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DAVID CORN wonders whether the war, and the W regime, might soon stumble upon the “Hubris of the Neocons.”
CLEVER ENTREPRENEURS have designed a pro-peace, pro-love, and pro-active T-shirt bearing the slogan “French Kiss for Peace.”
THIS SUNDAY, the Seattle Times ran a long and lovely story about the Grand Illusion Theater, where I curated a strange-matinees series in 1987 and where, under the name The Movie House, the Seattle alterna-film exhibition scene began back in 1970. Under various owners over the years (it’s currently part of the nonprofit Northwest Film Forum), the 78-seat GI has epitomized the best of the Seattle filmgoing scene: Friendly curiosity, wild eclecticism, and a healthy indifference to celebrity BS.
The same day the times ran its Grand Illusion piece, Scarecrow Video held a public wake at its Roosevelt Way digs for the store’s founder George Latsois. (He’d died earlier in the month, from the brain cancer that had forced him to sell the store four years ago.)
Latsois essentially took the aforementioned Seattle film-consumption aesthetic and built a video-rental superstore around it. He’d started with a handful of Euro-horror titles he’d consigned to the old Backtrack Records and Video store north of U Village (a sponsor of my matinees at the Grand Illusion). From there he opened his own 500-title store on Latona Ave. NE, which by 1993 had grown to take over a former stereo store on Roosevelt.
He built it from there according to that mid-’90s local business mantra, “Get Big Fast.” It had 18,000 titles when it moved to Roosevelt and over 60,000 now. But like many other local ’90s entrepreneurs, Latsois spent more money on expansion than he was bringing in. He became ill before he could sort it out, but the new ex-Microsoftie owners have honorably continued the store’s operations and its wide-ranging buying policies (want DVDs of Korean films dubbed into Chinese? They got ’em!).
Scarecrow Video, and the Grand Illusion four blocks away on University Way, are hallmarks of the city’s intelligence and unpretentious sophistication. These qualities were quite ludicly expressed in the current Seattle Weekly cover story. In a lengthy essay originally commissioned for The Guardian (that Brit paper that’s become the newspaper of record for un-embedded war coverage), local UK expatriate
Jonathan Raban depicts a city where just about everybody (except the cops and the sleaze-talk radio hosts) is adamantly antiwar, from the coffeehouses to the opera house. Around here we don’t have to escalate Bush-bashing protests into disruptive confrontations, because we’d rather try to send a more positive message out to the world.
Compare Raban’s depiction of the local antiwar movement with that of the current Stranger, which trots out that ages-old self-defeatist whine that Seattle’s (fill-in-the-blank) isn’t an exact copy of a (fill-in-the-blank) in San Francisco and therefore automatically sucks.
I say Seattle people only accomplish anything when they don’t settle for imitating shticks from down south, but instead dare to create their own stuff. We don’t have to break things or shut the city down to get out point across. We can forge our own path toward a less-stupid, less-violent world. We can show, by daily examples large and small, individual and massive, that, as they said in the WTO marches, another world is possible.
MORE LINKS TO LINKS to war commentary worth the time and eyestrain:
…and against prowar Democrats, are offered up by an anonymous North Carolinian at Monkeytime’s Monkey Media Report.
…is among the creators of copyright-free, print-out-yourself badge and banner designs at Another Poster for Peace.
…of the battles and their aftermaths can be seen at This Is Gulf War 2. Warning: They’re not pretty.
…”The war is getting messy, but the peace will be much worse:”
” The Bush administration’s plan to keep several hundred thousand U.S. and British troops for years in a divided, heavily armed Muslim country will make all Americans “targets of opportunity” for terrorists and become a rallying point for fundamentalist revolutionaries throughout the world.”
CAT POWER AND EUGENE CHADBOURNE are among the artists with lively tunes of dissent available for downloadin’ at Protest Records.
…would like y’all to visit his own site Where’s the War?, full of linx to not-necessarily-White-House-spun war news items from across the Web.
