Can of Worms

First there was this...

Saturday, August 07, 2004 1:57 AM------------------------------------------------------
                MSNBC Breaking News
------------------------------------------------------

Web site shows beheading of American in Iraq -  A group allegedly linked to al-Qaida ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has beheaded an American hostage in Iraq and posted a video of the murder on a Web site on Saturday.

=========================================
For more details: http://www.msnbc.com

 Then, three hours and one minute later, there was this...

Saturday, August 07, 2004 4:58 AM------------------------------------------------------
                MSNBC Breaking News
------------------------------------------------------

UPDATE - Video of American's 'beheading' in Iraq a hoax -
A San Francisco man said Saturday that a video that purportedly showed him being decapitated in Iraq is a hoax.

=========================================
For more details: http://www.msnbc.com

    What was the hoax? "The faked beheading story broadcast on two Arab language television stations and sent out on international news services early Saturday was based on a grainy video that was made by three Bay Area residents as an experiment to find out how quickly erroneous information could be spread by the Internet," says SFGate.com.
    In order to prove their thesis, Ben Vanderford and two cohorts made a video of Vanderford being beheaded that is so patently false, so clearly NOT an actual video of someone being beheaded, so obviously a badly edited compilation of footage that doesn't match, that only a moron could possibly accept it as evidence of anything other than an attempt to garner the first ever prize for "Best Ed Wood Jr. Impersonation Masquerading as an Actual News Event of the Year." Vanderford and gang have made a brilliant piece of propaganda, the last thing on earth anyone wanted to see, a splendid and disgusting satire of the Nick Berg beheading video. Vanderford says he wanted "to just make a statement on these type of videos and how easily they can be faked." Damn right.
   Like all the best satire, you don't necessarily have to have seen the original to get the point. I promised myself I wouldn't watch the actual Nick Berg video, and that's a promise I've kept, but I had to watch the satire. I am your satire martyr, blatantly opening my eyes to wonders too horrific to behold, and reporting them to the stunned listener as though it were the truth.
   The tape consists of bad live footage of a man in a chair saying "We need to leave this country alone. We need to stop this occupation" while Arabic chanting drones in the background. The poorly shot and lit video is intercut with STILL PHOTOS of mutilated bodies that clearly have nothing to do with the man in the chair, then there's a shot of something being sawed across his neck and a little blood shows up. That's it. Like the other beheading videos, he banks on the fact you'll want to look away when he shows the gross stuff, but if you plow through it, your disgust at carnage will be replaced by disgust at ANYONE who would pass this forward as NEWS.
   Vanderford actually made this tape three months ago. "An aspiring politician and video game designer who faked his own beheading by Iraqi militants awoke Saturday to learn that television stations around the world were showing his homemade video of the gruesome hoax," says Ron Harris of the AP. "Benjamin Vanderford, 22, said he posted the 55-second clip, which shows a knife sawing against his neck, on an online file-sharing network in May. It circulated in cyberspace before crossing over to major media, airing on Arab television."
  Ogrish.com has done us all the favor of collecting every beheading video in one place, not to mention lots of other gruesome stuff that'll make you barf faster than a Republican convention (Nuremburg on the Hudson). You can download the tape there or here.
   Contrary to my general nature, I speak with total lack of sarcasm or irony when I hereby nominate Ben Vanderford for the Pulitzer Prize in journalism. He has shaken the foundations of what journalism can be, displaying the maximum amount of "truth" through an obvious piece of fiction. It's a news story, but what's the story? Not that a man was beheaded. Not that a video was made of a beheading. Not that the video was fake. None of those are the story. The story here is that MSNBC, plus God knows how many other legitimate news outlets, can be so easily taken in by false evidence. Their ability to discriminate between fact or fiction has been obliterated by years of presenting Xeroxes of government press releases masquerading as truth.

Statement by Robert F. Martin, co-producer of the tape

That's Diabolical!
starring Diabolical Dan

EXT. CHICAGO: 1930
It's a dark and moonless night on the west side. Two fancy cars pull into a deserted alley, two guys in fancy suits get out and talk.

