Yesterday the Longshoreman’s Union closed the ports of the West Coast to protest the Iraq war. If you’re a Times reader you’d know all about this, if you made your way to page A12.
West Coast ports were shut down on Thursday as thousands of longshoremen failed to report for work, part of what their union leaders said was a one-day, one-shift protest against the war in Iraq.
Cranes and forklifts stood still from Seattle to San Diego, and ships were stalled at sea as workers held rallies up and down the coast to blame the war for distracting public attention and money from domestic needs like health care and education.
“We’re loyal to America, and we won’t stand by while our country, our troops and our economy are being destroyed by a war that’s bankrupting us to the tune of $3 trillion,” the president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, Bob McEllrath, said in a written statement. “It’s time to stand up, and we’re doing our part today.”
The Times has sometimes expressed regret for its shameless pimping of the Iraq War in the palmy days of Fall, 2002, when Judith Miller had a direct line to the very best WMD fantasies money could buy. It has never expressed regret, so far as I know, for systematically ignoring and downplaying the extent of war opposition at that time. No doubt a closure of our ports is nowhere near as important as yet another story (Page 1, of course) about the tiresome Jeremiah Wright. The Times always has it both ways. They will bemoan the press feeding frenzy distractions on their editorial pages, while joining in with gusto on their front page. We await with patience similar coverage of McCain’s bigoted religious supporters.
Anyway, good for the Longshoremen.
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