High Court Refuses To Hear Washington Redskins Case

Just in time for Holocaust Denial Day on November 26. Cap Tip: AK48

High Court Won't Hear Washington Redskins Case

November 16, 2009

The Supreme Court on Monday decided not to weigh in on a 17-year legal challenge by a group of American Indians who contend the Washington Redskins football moniker does not deserve trademark protection because it is racially offensive.

In sidestepping the controversy, the justices did not comment on Harjo v. Pro Football, Inc. The court's refusal to hear the case leaves in place an appeals court ruling that the plaintiffs waited too long to challenge the National Football League trademarks.

Susan Shown Harjo, a Cheyenne-Hodulgee Muscogee, and other plaintiffs argued that U.S. trademark laws prohibit registration of a disparaging name. Their appeal was supported by more than 30 law professors, 13 psychology professors who are experts on stereotypes and discrimination, and the Social Justice Advocacy Group, a coalition of nonprofit and religious organizations.

The team was known as the Boston Braves until they adopted the Redskins moniker in 1933 to honor the team's head coach, an American Indian, according to attorneys for the team. The club moved to Washington, D.C., in 1937.

In 1992, Harjo filed suit to have the Redskins trademarks invalidated. She initially won when the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board agreed that the name could be offensive to American Indians.

But the team challenged the decision in federal courts, and U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled, in part, that the challenge was made too long after the first trademark was issued in 1967.

When the plaintiffs appealed, the appeals court noted that the youngest of the plaintiffs was too young to have taken legal action in 1967 and sent the case back to Kollar-Kotelly.

Kollar-Kotelly again rejected the claim, saying that youngest plaintiff waited too long after turning 18 to join the suit. The appeals court upheld the decision in May.

However, the matter is not over. Another group of American Indians filed the same claim two years ago, but their case has been on hold pending the outcome of Harjo's lawsuit.

No court has ever commented on the claim that the Redskins name is racially offensive.

In other business, the court decided to hear the case of an Alabama man sentenced to death for killing a sheriff in 1979.

Billy Joe Magwood was sentenced to death in 1981 for the murder of Coffee County Sheriff Neil Grantham. But a federal judge overturned the sentence, ruling that Alabama had changed its laws to make Magwood's crime eligible for the death penalty.

A panel of judges on the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta reversed the ruling and reinstated the sentence.

Magwood then appealed the 11th Circuit decision to the Supreme Court.

From NPR staff and wire reports

Collapse Watch: Detroit's Unburied Bodies

This is what industrial collapse looks like. Corporate ecoterrorism is not sustainable.

Unburied bodies tell the tale of Detroit — a city in despair

From The Times
November 21, 2009

Tim Reid in Detroit

The abandoned corpses, in white body bags with number tags tied to each toe, lie one above the other on steel racks inside a giant freezer in Detroit’s central mortuary, like discarded shoes in the back of a wardrobe.

Some have lain here for years, but in recent months the number of unclaimed bodies has reached a record high. For in this city that once symbolised the American Dream many cannot even afford to bury their dead.

“I have not seen this many unclaimed bodies in 13 years on the job,” said Albert Samuels, chief investigator at the mortuary. “It started happening when the economy went south last year. I have never seen this many people struggling to give people their last resting place.”

Unburied bodies piling up in the city mortuary — it reached 70 earlier this year — is the latest and perhaps most appalling indignity to be heaped on the people of Detroit. The motor city that once boasted the highest median income and home ownership rate in the US is today in the midst of a long and agonising death spiral.

After years of gross mismanagement by the city’s leaders and the big three car manufacturers of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, who continued to make vehicles that Americans no longer wanted to buy, Detroit today has an unemployment rate of 28 per cent, higher even than the worst years of the Great Depression.

The murder rate is soaring. The school system is in receivership. The city treasury is $300 million (£182m) short of the funds needed to provide the most basic services such as rubbish collection. In its postwar heyday, when Detroit helped the US to dominate the world’s car market, it had 1.85 million people. Today, just over 900,000 remain. It was once America’s fourth-largest city. Today, it ranks eleventh, and will continue to fall.

Thousands of houses are abandoned, roofs ripped off, windows smashed. Block after block of shopping districts lie boarded up. Former manufacturing plants, such as the giant Fisher body plant that made Buicks and Cadillacs, but which was abandoned in 1991, are rotting.

Even Detroit’s NFL football team, the Lions, are one of the worst in the country. Last season they lost all 16 games. This year they have lost eight, and won just a single gane.

Michigan’s Central Station, designed by the same people who gave New York its Grand Central Station, was abandoned 20 years ago. One photographer who produced a series of images for Time magazine said that he often felt, as he moved around parts of Detroit, as though he was in a post-apocalyptic disaster.

Then in June, the $21,000 annual county budget to bury Detroit’s unclaimed bodies ran out. Until then, if a family confirmed that they could not afford to lay a loved one to rest, Wayne County — in which Detroit sits — would, for $700, bury the body in a rough pine casket at a nearby cemetery, under a marker.

Darrell Vickers had to identify his aunt at the mortuary in September but he could not afford to bury her as he was unemployed. When his grandmother recently died, Mr Vickers’s father paid for her cremation, but with a credit card at 21 per cent interest. He said at the time it was “devastating” to not be able to bury his aunt.

What has alarmed medical examiners at the mortuary is that most of the dead died of natural causes. It is evidence, they believe, of people who could not afford medical insurance and medicines and whose families can now not afford to bury them.

Yet in recent weeks there have been signs of hope for Mr Samuels that he can reduce the backlog of bodies. Local philanthropists have donated $8,000 to help to bury the dead. In the past month, Mr Samuels has been able to bury 11 people. The number of unburied is now down to 55.

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Taking The Children From Their Mothers

AK48 sends in the first two stories, which are local to Denver, about the mother of the child dubbed "Balloon Boy". Arm-twisting the Heene family by threatening to deport their Japanese mother forced a guilty plea.

In the third story, a soldier is forced to refuse deployment to Afghanistan because she cannot find care for her child. The Army said she had to go and that her son would be placed in foster care if she could not find family to take him.

Only in a white male capitalist racist patriarchy can any of these obscenities against women of color happen.

Lawyer: 'Balloon Boy' Parents To Plead Guilty

by Jeff Brady

A small homemade helium balloon, thought to have been containing a 6-year-old boy, is pictured floating thousands of feet above Colorado.

November 12, 2009

The parents of a Colorado boy who was thought to have floated away in a silver helium balloon last month are expected to plead guilty to criminal charges in a Larimer County, Colo., court Friday.

Lawyer David Lane, who represents the parents in the case, said Thursday a settlement has been reached. In a written statement, Lane said the father, Richard Heene, will plead guilty to a felony charge of attempting to influence a public servant. He said the mother, Mayumi Heene, will plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of making a false report to authorities.

Lane said Mayumi Heene is a citizen of Japan and could have faced deportation if she had pleaded guilty to a felony. He said the father agreed to "fall on his sword" to keep that from happening.

"It is supremely ironic that law enforcement has expressed such grave concern over the welfare of the children," Lane said. "But it was ultimately the threat of taking the children's mother from the family and deporting her to Japan which fueled this deal."

Neither the Larimer County district attorney's office nor the sheriff's office has confirmed the settlement. If the court approves it, the father could face up to 90 days in jail and the mother up to 60 days.

Earlier in the week, Boulder County's district attorney decided not to file criminal charges against Larimer County Sheriff Jim Alderden for allegedly violating privacy laws. Alderden had earlier disclosed that child welfare workers were involved in the case.

The Oct. 15 incident triggered national attention amid reports that 6-year-old Falcon Heene was inside a balloon that floated away from the family's home. Video of the balloon, careening wildly in the air, was broadcast live by cable television news outlets. When the balloon landed 40 miles from the family's Fort Collins, Colo., home more than two hours later, no one was found inside.

The stunt temporarily shut down Denver International Airport and caused the National Guard to scramble two helicopters in an attempt to rescue the boy, who was believed to be inside the flying-saucer shaped homemade balloon that hurtled across two counties.

A few hours later, the 6-year-old was found hiding in a cardboard box in his family's garage attic. As the investigation continued in subsequent days, law enforcement officials began to suspect it was an elaborate hoax — a marketing ploy by the boy's parents, who had appeared on the ABC reality show Wife Swap and reportedly were seeking a reality television contract.

Alderden said all three of the Heenes' sons knew of the hoax but likely won't face charges because of their ages. The oldest son is 10. One of the boys told investigators he saw his brother get in the balloon's box before it launched.

Heene, 48, a storm chaser and inventor, has described himself as an amateur scientist.

Contributing: The Associated Press.

Balloon Boy' Parents Plead Guilty

November 13, 2009

A Colorado couple pleaded guilty Friday to charges related to a massive hoax that had authorities scrambling to find a boy believed to have been carried away in a helium balloon.

Richard Heene pleaded guilty to a felony charge of attempting to influence a public servant, Larimer County Sheriff Jim Alderden. His wife, Mayumi Heene, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of filing a false report.

Last month, the couple called Federal Aviation Administration officials, a Fort Collins, Colo., television station, and law enforcement officers to report that their 6-year-old son was inside a helium balloon that HAD becOme untethered from the family's house and floated away.

Authorities launched a massive search for the child, Falcon, only to find that he was hiding in the garage of the family home. Prosecutors and Alderden said the parents coerced their children to lie to authorities in an effort to get roles in a reality television show.

Richard Heene told Judge Stephen Schapanski he understood that he could have to pay restitution for the costs incurred by public agencies because of his actions. Local and federal authorities spent at least $62,000 pursuing the balloon and searching for the boy.

The judge warned Mayumi Heene, a Japanese citizen, that her actions and plea could affect her immigration status. But Lee Christian, attorney for Mayumi Heene, said by pleading guilty he hopes she will avoid more serious consequences.

Prosecutors want the Heenes to serve some time in jail, but the final decision will be made by Schapanski at a Dec. 23 sentencing hearing.

David Lane, attorney for Richard Heene, said the couple plan to travel to New York soon to follow up on "an employment opportunity" for Richard. Lane also said the Heenes are scheduled to go to California.

The judge adjusted their bond to allow them to make the trips, as long as they report to probation services within seven days.

Business associates of Richard Heene said before the balloon incident, he was trying to pitch a TV series based on science. The Heenes are amateur storm chasers and appeared twice on the ABC reality show Wife Swap.

From NPR and wire service reports

Soldier mom refuses deployment to care for baby

By RUSS BYNUM, AP Military Writer Russ Bynum, Ap Military Writer Mon Nov 16, 9:32 pm ET

SAVANNAH, Ga. – An Army cook and single mom may face criminal charges after she skipped her deployment flight to Afghanistan because, she said, no one was available to care for her infant son while she was overseas.

Spc. Alexis Hutchinson, 21, claims she had no choice but to refuse deployment orders because the only family she had to care for her 10-month-old son — her mother — was overwhelmed by the task, already caring for three other relatives with health problems.

Her civilian attorney, Rai Sue Sussman, said Monday that one of Hutchinson's superiors told her she would have to deploy anyway and place the child in foster care.

"For her it was like, 'I couldn't abandon my child,'" Sussman said. "She was really afraid of what would happen, that if she showed up they would send her to Afghanistan anyway and put her son with child protective services."

Hutchinson, who is from Oakland, Calif., remained confined Monday to the boundaries of Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, 10 days after military police arrested her for skipping her unit's flight. No charges have been filed, but a spokesman for the Army post said commanders were investigating.

Kevin Larson, a spokesman for Hunter Army Airfield, said he didn't know what Hutchinson was told by her commanders, but he said the Army would not deploy a single parent who had nobody to care for his or her child.

"I don't know what transpired and the investigation will get to the bottom of it," Larson said. "If she would have come to the deployment terminal with her child, there's no question she would not have been deployed."

Hutchinson's son, Kamani, was placed into custody overnight with a daycare provider on the Army post after she was arrested and jailed briefly, Larson said. Hutchinson's mother picked up the child a week ago and took him back to her home in California.

Hutchinson, who's assigned to the 3rd Combat Aviation Brigade of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, joined the Army in 2007 and had no previous deployments, Sussman said. She said Hutchinson is no longer in a relationship with the father.

The Army requires all single-parent soldiers to submit a care plan for dependent children before they can deploy to a combat zone.

Hutchinson had such a plan — her mother, Angelique Hughes, had agreed to care for the boy. Hughes said Monday she kept the boy for about two weeks in October before deciding she couldn't keep him for a full year.

Hughes said she's already having to care for her ailing mother and sister, as well as a daughter with special needs. She also runs a daycare center at her home, keeping about 14 children during the day.

"This is an infant, and they require 24-hour care," Hughes said. "It was very, very stressful, just too much for me to deal with."

Hughes said she returned Kamani to his mother in Georgia a few days before her scheduled deployment Nov. 5.

She said they told her daughter's commanders they needed more time to find another family member or close friend to help Hughes care for the boy, but Hutchinson was ordered to deploy on schedule.

Larson, the Army post spokesman, said officials planned to keep Hutchinson in Georgia as investigators gathered facts about the case.

"Spc. Hutchinson's deployment is halted," Larson said. "There will be no deployment while this situation is ongoing."

___

Russ Bynum has covered the military based in Georgia since 2001.

Anti-Racists Steal the Show at White Supremacist "Tea Party Against Amnesty"

Submitted by TCIMC on Sun, 11/15/2009 - 11:01

Forty-five anti-immigration activists held a small rally outside the state capitol on Saturday. Counter-protest from members of Anti-Racist Action, Bash Back, the Minnesota Immigrants' Rights Action Coalition and others was frequent, vigorous and hilarious. ("America is not for Russians! America is not for Germans! Europeans go home!")

The cheerful crowd of immigrants' rights activists held a banner reading "Stop the raids and deportations". In conversation with members of Minnesotans Seeking Immigration Reform, the activists repeatedly pointed out that all non-native people in Minnesota are illegal immigrants--Minnesota was taken by force by whites from the native people who lived here for centuries before white arrival. One activist, under the name "Robert Erickson," managed to get on the list of speakers and riled the crowd into a frenzy about the theft, murder and disease inflicted by illegal immigrants... from Europe, upon indigenous populations. In a "Yes Men" moment, the anti-immigrant crowd sat in silence, trying to figure out what just happened. (See video from Bluestem Prairie; transcript below; photos to come) | More video from I Don't Hate America (1, 2)

Immigrants' rights activists were also unimpressed with MINN-SIR's conservative libertarian take on government programs--although members of MINN-SIR have no problem working for the government, they are opposed to government assistance, whether to support homeowners, to provide health care, schools, or any other form of citizen benefit. "No money for children!" said one immigrants' rights activist. "No money for schools! No money for veterans! That's just great!"

Minnesotans Seeking Immigration Reform and the Minnesota Coalition for Immigration Reduction attempt to present themselves as the respectable face of anti-immigrant sentiment, distinguishing themselves from the neo-nazis who frequently rally in southern Minnesota. But how big is the distinction? Some scenes from yesterday's rally:

Domestic violence is caused by women and exploited by immigrants! A white man who looked to be in his late fifties gave an extended speech describing how, because of the National Organization for Women, hundreds of undocumented women make false claims of domestic abuse in US courts to get US residency. He added that seventy percent of domestic violence cases are caused by women, that some abusers "have good reasons" for what they do, and that courts never investigate domestic violence cases. This was a particularly creative speech given that undocumented women who are victims of abuse often can't get legal help or protection out of fear that they'll be deported.

No education for special needs children! You know what's wrong with education in Minnesota? Schools have to educate everyone. Federal legislation, said local politician Noran Dylan, "forces states to educate children with higher barriers to learning", including students learning English. This raises costs!

Chain gangs, prison deaths and refusing to investigate rape cases are things to boast about! This crowd loves Arizona sheriff Joseph Arpaio, who is a personal friend of the rally's keynote speaker, former Sheriff Richard Mack--a fondness they share with Aryan Nation and the Ku Klux Klan. (Mack's claim to fame is his distaste for background checks on gun owners.) Arpaio is accused of racially profiling Latin@ drivers; he charges undocumented immigrants with felony conspiracy and holds them without bail; his heavily militarized anti-immigrant sweeps are often conducted against the wishes of local government (so much for local government!)--and he's under investigation by the federal government.

Arpaio's jails have money to hire guards to beat blind and disabled prisoners to death (as noted on a conservative website!), but they don't have enough money to investigate rape cases, as per the conservative Goldwater Institute. And serious felonies have skyrocketed during Arpaio's tenure--he's not just racist and violent, he's ineffective! Arpaio thinks it's an honor to be compared to the KKK, too. You may remember Arpaio for his "tent cities" for immigrants, intentionally located near polluted sites. Or his chain gangs--Arpaio-lovers see nothing wrong with lines of poor men, many men of color, laboring in chains. And then there's the homophobia--Arpaio thinks it's hilarious to dress his male prisoners in pink and parade them around, since he thinks men should be humiliated to wear a "feminine" color and he thinks it's awesome to sexually humiliate prisoners.

