Letter the Editor - Stop the Keystone XL Pipe LIne

This Sunday 4000  or more people will be surrounding the White House in an action to stop the Keystone XL Pipeline from being built.  I was one of the 1253 citizens arrested in the Tar Sands Action that took place earlier in DC.  Now I’m returning Sunday, November 6^th, exactly one year to the day before the election next year, to take part in this follow-up action.  Why would someone living in Mt. Shasta, where heaven meets earth, bother?  Because stopping the pipe line is crucial for the climate.  The President can stop this off-loading of sludge from the Alberta, Canada Tar Sands.  This is because the pipe line, that TransCanada is pushing to build, crosses our international border.  Thus, it is an issue for the State Department to decide.  The President who told us that under his leadership the oceans would stop rising and the US would kick its dependency on oil, now has an opportunity to act on what he promised.  The Keystone XL Pipe Line, if built, will carry Tar Sands oil 1700 miles across the US to Gulf Coast refineries.  Never mind that it will leak as it crosses some of America’s most sensitive aquifers that millions of us depend upon for drinking and agriculture.   Once this sludge is refined there is no guarantee that it will be available for US consumers.  It will be sold tax free to the highest bidder.  But burning it will be the ultimate disaster for the earth’s climate.

Tear Gas ... Bean Bag Rounds ... Iraq War Vet critically Injured by Police

Yesterday and last evening saw police actions targeting occupy communities on both coasts.  In Atlanta, Mayor Kasim Reed, in his succumbing to the wishes of the ruling elites, withdrew his executive order allowing Occupy Atlanta to continue in Woodruff Park.  He used the pretext of a the dangers stemming from a misguided and misrepresented rap concert that was advertised on Georgia's most listened to radio station, to eliminate the Atlanta Occupy Community.  He said the trust between he and the Occupy Atlanta Community had been broken.  He didn't use the ruse of "weapons of mass destruction" to justify his police action.  It has already been taken. The occupy folks in Atlanta had been peacefully maintaining their vigil in the new American Revolution.  This vigil involved, among other things, the feeding homeless people, something that the outside community has not been able to do.  The mayor did not suggest that the Occupy Atlanta Community would be welcome in other venues.

Meanwhile, yesterday morning police in riot gear from many communities in the San Francisco Bay Area, cleared out the Occupy Oakland Community in the matter of a few minutes, lingering long enough to arrest over 97 residents and destroy their personal belongings.  Later in the evening, in front of Oakland City Hall, demonstrators, supporting the Occupy Oakland residents, gathered to demonstrate.  They were warned that they represented an "unlawful assembly."  On three separate occasions they were attacked with tear gas and bean bag rounds.  I watched all of this on the "Global Revolution live stream.   I saw one bloody demonstrator who had bean hit just above his right eye.  As it turns out, his name is Scott Olsen.  The Huffington Post reports that he is 24 and an Iraq War Veteran.  His room mate,  Keith Shannon also reported to the Huffington Post that Scott is sedated and on a reparator at Highland Hospital in Oakland.

Civil Disobedience

Civil Disobedience.  This is the action that is flowing outward much like penicillin in a petri dish, destroying the diseased  culture of exploitation surrounding it.  This is the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon.  What is occurring is the basic taking and remaking of the commons, places where an alternative system of democracy is being germinated.  The world economic system, nominally headed by the United States but, in reality, owned and managed by financial and corporate ruling elites, will not respond to anything less than direct, persistent and full spectrum civil disruption and disobedience.  I am describing the beginning of the end of capitalism represented as it is by its perverted ideology: the accumulation of personal wealth.  Like a sponge soaking up the last sources of public wealth, the neoliberal economics of privatization is sucking up public education, social security, Medicare, publicly owned land trusts, and the very air we breath.  People are finally waking up to the reality of the destruction that capitalism has brought to our little blue marble of a planet.

Occupy Wall Street

The critical comments of people responding to the "Occupy Wall Street" events separate into two different categories.  One, we don't recognize responsible leaders, (meaning, I suppose,  the ruling elites are not in charge.)  Two, they contend that we lack credibility because we do not present coherent demands.  We don't formulate demands. Such activity would necessarily imply that we want the ruling elites to fulfill them while remaining in power.  No.  That is no longer possible.  It is time for them to go.  We have goals but not demands.  Demands imply that there are responsible parities out there who can accede to such requests.  This is obviously not the case, be it Wall Street or political parties.  There is no such beast.  It has gone beyond liberal negotiation and educational efforts.  Radical action is called for.  This is a revolution and in it leadership is flowing from the bottom up, not the top down.  And ... I am just speaking for myself.

Blame the Victims, Says Cain in Defending Neo-feudalism

"Cain said Wednesday to the Associated Press during a book signing event, 'Don't blame Wall Street, don't blame the big banks, if you don't have a job and you're not rich, blame yourself!'" So when the economic system breaks down, it has absolutely nothing to do with neo-feudalism.  Twenty-five million Americans who would prefer full time work just decided simultaneously to quit working and go on extended vacation so that some of them could become full-time anarchists. 

Eric Cantor calls us "Mobs"

Eric Cantor is portraying us as “mobs” because he recognizes the threat to his power and his base, the ruling elites.  People have given up on political parties responsive only to the corporations and Wall Street.  It must be finally reaching the level of threat to the entrenched elites as they are responding in the most predictable fashion.  People, rather than trying again and again to address a nonresponsive government along with the "for the privileged only” economic system, have moved on to model and create a new world.  The power is shifting.  What took us so long?  Rather than make demands of power, and thus imply that we want the current system to remain, we are building something new.  This is called “Revolution.”  The American Revolution continues.  It is not a once and for all deal.