We all know that Bush’s attack on Iran is going to come

We all know that Bush’s attack on Iran is going to come. In fact, the bombing of civilians at night in Pakistan and Afghanistan is just the opening act for the bombing of Iranian civilians that is being planned. It will most certainly also be done at night, too, simply because it lights up the night sky so bright. This imagery will show how tough Bush really is against ‘Arab terrorists’. Not afraid to bomb them babies is he. So don’t tickle us with details, now, y’all hear? ‘Mericans going to pour out another trillion dollars in support of their ignorance after this bad boy bombing comes down. It’ll be the best patriotic American light show since Belgrade!

Has anybody heard any of those cowardly Democratic Party politicians speaking out against the official program? What about them Democratic Party voting peaceniks? Shoot, the Lebanon ‘affair’ just passed them by entirely, didn’t it. Hey, they didn’t even get time to pray on it, and even though they were demonstrating against Iraq at a very few anemic rallies, and were making sweet speeches, too. Well shucks, it was troo complicated to bring up the war-making by Israel that the Democratic Party was supporting. Shut our eyes and it just went away. Few cluster bombs left around, that’s all. Oil slick.

Bush saying that the Democrats got it all wrong! There never was an October Surprise at all. It’s a November Surprise instead! Couldn’t see it could y’all? All the time it was hanging right in front of your eyes, too. You wimps sure are just so lame.

And the Democrats? Gee! You sure pulled one on us, Dubya. Got to hand it to you, you sure are tricky. If we had known it was coming, we would have opposed you. But now that you’re doing something to stop those terrorists, we got to support our troops. We support you, Mr. President, all the way. Let’s get the job done right, and then let’s discuss time tables, giving our troops the equipment they need, and how to more efficiently dispense our government’s militaristic propaganda in the future. Go, team Go!

Is this Iran war going to be a surprise, or what? Going to catch us all off guard. We didn’t know that a constant war would be constant, you know? It’s supposed to go on for an eternity, but we just didn’t forsee. We don’t mind footing the bill. We’re Americans. At least nobody much got hurt. We’re Americans.

Nonviolent communication

Non Violent Communication 2nd EditionIn working to communicate non-violently with one another, there is a form of verbal violence that I find very difficult to steer around: the brutality of violence against logic.
 
Whilst the rest of us watch our Ps & Qs, hold our punches and bar our holds, half-wits get a free pass. Here to my mind is the Achilles heel of NVC and most mechanisms of popular consensus: the slowest common enumerator. Critical, analytic tongues are held to standards of civility, but a cowhand’s wag is excused in light of his circumstance, because it’s the best probably he can do.

By design therefore, a non-violent conversation cannot get beyond what the best arguments can prod out of a cow.

As a lesser gifted person myself, I am unable to bear fools gladly. For my benefit, I have a suggestion for an amendment to the NVC code. I’d like to insist that non-sequiturs, and other such imbecilities be considered forms of communication violence. They inflict profound violence on one’s sense of energy, time and passion. They should be as off-limits as knee-jerk retorts.

Or perhaps it would be simplest if half-wits and cows be let to eat only at the children’s table. Camaraderie among all human beings is fine for fiestas, but if there are understandings to be reached, conclusions to be drawn and work to be done, let’s excise the ne’re-do-much.

Or let’s lambast and skewer the damn imbeciles before they befuddle consensus with the rapacity of their foolish lumber.

Toxic chimp

Toxic ChimpI’ve been content to think of George Dubya as an ugly little monkey, as dangerous as he is rabid perhaps. But -and this is no joke- the comparison vastly undersells monkeys.

A recent study involving elephants recognizing themselves in mirrors made the distinction more clear. “Humans, great apes, dolphins and elephants, well known for their superior intelligence and complex social systems, are thought to possess the highest forms of empathy and altruism in the animal kingdom.” George it’s painfully obvious, and fatally obvious to too many, doesn’t score there.

Liberal Democrats, your votes will not be counted

Election fever is once again in the air. All around us we see Liberal Democrats with their yard signs and bumperstickers as the delirium builds. And once again, they will try for change by promoting their Tweedle Dees against the others guys’ TweedleDumbs. If there any content to be found, it is simply in that the Democratic Party ‘loyal oppositionists’ seem to have rather more polite candidates, as opposed to the ruder ones the Republicans run. All the election paraphernalia is generally without differentiating slogans, or even differentiating colors. Yet this is somewhat deceptive, as the opposing religious brethen have convinced themselves that this is a battle of socialism versus fascism! Yes, that’s what it is in fantasy land America. Sad to say, but both sides just go on simply ignoring that it is the corporate world that funds both these 2 political parties, and that the corporate world is not about to give up the charade that having both these parties dominating the electoral game provides.

