Friday, May 30, 2003
•• Secrets and Lies (Part 1)••
Re-posted here at voxpopgirl, via Billmon's blog WhiskeyBar; full props to Billmon for doing what the Democratic Leadership has so far failed to do on behalf of the American people: expose Bush Inc.'s lies to the American people. A shout out to Toronto Star Media Critic Antonia Zerbisias for hipping me on this wonderful blog.
"What a Tangled Web We Weave . . .When First We Practice To Deceive!"
[Originally posted by Billmon at WhiskeyBar]
"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."
Dick Cheney, Speech to VFW National Convention
August 26, 2002
"Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons."
George W. Bush, Speech to UN General Assembly
September 12, 2002
"If he declares he has none, then we will know that Saddam Hussein is once again misleading the world."
Ari Fleischer, Press Briefing
December 2, 2002
"We know for a fact that there are weapons there."
Ari Fleischer, Press Briefing
January 9, 2003
"Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent."
George W. Bush, State of the Union Address
January 28, 2003
"We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more."
Colin Powell, Remarks to UN Security Council
February 5, 2003
"We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons -- the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have."
George W. Bush , Radio Address
February 8, 2003
"So has the strategic decision been made to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction by the leadership in Baghdad? . . . I think our judgment has to be clearly not."
Colin Powell, Remarks to UN Security Council
March 7, 2003
Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.
George W. Bush, Address to the Nation
March 17, 2003
Well, there is no question that we have evidence and information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical particularly . . . all this will be made clear in the course of the operation, for whatever duration it takes.
Ari Fleisher, Press Briefing
March 21, 2003
There is no doubt that the regime of Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction. And . . . as this operation continues, those weapons will be identified, found, along with the people who have produced them and who guard them.
Gen. Tommy Franks, Press Conference
March 22, 2003
I have no doubt we're going to find big stores of weapons of mass destruction.
Defense Policy Board member Kenneth Adelman, Washington Post, p. A27
March 23, 2003
One of our top objectives is to find and destroy the WMD. There are a number of sites.
Pentagon Spokeswoman Victoria Clark, Press Briefing
March 22, 2003
We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.
Donald Rumsfeld, ABC Interview
March 30, 2003
Obviously the administration intends to publicize all the weapons of mass destruction U.S. forces find -- and there will be plenty.
Neocon scholar Robert Kagan, Washington Post op-ed
April 9, 2003
I think you have always heard, and you continue to hear from officials, a measure of high confidence that, indeed, the weapons of mass destruction will be found.
Ari Fleischer, Press Briefing
April 10, 2003
We are learning more as we interrogate or have discussions with Iraqi scientists and people within the Iraqi structure, that perhaps he destroyed some, perhaps he dispersed some. And so we will find them.
George W. Bush, NBC Interview
April 24, 2003
There are people who in large measure have information that we need . . . so that we can track down the weapons of mass destruction in that country.
Donald Rumsfeld, Press Briefing
April 25, 2003
We'll find them. It'll be a matter of time to do so.
George W. Bush, Remarks to Reporters
May 3, 2003
I'm absolutely sure that there are weapons of mass destruction there and the evidence will be forthcoming. We're just getting it just now.
Colin Powell, Remarks to Reporters
May 4, 2003
We never believed that we'd just tumble over weapons of mass destruction in that country.
Donald Rumsfeld, Fox News Interview
May 4, 2003
I'm not surprised if we begin to uncover the weapons program of Saddam Hussein -- because he had a weapons program.
George W. Bush, Remarks to Reporters
May 6, 2003
U.S. officials never expected that "we were going to open garages and find" weapons of mass destruction.
Condoleeza Rice, Reuters Interview
May 12, 2003
I just don't know whether it was all destroyed years ago -- I mean, there's no question that there were chemical weapons years ago -- whether they were destroyed right before the war, (or) whether they're still hidden.
Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, Commander 101st Airborne, Press Briefing
May 13, 2003
Before the war, there's no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical. I expected them to be found. I still expect them to be found.
Gen. Michael Hagee, Commandant of the Marine Corps, Interview with Reporters
May 21, 2003
Given time, given the number of prisoners now that we're interrogating, I'm confident that we're going to find weapons of mass destruction.
Gen. Richard Myers, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff, NBC Today Show interview
May 26, 2003
They may have had time to destroy them, and I don't know the answer.
Donald Rumsfeld, Remarks to Council on Foreign Relations
May 27, 2003
For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction (as justification for invading Iraq) because it was the one reason everyone could agree on.
Paul Wolfowitz, Vanity Fair interview
May 28, 2003
It was a surprise to me then — it remains a surprise to me now — that we have not uncovered weapons, as you say, in some of the forward dispersal sites. Believe me, it's not for lack of trying. We've been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad, but they're simply not there.
