<nettime> Michael Moore on Denver and Kosovo

[artactivism@gn.apc.org (reclaim the streets)]

>
>Subject:     forwarded from Michael Moore
>Sent:via Sue lanzon
>April 22, 1999
>
>Dear Friends,
>
>There he was, The Great Consoler, standing
>at the podium, biting his lip, and speaking to
>a nation in shock.
>
>"We must teach our children to settle their
>differences through words and not weapons."
>
>Meanwhile, this same President, continues
>a daily slaughter of human beings.  He says
>it's because the people he is bombing are
>doing their own slaughter. He has chosen to
>respond to their actions not with "words" but
>with death.
>
>Is it any wonder some of our children -- especially
>those in most pain, the "outcasts," the "uncool" --
>decide to turn to murder and strike out against
>what they perceive to be a world against them?
>We live in a culture in America where violence is
>The Way We Get Things Done.  If it works for their
>elders, why shouldn't the kids give it a try?
>
>As the kids at the high school near Denver
>huddled in locked classrooms in the hopes
>that they would not be the next one with a
>bullet in the face, they turned on the classroom
>TVs to watch the carnage and their own
>potential execution on CNN.  One student,
>"Bob," got on his cell phone and called the
>local Channel 9 to give the on-air anchors a
>live play-by-play of events inside the school.
>
>"Bob," the anchors said after getting their
>precious, Emmy-winning sound bytes, "maybe
>you should hang up now and call 911."
>
>"Uh, oh, yeah," responded Bob, sounding a bit
>disappointed.  His connection to the virtual world
>of television and cellular communication was
>more a part of his instinct to survive than his
>need to call the cops.  Or maybe he trusted the
>people on TV more to get him out of there than
>the full-time armed officer who patrolled the halls
>of the high school.  Not one gun of a well-armed
>force of police that showed up was able to
>prevent one death.
>
>A world away, kids just a few years older than
>Bob are dropping bombs that are killing kids
>just a few years younger than Bob.  We know
>this because we watch it on TV.  We learn why
>we're dropping these bombs also on TV.  A
>man from the Pentagon shows us cool video
>game images of point-and-click targets that
>go "BOOM!"  Cool.
>
>Another man in an important uniform shows
>us photographs from one of the Mother-of-All-
>Cameras, those satellites that sit thousands
>of miles up in space and have, I guess,
>REALLY long lenses.
>
>He shows us Photo #1.  Here, he says, is
>"unbroken, untouched ground" from a week ago.
>Then he shows us Photo #2 where he points to
>the ground being "freshly turned-over, dug up,
>and replaced."  This, he says, is evidence of
>"a mass grave."
>
>The reporters sit there like anxious pet dogs,
>lapping up the "revelations" and eagerly
>reporting them to us as "truth."
>
>But these journalists failed to ask the man in
>the important uniform one very important and
>obvious question:   "Where's the middle photo?"
>
>If our satellite camera is always up there and
>running, capturing the before and after of a
>300 foot piece of dirt, where's the "during"
>photo?  The satellite cameras were snapping
>pictures the whole time, so where's the photos
>of the massacre itself?  Where are the photos
>of the Serbs transporting the bodies to the
>"mass grave?"   Where are the photos of the
>bodies being placed in the "mass grave" and covered
>with dirt?  Where's just ONE photo of any of this?
>
>Was the satellite camera on the blink during all
>this activity?  Was it only working before the
>ground was dug and then only after it was
>covered back up?
>
>Where are those photos, Mr. Clinton and
>Mr. Blair?
>
>Members of our so-called free press:  Where
>is your courage to ask the obvious questions?
>Why won't you?  Why are we being lied to?
>
>On the night of the Denver shootings, NATO (us)
>bombed the building containing the three
>Serbian TV entertainment networks.  They
>didn't bomb the news station putting out
>the nightly propaganda until two nights later.
>They chose to bomb the entertainment
>networks first, one of which was showing
>"Wag the Dog" with its fake Albanian
>atrocity scenes, on a continuous loop.
>
>Yes!  Bomb the entertainment networks,
>'cause it's all just one big show for a
>violence-deprived public forced to sit through
>a year of mostly-unconsummated oral sex in
>oval offices.  We'd much prefer the gore to
>Gore and Bill.  "The Matrix," a film about a
>young hero in a trenchcoat who is able to
>blows away everything in sight,  is the
>number one film this week in the country.
>
>And as the children of Denver ran from the
>trenchcoated killers, they were not met outside
>by nurturing adults who might take them into their
>arms to console and soothe them.
>
>No, the students were ordered to run out with
>their hands above their heads into the gun
>sights of the local S.W.A.T team who herded
>them up against a wall -- "KEEP YOUR
>HANDS WHERE WE CAN SEE THEM!" --
>and frisked them with their other hand, the one
>not holding a gun to their backs.
>
>You see, the killer or killers might have been
>amongst them, so all the children were
>suspects, all potential murders in the eyes
>of the state.  Yes, it's our children who are
>at fault, we are told -- They watch violent
>movies!  They listen to violent misogynist
>music!  They play violent video games!
>
>Soon, they may be asked to die a violent
>death on the fresh-but-recently-disturbed
>soil of the Balkans.
>
>They will be well prepared.
>
>Yours,
>Michael Moore
>

"To work for delight and authentic festivity is barely distinguishable
 from preparing for a general insurrection."
 Raoul Vaneigem, The Revolution of Everyday Life.

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