…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).

…and, as the commentators have commentated, it’s a challenge to find things to be thankful for (other than the ol’ “at least things aren’t worse” standby).

On top of the mass murder, war, riots, earthquake, dead dot-coms, runaway Boeing execs, general economic malaise, and other calamities affecting this world, nation, and region this year, government analysts just announced Washington state’s unemployment rate is the highest in the nation. And that’s before the 32,000-ish Boeing layoffs kick in.

And now comes something bound to dishearten the most hardy U.S. proponents of the war in Afghanistan–its stunning, nearly-complete success.

This was supposed to go on smoldering for months and years of stalemate. Now, the Taliban are only holding on to four provinces and a couple of surrounded townships; and that principally due to foreign mercenary soldiers. By year’s end, the Taliban could be crushed. Their house guest and patron Osama bin Laden could be captured any month now, or maybe he’ll just disappear as just another powerless refugee, or maybe he’ll be found dead of natural causes sometime next Autumn.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. The Pentagon/GOP strategists almost admittedly wanted the start of Cold War II, the resumption of what some Vietnam-era activists called “the permanent war economy.”

This was supposed to be so pervasive, so intense, and so drawn-out that three decades’ worth of domestic anti-military sentiment would permanently disappear. The public would unanimously support the re-direction of the federal money spigot back toward weapons contractors.

Citizens daring to speak non-Limbaughesque points of view were to be silenced, either by the shouts of mass disapproval or the heavier hand of new anti-dissent regulations. We were expected to rabidly cheer the piece-by-piece dismantling of due process under the law. Even the mildly authority-questioning satires of Saturday Night Live and e-mail joke lists, the mid-October conventional wisdom went, would have to fall in line with a new and permanent spirit of disciplinary obedience, or face publc obsolescence.

Instead, we’ve got a war that debuted in the fall and just might leave the airwaves in midseason. (Unless, of course, the Bushies try to get it renewed by adding the plot-twist of invading another country or two.)

Maybe, instead, some of us could start scripting our own midseason replacement. One with the far more difficult (hence more intriguing) storyline of trying to build a lasting peace and a more equitable lot for the folk (including the female folk) of that once-obscure land.

Call your cable or satellite provider (or, more directly, your Congressional representatives). Tell them you want to see The Peace Show.

(This article’s permanent link.)

WHATEVER HAPPENED to investigative reporting?

JUST HOW are we gonna pay for this war, anyway?

BASEBALL COMMISSIONER BUD SELIG (you know, the guy who stole the Seattle Pilots away) has won owner approval (but will undoubtedly get player-union challenges to) a plan to not move two teams but to shut them down altogether. This would leave places for the remaining owners to threaten to move their own teams to, and would lower the leverage of the players’ union in the next round of contract negotiations.

Baseball needs to bring more parity to its small-market teams, not pare them down. The Expos, Twins, and Marlins (the three teams most likely to get one of the two death sentences) all were league leaders at different times in the ’90s, and all have had reasonable attendance before current owners mismanaged them to near-death. Yet it’s those very owners who’d benefit the most from killing the teams. They’ll get cash from the other owners, and will be permitted to buy other MLB teams, thus letting them wreak their destructive management styles onto the Angels or A’s.

“Contraction” (Selig’s term for the scheme) isn’t something successful sports leagues do. It’s what outfits like the American Basketball Association and the North American Soccer League did, just prior to folding completely. For Major League Baseball to get away with this would be an outrage to the sporting community.

In human physiology, a contraction can lead to a birth. Selig’s contraction plan, however, could help lead to the death of baseball as we know it, or at least make it fiscally sicker.

JOHN PILGER WRITES in the London Daily Mirror:

“The war against terrorism is a fraud. After three weeks’ bombing, not a single terrorist implicated in the attacks on America has been caught or killed in Afghanistan. Instead, one of the poorest, most stricken nations has been terrorised by the most powerful – to the point where American pilots have run out of dubious ‘military’ targets and are now destroying mud houses, a hospital, Red Cross warehouses, lorries carrying refugees.”

“…Before another child dies violently, or quietly from starvation, before new fanatics are created in both the east and the west, it is time for the people of Britain to make their voices heard and to stop this fraudulent war–and to demand the kind of bold, imaginative non-violent initiatives that require real political courage.”

…of the Stateside war hype this time around. Here, a woman strolls downtown in the type of full-body veil prescribed by the Taliban. This particular woman might be an actual conservative Muslim, or she might be trying to drum up war support by presenting an image of the Taliban’s repressiveness, or she might be another journalist on some “chador-for-a-day” assignment.

Elsewhere downtown, a dozen or so women stood up at Westlake carrying the name of “Women In Black,” an international group opposed to both the Taliban and the war.

While four blocks away, Deja Vu (a company, and an industry, that historically has depicted governments as censorious threats to porn-lovers’ civil rights) bares its patriotic support toward making the world safe for lap dances.