[Peace-discuss] how I am thinking

[parenti susan rose]

This is how I think about the anti-war part of our current political
situation:

The attempt to stop the war on Iraq is also an attempt for the people
of this country to see if we can control a corporate-owned government.
We don't own the government---other groups do. We vote, pay taxes, we
protest---will these means exert an influence comparable to the influence
of the owners of our government?

Being educated American, I'm miserably ignorant of history. Has this
situation ever happened before, where the gap between an owned government
and a protesting people was so wide?

I look at the
heart-warming amounts and kinds of creative
protests we all are making, and I wonder if the merging of 'democracy'
with capitalism will prove itself still stronger than our efforts.

I was in Italy last week, and it was glorious from the perspective of
being with politicized people who unabashedly speak out and participate.
(80% of the Italians are against the Iraq war; 3 MILLION people
congregated in Rome on Feb. 15---and this is a conservative estimate;
last week Italian groups were chaining themselves to the railroads in
order to stop the transport of weapons for the war). AND, at the same
time, millionaire Belasconi runs the country and his brother owns all the
media, and Italy is the one European country in favor of the war. The
people, on the one hand; the government corporation, on the other.

DAve Blume the permaculture activist from California who visited our
school this week, said that the Bush Corporation has done two great
things: it has unified the Arab world,and it has triggered a COMMUNITY of
protest----people are seeing each other doing things, and try their own
attempt with the knowledge that they belong to the world-attempt.

DAve Blume also said that unfortunately, the anti-war movement could be
seen as absorbing the anti-globalization movement, which, he contends, is
the movement which gets at the source of the problems.

How does the WTO, IMF look at this pending war?

This is how I'm thinking, which is a subtle way of wondering how you're
thinking.

Susan Parenti.