Beware the Ides of March, 2003
laden.gif is an hilarious animated GIF. May be offensive to some since it depicts male nudity in a tiny line drawing. I don't consider it at all pornographic, however, due to the nature of the animated behavior. Hehe. [trt-ny]
Michelle Goldberg at Salon - The antiwar movement prepares to escalate - many anti-war protesters intend to stop being so peaceful once the bombs begin to fall on innocent heads in Iraq. I doubt they're going to be as successful as they think they are. More likely, they'll end up in jail or six feet under. Such is the price of freedom. [rrnd]
Already, activists are ramping up their tactics. On Friday, March 14, a loose network of people called Direct Action to Stop the War are going to try to shut down the Pacific Stock Exchange in downtown San Francisco, kicking off a campaign of civil disobedience that organizer Patrick Reinsborough says is meant "to show the Bush administration and their corporate backers that if they won't stop the war, a nonviolent grassroots uprising will physically unplug the war machine." Next Monday, a coalition called the Emergency Campaign to Reclaim Democracy And Stop the War Now is launching a week of civil disobedience in the Capitol that will include sit-ins in congressional offices; and there will be civil disobedience outside the U.S. mission to the United Nations in New York.
Juanita Ramirez at Liberty for All - Use Your W-4 Form - Mr. Ramirez recommends putting the maxiumum number of dependents on your W-4 form and earning interest on the money until tax time. [rrnd]
Jochen Boelsche at The Sydney Morning Herald -
A think tank war: Why old Europe says no 
- a translation of a
German Der Spiegel article. Yet another take on the real reason
the U.S. government intends to make war on Iraq. How the Project for
the New America Century (PNAC) has been planning wars like this since
at least 1997. [dirk]
And the Nuremburg News reported on public statements last week by Presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer to an inner circle in the US that war can only be avoided if Saddam not only disarms, but also leaves office.
Regime change is a condition that is in none of the barely remembered 18 UN resolutions. The Nuremburg News asked in astonishment whether Fleischer had made the biggest Freudian slip of his career or whether he spoke with the President's authority.
It's not about Saddam's weapons
So it goes. Across the world critics of President Bush are convinced that a second Gulf War is actually about replacing Saddam, whether the dictator is involved with WMD or not. "It's not about his WMD," writes the German born Israeli peace campaigner, Uri Avnery, "its purely a war about world domination, in business, politics, defence and culture".
...
Across the Atlantic in mid February, Democrat Senator Robert Byrd (at 86 years of age the so-called "Father of the Senate") spoke out. The longest serving member of that Chamber warned the pre-emptive war that the Right were advocating was a "distortion of long-standing concepts of the right of self-defence" and "a blow against international law". Bush's politics, he said "could well be a turning point in world history" and "lay the foundation for anti-Americanism" across much of the world. (Byrd's speech is at A lonely voice in a US Senate silent on war.
Margaret Ramirez at New York Newsday - Ban Lights Group's Fire - one group of Big Apple residents plans to welcome the citywide smoking ban with a loud boycott of all city restaurants and bars. [villagechoice]
"We're not just fighting for smokers' rights. We're fighting for basic rights that are being taken away," Silk said. "There's a whole class of people that are being treated horribly and no one is talking about it. Our whole lives are being disrupted, but we're not going to just hide in little corners of our home and light up in secret. We're going to fight."
Rick Elia at New Castle News - Holocaust survivor concerned with history repeating itself - Helga Hooper knows that genocide begins with gun control. She lived through it in Germany. [trt-ny]
Garry Reed, The Loose Cannon Libertarian - Who Hates Our Freedom? - when the Twin Towers fell, Bushnev and company made it clear that it happenned because the Islamists hate our Freedom and democracy. Now that we no longer have any freedom, thanks to the Busheviks, they've had to take a stance a little closer to reality.
Funny how Arabs without membership in the al Qaeda Club see things just the opposite. According to an Associated Press article last October, a Zogby International poll of 3,800 adults in eight different Islamic countries came to this conclusion: "A comprehensive survey of attitudes and opinions in the Arab world has found that Arabs look favorably on American freedoms and political values, but have a strongly negative overall view of the United States based largely on their disapproval of U.S. policy toward the region."
Oh. So they don't hate us for the Freedom and Democracy we used to have. They hate us for our foreign policies that we still have.
L. Neil Smith at Rational Review - If you want peace, free the slaves - a little history lesson about the enslavement of Americans, all Americans. [smith2004]
The day will come, however, when maintaining a worldwide empire will force this or successor regimes to begin conscription again. This time, they will draft our daughters, as well. Likewise, circumstances will compel them to raise taxes massively, if not simply to finance the military occupation of the whole Moslem world, then in a Keynesian attempt to absorb the runaway inflation brought about by their idiot policies.
It will take a lot more than Vietnam-style street demonstrations to prevent this (although they are a good beginning). Americans at every level of the culture and in every walk of life must come to understand that taxation is the fuel of war, and that conscription is slavery.
Harry Browne - Bring Back America - Mr. Browne wants back the America of his youth. Me too. [rrnd]
