Once again, Haliburton is in the news. They are being subpoenaed for information related to alleged illegal business activity in Iran. For those of you who don’t know, Iran is actually a terrorist state. It is illegal for any American person or company to do business with them. Why? Because they have a history of holding and abusing American hostages. There is solid intel that they are still holding American hostages that were captured as far back as 1979. We don’t do business with Iran because they are the bad guys. They have weapons of mass destruction. They fund countless terrorist organizations including Al Qaeda. They willingly allowed 10 of the September 11th terrorists to cross their borders without record. Even George W. Bush included them as part of the so-called Axis of Evil. They are the Iraq that this administration invented.

In 2003, in response to queries about Iranian business dealings Haliburton made the statement that “it is not illegal for us companies’ independent foreign subsidiaries to conduct business in Iran.” Independent subsidiaries? That is the best oxymoron I’ve heard since ‘military intelligence’. In the spurious words of President Bush, “Fool me once, shame on you. But you’re not going to fool me again.” How many times do we let the wolf eat our sheep before we believe the boy crying for help? I don’t want anyone in my country that is willing to do business with an enemy state, especially on a technicality.

This nation is being raped by the special interests of big business. We have allowed them to create an environment where they can get away with just about anything. Only those companies that take things too far, like Enron, are paying the price. The careful carpet-baggers are thriving behind distractions like Martha Stewart’s insider trading and Rush Limbaugh’s drug habit.

I believe that capitalism can be compatible with patriotism and humanitarianism. I’d like to think that morality can bring rewards tenfold those of selling your soul. If we only could escape the fear, take control and demand that every person who wishes to call this land their home is willing to lose everything to protect it. Freedom is an individual right but a collective responsibility. We could be the strongest nation in the world, adults among children, if only we were willing to stand up and say enough is enough.

Apparently I’m not the only one struck by this. Leonard Pitts Jr., a commentator for the Miami Herald, ponders the future of our past and the new trend in unlikely mating of technology with common household items. Its a more optimistic way of saying something I was trying to get at.

He’s right to be optimistic. Not every step moves you forward and what you learn from mistakes often slingshots you towards greater enlightenment. But beneath the gloss of his wit and optimism he touches on a greater problem. “The future is always sold to us bright and shiny by big corporations making bigger promises about how new technology will render us complete. There’s always a sense of ‘Buy this and all your worries will be over.’ You’ll be smarter, thinner, wealthier, healthier and have more sex. Somehow it never works out that way, but we keep lining up anyhow..”

Our misstep isn’t that we feel the need to put a television in a refrigerator, its that we line up to buy them. With every new invention comes a marketing slogan that claims this new thing will make us whole. Every time it fails to. Over and over, ad infinitum ad nauseum. Our lack of identity and self confidence keeps us from breaking the cycle; it keeps them making power toilet brushes.

If we keep buying, they’ll keep selling. I believe in personal responsibility for choice and our choices. Free will is somewhat like an ouroboros because how do we make choices if not by personal experience and values, if those experiences and values have been set by some external will? Most of what people know and believe comes from 3 places: family, religion and the market. Most people won’t immediately admit the third. Its not until recently that smoking cigarrettes carried a stigma. For decades tobacco companies convinced us that smoking was sophisticated and sexy. What is sexy about foul smell and yellow teeth? The only thing our nation spends more on than food today is dieting — we’re supposed to eat more but be thinner. That sounds like a lucritive partnership between industries to me!

Perhaps it is not impossible for consumerism to drive real innovation, though it may seem that way. Perhaps it is not the corporations’ fault for doing what it takes to make money. Perhaps its our fault for spending so much money on items we think will give us a soul because we apparently have none. Perhaps if we didn’t count our self worth in dollars. Is it their fault for lying or ours for believing?

Here’s a selection from an email going around that I thought was on point.

1. You have to truly believe that people who are privileged from birth, achieve success all on their own.
2. You have to believe that government should stay out of people’s lives but it needs to punish anyone caught having private sex with the “wrong” gender.
3. You have to believe that pollution is ok, so long as it makes a profit.
4. You have to believe in prayer in schools, as long as you don’t pray to Allah or Kali.
5. You have to believe that the best way to encourage military morale is to raise the troops overseas while cutting their VA benefits.
6. You have to believe it is wise to keep condoms out of schools, because we all know if teenagers don’t have condoms they won’t have sex.
7. You have to believe that federally funded universal health insurance is Socialist and wrong, and that HMO’s and insurance companies only have your best interests at heart.
8. You believe that “tobacco’s link to cancer” and “global warming” are “junk science”, but Creationism should be taught in schools.
9. You have to believe that waging war with no exit strategy was wrong in Vietnam but right in Iraq.
10. You have to believe that Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when Bush’s daddy made war on him, a good guy when Cheney was doing business with him, and a bad guy when Bush needed a “we can’t find Bin Laden” diversion.
11. You have to believe that what Clinton did in the 1960’s is of vital national interest but what Bush did decades later is “stale news” and “irrelevant”.
12. You have to believe that trade with Cuba is wrong because it is Communist and oppressive, but trading with China and Vietnam is just dandy.

The camera has proven to be mightier than the pen. Cinematic technology has reached such quality that we’ve begun to lose sight of the difference between the movies and the real world. Worse, we now prefer seeing the world through a Hollywood lens in 8-second cuts. We want to be shown what’s important and told what we need to believe, rather than have to pay attention and make those decisions ourselves.

For such a powerful medium its a shame that its usefulness has been limited except in rare circumstance to placation and subjugation. Its much easier to tug on someone’s sentiments than it is to try and change their mind - especially when you have to fight to keep their attention. That’s why 20 million people paid $8 to see Spiderman 2 last weekend. See, most people just don’t like to think — not that much anyway. When confronted with something they don’t understand, especially something that challenges basic notions, people can get afraid and angry. They lash out with irrational responses because they know they don’t have rational ones.

‘America’s Heart and Soul’ is a new documentary released by Disney in a see-through attempt to triage the effects of a movie they were otherwise unable to suppress. Apparently it is a “vacation where one can feel free to take the back roads and spend time sitting on a porch and talk to an old friend.” Though they insist it is not a direct response to Moore, these reader reviews reveal that Disney has nonetheless hit their mark.

This movie is a true documentary. It should be shown everywhere Moore’s blasphmey fictious movie is shown. This movie depicts the very best and most diverse of who we are. The America Michael Moore hates, the America the terrorists hate. I shed a few tears at the greatness of our wonderful land and its wonderful people.

This is exactly the kind of irrational response I was speaking of. The suggestion that Michael Moore hates America is simply ridiculous. Ever heard of Roger & Me? America is the only country where films like his could be made. Michael Moore loves this country, and like anyone who truly loves something he wants to make it better. He wants soldiers to stop dying for an immoral cause. He wants America to be a place where the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the rich.

I try not to write when I’m mad but ignorance really pisses me off. You can’t hold it against someone that they’re stupid but you can hold it against them if they don’t even try. It shouldn’t be so easy to pull the wool over our eyes! Ironically, rodrunr867 did say something intelligent. The people in America that Michael Moore hates are the Americans that the terrorists hate. The Americans who use poverty, religion, and fear to exploit the rest of the world. Moore just stands up to them in a kinder and more American way.