I'll excerpt a bit more from my e-mail exchange with a colleague about solutions to warmongering.

If you read the earlier installment, you know I was mystified by objections to ALL protesters being violent. My correspondent didn't mean that, but it turns out she doesn't believe in some kinds of civil disobedience (blocking doors), but does believe in others (Rosa Parks' refusal to change seats, leading to her arrest). So now I've got a new topic to be mystified over, but at least I'm learning more about an alternative point of view. So, to continue, here is her response to my long answer (we'll call this installment 2):

The protesters did not stop the war. It seems to me that more peaceful protests would have fostered a climate in which more people might be encouraged to resist the use of force. All the protesters did was indicate that the use of force is OK if it's in a good cause. That's an easy and risky path to go down. By rejecting the use of force to resolve disputes we can hope to increase peace in the world, encourage others to do the same, and create a climate in which we may hope to reduce violence. Violence in a good cause is still violence.

Longer answer to follow next week.

This is tricky. On the one hand, she had suggested that we should all recycle and be nice to each other, which didn't stop the war, but then points out that protesting didn't stop the war, which means we shouldn't to it, so it is a flaw that is worse for peaceful protesting, somehow. She'll elaborate on this in the next installment. First, my part of installment 2:

I look forward to your longer answer!

The protesters elsewhere in the world stopped their countries from participating in the Iraq war. If you're asking why ours didn't, it's a VERY good question, and merits much more discussion. But it doesn't mean that civil disobedience and all the teachings that you and I both respect about civil disobedience are dead.

I also ask that you consider the priests and monks who were arrested that day, and consider what the "violence" was that they were doing by blocking streets and the entrance to the Federal Building. If stopping immoral commerce is violence, if sitting peacefully in the street is violence, if holding a group prayer is violence, than we have a very long route to tread!! There is much documentary evidence that most protesters where acting in the spirit of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., however unnewsworthy their peaceful actions may have been.

I added more references to non-violent protest here to make sure she wasn't wildly generalizing, and would give me a conditional response like either 'I didn't mean THOSE people' or clarify that her position is 'all people are violent.'

On to installment 3, in which the comments in quotation marks are mine (from my installment 1 message):

" If stopping immoral commerce is violence, if sitting peacefully in the street is violence, if holding a group prayer is violence, than we have a very long route to tread!!"

People have been killing people in wars and other violent situations for some considerable time. Protests can sometimes deter specific acts of war or other violence but have never eradicated them. While eradication of war and violence are goals we must work towards, we need to deal with the probability that most of us won't live long enough to see the entire human race experience the metanoia that could bring about universal and lasting peace on earth. We have to be prepared to endure frustration and failure along the way and history suggests that the way will be very long. All the more reason, therefore, to practice peace along the way.

Should we therefore not work for peace? NO -- we must work for peace in ways that will remove the causes of war and violence and will increase peace along the way. We must practice peace in the situations in which we find ourselves (crowded laundromats and buses, long lines at the produce market, etc) and attempt to build consensus for peaceful resolution of conflicts at any and all levels. YES, write to senators, representatives and government officials. (By the by, you might enjoy Colm McCarty's "I'd Rather Teach Peace.") YES, hold peaceful demonstrations that respect the rights of others. And any efforts along the lines of recycling, buying fair trade coffee, using mugs instead of styrofoam or paper cups, turning the heat down or off, eschewing (as opposed to chewing) meat and practicing courtesy for others at all times couldn't hurt. (Barbara Kingsolver's "Small Wonder" has some good ideas about conserving fuel by not buying products that have to be shipped a long way.)

The protesters I observed on my way from the metro to work that morning (and saw photos of in the newspaper the next day ) were not behaving in ways that promoted or demonstrated a commitment to peace; they demonstrated instead a belief in their right to coerce and pester other people. Blocked traffic seldom increases peace as anyone who's been in traffic jams will testify. It increases tension and irritation, even when it is accidental. When the blocking is deliberate, tempers rise and the potential for physical violence increases. Leaping up and down in an intersection, beating on drums, blowing horns and howling does not increase peace; it is quite unnerving to have to cross the street in the vicinity of such antics, while wondering if these poor confused people might be confused enough to expand their tactics to physical attacks. The impression I received was of people who had not got their way and were throwing tantrums. They were not building consensus for peaceful solutions, they were attempting to disrupt.

" I also ask that you consider the priests and monks who were arrested that day, and consider what the "violence" was that they were doing by blocking streets and the entrance to the Federal Building."

I did not observe these protests but would suggest that if the priests and monks were blocking traffic, they were not choosing the most effective means of practicing peace. People have a right to enter the Federal Building -- or, for that matter, a hospital or clinic where abortions are performed -- on legitimate business. If the clergy and religious were blocking access, then they were violating that right. What could they have done instead? Courteously hand out leaflets, try to engage people entering the building in respectful dialog about the purpose of the protest, picket peacefully, hold pray-ins, as long as they respect the legitimate rights of their fellow human beings. The Dominican tradition of disputatio is a form of debate in which both sides try to increase the common ground between them. There's probably a way to apply that method to protests.

As long as they respect the freedom and rights of others, it is possible for people to practice civil disobedience in a way that can increase peace and promote consensus. Rosa Parks sat down in a part of the bus that the law said was off limits to her. She did not block the door to the bus and prevent her fellow human beings from boarding. Fr. Vitale at St. Boniface's was in a Federal prison camp not that long ago for trespassing at the School of the Americas. Numerous elderly lay and religious women and men have spent time in prison for the same cause. I would be honored to shine their shoes; I couldn't fill them. As long as they respect the rights of others while engaging in their protests, their examples will increase peace, even if they do not succeed in their short term objective.

The protesters elsewhere in the world stopped their countries from participating in the Iraq war.

Did the French government intend to go to war and was it dissuaded by protests that did not respect the rights of others? Sadly, I don't know enough about the intentions of either the French government or the nature of the protests to judge. There were protests. France did not go to war. Was there a causal relationship? I don't know.

Were there protests in the U.K.? There were British troops in Iraq.

Her message raises a variety of interesting questions, which I alluded to earlier. Why is Rosa Parks right but a bunch of priests outside the SF Federal Building wrong? In inquire about these in my very long response. Forgive how long it is: this was very early in the morning.

Thank you for your excellent, well-reasoned response! It's very enjoyable to read.

There appears to be a fuzzy line about civil disobedience in your approval of Rosa Parks which I'm not sure I understand. She did not block the door to the bus, but her refusal to move meant that the bus driver had to stop the route, delay all the passengers, and have her removed by the police. You approve of that, but had she laid on the ground in front of the bus to exactly the same effect, she would fall under your disapproval with others who disrupted traffic and caused aggravation. I don't see how the effect -- the annoyance and increase in hostility that the bus driver and riders experienced -- is any different whether she is seated indoors or standing/lying outdoors. She stubbornly held everyone up and disrupted the mornings of dozens of people! She had to be removed by police! She angered her fellow riders! So why don't you lump her into the same category of people coercing and disrupting others without respect for their rights?

Some clarification on this would help me understand your position. To me, metaphorically, all peaceful protesters were 'on the bus' whether sitting upright on lying before it, whether shouting slogans or quiet.

(My question applies to the trespassing at the School of the Americas, too, which is disruptive and keeps people from being able to go about their (evil) tasks as much as blocking a door would -- a security breach drags such places to a halt. It almost sounds as if the folks blocking our own Federal Building had entered and gone to the counter and refused to move, you would have approved of them, but something about the door itself is forbidden.)

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It's interesting to me that it's the protesters, and not the warmongers, who merit most of the criticism from you. Why is that?

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I have too much respect for the civil rights movement, which achieved many of its goals, to say that occupying a legally racist lunch counter is coercive and negative. Or that a peace march that ties up traffic makes too many enemies. If such actions are enemies of peace to you, then I will agree to disagree with your position. I think they are important, moral, peaceful tools. I also believe they achieved goals that obedience and acceptance of immoral laws had not, and never would.

I think you are, in some ways, arguing for civil obedience, rather than the civil dis obedience that leaders we both admire have advocated. I don't think you can take the "dis" out and have the principle remain the same.

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You didn't see peaceful protests on the news because the corporate media has no interest in promoting peace. They believe sex and violence sell, and their main business is to make money, not to inform. They won't report on your good works, but you'll certainly make the paper if you kill someone. Media reform is an area that the peace movement will be well served by participating in. Making information on peaceful solutions available to everyone will allow them to be implemented, and will publicize alternatives to much glorified war. (This is already effective in the non-corporate press, but does not reach enough people) Publicizing and glorifying violence does not serve us.

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I was under the impression that disputatio involved two parties willing to have a dialogue. When a violent power has the upper hand and refuses to participate in a dialogue, it is useless. There are similar Buddhist traditions which I have much respect for, but which are ineffective when one party sees no advantage in participating. To support such a system, we need a COMMUNITY to support and require it of its members. If you have a way of making our government leaders part of a moral community of nations, I would encourage you to share those suggestions widely. If our government is choosing to be part of a community of arms merchants and bombers, or only willing to see the world as a community when it wants some concession from others, as the current situation appears to be, all of our hopes for peace will be set back. In fact, they have been set back by just such anti-community behavior on the part of our government. The international community was ready to prevent war, and the US had to leave the community to start war.

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Yes, England had massive anti-war protests, and the government didn't listen, and now is crumbling: a lead weapons expert killed himself, senior officials are being forced to step down, and Blair's resignation is being openly demanded by members of his own party. Germany and France had protests, and their governments listened are now more popular and influential. I'm sure there are lessons to be learned there. People better informed than I have discussed the causation issues you raise, and have found positive influence, but I cannot improve upon their original work here.