Both groupings have constructed a paranoid view of the other. The Republicans are going to steal the vote at the machines again, shouts the liberal Democratic Party cadre. Bush is a Fascist! And the Republicans swear that Al Gore and the now silent, Michael Moore, are socialist devils. And well, Al Franken is a Judas socialist devil we suppose. The Democrats side with the ‘Islamo Fascists’, you see (if you are a true believing dittohead). So, now it is in quite in vogue to fascist-bait these days, no matter what angle you come from. Perhaps this is an Israeli idealogical import? If you’re not with us, you are against us… sort of a Moses style, religious world view. Both the liberal and conservative American religions love this stuff!

Well here’s the thing. Most people are not with either of these 2 religious camps anymore. The great American agnostic majority is beginning to form, and they don’t like the fact that their votes don’t count. The Repubilcan Right wants a Christian Republic declared, but Bush doesn’t deliver. The Democratic Party liberal wants the US out of Iraq and a stop to the bankrupting of our country through the Pentagon welfare system. And the Democratic Party hierarchy says NAY. Or whatever the sound a donkey makes? The corporations funding both parties want neither a theocracy, nor a society without ample, Pentagon based corporate welfare. So Liberal Democrats, your vote won’t count, just like the Right Wing Christian votes will not be counted, neither. Neither one of your two world views is the core values of your respective corporate funded political parties.

So why continue getting religion, if your vote won’t count, Liberals? Howard Dean, DP chair, already told you that it don’t make a difference if the Democrats do win. You heard it from the donkey’s mouth! Your votes will not be counted, and it has nothing to do with the Diebold machines. It has nothing to do with gerrymandering voter registration lists. It has nothing to do with fascism. It has all to do with corporations not listening to consumers. When you vote Demcoratic Party, you are consuming a corproate ideological product. Consider it yet another mass produced hamburger taken in. So you don’t like the secret sauce and complain to management. They are laughing at you, not changing their product line.

Big liberals going to pressure the corporate board of Democratic Party Unlimited in Gall? I just visited the Progressive Democrats of America website, and they are calling for … get this!… that the Democrats should CENSURE Bush and Cheney! Not jail him, nor even impeach him. What backbone, what pressure they apply! These liberal nuns at PDA want Dean to demand a slapping of Dick and Dubya’s wrists with the rulers! Oh such torture! Bush and Cheney must be shaking in their combat boots. lol. Well, Liberals, the Republicans will shoot you down just like so many quail! OOps, your own party will do it for them, won’t they? Ask Dean. The answer is there already.

So please get off your butts, and stop campaigning. Your vote will not be counted. Try something else.

Death of Brad Will sparks US protests against Mexican government

Tourist destinationThe murder of journalist Brad Will by Mexican government death squads in Oaxaca City last Friday, has brought out multiple US protests at Mexican consulates around the US. And once again, the international spotlight is being turned on the Mexican government like it was previously, when the Zapatistas began their uprising in Chiapas. Mexico, prodded by the US Clinton Adminstration to allow the reign of another polticial party other than the PRI, has in actuality changed not in the least. The PRI institutional dictatorship of old has now morphed into a PRI-PAN alliance for the updated dictatorship of today. A PRI-PAN alliance that conspires together to steal elections, murder off opposition, and to rape and pillage the country on behalf of the US multinational corporations.

Brad Will was an inspirational younger US radical like Rachel Corrie, who was in like fashion murdered by the Israeli military 3 1/2 years ago. Both were dedicated to helping out foreign peoples who were being repressed with the complicity and political support of our own US government. The martyrdom of both have helped open the eyes of many an American to world events that they had been ignoring. We learn, from the sacrifice of their lives, about just how evil is Amercian foreign policy. And we have learned that there are some Americans who are not complacent, but rather are involved in trying to make the world a better place.

Mexico is not a safe place, neither for American travelers nor for the Mexican people themselves. And it is kept unsafe and desperate, due to American interference into the politics of that nation. Our elites are integrally linked with the Mexican elites, and both are sorry and corrupt. And both elites are bankrupting the common folk of their respective nations through militarism, cronyism, and impunity for the corporate criminals that reign supreme in both nations. Brad Will hoped to open eyes with his independent journalism, which he did for no salary. Sadly, he became another of the many victims of Mexico’s government death squads.

