Fueling the war economy

By the time a gallon of gas--purchased wholesale from, say, ExxonMobil for 84 cents per gallon--gets to Afghanistan, the US Military has paid around $600 for each gallon. In Iraq, fuel is a bit cheaper, at $150/gallon. Consider: a single Abrams tank driving one mile per hour en route from the southern border of Iraq to Baghdad racks up gas costs of $60,000. To cut costs, a special army unit is teaming up with GM, Ford, and DaimlerChrysler to develop a line of military vehicles that are gas-electric or diesel-electric hybrids. Hopefully this technology will trickle back to the States where it can be used in the top-selling product rollout from the last Gulf War, the gas-guzzling Humvee.

Atwood to America: we've gotta talk

"Dear America: This is a difficult letter to write, because I'm no longer sure who you are," writes novelist Margaret Atwood. It's a beautiful letter, celebrating what America was, or can be. Here's where she ends up with it:

By the time you read this, Baghdad may or may not look like the craters of the Moon, and many more sheep entrails will have been examined. Let's talk, then, not about what you're doing to other people, but about what you're doing to yourselves.

You're gutting the Constitution. Already your home can be entered without your knowledge or permission, you can be snatched away and incarcerated without cause, your mail can be spied on, your private records searched. Why isn't this a recipe for widespread business theft, political intimidation, and fraud? I know you've been told all this is for your own safety and protection, but think about it for a minute. Anyway, when did you get so scared? You didn't used to be easily frightened.

You're running up a record level of debt. Keep spending at this rate and pretty soon you won't be able to afford any big military adventures. Either that or you'll go the way of the USSR: lots of tanks, but no air conditioning. That will make folks very cross. They'll be even crosser when they can't take a shower because your short-sighted bulldozing of environmental protections has dirtied most of the water and dried up the rest. Then things will get hot and dirty indeed.

You're torching the American economy. How soon before the answer to that will be, not to produce anything yourselves, but to grab stuff other people produce, at gunboat-diplomacy prices? Is the world going to consist of a few megarich King Midases, with the rest being serfs, both inside and outside your country? Will the biggest business sector in the United States be the prison system? Let's hope not.

If you proceed much further down the slippery slope, people around the world will stop admiring the good things about you. They'll decide that your city upon the hill is a slum and your democracy is a sham, and therefore you have no business trying to impose your sullied vision on them. They'll think you've abandoned the rule of law. They'll think you've fouled your own nest.

The British used to have a myth about King Arthur. He wasn't dead, but sleeping in a cave, it was said; in the country's hour of greatest peril, he would return. You, too, have great spirits of the past you may call upon: men and women of courage, of conscience, of prescience. Summon them now, to stand with you, to inspire you, to defend the best in you. You need them.

WARn out

• As the war in Iraq fizzles along (troops are under-supplied, and "shock and awe" clearly didn't), Pentagon insiders say it's Rumsfeld's fault, according to a new New Yorker article. As allegations surface that Rumsfeld and his cadre of civilian advisors have been over-ruling Tommy Franks and the traditionally held rules of engagement, dissent is mounting in the British forces too: three soldiers in the 16th Air Assault Brigade are being sent home for court martial because they "complained about the way the war is being fought and the growing danger to civilians."

• Here's how CNN's Aaron Brown began his interview with peace activist Daniel Ellsberg. Note the less-than-objective premise he starts out with, then read Ellsberg's right-on-the-money response: "The Iraqi political strategy is in large part to use the anti-war demonstrations around the world to create political pressure on the coalition governments to stand down, cease fire and stop the war. In that regard, are you playing into the hands of what I think you would even acknowledge is a very bad regime."

• American GIs in the Gulf are required to pray for the president every day (well, he doesneed it). The pamphlet "A Christian's Duty" includes verses like "Pray that the President and his advisers will seek God and his wisdom daily and not rely on their own understanding" and "Pray that the President and his advisers will be strong and courageous to do what is right regardless of critics".

• A British soldier injured by a friendly fire attack from a US anti-tank aircraft that killed one, injured three and destroyed two armored vehicles: "Combat is what I’ve been trained for. I can command my vehicle. I can keep it from being attacked. What I have not been trained to do is look over my shoulder to see whether an American is shooting at me.” He described the American pilot as a cowboy with "no regard for human life."

• US Marines fire on civilians at the "Bridge of Death," killing 12 or more: "One man's body was still in flames. It gave out a hissing sound. Tucked away in his breast pocket, thick wads of banknotes were turning to ashes. His savings, perhaps."

• Read "When 'Precision' Bombing Isn't: Iraqi Civilians Learn the Lesson of Afghanistan," a study by Marc W. Herold, professor of Economics and Women's Studies at the University of New Hampshire.

[Expletive Repeated]

• The U.N. Children's Fund representative in Iraq says that more than 570,000 traumatized Iraqi children could need psychological counseling by the time the war ends.

• A physician in Baghdad, where at least 58 civilians were killed by Allied bombs, implores, "I ask Bush and Blair to imagine how they would feel if their child died in their arms," while Rasoul Hammed Najeed, whose 5-year old son was killed in the market bombing, sobs uncontrollably: "After this crime, I wish I could see [US President George Bush] in order to cut him to pieces with my teeth."

• It turns out the resignation of accused war profiteer Richard Perle from the Defense Policy Board is just the tip of the iceberg. The Center for Public Integrity reports that at least nine of the board's 30 members--entrusted with guiding the Pentagon's war policy in Iraq--are involved with companies that "have won more than $76 billion in defense contracts in 2001 and 2002. Four members are registered lobbyists, one of whom represents two of the three largest defense contractors."

• US Marine Sgt. Eric Schrumpf, a sharpshooter working along Highway 1 into Baghdad, reported, "We had a great day. We killed a lot of people." Discussing the possibility that he may be shooting at civilians, he replied, "We dropped a few civilians, but what do you do?" In an instance where an Iraqi soldier was in a group with 25 women and children, Schrumpt held his fire, but when a soldier was among two or three civilians, he let rip, killing the woman: "I'm sorry. But the chick was in the way."

• The architect of the "shock and awe" strategy, Harlan Ullman, says we'd better find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq--or else. "What they are doing is waging a guerrilla war in the south which is going to persist and a really tough defensive campaign around Baghdad, with the expectation that Iraq will be viewed as the victims and the British and Americans as the bullies." Makes me wonder: to what lengths will the U.S. go to uncover WMDs? Would we fabricate evidence (as Bush did unsuccessfully in explaining his pre-war rationale on Iraq?)? Or simply blame it on Syria or Iran?

• Protesting biased news coverage of the war, 500 activists staged a "die-in" in front of New York's Rockefeller Center, home of NBC, CNN, and Fox. Proving their media target is legitimate, Fox News ridiculed the protesters by running bottom-of-screen news tickers that read "War protester auditions here today ... thanks for coming!", "Who won your right to show up here today? Protesters or soldiers?", and "How do you keep a war protester in suspense? Ignore them."

• Apparently, it runs in the family. The president's grandfather, Prescott Bush, profited from Auschwitz slave labor and violated the Trading with the Enemy act for running front businesses for Hitler's Nazis throughout World War II. Former president George H.W. Bush, too, has close ties to tyranny--he allegedly kept business deals going with Osama's dad, Mohammed bin Laden, until two months after September 11. And Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Michael Moore just got financing to make a film about the Bush-bin Laden link. The title: "Fahrenheit 911."

Bush no more

A 72-year old living in Jonquieres, France, was ashamed that he and the American president share a name that "will go down in history as that of a tyrant." The former Eric Bush is now known as Eric Buisson--the French word for bush. We've all got to do our part.

Co-opting God

The House and Senate have passed a resolution making March 17, the day the war began, a day of prayer and fasting. This is bad: it violates the separation of church and state, it messes up St. Patrick's Day for millions, and enlists God's name in a war opposed by the pope and nearly every other religious leader. The resolution, passed 346-49, says we should use the day of prayer "to seek guidance from God to achieve a greater understanding of our own failings and to learn how we can do better in our everyday activities, and to gain resolve in meeting the challenges that confront our nation." I'm all for humility and prayer, but may I suggest we initiate such a day BEFORE we nuke a mostly defenseless country to high heaven? One dissenter, Dennis Kucinich, said the resolution "may be seen by some as an attempt to inject religion into this war at a time when some of America's enemies abroad are asserting that this indeed is a war about religion."

Pawlenty: Protesters pay up

Minnesota's Republican governor Tim Pawlenty says he wants antiwar protesters who get arrested for civil disobedience to pay for costs associated with their arrest. Let me get this straight: We're engaged in a war that the international community and countless legal scholars have deemed illegal. My taxes pay for a war I vehemently oppose. Yet, if I protest the war and get arrested for civil disobedience the governor thinks I should pay? Should I pay a cop's salary once through taxes and again through a user's fee? Are thieves and rapists paying their tabs too?

The cost of arresting a million protesters probably doesn't amount to the pricetag for a day's worth of "smart" bombs dropped in this ugly war. The governor has no power to affect prosecution this way, but he promises to initiate legislation to force protesters to pay. It's clear what he really wants to do is shut us up.

Tell Pawlenty what you think of his plan. E-mail tim.pawlenty@state.mn.us.

Perle quits

Richard Perle--"architect of the war" in Iraq and author of "Clean Break," a 1996 report calling for a radical reshaping of the Middle East to secure US/Israeli interests, starting with the overthrow of Iraq--resigned amid allegations of what can only be described as war profiteering. Read The Guardian's report.

More to The Point

Blake Brunner of Official Media has been tracking Sinclair Broadcast Group and the commentary segment The Point, home of Mark Hyman's right-wing rants. In a thorough piece, Brunner writes that--aside from Hyman's views that celebrity protesters are "wackjobs," Jesse Jackson is "America's premier race hustler," and the "liberal media" is really the "Axis of Drivel"--what's truly scary is:

the prospect that Sinclair may soon increase its share of the nation’s media markets. Although its website boasts that Sinclair is currently the “largest commercial television broadcasting company not owned by a network,” the company is one of many currently lobbying the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to ease its ownership rules. Sinclair would not be the sole beneficiary of deregulation—fellow broadcasting giants like Hearst-Argyle and Scripps could expand their vast holdings—but in attaining a greater market share Sinclair increases its already great potential to damage public discourse. If these companies—and their ally, FCC Chairman Michael Powell—get their way, viewers should expect increasingly homogenous programming as well as an acceleration of the rightward shift in already-conservative televised discourse.

Rumi:

Beyond the ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there.

Dubya's Dubble?

"You may think the air of extreme witlessness impossible to mimic, but is the man on the podium the authentic Dubya, a trained stand-in or an animatronic lookalike?" The Guardian investigates.

[Expletive Deleted]

• More than 14 civilians are dead after Allied missiles hit a Baghdad market. Tony Blair's spokesman, from the security of London, asserts, "We have always accepted that there will be some very regrettable civilian casualties."

• The man Bush selected to govern occupied Iraq has ties to right-wing anti-Palestinian groups. In 2000 he signed a statement blaming Palestinians for Israeli-Palestinian violence. The statement, sponsored by the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, includes signatures by JINSA advisory board member Richard Perle and past board member Dick Cheney.

• With a humanitarian crisis mounting in Basra, British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon denies that American and British bombing had been aimed at the water supply. Oh, yes? In 1966, Assistant Secretary of Defense John McNaughton, quoted in Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States," discussed his strategy in North Vietnam: "Destruction of locks and dams, however--if handled right--might...offer promise. It should be studied. Such destruction doesn't kill or drown people. By shallow-flooding the rice, it leads after a time to widespread starvation (more than a million?) unless food is provided--which we could offer to do 'at the conference table.'"

• On-the-ground reports conflict with the network's gushing praise of "surgical" and "precision" bombing raids by U.S. and British troops, writes the media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. (While you're there, support FAIR and buy a "Don't Trust the Corporate Media" t-shirt or bumpersticker.)

• Rep. John Conyers demands an investigation into Bush war advisor Richard Perle's work as a paid consultant to Global Crossing and his guidance on investment opportunities resulting from the Iraq war. Meanwhile, Dick Cheney's former company Halliburton, from which he still receives up to $1 million a year, gets the contract to put out Iraq's oil fires, without a bidding process. (Anybody want to write a letter to The Ethicist?)

• Images the media won't show and no one--yet everyone--should see. WARNING: EXTREMELY GRAPHIC IMAGES.

• Peace activists doing a die-in at Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman's office don't miss the irony: it used to be Paul Wellstone's pad. At least 28 were arrested. Today, 67 more were arrested for civil disobedience at the Federal Courthouse in downtown Minneapolis.

• And, simply because my dad asked for it, please take a moment to read this. Thanks.

More secrecy from Bush

At 6:40 last night--too late for any experts to review the document--the Bush administration signed an order delaying until 2006 the release of millions of government documents that would've been declassified in April. It also gives the government new powers to reclassify documents. According to Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, the order "will slow the declassification process" and "signals a greater affinity for secrecy." He adds, in a sentiment more and more common during the Bush/Ashcroft reign, "It makes secrecy reflexive rather than intelligent." The records that would've been declassified in April date back 25 years--to George H.W. Bush's tenure as director of the CIA. A coincidence, I'm sure.

Loudmouth vs. Poet

You know you're monkeywrenching the conservative-talk-show machine when an interview--like this one between Fox's Bill O'Reilly and American poet Amiri Baraka--ends up like this:

O'REILLY: I guess we don't have too much common ground, other than we both don't like bigots.

BARAKA: We can talk about what--we don't understand what each other is saying.

O'REILLY: All right. I've got to tell you I appreciate you coming on in. I think you're a lunatic, and...

BARAKA: Yes. Well, I think you're a lunatic who's more dangerous because you're on television.

O'REILLY: All right. Mr. Baraka, thank you very much.  We appreciate it.

BARAKA: Thank you very much. That was short and sweet.

(Thanks, Meredith.)

Smearing mass transit

The campaign against mass transit continues: Vancouver IndyMedia catches General Motors smearing bus riders in a new full-page ad. An approaching bus flashes a destination ticker that reads "Creeps & Weirdos." But of course, there's an alternative: buy a Chevy Cavalier VL Sedan. (Via Boing Boing.)

At Bloggerheads

I've been having tons of problems with Blogger, my blogging software. So if you catch a glitch--like the question-mark that should conclude the last entry, the entire sentence that's missing, and my disappearing archives--it's a Blogger thing, and I can't fix it. My apologies.

Clear Channel, Jr.

After last night's news on the Madison, Wisconsin, Fox affiliate, Mark Hyman opined that he's "tired of lies":

Editorials in liberal papers such as the New York Times and Baltimore Sun--begging for more time for diplomacy--conveniently leave out the fact that diplomacy started in 1990 when Iraq invaded Kuwait. They don’t mention that Saddam has not honored the diplomatic efforts of 17 UN Security Council resolutions in the last dozen years.

They want you to believe that world solidarity starts with France, but don’t tell you that the cheese eating surrender monkeys have been profiting off legal and illegal Iraqi business dealings for decades.

What these bastions of the "hate America crowd" don’t realize is that we are all tired of the lies.

Turns out not only Madisonians were blessed with Hyman's wisdom; the program, "The Point," is piped out to stations in more than 62 markets, from Baltimore all the way to Sacramento (and including the Twin Cities WB affiliate, WB23). The program, a segment within a show called NewsCentral, is produced by Sinclair Broadscast Group, an ultraconservative network that, aside from owning and operating stations, provides 20-minute canned segments of "news" that can be supplemented with a few minutes of local reporting.

Mark Jeffries, of TVBarn, calls Sinclair the "Clear Channel of local news." He writes:

[T]he national style of "NewsCentral" seems to be taking on a fiercely right-wing approach that makes Fox News Channel look like a model of objectivity. Newsblues.com quotes national anchor Morris Jones making this statement on last night's newscast: "Apparently thinking the war had already begun, a small group of Iraqi soldiers crossed the border into Kuwait holding a white flag. It may also be the new flag of France."

