28 February 2003
wow, this is a beautiful example of the patriotism of the left. one of the most difficult things about the anti-war discussion of the past year has been the assumption on the part of many conservatives -- whether it is heartfelt or merely instrumental i do not know -- that people who oppose the war, or the administration more generally, are unpatriotic. there is little that makes me feel more pride in my country than attending a protest, and little that makes me more ashamed of it than the slavish devotion to the status quo that passes for patriotism in so much of the country.
27 February 2003
i can't believe i forgot this was happening! yay for my church!
rowan williams, the new archbishop of canterbury (i.e. anglican head honcho) is, quoting from the times article now, 'a self-described youthful "hairy leftie" and "peacenik"' who will consider ordaining queer clergy and women bishops and who seeks a beginning to the process of disestablishment -- that is, separation of the church from the state of england.
deck thyself my soul with gladness...
rowan williams, the new archbishop of canterbury (i.e. anglican head honcho) is, quoting from the times article now, 'a self-described youthful "hairy leftie" and "peacenik"' who will consider ordaining queer clergy and women bishops and who seeks a beginning to the process of disestablishment -- that is, separation of the church from the state of england.
deck thyself my soul with gladness...
ok, so i know it's not nice to shoot at easy targets. we should pick on people our own size. etc., etc. but someone forwarded me this really detestable fred barnes article (the weekly standard; i suppose it figures) including the following reasons why the left's anti-war position is "bankrupt." following the barnes excerpt is a chunk of the somewhat irate email i sent to the forwarder (?!) in question.
barnes said:
" In ignoring the 25 million Iraqis who suffer under Saddam's autocratic rule, the left has stripped any moral dimension from the antiwar cause. And its arguments for opposing a war of liberation in Iraq are either uninformed or merely stupid. Here are a few of those arguments:
(1) War will mean thousands of civilian casualties. If there's anything Saddam has produced in his nearly 25 years of rule in Iraq, it's civilian casualties. He ordered the gassing of thousands of innocent Kurds. He had thousands of Shiites murdered. His war against Iran caused tens of thousands of civilian casualties, and his invasion of Kuwait was marked by the killing of thousands of Kuwaiti civilians. Saddam has personally ordered the execution of thousands of Iraqis. He has allowed thousands of Iraqi children to die from starvation or lack of medicine.
Compare that with the few hundred civilians killed in Afghanistan by the U.S. military. In fact, the American intervention saved hundreds of thousands who would have starved to death otherwise. And in the 1991 Gulf War relatively few Iraqi civilians were killed. In truth, a war that deposes Saddam in Iraq will save civilian lives, thousands of them.
(2) It's a war for Iraqi oil. There's an easy way to get all the oil in Iraq that President Bush or anyone else might desire--and it's not war. No, the easy way is to lift sanctions on Iraq and make a deal with Saddam. He's eager to sell the oil and make money. And the United States doesn't need Iraqi oil anyway, what with Russian oil production coming on line. At the moment, America's problem is the cutoff of oil from Venezuela. A war for oil would oust President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Of course there is no such war planned, nor is there one to cut the price of oil. The price favored by Bush and the domestic oil industry--and producers like Saudi Arabia--will be restored when Venezuela is pumping fully again, probably soon.
(3) War in Iraq will stir a new wave of terrorism. We've heard this one before. The Gulf War, it was warned, would arouse the Arab street and subject Americans to a wave of attacks. That didn't happen. When the United States went into Afghanistan and, worse, bombed during Ramadan, it was supposed to prompt a worldwide uprising of Muslims, and Muslim terrorists in particular, against America. Again, that didn't happen. So when the Arab leader most hated by other Arab leaders--a leader who's far more secular than Muslim, is removed, it's highly unlikely to cause more terrorism. Most likely, the result will be less.
(4) Give the inspectors more time. This was a common cry at Saturday's antiwar demonstrations. But of course those cries were entirely disingenuous. By definition, the "stop the war" protesters don't want war, no matter what the United Nations inspectors in Iraq happen upon. The demonstrators are playing Saddam's delaying game: Let the inspections continue until support in the United States for military action in Iraq dissolves and war is averted. Then Saddam survives. The inspections ploy is further proof the left has given up wars of national liberation against
oppressive dictators and is now in the business of saving oppressive dictators from wars of national liberation."
so *i* said, in part (sorry about the formatting here):
the fact that saddam is bad, combined with the outside chance
(and i think that, factually, the chances are indeed small) that america
will make things better rather than worse for average iraqis does *not*
mean that it would be a good idea for us to invade -- certainly not
unilaterally, and in my opinion probably not multilaterally, either. i am not
uninformed or stupid. neither is any thoughtful leftist. and i think all of
barnes's points are entirely debatable. forthwith:
1. barnes doesn't realize it (maybe he's stupid or uninformed?), but this
point is closely tied to (3). i believe that if we press saddam he will use
every weapon at his disposal, including all the lovely chemical and
biological agents he got from us in the '80's. i think it will be horrific.
after all, he's crazy and if we attack him, he's got nothing to lose. however: it's
not so much the short-term civilian casualties i'm worried about (though
obviously i'm worried about those too). i'm more worried about
america's place in the world, and the utter hatred that any invasion of
iraq will engender. there's no better way to ensure civilian casualties
than to inflame the causes of terrorists. barnes resorts to anecdotal
evidence from qualitatively different situations to "prove" his point here,
and fails miserably.
2. barnes can have this one. i don't much care for the oil argument. i do,
however, think that there are other economic reasons for this war that
the bush administration isn't telling us about. several come to mind:
bush friendliness to industry in general, including the "defense"
industry; camouflage during poor economic times...
