WILL WILKINSON is unimpressed by the invocation of Martin Luther King at yesterday’s protests:

I have no idea what the man would have thought of our present situation, and I doubt others are in a much better position. I guess when you do such an awful job making a moral case against the war, you’ll take whatever associations of moral authority you can muster. (And this from someone who is by no means in favor of the war.)

But his picture is an icon, and these protests seem to be mostly about the parading of icons. What the antiwar left needs, however, is some iconoclasm.

UPDATE: A reader points out that King’s views on Zionism probably wouldn’t be very popular with many of these protesters.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The King letter linked above appears to be a hoax. I actually checked on Google, found it in a number of places that looked reputable, and went with it. But another reader sends this link to a post explaining that it is probably bogus, though it goes on to note: “the message of the letter (Anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism) was one Martin Luther King, Jr. had indeed articulated.”

PEACE AND, ER, LOVE? Knoxville band Jag Star will be travelling abroad to entertain troops for the U.S.O. Unfortunately, this has gotten them hate mail:

But a couple of weeks ago, Jag Star was notified it had been selected. “When I read the email, I was sort of stunned imagining going to Afghanistan. But I want to go. I hope it brings out the patriotic part in me. It’ll be cool to hang out with the troops and talk to them.” . . .

They’ve gotten some nasty emails from people against the war. “Some people have said to me, ‘I don’t believe in war, I don’t believe what they’re doing,'” Lewis says. “I don’t think it’s fair to say that because I don’t think those people want to be over there to kill someone. I think they want to be home with their families. I hate talking about politics because I know how angry people get. I think our job is to go over there and give them something positive.”

Lewis says she’s looking forward to talking with many of the troops while she’s there.

I mentioned Sarah Lewis earlier here when she won a prestigious national songwriting award. Here’s the band’s website.

YOU ASKED FOR IT: Evidence of Saddam’s nuclear program:

The documents seized at the homes of the two scientists, however, confirm what Western intelligence has been arguing all along, that Saddam is continuing with his quest to develop the first Arab atom bomb.

Ever since the inspectors arrived back in Iraq two-and-a-half months ago, Saddam has gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal the true nature of his nuclear weapons programme. . . .

That’s a “material breach,” of course — but no doubt Saddam’s apologists will soon start arguing that it doesn’t prove that he has weapons now, that he deserves them anyway to resist U.S. hegemony, etc., etc.

(Via LGF).

UPDATE: Even the Guardian is backing war with Iraq now. Kind of an anticlimax for the peace protests, isn’t it? I mean, if you’ve lost the Guardian, (well, strictly speaking it’s the Guardian/Observer, but still. . . .) who have you got?

Oh, wait! I know! I know that one! Call on me!

A READER SENDS THIS REPORT FROM SAN FRANCISCO:

The rally started at 11:00 A.M. PST and the parade got going down Market Street at around 11:50 A.M. Very peaceful overall. One organizer specifically shooed away a woman with a blank red flag (IMG_5308a) probably to avoid having communist symbols. Didn’t see one sickle or hammer. Very boring.

I’d estimate at least 10 -15 people per second going down Market so that’s about 45,000 people per hour for at least an hour and a half (I left at 1:20 P.M.) One cop said he was told 45,000 people were there total so obviously that sounds low to me.

The photos are mostly of specific signs. I tried to get the best ones as grist for the mill. I’m an amateur photographer with professional lenses.

S.U.V.s seemed to be a popular topic for the signs.

So there you have it. More pix here, here, and here. Note the pacifistic theme of wishing Bush would choke on a pretzel.

UPDATE: “God Bless Iraq” and Cheney as Hitler: Here are more pictures from the San Francisco protests. And I’ll have some pics from the D.C. protests soon.

(LATER: Here’s a lengthy report with pictures from San Francisco by Russell Wardlow, who says “Apparently, it’s all about oil.” He then proceeds to channel David Corn.)

