"It's difficult to be in France and criticize my
government. But I'm doing so because Bush and the people
working for him have a foreign policy that is not good
for America, not good for the world."
"Your blood will be spilled so the
White House gang gets richer and the arms dealers with
them, as well as the large companies involved."
"The single-minded obsession of this Administration
to now make sense of the chaos in Iraq, and the
continuing propaganda which emanates from the White
House painting Iraq as the geographical center of
terrorism is distracting our attention from Afghanistan
and the 60 other countries in the world where terrorists
hide. It is sapping resources which could be used
to make us safer from terrorists on our own
shores. The body armor for our own citizens still
has many, many chinks. Have we forgotten that the
most horrific terror attacks in history occurred right
here at home!! Yet, this Administration turns back
money for homeland security, while the President pours
billions into security for Iraq. I am powerless to
understand or explain such a policy."
"For centuries, pillage by invading
armies was a normal part of warfare: a way in which to
reward badly-paid or unpaid troops for risking their
lives in battle. Nowadays, at least in more civilized
countries, we do not let armies rampage for booty. We
leave the pillaging to men in suits, and we don't call
it pillaging any more. We call it economic
development."
"Bush apparently thinks (if that is the word) that
the publicly available media contaminate the news with
opinion but Condi Rice and Andy Card are objective
reporters. Anyone who has either been a boss or had a
boss will find it easier, knowing that Bush believes
this, to understand how he can also believe that things
are going swimmingly in Iraq. And where does the
Rice-Card News Service obtain its uncontaminated
information? Bush conceded his shocking suspicion that
Rice and Card 'probably read the news themselves.' They
do? Whatever is next? The president apparently is
willing to tolerate the reading of newspapers by his
staff members in the privacy of their own homes, as long
as they don't flaunt this unseemly habit by bringing the
wretched things into the White House or referring to
them at staff meetings."
- Michael Kinsey:
Slate -
"Worst of all, the gang of pirates who have been in
charge since January 2001 have brought about the End of
Satire. How can we really make fun of a president who
vows not to rest until corporate thieves, Osama, Saddam,
and the White House leaker are brought to justice, then
goes off to play a round of golf? Or a rightwing
talkshow host who spends years ranting against drug
users, then admits he is the Grand Champion of drugs,
checks himself into rehab, and now is promoted as The
Guy So Amazingly Truthful He Takes Full Responsibility
For His Problem. (A radio station is currently running a
promo for Rush's show where the narrator says 'This is
what a lie sounds like,' then plays a clip of Clinton
saying 'I did not have sex with that woman,' followed by
the narrator saying 'And this is what the truth sounds
like.' followed by Rush's noble confessional of drug
use.)"
"The leaders we conservatives have trusted have
taken advantage of our trust to line the pockets of the
wealthy and powerful, and it's time we rose up and drove
out these greedy liars. They've hijacked and distorted
our belief system for their own gain, and in doing so
are destroying our credibility. And if we decent,
honest, hard-working, patriotic, true-blue conservatives
of this country neglect the duty we have to our children
and grandchildren, we will never be able to work with
those decent, honest, hard-working, patriotic, true-blue
liberal Americans that these lying creeps have taught us
to despise. We will never be safe to debate them or,
when warranted, to listen to them and maybe even agree
with them. We will never be safe to work out our
differences or to work together. And we will never be
able to build on the all-American sense of unity that
burst forth following 9/11, only to disappear shortly
thereafter in a cloud of lying, greedy partisan
politics."
"With all that money now just
lying about in the federal coffers, and so much more
coming in every day, the Republicans had their own
interpretation of what was inappropriate presidential
behavior. It had little to do with Clinton's alleged
sexual proclivities, or with defiling the White House as
shrine. In fact, to these guys, getting a little head in
the Oval Office could be a good thing. In fact, it could
be a very good thing - especially if that little head
was the one that sat atop their president's neck. And
these cons (short for conservatives, of course) knew
just the candidate who fit that description. So, they
rigged the ensuing election, thus handing the greatest
budget surplus in our nation's history, and the greatest
monetary treasure in the history of history, to their
new quiz kid president, George W. Bush. 'The Businessman
President.' Yahoo! God bless America!
"He promptly spent all of
it."
"China's first manned
spacecraft did more than simply showcase Beijing's
efforts for civilian space flight. The Shenzhou 5, or
Divine Vessel 5, spacecraft also conducted
intelligence-gathering work for China's military.
Included on the top of
the Long March 2F rocket, which boosted Shenzhou into
orbit Tuesday, was a new Chinese military
intelligence-gathering satellite. The satellite was
placed in orbit successfully shortly after the Shenzhou
began its 14-orbit mission. No mention of the satellite
launch was made in the state-run Chinese
press."
"The Police Officers, National
Guardsmen and military officers who have contributed to
this special publication are aware of a plan to
overthrow the Constitutional Republic of these United
States of America. This publication, many months in
preparation, was found difficult to compile for many
reasons. One important reason was that none of the
officers involved were pleased with the duty of bringing
to the attention of our colleagues the names and
activities of some in our nation who have been in the
past (or presently) engaged in what can only be
described by law as treason and/or sedition against
their own government.
"While detailing the plan of
these Internationalists, the main goal of this special
police publication will be to promote an active program
that will defend America from those at work forming an
oligarchy of Imperialism against this nation of free
people.
"The herein-described plan to
halt this un-American activity can succeed only with the
combined efforts of the People's Protectors (the Police,
Guardsmen and Military) and their countrymen in the
private sector."
