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Talk:Protests against the Iraq War

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    Contents

    [edit] Archived talk

    Talk:Protests against the invasion of Iraq/Archive 1: 1) Attendence/Merge/Numbers etc, 2. Why can't people unite?, 3. Protests on different days, 4. Orrder, 5. Numbers in Amsterdam, 6. Global protests against war on Iraq (pre-war), 7. demonstrations for & against this war, 8. Afghanistan Protests, 9. Media, 10. Moved here from Talk:Global protests against war on Iraq (pre-war), 11. Source for list, 12. Web archive URL,13. Error, 14. Cairo Anti war conference, 15. Clean up, 16. This article or section should be merged with 2003 Invasion of Iraq, 17. Page title, 18. February 15th Protest (London), 19. Global protests against the invation of Iraq?

    [edit] Role of this article in the pages on the anti-war movement, and organization of related articles

    After having looked at the article for February 15th Protest (London), and looking at the corresponding article section for it on Protests against the invasion of Iraq, it makes me wonder about the role that the latter article should play in organizing information about large-scale protests on the war in Iraq.

    As more anti-war protests occur (there's a big one in DC coming up on September 24), this page is going to get really long. I already consider it bordering on unwieldy, carrying things like the big table with the attendance numbers for all the various cities on February 15 (which I think would be more appropriate for an expanded February 15th Protest (London) article - see below). As it is, the article is already 34KB long, and according to Wikipedia:Article size is getting to the point where it should be addressed.

    The way I see it would make some changes where things should go. Big global days of action like February 15 should be an article all to themselves. Let me use the February 15, 2003 Global Day of Action as an example. The article on the protests worldwide on that day would be an article entitled February 15, 2003 Global Day of Action or thereabouts. Then we could list details about events in all the cities where events occurred. Then we could merge February 15th Protest (London) into that new article, turning February 15th Protest (London) into a redirect to the new February 15, 2003 Global Day of Action article, which would also contain that table with attendance numbers for the various cities participating. That would leave the Protests against the invasion of Iraq article to have a number of "Main article: (Whatever)" links on it, and shorter descriptions where there exists a full article about the day.

    I hope what I've described makes at least some sense, but it ought to keep things from getting too big and unwieldy, and also better organize what we've got going here. Please let me know what you think and any questions you may have.

    Schuminweb 19:26, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

    The merge is complete. The new article is February 15, 2003 Global Day of Action. Schuminweb 04:45, 11 September 2005 (UTC)
    I def' agree with what ur saying. Moving alot of the Feb 15 stuff out has trimmed the article but it is still to big (as I write it is 31 kilobytes) and like you say there are probally more demo's to come (There will be a demo in London tomorrow along with one in DC) also I expect that there is stuff from the past that is still missing (I have just added some more info). The page contains alot of stuff on demo's the week after the war began prehaps we should have a page like Anti-war protests in the week following the Iraq invasion (or something shorter!).--JK the unwise 18:41, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
    My ultimate goal is to see this page reduced even further, closer to a list, with very brief descriptions if any on that page. I'm also in support of splitting the article into pieces, if we can figure out a good way to split it. Let's not split anything yet - first I want to think about it for a while.
    I also am going to write the description for the S24 demonstration, which will happen in less than 12 hours at the time of this writing, as I plan to be there.
    Schuminweb 03:36, 24 September 2005 (UTC)


    [edit] Missing Key Protests

    Please consider including the work of PMR (Port Militarization Resistance). There were ten days worth of protest last May (2006) at the Port of Olympia. Hundreds of protesters blocked Stryker vehicles deploying ahead of troops to Iraq. 33 people were arrested over ten days. Now, Tacoma PMR is currently (as of March 11th 2007) protesting another shipment of Strykers out of the Port of Tacoma ahead of troops. The police have used excessive force, gassing protesters on the night of March 9th, early into March 10th. PMR's position is that the troops will not deploy if the shipments can be stopped. This article also fails to mention the Citizens hearing on the legality of the war back in January, as well as resistance from Iraq war vetrans, and Lt. Watada, who was court marshalled for refusing to deploy. Some sources to include/ sites with more information and press releases= www.couragetoresist.org, www.thankyoult.org, www.omjp.org, http://www.omjp.org/OlyPort.html, http://www.omjp.org/PortMay06.html, and http://www.omjp.org/Port2007.html. You can also go to google news and google "Port of Tacoma" for news articles. You tube contains footage, as well as an interview with two PMR members. Please consider adding this information to the article.24.18.106.13 21:51, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

    [edit] More text, less images - here's why

    I removed a lot of images from this page tonight, in order to continue to clean up and shorten this article. The way I see it, thus my rationale for this change, is that this page should function less as a full article about all these different protests, or a collection of short articles on these protests, but rather as a list of different protests with descriptions, with links to separate articles on protests as appropriate (think February 15, 2003 global anti-war protest).

