Comments on: Powerful anti-war flash animation from the Kucinich campaign

Powerful anti-war flash animation from the Kucinich campaign

skallas — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 23:51:24 -0800

Powerful anti-war flash animation from the Kucinich campaign. A bit heavy handed, but when dealing with life and death, literally, its best to just come out and say what one thinks.

By: digaman

digaman — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 00:26:13 -0800

Very powerful, yes, and it should be shown on every TV network in the nation every hour. But it's not from the Kucinich camp. It was produced by the extremely talented Eric Blumrich at Bushflash.com.

By: Witty

Witty — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 00:33:00 -0800

Compelling... truly compelling. I haven't seen anything that good in a long time. DAMN, that was good. Good, good, good. And who is this Dennis guy? I'm voting for him. He's a good flash maker. Good, good, good.

By: homunculus

homunculus — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 01:03:59 -0800

The rest of his animations are here. My favorite is Doctor Bushlove. [flash] Vera, Vera, what has become of you A friend of his did this surreal piece, set to Black Sabbath music: Who are you? [.wmv]

By: homunculus

homunculus — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 01:12:27 -0800

("Vera, Vera, what has become of you?", a line from Pink Floyd's The Wall, refers to Vera Lynn, whose song from Doctor Strangelove is in the animation.)

By: Happydaz

Happydaz — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 02:11:00 -0800

Perhaps Kucinich, as a candidate with ZERO chances right now, has the chance to do some alternative campaigning like this his rivals won't. Wow, that'd be neat if he could sneak to Dean's left (we all know he's already there, but not visible to the public) and use his secret vegan powers to secure the nomination? Wonder if Fox would ever play that ad? Complete sidenote: Witty, I find you far too clever for your own good. Are you just incredibly sincere or subtly mocking everyone with each comment? [scratches head.]

By: cedar

cedar — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 06:58:07 -0800

My first impression was of Kucinich throwing himself on a grenade to protect those in his party with a chance of being elected. These are issues that need to be addressed, but aren't going to play well in Peoria. Hopefully this will allow the more viable candidates an opportunity to be more direct in their response to the administrations policy in Iraq while coming off as moderate compared to Dennis "Loose Cannon" Kucinich.

By: balinx

balinx — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 07:14:42 -0800

This animation offers no solutions. Don't bother.

By: SealWyf

SealWyf — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 07:17:31 -0800

Sometimes there aren't any solutions. But it's still worth pointing out that there's a problem.

By: soyjoy

soyjoy — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 07:17:33 -0800

Dammit, what good is an animation that doesn't offer solutions? What else is an animation for? Seriously, though, it was a little heavy-handed. Not the content, just all the quick-cut overlapping - even though I was already firmly in the choir it was preaching to, I started thinking, "hey, stop tryin' to brainwash me, already!"

By: Tubes

Tubes — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 07:24:04 -0800

The implied solution is to remove GWB so our troops come home. Real classy -- implying that the President dreamed up the war as nothing more than a jobs program for all his business pals, ignoring any aspect of the situation not supporting that argument.

By: raysmj

raysmj — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 07:37:33 -0800

ubes: Yeah, that had a lot to do with why we went to war. Even without the whole WMD thing, we would've attacked Iraq for that. You know it.

By: Wallzatcha

Wallzatcha — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 07:47:50 -0800

Very compelling ad, but it would be a lot better if he'd give us a bit of his plan for Iraq instead of just pointing fingers. Obviously that's hard in a 30 second tv spot but you'd think online they could give us a little more. And on a sidenote, I don't completely disagree with the ban on pictures of soldiers body's coming back to the U.S. A family should be able to keep some things private in a situation like that. I think the gov't is banning the pictures for the wrong reason, but it's still the right thing to do.

By: Faze

Faze — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 07:58:28 -0800

"They are are sons, our daughters, our brothers, our sisters..." Kucinich is still protesting the Vietnam War, which was fought in large part by draftees, whose deaths were indeed a tragedy. Our current armed forces are all-volunteer. They are paid killers. They receive salaries and other benefits in return for their willingness to go overseas and -- when ordered to -- kill people. They are exhaustively trained to kill people. Every day of their lives in the service, they are reminded that their mission is to kill people. There has to be some limit to how much boo-hooing we do when these paid killers themselves get killed. War is murder and volunteer soldiers are... not innocent.

