My blogs about
America's Wars
War on Iraq
War on Drugs
War on Afghanistan
War on Columbia
War on Philippines
War on Venezuela

More
Matrix Masters
Blogs
World Events
US News
Science & Health
Earth News
Free Speech
News from Africa
News from Palestine
Bill of Rights Under Attack

Matrix Masters'
SUPPORTERS

More about Lorenzo
Books

"Spirit of the Internet"
   Synopsys
   Read Online
   Chapter Highlights
   Table of Contents
   Reader Comments
   Award

Essays
Speaking
Consulting
Biography (c.v.)

Photos

Member of the
Digital Space Commons

My Tribe.Net profile

31 July 2003

 

Thought for the day
What is all this talk about winning the peace? What do people mean when they say this? To me, the concept of winning implies that someone must therefore lose the peace as well. If the US "wins" the peace, then it must mean that the Iraqi people will have "lost" the peace.

posted by Lorenzo 2:20 PM

30 July 2003

 

Thought for the day
We don't know because we don't want to know.
- - Aldous Huxley

posted by Lorenzo 12:52 PM

29 July 2003

 

Thought for the day
Ironically, if Saddam is killed as well as his two sons, that will accelerate the process of seeing the Americans as the real enemy.
--Abu Odeh

posted by Lorenzo 4:10 PM

28 July 2003

 

Wolfowitz has changed his tune
Have you noticed that Paul Wolfowitz is now telling his buddies at FOX News that Iraq is the new centerpiece of the war on terror? Before Bush attacked Iraq, Wolfowitz was leading the chorus of liars saying that Saddam must go because he could launch a nuclear attack on the USA within 45 minutes. Then, after Little Bush began to acknowledge the fact that the weapons of mass destruction story was a lie, Wolfowitz told the press that the WMD story was, ��just the most convenient thing to tell the people at the time.� Now he is saying that we are in Iraq because it is a hotbed of anti-American terror. �

Let�s think about this for a minute. We invade and completely destroy a country that posed no immediate threat to us at all. In the process we murder over 6,000 innocent people plus tens of thousands of their soldiers. Their national treasures have been looted, there is no water or electricity, and we have commandeered their oil fields. Is it any wonder that Iraq is now (but was not before) a hotbed of anti-American terrorists? Wolfowitz and his cabal forced the creation of terrorists in Iraq � a lot of them. It seems to me that Paul Wolfowitz is a greater threat to the security and safety of Americans than Saddam and bin Laden combined.

posted by Lorenzo 1:34 PM

27 July 2003

 

Thought for the day
Never exceed your rights, and they will soon become unlimited.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau

posted by Lorenzo 12:03 PM

 

John Gilmore ejected from a plane for wearing "Suspected Terrorist" button
Take a look at the story about John Gilmore on our BoR Under Attack page. John, as you know, is suing John Ashcroft for forcing US citizens to show their "internal passports" while moving from place-to-place inside the US.

posted by Lorenzo 12:02 PM

24 July 2003

 

Thought for the day
Criminals kill for money, guerrillas kill for politics . . . Iraqis are killing Americans to take back their country!
--Stewart Nusbaumer, Vietnam veteran

posted by Lorenzo 9:33 AM

23 July 2003

 

Thought for the day from Bush Sr.
We should not march into Baghdad. To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us and make a broken tyrant into a latter-day Arab hero. Assigning young soldiers to a fruitless hunt for a securely entrenched dictator and condemning them to fight in what would be an unwinnable urban guerilla war, it could only plunge that part of the world into ever greater instability.
--George H.W. Bush, "A World Transformed," 1998

posted by Lorenzo 11:03 AM

21 July 2003

 

Thought for the day
My biggest regret is that I waited to leak the Pentagon Papers when we needed the truth yesterday. The most important lesson from my experience is this: Don't sit on documents, don't wait to come out with the truth. Don't wait while the bombing and the killing continue.
--Daniel Ellsberg

posted by Lorenzo 9:48 AM

18 July 2003

 

Thought for the day
Bush lied. Thousands died.

posted by Lorenzo 11:25 AM

17 July 2003

 

Thought for the day
Who are you going to believe - me, or your own two eyes?
--Marx (Groucho)

posted by Lorenzo 12:46 PM

15 July 2003

 

The Emperor Has No Clothes!
Let's be honest here. No more quibbling about 16 words. George W. Bush LIED to us about the reasons for attacking and destroying a country that posed no immediate threat to the U.S. That is it! That is the bottom line. All of you who have children, and all of us who have been children KNOW what a lie of misdirection sounds like. We've all heard them, and we've all told them. Bush is a liar and should be impeached and tried for the international war criminal he is. What is all the debate about? His lies are obvious to even the most innocent school child. BUSH MUST GO! ... NOW!!!!

posted by Lorenzo 7:01 PM

 

Thought for the day
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
-- Henry Kissinger, The New York Times Magazine, October 28, 1973.

posted by Lorenzo 11:23 AM

14 July 2003

 

