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

Posted on December 23, 2017 by Eric Verlo

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

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

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

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

Al Franken’s tramping with the U.S.O. comes back to bite him in the libido.

Posted on December 8, 2017 by Eric Verlo

Did Senator Al Franken try to kiss subordinates he shouldn’t have? Suggesting a kiss was “my right as a celebrity” sounds like a gag, just like the photo taken during his USO tour, fondling the air around his fellow clown’s breast implants. The trouble is, beside the partisan accusations from right wing bimbo Leeann Tweeden and other dubiously provable complaints from selfie partners, the other transgressions are reported anonymously. It’s not accurate to say women “keep coming forward” to accuse Franken, when their identities are being shielded by media agencies hostile to Franken. The senator’s resignation shows great respect to the #MeToo movement, but dishonors representational politics. Of course Franken’s resignation is true to his party’s character. In DC, Democrats play the ringer who capitulates. Alabama Republican Roy Moore’s philandering is far more toxic, but God Bless Him, he’s sticking to his guns, because he dances with them that brought him. Moore doesn’t represent 13 year old girls nor victimized women. Roy Moore represents the patriarchal kleptocracy and he’s got a job to do. I applaud Franken for setting a moral example, but if I was a constituent I’d be screwed. Couldn’t Franken have scored higher politically by saying I’m a sexist wretch, like many men in power, but I’m not going to step down until our creepy president does.

CSPD Intelligence doesn’t have much

Posted on December 8, 2017 by Eric Verlo

COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO- Like the term Military Intelligence, “police intelligence” is an oxymoron. At least that’s the old joke. Wednesday’s hearing about the CSPD’s undercover operation against the Colo. Springs Socialists reinforced the adage. The good news is that Metro VNI, that is, Vice Narcotics & Intelligence, doesn’t have much intelligence, as in smarts, haha, OR constructive data. The impetus of CSPD’s efforts to infiltrate local activists has been to track ANTIFA, a nefarious worldwide anti-fascist organization apparently. Lieutenant Mark Comte, who heads Metro-VNI, testified to what they know so far. ANTIFA members wear black and cover their faces. When protesters do that, they’re Antifa.

Give Trump some credit. Of course Jerusalem should be the capitol of a one state solution. Palestine.

Posted on December 7, 2017 by Eric Verlo

OH BOY. It’s Trump’s most politically insensitive move yet, recognizing Jerusalem to be the capitol of Israel, as no other nation in the world will do because it means colluding with an illegal territorial claim. Moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv means giving official sanction to what the United Nations has declared to be against international law. Criminal insanity. But Trump wants to move the “Peace Process” forward and let’s be fair, that sham has been a cover to keep shrinking the prospects for Palestinians, to the point that few dispute the eroded viability of a two state solution. So let’s move this invasive “process” along. The sooner Israel crowns its land grab with a undivided Jerusalem, the sooner Israelis can be made to confront, and renounce racist Apartheid. When Israel’s democracy is forced to grant equal rights to non-Jews, the theocracy of Israel will become PALESTINE. And America won’t have to move its embassy.

The two state solution is dead. Good riddance to that lie. Neither side wanted or believed it.

Zionists have always intended a one state solution. Their ethnic cleansing of the Occupied Territories and their warmongering against Syria are designed to thin the Islamic population of Greater Israel such that it will always remain the minority, especially when Israel is forced to release its Palestinian citizens from their segregated Favelas. Israel is not finished with its “peace process” of killing or driving off the legitimate occupants of the Holy Land. Declaring the invasion a victory sooner than later will mean more Palestinians could survive to see the day they’ll be given the right to vote. That’s when a democratic process will decide whose Holy Lands these are, and lead their people to a post-colonial era.

Sovereign constitutional oath activist Stephen Nalty sentenced to 36 years!

Posted on December 6, 2017 by Eric Verlo

DENVER, COLORADO- Judge Michael Spear came down hard on judicial reform activists Stephen Nalty and Steve Byfield, who prosecutor Robert Shapiro insisted “can’t be rehabilitated.” The quiet Byfield received 22 YEARS, and this afternoon, so-called ringleader Nalty was given a sentence of 36 YEARS. For insisting that holders of public office file oaths secured by bonds as required by the US and Colorado constitutions. Their victims, judges and officials who were exposed for having sworn no oaths, testified about now having nightmares about the public coming to get them with torches and pitchforks. Which is of course what ought to happen, now that the bastards have retaliated against critics who were only trying to bring them into compliance.

The most severe remedy proposed by WE THE PEOPLE, the sovereign citizens organized to confront fraudulent office holders, was in fact resignation, or if necessary, banishment. Even so, the reformers were targeted by the FBI and its Colorado affiliates. A join anti-terrorism task force was deployed to infiltrate and entrap the “paper terrorists” who were then charged with criminal enterprise and racketeering, then held on quarter million dollar bonds. Now the two were given prison terms to exceed their lifetimes, ensuring both will die in jail. Because our system will not abide free men.

