Please don't miss this chilling and powerful commentary in the Boston Globe by Paralegal Carl Taki on the anniversary of February 19, 1942, the day President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066. As a result of that Order, 110,000 Japanese-Americans were rounded up and put in detention camps. Taki speaks from personal experience, that of his grandfather.

THE FBI ARRIVED at his door carrying pistols and a terse message: Juro, the owner of a small sweater factory and dry goods store in one of Seattle's ethnic neighborhoods, was under arrest. As his bewildered wife and children watched, the agents took Juro away without saying why, where he would be taken, or for how long. He spent the next year being held as an enemy alien in a federal prison nearly 1,000 miles away and died only three years later, never again seeing his home in Seattle.

Juro was a Japanese-American - and my great-grandfather. In early 1942, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the FBI arrested many men like him: people whose sole crime was their leadership or prominence within the Japanese-American community. In the eyes of FBI agents searching for traitors, their foreign faces and foreign names made their guilt a presumption and their innocence unprovable....

Though few spoke out against it at the time, the wartime internment of Japanese-Americans is now widely recognized as one of America's grossest violations of civil liberties, forcing an entire race to labor under a collective presumption of guilt."

Every year, members of the Japanese-American community pause on February 19 to reflect on the injustices of 1942.

This February, we do so in an environment that increasingly mirrors that of 1942: when the courts are too timid to challenge the wisdom of military decision making and when free-floating anxiety combines with racial suspicions to embolden those who would conduct witch hunts of the foreign-born and trample over the rights of the accused.... This month, as we remember how America's leaders violated the rights of those of Japanese ancestry, we should recall that the public's failure to dissent - their willingness to turn away in the face of injustice - is what allowed that wrong to be perpetrated. Today, America has a chance to avoid making a similar mistake. This time, let's stand up and stop it from happening again.

A hearing will be held Thursday at 10:00 a.m. in federal court in Boston on the lawsuit filed last week by U.S. soldiers, parents of U.S. soldiers, and Members of Congress, challenging President Bush¹s authority to wage war against Iraq.

The lawsuit seeks to prevent the President from launching a military
invasion of Iraq, absent a congressional declaration of war. U.S.
Representatives John Conyers and Dennis Kucinich are leading the Members of
Congress who are serving as plaintiffs.

The Traprock Peace Center has agreed to publicize all details and events in the case. All case news, and copies of all of the Plaintiff's legal pleadings are available here.

[source: Press release received via email]

Where is the media reporting on the 220,000 casualties from the first Gulf War? Cursor points us to Stanley Heller's article in Media Monitors, titled The 220,00 Casualties No One Speaks About.

The major media will talk about holes in the Administration case on Iraq, weaknesses in the accusations about Halabja, and even occasionally an article about sufferings of Iraqi civilians. What they won't talk about is the huge number of U.S. casualties from our first Gulf War. In two articles in the Washington Post in mid-January David Brown said that 1600,000 Gulf War veterans may be in "less than optimal health since the war". He talked about "muscle aches" and "stress". He could not bring himself to mention the "D" word, as in "Disabled". The VA officially reports that 159,238 soldiers who were in the Gulf in 90'-91' are disabled. Of that number over 111,000 are 10% or more disabled. According to the report 8,000 Gulf War vets have died. The report that mentions all this came out in September, but I don't know of one U.S. newspaper that has mentioned it.

The scary thing is no one is talking about the contamination still present in the region, and more troops are being dispatched there as we write.

We’re led to believe that Gulf War casualties were minimal. At the close of the fighting in 1991 less than 800 were killed and wounded. But first a trickle and then a river of American soldiers have gotten sick. The enormous numbers of casualties is not confined to soldiers who fought in the Gulf War. The V.A. has awarded disability to another 60,000 soldiers who went into the Gulf countries after the war was over. These are considered "theater" veterans. 2,000 of Gulf War "theater" veterans have died. This is very alarming. It means that the Gulf area (Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia) is still highly contaminated. The chief suspect is DU, "depleted uranium".

After describing "depleted uranium," Mr. Heller closes with this:

DU isn't the only culprit suspected in Gulf War illnesses. There's also the PB pills that were supposed to ward off some effects of sarin gas. There's the anti-anthrax shots that soldiers were forced to take. These "medicines" that got many GI's sick immediately and are thought to be part of the toxic mix that disabled so many soldiers. Obsessed with a quick triumph and low body counts the U.S. military fought the Gulf War without calculating the long term effects on its soldiers of its hi-tech weapons and "miracle" pharmaceuticals. Now the politicians are again sending the troops in harms way. U.S. parents will be gambling that the military brass that failed so wretchedly in Desert Storm will this time protect the health of their sons and daughters. The odds are poor. If the war starts Iraqi soldiers and civilians will be the main casualties, but U.S. soldiers will likely also pay a steep price for "victory".

This whole article leaves us pretty speechless. Suffice it to say, we are one parent who's not about to take the gamble.

