Mandatory Reading

[Michael Meacher] is not a back-bench maverick or a member of what the right-wing British press likes to refer to as the "loony left." On the contrary, he was the Labour Party's most experienced cabinet minister, having served in Parliament for 33 years, holding various cabinet posts going back to the Wilson and Callaghan administrations in the 1970s. He served in Blair's cabinet as environment minister for six years until he was removed in June amid the mounting crisis of the Labour government over the Iraq war. He played a prominent role in the negotiation of the Kyoto accords on the environment and was long considered a contender for the position of Labour Party leader. That someone with these political connections charges in print that elements within the U.S. administration knew that a terrorist attack was coming on September 11 and allowed it to happen to further their war plans represents an extremely dangerous development for the Bush White House. He speaks not just for himself. The thesis he advances is indicative of what is assumed and is being said behind the scenes among much wider circles within the sole major government to have backed Washington in its invasion of Iraq.
- Bill Vann -

Read Michael Meacher's This war on terrorism is bogus.

Fan Mail for Mordechai Vanunu: The Prisoner of Zion

Sir,

    Mordechai Vanunu is a traitor and deserves what he got. Pollard is in American jail life in prison for much less important info that he provided to an ally who was suppose to get the information from the US but the US broke it's word and didn't provide the info.
    Israel has nuclear weapons and it scares the fuck out of all the anti-Israelis. What makes France or China more acceptable to people in possessing nuclear weapons than Israel. Does France need it for protection or does Israel?
    The BBC is a biased anti-Israeli lying scum! The gas story is total fabrication by the Palestinians which the BBC loves.
    The Web is amazing for passing both information and disinformation. And a lot of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic information. We just have to stay vigilant. Fuck the left! Fuck the BBC! Fuck the French! Fuck the Chinese! And most of all Fuck the Arabs! Now you know my sentiment. 

Bitzy

Bitzy,
    Remember in Dr. Strangelove when the Soviet Ambassador first brings up the "doomsday device" and the President says something like "What's the point of such a weapon if you keep it a secret?"
   "The premiere was going to announce it next week," said the ambassador. "You know how he likes his little surprises."
   I would ask the same thing of Israel. Israel is completely surrounded by enemies who would like to destroy it. Israel having a nuclear deterrent is a GOOD thing, and I think even Vanunu would agree. If they didn't have a nuclear deterrent, they could get wiped off the map. Nobody disagrees with Israel's need to defend itself against Arab aggression.
   But for such a deterrent to work, the enemy has to know about it. Everyone knows now and the deterrent is working, but what on earth was the point of keeping it a secret 15 years ago? It made the Israeli nuclear program look offensive instead of defensive. Exactly what harm did Vanunu do? He let Israel's enemies know they'd better watch out. All he did was spoil Israel's little "surprise." Unless they had something more devious in mind.
MD

MD,

    You are wrong in your Dr. Strangelove analogy.
    Because Israel is the pariah state of the world, it needs the world to believe that it has nuclear weapons (this is for deterrence purposes), however it can not officially acknowledge the existence of these weapons, as the UN resolutions and the boycotts and sanctions that will be imposed on Israel by all the "loving left wing countries" such as freedom loving Cuba and all the "hateful right wing countries" such as Mayanmar and peace loving Pakistan etc. And the "self righteous countries" such as France and Belgium. All of which support a slimy autocratic bully terrorist like Yasser Arafat while denigrating a democratic country like Israel. Such misplaced morality that it is disgustingly unbelievable.
    There are 21 Arab countries plus the PA, 57 Moslem countries, over 100 third world countries under pressure by Arab oil and Moslem minorities, in addition you have some of the former Soviet Union countries and of course France and China.  Add to that the worldwide anti-Semitism that still exists today and Israel doesn't stand a chance if it admitted that it has nuclear weapons. It must let the world think and believe that it has these weapons as a deterrent but at the same time have plausible deniability for lack of proof. 
Bitzy

Anyone want to respond to this?

BTW: Vanunu isn't the only one in an Israeli prison who doesn't belong there. Read the story of Daoud Dirawi.

What the Hell was I Thinking?

This is the cover of the new DVD of The Sure Thing, featuring a stunning shot of Nicollette Sheridan and a quote by me. Okay, I was, in fact, the film critic for the L.A. Weekly, and I vaguely remember reviewing The Sure Thing, but I didn't remember THAT quote, so I dug out my archives. Hoo boy, is this one embarrassing. My editor must have been out of his mind to let me get away with it. The lead actress (Daphne Zuniga) reminded me of a girl I loved so I got a wee bit more personal than most critics ever get. Here, for the record, is my complete review, from the L.A. Weekly, 1985...

