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March 20, 2003
This blog from Baghdad is must-read for two reasons. First, it will tell you more about what the coming war feels like than 24 hours of network babble. Second, it is a vivid example of why blogging matters.
(Thanks to Kathy Quirk for the link.)
March 19, 2003
The Dixie Chicks’ album is plummeting because they are being kept off the air for saying what many of us feel. I myself am about to buy muh very first Dixie Chicks CD.
You can get their new one, Home, for $14.00 plus shipping at their web site.
From William Du Bois, from a mailing list I’m on:
Bush’s Utopian Plan for Peace and mine differ at the core.
Hal Pepinsky, one of the founders of peacemaking criminology, talks about the dynamics of democracy and violence.
He defines democracy as responsiveness — we take each other into account. We may not change our agenda but we take what the Other has to say into account. Violence is the opposite of democracy. It is asserting your own will and refusing to take the other into account…
You know how the NY Times wrote a few hundred words about each and every person who died in the attack on the World Trade Center? Suppose the Times were to accord each Iraqi civilian we kill the same dignity. Of course the Iraqi victims will be unintended casualties, unlike those who died on 9/11. But, they are predictable unintended casualities, so why not remind us of the price of victory? Why not remind us that an Iraqi father searching for his child in the rubble is no different from my friend who waited for a phone call from his son who worked in the Towers? Are Iraqi lives really not worth the ink? Or our attention?
Wouldn’t such coverage help tell the world what sort of people we Americans are?
The bumpersticker “Bombing for peace is like fucking for virginity” pisses me off because it glosses over the hard question: Is this particular war worth fighting? Will it create a more peaceful world once the bombs stop turning people into red mist? That’s the difficult discussion we need to be having. My answer is: No! But not because bombing is always illogical the way fucking for virginity is always self-contradictory. I’m not a pacifist, so I think sometimes bombing makes sense. Our challenge is to figure out when. This bumpersticker doesn’t help.
Here is my new bumpersticker. I’m not satisfied with the wording, though. Any suggestions?
Hank Blakely of Dystopical has decided to continue his weekly comments on the Bush administration. Hank’s writing is funny the way Delft is blue.
He reports this week that he was going to suspend operations during the upcoming carnage, but his wife convinced him that this is precisely the wrong time for critics to go silent.
Good.
March 18, 2003
I wish that Bush were strong enough to admit ambivalence. But he’s not. He has the courage granted by a big rare-wood desk.
March 17, 2003
Jack Bury, a 20-year old poet, is co-creator of a Microsoft IE add-in called Eyebees. If you join a “swarm” – people interested in the same topic – the add-in shows you the movement of all other swarm members as they go from site to site. Click on one of the dots representing a swarm member and you are taken to whatever site they’re visiting. It’s a visceral visual experience.
To join the peace swarm, download the Eyebees software from www.eyebees.com and join the “Eyebees March on Washington” swarm (under the category of “The Rally”) at Eyebees.com. Jack is suggesting that Friday at noon EST might be a good time to flock together for peace.
This software is way new. There have been a handful of downloads so far. So if you don’t see anyone in the Peace Swarm, check back later.
Writes Jack: “The enveloping presence of thousands of minds, tracing across the Internet Sky in strange union – hissing and livid and one in censure of war – would be a conspicuous, awe-inspiring sight of this next social revolution taking firm hold.”
John has told Doc that he plans to open source Eyebees. Good move. That’s the only way to get an idea like this off the ground.
March 14, 2003
Gary Lawrence Murphy sent out this meme-ful piece that’s circulating on the Net:
Waging Peace in the world –
Dr. Robert Muller, former assistant secretary general of the United Nations, now Chancellor emeritus of the University of Peace in Costa Rica was one of the people who witnessed the founding of the U.N. and has worked in support of or inside the U.N. ever since. Recently he was in San Francisco to be honored for his service to the world through the U.N. and through his writings and teachings for peace. At age eighty, Dr. Muller surprised, even stunned, many in the audience that day with his most positive assessment of where the world stands now regarding war and peace.
I (do not know how the original person is) was there at the gathering and I myself was stunned by his remarks. What he said turned my head around and offered me a new way to see what is going on in the world. My synopsis of his remarks is below:
“I’m so honored to be here,” he said. “I’m so honored to be alive at such a miraculous time in history. I’m so moved by what’s going on in our world today.” (: I was shocked. I thought — Where has he been? What has he been reading? Has he seen the newspapers? Is he senile? Has he lost it? What is he talking about?)
