activism

Can we search your knickers please...

BANKRUN 2010

What would happen if we tried to withdraw all that fictional money that the banks have created?

Only trouble is - it's the people with no money who will have most interest in collapsing the system. George Osborne is not likely to remove his millions.

Incidentally - interesting that the Guardian thinks it important to outline in detail Cantona's football misdemeanours from 15 - 20 years ago. Nothing more recent to report? Scarred for life then. Don't take seriously this mad, erratic, violent former footballer.

ERIC'S DIRECT ACTION

1987 Fined by Auxerre for punching his team's goalkeeper, Bruno Martini.

1989 Kicks ball into the crowd and hurls shirt at the referee on being substituted in a charity match, then throws his jersey at Marseille coach Gerard Gili. Playing for Montpellier, he hits team-mate Jean-Claude Lemoult with his boot.

1991 Now playing for Nîmes, he throws the ball at the referee and storms off. Later attacks an opponent.

1993 Spits at a Leeds fan in his first season for Manchester United.

1995 Kicks out at a Crystal Palace defender and is sent off. As Cantona leaves the pitch, Palace fan Matthew Simmons screams abuse at him and Cantona launches his now infamous kung-fu kick at Simmons.

From the Guardian article - Eric Cantona's call for bank protest sparks online campaign

A few unanswered questions from the BBC's brief report on yesterday's blockade - the most notable feature of which is contained in its choice of title:

Campaigners blockading oil refinery in Essex disperse

!!!

Question: How long after the protesters arrived did they disperse?

The BBC doesn't say. Just that:

Murray Smith from Crude Awakening said the activists decided to leave as they felt they had achieved their objectives for the day.'

Question: What was the effect of the 7 hour long blockade?

The BBC doesn't say. Just that:

A spokeswoman for Petroplus, which owns Coryton refinery, had said during the protest that operations were running normally and the protest had been "a police matter" as it was on a public highway.

However, protesters claimed to have stopped about 50 tankers travelling on The Manorway.

Qu: Could the BBC have bothered to find out -

a) whether oil is normally transported out of the refinery along the Manorway (and how much, in 7 hours)

b) whether there are any other routes out of the refinery, and whether these were used yesterday (there are none)

c) what 'operations running normally' means, if tankers were unable to leave the refinery for 7 hours

Qu: Whose interests are the BBC serving?

(This is not a question)

Obama lies as cravenly, if not as crudely, as George W. Bush ... As a senator, Obama promised he would filibuster amendments to the FISA Reform Act that retroactively made legal the wiretapping and monitoring of millions of American citizens without warrant; instead he supported passage of the loathsome legislation. He told us he would withdraw American troops from Iraq, close the detention facility at Guantánamo, end torture, restore civil liberties such as habeas corpus and create new jobs. None of this has happened.

He is shoving a health care bill down our throats that would give hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to the private health insurance industry in the form of subsidies, and force millions of uninsured Americans to buy insurers' defective products ... Obama did nothing to halt the collapse of the Copenhagen climate conference, after promising meaningful environmental reform, and has left us at the mercy of corporations such as ExxonMobil. He empowers Israel's brutal apartheid state. He has expanded the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where hundreds of civilians, including entire families, have been slaughtered by sophisticated weapons systems such as the Hellfire missile, which sucks the air out of victims' lungs. And he is delivering war and death to Yemen, Somalia and perhaps Iran.

From Chris Hedges' Ralph Nader was right about Barack Obama

Is this enough to take our idol off the wall? No, no! He would have done so if he could (and didn't, so he obviously couldn't).

What does it take to take an idol off the wall? It takes another idol to replace him. Until that happens, and unless an idol loses his good looks, his ease, smooth charm and eloquence, he can smooth-charm his way through just as many lies as there are pores to let them out of his athletic body. He isn't there to lead us out of trouble: he's there for us to make-believe the trouble isn't there while he's in charge. And the smoother and more porous his athletic body is, the more we pin it on our walls to gaze at; the more we blame the things he said he'd do, and didn't do, on everyone, except for him.

Until the wall falls down. And even then, the wall fell down despite him, not because of him.

It's easier, more comforting, to cope with walls come tumbling down than it is to have our superheroes falling of their own accord. It's easier to have a superhero who we vote for every 4 or 5 years, and who will do the job of Change for us, mend everything, put things to rights. It's hard and most unsettling to think that superheroes don't exist and we have no-one else to put up on the wall. Or at least - no-one who has the powers of superheroes: the power to do for us what we need to do for ourselves.

I am not blaming Obama for not being super-human. I am blaming humans for believing in those who make-believe that they are superhuman - and cannot see, as Hedges says, that

Social change does not come through voting. It is delivered through activism