I was struck by the huge range of ages, ethnicities, and types of people in the demonstration today.

This is how the NY Times presents that diversity:

The protesters were middle-aged mothers, tongue-pierced students, veterans and bearded professional dissenters, who all came together in what organizers described as a broad-based protest of the Bush administration’s foreign policy not just in Iraq, but in Haiti and Israel.

This is what the Washington Post, not particularly good on coverage of the Iraq War, had to say:

The crowd along Madison Avenue represented an array of professions, ages and backgrounds from the East Coast. They arrived by bus, caravan and subway.

Look at the photos that James took of the people we saw today. The Times is becoming Fox-like in its approach to news.

Right now, the NY Times home page has no mention of the anti-war demonstration here in NYC (we just got back but it’s not finished yet). Instead they have a photo of G.W. Bush at a rally in Florida. The Times doesn’t want to acknowledge that such as thing is happening in the city, but it’s hard to ignore 100,000 marchers.

There is a small link lower down on the page under another Iraq story about worldwide demonstrations, but if fails to mention the New York one.

Newsday has an AP story, which is where I got the 100,000 number. Also, on the page with the story is a link to a photo gallery.

James now has a photo gallery of his own up.

Of course, that won’t happen while the GOP is in charge of Congress. War and terrorism threats are useful tools to hold onto power, not things our country should actually do anything about.

They wanted to bomb Iraq after 9/11, even though they new it had nothing to do with it — dead Iraqis for “revenge.”

Frankly, I don’t understand right-wingers at this point. Do they honestly believe what this administration is doing will make us (or anyone else) safer?

See you all tomorrow!

From an article that TBOGG pointed out:

In truth, however, September 11 became a political football on September 11. Conservative columnist Andrew Sullivan, in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, blamed the Clinton administration. “The decision to get down and dirty with the terrorists, to take their threat seriously and counter them aggressively, was simply never taken,” wrote Sullivan. Senator Orrin Hatch referred in 1996 to the terrorist threats, threats which compelled Clinton to attempt the passage of a comprehensive anti-terrorism bill that would have gone a long way to stopping 9/11, as “Phony threats.” After September 11, he joined the ‘Blame Clinton’ chorus.

During his administration, Clinton offered legislation that would give the Treasury Secretary broad powers to ban foreign nations and banks from accessing American financial markets unless they cooperated with money-laundering investigations that would expose and terminate terrorist cash flows. The legislation was killed by Texas Republican Senator Phil Gramm, who was chairman of the Banking Committee. At the time, he called the bill “totalitarian.” It was revealed later, of course, that Gramm killed the bill because it would have blocked Enron officers from laundering stolen stockholder money through the same offshore conduits the terrorists were using. Gramm, from Texas, was beholden to Enron, and killed the bill at their behest. Of course, he joined the ‘Blame Clinton’ chorus after the attacks, and never mind the facts.

…

The Bush administration received a blizzard of warnings before September 11 that something huge was about to happen. The security agencies of Germany, Israel, Egypt and Russia delivered specific warnings about airplanes being used as bombs against prominent American targets. FBI agents were raising alarms in Minnesota and Arizona. Donald Kerrick was a deputy National Security Advisor in the late Clinton administration. He stayed on into the Bush administration. He was a three-star General, and absolutely not political. He has reported that when the Bush people came in, he wrote a memo about terrorism, al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. The memo said, “We will be struck again.” As a result of writing that memo, he was not invited to any more meetings. No one responded to his memo. He felt that, from what he could see from inside the National Security Council, terrorism was demoted.

Richard Clarke was Director of Counter-Terrorism in the National Security Council. He has since left. Clarke urgently tried to draw the attention of the Bush administration to the threat of al Qaeda. Richard Clarke was panicked about the alarms he was hearing regarding potential attacks. Clarke is at the center of what has since become a burning controversy: What happened on August 6, 2001? It was on this day that George W. Bush received his last, and one of the few, briefings on terrorism. According to reports, the briefing stated bluntly that Osama bin Laden intended to attack America soon, and contained the word “hijacking.” Bush responded to the warning by heading to Texas for a month-long vacation. It is this briefing that the Bush administration has refused to divulge to the committee investigating the attacks.

