Tag: protests

A Message To Trump Protesters

The Nightly Show’s Trevor Noah and Charles Pierce of Esquire Politics have some really good advice for the protesters at Trump rallies: Stay Out Of The Building. As Uncle Charlie says:   Don’t become part of the show. Stop being played for such suckers. Stop enlisting yourself in his bloody vaudeville. Stop giving him stuff …

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Climate Change Protest a Success!, Peace and Antiwar Not So Much

Here we have Obama restarting the war in Iraq, escalating his proxy war in Syria, while threatening WWIII with Russia, and we’re having a climate change protest march. A protest march led by corporate interests. Sure, the people mean well, but the thing is led by the damn establishment man.

These paid activists on the left are starting to annoy me. They think that in order to fight the system they need to use the system, and they end up being dependent on the system. Here’s my PayPal account, thank you very much. That simply won’t work. We knew that back in the sixties, those of us that took it seriously. The counterculture, the radicals, the real hippies, the ones who had it right. We railed against the “establishment” back then. You rarely hear that anymore. Now they want to work within the establishment.  You want to really change what we’re doing on this planet, you are just going to have to be radical, anti-establishment. Anything less is nothing, it’s just perpetuation.

I saw how this played out. It was billed as a “Peace and Climate Movement”.

http://peoplesclimate.org/peac…

“But the developing climate emergency does not exist in isolation. And we must understand and confront the social and economic context that produced and accompanies it: war and unlimited military expenditures, corporate globalization, vast social inequality and racism.”

Most everything I’ve read since then reporting on this “event” has nary a word about Peace. It’s all climate change. There’s no big clamoring to stop Obama from bombing in Iraq and Syria, it’s all about the CO2 levels that purportedly are going to kill all of us before those darn nuclear weapons kill us. Don’t worry about the wars, imperialism, militarism, nuclear weapons, millions being killed, displaced, subjugated and hegemonized right now.  The very actions that are driving the use of more oil, more diamonds, more zirconium and natural gas.  There will be billions killed very soon if we don’t stop driving cars and shopping at Walmart! We must warn the people, they have to change! Let’s have another Earth Day!

There have been many before us that have warned us about war and imperialism. War and imperialism have always been the most insidious evil humans perpetrate on each other. After WWI, an especially ugly and brutal war, the world was so aghast that it tried to abolish war and imperialism. That effort culminated in the Kellogg-Briand Pact, eventually signed by 62 countries including the United States. It’s actually still in effect, but like treaties and laws regarding war, it means nothing to the western ruling class.

Evidently the “establishment” took hold of this event and steered it in the moderate, sanitized direction the ruling class prefers. The radicals were dispensed with, the moderates were paid off and the event proceeded with the usual “smell of cooptation in the morning”. Everybody goes home, a certain segment pledge to carry on, then the next climate change conference is arranged so everybody can get paid and books can get signed.

I saw where many were proclaiming this event a success because it is “creating awareness” about climate change. Again nothing about War and imperialism. The wars will go on, Obama will go bombs away in the MIddle East/North Africa region, but more people will have their eyes on that new Prius in the window. Hey it’s powered by electric batteries, that’s better isn’t it?

Many have lamented the antiwar movement since Obama took office. They say Obama killed it. The allegience of the mainstream left, which was instrumental during protests against the Bush wars and imperialism, was too tied into the lesser evil democratic party and it’s new savior Obama, the newest Presidential war criminal. They’re so freaked out by the republican party that they will allow their own to do things even worse. Quite the human social phenomena.

Everybody has an opinion, you know what they say about that. In my opinion we need to stop the ruling class from conducting wars and imperialism NOW. We need a national and international citizens revolution against the imperialism and militarism that is rotting this earth. We need to stop the western ruling elite from seeking their insane New World Order, their utterly delusional human belief that they can rule the world.  We can combine that with the demand for a new way of living that can address climate change. I believe if we can do that, we CAN address climate change in the way it should be addressed. I believe if we don’t, we can’t.

CNN compares protesters to terrorist insurgents; Feds scare up reason to use drones for conventions

For the first time (that we know of) drones will be used for a political convention for “intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance to government agencies”.  “Wraiths” will also be used, ground-based robots that can be armed with lethal or non-lethal weapons.  The manufacturer of these vehicles has crosshairs and a skeleton as their logo.

A bulletin was issued jointly by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security on August 21st, warning law enforcement agencies about anarchist extremists and the report uses words and imagery that are usually reserved for terrorist insurgents.  They invited the media to learn about their operations control center at an “undisclosed location” and today the fearmongering and demonization of “anarchist extremists”  is blazing across the airwaves along with news about the drones that will be used.

CNN did a video report that is particularly egregious as it quotes from the report saying that the extremist anarchist protesters might use IEDs, and they explain that IEDs are the things used by terrorist insurgents in Afghanistan.  They generously supply video clips of an explosion in Afghanistan and another one that is a military vehicle being blown up, with the shoulder of a soldier in camo coming into the view of the camera at the end.  While the report explains that not all protesters are expected to be violent, CNN adds some video footage of Occupy Wall Street protesters chanting “this is what democracy looks like” and just in case you didn’t make the connection, they throw in some people in Guy Fawkes masks from some supposed Anonymous videos about the convention.  The words and imagery used by the media and the government are meant to cause conflation of Occupy Wall Street protesters and terrorists, in my opinion, and to preemptively justify the excessive use of force during the upcoming conventions and extreme use of militaristic equipment.

The report also mentions that law enforcement should look out for anarchists who might be doing weapons training or buying explosives and they mention that they have used the internet for research and organization in the past.  In the CNN video though, they say that the feds told them they are not watching any particular anarchists.  No.  And then after all of that fearmongering and set up, they say that no specific threats have been made.

It’s funny that the FBI/DHS waited until six days before the RNC convention to issue this warning, isn’t it?  This report was made for the media, in my opinion.  

Huge Protests at BofA Shareholder Meeting Today. Pay Packages Approved, Proposals Defeated.

Bank Of America Protests Begin At Shareholder Meeting

Activists from Occupy Wall Street, the environmental movement and labor unions, along with victims of home foreclosures, have begun massive demonstrations at Bank of America’s shareholder meeting in Charlotte, N.C., on Wednesday morning.

[ … ]

Inside the Bank of America meeting, disgruntled shareholders [ … ] will force votes on proposals [ … ]

Outside the meeting, protesters promise a boisterous slate of events to draw attention to Bank of America’s relationship with the federal government, the coal industry and its long record of foreclosure abuse. Occupy Atlanta’s Tim Franzen said there are three marches planned, each with its own theme: the bank’s environmental record, the housing crisis and corporate accountability issues. The marches will converge into one big protest.

The Week in Editorial Cartoons – Unprincipled Zealots and March Madness

Crossposted at Daily Kos and Docudharma

Clay Bennett

Moammar Gadhafi by Clay Bennett, Comics.com, see reader comments in the Chattanooga Times Free Press