Tag Archives: Cheyenne

Of course it was the 7th cavalry at Nogun Ri

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Of course it was the 7th cavalry at Nogun Ri

Even the rightest wing-est extremist in Texas don’t hold a candle to Some Colorado Wingnuts, the ones who call Natives “prairie niggers” or “wagon burners”, especially when any negative reviews of the Seventh Cavalry massacres. Like Wounded knee, a vengeance quest for Custer and a bunch of his homicidal lunatic troopers got their own asses sent to Hell. And before that, at the Little Ouachita, murdering men, women and children at a mostly Cheyenne winter encampment. Must not criticize heroic asswipes like Custer. Oh, that song they adopted, Garryowen, that’s about a really rowdy  custom (performed by the lads of Garryowen, a town in Ireland) of getting drunk and beating up on cops. Anyhoo, I got this from Wiki because it’s easy. Sue me. It’s about another massacre and why the people of Korea aren’t as enthusiastic about the U.S. Big Brother as the South Korean Government. Hint: it’s because the corrupt U.S. Government pays the S. Korean Puppet Government to pretend to like us.

The No Gun Ri massacre (Hangul: ??? ??? ?? ??; Hanja: ?????????; RR: Nogeun-ri minganin haksal sageon) occurred on July 26–29, 1950, early in the Korean War, when an undetermined number of South Korean refugees were killed in a U.S. air attack and by small- and heavy-weapons fire of the 7th U.S. Cavalry at a railroad bridge near the village of Nogeun-ri (Korean: ???), 100 miles (160 km) southeast of Seoul. In 2005, a South Korean government inquest certified the names of 163 dead or missing and 55 wounded, and added that many other victims’ names were not reported. The South Korean government-funded No Gun Ri Peace Foundation estimated in 2011 that 250–300 were killed, mostly women and children.

The incident was little-known outside Korea until publication of an Associated Press (AP) story in 1999 in which 7th Cavalry veterans corroborated survivors’ accounts. The AP also uncovered declassified U.S. Army orders to fire on approaching civilians because of reports of North Korean infiltration of refugee groups. Some details were disputed, but the massacre account was found to be essentially correct. In 2001, the U.S. Army conducted an investigation and, after previously rejecting survivors’ claims, acknowledged the killings, but described the three-day event as “an unfortunate tragedy inherent to war and not a deliberate killing”. The army rejected survivors’ demands for an apology and compensation. United States President Bill Clinton issued a statement of regret, adding the next day that “things happened which were wrong”.

South Korean investigators disagreed with the U.S. report, saying that they believed that 7th Cavalry troops were ordered to fire on the refugees. The survivors’ group called the U.S. report a “whitewash”. The AP later discovered additional archival documents showing that U.S. commanders ordered troops to “shoot” and “fire on” civilians at the war front during this period; these declassified documents had been found but not disclosed by the Pentagon investigators. American historian Sahr Conway-Lanz reported that among the undisclosed documents was a letter from the U.S. ambassador in South Korea stating that the U.S. military had adopted a theater-wide policy of firing on approaching refugee groups. Despite demands, the U.S. investigation was not reopened.

Prompted by the exposure of No Gun Ri, survivors of similar alleged incidents from 1950–51 filed reports with the Seoul government. In 2008, an investigative commission said more than 200 cases of alleged large-scale killings by the U.S. military had been registered, mostly air attacks

If you’re a vet from that arena, and was above the rank of captain at the time, I won’t give two thirds of a sex act about your damn feelings.

Broomfield Police play rough game of Cowboys & Indians with Idle No More Native Americans, literally

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Photo by Jolynne Locust WoodcockBROOMFIELD, COLO.- Fellow Occupy members and I joined in a “round dance” flash mob at a local mall on Wednesday night, as part of the growing IDLE NO MORE actions whose First Nations grievances include the despoiling of indigenous treaty lands by tar sands extraction and the XL pipeline, and sovereignty issues about which Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence is now on a 22 day hunger strike. Two previous round dances in Colorado had proceeded uneventfully but no sooner had we begun in the Flatirons Crossing Shopping Center, located between Denver and Boulder, that mall security and police began routing the round dancers out the door. It was a rather comical scene, peaceful dancers, many of them children, being blocked and herded straight out into the cold, no warning or explanation being given. Of course the round dance stopped in its tracks, people instead dancing in place, gently waving their signs, as security told them they had to leave or face arrest. Apparently, because we didn’t hear it. Drummers were let to finish the first song, after which they packed up to leave. Once the drumming stopped however, we were surprised to hear security and police officers relaying their instructions, that “anyone who looked Native American” should be made to leave.

Of course we questioned what we were hearing, and were then threatened with immediate arrest and ushered out the door. At the same time, police officers were running in a continuous line into the mall to conduct sweeps as many flash mob participants were still arriving from all directions. Many got lost on the way, or miscalculated the traffic they’d encounter, so arrived late. In essence however, people without signs, not singing or dancing or drumming or holding their ground, were summarily being ordered to leave the mall immediately, based upon the clue that they looked Native American.

If my “Cowboys and Indians” analogy seems kinda flip. Imagine squads of Broomfield and Westminster police, roaming throughout the FlatIrons Mall checking people’s faces to see if they qualify to be expelled. The mall wasn’t cleared of all shoppers, just those who looked indigenous. A fairly scarey game, considering that many of the Idle No More participants were children.

I can tell you part of the thrill for me, of the round dance flash mobs, as a European immigrant, is feeling the surroundings begin to fill with indigenous faces. That is turned around in the hostile atmosphere created by the police, as western law enforcement resumes its traditional role of hunting down those it pretends don’t belong.

I had invited a friend to bring her young family, part Native American, to join the dance. Thankfully they couldn’t make it. What if they’d had, and come late, and were walking through the mall full of shoppers, and were encountered by squads of police who sought them out of the crowd and inexplicably ordered them to leave the premises? What’s any American child to think of that?

I have a young nephew who just that day I’d seen playing in his policeman’s costume, with a new policeman’s badge he got for Christmas. What would he have thought of that?

Plus, how’s that for irony? Natives considered trespassers. Even the mother of a girl being detained, was not allowed past to inquire what was happening, because she didn’t fit the profile of Americans who have rights, or a profile the police thought should be afforded a status of dignity or respect.

Meanwhile, three female participants, one of them 17-year-old Idle No More organizer Cheyenne McCallister, were being detained inside.

When Occupy Colorado Springs activist Patrick Jay tried to document the actions of the police from outside the mall window, he was pounced upon by Bloomfield Police for not having removed himself sufficiently from the area and thus was held to be trespassing. When I tried to take pictures of his arrest, I was arrested.

Held in separate police cruisers we could hear over the police radio that fifteen Westminster Police Officers were on their way armed with “shields and gas”. An officer on the scene told the dispatcher to turn them back because they were no longer need. As we’d seen, the mall and even the parking area filled with police vehicles had been completely cleared. But then a report came that a Native American group was reconstituting itself in “Parking lot E” and so the officers in riot gear were summoned. We learned later that they did arrive to menace the crowd, which decided to reconvene across the street at a McDonalds instead.

And now consider the further travesty, when a local news crew arrived to cover the story, they told only the mall’s side, because the IDLE NO MORE folks were prevented from reaching the news crew because it would mean trespassing! They could only watch, then watch on television as the story completely misrepresented the facts.

Patrick and I were eventually booked and held for several hours, like the others, then released to a warm welcome from Idle No More organizers who’d waited the whole evening. Our court date is February 20, the two women and one minor have court the next day, February 21.