4. the argument *against* giving inspectors more time since iraq has
not moved to attack the united states or anyone else is a poor one. it
goes like this: "but i wanna!" i know we're not much into moral
normativity in american social science these days, but i can't help but be
appalled at the eagerness with which hawks approach this war, which
is just by no standard i can think of. i am not a pacifist, and neither,
interestingly, are many of us on the left these days. but war is a uniquely
terrible situation that is harmful to all involved, and anyone who does not
seek to avoid war until there is no other option is either deluded or
absolutely morally bankrupt (thought i'd engage in some barnesian ad
hominem. like it?)
barnes said:
" In ignoring the 25 million Iraqis who suffer under Saddam's autocratic rule, the left has stripped any moral dimension from the antiwar cause. And its arguments for opposing a war of liberation in Iraq are either uninformed or merely stupid. Here are a few of those arguments:
(1) War will mean thousands of civilian casualties. If there's anything Saddam has produced in his nearly 25 years of rule in Iraq, it's civilian casualties. He ordered the gassing of thousands of innocent Kurds. He had thousands of Shiites murdered. His war against Iran caused tens of thousands of civilian casualties, and his invasion of Kuwait was marked by the killing of thousands of Kuwaiti civilians. Saddam has personally ordered the execution of thousands of Iraqis. He has allowed thousands of Iraqi children to die from starvation or lack of medicine.
Compare that with the few hundred civilians killed in Afghanistan by the U.S. military. In fact, the American intervention saved hundreds of thousands who would have starved to death otherwise. And in the 1991 Gulf War relatively few Iraqi civilians were killed. In truth, a war that deposes Saddam in Iraq will save civilian lives, thousands of them.
(2) It's a war for Iraqi oil. There's an easy way to get all the oil in Iraq that President Bush or anyone else might desire--and it's not war. No, the easy way is to lift sanctions on Iraq and make a deal with Saddam. He's eager to sell the oil and make money. And the United States doesn't need Iraqi oil anyway, what with Russian oil production coming on line. At the moment, America's problem is the cutoff of oil from Venezuela. A war for oil would oust President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Of course there is no such war planned, nor is there one to cut the price of oil. The price favored by Bush and the domestic oil industry--and producers like Saudi Arabia--will be restored when Venezuela is pumping fully again, probably soon.
(3) War in Iraq will stir a new wave of terrorism. We've heard this one before. The Gulf War, it was warned, would arouse the Arab street and subject Americans to a wave of attacks. That didn't happen. When the United States went into Afghanistan and, worse, bombed during Ramadan, it was supposed to prompt a worldwide uprising of Muslims, and Muslim terrorists in particular, against America. Again, that didn't happen. So when the Arab leader most hated by other Arab leaders--a leader who's far more secular than Muslim, is removed, it's highly unlikely to cause more terrorism. Most likely, the result will be less.
(4) Give the inspectors more time. This was a common cry at Saturday's antiwar demonstrations. But of course those cries were entirely disingenuous. By definition, the "stop the war" protesters don't want war, no matter what the United Nations inspectors in Iraq happen upon. The demonstrators are playing Saddam's delaying game: Let the inspections continue until support in the United States for military action in Iraq dissolves and war is averted. Then Saddam survives. The inspections ploy is further proof the left has given up wars of national liberation against
oppressive dictators and is now in the business of saving oppressive dictators from wars of national liberation."
so *i* said, in part (sorry about the formatting here):
the fact that saddam is bad, combined with the outside chance
(and i think that, factually, the chances are indeed small) that america
will make things better rather than worse for average iraqis does *not*
mean that it would be a good idea for us to invade -- certainly not
unilaterally, and in my opinion probably not multilaterally, either. i am not
uninformed or stupid. neither is any thoughtful leftist. and i think all of
barnes's points are entirely debatable. forthwith:
1. barnes doesn't realize it (maybe he's stupid or uninformed?), but this
point is closely tied to (3). i believe that if we press saddam he will use
every weapon at his disposal, including all the lovely chemical and
biological agents he got from us in the '80's. i think it will be horrific.
after all, he's crazy and if we attack him, he's got nothing to lose. however: it's
not so much the short-term civilian casualties i'm worried about (though
obviously i'm worried about those too). i'm more worried about
america's place in the world, and the utter hatred that any invasion of
iraq will engender. there's no better way to ensure civilian casualties
than to inflame the causes of terrorists. barnes resorts to anecdotal
evidence from qualitatively different situations to "prove" his point here,
and fails miserably.
2. barnes can have this one. i don't much care for the oil argument. i do,
however, think that there are other economic reasons for this war that
the bush administration isn't telling us about. several come to mind:
bush friendliness to industry in general, including the "defense"
industry; camouflage during poor economic times...
4. the argument *against* giving inspectors more time since iraq has
not moved to attack the united states or anyone else is a poor one. it
goes like this: "but i wanna!" i know we're not much into moral
normativity in american social science these days, but i can't help but be
appalled at the eagerness with which hawks approach this war, which
is just by no standard i can think of. i am not a pacifist, and neither,
interestingly, are many of us on the left these days. but war is a uniquely
terrible situation that is harmful to all involved, and anyone who does not
seek to avoid war until there is no other option is either deluded or
absolutely morally bankrupt (thought i'd engage in some barnesian ad
hominem. like it?)
26 February 2003
i am still alive. this is not really all that surprising, but still i find myself rather impressed about it. desdemona went well saturday and sunday, despite my total lack of voice off-stage. this week exists in a flurry of catch-up work and job applications -- found out today that i'm a finalist for one of the jobs i applied for, and am also in the process of sending out another, this one to the friends' committee on national legislation. woo hoo.
...i would post some news commentary, but i'm too overwhelmed with bad feelings. somehow the bush administration has managed to skip directly to the successful conclusion of the iraq war, and has started publicizing its plans to "democratize" and "deal with" iraq. why do they get to do that???
...i would post some news commentary, but i'm too overwhelmed with bad feelings. somehow the bush administration has managed to skip directly to the successful conclusion of the iraq war, and has started publicizing its plans to "democratize" and "deal with" iraq. why do they get to do that???
21 February 2003
20 February 2003
know what's cool? here's what: there's a math lecture on monday titled "what do you hear in these sounds?"
...which is a dar williams song. ha ha. other cool things about math include, probably temporarily, my understanding of statistics. for those of us who are social scientists at heart, it's amazing the difference a text makes. so now i can tell you in fifty words or less pretty much how bayesian inference works. (luckily for you, i'll refrain from doing so here.) furthermore, i can also explain why, which is even better.
