Celebrity
Watch
A look at what some celebrities have said and written about the terrorist attacks in America and the war on terror.
Index
Baudrilliard, Jean
Belafonte, Harry
Drabble, Margaret
Falwell, Jerry
Fischer, Bobby
Fo, Dario
Grass, Gunter
Gere, Richard
Harrelson, Woody
Hirst, Damien
hooks, bell
Kingsolver, Barbara
le Carré, John
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
Mahfouz, Naguib
Mailer, Norman
Mandela, Nelson
Pinter, Harold
Redford, Robert
Robbins, Tom
Roth, Philip
Roy, Arundhati
Saramago, José
Sontag, Susan
Soros, George
Spivak, Gayatri
Steinem, Gloria
Stockhausen, Karlheinz
Stone, Oliver
Thompson, Hunter S.
Tum, Rigoberta Menchú
Turner, Ted
Tutu, Desmond
Ustinov, Peter
Vidal, Gore
Vonnegut, Kurt
Walker, Alice
"Moral condemnation, sacred union against terrorism are of the same size as the prodigious jubilation of seeing this global superpower destroyed, better still, of seeing it destroy itself and, in a way, commit suicide in beauty. For this is the one which, in its unbearable power, has fomented all this violence that is innate the world over, and therefore (unwittingly) this terrorist imagination that inhabits us all. ...
That we have dreamed of this event, that everyone without exception has dreamed of it, because no one can avoid dreaming of the destruction of any given power that has become hegemonic to such a point, is unacceptable for the Western moral conscience but it is still a fact which is measured precisely by all the pathetic violence of all the words that would erase it. ...
A power is itself an accomplice in its own destruction. When the two towers collapsed, one had the impression they were answering the suicide of the suicide planes with their own suicide. Some have said: "Even God cannot declare war on himself." Ah but, yes he can. The West, in the role of God (almighty, divine and absolute moral legitimacy) is becoming suicidal and declaring war on itself." ("The Mind of Terrorism" (Jean Baudrilliard, Le Monde/Watch, 2001/11/02 [2003/01/09]))
"Belafonte, appearing on San Diego's 760 KFMB, told host Ted Leitner that Powell was like a plantation slave who moves into the slave owner's house and only says what his master wants him to say. "There's an old saying," Belafonte began. "In the days of slavery, there were those slaves who lived on the plantation and were those slaves that lived in the house. You got the privilege of living in the house if you served the master... exactly the way the master intended to have you serve him. 'Colin Powell's committed to come into the house of the master. When Colin Powell dares to suggest something other than what the master wants to hear, he will be turned back out to pasture.'" ("Harry Belafonte slams Colin Powell as race sellout" (Matt Drudge, Drudge Report, 2002/10/08))
"My anti-Americanism has become almost uncontrollable. It has possessed me, like a disease. It rises up in my throat like acid reflux, that fashionable American sickness. I now loathe the United States and what it has done to Iraq and the rest of the helpless world.
I can hardly bear to see the faces of Bush and Rumsfeld, or to watch their posturing body language, or to hear their self-satisfied and incoherent platitudes. The liberal press here has done its best to make them appear ridiculous, but these two men are not funny.
I was tipped into uncontainable rage by a report on Channel 4 News about "friendly fire", which included footage of what must have been one of the most horrific bombardments ever filmed. But what struck home hardest was the subsequent image, of a row of American warplanes, with grinning cartoon faces painted on their noses. Cartoon faces, with big sharp teeth.
