Greg Allen over at greg.org is doing some great writing lately, ranging from the use of “incursion” vs. “invasion”, to Norway’s use of nonviolent tactics to resist the Nazi occupation, to Gran Fury.

The latest Village Voice has a good essay by Barbara Pollack on the history of protest art. One of my favorite paragragraphs is:

Across the Met in the Assyrian gallery, artists gathered on March 5, Moratorium Day, to stage a more contemporary version of anti-war art-making, a “Draw-In for Peace,” organized by Artists Against the War, and focusing attention to the wealth of archaeological treasures in Iraq, as well as the human life, that could be destroyed by American bombing. “If you are a serious artist, you don’t want to make work that is thought of as agitprop,” says Joyce Kozloff, one of the event’s organizers, “but now I feel that what I want is to learn to do that and fast.”

Here are links to some of the works and artists discussed in the essay:

• Kathe Kollwitz – she lost a son in WWI and a grandson in WWII
  
• Peter Paul Rubens: The Consequences of War
  
• Francisco de Goya: Disasters of War
  
• Martha Rosler: Bringing the War Home
  
• Art Workers Coalition: Q: And Babies? A: And Babies</p>

Bush used to joke about hitting the trifecta. The French say we made a triple mistake with the war in Iraq.

I was at a meeting of queer anti-war activists last night, and we were talking about how some groups seem to want to focus on war profiteering, as if the dollars were the point as much as the lives being lost. My favorite response to that, from someone at the meeting:

I would still be against a not-for-profit war.

This site — warning: bad music — is showing up in my referrer logs. I can’t decide if it’s a parody. I fear it’s not, since I have cousins whose emails sound like this.

An interesting list of war profiteers and their offices in NYC

Via The Guardian and Common Dreams:

A few miles from the bridge to the south lie the ruins of the ancient city of Ur, founded 8,000 years ago, the birth place of Abraham and a flourishing metropolis at a time when the inhabitants of north-west Europe were still walking round in animal skins.

Sgt Sprague, from White Sulphur Springs in West Virginia, passed it on his way north, but he never knew it was there.

“I’ve been all the way through this desert from Basra to here and I ain’t seen one shopping mall or fast food restaurant,” he said. “These people got nothing. Even in a little town like ours of twenty five hundred people you got a McDonald’s at one end and a Hardee’s at the other.”

We took Mom to Century 21 for some shopping during her visit last week. While there, I overheard one employee tell another this:

You be the teddy bear stalker. You be stalkin’ anyone with a teddy bear.

You’re either with us or against us.

Like it or not, Canadian baseball fans will be hearing God Bless America played during the seventh-inning stretch of each team’s first home game.

Toronto’s SkyDome will air the song during the New York Yankees game on Monday night, a Toronto Blue Jays spokesman said. Normally, Okay, Blue Jays is played during the seventh-inning stretch.

The directive was handed down from Major League Baseball, which has decreed that God Bless America will be sung during the seventh-inning stretch of all home openers, Sunday games and holiday games to honour U.S. military men and women serving in Iraq.

The title of this post, along with “We can’t hear your car alarms / from our renovated barn” are some of my favorite lyrics from People Are Wrong, a rock musical at P.S.122. There are only two more performances — Saturday at 9pm and Sunday at 5pm.

Don’t just stand there! Go buy tickets!

The talented cast includes our friend David Driver (web site seems to be down), John Flansburgh from They Might Be Giants, and is directed by our friend David Herskovitz. The cast also includes Maggie Moore from Hedwig, and the great music is written by Julia Greenberg and Robin Goldwasser.