A photo representative of the current paranoia in the US: child-friendly security searches. Oh dear.

I've seen a few versions of this, but like this collection of pro-peace, anti-war, witty slogans more than others.

Draft The Bush Twins

Don't Mess With Mesopotamia

War Is SO 20th Century

When Bush Comes To Shove

Brains Not Bombs

War Is A Dick Thing, Peace Is A Heart Thing

George Dubya: Weapon Of Mass Distraction

Beat The Bushes For Peace

Weapons Of Mass Destruction: Look Under The Bushes

Drop Bush, Not Bombs

Save America, Spare Iraq, Make Texas Take Him Back (my favorite)

Who Would Jesus Bomb?

Stop Mad Cowboy Disease

Make Love, Not W

Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld: Axis Of Weasel

A Village In Texas Has Lost Its Idiot

How Many Lives Per Gallon?

How Did Our Oil Get Under Their Soil?

God Does Not Bless Only America

Has Anyone Seen Our Constitution Lately?

What If God Blesses Iraq?

Born To Kill, Born To Drill

Fight Plaque, not Iraq! (and the guy was carrying a toothbrush).

Today's virtual march against war was covered in the NY Times. ("...32 groups are involved, including the National Council of Churches, the N.A.A.C.P., the Sierra Club, the National Organization for Women and MoveOn.").

Another entry for the thou shalt not kill file from the SF Chronicle:

"Nothing I understand about Jesus Christ leads me to believe that support of war and violence are necessary or tolerable actions for Christian people," said Jim Winkler of the United Methodist Church.

Winkler was among several church leaders from France, Germany, Scotland and the United States participating in a prayer service and briefing organized by the National Council of Churches.

Edward Gomez's World Views column (appearing Thursdays in the Chronicle) suggests that protestors messages thanking France got through: Le Monde was touched by signs of support in New York.

Though shalt not kill continued: the UK Roman Catholic and Anglican bishops oppose war. Oops. Poor Blair. Once again, they point out that "the moral alternative to military measures is not inaction." They demand Iraq's disarmament and cooperation, but aren't allowing the US/UK to claim moral high ground.

The country's two most senior archbishops say "inaction, passivity, appeasement or indifference" cannot be embraced and instead urge for all sides to give UN weapons inspectors more time.

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Fascinating tidbit on Iraq of the afternoon, from Democrats.com: Iran sues U.S. in World Court for Helping Saddam Kill Iranians, as reported in the German magazine der Spiegel.

A strange spectacle in court: As the USA prepares for a war against Iraq, it is being sued by Iran for its previous close relationship to Saddam Hussein. At the International Court of Justice, Teheran is accusing the United States of delivering dangerous chemicals and deadly viruses to Baghdad during the eighties.

[Der Spiegel now offers English translation of key features, for those of us who doubt our deutsch. One of the current features has the subtitle: In the highly religious United States, there has rarely been such a deep connection between national power interests and fundamentalist false piety. Christian fanatics are calling for a crusade against Islam.. It has such interesting lines about Bush's abandonment of drink for religion, such as, "The insecure drinker has become a president with whom mainstream Americans can identify, precisely because of his mediocrity, fallibility and devoutness." Thanks so much, Spiegel! Also, "religious presidents can make the world a worse place by spectacularly failing in their efforts to improve it."

For eventual addition to the list on my peace page: the Progress Unity Fund, distributing tax-deductible funds to programs promoting peace, civil rights, civil liberties, economic justice and social justice.

There's also Target Oil, attempting to point out that the US' abrupt interest in the fate of some Middle Eastern people while disregarding others, has its roots in black gold, Texas Tea.

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Diplomacy: a word you can look up in the dictionary. But perhaps this Administration doesn't have a dictionary, as suggested by implied threats to the Security Council as reported in this Washington Post article.

In meetings yesterday with senior officials in Moscow, Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton told the Russian government that "we're going ahead," whether the council agrees or not, a senior administration official said. "The council's unity is at stake here."

A senior diplomat from another council member said his government had heard a similar message and was told not to anguish over whether to vote for war.

"You are not going to decide whether there is war in Iraq or not," the diplomat said U.S. officials told him. "That decision is ours, and we have already made it. It is already final. The only question now is whether the council will go along with it or not."