It is grotesque. It is hideous. This great and powerful nation bombs foreign cities and the people in those cities from Disneyland cartoon planes out of comic strips. This is simply not possible. And yet, there they were." ("I loathe America, and what it has done to the rest of the world" (Margaret Drabble, The Daily Telegraph, 2003/05/08))
"The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way - all of them who have tried to secularize America - I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen.'" ("God Gave U.S. 'What We Deserve,' Falwell Says" (John F. Harris, The Washington Post, 2001/09/14))
"The Rev. Jerry Falwell says "I think Muhammad was a terrorist" in an interview to be broadcast Sunday on the CBS program 60 Minutes. The conservative Baptist minister tells correspondent Bob Simon he has concluded from reading Muslim and non-Muslim writers that Islam's prophet "was a - a violent man, a man of war." "Jesus set the example for love, as did Moses," Falwell says. 'I think Muhammad set an opposite example.'" ("Falwell: 'Muhammad Was a Terrorist'" (Fox News, 2002/10/03))
"Bobby Fischer, the reclusive American chess grandmaster, has broken years of silence to support the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. The Telegraph has discovered that Mr Fischer gave an interview to an obscure radio station in the Philippines hours after the events on September 11. ... In his interview on September 11 with Radio Bombo in Baguio City, Mr Fischer said: "This is all wonderful news. It is time to finish off the US once and for all. "I was happy and could not believe what was happening. All the crimes the US has committed in the world. This just shows, what goes around comes around, even to the US. "I applaud the act. The US and Israel have been slaughtering the Palestinians for years. Now it is coming back at the US." Mr Fischer, 58, also attacked Israel and "Jews" who he claimed were responsible for "bringing" the attack on the World Trade Centre. ... Mr Fischer, who usually lives in Hungary, is a well-known anti-Semite who has spoken out against 'the international Jewish conspiracy'." ("Bobby Fischer speaks out to applaud Trade Centre attacks" (David Bamber and Chris Hastings, The Daily Telegraph, 2001/12/02))
"'The great speculators wallow in an economy that every year kills tens of millions of people with poverty so what is 20,000 dead in New York? Regardless of who carried out the massacre, this violence is the legitimate daughter of the culture of violence, hunger and inhumane exploitation.' - Dario Fo (1997 Prize for Literature) in an email newsletter." ("Idiocy Watch #8" (The New Republic, 2001/10/29))
"'In a situation like this, of course you identify with everyone who's suffering. [But we must also think about] the terrorists who are creating such horrible future lives for themselves because of the negativity of this karma. It's all of our jobs too keep our minds as expansive as possible. If you can see [the terrorists] as a relative who's dangerously sick and we have to give them medicine, and the medicine is love and compassion. There's nothing better.' - Richard Gere, in an interview with ABCNEWS Radio, October 10" ("Idiocy Watch #4" (The New Republic, 2001/10/15))
"'Conjuring the spirit of November 9, 1938.' - Gunter Grass (1999 Prize for Literature) describing the Bush administration's rhetoric in the war on terrorism in The Daily Telegraph. [Grass refers to Kristallnacht, the Nazis' notorious anti-Jewish pogrom.]" ("Idiocy Watch #8" (The New Republic, 2001/10/29))
"We've killed a million Iraqis since the start of the Gulf war - mostly by blocking humanitarian aid. Let's stop now. ... I'm an American tired of lies. And with our government, it's mostly lies. ... Columbus is the perfect symbol of US foreign policy to this day. This is a racist and imperialist war. The warmongers who stole the White House (you call them "hawks", but I would never disparage such a fine bird) have hijacked a nation's grief and turned it into a perpetual war on any non-white country they choose to describe as terrorist." ("I'm an American tired of American lies" (Woody Harrelson, The Guardian, 2002/10/17))
"In an interview, Hirst told BBC News Online: "The thing about 9/11 is that it's kind of an artwork in its own right. It was wicked, but it was devised in this way for this kind of impact. It was devised visually." Describing the image of the hijacked planes crashing into the twin towers as "visually stunning", he added: "You've got to hand it to them on some level because they've achieved something which nobody would have ever have thought possible, especially to a country as big as America. So on one level they kind of need congratulating, which a lot of people shy away from, which is a very dangerous thing." ... Hirst also said any military action to stop more terrorist acts would be a mistake: 'I think the thing to do is to stand up and say hang on a minute - this is people, these are bodies, these are lives. The surest way to make it happen again is to go and start throwing stones at somebody.'" ("9/11 wicked but a work of art, says Damien Hirst" (Rebecca Allison, The Guardian, 2002/09/11))