The digital camera: a blogger’s best friend. Well, one of them.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s a reader report from the Washington, D.C. protests:

I spent several hours at the DC protest today. My impressions:

1 – It was a peaceful demonstration; relatively well-behaved. I saw no shouting matches, confrontations with police, or fights. But I didn’t see any counter-demonstrators either, although I was told there was a small counter-demonstration at the other end of the mall near the Viet Nam War Memorial.

2 – My guess at size of the crowd is on the close order of 50,000, arrived at by estimating the area of the demonstration and dividing by 10 square feet per person. I heard another estimate of 30,000 was given on C-SPAN, so I’m probably not too far off. It couldn’t have been much larger, since if you went off the mall by one block in any direction, you couldn’t tell there was anything going on – if anything, the rest of the area had less than normal traffic.

3 – The speakers – those I could hear, at least – gave the usual excuses. No blood for oil. Money for jobs, not for war. Drop Bush, not bombs. Teach peace, not hate. No war without just cause. Collateral damage means Iraqi children. Main street, not Wall Street. Iraqis are people too. Not in our name. Nothing particularly new or original.

4 – The demonstrators seemed to be of two separate demographics: the 18-25 year old students (expected) and the 50 to 60-year old Viet Nam protestors (completely unexpected). In fact, it seemed to me to be almost ‘old home week’ for the Viet Nam era types: “Hi, how are ya?” “Long time, no see.” That sort of thing.

5 – Finally, I was struck by the attitude of the protestors. “Whiny” and “smug” come to mind, as does “entitled.” I know that doesn’t cover the territory, but I’m having a hard time finding the right words to describe it. “Condescending” might be better, as in “I’m clearly your moral superior, therefore I’m entitled to dictate the solution.” “Whiny” as in “You’re not listening to me. How can you not recognize my superiority?”

6 – ANSWER clearly had significant role in organizing and staffing the protest; the number of participants carrying professionally done (by ANSWER) signs was astounding. Were all the protestors members and sympathizers? Probably not, but the number of signs suggests that a significant minority probably were.

Pet Bunny has more coverage from D.C., and many more pics, along with amusing commentary.

STILL MORE: Jim Henley doesn’t have pics (somebody buy that man a digital camera!) but he has posted a lengthy report from the perspective of a marcher — though I suspect that his “PEACE NOW! SOCIALISM NEVER!” sign made him something less than typical. And here’s a report from fellow-marcher Max Sawicky, who fits the profile somewhat more closely. And this report, from David Kenner, features many, many photos of the D.C. protests, which he characterizes as something more like a retro-nostalgia act than a revolution.

OH, GOD, NOT MORE STILL: When I asked for “pictures from the D.C. antiwar protest” I didn’t really mean this. I mean, I really didn’t mean this. But Laurence Simon is not to be denied. Or he’ll put one of those Amish hex-sign things on me.

LAST ONE: Yes, I know my correspondents are giving higher crowd estimates than the official ones. Make of that what you will. Crowd estimates are notoriously tricky.

But here’s the last word on crowd estimates for yesterday.

THIS PIECE BY ANN MARCHAND IN THE WASHINGTON POST quotes a lot of people from A.N.S.W.E.R. but says nothing about the group’s pro-Saddam, pro-North Korea, anti-American leanings. Even if mentioning that it’s a front for the Workers’ World Party, as David Corn has reported, is out — calling people communists, I suppose, might sound McCarthyite, even though surely that isn’t the case when they really are communists — I would think that mentioning that it’s a group that’s actively rooting for the other side would only be fair.

If the Ku Klux Klan organized a pro-war rally, even if a lot of the protesters were just useful idiots who didn’t know who was behind it, I somehow think the Post would manage to ask a few tough questions.

UPDATE: Reader John Fenton points out:

Scroll down far enough and you’ll see that she refers to the organizers of the counter-demonstration as “conservative.”

But of course. Count on the Post to look for the political motivations behind the patriotic slogans! Well, sometimes.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Greg Sperla writes:

Just wanted to let you know that you’re 100% right about the roots of ANSWER. I attended a seminar they put on at my campus at SFSU and probably heard more about the Socialist Workers Movement than I heard about ANSWER. They aren’t shy about it either, most of the members are very forthcoming about their political assocations, I don’t understand why this comes as such a shock to some people.