Springs municipal judge gives blessing to lucrative yet illegal I-25 speed trap.

Posted on December 5, 2017 by Eric Verlo

COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO.- Local municipal court judge Matthew Ramirez was presented with evidence today that the city is operating an UNJUSTIFIED SPEED LIMIT TRAP in the construction zone at the intersection of Highway-24 and Interstate-25. Though drivers are regularly cited for exceeding a 30mph speed limit, the posted speed does not meet the 85% compliance rule, nor the “pedal test” for enforceable speed reductions. Both are characteristics of improper and legally unenforceable “speed traps”. Plus, it turns out, 30pmh is not even the minimum speed required to cross under I-25 before the traffic light turns red.

At 30pmh it takes a motorist 8.75 seconds to cross the intersection from West to East. But the traffic light allows only 2.75 seconds! No wonder drivers don’t want to slow down. Upon seeing the video, instead of calling traffic engineers to set appropriate speed restrictions and adjust the timings, Judge Ramirez instead put his stamp of approval on CSPD’s very lucrative speed trap.

YES, I got a speeding ticket. Haha. And yes, today I was found guilty. I’m not upset so much as disappointed that the judge made himself complicit with the city’s scheme.

I know that “speed trap” has come to designate anywhere that police monitor traffic speeds, sometimes in hiding, and issue tickets. But I’m not using the term in the general sense. “Speed trap” has a legal definition which describes a scenario where police are ticketing motorists who have been forced, by circumstances under the control of the police, to violate the law and thus become eligible to be asked to contribute to the local administration’s fee based tax. “Speed traps” are abuses by law enforcement to maximize citation revenues without having to come across and apprehend offenders operating autonomously to local fundraising schemes.

On August 31 of this year, I was clocked going 43mph in a 30mph construction zone. Except for a vague feeling that I had not been “speeding”, I had no intention of fighting the ticket. I support the enforcement of speed limits and I accept that being pulled over is more or less a random hazard of going with the flow. No objection. But my recent attendance at municipal cases brought against activists has meant a lot of time spent in courtrooms where I couldn’t help but notice that many, many drivers were being cited for the same ticket as me, crossing the same intersection, their fines doubled because it’s a construction zone, almost all of them taking a plea.

My decision to plead not guilty led to a fruitful survey of legal abuses perpetrated by our traffic courts; on the part of the city attorneys, on the part of the police officers, and on the part of the judges. It was worth the fight and I assure you it’s not over.

Hundreds, if possibly thousands, of motorists have been ticketed, and are still being ticketed, like I was. Unless they’re riding the brake as they approach the intersection, they are considered speeding. Often, hitting the brake at that approach means upsetting drivers around you impatient to build speed for the on-ramp or impatient to cross the long intersection. To slow to 30mph when surrounded by others causes you to “impede the flow of traffic”, which is itself a driving offense in Colorado. Yes, driving the speed limit, when it impedes speeders, is illegal because the disruption it causes is considered unsafe. A traffic instruction that causes a driver to commit a worse infraction is not enforceable.

Likewise, if you have to choose between maintaining your speed to cross an intersection legally, before the light turns red, or lingering in the middle at risk of colliding with cross traffic, the safest recourse is also clear.

Judge Ramirez rejected the necessity defense, which protects accused if their infraction is incurred while trying to avoid more hazardous violations. He did not find it troublesome that local drivers were being forced to decide between speeding or running a red light, knowing they could be punished in either case.

Colorado Springs traffic ticket revenues are relying heavily on drivers being fraudulently stopped and fined. At ten dollars per mile over the limit, doubled for the construction zone, the fines add up. These penalties are for driving the intuitive speed calculated by the engineers who designed the motorway, in this case also by the engineers who time the traffic lights to facilitate flow.

A FOIA request will probably reveal the revenue to number in the millions, coming from local citizens feeling wronged. And if they took their case to court, feeling further wronged by the unjust process.

To begin with, they won’t show you the evidence against you. And it gets worse from there. With just this case I’ve documented abuses to rival the ACLU’s condemnation of the corrupt court system of the Colorado town of Alamosa. Their chief judge resigned in disgrace.

Check back as I update this article to recount the unending duplicity of the city attorney’s office. Then there are the dishonest public safety managers. And the police officers who outright lie. Aided and abetted by judges who know better. It’s a long story and all the more ugly because it could happen to anyone. And if Judge Matthew Ramirez has his way it will happen to you.

Storm Bastille. Load Guillotine. Done.

Posted on December 3, 2017 by Eric Verlo

Tax cuts for the rich. Higher deficit interest to the bankers. Less healthcare, Social Security and safety net for you. Ceaseless war for corporate imperialists, continued resource extraction for climate depopulation, and more austerity for the middle class. 21st Century oligarchs say: let the poor eat shitcake.

