The Try-Works

Remember this post, where I noted that the geniuses at The Alliance for Real Democracy (T.A.R.D) had filched their front page graphic from Westword?

The graphic which I uploaded so’s we could still chuckle over their corny little thievery when they deleted it?

Well, they’ve deleted it.

Keep reading, T.A.R.D.  I’ll be roasting your asses well into August.

But Try-Works commenter Puck beat me to the punch.

TARD is basically made up of the large, liberal national protest bureaucracies like UFPJ, CodePink, etc. They are the big corporations of the protest movement. And, naturally, they are organizations that quash independent, grassroots, local, spontaneous, radical activism. They quash anything that doesn’t follow their script. Along with this, they make everything they touch bland, safe, boring, rehearsed. TARD is a last minute attempt to co-opt the work that R68 has been working on for over a year. These liberal, national groups show up in town and find a few faces willing to sell out the local community for a few bucks. They also exploit existing splits in the local scene in order to move in. One really has to wonder about the intelligence of those who are are selling out the Denver activist scene to get paid positions. They sell out for next to nothing — it isn’t like UFPJ or CodePink are going to have any use for these Denver sellouts after August. After August, these national groups will cut them loose. In the end, the sellouts are just fucking themselves over by wrecking the Denver activist community. I don’t see how these sellouts can show their faces in public.

My advise to the sellouts: You’ve really fucked up for nothing. You ought to cut your losses. You should come hat in fucking hand back and talk to the right people while they are still willing to listen.

Now, granted, I haven’t really been, how shall I put it, blinded by the brilliance of those shining stars over at The Alliance for Real Democracy (T.A.R.D.). But, even as underwhelmed as I’ve been, I couldn’t help but be a little thunderstruck at the sheer ineptitude evidenced by whoever’s doing the organizing.

Take, for instance, this latest article in the Rocky Mountain News, wherein Mr. Jung(k) pontificates on the lengthy and deliberate preparations he and his cohorts have made in anticipation of 50,000 protesters (their number).

I’d imagine, for instance, that restrooms would be foremost in Mr. Jung(k)’s mind.

His plan?

Jung hopes the city will provide the outhouses.

Really? Hopes? Really? Not having conversations with the city about coordinating the outhouses, he just kinda hopes they’ll, like, appear?

Well, that’s understandable, I suppose. I kinda hope to see Mr. Jung(k) rolled down Colfax in one of those very same outhouses.

Moving on, what about, say, showers?

He plans to ask churches and like-minded Denverites to welcome folks in for showers.

Now that one had me folded up in my chair, laughing. Just imagine, if you will, dear reader, 50,000 motherfuckers milling around downtown, knocking on doors and begging showers.

Naw, that shouldn’t be a problem.

And the best part is that Mr. Jung(k) hasn’t, as of yet, asked anyone to help out with showers. He only plans to.

Hell, we’ve got almost two whole months until the convention. Take your time, Mr. Jung(k).

But, anyway, now that we’ve squared away the facilities, what about food?

Never fear, Mr. Jung(k)’s on top of his game.

As for food, the group will issue participants a list of recommended organic, enviro-friendly local restaurants.

Good. Fucking. God.

Might I suggest, Mr. Jung(k), that you might be better served restricting your logistical talents to endeavors more suited to your capabilities?

Like, I don’t know, stoned trips to Chuck E. Cheese?

Never fear, though. There’s one area that Mr. Jung(k) has down cold.

“Our main argument is, if people are allowed to camp, is that we retain control over the entire event,” he said. “We’re bringing in professional security, so we can direct the energy and we can keep it safe and . . . a very positive event.”

Yep, even I’ll concede that Mr. Jung(k) should have no problem arranging security.

After all, I’ll bet he knows plenty of cops.

The Alliance for Real Democracy has a website. And I couldn’t help but take note of the dominant graphic on their main page (uploaded and displayed below so it’ll still be around when the T.A.R.D.’s delete it):

See, it may be just me, but it seems to bear a certain, shall we say, resemblance, to the banner graphic on Westword’s Demver blog.

Which is a pretty good indication of T.A.R.D.’s modus operandi, ain’t it? Cajole your pasty, narrow-eyed ass into other organizations, lift their ideas, and then start up your own little shindig on their backs.

Hell, with activists like these, who needs cops?

Examples?

Well, anybody notice any similarity between this event, just posted on T.A.R.D.’s website, and this one, which Recreate 68 has been planning for a year and a half?

Even better, however, was T.A.R.D.’s poaching of MC5 guitarist, Wayne Kramer, from Recreate 68’s musical line-up.

What makes that so particularly funny is, of course, that the reason Recreate 68 approached Wayne Kramer is that MC5 kicked off the original 1968 Democratic National Convention protests with the mighty “Kick out the Jams”.

Meaning that, while T.A.R.D. is whining to any journalist who will listen about Recreate 68’s name, the hypocritical motherfuckers are explicitly trying to co-opt their theme.

More to come. Much, much more. One doesn’t get handed targets quite this fucking stupid, bloated with self-appreciation, and full of shit every day. I am gonna be having me some fucking fun.

Update: Well, hell, it’s a start.

Thanks, Daisy.

