The BEARCAT Arrives in Keene – Feeling safer yet?

BEARCATDespite a supermajority of Keeniacs opposing the “tank”, as Mayor Kendall Lane excitedly called it, the city council overwhelmingly did as they were asked by Keene Police and accepted the armored Lenco BEARCAT killing machine from the Department of Homeland Security. Now it has arrived and is ready to be used to crush your freedom – I mean to rescue people from floods and save people in burning homes.

Keene police only have the best of intentions for the vehicle – the thermal imaging equipment that can see through walls will only be used to find people in fires – they would NEVER use it to try to find cannabis grow operations. Sure, the BEARCAT has gunports all around the vehicle – but don’t worry – they’ll be using those for… um…

Secession Coverage Continues to Spread

Local independence movements continue to be popular in various media. NHPR has today published a seven minute segment that focuses mostly on the Foundation for New Hampshire Independence. Also published on the same day as last week’s Free Concord article on the subject was a story on the Concord-NH Patch, Secession Movement Comes to NH. FreeWilliamsburg.com published on November 16 an interview with a resident of the Brooklyn neighborhood who started a petition on WhiteHouse.gov to grant secession to East Williamsburg to ‘create a new, hipper neighborhood’.

A mural welcoming Barack Obama to Burma (Myanmar) is vandalized in Yangon

Gun bans on school campuses really work!

Keene’s big violent crime news from over the weekend is being picked up by multiple news sources. A local man has been accused of pulling a gun on someone at a party and on Keene State College campus. The accused says that he was the one who had a gun pulled on him and that he had called the police at the party.

Wait, I thought carrying firearms on campuses in NH is prohibited! How about that… laws aren’t actually magic words that make people do what the lawmakers want!

The Amazing Silence: Joan Roelofs on the State of the Antiwar Movement

On Friday, November 16 at the Unitarian Universalist church in Keene, New Hampshire Peace Action hosted a presentation and discussion with author Joan Roelofs. Joan is a former professor at Keene State College and the author of Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism and Greening Cities: Building Just and Sustainable Communities. In her presentation, she theorizes the reasons for the disappointing state of antiwar movement, given the chronic militarization of the globe. See the playlist embedded below for the full hour and forty minute discussion on focusing through the distractions to confront the issues that most threaten peaceful human existence.

Who Is Officer Pelliccia?

What does it say about an individual that is uncomfortable sharing their first name with you? On November 5, the afternoon before the 2012 election, I was chalking around city hall in Concord when I was approached by an officer. He implied that he needed to know my name because “I got called in”, which is not a valid excuse/reasonable suspicion of any crime. I figured I would entertain him in reciprocity by first asking his name.

Ean: What’s your first name?
Pelliccia: My first name? It’s Officer Pelliccia. That, that’s how we refer to each other here.
E: You won’t give me your first name?
P: Nope.
E: Okay, well I’ll give you only my last name then. My name is Mr. Ean.

As he walked away, I told him that my name was Garret, and asked his. He only repeated, “Officer Pelliccia”.

The nice lady on the phone at the company he works for told me that his name is Andrew.