WE’RE NOT REALLY POETRY PEOPLE HERE, but can’t help admire UW prof Richard Kenny’s versified thoughts about the “timorous Congress” acceding to war-fever.

…this past Sunday afternoon and Wednesday evening along the usual downtown-Capitol Hill routes for such marches. This is expected activity during a time of hotheaded drumbeating for organized military peurility; particularly for a would-be war in which the U.S. would be the undisguised aggressor.

Two aspects made these marches particularly significant. They were among the best-attended of many such marches held across the country this week. (At least 10,000 attended the Sunday march.) And both were remarkably intelligent, respectful, life-affirming affairs, attended by a wide cross-section of the local populace.

We need a popular uprising against the election-stealers and coup-plotters in DC. And we’ll need everybody we can get to be in it–even your parents, people who look like your parents, and men who don’t have ponytails.

(I’ve been thinking of forming a group for guys who care for progressive politics but don’t care to sport abundant hair. Call it the “Green Shaven.”)

War-aggression propaganda, particularly the type practiced by post-Reagan Republicans, is a campaign by a ruling regime to pressure its own citizens into unthinking passive-aggressive obedience. It tries to turn individuals into a dumbed-down mass. Opponents of war-aggession can best counter this tactic by welcoming and respecting humans of all backgrounds as intelligent individuals.

One lifestyle-left poster in the post-WTO era bore the slogan “Live Without Dead Time;” implying that sanctimonious personal thrills should be a movement’s true main goal. But in any serious work, including work for important social causes, there’s a lot of “dead time,” a lot of time spent on the boring details, a lot of time when it seems all for naught.

The organizers of the Sunday and Wednesday marches spent that time wisely. They ran well-organized, peaceful, on-topic gatherings that gained positive media attention and reinforced an image of antiwar activists as sane and rational–a lot more sane and rational than the war promoters.

Contrary to the image promoted by Michael Moore, the American power elite and the White House war-wanters shouldn’t be caricatured as “Stupid White Men.” They’re not stupid, even if they wish everybody else was. They’re brutishly clever and ambitious, even the ones who aren’t (or like to pretend they aren’t) book-learned. They’re not all white; and they’re certainly not all men. They’re not “The Patriarchy” or “Straight White Male Society” as some of my Olympia friends like to imagine. Their current top leaders (with a few backward exceptions) no longer discriminate (at least not overtly) on such outmoded, inaccurate criteria as race and gender.

No, today’s powermongers (heart symbol) you if you’ve got money, power, and an eagerness to play the game the right-wing way. If you lack these qualifications, they’ll treat you as a potential foot-soldier in their domestic army of dumbed-down discipline. If you decline to get with the program, you’re the enemy.

We should welcome everyone, regardless of subculture or lifestyle, who’s tired of being defamed and insulted by the talk-radio demagogues. Who’s tired of being talked down to, of being endless cajoled into living in fear. Who’s tired of the peurile influence-peddling and naked corruption. Who wants a world of real spirituality, real statesmanship, and real governance. Who’d rather see less Mideast violence rather than more.

Peace. It’s not just for hummus eaters anymore.

…to protest Bush’s warmongering tonight. It starts at 7 at the (threatened with razing for a high-rise) First United Methodist Church, 5th & Marion in downtown Seattle. It’ll end up at St. Mark’s Cathedral, 1245 10th Ave. E., where a short service will be held ending at 9 p.m.

A FEW ITEMS AGO, I mentioned the curious creatures I’ve deemed “liberal-buts.” Here’s one of the more effective examples of liberal-but forensics I’ve seen lately. Professional gadfly writer Christopher Hitchens has written a pro-war screed for the London Mirror. In UK tabloid fashion, it consists of short paragraphs containing short sentences, and expresses its premise loudly and doubtlessly. Hitchens wants us to view a forced ouster of Saddam as a righteous liberation movement any consistent leftist should applaud, and chastizes anyone who doesn’t agree with him.

I don’t agree with him.

I’d more easily foresee Saddam’s ouster as a costlier, more violent version of Manuel Noriega’s ouster from Panama or Alexander Dubcek’s ouster from Czechoslovakia–the forced retirement of a fomer client-state dictator who’d tried to break off on his own. There’s no guarantee any successor Iraqi regime would be any less cruel to its own people than the regime there now; just that it would be, by design, more amenable to US business interests.

…has long been one of those New Republic liberal-buts. (That’s a fella who says “I’m a liberal, but…” just before he endorses every conservative position.) But now, even Kinsley’s sounding the alarm on war posturing as a domestic attack against democracy:

“The official U.S. government message on how citizens should decide about going to war is, ‘Don’t worry your pretty little heads about it.’ Last week the White House issued a sort of Official Souvenir Guide to the Bush administration’s national security policy, and it is full of rhetoric about democracy. Yet that policy itself, including at least one likely war, has been imposed on the country entirely without benefit of democracy. George W.’s war on Iraq will be the reductio ad absurdum of America’s long, slow abandonment of any pretense that the people have any say in the question of whether their government will send some of them far away to kill and die.”

Be the first kid on your block to mount a protest against this year’s more-explicit-than-ever pro-war toys!

…it’s “Songs About Nuclear War from the ’80s.”

Survivors of the hype. Survivors of the tears, real and crocodile. Survivors of the merchandising. Survivors of the self-serving politician pontifications.

