Dear Mr Wicks,

The Register comes out all guns firing at the blogging community’s apparent “redefinition” of a term, calling it Orwellian doublespeak. Is it true that a small coterie of A-list bloggers is able to change the way we (for we: read Google users) define a phrase? Or is there really something bigger going on?

Update: Good discussion at MetaFilter

Source: moreover

Surely it’s only a matter of time before they attempt to try Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld & co. as well? Blair might well escape prosecution this time (he was only obeying orders) but who will come out looking the worst once the international jury is in?

Source: meooglefilter

James Moore, Senior Fellow of Harvard Law School, writes:

As the United States government becomes more belligerent in using its power in the world, many people are longing for a “second superpower” that can keep the US in check. Indeed, many people desire a superpower that speaks for the interests of planetary society, for long-term well-being, and that encourages broad participation in the democratic process.

Where can the world find such a second superpower? No nation or group of nations seems able to play this role, although the European Union sometimes seeks to, working in concert with a variety of institutions in the field of international law, including the United Nations. But even the common might of the European nations is barely a match for the current power of the United States.

There is an emerging second superpower, but it is not a nation. Instead, it is a new form of international player, constituted by the “will of the people” in a global social movement.

Read on…

Source: Dave

Rummy’s invasion plans seriously flawed? Seymour Hersch investigates.

Source: blogdex

To paraphrase from today’s PMQs: “President Bush is fully behind what I see as essential: that any post-conflict Iraqi administration has to be specifically endorsed by the United Nations.”

I remain deeply sceptical.

A powerful article from Tikkun (one of the only major Jewish organisations to oppose the Iraqi invasion) which attempts to raise the anti-war argument to another plane. I quote some passages below to give the flavour, but the whole article is well worth printing out and reading.

1. The Decline of Hope

How could it have come to this? The fundamentally decent people of the United States destroying the homes and lives of innocent Iraqis, just twenty-eight years after most Americans were so sickened by war-making that they chose to abandon the ill-conceived war in Vietnam!

We would love to see Saddam Hussein’s regime replaced by a democratic and human rights-respecting regime in Iraq. But war is not the way to achieve that.

The human race has already recognized that any line of reasoning which leads to the conclusion that “I must kill some Other who stands in my way or does not act the way I wish” is a fallacious way of thinking.

Americans are in a state of fear, and that fear has been manipulated by militarists and political opportunists to lead ordinarily decent people to the conclusion that we can be safe only by wiping out others.

“Ah, the September 11 syndrome again?” you might wonder.

Well, yes, partly. But that fear goes much deeper than September 11. To understand it, we need to consider how it functions in the daily life experience of people. Let’s start by considering the central fallacy that underlies all this fear: the belief that we are separate from each other, and that our individual well-being can be achieved without the well-being of everyone else on the planet.

2. The Anti-War Movement

Rational arguments against the war-apologists have their place, and we should continue to refine them and do our best to communicate them. And if the bombs are falling, and Iraqis are being massacred, Americans with a moral conscience should also be willing to act in powerful and non-violently disruptive ways to challenge this war. Civil disobedience is on the agenda.

Yet if you have followed our argument up till here, you will understand that the most important task for the anti-war movement is to project a new vision of how to create safety. 

The most effective thing we can do it to get every American to grapple with the following question: will we be safer through more war and domination or more love and generosity? [emphasis added]

We’ve tried to coerce people into being good, being peaceful, and going along with our agendas. It hasn’t worked. The realists brought us the war in Vietnam, and now they are bringing us the war in Iraq.

So forget that realism. It doesn’t work. Remember that “reality” as portrayed by the media and by the government is only “their reality,” and that there are millions of people determined to shape another reality.

[L]et us proclaim that this is the time when the world needs utopian realism—a strategy of insisting that this is now the moment to rebuild the world upon a new bottom line of love and caring, ethical, spiritual, and ecological sensitivity, and awe and wonder at the grandeur of creation.

Source: MetaFilter

A very interesting interview with Robert Fisk, in which he warns of the quagmire that the UKUSIAN forces might well be getting themselves into:

“…we’ve already got a situation down in Basra where the British army have admitted firing artillery into the city of Basra, and then whingeing on afterward saying ‘We’re being fired at by soldiers hiding among civilians’. Well, I’m sorry; all soldiers defending cities are among civilians. But now the British are firing artillery shells into the heavily populated city of Basra. When the British were fired upon with mortars or with snipers from the cragg on the state or the bogside in Delhi and in Northern Ireland, they did not use artillery, but here, apparently, it is OK to use artillery on a crowded city.

“What on Earth is the British army doing in Iraq firing artillery into a city after invading the country? Is this really about weapons of mass destruction? Is this about al Qaeda? It’s interesting that in the last few days, not a single reporter has mentioned September 11th. This is supposed to be about September 11th. This is supposed to be about the war on terror, but nobody calls it that anymore because deep down, nobody believes it is. So, what is it about?”

As a US-led invasion of Iraq begins, we, the undersigned citizens of many countries, reaffirm our commitment to addressing international conflicts through the rule of law and the United Nations.

By joining together across countries and continents, we have emerged as a new force for peace. As we grieve for the victims of this war, we pledge to redouble our efforts to put an end to the Bush Administration’s doctrine of pre-emptive attack and the reckless use of military power.

Sign the declaration

There was a fine debate yesterday in the House of Commons. Blair won the vote, of course, although the rebellion was the largest ever. Passionate arguments were made for both sides of the argument. It restores one’s faith in the process here, even if MPs do not always vote according to logic or their constituents’ wishes. I had a three-page letter from my MP explaining his pro-goverment stance on the issue. He can’t have written this for me alone.