"Indeed our nation's call for violence in the aftermath of 9/11 was an expression of widespread hopelessness, the cynicism that has been at the heart of our nation's ongoing fascination with death. Any society based on domination supports and condones violence. Yet as that violence wreaked havoc in our own hearts and in the lives of our loved ones and fellow citizens, many Americans experienced for the first time a moment of clarity when they knew without a doubt that to choose life, we must stand against violence, we must choose peace. And yet that moment of collective clarity was soon obscured by the imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal hunger to show the planet our nation's force, to show that this nation would commit absolute acts of violence that will wipe out whole nations and worlds. The world was held spellbound by our government's declaration of its commitment to violence, to death. Yet just as the violence of the terrorists who slaughtered the innocent on 9/11 does not lead us closer to justice, to reconciliation or peace, the violence acts of imperialist aggression enacted in the name of bringing an end to terrorism have brought us no closer to reconciliation, to peace, to justice." ("bell hooks Spews Anti-American Tirade in Commencement Speech at Southwestern University in Georgetown, TX" (Marc Levin, FrontPageMagazine, 2002/06/07))
"Patriotism threatens free speech with death. It is infuriated by thoughtful hesitation, constructive criticism of our leaders and pleas for peace. It despises people of foreign birth who've spent years learning our culture and contributing their talents to our economy. It has specifically blamed homosexuals, feminists and the American Civil Liberties Union. In other words, the American flag stands for intimidation, censorship, violence, bigotry, sexism, homophobia, and shoving the Constitution through a paper shredder? Who are we calling terrorists here?" ("And our flag was still there" (Barbara Kingsolver, San Francisco Chronicle, 2001/09/25))
"Uncivilized criminals are still held accountable through civilized institutions; we abolished stoning long ago. The World Court and the entire Muslim world stand ready to judge Osama bin Laden and his accessories. If we were to put a few billion dollars into food, health care and education instead of bombs, you can bet we'd win over enough friends to find out where he's hiding." ("No Glory in Unjust War on the Weak" (Barbara Kingsolver, Los Angeles Times, 2001/10/14))
"America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War. The reaction to 9/11 is beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped for in his nastiest dreams. As in McCarthy times, the freedoms that have made America the envy of the world are being systematically eroded. ... But the American public is not merely being misled. It is being browbeaten and kept in a state of ignorance and fear. The carefully orchestrated neurosis should carry Bush and his fellow conspirators nicely into the next election. ... What is at stake is not an Axis of Evil — but oil, money and people's lives. Saddam's misfortune is to sit on the second biggest oilfield in the world. Bush wants it, and who helps him get it will receive a piece of the cake. And who doesn’t, won't. If Saddam didn't have the oil, he could torture his citizens to his heart’s content. Other leaders do it every day — think Saudi Arabia, think Pakistan, think Turkey, think Syria, think Egypt." ("The United States of America has gone mad" (John le Carré, The Times, 2003/01/15))
"Poor old John le Carré. First he lost his theme – the Cold War – and now he is losing his audience. Those who listened to the end of the embarrassing interview he gave to Jim Naughtie yesterday on the Today programme must have squirmed, as I did, when le Carré compared himself to Victor Klemperer, the great diarist who survived the Holocaust, and compared the Americans, by implication, to the Nazis. ...
Having "appointed the state of Israel as the purpose of practically all policy", the neo-cons will not stop their "war machine" from wreaking havoc "until they have quelled the world". This American junta's "minstrel" is Tony Blair, who apparently lied to his country out of a sycophantic desire to impress the Americans, than which there is "no bigger sin". ...
When le Carré declares, "I'm waiting for the real Americans to come back", paraphrasing Victor Klemperer on the Nazis, he oversteps the bounds of permissible prejudice. And when he tells the BBC that it is "obscene" that he cannot discuss Israel without being accused of anti-Semitism, some listeners may wonder whether it is not anti-Semitism itself that is obscene, rather than the censorship of which le Carré imagines himself a victim.
It is his voice we hear in Absolute Friends: "Tell the new zealots of Washington that in the making of Israel a monstrous human crime was committed and they will call you an anti-Semite." Someone should tell le Carré that anti-Semitism is the hatred that has come in from the cold." ("John le Carré is Mr Angry now that Smiley's day has gone" (Daniel Johnson, The Daily Telegraph, 2003/12/02))
"Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has called for the removal of President Bush, saying that his bellicose posture has opened the road to the gates of hell, followers said Saturday. Speaking from the Netherlands, the founder of the Transcendental Meditation movement told followers that many unintelligent people believe in arms. He said Bush's ignorance of science has led him to rashly go out and destroy the world, according to a statement by followers." ("Maharishi urges Bush ouster" (DesMoinesRegister.com, 2001/10/28))