And, bonus, Buckley also threatens to smash Chomsky in the face.

Update:  Had the wrong video up.  This one’s much more fun.

Denver city officials have released new details about Denver’s, ahem, free speech zone.

Details released Monday

* Wire mesh fencing will be used to mark public viewing area.

* Parade route starts at Larimer Street and Speer Boulevard.

* Parade route ends at Seventh Street and Auraria Parkway, which is the entry and exit point for the public demonstration zone in Parking Lot A.

* Permits are not required for entering or using viewing area.

* People using the public viewing area will be protected from unreasonable search and seizure but could be subject to search and seizure under constitutional standards.

* No one will be allowed to obstruct the public viewing area in a way that would prevent free use of the area by others.

The rest.

I ain’t buying for a fucking second, by the way, that Hickenlooper or anyone else in the city is calling the shots on DNC preparation any longer. This is the pigs at the Democratic National Committee.

And, make no mistake, they are pigs. Anyone who would put you in a cage to exercise your civil rights is a pig. They’re not even crypto-fascists, they’re flat-out fascists, they’re fucking pigs.

A right is a right. The pigs at the DNC no more have the ability to allow you your rights than you have the ability to allow the moon to rise. The only thing they can do is use force to ensure your compliance.

It’s no different than what a mugger does.

Or, for that matter, a rapist.

At least that seems to be the gist of the latest Mike Rosen article about Recreate 68.

Free speech? Let them write a letter to the editor, or a book or take out an ad. It’s no secret what these would-be revolutionaries believe in. The icon of a raised fist on their Web site accompanies the menu of daily protest themes, with each one focusing “on a symptom of the disease of an Imperialist, Capitalist, Racist system.” Glen Spagnuolo, Marxist revolutionary-in-chief, describes his group as representing minorities, anarchists, communists, socialists and radicals. He expects 25,000 people from across the country to join his Denver protest. So what? Whom do they represent? And why should anyone else care? Do the math: Twenty-five thousand people out of a population of more than 300 million is eight one-thousandths of 1 percent. That’s less than one person out of 10,000 in the country. Even if it were a hundred times that number, what would it matter? So what if a hard-core band of “anarchists, communists and radicals” takes to the streets to indulge their rage and self-disenfranchisement. Why in the world should such tantrums affect any rational citizen’s fundamental beliefs or positions on important issues?

HBO recently ran a multipart series based on David McCullough’s popular biography of John Adams. In one of the early episodes, an angry crowd of Bostonians is seen venting its frustration at British soldiers. American colonists often took to the streets to protest the tyranny of King George III imposed by his appointed governors, magistrates and military forces. The Boston Tea Party was a demonstration against taxation without representation. One can sympathize with such actions and understand the justification of resorting to property damage and rebellion when no political or legal remedies were available. That was then, this is now.

In our constitutional republic, representative democracy offers ample opportunities for electoral majorities to have their will translated into public policy, with the courts protecting individual rights. I’m not impressed by the theatrics of those who take their politics to the streets. The ballot box is the appropriate venue for orderly change or support of public policy.

Keep reading.

You can be unimpressed, asshole.  That’s your right.  But in this “constitutional republic” the people have constitutional rights.  Those aren’t restricted to writing letters to the editor, nor taking out an ad.  The only way you can state “that was then, this is now” about the First Amendment is to consign the Constitution to the dustbin of history.

Which makes me wonder what the hell kind of conservative you claim to be.  See, I always understood conservatives to be vested with the idea of conserving the Constitution.  Your kind?  Well, I don’t even know what to call you.  I kinda like all the Bill of Rights, both those unpopular to the left and to the right, and I have no idea where the fuck you’re coming from.  You, you ain’t a conservative of any sort that Thomas Jefferson would recognize, you’re more like that kind that’s best exemplified by William Jefferson Clinton.

Constitutional rights aren’t negotiable, they’re rights.  Having the right to vote doesn’t negate the First Amendment, and your argument as such only shows how willing you are to gut the Constitution to your own ends.  You ain’t a conservative, you’re the kind of shitheel our founding fathers would’ve thrown in the Boston Harbor with the tea.

One can’t be all Re-create 68 all the time. Now and then one must sit back, roll a cigarette, and smell the Evan Williams.

Ladies and gentlemen: your wholly-non-violent, always-opposed-to-exercising-their-own-rights, happy-to-let-cops-beat-them-over-the-fucking-head, Re-create 68 splinter group.

The Alliance for Real Democracy.

Otherwise known as T.A.R.D.

Anything else from me would seem superfluous at this point.

(Thanks, exeter.)

If he were alive today, Thomas Jefferson would shoot Mayor Hickenlooper in the fucking face.

Protesters who want to march to the site of the Democratic National Convention will have to end their processions several blocks short of the Pepsi Center, according to the route released Thursday by Denver city officials.

The special parade route, put together by the city to balance the desires of protest groups with the needs of downtown businesses, angered the protesters, who had hoped to be able to end their marches within sight and sound of the convention hall

“This is not an appropriate parade route,” said Re-create 68’s Glenn Spagnuolo. “I’m not being able to march in front of the event site at the Pepsi Center. That’s the target audience. Your political protest is completely ineffective if … you’re not even allowed to march to where your intended audience is.”

