Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Cuba- A Primer on "Paradise": Again, I can't say it any better than the Los Angeles Times.
Source Link:From The Ground Up, Cuba Is Crumbling
An account of the "worker's paradise" in Cuba:
From the Ground Up, Cuba Is Crumbling
Physical decay worsens by the day. For many, theft is their Mr. Fix-It.
By Carol J. Williams, Times Staff Writer
September 19, 2006
HAVANA — At the intersection of Marina and Jovellar streets, more than 50 people wait along a potholed sidewalk and broken curb for a bus that wheezes up to the stop already full.
Somehow, a dozen or so manage to squeeze into the windowless contraption that dates to the days when Moscow provided much of the means to keep the Cuban economy moving. Today, the buses barely keep Cubans moving. Many people spend as much as two hours each night getting home from their jobs in the center of Havana.
Their homes are also in a sad state, with at least 500 buildings in the capital collapsing each year, by the government's own count. Their utilities are decrepit too: Water and power distribution systems are corroded patchworks predating the 1959 revolution, and olfactory evidence of the state of the sewer system wafts throughout the city.
Cuba is falling apart — literally.
Even as its economy booms thanks to a thriving tourism industry, brisk nickel exports and cheap oil from ideologically aligned Venezuela, the social benefits are difficult to see at street level. Except for a few high-profile historical restoration projects such as the Art Deco buildings of Old Havana, the country's structural decay seems to worsen with each month.
"It's not a question of repairing anymore. Everything needs to be rebuilt," says Julio, a construction worker who spends more time as an unlicensed cabdriver than on state building sites. "There is no material and no money to buy it, so nothing has been maintained."
Some blame the decrepitude on the U.S. economic embargo that has blocked travel and the flow of goods to the island for nearly 45 years in an effort — through nine U.S. administrations — to starve Cuba into abandoning what Washington sees as a ruinous adherence to communism.
Few Cubans will talk openly about what might be wrong with a political and economic system that even in boom times can't keep the wheels of public transportation turning or the lights on — especially since President Fidel Castro turned over power to his brother six weeks ago for surgery deemed a state secret. But they complain quietly that there is more to their urban squalor than the embargo or the loss of Soviet aid 15 years ago can explain.
"The problem is that the government owns everything, and people only take care of what is their own," says another moonlighting cabdriver, Arturo, who buzzes his plastic-encased motorbike around basketball-sized craters in the asphalt where the Malecon seaside promenade meets 23rd Street. "Cubans are very clever and improvisational. We can fix anything. But there isn't the will to do it unless it is to improve your own conditions."
In self-improvement mode, city dwellers resort to pilferage to "resolve" their problems.
Resolver, Spanish for "to resolve," has long been a euphemism for getting around the system, be it a restaurant cook setting aside a few frozen French fries to take home from each tourist's order, or the filching of park bench planks to patch a gap in the deteriorating walls of an apartment.
The lack of available or affordable parts, tools and building materials has had a cancerous effect on the alreadydegraded infrastructure. Doorknobs disappear from public buildings, screws from wall-mounted shelves and dispensers. Along the Malecon, not a single storm-drain cover survives to prevent rubbish from clogging the sewers, the square metal grates apparently useful to screen windows.
Rampant theft has engendered more bureaucracy, with office workers having to lock their doors when they go for coffee out of fear someone will snatch the wastebasket, stapler, lightbulbs, pens and paper. Inventory lists are posted in government offices, a hedge against the contents disappearing.
But it is the buildings themselves, as well as vehicles and farm equipment, that are at risk of collapse from the pilfering. A tow-truck driver describes how the vehicles he pulls tend to lose their spark plugs, air filters, lug nuts and rear-view mirrors from the point of collection to delivery. Because most cars and trucks are state property, they are seen as fair game by Cubans hoping to make a few dollars by selling the purloined parts.
