaped Syrian refugees to their cages. The escapees are civilians fleeing the war zones of Syria, where many of them already lived in refugee camps after fleeing Iraq and before that Palestine. So many people are seeking the safety of non-destabilized nations that the EU is full up. Too many refugees have survived the perilous crossing from Turkey to Greece that the EU wants to ship them back. To the internment camps blotting the Syrian boarder, tented slums encircled by razor wire, where huddled masses yearning to be free are concentrated and forbidden to leave. At the same time that the West demonizes Turkey, we’re counting on Turkey to jail the innocents fleeing our wars. One sticking point are the maquiladora sweatshops which exploit the captive cheap labor. EU labor laws protect against such abuse, thus slave labor pools are only profitable outside the EU. In 21st Century camps, Arbeit nicht macht frei, whether your work is weaving rugs for discount superstores or treading the waters of the Aegean.

Monk Brown set up a tent on the plaza. It took a SWAT team to take it down. Now a Denver jury took them down.

Posted on by
Reply

Adrian Monk Brown
DENVER, COLORADO- Homeless Adrian “Monk” Brown was accused of “obstruction” for sitting in a protest tent last August 26th on the plaza of the Lindsey Flanigan Courthouse. Monk was also charged with “interference” with the riot police sent to evict him. A subsequent charge of “failure to obey” was added by prosecutors pressuring Monk to take a plea. After a two day trial which ended Wednesday, a Denver County jury found Monk Brown NOT GUILTY of either obstruction or failure to obey. Owing maybe to a crime scene video that highlighted the brutal irreverance shown by protesters toward DPD officers, the jury did convict Monk of interference. Except now it wasn’t a crime scene. Monk’s attorney Melissa Trollinger Annis is challenging the inconsistent verdict because it’s unlikely interference will stick without the police having a cause for arrest. Monk wasn’t obstructing.

This verdict marks the second time Monk has beaten the obstruction charge. The first was November 17 when Monk was acquitted of erecting a tent in the plaza on August 28, two days after the recent case. Monk put up that tent the moment he got out of jail for his August 26 arrest. He was fully acquitted in that case. Monk’s subsequent arrests in the plaza on September 18 and September 24 were dismissed and dropped, respectively.

Monk’s arrests numbered among the 19 arrests and two citations issued against the plaza demonstrators during a full time Occupy Denver protest which ran from August 26 to October 21, 2015, when DPD effected a final eviction and activist resources became terminally waterlogged. Just as the activists have now become tied up in court, Denver police headquarters are now overburdened with a hoard of tents, tarps, chairs, umbrellas, banners, and drums which must be kept in evidence.

The plaza protest was launched after the arrest of Mark Iannicelli and Eric Brandt for distributing jury nullification fliers at the Lindsey Flanigan Courthouse. Activists with Occupy Denver won a federal court injunction to prevent such further arrests. With an ongoing legal battle stipulating the plaza as not just a traditional free speech zone, but a designated free speech zone, the city’s backdoor methods of restricting First Amendment Rights could be isolated and exposed.

For too long, the city of Denver has been able to curb free speech through backdoor charges: Obstruction, disturbing the peace, jaywalking, and TRESPASS. Activists are even charged with resisting arrest, when subjects are actively objecting to their unlawful arrest. The days of halting political demonstrations by having riot cops enforce city ordinances such as obstruction may be drawing to a close.

Who spends so much on weapons that they can’t feed or house their people?

Posted on by
1

North Korea’s leader as a mere toddler -that’s rich. Kim Jong Un is the preeminent adversary of our Pentagon. This New Yorker cover is wishful thinking I suppose if also insulting to our own sense of shame. The New Yorker depicts junior Kim’s military success as child’s play, though he continues to hold Western gunboat diplomacy in abeyance. The old saw is that North Korea has been starved of economic prosperty owing to its regime’s unfettered militarism. Sound more like someone else you know? The US can’t house its poor, can’t feed its children, can’t rebuild its infrastructure, nor provide safe drinking water to disfavored urban populations. The US spends more on war than everyone else put together. It can’t provide healthcare. Even Kim Jong Un can do that. Likewise Un doesn’t start wars, or expend ordnance to require the manufacture of more. North Korea’s war footing isn’t our capitalist sinkhole for weapons industry profiteers. That baby with the warheads would be better played by an average American preadolescent, shortly to be a PTSD’d amputee.

Police raid Occupy Denver camp, issue citation for having OD leader off-leash.

