Well... here 'Fahrenheit 9/11' is. by Quicksand

Sorry, but the words "Documentary" and "Michael Moore" should never been used together. He's an embarrassment to REAL documentary filmmakers! His films resemble documentaries as much as reality shows resemble reality!

To quote Dennis Miller, "That's just my opinion. I could be wrong!" I'm sure many here are fans of his propaganda machine, but I'm not!

I'd given some thought to movin' off the edge -- not an ideal location -- thinkin' a place in the middle.

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Friday, June 25, 2004 6:51 PM

Here's yet another user commentary...

User Comments:

Michael Daly (fanstp43@aol.com)

Date: 23 June 2004
Summary: Moore Collapses On His Own Hatreds

Michael Moore has concocted a film whose intent is, in Moore's words, "to bring down a President." Moore's film - whose title has earned criticism from writer Ray Bradbury for its tacky parody of his famous story - is a typically labored and scattershot series of attacks on its subject - here President George W. Bush and the US war on Islamo-Arab terrorism.

Moore tries to prove that Prewsident Bush was somehow culpable in Islamo-Arab attacks on the US in September 2001 because of the Bid Laden family's relation ship with the Bushes through the Carlyle Group. But this relationship is completely convoluted and once you sort through Moore's attack you find that the relationship was at most tangenital and utterly irrelevant to anything; it's somewhat like blaming Harvard for Pearl Harbor because Isoroku Yamamoto graduated from Harvard.

Moore pushes this alleged Bush-Bin Laden connection by citing flights that took members of that family out of the US after September 2001, and only by his convoluted paranoia can Moore believe they are evidence that the US somehow staged attacks on its own soil. Moore (as is his want) leaves out facts that destroy his paranoia, namely that no respectable investigation has found any kind of sinister motive behind these flights.

But as writer Christopher Hitchens has put it, a film that is based on a lie can only sustain itself by piling up smaller lies with ever-more contradictory claims. Moore balmes Bush for spending too much time on vacation before the 2001 attacks, but Moore's own footage shows these "vacations" were anything but - in one shot Bush is seen "vacationing" with Tony Blair, prime minister of Great Britain; such summitting is inherently serious work, not goofing off. More again uses his own paranoia as evidence of malicious motive by the Bush Administration.

More goes beyond paranoia into outright propagandizing for the enemy with his grotesquely fawning view of Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Moore wants us to believe Iraq never backed any terrorist force, let alone the 2001 attackers, never mind Hussein's own boasts about his backing of international terrorists including Al Qaida, never mind the written documentation unearthed in Iraq after his overthrow (consistently ignored in major media) showing Iraqi involvement with Al Qaida and other international terrorist groups.

It continues with shots of Iraqi palaces and military bases under attack - Moore wants us to believe that these structures were civilian enclaves when they in fact were military and secret police bases. Iraq's 30-plus year record of slaughter, internal and international, is glosses over completely.

Moore tries to have it every way that attacks the US and ultimately collapses on his own contradictions. Either Saudi Arabia runs US policy or it doesn't - here Moore never bothers to wonder why Saudi Areabia would want to overthrow a Taliban regime in Afghanistan to which the Saudi government had close ties; Moore also never wonders about how a democratic Iraq means an economic rival to Saudi Arabia's near-monopoly on Middle Eastern oil exports and yet Saudi Arabia backs, however imperfectly, US efforts toward that goal.

It all means that Michael Moore has done it again - vented his spleen for no rational reason beyond anti-American bigotry. One has to wonder when people will grow tired of such, for Moore has taken the documentary and made it nothing but a vehicle woprthy of Leni Riefenstahl.

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Friday, June 25, 2004 6:53 PM

And from the Boston Globe:

Movie Details

Fahrenheit 9/11

Moore's anti-Bush outrage fuels his riveting 'Fahrenheit 9/11'

By Ty Burr, Globe Staff
Boston Globe
Published: 06/23/2004

...

it should come with a label: "Chew before Swallowing." There are no new smoking guns here. Instead, Moore gives us the case against George W. Bush, a fat compendium of previously reported crimes, errors, sins, and grievances delivered in the director's patented tone of vaudevillian social outrage. And it works for much of the film; indeed, the first two-thirds of "Fahrenheit" are chunky with damning information and imagery.

....

One last thought: "Fahrenheit 9/11" is many things, but for pity's sake let's not call it a documentary. To do so abuses the word and shames the good and balanced work done by filmmakers as storied as D.A. Pennebaker and Barbara Kopple, as current as Jehane Noujaim of "Control Room," and as hard-working and unheralded as Carma Hinton of Brookline's Long Bow Group.

Moore, by contrast, is a maker of agit-entertainment, of cinematic essays whose express purpose is to convince. That's fine as long as he's respecting his audience. But when he pushes the camera into Lipscomb's weeping face and keeps it there, he's saying that he doesn't trust you to think for yourself. And that is when he becomes his enemy.

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Friday, June 25, 2004 7:06 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by MacBaker:

I'm sure many here are fans of his propaganda machine, but I'm not!

Actually, he's quite forward with such things. I just saw him on the Daily Show (Jon interviewed him) and he said that his movies have two things in them.

1) fact (it's all public record after all so check it out for yourself if you like)
2) his opinion

Now, I don't know about you, but, I find it quite easy to tell when he is stating his opinion and when he is stating a fact. Those who can't (not saying you're one of them) have more problems then they know ie can't tell the difference between fact and fiction.

Propaganda machine my eye.

----
"Canada being mad at you is like Mr. Rogers throwing a brick through your window." -Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

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Friday, June 25, 2004 7:50 PM

Ooookay! If his films aren't Documentarys, and they aren't Propaganda films, then what exactly are they?

Facts and "public record" are not exclusive to each other. The headlines "Dewey Wins!" are a part of public record, but last time I checked, Truman actually won that election.

Read the reviews above, they expose the "propaganda" style fact twisting that Michael Moore is infamous for. He's like P.T. Barnam. He's a showman, but he's no docmentary filmmaker. IMHO

I'd given some thought to movin' off the edge -- not an ideal location -- thinkin' a place in the middle.

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Friday, June 25, 2004 8:12 PM

TERRIBLETINK

There are all kinds of documentaries, and in most cases, they are going to be subjective -- that's their nature. I could do a documentary about shopping at big, trendy malls, and if I loved doing that, my documentary would be full of happy shoppers all having fun, the rich diversity of the food court, and all the wonderful things you could buy at a mall that would make you and your family full of joy. If I didn't like these malls, my documentary would be full of parking lot fender benders, strollers running over your toes, and the horrors of rampant consumerism that drives us to buy useless trash. Now, which documentary would be a true documentary? Both of them. It's all about perspective.

Instead of trying to subvert the point with such a wide brush stroke that you do yourself disservice, why not argue the facts? If you don't like what Michael Moore is saying, that's your right. But don't say that his work is propaganda just because you don't agree with it.

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Friday, June 25, 2004 8:38 PM

Sorry Tink, but I'm not the only one calling his tripe propaganda.

Here's another review on "public record".

FAKEN-heit 9-11: Michael Moore’s Latest Fiction
By Debbie Schlussel
June 25, 2004

Mark Twain, once said, "There are lies, damn lies, and statistics."

But Twain lived in the 19th Century. In the 21st Century, there are lies, damn lies, and Michael Moore "documentaries."

Like Twain, Moore wants to be the great social commentator of our era. But, "Fahrenheit 9-11" (F911), his latest propaganda film, shows why he will forever remain in "wanna-be" status.

It’s typical Moore: lies, half-truths, far-left wackos and kooks as experts, snarky cheap shots, and just plain nonsense.

F911 starts out by recounting the tired liberal-left canard about George W. Bush "stealing" the 2000 Presidential Election. Gee, we haven’t heard that one before. And for those who actually read the paper and peruse bookstores, there’s little else new in this waste of celluloid.

Moore shows endless shots of Bush and administration officials being made up for TV appearances, montages of Bush golfing and on vacation, a shot of Bush with his dog – all accompanied by the sarcastic vocal commentary of Michael Moore. (You didn’t expect the self-important, schlubby Moore to spare us and stay off-screen, did you?)

In Moore’s world, liberal politicians never get made up or hair coiffed for TV appearances. In Moore’s world, Bill Clinton never golfed, never vacationed for months on Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard, never had a dog named "Buddy" – all while Slick Willie had the opportunity (several times) to have Osama Bin Laden handed over to him, but declined.

But that’s Moore’s world. He has learned the Costas Gavras (the famous Socialist-Communist director who produced Anti-American films) technique well. Bush and other administration "villains"--so cast by Moore--are shot from down below, to make them look even more evil.

Moore spends much time on Bin Laden family members flying out of the US when the rest of America was grounded, right after 9-11. Showing a clip of Khalil Bin Laden at the airport, a chyron on the screen cleverly reads "days after 9-11." But, how many days? In fact, while some Bin Ladens did get to fly out early, most of the Bin Laden family flew out of America, after the rest of America could already fly. Moore says the FBI was not allowed to interview them, but in fact, the FBI was allowed to interview them and chose not to. That is disturbing, but it’s not what Moore "reported".

The close relationship between the Bush family, including the current President, and the Saudi Royal Family is troubling. But it’s nothing new, and Moore offers no alternative. The Saudi Royals are, no doubt, despicable. They foster and fund madrasas, mosques, and clerics who preach the death of the West, Christians, and Jews. They hold telethons to fund the "martyrs" and allowed Al-Qaeda to grow. Women can’t drive, and non-Muslims are the equivalent of slaves. Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar is slimy and dishonest.

But the precarious Saudi Royal Family is better than the alternative--the Saudi masses who hate us even more and who love Osama Bin Laden.

If Crown Prince Abdullah is deposed by its extremist population, Bin Laden is the most popular replacement. Given the large Saudi investment in our economy (upon which Moore touches) and large holdings in our banking system, a change in Saudi leadership could result in the collapse of our economy. $2 a gallon oil? That would be a pleasant memory from the past, and only rich phonies like Michael Moore would be able to afford to drive. The Saudis are the largest producers of oil, and the radical Saudi population would see to it that we go back to the horse and buggy.

That is why it’s important for Bush to remain on good terms with the sleazy country that is the home to public beheadings and 15 of the 19 hijackers. Leftists from Moore’s "Amen" crowd won’t let us drill for oil in Alaska, so we can get away from dependence upon the Saudis. Not a peep about that in F911.

And while there’s plenty of factual material to use against the Saudis, Moore fabricates on that, too. He claims that the US Secret Service’s Uniformed Division protects only the Saudi Embassy, no others. That’s just plain false. Any tourist to Washington, DC, will see plenty of Secret Service Police guarding all of the other foreign embassies which request such protection. Other than guarding the White House and some federal buildings, it’s the largest use of personnel by the Secret Service’s Uniformed Division.

Since Moore lies about little things like that, what else has he lied about in this master docu-fakery?

Then there are Moore’s Congressional "experts." F911 features extensive interviews with two of the biggest wackos ever elected to Congress, Reps. Jim McDermott and John Conyers, both far-left Democrats. They spout off against everything from the USA Patriot Act to the War on Iraq.

