Chris Hedges: At This Moment In History, Either You Are A Rebel Or A Slave

Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent and author, had this to say about the “Occupy Wall Street” movement last week:

“The only word that these corporations know is ‘more’…There is no way within the American system to vote against Goldman Sachs...Speculation in the 17th century was a crime. Speculators were hanged. Today they run the state and the financial markets… And of course the working class and the poor, and increasingly the  middle class, have to pay the price.”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uz5RxhahHK0&feature=player_embedded]

On September 29th, Hedges also wrote on Truthdig.org:

There are no excuses left. Either you join the revolt taking place on Wall Street and in the financial districts of other cities across the country or you stand on the wrong side of history. Either you obstruct, in the only form left to us, which is civil disobedience, the plundering by the criminal class on Wall Street and accelerated destruction of the ecosystem that sustains the human species, or become the passive enabler of a monstrous evil. Either you taste, feel and smell the intoxication of freedom and revolt or sink into the miasma of despair and apathy. Either you are a rebel or a slave.

...The only word these corporations know is more. They are disemboweling every last social service program funded by the taxpayers, from education to Social Security, because they want that money themselves. Let the sick die. Let the poor go hungry. Let families be tossed in the street. Let the unemployed rot. Let children in the inner city or rural wastelands learn nothing and live in misery and fear. Let the students finish school with no jobs and no prospects of jobs. Let the prison system, the largest in the industrial world, expand to swallow up all potential dissenters. Let torture continue. Let teachers, police, firefighters, postal employees and social workers join the ranks of the unemployed. Let the roads, bridges, dams, levees, power grids, rail lines, subways, bus services, schools and libraries crumble or close. Let the rising temperatures of the planet, the freak weather patterns, the hurricanes, the droughts, the flooding, the tornadoes, the melting polar ice caps, the poisoned water systems, the polluted air increase until the species dies.

Who the hell cares? If the stocks of ExxonMobil or the coal industry or Goldman Sachs are high, life is good. Profit. Profit. Profit. That is what they chant behind those metal barricades. Read full article, The Best Among Us, at Truthdig.org.

700 United & Continental Pilots Joined Occupy Wall Street on September 28th

More links:

Occupy Together.org

Chris Hedges.net

OccupyWallStreet.org

“Hole In the Ocean”

“Hole in the Ocean” was written written by Joe Monto & Steve Bartlett to keep the focus on the BP oil spill disaster unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico. This is already the largest environmental disaster in United States history, and the oil is still gushing out of the oil well.

The song is dedicated to the 11 men who lost their lives on the Deepwater Oil Rig on April 20th, 2010.

The words to  Hole In The Ocean” are:

The wave crests on fire
And storm clouds below
The oozing dark monster

Creeps silently slow
The heartache of many
The future unclear
We stand on the shoreline
Surrounded by fear

Chorus:

There’s a hole in the ocean
That’s breaking my heart
When will it end
Why did it start?

Can we ever return
To our blue watered bay
There’s a hole in the ocean
That stands in our way

2nd Verse:

For the diving birds diving
And the fish ‘neath the waves
There is so much to do
There is so much to save

With bitter tears stinging
For the ones who were lost
Is there really a way
To assess what this cost?

Bridge:

Eleven souls sailing
That April day
It happened so quickly
‘Twas no time to pray

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtIWvkDvVUM]

Click here to send a message to President Obama to ban offshore drilling permanently.

Click here to find out how BP is quietly breaking ground on a controversial project in B.C.’s Rocky Mountains without a provincial environmental review.