    Thus as far as images go, the only ones I left are ones that are exclusive to this article. That's all of two photos. Of course, for larger protests, I'd like to see more separate articles. But we shall see... Schuminweb 03:42, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

    [edit] Search for references

    Some of the demonstrations on this page are saddly lacking in referances :-(. In orrder to fix this I have done a search for "anti-war demonstrations" on the BBC internet page [1]. I have dumped the results here. Most of it is about the UK 'cus the beeb is a UK institution but there is some global stuff as well.

    Once used in the article the link has will be struck through.

    --JK the unwise 18:56, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

    Some other stuff To work in:

    [edit] Reformatted article back into lots of headings

    I just finished reformatting the article back to where there are lots of headings. However, the headings are smaller and there are now indentations in order to facilitate readability. I considered the bulleted version of the article to look like too monolithic of a block of text, and I personally was disinclined to either read it or edit it. Now that it's more visibly broken into smaller chunks, it makes it appear more prone to actually getting read.

    Additionally, keeping it broken out like that makes editing easier. Rather than dealing with a large block of text, one can just edit the specific section that they wish and not have to deal with other areas.

    I do like the way it's broken up now as far as time periods and such. I tweaked just slightly, though, to match it to periods in the war in Iraq.

    Schuminweb 23:32, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

    [edit] Text from Popular opposition to the 2003 Iraq War, protests section.

    The section on protests on the Popular opposition to the 2003 Iraq War lists this page as the main page for that subject and so should just be a summary of this page. For this reason the folowing text which was added to that page should be worked into this page.

    In October 2005, hundreds of vigils and protests occurred in towns across the U.S., all calling for "Not One More Death. Not One More Dollar." The event is sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee, Gold Star Families for Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War, and Military Families Speak Out. One of the most popular chants used by protesters was "no blood for oil." Nu metal band System of a Down made a protest song called "Boom!", and invited documentarist Michael Moore to direct the music video, consisting mostly of clips of the protests worldwide.

    --JK the unwise 16:30, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

    [edit] name change

    I changed the name from Protests against the invasion of Iraq to Protests against the Iraq war as this seems more accurate. Protests took place not only against the inicial invation but also against the continuining war.

    A while back the page was called Global protests against war on Iraq and was changed to Global protests against invasion of Iraq by Ed Poor for the reason that 'Invation of Iraq' is more neutral then the POV 'war on Iraq'[2]. I agree that 'war on Iraq' is problematic but I think the propper NPOV title is 'Iraq war'. This is a popular name for the conflict, and it is uncontrovercial since no one disagrees that there was a War and that it was in Iraq.--JK the unwise 11:15, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

    Further name change, I have further changed the name of this article to specify which Iraq war the protests were against.--JK the unwise 11:34, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

    [edit] Merge

    Post-September 11 anti-war movement is writtern in a POV editorial orriginal reasearch fasion. I belive that this partly steams from the title which sets the article up to present an editorialised content.

    To solve this problem I want to propose merging the content of the article into this page and the following pages Opposition to the 2001 Afghanistan War, Protests against the invasion of Afghanistan, Opposition to the 2003 Iraq War, Anti-war and The Left and war and then deleting Post-September 11 anti-war movement.--JK the unwise 13:20, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

    As I mentioned elsewhere, I see most of the article as NPOV, and am not comfortable with breaking up the article, since itself tells a story of how the "modern" anti-war movement got going. SchuminWeb (Talk) 04:51, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
    Can that story not be told accross Opposition to the 2001 Afghanistan War and [[Opposition to the 2003 Iraq War?--JK the unwise 10:03, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

    [edit] Revision of 04:57, 11 December 2005

    Hopefully this revision will streamline things a bit. What I did is I removed the year headings (i.e. ===2004===) and promoted all the date headings to level-three headings. I figure that since every single date entry lists the year, that a separate year heading is unnecessary. This also straightens out the table of contents, which, since the addition of major time points (prior to invasion, invasion to fall, post-fall), had been kind of strange, since different divisions were laid on top of each other. As I said, this straightens it out, with our getting rid of the year separations. SchuminWeb (Talk) 05:03, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

    [edit] Christians VS Bush

    Published on Sunday, October 20, 2002 by the Observer/UK Iraq War 'Unjustifiable', says Bush's Church Head by Ed Vulliamy in New York <quote> President George Bush's own Methodist church has launched a scathing attack on his preparations for war against Iraq, saying they are 'without any justification according to the teachings of Christ'.