I completely agree that public assembly-style protests are not enough. I think we are agreeing that there is no one complete solution. Quakers' illegal aid to escaped slaves didn't end slavery; protests didn't end slavery; and even the Emancipation Proclamation didn't end slavery. In my mind, American slavery didn't end until 1964 when additional rights were legally put in place, but even so racism and the aftermath of slavery exist. None of the individual positive steps leading to the end of slavery were a complete solution on their own.

But I differ from your position in that I think being a peaceful person is sufficient . We're back to recycling (or safe soap, or any other small, personal decision at home). Recycling is not sufficient to stop war and injustice. It saves resources, it saves money, it saves energy, and it makes us feel self-satisfied. In those ways, it's nice . But it is not changing the culture of war. It is not limiting the profitability of warmongers. It is not in any way challenging the Bush Administration's might-makes-right doctrine.

I believe many people throughout history have lived peaceful, pious, non-disruptive, environmentally friendly lives, and did so through holocausts, conquests, disasters, and wars. But their personal peace bubbles did not extend to the people in the death camps, or the aboriginal peoples, or the slaves down the street. Making the world .00001% more peaceful is worthy. It is needed. Every incremental step helps. But it doesn't help ENOUGH.

It's time for a bad analogy! Recycling to make the water cleaner is nice, but when someone is drowning in that water, more must be done. You may be satisfied with the water's clarity. The drowning person needs more. Under many belief systems, it is a moral crime to allow someone to drown if you could have intervened to save their lives. Ensuring that the water they drown in is a tiny percentage cleaner than it would have been (thanks to recycling and other eco-conscious domestic decisions) does not meet the moral standard.

I put to you that none of the excellent suggestions you've made are life preservers. And while you may take issue with the lifesaving efforts of others, your criticism saves no lives. The world needs a life preserver right now.

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Because you are full of good ideas, I hope that you can come up with some new approaches for the larger problems at hand.

Approving seated indoor protesters and criticizing standing outdoor protesters won't solve our problems.

Many protesters, whether they met with your approval or not, have already tried the leafleting, the praying, and friendly overtures, and were dissatisfied with the results. What do you propose next? They see someone drowning, and while you're telling them not to throw particular sorts of life preservers or harass the people who threw the victim in, they don't see you offering anything they haven't already thrown. So what will you tell them? Please, please, please, not that recycling will make drowning more comfortable!

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[If you want specific questions: how can we make selling weapons less profitable? How can we make occupation less beneficial for warmongers and scaremongers? How can we keep Bush campaign donors from benefiting from Bush's wars? How can we get our government to promote actual democracy, rather than forbidding Iraq to have elections that might be unfavorable to our interests? It isn't enough to criticize blocking the streets for newspaper coverage. It isn't enough to recycle. Specific solutions are needed for these specific problems. Please consider putting your talents to work in a manner focused on these problems. A solution that is specific enough will allow it to be easily and briefly explained: "We can make weapons sales less profitable by _______ because it eliminates profits through _________." The more direct the solution, the clearer and shorter the explanation.]

What I'm looking for are effective and specific alternatives to protesting, which only works when you have a civil government, or non-specific good deeds, which don't effect the situation at all.

I'm hoping her response is truly applicable.

Our nation is at a very strange place historically, where the 'cold war superpower era' has ended, and 'the lone superpower with cowboy and defense contracting corporations in charge' era has begun. And I don't think the solution to every problem lies in recycling. I'm viewing it as if I'm in a study group working on a quiz, and the completely hypothetical quiz question is:

Your wonderfully sweet Pakistani neighbor has been 'disappeared' by the FBI, leaving her family terribly worried for her condition. The appropriate response is:
(1) recycling,
(2) using environmentally sound dish soap,
(3) marching with a sign,
(4) other____________.

And I know with absolute certainty that 4 is the right answer, and that we should concentrate our energies on working up a list of actions for 4, but another member of the study group is already on to the next question, convinced that 1 or 2 are the best answer in all situations, and unwilling to discuss what goes in that blank.

There's got to be more to this! The Quakers who smuggled escaped slaves out of the South weren't concerned about dish soap. People who went to jail in the non-violent battle against Apartheid in South Africa weren't using all of their energies to focus on being nicer to people in the laundromat. I may not be able to persuade my colleague, but perhaps this discussion can help me focus on what I think the right answer to 4 is.

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Yes, I do have some ideas as to what potential answers to hypothetical situation (4) are. Express sympathy and support to the family (this would include plying them with food, of course); publicize the event to all local newspapers and TV organizations; organize to get legal help for my neighbor; try to network with others in a similar plight; work with organizations who are tracking this sort of abduction by the government, and add this information to their database; start a support action (like a letter writing or representative phone call campaign) to demand justice for my neighbor...

And yes, I have been pondering what peaceful activities I can do to stop warmongers. I'm working up a list, and will work with the discussion group that's forming to see where we can take it.

Something to contemplate: columnist Mark Morford's reflections on the second anniversary of the September 11th tragedy.

Do you remember? The days immediately after 9/11? That rich feeling of global sympathy and sincere concern and this powerful, overarching sense that maybe, just maybe, if we work together and reach out to each other without snide bias or prejudice, we can re-make the world in an entirely new, politically purified, blazingly conscious, peace-seeking vision? No? It's OK. Neither does anyone else.

The article is a reflection (as irreverent as all of his columns) on the choice that was given to us, whether we knew it or not, to respond to tragedy with a headlong rush to peace, or a headlong rush to war, not just nationally but also in our hearts.

Something beautiful: a lovely collection of September 11th, 2001 tributes and memorials from around the world days after that tragedy. It has been reposted to remind us of the love the US received in the aftermath of our loss.

Today is the second anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center, and there are several very cynical comments about how that event has become obscenely politicized. My favorite cynical comments are Mark Fiore's "A Nation Remembers II" (markfiore.com) and John Carroll's 'A Special Speech to the Nation' (SF Gate).

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Today's World Views Column (SF Gate) is even more excellent than usual. The first portion points out that the US isn't the only country that ever suffered on a September 11th, discussing the US-backed overthrow of Allende in Chile. There is then a compilation of both sympathy and concern around the world for the US, which now seems bent on using the terrorist attacks as a pretext for expanding its control by force around the world.

The latest World Opinion Roundup (Washington Post) may be even better. It has more translations from the foreign press, including comments like:

"In the last two years, has the U.S. found more opponents or sympathizers, more friends or enemies, more stability or insecurity? . . . This is what needs to be evaluated by the people of the United States."

"Somehow when Asians or Arabs commit terrorism, that is a crime against humanity. When Americans, Europeans and Israelis bomb, burn and brutalize the colored people, that is a war against terrorism or (as in Iraq) a war of liberation. Such hypocrisy and racism must be condemned."

It is a terrible burden for Americans to be so completely convinced that we are always on the side of GOOD that anything our forces or government does, not matter how bad an atrocity, must be justified and rationalized, no matter how implausibly.

The overthrow of Allende; the training of death squads; the arming of dictators, including providing chemical weapons to Saddam Hussein; - so many sad examples come to mind...

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Speaking of arming dictators, the Project Censored folks have released their latest collection of important news that was ignored or mishandled by the mainstream, corporate media. A great summary is available as The San Francisco Bay Guardian's latest cover story. There's a lot that's important and worth knowing about, but one bit that especially ticked my fancy:

...the U.S. government covertly removed 8,000 of the 11,800 pages of the weapons declaration the Iraqi government had submitted to the United Nations Security Council and the International Atomic Energy Agency.

But the Iraqis released copies of the full report to key media outlets in Europe. It turns out that the missing pages may have contained damning details on 24 U.S.-based corporations, various federal departments and nuclear weapons labs, and several high-ranking members of the Reagan and Bush administrations that, from 1983 until 1990, helped supply Hussein with botulinum toxins, anthrax, gas gangrene bacteria, the makings for nuclear weapons, and associated instruction. Among those implicated: Eastman Kodak, Dupont, Honeywell, Hewlett-Packard, Bechtel, the U.S. Department of Energy and Department of Agriculture, the Livermore, Los Alamos, and Sandia nuclear weapons labs, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfield.

Yes, a lot of it is that good. Yes, you should read the article. If you like it, you should probably also buy the book, which contains additional details on their top stories, plus great essays about media control, fake celebrity news that dominates your local outlets instead of information that's relevant to your life, and more.

I'm going to try really hard to make this the last item of the evening, but there's just too much good stuff out there: this is This Modern World on the false linkages between September 11th attacks and Iraq, plus actual linkages between terrorism suspects and the Saudi government. It's a fascinating and worthwhile compilation. I'll restrain myself to print just one excerpt, from a great article at the Christian Science Monitor

In his prime-time press conference last week, which focused almost solely on Iraq, President Bush mentioned Sept. 11 eight times. He referred to Saddam Hussein many more times than that, often in the same breath with Sept. 11....Polling data show that right after Sept. 11, 2001, when Americans were asked open-ended questions about who was behind the attacks, only 3 percent mentioned Iraq or Hussein. But by January of this year, attitudes had been transformed. In a Knight Ridder poll, 44 percent of Americans reported that either "most" or "some" of the Sept. 11 hijackers were Iraqi citizens. The answer is zero.

Truthout and the Independent present a new article dated today on the US and UK backing down on their WMD claims.

The "current and serious" threat of Iraq's WMD was the reason Tony Blair gave for going to war, but last week the Prime Minister delivered a justification which did not mention the weapons at all. On the same day John Bolton, US Under-Secretary of State for arms control, said that whether Saddam Hussein's regime actually possessed WMD "isn't really the issue".