Even the tourism industry cash cow is vulnerable to widespread theft and minimal investment. Ancient air conditioners blow the smell of mold into "five-star" hotel rooms where renovations have been limited to the lobbies.
Rail tracks link most major cities, offering an affordable means of transportation, but the lines are rusted, engine breakdowns frequent and passenger service so primitive most travelers prefer to hitchhike.
Hope for repair of Cuba's housing, roads, transportation and utilities has risen with the multibillion-dollar investments made by Venezuela in the last few years, including a deal signed this year for Venezuelan engineers to complete the Cienfuegos oil refinery abandoned by the Soviets in the early 1990s.
That and other joint projects to upgrade the electricity grid, in addition to crude-oil-burning power plants, have had the effect of lowering the number of blackouts and power failures this year compared with the prolonged outages that left Cubans sweltering without fans or elevators the last two summers.
Decades of stoically making do with shortages and dysfunction have engendered a paralyzing passivity among Cubans, at least about the quality of their administrators and the political system that guides them.
"It's very tranquil here, very safe. We like it that way and don't want things to change, at least not suddenly," says Monica, a 30-something engineer asked if the conditions of urban life are frustrating. Like many asked about their expectations for the future, she claims not to have given it much thought, even with the only leader she has ever known now uncharacteristically in the background.
While Cubans succumb to the daily demands of resolving their food, shelter and finance problems, their former countrymen across the Florida Straits say they expect to be called on to help when the next leadership takes on the massive task of reconstruction.
Frank Nero, head of the Beacon Council, a public-private consortium of 400 Miami-area businesses, says that Cuba's dearth of lumber, hardware, tools, flooring materials, paints, electrical supplies and other do-it-yourself materials could mean that U.S. construction firms "are going to be very much in demand post-embargo."
Cubans have been taught to fear economic overtures from the exile community in Miami, where some who lost property to the revolution nurture hopes of reclaiming it after the Castro regime comes to a close and — they believe — a more democratic and free-market society emerges.
But with every third family thought to have relatives among the 1.2 million Cuban exiles in the United States, the younger generation has expectations of cross-straits collaboration.
"My brother-in-law has a construction business in Florida. He would help us if it was allowed," says Julio, who would like to replace the broken, grimy tiles on the staircase leading to his Havana apartment and put glass in the windows. "It will be faster to rebuild if there is goodwill on both sides."
Source Link:From The Ground Up, Cuba Is Crumbling
An account of the "worker's paradise" in Cuba:
From the Ground Up, Cuba Is Crumbling
Physical decay worsens by the day. For many, theft is their Mr. Fix-It.
By Carol J. Williams, Times Staff Writer
September 19, 2006
HAVANA — At the intersection of Marina and Jovellar streets, more than 50 people wait along a potholed sidewalk and broken curb for a bus that wheezes up to the stop already full.
Somehow, a dozen or so manage to squeeze into the windowless contraption that dates to the days when Moscow provided much of the means to keep the Cuban economy moving. Today, the buses barely keep Cubans moving. Many people spend as much as two hours each night getting home from their jobs in the center of Havana.
Their homes are also in a sad state, with at least 500 buildings in the capital collapsing each year, by the government's own count. Their utilities are decrepit too: Water and power distribution systems are corroded patchworks predating the 1959 revolution, and olfactory evidence of the state of the sewer system wafts throughout the city.
Cuba is falling apart — literally.
Even as its economy booms thanks to a thriving tourism industry, brisk nickel exports and cheap oil from ideologically aligned Venezuela, the social benefits are difficult to see at street level. Except for a few high-profile historical restoration projects such as the Art Deco buildings of Old Havana, the country's structural decay seems to worsen with each month.
"It's not a question of repairing anymore. Everything needs to be rebuilt," says Julio, a construction worker who spends more time as an unlicensed cabdriver than on state building sites. "There is no material and no money to buy it, so nothing has been maintained."
