The story of what happens to everyday Americans when corporations go to war. Acclaimed director Robert Greenwald (
Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price,
Outfoxed) takes you inside the lives of soldiers, truck drivers, widows and children who have been changed forever as a result of profiteering in the reconstruction of Iraq. Iraq for Sale uncovers the connections between private corporations making a killing in Iraq (
Blackwater,
Halliburton/KBR,
CACI and
Titan) and the decision makers who allow them to do so.
Join Providence Students for a Democratic Society, Operation Iraqi Freedom (Brown U’s anti-war group), and others in saying no to five years of imperialist war.
Monday, March 17
Screening of “Iraq for Sale“
7:30 PM at MacMillian Hall, Room 115
(On Thayer between Waterman and George)
Tuesday, March 18 FUNK THE WAR
Student Power Dance Party Against Empire
Dress code: Supah fly.
6:00 PM in Kennedy Plaza
(folks from Brown meeting up to walk down at 5:30 from Faunce Arch)
I sit on two committees of the House of Representatives — Corporations, and Environment and Natural Resources. This is a recap of last night’s Corporations’ meeting — which hears bills related to licenses, banks, insurance, and utilities — with judgement reserved:First up was Bowser,
of Sha-na-na’s fame, to testify in support of the “Truth in Music Act.” Basically, Bowser and his friends want to stop bands from touring under the names of famous acts, unless they own the rights to those names or were among the original members. (There’s a faux Drifters-Platters-Coasters combo that’s doing especially well for itself.)
That’s all well and good to me — especially as the Coasters and Drifters have variously been among my very favorite acts. Members were particularly charmed by Bowser’s sing-song testimony, including the closing, “Bom ba ba bom ba bom ba bom bom ba ba bom ba ba bom ba ba dang a dang dang Ba ba ding a dong ding THANK YOU…”
(more…)
The Army is apparently mandating that workers at Walter Reed be subjected to sessions with
Disney cartoons:
Fifty medical workers — doctors, nurses, therapists and administrators among them — sat in a room at
Walter Reed Army Medical Center gazing at a slide of Donald Duck on a screen….
A year after a scandal erupted over the long-term treatment of soldiers at the hospital, the Army has turned to Disney for help. “Service, Disney Style” is newly required for all military and other government employees at
Walter Reed.
Ian has this article, on concerns about Clinton’s donations from big arms manufacturers — and, in particular, the money she’ taken from Textron:
Last October, in an examination of campaign contributions in 2007 from employees of major defense industry contractors, Thomas B. Edsall wrote on the Huffington Post that “Senator Clinton took $52,600, more than half of the total going to all Democrats, and a figure equaling 60 percent of the sum going to the entire GOP field. Her closest competitor for defense industry money is former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney (R), who raised $32,000.”
Critics have previously rapped Clinton for voting in 2006 against Senate Amendment 4882, which would have banned the sale of cluster munitions for use in heavily populated areas.
Acknowledging that $2000 in PAC money is a minor amount in the scheme of campaigns, Segal, in an interview, nonetheless says that he is an Obama supporter “substantially because of the difference in his and Clinton’s behavior relative to issues like this.”
If you’ve been looking for a movie that doesn’t have Morgan Freeman, I think I found one.
Persepolis is still at the
Avon Cinema. It is up for an Oscar in the ‘Animated Feature’ category, but that should read ‘Best Picture’. It’s the wrenching, but frequently funny, tale of life in Iran since the Shah was toppled. However, I must make it clear — I did not read the graphic novel. My experience regarding this type of film has always been that the group known as ‘people who have read the graphic novel’ is never satisfied with a movie that is ‘based on the graphic novel’. But just regular people should like this movie.
AMTRAK passengers will have to submit to random screening of carry-on bags in a major new security push that will also include officers with automatic weapons and bomb-sniffing dogs patrolling platforms and trains, the railroad is set to announce Tuesday. The initiative represents a significant shift for AMTRAK, which, unlike the airlines, saw relatively little increase in security after the 2001 terrorist attacks…
If you’ve got a box of men under your bed, or you like history, or you like anything, you should stop in and see the toy soldiers at the
John Hay Library, Brown University. Formally the
Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection, it’s all about the toy soldiers for me — over 5,000 of them, some with the original boxes. Everything from Crusaders and Huns, to Samurai and the British Raj (and my personal favorite, Napoleon’s Dromedary Corps, because camels are awesome) the sheer scale of this collection, as well as the detail and vivid colors, will make your head spin. Made all the more cool by the fact that this collection was put together by a female lady, and she started it on her honeymoon. She must have been interesting.
