SEVEN TRAPPIST MONKS ABDUCTED BY GIA IN TIBHIRINE MONASTERY ; FRANCE PRESS FOR UN INTERVENTION
-The Times, March, 27 1996
« This abduction of innocent monks who chose to remain in Algeria to care for the local population, according to their faith, shouldn’t divide France, a secular country that respect its citizens’ choices ; but this attack was clearly targeted by the GIA on French nationals, and as such, we should really intervene to protect other European nationals in Algeria and in Maghreb. »
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French President Jacques Chirac, in a speech in Toulon, March, 28 1996
Protests from Toulon's Algerian community
MIRAMAX BOSS AND INDEPENDANT FILM PRODUCER HARVEY WEINSTEIN ASSASSINATED IN HOLLYWOOD
-Los Angeles Times, March, 29 1996
Bob and Harvey Weinstein
« Just after having escaped Los Angeles after killing the rising star of the independant movie industry, Harvey Weinstein, StormFront member Buford O. Furrow, Jr. wrote in his diary : « Did a good thing yesterday. Terminated a Kike who enjoyed all the money drawn by the filth that infects Hollywood. He had offended God with his movie Priest, showing a faggot priest. Hollywood needs more cleansing. »
-From Outrun my Gun-A Short History of the Militia Movement, Winner for Documentary Film Price at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival
« Even if many rejoiced at the announcement of the death of Harvey Scissorhands, most notably among the big fellas of the production majors, the film industry was deeply shaken. A wave of paranoia engulfed Hollywood, while repeating that since his provocations such as The Thin Blue Line, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover or Priest, « Harvey had it coming ».The expenses on household security and bodyguards skyrocketed on Beverly Hills, and many actors had some sort of political epiphany, understanding that the crazy militiamen weren’t only attacking the government in Oklahoma City, but also the film industry.
However, even if Miramax remained on the track thanks to Bob Weinstein’s sheer energy, maybe Japanese movies coming to the United States such as Princess Mononoke escaped the well-known Harvey Weinstein treatment of cutting them deeply and messing with the montage… »
-Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film, Peter Biskind
« The assassination of Harvey Weinstein forced many film companies to reconsider their ongoing projects, not wanting to be the next on the list, and toning down their next projects in order not to infuriate the most conservative parts of America : one of the best known exemple was Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting limited release in the United States, as the story of raving junkies would’ve dismayed the average Midwest American. Danny Boyle would’ve to wait until 2007 with his highly successful adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk’s Invisible Monsters. Not only the incapacity of Miramax didn’t helped with the nascent independant industry, but many actors then reconsidered their place in politics, if Hollywood hadn’t been too much isolated from the outside world. It was on the same time that The West Wing was conceived ; it was on the same time that Gary Sinise undertook his political career that would lead him to the governorship of Illinois. Ronald Reagan used to say that Senator George Murphy, also an actor, had been his John the Baptist ; the assassination of Harvey Weinstein trigerred Christianization waves.
Extracted from Raging Against the Night : Consequences of the 90s Violences on American culture and Movie industry, doctoral thesis by Harvard psychology alumna Natalie Hershlag, 2008
« Yeah, when Weinstein was killed by his antisemitic madman, we were quite disappointed, Matt and I. We had just begun our career in movies, and we were trying to sell our dearest screenplay, on which we had worked during our first years in Boston : a screenplay on a Boston smart guy, called Will Hunting. We were proposing to all the studios, and all the studios refused. Weinstein was the only one left, and was really interested by it, even if he said that some things had to be fixed, and Matt and I were OK with that. And then he died. He read in the newspapers that he had Good Will Hunting’ screenplay on his desk that the bastard entered and shot him dead with five bullets.
Matt whispered and threw away the screenplay, and told me we would have to concentrate instead on acting. He went on, and I went on. But I had other plans.