Some blame the decrepitude on the U.S. economic embargo that has blocked travel and the flow of goods to the island for nearly 45 years in an effort — through nine U.S. administrations — to starve Cuba into abandoning what Washington sees as a ruinous adherence to communism.
Few Cubans will talk openly about what might be wrong with a political and economic system that even in boom times can't keep the wheels of public transportation turning or the lights on — especially since President Fidel Castro turned over power to his brother six weeks ago for surgery deemed a state secret. But they complain quietly that there is more to their urban squalor than the embargo or the loss of Soviet aid 15 years ago can explain.
"The problem is that the government owns everything, and people only take care of what is their own," says another moonlighting cabdriver, Arturo, who buzzes his plastic-encased motorbike around basketball-sized craters in the asphalt where the Malecon seaside promenade meets 23rd Street. "Cubans are very clever and improvisational. We can fix anything. But there isn't the will to do it unless it is to improve your own conditions."
In self-improvement mode, city dwellers resort to pilferage to "resolve" their problems.
Resolver, Spanish for "to resolve," has long been a euphemism for getting around the system, be it a restaurant cook setting aside a few frozen French fries to take home from each tourist's order, or the filching of park bench planks to patch a gap in the deteriorating walls of an apartment.
The lack of available or affordable parts, tools and building materials has had a cancerous effect on the alreadydegraded infrastructure. Doorknobs disappear from public buildings, screws from wall-mounted shelves and dispensers. Along the Malecon, not a single storm-drain cover survives to prevent rubbish from clogging the sewers, the square metal grates apparently useful to screen windows.
Rampant theft has engendered more bureaucracy, with office workers having to lock their doors when they go for coffee out of fear someone will snatch the wastebasket, stapler, lightbulbs, pens and paper. Inventory lists are posted in government offices, a hedge against the contents disappearing.
But it is the buildings themselves, as well as vehicles and farm equipment, that are at risk of collapse from the pilfering. A tow-truck driver describes how the vehicles he pulls tend to lose their spark plugs, air filters, lug nuts and rear-view mirrors from the point of collection to delivery. Because most cars and trucks are state property, they are seen as fair game by Cubans hoping to make a few dollars by selling the purloined parts.
Even the tourism industry cash cow is vulnerable to widespread theft and minimal investment. Ancient air conditioners blow the smell of mold into "five-star" hotel rooms where renovations have been limited to the lobbies.
Rail tracks link most major cities, offering an affordable means of transportation, but the lines are rusted, engine breakdowns frequent and passenger service so primitive most travelers prefer to hitchhike.
Hope for repair of Cuba's housing, roads, transportation and utilities has risen with the multibillion-dollar investments made by Venezuela in the last few years, including a deal signed this year for Venezuelan engineers to complete the Cienfuegos oil refinery abandoned by the Soviets in the early 1990s.
That and other joint projects to upgrade the electricity grid, in addition to crude-oil-burning power plants, have had the effect of lowering the number of blackouts and power failures this year compared with the prolonged outages that left Cubans sweltering without fans or elevators the last two summers.
Decades of stoically making do with shortages and dysfunction have engendered a paralyzing passivity among Cubans, at least about the quality of their administrators and the political system that guides them.
"It's very tranquil here, very safe. We like it that way and don't want things to change, at least not suddenly," says Monica, a 30-something engineer asked if the conditions of urban life are frustrating. Like many asked about their expectations for the future, she claims not to have given it much thought, even with the only leader she has ever known now uncharacteristically in the background.
While Cubans succumb to the daily demands of resolving their food, shelter and finance problems, their former countrymen across the Florida Straits say they expect to be called on to help when the next leadership takes on the massive task of reconstruction.
Frank Nero, head of the Beacon Council, a public-private consortium of 400 Miami-area businesses, says that Cuba's dearth of lumber, hardware, tools, flooring materials, paints, electrical supplies and other do-it-yourself materials could mean that U.S. construction firms "are going to be very much in demand post-embargo."
