04
Apr
Your Letters And More
Damagement writes:
“”I was just reading your blog and saw the link to Truthout.org on wounded US soldiers and I passed by it without opening it because I just didn’t want to see the sad pictures today and get depressed. Within a few seconds I changed my mind and thought the least I can do is to acknowledge them and see their faces and the message they bring. They are all so young. I am so angry beyond words that we don’t get to see their faces and hear their agony and frustration as they return home to a life that has been changed forever. People need to see all faces of war, not just the shock, the awe and the high five that follows.
“The soldiers’ faces show the side of war that our government doesn’t want us to see and I say the least we can do is acknowledge them, tell them that we see them and we thank them for being out there and getting hurt for something that I believe, even they don’t fully support. And maybe — just maybe — the next time someone full heartedly supports war as if it’s an ‘us against them’ game, as they’re sitting comfy at home eating dinner and watching TV, they remember the faces on these soldiers and they think twice. This would be the most patriotic act anyone can show.
“Has watching all this TV and video games made us so hard and detached that we have people forgotten the value of one single person’s life? Say it aint so!”
STARVE FOX?
Tom writes:
Check out
Paul writes from Montana:
“Danny, read your piece at smirkingchimp.com. Thanks for all the good work.
“I think progressives can never win until they realize conservatism, fascism,and many forms of extremism are tied to an irrational need for certainty(fear of uncertainty, etc) (see Yost et al, “Political Conservatism asMotivated Social Cognition” — link at website below) caused in part by the fact that in many humans the early neural patterning associated with sexual
satisfaction is linked to the right hand, which is connected to the left/logical/rational side of the brain.“Maybe that’s what the problem is with our ‘decadent’ ‘religious’ society — simultaneous devaluation of art and other right brained activitiecoinciding with high titilation, frustration, and privacy factors. We’re generally a frustrated society trying to find satisfaction with certitude and magnitude (greed). And certainty becomes more important than truth. Maybe thats why the GOP spent hundreds of millions on talk radio to make the last election george the certain vs kerry the flip flopper.”
http://sexonthewrongbrain.org
Jack Shultz of Pointe Claire, Quebec, writes:
“That was a very interesting story from Denver that you covered from the Daily Kos concerning Democratic activists who were forced to leave a so-called ‘Town-Hall meeting’ with the President that was supposed to discuss social security. Apparently, there was a similar story from Fargo, ND. I had heard about the audience for the President’s events were carefully vetted, but I wasn’t aware that these events were being paid for by taxpayers, and not the Republican Party. If taxpayers are paying for it, it is therefore by definition a public event.
“Other writers on the Kos web site began discussing the possibility of Democrats trying to attend these presidential events by the hundreds, bring their own video cameras and video phones, and notifying the local media outlets, raising a public fuss, maybe even forcing the President to answer their questions.
“I thought that it was a wonderful idea. If neither the media nor the Democratic Party leadership will confront the President, maybe its time that the rank and file of the party, Democrats and other dissenters, did.”
DENNIS IS BAAACK
Anita of Ramsey, NJ, writes:
“Hello Danny, don’t know if you’ve wind of this yet…
“Upcoming Kucinich.us website relaunch
“A message from Congressman Dennis Kucinich:
“In seven days, on Tuesday, April 5, I will relaunch http://www.kucinich.us, the Web site originally used for my 2004 Presidential campaign. Dedicated to empowering activists nationwide, Kucinich.us will be a platform for educating and organizing around the issues that brought millions of people together to create a politics with heart and intelligence, celebrating our highest capabilities and enabling the triumph of hope over fear.
“The theme of the new Kucinich.us will be “Insight and Action.” To aid in the education and empowerment of activists everywhere, I will share my insights on a range of critical issues. I’ll give calls to specific action and provide specific tools to help engage supporters in working to change the world, starting in your own communities.”
Deborah writes:
“In response to that woman from Spokane who can’t understand what kids go through that might push them to murder, perhaps, it might help her to feel what that hand was that Weise was dealt. I know I go on and on about him (and for all the others like him as well) but there are days it just causes me some concern that adults can’t recall what it is like to be an adolescent, can’t empathize with someone’s pain. I don’t really care whether anyone thinks he should have been able to handle the cards he was dealt. The point was — he couldn’t.
“There was a very revealing interview with the principal of the school. He went on and on about how terrible, the ways in which they had tried to make the kids feel safe with security guards and metal detectors and drills for such events. At the end of the interview he said, it was time to forget about No Child Left Behind and test scores and just think about the kids. He didn’t care anymore how they did on a test. He wanted them alive. (This was on NPR, of course.)