D’YA THINK THE TIME TO ACT IS NOW?! You already went to the polls. You elected a democrat president who served only money lenders and warmongers. You already had a democrat majority in Congress. You already called your representative. You already sent them petitions. No matter the party, rich asshole politicians will pass laws to favor the rich. EAT THE RICH is good for laughs but first you gotta catch them. The French Revolution left us a blueprint that historians have tried to distort and blur ever since. Rise up! Overrun the security citadel. Decapitate the hydra of state. This time, spare not a single Mandarin. Minus greedy sociopaths, the average human nature is good.

Is Colo. Attorney General worried that Colorado River rights case will reduce Land of Many Uses to too few abuses?

Posted on December 1, 2017 by Eric Verlo

DENVER, COLORADO- Do you know about the lawsuit brought on behalf of the COLORADO RIVER, suing the State of Colorado for interfering with its right to flow into the sea? It’s a “Rights of Nature” initiative which suggests that if corporations can have rights, why shouldn’t natural stakeholders? Although environmental entities have been granted recent legal protections by various progressive nations around the world, the Colorado team bringing the lawsuit is widely expected to be rebuffed. The court has already delayed the initial hearing where first arguments will be presented, but this week brought a surprise development that suggests that the lawsuit’s defendants give the case better prospects. This week the Colorado Attorney General’s office served a letter to the plaintiff’s lead council, attorney Jason Flores-Williams, warning they would initiate sanctions against him if he did not voluntarily withdraw the lawsuit. Intimidating, but really a very good sign.

The Fourth Estate is a Fifth Column

Posted on November 30, 2017 by Eric Verlo

The Premier, Seconde, and Tier Etats were pre-revolutionary constructs to harness the power dynamics of the Ançien Regime. Academics and journalists then sought to pretend impartiality by pronouncing themselves a Fourth Estate, but there is no such division. That concept is a fabrication of the press to feign independence from their bosses. If we must talk in terms of arrondissements, the Fourth Estate in reality is a Fifth Column. It acts like it seeks the truth, in the interest of the people, but in reality propagandizes for the oppressors.

The conventional 1st and 2nd classes, the clergy and the nobility of all monarchies, disguise a single religious scam that presents the despot’s raison d’etre. The two were only ever one. Even now that partnership persists in today’s simulated democracies.

The Third Estate, meant to represent the populace, is not an estate at all. It’s a people deprived of unity and, literally, estate. There are only two classes: the haves and the have no estates.

Schools and media indoctrinate members of the public about the inherent superiority and inevitable supremacy of their betters, and assure us that these journalistic conclusions have been independently sourced.

Oscar Wilde wrote in 1891:

In old days men had the rack. Now they have the Press. That is an improvement certainly. But still it is very bad, and wrong, and demoralizing. Somebody — was it Burke? — called journalism the fourth estate. That was true at the time no doubt. But at the present moment it is the only estate. It has eaten up the other three. The Lords Temporal say nothing, the Lords Spiritual have nothing to say, and the House of Commons has nothing to say and says it. We are dominated by Journalism.

Authenticity of Christ’s Tomb PROVED! If Jesus was crucified at the age 345.

Posted on November 28, 2017 by Eric Verlo

National Geographic magazine has just been handed exclusive evidence apparently, confirming the authenticity of what’s known as the Tomb of Christ. Thought to be a fabrication of the crusades, the tomb dates back as far as 345 AD according to carbon dating tests. This places it in the Roman Age they say, thus in the realm of possibility to be the brief burial site of the pre-ascendant deceased prophet Jesus of Nazareth. Fans are always chasing for tangible traces of the historically undocumented celebrity of biblical lore. Although his birthday remains a guesstimate, Nat Geo publicists now propose that Jesus lived to the age of 345 before he was crucified.

Iraq War embed Rob McClure, witness to war crimes he didn’t report, suffers phantom pain in gonads he never had.

Posted on November 28, 2017 by Eric Verlo

DENVER, COLORADO- Today Occupy Denver political prisoner Corey Donahue was given a nine month sentence for a 2011 protest stunt. Judge Nicole Rodarte’s unexpected harsh sentence came after the court read the victim statement of CBS4 cameraman Rob McClure, who said he still feels the trauma of the uninvited “cupping [of his] balls” while he was filming the 2011 protest encampment at the state capitol. Donahue admits that McClure was the target of a “nut-tap”, but insists it was feigned, as occupiers demonstrated their disrespect to the corporate news crews who were intent on demonizing the homeless participants even as Denver riot police charged the park. Though a 2012 jury convicted Donahue of misdemeanor unwanted sexual contact, witnesses maintain there was no physical contact.

Of course simply the implication of contact would have humiliated McClure in front of the battalion of police officers amused by the antic. That’s authentic sexual trauma, just as a high school virgin is violated when a braggart falsely claims to have of engaged them in sexual congress. Donahue was wrong, but how wrong? Can professionals who dish it out claim infirmity when the tables are turned?

