Bartcop Entertainment - Wednesday, 18 February, 2004

"Chance is always powerful. Let your hook be always cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be a fish."

- Ovid -

"Grandiosity, rigidity, and intolerance of ambiguity, and a tendency to obsess about things are among the traits associated with the dry drunk. The dry drunk quits drinking, but his or her obsession with the bottle is often replaced with other obsessions."

- Katherine van Wormer: Is Iraq Evidence that President Bush Is A "Dry Drunk" -

"My son died for absolutely nothing."

- Sue Niederer, quoted by John Tredrea in Hopewell Township relatives talk about Lt. Seth Dvorin's death in Iraq -

"Forget law. No more legal papers, or rights. Forget truth. The claim that either Afghanistan, or Iraq declared war on the U.S. is absurd. The U.S. chose to attack both nations, from one end to the other, violating their sovereignty and changing their 'regimes,' summarily executing thousands of men, women and children in the process. At least 40,000 defenseless people in Iraq have been killed by U.S. violence since the latest aggression began in earnest in March 2003 starting with its celebrated, high tech, terrorist 'Shock and Awe' and continuing until now with 25, or more, U.S. raids daily causing mounting deaths and injuries.

"All this death-dealing aggression has occurred during a period, Mr. Bush boasts, of 'over two years without an attack on American soil.' The U.S. is guilty of pure aggression, arbitrary repression and false portrayal of the nature and purpose of its violence.

"President Bush's brutish mentality is revealed in his condemnations of the 'killers' and 'thugs in Iraq' 'who ran away from our troops in battle.' U.S. military expenditures and technology threaten and impoverish life on the planet. Any army that sought to stand up against U.S. air power and weapons of mass destruction in open battle would be annihilated. This is what President Bush seeks when he says 'Bring 'em on.'

"If Qaddafi 'correctly judged his country would be better off, and far more secure, without weapons of mass murder,' why would the United States not be better off, and far more secure, if it eliminated all its vast stores of nuclear weapons? Is not the greatest danger from nuclear proliferation today without question President Bush's violations of the Non Proliferation (NPT), ABM and Nuclear Test Ban treaties by continuing programs for strategic nuclear weapons, failing to negotiate in good faith to achieve 'nuclear disarmament' after more than thirty years and development of a new generation of nuclear weapons, small 'tactical' weapons of mass murder, which he would use in a minute? Has he not threatened to use existing strategic nuclear weapons? The failure of the 'nuclear weapon State Party(s)' to the NPT to work in good faith to achieve "nuclear disarmament these past 36 years is the reason the world is still confronted with the threat of nuclear war and proliferation.
- Ramsey Clark's letter to Kofi Annan concerning Bush's State of the Union speech -

"Government is not reason. Government is not eloquence. It is force, and like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful Master"

- George Washington -

"As you approach a town to attack it, first offer its people terms for peace. If they accept your terms and open the gates to you, then all the people inside will serve you in forced labor. But if they refuse to make peace and prepare to fight, you must attack the town. When the LORD your God hands it over to you, kill every man in the town. But you may keep for yourselves all the women, children, livestock, and other plunder. You may enjoy the spoils of your enemies that the LORD your God has given you. But these instructions apply only to distant towns, not to the towns of nations nearby.

"As for the towns of the nations the LORD your God is giving you as a special possession, destroy every living thing in them. You must completely destroy the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, just as the LORD your God has commanded you. This will keep the people of the land from teaching you their detestable customs in the worship of their gods, which would cause you to sin deeply against the LORD your God."

- Deuteronomy 20:10-18 -

"Instead of threatening our trading 'partners' with tariffs and sanctions, threaten the multinational corporations who are setting up shop in countries that allow the wholesale theft of American intellectual property. If IBM wants to move a million programming jobs to India, that's fine. But if India doesn't respect the intellectual property rights of our imports, then why should the US respect the intellectual property rights of companies who use Indian labor to produce goods for export? You want to program your software in India? Fine. The price for doing so is that your copyrights, patents, and trademarks become unenforceable in the US. Anything IBM makes in India can be copied for free, and if IBM doesn't like it, they can damn well program the code somewhere else. If China wants to turn a blind eye to manufactures who produce counterfeit goods, so be it. But if Levi Strauss wants to set up a blue jeans factory there, then the Levi trademark falls into the public domain. Were this to become US policy, the outsourcing of US jobs to nations that steal US intellectual property would dry up faster than you can say 'Most Favored Nation Status.'"

- The Daily Brew -

"No man in this country is so high that he is above the law. No officer of the law may set that law at defiance with impunity. All the officers of the government, from the highest to the lowest, are creatures of the law, and are bound to obey it. Courts of justice are established, not only to decide upon the controverted rights of the citizens as against each other, but also upon rights in controversy between them and the government. Under our system the people . . . are the sovereign."

- Justice Samuel F. Miller: Supreme Court of the United States, United States v. Lee, 1882 -

"The Department of State has notified elections supervisors that touchscreen ballots don't have to be included during manual recounts because there is no question about how voters intended to vote. While touchscreen ballot images can be printed, there is no need and elections supervisors aren't authorized to do so..."

- Brendan Farrington: State: Touchscreen ballots don't have to be recounted -

"In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other."

- Voltaire (1764) -

"Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."

- Frederic Bastiat -

"We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle."

- Winston Churchill -

"There is no distinctly native American criminal class save Congress."

- Mark Twain -

"I've spent more time cleaning up latrines than he did flying."