Cubans have been taught to fear economic overtures from the exile community in Miami, where some who lost property to the revolution nurture hopes of reclaiming it after the Castro regime comes to a close and — they believe — a more democratic and free-market society emerges.
But with every third family thought to have relatives among the 1.2 million Cuban exiles in the United States, the younger generation has expectations of cross-straits collaboration.
"My brother-in-law has a construction business in Florida. He would help us if it was allowed," says Julio, who would like to replace the broken, grimy tiles on the staircase leading to his Havana apartment and put glass in the windows. "It will be faster to rebuild if there is goodwill on both sides."
Monday, September 18, 2006
The State of Modern Day Liberalism: I couldn't have said it better than Sam Harris in this article:
Source Link: Head-in-the-Sand Liberals
Head-in-the-Sand Liberals
Western civilization really is at risk from Muslim extremists.
By Sam Harris, SAM HARRIS is the author of "The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason."
TWO YEARS AGO I published a book highly critical of religion, "The End of Faith." In it, I argued that the world's major religions are genuinely incompatible, inevitably cause conflict and now prevent the emergence of a viable, global civilization. In response, I have received many thousands of letters and e-mails from priests, journalists, scientists, politicians, soldiers, rabbis, actors, aid workers, students — from people young and old who occupy every point on the spectrum of belief and nonbelief.
This has offered me a special opportunity to see how people of all creeds and political persuasions react when religion is criticized. I am here to report that liberals and conservatives respond very differently to the notion that religion can be a direct cause of human conflict.
This difference does not bode well for the future of liberalism.
Perhaps I should establish my liberal bone fides at the outset. I'd like to see taxes raised on the wealthy, drugs decriminalized and homosexuals free to marry. I also think that the Bush administration deserves most of the criticism it has received in the last six years — especially with respect to its waging of the war in Iraq, its scuttling of science and its fiscal irresponsibility.
But my correspondence with liberals has convinced me that liberalism has grown dangerously out of touch with the realities of our world — specifically with what devout Muslims actually believe about the West, about paradise and about the ultimate ascendance of their faith.
On questions of national security, I am now as wary of my fellow liberals as I am of the religious demagogues on the Christian right.
This may seem like frank acquiescence to the charge that "liberals are soft on terrorism." It is, and they are.
A cult of death is forming in the Muslim world — for reasons that are perfectly explicable in terms of the Islamic doctrines of martyrdom and jihad. The truth is that we are not fighting a "war on terror." We are fighting a pestilential theology and a longing for paradise.
This is not to say that we are at war with all Muslims. But we are absolutely at war with those who believe that death in defense of the faith is the highest possible good, that cartoonists should be killed for caricaturing the prophet and that any Muslim who loses his faith should be butchered for apostasy.
Unfortunately, such religious extremism is not as fringe a phenomenon as we might hope. Numerous studies have found that the most radicalized Muslims tend to have better-than-average educations and economic opportunities.
Given the degree to which religious ideas are still sheltered from criticism in every society, it is actually possible for a person to have the economic and intellectual resources to build a nuclear bomb — and to believe that he will get 72 virgins in paradise. And yet, despite abundant evidence to the contrary, liberals continue to imagine that Muslim terrorism springs from economic despair, lack of education and American militarism.
At its most extreme, liberal denial has found expression in a growing subculture of conspiracy theorists who believe that the atrocities of 9/11 were orchestrated by our own government. A nationwide poll conducted by the Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio University found that more than a third of Americans suspect that the federal government "assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East;" 16% believe that the twin towers collapsed not because fully-fueled passenger jets smashed into them but because agents of the Bush administration had secretly rigged them to explode.
Such an astonishing eruption of masochistic unreason could well mark the decline of liberalism, if not the decline of Western civilization. There are books, films and conferences organized around this phantasmagoria, and they offer an unusually clear view of the debilitating dogma that lurks at the heart of liberalism: Western power is utterly malevolent, while the powerless people of the Earth can be counted on to embrace reason and tolerance, if only given sufficient economic opportunities.