Posted on by
Reply


DENVER, COLORADO- Occupy activists had no sooner retrieved their pop-up canopy, which the Denver police had been ordered to return, and re-erected it, when riot cops marched in again to re-confiscate it! After tearing down the now usual “encumbrances” Friday morning, this time the canopy, table and chairs, and not also the handcart, drums, signs, banners, brochures, water, and personal items, the officers were determined to issue a citation. But for what? Apparently LIZZIE had been spied off-leash on the city’s Halo surveillance cameras.

Lizzie’s owner was not on the scene, but the humble Canis Lupus Coracinus had been entrusted to fellow Occupier Caryn Sodaro, who swore to break pig skulls before she would ever surrender Lizzie to the pigs. Behind the SWAT team and shielded riot cops, two officers were approaching with a black leash.

Onlookers have described the strange tiptoeing that’s overtaken the latest dances between activists and the DPD, but witnesses to this scene can attest they were bracing themselves for both Caryn and Lizzie’s abrupt demise. Fortunately the DPD deescalated and wrote a citation as other Occupiers took photographs of the surreal show of force. The circus, a literal circus, was calculated no doubt to overcome Occupy’s well broadcasted Oppositional Defiant Disorder.

It’s presumed DPD Intelligence knew that Lizzie had been anointed the newest leader of Occupy Denver. Their recordings would also have reflected that we expected she be accorded diplomatic immunity from the city leash law. Lizzie is the successor of Shelby, the border collie who made news in 2011 as the inaugural “leader” of Occupy Denver, when Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper wouldn’t accept a leaderless movement.

Hickenlooper shows Animas River mine waste is as drinkable as fracking fluid.

Posted on by
Reply

Gov. John Hickenlooper drinks from Animas River
Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper put on his usual demonstration of drinking a bottle of contaminated water to show that the Animas River is just as potable as FRACKING FLUID. What he has really shown is that the mine waste which the EPA un-dammed from the Gold King Mine into the Animas River was toxic enough to kill GIARDIA. Who drinks river water in Colorado?! The EPA may have unleashed the waste seeping from a mine closed in 1928, but the extraction industry that created it is still hard at work making more.

Deadliest motorcycle “gang” in Waco shoot-out was not Bandidos, Cossacks, Scimitars, or Vaqueros. It was police.

Posted on by
393

Bandidos, Cossacks, Scimitars, Vaqueros Motorcycle Clubs
Was the Waco Shoot-out a gunfight between rival gangs or an ambush laid by law enforcement? Police are monopolizing the testimony but the evidence suggests a barroom brawl became a pretext to kill or arrest club officers, essentially grassroots organizers, now charged with “organized crime”. Investigators can litter the crime scene with brass-knuckles, knives and wallet chains, but the shell casings are going to be police issue. Motorcycle headlights were on, indicating club members were trying to leave. Police claim that the brawlers redirected their fire toward officers, but did that happen while the bikers were trying to ride off? Because riding requires both hands. This gangland “shoot-out” was a St Valentine’s Day Massacre executed by cops.
 
[5/20 Update: HA! The nine casualties died of gunshot wounds, sustained outside the restaurant. No shell casings were found around the bodies. Eight of the nine were Cossacks. The eighteen wounded are not expected to be charged. So much for the narrative that gangs were fighting each other, or that Bandidos were the aggressors.]

It’s described as being a gang shoot-out, but what happened in Waco is still shrouded in the fog of the official POV. Did motorcycle club members shoot at each other? They’re unavailable for interviews, locked up on million dollar bonds. The Twin Peaks restaurant claims the shooting started outside. The only witnesses reaching reporters are the sergeant giving the press briefing and undercover cops purporting to describe the tensions between the “gangs”. By my reading, informant provocateurs incited trouble by “rocking” patches which claimed the territory of “Texas” for the Cossacks Motorcycle Club.

Something like three dozen undercover officers were monitoring the usually uneventful bi-monthly meeting of the Confederation of Clubs and Independents, in anticipation that the “Texas” patch would offend the Bandidos MC. They were able to respond within 45 seconds of the alleged altercation. What might have been an unremarkable barroom brawl, if even that was not contrived, turned into an ambush that killed nine and wounded eighteen. Zero officers were hit and I will bet every bullet was theirs.

Let’s say the melee happened as the police and media describe. Why the blackout on the club affiliations? Why are the 170 arrestees being detained on a million dollar bond each? Why aren’t reporters challenging the police narrative? Witnesses assert that at least four of the dead were killed by police. How long before we learn how many undercover officers had fired their guns?