"'Of course we grieved for the thousands of innocent civilians whose lives were destroyed on 11 September. But the so-called war on terrorism is just as despicable a crime.... While the group that carried out the September 11 attack showed utter disregard for any law or standard or decency, now we find a major world power doing the same.... Bombing innocent civilians...is simply an exercise of military power and America has this in abundance, allowing it to contribute to the factors causing terrorism rather than attacking its roots.' - Naguib Mahfouz (1988 Prize for Literature) in an interview with Al-Ahram Weekly." ("Idiocy Watch #8" (The New Republic, 2001/10/29))
"Everything wrong with America led to the point where the country built that tower of Babel, which consequently had to be destroyed. ... And then came the next shock. We had to realize that the people that did this were brilliant. It showed that the ego we could hold up until September 10 was inadequate. ... The key thing is that we in America are convinced that it was blind, mad fanatics who didn't know what they were doing. But what if those perpetrators were right and we were not? We have long ago lost the capability to take a calm look at the enormity of our enemy's position." ("Idiocy Watch: Special Norman Mailer Edition" (The New Republic, 2001/11/20))
"In an 8,000-wordish polemic to be published in this weekend's London Sunday Times [9/8/02], Norman Mailer sounds what he hopes to be a "wake up call for America," the Drudge Report has learned. ... 'Let's suppose ten people are killed by a small bomb on a street corner in some city in America. The first thing to understand is that there are 280 million Americans. So, there's one chance in 28 million you're going to be one of those people. By such heartless means of calculation, the 3000 deaths in the Twin Towers came approximately to one mortality for every 90,000 Americans. Your chances of dying if you drive a car are one in 7,000 each year. We seem perfectly ready to put up with automobile statistics. I fear I am ready to say there is a tolerable level to terror...'" ("Norman Mailer declares: 'America is so vain'" (Matt Drudge, Drudge Report, 2002/09/06))
"According to Mailer, the war is all about - what else? - sex. ... "Behind the whole thing in Iraq is the desire to have a huge military presence in the near-East as a stepping stone for eventually taking over the world," Mailer says. The puritans in the White House believe that "if America becomes again a military machine that is huge in order to oversee all its new commitments, then American sexual freedom, willy-nilly, will have to go on the back burner. Commitment and dedication will become necessary national values (with all the hypocrisy attendant on that)." So a new Roman Empire (one, presumably, not given toward the sexual predilections and excesses of the first one), is the only way to make Britney Spears cover up her midriff." ("Norman Mailer's Buchananite Theory" (Chris Weinkopf, FrontPageMagazine, 2002/12/11))
"There were, however, even better reasons for using our military skills, but these reasons return us to the ongoing malaise of the white American male. He had been taking a daily drubbing over the past 30 years. For better or worse, the women’s movement had had its breakthrough successes and the old, easy white male ego had withered in the glare. Even the mighty consolations of rooting for your team on TV had been skewed. There was now less reward in watching sports than there used to be, a clear and declarable loss. The great white stars of yesteryear were for the most part gone, gone in football, in basketball, in boxing, and half-gone in baseball. Black genius now prevailed in all these sports (and the Hispanics were coming up fast; even the Asians were beginning to make their mark). We white men were now left with half of tennis (at least its male half), and might also point to ice-hockey, skiing, soccer, golf, (with the notable exception of the Tiger) as well as lacrosse, swimming, and the World-Wide Wrestling Federation — remnants and orts of a once-great and glorious centrality." ("We went to war just to boost the white male ego" (Norman Mailer, The Times, 2003/04/29))
"In an interview with Newsweek, former South African president Nelson Mandela defends Saddam Hussein and lashes out at Israel: "What we know is that Israel has weapons of mass destruction. Nobody talks about that. Why should there be one standard for one country, especially because it is black, and another one for another country, Israel, that is white." This is racist drivel. Iraq is Arabic, not black; and Israel, a multiracial democracy, is no more "white" than America is." ("Stupidity Watch" (James Taranto, The Wall Street Journal/Best of the Web Today, 2002/09/11))
"Mandela has uttered stronger and stronger statements critical of Bush. ... When this failed to move Bush Jr., Mandela declared the U.S. threat of pre-emptive war to bring about regime change in Iraq meant that the United States, not Iraq, was now "a danger to world peace." He followed this up by announcing that "some people" were saying that the United States was flouting the United Nations' authority because Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General, was a black man. Last week Mandela went further still, no longer putting such allegations in the mouths of "some people," but openly charging that the Bush administration was acting out of racist and white supremacist motives in not "obeying" Kofi Annan. 'No country, however powerful it may be, is entitled to act outside the UN. When UN secretaries-general were white we never had the question of any country ignoring the United Nations, but now that we have got black secretaries-general like Boutros Boutros-Ghali and Kofi Annan certain countries that believe in white supremacy are ignoring the UN for racist reasons.'" ("Mandela picks Iraq over U.S." (R.W. Johnson, National Post, 2002/10/11))
