So I went to the antiwar rally today...
 

It was in DC, on the lawn in front of the White House. The weather was perfect - Overcast with occasional drizzle heavy enough to cool you down, but light enough to leave you dry afterwards.

On the way to the rally, we saw this billboard truck.
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At the rally, we settled in, waiting for the march to start. There were speeches over the intercom, but these started to get a bit offtopic.

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(in full size, you can see a couple of White House Roof Snipers)

After a couple of speeches on Israel/Palestine, Haiti, and South Africa the crowd started getting restless to march. When a seemngly endless series or poets started speaking, the crowd up and left the stage, to go and do the march on its own.

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The people with the speakers made a few plaintive attempts to keep the crowd in attendance, but the march was on.

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As they have since Bush took office, the Park Service fenced off all the lawns, and made many of the sidewalks dead ends, to "protect the grass". Apparently they've been resodding for five years. Eventually we got through the maze, and joined the march.

This view is from a point somewhat near the beginning of the march, down a street to a point near the end of the circular march; people were already there.

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Some revolutionary college students cheered the marchers on from the sidelines. Is a black and red flag, divided diagonally, a French Revolutionary flag, like in Le Miz?

http://static.flickr.com/30/46228479_7527fbdee1.jpg

The march curled around the other side of the White House, and I got a somewhat better shot of the snipers.

http://static.flickr.com/32/46229162_3233055d0b.jpg

This was one of the more amusing little groups of activists.
http://static.flickr.com/28/46229946_06add4a0c0.jpg

Close enough...

Bill For First Lady dot Com?!?! :lol2:

Man, you never see this kind of thing in Singapore...

anarchists just kill me.. "i hate government, but i don't want to give up all the benefits of organized society because i love my digital camera"

http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/010203/anarchy.gif

http://toothpastefordinner.com/07140...anarchists.gif

Tom DeLay has mocked the Democrats as losers with "no ideas, no leadership, no agenda". How sad that the demonstration got hijacked by just such people. If you wanna march against Bush's disasterous policies you don't give equal time to some bozo who wants to rant about injustices in Haiti or the never-ending boycot of the United Farm Workers against anything edible in California! You do not come in drag or parade like a skit from SNL. You just simply MARCH and PROTEST! Man, sometimes I really do miss living in DC.

Lady forgot her irony tags wearing a Che shirt to a peace rally.

She's the only one philosphically grounded, Griff. The march is sponsored by A.N.S.W.E.R. which is a Worker's World Party front. These are Communists.

The anarchists are the ones who are confused. To A.N.S.W.E.R. they would be "useful idiots". They can't really be mad about a billboard wanting to cut government in half, eh, when they want to cut it in whole?

Nor can they be mad about Bush producing anarchy in Iraq and New Orleans.

Nor are they, in all likelyhood, actual anarchists.

To tell the truth, in this instance ANSWER were the useful idiots. They did the schlep work of organizing the march, getting permits, etc etc, and when they veered off from the antiwar message to their pet projects, everyone left.

I looked at the link UT provided. Um, these people want Mumia to be freed? Yeah, right. Can't really get behind that one. Dumb-ass, rich-hippie kids at Antioch had that complete asshole give a commencement speech not too long ago--via satellite. A local business man wrote the college that he would never hire any member of that year's graduating class because of it.

Pure crap, the whole thing. One hundred thousand Americans want a war launched against America to be lost -- immediately if not sooner. ¡Cacacabezas! Their only idea of what to do about the worldwide and very easily identified evil that is totalitarianism (which we Americans are NOT practicing and never shall, in spite of any ill-informed opinions to the contrary) is to cut and run! Incomprehensible, immoral, inhuman, anti-freedom, and idiotic.

Um... wasn't this complete fuck up supposed to be about wmd? We do, after all, have totalitarian allies in this war.

Oh and King Georges war is incomprehensible, immoral, inhuman, anti-freedom, and idiotic.

btw as of 09/23/2005 your national debt is $7,920,697,571,825.43 Thanks Georgie!

