All of a sudden, Grafton is back in the news. Looks like the liberty activist community has been quietly growing there and getting organized – to the point where at a recent town meeting activists voted to put a ballot measure on to reduce the town budget 10%. The aggressors are worried. Here’s the story from local mainstream mouthpiece Valley News:
By Jim Kenyon
Grafton — At last month’s deliberative session, “Free Staters” and their allies scored a victory by getting preliminary approval for a major cut in town spending. On Town Meeting Day, voters will go to the polls to decide whether the proposed budget reduction of more than $128,000 will stick.
The proposal represents a budget cut of either 10 percent or 13 percent, depending on whether the Free Staters’ or Selectboard’s figures are used. Either way, if voters uphold the cut, “it certainly won’t be trivial and people are definitely going to notice it,” said Selectman David Rienzo. “I think it would be better for the town if people rejected the Free Staters’ budget.” (more…)
Dave Ridley gives some critical analysis to recent comment controversies. Mark Warden, a state representative from Manchester, found himself under criticism after remarks made during a hearing were reported on by the Granite State Progress blog and reposted further. Part I, The Hunt for Controversial Comments is On:
This comes in the wake of the controversy stirred by Keene representative Cynthia Chase’s comments regarding actively immigrating porcupines. Ridley ambush interviewed Chase in Concord and published the video last week, which is fairly uneventful as she declines comment and moves on. In a sense, the videographer was throwing a softball by asking, ‘Do people get too focused on controversial comments and not enough on people’s actions?’
Yesterday Truthdig and today Dandelion Salad published an article by Christopher Hedges, who was present at Ft Meade during the hearing in which Bradley Manning delivered his first public statement. Journalist Alexa O’Brien has transcribed Manning’s statement which is also published at Dandelion Salad. Below is Hedges’ entry We Are Bradley Manning:
I was in a military courtroom at Fort Meade in Maryland on Thursday as Pfc. Bradley Manning admitted giving classified government documents to WikiLeaks. The hundreds of thousands of leaked documents exposed U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as government misconduct. A statement that Manning made to the court was a powerful and moving treatise on the importance of placing conscience above personal safety, the necessity of sacrificing careers and liberty for the public good, and the moral imperative of carrying out acts of defiance. Manning will surely pay with many years—perhaps his entire life—in prison. But we too will pay. The war against Bradley Manning is a war against us all.
This trial is not simply the prosecution of a 25-year-old soldier who had the temerity to report to the outside world the indiscriminate slaughter, war crimes, torture and abuse that are carried out by our government and our occupation forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is a concerted effort by the security and surveillance state to extinguish what is left of a free press, one that has the constitutional right to expose crimes by those in power. The lonely individuals who take personal risks so that the public can know the truth—the Daniel Ellsbergs, the Ron Ridenhours, the Deep Throats and the Bradley Mannings—are from now on to be charged with “aiding the enemy.” All those within the system who publicly reveal facts that challenge the official narrative will be imprisoned, as was John Kiriakou, the former CIA analyst who for exposing the U.S. government’s use of torture began serving a 30-month prison term the day Manning read his statement. There is a word for states that create these kinds of information vacuums: totalitarian. (more…)
Following the publication of Aqua Keene Parking Force, another video featuring similar graphic design has appeared on the Fr33manTVraw youtube channel. In this episode, Slavoj Žižek and Charlie Rose discuss the monstrosity of the Stalin regime in historical context. Zizek analyzes the suicidal nature of Stalinism and the implosion of the top-heavy, bureaucratic Central Committee.
The Fr33manTVraw channel recently received one of its largest uploads to date. The 82 minute video is the first third of a compilation of raw footage from our group’s first day on the ground for the NATO summit protests. The videos have been released first to the raw channel, and then to Free Concord’s youtube channel as they are edited and narrated to give the footage context. For those looking for the entire journey of the camera, the raw footage includes practically everything filmed. The previous day’s release, Day Zero, is just over nine minutes edited and just under ten raw. Within the coming weeks, a shortened, finished product will publish from the following day. In the meantime, the raw first segment of Day One: Boots on the Ground is live:
Yesterday truth-out.com posted an update on the NATO 3 case in Illinois, where three travelling protesters still remain caged on state-level charges of domestic terrorism after their apartment was raided by police days before the historic protest weekend.
Today’s 2013 NH Liberty Forum presentation video is none other than footage from the screening of the unreleased documentary Vote Jesus: The Chronicles of Ken Stevenson. Presidential hopeful Vermin Supreme went undercover as Ken Stevenson in 2008 to make the film, remaining in character while engaging with numerous figures from America’s christian right. In the post-screening Q&A, Vermin discusses the history of the project and the potential for a release of some version of the film in the future. You may recognize the self-declared Emperor of the New Millenium as featured in previous Free Concord content: Election summary The Most Least Important Primary, Capitol Center debate arrest coverage, On the Campaign Trail with Vermin Supreme, Arrested on Election Eve: Why not to talk to police, Tough Questions on Oral Hygiene interview, and presidential endorsement Why You Should Consider Vermin Supreme in 2012.
I’d like to thank you all for enjoying my playing, and having fun with pretend, and coming up with these outrageous things, and running with them, and letting the people at large, and the media think that it’s something real. You people are a force multiplier for this sort of absurdity, this sort of surrealism, this sort of critique of American politics, and I think the more people that get involved and take this sort of tact, the better.
