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"Stupid White Men" is #1 in USA Britain Canada Ireland. Book by Michael Moore. D
"New York Times today had declared that, for the fourth week in a row, 'Stupid White Men' is the #1 book in the country. ... Also, it remains #1 in Canada, and it has gone to #1 this week in Britain and Ireland, according to the Sunday Times of London." Michael Moore is one of the few people to successfully punch a big hole in the corporate, mega-media, Bush propaganda machine. And Michael Moore is also for cannabis reform as shown by this Renee Boje web page on his site...
Renee Boje Mission - Mike's Militia.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/missions/renee_boje/
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From: mike [at] michaelmoore.com
Subject: "Stupid" Stays at #1 on NY Times List, 4 Weeks in a Row
Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2002 20:55:53 +0000
"Stupid" Stays at #1 on NY Times List, 4 Weeks in a Row
4/15/02
Dear Friends,
I woke up in Tampa, Florida, yesterday, picked up the Sunday newspaper, and there it was: the New York Times today had declared that, for the fourth week in a row, "Stupid White Men" is the #1 book in the country. I am out of explanations at this point as to how this thing has stayed atop on the Times bestseller list for a month. I've been informed that the book is now in its 19th printing. Also, it remains #1 in Canada, and it has gone to #1 this week in Britain and Ireland, according to the Sunday Times of London.
All this has occurred in spite of a virtual press blackout on the book. Or maybe because of it. The more the book is ignored by the media, the better it does. So, if you are a newspaper editor or a TV producer, PLEASE do NOT pay any attention to this book! Just because more Americans are reading it than any other book in the country for the past month should NOT persuade you to ask crazy questions of yourselves like, "How can this be happening when the 'President' has the highest approval ratings ever?" Just concern yourselves with repeating your mantra of the past 7 months - "America Loves Bush! America Loves Bush!" It's a comforting mantra, one that seems to bring you solace at a time of journalistic confusion. It's also simple and easy to repeat - and it means that you don't have to go out and do the work you are supposed to do (like rooting out the Enron-backed criminals in the White House or finding out what really happened before and after September 11th ).
The front page of the Tampa Tribune yesterday was all ablaze with the news about the convention of Florida's Democrats on Saturday in Orlando. There was a color photo of a smiling, waving Al Gore. Lieberman was there and so was Kerry and a host of other stars of the Democratic Party. About 2,500 Floridians were in attendance.
But in Tampa, on that same night, I was looking out from the stage at the Sun Dome at a crowd of nearly 7,000 people who had come to the "Democracy Rising" rally organized by Ralph Nader. Tampa has now produced the largest crowd of the book tour (I signed the 2000th book of the evening somewhere around 2am). This is 3 times the crowd that the Democrats got and, again, there is virtually no coverage.
But remember - it NO LONGER MATTERS that most of the media ignores the real news. It no longer matters because much of the media has chosen to make itself irrelevant through its lazy reporting, sleazy presentation, its obedience to the corporate agenda, and all the blowhard pundits who scream out their useless opinions. A political shift has occurred in the country and the media has completely missed it. We have become a nation where the majority of citizens are very liberal and progressive on the issues. The majority of Americans now call themselves pro-environment, pro-choice, pro-labor, and anti-Big Business. 154 million out of the 200 million voters in this country did NOT cast a vote for George W. Bush. That is the America in which we now live. Liberal, progressive, and sick of the stupid white men who run the country.
Hey, here's something that you haven't seen on the Fox Nuisance Channel - there are now over 140 college campuses in the U.S. with an active student Green organization. The Green kids in Florida are everywhere and their numbers are among the largest. You wouldn't think so, not after the blame that was heaped on the Greens for causing Gore to "lose" Florida. But they are building a mass movement, and the turnout I saw in Tampa was proof to me that there is a ruckus afoot in America, and if it's rockin' in a place like central Florida, then it's happening just down the street from where you live.
The Democrats could have stopped this. They could have spent the past two years fighting to raise the minimum wage or to lower the amount of pollutants spewed into the air or to call for a Special Prosecutor to investigate Bush and Enron.
But, no. The Democrats have spent their time trying to act like Republicans, thinking that's how they will win back the House this November. Note to Democrats: You will not win the House by being your usual weak, lame-o selves. The Greens will deny you the chance you have had to take charge. Until you get a clue, the Greens will thrive and grow. You want to avoid a repeat of 2000? Fight for the working people of this country! You want to stop the Greens? Act like a real Democrat! Stand up for something! Do the math: A couple of thousand in Orlando come to see the stars of the Democratic Party, while, at the same exact moment, nearly three times that number is in Tampa to cheer on a progressive agenda - which is greater? If the Democrats can't add 2+2, then they are doomed.
I should also mention that Tampa is the command headquarters for the war on Afghanistan. It's all done via remote control from the comfort of Florida's beautiful Gulf coast. How many civilians have we killed now? I believe the last number I read, it was more than the civilians who died on September 11th. Oh, I know the Bush boys over at Macdill Air Force Base have their rationalization as to why, in wartime, sometimes civilians have to die. The terrorists of 9-11 had their rationalizations, too. Everybody's got their rationalizations. Well, here's mine - there is NO rationalization for the killing of other human beings except in the rare and extreme cases of true self-defense.