Just walk in the front door and inquire at the desk. They have always accommodated me (but they do recommend that you call ahead). 863-2414/20 Prospect Street
I’m going to do something different this week so, this column won’t take its standard gush-about-stuff-from-this-week format, because I’m responding to something Newbury Comics has done in their weekly comic book and graphic novel e-mail newsletter, which you can subscribe to
here. For my thoughts on this week,
you can check my blog.
Okay, so down to business. Publishing 10 best comic book titles of 2007 lists from your superexploited employees (I say superexploited because people who work in Newbury Comics don’t make a lot and tend to be people who chose the work environment because of an affinity for some superfluous product the store sells–i.e. comics, cds, hello kitty dolls–and so end up spending a huge portion of their limited income at the company store. I don’t even want to imagine the kind of debt I’d wrack up if I spent 5 days a week surrounded by comics for sale. Yikes. Sorry, huge tangent.) would not seem to be a task that the first week of February 2008 would call for. I know if I were left to my own devices I would never dream of publishing a list of my 10 favorie comics from 2007 this week, but Newbury Comics had to go and do that. What’s worse is that the lists provided by these guys (and they were obviously all male) demonstrate that they are even less equipped to provide such a list to the general public than I am. In the course of human events, there comes a time when I must cry havoc and let loose the dogs of war against Newbury Comics’ tardy best of 2007 lists.(more…)
Evangelical nutbags still have a strangle-hold on the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.
The New York Times reports that three speakers invited to participate in a recent conference on terrorism may not be former Muslim terrorists as they claim, but rather proselytizing Christians.
Members of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a group suing the federal government to combat what it calls creeping evangelism in the armed forces, said it was typical of the Air Force Academy to invite born-again Christians to address cadets on terrorism rather than experts who could teach students about the Middle East.
“This stuff going on at the academy today is part of the endemic evangelical infiltration that continues,” said David Antoon, a 1970 academy graduate and a foundation member.
Experts say their stories just don’t add up and they aren’t even the correct ages, but the three former Muslim terrorists are very sure of one thing… “Jesus can change your life”.
Iraq has formally ratified the UN’s Kyoto Protocol on climate change, according to a government statement seen by AFP on Saturday.
“The presidential council ratified in its session on January 23 a law according to which the Republic of Iraq will join the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Kyoto Protocol,” the statement said.
Over the past few weeks, our political debate has centered on the intersection of race and gender in American politics. Clinton claims to be “
proud” of Obama’s transcendence of racial discrimination, and Obama claims to be proud of Clinton’s success in shattering the glass ceiling. And both campaigns have instrumentally used race and gender, both publicly and deceitfully, to smear their opponents.
Journalists, commentators, and public figures have contributed to this debate, at times stirring feminist or African-American solidarity and, at other times, commending a nation that seems, perhaps, finally colorblind and egalitarian. “
Women Are Never Front-Runners,” wrote Gloria Steinem, in
an attempt to explain the importance of female support for Hillary Clinton. Chris Rock, opening for Obama at Harlem’s Apollo Theater, warned the audience not to waste their votes on “
that white lady.” Others still use this contest between a black man and a female front-runner as evidence of our progress as a nation.
Are we left with the realization that we are still racist? Still sexist? Or are we left with the warm feeling that we are somehow less sexist and less racist than ever before? Perhaps this is the most dangerous of all the assumptions. Noticeably absent from the Race/Gender debate over the past few weeks has been a discussion of the anti-Muslim, anti-Arab sentiment that has played a significant role in the formation of our voters’ choices.
Online sympathizers of al Qaida from across the internet have submitted hundreds of questions for deputy leader Ayman Al-Zawahri over the past two months for an “on-line interview” on a militant Islamic website, and many supporters seem to be as in the dark about their activities and future plans as the rest of the world.
“Knight of Islam,” asks, “We are awaiting a strike against American soil. Why has that not been done? Why are the Jews in the world not struck?”
“We hear a lot about the non-centralization of al-Qaida,” one supporter writes. “Is the loss of direct control by al-Qaida’s leadership over the jihadi cells harmful to al-Qaida? … Does al-Qaida intend to try to reassert its control?”
Entries
Take a break from getting waste off green beer to come out and see
“Iraq for Sale: the War Profiteers”, which will be kicking off
Providence Students for a Democratic Society’s anti-war Week of Action during this the week of the
fifth anniversary of the Iraq War. It starts at 7:30 at MacMillian Hall, Room 115 (on Thayer between George and Waterman) on Brown’s campus. It sounds pretty cool:
Join Providence Students for a Democratic Society, Operation Iraqi Freedom (Brown U’s anti-war group), and others in saying no to five years of imperialist war.
5:30: The rescheduled
Online sympathizers of al Qaida from across the internet have submitted hundreds of questions for deputy leader Ayman Al-Zawahri over the past two months for an “on-line interview” on a militant Islamic website, and many supporters seem to be as in the dark about their activities and future plans as the rest of the world.