            Dan
       We need a small raid, you know?
       Frank's and Hardy's, maybe Sorrento's.

            Chief
       Sorrento's? That's your place.

            Dan
       That's what gives the whole move
       credibility. This small sacrifice
       of Sorrento's will give us the
       perfect excuse to do what we want
       to do anyway.

            Chief
       Take over the east side.

            Dan
       Exactly.

            Chief
       It's diabolical.

             Dan
       It is, if you handle it right.
       If we leave the right calling card.

            Chief
       What kind of calling card?

            Dan
       Something that points to Stein,
       obviously. That's the point.
       Maybe some of his guys arrested.
       I'm sure you can figure something
       out. I don't want to know about it.
       Just make it...

            Chief
       Diabolical?

            Dan
       Exactly.

The cars pull away into the deep dark night.

INT. POLICE CHIEF'S OFFICE: DAY

            Chief
       Here's how it's going to work.
       You're going to grab a few shipments
       and make it look like Stein did it.
       This will give Dan the opportunity
       to respond to Stein.

            Omar
       By taking him out.

            Chief
       Exactly.

            Omar
       That's diabolical.

            Chief
       I know it is.

EXT. SORRENTO'S SPEAKEASY: DAY
Dozens of cop cars pull up. Dozens of cops break through the front door.

INT. SORRENTO'S SPEAKEASY: DAY
The cops are ambushed by dozens of mystery men with machine guns who mow them all down.

POLICE CHIEF'S OFFICE: LATER THAT DAY

            Chief
       Omar says he was double-crossed by
       Bernie. Bernie was hired to grab a
       few crates, not wipe out a whole
       bunch of cops.

            Stein
       How did he pull it off? How did
       he know the cops were going to
       be there?

            Chief
       Omar must have told him. I
       mean they were supposed to be
       there, it was part of the plan.

            Stein
       But they were supposed to be
       witnesses, not victims.

            Chief
       Exactly.

            Stein
       47 is a lot of dead cops.
       There's going to be a war.

            Chief
       Against who?

            Stein
       Omar.

            Chief
       But it was all Bernie. Omar had
       nothing to do with it.

            Stein
       So what. His gang rules the
       east side. He's got to be dealt
       with if Dan's going to control
       Chicago.

            Chief
       You gotta hand it to Dan.
       He may be bald but no one's
       got a follicle that is half
       as diabolical.

Stein and Chief do a big soft-shoe musical number called "No One's Got a Follicle that is Half as Diabolical."

INT. CORONER'S OFFICE: CHICAGO: 1930 - LATER THAT DAY

            Coroner
       Oh my God, I've never seen
       so many dead policemen.

            Policeman
       We're not dead we're just
       pretending.

All the dead policemen do a big musical number called "We're not dead we're just pretending."

To be continued...

Letters of the Week

Subject: Orwell Rolls in His Grave . . .

Regarding your review of this movie, I believe you have written the most inaccurate statement I have ever read in a film critique. If you think the movie was objective, you MUST buy a dictionary and READ it, front to back. Don't cheat by checking 'objective' only, because you'll be skipping several additional words that you must be oblivious to, including conservative and libertarian, both of which would do you a ton of good.

Literate Citizen of the USA

Dear Literate Citizen,

Thank you for braving time and space to contact me.

I know what the word objective means, and many other words. I meant what I said.

The statement in my review you are referring to is "Orwell Rolls in his Grave is as objective as it gets. There are no hysterical rants, no oblique conspiracy theories, just cold hard facts presented as clearly and succinctly as possible. You can show it to your parents, your kids, your PTA, and they will be equally outraged. It's not left, right, conservative or liberal, just a straightforward piece of filmmaking with no more agenda than the truth."

If you disagree with that statement, if you believe that Orwell Rolls in his Grave is NOT as objective as it gets, that there ARE hysterical rants and oblique conspiracy theories, that there are MORE THAN cold hard facts presented and NOT as clearly and succinctly as possible, that you CAN'T show it to your parents, your kids, your PTA, and they WON'T be equally outraged. That it IS left, right, conservative or liberal, and NOT just a straightforward piece of filmmaking with no more agenda than the truth, I'm afraid YOU'RE the one who has some explaining to do.