This is the man whose name was cheered--cheered with passion--by the crowd.

White people brought everything good to this country! Plus confusion. "Can you imagine what it would be like if Mexico still ran this place?" said one rally attendee after explaining to a counter-demonstrator that white Europeans had brought ambition and bravery to a lax and cowardly land.

Pushing journalists is A-ok! After you get done knocking someone off a bike, that is. I was frankly shocked to see one of the older men at the rally push a protester off his bike. While I was taking pictures, the man turned toward me. "I saw you," I said. "I saw you push him off his bike." The guy responded by heading over and giving me a couple of good shoves, because if you're going to knock someone smaller and younger than you down, you sure don't want anyone seeing you do it.

Minutemen hats! "America's Neighborhood Watch" has interpersonal ties to the Klan. Just this summer, former Minutemen star Shawna Forde was arrested for the robbery and murder of Raul Flores and his 9-year-old daughter Brisenia.

That one guy from the Nazi rally! He's always there, and he'll tell you that he's carrying weapons. At the raucous Austin rally last month, local police identified him as Joseph Benjamin Thomas, 38, of Mendota Heights. After trying to join the Nazi rally but being detained when a Mower County Deputy noticed he was wearing body armor and carrying a knife, he was questioned and stated he also had an expandable baton and a stun gun, according to the police report. He was disarmed but allowed to pick up the weapons later. At Saturday's rally at the Capitol, he appeared to pull some kind of weapon in the scuffle after another rally attendee knocked a protester off his bike. (Photo: Thomas at the State Capitol on Saturday (left) and at neo-Nazi rally in Austin, MN on October 17 (right). More photos from Austin available upon request.)

Peaceful Protest FAIL: Here's an excerpt from an email promoting the MINN-SIR rally on a public anti-immigrant listserve:

3. HOTHEADS

BRING YOUR CAMERAS- lets make sure we get plenty of pictures of any actions taken against our Peaceful Protest.

Our rally is a peaceful event - and quite frankly I do not believe that any plans to counter protest will interfere with our event HOWEVER WITH THAT SAID - if you are a hothead - do not attend.

I do not want - not one - of those answering MINNSIR's call to in anyway start or antagonize anyone if anyone counters it will be THEM who will be in trouble - NOT US.

And some really shockingly bad language!

I may be old-fashioned, but it's still surprising to me to hear an older man approach a group of young people and refer to them as "pieces of shit". Counter-protestors were also "assholes" who had been "dropped on their heads", said another rally attendee. It's important to understand that although there was plenty of shouting on both sides, counter-protestors did not pick individuals out of the crowd and curse at them; this was an anti-immigrant-activist thing.

Related: Support the Bash Back Two! At the recent anti-nazi rally in Austin, MN,two members of Twin Cities Bash Back were arrested for protesting the racist, homophobic, anti-immigrant National Socialist Movement. Donate here to help out with their legal expenses.

"Columbus Go Home!": Prepared transcript of "Robert Erickson's" speech:

Hi, my name is Robert Erickson and I’m really excited to be here. Its people like all of you, and events like this that make our country great! Give yourselves a round of applause!

I just want to talk about a couple themes this afternoon because I love this country and I want to see America be the best place it can be.

Mr. Gutierrez is getting ready to propose an immigration bill in just a few short days, and we have to make sure he knows that we want a bill that’s tough on immigration. Now is the time for us to stand up and make our voices heard!

In Minneapolis, where I’m from, we have a huge immigrant population that’s been causing a number of problems. With the economy in recession, and so many people getting laid off, and unable to find work, immigrants should not be competing for the few jobs that are out there. Its just not fair to the folks who have a claim to this land and the right to be here. All across America, they are contributing to the flooding of our job markets making it hard for American’s to find jobs. Well I’m fed up and its time to let our politicians know that enough is enough, and we’re not gonna take it any more!

We need to secure our borders to protect our country. We need to restore order and put an end to the anarchy that’s sweeping the nation. We need tougher immigration laws to make sure that we send these people back where they came from. We need to protect the sovereignty of the real Americans. We need to hold our politicians accountable.

Its no secret that with an invasion of immigrants, comes waves of crime. We see them involved in massive theft, in murder, and bringing diseases like smallpox, which is responsible for the death of millions of Americans. These aren’t new problems though, they have been going on for hundreds of years, and continue to this day.

I say its time for us to say enough is enough! Are you with me? Are you with me? Lets send these European immigrants back where they came from! I don’t care if they are Polish, Irish, English, Italian, or Norwegian! European immigrants are responsible for the most violent and heinus crimes in the history of the world, including genocide and slavery! Its time to restore the sovereignty of people native to this land! I want more workplace raids, starting with the big banks downtown. There are thousands of illegals working in those buildings, hiding in their offices, and taking Dakota jobs. Let's round them up and ship them out. Then we need to hit them at home where they sleep, I don’t care if we separate families, they should have known better when they came here illegally!

If we aren't able to stand up to these European immigrants, who can we stand up to? We need to send every one of them back home, right now.
Thank you very much, and we’ll see you in the streets!

Columbus go home! Columbus go home! Columbus go home!

90,000 Casualties! Happy Veterans' Day

Wow! 90,000 casualties. And you thought suicide-by-cop was effective. Apparently, illegal invasions have done that one better.



90,000 Casualties, but Who’s Counting?

Posted By Kelley B. Vlahos On November 9, 2009 @ 11:00 pm In Uncategorized | 19 Comments

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to reflect new data on total casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Veterans Day arrives tomorrow, and with it, the anticipated harvest of heartbreaking anecdotes driving the press coverage and our ever wandering attention back to less desirable realities: the disfigured but persevering hero, the homeless warrior, the unemployable sergeant, the father or son or daughter who came home a stranger and cannot be reached.

Usually, there is nothing more powerful than a personal story to pound home the cost of eight years of war overseas, but I think today there is something even more disturbing to bear.

It’s the number 89,457 [.doc].

As of Nov. 9, that’s how many American casualties there were in Iraq and Afghanistan since Oct. 7, 2001, when the Afghan war officially began. That includes a tire-screeching 75,134 dead, wounded-in-action, and medically evacuated due to illness, disease, or injury in Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), and 14,323 and counting in Afghanistan, or Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF).

That it may sound incredible – even unreal – is understandable. Early attempts to effectively count casualties (outside of battlefield fatalities) had been in earnest, then erratic, but finally dead-ended, frustrated by the Department of Defense, which has always been loath to break down and publicize the data on a regular basis.

One stalwart has always been Veterans for Common Sense (VCS), a nonprofit advocacy group dedicated to advancing the health and readjustment of returning soldiers and veterans. They’ve been diligently aggregating the statistics over time, and thanks to their diligent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, they can provide casualty reports at a level of detail not currently seen on the DOD’s publicly accessible Web site, DefenseLink.mil.

If we could access the data more easily, more people would know that 196 servicemembers took their own lives while serving in Iraq between March 2003 and Oct. 31, 2009, and there were 35 such suicides in Afghanistan. (These figures, of course, do not include the skyrocketing cases of suicides among all active-duty soldiers and veterans and cases of self-inflicted injury outside both war zones.)

More people would also know that 48,871 servicemembers had to be medically evacuated from the battlefield due to hostile and non-hostile injury, disease, and other medical issues since the beginning of the Iraq War [.pdf]. As of Oct. 31, 11,080 were evacuated for the same reasons from the war zone in Afghanistan [.pdf].

What the DOD does say, is that as of Nov. 4, there were 13,880 servicemembers wounded in action in Iraq who had not returned to duty, while 2,619 had left Afghanistan under the same conditions [.pdf]. That number is climbing faster. According to the Washington Post on Oct. 31, more than 1,000 were wounded in Afghanistan in the last three months, accounting for one-third of the total American casualties in OEF overall.

Thus, the troops are coming home, but in drastically varied degrees of wholeness. In Vietnam, there was one soldier killed for every 2.6 wounded. The vast majority of soldiers are surviving their injuries today (approximately one killed in action for every 11.5 wounded in action, according to current stats for Afghanistan and Iraq), thanks to advanced body armor, better medevac transport, and mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles. But in tens of thousands of cases, their journey has just begun.

No one should be surprised, then, to hear that some 454,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have already sought medical care from the Veterans Administration (VA) when they came home. That’s 40 percent of the total OIF/OEF veteran population, which is a number that is of course in flux, considering that the war has no end and veterans have five years to apply for care after the end of their service.

As of this summer, of those veterans who sought healthcare at the VA, 45 percent were diagnosed with a mental health condition, according to VA statistics. Twenty-seven percent of these had post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Based on available resources from the DOD and research by the RAND Corporation, VCS estimates that an estimated 370,000 (or 19.5 percent of) veterans have a traumatic brain injury (TBI) thanks to the high rate of accidents, roadside bombs, and other battlefield explosions and events – plus repeated deployments – in the war. VCS also estimates that some 18.5 percent of veterans come home with PTSD.

"This is very, very serious. The numbers are… bad, OK?" said Paul Sullivan, the bulldog director of VCS. "The good news is veterans are asking for care, and it’s good care. The bad news is there is 454,000 of them."

That’s tens of thousands of men and women and affected families and communities that are all but missing from the mainstream news any other time of the year. Sullivan said this is partly the military’s fault for obfuscating the statistics and working to keep the agony of sacrifice in the shadows.

"It’s still the policy of the United States to minimize concerns about postwar health," said Sullivan. Take the issue of soldiers coming home with chronic health problems allegedly caused by the toxic open-air burn pits in theater. One look at the online discussion boards and it’s clear something over there went awry. Vets are headed to VA facilities in droves with symptoms ranging from respiratory distress to sleep apnea and irregular heart conditions, but the Pentagon still refuses to admit a connection to their wartime exposures.

"They treat it as a public relations issue, not a health issue," Sullivan said. "In our view, we are tired of the government lying, and we’re done with the PR."

Larry Scott, who runs VAWatchdog.org, an invaluable daily monitor of ongoing issues affecting the 23.4 million living U.S veterans, said the 90,591 figure relating to OIF/OEF casualties is valid – and ultimately overwhelming. "People just forget, they don’t realize there is an ongoing cost of war. Whether you agree with the war or not is not the issue. We have to be ready to pay the price."

Looking at it in monetary terms – more numbers – may seem cold, but again, it puts the taxpayers’ burden into shocking perspective. Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz have identified two scenarios in their book, The Three Trillion Dollar War (2008). One scenario estimates a long-term cost of $422 billion to the federal government for veterans’ health care and disability compensation (given 1.8 million men and women deployed and troop levels falling below 55,000 by 2012). In the other scenario, the U.S. stays in Iraq and Afghanistan another eight years and 2.1 million men and women are deployed, with a price tag of $717 billion

Sullivan estimates that there are about 450,000 disability claims already filed with the VA on behalf of Iraq and Afghanistan vets, based on the official 405,000 figure announced back in February. He said there are approximately 80,000 new claims a month from veterans of all wars. As of Sept. 26, there were more than 951,217 pending claims by all veterans, including 200,679 claims pending appeal (the Veterans Benefits Administration recently reduced that number to 176,000, raising eyebrows at Sullivan’s group).

Rarely do we hear these figures over the din calling for even greater numbers of troops on the ground in Afghanistan. The generals want 40,000 or more, which would exceed the "surge" of 20,000 men and women into Iraq almost three years ago. Soldiers are finally withdrawing from that front only to be shifted to the other one for seemingly more hazardous duty.

"Where is the discussion about making sure that before we send any more troops overseas that we can take care of the veterans we already have and whether we can take care of another flood of them?" asked Sullivan.

Such discussions are indeed hard to come by. As Veterans Day nears, veterans are strangely absent, and for many of us, out of mind. Perhaps Sullivan’s question is best answered by Macy’s full-page Veterans Day sale advertisement in the Washington Post this week, featuring two well-dressed, shiny, happy, pretty people with a bugle and a drum. There are lots of numbers – 30% to 60% off storewide! – but not a veteran in sight.
Read more by Kelley B. Vlahos

* Polls Give False Impressions About War – November 2nd, 2009
* Afghan Army MIA – October 26th, 2009
* The Pentagon’s Recruitment Two-Step – October 19th, 2009
* Lara Logan Casts Her Spell for War – October 12th, 2009
* PATRIOT Act Fight Needs More Patriots – October 5th, 2009

Article printed from Antiwar.com Original: http://original.antiwar.com

URL to article: http://original.antiwar.com/vlahos/2009/11/09/90000-casualties-but-whos-counting/

Click here to print.

Copyright © 2009 Antiwar.com Original. All rights reser

Who Will Be Sent To Afghanistan?

"During the eight months he has been held at Fort Lewis, Wildman claims he has suffered verbal abuse and substandard mental healthcare. 'The command treated me like dirt. My commander ignored me for the first couple months until my roommate jumped me. They’ll make sure you’re in the room and call you a ‘bunch of PTSD pussies.’'"

Well, there it is. A non-female goes to war to try to prove he is not a woman only to find it breaks him, which causes the other non-females to see him as a woman.

No matter how hard woman-hating men fight the "contamination" of femininity, it seems there will always be some testosterone-poisoned fucker who will not allow them to pass the gender purity test.

And I don't feel the least bit sorry for any of you. All I want is to see men like this form a circular firing squad with the most phallic, high-powered weapons they can find and pull the trigger. Hey, anybody left standing is a pussy, ok?

Who Will Be Sent To Afghanistan?

Who Will Be Sent to Afghanistan?

by Dahr Jamail, Sarah Lazare, and Tom Engelhardt, November 09, 2009

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In a grim Nov. 3 Wall Street Journal piece (buried inside the paper), Yochi Dreazen reported record suicide rates for a stressed-out U.S. Army. Sixteen soldiers killed themselves in October alone, 134 so far this year, essentially ensuring that last year’s “record” of 140 suicides will be broken. This represents a startling 37 percent jump in suicides since 2006 and, for the first time, puts the suicide rate in the Army above that of the general U.S. population.

After eight years of two major counterinsurgency wars (and various minor encounters in what used to be called the Global War on Terror), with many soldiers experiencing multiple tours of duty, with approximately 120,000 U.S. troops still in Iraq and almost 70,000 in Afghanistan, with the Afghan War clearly in an escalatory phase, commanders in the field calling for 40,000-80,000 more American troops, and base construction on the rise, the military’s internal problems are clearly escalating as well.

As Dahr Jamail, author of The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Sarah Lazare report, under these circumstances, the Army is digging deep for deployable troops; in fact, it’s dipping into a pool of soldiers who have already been damaged or even broken by their experiences in our war zones – and that’s just to meet present deployment needs. Perhaps it’s not surprising then that Dreazen included this striking passage in his report: “At a White House meeting Friday, the Joint Chiefs of Staff urged President Barack Obama to send fresh troops to Afghanistan only if they have spent at least a year in the U.S. since their last overseas tour, according to people familiar with the matter. If Mr. Obama agreed to that condition, many potential Afghanistan reinforcements wouldn’t be available until next summer at the earliest.”

In translation (if Dreazen is correct), that means, in a private brainstorming session with the president, the Joint Chiefs have evidently put the brakes on implementing the full-scale plan of CENTCOM Commander David Petraeus and Afghan War commander Stanley McChrystal to send a massive infusion of new troops to Afghanistan any time soon.

It’s worth asking – though no one, as far as I can tell, yet has – whether this may be a modest Afghan equivalent of the “Shinseki moment” before the invasion of Iraq. (Then, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki warned in congressional testimony that, if we invaded, we would need “several hundred thousand” troops – numbers not available – for the occupation to follow. He was laughed into retirement by the Bush-appointed civilian leadership of the Pentagon.)

At the same time, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Adm. Mike Mullen, has just made it clear that the Pentagon will once again request supplemental war-fighting funds sometime next year, over and above the $130 billion Congress appropriated only a month ago in the Defense Department budget. These will be based, in part, on a calculation that each 1,000 new troops sent to Afghanistan must be supported by an extra billion dollars in funds. (You can do the math yourself on those 40,000 troops and then wonder just where all that money is going to come from.)

We are, in fact, facing an ongoing disaster not just for the U.S., but for the U.S. military. Read the following piece and ask yourself: What state would a military have to be in to consider sending such men back into a war zone? A desperate military is, of course, the answer – a military rubbed raw and, as the shocking mass murder spree at already stressed-out Fort Hood may indicate, on edge in a way that perhaps no one has quite grasped. Tom

Where Will They Get the Troops?

Preparing undeployables for the Afghan front
by Dahr Jamail and Sarah Lazare

As the Obama administration debates whether to send tens of thousands of extra troops to Afghanistan, an already overstretched military is increasingly struggling to meet its deployment numbers. Surprisingly, one place it seems to be targeting is military personnel who go absent without leave (AWOL) and then are caught or turn themselves in.