Regarding Clarke, this was a non-partisan anti-terrorism professional and member of the National Security Council. His latest revelations are that the Bush administration wanted to bomb Iraq on 9/12, even though they knew it had nothing to do with 9/11:

A former White House anti-terrorism advisor says the Bush administration considered bombing Iraq in retaliation after Sept. 11, 2001 even though it was clear al Qaeda had carried out the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Richard Clarke, who headed a cybersecurity board that gleaned intelligence from the Internet, told CBS “60 Minutes” in an interview to be aired on Sunday he was surprised administration officials turned immediately toward Iraq instead of al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.

“They were talking about Iraq on 9/11. They were talking about it on 9/12,” Clarke says.

Clarke said he was briefing President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld among other top officials in the aftermath of the devastating attacks.

“Rumsfeld was saying we needed to bomb Iraq. … We all said, ’but no, no. Al Qaeda is in Afghanistan ,” recounts Clarke, “and Rumsfeld said, ‘There aren’t any good targets in Afghanistan and there are lots of good targets in Iraq.”’

We’re big fans of Carlos de Villasante’s work, as you can see from my various blog posts.

He has a solo show at Heriard-Cimino Gallery in New Orleans at the moment. When we visited New Orleans a few years ago, the gallery was one of our first stops because the fabulous director, Jeanne Cimino, is a friend of Margaret Evangeline.

Closer to home, we’ll be headed out to Williamsburg on Friday for the Williamsburg Gallery Association’s Third Friday event. All galleries will be open until 9pm. It will give you a chance to see a few things I recommend. Several of these are opening that night:

Suzanne Wright at Monya Rowe – extended through March 21

Reed Anderson at Pierogi 2000

Christopher Johnson at Plus Ultra

Josh Stern at Parker’s Box

The always fun Brooklyn Fire Proof should be the place to end up, with their Fashion Social.

Of course, this whole schedule may change drastically when we find out more details on Cory Arcangel’s performance at the Whitney on Friday night.

I received spam today with this subject:

Imagine Super Viagrá! A norwich atheist gremlin.

A quote from a Time article, via Pandagon:

Administration sources tell TIME that employees at the Department of Homeland Security have been asked to keep their eyes open for opportunities to pose the President in settings that might highlight the Administration’s efforts to make the nation safer. The goal, they are being told, is to provide Bush with one homeland-security photo-op a month.

The Center for American Progress has a report on the things we are NOT doing to make us safer.

After 9/11, we attended demonstrations to say that we wanted justice for the awful attacks of that day, but we did not want innocent people killed as the USA lashed out in anger. There is a difference between combating terrorism and killing innocent people to make (some of) us feel better. I remember “patriotic” New Yorkers screaming awful things at us during these demonstrations.

Those who argue that dealing with terrorism as a crime is somehow appeasement are arguing that American lives are worth more than the civilians we kill when we drop bombs from 30,000 feet in revenge. We still haven’t caught the people responsible for 9/11, but we have killed tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan. It is as if Italy chose to deal with the mafia by carpet-bombing Palermo with cluster bombs.

We diverted resources to attacking Iraq rather than chase after Al Qaeda, even though Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. We have now killed at least 10,000 civilians in Iraq.

I’m saying all of these things because I was just looking at photos of the anti-terrorism demonstrations in Spain. Our country is ready to descend into barbarism over the War on Terrorism. Spain is saying they want justice for the attacks, but they do not want innocents killed in the vain hope of making them safer from attack. At least 11 million people demonstrated around the country on Friday.

Spanish people holding posters saying ‘Peace’ protest over lack of information on Thursday’s bombings on trains outside the ruling Popular Party’s headquarters in the center of Madrid, Saturday March 13, 2004. Some 3,000 people chanted accusations that Spain’s government is hiding the truth about bombings that killed 200 people. (AP Photo/Denis Doyle)

Barcelona’s Brazilian player Ronaldinho, second right, and Luis Garcia, second left, wear shirts with, No to Terrorism, Yes to Peace, on them before a first division soccer match against Murica in Murcia, Spain, Sunday March 14, 2004. The shirts are a protest against the Madrid bomb attacks on trains last Thursday that killed 200 and injured another 1,500. The other two Murcia players are unidentified. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

