Duty to Warn

Last week, President Obama racked up several more broken campaign promises as he pushed through Congress three new job-killing corporate trade agreements. The Senate Finance Committee was quite open about the fact that these agreements will kill off more jobs and eager to mitigate the damage with band aids attached to the treaties. Some of us who were in the hearing room felt an obligation to speak up and ask why in the world the senators -- with perfect bipartisan harmony -- insisted on causing the damage in the first place. And for that we were thrown in jail.

Imagine the denunciations of human rights abuses in Colombia if the plan for that country this week were war rather than corporate exploitation to produce impoverishment to produce drug crops to produce war. Imagine the denunciations of human rights abuses in Iran having continued as usual if U.S. cops weren't cracking skulls in New York, Boston, Denver, and San Diego. Maybe we wouldn't have needed the Tale of the Moronic Mexican Iranian Assassins at all.

Nuclear Critics Say Containment Cracking May Be Cause for Public Concern - Press Conference Held in Toledo, OH
A growing Coalition of groups that opposes a 20-year operating license extension for the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant near Port Clinton says it is closely watching developments since the discovery last week of a 30-foot-long crack in the plant's reactor containment building. The cracking, which is being investigated by the utility and U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, has prompted critics to widen their opposition to the continued operation of Davis-Besse for the generation of electricity.

October2011.org movement denounces the pollution of money from concentrated wealth.
Washington, DC: The October2011.org Movement that is occupying Freedom Plaza, led an impromptu march of 250 people up Pennsylvania Avenue to the U.S.Supreme Court where Dr. Cornel West climbed on the steps of the Supreme Court and denounced court decisions that have produced money-based elections that empower corporations. Dr. West was holding a sign that said "Poverty is the Greatest Violence of All." He was arrested because holding political signs on the Supreme Court steps is illegal.

Dr. West spoke to more than 500 people on Freedom Plaza where he said that "if Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. were alive today, he would be on Freedom Plaza." West described how the struggle against, poverty, war and injustice continues and confidence that the people will succeed. He applauded the occupation as "an inclusive social revolution for all of us" and a "leaderless-leader-filled movement" where people are "finding their own political voices rather than echoing others."

McGovern expressed confidence in the inevitable success of a mass movement for renewed democracy and an end to corporate rule and militarism. He spoke with the Columbus Free Press last weekend at Freedom Plaza, one of two sites of Occupy D.C.

“I work for justice now. I used to work for the CIA and the US Army, ” said McGovern whom police bloodied and arrested in February at George Washington University when he stood up in silent protest during a speech by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. During the spectacle of cops grabbing the 71-year-old McGovern, Clinton didn't miss a beat or blink an eye as she criticized--ironically-- governments that don’t allow protests and freedom of expression.

Dozens of people who are part of Occupy DC, camping out in Freedom Plaza and McPhearson Square, packed the line to get into the House Armed Services Committee where Defense Secretary Leon Panetta was testifying. Only 15 people were allowed in and none were allowed to even quietly hold up signs—a clear violation of their free speech

One by one, seven people who managed to get inside got up to protest the wars. CODEPINK Alli McCracken, 22, held up a sign saying “Fund My Education, Not Your Wars.” “My generation only knows war and a bankrupt country. We deserve better,” she yelled, as she was yanked out and handcuffed by Capitol Police. Also arrested was 21-year-old Iraq veteran Michael Patterson, who was sent—at the age of 18—to be an interrogator in Iraq. “You are murdering people; I saw what you do to people in Iraq!” he shouted. “Then you refuse to even take care of our veterans when they return.” Nancy Brennan, 63, asked “How many lives will be sacrificed? How many lies will be told?” as she was arrested.

The protesters who were left in the hallway and not allowed inside chanted, “We are the 99 percent and we don’t support these wars.”

Thanks in large part to the New York and national corporate media a massive campaign to shift power away from giant corporations and into the hands of the people is now afoot all across this continent. It was inspired by peoples' nonviolent uprisings in other countries and sparked by courageous nonviolence on Wall Street.

Can we keep it going and growing despite the unreliability of the corporate media? When the television networks created Camp Casey in Crawford, Texas, for us -- following the courageous stand taken by Cindy Sheehan -- they later turned against the movement and against Cindy. Already they are working to depict our occupations as violent, misdirected, undirected, and impotent.

Ann Bell, an economist by trade, draws those conclusions from her experience with fighting back against the attacks on collective bargaining in Wisconsin. She spoke with the Columbus Free Press last weekend at Freedom Plaza, one of the sites of the ongoing occupations in DC. Like her counterparts in Occupy Columbus, Bell is part of a national movement to make government and corporations more accountable to the majority of ordinary people.

“As we were illegally kicked out of the capital and moved more to focusing on the recall elections, we really kind of saw the weakness of the progressive movement (in terms of ) not building long term organizations and umbrella groups that we can use independent of who wins elections and independent of what exactly the issue is that we’re being confronted with.”

Bell said the fundamental issue to base a mass movement on is income inequality.

Just one short week ago, I read Ray McGovern's excellent article Israel’s Window to Bomb Iran; suggesting that Israel has a limited window to attack Iran. In a nutshell, McGovern argues that Israel may believe that they will have no chance of attacking Iran after Nov 2012. Israel is isolated due to the Arab Spring, Turkey's repudiation of their long standing support of Israel, and international reaction to the Palestinian issue. Obama will cave to Israel (again) during the run up the the Presidential election in order to ensure support of the Israel lobby and thus reelection. And so, Israel may view this as their last chance.

That's what we chanted, passing groups of male cops. Some of them appeared to respond or react by squinting and tightening their shoulders and jaws. Don't know who among the 60 of us marchers started the chant, but it seems to have been a playful, taste-of-your-own-medicine challenge to patriarchy. What role does feminism play in the occupations going on around the country ?

The majority of the organizers for the October 2011 occupation of Freedom Plaza are women. And women seem to have played a leading role in opposing our nation's militarism by way of--among other means--Code Pink, an organization named in defiance of post-9/11 color-coded terrorism threat levels.