"Peacemongers 'r' Us"

Issue #51
is brought to you by


 
 
Transcript of the speech given by film actor/writer/director/producer Tim Robbins to the National Press Club in Washington DC on Tuesday, April 15, 2003.
 
 
TIM ROBBINS: Thank you. And thanks for the invitation. I had originally been asked here to talk about the war and our current political situation, but I have instead chosen to hijack this opportunity and talk about baseball and show business. (Laughter.) Just kidding. Sort of. 
 
I can't tell you how moved I have been at the overwhelming support I have received from newspapers throughout the country in these past few days. I hold no illusions that all of these journalists agree with me on my views against the war. While the journalists' outrage at the cancellation of our appearance in Cooperstown is not about my views, it is about my right to express these views. I am extremely grateful that there are those of you out there still with a fierce belief in constitutionally guaranteed rights. We need you, the press, now more than ever. This is a crucial moment for all of us. 
 
For all of the ugliness and tragedy of 9-11, there was a brief period afterward where I held a great hope, in the midst of the tears and shocked faces of New Yorkers, in the midst of the lethal air we breathed as we worked at Ground Zero, in the midst of my children's terror at being so close to this crime against humanity, in the midst of all this, I held on to a glimmer of hope in the naive assumption that something good could come out of it.
 
I imagined our leaders seizing upon this moment of unity in America, this moment when no one wanted to talk about Democrat versus Republican, white versus black, or any of the other ridiculous divisions that dominate our public discourse. I imagined our leaders going on television telling the citizens that although we all want to be at Ground Zero, we can't, but there is work that is needed to be done all over America. Our help is needed at community centers to tutor children, to teach them to read. Our work is needed at old-age homes to visit the lonely and infirmed; in gutted neighborhoods to rebuild housing and clean up parks, and convert abandoned lots to baseball fields. I imagined leadership that would take this incredible energy, this generosity of spirit and create a new unity in America born out of the chaos and tragedy of 9/11, a new unity that would send a message to terrorists everywhere: If you attack us, we will become stronger, cleaner, better educated, and more unified. You will strengthen our commitment to justice and democracy by your inhumane attacks on us. Like a Phoenix out of the fire, we will be reborn. 
 
And then came the speech: You are either with us or against us. And the bombing began. And the old paradigm was restored as our leader encouraged us to show our patriotism by shopping and by volunteering to join groups that would turn in their neighbor for any suspicious behavior. 
 
In the 19 months since 9-11, we have seen our democracy compromised by fear and hatred. Basic inalienable rights, due process, the sanctity of the home have been quickly compromised in a climate of fear. A unified American public has grown bitterly divided, and a world population that had profound sympathy and support for us has grown contemptuous and distrustful, viewing us as we once viewed the Soviet Union, as a rogue state. 
 
This past weekend, Susan and I and the three kids went to Florida for a family reunion of sorts. Amidst the alcohol and the dancing, sugar-rushing children, there was, of course, talk of the war. And the most frightening thing about the weekend was the amount of times we were thanked for speaking out against the war because that individual speaking thought it unsafe to do so in their own community, in their own life. Keep talking, they said; I haven't been able to open my mouth. 
 
A relative tells me that a history teacher tells his 11-year-old son, my nephew, that Susan Sarandon is endangering the troops by her opposition to the war. Another teacher in a different school asks our niece if we are coming to the school play. They're not welcome here, said the molder of young minds. 
 
Another relative tells me of a school board decision to cancel a civics event that was proposing to have a moment of silence for those who have died in the war because the students were including dead Iraqi civilians in their silent prayer. 
 
A teacher in another nephew's school is fired for wearing a T-shirt with a peace sign on it. And a friend of the family tells of listening to the radio down South as the talk radio host calls for the murder of a prominent anti-war activist. Death threats have appeared on other prominent anti-war activists' doorsteps for their views. Relatives of ours have received threatening e-mails and phone calls. And my 13-year-old boy, who has done nothing to anybody, has recently been embarrassed and humiliated by a sadistic creep who writes -- or, rather, scratches his column with his fingernails in dirt. 
 
Susan and I have been listed as traitors, as supporters of Saddam, and various other epithets by the Aussie gossip rags masquerading as newspapers, and by their 'fair' and 'balanced' electronic media cousins, 19th Century Fox. (Laughter.) Apologies to Gore Vidal. (Applause.) 
 
Two weeks ago, the United Way canceled Susan's appearance at a conference on women's leadership. And both of us last week were told that both we and the First Amendment were not welcome at the Baseball Hall of Fame. 
 
A famous middle-aged rock-and-roller called me last week to thank me for speaking out against the war, only to go on to tell me that he could not speak himself because he fears repercussions from Clear Channel. "They promote our concert appearances," he said. "They own most of the stations that play our music. I can't come out against this war." 
 
