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Politics : Attack Iraq? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elmer Flugum who wrote (2387)	10/10/2002 5:06:24 PM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 8683

Well, we know it wasn't the Office of Strategic Influence, the Office of Global Information or their disinformation contractors like Hill & Knowlton and John Rendon & Associates. These firms are paid tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars annually by our government to lie to us. And the taxpayer doesn't revolt. I don't understand America any more.

To: Elmer Flugum who wrote (2387)	10/10/2002 5:08:23 PM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 8683

COMING SOON TO A THEATRE NEAR YOU "Bowling For Columbine" Michael Moore October 9, 2002 My Film, "Bowling for Columbine," Opens This Friday Dear friends, fans, and fellow evildoers: I am very happy and excited to tell you that this Friday, October 11, my new film, "Bowling for Columbine," will open in New York and Los Angeles. It is, I promise, the last thing the Bushies want projected on the movie screens across America this week. The film is, first and foremost, a devastating indictment of the violence that is done in our name for profit and power -- and no one, in all the advance screenings I have attended, has left the theatre with anything short of rage. I truly believe this film has the potential to rock the nation and get people energized to do something. This is not good news for Junior and Company. Not when they are trying to drag us into another war. Not when a crazed sniper is exercising his constitutional right to own a high-powered rifle. Not when John Ashcroft is still prohibiting the FBI from looking through the gun background check files to see if any of the 19 hijackers or their associates purchased any weapons prior to 9/11 -- because THAT, we are told, would "violate" these terrorists' sacred Second Amendment rights! Yes, I believe this movie can create a lot of havoc -- but I will need ALL of you to help me do this. Are you game? Last February 5th, I wrote to tell you about a book I had written and how the publisher had decided to dump it because they were afraid to publish anything critical of Bush after 9/11. I appealed to you to save "Stupid White Men" from the shredder and to go out and buy it. I promised you would not regret it, and that the book would not only be a great read but an important organizing tool in gumming up the plans of George W. Bush. Within 24 hours, the book went to #1 on the Amazon best seller list. By the fifth day, the book was already into its 9th printing. The publisher was torn between its desire to kill the book or make a wad of money. Greed won out, and this Sunday the book enters its 31st week on the New York Times best seller list -- and its 32nd printing. This is all because of you, my crazy and loyal friends. You made this happen, against all the odds. Now I would like to ask you again to help me with my latest work, "Bowling for Columbine." It's a movie that many critics have already called my best film to date. They may be right. It is certainly the most provocative thing I have ever done. I have spent three years on it and, I have to say, it cuts deeper, harder and funnier that anything I have given you so far. The movie opens this Friday in New York and Los Angeles, and then in 8 more cities next week. How it does in these first ten cities will determine whether or not the rest of the country gets to see it. That is the nutty way our films are released. If it doesn't have a big opening weekend, you can kiss the film good-bye. Therefore, this weekend, this film must be seen by millions of Americans. Can you help me make that happen? "Bowling for Columbine" is not a film simply about guns or school shootings. That is only the starting point for my 2-hour journey into the dark soul of a country that is both victim and master of an enormous amount of violence, both at home and around the world. With this movie I have broadened my canvas to paint a portrait of our nation at the beginning of the 21st century, a nation that seems hell-bent on killing first and asking questions later. It is a movie about the state sponsored acts of violence and terrorism against our own poor, and how we have created a culture of fear that is based on the racial dilemma we continue to ignore. And it's a devastating comedy. This film is going to upset some pretty big apple carts. No film has EVER said the things I am saying in "Bowling for Columbine." I expect to be attacked. I expect certain theatres will not show it for fear of retribution. I expect that this movie will be a bitter pill for many to swallow. This is why I need your help. Movies live or die based on what happens at the box office the first weekend of its release. I need you, if you live in the New York or L.A. area, to go see "Bowling for Columbine" this Friday and Saturday -- and take as many family members and friends with you as possible. I guarantee you will not be disappointed -- and you may just see one of the best films of the year. Monday night in Times Square, "Bowling for Columbine" had its premiere. The crowd was amazing, as it was this past Saturday night at the Chicago Film Festival. The audience kept laughing or hooting or applauding so loud throughout the film that it was hard to hear the next line. The hate mail, the threats, the promises of retribution have already started to roll in to the distributor of this movie, United Artists. They are not backing down. But how long will this last? I need all of you in the New York tri-state and southern California areas to go see "Bowling for Columbine" THIS weekend -- the rest of you can see it in a couple of weeks when it comes to your town. A strong opening not only means that the rest of America will see this film, it means that a good number of people who see it are going to leave the film angry enough to get active and get involved. If it does poorly, I will have a difficult time finding the funding for the movie I want to make next -- a film about 9/11 and how Bush is using that tragic day as a cover for his right-wing agenda. Don't let that happen. Don't let the NRA have one more success by stopping the wider distribution of this movie. And, together, let us not remain silent in our opposition to Bush's phony war against Iraq. If you live in New York, you can see it at the Lincoln Plaza, the Sunshine and the Loews 19th St. In L.A., you can catch it at the Sunset 5, the Westwood Regent, Laemmle Sunset, Laemmle Towncenter (Encino), Landmark Rialto (Pasadena), and Regal University (Irvine). Also, please forward this to your other friends and tell them to go see "Bowling for Columbine" this weekend. And finally, don't miss our new website www.bowlingforcolumbine.com Thank you for your help with this. I feel so honored and privileged to have so many people interested in my work. Last January I was getting 70,000 hits a month on my website. Last month, I got 17 million hits. This alone speaks volumes about the vast majority all of us belong to who are sick and tired of what is going on and are longing for an alternative source of information. I hope that you enjoy "Bowling for Columbine." Thank you again... Yours, --- www.bowlingforcolumbine.com