Today is the beginning of National Library Week. As many of you know by now, it was a single librarian who saved my book from the corporate shredder. In the next day or so, I will send you another letter telling you about what she did and what you can do to support the libraries of this country.
Thanks again to everyone for your support. I'm in Oklahoma City and Norman, Oklahoma, tonight (4/15). I head to Canada to the University of Toronto tomorrow night (Tuesday), and I'll be in the Northwest later in the week. Hope to see many of you there.
Yours,
Michael Moore
Author
Filmmaker
Detroit Tigers fan
http://www.michaelmoore.com
Write me at:
stupidwhitemen [at] aol.com
TO ORDER "STUPID WHITE MEN," GO TO...
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060392452/ref=ase_dogeatdogfilms/
... or here ...
http://www.michaelmoore.com/announce/how_to_buy_SWM1.html
TO ORDER SEASON TWO OF "THE AWFUL TRUTH," GO TO...
http://www.newvideo.com/docurama.shtml
PS. I have just landed in Dallas and turned on the TV. A representative from the humanitarian aid group, Oxfam, is describing the massacre of Palestinian civilians and children by the Israeli army in the Jenin refugee camp. It is shocking and horrifying when terrorism is committed by desperate suicide bombers. It's beyond belief when that terrorism is committed as an organized act by an avowed democratic state. Twenty Palestinians lined up against a wall and executed? Ten-year old children burned to death after soldiers set their homes on fire? Are we funding this? Yes, bring to justice those specific individuals who have committed acts of murder against Israelis citizens. But execute the innocent? Has everyone gone insane? What are we going to do to put a stop to this? For God's sake, we can't wait for Bush to find out where the West Bank is located on a map.
-----end of Michael Moore message--------
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Renee Boje. Medical cannabis. IMAGES, banners, graphics.
http://corporatism.tripod.com/rbimages.htm
MMM 2002. May 4. Million Marijuana March. 176+ cities listed here:
http://corporatism.tripod.com/mmm2002.htm
Greens. Drug War Platforms Worldwide.
http://corporatism.tripod.com/platforms.htm
Greens worldwide against Drug War.
http://corporatism.tripod.com/greens.htm
Electoral systems worldwide, and drug reform.
http://corporatism.tripod.com/voting.htm
Ideology, Idiot-ology, Political Parties, Drug War.
http://corporatism.tripod.com/ideology.htm
Quotes. Lots of them.
http://corporatism.tripod.com/quotes.htm
Quotes. Corporatism.
http://corporatism.tripod.com/corporatism.htm
Quotes. Revolutionary.
http://corporatism.tripod.com/change.htm
_________Be the media_________
*TOTAL INMATES. Yearend 2000. USA and Territories. Jail, prison, INS, juvenile, Indians, military, etc..
http://www.angelfire.com/rnb/y/usaterr.htm and
http://corporatism.tripod.com/usaterr.htm
[pre][code]
<font face=Courier New>
>_____________________________________________
>ALL_inmates._End_of_2000.____________________
>USA_and_territories._________________________
>_____________________________________________
>State_and_federal_prisons.__________1,312,354
>Local_jails.__________________________621,149
>Juvenile_facilities.__________________108,965
>Territorial_prisons.___________________16,130
>INS_facilities._________________________8,894
>Military_facilities.____________________2,420
>Indian_country_jails.___________________1,775
>_____________________________________________
>TOTAL_______________________________2,071,687
>_____________________________________________
>INS=Immigration_and_Naturalization_Service___
>234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456
>Fixed_width_Courier_font_lines_up_columns.___
>_________________________</font>[/code][/pre]
> http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/press/p00pr.htm and
> http://members.fortunecity.com/multi19/usaterr.htm ___
> Number in juvenile facilities is as of October 1999.
U.S. Territories and Commonwealths are American
Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands,
Puerto Rico, and Virgin Islands.
-----------------------------
*The MAJORITY of the 2 MILLION U.S. prisoners are incarcerated due to the DRUG WAR! The Drug-War Industrial Complex. This is calculated by adding together prisoners who have committed drug crimes (24%), drug-related crimes (such as robbing to get money for drugs that are expensive because of the drug war), drug trade crimes, drug-related parole violations, etc.. The USA has 5% of the world's population and 25% (2 million) of the world's 8 MILLION prisoners. As of the year 2000 the USA again has the world's highest incarceration rate! It is 5 to 17 times higher than all other Western (long democratic traditions) nations. The US rate is almost 4 times higher than in 1980 at the time of Reagan's election, and almost 5 times higher than in 1971 when Nixon declared a "war on drugs." 6.5 million adults, or 1 in 32 adults in the USA, or 3.1% of U.S. adults, were under correctional supervision (in jail, in prison, on probation, or on parole) at yearend 2000. Statistics, references, links, and charts:
http://corporatism.tripod.com/majority.htm and
http://www.angelfire.com/rnb/y/majority.htm and
http://members.fortunecity.com/multi19/majority.htm
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To distinguish himself from the flock of privileged leftist gadflies that litter the progressive causes, Moore likes to emphasize his working class Michigan upbringing. (Though from all accounts he never labored very hard himself, save one day on a Buick assembly line.) Despite his open hatred of the rich, Moore has few qualms about aping an authentic capitalist, peddling his new book, Stupid White Men... and Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation, on seemingly all news, entertainment and radio show running. His efforts have paid off substantially, as Stupid White Men sits at the number one spot on Amazon.com.
