This, in response to jfcates’ request:
1. Where do I stand on the eve of this war?
See here and here and here……
2. Has my position caused arguments with friends or family?
Not a one. Just take a look at my son’s weblog here.
3. Is there some other issue making me grind my teeth?
Figuring out how to psyche myself up to move myself and my 87 year old mother to a less expensive housing arrangement.
So, there you are.

We Americans are the Greeks of our day, and as we now go to war, we should appreciate not only the beauty of the tale, but also the warnings within it.
So ends “Cassandra Speaks” by Nicholas Kristof (NY Times).
Some statements from the article:
— Troy offers us three lessons about war.
— Agamemnon was the Donald Rumsfeld of his day, needlessly angering his key allies.
–Troy’s fundamental failing was not a military one.
–So, by Zeus, that third lesson from Troy is the paramount need to listen to skeptical voices.
But Bush listens to his own personal god, not to the millions of Cassandras who circle the planet in candlelight.

I took these photos at a candlelight peace vigil in which I participated tonight. It took place at the busiest intersection in the Albany area, less than 3 miles from where I live, and it was too close for me to be comfortable if I didn

I

My birthday is Tuesday. I

My grandson loves Elmo. He

This is Blogsister Anita Roddick — socially responsible corporate entrepreneur/founder of The Body Shop, author of several books on those subjects; internationally known advocate for human rights, fair trade, the environment, peace, and any number of issues that specifically affect women; and current Woodrow Wilson Fellow at Russell Sage College in Troy — and me in my Blogsisters T-shirt.
I scooted over to the college to have a chance to meet her in person, since I do buy her products and have great respect for the business models she maintains and inspires.
Her current project is organzing a March 10 Virtual Anti-war March in London.
What a woman. If she were an American citizen, we should draft her to run for American President.

What we have here is the classic maneuver of the authoritarian, in which they try to make the focus of liberty “freedom from” rather than “freedom to” — it’s infuriating.
Liberty is not about being free from fear, or free from attack. It’s about being free to speak, and write, and assemble, and worship, and all those others things we all have the inherent right to do without any governmental interference.
Authoritarian-minded people perform this trick constantly. By reframing liberty as “freedom from” rather than “freedom to” they make liberty a passive rather than an active feature of American society. Worse, they essentially replace discussions of liberty with discussions of security at all costs. Security is about “freedom from” and liberty is about “freedom to” — don’t let them make you forget this, or confuse the two.
The above is from a well-worth-reading- post on ‘Freedom From’ Versus ‘Freedom To’ posted here by theonetruebix. He links to Ashcroft’s infuriating speech about ‘civil liberties.’

I heard this on the local news last night and I’m glad that CNN.com picked it up.
From that story:
A lawyer was arrested late Monday and charged with trespassing at a public mall in the state of New York after refusing to take off a T-shirt advocating peace that he had just purchased at the mall.
According to the criminal complaint filed Monday, Stephen Downs was wearing a T-shirt bearing the words “Give Peace A Chance” that he had just purchased from a vendor inside the Crossgates Mall in Guilderland, New York, near Albany.
I remember a very similar thing happening during the first Bush war. Crossgates Mall is one of the mega-malls that I never go to unless my mother insists on being taken to Lord and Taylors.
As area resident myrln emailed:
A complaint by the shopkeeper was sufficient to mark them as creating a disturbance and when asked to leave by mall security, they refused and were arrested for trespassing. Creating a disturbance at the mall is apparently a crime. Welcome to America, the Land of the Free, Stupid, and Arrogant. Kiss My Country ‘Tis of Thee a fond farewell; we are hard down the road to fascism, and meanwhile, the Congress is silent…covering their political asses. Every incumbent needs to be defeated next election…tho’ they’ll only be replaced by clones. Feh…this is far worse than the Vietnam era ever was.
I want to wear my Peace t-shirt that I made after 9/11, but I’m afraid if I wear it in public, I’ll get arrested. And then who’ll take care of my mother?
Feh.