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Thursday, March 27, 2003

Okay all, my time is running out at the internet cafe, so I guess I´ll say ciao for now and more to come from Poland. :-)

posted by Jenny at 2:44 AM |

aaaauuuugh!

VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- On eBay, the highest bid wins -- unless the item on sale is a laser printer from CompAtlanta and the bidder happens to be Canadian.

That's what a tax consultant discovered last week when he tried to buy a printer on eBay, but was refused by the vendor when it was discovered he lived in Vancouver.

David Ingram received notification that his winning bid of $24.50 had been canceled, along with this message: "At the present time, we do not ship to, or accept bids from, Canada, Mexico, France, Germany or any other country that does not support the United States in our efforts to rid the world of Saddam Hussein. If you are not with us, you are against us."

More...via Tom Tomorrow, who has another scary one here about a truck driver heading purposefully toward protestors in his semi!

posted by Jenny at 2:42 AM |

*sigh* More veiled ethnic slurs in Congress--this one directed to the only Native American in the Senate.

posted by Jenny at 2:38 AM |

Whose Geneva Convention?

The hypocrisy in Rumsfeld and Bush´s invocation of the Geneva Convention last week was utterly clear to some of us--there are some great articles and posts out there on this one, but for lack of time I´ll direct you guys to Mother Jones. The Guardian also had a scary op-ed up about this, including the participation of American soldiers in dumping machine-gunned prisoners of war into mass graves in Afghanistan, but I can´t find it--much to my frustration!

posted by Jenny at 2:36 AM |

Burhan al-Chalabi´s article on why "the invading forces will never win over Iraqi hearts and minds" appeared last Tuesday in the Guardian´s print edition--I liked it so much, I made a mental note to include the link here.

posted by Jenny at 2:31 AM |

Alternet discusses the sudden mass migration from the United States of thousands of Pakistanis, Bangladesis, Egyptians and others in the months following nationwide intensified racism and institutionalized suspicion.

posted by Jenny at 2:25 AM |

Here´s a good one on the revival of McCarthyist attitudes in the USA. More of the same, but still pretty informative!

posted by Jenny at 2:12 AM |

Tuesday, March 25, 2003

Last one, I promise--if you feel like it, take a minute and click here to tell Bush & Co not to use nuclear weapons in Iraq. As scary and improbable as it may seem, the use of nukes is probably something they are considering with everything getting worse really fast--so please just add your name if you feel comfortable doing so.

posted by Jenny at 2:32 AM |

This one´s gotten a fair amount of coverage in Germany...how is this being received stateside? Anybody think that Putin will still be invited to the ranch next time he comes to the US? Will people start bashing bottles of vodka with sledgehammers? (No sarcasm intended there...)

Okay folks, it´s back to the hotel with me. But it´s been nice catching up on everything...I´ll be back in a couple of days!

posted by Jenny at 2:24 AM |

Anybody else notice this one in the NY Times?

Aid May Take Weeks to Get Into Iraq, Officials Say

Funny, they had the military all ready...now why not primary humanitarian aid as well? Or wait...maybe the troops weren´t as prepared as they thought. Seems Rummy underestimated how many we´d need to fight off the Iraqis--ironic, considering they´re supposed to have those scary weapons of mass destruction and all.

posted by Jenny at 2:19 AM |

Salam Pax is back! I was getting worried...

posted by Jenny at 2:13 AM |

Just found this at Tom Tomorrow´s blog. It was inevitable, though. Funny, none of the Bush administration thought to mention these guys beforehand...

CAIRO, Egypt - The United States and Britain should withdraw their troops from Iraq (news - web sites) immediately and without conditions, and the U.N. Security Council should hold an emergency meeting on the issue, the Arab League said Monday.

The coalition attack on Iraq violates the U.N. Charter and threatens world peace, the 22-member league said in a resolution that did not receive full support.

Kuwait entered the lone no vote because the resolution omitted any reference to the 10 Iraqi missiles that have landed on its soil since the conflict began Thursday.

Several summit delegates chose their words carefully because their nations are hosting U.S. forces. But the chief Libyan delegate, Ali al-Treiki, received sustained applause when he spoke of "Iraqi heroism" battling American and British troops.

"We have to raise our heads high and salute Iraqi heroism as proof that Arab individuals are capable of confronting the mighty, the coercive and the arrogant," al-Treiki said.

