October 3, 2007
September 19, 2007
Shock Doctrine Redux
Here’s another review of Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine”.
‘Nuff fucking said.
September 18, 2007
More on Foster Campbell…
Today’s T-P covers another candidate for Governor: Foster Campbell.
This guy reminds me of several of my older relatives. Down to Earth and freakin’ real. Here’s the part concerning Campbell’s proposed Tax on the oil and gas industries:
“There’s nothing hidden about Campbell’s belief in his oil processing fee, and that’s disturbing to the refinery industry.
Larry Wall, spokesman for the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association, said no industry could survive a $5.5 billion tax. And a tax on energy would place a burden on all businesses, he said.
The tax would impede interstate commerce and probably violate the U.S. Constitution, Wall said. The industry, which employs 20,000 workers in Louisiana, would over time move assets out of state, eroding Campbell’s proposed tax base.
Campbell said other states do not want refineries, so the plants in Louisiana will have to stay. To those that pare down, good riddance, he said.
“It’s not like they’re the best thing that’s ever been invented,” Campbell said. “It’s a polluting deal. They use our air, they use our water, they’ve torn our coast up. And what are we supposed to say? ‘Well, thank you for the refineries?’ “
So Mr. Wall, a “spokesperson” for the oil and gasbags says his industry will be hurt? That they will pick up their toys and run to another state? My dying tush they will. They have destroyed so much of our wetlands in order to make huge profits that they can’t leave, and it’s time for the people of the Gret Stet to get back something for almost 40,000 miles of pipelines, over 20,000 miles of canals carved into our wetlands (thus destroying them), the damned air pollution and the general poisoning of the area in which all of us must live.
These industrialists environmental rapists should count themselves lucky that Mr. Campbell only wants $5.5 Billion a year… I would demand their firstborns, especially the ones of their major shareholders and $20 billion per year. They will probably move away? Fat freakin’ chance: they aren’t going to pay for new facilities AND ship “our” oil and gas to a new location. Besides, we are the only ones crazy enough to not force them from our back yards. (They’ve already screwed the neighborhood up.)
(Yes, that was a redundant paragraph, but it’s 10 in the morning and I should be asleep.)
Read about Foster Campbell, ponder his plans for the Gret Stet, and VOTE for him come late October.
April 30, 2007
Anti-Capitalism in Five Minutes or Less…
From Common Dreams comes a great piece concerning Capitalism and what we “actually” live with.
Here’s a snippet:
“We are told, over and over, that capitalism is not just the system we have, but the only system we can ever have. Yet for many, something nags at us about such a claim. Could this really be the only option? We’re told we shouldn’t even think about such things. But we can’t help thinking — is this really the “end of history,†in the sense that big thinkers have used that phrase to signal the final victory of global capitalism? If this is the end of history in that sense, we wonder, can the actual end of the planet far behind?
We wonder, we fret, and these thoughts nag at us — for good reason. Capitalism — or, more accurately, the predatory corporate capitalism that defines and dominates our lives — will be our death if we don’t escape it. Crucial to progressive politics is finding the language to articulate that reality, not in outdated dogma that alienates but in plain language that resonates with people. We should be searching for ways to explain to co-workers in water-cooler conversations — radical politics in five minutes or less — why we must abandon predatory corporate capitalism. If we don’t, we may well be facing the end times, and such an end will bring rupture not rapture.”