Civil Disobedience

Protesters outside the torched police precinct building were frustrated with the U.S. police and authorities after African American George Floyd died in the hands of police. Derek Chauvin, the officer at the center of the incident, and three other officers involved were fired Tuesday from the Minneapolis Police Department. However, local and federal officials have yet to announce any charges against the four officers.

Perhaps the most important part of his analysis is that mass refusal to comply with totalitarian edicts is the only way to halt and then reverse the process.

As Americans sat down to Thanksgiving dinner, Iraqis were mourning 40 protesters killed by police and soldiers on Thursday in Baghdad, Najaf and Nasiriyah. Nearly 400 protesters have been killed since hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets at the beginning of October.

Everybody's attention span seems fully engaged with impeaching Trump right now. Many people predicted-- correctly-- that that is exactly hat would happen and that it would take a sense of urgency away from other urgent matters, the Climate Crisis being on the top of most lists. This isn't something that we have infinite time to get to; we have very little time get to it and the power of concentrated wealth is lined up against doing anything at all.

Every war is a war against children.
— Egalntyne Jebb, founder Save the Children a century ago.

Responding to the British post-war blockade of Germany and Eastern Europe, Jebb participated in a group attempting to deliver food and medical supplies to children who were starving.
In London’s Trafalgar Square, she distributed a leaflet showing the emaciated children and declaring:

Our blockade has caused this, – millions of children are starving to death.

Murdering Truthsayers 
I am thinking of Karen Silkwood for some odd reason. Murdered November 13, 1974 as a twenty-eight-year-old labor union activist and chemical technician working for a nuclear power plant, Kerr-McGee Cimarron River nuclear facility in Crescent, Oklahoma. The industry was supplying nuclear fission rods for reactors. She found violations of health and safety regulations, and well, the story of this ordinary woman with an ordinary life has turned into a cause celebre with Meryl Streep playing her in a 1984 movie.

It happened that a fire broke out backstage in a theater.  The clown came out to inform the public.  They thought it was a jest and applauded.  He repeated his warning, they shouted even louder.  So I think the world will come to an end amid general applause from all the wits, who believe that it is a joke.
— Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or

Paris, France, April 2017: Macron Unveils Assault on Workers’ Rights.
Paris, France, December 2018: A potential worldwide insurgency of the working class starts in France as Yellow Vests occupy the streets.

Some 75% of the French back the gilets jaunes. And this support has held up despite the violence.1

The Yellow Vest Movement – weekend 8 and 9 December – Round 4. Some say they are the worst riots in France since the student-driven mini-Revolution of May 1968. Over the four weekends, hundreds of thousands were in the streets, middle class people, from students to workers to outright employees and housewives. The police force increases by every new Round – and so do the demonstrators. Today more than 8,000 police, a considerable increase from last weekend’s 5,000-plus. Tens of thousands Yellow Vests demonstrated; police reported more than 1,600 arrests.

Students across France are protesting against the government’s education reforms – forcing over 150 schools to close. The riots come in the wake of weeks of nationwide protests against fuel-price increases, and high living costs.