MNN Akwesasne Womens Fire Needs Help

UPDATE/VIDEO: AKWESASNE WOMENS FIRE NEEDS HELP TO STOP GUNS

MNN. July 1, 2009. On Monday June 1st 2009 the Canadian Border Service Agency was to take up arms at the border crossing in the middle of Akwesasne of Mohawk Nation Territory. The people protested. At 11:30 pm on May 31st the CBSA guards abandoned their post and left. Since then, we have peacefully camped on the grounds next to the facility. This is the first video on the ongoing events in the camp and the people.

http://www.youtube.com:80/watch?v=cQQNz0FKCKI:



No band councilors showed up. They have been intimidated by the government, are afraid and caved in. It’s a powerful grassroots Peoples movement with no support from any government.

NEEDED: Funds would be greatly appreciated to keep up our tents: Please go to www.akwesasnewomensfire.com and donate online. For donations by check or money order please send to: Akwesasne Womens Fire, 936 Island Rd, Akwesasne ON K6H 5R7

Urgently needed are life jackets for the crossings and fuel for the boats. Your donations are appreciated of food, can goods, general supplies, non-perishable food, flashlights and batteries, lanterns, coal oil lamps, bug spray or zapper, regular toiletries – toilet paper, paper towels, soap, laundry, etc.

For further information please contact: Rosemarie White 613-933-8784; Veronica Cook; 915-886-0210; Neddy Thompson 613-577-4647; and Nona Benedict 613-551-5421 (c) 613-938-8145 (h) nonabena@yahoo. com

The caravan was greeted by an emotional welcoming ceremony and social. The people were overwhelmed by the sight of the caravan approaching over the International Bridge onto Kawenoke on Cornwall Island. We will keep it peaceful. The Customs Building is being maintained. Please send your messages of support to nonabena@yahoo. com

Please keep supporting us. The Chocktaw Nation of Oklahoma is coming to bring supplies and to meet the people.

Two Indigenous men hitchhiked from Vancouver. Jayson Fleury said that we are being eliminated by guns. We came to support our brothers and sisters to stop the genocide of our people. His sister ended up as one of Picton’s victims on the farm where dozens of our women were murdered. We will never accept outsiders carrying guns in their midst.

Old videos of gunfire 20 years ago are being used as part of the training of the CBSA that work on the island, completely ignoring the peace that has since prevailed. They probably watch old films where a cowboy shoots one bullet and knocks a whole tribe off their horses. The blue-eyed fat Indians with Brooklyn accents were played by Italians and others. Prejudice is being promoted by showing these kind of old movies to scare the CBSA.

Kahentinetha MNN Mohawk Nation News, www.mohawknationnews.com kahentinetha2@ yahoo.com Note: Go to MNN “BORDER” category for more stories; New MNN Books Available now! Purchase t-shirts, mugs and more at our CafePressStore http://www.cafepres s.com/mohawknews; Subscribe to MNN for breaking news updates http://.mohawknationnews. com/news/ subscription. php; Sign Women Title Holders petition! http://www.ipetitio ns.com/petition/ Iroquois

Pair planned to give $500,000 bursary for non-native students

What? Is there a competition going on for who can be the biggest white settler asshole? If so, the University of Saskatchewan alumna in the story below takes this week's prize.

Hat tip to AK 48 for the link.

Pair planned to give $500,000 bursary for non-native students

By David Hutton, Canwest News ServiceMay 13, 2009Comments (82)

SASKATOON -- The University of Saskatchewan has turned down a $500,000 endowment from an alumnus who requested the money be awarded only to "non-aboriginal students." The university said the proposal would violate university policy and provincial human- rights law.

"Our university policy states an award cannot be created to exclude a disadvantaged group . . . and aboriginal persons would be considered a disadvantaged group requiring special action," said Heather Magotiaux, a university vice-president. "The wider a scholarship can be applied the better we like it." The rejected donor contacted the Saskatoon StarPhoenix but would only speak on a condition of anonymity out of fear of negative publicity; both she and her husband work in public-sector jobs.

"I really want to raise this issue but not at the expense of my own personal safety," the woman said.

Designating the bursary for non-aboriginal students only was not a form of racism, she argued.

"In my view, aboriginals are basically taken care of," the 57-year-old nursing graduate said. "I wanted to leave an award to someone who was just like me, who was struggling and could really use this money.

"This isn't a racist thing, it's a fairness thing. It's just what I want to do with my money." The couple argued that people of aboriginal ancestry have several awards designated for them, so she should have the right to allot the donation to someone who isn't of aboriginal ancestry. Many First Nations students have their tuition covered by their bands, she said.

Magotiaux said the university gets such requests "occasionally." There's a lot of misconceptions regarding funding for aboriginal students, Magotiaux said.

"Funding for aboriginal students is not as robust as people assume it to be," she said. "We want more aboriginal students in a wider number of programs." The alumnus said she struggled financially through college and university and incurred major student loan debt when she graduated in the early 1990s.

When asked why she wouldn't then be sympathetic to a student of any background who doesn't have the means to afford post-secondary education, she said aboriginal students, in particular, are more likely to have an opportunity to receive a scholarship or other benefits.

"All I'm asking for is fairness," she said. "I think there is an unequal playing field . . . I want to reduce the barriers for non-aboriginal students who don't expect or receive benefits."

What do you think?

Tell us by e-mail at provletters@theprovince.com, or by fax at 604-605-2223. Please include your name and address.

© Copyright (c) The Province

Wednesday Song: How Do I Feel This Good Sober?

So, yeah... I'm layin' low, enjoying my Spring. There are some new things happening in my life right now that have my undivided attention.

This Pink song is on the radio a lot lately. I've known enough drunks in my day that it's meaningful.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tQUsenjMmo

Rupert Murdoch: "The Internet Will Soon Be Over"

"Murdoch’s newspapers and TV networks, which include Fox News and the Asian Star Network, have seen profits plummet from $216m to just $7m year-on-year. MySpace.com is also floundering despite a recent move to replace the company’s entire management staff."

Rupert Murdoch: "The Internet Will Soon Be Over"

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Thursday, May 7, 2009

Billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch gave a strange response when asked about plans for mainstream news websites to charge for content, declaring, “The current days of the internet will soon be over.”

He was making reference to the fact that corporate media websites cannot continue to survive under their current failing business model.

The establishment media is dying and advertising revenue has plummeted as people turn to blogs and the alternative media for their news in an environment of corporate lies and spin.

This has forced sectors of the corporate media to charge the dwindling number of loyal readers they have left for news content, a practice which is set to become widespread according to Murdoch. This will only send more people over to the alternative media as the old organs of de facto state-controlled propaganda wither and die.

“Asked whether he envisaged fees at his British papers such as the Times, the Sunday Times, the Sun and the News of the World, (Murdoch) replied: “We’re absolutely looking at that,” reports the Guardian. “Taking questions on a conference call with reporters and analysts, he said that moves could begin “within the next 12 months‚” adding: “The current days of the internet will soon be over.”

Murdoch’s newspapers and TV networks, which include Fox News and the Asian Star Network, have seen profits plummet from $216m to just $7m year-on-year. MySpace.com is also floundering despite a recent move to replace the company’s entire management staff.

It was all but over for the Boston Globe this week, following a threat to close the 137-year-old publication after net losses of $85 million this year alone. Only a last minute cost-cutting agreement on behalf of its owner, The New York Times Company, and The Boston Newspaper Guild, saved the newspaper.

(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)

Rupert Murdoch: Internet Will Soon Be Over obama 340x169

But it’s not just establishment newspapers that are struggling to survive - social networking websites like Twitter and corporate online video giant You Tube are also deep in the red. Apparently, paying out millions in server fees for half the population of the planet to watch clips of cute puppies isn’t a sustainable business model.

This is why You Tube is being forced to pursue lucrative partnerships with giant production studios and broadcasters, at the expense of user generated content which has been relegated to a sub-section of its website, taking the “You” out of You Tube altogether. Content that may be deemed harmful to You Tube’s corporate agenda and its multi-million dollar partnership deals, like The Alex Jones Channel, is being systematically erased from You Tube’s website under the pretext of flimsy copyright infringement claims.

The jig is up for the corporate media. If they continue to allow free access to their content they will go out of business because there’s not enough advertising revenue coming in, whereas if they charge for content they will lose a huge chunk of their audience and their influence in shaping the news agenda will wane completely.

This is the price the corporate media has paid for lying, spinning and obfuscating on behalf of the virulently corrupt power elite and expecting the population to eat it up without question.

The corporate media monopoly has terminal cancer and they are losing their power, which is why they are aggressively supporting moves to phase out the old Internet altogether and replace it with “Internet 2,” a highly regulated and controlled electronic Berlin wall, where alternative voices will be silenced and giant corporate propaganda organs will dominate once again.

This what Murdoch is really getting at when he assures us that, “The Internet will soon be over” and it’s down to us to stop that agenda from being realized.

A New Bromance For Brennan?

Just when I think Chuckles the Clown has finally given me as much batshit-crazy material as a Fox News reporter can, he goes and runs the 2009 Cherry Creek Sneak with some dude in a Broward County (FL) Sheriff's t-shirt. Is this his new body guard or a budding BRO-mance? The two are so tied at the hip, they even crossed the finish line at exactly the same time.

So who is the Mystery Dude at Brennan's sweaty, greasy side? Can he be why Chuckles has donned the little black dress of obsessed Colorado joggers everywhere - spandex running tights? And what manner of body-nazi hypocrisy led pudgy-phobic Chuckles to believe he should be wearing tights when packing a spare tire like the one around his waist? Gee, Charlie. Drink much?

A quick search on the Mystery Dude's bib number reveals him to be Michael Romano. A google search found this article in the Denver Biz Journal, which reports that Romano is a former Rocky Mountain News reporter (well, aren't they all?) who now does PR pimp work for the Catholic Church via Catholic Health Initiatives. No surprise werewolf Brennan would be running with a man who supports the forced breeding of women via the Catholic Church's anti-abortion and anti-birth control policies. Brennan, afterall, once kept pornographic pinups in his cube at work, doing his part to help further the degradation of women as sex objects - a key component in forced breeding.

Or is Brennan getting sweaty with Romano in hopes of a near-future job in PR? (And we all know what a public relations genius Charles is.) A quick review of Fox 31 KDVRs website shows them to be mighty dependent on AP stories now that the Rocky is toast. Hell, AP's work is half the stories on the front page! Can the blessed end of all things Fox 31 be near?

Still... one almost has to feel sorry for Charles (almost). It must be really hard to live in a patriarchical culture that promotes the lie, via phallocentric porn, that women are satisfied by well-endowed men, when Chickie's running tights clearly reveal he isn't one. You know, Chuck. If you would just do more to fight patriarchy, you would not have to feel so inadequate.

Cuz I really do hate to turn patriarchy back on a fucker and make him feel inadequate. Really.

Point. Giggle. Snark.

I Told You So

Carrie Underwood's version of a Randy Travis classic "I Told You So."

Untold Stories about Somalia Pirates - European ships dump Nuclear Waste into Somalia Ocean

Untold Stories about Somalia Pirates - European ships dump Nuclear Waste into Somalia Ocean

Posted by admin
April 12, 2009

In 1991, the government of Somalia - in the Horn of Africa - collapsed. Its 9 million people have been teetering on starvation ever since - and many of the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country’s food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.

Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died.

Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the U.N. envoy to Somalia, tells me: “Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury - you name it.” Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to “dispose” of cheaply. When I asked Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: “Nothing. There has been no cleanup, no compensation and no prevention.”

At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia’s seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish stocks by over-exploitation - and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300 million worth of tuna, shrimp, lobster and other sea life is being stolen every year by vast trawlers illegally sailing into Somalia’s unprotected seas.

The local fishermen have suddenly lost their livelihoods, and they are starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: “If nothing is done, there soon won’t be much fish left in our coastal waters.”

This is the context in which the men we are calling “pirates” have emerged. Everyone agrees they were ordinary Somalian fishermen who at first took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least wage a “tax” on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coast Guard of Somalia - and it’s not hard to see why.

Keep reading here

You are being lied to about pirates

by Johann Hari

Somali pirate “ships” are small, but the ships they seize are huge. They held one gigantic tanker for months until ransom was paid.

Who imagined that in 2009, the world’s governments would be declaring a new War on Pirates? As you read this, the British Royal Navy - backed by the ships of more than two dozen nations, from the U.S. to China - is sailing into Somalian waters to take on men we still picture as parrot-on-the-shoulder pantomime villains. They will soon be fighting Somalian ships and even chasing the pirates onto land, into one of the most broken countries on earth.

But behind the arrr-me-hearties oddness of this tale, there is an untold scandal. The people our governments are labeling as “one of the great menaces of our times” have an extraordinary story to tell - and some justice on their side.

Pirates have never been quite who we think they are. In the “golden age of piracy” - from 1650 to 1730 - the idea of the pirate as the senseless, savage thief that lingers today was created by the British government in a great propaganda heave. Many ordinary people believed it was false: Pirates were often rescued from the gallows by supportive crowds. Why? What did they see that we can’t?

In his book “Villains of All Nations,” the historian Marcus Rediker pores through the evidence to find out. If you became a merchant or navy sailor then - plucked from the docks of London’s East End, young and hungry - you ended up in a floating wooden Hell. You worked all hours on a cramped, half-starved ship, and if you slacked off for a second, the all-powerful captain would whip you with the cat o’ nine tails. If you slacked consistently, you could be thrown overboard. And at the end of months or years of this, you were often cheated of your wages.

Pirates were the first people to rebel against this world. They mutinied against their tyrannical captains - and created a different way of working on the seas. Once they had a ship, the pirates elected their captains, and made all their decisions collectively. They shared their bounty out in what Rediker calls “one of the most egalitarian plans for the disposition of resources to be found anywhere in the 18th century.”

They even took in escaped African slaves and lived with them as equals. The pirates showed “quite clearly - and subversively - that ships did not have to be run in the brutal and oppressive ways of the merchant service and the Royal navy.” This is why they were popular, despite being unproductive thieves.

The words of one pirate from that lost age - a young British man called William Scott - should echo into this new age of piracy. Just before he was hanged in Charleston, South Carolina, he said: “What I did was to keep me from perishing. I was forced to go a-pirating to live.”

In 1991, the government of Somalia - in the Horn of Africa - collapsed. Its 9 million people have been teetering on starvation ever since - and many of the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country’s food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.

Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died.

Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the U.N. envoy to Somalia, tells me: “Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury - you name it.” Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to “dispose” of cheaply. When I asked Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: “Nothing. There has been no cleanup, no compensation and no prevention.”

At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia’s seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish stocks by over-exploitation - and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300 million worth of tuna, shrimp, lobster and other sea life is being stolen every year by vast trawlers illegally sailing into Somalia’s unprotected seas.

The local fishermen have suddenly lost their livelihoods, and they are starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: “If nothing is done, there soon won’t be much fish left in our coastal waters.”

This is the context in which the men we are calling “pirates” have emerged. Everyone agrees they were ordinary Somalian fishermen who at first took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least wage a “tax” on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coast Guard of Somalia - and it’s not hard to see why.

In a surreal telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali, said their motive was “to stop illegal fishing and dumping in our waters … We don’t consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas.” William Scott would understand those words.

No, this doesn’t make hostage-taking justifiable, and yes, some are clearly just gangsters - especially those who have held up World Food Program supplies. But the “pirates” have the overwhelming support of the local population for a reason. The independent Somalian news site WardherNews conducted the best research we have into what ordinary Somalis are thinking - and it found 70 percent “strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defense of the country’s territorial waters.”

One of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali, said their motive was “to stop illegal fishing and dumping in our waters … We don’t consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas.”

During the revolutionary war in America, George Washington and America’s founding fathers paid pirates to protect America’s territorial waters, because they had no navy or coast guard of their own. Most Americans supported them. Is this so different?

Did we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches, paddling in our nuclear waste, and watch us snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome? We didn’t act on those crimes - but when some of the fishermen responded by disrupting the transit corridor for 20 percent of the world’s oil supply, we begin to shriek about “evil.” If we really want to deal with piracy, we need to stop its root cause - our crimes - before we send in the gunboats to root out Somalia’s criminals.

The story of the 2009 war on piracy was best summarized by another pirate, who lived and died in the fourth century BC. He was captured and brought to Alexander the Great, who demanded to know “what he meant by keeping possession of the sea.” The pirate smiled and responded: “What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you, who do it with a great fleet, are called emperor.”

Once again, our great imperial fleets sail in today - but who is the robber?

Johann Hari is a writer for the Independent newspaper. He has reported from Iraq, Israel/ Palestine, the Congo, the Central African Republic, Venezuela, Peru and the U.S., and his journalism has appeared in publications all over the world. To contact him, email johann@johannhari.com or visit his website at JohannHari.com. This column previously appeared in the Independent and Huffington Post, where the following postscript was added:

Postscript: Some commentators seem bemused by the fact that both toxic dumping and the theft of fish are happening in the same place - wouldn’t this make the fish contaminated? In fact, Somalia’s coastline is vast, stretching 3,300km (over 2,000 miles). Imagine how easy it would be - without any coast guard or army - to steal fish from Florida and dump nuclear waste on California, and you get the idea. These events are happening in different places but with the same horrible effect: death for the locals and stirred-up piracy. There’s no contradiction.

Ward Churchill Wins His Wrongful Termination Case

Former University of Colorado Professor Ward Churchill holds up a dollar bill and shouts "Here's the dollar" to the audience after he was awarded $1 in damages from the school in his trial in Denver on Thursday. Photo by Paul Aiken / The Camera / April 2, 2009

Huzzah! to the Good Professor!

Oh, and Charlie Brennan (of the now defunct Rocky Mountain News, which led this hateful attempt at character assassination in the first place), please go fuck yourself forthwith - with the largest rolled up newspaper you can find. Bad dog! You have always been a loser and a coward and you always will be. You committed a war crime against the people when you enabled fascist fucks like Governor Owens and CU to BREAK THE LAW in punishing Churchill for exercising free speech. The Constitution protects his right to do that, and by giving Owens and his aparatchik ilk a forum, YOU enabled their crime. Treasonous little shit, ain't cha Chuckie?

Today you and all your witch-hunting scum have gone down in much deserved flames. Prepare to be forever remembered for your traitorous lies, jackass. I own your name now and you're toast.

We won! We won! We won! OH. GOD. JOY! We won! Thank you, Dear Jury of the young. You are all our heroes today.

Churchill wins his case, awarded $1 in damages
Reinstatement at CU to be decided at future hearing

By John Aguilar (Contact)

Originally published 10:52 a.m., April 2, 2009
Updated 05:40 p.m., April 2, 2009

Former University of Colorado Professor Ward Churchill holds up a dollar bill and shouts "Here's the dollar" to the audience after he was awarded $1 in damages from the school in his trial in Denver on Thursday. Photo by Paul Aiken / The Camera / April 2, 2009

Photo by Paul Aiken

Former University of Colorado Professor Ward Churchill holds up a dollar bill and shouts "Here's the dollar" to the audience after he was awarded $1 in damages from the school in his trial in Denver on Thursday. Photo by Paul Aiken / The Camera / April 2, 2009


Former University of Colorado Professor Ward Churchill hugs a supporter after he was awarded one dollars damages from the school in his trial in Denver, Colorado Thursday afternoon April 2, 2009 Photo by Paul Aiken / The Camera / April 2, 2009


Sept. 11, 2001: University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill writes a response to the day’s terrorist attacks, saying they were not senseless but a direct result of American policies. The online essay compares victims at the World Trade Center to an infamous Nazi technocrat.

Jan. 26, 2005: The essay catches media attention for the first time after students at Hamilton College in New York protest their school’s invitation to have Churchill speak.

Feb. 3, 2005: CU regents launch an investigation into Churchill’s work to determine if he should be fired.

March 24, 2005: CU Chancellor Phil DiStefano says Churchill’s comments about 9/11 were protected by the First Amendment. But he determines allegations of fraud and plagiarism against Churchill warrant further inquiry by CU’s Standing Committee on Research Misconduct.

May 16, 2006: The investigative panel releases its 124-page report to the public. The group finds serious and recurring problems with Churchill’s work, including plagiarism, fabrication and questionable citations. Most panel members say Churchill should be suspended without pay, and one member says his research misconduct was so egregious that he should be fired.

June 13, 2006: The Standing Committee on Research Misconduct backs the previous panel’s findings of deliberate misconduct and releases its own report. Six of the nine members say Churchill should be dismissed. Two favor suspension without pay for five years, and one recommends suspension without pay for two years.

May 2007: Three members of the university faculty’s Privilege and Tenure Committee recommend suspension. The other two members say he should be fired.

May 25, 2007: CU President Hank Brown recommends in a report to the regents that Churchill be fired.

July 24, 2007: Regents vote 8-1 to fire Churchill.

July 25, 2007: Churchill sues CU in Denver District Court, claiming he was fired for what he wrote in the 2001 essay.

Oct. 2, 2007: Churchill returns to CU to teach a series of unsanctioned classes.

March 9, 2009: The trial of Churchill vs. the University of Colorado begins in Denver District Court.

April 2: Jury rules in favor of Churchill and awards him $1 in damages.

The University of Colorado unlawfully fired Ward Churchill for expressing his political beliefs, a jury decided this afternoon.

The jury of four women and two men awarded the former ethnic studies professor $1 in damages. The dollar amount was largely a symbolic move because the judge instructed the jury to award that amount if they ruled in Churchill's favor but found no damages.

Chief Denver District Judge Larry Naves will decide at a separate hearing whether Churchill, 61, is reinstated at CU or given a lump sum of money instead.

Shortly after the verdict was announced, Churchill told reporters that getting his job back was more important than any monetary award.

"I didn't ask for money," said Churchill, who was joined by his attorney, David Lane. "What was asked for and what was delivered was justice."

Ken McConnellogue, spokesman for the CU system, said the $1 award offered "some vindication."

"Mr. Lane told the jury to send a message with a monetary award, and I believe they sent a message with that $1 award," McConnellogue said.

The jury's verdict in favor of Churchill, which came after 10 hours of deliberation, brings to a conclusion a four-year saga that began with the widespread discovery of an essay Churchill had written about the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.

The case prompted heated debates in the media and on college campuses around the country on the meaning of academic freedom, the limits of free expression and the role of tenure at universities.

In the controversial piece, which Churchill penned during the hours after the attacks, he lambasted American foreign and economic policies and called some of the victims in New York's twin towers "little Eichmanns" -- a reference to the infamous Nazi bureaucrat.

The essay, which remained under the radar until a student at New York's Hamilton College complained about it in advance of a scheduled speech by the professor in January 2005, sparked an immediate firestorm across the country.

CU was bombarded with e-mails and phone calls demanding it fire Churchill for expressing anti-American hate speech and supporting terrorism.

Contributors threatened to withhold donations from the school and parents threatened to send their children to other universities.

Former Colorado Gov. Bill Owens said Churchill should be fired and a growing chorus of right-wing pundits and media figures joined in the call for the professor's ouster.

The school launched an investigation into the professor's essay in February 2005 to determine whether it was protected by the First Amendment or whether it had caused enough harm to CU that it could be considered outside the bounds of legitimate expression by a public employee.

Six weeks later, the university ruled that the essay was protected speech. But by that time, CU had become aware of a number of allegations of academic misconduct against Churchill and began a separate probe to look into them.

In May 2006, an investigative committee under the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct ruled that Churchill had committed multiple acts of plagiarism, fabrication and falsification in his scholarship on American Indian history.

The regents, in an 8 to 1 vote, fired him 14 months later.

Churchill filed a civil suit the day after he was dismissed by CU, accusing the university of trumping up charges of misconduct against him in order to find a legal avenue by which to remove him from the faculty.

He claimed in his suit that he was actually fired for writing the controversial essay on 9/11 -- a violation of his First Amendment rights -- and that he deserved reinstatement on the Boulder campus.

The 3 1/2-week long trial saw testimony from 45 witnesses, including dozens of professors, a handful of regents, two past CU presidents, the former Colorado governor, and Churchill himself, who testified over a two-day period.

Lane, the former professor's attorney, spent much of his time during the trial making the case that CU had it out for Churchill from the very beginning.

He equated the furor over the essay to a bloodthirsty "howling mob" gathered at the gates of CU demanding his client's head, a general rage that he said forced CU to do whatever it could to rid itself of a faculty member who had become a thorn in its side.

Lane hammered the CU regents for making statements and giving interviews four years ago -- in the midst of the furor over the 9/11 essay -- that indicated they wanted Churchill gone. Some of those same regents ultimately voted to fire the professor in the summer of 2007.

Former Regent Jerry Rutledge testified that he would have immediately fired Churchill for the essay if there had been a legal way to do it.

"Gee, maybe this 9/11 essay had a little something to do with him getting fired," Lane said sarcastically to the jury before it was handed the case. "Maybe huh? You think?"

Lane said CU established a "kangaroo court" to convict Churchill of academic misconduct, a charge that he characterized as consisting of three bad footnotes out of 30 years of scholarship.

He said the CU committees that evaluated Churchill's work were stacked with handpicked "pet poodles" and biased faculty members who did what they had to in order to fire the professor.

CU's attorney, Patrick O'Rourke, called Churchill's free expression claims a "fraud." He ridiculed the notion that CU was able to somehow get 20 faculty members to all come together in a conspiracy to knock one of their colleagues down.

"Professor Churchill is trying to use the First Amendment to excuse his fraud," he said during his closing argument.

O'Rourke said the university had every right to inquire whether Churchill's 9/11 essay had caused it harm and disturbed its operations.

In the end, CU ruled that the essay was protected and from there on out, it was no longer a factor in Churchill's fate, O'Rourke said.

Members of the various committees that examined Churchill's scholarship were called to the stand to tell the jury why they deemed the professor's work to be not only substandard, but to represent a deliberate pattern of misconduct.

Professor after professor testified that fabrication, falsification, plagiarism and ghostwriting -- where one attaches another's name to a piece of written work -- are simply not acceptable practices in academia.

"He just cheated," testified CU sociology professor Michael Radelet, who served on the investigative committee.

And O'Rourke said Churchill hasn't acknowledged his behavior or apologized for it.

"What we saw is that Ward Churchill can justify everything and explain nothing," he told the jury. "What we have seen at the end of the day is that in Ward Churchill's world there are no standards and no accountability."

UPDATE: 3:53 p.m.

The jury has reached a verdict in the case of Ward Churchill vs. University of Colorado. It is expected to be delivered shortly after 4 p.m.

UPDATE: 3:01 p.m.

Jury question hints of Churchill victory

A question submitted this afternoon from the jury indicates that it is leaning toward granting Ward Churchill's civil claim against the University of Colorado.

But the six jurors also appear to be struggling with what to award the former ethnic studies professor in damages, if anything.

Chief Denver District Judge Larry Naves read the question in the courtroom this afternoon.

"We are feeling uncomfortable about the damages portion. Would you be willing to meet with us to talk about what is required and other things regarding money," Naves said. "And is zero dollars an option?"

Naves read his reply to the jury.

"I cannot meet with you. Please re-read the instructions regarding damages and if you find in favor of the plaintiff but do not find damages, you will award in the sum of one dollar," he said.

Churchill attorney Robert Bruce said "it's one of those juror questions that seems to be leaning in our direction."

The way the verdict form is organized, he said, the jury wouldn't get to the question of damages unless it had already ruled that Churchill was unlawfully terminated from his post as professor.

A second question was just posed by the jury, asking if they could replace one juror who cannot agree on a dollar amount for non-economic and economic losses and damages.

The judge said no.

UPDATE: 2:40 p.m.

The lawyers in the case have been called to the courthouse to answer a question from the jury.

The bailiff emerged from the jury room a little while ago with a piece of paper, which he brought to the judge.

A robe-less Chief Denver District Judge Larry Naves came out of his chambers to talk to the court reporter briefly before going back behind closed doors.

UPDATE: 1:51 p.m.