Ultimately the joke was on Donahue, because his mark turned out to be far more vulnerable than his dirty job would have suggested. The CBS4 cameraman who Donahue picked on was a louse’s louse.

Off limits?
While some might assert there is no context which would excuse touching a stranger’s genital region, I’m not sure the rule of no hitting below the belt is a civility to which folks facing riot cops are in accord. Protesters can’t shoot cops, they can’t spit at cops, in fact protesters have to pull all their punches. Some would have you believe demonstrators should do no more than put daisies in police gun barrels, all the while speaking calmly with only pleasant things to say.

Let me assure you, simply to defy police orders is already a humiliation for police. What’s some pantomimed disrespect? Humiliating riot cops is the least unarmed demonstrators can do against batons and shields and pepper spray. Should the authorities’ private parts be off limits for a public’s expression of discontent? Jocks wear jock straps precisely because private parts aren’t off sides.

It’s tempting to imagine that all cops are human beings who can be turned from following orders to joining in protestations of injustice and inequity. This is of course nonsense. But it’s even more delusional to think corporate media cameras and reporters will ever take a sympathetic line to the travails of dissidents. Media crews exploit public discontent just as riot cops enjoy the overtime. Media crews gather easy stories of compelling interest from interviewees eager to have their complaints be understood.

Corey Donahue
On October 15, 2011, Rob McClure turned his camera off when the narrative wasn’t fitting the derogatory spin he wanted to put on the homeless feeding team which manned Occupy Denver’s kitchen, dubbed “The Thunderdome.” Donahue observed the cameraman’s deliberate black out of the savory versus the unsavory and reciprocated with the crowd pleasing nut-tap. In the midst of this circus, Colorado State Troopers, METRO SWAT, and city riot police charged the encampment and made two dozen arrests.

It was hours later, perhaps after reviewing police surveillance footage, that McClure conferred with police commanders and agreed to press charges for the nut-tap. Corey Donahue was one of the high visibility leaders of the crowd. He’d been involved in multiple arrests, but this time his bond would be higher and harder to post because instead of the usual anti-protest violations, Donahue would be charged with sex crime.

Ultimately Donahue sought political asylum in South America rather than face having to report for the rest of his life as a sex offender. The offense was only a misdemeanor and his trial was a miscarriage of justice. Attorney friends later convinced Donahue to return to the US because this crime was arguably not sex related and was likely to be overturned on appeal. Likewise, a sentence was unlikely to exceed time served as the “nut-tap” paled in comparison to the police brutality and excessive force which has since ensued. Neither Judge Rodarte or victim Rob McClure got the memo, and it wasn’t the first time McClure failed to frame public outcry in the context of brutal militarized repression.

It turns out McClure’s own self respect was probably way too fragile to have ventured to cast stones at the slovenly homeless occupiers.

Rob McClure
Cameraman Robert McClure had been an embedded reporter in Iraq in 2004. You might expect such a experience to have toughened him up, or expanded his empathy for critics of US authoritarian brutality, but that is to underestimate the culpability of the corporate media war drum beaters.

And McClure’s guilt ran deeper that that. According to his CBS4 bio, McClure was reporting from a major military detention center. It turns out McClure covered Abu Fucking Ghraib. In 2004 McClure’s assignment was to distort what happened there as rogue misconduct. No thanks to fuckers like McClure, the Abu Ghraib techniques were later confirmed to be standard protocol. The US torture and humiliation of prisoners was systemic.

McClure’s coverage for CBS4 specifically glorified Dr. Dave Hnida, otherwise a family physician from Littleton, but in the service of the military as a battlefield surgeon assigned to treat prisoners of war. While it sounds commendatory to attend to the health of our sworn adversaries, in practice that job involves most commonly reviving prisoners being subjected to interrogation. Hnida’s task was to keep subjects conscious for our extended depredations. Medical colleagues call those practitioners “torture docs”. They shouldn’t be celebrated. They should lose their medical licenses.

So that’s the Rob McClure who wrote Judge Rodarte to say that after all these years, having witnessed unthinkable horror and sadistic injustice, while still spinning stories to glorify American soldiers and killer cops and power-tripping jailers, the memory of Corey Donahue’s prank made his balls hurt.

“Everything you need to know about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle etc”

Posted on November 27, 2017 by Eric Verlo

Designate US a State Sponsor of Terror

Posted on November 22, 2017 by Eric Verlo

WTF. What act of terrorism has North Korea sponsored lately or ever? Are we talking about the weird assassination of Kim Jong-Un’s debauched rival heir? That was a hit, not an indiscriminate act, even as our propagandists now pretend to feel North Korea’s cross hairs. It was not even peanuts compared to capitalist corporate malfeasance and western state sponsored shock doctrine. If “State Sponsor of Terrorism” designation is an appellation controlée sort of prerogative, like Public Enemy Number One, it’s probably time to democratically crowd source a citizen’s intervention. Designate the US a state sponsor of terrorism. Bring on all the sanctions, terms of probation, and ankle monitoring devices required by law. Disarm our terrorist mercenaries and advisors. Throw them in Guantanamo and render them to the interrogation centers of the other rogue regimes who aid and abet state terrorism. Freeze our and their assets and check Priceline for last minute bookings at the Hague.

