jmoiron.net

I would have read arsjerm's rant in its completion if it wasn't laced with the mind control of the corperate media. As Phil has already pointed out, you cannot trust news from CNN, nor the other "media" controlled by massive conglomerates. Its not that I'm some conspiracy theorist, I'm just one of the many Americans who are able to see through a twisted, antihumanist slant and an almost ridiculous self righteous belief that we have the right to kill millions of people around the world.

But lets take a look at the media. Check out CNN; if you're catching this anywhere near when I am, you'd notice that there's a big snow storm in the northeast and the showdown with Iraq is on the horizon. What you won't notice is the social strife and complete carnage of a country on the brink of civil war. Why not? Because it's Bolivia, and people there have nothing to offer the United States. Its more of a fucking tragedy that Reagan airport is closed than structure and order in Bolivia is on the brink of complete destruction. Why are evil men only adversaries of the United States when they have something we want? Where are the 'righteous capitalist' humanitarians when the East Timors of the world are being slaughtered by the hundreds of thousands? We're in Iraq, because they have what we want.

As predecessors before me already have, I'll take it point by point and try my best to not be redundant. A code orange being announced before polygraph tests on the suspected terrorist is irresponsible; to put a nation in a panic over suspicion alone. Apparently, the fear and mass hysteria has spread to even the intelligent.

On issues concerning the antiwar protest, I'm surprised that someone who was invited and turned down the opportunity to go would comment on its content. Let me pose the question; how many demonstrators did you talk to on Saturday? I spoke to at least 100. I read nearly every sign, heard every chant; got an honest, my own two eyes view of the real people that made up the movement. And here's what I learned.

"GLAMericans, a group of stylish urbanites, shattered the stereotype of protesters as hemp clad hippies". So says their business card, and I believe that many of the people at the protest exemplified this one, vital, crucial, so important that I had to break out synonymous terms point that is almost more important than the message of the protest itself: This is a true, racially, economically, politically blind grassroots movement. There is nothing more important to read on my site, perhaps on the whole fucking archive, than that statement; its truer than anything I've ever said.

This was NOT a march of angry anticapitalist leftists. If you think so, you are an ignorant fucking idiot who didn't march and does not know what you are talking about. I spoke to veterans of 3 different wars (Gulf, Vietnam and Korean) who were against this coming war on Saturday. One veteran told me, "I don't want to see my country make the same mistake again." The GLAMericans were chanting "Money for Shopping, not bombs dropping." Despite every cell in my body wanting to tell that veteran of the futility of our current war in Afghanistan (We drop bombs EVERY day: where is the coverage? The country might as well not exist according to the American media), or scream at the GLAMericans that they are just feeding the same consumerism that will eventually destroy the world, I took solace in the fact that these people, from different walks of life and different backgrounds all just wanted peace.

A good amount of people that I spoke to had never been to a peace rally before; hell, I've never been to one. Even CNN and MSNBC showed a few interviews with protesters who basically said "we are not radicals, we just don't want war." I spoke to a french man who had been to the large rally Washington DC, who said that the ammount of people in the city Saturday was "staggering" and "incredible, far more people than were in DC". I also spoke to a deaf man (w/ hearing aid) who was a member of the republican party and was against war. His thoughts were that we should not act without the support of the United Nations.

So maybe Jeremy Mikola would call me 'anti-american'. Oscar Wilde said, "Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious." I don't know that I agree, unless there was some sarcastic intent. I believe, as Thomas Jefferson did, that the most patriotic thing you can do is dissent your government. In the words of J William Fullbright, "The citizen who criticizes his country is paying it an implied tribute." So you can march along, gallop with the charging herd, marching America towards more international hatred and disgust. When I'm watching Nelson Mandella spreading truth about US foreign policy, you can hide behind your headphones. Its the fact that you can, and the fact that I can fight you every step of the way and never do anything about your ability to fight me back that makes this country worth walking for 6 hours in 20 degree weather around manhattan. But I guess, in some way sharing the opinions of millions of people nation wide is anti-american. So keep on throwing around "anti-capitalist" and "disestablishment" as if they were bad. It seems that most Right Wing propaganda centers around stating truth and then, without refuting the basis for those believes, simply saying, "Can you believe that? How stupid."

Moving right along in the same motherfucking paragraph, you call the "blood for oil" posters shallow. Perhaps to the mentally deranged that enjoy their own blood being spilled, blood isn't a convincing or deep statement of distress and "bad things" in general. Trading our nation's youth for George W. Bush's anti-muslim movement, whatever the reasons behind it (if we attack Iraq; that makes 2 Muslim nations in 2 years), is just not something that people will take lightly. Of course, you're the type of religious radical that that would simply say "been there, done that." Its too late in civilization's history to start another crusade, even if the cause was as noble as erradicating terrorism. Unfortunately, and history has shown this, military action does not reduce terrorism. Ask Israel; since Sharon has used the military to destroy Palestinian homes, more and more blood is shed every day.

