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On Work:

"If you're working to make a living, why do you kill yourself working?"

Tuco Ramirez (Eli Wallach) The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly (1967)

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Pentagon to Protect Privacy:

A month away from the 100th birthday of author Eric Blair (better known as George Orwell) we offer the following news item from the "War is Peace," "Ignorance is Strength," & "Freedom is Slavery" department:

05/21/03 - (Washington D.C.) Reuters

"A controversial Pentagon program that would comb computer records to identify potential terrorist activity will have safeguards to ensure it does not violate individual rights, the Pentagon said yesterday.   Responding to concerns that its Total Information Awareness program - renamed Terrorist Information Awareness - would allow unfettered surveillance, the Pentagon said in a report to Congress that the program would have built-in mechanisms to ensure that it did not intrude on American's privacy..."

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Big Macs and Big Media: The FCC Decision to Supersize:
Remarks by FCC Commissioner Jonathan S. Adelstein Before The Media Institute

"The FCC is charged by law to serve the public interest. And the public has zero interest in seeing media conglomerates grow bigger. The public knows instinctively what the FCC is supposed to do – protect them from large entities gaining too much control over critical channels of communication. A majority of five unelected bureaucrats shouldn't substitute their own judgment – or the judgment of self-interested corporate CEOs – for the protection of the American people...

Despite the oft-repeated exhortation that technology has changed everything, a simple fact remains. No technological advances have made it possible for every person who wants to broadcast in a local community to do so. We therefore must reaffirm that the public interest is served by promoting all three of the basic principles that form the foundation of American broadcasting system: localism, diversity, and competition – not just competition alone...

I'm afraid that the FCC isn't only about to further McDonaldize the media – it's about to Supersize it. Once we place our order on June 2nd, we'll all have to digest what comes our way. And the public may be about to experience a giant "Maalox moment." I, for one, hope that we take it slowly and avoid indigestion."

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Molly Ivins on War and peace (WorkingforChange.com 5/22/03)
Which one will prove more costly for the U.S. in Iraq?

"Much as I hate to interrupt what is apparently a deeply felt triumphalism on the American right, now that it's over, does anyone see any reason for our having invaded Iraq?

I hate to be picky, picky, picky, but there are still no weapons of mass destruction. In fact, we've apparently even stopped looking for them. Since Iraq never had anything to do with Al Qaeda or Sept. 11 -- despite American public opinion on this issue -- it was certainly no surprise to see Al Qaeda back again, with strikes in both Saudi Arabia and Morocco. Bush's announcement that we had broken up the organization seems to have been a trifle premature. There was much un-muted griping from American intelligence about the total Saudi failure to cooperate before the attack there. (As one antiwar sign reminded us before the recent events, "Sept. 11 equals 15 Saudis, 0 Iraqis.")

We may yet see hopeful developments, but damned if I can see any cause for celebration now, or even for building a presidential re-election campaign around footage of our triumphant pres flying out to the aircraft carrier. There's a very real possibility that by November 2004, Republicans will very much want everybody to forget the war now called Dubya Dubya II. (Sorry, I don't know whom to credit for that one, but it's not original with me.)"

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Groucho Marx:

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."

"I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members."

"Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others."

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http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0525-02.htm

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James Connolly, Introduction to “Songs of Freedom,” 1907

“No revolutionary movement is complete without its poetical expression. If such a movement has caught hold of the imagination of the masses, they will seek a vent in song for the aspirations, the fears and hopes, the loves and hatreds engendered by the struggle. Until the movement is marked by the joyous, defiant singing of revolutionary songs, it lacks one of the most distinct marks of a popular revolutionary movement; it is a dogma of the few, and not the faith of the multitude.”

[thanks to musician, activist DAVID ROVICS for suggesting this one!]

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Barbara Ehrenreich,  Nickel and Dimed, On (Not) Getting By in America, (Metropolitan Books, 2001)

"...Why does anybody put up with the wages we're paid? True, most of my fellow workers are better cushioned than I am; they live with spouses or grown children or they have other jobs in addition to this one. I sit with Lynne in the break room one night and find out this is only a part-time job for her - six hours a day - with the other eight hours spent at a factory for $9 an hour. Doesn't she get awfully tired? Nah, it's what she's always done. The cook at the Radio Grill has two other jobs.  You might expect a bit of grumbling, muffled guffaws during our associate meetings - but I can detect none of that. Maybe this is what you get when you weed out all the rebels with drug tests and personality "surveys" - a uniformly servile and denatured workforce, content to dream of the distant day when they'll be vested in the company's profit-sharing plan..." [page 178]

"Then, too, the particular political moment favors what almost looks like a "conspiracy of silence" on the subject of poverty and the poor. The Democrats are not eager to find flaws in the period of "unprecedented prosperity" they take credit for; the Republicans have lost interest in the poor now that "welfare-as-we-know-it" has ended. Welfare reform itself is a factor weighing against any close investigation of the conditions of the poor. Both parties heartily endorsed it, and to acknowledge that low-wage work doesn't lift people out of poverty would be to admit that it may have been, in human terms, a catastrophic terms." [page 217]

http://www.progressive.org/0901/ehr1201.html   "A Mystery of Misogyny"

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Barbara Bush (former first lady)

"Clinton lied. A man might forget where he parks or where lives, but he never forgets oral sex, no matter how bad it is."

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Robert De Niro (actor)

"According to a new survey, women say they feel more comfortable undressing in front of men than they do undressing in front of other women. They say that women are too judgmental, whereas, of course, men are just grateful."

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Various Forefathers

"War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses."  Thomas Jefferson

"A government is like fire, a handy servant, but a dangerous master."  George Washington

"All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree."  James Madison

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Philip Berrigan

"Lying and war are always associated.  Pay attention to war-makers when they try to defend their current war...if they move their lips they're lying."

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Howard Zinn

"Civil disobedience. . . is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that numbers of people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience... Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem."  (thanks to Peace Abbey, Sherborn, MA for this quote)

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Lorenzo Milam (from his book Sex and Broadcasting)

"A radio station should not just be a hole in the universe for making money, or feeding egos, or running the world... A radio station should be a live place for live people to sing and dance and talk: talk their talk and walk their walk and know that they (and the rest of us) are not finally and irrevocably dead."

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Casey Stengal via Whitey Herzog (on workers vs. ownership)

"Hey, it comes down to what Casey [Stengal] told me when I was still in player development for the Mets, and had never managed. Casey was getting old, but for some reason he thought I'd manage one day. He told me, 'Just remember one thing: Unless you die on the job or own the team, you're going to get fired.'"

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Horoscope - September 22, 2003 - Aquarius

"Turn your stress into passion, or work on something creative that requires imagination.  You have far more to gain if you are positive and lots to lose if you aren't."

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Families seek truth over Israeli deaths

Chris McGreal talks to the relatives of three British and American victims as they struggle to find out how their loved-ones came to die at the hands of the Israeli army

The Guardian (London) Monday October 20, 2003
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1066751,00.html

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Martin Luther King Jr.

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."

Compiled by David Goodman, I.B.I.S.
Revised: January 18, 2004.