Hmm. I'll agree that the situation is more complex that just cutting and bring them home right now. But you must admit its also more complex than "Iraq launched a war against America."

Come on. If you have any shread of critical thinking skills (and I know you do), the case and rationale for the invasion of Iraq was weak from the start, poorly presented. Some argue effectively that it was illegal and perhaps most imporantly to the situation right stinkin' now, the management of the war effort even weaker. The noble reasoning, the strain of failing in Afghanistan, is all tarnishing the official story, the Administration deadly gaffes, cronyism, and incompetence. This mismanagement is shocking. Trust and security are eroding and the moderates are starting to speak out along with your usual yahoos. Once most felt speaking out against the war in Iraq compromised our security. No a growing number feel that not speaking out, to let the mistakes of this bunch continue unchecked, is more of a risk.

This is a big hairy turning point. The army is trying out a new ad campaign.

The far left are just like the far right- narrow minded ideologues. Sure the hippy with a giant puppet gets the attention as does the destruction loving anarchist, on flip side are the hateful abortion center blockader and the brilliant crew promoting creationsim when we lived with the dinosaurs. In the middle is where it swings.

I caught some of the speakers, but stopped watching when the point was lost. Still, there was an eloquent minister, and a profound mom of an 81st airborne soldier that did make me think. But it was about the turnout.

I don't know that I can support immediate withdrawl, but we need some leadership and clear ideas. And it seems that the only way to get the current federal leaders to take or at least communicate responsibility for their decisions is to get a bit noisy. And the tent is growing.

"I don't know that I can support immediate withdrawl, but we need some leadership and clear ideas." The problem with that catchphrase is that it doesn't fit on a sign.

I have seen pictures of anti-protestors. I think it would be funny, some day, to go to a protest and be the one demanding the middle position.

"Staggered withdrawl from Iraq on the basis of Iraqi troop promotion NOW!"

"Careful public review of all no-bid contracts NOW!"

What do we want? An emphasis on reasonable metrics to govern spending on future programs!
When do we want it? After a careful study of how to practically apply such a thing!

Weakly presented? Who cares? The opportunity arose to do something the free peoples of the world should be doing routinely every week: extirpate a dictator and replace his dictatorship with a real democracy, the most legitimate sort of government.

Is not nearly all of the world's misery generated by the oppressions of totalitarian governments, unresponsive to their subject peoples' real needs? And do not totalitarian regimes always oppress? That's practically what they exist to do, window-dressing and rationalizations aside.

Therefore I pose this question: when the last dictator is strangled on the eviscerated guts of the last national chief of secret police, how much of the world's miseries will have fled?

I only think the resulting happy condition of worldwide democracy will last for but a generation or two, but this is at least enough time to get a good momentum on.

And at no point did I ever say any such thing. Iraq is not a separate war; it is a seamless part of the overall War On Terror; it is a campaign in it. Terrorists, whose longterm, sustaining motivation is their noxious religious bigotry, undertook over twenty years of bombings and attacks to start a war with us, from the Beirut Marine barracks in 1983 on. With 9/11, we Americans came to a full understanding of this. Those fanatics and bigots have sown the wind; let them reap the whirlwind until WE are satisfied they can't and won't do it any more. For generations we've been the longsuffering target of every damned idiot with a bomb and a grudge. Let's make sure we send the damned idiots to Gehenna, wholesale and on a regular basis. Let severed terrorist testicles be washed into storm drains in a stream of their supporters' hearts' blood. Those guys want to try terror? Fine. Bury them with pork sausage stuffed into their mouths.

Get the impression I don't like those guys? Remember that you don't see effective, sustained international terrorism without national sponsorship. The terrs may be hard to locate and hit, but their national sponsors can be found out and uprooted.

A good world is a world full of vigorous democracies who like hunting totalitarians and totalitarians' lackeys.

News flash: Your war is strengthening those who hate liberty. Your generation or two of happy happy w/w democracy is a complete utopian fantasy. Put down the Kool-Aide man, its unbecoming.