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Last two items before I go back to bed to nurse this cold/headache/general malaise: a Guardian UK article by Peter Arnett on how the US loved his positive Gulf War I reporting, but decided he was an evil mouthpiece of Saddam when he bothered to report when US attacks went wrong. Oh, the truth hurts.

And, on the lighter side, Terry Jones takes Bush's "attack first" mentality to his neighborhood.

Finally! A spot to post all of the news related items of the times that don't relate to food. Blogging is just so wonderfully easy to keep current. And so, onto the clippings:

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This takes a long time to load, but it's worth it: more photos of the international pro-peace demonstrations from 02/15/03. (Yahoo had a great collection, but they re-use the same link every day to update anti-war events, and now include soldiers hauling equipment, which seems a bit off topic.) The peace symbol in Antarctica (yes, Antarctica) is especially "cool." (sorry.) You might want to save this page to your hard drive, since the images of these protests are bound to disappear from the newswires under political pressure.

I like the slogans on the peace sings from India: "no guns in tiny hands - give us books."

It should not be a revolutionary thought that nations can make friends by meeting people's needs rather than using violence to manage through fear.

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Morford's essay "Bush Gives You The Finger", regarding the Administration's dis of massive international protests, is a hoot.

A touching side story: J. Dennis Hastert, the Speaker of the House and noted hunk of conservative sweating Muenster cheese, was actually considering legislation to ban French wine and bottled water -- for "health reasons," he said, and not because France has smartly dissed poor Shrub on the whole bogus-war thing. Isn't that cute? Hastert claimed that some French wine is clarified using cow blood. Hee. Oh Dennis. As the kids say, are you high?

Read Morford's column, Notes & Errata here.

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Get Your War On, Page 19. (Favorite strip: where it is asked whether the British got their Iraqi weapons dossier from the back of Tiger Beat.)

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You've probably seen it: the Windows-style Weapons of Mass Destruction error message. But just in case you haven't...

The false short list of choices
Recent US policy reminds me of a conversation I overheard on the bus a few years back. A mentally troubled older guy announced that someone on the bus had looked at him funny, therefore he had to kill him. As his friend tried to persuade him to let it slide, the troubled guy announced that 'if I don't kill him, I'll be a coward.'

He saw two choices: kill or be a coward.

The troubled guy's friend had to rather painfully point out that there were MANY choices. And the best one was to go about his business, which was not the same as being a coward: rather, it was a choice to act dignity appropriate to the situation.

And so we come to this: Bush disagrees with protests against his war plans (duh), and says ...such a war remains a final resort, but "the risk of doing nothing is even a worse option as far as I'm concerned." He sees two choices: bomb a nation where half the population is under the age of 15, or do nothing.

This is a false dichotomy. He has a large menu of options: diplomacy, having nations like Russia coerce Iraq into a better posture for the sake of oil revenue, allowing inspections to actually determine what the real problems are, providing political support to dissidents and allowing them to work on their own terms, bringing Hussain to the International Criminal Court (oh, wait, our government doesn't believe in an international justice system, skip that one), swaying public sympathy there by lifting sanctions and offering other economic rewards to the people if they throw off their current leadership, even technical sabotage...

But two options is all Bush is choosing to present or consider. That's not what I would call high-quality leadership.

Do you want fries with that?

Love your country - hate war
There's a great confusion among public, pro-war speakers, and I'd like to clarify things for them right now, since they're clearly not following along with their textbooks. They make the same mistake again and again. They say, inexplicably, that opposition to war is the same as opposition to the USA and is also hatred of the USA's troops.

Perhaps they've never been to church, or at least not a fun church. But there's a saying in church, "Love the sinner, hate the sin." It means that, if a person makes a mistake, they do not become the mistake - their action is separate from themselves. A friend who engaged in illicit activities took my criticisms of those activities personally, insisting that he wasn't a bad person. He may not be a bad person, but he was doing bad things. He is not the same as those things, though he is responsible for them. But they do not take him over.

So it is with the government of the US and its troops. It is possible to love one's country while dissenting from its policies. These seems extremely self-evident, but it's too complicated for some folks to grasp, so I'm spelling it out here.

Likewise, if you notice the parents of servicemen and servicewomen in the military at anti-war protests, they are not loathing their own kids - they are loathing the untenable situation their kids are being put in. They are loathing the injustice of the assignment that their kids are being given. The soldiers and their orders are, in fact, separate things.