Blog For Free!
Archives
Home
2005 July
2005 June
2005 May
2005 April
2005 March
2005 January
2004 December
2004 November
2004 October
2004 September
2004 August
2004 July
2004 June
2004 May
2004 April
2004 March
2004 February
2004 January
2003 December
2003 November
2003 October
2003 September
2003 August
2003 July
My Links
STOP TCPA!!!!
tBlog
My Profile
Send tMail
My tFriends
My Images
Sponsored
Blog
"Those who are willing to give up freedom for a little safety deserve neither freedom nor safety." -Benjamin Franklin
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." Theodore Roosevelt
digg links, for the techie:
|
| .....The Paper Trail |
| 05.31.04 (8:35 pm) [edit] |
Sunday, May. 30, 2004
Vice President Dick Cheney was a guest on NBC's Meet the Press last September when host Tim Russert brought up Halliburton. Citing the company's role in rebuilding Iraq as well as Cheney's prior service as Halliburton's CEO, Russert asked, "Were you involved in any way in the awarding of those contracts?" Cheney's reply: "Of course not, Tim ... And as Vice President, I have absolutely no influence of, involvement of, knowledge of in any way, shape or form of contracts led by the [Army] Corps of Engineers or anybody else in the Federal Government."
Cheney's relationship with Halliburton has been nothing but trouble since he left the company in 2000. Both he and the company say they have no ongoing connections. But TIME has obtained an internal Pentagon e-mail sent by an Army Corps of Engineers official—whose name was blacked out by the Pentagon—that raises questions about Cheney's arm's-length policy toward his old employer. Dated March 5, 2003, the e-mail says "action" on a multibillion-dollar Halliburton contract was "coordinated" with Cheney's office. The e-mail says Douglas Feith, a high-ranking Pentagon hawk, got the "authority to execute RIO," or Restore Iraqi Oil, from his boss, who is Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. RIO is one of several large contracts the U.S. awarded to Halliburton last year.
The e-mail says Feith approved arrangements for the contract "contingent on informing WH [White House] tomorrow. We anticipate no issues since action has been coordinated w VP's [Vice President's] office." Three days later, the Army Corps of Engineers gave Halliburton the contract, without seeking other bids. TIME located the e-mail among documents provided by Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group.
Cheney spokesman Kevin Kellems says the Vice President "has played no role whatsoever in government-contract decisions involving Halliburton" since 2000. A Pentagon spokesman says the e-mail means merely that "in anticipation of controversy over the award of a sole-source contract to Halliburton, we wanted to give the Vice President's staff a heads-up."
Cheney is linked to his old firm in at least one other way. His recently filed 2003 financial-disclosure form reveals that Halliburton last year invoked an insurance policy to indemnify Cheney for what could be steep legal bills "arising from his service" at the company. Past and present Halliburton execs face an array of potentially costly litigation, including multibillion-dollar asbestos claims.
|
|
|
| |
| ....The Los Angeles Times: "An Alternate History of the Last Four Years" |
| 05.20.04 (7:11 pm) [edit] |
Substance Over Style
By Kenneth Turan / Los Angeles Times
CANNES, France -- "What if," wonders Michael Moore, just asking, "George Bush filed a Writers Guild grievance against my film? Because the funniest lines in it are his, not mine."
Never mind Brad Pitt and Tom Hanks, Cameron Diaz and Angelina Jolie, this almost willfully unglamorous man in jeans, sandals, pullover shirt and "Made in Canada" baseball cap is the center of the Festival de Cannes' biggest media storm. Variety cheekily calls him "Fest's Fave Pest," while a French film magazine more grandly insists he's one man "Contre L'Empire," against the American empire.
"It's a product of the times we live in, not me," Moore says, thinking about it. "With what's going on in the world, in the States, this becomes a focal point because I'm willing to put my toe in the water and make a movie about something."
That movie, "Fahrenheit 9/11," which had an unprecedented five same-day screenings on Monday, four of them for the press, became a cause celebre even before it got here when Disney Co. refused to allow Harvey Weinstein and his Miramax division to distribute it because of the film's partisan political nature. That led, among other things, to a political cartoon with a "Snow White and the Six Dwarfs" marquee and a man saying, "Sneezy's a Bush Critic, So Disney Dumped Him."