I'm glad I don't take heart medication, because the threat of popping over this about face would be high. Also on the same page: a revelation that the unaccounted for weapons may be mere bookkeeping glitches.

Ex-inspectors now say, five months after the U.S. invasion, that the notorious "unaccountables" may have been no more than paperwork glitches left behind when Iraq destroyed banned chemical and biological weapons years ago.

Elsewhere on truthout you'll find a Newsweek poll shows a drop of support of Bush's policies in Iraq, and a great speech by Senator Byrd, which I feel compelled to quote a tiny bit from here:

Does it really come as a surprise to anyone that many of our allies are reluctant to commit their own troops to the aftermath of a pre-emptive war, considering how the Administration tried to bully them during our headlong rush to war against Iraq? While the White House was furiously trying to twist arms in Berlin, Paris, Ankara, and Moscow to gain acquiescence to a war in Iraq, millions took to the streets to protest the President's policy toward Iraq.

According to polls released by the Pew Research Center on March 18, 2003, the day before the war began, opposition to a war in Iraq was at 69 percent in Germany, 75 percent in France, 86 percent in Turkey, and 87 percent in Russia. Yet the White House scoffed at this opposition and belittled the need to unify the world in confronting Saddam Hussein. Could it be that our troops are now paying the price for the Administration's bullheaded rush to war without the broad and active support of the international community?

[Feel free to act out raising your hand and desperately trying to get the teacher's attention to answer that one.]

A friend has been forwarding me excerpts from the blog Cal Pundit. Entry I like best so far: Democratic Foreign Policy, a very short list of very big policies that Democrats suggested, Bush rejected, and now Bush is attempting to use.
He has many other good entries in the September archive.

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Another item from the reading of the same friend: a subscriber's only Salon.com article amusingly entitled "Would you like some freedom fries with your crow, Mr. President?" about Bush's belated attempts to drag the UN into Iraq now that things aren't going well.

International ANSWER already has commentary up about Bush's address today. In short: Bush lied, Bush lied some more, and Bush is lying now. A 'Bring the Troops Home' protest is being planned for October 25th in Washington, D.C., which will coincide with the anniversary of the hopelessly misnamed "Patriot Act." Regional rallies are planned for September 25-28 for an end to all occupations, including that of Palestine, whose 2nd intifada has an anniversary that weekend. Follow the links for additional details.

My e-mail exchange with my colleague who considered all San Francisco anti-war protesters on Day X to be violent continues. (Her perception will require considerable discussion, as it's not based on available information. I've canvas(s)ed a few other folks, and they are likewise mystified. If the interfaith prayer service and yoga demonstrations were violent, we aren't using the same definition of violence!) Here is some of the text of my discussion of our exchange on one of my mailing lists:

As an alternative to blocking traffic and chaining oneself to Bechtel HQ, such activities as 'practicing peace,' reducing consumption, and going to the farmer's market were suggested [by my correspondent].

I've been doing those things most of my life, yet I've noticed that wars keep happening anyway. So I want to try a new approach. I'm attaching my last missive in the discussion, which proposes a collaborative project beyond just plain e-mail writing. If you're interested, opt in my sending me a message at home.

---------------[body of the response sent to correspondent follows]

I like ALL of your suggestions!! And I share your values on these activities. I don't own a car; I volunteer in my community; I support organic farmers. But... Did doing these stop the war?

None of my personal good habits stopped the war. I think many of these things benefit us, and benefit those around us. I think they make the world a better place. But I don't think they make war profiteering less profitable. I don't think they keep the poor from being exploited or bombed. I don't think they are enough to preserve our wild places or ensure that we breathe fresh air.

Every day we come to work on public transit and eat our organic lunches, while Bechtel makes millions of dollars in Iraqi oil trust fund money. I let them do it. You let them do it. Our elected representatives let them do it.

Years from now, I'll be explaining this to my niece. "Well, Bechtel made hundreds of billions of dollars in Iraqi oil money, profiting directly from the US' illegal attack on a sovereign nation, while I was eating organic yogurt and cleaning up my local park." And she'll look at me like I'm speaking Hungarian. And then she'll open her textbooks, and read about how we - grown ups like you and me - did nothing but pen a letter to our congressman once or twice and then went back to using environmentally friendly soap on our dishes, disassociating ourselves from the wars that we're funding.

If people are to criticize people who blocked traffic or chained themselves to Bechtel's front doors, forcing the company HQ to close for a day and costing the company hundreds of thousands of dollars in ill-gotten gains and interrupting their self-righteous, pro-war posturing for a day, I think we'll need to come up with something better than environmentally friendly soap, or not wasting food.

The protesters had a direct impact on a company engaging in a crime. You or I shopping at the farmer's market did not.

We are CONSENTING to the way the world is being run. We are CONSENTING to the way our country is being run. We are RESPONSIBLE for the state of the world around us. I respect the little steps, but that's what they are -- little steps. The personal gestures you have described are little steps. This mailing list is just a little step. It is not a solution. If we are satisfied with the little steps, if we stand still to admire the path we've taken, we will never arrive at our destination - a better, just, peaceful world.

I don't want to discourage you. But I want you, and all of us, to think bigger. We cannot afford to be self-satisfied while landmines maim children in Afghanistan and warmongers get rich off the resources of the poor. We're all in this together.

In the spirit of making a bigger step forward and doing it together, I'm going to make a proposal. I'm going to distribute this proposal to the mailing list, and encourage the people on the mailing list to find like minded friends and involve them. My proposal is that we develop a list of strategies that directly impact the war situation in a concrete way, that we involve others to make our efforts more significant, that act upon our ideas to test their efficacy, and that we publicize our effective ideas widely to encourage others to join us. I would be willing to submit the results of our efforts to magazines and on-line journals for publication.

The ideas would have to be original and on-topic: ideas about topics like conservation that we are already familiar with would have to have some unusual and direct application to make them apply. Some of the ideas may involve some effort -- some time to appear at public meetings to promote a resolution, some time and money mailing educational materials to a group willing to support our effort, money to take out an ad in a newspaper contesting misinformation about the war, evenings spent volunteering with a group that's doing effective peace work. But if our ideas are worthwhile, the effort is worth it.

So that was my response, and I'm opening up the options of our mailing list to see what we can come up with.

Protesting works elsewhere, and is a longstanding traditional method of expressing public dissent. I don't think it should be abandoned (although my correspondent notes that the protests didn't stop the war). Nor do I think letter writing (the point of this particular mailing list) should be abandoned: it's a favorite tool of the right wing, because it's simple and it works. But I'd like to brainstorm and work up other options.

I was up until 1 this morning discussion options with S. I spent much of Friday afternoon discussion options with another motivated colleague. We have a few good ideas. It will be worthwhile to discuss our options and see what we come up with.

If you missed it, scathing criticisms from British weapons experts about the infamous WMD dossier are coming out, and they're not pretty. (Washington Post) I like the British understatement so often implied:

But Jones said his staff's concerns were by and large ignored and not reflected in the final draft of the document, in a process he called "very unusual."

I don't think folks here would just limit themselves to "very unusual."

It's a scathing good read.

An average of 10 U.S. troops a day are getting wounded (Washington Post) in the don't-call-it-a-quagmire Iraq occupation. 1,124 soldiers have been wounded since the attack on Iraq began. More than half of those were after 'hostilities' ended May 1st, a triggering of reduced benefits for the soldiers by the Bush Administration. Sadly, there are some disturbing comments about the need for amputations caused by the shrapnel injuries the soldiers are enduring.

The Washington Post also has a feature called Faces of the Fallen, a multimedia feature of U.S. troops who died in Iraq. Just when you're trying to adjust to the large number of tiny faces on the screen, I realized that I was only look at one of three pages of tiny faces. Oh...

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In the face of this kind of suffering of U.S. troops, shouldn't all the folks that were pro-war being DOING something for them? Our government is already doing something -- that is, cutting benefits. But perhaps something more supportive would be, oh say, signing up to relieve all those National Guards soldiers who are stationed in Iraq, so they can return to their families?

Oooh, too good not to quote: an excerpt from Stan's blog:

Slogan of the day: seen outside Little America during Ashcroft's visit - "We're one moustache away from Hitler." Displayed beneath picture of Pres. Shrub.

After circulating an enthusiastic endorsement of a great locally made protest documentary among the folks on my activist mailing list, I received a message that I didn't expect.

The attack on San Francisco's financial district puzzled me. Why target a city many of whose people opposed the war? I imagined Mr. Bush enjoying a hearty chuckle at our expense -- if he paid any attention to it at all. I felt at the time -- and still feel -- that anyone who came into SF that day for the express purpose of making life difficult for San Franciscans ought to put in some time cleaning Muni trains, picking up trash on public streets and planting flowers & trees in low income neighborhoods. I wonder if they had bothered to vote in the last election? Not as much fun as kicking up a rumpus in the streets, of course, but in the long run, probably more useful.

I was rather mystified: attack? What attack? Sure, there were protesters blocking traffic in downtown San Francisco the day after the bombing of Iraq started, and massive demonstrations against the government's attack on Iraq and its people, but the only complaint I heard from anyone I knew personally was from an attorney who was held up in traffic half an hour. Half an hour! That's ordinary traffic delays for around here. (SF is too dense for sensible folks to drive to, for the most part.) There was some property damage, but not much, and only at a few buildings of either government offices or war profiteers. "Attack" is really a strong word for traffic disruption, considering that our country was bombing another country at the cost of thousands of civilian lives. But I've heard these kinds of complaints before. So I responded:

My protest on Day X was to stay home, so I can't really speak for the protesters who came downtown. However, the folks who participated in the major civil rights protests of the 1960s faced exactly the same criticisms: that they were alienating their allies, and failing to inconvenience only those who had done them wrong. But the civil rights protests both generated publicity for a good cause, and raised the consciousness of those who were consenting to the status quo. I think that both of those purposes are legitimate. I think those same methods and purposes were also legitimate for the anti-war protests.

