Here, on Facebook, etc, Code Green Idea #7 was the comic that was clearly preferred by readers. So I drew it. Thanks to everyone for their input!

My outrage at what is happening in the Gulf has generated a lot of ideas for Code Green comics. I’ll probably do some extras this week. Want to help me decide which ones to do first? Which would you choose? Here’s my list:

1)
Image: A bunch of protesters stand in front of BP, sweltering in the hot sun, holding signs that are lame because they are overly polite: “If you wouldn’t mind…” etc.
Person to friend: We’ve got them where we want them. Only 10000000000 more hours of protests to go before they *have* to listen.
Person 2 (kneeling and praying, reading a book: “Obama’s Prayer Manual”): Don’t forget praying.

2)
Obama (dressed as general with opulent uniform and hat, rubber boots and sword held aloft, standing in oily water): Because war rhetoric usually suckers the American people: JOIN MY GLORIOUS WAR ON ERROR!

3)
Caption: BP committed at least 760 “egregious” and “willful” safety violations
during the last 3 years.
BP official (yelling at the sky): It was a tragic, random, accidental act-of-God accident. Damn you, God!

4)
Image: Person (standing on dead planet covered with corpses and toxic waste, indignant): Sure, civilization has its costs. But it’s so convenient. Hey – got any food?

5)
Image: 2 people are at the edge of the oily Gulf.
Person 1: This is nothing new. Oil companies already wrecked huge areas in Ecuador and the Niger Delta.
Person 2: When I demanded an end to outsourcing, I meant jobs.

6)
Image: BP and US officials hold up large banner with photo pristine beach scene, hiding real oil-poisoned beach behind them.
One: We don’t block media access.
Other: Take all the photos you want.

7)
Image: 2 people stands in ruined landscape, with mushroom cloud, toxic water, fires, etc.
Person 1: *THIS* catastrophe is *FINALLY* going to make everyone understand that our way of life is unsustainable.
Person 2: I think I need one more oil spill.

8
Image: Person stands in ruined landscape.
Person: Technology will fix it.
 

[EDIT: Paypal button removed -- thanks to everyone who donated! Future donations to this organization can be made to them directly]

I’m raising money for the Gulf Emergency Summit to take place June 19 in New Orleans.

Donate $18 and I will send you a signed, full-color print (on photo paper) of this cartoon:

I will collect funds through midnight June 19 (Saturday). On Monday (June 21) I’ll make the prints and mail them out, and will send 100% of the donations (after mailing and printing costs) to the Summit organizers.

If you’d rather donate to them directly, there’s a link on their website.

From the webpage of the event:

Call for an Emergency Summit

AN EXTRAORDINARY CRISIS REQUIRES
AN EXTRAORDINARY RESPONSE

THE PEOPLE MUST ACT
TO STOP THE GULF CATASTROPHE

The BP oil blowout is an environmental catastrophe, bringing great peril to marine and wildlife in the Gulf and threatening ecosystems of the planet. The spill is still out of control and spreading. It jeopardizes communities and livelihoods. The government and BP have proven unable and unwilling to stop the disaster, protect the Gulf, or even tell the truth.

The people must come together now to stop this nightmare.

Millions are sick at heart and looking for ways to act. Many individuals and groups have spoken out, offered suggestions, volunteered to help, protested. BP and the government – pursuing their own interests – have ignored people’s ideas, blocked public participation, suppressed and harassed scientists, and prevented people on the Gulf from taking initiative to keep oil away from shore.

This must not continue. A broad, determined, and powerful “peoples’ response” is urgently needed – to get the truth out, to protect the shores and oceans and deal with the ecological impacts, while exploring deeper causes and solutions.

The Emergency Summit will bring together scientists, people from fishing communities, environmental activists, progressives, radicals and revolutionaries, artists, intellectuals and all who want to halt this horror. There will be testimony on the true scope and impact of the disaster and on what can be done to protect ecosystems, wildlife, and people. We’ll thrash out ways for people to act now – on different fronts and in different ways – and to galvanize many, many more, across the Gulf and beyond.

The world is watching. We must not allow the Gulf and oceans to be devastated. Our mission is nothing less than stopping this catastrophe.

Draft Demands:

1. Stop oil drilling in the Gulf
2. The government and entire oil industry must allocate all necessary resources to stop the spill and clean up the devastation. Full support, including by compensation, must be given to efforts by people to save the Gulf.
3. No punishment to those taking independent initiative; no gag orders on people hired, contracted, or who volunteer.
4. Full mobilization of scientists and engineers. Release scientific and technical data to the public; no more lying and covering up. Full and open scientific evaluation of emergency measures like the use of dispersants. Fund all necessary scientific and medical research.
5. Full compensation for all losing livelihood and income from the disaster.
6. Provide necessary medical services to those suffering health effects of the spill. Protect the health of and provide necessary equipment for everyone involved in clean up operations. Full disclosure of medical and scientific studies about the effects of the oil disaster.

