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Monday, July 25, 2005
Story of the Week: Raging Grannies Want to Enlist for Iraq
From the BBC:
US Anti-War Grannies Face Justice
Tucson's Raging Grannies have been holding regular protests
Elderly members of a US anti-war group called the "raging grannies of Tucson" are due in court following a protest at an Arizona military recruitment centre.
They have been accused of trespassing after entering the centre earlier this month, saying they wanted to enlist.
The group, mostly women in their 60s and 70s, said they wanted to go to Iraq so their grandchildren could come home.
An army spokeswoman says the protesters were not serious about enlisting and were harassing recruiters.
Nine people - five elderly activists and four journalists - are due to appear in court on Monday.
The Raging Grannies, who are associated with the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, have held protests outside the Tucson recruitment centre every week for three years.
July 25, 2005 at 09:04 AM in Iraq War | Permalink
Comments
Global Instant True Democracy
We imagine running on the single issue of Ranked Ballot (RB), allowing a citizens advisory board based on “Organized Communications” (OC) to guide us in the rest. RB is the ranking of all candidates by each voter. The “additive” form of RB is the first choices being counted & if noone has 50% then the next choices being added in, & so on, until someone finally does. OC is small randomly assigned discussion groups electing reps to higher & higher levels by means of RB until one small group at the top necessarily names the next winner of the next election, thereby installing preferentiality virtually instantly, & inevitably globally, no matter what ladders are pulled up. You do the same, from the most local on up. Shouldn’t your group be the first, lest others avail themselves of this great advantage first? RB is the sole unchangeable plank & bylaw of the Preferential Ballot Party, the only practicable third party. Because it always elects the candidate most exactly in the middle of all voting, RB is “top-dead-center-counter-extremist” & thus more anti-terrorist than all the many recent retrenchments combined. While RB would be equally useful for all else, its real power is perhaps most clearly shown in the case of the potential civil war in Iraq. Unless the Iraqi Parliament comes to select its Prime Minister by RB, it may not hold, & the world will be in danger of going to war over some oil well. (It would be a useful improvement for all other parliaments & collective leaderships as well.) Because it gives the Iraqi minorities a real say in which Shia gets chosen, RB is the only thing that will encourage them to support any plan more than perfectly inadequate con-federation. Because it gives all combinations of programs, not just parties, an equal chance of winning & will always provide real time alternatives to all proposals, it is the only thing that is completely just, lightfooted & self-controlled, ie: with brakes, & reverse. No more jumping back & forth between extremes & no more fear. Both more liberty AND more community can be found in RB than in any ideology. Help put this powerful idea, in time, to as many as possible. The $15,000 cost of a single full-page ad in USA Today, enough perhaps to put it to virtually everyone on earth, would be repaid to a single person in a year & one half at the approximate pre 9/11 US annual defense spending of $10,000 per family. How can we ask it of others if we do not have it ourselves? Zoe Zidbeck preferentiality257@yahoo.com, www.preferentialballotparty.org
Posted by: Zoe Zidbeck | Aug 3, 2005 3:12:30 PM