I guess it’s a shock to people because they haven’t read about it in the Post.

But this article in the Mercury News does point out some, though not all, of ANSWER’s unsavory connections and notes that many peace protesters don’t care because they feel that worrying about them would hurt the cause. No enemies on the left, and all of that.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s a later, but similarly friendly story in the Post by Manny Fernandez and Justin Blum. Fernandez wrote another story earlier this week, reproduced on A.N.S.W.E.R.’s website, that briefly raises but dismisses any concerns with the organization.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Rand Simberg has questions about A.N.S.W.E.R.:

Can a group whose basic premise seems to be that the US government under its constitution is the source of all evil in the world, and that all of its initiatives are to be opposed, in a knee-jerk fashion, be said to be in any way patriotic?

That would be a “no,” Rand. But I don’t expect the Post to point it out.

ERROR CORRECTION UPDATE: Greg Beato praises my courage for daring to criticize the Washington Post despite my MSNBC gig, but takes me to task for inexactitude in characterizing the Marchand piece as interviewing “a lot of people from A.N.S.W.E.R.” He’s right, and I was wrong. A better way of putting it would have been “a lot of people from the antiwar movement, and some people from A.N.S.W.E.R.,” as the article talks a lot about A.N.S.W.E.R. but also quotes mostly people who aren’t clearly actual members of A.N.S.W.E.R. I don’t think that affects my basic point, though, about the sloppiness, or dishonesty, of talking about A.N.S.W.E.R. at length without examining the organization’s essential anti-Americanism. And calling A.N.S.W.E.R. anti-American isn’t just a pejorative, but descriptive.

POWER LINE has protest photos and comments on A.N.S.W.E.R.

MICKEY KAUS is dissenting from Linda Greenhouse’s opinion. Or something like that.

TACITUS HAS BEEN WATCHING the Washington, D.C. protests on C-SPAN and is not impressed. “Sorry, they’re not just dim bulbs — they’re apologists for genocide and tyranny. My mistake. I forget that we live in a country where the left will howl about you if you express addled nostalgia for the Confederacy, but march alongside you if you strongly support the proprietors of modern-day slave camps.”

Some of us, of course, are unhappy with people who do either.

UPDATE: Also via Tacitus, look who’s showing his appreciation!

MERDE IN FRANCE is reporting miserably low turnouts for antiwar protests there.

UPDATE: Just emailed Paris correspondent Claire Berlinski to ask how big the crowds were. Response:

So small that I had no idea there were any. The crowds for the post-Christmas sales on the rue de Rivoli were murder, though. I thought I’d faint trying to get at the snakeskin boots.

Western consumerism reigns triumphant.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Jeralyn Merritt sends this link and says the crowd looks big to her. I don’t know — the actual photo shows at most a few hundred people, tightly framed, so it’s kind of hard to judge by that. In fact — though this is pure speculation — it looks like the kind of photo I’d take if I wanted to make a small demonstration look big. (LATER: Kind of like this description.) Where’s the aerial photo showing people covering acres and acres? Anybody got one?

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Charles Johnson reports that turnouts seem to be low all over — except in Damascus. Then there’s this not-entirely credible report from Baghdad.

STILL MORE: Merde in France emails:

The French media would do everything possible to make the crowds look big if they could. This evening’s news only covered the entire subject of international demonstrations for about 6 minutes with the majority of time concentrated on Washington DC (where the thinned out crowd was very evident).

No attempt was made to create the illusion of mass protests. It just wasn’t possible from any angle.

Perhaps the snakeskin boots were too appealing.

Damian Penny also reports low turnouts worldwide, though the tentacles of the antiwar movement did reach to Newfoundland, with results he reports.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Collin May joins the chorus reporting that French protest turnout was dismal.

STILL ANOTHER UPDATE: Sounds like the turnout in Sweden was better, at least on a per-capita basis.

TONY ADRAGNA has some thoughts on Eldred. Jack Balkin, meanwhile, wonders whether Eldred means the DMCA is unconstitutional.

