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“Not for the politically correct.”

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DrudgeReport.com

 HBO Sues Gandolfini to Abide by Contract | LA Rabbi Concerned Mel Gibson Film Anti-Semitic 
 Saddam May Make War On Own Population | Russian Citizens Want to Defend Iraq 
 Beastie Boys ‘Anti-war’ | UN Iraq Debate Hits 6 Month Mark | Brain Prosthesis

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HBO Files $100 Million Suit Against 'Sopranos' Star...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Instead of making James Gandolfini an offer he can't refuse to stay in "The Sopranos," HBO and the producers of the TV series went to court on Tuesday and sued him for $100 million while at the same quietly reopening negotiations with him.

As Gandolfini noted when he won a Screen Actors Guild award for his performance as mob boss Tony Soprano on Sunday "things get pretty weird" once you become a successful actor.

HBO and the producers of the hit cable TV series "The Sopranos" -- about a Mafia family -- filed a $100 million countersuit against Gandolfini in the same Los Angeles Superior Court where he sued to get out of his contract last week. A spokesman for Gandolfini said, "We believe these matters will be settled amicably and judiciously."

LA Rabbi Asks Mel Gibson to Reconsider Jesus Film...

Christ was executed by a detail of Roman soldiers. Since Christ was tried and executed in Jerusalem during Passover, the population was overwhelmingly Jewish. The crucifixion was the world’s, not the Jews’, rejection of God.

Vatican II also gave additional (but not full) recognition of the legitimacy of other Christian sects.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A prominent Jewish leader on Friday asked actor Mel Gibson (news) to make certain that his new film on the last 12 hours in the life of Christ does not portray the Jews as collectively responsible for the crucifixion.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said he was concerned because an article to be published in the New York Times Magazine portrays Gibson as a traditionalist Catholic opposed to the reforms of Vatican (news - web sites) II.

Heir said, "Obviously, no one has seen 'The Passion' and I certainly have no problem with Mel Gibson's right to believe as he sees fit or make any movie he wants to. What concerns me, however is when I read that the film's purpose is to undo the changes made by Vatican II."

Saddam ready to kill Iraqis, blame U.S...

Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein is planning attacks on his own people in the event of a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, and his top operative, a general nicknamed "Chemical Ali," has been put in charge of southern Iraq to quell any civilian uprisings, U.S. officials say.

The Pentagon is communicating with Iraqi military commanders, both through leaflet drops and private e-mails, to discourage them from carrying out Saddam's orders. The Iraqis also will be given instructions on how to surrender.

…

Bush administration officials reported last week that Saddam was planning to dress Iraqi forces in coalition uniforms and order them to kill innocents.

Mr. Rumsfeld suggested yesterday that Saddam is considering shelling civilians with deadly chemical weapons, as he did in 1988, killing up to 100,000 Kurds in northern Iraq.

"His regime may be planning to use weapons of mass destruction against its own citizens, and then blame coalition forces," Mr. Rumsfeld said.

Thousands of Russians volunteer to defend Iraq...

I believe that Pravda is an anti-Western newspaper. Russians defending Iraq doesn’t make sense—Al Quaeda and other Islamist extremists are active in Chechnya.

Around ten thousand Russian citizens have applied for entry visas into Iraq to defend this country against the planned aggression by the warmongering USA and UK, according to the Iraqi Embassy in Moscow.

Beastie Boys Take On Bush With First Song In Five Years...

They should have done “You’ve Got to Fight for Your Right … to Be a Terrorist Victim.”

Following a recording hiatus of nearly three years, the Beastie Boys have been driven out of hiding by the need to comment on the scary state of the world.

In the middle of a New York writing and rhyming session for their next album, MCA, Ad-Rock and Mike D hammered out a song called "In a World Gone Mad" and posted it on their Web site.

"We all got to a point where we felt like, we’re in this room in New York, we’re looking at each other every day, and we really felt compelled to speak our minds on what exactly we see happening right now," Mike D said.