Unexpected hagiography of pedophilic sodomy admitted by catholic priests to being “suggestive” instead of noxious.

Posted on November 22, 2017 by Eric Verlo

The pedophile priest theme has been set in stone. A catholic school in Australia commissioned a statue of St Martin de Porres offering a penis sandwich to a child who stands no taller than most convenient. The child’s hands are cupped as if receiving communion. Is the granite statue historically inaccurate? Probably its likeness is timeless. I’m thinking of the resignation to mechanical carnality and the stone cold gaze. De Porres was a Dominican brother in 16th Century Lima, Peru. No doubt the ritual depicted here reflects “Martin the Compassionate” at his least menacing. When he wasn’t molesting children, De Porres was administrating the enslavement of South America’s indigenous people for Spain’s colonial silver mines.

When repulsed parents lambasted the newly installed statue at the Blackfriars Priory School in Adelaide, the priests agreed to cover it up. They conceded that the placement of the loaf of bread -in hand- was “suggestive” of a less palatable offering. While indeed the pose could be said to suggest misconduct, the adjective was paired with another term which only a pederast would be clueless enough to offer: “riské!” Yes, Father, do cover the statue if you suspect your fellow friars will find the little scene titillating. So that’s the Catholic church on pedophilia: it’s set in stone, and kept under wraps.

Denver used protection orders to curb mobility of Occupy protesters in 2011

Posted on November 13, 2017 by Eric Verlo

DENVER, COLORADO- Activist Corey Donahue’s 11-11-2011 protest case is still outstanding. The recently surrendered fugitive is charged with inciting a riot in the first months of the Occupy Denver encampment, when supporters crowded a police cruiser and began to rock it in protest of Corey’s third arrest. Clouding this nostalgic look back at DPD’s mishandling of mass demonstrations are the quasi-legal steps the city took to constrain the protest.

It turns out Corey’s felony riot charges were used to convince a Denver court to grant protection orders to two state troopers who considered themselves personal victims of Occupy Denver’s assertive tactics. As a resut, Corey was prevented from leading demonstrations into areas when those officers were deployed, and he didn’t know which those officers were.

The measure was of dubious legality and so far remains shrouded in disinformation. Were two officers “seriously injured”, as news outlets reported, in the so-called riot of Nov 11? Except for their official statement, no evidence was ever provided by DPD. What were the injuries and who were the officers?

Can police invoke the protection of a blanket injunction to stop public demonstrations whenever they want? Can a police department enforce protection orders and pretend its subjects can remain anonymous? These are the questions which Denver police face as they push charges against one of their most outspoken antagonists.

Can law enforcement officers unknown to a defendant file for restraining orders against the public they serve and protect? Can police require that ordinary citizens maintain a prescribed distance from them in a public space?

Encamped on the grounds of the capitol, at the peak of an ongoing protest movement, Corey Donahue was in no position to push back with a legal challenge.

Denver has since used an even more abusive method, designating “area restrictions” to keep active protest leaders out of places like the state capitol, Civic Center Park, and 16th Street Mall. DPD cite the arrestees’ repeated arrests as justification. This probation stipulation may be applicable for criminal recidivists, in particular domestic violence abusers, but it is hardly constitutional when applied to free speech. Denver’s practice hasn’t been challenged yet, for want of sympathetic plaintiffs.

Giving police protection orders, to prevent specific demonstrators from assembling near police lines, would seem to fall in a similar category of judicial misconduct.

I sent you a poke

Posted on November 9, 2017 by NMT

While thou beholdest

the mote that is in

thy brother’s eye,

considerest a finger

in thine.

Syria neoliberal invasion ad campaign casts chicks with guns but no helmets

Posted on November 3, 2017 by Eric Verlo

THAT’S RICH. When they’re not bombarding western viewers with contrived photo-ops of camera-facing toddlers, victimized by Asad’s bombs never ours, the neoliberal propagandists are fishing for left-leaning sympathies with “Freedom Fighters” who Americans could not should not leave behind. Meet the West’s own Femen ForWar, Kurdish anarchist insurgents, one even dubbed “Angelina Jolie”, who are photographed in action, with wide smiles in sniper’s nests, looking like they’re otherwise hanging in homeroom detention. I’m surprised we never see the lighting crews or makeup artists reflected in the shattered glass, but what we don’t see in plain sight are HELMETS. Apparently only real soldiers need those.

There’s even a Chicks-with-Guns meme gone viral of a bareheaded Freedom Fighter breaking into a huge grin after narrowly escaping a sniper’s bullet. One man’s insurgent is another man’s freedom fighter. Western media’s freedom fighters are your Freedom Fries.