Hidden behind the gates of military bases across the U.S., troops facing AWOL and desertion charges regularly find themselves in the hands of a military that metes out informal, open-ended punishments by forcing them to wait months – sometimes more than a year – to face military justice. In the meantime, some of these soldiers are offered a free pass out of this legal limbo as long as they agree to deploy to Afghanistan or Iraq – even if they have been diagnosed with severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

In August 2008 at TomDispatch.com, we reported on the deplorable conditions at the 82nd Replacement Barracks at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. There, more than 50 members of Echo Platoon of the 82nd Airborne Division’s 82nd Replacement Detachment were being held while awaiting AWOL and desertion charges. Investigations launched since then – in part in response to our article – have revealed that the plight of members of Echo Platoon is not an isolated one. It is, in fact, disturbingly commonplace on other bases throughout the United States. And it is from these “holdover units,” filled with disgruntled soldiers who have gone AWOL, many of whom are struggling with PTSD from previous deployments in war zones, that the military is hoping to help meet its manpower needs for Afghanistan.

Nightmare in Echo Platoon

On Aug. 16, determined to put an end to unbearable mental and psychological pain, Pvt. Timothy Rich, while on 24-hour suicide watch, attempted to jump to his death from the roof of Echo Platoon’s barracks (where he had been held since being arrested for going AWOL). Prior to his suicide attempt, Rich had been offered amnesty by the military in exchange for agreeing to deploy to Afghanistan or Iraq.

He had already been through a hellish year awaiting a discharge and treatment for mental health problems. “I want to leave here very bad,” he explained. “For four months they have been telling me that I’ll get out next week. I didn’t see an end to it, so I figured I’d try and end it myself.”

He fell three stories, bouncing off a tree, before hitting the ground and cracking his spine. The military gave him a back brace, psychotropic drugs, and put him on a renewed, 24-hour suicide watch.

While he has recently been discharged from the military, Rich was not atypical of the soldiers of Echo Platoon, some forced to wait a year or more in legal limbo – in dilapidated buildings under the authority of abusive commanders – for legal proceedings to begin, and many struggling with mental illness or PTSD from previous deployments. As Spc. Dustin Stevens told us last August: “[It's] horrible here. We are treated like animals. Some of us are going crazy, some are sick. There are people here who should be in mental hospitals. And the way I see it, I did nothing wrong.”

Shortly after our story was published, Stevens told us that at least half a dozen soldiers in the platoon, including him, were suddenly given trial dates. Although he was likely to be found guilty and face punishment, Stevens claimed to be “relieved” to have an end in sight. Soon after, according to Echo Platoon informants, their barracks were condemned as a result of a military investigation of the site and, on Oct. 19, the platoon itself was disbanded.

Recently, due possibly to the attention his story drew to the mistreatment and indefinite detention soldiers were facing in Echo Platoon, Stevens was informed by the military he would be “chaptered out” – in other words, given an administrative discharge from the Army – and will not be forced to serve formal prison time.

James Branum, Stevens’ civilian lawyer, as well as the legal adviser to the G.I. Rights Hotline of Oklahoma and co-chair of the Military Law Task Force (MLTF), summed developments up this way: “After repeated complaints and congressional inquiry, Echo Platoon was shut down. The whole place was shut down. Everyone was scattered to other units. If your old unit still exists, they are sending you to your old unit. We know that at least one of the NCOs [non-commissioned officers] in charge of Echo Platoon was fired. I think this is a positive thing.”

Echoes of Echo

The troubling state of affairs in Echo Platoon may only have been the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Army holdover units. Evidence suggests that soldiers being held on other bases in the United States for AWOL and desertion face similar apathy or intentional neglect – and that they, too, are often left with the choice between living in legal limbo or agreeing to be sent to a war zone.

Scott Wildman, a former Army specialist, went AWOL in 2007 when he was unable to receive adequate help for severe PTSD sustained after a 15-month deployment to Iraq. In February 2009, he finally turned himself in at Fort Lewis in Washington state, only to find himself lost in a labyrinthine bureaucracy. For the first four months, he was not allowed to leave a confined area and was forbidden even to walk around by himself.

Here’s how he describes his experience: “I was flipping out. My wife had left me while I was over there. I hadn’t seen my kids in a couple years. I came home and tried to get help. At Fort Lewis, they do not care about you. I had been diagnosed by civilian and military doctors with severe depression, PTSD, and severe anxiety. When you are at the unit, they make fun of you. They crack PTSD jokes. They all have it too, but they’re too cool.”

During the eight months he has been held at Fort Lewis, Wildman claims he has suffered verbal abuse and substandard mental healthcare. “The command treated me like dirt. My commander ignored me for the first couple months until my roommate jumped me. They’ll make sure you’re in the room and call you a ‘bunch of PTSD pussies.’”

Four weeks ago, Wildman was informed that he would be court-martialed, but he was not given a trial date. Feeling he had no other choice, he went AWOL again and remains so today. “I’d been going to see some military counselors, but we weren’t making progress on the real problem…. They give us classes on calm and peacefulness, but they are right near the shooting ranges. There’s gunfire and explosions all around, people being screamed at all the time because it’s infantry. It’s not a good place for someone with [mental health] issues.”

At one point, despite a confidentiality protocol that should have prevented it, Wildman’s commanders went through his medical evaluations and found out that he had been involved in the accidental killing of two little girls in Iraq. They proceeded to needle him by threatening to write him up for war crimes.

Explaining why he once again went AWOL, Wildman says, “I didn’t know what was going to happen next. I had to remove myself from that situation.”

“Examples of how the military is treating soldiers, like the case of Wildman, are common,” comments Kathleen Gilberd, co-chair of the MLTF. She also points out that the Army, stretched thin by years of multiple deployments to two war zones, has taken to downplaying potentially severe medical conditions to keep soldiers eligible for service overseas. It is commonplace, she reports, for formerly AWOL soldiers to be “bribed” with offers of having all charges, or potential charges, dropped, as long as they accept deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan.

“A lot of folks who are under-diagnosed or misdiagnosed are being deployed second and third times,” she adds. “Barrier mechanisms that should prevent this from happening are being routinely ignored. … If someone is on psychotropic medication or is diagnosed with a fresh psychiatric condition, there should be a 90-day observation period and delay, under DOD [Department of Defense] policy.”

Remarkably, that sometimes-ignored 90-day hold period for military personnel on psychotropic medications does not always apply to soldiers who are diagnosed with traumatic brain injury (TBI) of a sort commonly caused by roadside bombs. According to an Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center analysis, reported in the Denver Post in August 2008, more than “43,000 service members – two-thirds of them in the Army or Army Reserve – were classified as nondeployable for medical reasons three months before they deployed” to Iraq. The process, if anything, only seems to be accelerating when it comes to Afghanistan.

Deploying the Undeployables

Not all soldiers go AWOL in order to save their minds and bodies. Some are trying to save their families. One soldier held in Bravo Platoon, a holdover unit of the 3rd Brigade, 4th Infantry Division at Fort Carson in Colorado Springs (who did not want his name made public) disclosed that, having returned from service in Iraq, he was told he would soon be redeployed there. Because his mother was ill, he refused and was threatened with a court martial.

“When I turned myself in, I submitted a binder with letters from my mom’s doctors and state officials that made clear that I needed to be home to take care of my mother. At that time, they had me on restriction and lockdown 24/7 to keep me from leaving again. Later they punished me. I was assigned extra duty and received a rank reduction from E3 to a private. I was treated like crap.”

He and the other soldiers in his holdover platoon were subjected to verbal abuse and made to do menial jobs. He claimed that he was threatened daily with being sent to the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, the military’s maximum security correctional facility – and then was urged to agree to go back to Iraq instead. It made no difference that he had “no-go” orders from doctors at Fort Carson exempting him from overseas deployment.

His commander promised him a clean slate if he would redeploy to Iraq, insisting that the only alternative was a court-martial. Despite a regimen of humiliation, he stood his ground and was finally discharged for family hardship in September 2008. There were at least 11 other soldiers then in Bravo Platoon. Like their counterparts in Echo, most were told that their records would be wiped clean once they agreed to redeploy. The alternative was a non-judicial punishment, followed by a court-martial some months down the line.

As he tells it, Sgt. Heath Carter, originally based at Fort Polk, La., found himself torn between pressing family needs and an indifferent military command. On returning from the invasion of Iraq, he discovered his daughter living in what he believed to be an unsafe environment. Heath and his new wife started consulting attorneys in order to secure custody of the child. Precisely during this time, the military began changing Carter’s duty station. He was moved from Fort Polk to Fort Huachuca, Ariz., then on to Fort Stewart, Ga., reducing his chances of gaining custody.

Convinced that this was a crucial matter for his daughter, he requested compassionate reassignment to Fort Leavenworth, Mo., about two hours away from her. His appeals to the military command, to his chaplain, even to his congressman failed. In May 2007, having run out of options, he went AWOL from Fort Stewart, heading home to fight for custody, which he won.

This Jan. 25, however, he was arrested at his home by military police, who flew him back to Fort Stewart, where he has been awaiting charges for the past eight months. Being a sergeant, he is in a regular unit, not a holdover one. Initially, his commander assured him he would be sent home within a month and a half. Several months later, the same commander decided to court-martial him.

Carter feels frustrated. “If they had done that in the beginning, I would have been home by now. It’s taken this long for them to decide. Now I have to wait for the court-martial. If we had known it would take this long, my family could have moved down here. Every time I ask when I’ll have a trial, they say it’s only going to be another two weeks. I get the feeling they’re lying. They’ve messed with my pay. They’re trying to push me to do something wrong.”

His ordeal has forced Carter to reflect on America’s wars. Once, he admits, he was proud of his mission in Iraq. Now, he sees things differently. “I don’t think there is any reason for us to be there except for oil.”

His wife, who witnessed her husband’s callous treatment, says, “He’s been there [Iraq], done that, and seen horrible, terrible things, so of course he doesn’t want to go back.”

While the Obama administration decides how many thousands of troops to send to Afghanistan, service men and women are already facing repeated deployments, oftentimes while having already been diagnosed with medical conditions that should render them unfit for deployment.

Nothing has changed for these beleaguered troops, except the venue of their maltreatment and the desperation with which the military is now struggling to make the necessary deployment numbers as it continues to fight two endless wars.

Dahr Jamail, an independent journalist, is the author of The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan (Haymarket Books, 2009) and Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq (Haymarket Books, 2007). Jamail reported from occupied Iraq for nine months, as well as from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Turkey over the last five years.

Sarah Lazare is the project coordinator for Courage to Resist, an organization that supports troops who refuse to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. She is also a freelance writer.

Bhaswati Sengupta contributed to this report.

Copyright 2009 Dahr Jamail and Sarah Lazare

Afghan Insurgents Learn to Destroy key U.S. Armored Vehicle

Failure, failure, failure. Do the same clowns who let the towers be attacked and could not defend themselves at Ft. Hood do anything else but fail? Somebody needs to declare imaginary victory and depart the field already.

Afghan insurgents learn to destroy key U.S. armored vehicle

By Jonathan S. Landay | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Taliban-led insurgents in Afghanistan have devised ways to cripple and even destroy the expensive armored vehicles that offer U.S. forces the best protection against roadside bombs by using increasingly large explosive charges and rocket-propelled grenades, according to U.S. soldiers and defense officials.

At least eight American troops have been killed this year in attacks on so-called Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected vehicles, or MRAPs, and 40 more have been wounded, said a senior U.S. military official who, like others interviewed on the issue, declined to be further identified because of the issue's sensitivity.

The insurgents' success in attacking the hulking machines, which can cost as much as $1 million each, underscores their ability to counter the advanced hardware that the U.S. military and its allies are deploying in their struggle to gain the upper hand in the war, which entered its ninth year last month.

The attacks also raise questions about how vulnerable a new, lighter MRAP, the M-ATV, which is now being shipped to Afghanistan, are to the massive explosive charges that Taliban-led insurgents have been using against its bigger cousin.

The insurgents are also hitting MRAPs with rocket-propelled grenades that can penetrate their steel armor, according to U.S troops in Afghanistan, several of whom showed McClatchy a photograph of a hole that one of the projectiles had punched in the hull of an MRAP.

The Pentagon has spent more than $26.8 billion to develop and build three versions of the largest MRAPs, totaling some 16,000 vehicles, mostly for the Army and Marine Corps, according to an August report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.

Another $5.4 billion is being spent to produce 5,244 M-ATVs, the smaller version that U.S. defense officials contend offers as much protection as the large models do, but is more maneuverable and better suited to Afghanistan's dirt tracks and narrow mountain roads.

"The traditional MRAP was having real problems . . . off road in Afghanistan," said Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell. "And clearly we have to do a lot of work off-road. And these new vehicles will provide our forces the ability to travel more safely off road — certainly off paved roads — than they would have been able to do with other vehicles."

Defense officials acknowledged the growing problem of successful attacks on MRAPs, and said the U.S. military is constantly developing improvements for the vehicle that include better sensors and tactics.

"It's not all about the armor. We can't build something that is impervious to everything," said Navy Capt. Jack Henzlik, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, which oversees operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. "We are using a comprehensive strategy to try to provide for the protection of our forces."

The issue was the subject of a high-level meeting convened on Wednesday by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who made the production of MRAPs his highest priority in 2007 as U.S. troops in Iraq were suffering massive casualties from roadside bomb attacks.

The use of powerful explosive charges against MRAPs "is a problem that he (Gates) is keenly aware of, very concerned about, and is determined to make sure this building is doing everything it can to combat," Morrell said. "We have never advertised MRAPs or M-ATVs as a silver bullet for the IED (improvised explosive device) problem. This is but one element of a vast array of capabilities that we need to bring to bear to protect our forces."

However, retired Army Col. Douglas A. MacGregor, a former armored cavalry commander and combat veteran and an expert on armor warfare, said that vehicles such as the MRAP have "very limited utility" in a war against a guerrilla group such as the Taliban.

"The notion of a wheeled armored constabulary force as a prescription for a close combat situation is nonsense," he said.

U.S. troops rely on the MRAP's V-shaped hull, which is designed to deflect explosive blasts, and heavy armored plating to protect them against the landmines and IEDs that are causing most American combat deaths in Afghanistan.

October was the deadliest month for U.S. troops since the 2001 U.S. invasion. At least 59 were killed, bringing the total for the year to at least 272 dead, according to the Internet site iCasualties. At least 139 of those troops died in IED blasts, according to the Pentagon.

"Pentagon officials note that insurgents are building larger IEDs and are finding better ways to conceal them," the Congressional Research Service report said.

"The biggest question is what took them so long," said a senior Pentagon official with extensive experience with the MRAP program and familiarity with the weapons and techniques that the militants in Afghanistan have developed to "compromise" the vehicle.

The fact that the large MRAPs — which range from 7 tons to 24 tons depending on the model — often are confined to narrow mountain roads and valleys in Afghanistan has made it easier for insurgents to prepare ambushes using anti-tank mines, IEDs or rocket-propelled grenades capable of penetrating armor, the official said.

U.S. defense officials insisted that many more U.S. troops would be killed and injured in Afghanistan and in Iraq if they'd been equipped with vehicles other than MRAPs.

"KIA (killed in action) rates in particular are noticeably reduced in MRAPs," said Irene Smith, a spokeswoman for the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization, the Pentagon agency created to develop defenses against roadside bombs.

U.S. defense officials in Washington and Kabul declined to reveal the number of MRAPs that have been crippled or destroyed since the first vehicles were deployed in Afghanistan in 2003, saying they didn't want to provide the Taliban with information on the effectiveness of their tactics.

McClatchy is voluntarily withholding some U.S. soldiers' descriptions of insurgent tactics out of concern that they may not be known by all of those fighting U.S.-led forces.

The soldiers spoke out of what they said was a heightened concern about the vehicles' vulnerability to ambushes, especially on mountain roads where there's no room for the vehicles to turn around.

Mayan Truth About 2012

Hat tip, AK48

2012 and the Mayan Calendar end date.
Do you want your facts on 2012 from the

Maya Elders or Hollywood?

We have heard from everyone but the Maya on this controversial topic of 2012

and the Mayan Calendar end date.
The time is now to hear what Mayan Elder Cirilo Perez Oxlaj,

a.k.a "Wandering Wolf the Voice of the Jungle"

has to say about these times that we are in.
This is the purpose of the film the Shift of the Ages.

Synchronicities have their humor....
Beginning this November, the mass consciousness will be assaulted

with the apocalyptic Hollywood version of 2012 by the director of "Independence Day."

We were shocked to discover that these Hollywood film makers
also have a site called "Institute for Human Continuity" which is offering a

lottery for people to occupy their underground
facility intended to survive the "end of the world."

How noble to offer such hope for the lucky few who win their lottery.

Because of this overt fear mongering, we as light workers, healers,

conscious beings and Maya supporters
have an unprecedented opportunity to shift this fear into a

powerful force for conscious transformation and human evolution.
We believe it is time to drop the remote controls and take positive action

so we can organize together and transcend the fear regarding the shift.
We can do this in part by rallying in support of The Maya people themselves

who are responsible for this ominous and auspicious 2012 date.

