Monday, December 23, 2002

World Wide Web Anti War Machine QUOTE OF THE DAY "If Lott didn't see the storm coming, it was in part because it was so slow in building. The papers did not make note of his comments until days after he had made them. But the stillness was broken by the hum of Internet "bloggers" who were posting their outrage and compiling rap sheets of Lott's earlier comments. It took a few more days before Democrats denounced Lott and demanded a censure." - - Time Magazine (from the cover story "A Sorry Lott", 12/23/02) http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101021223/story.html RHINO HERE: Today's anti-war movement has an important tool that peace movements of previous days lacked; the Internet. As just one cog in a huge world wide web anti war machine, I created Rhino's Blog to try and encourage my friends and relatives during tough times. An excellent web site serving as an anthology of the best political opinion and commentary from the progressive internet is "The Crisis Papers". http://www.crisispapers.org One of the pages of "The Crisis Papers" is called The Dissenting Internet. It has a wonderful list of other politically progressive web resources. Lots of informative surfing there: http://www.crisispapers.org/internet.htm Meanwhile, students in colleges, high schools, and middle schools around the country are building anti-war efforts, organizing events, from forums challenging their school administrators' hypocritical support for war, to marches, including a two thousand-strong march for peace in New York City down Broadway. Also in New York, former U.S. Senator & current president of The New School Of Social Research, Bob Kerry, was hit by a barrage of questions about his support for the War in Iraq. MORE INFO ON THE NEW SCHOOL OF SOCIAL RESEARCH AT: http://www.newschool.edu Kerry, who has been implicated in war crimes committed during the Vietnam War, is a member of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (CLI) whose goal is to revive flagging public support for "regime change" in Iraq. The group has close ties to shrub & company honchos Cheney, Rumsfeld and embattled lifelong racist Trent Lott. The chairman of the new Committee, Bruce Jackson, is a former VP of Lockheed Martin, and includes a host of Republican dinosaurs like George Shultz, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), and Newt Gingrich. COMMITTEE FOR THE LIBERATION OF IRAQ WEB SITE IS AT: http://www.liberationiraq.org/ ALTERNATIVE COVERAGE ON THE COMMITTEE FOR THE LIBERATION OF IRAQ AT: http://www.presentdanger.org/papers/libiraq.html http://www.counterpunch.org/nimmo1119.html Also in NYC, students at Hunter College dropped colorful banners to highlight the connection between war in Iraq and budget cuts at home. New York state is facing a record budget shortfall and many students are concerned that Republicans will give the lowest priority to the City University and And then there's the controversial, "International Answer", which while helping to organize the largest of the demonstrations thus far, has many people (including yours truly) concerned about their roots, their tactics and their ultimate goals. Below the line is an excerpt from an excellent article by Marc Cooper of The Nation Magazine regarding International Answer and the future of the anti-war movement. 8:14:07 AM    comment

Dissonance - Our Peace Movement - Not Theirs by Marc Cooper, L.A. Weekly, December 13-19, 2002 FUNDAMENTALISTS ALL AROUND US. Certainly to our right. And also to our left. For fundamentalist is the most polite and diplomatic characterization I can attach to a small choir of leftists who as much as declared jihad on me and a couple of other writers when we suggested that at least a tad of critical thought should be applied in building a peace movement. With the Bushies blindly pushing for conflict with Iraq, we had argued, it's going to take a very big, a very broad and - yes - a very mainstream anti-war movement to maintain the peace. That's what The Nation magazine's Washington editor David Corn wrote in these pages when he publicly worried that the organization that ran this season's major national peace rallies was dominated by a cultish sect of Stalinists in the minuscule Workers World Party. Todd Gitlin, a former Students for a Democratic Society leader and now a writer and academic, made similar arguments in Mother Jones. I did the same in an L.A. Times opinion column. We were heartened that so many tens of thousands had turned out for the demonstrations. But we were concerned that just as the peace movement failed to gain traction during the first Gulf War, the new anti-war movement would be similarly doomed if the shrill rhetoric of the Workers World and the Maoist Revolutionary Communist Party loonies would dominate. Fronting for Saddam Hussein (and Slobodan Milosevic) as self-appointed peace leader Ramsey Clark has and exhorting the peace protesters to defend convicted cop killers like Mumia Abu-Jamal and H. Rap Brown as Workers World does, we said, was hardly the way to win over the millions we need to stop Bush... READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT: http://www.laweekly.com/ink/03/04/dissonance-cooper.php Reprinted under the Fair Use doctrine of international copyright law ( http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html ). All copyrights belong to original publisher. - COMMENT ON TODAY'S BLOG - SEARCH BLOG ARCHIVES - SURF RHINO'S LINKS http://www.rhinosblog.info "RHINO'S BLOG" is the responsibility of Gary Rhine. (rhino@kifaru.com) Feedback, and requests to be added or deleted from the list are encouraged. RHINO'S WEB SITES: http://www.rhinosblog.info (RHINO'S WEBLOG - PRESENT & PAST) http://www.dreamcatchers.org (INDIGENOUS ASSISTANCE & INTERCULTURAL DIALOG) http://www.kifaru.com (NATIVE AMERICAN RELATIONS VIDEO DOCUMENTARIES) 7:57:13 AM    comment

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