Also, the only real disturbance they caused was traffic disruption. Which should have been a completely reasonable price to pay in exchange for an end to the war. Protesters all over the world used the same tactics, and their governments listened. The fact that protesters here weren't successful, while the folks in Barcelona, Sydney, Berlin, and other places were, doesn't mean it wasn't worth trying.

In a day when you literally can't buy advertising on television for anti-war messages (as MoveOn tried to do, and was refused by every major network), I'm not sure what other options were available to show that there was dissent in this country. After the initial Day X protests in downtown SF, protesters did focus their efforts on the HQs of the war profiteers, so there were others who shared your concern about the protests not sending a message to the right people. They changed their approach. (Though you may not have read about that, because protests that don't disrupt traffic aren't newsworthy! United we stand!)

The peace movement is looking for ways to stop both the doctrine of might-makes-right and the war profiteering. They're open to suggestion. (Voting alone isn't enough - too many of our elected officials surrendered their war powers to Bush, and then signed the Patriot Act!) If you know a way to stop the killing and war-profiteering, speak up!

I think that protesting, voting, and writing to government representatives are all part of a package to get change. But we need more. We especially need media reform, so people can make informed choices and have an outlet for their opinions.

Meanwhile, the war profiteers are taking money from the Iraqi people's accounts for their work in Iraq, which the Iraqi people have had little say in. Only the politicians in the Bush Administration who received fat donations from the profiteers and granted them no-bid contracts are able to decide what the future democracy of Iraq needs. Which isn't the best start.

And every day, as the war profiteers rake in Iraqi oil money, we... go to work. Eat meals. Live our lives. Silently accept the status quo. Really, stopping traffic now and then to express the injustice of the situation doesn't seem very contemptible.

Remember when U.S. forces opened tank fire on the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, the designated hotel for all non-embedded journalists? The Pentagon, though unable to keep its stories straight about how the hotel came under fire, has investigated itself and found itself not at fault for the deaths of two journalists and injuries to many others.

Act surprised.

A factual summary by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ.org) notes the many inconsistencies in the Pentagon's story, and observes (without the sort of rude tone I would be tempted to use) that the Pentagon and just about everyone else knew that hotel was filled with journalists, some of whom were filming from their balconies immediately before the attack, providing evidence that the gun battle the military claimed to be participating in was occurring at the time the tank fired, and that no gunfire was coming from the hotel.

In a tribute to award-winning Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana, who was killed this week in broad daylight by U.S. troops (Washington Post), the US government's self-serving conclusion is discussed:

Mazen's death came just days after a U.S. military inquiry exonerated a tank crew for firing on a Baghdad hotel housing journalists on April 8, killing a Ukrainian-born Reuters cameraman and a Spanish cameraman. The investigation concluded the tank crew had reason to believe hostile forces were using the building to direct fire on the Americans.

That is little comfort to the families of those killed. They don't believe the Pentagon's version. Many of the 100 journalists in the hotel that day deny the tank crew came under any fire.

(Additional links to articles, including a short compilation of stories on Dana's death can be found at Urbana-Champain Indymedia.)

God told me to strike at al-Qeada and I struck them, and then He instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me, I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them.

-George Bush, during Middle East Peace Negotiations (more at The First Stone)

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It's the end of another week, and another chance to take stock of the world.

Before you become too depressed, there are some good things to consider. Now that we're moving into fall, you should take stock of your involvement in your community and try to decide whether or not you're satisfied with your actions. Whether you feel informed. Whether you are volunteering enough. Whether you are making your views heard. Whether you will look back on this very eventful time in history and wish you were more engaged.

Take a moment to try to think back and remember, before the media bombarded you with corporate idealism, as to what YOU think the world should be like. And then figure out how you can make that image real.

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As the World Trade Organization and the September 11th memorials overlap, it's time to think, act, and plan a way to make the world a better place. Sweatshops, undermined environmental regulations, exploitation, and exported jobs overseas aren't things that serve any of us but the 'captains of industry'/Enrons/WorldComs.

There is a host of activities going forward during "A WEEK FOR PEACE & GLOBAL JUSTICE SEPTEMBER 6-13, 2003" including candle light vigils, anti-exploitation/polluter/war profiteer protests, and more. Additional information is at Act Against War dot Org.

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The San Francisco Video Activists' Network is screening its brilliant film, We Interrupt This Empire, a documentary about the Bay Area protests against and media coverage of the early days of the invasion of Iraq.

I saw it on Thursday at the Roxie Cinema, after many days of obsessively watching the Quicktime trailer over and over again. (As an added bonus, the screening I attended was a benefit screening for Food First and UNORCA, the latter an organization sponsoring buses to bring Mexican farmers/indigenous workers to protest the WTO's ministerial meeting in Cancun (Indymedia Mexico City/Chiapas) and the adverse impact they are already feeling from prior trade negotiations.)

It's worth seeing. The inanity and bias of the media; police violence; the thrill and humor of the protests; police cars with the Anarchy symbol spray painted on them; ranting, misinformed pro-war protesters... It is documented with wit AND good editing!

The documentary is running with a couple of shorts, including a hysterical subtitled sendup of scenes from Lord of the Rings.

SEE IT.

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Follow the demonstrations against the WTO in Cancun at Espora.org (an Indymedia host site).

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Stay Informed: Don't sedate yourself with network television news! For a completely reasonable price you could subscribe to any of the fabulous 'alternative' (meaning non-corporate) news magazines that grace our better newsstands.

The September 1st/8th issue of The Nation is excellent, and not just because hysterical movie poster cover about the California recall election debacle. It also has great articles on how the Bush Administration is censoring health and science information (about AIDS prevention, global warming, the air quality in New York after September 11th, and more); how the US lags behind other nations in recognizing gay unions; McGovern baiting (including some great quotes by McGovern, who notes that the change his candidacy stood for went forward even though he lost); dirty dealing in the Phillipines by the government with regard to 'terrorism,' and some darned good essays on photography, among other things.

The September 1st issue of In These Times includes a detailed list of Bush's lies about the war; an article on how even Republicans object to the so-called Patriot Act; and a rather spooky article about "Psyops," or how public relations firms stage international news events to manipulate the public. *shudder*

There are MANY great news sources: these just happen to be the two paper publications I have in front of me at the moment. Non-corporate news magazines don't seem determined to persuade me to buy wasteful objects, don't have ads suggesting that my life will be perfect if I change floor waxes or make my spouse's shirts whiter; and they actually contain NEWS about people, including working class people and others who are not completely aligned with corporate interests. Such publications can provide a completely different, authentic view of the world when compared to the 'store openings and celebrity gossip are news' networks. Try one! Try two! Support as many as you can!

In the midst of Bush's month-long AWOL from his duties as president during wartime (and crises like the worst blackout in U.S. history), the Department of Defense announced last week it intended to cut the pay of the 148,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and the 9,000 still in Afghanistan. These troops were to receive increases in imminent danger pay (from $150 to $225 a month) and family separation allowance (from $100 to $250).

Read the rest of Bisbort's editorial at Truthout.org.

Torture is coming up again, now in an article originally published in Newsweek, of all places.

First of all, as a Lebanese torturer—er, interrogator—of my acquaintance once told me, the real challenge comes if someone is telling the truth: “How do you know?” And what if that truth doesn’t fit with what you really want to hear? ...What if, for instance, there really are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq because they really were destroyed to keep United Nations inspectors from finding them? The United States now has captured 37 of the 55 most-wanted Iraqis in the famous pack of cards. That’s what all of them are saying, and lesser-known scientists have told the same story. Yet still the WMD beat goes on.

Read the entire article at Truthout.org. If there's anything the US doesn't need, it's to further dirty its hands with new sources of unreliable intelligence tortured out of captives who will say anything to stop the torture...

The venerable Iraqometer has undergone an update. The war financial cost meter now skips all those pesky decimal places and goes straight to 'billions'; there is now a purple heart to designate wounded US soldiers, as well as a separate statistic for the number of troops currently in Iraq; and, painfully, there is a meter that measures how many days it has been since there has been an American killed.

Ouch.

Of course, as it has, the WMD meter reads zero.

A big, glaring zero.

[S asked me today if I thought a WMD or two might conveniently appear immediately prior to the 2004 election. Golly. By then, I don't think anyone (aside from the 30% or so of Americans who already think WMDs were found) would think the Bush Administration didn't fly it in or build it on the spot. But American politics work in unusual and inexplicable ways. I know this, because I live in California, where an action movie actor is running for Governor during a bitter recall battle lead by a party that couldn't manage to get a single, state-wide seat in the last election. Because losing once hurt so badly, they need to do it again? Or because they REALLY want to inherit the woeful finances of a state tapped out by an energy scam/dot com bust/war economy? Inexplicable ways, I tell you...]

Much heralded by the Democratic Party's mailing list, The Washington Post's Weapons of Mass Destruction Feature provides a lovely compilation of the entire, can't find 'em, doubt-ridden, WMD saga.

A good essay to read: Beware the bluewash: The UN must not let itself be used as a dustbin for failed American adventures, by George Monbiot (Guardian UK). The premise: that if the U.S. can unload the mess it's made onto others, the Bush Administration can wash it's hands and get back to campaigning to keep the presidency in 2004.

Interesting aside that I hadn't considered: with the occupation raging, the US can't yet invade anyone else. And to think I've been seeing the occupation so negatively. :-/

"My son signed up to defend the Constitution.... This war has nothing to do with the Constitution."
-- Susan Schuman, mother of a Massachusetts National Guard soldier stationed in Iraq

Military families have started an organization called the Bring Them Home Now Campaign. They have a great links page, and updates (complete with profanity) about how no one signed up for occupation.

