[PEN-L:6103] (Fwd) TO BE DEAD IN DENVER & DOWNTOWN PRISTINA - Michael Moore

["Paul Phillips" <phillp2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
Date:          Tue, 27 Apr 1999 12:09:45 -0700
To:            ccpa@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
From:          Sid Shniad <shniad@xxxxxx>
Subject:       TO BE DEAD IN DENVER & DOWNTOWN PRISTINA - Michael Moore

April 22, 1999

TO BE DEAD IN DENVER & DOWNTOWN PRISTINA 	

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