Semi Truths A highly irregular weblog dedicated to Truth, Justice, and American Cheese…!

It’s been a Good News/Bad News kind of week. The bad news is that wearing the wrong t-shirt could get you arrested. The good news is that local hippies may come to your aid. MSNBC has an update on the t-shirt flap in Schenectady:

Protestors gather at Crossgates Mall

The management at Crossgates Mall Wednesday asked the Guilderland Police Department to drop the trespassing charges against a Selkirk man. This came after about 100 protestors descended on Crossgates Mall that afternoon. Their “Mall Walk for Peace” protested the arrest of 60-year-old Stephen Downs, who was charged with trespassing Monday night when he wouldn’t leave the mall after he refused to remove his T-shirt bearing a peace message.

All I can say is … it’s about time!

Gephardt, Taking Aim at White House, Sharply Attacks Bush

DES MOINES, Feb. 19 — Representative Richard A. Gephardt began his second campaign for president in 16 years today with a fierce attack on President Bush’s economic and domestic polices and a pledge to push for health care coverage for all Americans.

He portrayed the White House as overridden with “special interest lobbyists,” and said that Mr. Bush’s policies had undermined the nation’s economic recovery, soiled the environment and neglected public schools. Attacking the centerpiece of Mr. Bush’s economic plan, Mr. Gephardt vowed to “scrap the vast majority of the Bush tax cuts for wealthier Americans and corporations.”

“President Bush has taken us right back to the broken policies of the past, the economics of debt and regret, unaffordable tax cuts for the few, zero new jobs, surging unemployment,” Mr. Gephardt told 400 supporters this morning at the elementary school he attended.

“I’ve got to hand it to him: Never has so much been done in so little time to help so few,” Mr. Gephardt said. “President Bush campaigned as a centrist, a coalition-builder and a compassionate conservative. But on issues after issue, the only thing he’s conserved is compassion itself.”

(NYT story; requires registration. Oh go on, you know you want to…)

Shortly after September 11 2001, I was honored to be part of an internet-wide effort to post pictures of reactions to the terrorist attacks from around the world. I received many messages thanking me for my efforts; more importantly, it helped me to feel connected to a global community of grief and compassion. (I just did a quick check and it appears that my page is one of the few still up).

It was with this experience in mind that I gathered and posted pictures of dissent from around the world after the F15 events. The contrast and irony are inescapable — after September 11, the world joined us in mourning; not quite a year and a half later, millions poured into the street to protest an American-led war. I feel confident saying that, with few exceptions, this is not a “pro-Iraq” movement; this is an anti-war, anti-Bush, and sadly, now, an anti-American protest. This ill-conceived “war on terrorism” may yet squander every opportunity we may have had for uniting the peaceful nations of the world. Who could ever have guessed that, after watching my own government feverishly heading to war, I would find myself admiring the French for their bravery and the Germans for their caution?

I am not the only one gathering these pictures. I have found at least one other page on the BBC World News site that is asking readers to submit their own pictures of global protest. I particularly like this one from the South Pole, Antartica. The caption reads “We organized a rally here at the US Amundsen-Scott Station, South Pole, Antarctica. We were only five rallying, probably the smallest protest in the world. Antarctica is the only continent where no wars ever happened and where all countries recognise that the only way to survive is collaboration.”

If you find other sites with similar pictures, please let me know. Drop me an email or post a comment below. Thanks.

This weekend, the entire Southern mid-Atlantic was covered in a record amount of snow. The planned for Peace March in my town attracted only the heartiest souls … sadly, myself not among them.

The snow started to let up about 4:00. We were all going a little stir crazy in the house, so I asked my two girls — six and eight — if they still wanted to go protest the war. They were game, so instead of marching to the Downtown Mall, we drove there and walked around. All that was left of the protest were a few desiccated “snow angels” and a single sign. The girls decided they still wanted to have their own “parade”, so they stomped around crying “No More War!” and waving their umbrellas in the air. It wasn’t very politically potent, but it was awfully cute.

The reports have come in from around the globe, with estimates between four and twenty million protestors engaging in rallies this weekend. Even though the local contingent was a little sparse, the worldwide turnout was impressive. I have spent a little time gathering the most interesting pictures I could find of what has become known as F15 and present them to you here on the following pages. There are a lot of files here, so be prepared for some serious load time:

IMAGES OF PEACE

from New York City (29 images)

from across the nation (24 images)

from around the world (65 images)