The up-tempo song, which features a simple rhythm and rudimentary samples, has the old-school feel of a Run-DMC track. The buoyancy of the beats contrasts with the lyrics, which criticize the Bush administration's eagerness to attack Iraq: "You build more bombs as you get more bold/ As your mid-life crisis war unfolds/ All you wanna do is take control/ Now put that Axis of Evil bullsh-- on hold."

UN Debate on Iraq Hits Six-Month Mark...

Some “rush” to war.

World's first brain prosthesis...

The world's first brain prosthesis - an artificial hippocampus - is about to be tested in California. Unlike devices like cochlear implants, which merely stimulate brain activity, this silicon chip implant will perform the same processes as the damaged part of the brain it is replacing.

The prosthesis will first be tested on tissue from rats' brains, and then on live animals. If all goes well, it will then be tested as a way to help people who have suffered brain damage due to stroke, epilepsy or Alzheimer's disease.

Any device that mimics the brain clearly raises ethical issues. The brain not only affects memory, but your mood, awareness and consciousness - parts of your fundamental identity, says ethicist Joel Anderson at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri.

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 OpinionJournal.com

 Iraq Delay Endangers American Lives | Nicholas von Hoffman on Clinton v Gore 
Freedom Fries | 

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This is another reprise of the Vietnam Era protests, which prolonged the war and thus increased casualties on both sides. The best way to minimize casualties in war is to get it over quickly.

We've never visited Guinea, which is perhaps our loss. But the spectacle of the U.S. government begging that African nation for permission to sacrifice American blood and treasure to save the world from Saddam Hussein exposes the farce that the U.N. Security Council's Iraq debate has become. Every day of delay in starting the war matters little to Guinea but it puts more Americans at mortal risk.

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The Mexican and Chilean fandango is especially insulting given the preferential treatment their exports receive to the U.S. market. Maybe we should transfer to Bulgaria--which is supporting us sans bribery--the trade benefits that these two nations apparently take for granted. These columns have long tried sympathetically to explain Mexican realities to our readers, but President Vicente Fox's U.N. war straddle will cost his country years of U.S. public goodwill.

Then I read that the president's opposite number was former Sen. Robert Dole, the first man to go over Viagra Falls in a barrel and live to hold his head up in public afterward. Mr. Dole, of course, was a World War II hero as well as a man held in the highest regard by the Senate, neither of which you can say about Mr. Clinton, who may be thinking that partnering up with Mr. Dole is a step up in class.

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… We learned early that in television it isn't what you say but how you say it. …

Welcome to the trans-Atlantic food fight. Yesterday, while Jacques Chirac was wagging his veto finger, Republican lawmakers in Washington officially decreed that the quintessential American hamburger has no business sharing a plate with greasy Gallic potatoes. French fries will henceforth be known as "freedom fries" in the House cafeteria. Breakfast will offer "freedom toast."

…

Companies have entered the renaming game in recent years to cleanse themselves of political taint as well. Phillip Morris rebranded its holding company Altria, presumably to wash the smell of smoke from its corporate fingers; Andersen Consulting has become Accenture, the better to distance itself from accounting scandals.

…

The media will have fun with the new patriotic potatoes, but there's a bigger point underlying the barrage of late-night jokes and caustic Web sites at French expense: We finally get to trash-talk our stuck-up cousins. A Web site called francesucks.net posts an apocryphal Mark Twain quote: "France is miserable because it is filled with Frenchmen, and Frenchmen are miserable because they live in France." A faux magazine cover called "Soldiers of Surrender" promoted an article on "White Flags: New Technology That Could Save Your Life!" ScrappleFace.com "reports" that Congress's cafeterias are also renaming chicken-fried steak "French-fried steak" and will keep French dip on the menu.

The French have had it coming for a while. But while they lingered for years as Americans' least favorite nationality, no one could really figure out why. In recent weeks, Mr. Chirac and Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin have helped everyone pin the tail on the baudet. Watching Algerian crowds rally around the president of their former colonial master explicitly for spitting on the U.S. was more than enough for Americans to toss their brie out the window.