Israel and Mexico hope that the Americans, Rachel Corrie and Brad Will, will be forgotten. But they won’t be. Instead, they have inspired us to do more. The Palestinians and the Native Mexican-Americans of Chiapas and Oaxaca have inspired us to resist more, also. We live in a sick world society led by our own US government, and we owe people everywhere to resist more from inside this nation itself. Let us remember the examples of Rachel Corrie and Brad Will, and not let the official media bury their stories. Thank you, ‘Democracy Now’ for your special report today on the life of Brad Will. He was an inspiring young man.

War on Terror- the boardgame

At last, an up to date replacement for our family’s RISK game. We were beginning to tire of this stodgy old war game almost as out dated as chess itself. The last time we called it quits after only some 8 1/2 hours, so when we heard about this awesome new game, we went a little bananas. And this fabulous game of stealth and strategy is actually coming out just at the perfect time! It is, in fact, the perfect Christian Christmas gift! Mail one to friends and family, along with a fruitcake. You can play like the pros do, too! So have some fun, and go play War on Terror- the boardgame!

Let the dead bury their dead

I know it’s Monday and I should be toiling away at my job, thinking about bringing home a large rasher of bacon, double-checking the kids’ Halloween costumes, deciding what to do about the brand new fake fingernails I bit off in a weekend fit of pique.

For some reason I am perseverating on the subject of death, especially the death of a child. I watched an interesting film last year about how Americans handle the dead bodies of their loved ones. I, of course, had never questioned how we do things until I saw this film and realized that we are one of the only cultures that whisks away our corpses, tags ’em, drains ’em, pumps ’em full of some other liquid, gives ’em a bad hairdo, an even worse makeup job, dresses them in their least favorite outfit, sticks them in an incredibly expensive and garish casket and dumps ’em in the ground really really quickly. In short, we turn our dead over to complete strangers, nearly instantaneously, and by the time we lay them to rest, still firmly in the denial phase, they bear no resemblance to the one we’ve known and loved. We give ourselves no real opportunity to grieve, to come to terms, to “give up” the body and take hold of the spirit.

Other cultures allow the deceased to take up residence in the living room. Propped up, perhaps, in their favorite chair, dressed in their normal clothes. Friends, colleagues, family are able to hang around, to view the body, to hold the hand, stroke the hair, feel the pain and the loss. I understand that after a few days, as the cheeks and eyes have become sunken and there is no sense of life whatsoever, those of us left behind are able to make peace with the fact that this body IS NOT our little boy or girl or father or mother or sister or brother. This is, in fact, a shell. An earthly vessel. We have time to grieve the loss, to let go of the body and embrace the spirit.

Of course, the funeral business, just like the wedding business or any of the other “ritual” businesses that are so ingrained in American culture, doesn’t want us to consider anything besides the norm. Five thousand dollar caskets are expected because, after all, we loved Uncle Joe and want only the best for him. What a fucking scam.

Note to anyone who knows and loves me……When I die, please choose a very simple pine casket, perhaps lightly distressed just for effect, dress me in my flannel pajamas, put my hair in pigtails. Give people a few days to come by to look at me, hold my hand, tell me how they’ve loved me, how they’ve hated me, whatever they’d like to say.

When everyone has had enough time to comprehend that the body is not me, that I’m waltzing with Jesus, or dirty dancing with Satan, or whatever people do in the afterlife, dump me in a hole that you’ve all dug together in the back yard. That would make me happy.

Brad Will presente

The city of Oaxaca, Mexico is now under direct military assault. For days now death squads have been killing the people there who have been demanding the dismissal of the state governor, who is the guiding force and organizer behind that state’s death squad activity. One of those victims, murdered just a couple of days ago, was an American reporter for IndyMedia, Brad Will. He was dedicated to bringing to light, the fight for justice of the Mexican people against the US supported Mexican dictatorship. See the last film he ran as he was shot down in cold blood: Brad Will- Presente .

One might ask, just what does Oaxaca have anything to do with us here in Colorado Springs? The answer is simply that for us to intelligently judge our own government as it builds a Border Wall and talks tough on Hispanic immigration to this country, we need to know what is going on inside Mexico itself, and other Latin countries, too, like Nicaragua. And just what has been the role of our own government in its long standing propping up of Mexico’s institutional dictatorship? It has not been a very pretty story, and this history says a lot about how little our own elites actually have any democratic inclinations of their own.

For more info on the current situation in Oaxaca and Brad Will, go to either Narco News or IndyMedia

Activism home grown

My siblings and I frequently talk about our “activist” upbringing. We grew up with parents who walked their talk. Our mom hung out with the radical nuns protesting around Rocky Flats. And I can’t remember a single Thanksgiving where we didn’t have a couple of homeless men sitting at our dinner table. Our parents introduced them by name and we were expected to be gracious and make interesting conversation.

