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Mayor Marty Blum marches for a reasoned solution

FROM the ARCHIVES

From a Disgruntled Tech Worker

Should there be a Lemon Law for Computers?

Let's Reward Microsoft for their Anti Trust Violations

Michael Moore's Letter to George Bush re: Enron

Keeping Drugs Illegal: The Drug War Folly

What Bush has done

Those Born Against Savage rants about Born Agains

I Wish to Complain by John Connell (Punk, the Press, and . . .)

Capital Punishment

Vietnam 25th Anniversary

Bill Gates Revisited and Revisited

Guess Who

Sleep by Ken Magalnik

Extraterrestrial Contact is Illegal

War on Kosovo by Nik Green

Bombing the Chinese Embassy by Nik Green

Murdoch or Milosevic by Tarquin Chodsworth

Why we Must Buy Organic Foods by Steve Schenck

Safety by Ken Magalnik

Who is Christian Here: The Religious Right and Conservative Christianity? by Anonymous

Letter to Prince Charles

Arts and Arms by Marvin Banasky

The Grand Deception Continued by Nu Gamma (Alien Conspiracy Theories)

Another View on Bootlegging by Nik Green

A Dissenting View on Bootlegging by Richard Hilton

Another View on Forks by Little Savage

Railing against the Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft Mafia.

A activist's journal of peaceful uprising against the Bush Administration's ongoing policy of 'pre-emptive' military action (unilateral aggression) against sovereign nations, as well as numerous other examples of ill-conceived foreign policy which results in our nation's reputation throughout the rest of the world being dragged through the mud.

Saturday 21 September 2002:

The imminent war against Iraq presents an even uglier future of armed conflict breaking out all over the already unstable middle east, as well as other regions. The whole concept of "pre-emptive action" against a nation , no matter how irresponsible their leaders, is not only folly, but also contravenes international law. It also sets an extremely dangerous precedent in which other nations will look to the U.S., by far the worlds most powerful, influential and visible nation, economically and militarily, and use our example as "justification" to attack those with which they are in dispute, as a means of solving their differences. Of course, the more conflicts that break out overseas, the better the US war based economy fares, and provides not only a huge financial booster for the "defense" industrial contractors like Lockheed, Boeing, Martin Marietta, Raytheon etc etc, but also gives a superficial "justification for the $350 Billion+ U.S. annual military budget. Combine this with the fact that "President" Bush is stripping the role of the peoples' representatives in both Houses and assuming a dictator-like stance in which anyone who argues against him is portrayed by him, his cabinet and a cpmplkiant corporate media as "unpatriotic" or "anti-American". A rapidly increasing number of people, many ofwhom have been blinded by anger and emotion for the year post 9-11 to allow rational thought and discussion as to foreign policy and the motives of the Bush Administration, are starting to realize that what the American public are being sold by the this administration via their media puppets is nothing like reality. It is only possible to swallow a finite amount of corporate TV (CNN, Fox, ABC, CBS etc) and newspaper sanitized "news", Bush administration propaganda and sheer bullshit, and we are now way over the overdose threshold. So it was with this background that Penny and I decided to no only partake, but also document the ongoing series of protests that are now happening on a weekly basis here in Santa Barbara. It all started on a very small basis. During the initial bombing of Afghanistan in response to the 9-11 terrorist attacks by mostly Saudi nationals (?), a small group of women dressed in black have stood in silent vigil at the State Street entrance to the Paseo Nuevo shopping mall, to protest the arbitrary killing of innocent Afghan civilians with bombs and bullets labeled "made in the US". As a historical note, in the first 4 weeks of the bombings, 6337 innocent civilians were murdered in addition to the killing of a number of mostly junior al'Qaida and Taliban combatants, who ended up in Guantanamo Bay, (in conditions that contravene the Geneva Convention).

However the looming specter of a war against Iraq is now galvanizing public protest, to add to that already occurring in response to many other ugly issues, including globalization, the crippling debts of 3rd world nations, environmental devastation, sweatshop slave labor and the ongoing militarization of space. The upcoming war is clearly designed to distract the US public's attention away from the most extensive and expensive wave of organized white- collar crime in US history, some of it perpetrated by close corporate associates of the Bush Administration (Enron et al), an economy that is in tatters, and the biggest attack on civil rights since the mass internment of American Japanese citizens during WW2. The first protest that we heard of was for the Saturday September 21st at 11am at Vera Cruz Park on Cota Street. We just happened to find out via email and word of mouth the previous evening, so we decided to take the video camera and film a short documentary piece, and interview some of the protesters. Early that morning, I knocked up a pair of placards emblazoned with thick black letters on red and green fluorescent cardboard, including "Mass murder is not a family value", and "Dump Cheney, Ax Ashcroft and bin Bush (!). I also took a large US Flag on an aluminum pole... I feel that is most important to put over the fact that this is OUR country too, and "Old Glory". the symbol of this nation has been unfortunately publicly co-opted by the far right.

We got to the park in good time on a really warm sunny morning and met a small contingent of maybe a couple of dozen folk standing on the sidewalk armed with placards. As we got the camera ready and loaded the park started to fill up, with people arriving from all directions. This turnout was unexpectedly large and the park was swelling rapidly with people; some impromptu speeches were given, but rather than just stand on the sidewalk and remain invisible in a park off a sidestreet, someonesuggested we should march up State Street, to roars of approval. We set off at around11-30 and slowly made our way up State St, on both sides of the street. At one point, it was estimated that by the time we were half way up State Street, there were some 500 marchers and we were making one hell of a lot of noise! Some people even paraded their banners in the center of the street, in a clear act of civil disobedience! Penny interviewed many protesters, including one of a group of "Pissed Off Patriots", aka POPs who gave a very eloquent and clear explanation of where he stood and why he was spending his hard-earned Saturday morning walking up and down the streets on a hot day, on camera. The Mayor of Santa Barbara, Marty Blum, also marched with us, and gave an interview while on the move: she was also of the viewpoint that pre-emptive action against a nation, specially without proof or provocation was an extremely dangerous path to follow, and America should follow the rule of International Law (as opposed to flouting it) and let the U.N. deal with the problem.

Strangely, no police showed throught the entire 2 hours we took over the downtown area, they seemed to have no idea that the march was going to happen. We stopped for a while outside the Courthouse, then made our way to Congresswoman Lois Capps' election campaign offices, where a petition was delivered, to persuade Ms. Capps to vote against a decision to use pre-emptive, ie unilateral aggression against a sovereign nation. Finally the police show up, and ask everyone to leave the election office's parking lot "as it is private property". Gradually we melted away, with the plan to meet on the following Saturday, same place same time. the following day, Penny edited the footage in the computer and I recorded a version of "Mine Eyes have seeen the Glory" which was put to a patriotic epilog right at the end of the 14 minute video: we took it down to Channel17 TV and they liked the footage and the first two airings happened on the Thursday evening.

Continue: Saturday 28 September 2002.