But he fails to tell us that Jim McDermott was on the take from Saddam Hussein. McDermott was one of three Congressmen who went on Saddam’s propaganda tour of Iraq in Fall 2002. The trip was funded by Life for Relief and Development (LRD), a "charity" which laundered money to terrorist group Hamas’ Jordanian operation. LRD is funded in part by Shakir Al-Khafaji, a man who did about $70 million in business with Saddam through his Falcon Trading Group company (based in South Africa). LRD’s Iraqi offices were raided by US troops last week, and the Detroit-area "charity" is suspected of funding uprisings, such as the one in Fallujah. Its officials bragged of doing so at a recent private US fundraiser.

Mr. Alkhafaji, one of two Americans named in Iraqi newspapers as a participant in Saddam’s "Oil for Food" scam, gave Congressman McDermott $5,000 in October 2002 for McDermott’s legal defense fund in a lawsuit against him. He’s not biased about Iraq, right?!

Then there’s Conyers. He’s the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. Heaven help us if the Democrats retake the House majority, and he becomes Chairman of the Judiciary Committee. The far-left Conyers never met a terrorist he didn’t like.

Take the June 13 Muslim American Society fundraising dinner for Islamic Relief, a charity with links to the Muslim Brotherhood. Conyers and his wife were the guests of honor. They watched and clapped as the Sanabel Al-Quds "dancing" troop from Milwaukee—featuring boys as young as seven—sang in Arabic of martyrdom and jihad for Allah and Palestine. They didn’t need to understand Arabic, as the young boys used a rifle to simulate killing and pistol-whipping, simulated throat-slittings and beheadings, and dishonored the American flag.

The War in Iraq is a major focal point of the film. Moore shamelessly dishonors our brave soldiers. He makes fun of soldier’s musical choices in Iraq ("The Roof is on Fire") and depicts multiple wounded and dead Iraqis and soldiers raiding a home in Iraq searching for a militant. That’s what happens in war. People get wounded and killed. Moore shows the militant’s female relatives crying. "He’s a college student," they cry out in Arabic. College students would never be terrorists, would they? Tell that to the Israelis, where the "colleges," such as Bir Zeit University, are the breeding grounds for terrorists.

Very telling is the presence of the Al-Jazeera microphone in one segment of a women crying, "Allah Hu Akbar" (Allah is Great). Moore apparently thinks the sympathetic Terrorist News Network (Al-Jazeera) is the epitome of accurate news reporting.

Other BS in the Moore film:

He shows Britney Spears saying she supports the President on Iraq. As if there weren’t a host of brain-dead bimbo celebs, (Madonna, Sean Penn, Russell Simmons, Lenny Kravitz, Susan Sarandon, The Dixie Chicks, etc.), spouting off on the other side.

Moore repeatedly features Sam Kubba, of the American-Iraqi Chamber of Commerce, denouncing the War in Iraq as money-driven. But Kubba is a fringe character. Most Iraqi-Americans and their prominent leaders, such as Nabil Roumayah of the Detroit-based Iraqi Democratic Union, supported the war, whether they were Chaldeans (Christian Iraqis) or Shias.

In very selectively edited clips, Moore poses the absurd notion that the main news anchors—Peter Jennings, Dan Rather, and Ted Koppel—wholeheartedly support Bush and the War in Iraq. Jennings, Rather, and Koppel supporting the War and Bush? Puh-leeze! Has Moore forgotten the hour-long Saddam softball interview Rather did just prior to the war, Jennings’ condescending coverage and Koppel’s critical "Nightline" episodes every step of the way?

Moore exploits the grief of Lila Lipscomb, the mother of a soldier who died in Iraq. She denounces Bush and the War. But there are many mothers and relatives of US soldiers, alive and dead, who served there who don’t agree with her. Don’t look for them in this agit-prop "film."

Moore, as many misinformed "journalists do, makes light of the claimed Bush connection between Saddam and Al-Qaeda. But what about the meeting between hijacker Mohammed Atta and Iraqi Intelligence agents in the Czech Republic before 9-11? What about the Iraqi training camp in Salman Pak where Al-Qaeda used abandoned planes to train to hijack them? What about Ramzi Youssef, the Iraqi Secret Service agent and mastermind of the 1993 WTC bombing, who is the nephew of 9-11 Al-Qaeda mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? What about Iraqi Intelligence and Secret Police (Mukhabarat) at a Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Al-Qaeda terror planning convention? These are just some connections, and there are others in "The Connection," by Stephen Hayes, that you won’t see in Moore’s silver screen screed.

Not just the film--but the audience that populated the promotional screening I attended--looked like it came out of far-stage-left of Democratic Party central casting.

Those surrounding me were literally the "Great Unwashed." They smelled as if they hadn’t taken a shower in weeks, not because they couldn’t afford running water, but because it’s cool to be dirty and nasty in the far-left. Not for any good reason, but just because they can. With their awful stench wafting universal, they want to make the rest of us as miserable and skanky as the Hate-America crowd.

It’s emblematic of the filmmaker and his fake-umentary. Michael Moore and "Fahrenheit 9-11" stink.

END OF REVIEW BY Debbie Schlussel

For more on the Moore Propaganda machine, check out:
www.moorelies.com/

I'd given some thought to movin' off the edge -- not an ideal location -- thinkin' a place in the middle.

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Friday, June 25, 2004 9:15 PM

LJSQUARED

"He shows Britney Spears saying she supports the President on Iraq. As if there weren’t a host of brain-dead bimbo celebs, (Madonna, Sean Penn, Russell Simmons, Lenny Kravitz, Susan Sarandon, The Dixie Chicks, etc.), spouting off on the other side."

10 Britney spears wouldn't equal the IQ of any one of those stars ( I mean, Susan Saradon, a Brain dead bimbo?)

"That is why it’s important for Bush to remain on good terms with the sleazy country that is the home to public beheadings and 15 of the 19 hijackers. Leftists from Moore’s "Amen" crowd won’t let us drill for oil in Alaska, so we can get away from dependence upon the Saudis. Not a peep about that in F911."

Excuse me while I gauge my eyeballs out

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Friday, June 25, 2004 9:36 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by LJSquared:
Excuse me while I gauge my eyeballs out

Just wondering what measurement you got, when you "gauged" your eyeballs?

Those are the only points that got to you? Britiney and the Saudis?

BTW: That questionable relationship with the Saudi's is something our government has cultivated and worked on for decades. Before G.W. Bush, the Clintons, Bush senior, the Reagans, and the Carters all wined and dined the Saudi Royals. This isn't anything new, and do you know why? Because everytime gas prices go up, every mindless twit in this country blames the government! We don't want to know what it costs to keep oil prices down as long as we can all drive our big SUVs and sports cars!!!! We have the cheapest gas in the world, but we all bitch if it goes up 20 cents, and we drive the biggest gas guzzlers! Hypocrites! Maybe you should GOUGE your eyes out!

I'd given some thought to movin' off the edge -- not an ideal location -- thinkin' a place in the middle.

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Friday, June 25, 2004 9:44 PM

FYI, the wife and I both drive 4 cylinder cars, car pool whenever possible, and laugh at those fools driving gas guzzling barges.

We even considered a hybrid like the Toyota Prius, until we read reports that landfills full of worn out fuel cells will do more damage to the environment, than an equal number of efficient traditional gas powered cars.

I'd given some thought to movin' off the edge -- not an ideal location -- thinkin' a place in the middle.

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Friday, June 25, 2004 9:58 PM

PLEASE111

macbaker,
Give me a break. How long have you been waiting to pounce on someone with that load of crap? Tink is absolutely right, and Tink's comment was not partisan at all. But, you took it as opportunity to ram your extremist politics down our collective throats.

It's propaganda when it comes from the left, but god forbid I call Debbie's piece propaganda. It starts with the usual attack/comparison of Bill Clinton. For all the effort that these typical right wing diatribes put into smearing Clinton, they are always heavily biased with little or no substance. I love how she opens up her essay with the response of a 6 year old, "Clinton took vacations too." Vacations aren't the issue. The issue is the amount of vacation time that Bush took when we *really* needed him to be president and not shirking his responsibility.

The minute that this movie was released, the right wing fanatics started blogging on any and every forum on the web to discredit any opinion that differed from their own. If Michael Moore is such a crack pot, what are you/they so afraid of? This country was founded on free speech and debate, but that seems to be something that the right cannot tolerate from anyone with an opposing or different view. If I disagree with Ann Coulter (and I often do), does that mean that I should stop calling her a columnist/pundit and start calling her a propaganda machine? No, because, for good or bad, she has a right to her opinions. I could write for a week continuously about the nonsense that woman spews. But to dismiss anyone completely is to kill free debate -- something this polarized country desparately needs right now.

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Friday, June 25, 2004 10:04 PM

SOUPCATCHER

If you're not going to see the movie because of negative reviews, that's fine. That's the purpose of reading reviews in the first place. But I think it's silly to cut and paste these long quotes from other people into a thread. Link to them. Summarize them. All you're really doing is passing along second hand information. I'm more interested in what fireflyfans thought of the movie, not reviewers who fireflyfans happened to read. It looks suspiciously like trying to drown discourse through a huge data dump. Which I have no problem with if it's your own data dump.

[editted to add: This in no way applies to Firefly related material. I love all the re-posting and clipping and cutting and pasting that goes on here since this is my first stop for any and all things Firefly]

Eh. So that rant out of the way

. I went to the matinee to see the movie not quite knowing what to expect. I was aware of much of the information in the film but a lot of the actual footage was new to me. I'm still trying to sort out how coherent Moore's thesis is but there are certain scenes that really stuck out. The scene from the floor of Congress after the 2000 election: minority Representative after minority Representative coming up to protest what happened in Florida in regards to disenfranchisement of African-American voters and being told by Al Gore, acting President of that session, that there was nothing that could be done because they could not find one Senator to co-sign. It was just surreal. The scenes from Flint: lines at the welfare office, rundown abandoned houses, huge unemployment numbers. Those scenes I got. I understood the point he was trying to make and felt he used the medium well.

Areas where I think he didn't do too good a job were the whole document blacking out part and the chaining of the people from Bush, to the Bin Ladens, to the Saudi Royals, to the Taliban. It was either too much exposition on a point that was easily made (Bush's let's-skip-our-flight-physical buddy) or too many different people in too short a period of time where I couldn't keep track of the players without a scorecard. That was the one area of the movie where I felt it bogged down a bit, just from a flow point of view.

I'll have to reflect more on the cognitive side of things. My immediate reaction is more based on how emotionally charged the movie is. In that, Moore did a good job - he really does know how to lead you through an emotional roller coaster.

I shaved off my beard for you, devil woman!

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Friday, June 25, 2004 10:32 PM

I agree completely that Debbie's review is right wing, and YES it IS propaganda!!!! DUH! I bet that takes the wind out of your sails. It certainly makes your response more impotent!

