"Three British soldiers in Iraq have been ordered home after objecting to the conduct of the war. It is understood they have been sent home for protesting that the war is killing innocent civilians.
....

Any refusal of soldiers to obey orders is highly embarrassing to the government, with ministers becoming increasingly worried about the way the war is developing.

It is also causing concern to British military chiefs who are worried about growing evidence of civilians being killed in fighting involving American soldiers around urban areas in southern Iraq. "

Some friends of yours are planning to rob a bank, you are opposed to armed robbery, you try to discourage them... so when they say "Hey, the heist has already started, we're holding 50 hostages right now, plus we shot one of them... you have to support us now until this thing is over"

Should you?

Can I continue with my analogy? If you had a son in a gang that was robbing a bank, and was about to rob the bank next door, would you be incensed at suggestions that the bank take counter-measures?

" The pivotal feature of that warfare, into which an already bankrupt U.S. has just been plunged, is the de facto usurpation of the function of a still-sitting President by Halliburton's Vice-President Cheney, and by a gang of his organized-crime-linked lackeys polluting not only the Departments of Defense and State, but also polluting, and virtually castrating elected and other leaders of the nominal opposition, the Democratic Party. "

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The government ran up a deficit of $193.9 billion in the first five months of the 2003 budget year, nearly three times the deficit for the same period a year earlier.

In February alone, the deficit was $96.3 billion, the largest on record.

The latest figures, released Thursday by the Treasury Department, highlighted the government's deteriorating fiscal situation. Record deficits are forecast this year and next.

The total so far this fiscal year, from October through February, compares with $67.7 billion a year earlier....

Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God.

Blessed are the poets for they shall be called the unacknowledged legislators of the land.

Blessed are the jazz makers for they shall be called God's
trumpeters, blasting B natural, God's keyboard players, tickling high C on the ivories, God's drummers the healers, taking measure of our pulse, and God's bass players wailing B flat through the guts of a cat.

"Jewels of the forest," is how Wolfgang described the unparalleled collection of radiance in flight. Purple honey creeper, green honey creeper, tufted coquette hummingbird, copper-rumped hummingbird, blue-crowned motmot, bearded bellbird, blue gray tanager, silver beaked tanager, boat-billed flycatcher, golden-headed mannequin, black-tailed tityra: Although I'm not a keeper of scorecards, in a few hours of exploring trails, perching on the verandah and with the help of Sheldon, one of Asa Wright's professional rangers/guides. I observed more bird species than in all of the previous year— including a trip to Costa Rica.

We had heard fantastic stories about Caroni Bird Sanctuary, a mangrove swamp oasis surrounded by nondescript grass marshes near the airport. The evening fly-in of the national bird, the scarlet ibis, so great in number, we were told, that as the blood-red chicken-sized waterfowl took roost in mangroves, the green forest slowly turned red.
...

... Then we saw it - our first scarlet ibis, shimmering red in an emerald tangle. "Red" doesn't do this supernatural beast justice, the color so intense that you'd swear It's generated by some mysterious internal electronic mechanism.

Press Release 25th March 2003

BBC RADIO 3 WORLD MUSIC AWARDS
Banned Members In Naked Protest

A Somerset band who were denied a prestigious Radio 3 World Music Award because of their anti-war views, stormed the stage to launch a naked protest at The Ocean in London last night.

Two members and one supporter of the radical British folk-band Seize The Day, stripped off and climbed onto the stage as applause for the final act of the night ended. Their bodies were hidden at first with signs reading "BBC Cover-Up", before they went "the full Monty", to excited cheers from the 1000 strong audience. The slogan "Peace Not War" was written across their chests.

“There is no doubt Saddam Hussein is a despicable dictator,” Wright told Powell. But she believed U.S. military forces shouldn’t be used without Security Council compliance. “In our press for military action now, we have created deep chasms in the international community and in important international organizations,” Wright said. “America has lost the incredible sympathy [resulting from the Sept. 11 attacks] of most of the world because of our policy toward Iraq.”

Wright’s government career spanned the worlds of diplomacy and military affairs. She joined the Foreign Service in 1986, and asked to be assigned to a position as a Defense Department attaché. At the time, however, women weren’t allowed to hold those jobs.

In 1997, Wright managed the evacuation of the U.S. embassy in Sierra Leone and of Americans living there when a coup d’etat took place. She assisted in the evacuation of a number of diplomats from other countries, as well, and was given the State Department Award for Heroism for her work.
....

Since sending her letter to Powell, Wright said she has received about 150 e-mails from Foreign Service officers around the world expressing support for her actions.

John Brown, a career diplomat who also resigned this month, has said there is an air of dissent in the State Department over the administration’s policies. But it’s rare that Foreign Service officers use public resignations as a means of protest, or an attempt to influence administration policy.

Nevertheless, the resignation of three senior diplomats is significant because the individuals had invested so many years climbing the ladder of the Foreign Service. ...

TODAY is a day of shame for the British military as it declares the Iraqi city of Basra, with a stricken population of 600,000, a "military target".

You will not read or hear those words in the establishment media that claims to speak for Britain.

But they are true. With Basra, shame is now our signature, forged by Blair and Bush.

Having destroyed its water and power supplies, cut off food supply routes and having failed to crack its human defences, they are now preparing to lay siege to Iraq's second city which is more than 40 per cent children.

the Pentagon’s response can only be seen as an implied threat to other reporters who are endeavoring to provide objective and accurate coverage of the US assault and its impact on the Iraqi population.

This is not the first time that such a message has been delivered. When the Pentagon first unveiled its plan to “embed” journalists with military units, it specifically refused to vouch for the safety of reporters operating outside Pentagon control and in fact warned journalists that using their satellite phones could make them targets for unfriendly missile fire.

Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.

I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.

"the West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do."
----------
Samuel P. Huntington

"There are none so blind as those who will not look. If you are one of those who will look, take a look around. You are surrounded surrounded by millions who will not look. These are the blue pill people. Who are these blue pill people and why won t they look? "

" Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.

"This comes from the CorpWatch website. I feel it's vital that all of us understand the symbiotic relationships in the military corporate complex. In this way we can make more educated choices, to not only whom we elect, but also how we spend our consumer dollars and what those dollars are funding."

March 16, 2003 -- The 70th anniversary wasn't noticed in the United States, and was barely reported in the corporate media. But the Germans remembered well that fateful day seventy years ago -- February 27, 1933. They commemorated the anniversary by joining in demonstrations for peace that mobilized citizens all across the world.

It started when the government, in the midst of a worldwide economic crisis, received reports of an imminent terrorist attack. A foreign ideologue had launched feeble attacks on a few famous buildings, but the media largely ignored his relatively small efforts. The intelligence services knew, however, that the odds were he would eventually succeed. (Historians are still arguing whether or not rogue elements in the intelligence service helped the terrorist; the most recent research implies they did not.)