www.wordsasweapons.com > Perspectives on the war

words as weapons
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"I hope that everyone who reads my diary remember me and know that there was
an Iraqi girl who had many dreams in her life, but war has destroyed all her dreams
and her dreams will never come true.

- Thuraya El-Kaissi, age 17 (Al-Adamia Secondary School for Girls – Baghdad )
March 2003

Blood for oil...

See for yourself the cost of the "war" in Iraq. This tally doesn't take into consideration the cost of human lives, both US and Iraqi.

There is nothing "unpatriotic" about being critical of U.S. foreign policy. In fact, assuring that the truth is told, listening to what is offered and then providing alternative points of view are the foundations of the democracy upon which this cultural construct called America is based.

The war distracted us from the potentially incriminating dealings of the vice-president, and from the failure of the war on terrorism to find Osama Bin Laden. It distracted us from the demise of the stock market. It distracted us from the red hot FBI investigation into United States responsibility / complicity in the September 11th attacks. It distracted us from the stripping away of American civil liberties. And it distracted us from the simple fact that democracy has eroded in this country.

Lou Reed wrote "Don't believe half of what you see and none of what you hear." Given the potential for manipulation of image and sound in our world, our only hope to acheive any coherent viewpoint on current events is to do whatever we can to educate ourselves from a wide variety of sources and then act accordingly. A friend of mine wrote me and said "true patriots reject all forms of terrorism and violence and value dissent as essential to any sort of democracy".

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Articles and commentary...
  • The Downing Street Memo
    The document that is said to be comprised of minutes from a July 2002 meeting where Prime Minister Blair allegedly admitted that the Bush administration "fixed" Iraq intelligence to manufacture a rationale for war.


  • See the film 'Control Room'...
    12.14.2004: This is a remarkable documentary account of media on both sides of Gulf War II. It tells the tale of suppression of information and of the jockeying of position between opposing press agencies. It also paints a very different picture of the war than what we see in the US on CNN and Fox. "People will ask for revenge. And revenge is something that is very sacred in this country." (Samir Khader, Al Jazeera)..



  • The elusive WMD and the big joke it seems to be for those in charge...
    8.10.2004: Thanks go out to Jason at musicforamerica.org for allowing us to post the movie below based on the President's comments at the Radio and Television Correspondent's Dinner a few months back about the failure to find WMD (requires quicktime).

    Bush Laughs

  • Ever heard of The Project For the New American Century? It is about time you did.
    5.18.2004:     Given the events of the last year is that I wish this site was a joke, but it isn't.


  • The Iraq War Quiz - by Stephen R. Shalom
    4.8.2003: Test your ability to interpret the news. The big story over the last few days is that of Iraq having chemical weapons. The footnote, a growing possibility, is that the find might actually just be a pesticide. That's how the US media seems to work--report a HUGE story that is a lie, that will stay in the public's mind (like: Hussein kicked out UN Inspectors in 1998, Hussein has ties to Al-Qaeda/9-11, Iraq bought Uranium from Niger, Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, Iraq is a threat to the US, Uprising in Basra). The quiz will put some of this in clearer perspective. Take the quiz and then add your thoughts to the forum.

    Additional links...

    What follows is a list of resources and links to more information. I am applying only brief comments about the following pages, in order to let readers explore them and discover new ideas for themselves.

    Archived links...
  • You've got to be kidding...
    4.3.2003:  The State of Oregon is proposing jailing for 25 years     those who block streets in protest of the war in an attempt to silence dissenting voices. In the current political climate, it seems anything is possible. This is truly a world turned upside down.
  •  Twenty points of critique for the pre-war speeches
    4.2.2003:      A picking apart of Bush's pre-war speech from an anti-war perspective. Special thanks to Jerry of the World Socialist Web Site for permission to use this text.
  •  Thoughts on the war through the lens of the work of Ernest Becker
    3.18.2003:      Thanks to Professor Tom Duncanson of Millikin University in Illinois for this submission. Prof. Duncanson offers his take on the war through the lens of the work of cultural anthropologist Dr. Ernest Becker who wrote that human behavior is largely influenced on a subconscious level by fear of death.
  •  War On Iraq - What Team Bush Doesn't Want You To Know
    3.15.2003:      Just read War On Iraq, a paperback containing an amazing interview with a former U.N. weapons inspector. I highly recommend it. This page is full of links - maybe too many to wade through. But more valuable than anything else is the link at the bottom to buy the book. Borrow the book, buy it, or steal it...but read it.
  • Fact or fiction: motivations for the war on terrorism?
    10.9.2002:  Disconcerting questions arise when doors are opened and explored behind the war on terrorism. These articles will inspire questions at the very least, even if they yield few concrete answers.
  • Two recent decisions seem to go against democratic ideals...
    2.9.2002:   Secret executions of suspected foreign terrorists? Forced suppression of potentially incriminating and embarrassing government documents? Read here to find out more. Just updated with an article from the Wall Street Journal. Lots of words here, but since they might someday apply to you, I recommend reading them.
     
  • Perspectives on war from the point of view of Ernest Becker
    1.11.2002: A segment of an interview I recently did with Nonkonformist zine in Hungary. We talk about the psychological inevitability of the war in Afghanistan. A slightly different perspective than is commonly seen these days.
  • Freedom of Information Act undermined...
    1.10.2002: An editorial from the San Francisco chronicle tells a frightening tale of manipulating access to information in the post 9.11 age.

  • STOP THE WAR: Notes from the activist front
    11.30.2001: An excellent interview with a college anti-war activist from Ohio who speaks openly with me about some of the psychological and political ramifications of 9/11 and the military response which followed. This is a great read to gain perspective on alternative points of view.
  • Noam Chomsky - interview
    10.5.2001: A good interview with Professor Chomsky on the nature of the "war"


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