randomWalks: January 2003

Leave it to the Bush administration to spin a plan calling for dropping more bombs in Baghdad in one day than were used in the entire first Gulf War as a "psychological" attack.

For the millions of people in this country who do not know that it was Britain which drew the borders of Iraq and has never ceased playing a significant role there, the book could be an eye-opener.

At least it would strip away the moral indignation which distorts the current debate. Britain and the US have not only acted to thwart democracy throughout most of Iraq's short history as a modern state. They have consistently turned a blind eye to or encouraged crime and terrorism, most recently in 1994 and 1995 when Abu Amneh, a terrorist on the Central Intelligence Agency payroll, took part in a bombing campaign which aimed at destabilising the regime and killed more than a hundred people sitting innocently in a Baghdad cafe, a cinema and a mosque.

Fresh from the J18 ANSWER mass mobilizations in D.C. and San Francisco, is everyone ready to do it again for United for Peace and Justice's February 15 rallies in New York City and San Francisco?

Condoleezza Rice: The Devil's Handmaiden by The Black Commentator; Bush's alien views on affirmative action by Derrick Z. Jackson.

While it’s safe to say the demonstrations here and in the capital had zero effect on the White House and big media’s drooling class of pundits, protests against the pending incineration of Iraq are growing. And they are growing at a rate that required years, not months, during the Vietnam War.

"Congress, which voted overwhelmingly to support Bush's war, includes only one member who has a child in the enlisted ranks of the armed services." It is, of course, a trial balloon but nonetheless terrifying and impossible to ignore: Is the US going to have a military draft? How does the US Draft work, anyway?

May our country, on the brink of war, take to heart the final refrain of America, the Beautiful: "America! America! God mend thine ev'ry flaw, confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty in law."

Today's Washington Post played the protests on the front page. Woo hoo.

Human peace sign in Antarctica.

"The lives of our children are worth more than your dirty wars".

"This is your destiny. You were born to be here. You were born to reclaim this land. You will not abandon it. You were born to take this country back. You not only will stop this war, but you will change the priorities of this nation and return it to the people. You will do this because it is your sacred responsibility as Americans, and as citizens of the world."

- Ron Kovic, 18 Jan 2003

San Francisco: Pics of today's huge demo.

Dubya actually said it. He actually went so far as to pledge his administration's commitment to "build a culture that respects life," saying this with a straight face, no violent lightning bolt striking him dead on the spot, no gnarled filthy hell-beasts reaching with clawed fingers up from the ground and dragging him under, isn't that just the sweetest thing and don't you just feel the sentiment deep in your heart? Or perhaps your colon?

"I believe Bush is an oedipal fool who is generating this war for oil and who will end up making the whole world hate us," said Dan Bright, 36.

Let's be clear. These were not 'chemical warheads.' In the Iraqi arsenal, a warhead is a warhead - an empty ordnance space strapped to a missile. What matters is the payload, be it explosive or chemical or nuclear. The item placed in the warhead denotes the designation. These warheads were stone-cold empty, so by definition they are not 'chemical warheads.'

William Rivers Pitt helps CNN with its facts.

"The fact that the inspectors have not yet come up with new evidence of Iraq's WMD program could be evidence, in and of itself, of Iraq's noncooperation."

There was a big-ass anti-war demo in L.A. on Saturday.

ATTENTION PEACE-LOVING CITIZENS OF THE WORLD!

Join us in challenging rogue states run by military fanatics who produce and conceal weapons of mass destruction.

Rooting Out Evil is sending a weapons inspection team to the United States to inspect the chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons produced and concealed by the Bush regime.

The administration has embarked on something "quite extraordinary in American history, a preventive war, and the threshold for justification should be extraordinarily high," said G. John Ikenberry, an international relations professor at Georgetown University. But "the external presentation and the justification for it really seems to be lacking," he said.

Time magazine asks which country is the biggest threat to world peace in 2003, and the online community's answer is ....

Naked war protest in Marin.

You cannot have a war when the so-called enemy has done nothing to provoke you and is absolutely no threat to your national safety and has no significant military force and has negligible chance of even setting off a firecracker near your own overwhelming death machines, and whose only weapons of minimal destruction are the rusty short-range warheads and biochemical agents we sold him 20 years ago, and kept selling to him, even after we knew he was gassing his own people.

CAUSA BELLI by Andrew Motion

They read good books, and quote, but never learn
a language other than the scream of rocket-burn.
Our straighter talk is drowned but ironclad:
elections, money, empire, oil and Dad.

Wanna stop the war? There's a whole slew of people getting ready to go to Iraq to act as human shields.

• U.K. "human shield" effort [some really terrible and devastating images]


• U.S. Human Shields


• Voices in the Wilderness


• Voices U.K.


• Nonviolent Peaceforce Canada


• Nonviolent Peaceforce


• Christian Peacemaker Teams


• Friends Peace Team


• 
  Michigan Peace Team


• European groups

"But some of the most decisive factors are out of the activists' hands. 'Most of the opposition is to a unilateral, pre-emptive war,' says Cavanagh. 'If there's a clear-cut provocation by Iraq and strong international backing, all of that evaporates.' The more likely scenario, according to IPS experts, is a feeble excuse for war, trumped up by the Administration, and lukewarm international backing, with a couple of abstentions or even no votes on the UN Security Council. That result would provide a real challenge for the antiwar movement: to quickly educate against what Wing calls 'the big-time propaganda machine that will fall into place' and win the public debate about what constitutes a legitimate war. But the movement would likely be aided by broad popular opposition in Europe and the Muslim world.
"It would be a moment fraught with danger--of escalating anti-American terrorism, especially--but also opportunity."