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29 June 2003

 

Thought for the day
The first step in our endeavour to build sustainable communities must be to "become ecologically literate," i.e., to understand the principles of organization, common to all living systems, that ecosystems have evolved to sustain the web of life.
--Fritjof Capra

posted by Lorenzo 11:07 AM

26 June 2003

 

George Bush and George Orwell
Have you ever wondered why one of Bush II's first acts in office was to seal the records of his father's presidency? Why doesn't he want scholars to see this information? What is he doing behind those library doors that are now so tightly locked?

Perhaps there is a clue in Orwell's novel "1984." As you will recall, one of the characters' jobs is to re-write newspaper accounts to bring them in line with what the government wanted people to believe. (Sounds a bit like what is now taking place with those falsified reports of WMDs, doesn't it?) ... Here is what Orwell wrote:

This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound tracks, cartoons, photographs--to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance. ... In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct.

My guess is that after someone read "1984" to little Bush (he never reads himself, you know), his only comment was, "Let's do it!"

BTW, in case you aren't aware of it, many of the bits of information the Bush Administration is trying to destroy and cover up may now be found at The Memory Hole.

posted by Lorenzo 2:14 PM

25 June 2003

 

Thought for the day
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

posted by Lorenzo 11:30 AM

 

History repeats itself
We had to destroy the village in order to save it.
US Army Officer in Viet Nam

We have to destroy the world in order to save it.
George W. Bush

posted by Lorenzo 11:29 AM

20 June 2003

 

Thought for the day
The brutal reality of politics alone would probably be intolerable without drugs.
--Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

posted by Lorenzo 9:39 AM

19 June 2003

 

Thought for the day
A man's feet must be planted in his country, but his eyes should survey the world.
--George Santayana

posted by Lorenzo 4:09 PM

18 June 2003

 

Thought for the day
It�s not just a case of hyping intelligence, but of asserting something that�s already been flatly discredited.
--Nicholas D. Kristof

posted by Lorenzo 12:54 PM

16 June 2003

 

Could this be true?
Rumors coming out of Washington reveal a new approach by Little Bush in his attempt to find at least one weapon of mass destruction in Iraq. Apparently, National Insecurity Advisor Condoleezza Rice came up with the plan ... hire that Master Detective O.J. Simpson to flush them out, just as he found the butcher who cut off his wife's head.

posted by Lorenzo 1:55 PM

13 June 2003

 

Google sees news as "entertainment"
In today's Google news listings they list stories about newscaster David Brinkley's death under their "entertainment" section. How appropriate. After all, most U.S. news outlets are little more than entertainment venues designed to help sell their commercial sponsors' products.

posted by Lorenzo 1:18 PM

12 June 2003

 

Thought for the day
Facts are subversive.
--I.F. Stone

posted by Lorenzo 12:34 PM

11 June 2003

 

Thought for the day
Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your common sense.
--Buddha

posted by Lorenzo 4:29 PM

10 June 2003

 

Thought for the day
This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.
--Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address

posted by Lorenzo 8:17 PM

09 June 2003

 

Thought for the day
When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous, and its speaker a raving lunatic.
--James Dresden

posted by Lorenzo 10:17 AM

07 June 2003

 

Thought for the day
This morning I heard a radio interview with the man who wrote the "Barney Song," which is now being used by the U.S. military to torture Iraqi prisoners. Apparently, the Americans are playing that song 24 hours a day in the prisoners' cells. Aside from the fact that the U.S. is now admitting to the use of various means of torture on the hapless victims of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the use of a popular children's song to do so raises some interesting questions. For example, if listening to this song over and over again is a form of torture, what does it say about parents who give their children toys that play that song continuously. I guess the results of these years of child torture are clear ... we've raised a generation of mercenary soldiers who enjoy torturing their captives ... just like their parents did to them.

Another thing that struck me while listening to this interview was the fact that the composer of that song was actually pleased that his work was being use to torture people. He figured he was doing his part to "help find those weapons of mass destruction." Of course, rational people are now fully aware that there are no WMD. They are as fictitious as Big Bird, which might explain the use of the Barney Song ... facts are old fashioned, fiction is the new king. (Side note: This goof ball of a composer also said he is thinking about asking the government to pay him a royalty for each time the song is played. ... I'd love to see how the accountants enter that transaction on their books.)

posted by Lorenzo 10:38 AM

06 June 2003

 

Thought for the day
The United States is a nation of laws, badly written and randomly enforced.
--Frank Zappa

posted by Lorenzo 11:53 AM

05 June 2003

 

Thought for the day
Follow the old faith ... and stay high.
--Terence McKenna

posted by Lorenzo 10:11 AM

04 June 2003

 

Something to think about
When Little Bush was touring the Nazi death camps last week, do you think he was taking notes for the design of the execution chambers he has proposed for the prisoners being held without charges at the American base in Cuba?

posted by Lorenzo 9:19 PM

 

Thought for the day
Non-violence is a more active and real fight against wickedness than retaliation whose very nature is to increase wickedness. It is not a weapon of the weak, but a weapon of the strongest and bravest.
--Mahatma Gandhi

posted by Lorenzo 8:12 PM

 

ROSENTHAL FREED!!!!
(Bob Egelko, SFGate.com, June 4, 2003)
In a dramatic blow to the federal government's campaign against medical marijuana, a federal judge spared pot advocate Ed Rosenthal from a prison sentence Wednesday for his conviction on cultivation charges, saying Rosenthal reasonably believed he was acting legally. . . . "This is day one in the crusade to bring down the marijuana laws, all the marijuana laws," Rosenthal -- whose latest book is called "Why Marijuana Should Be Legal" -- proclaimed after the hearing to about 100 jubilant supporters. . . . Some carried huge puppet figures showing President Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft in jailhouse garb and depicting Rosenthal and other medical marijuana defendants with angels' wings. San Francisco District Attorney Terence Hallinan was also in the gathering and praised the judge's decision. . . . "He did me no favors" in sentencing, Rosenthal said. "He made me a felon because he would not allow the jury to hear the whole story. He had an agenda. I call on Judge Breyer to resign." . . . Rosenthal plans to appeal his conviction, based on Breyer's rulings that kept virtually the entire defense case from the jury -- Rosenthal's medical motives, his claim that the city of Oakland had designated him as an officer to supply marijuana to a city-endorsed dispensary, and his reliance on Proposition 215, the 1996 California initiative that allowed seriously ill patients to obtain marijuana with a doctor's recommendation. . . . "Today marks the beginning of the end of the federal war on medical marijuana patients," said Robert Kampia, executive director of the nonprofit Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, D.C. . . . "It sends a very strong message to the Bush administration that they had better focus their law enforcement resources on serious and violent crime, especially terrorism, and stop arresting patients and caregivers in the nine states that have legalized medical marijuana," said Keith Stroup, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. . . . Also celebrating were some of the jurors who disavowed their guilty verdict after learning about the evidence that had been excluded. Seven of the 12 jurors signed a letter urging Breyer not to sentence Rosenthal to prison, and four attended Wednesday's hearing. State Attorney General Bill Lockyer also called for a lenient sentence. . . . Rosenthal's case was unique because of his relationship with the city of Oakland. Trying to shield its Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative from the federal crackdown, the City Council declared the organization an official city agency in 1998 and allowed its leaders to designate suppliers -- including Rosenthal -- as city officers. . . . Breyer refused to allow evidence of those events at the trial.

posted by Lorenzo 6:59 PM

03 June 2003

 

Thought for the day
The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do.
--Samuel P. Huntington

posted by Lorenzo 9:12 AM