...which is a dar williams song. ha ha. other cool things about math include, probably temporarily, my understanding of statistics. for those of us who are social scientists at heart, it's amazing the difference a text makes. so now i can tell you in fifty words or less pretty much how bayesian inference works. (luckily for you, i'll refrain from doing so here.) furthermore, i can also explain why, which is even better.
19 February 2003
i am thinking about graduation. why? maybe 'cause it's inevitable. or maybe because i just read tony kushner's speech from last year at vassar, and i want to be happy, and radiant, and thank my parents and friends for their patience and courage. he said:
"I can tell just by looking at you not only how thoroughly and capaciously and meticulously you have been prepared for matriculation, but also how fantastically lively you all are, you are radiant, each and every one of you, your parents are schepping major naches at how radiant and formidable you have become, they're maybe not entirely sure why this effect was so expensive to produce but looking at you robed and mortarboarded and aflame with vision ambition and hope, they are certain it was worth every penny and each drop of spilled blood and they look forward to long years exacting their subtle and exquisitely costly vengeance."
and then later on, incredibly importantly,
"The answers you provide for yourself to the question WHY ME will be of great consequence to the way you answer WHAT AM I DOING HERE, but if I may succumb to the immemorial nasty habit of commencement speakers since back in the days when the robes you are wearing were street clothes, and offer you advice: one of the answers to the WHAT question ought to be: I am here to organize. I am here to be political. I am here to be a citizen in a pluralist democracy. I am here to be effective, to have agency, to make a claim on power, to spread it around, to rearrange it, to democratize it, to legislate it into justice. Why you? Because the world will end if you don't act. You are the citizen of a flawed but actual democracy."
yes, please.
"I can tell just by looking at you not only how thoroughly and capaciously and meticulously you have been prepared for matriculation, but also how fantastically lively you all are, you are radiant, each and every one of you, your parents are schepping major naches at how radiant and formidable you have become, they're maybe not entirely sure why this effect was so expensive to produce but looking at you robed and mortarboarded and aflame with vision ambition and hope, they are certain it was worth every penny and each drop of spilled blood and they look forward to long years exacting their subtle and exquisitely costly vengeance."
and then later on, incredibly importantly,
"The answers you provide for yourself to the question WHY ME will be of great consequence to the way you answer WHAT AM I DOING HERE, but if I may succumb to the immemorial nasty habit of commencement speakers since back in the days when the robes you are wearing were street clothes, and offer you advice: one of the answers to the WHAT question ought to be: I am here to organize. I am here to be political. I am here to be a citizen in a pluralist democracy. I am here to be effective, to have agency, to make a claim on power, to spread it around, to rearrange it, to democratize it, to legislate it into justice. Why you? Because the world will end if you don't act. You are the citizen of a flawed but actual democracy."
yes, please.
16 February 2003
whoa...the extent to which i don't even know what's going on in my own life...
note the post below, for example, wherein i refer to new york city as "dc." oy.
but never fear, i am now well aware that the city i was in yesterday was in fact new york. it was quite a day...check out the times for the mainstream account (and numbers) or indymedia for accounts from people who were actually there. i was interested to note that there were no (visible) mainstream media in the midst of the first avenue gathering -- they seemed to be grouped around the periphery, on second or third. is it that difficult to attempt to cover what's actually happening?
what to say...well, first of all, major kudos to new york city for making the protest a much bigger deal than it might have been. thousands of unnecessary barricades meant that people generally had to walk a dozen or two (or more) blocks to find a place where they could actually join the first avenue rally, and that once they got to first avenue the crowd was dispersed for thirty city blocks. if there hadn't been barricades or mounted police, i bet the rally would have been concentrated in ten or fifteen blocks of first rather than stretching for the thirty it did. it might also not have spilled over westward onto 2nd, 3rd and lexington, as it did. it might also not have snarled traffic for huge sections of manhattan, as it did. in any case, if they were hoping to make us as visible as possible, they did the right thing. ;-)
there were serious problems with the vertical nature of the rally, though. unless you were near a sound truck it was nearly impossible to hear what was going on. no matter, though...every round of cheering for every speaker created a wave of sound that reached all the way to the end of the rally, which was amazing to witness.
i spent much of last week wondering what good this event could do...i think i know now. first of all, the outpouring of rage on the heads of the bush administration will slow the rush to war. second, it just felt really good. when your life is saturated with mainstream media accounts of the inevitability of war and the domination of the current administration, it's nice to see the opposition be large enough, physically, to halt the life of a major city for an afternoon. by and large, the crowd at yesterday's protest was peaceful, good-natured and full of righteous moral outrage. i'll stop myself, at this point, from saying something really sappy about 'hope for democracy,' but...you know what i mean, i suppose. big protests have the power to make me feel absurdly patriotic for all the best reasons. like this:
"whose streets? our streets!"
"tell me what democracy looks like! this is what democracy looks like!"
note the post below, for example, wherein i refer to new york city as "dc." oy.
but never fear, i am now well aware that the city i was in yesterday was in fact new york. it was quite a day...check out the times for the mainstream account (and numbers) or indymedia for accounts from people who were actually there. i was interested to note that there were no (visible) mainstream media in the midst of the first avenue gathering -- they seemed to be grouped around the periphery, on second or third. is it that difficult to attempt to cover what's actually happening?
what to say...well, first of all, major kudos to new york city for making the protest a much bigger deal than it might have been. thousands of unnecessary barricades meant that people generally had to walk a dozen or two (or more) blocks to find a place where they could actually join the first avenue rally, and that once they got to first avenue the crowd was dispersed for thirty city blocks. if there hadn't been barricades or mounted police, i bet the rally would have been concentrated in ten or fifteen blocks of first rather than stretching for the thirty it did. it might also not have spilled over westward onto 2nd, 3rd and lexington, as it did. it might also not have snarled traffic for huge sections of manhattan, as it did. in any case, if they were hoping to make us as visible as possible, they did the right thing. ;-)
there were serious problems with the vertical nature of the rally, though. unless you were near a sound truck it was nearly impossible to hear what was going on. no matter, though...every round of cheering for every speaker created a wave of sound that reached all the way to the end of the rally, which was amazing to witness.