Your fatal flaw in logic, is assuming that I share her views! I just felt it was important to see things from an opposing point of view. Moore's opinions obviously come from an extreme left wing point of view. It seemed only proper to play devil's advocate, and give a response from the extreme right. Both sides are wrong, and they always have been! One side believes in some mythical socialist paradise, and the other believes a facist kingdom is the cure for everyone's problems! The Democrats don't have all of the answers, and clearly, neither do the Republicans. The majority of the population tends to steer towards the middle, which is why moderate candidates (or candidates that appear moderate, like Gore and Bush both tried to convince us they were) win presidental elections! The reason the last election was so close, is because both Bush and Gore convinced enough voters that they were moderate. No candidate will win a presidental election on a true "left wing" or "right wing" platform!

Sorry, I'm not the easy "extremst" target you would like to believe I am. That would make it easy for you to dismiss. The truth is, I dislike Micheal Moore for the same reason that I dislike Rush Limbaugh. Both twist facts to convince small minded lemmings to follow thier cause. It takes a lot more than that to get me to follow anyone. Frankly, I pity anyone that does. If you wish to believe Moore's tripe, you have my pity!!!

I'd given some thought to movin' off the edge -- not an ideal location -- thinkin' a place in the middle.

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Friday, June 25, 2004 11:07 PM

You know, this is why Political Threads (including political threads disgused as movie reviews) shouldn't be posted on forums of this kind. It never goes well.

I'm more than willing to agree to disagree, and let this lame thread die the quick pathetic death it deserves!

Opinions are like a$$h*les, and EVERYONE (including me) that posted in this thread is an A$$H*LE! BUT, the biggest A$$H*LE is the person that started this thread in the first place. What did you expect! Peace and harmony??? LMAO!

So. now that we know that anyone posting in this thread is just another A$$H*LE, post away!!!!!

I'd given some thought to movin' off the edge -- not an ideal location -- thinkin' a place in the middle.

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Friday, June 25, 2004 11:19 PM

PLEASE111

Quote:
Originally posted by MacBaker:
I agree completely that Debbie's review is right wing, and YES it IS propaganda!!!! DUH! I bet that takes the wind out of your sails. It certainly makes your response more impotent!

##LOL! It might, except that you missed the point entirely.

Your fatal flaw in logic, is assuming that I share her views! I just felt it was important to see things from an opposing point of view. Moore's opinions obviously come from an extreme left wing point of view. It seemed only proper to play devil's advocate,

##Give it a rest. You are not moderate and that wasn't the point to your three page cut-n-paste.

and give a response from the extreme right. Both sides are wrong, and they always have been! One side believes in some mythical socialist paradise, and the other believes a facist kingdom is the cure for everyone's problems! The Democrats don't have all of the answers, and clearly, neither do the Republicans. The majority of the population tends to steer towards the middle, which is why moderate candidates (or candidates that appear moderate, like Gore and Bush both tried to convince us they were) win presidental elections! The reason the last election was so close, is because both Bush and Gore convinced enough voters that they were moderate. No candidate will win a presidental election on a true "left wing" or "right wing" platform!

#That's not true. A true moderate is going to have a tough time in November. On which points are moderate views going to capture a majority? Domestic economic policy, global foriegn policy, women's rights, religious issues...

Sorry, I'm not the easy "extremst" target you would like to believe I am.

##I think you are. If you're so middle of the road, then prove it. Give us your opinions on the war in Iraq. Do you support it? Was it justified? Is it about oil? Was it intended to divert attention? What about the nonexistent (or just extremely weak connection) to alcaida? What about the non existent weapons of mass destruction? What is your opinion of Richard Clarke? Is he telling the truth? Or, is he just a liberal trying to damage Bush's creditability before the election?

That would make it easy for you to dismiss. The truth is, I dislike Micheal Moore for the same reason that I dislike Rush Limbaugh. Both twist facts to convince small minded lemmings to follow thier cause. It takes a lot more than that to get me to follow anyone. Frankly, I pity anyone that does. If you wish to believe Moore's tripe, you have my pity!!!

##You're plenty easy to dimiss. :-) And, I think for myself.

I'd given some thought to movin' off the edge -- not an ideal location -- thinkin' a place in the middle.

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Friday, June 25, 2004 11:49 PM

TERRIBLETINK

Quote:
Originally posted by SoupCatcher:
I'm more interested in what fireflyfans thought of the movie, not reviewers who fireflyfans happened to read.

Good deal, SoupCatcher. I'm interested in that too. I saw it tonight with my son and husband, and it was definitely something I would recommend to others. It's hard to describe. It's not the kind of movie you come home from and say "Gee, what an awesome movie!" because it wasn't the typical movie-going experience, that's for sure. But I think that everyone should see it just for the different perspective it offers. I kept wondering "Why haven't I seen this footage before?" I'm not talking about the parts that Moore put together for it, but the footage of the various public officials and the happenings in Iraq.

The scenes that chilled me the most had to do with the military recruitment tactics -- something I had no clue I'd be seeing based on previews, reviews, etc. I know that for a lot of people that might be a side note, but I sat and watched this movie sitting next to my 15-year-old son. He started high school this year, and he has been absolutely bombarded by military recruiters at his school. They are there all the time, and of course they hand out the coolest pins, calendars, folders, pens, lanyards, etc. I've seen the brochures they give him at least once a month, and I have to say that I've found it very chilling that they are so aggressive and paint such a rosy picture at a time when they know so many kids are dying in Iraq (and in Afghanistan). I don't want to sound like I'm knocking the military here and I don't mean any disrespect to those who are serving or who wish to serve. But I do think that selling this choice to freshman as the equivalent of a real-life video game is irresponsible, and I admit that I've been worried my son would get swept up in the romance that they are trying to sell without considering the reality of what this choice would mean. It's sort of like selling teenage motherhood to a 15-year-old girl as "hey, it'll be like having a live doll you can dress" without mentioning the responsibility of being a parent. But watching those recruiters in action, targeting poor neighborhoods, telling teenagers that the Marines could help them with their music careers (!!??!!), etc. really put things in perspective for my son (while scaring the

out of me as a parent -- but don't tell him I said that -- you know how 15-year-olds are

).

I think the strongest points to the movie had to do with the weak link between Iraq and the war on terrorism and also the manipulation of the public. Of course Saddam was a horrible dictator -- being against the war in Iraq doesn't mean that you liked Saddam, for goodness sakes! But to see the footage of Powell and Rice mere months before 9/11 saying that Iraq had no WMD and then seeing us go to war with them on the basis of WMD really sends a shiver down the spine. I do believe Richard Clarke -- I mean, how many of us have brought issues to management only to have them ignore us completely because our findings didn't mesh with their focused goal?

I've watched this progression in horror myself: Ok, we're going to war for WMD cuz if we don't Saddam will destroy us all. Oh no, wait! There aren't any WMD. Ok then, um, er, let's make this a war against Saddam-as-Al Qaida-darling. No wait! He rejected involvement with Al Qaida (guess secular dictators don't much care for religious extremists that would strip them of their booze and luxurious amenities). OK, so then, um...I know...we'll make this a war for the liberation of the Iraqi people. Yay!!! Except that if we really just wanted to liberate the Iraqi people, then why did we base the war on bogus WMD and Al Qaida theories? Sigh. Do we all have attention deficit disorder? I think the movie did a great job at re-capping this progression. We're all so busy these days that we have the attention spans of nervous gnats, and it was good to see the re-cap of just how this great fleecing of the American public occurred.

I also think the movie did a very, very, very good job of being respectful to the troops who are serving. Yes, there were the scenes (alluded to elsewhere in this thread) that showed a few guys who were taking war a bit too lightly, but by far, the majority of soldiers they showed were decent folks who were doing their best to cope with a very bad situation. My heart ached for the guy who said that you can't kill someone without killing a part of yourself, and I cried when Cpl. Henderson said he refused to go back to Iraq "to kill other poor people." Too often we're forced into line with the threat that questioning the Bush administration is tantamount to spitting on the men and women serving in the military, but this movie shows that maybe the most supportive thing you can do is to make sure they don't die for a

cause. They're not automatons who are happily plunging headlong into death -- they know they've been duped, but what can they do about it except hope that their leaders will stop treating them like pawns in some global chess match where the winner gets all the oil? If this film can make any difference, I hope it's to remind people that our soldiers are not game pieces -- they are human beings who deserve better than this.

(Also, apologies in advance if this double or triple posts as I've been having problems with that on this PC.)

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Saturday, June 26, 2004 12:23 AM

DRAKON

3000 people died on September 11th 2001. Because of that, we fought back. We were attacked, and we fought and are still fighting back.

Even if Bush's motives are less than pure, even if Halliburton makes a fortune, the question is not what their motives are, but what they accomplish.

So far, Afghanistan and Iraq have both been liberated from brutal tyrannies. (Something the left is supposed to care more about than we on the right.) There have been no follow on attacks here, yet.

Yet because it was done by someone other than themselves, or for some imagined alterior motive, it is somehow wrong to defend yourself and liberate brutalized folks around the world.

It is an Us versus Them world. Not by our choice, but by the design and choice of the terrorists. The more I see the kinds of excesses that is widely accepted as gospel by the political left, I am left with the only rational conclusion available. They are simply on the other side. Whether I want to or not, I am forced to question their patriotism, their intelligence and their sanity. Simply because I see no evidence of any of them.

The scatter shot approach that Moore has adopted is contradictory within itself. He makes a whole list of charges against Bush, half of which contradict the other half. The only constant in the whole thing is that Moore hates Bush, which I already knew.

And considering that Richard Clarke, no friend of Bush, has taken responsibility for sending the bin Ladan's home, and that more recent reports does show a relationship between Saddam and Usama, the recent discoveries of Sarin and mustard gas shells, I can't honestly trust Moore anyway.

I really think this is going to backfire badly on Kerry, unfortunately. I don't think he deserves it, but when his own national party chairman comes out in support of this film, a lot of people are going to associate the Democratic party with the lunatic fringes of the political left, and see them more as supporters of conspiracy theories and the enemy, rather than this country. It makes that party look like the tin foil hat crowd, if not treasonous turncoats.

I don't think most people will want to be associated with such a party, and will avoid voting for it in November. They may not vote for Bush, but even staying home is a vote. So enjoy the show while it lasts.

"Wash, where is my damn spaceship?"

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Saturday, June 26, 2004 12:23 AM

TERRIBLETINK

Quote:
Originally posted by MacBaker:

Those surrounding me were literally the "Great Unwashed." They smelled as if they hadn’t taken a shower in weeks, not because they couldn’t afford running water, but because it’s cool to be dirty and nasty in the far-left. Not for any good reason, but just because they can. With their awful stench wafting universal, they want to make the rest of us as miserable and skanky as the Hate-America crowd.

It’s emblematic of the filmmaker and his fake-umentary. Michael Moore and "Fahrenheit 9-11" stink.

LOL -- Sorry to disappoint you, sir, but I showered between getting home from work and seeing the movie. And the only things I smelled in the theatre were popcorn and someone's Vanilla-scented perfume (which kinda made me want a chocolate chip cookie). Not sure where you saw the movie, but it was a lot of hygenic, family-type folks where I saw it.