Initial Endorsers:
William Quigley, Loyola University; Legal Dir., Center for Constitutional Rights*
Michael G. Hadfield, Marine Biologist, University of Hawaii*
Larry Everest, author Oil, Power & Empire, Revolution newspaper
John Pearse, Prof. Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Santa Cruz*
Eloise Williams, Lower Algiers Environmental Committee, New Orleans
Elizabeth Cook, Women United for Social Justice, New Orleans
Andy Washington, Civil Rights Activist, New Orleans
Survivors Village, New Orleans
Ben Gordon, Pax Cristi, New Orleans
Debra Sweet, Director, World Can’t Wait
Sharon Jasper, public housing activist, New Orleans
C3-Hands Off Iberville, New Orleans
George Mahdi, Social Worker, New Orleans
Endesha Juakeli, housing activist, New Orleans
Randy Poindexter, New Orleans
Rebecca Austen, New Orleans
Gilda & Sain Reed, New Orleans
* for identification purposes only

Website: gulfemergencysummit.org
Email: gulfemergencysummit@gmail.com

Saturday, June 19, 2010
10AM-End Time TBA
First Unitarian Universalist Church, Sanctuary
5212 South Claiborne Avenue
New Orleans, LA

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Under capitalism, competition causes the rate of profit to drop, and overproduction results. This is when the business cycle dips, and we experience recessions and depressions. To restore the rate of profit and force the cycle up again, capitalists have several methods including financial speculation and deliberate waste. Plus they must destroy capital, usually through wars. During the current dip we have seen a frenzy of financial speculation, waste, and wars.

In the process of destroying capital to save capitalism, there is always contention among capitalists: whose capital will be destroyed? This is a point of conflict – no one wants it to be their own. When this conflict becomes acute, it can be resolved by war.

At the moment, the capital of a British oil company, the fourth largest corporation in the world, is being destroyed. BP was allowed to create this destructive situation by the US government. We assume it must have been due to greed, negligence and short-sightedness.

But what if it wasn’t? Couldn’t this, actually, be war in another form, the deliberate facilitation of destruction of British-based capital by representatives of US-based capital?

That would explain why Obama isn’t doing anything about it.

I was trying out a new brush pen here…

Among the headlines on commondreams.org I spotted this: “If There Was Ever a Moment to Seize,” by Bill McKibben. For one wild second I thought — wow, McKibben sees the revolutionary potential in this crisis and is finally going to encourage people to rise up and overthrow the maniacs killing the planet!!! But that was not, of course, the case. Instead of asking *us* to seize the moment, he is asking *Obama* to do so. He wants Obama to be the leader of a people’s movement for sustainability.

Um… I think Obama is already very busy being the leader of the ecocidal, murderous capitalist class that runs this country.

by Stephanie McMillan
5/6/10

The moment is ripening. Can you sense the building tension? The simultaneous unease and anticipation? The global capitalist system is breaking apart at last. Millions of angry, dispossessed, exploited, poisoned people the world over are beginning to challenge its existence, are making their decisions and steeling themselves to kick it down and keep it down. They are ready to go all in, to confront the system no matter what the consequences to themselves, to do whatever it takes to destroy the evil machine that’s sucking the life out of this planet and all its people. With the revolution in Nepal to the Naxalites in India, to the anti-capitalists and anarchists of Europe, the indigenous rebels of Latin America and Africa, the discontent rumbling barely under the surface here in the US – the global uprising is gaining steam.

The system is flailing in weakness and panic. Even its escalation of frantic shoveling of cash into the pockets of the rich is a sign that the party’s almost over. There’s no more attempt to hide or soften the plunder of the planet of its last remaining bits of life. Those in power are scrambling, knowing they have no solutions, no way out of this situation, nothing to offer us but fire and blood.

We must brace ourselves and cast aside our fear, if we are to seize this rare opportunity. The moment is approaching, the moment that we’ve been waiting for all our lives. It’s time for each of us to decide where we stand, to step up and do whatever it is we’re going to do to push this situation forward as hard as we can. For the first time since the late 1960s the system is stumbling, exposed in all its horrors, and the people of the world are standing up in defiance, with dreams of freedom. We might actually stand a chance. Finally, finally.

Here is an audio file of me reading my essay “Artists: Raise Your Weapons.” (The text is here). The great music is by The Filthy Politicians, used with permission.

Artists: Raise Your Weapons

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Think I’m being alarmist about surveillance drones being used at protests? It’s started in the UK. This photo was taken at a gay pride march last year in Brighton. The person who took the photo gave me permission to share it.

Here is AirRobot’s company website: http://www.airrobot-uk.com/air-robot-products.htm.

Look for them soon at a protest in your town.