i spent much of last week wondering what good this event could do...i think i know now. first of all, the outpouring of rage on the heads of the bush administration will slow the rush to war. second, it just felt really good. when your life is saturated with mainstream media accounts of the inevitability of war and the domination of the current administration, it's nice to see the opposition be large enough, physically, to halt the life of a major city for an afternoon. by and large, the crowd at yesterday's protest was peaceful, good-natured and full of righteous moral outrage. i'll stop myself, at this point, from saying something really sappy about 'hope for democracy,' but...you know what i mean, i suppose. big protests have the power to make me feel absurdly patriotic for all the best reasons. like this:
"whose streets? our streets!"
"tell me what democracy looks like! this is what democracy looks like!"
14 February 2003
so i lived through my stat class. just barely, though.
now, on to more exciting/important/fulfilling things: protest tomorrow in DC, which i'll be sure to tell you about at ridiculous length.
also, it's valentine's day, which is...nice. lots of little pink envelopes on the wall in sharples, lots of consumer-product-driven love in the air.
to the theatre!
now, on to more exciting/important/fulfilling things: protest tomorrow in DC, which i'll be sure to tell you about at ridiculous length.
also, it's valentine's day, which is...nice. lots of little pink envelopes on the wall in sharples, lots of consumer-product-driven love in the air.
to the theatre!
12 February 2003
the question is, is there any actual evidence? powell and tenet think so, or at least are saying so:
'Mr. Powell seized on a new audiotape believed to be of Osama bin Laden, urging Muslims to help Baghdad defend itself against an American attack, as evidence that the Qaeda leader was "in partnership with Iraq."'
having recently discussed the history between osama and saddam -- and it's not friendly -- it's difficult to resist the conclusion that bin laden has changed his tune for a reason. which reason, you ask? how about this: if the united states attacks iraq (or participates in an attack), it will be reviled in the arab world, ensuring a nearly endless supply of "qaeda recruits" and "qaeda cells" and "qaeda operatives" just like the ones we'd by trying to eradicate with an attack. clever, huh?
if iraq is actively supporting al qaeda (a 'fact,' by the way, of which no one can be sure), that sucks. if the united states then kills a lot of people trying either to root out the al qaeda connection or somehow to punish the country for harboring, that sucks too. that sucks more, in fact, because by doing so we will have assured the active wrath not only of people who are already involved in terrorism but of people who now merely sympathize, vaguely, with anti-american sentiment. leave it to the invented justifications of american hawks to make a bad situation infinitely worse.
'Mr. Powell seized on a new audiotape believed to be of Osama bin Laden, urging Muslims to help Baghdad defend itself against an American attack, as evidence that the Qaeda leader was "in partnership with Iraq."'
having recently discussed the history between osama and saddam -- and it's not friendly -- it's difficult to resist the conclusion that bin laden has changed his tune for a reason. which reason, you ask? how about this: if the united states attacks iraq (or participates in an attack), it will be reviled in the arab world, ensuring a nearly endless supply of "qaeda recruits" and "qaeda cells" and "qaeda operatives" just like the ones we'd by trying to eradicate with an attack. clever, huh?
if iraq is actively supporting al qaeda (a 'fact,' by the way, of which no one can be sure), that sucks. if the united states then kills a lot of people trying either to root out the al qaeda connection or somehow to punish the country for harboring, that sucks too. that sucks more, in fact, because by doing so we will have assured the active wrath not only of people who are already involved in terrorism but of people who now merely sympathize, vaguely, with anti-american sentiment. leave it to the invented justifications of american hawks to make a bad situation infinitely worse.
10 February 2003
i wouldn't usually post a forward. i'm just not that tacky. but GOOD LORD THIS SUCKS! (shall edit the annoying little arrow thingies after rehearsal.) grrrrrr:
Dear Friend of United for Peace and Justice:
>
> To our great shock and outrage, Federal Judge Barbara Jones ruled
this morning that the City of New York can deny United for Peace and
Justice a permit to march on February 15. Citing "heightened security
concerns," she ruled that we may only hold a stationary rally, for which
we have been granted a permit for First Avenue stretching north from
49th Street.
>
> We are accepting the rally permit, and our massive demonstration to
stop the Iraq war will go forward no matter what. But we are appalled by
this attack on our basic First Amendment rights, and we will continue to
fight for the right to march. Our attorneys, the New York Civil Liberties
Union, have already filed an appeal, and we are asking all of our
supporters to protest passionately against this attempt to stifle the
growing opposition to Bush's war.
>
> We will provide you with more information soon on this rapidly evolving
situation. For now, we encourage you to keep organizing and mobilizing
for
> February 15 -- we have a legal permit to rally, and we cannot and will
not let the NYPD and the Bush Administration silence our cry for peace.
>
> More than 300 cities around the globe will be holding protests this
weekend against the Iraq war: Let's make New York City's protest the
biggest, most passionate anti-war gathering of them all.
>
> WHAT YOU CAN DO:
>
> 1) KEEP MOBILIZING FOR FEB. 15: The NYPD wants to discourage
people from coming to this protest -- we need to redouble our efforts to
make February 15 an enormous gathering for peace. Please contact
Fran Geteles asap (fgeteles@igc.org or 212-663-8048) if you are
organizing buses or trains. Check out our website at http://
www.unitedforpeace.org/feb15 -- we've added lots of new information.
>
> 2) SPREAD THE WORD: Forward this message widely, post the
assembly location on your website, tell everyone you know that the
February 15 protest is indeed happening and that we have a permit to
rally at 49th Street and First Avenue.