Hyman, who, it turns out, is Sinclair's Vice President, came under fire in December 2001 for his inane criticism of media coverage of the military strikes in Afghanistan. Among the zingers in his commentary:

Some of the network television newscasts have apparently forgotten that this country is engaged in a war with a ruthless enemy, and they are now broadcasting thoughtful pieces, suggesting the Taliban are [sic] misunderstood… If you listen to public radio, you would think that the U.S. military is only targeting schools, hospitals, mosques, and Red Cross shelters… What he have witnessed in recent days is questionable reporting that gives aid and comfort to the enemy and-in some cases-provides a platform for enemy propaganda.

Hyman lashes out at Peter Jennings and the big networks for being too liberal. As the media conversation shifts ever rightward--with Sinclair and Fox News grabbing more and more viewers, and CNN trying regain market share with its increasingly hawkish war coverage--the definition of liberal, as it's defined by the conservative media, changes. If Peter Jennings is a liberal, what do you call Amy Goodman
(Thanks, Ben.)

The Bitterness of Sgt. Akbar

Is Sgt. Asan Akbar--the Louisiana soldier who allegedly lobbed grenades at and fired on members of the 101st Airborne, killing one and wounding 15--merely a man with an "attitude problem," as the Pentagon asserts? Much of the press describes Akbar as "disgruntled," "acting out of resentment," or—as the New York Post reports—a traitor, a loner, and a Muslim.

The truth is probably far more complex than that.

Most papers report the story like this: a bitter loner--probably an antiwar activist who can't bear to fire on fellow Muslims--rolled grenades into the tent of American soldiers. One publication straying from this story, the Financial Times of London, describes the events: after a series of explosions ripped through the camp, followed by a series of gunshots, fired--according to witnesses--at soldiers as they exited their tents. One soldier said he glimpsed a figure in the doorway of his tent. "I couldn't pick him out of a line-up," he said. "But he was clearly dressed in a US uniform." According to the soldier, the figure said, "We are under attack sir!" When things calmed down, soldiers held two Kuwaiti translators, who were later released, and also sought a civilian in a white t-shirt and khakis for questioning. They found Akbar hiding in a bunker with a shrapnel wound to the leg and a grenade in his gas mask case. Charges have not yet been leveled.

If Akbar is indeed, as it appears, the culprit, he's not such an isolated case. "Fraggers"--soldiers who attempt to kill officers by using grenades, or fragmentation devices--were quite active in the Vietnam War. But in Vietnam, it wasn't a common problem until several years into an ugly conflict that grew unpopular in the States and, through time and extended suffering by GIs, within the military. Last September in La Voz de Aztlan, writer Ernesto Cienfuegos chronicles the treatment of minority "grunts" in the US military: "Chicano and Black soldiers were being ordered by white officers to be the 'point men' during reconnaissance missions. Minority soldiers rebelled against these suicide missions and started retaliating against the whites officers who usually stayed behind the lines."

Historian Howard Zinn also traces the evolution of the antiwar movement inside the military in his book "A Peoples' History of the United States"--a movement that came in large part from ordinary enlisted men, many from lower income groups or ethnic minorities. He writes of one case with striking similarities to Akbar's:

A twenty-year-old New York City Chinese-American named Sam Choy enlisted at seventeen in the army, was sent to Vietnam, was made a cook, and found himself the target of abuse by fellow GIs, who called him "Chink" and "gook" (the term for the Vietnamese) and said he looked like the enemy. One day he took a rifle and fired warning shots at his tormentors. "By this time I was near the perimeter of the base and was thinking of joining the Viet Cong; at least they would trust me. " Choy was taken by military police, beaten, court-martialed, sentenced to eighteen months of hard labor at Fort Leavenworth. "They beat me up every day, like a time clock." He ended his interview with a New York Chinatown newspaper saying: "One thing: I want to tell all the Chinese kids that the army made me sick. They made me so sick that I can't stand it."

In Akbar's version, the crime may be looking--and praying--like the enemy. An African American, he was kept out of the first Gulf War because of his faith (he converted to Islam and changed his name as a boy). Akbar reportedly told his mother, "Mama, when I get over there I have the feeling they are going to arrest me just because of the name that I have carried."

One of his neighbors tried to come up with an explanation for the behavior of which Akbar is accused: "I know he didn't like his unit that much. He didn't get promoted. I had asked him how that had worked. A lot of people feel that (discrimination) is there at Fort Campbell."

Discrimination in the military goes back to pre-Vietnam conflicts where units were segregated, but came to a head during Vietnam, the first war where troops were integrated. The Guardian writes,

Black servicemen were frequently sentenced to longer terms than their white counterparts and, once inside a military prison, black Muslim inmates were refused copies of the Koran… But, most disturbingly, black Americans were dying at a disproportionate rate and this only inflamed their indignation, as one black private remonstrated: "You should see for yourself how the black man is being treated over here and the way we are dying. When it comes to rank, we are left out. When it comes to special privileges, we are left out. When it comes to patrols, operations and so forth, we are first."

In today's US military, there's no clear evidence that minorities are dying at higher rates than whites. Nonetheless, Rep. Charles Rangel in January called for reinstating the draft because minorities and the poor make up a disproportionate percentage of military personnel. Indeed, from 1995 to 2000, the number of minority enlisted rose from 28 percent to 38 percent (compared to 30 percent of the national population), and the officer corps grew from 11 percent to 19 percent. But while studies on minorities in the military have been somewhat plentiful, little has been written on Muslims--especially black Muslims--in the military, not to mention the even more rare examination of Muslims serving in conflicts in Islamic nations.

The evidence suggests that Akbar did kill and injure U.S. soldiers--a human tragedy within the larger horror of an unfathomably cruel war--but the prevailing message from the American media, a noncommittal shrug, seems to ignore the systemic problems in our armed forces: by and large, enlisted soldiers come from lower economic backgrounds and are increasingly from ethnic minorities. Clearly, those making the decision to go to war aren't dodging bullets on the front lines. As is often cited, only one of the 535 members of the Senate and House who authorized this war have children or grandchildren in service (the Progressive Populist, I'm told, puts the figure at five). Even the commander-in-chief George W. Bush, who bailed out of his military obligations with the Texas Air National Guard and was accused of using his father's influence to land such a plum Vietnam-era assignment, has never seen combat.

But whether Akbar is mentally ill or whether the stress of combat made him so--or whether he represents a lineage of intramilitary resistance to institutional racism and classism--we'll probably never know. It just seems too easy to simply dub Akbar a guy with a grudge and leave it at that, especially when historical precedent suggests there may be other factors. It's too easy to merely accept, as one report does, that "where [Akbar's] bitterness may have come from remains a mystery."

The irony of Rumsfeld's ire

Donald Rothwell, a law professor at the University of Sydney, writes about the irony of the US position on the humane treatment of political prisoners:

Early last year the US was embroiled in a controversy over the application of the Geneva Convention to Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters captured during the Afghanistan conflict. The US has consistently argued against applying the convention to Afghan POWs, insisting that the fighters were "battlefield detainees" with no rights under international law other than respect for very basic principles of humanity.

Australia found itself part of this dispute following the capture of the Taliban fighter, David Hicks, from Adelaide.

While there can be little doubt that the Geneva Convention clearly applies in Iraq, the US ambivalence over the captured prisoners from Afghanistan now held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, may have rebounded upon it in this instance.

What is important for all parties to this war to remember is that if they expect their troops to be treated consistently with international law then this is a reciprocal obligation. The recent actions of the US in Afghanistan and now in Iraq to unilaterally interpret international law, including the UN Charter, unfortunately undermine respect for international law.

Iraq and the US have reaffirmed their respect for the provisions of the Geneva POW convention, but the US remains concerned over Iraq's media exposure of the POWs and President George Bush has pledged to prosecute any war criminals.

If any international prosecutions result from war crimes committed in Iraq, for the sake of international rule of law, criminals on all sides should be dealt with evenly.

Read the entire piece.

Another resignation

Mary Ann Wright, deputy chief of mission at the US embassy in Mongolia, resigned over Bush's policies in Iraq, North Korea, and Palestine/Israel, as well as domestic attempts to erode civil liberties. Read her lengthy and empassioned letter to Colin Powell. My growing fear is that all the good ones will resign, leaving just the Richard Perles and Dick Cheneys.

The first casualty is truth

Ari Fleischer gave this ominous warning to journalists on February 28: "If the military says something, I strongly urge all journalists to heed it," adding, "It is in your own interest and that of your family too. And I mean that." Reacting to what amounts to a veiled threat, and concerned about effective war coverage, the international journalists' rights organisation Reporters Sans Frontieres (Reporters without Borders) has warned US authorities not to obstruct the media in its reporting of the war in Iraq, demanding that the international media be allowed to work "freely and in safety." They questioned the policy of "embedding," which is offered only to reporters who sign a 50-point conduct about their behavior while in Iraq. One provision of the contract allows commanders to "embargo" news that could damage "operational security."

Fromm on patriotism

An excerpt from Erich Fromm's "The Sane Society":

Nationalism is our form of incest, is our idolatry, is our insanity. "Patriotism" is its cult. It should hardly be necessary to say, that by "patriotism" I mean that attitude which puts the own nation above humanity, above the principles of truth and justice; not the loving interest in one's own nation, which is the concern with the nation's spiritual as much as with its material welfare -- never with its power over other nations. Just as love for one individual which excludes the love for others is not love, love for one's country which is not part of one's love for humanity is not love, but idolatrous worship.

Enemy combatants or PoWs?

The Afghani prisoners detained in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba--now totalling 660 people, after a shipment of 30 more arrived Sunday--are being called "captured enemy combatants" instead of "prisoners of war," so that the US won't be tried under the Geneva Convention. Is the "war on terror" really not a war, despite all its war planes and daisy-cutters? Can a linguistic flourish be an acceptable alibi? And why aren't the US soldiers shown on Al-Jazeera "enemy combatants" as well? Rumsfeld's indignation at the treatment of US soldiers is understandable, but considering that the US tortured two Afghan detainees to death, putting American PoWs on TV seems to be a far less heinous crime. As Bush calls for humane treatment of American captives, I hope the president can assure the same for those in our custody.

While the world's not looking

From The Independent:

Israel is preparing to move a security fence, designed to separate Israelis and Palestinians, further into the West Bank. About 40,000 more settlers and another 3,000 Palestinians would find themselves on the Israeli side of the barrier.

Saeb Erekat, a senior Palestinian negotiator, denounced the initiative yesterday as "flagrant defiance" of President George Bush and Tony Blair, who have promised to present their "road map" to peace as soon as a new Palestinian Government is sworn in.

"Israel is telling the Americans and British to forget it," Dr Erekat said. "They are saying they have their own road map, based on dictation, not negotiation. They are creating facts on the ground, which will take 40 per cent of the West Bank."

Moore on war

Winning the Oscar for best documentary (i.e. nonfiction) film, Michael Moore took his 45 seconds at the podium to address the war:

We like nonfiction and we live in fictitious times. We live in a time where we have fictitious election results, that elect a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons.

Pay-per-view art

Working in the arts, I know all too well how hard it is (for some of us, anyway) to operate in this emaciated arts-funding climate. So why does the exhibition "Sponsorship"--a show comprised entirely of corporate logos--currently up at Shepard Fairey's LA gallery BlkMrkt, bother me so? Probably because I suspect its motives: in neo-uber-hipster fashion, it uses an ironic self-referential critique of corporate patronage to cover for what's ultimately a mad dash for cash. The show features logos of companies like Levi's, AOL, and Kinko's as well as smaller skateboard-related companies who paid for the privilege of being included. The opening, by the way, was so successful the fire marshall had to shut it down. And maybe that--the fact that the idea's a bit tired, but still has the power to pack 'em in--is what irks me. Still, you've gotta give Shepard credit: at least he's honest.

Read Rob Walker's take on the show in Slate.

Revolutionary Waters

The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution.

--Paul Cezanne

How gratifying and re-centering to turn on the TV in search of war news and find the PBS documentary "Alice Waters and her Delicious Revolution." Waters founded the Berkeley restaurant Chez Panisse on principles of sustainability, sensuality in eating, and creating a dining atmosphere that's more like your own dinner party than a restaurant visit. Her ideas--buying fresh organic produce, whatever's in season, from local small farms, farmers' markets, and gardens--were radical when she started her restaurant in 1971. The success of her restaurant, seven cookbooks, and her example of providing sustaining support to new varieties of seasonal produce, compelled food writer Marian Burros to write that Waters has "single-handedly changed the American palate."

Always believing that food is political--she founded The Edible Schoolyard, a way to introduce schoolkids to growing food, and started a prison food program--Waters reminds us how vital relationships are with local growers. As the farmers' market season approaches, reviewing (or finding, as I did, for the first time) her ideas, seems increasingly important in an agricultural market that's seeing a decline in the diversity and quality of produce while concentration of farm ownership in large agribusiness corporations is increasing.

Read her interview in the Christian Science Monitor:

It's not only a more delicious way to eat, it's a political imperative. Our own health and the health of the planet depends on eating this way... If you dull your palate year round with mediocre vegetables, you can't appreciate the real thing when it comes along.

or in Mother Jones:

The decisions you make are a choice of values that reflect your life in every way. Buying Big Macs from the people McDonald's buys its meat from, who are raising these cattle or kangaroos or whatever goes into what they call beef, is the complete opposite of the way it should be done. When I buy food from a farmer, I know who he is, I know he cares about my well-being, and I know he's taken care of the land he's farming. I have a responsibility to him, and he to me. I couldn't put the food I cook on the table without him, so I really treasure this relationship.

War crimes?

As more and more American allies--including Saudi Arabia, Turkey, France, Russia, and Germany--line up to denounce the war as illegal, one question is outstanding: is Bush committing war crimes? Read the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and the Geneva Convention and decide for yourself. Although the US has defied UN resolution 1441 and several articles of both these documents, and bailed out of the International Criminal Court, Donald Rumsfeld is now, conveniently, extolling the virtues of international law in accusing Iraq of taking US hostages.

Justin's Jingoism

"This may not be Walter Cronkite's kind of journalism, but it's not necessarily wrong," writes Neal Justin, the Star Tribune's sitcom-and-soap-opera media writer, in a gushing homage to Fox’s war coverage:

Fox News embraced its patriotic spirit like no one else, from the flag fluttering in the upper left-hand corner of the screen to the tough-guy lingo... I kept waiting for someone to yell, "Hoo-ah!"

Justin's analysis--printed on the paper's "War on Iraq" news spreads, not the more appropriate Opinion or Variety pages--suggests that news analysis isn’t his strong suit. He lauds the showmanship of Fox anchor Shepard Smith--or "Shep" as Justin glibly points out he's called--as the "smoothest" anchor on TV and praises that he never "let on that he was at the helm 19 of the first 50 hours of coverage" (that's two 9.5 hour shifts in two days, not an uncommon schedule for the average minimum-wage worker). Flubbing another tenet of Journalism 101, Justin quotes only one source for his piece, a Fox representative who’s also the wife of key Fox anchor Brit Hume. "The public tends to be patriotic, and we're a reflection of America," she says. "Those who criticize us for being patriotic are just looking for ways to undercut us."

Can news be “patriotic” and fair?

Justin doesn’t seem interested in that question. Shrugging it off with the-market-is-always-right logic, he concludes that Fox's "pro-America tone" is what viewers want right now--citing the popularity of bigoted broadcaster Bill O'Reilly as his evidence--and that, "as long as the news organization continues to be accurate and fair--and there continue to be other, more traditional options--it can be exhilarating to watch." Accurate and fair, as Justin well knows, isn’t the tagline Fox has been using. "Fair and balanced" was their slogan for awhile, although their website now touts the more ambiguous and less restrictive "We report. You decide."