An authentic Mayan perspective on 2012 has yet to be heard by

a global audience and it is NOW TIME for their message.
If the year 2012 has any significance whatsoever,

it is because it points to Year Zero in the Mayan Calendar,
which has been translated into "2012" by non-Mayan scholars.
Don't you think it will be useful to hear the authentic account of

Year Zero by the presently living elders of the Maya?
This is offered in the film Shift of the Ages.

For over four years now this film has been gestating. It will be released

within the next 6 months, with all of your help.
The Maya Elders and Mayan Elder Cirilo Perez Oxlaj

need your help to bring their message to a global mainstream audience.
Because this is an independent film, the film's producers do not have

millions of Hollywood dollars to invest in advertising and publicity.
The film Shift of the Ages producers, production crew

and Mayan Elder Cirilo Perez Oxlaj, do not want to sell the film to

a bigger company, as they might lose creative control,

and watch the truth of the message get lost in translation.
Instead, they have created an Ambassador-Affiliate Program designed

to organize a grass-roots global outreach and support system.
The Shift of the Ages Ambassador program allows everyone to

help with the film's success.

Ambassadors for this film are now unifying, forming alliances,

and working underground networks. These alliances and networks will

assist in the availability of this film to the mainstream world.

You can help get this timely message out to the world during this

momentous and transitional time.
See the film trailers - click this link: Shift of the Ages

Become an Ambassador for the Shift of the Ages.

PLEASE forward this message to all your networks all over the world.
Network this announcement on Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Architects of a New Dawn, and iPeace Now!

_______________________________

From the film's creator, Steve Copeland

I usually don't send emails like this, but I feel a sense of urgency. The year 2012 and the "end of the world" has captured the attention of many people now. Many are presently using and twisting Mayan prophecy to advance their own agenda. We haven't had the opportunity to hear from the real Maya yet regarding what is actually happening now. As many of you know, I have been producing a film called "Shift of the Ages" for the past five years with the Grand Elder of the Maya Nation. This is their film and effort to clear up popular misconceptions of the Maya's past and educated the public about what they believe is "the change of the sun." Much of what is being spread over the internet is false. I have done my best to walk in integrity with the Maya people and honor the information they believe is "the flame that will light the world." Proper project funding has been our biggest obstacle to date. The Mayan Elders involved in the project have seen the success of our collective effort, but at the 3D level I'd say we are about 75% done with our post-production process. We're open to partnering with a conscious and accomplished production company that is willing to honor our arrangement with the Maya nation and the direction of the project. We have decided to release a series of clips and segments over the Internet to help dispel the fear associated with 2012 and raise awareness for our project. (USE THIS LINK to VIEW FILM CLIP )

This clip will be followed by several more clips as days go on. Keep in mind these are not film trailers; they are actual edit segements from the film. I invite you to please watch the "Creation" clip and forward it along if it speaks to you.

Thank you very much, Steve Copeland
Shift of the Ages

Much sheer effort goes into avoiding the truth:left to
itself, it sweeps in like the tide.

- Fay Weldon -

I Hate Bono

If you live in Denver and have a pulse, you know that U2 tickets have just gone on sale for their concert at Invesco Field SEVEN GODDAMN MONTHS FROM NOW. I guess they need that much lead time to try to fill all those seats that are going to stand empty once the first wave of 80's nostalgia purchases are made.

The only good thing I can think to say about Bono is that he loves alcohol almost as much as he loves himself, and might very well commit slow-motion suicide with the stuff, doing us all a huge favor by ridding the earth of his gianormous wankitude.

Why, god, why does this soulless corporate creep have to come to my town? And how, for the love of god, could Ireland have done this to itself?

Photo source: I Hate Bono



Desperately-irrelevant Bono fishes for Mini-Me.

Fort Hood Under Attack: At Least Seven Dead

Naturally, the same testosterone-poisoned posers that failed to protect the Twin Towers on 911, fail once more to secure themselves, this time on their own Army base, the largest in the entire world.

And my tax dollars pay to arm these losers?

Seven Dead, Twenty Injured in Ft Hood Shooting

7 dead, shooters sought at Ft. Hood

At least seven people are dead and 20 wounded in a mass shooting Thursday at Fort Hood, Texas, and at least one suspect is believed to be holed up in a building and shooting at SWAT team members, NBC News and affiliate KCEN reported.

It was unknown whether the victims were all soldiers or civilians at Fort Hood, one of the largest military complexes in the world.

One gunman was reportedly in custody and another was on the loose, NBC News said. A third shooter may be involved, according to NBC News affiliate KCEN in Waco, which said the person was holed up in building 42006 on the base and had opened fire on SWAT team members. KCEN quoted a source as saying the shooter had a high-powered rifle.

Rooted Resistance: Feasting For Change

Hat Tip AK48, for this moving, inspiring clip "Feasting For Change".

On this Halloween night, in which the ancestors walk, it's good to be reminded that the traditional community that gathers wild food together endures forever.

Excerpt: the vision of the Feasting For Change Working Group:

"Promotion of culture and preservation of Mother Earth in giving thanks to the land, the animals, and the sea allowing all people to reconnect to their cultural heritage by exercising their inherent right to hunt, fish, grow and harvest as our ancestors taught us."

How I Spent My Snow Days

So it's been snowing here in Denver for almost 48 hours, and to shake off the cabin fever, I thought it might be fun to go for a ramble to see what manner of creatures were leaving their tracks in the snow. A few nights ago, a great horned owl plopped herself on a lamppost outside my window [cue the "Wildfire" theme music], and that left me feeling up for another surprise encounter.

As I trudged along in the snow near a creek, a set of dog tracks beside a man's very large ones made me think it would be interesting to find some coyote tracks to follow. Then it occurred to me that those "dog" tracks ran in a perfect single file line, like the kind overweight, waddling, city dogs tend not to make. I looked up to see how far ahead these tracks led, and in a furry flash, saw something moving just off a footbridge over the creek.

That's the thing about tracking. At some point, you're going to find the creature that made the tracks standing in them. The biggest coyote I have ever seen in my entire life slipped around the bridge and towards some trees without looking in my direction. I noted the wind; it was in my face, so perhaps she had not scented me. Excited, I followed her tracks for a few yards until another thought stopped me cold: I am out here walking in the snow because I've eaten today and need the exercise. She's out here today because she hasn't eaten and is looking for a meal.

I walked home with a very big stick and more than the occasional glance over my shoulder. No wonder we have so many fliers for lost cats and dogs in this area. Seeing the coyote was a nice Nature moment, and I want to go back out again for another (I'm thinking a moonlit, snowbright night), but that might be a very good way to end up on the back of a milk carton. After all, it's almost Halloween, and who knows what's really walking out there?

NY Times: For Some Seeking Rebirth, Sweat Lodge Was End

Hat Tip, AK48

For Some Seeking Rebirth, Sweat Lodge Was End

October 22, 2009
By JOHN DOUGHERTY

SEDONA, Ariz. — Midway through a two-hour sweat lodge ceremony intended to be a rebirthing experience, participants say, some people began to fall desperately ill from the heat, even as their leader, James Arthur Ray, a nationally known New Age guru, urged them to press on.

“There were people throwing up everywhere,” said Dr. Beverley Bunn, 43, an orthodontist from Texas, who said she struggled to remain conscious in the sweat lodge, a makeshift structure covered with blankets and plastic and heated with fiery rocks.

Dr. Bunn said Mr. Ray told the more than 50 people jammed into the small structure — people who had just completed a 36-hour “vision quest” in which they fasted alone in the desert — that vomiting “was good for you, that you are purging what your body doesn’t want, what it doesn’t need.” But by the end of the ordeal on Oct. 8, emergency crews had taken 21 people to hospitals. Three have since died.

Mr. Ray, who calls himself a teacher of “practical mysticism” and has gained widespread exposure through writings and an appearance on “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” has come under intense scrutiny in the New Age movement that is a cottage industry here. The Yavapai County sheriff, Steve Waugh, has opened a homicide investigation, but Mr. Ray has not been charged.

Dr. Bunn, who had signed up for the $9,695 “spiritual warrior” experience, offered the first eyewitness account of the sweat lodge. Details were confirmed by relatives and lawyers for other participants. Dr. Bunn, who has not retained a lawyer and has not decided whether to sue, recounted that Mr. Ray told the group that he had extensive experience in sweat lodges — he holds the “spiritual warrior” event annually — and that his sweats were very intense.

Mr. Ray sat by the tent-flap door, Dr. Bunn said, which remained sealed except for pauses when fresh air briefly circulated as additional rocks heated in an outdoor fire were brought in.

But the heat grew overwhelming. About 90 minutes into the ceremony, Dr. Bunn said, someone yelled in the darkness that a woman had passed out just after Mr. Ray closed the tent door between rounds. Dr. Bunn said Mr. Ray replied, “We will deal with that after the next round.”

By the end of the ceremony, two people, James Shore, 40, who Dr. Bunn said had dragged an ill woman out of the lodge and then returned, and Kirby Brown, 38, were near death; they died that evening. A third participant, Liz Neuman, 49, fell into a coma and died on Oct. 17. Autopsies have been completed on Mr. Shore and Ms. Brown, but the results have not been released.

Mr. Ray, who is based in Carlsbad, Calif., did not respond to requests for comment. At a public seminar in Denver on Tuesday, he was interrupted by two men who shouted, “Tell them the truth!” and: “You control people! You stood in front of the door and refused to let people leave.”

The men were escorted from the meeting, and people burst into applause for Mr. Ray. “I, too, want answers and am cooperating with authorities,” he said. He asked for a moment of silent prayer for those who had died.

Mr. Ray’s company, James Ray International, made $9.4 million in 2008 from events including weekend seminars with titles like “World Wealth Summit,” videos and books, including the 2008 best-seller “Harmonic Wealth: The Secret of Attracting the Life You Want.” He gained wide attention in New Age circles with his 2006 appearance in “The Secret,” a film about reaching personal and financial goals.

The sweat lodge deaths have focused scrutiny on the New Age community in Sedona, which over three decades has become a magnet for spiritual seekers thanks to spectacular scenery and links to Native American rituals. The Angel Valley retreat center, which hosted the five-day Spiritual Warrior event, offers a menu of services like soul retrieval, vortex healing and dolphin energy healing.

A psychic in Waynesville, N.C., Page Bryant, who was among the first to claim in the 1980s that Sedona had several “vortexes” of high energy — the initial lure for the legions of seekers — said that she became fed up and left nearly two decades ago “because of the craziness I saw going on in the New Age community.”

The deaths have not shaken all of Mr. Ray’s supporters. “He sets up the stage for people to change their lives — he gives you the tools,” said Meredith Ann Murray, a real estate agent in Bellingham, Wash. She attended a 2007 Spiritual Warrior retreat, where she spent three hours in a sweat lodge. Mr. Ray let people come and go as they pleased, she said. Ms. Murray said she had had a “huge breakthrough” in the sweat lodge that helped her overcome claustrophobia.

She also described a game — enacted again at the retreat this month — in which Mr. Ray wears white robes and plays God, ordering some participants to commit mock suicide.

For the “vision quest,” the exercise that required spending 36 hours in the desert without food or water, participants had sleeping bags, but Mr. Ray also offered to sell Peruvian ponchos for $250, Dr. Bunn said.

After the vision quest and a light breakfast, Mr. Ray announced one more challenge to help break mental and spiritual blocks: a sweat lodge. “He told us that it was going to be an intense situation and it was to resemble a rebirthing,” Dr. Bunn said.

Dr. Bunn’s description of the sweat lodge dovetailed with accounts gathered by Thomas J. McFeeley, a cousin of one of the dead, Ms. Brown, a painter from Westtown, N.Y. Mr. McFeeley said that he and his relatives had spoken to about 10 people who were in the lodge, lightly clothed, and that by all accounts, Mr. Ray had discouraged them from leaving except during brief breaks.

“James Ray stood by the door of the tent and he controlled when those rounds began and ended,” Mr. McFeeley said. “He called for more and hotter rocks that were brought into the tent between the rounds. He instructed people inside that you could not leave during the rounds. If you had to leave, you had to wait until the end of the round.”

Ted Schmidt, a lawyer for Sidney Spencer, 49, who was airlifted to Flagstaff Medical Center after she passed out in the sweat lodge, said Ms. Spencer had intended to leave but fainted before she could reach the door.

“Other people wanted to leave and some did leave,” Mr. Schmidt said. Mr. Ray “was very intimidating” and discouraged people from leaving, he added. “His catchphrase was, ‘Play full on, you have to go through this barrier,’ ” Mr. Schmidt said.

He added that his client had suffered liver and kidney damage and “scorched lungs.” He said he planned to file a lawsuit.

On Wednesday, a publicist representing Mr. Ray, Howard Bragman, said his client would not comment on the accounts of participants. “There were a lot of people at the retreat who had amazing and empowering experiences,” Mr. Bragman said. “Before we rush to judgment, let’s do a little more research and not try this case in the media.”

At least seven other people have died in ceremonial sweat lodges since 1993 in the United States, England and Australia, according to news accounts compiled by Alton Carroll, an adjunct professor of history at San Antonio College who also moderates the Web site Newagefraud.org.

Dr. Bunn and others said that by the end of the final round in the sweat lodge, at least three people were unconscious. Mr. Ray’s employees, called the Dream Team, threw water on people as they emerged from the structure, which was about 24 feet wide and 4 1/2 feet tall.

The events have left Dr. Bunn distraught and angry. Dr. Bunn said that as she was crawling out of the tent, weak from exhaustion, she found Ms. Brown, her roommate at Angel Valley, not moving. “I think Kirby was barely gasping her last breaths, and that’s what I was hearing as I got out of the tent.”

On a conference call Mr. Ray held last week for sweat lodge participants, Dr. Bunn was shocked to hear one recount the comments of a self-described “channeler” who visited Angel Valley after the retreat. Claiming to have communicated with the dead, the channeler said they had left their bodies in the sweat lodge and chosen not to come back because “they were having so much fun.”

Dr. Bunn had a less charitable view: “They couldn’t re-enter their bodies because they were dead.”

Mindy Sink contributed reporting from Denver.

Oathers, and Freepers and Truthers, Oh My!

And they call us the "loony left." Who wouldn't go bat-shit crazy trying to keep up with all the ways the racist right has split now that a Black man is president.

Truthers, Oathers, Freepers, Tea Baggers, Birchers, and Birthers. Did I forget anyone?

How bout we just call them all AMERIKANERS and be done with it?

Essential reading via AK48.

Native American Chief Addresses Deaths In Sweat Lodge

Chief Arvol Looking Horse Speaks Out

By All Nations Indigenous Native American Indian Cultural Center

Native Elder Addresses Deaths In Sweat Lodge

A white man, James Arthur Ray, who owns a company called Spiritual Warrior charges 60 people almost $10,000 each, or more than a half a million dollars, then directs them not to eat or drink for three days before allowing them to cook in a sweat lodge. Each person is then allowed only a space equivalent to two foot by 3 foot space to sit until they “see the light” or die! His Twitter site even says “something must die before something new can be born”

How many things are wrong here? Well first this traditional Native American event is truly a spiritual event, not a “For Profit Event”. Second, the true event is held by a person of native indian descent who have knowledge and understandings of the nature of the spiritual journey. It appears that once again greed interfered with common sense. Why would anyone pay these outrages fees to be conducted by someone who doesn’t even know or understand the spiritual meaning or significance?

One must ask what James Arthur Ray, a self proclaimed wealth builder, of non Native American descent, from southern California has to do with Native American spiritual growth? Ray's company, James Ray International, is based in Carlsbad, California and brags of raising profits of over 500% last year. He holds two hour wealth building seminars around the country for up to 2000 people for $2000 per person, that’s 2 million an hour, not bad!

What do Native Americans have to say about this? We had to ask. So we’ve contacted the spokesperson for the Native American Indian Cultural Center. In general they are appalled and insulted that anyone would take their age old spiritual tradition and turn it into a Greed Mongers’ Money Grabbing Machine and on top of that abuse it in such an insane way that people would put their life on the line.

A spokesperson of the nonprofit cultural center in the heart of the Black Hills of South Dakota called All Nations Indigenous Native American Indian Cultural Center said this is one of the reason we are trying to help by educating everyone about the history of Native Americans. We wish to accurately inform the general public as to our traditions. Sweat lodges are not games to be played with by people that do not have the understanding of their use in spiritual journeys, quests or healing.

Our hearts go out to the families of the people that have been affective in a negative way over this mater.

Arvol Looking Horse, a 19th Generation, Keeper of our Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe, says, “I am concerned for the 2 deaths and illnesses of the many people that participated in a sweat lodge in Sedona, Arizona that brought our sacred rite under fire in the news. I would like to clarify that this lodge and many others, are not our ceremonial way of life, because of the way they are being conducted. My prayers go out for their families and loved ones for their loss.

Our ceremonies are about life and healing, from the time this ancient ceremonial rite was given to our people, never has death been a part of our inikag¹a (life within) when conducted properly. Today the rite is interpreted as a sweat lodge, it is much more than that. So the term does not fit our real meaning of purification.