I don't know how many more engineers and architects need to blow themselves up, fly planes into buildings or saw the heads off of journalists before this fantasy will dissipate. The truth is that there is every reason to believe that a terrifying number of the world's Muslims now view all political and moral questions in terms of their affiliation with Islam. This leads them to rally to the cause of other Muslims no matter how sociopathic their behavior. This benighted religious solidarity may be the greatest problem facing civilization and yet it is regularly misconstrued, ignored or obfuscated by liberals.
Given the mendacity and shocking incompetence of the Bush administration — especially its mishandling of the war in Iraq — liberals can find much to lament in the conservative approach to fighting the war on terror. Unfortunately, liberals hate the current administration with such fury that they regularly fail to acknowledge just how dangerous and depraved our enemies in the Muslim world are.
Recent condemnations of the Bush administration's use of the phrase "Islamic fascism" are a case in point. There is no question that the phrase is imprecise — Islamists are not technically fascists, and the term ignores a variety of schisms that exist even among Islamists — but it is by no means an example of wartime propaganda, as has been repeatedly alleged by liberals.
In their analyses of U.S. and Israeli foreign policy, liberals can be relied on to overlook the most basic moral distinctions. For instance, they ignore the fact that Muslims intentionally murder noncombatants, while we and the Israelis (as a rule) seek to avoid doing so. Muslims routinely use human shields, and this accounts for much of the collateral damage we and the Israelis cause; the political discourse throughout much of the Muslim world, especially with respect to Jews, is explicitly and unabashedly genocidal.
Given these distinctions, there is no question that the Israelis now hold the moral high ground in their conflict with Hamas and Hezbollah. And yet liberals in the United States and Europe often speak as though the truth were otherwise.
We are entering an age of unchecked nuclear proliferation and, it seems likely, nuclear terrorism. There is, therefore, no future in which aspiring martyrs will make good neighbors for us. Unless liberals realize that there are tens of millions of people in the Muslim world who are far scarier than Dick Cheney, they will be unable to protect civilization from its genuine enemies.
Increasingly, Americans will come to believe that the only people hard-headed enough to fight the religious lunatics of the Muslim world are the religious lunatics of the West. Indeed, it is telling that the people who speak with the greatest moral clarity about the current wars in the Middle East are members of the Christian right, whose infatuation with biblical prophecy is nearly as troubling as the ideology of our enemies. Religious dogmatism is now playing both sides of the board in a very dangerous game.
While liberals should be the ones pointing the way beyond this Iron Age madness, they are rendering themselves increasingly irrelevant. Being generally reasonable and tolerant of diversity, liberals should be especially sensitive to the dangers of religious literalism. But they aren't.
The same failure of liberalism is evident in Western Europe, where the dogma of multiculturalism has left a secular Europe very slow to address the looming problem of religious extremism among its immigrants. The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists.
To say that this does not bode well for liberalism is an understatement: It does not bode well for the future of civilization.
Source Link: Head-in-the-Sand Liberals
Head-in-the-Sand Liberals
Western civilization really is at risk from Muslim extremists.
By Sam Harris, SAM HARRIS is the author of "The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason."
TWO YEARS AGO I published a book highly critical of religion, "The End of Faith." In it, I argued that the world's major religions are genuinely incompatible, inevitably cause conflict and now prevent the emergence of a viable, global civilization. In response, I have received many thousands of letters and e-mails from priests, journalists, scientists, politicians, soldiers, rabbis, actors, aid workers, students — from people young and old who occupy every point on the spectrum of belief and nonbelief.
This has offered me a special opportunity to see how people of all creeds and political persuasions react when religion is criticized. I am here to report that liberals and conservatives respond very differently to the notion that religion can be a direct cause of human conflict.
This difference does not bode well for the future of liberalism.
