You know what's really wrong with protests...?

It's all the lengths that people in authority will go to to prevent them having any effect. Tomorrow is the day that thousands of people are going to converge in Washington and have a demonstration in front of the White House. The object of their attentions, their pleas and demands will be nowhere in the area.

He's a stinking coward.

Not that he's avoiding any physical danger, but that he's evading his own responsibility as head of state. When the people, as per their constitutional rights, "gather peacefully to petition the government for redress of grievances," don't you think the government perhaps ought not to ignore them? Or, as I've just today learned via one of the main groups organizing the demonstation, to restrict the news media from covering the event at a decent proximity so that it doesn't occur in a mainstream-media vacuum?

Here's (part of) what I got in my email today--it's an appeal for emergency donations:

We really need your help right now. All the major antiwar groups are coming together for this action at the White House, but only one organization, the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition, has the financial responsibility for the powerful unity rally - for the stage, sound and setup. Now we have the opportunity to have this massive outpouring broadcast to millions - if you can help!

We have learned that C-SPAN is planning to cover this incredible assembly of opposition to the war. They will broadcast to millions - but there's a catch. The government is restricting C-SPAN's access on one side of the rally site, and their satellite trucks, which provide the live feed, are now only authorized to park much farther away.

In order for C-SPAN to have a live feed of the rally, hundreds of feet of additional cable as well as cable ramps must be rented. This will cost many thousands of dollars, on top of the tens of thousands of dollars that must be spent for the joint rally stage and sound to reach the huge number of people assembling, for the thousands of placards, hundreds of thousands of flyers, port-a-johns, the buses, banners, flags and everything else that it takes to make a demonstration successful.

You see, these groups--these people--don't organize rallies and marches just for the hell of it. They are putting their resources into trying to make a difference--trying to reach the nation's leadership, trying to reach the rest of the country and the world--and yet constantly, from Day Zero and before, they have been given the shaft in terms of the very goal of communication itself.

"We won't give you the permit--you'll ruin the grass in Central Park."

"Okay, we'll give you the permit, but you have to take your route all the way over here where no one has to see you, and we won't let anyone join you from the sidewalk."

"Okay, we'll give the the permit, but there won't be anyone there listening and we'll keep the media from getting any decent coverage."

And that's assuming that the counter-protests--the pro-Bush demonstrators scheduled to take the field concurrently and the next day--won't send in any of their own to infiltrate the peace rally and try to make trouble under other groups' names. Not that I want to give them any ideas, of course.....but I'm certain that it's happened with trade protests already, the sort of violent outbursts and vandalizing that work to give protestors a bad name. In reality, protests these days are so law-abiding and decent that the only thing they got majorly arrested in Chicago for was peacefully blocking Lake Shore Drive...just the obstruction of the everyday itself.

But I'm sure the conservative rallies will have all the mainstream news coverage they want.....meanwhile, in the four years since 9/11, I've seen better coverage of U.S. peace rallies on BBC World News than on the local network affiliates. To coin a phrase, isn't that just a bit....obstructionist? As in, obstructing and defusing all the legal rights of assembly and petition and demonstration that were clearly included in the Constitution. I mean, it does specifically say "redress of grievances" and not "just to show support for the administration and kiss ass"....

But that's the thing--the rich and the powerful will do whatever they have to--get whatever guards and police on the case, move their trade meetings to an island (or a secret fortress or whatever), live as far away fom the cities as they can--to avoid dealing with, hearing, or seeing the people their actions affect in real life. To not see what they don't want to see, to not hear things they don't want to hear--and truth and ethics be damned, even though that's all that the "other side" is counting on to prove their cause.

"A little revolution, now and then"....would actually be refreshing. It's a shame to see the majority of the truly "law-abiding" people in this country on the opposite side from the ostensible law.

___________________________________________________________________________

Links:

"War Protesters Seek to Put the Heat on Bush" - Yahoo News

ANSWER Coalition

United for Peace and Justice

--and I'm not including more publicity for the Republican damage-control groups on my blog, but they're mentioned and linked in the Yahell article listed first here.

Re the latest on homosexuality in the priesthood....and here's my own theories

In hyperlucidity@yahoogroups.com, "K. Aurencz Zethmayr"
aureantyev@y...; wrote:

First of all, just to express my essential lack of surprise--
afterall, as a traditionalist, the new Pope is hardly likely to buck
the kneejerk trend of conflating all pedophilia with adult
homosexuality, or to take every opportunity of "purging" the ranks of
all who might possibly compromise the virtue/image/mission of the
Roman Catholic Church (a bit late for that, overall, but hey...call
it a second Counter-Reformation).

