BARBWIRE
by
ANDREW BARBANO


Current
Barbwires

 

"If you can't say anything nice about someone, sit right here by me."

Alice Lee Roosevelt Longworth  

 


About
Barbano


Site Map
SITE NAVIGATION TIPS: When all else fails, read the instructions
Je Suis Charlie

¡Viva Chávez!
César Chávez Celebration / Celebración de César Chávez
31 March
/ 31 de Marzo

Followed by a moon shadow

TRAVUS T. HIPP, 1937-2012

ADIÓS, COMPADRE — Our friend Travus, 75, passed away peacefully between 2:00 and 3:00 a.m. PDT on 18 May 2012 at his home in Silver City, Nevada. The sun is in eclipse as I write this at 6:30 p.m. on May 20.

SLIGHT CHANGE OF VENUE (5-22-2012) — Adiós in Silver City, Nevada, Saturday, May 26, 2012 —>
The auld church where Travus lived and died is too small for the expected multitude, so gathering, gnoshing and remembering will commence at the Silver City Community Center, 385 High Street, at 10:00 a.m. PDT. Bring food if you want but most important, bring yourself and all your memories. Memorial service starts at High Noon. Travus will be buried next to his rock star companion Lynne Hughes, a short walk away. My remembrance of Lynne from the 3-21-1993 Daily Sparks Tribune will posted with Travus' formal obituary at this website. All memories accepted for permanent posting hereat. Thanks for all your kind words. Keep up the good work and the good fight.

Be well. Raise hell.

Andrew Barbano

NEW — Travus' life story and obituary
Travus' last column in the 5-20 Daily Sparks Tribune
Debra K. Reid photo / Sparks Tribune Jan. 4, 2009

Guest Writings by Travus T. Hipp
TRAVUS 2006 // TRAVUS 2008

Democracy is on the march
From the 12-17-2004 Comstock Chronicle
Reproduced by permission
Copyright © 2004 Cabale News Service

In our headlong rush to bring the benefits of democracy to the benighted nations of the earth, it ill behooves us to ignore the underlying realities of why we are selling this particular political snake oil, and to whom.

Largely ignored in discussions of world affairs India, the worlds largest democracy is a glowing example of aggressive democratic politics. The bloated government bureaucracy and the coalition politics of a multi party system have made political favor the currency of corruption from the lowly clerk to the district police and their party bosses. Sinc
e the second world war India has tried to maintain its semi imperial rule over diverse tribal territories with mixed results. The Moslem west broke away and became Pakistan, Bengal (also Moslem) became a virtual economic vassal to Indian crop brokers who controlled the delta croplands where poor share cropper farmers risk their lives on getting the crop in before the Monsoon rains flood their villages and fields.

Along the Himalayan mountain chain India has absorbed numerous small independent kingdoms, including Bhutan, Sikkim and , (some suspect), various plots to take control of Nepal, the key to the Tibetan and Chinese high plateau. The method of these conquests is simple. Send in lots of Hindu immigrants as low price workers of technicians, then begin to stir resentment of the immigrants low status, stage rallies demanding rights and make enough trouble to threaten the token military, forcing the country to petition India, its powerful neighbor, for "peace keeping forces". Negotiations produce a demand for elections, and the already politically astute Hindu population votes en masse for a government that will negotiate their melding into "Mother India". Aggression by the ballot instead of the bullet.

Democracy is favored by the international capitalist class because it is so easily manipulated. Once the masses of the people are given the vote they can be controlled by creation of election "issues" that divide voters into warring factions of roughly equal strength. In a close election you only need to buy or steal a very few votes to put your puppets in place.

Democracy is the expression of public opinion in public policy, but opinion if formed by information, and control of the media and the information flow are for sale to the highest bidder in our free market society, where the Supreme court has ruled that money is the same as speech, and campaign funding is a protected right for both the rich and poor. Money in the right places can enhance a political cause or simply overwhelm an opposition candidate with advertising.

It is no coincidence that our government spent some $65 million dollars in support of the Ukrainian opposition and their candidate Yushenko, including paying for the exit polling that was used to challenge the election results. When we establish whatever puppet regime we install in Baghdad, they will dance to the same tune, as democracy masks imperialism in free market politics.