The media is making much of the anticipation that fellow gang members are converging on Texas to avenge their comrades. I think the police know that it’s themselves who are the targets of the bikers’ vengeance.

No doubt one can say the bikers were not boy scouts, but have you seen the photos? These “gangs” wore their colors, in this case patches, like boy scout badges. And everyone in uniform creased jeans and leather vests as tidy as bowling shirts. Did you see the mugshots? If you look past the long hair and tattoos you’ll note everyone is clean shaven. This was a Sunday outing. These are family men and women, not gang members. The Cossacks are a “Harleys Only” motorcycle club for God’s sake!

Police aren’t naming the “gangs” involved in what’s being called the “Waco Shoot-out”. Because they are motorcycle clubs, for one, and because the only gang deserving of the notoriety is really the police.

NOTES 5/20:
Names of 9 dead. All killed by gunshot wounds, all outside the restaurant: COSSACKS MC ROAD CAPTAIN Daniel Raymond Boyett, 44, of Waco TX; COSSACKS MC ROAD CAPTAIN Wayne Lee Campbell, 43, of Arlington TX; COSSACKS MC SERGEANT AT ARMS Richard Vincent Kirschner Jr., 47, of Kylie TX; COSSACKS MC Matthew Mark Smith, 27, of Keller TX, formerly of Scimitars; COSSACKS MC Charles Wayne Russell, 46, of Tyler TX; COSSACKS MC Jacob Lee Rhyne, 39, of Ranger TX; Jesus Delgado Rodriguez, 65, of New Braunfels TX; Richard Matthew Jordan II, 31, of Pasadena, TX; and BANDIDOS MC Manuel Isaac Rodriguez, 40, of Allen TX.

Names of the 170 booked and charged with organized criminal activity: Martin Lewis, 62, retired San Antonio PD detective; Marcus Pilkington, 37; Michael Kenes, 57; Michael Woods, 49; Julie Perkins, 52; Nate Farish, 30; Ronald Warren (wounded), 55; Morgan English, 30; Ryan Craft, 22; Rolando Reyes, 40; Jonathan Lopez, 27; Richard Benavides, 60; Michael Baxley, 57; Aaron Carpenter, 33; Jarrod Lehman, 30; Ricky Wycough, 56; Royce Vanvleck, 25; Ester Weaver, 46; Ryan Harper, 28; Timothy Bayless, 53; Michael Chaney, 53; Mitchell Bradford, 29; Nathan Champeau, 34; Noe Adame, 34; Owen Bartlett, 34; Rene Cavazos, 46; Berton Bergman, 47; Greg Corrales, 47; John Wiley, 32; Jeff Battey, 50; Kenneth Carlisle, 36; John Craft, 47; Lindell Copeland, 63; Matthew Clendennen, 30; Michael Thomas, 59; Narciso Luna, 54; Owen Reeves, 43; Richard Donias, 46; Robert Robertson, 36; Reginald Weathers, 43; Richard Dauley, 47; Rudy Mercado, 49; Seth Smith, 25; Steven Walker, 50; Thomas Landers, 58; Valdemar Guajardo, 37; Walter Weaver, 54; William English, 33; Marco Dejong, 37; Melvin Pattenaude, 51; Jarron Hernandez, 21; Jason Moreno, 30; Jeremy King, 32; John Martinez, 30; Jeremy Ojeda, 37; John Guerrero, 44; John Moya, 26; Jose Valle, 43; Joseph Ortiz, 34; John Vensel, 62; John Wilson, 52; Jorge Salinas, 24; Justin Garcia, 23; Justin Waddington, 37; Lance Geneva, 37; Lawrence Kemp, 40; Lawrence Garcia, 51; Josh Martin, 25; Eliodoro Munguia, 49; Lawrence Yager, 65; James Rosas, 47; James Stalling, 56; James Venable, 47; Gage Yarborough, 22; Gilbert Zamora, 60; Gregory Salazar, 42; George Wingo, 51; James Eney, 43; Edward Keller, 47; Christopher Eaton, 46; Christopher Stainton, 42; Daniel Johnson, 44; Daniel Pesina, 21; Don Fowler, 51; Doss Murphy, 44; Drew King, 31; Brian Eickenhorst, 28; Edgar Kelleher, 50; Andrew Sandoval, 30; Andrew Stroer, 49; Arley Harris, 32; Bobby Samford, 35; George Rogers, 52; Jacob Reese, 29; Joseph Matthews, 41; Juventino Montellano, 46; Mark White, 41; Bradley Terwilliger, 27; Ares Phoinix, 36; Benjamin Matcek, 27; Craig Rodahl, 29; Daryle Walker, 39; David Martinez, 45; David Rasor, 37; Christopher Rogers, 33; Andres Ramirez, 41; Robert Nichols, 32; Seth Smith, 28; Theron Rhoten, 35; Timothy Satterwhite, 47; Anthony Palmer, 40; Terry Martin, 48; Wesley McAlister, 32; William Redding, 35; Matthew Yocum, 25; Phillip Sampson, 43; Phillip Smith, 37; Jason Dillard, 39; Jacob Wilson, 28; Dustin McCann, 22; Billy Mcree, 38; Kevin Rash, 42; John Arnold, 43; Kristoffer Rhyne, 26; Raymond Hawes, 29; Richard Kreder, 33; Robert Bucy, 36; Ronald Atterbury, 45; William Aikin, 24; Trey Short, 27; Christian Valencia, 26; Michael Moore, 42; Jason Cavazos, 40; Roy Covey, 27; Brian Logan, 38; Colter Bajovich, 28; Ronnie Bishop, 28; Nathan Grindstaff, 37; James Gray, 61; Jimmy Pond, 43; Clayton Reed, 29; Tommy Jennings, 56; Ray Allen, 45; James Devoll, 33; Blake Taylor, 24; Matthew Folse, 31; Sandra Lynch, 54; Marshall Mitchell, 61; Mario Gonzalez, 36; Larry Pina, 50; Richard Luther, 58; Salvador Campos, 27; Michael Lynch, 31; Michael Herring, 36; Richard Cantu, 30; Tom Mendez, 40; Sergio Reyes, 44; Bohar Crump, 46; Jerry Pollard, 27; Eleazar Martinez, 41; Jim Harris, 27; Christopher Carrizal, 33; Diego Obledo, 40; David Cepeda, 43; Brian Brincks, 23; Dusty O’Ehlert, 33; Juan Garcia, 40, engineer for Austin water dept; Kyle Smith, 48; and Jimmy Spencer, 23.