Two points, though:

A, all self-respecting sexual deviants reject juvenile predation and
coercion--and likely with very good personal reason--therefore,
anything that is a non-consensual sexual violation by an adult of a
minor is an unjustifiable abuse of trust and authority.

And B, where the hell would the Roman Catholic Church be without
the thousands, millions even of men who found their spiritual and
intellectual vocations there through the ages in the absence of
being able to have a "normal" life, i.e., marriage with the duty of
fecundity and ruling a family? Just read even one Andrew Greeley
novel, for example (I recommend "The Cardinal Sins"), and you realize
that especially in America, the priesthood has long been the only
acceptable way for a good Catholic boy to honourably sublimate and
conceal his homosexual identity--and some repress or exercise their
needs more honourably than others, whatever their basic tendencies.
The many who prefer men and use discretion therewith should not be
tarred for the few who molest boys and teens and further abuse them
with the pressure of a guilt they do not deserve.

In Europe, sexual "deviancy" in general had long been tacitly tolerated under
the aegis of the Vatican, and so long as it was reasonably discreet
and was not molestation--anything forced or abusive that could force
a scandal--it has caused no essential problems save those of
favoritism to one's lovers or preference to the children of one's
mistress--take the Borgias, for example. Concubines both male and
female were tolerated and/or politely ignored, and the main issues of
contention when they did arise were hypocrisy (well, of course,
though the faithful in the lower social classes were hardly in the
know of who was sleeping with whom) and simony--technically the
buying and selling of church appointments, in this case for sexual
favours (either directly or indirectly, as in granting a bishopric to
the son of a mistress).

The particular rise of molestation cases in the U.S. can be
attributed to two main things, besides the technical (and arguably very
politically-based) requirement of celibacy itself -- the longstanding
exclusion of women from the Vatican choirs, an example which in
Europe caused both the flowering of boys' choirs as a tradition and
the musical trend of cultivating castrati for both religious and
operatic music (meaning that young boys and/or the fabulously glam
castrati superstars became prime objects of sensual attraction if
they hadn't been before--there aren't any more castrati divi,
but the all-boys' choir is still a fixture) ....

.... and then the social pressures of transplanting Catholicism via
immigration into the more crowded and suspicious territory of urban
America, which naturally made the gaining of any romantic or sexual
satisfaction a bit harder for everyone. And, seeing as the United
States was by then mainly set in the social pattern of Puritan-borne
Protestantism, the moral and social absolutes were more stringent in
a common-law sense, much less tolerant of difference or
sensual indulgence.

My view is that the social pressures of trying to maintain
Catholicism and its older ethnic traditions (in parish enclaves
within an often disdainful overall WASP milieu) added to internal and
external pressures on all those with any conflict with the
neighborhood parish=close-knit village culture. Both the priesthood
and the veil appealed as always to those not suited to raising a
family, but with far more a component of social coercion because of
the (pervasive) urgency to marry and bring more babies into the
Church. Thus, there was even more tendency for personal sexuality
(even if not practised in itself) to find a haven away from these
demands -- so, for gay men, for lesbians, and also for those who had
more an instinct for power and predation than for any honestly
physical relationship and its responsibilities. I.e., the real
sexual and emotional predators who should ideally not have been around
children or anyone so vulnerable in the first place in any role at
all. Not that they can't make very impressive priests and high-level clerics, though...

Personally, I think it's a sick system overall to demand and enforce
these rules en masse, but a lot healthier to allow private affairs
between consenting adults than to force all urges underground even
further. A lot of people, and family of mine, will hail this as a
purification of the Church -- but it will A, not solve the problem of
sexual abuse of power in itself, and B, lead to a great many
gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and even whole LGBT-supportive parishes
leaving the Roman Catholic Church decisively, unwilling to be blamed
for all the crimes of hypocritically pious individuals. Incidentally
undercutting whatever good Pope John Paul II did with his single
exhortation for love and personal acceptance regardless of sexual
orientation. Not that he didn't consider homosexuality "objectively
disordered" as in the catechism (see second article cited), and not
that this policy wasn't in the works under his reign -- but at least
he tried to be socially-conciliatory on the surface.

On the other hand, though, that may have done more harm than good
over the years in allowing people to feel complacent about their own
faith, rationalizing that it's okay to be gay and still Catholic, or
that the (lately) single most temporally-powerful religious figure on
the planet was a "good man" for his tolerance and bridge-building
even though it was only of a thinly social nature, still condemning
the official sins as he proposed compassion and the non-withdrawal of
parental love to the sinners....a magnanimous gesture, that.