It seems that as we get closer to the reality of war, commentators are ratcheting up the tone of their criticism. We like Gordon Arnaut's commentary on Saturday's peace marches, The People Have Spoken, Is Anybody Listening? If you oppose the war, we think you will appreciate it as well.

Update: Permanent link to article is now substituted for the original, per "Canadian Reader" in the comments section.

"Editors of the world's leading scientific journals announced Saturday they would delete details from published studies that might help terrorists make biological weapons. The editors, joined by several prominent scientists, said they would not censor scientific data or adopt a top-secret classification system similar to that used by the military and government intelligence agencies."

"But they said scientists working in the post-Sept. 11 world must face the dismaying paradox that many of their impressive breakthroughs can be used for sinister purposes....They unveiled their agreement at the national meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science" held in Denver this weekend.

If you read the article, you will see that these writers deal with some strange stuff--"from decoding the human genome to the cloning of Dolly the sheep .

Indeed, it has never been easier to tweak a microbe's genes to create a deadlier, drug-resistant superbug for a germ bomb or hijack aerosol technology meant for convenient spray vaccines to make anthrax spores float through the air. Journal editors said they were establishing their own expert panels to review papers that contain alarming information, and would work with the authors to make specific changes and "tone them down."

We'll be joining the science writers at their party this evening, we'll report any particularly noteworthy details when we get back.

Bump and Update:

More than six million protested today around the world. Pure People Power. It began in New Zealand and Australia.

Update on World protests today here, with link to pictures world-wide.

By noon, the headlines reported Two Million Gather Across the Globe::

From Canberra to Sofia, from Cape Town to Karachi, they took to the streets to pillory Bush as a bloodthirsty warmonger. In the biggest demonstrations of 'people power' since the Vietnam War, they poured scorn on Bush's hawkish stance. "This war is solely about oil. George Bush has never given a damn about human rights," London mayor Ken Livingstone told reporters at a giant rally in London.

London anti-war march: 750,000 to 1.5 million turn out. Here is a Hyde Park photo and here is more on the London protest.

In Paris, police said "100,000 demonstrators marched the three miles from the capital's Place Denfert-Rochereau to the Place de la Bastille, filling the broad Boulevard Saint Michel, which passes the French Senate, and spilling into the surrounding streets."

From The French Say No to War: "With more than 80% of people in France supporting President Jacques Chirac's anti-war stance, this is a huge vote of support for the French president."

Great photos from London, Amsterdam and Australia.

Spain: 2 million. Barcelona city officials estimated a turnout of 1.3 million people -- nearly equalling the entire city's population of 1.5 million -- in the largest demonstration in the city's history. Here's a photo.

In New York, New York City's police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, put the crowd at about 100,000, while the organizers said 400,000 people attended.

Although yesterday's demonstration against war was speckled with professional peace activists, leftist doctrinaires and a kaleidoscopic array of malcontents advocating the end of capitalism, imperialism, sexism and taxation, a great many of those who converged on the East Side of Manhattan were the unaligned and the unaffiliated. Housewives, accountants, aging hippies and high school students, many of them first-time protesters, all of them moved by the prospect of war, surged up Second Avenue or stood wordlessly on First Avenue as those around them chanted "No blood for oil."

Here is the text of the speech delivered by Sen. Robert Byrd on the floor of the United States Senate on Feb. 12, 2003. We urge you to read the whole thing. Here's a sample:

This administration, now in power for a little over two years, must be judged on its record. I believe that that record is dismal.

In that scant two years, this administration has squandered a large projected surplus of some $5.6 trillion over the next decade and taken us to projected deficits as far as the eye can see. This administration's domestic policy has put many of our states in dire financial condition, underfunding scores of essential programs for our people. This administration has fostered policies which have slowed economic growth. This administration has ignored urgent matters such as the crisis in health care for our elderly. This administration has been slow to provide adequate funding for homeland security. This administration has been reluctant to better protect our long and porous borders.

In foreign policy, this administration has failed to find Osama bin Laden. In fact, just yesterday we heard from him again marshaling his forces and urging them to kill. This administration has split traditional alliances, possibly crippling, for all time, international order-keeping entities like the United Nations and NATO. This administration has called into question the traditional worldwide perception of the United States as well-intentioned peacekeeper. This administration has turned the patient art of diplomacy into threats, labeling and name calling of the sort that reflects quite poorly on the intelligence and sensitivity of our leaders, and which will have consequences for years to come.

Taking a Stand on Iraq: Speak Out
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, San Francisco Chronicle

And a vast paranoia sweeps across the land

And America turns the attack on its Twin Towers

Into the beginning of the Third World War

The war with the Third World

And the terrorists in Washington

Are drafting all the young men

And no one speaks

And they are rousting out

All the ones with turbans

And they are flushing out

All the strange immigrants

And they are shipping all the young men

To the killing fields again

And no one speaks

And when they come to round up

All the great writers and poets and painters

The National Endowment of the Arts of Complacency

Will not speak

While all the young men

Will be killing all the young men

In the killing fields again

So now is the time for you to speak

All you lovers of liberty

All you lovers of the pursuit of happiness

All you lovers and sleepers

Deep in your private dreams

Now is the time for you to speak

O silent majority

Before they come for you

Lawrence Ferlinghetti is San Francisco's first poet laureate (1998) and the owner and founder of City Lights Bookstore. This poem first appeared on the City Lights Web site .