And, so far, at least most of us are survivors of the war against freedom being conducted in freedom’s name.

Richard Nixon was often described as running an “imperial presidency.” The current thief of the presidency is running an imperial presidency that would lack only the imperial pomp and grey-flannel style of the Nixon era. He is a president who wants to be dictator, and who is trying to transform this nation into a dictatorship.

But it wouldn’t be the fascist dictatorship my anarchist pals always rant about. The U.S. Right-Wing Conspiracy (hereafter “RWC”) has a simpler style in mind–the Latin American dictatorship model, in which a hired stooge runs a brutally authoritarian regime on behalf of the 500 families that own everything in the country. One stooge can be replaced by another, but the underlying power structure remains.

I know someone who likes to explain the human condition as a struggle between a “love-based reality” and a “fear-based reality.” I would argue there are many other bases for people’s individual zeitgeists; but the “fear-based” concept works in this case. The RWC thrives on spreading fear, and “terrorism” is just about the most exploitable fear-object you can find.

So we’ve been inundated with piece-by-piece assaults on our rights and freedoms, and accusations of treason against anyone who dares question these assaults. You’ve got any number of pro-corporate, anti-environment, and anti-labor power plays promoted under the new excuses.

But you also have activists, webloggers, pundits, ordinary folk, and even a few politicians speaking out against the ongoing coup-in-process. This is the true resiliant, never-say-die Spirit of America. These, not the RWC demagogues, are the real patriots. If more of us can join this fight for real freedom, we can stand a decent chance of both defending our country and of having a country worth defending.

…has taken old WWII domestic-propaganda posters and added new texts to create some scathing anti-Bush satires. (Warning: The site is on one of those free servers with a daily hit quota, so you might have to access it early in the day.)

IT’S PHOTO DAY TODAY, starting with some more examples of American business standing up for our nation (don’t you dare imagine any commercial exploitation of the popular emotions could be involved.)

First, it’s good to know the bowling pins of America refuse to be knocked over by internal divisiveness…

…And almost as good to know that giant balloon eagles are valiantly defending our right to consume mass quantities of imported oil to power our big-ass RVs.

Meanwhile, some folks who had other ideas about America and commerce staged protests across the nation on Saturday. Locally, rallies took place at Westlake Park, the Seattle Central campus, and at Broadway and East Thomas Street (where activists staged a symbolic “Take Back the Streets” exercise in the middle of the intersection.)

Whilst phalanxes of cops protected oil-company assets, peaceful advocated advocated peace. Peace was about the only thing all the protesters seemed to be for (some attendeess also expressed support for the Palestinian cause).

The protests across the country were ostensibly about the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Protest leaders have depicted the organizations as loan sharks, ruining the economies of Third World countries for the benefit of big global corporations. But, as often happens in a lefty gathering, topic drift abounded.

So you got bashers of the Bush oil policy, the Bush Mideast policy, the sanctions against (and potential invasion of) Iraq, the war on drugs, SUVs, domestic banks, and capitalism in general.

Later on Saturday, about 100 fans of Alice in Chains singer Layne Staley held a quiet vigil at the Seattle Center International Fountain. Staley, 34, was found dead at his University District home late Friday night; probably from an overdose.

In his songs and in interviews, Staley frequently admitted that he’d used heroin and that it had turned his life into a living hell. His lyrical imagery was perfectly matched by the band’s music–heavy metal dirges, often slow and pounding.

By 1993 AIC’s brutal and tragic aesthetic, unrelieved by the pop-punk energy of Mudhoney or the cynical wit of Nirvana, had come to most purely embody what many people (including most rock people in Seattle) claimed they hated about the media’s “Seattle Scene” stereotype. By 1996, Staley had essentially retired from making music. He seldom appeared in public, stopped performing live, and contributed to only a handful of new recorded songs. The few friends who kept in contact with him didn’t talk.

A Stranger gossip item last year said he’d been seen, looking presumably healthy, at a local club. A lot of us wanted to believe it. Instead, it now turns out to have been one of many unsuccessful sobriety attempts.

Staley never glamorized drug use. His songs and interviews spoke plainly of heroin’s momentary joy and lingering sadness. He lived in a private hell; it ultimately didn’t matter that this hell was initially of his own making.

…why the U.S. shouldn’t invade Iraq, at least not now. (Found by Edgecurve.)

…Terry Jones ponders what would happen if current ideologies i/r/t bombing any country where a terrorist lives were applied a little closer to home.

BENJAMIN BARBER SEZ the post-Taliban era’s a great opportunity to revive the idea of real democracy (rather than mere capitalism).

OUR OL’ PAL BOB MCCHESNEY writes about how reactions against a monopolistic, right-wing-biased news media might (just might, mind you) be a cornerstone of the next great progressive movement.

‘TWAS A GLORIOUS 20th anniversary party Sun. night for the Pink Door, our official fave gourmet-Italian eatery. (And not just because the name discreetly alludes to something I always like to go into.) The event had the swingin’ acrobat depicted here, a stilt walker, an accordian-tuba combo, several torch singers, a sax player, and street-music vet Baby Gramps. Fun was had by all.

AN EGYPTIAN INTELLECTUAL claims “Terrorism is the antithesis of self-determination.” (found by Rebecca’s Pocket.)

ROGER EBERT’S glossary of movie cliches (found by Robot Wisdom).