>
> 3) SPEAK OUT: The denial of our right to march sets a very dangerous
precedent for free speech in this country -- we ask you to raise the
biggest ruckus you can about this attack on our rights. Some
suggestions:
>
> >>Fax a statement from your organization to NYC Mayor Michael
Bloomberg insisting on our right to march on February 15. Fax#: (212)
788-2460
>
> >>Ask sympathetic elected officials, community leaders, and/or
celebrities to contact Mayor Bloomberg and demand that the City issue
a march permit.
>
> >>Contact your local media, write letters to the editor, call in to radio
talk shows, get the word out about this outrageous denial of our
Constitutional rights.
>
> >>Make phone calls of protest to these officials:
> *NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg: 212-788-9600, 212-788-3010, 212-
788-3040
> *NYC Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly: 646-610-8526
> *NYPD Chief of Department Joseph Esposito: 646-610-6710
>
> >>Send emails protesting the denial of our march permit Mayor
Bloomberg: http://www.nyc.gov/html/mail/html/mayor.html
> Commissioner Kelly: rkelly@nypd.nyc.gov
> Chief Esposito: jesposito@nypd.nyc.gov
>
> >>Sign this online petition supporting our right to march:
> http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?FEB15
>
> If you're not already on our email list, you can receive future updates
like this one about the February 15 mobilization by visiting
> http://unitedforpeace.org/email.php
>
> Thanks for your support -- we can still prevent this war, and together
we will win the right to march.
>
> Sincerely,
> The February 15 organizing staff of
> United for Peace and Justice
Dear Friend of United for Peace and Justice:
>
> To our great shock and outrage, Federal Judge Barbara Jones ruled
this morning that the City of New York can deny United for Peace and
Justice a permit to march on February 15. Citing "heightened security
concerns," she ruled that we may only hold a stationary rally, for which
we have been granted a permit for First Avenue stretching north from
49th Street.
>
> We are accepting the rally permit, and our massive demonstration to
stop the Iraq war will go forward no matter what. But we are appalled by
this attack on our basic First Amendment rights, and we will continue to
fight for the right to march. Our attorneys, the New York Civil Liberties
Union, have already filed an appeal, and we are asking all of our
supporters to protest passionately against this attempt to stifle the
growing opposition to Bush's war.
>
> We will provide you with more information soon on this rapidly evolving
situation. For now, we encourage you to keep organizing and mobilizing
for
> February 15 -- we have a legal permit to rally, and we cannot and will
not let the NYPD and the Bush Administration silence our cry for peace.
>
> More than 300 cities around the globe will be holding protests this
weekend against the Iraq war: Let's make New York City's protest the
biggest, most passionate anti-war gathering of them all.
>
> WHAT YOU CAN DO:
>
> 1) KEEP MOBILIZING FOR FEB. 15: The NYPD wants to discourage
people from coming to this protest -- we need to redouble our efforts to
make February 15 an enormous gathering for peace. Please contact
Fran Geteles asap (fgeteles@igc.org or 212-663-8048) if you are
organizing buses or trains. Check out our website at http://
www.unitedforpeace.org/feb15 -- we've added lots of new information.
>
> 2) SPREAD THE WORD: Forward this message widely, post the
assembly location on your website, tell everyone you know that the
February 15 protest is indeed happening and that we have a permit to
rally at 49th Street and First Avenue.
>
> 3) SPEAK OUT: The denial of our right to march sets a very dangerous
precedent for free speech in this country -- we ask you to raise the
biggest ruckus you can about this attack on our rights. Some
suggestions:
>
> >>Fax a statement from your organization to NYC Mayor Michael
Bloomberg insisting on our right to march on February 15. Fax#: (212)
788-2460
>
> >>Ask sympathetic elected officials, community leaders, and/or
celebrities to contact Mayor Bloomberg and demand that the City issue
a march permit.
>
> >>Contact your local media, write letters to the editor, call in to radio
talk shows, get the word out about this outrageous denial of our
Constitutional rights.
>
> >>Make phone calls of protest to these officials:
> *NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg: 212-788-9600, 212-788-3010, 212-
788-3040
> *NYC Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly: 646-610-8526
> *NYPD Chief of Department Joseph Esposito: 646-610-6710
>
> >>Send emails protesting the denial of our march permit Mayor
Bloomberg: http://www.nyc.gov/html/mail/html/mayor.html
> Commissioner Kelly: rkelly@nypd.nyc.gov
> Chief Esposito: jesposito@nypd.nyc.gov
>
> >>Sign this online petition supporting our right to march:
> http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?FEB15
>
> If you're not already on our email list, you can receive future updates
like this one about the February 15 mobilization by visiting
> http://unitedforpeace.org/email.php
>
> Thanks for your support -- we can still prevent this war, and together
we will win the right to march.
>
> Sincerely,
> The February 15 organizing staff of
> United for Peace and Justice
09 February 2003
bad me...blogging when i should be working. i just wanted to note that i'm still alive and chugging through another overscheduled sunday. i should have gone to church but didn't; other than that it's brunch, reading, desdemona rehearsal, reading, grapevine, girls action initiative, stat study group. then, hopefully, early to bed.
paul gets props for an amazing arab dinner last night...it's been a while since i've seen such a big and diverse group of people together on this campus. it was paul's (and palestinian freshman saed's) arabic students, frisbeeers, our "sophomore year crowd," plus a host of nonrandom others. food was yummy and a whole bunch of stupid people left before the baqlawa came out of the oven, so for the 15 or so left at that point it was quite a feast.
in other news...friday's anti-war discussion was very interesting, if a tad disheartening. the people who are interested in stopping the war because this particular war is bad -- myself included -- are feeling a little clueless in the face of what seems like an imminent attack. the people for whom the iraq war is just one more rallying cry in some huge, unified radical ideal...well, i don't really know what they're thinking, but i do worry about them ever finding enough support to make their goals -- which are pretty righteous, on the whole -- reality. i certainly don't think their implicit and explicit acceptance of violence as a means helps their cause(s). [actual quote: "america and everything it stands for...it's really...just...so awful..."]
hmmm....
paul gets props for an amazing arab dinner last night...it's been a while since i've seen such a big and diverse group of people together on this campus. it was paul's (and palestinian freshman saed's) arabic students, frisbeeers, our "sophomore year crowd," plus a host of nonrandom others. food was yummy and a whole bunch of stupid people left before the baqlawa came out of the oven, so for the 15 or so left at that point it was quite a feast.
in other news...friday's anti-war discussion was very interesting, if a tad disheartening. the people who are interested in stopping the war because this particular war is bad -- myself included -- are feeling a little clueless in the face of what seems like an imminent attack. the people for whom the iraq war is just one more rallying cry in some huge, unified radical ideal...well, i don't really know what they're thinking, but i do worry about them ever finding enough support to make their goals -- which are pretty righteous, on the whole -- reality. i certainly don't think their implicit and explicit acceptance of violence as a means helps their cause(s). [actual quote: "america and everything it stands for...it's really...just...so awful..."]
hmmm....
