Is it okay if my second post is an ad for someone else's blog?

I know a ring of academics and lawyers living the good life in New York City, and they've got an anti-war blog that will give you brain burn.

It's good stuff, here: www.againstwot.com

Of course, the views expressed on my friends' blogs are not necessarily the views of this blogger!

But here's a great selection from Nov. 17, after the Saddam Hussein verdict came in, which nicely explains why no one really cared about the trial:

"Naive minds think that the office of kingship lodges in the king himself, in his ermine cloak and his crown, in his flesh and bones. As a matter of fact, the office of kingship is an interrelation between people. The king is king only because the interests and prejudices of millions of people are refracted through his person. When the flood of development sweeps away these interrelations, then the king appears to be only a washed-out man with a flabby lower lip. He who was once called Alfonso XIII could discourse upon this from fresh impressions."

"So wrote Leon Trotsky about the Spanish king displaced by the establishment of the Second Spanish Republic. And one Saddam Hussein, now languishing in an Iraqi jail awaiting execution, might add some further insight..."


Their description:

The blog is called ‘Against the War on Terror’. The aim of the blog is to challenge what we see as a political consensus around the notion that the central purpose of government is to reduce threats to our security, no matter how small the risk, and at the expense of liberty.

We argue that the first principleof our society should be liberty, not security, and that the central problem with the war on terror is nothow it is conducted, but that it is being fought inthe first place. We wish to show that the war onterror is not reducible to the peculiarities of theBush administration, but also that much of the criticism of Bush fails to establish a real alternative to the pragmatism and security-based politics that dominates our society.

A truly critical, alternative position must be based on the independent principle of liberty. The blog can be found at www.againstwot.com.

The blog will have a daily post, as well as a Friday Special ofsomewhat longer length than normal posts. A brief statement of our aims and principles is available onthe blog, but it is through the posts themselves thatwe will develop our analysis and arguments. In addition to the blog, we will hold a series of events, beginning with a teach-in on February 25. Theteach-in will be a daylong event covering various specific issues in the war on terror like foreign intervention, civil liberties, political Islam, the problem with human rights, and the place of fear in American politics.

More information will soon beavailable on the blog. For now, I hope that you will visit the blogregularly, send your comments, and spread the word.