Most troubling about Justin's logic is this: news shouldn’t be driven by what we want to hear, but by what we need to hear. What about body counts, alternative perspectives, world opinion, environmental analysis, economic impact, critical examinations of weaponry and their long-term effects? While Pravda reports that 77 civilians were killed by US bombing in Basra and The Sydney Morning Herald reports a US soldier radioing that "dead bodies are everywhere" following an attack in southern Iraq (a claim disputed by the US military), Fox opts for news that’s merely "exhilarating." And Justin thinks that’s good enough.

Cooking Clinton

The economy's tanking, we're in our first unprovoked (and as yet unbudgeted) war, and all conservatives can think about is blaming Clinton? From the Free Republic, The Clinton Legacy Cookbook.

Blogging from Baghdad

Through some fairly complex sleuthing, blogger Paul Boutin (also a writer for Slate, Salon and others) ponders whether this site--Dear Raed, purportedly written by an Iraqi in Baghdad--is legit. He concludes: it probably is. The blog's author, posting as Salam Pax, is tired of fielding e-mails on the issue, and insists he's "nobody's propaganda ploy."

Godspeed

I felt guilty, holding my large bottle of Corona at smoky First Avenue Wednesday night, awaiting a concert that was scheduled to begin the minute George Bush's war clock dipped to zero. But there I was. And it turns out it was the perfect music for the moment. The band was Godspeed You! Black Emperor, a Montreal nine-piece, and the music was eerie: instrumental, orchestral, immersive, building from delicate strings to the menacing, mindless bludgeon of rock-n-roll drums. It was powerful, but moreso because of the context: as the Segovia-esque guitars were pummeled by a crescendo of drums and noise, I imagined the fear of families in Baghdad facing missiles my taxes paid for. At the same time, the music isolated me from the real horror these people are experiencing--like the war movie where arias incongruously drown out the brutal scenes of battlefield destruction. I've never been at a rock show and ended up praying.

Hear it.

Supporting our troops?

From The Nation:

The Republican majority on the House Budget Committee has just rammed through a resolution that would cut $844 million from veterans’ medical care for next year. (Yet somehow, the robbing-Peter-to-pay-Paul Republicans have already come up with $900 million handy to give to Dick Cheney's old company Halliburton and a few other big Republican sugar daddies for the post-war reconstruction of Iraq.)

Over the next ten years, the Republican changes would cut $24.7 billion -- billions with a "b" -- for veterans’ medical care, disability compensation and other benefits.

In other words: at the very moment men and women in the armed forces are being sent into military action, the Republicans back home are cutting their current and future benefits -- including payments to their families, should they be killed in action.

Read more.

Recent shout-outs and media mentions

Updated 10.01.09

On Eyeteeth:

An "intelligent arts and culture blog with a strong left-leaning political agenda."
Writers Guild of America "September 2009 Hotlist"

Ranked among the top ten blogs in Minnesota, Newsbobber.com's "Top 100 Minnesota Blogs," Sept. 2009

“Eyeteeth's 'Bits' may be the best links feature in the blogosphere. For reals.”
Modern Art Notes' Tyler Green via Twitter

“Must-read: A wonderful post.”
C-Monster (Carolina Miranda) on the Art21 post “Transcending protest: Looking for pragmatic or poetic art of change”

“An intelligent, wildly eclectic site that encompasses art, pop culture, happenings, media, and a little light politics.”
MPLS.ST.PAUL magazine, January 2008

“Unfailingly interesting and eclectic.”
Worldchanging, May 3, 2006

Quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle article, "Can art still play a subversive role in society?" March 29, 2006

“I've been collecting all the marvellous little spores he leaves behind on various sites around the interweb.“ Fimoculous' Rex Sorgatz, "Best Blogs of 2006 that You (Maybe) Aren't Reading”

On @iteeth:

One of two “local art-happy Twitterers worth your time,” Ranking at #36 in Metro Magazine's "Metro 100," Oct. 2009

On Signifier, Signed:

“The Best Homegrown Blogs,” Metro Magazine, Jan. 2008

“The Best Links 2005” list, Kottke.org, Dec. 28, 2005

Journalistic prizes:

Paul Schmelzer is the first online journalist in Minnesota history to win a Society of Professional Journalists Page One Award (2006) and the first to win a Frank Premack Award Public Affairs Journalism Award from the University of Minnesota School of Journalism (2007). He's won multiple SPJ Awards, including firsts for best video (2009) and best online news story (2008).

McLaren's musings

Carrie McLaren, brainchild behind Stay Free! magazine, sends a great e-mail (from which I copped the Victoria's Secret link below). Ending up with her list of favorite protest signs--including her own: "Re-elect Carter"--her update starts out here:

Man, this war stuff is so depressing. All I seem to read about in the business press is how much advertising will be lost. Many corporations plan to keep commercials off the air for the first few days of bombing... after which they will trickle back in as circumstance warrant. What I can never figure out is -- If it's tasteless to run commercials the first week of bombing why isn't it tasteless them the second or third week?

Everyone expects the networks to return to business as usual soon. No one wants to be tacky but, hey, the show must go on. So ABC will broadcast the Academy Awards as planned but the celebrities will be sure to "dress down." Even that small concession has some fans riled. An editorial on the front of Oscarwatch.com reads:

<< It is shameful to deny us (the fans) that only opportunity into the dream factory just because some celebrities feel unease about the situation in Iraq - there is always strife going on somewhere in the Globe and this one is not more important than the others. It is cowardly to deny people enjoyment of that brief moment of fantasy -- which is what the Oscars are about. >>>

God bless America, indeed.

Secret website

See the spoof website What is Victoria's Secret? before Victoria shuts it down. (Vomit alert: high.)

Jingo all the way

This morning on NPR, Bob Edwards, in one of those supposed-to-be-quaint anecdotal interludes, tells of a hockey game last night between the NHL's New York Islanders and Montreal Canadiens. The Canadian fans booed through the entire US national anthem, to which the commentator quips something to the effect of: "Their plan backfired, though; their team lost 6-3." Huh? Are they booing in order to cheer their team on to victory or to oppose unprovoked war?

No, I'm not surprised. A few glimpses of the American media toadyism yesterday: Fox News runs the on-screen graphic "WAR ON TERROR"--following Bush's illogic that Iraq had something to do with 9/11 or a terrorist attack on Americans. The bottom-of-screen crawl read: "Pentagon: If you're not sure it's 'Shock and Awe,' it's not." Terry Moran on ABC gushes about the latest White House briefing and, flipping channels, some general-for-hire on CBS says that the two missiles launched at Kuwait--Scuds, the kind Saddam wasn't supposed to have--prove that Bush was right to launch this war. And today's Minneapolis Star Tribune runs this headline, straight off the Pentagon's press release: "Military pleased with Patriot missile system performance."

Terror

Representative Pete Stark:

I think unleashing 3,000 smart bombs against the city of Baghdad in the first several days of the war . . . to me, if those were unleashed against the San Francisco Bay Area, I would call that an act of extreme terrorism.

Today I weep for my country

Sen. Robert Byrd:

Today I weep for my country. I have watched the events of recent months with a heavy, heavy heart.  No more is the image of America one of strong, yet benevolent peacekeeper.  The image of America has changed.  Around the globe, our friends mistrust us, our word is disputed, our intentions are questioned. 

Instead of reasoning with those with whom we disagree, we demand obedience or threaten recrimination. Instead of isolating Saddam Hussein, we seem to have isolated ourselves. We proclaim a new doctrine of preemption which is understood by few and feared by many. We say that the United States has the right to turn its firepower on any corner of the globe which might be suspect in the war on terrorism.  We assert that right without the sanction of any international body.  As a result, the world has become a much more dangerous place.

We flaunt our superpower status with arrogance.  We treat UN Security Council members like ingrates who offend our princely dignity by lifting their heads from the carpet.  Valuable alliances are split. After war has ended, the United States will have to rebuild much more than the country of Iraq.  We will have to rebuild America's image around the globe... 

What is happening to this country?  When did we become a nation which ignores and berates our friends?  When did we decide to risk undermining international order by adopting a radical and doctrinaire approach to using our awesome military might?  How can we abandon diplomatic efforts when the turmoil in the world cries out for diplomacy?

Why can this President not seem to see that America's true power lies not in its will to intimidate, but in its ability to inspire? 

...May God continue to bless the United States of America in the troubled days ahead, and may we somehow recapture the vision which for the present eludes us.

This war brought to you by Clear Channel

Clear Channel, the global media conglomerae that probably owns a radio station or two in your hometown, has been sponsoring pro-war rallies, some attended by 20,000 people or more. Manufactured consent?

Some of the biggest rallies this month have endorsed President Bush's strategy against Saddam Hussein, and the common thread linking most of them is Clear Channel Worldwide Inc., the nation's largest owner of radio stations.

In a move that has raised eyebrows in some legal and journalistic circles, Clear Channel radio stations in Atlanta, Cleveland, San Antonio, Cincinnati and other cities have sponsored rallies attended by up to 20,000 people. The events have served as a loud rebuttal to the more numerous but generally smaller anti-war rallies.

The sponsorship of large rallies by Clear Channel stations is unique among major media companies, which have confined their activities in the war debate to reporting and occasionally commenting on the news...

While labor unions and special interest groups have organized and hosted rallies for decades, the involvement of a big publicly regulated broadcasting company breaks new ground in public demonstrations.

"I think this is pretty extraordinary," said former Federal Communications Commissioner Glen Robinson, who teaches law at the University of Virginia. "I can't say that this violates any of a broadcaster's obligations, but it sounds like borderline manufacturing of the news."

A spokeswoman for Clear Channel said the rallies, called "Rally for America," are the idea of Glenn Beck, a Philadelphia talk show host whose program is syndicated by Premier Radio Networks, a Clear Channel subsidiary.

A weekend rally in Atlanta drew an estimated 20,000 people, with some carrying signs reading "God Bless the USA" and other signs condemning France and the group Dixie Chicks, one of whose members recently criticized President Bush.

"They're not intended to be pro-military. It's more of a thank you to the troops. They're just patriotic rallies," said Clear Channel spokeswoman Lisa Dollinger.

Rallies sponsored by Clear Channel radio stations are scheduled for this weekend in Sacramento, Charleston, S.C., and Richmond, Va. Although Clear Channel promoted two of the recent rallies on its corporate Web site, Dollinger said there is no corporate directive that stations organize rallies.

"Any rallies that our stations have been a part of have been of their own initiative and in response to the expressed desires of their listeners and communities," Dollinger said.

Clear Channel is by far the largest owner of radio stations in the nation. The company owned only 43 in 1995, but when Congress removed many of the ownership limits in 1996, Clear Channel was quickly on the highway to radio dominance. The company owns and operates 1,233 radio stations (including six in Chicago) and claims 100 million listeners. Clear Channel generated about 20 percent of the radio industry's $16 billion in 2001 revenues...

Size sparks criticism

The media giant's size also has generated criticism. Some recording artists have charged that Clear Channel's dominance in radio and concert promotions is hurting the recording industry. Congress is investigating the effects of radio consolidation. And the FCC is considering ownership rule changes, among them changes that could allow Clear Channel to expand its reach.

Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) has introduced a bill that could halt further deregulation in the radio industry and limit each company's audience share and percent of advertising dollars. These measures could limit Clear Channel's meteoric growth and hinder its future profitability.

Jane Kirtley, a professor of media ethics and law at the University of Minnesota, said the company's support of the Bush administration's policy toward Iraq makes it "hard to escape the concern that this may in part be motivated by issues that Clear Channel has before the FCC and Congress."

Read more. (Thanks, Diana.)

Spying on our allies, part 2

Telephone eavesdropping devices were found in offices to be used by Germany and France at a European Union summit to start tomorrow. France says it's the US's doing.

Media in bed--er, embedded--with the military

I rarely watch US national newscasts anymore, and watching Peter Jennings and company referring to Bush's robotic performance last night as the president's "Day of Destiny," I vow to continue looking elsewhere for news. Turns out I'm not alone. With war ramping up, and American journalism bowing to the White House, more and more people are turning to foreign news reports for more balanced coverage. According to Wired, 49% of the visitors to The Guardian of London in January came from the Americas, and the BBC and Independent also saw spikes in visits from our hemisphere.

As the war unfolds, finding balance will mean seeking out networks, news sources, and reporters who refuse to "embed"--or caravan with the US military. Of the 660 reporters signed up to report on Iraq, most Americans are embedding, while only a handful of the 100 non-American journalists are expected to be independent (a particularly spooky venture, considering the Pentagon says such "unilateralists" can be shot at by American troops). Like a Boy Scout campout, embedding promises such fun--they all get camoflaged "uniforms" embroidered with the name of their network, and one even brought an American flag to unfurl in Baghdad--that the roster of reporters runs that gamut from an MTV VJ to arms-dealer-turned-Fox-pundit Oliver North. As The Toronto Star writes:

Critics charge that they in fact will be "in bed" with the troops: eating, drinking, sleeping and surviving (or not) together.

The danger, of course, is that they will identify so closely with the soldiers that they won't file the negative sorts of stories that came out of Vietnam, such as the report that made 60 Minutes' Morley Safer's career. (It depicted Americans torching villages with their Zippos.) All we'll get are warm and fuzzy features about the joys of bathing out of a bucket and how the sand infects everything from your crotch to your K-rations.

And, needless to say, the tales will all be told from one side. Not many reporters will jump to the Iraqi lines to get a quote.

One reporter, George C. Wilson--dubbed the "dean" of the DC press pool in a Christian Science Monitor article--illustrates this point when he talks about how "real" his reporting in Iraq will be:

It's still exciting. I like being a soldier, seeing real things instead of Rumsfeld's portrait of what's going on in the world.

In a letter to the about-to-be-embedded,Vietnam reporter Jeff Gralnick reiterates the notion that intentions of reporting The Truth are often waylaid by a kind of Stockholm Syndrome:

You will fall in with a bunch of grunts, experience and share their hardships and fears and then you will feel for them and care about them. You will wind up loving them and hating their officers and commanders and the administration that put them (and you) in harm's way. Ernie Pyle loved his grunts; Jack Laurance and Michael Herr loved theirs; and I loved mine. And as we all know, love blinds and in blinding it will alter the reporting you thought you were going to do. Trust me. It happens, and it will happen no matter how much you guard against it.

Journalist Chris Hedges, who refused to take part in the Pentagon's press pool in Kuwait and ended up detained by the Iraqi Republican Guard for a week as a result, says in an excellent article in Editor & Publisher that only a handful of reporters in Iraq really care about the conflict. The rest

just want to be hotel-room warriors, don't want to get anywhere near the fighting. The 10% that tries to get out will be stomped on. We saw that with Doug Struck, The Washington Post correspondent, when he tried to investigate civilian casualties in Afghanistan, by the U.S. military. He was made to lie down with a gun pointed to his head.

In softer terms, Gralnick says the same thing, imploring: "Remember also, you are not being embedded because that sweet old Pentagon wants to be nice. You are being embedded so you can be controlled and in a way isolated."

NOTE: If you encounter journalism--weblogs, reporters, foreign news services--featuring non-embedded voices in the Middle East, please email me (click on my name, below). Thanks.

All the news that's authorized to print

Robert Fisk writes about CNN's document "Reminder of Script Approval Policy," a reiteration to CNN reporters stationed worldwide to follow proper channels when processing the news. Be very wary when you watch this war unfold on CNN:

"All reporters preparing package scripts must submit the scripts for approval. Packages may not be edited until the scripts are approved... All packages originating outside Washington, LA (Los Angeles) or NY (New York), including all international bureaus, must come to the ROW in Atlanta for approval."

The date of this extraordinary message is 27 January. The "ROW" is the row of script editors in Atlanta who can insist on changes or "balances" in the reporter's dispatch. "A script is not approved for air unless it is properly marked approved by an authorised manager and duped (duplicated) to burcopy (bureau copy)... When a script is updated it must be re-approved, preferably by the originating approving authority."

Note the key words here: "approved" and "authorised". CNN's man or woman in Kuwait or Baghdad--or Jerusalem or Ramallah--may know the background to his or her story; indeed, they will know far more about it than the "authorities" in Atlanta. But CNN's chiefs will decide the spin of the story.