Now if only McDonald's could start feeding Parisian teens some freedom fries.

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 Wall Street Journal
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Frenchman Knew About Cambodian Genocide Before the Fact

In 1971 Francois Bizot, a French ethnologist, was conducting research at a monastery north of Phnom Penh when he was kidnapped by the Khmer Rouge, a shadowy communist group that was fighting the government at the time. Accused of being a CIA agent, he spent the next few months chained up in a jungle camp -- and struck up a bizarre friendship with one of his captors, a young Khmer Rouge firebrand who used the name of Douch.

Their conversations were revealing. When Mr. Bizot recoiled at the idea of violent insurrection, Douch reminded him of the blood shed during the French Revolution. And Angkor Wat, the magnificent 12th-century temple in northwest Cambodia: How did Mr. Bizot think that was built? "Who now thinks about the price, about the countless individuals who died from the endless labor?" Douch asked his captive. "The extent of the sacrifice matters little; what counts is the greatness of the goal you choose for yourself."

These words would turn out to be prophetic. After three months Mr. Bizot was released, and he returned to his research -- until April 17, 1975, when Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge. The triumphant guerrillas abolished money and evacuated the city. Virtually the entire population was force-marched to collective farms in the countryside, where the lucky ones were treated like slave laborers. The unlucky ones were jailed, tortured or executed. Mr. Bizot fled to the French Embassy, as did some 2,000 other residents of the capital, including members of the Cambodian royal family.

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Mr. Bizot is bearing witness to one of the great tragedies of the 20th century, and one is grateful to have his account. "I have written this book in a bitterness that knows no limit," he declares. Still, one wishes that he were less self-righteous and more self-aware. He says that he carried (and translated) a Khmer Rouge document to the French Embassy when he was released in 1971. The paper spelled out Khmer Rouge plans to take over Cambodia's cities, evacuate them and set up collective farms. Mr. Bizot is harshly critical of the French government for not heeding this warning.

…

Mr. Bizot eventually returns to Cambodia for a visit. In Phnom Penh he goes to Tuol Sleng, once a high school, under the Khmer Rouge a prison that few left alive, now a museum. It turns out that the official who was in charge of the prison had been Douch, the earnest revolutionary who had befriended Bizot years before.

"I could not bring myself to identify the man I had known, who so loved justice, with the principal torturer of this vile jail, responsible for these atrocities," Mr. Bizot writes. "What monstrous metamorphosis had he undergone?" And yet of course Douch's words, from the beginning, had the blood of revolutionary zeal in them.

The story gets even stranger -- although Mr. Bizot doesn't mention it in his book. In 1999, two journalists for the Far Eastern Economic Review found Douch (also spelled Duch) living as a born-again Christian aide worker in a refugee camp. The Cambodian government was embarrassed into arresting him, and he is now in prison facing possible trial for his crimes as a Khmer Rouge leader -- only the second time a Khmer Rouge leader has ever been detained.

"It is OK, they can have my body," Douch told the Review reporters. "Jesus has my soul. It is important that this history be understood." This book offers a fragment of understanding, but only a fragment.

Review of The Gate by Francois Bizot.

The paranoid Cambodian Communists thought that nearly anyone who displeased them could be a CIA agent.

Hitler could have said this.

Ben Keirnan points out in The Pol Pot Regime that by abolishing money the Cambodian Communists make the Cambodian people slaves.

The French could have saved millions of lives if they had disseminated this information.

The nature of the society which the Communist Party of Kampuchea (KPC) wanted to create was known to Western journalists in Cambodia. People who had escaped from KPC villages were available to them.

“Douch” is the revolutionary name of Kaing Khek Iev. It is more commonly seen as “Duch” or Deuch.” The was the head of the Communist Party of Kampuchea’s secret police, the Santebal, and was in charge of Tuol Sleng (code named “S-21”). The KPC had its most important prisoners interrogated at Tuol Sleng to obtain outlandish false confessions.

The big question is whether Duch’s conversion to Christianity is sincere.

