What a waste of time and energy.

First, as others have already pointed out, BM still lives in a fantasy world where Obama isn't an employee of the Big Corporations and the Upper Class who 'own the place.'

Second, know what we learned in Feb/March 2003? That even the 2 biggest worldwide anti-war protests in history meant nothing to the Owners of the Place... and we're still at 'war' in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Third, look around - where have protests, whether peaceful or violent, short-term or sustained, succeeded recently in Western societies? Greece? Nope. Spain? Nope. Italy? Nope. England? Nope. Etc. Because the Owners of the Place do not give a f***. We're talking about psychos who don't blink when they steal trillions in wealth, or destroy the Gulf of Mexico, or kill millions in the desert - you think they care whether the peaseants spend a few days waving signs and singing songs?

Good luck with that.

I will forgive him the Obama buttons and the "fun" talk 'cuz he is a very good man.

Mwildfire said it best. I should have noticed before, long before now, our president has all the classic signs of a sociopath. His winning personality makes it hard to spot and is at the same time the most telling symptom.

Can someone please tell me how it takes courage to "plan to get arrested" knowing full well he/she won't be incarcerated for more than a few hours or a few days? Does anyone really think McKibben or anyone else involved in this mass protest, who voluntarily gets arrested, will suddenly get thrown into a crowded cell, incur a "record" and somehow be subject to the same loss of privileges ordinary prisoners endure? (denail of a decent job or having voting privileges revoked?)

There's something wrong with this. It's like his voluntary hunger strike in Copenhagen during the climate talks. What good is a hunger strike when you know you'll be eating again in a few days? What does that say to those who are hungry every day of their lives? And in this case, what about all the men/women who have been thrown in jail for petty crimes who won't be getting out in a few hours? And I have to ask, where will all these arrested protesters be held? In solitary confinement?

I echo the other posters in here who have had it with Obama. I'm done with him too. This treating him like he's six years old and using the old "you can do it" conditioning is getting us nowhere. He's a sell out. He's proven that over and over. He's as much a part of the problem as the very corporations charged with spewing massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. And don't forget, 2012 is around the corner. Many of the oil and coal industry players are also major contributors to presidential elections.

Something has happened to McKibben. His organized protests are feeling more and more like competitions to set historical records in terms of who created the biggest environmental protest. And the self aggrandizement is getting old. I'm all for limiting carbon and changing how we use energy. But I'm even more for the real measurement of putting one's self on the line environmentally and politically: the protest and civil disobedience that addresses human overpopulation and how we reduce that. Now that's the root cause of every problem facing Earth today. When someone starts addressing that in a major civil disobedience event, I'll join the march.

Bill, forget Obama. He has already made plans to grant the permit to approve the pipeline. Obama will con you into believing he really cares about the environment, while saying jobs are more important!

The first sentence of the first paragraph tells you all you need to know of where and how these useless campaigns emulate from. Club D.C. Hacksters, Inc.

..."hand it off to the Canadians"?. "

...join the fun"?

A suggestion: thousands of demonstrators, all at the same time, get down on their knees in the streets, on the sidewalks, in the parks, etc. and beg Obama to have mercy on our mother earth. It would be particularly poignant if none other than Michael Moore and Bill Maher, who have experience along these lines, lead the prayer. "O-Bomber, won't you please have mercy on our suffering mother earth. In your sacred name, amen."

Seriously if you really want to stop this pipeline you'll need to be a lot more creative than getting yourself arrested at a mass protest. To call this article naive would be an understatement. I was arrested for protesting the 2nd Iraq invasion in 2003 and I can tell you that it accomplishes nothing. Even if the media give the protestors any attention your message will be twisted into something other than what you intended. Once your arrested you've lost, and they can really make your life hell with court dates and legal fees. Granted I don't have a better idea on how to get your voice heard, but there must be a more intelligent way. Two examples of creative protest methods that come to mind are Banksy planting a GITMO figure in Disneyland, and Greenpeace painting seals so they would be worthless to seal traders. We need to think along those lines.

I'd be interested to know how many tons of carbon will be spewed into the atmosphere to get everyone to this protest. (I fully support the sentiment, but, hey, someone had to ask the question!)

I agree with Jill and others that this protest may generate unintended consequences, including attracting more militant protestors who aren't inclined to adopt the conciliatory, even wooing approach preferred by McKibben. I hope so.

So it seems unwise and unnecessary to condemn it in advance. Still, I said it before and I'll say it again:

Good luck and best wishes, Bill.

But I can't help but cringe at sentences like, "Yet it’s hard to give up on the image of the skinny senator from Illinois and the young people who were his most fervent supporters..."

That's like writing "Yet it’s hard to give up on the Pied Piper from Illinois and the young people who were captivated and enthralled by his magical piping..."

And personally, I'm squeamish about the "not, exactly, protesting" stance.

