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)."
I was in Radio Shack yesterday, and saw it streamed over the demo computer. I enjoyed the fast 9/11 clips they pieced together. Especially the Dan Rather series.
Beep. Boop. Beep. You have questions. I have answers and your home address.
I might actually get the movie before it gets slashdotted.
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
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'.
In related news, the GNN news network was disrupted by a terrorist attack. A group known as 'Slashdot' has claimed responsibility.
Seriously, thoug, can anyone post a transcript for thoses of us with really slow internet connections?
I haven't seen 9-11: (c)StA, despite being a GNN forum semi-regular, but I've had the opportunity to view other collage film efforts on the topic.
In particular, Plasticman and the Justice League by Toronto artist and slacker Jonathan Culp was quite hilarious and biting.
If you're up for a slightly twisted view of things, along with some artsy-fartsy film tricks, dig around the alternative billboards in your area. There's some interesting stuff floating around out there. It may not change any minds (or it might!), but as cultural artifacts and Negativland-style low-budget social commentary efforts, many such flicks are worth seeking out.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
before this get's slashdotted, you can download the movie at
b .m ov
http://http.dvlabs.com/gnn/qt/gnn/redux/redux_b
Happy viewing!
Do them a favor and download from the Sundance site instead of the GNN. They have a distributed, Akamai-like system for viewing the flick.
You get the film, the GNN doesn't spend money on bandwidth, and noone feels too guilty about slashdotting a film-specializing site like Sundance. Everyone wins.
Alternativately, find an interesting political story that doesn't come out of the same old, tired, pseudo-radicalist mindset and attempt to provide the same standards of objectivity and balance that would be expected of a news organization.
You expect objectivity and balance from a news organization?
I know journalism classes talk a big game about "objectivity" these days, and most news organizations will pay lip service to the concept, but a cursory glance over the political content of most news media will immediately expose the editorial bias of the organization in question. I'm actually happier when a website or newspaper comes right out and admits its editorial slant, rather than letting it quietly run past the editorial page.
In particular, Fox News' "Fair and Balanced" slogan is practically begging to be refuted. Not that CNN or many other news networks are much better, Fox just happened to be the org that painted a huge bullseye on itself regarding objectivity.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Not quite. Rusty works really hard on the quality of his site. And when he asked for money to keep things going he gave out specific numbers, took a very reasonable salary, and turned his operation into a nonprofit.
Interesting that the clip of Ted Koppel in which he talks about wishing "all our Muslim viewers a happy Ramadan" doesn't include the full quote, which ended with something along the lines of "We do want to be politically correct, don't we?" The full clip is available in this amazing "illegal" video Spin
at illegal-art.org, where incidentally you can download other illegal audio & video.
Secondly, Steve Allen was a genius.
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?
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
www.mplayerhq.hu
If you can't watch WMV, you're just not trying.
Or you don't run x86, but that wuld be nutty.
I want my Cowboyneal
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.
Not that's necessarily of much use to you either.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
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.
this
While I dont like the GNNs message, but I think the series of images and sounds contained in this video are pretty damn cool.
In a recent news report covering an anti-US rally in Iraq, one man was shown holding a banner reading "A nation of sheep, owned by pigs, and led by wolves." (or something to that effect). Most Americans would probably find this very offensive unless they consider the facts of the matter, and the truth is that we have let Donald "Let's Rumble" Rumsfeld and the rest of the Bush-lynching mob get completely out of control. This movie only helps to drive that point home.
This was clearly made by the "Daddy is paying for my college, let's go protest...yah!!" crowd. While I appreciate art, I loathe the fact that the most recogized art is made by people who, with their views, would otherwise be known as "freaks" or , my favorite, "those people". The news media by and large knows nothing and we must not forget that they are all clamoring for ratings first and real news and insight comes second.
As far as the comments about Fox News; while it does seem to lean to the Right this is highlighted by the other networks leaning far far Left. I don't believe any of it is intentional (Please see Bernard Goldberg's book Bias). I expect bias. Can you imagine going through life with no opinion? And if a journalist could even get out of college without hugging a tree or joining a protest then the Washington game would do them in at some point.
