Monday, March 24, 2008

3/19 Iraq War Blogswarm - Blogs Starting with F

Here are links to the posts from blogs starting with the letter "F," along with brief intros quoted from the posts.

Faces of Grief:
March Photos
This blog features pictures and descriptions of the grief Iraqis are facing due to the war.

The Fanciful Muse:
Blogswarm: Iraq The Winning Move and the Human Factor
Because this is about peace, and not war, I thought this quote highly appropriate. For those who may not remember the movie "War Games" (really you should watch this great classic,) it goes off the premise that all of our missile defenses and offenses are ready to be given into the control of a computer programmed with basic A.I. The conclusion is that nuclear war is a lot like a game of Tic-Tac-To. When you have two players of equal skill the game always ends in a stalemate. No one wins, everyone loses.

Blogswarm: Iraq The Power of One Voice
I often hear from my friends, who are very much activists in their own right, that they feel their efforts at times are not enough. I have to admit, just speaking out, just talking about the injustices of the world does not seem like enough effort at times. I often say that we as citizens seem content to sit back while civil liberties are stripped from us, so long as we still have the right to complain about it. Soon enough the right to complain will be the only right that we have left... and then they will take that away too. The Prophet Mohammed (P.B.U.H.) said, "If a man sees evil, let him change it with his hands, if he cannot, let him change it with his voice, if he cannot, let him hate it in his heart..." and on the last part of the quote I've heard two different interpretations, one says, "... beyond that there is no faith," while the other says, "but this is the lowest form of faith," in reference to simply hating it, or feeling bad about it in your heart.


Fed Up American:
Five Years Later - bush's War Rages On
From the horror of 9/11 to the invasion of Iraq; the truth about WMD to the rise of an insurgency; the scandal of Abu Ghraib to the strategy of the surge -- for six years, FRONTLINE has revealed the defining stories of the war on terror in meticulous detail, and the political dramas that played out at the highest levels of power and influence.


Finding Bonggamom:
ENOUGH
Today I join hundreds of people at Blogswarm, thousands throughout the blogosphere, and millions around the world, in mourning the day that George Bush used the US Army to invade Iraq and throw the world into turmoil.

Five years. Five. Fucking. Years. I never ever swear on my blog but today I am angry.


Fitness For The Occasion:
Iraq: Seeing the Violence
"An Iraqi mother in a van fired on by US soldiers says she saw her two young daughters decapitated in the incident that also killed her son and eight other members of her family.
The children’s father, who was also in the van, said US soldiers fired on them as they fled towards a checkpoint because they thought a leaflet dropped by US helicopters told them to “be safe”, and they believed that meant getting out of their village to Karbala."


Anti-War Protests and Working in DC
In my mind, a protest serves several purposes. It is a PR action, it can bolster morale within a movement (and be quite empowering), and it can effect direct action. With the media being the way it is, massive numbers and effective cleverness are necessary for a protest to make waves. It needs to be something new!

We Killed People, We Don't Care
They lied us into a war. They are actively working against the will of the people. And they are risking this country’s security by misfiring our military resources and they won’t even lift the self-imposed blind-fold long enough to take a real peek at how they’re doing.


Flying Hamster(s) of Doom:
5 Years after "Mission Accomplished": Blogswarm Against the War
While listening to Democracy Now! on KPFK 90.7 out here in L.A. yesterday I heard Rahul Mahajan from the blog Empire Notes talking about what has happened in the 5 years that have passed since the start of the US invasion of Iraq on March 19th, 2003:
"Children who were in 7th or 8th grade during the invasion of Iraq are now deciding whether or not to enlist and be sent to Iraq to kill or die. Iraq itself has been changed beyond recognition, irrevocably altered. Depending on which study you believe, 400,000 to 1.3 million have died of violence, perhaps 25% of them at the hands of American soldiers. Over 4 million have lost their homes, half of them now refugees in foreign lands..."


Fourdogmom:
Bush's War Turns 5
The Iraqi war will be 5 years old on March 19th. Here are a few of the costs in money and in lives lost:
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated that the war in Iraq costs up to 9 billion per month. That's on top of the $13 billion spent on the initial deployment.
Here is a summary of the costs:
Initial deployment of troops: $9 billion to $13 billion


FranIAm:
5 years later, what has been the cost of war in Iraq?
Today marks the anniversary of evil. A nation was co-opted by its leaders and remains compromised. While I started many different themes for today, I ended up trashing them all as I addressed the way that the war, perhaps from afar, touched my life.

I remember that time 5 years ago - it was a time of hope in my life for other reasons and the specter of war worked to change that.


March 19 Iraq War Blogswarm - Dick Cheney Says - "So?"
I am not in Albany today! I am in my secret, secure and most undisclosed location and I am coincidentally about to blog about Darth Vader I mean Dick Cheney.

Martha Raddatz was interviewing Dick Cheney about the Iraq war on ABC news. Being as I am in this undisclosed location I can't figure out how to embed this video, so I link to it right here.


Freethought Weekly:
Iraq War Blogswarm: 'We Own the World' by Noam Chomsky
I thought about what would be most appropriate to write here. Simple criticism of the Iraq War, while certainly valid, lacked the historical context that I wanted to provide linking this war to the way our government always operates. The Iraq War was not just a 'botched job', a 'miscalculation in the fight for freedom', or a 'misguided attempt to attack the evil-doers', it was instead a simple application of the way our government works. Power and profit for the few, squalor and death for the others.


Freeway Blogger:
Five Years of Victory!
There were protests all around the Bay Area yesterday, though none too well attended compared to before the war. One reporter seemed impressed however by how media-savvy the protesters were, with handy press packets and convenient up-to-the-minute text-messaging capabilities.
I prefer freewayblogging to organized protests for a couple of reasons. One, you don't need thousands of people, which is a real time-saver in terms of organizing and logistics. Two, you don't have to rely on the media to reach a significant number of people, or have to depend on them to transmit your message faithfully: you can say whatever you want, unedited. {with pictures of big signs! On freeways!}


Freida Bee:
U.S. May Scrap Dollar
In light of President George W. Bush, Jr.'s announcement to stay the course in Iraq today and recent stock market instabilities, the Federal Reserve has made an announcement of its own, a proposal to eliminate the printing of the U.S. dollar. "It's just barely worth the cost of printing it anymore," announced Federal Reserve spokesperson Janet Hamilton this morning in the wake of Bush's plans to continue sinking money into the U.S. led destruction of Iraq. "This essentailly guarantees that the value of the U.S. dollar will continue to decline," Hamilton stated today on the fifth anniversary of the invasion.


From Smiler, With Love:
No Cause for Celebration

It’s a very sad anniversary today. The war in Iraq is already five years old. Five years too many. I chose to join the Blogswarm today because I’m opposed to crimes against humanity and all living beings, and what could be more criminal than a war launched under false pretense and which never had any other aim than to assert dominance? Some will argue that wars have been waged for as long as humans have existed and that it can’t be avoided, a necessary evil, they might say. I say that war is a demented game played by morally deficient politicians, their advisers and their special buddies, who are so caught up in continually asserting their authority, gaining power and riches that they lose sight of the value of human life. I can imagine that to them, war must seem like nothing more than a video game, played live and in supra high definition.


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