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An Open Letter to Tom a Columbus Guitarist

 

 

Dear Tom:*

   I am writing you this letter on behalf of not just myself, but on behalf of several present and former bandmates and the many people within the local music scene who like and respect you. After a good deal of hint dropping and argumentative banter, we have determined that this letter is the only remaining vehicle by which we can communicate our concerns about a serious problem: to wit, your continued use of the Boss DS-1 Distortion pedal. 

   Initially, we all think you are a damn fine Guitar Player. Sometimes we actually go out to see a band you are playing in just to see you play guitar. Put aside the false modesty and accept this as truth – knowledgeable individuals actually will take an evening of their life and cough up $5.00 just to see you play guitar. Let that sink in.  OK, now hopefully you are ready for more truth…..

Woman groped by NYPD officer at protest faces seven years for flinching

 

 

On March 17, 2012 Occupy Wall Street veterans gathered in Zuccotti Park to commemorate the six month anniversary of the beginning of the Occupy movement. What followed was a mass of New York police in riot gear with batons marching in to crush the protest. Some protestors left, others sat down or linked arms. The results were extreme even for the New York Police Department (NYPD), which has acquired a reputation for brutality. Reported injuries among the protestors included a broken thumb, a broken jaw and at least one protestor struck repeatedly in the back with a nightstick as he fled the park. Multiple witness accounts claim that officers used their boots to hold protestors’ faces to the ground while handcuffed and awaiting the pre-arranged bus to jail.

In Search of a Good War

Seven percent want military options considered (poll by McClatchy-Marist, April 7-10), up from six percent a bit earlier (Pew, March 20-23), or 12 percent for U.S. ground troops and 17 percent for air strikes (CNN, March 7-9). Polling is similar on U.S. desire for a war with Iran, or for U.S. military involvement in Syria. Many more Americans believe in ghosts and UFOs, according to the polls, than believe that these would be good wars. The U.S. public never got behind the war on Libya, and for years a majority has said that the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan never should have been launched. The search for a good war is beginning to look as futile as the search for the mythical city of El Dorado. And yet that search remains our top public project. The U.S. military swallows 55.2 percent of federal discretionary spending, according to the National Priorities Project. Televised U.S. sporting events thank members of the military for watching from 175 nations. U.S. aircraft carriers patrol the world's seas. U.S. drones buzz the skies of nations thousands of miles from our shores.

Matt Bors 05052014

Old habits die hard: Europe's fascist right returns to the mainstream

 

The European Union's parliament is due to undergo elections later this month, and many poll projections across the troubled continent suggest that extreme right and fascist parties are set to make large gains. The Europe-wide elections will take place across all 28 member states in two weeks, an event which many now fear is going to give power and legitimacy to parties running on platforms of racism, sexism, homophobia and fascism.

While Europe's habitual problem of far right extremism never disappeared completely. For years, the EU had made it seem as if it was at least contained, with overtly racist parties gaining very few seats in the European Parliament or legislative bodies in their own countries. Since the global financial crash in 2008, however, the economic hardships of austerity and unemployment have led to a sharp increase in support for the extreme right across Europe, even in the more economically stable northern countries like France and the UK.

What Obama Missed About Our Bought, Rigged and Stolen Elections

 

President Barack Obama has suddenly concluded that the Republicans don’t really like democracy. (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/12/us/politics/criticizing-gop-obama-says-the-right-to-vote-is-threatened.html?_r=0)

The GOP, he says, is doing all it can to deny the vote to women, the poor, people of color, young people and millions more in the 99%: “Across the country, the Republicans have made it harder, not easier, to vote.”

Black teen serves slave owners in coming-of-age tale

After being nearly absent from American multiplexes for decades, slavery has returned at the center of three very different films. Quentin Tarentino’s Django Unchained (2012) was a bullet-riddled Americanization of the spaghetti western. Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave (2013) won a Best Picture Oscar for its grim retelling of a real-life nightmare. And now we have The Retrieval, a low-budget effort that makes up in originality what it lacks in production values. The indie flick may be the most surprising take yet on the shameful institution of American slavery. Written and directed by Chris Eska, it stars Ashton Sanders as Will, an African-American boy who plays a perverse role in the Civil War. Along with his Uncle Marcus (Keston John), the fatherless 14-year-old helps a white bounty hunter named Burrell (Bill Oberst Jr.) recapture escaped slaves.

Killing the Putin-Obama ‘Trust’

“Putin will not talk to Obama under pressure,” American journalist Josh Rogin was told late last week by a close associate of Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. If Russia’s President will no longer call or accept calls from President Obama, this strikes me as the most important casualty so far from U.S.-provoked “regime change” in Ukraine. Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin apparently had conversations on Ukraine almost every week in March; their last talk took place on April 14. U.S. “pressure” – including token economic and travel sanctions against some Russian companies and friends of Putin – is likely to continue. But it is not likely to become more extensive if key European countries “man up” and tell Washington what was obvious from the start; namely, that Russia holds very high cards in this area and that the Europeans will not damage their own flagging economies by approving stronger economic sanctions that would inflict real “punishment” on Russia.

USAID's "Technological Mercenaries" Deceive Cubans

BANGKOK, Thailand -- The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) used "technological mercenaries" in a dumb, secret, illegal assault against Cuba's government and unsuspecting population, comparable to the strategy of deceptive Nazi propaganda, according to Cuban Ambassador Victor Ramirez Pena. "ZunZuneo, in the two years that it was in operation, didn't have enough time to do what it wanted, which was to subvert the order in Cuba," Ambassador Pena said in an interview, referring to USAID's Internet-based social media site named ZunZuneo "It was working on profiling people," in Cuba who had no idea that USAID was sucking up their personal data by secretly hosting and spying on their accounts, to later spam them with anti-communist and pro-American propaganda, he said. "That is something that nobody should be doing because it's illegal by U.S. law, it's illegal by international regulations," Ambassador Pena said. "Does one have to accept that the continuous use of deceit, lies -- as Goebbels said -- to make it a truth, is something that we have to accept?

The United States Democracy Is Illegitimate. Time for the American Awakening.

Two weeks ago in reaction to the McCutcheon decision we touched on an issue that will become central to our movement: Has the democratic legitimacy of the US government been lost? We raised this issue by quoting a Supreme Court Justice, former US president and a sitting US Senator: “The legitimacy of the US government is now in question. By illegitimate we mean it is ruled by the 1%, not a democracy ‘of, by and for the people.’ The US has become a carefully designed plutocracy that creates laws to favor the few. As Stephen Breyer wrote in his dissenting opinion, American law is now ‘incapable of dealing with the grave problems of democratic legitimacy.’ Or, as former president, Jimmy Carter said on July 16, 2013 “America does not at the moment have a functioning democracy.” “Even members of Congress admit there is a problem. Long before the McCutcheondecision Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) described the impact of the big banks on the government saying: ‘They own the place.’ We have moved into an era of a predatory form of capitalism rooted in big finance where profits are more important than people’s needs or protection of the planet.”

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