Moore first established his celebrity as the director of Roger and Me, a tedious documentary, endlessly glorified by critics for its populist ethos and stark honesty. In it, Moore trails former General Motors CEO Roger Smith after the executive closed down a GM plant in Moore’s hometown of Flint. The film, which ended up exploiting the suffering of Flint’s blue-collar population, made Moore a rich man and an instant celebrity after years of political activism. Subsequently, Moore has directed a feature film, produced two TV series of faux investigative journalism and written best selling books.
What is most curious regarding Moore’s recent popularity is the lack of pointed questions being asked by the media regarding his radical political posture. Teeming with bizarre conspiracy theories, Moore freely assails free markets values and other capitalist institutions, employing an extreme political position that feeds off racial tensions, class jealousy and a distorted perspective of history. Any competent journalist would handle Moore as political commando, rather than an entertainer with a book to sell. That, however, has not been the case. Moore has been affectionately received by the press; his lecturing seldom obstructed by a question of substance from fawning peers.
Particularly gruesome has been Moore’s character assassination of President Bush. The day after September 11, for instance he wrote: "Many families have been devastated tonight. This just is not right. They did not deserve to die. If someone did this to get back at Bush, then they did so by killing thousands of people who DID NOT VOTE for him! Boston, New York, DC, and the planes' destination of California -- these were places that voted AGAINST Bush!” Blaming the president, who had been in office for less than a year, for an act that took considerable time to plan, while never once mentioning Bush’s predecessor as complicit, took impressive dexterity. Apparently if the terrorists would have targeted Americans in any of the ‘red colored’ states, they would have been justified in doing so. One can only imagine the outrage if this comment would have been reversed. I suppose the indignation would be appropriately deafening if someone had entitled a book “Stupid black men.”
“In just eight months,” Moore writes, “Bush gets the whole world back to hating us again. He withdraws from the Kyoto agreement, walks us out of the Durban conference on racism, insists on restarting the arms race -- you name it, and Baby Bush has blown it all.” It’s hard to believe that a waitress in London hates Americans because we didn’t sign on for the suicidal Kyoto Protocol. Or, that a Spanish textile worker is upset that the US did not attend the racist conference at Durban, which featured rampant anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism.
Mr. Moore, deluded into believing his fan base “is made up of working stiffs,” is an advocate of a 70 percent tax rate, infinite governmental expansion and regulations, rivaling Ralph Nader -- whom he vigilantly campaigned for in 2000. From the privileged confines of the Upper West Side of Manhattan, this guilt-ridden progressive with a six-figure deal book deal proposes to double the tax burden on American working class without a hint of sarcasm.
In his ‘Letter to Elián González,’ Moore further illustrates his allegiance to the working class, this time the Cuban Americans of Miami, by defending Castro’s communist regime. Cuba, Moore writes, is a haven where children are only in jeopardy “of receiving free health …an excellent education in one of the few countries that has 100% literacy, and a better chance of your baby sister being born and making it to her first birthday than if she had been born in Washington, D.C.”
Moore’s enthusiasm with communism extends into popular culture. He directed a video for the now defunct-communist band, Rage Against the Machine. Rage -- who must have set aside their left-wing values long enough to ink a multi-million dollar deal with Sony records – feature a reading list on their website that includes some of counterculture’s recent champions: Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn and Susan Faludi. The site also features some more noteworthy ‘readings’ like Lenin’s ‘State and the Revolution,’ Che Guevera’s ‘Guerilla Warfare,’ and Karl Marx’s ‘Capital, Volume One.
Now, five pages of Marx’s Capital may be sufficient enough reading to turn anyone away from communism, certainly the ‘working stiffs’ that Moore believes constitute his fan base. However, most media outlets have failed to properly define the nature of Moore’s agenda. Glowing reviews from a sycophantic press should instead be turned into an earnest reevaluation of a figure more fittingly slotted between David Duke and Lyndon Larouche on the Jerry Springer show than on the pages and panels of serious media.
He then turns around and claims that we need to "vote our conscience". He is quite openly liberal and reformist.
I'm glad he's doing his part to crack the bullshit about the Everlasting War wide open, but listen up, Mike: the Green Party will not save us. Higher corporate taxes, a couple of environmental and labor laws, an "investigation" in Enron, etc. will not cut it.
Come on, Mike, I'm sure you can make that last leap. Do we just have the wrong politicians, immoral corporate executives, laws that need to be tweaked? Or is, just maybe, capitalism itself the problem?