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Reflections on the “March for our Lives” Movement by an Aging Anti-War Activist

15 years ago, on January 25, 2003, 1,500 Duluth-area, anti-war activists participated in a downtown march and rally at the Civic Center, protesting what the George W. Bush administration and his allies in the right-wing, pro-war Project for the New American Century (google it) promised to be the start of an endless series of senseless, illegal, unaffordable and perpetual wars for empire and resource acquisition in the Middle East.

 

6 weeks later, on March 8, 2003, sensing an increased urgency that was well-understood by the entire peace-loving world, 1,400 Duluth-area altruistic activists participated in another Civic Center rally against the promised war.

 

Pentagon Lies About Yemen, Says US Role in Saudi War Is "Noncombat"

“The U.S. government claims that it’s not engaged in hostilities unless U.S. troops are on the ground being shot at by the enemy…. It stretches the imagination, and it stretches the English language beyond its breaking point, to suggest the U.S. military is not engaged in hostilities in Yemen.” – Senator Mike Lee, Utah Republican, Senate floor March 13

he Pentagon, having spent three years creating famine and spreading cholera on an unprecedented scale in one of the poorest countries in the world, Yemen, now lies, baldly but with lawyerly gracelessness, that the American bombs guided by American officers to targets as often as not civilian is somehow “noncombat.” Effectively, the Pentagon argues that when US military forces only enable genocide, it’s not combat. Strictly speaking, the Pentagon is only following orders to commit ongoing war crimes.

Campaign Finance — Another Layer

By now, anyone with a scintilla of public spirit knows the names of Adelson, the Koch Brothers, Mercer, and the mammoth corporations from Wall Street, the banks, the oil companies, big Pharma, big agriculture, and the like. If you are of the older generation, as I am, you remember when you and those who thought like you clucked over the millions that were being spent in political campaigns. How quickly the change in a single letter signified our movement to campaigns of millions. Now it’s billions. 

 

Trumparade of 2018 Stupidest Idea Since Philadelphia Liberty Loan Parade of 1918

It’s hard not to focus on the fact that Trump has picked the 100th anniversary of the first Armistice Day celebration for his weaponry parade (more on that below). But there was another parade a month and a half before the armistice that cries out for comparison because of its remarkable stupidity. I’m thinking of the Liberty Loan Parade in Philadelphia:

This was a parade to squeeze more money out of people to pay for war, to celebrate patrioti-nationali-militarism, and to reject fake news. I’ll explain that last one.

World War I brought us a number of wonderful gifts: professional propaganda, alcohol prohibition, World War II “The Sequel!,” and “Spanish” influenza. But one reason that this disease epidemic was called “Spanish” was that Spain was not at war, so Spanish media outlets were allowed to report that thousands of people were dying of a horrible disease. In nations at war, such a report would have been unacceptably un-cheerful — and therefore illegal. Few editors wanted to risk jail time to report on the flu in Woodrow Wilson’s brave new world. The flu was fake news.

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