Photo by Jolynne Locust Woodcock
(First and last photo credit: Jolynne Locust Woodcock)
See more at Facebook/OccupyColoradoSprings

Occupy Denver recognizes Colo. AIM, mixes metaphor to Unoccupy America!

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This weekend the General Assembly of Occupy Denver recognized that its intended occupation was actually a re-occupation, of lands to which original inhabitants lay claim. On Sunday the GA consensus voiced its solidarity with the American Indian Movement of Colorado who submitted a statement for ratification. It’s reprinted below via The Sole Reader:

COLORADO AIM’S CHALLENGE TO #OCCUPYDENVER

An Indigenous Platform Proposal for “Occupy Denver”

“Now we put our minds together to see what kind of world we can create for the seventh generation yet to come.”

John Mohawk (1944-2006), Seneca Nation

As indigenous peoples, we welcome the awakening of those who are relatively new to our homeland. We are thankful, and rejoice, for the emergence of a movement that is mindful of its place in the environment, that seeks economic and social justice, that strives for an end to oppression in all its forms, that demands an adequate standard of food, employment, shelter and health care for all, and that calls for envisioning a new, respectful and honorable society. We have been waiting for 519 years for such a movement, ever since that fateful day in October, 1492 when a different worldview arrived – one of greed, hierarchy, destruction and genocide.

In observing the “Occupy Together” expansion, we are reminded that the territories of our indigenous nations have been “under occupation” for decades, if not centuries. We remind the occupants of this encampment in Denver that they are on the territories of the Cheyenne, Arapaho and Ute peoples. In the U.S., indigenous nations were the first targets of corporate/government oppression. The landmark case of Johnson v. McIntosh (1823), which institutionalized the “doctrine of discovery” in U.S. law, and which justified the theft of 2 billion acres of indigenous territory, established a framework of corrupt political/legal/corporate collusion that continues throughout indigenous America, to the present.

If this movement is serious about confronting the foundational assumptions of the current U.S. system, then it must begin by addressing the original crimes of the U.S. colonizing system against indigenous nations. Without addressing justice for indigenous peoples, there can never be a genuine movement for justice and equality in the United States. Toward that end, we challenge Occupy Denver to take the lead, and to be the first “Occupy” city to integrate into its philosophy, a set of values that respects the rights of indigenous peoples, and that recognizes the importance of employing indigenous visions and models in restoring environmental, social, cultural, economic and political health to our homeland.

We call on Occupy Denver to adopt, as a starting point, the following:

1. To repudiate the Doctrine of Christian Discovery, to endorse the repeal of the papal bull Inter Caetera (1493) to work for the reversal of the U.S. Supreme Court case of Johnson v. M’Intosh 1823), and call for a repeal of the Columbus Day holiday as a Colorado and United States holiday.

2. To endorse the right of all indigenous peoples to the international right of self-determination, by virtue of which they freely determine their political status, and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural futures.

3. To demand the recognition, observance and enforcement of all treaties and agreements freely entered into `between indigenous nations and the United States. Treaties should be recognized as binding international instruments. Disputes should be recognized as a proper concern of international law, and should be arbitrated by impartial international bodies.

4. To insist that Indigenous people shall never be forcibly relocated from their lands or territories.

5. To acknowledge that Indigenous peoples have the right to practice and teach their spiritual and religious traditions customs and ceremonies, including in institutions of the State, e.g. prisons, jails and hospitals„ and to have access in privacy their religious and cultural sites, and the right to the repatriation of their human remains and funeral objects.

6. To recognize that Indigenous peoples and nations are entitled to the permanent control and enjoyment of their aboriginal-ancestral territories. This includes surface and subsurface rights, inland and coastal waters, renewable and non-renewable resources, and the economies based on these resources. In advancement of this position, to stand in solidarity with the Cree nations, whose territories are located in occupied northern Alberta, Canada, in their opposition to the Tar Sands development, the largest industrial project on earth. Further, to demand that President Barack Obama deny the permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline, proposed to run from the tar sands in Canada into the United States, and that the United States prohibit the use or transportation of Tar Sands oil in the United States.

7. To assert that Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their cultural heritage, traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions. They have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their intellectual property over such cultural heritage, traditional knowledge, and traditional cultural expressions. Further, indigenous peoples have the right to the ownership and protection of their human biological and genetic materials, samples, and stewardship of non-human biological and genetic materials found in indigenous territories.

8. To recognize that the settler state boundaries in the Americas are colonial fabrications that should not limit or restrict the ability of indigenous peoples to travel freely, without inhibition or restriction, throughout the Americas. This is especially true for indigenous nations whose people and territories have been separated by the acts of settler states that established international borders without the free, prior and informed consent of the indigenous peoples affected.

9. To demand that the United States shall take no adverse action regarding the territories, lands, resources or people of indigenous nations without the free, prior and informed consent of the indigenous peoples affected.

10. To demand the immediate release of American Indian political prisoner, Leonard Peltier, U.S. Prisoner #89637-132, from U.S. federal custody.

Finally, we also remind Occupy Denver that indigenous histories, political, cultural, environmental, medical, spiritual and economic traditions provide rich examples for frameworks that can offer concrete models of alternatives to the current crises facing the United States. We request that Occupy Denver actively utilize and integrate indigenous perspectives, teachers, and voices in its deliberations and decision-making processes.

Submitted 8 October 2011

American Indian Movement of Colorado

P.O. Box 292, Sedalia, CO 80135

Cartographic traces of Lake, Colorado

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Maybe like me you’re wondering how a landmark falls off the face of the earth, in particular Google Earth, assuming as we do that web crowdsourcing is archival, not perishable. A stagecoach watering hole in Kansas Territory, formerly Arapaho, was Hedinger’s Lake, between present day Limon and Hugo. Like the history of Colorado’s water, Lake became Lake Station, later a railway siding, today a creek.


First some back-story: 1750. When gold looked to become the carrot to drive white man’s Manifest Destiny, the Indian Territories of what would become Colorado were labeled simply the Gold Region.


Back in 1815, the West was still La Louisiane, and place names were native, French and Spanish. Taos was one of the oldest Spanish settlements, site of the First American Revolution, against the Spaniards, and another revolt when the US invaded. Camp de Baroney sits on the Arkansas River, eventually resettled as El Pueblo. And there’s La Fourche Republicaine, a fork of la Rivoire Missouri, soon to lead a prominent migration trail west.


By 1848, St. Vrain’s Fort and Grante Ft., Bent’s Fort, were already protecting Anglo trading interests. (Note by the way, Old Park and New Park, eventually to be become the “North” to South Park.)


By 1864, the Cheyenne and Arapaho found themselves bordered on the west by the “Military Department of Utah” and ceding their lands to the Kansas Territory. (On this map we can see Montana City, the original Denver City. Denver eventually overtook Auroria and the metropolis. Mineral Springs became Manitou and Colorado Springs at the foot of Pikes Peak.)

Note the curiously singular representation of a “Kansas Lake” depicted at the tip of the south fork of the Republican River, whose waters will originate in the later to be named Lincoln County, at whose heart will lie Lake, Colorado.

The Rocky Mountain region lost many lakes by the mid 1800s when beaver were hunted to near extinction and with them the beaver dams. Note just West of “Kansas Lake” lies Beaver Creek.


With the gold rush, settler trails crisscrossed the West, for wagon trains, stagecoach and mail carriers. Lake was a stage at the convergence of the Butterfield Overland Dispatch and Republican Fork Trails, where they crossed the Big Sandy Creek to join the Smoky Hill South and North Roads (after similarly named rivers which were starting points in Kansas) or the spartan Starvation Trail to Denver. Today’s I-70 follows Smoky Hill North.


Was Hedinger’s Lake the water which travelers sought at the end of the South Republican Fork Trail?