"Arrogant, indifferent, contemptuous of International Law, both dismissive and manipulative of the United Nations - [America] is now the most dangerous power the world has ever known - the authentic ' rogue state' - but a 'rogue state' of colossal military and economic might. ... It is certainly true that the police action in Genoa recently made it clear that the forces of reaction and repression remain savage, vicious and merciless. But we are free. And I believe that this brutal and malignant world machine must be recognised for what it is and resisted." ("Degree Speech to the University of Florence 10th September 2001" (Harold Pinter, haroldpinter.org, 2001/10/10))
"However, I found that to emerge from a personal nightmare was to enter an infinitely more pervasive public nightmare - the nightmare of American hysteria, ignorance, arrogance, stupidity and belligerence; the most powerful nation the world has ever known effectively waging war against the rest of the world. ... The atrocity in New York was predictable and inevitable. It was an act of retaliation against constant and systematic manifestations of state terrorism on the part of America over many years, in all parts of the world. ... Apparently a terrorist poison gas attack on the London Underground system was recently prevented. But such an act may indeed take place. Thousands of schoolchildren travel on the Underground every day. If there is a poison gas attack from which they die, the responsibility will rest entirely on the shoulders of our Prime Minister." ("The American administration is a bloodthirsty wild animal" (Harold Pinter, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/12/11))
"'I would hate to see under the issue... that we don't get so jingoistic with the word security that we pull things that should be dealt with separately under that banner. I'm chiefly talking about the environment. I think there should be a defense policy for our environment, too.' - Robert Redford, quoted on CNN Showbiz Today, October 12." ("Idiocy Watch #6" (The New Republic, 2001/10/19))
"Quite probably the worst thing about the inevitable and totally unjustifiable war with Iraq is that there's no chance the U.S. might lose it. America is a young country, and intellectually, emotionally, and physically, it has been exhibiting all the characteristics of an adolescent bully, a pubescent punk who’s too big for his britches and too strong for his age. Someday, perhaps, we may grow out of our mindless, pimple-faced arrogance, but in the meantime, it might do us a ton of good to have our butts kicked. Unfortunately, like most of the targets we pick on, Iraq is much too weak to give us the thrashing our continuously overbearing behavior deserves, while Saddam is even less deserving of victory than Bush." ("Sontag Award Nominee" (Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish, 2003/03/11))
"Language is always a lie; above all, public language. McCarthy used a certain language to hunt communists. That which was used against Clinton is a bit more sophisticated. As for Bush, it's ventriloquists who make him speak."
"What we are witnessing since September 11 is an orgy of national narcissism and a gratuitous victim mentality which is repugnant,' he said in an interview with the French newspaper Le Figaro. ... To the much-repeated suggestion that America "lost her innocence" after September 11, Mr Roth said: 'What innocence? From 1668 to 1865 this country had slavery; and from 1865 to 1955 was a society existing under a brutal segregation. I don't really know what these people are talking about." ("Susan Sontag Nominee" (andrewsullivan.com, 2002/10/07))
"But who is Osama bin Laden really? Let me rephrase that. What is Osama bin Laden? He's America's family secret. He is the American president's dark doppelgänger. The savage twin of all that purports to be beautiful and civilised. He has been sculpted from the spare rib of a world laid to waste by America's foreign policy... ... Now that the family secret has been spilled, the twins are blurring into one another and gradually becoming interchangeable." ("The algebra of infinite justice" (Arundhati Roy, The Guardian, 2001/09/29))
"The International Coalition Against Terror is a largely [sic] cabal of the richest countries in the world. Between them, they manufacture and sell almost all of the world's weapons, they possess the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction - chemical, biological and nuclear. They have fought the most wars, account for most of the genocide, subjection, ethnic cleansing and human rights violations in modern history, and have sponsored, armed and financed untold numbers of dictators and despots. Between them, they have worshipped, almost deified, the cult of violence and war. For all its appalling sins, the Taliban just isn't in the same league." ("'Brutality smeared in peanut butter'" (Arundhati Roy, The Guardian, 2001/10/23))