Lt. Gen. James Conway, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, Press Interview
May 30, 2003
posted by voxpopgirl |
5/30/2003
•• Secrets and Lies (Part 2)••
Today's NYTimes OpEd by Paul Krugman titled "Waggy Dog Stories" reminds us of the diversionary tactics and "cooked intelligence" manufactured and brought to us by Bush Inc. in order to fulfill their neocon fantasy of re-shaping the geopolitical/economical map and cementing U.S. supremacy in the 21st century -- or in the New American Century as the neocons prefer to refer to it, globally, universally (literal outer space) and virtually (cyberspace).
Krugman exposes the Bush Inc. tactics for what they are, by reminding us of the premise to the screenplay for the film "Wag the Dog":
An administration hypes the threat posed by a foreign power. It talks of links to Islamic fundamentalist terrorism; it warns about a nuclear weapons program. The news media play along, and the country is swept up in war fever. The war drives everything else — including scandals involving administration officials — from the public's consciousness.
The 1997 movie "Wag the Dog" had quite a plot.
Although the movie's title has entered the language, I don't know how many people have watched it lately. Read the screenplay. If you don't think it bears a resemblance to recent events, you're in denial.
[snip]
The war was justified to the public by links between Saddam and Al Qaeda, and Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction. No evidence of the Qaeda link has ever surfaced, and no W.M.D.'s that could have posed any threat to the U.S. or its allies have been found.
Krugman pulls back the curtain further, to remind us about the Bush Inc. cooking-of-the-facts as well as the "brand new" stance they've taken of blaming and backpedalling to cover their calloussed asses and velvet-gloved lies:
The failure to find W.M.D.'s has been described as an "intelligence failure," but this ignores the fact that intense pressure was placed on intelligence agencies to tell the Bush and Blair administrations what they wanted to hear.
Even before the war began we learned of such pratfalls as the presentation of a plagiarized, decade-old report about Iraqi capabilities as hot new intelligence, and the use of crudely forged documents as evidence of a nuclear program.
Last fall the former head of the C.I.A.'s counterterrorism efforts warned that "cooked intelligence" was finding its way into official pronouncements.
This week a senior British intelligence official told the BBC that under pressure from Downing Street, a dossier on Iraqi weapons had been "transformed" to make it "sexier" — uncorroborated material from a suspect source was added to make the threat appear imminent.
It's now also clear that George W. Bush had no intention of reaching a diplomatic solution. According to The Financial Times, White House sources confirm that the decision to go to war was reached in December: "A tin-pot dictator was mocking the president. It provoked a sense of anger inside the White House," a source told the newspaper.
The Boondocks by Aaron McGruder
The Bush Inc. Beginners' "ABC's": Ass-kicking, Back-pedalling, Blacklisting, Bullshitting, Corporate-kissing, Dog-wagging, Election-stealing, Flag-waving, Fear-mongering ...
posted by voxpopgirl |
5/30/2003
Wednesday, May 28, 2003
•• US finds evidence of WMD at last..... ••
"......buried in a field 50 miles from Washington near Fort Detrick near the Maryland countryside". So says a report in today's UK Guardian.
The Guardian piece, written by reporter Julian Borger in Washington, casts a critical lense on the U.S. media's standards of reporting; the article posits that although this new discovery of evidence of WMD's in the U.S. "merited only a local [emphasis added] news item in the Washington Post", it only requires a mere "suspicious" find in Iraq in order to make "front-page news (before later being cleared)".
Setting aside the U.S. media's record complacency and their neglect to report the news via omission, it's worth taking a read of both Paul Krugman's OpEd in yesterday's NY Times and a Miami Herald OpEd by Robert Steinback titled "Where did all the feisty Americans go?"; both pieces strike a common note in questioning the passivity and apathy of the American public.
Krugman asks:
How can this be happening? Most people, even most liberals, are complacent. They don't realize how dire the fiscal outlook really is, and they don't read what the ideologues write. They imagine that the Bush administration, like the Reagan administration, will modify our system only at the edges, that it won't destroy the social safety net built up over the past 70 years.
But the people now running America aren't conservatives: they're radicals who want to do away with the social and economic system we have, and the fiscal crisis they are concocting may give them the excuse they need. The Financial Times, it seems, now understands what's going on, but when will the public wake up?
Steinback writes:
Sept. 11 rightly made us more cautious and more vigilant. But it also diminished us. We're less tolerant of dissent; less thoughtful about world issues; less concerned with principles of justice, fairness and equity; and -- to the apparent benefit of Bush's poll numbers -- less demanding of our political leaders.