And here in Washington, Helen Thomas finds herself banished to the back of the room and uncalled on after asking Ari Fleischer whether our showing prisoners of war at Guantanamo Bay on television violated the Geneva Convention. 
 
A chill wind is blowing in this nation. A message is being sent through the White House and its allies in talk radio and Clear Channel and Cooperstown. If you oppose this administration, there can and will be ramifications. 
 
Every day, the air waves are filled with warnings, veiled and unveiled threats, spewed invective and hatred directed at any voice of dissent. And the public, like so many relatives and friends that I saw this weekend, sit in mute opposition and fear. 
 
I am sick of hearing about Hollywood being against this war. Hollywood's heavy hitters, the real power brokers and cover-of-the- magazine stars, have been largely silent on this issue. But Hollywood, the concept, has always been a popular target. 
 
I remember when the Columbine High School shootings happened. President Clinton criticized Hollywood for contributing to this terrible tragedy -- this, as we were dropping bombs over Kosovo. Could the violent actions of our leaders contribute somewhat to the violent fantasies of our teenagers? Or is it all just Hollywood and rock and roll? 
 
I remember reading at the time that one of the shooters had tried to enlist to fight the real war a week before he acted out his war in real life at Columbine. I talked about this in the press at the time. And curiously, no one accused me of being unpatriotic for criticizing Clinton. In fact, the same radio patriots that call us traitors today engaged in daily personal attacks on their president during the war in Kosovo. 
 
Today, prominent politicians who have decried violence in movies -- the "Blame Hollywooders," if you will -- recently voted to give our current president the power to unleash real violence in our current war. They want us to stop the fictional violence but are okay with the real kind. 
 
And these same people that tolerate the real violence of war don't want to see the result of it on the nightly news. Unlike the rest of the world, our news coverage of this war remains sanitized, without a glimpse of the blood and gore inflicted upon our soldiers or the women and children in Iraq. Violence as a concept, an abstraction -- it's very strange. 
 
As we applaud the hard-edged realism of the opening battle scene of "Saving Private Ryan," we cringe at the thought of seeing the same on the nightly news. We are told it would be pornographic. We want no part of reality in real life. We demand that war be painstakingly realized on the screen, but that war remain imagined and conceptualized in real life. 
 
And in the midst of all this madness, where is the political opposition? Where have all the Democrats gone? Long time passing, long time ago. (Applause.) With apologies to Robert Byrd, I have to say it is pretty embarrassing to live in a country where a five-foot- one comedian has more guts than most politicians. (Applause.) We need leaders, not pragmatists that cower before the spin zones of former entertainment journalists. We need leaders who can understand the Constitution, congressman who don't in a moment of fear abdicate their most important power, the right to declare war to the executive branch. And, please, can we please stop the congressional sing-a- longs? (Laughter.) 
 
In this time when a citizenry applauds the liberation of a country as it lives in fear of its own freedom, when an administration official releases an attack ad questioning the patriotism of a legless Vietnam veteran running for Congress, when people all over the country fear reprisal if they use their right to free speech, it is time to get angry. It is time to get fierce. And it doesn't take much to shift the tide. My 11-year-old nephew, mentioned earlier, a shy kid who never talks in class, stood up to his history teacher who was questioning Susan's patriotism. "That's my aunt you're talking about. Stop it." And the stunned teacher backtracks and began stammering compliments in embarrassment. 
 
Sportswriters across the country reacted with such overwhelming fury at the Hall of Fame that the president of the Hall admitted he made a mistake and Major League Baseball disavowed any connection to the actions of the Hall's president. A bully can be stopped, and so can a mob. It takes one person with the courage and a resolute voice. 
 
The journalists in this country can battle back at those who would rewrite our Constitution in Patriot Act II, or "Patriot, The Sequel," as we would call it in Hollywood. We are counting on you to star in that movie. Journalists can insist that they not be used as publicists by this administration. (Applause.) The next White House correspondent to be called on by Ari Fleischer should defer their question to the back of the room, to the banished journalist du jour. (Applause.) And any instance of intimidation to free speech should be battled against. Any acquiescence or intimidation at this point will only lead to more intimidation. You have, whether you like it or not, an awesome responsibility and an awesome power: the fate of discourse, the health of this republic is in your hands, whether you write on the left or the right. This is your time, and the destiny you have chosen. 
 
We lay the continuance of our democracy on your desks, and count on your pens to be mightier. Millions are watching and waiting in mute frustration and hope - hoping for someone to defend the spirit and letter of our Constitution, and to defy the intimidation that is visited upon us daily in the name of national security and warped notions of patriotism. 
 
