This is too completely hysterical: interpretations of government 'readiness' symbols. I laughed so hard I cried.

Ah, here are photos of this morning's protest, which was over long before my arrival at work today. When I arrived at the office, it really did appear that only police were causing any disruption to the ordinary fabric of the morning commute!!

Probably because the police were the only people at that point causing disruption. But still.

Here is the Chron's version of the story.

About 70 protesters have been arrested. Most were held for minor charges but a handful allegedly resisted arrest, San Francisco police said. Among those in custody are the former president of the Pacific Stock Exchange, Warren Langley, Sister Bernie Galvan of the group Religious Witness for the Homeless, and Father Louis Vitale of St. Boniface Church.

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A useful link: San Francisco Indymedia's Anti-War Feature.

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Police state, continued: The SFPD engages in domestic spying on war protestors!

The San Francisco Police Department has been monitoring a radical Web site, using undercover officers to spy on antiwar protesters, and apparently collecting personal information about political dissidents, the Bay Guardian has learned.

A confidential police memo, part of a dossier obtained under the Sunshine Ordinance, acknowledges that at least some of the activities appear to violate the department's own rules....
Directed by Lt. Kitt Crenshaw, a group of four officers assigned to the Violent Crimes Task Force - a unit that normally handles gang killings - carried out the undercover operations. Dressed as protesters, the squad videotaped the demonstrations and marched along Market Street in the large antiwar parades as well as in the smaller, riotous "breakaway" marches....

The SF Chronicle also reports on SFPD's spying on peace marchers. Favorite quote: "Asked whether police were planning surveillance at Saturday's anti-war rally in San Francisco, Crenshaw said, "Do you think I'd tell you?" "

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And speaking of spying, Secret document details American plan to bug phones and emails of key Security Council members. [Should I change the title to not-so-secret document?]

The leaked memorandum makes clear that the target of the heightened surveillance efforts are the delegations from Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Mexico, Guinea and Pakistan at the UN headquarters in New York - the so-called 'Middle Six' delegations whose votes are being fought over by the pro-war party, led by the US and Britain, and the party arguing for more time for UN inspections, led by France, China and Russia....
The disclosure comes at a time when diplomats from the countries have been complaining about the outright 'hostility' of US tactics in recent days to persuade then to fall in line, including threats to economic and aid packages.

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On the lighter side, a variation of something I'd swear I read at The Onion first: from Satire Wire: ANGERED BY SNUBBING, LIBYA, CHINA SYRIA FORM AXIS OF JUST AS EVIL "Cuba, Sudan, Serbia Form Axis of Somewhat Evil; Other Nations Start Own Clubs."

It's a police state downtown!!! Traffic is being redirected off Bush, there are police cars parked all up and down my block, and our building is extending the after-hours sign in procedures to require us all to use our key cards to prove that we work here.

In addition to all the police, there's a news crew, but all I can see on the web is from KPIX's traffic advisories.

San Francisco Traffic show
(first reported at 7:42 am)
advisory in san francisco's financial district, war protestors have montgomery street blocked between pine and bush streets... bush street is closed between kearny and sansome streets... and market is blocked at first street. (updated at 8:58 am)

This is actually part of a direct action to shut down the stock exchange that had been planned for today, which I was blissfully unaware of.

S called me up and told me that 20-40 protestors sat down on Market Street blocking traffic, and that a news crew which had happily been reporting how peaceful the event was turned nearly giddy when the police van arrived. (Presumably, because the police can cure a peaceful protest??)

So for 20-40 people, there are about a DOZEN police vehicles, and officers passed me holding onto the back of their arrest van wearing RIOT GEAR. With all we office workers wondering what the deal was over a few people waving signs that say "French Kissing Not War."

Spooky.

It's a strange time, historically. Looking back on many of the big horrors of the past, I wonder how people at the time felt, suspecting that something very bad was going to happen, and yet feeling powerless to stop it.

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I've been thinking of a lecture by a bible scholar that I attended during the Gulf War. He was asked to confirm that the Bible tells people that they must go to war in support of their government. His initial response was something like, "What section would that be in, Opinions 9:13?" And then went on to quote the many sections of the bible that forbid killing.

Yet so many people of faith say it's okay for the US to kill people in Iraq, because we have to demonstrate that it's wrong for Saddam Hussein to kill people in Iraq.

The U.S. likes to kill people to show that killing people is wrong. Which seems flawed, as a technique and logic, until you factor in oil.

[The BBC said it's mostly U.S. protestants that want war, while Catholics are largely against. I've heard differing explanations for this...]

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The business news is full of talk of war. There's some indecision by the US stock markets about it. While it's been reported that the threat of war has made stocks dip lower, whenever the markets go up reporter's can't decide if it's because war has again been postponed, or whether businesses think that the war will end quickly.

The Airline industry is concerned.

"As a war would inevitably have a detrimental effect on the whole of aviation, it goes without saying that everybody in the industry wants the Iraq situation to be resolved peacefully, and as quickly as practically possible," said Rod Eddington, chief executive....