Read more.

Pray for peace

Pray to whoever you kneel down to:
Jesus nailed to his wooden or marble or plastic cross,
his suffering face bent to kiss you,
Buddha still under the Bo tree in scorching heat,
Adonai, Allah, raise your arms to Mary
that she may lay her palm on our brows,
to Shekinhah, Queen of Heaven and Earth,
to Inanna in her stripped descent.

Hawk or Wolf, or the Great Whale, Record Keeper
of time before, time now, time ahead, pray. Bow down
to terriers and shepherds and siamese cats.
Fields of artichokes and elegant strawberries.

Pray to the bus driver who takes you to work,
pray on the bus, pray for everyone riding that bus
and for everyone riding buses all over the world.
If you haven't been on a bus in a long time,
climb the few steps, drop some silver, and pray.

Waiting in line for the movies, for the ATM,
for your latté and croissant, offer your plea.
Make your eating and drinking a supplication.
Make your slicing of carrots a holy act,
each translucent layer of the onion, a deeper prayer.

Make the brushing of your hair
a prayer, every strand its own voice,
singing in the choir on your head.
As you wash your face, the water slipping
through your fingers, a prayer: Water,
softest thing on earth, gentleness
that wears away rock.

Making love, of course, is already a prayer.
Skin and open mouths worshipping that skin,
the fragile case we are poured into,
each caress a season of peace.

If you're hungry, pray. If you're tired.
Pray to Gandhi and Dorothy Day.
Shakespeare. Sappho. Sojourner Truth.
Pray to the angels and the ghost of your grandfather.

When you walk to your car, to the mailbox,
to the video store, let each step
be a prayer that we all keep our legs,
that we do not blow off anyone else's legs.
Or crush their skulls.
And if you are riding on a bicycle
or a skateboard, in a wheel chair, each revolution
of the wheels a prayer that as the earth revolves
we will do less harm, less harm, less harm.

And as you work, typing with a new manicure,
a tiny palm tree painted on one pearlescent nail
or delivering soda or drawing good blood
into rubber-capped vials, writing on a blackboard
with yellow chalk, twirling pizzas, pray for peace.

With each breath in, take in the faith of those
who have believed when belief seemed foolish,
who persevered. With each breath out, cherish.

Pull weeds for peace, turn over in your sleep for peace,
feed the birds for peace, each shiny seed
that spills onto the earth, another second of peace.
Wash your dishes, call your mother, drink wine.

Shovel leaves or snow or trash from your sidewalk.
Make a path. Fold a photo of a dead child
around your VISA card. Gnaw your crust
of prayer, scoop your prayer water from the gutter.
Mumble along like a crazy person, stumbling
your prayer through the streets.

--Ellen Bass

Air Force authorized to kill protesters if necessary

Security forces at Vandenberg Air Force Base may use "deadly force" against protesters if they infiltrate the military complex if a war starts, officials said...

The directive has always been in existence, but a base spokeswoman said it is more critical now that people understand its severity.

"This is not fun and games anymore," said Maj. Stacee Bako. "We're living in post 9/11. We don't know what's going to happen with the war effort in Iraq. These folks have got to realize their actions. ... They're illegal intruders."

Read more. (Via Cursor.)

Carl Oglesby, Students for a Democratic Society:

It isn't the rebels who cause the troubles of the world, it's the troubles that cause the rebels.

Buddha:

Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.

Writing from Rafah

Rachel Corrie, the Olympia, Washington, college student killed by a bulldozer in Palestine, in an e-mail to her family, dated February 7:

If I feel outrage at arriving and entering briefly and incompletely into the world in which these children exist, I wonder conversely about how it would be for them to arrive in my world.

They know that children in the United States don't usually have their parents shot and they know they sometimes get to see the ocean. But once you have seen the ocean and lived in a silent place, where water is taken for granted and not stolen in the night by bulldozers, and once you have spent an evening when you haven’t wondered if the walls of your home might suddenly fall inward waking you from your sleep, and once you’ve met people who have never lost anyone-- once you have experienced the reality of a world that isn't surrounded by murderous towers, tanks, armed "settlements" and now a giant metal wall, I wonder if you can forgive the world for all the years of your childhood spent existing--just existing--in resistance to the constant stranglehold of the world’s fourth largest military--backed by the world’s only superpower--in it’s attempt to erase you from your home.

New Mexico House says no to the Patriot Act

In an overwhelming vote, the New Mexico House of Representatives passed a provision opposing implementation of key parts of the USA-PATRIOT Act. The measure instructs state police to "refrain from engaging in the surveillance of individuals or groups of individuals based on their participation in activities protected by the First Amendment," refrain from participation in Operation TIPS, direct public libraries to post warnings in libraries that the feds might be spying on their reading habits, and more.

Read the legislation

UK's Cook resigns over Iraq

Robin Cook, leader of Britain's House of Commons, became the first cabinet-level minister to resign over Tony Blair's pro-war stance on Iraq. "What has come to trouble me most over past weeks is the suspicion that if the hanging chads in Florida had gone the other way and Al Gore had been elected we would not now be about to commit British troops," he said.

Fuque War

Someone from the US Air Force--following the tradition of Vietnam graffiti "Killroy was here" or the Gulf War's "Up yours, Saddam"--gets it wrong when he scrawls on a bunker-buster bomb, "Fuque the French." (Via Cursor.)

Targeting the media

According to a story in The Register, journalists operating behind enemy lines in Iraq or, presumably, straying from the press pool, run the risk of being shot by US forces:

Should war in the Gulf commence, the Pentagon proposes to take radical new steps in media relations - 'unauthorised' journalists will be shot at. Speaking on The Sunday Show on Ireland's RTE1 last Sunday veteran war reporter Kate Adie said she had been warned by a senior Pentagon official that uplinks, i.e. TV broadcasts or satellite phones, that are detected by US aircraft are likely to be fired on.

Read more.

Chaining the president

Minnesota Senator Mark Dayton:

Last October, a majority of Members of the 107th Congress...gave the President the authority to use whatever means necessary, including the use of force, against Iraq.

We use such clever euphemisms here--words which disguise the meaning of our intentions. Use whatever means necessary...deadly, ear-splitting, earth-shaking, people-maiming, death-dealing bombs. The most devastating, overwhelming, terrifying, death-dealing "force" the world has ever known. Coming from us. The good guys. The protectors. The preservers of world peace.

The United States of America.

What foresight the Founders of this great nation had in not wanting a decision that enormous, that earth-shaping or earth-shattering to be made by one person. Not by this President. Not by any President. Instead this President asked for--and Congress acquiesced to give complete, unrestricted authority--no conditions, no restraints.

"Don't tie my hands," the President said. Don't tie the President's hands. What did the Founders think of that? Thomas Jefferson in 1798 said, "In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution." Bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution. Tie his hands? That is not enough. We should chain him to the Constitution. We in Congress are supposed to be chained to the Constitution.

Shock in Israel is old news in Palestine

The Israeli Defense Force killed two of their own on Thursday, an item that is only newsworthy in that they mistook the two men, security guards Yoav Doron and Yehuda Ben-Yosef, for Palestinians. Many in Israel, rightly so, are shocked: "innocent and helpless, one was gunned down as he stepped out of the security vehicle south of Hebron, the other killed by an anti-tank missile fired from a pursuing helicopter." The incidents shed light on IDF tactics which have killed dozens of Palestinian civilians, but, unlike earlier cases, these cases will be investigated by the IDF because "Jewish blood was shed."

Writes Gideon Levy:

No one should be surprised that, this time, two Israelis were killed - the real surprise is the rarity of such incidents. If the IDF has killed no fewer than 50 Palestinians in the past 13 days alone (according to the figures of the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group), some of them civilians, no one need be taken aback if Israelis, too, have fallen victim to the wholesale shooting...

As reported last Thursday in Haaretz, the IDF itself admits that 18 percent of the Palestinians who have been killed in the current confrontation (since September 29, 2000) were innocent civilians, 235 adults and 130 children below the age of 16. The actual number of innocent civilians killed is probably higher.

Israelis kill American with bulldozer

From Ha'aretz:

An American woman peace protester was killed Sunday by an [Israeli Defense Force] bulldozer, which ran her over during the demolition of a house at the Rafah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip. Another activist was wounded in the incident.

Rachel Corey[sic], 23, from Olympia, Washington, was killed when she ran in front of the bulldozer to try to prevent it from destroying a house, doctors in Gaza said.

"Corey was killed in the al-Salam neighbourhood when an Israeli bulldozer covered her with sand as she stood in front of a bulldozer," said Dr Ali Musa, a doctor from the al-Najar hospital in the southern Gaza Strip. He said she died from skull and chest fractures.

IDF spokesman Captain Jacob Dallal said her death was an accident.

"This is a regrettable accident," he said. "We are dealing with a group of protesters who were acting very irresponsibly, putting everyone in danger."

The U.S. State Department had no immediate comment.

Greg Schnabel, 28, from Chicago, said the protesters were in the house of Dr. Samir Masri.

"Rachel was alone in front of the house as we were trying to get them to stop," he said. "She waved for bulldozer to stop and waved. She fell down and the bulldozer kept going. We yelled 'stop, stop,' and the bulldozer didn't stop at all. It had completely run over her and then it reversed and ran back over her."

Since the start of the Intifada, groups of international protesters have gathered in several locations in territories, setting themselves up as "human shields" to try to stop IDF operations.

Corey was the first member of the groups, called "International Solidarity Movement," to be killed in the conflict. Schnabel said Corey was a student at Evergreen College and was to graduate this year.

He said there were eight protesters at the site, four from the United States and four from Great Britain. "We stay with families whose house is to be demolished," he told the Associated Press by telephone from Rafah after the incident.

Jingoist Linguistics

With war possibly 24 hours away, it's time to brush up on the deceptive terminology the flapping gums in the mainstream media will likely use to distort the fact that war means death. From The Independent:

Inevitable revenge: for the executions of Saddam's Baath party officials which no one actually said were inevitable.

Stubborn or suicidal: to be used when Iraqi forces fight rather than retreat.

Allegedly: for all carnage caused by Western forces.

At last, the damning evidence: used when reporters enter old torture chambers.

Officials here are not giving us much access: a clear sign that reporters in Baghdad are confined to their hotels.

Life goes on: for any pictures of Iraq's poor making tea.

Remnants: allegedly 'diehard' Iraqi troops still shooting at the Americans but actually the first signs of a resistance movement dedicated to the 'liberation' of Iraq from its new western occupiers.

Newly liberated: for territory and cities newly occupied by the Americans or British.

What went wrong?: to accompany pictures illustrating the growing anarchy in Iraq as if it were not predicted.

From The Observer:

Automaticity: Claim made for resolution 1441 that it requires no further vote.

Blowback: Every foreign policy intervention has unintended consequences: for example, backing Saddam Hussein against Iran; supporting the Islamists, bin Laden included, against the Soviets in Afghanistan.

Collateral damage: Unintended damage to non-military sites; civilians killed or injured; damage to non-military buildings.

Day after: What happens to Iraq afterwards. Can Iraq be remade on the model of post-war Japan or Germany? Or will civil strife make it the next Yugoslavia?

Sweets and flowers: How the Pentagon expects troops to be greeted by Iraqis.

Vertical envelopment: New euphemism for carpet-bombing, The media, having been much criticised for using terms such as collateral damage in previous conflicts, may choose to describe the conflict in simpler language this time.

Arctic Oil: Urge Coleman to vote no on oil drilling in ANWAR

Here's one they're trying to sneak by us: Bush is one vote away from getting his domestic pet project going--drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve. And that one vote could come down to Minnesota's Sen. Norm Coleman. According to an internal GOP memo, 49 senators have already agreed to support the plan, and Dick Cheney has been "working madly to secure the 50th." If Coleman crumbles--breaking his own campaign pledge and going against the stance of his predecessor, the late Paul Wellstone, who vociferously opposed oil drilling in the arctic--the matter could be a done deal by next week. The GOP has begun a drive in earnest to pressure Coleman, whose track record of defying the president is, well, nearly nonexistent; the GOP memo singled out Coleman and said, "We need to get calls in to those offices from constituents, and fast."

So let's give 'em some calls.

Contact Coleman now, and let him know what you think: opinion@coleman.senate.gov or 202.224.5641. Or visit the National Resources Defense Council to contact your state's senator.

Light a candle for peace

On what might be the eve of war with Iraq, join in a rolling wave of candlelight vigils that will cross the globe. Archibishop Desmond Tutu and other religious leaders have called for these vigils and so far 6,144 have been organized in 135 countries. It will begin in New Zealand and ring the globe, hitting the midwest at 7 pm. Knowing where some of my readers live, check up to see when and where:
- If you live in Minneapolis or St. Paul, click here.
- If you live in Madison, click here.
- If you live in Northfield, MN, click here.
- If you live in Wausau, Wisconsin, click here.
- If you live in Chicago, click here.
- If you live in Homewood/Flossmoor, Illinois, click here.
- If you live in Hayward, Wisconsin, click here.
- If you live in St. Cloud, Minnesota, click here.
- If you live in Buffalo, New York, click

War, my ass!

Juvenile, yes, but you've got to hand it to the German antiwar crowd for their creative float-building.

Railroading Rosenbaum: GOP hunts down a sitting judge

Republicans have a double-standard going. They won't release internal memos from Miguel Estrada's tenure at the Solicitor General's Office to give the Senate a more full picture of his judicial philosophy, arguing as Norm Coleman does that doing so would "compromise the ability of the Justice Department to represent the United States in court." At the same time they're working to subpoena a sitting judge, Minneapolis' own James Rosenbaum, chief judge of the US district court, to release sealed documents on his judicial decisions. Republicans, led by James Sensenbrenner, believe Rosenbaum's sentencing has been too lenient, specifically in cases of first-time drug offenses. Rosenbaum's attorney says the Judicial Committee's requests "overstep congressional authority and threaten the separation of powers," according to the Wall Street Journal.

This unprecedented act against a sitting judge is yet another way--like stacking the judiciary with neo-conservative activist judges like Estrada--for the Republicans to reshape the courts in their own likeness. Rosenbaum's sentences don't seem to entirely match with the Bush administration's demonstrated beliefs: some drug offenders get lighter sentences, while corporations don't get a judge who falls all over himself to bend the laws. For example, in 2000 Rosenbaum threw out a lawsuit filed by the logging industry in Northern Minnesota. The loggers, desiring to do more commercial timber cutting on federal land, argued that "deep ecology"--a way of looking at the interconnectedness between all living things--was guiding the Forest Service's policies and that this is a violation of the separation of church and state ("deep ecology," they say, is a religion). Rosenbaum called this "illogical." (Under Bush, the Forest Service continues to open more federal lands to commercial logging.)

Republicans seem particularly peeved that Rosenbaum resisted handing down sentences of a decade or more for minor drug offenses; sometimes his prison sentences were significantly below the federal minimum sentence. Last November, Rep. Robert C. "Bobby" Scott (Va.), ranking Democrat on the subcommittee, defended Rosenbaum, saying the Republicans wanted to punish Rosenbaum because they didn't like his views on the sentencing guidelines.

And Rosenbaum--appointed by Reagan in 1985--has been vocal about his criticisms of strict sentencing guidelines, especially as they apply to first-time offenders with dependent children. Low-level drug offenders, he says, often end up in prison with rapists and murderers. The Wall Street Journal reports that the federal prisons are flooded with drug offenders, mainly because of harsher sentencing guidelines passed in 1987; while the crime rate declined in the 1990s, the number of inmates--the majority drug offenders--rose from 33,000 in 1987 to 128,000 in 2002. And sentences for crack cocaine possession--prevalent among black offenders and a cheaper version of the cocaine preferred by white users, include considerably longer prison stays. Rosenbaum believes these tougher guidelines, especially for first-time offenders with dependent children, hurt moms and kids.