Jury does a working lunch

The jury has just stepped out of the jury room for a break, its second of the day.

The four women and two men worked on the case through lunch and are now entering their ninth hour of deliberations.

Ward Churchill is back at the plaintiff's table, reading a book.

About a dozen people are in the courtroom reading, working on laptops, or doing crossword puzzles as they await a verdict.

About the same number of media personnel populate the hallway outside the courtroom.

UPDATE: 10:52 a.m.

Jury deliberations continue, Churchill dozes in courtroom

Reporters, photographers and trial watchers are once again gathered in the Denver City & County Building to await a verdict from the jury in the Ward Churchill versus the University of Colorado civil trial.

The six jurors went into the jury room at 9 a.m. and haven't yet come out for a break this morning.

Churchill, and his wife Natsu Taylor Saito, entered the courtroom a few minutes ago and are both sitting at the plaintiff's table.

Saito is sitting in a chair with her arms crossed and Churchill is appears to be dozing in his seat.

No lawyers have returned to the courtroom yet.

The jury was given the case at noon Wednesday and has been deliberating for about 5 1/2 hours.

One Bullet, One Cop (Times Four)

"Beware the Risen people / Ye who have bullied and bribed / Ye who have harried and held" - Padraig Pearse

Sadly, Citizen Lovelle Mixon was killed in the line of duty. What did the pigs think was going to happen after they murdered a handcuffed, unarmed man at an Oakland BART station? What goes around comes around.

Four Officers Down

St Padraig's Day and the Lost Lessons Of Empire

Now that Irish American pretenders' day - with its infantilized, Disneyfied version of what it means to be Gael - is over, here is a revolutionary refresher about Ireland's 839 years of indigenous resistance to Empire.


St. Patrick's Day and the Lost Lessons of Empire

By Daniel Patrick Welch

March 17, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- -

Another Saint Patrick's Day is here, with its tacky kegs of green beer, leprechauns, lucky charms, fake plastic hats and all imaginable variety of gaudy faux-Irish...um..."charm." But it needn't be so. The holiday offers up an incredible opportunity to expose children (and adults, of course) to the history of struggle of a courageous people--England's first and last colony--and, by extension, to shed light on the legacy of colonization and imperialism and the universal nature of popular resistance.

At the risk of using one of the thankfully less egregious cliches, the Irish have long been a musical and literate people, a country where, as the poet said, "All her wars are merry, and all her songs are sad." Even the most cursory outline of Irish history yields a treasure trove of struggles, uprisings, and oppression--the practice field on which the British Empire honed its techniques. Fortunately, for those whose task is to educate, the songs are beautiful, moving, and largely self-explanatory.

While the diaspora revels in the Luck O' the Irish and sports "Kiss Me, I'm Irish" buttons, we'll be singing "The wearing of the Green," a concise, if simplified explication of the tradition of wearing green. Distilled by generations of mass marketing into Irish Pride, the practice was actually a passive form of resistance to British rule, symbolizing the culture, language, religion and traditions ruthlessly suppressed in the wake of the Wolfe Tone and other uprisings. "It's the most distressed country that you have ever seen/They're hanging men and women for the wearing of the green."

The color and practice are also a convenient symbol for the natural--and unstoppable--force for human liberation. The shamrock, rather than a mere symbol of luck, is chosen for its resilience and invincibility: "You may take the shamrock from your hat and cast it on the sod/But it will take root and flourish there, though underfoot it's trod."

Popular resistance struggles have invoked the image of nature time and again to illustrate the inevitability of their victory. Sadly, of course, forces of reaction have been crafty and merciless in their exercise of power in repression. But hope springs eternal: "When the law can keep the blades of grass from growing where they grow/And when the leaves in summertime their verdure dare not show/Then I will change the color that I wear in my corbeen/But 'til that day, please God, I'll stick to wearing of the green."

With students from many different countries, the study of the Great Hunger--where almost half of Ireland's population either died or fled in the space of a generation--lends itself quite well to the general study of diaspora and immigration. Our mostly first-generation students are especially quick to grok the sense of isolation and distance felt by recent immigrants, and take to the strains of Danny Boy and The Leaving of Liverpool with a partiular warmth. The difference for their own generation is that their parents can travel back to Haiti, the DR, Puerto Rico, Thailand, China, Nigeria, Portugal, Russia or other countries from which they come. Those of African descent are also especially disposed to understand being robbed of their languages, culture and history, and so a cross-cultural vortex of people's history is easily explored.

Even the specific language has its overlaps. "Puedan cortar las flores, pero no pueden parar la primavera" is yet another testament to the use of natural imagery and the belief in the inevitability of liberation. And with this background easily prepared, children whose eyes might otherwise glaze over at the archaic language sit in rapt attention at the recitation of Padraig Pearse's The Rebel. Many of them, like Pearse's Rebel, are "come of the seed of the people." It is hardly a stretch that, by the end, they share the Rebel's scorn for his tormentors and his warning to his people's masters: "Beware. Beware of the thing that is coming. Beware of the risen people, who shall take what ye would not give. Did you think to conquer the people? Or that law is stronger than life, or than man's desire to be free?" It's always an exhiliarating moment, and a potent opportunity, to invest a holiday marketed as one more excuse to party with a bit more meaning and purpose--and hope, so that one day the "tyrants, hypocrites, and liars" might tremble at The Thing That is Coming.

Hear Danny's rendition of Padraig Pearse's The Rebel here:
http://www.redress.cc/cms-files/rebel.wav

and The Wearing of the Green here:
http://www.redress.cc/cms-files/wearing_green.wav

On a personal note, Danny's mother recently passed away. A moving tribute to an incredible woman can be found here:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/20643 and here:
http://bellaciao.org/es/spip.php?article5877

© 2007 Daniel Patrick Welch. Reprint permission granted with credit and link to http://danielpwelch.com.

Consequences Come For Imus

Racist, white fuck Don Imus, who called the Rutgers Women's basketball team "nappy-headed ho's" gets kicked in the balls by cancer. Huge Huzzah! to Mother Nature, as Imus takes one for the team.

Get some, Donny Boy! Right there.

Don Imus Says He Has Cancer

Compiled by DAVE ITZKOFF
Published: March 16, 2009

The broadcaster Don Imus said he had prostate cancer, the Web site of the New York television station WCBS (wcbstv.com) reported. Mr. Imus, 68, right, made the remarks during the Monday broadcast of his syndicated radio program “Imus in the Morning,” which in New York is on WABC-AM. He said he had Stage 2 prostate cancer, giving no further details of his prognosis, but added he was confident his doctors would beat it. According to FoxNews.com, Mr. Imus said on the air that the cancer could be a result of stress. Discussing his reaction to the diagnosis, Mr. Imus said: “The day you find out is fine. But the next morning when you get up, your knees are shaking. I didn’t think I could make it to work.”

Press Release: Aboriginal News Group Formed

Press release via The Angry Indian. A hearty huzzah! and welcome to the blogosphere for the Aboriginal News Group.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE


Announcing the Formation of the Aboriginal News Group

The Fourth World - March 6th 2009 - - The Intelligent Aboriginal News Service has partnered with other progressive bloggers to form the Aboriginal News Group (ANG), an International association representing Indigenist blog-journalists covering Indigenous/First Nations news.

In recognition of the socio-political disparities and biases inherent within the corporate culture of mainstream news agencies and demonstrable under-reportage of issues that document and objectively investigate matters of human rights and genocide within the Native American press, the ANG will work to promote grassroots-produced Indigenous news material among the global news reading public via promotion of Indigenous blog-journalists who provide accurate and authoritative news, analysis and opinion pertinent to the continued Indigenous struggle for survival under existing colonialist nation-states and neoliberalism.

The ANG plans to address this gap by providing Indigenous blog-journalists with support and fellowship so they may observe, document and report news and other issues of importance that matter to their respective communities and the global Indigenous family as a whole. Through promotion of Open-Source software and other free web services, the ANG will help encourage independent Indigenous news blogging, Internet news-reading and social networking among Indigenous communities to connect, educate, inform and provide these sectors with the means to democratically disseminate their own news stories to the world community.

The ANG will also strive to insure that the cases of American Indian Movement leader Leonard Peltier and American African journalist Mumia abu-Jamal; the murder of American Indian Movement activist Anna Mae Aquash and the strange disappearance of Perry Ray Robinson Jr. during the 1973 siege at Wounded Knee receive the media attention they justly deserve by encouraging international discourse on the socio-political as well as historical circumstances surrounding their respective cases.

For additional information about this announcement and the work of the Aboriginal News Group, please contact the following:

Sequoyah Kofi bin-Tomas/Editor-general - editor.novajoservo@gmail.com
Sina Brown-Davis/Senior Deputy Editor - uriohau@gmail.com
Brenda Norrell/Chief Associate Editor - brendanorrell@gmail.com

###

*The Aboriginal News Group (ANG)* is an international association founded to represent Indigenist blog-journalists working to promote accurate and informative Indigenous news, issues and opinion across the World Wide Web.


-- Rev. Sequoyah Kofi bin-Tomas - Editor-in-Chief:
Intelligent Aboriginal News Service (IANS) - http://angryindian.blogspot.com/

Notice: This communication (including attachments) is covered by the
Electronic Communications Privacy Act, 18 U.S.C. 2510-2521.

"Howling Mob" Crazed For Churchill Firing

Boulder's Daily Camera is live-blogging from the Ward Churchill trial, which started Monday.

UPDATE: 10:38 a.m.

Lane: University, media had "mob mentality"

"The media was out of control -- it was an absolute mob mentality," Lane said.

He said former Gov. Bill Owens threatened to cut funding to CU if it didn't fire Churchill. National media figures also jumped on the anti-Churchill bandwagon, he said.

Lane said all of that pressure prompted CU to find any way it could to get rid of the ethnic studies professor. It didn't stand up for him and defend his free expression rights, Lane said.

"They ran like cowards and they sacrificed this man because they were afraid of the howling mob," he said. "Lacking in courage, CU hung him out to dry."

UPDATE: 5:34 p.m.

CU Provost Phil DiStefano found himself in an awkward moment during testimony Tuesday afternoon when Ward Churchill's attorney, David Lane, asked him about the university's rules regarding confidentiality during the investigation into the professor's scholarship by the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct.

Lane questioned DiStefano about a CU panel that criticized him for violating Churchill's rights to confidentiality and damaging his reputation by issuing press releases about the progress of the committee's work while it was ongoing and by announcing the fact that he would be issuing an intent to dismiss notice before Churchill had been given a chance to respond.

"But not a blessed thing ever happened to you," Lane said.

Excerpts From Liberation

These excerpts from Brian Francis Slattery’s novel “Liberation: Being the Adventures of the Slick Six After the Collapse of the United States Of America,” are dedicated to the coyote that perennial pissing post, Charlie Brennan, claims approached him then assumed an attack position while Brennan was out jogging in west Lafayette this morning. The story comes via Chuckles the Clown himself, during the live commentary that followed yet another chicken little, anti-coyote smear job on Fox 31 news. Yes, Dear Canis latrans, your attack instincts are spot on; Brennan's a vicious nutter, and a werewolf in reporter's clothing. Or as David Lane said Tuesday during Ward Churchill's wrongful termination lawsuit against CU - one of the "howling mob" of right-wing, media attack dogs.

Damn, I bet the cloying little coward needed a change of shorts after his close encounter with ole Wiley!

See Charlie. We really are everywhere. You mind that gleaming, white throat now, ya hear? Coyotes like sheep.

The excerpts:

Then the engineer tells them what happened twenty miles south and more than a hundred years ago, near where Highway 96 rockets over the ground outside of Towner and Chivington, when 133 Cheyenne men, women, and children were massacred near Sand Creek by American soldiers bleary with whiskey. Kill every Indian you find, their commander had said, and they complied, and mutilated the dead besides; even though Black Kettle waved a huge American flag over his head and had his people rally underneath it, because the Americans had said they would be safe if they did.

On the engineer’s first trip to Limon from St. Louis, the train broke down for three days in Cheyenne Wells, and the engineer went to see the spot where all those people had died. He couldn’t find it. There were just cracking benches under the trees near where the road crossed the creek’s dry bed. A few miles west, near a set of corroded rails, the state of Colorado had put up a memorial marker at a rest area, but the sign had been vandalized into illegibility. The engineer stood in the gravel, regarded the empty hills. A hawk lurched in the breeze, dangling its gangly legs in flight. Nobody passed on the road for twenty minutes; the only signs that we’d done anything at all with the land were the broken fences, the ragged telephone poles, the hollow grain silos simmering in the mirage down the road. This is what we killed them all for, the engineer thought, for this; and understood something of their anger. We had to get them off the land, the American myth said; it was about the land, our destiny, unbroken dominion of the soil between two oceans. But it wasn’t about that at all, was it? We named the towns and counties in equal share after the people we’d slaughtered and those who’d done the slaughtering, and now the wind was taking the towns apart; the telephone poles and trailers were becoming dirt again. One day it would all fall over, and the names, the state borders, would exist only on maps that sat fading in the metal racks of abandoned convenience stores; and the engineer wondered if all of the first Americans - the Comanche, the Kiowa, the Onondaga and Mohegan - would shake off the long nightmare of occupation and return to the places that had once been theirs. There could be new towns in the hills and along the rivers again; they could stand in the metal and plastic ruins we left behind, and the people could name everything again, as though the world were starting over, a new cycle of reincarnation, the past just a pull at the heart, a note sounding in the brain when they passed over the ground where their ancestors had fallen.
…

The alarms go off from cell block to cell block; red emergency lights spark off the cinderblock walls; inmates shout into the halls; guards holler at everyone to settle the fuck down. And Maria Lista Sandinista’s parents speak to her through the ether, of timers, batteries, insulated wires, of putty that can tear down buildings. Be our daughter, they say. Do what we never could because the van kept breaking down, because we paid for our vegetables with nickels and dimes, and the FBI put a tap on our velour purse. Write your anger on the surface of the world in letters of fire, and let them rage until the words have destroyed everything.

Until the words have destroyed everything…

Indigenous Women Demand Respect In Ottawa

"And Then Let's Go For That Justice" Part II
Indigenous women demand respect in Ottawa

A great read that rightly equates the rent-a-rape prostituting of First Nations' women with colonization. It's a long observed fact that most prostituted women were terrorized into accepting their sexual subjugation to men through rape in childhood. The same is true for porn.

Hat Tip to AK48 for the link to The Dominion .

“Because a lot of First Nations cultures were matriarchal, women have suffered the brunt of colonization,” says Jacobs.

Excerpt from the report by by Maya Rolbin-Ghanie:

...
First Nations women living in the city are more susceptible than men to losing their homes due to abuse or conflict with a spouse or caretaker upon whom they are financially dependent. Because women are more likely to have children to look after, and are less likely to feel safe on the street or in shelters where men are also present, many return to abusive relationships when there is no alternative available.

Across Canada, there are more women among the Aboriginal homeless population than are found in the non-Aboriginal population. According to Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC), 35 per cent of the Aboriginal homeless population in Greater Vancouver is female, compared to only 27 per cent among the non-Aboriginal homeless population.

First Nations women are also vastly overrepresented in Canada’s community of sex-workers, and continue to be brutally criminalized by the police and simultaneously marginalized and taken advantage of by society in general.

In 2003, Pelkey, forcibly separated from her baby boy, spent two-and-a-half months in prison for her involvement with the Sun Peaks protests. During her incarceration, she met many First Nations women who had been imprisoned for sex-work and drug abuse. Most of the women's stories involved sexual molestation during childhood. Many women had experienced these abuses in residential schools, while others were the children of residential school survivors.

Aboriginal rights lawyer and President of the NWAC Beverly Jacobs stresses that often police lack an understanding of the cycles of abuse that occur within Native communities, and, as a result, do not possess the empathy necessary to view women on the streets as part of the public. As such, they do not feel responsible for the protection of these women. Jacobs has worked with Amnesty International as a lead researcher and consultant on their report “Stolen Sisters: Discrimination and Violence Against Indigenous Women in Canada.”

The controversial BC Coalition of Experiential Communities (BCCEC), the first sex-worker co-operative in Canada, is the brainchild of sex-worker Susan Davis, who has been trying to pressure the government to create legal brothels for the upcoming Winter Olympics in 2010. Despite the decriminalization of sex workers being one of the BCCEC's primary motives, the issue is contentious both among Canada's political elite and among sex-workers themselves. The move had the support of Vancouver’s then-Mayor, Sam Sullivan, and VANOC (the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games), but has so far been refused by Canadian Justice Minister Rob Nicholson.

Tait finds it difficult to understand sex-workers who support the move, and does not envision the legalization of brothels solving the problem of police brutality and societal marginalization.

“They are [Vancouver is] basing their research on one woman’s point of view for creating [legal] brothels in the DTES [Downtown Eastside]. This woman [Davis] is a prostitute by choice who doesn't have to make a living from the streets. She says that she enjoys what she does. I never met one woman who said that they enjoy being a prostitute, they say that’s just the way things happened. Others are trying to make a living for their family, which includes young mothers who are trying to put food on the table for their babies.”

Tsimshian youth, co-ordinator of North Coast Enviro Watch and member of Native 2010 Resistance Dustin Johnson notes that the Olympic tradition of catering to the elite as a means of social control can be referred to as a policy of "sex, screens and sports," a phrase coined to describe the 1988 Seoul Games. A massive influx of prostitution, coupled with the pseudo-legalization of the sex industry for the benefit of elite athletes and businessmen, has always been an Olympic norm.

Johnson maintains that not all sex-workers even made a career choice to begin with.

"You actually see, at some of the elementary schools in Vancouver, sexual predators, just waiting around to try to kidnap young Native kids. Some of these kids end up in the sex-slave industry, they get shipped all over the world. This is the kind of industry that VANOC and the people that are organizing the Olympics in Vancouver are trying to continue.”

Jacobs, too, stresses that the issue of violence against Aboriginal peoples in general and Aboriginal women in specific is not a three-decade concern, but instead extends to the past 300 years. The crisis is one of historic proportions. A report she wrote for the Native Women's Association of Canada looked to the history of colonization, and how it has affected Aboriginal women.

“Because a lot of First Nations cultures were matriarchal, women have suffered the brunt of colonization,” says Jacobs.

Her studies reveal that white policymakers noted the remarkable strength of First Nations women, and found ways of demeaning it. Despite the fact that many clans, and by extension, the status of individuals, were once determined matrilineally, the Canadian government’s invention of the status card changed this: status became determined by the male alone, creating a severe disconnect between Native people and their cultures. The previously significant responsibility of men to act as protectors was also adversely affected by this forced shift, creating internal oppression in First Nations communities that is still very present today.

“The responsibilities and the roles that come with being a Native woman are very highly respected, or at least they were. [First Nations people are] still having to deal with the issues internally within our communities because we’ve learned those patriarchal values and we’ve learned them really well,” observes Jacobs.

About half-way through the colourful roster of speeches on Parliament Hill, one of Prime Minister Harper’s aids came to formally accept the women’s documented demands. Dressed all in grey, he gripped the bright pink folder firmly, saying, “I will deliver this to Mr. Harper” as the crowd murmured their skeptical thanks.

But Akwesasne Elder and Bear Clan mother Harriet Boots quickly brought people back to the core of the matter.

“Every person today has a lot of tears. Let’s make it our strength. Let’s go ahead and cry. Take it all out of our system. And then let’s go for that justice.”

Maya Rolbin-Ghanie is a freelance journalist, creative writer, and barista living in Montreal.

An original version of this article was published by Oil Sands Truth (Fall 2008 print issue).

Photo Dedication For Our First Day Without The Rocky

Thanks to a Dear Reader for sending this photo from Comedy Central.



I'd like to dedicate the sweet sentiment to all the now-unemployed propagandists of the defunct Rocky Mountain News.

Depressed are we? So jump!


Employees of the Rocky Mountain News react during the announcement that the newspaper will close in this photo provided to Reuters by the Rocky Mountain News February 26, 2009. Media conglomerate EW Scripps Co will shut down the Pulitzer Prize-winning Rocky Mountain News after failing to lure qualified buyers, as the industry endures a painful and prolonged economic downturn. The 149-year-old Denver newspaper will run its final edition on Friday but employees will remain on the Scripps payroll through April 28. REUTERS/Ellen Jaskol/Rocky Mountain News/Handout

Hey Rocky Rejects! Make like THESE crapitalist losers and take one for the team:

Buh-Bye, Liars! Bankrupt Rocky Mountain News To Fold Friday

Dead At Last! Rocky Mountain News Down For Dirt Nap


Racist, right-wing loser, John Temple, editor/publisher of the Rocky Mountain News hangs his head in defeat as the Internet and all its beautiful bloggers destroy his crapitalist business model.

OH. GOD. YES!

The Rocky Mountain News and its collective hard-on for race war, and immigrant-bashing, and the Columbus Day parade, and right-wing pandering, and the sexual mascotization of women, have at long last finally fucked themselves into oblivion.

Tomorrow, Friday February 27, 2009 the Rocky Mountain News will print its last paper after 149 years of white supremacist publishing that enabled horrors like the Sand Creek Massacre and the Iraq war.

This is one of the happiest days of my life and I do believe this wonderful, wonderful news deserves a heartfelt song dedication.

Take it away (to the dustbin of history) Louis Armstrong! Some days it really is such a wonderful world.

Jensen, Churchill, Ayers At CU March 5, 2009

http://www.180degreeshift.org/

Students for TRUE Academic Freedom, the 180 Degree Shift at the 11th Hour, and the Student Environmental Action Coaliton are hosting an event in conjunction with Ward Churchill's landmark academic freedom lawsuit against the University of Colorado. Churchill's legal suit for violating his first amendment rights begins March 9th. Therefore, we are bringing well known activist-scholars Derrick Jensen and Bill Ayers to voice their strong support for Churchill and political dissent in academia. Their presentations will unveil the mask of liberal academia and link Churchill's fight with other scholars who have been attacked for their strong beliefs. If we want our universities to embody institutions of critical inquiry, then we must not only support scholars such as Ward Churchill, but also view these attacks in context. Come and hear the shocking truths behind the right-wing attacks on Churchill. Hear what they don't want you to know!

Event is FREE for CU Students, Community Members $5 in advance, $6-10 Sliding Scale at the Door tickets available at UMC Connection, King Soopers, and Ticketswest.com

DERRICK JENSEN, activist, small farmer, teacher, and philosopher, is the author of A Language Older Than Words and The Culture of Make Believe (a finalist for the 2003 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize) among other titles. Jensen’s writing has been described as “breaking and mending the reader’s heart” (Publishers Weekly). He writes for The New York Times Magazine, Audubon, and The Sun Magazine, among many others. Jensen’s speaking engagements in recent years have packed university auditoriums, conferences, and bookstores across the nation.

WILLIAM AYERS, is an American elementary education theorist who was a 1960s anti-war activist. He is known for the radical nature of his activism in the 1960s and 1970s as well as his current work in education reform, curriculum, and instruction. In 1969 he co-founded the radical left organization the Weather Underground. He is now a professor in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, holding the titles of Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar. Ayers' ties with President Barrack Obama were matters of some controversy for the candidate from John McCain in the 2008 election.

For More Info Email: studentsfortrueacademicfreedom@gmail.com


Click here to see a map and get directions to the University Memorial Center (UMC) at CU Boulder.

Maori Win Battle To Control All Blacks' Haka Ritual

Hat Tip to AK48 for the link to this inspiring story.

Maori win battle to control All Blacks' haka ritual

Ellen Connolly in Sydney
The Guardian, Thursday 12 February 2009


A Maori performs a traditional haka. Photograph: MJ Kim/Getty Images

The eye-rolling, tongue-flicking haka war dance made famous by the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team was officially handed back to a Maori tribe yesterday to stop it being ripped off by Hollywood directors and international advertising campaigns.

The New Zealand government assigned intellectual property rights in the traditional Maori haka, the Ka Mate, to Ngati Toa, a North Island tribal group.

The new agreement is largely symbolic, but it is considered immensely significant by Maori leaders. "Ngati Toa's primary objective is to prevent the misappropriation and culturally inappropriate use of the Ka Mate haka," the official settlement letter read.

The tribe has been battling for a decade to stop commercial exploitation of the haka, saying its use in film and television has been culturally insensitive and has undermined its traditional significance.

Among uses it objected to was a 2006 television advertisement by the car maker Fiat in which Italian women performed a slapdash rendition of the haka, which is traditionally performed only by men.

There was outrage the following year when New Zealand's bakery of the year awards featured a mock performance by gingerbread men. Ngati Toa elders were also incensed when the haka was performed in the Hollywood movie Forever Strong, about a high school rugby team in the US.

The tribe has tried to trademark the Ka Mate several times over the past decade to limit commercial abuse but has failed, largely because of concerns it might charge the All Blacks for performing it.

John Key, New Zealand's prime minister, said the issue was cultural redress and not money. If a company wanted to use the haka for commercial reasons there should be a recognition of the tribe's cultural interests. How this would be handled in the final treaty settlement was still a matter of discussion, he told the New Zealand Herald.

He said he did not believe the All Blacks would be considered as commercially exploiting the haka.

"They are our national sports team and they have had the rendition of Ka Mate for a long time ... There will neither be any restrictions on them in terms of their use or rendition of Ka Mate, nor any charge for doing so," he added.

The agreement was a special provision in a $NZ121m (£44m) compensation package awarded to eight tribes over land and human rights abuses dating back 160 years.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2009

Another White Boy Rant About First Nations' People

Ain't it just like a settler to presume to define those he oppresses? The insidious settler in question this time is Euro-Canadian, liberal loser Gordon Gibson. Naturally he dislikes the use of the term "First Nations," rejecting it because the words imply "a particular political agenda of "nation-to-nation" treaties."

Precisely! Treaties are made BETWEEN nations and are legally binding on both parties. The US Constitution states that treaties are "the Supreme law of the land."

Sliming out of those legal and moral responsibilites is what underwrites the European domination of Turtle Island.

Got broken treaties? Then it's an imperial occupation, not a democracy.

Hat tip to K for the link.

Gordon Gibson takes a new look at 'Indian' policy

By John Richards, Special to the SunFebruary 5, 2009

Tsimshian writer Calvin Helin's book, Dances with Dependency, is held up as a tough-minded analysis of on-reserve dependence on federal assistance.

In the early 1990s, three "Gordons" contested the leadership of the British Columbia Liberal Party. In retrospect, the outcome was all to the good. Gordon Campbell, the most attuned to the art of governing, became premier. One of the losers, Gordon Wilson, has displayed over the years more ambition than ability, and has now largely disappeared from the public stage. The other loser, Gordon Gibson, thereafter reconciled himself to the role of political observer. Had he won, probably he would not have delved deeply into the tortured relationship between aboriginals and the rest of us. Nor would he have written A New Look at Indian Policy.

The choice of "Indian" in the title is not casual. The first chapter is about semantics. Gibson rejects "first nation" as a term that implies a particular political agenda of "nation-to-nation" treaties. He has no objection to "aboriginal", the common term in Canada for all those who identify with their indigenous ancestry. But this is not a book about Metis and Inuit. It is a book, he insists, about "registered Indians," those granted historical collective rights by the 1867 BNA Act and the Indian Act that followed within a decade. This is a book about how a modern state, in which citizens primarily enjoy rights and incur obligations as individuals, should address claims for collective rights.

Read the rest...

First Nations Sue Over Salmon

Hat Tip to a Dear Reader for sending the link to the article:

"Here's yet another way to erode the lives of First Nations people - destroy their food source..."

First nations sue over salmon

Class action cites damage caused by aquaculture to wild fish stocks

By Larry Pynn, Vancouver SunFebruary 5, 2009

Aboriginal people in the broughton archipelago off northeastern vancouver island launched a class-action lawsuit wednesday against the b.C. Government for damages caused by salmon farming to wild stocks.

"We are focusing on the health of the wild salmon," Chief Bob Chamberlain of the Kwicksutaineuk Ah-Kwa-Mish First Nation said in an interview. "We have an obligation to look after our resources."

