Progressive Calendar 12.08.11 /2 | <– Date –> <– Thread –> |
From: David Shove (shove001umn.edu) | |
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2011 04:18:34 -0800 (PST) |
PROGRESSIVE CALENDAR 12.08.11 1. Nader KFAI 12.08 9:30am 2. Free curry dinner 12.08 5:30pm 3. Health care 12.08 7pm 4. Palestine vigil 12.09 4:15pm 5. How the 1% lives 12.09 7pm 6. Jules Lobel - The future of the Occupy movement 7. Phil Rockstroh - Imbeciles who really mean it 8. ed - Bumperstickers --------1 of 8-------- From:Danene Nader KFAI 12.08 9:30am Don Olson will interview Ralph Nader live on KFAI radio tomorrow at 9:30am about his newest book,"Getting Steamed to Overcome Corporatism." --------2 of 8----- From:<kimdefranco [at] yahoo.com> Free curry dinner 12.08 5:30pm Free Dinner: Grand Curry NOT Grand Juries! Stop the FBI Witch Hunt! Thursday, December 8th from 5:30 to 7pm @ Walker Church, 3104 16th Ave. S., Minneapolis Come enjoy a free dinner in solidarity with local activists targeted by the feds for their anti-war and international solidarity work! Get an update on the case and hear what they've been doing to fight political repression! FFI: stopfbi.net and https://www.facebook.com/events/298395770182216/ If you would like to help with the dinner, start showing up after 4 pm! --------3 of 8-------- From:John Kolstad <jkolstad [at] millcitymusic.com> Health care 12.08 7pm There is an important event coming Thursday, Dec 8 related to health care. See attached below the detailed info from Physicians for a National Health Plan [PNHP] and or the Metro Inde Biz Alliance. PNHP is bringing in a speaker to speak on health care reform Dec 8 at Warner Stellian Corp Headquarters in St Paul [550 Atwater Street]. It starts at 7 PM. What makes this speaker important and exciting is that he is a life long Republican, a Repub Legislator in Pennsylvania for 17 years and a biz person for 35 years. He is currently the President of "Health Care For All PA" an Org dedicated to bring universal single payer to reality in PA and the USA. For a number of us this is very exciting because having a Republican of many years and an elected Legislator of many years supporting Single Payer can demonstrate this not a Left vs Right is, but is about bottom line costs, efficiency and American Business being able to compete in the Global Market. Many think of Single Payer or Medicare for all as a Left or Liberal or Progressive issue. So having a strong speaker who is a life long Republican show that this is not, and should not be a partisan issue. Clearly to solve the health care mess, we will need bi-partisan support. He is a good and articulate speaker who advocates for Single Payer for economic and practical reasons, exposing the wasteful, excessive cost of the current system that does not provide health care for all, and to take the burden of health care off the backs of business. He does not use rhetoric, myth or idealogy. He just shows how the current system puts his business and all our businesses at a disadvantage Globally. We are eager for as many business owners as possible to see this, as well as Republican State Legislators. These Legislators need to hear arguments from a Republican that make common sensel. Moreover, he is a very direct speaker, straight to the hard facts and numbers. There is a program on the net where he appears with Dr Dwight Michael, another life long Republican, who strongly supports single payer, in order to get the insurance companies off his back and let him practice medicine. You can search the web for David Steil / Health care for all PA. I would like you to help get the word out to more business people or any one interested. This should include your State Senator or Representative. The Metro IBA and Minnesota Small Business Org are contacting all their members and contacts. I'm helping organize this with Dr Elizabeth Frost [ I think MN Director of PNHP]. If you or any others are interested, you can contact me. My daytime Phone is 612/722-6649 [best after 11 AM] Morning between 9 AM and 11 AM and evenings I can be reached at 612/321-2007. Or by email : jkolstad [at] millcitymusic.com. Or I could put you in touch with Dr. Elizabeth Frost. We do want to have an idea of who may be coming so we can seat everyone. RSVP is not required, but it will help us be prepared. Look forward to hearing from you. John R Kolstad/President, Mill City Music, Bd Metro Independent Business Alliance aka Papa John ---- David Steil On How to Solve the Health Care Mess Join the growing movement of business owners (democrats, republicans and independents) who support a Medicare-like solution for our healthcare system. Thurs, Dec 8, 7:00PM MetroIBA and Physicians for a National Health Plan will be co-sponsoring a forum which will make a case for why businesses and politicians from both major parties should embrace a Medicare like system. Speaker David Steil is a business leader and former state representative (PA-Rep) who now runs Healthcare For All in Pennsylvania. This will be a great opportunity to meet other small business owners who share your concerns about the state of healthcare in our country. Location: Warners' Stellian Corporate Headquarters 550 Atwater Circle St. Paul, MN 55103 (one mile north of I94 at corner of Dale and Topping) For those who already support Universal Healthcare, visit http://www.pnhpminnesota.org/business-initiative.php and let your voice be heard! --------4 of 8-------- From: Eric Angell <eric-angell [at] riseup.net> Subject: Palestine vigil 12.09 4:15pm The weekly vigil for the