Tag: civil disobedience

Anti-Capitalist Meetup: Fracking Skirmishes In the Anti-Corporatist War by Northsylvania

Fracking, like cigarette production, is one of the moral indicators of Capitalism-as-practiced. A lot of money is spent by the companies involved proving that it causes no harm and is in fact a common good. It also provides a good case study in how the fight against corporate/ governmental hegemony can be a long drawn out process punctuated by the occasional surprising success. If the city of Dallas, the home of Big Oil, effectively bans fracking, that says a lot.

J.R. Ewing standing in front of Southfork with the phrase,

 However, fracking is a complicated subject. The points made for it by its apologists include economic development, the prospect of having a smaller carbon footprint than with coal fired energy generation, and cheaper gas for those who are vulnerable to high heating costs. Proponents say that fracking is a proven technology used for many years, has never been proved to have a negative effect on environmental degradation, and has never caused earthquakes, which is true…if you define fracking narrowly as sending an explosive charge down a borehole to loosen the formation from which the oil is extracted, and discount the storage and transport of waste, the fugitive emissions from extraction and storage, and earthquakes caused by injection disposal wells.  Fracking is also bound up in our ideas of individual versus collective rights, class warfare, corporate/ governmental collusion, and climate change, something we on the Left are passionate about, and rightly so. On the Right it is likewise associated with decreasing reliance on foreign gas and oil imports, national economic progress, and providing jobs. Because the media promotes controversy, everything from the visual images of protesters to the letters written to local papers are often chosen to be polarising. The most extreme examples of corporate sponsored puff pieces are often balanced with impassioned but uneducated letters and e-mails, so that readers unfamiliar with the process become confused. One friend of mine asked, “How can anyone possibly think that injecting a highly pressurised column of carcinogenic chemicals into a pipe through the water supply could be a good idea?” Another made equally valid points from his point of view: “If you all say that nuclear power is off the table, renewables can’t generate enough power, biofuels take up too much productive land, and coal and petroleum has to stay in the ground, how are you going to heat your houses and cook your food?”

Civil Disobedience. NSA & Lesser Evilism.

If you are ever traveling on route 9 east through the New Hampshire border town of Chesterfield, and you’re not stuck behind some slow poke (me), watch your speed.  The limit changes from 35 to 45 then to 55 and back again to 35 just about every quarter mile or so. The local police have a ball targeting vehicles with out of state tags.

Whenever I’m traveling in the area, the way I fight back is by consistently traveling 5 miles an hour UNDER the speed limit. They can’t give me a speeding ticket. AND they can’t give anyone traveling behind me a ticket either.

Screw You Chesterfield cops!

On a similar note:

(h/t ek –More Video)



I encourage everyone to support Operation: Everyone Talk Like A Terrorist All The Time. You may think I’m just kidding. But I am kidding on the square.

Like the video says:

During an election candidates pretend not to be assholes, then when they get the job they reveal they’ve actually been a complete assholes the entire time. Just look at the people we’re expected to choose from in 2016. Do we NOT think that they are all going to be giant assholes?…

The only way to fight back against our country’s excessive wire tapping & data mining is to make it irrelevant.

Phone calls. Emails. Text messages as routine as grocery lists.

Think of it as Talk like a Pirate Day. Only replace Pirate with Terrorist and Day with All The Time.

The Stars Have Aligned: The Time Is Now for the DREAM Act

Originally posted at Citizen Orange.

If you haven’t been on facebook, twitter, or following the news, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) announced yesterday that he would be introducing the DREAM Act as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act.  Univision anchor Jorge Ramos tweeted last week that Reid wanted to move the DREAM Act before November.  Now we know how Reid wants to move it.  The DREAM Act could come up for a vote as early as Tuesday of next week.

DREAM Now Letters to Barack Obama: Lizbeth Mateo

Originally posted on Citizen Orange.

The “DREAM Now Series: Letters to Barack Obama” is a social media campaign that launched Monday, July 19, to underscore the urgent need to pass the DREAM Act. The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, S. 729, would help tens of thousands of young people, American in all but paperwork, to earn legal status, provided they graduate from U.S. high schools, have good moral character, and complete either two years of college or military service.  With broader comprehensive immigration reform stuck in partisan gridlock, the time is now for the White House and Congress to step up and pass the DREAM Act!

Dear Mr. President,

My name is Lizbeth Mateo and I am undocumented. On May 17th, on the 56th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, I, along with Mohammad Abdollahi, Yahaira Carrillo and two others, became the first undocumented students to risk deportation by staging a sit-in inside Senator McCain’s office in Tucson, Arizona, to demand the immediate passage of the DREAM Act. As a result of that sit-in we were arrested, turned over to ICE, and we now face deportation

Conscience Clauses, Civil Disobedience, and Uncivil Discourse

In this country, a long tradition exists of individuals who have refused to perform a particular duty or task, citing their religious beliefs as justification.  The very definition of Civil Disobedience, of course, depends on the person, the situation, and how it is applied.  The latest incident has opened up a discussion which has never really subsided, only dipped underneath the radar from time to time.  In this circumstance, a Texas bus driver, who is also an ordained conservative Christian minister, claims that he was fired for not taking a women to Planned Parenthood.  His decision is in the same vein as those of pharmacists who, stating moral reasons, will not dispense the morning-after pill to women who request it.

Witnessing Against Torture: Why We Must Act

By Kathy Kelly

June 22, 2010

   

Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.  U.S. Constitution Amendment I

An old cliché says that anyone who has herself for a lawyer has a fool for a client.  Nevertheless, going to trial in Washington, D.C., this past June 14, I and twenty-three other defendants prepared a pro se defense.  Acting as our own lawyers in court, we aimed to defend a population that finds little voice in our society at all, and to bring a sort of prosecution against their persecutors.