It made us intellectually passive -- which frightens me much more than a hijacked airliner.
The Toronto Star's media critic Antonia Zerbiasias takes a closer look as to why America society is becoming more polarized, in the midst of a media that "are fragmented further" and who "lower their standards to maintain their numbers", while the "people just end up ignorant and apathetic".
Carpe Diem, folks.
posted by voxpopgirl |
5/28/2003
Thursday, May 22, 2003
••Celebrity cyber-shoulder-rubbing••
This morning i typed "May 22" into Google and discovered i share the same birthday with British actor Sir Laurence Olivier, American impressionist artist Mary Cassatt, German composer Richard Wagner and finally, with the very first lyricist i really listened to and who was ultimately influential in steering me away from becoming solely a musician, and instead focusing on discovering the world at large and my own inner world as a songwriter which in turn, opened me up as an artist: Elton's creative other half, lyricist Bernie Taupin, who wrote all those great lyrics, particularly on all those early Elton records like Tumbleweed Connection and Madman Across The Water. Well, hey, that's pretty nice company.
Then again -- and Clive, you'll love this -- i also discovered that May 22 is also the birthdate for Paul Winfield, that very theatrical actor who voices those dry-drawled narrations about sleezy small-time crimes in sleepy small towns on A&E's City Confidential that always open with something like:
In a hamlet near Scottsboro, Alabama, Reverend Summerford was head preacher at the Church of Jesus with Signs Following, a congregation of snake handlers. Prone to heavy drinking and enraged by his wife's infidelities, in 1991 Summerford forced her to plunge her arm into a cage of rattlesnakes, then write a suicide note. Unfortunately for her husband, she lived.
Between the copy and Winfield's read -- which i find both annoying and rivetting at the same time -- i'll admit that i somehow inevitably find myself stopping to watch yet another episode of that nutty little "crime" show. So, O.K. Winfield, you can be part of our exclusive little Gemini club.
Feeling a little heady with all that celebrity shoulder-rubbing -- at least in the virtual world, i immediately headed off to CelebrityMatch.com eager to discover which celebrity i was most compatible with and typed my birthdate into their "show best matches" category: the good news is that i have a 98% compatibility rating with none other than Mr. Big -- Chris Noth, from Sex and the City.
The not-so-good news is that my compatibility with Mr. Big was beaten out by an even closer-to-perfect score of 99% by...... Bush Administration Court Comedian -- Drew Carey.
posted by voxpopgirl |
5/22/2003
Sunday, May 18, 2003
••Get Rich on Bennett's Shuffle••
A losing hand: Bush bets on Bennett
Just because the NY Times' Frank Rich has left the OpEd pages and moved on over to the Arts & Entertainment pages, doesn't mean he's lost his mojo.
Here's Rich on the busted Bill Bennett, author of The Book of Virtues and moraliste extraordinaire -- au contraire.
posted by voxpopgirl |
5/18/2003
Friday, May 16, 2003
••voxpopgirl's lazy friday••
Had too much other cool stuff to do today, but i'll post some links to three guys that are well worth reading when you get a moment to kick back over da weekend:
Paul Krugman has a great piece in today's NY Times OpEd about Bush's "telegenic" campaign to fight terrorism, versus his real life failed campaign against the war on terror.
Slate founding Editor and a regular WaPo contributor Michael Kinsley's wonderful new piece called The Fabulist on Bush and his administrations' propagandists' propensity to lie and lie again about who his tax cuts help -- in his latest lie on Monday in New Mexico, it's "small businesses".
And last but never least, go visit Josh Marshall's Talk Points Memo and read his latest string of posts here, here, here and here on Texas state House Speaker Tom Craddick and House Majority Leader Texas R- Rep. Tom DeLay for having crossed an altogether different line in having tried "to invoke federal law enforcement officials to resolve a political, partisan dispute", by using the Homeland Security Dept. to round up and force the Texas state house Democrats back to Austin.
btw, freakin' eh and a warm welcome back to those renegade Texas state Democrats for kickin' it for 5 days at the Holiday Inn Express in Ardmore, Oklahoma just north of the Texas state line, putting them beyond the reach of Lone Star justice and of GOP ambitions and telling Tom Delay to put his gerrymandering where the Texas sun don't shine.
If only those Congressional Democrats had the same cojones. If only.
Have a great weekend, and to my fellow Canadian pals, have a relaxing chillin' Victoria's Day Holiday long weekend.
posted by voxpopgirl |
5/16/2003
Wednesday, May 14, 2003
••ACTION ALERT: Showdown At The FCC -- Only 19 days left for you to do something!••
If ever there was a more potent issue and a more crucial time to organize day-in day-out massive rallies in the streets of America's cities by those very same peace activists who did such a brilliant job at drawing the news media's attention and in turn, the American public's attention to the hundreds of thousands of united Americans against the U.S.-led war on Iraq, then the up-coming June 2 FCC vote to relax regulations on U.S. media ownership is IT -- and the time to act is NOW.