Always one to relish moments like that, a buoyant Weinstein showed up at the end of "Fahrenheit's" first press screening, insisting he was there "for reactions" and not to answer questions about the film's still undecided distribution future. "Have I ever let you down?" he answered when a plaintive European television journalist asked if America would get to see the film. Clearly enjoying the brouhaha, Weinstein sighed an ironic sigh and said, to no one in particular, "All those reports about me losing my edge are so true."
Though it's been characterized in press reports as an examination of the Bush family's relationship to Saudi Arabia, the impressive "Fahrenheit 9/11" turns out to be both more ambitious and more complex.
What Moore has in effect given us is an alternate history of the last four years on the U.S. political scene "as if [counterculture historian] Howard Zinn had a movie camera," he says, that covers the disputed 2000 election, the Patriot Act and the preamble to and aftermath of the Iraqi invasion, as well as that Bush-Saudi connection.
The film is also, not unexpectedly, an unapologetic and incendiary indictment of the current administration's policies and their implications.
But that fury is leavened by surprisingly emotional sequences, excellent use of previously unseen footage and Moore's trademark impish sense of humor, his sharp eye for both what he can make fun of and what makes fun of itself.
That category includes U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft singing "Let the Eagle Soar," a song of his own composing, unedited clips of the president that the networks have never shown us, as well as candidate Bush meeting Moore on the campaign trail and saying, "Behave yourself, will you? Go find real work." But the film also includes video footage of soldiers in the field abusing Iraqi prisoners -- some laugh as they grab a prisoner's genitals through a blanket -- as well as interviews with discontented GIs captured by Moore cameramen embedded with U.S. troops under non-Michael Moore pretenses.
What is perhaps most surprising in "Fahrenheit 9/11" is Moore's decision to make himself less visible as an on-camera presence, in part because the filmmaker says he "has not been able to come to grips with my own recovery from Sept. 11."
"I'm someone who lives in New York, who was supposed to fly that day, who lost a friend on the Boston flight, who watched the World Trade Center being built from my aunt's porch on Staten Island," he says. "I just couldn't come to grips with my own sadness, I just wasn't there yet. I felt that the issues that sprung from Sept. 11 deserved to be much more front and center."
Besides, Moore says, "I don't personally like to be on camera, I don't like looking at myself on screen. There's always been a sign in my editing rooms that says 'When in doubt, cut me out.' I've found that a little bit of me goes a long way."
For all the confidence of his films and his politics, Moore can sound uncertain and ambivalent about his personal appearances. This is how he describes what went through his head the night he won his Oscar for "Bowling for Columbine" and made a famously political speech from the podium.
"Do you think I wanted to give that speech at the Oscars?" he says, warming to the subject. "That was my night; I'd accomplished something. Was I going to give up my moment for the greater good, hokey as that sounds?
"Climbing the stairs, I was like Gollum in 'Lord of the Rings' with two voices in my head. Just blow them a kiss. No, you have work to do. You don't have to say anything, just thank your agent. Shut up, there's a war going on; you have to say something."
Hearing Moore's passionate rendition of the two Gollum voices, one stern, the other flighty, is a reminder of how funny he is in person, and the filmmaker doesn't want that forgotten as far as his film is concerned. "I believe in healthy doses of humor, if we sink into despair about what we're going through we won't survive," he says. "You want to do something that's fresh, something that's original, not the same old, same old. I always start with the attitude, 'What would be cool to see?' If I put the message first, I believe no one will go. I say that so much it sounds like my mantra, but it's what I believe in my bones."
Moore acknowledges, however, "it was more of a challenge to bring humor to the film without me being the poker. But I felt I could do that in other ways, with footage, voice-over and cutting. No one's going to mistake this for anything other than my film."
Still, Moore is not always buoyant himself, especially when it comes to the prospects of his film with different distribution this late in the game.
"Everyone's saying, 'This is great publicity for the film: You're really going to sell some tickets,' but if you've seen the box office receipts for 'Kids' and 'Dogma' that's not backed up by the facts. Name me one film that's gone on to huge box office success after their distributor said no eight weeks before the opening. Still, it's 'Oh, Michael Moore and Harvey are doing some publicity stunt.' Man, dig a little deeper than that."
One of the ironies of Michael Moore's position, not lost on the man himself, is that though he's one of the nation's preeminent left-wing voices, his personality has earned him as much criticism, if not more, from liberals than conservatives.