I stand by my statement.

 MD

The plot thickens. Apparently you're impressed with yourself and would rather not be aware that someone else might have a point. 

No need to ask why I don't consider this objective, I'll tell you anyway. 

The main reason, of several, that I KNOW this was NOT an object film is because Mr. Pappas hyper-focused on conservatives, the media they own, and presidents Reagan, Bush (41) & Bush (43), instead of opening the discussion to both sides of the spectrum, in a media clearly dominated by liberal thought [FOR INSTANCE?], and which shamelessly and arrogantly walks away when everyday citizens voice objection to their blatant subjectivity [FOR INSTANCE?]. 

It's too bad to, because in the big picture, Mr. Pappas was on to something. The media is corrupt, and it is one-sided, but it is not a conservative bent [FOR INSTANCE?]. Sorry that you're not sharp enough to follow the obvious ongoing conspiracy theory that plagues our national debate. 

The ongoing roles of liberals as whiny, victimized cry-babies who want to steal from everyone and control the poor stupid people with their new found wealth (John Kerry), and the decent moderate and conservative people who are god-fearing, earn their own way in a difficult time, and try to defend democracy against people who don't like themselves very much. 

As an example, the outspoken, ranting, foolish Michael Moore steps on stage as the most obvious example of Orwell's nightmare to ever walk the planet. 

His most recent drivel marketed in typical lying fashion as a 'documentary', is nothing but doublespeak [FOR INSTANCE?], taking all 'debates', 'points' and 'issues' out of context and 'proving' his perspective of 'truth' with asinine editing techniques that would make George Orwell purple with rage [FOR INSTANCE?]. 

You are wrong! Suck it up and learn how to READ & THINK for yourself, KOOL-AID drinker!! 

Literate Citizen of the USA

Congratulations. You didn't respond to one single question I asked or give one single concrete example of any point you're trying to make, providing us with an almost textbook example of dittohead thinking, where facts are self-evident simply because someone said them. Show me one thing in George Orwell's masterpiece 1984 that isn't part of the game plan of the current administration. For you to call Moore's response to Bush's "big brother" attitude as "Orwellian" is truly asinine. Orwell WOULD be spinning in his grave.

On the other hand...

Subject: absolute proof PlaneSite is disinformation to discredit the real evidence

In Plane Site makes much of its claims of Bush regime complicity in 9/11 on the basis that there was an anomalous "pod" under the plane that hit the South Tower. These photos should put this bad joke to rest forever.

9/11 WAS an inside job, but a phony film basing much of its arguments of this sort of nonsense makes the real evidence much more difficult to find and turns people off to looking deeper since this film has so many red herrings.

It is so wonderful that lots of "new video" footage magically appears at the precise moment with the 9/11 truth movement is having political success in persuading lots of people that Bush is complicit. What an amazing coincidence that christian fundamentalists are pushing nonsense theories of 9/11 to distract the 9/11 truth movement just before the 9/11 commission published its "new warren commission" report. I feel honored that some people toiled for a long time to make these bogus video clips to snare the gullible.

Digital editing software is truly an amazing development.

PlaneSite is in fact "disinfotainment" -- disinformation that is entertaining for some, but this sort of operation merely discredits the careful work that has been done to prove that 9/11 was an inside job

.- Mark Robinowitz -

    Gee Mark, I'm stunned. Yep, you're right. That photo proves it all. I guess everyone's wrong.
   Your site claims that the DVD 911 In Plane Site, which I reviewed in issue #113, is "blatantly bogus bullshit, the worst film on the subject of 9/11, an effort to drown out truth with distraction and disinformation... the most incompetent documentary ever produced, deliberate disinformation to discredit the 9/11 truth movement, or are the producers merely gullible 'useful idiots' used by covert operators to cover the real evidence behind a smoke screen of bogus material?"
    I are cornfused. Is this disinformation to further obscure the previous disinformation? You claim everything in 911 In Plane Site is Photoshopped and fake and misinterpreted and part of the conspiracy to obscure the REAL conspiracy, and you prove it by using photographs that could ALSO be Photoshopped and fake and misinterpreted and part of ANOTHER conspiracy to obscure the FAKE conspiracy.
    The important part of the search for truth is the search itself, not the truth, which can never be found. It's all part of the puzzle. It's all entertainment. Enjoy it while you can.

