Op/Ed

PRIMARY, EMERGENCY MEETING 6:30 PM NORTH CAROLINA – VOTERS TURNED AWAY FOR HAVING THE WRONG KIND OF I.D.? BUT POLL WORKERS WERE NOT PROPERLY TRAINED!!!!! BERNIE SANDERS MUST FILE LAWSUIT FAST because the 2000 election Bush vs Gore proved you have to act fast! The Supreme Court of the U.S. stopped the delayed vote count in that case!

In week long show of pseudo-Christian reverence, the profitably genocidal criminal US establishment has had its controlled news media and government use the passing of a former first lady to promote the stature of a simple minded, good-for-billionaires, US President, who got away without being prosecuted for overseeing the brutal death of at least a half million men, women and children in Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua during his eight years in office.

Why does the U.S. Marijuana Party care what George Oloo thinks?

George Oloo works for Walmart in the Country of KENYA, where President Barack Obama claims his father is from.

Studying the opinions of George Oloo, gives us an idea of what ethics and moral values may have been taught to President Obama by his father.

Walmart has employees around the world, and may have regard for their opinions, depending on the particular employees position, status and work record.

How can anyone in the USA be held in a local jail or a prison for any amount of marijuana possession or sales, while United States Senator Bernie Sanders campaign for President is allegedly receiving money from marijuana sales?

Those of us who know that Pope Francis, while he was the most influential Jesuit leader in Argentina, maintained a cooperative silence, even as millions of people throughout the world were aghast at the horrific news that thousands of Argentinians were being murdered or ‘disappeared’ during the brutal US supported dictatorship of General Videla, see the Pope’s present outspokenness about anti-establishment presidential candidate Donald Trump as consistent with the Papacy having always been a tool of the business interests of the colonial, now neocolonial, capitalist elite in Europe and the United States.

Vermont Senators

With marijuana legalization being pushed through the legislature this year, what has been obscured is the impact this current bill would have on existing local economies.

The recent Rand Report estimated annual consumption of marijuana in Vermont at up to 55,000 pounds. The report fails to define where all that marijuana comes from. While it is certain some is imported from other states, it is also a given that a large percentage of the marijuana currently consumed in Vermont is grown locally.

Considering that consenting adult marijuana consumption is one of the definitive victimless crimes, where there is no apparent victim and no apparent serious pain or injury, it means it should never have been a crime to begin with.If anything, the history of marijuana laws and their application are arbitrary, irrational and draconian by any reasonable standards. Therefore, marijuana consumers are victims of the law, not offenders of the law.

Evidently, now that marijuana consumption is moving into the mainstream of legalization, it makes me wonder what the hell were we thinking of all those years of criminalization? Clearly, there was and is no good conscience behind criminalizing marijuana. Historically, the escalation of marijuana laws turned tens of millions of Americans into criminals who were not criminals before.

On social media we have personas we prop up, be they wild pseudonymic selves, or some semblance of our verifiable ID’s. On Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, et. al., there’s the ever-present component of a post being liked or faved, or recycled.  Many posters curry favor, pander, intimidate, or otherwise stoke the flames of approval-by-click. Many online personalities have cultivated followings of several hundreds or thousands of people.

A pattern occurs which supposes that every submission will get at least some percentage of affirmation. Meaning many tokens of approval and affection. I’m wondering what happens to general human relations when this newly dominant form of sharing comes with expectation of a cluster of facile responses- from mostly strangers, or ‘friends’ through association?

DESCRIPTION:
Okay, once again during Martin Luther King’s 2016 birthday celebrations, genocide justifying US media has suckered the world by suppressing King’s condemnation of “US atrocity wars and covert violence on three continents since 1945 meant to maintain unjust predatory investments.” Once again, the last year of King’s life during which he was vilified as a traitor for condemning the mass murder that was being perpetrated by his countrymen in Vietnam and Laos, has been tightly blacked out of all mention. Let’s get Beyond Vietnam translated into all languages.

DESCRIPTION:
What the world and most every Americans under the age of fifty, do not know (for it having been criminally suppressed in all US media for nearly a half-century), is that exactly one year before being assassinated, Rev. King condemned the US war in Vietnam and all previous “atrocity wars and covert violence on three continents since 1945 meant to maintain unjust predatory investments” and held all Americans, including himself, responsible for these atrocity wars for “not being willing to give up the pleasures and privileges that come from the immense profits from those predatory investment the wars and violence had been protecting.

     The post bringing us the Police/Fire survey begins by stating that the town is asking the public to weigh in on how to proceed.  In actuality it is asking the public to choose between one of the projects they have chosen to put before us.  Sort of like voting in the former Soviet Union.  The state named the candidates from the Communist Party and the people got to decide which one they wanted.  The citizens could theoretically vote them all down but there wasn’t any point.  There would just be another slate of Communist Party members.