But, from the same article:

Leaked reports suggest oil multinationals are already jostling to win concessions in any post-war reconstruction of Iraq.

ExxonMobil, Unocal, BP and Shell are all reportedly involved in informal negotiations with US officials and the Iraqi exile community....

As Mr Carey points out: "There is no business upside to war. In the long-run we may benefit from increased [military] spending, but it will average out in time."

This reminds me of the NATO bombing campaign in the former Yugoslavia, which I'd read was very precise. But then I read in a construction magazine about all the lucrative contracts American companies were getting to rebuild the hospitals and schools we'd bombed.

WHAT hospitals and schools we'd bombed? Hey! Wait a minute!!

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The costs of war may be quite high. From the BBC:

Chancellor Gordon Brown has already almost doubled his provision, to £1.75bn.But economists are a lot more gloomy. The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) has suggested £3.5bn is a more likely price tag.

But that's just for the actual conflict, which they are estimating will last a maximum of six weeks.
That's before the cost of getting the country back into shape.

Where are we going to get the money from?
Essentially, from nowhere. The UK Government will just add the cost to its public sector debt.
There is a chance that longer term, however, spending in other areas such as the public sector will be cut.

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The Plan for Post-Saddam Iraq and the division of contractual spoils is prematurely being made.

U.S. military and civilian officials also are plotting strategy for rebuilding a post-Saddam Hussein war-torn country. Such a strategy will take almost as much careful planning as the military campaign. It could also mean billions of dollars in work for engineering and construction firms....

...In late February, USAID also asked a select group of U.S. engineering firms to bid on a contract that could be worth $900 million to rebuild a postwar Iraq. Special procurement laws allow for the select bidding and also prohibit the government from discussing details about which firms were asked to respond.

...U.S. companies shouldn't expect a monopoly on the work. After the last Persian Gulf war, many contracts went to non-U.S. firms. "I would expect that if these contracts are related to an aid program that the U.S. is going to finance, then those contracts would go to U.S. firms," says one lobbyist.

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In the same vein Nael Al-Qattan, a 38-year-old civil engineer from Kuwait City with a masters degree in construction management,
predicts a successful war with Iraq will trigger a tremendous business and building boom in the entire Persian Gulf region. He expects prosperity to stimulate growth in the seaport of Kuwait...

But in the short run, Al-Qattan is frustrated by a lack of contacts with the American forces and their purchasers supplying the buildup. The Americans' isolation from the Kuwait business community means purchases of local materials and supplies are being put together through their contacts with an emerging group of middlemen, the small construction and maintenance contractors, painters and carpenters -- mostly foreign nationals -- who have access to the Americans because they are doing small jobs on base. They speak English and they know how to reach the wholesellers like Al-Qattan, while the Americans have yet to develop their own ties. The middlemen are turning many a fast buck the Americans could save simply by dealing direct, Al-Qattan says.

Those pesky Americans! Why aren't they preparing to spread the war loot around!

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Rumsfeld's speech about going to war without stalwart ally Britain has caused some trouble. "If this was Donald Rumsfeld trying to help Tony Blair, he had better not consider a career in the diplomatic service.
...he allowed the dissenters to claim he had finally let the cat out of the bag and shown what they had been saying all along - that the US is determined to go to war on Iraq with or without the support of any other country."

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Is war legal?

Could George W Bush and Tony Blair one day find themselves facing criminal charges for going to war against Iraq? A British academic, Professor Nicholas Grief, says this is not as far fetched as it may seem. He cites the Nuremberg charter of 1945, which established the concept of a crime against peace.

"There is a school of thought that going to war without the express authority of the Security Council would violate the UN charter," says Professor Grief.

"That could raise serious questions about the personal responsibility of President Bush and Mr Blair, and they could have a case to answer.

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"The FBI is looking into the forgery of a key piece of evidence linking Iraq to a nuclear weapons program, including the possibility that a foreign government is using a deception campaign to foster support for military action against Iraq."

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Ergin said
U.S. threats that Turkey would have no say in the future of northern Iraq if it did not allow the U.S. deployment have backfired, serving only to make Turkish officials more suspicious of U.S. intentions.

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You don't see me quoting many pro-war positions here, though I'll quote from this one: an essay by Frank Van Riper , a photography writer special to the Washington Post, who is very concerned about the fate of journalists now "embedded" with the US military in the Middle East. After making an impassioned argument FOR war (yes, I read the whole thing even though he gave that away in the opening paragraph), he then goes on to express something few on the pro-war bandwagon have:

In this current perilous endgame in the Bronx - we'd call it "chicken" - there is no comfort in the fact that the leaders on each side of the conflict, George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein, profess near-messianic faith in the rightness of their cause. Hussein has long seen himself as the latter day Saladin who unites the Arab word against the western infidel. My old colleague Tom DeFrank wrote in Sunday's New York Daily News of a George Bush eerily serene as war nears, so convinced is he that he is doing God's will by smiting Saddam.

Each leader, so it seems, is willing to go it alone.

And each is wrong.