Our ability to disagree, and our inherent right to question our leaders and criticize their actions define who we are. To allow those rights to be taken away out of fear, to punish people for their beliefs, to limit access in the news media to differing opinions is to acknowledge our democracy's defeat. These are challenging times. There is a wave of hate that seeks to divide us -- right and left, pro-war and anti-war. In the name of my 11-year-old nephew, and all the other unreported victims of this hostile and unproductive environment of fear, let us try to find our common ground as a nation. Let us celebrate this grand and glorious experiment that has survived for 227 years. To do so we must honor and fight vigilantly for the things that unite us -- like freedom, the First Amendment and, yes, baseball. (Applause.)
 
Event Date: April 15, 2003 
Event Name: Tim Robbins  
Event Type: NPC 
Luncheon  Time: 12:30 PM  
Sponsored by: National Press Club (NPC)
Event Location: Ballroom  
Details: Actor/Director Tim Robbins and Win Without War
 

 
BELIEVE IT OR ELSE
Posted April 21, 2003
 

Celebrities vs. the United States Government

Fan Mail

You are an idiot.
- Stephen Oates -

    You can stuff that left wing anti-American garbage up your ass. As far as the picture of the stupid bitch goes, it sure as hell would have happened under Mussolini, even more so under Hitler. All you anti-Semitic assholes should read your history books. Neville, "Peace In Our Time" Chamberlain should have been hung by the balls. As far as the French, those pussies could have stopped Hitler cold, if they challenged him when he crossed the Rhine. But hey, it was only 6 million Jews gassed, shot at mass execution sites, enslaved, starved to death and killed by disease in those well appointed "work camps".
    Charles DeGaulle's stroll down the Champs Elysee` after the liberation of Paris in 1945 wasn't made possible by the French Resistance, it was through the sacrifice and deaths of tens of thousands of Americans.     Where are your protesters when Jewish children, students and civilians are being murdered by suicide bombers too cowardly to pick up a rifle and face a military adversary. By the way, their families were rewarded by good old Saddam for their "sacrifice".
    Where were the protesters when Saddam was gassing thousands of women, children and elderly Iraqi citizens.
    Saddam's main interest was to dominate the entire Middle East, and foremost the annihilation of Israel, with weapons of mass destruction. If George Bush didn't take the initiative to get rid of this murdering maniac, we would no doubt have had a nuclear war to contend with in the future. Of course, there would still be that element willing to roll over and try to undermine those who would try to stop a psychotic mass murderer.
    Where were the protesters when Bill Clinton was bombing an aspirin factory to distract attention from his "non-adulterous" shenanigans in the Oval Office.     Which points to a conclusion: the protesters aren't about anti-war they're about ant-Semitism and anti-Bush.
    Head-up-their-ass Clinton supporters.
    Yes, those moral Clinton die-hards who feel it's okay for their teen age daughters to be giving blow jobs to men old enough to be their fathers as long as they're Democrats who wield some power.
- mi.ro -

You're not quite the ass that [Tim] Robbins is, I don't think it's possible for two people to be so out of touch with reality simultaneously. The whiny little MILLIONAIRE feels bad that maybe the HUGE MAJORITY of Americans don't want to hear his misguided views on world affairs. He's an ACTOR, not a politician, if he wants to be a political voice in this country, let him run for office and the people will decide. In the meantime I'll pass on his product, just as I did when I disagreed with the South African Gov't, and let him know, in the best way I can, that I disagree with him.
- Kevin -

The similarities between this stupidity and the McCarthy hearings is astonishing. At first I was intrigued that I would get to live through something like this, now I am soiling my pants. 
- Rvaisman -

New Al Jazeera Video Shows Saddam
Playing Golf With Sons 

U.S. questions date, authenticity
- Ironic Times -

Rewrite of the Week

The winning entry from the Washington Post Style Invitational contest that asked readers to submit "instructions" written in the style of a famous person - like W. Shakespeare, who's birth and death we celebrate this week: 

Ye Olde Hokey Pokey
by Jeff Brechlin

O proud left foot, that ventures quick within 
Then soon upon a backward journey lithe. 
Anon, once more the gesture, then begin: 
Command sinistral pedestal to writhe. 
Commence thou then the fervid Hokey-Poke, 
A mad gyration, hips in wanton swirl. 
To spin! A wilde release from Heavens yoke. 
Blessed dervish! Surely canst go, girl. 
The Hoke, the poke -- banish now thy doubt 
Verily, I say, 'tis what it's all about.

Rock 'n' Roll Quote of the Week

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
- The Who -

Videos of the Week

The world's greatest kitten band returns with a song by Elbow.

A Day in the War as seen on CNN.