In case you're wondering...I do listen to Rush Limbaugh, I drive German cars, I'm poor, I couldn't code to save my life, approve of drug legalization, and I'm drunk at this moment. I don't conform to labels....do you?
refreshing to see slashdot address some real issues rather than 'dmca is evil take 1024'. i must've downloaded the video a couple of months back though so i don't know how its news - quite funny but of course lacking in any hard facts so not going to really convert anyone but the converted. the GNN also has a series of videos on 'unanswered questions about sept 11' which are interesting and more informative but rather conspiracy theorist.
in my search for a bit of truth about the whole matter, i've put together a small set of actual facts about sept 11 + american foreign policy in general and thrown them on my website www.bevin.de/usa/ . every fact/claim is linked to relatively credible documents / news stories. i'd like to hear some slashdotters' opinions - the site is pretty anti us-foreign-policy in its leaning but like i said, nothings there thats not well backed up, which is in contrast to everything else i've been able to find on the web.
I always thought G.W.B looked a bit like kid on the porch from Deliverence.
I never really knew he WAS the kid!
Now whenever I watch a state of the union address I'll get the same creepy feeling I get when I hear William Shatner sing.
The thing I really didn't like about this video (aside from its political angle, but it _did_ come from GNN after all..) was its methodology of trying to create a constant stream of ideas (like a audio-visual 'stream of consciousness') out of a series of quotes taken out of context, or even cut to mean the complete opposite of what was then said. Add to that the various funny bits, such as slow framing Bush, and him umming and ahhing with the combined effect of making him appear vacant, and altogether we actually have a standard piece of propaganda: Shaping how we think through use of the media, and giving 'sound bites' to give the appearance of rational arguments, while the actual content is a lot more vacuous than it appears.
"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.
It's just more of the same old same old objectionist nonsense ["You're bad, what you do is bad, shame on you, shame on you."] without any attempt to provide an alternative. Why? Because that's hard to do.
So they come off looking like a bunch of bitch ass, daddy's buying, whiners.
Someone please explain what the hell this actually was if I'm wrong.
Well obviously the liberal spin on it is stupid, but using similar images and putting a different spin on it it would be a really nifty piece of imagry for the other side.
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.
Fox News is really pretty far-right; it's just that their constant denial of bias can throw you off and give you a warm, fuzzy feeling, especially if you do have a conservative streak. (This coming from a fellow Libertarian, albeit one who thinks Libertarianism reserves the people's right to form communes. ;)) If there's one thing GNN does point out, it's that all the 'liberal' outlets are 1. asleep at the wheel anyway (e.g., more interested in pimping AOLTW or Disney properties than conducting journalism), and 2. more than happy to be under the influence of the propaganda machine (they get their Press Passes, they don't need to write the stories or get the film themselves, the DoD provides the Shit Blowing Up footage the folks at home love)... FWIW, the New York Times seems to get a lot of shit for it- I guess because all the hippies just *expect* CNN/ABC/etc to be biased- but I think their wibbling is more based on Jewish neuroses. (This coming from a Jew. Everyone under the 'Jew' label not actively screaming for war (Sharon) feels like a total cornered asshole right now - as a friend who just got drafted into the .il military said... well, not quite literally, but, "Jesus Christ, I don't want to fight, but these people are killing my friends|neighbors|relatives!")
Er, anyhow... GNN seems run by some grown-up hippies, but it *is* rather inobvious where the cash and such comes from... It's mostly a shoestring type of thing, but given the whole sponsorship of the Eminem video (which would've almost had some sort of message if he didn't apologize at the end of the track), you'd think they'd follow the open-society schtick and make it more obvious who everyone is, what their party registrations are and so forth.