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A new site to monitor: Occupation Watch.org.

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Iraqbodycount.net has a new editorial tabulating Iraqi civilian injuries from a review of over 300 sources.

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"We've adopted a new strategy for a new kind of war. We will not wait for known enemies to strike us again. We will strike them in their camps or caves or wherever they hide, before they hit more of our cities and kill more of our citizens.'' -- President Bush, in this New York Times article.

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Maureen Dowd summarizes the Bush Administration rhetoric on how well things are going:"Yep, we've got 'em right where we want 'em. We've brought the fight to their turf, they're swarming into Iraq and blowing up our troops and other Westerners every day, and that's just where we want to be." (Common Dreams/NYT) If this is what the plan was...

Also of import: Naomi Klein's report on how governments are using the War on Terror to kill dissidents, union members, and anyone who is inconvenient. (Common Dreams) The first time this came up, there were only a few countries taking the initiative to pretend that human rights only exist when they say so: now many nations are on the bandwagon.

"You have to be willing to go on the offensive against terrorism - kill them before they kill you." - Paul Bremer, US Administrator for Iraq (BBC)

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Between long days at work and a lovely backpacking trip, I've been away from occupation news for a while. It doesn't appear much has changed, so it's hard to know where to begin. It's especially difficult because of the American media system, in which anything that isn't deemed one of the top stories abruptly ceases to exist. (One day the big fire up at Glacier National Park is on the front page, the next day it disappears completely, the next day it's back... Who can tell if it's burning in between?) I think, from what I've read so far since my return, that I can safely state the following things that have not changed in my absence:

The U.S. doesn't appear to be safer from terrorism.

The rest of the world doesn't appear to be safer from terrorism.

The Iraqi people don't have democracy.

American troops are still being killed.

Violent overthrow of a regime following by occupation is not being questioned as a technique for making the US and the world safer from terrorism, spreading democracy, or keeping US troops safe.

The false choice of 'kill or be killed' is still being promoted, even when our troops must travel half way around the world to a country that hadn't threatened us, leaving them in a situation where many are likely to be killed.

It's not that I was expecting a serious re-examination of tactics by the Bush Administration in my absence. Though it would have been a very pleasant surprise.

[I'm recovering from a weeklong backpacking trip. I'll publish once I'm re-assimilated into my usual, hectic lifestyle.]

Judge, jury, and executioner: while it isn't yet illegal to own or sell weapons in Iraq, unloading weapons from a car is now punishable by death in Tikrit (BBC), where U.S. "soldiers spotted the men unloading weapons and bomb making equipment from a car and shot them - no questions asked."

A military spokesman said that anyone who picks up a weapon becomes a "combatant."

S heard about this from a television blaring near where he was working, and was amazed at how shooting people who were unloading a car was completely accepted by the television reporter covering the story.

The reporter later asked, 'How can you tell the good guys from the bad guys,' which tells you that the black and white thinking of the Bush Administration has been all too widely accepted. S reported that there are photographs of various 'wanted' people in Iraq and our soldiers are under orders to shoot them on sight. No 'innocent until proven guilty' no 'fair and fast trial,' just 'kill 'em and let God sort 'em out.'

Public executions without trial will NOT lead to democracy, or love of those of us who claim to believe in justice.

Mainstream media? Yoo hoo? Are you awake?

The Bush Administration has granted the oil industry sweeping immunity from lawsuits in Iraq, regardless of human rights or environmental damage they may do. (Indymedia) Executive Order 13303 (link provided in article) gives the oil industry Bush donors working there free range. "Like the recently reported U.S. corporate mobile phone monopoly being instituted in Iraq, Executive Order 13303 is yet another example of corporate colonization and a U.S. regime gone out of control."

Additional information is available at Earthrights.org and Corporate Watch, including a thorough article containing these excerpts:

"The two public interest organizations charged that President Bush far overreached a May 22, 2003, United Nations resolution that was designed to protect Iraqi oil revenues for humanitarian purposes when he signed an executive order that could place U.S. corporations above the law for any activities "related to" Iraqi oil, either in Iraq or domestically. Bush signed Executive Order 13303 the same day that the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1483, which sets up a development fund, from Iraqi oil revenues, for "humanitarian purposes."

"This order reveals the true motivation for the present occupation: absolute power for U.S. corporate interests over Iraqi oil," said IPS Senior Researcher Jim Vallette. "This is the smoking gun that proves the Bush administration always intended to free corporate investments, not the Iraqi people."

An interesting and somewhat unique development: the Bush Administration has granted sovereign immunity to Iraq for crimes perpetrated during the Hussein regime (from Law.com - a subscription may be required to read this). As cases awarding massive judgments to U.S. soldiers who were detained in Iraq as prisoners of war during Gulf War I were zipping along in American courts (without an Iraqi defense), if you didn't know it. But now any payments would come from the current regime, that is to say, the U.S. regime, and that's not acceptable.

It would be great if people wouldn't be held responsible for the obligations of their evil rulers if they opposed them, but I don't think this reasoning will apply to other nations. If it did, many nations suffering under enormous international debt would have their debts forgiven, because their corrupt rulers made off with huge international loans that the people (now obligated to pay them back) never benefitted from.

An item I should have included earlier: the U.S. Justice Department's internal investigation shows a variety of civil rights violations perpetrated against Arabs and Muslims. (SFGate) Parts of it are scary, including substantiated comments from a doctor telling a detainee that if he were in charge, he'd execute all of the people rounded up, whom he apparently considered guilty through some sort of collective ethinic/religious association. *shudder*

Some quotes from Traveling Solider.org:

"...I saw people taking pictures of dead people. I thought: That's disgusting. I asked my tank commander, 'Why are you doing that?' He said, 'If my son says he wants to join the Army, I'll show him this [photograph] and tell him this is what the Army does.' " ----

"Some of the people I killed who I didn't know if they were innocent or not. That won't leave me." - Sgt. 1st Class ---.

[The quotes are attributed at the website.] Some of the other quotes are more graphic in the detail of what the soldier are having to live with, including throwing old women from their homes, facing dead children, and complaints about needless deaths caused by the language barrier.

War is still hell.

Gee, Arlene, you sure do report a lot of bad news about the situation in Iraq.

Well, yes. There's a lot of bad news to report, though I notice it's slipped from the front pages of the papers. And the thing that bothers me most, I suppose, is that all this bad news seems... unnecessary.

Are you suggesting that there's an alternative? What would you do differently if you were occupying Iraq?

I guess that's the thing: I would NOT be occupying Iraq if I were a superpower. It's been done before, and it didn't work well that time, either: the colonial British did it, forced people to form a country who didn't have much in common, arbitrarily drew some borders, and mucked things up badly enough that the aftermath is still being felt today.

There is no 'undo' button for colonialism, or for war, or for occupation. These things create aftermaths that simmer for decades.

It's very difficult to create a just society from unjust beginnings.

Okay, specifically, what would you have done differently in the past few decades?

Gosh. If I were President Reagan, I wouldn't have sold Hussein chemical weapons. I wouldn't have extended his credit after learning that he gassed people within his borders. I probably wouldn't have allowed U.S. companies to sell weapons to both sides in the Iran-Iraq war.

If I were President Bush I and President Clinton, I probably wouldn't have been so chummy with Hussein that he thought the U.S. was winking at him when he invaded Kuwait. Changing that and providing a stern warning might have prevented full-scale war right there. If the U.S. chose to intervene on Kuwait's behalf, I probably would have insisted that Kuwait clean up its abysmal human rights record, since the idea of battling one despot for the freedom of another group of despots doesn't seem like a good investment of U.S. lives.

But some of my ideas are so humane that I probably wouldn't have done well in politics as any of those men anyway. I don't really believe that Americans should put dinner on the table by selling landmines to poor countries, often subsidized with American tax money, that blow up children. I would promote democracy through development assistance with other countries that invovled nutrition and medical programs, including scholarships for medical students that want to be doctors who are willing to serve both underserved communities in the U.S. and underserved communities abroad. I would be reluctant to form alliances with non-democracies, countries with poor human rights records, places without freedom of the press or of religion. I would want our country to enjoy a truly high standard of living, not based on how many TVs and VCRs and cars each home has, but based on how many children have enough to eat at night and how many people have health and medical care, while attempting to ensure that all people who work hard really do have a chance to earn rewards, rather than watch their retirement savings stolen by corporate pirates.

See what I mean? Too humane. Insufficiently oil-driven. Too... friendly. I believe in punishing despots and invaders -- I do -- and I believe in doing it through a strong body of international law, such as the International Criminal Court. If evil deeds go unpunished, it throws societies out of wack and sets the stage for future disputes. People who feel justice has been done are less likely to hold grudges. Yet our current policies, and the policies of other former colonial powers, just assumes that one decree that a dispute is over is enough, and that everyone can go about their business...

So many things could be better. So very many things. And if we forget that, we'll just keep doing the same stupid things our countries have been doing for years, and never learn, never get better, never really live in peace and prosperity without exploiting or killing or cheating. I think we could do so much better. And that's why this whole war and occupation are so discouraging. A better future -- a better PRESENT -- is possible. But it seems just out of reach.

In life, you can learn a lot of things accidently, by happenstance. You can learn from your mistakes (or not). But sometimes, you have to go out of your way to avoid learning something.

The U.S. is going out of its way not to learn how many civilians have died in Iraq, either during the war, or during the occupation by U.S. forces.

That's very odd to me.