Avoid Genetically Modified Organizers

Posted on October 30, 2017 by Eric Verlo

I would call them Academically Modified Organizers except that doesn’t relate their haunting similarity to agricultural GMOs. University-incubated community organizers are designed to share a tragic characteristic of killer crops: the terminator gene. And it self-selects for stupid.

OF COURSE establishment-perpetuating education is going to adulterate what it’s selling as liberatory ideology! For example: anti-oppression, to innoculate against leadership; safe spaces to subvert direct communication; inclusion to preempt focus; consensus to thwart decision. These are genetic modifications to the social impulse, confounding political activism with self crit therapy. The newest social studies grads have resurrected a hopeful rejoinder to repression that reeks of their generations’s ubiquitous consolation prize. It goes THEY TRIED TO BURY US. THEY DIDN”T KNOW WE WERE SEEDS. Sorry, no you are not viable seeds. Poor hobbled Millennials, your miseducators and anti-social conditioners have as good as irradiated your seeds. Your enfeebled strain of resistance may be crazy infectious to systemically modified uncritical thinkers, but it’s not fertile.

While he’s disinhibited, let’s ask Poppy “Cop-a-Feel” about the CIA Dallas job.

Posted on October 26, 2017 by Eric Verlo

Do we simply forgive ex-presidents as they become demented dirty old men? I would guess so. Groping is probably the least of their criminal white patriarchal behavior. The formal apology explaining H. W. Bush’s incapacity to interact with female guests anywhere but above the waist, which also clarifies the standby joke he makes, to excuse his move, or to illustrate his punchline: “Wanna know my favorite book? David Cop-a-Feel”, would suggest that HW’s lecherous groping is standard practice during his group photos. And it probably ALWAYS WAS. I say if Poppy Bush truly is disinhibited with dementia, somebody please ask him about his wildcat days of Zapata Oil and the Bay of Pigs and whatever intelligence activity he engaged in that qualified him to later be appointed director of the CIA. US intelligence agencies are stalling on the JFK document release because the revelations would still be too sensitive to parties yet to kick the bucket or curb the groping.

Who is this El Paso Sheriffs undercover infiltrator provocateur? We don’t care!

Posted on October 25, 2017 by Eric Verlo

COLO. SPRINGS– Lawyers for the city are fighting defense team efforts to expose who, how, when and why local law enforcement agencies infiltrated a campus political activist group. The 2017 undercover operation was revealed in CSPD bodycam videos, but city courthouse lawyers and judges are preventing the evidence from being made public.

Alerted to the October 17 evidentiary hearing meant to shed light on the bodycam video, journalists and news crews instead witnessed stonewalling by city attorneys but made to look like a disorganized defense. They saw municipal Judge Kristen Hoffecker blame the defendants for not submitting to a sham proceding, when the judge should have confessed that the defense’s subpoenas had not been honored.

Today the city learned that our defense team went around them and served the subpoenas directly, requiring the responsible law agency parties to testify as witnesses at an evidentiary hearing on November 3. Now the city wants to use a November 1 status hearing to quash the subpoenas.

What’s the big deal? The city asserts the confidential identity of its undercovers is a stake. That is of course the least of it.

The city’s own evidence against the defendants, accused of marching in the street on March 26, 2017, documents police officers deciding to issue tickets. What’s clear from the video is that the police issued tickets, not to cite wrongdoers, nor to halt law-breaking, but to 1) “identify everyone”, 2) arrest an undercover agent, and 3) disperse a lawful assembly. It’s all on tape.

When defendants first grasped what they were seeing on the bodycam video, they brought it to the attention of the various municipal court judges who take turns directing the daily court matters. Asked to produce the written reports generated by the officers on the video but missing from the discovery evidence, the judges declined. Asked to subpoena the officers involved, the judges declined. After each defendant’s pro se arguments were rebuffed, one motions hearing after the other, the defendants sought legal help. Actually Judge Hayden Kane II did eventually grant a hearing to look into the video, but he told us he’d already watched it in private and was not inclined to find it relevant, so defendants were not encouraged that his opinion would change.

In the meantime civil rights lawyers were highly interested in the police activity documented by the video. They submitted 20 pages of argument for the dismissal of charges against the defendants, citing outrageous police misconduct in violation of the Code of Federal Regulations, part 23. They requested that the sheriff, the police chief, the commander of CSPD intelligence, and others named and unnamed, be subpoenaed to testify at an evidentiary hearing on October 17. That didn’t happen, as everyone saw. The subpoenas didn’t even go out.

The October 17 hearing misfire was simply the latest of months of attempts by the defendants to bring this story to light.

This time around the city wasn’t given the chance to sit on the subpoenas, they’ve been served directly. On November 1, will Judge Hoffecker invalidate the subpoenas two days before the witnesses are compelled to appear? The question reporters can ask is should she?