06 February 2003
well...i think the ten comments on 'who's stealing the pctf board' post below is the most i've ever gotten. it's so interesting to me that we (we swatties, that is) can all rouse ourselves to think about issues like that -- even in the midst of other issues that should by rights be more important. i guess this is one where we feel like there's actually something we can do...
anyway. just back from tom jones with laurel (great service!), and before that american political system seminar -- another week of knock-down, drag-out fights between numerically provable empiricists and intuitively real third-face-of-power people. at least this time around the third face kids gained some traction against the conservative powers that be. still, we didn't get into the ways that 'neutral' empiricism masks its own normativity while arguing against the normativity of others. we *did* manage to get into all of the following, though: water rights in the southwestern united states, socialized gender roles, capital punishment, and income inequality. all in all, a night of satisfying discussion. [also laurel made rick do the rick-laugh by needling him about his book's poor sales.]
i finally brought up a thought experiment that had been brewing in my head for a while, in a desperate attempt to save third face of power theory (which i think is very important) from the realm of the ungeneralizable. here it is, because i know you all want to know. thing one: i accept as "fact" the assertion that capital punishment does not decrease violent crime. i think there is a reasonable amount of consensus on this, as evidenced by the fact that politicians who campaign on a platform of reduced crime through more death inevitably punt to the "emotional redress for the families of the victims" excuse when pressed on the numbers. so there. ok, so we've got this fact, right. but we've also got a whole bunch of people, including conservative politicians and the fabled prison-industrial complex, who need, for various reasons, for the system to continue. so...guess what! they disinform! they talk about being "tough on crime." they...well, they lots-of-stuff, and the end result is that americans generally believe that the death penalty will actually help them be safer. when in reality it is bad for them: wasteful, ineffective, racist, just plain wrong, etc, etc.
so: yeah, sure, public opinion makes policy. to that extent, yay democracy. but who or what makes public opinion? sometimes, it's surely not "the public."
anyway. just back from tom jones with laurel (great service!), and before that american political system seminar -- another week of knock-down, drag-out fights between numerically provable empiricists and intuitively real third-face-of-power people. at least this time around the third face kids gained some traction against the conservative powers that be. still, we didn't get into the ways that 'neutral' empiricism masks its own normativity while arguing against the normativity of others. we *did* manage to get into all of the following, though: water rights in the southwestern united states, socialized gender roles, capital punishment, and income inequality. all in all, a night of satisfying discussion. [also laurel made rick do the rick-laugh by needling him about his book's poor sales.]
i finally brought up a thought experiment that had been brewing in my head for a while, in a desperate attempt to save third face of power theory (which i think is very important) from the realm of the ungeneralizable. here it is, because i know you all want to know. thing one: i accept as "fact" the assertion that capital punishment does not decrease violent crime. i think there is a reasonable amount of consensus on this, as evidenced by the fact that politicians who campaign on a platform of reduced crime through more death inevitably punt to the "emotional redress for the families of the victims" excuse when pressed on the numbers. so there. ok, so we've got this fact, right. but we've also got a whole bunch of people, including conservative politicians and the fabled prison-industrial complex, who need, for various reasons, for the system to continue. so...guess what! they disinform! they talk about being "tough on crime." they...well, they lots-of-stuff, and the end result is that americans generally believe that the death penalty will actually help them be safer. when in reality it is bad for them: wasteful, ineffective, racist, just plain wrong, etc, etc.
so: yeah, sure, public opinion makes policy. to that extent, yay democracy. but who or what makes public opinion? sometimes, it's surely not "the public."
04 February 2003
check out the following chunk of a times article on a gun-industry whistleblower...
'In a telephone interview from his home in suburban Washington, Mr. Ricker said he had recently served as an expert witness for the gun industry in a related lawsuit, brought by Cincinnati. He said he also still served as a consultant to some gun companies.
But Mr. Ricker said someone in the gun industry needed to speak up about bad dealers because "we've got a bunch of right-wing wackos at the N.R.A. controlling everything." '
wait, you mean the entire industry is not composed of right-wing wackos?? who knew?!?
'In a telephone interview from his home in suburban Washington, Mr. Ricker said he had recently served as an expert witness for the gun industry in a related lawsuit, brought by Cincinnati. He said he also still served as a consultant to some gun companies.
But Mr. Ricker said someone in the gun industry needed to speak up about bad dealers because "we've got a bunch of right-wing wackos at the N.R.A. controlling everything." '
wait, you mean the entire industry is not composed of right-wing wackos?? who knew?!?