As the growing number of civilian deaths in Iraq increases resentment against U.S. forces, surely there is something to be learned? (SF Gate) Something other than, 'the life of an occupied people is cheap,' which is something we already knew, sadly.

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After an incident in Khaldiyah where resentment of the troops resulted in a mob torching the mayor's office, U.S. troops withdrew without making a positive impression. (Washington Post) One local said that it was not sympathy for the ousted regime but outrage that the soldiers shot teenagers and blew up shopfronts during their visit that upset the crowd.

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How to know you've lowered your standards for success: when the military announces they've gone two whole days without an American casualty. (Washington Post)

Hussein, Iraq's evil dictator, used to drag people out of their homes late in the night, and hold them in one of his prisons without charging them or letting their families know what has become of them.

The United States, Iraq's aspiring liberator, is now dragging people out of their homes late in the night, and holding them in one of Saddam Hussein's prisons without charging them or letting their families know what has become of them. (SF Gate) No, really. This is supposed to be a recipe for success and appreciation. From the same article:

According to rights groups, none of several thousand detainees being held at 18 U.S. military jails throughout Iraq has been allowed to see a lawyer or meet with relatives, and none has yet been charged with a crime or brought to trial. They have essentially fallen into a black hole.

In their infinite wisdom, US forces even detained the President of Iraq's Red Crescent Society (the sibling organization of our Red Cross) for several hours, tied him up, and refused to provide him with water.

The U.S. is also trying to set up its own court system to try whoever it wants to try for whatever crimes it feels like charging, dishing out whatever punishments it feels like dishing. To make things look legitimate.

Don't we MAKE FUN of countries that pull this kind of joke on people?

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Iraqis accuse American troops of hysteria in their violent efforts to find Hussein and his supporters.(BBC) (This article also notes that an Al-Jazeera reporter was captured and his tape confiscated after he filmed U.S. troops shooting at a civilian vehicle, but he has now been released -- without his videotape.)

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Task Force 20 raided a villa in the belief, it is reported, that perhaps Saddam's youngest son Ali or even the former president himself was sheltering there. They found nothing and made no arrests, but troops guarding the scene shot and killed five people.

(From the BBC)

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Interesting quote of the moment from an editorial from truthout.org:

Well, if we're going to talk about aiding the enemy: By cooking intelligence to promote a war that wasn't urgent, the administration has squandered our military strength. This provides a lot of aid and comfort to Osama bin Laden - who really did attack America - and Kim Jong Il - who really is building nukes.

I do find it interesting that many people who claimed to be concerned for the safety of those of us in the U.S. have NO PROBLEM with the idea of unguarded nuclear facilities being looted in Iraq, no problem with the idea that our intelligence reports to the president are either wildly inaccurate or wildly misused, no problem with the idea that weapons the administration claims exists are nowhere to be found, yet no one seems to be looking for them... Though there's no point in looking for weapons you KNOW don't exist... Which means...

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There's lots more great stuff to read at truthout.org, as always.

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Not to bring up our LAST wildly unsucessful attempt at saving a country from it's wicked rulers and then improving the citizens' lives, but things still aren't going well in Afghanistan. (Washington Post) In fact, Taliban 'guerrillas' are "roaming around freely" in public quite a bit, and threatening people in ways that undermine the country's stability. (truthout.org)

Wouldn't it be nice to get some practice at helping a country and leaving people much better off before we try it again elsewhere?

The feeding frenzy over the Defense Department's ill-conceived notion of letting people invest in terrorism futures was pretty entertaining today. (SF Gate). The idea of gambling against and for various unpleasant events happening, and using the investment patterns to predict or prevent terrorism, was too much even for Republicans, whose very harsh comments got heavy play today.

The afternoon economics shows didn't seem too surprised by the idea, having already decided that the stock market's wisdom is a great thing. However, one consultant did voice the idea that, even if you believe that wise investors can give a good indication of when terrorism would occur, the fact that the Pentagon would be using that information to prevent terrorism would keep investors from making any money... And I kept waiting for the punch line. And waiting. And waiting.

No, Poindexter is not enough of a punch line on his own.

Quote of the day:

"Can we be sure that terrorism and weapons of mass destruction will join together? Let us say one thing: If we are wrong, we will have destroyed a threat that at its least is responsible for inhuman carnage and suffering. That is something I am confident history will forgive." -Tony Blair, July 17, 2003 (Washington Post)

My my.

As S. asked when I read him this quote, "So do they think that the fact Hussein was a tyrant would have been enough to bring our countries into war?"

Obviously not.

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"Even if there were no weapons of mass destruction, we removed the tyrant from Iraq." -- Tony Blair. (spiegel.de)


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Do you remember the principal of American justice, that one is innocent until proven guilty? Bush doesn't.

QUESTION: Do you have concerns that they'll get justice, the people detained there?

BUSH: "No, the only thing I know for certain is that these are bad people.

...

QUESTION: Mr. President, do you realize that many people hearing you say that we know these are bad people in Guantanamo Bay will merely fuel their doubts that the United States regards them as innocent until proven guilty and [due] a fair, free and open trial?

BUSH: Let me just say, these were illegal combatants. They were picked up off the battlefield aiding and abetting the Taliban. I'm not trying to try them in front of your cameras or in your newspaper. (CNN)

Of course, many of the so-called 'illegal combatants' were actually picked up in Pakistan, far from any battlefield, going about their daily business. And some of the 'illegal combatants' are just 13 years old. Some 'illegal combatants' were 70 years old (who were released -- there may be others still in custody of that age).

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Heard about the suicide attempts by these illegal combatants recently? (unknownnews.com). I didn't think so.

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There is skepticism, disgust, and celebration over the deaths of Hussein's sons on a comment board(BBC). Some, especially Americans, hail their killings; others ask why they couldn't have been arrested and tried; others doubt that they are Hussein's sons at all.


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I hope I am not the only one who sees something wrong with this title: "Stocks Rise on Earns, Saddam Sons' Deaths" (Yahoo!/Reuters).

I forgot to add this summary of Darn good intelligence and the Bush Administration's many inconsistencies in defending its decision to emphasize Iraq's nuclear ambitions. (Washington Post) For those of you who haven't heard enough about those 16 words.

... senior administration officials acknowledged over the weekend that Tenet argued personally to White House officials, including deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley, that the allegation should not be used in the October speech, four months before the State of the Union address.

[I still have a hard time blaming other countries for having nuclear ambitions. I mean, WE the U.S. did, right? And every country that gets them is suddenly treated with considerably more respect from us, right? Knowing that, it's hard to take our government's many "do as we say, not as we do" lectures to other countries seriously. If the U.S. won't sign a landmine treaty or destroy its anthrax collection or stop using radioactive materials in battle, why should anyone else? (There are reasons, of course, but they fail to be as convincing as they could if the U.S. had some sort of moral authority in such matters.)]

But back on topic: Bush Aide Steven Hadley is now taking the blame for the discredited uranium assertion (Yahoo! news).

...deputy national security adviser, said he should have deleted the reference from the January speech because the CIA had asked him to remove similar language from an October speech by the president... He said he had failed to recall the CIA objections, which were included in two memos and a telephone conversation with Tenet in the days before Bush outlined his case against Iraq in an Oct. 7, 2002 speech in Cincinnati.

Hadley said the CIA memos which had been sent to him were found over the weekend. White House officials had previously said they had not been informed of CIA doubts over the claim.

How many people will the Administration offer up as sacrifice? Stay tuned!

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Dr. David Kelly, who had spoken to the BBC about the UK's case for war, was found dead on July 20th (BBC) with a slashed wrist and a package of pain killers. He had admitted to having had an 'unauthorized' conversation with the BBC, who had refused to name sources for stories that were damaging to the government.

He's the first 'fall guy' to turn up dead over the WMD issue.

Perhaps I shouldn't say first. It implies too much. Hmmm.

While the Blair government has accused the BBC of improprieties, the BBC apparently has a tape recording of Mr. Kelly making statements damaging to the Blair government (Guardian UK).

Add this to your "Why do they hate us?" file: a photo of a U.S. soldier drinking Coke and watching over Iraqi prisoners with bags tied over their heads (SFGate.

For your "Why does Turkey hate us?" file: a discussion of how the U.S. interrogated Turkish soldiers for 60 hours, which has caused a souring of relations with Turkey.(BBC)

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This is only marginally on-topic, but the special 'Land of The Free' issue of the Stranger. No, it's not about the U.S. -- "It's America's Independence Day, and to celebrate, we're dedicating this issue to the greatest, most freedom-filled nation on Earth: Canada!" The essays associated with the issue, some of which are pure humor, others opinion, point out some differences about our nations that have influenced our differing paths, including our differences over attacking Iraq.

I especially find interesting the observation that the U.S. has formed a national religion, making things such as the flag sacred, which is apparently unfathomable in Canada. They also very strictly believe in the separation between church and state, and their leaders never pray in public.

Wow.

This issue also includes articles with titles like, "Canada's Biggest Idiots Are Your Biggest Stars"

For those of you who haven't reread Orwell lately

The always excellent This Modern World excerpts a report by a man who was interrogated by the FBI for reading an anti-Fox-news editorial in his local cafe (atlanta.creativeloafing.com). Seriously.

HE WAS READING IN A CAFE WHILE GETTING HIS COFFEE. Apparently, some of his fellow coffee drinkers are freaks, but that doesn't excuse this.

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Also featured in TMW, a link to the blog Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, which, in turn, has references to many other good blogs.

Hey, this Internet thing is becoming useful after all!

The Democratic National Committee has a new game on their website: George W. Bush Credibility Twister. Ouch!