The route begins at Civic Center park and runs down West Colfax Avenue to the southbound lanes of Speer Boulevard until it reaches Larimer Street and ends. A wide divide separates the end point from the Pepsi Center, which will hold the delegates from 4 to 9 p.m. nightly Aug. 25-28. The U.S. Secret Service, responsible for protecting the convention, has yet to release its security perimeter.

Keep reading.

(A guest editorial by Try-Works reader, Business Major.)

Over the past few years, Jim Paine, PirateBallerina’s self-described Moonbat in Charge, has revealed more than enough about his views on taxation to firmly establish his credentials as a member in good standing of the Let Them Eat Shit School of “Free Market” Economics (otherwise known as rabid “Milton Friedman groupies”).

Hence, among other repugnancies, Paine’s continuous whining about “every dime of taxpayer money” expended in efforts to better the lot of “colored folk,” even as he’s displayed all the rhetoric elegance of Geraldine “How dare you state the obvious?” Ferraro in trying to counter suggestions that his is a profoundly racist outlook.

Heretofore, we’ve simply referred those seeking to unravel the implications of what Paine passes off as “principles” to The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Kline’s brilliant analysis of the unspeakable misery resulting from the imposition of Friedmanism upon country after Third World country since 1973.

To this, we can now add a local dimension. As was reported in the New York Times on June 11, “Colorado experienced the nation’s largest rate of growth in impoverished children from 2000 to 2006.” By the latter year, “180,000 children—15.7 percent of the state total—were living in poverty in Colorado…a 73 percent increase since 2000.”

Nor was Colorado’s “leadership” in this area in any sense marginal. The second-highest rate of increase in child poverty occurred in New Hampshire, where it was 47%. In other words, Colorado led its closest rival by a whopping 26% (i.e., a full lap in a 4-lap race).

There’s more. While the increases in states like New Hampshire and Delaware—the latter, with a rate increase of 45%, placed third among the 50 states—were suffered disproportionately by communities of color, such lopsidedness was nowhere near so pronounced as it has been in Colorful Colorado.

The rate of increase pertaining to Colorado’s black children, for instance, was 116%. While no data was reported by the Times regarding Latinos, but among American Indians—a group against which Paine has consistently voiced an especially virulent loathing (all the while pretending to be doing exactly the opposite, of course)—the rate of child impoverishment rose by a staggering 473 percent.

Tellingly, the median income of Colorado’s burgeoning white urban population actually rose during the same period.

How to account for the so-called Colorado Paradox? How about the fact that during the years 2000-2006, Colorado served as a veritable national showcase for implementing the very economic model Jim Paine so vociferously champions?

Not only was the Bush program of corporate welfare and tax cuts for the most affluent in place during the entire period, but, in Colorado, the effects were amplified immensely by Bill Owens’ control of the governor’s mansion, and by certain services provided to the state’s lily-white elites by such unsavory types as Bob Beauprez, Tom Tancredo, and Benny “The Scotsman” Campbell in the U.S. House and Senate.

With this cast of characters running the show in behalf of its “natural constituency”—a population guaranteed to induce snow-blindness when viewed without benefit of dark lenses—it’s no wonder that what little remained of Colorado’s social contract after passage of the “taxpayer’s bill of rights” in 1992 was quickly shredded.

While the portion of the state’s public revenues devoted to sustaining everything from social services to education stagnated or declined, appropriations to expand policing and prison capacity rose steadily. At the same time, the tax codes were utilized to “stimulate investment and development”—read, “profitability”—to an unprecedented degree.

All told, the 2000-2006 period came as close to economic nirvana as anything Friedmanites like Paine have yet experienced on the domestic front. Indeed, his only real complaints have been that Colorado’s duly-elected “stewards of free enterprise” weren’t able to privatize the state’s infrastructure altogether.

Maybe if all those newly-impoverished black and Indian children had literally starved or died for lack of home heating, Herr Eichmann would have been satisfied that “economic justice” has at last been delivered to Colorado’s master race.

But probably not. Some forms of moral depravity know no bounds.

Be that as it may, one thing couldn’t be clearer at this point. And that’s that the price of the several “well appointed bathrooms” adorning Jim Paine’s utterly unearned country estate has been paid in suffering by an untold number of the hungry, shivering little “darkies” upon whose very futures he’s pronounced himself entitled to foreclose.

This from the Rocky Mountain News.

On Monday, the city told protesters the demonstration area will be 50,000 square feet somewhere on the much larger Lot A, or VIP parking lot at the Pepsi Center. It will be surrounded by a fence that will allow people outside to see and hear the protesters, and vice versa, an attorney for the protest groups said.

Keep reading.

Fucking idiots.  Quick, trolls, name one kind of quickly erected fencing that doesn’t allow those inside to see those outside?

For the life of me, I can’t think of a concentration camp in the world that doesn’t have a good concertina wire fence, which meets the city’s proposal to the letter.

But, hey, on the bright side, it’ll give Medea Benjamin, Leslie Cagan and Adam Jung somewhere to pretend to be relevant.