Chamberlain said the B.C. Supreme Court class-action suit involves a total of eight first nations in the area concerned about the detrimental impact of open-net salmon farming on wild stocks.

He said the class action is a last resort based on years of frustration over the province not addressing aboriginal concerns about salmon farms, 29 of which are authorized in the area.

"The province's approach can be characterized by three words -- delay, deny, distract," he said.

The salmon-farming industry has been the subject of long-standing concerns related to issues such as transmission of sea lice and disease to wild stocks, as well as pollution, and the escape of non-native Atlantic salmon into the wild.

The class action is seeking:

- A declaration that the way the province has authorized and regulated salmon farms has contributed to a significant decline in the wild salmon stocks and infringed on natives' constitutional fishing rights.

- An injunction prohibiting the issuing of salmon aquaculture permits in the Broughton Archipelago pending adequate consultation and accommodation with natives.

- A declaration that the province must remediate the impact of salmon farms on wild salmon.

B.C. Wilderness Tourism Association president Brian Gunn applauded the class-action suit, saying senior governments "refuse to accept that salmon farms, as they currently operate, are causing irreparable damage to our wild salmon stocks."

Gunn said association members have observed grizzly bears seeking to bulk up for hibernation unable to find enough salmon to eat. "The B.C. tourism industry relies on healthy wild salmon populations to sustain their businesses, whether they are fishing lodges or wildlife viewing operations."

The class-action lawsuit precedes the release today of a report by the Pacific Salmon Forum, a body appointed by the provincial government, on the fate of wild salmon stocks, including the impact of aquaculture and sea lice.

Release of the forum's report had been delayed out of respect for the Jan. 20 death of Stan Hagen, the minister of agriculture and lands, who had responsibility for aquaculture.

Hagen's replacement, Ron Cantelon, MLA for Nanaimo-Parksville, said he found the timing of the class action curious -- one day before the forum report -- and said he would prefer negotiation over lawsuits.

Mary Ellen Walling, executive director of the B.C. Salmon Farmers Association, could not be reached for comment.

lpynn@vancouversun.com

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Valentine's Day Song Dedication: What Kind Of Fool

Good for a laugh!

Fox Reporter Charlie Brennan Pleads Guilty Before Denver Court

After waging a futile fight for six months against the charge of Interference with a police officer, belligerent Fox 31 News reporter Charlie Brennan finally pled guilty and was given a one-year deferred judgment and sixteen hours of community service by Judge Breese in Denver County Civil Court on February 5, 2009.

Present at the last two of Brennan’s appearances before the court, our dear Mystery Lady files this report, which can be read in full on her website The Brennan Files.

Huzzah! Ma'am. I could not be any prouder to be your Campaign Champion than I am today.

We'll see the fucker behind bars before it's all said and done, mark my words.

Charlie Brennan On Trial

February 6, 2009
Posted by Mystery Lady


Never let it be said that I was a woman who interfered with a malevolent man kicking his own ass.

When Rocky Mountain News reporter Charlie Brennan wrote me over one hundred letters in what, I believe, was an attempt to seduce me into giving him vicious gossip for his Swift-boating of Ward Churchill back in 2005, I did not interfere. I patiently let him pour his sleazy heart out for five months and then forwarded the letters for publication on the Internet. Charlie was immediately fired from the Churchill story for bias. He kicked his own ass and I did not interfere.

When Charlie left the now-bankrupt Rocky Mountain News for Fox 31 News, I knew his oily quackery would be broadcast for all to see and shake their heads at in embarrassed wonder. Night after night he kicks his own stumbling, discombobulated ass like a bucking bronco on crack. I did not interfere. The Week In Politics With Charlie Brennan was finally canceled and every month sees Charlie with less and less airtime.

And in Civil Court in Denver County on Thursday, Charlie Brennan pled guilty to Interference with a police officer (case #08GS089868), a charge he incurred at the 3200 block of N. Downing Street June 20, 2008 while covering the shooting of a little girl named Sierra Moore. According to the police sergeant who ticketed him that night, Charlie “deliberately and intentionally yanked up the crime scene tape to cross the crime scene.”

The police officer said this to the prosecuting attorney - and Charlie’s lawyer Craig Skinner - before the trial began Thursday, as Skinner attempted to hustle the city into a less embarrassing judgment than the SCRAM bracelet and house detention Brennan might have faced. Craig Skinner is one of Colorado’s most prominent DUI attorneys and previously has been the legal counsel for Charlie when he faced losing his drivers license over too many traffic violation points (case #B480680). Skinner is also the attorney of record for Charlie’s daughter, who in 2004 faced a domestic violence/misdemeanor violent crime charge (#04M510 - dismissed) and has been sentenced by the Boulder County court to a Level I Alcohol Eval and Treatment program for reckless driving (06T4857)*. Needless to say, Charlie is as much a menace behind the wheel as he is everywhere else. Apparently, it’s a family tradition.

Initially refusing to give his consent to the plea bargain, the police sergeant pointed out that Charlie did not just “put a little bit of a toe across the line. I had to chase him down to ticket him.”

“And he still won’t take responsibility!” the policeman exclaimed in frustration at the bargaining.

Later during the court trial, after Charlie pled guilty and Judge Breese gave him a deferred judgment for one year plus sixteen hours of community service, the prosecuting attorney read the charges again for the record.

She said, “At the 3200 block of North Downing Street, the Defendant deliberately entered a sixty foot section of the crime scene. When a policeman came after the defendant to ticket him Charlie Brennan said ‘I know, I know but I am working for Fox News and I wanted to get to the other side.’”

That Charlie would have such arrogant disregard for the inviolability of a crime scene - especially when the crime has been committed against an eight-year old African-American girl - does not surprise me. What did surprise me was Craig Skinner’s almost desperate pleading with the city and then the judge to have the trial heard in judge’s chambers. The prosecuting attorney was asked by the police why such an unusual request for a hearing in chambers was made. She answered “Because Brennan thinks he’s special.”

Apparently no one else did. The request was denied.

I am still in shock that Charlie and his attorney would imagine my reporting such a threat that they needed to go hide in the judge’s chamber, especially with a judge who the defendant already had been told did not like his attitude. But then again, Charlie has a great deal of trouble controlling his temper, or comporting himself with any class. I would know. After the previous Diversion hearing on December 17, 2008, Charlie spied this reporter outside the court room and came barreling over to stand uncomfortably close to me and demanded that I give him my name. For almost four years and over one hundred letters now, I have steadfastly refused to do so. This enraged Charlie further and he bellowed to his lawyer “THAT’S HER!!!”

Charles was feeling very brave - with his wife not present.

Read the rest...

Jesus Pimp's Empire Crumbling

"Others said they felt betrayed that the Schullers couldn't put God before their family spat.

'They have not been forthcoming at all,' said John Dewart, an insurance agent from New Jersey who's watched for 30 years. 'Why can't a father and son work together for the glory of God? That's my big question.'"

In one word? Patriarchy.

Did you expect anything less from those who worship the Almighty Collector of Prepuces?

Schuller's TV empire crumbling

By Gillian Flaccus
The Associated Press
Updated: 02/01/2009 01:37:59 PM MST

Robert A. Schuller, left, and his father, Robert H. Schuller, outside the Crystal Cathedral in 2006 (Associated Press)GARDEN GROVE, CALIF. — Once one of the nation's most popular televangelists, the Rev. Robert H. Schuller is watching his life's work crumble.

His son and recent successor, the Rev. Robert A. Schuller, has abruptly resigned as senior pastor of the Crystal Cathedral. The shimmering, glass-walled megachurch is home to the "Hour of Power" broadcast, an evangelism staple that's been on the air for more than three decades.

The church is in financial turmoil: It plans to sell more than $65 million worth of its Orange County property to pay off debt.

Revenue dropped by nearly $5 million last year, according to a recent letter from the elder Schuller to elite donors. In the letter, Schuller Sr. implored the Eagle's Club members — who supply 30 percent of the church's revenue — for donations and hinted that the show might go off the air without their support.

"The final months of 2008 were devastating for our ministry," the 82-year-old pastor wrote.

The Crystal Cathedral blames the recession for its woes. But it's clear that the elder Schuller's carefully orchestrated leadership transition, planned over a decade, has stumbled badly.

It's a problem common to personality-driven ministries. Most have collapsed or been greatly diminished after their founders left the pulpit or died.

Members often tie their donations to the pastor, not the institution, said Nancy Ammerman, a sociologist of religion at Boston University. Schuller, with a style that blends pop psychology and theology, has a particularly devoted following, she said.

"Viewers are probably much less likely to give when it's not their preacher they're giving to," she said. "There's something about these televised programs where people develop a certain loyalty." Today's increasingly fragmented media landscape is also to blame, said Quentin Schultze, a Calvin College professor who specializes in Christian media.

Church-based televangelism led by powerful personalities filled TV in the 1980s, but now only a handful of shows remain, he said.

Read the rest...

Oh, Isn't That Precious? Candlelight March For Deadbeat Journos

The soon to be ex-employees of the bankrupt Rocky Mountain News are pleading for Denverites to join them in a candlelit procession as they mourn the karmic consequences of promoting a white male supremacist capitalist agenda that, in the end, always eats its own. Chomp, chomp.

It comes as no surprise that these bratty whiners' cry for Colorado citizens to send letters to the indifferent politicians these scribes so slavishly served has fallen on deaf ears. Clearly there will be no bailout for these creepy, infotainment clowns. We The People could not care any less about you in your darkest hour than you ever cared about us. Your silly candlelight vigil deserves to be ignored for the pathetic display of desperation that it is.

Have a nice funeral procession, liars. Then its off to the glue factory for you! You jumped the shark years ago, and now at long last, you are headed for the dustbin of history, leaving nothing more to ponder than why it took so long.

Maybe the ghosts of all the victims of your race-baiting, woman-hating propaganda (Sand Creek Massacre, anyone?) will join you with placards of their own.

A hearty "Go fuck yourselves!" tops my long list of suggestions. As does a counter march composed of smear campaign survivors carrying placards that highlight the many lies from each of the 149 years the Rocky Mountain News has been in its murderous (but soon to be defunct) business.

You fuckers have so got it coming.

Save the Liars! We're Desperate!

I Want My Rocky will hold a candlelight march from the Denver Press Club to the Denver Newspaper Agency building Thursday, Jan. 29, to show support for the Rocky Mountain News. The event is open to one and all: readers and writers, labor and management, Post and News and DNA, public officials and private citizens.

Each marcher — 150 total — will hold a candle and placard representing one year of the newspaper’s 150-year history. The group will gather at the Denver Press Club at 6 p.m. and head out single file to the DNA building at 6:30 p.m. Marchers will ring the building. The person bearing the 1859 placard and candle will light the candle representing 1860, 1860 will light 1861 and so on through 2009. The vigil will last about a half hour.

If you would like to be a part of this historic event, please contact John Ensslin at contactus@iwantmyrocky.com.

Pedophile Priests Dumped On Alaska Natives

[Hat tip to an anonymous commentor who left the link to the story.]

Murder will out. Survivors will not remain silent.

A Pedophile's Paradise

Posted by Brendan Kiley on Wed, Jan 14 at 11:42 AM

This morning, 43 Alaskan Natives filed a lawsuit against the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits), claiming a widespread conspiracy to dump pedophile priests in small Alaskan towns and shelter them from exposure.

The suit was filed in the Bethel, Alaska Superior Court.

Reverend Father Stephen Sundborg—current president of Seattle University and head of the Northwest Jesuits from 1990 to 1996—is named as a co-conspirator.


Attorney Ken Roosa announced the lawsuit at a chilly press conference outside Seattle University this morning and said, as of today, he knows of 345 cases of molestation, only two of them against non-natives.

The Jesuits, he said, sent known pedophiles to isolated Alaskan villages—many of them only accessible by boat or plane—to let them abuse children with impunity.

"It was a pedophile's paradise," Roosa said. "We are going to shine some light on a dark and dirty corner of the Jesuit order."

Today, Roosa said, there are 17,000 Catholics in the diocese of Fairbanks—which filed for chapter 11 last year—and were even fewer during the peak of the abuse, from 1960 to 1975.

The rate of child molestation by priests in Alaska, he said, "is several orders of magnitude larger" than anywhere else in the United States. (Roosa compared this lawsuit to one in Los Angeles, with 550 cases of abuse and a Catholic population of 3.5 million.)

The diocese filed for bankruptcy protection in order to pay off settlements with Native Alaskans who were molested as children. (Roosa led that effort was well. This suit—against the Society of Jesus as a whole—is the latest battle in a long campaign Roosa has been waging against the opaque, secretive way the church responds to accusations of sexual abuse.)

Some members of the lawsuit spoke at the press conference, including Flo Kenny, a short woman with a steely gray ponytail and sunglasses.

"I am Flo Kenny," she said slowly. "I am 74 years old. And I've kept silent for 60 years. I am here for all the ones who cannot speak—who are dead, who committed suicide, who are homeless, are drug addicts. There's always been a time, an end of secrets. This is the time."

She said her abuse started when she was 13 and depressed by the treatment she and other village children suffered from the nuns. "They managed us like wild ponies and beat us every day," she said. "They said it was good for our character."

She sought comfort from the village priest who began an abusive relationship that lasted several y ears. "The priest at that time took the role of the shaman and the tribal council, making the decisions," she said. The priests held all the power in these remote towns and, according to the lawsuit, many of them were known sexual predators.

Another native, Rena Abouchuk, cried while she read a letter to her village priest: "You did so many evil things to young children... God will never forgive you." Abouchuk said the priest raped and molested her and her cousins, often together in the same room, and offered to let them ring the church bell as a prize for complicity.

"You took a lot of lives," she read aloud, crying and holding an eagle feather she'd been given at a "sobriety powwow" on New Year's Eve. Six of her cousins, she said, have committed suicide because of that priest.

Read the rest....

Cowtown Countdown: How Many Days Til The Rocky Dies?

Your guess is as good as mine, but this interminable waiting for the Rocky Mountain News to expire has got to be the longest clit tease in the history of Denver. I'm so ready to pop the champagne corks, already! Bring it, E.W. Scripps.

Any potential (but highly unlikely) buyers were given until the middle of January - right about now - to save the bankrupt rag and the few ink-stained, imperial toadies who remain to produce it. So far, no takers.

In the meantime, enjoy the pain of the nearly departed at Rocky whiners central:

I Want My Rocky?

Hardly.

Re-Create 68 Organizer Found Not Guilty!

I heart Killmer, Lane & Newman. Thanks Carlo, for your time and your courageous act. Congrats on your acquittal.

Re-Create 68 Alliance

info@recreate68. org
P.O. Box 6444
Denver, CO 80206


For Immediate Release
January 6, 2009

Re-Create 68 Organizer Found Not Guilty!

Police Misconduct Apparent, Justice is Served!


Denver, CO - Rebecca Wallace and Althea Licht of the law firm Killmer, Lane & Newman LLP successfully defended Re-Create 68 organizer Carlo Garcia against an unlawful arrest that occurred on Tuesday, August 26, 2008 during the DNC, resulting in numerous legal charges against Mr. Garcia. Carlo Garcia participated in defending the community against hate speech perpetrated by Rubin Israel and other Christian extremists who were determined to disrupt a lawfully permitted event. Mr. Garcia was found not guilty by a jury of his peers on the charge of "interference of a police officers duty by failure to obey a lawful order". Charges of "assault" and "causing a public disturbance" never reached a jury due to lack of evidence of such crimes.


Contrary to the comments of Richard Rosenthal from the City of Denver's Independent Monitors Office, not all was on the up and up in regards to police behavior during the DNC. After a jury of independent Denver citizens honestly reviewed the evidence, including a damming video that directly contradicted police officers' fabricated testimony of the brutal assault of Mr. Garcia, they found in favor of the truth and entered a verdict of not guilty on all charges. "I was unnecessarily and viciously attacked as were dozen of other Americans and their civil liberties during the DNC. The government tried to create a police state, fortunately justice was served by the people," said Carlo Garcia. The members of Re-Create 68 would like to thank the lawyers of the firm Killmer, Lane & Newman for their continued commitment to truth and justice and, in turn, hold the City of Denver officials directly responsible for creating a volatile atmosphere that restricted the community's ability to properly exercise their constitutional rights.


Video of the attack:

http://www.youtube. com/watch? v=CE-0O3pLbl0

Angry Indian: Zionism and the Art of Genocide Denial

Zionism and the Art of Genocide Denial

04 January 2009
The Angryindian 1.4.2009

"We cannot allow the Arabs to block so valuable a piece of historic reconstruction ..... And therefore we must generally persuade them to 'trek.' After all, they have all Arabia with its million square miles .... There is no particular reason for the Arabs to cling to these few kilometers. 'To fold their tents and silently steal away' is their proverbial habit: let them exemplify it now."

Israel Zangwill, Expulsion Of The Palestinians

"The antisemites will become our most loyal friends, the antisemite nations will become our allies."

Theodor Herzl, One Palestine Complete

Now that the much anticipated Israeli ground “war” has begun in earnest, there has been an escalating swell of semantic ju-jutsu concerning the rightness of the Zionist putsch to utterly take apart the Palestinian government-in-exile and by extension, what remains of Indigenous Arab resistance to Ashkenazim White Power.

The mainstream U.S. and British press has narrowly portrayed this crisis as an issue of Jewish self-defence instead of the Arab genocide this really is. There are the numerous obligatory calls by world leaders for a halt to the violence, but they are unanimously committed to admonishing Hamas while deliberately skipping over the facts surrounding the activity which led to the blitzkrieg. The fact that deadly Israeli Defence Forces actions against “suspected” Hamas, Hezbollah and random civilian activists clearly violated this truce on numerous occasions is rarely if ever examined.

While news agencies in the United States report this calamity as a just and humane military action on the part of a besieged Jewish homeland defending themselves against an overwhelming and unstoppable force, Israel’s own press is reporting this as an endeavour long in the planning. Perhaps the most respected newspaper in Israel, Haaretz soberly reported, “Long-term planning, meticulous intelligence-gathering, secret discussions, visual deception tactics and disinformation preceded operation "Cast Lead" which the Israel Air Force launched yesterday in Gaza to take out Hamas targets in the Strip.”

The article goes further:

“Sources in the defense establishment said Defense Minister Ehud Barak instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prepare for the operation over six months ago, even as Israel was beginning to negotiate a ceasefire agreement with Hamas. According to the sources, Barak maintained that although the lull would allow Hamas to prepare for a showdown with Israel, the Israeli army needed time to prepare, as well.”

Preparations included a widespread intelligence campaign to identify Hamas' security networks and other activist installations and offices present within the confines of The Gaza, the arrival of U.S. military supplies support and the premeditated strangling of vital resources essential to the refugee population including the complete blockage of humanitarian aid. Israel’s government wilfully planned to starve-out the people of The Gaza, to squeeze the very life out of them until they saw signs of people panting on all fours in the streets, too weak and despondent to fight any further. Israel cowardly plotted to punish the Palestinian people as a whole, thereby making any armed or moral resistance to their genocidal plans effectively insignificant if not nearly impossible.

This should be front-page news in the United States but it isn’t. However, the UK, Japan and other news agencies around the world did take notice, providing evidence of the deception programme mentioned above. In a report published on the 19th of June 2008 by the BBC, the British news agency reported comments by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert saying that the truce was “fragile and could be short-lived.” Reuters later reported on Jan. 4th that Israeli President Shimon Peres flatly rejected the likelihood of a physical occupation of The Gaza stating, "We don't intend neither to occupy Gaza nor to crush Hamas, but to crush terror. And Hamas needs a real and serious lesson. They are now getting it."

Read the rest...

A Call For Contributions For The Anthology: To Be Heard

Posted by request from Christine Stark:

Call for Contributions for the Anthology: To Be Heard

Deadline: April 15, 2009

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

We need your knowledge, experience, and understanding. We are looking for essays, poetry, prose poems, creative non-fiction, short stories, micro-fiction, memoir, diary, and multi-genre writing to create a groundbreaking anthology that addresses the connections between prostitution and the colonization of indigenous peoples in Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the United States, and the indigenous people of Hawaii. We define prostitution to include street prostitution; stripping; bartering sex for food, drugs, and shelter; adult and child pornography; escort and out-call prostitution; sex tourism; religious and cult abuse; massage parlors; saunas; brothels; phone sex; peep shows; mail order bride services; and international and domestic sex trafficking.

Some potential topics include prostitution and global connections, sovereignty, colonization, boarding schools, social history, intergenerational abuse, healing, legal strategies, struggle to overcome histories of trauma, connections to other forms of sexual exploitation, racism, classism, sexism, sexuality, unique experiences of Indigenous peoples, disability, impact on contemporary communities, and other related issues.

We invite submissions from survivors (male and female), family and friends of survivors, elders, advocates, activists, and all others who have experienced or observed the impact of prostitution on our people.

Megwetch,
Eileen Hudon & Christine Stark


SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:

Guidelines for Submission of Writing:

- Poetry (any style of poetry accepted)

- Prose (essays, creative non-fiction, short stories, micro-fiction,
autobiography, diary)

-We want a broad perspective of work and therefore the word count is flexible



Include the following in your submission:

- Bio

- Full name as you would like it to appear if your work is chosen for publication (we will print pseudonyms)

- Contact information: mailing address, phone number, and email (if you have one)

-Tribal affiliation

Send Submissions as word documents to: firstvoices@hotmail.com

or send via regular mail to:

"Contributions-To Be Heard," P.O. Box 19643, Minneapolis, MN USA 55419

Email: firstvoices@hotmail.com if you have questions

Weblink: www.miwsac.org


The co-editors are Eileen Hudon (White Earth Anishinabe) and Christine Stark (Anishinabe and Cherokee)

Eileen Hudon is working on a special project with the Minnesota Coalition for Battered Women Women-of-Color and Native Women’s Leadership Task Force. She has
twenty-six years experience in working with criminal, civil, and tribal court advocating on behalf of battered women and sexual assault victims.

She co-founded several Native organizations and groups to address violence against Native women including: Native Women’s Advocacy Center; Minnesota Indian Women’s Sexual Assault Coalition; Mending the Sacred Hoop; Women of Nations; Nin-din-a-way Mah-gah-nug Council, and Inwewin Wasiswan.

Eileen is a national and international speaker and she has provided over 2,000 trainings from 1978 until the present addressing violence against women in Canada; New Zealand; Australia; and Albania. She has also provided Technical Assistance and training to at least 350 of the 562 tribal nations since the passage of the Violence Against Women Act in 1994.

She was an instrumental part of the creation of legislation for an amendment to the Minnesota Domestic Abuse Act providing for 16-and 17-year-olds to petition civil court for a Protection Order.

She has been a member of Minnesota State Planning Team – VAWA Implementation; Minnesota Supreme Court, Guardian Ad Litem Task Force; National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges Family Violence Project, Child Protection Services/Domestic Violence Policy Working Group; and she was invited to the White House by President Clinton for the opening of the National Domestic Violence Hotline in 1994.

As a member of the Minnesota Indian Women’s Sexual Assault Coalition, Eileen is conducting research with other Native women on Native prostituted women in the state of Minnesota.

Christine Stark is an award-winning author, visual artist, and public speaker of Anishinabe and Cherokee ancestry. She is a co-editor (with Rebecca Whisnant) of Not for Sale, an international collection of writing about prostitution, pornography, and trafficking. Her poetry, essays, art, and short stories have been published in a variety of books and periodicals, including Poetry Motel, The Florida Review, La Primavera, Hawk and Handsaw, and Prostitution, Trafficking, and Traumatic Stress. She has been a community organizer around issues of rape, racism, poverty, and homelessness for nearly twenty years. As a member of the Minnesota Indian Women’s Sexual Assault Coalition, she is conducting research with other Native women on Native prostituted women in the state of Minnesota. Christine teaches humanities, writing, and speech at a college in Minnesota.

Nazis Invade Gaza

Two and a half years ago, I created the montage below when racist fuckers from Israel invaded Lebanon.

The post was titled "Yes, It's a DiKKK thing."

Today, as apartheid Zio-Nazis turn their mechanized rape and genocide towards Gaza, it still is. May Hamas give these psychotic murderers the same meatgrinder Hizbollah did. May the United States' continued economic and military support for Israel bring both empires to bankruptcy and ruin.
















Yes, it's a dick thing.

And it looks like it hurts, too!

Relentless Courage: Cynthia McKinney Fights The Zio-Nazis

The Person of the Year was not Barack Obama. It's Cynthia McKinney!

Huzzah, Sailor. Liberation looks just like you, not the President-Elect.



Cynthia McKinney: Oh What a Day!

Submitted by davidswanson on Wed, 2008-12-31 20:50. Israel

By Cynthia McKinney

Oh What a Day!

I'm so glad that my father told me to buy a special notebook and to write everything down because that's exactly what I did.

When we left from Cyprus, one reporter asked me "are you afraid?" And I had to respond that Malcolm X wasn't afraid; Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wasn't afraid. But little did I know that just a few hours later, I would be recollecting my life and mentally preparing myself for death.

When we left Cyprus, the Mediterranean was beautiful. I remember the time when it might have been beautiful to look at, but it was also filthy. The Europeans have taken great strides to clean it up and yesterday, it was beautiful. And the way the sunlight hit the sea, I remember thinking to myself that's why they call it azure. It was the most beautiful blue.

But sometimes it was rough, and we got behind on our schedule. We stayed on course, however, despite the roughness of the water and due to our exquisite captain.

There were no other ships or boats around us and night descended upon us all rather quickly. It was the darkest black and suddenly, out of nowhere, came searchlights disturbing our peace. The searchlights stayed with us for about half an hour or so. We knew they were Israeli ships. Who else would they be?

They were fast, and they would come close and then drop back. And then, they'd come close again. And then, all of a sudden there was complete blackness once again and all seemed right. The cat and mouse game went on for at least one half hour. What were they doing? And why?

Calm again. Black sky, black sea. Peace. And then, at that very moment, when all seemed right, out of nowhere we were rammed and rammed again and rammed again the last one throwing me off the couch, sending all our food up in the air; and all the plastic bags and tubs--evidence of sea sicknesses among the crew and passengers--flew all over the cabin and all over us. We'd been rammed by the Israelis. How did we know? Because they called us on the phone afterwards to tell us that we were engaging in subversive, terroristic activity. And if that if we didn't turn around right then and return to Larnaca, Cyprus, we would be fired upon. We quickly grabbed our lifevests and put them on. Then the captain announced that the boat was taking on water. We might have to evacuate. One of my mates told me to prepare to die. And I reflected that I have lived a good and full life. I have tasted freedom and know what it is. I was right with myself and my decision to join the Free Gaza movement.

I remembered my father's parting words, "You all will be sitting ducks." Just like the U.S.S. Liberty. We were engaged in peaceful activity, a harmless pleasure boat, carrying a load of hospital supplies for the people of Gaza, who, too are sitting ducks, currently being bombarded in aerial assault by the Israeli military.

It's been a long day for us. The captain was outstanding. Throughout it all, he remained stoic and calm, effective in every way. I didn't know how to put my life jacket on. One of the passengers kindly assisted me. Another of the passengers pointed out that the Israeli motors for those huge, fast boats was U.S. made--a gift to them from the U.S. And now they were using those motors to damage a pleasure boat outfitted with three tons of hospital supplies, one pediatrician, and two surgeons.

I have called for President-elect Obama to say something. The Palestinian people in the Gaza strip are seeing the worst violence in 60 years, it is being reported. To date, President-elect Obama has remained silent. The Israelis are using weapons supplied to them by the U.S. government. Strict enforcement of U.S. law would require the cessation of all weapons transfers to Israel. Adherence to international law would require the same. As we are about to celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday, let us remember that he said:

1. The United States is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world, and
2. Our lives begin to end the day we remain silent about things that matter.

I implore the President-elect to not send Congress a budget that contains more weapons for Israel. We have so much more to offer. And I implore the Congress to vote "no" on any budget and appropriation bills that provide more weapons transfers, period.

