Saturday, March 08, 2003

International Women's Day, he sobbed

I commend to one and all Amber Howard’s op-ed piece in Saturday’s Seattle Times, in which she lists eight bulletpoints highlighting the severe and unremitting damage inflicted on women, both in this country and around the world, by the craven boors inhabiting the executive branch of the government of the United States.

Following the litany of heavyhanded anti-woman (and anti-human, and anti-American, and anti a whole lot of other things) Bush administration actions, Ms. Howard closes with these words:

And, unfortunately, the list goes on. It is astonishing that this administration has so quickly and easily turned back the clock on women’s rights � especially the right to control their family size and protect their health and well-being.

Giving women the power to control when or if they have children is essential to slowing rapid population growth, maintaining healthy children and slowing environmental destruction.

We must ensure that women have access to the information and resources they need to make healthy choices for themselves and their families, which will lead to a better world for us all.

The Bushian monsters must be turned out of office ASAP.  Their misdeeds and missteps must be noted and reported upon day and night.  Their attack on our values and ideals, on the very fabric of our nation must be countered before it’s too late.  We must mobilize the good people of our nation to understand what is being done to them and to the entire world by these arrogantly simplistic, self-righteously demagogic bastards.

One suggestion, which I should probably put into its very own entry, is that on Shock-and-Awe day, when we the people assemble freely in whatever public space we choose to express our vociferous objections ... we should go there armed to the teeth with voter registration materials.  Sign up thousands upon thousands of voters who will remember that day and those activities come November 2, 2004.

Under the radar

While the entire world concentrates on the coming war in Iraq—most with dread and sorrow, a few (including Dubya and his crew, Tony, and of course Osama) with slavering relish— the Bush government continues its unrelenting behind-the-scenes course of undermining American values, economic well-being, environmental conditions, and so on and so forth.  Buried on page A4 of Saturday’s Seattle Times was a compendium called Capital Watch, which included three well-hidden items.

One of those items—the Congressional Budget Office’s fast-rising estimate of the deleterious effects of GWB’s economic “stimulus” insanity—has been discussed in a number of places in the blogosphere, and even appeared in the mainline media, so I won’t talk about it here.  See, for example, Daily Kos and this Reuters story. 

Nor will I say much about the third item—postponement of arguments before the Supreme Court in an appeal of a lawsuit concerning accommodations under the Americans With Disabilities Act—because I don’t know enough about the law or the legal process to really understand what it means.

Here’s the important information in what I do want to talk about:

Thursday, March 06, 2003

What's in it for Tony?

In my morning review of the blogosphere, an entry in Daily Kos took me to this news story about the Prime Minister of Great Britain.  In still another baffling move Bush-ward, Tony Blair apparently will let neither public opinion in his own nation, nor rising opposition in Parliament within his own political base, nor (now) the likelihood of deeply considered and deeply felt Security Council vetoes to deter him from plastering himself and his country’s fortunes firmly to parts-unmentionable of Dubya.

It doesn’t make sense that what once appeared to be an erudite, progressive, thoughtful man, leading Britain with firm hand into a peaceful international community, has turned into this.  In the United States, the leadership transformation is (unfortunately) perfectly explicable—subtract Clinton and add Bush, and raving-lunatic hell breaks out.  But Blair was PM then and is PM now, with much the same cast of characters in his Cabinet at 10 Downing, and I suspect that 90-95% of today’s Labour MPs are the same people who were in Parliament three years ago.  So what has changed?

A friend of mine at work, a close observer of Anglo-Irish relations (and thus, of the British political scene), suggests that the explanation must fall into one (or more?) of four possibilities:

Wednesday, March 05, 2003

Moratorium

Today was the day of the National Moratorium to Stop the War in Iraq, in which students and employed people were asked to take the day off and join protests.  Along with such cities as San Francisco, Philadelphia, New York, and Dallas, and along with college towns and high school campuses, there was a Not In Our Name-sponsored “convergence” in Seattle.

I can’t say that our event was earth-shattering in its size or in its fervor.  On a raw, gray, and breezy afternoon at Seattle’s Westlake Park, the total number of participants came to somewhere between “more than 1000” (Post-Intelligencer) and “about 2000” (according to an organizer quoted in the Seattle Times).  Given that the principal organizations leading Seattle’s anti-war/anti-Bush movement, e.g. the SNOW Coalition and the Church Council of Greater Seattle, didn’t do much of anything to promote or encourage this event, the turnout was actually fairly significant.

I was underwhelmed by the speakers.  They seemed more interested in five-second applause lines than in raising logical or factual arguments in support of their/our stances against Dubya’s multi-pronged attack on America and the world.  With so very many kids in the audience, I suppose that’s OK.  This wasn’t a Vietnam-era teach-in, after all.

Without a doubt, the best part came when representatives of all the schools involved in the day’s activities got up on the stage and gave *their* applause lines.  Hign schools and middle schools, colleges and elementary schools ... three or four dozen different schools, from inside the city to Puget Sound islands to Eastside suburbs!  The enthusiasm of youth was evident, and in many cases, it was clear that these kids had been pondering the big world events swirling around them very intensively.

All in all, despite the rather meager turnout, I’m glad I went.  I can’t say that it reinvigorated me or that my spirits were lifted, but it’s always good to see that there are others out there who are willing to speak their minds, raise their voices, and practice the highest form of American patriotism ... freely and openly protesting against the actions of the people occupying the highest seats of government in the land.

Tuesday, March 04, 2003

Will GWB listen? ... followup!!

While reading what the always-informative Atrios had to say about today’s Wolf Blitzer poll, I observed that the comments quickly developed into a discussion of a name that was missing from the choices offered to those deciding who is the “greatest threat” to the United States.  In comment #23, someone named Observationist revealed that, amazingly enough, the HTML code defining the poll does contain a commented-out fourth choice!  Without a few well-placed brackets, the poll would read as follows:

Who’s the number one threat facing the United States: 

Saddam Hussein
Kim Jong Il
Osama bin Laden
George W. Bush

I don’t have the HTML skills to show the code itself, but it’s easily seen.  Click on this link to Blitzer’s page, then use your browser’s View Source utility and scroll down about halfway through the HTML code.  Search for the phrase “Answer 4”, for example.

Amazing!!!