Then there was Robin, a retarded young man who was obsessed with a pair of moccasins that we had in our front closet. My mom made a rule that the front door be always open so that Robin could come in for his moccasins any time he wanted. As a mother, I question the wisdom of this now but, at the time, we just accepted that at any time Robin might walk in and open our front closet. It wasn’t anything we worried about….just another one of mom’s people.

At the 1975 fall of Saigon, Divine Redeemer, our home church with hundreds of families, decided to sponsor a family fleeing Communist oppression. They asked that someone step forward to host a family of 8 people for several months. Guess who stepped forward? Much to our horror, my mom and dad did. We had 6 of our own children, aged 6 to 15, living in a small house and suddenly we had 16 people living under the same roof. They didn’t speak a word of English. We certainly didn’t speak Vietnamese. Our mom and their dad were able to communicate in broken French.

We reminisce about how our mom used to read little kid books to them, VERY LOUDLY, as though she could make them understand English if only she shouted. They used to stare at us and we back at them while she did this…all of us trying hard not to laugh.

Because my dad had been a part of the war in Viet Nam and a number of families we knew had been widowed during that war, we lost friends because of the choice we made to support this family. I didn’t understand this at all at the time. It’s taken many years for me to understand that to stand for something, anything, is to risk the wrath of those who don’t agree.

As kids, we remember it as crazy fun. We made Chef Boyardee pizzas and they chopped off the heads of weird little fish and made carrots look like flowers. We were all about the same age, they dressed weird, we dressed weird….we laughed and figured out how to communicate even without words. They showed us martial arts. We taught them to hula hoop. We laughed our asses off day after day.

Once, the 10-year-old girl, incredibly beautiful, her name was Ngoc (pronounced Nop), and I sat on the swing in the front yard. She placed her hand in front of my face, put up her index finger and said “Mot.” “Mo,” I said, knowing that she was counting. “Hai.” “Hi.” “Bah. Bon. Nam. Sau.” After she taught me to count to ten she grabbed my hand and rushed me into the living room where 15-20 people sat, always at the ready, listening to the Vietnamese singing American anthems, which was both lovely and hilarious since they didn’t really understand the words. “Ma cunry tis a vee. Swe lan a liverty.” Ngoc got everyone’s attention and suddenly 20 people were staring at me, a 14-year-old, not exactly at the age where I wanted a lot of scrutiny, and she said, encouragingly, “Mot.” I felt like throwing up but I understood that the stakes were high so with red cheeks I recited what I just learned. When I finished a loud roar went up….I swear there were even a few tears from the Vietnamese parents.

This family went on to become a success story. Ultimately, the boys, Phat, Dat and Loi, became Tony and Billy and Joey. They went to DU, studied engineering. Mom and Dad opened a successful restaurant on Federal Boulevard in Denver. The girls married Vietnamese men and carried on Vietnamese tradition on their new soil. Oddly, my two brothers married Asian women, one Vietnamese, one Thai.

This family had another baby after they came to the United States. They wanted to choose an American name to honor the country that had given them a second chance. They chose Helen. My mother’s name.

I’ve spent a lot of time over the past two decades “wasting” my time doing things that may or may not ever register on anyone’s radar. One of my inspirations has been Margaret Mead who said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” That’s what my family taught me….what I’d like to teach my own.

Is activism a waste of time?

One of the most frustating things about our society to me, is the cynical belief by most everyone in America that activism is a complete waste of time. Meanwhile, people drive mindlessly for hours on end, in essentially circles. They spend hours upon hours watching brain dead programs on TV. They waste much of their off work hours on mindless shopping for mindless products. Yet, if it comes to giving 15 minutes to some form of activism, then that’s out! How bizarre is that, to think that independent activism is a wasteful use of energy?

It’s not that people are totally inactive. They aren’t. Many spend hours at work ordered by others down to the most minute details, and are forced to follow orders or lose their paycheck. It seems that when people are off work, if they do donate their time, then they feel it is only valid if, here too, they follow orders inside well defined parameters. For example, many people will come to something like a ‘Run Against Cancer’ and volunteer a whole day for that. Why? Simply because it is an activity structured much like work, where some authority tells you what to do, and that to do it like a sheep ON THE JOB is good. You simply show up and do the job laid out for you by others. Just like at work paid by the hour.