-Sen. Ben Affleck (D-MA), quoted in From Helen Gahagan to Jaroslaw Kaczynski : An Essay on Actor-Politicians
« We have just learnt that General Wesley Clark, a valuable officer and a friend of mine, commander of Operation Righteous Strike in Rwanda and Burundi, has been killed by a car bomb on US headquarters in Kigali, Rwanda. The Department of Defense express its deepest apologies to the family and wishes to honor a true American hero. »
-Secretary of Defense Colin Powell, from the Pentagon, Washington, D.C., April, 3 1996
« -Governor, you’re a well-known early associate of famous and controversial political strategist Lee Atwater, who actually managed your first campaigns for Representative and Governor : as such, these early campaigns were stained with bashing against either African American Democratic candidates and even a Jewish one, against whom Mr. Atwater allegedly launched a third party candidate who declared, in order to help you : « I couldn’t vote for someone who didn’t accepted Jesus Christ as his personnal savior ». Do you regret these controversial statements ?
-First, I will never deny my friendship with Lee : he was a true friend to me, and it was difficult for me to go through his demise. As of his methods, well, it is how politics work noawadays, isn’t it ? One could accuse Lee to have been too rough on his methods but, well, if it works, and if voters are smart enough to make the difference between true charges and campaign allegations…
-With Senator Paul Wellstone as a possible Democratic nominee, would you throw back this « Jesus Christ » line ?
-Well, if I don’t share with Senator Wellstone his religious beliefs, I don’t share with him his political beliefs. I could vote for a Jew, but I couldn’t work with a socialist."
-Interview of Republican presumptive candidate and fmr. Gov. Carroll Campbell (R-SC) in CNN, April, 7 1996
RABIN LAUNCHES OPERATION GRAPES OF WRATH AGAINST HEZBOLLAH POSITIONS IN LEBANON
-New York Times, April, 11 1996
PEROT, JIANG ZEMIN, LEE TENG-HUI MEET IN GUANGZHOU, RATIFY THE TERMS DISCUSSED ON USS NIMITZ
-Los Angeles Times, April, 13 1996
« -You have been criticized for your lack of foreign policy credentials, compared, say, to General Norman Schwarzkopf or Senator Richard Lugar. Even a candidate like President Ross Perot who focused during his presidential campaign on domestic issues was forced to go deep on foreign policy. What do you respond ?
-Well, I actually have foreign policy experience, as I helped bring BMW to South Carolina.
-But, as complex as foreign affairs got since the fall of the Soviet Union, what would you do ?
-Well, if there is still things to do after President Perot, it’s the evidence that things didn’t went so well, no ? More seriously, you are right into pointing the President’s incoherence : even if he passed right, although heavily amended by the Democrats, legislation such as the balanced budget or lobbying reform, he spent heavily into things such as that Internet thingy or these wars in Somalia or Rwanda that are turning out of control. Worse : he bashed the late President Bush’s initatives on free trade and is currently demolishing our nuclear capacity just to please Europeans, and our military presence in the Middle East to please the Arabs. If you call that coherence…
-I know that you dislike President Perot’s policies, but what would you bring, yourself, to the foreign field ?
-Well, I’m not President yet !
-But do you have any ideas ?
-There is nothing more changing than foreign affairs, and we would have, in my administration, to see each problem at the time.
-So you don’t have a doctrine on foreign affairs ?
-Who could pretend to have a doctrine ?