    Jim Winkler, head of social policy for United Methodists, added that all attempts at a 'dialogue' between the President and his own church over the war had fallen on deaf ears at the White House.

    His remarks came as the US continued its efforts to achieve agreement on a UN resolution that would open the way for a tough program of weapons inspections in Iraq. France is believed to be concerned that the current draft resolution might still act as a trigger for military intervention without a full Security Council debate if Iraq fails to comply.

    Winkler is general secretary of the Board of Church and Society for the United Methodist church, which counts the President and the Vice-President, Dick Cheney, among its members. The church represents eight to nine million regular churchgoers and is the third biggest in America.

    The Methodist Church, he says, is not pacifist, but 'rejects war as a usual means of national policy'. Methodist scriptural doctrine, he added, specifies 'war as a last resort, primarily a defensive thing. And so far as I know, Saddam Hussein has not mobilized military forces along the borders of the United States, nor along his own border to invade a neighboring country, nor have any of these countries pleaded for our assistance, not does he have weapons of mass destruction targeted at the United States'.

    Winkler said his church was 'keenly aware' that it counted the President and his deputy among its members, and that he was therefore 'frequently encouraged by others to be very careful about how I say things'. </quote> © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 132.241.41.44 (talk • contribs) 20 Jan 2006

    [edit] 6th grade student

    in words of a sixth grade student i dont like wars they are a waste of time and it hurts many prople in different way such as if a family member dies fighting for their country also it kills many people and could also leave people in danger. i am a 6th grade student and i am against war. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.66.19.210 (talk • contribs) 14 Feb 2006

    So you don't think the United States ending World War II was a good idea? Or are you against only certain types of wars? Would you support a war to prevent someone from killing others? 72.45.14.84

    [edit] "popular" opposition, 'anti-war' - false, misleading designations

    Can the heavily endowed, 'astroturf' organizations which comprise the 'antiwar' movement be factually described as 'popular?' especially since the largest of these demonstrations were organized by members of Saddam Hussein's legal council?

    also, few of these groups are against war, supporting 'anti-imperialist war' against the U.S.. Describing them or their initiatives as 'anti-war' is counter-factual and POV. I'll make the nessesary changes.

    [edit] Disputed

    The material I am objecting to is in the second paragraph of the article and was added in this edit, which has stood unchallenged for over 5 days in this presumably much-watched article. Normally, seeing an edit like this by an anonymous contributor, I would simply revert it, but I assume that if it has sat here for 5 days, that is something of an implicit endorsement by several contributors, so instead I am raising this as a dispute.

    "These demonstrations in support of 'anti-imperialist' war against the U.S." is an outright slander. While there may have been such demonstrations somewhere in the world, that is clearly a mischaracterization of at least most of the protests mentioned or alluded to in this article. Tens and hundreds of thousands of people were not out in the streets of Europe and the U.S. itself calling for "'anti-imperialist' war against the U.S.". Normally, I would presume simply to revert this, but it has sat as the start of the second paragraph of the article for over a week
    "were mainly organised by anti-war groups" became "were mainly organised by radical 'Social Justice' groups": note that the link still goes the same place, List of anti-war organizations: what, if anything, is the basis for rewording?
    "the largest of these were organized by the Stalinist group, International ANSWER, an initiative of Saddam Hussein's lawer, Ramsey Clark. Other groups acting in the U.S. were heavily subsidised by the Heinz Foundation, directed by the wife of President Bush's opponent in the 2004 U.S. Presidential election." There's so much wrong with this I hardly know where to begin:
    1. While some (including me) consider the Workers World Party and later the Party for Socialism and Liberation to have taken an overly controlling role in ANSWER, it is problematic to call these groups Stalinist. WWP is almost unique among left parties in carrying the works of both Stalin and Trotsky in its bookstores and vaguely embracing both. Some (including me, again) would call this hypocritical and opportunistic, and suspect them of being Stalinists who won't quite own up to it, but that's a very small part of the way to callin ANSWER "Stalinist". I don't particularly like ANSWER, but to say that the group is Stalinist is quite a stretch. Certainly, most of its supporters are not, and the people who come to their demos even less so.
    2. Ramsey Clark only recently joined Saddam Hussein's legal team. At the time he was involved in founding ANSWER, he had no relation to Saddam Hussein. This is, at best, anachronistic and tendentious (why not identify him as "former U.S. Attorney General, for example?), at worst an effort to set up a false inference that the anti-war movement had a link to Saddam Hussein during the time that Saddam was in power.
    3. "Other groups acting in the U.S. were heavily subsidised by the Heinz Foundation": never heard this before, and given the rest of this person's edit, I am not willing to give it any benefit of the doubt. It is particularly hard to know what to make of it because there is no such organization as "the Heinz Foundation": The Heinz Foundations are The Teresa and H. John Heinz III Foundation, The H. John Heinz III Foundation, The H. John Heinz III Foundation, the Howard Heinz Endowment, and Vira I. Heinz Endowment. In any case, since Kerry was not opposed the war, it seems unlikely that his wife Teresa Heinz Kerry was heavily subsidizing protests against his own position. Given the other dubious assertions from this same source, I would be inclined to remove this pending citation.