Poster of the Week

ANTI-WAR.US is dedicated to the free distribution of anti-war graphic material. 
All materials on this site are created voluntarily and distributed free to activists around the world.

And They Say Radiation is a BAD Thing

Worms contaminated by radioactivity from the Chernobyl nuclear accident have started having sex with each other instead of on their own.

Excuse U.S. Soldier Will Use When Charged with War Crimes

"I was only following orders."

Excuse George W. Bush Will Use When Charged with War Crimes

"I was only giving orders."

Major War Justification Story
(that has mysteriously only appeared in a Singapore newspaper)

The Marines found 123 prisoners, including five women, barely alive in an underground warren of cells and torture chambers.

Blow Me

Monica Lewinsky has a television show.

Staged Event of the Week

Why was there all that looting and plundering? U.S. troops encouraged it for the photo op.

The rescue of Private Jessica Lynch, which inspired America during one of the most difficult periods of the war, was not the heroic Hollywood story told by the U.S. military, but a staged operation that terrified patients and victimized the doctors who had struggled to save her life.

Tourist Spot of the Week

The Ossuary in Sedlec - Kutna Hora, chapel made of human bones.

I Feel So Much Safer Now

Nuala O'Connor Kelly, currently the privacy officer and chief counsel for the Department of Commerce's Technology Administration, has been named the nation's first privacy czar at the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Prior to joining the government, she was the privacy officer for online ad firm DoubleClick. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigated the company over complaints that DoubleClick was violating the privacy rights of Internet users by improperly sharing personal user data. Class action suits followed the FTC probe. 

The California Court of Appeals has overturned the marijuana convictions of two persons arrested after a California Highway Patrol officer stopped and searched their vehicle because they looked like hippies.

"Fox News has reported that an empty plastic bucket has been found in the Iraqi desert. 'The five gallon bucket could be used to mix chemicals,' a source close to Fox News said. 'This bucket may be a key find in the hunt for Weapons of Mass Destruction. You can definitely mix stuff in one of these.'"
- Fox News -

Scientists who study AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases say they have been warned by federal health officials not to use the phrases "sex workers," "men who sleep with men," "anal sex" or "needle exchange" if they want to get federal grants.

Mother Theresa predicted SARS.

Pentagon officials announced they do not plan to determine how many Iraqi civilians were killed in fighting during the war. (I'll save them the trouble. Civilian death now number around 2,000.)

At least 14 people were shot dead and several wounded in Mosul when US troops opened fire on a crowd after it turned against an American-installed local governor.

Allied troops now control all of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction oil fields.

The FBI wants to get its hands on your DNA.

Oh boy, you can chomp down your freedom fries and sign this petition to return the Statue of Liberty to France.

Journalists critical of the U.S. have been banned from meeting with the U.S. Civil Military Operations Center, or with other international journalists working out of the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad.

The enemy doesn't need Heraldo Rivera to provide troop information, it's being supplied by the U.S. Navy.

Iraq is about to be invaded by thousands of U.S. evangelical missionaries who say they are bent on a "spiritual warfare" campaign to convert the country's Muslims to Christianity.

The Bush administration awarded the Bechtel Group the first major contract in a vast reconstruction plan for Iraq that assigns no position of authority to the United Nations or Europe. The contract will initially pay Bechtel, a closely held San Francisco company that posted $11.6 billion in revenue last year, $34.6 million and could go up to $680 million over 18 months. They have a long history of doing business in Iraq, including an unsuccessful pipeline deal that at one point involved a meeting between Donald H. Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein.

Microsoft has a research project the goal of which is to collect everything you watch, read, listen to, and write about into a single, searchable database.

Bush has hired upright citizens to lead Iraq.

Afghanistan still has no new constitution, no new laws and no food.

The U.S. says it has no plans to remove the debris left over from depleted uranium weapons it is using in Iraq.

Economic slump? Not if you're a CEO.

More than 570,000 children nationwide could be eliminated from eligibility for after-school programs if the federal budget proposed by President Bush is adopted by Congress.

US forces tried to stop the media from covering a third day of anti-American protests by Iraqis outside a hotel housing a US operations base. ("The suggestion that the US would have deliberately attacked journalists is obviously completely false. You'd have to be an idiot to believe that." - Dick Cheney - )

Cartoon of the Week

Animation of the Week

The fun of looting.

The Other Side

Rachel Lucas is a 30-year-old gun-totin' capitalist oppressor college student who is vehemently pro-war, but I like her anyway.

Calling All Artists

This site lists art contests & competitions, art scholarships & grants, juried exhibitions, art jobs & internships, call for entries/proposals/papers, writing & photo contests, residencies, design & architecture competitions, auditions, casting calls, fellowships, festivals, funding, and other opportunities (including some that take place on the web) for artists, art educators and art students of all ages.