"The U.S. is pushing for a reevaluation of the
Chinese Yuan, declaring that the difference is affecting
U.S. manufacturing jobs when, in fact, those
manufacturing jobs were lost to mostly offshore labor
markets a long time ago. Mexico and Indonesia and China
etc. will still hold those jobs even after any revaluing
(What? You think because Chinese etc. labor costs might
rise from 5% of U.S. labor costs to 10% or even 15% that
will bring those lost manufacturing jobs back?). Better
be careful what you wish for; China, Japan and a large
group of other investors are keeping the U.S. dollar
afloat by investing in U.S. treasury bonds. Any crunch
could see a sudden and dramatic drop in the trading
value of the buck and further
recession/deflation."
- anonymous Internet poster -
"For the CIA legally to
carry out a covert action, the president must authorize
a document called a finding. Crile repeatedly says that
Carter signed such a finding ordering the CIA to provide
covert backing to the moujahedeen after the Soviet Union
invaded Afghanistan on Dec. 24, 1979. The truth of the
matter is that Carter signed the finding on July 3,
1979, six months before the Soviet invasion, and he did
so on the advice of his national security advisor,
Zbigniew Brzezinski, in order to try to provoke a
Russian incursion. Brzezinski has confirmed this
sequence of events in an interview with a French
newspaper, and former CIA Director Robert M. Gates says
so explicitly in his 1996 memoirs."
"Last
month, Armenia became the 51st country to guarantee its
citizens the right to know what their government is up
to. Armenia's new freedom of information law is the
latest outpost of the worldwide movement towards opening
government files - a movement that took off in the
1990's and just this year also brought in the world's
second most populous country, India, and one of China's
largest cities, Guangzhou. The new openness laws vary
tremendously, face huge implementation problems, and
often receive only lip service from bureaucrats. But the
trend is producing much more government accountability,
and often dramatic headlines...
"Ironically, civil society and government reformers
around the globe are making this extraordinary progress
at the very time that the United States is backing away
from its previous leadership in open
government."
"U.S.
soldiers driving bulldozers, with jazz blaring from
loudspeakers, have uprooted ancient groves of date palms
as well as orange and lemon trees in central Iraq as
part of a new policy of collective punishment of farmers
who do not give information about guerrillas attacking
U.S. troops. The stumps
of palm trees, some 70 years old, protrude from the
brown earth scoured by the bulldozers beside the road at
Dhuluaya, a small town 50 miles north of Baghdad. Local
women were yesterday busily bundling together the
branches of the uprooted orange and lemon trees and
carrying then back to their homes for firewood.
Nusayef Jassim, one of
32 farmers who saw their fruit trees destroyed, said:
'They told us that the resistance fighters hide in our
farms, but this is not true. They didn't capture
anything. They didn't find any weapons.'" (In our
defense, one of the soldiers is reported to have been
crying while he did it.)
"Self-important, obstinate, swept away by the pride
of wealth, they ostentatiously perform sacrifices
without any regard for their purpose. Egotistical,
violent, arrogant, lustful, angry, envious of everyone,
they abuse my presence within their own bodies and in
the bodies of others."
- Bhagavad Gita 16:17-18 -
"And one day, too late,
your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all
rush in upon you. The burden of self deception has
grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my
little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying 'Jew swine,'
collapses it all at once, and you see that everything,
everything, has changed and changed completely under
your nose. The world you live in, your nation, your
people, is not the world you were in at all.
The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring,
the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the
visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the
spirit, which you never noticed because you made the
lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is
changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear,
and the people who hate and fear do not even know it
themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is
transformed. Now you live in a system which rules
without responsibility even to God. The system
itself could not have intended this in the beginning,
but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go
all the way."
"February 22, 1943, 9am...
Three students from the University of Munich are brought
to trial for treason. The trial lasts until 1 pm and by
5 o'clock all are dead. What have these three young
people done to cause the top justice of Hitler's
People's Court to personally oversee the trial? Why are
their voices silenced? And how many more innocent people
will have to die before they are heard?"
"To me those hours were
like a deliverance. I am not ashamed to say that,
overcome by a storm of enthusiasm, I fell on my knees
and thanked Heaven from an overflowing
heart."
- Adolf Hitler on the
outbreak of WWI -
"Little did I realize we'd
get the trifecta."
- George W. Bush on the
outbreak of WWIII -
"Wars arise from a failure to understand one
another's humanness. Instead of summit meetings, why not
have families meet for a picnic and get to know each
other while the children play together?"
- His Holiness the Dalai Lama -
"There are two ways for you to have
lower prescription drug costs: one is you could hire
Rush Limbaugh's housekeeper or you could elect me
president of the United States."
- Future President John
Kerry making a funny during the Democratic candidates'
debate last week in Phoenix -
"Belief without
evidence, in what is taught without knowledge, of things
without parallel."
- Ambrose Bierce on "faith" -
"We have 200,000 troops in
the IRAQ theater. We are paying $4 Billion a month to
keep them there in IRAQ. This works out to $20,000 per
man per month or $240,000 per man per year. Where is all
the MONEY going ??? We can send home the aircraft
carriers, they are no longer needed since we now control
IRAQ. We are not using million dollar cruise missiles or
1000 airplanes a day so where is all the money going?
We are using mainly
small arms fire now, so where is all the MONEY going????
We are not giving our
troops enough water or food or Kevlar Bulletproof vests,
so where is all the money going? The troops were being paid anyway at
an average of less than $3000 per month or a total for
the whole 200,000 servicemen of $600 million a month, or
$7.2 Billion per year and this does not come out of the
$4 Billion per month operating costs. AGAIN WHERE IS ALL OF THE MONEY GOING
? ? ?"
- Howard Scott Pearlman
-
"Dogs chase their
tails. Humans chase their heads."
- Zen proverb
-
