The military sends troops armed with big budgets and 38 lb. cameras to film that good old American propaganda. Make no mistake, these are not journalists. They’re trained parrots. Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. They’ve gone through the rigorous conditioning perfected by our armed forces. Coming to a theatre near you, 4-minute displays of American machismo, self-righteousness, and down home, simple-minded ‘patriotism’. I can just see all these credulous 19-22 year olds: “This is for you mom and dad! We’re fighting for freedom!” as they load munitions worth more than they’ll ever earn in a lifetime onto jets, tanks, and missile batteries. Stupid, so stupid.
Monthly Archives: March 2003
13
Mar 03
Turkey reconsiders US proposal: Turkey
13
Mar 03
Markets don’t like war
The Dow jumped nearly 3.6 percent today with the news of delays to Bush War 2. As US Rep. Ron Paul points out in an previous post, war is actually harmful to the economy. This is not even to mention the waste involved with destroying valuable property, people, families, and internationational relationships.
13
Mar 03
AP: Bill would automatically register
13
Mar 03
A Texas original
The Myth of War Prosperity by Rep. Ron Paul
There is a commonly-held myth that war creates prosperity. Many believe that World War II ended the Great Depression. Unemployment went down because hundreds of thousands of men were drafted, and factories at home busied themselves with war production. This provided the illusion of a bustling wartime economy. But in truth the economy shrank and GDP plummeted. The hidden costs were enormous, because so much human energy and human capital was expended fighting the war rather than doing productive, specialized work back home. …
The greatest economic cost of war, however, comes from the expansion in the size and scope of government. Government always grows during wars and other crises. As economist Murray Rothbard noted, government uses crises to “Engineer the great leaps forward,” in the size of the state. When the crisis ends, government never returns to its former size. As government expands, individual liberty necessarily shrinks. True prosperity cannot exist without individual liberty and its corollaries of limited government, property rights, and free markets. Ultimately, war leaves us with less freedom at home. The sad irony is that while our soldiers have fought for the freedom of Europe, Korea, Vietnam, Kuwait, and Iraq, the government uses war to steadily diminish freedom here at home. While we fight a war in Iraq, we must also fight to maintain and restore individual liberty in America.
13
Mar 03
Gov. cogs try to smear peer-to-peer
WashingtonPost.com: Pornography Prevalent on File-Sharing Services: Teenagers — who are among the heaviest users of sharing services — might accidentally be exposed to pornographic files because they often have innocuous labels that users often seek, the reports say. And parents might not realize how much pornography is available on the services, according to the studies produced by the General Accounting Office and the House Committee on Government Reform.
It’s really simple. If you don’t want your children exposed to any ideas, imagery you wouldn’t approve of either don’t let them use the internet or use the internet with them.
13
Mar 03
MTV: Anti-war groups ‘loathsome’
From Antiwar.com: MTV Refuses Antiwar Commercial: Mtv has refused to accept a commercial opposing a war in Iraq, citing a policy against advocacy spots that it says protects the channel from having to run ads from any cash-rich interest group whose cause may be loathsome.
Most networks and media spigots have policies of non-advocacy yet they run advertisements for the military and promote all sorts of ‘patriotic’ ie. nationalist crap. It’s hypocrisy.
13
Mar 03
Guess whose birthday is coming up
I don’t expect anyone to get me anything, but I was thinking on my own about ideas for presents (for myself of course). It’s fun!
- Jumbo playing cards. I like the idea of playing hearts or spades with a giant deck of cards.
- Coconut cream pie. Yum.
- Good non-white socks. Mutedly colorful, stripey, cotton, something.
- Singing Bird Cage. Don’t ask me why, but I really like this.
12
Mar 03
Elizabeth Smart found alive, but too late to save innocent man
I wouldn’t normally find this very newsworthy just for my own personal reasons, but I wanted to point out how they tried to pin this to that Ricci guy who had a brain hemorrage and died in jail. So, I’m glad the Smart girl has been found, but this just goes to show how ‘justice’ is often delivered by zealous prosecutors and police, on the backs of the hapless and innocent. Shame.
Police earlier had focused on 48-year-old handyman, Richard Ricci, calling him “a possible suspect. He was later imprisoned for a parole violation stemming from burglary charges related to the Smart family. Ricci died in the Utah State Prison August 30, 2002, when he was taken off life support following a brain hemorrhage three days earlier.
I have to wonder if he did indeed even take anything from the Smarts. Authorities can often find laws that have been broken and will even go so far to plant evidence.
12
Mar 03
Tasty Morsels
- Scientists develop experimental silicon-based hippocampus replacement. World’s first known brain prosthesis. Any device that mimics the brain clearly raises ethical issues. The brain not only affects memory, but your mood, awareness and consciousness – parts of your fundamental identity, says ethicist Joel Anderson at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri.
- Serbian prime-minister assassinated by mafia?
- Death rate for eating disorder not unusual Anorexia nervosa: Mayo Clinic study looks at patients over 60-year period
- Serbian Prime Minister Assassinated: The Serbian government said later in a statement that a Belgrade-based criminal group was behind the assassination. It called the group the Zemun clan, named after a Belgrade municipality, and said it was responsible for many murders and kidnappings during the past few years. It also named several alleged leading figures. It reminds me of the line in ‘The Godfather’: “If history has taught us anything, it is this: Anyone can be killed.”