“It is alright to be enraged that Weise was driven to this extreme, but it is also alright to expend the time and energy to feel what it is like to be in his shoes. And now for your words, Danny, “Kids are being taught attitude, not critical thinking. They know that what matters is the bottom line. They don’t respect society because society doesn’t respect them.”
WHAT DID HE SAY? WHEN DID HE SAY IT?
Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez said the abusive interrogation rules used at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq “were drafted ‘at the company commander level.’ He said he had ‘no role in preparing or approving it.’”
– USA Today,
VERSUS
In a memo dated 9/14/03, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top United States commander in Iraq, “authorized prisoner interrogation tactics that were harsher than accepted Army practice, including using guard dogs to exploit ‘Arab fear of dogs.’”
– NYT,
OH?
Bill O’Reilly on Fox last Thursday:
“I’ve studied this pope as well as I’ve studied anybody. And I can’t find anything, anything that this guy didn’t walk the walk. You know, right down the line.”
Bill O’Reilly, 12 March 2003 edition of the O’Reilly Factor:
“But as I’ve said before, I believe also that John Paul is naive and detached from reality. If America does not lead an attack on Iraq, once again, Saddam remains in power and is free to use his anthrax and other terrible weapons as he chooses. So the pope does not seem to be concerned about that or about Saddam’s behavior in general. Once again, he must know Saddam is a killer. He must know he’s oppressed his own people using murder and torture. He must know that.”
Daniel DeLeo writes from Denver:
“The more they attack you, the more they are afraid that you’re making a difference… so smile next time they slander you.”
Urs Oh:
“To me, responding to attacks from the right is fruitless, they seem to like the truth bent to their liking, no matter how FCCed-up it is.
“At the same time I like to read between the lines, and with what AIM writes about CNN, Jordan, and you, ‘accurately’ only confirms that there was a deliberate targeting of journalists by the U.S.
“The more they scream to distract, the more they confirm it happened.”
JANE FONDA ON 60 MINUTES
Mark this date: April 30 marks the 30th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War. Efforts to cash in are underway.
It was weird to watch Jane Fonda waffle in her interview with Leslie Stahl last night on 60 Minutes in an interview that was more of a promotion for her new book, excerpted in TIME this week. Weird because the issues were so distorted. Fonda was derided for “shlepping” her own laundry as if she her movie star status earned her a world of servants and the like. Besides, her original “apologies” were made years ago, in the late l980’s, and are now being repeated as part of the book promotion. It’s nothing she hasn’t said before in an attempt to cool out the rightwing groups that used her as a symbol for their campaign against the anti-war movement. In a sense, they cast her as a celebrity in their movie to defend the war.
It is to her credit that even while appearing to backtrack from her stand against the War, she still defended it, except for visiting an anti-aircraft batter in North Vietnam which was defending the city of Hanoi and its people from the B52 bombings ordered by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger.
What wasn’t mentioned — even as Fonda discussed other “delegations” that went to Vietnam in solidarity with people many American anti-war activists believed were defending themselves against an illegal war — was that she went as part of the Indochina Peace Campaign, a part of the anti-war movement, She may have been “shrill,” but it was a shrill time.
60 Minutes’ references to all the Vietnam vets who hated her left out all the GIs in groups like Vietnam Veterans Against the War (headed for a time, let us recall, by John Kerry) who admired her stand. Fonda supported the GI coffee house movement that did anti-war organizing near military bases. Leslie’s reference to Jane Fonda being “paraded around” in Vietnam was misleading.
I am not sure who was doing the most pandering, Lesley Stahl or Jane Fonda. I especially liked Stahl asking Fonda how she would feel about a movie star visiting Iraq to meet the insurgents. Ask yourself: when was the last time you saw a report that reported in their position. Maybe, in our celebrity obsessed society, that’s what it takes to hear the voice of “the enemy.” Jane Fonda showed many Americans that the “enemy” then were human beings with a reason for fighting. Why give the Iraqi resistance any airtime today?
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I had a great packed screening on Saturday hosted by the Pocono Progressives in East Straudsburg. I will be off to Bologna in Italy for a screening next weekend. We are pleased that so many organizations are working with us to promote WMD. Write David@wmdthefilm.com for more information.
Our Scottish friend Paul O’Hanlon has been traveling in the Middle East, showing WMD when he can. He screened it in Cairo last week. He is now in Taba in Egypt and sends this report:
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/world/2005/04/308317.html
NEED RELIEF FROM NEWS? TAKE AMNEZAC
http://www.fulana.org/amnezac.html (requires quicktime)
Your comments welcome: write dissector@mediachannel.org
