Confronting America's countdown to war, throngs of chanting, placard-waving demonstrators converged on New York and scores of cities across the United States, Europe and Asia yesterday in a global daisy chain of largely peaceful protests against the Bush administration's threatened invasion of Iraq. Today's New York Times has a pretty thorough report on the protests.

Rick, Mudlark and others, for about the last three days I've been feeling a quiver of hope that just maybe Bush, et al, will find that going against the wishes of the UN Security Council and the THRONGS of people around the world are just a tad more than they can pull off. At first I was afraid that he/they would just starting shooting and report it as a war in progress- but since they haven't done that, I'm hoping that at the very least we will have bought ourselves time, time to explore diplomatic means. And given time, it's hard to imagine that Bush will be in a good position to expect re-election.

Isn't it marvelous to consider that maybe the internet age is able to facilitate different behaviors in the governmental powers of the world. Just two hundred years ago, the news of an event could take
three weeks to travel across the US- now it takes literal moments.