liberation of Palestine continues at the intersection of Snelling and Summit Aves in St. Paul. The Friday demo starts at 4:15 and ends around 5:30. There are usually extra signs available. --------5 of 8-------- From: Lisa Luinenburg How the 1% lives 12.09 7pm Socialist Action Twin Cities With the Occupy movement filling local and national headlines and bringing attention to the demands of the 99%, have you ever wondered how the 1% really lives? Join us to hear local labor historian Dave Riehle discuss the hidden lifestyles of three of America's elite in a historical context. How the 1% Lives: Three Studies from Life Speaker: Dave Riehle Friday, December 9th at 7:00 pm Mayday Bookstore 301 Cedar Ave S Minneapolis, MN 55454 612-333-4719 for more information This event is free and open to the public. Bring your friends! --------6 of 8-------- Published on Tuesday, December 6, 2011 by Jurist The Future of the Occupy Movement by Jules Lobel The Occupy Movement, which has already been hugely successful in thrusting issues of inequality and corporate power into the public discourse, faces a critical juncture. As many of the larger encampments in New York, Oakland, Philadelphia and Los Angeles are shut down by the police, activists have been searching for the tactics to move beyond Occupation to Phase 2 of the movement. Some say that the movement now should evolve into the political arena, supporting policy ideas, running candidates for office, and putting pressure on politicians and corporations. Similarly, others argue that the next step is to develop a specific list of demands, which presumably could further policy initiatives and protests. A different tactical response is to create what essentially would be a non-violent guerrilla movement in American cities. For example, Kalle Lasn, the Adbuster magazine publisher and originator of the Wall Street encampment idea, reportedly urged a new "swarming strategy of surprise attacks against business as usual." The Chicago occupiers have resolved to have an event a day throughout the winter, such as defending foreclosed homes, sit-ins, banner drops, building parks, providing supplies to the homeless, or guerrilla theater and art. In the same vein, longtime social movement scholar and activist Francis Fox Piven foresaw some time ago that the movement would develop new phases, utilizing "other forms of disruptive protests that are punchier than occupying a square," or "rolling occupations of public space." This article suggests another alternative, one that focuses on creating sustainable alternative decentralized institutions that reflect in microcosm the egalitarian, democratic vision of society that the Occupy Movement has put forth. Such a strategy would be combined with a continual presence in the streets and parks around issues of injustice such as foreclosures. While determining the tactics of the next phase is critical to keeping the movement alive over the next weeks and months, the broader strategic goal is that of developing a truly long-term movement to transform society — measured not in seasons, but years or even decades. That task is one of sustainability. How can the Occupy Movement (OWS) develop the organizational, cultural and institutional forms to sustain a long term movement, yet also maintain its dynamism, horizontalism, direct democracy, creativity, activism and transformative vision? No American social or political movement of the twentieth century has been able to do so. The 1960s civil rights and 1930s CIO trade union movements initially had much of the activism, creativity and direct democracy now exhibited by OWS. They utilized street protests, sit-ins, factory occupations and boycotts. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and some of the radical CIO unions practiced direct, participatory democracy. Their movements changed American society and resulted in lasting, meaningful reforms — which if OWS succeeds in emulating would be a remarkable achievement. Those movements failed to achieve many activists' goal of an egalitarian society, however. Perhaps more importantly, they were unsuccessful in sustaining their creativity, dynamism, activism and vision in some non-bureaucratic forms or institutions that could continue the long-term fight to transform an unjust society into a just one. They seized the radical moment and achieved important reforms, but failed to sustain their transformative vision. Can OWS avoid that fate over the long haul? There is no road map or magic formula for success in that project. Indeed, OWS's spirit of creative experimentation and of an openness to new ideas must be at the heart of any effort to move beyond what has been accomplished in the past. As Naomi Klein put it in her speech to OWS, being horizontal and deeply democratic "are compatible with the hard work of building structures and institutions that are sturdy enough to weather the storms ahead." But what lessons have we learned to help us in the long term task? Lessons of OWS Five main attributes of OWS have contributed to its massive success and provide the basis for its continuation as a radical alternative in the future. 