I use a store mobility scooter when grocery shopping.  Today at Hannaford’s at the checkout, they asked me if I would like them to get me another cart to go out to my car.  I said, “Why would I need another cart?”  They said because you aren’t allowed to take the cart outside anymore.  A myriad of thoughts went through my head.  It’s hard enough for me to get all the way into the store now, since they moved the electric carts out of the entranceway, and they expect me to get all my groceries and me out to my car without the e-cart? What is going on? 

A letter from corporate apparently came down with the pronouncement.  I will be calling corporate 1/7/16 to find out more.  The line I was given by the frontline staff was that there have been accidents because the carts are too low.  I said, oh, are they going to stop allowing children and any Little People in the parking lot, too?  Never at a loss for a sarcastic retort, am I!!  I apologized, and said I would contact corporate with my concerns and stop taking out my anger on them.

The Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia has a lot of oil.

The Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia has a lot of Shiites.

Many of the oil workers in the Eastern Province (as well as Bahrain, Oman & UAE) are Shiites.

These Shiites are currently very angry.

This year’s seasonal epiphany had a fitting theme – peace and how to attain it.  It was a two part revelation.  The first is very simple: stop starting new wars.  If there’s not already a war somewhere, don’t start one.  Period.  No matter how undemocratic you think the regime or how crappy their policies, bombing a country does not improve the lives of the people there.  On the contrary, it destroys lives in every sense.  

So many things happened in 2015, it’s hard to catalog in one year-end summation. To a large extent, It was a year defined by crises, including financial distress in Greece and China as well as the Syrian refugee crisis and the rise of ISIL. But before we plunge into the disaster zone, it was also a political year. What better place to start than the US presidential campaigns, now well underway.

Here in Vermont, many were heartened by Bernie Sanders’ strong start and people-powered campaign. It was nice to see someone take on Hillary, even as he gave her a pass on her various scandals (emailgate, Benghazi). There was also the rise of Donald Trump as the Republican frontrunner who can say almost anything and still gain in the polls. Despite the theatrics, politics this year provided a patter of response to the events of 2015, as the real world intruded into the carefully crafted platforms of the various candidates. They were forced to take positions on gun control, foreign affairs, Black Lives Matter, and the global economy, articulated in a string of debates held by both parties. Voters who are paying attention got the chance to hone their own positions against those who would be our leaders over the next several years.

DESCRIPTION:
Will 2016 be the year in which a prominent voice quotes King’s condemnations of US wars. Good people everywhere should resolve this new year to follow Ramsey Clark in his efforts toward hearing the truthful and liberating words of King as a catalyst toward achieving justice and adjudicated compensations that will end profitable genocide

TEXT:
Will it happen in 2016, during the weekend holiday in the United States dedicated to Martin Luther King’s birth date. that of the dozens of nations presently under attack, whether by US NATO UN military or economic warfare, one will field a celebrity status leader reading to the public from King’s long suppressed sermon Beyond Vietnam – a Time to Break Silence?

At about this time each year, Brattleboro businesses generously donate over $50,000… to the Town of Brattleboro for a town business license.

That’s $50,000 that is diverted from food and heat drives, year-end bonuses, and holiday gift buying and into the town’s coffers. It is also an unnecessary hurdle for business owners in Brattleboro.

There are many things wrong with this approach, all easily solved if we are serious about being business-friendly.

It doesn’t need to be collected at this time of year.

The current system requires payments be made during the holiday season, when food drives, heat funds, and donations to other worthy causes need funds. This is the only time it can be collected, according to the way the town operates the program.

DESCRIPTION:
Jesus warns harming God’s children is equivalent to harming the Lord. “As you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.” This principle of a common humanity is basic to the Nuremberg Principles of Int’l Law, written to prosecute anyone, who would ever do what the Nazis did, which included bombing, invading and occupying innocent nations as Christian Americans have done since end of World War Two

 3:42 minutes
Apollo 11 was the first manned mission to land on the Moon in 1969. There have been six manned U.S. landings between 1969 and 1972. A cursory trolling of the Internet will bring a trove of manned moon landings hoax claims and debunkers of the hoax theory. Did man walk on the moon or not?

One strong indicator against man walking on the moon hoax is that if the 1969 landing was a hoax, then all six manned missions to the moon were a hoax, as well as all of the unmanned vehicles landings and all the manned orbits around the moon. If a hoax is in order, then it would not make sense to create a hoax for just the first manned mission but to create a hoax for the entire array of Apollo missions.

In fact, there are too many indications that the manned landings were for real.

I miss reading all the comments and good wishes in the donation column. I miss having a local charity that gave 100 percent of the proceeds to its intended beneficiaries.

I miss Pat Smith running the newspaper campaign. I miss how people would write: In lieu of local Christmas cards. I miss how you could write anything you wanted and make it as long as you wanted and it would get printed.