Perhaps unfairly, perhaps not, the biggest onus for this foolhardy behavior falls on the President, precisely because no one in his right mind views Saddam Hussein with anything but horror. Even the much quoted "Arab Street" - and certainly many Arab diplomats and political leaders - prefer Hussein gone, or worse.

But in fact we have managed to blow apart the coalition that once supported us - a testament, not to any perceived goodness in Saddam Hussein, but to our own political clumsiness in not being able to close the deal that would have sealed Hussein's fate.

Give the administration credit for applying the military pressure that is forcing Iraq, however slowly and reluctantly, to comply with the unanimous wishes of UN resolution 1441.

But give credit, too, to our opponents - including the damn French - for making us confront, also slowly and reluctantly, the terrible folly of acting alone.

The Judge in the Jose Padilla case is optimistic. He has required that the federal government produce some convincing evidence to keep Padilla, and has ordered that the "enemy combatant" have access to lawyers, and believes that this case is an isolated event, and does not foreshadow WWII-like detention camps.

Oh, I wish I could hope so! If only this didn't come out at the same time: Detainees not entitled to a hearing -- Guantanamo prisoners have no Constitutional rights, court rules.

The court seemed to endorse the administration's view that "Guantanamo is the legal equivalent of outer space," said Michael Posner, executive director of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights.

The ruling "gives a green light to United States officials to imprison foreigners outside the rule of law," said Thomas Wilner and Kristine Huskey, lawyers for 12 of the plaintiffs, Kuwaitis held at Guantanamo for more than a year.

"We are all foreigners outside our borders," they said. "This decision endangers every United States citizen who travels abroad."

Prisoners from 43 nations, captured in Afghanistan, are being held under military custody in Guantanamo, a U.S. base leased from Cuba a century ago.

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Just say no to war!

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A double article in the NYT on the Beastie Boys' new anti-war song. They released it for free on the web.

"I think a big part of wanting to do the song was just hearing Bush make these speeches, seeing how the rest of the world was reacting to it, and feeling like Bush doesn't represent us," Mr. Yauch said. "One of the purposes is to let people in other parts of the world know that the messages he's sending out aren't necessarily the view of all Americans. And it's also to say to people in the United States who might be uncomfortable protesting that it's all right to do that. One thing that the U.S. administration has been trying to do is give the feeling that it's un-American to protest."

Later, in a second portion of the article, it is revealed that an artificial intelligence computer in Spain is analyzing songs to identify future hits, and that the big labels are beginning to seek out such feedback. Yes, a computer is judging music quality. I like this part:

Jaron Lanier, a computer scientist and musician who coined the term "virtual reality," said that the science side of the application seemed sloppy. "As for the music side of things," he continued, "I doubt pop music could get any worse, so using even a meaningless tool like this might result in some improvement."

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So, if the US starts a war on its own, should the international community have to pay to pick up the US' mess? The EU doesn't think so Sensibly, "The European Union would be more willing to spend money on postwar reconstruction and relief aid in Iraq if the legitimacy of the war was clearly authorized under a Security Council mandate." Duh. It's sad they had to say it. Also of note, comments from Chris Patten, the European Union's External Relations Commissioner:

"As a general rule, are wars not more likely to recruit terrorists than to deter them?" he said. "It is hard to build democracy at the barrel of a gun, when history suggests it is more usually the product of long internal development in a society."

"What I'm absolutely sure about," he added, "is that to invade Iraq, while failing to bring peace to the Middle East, would create exactly the sort of conditions in which terrorism would be likely to thrive."

The fun Guardian link of the moment: an an imagined debate between George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein. Sample:

Bush: First of all I would just like to welcome my evil friend to the UN, one of the great American institutions for the propulsion of freedom throughout the world.

Saddam: Thank you, Great Satan. I hope that in today's debate we may find some common ground between the Iraqi people's commitment to peace and human progress and America's desire to destroy the Middle East.

Here's an interesting, [completely humorous] money saving alternative to bombs: Operation Penny Drop. Ouch.

This came to me as a forwarded e-mail, but I found the original at this Veterans for Peace site.


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Quick Political Scholastic Aptitude Test:

This test consists of one (1) multiple-choice
question (so you better get it right!).
Look at this list of countries that the U.S. has
bombed since the end of World War II, compiled by
historian William Blum:

China 1945-46
Korea 1950-53
China 1950-53
Guatemala 1954
Indonesia 1958
Cuba 1959-60
Guatemala 1960
Congo 1964
Peru 1965
Laos 1964-73
Vietnam 1961-73
Cambodia 1969-70
Guatemala 1967-69
Grenada 1983
Libya 1986
El Salvador 1980s
Nicaragua 1980s
Panama 1989
Iraq 1991-99
Sudan 1998
Afghanistan 1998
Yugoslavia 1999

Question: In how many of these instances did a
democratic government, respectful of human rights,
occur as a direct result? Choose one of the
following:

(a) 0
(b) zero
(c) none
(d) not a one
(e) a whole number between -1 and +1

-------------------------------------------------------

This quiz compliments of Vietnam Veterans Against
the War.
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