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You, Terrorist
(Photo: 350.org / Flickr)
You, Terrorist
By William Rivers Pitt
Truthout | Op-Ed
Wednesday 19 June 2013
The Keystone XL pipeline is not a disaster waiting to happen. It is a whole pile of disasters waiting to happen. Expected to run from the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin in Alberta through more than half a dozen American states and down to the Gulf shore of Texas, the pipeline is already riddled with problems before it has even approached completion.
The extraction of tar sands oil, for openers, causes far more greenhouse emissions than conventional oil extraction. Then there is the problem of the corrosiveness of the extracted oil affecting the pipeline itself; corrosive tar sands oil ate through a pipeline in 2010, causing nearly a million gallons of oil to pour into the Kalamazoo River. Another corrosion-caused spill dumped 40,000 gallons in Illinois in 2012.
Tar sands oil is almost impossible to clean up; three years and $1 billion later, 38 miles of the Kalamazoo River remain utterly devastated by the 2010 spill. Should a spill enter one of the aquifers that dot the planned path of the pipeline, millions of people would lose their drinking water. The pipeline plan also crosses a seismic zone, as well as a large swath of Tornado Alley in America...but earthquakes and tornadoes never do any damage, right? Especially not to something almost 75% completed that has already fallen into deadly disrepute thanks to all the "construction anomalies" revealed recently by mandatory testing.
Given the serial perils posed by the Keystone XL pipeline, large numbers of American people have stepped forward in protest. They have demonstrated both in affected states and in Washington DC, they have spoken up at public meetings, and they have created online videos to spread their message. Some have taken to acts of civil disobedience, such as locking themselves to equipment and blocking the paths of construction. Every action taken has been peaceful and non-violent.
And for their efforts, they have been labeled as terrorists: http://www.omaha.com/article/20130617/NEWS/130619686/1685#company-terror-laws-may-apply-to-keystone-xl-pipeline-foes
(snip)
The recent revelations about the NSA's far-reaching program of domestic surveillance have been met with an astonishing lack of outrage from the American people. A combination of "I'm not doing anything wrong, so why should I worry?" and "We've known this was going on for years" has led to a big national shrug over the matter.
If the rise in local, state and federal government's willingness to act on behalf of major corporations by labeling lawful American citizens as terrorists does not shake people out of their lethargy, then we deserve everything we are certainly going to get.
Need a reason to worry about the NSA spying scandal? Try this: you legally protest an oil company in your town, are arrested, and wind up in court facing federal terrorism charges and a personal eternity behind bars. The evidence presented against you was gathered by NSA monitoring of your telephone usage and social media communications, all at the behest of said oil company, which owns every Senator who sits on the Intelligence Committee in Washington DC.
Think it can't happen?
It is already happening.
The rest: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/17068-you-terrorist
67 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
Thank you Mr. Pitt
surely he will intervene!
magically rise from their graves to interject their opinions on the people's right -- & duty -- to protest against tyrannical government decisions:
"It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government."
-- Thomas Paine
-- Thomas Paine
"The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government." -- Patrick Henry
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. -- Declaration of Independence; Thomas Jefferson
"To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men."
"We the People are the rightful masters of both Congress and the Courts--not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution." -- Abraham Lincoln
"We the People are the rightful masters of both Congress and the Courts--not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution." -- Abraham Lincoln
Thank you!
We're all Germans now
.
.
A Prisoner in Stalin's mining Gulag, Or a Jew in Hitler's Concentration Camp. Why I ask this is because Most Gulag Prisoners In Stalin's Gulag system Did not Think the Great Comrade Stalin Knew that this was happening to his people. But Every European Jew took it as fact that Hitler Knew about the camps! As for me I would chose to be a Jew, Because after all their was Sobibor!
mean you are a racist? 