The FBI and CIA are moving their counter-terror operations into a joint complex. The Administration promises that each agency will maintain control over its own staff.

But a joint intelligence center to be created at the same location, probably in Northern Virginia, will report to George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence. That arrangement in particular has prompted civil liberties advocates to warn that lines of authority could become blurred, giving the Central Intelligence Agency a new role in domestic spying....

Civil liberties advocates said they were concerned that the plan, especially the creation of the joint center with the director of central intelligence in charge, would give the C.I.A. an active role in the gathering of intelligence within the United States.

Timothy Edgar, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said in an interview that despite pledges by the Bush administration to honor the longtime separate roles of the two agencies, "we think it will be difficult for them to hold that line."

Bush has said he intends for the two agencies to maintain their separate identities and operations, but that there is a greater need for sharing of intelligence information.

He said the move was "an important advance" in creating a better, more integrated system for analyzing intelligence about terrorists...."In order to better protect our homeland, our intelligence agencies must coexist like they never had before."

The new center will be called the Terrorist Threat Integration Center. It will open for business May 1.

The Guardian reports that millions will march in hundreds of cities Saturday as part of the global protest against the war.

More than 10 million people are expected to take to the streets in 600 cities today as part of global demonstrations against a war in Iraq. It is anticipated that today's marches will be the largest ever for a single cause and far greater than at the height of the Vietnam war in the 60s. Last night London was celebrating peace, as politicians, poets, musicians, trade unionists and actors came together to lead debates and concerts. But protest organisers raised the stakes by calling on people to stage thousands of impromptu demonstrations, sit-ins, walkouts, strikes, vigils and acts of civil disobedience as soon as hostilities started." "We want people to strike on the day that war breaks out and occupy the whole Whitehall area of central London," said Lindsey German of the Stop the War Coalition.

A federal court in Florida today issued an order preventing the state of Florida from blocking nude anti-war activists.

As has been occurring in other cities, a group of women planed "to gather in a state park, strip nude and form a peace symbol with their bodies in protest of a U.S. war on Iraq."

"U.S. District Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks wrote an eleven-page order stating that "nude overtly political speech in the form of a 'living nude peace symbol' is expressive conduct well within the ambit of the First Amendment."

The demonstration took place Friday morning at John D. MacArthur Beach State Park on Singer Island, north of West Palm Beach. Two dozen men and women took off their clothes, lay down and formed a peace symbol.

Why the nudity? "Organizer T. A. Wyner said the protesters stripped because it shows vulnerability and calls attention to their lack of weapons."

No one was arrested. The best comment we've seen on it:

Marilyn Weil, who brought her three young grandchildren to the Singer Island beach Friday morning, said she was warned before she reached the sand about the protest. "It's a little bizarre, but it's freedom of expression and that's what this country is all about," Weil said. "I'd rather have them see that than a bunch of dead bodies on the television screen, which is what we'd see if we bomb Iraq."

Us too.

Update: You can view photos from the various protests here. [link via Buzzflash]

Gary Hart delivered a new speech Monday night at the World Affairs Council & Council on Foreign Relations in San Francisco. You can read the full text of Principled Engagement: America's Role in the 21st-Century World here. Some quotes:

American military power must be used judiciously and prudently, even more so now that we are the dominant military power on earth by several orders of magnitude. We now spend more each year on our military establishment than at least the next five major powers, including China, Russia, a the U.K., combined.....

Our forces must be used primarily to protect our legitimate security interests and those of our allies. When they are used, certain standards must be clearly stated and met. We must define our political and military objectives, and our political goals must be tangible, obtainable, and stated in concrete terms. The American people must support the use of our forces in any sustained military operation and must be fully cognizant of the proposed levels of military force and the potential costs, including in human lives. Our military forces should be committed only after diplomatic, political, and other means of conflict resolution have been exhausted and after local forces are determined to be insufficient to resolve the conflict. We must be clear on how we intend to achieve our objective and what strategies, tactics, and doctrines we mean to employ. And command structures must be clearly defined and our plan of operation must be simple and achievable in its execution. ....

We should not hide our policies from our own people or from the world at large. In the long run, and increasingly in the short run, there are few if any secrets. Our policies must withstand the therapy of sunlight. In almost every case, except the most important security secrets, if we are afraid to disclose our practices or intentions, it usually means we will be ashamed of them when they are ultimately exposed.....

We should not behave differently to others, including the most humble nations, than we would have them behave towards us. Our dealings must not only be transparent, they must also be fair and just. This is true all the more so since we now stand constantly examined in the court of international opinion and we do not have the excuse of combating communism to rationalize our misdeeds. Even our resistance to terrorism must not become a new excuse to shortcut our principles, bully our neighbors and allies, and act as the new empire-builders....