Israel is able to carry out these intense military maneuvers because taxpayers in the U.S. give their hard-earned money to our Representatives in Congress and our Congress chooses to spend that money in this way. Let's stop it and stop it now. There's been too much blood shed. And while we still walk among the living, let us not remain silent about the things that matter.

We really can promote peace and have it if we demand it of our leaders.

--
"The shock, awe and heart attacks that followed Madoff's confession that he was 'running a Ponzi scheme' drew as much anger for the money lost and the fall from the moneyed class as for the embarrassment of knowing that the world's biggest exploiters and smartest swindlers on Wall Street, were completely 'taken' by one of their own. Not only did they suffer big losses but their self-image of themselves as rich because they are so smart and of 'superior stock' was utterly shattered: They saw themselves as suffering the same fate as all the schmucks they had previously swindled, exploited and dispossessed in their climb to the top. There is nothing worse for the ego of a respectable swindler than to be trumped by a bigger swindler. As a result, a number of the biggest losers have so far refused to give their names or the amount they lost, working instead through lawyers fighting off other losers."
--James Petras

"And advanced forms of biological warfare that can 'target' specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool."
--PNAC, Rebuilding America's Defenses, p. 60

"The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can "throw the rascals out" at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy."
--Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in our Time

Race War Criminal Charlie Brennan: Rape of Iraq "Ride of My Life"

Inveterate coward and shameless race war criminal Charlie Brennan says goodbye to his former Rocky Mountain News pals in the comment section of "I Want My Rocky," the website Rocky Mountain News employees have set up to mourn their impending unemployment as the paper faces imminent extinction. Ever the self-absorbed opportunist, Brennan proudly lauds his own ugly careerism, including his imperialistic embedded reporting, which helped beat the war drums for Amerika's white supremacist invasion and occupation of Iraq.

But self-proclaimed Quaker pacifist Charlie Brennan ran away from that murderous endeavor as soon as the Iraqi Resistance started firing back. He has always maintained that it was because of a promise he made to his wife and daughter, but clearly self-preservation and a fear of karmic consequences led the ink-stained thug to flee the genocidal horrors of the race war he helped enable.

Funny, though. Nowhere in the comment section tribute to himself does the little narcissistic wanker and needy cipher mention the Ward Churchill smear campaign he once led. Well... led that is until he was FIRED by Rocky editor John Temple from said campaign for bias. The reason? He sent over one hundred psuedo-amourous letters to an unnamed Mystery Lady - very likely in an attempt to seduce her into giving up dirt on Colorado AIM and Churchill. Read the screamingly awful letters at The Brennan Files.

Like the calculating flim flam man he is, Charlie's already jumped fascist ship for the hate-TV bloviating of Fox 31 News, which itself will face likely extinction should the FCC ever decide to allow a la carte programming for cable subscribers. Only forced bundling of channels by cable companies is saving these untalented hacks as it is. Otherwise, how many people would really choose to watch them?

Regardless of Fox 31 News' fate, Brennan's career continues to circle the drain; his embarrassingly bad frippery - the "Week in Politics with Charlie Brennan" - was mercifully cancelled in August.

Jeez Fox. Courtesy flush already! I'm sick of stinking up my blog with this loathsome liar's slow but much deserved spiral to oblivion.

The tedious, self-absorbed comment:

Charlie Brennan said:

I came to Colorado to be part of the Rocky family in 1984, seduced by the mountains, the lifestyle, then-state editor Rob Reuteman, then-city editor John Baron, and excitement over the revelation that there was civilization, of a sort, west of the Mississippi.

The institution provided me with the ride of my life, everything from a trip to the Peruvian rain forests, to witnessing firsthand the tragic launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger, to the JonBenet Ramsey saga to the invasion of Iraq. I hoped and believed all along that I was part of providing something of value to the community. I know without question that the Rocky experience gave my life a sense of enrichment it would have been hard to equal elsewhere.

The Iraq experience was memorable also in that it proved the humanity of the people I was working for. Despite the high cost of sending me there, when concern about my own safety and a promise I’d made to my family led me to decide to come home early, Deb Goeken and John Temple didn’t hestitate in saying, thanks for your good work, come on home. I’m still grateful for that level of understanding and compassion from my employers. And it exemplifies the level to which the Rocky always was, and remains a family.

I left the paper in body early in ‘07, but after 20-plus years there, it has never left my heart. I’m pulling for all you guys, and gals, in the days to come.

# 29 December 2008 at 9:29 am

Really, Rocky scribes. Charles cares for you all like family, even though he long since abandoned you for a job at Fox News. No, truly. He's rootin' for ya. With all his diseased little hustler's heart.

Wall Street Swindler Strikes Powerful Blows for Social Justice

"In a few days, one individual, Bernard Madoff, has struck a bigger blow against global financial capital, Wall Street and the US Zionist Lobby/Israel-First Agenda than the entire US and European left combined over the past half century! He has been more successful in reducing vast wealth disparities in New York than all the white, black, Christian and Jewish, reform and mainline Democratic and Republican governors and Mayors over the past two centuries."

The rich eating the rich. I should sell tickets!

Now which of you greedy fucks wants to be the Biggest Loser? C'mon. Get some!

Madoff Stikes Powerful Blows for Social Justice

Madoff’s investment fund only dealt with a limited clientele of multi-millionaire and billionaires who kept their funds in for the long haul; the occasional withdrawal were limited in amount and were easily covered by soliciting new funds from new investors fighting to have access to Madoff’s money management. The long-term big investors looked toward passing their investments to their kin or eventual retirement. The wealthy lawyers, dentists, surgeons, distinguished Ivy league professors and others who might need to draw from their funds for an occasional fancy wedding or celebrity-studded bar-mitzvah, could draw from their funds because Madoff had no problem covering the withdrawal by attracting funds from rich owners of sweat shop garment factories, dangerous meat packing outfits and slumlords.

Madoff was no Robin Hood, his philanthropic and charity contributions facilitated access to the rich and wealthy who served on the boards of the recipient institutions and proved that he was ‘one of them’ a kind of super-rich ‘intimate’ of the same elite class. The shock, awe and heart attacks that followed Madoff’s confession that he was ‘running a Ponzi scheme’ drew as much anger for the money lost and the fall from the moneyed class as for the embarrassment of knowing that the world’s biggest exploiters and smartest swindlers on Wall Street, were completely ‘taken’ by one of their own.

Not only did they suffer big losses but their self-image of themselves as rich because they are so smart and of ‘superior stock’ was utterly shattered: They saw themselves as suffering the same fate as all the schmucks they had previously swindled, exploited and dispossessed in their climb to the top. There is nothing worse for the ego of a respectable swindler than to be trumped by a bigger swindler. As a result, a number of the biggest losers have so far refused to give their names or the amount they lost, working instead through lawyers fighting off other losers.

Read the rest...

My Big Beautiful Greek Riots

Athens' giant Christmas tree burns in front of the Greek parliament in Athens December 8, 2008. Protesters set fire to a major department store in central Athens and torched the city's giant Christmas tree outside parliament as anti-government protests worsened. (REUTERS/John Kolesidis)

"Merry Crisis and Happy New Fear" - Anarcho-Greek graffiti.

Capitalist Greece Burns In 37 Gorgeous Photos

Pigs on fire
Xmas trees in flames
Thousands marching
Bank windows smashed
Outraged women screaming
Molotov cocktails flying
Youth attacking
Ana-Archons winning!

Burn, Baby, Burn!

Freedom! Lance Hering Released By His Marine Captors

In a final, punitive act, the white power gangbanging cult that is the United States Marine Corps shaved Lance Herring's long, blond hair almost to the scalp, but they did not imprison him for refusing to return to the racist slaughter that is Amerika's invasion of Iraq.

Huzzah! Lance. Well done. May your still-captive brother Brendan learn to find the same humanity in himself that you and your father have.

Welcome home. I look forward to meeting you.


Lance Cpl. Lance Hering leaves the building after his court-martial hearing at Camp Pendleton on Friday. His parents, Elynne and Lloyd Hering, follow. Photo by Matt MCclain / The Rocky

Hero Marine Released By His Captors

"I believe it's not surprising that my son was torn by the war in Iraq," he said.

Lance was born in Saudi Arabia, he said, where he and his wife taught English. He spent 11 of his first 13 years there, where his friends were Middle Eastern boys in his Scout troop and on his soccer team, where he looked up to the American military men and women he saw.

Then Lance Hering found himself in Iraq, in an infantry unit, fighting soldiers who looked like his childhood friends.

Lloyd Hering told of how quiet Lance was when he came home on leave in the summer of 2006, how distant he was, and of his growing understanding of PTSD.

"I did not recognize it in myself many years ago when I returned from my service in Vietnam, and my family has paid a price for that," he said.

Get Some! Iraqi Journalist Throws Shoes At Bush

Take that you useless, genocidal, inbred, white supremacist fucker!!!



Talk about yer Highway to the Danger Zone. Now THAT's real journalism in action.



Calling all journos. Put down yer pens and throw yer shoes!!!

(It's not like newspapers have jobs for you anyway.)

Burn Baby Burn! Palin's Christo-Facist Church Set Alight

Just when I thought it could not be a better week to be a Fire Witch, here comes more good news.

Remember, if this fascist nutter had been elected, she'd have burned us all for witches:

Gov. Palin's home church damaged by arson

Associated Press

Published December 13, 2008 at 8:01 p.m.
Updated December 13, 2008 at 8:02 p.m.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Gov. Sarah Palin's home church was badly damaged by arson, leading the governor to apologize if the fire was connected to "undeserved negative attention" from her failed campaign as the Republican vice presidential nominee.

Damage to the Wasilla Bible Church was estimated at $1 million, authorities said Saturday. No one was injured in the fire, which was set Friday night while a handful of people, including two children, were inside, according to Central Mat-Su Fire Chief James Steele.

He said the blaze was being investigated as an arson but didn't know of any recent threats to the church. Authorities didn't know whether Palin's connection to the church was relevant to the fire, Steele said.

"It's hard to say at this point. Everything is just speculation," he said. "We have no information on intent or motive."

Steele would not comment on the means used to set the fire.

Pastor Larry Kroon declined to say whether the church had received any recent threats.

"There are so many variables," he said. "I don't want to comment in that direction."

Palin, who was not at the church at the time of the fire, stopped by Saturday. Her spokesman, Bill McAllister, said in a statement that Palin told an assistant pastor she was sorry if the fire was connected to the "undeserved negative attention" the church has received since she became the vice presidential candidate Aug. 29.

"Whatever the motives of the arsonist, the governor has faith in the scriptural passage that what was intended for evil will in some way be used for good," McAllister said.

The 1,000-member evangelical church was the subject of intense scrutiny after Palin was named John McCain's running mate. Early in Palin's campaign, the church was criticized for promoting in a Sunday bulletin a Focus on the Family "Love Won Out Conference" in Anchorage. The conference promised to "help men and women dissatisfied with living homosexually understand that same-sex attractions can be overcome."

The fire was set at the entrance of the church and moved inward as a small group of women were working on crafts, Steele said. The group was alerted to the blaze by a fire alarm.

Outside temperatures were minus 20 as firefighters battled the blaze.

Steele said a multi-agency task force was being assembled to investigate the fire.

Wasilla, the governor's hometown, is 40 miles north of Anchorage.

And Even MORE Pigs Get Some

Yes, our oppressors are human, if only because they can be made to bleed.

Not a great week for the pigs, aye?

They've been set on fire in Greece...



... and now blown up in Oregon.

Great job, genius, on picking up the bomb and carrying it INTO the bank! You are my nominee for the 2008 Darwin Award. Clearly, stupid is as stupid does.

Get some!

Bomb at a Bank in Oregon Kills 2 Uniformed Thugs, Chief Pig In Critical Condition

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: December 13, 2008

WOODBURN, Ore. (AP) — A bomb explosion at a bank killed a police officer and a state bomb disposal technician, and state police did not have any suspects, officials said Saturday.

“That person is dangerous and needs to be found as soon as possible,” said Lt. Gregg Hastings of the Oregon State Police.

The explosion occurred Friday afternoon at a West Coast Bank branch in Woodburn, about 30 miles south of Portland.

The police went to check on a telephoned bomb threat received by a Wells Fargo bank branch in the center of town and found a suspicious device that turned out to be harmless. But the police said the investigation led them to the nearby West Coast office where the bomb was found.

The police would not discuss a possible motive for the bombing. Lieutenant Hastings said he did not know of any grudges against the West Coast Bank, a statement echoed by its president and chief executive, Robert Sznewajs.

“We’re not aware of anything,” Mr. Sznewajs said.

Police Capt. Tom Tennant and Senior Trooper William Hakim, both 51, died at the scene. Captain Tennant was a 28-year veteran of the Woodburn Police Department, and Trooper Hakim, a bomb technician, had been with the force for 11 years.

Woodburn’s police chief, Scott Russell, 46, was injured. Chief Russell, who has been with the Police Department for two decades, was in critical condition but stable at a Portland hospital.

State police said the inside of the bank was extensively damaged, and a female employee was treated at a hospital and released. Another bank employee was uninjured.

Lieutenant Hastings declined to describe the bomb in detail but indicated it was powerful. A bank employee found the bomb in bushes outside, and it exploded after officers took it inside.

Lieutenant Hastings said he did not know why the officers took the bomb inside.

Federal authorities said Saturday that they were offering a $35,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction in the case.

Three Pigs Charged With Baton Rape Of Man

The pigs accused in the case are white, Black, and Latino. The survivor is Black.

It will surprise few, and certainly not women, that all kinds of men use sexualized violence to terrify other men into submission. Despite its overwhelming perception as a heterosexual crime done by men to women, rape is an act of degradation that is NEVER limited by sexual orientation. Fuckers are fuckers. If they think it proves their masculinity to use sexualized violence to harm a woman, why not a man?

Men rape.

Just ask a prisoner.

Men rape.

Do you think this statement is meant to warn only women?

Ecowarrior feminist Lierre Keith, in an interview touching on many aspects of patriarchy, has this to say to men who can be its victims as well as its beneficiaries:

I'm going to end with a comment addressed specifically to any men who are still reading this. You can be traitors to your class. You don't have to be good soldiers, good Germans. You can shift your loyalties. You can learn to identify with women. It's even to your benefit to do so. Growing up, I saw what happened to turn my brother from a child into a boy and then into a man. It was brutal. Male socialization is pretty ghastly. And as long as there is war, the rich, old men will sacrifice the young men on the altar of power and profit. Men may not be defined a priori as victims, as fuckable, like women are, but you can be fucked. 1 in 11 boys are sexually abused. That's a lot of abuse. As long as domination is eroticized, as long as violence and violation constitute masculinity, you aren't free either. My question is: how many of you will face that and cast your lot with us?

Huzzah! to Mr. Mineo for his courage to speak out against his attackers.

Three Officers Charged in Brooklyn Assault

The New York Times

December 10, 2008
By LIZ ROBBINS

Three police officers were charged on Tuesday for their roles in the alleged assault of a 24-year-old body piercer on a busy Brooklyn subway platform in October. One officer, Richard Kern, who is accused of sodomizing the man with his baton, faces the most serious charge, aggravated sexual abuse in the first degree.

The two other officers, Alex Cruz and Andrew Morales, were charged with hindering prosecution and official misconduct.

Brooklyn District Attorney Charles J. Hynes announced the indictments at news conference several hours after the three officers surrendered, detailing the accusations and disclosing the charges by the grand jury that painted a chilling picture of police brutality and subsequent cover-up. The officers were arraigned later in the day.

Prosecutors had asked that Officer Kern’s bail be set at $50,000, but the judge put it at $15,000. Officers Morales and Cruz were released on their own recognizance.

The victim, Michael Mineo, attended the arraignment of the officers on Tuesday. Mr. Mineo, who was wearing thick wooden rosary beads around his neck, a diamond stud in his left ear and low slung pants, gave a victory punch to the air when the arraignment ended.

Emerging afterward with his two lawyers, Stephen Jackson and Kevin O. Mosley, Mr. Mineo said that his injuries still caused him pain.

"I relive this every day," he said. "I move my bowels, I’m in pain."

Mr. Mineo said he felt a wide range of emotions, including hatred towards the officers, and that he was pleased they were indicted. “I looked them straight in the face, they couldn’t look at me,” he said..

Mr. Mineo had claimed that he had been sodomized by Officer Kern’s police baton on Oct. 15, after a chase onto the crowded subway station.

Officer Kern, 25, who could face up to 25 years in prison for aggravated sexual abuse if convicted, was also charged with assault in the first degree as well as other felonies. Officer Morales, 26, was also charged with offering a false instrument and falsifying business records.

“They tried to make this thing go away,” Mr. Hynes said.

The police department was initially criticized for not taking Mr. Mineo’s accusations seriously. When the police officers did not cooperate, Mr. Hynes empaneled a grand jury on Oct. 28. Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly disciplined the officers involved by placing them on modified assignment on Nov. 3.

“The initial report was one of disbelief," Mr. Hynes said at the news conference. "But it was soon changed because of the evidence."

Paul J. Browne, a police spokesman said the department’s investigation was aggressive in locating additional records, reviewing hours of videotape, examining MetroCard records and retaining equipment for DNA testing.

Before the arrest, Mr. Hynes said, Mr. Mineo had allegedly been smoking marijuana, threw the cigarette to the ground and, after being questioned by Officers Kern and Morales, fled into the subway station.

Mr. Hynes said that officers Kern, Morales and Cruz then subdued Mr. Mineo, who was lying face down near the token booth.

Mr. Mineo said it was then that Officer Kern shoved his retractable baton into his anus.

“Mineo’s screams that he had been violated were heard by several civilian witnesses,” Mr. Hynes said. “It is alleged that Mineo’s complaints, that he was bleeding from his rectum, were ignored by the police officers.”

The district attorney said Officer Kern issued Mr. Mineo a summons for disorderly conduct, which was found to be defective because it was backdated to January.

According to an assistant district attorney, Charles Guria, who laid out more details at the arraignment, Officer Kern warned Mr. Mineo repeatedly not to go to the hospital or to a police precinct or else he would be charged with a felony. Officer Morales was in earshot when that warning occurred, the assistant district attorney said.

After the incident, Mr. Mineo was treated at Brookdale University Hospital, which called the police Internal Affairs Bureau. Police investigators interviewed Mr. Mineo that night and notified the district attorney’s office. For six weeks, the jury heard testimony from approximately 20 witnesses, and was presented with forensic evidence.

Mr. Hynes credited two officers who were witnesses to the incident, Noel Jugraj of the 71st Precinct, and Kevin Maloney, a transit officer, for ultimately testifying.

Officer Maloney, who assisted in subduing Mr. Mineo, testified that Officer Kern touched Mr. Mineo’s buttocks with his baton. He waited several days before reporting what he saw, however, and police officials have said that other witnesses initially questioned by the department’s Internal Affairs Bureau did not see an assault.

My. Hynes confirmed that the witnesses did not see an assault, though they did say they heard Mr. Mineo’s screams.

Officer Cruz, 26, and Officer Morales were not charged with assault. But, as Mr. Hynes added, “It’s clear if they made any attempt to stop this, they wouldn’t be in hot water.”

Stuart London, the attorney for Officer Cruz, said: “The charges against my client are predicated on him knowing a crime was committed. My client never knew a crime was committed, so the whole case against him falls like a house of cards.”

Carlos Cruz, the father of Officer Cruz, said he believed his son innocent. “My son is a man who represents the law, who never did anything wrong, and he is not an abuser,” Mr. Cruz said in Spanish. “This is a miscarriage of justice.”

The president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, Patrick J. Lynch, said in a statement: "An indictment is nothing more than an accusation and police enjoy the same presumption of innocence as everyone else. Police do a tough and dangerous job everyday and we have earned the benefit of a doubt with our blood and sacrifice. No one should come to any conclusions before all the evidence is heard."

Cara Buckley, Ann Farmer and Mick Meenan contributed reporting.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Statement From Greek Anarchists

Hey, Pig. Get Some!


A riot policeman in flames runs to escape during a riot in Athens December 12, 2008. Greek students hurled firebombs and stones at police outside parliament on Friday, in a seventh day of violence over the police killing of a teenager that has threatened Greece's government.
REUTERS/John Kolesidis (GREECE)

The letter below comes via the All Nations Alliance list and was translated by Pavlos Stavropoulos.

The following statement was issued by a group of Greek anarchists and anti-authoritarians in the southern suburbs of Athens. This is in the area (Ag. Dimitrios) where there has been a takeover of the local City Hall. The takeover, now in its second day, has received significant local support. Last night, a popular assembly was attended by over 300 people. The takeover has also been supported by a statement from the Association of Employees of the City Hall of Ag. Dimitrios and many of these employees are helping to guard the building from a police attack.

The translation of the statement was done very quickly and I take responsibility for any mistakes. I have added some notes to explain some references.

THE STATE MURDERS

The evening of Saturday December 6, 2008, a murderer pulled out his gun and executed in cold blood a citizen, Alexandros. What is most tragic about this murder is that the murderer, police office by profession, killed a 16-year-old kid.

The incident occurred at Exarhia, at the intersection of Tzavella and Mesologgi Streets. At a place where any one of us could have been. At a place that could have been at any neighborhood. The eyewitnesses of the incident state that the murder was precedent by a simple verbal incident. But the Macho Greek Murderer could not stand the insult and pulled the gun. And he executed. In cold blood.

This murder is neither an accident nor an isolated incident. It is one more link in a endless series of murderous attacks of the various departments of the police. Let us not forget the murder of the Pakistani immigrant at Petrou Ralli Street(1), while he was waiting in line to apply for asylum (in a line that the state itself had told him to wait). Let us not forget that recently a woman was murdered in Leukimmi(2), from actions of the MAT(3) against the XYTA(4) establishment in their area. The list, unfortunately, is endless. Let us not forget the torture by police officers in police stations and prisons. Let us not forget the in effect murderous behavior of the instruments of order, with infinite chemicals [tear gas, etc.], flash and stun grenades, shootings, beatings, in every instance when people get out in the streets, during strikes, during student and local actions (it has not been very long since the police drowned the entire area around the KYT(5) of Argiroupoli and beat up mercilessly neighbors of ours). This is their function. Let us not delude ourselves. To beat up and murder so that their message gets through "we and the bosses are the the law, whoever resist will be beat up mercilessly, and then some."

And who are their bosses? Is it maybe the stockholders of the banks? Is it maybe the stockholders of the chain stores? Is it the president of EBEA(6)? Is it maybe all those who demand more work from us, for less money and less security? Is it maybe all those who get rich charging interest while thousands despair? Is it maybe those who profiteer, both against us and the producers, with the prices they set in the supermarkets for basic goods? Is it maybe those who during the periods of fat cows make huge profits and when things get rough they lay off workers and cut wages? Well then, it is logical for the popular rage to be directed at them. They talk of material damages while there is one more death. If private property is the only thing that interests them, then those who rebel are justified. We must comprehend than when the horror doesn't wake up consciences, then unfortunately the smell of the burnt is necessary.

In the midst of all this and the developing uprising, is it possible to not take a stand? Can we stand with those who always ask for "order and calm"? Who even during the [Nazi] occupation and the junta the only thing they wanted to do was to "mind their own business and live their lives"? Who always see "provocation" and "known unknowns"(7)? Who see conspiracies behind every social movement they don't control, accustomed to being "leaders" behind closed doors? Let us not be deceived that every time the events concern the "strikers", the "students", the "youth". These days it is the people who are in the streets, without "central administrations", "instructors" or "enlightened vanguards". The means used are decided freely by each participant in the insurrection. This concerns us as much as the residents of Exarhia, who faced with the so called "cat and mouse vendetta between anarchists and police", took a stand. Over the weekend they were throwing flower pots from their balconies and demanded the removal of the MAT squads and the cessation of the use of chemicals [i.e. tear-gas]. They took a stand, they didn't look the other way. They took a stand against state repression. All of us therefore must take a stand. We must counterpose in action our refusal to the imposition of the regime of terror and the police state.

NO STATE MURDER LEFT UNANSWERED
FREEDOM TO ALL THOSE ARRESTED
SILENCE IS COMPLICITY

Initiative of anarchists and anti-authoritarians from the southern suburbs

1. At an Immigration Office. Police attacked immigrants standing in line under the pretext of "maintaining order." A 24-year old Pakistani was fatally injured. At least 14 others were injured.
2. During a demonstration against the local landfill police clubbed a16-year old who was driving his motorcycle. He crashed into a 43-year old pregnant woman who died days later of head injuries.
3. Μονάδες Αποκαταστασης Ταξης , literally Units for the Restoration of Order. They are the Greek Police's riot units
4. Χώροι Υγειονομικής Ταφής, literally Places for Sanitary Burial, aka the landfill.
5. Κέντρο Υπερυψηλής Τάσης, Super High Voltage Station
6. Εμπορικό και Βιομηχανικό Επιμελητήριο Αθηνών, Athens Chamber of Commerce and Industry
7. "γνωστοί άγνωστοι" Media, state and police reference to anarchists and other militant protesters. Implying that they are known to the police but are not arrested for unknown reasons. Similar to the phrase "usual suspects" but it refers specifically, and conspiratorially, to anarchists.

Got Friendly Fire?

This friendly fire video comes courtesy of Salon magazine, and quite frankly, I believe the only reason it is getting the play that it has, is because those left dead and mutilated by a friendly fire incident in Ramadi, Iraq are men of color.

Still, worth watching to see the white cowboys' racist arrogance and murderous glee turn to panic as the tank they were cheering on to genocide turns and fires on them.

Helmet cam man, Sergeant Robison wanted to record himself and his buddies in a firefight "fucking shit up." Instead, Pfc Nelson gets his leg blown off and Pfc Suarez-Gonzalez gets killed.

Heh. Get some!

Unedited helmet cam footage (3rd video on page)

Oct. 14, 2008 | Helmet-cam footage from Ramadi, Iraq

On the afternoon of Dec. 4, 2006, Pfc. Albert Nelson was wounded and Pfc. Roger Suarez-Gonzalez was killed during an exchange of fire in "building #2" close to the south bank of the Euphrates River in Ramadi, Anbar province, Iraq. This video, which was recorded from the point of view of the men in building #2 that day, appears to show an American tank firing on them, followed by an attempt to assign official blame for the death of Suarez and the injuries to Nelson to Iraqi insurgents firing mortars. Nelson later died of his wounds.

The video comes from a camera mounted on the helmet of Sgt. 1st Class Jack Robison, who donned it to record a firefight in progress. The footage begins with Robison in a courtyard attached to building #2. The original video was 52 minutes and 38 seconds long; Salon has abridged it to show the alleged friendly fire incident and its aftermath, including exchanges between Robison and a commanding officer as to whether or not a U.S. tank fired on the building, and the comments of other soldiers in the house who say they saw the tank fire at their position. The video shows Pfc. Nelson receiving medical attention for his left leg, which was severed in the blast. At the request of Nelson's family, we have blurred his image throughout. It includes graphic violence and profanity. The video can be viewed in its entirety below, albeit with Nelson's image obscured.

Israeli Settlers To March Through Arab Town

Like the Orange parades in the North of Ireland, or the Columbus Day parade in Denver, Occupation settlers celebrating hate speech and genocide plan to march through an Arab town.

Hebron Settlers Take Their Fight into Israel

Jonathan Cook



Nazareth, December 5, 2008

Extremist settler groups currently involved in violent confrontations with Palestinians in the centre of Hebron have chosen their next battleground, this time outside the West Bank.

A far-right group know as the Jewish National Front, closely associated with the Hebron settlers, is preparing to march through one of the main Arab towns in northern Israel. The march, approved by the Supreme Court back in October, is scheduled to take place on December 15, the group announced this week.

The police are expecting to deploy thousands of officers to prevent trouble, and have limited the number of Front members participating to 100. The march will not enter the heart of the city, say police, though it is not yet clear whether Front members will be allowed to carry the guns most have been issued as settlers.