This 1868 Union Pacific map predicted the stops heading eastward from Denver to be Parkhurst, Beaver, which later became Deer Trail, and Coon Creek, which became Kit Carson, opposite Sand Creek.


By 1870, Kansas was a state and the Kansas Union Pacific RR reached Denver. (Beyond the mountains: North Park, Middle Park and South Park.)


By 1873, leaving for Denver from Fort Wallace, there were stops at Kit Carson, Aroyo, Lake, Agate (pronounced “A-Gate”) and Deer Trail. (Note: still no Colorado Springs.)


A map circa 1880s, shows Hugo, Lake, River Bend, Godfrey, Agate, Deer Trail, and Byers, named for the founder of the Rocky Mountain News, formerly Bijou.


When the Chicago Kansas and Nebraska Railroad sought a direct route to Colorado Springs, it decided to intersect the Kansas Pacific at a new stop called Limon and that was the end of Lake. At Limon the westbound trains performed what was called the “Limon Shuffle” where passenger and freight cars were separated depending on which were going to Denver and which to Colorado Springs.


Lake Station remained a stop for the Union Pacific, and on this map which accompanied the 1910 census, it’s gone, in favor of a late addition, Bagdad.

As trains no longer needed to take on water, and could reach their destinations more quickly, many stops were eliminated. This 1925 train Union Pacific train schedule lists only Cheyenne Wells, Kit Carson, Hugo and Limon before reaching Denver.


Lake is still marked on railroad maps, though there’s not even an access road to reach it.


On other maps it’s just Lake Creek, spanned by an impassable decaying bridge. It’s now a wetlands area that provides a bird sanctuary.


For the USGS, Lake still serves as namesake for the topographical map of the Lake Quadrangle.

To be continued…

Demonic DIA mustang Blucifer may be Bronco Blue, but eyes are Herring Red

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Demonic DIA mustang Blucifer may be Bronco Blue, but eyes are Herring Red

Bluecifer, Satan's Steed, the Demon StallionThe conspiracy theories deepen about cruel oddities at Denver International Airport, and much of the conjecture is now being scuttled with classic disinformation. Questions are substantive enough about DIA construction anomalies, without worrying about Blucifer the red-eyed stallion, his Egyptian pal Anubis, gargoyle luggage gods, prophetic end-times murals, inward-facing concertina wire, tent canvas of pure Kevlar, and the dastardly Freemasons behind it all.

It’s supposed.

Conspiracy freaks delight in pretending the Masonic Order cannot help but leave triumphant clues about its omniscience. The eyeball pyramid on US paper currency would seem demonstration enough, but conspiracy sleuths nursed on Dan Brown eat that up. And the confusion disseminaters are pouring it on. Who am I to pooh-pooh any particulars, especially conspiracies, of themselves too often scurrilously maligned, except to suggest that the less symbolism-intensive speculation about DIA is plenty obvious, and operatic enough.

The fact that excavation continues at DIA, years after the facility became operative should raise eyebrows. How much excavation is required to build runways on a near-flat landscape? Has DIA really displaced so much earth it’s become a significant fraction of what was removed to carve the Panama Canal? Apparently satellite pictures reveal a growing mound to suggest the extent of cavernous facilities being dug under and around the DIA. The evocative white tents were always for the nomads, on the plains, white settlers needed dugouts.

Where easier to install secretive accommodations than under the everyday lock-down of a post-9/11 airport?

Would DIA serve as a massive underground concentration camp? Ask yourself if a many mile buffered isolation is necessary for that, on top of being underground, or vice-versa. Area 51 remains a mystery without having to comprise buried facilities. We’ve already seen that Superdomes smack in the middle of urban centers make perfectly inhumane detainment centers. Imagine too, the isolation of DIA, without a railway for incoming. The Nazi camps did not predate flight. There would have been no Auschwitz without a railroad line.

A far more obvious application would be as a shelter from the public outside, behind miles of no-man’s land, the single entrance easily closed off. Far from even prying eyes.

Underground shelters have historically been carved in bedrock, NORAD in Cheyenne Mountain as an example. Could a man-made hole ever surpass a mountain range for protection? But perhaps the New World Order has the atomic threat sewn up. The mushroom cloud may still be evoked to frighten the masses, but I’ll bet that all the nuclear arms across the globe are as secure as Israel’s Security Council veto. This DIA shelter may need only protect against biological agents or fallout from an environmental cataclysm.

Old-fashioned bomb shelters have suffered obsolescence due to ease-of-access. What safe-room will save you if you cannot get to it? NORAD only protected those already inside it. What do you do to protect far-flung clients in the age of Twitter-speed atmospheric percussions?

An oversized airport like DIA certainly answers that requirement. While Coloradans might grouse about the interminable drive to DIA, they might one day rue its impenetrability. Meanwhile the jet set will gain admission by simple default of having wings.

Nothing terribly complicated about that setup. If you belonged to the billionaires club, you’d think of a provision like that too. The A-bomb age already prepped Americans for the contingency that a nuclear war would necessitate saving the more important among us. What’s the objection now?

Case of curious cellphone, bandana and Greyson Chance’s perfect microphone

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Case of curious cellphone, bandana and Greyson Chance’s perfect microphone

Oprah Winfrey records own show on cellphonePT Barnum would have been a terror on Youtube –I’m certainly sobered to see what fools America every time. Is sudden-tween-throb Greyson Chance’s talent for real? Too soon to say. But the 6th grade sound man at Cheyenne School of Edmond, Oklahoma has unlikely genius. * What’s hard to believe about doctors bandaging Bret Michaels’ massive brain hemorrhage with his signature headband? * And my favorite, Oprah Winfrey recording a show performance with her cellphone to attest to her surprise at “the coolest thing ever!”

Oprah
It happened ages ago (in blog-years) but television talk shows bind these three example together. Do you remember Oprah’s anniversary whatsit, taped like a big tailgate party in downtown Chicago? Oprah stood there on the outdoor stage beside the Black Eyed Peas and held her cellphone up, aimed at the audience, as if the dozen or more cameras on cranes, wires and rails weren’t going to be enough. And the crowd erupted in spontaneous dance, although it was choreographed, and a concept swiped from a European video. But Oprah’s deal went viral because, OMG would you believe it, and there was Oprah, OMG’ding herself, careful to record it to show her friends in case they wouldn’t have believe her, or watched the show.

Now how many of you believe the media diva even has her own phone, much less carries it or knows how it works?

Watching the video again, an establishing shot before the music begins shows someone in the audience (who later would turn out to be a dancer) aiming their cellphone like a camera, in case the audience at home needed a reminder that’s what normal people do today, and that’s what Oprah would be doing, to confound your awe with hers. Compound.

After the video had done its viral thing, Oprah had all the crowdsourced uploads removed, being unlicensed and all. I think it was really because her feigned incredulity wasn’t going to pass muster. Better a memory gone viral than video evidence of Oprah taking her viewers for fools.

Bret
Bret Michael’s blue bandana as he reclined on the hospital bed on the cover of People Magazine was just too silly for words. No doubt America wouldn’t know him without his bandana wig, so it was definitely an art director’s call.

Alright, it wasn’t a video, but the internet rumors went viral. Fans started to twitter about an oddly fortuitous recovery which put him back on the Celebrity Apprentice season finale, so now poor Bret is back in the hospital to prove it wasn’t a PR stunt, this time for a hole-in-the-heart, probably something to do with a tatoo, in any case nothing to interfere with his headband.

