I got email from a former housemate living in the UK, offering some suggested reading. It was an editorial carried by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation pointing out that most of the current wave of US imperialism was meditated well before September 11th. It’s an excellent article.

In the email, my friend reminded all of the recipients that it’s important to keep in mind America’s real motivations, no matter how often it’s suggested America wants what’s best for Iraq. I agree but disagree. I spammed out this email:

Subject: Re: America’s motives
Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 12:40:24 -0500 (EST)

Reply Reply All Forward Delete > Message List

Alanna and folk,

It’s a good article, read it. As a Canadian living in the big US and
A, I think there’s a couple extra points worth making.

Alanna said

> It is important to keep in mind why this is really happening, no
> matter how many of us want to believe America wants to do what is
> best for the Iraqi people.

Remember one thing: George Bush, the Bush Administration and the
select few neo-conservative “think tanks” who have their ear are not
America. America is a lot of things and a lot of people. But the
wing-nuts who are responsible for US foreign policy and who guide it
with the goal of world domination, make up only a tiny thread in the
great American quilt.

There are plenty of people here who do support their war. Probably,
yes, the numeric majority. A lot of them yelled their reasons at me
from their cars as I protested on the streets of Sacramento
yesterday. None of them wanted global hegemony. They wanted to
secure peace and safety, and they felt some risk was worth it.

I disagree with them. And I’m not alone here. San Francisco was
essentially clogged with protest actions yesterday. I haven’t heard
the numbers from New York but it was likely phenomenal, following on
the greatest wave of protest there since Vietnam. Likewise LA.
Likewise Boston. Likewise, for all I know, Sheboygan. In Sacramento
(the californian capital, believe it or not) the response to our
little vigil was phenomenal. Resigned and dissapointed? Nope. Try
widespread anger and cheerful protest. There is a commitment among a
lot of soccer moms, ex-vets, school girls, homeless people, religious
groups, guys in suits, doctors, bakers and candlestick makers to
resist the local dictatorship cheerfully and unyeildingly. I am
frankly suprised at how wide and how deep the resistance here is.
This is also America.

Don’t be fooled by the polls and the media. The pollsters and the
media mostly belong to the same people who designed the war. If you
could hear the steady cacophny of car horns our “honk for peace”
signs raised hour after hour you wouldn’t feel threatened by
Americans. Feel threatened by Bush, by all means. Feel even more
threatened by the hardened schemers who surround him and are now
having their moment, as described in this article. But when you feel
that way, keep in mind you do it together with a whole great heap of
America.

Hugh

Just got emailed a great report from a fellow Davisite who was in San Francisco yesterday.

It’s here.

2 lines of a tight lockdown were blocking the whole intersection–creating a huge free space between them. By the time we got there, the cops had un-liberated the space, but there were many, many people still there, including a brass band.

The San Francisco branch of Indymedia (sf.indymedia.org) has an hour-by-hour rundown of yesterdays’ protests in the SF streets. It makes for harrowing reading. The website is hard to get on to, apparently the servers are being hammered. I’m mirroring a snapshot of that page here if you can’t get through to the real page.

8AM: Arrests beginning.500 people (police say 300)blocking Market at Sansome. Cop violence reported outside UK consulate and outside Bechtel

Today is promising to be another long one for San Francisco, with more protestors reportedly converging on the bay area all the time. I’m not sure how many can be left. The police are reporting the largest number of arrests “in 30 years”. Tomorrow (Saturday) there is a planned rally at Civic Centre Plaza which should be more organized, less confrontational. That will be my first time in the big city since the start of the war. Yesterday I was in Sacramento, and it was great.

9:50AM: 1000 at Mission & 1st headed towards Market to meet about 1000 people that have taken over Market & Montgomery and have formed a liberated zone.

Davis was relativley quiet, with most dissenters heading out early yesterday morning to San Francisco. Some of the solid core of older people who have been the overwhelming majority of the peace presence in campus-town Davis (don’t ask me what happened to the student, but good for the old people) maintained (and are maintaining) a 24 hour vigil downtown, where children are making signs and flagging them at traffic. The first first-hand accounts of Davis residents’ experience in San Francisco are nasty: police aggression and violence starting early and a long list of area arrestees. Which is why me and my visa weren’t there.

1:30PM: Crowd is getting rowdy at 7th & Market. One cop down.

Word has it the Oakland area and East Bay Area generally are quietly going off as well. Maybe quiet isn’t the word. There it is reportedly the highschool students of 3 or 4 schools who are leading the protests, with the Berkeleyites backing them up. Raising up the next generation of resistance.

6:09PM: Upwards of 6000 people running down 2nd Street towards Folsom

I don’t mean to sound too radical, but this war has been more than enough to radicalize normally calm citizens.

8:00PM: 6000 strong at Castro & Market Streets – unsuspecting onlooker assaulted by police on the sidewalk.

Indymedia.org has reports on major protests across America, including:

San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, DC, New York, Chicago, Eugene, Portland, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Richmond, Boston, Urbana Champaign, Milwaukee, Baltimore/Towson, Maine, New Mexico, Atlanta.

This doesn’t cover any of the smaller protests that I know are on across the country.

11:30PM: 600 People marching through the Haight.