Perhaps I should establish my liberal bone fides at the outset. I'd like to see taxes raised on the wealthy, drugs decriminalized and homosexuals free to marry. I also think that the Bush administration deserves most of the criticism it has received in the last six years — especially with respect to its waging of the war in Iraq, its scuttling of science and its fiscal irresponsibility.
But my correspondence with liberals has convinced me that liberalism has grown dangerously out of touch with the realities of our world — specifically with what devout Muslims actually believe about the West, about paradise and about the ultimate ascendance of their faith.
On questions of national security, I am now as wary of my fellow liberals as I am of the religious demagogues on the Christian right.
This may seem like frank acquiescence to the charge that "liberals are soft on terrorism." It is, and they are.
A cult of death is forming in the Muslim world — for reasons that are perfectly explicable in terms of the Islamic doctrines of martyrdom and jihad. The truth is that we are not fighting a "war on terror." We are fighting a pestilential theology and a longing for paradise.
This is not to say that we are at war with all Muslims. But we are absolutely at war with those who believe that death in defense of the faith is the highest possible good, that cartoonists should be killed for caricaturing the prophet and that any Muslim who loses his faith should be butchered for apostasy.
Unfortunately, such religious extremism is not as fringe a phenomenon as we might hope. Numerous studies have found that the most radicalized Muslims tend to have better-than-average educations and economic opportunities.
Given the degree to which religious ideas are still sheltered from criticism in every society, it is actually possible for a person to have the economic and intellectual resources to build a nuclear bomb — and to believe that he will get 72 virgins in paradise. And yet, despite abundant evidence to the contrary, liberals continue to imagine that Muslim terrorism springs from economic despair, lack of education and American militarism.
At its most extreme, liberal denial has found expression in a growing subculture of conspiracy theorists who believe that the atrocities of 9/11 were orchestrated by our own government. A nationwide poll conducted by the Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio University found that more than a third of Americans suspect that the federal government "assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East;" 16% believe that the twin towers collapsed not because fully-fueled passenger jets smashed into them but because agents of the Bush administration had secretly rigged them to explode.
Such an astonishing eruption of masochistic unreason could well mark the decline of liberalism, if not the decline of Western civilization. There are books, films and conferences organized around this phantasmagoria, and they offer an unusually clear view of the debilitating dogma that lurks at the heart of liberalism: Western power is utterly malevolent, while the powerless people of the Earth can be counted on to embrace reason and tolerance, if only given sufficient economic opportunities.
I don't know how many more engineers and architects need to blow themselves up, fly planes into buildings or saw the heads off of journalists before this fantasy will dissipate. The truth is that there is every reason to believe that a terrifying number of the world's Muslims now view all political and moral questions in terms of their affiliation with Islam. This leads them to rally to the cause of other Muslims no matter how sociopathic their behavior. This benighted religious solidarity may be the greatest problem facing civilization and yet it is regularly misconstrued, ignored or obfuscated by liberals.
Given the mendacity and shocking incompetence of the Bush administration — especially its mishandling of the war in Iraq — liberals can find much to lament in the conservative approach to fighting the war on terror. Unfortunately, liberals hate the current administration with such fury that they regularly fail to acknowledge just how dangerous and depraved our enemies in the Muslim world are.
Recent condemnations of the Bush administration's use of the phrase "Islamic fascism" are a case in point. There is no question that the phrase is imprecise — Islamists are not technically fascists, and the term ignores a variety of schisms that exist even among Islamists — but it is by no means an example of wartime propaganda, as has been repeatedly alleged by liberals.
In their analyses of U.S. and Israeli foreign policy, liberals can be relied on to overlook the most basic moral distinctions. For instance, they ignore the fact that Muslims intentionally murder noncombatants, while we and the Israelis (as a rule) seek to avoid doing so. Muslims routinely use human shields, and this accounts for much of the collateral damage we and the Israelis cause; the political discourse throughout much of the Muslim world, especially with respect to Jews, is explicitly and unabashedly genocidal.
