War & Peace: June 2004 Archives

If you've seen Fahrenheit 9/11 already, or even if you've just heard about this movie, you know about one of the people in the movie, Lila Lipscomb, resident of Flint, Michigan and mother of a soldier in Iraq. The scenes involving her are some of the rawest and most emotional in the film, and I had wondered afterwards what she thought of the film and how she was portrayed. Turns out she's just fine with it. In fact, she's seen the movie three times as of this interview in the Flint Journal.

Barry Reingold, on the other hand, is in no hurry to see the movie. He was the guy who got a visit from the FBI after he said Bush was an a-hole during a casual discussion in his local gym in Oakland (he lives somewhat near me, in fact). He may hate Bush, but he doesn't love Kerry either, and worries that the film doesn't deal with the bigger picture.

I think Michael Moore's agenda is to get Bush out, but I think it (should be) about more than Bush," said Reingold, an independent, on Saturday. "I think it's about the capitalist system, which is inequitable. They're laying people off, cutting off health care, and the few people on top are getting more rich and powerful."

"Bring 'em on!" said President Bush...

(and when you bring 'em on, we'll "hand over power" two days ahead of schedule and sneak out of the country.)

And where's all the money?

From this week's J., an editorial by Ruth Messinger about the genocide happening in Sudan:

As early as March of this year, humanitarian organizations were issuing warnings of ethnic cleansing in Darfur, Sudan. For a long time these warnings continued to be ignored by most of the mainstream and Jewish media, and Americans remain virtually unaware of the atrocities occurring there. Are we Jews to do nothing when we know better?

Visit the website of her organization, the American Jewish World Service, to learn more about what's happening and how you can help...

This was what the front page of Google News looked like at 2:45 p.m. or thereabouts today. Note the first two top stories.

Maybe, just maybe, this is a topic Bush and his buddy Karl Rove want to stay away from right now.

(The relevant stories, in case you have trouble with the image, are Bush Touts Afghanistan as Model for Iraq, from Reuters, followed by Senior Afghan official shot dead, from BBC News.)

A while back, I saw and commented upon a disagreeable anti-Palestinian piece. Well, here's the flipside: a posting on SFIndymedia which thankfully has slipped off the front page (did someone get wise?)

It's a shame. There's a real case to be made about what's wrong with Israel's current policies and direction. There's a real case to be made that they need regime change like we do. There's a real case to be made that the actions against the Palestinians have caused much death and misery without making Israelis any safer.

This ain't it.