1. Presenting a Narrative, World View or Declaration — Not Specific Demands Until OWS, the left had not set forth an alternative narrative to that of the right or democratic party liberals. Such a narrative explains to people why we are in our present mess, who and what is responsible for our predicament, and offers a broad solution. The right has such a narrative: the evil is big government and the solution is to cut taxes and government spending. The liberal narrative tends to be that the lack of government oversight and a rigid adherence to free market capitalism is the problem and that more government regulation is the answer. The left has all too often simply presented a mélange of programmatic demands and a defense of government programs. OWS presented a competing narrative that resonated with millions of people: corporate power and greed got us into this mess, the only way out is for the 99% to stand together to demand equality, justice and fairness. It is that broad perspective, narrative or worldview — as opposed to a laundry list of demands — that helped change the political debate. People see the world through a broad lens or framework — to convince or move them is not primarily a logical or factual process, but one of providing a lens or framework with which to view reality. OWS did just that. OWS was able to connect equality to liberty in a manner that allowed people to see gross inequality as morally unjust. As others have observed, since the 1970s, both conservatives and liberals have focused on individual liberty, privacy and autonomy (albeit in different areas, guns versus reproductive freedom), while paying little or no attention to equality. Indeed, the original 1787 Constitution omitted any mention of equality, focusing solely on liberty, and requiring a bloody Civil War and the post-war Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to include equal rights in our basic governing document. OWS focused the nation's attention on the fact that for most folks (the 99%), individual liberty is incomplete or even a hollow shell without social and economic equality and justice, as international human rights principles now recognize. Thus, OWS's narrative refocused the national debate on equality. Finally, that OWS's basic document was a declaration which seemingly tracked the July 4, 1776, Declaration of Independence — substituting corporate power for King George, issuing a list of grievances against corporate power instead of the King, and announcing occupation of the illegitimate power and not independence from it — emphasized that the goal was to set forth a narrative which would shift and galvanize the public debate and not simply present demands to the government. Neither the OWS nor the 1776 Declaration demanded a list of reforms; rather they both highlighted the illegitimacy of the ruling regime, as did OWS's not seeking a permit to occupy the square. Some have argued that while the broad critique was appropriate at the outset, now the movement needs more specific programmatic demands. While OWS has and should continue to involve itself in particular struggles around particular issues — for example stopping foreclosures — its uniqueness and vitality is contained in its ability to present an indictment of current reality and a broad, amorphous perspective on what should be done. The Occupy Movement can be thus viewed as a prophetic movement, reminding people of basic values. As OWS activist Katie Davison pointed out in The Nation, "We need a movement of solidarity that is about values first." These values are not foreign to the left, or for that matter to most Americans. OWS has recalled them to us, and any adequate movement forward will have to keep them before people's minds. 2. Political Independence OWS, unlike many unions and progressive coalitions, chose not to focus on elections, the legislative process or lobbying. While engaging in the electoral arena or having an impact on legislation are important, OWS's contribution and vitality would be undermined by running candidates or engaging in lobbying. Rather OWS started in the streets (or parks) and ought to remain there as a beacon of hope for the future and a means of putting pressure on corporations and politicians from outside the political system. As a constitutional and human rights lawyer, I recognize the value of specific reforms that can sometimes be won in the electoral arena, in legislative forums or in courts. But I also have seen that often the most important reforms are achieved by pressure from outside of the system, by people acting independently of political parties or lobbying efforts and that entering such established arenas can often hamstring social and political movements. OWS has already had an effect on specific issues such as the Keystone XL pipeline issue, as Naomi Klein recently pointed out. But even more importantly, OWS has stirred for many the desire to move beyond specific reforms, to act on our aspirations for a fundamentally different type of society that is democratic and egalitarian. Only by maintaining its independence from parties and traditional institutions can OWS continue to inspire those hopes and dreams. 3. Non-Violence, Creativity, Experimentation and Inclusiveness I include these attributes as one because they are all related. The occupation encampments encompassed a diverse group of very creative activists who debated various issues and a range of solutions without dogmatic, fixed preconceptions. Many of us were captivated by the energy, creativity and ability to reach consensus exhibited at the numerous occupations around the country. 