03 February 2003
who's stealing the pro-choice task force board?
i know it's not exactly a masterpiece of public art on the scale of, say, the "swarthmore students advocating life" board -- no pretty colors, no pockets full of handy dandy antichoice propaganda -- but i don't think it deserves destruction. allow me to catalogue the things which have been removed from our board so far this fall: every time the word "pro-choice" appears it has been taken, a total of four times. the contact info three times. most of the fliers, gone. i know this has been a problem for a lot of student groups this year, but the particular fascination with "pro-choice" (whoever they are, they always leave "task force" alone) really bugs me.
the larger question here is, what the hell is going on at swarthmore? now, i know it's common knowledge that college seniors tend to long for the good old days, defining "good old days" as "my freshman year," but several of my friends have been concerned enough about the conventionalization (that may or may not be a word, but it's definitely the concept i want) of the incoming classes in the last few years that they have talked to deans about it. and guess what: the deans see it too. ever since swat became a "name" through the US News rankings (damn them!) its freshman classes have been less and less wacky, idiosyncratic lefties and more and more abercrombie-wearing republican-leaners...just to make one more in my long personal series of underjustified overgeneralizations.
it's true, though. the proportion of real characters in any given class has dropped every year i've been at swat. the classes two and three years above us were full of cross-dressing, naked-sunbathing, nader-voting, sandal-wearing weirdos. and i miss them. and i'm sorry to say that, rational or not, the tendency toward conformity and (at least social) conservatism among swatties is disturbing to me at least in part because of what it seems to mean for pro-choice task force. or at least the public face thereof. (not that i actually believe that the brand name kids are stealing my signs. rather that the current social atmosphere here somehow makes that more OK.)
and it's no use telling me that i should get used to it, that this is the sort of thing that i'm going to face in the real world. i never thought swat was designed to approximate the real world. i never thought it should. i don't think things are necessarily better by virtue of being part of "the real world." people vandalize in the real world, and people are conservative and anti-choice and mean about it. nothing can convince me that that's the sort of "real world" i actually want to occupy.
i know it's not exactly a masterpiece of public art on the scale of, say, the "swarthmore students advocating life" board -- no pretty colors, no pockets full of handy dandy antichoice propaganda -- but i don't think it deserves destruction. allow me to catalogue the things which have been removed from our board so far this fall: every time the word "pro-choice" appears it has been taken, a total of four times. the contact info three times. most of the fliers, gone. i know this has been a problem for a lot of student groups this year, but the particular fascination with "pro-choice" (whoever they are, they always leave "task force" alone) really bugs me.
the larger question here is, what the hell is going on at swarthmore? now, i know it's common knowledge that college seniors tend to long for the good old days, defining "good old days" as "my freshman year," but several of my friends have been concerned enough about the conventionalization (that may or may not be a word, but it's definitely the concept i want) of the incoming classes in the last few years that they have talked to deans about it. and guess what: the deans see it too. ever since swat became a "name" through the US News rankings (damn them!) its freshman classes have been less and less wacky, idiosyncratic lefties and more and more abercrombie-wearing republican-leaners...just to make one more in my long personal series of underjustified overgeneralizations.
it's true, though. the proportion of real characters in any given class has dropped every year i've been at swat. the classes two and three years above us were full of cross-dressing, naked-sunbathing, nader-voting, sandal-wearing weirdos. and i miss them. and i'm sorry to say that, rational or not, the tendency toward conformity and (at least social) conservatism among swatties is disturbing to me at least in part because of what it seems to mean for pro-choice task force. or at least the public face thereof. (not that i actually believe that the brand name kids are stealing my signs. rather that the current social atmosphere here somehow makes that more OK.)
and it's no use telling me that i should get used to it, that this is the sort of thing that i'm going to face in the real world. i never thought swat was designed to approximate the real world. i never thought it should. i don't think things are necessarily better by virtue of being part of "the real world." people vandalize in the real world, and people are conservative and anti-choice and mean about it. nothing can convince me that that's the sort of "real world" i actually want to occupy.
01 February 2003
this sucks. not much else to say about it, really. i mean, there are a million things one could (or should or whatever) say, but...i'm too old, this time around, and have seen too many news stories about military incursions and suicide bombings, to have that same crushed-dream feeling i had when i was an almost-kindergartner and the challenger exploded. things fall out of the sky, and i'm more inclined to be glad there were so few people on the columbia than to wring out a few irrational tears over it. but.
but coming home this evening certainly made me more aware than ever of the fabled "swat bubble." i had had a great day -- there was lunch with grapevine girls and the fun rehearsal i wrote about earlier today and cooking and chai at the weinstein house and a surprise party and...um, clean socks -- but i hadn't read the newspaper or checked any of the news blogs, and i certainly hadn't turned on a television. no one knew at jenny's party; we told stories about small children swearing. leonard, who drives the shuttle, knew, and he told me to check the news. having him tell me in the dark, in the overheated shuttle, after that day, and after all of it finding out that it had happened before i even woke up this morning...that was odd.
and also: who else remembers where they were or what they were doing or the general circumstances of their life when the challenger exploded? it made me feel extremely old when i read in the article that that happened 17 years ago. at first i thought, "it couldn't be seventeen years ago! i remember it!" and then i realized for the umpteenth time in the last year or so that i am quite definitely not a teenager any more. i remember the tone but not the substance of the talk i had with my parents about it; i remember the punky brewster episode about the challenger that aired the next year. and i remember the way the image of the shuttle exploding played and played and played on every TV i saw for what seemed like months.
sometimes (not often, i suppose) it seems like we have explosions of various sorts for the "where were you when" moments of our growing up rather the same way our parents talk about the shootings in the '60's. challenger, and then those grainy, hazy, green images of baghdad being blown up, and then the world trade center. i don't think this one is going to make the list, but perhaps that's just some sort of sad testament to the times we live in? after all, we may see those night-vision-goggle views of iraq again some day quite soon.
but coming home this evening certainly made me more aware than ever of the fabled "swat bubble." i had had a great day -- there was lunch with grapevine girls and the fun rehearsal i wrote about earlier today and cooking and chai at the weinstein house and a surprise party and...um, clean socks -- but i hadn't read the newspaper or checked any of the news blogs, and i certainly hadn't turned on a television. no one knew at jenny's party; we told stories about small children swearing. leonard, who drives the shuttle, knew, and he told me to check the news. having him tell me in the dark, in the overheated shuttle, after that day, and after all of it finding out that it had happened before i even woke up this morning...that was odd.
and also: who else remembers where they were or what they were doing or the general circumstances of their life when the challenger exploded? it made me feel extremely old when i read in the article that that happened 17 years ago. at first i thought, "it couldn't be seventeen years ago! i remember it!" and then i realized for the umpteenth time in the last year or so that i am quite definitely not a teenager any more. i remember the tone but not the substance of the talk i had with my parents about it; i remember the punky brewster episode about the challenger that aired the next year. and i remember the way the image of the shuttle exploding played and played and played on every TV i saw for what seemed like months.