To: Elmer Flugum who wrote (2387)	10/10/2002 5:14:47 PM
From: Raymond Duray	Respond to of 8683

AMERICA'S MAD OBSESSION WITH VIOLENCE indiewire.com "Bowling for Columbine" explores more profound problems than "Roger & Me," the 1989 documentary that put Michael Moore on the filmmaking map. The question he tackled there -- why would a fat-cat corporation ruin a city with shutdowns and layoffs? -- had an easy answer: greed. This time he takes on America's penchant for violence and guns, a wide-ranging issue that eludes the clear explanation he'd like to find. Moore bases "Bowling for Columbine" on a series of paradoxes. Firearms and mayhem are ingrained parts of the American scene, often traced to a legacy of violence predating the Revolutionary War, and to a love affair with weapons going back just as far. Yet countries like Germany and Britain have equally violent histories, and Canada couples a low murder rate with gun-ownership figures similar to those of the United States. In his effort to discover why America dotes so much on guns, Moore talks to all sorts of weapon-toting patriots, from camouflage-clad members of the Michigan Militia to a brother of Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols and a napalm-happy suburbanite who tests homemade bomb recipes from "The Anarchist's Cookbook." Moore also spends time in Littleton, Colo., where he persuades survivors of the Columbine high-school shooting to confront representatives from Kmart, which sold the bullets still embedded in their bodies. Farther north, he chats with Canadians about their country's low level of violence and barges into people's houses through the front doors they cheerfully leave unlocked. Moore hasn't lost his knack for digging out oddballs from the sticks, with special interest in poker-faced PR people and small-time authority figures who don't know how to parry his sardonic questions -- like a state trooper who soberly considers whether a rifle-carrying canine might be culpable in an accidental shooting. Such mordant vox-pop footage is juxtaposed with more sobering montage sequences, including tapes from security cameras in the Columbine cafeteria and news coverage of American military interventions over the past 50 years. In case you didn't notice, the most savage U.S. bombing in Kosovo took place the same day as the Columbine massacre. The film's strongest argument is that most American violence is either legally sanctioned -- police actions, military operations, and the like -- or committed by citizens saturated with media-generated paranoia. Exhibit A is the hugely popular cable show "Cops," followed by nightly news programs with their "if it bleeds it leads" mentality, often permeated with a barely disguised racist subtext. Moore uses a mosaic of TV news headlines to demonstrate media obsession with disasters du jour, from gang warfare to "Africanized" killer bees -- despite the fact that most of urban America is safe and even dull, as he shows by taking an uneventful stroll through much-maligned South Central Los Angeles. The real causes of crime, according to "Bowling for Columbine," are rarely dramatic and seldom newsworthy: social inequities, cultural anxieties, and welfare policies that force poor single mothers into minimum-wage jobs that separate them from their kids. These are a far cry from out-of-control gangs, kill-crazy video games, and other scapegoats lurking "out there" in the mythical boiler-room of American culture. In one of the film's most striking scenes, goth rocker and veteran scapegoat Marilyn Manson argues that fear is a major fuel for modern capitalism, as people frantically consume to allay the anxiety fostered by media rumor-panics and other scare-mongering propaganda. "Bowling for Columbine" would be more powerful if such insightful moments were delivered with fewer digressions, and if some of its arguments didn't seem so sketchy. American history is far too recent and idiosyncratic to be compared with that of England or Germany, for instance, let alone reduced to the oversimplifications of a "South Park"-style history lesson Moore injects into the movie. He doesn't ask why American news is driven so constantly by urban violence, or why shows like "Cops" draw such enormous audiences. "Bowling for Columbine" also contains too much of Moore himself, morphing from indefatigable populist to grandstanding scenery-chewer as he commiserates with sobbing schoolteachers, waves around pictures of murdered children, and congratulates himself for getting Kmart to stop selling bullets. He pushes the envelope in the final sequence, where he tracks down National Rifle Association honcho Charlton Heston in his Beverly Hills home and badgers the bewildered star until he throws up his hands and totters out of the room. It's a quintessential Moore moment: The mighty Moses of the NRA turns out to be a courteous old fool who can hardly comprehend the accusations thrown at him, much less answer them. But it's also a reminder that Moore didn't become a culture hero -- or a movie star -- by being Mr. Nice Guy, and that this friend of the common man can still pack a nasty punch when the time is right and the camera is pointed his way.