By: PigAlien

PigAlien — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 08:05:12 -0800

Every time I think about what's happening in this country and where we're leading the world, I just take a deep breath and say, "We thought Reagan was the worst thing to ever happen to this country, we thought Nixon was the worst thing to ever happen, we thought Vietnam was horrible and protestors at Kent State were killed, we survived the Great Depression and the oil crisis of the 70s." I'm not dismissing what we're going through or saying we shouldn't fight it, quite the contrary. Sometimes the only hope I feel in the face of such negativity is to remind myself that throughout history we've survived difficult times and difficult administrations. Let's hold out hope we survive this one without decades of damage to clean up.

By: sic

sic — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 08:12:03 -0800

From tubes link: The deadliest atrocity associated with Saddam's government was the scorched-earth campaign known as the "Anfal", in which the government killed an estimated 180,000 Kurds in Iraq's far north. Many were buried in mass graves far from home in the southern desert. This campaign started in 1987, I believe, when the Iran-Iraq war had settled into a stalemate and Saddam turned his attention to the Kurdish rebels who had been aiding Iran during the conflict. The Culmination was the tragic gassing of men, women and children at the town of Halabja in March of 1988. Of course, to support the Iraqis in the war the US supplied Saddam Hussein with military intelligence, weapons technology and "dual-use" technology, which is a clever way of saying "things that can be turned into lethal arms", like say crop dusting helicopters and strains of Anthrax and the Bubonic plague, all of which, of course, the Reagan administration supplied to Saddam Hussein. Now, the pragmatists among you will point out that the Reagan Administration chose to arm Saddam Hussein, a dictator known to be brutal to his own population, with these weapons to contain an even greater evil, Khomeni's Islamic Revolution that threatened to spread from Iran to the rest of the Middle East. Of course the Reagan administration had no intention of Saddam using those US supplied weapons on the Kurds, only on those evil Iranians, which was the pragmatic purpose of the weapons. Now of course the whole pragmatic argument becomes even more pragmatic when you factor in the Iran-Contra scandal, where the CIA and the NSA were also supplying arms to the "greater evil" Iran in exchange for the release of CIA operatives being held in Lebanon by Hezbollah. So they were arming both "evils" on both sides of the Iran Iraq war, which is really really pragmatic. I don't think I have to mention that the CIA then used the profits of those illegal arms sales to Iran to arm the CIA-invented Contras paramilitary group in their terrorist campaign against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. And it would surely be off topic to mention that at the same time the Reagan Administration was funding the Taleban and Osama Bin-Laden in Afghanistan in their struggle against the Soviets. None of this has anything to do with the current situation, oh, except for the fact that many of the people involved in these decisions by the Reagan Administration (and Bush sr. administration who in 1989 gave 1 BILLION dollars in aid to Saddam), are in the Bush jr. administration: Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Colin Powell, John Negroponte, Richard Armitage, John Poindexter... and I'm sure I'm leaving some more out, but hey, I suppose these career pragmatists are capable of doing something romantic and crazy, like start another Iraq war, "just to help out those Iraqis", since at heart they are really just a bunch of swell guys.

By: PigAlien

PigAlien — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 08:17:57 -0800

To anyone who says Saddam killed 61,000 people: America has turned many times more people with a medical problem, namely drug addiction, into criminals and ruined their lives by putting them into prison and denying them the right to an education (through denying financing available to convicted MURDERS). Saddam Hussein could get a student loan in this country, but someone who smoked pot couldn't! If you don't like that anti-american troll, how about Kim Jong Il? I think he's killed somewhat more than 61,000 and in a far crueler manner - starvation. I don't see us marching into North Korea. And don't give me anything about 'nuclear weapons' either - we could have dealt with them long ago. I don't care if you blame the North Korea problem on Clinton - two wrongs don't make a right.

By: PigAlien

PigAlien — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 08:20:37 -0800

uh, MURDERERS...

By: a3matrix

a3matrix — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 08:36:06 -0800

23:1 ratio, I think we could do better than that. I said it before, I'll say it again. I liked having Saddam in power. He really was doing a good job at reducing the Iraqi population, much better then we are, but, that isn't our objective.