Listen up.
My American friends, first things first: go and read Paul Krugman's bang on Op Ed in yesterday's NY Times.
Krugman correctly warns that this Monday's proposal by Republican Michael Powell, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, son of Sec. of State Colin Powell, and the chief architect of the plan to overhaul and relax the regulations on media ownership is not only a dangerous proposal, but it also leaves open the potential for the U.S. government's ability to reward media companies that do what it wants.
Krugman writes:
The plan's defects aside -- it will further reduce the diversity of news available to most people -- what struck me was the horse-trading involved. One media group wrote to Mr. Powell, dropping its opposition to part of his plan "in return for favorable commission action" on another matter. That was indiscreet, but you'd have to be very naïve not to imagine that there are a lot of implicit quid pro quos out there.
And the implicit trading surely extends to news content.. Imagine a TV news executive considering whether to run a major story that might damage the Bush administration -- say, a follow-up on Senator Bob Graham's charge that a Congressional report on Sept. 11 has been kept classified because it would raise embarrassing questions about the administration's performance. Surely it would occur to that executive that the administration could punish any network running that story.[Emphasis Added]
Meanwhile, both the formal rules and the codes of ethics that formerly prevented blatant partisanship are gone or ignored. Neil Cavuto of Fox News is an anchor, not a commentator. Yet after Baghdad's fall he told "those who opposed the liberation of Iraq" -- a large minority -- that "you were sickening then; you are sickening now." Fair and balanced.
And this article at Tom Paine explains into whose hands media concentration and control will fall, and which political party (take a guess) stands to gain:
The Bush administration will soon hand the nation's biggest media conglomerates a new give-away that will concentrate media ownership in fewer hands. On June 2, the Federal Communications Commission, run by Michael Powell (son of Colin), plans to end long-standing federal checks and balances on corporate media power.
Companies behind the measure include the powerhouses of corporate media power: Rupert Murdoch's News Corp/Fox, General Electric/NBC, Viacom/CBS, Disney/ABC, Tribune Corp and Clear Channel. Once the rules are swept away, expect to see more mergers and buy-outs of radio and TV stations, major papers and even TV networks. It will then soon be possible for a single conglomerate to control most of a community's major media outlets, including cable systems and broadband Internet service providers. [Emphasis Added]. There will be fewer owners nationally of all major media outlets of communications.
Right-wing powerhouses are also likely to grow more powerful soon, unless opposed. Rupert Murdoch's Fox is planning to take over the country's most power satellite service, Direct TV.
He will be able to not only control access to millions of households, he will use it as a "Death Star" to further expand his broadcast and cable TV empires. Meanwhile, liberals -- let alone progressives -- have no ownership influence over any major media outlet. [Emphasis Added]
The FCC is about to decide the fate of all its existing media ownership regulations in your country.
If you think it's bad now, just wait and see what the de-regulation loving, power-mongering bullshitting bullies a.k.a. the CheneyRovebushGovernment has in store for you by June 2, courtesy of Michael K. Powell, as he helps deliver for the Bush Administration and The Republican Pretty Hate Machine one of the most sweeping regulatory actions in FCC history; an action that has the potential to radically reshape your nation's media landscape, with likely adverse consequences in media markets both big and small throughout the country.
My dear American neighbours to the south, organize a rally; or two, or twenty.
Do something. Now.
Go here.
I mean it.
Go.
Now.
**ALSO: The very least you can do is to email the MoveOn.org folks and urge them to consider organizing protest rallies immediately -- i just did.
And forward this post to all your friends or link to me while you're at it.
posted by voxpopgirl |
5/14/2003
••Sweet & Sour Chicken Balls with Chris Matthews••
Did anyone happen to catch Chris Matthews on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart last week?
[Sidebar 1: for my European pals -- and that means you: IA in Sweden, and Pauline in London -- it's known as The Daily Show: Global Edition carried on CNN International],
[Sidebar 2: to my North American pals -- in these Bush-whacked times, what would we do without The Daily Show folks?].
There's no other way to describe Matthews' performance other than frankly, well, he was an asshole, an idiot, a lightweight, a loser, ummmm, a disgrace to his "profession"...
Shall i go on?