"When a man goes to jail, he usually leaves behind his children to his wife or girlfriend,'' he adds. "But let's face it. It is mothers who primarily care for children. What happens when they go to prison?'' Rosenbaum explains. ``It is extraordinarily infrequent that a male cares for them. What happens is that these children are either sent to live with a sister or a mother or become wards of the state?"

A judge like Rosenbaum must seriously irk conservatives who seem hell-bent on throwing the book at those committing crimes involving Christian moral character--minor drug offenses or Bill Clinton's dalliances with interns--but seem to have overlooked the billion-dollar deceptions of white collar criminals like Ken Lay and Dick Cheney. And they seem more intent on putting a long-serving judge through the ringer than a tight-lipped neo-conservative lawyer who's auditioning to serve on the country's second-highest court.

Yesterday, the Republicans agreed to hold off on their subpoena of Rosenbaum, for the time being. Let's hope they call off the dogs, because as U.S District Court chief judge John Coughenour says, this subpoena could have a chilling effect on judges nationwide. "I think it would be demoralizing and very disturbing to most of us" for Congress "to focus on individual judges and their practices," he said. "Judges struggle mightily with their sentencing decisions."

History repeats?

Some think it's a stretch to draw parallels between the rise of Nazi Germany and the changes shepherded in by George W. Bush and his ideological compatriots. Undoubtedly, Bush is no Hitler. But in sociological and economic terms, you've gotta wonder what's afoot.

From Erich Fromm's Escape from Freedom:

...certain socioeconomic changes, notably the decline of the middle class and the rising power of monopolistic capital, had a deep psychological effect. These effects were increased or systematized by a political ideology--as by religious ideologies in the sixteenth century--and the psychic forces thus aroused became effective in a direction that was opposite to the original economic interests of that class. Nazism resurrected the lower middle class psychologically while participating in the destruction of its old socioeconomic position. It mobilized its emotional energies to become an important force in the struggle for the economic and political aims of German imperialism.

(Thanks, Jim.)

Handouts and Haliburton

Dick Cheney still gets $1,000,000 a year from Halliburton, the company he used to head. The company that's on the short list of five US firms invited to bid on post-war reconstruction of Iraq (worth $900 million). The company that was contracted to build holding pens for Afghan prisoners in Cuba. The company contracted to put out oil well fires in post-war Iraq. With such war for profit, Cheney puts the "conflict" in conflict of interest.

Hip Hop for Peace

Breaking a three-year recording hiatus, the Beastie Boys just released an antiwar song. "None of us feels very comfortable with what Bush is putting forward and the way that Bush is representing the United States, and I don’t think he represents us," MCA said. "I mean, you just look at the TV and see this guy who’s supposed to be representing us and it just feels ridiculous." Download "A World Gone Mad." (Via Cursor.)

A letter from Norm

In the last year our national economy has moved from recession to recovery.

So writes Sen. Norm Coleman in a form letter I received yesterday. I'd written him to express opposition to the president's "economic stimulus" plan that includes abolishing the tax on dividend income, a plan that--as you've no doubt heard--should benefit the wealthiest one percent of Americans (those making more than $102,000/year). Why, I had no idea that our ebullient, ever-upward-arcing economy was so plump and healthy.

Many economic indicators signal a healing economy with a promising outlook, but more needs to be done to instill confidence in our markets.

We sure do need confidence in the markets. Because when I go to check up on my shriveled prune of a retirement plan, I can barely muster the strength to open the envelope. But, last time I checked, the president's budget called for record defecits, and the stock market was faltering due to fear of a war that hasn't yet made it to the president's budget sheets.

I firmly believe that tax relief is the key to economic recovery and job growth. During my tenure as mayor of St. Paul I put this belief to work. We achieved eight straight years of zero increases in the city's property tax levy. The result was 18,000 new jobs and $3 billion in new investments for our capital city.

Now there, Norm, this is some selective truth-telling. Paul Demko debunked--or at least filled in the gaps of--these claims in an October City Pages analysis:

According to the Minnesota Department of Economic Security, there were indeed 18,038 jobs created in St. Paul between 1993 and 2000, a jump of 9.7 percent. What the Coleman campaign fails to mention, however, is that the average increase in jobs statewide during those heady economic times was 20.1 percent. Even Minneapolis, whose two-term mayor was drummed out of office last year, had a better track record than St. Paul, with 28,303 new jobs generated, a rise of 10.1 percent.

Demko goes on to report that St. Paul has the state's highest vacancy rate for commercial spaces (at 21.2%), that the $3 million city-funded parking ramp Coleman built for Conseco now sits empty, and that the $100-million building he used to lure Lawson Technologies across the river from Minneapolis is now half empty (they laid of more than 345 employees in 2002).

"You can't run a city like Norm Coleman did and expect that to be sustainable," says Dan McGrath, executive director of Progressive Minnesota. "Norm Coleman might be a wonderful mayor in great economic times, but look at the economic disaster he's left in St. Paul."

I hesitate to give Coleman more ink, but his scattershot mathematics compels me. As does that fact that he's a rising star on the GOP scene--a "giant killer" who took down Walter Mondale. In the past few months, he's made campaign stops--er, official senatorial visits--to Republican fundraisers and conventions in Florida, North Carolina, Nevada, Illinois and Wisconsin. And some say he's on the short list as a VP candidate in the not-so-distant future. Runs chills, doesn't it?

Hey, Mr. President, over here!

What's it take to get W to pay attention to domestic concerns? Let me get this straight, Bush waves a $100 billion carrot in front of Turkey to secure a northern command center for war in Iraq, but he says he can't "bail out the states" from their financial woes? And now, as US airline officials are saying a war in Iraq could cost 70,000 jobs in the industry, the administration announces it'll pay the salaries of some two million Iraqi government workers to stabilize the country after an attack? That's some economic incentive package you've got there, Mr. President!

American Values

It was 1976 when France last cast a lone veto in the UN. For the U.S., the history's not so ancient:

For the United States, it was three months ago, over a resolution condemning violence in the Middle East, specifically the killing of U.N. employees by Israeli soldiers and the destruction of a U.N. warehouse filled with food for needy Palestinians.

More...

An open letter to the president

Toby Barlow, writing on AlterNet, is in on Bush's big joke:

Dear President Bush,

Remember back when you were first running for President and you had that interview where you made that joke about the death row inmate who begged you for her life. But then you killed her anyway? Well, some people didn't find that funny, but I found it really funny! I think we sort of have the same sense of humor. It's a little dark, but it's FUNNY, isn't it? Here are some of my favorite jokes of yours:

What I think is really funny is 3,000 cruise missiles being launched into Iraq within the first 48 hours of the war. The idea that you call that "precision bombing," boy, that's funny.

And this is hilarious, the first Gulf War killed 205,500 Iraqis, three-quarters of the dead were civilians, including 74,000 children. More than 100,000 died of postwar adverse health effects. That's so funny. I just look at that line that says "74,000 children" and I'm laughing again, and I bet you're laughing too. Admit it, you're grinning a little. Come on, 74,000 children killed. Do you feel that smile coming on? Yeah.

And you know that's peanuts compared to the can of whoop-ass you're about to unleash on those kids, what do you call it, "Shock and Awe" as in "Awe there just went my baby girl, I'm covered in her blood, awe there just went my legs." See, that's funny.

Now, it's also sort of funny that in the US-Afghan war, the US military killed 3,400 civilians. That's almost equal to the 3,700 civilians killed in the World Trade Center. I admit, it's more of a dry, ironic kind of humor, but come on, killing innocent people to get back at someone for killing innocent people, that's rich. "Killing innocent people is bad, let's go kill innocent people." If someone said that on "Married With Children" it would get a real big laugh.

Now, I know this cracks you up because it cracks me up--the UN sanctions against Iraq, begun by your dad and continued by you, didn't do a thing to Saddam, but they did manage to kill 5,000 children under the age of 5 every month! Every month! 5,000 children dead! It upsets you so much you're launching 3,000 cruise missles and blowing more kids up now. Talk about not leaving a child behind, har, har, har. ("Awe, there goes my mom!")

What's really funny is that Kofi Annan estimates that this new war could swell the number of displaced people in Iraq to 2 million and create a million refugees. A million! It doesn't get any funnier than that! What, are they all gonna have little sticks and bandanas tied up with food in 'em? Oh, that's right, they won't have any food. And the joke's on them, because they didn't even vote for Saddam.

What's really, really funny is that you even use the word "terrorist." Aw, man, you're killing me.

Sincerely,

Toby Barlow

Correcting Coleman:
What Norm didn't say about the Estrada filibuster

Minnesota Republican Senator Norm Coleman wrote a commentary in today's Minneapolis Star Tribune in which he asserted that "In their zeal to inflict political damage on the president, not only do Democrats damage the reputation and character of an outstanding potential jurist. They also want to create a new constitutional standard for assessing judicial nominees." The continuing filibuster of Estrada, Coleman says, is about partisanship, plain and simple. Tossing Bush catchphrases like "litmus test," Coleman writes that (cue the National Anthem) Estrada "represents the American Dream. He is the American dream." God forbid the Democrats get a chance to ask the guy a few probing questions--whether he's privileged, ultra-conservative, and Hispanic or not.

My letter to the editor:

Sen. Norm Coleman is being a bit disingenuous, if not deceptive--and certainly downright partisan himself--in his opinion on the "deadly cloud of partisan gridlock" surrounding the filibuster of US Appeals Court nominee Miguel Estrada.

While I don’t have Senate staffers to help with research, I’d like to correct (and enhance) Coleman’s facts: Miguel Estrada may represent the "American Dream" for folks like Coleman, but Estrada’s background--his father was a successful commercial lawyer and his mother an accountant and bank executive--is conveniently left out of his humble rags-to-riches story. As an attorney at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, Estrada worked on the historic Bush vs. Gore case that decided the 2000 presidency--a fact, omitted by Estrada when filling out his questionnaires for the Judiciary Committee, that might give Democrats pause about whether qualifications or political favors guide his nomination. Furthermore, Estrada has no judicial experience; while it’s true he is considered "well qualified" by the American Bar Association, he has never served as a sitting judge.

None of which should disqualify Estrada. Several current federal Appeals Court judges have no prior experience, and many come from well-to-do backgrounds. And contrary to what Coleman and other Republicans would like you to believe, many Latinos have served and continue to serve as federal judges, including Reynaldo Garcia of Texas (the first ever Latino federal judge, appointed by Democratic president John F. Kennedy), Valdemar Cordova of Arizona (appointed by Democratic president Jimmy Carter), the six district court judges and 8 of the 10 current appellate judges appointed by Democratic president Bill Clinton, to name a few. To make this about race, Mr. Coleman, is unfair and wrong.

What should disqualify Estrada--or at least keep his nomination on hold until he coughs up some vital information--is his inability to be forthcoming about his judicial philosophy. While he may have answered more than 100 questions, as Coleman states, many of the answers were evasive, like, when asked about his judicial philosophy, he elliptically answered: "My view of the judicial function, Senator, does not allow me to answer that question." (Is he pleading the Fifth or being interviewed for the second highest court in the land?) Had Estrada previous judicial experience, the Senate could draw from published decisions, law review articles, or peer opinions; but, since he doesn’t, Democrats have asked to see internal memorandums written by Estrada during his years working for the Solicitor General’s Office. There is precedent for this: during his confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court in 1987, Robert Bork gave the Judiciary Committee access to the same kind of documents from his employment with the Solicitor General during the Nixon administration. Estrada refuses to comply. Without these memos, we only have documents from the handful of cases he argued, as well as his organizational affiliations--including membership in the arch-conservative groups The Federalist Society and the Center for the Community Interest--to go on. If this is all we’ve got, it’s easy to see why Sen. Charles Schumer fears Estrada might be an activist judge and a "far-right stealth nominee," isn’t it?

Coleman’s claim that the filibuster is Democratic "political gamesmanship" ignores the fact that the nomination is opposed by organizations across the political spectrum, from Latino groups (Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Willie C. Velasquez Institute, United Farmworkers of America, the U.S. Hispanic Leadership Institute) to religious groups (National Council of Jewish Women, The Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, and the Interfaith Alliance--which expresses "grave concerns" about the nomination) to civil rights, minority, legal, environmental, and labor groups (NAACP, AFL-CIO, Congressional Black Caucus, Sierra Club, National Employment Lawyers Association, the Alliance for Justice), to name but a few. It's not only liberal Democrats who oppose Estrada. Even the country's newspaper of record, The New York Times, thinks the Senate should vote to reject Estrada’s nomination, citing his "scant paper trail" and "a reputation for extreme positions on important legal questions."

So, Coleman can mount his soapbox to decry the Democrats’ supposed politicking--what he dubs their "zeal to inflict political damage on the president"--but we all know he’s ignoring the fact that, with dividend tax-cuts for the rich, unbudgeted-for preemptive war in Iraq, an exploding deficit, and an imploding economy, the president is doing just fine inflicting damage on himself.

Straw Men:
Vicarious Empire and Blair's inexplicable love of Bush

I lived in London for a semester in 1992, shortly after the Gulf War ended. As an unrecruited representative of American foreign policy, I was repeatedly asked for my take on the War. How humiliating was it for us to let Saddam get away? Is America losing its edge? People seemed to enjoy the thought of the US being taken down a notch.

I'd get these questions quite frequently, but, to be fair, the most common setting--Prince Alfred's pub near the Sutherland Avenue Tube stop--didn't suggest I was necessarily conversing with the most reliable, or sober, folks around. But when reading British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw's address to the UN yesterday, I couldn't help but recall a conversation with a loose-lipped man who enigmatically wore a tuxedo (an oddity in this Aussie/Kiwi pub overrun by shaggy college students and dozing Border Collies). “What's it feel like to live in a dying Empire?” he slurred in a frank tone I'd rarely encountered in London. Misery loves company, he argued; we had empire once and so did you, and now we're both in the same boat.

I’ve been struggling to understand Tony Blair’s and Straw's intense desire for war with Iraq, and this encounter gives me a thought: England’s cultural memory of glories lost drives the Blair government to seek vicarious empire through the US. Straw’s comments to French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin yesterday were filled with such Wild West swagger, arrogance and condescension. The Straits Times reports the meeting this way: "Staring Mr de Villepin in the eye, Mr Straw called him repeatedly by his first name, a not-so-subtle putdown in international diplomacy. Laughter erupted the first time Mr Straw referred to Mr de Villepin as simply 'Dominique'." He repeated the first name 4 or 5 times. This is pure childishness--High Noon antics, right down to the confrontational stare--the British version of Bush’s Mad Cow(boy) Disease and the diplomatic equivalent of sandbox namecalling.

It's like Blair and Company are trying to be more American, i.e. more boorish. In the African paper The Sunday Nation, Philip Ochieng writes on the American-British likeness:

Loud and pushy, he has never heard of tact and courtesy even as an "ambassador" in somebody else's house. For he knows it all.

He excels only in the legerdemain of money-making, the filth of accumulation, the itch for other people's property, the cacophony of sabre-rattling as he grabs it, the artlessness of propaganda.

On Iraq, therefore, it surprises few that the West is divided precisely between the Franco-Germans and the Anglo-Americans and precisely on style.

Straw’s gall is on par with Dennis Hastert’s digs on the Eiffel Tower and calls for sanctions on French wine and cheese; Rumsfeld’s insults about “Old Europe”; and the Bush-Blair team’s track record of fabricated evidence of Iraq’s material breaches, spying on UN Security Council members, and trying to pass off a 12-year old doctoral thesis as "intelligence" on Iraq’s wrongdoings.

Straw, like Blair all along, has this weird me-too eagerness for supporting Bush and his preemptive war. Could "coattail empire" really be such a powerful motivator?

“The United States, conceived as an anti-imperialist project, is now engaged on remaking the world order,” writes The Guardian. “This requires allies, like-minded friends who will change the way the globe is ruled and regulated. It is these thoughts which, perhaps, lurk behind Tony Blair's moral case. The idea of finding yourself on the opposite side to America, a nation with a history, of wrecking global treaties and disregarding international law, must be terrifying.”