But independent activism is different. It is uncoordinated and there is no central authority much of the time. Often, too much time is spent trying to coordinate where there is no coordination easily found. Authority is missing. It is frustrating to us Americans, since most of our ‘work’ is spent following orders. Contrary to our national ideology that we are supposedly an indivualistic society, it turns out really, that we are a nation of sheep following orders. So when the herd dog cannot be found, then we American sheep begin to panic. We get angry at the sheep next to us, and blame them for not following orders good enough. That’s even when the reality is that the sheep dog that normally drives us is drooling at the mouth and unable to stand up at all, due to being quite rabid.

So there are in reality very few people willing to do independent activism, simply because nobody amongst our companions tells us that it is a worthwhile activity. The authorities offer us no pay, and often offer us hostility instead. One of the most common things shouted out against activists if you protest against the warmaking, is “Go Get a Job!”. It infuriates other sheep when somebody is actually not doing something inside carefully prescribed parameters, like they would only do.

But it is not just those that are outright hostile, but the sea of cynicism amongst us ourselves that is even worse. Each and everyone of us is an activist of some sort, and has their own ideas of what would work. But it is almost always met by apathy, doubt, and cynicism when one tries to coordinate that particular activity with fellow supporters of the cause the activism is trying to promote. Always, it seems, there is the turn away as the others say, “No, that is just impractical. No, it accomplishes nothing.” And their counterproposals are always to follow some REAL authority figure’s orders. Just like at work. So even in circles that seemingly support independent activism, we find the same tendency to following orders that everybody has to have to survive on the job. It is usually that we are met with demands to follow some strategy that ‘liberal’ churches, or one of the offical political parties(Democratic Party), is animating.

Truth is, we have a society that uses mainly money to reward or bash us with. All activity outside ‘getting paid’ is seemingly inconsequential, and it is considered that only a fool does anything without getting paid. And by paid, I mean in emotions, too. Get the dollar, get the love. And the opposite also applies, too. Just have the authorities withhold the dollar, and you then begin to get the disdain. Keep it up too long, then you become homeless. We like to think that we are free, but in fact we are not. So that is why I try to do independent activism even as we receive the almost constant contempt for doing so. It is merely the contempt of my fellow slaves, because they don’t believe much in themselves, but rather only believe in following orders. What a shame, but trying to radically change our society before it destroys us all is worthwhile, even if at times we make mistakes in best how to do it. We have to at least make the effort to stop ‘the authorities’ from heading us down such a destructive road.

Child

RooI was holding my little boy (at almost 9, not so little anymore) on my lap the other day and I was looking at his hand. His long fingers, still slightly pudgy, tapering to perfect little fingernails. I took off his sock and looked at his little foot, again with clear beautiful skin and perfect tiny toenails. He, of course, thought I was weird for doing this but my thoughts were, “What if I never got to see this again? What if I could never hold this warm little hand, or look into these lovely clear green eyes? Or touch these sweet adorable freckles?” I’m not sure how I’d get my head off the pillow each day.

I once knew a woman who lost a young child to an accident. She held the toddler in her arms for hours after his death and when the nurses finally insisted that she give up the body she asked if she could undress him so she could look at him one last time. She said she wanted to memorize every inch of him so she’d never forget. Especially his little fingers and toes.

The mothers and fathers in war-torn countries encounter this nightmare every day. They’re forced to live with the horror and the guilt of not having protected their babies from harm. Their children become statistics that are reported to us daily, but, believe me, as a parent I can tell you that a child is not a statistic. Even a grown up child.

Oppose war…any day, any place, any time….It’s not worth it.

Highway shoulder felons

Adopt-a-RoadA close friend of mine wants to give more visibility to his grassroots political group by adopting a highway. In exchange for a small sign giving credit to the West End Democrats, we plan to don safety vests and one morning every month be mistaken for roadside chain labor.

Although “mistaken” might be a misnomer.

What an incredible abuse of the local resident! Adopt-A-Road. They’ve been doing it for ten years already because “it is not possible to keep up with the trash that thoughtless people…” Slash the budget for highway cleanup, then sell little signs on the side of the road in exchange for the priviledge of doing the cleaning up. That’s privatization, shift the burden to the citizen, no one to complain but the public.

And what a time to shift the responsibility! Half the brochure about the Highway Cleanup Program details the further complication of Meth-lab refuse. Amateur Meth-amphetamine laboratory rats know better than to throw their tell-tale byproducts into their dumpster. The only option for discrete waste disposal is out the car window while driving where no one sees you, on the highway. The Meth-Lab explosion has produced a highway litter epidemic. It’s less that the discarded chemicals are needed by the police for evidence, It’s more that they are toxic and endanger the garbage handlers, in this case volunteers in day-glo safety jackets trying to do a good deed.