Did i mention Chris Matthews the Careerist? Jon Stewart asked straightforward questions, no-brainers and of course, political in nature; they merited answers worthy of coming from a person of Matthews' status as an inside-the-beltway political tv news person and pundit. And Chris, in an attempt to "fit the venue" as opposed to being what he's supposed to be (a news person/political pundit with an MSNBC primetime tv show about current political affairs called Hardball with Chris Matthews), was flippant, dismissed questions about whether he'd watched the first Democratic debates, and couldn't stop looking at himself in the monitor that was obviously not too far away from him; he was in one of those "trying-too-hard-to-be-really-cool" modes that makes you cringe; however, his body language betrayed his attempts at achieving cool status, in that he looked so uncomfortable... kind of dumpy, exposed with no desk to hide himself and his girth behind, fidgeting with his hands, crossing and re-crossing his legs, unable to kick back and kick it...
And then, before going to commercial, the interview closed on a note - a note and tone that Matthews set, and in one last attempt to be hip, fit the venue and kiss a little ass as well, he said,
"If i had a choice between watching (i think he may have actually said Walter Cronkite!) or watching the Daily Show, i'd watch you."
To which Jon Stewart, with a stunned grin that expressed his astonishment and disgust, said,
"that’s the saddest thing i’ve ever heard in my life".
'Nuff said.
posted by voxpopgirl |
5/14/2003
••Big Brother = Big Fun••
Speaking of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, here's a great video clip featuring the Daily Show's Steven Colbert, doing a segment on the "benefits" of the Bush Administration's Patriot Act, called "So You're Living In A Police State" * (22 MB - Takes a while to open, but well worth the wait. Requires QuickTime Player, available on all platforms)
And while you're waiting for the movie to load:
Here it is, (as Jon Stewart likes to say as he wraps up his show by replaying a segment of a clip from earlier in the show), your moment of Zen:
"But Steven", -- you're probably being recorded as saying -- , "doesn't all this government spying on our citizens mean losing our basic freedoms?"
Of course not: it means gaining limits on those freedoms, something Uncle Sam likes to call Freedom Plus.
posted by voxpopgirl |
5/14/2003
Monday, May 12, 2003
••Gore Vidal's Prophetic Injustice••
In lieu of America's current and potentially perpetual "war on terror", with the war in Afghanistan waged in 2002 and the U.S. prëemptive war on Iraq this spring of 2003 still fresh in our collective minds, i thought it appropos to re-publish a portentous paragraph from the opening chapter from "Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta", the latest book, or "pamphlet" (as the author prefers to call it) written by America's last small "r" Republican, Gore Vidal.
"Dreaming War" contains a collection of articles and essay's he's written over the past 8 yrs.; but what is paticularly chilling if not downright prophetic, is the 2nd last line of the final paragraph found in Chapter 1, excerpted from an article he initially wrote in The Nation on January 15, 2001 :
"Expect a small war -- or two in order to keep military appropriations flowing. There will also be tax relief for the very rich...... The military -- Cheney, Powell, et al. -- will be calling the tune, and the whole nation will be on constant alert, for, as James Baker has already warned us, Terrorism is everywhere on the march".
-- Gore Vidal, January 15, 2001
posted by voxpopgirl |
5/12/2003
••American media is a hall of broken mirrors••
Back on March 30, when Natalie Maines of the Grammy award winning Dixie Chicks said her thing in London the day before the war, it appeared that they had instantly became persona(e) non grata in the U.S. -- that is -- according to blitz headlines and bylines on the frontlines of the U.S. media reports, as well as the ensuing "news" that commercial radio had taken to "banning" the playing of Dixie Chicks records/singles and fans were egged on in some cases by talk-show hosts and by the country radio stations that also stopped playing the Dixie Chicks; this was followed by a non-stop parade on-air radio and television partisan pundits chiding the Chicks for "speaking out against their President while out of the country" as an unforgivable sin; and then came the cable news network video clips and stories of the book burning cd crushing "events" of "former fans" with their 8-yr old kids in tow jumping up and down on smashed cd's (nice values there, parents) and lead right the way through to that shameful excuse for a "journalist" -- Ms. Insincerity-Brownnoser, Diane Sawyer and her scarlet-lettering of interview with the Dixie Chicks three weeks later.
Based on all that, North American bystanders got the overall sense that a majority of Americans -- er, patriotic Americans -- had risen up as a collective force to be reckoned with, and the outcome of their "action" appeared to be that Dixie Chicks career was in a potentially precarious situation.
"The people", had spoken.
During the wall to wall war coverage, the cable news channels and newspapers still managed to find to extended the Dixie Chicks "news" cycle to segments and articles about their future cd sales and ticket sales: the day before their opening U.S. concert tour, the Orlando Sun-Sentinal ominously cautioned:
As the Dixie Chicks open a U.S. arena tour on Thursday in South Carolina, a strange split reality awaits. They arrive having sold out 51 of 59 dates in advance -- $46 million worth of tickets [emphasis added] -- but face an uncertain welcome at every stop."