Perhaps when you learn to spell it ten tries out of ten, Griff. My contention stands; I believe more strongly in democracy and human freedom than you do.

Therefore, how are you, Griff, distinguishable from a fascistic slacker??

After all, I've not met a smart totalitarian-lover yet. I've met some warped ones, but none I'd call smart.

You know, for a guy I've got a lot of fundamental things in common with, you sure do a fine job of pissing me off regularly.

Wow! If they ever come up with Anglo-Jihad, you are so in as the leader. As for the national sponsors, many of them are still our allies, or at least our business partners. As far as I know, two countries we seem to have a real hardon for, Cuba and now Venezuela, don't seem to have been caught with ties to terrorists. However, being communists and socialists, they are the opposition, so if it was a choice between attacking them and Saudi Arabia, which has produced most of the terrorists, you can guess what the current adminstration would choose.

My bad. Sorry to have accused you of deeper understanding of the complex reality.

I don't support GW and I prefer liberty to material comfort.

I'd say it is because I'm helping you see basic flaws in your belief system. You cannot force other people to be free and growing our government's power over the individual does not make us more free. I'm glad I could help. :)

We may even be civil to one another if this war ever ends

Am I to understand you believe Bush to be a fascist? I've studied fascism, and nothing Bush does can honestly be mistaken for fascism. The people who claim the Bush Administration is fascistically or otherwise attacking civil liberties are people who are first and last anti-Bush, and not visibly pro anything. These are only civil libertarians at those times it looks good -- a most unreasonably distant second in their scheme of priorities. A great many of these people are toetag Democrats, making a religion out of their political affiliations. This is a very grave error, as the example of the Communists, who did the same thing, shows us. The Dems get no support from me until they quit fucking up like this. Upwards of fifteen years and counting, now...

There was a recent President who clearly leaned toward fascistic measures, as evinced by the kind of law his Administration made and the actions it took, viz., the Omnibus Crime Bill of 1994, the Communications Decency Act, the suborning of the entire Department of Justice into making its top priority running interference for the Clintons, and the browbeating of Smith & Wesson into signing off on a disadvantageous agreement on firearms manufacture, fortunately now moot. His name is William Jefferson Clinton, Democrat, and I am pleased to report I always voted against him. He was, however, annoyingly good at fooling enough of the electorate to stay in office.

It amazes me just how many people cannot believe I understand this point! Will you all kindly take it as read that I do? I grow impatient with your seemingly deliberate noncomprehension. For what seems like the sixth time, addressed to those who for their own stupid reasons will not listen, where the use of force comes in is in the removal of the obstacle to democracy's development presented by the forces of totalitarianism, all the way from the top man-on-horseback to the most junior lackey's lackey. The removal of the slavemakers and their antidemocracy program is all I expect the use of force to do. I can make it no plainer.

Have Iraq's slavemakers, in their campaign to return to their previous position of power and privilege, actually dented Iraqis' commitment to having a democracy, for all their car bombings, for all their dicked and dickless suiciders? I think the Iraqis are more committed to getting their democracy than Griff is. Good thing!

Then, in the absence of the slaveminded slavemakers' threat, you have a free field to bring up democracy. Humans are capable of self-governance, whether or not they've been recently in the habit. This, Griff, is a point you never seem to understand -- or else don't have any faith in, as the pessimistic tone of your comments indicates. Given this lacuna in your philosophy, how is it you call yourself a libertarian? Libertarianism is all about self-governance, is it not? Is this somehow only the exclusive property of American citizens? I don't see it that way.

Neither does PNAC, come to that: their whole thrust is that a world with markedly fewer autarchies, dictatorships, and despotic oligarchies and many more representative governments would be a world much more secure, and having much more in the way of mutual, common interests with mature republics like the United States. Given that, the next question is how do we get from a world full of autarchies et cetera to that goal? And if there's anything not to like in that goal, I haven't seen it. The ones who squawk about it all seem at bottom to be leftists of the most totalitarian stripe. Well, any idiot can complain, and most of them do. The action cannot make them any smarter.