It used to be there was a budget for these tasks. We built the highways and intended to maintain them. Somewhere along the line, between tax-cutting and graft, the public was handed back the shovel.
The highway cleanup scam looks to me like it shares the purpose of latrine duty. Do the work of untouchables and be seen doing it.

A good thing for the visibility of the West End Dems?

Afghanistan, where cowardly US military is deliberately murdering children

Every week now, it seems that the US puppet president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, is ‘investigating’ another tragic ‘accidental bombing of civilians. He demands that these ‘accidents’ stop. But these are not accidents, and Karzai knows this well, as every other Afghan must now know it well, too. An accident occurs once or twice, but an intentional strategy of targeting civilians becomes constant, as have become the US bombings of Afghan civilians in the more remote regions of that country.
 
The strategy is ‘to destroy the sea that the guerrilla fighter must swim in’, as it was once explained in the Vietnam War era, years ago. In short, the quickest, easiest way to combat the enemy, is simply to target his wife and family, including the kids. So the cowardly US-led NATO army of occupation in Afghanistan, is systematically doing that instead of engaging the enemy on the ground, where politically dangerous casualties might occur. Bomb the Afghan women and children in their homes from up high, if there is even the remotest military resistance to US forces in their general neighborhood.

This is the same strategy that the US government formerly used in SE Asia, some 35 to 45 years previously. It is the same strategy that the NAZIs used when they pushed into East Europe against the Russians during the Second World War. In their pathway, they razed to the ground villages, towns, and even entire cities. It is even the same strategy that Mafia gangsters use against their opponents. It is the same strategy that the US fed Colombian death squads use, too. They go into villages with chain saws, and cut people up before their own family members. Basically, this is government sponsored terrorism against civilians, and the US is committing internationally recognized war crimes by targeting civilians instead of the armed combatants they face. The strategy, is to target the families of combatants, and not those who might actually be able to inflict return casualties upon the invading and occupying, barbarian armed forces.

see Hamid Karzai orders investigation

We expect this cowardice from the cowardly US military commanders and chiefs, like Dubya and Dick Cheney, Donald and Alberto, who all get great glee out of torturing US-held POWs. And we expect it from the US grunts, too. They mainly just want to get out alive, and don’t much care who gets hurt, as long as it is not themselves. Innocent children bombed as they play, or as they sleep? Well who cares? Not the uniformed soldier cowards, nor their leaders. They are much like the Israeli troops, another cowardly group of soldiers, that distributed hundreds of thousands of cluster bombes in the last 3 days of their Lebanon vacation. Early Christmas for the children? Well the uniformed forces of occupying armies don’t care. They are simply cowards who want to get back home whole, and they will follow cowardly orders, from cowardly leaders.

But what of the press? The press barely even reports Afghanistan these days to US readers. And when they do, they cowardly hide away the nature of what they are reporting on. To the US press, the Afghanistan fighting is a NATO conflict, and they will report whole articles without even once using the letters, ‘US’ or ‘USA’! Let’s keep our jobs, and let’s keep the whole Afghanistan issue away from the American public, who are too cowardly to actually think about what they are doing to that poor country.

And what about the US peaceniks’? They are cowardly, too. 99% of them vote for the Democratic Party, and talking about Afghanistan is too embarrasing to the top party hacks. So, shhhhhh….. Keep quiet. The recent AFSC tour of their ‘Eyes Wide Open’ exhibit was basically a ‘Mouths Tightly Closed’ exhibit of their AFSC political cowardice when it comes to Afghanistan. They should remember and be ashamed of this, when the Quaker leaders are inside the voter booths pushing the levers for the Democratic Party candidates. They could have put boots out for the US soldiers killed in Afghanistan. But they didn’t. They could have placed out shoes of Afghani civilians killed by US and allied troops, but they didn’t.

But the other liberal peaceniks from the other liberal churches are equally as cowardly. When was the last time one saw a sign saying, Get Out of Afghanistan Now? All the talk is of Iraq instead. The liberal megawebsite, commondreams, carries bumperstickers calling for Get out of Iraq, No war with Iran, and even No War with Syria. But Get Out of Afghanistan? Not a chance! More political cowardness. It would push the Democratic Party hacks too hard. Yet our country is now deliberately bombing civilian children in that country, and doing it routinely, too.

