The People vs. The Men of Power
Of Gods and Mortals and Empire
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Friday 21 February 2003
“To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire;
and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace.”
- Tacitus
It sounded like two behemoth icebergs colliding in the North Atlantic, but
you needed the right kind of ears to hear it. Two immensely powerful forces
crashed into each other over the weekend of February 15th, and the resulting
thunder has set the world to trembling.
On one side were the people, who took to the streets all across the world by
the tens of millions to stand against George W. Bush’s push for pre-emptive
war on Iraq. The numbers, and the locations, were staggering. More than
100,000 people took to the streets of Sydney, Australia, a nation that has
been solidly in Bush’s corner on this matter. In Spain, another member of
Bush’s “Coalition of the Willing,” several million protesters took over
Madrid, Barcelona and 55 other cities. Italy, another Bush ally, saw over a
million citizens take to the streets of Rome. Britain, Bush’s go/no go ally
of allies, saw over a million people protesting in London. Police there said
it was the largest demonstration in that nation’s long history.
[…]
This was a gathering of ordinary citizens who came together in the streets
of the world in an organized event that has no precedent in all of human
history. They were brought together by a global word-of-mouth activism
rooted entirely in the Internet. Were it not for this planetary connection,
no such coordination could have ever taken place. Once upon a time, the
world wide web was a realm dominated by dreams of profit and marketing.
Those dreams have soured, leaving behind a marvelous network now utilized by
very average people who can, with the click of a button, bring forth from
all points on the compass a roaring deluge of humanity to stand against
craven injustice and ruinous war.
The weekend of February 15th saw this force ram headlong into the will of
men who walk in shadow, whose hands wield lightning and steel, pestilence
and famine. In their ranks stand Presidents, Prime Ministers, corporate
magnates, untouchable billionaires, and the advisors who whisper to them of
empire and domination. They are few in number, but life and death flows from
their fingertips in freshets and gouts. These men control the armies and
navies of great nations, nuclear and chemical nightmares beyond measure,
unassailable technological weapons and walls, the financial cords which hold
the package together, the water, the air, the oil, the law, and a global
media machine by which they can obscure their designs with pleasing lies.
[…]
