Reports in the independent media Twin Cities Daily Planet of raids on persons planning to demonstrate who are quests in private houses are very chilling. Amy Goodman was among the journalists on the spot. She climbed over a fence with her crew and refused to leave. I look forward to her report on Democracy Now on Monday. It was said that journalists from her organization were among those detained.

An eloquent editorial this morning by Ian Welsh on FireDogLake
comments on the deafening silence of the traditional media and political figures on these probably illegal and certainly specious police actions.

The police repression is chilling. The silence is as bad. On one video Bruce Nestor, a legal observer and past president of the National Lawyers Guild, puts these kinds of police abuses in perspective.

Bruce: We're not in this country yet where we're having mass detentions of people like this, so it really is about sending a message. I think what it really is designed to do is to send a message to people who agree with some of the viewpoints of people organizing activity and to say - you know what? You can write an email, it's okay to write a letter, to vote, but don't go out in the street, don't organize public activity, because do you want us bursting into your house? Do you want to be associated with people who are getting arrested? It's designed to somehow say these aren't citizens engaged in the exercise of political freedom, but that they're kooks, they're freaks, they're dangerous, stay away from them, don't get involved.

Glenn: And there's been no evidence that any actual violence or illegality has been committed, this is all preventative right, it's all anticipatory?

Bruce: That's right.

As a veteran of actions myself, I want to thank the legal observers, members of the National Lawyers Guild who appear at protests and demonstrations and such wearing identifying insignia to take note of abuses of rights. I am always grateful to see these lawyers on the scene to help keep the police honest or in the worst case to provide expert witness if necessary.

Today's New York Times covers this year's BlogHer conference in its Fashion and Style pages, a blatantly sexist effort to contribute to the nearly universal attack on women by the US dominated corporate media. The report states that though fifty percent of bloggers are women, they have mostly failed to succeed financially and that women political bloggers are not taken seriously by their male counterparts and by major media. A primary reason offered for these failures is that:

"women are taught not to be aggressive and analytical in the way that the political blogosphere demands, and are more likely to receive blog comments on how they look, rather than what they say."

I contrast this egregious propaganda effort by the US corporate media's most prestigious organ with coverage of last year's BlogHer conference on these pages.

I also note an article by Chris Hedges from Truthdig in June after the death of entertainer/regime propagandist Tim Russert:

"We were repeatedly told by these television courtiers, people like Tom Brokaw and Wolf Blitzer, that this talk show host was one of our nation’s greatest journalists, as if sitting in a studio, putting on makeup and chatting with Dick Cheney or George W. Bush have much to do with journalism.

"No journalist makes $5 million a year. No journalist has a comfortable, cozy relationship with the powerful. No journalist believes that acting as a conduit, or a stenographer, for the powerful is a primary part of his or her calling. Those in power fear and dislike real journalists. Ask Seymour Hersh and Amy Goodman how often Bush or Cheney has invited them to dinner at the White House or offered them an interview."

Though some reporters for the Times are true journalists, the paper as a whole is part of the corporate media that are aiding the Bush regime and its backers to effect an authoritarian agenda of suppression of women, minorities, "undesirables" of all sorts and truth. A primary tool of this suppresion, used on the anti-war movement for example, is to trivialize and discount, as in this report on the BlogHer conference.

Thank you to the WIP for continuing to offer an alternative to male dominated propaganda masquerading as journalism.
Thank you to the courageous editors who persevere in spite of financial challenges and the policy of discounting work such as you do. Your results are invaluable.

Rereading Carolyn Heilbrun's Writing A Woman's Life, published in 1988 led me to reread Virginia Woolf's Three Guineas, 1938. Heilbrun is calling for "new texts," new concepts of what a woman's life could be. Woolf gave the world powerful new texts that have made it possible for me to live the life I do in 2008. She never went to school or university. She was grown before women could hold professional positions in England and vote. She achieved great things in a time when the message "women can't..." was pervasive. Three Guineas was her response to the role of women in the effort to respond to the crises in Europe that led to the Second World War.

She also states forcefully that until women are free to choose what they want in life, no one is truly free and there can be no peace.

UN Resolution 1325, passed on 31 October 2000, says that member nations should:

ensure increased representation of women at all decision making levels in national, regional, and international institutions and mechanisms for the prevention, management, and resolution of conflict.

Clearly, this resolution is still honored in the breach rather more than not, but that it exists as an aspiration for the world is a result of women writing texts that did not exist before the twentieth century.

The WIP is a place where women and men can write new texts here and now (a favorite expression of Woolf and the original title of a book that ultimately became two different ones, The Years and Three Guineas). It is part of the most important work in the world at this time of crisis, not just of nations and empires, but of the planet.

How can we further this work?

An aspect of totalitarian regimes is that while there may be voting, there is no choice. The ruling party puts forward "the candidate" to be ratified.

