Orange is the fashion statement of choice this season. Watch out! Duck! Tape those windows! Welcome to the Republic of Fear. Or could it be just an episode of some old Judge Dredd comic?
Within the last few days, we’ve learned from the heads of the CIA and FBI, among others, that Al Qaeda is on the loose in America, possibly with “radiological” weapons; that the North Koreans, previously not worth stirring over, should be able to hit the West Coast with nuclear-tipped Taepodong 2 missiles; that Osama bin Laden (who has the nasty habit of turning up just when this administration needs him most) is loose and broadcasting on the Terrorist Network for all he’s worth (remember the good old days when it took a while to “authenticate” his voice?); that Saddam and Osama have been spotted in a nightclub in Baghdad (or was it a madrassa on the Pakistani border) plotting our destruction; that our former European allies are aiding and abetting the enemy (a headline in today’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution goes, “Powell to confront France, Germany, Says he’ll ask them Friday at U.N.: Are you stalling to save Saddam?” and this morning on NPR I heard Congressman Henry Hyde say, while denouncing the French and Germans, “We shoulder a burdensome responsibility for the benefit of the entire globe, but too often we have to do it alone” — imperial self-pity, it’s so becoming); and that, by court decree, an antiwar (I hesitate even to say the word “peace”) march in New York on Saturday slated to go by the UN must now be a stationary rally, whose former marchers, according to my hometown paper the New York Times, will be “accommodated in pens on First Avenue” by the police.
And not an editorial peep so far from the Times on the banning of the march, or for that matter a ban on any marching below 59th street. New York, it seems, has now been declared a crowded theater and we’re the ones who evidently could yell, “Fire!” (Let’s forget, for a moment, that this administration has been doing nothing but yelling “Fire!” on our crowded planet for what now seems like eons.) Of course, it’s worth getting this straight, since there’s a logic worth grasping here, if you think about it. The hundreds thousand or more demonstrators who will turn out in New York in support of the United Nations, international law, restraint and peace, and have the urge to march supportively in front of the UN building at a moment of high drama are essentially declared dangers in a country whose administration wants to ensure that the UN is a vassal body or nothing at all. We would like to pen the administration in, but of course we’re the ones who will end up in pens in an ever more draconian state.
And really, except on the odd day on the odd opinion page, there’s been hardly a peep from the most significant parts of the mainstream media. I’ve been watching, as best one busy man can, the prime time news (CBS and ABC), some Ted Koppel, some Charlie Rose, some CNN, throw in a look at our major papers. Generally, in the last week, if you were that visitor from Mars of my childhood civics texts, who always landed in Middletown, USA to check out the glories of our system, you might be pardoned for mistaking our imperial media for a well-oiled (oops, sorry for that word) government propaganda machine pushing the line of fear, the sense that only one reasonable path exists in the world, the path to war, and that anyone or any country with a different take is mentally impaired. Consider, for instance, Gary Younge’s recent piece in the British Guardian, “Wimps, Weasels and Monkeys,” that began:
“The ‘petulant prima donna of realpolitik’ is leading the ‘axis of weasels’, in ‘a chorus of cowards’. It is an unholy alliance of ‘wimps’ and ingrates which includes one country that is little more than a ‘mini-me minion’, another that is in league with Cuba and Libya, with a bunch of ‘cheese-eating surrender monkeys’ at the helm. Welcome to Europe, as viewed through the eyes of American commentators and newspapers yesterday, as Euro-bashing, and particularly anti-French sentiment, reached new heights.”
To use a Reagan-era book title of Mark Hertsgaard’s, the media is now “on bended knee” to this administration — and it’s so much more effective for the fact that we lack a ministry of propaganda. It just seems to come naturally to us.
Fear focuses the mind tolerably well, just in strange ways, as this administration knows. So, as many Americans scramble for duct tape, plastic sheeting, and potassium iodide pills, and sink into a miasma of irrational fear, the Bush administration proceeds to tear up (or do I mean down) every global convention, every non-economic world organization, every agreement that passed for anything like order in the post-Cold-War world, while burying this country in the kind of debt — via a staggering redistribution of wealth — from which a score of future administrations may never dig us out.
To use a Reagan-era book title of Mark Hertsgaard’s, the media is now “on bended knee” to this administration — and it’s so much more effective for the fact that we lack a ministry of propaganda. It just seems to come naturally to us.
Fear focuses the mind tolerably well, just in strange ways, as this administration knows. So, as many Americans scramble for duct tape, plastic sheeting, and potassium iodide pills, and sink into a miasma of irrational fear, the Bush administration proceeds to tear up (or do I mean down) every global convention, every non-economic world organization, every agreement that passed for anything like order in the post-Cold-War world, while burying this country in the kind of debt — via a staggering redistribution of wealth — from which a score of future administrations may never dig us out.