"Israel, in Saramago's view, has pursued immoral and hateful policies during its entire history. ... Saramago traced Israel's policies to biblical Judaism. He pointed to the story of David and Goliath, which, though commonly pictured as a tale of underdog triumph, is actually the story of a blond person (David's blond hair seemed to catch Saramago's attention) employing a superior technology to kill at a distance a helpless and presumably non-blond person, the unfortunate and oppressed Goliath. Today's events, in Saramago's fanciful interpretation, follow the biblical script precisely, as if in testimony to the Jews' fidelity to tradition. ... Saramago, shrewder and more sophisticated than the crowds in the Washington streets or the panelist at the Socialist Scholars Conference, did condemn the suicide bombers. He did so in two throwaway sentences at the end of his essay, sneeringly, with his own expressive ellipsis: "Ah, yes, the horrendous massacres of civilians caused by the so-called suicide terrorists.... Horrendous, yes, doubtless; condemnable, yes, doubtless, but Israel still has a lot to learn if it is not capable of understanding the reasons that can bring a human being to turn himself into a bomb." And so, the deliberate act of murdering random crowds turns out to be the fault of the murdered - or, rather, of the monstrous and racist doctrines of their religion, which is Judaism. ... Still, something was remarkable in seeing, in this day and age, a fulmination against Judaism for its intrinsic hatefulness, written with the savage energy of a Nobel Prize winner, published in one of the world's major newspapers." ("Bigotry in Print. Crowds Chant Murder. Something's Changed." (Paul Berman, Forward, from the 2002/05/24 issue))
"Renowned Portuguese writer and Nobel Prize-winner Jose Saramago, drew comparisons Monday between Israel's blockade of the West Bank city of Ramallah and the Holocaust. On a trip to Ramallah, Saramago said that "the spirit of Auschwitz" was linked to what was going on in the city. "This place is being turned into a concentration camp," he said, referring to the IDF's siege on the city. ... Asked by Haaretz where the gas chambers were, he replied; "So far, there are none." He added that, as a writer, it was his prerogative to make emotional comparisons in order to shock people into understanding." ("Nobel winner: Ramallah being turned into concentration camp" (Amira Hass, Haaretz, 2002/03/26))
"Where is the acknowledgment that this was not a "cowardly" attack on "civilization" or "liberty" or "humanity" or "the free world" but an attack on the world's self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions? How many citizens are aware of the ongoing American bombing of Iraq? And if the word "cowardly" is to be used, it might be more aptly applied to those who kill from beyond the range of retaliation, high in the sky, than to those willing to die themselves in order to kill others. In the matter of courage (a morally neutral virtue): whatever may be said of the perpetrators of Tuesday's slaughter, they were not cowards." ("First Reactions" (Susan Sontag, The New Yorker, 2001/09/17))
"Soros, who has financed efforts to promote open societies in more than 50 countries around the world, is bringing the fight home, he said. On Monday, he and a partner committed up to $5 million to MoveOn.org, a liberal activist group, bringing to $15.5 million the total of his personal contributions to oust Bush. ...
"America, under Bush, is a danger to the world," Soros said. Then he smiled: "And I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is."
Soros believes that a "supremacist ideology" guides this White House. He hears echoes in its rhetoric of his childhood in occupied Hungary. "When I hear Bush say, 'You're either with us or against us,' it reminds me of the Germans." It conjures up memories, he said, of Nazi slogans on the walls, Der Feind Hort mit ("The enemy is listening"). "My experiences under Nazi and Soviet rule have sensitized me," he said in a soft Hungarian accent." ("Soros's Deep Pockets vs. Bush" (Laura Blumenfeld, The Washington Post, 2003/11/11))
"Suicide bombing - and the planes of 9/11 were living bombs - is a purposive self-annihilation, a confrontation between oneself and oneself, the extreme end of autoeroticism, killing onself as other, in the process killing others. It is when one sees oneself as an object capable of destruction in a world of objects, so that the destruction of others is indistinguishable from the destruction of self. Suicidal resistance is a message inscribed on the body when no other means will get through. It is both execution and mourning, for both self and other. For you die with me for the same cause, no matter which side you are on. Because no matter who you are, there are no designated killees in suicide bombing. No matter what side you are on, because I cannot talk to you, you won't respond to me, with the implication that there is no dishonor in such shared and innocent death." ("Columbia U. Prof. excuses suicide "resistance" - An Unanswered Letter to Columbia's Dean of Academic Affairs by Edward Alexander" (Edward Alexander, IMRA, 2002/08/27))
[founder, Ms. magazine] "Many of the Afghan women who have been warning us about the Taliban for years say that bombing would be the surest way to unite most Afghanis around them. We need an act as positive as the terrorists were negative. For example, a massive airlift of food and medicine into Afghanistan. Instead of dividing the world into Islam and the West, we need to make clear that we are part of the same world." ("The Empire Strikes Back" (Rachel Neumann, Village Voice, 2001/10/03))
"'That characters can bring about in one act what we in music cannot dream of, that people practice madly for 10 years, completely, fanatically, for a concert and then die. That is the greatest work of art for the whole cosmos. ... It's a crime because those involved didn't consent. They didn't come to the 'concert.' That's obvious. And no one announced that they risked losing their lives. What happened in spiritual terms, the leap out of security, out of what is usually taken for granted, out of life, that sometimes happens to a small extent in art, too, otherwise art is nothing.' - German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, September 16" ("Idiocy Watch" (The New Republic, 2001/10/02))