For Sale

GOLDEN HARP, 3000 B.C.GIVE OR TAKE 

This beautiful, ancient relic was found sitting on a devastated street corner in Baghdad and could find itself in your home, if you're the top bidder. I am not the original owner. My name is Mister X. Make money order out to Cash and send to the post office box below.
- Brad Schreiber - 

Best Excuse for Iraqis to Shoot Brandi in the Head

Censored Poet of the Week

Bill Nevins was suspended from his teaching job at Rio Rancho New Mexico public high school. Reading out loud of ALL POEMS has been banned by the school principal.  Why? Because a student read aloud the following poem.

Revolution X
by Courtney Butler

Bush said no child would be left behind 
And yet kids from inner-city schools 
Work on Central Avenue 
Jingling cans that read 
Please sir, may I have some more? 
They hand out diplomas like toilet paper 
And lower school standards 
Because 
Underpaid, unrespected teachers 
Are afraid of losing their jobs 
Funded by the standardized tests 
That shows our competency 
When I'm in detox. 
This is the Land of the Free ... 
Where the statute of limitations for rape is only five damn years! 
And immigrants can't run for President. 
Where Muslims are hunted because 
Some suicidal men decided they didn't like 
Our arrogant bid for modern imperialism. 
This is the Land of the Free ... 
You drive by a car whose 
Bumper screams 
God bless America! 
Well, you can scratch out the B 
And make it Godless 
Because God left this country a long time ago. 
The founding fathers made this nation 
On a dream and now 
Freedom of Speech 
Lets Nazis burn crosses, but 
Calls police to 
Gay pride parades. 
We somehow 
Can afford war with Iraq 
But we can't afford to pay the teachers 
Who educate the young who hold the guns 
Against the "Axis of Evil" 
Land of the Free ... 
This is the land 
If you're politically assertive 
They call you a traitor and 
Damn you to ostracism. 
Say good-bye to Johnny Walker Lindh 
And his family. 
Bye Bye. 
American Pie. 
So maybe 
My ideas about this nation 
Don't resolve around perfection 
But at least I know 
Education is more important 
Than money. 
Land of the Free . . . 
If this was utopia 
We'd have to see each other naked 
Before we got married 
But instead, we see each other naked all the time 
Because the government has my social security number 
And the name of my dog! 
And then we make babies, 
But don't worry, they won't be left behind 
And they grow up saying 
God bless America! 
But they don't know who Bush is 
Because they never learned the Presidents. 
And they will ride the ship Amistad 
To our dreamland shores 
Bearing the same shackles as us. 
I'm here to say that 
Generation X 
Is pissed and we are taking over, 
Ripping down the American illusion of perfection 
We are the future generation 
I have my qualifications 
I know it looks like Angel Soft paper, 
But don't worry 
It's a diploma 
Do I look qualified? 
You can take our toilet paper, 
But you can't take our Revolution. 

War Profiteer of the Week

Yee Haaa, get yerself some Anti-Ben and Jerry's Ice cream

Don't Take My Word For It

"Saddam Hussein's greatest crime is that he brought the American army to Iraq."
- Gailan Ramiz: Iraqi citizen -

"No hawk has asked me whether an America willing to resort to discretionary war could trigger a new worldwide arms race. We've just demonstrated technological wizardry capable of delivering a cruise missile or 'bunker buster' bomb into any bedroom in Moscow, Beijing, Damascus, Tehran, the West Bank -- even Havana. The pressure can only intensify to either match U.S. technology, deter it with nuclear brinksmanship (as the North Koreans are attempting) or challenge it with low-tech, anti-civilian strategies like suicide bombings."
- Robert Steinback: A dissenter looks at war's consequences -

"I've been all the way through this desert from Basra to here and I ain't seen one shopping mall or fast food restaurant. These people got nothing. Even in a little town like ours of twenty five hundred people you got a McDonald's at one end and a Hardees at the other."
- Sgt. Michael Sprague of While Sulphur Springs, W. Va. - 

"An alcoholic is someone you don't like who drinks as much as you do."
- Dylan Thomas - 

"Dozens of corpses lay rotting by roadsides or in cars blown up by U.S. forces as they captured Baghdad."
- David Fox: Reuters -

"Why should we hear about body bags and deaths. Oh, I mean, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?" 
- Barbara Bush -

"For lack of a beautiful mind, I agree with the Iraqi man who told a U.S. Marine, 'I'm going to exercise my right of free speech for the first time in my life - we want you out of here as soon a possible.'" 
- Joyce Marcel: For Lack of a Beautiful Mind -