Chance Michael Grayson plays Cheyenne School 6th Grade show at Edmond, OklahomaGreyson
Brand-spanking-fresh-phenom Greyson Michael Chance wowed everyone on Youtube, and Ellen’s people, reportedly before his views had even hit five-digits –are talent scouts that grassroots? He encored with the same brilliant performance on her show, thus certifying his authentic talent, based on the law that lightening can’t be fixed twice. Although the equalizer setting, for lack of a technical term, was remarkably identical, wasn’t it? Same tweaked toning, same very attentive fader, especially if it wasn’t the same microphone.

Seriously, SNL, of the notoriously bad music soundboard, should hire whoever miked that primary school performance.

On the subject of expensive equipment, how often do you see a shiny grand piano at a public school choir concert?

Although the camera work was shaky, the cameraman kept an interesting crop on Greyson, framed by the waiting choir girls. It reminded me of the soldier backdrop they used to give President Bush. Authenticity came of the development that none of the girls were compelled to look too interested, I’m guessing that was sheer fortuity. The result was that Young Mr. Chance was strangely placed off-center, the better to feature the girls. An actual parent would have framed their son to show his feet at the pedals, I guarantee you.

The close crop remained even as Greyson finished and the school emcee offered her remarks, her head off camera. The lens never zoomed, fitting for a digital still camera which cannot zoom in video mode, or because appearances of homemade authenticity be damned, broadcast editors will not abide zoom.

But Greyson gave the game away when he took his bow, aimed not at the audience, but directly at the camera. You’d figure he already had countless home recordings of his Lady Gaga cover, both practice and dinner guest performances. On this stage the camerawork was let to look improvised, like a parent’s afterthought, while Cherub Gaga sang the performance straight ahead, in the same direction to which the emcee addressed the audience. So to whom was Mr. Chance taking his bow?

Our prejudice against tent-dwellers

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Our prejudice against tent-dwellers

Great Depression Okies living in tents
What do home-enabled Coloradans have against disadvantaged people forced to live in tents? The Great Depression saw migrant workers having to subsist under canvas, striking miners have been forced from their homes and into camps in Ludlow and before that Cripple Creek. And of course the first Colorado tent-dwellers to get everyone’s panties in a knot were the Native Americans who held original claim to the territory.

The above photograph is from Dorothea Lange’s historic series which documented the lives of migrant workers as they fled the Dust Bowl for the fertile agricultural plantations of California. The woman at right is the iconic “Migrant Mother” known for a more famous closeup. I chose this shot because it makes clear that she and her seven children were living in a tent.

Colorado was one of the states which the Okies had to cross in search of work in California. As depicted in Grapes of Wrath, Colorado and Arizona only begrudgingly tolerated the vagabonds, making sure they didn’t linger and kept on their way.

Do we fear the poor because they threaten our own sense of prosperity? There but for the grace of God, go ourselves? We shoo them along lest their itinerant ways tax our charity, or they take the righting of economic inequity into their own hands. The Europeans have always shunned the ever-homeless gypsies. Landless people can’t be trusted, they’re in the opposite position of what we look for in businesses, reliable to the extreme of being “bonded.” People unattached to assets don’t have capital to bond them with responsibility.

Depression era photograph by Dorothea LangeBefore Coloradans were chasing off out-of-state migrant workers, yesterday’s illegal immigrants, they were offended by earlier indigent encampments. When miners struck in Colorado’s southern coal fields, the mine owners evicted them from the company-owned houses. The unions were left to build a tent city in Ludlow to put pressure on the industry to accept some labor demands. The standoff was spun as a standoff between the ungrateful miners, most of them recent immigrants, and a nation’s critical source of heating fuel. The Colorado population was roused to man a militia and beat the miners into submission. As much as consumers feared an interrupted coal supply in the record cold of the winter of 1914, imagine the miners enduring in their tents. In the end, we all know the result: the Ludlow Massacre and the unions were defeated.

The gold miners fared slightly better in their 1894 strike to preserve the eight hour day. When they closed down the mines and camped on site to keep them shut, the folks of Colorado Springs were rallied to form a near 2000-strong army to go attack the ingrates. Fortunately the miners escaped a battle, but the common population’s prejudice against the laborers in their tents was the same.

Could these have been related to the sentiments which inflamed Colorado Territory settlers in 1864, enough to go after the few remnants of Native Americans encamped along Sand Creek?

The Pikes Peak region plays an ignoble role in all of these examples. Men from Colorado Springs and Colorado City formed the population from which participants were drawn for Chivington’s raid against the Cheyenne, the private army which marched against the Cripple Creek gold strike, and the militia which Rockefeller mobilized to torment the tent city of Ludlow. Colorado Springs was a hotbed of Klu Klux Klan activity in the 1930s, epitomizing local xenophobia.

When Colorado Springs city councilman speak of fielding calls from constituents angry about the growing homeless encampments, I cannot help but think of our legacy of intolerance of people deemed lesser than us. Colorado Springs has always been ripe for bigotry and hatred.

Not so long ago our city was the crucible for Amendment Two which sought to deprive homosexuals of protection from discrimination. More recently fear-mongering about immigration from Mexico made Colorado Springs fertile for recruiting gunmen for the Minutemen, to make pilgrimages to the Mexican border with the promise of getting to shoot Mexicans pell-mell. Since the election of President Obama, we’ve seen a phenomenal growth of Tea Party enthusiasts, white bigots determined not to have their taxes spent by a nigger.

What a sorry racist lot we’ve been, anti-labor, anti-progressive and anti-poor. Somewhere in the past there must have been city leaders who defied the simple-minded xenophobia of our historic population, otherwise all our statues of municipal heroes would be wearing clan gowns. Hopefully with the current bloodlust to run off the victims of our current depression, city politicians will lead my setting a higher moral example.

Bobcat

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bobcat lynx rufus spotted on Cheyenne MountainCOLO. SPRINGS- We’ve seen mule deer in the dozen, two bears wrestling, and fox triplets at play, but this was the first wild cat Marie had seen on Cheyenne Mountain. Did it escape the zoo? It’s a Bobcat, aka Lynx Rufus, halted momentarily for the camera. This cat stood 22 inches or so tall at the shoulders, with a paw print 2.5 inches wide, and moved with a stealthy nonchalance across the properties, but you could plot its progress by the loud consternation of the birds. Wildlife management was not alerted.



bobcat lynx rufus cheyenne mountain
Taking in the sun while waiting out the photographer.

bobcat lynx rufus hunting
Deciding on an alternate route.

Who runs Colorado Springs?

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NoradWho runs Colorado Springs might be a funny question to ask if the answer wasn’t so sad? Why the US military runs Colorado Springs and at the heart of it all is NORAD. See NORAD images Check them out at atomicbombs@cheyennemountain!com

Cheyenne Mtn white-flight or white lie?

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Cheyenne Mtn white-flight or white lie?

cheyenne mountain footballThere is an aspect about the Cheyenne Mountain High School drug bust story that most interests me. An insider aught to be able to confirm it: Did the student who narc’d on his druggie friends really have to move –siblings, household and all– straight out of town? That weekend, the rumor goes, so terrified was his/her family of the wrath of the “¡MEXICAN NATIONALS!”

No need to reveal the student’s name, and I’m certainly not going suggest the Xanax-stowaway did anything wrong to break the silence, of apparent consent, on the Cheyenne Black Tar Breakfast Club.

But someone who knew the student’s name, could look up his/her address –in the school directory if the address in unlisted, then go straight to the spot, or talk to the neighbors, or of course consult friends you might have in common, to confirm or debunk the hysteria.

Did Family Xanax pull up and go, moving van and all, to parts unknown, protected by the same White Mountain keep-our-troubles-to-ourselves White Witness Protection Program which kept a lid on its untroubled heroin trendies?