"As hisses filled the air, Oliver Stone, another panelist, shook his head in disbelief. ... 'They control culture, they control ideas. And I think the revolt of September 11th was about 'Fuck you! Fuck your order—'' 'Excuse me,' a fellow-panelist, Christopher Hitchens, said. ''Revolt'?' 'Whatever you want to call it,' Stone said. 'It was state-supported mass murder, using civilians as missiles,' said Hitchens, a columnist for Vanity Fair and The Nation. Stone wagged his head and continued. 'The studios bought television stations,' he said. 'Why? Why did the telecommunications bill get passed at midnight, a hidden bill at midnight? The Arabs have a point!'... Stone sat in a booth, cradling a glass of white wine in his hands, and remarked that he hadn't slept in days. 'The new world order is about order and control,' he said. 'This attack was pure chaos, and chaos is energy. All great changes have come from people or events that were initially misunderstood, and seemed frightening, like madmen. Einstein, Nikola Tesla, Gates. I think, I think . . . I think many things.'" ("Oliver Stone's Chaos Theory" (The New Yorker, 2001/10/15))
"Make no mistake about it: We are At War now -- with somebody -- and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives. It will be a Religious War, a sort of Christian Jihad, fueled by religious hatred and led by merciless fanatics on both sides. It will be guerilla warfare on a global scale, with no front lines and no identifiable enemy. Osama bin Laden may be a primitive "figurehead" -- or even dead, for all we know -- but whoever put those All-American jet planes loaded with All-American fuel into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon did it with chilling precision and accuracy." ("Fear & Loathing in America" (Hunter S. Thompson, ESPN.com, 2001/09/12))
"'I exhort the international community not to fall in a logic of war, seeking retribution for old and new controversies among nations and justifying actions against groups and sectors that have not found a pluralist disposition for the recognition and respect of their individual expressions in the existing institutional frameworks.' - Rigoberta Menchú Tum (1992 Prize for Peace) in The Community.com." ("Idiocy Watch #8" (The New Republic, 2001/10/29))
"'Aren't the Israelis and the Palestinians both terrorising each other?' says Turner, who is vice-chairman of AOL Time Warner, which owns CNN, in an exclusive interview with the Guardian. "The Palestinians are fighting with human suicide bombers, that's all they have. The Israelis ... they've got one of the most powerful military machines in the world. The Palestinians have nothing. So who are the terrorists? I would make a case that both sides are involved in terrorism." ... Mr Turner also admits that he was wrong to call the September 11 hijackers "brave" in a speech in Rhode Island that sparked outrage. "I made an unfortunate choice of words," he says, adding that his ownership of the Atlanta Braves baseball team meant the word was never far from his mind. 'Look, I'm a very good thinker, but I sometimes grab the wrong word...'" ("CNN chief accuses Israel of terror" (Oliver Burkeman and Peter Beaumont, The Guardian, 2002/06/18))
"I've been very deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa. I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about. ... Have our Jewish sisters and brothers forgotten their humiliation? Have they forgotten the collective punishment, the home demolitions, in their own history so soon? Have they turned their backs on their profound and noble religious traditions? Have they forgotten that God cares deeply about the downtrodden? ... We condemn the violence of suicide bombers, and we condemn the corruption of young minds taught hatred; but we also condemn the violence of military incursions in the occupied lands, and the inhumanity that won't let ambulances reach the injured. ... People are scared in this country [the US], to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful - very powerful. ... The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosevic, and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in the end they bit the dust." ("Apartheid in the Holy Land" (The Guardian, 2002/04/29))
Here Ustinov is "quibbling with George W. Bush's description of Palestinian bombers as 'cowardly'": "They require the kind of courage that none of us would have. It's a kind of courage that’s very hard to understand. And it's our duty to try to understand it because it is the courage of desperation. And what is the difference between somebody who goes into a coffee house with the intention of killing as many people as possible - and does so - and somebody who's in an aeroplane at the height of five miles, unobtainable by any anti-aircraft gun, and lets their bombs drop as scientifically as possible, in order to kill as few people as possible? I guarantee that the one who tries to kill as few people as possible will kill many more than the one who goes into a snack bar and blows himself or herself up. But in this campaign, I wonder how many of the people who have been killed were terrorists? I think very, very few. To my mind, it's a big lie." ("The world according to Ustinov" (Matthew Sweet, Arab News, 2002/07/26))