The current effort in the US by the two major parties and the press to limit discussion and reduce the number of candidates early is not a good sign for democracy. The elections are not till November, the conventions are not till summer. Already the "candidates" have been winnowed to three and pressure is mounting on Hillary Clinton to withdraw.

I want to state clearly that I do not personally support Clinton, but I am opposed to the effort to get her to withdraw. In fact, I want to see more candidates and more media coverage of them.

I would love to see a field of candidates going into lively, noisy conventions where issues were debated and views were aired and a final consensus reached. That is what democracy is.

We in the US have allowed the corporate media, who have been in league with the authoritarian Bush regime, to choose our candidates. When are we going to demand real democracy here? Have we completely forgotten what it looks like?

March 19 marks the anniversary of the illegal invasion of Iraq by the US. Many of us here are planning actions to protest the continued illegal occupation of that country and the aggression of the Bush regime.

Winter Soldier, which I remarked on in a previous post has started in Washington. US veterans of the invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan are providing first hand testimony of war crimes that they both witnessed and participated in. For coverage of that event, you can go to

http://ivaw.org

A large protest is planned for the 19th in Washington as well.

I cannot go to that, but I am joining the Granny Peace Brigade for a Knit-In at the Times Square recruiting center.

The Grannies have been active since the start of this illegal war. They focus on protecting our young people from being enticed into the military service. Sometimes, they demand to be enlisted themselves; sometimes they do what they can to block entrance to the centers. They are arrested, go to jail, get out, and return to their places. The courage and patriotism of these women is inspiring.

The Grannies say that stump socks for service personnel with amputations are needed as well as clothes for Iraqi and Afghani children. I plan to work on a child's sweater as I join them in peaceful, constructive protest against destruction and violence.

I would love to hear what others are doing to protest.

I have seen the United States change from a vital and open society and democracy to a closed, repressive, authoritarian one in my life time. Never a perfect place, a nation which has made many errors and done bad things, it was at least a place where people could speak out and be heard on most issues, where there was lively dissent and challenge to vested interests and to authority. Not now.

Tom Paine's famous quotation about the times that try men's souls and the Winter Solder, the example among our forefathers who did not desert Washington and the Revolutionary Army during that dreadful winter when all looked lost, but who stayed on and earned freedom for the rest of us, inspired Viet Nam veterans to speak out about what was really going on in Viet Nam. Widely covered by the media at the time, those brave patriots helped their country by speaking the truth about the very real enemies to US freedom: aggression, government deceit, corporate greed, war profiteering, and injustice.

Veterans told what they had done and what they had seen. Americans were horrified.

This was in a time when the nightly news carried images of violence perpetrated in our name and when protesters where not herded into the Bush regime's egregiously not free "free speech" zones out of sight, and when the media were not the propaganda organs for the administration that the current corporate media have become for this regime.

Later this month, Iraq and Afghanistan veterans will hold a second Winter Soldier event where women and men who have served in those invasions and occupations will tell the truth.

When I was at Camp Casey, I had the privilege of hearing some of those stories from veterans. They tell movingly of being ordered to shoot white phosphorous, a weapon banned by international law, into populations of civilians.

Once a military action is over, the troops muster to assess their victory, count combatants killed, and collect weapons. I heard stories of them finding no combatants at all, just the viciously burned and mutilated remains of unarmed civilians, many of them women and children. A marine I know wept openly when telling about the baby shoes with feet in them, unattached from the rest of the child's body. A huge pile of women's and children's shoes at Camp Casey reminded us all of the many Iraqis who were brutally killed in such actions.

I know these Winter Soldier Patriots will tell about torturing people. I know they will tell about murder and mayhem on a scale I can hardly fathom.

I doubt most Americans will hear about it. The only major media story about this event, titled Patriot Missiles, appeared in the Times in the UK.

Here are links to information about this event for anyone who wants to read about it.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_cheryl_b_080305_winter_soldier_3a_can_.htm

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article3444835.ece?Submitted=true

I am grateful to the WIP and other alternative sources of information. If there is hope for the United States to stop its tragic decline, certainly part of that hope lies with institutions like it.

The spate of articles about Kenya are very moving. I know Philo Ikonya is correct when she says

"I believe it must be the women who find the solutions."

I heard recently of UN Resolution 1325 that says women must be included in nation building.

At least in principle if not in fact, the world knows that women find the solutions.

Are things changing? In this time of global crisis, will we finally see women take their place?

It is really good to be using this new feature for the first time. I look forward to making more substantive remarks, but maybe it is more important than I realize. A place for people all over the world to dialogue about things that matter is no small achievement.

At this moment, I am away from New York at an artist's residence in Nebraska and thankful for the opportunity to focus on my work away from day to day concerns. This launch today is too important to me to wait a week to try. I look forward to using it and to encouraging others I know to do the same.

A young woman visual artist here, Julia Karll, is doing a moving project about the state of the world. I will review it and see if I can get some photos of it and her before I leave here.

For now, I must get back to my work.

Hats off to all the women at the WIP who made this happen.