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3/17/03:

N?o a guerra!

Out here where I can barely understand anything being said on the streets or TVs this is coming to me as quick ominous flashes of images - Time and Newsweek covers, TV commercials from Lula da Silva's party denouncing the war, graffiti, muted footage of Bush addressing someone or other, and panoramas of frustrated faces and candles in some of the only places where I'd rather be than here. It's strange to be out of the paranoid boilerplate that's the US right now. I enjoy being American here, talking about back home, that my Brazilian students are genuinely interested in our differences. But I'm disgusted by the greed politics I see coming from there. Most of the people I talk to out here easily see this and are quite sympathetic. We see just how dangerous these politics are so acutely out here, despite the inability to read the minutia.

At last some links that I quite appreciate in my currently tender mood -

Fifteen things scarier than Saddam by way of cheesedip.

From Moveon.org, photos from last night's candlelight vigils around the world (via consumptive)

and this quote from an Iraqi weblogger copied onto this Modern World and now here -

"The entities that call themselves 'the international community' should have assumed their responsibilities a long time ago, should have thought about what the sanctions they have imposed really meant, should have looked at reports about weapons and human rights abuses a long time before having them thrown in their faces as excuses for war five minutes before midnight. What is bringing on this rant is the question that has been bugging for days now: how could ?support democracy in Iraq? become to mean ?bomb the hell out of Iraq?? why did it end up that democracy won?t happen unless we go thru war? Nobody minded an un-democratic Iraq for a very long time, now people have decided to bomb us to democracy? Well, thank you! how thoughtful."

I feel safer in a city whose sewers are currently backing up from today's tropical storm than the overheated militarism of the US. I know I'm exaggerating but it's an honest feeling.

Hope you're well, everyone.

posted by jeremy @ 5:15 PM