Given these distinctions, there is no question that the Israelis now hold the moral high ground in their conflict with Hamas and Hezbollah. And yet liberals in the United States and Europe often speak as though the truth were otherwise.
We are entering an age of unchecked nuclear proliferation and, it seems likely, nuclear terrorism. There is, therefore, no future in which aspiring martyrs will make good neighbors for us. Unless liberals realize that there are tens of millions of people in the Muslim world who are far scarier than Dick Cheney, they will be unable to protect civilization from its genuine enemies.
Increasingly, Americans will come to believe that the only people hard-headed enough to fight the religious lunatics of the Muslim world are the religious lunatics of the West. Indeed, it is telling that the people who speak with the greatest moral clarity about the current wars in the Middle East are members of the Christian right, whose infatuation with biblical prophecy is nearly as troubling as the ideology of our enemies. Religious dogmatism is now playing both sides of the board in a very dangerous game.
While liberals should be the ones pointing the way beyond this Iron Age madness, they are rendering themselves increasingly irrelevant. Being generally reasonable and tolerant of diversity, liberals should be especially sensitive to the dangers of religious literalism. But they aren't.
The same failure of liberalism is evident in Western Europe, where the dogma of multiculturalism has left a secular Europe very slow to address the looming problem of religious extremism among its immigrants. The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists.
To say that this does not bode well for liberalism is an understatement: It does not bode well for the future of civilization.
Sunday, September 10, 2006
The Highest Form of Patriotism: I keep hearing protestors on television say "dissent is the highest form of patriotism" and then go on to bash President Bush, bash the war on terror, or bash some other pet project. It's time to dispense with that notion right now. THE highest form of patriotism is the sacrifice of one's life in defense of this nation and The Consitution. To insinuate in some way that trashing this country and this country's president is somehow more noble is, frankly, a load of crap.
Saturday, September 09, 2006
The Path to 9/11: The defeat-o-crats certainly seem perturbed by the ABC movie "Path to 9/11". In fact it is reasonable to describe them as hyperventilating. Their behavior over the last two days borders on deranged. Take this letter that Bruce Lindsey wrote to ABC:
"Dear Bob,
Despite press reports that ABC/Disney has made changes in the content and marketing of "The Path to 9/11," we remailn concerned about the false impression that airing the show will leave on the public. Labelng the show as "fiction" does not meet your responsibility to the victims of the September 11th attacks, their families, the hard work of the 9/11 Commission, or to the American people as a whole.
At a moment when we should be debating how to make the nation safer by implementing the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, "The Path to 9/11" calls into question the accuracy of the Commission's report and whether fabricated scenes are, in fact, an accurate portrayal of history. Indeed, the millions spent on the production of this fictional drama would have been better spent informing the public about the Commission's actual findings and the many recommendations that have yet to be acted upon. Unlike this film, that would have been a tremendous service to the public.
Although our request for an advance copy of the film has been repeatedly denied, it is all too clear that our objections to "The Path to 9/11" are valid and corroborated by those familiar with the film and intimately involved in its production.
-- Your corporate partner, Scholastic, has disassociated itself from this proect.
-- 9/11 Commission Chairman Thomas Kean, who served as co-executive producer on "The Path to 9/11," has stated that he raised concerns about the accuracy of several scenes in the film and that his concerns were not addressed during production.
-- Harvey Keitel, who plays the star role of FBI agent John O'Neill, told reporters yesterday that while the screenplay was presented to him as a fair treatment of historical events, he is upset that several scenes were simply invented for dramatic purposes.
-- Numerous Members of Congress, several 9/11 Commissioners and prominent historians have spoken out against this movie.
-- Indeed, according to press reports, the fact that you are still editing the film two days before it is scheduled to air is an admission that it is irreparably flawed.
As a nation, we need to be focused on preventing another attack, not fictionalizing the last one for television ratings. "The Path to 9/11" not only tarnishes the work of the 9/11 Commission, but also cheapens the fith anniversary of what was a very painful moment in history for all Americans. We expect that you will make the responsible decision to not air this film.