To: Elmer Flugum who wrote (2387)	10/10/2002 8:54:00 PM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 8683

Belgians Lead Push for Regime Change in America U.S. Retaliation Planned September 24, 2002 By Phil Lebovit Spurred by reports of an aggressive military build-up and failure to reign in corporate terrorists, the government of Belgium is pressing for a preemptive strike against the regime of George W. Bush. "We cannot sit idly by and eat our delicious chocolates while the United States government engages in a policy of harassment," Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt said in a nationally-televised address to the Belgian people. "Now is the time for action. We cannot waffle." Recent reports from Belgian intelligence sources indicate that the United States is now in possession of weapons of mass destruction - chemical, biological and nuclear. "We know that the United States has nuclear weapons and that they have actually used them in the past," intoned the Prime Minister." There is no reason to think they will not use them in the future." Verhofstadt is insisting that United Nations weapon inspectors be given "unfettered access to the massive stockpiles" of weapons, and that they be destroyed immediately. "We stand at the crossroads," pleaded Verhofstadt. "Either the United States agrees to our demands, or we will be forced to put down our delicious chocolates and lead the way for permanent regime change. Remember, my dear Walloons, the current clique in Washington was elected in direct contravention of the will of the American people. Regime change will be welcomed by their citizens." Reaction to the speech throughout Europe was swift. "We stand with our Belgian brothers," offered French President Jacques Chirac. "France is willing to commit thirty-five troops and many cases of fine champagne to the cause. We cannot stand on the sidelines enjoying our delicious baguettes while our comrades from Antwerp go it alone. Let me assure the dear Prime Minister. France is with you, almost." Russian President Vladimir Putin did not mince any words. "Again, it is the powerful Belgians who must lead the world against aggression and American hegemony. Russia stands with her European allies and insists that the United States disarm unilaterally. I only wish we too had delicious foods." Following the speech, the mood at the White House was one of defiance. "Let the Belgians make their empty threats," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. "We are urging Hershey's and Mars and other fine American chocolate makers to increase their yummy output by two-hundred percent in the coming weeks. We intend to break up the evil-doing Belgian chocolate cartel once and for all." Vice President Dick Cheney was even more bellicose. Speaking directly underneath Karl Rove from an undisclosed underground bunker, the Vice President warned of dire consequences should Belgium make a preemptive strike. "We are prepared to strike back with alarming force," said Cheney. "The Belgians cannot bully us. They may be the world's only [chocolate] superpower, but we here in America have Allah on our side. To hell with their delicious chocolate treats." Verhofstadt, while unyielding in tone and substance, did offer the Americans a plausible way out. "I call upon George W. Bush to capture Sheik Kenneth Lay, Imam Dennis Kozlowski, and the entire Worldcom terrorist organization, and to hand them over to an international tribunal. The United States can no longer harbor agents of terrorism. You are either with us or against us." Back in Washington, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and National Security Advisor Condaleeza Rice were trying eagerly to persuade President Bush that there was indeed a country named Belgium.