The rest of us, those who actually have some respect for our rights, we won’t be in pigpens.

Ward Churchill, adapted from a speech given at the University of Regina.

Truth is one thing, and reconciliation is something else entirely. The two terms have somehow become fused, however, to the point where they usually come out as just one word: truthandreconciliation. Kind of like some other fusions that I’ve encountered in my life — innocentamericans, for example. I had thought innocent was a qualification that had to be earned, and you didn’t just have it by virtue of some national identity. It’s nonsensical, and I would suggest that truthandreconciliation might be as well.

You see, were the truth to be expressed, internalized and acted upon, there might be a basis for reconciliation. People and communities can indeed reconcile within and among themselves, but that process is fundamentally different from the sort of superficial blather of the dominant society which is the primary promoter of the truthandreconciliation process in Canada, especially with regard to the ongoing effects of the system of residential schooling imposed for well over a century upon First Nations children.. . .

If it’s “truth and reconciliation” we’re after with regard to the residential schools, then the first truth we need to establish is that the Indian Residential Schools were not the result of a “misguided policy undertaken with the best of humanitarian intentions,” as they’re often described, but rather a pillar in the attempted genocide of Canada’s indigenous peoples.

This truth is masked, hidden, denied. It’s the official posture of the government of Canada that the word genocide will not be used in connection with the residential school truthandreconciliation process. But genocide is exactly what it was, and until that truth is recognized, reconciliation remains impossible.

Keep reading.

From Fox News.

Political activists planning protest rallies at the upcoming Democratic Convention in Denver have their stomachs in knots over a rumor about a crowd control weapon - known as the “crap cannon” - that might be unleashed against them.

Also called “Brown Note,” it is believed to be an infrasound frequency that debilitates a person by making them defecate involuntarily.

Mark Cohen, co-founder of Re-create 68, an alliance of local activists working for the protection of first amendment rights, said he believes this could be deployed at the convention in August to subdue crowds.

“We know this weapon and weapons like it have been used at other large protests before,” he said.

Cohen, who described Brown Note as a “sonic weapon used to disrupt people’s equilibrium,” cited eyewitness accounts of its use during free-trade agreement protests in Miami in 2003.

“I think these weapons were mostly intended for military use and so their use for dealing with innocent protesters seems highly inappropriate,” he said. “The idea that they might be field testing them on people who are doing nothing more than exercising their first amendment rights is disturbing.”

His group is preparing against a possible attack by Brown Note and other crowd-control measures by dispatching street medics at the convention trained in treating injuries in demonstration situations.

“It’s all we can do,” Cohen said.

So is the Brown Note a real threat?

Dr. Roger Schwenke - an expert acoustician who appeared on the Discovery Channel’s “Mythbusters” in 2004 to test the phenomenon - told FOXNews.com there is no scientific evidence that proves such frequencies cause involuntary defecation.

“When we conducted the low frequency experiment for the Brown Note episode of MythBusters, we tested a variety of low frequencies and no involuntary gastro-intestinal motility was caused,” he said.

But Schwenke acknowledged the low-frequency exposure did cause an adverse effect. Several people — including himself — reported “abdominal discomfort,” he said, “which was easily alleviated by moving a moderate distance away from the source.”

Adding to the Brown Note rumor is a refusal by Denver’s Mayor John W. Hickenlooper to release details of what was purchased with $18 million of a $50 million federal grant the city received to pay for convention security, despite a lawsuit filed by ACLU.

Cohen’s group is calling on the administration to disclose what measures will be taken.

In a statement released to FOXNews.com, city spokeswoman Sue Cobb said, “commenting on specific security preparations is not helpful to ensuring their effectiveness. I can say, however, that all of our security-related purchases for the Democratic National Convention will comply with federal and City requirements. We are working closely with the U.S. Department of Justice to ensure that the $50 million federal security grant is spent on personnel and equipment in the manner required by the grant.”

Denver’s police Department wouldn’t comment on the tactics that will be used during the convention, but a spokesman said that “we do support and encourage people to express their views safely and in a manner that respects the rights of others along with the laws and ordinances of our city.”

But Glenn Spangnuolo, also with Re-create 68, isn’t taking any chances. He said he has no doubt that Brown Note exists, and is preparing his group for confrontation. “Whether it causes someone to defecate in their pants or not, I don’t know that,” said Spagnuolo. “What I do know is that it causes a person to be disoriented and lose their equilibrium resulting in a nauseous feeling in their stomach.”

Keep reading.

Okay, I have no idea if the brown note is real.  Every time I get it in my head to dismiss as ridiculous some idiotic piece of pig weaponry, I get hit over the head with something even more ridiculous, like say, the puke flashlight or armor-weaving spider goats.  A sonic weapon that makes people wish they were elsewhere doesn’t seem all that far-fetched to me.

But if it does make people shit explosively and uncontrollably, I want one.

Can you imagine how much fun something like that could be if aimed at, say, the Cherry Creek Mall?

Or downtown Boulder?

Or KHOW studios?

(Updated ad nauseum.)

So I opened my email this morning to find a missive from Adam Jung. Mr. Jung, you’ll recall, is the organizer from Tent State University who has been making the rounds of the local media for the last month or so, trying to paint Re-create 68 as bad,violent protesters and his organization as good ‘uns.