I was surprised, after the death of Pope John Paul II, to see how
many people in the online groups I'm in regarded him as such a
positive social figure. When it comes right down to it, the only
thing that I ever had cause to respect him for was condemning the
U.S.-led invasion of Iraq (though these days a pope's temporal
authority doesn't make or break wars like it used to
when "Christendom" was assumed as Catholicism...) -- point is,
many of these are people with no reason atall to be grateful or
conciliatory towards a religious structure in itself that condemns
many or most of their personal beliefs and practices. A structure
that both would eliminate them from the world if it could and has
tried it with great zeal before. Why give the persecutors such
credit, and their "infallible" leader, moreover?--isn't that a blow
against your own validity? In my opinion, the very best part of
Roman Catholicism is the Franciscan Order -- closest to nature,
closest to their fellow human beings, closest to the ideal of a faith
lived in action, not just in words and dependence on top-down
authority.

Unfortunately, I could very well see them being the next on the
chopping-block, with all their human rights involvement and actual
respect for others....not exactly orthodox, these days.

===============================================================
Inciting Articles:

Vatican to Check U.S. Seminaries on Gay Presence
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
Published: September 15, 2005

New Vatican Rule Said to Bar Gays as New Priests
By IAN FISHER and LAURIE GOODSTEIN
Published: September 22, 2005
__________________________________________________________________

The majority and theoretical material of this post was first "published" at my news/current events/shape-of-things-to-come group hyperlucidity -- the eternal pathology on 16 September 2005.

Yeah, there's a war on--here, let me /show/ you just how one-sided this one is....

Mainly because it's been being fought under our noses and out of sight of TV screens, where far too many of us still get our news pre-digested, not even able to read between the lines of a printed page, never taught to test for truth. Maybe because there's that other war-- or two, or three--that has been built up and given the spotlight as an honourable cause--America against this, against that, a sanctioned outlet of us versus them, us versus evil. The war that goes unspoken or derided as a mirage is the one that is U.S. versus us--the steady erosion of rights and dignity and the welfare--yes, literally, the well-fare, the well-being--of the ordinary American citizen.

The one who doesn't have an escape pod for every disaster, resources and insurance and medical provisions to cover every loss without hassle or delay, names and connections to get a job in a pinch whenever he or she needs one--or hell, just wants one for the credentials. The one whose name is not a passport to perks and privilege, whose labour is for the sake of survival not amassment of landed wealth. The common man--whether common or not in skills, intelligence, honour and personal virtue--who is being edged steadily back to the feudal ages, under the triple thumb of state and church and all-powerful-&-unquestioned "employer" from whom he must beg his daily bread. Leave God out of it--he's only a name in this machine, a placebo to make people think there's someone looking out for them, a source of true justice and unbiased, unstinting love. Bullshit, at least for the daily grind--only a pill one takes with all the others, and now on the pretense that it'll help one's health, lower one's blood pressure, increase one's life expectancy--and for what? For more of this crap, this technicolour pablum, this sham of a culture, this artifically sweetened and chemically fertilized, hyped-up, accessorized, wholly inconsequential vanity of vanities that is the existence of the American consumer-subject?

iPods and circenses, my friends....an armory of mass distraction--and the unwitting accomplices in it are twofold.

There are the willing marketers, salesmen, trendsetters, survey-takers, test panels--paid and unpaid alike, selling themselves for these corporate gods, external idols, false saviours for whom one will lie, cheat and steal to get a buck, to win a prize, to land the big one, anything to replace the real with the synthetic, the essential with the persuaded luxury, the energy of integrity for the dregs of ephemeral fame, attention, something from the Powers That Be.

And there are the well-meaning but all-too-ambitious politicians who voice their outrage in every moment but the ones that might have counted in the first place, thinking so much for the long-term and the interest of lasting harmony and stability (and political tenure for themselves) that they refuse to take a firm stand against the thousands of little encroachments, erosions, cracks and lapses that the enemy has given them an ostensible choice on--and that they refuse to lead any firm alternative or argument to sway the other side of the aisle, letting the battles be lost and thinking that they have a positive war they're fighting all the same--trying to win support and dollars from the people for their moderation, when it is their very moderation that has let the fox into the henhouse and approved him having his way--ah well, bargaining and quibbling over a wing or a leg here and there, but mounting no decided objections to his presence in itself.

There is a war going on. It is the war of power and wealth against those who are ignored, underrated, have little or no voice, little choice in their lives. It is the war of privilege against a common humanity, of moral hypocrisy against a common decency. Of paperwork against people, the letter of the law against the very virtues that it was supposed to support and encourage. The administration is destroying the people--and it does not care one whit more than it has to for a good soundbite, a dramatic photo opp, another little token to keep the wool pulled over the eyes of those who want to believe that they live in a system that makes sense. But no "god in a machine" is coming down to set things right, and the fox is still feasting in the henhouse. Criticism alone won't get him out.