Inikaga is the oldest ceremony brought to us by Wakan Tanka (Great Spirit). 19 generations ago, the Lakota/Dakota/Nakota Oyate (people), were given seven sacred rites of healing by a Spirit Woman ­ Pte San Win (White Buffalo Calf Woman). She brought these rites along with our sacred C¹anupa (pipe) to our People, when our ancestors were suffering from a difficult time. It was also brought for the future to help us for much more difficult times to come. They were brought to help us stay connected to who we are as a traditional cultural People. The values of conduct are very strict in any of these ceremonies, because we work with spirit. The way the Creator, Wakan Tanka told us; that if we stay humble and sincere, we will keep that connection with the inyan oyate (the stone people), who we call the Grandfathers, to be able to heal ourselves and loved ones. We have a ³gift² of prayer and healing and have to stay humble with our Unc¹i Maka (Grandmother Earth) and with one another. The inikag¹a is used in all of the seven sacred rites to prepare and finish the ceremonies, along with the sacred eagle feather. The feather represents the sacred knowledge of our ancestors.

Our First Nations People have to earn the right to pour the mini wic¹oni (water of life) upon the inyan oyate (the stone people) in creating Inikag¹a - by going on the vision quest for four years and four years Sundance. Then you are put through a ceremony to be painted - to recognize that you have now earned that right to take care of someone¹s life through purification. They should also be able to understand our sacred language, to be able to understand the messages from the Grandfathers, because they are ancient, they are our spirit ancestors. They walk and teach the values of our culture; in being humble, wise, caring and compassionate.

What has happened in the news with the make shift sauna called the sweat lodge is not our ceremonial way of life!

When you do ceremony - you can not have money on your mind. We deal with the pure sincere energy to create healing that comes from everyone in that circle of ceremony. The heart and mind must be connected. When you involve money, it changes the energy of healing. The person wants to get what they paid for; the Spirit Grandfathers will not be there, our way of life is now being exploited! You do more damage than good. No² mention² of monetary energy should exist in healing, not even with a can of love donations. When that energy exists, they will not even come. Only after the ceremony, between the person that is being healed and the Intercessor who has helped connect with the Great Spirit, the energy of money can be given out of appreciation. That exchange of energy is from the heart; it is private and does not involve the Grandfathers! Whatever gift of appreciation the person who received the help, can now give the Intercessor whatever they feel their healing is worth.

In our Prophesy of the White Buffalo Calf Woman, she told us that she would return and stand upon the earth when we are having a hard time. In 1994 this began to happen with the birth of the white buffalo, not only their nation, but many animal nations began to show their sacred color, which is white. She predicted that at this time there would be many changes upon Grandmother Earth. There would be things that we never experienced or heard of before; climate changes, earth changes, diseases, disrespect for life and one another would be shocking and there would be also many false prophets!

My Grandmother that passed the bundle to me said I would be the last Keeper if the Oyate (people) do not straighten up. The assaults upon Grandmother Earth are horrendous, the assaults toward one another was not in our culture, the assaults against our People (Oyate) have been termed as genocide, and now we are experiencing spiritual genocide!

Because of the problems that began to arise with our rebirth of being able to do our ceremonies in the open since the Freedom of Religion Act of 1978, our Elders began talking to me about the abuses they seen in our ceremonial way of life, which was once very strict. After many years of witnessing their warnings, we held a meeting to address this very issue of lack of protocol in our ceremonies. After reaching an agreement of addressing the misconduct of our ceremonies and reminding of the proper protocols, a statement was made in March 2003. Every effort was made to insure our way of life of who we are as traditional cultural People was made, because these ways are for our future and all life upon the Grandmother Earth (Mitakuye Oyasin ­ All my relations), so that they may have good health.

Because these atrocities are being mocked and practiced all over the world, there was even a film we made called “Spirits for Sale”. The non-native people have a right to seek help from our ³First NationIntercessors² for good health and well-being, it is up to that Intercessor. That is a privilege for all People that we gift for being able to have good health and understand that their protocol is to have respect and appreciate what we have to share. The First Nations Intercessor has to earn that right to our ceremonial way of life in the ways I have explained.

At this time, I would like to ask All Nations upon Grandmother Earth to please respect our sacred ceremonial way of life and stop the exploitation of our Tunka Oyate (Spiritual Grandfathers).

In a Sacred Hoop of Life, there is no ending and no beginning!”

Namah¹u yo (hear my words),

Arvol Looking Horse,

19th Generation Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe Bundle.

Another Settler Dead in Sweat Lodge Desecration

Whitey will pay for stealing sacred ceremony.

As AK48 wrote in regards to the second article linked below "Building permit was required for the lodge? Too funny."

Yeah, that shoulda been a sign right there that this so-called sweat lodge ceremony was as phony as Columbus' navigational skills. Well, that and the fact that the master of twisted ceremonies was a multimillionaire with more money than sense. Just like his clients.


3rd person dies in Ariz. sweat lodge; suit planned

By FELICIA FONSECA, Associated Press Writer Felicia Fonseca, Associated Press Writer

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. – The attorney for the family of a Minnesota woman who died more than a week after being overcome in an Arizona sweat lodge ceremony said Sunday that he plans to sue over her death.

Liz Neuman, 49, of Prior Lake suffered multiple organ damage and was in a coma before she died Saturday at a Flagstaff hospital. She was among dozens crowded into the sweat lodge on Oct. 8 at a resort just outside Sedona, a town 115 miles north of Phoenix that draws many in the New Age spiritual movement.

Louis Diesel, an attorney for Neuman's family, said it's clear that appropriate measures were not taken to prevent her death.

"She left this world way too soon," he said.

Neuman, a divorced mother of three who worked as a computer data programmer, was "extremely athletic" and did not suffer from any medical problems, Diesel said.

Self-help expert and author James Arthur Ray had rented the Angel Valley Retreat Center for his five-day "Spiritual Warrior" event that culminated in a sweat lodge ceremony.

Between 55 and 65 people were in the makeshift sweat lodge over a two-hour period. An emergency call reported two people without a pulse and not breathing.

Twenty-one people were taken to area hospitals with illnesses ranging from dehydration to kidney failure. Kirby Brown, 38, of Westtown, N.Y., and James Shore, 40, of Milwaukee, died at a hospital. No one else remains hospitalized.

Authorities are treating the deaths as homicides but have yet to determine the cause. Autopsy results for Brown and Shore were pending.

Ray wrote on his Facebook page on Sunday that he was deeply saddened by the news of death of Neuman, whom he had known for more than seven years.

"Liz was an amazing woman who touched so many lives" he wrote. "She'll be cherished and remembered by all. Liz, you're in our hearts forever. My continued love, prayers and support go out to her family in this time of grief and loss."

Neuman had attended Ray's events in the past and served as the leader of a Minneapolis-area "Journey Expansion Team," according to Ray's Web site. The teams, developed by Ray's friends and followers around the country, meet to exchange ideas on his principles.

Family seeks details in Sedona sweat lodge deaths

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

SEDONA (AP) -- A spokesman for the family of one of two people who died after being overcome in an Arizona sweat lodge demanded more accountability Tuesday from the man in charge of the spiritual retreat that led to the deaths.

Self-help expert and author James Arthur Ray led a group of more than 50 people last week through a five-day program intended to push people beyond their limits. The course included a Thursday sweat lodge ceremony, which ended tragically in the deaths of Kirby Brown, 38, of Westtown, N.Y., and 40-year-old James Shore of Milwaukee. Nineteen other people were hurt, and one remains in critical condition.

Tom McFeeley, Brown's cousin and family spokesman, called on Ray to assure that the participants "were not mistreated and not put in a reckless situation.

"He was someone people believed in, people paid good money to get his advice," McFeeley said. "It's a person we all wanted to believe had our best interest in mind. Quite simply, that didn't happen."

McFeeley also said he is concerned that Ray exhibited a "godlike complex" during the event that might have kept people from opting out of activities Ray acknowledged could cause "physical, emotional, financial or other injuries."

"We need to look at this way beyond the sweat lodge," McFeeley said. "If we could understand minute by minute what happened this week, I think we'll get a much greater view on what kind of event this was and the level of danger that existed."

Fire department reports released Tuesday show the incident wasn't the first involving a sweat lodge ceremony at the resort. Verde Valley Fire Chief Jerry Doerksen said his department responded to a 911 call in October 2005 about a person who was unconscious after being in a sweat lodge.

Angel Valley resort owner Amayra Hamilton confirmed that Ray was leading the sweat ceremony during the 2005 event. Ray's spokesman declined to comment.

No other details about the 2005 incident were immediately available.

Meanwhile, the Yavapai County Sheriff's Office continued to investigate last week's ceremony to determine if criminal negligence played a role in the deaths or illnesses. Authorities said Ray has refused to speak with authorities. No charges have been filed.

Ray's spokesman, Howard Bragman, has said Ray would speak when it's appropriate. He declined Tuesday to address the Brown family's concerns.

"The facts are going to come out," he said. "We're not going to conduct our investigation in the media. We're going to let the investigative bodies do their jobs."

Authorities say 55 to 65 people attending the program were crowded into the 415-square-foot crudely built sweat lodge during a two-hour period Thursday night. Participants paid between $9,000 and $10,000 for the retreat. They were highly encouraged, but not forced, to remain inside for the entire two hours, authorities said.

The participants had fasted for 36 hours as part of a personal and spiritual quest in the wilderness, then ate a breakfast buffet before entering the sweat lodge around 3 p.m. A 911 call two hours later said two people, who authorities said were Shore and Brown, had no pulse and weren't breathing.

Autopsies on Brown and Shore were conducted, but the results are being withheld pending additional tests. Carbon monoxide poisoning was ruled out as a cause of the deaths and illnesses.

A statement released by the family of Liz Neuman, who remains in critical condition at the Flagstaff Medical Center, said she is in a coma and doctors are working to stabilize damage to multiple organs.

"Liz is fighting hard and her family asks for everyone to keep her in their thoughts and prayers," the statement said.

Two others remained hospitalized. Fire officials say the victims exhibited symptoms ranging from dehydration to kidney failure after sitting in the sweat lodge.

Officials say the sweat lodge, built specifically for the five-day retreat, lacked the necessary building permit.

Resort owners Amayra Hamilton and her husband, Michael, asked Tuesday for prayers in hopes that something positive will come out of what they say was a tragic and unexpected event. The Hamiltons said that a prayer ceremony has been conducted at the sweat lodge site, and a heart-shaped memorial has been laid with stones for Brown and Shore.

Ray has expressed his condolences through social networking sites and said he is praying for the victims and their families.

McFeeley said the Hamiltons have been in contact with the Brown family, but did not receive a call from Ray until Tuesday.

GI Resistance: Lance Hering Recounts Military Escape

Boulder marine who went AWOL recounts journey

By Kevin Vaughan
The Denver Post
Posted: 10/11/2009 01:00:00 AM MDT
Updated: 10/11/2009 01:49:08 AM MDT


After more than three years of mystery and uncertainty, former Marine Lance Hering will have the chance to write a new future without a felony conviction hanging over his head. (Hyoung Chang | The Denver Post)

Lance Hering holds on to the awful images seared into his memory on the battlefields of Iraq — unwilling even after three years to discuss what he described as "atrocities" in anything but the vaguest of terms.

He holds back the details of the "acute mental disorder" that led Marine commanders to evacuate him to a military hospital, and specifics about the 28 months spent in hiding after he vanished in 2006.

Instead, he describes his feelings, and the sapping battle waged in his head as he was alternately repulsed by the actions of some of his comrades and completely understanding of why they occurred.

"This stuff happens, and it doesn't make any sense in any kind of a normal way," he told The Denver Post in
Lance Hering, center, is in his house in Boulder with his parents Elynne, left, and Lloyd on Thursday. (Hyoung Chang | The Denver Post)
his first comments about his three-year odyssey from confused, missing Marine to young man eager to figure out a new future.

"It's a really violent environment, and people go nuts, and people's friends die, and I sort of understand that, and I can empathize with it in a way," he said.

And yet, he said he could not stand the idea that one day he might commit the unthinkable.

In two interviews, he described his gradual migration, from a Marine expecting to experience clarity in combat to a warrior disillusioned with war.

And for the first time, he shed light on his state of mind on the August day in 2006 when he concocted an elaborate ruse with the help of a friend, boarded a Greyhound bus in Denver, and disappeared without much of a plan beyond getting away.

"If you ask me why, I think it was a combination of feeling so disconnected, of not being able to feel any happiness or joy, of feeling that something was fundamentally wrong, of not wanting to go back and be a part of the atrocities that occur in war," he said. "There's no space for not liking it over there."

Carrying hidden wounds

Some war wounds are obvious. Shattered legs. Bullet holes. Blood.

But others lurk in the mind, hidden.

In World War I, men who experienced mental problems were described as having "shell shock" and found themselves scoffed at as crazy, unstable or just plain chicken. By World War II, it was called "battle fatigue," and there was little help for it.

Today, the mental-health experts have a name for it: post-traumatic stress disorder.

Lance was not the first in his family to experience battle, and he was not the first to be singed emotionally by its flames. His father, Lloyd Hering, saw 15 months of combat in Vietnam, following in the footsteps of his own father.

"My father and my uncles were in World War II, and some of them came through it fine, and others carried damage with them the rest of their lives — and my uncle Walter was killed — and no one talked about it," Lloyd said.

He would not fully understand that until he began to comprehend the price he paid after spending 15 months as an Army infantryman in Vietnam. When his tour ended in January 1970, he stepped off a plane in Oakland, Calif., after dark and boarded a bus for San Francisco. Nearly 40 years later, he can picture the neon signs snapping by outside the bus window along the streets.

"Everything seemed so commercial and so shallow, and I kept asking myself, over and over, whether this was what all my friends died for," he said.

For a time he wanted to stay away from those he loved. He bounced through a few jobs. Eventually, he and his wife, Elynne, finished college and found work as schoolteachers.

But beneath the surface, his Vietnam experience smoldered. He carried what he described as a "terrific sadness" that manifested itself in explosive anger. His wife knew deep down that wasn't him — he hadn't been that way before he went off to war.

"There's no way I would have waited for that," she said.

His anger's effect on his family eventually grew to the point he could no longer ignore it.

"There was love, but there was also too much fear," he said.

Eventually, Elynne persuaded him to get help, and he underwent counseling. It made a dramatic difference — and continues to help him.

"I feel lucky that I had enough love from my family that I could start doing the work I needed to do — several decades after I should have been doing it," Lloyd said.

Read the rest...

Stupid White People Die Co-Opting "Sweat Lodge"

Hat tip AK48.

Steal a sacred ceremony and yer messin' with forces you don't understand. The consequences? Two dead settlers and 19 sent to the hospital. Justice! just in time for Columbus Day.

2 Die, 19 Overcome At Arizona 'Sweat Lodge'

by The Associated Press
text sizeAAA
October 9, 2009

Two people died and an estimated 19 others were taken to hospitals after being overcome while sitting in a sauna-like sweat lodge during a spiritual retreat in Sedona, Ariz., authorities said Friday.

Sixty-four people were in a crudely constructed sweat dome at the 70-acre Angel Valley resort Thursday evening, Yavapai County sheriff's spokesman Dwight D'Evelyn said. The resort nestled in the forest about 20 minutes from Sedona, a resort town about 115 miles north of Phoenix that is well-known as a center for the New Age spiritual movement.

Many people began feeling ill after about two hours in the sweat box, emerging lightheaded and weak, said Verde Valley Fire District Chief Jerry Doerksen. Authorities haven't determined the cause of the deaths and illnesses; tests for carbon monoxide and other contaminants were negative. D'Evelyn said authorities were checking into whether any of the attendees had pre-existing medical conditions and the possibility that some of the people might have been fasting.

About 21 people were taken by ambulance or helicopter to area hospitals, where two were pronounced dead, D'Evelyn said. The dead were identified only as a man and woman, both middle-aged.

Three people taken to Flagstaff Medical Center were listed in critical condition Friday, and another was in fair condition. Three others who were admitted to a hospital in nearby Verde Valley recovered quickly; two of them were released overnight and one was reported in good condition Friday.

Sheriff's homicide investigators were working to determine what happened and whether any criminal actions might have been a factor in the incident, D'Evelyn said. Investigators were at the resort Friday interviewing the retreat director, staff and guests, including some who told detectives they paid up to $9,000 for the multiday program.

A woman who answered the phone at the resort Friday said its founders, Michael and Amayra Hamilton, would have no comment. A call to the Hamiltons' home went unanswered.

Authorities said self-help expert and author James Arthur Ray rented the facility and was hosting the group inside the dome, a low-lying structure covered with tarps and blankets. In a testimonial on the retreat's Web site, Ray said it "offers an ideal environment for my teachings and our participants."

Ray's company, James Ray International, is based in Carlsbad, Calif.

A spokesman for Ray, Howard Bragman, confirmed that Ray was holding an event at the retreat, as he has done in the past.

