Indyrad writes:

Cyber-movement Against The War
By Adam Roark

On February 15, 2003, 10 million people simultaneously rallied in protest of the pending U.S. invasion of Iraq. It was the largest coordinated protest in the history of the world,(1) kicking off nearly 2 years of mass demonstrations culminating with the 400,000 – 1 million-strong Republican National Convention protest in New York City on August 29, 2004. The swift rise and demise of this movement leads one to question its strength and function; both the spectacular scale of these protests and the coordination of them are noteworthy. The U.S. peace movement in particular largely failed to present itself as ungovernable and effective, acting rather to reaffirm the legitimacy of a political system which had lost substantial credibility following the 1998-2000 crisis.

Anonymous Comrade writs: The following interview with Spc. Aidan Delgado, a conscientious objector who spent six months of a one-year tour of Iraq at Abu Ghraib prison, appears in the Spring 2005 issue of LiP Magazine. Delgado will be presenting a slideshow and talk about his experiences on Sunday, Jan. 30, 2005 (Iraqi election day), in San Francisco at the Beta Lounge, 1072 Illinois at 22nd Street, at 7:30. For more information contact boal at sonic dot net.


In Good Conscience
An interview with conscientious objector Aidan Delgado
by SCOTT FLEMING

Aidan Delgado, 23, was a Florida college student looking for a change when he decided to join the army reserve. It was his misfortune to sign an enlistment contract on the morning of September 11, 2001. After finishing the paperwork, he saw a television broadcast of the burning World Trade Center and realized he might be in for more than one weekend a month of low-key service. In the ensuing months, Delgado became dedicated to Buddhism and its principles of pacifism. By April 2003, when he began his yearlong tour in Iraq, he was openly questioning whether he could participate in the war there in good conscience. Having grown up in Cairo, Delgado spoke Arabic and had not been steeped in the racism that drove many of his fellow soldiers. When he surrendered his rifle and declared himself a conscientious objector in the middle of 2003, he was punished by his officers and ostracized by his peers. His unit, the 320th Military Police Company, spent six months in the southern city of Nasiriyah, and another six months helping to run the notorious Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad. Now out of the army, Delgado says the prison abuse that has been covered by the likes of 60 Minutes and the New Yorker was the tip of the iceberg: Brutality, often racially motivated, infected the entire prison and the entire military operation in Iraq.