sometimes (not often, i suppose) it seems like we have explosions of various sorts for the "where were you when" moments of our growing up rather the same way our parents talk about the shootings in the '60's. challenger, and then those grainy, hazy, green images of baghdad being blown up, and then the world trade center. i don't think this one is going to make the list, but perhaps that's just some sort of sad testament to the times we live in? after all, we may see those night-vision-goggle views of iraq again some day quite soon.
oh, things are so happy.
know why? because i now have the opportunity to air all of my nasty, spoiled-kid aggressive tendencies for eight to ten solid hours a week. while wearing petticoats and velvet and satin. i'm in the middle of rehearsing desdemona: a play about a handkerchief and my desdemona is, as i told adrienne (who's directing), "britney spears meets queen elizabeth meets helen of troy." only younger.
so today was another in a long series of rehearsals where amelia throws things. it's too bad i'm not ambidextrous, because my right arm is going to be so buff after four weeks of hurling phone books across various performance spaces. i also get to swear, scream, cry, fall, pound the floor, whine, jump up and down, stamp my feet and generally terrorize joy mills (who's playing emilia). not that i'd enjoy terrorizing joy in real life, but...hey, this is fun.
know why? because i now have the opportunity to air all of my nasty, spoiled-kid aggressive tendencies for eight to ten solid hours a week. while wearing petticoats and velvet and satin. i'm in the middle of rehearsing desdemona: a play about a handkerchief and my desdemona is, as i told adrienne (who's directing), "britney spears meets queen elizabeth meets helen of troy." only younger.
so today was another in a long series of rehearsals where amelia throws things. it's too bad i'm not ambidextrous, because my right arm is going to be so buff after four weeks of hurling phone books across various performance spaces. i also get to swear, scream, cry, fall, pound the floor, whine, jump up and down, stamp my feet and generally terrorize joy mills (who's playing emilia). not that i'd enjoy terrorizing joy in real life, but...hey, this is fun.
31 January 2003
jenny says my last post makes me postmodern! noooooooooooooo!!!
(no, just kidding, i do understand how it makes me a little postmodern.)
that said, i'm not giving up on the fact that this could be an objectively measurable concept...for instance, i'd like to get a better economic understanding of wealth and income stratification, then do survey or interview research to determine how low or middle income people understand stratification, and where they get their information. then i'd like to compare the facts of the matter to people's perceptions. see, in my head we can't all just generate our own facts and have them be equally acceptable, so i would expect that if elites were disinforming the broader public about who benefits from certain economic programs (for example), then that could be shown as a matter of fact.
easy, right?
(no, just kidding, i do understand how it makes me a little postmodern.)
that said, i'm not giving up on the fact that this could be an objectively measurable concept...for instance, i'd like to get a better economic understanding of wealth and income stratification, then do survey or interview research to determine how low or middle income people understand stratification, and where they get their information. then i'd like to compare the facts of the matter to people's perceptions. see, in my head we can't all just generate our own facts and have them be equally acceptable, so i would expect that if elites were disinforming the broader public about who benefits from certain economic programs (for example), then that could be shown as a matter of fact.
easy, right?
30 January 2003
sleep comes before statistics....and so i will sleep now, for an hour. tomorrow i will get back to posting for real (tomorrow i will also force myself to sit through the state of the union, eeew.)
seminar last night was interesting...a fight between pluralists and third-face-of-power folks over how much power "elites" really dominate in terms of public opinion. i'm getting depressed on this score, because it seems less and less likely that quantitative analysis (especially over only one country...like the US) can ever yield results that differ from the pluralist account of who controls political power (no one, for very long, they say). i just don't believe it, and i've spent all my idle brain time (right, because it's not as if i have stat seminar tonight or anything) since then thinking of empirical questions that might implicate the third face. are there measurable differences between the ways that people perceive policy effects and the way they actually play out?
and then i said to myself, doesn't the discussion we had about survey sampling last night say something about the power of words and symbols to shape opinions? it's well-known that asking the same questions with different words and word orders may yield different results. how is that *not* a proof that language matters, that people, even macro populations, are not so rational after all? when you ask the same question, worded three ways, you don't have to assert that the questions are actually different to get three different results. add active obfuscation to the equation, and i don't see how you can avoid the implication that americans, by and large, can be quite swayed by the manner in which things are said.
seminar last night was interesting...a fight between pluralists and third-face-of-power folks over how much power "elites" really dominate in terms of public opinion. i'm getting depressed on this score, because it seems less and less likely that quantitative analysis (especially over only one country...like the US) can ever yield results that differ from the pluralist account of who controls political power (no one, for very long, they say). i just don't believe it, and i've spent all my idle brain time (right, because it's not as if i have stat seminar tonight or anything) since then thinking of empirical questions that might implicate the third face. are there measurable differences between the ways that people perceive policy effects and the way they actually play out?
and then i said to myself, doesn't the discussion we had about survey sampling last night say something about the power of words and symbols to shape opinions? it's well-known that asking the same questions with different words and word orders may yield different results. how is that *not* a proof that language matters, that people, even macro populations, are not so rational after all? when you ask the same question, worded three ways, you don't have to assert that the questions are actually different to get three different results. add active obfuscation to the equation, and i don't see how you can avoid the implication that americans, by and large, can be quite swayed by the manner in which things are said.
28 January 2003
quick post: i'm too overwhelmed to read the yay-dubya preview of the state of the union in the times; more encouraging, perhaps, is the paul krugman column on the subject. but they'll both have to wait for tomorrow...
...because tonight is going to be the first all-nighter of the semester! does anyone else out there think it's a little much to ask for "a general treatment of how to analyze power in american politics" in six to eight pages?
...because tonight is going to be the first all-nighter of the semester! does anyone else out there think it's a little much to ask for "a general treatment of how to analyze power in american politics" in six to eight pages?
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