TEDx comes to Dumbville, or, Colorado Springs reads Horton Hears a How

Posted on by
Reply

COLO. SPRINGS- TED-TalksTM likes to say it offers “a spa for your brain” and when I saw that an X-variant was coming to Colorado Springs (“TEDx”s are unaffiliated affiliates. Yeah, uh-oh.) I wondered if a spa might only be as good as its mineral water. Or its mud, or masseurs, whatever. Yes, I foresaw the inevitability of Dumbass Springs confirming its nature, but the lure of a train wreck was strong. I confess my expectations were lower still because incessent shared posts on Facebook have inoculated me with an aversion to the TED motivational formula, no matter the click-bait hyperbole they are AHA-moments For Dummies.

Typically a TED theme holds water for about as long as it takes to incubate a viral meme, but I wondered if in unedited presentation form, do they permit the scrutiny of live input from the audience? They are popular after all. A complementary pass offered the chance to see, and our local franchise had sold out. Could I gag the reflex of skepticism about TED’s curated plethora of inspirational vehicles? To my mind they never fail to carry water (Let’s cross the metaphors) for the neoliberal false-Left, its outside-of-the-box thinkers never truly asserting a POV remote from Capital’s doomed ship whose last exertions mimick being radically progressive enough to impersonate credibility, cross fingers spark hope. TED’s appearance of being crowd-sourced has already been eroded by its gatekeeping against populist lay disciplines. Its novelty was its social media distribution model, otherwise TED is merely another consent-manufacturing think tank of unchanged spots for the pedestrian academic. Will a local TEDx event outsource its attractions or will it local-source from luminary wattage? I ask because our backwater tradition is to elevate dimbulbs. When we mob Ticketmaster it’s for star talent of our ilk. Upcoming exhibit A: Dennis Miller. Ok TED, a full report to follow.

Film critics toe corporate line to re-kill messenger Gary Webb, after Hollywood

Posted on by
Reply

Gary Webb
AT BEST “KILL THE MESSENGER” portrays suspiciously deceased journalist Gary Webb as a heroic sleuth who refused to compromise his principles. At best, the film re-reports the enormous crime which Webb exposed in his series DARK ALLIANCE, that the CIA’s support of the Nicaraguan CONTRAs in the 1980s involved facilitating the smuggling of drugs into the US, in such large quantities as to precipitate the crack cocaine epidemic, delivered to our major inner cities by the CIA. UNFORTUNATELY the film muddies the crack connection, as Webb’s detractors did back then. Two deliberate plot omissions suggest this is probably not a coincidence.