"The fall of Baghdad was so sudden that it left many of the Arab and Muslim volunteers who went to Iraq to fight the coalition forces in total disarray. Initially given weapons and uniforms, thousands of these volunteers - who came from Yemen, Egypt, Syria, Indonesia, Malaysia and elsewhere - wound up having no one to tell them what to do."
- Baghdad Did Not Fall - It Was Handed Over -

"It would seem more preparation was made by the coalition to protect oil wells than to protect hospitals or water plants."
-  Irene Khan: secretary-general of Amnesty International -

"In times of war, the temptation for people to wrap themselves in the flag and then forget the principles for which it stands is overwhelming."
- Donna Lieberman: executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union -

"'The entire morning, everyone who had tried to cross the road had been shot... After 45 minutes, the first Baghdad citizens dared to come out. Arab interpreters in the tanks told the people to go and take what they wanted in the building. The word spread quickly and the building was ransacked. I was standing only 300 yards from there when the guards were murdered. Afterwards the tank crushed the entrance to the Justice Department, which was in a neighboring building, and the plundering continued there. I stood in a large crowd and watched this together with them. They did not partake in the plundering but dared not to interfere. Many had tears of shame in their eyes.' 'Are you saying that it was US troops who initiated the plundering?' 'Absolutely. The lack of jubilant scenes meant that the American troops needed pictures of Iraqis who in different ways demonstrated hatred for Saddam's regime.'"
- Ole Rothenborg: US Troops Encouraged Ransacking - 

"Aunt Polly allowed how she was going to civilize me. I've been that route before, so I lit out for the territory."
- Huckleberry Finn -

"In support of our brothers in Iraq, a bunch of drunk guys from Jersey tore down the statue at their local Big Boy!"
- Steven Alan Green -

"Since the beginning of the year, America has had its reconstruction plan in place. Answering directly to Centcom commander General Tommy Franks, retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner will be in command of the reconstruction effort. He will be aided by a series of military hardmen, diplomats and Republican party place-men who will help the United States create 'Free Iraq' -- aided by exiles who are returning to get their share of the spoils."
- Neil Mackay: Carving Up The New Iraq -

    "US account: US officials say the driver of the car failed to stop after warning shots were fired over the car and then at its engine. Soldiers fired at the passenger cabin "as a last resort". US soldiers at checkpoints were said to be jumpy after a suicide attack at a checkpoint had killed four servicemen. Pentagon officials insist that the correct procedures were followed, and that soldiers had acted in 'the appropriate way.'
   Other reports: William Branigin, a reporter with the Washington Post embedded with the US Third Infantry, witnesses the shooting and has a different account. He says that 10 people were killed, and no warning shots were fired. He reports that after the shooting Captain Ronny Johnson, the commander at the checkpoint, yelled at his platoon commander: 'You just [expletive] killed a family because you didn't fire a warning shot soon enough!' US forces, according to William Branigin, offered the survivors of the incident financial compensation."
- BBC - 

"I know the Americans said their war was with Saddam and not the Iraqi people, but this is now inside our hearts and will never leave. Each day when I come here, I have the same thought, everyone says the same thing. There is no other reaction. We hate the Americans.
- Al Aadhamiy inspecting the 1,020 year old tomb of Imam al Nawman riddled with bullet holes -

"Shall any prisoner of war be in the midst of PMS, chocolate will be provided. It is also in the best interest of the guard of said POW to provide ice cream and tissues for when said POW gets all weepy."
- Lynette Sheffield: The Geneva Convention Revisited -

    "I lost 10 of my family. I once lived in that house with six other relatives, now I am alone. Just before the invasion started much of my family came to stay in my home, it being made of reinforced concrete and very strong. There was my doctor son, my daughter - a microbiologist and her three sons. My other daughter is a medical consultant and she came with her infants. We all slept in a very safe place at the back of the house, my bed was just a few meters away from the rest. Several rockets had already fallen on a club across the road from my home, five days before my catastrophe.
   "Two days before, the Mukhabarat, the secret police building, was hit. We escaped without injury, though all our windows were destroyed. On 5 April at 5.30 am, a plane dropped a rocket on the main road. We all woke up. Just five minutes after we had returned to bed, the plane returned and dived very sharply, firing its rockets. They fell just at the back of the house where we were. The three walls of the room fell on many of my family killing them instantly. I went to the room and saw them all covered with the bricks and concrete that had fallen.
   "There were 13 in that room. I somehow managed to save one of my daughters, together with her son aged five and her six-month-old infant. Her third child was killed sleeping beside his grandmother, my wife. Despite my enormous efforts, I was unable to remove the things piled up on their bodies. My daughter-in-law went into the street shouting for help, but it was early and it was completely deserted. We had to wait for the ambulances to come to remove them, but they were all dead.
   "I gave the kiss of life to three as they were removed, but I could not restore their lives. They were under that heap for such a long while. If they had been buried for just a few minutes, they could have survived. But it was half an hour.
    "While I was busy removing my family and in such great shock and sorrow, people looted my house. They stole two cases, one containing all our jewelry and $25,000, the other containing new clothes I had just brought back from Manchester, where my two sons live as British citizens.
   "The coalition has now created an excuse that they were firing on a house adjacent to mine and that Ali Hassan, known to many as Chemical Ali, was inside. They attacked us just one day before Basra fell. They could have caught this man, not tried to kill him. Was it necessary to kill 20 people in our street for the sake of one bastard?
    "We were hoping the coalition would come to Iraq, but not to kill us. We are not the army, we don't live in an army base. I have spent my life away from politics. I have never interfered with Saddam and he has left me alone to live with my family, bring up my children and educate them. Now the coalition has killed a family of highly qualified people, irreplaceable people for Iraq. The coalition has got what it wanted, it has liberated the country. But as far as I am concerned, my loss is too great to accept."
- Abid Hassan Hamoodi: 72-year-old Iraqi citizen -

