Myth-Busting, Pt. VII: There's No Anti-War Movement

"Whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad."
Euripides, via MacBeth, 2,447 years ago

"Cindy Sheehan is a clown. There is no real anti-war movement. No serious politician, with anything to do with anything, would show his face at an anti-war rally..."
Karl Rove, September 18th, 2005

Yet an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 antiwar protestors stormed the streets of D.C. on Saturday, September 24th, 2005. I was sad to not be in attendance. As country singer Steve Earle noted during a performance at the mall that day, "Not only is there an antiwar movement, the desire to pull out of Iraq is slowly becoming mainstream."

Publicly Traded Media did its best to downplay the numbers of protestors and its coverage of them in D.C. that day, like it wasn't news and the participants were Protesta Non Grata. We learned our lesson on the homefront in Vietnam, and all that. Well, actually, no.

There's the old form of protest of marching in the streets, but there are also 60 million bloggers in the world, the vast majority of which are strongly against Dumb Wars. Totally normal people like me, Bruce at the River Blog, Hope at Deep Confusion, Naj at IranFacts, and tens of millions of others voicing their disgust over what's happening . It's hard to know how many people read all those blogs, but one thing is sure: a lot more thought and discussion is going on in them than in Publicly Traded Media, and it's a very important form of protest. A self-organizing, evolving, momentum-building form of protest. So whether or not people are marching in the streets bearing signs, baring breasts, and burning effigies, which they have been doing by the millions across the world, the real battle for the media is going on over the Internet.

Earlier today, I linked to an ABC News page which contained the video of Barack Obama's interview with a scurrilous, tough-talking little turn-ass named George Twerpanopolous. The ABC News web page wouldn't allow me to outline text and press "Ctrl-C" to copy it, so I had to go dig it of the source html. Those pathetic bastards. They're trying to squelch bloggers, and they had a section on the page soliciting comments with the link title of "See What Others Are Saying." As of 12PM Pacific time, there were a grand total of three comments. As of 10PM Pacific time, there are a grand total of 20 comments. In the words of Chris Farley, "Well, whoop-dee-frickin' Doo!" In the blogsphere, there were probably millions of comments on Obama's interview today. Will Main Stream Media be able to co-opt the blogsphere and bring commenters into their arms, gaining their attention and trust? Anything's possible. Meanwhile, guess who's winning right now?

The Unreal Anti-War Movement has taped a big "Kick Me" sign on the back of Karl Rove's suit, and the kicks are starting to hurt. "Serious politicians" like Arlen Specter will be lining up for free kicks since someone in the White House sent Murray Waas the Un-Dead E-mails, i.e., the ones Karl stupidly thought he had permanently deleted; he's about to learn the meaning of that old country song, "Drop Kick Me Jesus Through the Goal Posts of Life."

There is a real anti-war movement in America. It's just moving in new ways people in the White House are Press Corps are too insulated and ignorant to understand.

Begin To Win

Click. Watch.

Russ Feingold (D-WI) represents our best chance for Congress to get control of an unending Global War on Terra. He recognizes that taking funding away from the war is the way to stop it. He's on the Judiciary Committee, and is holding hearings this week on how Congress should best go about it. He's promising to introduce legislation which sets a deadline, after which Iraq gets de-funded. In 1971, Congress did not approve a Nixon request for additional Vietnam war financing. It was that Congressional vote, not any brilliant statesmanship by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, which effectively ended American troop presence in Vietnam. "We will not take funds away from our troops," a frequent Dimocrat talking point, should instead be changed to, "We're approving funds to bring them home." That's where he's going with his hearings.

I realize Feingold probably won't get meaningful legislation passed fast enough, and only a miracle can stop Cheney and the Ziocons from blowing up the world as soon as they swallow their last Space Cakes. If you want to try and stop it anyway, as I assume you do, then the Progressive Patriot's Fund is the best place I know of to support.

Go. Give. At least you'll be on the record for doing the right thing. And you never know. It just might work:

http://www.progressivepatriotsfund.com/

(Hat tip to the esteemed Hope at Deep Confusion for surfacing this Feingold vid.)

One Day Hun, Blunder Serve Fails Lance

A speech recognition engine might transcribe the spoken phrase "One Nation, Under Surveillance" as "One Day Hun, Blunder Serve Fails Lance." Or to "Won Nary Tons Fundies Sir Salient." Or to "Dear aunt, let's so double the killer delete select all," as happens in this Microsoft Speech Recognition demo for their new Vista operating system. The poor product manager tries to dictate a "dear mom" letter in front of a bunch of reviewers, and hilarity ensues. Ah, yes. I know it well. This is my field, and I briefly had that guy's exact job several years back; they let me have it for awhile until they could find someone calmer, less prone to seizures, someone who wouldn't randomly scream out "Auaaaagggh!" in meetings, with no visible eye-twitch or physical abnormalities. And I was the lucky one. They found the new guy before I had to give one of these demos. Auaaaagggh!

Seriously, speech recognition has gotten pretty good. But it's also still sensitive, imperfect, and unpredictable, so it's not really ready for prime time in free-form applications like speaking English. It best performs repetitive tasks in narrow domains. Trying to understand people speaking full sentences is hard enough for a human, and some days I wonder if they do it very well at all. To be fair, the technology has come a very long way, and has gotten pretty good unless, say, you have a sinus infection or a fluorescent light happens to be on. Speaking of lights, it's very good at tasks like switching a light on and off. Almost always.

Our government, in its desire to be helpful, is applying speech recognition technology (not Microsoft's) to the problem of listening to phone conversations, you know, so we can tell who's running terrorist cells and where they're going to attack next. Last I checked I think the National Security Agency admitted to having about a $40 billion yearly budget, give or take a few score unreported black projects and a few hundred contractors. Making technology work for you. Feel better now?