Thought for the day ... America 2003
From the brief time that we did spend occupying Iraqi territory after the war, I am certain that had we taken all of Iraq, we would have been like the dinosaur in the tar pit � we would still be there, and we, not the United Nations, would be bearing the costs of the occupation. This is a burden I am sure the beleaguered American taxpayer would not have been happy to take on.
--Norman Schwarzkopf, from his 1993 autobiography, "It Doesn't Take a Hero."

posted by Lorenzo 4:58 PM

12 July 2003

 

Thought for the day ... America 2003
As scientific understanding has grown, so our world has become dehumanized. . . . [Humankind's] contact with nature has gone, and with it has gone the profound emotional energy that this symbolic connection supplied.
--C.G. Jung

posted by Lorenzo 12:41 PM

11 July 2003

 

Thought for the day
Even a man of high intellect can go badly astray for lack of intuition or feeling.
--C.G. Jung

posted by Lorenzo 7:53 PM

10 July 2003

 

It Is Time To Investigate the Lies of Bush
On the home page of this Web site you will find a link under the line that reads "Congressional Investigation of Bush's Lies About Iraq!". We urge you to click on this link, which will take you to the MoveOn.org site. From there you will be able to send a message to your Congressperson to urge them to support the Waxman bill to investigate Mr. Bush and his cronies about what they did to entangle our nation into the Quagmire of Iraq.

posted by Lorenzo 11:02 AM

 

Thought for the day
It's bad enough that such a glaring blunder became part of the President's case for war. It's far worse if the case for war was made by deliberate deception. ... We cannot risk American lives based on shoddy intelligence or outright lies.
--Senator Edward Kennedy

posted by Lorenzo 9:23 AM

09 July 2003

 

Thought for the day
They sentenced me to 20 years of boredom, trying to change the system from within, I�m coming now, I�m coming to reward them, first we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin.
--Leonard Cohen

posted by Lorenzo 8:17 PM

 

What did Rumsfield REALLY know in advance about 9-11?
Rumsfeld made a series of odd statements right after 9/11. When asked why the government had not foreseen a terrorist attack on US soil, he responded "There were lots of warnings." In the next breath he tried to deflect guilt from the Pentagon with, "But the state and local law enforcement officials have the responsibility for dealing with those kinds of issues." Rumsfeld then added "... we�re talking about plastic knives and using an American Airlines flight filed with our citizens and the missile to damage the building."

OK, let�s get this straight. There were lots of warnings? Local officials are responsible for terrorism prevention? THE MISSILE?

[Note: The information above came via email from a trusted source.]

posted by Lorenzo 4:13 PM

08 July 2003

 

Thought for the day
If voting could really change things, it would be illegal.
Anon

posted by Lorenzo 1:19 PM

07 July 2003

 

Thought for the day
Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of resistance.
-- Woodrow Wilson

posted by Lorenzo 1:52 PM

06 July 2003

 

Thought for the day
Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.
--John Quincy Adams

posted by Lorenzo 11:45 AM

05 July 2003

 

Thought for the day ... America 2003
In a way, the world-view of the Party [Cheney-Bush Junta!] imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening.
--George Orwell, "Nineteen Eighty-Four"

posted by Lorenzo 11:03 AM

04 July 2003

 

The Google of Government
If you are looking for the best place to begin looking for information about your elected officials, try the link above. This is a truly exciting experiment in giving a way for the average person to keep an eye on those who are supposed to be serving us. Over time, this site will combine the social capital of EBay with the power of Google.

posted by Lorenzo 11:38 AM

 

Thought for the day
When a man who wrecked every business he was ever handed "took" office in the year 2000, the USA enjoyed a $3 trillion surplus. It's $2.6 trillion in debt today.
--William Thomas

posted by Lorenzo 11:33 AM

03 July 2003

 

Thought for the day ... the Cheney-Bush Junta Agenda
War, it will be seen, not only accomplishes the necessary destruction, but accomplishes it in a psychologically acceptable way. In principle it would be quite simple to waste the surplus labor of the world by building temples and pyramids, by digging holes and filling them up again, or even by production vast quantities of goods and then setting fire to them. But this would provide only the economic and not the emotional basis for a hierarchical society. What is concerned here is not the morale of the masses, whose attitude is unimportant so long as they are kept steadily at work, but the morale of the Party itself. Even the humblest Party member is expected to be competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph. In other words it is necessary that he should have the mentality appropriate to a state of war. It does not matter whether the war is actually happening, and, since no decisive victory is possible, it does not matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is needed is that a state of war should exist.
--George Orwell, "Nineteen Eighty-Four"


[Comment: As long as loyal Republicans, most of whom are decent people, keep listening to the "fair and balanced" Fox News Network they, have no hope of figuring out the fact that they've been taken in by a group of insane people who are actively trying to bring on their own demented version of Armageddon.]

posted by Lorenzo 9:02 AM

02 July 2003

 

Thought for the day ... America 2003
The social atmosphere is that of a besieged city, where the possession of a lump of horseflesh makes the difference between wealth and poverty. And at the same time the consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the handing-over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable condition of survival.
--George Orwell, "Nineteen Eighty-Four"

posted by Lorenzo 10:00 AM