And Paul Foot in the same publication wrote in February:

Is not the truth that these US warmongers, most of them oil millionaires, are hell-bent on extending their capitalist empire--and their control of oil supplies--everywhere on earth, and that the invasion of Iraq is a further step down that road? And is not the British prime minister now fanatically committed to the same process? When the SNP MP Alex Salmond shouted at him last week ‘when do we stop?’ Blair rounded on him, eyes gleaming like those of Arturo Ui in Brecht's play [The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui]: ‘We stop when the threat to our security is properly and fully dealt with.’ In other words, we go on like Ui, until we conquer the world.

What strikes me about this passage is the fanatical glint in Blair’s eyes, suggestive of some other power governing the man. Many people have commented to me about Bush’s televised speech last week, and very little of it had to do with the content of the speech. “He looked drugged,” was the most frequent remark, followed by “He didn’t seem to believe what he was saying.” I’ve thought the same thing about Tony Blair, especially as he emotionally staked his reputation on the moral correctness of attacking Iraq.

Does the allure of Empire have a narcotic effect? Does Blair's lapdog fervor bear the same symptoms as Bush's religious zeal? Is empire that seductive? Considering all that empire entails--domination of markets and natural resources worldwide, global "partners" who give in to imperial wishes through bribes or fear, a "way of life" that rests on a diminished standard of living for developing countries--the answer is likely yes. Or, perhaps there's a simpler explanation. Like pride.

An Interview with Robin Rimbaud a.k.a Scanner

I interviewed electronic artist Robin Rimbaud a.k.a. Scanner in 2000, light years before September 11. I never published the interview, but, rereading it after digging it up on my hard-drive, it still seems timely.

((Tape begins with Robin checking my recording levels and is punctuated throughout by his nervousness that the tape isn’t recording. We are seated at a round table in the Walker Art Center’s basement, between the artist’s green room and the stage door. Around us are the sounds of preparation for the night’s film/performance of Godard’s Alphaville with a live score by Scanner, mingled with the sounds of the building’s nearby boiler room, tech storage, carpentry shop, and plumbing works. Our conversation is accompanied by the intermittent sounds of water flushing through pipes deep in the walls, tinny radio songs filtered through the gray cinderblock walls, the various hums and clicks of machinery, a nearby refrigerator, and heating equipment, and the distant noise of AV guys and stage hands completing a sound check on stage. All of these things, Robin hears and some of them he comments on. The work Scanner is best known for--and from which he takes his pseudonym--featured human voices “stolen” from the airwaves and sampled into his works.))

Paul Schmelzer: Let’s jump right in: have we as a western culture lost the ability to listen?

Robin Rimbaud: What’s interesting to me is the way that we consume sound now. When I used to listen to sound when I was 16, 15 years old, I would lie in my bed in the dark and listen to a Pink Floyd album or a Brian Eno record. And you really would absorb it on so many levels. You would really breathe that record. I wonder today when we listen to music how we consume it. When we’re listening to a CD on a portable carrier, we are incorporating acoustic sound around us. How much does that become part of the work? I’ve fed that into my work. It led me to begin to ask myself questions. When you listen to techno, do you walk quicker than if you were listening to 15th century church music? If you listen to hip-hop, which generally runs at around 110 per minute, do you generally walk along at that kind of sloppy pace? It’s interesting because when people use mobile phones today, they generally, if they’re in a conversation, walk away from the group, because they’re on the telephone. It’s interesting because that suddenly becomes a private space for them, even though it’s a public space. They generally take seven to nine steps around, up and down. If you notice now I’ve said this, you start looking outside a café, you see people start to take this amount of steps. It’s really interesting, these kinds of moments. It all comes from listening. It all comes from this kind of almost obsession. It’s like, if you were to go and buy a pair of shoes tomorrow, you start looking at other people’s shoes. Because I work with sound all the time, I constantly listen to these kinds of sounds. We sit and talk now, but we embrace the sound of water coming through the system behind us, some kind of engine hum in the distance here. But once it’s erased, that noise, once the machine is switched off, we suddenly realize how noisy the environment has been.

PS: This is “silence” to us now.

RR: This would seem to be silence, but it resembles the inside of an airplane, not only acoustically, but also visually at the moment.

PS: Since you sample the forgotten sounds, like the water pipe, perhaps the music you make is more familiar than keyboards and guitars, which are actually more alien to the human experience.

RR: It’s a good point. When I first had some success with Scanner, eight to 10 years ago, when people started to pick up on the controversial issues—the private/public, the invasive issues of “should you be doing this,” the morality issues of the scanned conversations—the interesting thing for me was that I was using the human voice in the work. And the human voice is something very unfamiliar to electronic music… It appealed to people because electronic music, particularly, was perceived as a very cold, inorganic, distanced, alienated type of music, and I was bringing something quite warm to it: I was bringing acoustic sound, the human voice. Which as any ventriloquist knows or anyone who studies the history of the voice, the human voice is the one item we can really relate to. It’s interesting to note that we all like the sound of our voice when we speak, but you never like to hear it back on a tape recorder. That’s because it lacks the resonance. Your body isn’t acting as a kind of speaker. For me, it’s curious to me that ventriloquism…has evolved. Machines like this are the new form of ventriloquism. They’re disembodied voices. A mobile phone is a form of ventriloquism.

PS: It’s interesting when I listen to your music and hear only half of a conversation, and I can’t help but fill in the blanks…

RR: What I’m interested in is stories. Our history of development has been through stories, in a way, through family stories, through parables. The bible is just a series of stories. And it’s really interesting because stories get changed. You have a tendency to reinterpret a story. You hear a conversation or a part of a conversation and you start to fill in the spaces, and that’s what began to interest me. Not you and I talking together, but just overhearing one part. You start to picture an image of what these people look like. Their social backgrounds. What relationship they hold to one another. And then try to fill in the spaces. When you didn’t hear what the other person was saying, what were they really talking about. You just heard a bit of a pop record, Scannerfunk, where there are these voices buried underneath the mix. These people saying things like “The sun is shining” and “I’m too sad to tell you,” and all these very melancholic phrases just keep spinning out underneath this elegant, melodramatic music. I like to use these voices on that level. Also, to relate it back to the issue of how you listen to that record, somebody may be listening on a Walkman on a bus and hear these voices. Is it on your headset or is it behind you? Is in the environment or is it in the frame of the music?

PS: When you use these snippets of conversation, two points fascinate me. One is about relationships: women tend to communicate one way and men another, making it evident that “communication” isn’t happening, rather mutual one-way message-sending. The other is about technology: these halves of conversations are like the messages borne on the radio waves that travel out into the ionosphere and travel in space forever, never to be responded to.

RR: I’ve taken the role, in a sense, of being a medium. Pulling down, retrieving these indiscriminate signals that float around us all the time. Pulling them into these soundscapes. …It’s something that interests me, the idea that as we are talking now, rather like those radio waves floating out there into the ether, these stories float into the walls here. If you have a computer and you have all your data there and you throw something away, there are bits of software, which allow you to dig within the frame of the computer and pull out that information again. It’s really easy. You just literally hit “un-erase” and it will un-erase your hard drive. Something you threw away three years ago, if you haven’t initialized your hard drive, will still be there. I love this romantic idea of speakers. If we could un-erase what has been through them, what would they have heard? If we could un-erase the memory of a building, what would we hear? What stories would be there? We can look at images. We can make film. But how would you capture that sound, these stories that have been lost?

PS: There’s something compelling in there about the spirituality of technology—the idea of ether. The air used to be the realm of anima mundi, mediums would channel spirits through the air, and heaven was “up.” Today, technology uses the air, and you’re being called immoral for grabbing what floats in the air.

RR: It is a romantic idea that around us the whole time there are these radio waves, and it merely takes a mechanism like a scanning device itself or a shortwave radio to enable one to pick up these messages…

PS: With the intercepted cellphone calls, you have no ethical dilemma because you’re erasing out all the identifying information?

RR: I’m not interested in exploiting people. If I wanted to exploit people, I wouldn’t have released CDs. I would’ve taken their credit card numbers down and bought products. People always order things over the cellphone. I’ve heard so many people giving out credit card details, addresses, rendezvous, but you can do all kind of pranks, all kind of extreme things, but I wasn’t interested in that kind of exploitation. I was more interested in the kind of linear narrative that was happening—how people communicate with each other, how they act, how when I make a performance it’s called a “live act.” It’s a performance, it’s a persona you’re adopting; it’s a live act. Like now, we’re in a different situation. We’re in a formal question and answer. Well, it’s not formal, but we’re both playing roles. Unfortunately, devices like this [tape recorder] take away innovation or improvisation, but I think we’re doing OK. It’s such a huge question, the issue of sampling. At the moment I’m trying to work out a project; I want to make the most extreme sampling project imaginable. I’m thinking about trying to document years of the century, trying to do the 20th century in one swift cut in like a one-hour piece that goes through everything. I was thinking as much as possible of going through everything imaginable and putting it onto one CD. All music, Led Zeppelin, Stockhausen, whatever. Alphabetically. I was going to work through my and everybody else’s collections I know and sample them in and just make one huge piece. And hold it together with something really simple, maybe just a breath or something.

PS: Tonight you’ll be performing the score for Godard’s Alphaville. In terms of your early work taping phone calls and addressing issues of the pervasiveness of surveillance, it seems like a fitting film for you.

RR: It’s interesting because it’s filmed in very normal circumstances in the ‘60s in France and yet the direction, the way he’s mapping a city with image, is so futuristic. It’s like a non-place. That’s what’s so interesting to me. …It also has this Big Brother feel, of this computer running a world, but you’re never sure of this world. … It’s an alienating film, but it’s set in a certain period in the ‘60s when Godard, amongst other directors like Resnais and Truffaut, were really playing with the idea of film and how far you could take it. Godard was always a key figure, and always is a key figure in a sense, in the development of the way you can subvert a very easily accessible medium.

PS: What about the issues of surveillance. Is the Alphaville nightmare coming true today?

RR: In some senses, the word nightmare obviously makes it seem more dramatic. But I think it’s already there. I live in a city, London in England, where there are more closed-circuit TVs than anywhere in the world. More information is now passed between organizations and people in the last 10 years than it has been in the whole of time. More books have been published in the last 10 years than in the history of time. It’s quite phenomenal, the overload of information. Where it becomes scary and unnerving is the access to information. I don’t particularly have a problem with people having information. What I’m curious about is who holds that information and how do they use it? Where it becomes intriguing, and where the scanning element came into it, is the argument is the more technology develops, the safer we will be. That often seems to be the image that’s being projected to us: it’s making it a safer community, people are not ripping off the system through credit card fraud and all this kind of stuff, or like housing benefit abuse and all these things you can take from the government and all these analog ways you’d rip the system off. In fact, it’s much easier now. It just takes a 13-year old kid to crack into a system. I’ve got a couple of friends that are hackers and it’s amazing. They can just crack into a system like that, so swiftly. It seems to be the method by which people transmit information is the most vulnerable point. That’s the most interesting thing. A law’s just been passed in England where employers can rightfully look into their employee’s emails, but there’s a secondary law that no one knows about that allows you privacy at work, but people don’t know it to fight back. These two laws, one big, one small, both battling one another, but the big one is the only thing that people know about.

((Our second interview takes place in the Teen Programs Office at the Walker, the only quiet, uninhabited place we could find. Sitting on a grey, once-futuristic looking sofa, we talk, our conversation punctuated with automatic beeps and e-mail chimes from the three Macs in the office. The microphone rests on the sofa making slurping noises as it rubs against the burlap-like fabric. We start out talking about the previous night’s performance of Alphaville.))

PS: One scene the stayed with me after the film last night reminded me of [Guy deBord's Society of the Spectacle: Lemmy Caution is walking through the city and he sees a wall-mounted machine with a sign that says “Please insert coin.” So he does, and out pops a card or bar that says “merci,” which he pitches over his shoulder in disgust. It reminds me of how a whole life can be circular: we watch the TV show, then read about it on the website or magazine, discuss it at the watercooler the next day, never really getting beyond the spectacle and to real human beings. We respond to the signs around us without thinking, somehow pleased (unlike Lemmy) to get our little thank-you brick in return.

RR: The film actually plays on that very cleverly. There’s this phrase that people, the women in particular, keep using: “Yes, thank you very much, please,” or some phrase like that, which is a very bizarre phrase. I like it, it’s a kind of tautology. When he actually takes that chip out and it says “Merci,” it is a beautiful moment. It’s very funny; not what you’d expect.

PS: Back on the technology part, the early part of your career, where you’re talking about how advanced technology makes us more vulnerable than ever: it’s interesting to me how we’re so “wired” and “interconnected,” but it’s all a myth—were more distant from each other than ever before.

RR: The thing that’s lacking in a sense is that, when people grew up, before architecture became what it is today, when buildings now are built, particularly in the ‘60s, they failed to realize that the social interaction between individuals was key to your upbringing. So they started, particularly in England, building blocks of flats where you have no streets. There’s no engagement with your neighbor. You walk out of your door, you hit a staircase or a lift, you exit, and then you’re on the ground. There’s been no relationship you’ve had with any other person... If you walk down the street, there’s a relationship you’re having between buildings. You’re seeing people coming out of spaces. There’s kids playing in the street. There’s this kind of flux and change that’s existing there. It’s interesting that technology has really led us to a role now we play where, I do question about what kind of real communication is happening.

…There’s something terribly dehumanizing about new technology sometimes, this kind of language and etiquette we need to learn. I feel sometimes we’re in such a pace that we’re failing to give ourselves the opportunity to engage with the technology. The Otaku kids in Japan, the kids who just grew up just playing games who don’t really socialize with their peer group… I was in Melbourne a couple of weeks ago, and I pass this enormous warehouse-size space with maybe 200 kids all playing Quake. They’re all sitting in this big kind of cyber-world. I was thinking, it’s curious, because what I used to do as a kid was play football in the park. That’s an analog versus a digital form of engaging with your peer group. But there is something important about that kind of physicality. A type of call and response. Where you understand what it feels like, flesh against muscle. This kind of physicality of dealing with situations.

Sometimes I feel like digital technology has an awkwardness about it. You’re communicating through a device quite often designed by someone else, and you have to fit a certain parameter. If you use SMS text message on a mobile, you can only have 160 characters, which is an interesting scenario in itself. How far can we take that? What kind of communication can you have? Do we start to edit our conversation apropos the situation? A couple years ago, I made a piece for an exhibition in Holland for a thing called the Impact Festival. It happens every year; it’s like a digital film festival. I made this piece where, there was a program called something like “Images for the Future” or “Ideas for the Future.” And I made a piece where, I was thinking OK we’re talking now. When you talk in e-mail you talk in a more edited fashion. You don’t keep mumbling around the subject like I keep doing here and drifting off. You’re more precise when you write things down. Well, you have a tendency to start editing words. You edit sentences. You know, the way the language is a living language and the dictionary is constantly updated. Well, I thought, what would be the logical conclusion 500 years into the future? How edited would our language be? Maybe we wouldn’t even talk anymore; we’d actually use telepathy. Just a playful investigation into this. So I invented a language, which was a telepathic language. The piece was basically just these two people in a gallery space, a brother and a sister, and a huge video projection. You walk into the space, nothing in front of you, just left and right, and either the male or female voices follow. Basically what they did was just take the words and cut them up. So instead of them saying, “Hello, how are you today? Isn’t it a beautiful day today,” they go, “Hll, hw r y tdy? Snt t a btfl dy tdy?”and cut the whole thing up. It was quite dark and sinister in its way. The guy would go ((SFX)) and the girl would go ((SFX)).

PS: As I hear that e-mail chime in the background, I wonder, since you’ve traveled the world sampling sounds, are there universal sounds? Is found sound specific to a place?