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Saturday, June 26, 2004 3:01 AM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!

1st and last thing I'll say about this MOCKumentary. Moore is a lying pig. That much is indisputable. I can see NOTHING positive coming from this movie OR discussion of it here on this board.

" They don't like it when you shoot at 'em. I worked that out myself. "

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Saturday, June 26, 2004 5:36 AM

Just for future reference:

threads of this nature should go to the
:Real World Event Discussions:
bin

Having that bin was a big agonizing
discussion and we should take advantage
of Haken's graciousness to create a
new bin for that sort of stuff.

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Saturday, June 26, 2004 6:22 AM

STANDING8

someone said it right:

GREAT MOVIE, DEPRESSING AS HELL.

i didnt need this movie to make me not vote for bush. bush himself made me not vote for bush. my mind was made up a long ago.

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Saturday, June 26, 2004 7:45 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by MacBaker:
Ooookay! If his films aren't Documentarys, and they aren't Propaganda films, then what exactly are they?

Facts and "public record" are not exclusive to each other. The headlines "Dewey Wins!" are a part of public record, but last time I checked, Truman actually won that election.

They are opinion pieces, period. The problem is that documentary is the closest category that fits his movie style. He takes the *facts* and paints a picture. As he says, if you want to look them up then go ahead. And as I've stated before, if he uses points of public record that are not true, then he gets sued (especially in this case). You are free not to like the picture he paints though.

Quote:
Originally posted by MacBaker:

Read the reviews above, they expose the "propaganda" style fact twisting that Michael Moore is infamous for. He's like P.T. Barnam. He's a showman, but he's no docmentary filmmaker. IMHO

You mean things like "let alone the 2001 attackers" referring to 9/11. Sorry bud, but that little tid bit has been long debunked. You're going to have to do better than that to convince anyone that these reviews are anything more than republican rhetoric serving to cloud the issues.

----
"Canada being mad at you is like Mr. Rogers throwing a brick through your window." -Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

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Saturday, June 26, 2004 7:51 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by MacBaker:

We even considered a hybrid like the Toyota Prius, until we read reports that landfills full of worn out fuel cells will do more damage to the environment, than an equal number of efficient traditional gas powered cars.

That's why you dispose of them properly. You don't throw out your batteries in the garbage, so, why would you toss your fuel cell there. Good god man!

----
"Canada being mad at you is like Mr. Rogers throwing a brick through your window." -Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

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Saturday, June 26, 2004 7:57 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Please111:
macbaker,
Give me a break. How long have you been waiting to pounce on someone with that load of crap? Tink is absolutely right, and Tink's comment was not partisan at all. But, you took it as opportunity to ram your extremist politics down our collective throats.

It's propaganda when it comes from the left, but god forbid I call Debbie's piece propaganda. It starts with the usual attack/comparison of Bill Clinton. For all the effort that these typical right wing diatribes put into smearing Clinton, they are always heavily biased with little or no substance. I love how she opens up her essay with the response of a 6 year old, "Clinton took vacations too." Vacations aren't the issue. The issue is the amount of vacation time that Bush took when we *really* needed him to be president and not shirking his responsibility.

The minute that this movie was released, the right wing fanatics started blogging on any and every forum on the web to discredit any opinion that differed from their own. If Michael Moore is such a crack pot, what are you/they so afraid of? This country was founded on free speech and debate, but that seems to be something that the right cannot tolerate from anyone with an opposing or different view. If I disagree with Ann Coulter (and I often do), does that mean that I should stop calling her a columnist/pundit and start calling her a propaganda machine? No, because, for good or bad, she has a right to her opinions. I could write for a week continuously about the nonsense that woman spews. But to dismiss anyone completely is to kill free debate -- something this polarized country desparately needs right now.

I completely agree. Even the lowliest among us has a divine revelation from time to time.

----
"Canada being mad at you is like Mr. Rogers throwing a brick through your window." -Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

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Saturday, June 26, 2004 8:08 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Drakon:

So far, Afghanistan and Iraq have both been liberated from brutal tyrannies. (Something the left is supposed to care more about than we on the right.) There have been no follow on attacks here, yet.

LOL, I stopped reading after I read this because the rest is probably as deluded as this is. Perhaps you should go and read a news paper from time to time. Afghanistan's country side is teaming with terrorists and its recommended that people don't go there. Hell, even the military won't drive, they fly. The only save zones are about a klick from the cities where the forces are, nothing more. They are losing it over there and people are starting to make plans to do something about it. But, one thing is sure, the brutal tyranny that was in is Afghanistan is still very much alive.

I won't even comment on your Iraq delusion. Sheesh, read a paper.

----
"Canada being mad at you is like Mr. Rogers throwing a brick through your window." -Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

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Saturday, June 26, 2004 8:11 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:

1st and last thing I'll say about this MOCKumentary. Moore is a lying pig. That much is indisputable. I can see NOTHING positive coming from this movie OR discussion of it here on this board.

\begin{dripping sarcasm}
Wow, I'm convinced!
\end{dripping sarcasm}

Perhaps you should back your comments is you want them to carry any weight.

----
"Canada being mad at you is like Mr. Rogers throwing a brick through your window." -Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

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Saturday, June 26, 2004 8:16 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Jasonzzz:

Just for future reference:

threads of this nature should go to the
:Real World Event Discussions:
bin

Having that bin was a big agonizing
discussion and we should take advantage
of Haken's graciousness to create a
new bin for that sort of stuff.

Just sent a message to Haken requesting the move. I don't want to re-live that debate.

----
"Canada being mad at you is like Mr. Rogers throwing a brick through your window." -Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

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Saturday, June 26, 2004 8:38 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SigmaNunki:
That's why you dispose of them properly. You don't throw out your batteries in the garbage, so, why would you toss your fuel cell there. Good god man!

Good god man, how exactly do you dispose of a battery or fuel cell properly? Go visit a landfill, you'd be stunned to see the crap there, including batteries by the truck load!

As a nation, we don't even dispose of nuclear waste properly. Then we spend millions of dollars cleaning up the problem. You live in a fantasy world, which probably explains most of your responses to this thread.

BTW, if I was the right winger you and other small minds believed, I wouldn't be concerned with environmental issues such as this.

I'd given some thought to movin' off the edge -- not an ideal location -- thinkin' a place in the middle.

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Saturday, June 26, 2004 9:13 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Please111:
Quote:
Originally posted by MacBaker:
I agree completely that Debbie's review is right wing, and YES it IS propaganda!!!! DUH! I bet that takes the wind out of your sails. It certainly makes your response more impotent!

##LOL! It might, except that you missed the point entirely.

**No, you did! You continue to make the same assumptions over and over again.

Your fatal flaw in logic, is assuming that I share her views! I just felt it was important to see things from an opposing point of view. Moore's opinions obviously come from an extreme left wing point of view. It seemed only proper to play devil's advocate,

##Give it a rest. You are not moderate and that wasn't the point to your three page cut-n-paste.

**You should give it a rest. You don't know me, and you certainly don't have the slightest clue what my true political beliefs are! I posted a far right response to a far left movie. Neither OPINION is shared by me, as I have repreatedly stated. You are still clinging to the same flaw in your logic!

and give a response from the extreme right. Both sides are wrong, and they always have been! One side believes in some mythical socialist paradise, and the other believes a facist kingdom is the cure for everyone's problems! The Democrats don't have all of the answers, and clearly, neither do the Republicans. The majority of the population tends to steer towards the middle, which is why moderate candidates (or candidates that appear moderate, like Gore and Bush both tried to convince us they were) win presidental elections! The reason the last election was so close, is because both Bush and Gore convinced enough voters that they were moderate. No candidate will win a presidental election on a true "left wing" or "right wing" platform!

#That's not true. A true moderate is going to have a tough time in November. On which points are moderate views going to capture a majority? Domestic economic policy, global foriegn policy, women's rights, religious issues...

**Are you serious? Do you even understand what a moderate platform is? The only chance anyone running for president has, is running on a moderate platform, trying to win voters from both sides. Sure, there are degrees, but Bush ran on a right leaning moderate platform, and Gore ran on a left leaning moderate platform. Both tried to lean towards the middle to get the critical indie and undecided votes. Ted Kennedy and Newt Gingrich would never win a presidental election, because the represent the extremes of their party's platforms.

Sorry, I'm not the easy "extremst" target you would like to believe I am.

##I think you are. If you're so middle of the road, then prove it. Give us your opinions on the war in Iraq. Do you support it? Was it justified? Is it about oil? Was it intended to divert attention? What about the nonexistent (or just extremely weak connection) to alcaida? What about the non existent weapons of mass destruction? What is your opinion of Richard Clarke? Is he telling the truth? Or, is he just a liberal trying to damage Bush's creditability before the election?

**My opinion of the war? We should have worked harder with the UN to resolve the problem. Saddam needed to go, but we needed the world behind us. We should have never invaded IRAQ without UN support!

**My opinion on WMDs? They were there. We gave them 6 months prior to invasion to dispose and/or hide them. Even the UN inspectors believed there were WMDs in IRAQ.

**My opion of Clarke? He's a flake, but so was Newt! They represent the worst of their own party's extremes. Like Newt did with Clinton, Clarke is headhunting, and his actions will do more harm than good to his party.

That would make it easy for you to dismiss. The truth is, I dislike Micheal Moore for the same reason that I dislike Rush Limbaugh. Both twist facts to convince small minded lemmings to follow thier cause. It takes a lot more than that to get me to follow anyone. Frankly, I pity anyone that does. If you wish to believe Moore's tripe, you have my pity!!!

##You're plenty easy to dimiss. :-) And, I think for myself.

**Not really! If I was so easy to dismiss, you wouldn't be responding in the first place. DOH! :o

I'd given some thought to movin' off the edge -- not an ideal location -- thinkin' a place in the middle.

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Saturday, June 26, 2004 9:28 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SigmaNunki:
You're going to have to do better than that to convince anyone that these reviews are anything more than republican rhetoric serving to cloud the issues.

I guess you missed my reply, where I clearly agreed that the review was from the extreme right. That was the point. Both views "cloud the issues"! The truth is somewhere in the middle. I was just playing devil's advocate, by showing a contrasting opinion, but the joke seems to be lost on "even the lowliest among us" here.

BTW: Opinion pieces are called EDITORIALS, not documentarys, and they are always represented as the opinion of the commentator. Mr. Moore makes no such representations, and tries to convince his audience that his opinions are FACT. There's a big difference between an editorial piece and propaganda. Propaganda makers always claim they are giving facts, not opinions!

I'd given some thought to movin' off the edge -- not an ideal location -- thinkin' a place in the middle.

