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S-11 Redux: (Channel) Surfing the Apocalypse
Halo1 writes "The Guerrilla News Network has made a great 11 minute movie, culled from over 20 hours of footage from different channels. It's a lightning fast razorsharp analysis of the post 9/11 coverage by the general media and gives you quite a different view of the politicians and their calls for war. It's insightful, frightning and funny at the same time (we need a new mod option! :). The links on the movie page go to the Windows Media version at the Sundance Online Film Festival (they're competing with that movie), but they also have Quicktime versions available locally: low and high bandwidth (links posted with permission from all involved parties)."
However, it was interesting to watch, if not a bit preachy. The thing that I walked away with it the previous time was this being painted as Christians vs. Muslums. It seems to be timely once again, tho'.
The only ones that will pay attention are those that held these views already. Especially since the method of information distribution is an indie film. It's not as if this stuff hasn't been exposed since 9-11, it's just that the sheeple are apathetic towards manipulation and corruption. If James Bamford can't get people to care one whit with editorial columns in USA Today, and the best Michael Moore can do is provoke a few days' worth of discussion with a nationally-distributed film, what hope does this project have?
kudos for doublechecking permission before slashdotting a site that is definately gonna get slammed, come morning. i know you got flamed last time for that barcode site, and it's good to see you're alerting people in advance this time.
in other news, interesting short film, i really liked the various music they played on it. did anyone by any chance catch the piano bit and know who wrote/composed/arranged it by any chance? it almost sounded like somthing out of the thomas crown affair.
moox. for a new generation.
my favorite part was about halfway through when they show henry kissinger (nobel peace prize winner and butcher of chile, e. timor, and vietnam) talking about the importance of strong leadership. queue "dueling banjos" and cut to president bush making an ass of himself ("...the american people...uh..."). i can't be the only person in america who cringes every time the president tries to say something off the top of his head. how in holy hell did a man that profoundly stupid become president of the united states?
... only in the way that now people are going to go around spouting this stuff as gospel because they are too lazy to go do their own research. Yes, it is well done. I even chuckled at the banjo music. However, quotes taken out of context do not count as fact. No matter who said it or how many there are in a row, it's still not the whole truth. I laugh at CNN for their egotistical 'learn about whole world's events in 30 seconds' approach to news, but this is something else entirely.
This, to me, is how MTV would cover the news in a desperate stab at keeping people's attention.
The powerful message coming out of the film was that we (and by "we" it's clear GNN means "the west", not america alone) are in a position to do something about the dangerous cycle of violence that is threatening what we have come to know as free civilisation.
By equating Al Qaeda with Islam, and the actions of terrorists with those of muslims, many in positions of responsibility in government (specifically, the clip shows Bush and his aides, Jean Chretien, Tony Blair, et al) and especially the media are pushing the views of the public toward a mindset last seen, with catastrophic outcomes, in the crusades.
According to Bush, because "they" hate "us", we must beat them until they change their minds. Christianity == good, Islam == bad. "Either you're with us, or with the terrorists", declared Bush.
Well, this film shows that we needn't subscribe to that point of view.
"You expect objectivity and balance from a news organization?"
It seems to me that worse sins are committed in the name of objectivity than would occur if the news orgs simply owned up, and reported what they wanted to. Many (poor) news outlets attempt to cast both sides of an issue as equivalent, which is all well and good, until you note that they extend it to an issue which has 99% of everyone on one side, and the loonies on the other. I've even seen fainthearted attempts to claim that Darwin's theory of evolution and creationism have the same amount of scientific basis, and that's with fairly liberal west coast papers. Ugh.
We can snigger at Bush's pea-sized brain but the fact is, he (and Blair et al) has got the sales pitch going and those against his war-mongering, do not. We can't just say, "don't destroy out civil rights, don't go to war" without offering an alternative, without offering some kind of argument
To give Bush some credit, he's not really that stupid. He's certainly not a deep thinker or a great speaker, and too many people mistake those qualities for good leadership. His gaffes tend to get inflated by the liberal news media, just as Clinton's so-called corruption was inflated by the conservative (and mainstream!) news media. A lot of the rhetoric being tossed about regarding Bush sounds suspiciously like the drivel we heard about Clinton for eight years- driven by partisanship rather than facts, and ignoring the more substantive criticisms.
