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Philadelphia protests

Eschaton reports:

Went and joined the march for a bit and then hopped off when it veered near my home. Anyway, I’d say a conservative estimate would be 4000 people, and growing. Was surprised there were that many people. Despite all the attempts at mischarcterization, the crowd was pretty representative cross-section of the public. Some union groups, some church groups – catholics, quakers, unitarians, some college students, some little old ladies, a small number of trustifarian types, and a lot of middle aged couples. Black, White, people of Asian descent, Latinos, the whole shebang. The signs were almost entirely on message – I saw almost no one trying to use the march for the usual assortment of lefty causes. Police seemed cooperative and everything was quite peaceful.

UPDATE: it turned out to be 10,000 or more, according to
police reports.

UPDATE: Slacktivist reports:

Went for a walk in Philadelphia yesterday with about 10,000 other folks.

The protest was really pretty delightful, with a truly diverse crowd — all ages, many religions and ethnicities — and an almost jubilant atmosphere. Some of the signs and chants were pretty funny (I liked the “Asses of Evil” one especially). There were a handful of fringe-y old lefty relics — people peddling various socialist newspapers and the like — and they were tolerated as a part of the crowd while clearly remaining fringe-y.

peace demonstrations tomorrow

If you’re a blogger or reader and going on a demo tomorrow and want to talk about it, send me an e-mail either with an URL to your story or the story itself and I’ll put it up here.
The e-mail address: peacedemo@cloggie.org.

Nathan Newman explains why
Belgium, France and Germany are doing the right thing by refusing to come to the aid of Turkey:

No one’s attacked Turkey.

No one has threatened to attack Turkey.

All that is happening is that in anticipation of the US violating international law and attacking
Iraq without UN sanction, there may be some chance of Iraq ending up in conflict with Turkey.

So this is preemptive demands for defense due to a possibility of a response to a preemptive attack
on Iraq?

The vetoing NATO countries rightly see the request as an attempt to create a fait accompli– deploy
their military resources so that any US assault on Iraq will inevitably drag all of them into the
conflict as well.

This is Gulf of Tonkin games on a global scale, trying to describe an offensive plan as some kind
of nonexistent defensive maneuver, all while trying to browbeat resisting people or countries as
disloyal or weak.

At the Daily Kos they’re
talking war scenarios:

Then there’s the bloody part of the conflict — door-to-door urban warfare. Air power is next to
useless in these conditions, where $30 million helicopter gunships suddenly become vulnerable to
$200 RPGs (rocket propelled grenades). Remember that missile barage that was supposed to break
Iraqi morale? Well, it turned each city into rubble giving snipers myriad ambush points. The
Russians found this out the hard way in Grozny.

Not to mention the US in Somalia… For some situations there are no clever technofixes.

Steve Gillard makes a good point in the comments to Kos’ post:

The Vietnamese ended the reign of the Khmer Rouge and within six months there was resistance to
them. The PAVN saved maybe a million or two people by their intervention. Yet, the Cambodians
fought them.

Hullabaloo:
Brothers in Weltanschauung:

“We do not claim to know all the ways of Providence yet we can trust in them, placing our
confidence in the loving God behind all of life, and all of history. May he guide us now.”

In the end, I advise myself and you to fear God covertly and openly and to be patient in the
jihad. Victory will be achieved with patience.

I also advise myself and you to say more prayers.

“Our prayer tonight is that God will see us through and keep us worthy,” “Hope still lights our
way, and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome it.”

God Almighty says: “Those who believe fight in the cause of Allah, and those who reject faith
fight in the cause of evil.”