4. Visible, Not Transitory Presence The occupations, unlike a one-shot demonstration, had continual visible staying power. As Naomi Klein and Francis Fox Piven have pointed out, the occupiers put no end date to their presence, and said they were staying put. That made them an ongoing real presence which could not be ignored, neither by the media nor by public opinion. This is in contrast to recent demonstrations that have been easily forgotten, when they reached public consciousness at all. Moreover, OWS has been able to bridge the gap that often separates virtual from actual politics. It utilized media technology, but because it was a constant presence, there was a continual feedback loop between the images that were transmitted across various media and the ongoing presence of the occupation itself. The first definition of the term "occupy" in Webster's dictionary is "to engage the attention or energies of," and the occupy movement succeeded by its continual visual presence in engaging the public's attention. Even without the space in those cities in which the encampments have been shut down, the occupy movement must find ways to continue to visually occupy the attention of millions of Americans, the media, and the elite. 5. Creating Alternative Models of What a Democratic Egalitarian Society Might Look Like Perhaps the most critical component of OWS is its creation of alternative communities which reflect the egalitarian, democratic world that its activists seek for the future. Sometimes referred to as "pre-figurative politics," this perspective seeks to create in microcosm the alternative models that reflect the future world that the activists support, while at the same time using those institutions to engage in direct action to change the current reality. By creating a community dedicated to solidarity, consensus decision-making, everyone's participation, respect for everyone's opinion, and equality, OWS attempted to demonstrate that another world is possible, not in theory but in practice. That effort creates hope for a radically different future, which in many respects is more or equally important than winning particular demands. As Matthias Schwartz pointed out in a recent New Yorker article, "In the end, the point of Occupy Wall Street is not its platform so much as its form, people sit down and hash things out instead of passing their complaints on to Washington." As the slogan around the encampment went, "We are our demands." Future When I went to the Occupy Pittsburgh encampment — which is still ongoing — I asked several people there what they saw as its future. A young English graduate student's answer lay in the community, in developing a concrete alternative rooted in equality, solidarity and democracy. For her, the OWS was a way of her expressing her vision of the future. To me, the long term viability of the OWS movement as a transformative movement lies in the creation of these communities, which not only directly practice what they believe, but seek to reach out and effect the public consciousness through direct action. Perhaps Noam Chomsky said it best in his speech to Occupy Boston: "The Occupy outposts are trying to create cooperative communities that just might be the basis for the kinds of lasting organizations necessary to overcome the barriers ahead and the backlash that's already coming." There are many groups which are trying to create alternative models in microcosm: food co-ops, farmer markets, cooperative renewable energy projects. Indeed many of these groups have united in an umbrella formation known as the solidarity economy. But none of these groups have captivated the public as has OWS, and very few combine direct action with community building. Other movements in the past have attempted to create such democratic, egalitarian institutions. As William Greider has pointed out, the Populist movement of the late nineteenth century created a series of ingenious agricultural and credit cooperatives, which were eventually destroyed by the money classes and bankers. He asks, "what is it we can build that is parallel to that cooperative movement?" But we must also seek to learn why that cooperative movement was unable to survive, and what can be done differently. So too, SNCC and its supporters created community-controlled day care centers, and at least in one prominent case, an agricultural cooperative, but these efforts were also destroyed and we need to understand why the civil rights movement was unable to sustain these radical, democratic structures. Yet an important accomplishment of the Occupy Movement is to rekindle the hope that these alternative communities of solidarity can grow. There are reasons to be hopeful. The bankruptcy of an economic order which threatens our very existence has led to the growth of co-operative, environmentally friendly, alternative institutions. Moreover, there currently exist organizations such as the National Lawyers Guild, Center for Constitutional Rights, or City Life/Urbana Vida, a Boston anti-foreclosure group, that have for decades sustained a radical vision and practice, as well as an anti-elitist, democratic internal structure, which OWS and other groups can learn from in building the creative cooperative structures they envision. Lessons can also be gleaned from movements around the world which have created such autonomous communities, whether it be the Zapatistas in Mexico, the Brazilian landless movement, or the Mondragon cooperatives in Spain. Hopefully OWS can create organizational forms that combine its democratic, egalitarian origins with audacious, ongoing direct action, an overall narrative that continues to express values of solidarity, equality and democracy, and political independence and survive as a model of how a just society would operate. If OWS can do so over the long term, it will have made a major