Anniversary of the Week

Meria Heller is celebrating her fifth anniversary of rising above it all with style, substance, and humor. Air America's good but Meria's still the best.

Song of the Week

An actual MP3 of Michael Dare actually singing Pull Out Your Tanks, one of the many Songs from Hell, that is destined to be a classic anti-war statement and Woody Guthrie hoax, thanks to the mighty mighty brain and superlative equipment of Grat Crabtree (a prince).

Stupid Answers of the Week

Last week's stupid question was "Does the United States of America actively foment trouble in foreign countries it wants to invade, and if not, why?"

Dear DT,

Yes.

Wanda

Dear DT,

The answer to this question is an excruciating obviousity [made-up word but pertinent]: YES. We have only to go to Google and do a search on Operation Northwoods to understand how far our government will go to pursue its own agenda. I mention its own agenda because it is not an agenda in the best interest of the American citizen.

Propping up right wing dictators (left leaners like Chavez Frias need not apply) around the world in the interests of fruit companies, oil companies, mineral companies, diamond companies, etc. is not in the interest of the American citizen. Sure you can buy bananas for 99 cents a pound but for that privilege you are paying dearly. Your tax dollars go to black ops to prop up these bad guys, supply them with WMDs and who, later when they inevitably get uppity, have to be invaded using our young people as troops.

Not that it will ever happen, but I would like to see a more transparent government where we stop interfering in foreign governments at the behest of global corporations. If Halliburton wants to send an army to defend oil pipelines fine. Let them pay for it out of their own pocket. Stop using our soldiers to further the ambitions of companies who form a subsidiary in the Cayman Islands so they can evade a law forbidding them from doing business with an axis of evil member du jour.

Little did we realize how prescient Dwight Eisenhower's warning about the military/industrial complex would be. Were living the reality right now.

Rita Morrison

Dear DT,

Why not?
JB

Dear DT,

    Me fucking stupid. Me vote for Bush, Please tell me why I am so fucking stupid as to vote for a fucking moron like that. He not even as smart as me. He fucking idiot. Me no fucking idiot, so why I vote for him?
    Oh shit, even parodying these racist, fascist arseholes gives me brain pain. How the fuck can these Cheneyheads vote against their own interests? Oh, I forgot, because they're fucking morons. Colour me inbred fuckwit and send me a "Happy Birthday Uncle Dad" greetings card.

Brian de Ford

Quotes from W.C.

"(H)ow violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder."
- Albert Einstein -

    "Long before the US military got involved there directly, Vietnam was the CIA's war. At first they waged it on behalf of the French, who struggled for nine years, from 1945 to 1954, to recapture their one-time colony (despite the war's unpopularity with the French public).Even with CIA mercenaries fighting alongside the French, and air support from the CIA's Air America (at the time, the largest 'private' airline in the world), the effort proved to be in vain.After the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in early 1954, the CIA plucked Ngo Dinh Diem out of obscurity in the United States and established him as the ruler of South Vietnam. He arrived in Saigon in mid-1954, controlling nothing except the complete dedication of CIA's covert action warriors. Using the 1954-1955 Geneva-Conference-imposed cease-fire, the CIA ran propaganda and covert operations in North Vietnam--including the implied threat of nuclear destruction--to scare and lure the minority Catholic population to migrate south. Once in South Vietnam, the CIA and the U.S. military formed them into an army, police force and government for Diem. Catholic Vietnamese never represented more than 10 percent of South Vietnam's total population but under Diem, a co-religionist, that small group enjoyed all status and privileges. From 1955 to 1960 Diem, pushed by his U.S. advisers, attempted to assert his authority over rural South Vietnam. His minions (assisted, directed and inspired by the CIA-Ed.) killed, tortured and imprisoned tens of thousands who resisted his unfair rule. It was this vicious repression that eventually forced the North Vietnamese to join with their compatriots in the South to fight against Diem and his U.S. backers.
   "It is also necessary to whip up the (American - Ed) population in support of foreign adventures. Usually the population is pacifist, just like they were during the First World War. The public sees no reason to get involved in foreign adventures, killing, and torture. So you have to whip them up. And to whip them up you have to frighten them. Bernays (Edward Bernays, propaganda expert Ed.) himself had an important achievement in this respect. He was the person who ran the public relations campaign for the United Fruit Company in 1954, when the United States moved in to overthrow the capitalist-democratic government of Guatemala and installed a murderous death-squad society, which remains that way to the present day with constant infusions of U.S. aid to prevent in more than empty form democratic deviations."
- Noam Chomsky -