THE SURE THING

A gentle teenage comedy that's honest and low key, a delightful cross between It Happened One Night and what happened to me last week. John Cusack plays a young Ivy-leaguer traveling across the country to meet the "sure thing" dream date a buddy has promised is waiting for him in California. Along the way he is forced to become the traveling companion of the uptight English major he has worshipped both from afar and up close (they sat next to each other in class the preceding term). She can't stand him. That doesn't cause him too much pain at first because he has his Sure Thing dream date to look forward to, but as the story progresses and their travels get them in and out of a variety of entertaining scrapes, he forgets the object of his dreams and sets about courting the reality at hand. Rob Reiner's direction is subtle and precise as it was on Spinal Tap, and he gives us a host of standout supporting characters and performances (such as those by Garry Goodrow and Larry Hankin) that almost deserve films of their own. I must confess though, it is impossible for me to be objective about the romance in this movie. Daphne Zuniga is such a perfect embodiment of a certain type of Eastern college girl - smart and passionate and impossibly cool - that it was all too easy to identify her with the girl of my dreams (Rachel will you marry me), so that tears were streaming down my face and this film gets my unapologetic nomination for Greatest Film Ever Made. At least it would be wonderful to believe, as this film so winningly suggests, that all it takes to win the heart of an impossible dreamgirl is to be unflappably cute, persistent...and to be accidentally right at her side at precisely the moment she needs you the most."

And just for the record, here's what I said about "Barbarian Queen." Let me know if you see it on the DVD cover.

"One of the great lost films of Paul Lynde. Just kidding. This film is neither great nor lost, but grating it and losing it isn't a bad idea."

Oh man, I've started and I can't stop. Weird reading yourself from almost 20 years ago. Here are some other quick quotes you won't be reading on any DVDs...

Raging Bull
"Biography of an idiot who likes to get punched in the face."

Sophie's Choice
"After three hours of character development, the film doesn't end happily for anyone concerned but the projectionist."

Hog Wild
"The first film rated PG that sucks more than Deep Throat."

Deathwish II
"The strongest argument against gun control I've ever seen. Everyone involved in this production deserves to be shot."

Herbie Goes Bananas
"Some day when they defrost Walt Disney from his cryogenic tomb, he'll see this film and jump right back in the freezer."

Gas
"Not very funny, but only compared to every other comedy ever made."

The Seduction
"Morgan Fairchild is Vogue on the outside and vague on the inside."

The House on Sorority Row
"Anyone who's got nothing better to do than see this picture still shouldn't see it."

Krull
"A film of utterable horror and bearable tension."

Treasure of the Four Crowns
"The first 3-D film with no depth and bad breadth."

Lonely Lady
"The only scene in which Pia Zadora is the least bit convincing is the one in which she's catatonic."

Yor
"No matter how this film was financed, it was a negative pickup deal."

Hercules
"I came home and watched a National Geographic special on elephants that had better acting than this."

Warning!

Aw, Fuck it, Go Ahead and Masturbate

 I Feel So Much Safer Now

Researchers horrified to find they had used a mislabeled bottle in an experiment retracted their findings on Friday, saying they had failed to show the drug Ecstasy can cause a certain pattern of brain damage.

"Klump was not in prison for murder, rape, drugs or any of the common offenses against society. His offense was one that astounded the most hardened and cynical of the criminals in the penal complex where he is housed. Klump's 'crime' boiled down to 'trespassing' cows on Bureau of Land Management property in Arizona's Dos Cabezas Mountains."
- J. Zane Walley: Has Wally Klump Failed The Law, Or Has The Law Failed Wally? 70-year-old rancher in prison for grazing cattle on government allotments -

Robot from Hell

Meet the Snakebot

Mr. Conspiracy Says...

Don't tell me you actually believe the UN headquarters in Baghdad was blown up by a bomb in a blue truck? The raw video footage tells an entirely different story.

Don't Take My Word For It

"The lesson of the hour is that while property is good, life is better; that while possessions are valuable, life is without price. Because life is sacred, we realize today the indivisible oneness of human welfare. These women and these men will have died in vain unless we today highly resolve that my brothers wrong is my wrong. I am not merely the keeper of my brother and sister, but the justice-dealing brother to all men and women in God's world."
- Rabbi Steven S. Wise: March 26, 1911, Remarks at a meeting the day after a fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory killed 146 workers, mostly young immigrant women. Quoted in Rabbi and Minister: The Friendship of Stephen S. Wise and John Haynes Homes by Carl Hermann Voss (1964) -

"While no intelligent person would be satisfied with limiting his reading ability to the first grade level, many smart people etch into rock the emotionality of a childish faith. This  certainly explains the behavior of John Ashcroft. He also is a very smart individual whose spiritual growth is stunted by infantile emotional experiences. Had Justice Moore allowed his faith to grow beyond a childish level, he would be able to study the Bible intelligently and prudently. As it is, the content of the Justice's faith is frozen like a 10,000 year old mammoth in Siberia."
- John Brand: No Backing Down -

"It takes a village to raise a village idiot." 
- Cooper Wiseman -

"Everywhere is not everywhere; it is just called everywhere."
- Hui-k'ung: The Pocket Zen Reader -