Barcelona’s Dutch player Edgar Davids, second right, protects a fan from a security policeman after the fan ran on to the pitch with the words No to Terrorism, and Peace written on his chest during a first division soccer match between Murcia and Barcelona in Murcia, Spain, Sunday March 14, 2004. The fan was refering to the bomb attacks on Madrid trains last Thursday that killed 200 people and injured another 1, 500. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

A girl gets out of her car to applaude as she sits in a traffic jam waiting for several thousand demonstrators to pass by as they march through the center of Madrid, Spain, early Sunday morning March 14, 2004. Later Sunday the Spanish population will vote for general elections, but demonstrators took to the streets protesting the government’s failure to link the Thursday March 12th bombings which claimed the lives of 200 people in coordinated attacks on commuter trains, to al-Qaida. Sign at rightreads ‘Peace’. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

A hand written sign in Spanish saying ‘peace’ is seen on one of the windows at Madrid’s railway station Atocha, Saturday, March 13, 2004. Powerful explosions rocked three Madrid train stations, including Atocha on Thursday, March 11, 2004, killing 200 rush-hour commuters and wounding more than 1, 240 in Spain’s worst terrorist attack ever. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)

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We put up a cross at the WTC after 9/11 (and it’s still there). Can you imagine someone painting a peace sign there?

Yes, I have been to both Scope and The Armory Show, this weekend (one day for Scope, two for Armory).

At the moment I’m too exhausted for a blog post, other than saying that I was really impressed by the quality of the San Francisco and Los Angeles galleries I encountered at both fairs. The SF galleries were also much braver about showing political art dealing with the War on Terror and 9/11 than most NYC galleries (except for a few like Barbara Gladstone, the only blue chip NYC gallery to do such a thing with its Thomas Hirschhorn installation).

What was with the food at The Armory Show? It wasn’t so bad last year, and this year it was horrible, expensive, and accompanied by enough tables to seat about 5% of the people getting food at any one time. Also, BUY SOME DAMN BENCHES FOR THE ATTENDEES.

One more thought: No one came up to me to tell me how much they loved my weblog, which cannot be said about James.

I was reading an article about Jocelyn Elders, and she pointed out that about half of the children in America qualify for free or reduced lunches. I just went searching for the government numbers on this. As far as I can tell from the chart, the number for FY2003 is 58.5%.

We are #1 in GDP, in wealth, in military technology, in military spending, in health technology, but we haven’t figured out how to be better than last in rankings of child poverty among the 18 wealthy industrialized nations.

Wondering about the title of my post?

“Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?”
— George W. Bush, Florence, S.C., Jan. 11, 2000

I have written before about Charlie before, the swearing, anti-Nazi parrot alleged to have belonged to Winston Churchill.

Yesterday the NY Times had a follow-up to this story, including these remarks showing the level of journalistic professionalism at the tabloids.

According to The Mirror, using a detail that was widely repeated in other British newspapers and indeed by the news media around the world, Churchill taught Charlie to curse — “particularly in company” — to the point that “many an admiral or peer of the realm was shocked by the tirade from the bird’s cage during crisis meetings with the prime minister.”

The Mirror account was written by Bill Borrows, an editor at large for Maxim U.K., who said in an interview that he could not recall, exactly, where he got the information that Charlie used to swear about Hitler, but that he might have read it on the Internet. He said he had not met Charlie in person, but had tried, unsuccessfully, to conduct a telephone interview.

“The bird didn’t say anything, but I’ve had worse,” Mr. Borrows said.

Appearing several weeks ago on BBC Radio 4, Mr. Oram said that although the bird did indeed have a history of swearing, she always sounded “parroty” rather than Churchillian. As for the content of Charlie’s remarks, Ms. Martin said she had never heard her curse about Hitler, or even about any of the lesser Nazis.

“She lived for a time in Mr. Oram’s father-in-law’s shop, and all the market traders were teaching her all sorts of swear words,” Ms. Martin said. In disgrace, she added, Charlie was exiled to the nursery in Surrey so that her cursing would not scandalize the shoppers.

But whatever Charlie said or did not say, she is not saying it now. Ms. Martin said that as the bird has grown older and more fragile, she has uttered less and less. From time to time, she might suddenly come out with a stray operatic high note, but nothing more. Nor does she fly, except for the occasional swoop.

I love birds. If I ever become a shut-in, I’m getting a smart parrot to play with.