To his email.

1) You are attributing a qoute to me, one that is also attributed to me on Slapstick politics, that they seem to have got from a comment on Drunkablog by a user named “Adam”. I have never said anything like that, I have a lot of respect for Unconventional Action and had you done some research you would realize this. You are also damaging not only the case the ACLU is fighting on behalf of both Recreate 68 and Tent State, as well as ten other organizations. I have forwarded your and their URL’s on to the ACLU cooperating attorney’s that represent both R68 and TSU and asked them for our legal remedies.

Okay, well, where to begin. Yeah, the commenter on the Drunkablog never specified he was Adam Jung. I assumed as much given the tone of the comment. As such, I apologize. (However, I find the similarities between that comment and this email interesting. Such as, for instance, the numbering of each substantive paragraph.)

As to damaging the ACLU case on behalf of Re-create 68, let me point out that I ain’t a member of Re-create 68, nor any other group. I’m an interested observer. But, that said, how am I damaging the case? I’d like some specifics, because, frankly, I think you’re trying to have it both ways: declaiming other groups to the mainstream media as the fancy strikes you, then whining like Mel Gibson at closing time when someone dares respond to one of your idiot statements.

And good luck seeking a legal remedy. I’ve been threatened with lawsuits by everyone from Dan Caplis to Vernon Bellecourt. Hell, thanks to the anti-Churchill pinheads I’ve even been investigated by the University of Colorado legal team. Nothing sticks, nothing’s going to, it ain’t against the law to poke at insufferable little shits.

2)In every media interview I do I have refused to say R68 is going to be violent, and have tried to avoid the Conversation. The quote concerning Cuba or the Revolutionary War was not directed towards Glenn or R68. I was asked why Tent State was tactively non-violent. That was my response. their was no reference to R68 when I was asked that question. Chuck apparently decided to do some creative writing.

Well, I certainly wouldn’t put it past the local media to misquote someone, but I’m having trouble buying it. The thing is that you’ve positioned yourself as the go-to guy to talk shit about Re-create 68, and you’ve done everything but start tapdancing for interviews outside of Clear Channel in order to fulfill that role.

I don’t know if you have some ulterior motive in destroying local movements, or if you’re just dumb enough to allow yourself to be used by the media, but in the immortal words of Ward Churchill, you don’t have to be a pig to do a pig’s work.

And you’re a liar. You hustled your way onto Caplis and Silverman, to provide one example, solely to have the “Conversation” about Re-create 68’s “violent imagery.” You got a little mealy-mouthed in the midst of the conversation, but the context was apparent. Any of our readers who wants to verify that can listen to the audio right here.

3)I have to wonder how much “self-defense” has helped you. I have had the shit beat out of me, I have been hit by both rubber bullets and pepper spray balls, I’ve been beat in jail, and I’ve been maced point blank. But tactivly it doesn’t do me any good to fight back. I’m going to lose, and the media and the police will have the excuse they needed.

That’s not the point. As I said here over the weekend, I think one ought to avoid tussling with the police whenever possible. It tends to get one seriously fucked up, legally and physically. But I don’t negotiate rights, and I sure as hell don’t condemn others for exercising ’em.

Nor do I dictate to the oppressed how they’re to resist their oppression. I consider that the worst kind of hypocrisy. It always reminds me of Tolstoy’s wonderful formulation: “I sit on a man’s back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means — except by getting off his back.”

4)The article doesn’t say the Street Medics are not working with R68, it says they are members of the new coalition, as is Code Pink. And I didn’t say shit about ethier of those organizations. That information came from somewhere else.

Glad to hear you draw the line somewhere.

Do some research, man. Read the media pieces again. They only group that is consistently bashed is Tent State, usually by Glenn trying to make a connection between Tent State and Kent State. And don’t help the state by posting a bullshit quote that hurts everyone, both legally, and politically.

Again, I’d like you to clarify how your pandering to the local media in the interest of painting Re-create 68 as a gang of violent extremists is constructive, while my calling you full of shit for doing so is, like, “helping the state”?

You initiated this story. You created it. You issued a press release declaiming Re-create 68 for violent rhetoric and imagery, went crawling to the media in support of said press release, and then you took your horseshit routine on no less a racist, rightwing outlet than Caplis and Silverman. You sure as shit don’t get to whine now about others “helping the state”. Hell, you might as well be doing Hickenlooper’s laundry at this point.

And a final note. People engage in non-violence ethier out of principal or as a tactic. As a tactic it has been used by groups that are in no way pacifists. Bobby Sands, one of my personal heros and a sniper for the Irish Republican Army went on hunger strike in 1981. 66 days later he died. The deaths of 9 more hunger strikers would follow. These men are held up as heros by the Irish Republican movement, and their actions are credited with turning international pressure on england and with eventually forcing england to the table. Currently, the hated militarized police in the north of Ireland ware on the verge of being put under the control of a former IRA soldier, and their authority greatly curtailed.

I’ve never said non-violence ain’t a useful tactic. I have no idea what the fuck your point is. Except that you might want to re-read Bobby Sands’ autobiography.