TODAY, SOME IMAGES from the past five days of local protests. As in the 1991 war, these were centered at the Federal Building. And as in the 1991 war, they tactically differed from the prewar protests.
The prewar protests included broad coalitions of groups, including labor unions and churches. They were devised to bring as many people as possible to one place at one time.
Last week’s protests were largely coordinated by the Radical Women/Freedom Socialist Party. They were devised as long vigils with a couple of extra highlighted gathering times (particularly Thursday evening). This diffused the number of potential participants, and emphasized the role of those for whom protesting is a year-round way of life.
That meant the speakers’ podium was dominated by dudes (almost all of whom were bearded) and dudettes who wanted to tie in the Iraq war with darned near everything else they didn’t like, from McDonald’s and health-care budget cuts to the capitalist system in general.
Even if we’re not doing this primarily for how it will look in the media, it’d still be to our advantage if it didn’t look like only the lifestyle-leftists still wanted peace. We need the experienced dedicated protestors; but we need to keep the rest of the populace in this as well. And that means bigger coalitions creating bigger events, which also recruit people from all walks-O-life into ongoing works in the more boring parts of the task (organizing, letter-writing, etc.)
IN OTHER NEWS, J.C. Penney had a commercial during the Oscars with average suburban young-women’s clothes modeled on screen while an off-screen singer proclaimed “I’m a One-Girl Revolution.” What if we had a 200-million-girl-and-boy revolution that was about something other than wearing different clothes?
What would an actual revolution be like today? What would be replaced, and what would it be replaced with? Any ideas? Lemme know.
…may still have a long-term effect on US policy, by raising popular support about the country’s directions.
WE DON’T KNOW WHO MADE IT, but here’s a hilariously intoxicating Gulf War 2 Drinking Game:
drink when: bush is called a crusader x2 if its by saddam saddam is called evil x2 if its by bush iraq troops surrender to the media x2 if to a unmanned vehicle or inanimate object a member of the media gets shot at a toast to the shooter if its ashleigh banfield (msnbc), geraldo riviera (fox) or arron brown (cnn) the united states terrorist threat level changes the united states government tries to link iraq to 9-11 someone implies tony blair is bush’s bitch someone implies scott ritter is Saddam’s bitch anybody ‘warns’ anybody the word “escalation” is used the media compares the war to blackhawk down x2 if its because a blackhawk really goes down a puppet government is installed in iraq x2 if its by the puppet government installed in the US
drink when:
…here’s The Nation’s listing of national antiwar resource links and Mother Jones’s daily updates of un-spun news.
…another elequent warning speech on the Senate floor:
“…Today I weep for my country. I have watched the events of recent months with a heavy, heavy heart. No more is the image of America one of strong, yet benevolent peacekeeper. The image of America has changed. Around the globe, our friends mistrust us, our word is disputed, our intentions are questioned. Instead of reasoning with those with whom we disagree, we demand obedience or threaten recrimination. Instead of isolating Saddam Hussein, we seem to have isolated ourselves. We proclaim a new doctrine of preemption which is understood by few and feared by many. We say that the United States has the right to turn its firepower on any corner of the globe which might be suspect in the war on terrorism. We assert that right without the sanction of any international body. As a result, the world has become a much more dangerous place. We flaunt our superpower status with arrogance. We treat UN Security Council members like ingrates who offend our princely dignity by lifting their heads from the carpet. Valuable alliances are split. After war has ended, the United States will have to rebuild much more than the country of Iraq. We will have to rebuild America’s image around the globe…. A pall has fallen over the Senate Chamber. We avoid our solemn duty to debate the one topic on the minds of all Americans, even while scores of thousands of our sons and daughters faithfully do their duty in Iraq. What is happening to this country? When did we become a nation which ignores and berates our friends? When did we decide to risk undermining international order by adopting a radical and doctrinaire approach to using our awesome military might? How can we abandon diplomatic efforts when the turmoil in the world cries out for diplomacy? Why can this President not seem to see that America’s true power lies not in its will to intimidate, but in its ability to inspire?… I along with millions of Americans will pray for the safety of our troops, for the innocent civilians in Iraq, and for the security of our homeland. May God continue to bless the United States of America in the troubled days ahead, and may we somehow recapture the vision which for the present eludes us.”