    I'll give at least 24 hours for response before I edit, although I certainly won't object if someone else reverts this material sooner. - Jmabel | Talk 20:52, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

    Just want to say I'm entirely with Jmabel here. Kalkin 21:04, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
    Just a note to clarify that the anonymous edits discussed above were only up for an hour or two before I reverted them—not 5 days. —GrantNeufeld 23:47, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
    My apologies! I was working through my watchlist, which I had run a few hours earlier and didn't notice that this article had been edited in between when I ran the watchlist and when I looked. So I presumed that since I was working 6 days back in my watchlist, that this material had been there for the intervening 6 days. I missed that this edit was not 5 minutes after the previous edit but 6 days plus 5 minutes after. Should have just reverted it, as was my first inclination. - Jmabel | Talk 04:15, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
    No problem. I believe that 66.209.214.23 is mainly just stirring up trouble, as he similarly vandalized the January 20, 2005 counter-inaugural protest article. SchuminWeb (Talk) 06:30, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
    there is a problem if you're accusing me of vandalism. the article you maintain about the counter-innaugural demonstrations is not encyclopedic, but an advocacy piece. i corrected the pov within it.
    "'These demonstrations in support of 'anti-imperialist' war against the U.S.' is an outright slander." it is not. it is a fact. both the wwp and the rcp are dedicated supporters of anti-imperialist war against the u.s., to say otherwise is a lie. to omit this from an encyclopedic article is to mislead and obfuscate. wwp = answer and rcp = nion, the largest organizing force within upj aside from medea benjemin's various front groups.
    that the wwp is stalinist is mere historical fact, as the wwp defined itsself as a faction by remaining loyal to the soviet union in the wake of kruschev's revalations of stalin's brutality. the wwp's stalinism is not really questioned within the social justice movement; why throw up smokescreens here?
    that the wwp is in fact answer is similarly a simple fact -- they hold the same dc office as their headquarters. if you call answer's phone, you've dialed the wwp's number. to deny this is similarly lying.
    my citation of ramsey clark as saddam's lawer is not anachronistic as i never cited a chronology. regardless, ramsey clark is saddam's lawer and an initiator of answer and a featured speaker at answer's dc rallies. the fact that he lacked the opportunity to defend hussein prior to hussein's status as defendent is utterly meaningless. a reasonable person can come to the conclusion that it was clarkes intent to represent hussein in court if his efforts to prevent his removal from power via answer failed. via clark, the social justice movement undeniably has a direct and central linkage to saddam hussein. it may pain you to admit this, and you may be willing to do whatever you can to suppress this fact, but wikipedia is a community project and you have no sole authority to suppress this fact and corrupt a wikipedia article into an advocacy piece.
    answer itsself is barely a "coalition" in any honest sence, since a signifigant number of its signatories (most since the split with upj) are merely the names of answer/wwp special interest groups.
    that the crowds at answer rallies are filled out with dupes who believe they are at an "anti-war" event who may ort may not share the wwp's stalinism is another meaningless point; as meaningless as if one were to say that a rally against illegal immigration organized by the national socialist movement couldn't be described as "fascist" or "nazi" because much of the crowd was comprised of non-affiliated supporters of immigration reform. nor is guilt by association imputed to the the general anti-iraq-war movement; though its obvious that answer rallies are accurately described as "stalinist" and "in support of anti-imperialist war," and rcp organized efforts are porperly described as maoist and in support of anti-imperialist war, its not obvious that non-affiliated crowd members are the same.
    i, for one, don't entirely blame these people for their ignorance, as they are largely victims of the deliberate, ideologically-driven and partisan obfuscation you are exersizing here.


