"Collectors, curators, lawyers and art patrons, are urging the U.S. government to take historic sites in Iraq into account as the military map out possible scenarios for attack and occupation. Specialists concerned about potential threats to the thousands of archaeological sites scattered throughout Iraq are supplying maps and other information to the Defense Department. The initiative, coordinated by Arthur Houghton, a Middle East specialist and former antiquities curator at the J. Paul Getty Museum, is an attempt to protect Iraq's cultural heritage following the U.S. government's initial disregard for archaeological sites during the 1991 Gulf War."
- via Floating Wreckage - Jettisoned Cargo
"America was never innocent. We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets. You can't ascribe our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances. You can't lose what you lacked at conception.
"Mass-market nostalgia gets you hopped up for a past that never existed. Hagiography sanctifies shuck-and-jive politicians and reinvents their expedient gestures as moments of great moral weight. Our continuing narrative line is blurred past truth and hindsight. Only a reckless verisimilitude can set that line straight."
--James Ellroy, American Tabloid
Ensure a Free and Fair Election (Ban Paperless Voting Machines
"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words."