"God, no. What the hell are we fighting for?"
- Winston Churchill upon being asked whether England's arts budget should be cut to help fund World War II -

"Absolute power corrupted the Caliphs. It corrupts the rulers of theocracies in the world today. The very thought of it corrupts anybody who imagines himself to be the hand of God, and when his own hands hold the levers of enormous power over human affairs, one may say that the outlook is grim. Such a person will become willful not only in matters of religious doctrine but in all matters, since any act of his is presumably God's pleasure. Having once decided to take his country to war, he'll mentally drift among theories of motivation believing that God is moving through him in some mysterious way and that any such thing as a reason must be divined from the possible outcomes. The same certitude can make him insensitive to the patent debasement of his authority, as when the leader of a democracy moves with bland unconcern to crush ordinary people to the ground and deliver the last morsel of their economic security to the rich."
- Cassandra Notes: The Mohammedan Candidate -

"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." 
- Anatole France -

"Let me get this straight: Soldiers who are right now in the line of fire -- basically thousands and thousands of poor, undereducated young kids, baffled, stunned, patriotically misled -- praying for you and the success of your corporate regime? And not the other way around? Jesus has two words for you, Dubya: Step off."
- Mark Morford: A Prayer For George Dubya - What might the universe have to say to Shrub right now? Hint: It ain't exactly fan mail -

"It is not difficult to imagine how the case for the prosecution against the coalition might be constructed. An indictment would have three main elements. In the first place, Britain and the US have waged an illegal war, without the sanction of a UN resolution (in itself of dubious legality when it comes to a war launched in violation of the UN charter and fought on this scale). Any argument that Saddam's failure to disarm fast enough justified the invasion of his state, the destruction of Iraq's major cities and the killing of thousands of Iraqis fails on the legal concept of proportionality. In British law, a householder may not cut an intruder to shreds with an ax on suspicion of burglary; if he does so, he becomes the object of prosecution. The suspected - but as yet unproven - violations of disarmament resolutions should not justify in international law the massive destruction and dislocation of the entire Iraqi state."
- Richard Overy: Coalition in the Dock -

"Martyrs are being created by the pre-emptive war against Iraq, martyrs whom some radicals in the Muslim world will want to avenge through terrorist attacks. So it's almost predictable that the Bush administration will lose the war on terrorism because it has discounted the force of religion in the motive for terror." 
- Susan B. Thistlethwaite: president of Chicago Theological Seminary -

"There is usually a division of labor in doing and rationalizing the unthinkable, with the direct brutalizing and killing done by one set of individuals ... others working on improving technology (a better  crematory gas, a longer burning and more adhesive napalm, bomb fragments that penetrate flesh in hard-to-trace patterns). It is the function of the experts, and the mainstream media, to normalize the unthinkable for the general public."
- Edward Herman -

"So instead of loving what you think is peace, love other [people] and love God above all. And instead of hating the people you think are warmakers, hate the appetites and the disorder in your own soul, which are the causes of war. If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed - but hate these things in yourself, not in another." 
- Thomas Merton: New Seeds of Contemplation -

"Now that Sheriff W. has driven that varmint out of Iraq for mistreating citizens, how long will it take for him to (equally democratically) sort out Comrade Robert in Zimbabwe who is guilty of all the same crimes against his citizens? Zimbabwe may not have much oil (and a lot of it is wasted by poorly maintained diesel vehicles!) but it has a lot of tobacco. It also has a network of highways built for the pre-independence military, so invasion will be a piece of cake. Would tobacco (and righteousness?) be enough of a prize to entice the sheriff to round up a posse to go and impose some democracy on people who don't know the American way?"
- Nigel Mander -