contribution, not simply to transforming the public dialogue, but to birthing a new society. © JURIST Legal News and Research Services, Inc., 2011 Jules Lobel is a Professor of Law and the Bessie McKee Wathour Endowed Chair at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. He is also the President of the Center for Constitutional Rights. Lobel is currently working on a book about Transformative Movements. --------7 of 8-------- Published on Wednesday, December 7, 2011 by CommonDreams.org "By Imbeciles Who Really Mean It": Lost Verities and Dirty Hippies by Phil Rockstroh Regardless of the dissembling of corporate state propagandists, free market capitalism has always been a government subsidized, bubble-inflating, swindlers' game, in which, psychopathic personalities (not “job creators” but con job perpetrators) thrive. By the exploitation of the many, a ruthless few have amassed large amounts of capital by which they dominate mainstream narratives and compromise elected and governmental officials, thereby gaming the system for their benefit. Historically, the system has proven so demeaning to the majority of the population that the elite, from time to time, have, as a last resort, due to fear of a popular uprising, introduced a bit of socialism into the system, allowing a modicum of swag to funnel downward, and, as a result, the ranks of the middle class have been expanded. For a time, the bourgeoisie are bamboozled by the sales pitch that one day they will be affluent enough to be freed from the taxing obligations of a dismal, debt-beholden existence, when, in fact, they sowed their fate (like those swindled by opening their bank accounts after receiving email from parties claiming to be momentarily cash-strapped Nigerian royalty) by their own greed i.e. by their self-imprisonment within their own narrow, self-serving view of existence. These stultifying circumstances will level an atmosphere of restiveness and nebulous rage. In general, the middle class can be counted on to detest the poor…blaming those born devoid of societal advantage and political influence for the impoverished circumstances that were in place long before the happenstance of their birth. Moreover, in a bit of noxious casuistry, as despicable as it is delusional, all too many members of the middle class have been induced by grift artists, employed by the ruling elite, to blame their own declining social status and attendant beleaguered existence on the poor. photo: Gary Denham "Be thine own palace, or the world's thy jail." --John Donne This has proven to be an effective, time-tested grift: Because as long as the animus of the middle class remains fixated on the poor, the criminal cartels known as the economic elite can continue to ply their trade. Of course, in reality, by their greed and complicity, what the middle class has gained is this: trustee status in the capitalist workhouse. Although, there is no need to fret: The run of neoliberal capitalism is about over. Don't mourn: This late stage, rapacious, mutant economic strain has leveled destruction on community and the planet itself as well as the hearts and souls of too many of those imprisoned within its paradigm. At this point, the situation comes down to this: paradigm shift or perish. The hour is amenable to reevaluate, reorganize and re-occupy. Doing so will prove helpful in withstanding false narratives. Apropos: As of late, in my hours spent at Liberty Park, I've been witness to increasing numbers of tourists wandering in and repeating derisive, rightwing distortions regarding the OWS movement and its participants. For example, they are a collection of whiny college students who want taxpayers to be responsible for picking up the tab for their student loans because they are too lazy and spoiled to work off their debt. These tales are variations of the old canards involving welfare queens, mouths gleaming with taxpayer financed gold teeth, arriving at grocery stores lounging behind the steering wheels of late model Cadillacs, and proceeding to purchase steaks and fifths of gin with food stamps. Ronald Reagan spoke of this mythical figure often, affording her near supernatural powers: She, through indolence, guile and a welfare state-bestowed sense of limitless entitlement, was the near singular cause of the nation's economic woes; her very existence, not only depleted the U.S. Treasury of dollars, but drained the U.S. free enterprise system of vitality and the very will to compete. She was a succubus who arrived in the socialist haunted night to feed on and zap the very virility of capitalism. Because of the wealth inequities inherent to capitalism, in order to prevent social unrest, the system is reliant on creating false narratives that foster misplaced and displaced class resentment. These tales are very potent, because they serve as palliatives for the enervating states of shame inflicted on the population at large by their enslavement to the free market. Accordingly, because the vast majority of the populace are deemed "losers", due to how the system is rigged, techniques must be created and maintained to displace the rage, borne of a sense of powerlessness, that grips the system's exploited underlings. OWS is beginning to change the narrative…align it with reality--and that is an alarming development for the 1%; hence, the retooled, amped up propaganda campaign we're seeing signs of at present. This is the reality the 1% endeavor to obscure: Capitalism is a pyramid scheme; by its very structure, only a few will ever receive its