"'How we dare even prate about democracy is beyond me. Our form of democracy is bribery, on the highest scale. It's far worse than anything that occurred in the Roman empire, until the praetorian guard started to sell the principate. We're not a democracy, and we have absolutely nothing to give the world in the way of political ideas or political arrangements. God knows, the mention of justice is like a clove of garlic to Count Dracula.... I'm a true protest-ant, so I do protest at the ignorance. And that's my unpopular role, alas.' - Gore Vidal, interview with the New Statesman, October 15." ("Idiocy Watch #6" (The New Republic, 2001/10/19))
"These people are for the most part rip-off artists. Notice that they're all gas and oil men from Cheney, to the two Bushes; I think Rumsfeld also. And what this is really about is oil, and it's Central Asian oil, which is what we've got our eye on. We do have practical motives every now and then. It's not just for the sheer glory that we get into a war like the Afghanistan. Afghanistan is the entranceway to Central Asia and five republics that used to belong to the Soviet Union that are now the largest suppliers of gas, natural gas, and oil. He who gets his hands on that will really control the world for a while. ... It's a weird world. A mercenary army that is not to be hurt, blowing up innocent countries, relatively innocent, like Afghanistan. But we do it." ("Beneath the Planet of the Anti-War Libertarians" (BrinkLindsey.com, 2002/04/30))
"U.S. author Gore Vidal denounced President Bush Tuesday as wanting the war on terror to go on forever and said some Americans were delighted that the September 11 attacks had singled out Muslims as the enemy. ... "Some people in the United States were rather delighted that it (the attacks) mobilized the entire country and focused on a single enemy, which we'd been demonizing for quite some time - the Muslim world," Vidal said. 'He (Bush) wants this to go on forever. He said to Congress after 9/11: 'It's going to be a long war'. He was thrilled.'" ("Gore Vidal Says Bush 'Wants War to Go on Forever'" (Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2002/09/09))
"We still don't know by whom we were struck that infamous Tuesday, or for what true purpose. But it is fairly plain to many civil libertarians that 9/11 put paid not only to much of our fragile Bill of Rights but also to our once-envied system of government which had taken a mortal blow the previous year when the Supreme Court did a little dance in 5/4 time and replaced a popularly elected President with the oil and gas Bush-Cheney junta. ... Osama was chosen on aesthetic grounds to be the frightening logo for our long-contemplated invasion and conquest of Afghanistan ... [because] the administration is convinced that Americans are so simple-minded that they can deal with no scenario more complex than the venerable, lone, crazed killer (this time with zombie helpers) who does evil just for the fun of it 'cause he hates us because we're rich 'n free 'n he's not." ("Gore Vidal claims 'Bush junta' complicit in 9/11" (Sunder Katwala, The Observer, 2002/10/27))
"I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened, though, is that it has been taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d’etat imaginable. And those now in charge of the federal government are upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka 'Christians,' and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or 'PPs.'" ("Susan Sontag Nominee" (The Daily Dish, 2003/02/01))
"In a war on Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden will either be left alive, while thousands of impoverished, frightened people are bombed into oblivion around him, or he will be killed in a bombing attack for which he seems quite prepared. But what would happen to his cool armor if he could be reminded of all the good, nonviolent things he has done? Further, what would happen to him if he could be brought to understand the preciousness of the lives he has destroyed? I firmly believe the only punishment that works is love." ("The Empire Strikes Back" (Rachel Neumann, Village Voice, 2001/10/03))
Copyright © Watch 2001-2006. Copyrights of quoted materials
belong to their respective owners.
"When
people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent.
The term is not a slur; it is a technical label."
Articles
of the week
"Losing the Enlightenment" (Victor Davis Hanson, OpinionJournal, 2006/11/29)
"Allah’s England?" (Daniel Johnson, Commentary. November 2006)
"'Sex in the Park': The latest doings of the Danish imams" (Henrik Bering, The Weekly Standard, 2006/11/18)
"Narcissism on Stilts" (Harold Evans, New York Sun, 2006/11/16)
"Terrorists are recruiting in our schools, says MI5 boss" (Philip Johnston, The Daily Telegraph, 2006/11/10)
›
AOTW Archive
From the archives
Oriana Fallaci, R.I.P.
"The Rage, the Pride and the Doubt" (Oriana Fallaci, The Wall Street Journal, 2003/03/13)
"How the West Was Won and How It Will Be Lost" (Oriana Fallaci, The American Enterprise, from the January/February 2003 issue)
"On Jew-hatred in Europe" (Oriana Fallaci, dennisprager.com, 2002/04/13)
"Anger and Pride" (Oriana Fallaci, dennisprager.com, 2001/12/19)
Weekly archive
2006/12/04
- 2006/12/10
2006/11/27 - 2006/12/03
2006/11/20 - 2006/11/26
2006/11/13
- 2006/11/19
2006/11/06
- 2006/11/12
2006/10/30
- 2006/11/05
›
From
2001/09/11 -
Monthly
index
December
2006
November
2006
October
2006
September
2006
August
2006
July
2006
›
From
September 2001 -
Author index
›
Ajami,
Fouad - Johnson, Paul
›
Kagan,
Robert - Ye'or, Bat
Support
Watch
Please
feel free to donate if you enjoy the daily content and links Watch provides:
Contact Watch
Email:
watch-at-windsofchange.net