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Saturday, June 26, 2004 10:34 AM

CREVANREAVER

Unfairenheit 9/11

The lies of Michael Moore.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, June 21, 2004, at 12:26 PM PT

One of the many problems with the American left, and indeed of the American left, has been its image and self-image as something rather too solemn, mirthless, herbivorous, dull, monochrome, righteous, and boring. How many times, in my old days at The Nation magazine, did I hear wistful and semienvious ruminations? Where was the radical Firing Line show? Who will be our Rush Limbaugh? I used privately to hope that the emphasis, if the comrades ever got around to it, would be on the first of those and not the second. But the meetings themselves were so mind-numbing and lugubrious that I thought the danger of success on either front was infinitely slight.

Nonetheless, it seems that an answer to this long-felt need is finally beginning to emerge. I exempt Al Franken's unintentionally funny Air America network, to which I gave a couple of interviews in its early days. There, one could hear the reassuring noise of collapsing scenery and tripped-over wires and be reminded once again that correct politics and smooth media presentation are not even distant cousins. With

Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, however, an entirely new note has been struck. Here we glimpse a possible fusion between the turgid routines of MoveOn.org and the filmic standards, if not exactly the filmic skills, of Sergei Eisenstein or Leni Riefenstahl.

To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of "dissenting" bravery.

In late 2002, almost a year after the al-Qaida assault on American society, I had an onstage debate with Michael Moore at the Telluride Film Festival. In the course of this exchange, he stated his view that Osama Bin Laden should be considered innocent until proven guilty. This was, he said, the American way. The intervention in Afghanistan, he maintained, had been at least to that extent unjustified. Something-I cannot guess what, since we knew as much then as we do now-has since apparently persuaded Moore that Osama Bin Laden is as guilty as hell. Indeed, Osama is suddenly so guilty and so all-powerful that any other discussion of any other topic is a dangerous "distraction" from the fight against him. I believe that I understand the convenience of this late conversion.

Fahrenheit 9/11 makes the following points about Bin Laden and about Afghanistan, and makes them in this order:

1) The Bin Laden family (if not exactly Osama himself) had a close if convoluted business relationship with the Bush family, through the Carlyle Group.

2) Saudi capital in general is a very large element of foreign investment in the United States.

3) The Unocal company in Texas had been willing to discuss a gas pipeline across Afghanistan with the Taliban, as had other vested interests.

4) The Bush administration sent far too few ground troops to Afghanistan and thus allowed far too many Taliban and al-Qaida members to escape.

5) The Afghan government, in supporting the coalition in Iraq, was purely risible in that its non-army was purely American.

6) The American lives lost in Afghanistan have been wasted. (This I divine from the fact that this supposedly "antiwar" film is dedicated ruefully to all those killed there, as well as in Iraq.)

It must be evident to anyone, despite the rapid-fire way in which Moore's direction eases the audience hastily past the contradictions, that these discrepant scatter shots do not cohere at any point. Either the Saudis run U.S. policy (through family ties or overwhelming economic interest), or they do not. As allies and patrons of the Taliban regime, they either opposed Bush's removal of it, or they did not. (They opposed the removal, all right: They wouldn't even let Tony Blair land his own plane on their soil at the time of the operation.) Either we sent too many troops, or were wrong to send any at all-the latter was Moore's view as late as 2002-or we sent too few. If we were going to make sure no Taliban or al-Qaida forces survived or escaped, we would have had to be more ruthless than I suspect that Mr. Moore is really recommending. And these are simply observations on what is "in" the film. If we turn to the facts that are deliberately left out, we discover that there is an emerging Afghan army, that the country is now a joint NATO responsibility and thus under the protection of the broadest military alliance in history, that it has a new constitution and is preparing against hellish odds to hold a general election, and that at least a million and a half of its former refugees have opted to return. I don't think a pipeline is being constructed yet, not that Afghanistan couldn't do with a pipeline. But a highway from Kabul to Kandahar-an insurance against warlordism and a condition of nation-building-is nearing completion with infinite labor and risk. We also discover that the parties of the Afghan secular left-like the parties of the Iraqi secular left-are strongly in favor of the regime change. But this is not the sort of irony in which Moore chooses to deal.

He prefers leaden sarcasm to irony and, indeed, may not appreciate the distinction. In a long and paranoid (and tedious) section at the opening of the film, he makes heavy innuendoes about the flights that took members of the Bin Laden family out of the country after Sept. 11. I banged on about this myself at the time and wrote a Nation column drawing attention to the groveling Larry King interview with the insufferable Prince Bandar, which Moore excerpts. However, recent developments have not been kind to our Mike. In the interval between Moore's triumph at Cannes and the release of the film in the United States, the 9/11 commission has found nothing to complain of in the timing or arrangement of the flights. And Richard Clarke, Bush's former chief of counterterrorism, has come forward to say that he, and he alone, took the responsibility for authorizing those Saudi departures. This might not matter so much to the ethos of Fahrenheit 9/11, except that-as you might expect-Clarke is presented throughout as the brow-furrowed ethical hero of the entire post-9/11 moment. And it does not seem very likely that, in his open admission about the Bin Laden family evacuation, Clarke is taking a fall, or a spear in the chest, for the Bush administration. So, that's another bust for this windy and bloated cinematic "key to all mythologies."

A film that bases itself on a big lie and a big misrepresentation can only sustain itself by a dizzying succession of smaller falsehoods, beefed up by wilder and (if possible) yet more-contradictory claims. President Bush is accused of taking too many lazy vacations. (What is that about, by the way? Isn't he supposed to be an unceasing planner for future aggressive wars?) But the shot of him "relaxing at Camp David" shows him side by side with Tony Blair. I say "shows," even though this photograph is on-screen so briefly that if you sneeze or blink, you won't recognize the other figure. A meeting with the prime minister of the United Kingdom, or at least with this prime minister, is not a goof-off.

The president is also captured in a well-worn TV news clip, on a golf course, making a boilerplate response to a question on terrorism and then asking the reporters to watch his drive. Well, that's what you get if you catch the president on a golf course. If Eisenhower had done this, as he often did, it would have been presented as calm statesmanship. If Clinton had done it, as he often did, it would have shown his charm. More interesting is the moment where Bush is shown frozen on his chair at the infant school in Florida, looking stunned and useless for seven whole minutes after the news of the second plane on 9/11. Many are those who say that he should have leaped from his stool, adopted a Russell Crowe stance, and gone to work. I could even wish that myself. But if he had done any such thing then (as he did with his "Let's roll" and "dead or alive" remarks a month later), half the Michael Moore community would now be calling him a man who went to war on a hectic, crazed impulse. The other half would be saying what they already say-that he knew the attack was coming, was using it to cement himself in power, and couldn't wait to get on with his coup. This is the line taken by Gore Vidal and by a scandalous recent book that also revives the charge of FDR's collusion over Pearl Harbor. At least Moore's film should put the shameful purveyors of that last theory back in their paranoid box.

But it won't because it encourages their half-baked fantasies in so many other ways. We are introduced to Iraq, "a sovereign nation." (In fact, Iraq's "sovereignty" was heavily qualified by international sanctions, however questionable, which reflected its noncompliance with important U.N. resolutions.) In this peaceable kingdom, according to Moore's flabbergasting choice of film shots, children are flying little kites, shoppers are smiling in the sunshine, and the gentle rhythms of life are undisturbed. Then-wham! From the night sky come the terror weapons of American imperialism. Watching the clips Moore uses, and recalling them well, I can recognize various Saddam palaces and military and police centers getting the treatment. But these sites are not identified as such. In fact, I don't think Al Jazeera would, on a bad day, have transmitted anything so utterly propagandistic. You would also be led to think that the term "civilian casualty" had not even been in the Iraqi vocabulary until March 2003. I remember asking Moore at Telluride if he was or was not a pacifist. He would not give a straight answer then, and he doesn't now, either. I'll just say that the "insurgent" side is presented in this film as justifiably outraged, whereas the 30-year record of Baathist war crimes and repression and aggression is not mentioned once. (Actually, that's not quite right. It is briefly mentioned but only, and smarmily, because of the bad period when Washington preferred Saddam to the likewise unmentioned Ayatollah Khomeini.)

That this-his pro-American moment-was the worst Moore could possibly say of Saddam's depravity is further suggested by some astonishing falsifications. Moore asserts that Iraq under Saddam had never attacked or killed or even threatened (his words) any American. I never quite know whether Moore is as ignorant as he looks, or even if that would be humanly possible. Baghdad was for years the official, undisguised home address of Abu Nidal, then the most-wanted gangster in the world, who had been sentenced to death even by the PLO and had blown up airports in Vienna and Rome. Baghdad was the safe house for the man whose "operation" murdered Leon Klinghoffer. Saddam boasted publicly of his financial sponsorship of suicide bombers in Israel. (Quite a few Americans of all denominations walk the streets of Jerusalem.) In 1991, a large number of Western hostages were taken by the hideous Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and held in terrible conditions for a long time. After that same invasion was repelled-Saddam having killed quite a few Americans and Egyptians and Syrians and Brits in the meantime and having threatened to kill many more-the Iraqi secret police were caught trying to murder former President Bush during his visit to Kuwait. Never mind whether his son should take that personally. (Though why should he not?) Should you and I not resent any foreign dictatorship that attempts to kill one of our retired chief executives? (President Clinton certainly took it that way: He ordered the destruction by cruise missiles of the Baathist "security" headquarters.) Iraqi forces fired, every day, for 10 years, on the aircraft that patrolled the no-fly zones and staved off further genocide in the north and south of the country. In 1993, a certain Mr. Yasin helped mix the chemicals for the bomb at the World Trade Center and then skipped to Iraq, where he remained a guest of the state until the overthrow of Saddam. In 2001, Saddam's regime was the only one in the region that openly celebrated the attacks on New York and Washington and described them as just the beginning of a larger revenge. Its official media regularly spewed out a stream of anti-Semitic incitement. I think one might describe that as "threatening," even if one was narrow enough to think that anti-Semitism only menaces Jews. And it was after, and not before, the 9/11 attacks that Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi moved from Afghanistan to Baghdad and began to plan his now very open and lethal design for a holy and ethnic civil war. On Dec. 1, 2003, the New York Times reported-and the David Kay report had established-that Saddam had been secretly negotiating with the "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il in a series of secret meetings in Syria, as late as the spring of 2003, to buy a North Korean missile system, and missile-production system, right off the shelf. (This attempt was not uncovered until after the fall of Baghdad, the coalition's presence having meanwhile put an end to the negotiations.)

Thus, in spite of the film's loaded bias against the work of the mind, you can grasp even while watching it that Michael Moore has just said, in so many words, the one thing that no reflective or informed person can possibly believe: that Saddam Hussein was no problem. No problem at all. Now look again at the facts I have cited above. If these things had been allowed to happen under any other administration, you can be sure that Moore and others would now glibly be accusing the president of ignoring, or of having ignored, some fairly unmistakable "warnings."

