ARRPPCO Claims Credit for Liberation of Oranges from Piedmont's Oligarchic Trees and Vows to Return for Lemons

From the S.F. Chronicle of June 21st:

"Q: I read with interest your May 3 column. I live in Piedmont, and have two lemon (Meyer and Eureka) trees and three orange trees. They are all mature trees, and after 22 years, have the largest crop of lemons ever. I have not had a problem with them being eaten.

But some of the oranges have been totally devoured, leaving little pieces of rind all over the place. I had suspected rats, but last week I saw two squirrels climb up on the fence and actually pick an orange right off the tree. They took it into the garden and proceeded to eat half of it. I have had many half-eaten oranges over the past few years. Some are even half eaten on the tree."

The Chronicle columnist, Pam Peirce, responds to this seemingly innocuous question with a coded message suggesting that Piedmontese Contras arm themselves.

A: Rat experts say rats eat orange pulp, leaving the rind and lemon rind, leaving pulp, and will strip bark from citrus trees. However, references are silent on the citrus preferences of tree squirrels.

Here we have the second report of East Bay tree squirrels caught eating oranges, so now we know they do it too. You might be able to dissuade tree squirrels with a hot pepper spray. It wouldn't stop a rat, but squirrels are said to detest it."

The Alliance for the Reincorporation of the Renegade Province of Piedmont hereby claims credit for the liberation of these oranges from the elitist and oligarchic trees of Piedmont. Furthermore, ARRPPCO charges the plantlife of Piedmont with criminal nutritional complicity in Piedmont's dirty dealings, and would like to warn Piedmont that its lemons, too, are no longer safe. Finally, ARRPPCO would like to advise Piedmont authorities to review the Geneva Protocol and the Chemical Weapons Convention on the use of chemical warfare and reconsider its threat to arm local militias with hot pepper spray.

ARRPPCO neither confirms nor denies that the liberation of oranges from Piedmont's loathsome groves is a symbolic action meant to indicate either an orange level terrorist threat alert or the possible expansion of ARRPPCO activities southward into the vulgar suburbs of Orange County.

Piedmont Middle School Takes Anti-Palestinian Stance-- a Prelude to Invasion of Oakland?

Hidden on page four of the Piedmont Middle School Parent Newsletter, January 2009:

"The eighth grade Language Arts classes are creating a memorial museum to Anne Frank and the Holocaust. It will be open all day on Monday, January 12th, 2009. Come by the Library to see the students' perspectives of a very important piece of world history."

While an Anne Frank and Holocaust museum is obviously not a prima facie endorsement of the predations of the Israeli state, reports from inside the Piedmont Middle School administration suggest that this memorializing gesture was rushed into production immediately following the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip on January 3rd. In other words, while the IDF was raining white phosphorus bombs on the residents of Gaza, the administration of the Piedmont Middle School, almost certainly under the direct orders of the city council, decided to signal their encouragement to hawks in the Israeli Defense Ministry by demanding of possibly innocent eighth graders the manufacture of popsicle stick gas chambers and cartoonish renderings of Anne Frank.




Futhermore, in the weeks that followed, while activists in the U.S. were considering campaigns of divestment from Israeli academic institutions, the Piedmontese responded with predictable bellicosity and invited music students from Tel Aviv University to perform. The American Friends of Tel Aviv University reports (scroll down) that on January 31st, the Gertler String Quartet performed "'American' and Israeli songs arranged for string quartets." (You'll note the quotation marks around "American" and the absence of those marks from "Israeli.") As Theodor Herzl foresaw, "The anti-Semites will become our most loyal friends; the anti-Semetic nations will become our allies." (Cited in Tom Segev's One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate, [2000]).


(Israeli and Piedmontese diplomats enjoy a recital at the Piedmont home of Dr. Gary and Lisa Gershony)

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Threat Assessment:

How are we to interpret Piedmont's unwavering avowal of Israel's right to invade?

Are we to read in that support a sly assertion of Piedmont's own right to violate the sovereignty of its neighbors in the name of "defense"?

Given that Oakland is Piedmont's neighbor on every side, are we to understand that Piedmont reserves the right to invade and occupy Oakland?

Lord, it may be later than we think.

Assessment of Opportunities:

It's possible that in Piedmont's aggressive attempt to ally itself with Israel, it is attempting to conflate Israel's justifiable right to exist with Piedmont's clearly unjustifiable right to exist. If so, then we may see in Piedmont's strategic partnership not only a cynical political ploy, but a palpable existential crisis. We may be able to exploit this unease by drawing stark distinctions between Israel and Piedmont, and by going even further and associating Piedmont with the foreign policy of Iranian conservatives such as Ahmadinejad and Khomeini. (This must be done before the possible election of the moderate reformist Moussavi in June.) This approach will also have the likely benefit of seriously confusing the gray hairs of Piedmont's ruling junta.

Light Shines on Primitive Burial Customs of Piedmont

BREAKING--Piedmont's gruesome practice of entombing its dead in the living rooms and entryways of its outwardly pristine and inwardly decrepit homes has finally broken through to mainstream media outlets such as the Associated Press, the S.F. Examiner, the Chronicle, and the Bay Area's CBS5.

The Chronicle headline: "Old corpse turns up in Piedmont home." ABC7: "Woman found mummified in Piedmont."

The Examiner reports that "(a)lthough police have not confirmed the woman's identity, she is believed to be Patricia Bostrom, the owner of the home, whom neighbors said they had not seen in up to five years." You'll note here that the Piedmontese---"the neighbors"--seem to be enforcing a collective silence around the matter.

"[Piedmont police Capt. John Hunt] said the home had not been well-maintained, pointing to rust and paint peeling off the chimney. However, the lawn and landscaping appeared to be trimmed."



The lawn and landscaping "appear" to be trimmed? As is true with all else concerning Piedmont, even basic descriptive facts are ontologically suspect.

Go here for the full S.F. Chronicle article, which naively participates in the official Piedmont version of events--that this instance of suburban entombment is isolated and not, in fact, a part of a larger pattern of primitive burial traditions widely practiced in Piedmont.