    Wow. Where to begin... you're getting almost all the details wrong as well as your larger points.
    First the organizations. ANSWER is not the WWP. The WWP doesn't even operate in ANSWER anymore, it split, and the PSL now is part of ANSWER instead. The phone number of ANSWER was never the same as the WWP, you're confusing ANSWER with the IAC, which I'll agree was and is a WWP front group, but is only a small part of ANSWER. NION is not the RCP and is anyway seperate from UFPJ. The largest Marxist organization in UFPJ is the CP, which does not dominate it. The participation of a Marxist organization in an anti-war coalition does not make that organization Marxist. I have no idea what a "Medea Benjamin front group" is - does this mean a group Medea Benjamin helps lead, so the GOP would be a "Bush front group"?
    Second the 'anti-imperialist war.' You say "wwp and the rcp are dedicated supporters of anti-imperialist war against the u.s." - this would need a citation, but it's not even relevant. Cite ANSWER supporting anti-imperialist war. Cite a single ANSWER protest that had that as one of its slogans or demands. Note that the slogans of each protest are public. Then try UFPJ, which you'll find even harder - I don't believe a single one of its major members says it supports the Iraqi resistance, let alone the group itself.
    Third 'Stalinism.' The WWP and now PSL are both closer to Maoism than Stalinism, although both are multi-tendency Marxist-Leninist. Like many Maoists they believe that Kruschev betrayed socialism - it's one of the excuses Mao used for his break with the USSR. The Stalinist party in the US was of course the CP. It would be unfair to describe them as Stalinist today, but much fairer then describing any other US group as Stalinist.
    Fourth Ramsey Clark. It's highly misleading to describe ANSWER as an initiative of "Saddam Hussein's lawyer." This is a point made above which you seem not to understand, but its very simple. At the time ANSWER was founded, thus at the time it could (possibly, misleadingly) be described as Clark's "initiative," he was not Saddam's lawyer. Compare "the political blame for the Iran hostage crisis fell on Jimmy Carter, head of Habitat for Humanity."
    Fifth your assumption of bad faith ("they are largely victims of the deliberate, ideologically-driven and partisan obfuscation you are exersizing here"). It's entirely unwarranted and insulting. Just because you have paranoid neo-McCarthyite political views which are, as outlined above, founded on extreme confusion does not mean that anyone is justified in asserting that your edits on Wikipedia are made with the intention of obfuscation, and you owe the same courtesy of assuming honest intentions to those who disagree with you.
    I'm reverting your edits to the article, given their factual problems and the consensus of commenters above.Kalkin 20:26, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
    i'm sorry that you've resorted to truely anachronistic name-calling. your reaction to a person's attempt to add nessesary facts to the article by dusting off and swinging cold-war era brickbats like "mccarthyite" shows that i'm not "assuming" bad faith. i'm being presented with bad faith, and that's dismaying. i didn't come here for controversy. my intention is to make the article more truthfull.
    we shouldn't honor recently thrown-together front-groups as seperate entities of their parents any more than an article should document every time its organizers change clothes. on what basis do we regard psl as non-wwp, organizationally? nion, similarly, was started by an rcp organizer, clark kissenger, and it's initial "our grief is not a cry for war" campaign was deployed through rcp chapters and the rcp membership. can nion honestly be separated organizationally from the rcp? clearly no. why can't these associations be spoken of plainly? why are we supposed to consider iac's proportion within answer to the exclusion of it's consequence in answer, particularly through brian becker? who is served by pretending to be ignorant of their anti-imperialism? here is a source in which answer defines the difference between them and upj: "[upj's briefly taken option to organize seperately of answer] had the effect of forcing people to choose between going to a demonstration organized by anti-imperialist forces, who defended the Palestinian and Arab cause, or going to one called by the more moderate anti-war forces."
    i did not misspeak when i said that answer and wwp occupy the same office. in fact, answer, wwp and iac share the same dc offices. answer has the same office under the psl front as they did prior to its invention.