-Interview of Republican presumptive candidate and fmr. Gov. Carroll Campbell (R-SC) in CNN, April, 7 1996
« We have just learnt that during his state visit in Tunisia, while adressing the crowd in Tunis along with President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Pope John Paul II has been victim of an assassination attempt, the third since he has been crowned Pontiff. An unidentified man, disguised as a priest, tried to reach the papal box and was gunned down by security guards while he was trying to engage an explosive belt. Three people were killed in the blast, while the Pope and Mr. Ben Ali were unharmed. »
John Paul II’s assassination attempt in Tunisia in April 1996 remains the first prime example of the Bin Laden-Yussef association : it was first Ramzi Yussef’s plan to have a terrorist wearing a suicide vest and disguised as a priest approach the Pope during his visit of the Philippines in late 1995, but his escape from the Far East left him without any prospects to carry out his plan. Bin Laden took it back, added some details, and if the attack proved unsuccessful thanks to the Tunisian security guards, it was the first instance of Bin Laden’s war against Europe, which was at the time threatening Algeria…
-From Osama Bin Laden : A Life in Holy War, by former National Security Advisor Bruce Reidel
GENERAL ELECTIONS HELD IN ITALY : VICTORY OF RIGHT-WING COALITION, CHRISTIAN-DEMOCRAT MARIO SEGNI TO BECOME PRIME MINISTER
-The Times, April, 21 1996
« Even if we won the Pennsylvania primary on April, 23, the situation was still undecided. All we wanted, now that the Democrats were the only one left without a nominee, was to go to the Convention, to go with the superdelegates and to leave the image of a divided party, leaving the way to another Mondale or Dukakis disaster, and letting Perot be re-elected, or worse, Campbell in the Oval Office… If the Democrats lost this election, in 2000, they would’ve been out of the White House for twenty years ! No party can survive that, except for the Republicans, but there was the Great Depression and World War II. Richards and her campaign managers, her daughter Cecile and James Carville, rejected all our offers of compromise, with Richards on the VP slot, and Walter Mondale, who was a Minnesotan and a friend of Paul, kept him advised on the risks of a quagmire for the Democrats. But Richards wanted the top slot, and we had more delegates than her, so we wouldn’t give up. And it continued, and Paul didn’t seemed ready to give up : « It’s the battle for hope », he said. I think he finally believed his hope and change rhetoric, in the end. »
- Sen. Stephen Colbert (D-NJ), interviewed in How Ross Perot and the Republican Party Screwed America, a documentary by Michael Moore, 2010
« My husband Paul has been fighting with non-Hodgkin lymphoma since he left Senate, and even with that disease still dwelling in his body, he continued to fight for his convictions and even ran a presidential campaign. But now, even so young, even so strong, his cancer has returned, and he thinks no much time to live. So, my husband, Paul Tsongas, has consulted with President Ross Perot and has decided to resign from the chairmanship of the Freedom Party, in order to spend more time fighting the disease. His resignation will become effective once a successor will be elected. »
-Niki Tsongas, in Lowell, MA, April, 30 1996
FMR. REP. ED ZSCHAU LAUNCHES BID FOR FREEDOM PARTY CHAIRMANSHIP
-San Francisco Chronicle, May, 2 1996
« Paul Tsongas’ resignation made the President sad because we wanted him as his running mate. Tsongas had the youth, the name recognition, the charisma, the ideas, everything to match with his short temper and succeed him in 2000 in the Oval Office. But the cancer arrived, the man was barely 55 and yet he was condemned, it would finally claim his life on January, 18 1997. I remember it because I was sad too when I heard of it, two days before Inauguration Day.
To my surprise, President Perot asked me if I wanted to become party chairman. When I responded immediately that I had no national experience, he explained to me that he wanted a White House insider, someone from his inner circle, to handle the Freedom Party. President or not, if he hadn’t the Freedomites under his hand, he would not feel as the chief. It was the same man who threw his money away to select candidates in 1994, and now that they were considering re-election, he wanted to control them, as a CEO would do with his employees and shareholders. When I told him that he could pick his son-in-law, he said that he had considered in fact Clay Mulford, but found out « that he hadn’t the guts for the job » and would turn to another person.
Then he made the most ill-fated decision of his presidency… Some would say the first one, but in my humble opinion, it was the only one, that triggered everything ever after. »
-Former Vice President of the United States Hill Harper (F-IA), interviewed on CNN, September, 8 2011
It was me, and no one else, who refused my father-in-law’s offer to handle the Freedom Party. I dismiss other jealous ones’ claims that it was him who dismissed the idea. I felt that a son-in-law, a relative, even a knowledgeable one on politics, couldn’t pretend to undertake the party founded by his father-in-law. I couldn’t imagine how far it would get.
-From The President’s Son-in-Law : Memoirs from Washington, by former White House Counsel Clay Mulford
BJP MANAGES TO FORM GOVERNMENT, ATAL BIHARI VAJPAREE PM
-The Guardian, May, 7 1996
RICHARDS WINS INDIANA, WELLSTONE DC AND NORTH CAROLINA
-Washington Post, May, 7 1996