Mao’s Communist China was the principal patron of “Democratic Kampuchea.” Their support included providing advisers to the staff of Tuol Sleng. Ben Keirnan’s The Pol Pot Regime has a picture of the Toul Sleng staff and their Chinese advisers on vacation at Angkor Wat.

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FrontPageMag.com

‘Anti-war’ Movement Plans Sabotage | International ANSWER a Front
 Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur Compares Terrorists to Founders
  New York Times Lies About Gods and Generals | NPR Bias on Terrorism
 Hollywood Leftist Hysteria | Saddam Suicide Bomber Camp

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In fact, the organizations and plans for this effort are already in place. Check out the website at www.actagainstwar.org. where it is clear that these activists intend to create a riot in the streets of San Francisco that will destroy property, tie up police and open a war front at home. Don't be fooled by the non-violent boilerplate -- which is a cover for the radicals who will see to it that violence erupts. If you're setting out to stop the war, you obviously want a bigger and better riot even than the anti-globalization riot in Seattle. …

A.N.S.W.E.R. listing on my “Anti-war” page listing

The group at the forefront of the recent anti-war rallies, International A.N.S.W.E.R (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) is in reality a front organization designed to further the radical agenda of several extremist movements from the political Left. Despite the media’s assertions to the contrary, present incarnation of the peace movement, led by ANSWER, is anything but representative of mainstream America.

For old political watchers in Toledo, it was an all too familiar story. Representative Marcy Kaptur had again stuck her foot in her mouth. The Saturday, March 1st, THE BLADE religious beat writer, David Yonke, recorded Ms. Kaptur at a “Preaching and Teaching Peace in the Face of War” workshop for Catholic leaders, claiming the Arab terrorists we fight today as similar to the “nontraditional American revolutionaries” such as the “Green Mountain Boys”, a Vermont militia Group, and “religious groups” that had “fled persecutions.” The obvious differences are that American revolutionaries fought for freedom in America, their homeland, in an anti-colonial revolt, and supported religious pluralism. Al Qaeda left their homeland to perpetrate 9/11, is a colonizing force, and seek to impose Seventh Century Islamic law on all.

Link to my response

… The film is a grand, dramatic, sincere, and exquisitely accurate re-creation of the opening years of America’s Civil War. It clearly depicts the motivations that drove leading figures on both sides, shows the horrors of battle without sickening the viewer, and reproduces the language, manners, and values of 19th century America better than any history book I’ve ever read. Indeed, viewing the film reminds me of work I have done on American history with primary sources—letters, documents, speeches, and old newspaper clips. There’s a reason for this: The writer/director Maxwell based most of the dialogue on actual correspondence and memoirs recorded by the real individuals he portrays: The speeches by General Lee are real; the loving words Lt. Joshua Chamberlain addressed to his wife are the ones she actually read, holding his battle-grimed letter in trembling hands as she prayed for his safe return from the Union Army.

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And critics are punishing “Gods & Generals” for its virtues. Just this Sunday, The New York Times (which has called President Bush the “Xanax Cowboy”) devoted half a page to a lazy compilation—drawn from a single Web site by a lazy reporter—of only the negative reviews given of the film. The Times called the picture “a bomb,” even though it has been in the top-ten grossing films since its release—quite an achievement for a gravely serious, 3 hour-plus film that theaters can only exhibit twice a day. The Times piece compared this carefully-documented, profoundly moving film to such ludicrous duds as “Battlefield Earth” and “The Postman,” even as audiences across the country are turning out to see it, and sober critics such as Henry Sheehan, Michael Medved, Jeffrey Lyons, and Leonard Maltin are praising the film for its profundity, complexity, and beauty. None of these reviewers earned a mention in the Times piece, of course.

This is why people say that NPR is biased.

An Islamic extremist explodes a bomb amidst a crowd of civilians on March 4th, killing more than 20, including himself. Less than a day later another Islamic extremist explodes a bomb on a civilian bus, killing more than 15, including himself.