I’d like to know, who is it the family thinks is after them, the so-called “Mexican National” devils? Weren’t the two suppliers arrested? Is there a Mexican drug cartel that must avenge what happened? That must keep rich kid students cow-towed in fear, lest the next frightened Xanax-abuser, think little enough to squeal on the next Mexican foot soldiers to take on the rich-kid-malaise HS gold mine?

Why do I doubt it?

Could it be instead, the other white rich parents of whom the Xanax-parental-gardians are more afraid?

It occurs to me now, thinking of a past acquaintance with another local high school, two in fact: Manitou and Coronado, to name them, that their chief drug supplier, a few years ago, lived in the Cheyenne Mountain school district! I visited his house, actually. It was quite spacious, and his father was in on the action, also ran a chop-shop, as I recall.

Now that’s someone the neighbors would know to fear. Is that guy still around? Probably there’s some kind of expiration date for how long a recent HS grad can hang around school without becoming conspicuous.

Am I the only one who thinks there’s a story here? Violence between dealers is commonplace; are customers also kept terrorized? If User X and family did have to skip out of town, who did they flee? Brown-skinned outsiders? Or white skinned bad boys still here?

It’s one thing for affluent Cheyenne Mountain families to keep mum and take their substance-abuse challenge lumps. It’s another to acquiess to drug use like it’s their child’s rite-of-passage, spelled “right.” I’m not sure they don’t think it’s spelled the same. For some privileged folk, it seems a person’s ability to afford something is the only determinant of whether it’s right. Laws do not apply to freedoms they will not be denied.

And of course, the chief benefit derived from propagating the urban-mythic Family Hightails It Out-of-Town story, is that it reinforces a code of silence. We don’t betray our own.

And it slams shut the barn door. There’s nothing further to talk about, they’re gone. Don’t re-ignite the issue lest you invite the attention of the bogiemen out for revenge.

Bearing False Witness
Worse, to me, might be to let the storytellers lay the whole mess at the feet of the White Mountain non-whites. Cheyenne Mountain households are the same conservatives crying for blood at our southern border. They support harsher measures to stem illegal immigration, yet they rely on the undocumented workforce for their domestics. Those who are rich developers, builders and car dealers hire an enormous share of the local illegals. This disparate attitude is not contradictory. Unforgiving immigration policies keep wages low.

And then the opportunist-hypocrites want to blame their children’s drug problems on the same victims.

Let’s find out the truth to that white-flight story. What good is served –to amplify the potentially false stigma– by remaining un-skeptical about such a salacious rumor?

Black tar heroin bust spoils Cheyenne Mountain High School White Christmas

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I’ll admit I was pretty floored when I read that students at Cheyenne Mountain High School — my kids’ school — were busted for using and dealing heroin. Apparently, a hired drug-sniffing dog led police to a locker containing Xanax, an anti-anxiety medication, that hadn’t been prescribed for the locker’s owner. The word is that this kid ratted out his fellow drug-using students. Whether this was an attempt to minimize his crime, or to strike a plea bargain of some kind, I don’t know. I called my college girl with breaking news of the drug busts. “Yeah,” she said, nearly yawning, or so it seemed, “it’s not 25 kids, it’s only 15. I heard the two dealers are facing 7 to 12 and the rest of the kids are being sent to rehab.” With Facebook, news disseminates in real time so my scoop was already old news to her.
Cheyenne-Mountain-High-School-banner

Undeterred, I dropped in on a fellow mother to deliver my bombshell. “Oh, yeah, there’ve been rumors of heroin use at Cheyenne for at least a couple years.” She proceeded to give me the lowdown on two of the alleged dealers.

Okay, everyone knew but me. But let me at least wager a guess about the future: since no drugs were found to be in possession of any student, there’s nothing the school can do to any of the alleged users. Not even a suspension, which is as it should be if due process is honored. I wouldn’t expect much more than hand-wringing from the parents who didn’t notice their children were strung out on heroin. The kids who’ve admitted smoking the stuff will likely be sent to $10,000/week rehab facilities where they can meet Mary Kate Olson or Lindsay Lohan and come back to mini-celebrity status.

The rest of us will distance ourselves from distasteful realities, likely with the full cooperation of teachers, shrinks, and media. One local headline read “D12 students were sold black tar heroin,” not “D12 students bought black tar heroin.” The subtle difference provides us a tiny emotional cushion.

Rather than dealing with the very real problems that plague our community, we’ll continue to emphasize the role of the drug-smuggling “Mexican nationals” in the corruption of our teenagers. Though the media has demonized them repeatedly, no one I’ve talked to knows anything about them, or exactly what a Mexican national is. But, then again, Cheyenne Mountain doesn’t know much about Mexicans in general, or blacks, or Indians that aren’t the school mascot. Come to think of it, we’d also never heard of BLACK TAR heroin. We thought heroin was supposed to be pure and white, like us. In any case, we take only prescription drugs, which is why we hurt for whichever mother had her Xanax jacked, the not-so-shocking incident that started this whole dark chapter.

‘Vigilant Shield ’09’? More like just scary and crazy…

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putinPurely by coincidence, my daughter and I were out walking on a rather warm Colorado Springs night with our ‘PEACE” dog, Harriet. Little did we know???? As we walked under the stars Wednesday night, my daughter asked me what bright star was that high above Cheyenne Mountain? And I looked….

…and we looked… and we looked.

‘Heck, that’s no star at all’, I said. ‘but what is it?’

And the more we looked, the more we noticed that it was too bright to be either a star or a planet. And then we noticed another more faint light, kind of red light. Then we noticed that there was many more than just one or two unusual lights up there! And they were moving slow and creepy like!

‘What is this?, asked my daughter with increasing anger. I, having grown extremely accustomed to much military nonsense when she was several years younger watching the Navy pilot training play center over Corpus Christi Bay, plus many other similar glimpses at the over militarization of our country, I really did not get to emotional this night at the “Boys with Toys’, but my daughter kept getting angrier and angrier as she became aware that the entire sky seemed taken over by their UFOs. She was hardly calmed down by me mentioning that these flights by the UFOS seemed to slowly criss cross between Cheyenne Mountain, Peterson Air Force Base, and the Air Force Academy. What was going on?!!!! she wanted to know?

I told her that I had no idea what this was all about. However, today I have now learned that it was some sort of bullshit nuclear game role playing called ‘Vigilant Shield ’09’ kickoff from the NORAD bunker here in our fair city. In the olden days of my youth, I would have fallen to my knees, placed my hands behind my head, and stayed close to the floor. I guess the training for this has gotten rather cold now post former Soviet Union times and I did not even inform my daughter how to best protect herself from a nuclear bomb ala ’50s Red Scare days.

‘Cover Up, Honey! You don’t want to get radioactive or pulverized into vapor!’

Here is a good question? What Is NORTHCOM Up To? Let’s follow that by What is Braxton Technologies up to?

I don’t really feel much safer with this going on, and in fact it makes me think maybe Southern Argentina might be a safer place to live than Colorado Springs, which will be Ground Central for a Nuclear Holocaust? Do you feel safer now that Braxton Technologies and others like them are out there making a killing? If you do, then I’d like to know WHY? These fools seem to think that they actually can ‘win’ a nuclear war! More than just a bit scary… Our neighbors here in Colorado Springs are just plain scary and crazy both. 601st Air and Space Operations Center

Life, Love, Liberty and Lunch

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graduation cheyenne mountain high school julia marie walden
I’m taking over the Bachelor Nutrition Series. Yes, Eric is a bachelor. But he’s my bachelor; as such, he’s carefully tended and well fed. The Simple Nutrition Series (its new name) should be geared toward those who know something about the body and, as such, desire nutritious fare but who, for whatever reason, find themselves culinarily challenged for a spell.