The city’s argument will be that the police undercover operation, however illegal, does not have anything to do with the guilt or innocence of the socialists charged with marching in the street. Outrageous police misconduct is a matter for federal court, that’s true. But have a look at the video. Notice that the first marcher fingered for arrest, the only one assigned an arrest team, was the undercover “Mark Jackson.” When the police shouted their warning that all who remained in front of City Hall would be issued citations, their only unequivocable target was Jackson.

Without the motive of arresting Jackson, whether it was to provoke the crowd or to embed their infiltrator, and until the order “LT wants everyone identified”, the police weren’t going to make any arrests. What does that say about the supposed guilt of the accused?

The police had already told the socialists “you’re free to carry on with your rally so long as you don’t step back unto the street.”

What the socialists were doing on March 26 was the essence of protected speech. But senior officers not on the scene had a crime of their own up their sleeves, and they needed an arrest or two to set it into motion.

Should we get to the bottom of this story, or let the city pretend it didn’t happen until the defendants get to turn the tables in federal court?

One presumes that undercover agents are only performing the intelligence function of surveillance, monitoring protest activity for hints of criminal behavior. At worse, we call them agent provocateurs, trying to encourage illegality, and believe that everyday nonviolent activists should know better than to be entrapped into illegal acts.

But undercover officers are much more disruptive than that. Undercovers sow dischord and mistrust among strangers who’ve come together to advocate for a common cause. Infiltrators pit activists against each other and confound organizers with sabotage. They volunteer for responsibilities then drop the ball. They complicate discussions with irrelevant, impractical, or illegal suggestions. When their ideas are rejected they express frustration by demeaning their fellow participants for being unmotivated. When “Mark Jackson” was found out, and it took many weeks for everyone to become convinced he was an undercover, he berated everyone for every personal failing in the book. He accused individuals of paranoia, ineptitude, or lacking courage. “Get back to me when you decide you want to DO SOMETHING” were his parting words.

Police infiltration harms every citizen effort to organize. The Code of Federal Regulations mandates that police agencies have suspicion of real crime before embedding infiltrators.

If CSPD or the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office or the Department of Homeland Security or the Colorado Bureau of Investigation has proof of a crime brewing among the Colorado Springs Socialists, wouldn’t we all benefit to know about it? We would if their motive is truly crime prevention.

The real identities of “Mark Jackson” and his partner “Aimee Walter” doesn’t matter at all. Who they work for is paramount. Are they “with the Sheriffs” or contracted or embedded from another agency? As the video shows, Jackson’s jittery hyperactive behavior while detained in the cruiser doesn’t give one much confidence about who law enforcement is entrusting with a loaded weapon in a crowd they hope to be inciting to riot.

The city’s determination to quash the question of whether or not such evidence exists points to police malfeasance, not the Socialists’.

Justice delayed is justice denied. Colorado Springs police infiltration operations against social justice activism should be brought to heel sooner rather than later.

OCTOBER 27 UPDATE:
According to Judge Hoffecker’s order: November 1st at 2:30pm will be the city’s next chance to quash the subpoenas. If they do not succeed, the evidentiary hearing is scheduled for November 3rd at 8:15am.

Repeat after Senator Jeff Flake: I will not be complicit.

Posted on October 24, 2017 by Eric Verlo

It does sound silly coming from a politician elected to oppose complicity. And what does it say to citizens tirelessly circulating petitions and urging their neighbors to vote? It says this: EVEN US senators are powerless to work within the system! Let’s thank Jeff Flake for that kernel of truth. If your resistance to Trump and corruption and capitalism does not seek to tear it down YOU ARE COMPLICIT.

DO US soldiers know what they sign up for? Horror? Mass murder? Burn pits? PTSD. Disability. Homelessness. Viagra.

Posted on October 19, 2017 by Eric Verlo

It was a crass thing for Trump to say to a recent war widow, but of course it’s also fundamentally said in praise of brave men. They knew what they signed up for. But do American soldiers know what they sign up for? Not just the risk, but the horror and culpability? Did Trump voters know what they signed up for? I’ll put it to you they did not.

City plan to snuff socialist infiltration hearing blows up in courtroom’s face

Posted on October 17, 2017 by Eric Verlo

COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO– If you attended today’s evidentiary hearing about the police infiltration of a local student group, you are no doubt left wondering what happened. Where were the defendants and why was the judge so angry? The outcome was not what either side wanted, but still it was a huge false step for the city. The defense was not provided the police witnesses it requested, but the prosecution was prevented from quashing those subpoenas outright. As a truant co-defendant, I had a unique vantage point on today’s anticlimax and I apologize I was unable to explain it in person.

Today’s hearing, it turns out, was supposed to exclude the defendants. The review of evidence relating to the police infiltration operation was intended to happen outside of public view. The lawyers signed the setting slips, not the defendants, who were kept uninformed of the October 17 hearing. The judge had specified lawyers only, to keep the details and identities of the undercovers confidential.

Can courts exclude defendants from their own hearings? Not really, but anyway.

