Times Square clock counts war cost

[Nambe]

NEW YORK (Reuters)

A giant clock ticking the cost of the war in Iraq has lit up in Times Square, making its debut by flashing $134.5 billion (75 billion pounds).

The amount on the clock will grow at a rate of $177 million a day, $7.4 million an hour and $122,820 per minute, said the advocacy group Project Billboard which put it up.

Project Billboard is supported by the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank headed by John Podesta who served as chief of staff under former President Bill Clinton.

The clock was unveiled just days before Republicans gather in New York for their national convention. ..

The message may not reach everyone, however, as the clock sits above a much larger billboard of a woman wearing nothing but a pair of sneakers. ..

This clock is part of a legal settlement reached between Project Billboard and Clear Channel Communications after the advocacy group sued the media giant for breaking a contract over the posting of an antiwar billboard in Times Square during this month's convention.

Clear Channel settled the case by agreeing to give Project Billboard two Times Square locations instead of one. In return, the group dropped its plan for a bomb graphic that Clear Channel said it found distasteful.

The advocacy group's other billboard displays a large peace dove and the words "Democracy Is Best Taught By Example, Not By War."
Ride Don’t Drive * * It’s Global Cool

[TahitiNut]

1. Dollars are one thing. The dead and maimed something else again!

Where's the billboard for the dead? Where's the billboard for the maimed? Where's the billboard for their families?

... and I don't give a damned whether they're Iraqi or American or British. Their wives, parents, and children grieve the same. The maimed suffer the same, no matter what flag flies above their land.

[movonne]

2. I like your suggestion and I wish they would do more of this kind

of creative thinking than marching...not that I have anything against marching and protesting but these evil devils will turn it against us.

[Nambe]

3. That issue was discussed on their web site.

A count of the dead and wounded was ultimately considered disrespecful to the families and those currently fighting in Iraq.

[TahitiNut]

4. (Hmmm) That's why the grief-stricken in an Asian funeral ..

... were traditionally screened from view by a cloth enclosure as they walk in a funeral procession. Their grief shames them.

We human beans sure have some strange ideas about what to make public and what to hide. We make our animosities, antagonisms, and hostilities public and embrace violence, but we hide body parts and condemn "public display of affection" (includng grief). We sure are bizarre creatures.

[DU9598]

5. Check this out - similar

www.costofwar.com

[LauraK]

6. If my brother were in that number,

I would want dimson the deserter to be reminded, but that's just me.

[sandnsea]

7. The glory of the war dead

It's sad, but the money will irk people more than soldiers dying and nobody cares about the Iraqi dead because they deserve it, doncha' know.

[0007]

10. Wish Madison Square Garden sign would give the WAR score

of all who died and lost a limb or two.

[leftchick]

13. How About OneThousandCoffins.Org?!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=2265289&mesg_id=2265289

...I posted this in GD this morning, it dropped like a rock and I don't know why. I think this idea is Fantastic!!



Fred Wright, along with other volunteers helps to construct nearly one thousand full-sized commemorative coffins draped in the American Flag in memorial tribute to the soldiers who have died in Iraq (news - web sites), Wednesday, Aug. 25, 2004, in the Brooklyn Borough of New York. The night's event organized by 'OneThousandCoffins.Org' is in preparation for a half-mile long solemn procession planned for Sunday, August 29 that will pass the Madison Square Garden one day before the start of the Republican National Convention. (AP Photo/Jennifer Szymaszek)

...Here is a link to Their website...
http://www.newdepression.com/onethousandcoffins /

[TahitiNut]

18. Super! That's a variation on an idea I posted some time ago.

I thought it'd be a good idea to have a protest in Washington, D.C., carrying symbolic coffins four abreast (down Pennsylvania Avenue?) and placing them in an array in front of the White House - one coffin for each 'coalition' serviceperson killed in Iraq.

I think it's a very powerful visual - something that should be impossible for the media to ignore.

[smirkymonkey]

16. Paging George Soros....

We've got a little project for you...

[Tsiyu]

8. Kudos to Center For American Progress

:kick:

[pinniped]

9. What ever happened to that US gun death clock that was there before?

Did they take it down because it rolled over?

Y2K software crash?

[G_j]

11. excellent! n/t

:kick:

[mediaman007]

12. Could we have a little counter here at DU?

[Dhalgren]

14. I think that would be a good idea.

Have a "counters page", where the cost in dollars and in lives and in injured each have a talley counter.

[Shallah Kali]

15. what of a bin laden counter tallying days since "dead or alive" vow

by bush?

[Nordic]

17. wonderful, but WHAT TOOK SO LONG?

why aren't these billboards up on every highway across every city in America?

I know, I know .... MONEY

[Barrett808]

19. Here's what it looks like

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/040826/photos_ts_afp/040826205631_3uyvs703_photo0