Proper equipment, fresh ingredients, adaptable recipes, sufficient time and talent — all components of good nutrition — are in short supply when one finds herself alone, in a dorm room, on a big college campus, hungry for both food and companionship. Yes, the hot pot is small consolation, and stands in the way of starvation. But wouldn’t it be great if a moveable feast was a genuine possibility? If the way to the heart is truly through the stomach, shouldn’t a girl come prepared for the journey?

My lovely Julia graduated from Cheyenne Mountain High School this weekend. Voted Most Likely to Win the Nobel Prize for Literature, and Best Sense of Humor — both make me so happy! — she did not win the Next Rachael Ray title. So begins my Fifteen Freshman Recipes Cookbook.

Freshman Fifteen #1 — Tortilla pizzas
I will not sing the praises of the lard/bleached-flour combo known as the tortilla. Pure dreck if you ask me. But, in a pinch, it can be the foundation for a nutritious gourmet pizza.

The PRESTO Pizzazz Pizza Oven is a stand-alone device that can cook a fresh or frozen pizza in minutes. We experimented with it tonight and discovered a few nutritious alternatives to Totino’s, using flour tortillas as our crust.

I placed the following items along the counter:
marinara sauce
olive oil
chopped fresh garlic
chopped fresh cilantro
chopped fresh basil
chopped fresh spinach
black beans
sliced black olives
turkey pepperoni
sliced roma tomatoes
sliced green pepper
sliced green onions
pineapple tidbits
shredded cheddar
shredded mozzarella
shredded swiss

We used the above ingredients in various tasty combinations and had a really lovely time of it.

A few combinations we discovered:
-black beans, tomatoes, cilantro, green onions, cheddar
-olive oil, spinach, garlic, basil, swiss
-marinara, pepperoni, pineapple, black olives, mozzarella

Each pizza took about six minutes, and ended up crisp and delicious. Not exactly haute cuisine, but definitely a step up from the ramen noodles of my era!
julia walden cheyenne mountain high school

Zebulon Pike was an Illegal Alien (In the No Hater Zone)

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posted this on Craigslist… Date: 2008-05-25, 1:31AM MDT

Just to remind people, since the Old Colorado City Territory Days celebration of colonialism and Imperialism is going on…

Young Lieutenant Pike, and his merry crew of saboteurs, spies and setup crew for the eventual Yanqui invasion, came to Colorado when it was SPANISH territory. Not that the Spanish had actually asked permission when they took over, but hey, according to the “Well, Illegal Immigration is against the Law, so the Immigrants are Felons” argument should apply equally, yes?

Pike and his crew encountered troops (the Spanish version of I.C.E., Da Fuzz, cops, whatever, but they had at least paper title to be here, and Pike didn’t) and did what any Honest, True, Red Blooded American Officer and Gentleman would do… he lied his ass off.

Said he was lost. Never mind the surveying equipments, wagonload of freshly drawn and annotated MAPS, and Native guides who knew damned well which invading force was occupying the Springs at the time. Heavens no, it’s not like a Mapping Expedition (into a foreign country no less) could possibly know where in Hell they’re located.

I wrote this just to remind all you sissy ass, titty baby fearful wannabe terrorists who have been crying and bitching and snivelling about somebody actually having a darker complexion or speaking with an accent, or in a different language, actually sharing YOUR personal universe, of which, no doubt, you racist Hate Freaks own every cubic inch…

To remind you that your own titty-baby whining arguments can be used against you as well.

If you want to live in America, learn the damn language… in this area the languages are Cheyenne, Blackfoot, Lakota, Uintah and Athapascan (Apache and Navajo), and those are just the largest language groups.

You freaks who want to impose “English ONLY” are also insisting that we of the Native Persuasion not be allowed to speak OUR languages, and even in our own homes.

Your leaders actually do say exactly that. Because (so they claim) speaking in a non-English “foreign” language like Cherokee would “hold the children back when they go to school and later when they join the Slave Labor Forces”

I should clarify that, Cherokee isn’t actually a language, it’s a dialect of Muskogeean.

Those of you who cry and snivel the longest and most fervently about “wetbacks” not speaking English well, (I’ve noticed) don’t bother to learn to actually read and write or even speak English FLUENTLY yourselves… and it’s the only language you ever learned.

I realize that you sissies will spend hours of your time debating a phantom issue, you’re very good at that game. I’m personally not going to even read your insignificant ignorant replies to this post. You’ll be screaming (figuratively speaking), Ranting, insulting, calling me a LiberalIntellectualCommiePinkoNiggerLovingFagJewBoy or whatever, and either challenging me to a fist fight (I would win) or threatening to kill me and my entire family.

I’m used to such childish threats and tantrums.

Get over it.

Location: In the No Hater Zone
it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

PostingID: 694154329

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Freedom of Speech in America IMO

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Free Speech -use it or loose it.Reprinted from vol 30, no 2
Active For Justice:
 
As one on the receiving end of a rather abrupt truncation of free expression in last year’s St. Patrick’s Day parade, and having participated this year with a toned-down message calculated to least offend, I don’t offer healthy prospects for Freedom of Speech as this nation progresses forward.

Even as the populace gets excited about a potential Obama victory, the candidate himself has been aligning with the disasterous policies of the current administration. Indeed Barack Obama has voted with Bush thus far. I predict therefore that voices for social justice will still feel the call to protest, and likewise the government’s need to silence dissent will continue.

More and more headlines tell of Americans deprived of their voice. Most recently a man was denied entry to a shopping mall on account of his t-shirt, despite courts deciding people have that right. Such indignant citizens are regularly arrested and detained, to be released without filing charges. The pattern has become to keep activists from public view until after whatever they are protesting has passed. Municipalities weigh the risk of incurring civil suits against the imperative to obfuscate criticism.

The PPJPC will have an interesting opportunity to test its members’ First Amendment protection with the 2008 Democratic State Convention coming to Colorado Springs. This will be no mere protest of a visiting dignitary, nor a picketing of a military facility. The convention will bring thousands of delegates together to the World Arena on May 16 and 17, where they will formalize the platform for their state party. The delegates will be skirting a panoply of issues, all of them relevant to the populace outside, many dear to us. Social justice groups from all over will be well served to take this opportunity to communicate with these delegates on the sidewalks and in front of TV cameras.

Citizens expect the Democratic Party to be more responsive to their constituents than Republicans, but the Democrats certainly haven’t
shown it. The state convention will be exactly the place to address such representative responsibility loud and clear.

The Colorado Springs city manager and CSPD have already begun expressing what they’d like to see, or not see, by way of public
demonstrations. They approve of the minimal turnout for the Bush protest of 2005, where activists were kept to Venetucci Boulevard. The
city is offering to host a forum to listen to public opinion while the convention continues without interruption. As yet there has been no
public mention of restrictions.

The World Arena sits on land stewarded by the El Pomar Foundation. Certainly the facility was built with participation from the city. The
street which connects Cheyenne Meadows Drive to Frontage Road, though it is marked “private,” has city curbs, signs and culverts. Whether the grounds are public or private could bear to be challenged in court. But as trends go, the police could feel safe in designating Free Speech Zones at certain areas of the grounds.

We don’t have to push it that far. The World Arena parking area is surrounded by several well situated public egresses from which to
demonstrate a message. We can choose to be seen by cars entering and exiting, or by pedestrians walking to and from their nearby hotel accommodations. There are places to hand out fliers and places visible to the convention doors. There is even a location prominent to where a national candidate, or two, could arrive, if the party deems it strategic to make a show for the Colorado delegates.