The nutcase truths
by Travus T. Hip
p
From the 1-7-2005 Comstock Chronicle
Reproduced by permission
Copyright © 2005 Cabale News Service

There is a point beyond which we all retreat into denial for fear of truth too horrifying and immense to be accepted. The recent Sumatra Tsunami and its implications of pending global destruction are one such reality. Like the hurtling asteroid hit or the eruption of the super volcano slowly swelling west of Yellowstone, we cannot comprehend the enormity of such a disaster , so we ignore it to maintain our "sanity" in what is all to obviously a delusion of civilization and human importance in the overall cosmos.

Similarly, we deny many social symptoms and political clues to our current situation because to recognize them would call to question our entire belief system and social order. I remember Mae Brussels, a totally compulsive researcher of the Kennedy assassination whose volumes of notes and transcripts filled her Carmel Valley home from floor to ceiling. She was the first person to reveal the Mafia connection to the CIA sponsored anti-Castro Cubans as the g roup behind the Dallas hit team. This was in the late sixties and I was running a tape of her Carmel radio show on the conspiracy every Sunday night after my own talk show in Sacramento. Nobody believed her!

She was just a raving nutcase claiming that Sam Giancana in Chicago and Santo Trafficante in Florida had shopped the contract to a Corsican hit team, at the behest of the Nazi-dominated CIA of the time, who feared Kennedy’s dismantling of the agency following the Bay of Pigs. Twenty years later most of the evidence she cited has been confirmed, but she and almost all of the eyeball witnesses are dead and cannot comment.

Today’s raving apostle of the greater conspiracy is one Michael C. Ruppert, a disillusioned former Los Angeles Police narco-cop, who first came to public attention with his discovery of the CIA/Contra/Cocaine connection to the Crack epidemic in the black community of LA. When he was stonewalled at higher levels, he quit the force and continued his probe of who was doing what, with which, and to whom.

Coke meant big money and big money needs to move in and out of banks to be "laundered", a process we like to think is only common in the Bahamas, Panama and other obscure third world edifices. Ruppert, along with other agencies discovered that major U.S. banks were profiting from the passage of organized crime funds, resulting in some federaal investigations but few actions of note.

Now comes Ruppert with a new book of accusations tying together the loose ends of 9/11, Iraq, the Caspian dry holes , the collapse of Russia, the Afghan pipeline and dozens of other familiar villains in a conspiracy to rule the world through energy control, using the U.S. military as their tool and anti terrorism as their key to power. He has been derided by major media and even the often turn coat left, and effectively banned from radio and television. This in a world where authors of books on aroma therapy get interviewed on the network morning shows.

The book is "Crossing the Rubicon", New Society Publishers. Rough read with lots of footnotes and references, but it will force you to think of the big picture in our small and fragile world.

SMOKING GUNS

More Guest Columns
Jake Highton 2005
Jake Highton 2006

Orland T. Outland
TRAVUS 2006
TRAVUS 2008

People vs. Corporate Con Job

The Orwell Diversion by Alex Carey

Review of Alex Carey's "Taking the Risk out of Democracy:
Propaganda in the US and Australia"

ORDER "Taking the Risk Out of Democracy"
Corporate Propaganda versus Freedom and Liberty
By Alex Carey
Edited by Andrew Lohrey
Foreword by Noam Chomsky
University of Illinois Press

CNN's Lou Dobbs' new book "Exporting America" quotes Carey


U-News 2004-05 Archives
NevadaLabor.com | U-News | Bulletins + Almanac
Casinos Out of Politics (COP) | Sen. Joe Neal
Guinn Watch | Deciding Factors
| BallotBoxing.US
DoctorLawyerWatch.com | Barbwire Oilogopoly Archive
Barbwire Nevada Corporate Welfare Archive
Annual César Chávez Celebration
War Rooms:
Banks, Cabbies, Cabela's, Cable TV, Cancer Kids/Mining, Energy, Food, Health Care, Resurge.TV/consumers, Starbucks, Wal-Mart
Search this site | In Search Of...


More
Barbwires

Copyright © 1982-2006, 2012, 2017 Andrew Barbano

Andrew Barbano is a 36-year Nevadan, a member Communications Workers of America Local 9413 and editor of NevadaLabor.com. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Daily Sparks (Nev.) Tribune since 1988.

Site composed and maintained by Deciding Factors (CWA signatory)
Comments and suggestions appreciated. Sign up for news and bulletins.