    "If we're bombing South Vietnam, that's because we're defending South Vietnam against somebody, namely, the South Vietnamese, since nobody else was there. It's what the Kennedy intellectuals called defense against "internal aggression" in South Vietnam. That was the phrase used by Adlai Stevenson and others. It was necessary to make that the official and well-understood picture. That's worked pretty well. When you have total control over the media and the educational system and scholarship is conformist, you can get that across."
- Noam Chomsky -

"One indication of it was revealed in a study done at the University of Massachusetts on attitudes toward the current Gulf crisis-a study of beliefs and attitudes in television watching. One of the questions asked in that study was, How many Vietnamese casualties would you estimate that there were during the Vietnam war? The average response on the part of Americans today is about 100,000. The official figure is about two million. The actual figure is probably three to four million. The people who conducted the study raised an appropriate question: What would we think about German political culture if, when you asked people today how many Jews died in the Holocaust, they estimated about 300,000? What would that tell us about German political culture? They leave the question unanswered, but you can pursue it. What does it tell us about our culture? It tells us quite a bit. It is necessary to overcome the sickly inhibitions against the use of military force and other democratic deviations. In this particular case it worked. This is true on every topic. Pick the topic you like: the Middle East, international terrorism, Central America, whatever it is-the picture of the world that's presented to the public has only the remotest relation to reality. The truth of the matter is buried under edifice after edifice of lies upon lies. End quote Noam Chomsky5) So it was international terrorists and narcotraffickers and crazed Arabs and Saddam Hussein, the new Hitler, was going to conquer the world. They've got to keep coming up one after another. You frighten the population, terrorize them, intimidate them so that they're too afraid to travel and cower in fear. Then you have a magnificent victory over Grenada, Panama, or some other defenseless third-world army that you can pulverize before you ever bother to look at them-which is just what happened. That gives relief. We were saved at the last minute. That's one of the ways in which you can keep the bewildered herd from paying attention to what's really going on around them, keep them diverted and controlled. The next one that's coming along, most likely, will be Cuba. That's going to require a continuation of the illegal economic warfare, possibly a revival of the extraordinary international terrorism. The most major international terrorism organized yet has been the Kennedy administration's Operation Mongoose, then the things that followed along, against Cuba. There's been nothing remotely comparable to it except perhaps the war against Nicaragua, if you call that terrorism. The World Court classified it as something more like aggression. There's always an ideological offensive that builds up a chimerical monster, then campaigns to have it crushed. You can't go in if they can fight back. That's much too dangerous. But if you are sure that they will be crushed, maybe we'll knock that one off and heave another sigh of relief."
- Noam Chomsky -

    "Nicaragua: US destroyed Sandanistas & real hope for reform The hatred that was elicited by the Sandanistas for trying to direct resources to the poor (and even succeeding at it) [was the basis for] the US launching a three-fold attack against Nicaragua. 
    "We exerted extreme pressure to compel the World Bank to terminate all projects and assistance. We launched the contra war along with an illegal economic war to terminate what Oxfam rightly called the threat of a good example. We used diplomatic fakery to crush Nicaragua. The US virtually tripled CIA supply flights to the contras, and within a few months the peace plan and [a fair] election campaign were totally dead. US achievements in Central America in the past 15 years are a major tragedy, not just because of the appalling human cost, but because a decade ago there were prospects for real progress toward meaningful democracy and meeting human needs. These efforts might have worked and might have taught useful lessons-which if course was exactly what US planners feared."
- Noam Chomsky: What Uncle Sam Really Wants -