The Front says it will wave Israeli flags in what the group has dubbed a demonstration of "Jewish Pride" through Umm al-Fahm, home to nearly 45,000 Palestinian citizens of Israel.

The Front’s main platform is the expulsion of all Palestinians from what it calls "Greater Israel", which also includes the West Bank and Gaza. It skates close to illegality with veiled suggestions that Palestinian citizens of Israel should also be ethnically cleansed.

"We will march through Umm al-Fahm with flags to send everyone a message that the Land of Israel belongs to us," Baruch Marzel, the Front’s leader, declared.

The move has aroused furious opposition from local residents and the leadership of the Palestinian minority. Jamal Zahalka, an Arab member of the parliament, called the court decision a "legitimization of racism": "We will use our right of protest and defend Umm al-Fahm from these fascists and racists."

Read the rest...

Friday Song: Dirty Laundry

In light of the fabulous news this week that the Rocky Mountain News will soon be no more, a song dedication for the race war shilling rag's oh-so-nearly unemployed liars.

Kick 'em when they're up
Kick 'em when they're down

We all know that crap is king
Give us dirty laundry

Busted! Bankrupt Rocky Mountain News For Sale

File photo: December 12, 2005. AIM and Allies protest at the Rocky Mountain News.

Some quick lowlights from the morally and now financially bankrupt Rocky Mountain News:

Enabled the illegal and genocidal war against Iraq.

Criminalized indigenous migrants as "illegals."

Supported the Columbus Day Parade.

Trivialized the essential and essentialized the trivial.

Lied about Ward Churchill, Colorado AIM, and Vine Deloria.

Lied about Earth Liberation Front ecowarriors.

Spent years being little more than the Ramsey Mountain News, pimping JonBenet kiddie porn while completely ignoring missing and exploited children of color.

Gave rabid racist mouthpieces like Vince Carroll a forum.

Afflicted the afflicted and comforted the comfortable.

And on and on and on.

The only good thing the Rocky ever did was fire Charlie Brennan from its own Ward Churchill smear campaign for bias. Flamed out in disgrace, Quaker Pacifist (neo) liberal Brennan ran all the way to Fox 31 News to lick his schizophrenic, self-inflicted wounds. Count the number of times this jaw-droppingly untalented hack flubs his lines in any given live broadcast and you've got a hell of a drinking game. Hard to believe, but now the only thing lower than Charlie's character is E.W. Scripps' stock!

Back in May, E.W. Scripps (SSP) was trading at $146.38. Today it is $2.32.

Sweet Jesus, karma never felt so good. I heart bankruptcy.

Rocky Mountain News For Sale



Scripps to Seek Buyer for Rocky Mountain News

Thursday December 4, 1:38 pm ET
50 percent interest in Denver Newspaper Agency also for sale

CINCINNATI, Dec. 4 /PRNewswire/ -- The E.W. Scripps Company has decided to offer for sale its Denver-based daily newspaper, The Rocky Mountain News, as well as the newspaper's 50-percent interest in the Denver Newspaper Agency, which publishes the Rocky Mountain News and The Denver Post under a joint operating agreement (JOA).
ADVERTISEMENT


Scripps bought the Rocky Mountain News, which is Colorado's first newspaper and the state's oldest continuously operated business, in 1926. After a decades-long circulation war, the newspaper in 2001 entered into the JOA with The Denver Post, which is owned by MediaNews Group.

The Denver Newspaper Agency manages the business and production operations of the Rocky Mountain News and The Denver Post. Through subsidiaries, Scripps and MediaNews Group each have a 50-percent stake in DNA but maintain separate and independent editorial operations.

"The decision to seek a buyer for The Rocky would have been unthinkable until very recently," said Rich Boehne, president and chief executive officer of Scripps, "but the operating conditions have become increasingly difficult in Denver, as is the case in all major metropolitan newspaper markets. Our 50 percent share of the cash flow generated by the Denver Newspaper Agency is no longer enough to support The Rocky, leaving us with no choice but to seek an exit."

The Scripps paper's share of the operating income (accounted for as "equity earnings") from the Denver Newspaper Agency fell more than 50 percent to $5 million in the first nine months of 2008 (excluding the one-time gain of $4.4 million from the sale of property). Rocky Mountain News editorial expenses in the same period approached $16 million.

In addition to the challenge of funding the two daily newspapers, the Denver Newspaper Agency also has approximately $130 million in long-term debt resulting from a recently completed consolidation of production facilities.

Scripps is working with New York-based Broadwater & Associates in the search for a buyer. The company intends to entertain offers through mid-January 2009. If no acceptable offers emerge in the course of that period, the company will examine its other options for the future of the Rocky Mountain News and its interest in the Denver Newspaper Agency.

"Some will be tempted to immediately write the obituary of The Rocky, but we're hoping this step will open the way for a creative solution to the financial challenges faced by Denver's great newspapers," said Boehne. "The loyal readers and advertisers of Denver deserve the very best and we'll work hard to find a solution that benefits this great city."

Scripps will continue to support The Rocky financially while a buyer is being sought. No changes are anticipated in the daily paper or its digital service, rockymountainnews.com.

Prairie Mountain Publishing, another partnership between Scripps and MediaNews Group entities involving newspapers elsewhere in Colorado, and YourHub.com, a print and online initiative of the Denver Newspaper Agency providing hyperlocal news content for communities in Colorado and elsewhere, are unaffected by today's announcement.

About Scripps

The E.W. Scripps Company is a diverse, 130-year-old media enterprise with interests in television stations, newspapers, local news and information web sites, and licensing and syndication. The company's portfolio of locally focused media properties includes: 10 TV stations (six ABC affiliates, three NBC affiliates and one independent); daily and community newspapers in 15 markets and the Washington, D.C.-based Scripps Media Center, home of the Scripps Howard News Service; and United Media, the licensor and syndicator of Peanuts, Dilbert and approximately 150 other features and comics. For a full listing of Scripps media companies and their associated Web sites, visit www.scripps.com.

Urgent: Support Needed For Black Mesa

Hi all,
I am sending this out to all! Please let your communities and organizations know what they can do to support in solidarity of Black Mesa.

We urgently need help preparing for the arrival of our guests and for Mondays action in Denver: Street medics, legal observers, video and audio people are needed, media contacts & outreach to mobilize our community youth, making flyers, text messaging and emailing. We will need help making signs and banners on Sunday for Monday's rally. We also need help cooking, set up and clean up preparation for Sunday and Mondays' dinner for Black Mesa guests. We also need help finding some extra backup housing and gathering monetary donations for gas for transporting the elders, money or checks should be given directly to Black Mesa Water Coalition. Please! Please! Please! spread the word and let's start mobilizing now! We need everyone's help and assistance at this time. Get a hold of your media contacts, write letters, and start making calls on Monday to O.S.M.

For more information about supporting Black Mesa in Denver, please call me at 303.513.9207/ cell. To contact Black Mesa Water Coalition, please use the contact numbers at the end of this email in red.

I appreciate all of you out there who have already given so much support! This fight is not just for the Indigenous people of Black Mesa but also for all future generations to come!

More info will follow soon!


**** SUPPORT URGENTLY NEEDED! ****

Navajo and Hopi communities under threat for more coal mining on Black Mesa, Arizona

The U.S. Office of Surface Mining (OSM) will soon release a "Record of Decision" on the "Black Mesa Project" Final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). This decision will determine if the now closed Black Mesa Mine will re-open more lands for coal strip mining, potentially relocate more families from Black Mesa and give Peabody Coal Company a Life-of-Mine permit to mine on Black Mesa. A "Record of Decision" in favor of Peabody Coal Company's "Black Mesa Project" would also allow the company the use of the Navajo Aquifer, which has been a center of controversy for the past 30 years and give Peabody Coal Company the right to mine untouched coal reserves indefinitely. For more information on the OSM process & the FEIS at: http://www.wrcc. osmre.gov/ wr\BlackMesaEIS. htm

Black Mesa is the ancestral homelands to thousands of Navajo and Hopi families. Black Mesa is regarded as a sacred mountain to the Navajo people and plays an integral role in the cultural survival for the future generations of both the Navajo and Hopi people. The "Black Mesa Project" will negatively impact all life that exists on Black Mesa. Coal equals pollution, water depletion, and global warming! O.S.M. has failed to let the people who will most be impacted know what is at stake and has failed to hear the concerns of residents of Black Mesa.

Support Navajo & Hopi People Going to DENVER!!
The fact that this federal agency has rushed the EIS process over the summer has alarmed Black Mesa residents to take action. If OSM doesn't want to come to our homes, answer our questions and hear our concerns, then we will go to their offices!
Please, support Navajo and Hopi people as they travel to OSM's regional headquarters in Denver, Colorado.

YOU can Support by Taking Action:
1. Join us in Denver! If you can make it to Denver or are already in Denver, please join us Monday December 8th at 10 am in front of the Office of Surface Mining building--Downtown Denver: 1999 Broadway Denver, CO 80202

2. Help us get to Denver! Many of the Navajo and Hopi people going to Denver are farmers, ranchers, elders, and grassroots people without a lot of financial resources. Any donation you can make will go a long way. An anonymous donor has graciously offered to match any donations made to get us to Denver. Visit our website: www.blackmesawaterc oalition. org to donate - any amount is greatly appreciated!
Funds will go to:
* Helping Navajo & Hopi Elders & young people rent vans & pay for gas to Denver and back to Black Mesa.
* Lodging for elders or others who are in need of lodging.
* Providing food for elders and those who are in need.

3. PLEASE e-mail, mail, or fax a letter to the U.S. Office of Surface Mining and/or the U.S. Secretary of Interior. Tell OSM NOT to issue a "Life-of-Mine" permit for Peabody's "Black Mesa Project"!
Below is sample letter you can use and send to the U.S. Office of Surface Mining and/or the U.S. Secretary of the Interior.

Addresses to send letters to:
Dennis Winterringer
Western Regional Office
Office of Surface Mining, Reclamation and Enforcement
P.O. Box 46667
Denver, CO 80201-6667
Phone: 303-844-1400, ext 1440
email: bmkeis@osmre. gov

OR

Dirk Kempthorne
Secretary
Department of Interior
1849 C Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20240
e-mail: webteam@ios. doi.gov

for more information please call BMWC (928) 213-5909, cell# (928) 380-6296, cell # (928) 637-5281

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ------FORM LETTER------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ---
Dirk Kempthorne
Secretary
Department of Interior
1849 C Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20240


Dear Secretary Kempthorne:

I am writing to request your urgent attention and immediate action regarding a matter of highest importance to the integrity of your trust responsibility and to the credibility of the Department of the Office of Surface Mining, Reclamation and Enforcement (OSM).

I request that you direct OSM to suspend all activity on the Black Mesa Project Final Environmental Impact Statement (DOI DES 08-49, OSM-EIS-33). The Record of Decision (ROD) for the Black Mesa Project Final EIS will be announced by Dec. 7, 2008 and I strongly urge you to not give the applicant, Peabody Western Coal Company, a permit to mine more coal in Black Mesa, AZ.

OSM has rushed to approve a life-of-mine permit, first without making the permit revisions sufficiently available for public review, and then without adequate environmental review. The power plant that previously used Black Mesa Mine coal shut down, and there is no other proposed use for the coal whose mining would be permitted by OSM. As a result, there is no actual proposed project involving Black Mesa Mine coal to be analyzed, making the pending EIS not only premature, but in direct conflict with the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act.

The current proposal would also grant the applicant continued access to Navajo Aquifer water for the life-of-mine operations. For over thirty years, Peabody Coal Company's coal-slurry operation has a depleted precious drinking water and the drying of many sacred springs to the Navajo and Hopi as a result of using the Navajo Aquifer. The Navajo Aquifer is the only source of drinking water for Black Mesa tribal residents. OSM's current proposal to grant a permit for a mine-with no potential customers-and indefinite use of water rights to the Navajo Aquifer is an affront to tribal communities, and if allowed to proceed, would be a clear failure to meet the Secretary of the Interior's trust responsibility to the people of the Hopi Tribe and Navajo Nation.

Thank you for your consideration,

Sincerely,


------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -----END OF FORM LETTER------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --------

Enei Begaye
Co-Director, Black Mesa Water Coalition
PO Box 613 Flagstaff, AZ 86002-613
phone: (928) 213-5909
fax #: (928) 213-5905
www.blackmesawaterc oalition. org

Occupation 101

If like me when growing up, some of you heard uneducated, racist cliches such as "They've been fighting over there since time immemorial" or "God gave the Jews that land" or "The Arabs want to push them into the sea" or "We're an isolationist country and should stay out of it" or Leon Uris novels were a fixture around your household, then please watch this extremely important film about the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

It's a breath of fresh air in the mummified face of those musty old apartheid myths.

Educated readers will immediately recognize the parallels between Occupied Palestine and Occupied Turtle Island.

Occupation 101

Synopsis

A thought-provoking and powerful documentary film on the current and historical root causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Unlike any other film ever produced on the conflict -- 'Occupation 101' presents a comprehensive analysis of the facts and hidden truths surrounding the never ending controversy and dispels many of its long-perceived myths and misconceptions.

The film also details life under Israeli military rule, the role of the United States in the conflict, and the major obstacles that stand in the way of a lasting and viable peace. The roots of the conflict are explained through first-hand on-the-ground experiences from leading Middle East scholars, peace activists, journalists, religious leaders and humanitarian workers whose voices have too often been suppressed in American media outlets.

The film covers a wide range of topics -- which include -- the first wave of Jewish immigration from Europe in the 1880's, the 1920 tensions, the 1948 war, the 1967 war, the first Intifada of 1987, the Oslo Peace Process, Settlement expansion, the role of the United States Government, the second Intifada of 2000, the separation barrier and the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, as well as many heart wrenching testimonials from victims of this tragedy.

Link to the video at Google:

Western Shoshone Call For Immediate Encampment

Western Shoshone Call For Immediate Encampment

WESTERN SHOSHONE ALERT:
By Brenda Norrell

MOUNT TENABO, WESTERN SHOSHONE TERRITORY --Western Shoshone are calling for immediate support and an encampment to protect the trees being ripped out by the roots for gold mining by Barrick Gold on sacred Mount Tenabo. Western Shoshone protested the destruction today and halted the damage for three hours. "They are piling up the trees like dead bodies," one of the Shoshone said. Western Shoshone Bill Larson urged supporters to come immediately and bring water, food, warm clothing, blankets and firewood for an encampment.

For support and media interviews:

Carrie Dann, Western Shoshone grandmother, 775-468-0230
Dan Randolph, Great Basin Resource Watch, 775-722-4056
Julie Cavanaugh-Bill, Western Shoshone Defense Project, 775-744-2565 or
wsdp@igc.org

See also: Shoshone Grandmothers Plan Resistance Day on Proposed Mine Site

Schools Cancel Thanksgiving Dress Up

A hearty Huzzah! to Michelle Raheja.

Schools cancel Thanksgiving dress up

Published: Nov. 25, 2008 at 1:15 PM

CLAREMONT, Calif., Nov. 25 (UPI) -- Kindergartens in Claremont, Calif., canceled a Thanksgiving dress up after some parents criticized the tradition as demeaning to American Indians.

Until this year, Claremont kindergarten classes had celebrated the Tuesday before Thanksgiving by dressing as pilgrims and American Indians who share a feast and sing songs.

This year, educators canceled the dress up part after Michelle Raheja, the mother of a kindergartner at Condit Elementary School, said the schools were perpetuating a racist cartoonish stereotype, the Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday.

"I'm sure you can appreciate the inappropriateness of asking children to dress up like slaves (and kind slave masters), or Jews (and friendly Nazis), or members of any other racial minority group who has struggled in our nation's history," said Raheja, whose mother is a member of the Seneca tribe.

Parents angry that the event was to be held without costumes accused Raheja and her supporters of being elitists determined to inject politics into a simple children's celebration, the Times reported.

UN: Canada Must Investigate Cases Of Murdered Aboriginal Women

Hat tip to K for the link.

Take note of the racist comments on this story (at the link). How quickly they reveal the seething, psychotic underbelly that is white supremacist KKKanada. So because a woman is allegedly a runaway, or prostituted by the sex trade that somehow makes her murder less urgent? Or is "Aboriginal" all most settlers need to hear to give their assent to slaughter?

Canada must probe cases of slain, missing aboriginal women: UN

Last Updated: Monday, November 24, 2008 | 5:56 PM ET
The Canadian Press

The United Nations is calling on the Canadian government to investigate why hundreds of deaths and disappearances of aboriginal women remain unsolved.

It's asking Ottawa to report back in a year on the status of more than 500 cases that "have neither been fully investigated nor attracted priority attention, with the perpetrators remaining unpunished."

The UN committee on the elimination of discrimination against women wants Canada to "urgently carry out thorough investigations" to trace how and why the justice system failed.

"It also urges the state party to carry out an analysis of those cases in order to determine whether there is a racialized pattern to the disappearances and take measures to address the problem if that is the case," says one of more than 40 recommendations.

One aboriginal activist who has worked for years with families of missing native women says Canada doesn't need another study, and that racism is the all-too-common thread.

"Absolutely," said Sharon McIvor. "I'm an aboriginal woman that's grown up in this country. I know it's racism."

A federally funded $5-million study by the Native Women's Association of Canada concludes that 510 aboriginal girls and women have gone missing or been murdered since 1980. It calls for an emergency strategy.

Federal and provincial justice ministers said last September that they're improving how missing-person cases are handled, especially those involving native women.

Special task forces have been formed in Vancouver and Edmonton since dozens of women working in the sex trade in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside went missing over several years with little police or media response. Many were aboriginal.

Investigators finally banded together under pressure from distraught families and a series by the Vancouver Sun to zero in on now-convicted serial killer Robert Pickton.

McIvor said aboriginal girls and women from all walks of life are still being targeted, their disappearances treated with uneven and too often muted reaction.

She cited the unsolved case of Daleen Kay Bosse, who vanished after a night out with friends in Saskatoon on May 18, 2004. There was no hint that the aspiring teacher and photographer, just 26 years old, would simply abandon her life.

Her heartbroken mother, Pauline Muskego, spoke publicly a year later about the comparative lack of media interest.

"My daughter's face has never been shown nationally," she said.

McIvor said the general public mistakenly thinks such victims are living high-risk lifestyles.

"And that's not true. Her risk is, she's an aboriginal woman."

No comment from federal officials was immediately available.

The UN also raised alarms about lack of shelters for battered women and about Conservative government cuts that wiped out the court challenges program — funding that helped advance minority rights in the legal system.

© The Canadian Press, 2008

Solidarity With Barriere Lake Algonquins

I'm a little behind on publishing this press release. Hat Tip to the Angryindian for the heads up.


More Barriere Lake Algonquin resistance photos at Flicker.

Press Release: Barriere Lake Algonquins Need Our Solidarity

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Wednesday, November 19, 2008


Barriere Lake Algonquins peacefully blockade highway 117 in Northern Quebec a second time: despite fears of more police violence, community wants Quebec and Canada to respect agreements and Canada to end interference in leadership selection

Kitiganik/Rapid Lake, Algonquin Territory / - This morning at 7:30am, Barriere Lake community members of all ages and their supporters once again peacefully blockaded highway 117 outside their reserve, demanding that Quebec and Canada send in negotiators rather than resort to police violence. During the Algonquin's first blockade on October 6th, 2008, Quebec police used tear gas and "pain compliance" techniques against a peaceful crowd that included Elders, youth, and children, arrested nine people, and hospitalized a Customary Councillor after hitting him in the chest with a tear-gas canister, drawing criticism from international human rights groups, the Chiefs of Ontario, and the Christian Peacemakers Team. [ http://blip.tv/file/1391794 ]


The Algonquins promise to maintain the blockade until Canada and Quebec commit in writing to honour their agreements and Canada appoints an observer to witness and respect the outcome of a new leadership selection in Barriere Lake in accordance with their Customary Governance Code.

"Instead of doing the dirty work of the federal government, Quebec should implement its agreements and immediately lobby the federal government to deal fairly with our community," said Norman Matchewan, a community spokesperson on-site at the blockade. "Charest's brutal treatment of our community shows his government has absolutely no respect for the rights of Indigenous peoples, which should be an urgent matter of debate during the provincial election."


Barriere Lake wants Canada and Quebec to uphold signed agreements, dating back to the 1991 Trilateral Agreement, a landmark sustainable development and resource co-management agreement praised by the United Nations and the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. Canada has been in breach of the agreement since 2001. Quebec signed a complementary Bilateral agreement in 1998, but has stalled since two former Quebec Cabinet Ministers, Quebec special representative John Ciaccia and Barriere Lake special representative Clifford Lincoln, made recommendations for the agreement's implementation in 2006.

"To avoid their obligations, the federal government has deliberately violated our leadership customs by ousting our Customary Chief and Council," said Matchewan. "In what amounts to a coup d'etat, they are recognizing a Chief and Council rejected by a community majority. The Quebec government is cooperating with the federal government because they are using the leadership issue as an excuse to bury the 1991 and 1998 Agreements they signed with our First Nation."

In November 2007 the legitimate leadership of Barriere Lake had issued a ban on new forestry operations in the Trilateral Territory until Quebec implemented their agreements, but the province and forestry companies have used the leadership change as an opportunity to cut new logging roads [in preparation for logging operations] without permission from the legitimate Barriere Lake representatives.

On March 10th, 2008, for the third time in 12 years, the Government of Canada interfered in Barriere Lake's internal customary governance. They rescinded recognition of the Customary Chief and Council and recognized individuals whom the Barriere Lake Elder's Council says were not selected in accordance with their Customary Governance Code.

"The federal government pretends this is simply an internal issue," says Marylynn Poucachiche, another Barriere Lake spokesperson on-site. "But we can only resolve the situation if the federal government appoints an observer to witness a new leadership selection that is truly in accordance with our Customary Governance Code, promises to respect the outcome, and then stops interfering in our internal affairs."

In 2007, Quebec Superior Court Judge Rejean Paul issued a report that concluded that the current faction recognized by the federal government was a "small minority" that "didn't respect the Customary Governance Code" in an alleged leadership selection in 2006 [2]. The federal government recognized this minority faction after they conducted another alleged leadership selection in January 2008, even though an observer's report the government relied on stated there was no "guarantee" that the Customary Governance Code was respected [3].

The Algonquin Nation Secretariat, the Tribal Council representing three Algonquin communities including Barriere Lake, continues to recognize and work with Customary Chief Benjamin Nottaway and his Council.

In Montreal at noon, supporters of Barriere Lake will rally in front of the office of Premier Jean Charest at the southeast corner of McGill College and Sherbrooke.

-30-

Media Contacts:

Norman Matchewan, Barriere Lake spokesperson: 819 – 435 – 2171, 514 - 831 - 6902

Marylynn Poucachiche, Barriere Lake spokesperson:514 - 893 - 8283, 819 - 860 - 3860

Norman Young, Grand Chief of the Algonquin Nation Secretariat: 819 - 627 - 6869


Attached: Briefing Package and letter from Acting Chief Benjamin Nottaway to Premier Charest

White Power Gang Re-Captures Lance Hering

Lance Hering made a valiant effort to escape the white power gangbanger life that is the United States Marine Corps and its race war in Iraq, but the thugs in that fascist cult have re-captured him.

Lance Corporal Herring's kidnapping by these murderous press gangs is just one more reason why snitches get stitches and officers get fragged.

Hering found perfect wilderness town to hide

By Kevin Vaughan, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)
Published November 17, 2008 at 9:34 p.m.
Updated November 17, 2008 at 9:42 p.m.

A fisherman navigates foggy waters Monday at the Port Angeles Yacht Club in Port Angeles, Wash. The fog-shrouded town was the safe haven of Lance Cpl. Lance Hering prior to his arrest Sunday.


PORT ANGELES, Wash. — Lance Hering spent his final days of freedom among rolling woods and smothering fog that swoops in without warning to obscure hillside homes in the extreme northwest corner of the United States.

Hering, 23, was a long way from Eldorado Canyon State Park near Boulder, where he was reported missing Aug. 30, 2006, after a rock-climbing fall — a story that authorities later concluded was an elaborate ruse.

He was even farther from Camp Pendleton, Calif., and his former life in the U.S. Marine Corps, which had included multiple tours of duty in Iraq.

His wavy blond hair hung past his shoulders, his high, tight Marine buzz-cut long since grown out. A scraggly beard covered his face.

It was the kind of look that might not have been noticed in a city of roughly 18,000 people, where logging and shipping tourism all feed the local economy, where the police department has 32 officers, where the county courthouse has no metal detectors.

It was here, at the W.R. Fairchild International Airport on the west edge of town, that Port Angeles police officers swooped in Sunday afternoon and arrested both the Marine and his father, Lloyd Hering, of Boulder.

The arrests answered the immediate question — where was Lance Tyler Hering? — but didn't solve the mystery of where he had been for the last 26 months, of what he had been doing, of how it was that he came to be here, where fall colors — ambers and golds and crimsons — dappled the hillsides Monday.

A couple months ago, authorities searching for Hering had zeroed in on this area after a tip that he might be hiding out in Olympic National Park. The park is almost a million acres of forests, rugged canyons and sub-alpine meadows, a place where it would be easy for a young man to lose himself. And it's surrounded, in places, by both forest and wilderness land.

"We have a lot of access points around the park to the backcountry, to the wilderness," said Kevin Hendricks, chief ranger in the park. "There are many, many roads that access park trails."

It's the kind of place where one could survive.

"It's a rainy environment — there would be ample fresh water around," Hendricks said.

Still, Hendricks had no reports of Hering having been reported in the area, and no indications that park rangers had come across him during their patrols.

Deputy Police Chief Brian Smith also said it was not clear how long Hering had been in the area.

"That's still under investigation," he said.

As dusk settled in Monday evening, a few sailors worked on their rigging in the Port Angeles Harbor.

Just beyond their boats, a fog bank rolled across the Strait of Juan De Fuca, which separates this corner of Washington from Canada, a place where some young men of another generation went to escape another war.

Angryindian: Why An Obama White House Will Remain White

The Angryindian - wide awake in Amerika. Let him shake you from your stupor:

The Rise of the Hapa Emperor, or, Why an Obama White House will remain White

By The Angryindian
11.13.2008

“What did you expect when you unbound the gag that had muted those Black mouths? That they would chant your praises? Did you think that when those heads that our fathers had forcibly bowed down to the ground were raised again, you would find adoration in their eyes?”

Jean-Paul Sartre, Orphee Noir
-

Everything that could be said about the United States has been said aloud, copiously written about or whispered in hushed tones from behind the closed doors of collective public group-think. When Pax Americana advocates tout the imperialistic grandeur of the U.S., the discourse is commonly cloistered along the prescribed talking-points of American Exceptionalism rather than pragmatic realism. European as well as non-White American citizens and residents struggle to see themselves as the perfect society, a literal paradise on Earth with no moral equal while at the same time playing make believe that Indigenous genocide and African slavery were, and are, mere aberrations to this historical record.

On this occasion, namely the eve of the appointment of the first non-total-European to the most powerful seat of global Euro-settler power, it is imperative at this notable moment in the history of Euro-American colonial power to examine what a Barack Obama presidency really means in relation to America’s long and ugly record of ethno-social manipulation, economic marginalisation and aggressive territorial expansionism. This writer is not at all alone in stating that the biggest mistake the entire world, chiefly the non-European colonialized world, is making is in assuming that since a person of colour has been selected by the American economic and military authority structure that a “change” is coming not just in Washington D.C. but the planet as a whole. In particular, the factors that have created the Diaspora that has defined our existence since expansionist Europe found Africa and turned it into a supermarket for slaves and natural resources. On its face, this seemingly clean break from America’s long tradition of racial hatreds and the representation of powerful White men running the world appears to be complete. But is it?

Read the rest...