It is political cowardice to bomb huts full of empoverished women and children noncombatants, rather than fight on the ground below against the men. But that’s what an imperialist army is full of. They are full of cowards who want to kill people like they are playing some video game back in the suburbs at home. But it, too, is cowardly for the US Peace Movement not to demand that our government get its troops out of Afghanistan with the same force we demand it get out of Iraq. We are betraying the children of that country, who are being slaughtered down like cattle. Yes, we have a cowardly antiwar movement in the US that wants only to concentrate on ‘Iraq’, and getting their cowardly Democratic Party leaders elected to office once again. Let’s hope that liberals can grow some backbone, and start opposing this war, too. Otherwise, the peace crowd is just as bad as ‘our troops’, who mainly want to kill from afar and from up high, with no possilbe repercussions to their cowardly, uniformed selves. Those that don’t mind killing innocent children, just so that they can claim a high ‘enemy’ body count.

Waterboarding not dunking

Click here to see the actual waterboardVice-president Cheney has just explicitly admitted that US interrogators use waterboarding as a method of interrogation. The decision to use it is a “no brainer” Cheney says, it’s not torture, referring to the practice as more like dunking.

Probably we all conjure images of the wooden see-saw at the water’s edge, where the Puritans sought confessions from witches. Others I guess envision the dunking booth at the school fair.

Neither would be correct. David Corn features an updated description of waterboarding, sent him from Jonah Blank, a former senior editor of US News and World Report. Blank attached pictures from the Tuol Sleng Prison in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, now a museum commemorating the Khymer Rouge attrocities. It’s the former site of a notorious torture facility. Of the many torture methods used by the Khymer Rouge, only two instruments are diplayed to represent the worst. Both involve water torture. One of them is the waterboard.

Water torture goes way back, and Dick Cheney of Halliburton and of the USofA are upholding its fine tradition.

Online ‘Eyes Wide Open’ exhibit Boothill

Eyes Wide Open, the price paid. Since it was just a week or so ago that the exhibit passed through our town, I thought that I would post this for all those who were unable to see it then. Unfortunately for Americans, there is no exhibit, that I know of, of the 1,400,000+ Iraqi shoes ‘paid.’ Boothill

The movement against illegal immigration

Oh those illegal immigrants! Something has got to be done now to stop this. My buddy, Jeff Henry of the Colorado Springs Minutemen, would be proud of what this town did to stop this plague from continuing to infect them. ‘Infect’, that’s something Jeff’s worried about coming from illegal immigrants. He’s a very clean Anglo dude, who washes his hands each time he goes to the bathroom or engages in other functions with his privates.
 
So Patrick, uh I mean Jeff… Henry makes it his hobby to warn folks that their All American gringo kids might get infected form Mexican kids (without documents) infecting our All-American public schools with their germs. He’s worried about National Security and public health he is. What a civic minded dude. Well, Jeff, stand up and applaud Kondopoga for how they handled their illegal immigrant problem, when they got overrun by hordes of this illegal vermin from the South.

Johnny Got His Gun

by Dalton TrumboJohnny Got His Gun is probably the most horrifying antiwar book ever written. And it is more pertinent today than even when it was written.
 
Still, any American English literature teacher at any US university might risk his/ her position for having it on her/his list of required reads. Here are excerpts from the book Johnny Got His Gun.

Enlist – accelerate your lifespan

Can you believe this is the new JOIN THE NAVY slogan?Can you believe this new recruitment slogan: Join the Navy: accelerate your life TM? It looks good on video with a rapid progression of tracking shots of incredibly busy warfare technicians. Sign up and before you know it you’ll be dropped into the thick of the action. Maybe your grave as well. Accelerate your lifespan TM.

Halloween and What Would Doctor Dobson Do?

I have just been visiting over at the Focus on Family website and am relieved to find that Dr. Dobson approves on allowing children to go Trick or Treating in the neighborhood. As long as they don’t go as black cats, witches, devils, or Satan himself. Nothing occult, he says. And certainly don’t allow your little ones to go in drag.
 
This is a relief to me, since too many of our kids have been finding themselves shuffled off to shopping malls and churches, on what used to be the best kid Holiday of them all. Just finding a neighborhood with Trick or Treating kids on the prowl has become increasingly more difficult for parents with kids. So thank you, Dr. Dobson, for taking this particularly controversial stand. Next we know, you’ll be encouraging parents to play penny ante poker with their kids, and teaching them to dance with the other sex without a Bible in hand. Praise the Lord!

A Veterans Day wheelchair parade

Colorado Springs Veterans Day ParadeThis year’s Colorado Springs Veteran’s Day Parade falls on Veteran’s Day. The theme is “a nation at war, a community of support.” Doesn’t sound much to do with honoring veterans. Are we holding an active-duty support-the-war parade on honor-the-Veteran’s Day?
 