"We express our deepest condolences to those who lost friends and family, but we pray for a speedy recovery for those who took ill," said Bagman. "At this point there are more questions than answers, so it would not be appropriate to comment further."

On Ray's Web site, a guide for participants of the five-day "Spiritual Warrior Event" includes a lengthy release of liability that acknowledges participants may suffer "physical, emotional, financial or other injuries."

Doerksen, whose fire district responded to emergency calls, said he sent a hazardous materials team into the sweat lodge to test for carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and other contaminants. The test "didn't show anything out of the ordinary," he said.

The Angel Valley Spiritual Retreat Center, built on former ranch property in the high-desert and red-rock country of northern Arizona, bills itself as a natural environment for self discovery and healing through a holistic approach aimed at balancing the mind, emotions, body and spirit.

The property includes American Indian structures such as teepees, guest houses and outdoor labyrinths made of stones.

Pigs Use Sonic Terrorism Device To Disperse Citizens

The war comes home. This LRAD device, which can burst eardrums when turned on to its full strength, was first tested on the citizens of Iraq. You know, the people to who the Amerikan Empire brought so much freedom and democracy.

The makers of the device, American Technology, need to get sued into bankruptcy by anyone suffering hearing loss from this obscenity. And the rest of us need to get busy figuring out how to disable it.

Police use acoustic warfare to disperse crowds

Oct 1, 7:10 AM (ET)
By JOE MANDAK

(AP) In this Thursday Sept. 24, 2009, file photo an unidentified person holds his ears to avoid...



PITTSBURGH (AP) - Police ordered protesters to disperse at the Group of 20 summit last week with a device that can beam earsplitting alarm tones and verbal instructions that the manufacturer likens to a "spotlight of sound," but that legal groups called potentially dangerous.

The device, called a Long Range Acoustic Device, concentrates voice commands and a car alarm-like sound in a 30- or 60-degree cone that can be heard nearly two miles away. It is about two feet square and mounted on a swivel such that one person can point it where it's needed. The volume measures 140-150 decibels three feet away - louder than a jet engine - but dissipates with distance.

Robert Putnam, spokesman for the manufacturer, San Diego-based American Technology Corp., said it's "like a big spotlight of sound that you can shine on people."

"It's not a sonic cannon. It's not the death ray or anything like that," Putnam said. "It's about long-range communications being heard intelligibly."

(AP) In this Thursday Sept. 24, 2009, photo, a Long-Range Acoustic Device is seen mounted atop a law...



During the Pittsburgh protests, police used the device to order demonstrators to disperse and to play a high-pitched "deterrent tone" designed to drive people away. It was the first time the device was used in a riot-control situation on U.S. soil, according to American Technology and police.

Those who heard it said authorities' voice commands were clear and sounded as if they were coming from everywhere all at once. They described the "deterrent tone" as unbearable.

Joel Kupferman, who was at Thursday's march as a legal observer for the National Lawyer's Guild, said he was overwhelmed by the tone and called it "overkill."

"When people were moving and they still continued to use it, it was an excessive use of weaponry," Kupferman said.

Witold "Vic" Walczak, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union in Pennsylvania, said the device is a military weapon capable of producing permanent hearing loss, something he called "an invitation to an excessive-force lawsuit."

The operator of the device is usually behind it and not in the path of the focused beam of sound.

Catherine Palmer, director of audiology at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, said 140 decibels can cause immediate hearing loss. But there's no way to know if anyone was exposed to sounds that loud without knowing how far away they were, she said.

Putnam and public safety officials said the complaints prove the device worked as designed.

"You have to put your hands over your ears and cover them, and it's difficult to throw stuff," said Ray DeMichiei, deputy director of the city's emergency management agency.

Police said they used the device last Thursday to issue prerecorded warnings to disperse when hundreds of demonstrators, including self-described anarchists, without a protest permit held a march that threatened to turn violent.

Aware of concerns about the volume, police were careful to use it about 12 feet off the ground mounted on a tactical vehicle, so no individual would be directly in its path or too close to it, Assistant Chief William Bochter said.

"The only way anybody gets hurt is if the deterrent is on full blast and they stand directly in front of it," Putnam said.

A regional counterterror task force bought four of the devices from American Technology using $101,000 in federal Homeland Security funds, DeMichiei said. Because the amplified message was prerecorded, police could be sure the protesters heard exactly the instructions police desired and have confidence those in the back of the crowd could hear, Bochter said.

Such devices also have military and commercial applications. Putnam said the primary purpose is to transmit specific orders loudly and clearly.

They have been used against protesters overseas, and police in New York threatened to use one during demonstrations near the Republican National Convention in 2004.

He said the city of San Diego uses them to instruct people to leave large sections of beach after festivals. It has also been used in SWAT operations.

In military applications, it allows ships to hail approaching vessels and determine their intent, the company says. Cargo ships use them to tell pirates that they had been spotted. When the pirates know they have lost the element of surprise, they will not attack, Putnam said.

Putnam said those complaining about the device have probably exposed themselves to sounds nearly as loud at rock concerts, and for longer periods of time. Walczak, the ACLU attorney, isn't buying the analogy.

"People don't flee the front row of a rock concert. Why would they be fleeing here?" Walczak asked. "Because it's loud, it's painfully loud."

Anti-Indian Hate Speech at BarackObama.Com: "The Cavalry Is Here"

Alert via AK48. The source for the hate speech reprinted below the photos is BarackObama.com.

The United States Cavalry, also known as the AmeriKKKan einsatzgruppen. In these pictures from 2006, a group of cavalry men symbolically ride at the head of the genocide-celebrating Columbus Day parade in honor of their Indian-murdering, continent-stealing forbears.

Here is the link to report objectionable content for the racist ad by Obama's group Organizing For America.




File photo: Horses asses at 2006 Columbus Day Parade, Denver Colorado.

"The cavalry, in white coats and scrubs"

By Christopher Hass - Sep 30th, 2009 at 9:30 am EDT

From Organizing for America Director Mitch Stewart:

The cavalry is here -- and they're in white coats and scrubs: More than a half a million doctors and millions of nurses are joining forces to help pass real health reform.

Americans listen to their nurses and doctors when it comes to health reform -- and for good reason. If we can help them amplify their voices, it'll be a huge boost to our campaign for change.

So we're working on a new television ad featuring their voices explaining why doctors and nurses so strongly support President Obama's plan -- and asking Congress to pass it. We'll run the ad in key states and districts all around the country to show folks where health professionals stand, cut through the spin, and build even greater support for reform.

But to produce and air the new ad before the Senate starts debating a final bill, we'll need to raise $300,000 by Thursday. Can you donate $25 right away?

Please donate

The American Medical Association, Doctors for America, and a dozen other physicians groups representing 500,000 doctors are endorsing reform. So are the American Nurses Association and other organizations representing millions of nurses.

They're speaking out because they see the shortcomings of our health care system firsthand, every day: patients denied the care they prescribe, families losing access to their doctors, and a system that forces them to spend more time with paperwork and less time with patients.

These voices need to be heard -- with so much deception out there clouding the debate, it's critical that medical professionals are able to focus the country on the simple fact that health reform is good medicine.

But the final congressional committee could vote on their reform bill as early as Wednesday -- and debate on final legislation could start by the end of the week. So if we're going to help make these doctors and nurses' voices heard, we'll need to do it right now. Can you chip in $25 or more to help get our ad on the air?

https://donate.barackobama.com/HealthAd

Thanks,

Mitch

Mitch Stewart
Director
Organizing for America

Are You Bloody Kidding!? Canadian PM at G20 Declares "We Have No History of Colonialism."

AK48 catches this horror from the Canadian PM. While reading this article, I spewed my coffee at this bullshit line:

"We also have no history of colonialism. So we have all of the things that many people admire about the great powers but none of the things that threaten or bother them," he said.

Don't it just make you want to choke?

Every G20 nation wants to be Canada, Stephen Harper insists

By David Ljunggren, Reuters
September 26, 2009

PITTSBURGH — Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, appearing to forget that his countrymen are generally known for their modesty, declared on Friday that his nation was the envy of the world.

Harper, usually a fairly wooden performer, seized on a routine question at a news conference and used it to deliver an impassioned defense of his 33-million strong nation and how well it has coped with the global economic crisis.

"Canada remains in a very special place in the world. . . . We are the one major developed country that no one thinks has any responsibility for this crisis," he said to laughter.

"In fact, on the contrary, they look at our policies as a solution to the crisis. We're the one country in the room everybody would like to be," he said at the end of the summit of the Group of 20 advanced and developing nations in Pittsburgh.

Canada, which was running a budget surplus before the recession and avoided major banking problems, has been less affected by the crisis than many of its partners.

Harper said the other G20 nations "would like to be an advanced developed economy with all the benefits that conveys to its citizens and at the same time not have been the source, or have any of the domestic problems, that created this crisis".

By this stage of his comments, the initial premise of the question had long since vanished and Harper — who leads the right-leaning Conservative Party — was focusing on several other factors that in his mind make Canada so irresistible.

"We're so self-effacing as Canadians that we sometimes forget the assets we do have that other people see," he said, speaking with a rare passion.

"We are one of the most stable regimes in history. . . . We are unique in that regard," he added, noting Canada had enjoyed more than 150 years of untroubled Parliamentary democracy.

Just in case that was not enough to persuade doubters, Harper threw in some more facts about the geographically second-largest nation in the world.

"We also have no history of colonialism. So we have all of the things that many people admire about the great powers but none of the things that threaten or bother them," he said.

And his final verdict?

"Canada is big enough to make a difference but not big enough to threaten anybody. And that is a huge asset if it's properly used."
© Copyright (c) Reuters

US Military Goons Kidnap G20 Protestor

Anybody remember this sweet little vid and cheers?

Bye, Bye GI
In Iraq Yer Gonna Die!
....

Fascist War is nothing new
It's not just bullshit the soldiers do!
....

Build a bonfire, build a bonfire
Put the soldiers on the top
Put the fascists in the middle
And we'll burn the fuckin' lot!

Tear Gas, Sound Weapons Deployed Against G20 Protestors In Pittsburgh

Canadian Occupation's Germ Warfare Against First Nations

Brenda Norrell, the editor of Censored News, was fired from the CIA-sponsored Indian Country Today for reporting Donald Rumsfeld's profiteering with the Tamiflu vaccine. Now comes the story, via Censored News, of Tamiflu being forced on aboriginal people across Canada. Many have been sickened by the vaccine. The Canadian Occupation sent body bags along with the shots, indicating its willingness to commit germ warfare genocide yet again.

[Link to the 9.22.09 Censored News Update.]

Canada: Tamiflu, body bags and genocide

The Mask Slips, for Those with Eyes to See: Preparing for the Real Pandemic
by Kevin D. Annett, M.A., M.Div.

Listen to Annett on Blog Talk Radio:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/hiddenfromhistory/
2009/09/20/Preparing-for-the-Real-Pandemic-Read-By-Kevin-Annett

Last week, many of the aboriginal people in the remote west coast village of Ahousaht were innoculated with the tamiflu anti-viral medication. Today, over a hundred of them are sick, and the sickness is spreading.

In the same week, body bags were sent to similarly remote native reserves in northern Manitoba that have also received tamiflu.

On the face of things, it appears that flu vaccinations are causing a sickness that is being deliberately aimed at aboriginal people across Canada, and this sickness will be fatal: a fact acknowledged by the Canadian government by their "routine" sending of body bags to these Indian villages.

Before you express your shock and denial at the idea that people are being deliberately targeted and killed, remember that murdering Indians with vaccinations is not a new or abnormal thing in Canada.

Indeed, it's how we Europeans "won the land", and it's one of the ways we keep it.

In 1862, Anglican church missionaries Rev. John Sheepshanks and Robert Brown inoculated interior Salish Indians in B.C. with a live smallpox virus that wiped out entire native communities within a month, just prior to the settlement of this native land by gold prospectors associated with these missionaries and government officials.
In 1909, Dr. Peter Bryce of the Indian Affairs department in Ottawa claimed that Catholic and Protestant churches were deliberately exposing native children to smallpox and tuberculosis in residential schools across Canada, and letting them die untreated. Thousands of children died as a result. (Globe and Mail, April 24, 2007) In 1932, B.C. provincial police attempted to lay charges against Catholic missionaries who had sent smallpox-laden Indian children back among their families along the Fraser river near Mission, BC.

The RCMP intervened and protected the church, even though whole villages were wiped out as a result of the church's actions.

In 1969, native children who escaped from the Nanaimo Indian Hospital on Vancouver Island described being inoculated with shots that caused many of them to die "with bloated up bodies and scabs all over", to quote one survivor. Knowing this history, it's not surprising when Indians on isolated Canadian reserves start sickening and dying en masse from sudden illnesses, after receiving flu shots.

After all, it's still the law in Canada, under the apartheid Indian Act, that no on-reserve Indian can refuse medical treatments or experimentation.

So it's small wonder that these reserves are the places being targeted first to be injected with untested, unsafe and potentially lethal flu vaccines. As an entire race of involuntary test subjects, Indians in Canada are a weather vane for what will befall all of us, and very soon. For the very techniques and weapons of genocide perfected against aboriginal people are now being deployed against "mainstream" Canadians. Under Bill C-6, which is about to pass third reading in Parliament and become the law, no Canadian will be allowed to refuse innoculations for the swine flu, despite the fact that it is relatively benign and mild, and has killed only people who are already immune-compromised.

Indeed, it is astounding that such coercion and dictatorial laws are being employed to deal with what the chief Canadian Health Officer has called a "mild seasonal flu".
Clearly, another agenda is at work; but the time to ascertain and challenge that agenda has all but run out. This coming month, forced innoculations and imprisonment of those who refuse them may be a reality across Canada. And for what reason?

Clearly, not for public health, considering the sickness and death caused by previous swine flu vaccines. I believe that the real pandemic is about to be unleashed through the very vaccines being pushed by governments and pharmaceutical giants like Novartis and Glaxo Smith Kline. The shots will be the cause, not the cure, of the pandemic.

Of course, those in power can disprove this by simply being the first people to take the swine flu shot: an event about as likely as these companies forgoing the multi-billion dollar profits they will reap from the mass vaccinations. It's indeed ironic that, very soon, many "white" Canadians may be suffering the same fate that aboriginal people have for centuries.

Perhaps it's fitting. For if we are indeed being targeted for extermination, or at the least martial law and dictatorship, we finally can have the chance to shed our complicity in the genocide of other people, and get on the right side of humanity - simply by having to fight the system that is causing mass murder.

Rev. Kevin D. Annett
260 Kennedy St.
Nanaimo, BC Canada V9R 2H8250-753-3345
http://www.hiddenfromhistory.org/

Kevin Annett is a community minister, educator and award-winning film maker who lives and works with aboriginal and low income people in Vancouver and Nanaimo, BC.
Read and Hear the truth of Genocide in Canada, past and present, at this website: http://www.hiddenfromhistory.org/

Film Trailer to Kevin's award-winning documentary film UNREPENTANT:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8HB5cbKHDU&feature=related

Censored by Indian Country Today in 2006:

Rumsfeld profiteered from sale of Tamiflu
by Brenda Norrell
http://bsnorrell.tripod.com/id73.html

Baxter sent live bird virus
http://www.infowars.com/baxter-product-contained-live-bird-flu-virus/

Google breaking news: First Nations respond to body bags:
http://news.google.com/news?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&q=Canada%20body%20bags&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wn
Posted by brendanorrell@gmail.com at 9:04 AM

Fairy Tale, Reality, Funny

Fairy tale...



Reality...



Funny...



Even Funnier...



Yeah, that took ovaries! Carrie Fisher skewers the abysmal George Lucas for his degrading sexism, missing only a reference to his racist Jar Jar Binks creation to make this roasting complete.

Racist Canadian Patriarchy Blocks Matrilineal Heritage For Aboriginal Families

AK48 sends in these articles that highlight the case of Sharon McIvor, whose legal battle "challenges the continuing preferential treatment given to males and those whose Indian status is traced from male ancestors, as a violation of section 15, the equality guarantee of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms."

Sharon McIvor, "an Indian woman who married a non-Indian man prior to April 17, 1985, and her son Jacob Grismer" assert that "the Indian Act discriminated against them on the basis of sex, contrary to section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In particular, they alleged that they were unable to transmit status to Jacob Grismer's sons, born after April 17, 1985, even though his cousins would be entitled if their grandfather was an Indian.

"On June 8, 2007, the British Columbia Supreme Court ruled that these distinctions were discriminatory and contrary to the Charter. In particular, the Court ruled that section 6 of the Indian Act is of no force and effect insofar as it authorizes the differential treatment of matrilineal and patrilineal descendants born prior to 1985 in conferring Indian status. The Court issued a very broad remedy that might be interpreted to allow registration of all descendants of women who "married out" as far back as 1869. Canada appealed this judgment."

Clearly, Canada's stance is a double-whammy of both racism and patriarchy, with the Euro-Canadians' intent being to destroy not only Indian identity through assimilation (marrying "out") into whiteness, but also eliminating mothers as family (and therefore Nation) founders.

