Civil disobedience and water are coming together in the face of Big Oil and Big Government. Three items below:
1) Email from Jodie Evans on mass movement to get arrested in front of the White House over Tar Sands waste of water
2) Why Rick Perry Would Put the World on a Fast Track to Total Meltdown
3) FEEDBACK from Robert Steele
From: jodievans
Dear Friends:
If you want to get Obama to sign this (see below), join us in getting arrested outside the White House. Below is a note from RAN ED Becky Tarbotten to the board. RAN has been part of our community for many years.
Randy Hayes is going on Sept 1, I am going 8/30. Anyone want to join us or pick another day. It ends 9/3 with a rally at White House. All that upset about what is happening to the planet, show how much you really care. Be
there!
Xxx
Jodie
I'm sure all of you have been hearing about the Tar Sands action that's been on-going for the past week in Washington DC that RAN and 350.org have been organizing. I thought this event would be important, but a week in it's clear that we might be onto something really, really big. To date, well over 300 Americans have been arrested, and thousands of more will be following their example. This is the largest act of civil disobedience on the environment in decades and is a pivotal moment for the US on climate change. We are on a nearly continuos loop on Canadian TV, and after the first week there have been many thousands of articles (see below for some examples).
For those of us looking for a moment to re-galvanize grassroots momentum on climate, this is it. For those of us looking for a way to concretely demonstrate to Obama that his constituents want him to stand up for ecological sanity, this is as good as it will get. All the big greens are in support, even if they can't stand behind civil disobedience.
Headline this morning on TPM: Why Far-Off Canadian Tar Sands Have Become A Make-Or-Break Issue For Obama With Enviros
I hear that RAN's founders, Randy and MikeŠare planning to risk arrest on September 1st. I'm going to head out too. Will anyone else join us?
As background, here¹s what¹s at stake:
President Obama will decide later this year on TransCanada¹s permit for the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, which will send 900,000 barrels a day of the world¹s dirtiest oil to US refineries, allowing further development of the Alberta tar sands. The pipeline would pass through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. Mining oil from tar sands creates three times more carbon emissions than conventional oil extraction.
The pipeline is now the most pressing environmental decision before President Obama before the 2012 election. His decision will be a signal to supporters whether he is serious about living up to his promises or if he¹s
just another politician. What¹s more, he doesn¹t need Congress. He can
decide with a stroke of his pen.
ARTICLES
TPM .. FT .. IPS .. USA Today .. Montreal Gazzette .. HuffingtonPost
———-
Remember … Inside we are all PINK.
Jodie Evans
Cofounder, CODEPINK: Women for Peace
CODEPINK is a women initiated grassroots peace and social justice movement that seeks positive social change through proactive, creative protest and non-violent direct action. www.codepink.org
From: Robert Steele
FEEDBACK for these good people:
1. It is a crime against humanity to use clean water from 100,000 year old aquifers to pump dirty oil out of the ground.
2. The “true cost” of this dirty oil is one hundred times what the sponsors claim, calculated in terms of clean water used up (it takes 10,000 years to refill an aquifer, and it is filled by sea water first, never) as well as public health and environmental damage.
3. The Administration is not the first to lack integrity, but the lack of integrity has been Obama's greatest disappointment. The Cabinet secretaries are all working to advance the interests of special interests that RECEIVE the taxpayer dollar, not the public interest of those that PROVIDE the taxpayer dollar.
This protest is about much more than dirty oil. It is about the core corruption of the entire US Government, including Congress, and it is about the cataclysmic gap between the public and reality, and those in power who serve special interests. As they had been saying in Egypt before the Arab Spring: ENOUGH!
Come get arrested. In a time of injustice, the place for a just man is in jail.
P.S. The fact is that Obama and prior Administrations have neither intelligence nor integrity. The secret intelligence community costs us $80 billion a year and produces according to General Tony Zinni, “at best” 4% of what the president or a major commander needs. There is no intelligence in decisions by this Administration–when a Goldman Sachs lobbyist occupies the corner office of the National Security Adviser, the Administration has clearly sold out to Wall Street in all respects.