And with the opening gig in South Carolina looming, South Carolina Republican state Rep. Caroline Ceips revved it up on behalf of those "concerned" Republican S.C. House members and "introduced a resolution Wednesday calling for the country music trio to perform for South Carolina troops and their families."
You gotta give it up for those Republicans being brazen enough in trying to do their damnedest to have it both ways: threaten to organize a against attending any Dixie Chicks concerts because they were being "disrespectful to the troops and their families", but then use the state government to pass a resolution threatening the Dixie Chicks to organize a free concert for the troops and their families to attend.
Whaaa? So the Dixie-chickenshit-haters would be willing to patronize a Dixie Chicks concert after all? Just so long as they don't have to pay. So much for conservatives and their strict constructionist fundamentalism and for railing against all that moral relativism.
By the way, the resolution passed the House on a 50-35 vote.
Rep. Ceips added, "I think it's an olive branch to the Dixie Chicks." That's awful generous of Ms. Ceips, the human gift that keeps on giving.
However, on the opening day of the Dixie Chicks American concert tour, and buried in the back pages and with hardly the same cable tv news fanfare afforded to them when cable news outlests plastered the airwaves with the antics of anti-Chicks hicks, was the news that only a handful of people showed up outside the sold-out South Carolina venue to "protest"; then the same Orlando Sun-Sentinal that had prominently featured the piece that contained the paragraph i quoted above, reported in a small blurb that "a lone protester stood outside a sold-out Dixie Chicks concert Saturday night during the band's first appearance in Florida" and that "Texas-native Thomas Newton stood at an intersection near the TD Waterhouse Centre wearing a cowboy outfit and holding a sign that read: 'I Am Ashamed The Dixie Chicks Are From Texas' ".
It went on to say that "One mother said she debated for a week whether to take her 13-year-old daughter to the concert because of the singer's statement." But in the end, Patty Smith, of Palm Harbor, said "she decided to go with her daughter, but wear a T-shirt that said "Chicks Music Not Their Politics!" and a button showing Bush and his father."
What happened to all that moral partriotic outrage? Poof! gone, just like that. Was it ever really there to begin with, at the level and volume reported?
It has one more than pondering that all of the Dixie Chick stuff had been totally disproportionately blown out of the solar system by the ratings-driven media, who, in turn were blitz faxed, emailed and hammered by the very organized hatings-driven Republican Pretty Hate Machine, and that, in point of fact, a majority of Americans didn't feel this way one iota, and because there is no decent and well organized Democrat party (!) or a well organized damage control machine to counter it, the Repugs and the media were left -- un-checked.
So were it not for a media (i.e. CNN and MSNBC who feared losing viewers and advertisers to Fox on the eve of this century's first American war, and Fox who will still work the refs even though they have the largest cable news viewership) who proceeded to "make" news again and again, by plastering the airwaves and the newspaper headlines about the "cross country reports" of these so-called protests and record bunrings in the first place, we'd come to discover that it was truly only a smattering of those idiot partisan idealogue haters who have nothing better to do than have to reassure themselves of their sense of self-worth through their pronouncement of their so-called "patriotism" by having to "take action" and "stand up" for America and the President through the denegration of others vis-a-vis their little mobilized mob mentality group of emotional cripples and collective dysfunctionals.
The tv cable news media are not a true reflection of the American people. The majority of Americans are still not in agreement with Bush's economic policies and the RNC machine and Rovian propagandist army of pundits and playas muscled their way into getting massive airwave time castigating those who dissented and disagreed with the war to the extent that it would make any average American who might disagree and who just wants to get on with their lives and their families feel uncomfortable and less inclined to speak out or speak up.
One of the biggest mistakes the cable news channels are making, is that they are altering, filtering, skewing and even withholding news stories in an attempt to compete with Fox in the hopes of winning and stealing conservativeeyeballs away from Fox . But they're not going to succeed. Fox has established itself as the Republican Party's "media" Crystal Cathedral from which they are preaching to the converted, and those eyeballs would therefore require no need to shift on over to the other two cable news outlets. For the idealogue viewers of Fox News, Fox is the place where their fixed and unquestioned belief system is protected from the incovenience of having to respond to "hostile" opposition, and ensured to be undisturbed, safely cocooned just like their fragile unchallenged psyches; for them, Fox is the path of least resistance, that offers comfort that there is a certain safety in numbers.