It turns out the judge wanted privacy because she had no intention of conducting the hearing at all. Without an audience to offend, this judge planned to summarily quash the defense motions to make police administrators testify and that would be the end of it. Objections be damned, let the lawyers take it up on appeal. Push this hot potato off a year or two.

However, through documents obtained directly from the courthouse, the defendants did learn about the hearing. So the defendants made plans to attend the hearing regardless of a judge’s preferences, and they publicized the event for what it promised to be, a scandalous exposé of CSPD intelligence overreach. Subpoenaed to testify were El Paso County Sheriff Bill Elder, Colorado Springs Police Chief Peter Carey, Lieutenant Mark Comte of the CSPD Intelligence Divison, and Sergeant Clayton Blackwell, among others.

Colorado Springs prosecutors did not inform the defense team that they had no intention of honoring those subpoenas. Instead they planned to motion to quash the subpoenas and truncate the hearing. The city attorneys did not file those motions beforehand nor give the defense any indication they were contesting the subpoenas.

I can only surmise that the city prosecutors began receiving calls from the media about the anticipated testimony of the sheriff and chief of police, because it wasn’t until late morning on the day of the hearing, after our press release went out, that the city emailed the defense team to say that “Sgt Blackwell is on vacation.” Blackwell wouldn’t be attending the hearing, they said, and by the way, his was the only subpoena delivered.

To which I imagine our legal team said: WTF?! Now we needed a hearing to learn why the city thought it could unilaterally decide to whom to deliver our subpoenas.

It’s one thing to disrespect the rights of defendants. Our municipal court does it ALL THE TIME. Everyday, sadly. In fact, it’s done it repeatedly to the very defendants in this case, before we got lawyers. But it’s quite another thing to trample on our rights when a civil rights attorney is involved.

If Blackwell was on vacation, the case needed a continuance. And if subpoenas were going to be quashed, we needed a motions hearing. Oddly, the judge was demanding our defense attorneys show up in person. To arrange a continuance?! Riiiiiight.

Our lawyers quickly let us know there was to be no hearing. Since the defendants weren’t supposed to attend today’s hearing anyway, we deemed it prudent not to attend the prosecution’s switcheroo. Without defendants, whatever the prosecution planned couldn’t proceed. Meanwhile the defense lawyers weren’t going to abide a Podunk Springs Judge Roy Bean throwing the law book out the window. If subpoenas aren’t going to be honored, you have to present the legal basis beforehand. Them’s the rules, Hayseeds.

So the courtroom audience, including journalists and media crews who had to leave their television cameras outside, were left to witness a Colorado Springs judge fuming at being out-thunk. The defense lawyers weren’t there to let her quash away with her gavel, without regard for the Colorado Rules of Proceedure, and the judge’s original scheme excluded the defendants so as a result there were no defendants present to accept her rulings. The judge could do nothing but seethe and lecture the audience about big lawyers disrespecting municipal courts. Nevermind that our courts are corrupt mechanisms that trample rights for breakfast. (The ACLU recently released a report damning Alamosa’s city courts: Justice Derailed. Believe me, the identical abuses of power occur in Colorado Springs.)

Nevermind too, what today’s court hearing was supposed to be about: Outrageous Conduct on the part of CSPD and EPCSO, and violations of the Code of Federal Conduct. Today’s defendants were arrested on March 26, 2017, but not for walking in the street. The socialists were arrested because the Intelligence Division wanted to “arrest” an undercover officer, maybe two, in order to give them deeper cover as they infiltrated a student-led group just formed in Colorado Springs. The CSPD body-cam video released to the defendants already proves this. We wanted the decision makers responsible to explain it.

Instead of a comedy of errors spotlighting local law enforcement ignoring the people’s Bill of Rights, the courtroom audience today saw another facet of our corrupt judicial system. They witnessed a judge prepared to ride roughshod over further rights that protect citizens from authoritarian zeal. You may not care how police abuse “socialists” but the whims of a municipal court despot affect everyone caught in their dragnet, be it a ticket or a zoning dispute. Even with an expensive lawyer, you are powerless to object when a judge pretends there are no rules.

What the judge saw today was a courtroom filled with supporters of the defendants and a media interested in their story. She saw that she and her gavel are not going to make this story go away.

It turns out Hollywood’s proverbial “casting couch” belonged to Harvey Weinstein. Glad it’s out of commission.

Posted on October 12, 2017 by Eric Verlo

Do you wonder why only Harvey Weinstein is taking the fall? Was he too fat and ugly for us to imagine despoiling young actresses? I like to think it’s because he produced truly awful movies.

I am heartened to see that articles about the tolerance of Weinstein’s abuse of power do make the link to our Womanizer in Chief, but again, Trump is also low hanging fruit. Certainly the casting couch is still an active element of Hollywood. It pervades patriarch-dom.

US & Israel leave UNESCO, cite its bias against heritage of invasive cultures.