it's not every day that Kerrang gets a mention in this blog but here goes, with Ian McKaye of Fugazi on the war.
Kerrang!, the world's biggest selling weekly rock magazine... on-line!
Kerrang! What are your feelings on this imminent war with Iraq?
Ian: What are my feelings? Well I am of course completely opposed to all wars so this war would be one of those. I think it's interesting for me as an American or someone born in America to experience what I imagine most totalitarian governments have done in the past. The salesmanship of this particular act is so intense and so almost unmitigated it feels almost. It feels like it's being shoved down our throats. I sort of think about it in terms of, you know, when there's a new movie coming out from Hollywood the stars suddenly start appearing in various news pieces. Weird little pieces in the personality sections of the papers and then suddenly it happens they're in town to talk about this movie. Basically the major media tends to revolve around issues that somehow feed into this movie. If it's a movie about orphans suddenly there's pieces on orphans. I don't know how deliberate it is but it seems incredibly orchestrated. So this particular situation with Iraq it's in the fine tradition of salesmanship of brutality. I can only imagine what was happening, like, in Germany in the thirties when the public was kind of moulded into this dreamy state where they thought this was probably the right thing to do you know ? Let's go into these other countries and square the situation up?. I imagine in England, obviously over the years, the English have undertaken really aggressive brutal things too. Certainly the United States has a fine tradition of it. Really it?s an incredible experience for me to be old enough to recognise it happening. It's almost like a boat that's starting to flood and it's sinking and there's nothing you can do about it. Do I think there will be a war? No. I don?t necessarily think there will be. Because I already think there has been. There's been a continuous war against Iraq for the last few years. British and American planes have been throwing bombs on people over there for the last twelve years. It's never stopped. I don't know what people think a war is but it's never stopped. Do I think a larger conflagration will occur? I don't know. It's hard to say. It doesn't make a difference because the money has been spent already in terms of companies already making money on arms. They're already hooked up. Thousands of troops are already being ferried across. Whether they go through with it or not it?s more a question of public opinion now.
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