“…Today I weep for my country. I have watched the events of recent months with a heavy, heavy heart. No more is the image of America one of strong, yet benevolent peacekeeper. The image of America has changed. Around the globe, our friends mistrust us, our word is disputed, our intentions are questioned.
Instead of reasoning with those with whom we disagree, we demand obedience or threaten recrimination. Instead of isolating Saddam Hussein, we seem to have isolated ourselves. We proclaim a new doctrine of preemption which is understood by few and feared by many. We say that the United States has the right to turn its firepower on any corner of the globe which might be suspect in the war on terrorism. We assert that right without the sanction of any international body. As a result, the world has become a much more dangerous place.
We flaunt our superpower status with arrogance. We treat UN Security Council members like ingrates who offend our princely dignity by lifting their heads from the carpet. Valuable alliances are split.
After war has ended, the United States will have to rebuild much more than the country of Iraq. We will have to rebuild America’s image around the globe….
A pall has fallen over the Senate Chamber. We avoid our solemn duty to debate the one topic on the minds of all Americans, even while scores of thousands of our sons and daughters faithfully do their duty in Iraq.
What is happening to this country? When did we become a nation which ignores and berates our friends? When did we decide to risk undermining international order by adopting a radical and doctrinaire approach to using our awesome military might? How can we abandon diplomatic efforts when the turmoil in the world cries out for diplomacy?
Why can this President not seem to see that America’s true power lies not in its will to intimidate, but in its ability to inspire?…
I along with millions of Americans will pray for the safety of our troops, for the innocent civilians in Iraq, and for the security of our homeland. May God continue to bless the United States of America in the troubled days ahead, and may we somehow recapture the vision which for the present eludes us.”
NEWSWEEK’S EXCELLENT COVER STORY by Fareed Zakaria, “The Arrogant Empire,” is chock-full-O-lucid-observations. Among them:
“A war with Iraq, even if successful, might solve the Iraq problem. It doesn’t solve the America problem. What worries people around the world above all else is living in a world shaped and dominated by one country–the United States. And they have come to be deeply suspicious and fearful of us….”The Bush administration’s swagger has generated international opposition and active measures to thwart its will. Though countries like France and Russia cannot become great-power competitors simply because they want to–they need economic and military strength–they can use what influence they have to disrupt American policy, as they are doing over Iraq. In fact, the less responsibility we give them, the more freedom smaller powers have to make American goals difficult to achieve…. “America’s special role in the world–its ability to buck history–is based not simply on its great strength, but on a global faith that this power is legitimate. If America squanders that, the loss will outweigh any gains in domestic security. And this next American century could prove to be lonely, brutish and short.”
“A war with Iraq, even if successful, might solve the Iraq problem. It doesn’t solve the America problem. What worries people around the world above all else is living in a world shaped and dominated by one country–the United States. And they have come to be deeply suspicious and fearful of us….”The Bush administration’s swagger has generated international opposition and active measures to thwart its will. Though countries like France and Russia cannot become great-power competitors simply because they want to–they need economic and military strength–they can use what influence they have to disrupt American policy, as they are doing over Iraq. In fact, the less responsibility we give them, the more freedom smaller powers have to make American goals difficult to achieve….
“America’s special role in the world–its ability to buck history–is based not simply on its great strength, but on a global faith that this power is legitimate. If America squanders that, the loss will outweigh any gains in domestic security. And this next American century could prove to be lonely, brutish and short.”
DANNY SCHECHTER offers up a handy list of media war-coverage cliches to watch out for.
FOR MAINSTREAM MEDIA WAR COVERAGE ONLINE, here’s a list from CyberJournalist.Net.