The three links below give in-depth detail on this war crime that white racist Canada continues to commit against Aboriginal, First Nations women.

Backgrounder - McIvor: an Overview

From 1869 to 1985, an Indian woman who married a non-Indian man would lose her status as an Indian under the Indian Act and her children were not entitled to status. However, an Indian man who married a non-Indian woman would retain his status and his wife and children would gain status. Moreover, if a child's mother and paternal grandmother did not have a right to Indian status other than by virtue of having married Indian men, the child had status only up to the age of 21(commonly referred to as the Double Mother Rule).

On April 17, 1985, Parliament adopted Bill C-31, an act to amend the Indian Act. In particular, this Bill ensured that Indian women who married non-Indian men (known as "marrying out") would no longer lose their status as well as to restore status to those who had lost their status prior to 1985. The Indian Act was also amended to give the children and grandchildren of such marriages identical treatment under the legislation. The Double Mother Rule was abolished and replaced by a gender-neutral rule.

While these legislative amendments eliminated the existing distinctions for future marriages and children of those marriages, they did not do so retroactively. Therefore, distinctions between women and their descendants created prior to 1985 continue to this day. It is for this reason that Sharon McIvor brought her case before the British Columbia Supreme Court and the British Columbia Court of Appeal.

Sharon McIvor (an Indian woman who married a non-Indian man prior to April 17, 1985) and her son Jacob Grismer asserted that the Indian Act discriminated against them on the basis of sex, contrary to section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In particular, they alleged that they were unable to transmit status to Jacob Grismer's sons, born after April 17, 1985, even though his cousins would be entitled if their grandfather was an Indian.

On June 8, 2007, the British Columbia Supreme Court ruled that these distinctions were discriminatory and contrary to the Charter. In particular, the Court ruled that section 6 of the Indian Act is of no force and effect insofar as it authorizes the differential treatment of matrilineal and patrilineal descendants born prior to 1985 in conferring Indian status. The Court issued a very broad remedy that might be interpreted to allow registration of all descendants of women who "married out" as far back as 1869. Canada appealed this judgment.

On April 6, 2009, the British Columbia Court of Appeal agreed with the trial's judge's decision that section 6 of the Indian Act infringes Ms. McIvor and Mr. Grismer's right to equality under section 15 of the Charter and that the infringement is not justified by section 1 of the Charter. The decision, however, was reached on narrower grounds than those found by the trial judge. The Court of Appeal found that the unconstitutionality is not in relation to the descendants of all woman who lost status when "marrying-out" any time since 1869. Instead, the Court of Appeal ruled that the Charter violation was limited to the beneficial treatment of persons in the male line previously subject to the transitional provisions relating to the Double-Mother rule, which was introduced in 1951.

The Court of Appeal suspended the declaration of invalidity for 12 months, giving Canada until April 6, 2010 to amend the Indian Act. The Government of Canada will not appeal the decision.

Here is the link to the case:

http://www.courts.gov.bc.ca/Jdb-txt/SC/07/08/2007BCSC0827.htm

Here is more information and how you can help:

Courts : Help Sharon McIvor win equality for Aboriginal Women

As well as working to get the Court Challenges Program back, it is essential to support Sharon McIvor so that she can hold on to her important victory and win basic equality for Aboriginal women and their children and grandchildren.

Please support Sharon McIvor in her challenge to the continuing sex discrimination in the Indian Act. If her challenge is successful, it can help many First Nations women and their descendants to gain their rightful status.

For more information, please listen to Sharon McIvor’s interview on Vancouver Co-operative Radio at the following link:

http://www.rabble.ca/rpn/episode.shtml?x=62679

To get more involved in the fundraising campaign please contact: Shelagh Day at sheday@interchange.ubc.ca.

Picture Of Dead White Soldier Upsets Imperial Invaders

Lance Cpl. Joshua Bernard is tended to by fellow U.S. Marines in Afghanistan. Photograph: Julie Jacobson/AP

The Associated Press ignores a long-standing, white supremacist taboo and dares to publish Julie Jacobson's photo of a dead white soldier, who got his legs blown off for illegally invading sovereign Afghanistan on behalf of marauding Amerikan corporations that covet its resources.

Don't these Christian Extremist Crusaders ever learn? Whites are not gods or superheroes. Just humans with flesh that can be torn to bloody pieces by the bullets and bombs of citizens resisting the invasion and theft of their country.

Pictures of dying marine bring war home to America

Angry debate in US as agency releases picture of dying marine in Afghanistan

* Gaby Hinsliff, political editor
* The Observer, Sunday 6 September 2009

Lance Cpl. Joshua Bernard is tended to by fellow U.S. Marines in Afghanistan

It is a graphic image of the harsh realities of war: the fatally wounded young marine lying crumpled in the mud, his vulnerable face turned to the camera. And it is one the US defence secretary would rather you did not see.

Lance Corporal Joshua Bernard, pictured being tended by comrades in southern Afghanistan, died of his injuries soon after. Now the release of this record of the 21-year-old's last moments has divided America, prompting furious debate over the sanitisation of war at a critical time for the military offensive.

The US defence secretary, Robert Gates, condemned the decision by the news agency Associated Press to publish. "I cannot imagine the pain and suffering Lance Corporal Bernard's death has caused his family. Why your organisation would purposefully defy the family's wishes, knowing full well that it will lead to yet more anguish, is beyond me.

"Your lack of compassion and common sense in choosing to put this image of their maimed and stricken child on the front page of multiple American newspapers is appalling."

However, AP, whose photographer Julie Jacobson took the shot after being caught in the middle of an ambush while accompanying marines on patrol, said it had acted only after a "period of reflection" and argued that the picture illustrated the sacrifice and the bravery of those fighting in Afghanistan. "We feel it is our journalistic duty to show the reality of the war there, however unpleasant and brutal that sometimes is," said Santiago Lyon, the director of photography for AP.

The row reflects rising tensions over the impact of the death toll on an already wavering American public, with support for the war dwindling and President Barack Obama warned this weekend by leading Democrats that any attempt to send more troops is likely to meet resistance in Congress.

It also recalls the controversy four years ago when the Pentagon finally released pictures of flag-draped coffins returning from Iraq, overturning a ban imposed in 1991 on the US media photographing military caskets in transit.

In that case, the concerns of families were also repeatedly cited as justification for suppressing images of the dead, and they were only published after a freedom of information request by a professor of journalism, who argued that they were a matter of public record. By contrast, the British media has regularly covered the return of coffins.

In extracts from her journal published by the US website huffingtonpost.com, Jacobson described the moment when she watched a marine lose his life "for the second time in my life". "He was hit with the RPG which blew off one of his legs and badly mangled the other... I hadn't seen it happen, just heard the explosion." She described how she heard Bernard calling out that he could not breathe, and his friends telling him he was going to make it.

About 20 American newspapers and some websites used the image, sent out alongside photographs of Bernard's life in uniform and his memorial service, last week, but it was taken on 14 August when Bernard's patrol in the village of Dahaneh was ambushed. He was airlifted to the US base at Camp Leatherneck but died there of his wounds, the 19th American to lose his life in Helmand that month at the height of the fighting.

AP said the images had been shown to his family in advance, but said that reporters had not specifically asked the family's permission to publish, admitting that his parents had not wanted the photographs to be used.

The son of a retired marine, Bernard, from New Portland in rural Maine, was described as a devout Christian, an Iraq war veteran, a keen snowboarder and an avid hiker. His father, John, described him as a "humble, shy, unassuming" man who did not smoke or drink and whose main friends were from his church group. Three weeks before Joshua died, Bernard Snr had written to his congressman expressing frustration at what he said was a change in the rules of engagement to spare civilians, calling the move "disgraceful, immoral and fatal" to American forces in combat.

Asked to sum up his son, John Bernard suggested the words "service and personal honour".

But as America continues to debate the use of his image, Joshua Bernard has now come to symbolise something more: the suffering inflicted on America's sons and daughters in uniform, and the unease of fellow citizens forced to confront the grim truth about their deaths.

Denver Post: Town Crier Connects A Community

In light of the post below that highlights sell-outs and the white supremacist, multinational corporations that court them, this article (hat tip AK48) shows how a Hunkpapa Lakota woman, Theresa Halsey, keeps it real for the Indian community in Denver.

Huzzah! Theresa.

Griego: "Town crier" connects a community

By Tina Griego
Denver Post Columnist
Posted: 09/01/2009 01:00:00 AM MDT

I don't know how long Theresa Halsey has been sending me e-mails, but the last few have included notices of upcoming powwows, news on Indian education in Denver schools, and an announcement for a Wisdom Circle where Native Americans can talk "about the things that matter in our lives."

I read them all, but what I look forward to most are her newsletters: "Congratulations! To Vincent and Redwing Williams-Sheely and family for the birth of their baby girl, Vivian Grace, who is gaining weight and growing! To DU student and former Miss Indian Colorado, Tina Trujillo, for studying at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, this summer. Congratulations! These are wonderful achievements!

"Happy Birthday to the People Born in August! Karen Artichoker, Keelan Campbell, Jeremy "Chaba" Stiffarm ... and anyone else having an August birthday!

"Happy Birthday to People Born in July! To Tim Giago, Roberta Yazzie and anyone else having a July birthday! I need July birthdays!

"Prayers are Needed! Pray for those that are having surgery or recovering from surgery! Especially Joe Upshaw, Richard Silversmith, Susan Yellow Horse Davis, Sharon Bohnsteadt and Vicci Anderson ... They need your prayers and positive thoughts because it's hard being ill."

One newsletter might have 100 names. It's like being transported to a small town with a newspaper that still reports Jim and Helen Smith went to see their grandkids in Phoenix and Eleanor Robinson is recovering nicely after she tripped on her grandson's dump truck and broke her hip, and the Rotary Club's luncheon speaker is the new dentist in town who is running an introductory special on teeth cleaning — just remember to bring your coupon.

It tells people, without going on about it, that they belong to a community and, like it or not, everyone is keeping an eye out for one another because that's what it means to be part of something that existed before you were born and, God willing, will survive long after you've finished your business in this world.

Never mind that we do not live in a small town. The Halsey newsletter is a version of the information superhighway of all pueblos and reservations: the grandma-sister-auntie network. And always it hums. Sooner or later, that information comes to Theresa, 20, 30 e-mails and phone calls a day, along with advice on what she should or should not be passing on or putting in her reports, such as, "you should only stick to the good news."

She is something of an auntie to many. "Or auntie grandma," she says. The newsletter has become a way, in the noise of city life, among all the diversity of tribes here, to tend the relationships of a people. So you're a caretaker, I say.

"Some people call it caretaker," she says. "Some people call it bossy."

Why do you do it? She looks away, appearing to give my question deep thought, then she grins: "Basically, it's because I'm a Virgo."

I met Theresa for the first time Sunday. She's Hunkpapa Lakota.

"I've always thought of you as a town crier," I tell her.

"That's what I am," she says. "We even have a word for it in Lakota that translates to 'messenger.' "

I met her in Boulder, at the KGNU studio where she produces "Indian Voices," a one-hour show that airs Sundays at 3 p.m. She puts together the newsletter for the show, reading from it between songs or other programming. She's been producing "Indian Voices" since 1983, when Richard Two Elk, the former producer, left to become an Army medic. He tells me training Theresa to take over was one of the smartest things he ever did. "Theresa, she knows everybody," he says, "and the show is much more tied to the community now."

The show is a labor of love, has been for the last 26 years. Sometimes she has help. Sometimes she does it on her own.

"You don't get paid?" I ask her.

"Are you kidding?" she asks me.

She produces it a few hours before it airs. "I don't like to go live," she says. "I start to breathe too fast — especially if I have gas."

"You've never been tempted to do a call-in show?" I ask.

"But that's live," she says.

"Yeah," I say.

"No!" she says.

She tells me she's been a nursing student, a youth counselor, a mental- health researcher. For 12 years she was an Indian education specialist for the Boulder Valley School District. She has won awards and mourned the death of her 33-year-old son.

What I learn about Theresa Halsey is that she is a funny, generous woman who has a serious answer for my question about why she does what she does. "Because that's what I was taught. You give back. You don't just take, take, take. You are a member of a community. Everyone should be giving."

Oh, yes, and one more thing:

Congratulations! To Theresa Halsey, who on Thursday will be 56! Happy birthday!

Tina Griego writes Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Reach her at 303-954-2699 or tgriego@denverpost.com.

Corruption Watch: Canadian Energy Corps Court First Nations

With a sharp eye on the sell-outs, AK48 forwards the following articles that shine a necessarily cynical light on those "in the pocket of corporate and government entities."

Allies, if we are to be of any service at all to The Struggle, it is our responsibility to understand the difference between Indigenous people who truly serve the people, and those who are merely self-serving.

The New National Chief, and His Corporate Suitors

Energy firms eager to build bonds with Canada's First Nations.

By Arno Kopecky, 24 Jul 2009, TheTyee.ca


New national chief Shawn A-in-chut Atleo.

This week's General Assembly of First Nations set many precedents, not least the election of 42-year-old Shawn A-in-chut Atleo as the youngest national chief in history. Calgary was at times a surreal setting for the event. In the corporate heartland of our energy industry, 3,000 native visitors simply took over the neighborhood where the voting took place, filling entire buildings like the Hyatt Regency and the Marriott Hotel at the foot of the Calgary Tower. Delegates strolled in and out of the Telus Convention Centre, scene of all the action. They stormed the patios lining Stephen Avenue, window-shopped on Centre Street, and held a magnificent pow-wow in the Olympic Plaza, which had its pond drained to make room for all the dancers. You could almost hear the Indian Act's authors turning in their grave at the sight of all those feathers so far off-rez.

The headdresses are a ceremonial thing, by the way -- at street level it's damn near impossible to tell a chief just by looking, so it pays to give everyone respect. That's all anyone's asking for anyway; it can take the form of money, or an apology, or a legal amendment, but it all comes down to the same thing.

And so words like culture, tradition, environment, and sensitive permeated the speech of TransCanada's president during the opening night's tribute to Phil Fontaine. Four days later, at Atleo's first reception as Fontaine's successor, it was the president of Enbridge who deployed the same vocabulary for the same reason: to keep the oil and gas dollars flowing.

The fact that the vast majority of this aassembly's million dollars in sponsorship came from the energy sector (you only had to look up at the names emblazoned on Calgary's skyscrapers for an idea of who was signing checks) said it all: we're entering an era in which First Nations land and treaty rights can no longer be bought for a song. The equation of those rights with oil and gas money was something each of the five candidates made clear, and Atleo will push it too. A series of Supreme Court decisions in the last decade or so, beginning with Delgamuukw in 1997, has put the law on his side; the corporations know it too, and are scrambling to make friends of potential adversaries.

Schmoozing or respect?

"I'm still not sure they get it, though," said Lee Ahenakew, a Saskatchewan Cree who chairs the board of directors for the National Centre for First Nations Governance. Ahenakew, whose uncle David became the AFN's first chief in 1982 (though he's more famous today for a 2002 videotape on which he spoke in favor of the Nazi Holocaust), was referring to the fact that none of the corporate presidents were seen mingling with the crowd during the week. At most they spoke a few words on stage, then disappeared and left their Aboriginal relations staff to schmooze the assorted chiefs. "To me that shows a clear lack of respect, and it's something they'll likely regret when they find their projects getting bogged down for a few extra years. Those guys have no idea what's coming. Every bridge or road they want to build on treaty land, they now have a duty to consult with the Nation and give it a stake. This applies particularly to resource companies -- if they so much as touch a tree on treaty land, we have to be consulted."

According to Ahenakew, the Environmental Assessment Act provides an especially strong legal tool for First Nations Communities to apply the duty to consult. "Not all of us know how to make it happen, but I do, and I can help others to figure it out."
The Tyee receives Excellence in Journalism Award 2009.

Ahenakew was typical of many of the First Nations I met over the course of the week: young, educated, and equally comfortable with western and Aboriginal traditions. A newly emerging cadre of leaders was on display, networking day and night. They operated both amongst each other and the corporate community -- in some cases, they even represented the corporate community.

Building ties to corporations

"Our problem as First Nations is that we have a huge resource base but almost no capacity," said Lloyd Martel, a former campaign manager for Phil Fontaine who now works in aboriginal relations for Nexen, a Calgary-based oil conglomerate. "Both sides want a partnership, but there are so few trained professionals in most aboriginal communities that it's just not possible yet; it's going to take years to develop." Nexen, he claimed, was setting the stage for this by designing long-term partnership contracts that included a date -- say, 30 years hence -- on which Nexen agreed to walk away from the project and leave it in the hands of the host community.

People like Martel walk a thin line analogous to that of the AFN (which gets all of its funding from the federal government): they are accused of collaboration, in precisely the same spirit as the French resistance accused the Vichy regime during World War II. Terrance Nelson, the most strident of the candidates running against Atleo, articulated it best: "How do you expect the AFN to change government policy," he asked, "when it's being paid to implement government policy?" This shadow of mistrust hung over the entire assembly, and Shawn Atleo has his work cut out to overcome such a deeply held suspicion of white money and power.

