How does dissent effect government policy, ie the war? "Our actions do not educate the government. It is not that we open their eyes to moral precepts they had missed, or to world relations they were blind to. Their morals are not changed by our actions, but remain unswervingly self-centered, profit-oriented, and power-driven. And they see the same world that we do; it is just that they like the implications we reject. The result of our activism is not the reeducation or moral uplift of elites, Rather, dissent creates a new context in which elite calculations change.

"The government pursues its policies, overwhelmingly to serve elite corporate and geopolitical interests. The aim, for example, of the proposed war on Iraq, is to further delegitimate international law, to further imbed in world consciousness the fear that the U.S. will economically and militarily crush any serious opposition to its pursuits, to further expand the "war on terrorism" because of its great utility in scaring populations into supporting policies they would otherwise reject, to enhance electoral prospects for the Republicans by drowning objections to their domestic policies in a flood of patriotic fervor, and to establish and entrench U.S. control over the oil resources of Iraq and the Middle East more generally."

How does dissent effect government policy, ie the war? "Our actions do not educate the government. It is not that we open their eyes to moral precepts they had missed, or to world relations they were blind to. Their morals are not changed by our actions, but remain unswervingly self-centered, profit-oriented, and power-driven. And they see the same world that we do; it is just that they like the implications we reject. The result of our activism is not the reeducation or moral uplift of elites, Rather, dissent creates a new context in which elite calculations change.

"The government pursues its policies, overwhelmingly to serve elite corporate and geopolitical interests. The aim, for example, of the proposed war on Iraq, is to further delegitimate international law, to further imbed in world consciousness the fear that the U.S. will economically and militarily crush any serious opposition to its pursuits, to further expand the "war on terrorism" because of its great utility in scaring populations into supporting policies they would otherwise reject, to enhance electoral prospects for the Republicans by drowning objections to their domestic policies in a flood of patriotic fervor, and to establish and entrench U.S. control over the oil resources of Iraq and the Middle East more generally."