Updates for the Bay Area can be had at KPFA 94.1 out of Berkely, or from Enemy Combatant Radio, who are running a pirate radio station with internet relays, reportedly straight out of Market St the Mission district. How are they managing that? One internet relay for ECR (in Ogg Vorbis, Winamp can open it) is casting at: http://stream1.transbay.net:8100/sflr.ogg.

Tomorrow is yet another day.

FRIDAY 3/21: We Need to Keep Our Voices in the Streets! 7AM – Assemble at Justin Herman Plaza

update 1:30pm: approximatley 75 protestors (and bystanders?) are trapped on Market St. Police marched in from both directions. They are not being told why they can’t leave, only that they are breaking the law. Communication is only via cell phone. At this moment, the police have deployed their enormous (!!!) riot sticks and are pushing into the crowd. Police numbers are estimated 75 to 175, with 75 probably the more likely number.

I’m going dowtown Davis now. There was a CHP helicopter circleing earlier, but it’s moved off. I don’t imagine there is much more than some old people with candles, this is after all Davis, but even that is good.

update 1:00pm:the police have started a major action on market. apparently it’s packed with police and police vehicles from ? to the castro. Sounds like things are changing from active to angry.

KPFA is reporting 350 arrests in San Francisco with more expected. Multiple intersections have been blocked by protestors, stopping traffic. As far as I can tell, it has been an ongoing game of cat and mouse in which protestors take a downtown intersection, traffic is stopped, police eventually arrive in substantial force and break up the blockades. Some protestors are arrested and the rest move on another intersection. Protestors are reportedly arriving in steady numbers to replace the arrested. Rinse and repeat.

A bus driver on air is reporting that many SF areas that are not normally high-traffic are mighty slow. Repercussions throughout “the whole city”, with exception of suburban areas, from the sounds of it.

“It’s fine with me. People are dieing right now, and I shouldn’t be living my life the way I normally do”
— Lisa, school bus driver

Also a brief report that in Oakland, a BART station was shutdown when “hundreds” of 400 to 500 high school students arrived demanding free transportation to a Berkeley rally. Damn.

Who knew this was even going to a vote today? And why did it all work out alright when it would have been easy to pass this through when no one was watching?

REP America Pleased with Arctic Refuge Vote

The Senate has voted (narrowly) to remove the clauses in the budget resolution which was going to allow oil drilling in the Artic National Refuge.

Tremble, oh Manitoba, oh Nunavut, oh mighty Quebec for thy remarks have been overheard and repeated on the Yahoo portal frontpage.

At least, Herb Dhaliwal’s remarks regarding Bush’s lack of “statesman” skills have been noticed. Yahoo has a Rueters article “Bush Failed to Act as Statesman-Canadian Minister” listed as one of it’s shortlist of News stories that are linked to on the yahoo.com portal.

“I think he has let not only Americans but the world down by not being a statesman as people expect of someone who is president of a superpower.”

The nice thing about this comment is that it was made in a public place, directly at journalists, so there’ll be no qualifying and conditionalizing of it. The not-so-nice thing is that calling Bush “not a statesman” is like knocking Augusto Pinochet for his poor singing voice. Statesmanship isn’t exactly the issue. Imperial bloodthirstiness doesn’t break for diplomacy and I think we all knew that.

But hey, every little thing.

There is some confusion surrounding the implications of the various levels of terrorist threat advisory status. How much danger is there of being the victim of a terrorist strike, for instance, on an “orange” vs. “yellow” day? In an attempt to clarify, I have assembled this guide:

www.actagainstwar.org is coordinating next-day response in the SF area. I probably won’t be there – if ever there was an oppurtunity to get arrested and get stripped of my current and future visas, that would be it – but a lot of other people will be.

Yep, here we go supportin’ the troops. Supportin’ the troops. Tie a yellow ribbon ’round the old oak tree.

This one was inevitable. Americans stand behind their armed sons and daughters when they’re in the field, and everyone loves a marching band. But even the Washington Bloody Post caught an important detail here.

As at the start of previous confrontations abroad, the poll found that the country has largely united behind its president — a unity that will be tested as the war unfolds and circumstances on the battlefield change….

Overall support for a war with Iraq also surged from 59 percent two weeks ago to 71 percent today. And the poll found equally broad support for beginning the war immediately after Bush’s 48-hour deadline expires on Wednesday. At this point, roughly one in four Americans opposes the invasion.

Link to the full article.

Dianne Feinstein is the democratic senator for California. Though she doesn’t actually represent me (I’m not a US citizen) neither does any other politician really, so what the hell. I sent her this email.

Who knows, I’ve heard it said that these actually get read sometimes.

Dear Senator Feinstein,

Hugh Stimson

America is divided somewhere around the 60/40 mark on the war. Presumably we’ll mostly be supportin’ the troops once it gets going, but in their hearts there are an enormous number of USians who don’t think the right thing is being done. There is a second party in the US political system, sort of, and it their natural job to stand for all those Americans who aren’t for war. Instead that second party don’t do jack shit all, and it’s an awful display of cowardice and cynicism. I hope they have a pang when they see their salary deposit on their bank statements. I hope they have a pang when and if they get internal notification of the number of dead in Baghdad.