There will be 92 entries and five helium balloons. There are no entry fees because the city business community is so supportive of our soldiers over there, fighting to make the war safe for the contractors. Lots of military profiteers in Colorado Springs.

Organizers say that fully half of the participants in the parade will be veterans or active duty soldiers. Fully half? What are the other half? By my calculations, that means that there will be more non-soldiers and non-ex-soldiers than veterans. In the Veteran’s Day Parade.

I have an idea about how to involve lots more veterans. The unseen, underappreciated veterans. The veterans not usually invited to join any reindeer games. This year let’s invite the disabled veterans. And since the focus is this nation at war, this war, let’s honor the freshly disabled. This year let’s have a Veteran’s Day wheelchair parade.

I pictured it last year, maybe a handful of malcontents, youthful Iraq War Veterans wearing disaffected-youth garb accessorized with the odd army cloth article, walking with their canes or without, challenging parade watchers to look at them. I imagined it too complex an antiwar statement for most.

This year there could be over 3,000 wounded Iraq War vets from Colorado Springs alone. There would be many more if you count the spiritually and mentally disabled, the post traumatic sufferers, and the yet to be, the terminally unabled. Forming a sea of true veterans, of youth sacrificed to war, in a mass to large to look in the eye.

Our city’s rejection of the EWO memorial, clarified

May I address City Staff Liaison Bob Stovall’s assertion in the Gazette that, contrary to what was reported, the City of Colorado Springs was willing to host the Eyes Wide Open 2,757 boot memorial? I represented the Justice and Peace Commission in asking the city for the use of Memorial Park. The Park and Recreation Department declined our request, telling us Memorial Park was unavailable because of previously scheduled football leagues. Since it was the PPJPC’s opinion that the first and only visit of the EWO traveling Iraq War memorial might merit relocating a couple days of regular football games, we approached the City Council to prevail upon the park supervisors on our behalf. This the City Council would not do.

In subsequent pronouncements Mayor Lionel Rivera tried to clarify that the city was not opposed to the memorial, only that its organizers needed to go through the proper channels like everyone else. This was bureaucratic doublespeak, like pretending to be accommodating while your subordinates keep the doors locked shut until it is too late. I found it also insulting that a national effort to highlight the sacrifices of America’s men and women in Iraq would be stonewalled and accorded no greater consideration than that given weekly football games.

EWO at Colorado CollegeNow of course it is safe for the city to claim the parks department had penciled us in. In fact we were told no and we had to proceed with our backup choice, Colorado College. Memorial Park was where I saw the traveling Vietnam Memorial and where I felt the Iraq memorial would have been most accessible and most appreciated. All along, Memorial Park was where we hoped the city would accommodate the memory of our soldiers.

Oliver North and Bizarro World

Oliver North is in Nicaragua advising voters there not to vote for Daniel Ortega for President this November 5. He is one of a series of benevolent GOP thugs who have gone down there the last couple of weeks to help ‘bring democracy’ to that country. And part of democracy, according to the GOP, is to intervene in the affairs of foreign, and supposedly sovereign, states.
 
Here is what MSN says that he told Nicaraguans…. Ollie told them that they had suffered enough from the influence of outsiders! Now that’s Bizarro World! He was referring to Hugo Chavez, and not the GOP of the USA, of course. But it’s too bad that the Nicaraguans can’t arrest this war criminal and have him shot. In fact, it’s too bad that Americans can’t do the same. Our national security certainly is not helped by allowing terrorists like Ollie to run loose.

Your Homeland Security Bill

A friend and I were talking about how to make the American taxpayer take more ownership of our nation’s outrages over the seas. By making him pay for it. It’s not a new idea, to mandate that government not dip into the deficit to fund its wars –burrow furiously is more like it, with an earth mover– but here’s a novel application. Let’s make every expense of war come straight out of the taxpayer’s pocket.
 
We call it the Homeland Security Bill. Not the Homeland Security Bill, but your Homeland Security Bill.

YHSB would be a bill that comes every month to you, like your electric bill or cable bill or credit card minimum payment. This bill would be for the costs of war, calculated up to the minute, and prorated across our population in whatever fashion seems fair, each expected to pay their share.

And the costs should be itemized. A new venture against a new foe? Additional R&D overhead. New medical procedures to treat the head trauma injuries of our wounded troopers? Elective of course. As would be alms for the poor invadees.

The Homeland Security Bill should be effective no matter which cheerleading team you are on. If you are pro-war, then you get to feel pro-war. “By Golly, it’s my war and I’m going to pay for it!”