Dr. Muller proceeded to say, “Never before in the history of the world has there been a global, visible, public, viable, open dialogue and conversation about the very legitimacy of war”.
The whole world is in now having this critical and historic dialogue — listening to all kinds of points of view and positions about going to war or not going to war. In a huge global public conversation the world is asking- “Is war legitimate? Is it illegitimate? Is there enough evidence to warrant an attack? Is there not enough evidence to warrant an attack? What will be the consequences? The costs? What will happen after a war? How will this set off other conflicts? What might be peaceful alternatives? What kind of negotiations are we not thinking of? What are the real intentions for declaring war?”
All of this, he noted, is taking place in the context of the United Nations Security Council, the body that was established in 1949 for exactly this purpose. He pointed out that it has taken us more than fifty years to realize that function, the real function of the U.N. And at this moment in history— the United Nations is at the center of the stage. It is the place where these conversations are happening, and it has become in these last months and weeks, the most powerful governing body on earth, the most powerful container for the world’s effort to wage peace rather than war. Dr. Muller was almost in tears in recognition of the fulfillment of this dream.
We are not at war,” he kept saying. We, the world community, are WAGING peace. It is difficult, hard work. It is constant and we must not let up. It is working and it is an historic milestone of immense proportions. It has never happened before – never in human history – and it is happening now – every day every hour – waging peace through a global conversation. He pointed out that the conversation questioning the validity of going to war has gone on for hours, days, weeks, months and now more than a year, and it may go on and on. “We’re in peacetime,” he kept saying. “Yes, troops are being moved. Yes, warheads are being lined up. Yes, the aggressor is angry and upset and spending a billion dollars a day preparing to attack. But not one shot has been fired. Not one life has been lost. There is no war. It’s all a conversation.”
It is tense, it is tough, it is challenging, AND we are in the most significant and potent global conversation and public dialogue in the history of the world. This has not happened before on this scale ever before – not before WWI or WWII, not before Vietnam or Korea, this is new and it is a stunning new era of Global listening, speaking, and responsibility.
In the process, he pointed out, new alliances are being formed. Russia and China on the same side of an issue is an unprecedented outcome. France and Germany working together to wake up the world to a new way of seeing the situation. The largest peace demonstrations in the history of the world are taking place — and we are not at war! Most peace demonstrations in recent history took place when a war was already waging, sometimes for years, as in the case of Vietnam.
“So this,” he said, “is a miracle. This is what “waging peace ” looks like.”
No matter what happens, history will record that this is a new era, and that the 21st century has been initiated with the world in a global dialogue looking deeply, profoundly and responsibly as a global community at the legitimacy of the actions of a nation that is desperate to go to war.
Through these global peace – waging efforts, the leaders of that nation are being engaged in further dialogue, forcing them to rethink, and allowing all nations to participate in the serious and horrific decision to go to war or not.
Dr. Muller also made reference to a recent New York Times article that pointed out that up until now there has been just one superpower – the United States, and that that has created a kind of blindness in the vision of the U.S. But now, Dr. Muller asserts, there are two superpowers: the United States and the merging, surging voice of the people of the world.
All around the world, people are waging peace. To Robert Muller, one of the great advocates of the United Nations, it is nothing short of a miracle and it is working.
March 13, 2003
According to Human Rights Watch, in order to protect US soldiers from being brought to justice for any war crimes they may commit, Bush has signed (well, last August) a new law that
… authorizes the use of military force to liberate any American or citizen of a U.S.-allied country being held by the [International Criminal] court, which is located in The Hague.
Since the Hague (or “den Haag” as those beastly Dutch refer to it) is in the Netherlands, this has stirred up some consternation. Dutch blogger and future enemy soldier, Niek Hockx, has blogged about this amusingly.
In protest of Holland’s outrageous aiding and abetting of The Hague, I pledge that from now on, when my girlfriend and I each pay our own way, I will refer to it as “going freedom.” Also, I’ll refer to the tree blight as “Freedom Elm Disease.” That that, Wooden Shoe Legal Pot boy!
David Deans responds via email to my pointing out the implicit difference between Tony Blair’s ability to handle himself in the House of Commons question period and George Bush’s tranq-ed out performance art piece euphemistically called a “press conference”:
On the lighter side of the issue — imagine this as a potential sketch for Saturday Night Live!Blair takes a “sick day,” and invites Bush to step in for him at Parliament, by answering questions regarding the rationale for the upcoming invasion of Iraq. Against the advice of Cheney and others, Bush agrees.
Brilliant!
If you know a writer at Saturday Night Live, how about passing this along to her/him?
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