Authority and Sociopathic Behaviour.

Not only does coercive power attract sociopathic individuals, but according to the latest studies it helps create that kind of outlook. See Kevin Carson's, "The Cognitive Basis of Hierarchy"

http://c4ss.org/content/3649

Target Ain’t People

This is worth watching...

Target Ain’t People
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FhMMmqzbD8&feature=player_embedded#!

March of the Monahan brothers through Ohio

Robin and Laird Monahan, Vietnam Veterans, are walking across the country to raise the issue of abolishing corporate personhood and Move to Amend. Their route is roughly US Route 50. This will bring them to Ohio from Cincinnati through Athens. They're willing to make a stop off-route in Columbus.

Their schedule is as follows:
Cincinnati OH Sept. 13 Monday
Columbus OH Sept. 20 Monday
Athens OH Sept. 24 Friday

They're traveling with a vehicle, so usually only one of the brothers is walking at a time.

At each stop they're looking for a place to stay, an event to speak at, publicity, and fellow walkers.

Let me know if you're willing to host/organize a visit in any of their locations.

We also need to work on stops between Cincy and Athens. Does anyone have any contacts? We should try to at least work on Chillicothe (Ohio's first state capital).

Move information about who they are and their trip is at
http://movetoamend.org/march-of-the-monahan-brothers

Target Targets Pro-Corporate Politicians Thanks to Citizens United

It was only a matter of time before business corpses decided to take advantage of the Citizens United vs FEC Supreme Court decision and open up their corporate treasuries to support corporate-friendly politicians.

The Target corporation, Best Buy corporation, and 5 other corporations have come up with $100,000 each to fund “Minnesota Forward,” a pro-corporate political action committee now running ads in support of Rep. Tom Emmer, candidate for Governor.

That means a portion of your purchase at any one of these corpses will be directed to ads supporting pro-corporate candidates.

Are the Corporate Money Floodgates About to Open?
http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/08/citizens-united-target-best-buy

Abolish Corporate Personhood. Move to Amend.
http://movetoamend.org/

Join Move to Amend-Ohio listserve. To be added, email David Berenson at
greenerdavid@sbcglobal.net

Dark Days Ahead

Molly's Blog very correctly shows the limitations faced by any country or bloc of countries that tries to escape the totalitarian hold of corporatism. (see Aug 1 “Greek Truckers” – comments) Europe, the example in question, is highly dependent upon foreign supplies of petroleum and natural gas. Hostile nations need only interfere with this supply to bring any genuinely reformist or revolutionary government to its knees.

Molly says we must give up the fantasy of The Revolution and be prepared for the long haul, which involves organization and education as well as trying to overcome energy dependence. I agree with this and always have... except for one thing. We don't have time. If we had a hundred years ahead of us, I am certain that libertarian socialism would replace the corporate state. But we don't have a hundred years. Maybe we have 30 years before global warming becomes unstoppable (the Tipping Point), the ocean dies, the methane in the permafrost is released and the climate becomes unbearable for most life forms. Putting forward the need for organization and education - as much as I agree with this – at this point is like pulling out the driving manual when you are about to go over a cliff.

This matter of urgency does not mean I think radical reform or revolution is at hand or likely to be so. Revolutionaries are a small minority of the population and their organizations are measured in the hundreds when they ought to be – given the seriousness of our situation - in the hundreds of thousands. The complete capitulation of the social democratic parties to the ideology of neoliberalism has reduced the reformist milieu to the small parties of the anti-capitalist left – at best 15% of the vote. No one in any position of power in any developed country is willing to take either the issue of climate change or peak oil seriously. All is denial and deception. The system is decadent to the core. Furthermore, corporate capitalism by eliminating the possibility of reforms within the system, (unlike the period immediately after WW2) has boxed itself in. By deliberately destroying much of our gains during the last century of struggle and reform, it would take nothing less than a revolution to restore us to a 1970's level of social democracy. But no one other than a small minority is for revolution.

The corporate state hell bent for destruction, but no reforms, and no revolution. What can we do?

1. Concentrate on slowing the destruction and delaying the coming of the Tipping Point. If we could delay it to 50 years we might just have time enough to make the changes necessary, for not only our survival, but also toward a more humane and democratic social system. Long before the Tipping Point, petroleum will become too expensive and the corporatist system will go into an even deeper crisis than it is now (like the collapse of the USSR universalized) This must be our opportunity, but at the same time we must prevent the use of even more CO2 producing energy sources like coal.

2. Continue to build community, solidarity and alternatives to the corporatist system. As it slides ever further into barbarism, with the stresses of economic crisis, peak oil and climate change, the organizations formed by socialists, greens and anarchists will be like the monasteries during the Dark Ages. Not only guarding culture and learning, but also keeping alive mutual aid, the social, the communal. By any means necessary, we must survive. The satanic concept that it is right to dominate and exploit must be damned for all eternity in the consciousness of the descendants of the survivors.

This is the darkest vision I have ever had. But I am often wrong. Hopefully I will be this time.