I am satisfied of two things: that GWB's instinct is libertarian, and that Clinton's instinct is statist and socialist. Clinton did a good deal more growing of power than GWB has ever done. I can clearly see that the civil-wrongs portions of the USA PATRIOT Act are being rolled back under court challenges, legislative amendments, and such. Slowly, to be sure, but this is to be encouraged. Keep your legislators doing this -- they're supposed to be your representative and your senators, right? What will be left in the end will be more efficient coordination of American intelligence agencies, and expansion of what the intel community calls "consumers" -- of their product and analysis. The disconnects exposed by the 9/11 Commission's work are being rethought, in view of the government's basic mandate to protect the citizens and nation.

A consummation devoutly to be wish'd. We can always start practicing up.

Shame on you, Warch. That's a very big mistake. ;)

Iraq didnt launch a war against America. Al Quada launched a war against America. Al Qauda and Iraq had nothing to do with each other. America and it's allies launched attacks against Iraq.........whetgher or not those attacks were justified ( I personally believe they weren't) is not the point, the fact remains that Iraq made no attacks against America.

"anarchists just kill me.. "i hate government, but i don't want to give up all the benefits of organized society because i love my digital camera"

Anarchists come in all shapes and sizes but true anarchy is a tad more complex than "hating government".

Happy Monkey, thanks for your wonderful reportage, it made for excellent lunch time reading at work ::)

De nada.

Dana, the medical treatment of Ayman al-Zarqawi in an Iraqi governmental hospital for a serious leg wound lets the air out of your contention that "Al-Qaeda and Iraq had nothing to do with each other." Those whose guidance, if followed, would lose us the war, contend that bin Laden's religiosity and Saddam's overall secularism would have kept these two peachy fellows well apart -- I don't see that that idea holds up, so on this fundamental point, I ignore these people. The idea fails because both parties were working on establishing a partnership, and this is documented also. The idea fails because an alliance between these suits too well the dictatorships' need for proxy warriors and dictatorship's penchant for making war, either overtly or deniably; from the dictators' points of view, what's not to like? Go and look for the documentation. I'm finding it. Do some reading; there's quite a bit coming out nowadays.

International terrorism doesn't happen without national sponsors, official or unofficial, and the Saddam regime's active governmental and financial support of terrorism is so satisfactorily proven that I see no reason to doubt it. This war is not being solely prosecuted by al-Qaeda, either, nor is it solely directed against us; these guys, al-Quaeda and not-exactly, are working on revenging themselves on most of Europe. We should, I think, have suitable misgivings about their aims. I do not propose to endure the tyranny of the vengeance-minded; for their sin of attempting it, I should kill them.

DanaC, I grow very tired of repeating this, but how much did Nazi Germany have to do with Pearl Harbor? Nonetheless, we knew even without Germany's declaration of war that Germany was part of the overarching problem we'd have to solve. Saddam's Iraq had spent the eleven years between Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom exacerbating the problem, shooting at patrol planes, paying terrorists' families, and convincing the entire planet, you included, that they had WMD and the desire to use them, particularly in light of the chemical raids in the eighties. This is all part of the typical nasty behavior of dictatorships. Dictatorships and dictators are more alike than different -- Saddam and Adolf even shared a penchant for uniforms and facial hair -- and dictatorships have a great penchant for warfare. The foreign policy of dictatorships is usually one of conquest and generally being a bad neighbor. When we tangled with Hitler, his power relative to ours was considerably greater -- yet how much woe would have been averted if Hitler had been stopped in the Sudetenland or Alsace-Lorraine, when he was less powerful? We managed to have the wisdom to hit Saddam at the right time -- relatively early in his ongoing bad-neighbor policy. It was our good fortune that Saddam's regime wasn't as militarily competent as Hitler's. It had more capable weapons.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating. We do not live under any great expectation of a followup attack on US soil precisely because of the Bush Administration's strategy of taking the war to our self-made, self-declared enemies' back yard and decimating them there. We are teaching the nations that their national interests do not lie with cells of thuggish religious bigots -- for it is their bigotry that provides our foes their emotional sustenance. We must discredit bigotry and crush it. The way to discourage others who might be sitting on the fence from taking bigotry up is to show them that bigots have short and unhappy lives and leave no children and get buried in small caskets because there are pieces missing.