By: gyc

gyc — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 08:38:41 -0800

By: matteo

matteo — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 08:50:30 -0800

ANGEL: Perhaps this is the first time you have read to dead children, Mrs. Bush? LAURA BUSH: Perhaps it is! And I have to admit, children, I'm nervous. I've never met actual dead children before. Nor actual children from Iraq. Before I met my husband I traveled all over, children, all over the world, and since we moved into the White House I have also traveled, but never to Iraq. So you are the first Iraqi children I've met and you look real sweet in your PJs. And I'm sorry you're dead, but all children love books. All children can learn to love books if you read to them. That's why I've come--to read to you, to share one of my favorite books with you, because when a parent reads to a child, or any adult reads to a child, even if that child is dead, the child will learn to love books, and that is so, so important. (To one of the children:) How did you die, darling? ANGEL: In 1999, an American plane dropped a bomb filled with several tons of concrete on the power station near his village. He was already malnourished; he had been malnourished since birth, because of the sanctions. The power station that was crushed by the bomb was believed to be supplying power to a plant suspected of producing certain agents necessary for the development of biotoxins. We do not know if it did. We do know that it supplied power for the water purification system for his village. He already had gastroenteritis and nearly chronic diarrhea, for which medicines were unavailable. Then the water purification system failed and he drank a glass of water his mother gave him infested by a large intestinal parasite. He died of dehydration, shitting water, then blood, then water again, so much! Then a trickle, everyone was sad, there was no food, he shook so hard the screws holding his bed together were loosened. It took three days to die. LAURA BUSH: That's really awful. ANGEL: Yes. Only We Who Guard The Mystery Shall Be Unhappy by Tony Kushner

By: clavdivs

clavdivs — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 08:59:25 -0800

Our current armed forces are all-volunteer. They are paid killers. well, they ain't candy stripers. Just to appease your idiotic statement, what is it you think solders do? There has to be some limit to how much boohooing we do when these paid killers themselves get killed. tell you what, go find some returning solders and tell them this (please) or better yet, their families. then i would like to check your teeth and perhaps your pulse. America has turned many times more people with a medical problem, namely drug addiction, into criminals and ruined their lives by putting them into prison and denying them the right to an education So, the government put that bottle or drug to that persons mouth? The government made them become addicted? great thinking. Sic, before you horse hoof the u.s. so much about shit we sold to Iraq, take a look at what France, England, Russia, and Germany sold them. That saddam was a weapon loving mo-fo eh folks?

By: clavdivs

clavdivs — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 09:00:51 -0800

oh yeah and Italy, saddam wanted some new boats

By: beth

beth — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 09:27:42 -0800

Our current armed forces are all-volunteer. They are paid killers. So, you think they all joined out of bloodlust? Let me guess, in your view of reality none of them joined because the armed forces seemed a decent way to get out of poverty or get money for college.

By: sic

sic — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 09:43:06 -0800

Clavdis, your statement is correct although irrelevant to the point, the Reagan administration encouraged its NATO allies to contribute to the Iraqi cause. One study lists 207 firms from 21 countries that contributed to Iraq's non-conventional weapons program during and after the Iran-Iraq war. E.g., West German (86); British (18); Austrian (17); French (16); Italian (12); Swiss (11); and American (18). The Soviets were aiding Iraq at one point as well, ah wasn't the Cold War fun! But of course, this doesn't change the contribution made by the US: Items sent from the U.S. during the Reagan and Bush Administrations that helped Iraq's non-conventional weapons programs and that are shipped to known military industrial facilities include: Computers to develop ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons; machine tools and lasers to extend ballistic missile range; graphics terminals to design and analyze rockets; West Nile Fever virus, a known potential BW agent, sent by the U.S. government's Centers for Disease Control (CDC); the chemical agents for botulism, tetanus, and anthrax. Now does this change the fact that the Reagan and Bush adminstration were the main doctors that created this particular Frankenstein? No.

By: jennak

jennak — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 09:52:50 -0800

I don't quite understand the math in the flash animation. It says that 1.99 are killed a day, yet it goes on to say that if trends continue, another 2,400 will be dead next year. Shouldn't that number be ~700 (365x1.99)? Is this some fuzzy math or am I missing something? I don't get it either. The statistic says "if this trend continues..." I didn't know what trend they were refering to, so I took their highest trend ("74 died during the first two weeks of Ramadan") and multiplied that by 26 (52 weeks divided by 2). That results in 1,924 soldiers' deaths.

By: matteo

matteo — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 10:06:26 -0800

your idiotic statement well, "paid killers" is not exactly idiotic. do you suggest that they aren't paid? or that they don't kill people? where's the "idiotic" part? but I agree that money is not the soldiers' motivation (couldn't possibly be, given the shameless cuts in soldiers pay and veterans benefits asked for by this allegedly patriotic administration) -- many of them are looking to get a US citizenship that currently eludes them, or are in there for the chance of surviving their tour of duty and finally getting a chance to go to college, or for the decent health care plan (things that those lame, surrender Euromonkeys provide to their civilian citizens as well, but nevermind) if you're looking for anti-military people, look at the White House -- they're the ones using soldiers as pawns and sending them off to slaughter in a badly-planned adventure, after all. but I agree that Bechtel/Halliburton money non olet pecunia never does after all oh yeah and Italy, saddam wanted some new boats heh. not to mention Italy propped him up for years providing chemical weapons to fight against those unruly ayatollahs right? (the ayatollahs Italy traded arms-for-hostages with, of course) of course, not every country is ashamed of her KIA soldier's homecoming, thank God but it's pretty lame to turn a tragedy like this botched occupation -- an international tragedy and humanitarian disaster -- into a jingoistic "I'll bust your teeth out" bar brawl tell you what, go find some returning solders and tell them this (please) how many times Bush and Cheney debated angry parents of KIA American soldiers (or American-wannabe foreign-born soldiers) as of today? how many?