The same "let's have it both ways" opportunism infects his treatment of another very serious subject, namely domestic counterterrorist policy. From being accused of overlooking too many warnings-not exactly an original point-the administration is now lavishly taunted for issuing too many. (Would there not have been "fear" if the harbingers of 9/11 had been taken seriously?) We are shown some American civilians who have had absurd encounters with idiotic "security" staff. (Have you ever met anyone who can't tell such a story?) Then we are immediately shown underfunded police departments that don't have the means or the manpower to do any stop-and-search: a power suddenly demanded by Moore on their behalf that we know by definition would at least lead to some ridiculous interrogations. Finally, Moore complains that there isn't enough intrusion and confiscation at airports and says that it is appalling that every air traveler is not forcibly relieved of all matches and lighters. (Cue mood music for sinister influence of Big Tobacco.) So-he wants even more pocket-rummaging by airport officials? Uh, no, not exactly. But by this stage, who's counting? Moore is having it three ways and asserting everything and nothing. Again-simply not serious.

Circling back to where we began, why did Moore's evil Saudis not join "the Coalition of the Willing"? Why instead did they force the United States to switch its regional military headquarters to Qatar? If the Bush family and the al-Saud dynasty live in each other's pockets, as is alleged in a sort of vulgar sub-Brechtian scene with Arab headdresses replacing top hats, then how come the most reactionary regime in the region has been powerless to stop Bush from demolishing its clone in Kabul and its buffer regime in Baghdad? The Saudis hate, as they did in 1991, the idea that Iraq's recuperated oil industry might challenge their near-monopoly. They fear the liberation of the Shiite Muslims they so despise. To make these elementary points is to collapse the whole pathetic edifice of the film's "theory." Perhaps Moore prefers the pro-Saudi Kissinger/Scowcroft plan for the Middle East, where stability trumps every other consideration and where one dare not upset the local house of cards, or killing-field of Kurds? This would be a strange position for a purported radical. Then again, perhaps he does not take this conservative line because his real pitch is not to any audience member with a serious interest in foreign policy. It is to the provincial isolationist.

I have already said that Moore's film has the staunch courage to mock Bush for his verbal infelicity. Yet it's much, much braver than that. From Fahrenheit 9/11 you can glean even more astounding and hidden disclosures, such as the capitalist nature of American society, the existence of Eisenhower's "military-industrial complex," and the use of "spin" in the presentation of our politicians. It's high time someone had the nerve to point this out. There's more. Poor people often volunteer to join the army, and some of them are duskier than others. Betcha didn't know that. Back in Flint, Mich., Moore feels on safe ground. There are no martyred rabbits this time. Instead, it's the poor and black who shoulder the packs and rifles and march away. I won't dwell on the fact that black Americans have fought for almost a century and a half, from insisting on their right to join the U.S. Army and fight in the Civil War to the right to have a desegregated Army that set the pace for post-1945 civil rights. I'll merely ask this: In the film, Moore says loudly and repeatedly that not enough troops were sent to garrison Afghanistan and Iraq. (This is now a favorite cleverness of those who were, in the first place, against sending any soldiers at all.) Well, where does he think those needful heroes and heroines would have come from? Does he favor a draft-the most statist and oppressive solution? Does he think that only hapless and gullible proles sign up for the Marines? Does he think-as he seems to suggest-that parents can "send" their children, as he stupidly asks elected members of Congress to do? Would he have abandoned Gettysburg because the Union allowed civilians to pay proxies to serve in their place? Would he have supported the antidraft (and very antiblack) riots against Lincoln in New York? After a point, one realizes that it's a waste of time asking him questions of this sort. It would be too much like taking him seriously. He'll just try anything once and see if it floats or flies or gets a cheer.

Indeed, Moore's affected and ostentatious concern for black America is one of the most suspect ingredients of his pitch package. In a recent interview, he yelled that if the hijacked civilians of 9/11 had been black, they would have fought back, unlike the stupid and presumably cowardly white men and women (and children). Never mind for now how many black passengers were on those planes-we happen to know what Moore does not care to mention: that Todd Beamer and a few of his co-passengers, shouting "Let's roll," rammed the hijackers with a trolley, fought them tooth and nail, and helped bring down a United Airlines plane, in Pennsylvania, that was speeding toward either the White House or the Capitol. There are no words for real, impromptu bravery like that, which helped save our republic from worse than actually befell. The Pennsylvania drama also reminds one of the self-evident fact that this war is not fought only "overseas" or in uniform, but is being brought to our cities. Yet Moore is a silly and shady man who does not recognize courage of any sort even when he sees it because he cannot summon it in himself. To him, easy applause, in front of credulous audiences, is everything.

Moore has announced that he won't even appear on TV shows where he might face hostile questioning. I notice from the New York Times of June 20 that he has pompously established a rapid response team, and a fact-checking staff, and some tough lawyers, to bulwark himself against attack. He'll sue, Moore says, if anyone insults him or his pet. Some right-wing hack groups, I gather, are planning to bring pressure on their local movie theaters to drop the film. How dumb or thuggish do you have to be in order to counter one form of stupidity and cowardice with another? By all means go and see this terrible film, and take your friends, and if the fools in the audience strike up one cry, in favor of surrender or defeat, feel free to join in the conversation.

However, I think we can agree that the film is so flat-out phony that "fact-checking" is beside the point. And as for the scary lawyers-get a life, or maybe see me in court. But I offer this, to Moore and to his rapid response rabble. Any time, Michael my boy. Let's redo Telluride. Any show. Any place. Any platform. Let's see what you're made of.

Some people soothingly say that one should relax about all this. It's only a movie. No biggie. It's no worse than the tomfoolery of Oliver Stone. It's kick-ass entertainment. It might even help get out "the youth vote." Yeah, well, I have myself written and presented about a dozen low-budget made-for-TV documentaries, on subjects as various as Mother Teresa and Bill Clinton and the Cyprus crisis, and I also helped produce a slightly more polished one on Henry Kissinger that was shown in movie theaters. So I know, thanks, before you tell me, that a documentary must have a "POV" or point of view and that it must also impose a narrative line. But if you leave out absolutely everything that might give your "narrative" a problem and throw in any old rubbish that might support it, and you don't even care that one bit of that rubbish flatly contradicts the next bit, and you give no chance to those who might differ, then you have betrayed your craft. If you flatter and fawn upon your potential audience, I might add, you are patronizing them and insulting them. By the same token, if I write an article and I quote somebody and for space reasons put in an ellipsis like this (…), I swear on my children that I am not leaving out anything that, if quoted in full, would alter the original meaning or its significance. Those who violate this pact with readers or viewers are to be despised. At no point does Michael Moore make the smallest effort to be objective. At no moment does he pass up the chance of a cheap sneer or a jeer. He pitilessly focuses his camera, for minutes after he should have turned it off, on a distraught and bereaved mother whose grief we have already shared. (But then, this is the guy who thought it so clever and amusing to catch Charlton Heston, in Bowling for Columbine, at the onset of his senile dementia.) Such courage.

Perhaps vaguely aware that his movie so completely lacks gravitas, Moore concludes with a sonorous reading of some words from George Orwell. The words are taken from 1984 and consist of a third-person analysis of a hypothetical, endless, and contrived war between three superpowers. The clear intention, as clumsily excerpted like this (...) is to suggest that there is no moral distinction between the United States, the Taliban, and the Baath Party and that the war against jihad is about nothing. If Moore had studied a bit more, or at all, he could have read Orwell really saying, and in his own voice, the following:

The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to taking life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists, whose real though unacknowledged motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writing of the younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States …

And that's just from Orwell's Notes on Nationalism in May 1945. A short word of advice: In general, it's highly unwise to quote Orwell if you are already way out of your depth on the question of moral equivalence. It's also incautious to remind people of Orwell if you are engaged in a sophomoric celluloid rewriting of recent history.

If Michael Moore had had his way, Slobodan Milosevic would still be the big man in a starved and tyrannical Serbia. Bosnia and Kosovo would have been cleansed and annexed. If Michael Moore had been listened to, Afghanistan would still be under Taliban rule, and Kuwait would have remained part of Iraq. And Iraq itself would still be the personal property of a psychopathic crime family, bargaining covertly with the slave state of North Korea for WMD. You might hope that a retrospective awareness of this kind would induce a little modesty. To the contrary, it is employed to pump air into one of the great sagging blimps of our sorry, mediocre, celeb-rotten culture. Rock the vote, indeed.

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Saturday, June 26, 2004 11:32 AM

PLEASE111

I agree completely that Debbie's review is right wing, and YES it IS propaganda!!!! DUH! I bet that takes the wind out of your sails. It certainly makes your response more impotent!

##LOL! It might, except that you missed the point entirely.

**No, you did! You continue to make the same assumptions over and over again.

#### I love this, "No you did." :-)Let's clarify my assumption then, you couldn't wait for someone to take your bait so you could respond with that right-wing rethoric.

Your fatal flaw in logic, is assuming that I share her views! I just felt it was important to see things from an opposing point of view. Moore's opinions obviously come from an extreme left wing point of view. It seemed only proper to play devil's advocate,

##Give it a rest. You are not moderate and that wasn't the point to your three page cut-n-paste.

**You should give it a rest. You don't know me,

####I wouldn't want to know you, and I don't get much rest. :-)

and you certainly don't have the slightest clue what my true political beliefs are!

####Oh, I think your motives are very clear.

I posted a far right response to a far left movie. Neither OPINION is shared by me, as I have repreatedly stated. You are still clinging to the same flaw in your logic!

####Your responses have been poorly designed attempts to discredit Mike Moore to discourage people from seeing the movie. My posistion is that people should see the movie if they want, and they should make up their own *damn* minds.
:-)

and give a response from the extreme right. Both sides are wrong, and they always have been! One side believes in some mythical socialist paradise, and the other believes a facist kingdom is the cure for everyone's problems! The Democrats don't have all of the answers, and clearly, neither do the Republicans. The majority of the population tends to steer towards the middle, which is why moderate candidates (or candidates that appear moderate, like Gore and Bush both tried to convince us they were) win presidental elections! The reason the last election was so close, is because both Bush and Gore convinced enough voters that they were moderate. No candidate will win a presidental election on a true "left wing" or "right wing" platform!

#That's not true. A true moderate is going to have a tough time in November. On which points are moderate views going to capture a majority? Domestic economic policy, global foriegn policy, women's rights, religious issues...

**Are you serious?

####Very.

Do you even understand what a moderate platform is?

####I was a moderate republican for over 20 years. My voting record was not partisan. I registered as a democrat before the last primary solely because the current administration's agenda leans so far to the right in so many dangerous ways.

####I do agree that this country desparately needs some moderation (or maybe even a lot). Our government was carefully designed so that no single group could hold all of the power. These are checks and balances. One of the primary agendas of this administration has been control
all branches of the government (Executive, Legislative, and Judicial). Electing Kerry is the only step in the direction of moderation.

The only chance anyone running for president has, is running on a moderate platform,

####This is factually untrue. Nobody has ever unseated and incumbent president with a completely moderate agenda.

trying to win voters from both sides. Sure, there are degrees, but Bush ran on a right leaning moderate platform, and Gore ran on a left leaning moderate platform.

####Gore won the popular vote and that's a fact.

Both tried to lean towards the middle to get the critical indie and undecided votes. Ted Kennedy and Newt Gingrich would never win a presidental election, because the represent the extremes of their party's platforms.