Months earlier, on January 21st, we had held a memorial vigil for three innocent Guantanamo prisoners, recently revealed to have been in all probability tortured to death by our government with what would turn out to be utter impunity – and because we had wished the culpable parties to take notice, we’d staged a vigil where they worked, specifically on the Capitol Steps and in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol Building. We had been charged with causing a “breach of the peace,” a technical legal term for a situation that might risk inciting people to violence. In abetting Administration use of torture, Congress had been inciting others to horrendous violence, and we’d been protesting perhaps one of the gravest imaginable breaches of the peace.  Now we were making our small attempt to take these crimes to court, in the course of defending ourselves against what we felt to be a misdirected charge.  

DADT: Dr Dean & Choi @ Today’s WH Protest, More Arrests

This was so totally fitting for today, as the President gave a short on details and lackluster speech down in Louisiana, during day 12 of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill blowout.  

SIX ARRESTED AT WHITE HOUSE PROTEST  5/2/2010 The Advocate

http://www.advocate.com/News/D…


Choi, who has twice been arrested after handcuffing himself to the White House gates and has now been court ordered not to enter a certain perimeter around the White House, was joined by a handful of other speakers, including former Vermont governor and Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean, Servicemembers United executive director Alex Nicholson, and Servicemembers Legal Defense Network executive director Aubrey Sarvis.

The protest came on the heels of a letter leaked late Friday afternoon in which Department of Defense secretary Robert Gates urged House Armed Services Committee chairman Ike Skelton “in the strongest possible terms” to delay legislative action on repeal until the Pentagon completes its assessment of how to implement repeal.

The Gangster Economy

(Cross-posted at Wild Wild Left)

I’m told that discussing the issues is important.  I’m told it matters.  But what good does discussing the issues do when the politicians in Washington don’t give a damn about the issues?  All they care about is expanding corporate power so the corporate thugs they work for will reward them.  It doesn’t matter what the issue is, they twist and distort it until it can be used as a pretext and justification for maximizing corporate profits and increasing corporate control over everything.

If you’re one of the few Americans who has a dollar left in your pocket, take a look at it . . .  

in greed we trust, gree, economic crisis, economic downturn, economy is down, capitalism, failed capitalism, media, media influence Pictures, Images and Photos

I hope that clarifies the issues for you.  

The Path We Must Take

If Dr. King hadn’t been assassinated for speaking truth to power, if he was here today, if he was at the Lincoln Memorial again, looking out at that corporate capital of deceit and corruption, what would he say, what would he ask us to do?

He’d ask us to overcome our fear, he’d call for mass protests and civil disobedience, he’d explain why it’s necessary, just as he did in 1968 . . .  

If you have never found something so dear and precious to you that you would die for it, then you are not fit to live.  You may be 38 years old, as I happen to be, and one day some great crisis arises and calls upon you to stand for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause, but you refuse to take a stand because you are afraid.

You refuse to do it because you want to live longer.  Or you’re afraid that you will lose your job, or that you will be criticized, or that you will lose your popularity.  So you refuse to take a stand.  Well you may go on and live until you’re 90, but you are just as dead at 38 as you will be at 90.   And when you take your last breath, it will only be the belated announcement of the earlier death of your spirit.

You died when you refused to stand up for right.

You died when you refused to stand up for truth.

You died when you refused to stand up for justice.

Can you understand that, “leaders” of the Netroots?  Can you understand that, Markos Moulitsas?  Can you understand that, Obamacrats?  Tap your TR trigger fingers on the lid of that coffin you call a blog if you do.  Can you understand that, MoveOn.org?  Can you understand that, Josh Marshall?  John Amato? Digby?  Jane Hamsher?  If you do, explain it to TBogg, that Mighty Slayer of “Purists.”  How about you, Madame Proprietor of the Huff and Puff Post?  Can you understand that?  Can any of you understand that???

None of you have called for mass protests or civil disobedience.  In the streets of Washington D.C. or anywhere else.  You refuse to because you’re afraid.  Well go ahead, keep on blogging until you’re 90, it won’t matter, you’re just as dead right now as you will be then.  

You died when you refused to stand up for right.

You died when you refused to stand up for truth.

You died when you refused to stand up for justice.

Welcome to Netroots Nation  . . .

Graves Pictures, Images and Photos

Enjoy your stay.

I have some news for those nonstop typers.  Typing isn’t standing up for right, truth, justice, or anything else.  It’s just typing.  

Remember Mischief Night? It’s back, and it could get us statewide single payer in PA

In case you’re unaware, there is currently a bill in the Pennsylvania state legislature to establish a statewide single-payer (that’s something close to Medicare for all) system.  Governor Rendell has pledged to sign it if it gets to his desk, and there are currently 35 co-sponsors in the House – including 4 Republicans – and 9 co-sponsors in the Senate.  That’s out of a Senate of 50 and a House of 203.

This Friday, the 30th, there will be a protest at a Blue Cross/Blue Shield building in Philadelphia in support of single payer, and in my state of Pennsylvania this will have particular significance because of how close we are to real health care reform.

IMPORTANT:  If you can’t make it to the protest, but live in Pennsylvania, please contact your state legislators and/or the media to either thank them for their support or to urge them to support these bills (SB 400 and HB 1660).  You can do that here.

Vets on McCain & Life On The Ledge

The following video ad was produced by veteran  inlookout and linked, in the replys, in an initial writeup posted at Vet Voice after the Debate.

John McCain Loves Cutting Veterans Health Benefits

Veterans Occupy National Archives Building and Much More

“Arresting Bush and Cheney for war crimes will honor our oath to the Constitution,” vets say.
 

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