HIGH SCHOOL RIFLERY PROGRAMS ARE, er, booming in Georgia:

“Something unique has happened in Georgia,” said Bob Mitchell, the head of USA Shooting, the organization that oversees the country’s Olympic and International shooting programs. “Georgia has the best youth shooting education and competition program in the country. I want to use that same model in other states.”

And, not entirely a surprise, girls are dominating the sport. I’d like to see this, and high-school Junior ROTC, pick up across the country.

UPDATE: A reader responds:

In the 50s my high school had a rifle club, and kids were on the school bus once a week bringing their rifles into school and home; and nobody thought anything of it.

NJ, Pingry School, Hillside.

Yearbook entry (1959) has a Rifle Club, Middle School Rifle Club, and Rod and Gun Club, pictures of kids standing in usual portrait, but with guns.

I knew things were screw up when the first thing after 9/11 they disarmed all the passengers instead of putting a large knife at each seat.

Yes, but the times they are a’changin’.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Peter Gookins emails:

Talk about “times a-changin”….I attended two schools in the D.C. area in the ’50s and ’60s that had riflery programs – one was a private school in the subutbs and the other a D.C. public high school from which I graduated. I grew up in D.C.close to the Zoo, and during the years I was 13-15 (early ’60s) on Friday afternoons after school I used to sling my 22 on my shoulder – uncased for the first year until I got a rifle case for Christmas – and ride the bus (public transit) down Connecticut Avenue to Dupont Circle, walk the three blocks to the NRA building and shoot with a junior rifle club, and reverse the trip about 9:30 PM. No one ever batted an eye. Try that now.

Yeah. And yet we’re not as safe as we used to be.

C-SPAN will be covering the anti-war protests live. I wonder how many stories about the protests will look at A.N.S.W.E.R. in detail? Not many, probably.

These guys — who can fairly be called unreconstructed anti-American Stalinists who are, quite clearly, not so much for peace as on Saddam’s side because, well, that’s what they are — are the Trent Lotts of the antiwar movement. Except that the antiwar movement is perfectly happy with them, as long as they supply the troops, and the press is playing along.

Personally, I won’t trust any anti-war activist who isn’t carrying a DISARM SADDAM lunchbox. Or at least wearing the DISARM SADDAM baseball cap.

UPDATE: Here’s a link that I found via Jim Henley, to a page with lots of information about A.N.S.W.E.R.

ANOTHER UPDATE: No, that’s not my lunchbox. It’s Patrick Ruffini’s.

DONALD RUMSFELD is right again as he heaps scorn on a guy who deserves it utterly. I’ve seen the photos.

WELL, IT’S ABOUT TIME:

Protestors gathering for anti-war demonstrations in several cities around the globe called on Saddam Hussein to disclose all weapons of mass destruction, disarm and to comply with all United Nations sanctions.

I like what they’re chanting, too. Heh. If only . . .

I SHOULD BE IN BED, but how can I go to sleep without posting on this news?

The Bush administration has signed off on the ambitious nuclear-rocket project — though not specifically for the Mars landing — and the president may officially launch the initiative during his State of the Union address on Jan. 28, NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe said in an interview with The Times. The project, dubbed Project Prometheus, would greatly expand the nuclear propulsion plans that NASA quietly announced last year when it said it may spend $1 billion over the next five years to design a nuclear rocket. NASA and the Bush administration are keeping the lid on the details, including how much more the agency expects to request from Congress, but O’Keefe said the funding increase will be “very significant.”

I suppose it won’t be anything like this. Unless, of course, there’s already somebody worried about this.

REMINDER: If you’re going to be at the DC anti-war march tomorrow, on any side, please post pics and accounts. And email me so I can link ’em.

SOMEBODY JUST EMAILED ME to remind me that he’d sent me an email that I hadn’t read yet. I’ve been a bit busy and distracted this week, what with home remodeling, snowstorms, and assorted other things. I’ll try to catch up on the email over the weekend, but no promises.

STEVEN DEN BESTE WRITES on what he sees coming. And it’s not the Super Bowl.