Stupid Question of the Week

Nudity. Humiliation. Dogs. Electrodes. Rape. And that's just the prisons. Imagine how we're treating the people we DON'T like.  It's too big not to be part of the plan. The Stupid Question of the Week is "How is the Abu Graib prison scandal, which is telling the world how the United States treats its enemies, actually HELPING the cause of the New World Order?"

Send your answers to stupidquestion@disinfotainmenttoday.com.

History Lesson from Hell

Check out the Iraq Timeline.

Smell of the Week

"The engagements in the cemetery were done on foot, encountering numerous fighters at a range when you can smell a man, and it's hand-to-hand combat."
- Col. John Mayer, battalion leader for Marines fighting in Najaf, Iraq -

Gallery of the Week

Cloned Animals at the b3eta zoo

I Feel So Much Safer Now

The new Iraqi government has reinstated the death penalty. (Stupid Question #487 - Who knew it was gone?)

Don't Take My Word For It

"We're not going to win this war by being funnier than the Republicans."
- Norman Mailer: Democracy Now -

"No one gossips about other people's secret virtues."
- Bertrand Russell -

    "The country may not be fully prepared for another terrorist attack, but one thing, at least, has been settled: Government employees assigned to take up positions at 'Site R,' the Raven Rock underground bunker that housed Vice President Dick Cheney after Sept. 11, have been told what to pack.
   "Among the reams of documents produced by the federal government in the name of contingency planning, one is devoted entirely to the details of bunker life. According to the Relocation Procedures and Support Handbook, those heading for Site R near the Maryland-Pennsylvania border should leave their pagers, radios, knives and alcohol at home.
    "What should they bring? 'All personnel designated to relocate,' the handbook advises, 'are encouraged to bring two complete changes of clothing,' as well as a combination lock, flashlight, two towels and a 'small box of washing powder.' The government will provide lodging, but it draws the line at detergent."
- William M. Arkin: How to Pack for the Bunker -

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
- Dubya -

"Would you please tell us more about these innovative and resourceful new ways you are thinking about that will harm our country and our people?"
- Question no one asked Dubya -

"If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything."
- Mark Twain -

"In a significant shift in U.S. policy, the Bush administration announced this week that it will oppose provisions for inspections and verification as part of an international treaty that would ban production of nuclear weapons materials... Arms-control specialists reacted negatively, saying the change in U.S. position will dramatically weaken any treaty and make it harder to prevent nuclear materials from falling into the hands of terrorists. The announcement, they said, also virtually kills a 10-year international effort to lure countries such as Pakistan, India and Israel into accepting some oversight of their nuclear production programs." 
- Dafna Linzer: U.S. Shifts Stance on Nuclear Treaty, White House Resists Inspection Provision -

    "Clinton campaigned on the economy and had remarkable success. GDP growth during his eight years averaged 3.5% per year, second only to the combined Kennedy/Johnson years and ahead of Jimmy Carter and Reagan. The economy also added jobs at a faster rate under Clinton than under any postwar president except Carter. For Carter, however, job growth merely matched an increase in the size of the labor force, while Clinton had much better luck curbing the unemployment rate as well. The result: The public's confidence in the economy hit an all-time high in the summer of 2000, near the end of Clinton's second term, according to Gallup. In the summer of 1992, before he was elected, it was at an all-time low...
   "Of the ten postwar presidents, the first President Bush brings up the rear. He ranks dead last for both GDP growth and income growth and also ballooned the deficit at a rate faster than every president but Ford. His one modest success was continuing the dramatic drop in inflation that had started under Reagan. LaSalle's Schubert notes that Bush had "some bad luck," in that the post-Gulf War recovery was too late and too tepid to aid his reelection prospects. But Schubert faults Bush for a lack of perceptible economic policy of any kind, good or bad."
- Dan Ackman: Forbes (repugpub!) Presidents And Prosperity -