Fetishing non-violence is a problem, but so is fetishing violent revolution. In the case of Ireland it has been a combination of both that has helped them take power.

Fetishizing any tactic is asinine. But I’m not the one playing to a hostile media to demonize those who exercise tactics I disagree with.

That’d be you. And I recommend that if you don’t want to be treated like a sleazy little asshole, you stop acting like one.

Update: I asked Mr. Jung if he was accusing of Chuck Plunkett of the Denver Post of lying when wrote that Mr. Jung had expressed “concerns about Spagnuolo’s insistence that he would resist police.” I also asked if Mr. Jung had requested a retraction. His answer was as evasive as you’d expect:

I think he lied to both me and Glenn when asking questions and attempting to goad activists into talking shit on the other. And I think he used my statement on why TSU is non-violent to make the connection to R68’s stance on self-defense. I didn’t refer to R68 at all, nor would I.

I also responded three different times with “Well if Glenn told you that, then that’s want he told you, I’m not talking about that.” He repeatedly said “Well Glenn said the other difference between your organizations and R68 is the stance on resisting police.” If Glenn said that, which I doubted at the time, though some ofhis comments make me wonder, it is a horrible statement. Esp. when we are trying to prevent the characterization of a non-violent and a violent coalition. That is what happened in Miami, and I was there to see the results of that.

I havn’t asked for a retraction because I don’t want the story to continue, and we have placed a blackout on the media until all the spokes, myself included, can go through a quick media training.

Again, horseshit. Adam Jung is the greatest source of “the characterization of a non-violent and a violent coalition.” It’s a wonder he hasn’t sprained his tongue repeating that line of shit, which is the reason he’s become the go to guy for the media whenever they need an idiot to connect the dots in that regard for their readers.

When I pointed that out to him, noting his press release, the media barrage, the Caplis and Silverman appearance, and the Rush Limbaugh mention, I got this response:

I will say we released a press release because R68 was (and still is) claiming we were a member of R68. I spent a week talking with Glenn about our concerns, as did other activists in R68 who are no longer with them, we were all dismissed.

Our message was being hurt and lost and we couldn’t make it work any other way. However, their were only two stories in the papers concerning the seperation and one appearance on Caplis which I felt I did a good job of refusing their baiting. The Rush mention was him reading the rocky mountain story, no control over that, and it followed a number of references to Recreate 68 over the previous weeks.

I don’t care if you like me or trust me. I’m open to grabbing a beer sometime if you’d like to meet me. But, regardless, you have no basis for that quote. It was written by someone named “Adam.” Do you have any idea how popular that name is!?

And I want it the stories to go away because I want to talk about the war. We don’t want an image of infighting and you are contributing to that.

So, got it, because the press release only got picked up by two papers, it wasn’t like you were really trying to smear other activists. Right.

Only problem being, the two papers were the only two daily papers in Denver. Meaning, you got one hundred percent pickup in the local market.

And as to your having no control over what Rush Limbaugh does, I have to remind you that you sent out a fucking press release providing, as you put it, a “characterization of a non-violent and a violent coalition.” Just out of curiosity, who the fuck did you think the story would appeal to but the rightwing radio junket?

And, yeah, I’ll admit there was some soft-peddling on your part on Caplis and Silverman, but that’s because you’d already set the fucking context with your press release. Or didn’t you know that’s why they asked you on their show?

Like I said above, I’d be happy to chalk some of this up to your immense naiveté, but for the fact that you’re still doing it. There are only so many times one can claim ignorance before the rest of us start wondering if you ain’t spent a little too much time sucking lead paint chips.

Let me make a recommendation. You don’t need “a quick media training.” You need total immersion, years of study, and, I’m guessing, a few rounds of electroshock therapy.

Or, perhaps, a new badge number and assignment.

Update II: By the way, anyone else note the irony in being called a “little man” by John Martin? It’s kinda like being called a “fat man” by El Presidente, or “a man who smells like horseshit” by Jim Paine. Or, say, a spastic, creepy, squirrely little fuck who’s only about one huff of spraypaint away from kidnapping a college girl and forcing her to chilled vodka on his nipples for the rest of her short, duct-tape laden life by, well, John Martin.

Update III: Michael J. Smith of one of my favorite blogs, Stop Me Before I Vote Again, has this to say about Code Pink and United for Peace and Justice split with Re-create 68.

And of course it’s always nice to see UFPJ and Code Pink running true to Democratic lapdog form. At left, Medea Benjamin; below, Leslie Cagan.

Couldn’t have said it better myself. The only contribution Coke Pink’s made to the anti-war movement is to ensure most of us who consider ourselves anywhere left of John McCain cringe a little bit every time we turn on Saturday Night Live. Or, for that matter, if we have the misfortune of accidentally happening upon the Denver/Boulder chapter’s MySpace page.

From what I’ve seen of the two, Medea Benjamin and Leslie Cagan share one brain.  Pink’s, actually. (You’ll excuse me whilst I rip my ears from my skull and nail them to a fucking stump.)

And it goes without saying that the only contributions United for Peace and Justice is interested in are, well, yours.

(The following interview was filed by Try-Works reader Romeo Zambaletti.)