"Man is the only Patriot. He sets himself apart in his own country,under his own flag, and sneers at other nations, and keeps multitudinous uniformed assassins on hand at heavy expense to grab slices of other people's countries." 
- Mark Twain: Letters from the Earth -

"When a man plants a shade tree under which he will never sit, we have arrived at civilization."
- Ancient Greek expression -

"And now there is talk that western collectors want the US to OK the sale of looted Iraqi antiquities on the open market, countermanding Iraq's strict antiquities laws. William Pealstein of the official-sounding but recently formed American Council for Cultural Policy described Iraq's laws as 'retentionist.' Considering how quickly there are fake groups and absurd new lingo to sanitize the plunder of Iraq, it now seems very possible that all the damage that has been done wasn't just the result of impulsive mobs."
- Barry Crimmins -

"The big elephant sitting in the corner is that George W. Bush is simply unqualified for the job... What's his accomplishment? That he's no longer an obnoxious drunk?"
- Ronald Reagan Jr. -

"If I don't know I don't know, I think I know. If I don't know I know, I think I don't know."
- R.D. Laing -

"We're here in Iraq now."
- George W. Bush, speaking from Camp David, Iraq -

"I don't want to just entertain people. I want to change their lives. I want them to wake up in the middle of the night and think that everything they're doing is wrong."
- Clifford Odets in Frances -

Why Am I Not Surprised?

Donald Rumsfeld sold nuclear reactors to North Korea.

The Amish have drag races.

Belated Christmas Gift

The First Ten Amendments to the constitution of the United States
printed on sturdy, pocket-sized, pieces of metal. The next time you travel 
by air, take the Security Edition of the Bill of Rights along with you. 
When asked to empty your pockets, proudly toss the Bill of Rights 
in the plastic bin. You need to get used to offering up the bill of rights 
for inspection and government workers need to get used to deciding 
if you'll be allowed to keep the Bill of Rights with you when you travel.

Quiz from Hell

According to a scientist who claims to have worked in Iraq's chemical weapons program, Iraq destroyed its weapons only days before the war began. They did this because...

a) they didn't want to be tempted to use them during the U.S. invasion.

b) they knew the U.S. was going to win anyway and they didn't want the U.S. to find any weapons AFTER the war so they could go "nyah nyah, we didn't have any weapons."

History Lessons from Hell

On June 8, 1967, the United States of America was attacked by Israel.


Mr. Conspiracy Says...

The real reason we went to war with Iraq is because Saddam Hussein was planning on switching to the Eurodollar.

Am I the Only One...

...who wants to gouge out the eyes of the ad execs who came up with all these new campaigns for drugs that say "ask your doctor if Fuckitall is right for you" without ever mentioning what the drug is for?

Everything Else

Mandatory reading: Robert Fisk is the best reporter on the scene in Baghdad. I'm serious. This is mandatory.

The Nation agrees that The Daily Show is the best news show on television.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll get around to doing some more Ask Dr. Hollywood real soon, but in the meantime, this place does a pretty good job of answering screenwriting questions.

This site puts forth the rather astonishing theory that George Bush was behind the assassination of John Lennon.

If you're planning on traveling this summer, you better brush up on swearing in different languages.

I don't think Ray Harryhausen would approve of this version of YMCA.

CNN amplified the booing in its re-broadcast of Michael Moore's George Bush-bashing Oscar speech. 

The most commonly misspelled words on the Internet.

U.S. Allied Forces Commander General Tommy Franks could face trial in Belgium for war crimes under the country's amended genocide law after four Belgian doctors lodged a complaint in Brussels.

Lesbian pop group Tatu have sparked outrage by calling for young schoolgirls to join them in a mass naked photo shoot.

The Patriot Act II translated into English.

100 questions and answers about Arab Americans

A fascinating research paper (in PDF format) on How online Americans have used the Internet to learn war news, understand events, and promote their views.

Everybody who accepts the official version of 9/11 had better read this.

The Red Cross says the civilian casualties in the war are worse than you could ever imagine.

Forget Jessica Lynch, read about her tentmate.
 

Last Disinfotainment Today Issue #50
Next Disinfotainment Today Issue #52

Satan for President in 2004
 



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Acknowledgment

dIsInFoTaInMeNt ToDaY consists of information from dozens of sources, cut up, thrown in the air, and recycled randomly. It is sent all over the place, so I apologize if you're seeing the same thing twice. If you see a joke, graphic, or news item that came from or through you, thanks, send more, and please accept the fact that much of dIsInFoTaInMeNt ToDaY is unacknowledgeable, and if I sought permission from everyone whose bastardized material showed up here, I'd never get anything else done. Please note that I don't even put my own name on it. If you're still pissed off, hey, it's fair use.
 

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