- anonymous military source who doesn't want to be found suicided: Finally, the truth about Bush's military service record, George W.'s Missing Year -

"To the fervent proponents of ruthless corporate capitalism I say: make a millionaire CEO live as a poor sweatshop worker in Indonesia for one month and then ask him about the merits of the world economic system."

- Vassilis Epaminondou -

"It should be unnecessary to point out that massive terrorism is a standard device of powerful states. Some cases are not even controversial. Take the US war against Nicaragua, leaving tens of thousands dead and the country in ruins. Nicaragua appealed to the world court, which condemned the US for international terrorism ('the unlawful use of force'), ordering it to desist and pay substantial reparations. The US responded to the court ruling by sharply escalating the war, and vetoing a security council resolution calling on all states to observe international law. The escalation included official orders to attack 'soft targets' -- undefended civilian targets, like agricultural collectives and health clinics -- and to avoid the Nicaraguan army. The terrorists were able to carry out these instructions, thanks to the complete control of Nicaraguan air space by the US and the advanced communications equipment provided to them by their supervisors."

- Noam Chomsky -

"They are having a panel look into the intelligence failures in Iraq. But the findings from this panel will not be issued until after the election. President Bush says the commission can go off and report back in a year, you know, the same way it works in the Texas National Guard."

- Bill Maher -

"Only puny secrets need protection. Big discoveries are protected by public incredulity."

- Marshall McLuhan -

"The parable of those who take protectors other than Allah is that of the spider, who builds to itself a house; but truly the flimsiest of houses is the spider's web; if they but knew."

- Quran 29:41 -

"PATRIOTISM, n. 1) The inability to distinguish between the government and one's "country"; 2) A highly praiseworthy virtue characterized by the desire to dominate and kill; 3) A feeling of exultation experienced when contemplating heaps of charred "enemy" corpses; 4) The first, last, and perennial refuge of scoundrels.

"PATRIOT, n. A dangerous tool of the powers that be. A herd member who compensates for lack of self-respect by identifying with an abstraction. An enemy of individual freedom. A fancier of the rich, satisfying flavor of boot leather."
- The American Heretic's Dictionary -

"There is an aspect to political activism that involves an incredible sense of urgency, people thinking, 'I absolutely know what is right,' and spirituality advocates that people step back, reflect, and approach the world with a sense of mystery--that maybe they don't know exactly what is right. This is a good quality to bring into activism, to look at some of the deeper issues that way."

- Starhawk: anarchist witch -

"Agricultural technology is built on the assumption that world hunger is caused by a scarcity of food and a lack of technology, and that therefore new technologies are needed to produce more food for the world's growing population. However, hunger is caused not by scarcity, but by free market economic policies that undermine food security and local self-reliance and create a system of institutionalized economic justice. These policies, whose effects are worsened by economic globalization, allocate food not to the needy, but to oligopolistic global markets where one dollar equals one vote. Agro-biotechnology will only exacerbate this situation."

- Carmelo Ruiz: Winners and Losers in the Biotechnology Revolution -

"Organization, far from creating authority, is the only cure for it and the only means whereby each of us will get used to taking an active and conscious part in collective work, and cease being passive instruments in the hands of leaders."
- Errico Malatesta -

"The whole history of progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. If there is no struggle there is no progress.

"Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning, they want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.

"This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

"Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted..."
- Frederick Douglass (1857) -

"Gays are not oppressed on a whim, but because of the specific need of capitalism for the nuclear family. The nuclear family, as the primary -- and inexpensive -- provider and carer for the workforce, fulfilled in the nineteenth century and still fulfills an important need for capitalism. Alternative sexualities represent a threat to the family model because they provide an alternative role model for people. Gays are going to be in the front line of attack whenever capitalism wants to reinforce family values.

- Louise Tierney, "Looking to the Future" -

"[T]here are reformist strategies that waste the energies of women, that raise expectations of great change, and that are misleading and alienating because they cannot deliver the goods. The best (or worst) example is electoral politics. Some socialists (beguiled by the notion of gradualism) fall for that one. Anarchists know better. You cannot liberate yourself by non-liberatory means; you cannot elect a new set of politicians (no matter how sisterly) to run the same old corrupt institutions -- which in turn run you.

- Carol Ehrlich: Socialism, Anarchism, and Feminism -

"It is not enough for a handful of experts to attempt the solution of a problem, to solve it and then to apply it. The restriction of knowledge to an elite group destroys the spirit of society and leads to its intellectual impoverishment."

- Albert Einstein -

"Reality is something you rise above."

- Liza Minnelli -

"It is agreed, in this country, that if a man can arrange his religion so that it perfectly satisfies his conscience, it is not incumbent on him to care whether the arrangement is satisfactory to anyone else or not."

- Mark Twain -

"Kites rise highest against the wind - not with it."

- Sir Winston Churchill -

"Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, It is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, Laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

"But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

- that pesky old Declaration of Independence -

"Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,

"Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,

"Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,

"Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations,

"Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

"Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,

"Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,

"Now, Therefore THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS"

"The people are the ultimate guardians of their own liberties. In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy. Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone."

- Thomas Jefferson -

"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."

- Douglas Adams -

Everything Else

That picture of John Kerry with Jane Fonda is a fake and shows a total lack of imagination. I want to see the fake photos of John Kerry fucking JFK.

A new world order isn't really such a bad idea. It's just the idea of a BAD new world order that's a bad idea. But a GOOD new world order? That's a good idea.

Surely you've got something better to do than join this lively discussion of conspiracy theories of 9/11, unless you like lots of pictures and videos that seem to prove that everything you know is wrong.