RR: It’s a good question. Cities have their own languages, and it’s something we fail to understand. Our environment’s changed over the last 15 years with the advent of fax machines, mobile phones, bank teller machines, all these kinds of devices. But cities really exhibit their own language completely. This is just a purchased computer that has a series of roll call sounds in it. Which is pretty much the same everywhere: if you buy the system, somebody who’s developed it put half a dozen alert sounds. You can change them, but most people don’t bother to do it. If you’re a student, generally what you do is you download some ridiculous Simpsons thing on there. Now that I’ve said that, you’ll probably tell me you’ve got a Simpsons one.

PS: I did that a few years ago.

RR: We all do that in the past. It’s always a playful thing. Then we reach a certain point and you think, I’ll just let the machine do it for me. I’ve got six options. I’ll go with one of those. But cities certainly do exhibit their own language. You go to somewhere like Sydney, and there’s a kind of electrical hum to the city. It’s really strange, this really weird electricity in the sound. You go to a place like Melbourne, it’s so quiet. The general ambience of the city when you come back to somewhere like London, it’s enormously loud, London. It’s just a barrage of information. Visually, but aurally as well. It’s incredible, the sound friction that goes on. A taxi engine in London sounds very different than a taxi engine does in Cairo. The green man that helps you cross the road in Australia sounds very different than the one in Berlin. These machines—things like a taxi being built—you’d think they’d pretty much be the same all around the world. But they’re not. When a car drives through Milano in Italy, it sounds different than it does in Washington, because the cobbled streets in Milan. I’ve become very fascinated by this language of cities. If I played you a tape now and said, is this London or New York, you’d be able to guess. By car horns, the kind of ambience of New York, the sirens. It is quite curious how you learn the kind of geography through an acoustic disturbance.

PS: Also how sound bounces off architecture differently… As the world becomes dominated by Microsoft and Macintosh, I’ve had some of these sounds pop up in my dreams—

RR: Gosh. You poor man.

Quotable

I think people look at [Bush] and think John Wayne. We in Europe like John Wayne, we liked him in cowboy films. We don't like him running the world.

-- Piers Morgan, editor of the Daily Mirror

UN investigates US plans to bug Security Council

While the story of US plans to spy on UN Security Council members to gather information about their votes on Iraq has been severely under-reported in the mainstream American press, The Observer runs two new stories. One tells of an arrest made in Britain: a 28-year old woman, an employee of the Government Communications Headquarters, was taken into custody "on suspicion of contravening the Official Secrets Act"--i.e. she was arrested, it seems, for suspicion of leaking the NSA memo calling for heightened spying. (I wonder if Frank Koza, who wrote the memo, or Condi Rice, who instigated it, will be arrested?) The UN has opened an investigation into the spying incident following anger by some Security Council members. The original news account "caused a political furore in Chile, where President Ricardo Lagos demanded an immediate explanation of the spying operationm," writes The Observer. "The Chilean public is extremely sensitive to reports of US 'dirty tricks' after decades of American secret service involvement in the country's internal affairs. In 1973 the CIA supported a coup that toppled the democratically-elected socialist government of Salvador Allende and installed the dictator General Augusto Pinochet." The article goes on to explain that the spying operation was initiated by Condoleeza Rice but that "a decision of this kind would also have involved Donald Rumsfeld, CIA director George Tenet and NSA chief General Michael Hayden" and would be run by the president himself during his daily intelligence briefings.

American Refuseniks

U.S. Marine Travis Clark says he won't go if he's deployed to fight Iraq. "I can see violence used if there was an invading army invading my people," he said. "But I'm not going to go into someone else's country and force them to defend themselves." He's part of a small but growing number of armed forces and reserve troops who are second-guessing their career choice based on a clash with what they see as the immoral values of the Bush administration regarding this war. While it's hard to tell how many soldiers will refuse to serve, the G.I. Hotline has received double the number of calls in the past month: 3,582.

The problem seems to be that recruits sign up when they're 18 years old and are relatively unformed, morally and personally. The bill of goods they get from the armed forces, it turns out, is completely different than what they thought they were signing on for:

Some callers to the G.I. Rights Hotline said they were 18 when they joined and were still forming their opinions. Others said they were persuaded to join by military advertisements, brochures and recruiters talking a lot about job skills, world travel and education benefits, and nothing about the brutality of combat, said Bill Galvin, counseling coordinator for the Center on Conscience and War in Washington, D.C., who helped answer calls.

A U.S. Armed Forces Web site, for example, asks: "Where else can you get paid to train with the best, travel around the world, make lifelong friends, and get an education?"

"Many of these people thought they were going to computer school," Galvin said. "Reservists think it's a job they do two weeks a year and a weekend a month. These people are realizing it's not about what they thought it was at all."

Soldiers like Clark may end up in jail for being true to their conscience. To learn more visit the GI Rights Hotline website or call 800.394.9544.

25 arrested at DC Women's Day peace rally

After a rally of "several thousand women" in Washington, D.C. yesterday, more than 25 women were arrested, including Alice Walker, Terry Tempest Williams, Maxine Hong Kingston, Susan Griffin, and Democracy Now host Amy Goodman.

President Spin: Bush demands standing ovation

FromThe Mirror of London:

George Bush pulled out of a speech to the European Parliament when MEPs wouldn't guarantee a standing ovation.

Senior White House officials said the President would only go to Strasbourg to talk about Iraq if he had a stage-managed welcome.

A source close to negotiations said last night: "President Bush agreed to a speech but insisted he get a standing ovation like at the State of the Union address.

"His people also insisted there were no protests, or heckling.

"I believe it would be a crucial speech for Mr Bush to make in light of the opposition here to war. But unless he only gets adulation and praise, then it will never happen."

Mr Bush's every appearance in the US is stage-managed, with audiences full of supporters.

It was hoped he would speak after he welcomed Warsaw pact nations to Nato in Prague last November. But his refusal to speak to EU leaders face-to-face is seen as a key factor in the split between the US-UK coalition and Europe.

The source added: "Relations between the EU and the US are worsening fast - this won't help."

Literature for dark days

The complete works of George Orwell are now online.

Marching with the sisters/Reclaiming the flag

During today's peace march in commemoration of International Women's Day, some 600 to 700 people marched from the Midtown YMCA on Lake Street in Minneapolis to Powderhorn Park. It was a wonderful, diverse assortment of families, dogs, Code Pink supporters, IndyMedia punks, neighborhood activists, and peacenik toddlers. I was proud to clog Lake Street with 'em. Special thanks to the woman who, following Bill Moyers' lead, was passing out American flags with this message:

Don't let war supporters hijack the flag. Fly your flag, but ONLY with antiwar signs and at clearly antiwar events.

Call Women Against Military Madness to purchase a "No War on Iraq" lawn sign ($10) or smaller apartment-window sized size ($5), then get a flag of your own.

Headlines

• Bush exempts oil industry from Clean Water Act.

• A Hennepin County, Minnesota, sheriff's counterterrorism expert lumps Students Against War, Arise! Bookstore, and Anti-Racism Action in with neo-Nazis, Christian identity groups, and neo-Confederates as "more dangerous in Minnesota than al-Qaeda."

• Sen. Tom Harken of Iowa, who voted in favor of authorizing the president to use force against Iraq during a lopsided 77-23 vote last October, now says he "was fooled" by Bush, who he characterizes as "the cowboy who rode out of Texas, all guns blazing" in pursuit of Saddam.

Brits fabricate evidence for war

A new report from The Guardian:

British intelligence claims that Saddam Hussein has been trying to import uranium for a nuclear bomb are unfounded and based on deliberately fabricated evidence, according to an investigation by the UN nuclear inspectors in Iraq.

Read more on Blair's trumped-up story about Iraq's attempts to import uranium.

News Flash: Richest Minnesotans pay lowest taxes!

According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the richest of the state's households--those making more than $102,000 a year--pay less in state and local taxes than nearly everyone else.

Halliburton contracted to put out Iraqi oil fires

Surprise, surprise: A subsidiary of Halliburton Co.--the company Dick Cheney was CEO of from '95 to '00--won the contract to oversee any firefighting operations at Iraqi oilfields after any U.S.-led invasion. (As your recall, Halliburton was also given a $9.7 million contract to build detention blocks for Afghani prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.)

In other Halliburton news, a radioactive device which could be used to make a "dirty bomb" was stolen from a Nigerian subsidiary of the company.

Buchanan on the "Wages of Empire:

I swallow hard as I type this because I never thought I'd say it:

Read Pat Buchanan.

A sample:

Even if Iraqis initially welcome U.S. soldiers as liberators, within months there will be Islamic bombers willing to die to drive us out, as they drove the French out of Algeria, the Israelis out of Lebanon, the Marines out of Beirut. While the Arab and Islamic worlds did not succeed in many endeavors in the 20th century, they did excel in terrorizing and expelling all the old imperial powers. Our turn is next...

And another:

The cost of invading and rebuilding Iraq has been put at $100 billion to $200 billion by Bush's former economic advisor. That was last year. More recent estimates have soared. Will Americans pay this immense sum to reconstruct and "democratize" Iraq? With California mulling higher taxes and firing workers to cover a $35-billion deficit, how long will taxpayers tolerate shakedowns like Ankara's demand for as much as $30 billion for U.S. troops to transit Turkey and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's demand for $15 billion in foreign aid and loan guarantees to hold our coat?

The Fifth Column

Longtime Republican activist and co-founder of the Center for the American Experiment and journalist-social critic Richard Broderick have launched a new magazine, The Fifth Column, which aims to explore "ways to persuade the American Right and the American Left fo join forces in principled, values-based opposition to unbridled power politics." The current issue features a piece by historian and Minnesota Green Party candidate for lieutenant governor Rhoda Gilman on the relevance of the 1862 Dakota War to today's issues of terrorism and justice; Robert Jensen and Rahul Mahajan on the White House's feigned indifference to antiwar protests; and a nice introductory quote by Hermann Goering at the Nuremberg trials. I squirm anytime I read a bio that includes "Republican activist," but this publication looks like it's got potential.

Our enemies and The Pledge

Rogert Ebert on the separation of church and state, "horizontal prayer," and what Sister Rosanne of St. Mary's School knows that John Ashcroft doesn't. (Thanks, Adrienne.)

Dear Mr. Vonnegut

Following up his popular, oft-emailed interview in In These Times, Kurt Vonnegut responds to a reader's letter. (Via AlterNet.)

What genuinely motivates al-Qaeda to kill and self-destruct? The president says, "They hate our freedoms – our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other," which surely is not what has been learned from the captives being held in Guantanamo, or what he is told in his briefings. Why do the communications industry and our elected politicians allow Bush to get away with such nonsense? And how can there ever be peace, and even trust in our leaders, if the American people aren't told the truth?

-Peter Hoyt, Little Deer Island, Maine

Dear Mr. Hoyt,
One wishes that those who have taken over our federal government, and hence the world, by means of a Mickey Mouse coup d'etat, and who have disconnected all the burglar alarms prescribed by the Constitution, which is to say the House and Senate and the Supreme Court and We the People, were truly Christian. But as William Shakespeare told us long ago, "The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose."

And what remains the best-kept secret from the Second World War, because it is so embarrassing, is that Hitler was a Christian, and that his swastika was a Christian cross made of axes, an apt symbol of a political party for Christians of the working class. And there were simpler, unambiguous crosses on all Hitler's tanks and planes.

Again: One wishes, for the sake of the whole planet, that the people in and around the White House nowadays truly mean it when they say, "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us," and that they respect as children of God the losers, the nobodies so loved by Jesus in the Beatitudes, in His Sermon on the Mount: the poor in spirit, they that mourn, the meek, the merciful, the peace makers and so on.

But such is obviously not the case. George W. Bush smirks and gloats unmercifully as he boasts of his readiness to loose more than a hundred cruise missiles, what I call "Timothy McVeighs," into the midst of the general population of Iraq, nearly half of whom are children, little boys and girls under the age of 15.

His domestic policies, whose viciousness is peewee in comparison with what he is so eager to do to foreigners who don't look like him and talk like him, who don't have names like his, nonetheless inflict pain on those Americans of the sort enumerated in the Beatitudes, by depriving them of decent health care and educations, and of food, shelter and clothing when times are bad. It seems quite possible that his opinion of the American people has been formed while watching the Jerry Springer Show, which is Republican propaganda of the most pernicious kind.

But America was certainly hated all around the world long before this coup d'etat. And we weren't hated, as George W. Bush would have it, because of our liberty and justice for all. We are hated because our corporations have been the principal deliverers and imposers of new technologies and economic schemes that have wrecked the self-respect, the cultures of men, women and children in so many other societies.

It's that simple.

What are we to do when confronted by such hatred? Respond to Code Red and run around like chickens with their heads cut off.

Keep in touch,
Kurt Vonnegut

Government aid for Turkey, but not for thee

Wherever you're reading this from, chances are your state is struggling with tough decisions about cutting vital services in attempts at balancing the budget. Who's to blame for all this? Why, George W. Bush, of course. Marta Russell observes in an excellent ZNet commentary that much of the available money is being funneled into a war with Iraq and, worse yet, to buy off potential allies like Turkey. So, while India, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Georgia, Philippines, Jordan, Oman, and Yemen (to name but a few) are getting millions in military funding, places like Minnesota, Wisconsin, and North Dakota are told by the president that the federal government can't "bail out the states." Remember this next presidential election. Or next time you write a letter to the editor of your local paper.

Bush Billions To Turkey: Screw The Govs, And The Poor Too.

Governors, who've been told by President Bush to go home and stare at their own budget spreadsheets, ought to take a look at the president's spending plans and start screaming bloody murder! Because it seems that many states - foreign states - are going to get the dollars they so badly need to save so many social safety net programs.

Consider some recent headlines: "Governors, Hurting Financially, Ask Washington for Assistance" (New York Times, 2/23/03), "President Bush Rejects Governor's Request for Additional Medicaid, Homeland Security Funds"(California Healthline, 2/25/03), "Bush Proposes Major Changes in Medicare and Medicaid" (New York Times, 2/24/03), "Iraq War Cost Could Soar, Pentagon Says" (Los Angeles Times, 2/26/03).

The Pentagon now estimates the cost of the Iraq War and occupation for 6 months to cost $85 billion. But when the bribes to Turkey are added on to allow American troops on its soil --$6 to10 billion in grants and up to $20 to 24 billion in long-term aid loans -- that could top the $100 billion mark or "twice the war costs cited just last month by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and an amount that the White House dismissed as outlandish last fall." (LA Times, 2/26/03).

Surprising the Bush gang, however, the Turkish Parliament, albeit narrowly, decided against taking Bush's money and allowing US combat troops in for now. It would seem democracy is stronger there than here, where our congress has not voted on the war with Iraq.

At home the Govs are facing the worst fiscal crisis since WWII. The National Governors Association asked Bush for new federal financial assistance for state Medicaid programs. Medicaid, which covers some 45 million people, has grown in recent years due to the number of uninsured rising in a soft economy, high insurance premiums, and private insurance out of pocket costs.

The Govs asked for more federal funding. They were in agreement that the federal government should cover the cost of long-term care for low-income seniors and disabled who qualify for Medicaid and Medicare - and for homeland security to secure our still vulnerable cities, towns and ports.

Bush, however, flatly turned them down stating there is no more money for anything. Bush told them "the federal government has fiscal problems of its own and could not bail out the states." (New York Times, 2/25/03)

Read more of Russell's ZNet commentary, including a list of who--you not included--is getting how much. (Thanks, Heather.)

Staying Organic

The New York Times writes an editorial today about the Georgia Republican who snuck a line into the Appropriations Bill that undermines the new organic standard.

If it weren't so dangerous, the chicken fight going on in Congress would be laughable. Representative Nathan Deal, a Georgia Republican, slipped a paragraph into a $397 billion spending bill that would allow farmers to give livestock nonorganic feed but call their meat, eggs and milk "organic" anyway. That would clearly violate the new United States Department of Agriculture standard. Specifically, the provision, which was suggested by a Georgia chicken farm that contributed to Mr. Deal's campaign, prohibits the government from requiring that organic livestock producers use organic feed.