Ever since June 25, the trolls over at PB have been busily yukking it up over Ward Churchill’s recent surgery. Just to set the record straight on a few of things said thereon, we dropped in on the Good Professor yesterday. The following interview results:

Try-Works: It was initially reported by Colorado AIM that you’d suffered an aneurysm in your leg and had been admitted to the hospital for corrective surgery. The story was then picked up by Drunkablog and, from there, found its way onto PirateBallerina. So let’s start there. How accurate was the information?

Churchill: Not very, although it’s easy to see how the AIM folks got it wrong. The aneurysm that caused alarm was abdominal. The surgeons got to it through my femoral arteries, however, so the incisions were in fact in my upper thighs. That said, it’s good to see John Martin openly admitting that information coming from Colorado AIM should be considered entirely accurate.

Try-Works: “Noj” has been gloating that your undergoing surgery indicates an admission on your part that you “think Western medical knowledge is superior to indigenous healing.” Do you have a response?

Churchill: Yeah, the argument is stupid enough to have come from Thomas Brown. The procedure I underwent involved the installation of a stint. Stints, as I recall, were invented by the Incas, who had already perfected the necessary surgical techniques long before Columbus washed up on the beach. So, it seems to me that I simply availed myself of traditional indigenous medical practice.

Try-Works: “Noj” also says s/he hopes you had “a nice Chinese immigrant doctor.” The implication, I guess, is that if your surgeon was white… You get the drift. Any comment?

Churchill: That’s even more stupid than the last one. But, the moron can rest easy, since his “hopes” were more or less fulfilled. I don’t know whether she’s an immigrant, but my lead surgeon was certainly Chinese. In fact, believe it or not, her last name is Mao.

Try-Works: Okay, here’s another one from “Noj.” He was positively jubilant about your suffering “terrible tobacco and alcohol withdrawal while hospitalized.” How about it?

Churchill: Ludicrous. I’ve no idea where this idiot got the idea that I’d be undergoing “alcohol withdrawal,” since I’m about one step removed from being a tee-totaler. As to my not being allowed to smoke, well, that’s simply delusional. First of all I was in the hospital for less than 30 hours. I refused to be admitted the night before surgery, showed up at 10 in the morning for the procedure, came out from under anesthesia around 5 in the afternoon, and left the hospital directly from the ICU a little after 2 the following afternoon. I was asleep most of that time, but whenever I was awake, I had a wheelchair available for the express—that is, pre-negotiated—purpose of getting me outside any time I wanted a cigarette. We made 3 trips total during the roughly 21 hours I was in ICU. It was very nice out, so we didn’t hurry. I smoked 3 cigarettes on each occasion, for a total of nine. That’s well below my normal rate of consumption, but it was really all I wanted under the circumstances. Suffice it to say that I suffered no “tobacco withdrawal.”

Try-Works: The basis for the claim about alcohol seems to be that piece in the Weekly Standard written by Matt Labash, wherein it’s recounted how you favor Jameson’s Irish whiskey, and how you and he sat around getting drunk during your interview.

Churchill: Did Labash really say I drink Jameson’s? Damn. He must’ve gotten drunker that I thought. If I’m going to drink Irish whiskey, which I do from time to time, like every 3 or 4 months I have a couple of shots, it’s going to be John Powers. The night I did the interview with Labash was rather exceptional, however. He offered to buy shots of anything I wanted to drink at a fairly upscale Berkeley bar, so I sampled three pretty exotic whiskeys at $20-30 a pop, compliments of William Kristol. Labash himself had rather more than three shots, as I recall, but I expect he’s had a bit more practice in that regard than I have. In any case, he spun a pretty good yarn out of not much.

Try-Works: “Noj” has also been crowing that you “absolutely must kick tobacco” if you “don’t want to die of this thing.” True?

Churchill: That’s just another instance of his having no idea what he’s talking about. The type of aneurysm I had, which is fairly rare, is hereditary in something like 95% of all cases. My biological father died of one at roughly the same age I am now, as did my grandfather. Neither of them ever smoked a cigarette. Get the picture?

Try-Works: “Noj” exults that you’ll have to take a medication called Coumadin for the rest of your life. Is there any truth to that?

Churchill: I’ve no idea what s/he’s talking about, and strongly suspect that, as usual, s/he doesn’t either. Not only has nobody mentioned such a drug to me, but the fact is that I’ve been prescribed no medication at all. Why? Because the consensus is that I need none.

Try-Works: There are more medical questions I could pose, but let’s shift gears a bit. “Mia” claims that you’ll soon be afflicted with “salary withdrawal,” and both “Noj” and “Retired Bill” are concerned about when you’ll be eligible to receive retirement benefits. Care to comment?

Churchill: Sure. My retirement benefits began on July 25, 2007. Since then I’ve been receiving a monthly bank deposit from PERA in pretty much the same amount I was taking home before I retired. As to “salary withdrawal,” there’ll be none, since the university paid me the equivalent of year’s salary in a lump sum during the second week of August 2007. I do have to decide whether to start receiving an additional few hundred bucks a month from Social Security in about 2 years, or wait for the larger monthly amount for which I’ll be eligible in 4. I’ve no worries, either way.