This is why I have no patience with the antiwar demonstrators. Imprudence in this cost us our will to keep South Vietnam out of the darkness of a remarkably stupid and oppressive ideology, that like most such, proved efficient only at killing and wasting. Vietnam wasn't the only domino that fell. Why should anyone with a functioning central nervous system call for the victory of the tyrannical over the democratic? Why? Why? Why? Is not democracy already hard enough won? (For why this has been, read The First Democracies.)

I notice, for a specific instance, that the bulk of Iraqis aren't in sympathy with the antiwar marchers, either. No matter how many car and suicide bombs the would-be-again tyrants send against Iraqis, their march towards a democratized and likely federal governmental form is undeterred. It strikes me that the antiwar marchers are cowards and slackers, with no faith in the goodness of democracy, and no interest in seeing anyone outside of our borders get any. Shame! This is a moral failure, this allowing of oppression, tyranny, and bad government.

Apart from active support (arms, money) for:
Idi Amin
Hugo Banzer
Roberto Suazo Cordova
Ferdinand Marcos
Augusto Pinochet
Saddam Hussien
Suharto
Jorge Videla
Mohammed Ul-Haq (an earlier pakistani dictator propped up because Pakistan was a front for another pointless war on a concept - drugs)
Mobutu Seko
Hassan II
The House of Saud
Ngo Dinh Diem (classic example of cure worse than disease)
The Sultan of Brunei

That's just off the top of my head with checks for spelling. America is no fascist state, hyperbole aside but it helps and has helped keep much of the world under the thumb of some of the nastiest pieces of work around.

Those Iraqis you speak of marching towards democratic government - is that the South, controlled politically by the SCIRI - Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (since the people voted for it) and linked to the Badr Brigade and Sadr's lot or the north (excluding Kurdistan, lets call a fork a fork) which is under the control of Sunni militants?

You should study fascism more closely, looking more at Mussolini less at Hitler.
Any libertarian instinct Bush may have had has been thoroughly corrupted by his Neo-Conservative associates. The Homeland Security nonsense shows faith in the State not faith in the individual, a good indicator of fascistic not libertarian thinking. He is apparently bi-polar, thinking the state bureaucrats can do everything to keep us safe from enemies real and imagined and thinking state bureaucrats can't do anything at all in other areas.

The appalling nationalism Bush came into power wrapped in and has exploited to fight his war is a good indicator of a fascistic heart not a libertarian one.

The combination of state and business disguised as privatization but actually state supported monopoly shows a mind sickened by State power not one enlivened by a dedication to a free market.

A true fascist, maybe not. A true libertarian, absolutely not.

And the fact that the 9-11 terrorists took pilot training in the US with the knowledge of the CIA lets the air out of the contention that "Al-Qaeda and the US had nothing to do with each other."

No. Neither fact lets the air out of either contention.

Meanwhile a caution that is probably nothing to worry about. Government biohazard monitors detected a tularemia bacteria during that anti-war march in concentrations that are normally not considered dangerous. However the symptoms (fever, chills, headache, muscle ache, joint pain, dry cough and conjunctivitis appear in about 1 week and can cause death if not treated by antibiotics. It is completely unknown where the bacteria came from. It may have been made airborne by so much pedestrian traffic on a very dry mall. But just in case, a medical alert was issued nation wide - only because so much traffic on that mall comes from across the country - is not local.

Again, the tularemia bacteria is not considered a problem but the warning was issued anyway for so many people during that anti-war march, a book convention, etc - all ongoing at the same time.

Goddammit, and me a hypochondriac. Now I've got a headache, muscle ache, and a dry cough.

Worry not about those trivial symptoms. Things we don't know about - conjunctivitis - sounds like it will kill everyone.