"My way of looking at the world comes from a Midwestern populism and a working-class sensibility, and that's always felt uncomfortable to otherwise good liberals who think, 'I wish we had someone more cultured. Why him?' " Moore says about the issue. "What is their problem? Why do they always want to be on the losing end of things? I'm trying to bring the vast majority of Americans along with me.
"People like me have to save liberals from themselves. This is not a job I went looking for; it wasn't in the career guidance I received in high school. I may come off as abrasive, but what am I supposed to do, wait around for the next Tom Daschle to lead us?"
Moore pauses and his eye falls on a magazine with his picture on the cover. "Really, how sad is it that it's left up to this guy with a high school education," he says. "Let this guy go back to Flint and everyone else start doing their job."
|
|
|
| |
| ...Iraq Occupation 'NewSpeak' |
| 05.12.04 (5:36 pm) [edit] |
Liberated (Invaded)
Peacekeepers (Aggressors)
Civilian Contractors (Mercenaries)
Loyalists/Thugs/Killers (Iraqi Partisan Fighters)
Weapons of Mass Destruction (Beat-up old AK47s)
'Depleted' Uranium (Weapons of Mass Destruction)
Terrorism (Guerilla warfare)
Support Our Troops (Push them to their death)
Pro Saddam (Anti Occupation)
:!:
|
|
|
| |
| ....Gas Prices? Yeah, stick it! |
| 05.12.04 (12:42 pm) [edit] |
IT HAS BEEN CALCULATED THAT IF EVERYONE IN THE UNITED STATES DID NOT PURCHASE A DROP OF GASOLINE FOR ONE DAY AND ALL AT THE SAME TIME, THE OIL COMPANIES WOULD CHOKE ON THEIR STOCKPILES.
AT THE SAME TIME IT WOULD HIT THE ENTIRE INDUSTRY WITH A NET LOSS OF OVER 4.6 BILLION DOLLARS WHICH AFFECTS THE BOTTOM LINES OF THE OIL COMPANIES.
THEREFORE MAY 19TH HAS BEEN FORMALLY DECLARED "STICK IT UP THEIR behind " DAY AND THE PEOPLE OF THIS NATION SHOULD NOT BUY A SINGLE DROP OF GASOLINE THAT DAY.
THE ONLY WAY THIS CAN BE DONE IS IF YOU FORWARD THIS E-MAIL TO AS MANY PEOPLE AS YOU CAN AND AS QUICKLY AS YOU CAN TO GET THE WORD OUT.
WAITING ON THIS ADMIINSTRATION TO STEP IN AND CONTROL THE PRICES IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. WHAT HAPPENED TO THE REDUCTION AND CONTROL IN PRICES THAT THE ARAB NATIONS PROMISED TWO WEEKS AGO?
REMEMBER ONE THING, NOT ONLY IS THE PRICE OF GASOLINE GOING UP BUT AT THE SAME TIME AIRLINES ARE FORCED TO RAISE THEIR PRICES, TRUCKING COMPANIES ARE FORCED TO RAISE THEIR PRICES WHICH EFFECTS PRICES ON EVERYTHING THAT IS SHIPPED. THINGS LIKE FOOD, CLOTHING, BUILDING MATERIALS, MEDICAL SUPPLIES ETC. WHO PAYS IN THE END? WE DO!
WE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE. IF THEY DON'T GET THE MESSAGE AFTER ONE DAY, WE WILL DO IT AGAIN AND AGAIN.
SO DO YOUR PART AND SPREAD THE WORD. FORWARD THIS EMAIL TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW. MARK YOUR CALENDARS AND MAKE MAY 19TH A DAY THAT THE CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES SAY "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH"
|
|
|
| |
|
QUOTE:
Stupidity has a bad habit of getting its way. --"The Day After"
QUOTE: Because I do it with one small ship, I am called a terrorist. You do it with a whole fleet and are called an emperor.
– A pirate, from St. Augustine's "City of God"
QUOTE: War: A wretched debasement of all the pretenses of civilization.
– General Omar Bradley
I hope....that mankind will at length, as they call themselves responsible creatures, have the reason and sense enough to settle their differences without cutting throats...
– Benjamin Franklin
"There must be security for all, or no one is secure. Now this does not mean giving up any freedom, except the freedom to act irresponsibly."-- Klaatu, The Day The Earth Stood Still, 1951.
|