On the other side of the fence, our non-Aboriginal leaders might put a little more energy into explaining that mistrust to Canadians. Many of us still seem perplexed by it. It's worth recalling, for instance, that Canada's reserve system served as the model for South African apartheid. John Ralston Saul, the Canadian philosopher, has eloquently described how South Africa's government repeatedly sent agents to Canada to learn from our talent for segregating and marginalizing indigenous communities, a collaboration the Canadian government endorsed from the late 1800s to the 1960s.

Yes, yes, the counterargument goes, but that was all back then. Why can't those natives stop feeling sorry for themselves and get on with it? We've formally apologized, after all, and we give them all kinds of money and preferential access to universities and the like -- what's holding them back in the 21st century?

Read the rest...


Generation divide shows in First Nations leadership speeches

By Arno Kopecky July 22, 2009 09:34 am 1 comments

CALGARY - The five candidates for the Assembly of First Nations’ top post delivered a final appeal for votes yesterday at Calgary’s packed Telus Convention Center.

Their fifteen-minute speeches were as notable for style as for content. The three youngest – Shawn Atleo, Perry Bellegarde, and John Beaucage – were smooth and emphatic, making as many well-rehearsed promises as they could squeeze into the allotted time and never veering from the script.

It was a big break from the fireside manner of Phil Fontaine and other elders who had dominated the opening ceremonies with ambling tales that veered from politics into childhood recollections and jabs at friends in the audience.

By contrast, these three sounded like western politicians, more likely to jab their fingers in the air to emphasize a point than tease a buddy or reminisce on family (though Atleo did recall his grandfather’s whale-hunting days as a metaphor for leadership).

All spoke of a “rights-based” approach to settling the myriad treaty disputes that continue to be the biggest issue in aboriginal politics; their tone seemed calibrated to convince their constituents that they would get results (“make no mistake,” said Beaucage, “things are going to be different from this day forward”) while at the same time reassuring Ottawa that the process would be collaborative (no more national days of action, in other words).

A share of Canada’s resource profits – that is, oil money – is the agreed-upon way out of poverty, and that means partnering with industry rather than taking one-time payoffs. Self-governance was another key theme.

“We have the right to self determination,” Bellegarde insisted, “we exercised it when we signed treaties in the first place.”

By contrast Bill Wilson, the oldest candidate at 65, managed to say almost nothing despite talking for fifteen minutes. The closest he came to discussing policy was to promise that under his leadership the AFN would no longer “go hat in hand to the government asking for handouts,” and would instead “demand its fair share of this country.”

With a face lined by decades of activism, he no doubt had the sympathy of many in the room, but it’s unlikely he’ll get many of their votes.

The same could be said of Terrance Nelson, who to his credit laid out the clearest platform of them all: “How do you expect the AFN to change government policy when it’s being paid to implement government policy?” he asked, referring to the fact that the AFN’s entire budget comes from the very government it has traditionally opposed.

Nelson’s solution is very clear: stop dealing with the Canadian government and start selling natural resources directly to foreigners.

“The Chinese have said to me that a national chief coming to China would be considered a state visit.” His message certainly resonated with the audience, but he never explained how these foreign interests would make it past Canada customs without Ottawa’s approval.

Perhaps the most poignant moment of the day came during question period (which almost no one stayed to listen to). A young woman from Valdez Island on the west coast came forward to explain that “we have no running water, no infrastructure, and we are now burying our dead on the mainland because we’ve run out of room at home.”

Decades of petitions to the federal government had yielded not a penny’s help; unfortunately, the assembled candidates had no suggestions either.

As the afternoon gave way to an evening of swanky receptions (and a more rootsy two-stepping party that blew out Number 1 Legion), the rumour mill gave Bellegarde a slight edge going into today’s ballot. But Beaucage and Atleo are still very much in the game.

The voting works like Survivor, with a candidate eliminated each round until someone gets 60% – after pancake breakfast and a pow-wow, it could be a long day before the next national chief is decided upon.

Freelance journalist Arno Kopecky is blogging the AFN General Assembly for The Tyee.

Ex-national native chief Phil Fontaine to advise big bank on aboriginal issues

Financial Post September 2, 2009


Phil Fontaine is moving from politics to finance — the former three-term grand chief of the Assembly of First Nations has stepped into a new role on Bay Street as special adviser to the Royal Bank of Canada. Photograph by: Todd Korol, Reuters

OTTAWA — Phil Fontaine is moving from politics to finance — the former three-term grand chief of the Assembly of First Nations has stepped into a new role on Bay Street as special adviser to the Royal Bank of Canada.

Fontaine's job will be to advise the bank on aboriginal issues and help expand its relationships with aboriginal governments and businesses.

"We are proud to welcome Phil Fontaine and look forward to benefiting from his wisdom and expertise, gained from a tremendous career as a leader within Canada's First Nations communities," said Gordon M. Nixon, RBC president and CEO, in a statement. "Phil Fontaine's guidance will be particularly valuable as we continue our effort to build relationships with Aboriginal Peoples and communities across the country."

Fontaine's appointment builds on an agreement signed between the bank and the AFN in 2007, a commitment to a two-year "action plan to help build strong, sustainable aboriginal communities."

Fontaine, who has set up his own consulting business since leaving the AFN in July, will be involved in RBC sponsorship programs, including the Olympic torch relay, where his job will be to ensure the aboriginal community is involved.

"RBC is a leader in building relationships with Aboriginal Peoples and I'm pleased to join RBC as it continues working for the benefit of First Nations, Metis and Inuit peoples, helping them increase opportunities for economic development," Fontaine said.
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

One, Two, A Hundred 911s

One, two, a hundred 911s - for example, Hurricane Katrina. And wildfires and tornadoes and floods and tsunamis.

Thanks to some wicked photoshop work, an advertising agency hired by the World Wildlife Fund stays on message with the planet. Here's the tagline for the photo:

"The tsunami killed 100 times more people than 9/11. The planet is brutally powerful. Respect it. Preserve it."



Warning: Whine Alert! This is the poisonstream source for the pic...

World Wildlife Fund 'appalled' by tasteless 9/11 terror ad

Burn, Baby, Burn! KY POWs Set Fire to Concentration Camp

Yes, POWs. What else does an Occupation produce? As the U.S. Empire falls apart, more and more of these concentration camps, with the majority of their captives being men of color, will be burned to the ground. Property destruction makes apartheid very expensive. Huzzah!

In this Aug. 21, 2009 photo, fires are seen at Northpoint Training Center, a medium-security men's prison near Burgin, Ky., in Mercer County, as inmates riot. Inmates set fire to trash cans and other items inside a central Ky. prison, and damage to some buildings was so extensive that officials were busing many of the facility's 1,200 prisoners elsewhere, police said Saturday.
(AP Photo/The Advocate-Messenger, Clay Jackson)

And Then She Was Three! Fire Witch Rising's 3rd Anniversary

Folks, it's been a hell of a year for great events. The Rocky Mountain News is dead. Charlie Brennan got fired from Fox 31 News. The housing market went bust and so did California. The Amerikan empire continues its slow motion death spiral as does the industrial infrastructure and apartheid upon which it was built.

But Fire Witch Rising? I'm still standing. Thanks to all of you!

I cannot think of a more appropriate dedication for this third anniversary than the fabulous Tina Turner's "One of The Living."

Here's to one more year of happy news.

Arthur Manuel: Beware of B.C.'s proposed Recognition and Reconciliation Act

Another important article from AK48:

Excerpt - "Indigenous peoples collectively are the proper title and rights holder. Aboriginal title over entire territories is held by indigenous nations with a common language, customs, traditions, and history."

Damn right. No matter how many settlers take to the streets to celebrate Columbus, none of this continent is European land.

Arthur Manuel: Beware of B.C.'s proposed Recognition and Reconciliation Act

By Arthur Manuel

Premier Gordon Campbell is trying to use the proposed British Columbia Recognition and Reconciliation Act to overcome the economic uncertainty that B.C. has been experiencing since the Supreme Court of Canada recognized aboriginal title. Aboriginal title is an exclusive property right of indigenous peoples. This is the Achilles’ heel of B.C., as the provincially created property rights, like fee simple or forestry tenures and mining leases, are put in question because they fail to take into account aboriginal title.

Aboriginal title could even operate to oust provincial control over lands and resources, so what the province is really seeking through the proposed act is recognition of Crown title by indigenous peoples.

The much advertised recognition of aboriginal title is contingent upon recognition of provincial Crown title in return. This position has historically been rejected by indigenous peoples insisting that their relationship is with the federal Crown and not with lower levels of government. The Gordon Campbell strategy is to plug the “First Nations leadership council”—consisting of the executives of the B.C. Assembly of First Nations, the First Nations Summit, and the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs—into existing provincial government business schemes. The result will be benefit-sharing agreements under existing provincial resource law. This will undermine aboriginal title and indigenous efforts to protect the environment from increased resource exploitation.

This has created a backlash against the First Nations leadership council, headed by Grand Chief Ed John, Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, and Assembly of First Nations B.C. regional chief Shawn Atleo (who was elected AFN national chief on Thursday [July 23]). There has been a groundswell of opposition by indigenous peoples to the Recognition and Reconciliation Act at regional sessions around the province. The chiefs’ council of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs even defeated a resolution to allow further work on the act.

Indigenous peoples collectively are the proper title and rights holder. Aboriginal title over entire territories is held by indigenous nations with a common language, customs, traditions, and history. The people have made it very clear that the First Nations leadership council and the federal Indian Act chiefs and councils are not the proper title and rights holders and have no right to negotiate about aboriginal title with Campbell. From an indigenous perspective, the proposed Recognition and Reconciliation Act does not recognize aboriginal title. It is an attempt to secure increased corporate access to our territories. It is also a major public-relations campaign in the lead-up to the 2010 Winter Olympics so the government can pretend it is dealing with indigenous issues. Canada and B.C. have been criticized by international human-rights bodies for their failure to address indigenous rights, and we will continue to raise this.

The economic uncertainty that B.C. has been experiencing by not resolving the indigenous land question should not be underestimated. Since the judicial recognition of aboriginal title, the province has had to report it as a contingent liability in the B.C. financial statements every year. The government has been pointing to the B.C. treaty process as its mechanism for extinguishing aboriginal title. The B.C. treaty process is a major failure, given that it only produced two small treaties after the government negotiated for more than 15 years and spent over $1.5 billion.

Indigenous peoples are worried about economic certainty too, but we want economic certainty based on the full and true recognition of our aboriginal title. We want to build a new economy that values indigenous knowledge and our relationship to the land. The failure of the B.C. treaty process and community-level opposition to the proposed Recognition and Reconciliation Act indicate that indigenous peoples want to be on an equal footing with the provincial government. Indigenous peoples do not want to continue subsidizing the B.C. government and corporations by having aboriginal title not recognized or marginalized, as under the proposed act.

What happens to the British Columbia Recognition and Reconciliation Act over the next few months will determine if Campbell gets economic certainty at the expense of indigenous peoples.

Former Neskonlith chief Arthur Manuel is spokesperson for the Indigenous Network on Economies and Trade.

Pilgrims escape burning bus on Alberta highway

Cheers to a great laugh from AK48!

Think God's trying to tell these pilgrims something? I have no doubt that the lake the pilgrims are trekking to has healing powers, but not because of Christianity.



Pilgrims Escape Flames

Passengers on a bus travelling to a traditional Catholic pilgrimage site in Alberta escaped safely before the vehicle burst into flames.

The National Motor Coach bus caught fire Wednesday morning north of Ponoka on Highway 2, likely due to a blown tire that had overheated, RCMP said.

Two off-duty firefighters returning to Edmonton from work at the fire department in the Municipal District of Rocky View stopped to help evacuate the bus.

"I guess we're lucky there was only 18 people on the bus," said Craig Passmore, one of the firefighters. "If it was a full bus, it might have been different getting the people from the rear of the bus out."

He said the bus driver's fire extinguisher was no use against the rapidly moving flames.

Marjorie Littleleaf, who was travelling with her grandchildren, said she was relieved they all got out safely.

"It was just a helpless feeling. I felt like I wanted to grab them but there was no way I could grab them because they were so far behind."
Belongings, bus destroyed

RCMP Cpl. Wayne Oakes said no one was hurt, but all of the passengers' possessions were lost in the fire, which destroyed the bus.

"I just had time to run out just with the clothes on my back. And there are precious things in my purse ... which I brought to be prayed with from my late family. It's all gone," said one woman who had been on the bus.

The passengers were destined for Lac Ste Anne, northwest of Edmonton.

The annual religious gathering attracts about 30,000 pilgrims — mostly aboriginal — for a week each July. Worshippers journey from across Canada to Lac Ste. Anne to pray, as well as wade in the lake, which they believe has healing powers.

A local mental health service volunteered a bus, which took the stranded passengers to a Tim Hortons in Ponoka. A second National Motor Coach then picked up the passengers to take them to the pilgrimage site.

Highway 2 is open in both directions, but RCMP warn that traffic may be slow "due to motorists slowing to see the results of the fire."

Charlie Brennan Fired From Fox 31 News

Sour, angry liar Charlie Brennan at the Capitol? Not anymore.

Well, you know I must really need to come up for air if five days have gone by since the story I have been waiting to report for over two years now breaks and I miss it.

CHARLIE BRENNAN GOT FIRED FROM FOX 31 NEWS!!!

Finally.

Think it had anything to do with his little meltdown at a crime scene that eventually saw him convicted of interference with a police officer? Was fear of his bosses finding out about that nutter moment the reason he and his attorney Craig Skinner BEGGED the judge and prosecutors to have the case heard in chambers after Chickie spotted our dear Mystery Lady with reporter's notebook and pen at the ready? You betcha.

Folks, I don't think this year could get any better, what with the disintegration and utter disappearance of the Rocky Mountain News, and now Charlie Brennan, from the fascist, apartheid media scene.

It has been a long, four year campaign that now finally sees Charlie visited with the pink slip consequences he so richly deserves for his obscene, Rocky Mountain News smear campaign against Ward Churchill, a story from which he was fired when over one hundred of his letters detailing his e-affair with our dear Mystery Lady were published on the Internet.

Even the sad news that Judge Naves unconstitutionally perverted the jury's findings in Churchill's wrongful termination suit cannot dent my utter joy at Charlie's long-overdue shitcanning.

Fucker, I hate you. I always have. But for all the laughs and all the great material you gave this web site and others, I sure would like to buy you a drink. I owe you that much. You were the compliant poster boy for everything that sickens me about pacifists, Irish Americans, reporters, television news, and white men in general.

Wanna drink, Chickie? God, you've got to want a drink now. And boy would I love to give you a great big ole shove right off that wagon. The gutter's where you've always lived; the gutter is your destiny. Really. Anytime, pal.

You know the number.

Chris Dunn, Charlie Brennan among those laid off at Channel 31/The Deuce

By Michael Roberts in Media
Thursday, Jul. 9 2009 @ 11:31AM

Carolyn Kane, vice president of content for Channel 2 (known as The Deuce) and Channel 31, confirms that five editorial employees at the combined stations were laid off yesterday. Included among them: Chris Dunn, the primary weather forecaster for Channel 31; Charlie Brennan, a former Rocky Mountain News reporter who made the switch from print to TV prior to the tabloid's closure; Channel 2 reporter Audra Ensign; and a pair of behind-the-scenes employees, satellite-truck operator Ty Covert and photographer Robin Black. In addition, Kane believes that a number of business-side staffers were also let go. She referred questions about them to 2/31 general manager Dennis Leonard, who has not returned a call on the topic at this writing. With luck, more information will be forthcoming.

The moves are the latest in a series of pink-slippings at the outlets.

Shortly after Leonard took over, around thirty people were relieved of their duties -- among them Channel 2 anchor Ernie Bjorkman, whose farewell has earned national media attention from the likes of the New York Times and Oprah. And as noted in the first blog linked above, another handful of editorial department types, including one on-air reporter, was shed in March.

Kane describes the reasons for the latest farewells as "purely economic" -- but she concedes that understanding the reasoning doesn't make things any easier for those who remain behind. "As you would expect, it's always hard to see people who you liked to work with go," she says.

Taking over for Dunn, who won a Westword Best of Denver award this year as best weather predictor in the market, is Channel 2 meteorologist Dave Fraser, who will now be offering weather predictions during all afternoon and evening newscasts on the two stations: 4 p.m., 5 p.m., 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. When asked if the consolidation of the stations made such a move possible, Kane replies, "It was only the economy that made it possible. I have somebody who can do meteorology during the same hours Chris could do it, but it's not a decision I would have made if I didn't have to. Because they're both very strong."

These days, unfortunately, being very strong isn't enough to guarantee ongoing employment.

Tags: Audra Ensign, Carolyn Kane, Channel 2, Channel 31, Charlie Brennan, Chris Dunn, Dave Fraser, Dennis Leonard, Michael Roberts, Robin Black, Rocky Mountain News, Ty Covert

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.