This is just the kind of provision, inserted at the last minute with Speaker Dennis Hastert's consent and without debate, that makes you wonder what else lies hiding in the darkly lit byways of the spending bill, passed by the House on Feb. 13.

Given the bitter Congressional politics of recent months, Mr. Deal could not have expected the speed with which a bipartisan coalition formed to attack his chicken deal, a group that includes fellow Republicans, major food corporations and the agriculture secretary, Ann Veneman. But then this is exactly the kind of issue that creates cost-free bipartisanship. Everybody but Mr. Deal gets a chance to look good.

And yet, his stealth paragraph, threatening as it is, may indirectly aid the cause of organic agriculture by alarming its Congressional supporters. Senators Patrick Leahy and Olympia Snowe have introduced legislation, co-sponsored by more than 50 other senators, that would kill Mr. Deal's provision. And Mr. Leahy and Representative Ron Kind have announced the creation of an organic caucus, designed to protect federal organic standards, which took effect last October, from other assaults.

There is a substantive point to be taken from Mr. Deal's effort to help out a local chicken farm. Too few farmers are raising organic grain for feed, especially in a market glutted with heavily subsidized conventional grain. Mr. Deal's provision became law when the spending bill was signed, and it must be repealed. Congress should look for ways to stimulate organic grain production rather than encouraging livestock producers to cop out, thereby confusing consumers and undoing the years of work it took to create the U.S.D.A.'s organic standards.

Peacemakers and Putzes

As France, Russia, and Germany vow to reject a new UN resolution for war with Iraq, Algerian president Abdelaziz Bouteflika says that, if he pulls off avoiding this disastrous war with Iraq, French prez Jacques Chirac should win a Nobel Peace Prize. Rumsfeld, meanwhile, says that the US has more support for this war than in the first Gulf War.

History Repeats?

From the Utne webwatch: The Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, a.k.a. Patriot Act II, bears a frightening resemblance to Hitler’s Enabling Act. Passed by the German Parliament on March 23, 1933, the "Law for Removing the Distress of the People and the Reich" effectively meant “the end of democracy in Germany and establish[ed] the legal dictatorship of Adolf Hitler,” according to an article on The History Place.

U.S. still plans to "Shock and Awe"

Shock and Awe is still the intended strategy for destroying Iraq: 3,000 bombs will be dropped in 48 hours, stunning Saddam into surrender. The flaw in the plan seems to be the assumption that Saddam gives a damn about civilian casualties. Of which there will be plenty. "We can't forget that war is inherently violent," says Gen. Richard Myers. "People are going to die. As hard as we try to limit civilian casualties, it will occur. We need to condition people that that is war. People get the idea this is going to be antiseptic. Well, it's not going to be." To see just how antiseptic, read the 1996 booklet Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance, written by Gulf War I veterans, which includes sections on "Massive Bombardment," "Blitzkrieg," and "Overwhelming Force."

Lessons from the man in the cardigan

My dad sends a link to a Christian Science Monitor article on "Mr. Rogers: A true director of homeland security." Steven M. Gorelick writes:

...Fast forward from the Cuban Missile Crisis to 1968 when it was even easier to imagine our social fabric was about to rip wide open. Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated. President Johnson's failure in Vietnam was forcing him from office. And the Democratic convention in Chicago looked more like the Battle of Stalingrad than an exercise in democracy. In the midst of this national angst, a precursor to PBS nationally broadcast the first episodes of "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood." Monday through Friday, for more than 30 years thereafter, Fred Rogers walked into his room, exchanged his leather shoes for sneakers and his suit coat for a sweater, and helped the nation's children negotiate a complex world in order to build a feeling of internal security.

He taught us that a safe place is not a sealed panic room, but the sense we give children that - although the world can be dangerous and that loss and pain and grief are real - responsible adults will do everything possible to keep them safe. Mr. Rogers' "duct tape" was a gift of gentle, unconditional love, which enabled us to create mental safe rooms that had nothing to do with matches, or canned food, or plastic sheeting.

So, to the quiet man in the durable cardigan and squeaky-clean sneakers, we say our goodbyes.

Unipolarism = Global Domination

Whatever you call it--unipolarism, Pax Americana, or a "Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity"--the neoconservative ideals of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Zalmay Khalilzad, and others bears some listening to. Not because you'll agree with them but because their version of American Empire just might not jive with yours. And, based on "a defense budget that would maintain American security and advance American interests in the new century," it's the ruling opinion right now. A whole lot of high-power Bushies agree with Ben Wattenberg who explains, "A unipolar world is a good thing, if America is the uni."

Gary Dorien writes for ElectronicIraq that 9-11, ostensibly the excuse for Bush's excited game of American policeman, wasn't really what set our current roster of pro-military, Reaganite hawks in motion. He writes:

In 1990, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney commissioned a new strategic plan for the United States. Under Cheney's guidance, Paul Wolfowitz, Lewis Libby, and Eric Edelman outlined a policy of U.S. global domination that called for unilateral military action and the preemptive use of force; Colin Powell countered with a case for a moderately conservative realism that was backed by George Schultz and Brent Scowcroft. Though the unipolarists won several victories in the first Bush administration, the realists held the upper hand. Cheney's attempt to create a new strategy was derailed by the Persian Gulf war and the leaking of Wolfowitz's plan to the press, and the unipolarists despaired of Bush's lack of ideological vision. A few of them supported Bill Clinton in 1992, because Clinton campaigned that year as a democratic globalist.

But most of them stayed in the Republican party, and in 1997, a group of unipolarists led by Cheney, Wolfowitz, Libby, Stephen Cambone, Donald Kagan, and Donald Rumsfeld founded the Project for the New American Century, (PNAC). This group espoused an aggressive American policy of global domination, and it forged an alliance with George W. Bush, who carried a personal grudge against Saddam Hussein and who turned out to be a foreign policy nationalist and unilateralist. Two months before the presidential election of 2000, the PNAC issued a position paper that spelled out the particulars of a global empire strategy: repudiate the ABM treaty, build a global missile defense system, increase defense spending by $20 billion per year to 3.8 percent of gross domestic product, and reinvent the U.S. military to meet expanded obligations throughout the world. When Bush won the presidency, the unipolarists came with him: Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Bolton, Cambone, Cohen, Cross, Feith, Libby, Perle, Pipes, and Woolsey.

Iraq is the first on the attack list not because the country is a real threat or strong enough for a good fight: it's a manageable first step through which the government can test the public's appetite for global imperialism.

The War on Iraq IQ Test

From the San Jose Peace Center:

1.Q: What percentage of the world’s population does the U.S. have? A: 6%

2.Q: What percentage of the world’s wealth does the U.S. have? A: 50%

3.Q: Which country has the largest oil reserves? A: Saudi Arabia

4.Q: Which country has the second largest oil reserves? A: Iraq

5.Q: How much is spent on military budgets a year worldwide? A: $900+ billion

6.Q: How much of this is spent by the U.S.? A: 50%

7.Q: What percent of US military spending would ensure the essentials of life to everyone in the world, according the the UN? A: 10% (that’s about $40 billion, the amount of funding initially requested to fund our retaliatory attack on Afghanistan).

8.Q: How many people have died in wars since World War II? A: 86 million

9.Q: How long has Iraq had chemical and biological weapons? A: Since the early 1980’s.

10.Q: Did Iraq develop these chemical & biological weapons on their own? A: No, the materials and technology were supplied by the US government, along with Britan and private corporations.

11.Q: Did the US government condemn the Iraqi use of gas warfare against Iran? A: No

12.Q: How many people did Saddam Hussein kill using gas in the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988? A: 5,000

13.Q: How many western countries condemned this action at the time? A: 0

14.Q: How many gallons of agent Orange did America use in Vietnam? A: 17 million.

15.Q: Are there any proven links between Iraq and September 11th terrorist attack? A: No

16.Q: What is the estimated number of civilian casualties in the Gulf War? A: 35,000

17.Q: How many casualties did the Iraqi military inflict on the western forces during the Gulf War ? A: 0

18.Q: How many retreating Iraqi soldiers were buried alive by U.S. tanks with ploughs mounted on the front? A: 6,000

19.Q: How many tons of depleted uranium were left in Iraq and Kuwait after the Gulf War? A: 40 tons

20.Q: What according to the UN was the increase in cancer rates in Iraq between 1991 and 1994? A: 700%

21.Q: How much of Iraq’s military capacity did America claim it had destroyed in 1991? A: 80%

22.Q: Is there any proof that Iraq plans to use its weapons for anything other than deterrence and self defense? A: No

23.Q: Does Iraq present more of a threat to world peace now than 10 years ago? A: No

24.Q: How many civilian deaths has the Pentagon predicted in the event of an attack on Iraq in 2002/3? A: 10,000

25.Q: What percentage of these will be children? A: Over 50%

26.Q: How many years has the U.S. engaged in air strikes on Iraq? A: 11 years

27.Q: Was the U.S and the UK at war with Iraq between December 1998 and September 1999? A: No

28.Q: How many pounds of explosives were dropped on Iraq between December 1998 and September 1999? A: 20 million

29.Q: How many years ago was UN Resolution 661 introduced, imposing strict sanctions on Iraq’s imports and exports? A: 12 years

30.Q: What was the child death rate in Iraq in 1989 (per 1,000 births)? A: 38

31.Q: What was the estimated child death rate in Iraq in 1999 (per 1,000 births)? A: 131 (that’s an increase of 345%)

32.Q: How many Iraqis are estimated to have died by October 1999 as a result of UN sanctions? A: 1.5 million

33.Q: How many Iraqi children are estimated to have died due to sanctions since 1997? A: 750,000

34.Q: Did Saddam order the inspectors out of Iraq? A: No

35.Q: How many inspections were there in November and December 1998? A: 300

36.Q: How many of these inspections had problems? A: 5

37.Q: Were the weapons inspectors allowed entry to the Ba’ath Party HQ? A: Yes

38.Q: Who said that by December 1998, “Iraq had in fact, been disarmed to a level unprecedented in modern history.” A: Scott Ritter, UNSCOM chief.

39.Q: In 1998 how much of Iraq’s post 1991 capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction did the UN weapons inspectors claim to have discovered and dismantled? A: 90%

40.Q: Is Iraq willing to allow the weapons inspectors back in? A: Yes

41.Q: How many UN resolutions did Israel violate by 1992? A: Over 65

42.Q: How many UN resolutions on Israel did America veto between 1972 and 1990? A: 30+

43.Q: How much does the U.S. fund Israel a year? A: $5 billion

44.Q: How many countries are known to have nuclear weapons? A: 8

45.Q:How many nuclear warheads has Iraq got? A: 0

46.Q: How many nuclear warheads has US got? A: over 10,000

47.Q: Which is the only country to use nuclear weapons? A: the US

48.Q: How many nuclear warheads does Israel have? A: Over 400

49.Q: Has Israel every allowed UN weapons inspections? A: No

50.Q: What percentage of the Palestinian territories are controlled by Israeli settlements? A: 42%

51.Q: Is Israel illegally occupying Palestinian land? A: Yes

52.Q: Which country do you think poses the greatest threat to global peace: Iraq or the U.S.? A: ????

53.Q: Who said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter”? A: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Voila

Last week, the "Voila Moment" was inserted into America’s war vernacular. A Pentagon source quoted in the Times used it to describe that moment when an Iraqi soldier, ducking bombs, has a catharsis about the bomb’s intended recipient—Saddam—and, in anger, rises up to overthrow the cruel dictator. Naomi Klein wonders if it will work. "I'm sceptical. There was, after all, a Voila Moment during the last Gulf war, when many Iraqis living near the Kuwaiti border believed US promises that they would be supported if they rose up against Saddam. It was followed shortly afterwards by a Screw You Moment, when the rebels watched US forces abandon them to be massacred." She writes that this is exactly the sort of thing we need in the antiwar movement—a moment when the light clicks on and we refuse to stand for war :

the civil disobedience the US military is hoping to provoke in Iraq is exactly the sort of thing the anti-war movement needs to inspire in our countries if we are really going to stop, or at least curtail, the pending devastation in Iraq. What would it take for large numbers of people in the US, the UK, Italy, Canada - and any other country assisting the war effort - truly to break with our leaders and refuse to comply? Can we create thousands of Voila Moments back home?

Could this be the start: a veteran U.S. diplomat resigned because he felt he couldn't in good conscience represent a government that declares unilateral preemptive war. "...until this Administration it had been possible to believe that by upholding the policies of my president I was also upholding the interests of the American people and the world," wrote John Brady Kiesling in his resignation letter to Colin Powell. "I believe it no longer." He continues:

We should ask ourselves why we have failed to persuade more of the world that a war with Iraq is necessary. We have over the past two years done too much to assert to our world partners that narrow and mercenary U.S. interests override the cherished values of our partners. Even where our aims were not in question, our consistency is at issue. The model of Afghanistan is little comfort to allies wondering on what basis we plan to rebuild the Middle East, and in whose image and interests. Have we indeed become blind, as Russia is blind in Chechnya, as Israel is blind in the Occupied Territories, to our own advice, that overwhelming military power is not the answer to terrorism?

Will more good people within the administration jump ship, as a matter of conscience?

Reclaim the Flag

Bill Moyers:

I wore my flag tonight. First time. Until now I haven't thought it necessary to display a little metallic icon of patriotism for everyone to see. It was enough to vote, pay my taxes, perform my civic duties, speak my mind, and do my best to raise our kids to be good Americans.

Sometimes I would offer a small prayer of gratitude that I had been born in a country whose institutions sustained me, whose armed forces protected me, and whose ideals inspired me; I offered my heart's affections in return. It no more occurred to me to flaunt the flag on my chest than it did to pin my mother's picture on my lapel to prove her son's love. Mother knew where I stood; so does my country. I even tuck a valentine in my tax returns on April 15.

So what's this doing here? Well, I put it on to take it back. The flag's been hijacked and turned into a logo — the trademark of a monopoly on patriotism. On those Sunday morning talk shows, official chests appear adorned with the flag as if it is the good housekeeping seal of approval. During the State of the Union, did you notice Bush and Cheney wearing the flag? How come? No administration's patriotism is ever in doubt, only its policies. And the flag bestows no immunity from error. When I see flags sprouting on official lapels, I think of the time in China when I saw Mao's little red book on every official's desk, omnipresent and unread.

But more galling than anything are all those moralistic ideologues in Washington sporting the flag in their lapels while writing books and running Web sites and publishing magazines attacking dissenters as un-American. They are people whose ardor for war grows disproportionately to their distance from the fighting. They're in the same league as those swarms of corporate lobbyists wearing flags and prowling Capitol Hill for tax breaks even as they call for more spending on war.

So I put this on as a modest riposte to men with flags in their lapels who shoot missiles from the safety of Washington think tanks, or argue that sacrifice is good as long as they don't have to make it, or approve of bribing governments to join the coalition of the willing (after they first stash the cash.) I put it on to remind myself that not every patriot thinks we should do to the people of Baghdad what Bin Laden did to us. The flag belongs to the country, not to the government. And it reminds me that it's not un-American to think that war — except in self-defense — is a failure of moral imagination, political nerve, and diplomacy. Come to think of it, standing up to your government can mean standing up for your country.

What do you think?

Wiretapping the Security Council:
Apparently Bush will do anything to get his war

The Bush Administration has been intercepting phonecalls and e-mails of UN Security Council members in the hopes of gaining valuable information that would help the US win support in a war against Iraq. A top secret memo discusses a "surge" in information gathering "directed at the UN Security Council (UNSC) members (minus US and GBR of course) for insights as to how to membership is reacting to the on-going debate RE: Iraq, plans to vote on any related resolutions, what related policies/ negotiating positions they may be considering, alliances/ dependencies, etc - the whole gamut of information that could give US policymakers an edge in obtaining results favourable to US goals or to head off surprises."