Try-Works: Last question. Jim Paine seems to be trying to break out as a poet. I’d like to read you his latest verse and get assessment of its aesthetic merit. Okay? Here goes, “Well said, Fred.” Whatcha think?

Churchill: Wow! I didn’t know he was capable. Just a bit more minimalization and he may actually achieve an eloquence worthy of his intellect.

And good riddance.

From the Denver Post:

Activists who plan to protest at the Democratic National Convention this summer are splitting with the umbrella organization, Re-create 68, because of concerns over its rhetoric and tactics.

The new coalition, called Alliance for Real Democracy, is a network of local and national groups, including Code Pink, United for Peace and Justice, the American Friends Service Committee, the Green Party of Colorado, the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Colorado Street Medics, and Students for Peace and Justice.

“We’ve separated ourselves; we’re not part of Re-create 68,” said Claire Ryder, chairwoman of the Denver Green Party.

Ryder said many activists had attended Re-create 68 meetings and were not comfortable with its organizational techniques.

Nevertheless, she said, “This has all been very difficult because a lot of them are our friends. We’ve worked together on a lot of other issues over time.”

Glenn Spagnuolo, an organizer with Re-create 68, said he doesn’t mind the new structure.

“More power to them,” he said.

Spagnuolo characterizes the groups that are splitting with his as liberal Democrats who are largely white and middle-to-upper class and want their party to guide the country out of the war in Iraq.

He described Re-create 68 as representing minorities, anarchists, communists, socialists and “radicals” who don’t support Democrats or Republicans.

Both his organization and the Alliance oppose the war, he said, and neither one advocates violence.

However, the statement of nonviolent principles listed on the Re-create 68 website includes the right to self-defense, which has raised questions within the moderate flank of the local activist community.

Adam Jung, a University of Denver student who represents Tent State University, which pulled out of Re-create 68 in May, said he doesn’t think Re-create 68 is planning violence. But he expressed concerns about Spagnuolo’s insistence that he would resist police.

“This isn’t like Cuba or the Revolutionary War,” Jung said. “If attacked by a police officer, I wouldn’t respond violently. I’m going to comply.”

The rest.

I answered this moronic line of reasoning in the comments to the article:

Re-create 68’s statement of non-violence doesn’t require anyone to defend themselves, it only refuses to deny people that right. As Re-create 68 has made clear, there will be folks marching with their children and elders, and they have every right to defend them. As even Martin Luther King Jr. put it, “the principle of self-defense, even involving weapons and bloodshed, has never been condemned, even by Gandhi.”

If Ms. Ryder and Mr. Jung are content to stand by while someone beats them into a puddle, more power to ‘em. But I’m guessing there’s less moral purity in it than slavish devotion to the state, even when representatives of it are violating their Constitutional rights. And, of course, there’s no moral purity at all in refusing to defend children and elders. That’s just cowardice.

Mr. Jung’s position is insupportably stupid. His position ain’t pacifism, it’s bootlicking toadyism. As I’ve been saying over and over again, not even Martin Luther King Jr. bought this line. Hell, even as, shall we say, little versed in the study of history as Mr. Jung seems to be, I doubt he buys it.

It’s fucking asinine, it’s fucking cowardly, and it’s the worst kind of assumption of class and racial privilege. Mr. Jung and Ms. Ryder are content to pawn off their right to self-defense precisely because they’ve never been in a position where they’ve had to exercise it.

Which, I’m guessing, is probably why one meets a hell of a lot more of Mr. Jung’s ilk in Santa Monica than on Pine Ridge.

Update: Obscenely stupid image from the obscenely stupid Metro Denver Greens blog.

Update II: White and upper middle class you say?

Update III: Mr. Spagnuolo left this in the comments over at John Martin’s place.

Just thought I would let you know that Code Pink and the Colorado Street Medics, the only two groups out of the bunch that are working with us and over 100 other groups, have contacted the Post and asked for a retraction. They have not “split”.

Adam Jung’s a fucking liar. Somebody had to say it.

Update IV: Adam Jung has chimed in over at John Martin’s place with some questions for Glenn Spagnuolo. It’s almost too good to be true.

Glenn, are you familiar with the story ‘The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian’? You are kind of like Nikabrik the dwarf in that story, and groups like Unconventional Action and RAIMD are like the hag and werewolf that he tries to bring into Caspian’s group.

Funny, I always pictured Mr. Spagnuolo as a rebellious spice smuggler with a Wookie sidekick drafted into overthrowing the evil Empire. Or, maybe, an intrepid hobbit, driven to the ends of the Earth by the need to destroy a great and gathering evil. Or, maybe, a boy wizard wrestling with his dark and secret past. Or, maybe . . . oh fuck it, you’re an idiot, Mr. Jung.

Seriously, maybe you’d do a little better at trying to frame a coherent argument if you tried on a book or two that, like, big girls and boys read.

Update V:  Adam Jung has emailed me several times insisting he is not responsible for the comment quoted in Update IV.  There ain’t no reason not to believe him, at least on that score.  My apologies, Mr. Jung.  For that, and no more.

Anybody wanna bet this wasn’t created by a cop?