I appreciate that it signals a "more in sorrow than anger" tone, and proceeds from a traditional quasi-religious or non-rational-- i.e. ethical or spiritual-- humanitarian optimism. It presumes that outside of the amoral, high-stakes, kill-or-be-killed, pressure-cooker arena of politics, Obama is at bottom an ordinary human being with a heart, soul, and conscience.

As other commenters have noted, this strategy seems to aim for shaming Obama or otherwise stirring his conscience to a degree that will check, if not override, Team Obama's enthusiastic, exclusive partnership and alliance with the corporate and financial power elite-- and its concomitant indifference or hostility towards the needs and concerns of ordinary unprivileged citizens.

YMMV, but I find this perspective a bit too unrealistically sentimental, even smarmy.

And while I don't put much stock in wonky "inside-politics" realpolitik, I simply reject the suggestion that beneath this saccharine coating, McKibben is shrewdly playing political hardball to somehow back Obama into a public-relations corner by threatening him with losing face.

It pleases liberal progressive theoreticians to sagely speak by turns of dynamics such as backing politicians into a corner-- or, more frequently, "creating political space" for them to Do the Right Thing. I regard such concepts as rationalizations or artifacts of wishful thinking.

McKibben's Conditional Positive Regard approach conjures up the image of a jilted high-school girlfriend putting on her prom dress, corsage included, and mooning about (in the genteel sense) on the sidewalk in front of her now ex-boyfriend's house-- or maybe sitting on the fender of his car, hoping he'll glance out, remember The Way Things Were, and have a change of heart. And abandon his new friend(s) to take her to the Senior Prom after all-- even though he cut her dead at the Soph Hop and the Junior Prom.

I do understand that this is also predicated on a hard-line willingness to engage in civil disobedience and risk the usual onerous consequences.

But apart from the vast difference in scale, it's a little too reminiscent of that well-intentioned but goofy group protesting the treatment of Pfc. Bradley Manning who interrupted an Obama fund-raiser to sing, "We paid our dues, where's our change?" and "We'll vote for you in 2012, yes that's true. Look at the Republicans - what else can we do?" IIRC, at least one of the protestors called out, "We love you, Obama" as they were led away.

So again: good luck, but it seems like a tough, not to say impossible, proposition to pull off.

Let me tell you people that I found a new way, and I'm tired of all of this bullshit dogma waiting for WW3 so they can have their myth of a rapture and other bs.

I've heard throughout most of my life that we were living in the latter days, which I prefer to call, 'The Dawning of a New Age.' Some told me that people all over the world can feel it in the air. Others have told me that its not going to happen the way we thought it was. You may not have ever heard that its all going to happen in the Flesh this time too.

http://www.care2.com/news/member/406091837/2902353

So far what we've got is a few saying, "well, it's kinda lame but it's better than nothing so we should do it," while most sneer at the stupidity of the "Please please Mr President, will you consider doing the right thing one time briefly if we say you're wonderful?" crap.
How about an alternative? What can we do that would be more effective? The only idea I've had so far is to set up a camp at the point on the border where the pipeline would cross--which is in North Dakota. Then we could take turns being there, and joining with Canadian activists on the other side. Or we could join protests AT a tar sands site. ideally one where native people have tried to stop the ravishing of their land and been overrun. They will arrest many of us USAns at the border--and we may not be released in a few hours, but hundreds of arrests all along the borders would get a lot more publicity than an invisible ritual mass arrest at the White House with no media. Our goal should not be to minimize discomfort for protesters but to maximize impact.
Any other ideas? The best protest should STOP business as usual, be impossible to ignore, and involve colorful imagery the TV cameras can't resist, imagery and symbolism which convey an instant message even if the corporate news chooses voiceovers or interviews designed to deligitimize the protest. In this case, the ideal message also harps on the alternatives we should be pursuing rather than only opposing the destructive "solution" of the XL pipeline.
Ideas?

THE FARELESS URBAN MASS TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM (FUMTS) AND THE WORLD OIL DEPLETION CRISISBy John M. Bachar, Jr.
It's no secret that the world is fast running out of petroleum, that every urban region in the USA (indeed, on Earth) is choking in 24/7 transportation gridlock, and that the transportation sector uses the overwhelming majority of petroleum. Read the analysis about how to massively reduce the vast amount of petroleum used by the transportation sector and, at the same time, about how to solve the gridlock situation for hundreds of millions of drivers and passengers by means of FUMTS. Financing this system literally involves no cost to 99% of the citizens. It will save hundreds of millions of hours that are wasted by people crawling along at a snail’s pace in continual gridlock conditions as well as saving hundreds of billions of dollars in costs for the enormous population of motorists and passengers who daily need transportation.
For full details, click on:
http://www.absentlinks.com/uploads/6/6/4/2/6642350/the_fareless_urban_mass_transportation_system_and_the_world_oil_depletion_crisis.pdf

Stage One: Make the case scientifically - Done! "Unequivocal".