####Yeah, that compasionate conservative line was a big load crap, and ahem, Newt isn't exactly the poster boy for the moderate.

Sorry, I'm not the easy "extremst" target you would like to believe I am.

##I think you are. If you're so middle of the road, then prove it. Give us your opinions on the war in Iraq. Do you support it? Was it justified? Is it about oil? Was it intended to divert attention? What about the nonexistent (or just extremely weak connection) to alcaida? What about the non existent weapons of mass destruction? What is your opinion of Richard Clarke? Is he telling the truth? Or, is he just a liberal trying to damage Bush's creditability before the election?

**My opinion of the war? We should have worked harder with the UN to resolve the problem. Saddam needed to go, but we needed the world behind us. We should have never invaded IRAQ without UN support!

####Damn right! But, we didn't did we? We plowed through with the collalition of the extreme minority. We were not open to any debate, and obviously did not enough think or plan
for the long-term consequences.

**My opinion on WMDs? They were there.

####Prior to 9/11 as stated by both Condeelza Rice and Colin Powell, Iraq had no WMDs or programs, and Iraq had no significant capability to attack it's neighbors. After 9/11 the story changes. But, when we got there, we didn't find anything. Ironically, the war brought al-Qaida to Iraq. Globally, al-Qaida's ranks have swelled and Global U.S. relations are the worst that they have ever been.

####BTW - I noticed that you didn't have a response to nonexistent Iraq/al-Qaida connection.

We gave them 6 months prior to invasion to dispose and/or hide them. Even the UN inspectors believed there were WMDs in IRAQ.

**My opion of Clarke? He's a flake,

####Lest we not forget that Clarke was hired by Reagan and has spent more time serving Republican administrations than democratic. You resort to the dismissive insult because there is no evidence to suggest that he has a liberal agenda, and his story rings true, especially when you line it up with the other facts.

but so was Newt! They represent the worst of their own party's extremes.

####I though you just said that Newt was a moderate. Moderate like you maybe...

Like Newt did with Clinton, Clarke is headhunting, and his actions will do more harm than good to his party.

####Years of investigation and tens of millions of dollars, and they busted him on a BJ. I think this when I really started to become disillusioned with republican party. Newts own personal history didn't stand up to well either.

That would make it easy for you to dismiss. The truth is, I dislike Micheal Moore for the same reason that I dislike Rush Limbaugh. Both twist facts to convince small minded lemmings to follow thier cause. It takes a lot more than that to get me to follow anyone. Frankly, I pity anyone that does. If you wish to believe Moore's tripe, you have my pity!!!

##You're plenty easy to dimiss. :-) And, I think for myself.

**Not really! If I was so easy to dismiss, you wouldn't be responding in the first place. DOH! :o

####Here we go again. Yes you are! LOL! :-)

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Saturday, June 26, 2004 4:01 PM

BRTICK

So, I've just seen the film.
Great stuff, as always, from Moore. It runs the full gambit of emotions. People laughed, cried, cheered (I’m personally too jaded to do any of that myself, but other people did). I was also slightly surpirsed at the crowd that turned out. some people every brought their kids.
I only disagreed with it on a couple of points ( I think people are putting too much on Bush for the “seven minutes”), but most of the film was right on.
It’s not as funny as his other films; in fact, it’s quite grim at parts. And Moore spends almost no time on the camera. Instead he serves mostly as narrator. Letting his subject matter take center stage in a way I don’t think he ever has. My only real complaint is that he tries to cover too much ground at some point.
Moore asks so many hard (some are more or less unanswerable) questions about fear, and leadership and war.
The stuff on the military is the most shocking and yet, he paints a very real picture about war and those it affects. Including those that serve in our military. He takes a hard and truthful look at the dark side of that. He lets us see the dark side and those than pins the blame square on those that put the troops there.
It’s so incredibly thought provoking. This documentary is amazing. And it is a pro-American film. This film makes us of, through and through, a the values and morals I was raised to believe were American values. people who say this isn't a documentary, apparently don't know what one really is.
GO SEE THIS FILM. Forget all the lefty vs. righty bullshit stuff you've heard. Just go see the film.

Keep Flying!

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Saturday, June 26, 2004 4:03 PM

FILMCRITIC3000

'Fahrenheit 9/11' Tops $8M in First Day

http://makeashorterlink.com/?S37A218A8

It looks like this may well be the #1 movie of the weekend, with more theatres added in the coming weeks. Quite a feat considering "White Chicks" is on about 2200 screens, while "Fahrenheit 9/11" is only on 868 or so.

FilmCritic3000

"If they give you ruled paper, write the other way."

- Juan Ramon Jiminez

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Saturday, June 26, 2004 8:10 PM

QUICKSAND

ROFL.

If we're trying to pick a movie that hates America, shouldn't we be pointing fingers at "White Chicks" anyway?

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Saturday, June 26, 2004 10:18 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Please111:

####I though you just said that Newt was a moderate. Moderate like you maybe...

I'd take the trouble to refute you again, but why bother. You are so into "you're a right wing wacko" rant, that you can't even get simple facts straight! Only a complete moron would infer that I ever considered Newt Gingrich a moderate! In fact, I clearly said that he demonstates the worst (I.E. EXTREME RIGHT) aspects of his own party! If you weren't so busy assmuming, and actually took time to read my responses before going off on another baseless rant, you'd see that we actually agree on many of these issues!

Claim to dismiss me all you wish, but you still respond everytime I make a point! That fact speaks for it self!

Am I a right wing conervative? Hell no! Am I a left wing liberal? Again, hell no!

I disgree with the war in IRAQ. I believed that Saddam should go, but I did't agree with the fact that we invaded IRAQ without UN support! Now that we are commited, we need to see it through (both in Iraq and Afganistan). If we pull out and leave the citizens of these countries vunarable to the first warlord powerful enough to take power, we'll be even more hated than we already are.

I support environmental issues, but only those that make sense. Example: Electric cars seem to be much better for the environment than gas powered cars, but the reality is, that electricity is made primarily by burning coal and oil. The increased production of electricity, so that every american could drive an electric car, would end up doing as much harm to our environment as current automoblies do. Fuel cell cars have other environmental issues that haven't been solved. They just don't work yet, but hopefully that will change. I'm sure that those who live in L.A. for example, would love to live to see the day that the sky isn't filled with haze, and that you would actually see more than a handfull of stars on a reasonably clear night!

I don't believe a two party political system works. Both partys apply so much pressure on members, that they fear voting against the party line, even when they know it's the right thing to do! We need I viable third party that can swing votes away from the majority party.

I believe that we should have term limits. Too many politicians from both partys are lap dogs to special interest groups, lobbists, and corporations! Term limits won't solve the problem, but it will minimize the exposure. It will also do away with career politicians! Do we really need Ted Kennedy (D) or Kit Bond (R) to serve another term?

I believe the President should have Line Item Veto powers. Too many junk laws get attached to good bills, and end up costing tax payers millions.

I am personally against abortion (except when the mother's life might be in danger), but I don't believe the government should have any control over this issue! I believe it is an individual decision. The only area I do take issue with, is third tri-mester abortions, when development of the fetus is far enough along that there is a working mind (soul). If a woman waits that long to make a decision, I feel that it is too late to abort. Too many premature births that survive at that stage of pregnancy, prove that this is a "life" at this point!

These beliefs are not conservative or liberal, they clearly lean towards a moderate view of politics. When you take a moment to stop ranting and assuming, you might understand that! BUT, I doubt it! Have a nice day! :)

I'd given some thought to movin' off the edge -- not an ideal location -- thinkin' a place in the middle.

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Sunday, June 27, 2004 12:32 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by MacBaker:
Good god man, how exactly do you dispose of a battery or fuel cell properly? Go visit a landfill, you'd be stunned to see the crap there, including batteries by the truck load!

Most major urban centers have a disposel site that takes care of such things for people. Perhaps it's because you live the US that you don't have one. Or maybe you do and you just don't know it.

Quote:
Originally posted by MacBaker:
As a nation, we don't even dispose of nuclear waste properly.

This scares me more than you know.

Quote:
Originally posted by MacBaker:
You live in a fantasy world, which probably explains most of your responses to this thread.

LOL, like you're the one that knows all, eh? Or is it just that I don't see things the way you do?

Quote:
Originally posted by MacBaker:
BTW, if I was the right winger you and other small minds believed, I wouldn't be concerned with environmental issues such as this.

LOL, you seem to be assuming that I look at people in a "black and white" way. Perhaps you should look to that before making such inflamitory comments.

----
"Canada being mad at you is like Mr. Rogers throwing a brick through your window." -Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

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Sunday, June 27, 2004 12:39 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by MacBaker:
The truth is somewhere in the middle. I was just playing devil's advocate, by showing a contrasting opinion, but the joke seems to be lost on "even the lowliest among us" here.

Huh? Where's the contrasting view? You seem to be (are) going off on the right. Perhaps you should be more careful when typing next time. And what's the "joke"? Are you off your meds?

Quote:
Originally posted by MacBaker:
BTW: Opinion pieces are called EDITORIALS, not documentarys, and they are always represented as the opinion of the commentator. Mr. Moore makes no such representations, and tries to convince his audience that his opinions are FACT. There's a big difference between an editorial piece and propaganda. Propaganda makers always claim they are giving facts, not opinions!

1) he does use facts, period, that is unless all that news archive footage doesn't count. That is unless all that public documentation doesn't count.
2) he states his opinions and the difference is explicit
3) he stated this *in an interview that I saw*
4) if people can't tell the very explicit difference they have more problems than they know
5) I would like you to direct me to the editorial section of the movie rental store please

----
"Canada being mad at you is like Mr. Rogers throwing a brick through your window." -Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

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Monday, June 28, 2004 7:50 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SigmaNunki:
Most major urban centers have a disposel site that takes care of such things for people. Perhaps it's because you live the US that you don't have one. Or maybe you do and you just don't know it.

*** Most CARS end up in junk yards, where they are stripped of any useful parts. An expended fuel cell isn't considered use full. The remaining "husk" of the car is then crushed, and moved to a land fill.

*** Most urban centers DO have disposal and recylce centers for such things, but MOST people don't use them!

Quote:
Originally posted by MacBaker:
As a nation, we don't even dispose of nuclear waste properly.

This scares me more than you know.

***Good, we agree on that point!

Quote:
Originally posted by MacBaker:
You live in a fantasy world, which probably explains most of your responses to this thread.

LOL, like you're the one that knows all, eh? Or is it just that I don't see things the way you do?

***Actually, as you fail to see, again and again, we do agree on several points. The problem lies in your assumptions. Example: In you fantasy world where all individuals and corporations properly dispose of toxic waste, such as batteries

Quote:
Originally posted by MacBaker:
BTW, if I was the right winger you and other small minds believed, I wouldn't be concerned with environmental issues such as this.

LOL, you seem to be assuming that I look at people in a "black and white" way. Perhaps you should look to that before making such inflamitory comments.

*** No, it's fairly clear that I see the greys just fine. You are making the assumptions! LOL

I'd given some thought to movin' off the edge -- not an ideal location -- thinkin' a place in the middle.