I’ve been coming up with flawed analogies, comparing certain authorities occupying the White House with abusive husbands/fathers. It may be wrong of me to do so. But it seems like all the relatives keep trying to get him into group counseling at the UN, but he’s too convinced that everyone else’s concerns are too petty to be bothered with. He oversimplifies so that everything that benefits him is good, and anything that doesn’t is evil. He tries to make his immediate family feel frightened to justify violence against others who have not previously posed any threat. He is offended whenever his authority is questioned, even when he’s wrong. He tries to dominate his country/family through fear (and considering the Patriot Act, it’s working). He won’t admit to making mistakes: if his actions harm the innocent, he blames others for ‘making’ him do it. (Hussein ‘forcing’ us to bomb Iraqi civilians being a sadly recurring example.) Some writers have remarked that Bush treats Congress like an unwanted stepchild (prospect.org). But I’ll stray from this theme and just talk about his promotion of fear in the American people.

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The idea of Bush ruling us through fear, an idea usually used in discussions about nasty and oppressive foreign dictators, is increasingly common in web searches. The difference may be that, instead of merely making us fear HIM, he’s attempting to make us fear everyone BUT him.

A short Nation article analyzing Bush’s speeches relative to those of other presidents (truthout.org)(thanks, D!) talks about how Bush is trying to make the U.S. feel helpless, fearful, and dependent upon him.

To create a dependency dynamic between him and the electorate, Bush describes the nation as being in a perpetual state of crisis and then attempts to convince the electorate that it is powerless and that he is the only one with the strength to deal with it. He attempts to persuade people they must transfer power to him….

John Brady Kiesling’s resignation letter over Bush’s Iraq policy asked if oderint dum metuant (more or less, ‘they can hate so long as they fear [us]’), which is directed at those we are, in turn, supposed to be afraid of, and acting in preventative self defense (!!) against. Other writers have noted that fear is close enough to respect for this Administration (pigdog.org).

This can’t lead anywhere good.

The examples of previous presidents in the Nation article dwelling on the strength of the American people to overcome problems together, rather than on our immense vulnerability and helplessness, is striking.

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My favorite Get Your War On cartoon about Iraq (mnftiu.com) is about how the Iraqi people “ought to be the freest ****ing people on the face of the earth. They better be freeer than me. They better be so ****ing free they can fly.” It goes on to insist on a permanent, multi-mile long buffet line for the children of Iraq.

I have to admit that I suspect the multi-mile buffet line would go over better than the various showings of force (BBC) that U.S. and British forces have made in Iraq. The UK also made showings of force when they occuped Iraq and invented its borders to their liking years ago, and that didn't exactly turn out very well, did it? (A colleague noted that the British seem keen to repeat their past colonial mistakes, not admitting that part of the reason we're in our current situation is because of their meddling in the region previously...)

Not surprisingly, the Bush Administration and Pentagon do not like criticism they've heard from soldiers speaking to the press. So, many of those soldiers are being reprimanded by the Pentagon.(SFGate.com)

"It was the end of the world," said one officer Thursday. "It went all the way up to President Bush and back down again on top of us. At least six of us here will lose our careers."

The article goes on to note that there is the usual, recently established double standard: you have plenty of freedom to say that things are great, but no freedom to say that the Bush Administration or its policies are NOT great.

While you may be thinking, sure, but they have up their rights to have opinions when they joined the military and agreed to, um, well, fight for our right to freedom of speech, keep in mind the same speech double standard is being used against civilians. Want to be part of a rally at the airport for the arrival of Bush? You'd better be pro-Bush, or you're not allowed to speak freely, as this protester (Refuse & Resist) and others learned. Pro-Bush views can be expressed in the airport; anti-Bush views cannot.

Hmmm.

(This reminds me of the item I published earlier about how the same folks who said terrible things about Clinton think that criticizing the current president is treason. Oh, to hold them to their own standards!!)

Less than $200 million of reconstruction projects have been completed in Afghanistan (theworld.org), compared with $15 BILLION in estimated need. Western nations aren't living up to their rebuilding committments. The locals were expecting to be better off after supporting the effort to throw out the Taliban. They aren't yet, and are wondering if the promised
improvements in other aspects of their lives will ever come...

Not to bring up that pesky PREVIOUS, yesterday's news war, but the U.S. Administration's complete failure to succeed at 'nation building' there doesn't bode so well for the war-of-the-week nation.

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Spin, spin, spin! British official John Sawyers claims that the shortages now plaguing Iraq are a result of improved democracy!! (theworld.org - wma file). No, really. His spin on this is that Baghdad was hoarding power unfairly so they had a constant supply, while other areas suffered shortages, so Baghdad's shortages are now more fair, because everyone has interrupted service.

When I think of democracy and fairness, I think of widespread shortages, don't you?

His explanation for water shortages adds classism: he implies that reporters are speaking with 'privileged' people who are accustomed to a regular water supply, and so they aren't representative. What a way to deflect a question!

How dare Iraqis of any class want CLEAN WATER from their liberators! (!?!)

I'm changing the title of this blog from "War is more than the absence of peace" back to an earlier title, "Peace is more than the absence of war." Not that we are in peace time -- there are many conflicts raging around the world, even if they aren't raging just next door. But that doesn't mean we won't all ultimately be effected. Peace and war are often regional in obvious scope, but much wider in their subtle, sadder scopes.

The title switch seems appropriate in the aftermath of the premature declaration of war's end and the ongoing unhappiness of so many people, in the occupied and among the occupiers.

Ending the bombing is not enough.

There are so many articles about the Bush Administration’s attempts to deflect criticism for using knowingly false information to justify attacking Iraq, I don’t need to write about it. Other people have been mentioning it more effectively than I can.

One writer sees Bush as the CEO who keeps having to "restate" profits (Washington Post), just like in so many recent corporate scandals.

There is a great article called Core of weapons case crumbling (BBC) by correspondent Paul Reynolds, which starts with: "Of the nine main conclusions in the British government document "Iraq's weapons of mass destruction", not one has been shown to be conclusively true."

One analyst wants to know why Powell dumped the Niger evidence, when three days earlier the President chose to include it (New York Times), since it had been called into doubt months earlier.

Nicholas Kristof complains of a broader pattern of dishonesty in the Administration's announcements about intelligence, (CNN) and notes that he's not the only one. "But Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, a group of retired spooks, issued an open letter to President Bush yesterday reflecting the view of many in the intel community that the central culprit is Vice President Dick Cheney. The open letter called for Mr. Cheney's resignation."

My my.

Kristof also has been told by attendees of Defense Intelligence Agency town halls that they're being asked to dumb down their intelligence reports.

The current issue of Time Magazine has a cover story called "Untruth and Consequences: How flawed was the case for going to war against Saddam?" and wonders aloud what else was incorrect in the State of the Union.

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I'm bothered by the brazenness of it all. It's basically, 'we lied, but you can't do anything to stop us.' Where Clinton's lies about his own sex life were supposed to be a major threat to democracy, Bush's outright lies to lead our nation to war, his no-bid contracts to his campaign donors, his secret energy task force meetings, and his current scheme to expand the war are supposed to be sacrosanct and good. Unlike with Clinton, it is unpatriotic to question his actions.

I've never had more sympathy for the parties that opposed the rise of dictators, who watched their nation spiral downward in propaganda and lies while the majority was either unheard or in a blissfully ignorant state...

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An angle I hadn’t considered with the new governing council of American-picked Iraqis (Washington Post): “U.S. officials also say they believe that putting responsibility for government operations on the council could help deflect public anger over the tardy resumption of basic services from the occupation authority."

Why that hadn’t occurred to me…

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Somehow, a set of cards criticizing the Bush Administration's 'Hidden Agenda' was filed in the "offbeat news" section of CNN. But the Administration's original Iraqi most wanted cards didn't. Does that imply that the most wanted cards were NORMAL, somehow??

Here's something very worthwhile: an audio history of Iraq, from the folks at The World (a co-production of the BBC and Public Radio International). It covers how Iraq's borders were created by foreign powers, how the British installed a king, the rise of Saddam Hussein, and Gulf War I. It was recorded prior to the more recent attack on Iraq. I found it to be a valuable refresher for how we got here. It should give pause to those who consider installing a government that suits outside, rather than internal interests. (Should. But...)

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Iraq is a lot like the former Yugoslavia in the respect that separate people with very different customs and beliefs were lumped together geographically and politically by external forces that didn't have the people's best interests at heart. It seems that many of the world's hot spots have a history of such forced associations, which are an unfortunate holdover from the colonial period. Until the people in such nations are allowed to choose their own political associations and agree on borders, we'll be cleaning up the mess made by colonists for YEARS.

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I was discussing my earlier published list of what does and does not quality as "news" in the commercial U.S. media, and S extended this idea to history. He noted that so many of the embedded journalists believed that this was their big shot at fame, because they were witnessing "history." By which they actually just mean war. S remarked that a farmer plowing a field is never history. And that is sad.

S had cable TV when I first moved in with him, and he aptly renamed "the History Channel" The War Channel, because that was all that station deemed worthy of reporting on. You couldn't flip past it without watching bombs falling on Dresden AGAIN and AGAIN and AGAIN... It was very sad.

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I believe journalists are subject to the same biases as our school textbooks. I mocked it at the time, but there is a consistent dogma to American History courses that, through repetition, hopes to drill certain unnatural values into the minds of democratic, peace-loving people. Those ideas are: War is important; rich people are important; generals and officers are important.

Only through harsh repetition can democratic, peace-loving people reflexively believe and say that most things we consider to be good are NOT "history." Not advances in medicine or hygiene; not art; not improvements in life quality; not liberation from oppression (unless it's violent liberation and rich people and generals were involved); not the advent of schooling for children, or the invention of the wonderful Arabic number system, or the invention of multi-story buildings, formal gardens, literature, poetry, the 40 hour work week, dentistry, jazz...