"The trouble is we're fool enough to think we're missing something if we don't spend each day nit-picking our minds. We think were losing chances. Life's little opportunities are passing us by. We forget our real ideas just occur to us out of the blue. One day you'll be sitting down doing something else and it strikes you. Why don't I do that? It's so clear you set to work immediately. There's nothing about it that's come of dwelling on discontentment. You let your thoughts push you around for nothing if you think it'll result in eventual inspiration."
- Joel Biroco: Slow Volcano -

"I am angry that so many of the sons of the powerful and well-placed...managed to wrangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units. Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class discrimination strikes me as the most damaging to the ideal that all Americans are created equal and owe equal allegiance to their country."
- Colin Powell from his autobiography -

"I stood inside and looked to where the men must have been standing, towards the apartment houses the other way. I could not find impacts on the concrete paths or on the facing walls that would suggest that there was a two-way firefight here. Whatever happened here was one-sided, a wall of fire unleashed at a building packed with sleeping families. Further examination shows powder burns where door locks had been shot off and splintered wood where the doors had been kicked in. All the evidence was that this was a raid that - like so many before it - went horribly wrong."
- Peter Beaumont: Farah tried to plead with the US troops but she was killed anyway -

"After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say 'I want to see the manager.'"
- William S. Burroughs -

"Anger is the real destroyer of our good human qualities; an enemy with a weapon cannot destroy these qualities, but anger can. Anger is our real enemy."
- His Holiness the Dalai Lama -

"Mr. Bush has done things in my name, and yours, which repulse me. I have no doubt that Saddam Hussein's two sons needed to be brought to justice. But I was disgusted that my country gave sponsor to the notion of showing their dead faces on television, as though that might reassure the Iraqis. This was the modern international equivalent of brutal tribes placing their conquered foes heads on a spike in the town square."
- James C. Moore: I Love My Country. I Hate My President -

"There are only two ways to live your life. One as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."
- Albert Einstein -

"Iraqgate may go down in history as the greatest justice or injustice that has ever been committed by mankind, depending on whether the investigation is allowed to proceed. Iraqgate is about an unjustified and unjustifiable, illegal act of violence against a sovereign nation, outside the auspices of the existing forum of law, an act in which many thousands of civilians were slaughtered. Iraqgate is about cooking the facts to present a causus belli when none existed. Iraqgate is about the governments of the USA, UK, Portugal, Spain, Poland and Australia, lying to their institutions, to their people, quoting falsities as fact, presenting forgeries and hearsay as evidence, or supporting those who did so, their leaders showing qualities as fishwives, not statesmen. Iraqgate is about the manifest disregard for the proper channels of international law and diplomacy by the perpetrators of this act of evil, these war crimes, this alarm signal which heralds the turning point between real freedom and democracy and the first signs of a renaissance of fascism on a global scale."
- Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey: Iraqgate now -

"There is no activity in the cosmos more unvarying, more predictable than the rate at which uranium turns into lead. That's a good thing. If the universal clock was based upon the rate at which novelty turns into routine, we might never show up at the dentist on time."
- Tom Robbins: Villa Incognito -

"When a man has taken a bride, he shall not go out with the army or be assigned to it for any purpose; he shall be exempt for one year for the sake of his household, to give happiness to the woman he has married."
- Parashah (24:5) -

"Your own words are the bricks and mortar of the dreams you want to realize. Your words are the greatest power you have. The words you choose and the use establish the life you experience."
- Sonia Croquette -

"The best craftsman always leaves holes and gaps in the works of the poem so that something that is not in the poem can creep, crawl, flash, or thunder in. The joy and function of poetry is, and was, the celebration of man, which is also the celebration of God."
- Dylan Thomas -

"Bush is counting on his assault on Iraq and his continued exploitation of the 9/11 attacks to help him become the first president to serve two full terms of office by winning only one election."
- Barry Crimmins -

"Honestly, I think we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes and we should just support that, you know, and be faithful in what happens."
- Britney Spears -

"Work like you don't need the money...Love like you've never been hurt...Dance like there's nobody watching."
- Satchel Paige -

Satan Doesn't Want You to Know

How to remove stains...

Alcohol: Quickly soak in water or glycerin, then rinse in vinegar and water. 
Blood: Cold water, vigorously applied. If its dry, peroxide. 
Butter: Grease solvent, rubbed in hard, followed by a one-hour soak in heavy detergent before washing. 
Coffee: Club soda or cold water. 
Gum: Peanut butter and orange oil cleaners will dissolve it. 
Ink: A dollop of hairspray, scrubbed with a toothbrush, then laundered. 
Ketchup: Cold water and dish detergent, if caught fresh. 
Kool-Aid: Water, if its fresh. Bleach, if the fabric is white. 
Sweat: Soak in white vinegar. 
Lipstick: Orange oil cleaners rubbed in. 
Pencil: Needs a heavy-rinse detergent, agitated, then ammonia, agitated. Repeat as needed.

Everything Else

This transcript of a phone call between Dan Benham and Ron Supinski of the Public Information Department of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank will convince you to take your savings out of a bank and put it in your mattress.

Here's a lovely memo to Bush: While you were on vacation.