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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
"no amount of "specifics" would satisfy the questioners of the need to rise.
...
But others have mentioned specifics like: stop paying bills, stop paying taxes, refuse to follow authorities' directives, conduct general strikes, block roadways, interfere with the comfort and convenience of officials, etc., etc. There's nothing new about any of this; it's standard kit bag stuff of revolt which could turn into revolution."
I almost didn't read any further than that first line. Talk about actively not wanting to organize people! Sheesh; something tells me that this isn't how Castro, Lenin or Zapata did things.
As for your specifics, those are methods/strategies. How would you organize these people? You need an organized group with fluid communication and a common acceptance of goals, to do these things. Otherwise, your solution is like suggesting sending an email when there is no internet service.
If you want another shot, how would you organize people? These strategies are all well-known, and they work in one way or another depending on the power of the people's will.
Here is the specific question: How do you organize people--even on a local level--to sacrifice and undertake these strategies in order to implement the kind of broad and sweeping change we all seem to want?
I have been an organizer for very limited goals, such as agitating for a union or for better work conditions, and those are hard enough when you are dealing with a non-politicized group of varying ages, genders, sexual orientation, ethnicity and just plain world views. THIS IS HARD EVEN WITH A TWO HUNDRED PEOPLE WORKING ON SHORT TERM GOALS THAT HAVE REPURCUSSIONS FOR EVERYONE!
Here's your chance. What's your organizing platform?
I'm feeling all Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young about now...
...a hippie.
Piaffe is an elevated trot en place. No galloping or gallavanting or galumphing.
Happy passage and canter pirouetting, and as always, may your mule's travers and flying changes be airy and performed with schwung. Gee and Haw ;}
"And finally, they no doubt would hate for GW to have prevented a terrorist attack in the US for all these years since 9/11, only to have the terrorists attack us when a Dem prez and Congress were in control."
I've said this for years- the lack of a high-profile terrorist attack in this country over the last 7 years has more to due with the overwhelming self-restraint of individual Muslims in this country than any other single factor.
Law enforcement prevention measures are secondary to that fact- no matter whether the government is headed by a Republican or a Democrat as President.
Terrorist action does not require a conspiracy in order to successfully carry out an attack with terrible consequences.
Consider the Virginia Tech massacre of 2007. The only thing lacking in order to make it a "terrorist attack" was a statement left in the record by the deceased killer, indicating that it was carried out for a political purpose.
Actions by more than one person are not necessary. "Weapons of mass destruction" are not necessary (and it's certainly a lot easier to make such materials with commonly available ingredients to produce crude weapons than it would be to resort to high technology to make the more sophisticated ones.) Even firearms are not necessary.
There are multiple incidents of terror violence in this country that have been carried out over the years, for which the perpetrators have never been apprehended or identified. If perpetrators of the Tylenol poisonings of the 1980s had sent letters to the press stating that their acts had a political motivation, would then-President Ronald Reagan have been justified in instituting a campaign of wiretapping and summary detention of a pool of likely suspects? Would such measures have guaranteeed any better success in apprehending the Tylenol killer(s)- who, I might add, remain(s) at large?
http://ask.yahoo.com/20030130.html
[link at my sig]
Instead, the government and American industries instituted a response in order to effectively close that loophole. It worked.
Similarly, the principal response to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks should have been to close that chink in the armor against terrorist vulnerability, by reinforcing cockpit cabins in airliners, and revitalizing the then-moribund Sky Marshal program. Those are important measures, because commandeering an airliner is the only way that a terror band could ever obtain the equivalent of a targetable cruise missile. without direct state sponsorship from a large military power.
Frankly, I'm unsure of the current status of either measures to reinforce airliner pilot cockpits against hostile intrusions, or of the Sky Marshal program. I know people were talking about it, in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. But then the defensive response seemed to shift, into the Permanent State of Emergency, as the more effective means of protection.
Who knows? As far as I know, the airliners are still easy targets, once someone with pilot skills can get themselves on a passenger jet with enough skills and weaponry to get through to the controls.
And- as in so many other cases- one person is all that's really required, for that. There are so many ways that one person can wreak terrible havoc in this society- especially if they don't care whether they live or die, as we've been told so many times is the case with fanatical radical Muslims as a population.
In a modern, developed industrial state with a huge geographic area, there's only so much that can be done to prevent terrorism- unless one wants to institute a panopticon state of satellite surveillance, a permanent imposition of random checkpoints on every highway system, and the mass detention of all suspect populations.
Would you support those measures in the name of increased security, ehillesum?
Even the State authorities in geographically small nations under continual battering from random terror attacks, like Sri Lanka and Israel, have thus far refrained from such drastic measures.
~
That song used to be pre-Nam make out music.
I always get a bit misty. *It's gonna be alright*
Those exact words always ring as clear as crystal.
Crystal dew on a cold fall morning. Leaves change.
Nature becomes beautiful.
If No hope, Human perish.
But in the war? The Medic would lie as one lay bleeding.
O, a green grad from a Army's Fort Hood- Texan Medics.
Medics had the saddest role. Grunts wished medics be god.
*Troops wished a "green" (green is new. but inexperienced) medic to exhibit divine powers? It was a Heavy Burden a young (green) medic-soldier had to bear. Medic!
We learned a young soldier who had arteries sliced, or a skull shattered.
died.
Lies.
I remember clearly when my silly lower extremities pink flesh hung down low. Red blood was flapping from two sliced, human flesh calves. My bone hurt. Moan. Medic! My Medic said;`James A., You will be okay. Everything will be all right. He said:` You can stay in the rear and heal up, and be right back out here in the Nam-jungles!" I am serious. I knew I'd not recover that fast, and go back into a war. I grieved, grieved, and grieved... Bless the Medics. The images of war flow like a bloody DVD. There is no Send/Push Stop Buttons. On and on, and banter, ramble. The below my ankles flesh looked like a red cranberry, or a huge smashed blue grape, and I love Blueberry wine. Shut off the computer. okay, Jkalos. And, No mule better kick Jkalos.
Bake 2-pastry Strudels.
Jkalos will be a peeled,
and flapped red issues,
Great apple fruit strudel.
O, flow out and rack-off,
and be sure no dead flea, huh.
lays dead, floats in Mead Jugs.
Honey Wine, fruit of thee vine.
Ya. Epicure. Sip, eat, tomorrow?
Jkalos don't know. Happy Friday.
Wholeheartedly, honest. Serious.
That blood was Life.
No destroy, or hate.
Respect green Medic.
We do our best. Never,
never settle for kill lies.
Good, better, and best,
never let rest. Not until,
Good is better, and better,
is your best. Gads. s.t.h.p.u.
okay. Go rack wine-off.
no more whine today.
What Hospitality.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Salon headlines in your mailbox
