Seven Oaks Magazine.

This Saturday, March 20, millions around the globe will take to the streets on the one-year anniversary of the beginning of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. The catch phrase for the international mobilisation is simple but effective: The world still says no to war. And even though the largest protests in history proved incapable of preventing the war, it's still important for people to demonstrate this March 20, one year after that shocking and awful display of disregard for world public opinion that was the launching of the war in Iraq.

In Vancouver, the rally has a little star power to help persuade the ambivalent, as the legendary American dissident Noam Chomsky will provide the keynote, preceded by the energiser bunnies of punk rock, D.O.A. Local rock star Matthew Good, now without the band, will be joining the rally. But, alas, for CFOX listeners at least, he is not slated to perform. So, although some may be coming to bask in the wisdom of Chomsky -- a phenomenon that likely makes the 75-year old MIT prof a little queasy -- there are ample reasons, important political reasons, to get out and demonstrate this Saturday.

For starters, the anti-war movement was right. No weapons of mass destruction (WMD) have been found, no matter how many million times CNN anchors have uttered the four-word bogeyman. U.S. officials are now sheepishly admitting that the proverbial smoking gun may never be located. "We were all wrong" is how U.S. chief weapons hunter David Kay put it, though Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and their semi-literate front man, George W., seamlessly moved on to new justifications. Their favourite new pretext, or post text, is that they have magnanimously liberated Iraq in order to bring "democracy." Never mind that the United States has emerged as the main opponent of direct elections, and that it is difficult to have genuine democracy when your country has been sold off fire-sale-style to an occupying power.

Occupation and sheer military power have also failed to make the world a safer place. Evidence of links between Al-Qaida and the Ba'ath regime of the now-captured Saddam Hussein have failed to materialise, much like the WMD, and the capture of the dictator himself has failed to stop attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq. And the transparent, clumsy and heavy-handed U.S. take-over of that oil-rich country - with a little help from the old British colonial masters - has surely reinvigorated the resentment that produces fertile soil for the promotion of the vicious, dead-end philosophy of the likes of the infamous (and mysteriously low-profile and uncaptured) Osama bin Laden.

This is a new anti-war movement still in the process of developing its philosophy, focus, and strategy. It is a dynamic movement, whose seriousness, international co-ordination, and adaptability bode well for future struggles for social justice. Not since the War in Vietnam era, a high tide for social movements in general in North America, has an anti-war movement shown this much potential. The movement in the 1980s focused on anti-nuclear proliferation. The 1990s movement ebbed and flowed with each war or cause celebre -- a sort of tour of the neo-colonial world, from the first Gulf War in Iraq, to East Timor, to the Balkans and back to the Middle East.

Today's movement, while galvanised by the bold drive to war on Iraq, seems capable of adapting to the new environment in which U.S. officials have openly asserted that this war will last generations, and has many targets. No longer is it acceptable for anti-war activists to reinvent the wheel with every conflict, and the new movement is increasingly taking shape in opposition to the whole project of U.S. Empire-building. A critical part of that project remains the crushing of the stubborn, heroic resistance of the Palestinian people. The connection between the conquest of Iraq and the continued U.S. support for Israel's occupation has been identified and openly condemned. In the past, this polarising issue was too often swept under the rug of peace coalitions, to be dealt with at a later, unspecified date.

Another front of the global war on terrorism/for empire is Latin America. Every U.S. president has applied the Monroe doctrine of "America for the Americans" of 1823 over the last two centuries. The recent coup d'etat in Haiti is an example of Bush flaunting this old doctrine, as the U.S. clearly supported the ouster of the democratically-elected president by armed right-wing bands, only green-lighting an armed U.S. force after Aristide had been forced out of the country.

The coup in Haiti will be integrated into the global day of action on March 20, and it will be condemned together with a year of Empire-building by the U.S. and its allies; a year of Iraqi, Afghani, and Palestinian civilians paying the price of wars of aggression and occupations; a year of increasing insecurity for immigrants and refugees, and all those of Arab and Muslim descent; a year of diplomatic bullying and sabre-rattling over the Korean peninsula, against the regime in Tehran, and against the dangerously popular and radical regime in Venezuela; and, a year that has seen the Canadian government under Paul Martin become increasingly open about its complicity in U.S. foreign-policy.

A year's worth of reasons why, this Saturday, it is still important to demonstrate your opposition, the world's opposition, to war and occupation.

In Vancouver, the march will begin at Peace Flame Park, at the south end of the Burrard Bridge, at 11 a.m. Click here for more information..