The psychopaths have no problem killing people that get in between themselves and their desires.

"Facism = Capatilism + Murder"
Upton Sinclair

Alexjonesfan = Liberal Democrat & Ron Paul Supporter

But how do we take it back? Corporations have hijacked our government and our media extensively, so even a general strike would be ineffective if it weren't being broadcast. People just don't get worked up about anything, no matter how significant , unless it hurts them directly or they see it on TV.

Maddog is right about Vietnam. The reason why that created such an uproar is because of the draft. This forced people to not only pay attention, but to act. We don't have that now and it's not going to happen. If the neocons need more soldiers, they'll hire mercenaries like Blackwater or Wackenhut to make up the difference. Private soldiers who are not accountable to Congress and who's death toll is not even reported. (Over 1,000 of these guys have been killed as of July '07 along with the 3,800 US "official" count.)

A 1 day strike by a few or more people that receives almost NO media coverage will be a blip at most. Like the stock market dropping a few points one day only to rebound the next. A week long strike by enough people would be better, but are we willing to lose our jobs?

Perhaps if enough celebrites raised hell about about how our Constitution is under siege and the need to defend it, we could get the media working. Or more celbrities putting their careers on the line for 9/11 truth. Any more Rosies out there?

Otherwise, we need a draft or the government trying to force implants into our physical bodies to get people riled up enough to revolt.

EDIT: On a positive note, we are starting to see some prime time coverage in the progressive media. Richard Greene's Air America radio show "Clout" is making waves for us! And the People's Email Network has an action page to investigate 9/11 as a result. Here's the link:
www.usalone.com/reinvestigate_911.php

I've studied this problem now for about 15 years. There are many introductory books and web sites on the matter. There is NO SUBSTITUTE for oil. The reasons for this are well-documented.