    i think it would be absurd to draw service with habitat for humanity together with culpability for the hostage crisis. i think if someone is both a foreign dictator's lawer and a central figure in the putatively "popular" movement against the war fought to remove that dictator from power, it represents a clear conflict of interest that should be aired openly if one is aiming at an honest representation of things. it is misleading to omit this corruption.
    regardless of particulars, what place do maoist or stalinist groups have in an "anti-war" movement? allarmingly, at its center and helm. whichever way its addressed, excluding this is misrepresentative and misleading. its not the object of an encyclopedia article to soften an organization's image.
    i've reverted the changes. please do not abuse the wikipedia system.
    I'm sorry I'm being presented with Cold-War style paranoia and anti-Communist witchhunting. However my political disagreements with you are not evidence of bad faith on my part, as above. Please cease conflating the two. If my tone has been hostile, it's because you began the discussion by asserting that my intention was "obfuscation." I will try to moderate it.
    "on what basis do we regard psl as non-wwp, organizationally" - because they split! The WWP and PSL are now hostile entities! "nion, similarly, was started by an rcp organizer" - compare "the ACLU, similarly, was started by Communist Party organizer, Roger Baldwin, and initially supported by CP cadre." True - does that mean the ACLU is the CP? Can you tell the difference between groups being related, and groups being identical? And yes, ANSWER calls itself anti-imperialist. That doesn't mean it supports anti-imperialist war. (I can be anti-Communist in 1980 without calling for war with the Soviet Union, can't I?)
    "answer, wwp and iac share the same dc offices" is just false. ANSWER and IAC are now rivals, IAC is no longer in ANSWER - the PSL is involved in ANSWER, and the WWP controls the IAC. My recollection is that the "same phone number" thing was IAC and WWP, but I could be wrong. It's certainly not presently IAC and ANSWER. You need to provide citations for your charges, regardless.
    "if someone is both a foreign dictator's lawer and a central figure in the putatively "popular" movement against the war" - exactly, this is a description that was never true of Ramsey Clark, because he didn't become Saddam's lawyer till the war had already deposed him, thus there can't be a conflict of interest, whatever it says about his politics.
    Anyone who is opposed to a war has a place in the anti-war movement. Purges are not healthy. Note that anti-war does not mean opposed to all war, by the way, only opposed to a particular war. There's a discussion about this on the anti-war talk page.
    "please do not abuse the wikipedia system" - that's pretty rich, coming from an anon user who is engaging in a revert war in order to insert demonstrably false information into an article against the consensus of all other posters on its talk page. Please think about what you're doing. I will continue to revert the article to the consensus version. Kalkin 00:49, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
    "...Cold-War style paranoia and anti-Communist witchhunting..." it's too bad that you've taken this down to the level of shrill ad hominem. i'll confess that if your beratements represent the concensus attitude here, you may be rid of me shortly and the article will remain as whitewashed appologia. its ugly the way truth is being sacrificed on the altar of "social justice" here, but it wouldn't be the first corpse lying there by a long shot.
    i'm having trouble understanding your argument about ramsey clark, unless your argument is that hussein suddenly and technically became something other than what he is once deposed. if that's the case, your argument just lacks merit. on september 24th,2005, clarke was simultaneously 1) the founder of iac and founding signatory of answer, 2) a featured speaker at the answer rally, and 3) saddam's attorney. if my reputation and integrety were tied to that event, i'd flee from those facts as well.
    i think you should consider the possibility that you are too close to the issue to report objectively on it.
    are purges unhealthy? sometimes yes, sometimes no. sometimes dissasociating onesself from a powerfull but corrupt ally can be painfull, but ultimately healthy. in such a case, hypocricy and dishonesty are the greater threats to one's health. the question is irrelivant to this discussion, however, since its probably not possible to "purge" the integral organizing pillar of a group from itsself. it's possible to break away from it, but this admittedly takes bravery that many do not possess.