"To find out a girl's faults, praise her to her girlfriends."
- Benjamin Franklin -

"If there is a child on the south side of Chicago who can’t read, that matters to me, even if it’s not my child. If there’s a senior citizen somewhere who can’t pay for their prescription drugs, and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it’s not my grandparent. If there’s an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties."
- Barack Obama -

"No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness."
- Aristotle -

"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a needle to go through the eye of a camel."
- Jesus II -

"Jesus. What a wit. I hear he went to heaven."
- Xarvon, alien investigator -

"[O]ur media tell us to be afraid of each other. Fear someone that's different. Fear someone of a different color or sexual persuasion. Fear someone who may have an Arab sounding name. Why? Because fear is about control. In order for people to think they need a government or policing they must have fear. Without it, there would only be love and that isn't a good thing for those who truly hate life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all. Not just a select few. Not just for rich white men who hide behind large fences and walls. When we realize we have nothing to fear except those who mean to control us, we will then be free. Not a moment before."
- Meria Heller: Living in Constant Fear and Constant Hope -

"The wall street journal is nothing more than the elegantly dressed hooker to corporate America's stiff prick."
- anonymous -

"A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer."
- Dean Acheson -

"Things have gotten a lot worse for chickens since 1958."
- The Humane Society of the United States: Chickens Deserve the Same Humane End as Cattle and Hogs -

"You mean they kill us? And it's going to be painful? Something's got to be done!"
- Buck BcGaw: chicken -

"In a startling accusation, nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu has alleged that Jerusalem was behind the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy, who was exerting pressure on the then Israeli head of state to shed light on the Dimona nuclear plant."
- The Truthseeker -

"I love deadlines. I especially like the whooshing sound they make as they go flying by."
- Douglas Adams -

"A conference is a gathering of important people who singly can do nothing, but together can decide that nothing can be done."- Fred Allen - "He volunteered for Vietnam duty knowing he would one day be running for president."
- John O'Neill: Swift Boat Veterans for Truth -

"Well, THAT clears THAT up! John Kerry is not only a flip-flopping liberal, he's also a plotting clairvoyant! Going to war to pad your résumé? Wow! That takes colossal heaps of foresight, guts... and a heap o'stupidity. Or perhaps the stupidity comes in accepting that line of argument." 
- Steve Young: Risking his Life Building a Résumé - Vet Sez Kerry Only Volunteered To Benefit His Presidential Run -

"Almost six decades after the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, collective horror at their consequences is being replaced by collective amnesia."
- Justin McCurry -

"The American Heritage Dictionary (Fourth Edition, 2000) defines terrorism as: "the unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons." By this definition, obviously the A-bombs we dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were terrorist acts, therefore Harry Truman was a terrorist. This administration hereby declares war on Harry Truman. We will find him wherever he is, dead or alive, and bring him to justice."
- Tom Ridge on acid -

    "[T]he war on terror is much like the war on drugs. Drug laws caused the price of drugs to soar, creating a black market and an unsavory drug-lord sector, which then produced gang wars, killings, burglaries, robberies, and muggings. All this drug-war crime obviously required a massive drug-war government bureaucracy to 'win' the war on drugs, and then came massive infringements on the fundamental liberties of the people. Along with all this came ever-increasing record drug busts and the need to 'stay the course' until the war is 'won.'
   "Yet, how many people realize that the entire problem lies with the drug laws in the first place — and that the solution to the 'war on drugs' lies, quite simply, with the elimination of the drug laws? Indeed, how many people realize that the entire terror problem lies with a brutal U.S. foreign policy — and that the solution to the 'war on terror' lies, quite simply, with the elimination of that policy?"
- Hornberger's Blog -

"President Bush says he has just one question for the American voters, 'Is the rich person you're working for better off now than they were four years ago?'"
- Jay Leno -

