AMERICAN SENATE TO VOTE ON WHETHER TO HAVE A POLICE STATE

Just in case you still think that what the Occupy Wall Street movement has been fighting for is all quite unnecessary, please note that the United States Senate is very shortly to vote on a very terrifying bill indeed. The following is from the ACLU website, and you can get more details there:

"The Senate is going to vote on whether Congress will give this president—and every future president — the power to order the military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians anywhere in the world. Even Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) raised his concerns about the NDAA detention provisions during last night’s Republican debate. The power is so broad that even U.S. citizens could be swept up by the military and the military could be used far from any battlefield, even within the United States itself."

The vote will take place this Monday or Tuesday. Check out the ACLU for what you can do about it.

Yes, the police and the army are the RIGHT HAND OF GOD ALMIGHTY. We are being require to FALL DOWN AND WORSHIP every state employee with a gun in his hand. As Chef says in APOCALYPSE NOW, "it's fuckin' pagan idolatry!"

WHAT ARE THOSE NIHILISTIC, MARXIST, ANTI-SEMITE

hippies doing at Zuccotti Park today? Demanding handouts? Selling drugs? Peeing in the street?

No, ah, well, they're handing out food and celebrating Thanksgiving.

Ah, but this must be a cynical plot to make themselves look good, eh? Hmmm?

I remember that when Jesus cast out devils the pharisees thought it was the devil doing it. Nothing Jesus did pleased those people, and so it is with OWS and the truculent reactionaries who blither against them.

What sort of a devil celebrates Thanksgiving?

Let the 1% and their stooges continue to slander and foam at the mouth. The Lord shall hold his enemies in derision.

Joy has entered politics.

I ALWAYS FIGURED

the police were supposed to protect us from people like those you might find in a biker gang. But what about when the police ARE a biker gang? Here we observe a police officer, in full macho mode, beating a protester in Oakland, November 3. Why? The cop has all the arrogant demeanour of some thin-skinned superman who feels his honour has been slighted somehow, and he must assert himself. From a position of perfect security, this pig (I will not dignify him with the title of policeman) strikes the very brave Kayvan Sabehgi.

Mr. Sabehgi is a veteran of the Iraq war. His behaviour is entirely peaceful, as you can see in the clip. Could it be this peacefulness which so enrages the furious little potentate? As the Good Book says, the darkness hateth the light.

I would like to believe that piggy was attacking in sheer frustration at his own shame. If so, there is hope that some day he will become a man again, instead of a pig. He might decide to walk on two legs again, and get out of the mire of his cruelty and self-pity, or whatever that mess is in there.

And right near the end of the video, I believe there is a woman protesting this brutality, but still trying to appeal to what is best in the police. Such patience! She is still able to hope that piggy has a human heart. And yes, she is right to do so.

It's enough to make you weep. These people strengthen me. If any of the OWS protestors anywhere is reading this, I want you to know that you strengthen me. You do indeed turn the other cheek, and out of strength, not weakness. Your peace is the peace of Christ, and I say this about all of you, whether you are Christians or not. The peace of OWS is stronger than the violence of the state.

Fuck it. How much commentary is really necessary? Just watch the video.

The people have the courage to stand up to the police. When will the police show some courage to stand up to those who are telling them how to dance? Or perhaps courage is not the issue: perhaps the cops really do love the state more than they do the people. Perhaps they are glad of what they are doing and enjoy it. But I believe the days of this wicked pleasure are numbered . . .

AT LAST . . .

. . . a cop who ACTUALLY HAS A NAME. The officer in this video is, allegedly, Lt. John Pike. Yes, he pepper sprays peaceful protestors at an Occupy protest in Los Angeles, University of California I believe, as if he were casually watering daisies on a Sunday morning.

But look what you're growing, porky: contempt. More and more people are noticing your lack of guts and your willful blindness to other people's humanity and rights. They may have the mace in their eyes, but you are the one who is truly blind. Don't you see the strings attached to your limbs? Take a look up there and see who's holding them. That's it: the 1%. That's who you are serving and protecting.

And look at the discipline of the protestors! This never ceases to impress me. No one breaks ranks in a panic, no one hurls himself at the state's obedient gardener in a fury, playing into the hands of a state that is aching to prove OWS "violent."

Thomas Merton Poem: "First Lesson About Man"

“First Lesson About Man”

by Thomas Merton

Man begins in zoology.
He is the saddest animal.
He drives a big red car called anxiety.
He dreams at night
Of riding all the elevators.
Lost in the halls,
He never finds the right door.

Man is the saddest animal.
A flake-eater in the morning,
A milk-drinker.
He fills his skin with coffee
And loses patience with the rest of his species.
He draws his sin on the wall,
On all the ads in all the subways.
He draws moustaches on all the women
Because he cannot find his joy,
Except in zoology.

Whenever he goes to the phone to call Joy,
He gets the wrong number.
Therefore he likes weapons.
He knows all guns by their right name.
He drives a big black Cadillac called death.
Now he is putting anxiety into space.
He flies his worries all around Venus,
But it does him no good.
In space where for a long time there is only emptiness,
He drives a big white globe called death.

Now dear children
Who have learned the first lesson about man,
Answer your test:
“Man is the saddest animal.
He begins in zoology,
And gets lost
In his own bad news.”


If you want to hear this read and with some cool paintings to go along with it, check it out at YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQz63Om0vdk

NEVER MIND

that previous post. I carry on. And speaking of posts, here's a short, knockout essay by one of my favourite political guys, Chris Hedges. An excerpt:

"The rogues’ gallery of Wall Street crooks, such as Lloyd Blankfein at Goldman Sachs, Howard Milstein at New York Private Bank & Trust, the media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, the Koch brothers and Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan Chase & Co., no doubt think it’s over. They think it is back to the business of harvesting what is left of America to swell their personal and corporate fortunes. But they no longer have any concept of what is happening around them. They are as mystified and clueless about these uprisings as the courtiers at Versailles or in the Forbidden City who never understood until the very end that their world was collapsing. The billionaire mayor of New York, enriched by a deregulated Wall Street, is unable to grasp why people would spend two months sleeping in an open park and marching on banks. He says he understands that the Occupy protests are “cathartic” and “entertaining,” as if demonstrating against the pain of being homeless and unemployed is a form of therapy or diversion, but that it is time to let the adults handle the affairs of state. Democratic and Republican mayors, along with their parties, have sold us out. But for them this is the beginning of the end."

The whole thing is a very rousing, empowering piece of work. See the link above for it all.

WHAT IS THE FUCKING POINT

of carrying on with this blog any more? On a very good day I might get a dozen hits. I know I can attract more traffic by giving up my job and the rest of my life and spending all my fucking time trying to get more people to come here, but I don't seem to have the hours of self-promotion time others do.

Fucking Hell! I can't go to any of the OWS protests, so I would like to at least support OWS on the net. How do I get more traffic here without making net work a full time job?

History is being made, people are standing up to the fascist goon squads (otherwise known as police) and here I am just fucking talking to myself.