Once we realize our society runs primarily on petroleum, a finite energy resource, then the perils of human economic behavior become more obvious: we proceed ever faster towards an "entropy watershed," a point where a population exhausts its fuel supply and other natural resources. The Sun can support some life on this planet--it has for millions of years. And the potential for a long future, with humans in the picture, is still theoretically possible. But the problem is that we've built up a centralized state, agriculture, cities, etc., that depend on fossil fuel. Petroleum accounts for approximately 75% of our energy used. This is an extremely dangerous situation that most people don't understand. The common assumption is that we will simply "invent" a way out of this problem with a new technology. To show why that's not possible would require an elaborate exploration of entropy and how "alternative" energy resources are in fact highly parasitic upon petroleum. It would also entail a more thorough debunking of a plethora of popular myths concerning the potential for various alternatives. Let the following remarks suffice for a brief explanation and unconvinced readers can refer to a book with the key equations and elaborate analysis, The Refrigerator and the Universe by Goldstein and Goldstein (Harvard University Press: 1993); or see Jeremy Rifkin's easy-reading book, Entropy.
Everyone seems to have their own suggestion for where the next energy resource will come from. Some think gasohol from corn, others believe fuel cells will supply our needs. Many people have offered that “the ocean is full of hydrogen.” Solar, wind, tidal, hydroelectric, fission, fusion. The list of illusory solutions is practically endless.
Few seem to realize that all of these "alternatives" cannot compare with the simplicity and efficiency of pumping fuel from the earth like water from the aquifers. The amount of energy that goes into producing a huge hydroelectric dam is more than will ever be gotten from it, ironically. And at some point, it is all worthless and must be replaced. The same is true for a nuclear power plant. Losing propositions. Obviously, if this point is not clear, then the concern and worry seems unjustified.
Can our world sustain 6 billion people with 6 billion cars, 6 billion computers, and 6 billion houses as fossil fuels become exhausted? The problem is compounded by our exponential population growth. If we continue to muddle along unconsciously as we do, the consequences will be horrific. To fail to consider this problem seriously will contribute to the severity of the eventual and necessary move away from fossil fuels. To reduce energy usage, we should encourage the development of renewable energy resources while discouraging the use of fossil fuel (taxing the latter to pay for the former, for example), sustainable agriculture, industrial hemp for paper, international population education programs, and so on. Nevertheless, any future society based on a renewable-resource paradigm will necessarily entail a vastly reduced use of energy.
Fewer people using far less energy and a plan which moves smoothly and rapidly in that direction, with as little disruption as possible, is the most reasonable option. Unfortunately, that goes against the very assumptions of global capitalism which has its own short-term motivations for driving us over a sharp precipice. And government has never been more subservient to international capital. And so we have a monster of a problem. Remember “Cold Fusion”? The public's assumption that it was a “new” form of energy was contrary to the laws of entropy and thermodynamics. Now we don't hear so much about cold fusion and no one learned the lesson. Wishful thinking is a popular form of entertainment and explains how entropy and its implications never figure into framing the debate about energy, technology, and our future.
If you were to consider a graph of energy usage, we are in the up-swing of another exponential curve. That life is, in a sense, “counter-entropic” doesn't have any bearing on this overall picture of the accelerating expenditure of finite resources and the harsh realities facing humanity and the planet in the next generation.
As if entropy wasn't bad enough, there's another problem which is parallel to many others. We are, sadly, somewhat “locked in” to a technological future. An economic path, once chosen, can lead to a bad product which may triumph over better for unexpected reasons. For example, VHS won over Beta in the video market, but not because it was a better product. VHS simply gained the upper hand in market share. Sound familiar? This problem has been analyzed by economists such as Stanford's Brian Arthur. Computers are similar to the automobile--one generation bought into the basic assumptions that permitted the industry to develop, another has to live in cities like L.A., areas geographically dependent on the automobile. Today, the geography of most U.S. cities is based on the assumption of cars and unlimited energy. In fact, the degree of centralization of our cities, the very ability of a city to function, is based on fossil fuels.
In the long run, the implications of an “entropy watershed” are much more extreme. Unpleasant things can happen when there are more people than can be supported by a shrinking supply of energy and other natural resources such as land, water, minerals, etc. In this regard, our activities are not much more insightful than those of bacteria feeding on a fixed food supply in a petri dish.
The laws of thermodynamics are as merciless as the arrow of time. The first law states that energy cannot be created or destroyed. The second law states that all available energy is moving from an available state to an unavailable state. It means that there will be no “new” energy resources discovered. Even our sun is subject to these laws and will eventually exhaust its supply of fuel. Our petroleum resources represent a one-time gift of millions of years of sunlight absorbed by previous life forms and preserved as oil.
To transform our present centralized, petroleum-based infrastructure to one based on renewable energy would be a vast project. For example, try to imagine how much effort and energy would be required to recycle all the current vehicles into electric cars. Existing vehicles are too heavy to be useful and would best be melted down and re-designed. The use of photovoltaic cells requires rare and also finite resources such as cadmium, silicon, germanium, ethylene glycol, liquid metals, selenium, gallium, arsenic, sulfur—as well as glass, plastics, rubber, etc. No photovoltaic solar cell has ever been created without the use of petroleum and other finite resources. Nor could a vast, centralized photovoltaic energy infrastructure be created or even maintained without the use of diminishing and soon-to-be-exhausted finite resources. “The end of the age of nonrenewable energy, then, presages the end of the Industrial Age as well. As the stored nonrenewable energy runs out, the entire economic superstructure built upon it will begin to crumble. Cracks all along that superstructure are already beginning to appear, and, try as we will, there isn’t enough nonrenewable energy left to mend all of them. This is the hard truth that every person on this planet must inevitably face up to.” [Jeremy Rifkin, Entropy (New York: Viking Press, 1980), p. 186.]
Faster, faster, we want it faster. But there is always a price. In this case, the price is the future. If technology is the answer, then the question might be: In what way can we most swiftly use up the available fuel supply