To: Elmer Flugum who wrote (2387)	10/11/2002 10:48:23 AM
From: Thomas M.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 8683

Time For A Dossier On Israel by Neil Sammonds The tenth anniversary of the crash of El Al flight LY1862 in the Netherlands passed virtually unnoticed by the world’s media. On 4 October 1992, a Boeing 747 airliner of the Israeli airline El Al crashed into apartment blocks at Bijlmermeer, near Schiphol Airport, south-east of Amsterdam, en route from New York to Tel Aviv (MEI 585, 598). At least 47 people were killed and over a thousand local residents fell ill to respiratory, neurological and mobility ailments and experienced a rise in cancer and birth defects. Facing official Dutch and Israeli stone-walling, an independent Dutch nuclear research group discovered that the plane used depleted uranium as ballast. In 1998 the Dutch daily Handelsblad revealed even deadlier material in the cargo: flight LY1862 was carrying 10 tons of chemicals, including hydrofluoric acid, isopropanol and dimethyl methylphosphonate (DMMP) — three of the four chemicals used in the production of sarin nerve gas. A belated Dutch parliamentary enquiry into the crash discovered unpublicized weekly flights from New York to Tel Aviv stopping off at Schiphol, where cargoes were not inspected and — as the Dutch attorney general testified — El Al security staff worked for Mossad. In the words of an investigator working on behalf of the Bijlmermeer survivors, Schiphol had become, and continues to be, “a hub for secret weapons transfers”. “Invisible” facilities The DMMP was supplied by Solkatronic Chemicals Inc. of Morrisville, Pennsylvania, and was destined for the Israeli Institute for Biological Research (IIBR) at Nes Ziona, near Tel Aviv. As MEI noted in 1998, the IIBR is “the Israeli military and intelligence community’s front organization for the development, testing and production of chemical and biological weapons”. A “senior Israeli intelligence source” told the Sunday Times: “There is hardly a single known or unknown form of chemical or biological weapons which is not manufactured at Nes Ziona.” The IIBR is not shown on maps, and access to it was denied even to members of the Knesset’s foreign affairs and defence committees, who were concerned about health risks to the neighbourhood. The 1993 report by the US Office of Technology Assessment for Congress states that Israel has “undeclared offensive chemical warfare capabilities” and is “generally reported as having an undeclared offensive biological warfare programme”. The Sussex-Harvard Information Bank on Chemical and Biological Warfare Armament reports that Israel allegedly used poison gas in the 1960s and early 1980s, chemical warfare against Egyptian forces in 1948, and against Palestinians in 1969 and during the first Intifada. The Sunday Times reported in 1998 that Israel’s F-16s had been equipped to carry chemical and biological weapons manufactured at Nes Ziona, and that crews were trained to fit an active chemical or biological weapon within minutes of receiving a command. The newspaper also reported that it was at Nes Ziona where research into an “ethno-bomb” was carried out. One of the most disturbing revelations made during the South African Truth and Reconciliation Committee hearings was that the apartheid regime and its ally Israel were cooperating on such a project. Scientists reportedly pinpointed a particular characteristic in the genetic profile of certain Arab communities, particularly in Iraq, and were trying to engineer deadly micro-organisms that attack only those bearing the distinctive genes. The disease could be spread by spraying the organisms into the air or putting them in water supplies. Israel’s nuclear weapons programme is better documented than its biological and chemical weapons programme but remains as “invisible” as the Nes Ziona plant. There is no doubt that Israel’s nuclear capability was developed from the 1950s at Dimona in the Negev, with French and then American and South African assistance. In 1986 the Moroccan- born Israeli scientist Mordechai Vanunu blew the whistle on the activities at Dimona, claiming it had produced “over 200” nuclear warheads. Five years later a US Strategic Air Command report said Israel had between 75 and 200 nuclear weapons. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (BAS) estimates Israel has “over 185” nuclear weapons. The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) estimates “over 100, but not significantly over 200”. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimates 200. In 2000, Israeli MK Issam Mahoul broke the parliamentary taboo on discussing Israel’s official policy of “nuclear ambiguity” and stated that Israel had 2-300 nuclear warheads. Jane’s Intelligence Review estimated in 1997 that Israel had over 400 thermonuclear and nuclear weapons. The Campaign to Free Vanunu estimates 500 nuclear warheads. In both the 1967 and 1973 wars, Israel reportedly put nuclear warheads on a number of missiles. In August this year Anthony Cordesman of the Centre for Strategic International Studies told the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee that were Israel to feel threatened by attack from Iraq it might retaliate with nuclear strikes on Iraqi cities not yet occupied by US forces. Despite the overwhelming evidence of Israel’s nuclear weapons and readiness to deploy them, London and Washington refuse to see them. A spokeswoman for the Foreign Office told MEI: “Britain continues to encourage Israel to ratify the Non-Proliferation Treaty as a non-nuclear state.” There is a similar blind spot in the US, where a 2001 Pentagon report omitted Israel from a list of states with nuclear weapons capability. Evidence about Israel’s nuclear weaponry that the Foreign Office and Pentagon, among others, refuse to acknowledge, includes well sourced information about Israel’s delivery systems. The latest edition of Nuclear Notebook says Israel’s F-16 squadrons based at Nevatim and Ramon are the most likely warplanes to carry nuclear warheads and that a small group of pilots has been trained for nuclear strikes. Israel’s F-4s, F-15s and Jaguars are also nuclear-capable. The newsletter adds that Israel possesses ground-to-air missiles — the Jericho I, Jericho II and Shavit — than can be equipped with nuclear warheads. The Jericho I has a range of 500km and can be fired from stationary positions or from mobile launchers. Jericho II missiles can travel 1,500km and are kept, according to the BAS, at the Zechariya base 45km south-east of Tel Aviv. The Shavit intercontinental ballistic missile, which launches Israel’s Ofek spy satellites from the Palmahim air base south of Tel Aviv, could deliver a nuclear payload 8,000km away. Between July 1999 and October 2000, the Israeli navy reportedly took delivery of three Dolphin-class submarines — Dolphin, Leviathan and Tekuma — which are believed to have been modified to carry nuclear-tipped cruise missiles. A considerable body of research suggests that Israel also possesses a tactical nuclear capability, including small nuclear landmines and strategic nuclear warheads that it can fire from cannons. Notwithstanding a white-washing, complicit visit to Dimona by a Norwegian team in 1961 that “verified” that exports of heavy water were not being put to illicit use, and a farcical visit there in 1969 by an American team that was guided around a fake control room, there has been no known scrutiny of Israel’s non-conventional weapons programmes. Israel has not signed the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, and while it did sign up to the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1993, it is yet to ratify it. UN Security Council Resolution 487, of June 1981, “calls upon Israel urgently to place its nuclear facilities under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards,” and Resolution 687 of April 1991 notes “the threat that all weapons of mass destruction pose to peace and security in the area and… the need to work towards the establishment of a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East”. Meanwhile, Washington marshals an international campaign to force inspection and dismantlement of Iraq’s comparatively modest (at best) weapons of mass destruction programmes and the probable overthrow of the regime that pursues them. Mordechai Vanunu may be expecting his release in 2004, but no one is predicting when there might be international scrutiny of Dimona and Nes Ziona, or of the unpublicized, weekly El Al flights between New York and Tel Aviv. meionline.com