Griff, I'm studying neoconservatism, too, and I burst out laughing when you said neocon associates suppress George's libertarianism. The neocon idea -- it's not unified enough to be a movement; it's more of a tendency -- is itself fundamentally libertarian, for it pushes for representative democracies as the single most legitimate form of government. As you can see, I don't find much to object to in this view. It is hardly unlibertarian to progress from the nonlibertarian conditions of autarchy or oligarchy to representative democracy. Libertarianism is about lightening government's yoke, and making the burden of maintaining a society (inescapable in groups of over three people) less. Being overly statist about things makes the burden heavy. Lessened statism may not be perfection, particularly from the radical libertarian point of view, but it is progress.

Irving Kristol, IIRC, was the one who remarked that a neocon is "a liberal who has been mugged by reality." I suppose now is the time to air a notion for discussion: it may be that the most visible difference between a Neocon and a Right-Libertarian is that one of them is a Republican. The same can be said of those neocons who are of the Democratic persuasion, for neocons comprise about equal numbers of the Big Two parties.

Oooookay. Who brought the dead bunny to the march? Fess up? Who did it?

I point out that the Hussein government actively repaired al-Zarqawi's leg. The CIA did nothing active. Stop even seeming to try making it sound like the 9-11 terrs undertook pilot training with CIA knowledge and blessing. That hint, in your sentence, is extremely broad.

Something the domestic devotees of an all-powerful, omniscient, and perhaps thereby omnibenevolent, make-it-all-better US government can't seem to incorporate into their thinking is that the terrs were secretive enough to outgeneral us -- all of us -- in their little act of war.

Schizophrenically, these same devotees seem stone convinced that America is the chronic evildoer here and therefore must lose this war. Well, I've seen America and I've seen non-American tyranny. By this experience, I know these people to be wrong. Thus I oppose them, eternally, and out-argue them often, for they are not in possession of the facts of the matter.

Adding "blessing" to his statement completely changes the meaning, but of course you knew that when you did it. It's the only way to discredit what he said. Slimy...very slimy. :eyebrow:

But you didn't say "I've seen American tyranny and non-American tyranny". Which leads me to guess that you don't believe it exists. Do you believe that we have made mistakes or that we never have? Do you believe that someone who hates America because his unarmed son or nephew was gunned down or bombed is wrong to hold that point of view? Do you believe we were right to annex countries and territories during the early 1900's? Do you believe civilian casualties are acceptable if they are not US citizens and it advances our political agenda?

No, I don't believe American tyranny exists. We are a representative democracy, which makes tyranny nearly impracticable, and we fought a blue-on-gray war to extend more fully the writ of that representative democracy, when all was said and done, and however poorly or slowly it may have been done. The Civil War discredited the idea that any population group should as a matter of nature or of law be second-class citizens, and that view continues to be robustly propounded in today's civil rights movement. The NAACP and the ACLU, give them their due, keep trying to advance and to perfect this, at least when they don't grope down blind alleys.

Turning directly to your post, I see a big problem: if you, Rich, answered yes to any of the questions you put except the one about annexation, you end up saying we should have lost World War Two. If my remark surprises you, go and ask yourself those questions in the WW2 context. Does it not paint you into a corner?

(The countries you speak of annexing would be the Republic of Texas and the California Republic, both of which sought entry into the Union, and got it.)

So I answer with a firm and proud, well reasoned "No" to most of those questions, and "Yes" to the bereaved-father one. He can't love us for that, but he can live a lot better after we've done what we came there to do. Recall that we are there to smash tyranny, regardless of how much in the habit of tyranny anyone there may be. Some of them are very very corrupted by that habit, and it leads them to murder people out of religious brand-loyalty -- that's really all it is, and should this not in righteousness be extirpated? The Sunni-Shi'a brawling sounds a lot like the wars between Catholic and Protestant of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, even though the political details of these rough parallels differ considerably. Our foes are tyranny's helpmeets, the Devil's fingertips. We fight against the return of their tyranny, and all who oppose us end up helping that tyranny instead. That's the wrong position. Our political agenda is human liberty; no one in the Administration believes tyranny to be good, which is what sustains our Administration in its thrice-worthy campaign, even in the face of bullshit of the kind you're throwing up, yea, vomiting. The leave-tyrants-alone program, after all, is the minority view, as demonstrated in the '04 election, and the continuing presence of Bush For President bumper stickers. Nobody has taken their campaign bumper stickers off: that bespeaks determination. The silent majority isn't silent: it's making a low, rumbling, determined and sustained growl that says freedom's enemies shall be converted to her friends or shall die. The ones in America who express fear of this have much too soft a spot in their heads for totalitarians and undemocrats.