Stage Two: Fight back. "The longest journey begins with the first step."

Best wishes to all of you going to DC - We begin.

Manysummits, Calgary, Alberta, Tar Sands Central
======

If just 10% of the energy spent blogging on this website about how Plan A or Plan B or Plan C is doomed to fail was actually spent PARTICIPATING in one of those Plans -- or in another creative Plan D -- we'd see a lot of rabble-rousing and change in this country.

Instead, we see a lot of holier-than-thou preaching, sniping at those who don't agree 100% with Plan A or B or C, and a profound lack of actual action.

Which is why I've grown to detest this blog. Good luck, losers!

Obama is the lone vote on the pipeline.....?

This seems wondrously simplistic . . . . as if Obama is going to weigh such a decision on the basis of whether it is beneficial to America's energy policy
(read: "mass fossil fuel consumption, damn the consequences")
OR whether it is going to cost him some votes (when the bulk of Americans are more worried about the cost/availability of the gas for their individual vehicles and lack of jobs)
OR whether it is environmentally risky or injurious (when "pollution" seems in the American psyche to be "fully acceptable collateral damage") . . .

I just don't see this as what is really needed--------which is a march on DC by millions of pissed off Joes and Janes, and an occupation of the Mall until something is done to begin to redress the laws which favor wealth, corporations, and the military.

And that will take months, years, decades.
The media will tire of it after about one week unless it turns bloody.

America is a doomed empire in decline, dragging other nations down with it.

Next stop------major international war.
That is, has been, the pattern.

So, since no form of protest will work, because the masters just don't give a rat's ass, they'll either ignore us or slaughter us, and since there's absolutely no hope of using the system to change the system, the system is hopelessly rigged, what's the solution?

It's not so much people criticising the ideas of other people. That should be the way things get worked out. It would just seem less pointless if, in the same post as a critique, some alternative was offered. That does happen occasionally but it's the exception rather than the rule.

Is there any consensus among a majority in america?

Is it simply time to lock load and declare war against the empire?

There are certainly enough weapons out there to mount a sustained rebellion, guerilla style. It would be futile but it sure would reduce the population.

Do we start going door to door trying to convince our neighbors to vote for the Green Party?

Even if we could mount a serious campaign, the system is so rigged, the masters would just put the fix in.

Do we just drop out and form small, independent, self-sufficient communities and hope the masters won't notice?

Not many americans are capable of self-sufficiency and, if enough tried, the masters would notice. If such a movement showed any sign of becoming a successful counter-culture, it would be eradicated in a heartbeat.

Happens all the time, whenever a socialist experiment anywhere in the world begins to look like it has even a remote chance of success.

I suppose if everyone just stayed home for a month, didn't go anywhere, didn't buy anything and simply pretended they weren't even there, the impact would be pretty dramatic.

What would it accomplish? I have no idea. Maybe nothing. But, if the action were accompanied by the announcement that this was the new normal unless certain conditions were met, then maybe notice would be taken.

But then, this presupposes a couple hundred million people could act together in common cause. Doesn't seem likely does it?

So what's the solution?

All of the above with no particular goal in mind? None of the above, just kneel before the masters and hope for the best?

I'll take a guess. There is no solution.

There will simply be another repetition of the cycle of human history. It will all fall down. Billions will die. The survivors will be pushed into a new neolithic era, if they're lucky, and the whole thing will start all over again. For the first time it will be truly global in scope but, otherwise, same as it ever was.

Repeat as needed until extinction is achieved.

My best wishes to all whom bravely will march this Saturday, God knows we need brave soldiers to speak for the rest of Us that silently sit and wait as the planet slowly deteriorates because our lack of vision and understanding.
But fear not, the winds of change are on our side, and they are coming in strong !
http://www.shareintl.org/magazine/old_issues/2011/2011-07.htm#featurespecialis

Rock on Bill. I hope you have a good day today, Monday, and can eat dinner at home!!
As for the rest of you...I know how cynical you feel at this point, but now is not the time to sit down and ignore this mess. They are stronger than ever, so so must we be. And we need to be more careful with one another who at least think along these lines. There is a solution, and a lot of it starts in our smaller communities. As many are finding, state governments are being corrupted by ghastly corporate greed, and even colluding and corrupting petition processess. The stifling of social media with spies, cutting cell services, black boots and brown shirts everywhere.
Hitler didn't lose...he moved to the US.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Ask yourself these questions:

Why do we keep trying to change the game, when it's clear that we no longer want to play the game?

If someone has made up their mind that they are going to live a certain way, why do we feel that we must force them to change?

Is it not understood that those at the top of the game play by a different set of rules?

If you want freedom, whose rules should you play by?

Do you live with the fear that the darkness will destroy the light?

Does not the light chase away the darkness?