Genocidal Marxists Pen An Anti-Indian Tirade

Here comes another anti-Indian obscenity, this one titled "Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry." [hat tip to K for the link]

Disrobing? As in ripping the clothes off of a person? What a rapacious name for a book, and perfectly appropos considering two pro-Occupation, white supremacist Canadians have written it. At one point the authors write, "We have to consider the question of what aboriginal communities would be like were it not for residential schools."

How about free of traumatized child-rape survivors?

From the article:

"Their new book, Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry, due out this month, is 260 pages of unspeakable challenges to what they consider the 'romantic mythology' of native culture, the 'quackery' of promoting traditional healing, the meaninglessness of 'traditional knowledge' and treacherous assertions that Indians were 'barbarians' before Europeans introduced to them 'civilization.'"

Excuse me? Since when have these racist ideas EVER been unspeakable? Honey, these ideas are not unspeakable; they're policy.

The authors are clearly two irrational nutters more than willing to attack Indigenous peoples' beliefs, which THEY CLAIM lead to unworkable relationships with Industry. But they are not willing to attack the irrational system of belief known as white supremacist capitalist patriarchy which sanctifies (with damn near papal infallibility) that same earth-raping Industry in the first place.

Ha! Marxism - just another despiritualized, mechanized, techno-utopian excuse for theft and murder. In these witch burners hands, anyway.

Watch out! Here comes whitey with his "economically questionable" yardstick with which to measure the way you give your world meaning. Never mind that his obsession with money and power makes him believe stock markets are "bears" and "bulls."

Once again, the predator blames his victims for their marginalization and isolation, not to mention their dispossession and subjugation.

I believe I will go say a prayer now that these two purveyors of genocidal propaganda someday hang, like Julius Streicher, for their war crimes. Sure, a hug to that happy, willing tree!

Leftist couple's stance on aboriginals leaves them in the cold

Kevin Libin, National Post Published: Friday, October 31, 2008

Authors Frances Widdowson and Albert Howard pose in their Calgary Home. Keith Morison for National PostCalgary

CALGARY -- In their living room, surrounded by posters of Vladimir Lenin and smiling, AK-toting Salvadorean guerilla girls, Frances Widdowson and Albert Howard hardly look like enemies of the Canadian Left. But in this country there are Things One Cannot Say; the most egregious of them being to question the special status Canada grants to entrenched Aboriginal interests. And the Calgary authors, despite their Birkenstocks and their confidence in Trotsky, appear, unconscionably, unworried about saying them.

Their new book, Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry, due out this month, is 260 pages of unspeakable challenges to what they consider the "romantic mythology" of native culture, the "quackery" of promoting traditional healing, the meaninglessness of "traditional knowledge" and treacherous assertions that Indians were "barbarians" before Europeans introduced to them "civilization."

Their scholarship has been denigrated. They have been denounced as racists. At this, they shake their heads and chuckle. None of it seems to bother them nearly as much as accusations that they are in collusion with, of all people, Fraser Institute types like Tom Flanagan and Melvin Smith.

"It's difficult because you get criticized by people you thought you had some connection to. But they're so misguided, they can't really look at things rationally," sighs Ms. Widdowson, a political science professor at Calgary's Mount Royal College.

Conservative scholars, with their tendency to critique the aboriginal status quo, may be a minority in the academy, "but we actually do exist," as one right-ish prof puts it. Heretical Marxists bucking left-wing orthodoxy, on the other hand, are as rare as the Wendigo.

"It's a bit lonely out here," says Mr. Howard.

Actually, their critique of the so-called aboriginal industry is classical, albeit outmoded, Marxism. In their book, published by McGill-Queen's University Press, they identify the main culprits as the primarily non-native agents such as lawyers, consultants and anthropologists who thrive on our segregated policy approach to First Nations people. The tens of billions of dollars a year channeled to reserves and Canada's North from governments and industrialists, they argue, attracts mercenaries in swarms, manipulating natives to inflate land claim grievances, demand industry payoffs and pressure politicians for more funding with few strings attached.

These revelations came to them when the two worked advising the Northwest Territories government in the 1990s. The territory had incorporated into official policy something called "traditional knowledge," requiring departments to include the spiritual folklore of Inuit and First Nations culture in decision-making about resource management - say, approving mines or setting hunting quotas. Appalled at the melding of supernatural beliefs with government policy, the two published an essay in the Institute for Research on Public Policy's journal, Policy Options, arguing that traditional knowledge made bad policy; its amorphous nature meant it "can be used to justify any enterprise, including the over-exploitation of resources."

For this, Ms. Widdowson was suspended from her government job. In a letter appealing to the deputy minister of the department, she reasoned: "Do you think that I should integrate the [native myth] idea that wolves create caribou and that animals ‘present themselves' to be killed with my current understanding of evolutionary biology? Should the department encourage renewable resource officers to throw beaver fetuses into lakes so that they can be ‘reborn?' This is exactly what the traditional knowledge policy is directing employees to do." Her contract was not renewed.

The sin, she says, was challenging the dogma maintaining the aboriginal industry: that natives are special; that their traditions possess enlightened ideals and crucial wisdom that must not only be protected, but encouraged. We sanction native justice, in the form of sentencing circles; the preservation of economically questionable traditional languages and sciences in schools (native languages often cannot accommodate modern scientific concepts); and the integration of "spiritual healing" in aboriginal health policy. This plays to sentimentalities for ancient ways, but when it comes to improving First Nations' social and economic outcomes, the authors argue, such things are dangerously counterproductive. "We don't want to stop people from believing these things," Mr. Howard says. "But how about we stop encouraging it?" The book even mounts a careful justification for Canada's reviled residential schools: Yes, they had flaws; but having introduced basic literacy and Western knowledge to hunter-gatherers, "we have to consider the question of what aboriginal communities would be like were it not for residential schools," they write.

The current aboriginal industry prefers atavism: "It's basically being said that Aboriginal cultures are equally developed and they have their own science and their own medicine," Ms. Widdowson says. "That whole philosophy justifies not doing anything about anything, and just basically allowing these very isolated, marginalized groups to continue that way without any hope for any improvement in the future."

Like proper Marxists, they contend that the system is perpetuated by those benefiting from the arrangement - which certainly aren't rank-and-file aboriginals, persisting in poor, sick and miserable conditions. "When you break down the romantic mythology, you find yourself immediately being accused of being anti-native people. But this whole thing came out of the fact that we looked at this and we said native people are getting screwed over here," Mr. Howard says.

To the Left, Ms. Widdowson and Mr. Howard's suggestion that aboriginal policy must elevate post-Enlightenment knowledge over superstitions is blasphemous. An essay in the New Socialist magazine last year said Karl Marx would be "turning in his grave" at the way they employ his theories. At Ms. Widdowson's college, administrators received letters calling for her dismissal.

The attacks from erstwhile comrades don't surprise the couple: They've faced these before, and predict more in their book. But they believe standing against the powerful machinery of institutionalized interests is what leftists do best. They may be among the only ones of that ideological persuasion willing to utter Things One Cannot Say, but Ms. Widdowson and Mr. Howard seem satisfied that they are keeping faith with the Bolshevik vanguard. As unpopular as it is, they insist, a "real left-wing analysis" of the state of aboriginals in this country "requires a critical eye rather than a bleeding heart."

National Post

klibin@nationalpost.com

How Much Do Dems Have To Screw You To Lose Your Vote?

This article and George Carlin video is dedicated with love to all of you not voting in any way shape or form on November 4th to validate the corporatist, war party rulers of the Amerikan empire. Know that the majority of people in this country stand with you, and that special blessings will be bestowed upon you for your intelligence, integrity, honesty, and heart.

Boycott the sham elections! A vote for the empire is a vote for genocide.



The Trail of Broken Promises

By MATT GONZALEZ

Watching the Democrats in the final weeks of the presidential election has been a lesson in revisionist history. While they lament the terrible crimes perpetrated against the American people by George Bush and vow to keep fighting for our rights, they conveniently gloss over the fact that they have no standing to make such claims. Indeed, the Democrats, including Senator Barack Obama, have actually voted with President Bush’s agenda, making them complicit in his acts, not valiant opponents defending our liberties.

PELOSI’S PROMISE TO END THE WAR

Democratic Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi said that if she became the speaker of the House of Representatives she would end the war in Iraq. Remember that? The Boston Globe noted, "Pelosi vows no ‘blank check’ on Iraq funds.” (1/8/07). In her own words: "If the president wants to add to this mission, he is going to have to justify it. And this is new to him, because up until now the Republican Congress has given him a blank check with no oversight, no standards, no conditions.” Rick Klein of the Globe noted "Pelosi’s comments mark the first suggestion by a Democratic congressional leader that Congress could use its authority over the nation’s finances to hasten an end to the war. Her remarks point toward an aggressive stance on Iraq from Congressional Democrats in their opening days of control of the House and Senate.”

Yet after she became the speaker of the House in Jan 2007, war appropriations actually went up by $50 billion, with no strings attached and no date for the withdrawal of troops. This year, 2008, they’ve gone up by another $25 billion for a two-year total of $350 billion, with no end in sight. So what happened to the promise of "no blank check?”

REID’S FILIBUSTER RULE

Sen. Harry Reid, the leader of the Democrats in the Senate, has complained that the Republicans have filibustered (a procedure used by the minority party to delay voting on legislation) more times in the last two years than in the entire history of the United States to explain why he can’t move forward a progressive agenda. First he said it was over 70 times, then adjusted it by saying it was 65 times (Las Vegas Sun 3/6/08); yet still the highest for any two-year period (the previous record was 57 filibusters) (Politico, 3/6/08; Gov.Track.us 4/15/08). But Sen. Reid’s frustration has proven to be a red-herring. Did you know that Reid lets the Republicans filibuster telephonically, meaning that he doesn’t require that they physically present themselves on the floor of the Senate? Why is he making it easy on them? Is this what an opposition party looks like?

REPUBLICAN CLASS ACTION REFORM

Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic Party nominee for president, has a long history of voting against the interest of the American people, and specifically, the working class. Before entering the presidential contest, he supported the Republican Class Action Reform Bill, which made it harder for class-action lawsuits to be brought in the state courts. State courts are exactly where consumer protection lawsuits and recent wage and hour claims have succeeded in improving the lives of workers and helped them obtain better wages and breaks during work hours have succeeded.

Progressive commentators at the time called it a thinly veiled special-interest extravaganza. Journalist David Sirota noted "Opposed by most major civil rights and consumer watchdog groups, this Big Business-backed legislation was sold to the public as a way to stop ‘frivolous’ lawsuits. But everyone in Washington knew the bill’s real objective was to protect corporate abusers.” (The Nation, 6/26/06). So why did Obama vote for it?

PATRIOT ACT & FISA AMENDMENT

Sen. Obama supported one of the worst attacks on civil liberties in recent history, the reauthorization of the Patriot Act, which extended an earlier law granting law enforcement expanded powers to search telephone, e-mail, and financial and medical records, in addition to granting the federal government a host of other powers to combat so-called domestic terrorism. After saying he would oppose it if elected to the U.S. Senate (NOW questionnaire, 9/10/03), in July 2005, Obama voted for it.

But this wasn’t enough. After entering the presidential race and running on a "change” message, Obama vowed in February of 2008 to vote against—and filibuster if necessary—the FISA bill amendment (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) that gave immunities to telecommunications corporations that cooperated with the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance program. This eavesdropping program clearly violated the privacy of law-abiding Americans at the behest of the president, and made the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover seem tame by comparison. Those voting in favor of the bill didn’t even first require full disclosure to see how deep the illegal conduct extended and agreed to apply the law retroactively.

Despite his promises to the contrary, and despite the vehement protests of many of his supporters, when the FISA bill came to the Senate for a vote this past July, Sen. Obama voted for it without explaining how this vote fit in with his change message or reconciled with his repeated claims he was going to protect the American people from repeated assaults on civil liberties by President Bush. Here was his chance to lead and make good on his promise, and what did he do?

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) called the FISA bill "an unconstitutional domestic spying bill that violates the Fourth Amendment and eliminates any meaningful role for judicial oversight of government surveillance" (ACLU press release, 7/9/08). Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office called the bill "a Constitutional nightmare” and noted "with one vote, Congress has strengthened the executive branch, weakened the judiciary and rendered itself irrelevant.”

Obama even voted to stop debate on the bill so he could get back to the campaign trail. How ironic is it that he was in a hurry to give more speeches about change and hope but couldn’t find the time or integrity to convert these ideas into action?

On the eve of the vote MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow noted "I’m betting that [Pres. Bush’s] wildest dreams did not include the prospect that Congress — a Democratic-led Congress — would help him cover up his crimes. Yet that is exactly what the US Senate is poised to do.” (Countdown with Keith Olbermann, 7/8/08).

OFF-SHORE DRILLING

As Sen. John McCain started to call for domestic drilling to ease our dependence on foreign oil, rather than debate the scientific and economic illogic of the position, Sen. Obama announced that he agreed with McCain. Reversing a 25-year ban on off-shore oil drilling, Sen. Obama led his party’s reversal, offering no explanation for how this would ease oil prices, particularly as experts noted that drilling would likely have an almost imperceptible impact on oil prices in the near future.

As Lester Brown and Jonathan Dorn of the Earth Policy Institute noted in "Drilling For Oil Is Not The Answer” (9/30/08) "The U.S. Department of Energy projects that lifting the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) moratorium [of the lower 48 states] would not increase production before 2017 and that by 2030 production would only amount to 0.2 million barrels per day—less than 1 percent of current consumption.”

Furthermore "The U.S. Department of Energy projects that opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) would lower gasoline prices at the pump by a mere 2 cents per gallon.” Even if we combined the two regions in question, it wouldn’t amount to much of an impact on oil prices: "Lifting the moratoria on drilling in ANWR and the OCS would reduce the price of a gallon of gasoline by at most 6 cents—and this would not be seen for at least another decade.”

Proponents of drilling have also exaggerated the
environmental safety of current off-shore drilling and oil production technology in general. There is widespread evidence that current drilling in the Gulf of Mexico is already leading to serious pollution and spills. After reviewing data from the National Response Center, the Houston Chronicle found there had been 595 oil spills across four state coastlines, totaling roughly 9 million gallons spilled in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita ("Spills from hurricanes staining the coast” by Dina Cappiello, 11/13/05). So why is Sen. Obama, who claims to care about the environment, now advocating off-shore drilling?

DEATH PENALTY

In June of 2008, the conservative Supreme Court struck down the use of the death penalty in cases of child rape (Kennedy v. Louisiana held that states may not impose the death penalty for the commission of a crime that did not result in the death of the victim), a decision that surprised even death penalty opponents who hailed it as an important step toward full abolition of the death penalty. Sen. Obama’s response? He quickly called a press conference to denounce the decision. Obama stated that he agreed with the extreme conservative minority, comprised of Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Alito, Scalia and Thomas. Despite the many known racial and class inequities inherent in the death penalty, a practice abolished and abhorred in most of the rest of the world, Obama celebrates that he has always been a supporter of it.

On the campaign trail, Sen. Obama likes to highlight death penalty legislation that he sponsored while a member of the Illinois legislature, to show his commitment to reform. But let’s be clear, he didn’t work on laws to address the disproportionate rate of death penalty convictions of African-Americans, but rather a law to require videotaped interrogations of death penalty suspects. Yes, something we can applaud, but something many critics have noted merely greases the wheels of this injustice.

Most disquieting of all, as a state legislator, Obama voted "to expand the list of death-eligible crimes” (Chicago Tribune, 5/2/07), despite admitting in his own allegedly soul-searching memoir that the death penalty "does little to deter crime.” (The Audacity of Hope, 2006).

AFGHANISTAN

On foreign policy, Sen. Obama’s approach is hawkish. He wants to deploy more soldiers to Afghanistan, which will only further destabilize the Afghan-Pakistani border. He simply ignores the historic reality that no invading army has ever managed to successfully win a war in this area or subjugate the Afghani people.

During its ill-fated 10-year war, between 1979 and 1989, the Soviet Union deployed 620,000 soldiers to Afghanistan and sustained 470,000 casualties (sick and wounded, including infectious diseases such as hepatitis and typhoid fever).

Why does Obama want to ignore these facts and risk further destabilizing the area and creating another Vietnam/Iraq occupation there?

IRAQ

With respect to Iraq, Sen. Obama has conceded the main argument of Sen. McCain’s campaign and said the so-called "surge” worked (despite significant evidence and analysis to the contrary). And he has vowed to keep soldiers in Iraq to fight counterterrorism. John Podesta, former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton who now leads the Center for American Progress, estimated this would take a 60,000 troop presence to achieve.

Moreover Obama "will not ‘rule out’ using private security companies like Blackwater Worldwide in Iraq” according to Democracy Now! Correspondent Jeremy Scahill. And Obama did not plan on signing on to legislation that seeks to ban the use of such forces by the U.S. government by January 2009, according to one of his senior foreign policy advisors. (Democracy Now! 2/28/08). (This is one promise Obama unfortunately has kept, refusing to sign onto the Stop Outsourcing Security Act, introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont).

In an interview with Amy Goodman, Sen. Obama stated his intention of leaving 140,000 private contractors in Iraq because "we don’t have the troops to replace them.” He also stated the need to keep an additional "strike force in the region … in order to not only protect them, but also potentially to protect their territorial integrity.” Summarizing the interview, Amy Goodman concluded that it sounded as if Obama "would leave more than 100,000 troops, close to 200,000 in Iraq. ‘Troops’ meaning U.S. soldiers and military contractors which some call mercenaries.” (4/1/08).

Even concerning a possible timetable to withdraw troops from Iraq, Obama has diminished his promises. He now is committing only to "reducing the number of combat troops within 16 months,” presumably to "bolster efforts in Afghanistan so that we can capture and kill bin Laden and crush al Qaeda.” (Obama/McCain debate, 9/26/08).

What we know for certain, though, is when given a chance to commit to a complete withdrawal of troops from Iraq, Obama said "no.” When Tim Russert asked him, during a debate in New Hampshire in September 2007, if he could promise having American troops out of Iraq by 2013, he would not do so.

MILITARY SPENDING

According to military policy analysts at the Arms Control Center, in their report "U.S. Defense Spending, since 2001” military spending has risen from $333 billion in 2001 to $696 in 2008 (including $189 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan). It’s expected to rise even more in 2009, to $706 billion.

Despite this, Sen. Obama has joined Sen. McCain and called for increased military spending. "I’ve said that we have to increase the size of our military,” Obama told ABC’s This Week (9/7/08). The details of which he has previously noted in a speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs: "I strongly support the expansion of our ground forces by adding 65,000 soldiers to the Army and 27,000 Marines.” ("Obama surrenders on military spending” by Glen Ford, The Progressive, 1/15/08).

WALL STREET CRISIS

The current financial crisis has generated perhaps the most fascinating political rhetoric of all. Obama has blamed the Republicans for deregulation and in doing so, his poll numbers have given him a healthy lead as we approach the final days of the campaign. The only problem is that the economic crisis is not just the fault of the Republicans. It is the direct result of bipartisan bills enacted into law by a Democratic president, Bill Clinton.

In 1999 Clinton signed into law the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. This repealed the last vestiges of an important Depression-era law, the Glass-Steagall Act (1933), which prohibited banking, brokerage, and insurance companies from merging together, thus compartmentalized the financial industry and protected it from future collapses.

Equally significant in 2000, President Clinton signed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which repealed 20-year-old agreements between the Security and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, so that financial institutions could sell credit derivatives such as the now notorious "credit default swaps” without any oversight and with no regulation. Two of its cosponsors included Democratic Senators Tom Harkin of Iowa and Tim Johnson of South Dakota. The measure had such bipartisan support that it was never even debated in the Senate and was passed by unanimous consent.

This resulted in the repackaging of mortgages into securities and the failure to regulate institutions that then over-leveraged themselves as they sold credit derivatives to investors who wanted protection from risky investments. This is what led to this financial crisis whose ramifications we have only begun to understand.

Both Obama and McCain voted for the $700 billion taxpayer-funded bailout despite the plea of 200 economists (including Nobel Prize winners) urging them not to do so (Open Letter to Congress regarding Treasury bailout plan, 9/24/08). Obama keeps emphasizing that the mess was the fault of Republicans alone. But how is this argument credible when the law responsible for the financial meltdown enjoyed unanimous support from both parties?

NAFTA

It was quite emblematic of Sen. Obama that he has changed his position on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to suit whatever situation he is in. First, while running for the Senate in 2004, he said he supported NAFTA and thought there should be more trade agreements like it. (AP story 2/26/08). Then, while running against Hillary Clinton he blamed her for NAFTA’s impact on workers in the "rustbelt” states of Wisconsin and Ohio. But once he won the primary things changed. When asked if he would truly invoke the six-month clause in NAFTA for unilateral withdrawal, Obama showed his signature political reversal.

NAFTA created a trilateral trade bloc encompassing the United States, Canada, and Mexico, which was meant to foster greater trade between its members. It primarily lifted tariffs on goods shipped between the three countries but has caused economic turmoil both among American and Mexican labor, with unexpected loss of jobs and negative environmental impacts.

Nina Easton, a Washington editor for Fortune, noted in a June 18, 2008 article that "the presumptive Democratic nominee backed off his harshest attacks on the free trade agreement and indicated he didn’t want to unilaterally reopen negotiations on NAFTA,” something he had promised to do when locked in a close primary race with Sen. Hillary Clinton. Asked directly about whether he would move the U.S. out of the trade agreement, Obama said "Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified.” Fortune magazine concluded that, despite once calling NAFTA "devastating” and "a big mistake,” Obama "was toning down his populist rhetoric” and had no intention of following through with his anti-NAFTA promises now that the primary battle was won.

In light of this evidence, can we believe any of the other commitments he‘s made?

THE FEDERAL JUDICIARY

Those who think Sen. Obama will appoint good Supreme Court justices should just take note of his long history of supporting some of the worst Bush appointees to the federal bench, including Thomas Griffith (D.C. Cir.), Susan Blake Neilson (6th Cir.), Milan Smith (9th Cir.), Sandra Segal Ikuta (9th Cir.), and Kent Jordan (3rd Cir.). The Neilson vote was particularly troubling as both senators from her own state "blue slipped” her for being "too extreme.”

And even when he does manage to muster the courage to vote against conservative appointees, he does it in a lukewarm and perfunctory manner, refusing to join Democratic Party filibuster efforts. This is deeply troubling. He voted cloture (to end any voting delay) on Priscilla Owen (5th Cir.) and Brett Kavanaugh (D.C. Cir.) both extremely conservative jurists, thus ensuring they would be confirmed.

SEN. JOE BIDEN AS VICE-PRESIDENT

Obama’s selection of Sen. Joe Biden as a running mate is particularly troubling and does not bode well for the decisions Obama is likely to make if elected president. Obama has presented Biden as someone who never forgot his roots, is a working class, regular guy.

The only problem with this characterization is Sen. Biden’s voting record. He was one of the main supporters of the Republican Bankruptcy Reform Bill that Pres. Clinton vetoed twice, only to have it signed into law by Pres. Bush in 2005, with Sen. Biden’s ardent support.

Criticizing the Bankruptcy Reform Bill, Arianna Huffington noted that the bill "makes it harder for average people to file for bankruptcy protection [average annual income of Americans who file for bankruptcy is less than $30K]; it makes it easier for landlords to evict a bankrupt tenant; it endangers child-support payments by giving a wider array of creditors a shot at post-bankruptcy income; it allows millionaires to shield an unlimited amount of equity in homes and asset protection trusts; it makes it more difficult for small businesses to reorganize while opening new loopholes for the Enrons of the world; it allows creditors to provide misleading information; and it does nothing to rein in lending abuses.” (Salon.com, 3/05)

Jackson Williams noted, in "Joe Biden: No True Friend of Working Men and Women” (Huffington Post, 10/27/08), that Biden "didn’t just vote for it, he helped carry the water on it. Some Democrats tried to soften the bill with a series of amendments; for example, exempting military personnel at war in Iraq. Biden joined the majority of his colleagues—the Republicans and too many Democrats—in knocking down every possible change that was offered.”

Sen. Biden has built a reputation as someone who works tirelessly for credit card companies, with some critics even referring to him as the senator from Mastercard—rather than the senator from Delaware.

In addition, Biden voted for the War in Iraq and the Patriot Act, so it’s hard to understand how Sen. Biden is going to help bring about change in the new administration.

OTHER FOREIGN POLICY ISSUES

Obama called Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez an enemy of the United States and urged sanctions against him. (Interview with Jorge Ramos, El Mercurio, 6/11/08)

He heaped praise on the first George Bush saying, "You know, one of the things that I think George H.W. Bush doesn’t get enough credit for was his foreign policy team and the way that he helped negotiate the end of the Cold War and prosecuted the Gulf War. That cost us $20 billion dollars. That‘s all it cost. It was extremely successful. I think there were a lot of very wise people.” (Larry King Live 3/23/08).

And in a much-anticipated speech to America’s pro-Israeli government lobby, AIPAC (The American Israel Public Affairs Committee), Obama towed the typical pro-Israel line. He urged that Jerusalem would belong to Israel, despite peace efforts currently underway which would allow the holy city to be shared among both Israelis and Palestinians. He unequivocally stated "Israel’s security is sacrosanct.” And "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.” (AIPAC speech, 6/08).

MAKING A DEMAND

Before you vote for someone with such a checkered voting record, it might be worthwhile to make some demands on him, don’t you think? Or at the very least we should ask him to explain why he’s capitulated so many times.

I’m sure Sen. Obama would find such questions uncomfortable. In fact, even progressives find such inquiry bothersome: they are aware of Obama’s lamentable history of capitulation on votes that take away our civil rights, but nevertheless cling to their wish that Obama will be something other than what he has already proven himself to be.

But it’s not likely that he will be a transformative leader. He’s already announced economic advisors whose ideas are at the heart of the economic meltdown, like Austan Goolsbee, an aggressive free trader and subprime loan advocate, and former Clinton advisors, David Cutler and Jeffrey Liebman, supporters of market-oriented solutions to social welfare issues such as the partial privatization of Social Security. ("Subprime Obama” by Max Fraser, The Nation, 1/24/08).

He has foreign policy advisors who helped take us into war, like Colin Powell, who in 2003 addressed the United Nations on behalf of the Bush Administration, outlining the reasons the U.S. had to invade Iraq (he also disturbingly, as a young Army Major, worked to suppress key evidence about the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam).

But that’s not all. Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman spoke with journalists Allan Nairn and Kelley Beaucar Vlahos who discussed Obama’s foreign policy advisors (2/10/08). They noted that Obama proudly brought on to his team old cold warrior and former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, who has boasted of having created the whole Afghan Jihadi movement; Anthony Lake, who was behind the U.S. invasion of Haiti during the Clinton years; General Merrill McPeak, who delivered U.S. fighter planes to Indonesia shortly after the Dili massacre in East Timor in 1991; and Dennis Ross who has pushed to subordinate the rights of Palestinians to the needs of the Israeli government.

What do you think the likelihood is that Obama will listen to us, once we’ve voted for him, without making any demands on him?

As Robert Scheer, a noted columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, noted on July 23, 2008, shortly after Obama voted for the FISA bill, "Barack Obama is betraying his promise of change and is in danger of becoming just another political hack.” And Scheer made these remarks before Obama decided to support off-shore drilling, denounce a Supreme Court death penalty decision, and before he voted for the Wall Street bailout.

CONCERNING RALPH NADER

But we don’t have to vote for either Senators Obama or McCain, do we? Ralph Nader has a more impressive legislative record as an outsider than do Sen. Obama and Sen. McCain combined. And he has a proven record of fighting the culture of Washington. Just think of the Freedom of Information Act, Clean Air, Clean Water, automotive safety, and the Environmental Protection Agency. Yet despite these accomplishments, Obama and McCain do not believe they should even have to debate him.

What they don’t tell you is that the so-called independent Commission on Presidential Debates is actually a private corporation run by former leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties. The Commission, which was formed in 1987, is currently led by Frank Fahrenkopf, a former head of the Republican National Committee, and Paul Kirk, the former head of the Democratic National Committee. No wonder they won’t debate Nader or anyone else.