On the Iraqi plans for defense, of course Saddam would act this way. Among the arguments given by people I spoke to on saturday, Nobody, not even me, wanted to stop the war because they thought Saddam Hussein was a good guy, a good leader, or anything near worth keeping on this earth. But the fact remains, his stay in government is not ours to decide; in these modern times, its the International Communities. This includes the "axis of impotence", as you so eloquently stole from someone on the daily show; or as I like to call them, "the countries that do not want to wage war accross the globe and actually listen to their people". One of my favorite signs on Saturday was "Vive la France". I find it funny that the gasing of the kurds, an event that took place back in 1984 when the CIA and republican united states government was selling weapons to Iraq and developing strong diplomatic ties with Iraw, is now called upon by those in favor of war. The same men who drowned out the cries of the humanitarians in the 80's with the drone of record deficit spending, tax cuts for the rich, immense nuclear research and defense budgets, are using these cries in hope that it would garner for them the same respect that it did the origional whistle blowers.

To say that France is economically motivated might not be far off the truth, but using simple statistics to spin this story on only the 14th (by the NY post of all people) seems like pro-war propaganda bent on garnering the sluggish public opinion of this country. It's not all that much unlike the united states national media to blow the whistles on other countries and ignore the fact that our country did the exact same thing in larger volumes. General Norman Schwartzkoff reported to George Bush that we were "A few days away" from ending the war on Iraq in 1991 when our army stopped its advance. On top of allowing the Iraqi army to retreat in fear of losing united states soldiers, resulting in the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens by their own army, the United States stopped short of an invasion of Iraq and left the Hussein regime in power. What did we do after we put the fires out? We sold billions and billions of dollars of arms to the surrounding Arab countries, urging them that they needed defense to guard them from Saddam Hussein. Countries that had multiple billions of dollars in surplus were left with billions of dollars in debt. Of course, its OK because we sold them to countries like Saudi Arabia, whose only had a 85% involvement in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Poor turkey, left to its own devices due to a now defunct veto (as NATO decided to help turkey anyway), totally ignoring the Armenian genocide. Should I feel bad? I suppose I should, since I claim to be humanitarian. Of course we should supply aid to turkey to defend its borders in case a war breaks out; but supplying that aid does not justify the war, whereas refusing to aid them does go hand in hand with refusal to fight a war.

Anti-war proponents are not isolationalist. There is a huge difference between America first, who wanted nothing to do with the world, and people who don't want to slaughter Iraqi people before exhausting completely all diplomatic opprotunities. I wouldn't rate activists who are in tune with world politics with activists who want nothing to do with them. Anti-war advocates of this day and age want Saddam Huseein to disarm; that much is obvious, but they do not want a large scal military incursion.

Go ahead and ignore any and all claims that the war on Iraq is distinct and different from the war on terror. Its apparent from what you wrote that you tend to ignore most truth and most accurate reporting as well. The war on Iraq has the express purpose of disarming Iraq; whether it be by regime change or by the current regime agreeing to unilaterally disarm. Despite the large scale media accusations of ties to Hamas and Al Quaeda (the latter of which doesn't even seem logical since Al Quaeda is a religious fundamentalist group and Iraq is the only secular government in the region), nothing concrete has ever ammassed to back these claims up. Its the sandanistas all over again; if Dan rather keeps repeating the same lies, sooner or later everyone will believe them and forget the truth.

Now to the polls. Of course, after a brief look at what type of poll it was, it turned out to be a FOX news poll. I won't challenge the numbers based solely on that; rather, I'll just offer my own. According to Time Magazine, 80% of Europe apparently views the United States as a greater threat to world peace than Iraq and North Korea, and although as a certain Mr. Chomsky said, the polls were rather losely conducted, even if they are off by an order of magnitude, they are dramatic. These guys called "Gallup"; you might have heard of them, they do polls pretty well; found that opinions all accross "new europe" were alarmingly against war. And what of the United States? Presidential approval ratings have dropped almost 15 points in 2 months, even to the questionable FOX news poll. Fair, accurate, and ballanced.

And finaly, mr. Tony Blair. You would praise Blaire, since he is at the moment comitting political suicide; and you seem to find the second half of that term quite trendy. Apparently, disregarding a HUGE ammount of dissent in public opinion, completely ignoring 1.5 million screaming people in your capital, and ripping off California graduate students while falsifying your information is now the high water mark for a good democratic leader? A leader who goes against the majority of his people is treading dangerous territory. True, some of the bravest people in history (the republicans that broke rank to save Johnson from impeachment come to mind) have went against their party and their constituents to vote for what they believed is right. But in this day and age, you can't call going against your own people and the international community to wage a war and ravage the already impoverished people of a nation you already attacked a dozen years earlier brave and noble. Bowing down to the immense pressures of the united states government and its political machine is not noble; especially when the rest of your population is there to hold you up for your dissent.

And as you compare the number of people worldwide who marched (more people marched in just 6 countries than Jews died in the hollocaust) to the number of people Hussein has killed, know that the casualties of our war with Iraq in the 90's cost 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens their lives; 500,000 of them children. Why so many civilians? We targeted infrastructure; water supplies, hospitals, roads, bridges; war crimes according to the Geneva convention.

More thoughts on the rally and my experiences should come sometime early this week.