Al-Treiki warned delegates at the session's opening, "If Iraq is to fall, many Arab countries will fall as well."

posted by Jenny at 2:11 AM |

Hey, Michael Moore's Oscar speech was really good! They probably booed so loudly for shame because they chickened out from airing their own opinions.

posted by Jenny at 2:04 AM |

There's something a bit bizarre about being with 200+ Americans after being almost totally immersed among Germans for months. However, I have to admit that it rocks because we have all been desperate to talk to fellow citizens about the crap on CNN, the news we've heard from alternative sources, what we can do. We are all mostly opposed to the war, and several went down to the protest march yesterday to join Berlin's group of "Americans Against War". I missed it by a half hour, but walked instead down Unter den Linden. There are memorials to the Holocaust and to the suffering of the Nazi years throughout the city--my favorite is the Bebelplatz, where National Socialist students burned books of many authors, poets, etc., most of whom were Jews. There's a plaque on the spot with the famous quote, "Where books are burned, people will be burned also." I keep thinking of Dixie Chicks CDs being bulldozed and thrown in trash cans on fire, of people beating Peugeots with hammers...and suddenly all that historical stuff I gaped at when I came here for the first time is too real, and I understand, once again, how naive I have been, and how naive I still must be. Next to the plaque at the Bebelplatz there is a span of reinforced plexiglass, through which one looks underground to a set of white empty bookshelves. What I didn't realize the last time I was here is that they light the underground room up at night, so white light reflects off the shelves and beams above the surface of the Bebelplatz. It's subtle, and yet incredibly profound. I stood on it, walked over it, and stared down it late last night as people occasionally rode by on bicycles, the little square of light a daily fixture for them. Strange that I was so drawn in the second time I saw it.

At any rate, our conference is sponsoring tours for us, and yesterday a public artist avowedly opposed to war led us to Gleis 17 on one edge of town, the last train stop for many Jews and other untermenschen headed to Auschwitz and other camps. The tracks are grown over with weeds, and the platform is now a memorial with the numbers and dates of the trains bound east. The rocks crunch under your feet to simulate the way it was for those who were being herded into the cattle cars. It was very sobering, but also disturbing as our guide began to take an incredibly partisan stance on the war, making assumptions as to our beliefs. At one point he discovered that a guy studying conflict resolution was "pro-war", and began mocking him, laughing at him and calling him brainwashed in front of our entire group. And as we climbed back into the train for the city center, a conservative friend said to me, "man, that just proves the maxim that you can't talk to a firm liberal." *sigh* I understand his frustration. How sad that people among progressive, antiwar or otherwise "liberal" factions have to make these old stereotypes seems valid. Just a note to everyone as I make a not to myself...we are not going to change people's minds for rhetorically clubbing them on the head or mocking their beliefs.

All right, I'm going to email my family now--but I hope to post more stuff before my credit at the internet cafe runs out! Stay tuned...:-)

posted by Jenny at 1:46 AM |

Sunday, March 23, 2003

Okay folks, I'm off to Berlin. Will write more as soon as possible, probably tomorrow, with news and info from the protest scene, among other things. Over the next two weeks I'll be moving from city to city, so my posts will probably appear every couple of days or so...please stay tuned, it's great having all of you visit my blog. :-)

posted by Jenny at 3:41 AM |

Finally, somebody says it!

The ReachM High Cowboy finally explains why the Bush administration gives cowboys a bad name. So, to my European friends who like to call him the "American cowboy", please take note:

There's a difference between a cowboy and a dude. A cowboy works hard, takes care of the critters that depend on him, fights off the predators that'd eat those critters, and shows considerable respect for the other folks in town. A dude is a feller who puts on chaps and hat, digs his spurs in a critter for no good reason, fires his guns off to impress others and thinks he's a cowboy 'cause he fits the clothes.

There's a dude like that in the White House right now. And the critters out here in the Pacific Northwest are feeling mighty neglected right now. I, for one, ain't buying the sweet talk about how cutting them taxes on all them fancy folks in them limousines is gonna cure a thing. Ridin' behind herds of cattle all the time, us cowboys may not be experts on macroeconomicals, but we sure kin spot cowflop 'afore it hits the ground.

And mark my words: it may git a whole lot worse 'afore it gits better.

Consider that there NASDAQ. It was at 3000 when The Dude rode inta office. It's been ta 1108 since he's been in. Now by my reckonin' when he's up for re-election, the highest it can be is 2000. But the odds are 50-50 that it could also dip down to 650-500 by then. Even in the best of circumstances, it'll still mean them speculators will have been hurt purty good overall.

That Dow Jones critter, on the other hand, has real good odds of findin' 5800 'afore it starts climbing again. By my reckoning, the next 10 months could git mighty ugly.

The market is a leading indicator, mind you. Them other statistics, like unemployment, tend to lag behind. So as near as I kin figger, The Dude doesn't stand much chance for folks ta re-elect him.

Now Lefty's been tellin' me none of it matters, 'cause The Dude don't pay much nevermind ta elections nohow. He says The Dude just may keep on firin' off his guns, scarin' the respectable folk with talk of bad hombres behind every tree and rock. Then he'll declare hisself Marshall and put us all under Marshall Law. In which case, he might declare it's unsafe ta hold elections.

More here. I believe Willie would be proud.

posted by Jenny at 3:40 AM |

There's a good post on the impact of this war on civilians, going in circles as to whether Bush & Co will see it to their advantage to go easy on them. It caught my eye because apparently Rumsfeld contrasted the bombing of Baghdad to Dresden (the former being, of course, "not so bad")...check it out.

posted by Jenny at 3:39 AM |