Of course they justify this by saying Nader isn’t polling well enough to include him in the debates. Yet, interestingly, both McCain and Obama were losing their respective primary races until they were let into televised debates. And there are well-known examples of how letting a candidate debate "mainstream” candidates can lead to a different outcome. Jesse Ventura won the governor’s race in Minnesota in 1998 when he was allowed to debate the Republican and Democratic Party candidates, going from 9 or 10 percent in the polls to ultimately winning the contest.

Ralph Nader polled at five percent and above at least four different times this year in national polls, and he even reached 10 percent in one poll in the state of Michigan (conducted by Lansing-based EPIC-MRA, 4/15/08). This should have been sufficient to gain access to the presidential debates. Ross Perot got in the debates in 1992 even though he was polling below 10 percent. Perot went on to win 19 percent of the vote, and his warnings about NAFTA and deficit spending influenced Clinton policy and proved prescient. Afterwards, the two parties retaliated by creating a 15% threshold which ironically no candidate is likely to reach without being included in televised debates.

The worse part of the so-called presidential debates as they are currently produced is that two-party control ensures that the questions are not sufficiently hard-hitting. Isn’t it appalling that we saw three debates between Obama and McCain at a time our country is suffering its worst economic crisis, and no one asked these men "Why should Americans have any confidence either of you is the best choice to tackle these problems given that both of your political parties helped pass laws that made this crisis possible—or even inevitable?”

They also like to say that voting for Nader is throwing your vote away. The Democrats often cite the 2000 election to blame Nader for Bush’s victory. But they noticeably never mention the 1992 election, when Bill Clinton won because Ross Perot "spoiled” the race for George Bush’s father, an incumbent president. By the way, Clinton got only 43 percent of the vote in 1992 compared to 48 percent by Bush in 2000.

And they offer no explanation for why they haven’t worked on election reform since 2000. Imagine claiming your political party lost the presidency because the "winner” was declared even though he hadn’t won a majority of the votes cast? Then imagine doing nothing to make sure it wouldn’t happen again. Isn’t it odd that the Democrats haven’t worked on election reform in the past eight years?

They never will change the system because the way things are now, they can be assured that they will be in office roughly half the time. They also count on people to accept their arguments that Nader and other third parties aren’t polling high enough to get your vote; that the real contest is between just two candidates.

If all else fails, they argue that it’s the most important election of your lifetime. I’m 43 years old and I’ve heard this argument each time the presidential race has come up.

If you accept these arguments, you are in effect rewarding the two parties for not fixing how we do elections in this country. You reward them for creating the Commission on Debates. You guarantee that things will not change. And you ensure that candidates that support single-payer health care, decent wages and pensions for workers, controls on corporations and a foreign policy based on achieving peace rather than driven by self-interest, cannot ever be heard.

Nader wants a more humane and democratic society. He’s seen that you can’t get anything done in Washington because senators like Obama and McCain ignore what’s good for Americans in pursuit of their own interests. Sure McCain talks like a maverick and Obama talks like a revolutionary, but look closely and you will see repeated
capitulations to the very entities our government needs to get away from if we are to build a more democratic society.

WOMAN’S SUFFRAGE & EUGENE DEBS

Eugene Debs ran for president several times in the early 20th century. He advocated the right of women to vote at a time when it was not popular to do so and while other more successful politicians openly argued against giving women the right to participate directly in elections.

The general attitude among men was exemplified by Elihu Root, a former cabinet secretary to presidents McKinley and Roosevelt and winner of the 1912 Nobel Peace prize who said: "Suffrage would be a loss for women. I think so because suffrage implies not merely the casting of the ballot, (…) but suffrage, if it means anything, means entering upon the field of political life, and politics is modified war. In politics there is a struggle, strife, contention, bitterness, heart-burning, excitement, agitation, everything which is adverse to the true character of woman. Woman in strife becomes hard, harsh, unlovable, repulsive…” (N.Y. Constitutional Convention, 1894).

President Theodore Roosevelt, himself, said "Personally I believe in woman’s suffrage, but I am not an enthusiastic advocate of it, because I do not regard it as a very important matter.” (Letter to Dr. Lyman Abbott, 11/10/1908). And President Grover Cleveland said, "Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote.” (1905).

Despite these sentiments Debs advocated this right. Yet he never obtained more than 6 percent of the vote. Let me ask you: Were the men who voted with Debs throwing their vote away? If you had lived in that era, would you have voted for him? Or would you have come up with an excuse for why it wasn’t important enough?

CONCLUSION

On the street when I am approached by an Obama/Biden volunteer or someone who tells me they’re voting for Obama, I usually ask "What about the FISA vote?” And each time I hear in return "What’s that?” Or if I say, "You know he supports the death penalty,” I usually hear in response, "No he doesn’t.”

At what point will there be intellectual honesty about what is
happening? People are voting for Obama because they find him to be an engaging public speaker and like his message regardless of his history of being part of the very problem he professes to want to fix. Most people don’t want the actual facts to interfere with the desperate hope that he is everything they want him to be.

Do you really want to vote for someone who has already voted to take away your civil liberties because of some vague wish that he’ll act differently as president? Obama himself, speaking of Sen. Hillary Clinton, made a remark that could just as easily apply to him, and, unwittingly makes the case for why no one should vote for him: "We can’t afford a president whose positions change with the politics of the moment. We need a president who knows that being ready on day one means getting it right from day one.” (Salem, OR, 3/21/08).

If voting for war appropriations and taking away civil liberties was bringing us closer to a more democratic and egalitarian society, well, I would advocate it. But it isn’t doing that.

What is your breaking point? At what point do you decide that you’ve had enough?

What do they have to do to lose your vote?

Matt Gonzalez is Ralph Nader’s Vice-Presidential running mate on an Independent ticket.

Happy Samhain To All

Oidhche Shamhna - Happy Halloween.

Here's a sweet, succinct You Tube video with lots of information about the Gaelic tradition of Samhain, the Celtic root of Halloween.

Lots of fire, too!

Love to all the Ancestors who walk this night. You are needed now more than ever.

Beyond The Barricades: Fire Witch Gets Obama

Inspired by all the Indigenous women who broke through the barricades to confront Denver's annual Columbus Day Convoy of Conquest, I decided to go see what could be done about Barack Obama - buffalo soldier for the white man.

Only one problem: Over a hundred thousand true believers were in attendance at Obama's visit in Denver today, and there were more barricades around Civic Center park than were set up for the entire DNC.

Hmmmm? What to do? Oh, yeah. Find the press table.

And when the Obama volunteer asks for my name, I give it to her so she can check her list to see if I am on it. Faking huge disbelief that I am not on the VIP list, I then tell her what international press organization I am taking photographs for today. Because I am white and putting on a serious air of class entitlement, the equally overprivileged checkpoint keeper falls for the feint. Does she give me a press pass? Oh, yeah.

SCORE!

At last, the Fire Witch gets behind the barricades. Eat that, DNC police-staters!



“Black man running and it ain’t from the police.”

I can appreciate the defiant spirit behind the tshirt, but there are thousands and thousands of innocent black men incarcerated by the racist establishment Barack Obama wholeheartedly serves. He advanced while others were buried alive in the Amerikan Gulag’s concrete cages.



Butcher's Apron flying high above the barricades. Barack has embraced AmeriKKKa’s race wars, expressing enthusiastic willingness to bomb and invade countries whose populations are predominantly brown or black. He has out saber-rattled even Vietnam war criminal John McCain.



I’m in!



Better than a corn maze! Sadly, the prize is seriously lacking in political spine or integrity.



Hope Monger Adrienne Benevides (I’d know that purple hair anywhere!) in Mayor Hickenlooper's front row, inner circle. Ms. Benevides has done pro bono work for Columbus Day protestors, but here she's not letting her inability to persuade Mayor Hickenlooper to publicly condemn the parade get in the way of front row seats to an Obama concert. Tricky Hicky is as likely to take a principled stand against the Convoy of Conquest as Adrienne is be a true red head.

The People’s real hope is in her children...



So many signs and Butcher’s Aprons being waved, so many fools thinking anything is really gonna change...



Barack-a-bus...



Yes, the crowd was mostly white people who think electing Barack Obama president will absolve our xenophobic, genocidal sins. Or that the photos they take will make some money on ebay...



Barack and the flag of empire. Senator Obama has repeatedly voted to fund the murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis and Afghanis...



Only ten yards away. Is Obama frowning at me? Since he’s voted for increased government spying on citizens, probably...



Hey, who do ya gotta know to get a ride on the Sky Jack?



Maybe an opened barricade and an innocent smile will get me and my fiery snark above it all...



Weeeeee! Infiltration is fun...



A corporate-owned criminal and hundreds of thousands of easy pickings...







Never mind the latest messiah. Baby I’m a star scoring a free cuppa in the press tent...



So many dirty corporate media liars. Now I really need a bath. Thank the goddess, I did not see Fox 31 TV personality Charlie Brennan there, or I’d need a bloody Silkwood scrub...



Gotta run. It's a beautiful Sunday and Obama's speech was boring as hell.



True. Caribou Barbie's a fascist nutter who hates women and little animals.



Fly free little balloon, and escape all these desperately unimaginative Amerikan drones stupified by the bee smoke.

Goodbye Fucker. Judge Nottingham Resigns

And ya'll know when I use the word "fucker," I mean it literally.

This porn-fed pig raped prostituted women repeatedly. And I mean raped. Just because money changed hands doesn't mean that the women Judge Nottingham used like sexual latrines weren't raped. No woman goes into prostitution unless she has been coerced by a patriarchy predicated on the sexual terror that narrows her choices in the first place.

Fucker oughtta lose far more than his job, if you ask me. Fucker oughtta get his dick stomped to hamburger for all the women he hurt, and all the oppressed he sent to prison.

On a personal note, I've had the unfortunate experience of being in disgraced ex-judge Nottingham's courtroom. I was there the day he denied former IRA freedom fighter Ciaran Ferry's petition to remain in the US, as a deportation back to the North of Ireland would leave him vulnerable to armed Loyalist vigilantes. He was also married to a US citizen and the father of a child born here.

Ciaran was brought into Nottingham's courtroom in shackles, having been in jail already for two years after his kidnapping during a green card hearing. When the hearing was over and Ciaran rose to leave the courtroom, he turned to the gallery where his supporters sat and raised his manacled hands in fisted defiance. We were electrified. I could swear he was looking right at me, and I remembering thinking then - there goes the real deal.

More about Ciaran Ferry's case from the Washington Post, October 2004: Terrorist Hunt Leads To Irish Immigrants


Ciaran Ferry with daugher Fiona.

Nottingham a no-show today after report of resignation

Judge mired in sex-related misconduct issues

by Sara Burnett, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)
Published October 16, 2008 at 2:47 p.m.
Updated October 17, 2008 at 2:08 p.m.

U.S. District Chief Judge Edward Nottingham was not in court today amid reports that he is expected to resign from the bench after a new sex-related scandal.

Nottingham's scheduled cases today were handled by another judge. His courtroom clerk said he "is not here today; he's still ill." The judge is still listed on a calendar of cases set for next week, his secretary said, because "he's still chief judge. He's not resigned."

The court's top administrator, Clerk of the Court Greg Langham, told CBS4, "I'm assuming he and his attorneys are discussing what his status (on the court) is."

Nottingham, who had started a trial earlier on Tuesday, called in sick on Wednesday and Thursday.

The Rocky first reported Thursday that sources said Nottingham is expected to quit the federal bench amid the sex scandal and a closed-door judicial misconduct hearing that didn't go well.

Nottingham could not be reached for comment, and the clerk of the U.S. District Court for Colorado said earlier he had received no official letter of resignation.

"To my knowledge it does not exist," Langham said Thursday.

Nottingham's attorney did not return a phone call.

But three sources with knowledge of Nottingham's plans, and who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the resignation is expected this week.

Earlier, 9News reported that a trial he has been presiding over will be assigned to a different judge when it resumes Monday.

Nottingham, 60, has been the subject of several judicial misconduct complaints filed with the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in the past year.

The most recent complaint became public Thursday in a 9News report.

A former prostitute said Nottingham asked her to lie to investigators and tell them he didn't pay her for sex, the station reported.

The woman, whom 9News did not identify, worked for the former escort service Bada Bing Denver. She claimed Nottingham paid her $250 to $300 per hour for sex once a week between February 2003 and November 2004.

According to 9News, the woman filed her complaint in writing with the 10th Circuit last Friday.

The station said Nottingham had not responded to attempts to contact him.

The judge's troubles started in 2007, when his ex-wife went public with statements Nottingham made during their divorce proceedings. The judge admitted he spent $3,000 over two days at the Diamond Cabaret, a Denver strip club, but said he was too drunk to remember much of it.

Nottingham later issued a statement saying he wouldn't discuss "private and personal matters involving human frailties and foibles."

Months later, a Denver woman who uses a wheelchair complained Nottingham parked illegally in a handicapped spot, then got angry with her when she confronted him.

In a tape recording of the 911 call the woman made at the time, Nottingham is heard calmly explaining he is in the wrong.

Officers issued him a $100 ticket, which he paid, Denver police said.

Most recently, 9News reported that Nottingham's name was among a list of clients seized in a federal investigation of Denver Players, a high-end prostitution ring.

Nottingham has not been charged with a crime.

In March, Chief Judge Robert Henry of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, issued an order stating he was looking into allegations that a U.S. district court judge "brought disrepute to the judiciary."

Henry did not name the judge, but Sean Harrington, the man who filed the complaint, confirmed to the Rocky it was Nottingham.

Henry's decision to proceed with an investigation was unusual. Between fiscal years 2005 and 2007, fewer than half of the complaints filed nationwide moved forward, according to a report by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.

Almost all those complaints were later dismissed.

Federal judgeships are lifetime appointments, paying roughly $165,000 per year. Judges may be removed only by a trial of impeachment in the U.S. Senate.

If the 10th Circuit concluded that Nottingham had committed misconduct, it would have several options: a public or private reprimand, a restricted caseload or a request that the judge voluntarily retire.

A source said Nottingham had a hearing before the panel investigating his case recently, and that the panel came down hard on him.

If Nottingham resigns, the normal outcome would be that all misconduct proceedings would terminate.

His departure would create a second vacancy on Colorado's short- handed federal bench, and come at a bad time for the court.

The Senate confirmed two new judges last month, after more than a year of disagreement between the state's two senators. A third vacancy was left unfilled.

With the presidential election weeks away, and a new president not taking office until January, it could be months before the vacancies could be filled.

Nottingham, an Eagle County native, was appointed to the federal bench in 1989.

He has presided over several high-profile trials, including that of ex-Qwest CEO Joe Nacchio.

Columbus Day Parade A Bust In Denver

The rainy Fall weather must have left the 2008 Columbus Day celebrants more in a mood to stay in their sheets this morning than to show up for the "parade" wearing them.

The 101st Columbus Day event was a total bust. No cavalry this year. No anti-abortion nutters with their hate speech rigs plastered with bloody fetuses and homophobic, misogynist slogans. In total, there were less than 30 big trucks, Hummers, and fire engines - a record low for George Vendeigna and his genocide celebrants.

Pitiful Convoy of Conquest, haters. Pitiful.

What, stock market got ya down?



Or are you just a bunch of sunny day "patriots" intimidated by a little rain and a lot of righteous, Indigenous outrage?



As usual, the Columbus Day paraders inspire no one to line the streets to watch their abomination.



Lost his pension in the stock market. Not exactly hittin' it big here, either.



OK. Some fans did turn out. Four to be precise.



No, genius. A-m-e-r-i-c-a spells America.



Heavy is the head that wears the crown on a dreary, foggy day.



The Columbus Day Parade Committee decided to stay in bed. Too cold for genocide. Brrrrr.



Libertarians. With a creepy, costumed Statue of Liberty...



Yeah, I'd be embarrassed too. She should hide her face in shame.



Damn proud of those Columbus magnets, ain't he? When not riding around in his RV, this gas-guzzling, white power race warrior lives in his parents' basement.



Gotta hurry around Civic Center park to catch the Convoy of Conquest on the other side before the pocket parade passes the protestors. Run or you'll miss it!



101 years of sociopathic settlers celebrating the racist theft of an entire continent.



Piggie requests The Police's "Don't Stand So Close to Me..."



Protestors head for the barricades to confront the Ugly Americans commemorating a slave-trading, Indian-killer.



A delegation of 13 Indigenous women tear down the barricades...



... and take a Treaty of Transformation to the hate speech organizers.



The confrontation is accomplished without arrests, and the Transform Columbus Day Alliance leaves the tedious losers to finish their creep show in front of no one.



Abolish Columbus Day, fools. Cuz now ya'll are just REALLY embarrassing yourselves.

Transform Columbus Day Events, Oct 11 and 13

via Colorado Indymedia:

Transform Columbus Day Events, October 11 and 13

Submitted by mbc on Tue, 10/07/2008 - 10:56
Start: 10/11/2008 - 08:00

Planning for this year's Transform Columbus Day events began late because of the DNC. But the following events have now been scheduled:

*Columbus Day Resistance March and Rally
The annual protest of the Columbus Day Holiday and the racism that it embodies will begin with a march from Four Winds that ends at the Capitol Building followed by a rally for a better future.

When: March starts at 8 am, Rally at 9am, Saturday, October 11
Where: Start of March is at Four Winds at 5th and Bannock in Denver, CO

*People's Council
Following the Columbus Day resistance, people will gather to begin to organize a new alliance locally that can act as a national vehicle for radicals to confront and end the 500-year Columbian legacy and begin to move the country in a different direction. Bring your thoughts and cooperative energy.

When: 1pm, Saturday, October 11
Where: The Great Hall at the Iliff School of Theology just past Evans on University Blvd, Denver.

*Student Walk-out on Racism
Whether you are a student or not, join the students of Iliff, CU Denver, CU Boulder and DU as they educate the public about Denver's hidden racial past on the 101st Anniversary of the Columbus Holiday. There will be a student walk-out, a short rally, followed by a march to locations with a racial history that will end at Civic Center Park.

When: 12 Noon, Monday, October 13
Where: CU Denver's Auraria Campus, The Plaza Building Lawn

Somebody Loves Me: Lightning Strikes Fox 31

Thank you, Dear Universe! You know how much I wish for bad things to happen to all the cloying, braying liars at Fox 31. A lightning strike on the Fox 31 transmitter - right as the Broncos game began - could not have been a better gift of affirmation that my firey heart is in the right place.

Broncos fans all over my neighborhood were literally screaming their silly little heads off at the forty minute loss of their game. Never has static on TV made me so happy.

And then just when I thought my week could not get off to a better start, the Dow dropped 800 points today.

Oh, happy Monday!

I love you too, Sweet Universe. More, more, more.

Lightning Strike Knocks out Broncos Game on FOX 31

Last Edited: Sunday, 05 Oct 2008, 4:20 PM MDT
Created: Sunday, 05 Oct 2008, 4:12 PM MDT

Denver Broncos Fox 31 undated graphic

DENVER - A lightning strike at Lookout mountain caused FOX 31 to lose transmission capabilities for nearly half-an-hour Sunday during the telecast of the Broncos playing Tampa Bay.

The transmission tower was struck at 2:17 p.m. knocking out the signal just 12 minutes into the game.

Engineers scrambled to bring the signal back up and were able to begin broadcasting at half-power analog at 2:49 p.m. Most cable customers were able to receive FOX 31’s signal.

“We are incredibly sorry for this major inconvenience to all of our customers,” says Dennis Leonard, Vice President and General Manager of FOX 31. “Obviously, a lightning strike is out of our control, but we do understand viewers concerns and their passion for the Broncos. We worked as hard as we could to get the signal back up and running.”

“I want to say thank you to all the people who called in and were extremely kind and understanding of the situation we were in,” Leonard added. "For a newcomer to Colorado this highlights the quality of people that make up our viewing area.”

Death Watch: Charlie Brennan's Week In Politics

Or The Week in Politics with Charlie Brennan.

Or Charlie Brennan's Weekly Political Wrap-up.

Or whatever the hell the show's name was last changed to, I think it's time to call it cancelled.

The last time Fox 31 News performer Charlie Brennan had a Sunday broadcast of his embarrasingly awful, weekly political, two-minute (brother) recap, was the next to last week in August before the DNC.

Folks, it's October. Can we stick a fork in Chucky's vapid noise and call it done?

With an anti-aircraft missile?



Fox 31 News and Channel 2 News have merged recently, agreeing to share a building under a Joint Operating Agreement. And ya'll know what JOAs mean. That's right, Sportsfans...

LAYOFFS!!!

So before it's too late, don't miss out on one of the best drinking games going:

Every time Charlie Brennan flubs his lines during a live standup, take a shot. Better make your alcohol something cheap, though. Charlie can't get three sentences out of his sour, angry face without a fuckup. Guaranteed, his monumental incompetence will get you shit-faced in two minutes or less.

Designate a driver!

And try not to piss yerself laughing.

Dow Plunges 777: Osama Bin Laden Wins

Like a bull to a red cape, the Amerikan Empire took the 911 bait and charged wildly towards a quagmire in Iraq and Afghanistan - as Osama Bin Laden correctly predicted it would.

Now the unwinable race war slaughters in Iraq and Afghanistan are bleeding Amerika dry, and Wall Street is thrashing around like a freshly staked vampire.

OH. GOD. YES!

Dow takes a dive as bailout bill fails in Congress

Monday September 29, 8:45 pm ET
By Tim Paradis, AP Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) -- The failure of the bailout package in Congress literally dropped jaws on Wall Street and triggered a historic selloff -- including a terrifying decline of nearly 500 points in mere minutes as the vote took place, the closest thing to panic the stock market has seen in years.

The Dow Jones industrial average lost 777 points Monday, its biggest single-day fall ever, easily beating the 684 points it lost on the first day of trading after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Bin Laden: Goal is to bankrupt U.S.

Al-Jazeera releases full transcript of al Qaeda leader's tape
Tuesday, November 2, 2004 Posted: 0107 GMT (0907 HKT)

...

"We are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy. Allah willing, and nothing is too great for Allah," bin Laden said in the transcript.

He said the mujahedeen fighters did the same thing to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s, "using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers."

"We, alongside the mujahedeen, bled Russia for 10 years until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat," bin Laden said.

He also said al Qaeda has found it "easy for us to provoke and bait this administration."

...

As part of the "bleed-until-bankruptcy plan," bin Laden cited a British estimate that it cost al Qaeda about $500,000 to carry out the attacks of September 11, 2001, an amount that he said paled in comparison with the costs incurred by the United States.

"Every dollar of al Qaeda defeated a million dollars, by the permission of Allah, besides the loss of a huge number of jobs," he said. "As for the economic deficit, it has reached record astronomical numbers estimated to total more than a trillion dollars.

The total U.S. national debt is more than $7 trillion. The U.S. federal deficit was $413 billion in 2004, according to the Treasury Department.

...

As for President Bush's Iraq policy, Bin Laden said, "the darkness of black gold blurred his vision and insight, and he gave priority to private interests over the public interests of America.

"So the war went ahead, the death toll rose, the American economy bled, and Bush became embroiled in the swamps of Iraq that threaten his future," bin Laden said.

Southeast Gas Shortage Rages On

A dear contributor left this insider's view comment in a previous post:

"Anonymous said...

Greetings all watchers of the signs of our times. We have been out of gasoline since Ike hit the southern states. People are so frightened and remark that it is the end of days. For a society that has been used to so much plenty for some, now understand what it is like to come up short. The folks that handle such matters tell us that our supply has been routed to the Northeast which is not experiencing these same shortages. People in Nashville cannot get to work,pick up their kids at daycare, buy food,or remove their funds from our banks to hide under the mattresses. What next for one of our great cities. I predict dire consequences for the rest of the country as well-we just led the way."

No quick end to gas shortage in Southeast

By Larry Copeland, USA TODAY

ATLANTA — A storm-related gas shortage in the Southeast that has left some places bone-dry and others with two-hour gas lines is expected to continue for at least another two weeks, energy experts and industry officials say.
The shortage began two weeks after Hurricane Gustav hit the oil-refining regions of the Gulf Coast on Sept. 1. Operations that shut down before that storm were just coming back online when Hurricane Ike hit, forcing another shutdown. The gas shortage, now in its third week, is particularly acute here in sprawling Atlanta, in Nashville in parts of the Carolinas and in Anniston, Ala.

"I don't go anywhere once I find some and get my tank filled up," says Alicia Woods, 32, who waited 45 minutes to fill up Sunday morning at a QuikTrip in Cobb County, Ga. "Going out, visiting friends, all that just has to wait. I have to keep my gas for getting back and forth to work."

Long gas lines continued to plague the Charlotte area over the weekend. Asheville, N.C., shut down some government offices Friday.

"Things were pretty severe to the point gas stations did not have gas, and the ones that did have gas had an hour to two-hour wait," said city spokeswoman Trisha Hardin.."

Mohawk Nation News: Theft Makes Rough Ride For Indigenous Peoples

Look to the Indigenous; they know the way.

"The U.S. economic system is based on stolen Indigenous goods, lands and resources to prop up its ailing dollar."

"There is another world, a world of resistance. Our fate rests in our own humble hands. Indigenous people have survived. We kept our philosophy, our notions of governance, our duties to mother earth and our way of life which was terribly damaged. We have been able to resuscitate it and bring it back to a healthy life. We all have our strengths. We have an enormous evolved consciousness. People are beginning to see through this capitalist fraud."

via Brenda Norrell's Censored News:

Mohawk Nation News: Theft Makes Rough Ride for Indigenous Peoples

“HOLD ON! INDIGENOUS PEOPLES!”. IT’S GONNA BE A ROUGH RIDE. THE INTERNATIONAL ROBBERY OF OUR TERRITORIES & RESOURCES CONTINUE FOR NOW!

MOHAWK NATION NEWS

Sept. 25, 2008. Who would have thought that artificial economies and their worthless paper currencies, based on theft of Indigenous resources, would come tumbling down? Greed and oppression can’t go on forever. These foreigners have been wheeling and dealing with goods stolen from us. Remember, they came here with nothing! Every inch of Onowaregeh, Turtle Island, they stand on is unsurrendered Indigenous territory. We are the caretakers. We will never give it up.

These colonial money grubbers never treated us right. They killed, hurt and weakened us and then took advantage of us. It looks like payback time. Nature is getting even. The natural order has to be restored. The people have to face up to what they’ve done or allowed to be done. The rape and pillaging of our mother earth has to stop. She has to be cared for.

Yes, it looks like we Indigenous will have to hang onto our hats and ride out the storm. We are still the trustees of everything over, on and beneath the land. We still have our lives. We still have our families. We still have the future generations to look out for. These rapacious thieves did not take care of mother earth as we did. They plundered her for instant pleasure and then moved on without thinking of the future. The colonists think they have to “conquer” nature and its caretakers, us. What are they afraid of?

The European throngs swarmed to our territory for deceptive ends. The so-called “conquest” of the “New World” was a European concoction. These pirates embezzled the “ownership” our property and forced people into slavery to work for them for next to nothing. Onowaregeh was occupied and ruined by a class of white European men who set up an individualistic capitalist exploitation system. Even when they charged over here for the “gold rush”, they had no concept of leaving anything for the future generations, or even of sharing with anybody.

The few elite made products with our resources, sold it and set up banking and monetary systems that were backed by the gun. Their highest ideals were racism, individualism, greed, grabbing other people’s property and accumulating more wealth than they needed. The driving feature is that the white race is superior and could enslave and kill Indigenous people. The lower order “settlers” were infected as well. They have a similar mentality of exploitation and victimization. Anyone who came here could grab our land and make a homestead. Today settler society is divided between the “parasites” and those who worked for them.

Developers have been putting up our unceded territories as collateral on the stock exchanges to raise billions of dollars from the public. This is fraud. The U.S. economic system is based on stolen Indigenous goods, lands and resources to prop up its ailing dollar. Countries worldwide accepted the U.S. dollar as the international currency. Now they have to work together to keep this whole fake economic engine going. If they bring it down it will bring chaos to them.