"I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!"
- Will Rogers -

"Meekness is the greatest of virtues."
- Talmud: Aboda Zara, 20b -

"Most of us spend our lives as if we have another one in the bank."
- Ben Irwin -

"It is like the water of the ocean: even without wind there are waves everywhere. Suddenly knowing of the waves all around is the gross within the subtle; letting go of knowledge in the midst of knowing is like the subtle within the subtle. This is the sphere of the enlightened."
- Pai-chang -

    "To bomb Afghanistan, one of the world's poorest countries, over pipeline transit rights was politically indefensible. To invade Iraq because Israel wanted to destroy a major supporter of the Palestinians was also impossible to justify. The White House couldn't be seen to be the tool of Big Oil or of a foreign power, but if these or other target countries could be portrayed as terrorist states or terrorist-sponsoring states, Congress and the American people could accept unilateral aggression, or at least not have the courage to challenge it. Thus we had the demonization of bin Laden and Hussein, slandering of Islam, racial profiling; and arbitrary arrests of Arabs and Muslims.
    "The consequences of this official bigotry have been appalling. In just two years, Bush has destroyed the U.S.'s international reputation, committed fraud and mass murder, violated the U.S. Constitution, and racked up record budget deficits. Domestic and international protests against U.S. militarism easily surpass those of the Vietnam era, and traditional allies like France and Germany have been vilified because they challenge the divine right of the U.S. to bully the world."
- Greg Felton: Enemies by Design -

"In 1958, poultry got short shrift in the Humane Slaughter Act, which mandated that animals raised for food be 'rendered insensible to pain' prior to slaughter. Nearly 50 years later, chickens and turkeys comprise 95% of the animals reared for food, but still have no protections. The Animal Advocate says these creatures deserve a more humane end."
- The Humane Society of the United States still whining about the fucking chickens -

"I think if Al Gore was president, it is significantly less likely that the attacks of September 11 would have happened in the first place. Here's why. As vice president, Al Gore actually read all his daily intelligence briefings and made notes of questions he wanted answered in the margins. Gore was the one who had waiting for him, should he have been elected president, an actual plan to target and take out Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda henchmen - the same plan that was given to Condoleezza Rice by Dick Clarke, the White House counterterrorism coordinator, and promptly put on the shelf, only to reappear again- according to the White House - on September 10."
- James Carville: Had Enough? -

"We don't know when it was done, but someone had discovered the first ever cave art in Britain (13,000 years old) and instead of publishing it, they vandalised it."
- Paul Bahn: Britain's First Nude? -

"After the terrorist attacks of September 11 we, the translators at the FBI's largest and most important translation unit, were told to slow down, even stop, translation of critical information related to terrorist activities so that the FBI could present the United States Congress with a record of 'extensive backlog of un-translated documents', and justify its request for budget and staff increases. While FBI agents from various field offices were desperately seeking leads and suspects, and completely depending on FBI HQ and its language units to provide them with needed translated information, hundreds of translators were being told by their administrative supervisors not to translate and to let the work pile up."
- Sibel Edmonds: Public Letter to 9/11 Commission Chairman from FBI Whistleblower -

"Worried by flagging poll numbers, a deteriorating situation in Iraq, and a sluggish economy, President Bush called on Congress today to approve a constitutional amendment that would ban gay sex on the Moon. Republican leaders hailed the move as a bold step to unite the country in a bold and forward-looking strategy to spread family values across the solar system, and protect the legacy of the Apollo missions."
- The Poor Man -

"Try eggplant."
- Buck BcGaw -

Everything Else

I created false evidence against a neighbor I wanted to attack. What did YOU do to celebrate the anniversary of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution?

According to the press release, "In spring 2003, award-winning filmmaker James Miller and reporter Saira Shah, set out to take a first-hand look at the culture of hate that permeates the Middle East. They captured the lives of three Palestinian children growing up in the bullet-riddled streets of Gaza. Although James and Saira had planned to film the lives of Israeli children as well, in the midst of production, Miller was shot to death by an Israeli tank, falling victim to the very conflict he covered." Death in Gaza premieres on HBO this week. I'll review it next week.