Conveniently the screenplay ends before the years when Gary Webb was able to elaborate on those links. By then he’d lost his audience. Unfortunately the film that might have given his life’s work a main stage reprise chose not to go that far. Does it matter anymore? These days the CIA and its covert cohorts are understood to have authored a litany of unimaginable evils. So it’s not too early to demonize the CIA. Evidently someone thinks the American public is not ready to be shown the racist stratagems of corportate class war.

Exposing the genesis of the crack attack on African American ghettos is clearly a missed opportunity for a film in 2014. Given Ferguson. Given the rising awareness of our government’s coordinated and premeditated containment and criminalization of dark-skinned populations. Let’s remember that while the US was fighting Nicaraguan rebels, it was also at war with the Black Liberation Army. Funding and arming drug warlords was the same strategy Brazil used to administrate the favelas, via proxy gangs. One might say that LA’s Bloods and Crips played domestic Contras set loose to destabilize community building efforts by militant Black Power.

UNPARDONABLE however are the film’s departures from the truth, which paint a curious fiction as if to indemnify the national press from its complicity with the intelligence community. Two lies will stand out to anyone who was there. (Did the filmmakers think their audience would be only millennials?)

First, the San Jose Mercury News was hardly a “local news outlet” unfamiliar with handling national stories and unknown to the average reader. The Mercury News was an award winning paper which competed with metropolitan mastheads. I can’t imagine its employees aren’t indignant by the film’s yokel characterization. The Los Angeles Times’ vindictive campaign to defame Gary Webb was hardly driven by professional embarassment over a missed scoop.

Second, the Contra-CIA drug smuggling link was suspected well before Gary Webb brought it to the mainstream. I remember during the Iran-Contra Hearings a decade earlier, the alternative media often lamented that the official investigation had been narrowed to exclude mention of the cocaine connection.

These amendments might be excused for simplifying the plot except that they minimize the breadth of the corporate identity of Webb’s censors. How very 90s of this narrative to pretend that Capitalist media outlets compete for news scoops like highschoolers at a science olympics. Newspapers and networks have always only ever peddled the themes their owners dictate. Media consolidation has only meant the manufacturing of public consent has become more uniform, perfectly illustrated by the collusion of the tag-team that hit Gary Webb.

AND AFTER HOLLYWOOD FAILED GARY WEBB, the film critics were waiting with daggers.

David Denby begins his New Yorker review by associating KTM with other crusading journalist thrillers, “some depicting real events, some not”, then pointing to director Michael Cuesta’s “paranoid” TV work, finally contriving that the film botches “many contraditory assertions.” Um, sorry, neither. But I do worry that giving all thumbs down will succeed in scaring away viewers. Denby finishes by making it all about actor Jeremy Renner, un-ironically aping the campaign waged on Gary Webb, overtly described in the film, shifting the focus from the story to all about the messenger.

The Washington Post dispatched one-time Webb adversary Jeff Leen to reprise the hatchet job begun when Gary Webb broke the story. Labeling Webb as “no journalism hero”, Leen’s rebuttal hangs on the technicality that no CIA “employees” were implicated, ignoring what everyone knows post-Blackwater, post-Wikileaks, that the US has long outsourced its crimes, from torture to food service. Dimwit.

Bottom of Sept 11 Memorial is for eyes of One World Trade Center penthouse

Posted on by
Reply

The two holes left from Buildings 1 and 2 of the pre-911 World Trade Center, figuratively or is it ostensibly, constitute the public area of the September 11 Memorial. Both are square, sunken “reflecting pools” into which water falls. Inside each an inner square hole appears to sink forever, deep enough that the base cannot be seen by even the tallest of visitors standing on tiptoe. Ironically the only location that affords a view into the bottomless mystery is the adjacent One World Trade Center, situated where the former WTC Building 7 stood, which I guess didn’t merit a memorial, the better to erase its memory. It would not surprise me if the fresh Eichmanns who will soon again populate the OWTC will be treated to an inside joke fitting for whichever of them chooses to stare into the abyss. At the base of the bottomless pools, printed in bold letters, shielded from errant-eyes by the post-911 no-fly zone, entrusted only to the exclusive fraternity of the top floor who know it already, read the words “WE DI DI T!”