Their economic fantasy is that they think they can endlessly put value in the circulatory process they’ve created. They steal everything, create nothing and sell it to each other. The U.S. and Canadian production bases have been totally eroded. The reality is that you can’t consume what you don’t produce. The colonial entities have to take what they need through force, like oil from the Middle East. The dollar has to be back with armed force to steal other people’s resources.

It’s all inter-connected. The corporations sell ‘air’ at inflated prices, paid for with worthless paper money based on “faith”. Wall Street is based on greed, investing money and watching markets here and there. The U.S. government looks desperate. They fear their delusional bubble will burst. The oligarchs have made an exit plan to run away with suitcases of money. When the Russian Czar’s regime went down in the early 1900s, people fled with cash that was later worthless. The Wall Street oligarchs have an army to cover their tracks.

Despite the propaganda, the people are going to be alright. It can always get worse. The deprivation can go to a deep dark end. We need to resist their dire threats of medieval retrogression to torture chambers, burnings, hanging, drawing and quartering and impaling. It doesn’t have to happen.

Now the U.S. government is going to take money from the taxpayers and give it to the bankers who caused the problems in the first place. When the people go to the bank to borrow money they will be told, “There’s no money. We had to give it to our banker friends.” The U.S. visible and invisible government is trying to control all the land and housing.

Instead of charging them with criminal acts of treason and conspiracy, the buy-out is going to the head gangsters. The drafter of the buy-out is U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulsen, who worked for Goldman and Sachs on Wall Street for 35 years. According to the package, once he gets the money, he is not accountable. He is beyond all courts and legislation. This is a reversion to the “divine right of kings”. They want total control over society, a “coup d’etat”.

The “wrecking ball” scenario is based on fear, intimidation and blackmail.
The 3rd Infantry Division of the 1st Brigade Combat Team is being brought back to the U.S. from Iraq in case there’s a public “fall out”. John McCain suspended his election campaign. Next the constitution will be suspended. The election could be pulled. There will be no discussion or debate. An immediate decision on the package is being forced to serve the needs of the oligarchic ruling elite.

The U.S. is the leading imperialist. Presently with outsourcing, unemployment, housing foreclosures and economic and social problems the base for consumption is getting narrow. The industrial base is shrinking. Its main production is military weapons, armaments and surveillance equipment. Scientific and technological research is aimed at creating more lethal weapons to kill innocent unarmed people.

The second seller is high end luxury goods to a narrow elite market. The basic necessities of the majority is neglected more and more. The economy is being hallowed out through impoverishment and ruination of people. Other states are still tied to the U.S. monster. They are making new arrangements to separate themselves from this world crisis.

The public is crying out for major change to end the colonial racist greedy system. They have to look at Indigenous culture and harmonize their society with ours to survive. They need to renew all their arrangements with us to live, think and govern themselves so that the parasites are pushed aside. Sacrifices are necessary or humanity will destroy itself.

There is another world, a world of resistance. Our fate rests in our own humble hands. Indigenous people have survived. We kept our philosophy, our notions of governance, our duties to mother earth and our way of life which was terribly damaged. We have been able to resuscitate it and bring it back to a healthy life. We all have our strengths. We have an enormous evolved consciousness. People are beginning to see through this capitalist fraud.

Do U.S. President George Bush, Republican candidate John McCain and Democratic candidate Barack Obama want to really re-arrange the economy and society on a new basis? Do they want to dig up the roots of the colonial past and harmonize relations with the Indigenous people and mother earth?

Throughout, the colonists and their banker backers thought they could just ride rough shod over us while they devastated the planet. We are still here because we always resisted.

Karakwine & MNN Staff, Mohawk Nation News www.mohawknationnews.com Katenies20@yahoo.com
Note: Current border challenges cost money. Your financial help is needed. Please send donations to PayPal at www.mohawknationnews.com, or by check or money order to “MNN Mohawk Nation News”, Box 991, Kahnawake [Quebec, Canada] J0L 1B0. Nia:wen thank you very much.

Posted by MNN Mohawk Nation News www.mohawknationnews.com
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Posted by Brenda Norrell at 10:55 AM

Gas Shortages Continue in The South

Inconvenience stalks those who consider it a god-given right not to be inconvienced. Here comes the future!

Drivers in the South still scrambling for a tank

By MARLON A. WALKER

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — More than a week after Hurricane Ike's strike, drivers across the Southeast are still bouncing between dry pumps and shuttered stations in a frustrating hunt for a fill-up — and they're starting to get angry.

There are stations shut down in Nashville, long lines in Atlanta and even fights breaking out in bucolic Blue Ridge mountain towns. In between the soccer moms and NASCAR dads, you'll even find guys who play in the NFL waiting for gas.

"It's really ridiculous. You would have thought by now — four days into it — they would have sorted it out somehow," Ahmard Hall, 28, a fullback with the Tennessee Titans, said Tuesday morning as he waited in a Nashville suburb for his turn at the pump. "You have to go driving around town, wasting gas, to try to find gas."

Hurricane Ike shut down or reduced work at more than a dozen refineries on the Gulf Coast of Texas, an area that accounts for about 20 percent of the nation's gas and diesel production. Among those affected was Exxon Mobil Corp.'s refinery in Baytown, east of Houston, and the nation's largest.

It won't get better until the Gulf Coast refineries disrupted by Ike — and before that, Hurricane Gustav — boot back up and start filling the empty pipelines that lead to thirsty stations. In the meantime, gas station owners are selling whatever shows up from their suppliers — be it regular, premium or super unleaded.

"Some days are better than others. You take what you can get," said Haddon Clark, the vice president at Raleigh-based United Energy, which operates about 75 gas stations in the eastern portion of North Carolina. "We're forced to sell what we can find."

The line was about 40 cars deep Tuesday afternoon at a 20-pump Quik Trip station just north of Atlanta. It was the only spot in the area with gas to sell, and police said they been called in often to referee spats over cutting in line. The station only had regular for $3.98 a gallon — a few cents under the city average of $4.02.

"I actually thought I was going to run out of gas before I found a station that had any," said Jim Elliott, 47, a real estate agent, who waited 45 minutes to spent $100 for 25 gallons for his Hummer.

Mail carrier Chester McClendon, 38, was closing in on empty as he waited for a fill-up. The Quik Trip was a dozen miles off his route, but he motored over after another carrier called him with news the station had gas.

"I knew there was a shortage, but I didn't realize it was to this extent," McClendon said. "For me, it pushes everything back. I was expecting to be done around 4 (p.m.), and now it probably will be more like 5 or 5:30, especially because now I'll also get stuck in traffic."

At Clark's stores in North Carolina, most are selling only regular unleaded — although at any given time, he said, several don't have any gas at all. And without the gas, store owners who count on sales of sodas and snacks to make up for the thin margins on fuel sales are feeling the pitch.

"When someone stops for gas, usually they come in and get something in the store," said Michael Peters, the manager of a BP station in Raleigh. "Now, they drive up and see (gas) is out, and they keep going."

And when they find it, some drivers are willing to fight for it. There were three fights Monday at a Shell station in Asheville, where local officials warned the shortages will continue for at least another week. They curtailed non-emergency driving by county staff, and urged drivers to conserve fuel by cutting unnecessary trips out of their daily routine.

That's the plan for Renee Manuel. The 50-year-old stay-at-home mom was out Sunday, and pulled up to a pump before she realized there was a line stretching around the block. She still had a quarter tank, so she left.

"I've been refusing to (wait in line). I've been staying at home," she said. "I called the doctor's office yesterday and canceled an appointment because I didn't want to take a chance on running out of gas. I only left the house today because I had to."

Self-Doubts Paralyze Recreate 68 Activists

Mark Cohen and Glenn Spagnuolo (masked) try to rally an anti-DNC crowd to levitate the Denver mint.

The concept "Recreate 68" only worked to recruit the media, which panted like dogs at the possible violence implied by the label.

The reporter on this story understates the number of pro-migrant demonstrators who took to Denver's streets May 1, 2006. The crowd size was well over 100,000. I know. I was there.

Follow the women (of color); they know the way.

Self-doubts paralyze activists

By Susan Greene
Denver Post Columnist
Article Last Updated: 09/21/2008 01:42:18 AM MDT


Mark Cohen is in a funk.

It was the Sunday before the Democratic National Convention during an anti-war rally the veteran activist had spent 18 months organizing. From the steps of the state Capitol, he was discouraged to see only a few hundred protesters.

Cohen — co-founder of the group Recreate 68 — had cut his teeth decrying the Vietnam War and always believed in the power of taking to the streets.

Now he's not so sure.

"Because we're the home-field activists, we felt we had to organize a march for the DNC or else people would say Denver doesn't care about the war," he said. "But mass marches don't work any more. Politicians don't perceive any kind of threat from our actions."

Glenn Spagnuolo, Recreate 68's louder-mouthed co-founder, voiced his own angst in his post-mortem:

"In the end, what did we accomplish? Not much. Do I feel like we influenced the Democratic Party at all? No. . . . I'm done with that type of protest."

The self-doubts of two of Denver's best-known protesters may be met with smugness by city officials, Barack Obama supporters and law-and-order ideologues irked by lefty dissent — however anemic — in August.

Even activists are pointing fingers.

Many blame the less militant among them for cowering in the face of police overpresence or wimping out for fear of eroding support for Obama.

Some blame a sense of powerlessness about a war that most Americans oppose. Some point to apathy in a town that got more worked up over a Rockies playoff game last fall than the deaths of 4,100 soldiers.

Others cite infighting in the activist community, faulting Cohen and Spagnuolo for harkening back to protests in Chicago in 1968 rather than pushing a more current agenda. After all, some note, the immigrant-rights movement managed to turn out 75,000 Denverites on a workday in 2006.

But all that misses the point.

In a time of war and economic tumult, when gas prices, foreclosures and joblessness are rising, it seems an odd time for so many in Denver's activist left to be paralyzed by self-doubt. Frustrated peaceniks, anarchists and other liberals who have given up on the Democrats and failed to build up a viable third party are struggling with where to take their activism.

"Since the DNC I keep wondering why wasn't it better, what did we do wrong, what do we do next?" said Cohen, 62.

Even young activists are questioning their future on the streets.

"At the end of the day, the only people who heard us were the riot cops. We need to figure out a different formula, something that's more inspiring to people," said 22-year-old Recreate 68 leader Carlo Garcia, one of roughly 150 protesters arrested in August.

This week marks the midway between the convention and the perennial uprising against Italian-Americans' Columbus Day parade in Denver.

While the American Indian Movement meets today to set its plans for October, some core activists who back the group say enthusiasm for a mass protest is lower than ever. There are rumblings about a small, direct action blocking the parade, or even skipping a protest.

"The question is whether it's worth our time, energy and resources to scream at a blind and deaf infrastructure," said AIM leader Glenn Morris.

"But let me be clear," he added. "Surrender is not one of our options."

Susan Greene writes Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Reach her at 303-954-1989 or greene@denverpost.com

Joy In Wall Street's Pain

"Revel in their misery. Toast their unemployment and celebrate their pain! Or at the very least, don't be brainwashed into thinking you have to care about the newfound poverty of the super-rich. This is one of the rare opportunities to see a little karma in action--and know that the people who always get away with it don't always get away with it."

Precisely. And a key theme at the heart of Fire Witch Rising: Karmic justice is cause for celebration, immoral actions have consequences.

Not surprisingly, many of the comments to this post at Common Dreams revealed a deep reluctance on the part of what I believe are mostly whites to accept for long that their greedy "heroes" - or symbols of ultimate evil - can suffer the fallout of their actions. How quick they were to wave The Poor around as a shield against recognizing that the overprivileged can and do get what they truly deserve, as if only The Poor will ever pay for the profligacies of the rich without ever exacting a price. Disgusting! The Oppressor can be hurt.

To fail to recognize that reality is to long to be considered one of the unresponsible innocent who, gosh-golly-gee, wouldn't hurt a flea or wish ill on anyone - not even the marauding rich. News flash, folks. No one who has even a scrap of power to stop evil is innocent. The very least we can do is acknowledge the deep justice in rich Wall Streeters failing to be omnipotent. Yes indeed, revel in their misery! They, too, must face that on a finite planet, their power has limitations. They cannot oppress us all forever and ever. History is strewn with the wreckage of empires that tried.

Screw Wall Street

Published on Thursday, September 18, 2008 by The Nation
Screw Wall Street

by Jason Flores-Williams

I must admit, watching the Dow tank 500 points on Monday felt something like fun. All those dazed and confused investment bankers walking out of the Lehman Brothers offices with plants in their hands, scared about their future, not knowing how they're going to make rent on their $2,700 studio apartments--it was pretty freakin' sweet. Better than watching the Yankees lose, Tom Brady blow out a knee or some rich trust-funder fall down and crack his head open on Houston Street.

Investment bankers are some people's ideal New Yorkers. They work twelve to fourteen hours a day. Their lives are completely centered around work. They rarely engage in political dissent, don't raise hell and question very little, unless it affects their money. They earn on average $280,000 a year, so can buy the townhouses and pay the punishing rents that force virtually everyone else out. They support expensive restaurants, bars, clothing stores, pet grooming and poop pick-up services that have turned once-unique New York neighborhoods into a soulless, upscale pukefest. These are the people who are happy to live in the Matrix and go along with the plan.

Sure I'm generalizing on some level, but who cares? Screw 'em! The world is falling apart, people are starving, our economic system is contributing to the destruction of the earth, there is injustice on every streetcorner--and these people decide to dedicate their entire existence to making as much money as they possibly could. There is no reason to become an i-banker except to get rich. To land a job at a Wall Street investment firm means nine times out of ten that you've gone to an Ivy League school. These are people with options--born on third base, yet believing that they don't owe anything to anybody--and from what can see, don't much care about the consequences of their relentless pursuit of wealth. If steering investments to war profiteers like the Carlyle Group, Halliburton or some oil company that's killing people and destroying the ozone layer is where the money is at--no problem. Let's hit the Hamptons on Saturday, it was a good week.

This is an unfair world. Most of the time, it feels as if there is no God. No old dude with a beard making sure that if two bad things happen to you, then two good things will happen down the line. The amount of suffering in the world is not evenly distributed. Poor people get crushed. Rich people get breaks. Most of us are not destined to be the ones seated inside the fancy restaurant; we're the ones outside on the sidewalk, looking at what's on their plates. So as disastrous as the market crash may be for all of us in the long run, take a minute and enjoy one part of it. Revel in their misery. Toast their unemployment and celebrate their pain! Or at the very least, don't be brainwashed into thinking you have to care about the newfound poverty of the super-rich. This is one of the rare opportunities to see a little karma in action--and know that the people who always get away with it don't always get away with it.

© 2008 The Nation
Jason Flores-Williams is an attorney currently based in Philadelphia. His work has appeared in High Times magazine and The Brooklyn Rail.

Slaughter House 504.

Capitalism is a Ponzi scheme. Buying and selling stolen land and resources is for losers. Don't take stock advice from settlers!

Via the Angry Indian: Navajo, Hopi and Lakota delegation warned Lehman Brothers of consequences of mining sacred Black Mesa

NEW YORK -- A delegation of Navajo, Hopi and Lakota warned Lehman Brothers stockholders of the dire consequences of their actions in 2001. In a rare move, censored by most media, the Navajo, Hopi and Lakota delegation warned Lehman Brothers, after it acquired the financial interests of Peabody Coal, of the spiritual consequences of mining coal on sacred Black Mesa and the aftermath of Peabody Coal's machinations that led to the so-called Navajo Hopi Land Dispute.
Lehman Brothers is now in the midst of financial collapse, with its bankruptcy producing a rippling effect throughout the world's economy.


At the time of the Lehman Brothers stockholders meeting in 2001, Arlene Hamilton bought two shares of stocks in Lehman Brothers to pave the way for the delegation to address the stockholders. Hamilton said her life was threatened because of this action. Shortly afterwards, Hamilton was killed in a car crash. Longtime Navajo relocation resister Roberta Blackgoat died in San Francisco at Hamilton's memorial.


A Hopi elder was among those addressing the Lehman Brothers stockholders. His admonitions followed those of the late Hopi Sinom elders Thomas Banyacya and Dan Evehema, among the Hopi elders who warned of dire consequences, including natural disasters and worldwide consequences, if Peabody mined coal on Black Mesa and Navajos were relocated from this sacred region. The Hopi Sinom never authorized the establishment of the Hopi Tribal Council, which they referred to as a puppet government of the United States.

Dow plunges 504 points; S&P suffers biggest drop since 9/11

At the close, the Dow Jones had lost 504 points — 4.4% — and the S&P 500 had plummeted 59 points — 4.7%.

The Nasdaq ended 81 points lower (3.6%), while the Russell small-cap index plunged 30points (4.2%).

It was the S&P's biggest drop since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

"Fear is in charge,'' money manager Henry Herrmann, president and chief executive officer of Waddell & Reed Financial Inc. in Overland Park, Kansas, told Bloomberg. "This blows another hole in the banking system's ability to extend credit.''

USA TODAY's Matt Krantz and Adam Shell wrap up the tumultuous day, and personal-finance reporter Sandra Block provides some answers to readers' questions.


Update at 5:28 p.m. ET: Bloomberg calculates that stocks erased more than $600 billion in value and that S&P 500 financial shares fell the most since at least 1989.

Update at 5: 30 p.m. ET: It's being reported that J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. is a likely suitor for Washington Mutual, which is staggering under huge mortgage losses. WaMu's shares continued to plunge today, dropping more than 26% to $2. In after-market trading they were down an additional 13% to $1.75.

Fight Like Ike!

This September 11 NASA satellite handout image shows Hurricane Ike. Massive Hurricane Ike is approaching Houston, Texas, forcing hundreds of thousands to flee and sparking a dire warning that those remaining in low-lying areas "face certain death."(AFP/NASA)

Ecodefender Ike bares down on earth rapists' oil platforms:


Waves from Hurricane IKE hitting the rig. The bottom of the rig is approximately 70 feet above the water. Submitted by: Steve Bertone Photo Date: 9/11/2008

Flag-waver tries to stop him:


Robert Shumake holds an American flag as high swells caused by Hurricane Ike break behind him in Galveston, Texas September 12, 2008.(Jessica Rinaldi/Reuters)

Where's yer robo-popo now, haters? Hmmmm? Think they're gonna stand in formation with 75 pounds of riot gear to protect your beachfront property from a twenty foot storm surge, do you?

Heh. You wish.

911 Jumpers. A Graphic Reminder

Yeah, that's a gut check, standing at a window towering high above a world you thought you owned and having to decide whether to jump or burn.



But it's nowhere near the everyday courage so many people around the world show in recognizing the Amerikan imperial kleptocracy for precisely what it is: a white supremacist empire illegally occupying somebody else's continent.

Having the intelligence and moral courage NOT to participate in enabling the buying and selling of stolen land, labor, and resources may be a hard, sometimes lonely road, but you're far less likely to find yourself out on a ledge with nothing but a concrete face plant for comfort.

Think about it. While there is still time....

EU Wants To Ban Sexist TV Commercials

OH. HELL. YES.

Ban them, ban them! And watch the soaring rates of anorexia/bulimia drop to virtually nothing.

Rape, battery, economic exploitation, and reproductive exploitation will take a considerable and much deserved hit, too.

EU wants to ban 'sexist' TV commercials

Adverts which use sex to sell or promote gender stereotypes could be banned by the EU.

By Chris Irvine
Last Updated: 1:34PM BST 05 Sep 2008

Comments 425 | Comment on this article

TV regulators have been asked to take a zero tolerance approach to sexist insults and degrading images by the EU's women's rights committee Photo: GETTY

MEPs want TV regulators in the EU to set guidelines which would see the end of anything deemed to portray women as sex objects or reinforce gender stereotypes.

This could potentially mean an end to attractive women advertising perfume, housewives in the kitchen or men doing DIY.

Such classic adverts as the Diet Coke commercial featuring the bare-chested builder, or Wonderbra's "Hello Boys" featuring model Eva Herzigova would have been banned.

The new rules come in a report by the EU's women's rights committee.

Swedish MEP Eva-Britt Svensson urged Britain and other members to use existing equality, sexism and discrimination laws to control advertising.

She wants regulatory bodies set up to monitor ads and introduce a "zero-tolerance" policy against "sexist insults or degrading images".

Ms Svensson said: "Gender stereotyping in advertising straitjackets women, men, girls and boys by restricting individuals to predetermined and artificial roles that are often degrading, humiliating and dumbed down for both sexes."

She added: "Gender stereotyping in advertising is one of several factors that have a big influence in efforts to make society more gender equal.

"When women and men are portrayed in a stereotypical way the consequence may be that it becomes difficult in other contexts to see women and men's resources and abilities."

The Advertising Standards Authority however had said there are already checks in place to prevent "discriminatory or harmful" material.

A spokesman said: "Although the ASA supports the overall objectives of the report... the approach suggested is inflexible and impractical."

Mutilated 911 First Responders Need Help

Rescuing the white elite from the consequences of their own actions is costing 911 first responders their very lives.

Actung! Rescuers and Enablers: Don't die for rich assholes who look down on you until they need you.

DNC Protestors Do Millions In Damages

Millions and millions of dollars were spent on securing the DNC against at most 1000 protestors. On a certain level, this is a victory for those who took to the streets.

The point is to cause the state to spend so much money in securing itself from both phantom and real threats, that its outward power projection becomes severely limited, or the entire security apparatus goes bankrupt.

In guerrilla warfare, the freedom fighters don't have to win; we just have to continue to exist. Note that the expenses do not include the inevitable lawsuits by both protestors, and the people in oppressed neighborhoods for whom this malicious weaponry is ultimately intended.

Sun Tzu, meet I Sue.

Police detail DNC expenses

By Christopher N. Osher

The Denver Post
Article Last Updated: 09/06/2008 09:37:04 AM MDT

Heavily armed law enforcement personnel stand guard as protesters demonstrate in front of the Pepsi Center, the site of the Democratic National Convention, Aug. 24, 2008 in Denver, Colo. (Spencer Platt, Getty Images)

The Denver Police Department dedicated six of its staff to planning for the Democratic National Convention, paying for their $554,000 cost out of the $50 million federal grant the city received for providing security to the event.

That cost was one of many contained in a seven-page budget document for the DNC the police department released Friday.

The police department also budgeted an additional $7.1 million to staff the event and pay for associated overtime and in extra planning costs.

The city budgeted another $10.19 million to pay the costs of police officers from other jurisdictions, which assisted in providing security.

The city expects all the expenditures that were detailed will be covered by the $50 million federal grant.

The budget also revealed numerous purchases by the police department that previously had been kept secret. Those expenses included $111,000 for turtle suits worn by officers for riot control, 1,800 ballistic helmets at a cost of $652,000 and $22,000 in flex cuffs as well as $22,000 in riot shields and $37,000 on riot control batons.

The city budgeted $364,000 to purchase 630 personal protective equipment kits, which protect officers in the event of a biological or radioactive attack. The city also budgeted $43,500 to buy 61 mountain bikes for police and budgeted $100,000 for intelligence equipment and intelligence training.

Prior to the convention, the city shielded many of the budget details because it argued revealing expenditures might hinder safety measures. Up to this point, the city only revealed expenditures in excess of $50,000 for a piece of equipment and contracts in excess of $500,000. Those are the amounts the city charter specifies as the threshold for requiring city council approval.

Christopher N. Osher: 303-954-1747 or cosher@denverpost.com

Republican Beaten, Pig Kicked

I heart Black Bloc.



Update 9.3.08: The young man the pig is dragging below gets away after the pig shoots his pepper wad, allowing the remaining crowd to close in; here's the video.



Republican National Convention Protests.

Action Targeting Sinister Wal-Mart, Newmont Alliance

From Glenn Morris:

-----Inline Attachment Follows-----

AIMsters and friends,

As you all know, we have supported our relatives in Western Shoshone territory for decades, in support of their treaty and territorial rights. For more background on their struggle visit http://www.wsdp.org/.

Now, a new and very sinister corporate scheme is about to begin that puts the corporate criminals Newmont Mining and Wal-Mart in partnership with each other. Shortly, there will be an announcement of a new action alert targeting Wal-Mart and Newmont for "greenwashing" (covering up corporate crimes by suggesting that they are good for the environment). Wal-Mart is selling gold jewelry mined by Newmont on Western Shoshone lands in Nevada, and calling the jewelry " environmentally sustainable". See their disgusting website at http://www.loveearthinfo.com/. What makes this new corporate scheme so horrific is that uninformed consumers at Wal-Mart will be convinced that their gold purchases are not destroying the environment (gold mining is one of the most environmentally toxic industries on earth -- see: http://www.nodirtygold.org/), in fact, Wal-Mart will attempt to persuade shoppers that their gold purchases will actually help the environment! At the same time, the Wal-Mart customers will be completely blinded to the fact that the gold that they are purchasing is being stolen from Western Shoshone territory, in violation of the Treaty of Ruby Valley of 1863.

The only solution is to make Wal-Mart regret that it made this decision, and to stop spending any of our money at Wal-Mart. Certainly, make sure that you, your family, and your friends, never, ever, buy any gold products at Wal-Mart. Third, let Wal-Mart know that you have made this decision, and that you will not spend a nickel at their stores. Their contact information is: http://walmartstores.com/7663.aspx To follow the progress of this campaign visit the Western Shoshone Defense Project website at http://www.wsdp.org/ or the Global Response website at: http://www.globalresponse.org/

Amy Goodman Arrested, Pepper Sprayed!

All hell is breaking loose in Minneapolis! The protestors are kicking ass so the pigs have kidnapped Democracy Now's Amy Goodman.

RNC: Annoynmous Statement by Anarchists Planning Civil Disobediance

Kick Ass, Ya'll! Freedom fighters everywhere are cheering.

Annoynmous Statement by Anarchists Planning Civil Disobediance
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 09/01/2008 - 09:36.
in Local Feature
Fellow Americans & Freedom Fighters,

Make no mistake, every attendee of the Republican National Convention from politicians to their cheerleaders are actively complicit in the coercion and violence of state power. The brutality of the police witnessed friday and saturday against lawyers and reporters is not surprising, it is rather business as usual. Apologists for our police state have never bothered with moral justifications for their violence, now we see that they don't even bother with legal ones.

Those planning civil disobedience to impede the warmongers descending upon our city are acting in self-defense to re-secure the liberties of all Americans.

In the face of the devastation of global climate change that we see in Hurricane Gustav and the deliberate assaults upon survivors of Katrina organizing with the Poor People's march, those of us gathered in the Twin Cities have decided to continue with our plans to impede the Republican National Convention. Further we call upon those in the Gulf to stand firm against police intimidation and the mercenary forces getting ready to re-occupy New Orleans. Anarchist and Anti-Authoritarian aid groups like Food Not Bombs, Common Grounds and various medic affinity groups are digging in to provide aid to those abandoned by our capitalist government

Community Call Out: White Arrestee Given Priority Coverage

Whiteness rears its ugly head in our post-DNC actions. This is unacceptable. A white woman must not be prioritized over a black man who equally risked his safety and well being in confronting the hate speech fascists in Civic Center park.

A righteous demand from Larry Hales (please repost widely):

Arrest of Carlo Garcia

Saturday, August 30, 2008 4:55 PM

From: "Mr larry hales"

For those in the activist community who have decided to elevate the arrest of one protester over the other, a white person who was brutally attacked over a Black male who was equally brutally attacked, here is the video of the attack on Carlo Garcia and Alicia Forrest.

On the blog both arrests are shown.

But, just to be clear, it appears racist when one is put over the other in terms of importance, when one is deemed an iconic image and the other is accepted and forgotten. Maybe it was not intentional, but for the future, for people outraged against the attack on Alicia, we must also be outraged at the attack against Carlo and raise both of them as gross violations by police forces.

See this blog for the videos:

http://dncrnc.wordpress.com/

Direct link to the post with the videos.