A better definition of history is needed. Now.

I propose a more comprehensive definition: 1) events that contribute to the advancement of humankind in knowledge, health, quality of life, communication, art, science, mutual understanding, and joy; 2) events that contribute to the regression of any or all of the above, and which people must find new methods to reverse so as to bring about a return to humankind's advancement. In both cases, history may be evaluated qualitatively.

All those other events, relating to the coronation of monarchs, passing of wealthy robber barons, and such, could be demoted from being 'history' and just referred to as time line placeholders.

The Washington Post has an even more dramatic Macromedia Flash 6 compilation of photographers, their work, and their words in "Eyes on the War". The photographers are from many different agencies and had many different experiences.

Some interviews indicate that embedding was a good political move by the military: after viewing a vehicle containing dead children shot by nervous gate guards, one photographer observes that she knows she would ordinarily have been appalled, but that having heard rumors of suicide bombers with her own ears, she believed that killing this family was justified.

The photographs also include images of the sort routinely censored in U.S. papers, which tried to show the war as "clean" and bloodless. Not that you need to spend your days looking at burned children and bodies littering the ground, but certainly our leaders should. And we should all know what the actual effects of war are.

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S viewed the photos and audio with me, and was horrified, as any healthy person should be. We had a discussion about how these images wouldn't exist if only military photographers were present, especially those of harmed civilians. While some photographers may be there to make a name for themselves by documenting "history" unfolding, they are serving a valuable function by recording the many aspects of war with their different perspectives on it.

I wouldn't want to go as a journalist. Perhaps as a person with several huge cargo planes full of food and medicine, but not as someone who could only record what was before me, without being able to act on what I saw.

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The Bush Administration finally admits that it shouldn't have used false information about Iraq attempting to buy nuclear materials. (Washington Post) The Administration found it increasingly difficult to defend forged evidence that had been debunked by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the CIA, a diplomat they'd sent on a special assignment to investigate (who recently went public), and the results of a widely publicized analysis in England.

This is a surprising concession to reality. I'm still taken aback.

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Short bits: an opinion piece on how the rebuilding effort is fading from the press limelight (some news magazines are leading with features on... cholesterol?), and the difficulties U.S. soldiers are facing in their unfamiliar new peace keeping role (both from the Washington Post).

Not everything a man longs for is within his reach, for gusts of wind can blow against a ship's desires.
-Iraqi poet Tayyeb Mutanabbi

That lovely quote is from The Washington's Post's War In Iraq pages, within the brilliant photojournalism feature Photos, Day by Day. (It launches a Javascript that in turn launches a multimedia program in a new window. If this link doesn't work, go back to the prior one and look down the left hand column.)

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Part of the reason I think the photojournalism feature is brilliant is that it has scenes of Baghdad and life for ordinary civilians during 2001-2002. Such photos (and acknowledgments of both civilian anti-Americanism during sanctions and images of suffering children) were largely censored in the Western press after Gulf War I.

Gulf War I was itself highly censored: the U.S. military supplied nearly all the footage broadcast by network news. But I had (wrongly) assumed that photos of ordinary Iraqi life after the war would soon be in the papers once the media's war hysteria died down.

Those photos did not appear. It took YEARS before I saw photos of ordinary life in Iraq. YEARS.

Was there a reason for that? I suspect so.

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Photos that are not shown regularly in mainstream Western publications (a partial list):
-photos showing that people all over the world are just like us: including birthday parties, wedding festivities, children playing -- ESPECIALLY cute children playing -- games out of doors (especially games involving red rubber balls); families enjoying nature or picnics; people showing off family photos and prize winning home-grown veggies...

-traffic jams and high rises in African cities

-African cities in any way that would show they are large and populous

-female university students, especially those who are not white

-modern public schools in any nation offering more generous amenities than our crumbling school system does (rural foreign schools with dirt floors OK)

-good air quality in any foreign city that may have it (images of bad air quality in eastern Europe and Mexico city are acceptable; images of such lack of air quality in Houston and Los Angeles are not)

-clean, well-dressed people in native costume doing modern things (Japanese Geishas with cell phones are an exception only when the Japanese economy is outperforming the U.S. economy)

-the aftermath experienced by civilians of an American attack anywhere, at any time in history (rare exception: Vietnam)

-the actual effects on people of sophisticated American weapons systems

-the domestic conditions for poor Americans

-images of poor Americans with multiple jobs at their labors

-people protesting the policies of the U.S. in 'allied' nations

-people who are comfortably well off in a traditional, non-imported, non-consumerist lifestyle.

U.S. soldiers on police duty in Iraq are unhappy, and are now beginning to say so to the press.(Washington Post)

"U.S. officials need to get our [expletive] out of here," said the 43-year-old reservist from Pittsburgh, who arrived in Iraq with the 307th Military Police Company on May 24. "I say that seriously. We have no business being here. We will not change the culture they have in Iraq, in Baghdad. Baghdad is so corrupted. All we are here is potential people to be killed and sitting ducks."

Their concerns are reflected in an incident where an armed British police patrol in Majar al-Kabir ignited a multi-hour gunbattle in which 6 British soldiers were killed after running out of ammunition. (SF Gate) Locals believed the soldiers were violating an agreement to cease their intrusions into local areas.

Of course, Rumsfield insists things are fine in Iraq (Washington Post), and blames any and all resistance on "looters, criminals, remnants of Saddam Hussein's government, foreign terrorists and Iranian-backed Shiites." Rumsfeld also insisted that there is no 'guerilla' warfare going on in Iraq, contrary to the Pentagon's definition and reports from soliders in the field using that characterization.

One wonders if he's testing the waters, and some day soon, he'll announce that the sky is green, and see who publishes it.

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Several children have been killed by U.S. forces in recent days, which is making the soldier's duties harder as the populace harbors increasing resentments over the deaths of innocents after Bush's decision that the war had ended. (There are few new reports regarding those who died in the bombing and their resentments, which is interesting. While widespread outrage was reported in Al Jazeera and some BBC articles, it has not been discussed again, as if all has been forgiven, or at least forgotten.)

U.S. forces shot a 12 year old boy on the roof of his house (Washington Post), and have not apologized to the boy's parents. an 11 year old boy was run over by a U.S. convoy while approaching to try to sell the soldier s goods. The convoy did not stop, leaving his body in the road. (BBC) And three children burned by flammable war materials were refused treatment by U.S. forces, despite the pleas of a U.S. sargeant moved to tears by their plight (Common Dreams/AP). They were turned down because their injuries were not immediately life threatening, but the distressing thing is that this was an opportunity to show concern for the plight of locals that was passed up. (The sargeant gave the parents everything he could from his first aid kit, but couldn't provide the full help that was needed, and can't believe the callousness of his superiors.)

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Mainstream Iraq news resources to bookmark:
-The BBC's "After Saddam" page.
-New York Times: "After the War"
-San Francisco Chronicle "Iraq aftermath" (the San Francisco Chronicle's on0line presence is known as SF Gate).
-Washington Post's "World: Iraq".

Very short news item: the U.N. Terrorist Committee says it has found no evidence of a connection between Iraq and the al-Qaeda terror network (BBC).

As is traditional, the U.S. says it has lots of evidence that the committee is wrong, and that there is a connection. And won't show it to anyone. I know, you'd laugh if it wasn't so serious. I would, too.

"We are going to fight them and impose our will on them and we will capture or, if necessary, kill them until we have imposed law and order on this country."

That's a quote from Paul Bremer, chief US administrator in Iraq, on uncooperative, allegedly Baathist elements in Iraq, in article called US strikes at resistance (BBC) I say allegedly Baathist, because the U.S. has characterized every single Iraqi protest to anything the U.S. has done in Iraq as Baathist.

I'm beginning to suspect the U.S. Government's definition of Baathist as different from everyone else's.

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At the moment, I'm reading Nelson Madela's brilliant autobiography. When the white supremacist Nationalist Party came into power after WWII, they passed a bunch of laws against Communism. But the catch was that the laws defined communists as anyone who wanted to change the policies of the government. That meant that anyone who objected to whites-only train cars, whites-only chairs, whites-only restaurants, or whites-only voting was suddenly defined as a "communist." The government hijacked the LANGUAGE first. And then they started taking away rights, one after another. Whenever anyone would organize a peaceful protest, they'd get locked up. When the international community asked what was going on, the government would just say 'rounding up communists,' and the anti-communist western nations would say, 'oh, that's great,' and wander off.

Because no one cared about what happened to "communists."

It took a while for other folks to notice that the National Government was not using the term as they were.

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So when I see a news photo of an Iraqi with a sign that says "No Bush No Saddam," and read that "Baathists," the folks who were members of Saddam's political party, are the ONLY people in all of Iraq who object to the American occupation, I am skeptical.

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Another note about Mandela: he was working actively with the African National Congress while working full time, running his own law practice. So no excuses, people: if he could run his own business during the weekdays and devote himself to challenging injustice on nights and weekends, you can, too.

(Well, yes, the successful fight for freedom for millions of his fellow Africans did cost him his marriages, and deprived him of time with his children. He did wrestle with the question of whether it is more important to serve one's family (or one's own group) or a wider group of mankind. He decided that it was his path to serve mankind. He noted that it is not necessarily a higher calling, but definitely is a different one. This is something for those to consider who say that the best way to serve your country is to have lots of kids and be a good parent. It's always a service to the community to be a good parent. But had Mandela chosen that route, his family and millions of others would still be horribly oppressed. Mandela's family benefited from what he did for society in big ways. Sometimes, society needs more than good parenting to improve the lot of all people. This seems obvious to me, but I keep having to argue this point.)