Efforts are underway to coordinate activist groups from Denver and Boulder to join us, to push the convention goers toward more
progressive, and in our case, moral ideals. This should prove a good measure of what Coloradans retain of their Freedom of Speech, and will be a good exercise for refining a message if we choose to participate in Denver demonstrations planned by our national colleagues at the Democratic National Convention this August.

Colorado Springs military community

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First Army Division
I was working on a poster to protest the Ft Carson expansion meeting, to challenge the notion that more military investment will benefit the city. Will it? FIVE MAJOR MILITARY INSTALLATIONS ALREADY AND THE CITY AND COUNTY ARE BROKE. But I picked up a brochure at the meeting which boasts that our city is beneficiary to more than the five.

Did you know there’s a Colorado Springs Chamber of Commerce Military Affairs Division charged with Service, Support and Advocacy of the military. Specifically:

– To sustain and cultivate the long-standing tradition
      of support to our military community and;
– To advocate and facilitate defense industry growth.

The Colorado Springs military community comprises:
  North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)
  US Northern Command (USNORTHCOM)
  Air Force Space Command
  US Army Space and Missile Defense Command /
      Army Forces Strategic Command
  7th Infantry Division -Fort Carson
  21st Space Wing -Peterson AFB
  50th Space Wing -Schriever AFB
  United States Air Force Academy
  Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station
  302nd Airlift Wing (AFRES) -Peterson AFB
  310th Space Group -Schriever AFB
  Space Innovation and Development Center (SIDC)
  Joint National Integration Center (JNIC)
  Joint Functional Component Command –
        Integrated Missile Defense (JFCC-IMD)

Regional non-DoD organizations include:
  Military Affairs Council (MAC)
  Area Chiefs of Staff (ACOS)
  Defense Mission Task Force (DMTF)
  Colorado Defense Mission Coalition (COMC)

Sand Creek No Gun Ri

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This morning will be the dedication of the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site. The headline of today’s Gazette? “One man’s battle” about whether the 1864 slaughter was a massacre or a battle, and reporting the re-release of a 1925 first hand account written by Irving Howbert who, 61 years after the fact, did not recall the atrocities ascribed to his unit. Whatever kind of near sesquicentenial slap in the face is this? Do you think the prominent placement of this insult could have something to do with blurring America’s vision about current military massacres?

Normally respected Old Colorado City historian Dave Hughes is republishing the book, and wants to repaint the Sand Creek Massacre as, well, not a massacre at all. A quick recap: One early morning in 1864, 700 cavalry volunteers swooped into a village of 500 Arapaho and Cheyenne refugees, killing nearly 200 (the Gazette says 150) committing unmentionable atrocities, following the command “Kill or scalp all, big and little; nits become lice!”

I first heard Dave Hughes talk about the glories of war at, of all places, the traveling Vietnam War Memorial. It reflected a myopic immoral tide change I would never have been cynical enough to foresee, and it presaged our national sanction of the US war of aggression against Iraq and acceptable collateral damage. In the shadow of the traveling wall, remembering the 58,000 American dead, where not often enough did someone mention the millions of Vietnamese dead, Dave spoke of his immense pride of commanding his men, suffering the terrible casualties they did in Korea. The heavier the toll, the deeper his pride, the blustery commander was volunteering, if it weren’t for old-age, to do it again. I kid you not. Though he lost half his men to the battle, he would bravely venture more.

Downplaying massacres seems to be Hughes’ game. If you Google No Gun Ri, the now admitted deliberate massacre of hundreds of Korean refugees in 1950, here’s what do you’ll get: Dave Hughes on record standing up for the actions of American machine gunners. Here too, he wasn’t there, and relies on the recollection of soldiers who might have reasons to be blanking out on those parts. For shame. I know and like Dave Hughes, but he’s got a moral screw loose. And as we’ve seen in this town, that’s catching.

Elsewhere in the news, a play opens in London which retells the tragedy of Fallujah, in the actual words of participants on both sides. Authorities note 70 breaches of international conventions by the US forces. Soldiers like Dave Hughes can explain to themselves the necessity of sniping, gassing and obliterating hundreds of civilians in the regular conduct of war. Luckily wiser soldiers and statesmen before them have already addressed man’s bloodlust and agreed there are crimes that must never be rationalized.

Have WMDs, will travel

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Trying to find weapons of mass destruction in your area to stop those Iranian beasts that got you so scared? Did you know that the Air Force controls over 6,000 nuclear weapons out of around 10,000 that the US has on standby? About 400 of these are located about 200 miles are so away from Colorado Springs at Warren Air Force Base. Feel more secure now? Whatever you do, don’t refer to these as Ass Force bases if you visit Cheyenne, Wyoming. Or if you go to the local Air Force Academy for a hike. Or you might get yourself handcuffed and hauled away to jail like those 3 highschool cheerleaders did at the football game.

I once got into an argument with a friend in Seattle that assured me that the US was not an overly militarized society! He just didn’t see it as compared to Israel, where he had toured as a rock star while a youngster. That is a militarized society he assured me, not here. Well, FYI, the Seattle area not only has the Boeing Company as its main employer, but it also has about 2,500 atomic weapons ready for deployment centered at Bangor less than 100 miles from the city. But my friend just had a blindspot in his vision, that’s all. He just couldn’t see what was right in front of him.

You are much more likely to be blown up by an American nuclear weapon, than by an Iranian one.

White Mountain

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Hitch your horse to this manservantWhite Mountain met its match last night, at their homecoming football game. The idea usually is to pick an opponent to beat at your homecoming festivities. Later you might visit a fellow school on their homecoming weekend and lose to them in return. But “South,” the underprivileged shoe-in with half the athletic department and budget, would not play ball. And that was the good news.

There was a distinct home advantage, the bigger, better lit bleachers, the multiple cheerleading squads, the band, the fireworks, everything uphill and upwind from the diminutive visitors stands. But the Indians got whooped by the visiting Pueblo South Colts, and maybe expected it. It felt like a surprise to most, and it was pretty dark out there. Add to that the anonymity of shiny football helmets under high school stadium lights, but if you looked closely you could tell it was darker on the south side of the field. The Pueblo South High School players were black and hispanic.

White Mountain gets its name because there are no children of color there. Well, there are the occasional adopted black children, and the whitish black children of privilege, but few others. Cheyenne Mountain is very very white. Nothing wrong with that, it’s an affluent neighborhood and welcomes all who can afford to be there.

But at the base of Cheyenne Mountain is a racism more overt and the children of White Mountain pass it everyday. Cheyenne Mountain Resort is a terribly exclusive country club with amazingly expensive membership fees and golf tee fees. And all the attendants there are black. It’s the Pullman porter valet concept with plantation era uniforms. They look like lawn jockey figurines. Thin black people in pure white clothes. Smiling black faces, happy to be there. Nothing illegal about the hiring standard, here’s how it works:

Cheyenne Mountain Resorts applies for an immigration waiver to hire international workers. They claim the jobs which resorts offer cannot be filled by the local labor force. The pay’s not enough, the career prospects are not enough, and true enough, the local populace is not enough either. Too fat maybe, poor work ethic, have social problems perhaps, and locals have their own transport to bring or fetch complications for the resort. Locals bring too much financial baggage to the table.

On the other hand, imported laborers are housed at company apartments. They’re shuttled to and from work. When they’ve finished their three month stint they are sent home. Deliriously uncomplicated and cheap. Cheyenne Mountain Resorts does its hiring in Jamaica. Know any white people in Jamaica? Well, they don’t appear to sign up to work across the sea, away from their home and family, on a rich man’s plantation.