ACLU to discuss their defense of Citizens United this Saturday in Columbus

The ACLU supported the Citizens United vs Federal Elections Commission (FEC) decision handed down by the US Supreme Court in January. Their support took the form of the filing of an Amicus Brief, which is a document submitted by a person or group with strong views or interest in the case but not a direct party to it.

The Ohio ACLU holds its statewide membership conference this weekend in Columbus
www.acluohio.org/Conference2010

Among the workshops will be this one on Saturday afternoon from 3:30-4:30 PM

Pay to Play: Repercussions of Citizens United
The U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission has many people dismayed, believing the ruling allows corporations to contribute to political campaigns. Join a lively discussion about the outcome of the decision and why the ACLU supported Citizens United.
Speakers include Scott Greenwood and Daniel Tokaji.

If anyone is planning to attend the conference (or lives near Columbus and could attend), please consider attending the workshop.

The ACLU needs to understand Citizens United wasn’t about free speech but rather about corporate personhood. The unelected, appointed-for-lifers of the Supreme Court falsely framed the case between limiting speech to have fair and free elections vs. approving corporate-dominated political influence to preserve free speech. This false frame evaporates if corporate personhood — the notion that corporations have constitutional “rights” -- is renounced. As corporate anthropologist Jane Anne Morris has said, “Only if we pretend that corporations are ‘persons’ under the Constitution, is limiting corporate ‘speech’ a constitutional infringement.”

If you can’t attend the conference but are a member of the Ohio (and/or national) ACLU, contact them and express your concerns.

Letter to Senator Sherrod Brown on BP and IEL

26. July. 2010

Sherrod Brown
United States Senate
Washington, DC

Re: Uniontown IEL Superfund Site

Dear Senator Brown,

Thank you for your leadership in speaking out and calling for the British Petroleum Corporation to be held responsible and liable for their role in the horrific ecological and economic disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

There is yet another disaster connected to the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig - a political disaster. The British Petroleum Corporation acquired the authority in the past up to the present time to define the terms of drilling, oversight of the well, capping of the exploded well, and cleanup of the well.

This political disaster of the British Petroleum Corporation being in charge of these functions is due to political campaign investments (misnamed "contributions"), political lobbying, and influence over regulatory agencies (ie, Mineral Management Services, MMS, a part of the US Department of the Interior). The root of the problem is acquired constitutional rights that the BP Corporation and other business corporations have acquired over time.

These constitutionally granted rights have usurped the power of citizens to control their communities, nation, and natural world. The fundamental problem is not corporate power as it is corporate rule.

Your public statements to the media and your constituents concerning accountability of the British Petroleum Corporation is laudable. I hope they intensify to include issues of corporate rule or governance.

A somewhat similar environmental and political disaster exists closer to home in connection to the Industrial Excess Landfill (IEL) in Uniontown, Ohio. The corporate polluters here have also been put in charge of the so-called "cleanup." The regulatory agency here, the EPA, has been compliant to the wishes of the corporate polluters. A real cleanup of IEL has not take place. Those responsible and accountability for the damages, cost and liability have not been brought to justice.

In the case of the Uniontown IEL, each of the three major cleanup components - the groundwater pump & treat system (that was to operate "in perpetuity"), the multi-layered cap to prevent rainfall infiltration of the waste, the expansion of the gas interception control system - have been replaced in favor of continued flushing the site into the area's drinking water system.

Formal public hearings, legal comment periods and EPA written responsiveness summaries were conducted by US EPA per Superfund law prior to the first two components being legally removed from the EPA's amended Record of Decision (ROD). Local citizens opposed both changes to the ROD. Citizens had no input, no due process, however, prior to the ending of the gas control system. This change occurred reportedly at the behest of a corporate polluter.

Shocked and dismayed by this apparent illegality by US EPA, Concerned Citizens of Lake Township (CCLT) turned to your office last year on this issue as well as the serious questions pertaining to radiation /Plutonium issues at IEL. CCLT asked your office to contact investigators and scientists who have provided critical information to the citizens group.

I was therefore very concerned to recently learn that your office had informed CCLT that EPA will not answer the Senator's questions on these basic points regarding when such a hearing/comment period/summary might have taken place on the gas issue, perhaps unbeknownst to the citizens' group.

Experts have cited at least 150 tons of toxic gases generated yearly at IEL. The Agency on Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR - an agency of the Center for Disease Control) expressed health concerns in a 1989 report connected to offsite migration of soil gases at IEL. The report stated: “Significant concentrations of soil-gas may be migrating offsite continually or periodically, but not detected by the present monitoring system…” and “An improved MVS system could intercept all significant quantities of migrating soil-gas.”

I appreciate your staff taking the time to continue pursuing the answers to these questions and others, which affected citizens, certainly deserve. Uniontown’s citizens have long since expressed many of the same concerns now being heard around the country regarding the BP Corporation and compliant regulatory agencies. Perhaps those concerns held are now better understood.

Please continue to raise concerns about the lack of accountability of the BP Corporation and the need for more assertive oversight. The same is called for in our own back yard at the Uniontown IEL and its corporate polluters.

I hope you'll agree the rights and heath of citizens are the most important priorities.

Respectfully,


Greg Coleridge
Director
Northeast Ohio American Friends Service Committee