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Monday, June 28, 2004 8:05 AM

Hi Crevanreaver, thanks for the posting. That's a great review. Where's the URL link for the article online?

CREVANREAVER posted:

Unfairenheit 9/11

The lies of Michael Moore.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, June 21, 20

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Monday, June 28, 2004 8:18 AM

This was brought up earlier. Mike Wilson's film
should be the film to watch. It promotes the real truth and asking the questions truthfully. It asks it audience to think for themselves with the facts presented as themselves in its own truth form.
I think the link is worthwhile to be brought up again for reference.

http://www.michaelmoorehatesamerica.com/trailer_sm.html

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Monday, June 28, 2004 8:28 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SigmaNunki:
Quote:
Originally posted by MacBaker:
The truth is somewhere in the middle. I was just playing devil's advocate, by showing a contrasting opinion, but the joke seems to be lost on "even the lowliest among us" here.

Huh? Where's the contrasting view? You seem to be (are) going off on the right. Perhaps you should be more careful when typing next time. And what's the "joke"? Are you off your meds?

*** Let's see if I can make this simple enough for you to comprehend. Moore's movie comes from the extreme left wing (something he easily admits), the review I posted came from the extreme right wing. What could possibly be more contrasting, than a response from someone with completely opposite views from Mr. Moore's. Maybe you don't undertand what the word "contrasting" means. Look it up!

Quote:
Originally posted by MacBaker:
BTW: Opinion pieces are called EDITORIALS, not documentarys, and they are always represented as the opinion of the commentator. Mr. Moore makes no such representations, and tries to convince his audience that his opinions are FACT. There's a big difference between an editorial piece and propaganda. Propaganda makers always claim they are giving facts, not opinions!

1) he does use facts, period, that is unless all that news archive footage doesn't count. That is unless all that public documentation doesn't count.
2) he states his opinions and the difference is explicit
3) he stated this *in an interview that I saw*
4) if people can't tell the very explicit difference they have more problems than they know
5) I would like you to direct me to the editorial section of the movie rental store please

*** 1) Which facts are those? The ones where he uses Clarke as his poster boy, or the ones he leaves out, where Clarke has publicly amitted that it wasn't Bush who approved the Bin Laden family flights out of the country, but Clarke himself approved such flights? Or the one where Moore mistakes a summit picture of Bush and Tony Blair, with a vacation? Those "facts"? It's so easy to take things out of context. Many of these so called facts are being contested by political experts all over the country, and many of these experts have no love for the current administration!

*** 2) and 3) Yes, he does state his opinions, but there is no such warning during his movie. You have to get that from other sources, such as this ABC interview.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Random House defines "propaganda" as information, rumors, et cetera, deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, et cetera. By that definition, Fahrenheit 911 is propaganda, isn't it?

MOORE: Well, it's an op-ed piece. It's my opinion about the last four years of the Bush administration. And that's what I call it. I'm not trying to pretend that this is some sort of, you know, fair and balanced work of journalism, even though those who use the words "fair and balanced" often aren't that, but—

Critics of the movie charge that Moore's filmmaking style is deliberately misleading. Stephanopoulos raised two separate issues about the film's accuracy — the first regarding Moore's assertions about the movement of the bin Laden family in the week following 9/11.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Take the issue of the Saudi planes. You make a big issue, a big chunk in the film about this issue where a few days after Sept. 11, many members of the Osama bin Laden family, Saudi nationals, were taken out of the country. It was helped, arranged by the White House. You suggest it was done when the airspace was closed. You suggest that these people were not screened. And you also [suggest] there's a whole sinister subtext there that this was because of the Bush family ties to the bin Laden family. But the 9/11 commission report found that they didn't fly until the airspace was open, that they were screened by the FBI. In fact—

MOORE: That's not true. That's not true. And in fact … there's an FBI agent who was on the al Qaeda task force who's in my movie, who says quite bluntly, "No, proper police procedures were not followed."

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, wait. But what wasn't true? Because it says here in the 9/11 commission report that these flights didn't take off until after the airspace reopened. That is true, correct?

MOORE: No, they were on charter flights. Once the airspace opened for commercial flights, they hadn't opened for the charter flights. And so the charter flights that picked up the bin Ladens around the country, that went to the various cities — this was all assisted by the White House, which really should be the real focus of this.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, but Richard Clarke, who's probably at the top of the White House enemy list, says that it was his decision, he takes responsibility for it. He doesn't think it was a mistake.

MOORE: Right. And he said that he's made mistakes, and he apologized to the 9/11 families for those mistakes.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But that wasn't one of the mistakes.

MOORE: Well, I happen to think it was a mistake. And the FBI did not do the proper interrogation, as our FBI agent says in the movie.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You said you have one retired FBI agent in the movie, Jack Cloonan, I think his name is. But here's the 9/11 commission report. It says, "The FBI has concluded that nobody was allowed to depart on these six flights that the FBI wanted to interview in connection with the 9/11 attacks, or who the FBI later concluded had any involvement in those attacks. To date, we have uncovered no evidence to contradict those conclusions." Do you have any reason to doubt the credibility of the 9/11 commission?

MOORE: Well, first of all, that's their preliminary report. This is not the final report.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, but then you make a pretty outrageous leap, though. You … suggest that Bush has somehow gone easy on bin Laden because of these connections between the bin Laden family—

MOORE: I don't blame him for that. I don't blame him for that. Hey, if you gave me $1.4 billion, I'd take your call too.

Easy on Bin Ladens?

STEPHANOPOULOS: Do you believe that Bush has gone easy on bin Laden because … of ties between the Bush family and the bin Laden family?

MOORE: I believe he's gone easy on the Saudi royals and the bin Ladens? Absolutely. They turned their head the other way. First of all, all the way leading up to 9/11, they didn't even want to think that there was anything wrong with Saudi Arabia.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But you're also making leaps, and by doing that, aren't you doing exactly what you accuse your opponents of doing? A lot of people have said the Bush administration looked at the raw data, looked at the raw intelligence about weapons of mass destruction, but then cherry-picked it, selectively edited it, exaggerated parts, extrapolated parts. Aren't you doing exactly the same thing?

MOORE: No, I'm presenting the truth. One hundred forty-two Saudi royals were assisted in leaving the country in the days after 9/11. They went to the front of the line. And as soon as the airspace opened to leave the country, they were the first to get out.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But they were screened by the FBI.

MOORE: What do you mean? No, they weren't. According to the 9/11 report, only 30 of the 142 were screened. The others had no interview. It is not outrageous to think that there's something suspicious about the fact that all of a sudden, all of these people wanted to get out of the country on a one-way ticket and not come back.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But do you accept the conclusion of the 9/11 commission now that all 142 of these people have been checked against the FBI watch list and there were no matches?

MOORE: That's not their conclusion. This is the preliminary report, and that's why they've put it up on the Web site. And I am making my comment on their preliminary report.

Stephanopoulos also asked Moore about a scene involving Rep. Mark Kennedy, R-Minn.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You have a scene when you're up on Capitol Hill encountering members of Congress, asking them if they would ask their sons and daughters to enlist … in the military. And one of those members of Congress who appears in the trailer, Mark Kennedy, said you left out what he told you, which is that he has two nephews serving in the military, one in Afghanistan. And he went on to say that, "Michael Moore doesn't always give the whole truth. He's a master of the misleading."

MOORE: Well, at the time, when we interviewed him, he didn't have any family members in Afghanistan. And when he saw the trailer for this movie, he issued a report to the press saying that he said that he had a kid in—

STEPHANOPOULOS: He said he told you he had two nephews.

MOORE: … No, he didn't. And we released the transcript and we put it on our Web site. This is what I mean by our war room. Any time a guy like this comes along and says, "I told him I had two nephews and one was going to Iraq and one was going to Afghanistan," he's lying. And I've got the raw footage and the transcript to prove it. So any time these Republicans come at me like this, this is exactly what they're going to get. And people can go to my Web site and read the transcript and read the truth. What he just said there, what you just quoted, is not true.

This Week followed up with the office of Rep. Kennedy. He did have two nephews in the military, but neither served in Iraq. Kennedy's staff agrees that Moore's Website is accurate but insists the movie version is misleading. In the film, Moore says, "Congressman, I'm trying to get members of Congress to get their kids to enlist in the Army and go over to Iraq." But, from the transcript, here's the rest:

MOORE: Is there any way you could help me with that?

KENNEDY: How would I help you?

MOORE: Pass it out to other members of Congress.

KENNEDY: I'd be happy to — especially those who voted for the war. I have a nephew on his way to Afghanistan.

In the course of the interview, Moore took on the media's handling of the war in Iraq.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You say this is an op-ed … and that this is not just straight journalism. What responsibility do you feel you have in this post-9/11 environment—

MOORE: Did I mention it's a comedy too?

***4) Most people seem to believe anything that's force fed them in the media, without questioning the "facts". Propaganda is a very effective tool. Just ask any German that lived during Hitler's reign.

***5) According to Mr. Moore, it belongs in the "Comedy" section! Most movies have a disclaimer at the beginning, that states "the views and comments presented in this film, are the express opinions of the filmmakers, and are not necessarily the views of (insert studio name and/or distributer)".

I'd given some thought to movin' off the edge -- not an ideal location -- thinkin' a place in the middle.

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Monday, June 28, 2004 8:30 AM

SUCCATASH

Quote:
Originally posted by Jasonzzz:
Mike Wilson's film should be the film to watch. It promotes the real truth and asking the questions truthfully.

Jason, you sound brainwashed. Michael Moore doesn't hate America. This is the real truth? Yeah right.

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Monday, June 28, 2004 8:47 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Jasonzz.. as usual, you're spouting second-hand opinions. You find the few (very few) negative ones and post them here. And you call Mike Moore a propagandist? And you do this with outrage???

Wait! Wait! I know! You're just trying to "balance the picture!"

MacBaker, Jasonzz, Crevanreaver- GO SEE THE FILM. I don't want to hear your "second-hand" opinions!

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Monday, June 28, 2004 9:02 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Succatash:
Quote:
Originally posted by Jasonzzz:
Mike Wilson's film should be the film to watch. It promotes the real truth and asking the questions truthfully.

Jason, you sound brainwashed. Michael Moore doesn't hate America. This is the real truth? Yeah right.

Hi Suck-a-Tash:

thanks for calling me a name. But since you sound like an ass - it must be ok. Here's another person's opinion. But this might indeed look very entertaining since I believe that it will use the same tactics that MM uses but in a different way. I think if you contrast that with what MM has/had to offer, it will clearly delineat the what and how these methods are employed to skew an op-ed into a "mock/documentary".

Just agreeing with someone who spouts things that you want to hear makes you a fool - regardless of what false pretense, what manipulative tools, or what deceptive tactics they used. It saids that you are easily manipulated. Find out how he is doing it and whether he really is speaking/skewing/slanting the truth or outright lying. It doesn't matter if they have sweetened it with honey, it's still poison that they are pouring into your ear.

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Monday, June 28, 2004 9:04 AM