The Broadmoor takes advantage of the same immigrant labor waiver to staff its hotel and restaurant, except they hire exclusively in Eastern Europe. I’m not sure that’s not racist to another extreme. The slavic labor force is the least expensive in the world, in the world of white people. There are no colored peoples there.

The immigrant labor waiver is an unfair means for local employers to escape contributing to a sustainable and healthy local community. It’s a foreign aid program of sorts, but at the expense of what could be local jobs. And when it’s racially segregated, it’s ugly. I plan to ask around if White Mountain prefers its golf jockeys all black. If they can’t say it with a straight face, they should stop it.

This isn’t about racism, it’s about economic justice. If we want to believe in the notion that the American dream is available to people of all shades and heritage, we must not teach our children that racial differences dictate social status.

USAFA, I’m glad I knew ya!

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pictureAhhh, it’s September again….my favorite time of the year. Lazy Saturday mornings spent in oversized sweatshirts and fluffy slippers, drinking coffee, aspen trees on Cheyenne Mountain clad in autumnal glory, jets practicing for afternoon Air Force football games.

I’ve attended many such games. When the jets fly overhead without warning I feel an incredible patriotic stirring in my loins. The poor unwitting soul seated next to me invariably must endure my tongue in his or her ear and my breathy rendition of Lee Greenwood’s neo-national anthem, Proud to Be An American. Tears stream down my face as I stand up and shout PENIS! PENIS! PENIS! (I think I remember a similarly-named Japanese film from my youth). Could there be anything sexier or more masculine than an F-16 suddenly overtaking me from behind? A Blackhawk helicopter hovering over me quivering, gyrating, rotoring away? A sleek submarine slipping into the murky depths? MY GOD, I don’t even need to sit on the washing machine anymore. The military presence in our town leaves me FULLY SATISFIED.

Unfortunately, I was raised Catholic and was compelled by nuns and priests of dubious character to consider always the plight of my fellow man. Okay….sigh….I’ll give it a shot. I wonder what it costs the taxpayers to bring out the heavy artillery in the name of athletic superiority? How much jet fuel do we have to buy so that the flyboys can do their thing? Is this truly the most expensive pre-game show in the history of college athletics? Shit. At the bottom of my hill are countless families biding their time at Fort Carson while fathers are in Iraq fighting terrorists on behalf of the good ol’ US of A. Families are living paycheck to paycheck….moms are alone making breakfast, lunch, and dinner….helping with homework….singing lullabies….fixing broken cars, peeling paint, fractured bones.

Oh, well. That’s what they signed up for, isn’t it? If it wasn’t military service it would be incarceration. Really. They should just shut their fat yaps and be grateful that Uncle Sam has given them a job at all. Meanwhile I’m going to sit on my deck and watch my protectors doin’ their thing….for you, for me, for the team. Ohhhhh. Mmmmmmm. Ahh, baby….Yes. Yeeessss. TORA! TORA! TORA!

White Native Americans

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A branch of our local library is hosting a discussion about a recent work of popular fiction, One Thousand White Women by Jim Fergus. I’m thinking of stopping by to puke.

The novel begins by alluding that its unspeakable historical premise has factual merit. ALLEGEDLY the author’s great great aunt, a “May Dodd”, left a journal about her life experience, hidden all these years in shame by her family. The author takes it upon himself to tell her repressed tale, and because it is the untold fate of 999 nameless more, we infer it to be one of the dark secrets of the American national identity.

The story concerns 1000 white women who were traded to the Indians in exchange for resettlement and peace. One thousand white women. The title does grab you. It has undeniable where-the-white-women-at? appeal.

Another prominant White IndianThe phenomena also shares something with the White Indian Series by Donald Porter. That’s a western series for readers who couldn’t be bothered to know about the lives of the Native Americans unless they were WHITE Native Americans. These readers can’t sympathize with Indians as victims, unless they are white Indian victims, and then preferably of course they should be white Indian victims of Indians.

The mythic white Indian abounds on film, and it’s not just Indians. The story of The Last Samurai had to be about a white man in Japan (Tom Cruise) or who would care?

Here you have the fate of 1000 women sold, sacrificed or let loose down the river to become Indian squaws. One part romantic fantasy, several parts feminist grudge, (1000 parts rape fetish?), all at the hands of red heathen.

To be fair, the author does provide a disclaimer that 1000 white women never changed hands. Fergus implies however that an original Cheyenne proposal to be given 1000 white women was real and asks readers to ponder, what if?

If true, it’s a piercing lesson on the embarrassing legacy that can come from sarcasm.

How deeply insulting is it to suggest that Indian tribal leaders would have asked the army negotiators for white women? And as a condition of laying down their weapons? I think it’s indescribably racist to be susceptible to thinking that Indian fathers and braves sought white mates with whom to raise new generations of their tribe.

Neither in-breeding nor poor education are excuses enough for this prevalent self-centered bigotry.

Town square Citizens Tribunal

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It tolls for thee
At the prospect of our nation executing Zacarias Moussaoui for perpetrating his unforgivable evil, conspiring and lying, let’s invite the big league lawbreakers to consider turnabout is fair play.

Let’s hold a preliminary trial and sentencing for our current governing criminals, traitors and kleptocrats. In advance of being able to bring them to account officially, let’s give them a vision of what they can expect for their own fate. Remember the revolutionary tribunals of the French Revolution? Something like that, the wrath of the people, without the guillotine.

Plans are to hold a mock tribunal with accused to be tried in absentia and executed in effigy. The evidence has already been presented and tried in multiple tribunals around the world. The first charge is war crime: the crime against peace, and multiple counts of crimes against humanity. These crimes have already been proven. We will enumerate upon each for the sake of onlookers who may not be as familiar.

The other crimes are treason, based on the betrayal of this nation’s founding principles, its constitution and bill of rights. Support of the Patriot Act alone is treason. Likewise is support for illegal detention and torture. And election fraud.

Other capital offenses are war profiteering, influence peddling and selling one’s vote.

The accused are the leaders, accomplices, and all complicit in permitting these crimes. If Zacarias Moussaoui can be convicted, even executed for conspiring to participate in the alleged 9/11 plot, then our local military commanders, politicians, community leaders and corporate executives can be considered guilty of conspiracy to wage a war of aggression against the nation of Iraq, the ultimate war crime. All Republicans have conspired to betray this democracy.

We’ll get a permit from the city to use the park at the center of town. We’ll hire the park for two days. On the first day we’ll begin to build the scaffold and work overnight so to have it finished by the next midday. At night we will have bright work lights to illuminate our activity. If by noon we are still hammering at the scaffold through the first part of the tribunal, all the better.

The tribunal will begin at noon with the reading of the charges. Next we will read the list of accused. We will dispense with the usual suspects in Washington and focus exclusively on the persons within the jurisdiction of our citizen’s tribunal. Our region’s own culprits.

We’ll have a display with the list of national figures to be attended by a national tribunal.

Next a prosecutor will elaborate on the charges of war crimes. Then an attorney will speak in defense of each accused. At this point we will entertain nominations for further culpable parties and consider their defense. After which the verdicts will be read and sentences announced.

The judge might be a kangaroo teleconferencing from Cheyenne Mountain Zoo through video chat on a laptop. This will be entirely for theatrical purposes. As stated, war crimes have already been proved. The accused have continuously refused to repudiate their expressed public support for the illegal war. The charges of treason and racketeering are already self evident.

A mock hanging will be performed for each of the accused, reading their name and dropping the trap door. Executions will be videotaped and streamed online in real time and archived for friends and supporters to see.

Naturally this citizen’s tribunal will act only as a precurser to the veritable tribunals. Justice will eventually catch up with each and every of these greedy buggers.