You'll note I don't. Must we indeed endure control of world-vital resources by the patently hostile or the just plain bigoted? Where is that written? If written, just who was the writer? We need not endure having our chain yanked. That's Seventies "national malaise" thinking. I put to you, Rich, that a fantastical degree of social perfection is not needed to actually be in the right; do not let a leftist rejectionism cloud your thinking, for that permits the great global evil of totalitarianism to ramp unchecked. Right now, I check it, you don't. There are some ugly names for what you're doing, Rich.

The slime is all on him, Bruce.

Now as for you, what part of
did you somehow miss? Can you explain your incomprehension? He did, after all, hint, and I called him on it. Slimy indeed.

No he didn't, not at all. That came from your twisted point of view.
Don't read more than is written. :p

And here I thought you actually knew military history. The two countries I am talking about are the Phiilipines and Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico has at least been given some choices, and Hawaii eventually became a state. The Phillipines until recently have suffered under numerous puppet regimes supported by the US.

Bruce, I see that you cannot explain it. Which figures.

Rich, check the histories of California and Texas. The Wikipedia article you cite -- and in my experience, Wiki articles vary extremely widely in quality, so cum grano -- notes the reason nobody thinks of the P.I. as having been annexed: that plans for colonization and annexation were given some thought and both dropped. Things like this persuade me our Republic is the least imperially inclined great power ever seen. We are permanently not in that habit. The peace treaty negotiations described also had precedent in US history: per the treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, the US paid Mexico 15 million dollars for the territories north and northwest of the Rio Grande. In a somewhat similar spirit, there later came the Gadsden Purchase, which wasn't a war but a real estate deal.

hmmmm...you might wonder why we had to grant them eventual (1946) independence with the Tydings-McDuffie Act (1934) after freeing them from the fallen Spanish Empire. It makes you consider what the rewrite of Iraqi history will look like.

Pokey, yes. Imperialistic? The weight of the evidence says "no."

So I didn't go to the evangelical rally yesterday...

From dictionary.com


A 'free state' where a foreign state appoints a governor? That's called a colony, as in colonialism. The one-crop economy is what devestated Ireland during the potato famine. I'd say we were acting very much like the British.

They had an interview with Palau on NPR. It was very interesting. He doesn't sound like the 'hate your neighbor' evangelicals who seem to pop up on the news. They did make an interesting point in that large coporations were very happy to advertise as long as the event was not televised nationwide.

It sounded interesting.

Seems God watered down the rhetoric considerably.
They can't blame the weather on anyone other than him. :eyebrow:

From the link...

I find this phrasing presumtious. The part about "...despite our prayers..." If one believes that God is actively involved in their life to the degree that He controls the weather and He has their best interests at heart, how can one justify the voice here: despite our prayers? What about the little old lady in the neighborhood who was praying for rain for her tomato plants? How does God handle competing prayers? Shouldn't the conclusion be "We prayed for the wrong thing." It has a distrustful posture to it.

I don't believe God sent the rain on their parade for or against their prayers. Nor do I believe he sent the earthquake in Pakistan, or the tsunami in Indonesia or the rain on my yardwork yesterday. I think this is an ace away from scrying, reading tea leaves and divination.

I don't think God picked up the Bat-phone and gave GWB his marching orders, either.

Well, somebody should tell
this asshole .

So if this guy gets hit by a car sometime in the future, does this mean I can declare it G-d's judgement and that he must have been a closet serial killer?

Serial killer? Certainly not. He's a politician which is sufficiant reason for any god to smite him. :D