Chuck says: "People who drive cars are complicit in their government's policies."
Oh frabjous day! I had thought it would be much more difficult to smoke out the ideology behind all this, but, sure enough, it's an attack on drivers for "complicity." And he supports this by indicating that the war is about oil -- fair enough -- so that everyone who uses oil-generated power is complicit. Explaining to drivers and everybody else their complicity is a wonderful approach to organizing, sure to build a mass movement. Could we consider systemic solutions, involving challenging oil companies, governments, current foreign policy, the military? No, let's blame drivers, and block their access to gas.
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As the old saying goes, I don't have a dog in this fight but I do want to zero in on this idea that drivers are "complicit".
Surely, one of the lamentable results of the US' poor record in teaching basic science (and anything useful really, about our technological infrastructure) is the absurd idea that driving cars is the heart of the petro problem.
Almost our entire techno sphere is dependent upon petroleum and derived chemicals. The keyboard I'm using - plastic - would not exist were it not for petroleum.
If activists are going to inconvenience drivers for being "complicit" they might as well intercept trucks carrying polyester and nylon clothes to retailers and berate the next person who gives them food in a Tupperware container.
In other words, the entire energy and product using world is "complicit". It's safe to say this constitutes a rather large target for direct action campaigns.
.d.
--------- She loves penicillin...and compromise. She's going to go for it
...................... http://monroelab.net/blog/