Parallel stories, but not covered in a parallel way on National Public Radio. In consecutive news segments on the March 5th broadcast of NPR's Morning Edition, the first attack was described as a "terrorist bombing," with "Muslim insurgents" the likely perpetrators. The report offered no explanation why the attack might have occurred, and in particular nothing that might have been construed as justification.

The second attack was reported without using any form of the word terror, and included nothing about who the likely perpetrators might have been, describing them only as "militants." Moreover, the attack, and similar attacks in the past, were implicitly justified as a "campaign against . . . occupation."

Why the gross disparity, with straight news reporting in the first case, and clear advocacy in the second? Of course, the answer is that the first attack was in the Philippines, and was carried out by the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front, while the second attack was in Israel, targeted Israeli civilians and was carried out by Palestinians.

…

NPR's March 5th news report is yet one more example of the truism that at NPR facts take a back seat to a European-style anti-Israel agenda, which is pursued with an almost religious fervor.

Denial of the truth is characteristic of Leftists.

Leftists don’t understand that if they can say one amendment in the Bill of Right is “stupid” that others can say other amendments are stupid. One can say that Leftists are cafeteria consitutionalists who think they can pick and choose.

“Hollywood is a society of liberal bigots.” A outstanding quote.

By awarding Michael Moore for his film “Bowling for Columbine,” The Writers Guild of America (WGA) has once again demonstrated Hollywood’s leftist gulag mentality. “Columbine” is filled with inaccuracies, deliberate misrepresentations and outright lies, a fact already detailed in numerous published reports. A “documentary” filled with fiction, “Columbine” is an entertaining (and admittedly well-written) work of anti-gun propaganda.

Like most organizations on the left, the WGA has chosen to pursue agenda over truth. Like the Pulitzer Prize, this award was granted for excellence in the pursuit of liberalism.

Hollywood has suppressed diversity of thought, so it doesn’t think anyone notices their pathological partisanship. The ‘fly-over” people they have so much contempt for are not allowed at development meetings. “Flag-waver” and “patriot” are derisive terms in their lexicon, like “conservative” and “gun-toting redneck jerk.” They take it as a matter of faith that gun-owners are bad. All wrong. Second Amendment “gun nuts” simply don’t deserve moral or ethical considerations, like fairness and truth. The West Wing’s President Josiah Bartlett (Martin Sheen) perhaps put it best when he said, “why can’t we all just agree that the 2nd Amendment is a stupid amendment?”

To the Hollywood left, guns are stupid—just like George Bush. If you work in Hollywood, you’ve heard the mantra so many times by now it’s comical: He’s too stupid to be President. He stole the election. It’s only about oil and getting even for his daddy. He’s the real enemy. He’s Hitler.

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… Indeed, leftist Bush-bashing is often so rabid and self-destructive it’s funny. …

…

Hollywood is a society of liberal bigots. “Stupid” is their N-word, like “coon” or “jungle bunny.” They walk into a party or restaurant and say “stupid Bush.” Somebody responds “stupid cowboy” or “drunken frat-boy,” and they know they are among Klansmen. If conservatives are offended—good—they want to drive them away. They don’t want them around. They can’t deal with them. They can’t deal with the truth. They surround themselves only with fellow “Progressives,” lefties who hate Bush. Conservatives are people of a lesser mind who don’t count--flag-wavers, heartlanders, patriots, rednecks--stupid people who are too stupid to understand moral relativity, too stupid to understand that Bush is too stupid to be president.

Saddam Hussein has opened a training camp for Arab volunteers willing to carry out suicide bombings against U.S. forces in case they invade Iraq, Arab media and Iraqi dissidents said Tuesday.

The dissidents, speaking by telephone from Jordan, said scores of Arab volunteers have gone to a special camp run by the Iraqi intelligence service near the town of al-Khalis, 40 miles northeast of Baghdad.

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"We didn't want to completely exclude the French after their great historic contributions to the fields of cuisine and combat," the chef said. "I might add that our customers can still order French Dip Sandwiches.

Great satire

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