But rest assured and don't be fooled: the television cable media is not accurately mirroring the political sentiments and empathies of the American people in proportion to cable news outlets' reports and reporting; when it comes to American cable news, it is not a true reflection of the American voting public; what you see, is not what you get, nor is it who America is.
posted by voxpopgirl |
5/12/2003
Thursday, May 08, 2003
••The Return of Salam Pax••
The Baghdad blogger, Salam Pax is back. He had stopped posting on March 24 when the bombs started falling and the blog went black until today; with the help of his internet correspondence pal Diana Moon, he was able to send her a Word attachment confessing that he is "going thru massive internet withdrawal symptoms. So here are what should have been 15 entries to the blog, for whatever it is worth."
She in turn, has posted all of them here at his blog, Dear Raed. Take the time to read all of the entries, if you can, in reverse chronological order, to get the full impact of his experience as the war raged on and rained down in downtown Baghdad.
With a keen sense of irony, observation and liberal smatterings of dry wit, Salam gives us an insiders' account and the lowdown of the daily goings' on in "liberated" Baghdad. A small snippet:
....the looting goes on..... if you are an enterprising looter you go to the weapons factories around Baghdad. The huge empty cannon shells you find there are very desirable items; the metal is melted and used. And there is an endless supply of these shells. There are big battles being raged around the qa’qah (al qa3qa3) factory every night to control it.
There are until now around 30 dead people and a number of wounded. The coalition forces is enjoying the scene and keeping its distance (emphasis added).
They are like that in most of the cases, they sit looking a bit bored watching the looting.
Sometimes, if it is not too troublesome, they will go check on what is happening if you jump in front of their tanks shouting “Ali Baba, Ali Baba!!”. Cute, isn’t it? We have found common ground in the stories of 1001 nights. Everybody knows the story of Ali Baba and the 40 thieves, but not everybody speaks English.
So if you are lucky, the Americans will come to check what Ali Baba is doing, sometimes they care sometimes they don’t."
How courteous of the "coalition forces" not to interfere with the local colour. After all, they were trained to fight a war, not police a nation. If the natives are restless, it ain't gonna be on their beat.
But Salam ain't buyin' it:
At the moment only what could be described as the government’s prosperity is being looted and destroyed, actually public property and they are only destroying what is theirs but who is going to listen to that argument. There has been very little attacks up till now on private property. Government stores full of cars imported cars to be distributed as “presents” by Saddam have been opened and cars are being pushed out and are there for the taking. Sorry, no keys. You’ll have to solve that problem by yourselves.
What I am sure of is that this could have been stopped at a snap of an American finger. The ministry of interior affairs was kept off limits to the looters by the simple presence of a couple American army cars and soldiers. Doors were shut, no one went in. At the moment we wish there was an American tank at the corner of every street.
Oh, and Salam's not buying into the coalition forces' “Iraqi Media Network” either:
The “Iraqi Media Network” started broadcasting yesterday. Nothing to go crazy about, they are apparently recording one single hour and broadcasting it for 24 hours. They are using it for announcements by the coalition forces mainly, beside the coalition radio station “information radio”. They have brought Ahmad al-Rikabi from (Radio Free Iraq/Radio Free Europe). Yesterday also, the Iraqi media people (journalists, TV and radio people) were demonstrating in front of the Meridian Hotel asking for their jobs back; wait in line, we all are.
The irony, during the last couple of weeks in this big media festival called ‘Iraq War’ there is not a single Iraqi voice. (emphasis added).
Somebody give this man his own show: he's a natural --- born citizen --- and comedian, as further demonstrated with this entry:
A conversation overheard by G. while in the Meridian Hotel – the Iraqi media center :
Female journalist 1: oh honey how are you? I haven’t seen you for ages.
Female journalist 2: I think the last time was in Kabul.
Bla bla bla
Bla bla bla
Female journalist 1: have to run now, see you in Pyongyang then, eh?
Female journalist 2: absolutely.
Iraq is taken out of the headlines. The search for the next conflict is on. Maybe if it turns out to be Syria the news networks won’t have to pay too much in travel costs.
Without having any access to CNN, MSNBC or Fox News, Salam Pax has intuited from his bombed out pad in Baghdad, what is undeniably blatant to all of us here in North America.
Who needs status reports and updates from the new Baghdad anymore? The war's been won, right?
Next.
posted by voxpopgirl |
5/08/2003
Saturday, May 03, 2003
••Full Circle with William Gibson: from Yorkville Hippie to Cyberpunk Daddy••
If you ever have a couple of hours to kill, go and hit up the CBC video archives; there's loads of cool interview and doc footage there about and with famous Canadians in our cultural, political and artistic history... in the "Life and Society" category, there's "Trudeaumania: A Swinger for Prime Minister" Topic Timespan: 1968-71, "Marshall McLuhan: The Man and his Message" Topic Timespan: 1960-80, and in the "Arts and Entertainment" category, "Leonard Cohen: Canada's Meloncholy Bard" Topic Timespan: 1961-93, justs to name a few.