Anyway, you've pretty much highlighted the current dilemma of the Democratic party, which came across as the Prescription Drug Party this past election. All the campaign updates I receive (I do still vote Dem, reluctantly) sounded exactly the same:
GEORGE W. BUSH WANTS TO PAVE THE RAINFORESTS, AUCTION OFF YOUR UTERUS TO ENRON, AND BOMB STARVING THIRD-WORLD COUNTRIES WITH BIBLES.
Obviously the majority of the people who bothered to show up at the polls weren't very impressed. I'm moderately anti-abortion and moderately pro-war, and though I have little love for the GOP I'm finding it very hard to support the Democrats given that their existence seems to rest on being the anti-Bush party right now. They'd do well to stop pandering to NOW, the NAACP, and the AARP, and actually come up with some substantive policy.
What you won't find in the video are the basic catalysts that triggered America's launching of the War on Terror. See any 2001 WTC video? How about WTC in the early 1990s? See any shots of the Pentagon after over 100 people died from an airliner being sent into it? How about any footage of Flight 97? No? What about coverage from the US Navy Ship USS Cole? Must have missed it.
In each of these events Americans died at the hands of terrorists. Americans are a generally peace loving people and did very little in response to terrorist attacks upon it until the events of September 11, 2001. Ultimately and rightly so, this vile and evil act was the final outrage that engaged America.
The words of Admiral Yamamato, "We have awoken a sleeping giant" spoken during World War II are relevant today. America did not pick this fight, but America will end the fight by utterly and completely defeating those who directly act against its people anywhere in the world.
The producers of this film take advantage of American technology to make their point over a network conceived and developed primarily by Americans.
Consider for a moment the great contributions of most of the nations of the middle east in the last century:
Buhler? Buhler? Anyone? Anyone?
How about America?
Aviation. Medicine. Manufacturing. Electronics. Telecommunications. Technology. Computing. Internet. Al Gore... Ok, so forget the last one.
I am tired of those who insist that the land, which gives them the very freedoms to open their great pie holes to speak out against it, is always wrong. America is not always wrong. There are bad people in the world who want to kill Americans and so America has a right and obligation to rid the world of those who wish to murder its citizenry.
The not so subtle comparison of America to Nazi Germany in the video is an affront to decency. Hitler rounded up and summarily murdered over 6 million Jewish people. In America, we are worrying about the conditions of the potties and quality of food given to those who actively participated in armed conflict against US soldiers. Hitler would have interrogated and shot these people within days, possibly hours.
There is no comparison and any pointing to such comparisons diminishes what happened to the Jews of Nazi Germany who faced horrors, which the "intelligencia" seem to have conveniently forgotten. Shame on anyone who dares to make comparisons of America and Nazi Germany.
Where will the blame America first crowd be when the first tactical nuke detonates in the US?
I am glad that America is not going to sit on its hands as a nation to find out. Do we round up Moslems and place them en mass into concentration camps? No, but America does have a right to interrogate those who are likely enemy combatants. Really we do... Really.
If the bad guys continue to blow up innocent civilians and target Americans, then "we will sustain this cycle of violence and revenge until humanity is returned to the status of primitivity."
The film? It gets two thumbs down... Really.
And this is different from the nightly news how? But unlike the nightly news, they've now got you thinking that maybe a constant barrage of sound bites, images, and quick cuts doesn't tell the whole truth and nothing but.
Mission accomplished, IMHO.
Hrm... not to rain on your paranoia parade, but there's more oil in Canada than there is in the middle east. Much of that is at present unexploited, but the US does import more oil from Canada at present than it does from Saudi Arabia.
The US gets less than 20% of its oil from the middle east. If its "all about oil" as you seem to claim, the US should be using political leverage to increase pump & oilsands production in Canada, not getting their people killed overseas. Not to mention dealing with the situation in Venezuela.
I think there is a bit more to it than you have identified...