Occupy Oz

Australia is very worried about an attack from China.

Huh?

Yes, we all must have missed that international headline. But sure enough, President Obama has announced that US troops are moving in with the Ozzies. Occupy Oz?

Lucky thing the US has such a budget surplus that we can deploy more troops to more nations, especially ones that are in such desperate need.

Is this the only way we can show friendship to anyone? Bring armed troops onto their sovereign soil? Occupy their country? When will this practice be seen for the sheer stupidity it is? We still have 50.7 million without health care coverage, including 8 million children, even after the so-called socialist Obamacare (which generated 23 million new customers for insurance corporations). We have enormous numbers of children who hate school because all the life has been drained out of it from budget cuts and No Child Left Behind teach-to-the-tests days of dryhole boredom. We have a government ready to shut down and Congress with an approval rating (nine percent of Americans) two points lower than the communist party and six lower than Paris Hilton, but we need those American troops stationed in Oz. 

This is why so many of us have hopes that the Occupy movement--our current best hope for change toward peace and justice from nonviolent civil society--gets its act together. Here is a tiny town Occupy that is all about positive peace and is showing a real American spirit of community: Occupy Mosier. For a longer, more fun version, watch the eight-minute movie. No drugs, no faceless enraged masked agents, just local accountable and personally identifiable good souls. This is what Eldridge Cleaver meant when he said that whatever we do for change in the US should have a Yankee Doodle slant to it. Real folks, real diversity, not a one percent ersatz "movement." Occupy Mosier just stopped Wal-Mart--not bad for a tiny town grassroots effort. Let's roll.