    I notice you're now only defending your Ramsey Clark claim, but you've nevertheless restored all your edits. What's up with that?
    On that issue. At the time Clark founded IAC, and at the time IAC helped found ANSWER, Clark had no relation to Saddam Hussein. Thus it is misleading to say that protests in 2003 were lead by "Saddam Hussein's lawyer, Ramsey Clark." Why does this matter? Because it suggests that ANSWER's, IAC's, and Clark's motive for opposing the Iraq War was support for Saddam. However, given the actual chronology, which is that Clark didn't assist Saddam in any way until he was no longer the opponent in the Iraq War, there is no evidence for support of Saddam as a motive for opposition to the war.
    Unfortunately we don't have to address the results of purging Communists and their sympathizers from movements in the abstract. It happened in the 1950s in the U.S., and the results continue to haunt the labor movement to this day. I understand that, as a vehement opponent of the anti-war movement, you would like it to lose all sense of proportion with regard to threats and begin tearing itself apart. Don't expect us to fall for that, however.
    Oh, and I have not taken this to the level of ad hominem. For one thing, I've attacked your politics, not your integrity, while you have attacked my motives repeatedly. For another, I've done so explicitly to note that politics should be kept seperate from both Wikipedia articles and personal honesty. Ad hominem is the logical fallacy of using attacks on a person to argue against their position. It is not a synonym for insult. Kalkin 04:20, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
    you haven't refuted my other claims. your response to the fact that answer is a child of the workers' world party is to triumphantly state that they just recently created a new front-group to run the opperation. your response to the fact that nion is an rcp venture is to make an inapt analogy to the aclu. to my knowlege, nion has never dissasociated itsself from its rcp founder, facilities and agents. refreshingly, the authors of the aclu wiki article refrained from deliberately ommitting the aclu's communist roots. when i spoke of nion as being an undersigner of upj, its because when upj had its extremely short-lived "split" with answer for the purposes of organizing the september 24th event, nion signed up under upj. in other words, these claims which you initially derided as slander have been proved true; your objection is that they should be softened or ommitted.
    iac dc address
    http://www.iacenter.org/iraqchallenge/orgcen.htm
    answer dc address (since the "split" between wwp and its front-group, psl)
    http://answer.pephost.org/site/News2?JServSessionIdr008=7ytawhuyl3.app13b&abbr=ANS_&page=NewsArticle&id=6947&news_iv_ctrl=2323
    these are facts and it doesn't matter if i or someone else "defends" them. what you are defending is an encyclopedia article which omits nessesary and availible facts.
    if you read back, you'll find that i never said that clark or answer opposed the iraq war because clark is saddam's attorney. you're debating a strawman and defending a meaningless and conviluted distinction. of course we know that answer was created to oppose any u.s. military response to attacks on its soil; i left language to that effect from the original article in because its a fact.
    "mccarthyite" isn't a party, policy or theory. its an insult. i haven't called you names. i don't see what i've said that would provoke name-calling, and yet i'm subjected to it.
    finally, your weird tangent accusing me of exersizing some power to get inside your head(s?) to implant bad, divisive thoughts is, well, weird. i'm a little freaked out by it. i now regret leaving my ip exposed like this.
    I believe what I've already written speaks for itself as per whether I've refuted your other claims. Only two things I want to add. First, I agree that it's perfectly appropriate to bring up RCP influence in NION in the NION article. It's inappropriate to describe anti-war protests organized by UFPJ, which includes NION as a minor participant, as advocating anti-imperialist war because the RCP may (I have no idea whether it does, actually - you still haven't provided a source). Thus the ACLU article mentions its Communist roots, but the article on Abu Ghraib does not. Second, you display your confusion again when talking about UFPJ's "short-lived split" with ANSWER for 9/24/05. Rather they came together briefly for that protest, and were split before and after - up until a month beforehand it still appeared that there were going to be two separate marches, and immediately afterwards UFPJ announced its decision not to work with ANSWER again.
    The IAC link you give is from when they organized opposition to the sanctions on Saddam. The last update to the site seems to have been in January of 2001 - there's no 'last updated' I could find even in the page source, but the top-of-the-page press release is for a January demonstration. January 2001 is of course before the founding of ANSWER. So what you've demonstrated is that ANSWER now uses a building that the IAC once used. Congratulations. I've already acknowledged that IAC helped found ANSWER - but this does not prove that they are identical, and whatever their former relationship, they've now split, as is documented in the Wikipedia articles I've linked above. This fact may be worth noting in the ANSWER section on allegations that it was founded as a front group; it is not relevant here.
    If you don't think Clark's being Saddam's attorney explains his defense of Saddam, why is it a fact that should be included in this article? Especially in the introduction, and especially in a way that implies it does explain his defense, by making it sound as if he was Saddam's attorney at the time of the invasion?
    McCarthyism is a political position. It has defenders - Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, and Daniel Pipes have all written in defense of McCarthy, I believe. My 'tangent' was in response to your demand that the anti-war movement disassociate itself from radical 'social justice' groups. Kalkin 17:33, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
    please, kalkin. i understand you don't like being challenged, but don't freak out on me. unfortunately i feel like i may be a target of progressive hate because of the hostility shown me in this talk page. now you have my ip. fine. please don't use my ip in a retributionary fashion. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.209.214.23 (talk • contribs)
    Calm the fuck down. I haven't come anywhere close to threatening you. And you could probably beat me up anyway, I'm not very physically intimidating. And this argument is two months old anyway! What's with this?
    I don't mind being challenged... in fact, I enjoy debate, that's why I'm aggressive about it. Please don't take that the wrong way. I'm sorry if I've given the impression that I'm angry at you personally - it's hard to communicate tone via text alone. But also please don't play some kind of victim here. The internets is very rarely serious business. Kalkin 14:46, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