bounty…that is wrung out of the exhausted hides of the vast majority. Fact is, capitalism, the neoliberal variety or otherwise, has never worked as promised; its innate structure ensures exploitation and inequity. Therefore, time and time again, adding aspects of socialism (e.g., New Deal era programs and reforms) have saved capitalism from itself. But, after a time, the plutocrats regroup and begin anew to launch a big money-financed, slow motion coup d’état of government (e.g., the Reagan Revolution). A vast disparity of wealth within a nation will all but ensure this societal trajectory. But that isn't going to happen, this time. The planet cannot endure the assaults wrought by a system that requires exponential growth to be maintained. The run of capitalism is nearly over. A more sustainable economic system, based on horizontal rule, is being developed, globally (e.g., the Icelandic model). The vertical structure inherent to capitalism brings about the self-perpetuating reign of an insular elite who choose to go the route of empire and, by doing so, overreach and bring themselves down, but only after much unnecessary suffering, exploitation and death--the calling card and ground level criteria of imperium. Yet, often within a declining empire, even as the quality of life grows increasingly degraded for the majority of the populace, questioning sacrosanct beliefs, such as, the myth that capitalism promotes societal progress and personal advancement, by means of the possibility of upward class migration, proves to be a difficult endeavor for many. The reason: Even given the degraded nature of life as lived under late capitalism, the act of taking stock of one's situation--beginning to question how one arrived at one's present station in life--will engender anxiety, anger and regret. Apropos to the shame based Calvinism of the capitalist state: If I was duped in a rigged game, what does that say about me? The narrative of capitalism insists that if I work hard, applying savvy and diligence, at fulfilling my aspirations then I would, at some point, arrive in the rarified realm of life's winners. But if success proves elusive, then my flawed character must be the problem--not the dishonest economic setup--and miasmic shame descends upon me. Yet I can count on rightwing media to provide the type of provisional solace proffered by demagogues i.e., imparting the reason that folks like me can't get ahead is because scheming socialists have hijacked my parcel of the American Dream and delivered it to the undeserving thereby transforming my shame into displaced outrage. And that must be the case; otherwise, it would behoove me to make the painful admission that I have been conned…have co-signed the crimes committed against me. Worse, I would be compelled to question all my verities and beliefs--all the convictions I clutch, regarding, not only the notions that I possess about myself and the methods I’ve adopted in approaching life, but also, the social structure that influenced my character. Imagine: If you had to re-imagine your life. Imagine, how the act would unnerve your loved ones, threaten friendships, even endanger your livelihood. What an unnerving task that would prove to be…an ordeal certain to deliver heart-shaking anxiety, devastating regret and nettling dread directly into the besieged sanctuary of what is suppose to be the inviolable precincts of my comfort zone. “At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.” --Albert Camus Accordingly, I might turn to Fox News and other well-rewarded, professional dissemblers of the political right, imploring them to dissolve my doubts and dread. To escort and ensconce my troubled form back into my comfort zone by telling me the problem is not the iron boot of the corporate state upon my neck; rather, my oppression stems from the barefoot hippie lefties of OWS "who need a bath and a job"; it is their odious presence in our lives that has subdued my happy capitalist destiny by the pernicious act of laying down an effluvia (more demobilizing than pepper spray) of patchouli musk and has caused capitalism itself to weaken into an enervated swoon. Yes, this has to be the case: The cause of my oppression. Those America-hating Occupy Wall Street hippies are actually the hidden hand that controls the global order and who possess a craven desire to smelt down the gleaming steel of the humming engines of U.S. capitalism into creepy, Burning Man statuary, who want to hold 24/7 Nuremberg-style rallies in the form of annoying drum circles. In reality, it is those dirty hippies who are actually "The Man." Withal, hippies crashed the global economy and pinned the blame on the selfless souls who ply their benign trade on Wall Street. Now, you know why conservatives harbor such animus towards hippies. Don't claim that Fox News et al--those selfless souls--who only desire to protect the glories of the present order, and who only have your best interest in mind, didn't try to warn you. "I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it." --Mark Twain Phil Rockstroh is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. He may be contacted at: phil [at] philrockstroh.com. Visit Phil's website or at FaceBook. --------8 of 8-------- *He's baaaack!* ---------------------- *NUCK FEWT* ---------------------- ---------------------- Nuck Fewt and the hearse he came in on ---------------------- PROOF THAT YOU CAN'T KEEP A BAD MAN DOWN ------------------------------------------------- Shove Clove
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