Folks, it turns out, that the heartland of our Republic of Fear is Las Vegas. The Busheviks may be history’s greatest gamblers. No administration in our lifetime has rolled the dice this way. They plan to reorganize the world by themselves or go down shooting. It’s impressive in terms of pure nerve and arrogance. In their eyes, Iraq, as will be clear to anyone who has been reading these dispatches, is only #1 on a long laundry list. Jack Beatty recently wrote a taboo sentence, which we should take to heart, in the opening paragraph of a piece in the Atlantic magazine, “The Road Better Not Taken, A war against Iraq could be the most catastrophic blunder in U.S. history”: “The imminent U.S. attack on Iraq will be the first war in our history in which success is as fearful a prospect as failure. When we ‘win,’ our troubles will just begin. How we win will determine their gravity
To read Beatty click here
In a piece just released at the ZNET site, “Antiwar questions and answers,” Michael Albert and Stephen Shalom make a similar point:
“Attacking Iraq will establish the precedent that preventive war is a permissible doctrine in global affairs, reversing decades of slowly building small checks on foreign aggression. Bill Keller of the New York Times (Feb. 9, 2003) says he supports this war, but not all the other wars that Bush is likely to pursue. But nothing will make those next wars more likely than giving Bush a free hand for this one.”
To read Albert and Shalom click here
As for the global demonstrations on February 15 (and February 16 in San Francisco, here’s a Guardian headline you’ll never see in the U.S.: “10 Million Join World Protest, Rallies from Africa to Antarctica, People Prepare to March for Peace,” for a piece which began:
“Up to 10 million people on five continents are expected to demonstrate against the probable war in Iraq on Saturday, in some of the largest peace marches ever known. Yesterday, up to 400 cities in 60 countries, from Antarctica to Pacific islands, confirmed that peace rallies, vigils and marches would take place. Of all major countries, only China is absent from the growing list which includes more than 300 cities in Europe and north America, 50 in Asia and Latin America, 10 in Africa and 20 in Australia and Oceania. New polls in Europe and the US yesterday suggested that opposition is still mounting and is likely to continue even if the US gets a second resolution. Spanish and Dutch polls showed that more than 70% now oppose even UN-mandated action, with slightly fewer in Italy. Yesterday CND reported that it was struggling to cope with the deluge of people wanting to join.”
To read the rest of this Guardian piece click here
The British Independent suggested today that up to a million people might demonstrate in Britain alone. To read the Independent piece click here
Peter Rothberg, who runs the Act Now weblog at the Nation. magazine website, claims demonstrations will take place globally in at least 568 cities. (Rothberg’s weblog is a very useful site. To check it out click here
Yes, we’re unlikely to stop this war, but in the longer run they can be stopped. Fear mobilizes, but as the antinuclear movement learned in the early 80s, fear only takes you so far. You can’t run a global empire on fear, pain, and military power alone. With that in mind I include below a fine column by Ruth Rosen of the San Francisco Chronicle on the global demonstrations, which also reminds us that in a world in which the sole hyperpower has put its money on the singular threat of hyperviolence, the nonviolent path is the one open to us. It is the counterbalance to global terror.
Finally, for all you lovers of Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano, a brief piece he wrote on the upcoming demonstrations, eloquently put into English by his book translator Mark Fried, which is a reminder that elsewhere in the world people are looking at what happens here. It’s important to announce to them that there are Americans in sizeable numbers opposed to the path to war and to our draconian regime.
For those of you in or near New York or heading this way Saturday, I’ll be there, too. Look for me. I’m the whizzing-past-middle-aged bald guy in the puffy blue coat. Of course, it’s winter and I’ll probably have my ski cap on, but you’ll still recognize me. I wear glasses. I’ve got a graying mustache. I’ll have a sign. I used to be five foot eight before my son convinced me that I was shorter (the shrinkage factor of age, I’m sure). I know there will be a lot of us, but still, come by and say hello. Tom
World Protests War
By Ruth Rosen
February 13, 2003
San Francisco ChronicleMany of us will never forget when the people of the world welcomed the dawn of the new millennium. As the Earth turned, we watched televised pictures of people celebrating and cheering as the sky lit up with fireworks — from Asia to Europe, from Africa to North America. And, for the first time in human history, we understood, in a deeply visceral way, that we really do inhabit the same planet and that we are, in fact, members of a global society.
That is what’s going to happen again on Saturday. In 316 cities in 60 countries — Cairo, Bangkok, Beirut, Jakarta, Prague, Budapest, Tokyo, Moscow, London, Cape Town, Kigali in Rwanda, Madrid, Warsaw, Kiev, Lisbon, Mexico City,
Sao Paulo, New York, Sydney, Barcelona, to name but a few — more than a million people are expected to march and rally against an American invasion of Iraq.
WHY WE SAY NO
Eduardo Galeano
Translated by Mark FriedThe president of the planet has announced the next crime he¹s going to
commit in the name of God and democracy.He slanders God. He also slanders democracy, which has barely survived
the dictatorships the United States has been sowing in every part of the
world for more than a century.The Bush administration, which resembles a pipeline more than a
government, needs to control the world¹s second largest oil reserve, which
happens to lie under the soil of Iraq. It needs to justify its outlandish
military budget and to put the latest models of its weapons industry on
display.That¹s what it¹s about. The rest are pretexts. And the pretexts offered
for this next butchery offend our intelligence. The only country that ever
used nuclear arms against civilians, the country that unleashed the atom
bombs that annihilated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, wants us to believe that Iraq
is a threat to humanity.If President Bush loves humanity so, and truly wishes to confront the
gravest threat that humanity faces, why doesn¹t he bomb himself instead of
plotting a new extermination of innocent people?Immense demonstrations will fill the streets of the world this February
15.Humanity is fed up with being used as an alibi. Humanity is fed up with
grieving for the dead at the end of every war. It´s time to kill the war before it
kills us.