SEND IN THE BATTLE ‘DROIDS! Trent Telenko has a post on Winds of Change about swarms of automated UAVs controlled by a single operator. Meanwhile, DefenseTech links to video of a Predator drone dogfighting with an Iraqi fighter.

AMPERSAND has a post on this Human Rights Watch report about sexual violence in Sierra Leone. The U.N. peacekeepers don’t come off very well (they are implicated in a number of rapes), but then, neither does anyone else, really.

UPDATE: Celeste Bilby, on the other hand, says that Human Rights Watch has dropped the ball in the Congo.

THIS READS LIKE AN ONION PARODY, but it appears to be real: “Animal ‘Rights’ Activists Confront Homosexuals Over Leather ‘Pride'”:

“We decided to come to the Mid-Atlantic Leather Weekend in our ‘pleather’ [false leather] and ‘animal friendly’ gear so we could show our gay friends that you can have just as sleazy a look without killing any animals,” said Dan Mathews, a homosexual PETA campaign coordinator outfitted in “pleather” from head to toe.

Mathews said he and his fellow PETA activists, a transsexual and a cow mascot, did not travel to Washington to antagonize or condemn the leather event and its participants.

“We’re just [trying] to get them to think about things,” Mathews said. “They’re just an unthinking crowd when it comes to this issue.”

Well, it doesn’t say it’s a parody, but it is. Even if it’s true.

A PACK NOT A HERD! A reader emails with this story:

I work (dispatcher) for a small town police dept (total of 26 sworn officers –counting the Chief) on the California coast, about half way between LA & SF.

Today we had a report from the high school of a juvenile with a pistol holding a classroom (teacher & students). All of my units immediately responded and the first one arrived within 2 minutes. On arrival, we found that the 15 yr old was down, disarmed and restrained due to the actions of two of the students (a 15 yr old & a 16 yr old). Although the suspect (15 yrs old) claims to have brought the pistol and taken everyone hostage so as to have a captive audience for his own suicide, he made sure he had a full magazine in the pistol and a spare magazine available (9mm FMJ – 29 rounds total). The two young men (not jocks, both are relatively scrawny) spontaneously took it upon themselves to disarm the suspect and prevented a tragedy (even if he had only blown the top of only his own head off, it would have been horrific for the kids who had to watch).

I think that the “don’t get involved” mentality has taken a beating lately, and I think that’s a good thing. I have his name, but I’m not using it since he says this is more information than has been released to the public, officially.

UPDATE: Here’s a link to the story, which is as described above. Excerpt:

ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. — A suicidal sophomore student was arrested Friday after he briefly held about 25 classmates and two teachers hostage at gunpoint, police said.

The unidentified boy was tackled by two classmates, who took a loaded 9 mm semiautomatic gun from him, police Sgt. John Allen said.

No injuries were reported.

Police were called to Arroyo Grande High School at 9:11 a.m. after they received a report of a student with a gun, Allen said.

The unidentified 15-year-old pulled out the loaded weapon and pointed it at two teachers in his sophomore English class, ordering them to sit down, Allen said.

I expect that this won’t get much coverage — though it should.

FORGET SUV’S: BAN PRIVATE JETS! You know, some enterprising politician could get mileage (and I don’t mean frequent-flier mileage) out of this one. Talk about your class warfare!

I’ll bet that the Hollywood crowd won’t get behind this crusade, though.

ERIC ALTERMAN ASKS, PLAINTIVELY:

Al Sharpton, Cynthia McKinney and Carol Moseley-Braun? Is this some kind of secret conservative conspiracy to show America only the worst of Black America in the race for the presidential race? Who’s next, Michael Jackson?

Of course, Alterman must really be a shill for the conspiracy himself, since he’s promoting Cornel West as an alternative. I mean, West is certainly a lot better than those three, but he’d still be a Karl Rove wet-dream as a Democratic politician.

“JUST SPOILS OF A RIGHTEOUS WAR” — Eugene Volokh picks up on this quote from Julian Bond and asks when we decided to fight a war against 17-year-old Americans of Asian descent.