Thursday, June 24, 2010

Get Involved!

This is from a local Denver Green Party effort. The local Green Party is doing a cable access TV show, and a few weeks ago picked the Gaza Flotilla attack as the topic.

Its a fascinating discussion, well worth listening too.
Don't laugh too much at the editing ... this was my first try at that. :)


If you're reading this in Denver, come get involved. If you are reading this somewhere else, then look around, the same might be happening near you. Or if not, you can start it. The technology to do make a video is within everyone's grasp.

In Denver, we are fortunate to have Denver Open Media, as a collective to purchase some good gear and provide some nice studio space. But, even without that, a video can be made these days with home video gear and editing on a home computer.

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Time to arrest all Americans

Two stories currently in the news lead to this statement.

Supreme Court upholds terrorism support law This is the law that outlaws any support of any kind to a 'terrorist' organization. Even advice on non-violent conflict resolution is subject to charges under this law.

Probe: US Tax Dollars May Be Funding Taliban In order to truck supplies through Afghanistan, US military contractors are paying protection money to the Taliban. $2 million to $4 million a week. Undoubtedly these costs are being passed along by charging higher rates, and thus eventually paid for by the US tax payer.

Put these two together, and its now clear that every US tax payer is now guilty of providing support to a terrorist organization. We've all paid taxes, and a portion of those taxes have been used to fund the Taliban. I'd say that prison building is about to become a huge growth industry, even more than before, but I'm not sure who will be building these since we'll all be inside the wire.

Maybe we can cut a deal pleading ignorance as to what our taxes were used for. But it occurs to me that this is only possible until the next election. Because on the next election day, we can vote to continue these same Bush/Obama policies on the Afghan war.

Or we can vote for candidates who will do something different. Like get us the heck out of there so we can stop paying protection money to Osama Bin Laden's friends in the Taliban.

Wikileaks video - "Collateral Murder"

Here's the Wikileaks video, "Collateral Murder", of the shooting of the Reuters employees (and about 10 others, including children) in Iraq.  It opens with an appropriate Orwell quote
"Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give the appearence of solidity to pure wind" - George Orwell

What struck me about this video is that the horror just keeps getting worse. You think you've seen the worst of it, and that the rest of the video will just wind down. But then decision after decision just keeps making this even more horrific.

Wikileaks deserves support.