So much of Tom Tomorrow's stuff from Gulf War I still makes sense today.

The response to PeaceBlogs.org has been phenomenal. Since it launched on Monday, over 500 bloggers from 28 countries have signed up--from as far away as South Africa, Ukraine and Indonesia. The most surprising response by far has been from Brazil, where nearly half of the bloggers reside. For the life of me, I can't explain the enormous Brazilian response, but I'm very happy that this has become such an international directory.

The site was mentioned this week on the Providence [RI] Journal site, as well as Metafilter and even the Italian site Blog-It (thanks, romakimmy!). If you've seen it mentioned by any other media outlet (formal or informal), please let me know.

I've added some features to help organize all the blogs. You can now view them by continent and by country of origin (here are all the Australian blogs, for example). I've also added a "Random PeaceBlog" feature, just for fun.

Thanks again to everyone who's participating, and who've expressed their support for the project, especially all you apes.

by jpoulos

It's funny. All those around me who before the war began would, whether they agreed or disagreed with my position, gladly discuss it with me, now just stare blankly at me when I bring it up. They suspect that I *gasp* "don't support the brave men and women of the US military". Everything changed when those first missiles were fired on Wednesday. It's one thing to speak out against the President's politically-motivated positions, quite another to not revere the men and women who are putting their lives at stake.

Well, I can't say I support them. I absolutely wish no ill on any of them. I hope this war will end this weekend without any further lives lost. (It won't.) I know they're working their asses off over there and that they think they're protecting my way of life and my ability to speak my mind. (They're not.) I know that many of them have very good intentions. But I can't say I support them. I'm certainly not baking fucking cookies to send "care packages" over there, like they're doing all around me here in quiet Suburbia. Here we've got the richest army in the world, they're flying billion-dollar bombers, and housewives and middle-school students are baking goddamn brownies to comfort them.

Between the last time we bombed the shit out them and this time, the United States has spent twelve years trying to starve the Iraqi people into submission. Starving. Literally. As in: empty stomachs, excruciating pain, hallucinations and slow, suffering death. We did that. You and I and Janie Smith down the street who has been flying a flag on her mailbox since 9/11. And what were we good, kind American people doing all that time, while innocent children died? Eating fucking McDonald's and watching "Who Wants to Be A Millionaire". And now our big concern is that Corporal McGuillicutty might be homesick and missing him mom's Rice Krispie squares.

I hope Corporal McGuillicutty stays safe. I honestly do. Sixteen coalition soliders died yesterday in a chopper crash and I felt the sting in my heart as much as anyone. But Corporal McGullicutty signed up for this war--or maybe he just signed up for the GI Bill benefits, or whatever, but he's over there of his own volition. He's not Innocent.

I support our troops...I support them getting their asses back over here where they won't get shot at. Where they can march in circles around the military bases and get up at 4:30am to run obstacle courses and run until they puke. But I don't support them dropping two-ton bombs on cities. I don't want them there, and I don't want them to kill any more people in the interest of oil or "the long-overdue internal reform and modernization of Islam." (see here). And I'm not going to pretend that I do.

So one day last week I was surfing around some of the warblogs, getting pretty pissed off, and I came up with the idea for PeaceBlogs.org, a directory of blogs that oppose the coming war in Iraq. Amazingly, the domain was available, so I went with it.

You need not be constantly blogging about the war, nor must you be of any particular political persuasion. If you have a blog and don't support the war, sign up.

Erotic Origami

Here's something you may not know...

In January 1998, a group called The Project for the New American Century, a group dedicated to the idea that the United States should through "military strength, diplomatic energy and commitment to moral principle" become the leader of the rest of the world, sent a letter to then-President Bill Clinton regarding their idea of what the future should hold for Iraq and the rest of the Middle East. It called for--in the interest protecting US troops and allies and "a significant portion of the world’s supply of oil"--a regime change in Iraq, and it wasn't taking "no" for an answer.

We believe the U.S. has the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the necessary steps, including military steps, to protect our vital interests in the Gulf. In any case, American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.

What's more interesting is who signed the letter. Of the 18 signatories, nine, including Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, are part of the Bush administration. Many of them make their money from oil and/or defense.

Long before September 11 their goal was to wage war on Iraq, in order to protect their oil interests and boost military spending. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

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EDIT - MARCH 4

More on the PNAC:

An intro to the PNAC
More from truthout.org

From this second article:

The Project for the New American Century seeks to establish what they call 'Pax Americana' across the globe....The first step towards the establishment of this Pax is, and has always been, the removal of Saddam Hussein and the establishment of an American protectorate in Iraq. The purpose of this is threefold: 1) To acquire control of the oilheads so as to fund the entire enterprise; 2) To fire a warning shot across the bows of every leader in the Middle East; 3) To establish in Iraq a military staging area for the eventual invasion and overthrow of several Middle Eastern regimes, including some that are allies of the United States.

....

Another PNAC signatory, author Norman Podhoretz...notes that the regimes, "that richly deserve to be overthrown and replaced, are not confined to the three singled-out members of the axis of evil. At a minimum, the axis should extend to Syria and Lebanon and Libya, as well as 'friends' of America like the Saudi royal family and Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, along with the Palestinian Authority, whether headed by Arafat or one of his henchmen." At bottom, for Podhoretz, this action is about "the long-overdue internal reform and modernization of Islam."

We're not just talking nation-building, people, we're talking religion-building, culture-building, World-building.

Admittedly, truthout.org has a leftwing bias, but if you look past the conspiracy-talk to what the PNAC itself has said, it's not hard to see that the agenda of this group--a group founded by Dick Cheney, by the way--has no intention of stopping with Iraq.

Weapons of mass destruction are a smokescreen. Paeans to the idea of Iraqi liberation and democratization are cynical in their inception. At the end of the day, this is not even about oil. The drive behind this war is ideological in nature, a crusade to 'reform' the religion of Islam as it exists in both government and society within the Middle East. Once this is accomplished, the road to empire will be open, ten lanes wide and steppin' out over the line.

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(Much thanks to tizzie for wising me up to this.)