    [edit] Rename article to Protests against the Iraq War

    Iraq War is capitalized, as all named wars. --nirvana2013 13:56, 24 February 2006 (UTC) I suppose it should be. Septentrionalis 04:19, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

    If we're to do that, we'll need to get an admin to remove that redirect in order to clear the way for the move. SchuminWeb (Talk) 05:14, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
    Done. —Nightstallion (?) 12:49, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

    [edit] Disambig'

    Morton devonshire removed the template and the disambiguation comment at the top of this article. On my talk page he explained that he had not meant to remove the anti-war topics template only the disambig' sentence because
    "The disambig isn't necessary, and in other similar articles this kind of information is placed under a 'See Also' header. From the WP style sheets I've seen, articles are supposed to start with a simple [subject] is . . . format" [3]

    I think that this disambig' comment was orrginally added by an annon user who did not provide an edit comment. (see [4] ). Other wikipedia articles do contain this kind of thing but usally only if the article subject is very similar to (or likely to be confused with) other articles. Neither of these things seem to be the case with this article so I agree with Morton that we should move the links into the see also section.--JK the unwise 13:46, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

    [edit] April 29, 2006

    The bit about the A29 protest needs to be updated. It currently speaks like it was written before the event happened (which is the case). We need to rewrite it to tell what actually happened, vs. what will happen. SchuminWeb (Talk) 23:50, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

    [edit] Cutting back the external links

    Before this becomes a List of anti-war organizations in the external links section, would anyone be averse to cutting this WAY back, particularly regarding those links that already have articles? SchuminWeb (Talk) 02:42, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

    [edit] Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. Media - Chomsky

    The January 27, 2007 protest was downplayed by the media, due to the attack of the media by various socialist groups, anarchists, etc. As a firsthand man of experience, there was well over a 100,000 people at this protest. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 149.125.201.197 (talk) 03:45, 29 January 2007 (UTC).

    [edit] Split article?

    This article is getting kind of looooooooong... any thoughts about how we might want to split it up? SchuminWeb (Talk) 07:40, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

    How about Postests Prior to the invasion of Iraq, Protests during the Invasion to the fall of Baghdad and Protests After the fall of Baghdad? How would exactly would we put on this page, a simple dismbig' or a short sinop' of the protests then links to differnt periods? Or Shot sections on each period?--JK the unwise 17:53, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
    This could work. Also nice would be Timeline of protests against the Iraq War which could take on much of the material here, while encouraging editors to write in some thematic material: for example, how did protest relate to the withdrawal of Spanish and Italian armed forces? a collation of material on anti-war protests against a visiting George W. Bush. Campaigns of anti-war activists. etc.--Carwil 22:13, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
    The article was split up, merged, and renamed several times. This breaks the history of articles, and the GFDL or usability of the diffs. There's nothing wrong with long articles. Please don't split split or rename it again without massive support. -- Jeandré, 2007-02-02t21:53z

    [edit] Add "Civil war" heading?

    In order to prevent the "After the fall of Baghdad" section from becoming too long - basically in order to provide another time point break - has anyone given any thought to adding an additional heading regarding the Iraqi civil war? Basically, this would entail changing "After the fall of Baghdad" to "Fall of Baghdad to civil war" and then add "After the beginning of civil war". I've not done it at this point because (A) it's a bit controversial about whether it's even a civil war going on over there, and (B) the Civil war in Iraq article does not give a good date in order to place such a break.

    Thoughts? SchuminWeb (Talk) 05:31, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

    Could we think of a term that is neutral, civil war is probably accurate but is disputed.--JK the unwise 18:03, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
    That is the crux of the problem. "Civil war" is quite controversial, so if we're to add another break (which is probably a good idea), we need to pin down where to break it, and what to call it. SchuminWeb (Talk) 05:05, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
    Why? People who can't handle large pages are unliky to edit the "After the fall of Baghdad" section. Is it that the contents' too long? We could create a custom compactTOC with links to the big protests and the years instead. -- Jeandré, 2007-03-22t11:56z

    [edit] Bias

    Riddled with bias, I'm not saying its wrong, it's just not encyclopedic. Billcarr178 (talk) 06:34, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

    Extrapolate? SchuminWeb (Talk) 14:59, 23 February 2008 (UTC)


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