By: callmejay

callmejay — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 10:12:03 -0800

all-volunteer They are all people who volunteered, yes. However, it's not like they are allowed to change their minds and leave, which is true of just about any other kind of volunteering I can think of. I'd say they are semi-volunteers.

By: badstone

badstone — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 10:38:01 -0800

re: paid killers/volunteers I think most soldiers would prefer to say they volunteered and are willing to kill and be killed in defense of their country. The point of the animation is that they are not killing and dying in defense of the nation, but in defense of the bank accounts of Bush & Cheny's chums. (Debate that claim and you won't be derailing the thread.)

By: tholt

tholt — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 13:04:37 -0800

I'm .99 dead.

By: hama7

hama7 — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 17:48:10 -0800

then i would like to check your teeth and perhaps your pulse. Yes Sir! *pounds on table* Those men are at the top of my admiration list.

By: hama7

hama7 — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 17:52:52 -0800

As well as a contemporary who was shot down during the first few weeks of the war. Ask his family what they thought of his sacrifice to his country.

By: poopy

poopy — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 18:18:46 -0800

the obvious parallels between this and limbaugh fans *uggghh* a little tip for a few of my fellow liberals: IT'S NOT US YOU HAVE TO CONVINCE! *waves yellow flag*

By: fold_and_mutilate

fold_and_mutilate — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 19:51:54 -0800

tell you what, go find some returning solders and tell them this (please) or better yet, their families. then i would like to check your teeth and perhaps your pulse. Tell you what. Paid killers is exactly what many of the troops are, and many of us continue to call them publicly for exactly what they are. Thinking that the threat of violence will stop people from speaking their minds...from speaking the truth.... is really about the lowest thing I can think of. But pretty unsurprising. My name, address, and phone number are available here. Send the paid killers over, clavdivs. Oh, and hama7? why don't you ask a few of these families what they thought of "sacrifice for their country": Grieving family asks why His son's death leads Fernando Suarez del Solar to speak out against the war "So, many, like Fred and Marianne D'Amato -- parents of Christopher, 23, a reservist who drives an Army truck in Iraq -- held their tongues and crossed their fingers. They thought they were alone and maybe a little strange, a military family against the war." Military Families Speak Out Go ahead, hama7 and clavdivs. Ask these families. (I doubt you'll even have to count your teeth or pulse.)

By: clavdivs

clavdivs — Wed, 10 Dec 2003 08:44:53 -0800

Thinking that the threat of violence will stop people from speaking their minds...from speaking the truth.... is really about the lowest thing I can think of. But pretty unsurprising. I agree. doctors are paid doctors kill doctors are paid killers. yup, works just fine. Now does this change the fact that the Reagan and Bush adminstration were the main doctors that created this particular Frankenstein? No. wrong, I'm tired of the blame game, Blame the brits sic, go ahead and read a book about the British occupation of iraq you too foldy, o great protector of truth. Does your limited scope want to tackle this? Also, do you feel threatened Foldy? by whom, me? Please. I may not like you but the thought of anyone, including myself harming you does not make sence, why would anyone do that, and if they did have such vial thoughts, why waste it on you? matteo, the killing of those fine solders while sleeping was tragic. Now, go and tell there families they where "hired killers" DO IT. come on, you got it in ya, face them like a man and let them know they died for money.

By: hama7

hama7 — Fri, 12 Dec 2003 21:36:01 -0800

Paid killers is exactly what many of the troops are ~guffaw~ Your "paid killer" is my "Defender", and as recipient of that defense, I have a deep respect for not only the soldiers who are defending us now, but also the eternal regard of the military men and women who have served to provide us with the lifestyle that many treat with such casual disregard or outright hostility (links to which are too numerous to recount here). We owe our Armed Forces our countles freedoms, including the right to fritter our lives away quibbling on the internet. ~wink~ We've all heard the cowards and turncoats, the indecisive... and the embarrassment for them grows as the dust clears. My name, address, and phone number are available here. The discussion (*such as it is) stays here, and there's no reason to do otherwise, though disagreements might sometimes be blinding. And I wouldn't have it any other way. (*stunted)