Monday, May 21, 2012

40 + Iraq/Afghanistan war vets toss medals at NATO protest

See story here. The first video has many of the very stirring speeches of 40 odd American vets who threw their military and war medals over the fence protecting buildings housing the NATO meeting in Chicago. NATO of course has been a co-conspirator with the United States in militaryaggression for more than twenty years. (At nine minutes one veteran tells about his post-war experience with protesters in the West Bank being attacked by Israeli soldiers.) The second also has much of it. Other shorter videos have some of these and other snippets, all in more closeup shots. Watch them.











Wednesday, May 16, 2012

When a buddy goes to the other side...

All of us 60 somethings have seen friends - and "foes" - go to the other side, especially over the last few years. I made an In Memoriam page for my buddy libertarian peacenik and draft and tax resister Bruce Baechler when in 2000, at the age of 45, he had a heart attack after an auto accident. See it here with lots of photos and his full (rather small) website as of the time of his death. Above, Bruce and Carol in Waco in September 1993 visiting the surviving Branch Davidians at the hotel where they were living at the time.

Bruce was known as an intrepid ballot access organizer and petitioner for the Libertarian Party - and a workshipper of the Goddess Maryjane. Now another buddy from that same crew, who lived out another 25 plus years, also has passed on.

John Robertson was a HOOT! He always told me I was one, so what greater compliment!
Independent Political Report has an obituary if you want more details. Here's a photo of John with Marijuana legend Jack Herer.

Here's John with his beloved dog Goldie whose grave he was buried next to. Probably collecting signatures for Nancy Lord for D.C. Mayor in 1990.

And here's John and Carol at the 1993 Libertarian Convention in Salt Lake City.
See you 75 years down the road in some future revolution, Bruce and John! (I'll probably be a guy and you'll be gals, so watch out for my lothario ways!)


Wednesday, May 09, 2012

Libertarian Spring! Revolution in the LP

The Libertarian Party national leadership (the Libertarian National Committee) tends to swing back and forth between certain longtime pragmatic "partyarchs" with delusions of grandeur committed to winning at all costs and an ever revolving crew representing the large majority of more principled libertarians who want to get the message out - but don't intend to sell out. The latter tend not to show at the biannual national conventions quite as often as the former. (Photo grabbed from tv of Presidential Nominee Gary Johnson on the convention floor.)

This time a particularly power mad set of "libertarian" conservatives (mostly Israel supporters) - popularly known as the "cabal" - were royally trounced from the national committee that they assumed they easily would take over for a 5th year running. My BOOT ROOT (neocon Wayne Root) convention website and Libertarians for Peace press release - distributed to all delegates - certainly had some small impact on the proceedings. Root only was re-elected to one of the five at large seats on the committee because Presidential candidate Gary Johnson owed him some favors and personally endorsed him from the stage - to boos from the floor. The self-promoting and allegedly wealthy "born again Christian gambler" Root nevertheless got the lowest vote total of the five candidates.

DC delegates celebrate to left. I didn't make it myself.

Here's links to the most relevant Reason Magazine coverage: Anarchy at the Libertarian Party Convention - Still no Chair of the Libertarian National Committee - Gary Johnson: The LNC Chair Race is Exciting! Interesting! -Starchild Is Here - Geoff Neale is the new LNC Chairman The Reason reporter also has some great videos. CSPAN covered the debates and presidential voting and acceptance speeches here. Also see Bruce Majors' youtube site.

Below is THE SPEECH that turned the tide: when former Maryland libertarian Nick Sarwark called for people disgusted with the choices for chair to vote for NONE OF THE ABOVE. Enough did to defeat the other candidaes and in the next round of mostly new candidates, new candidate and former chair, principled libertarian Geoff Neale, was elected.



Less Antman's nominating speech for presidential second placer R. Lee Wrights was fantastic.



Libertarian vice presidential nominee Judge Jim Gray's nominating speech was particularly stirring - revolution every twenty years, he says, and we're overdue. (Around 17 minutes on this CPSAN video.)

Someone's unofficial poster.

However, the Libertarian Spring is not over yet. Root and his cronies still have control of the Libertarian National (Congressional OOOPS they renamed it) Campaign Committee, have got the whole donor base, and hope to rook principled libertarians out of their hard earned money to promote their "libertarian" (neo)conservative candidates. Many strategies to combat this insidious faction are being discussed. More to come.


Added later: Here's a 2004 photo of Texan Geoff Neale who in 2012 was elected for a second time as Chair of the Libertarian National Committee.

Wednesday, May 02, 2012

Chomosomal Damage...This is what Apocalypse looks like

A few weeks ago I startled myself awake with the words CHROMOSOMAL DAMAGE... I wrote it down, plus "leading to human extinction" and went back to sleep. But I've certainly thought about it the last few weeks and all the pollutants we are throwing into the air and water, destroying chromosomes and genes until those few babies born will be so deformed they cannot survive and the human race dies out.

Then someone sent me that wild and crazy guy Max Keiser's article: Fukushima Is Falling Apart: Are You Ready … For A Mass Extinction Event? and then I knew what I'd really been dreaming about.  Our worst nightmare from the old nuclear power nightmare days thirty years ago.  But it didn't blow up spectacularly or meltdown to the center of the earth. (At least not yet.) It just keeps up a steady stream of deadly radiation, pumped out in the air and oceans of the world day after day. (Yup, they use ocean water to cool the radioactive nuclear rod containers and much of it ends up back in the ocean.)

According to Max, depending on the fuel, one broken fuel rod leaked into the environment could over time kill almost 3 billion people - and there are 1,500 of these lying about the most damaged Fukushima reactor which easily could fall down upon them in even a small earthquake.   So if each one only kills 10 million people (x 1500 equals 15 billion) -- that's human extinction right there.

We're from the government and we are here to protect you...not from the nuclear dangers we the government created, but from the terrorist plots we the government created with our incredibly skilled undercover agent provocateurs encouraging citizen with fantasies (or wing nuts with wild dreams) to push the button on the fake bombs we the government created and lured them into using....

The Human  Epitaph will read: STUPIDITY is what killed them! Assuming the last survivor can read and write and have enough energy to write it on something semi-permanent before they fall face down in the mud...

This youtube video from the Max Keiser page is particularly fascinating since it shows the slow moving Apocalypse a month later. A couple of intrepid reporters from an alternative news service start recording in the evacuation zone, 30 km from the Fukishima plant - with their Geiger counters clicking away on the dashboard, registering in the single digits. As they approach Fukushima they see emptied towns and a friendly pack of liberated dogs at 21 km. (Surviving dog probably would eat you alive today if you got out of the car.)  They get closer and closer, through herds of aimless cows, through earthquake and tsunami damage, stopping to inspect a tsunami-wrecked truck for any dead driver. Finally 1.5 km from the plant, climbing a hill to get a view, their Geiger counters - which have been beeping away unmercifully - register 109.  We know that's bad.

  

CNN story a year later here shows damage at the plant and mentions 4000 workers are starting a 30 to 40 year cleanup process - where they are allowed to get close enough to highly radioactive debris, that is.  I want to see what those dogs' puppies look like.