"The president's mind was made up long ago and all the chatter pro and con (the war) was just so much smoke in the wind. Mr. Bush will have his war.

Last night was a time of sadness around the world as people who think that war should always be a last resort lit candles to express their sorrow, their frustration and, however unrealistically, their last faint flickerings of hope." BOB HERBERT excerpt from an editorial in the New York Times.

Although the war is about to start within hours, the strength of the peace movement around the world was one of the major miscalculations of the Bush's administration, of course, together with their attempted United Nations strategy to get support for US policies through the Security Council. The failures at the United Nations by the US and "allies", also have to be linked, among other issues of course, to the world pressure on their respective leaders brought about by the massive demonstrations in every major city around the globe. Even though the war was not averted in the end, it remains to be seen how the peace movement evolves into new strategies and ways of dealing with the aftermath and the politics after the war.

We should be clear about one thing, the technological changes ushered in via e-mail, have enabled the world coordination of a peace movement which would not have been possible a decade ago. This has been one of the most demonstrable ways in which technologies have empowered people accross the globe to offset, to some degree, the historical imbalance in the distribution of information, always skewed in favor of governments. I am convinced much remains to be written about these new technological realities. What has happened is probably only the start.

M. Richer
March 17, 2003

http://www.zonezero.com/magazine/articles/vig_coyoacan/vig_coy.html