Sincerely,
Bruce R. Lindsey
Chief Executive Officer
William J. Clinton Foundation
Douglas J. Band
Counselor to President Clinton
Office of William Jefferson Clinton"
Source Link:
(Election Central Article)
I remember way WAY back to a time when Democrats fought AGAINST censorship and FOR the freedom of the press. I guess that ideal is trumped by the need to build the "proper" legacy for Bill Clinton which of course, is far more important than the actual Constitution.
"Dear Bob,
Despite press reports that ABC/Disney has made changes in the content and marketing of "The Path to 9/11," we remailn concerned about the false impression that airing the show will leave on the public. Labelng the show as "fiction" does not meet your responsibility to the victims of the September 11th attacks, their families, the hard work of the 9/11 Commission, or to the American people as a whole.
At a moment when we should be debating how to make the nation safer by implementing the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, "The Path to 9/11" calls into question the accuracy of the Commission's report and whether fabricated scenes are, in fact, an accurate portrayal of history. Indeed, the millions spent on the production of this fictional drama would have been better spent informing the public about the Commission's actual findings and the many recommendations that have yet to be acted upon. Unlike this film, that would have been a tremendous service to the public.
Although our request for an advance copy of the film has been repeatedly denied, it is all too clear that our objections to "The Path to 9/11" are valid and corroborated by those familiar with the film and intimately involved in its production.
-- Your corporate partner, Scholastic, has disassociated itself from this proect.
-- 9/11 Commission Chairman Thomas Kean, who served as co-executive producer on "The Path to 9/11," has stated that he raised concerns about the accuracy of several scenes in the film and that his concerns were not addressed during production.
-- Harvey Keitel, who plays the star role of FBI agent John O'Neill, told reporters yesterday that while the screenplay was presented to him as a fair treatment of historical events, he is upset that several scenes were simply invented for dramatic purposes.
-- Numerous Members of Congress, several 9/11 Commissioners and prominent historians have spoken out against this movie.
-- Indeed, according to press reports, the fact that you are still editing the film two days before it is scheduled to air is an admission that it is irreparably flawed.
As a nation, we need to be focused on preventing another attack, not fictionalizing the last one for television ratings. "The Path to 9/11" not only tarnishes the work of the 9/11 Commission, but also cheapens the fith anniversary of what was a very painful moment in history for all Americans. We expect that you will make the responsible decision to not air this film.
Sincerely,
Bruce R. Lindsey
Chief Executive Officer
William J. Clinton Foundation
Douglas J. Band
Counselor to President Clinton
Office of William Jefferson Clinton"
Source Link:
(Election Central Article)
I remember way WAY back to a time when Democrats fought AGAINST censorship and FOR the freedom of the press. I guess that ideal is trumped by the need to build the "proper" legacy for Bill Clinton which of course, is far more important than the actual Constitution.
Monday, September 04, 2006
Haitus Over: Labor Day seems to be a fitting time to end my brief haitus and get back in the swing of things. A lot of time has passed since my last post, but it won't take much time at all to catch up. The democrats- or dem-NO-crats- still have no plan to fight terror, no plan for alternative energy, no plans to increase our oil reserves, no plan to fix Social Security, and no plan for a so-called "new course" in Iraq. In short, nothing much has changed since my last post several months ago.
Oh, there is one change, since Delay is gone, they've moved on to a "get Rummy" plan...
Parting Shot: I take it most people are aware of the "Plame Flame-out". The brilliant end to the dem-NO-crats plan to "get Rove".
Yep, won't take me long to get up to speed at all.....
Oh, there is one change, since Delay is gone, they've moved on to a "get Rummy" plan...
Parting Shot: I take it most people are aware of the "Plame Flame-out". The brilliant end to the dem-NO-crats plan to "get Rove".
Yep, won't take me long to get up to speed at all.....