In the Life and Society category, there's a weath of fun old footage spanning from 1965 through 1985 about hippies; it was there under the header "Hippie Society: Youth Rebellion", that i found a gem of a doc about the "1967 hippie culture phenomenon" that had taken hold in Yorkville, an area and a street by the same name in central downtown Toronto which even back in '67, was considered a "tourist attraction", albeit one with "a splash of colour in a grey town -- a festering sore according to some city fathers."
Yorkville, once known for its counter-culture Bohemian atmosphere has changed with the times as hippies have become wealthy yuppies. In today's Yorkvile, there are plenty of terraced cafes, stores and art galleries, and it’s where many of Toronto’s elite come at night to be seen.
However, what's fascinating about this segment titled "Yorkville: Hippie Haven", that was shot on the streets of Yorkville in the summer of '67, has more to do with who is providing the informal "man on the street" guided tour.
The segment was encapsulated as follows:
"If Haight-Ashbury is the centre of the American hippie world, then Yorkville is Canada’s hippie heartland. Full of coffeehouses, boutiques, long hairs, draft dodgers, and freaks, Yorkville is a tourist attraction – one where the tourists prefer to watch the excitement from the safety of their cars. A 19-year-old draft dodger named William Gibson conducts CBC TV on a tour of the village, where Beatle-haired kids, drugs, and free love are rampant."
The documentary clip is hilarious in that one cannot help but hear the tangible distaste in the voice of one of Canada's most recognizable broadcast personalities, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reporter, Knowlton Nash, who was at that time, a prominent CBC Washington bureau correspondent more likely to be interviewing prominent heads of state rather than "long hairs, draft dodgers, and freaks". One of the best lines that demonstrates that looking-down-the-bridge-of-his-nose disapproval, is when Nash delivers in a deadpan perfection that had me laughing out loud:
"Yorkville hippies are non-violent, and passive to the point of lethargy."
And then there is the introduction of a slumberous young William Gibson:
This is Bill. A real hippie. He wandered from Vancouver to San Francisco when the movement began 18 months ago, then to Yorkville, home of the largest Canadian branch.
The hippies bring their beards, beads and dirty feet. Their vague ideas of "free love" and spiritual love. Their marijuana and LSD. They're different. But what are they?
And then as if introducing a subject from a failed clinical study that he is somewhat surprised is still even moving, Nash announces in an aloof no-committal droll: "This is Bill talking".
It is then, that a young gangly man appears on the screen and proceeds on a guided tour commentary which seems almost anthropological in it's detached style and acute analysis. It is a style of observation and a manner of its telling, that 17 years later, would launch the cyberpunk generation with the release of his book Neuromancer:
"They don't agree with the rules or with the lifestyle that society has setup. Find it, distasteful. They find a lot of it... insane. They can't cope with it. So rather than attack the society in an agressive way, they try to drop out and not contribute to the society. The society may change: if enough people drop out of the society, it'll be altered. There may eventually be the creation of a sub-culture... a large enough sub-culture that it would modify the existing culture.
It's not necessarily true that it's a society of individualists... there's a kind of conformity within this; a non-conformist doesn't necessarily have to be a hippie; a hippie has to be at odds with the establishment, but he may be conforming to the other hippies.
The hippie society centers largely around this curious word "love". And everyone here would probably give you a different definition of love. In a sense I suppose it would mean "co-operation"; sort of mutual sacrifice for the benefit of the community."
Cut to 2001, and Gibson has again become a documentarist, as he stars in a revealing film, No Maps for These Territories by British director Mark Neale. No Maps is mostly told in monologue by Gibson sitting in the back of a car wired with micro-cameras, a fax machine and the internet. The film is interspersed with other interviews, most notably with fellow "cyberpunk" author Bruce Sterling and both Bono and The Edge read from Gibson's books.
"He decided to go on the record in a way that he has very deliberately avoided for a long time. He'll talk until the cows come home about literature," explains Neale. "But the stuff he hasn't gone on the record about in the past, things like the loss of his parents, his dodging of the draft and taking drugs took a long time to get out of him. I had to go back and ask him those things several times. But drug culture was such a big part of his life."
Cut back to the 1967 CBC doc, as it closes with a night shot of the young Gibson walking away from the camera down Yorkville Ave. with his arm around a young blond woman, as he turns to her, much like a man on the street interview with a stranger he's just walked up to:
"How do you feel about love...?" he enquires in a serious tone, as he leads her to an unknown destination in the midst of conducting his informal scientific study. A small chuckles slips from his deadpan delivery as the scene fades to black:
"Do you see god when you take LSD?".
posted by voxpopgirl |
5/03/2003
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