In case you're wondering... I gave up on listening to Limbaugh when I turned 13, I drive a 13MPG LeBaron (though I'm not particularly happy about it), I'm poor after making Daddy pay for college, I can't code to save your life, I'm in favor of legalization and I'm probably going to join the Navy since killing people beats being homeless.
newsflash: the media (cable news networks and everything) are OWNED, bloody OWNED, by half a dozen gigantic corporations. and they don't tend towards the left side of the fence, billy. as for bernard goldberg's book: from Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) http://www.fair.org/articles/bias-op-ed.html
EBN was doing this stuff, much better, I might add, in the early 90's.
I qualify that slightly because afaik, it might even be some or all of the founding members of EBN that are behind GNN. Their original stuff, however, was far more deft and sarcastic. This 11-minute clip was fairly boring bore none of the medium-bending antics of the previous group.
My
Limekiller
That was an incredibly biting and funny piece of political satire! I've been a fan of GNN for a while, ever since they re-released their 'Real War' video.
:)
I wonder how long it will take for GNN to be classed amongst the 'Axis of Evil'
-- 7 string electric violin + live loop samplers
it's been on the fileshare apps for ages... it came out approx October 2001
Oh you don't r0x0rs as much as I do, I got it from a uNd3rgrouNd warez s1te in June 2001!
I've setup a mirror of the Quicktime version here. It's limited to 30 connections currently, but this may change at any time.
Donate free food here
It didn't have anything insightful to say, made gratuitous insults towards public figures disliked by the loony left, and reduced a complex situation to a set of distorted and misleading images suitable for ingestion by the MTV generation.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Please don't use this link anymore, the gnn people mailed me to say that if the slashdotting of their servers continued like this, they'll be broke by morning. Either watch it at Sundance or use my mirror (for now at least, can't promise how long it will stay up).
Donate free food here
I recognized a bit of Dave Brubeck (from "Take Five") in the video.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Just curious if anyone else has seen any of the EBN (Emergency Broadcast Network) videos? this reminds me of Josh's work.
.. good stuff if you liked that..
Also, You should check out www.oddcast.com click on OTV news and there are some similar videos
I just wish Josh would update the content on oddcast, there hasnt been a update for a year or more.. any rate check out the "I am a Astronaut" vid, funny stuff..
-BlahSnarto
Anyone else find this movie to be cheap and pointless? Bowling for Columbine was better.
It's pretty good and gets into some detail. He has some other videos as well, and a good mon-fri daily radio show. Also check on the site the link to the 9-11, government prior knowledge collection of articles.
The fact that you noticed that indicates that you, indeed,are not one of those who "accept things blindly" - but IMHO it's these people at which the clip aims: they're supposed to change their opinion radically and only later (realize that they've been had / rationalize that / form their own opinion)...
-- Language is a virus from outer space.
Yeah, it was perjury. For lying on the stand about a blowjob.
Tell me you wouldn't do the same, were you in his situation. Though I don't know many people who would blow a fat Republican...
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
"Hitler rounded up and summarily murdered over 6 million Jewish people" it was Bush's grandpappy Prescott that helped Hitler have the money to round up those Jews.
That's why I call CNN and BBC World "Propaganda 1" and "2" respectively.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
I don't think GNN is claiming that everything else is bullshit, or that what happened wasn't terrible, but they're showing that if they can manipulate those images to show you their view of the situation, then you should keep in mind that what you originally get to see is also manipulated to show you the politicians/media companies' version. At the same time, the maker obviously also voices his opinion ("war isn't going to solve this"), but so did the people that made the original footage (and the makers of the movie you link to).
Donate free food here
Unless you're using Hurd or Windows 3.1, there's almost definately both Quickime and Windows Media for your platform. Stop whining.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Mplayer playes quicktime:
http://www.MPlayerHQ.hu
I am just watching the movie under Linux.
<i>then our concept of a democracy (which is founded on the ability for all citizens to choose their nation's destiny based on a full spectrum of information) is in desperate peril. </i>
These people can't stop rewriting history. Our _Republic_ was based on the idea that wealthy men should be in office because the wealty men would be incorruptable (whoops!)
As for: <i>Film Synopsis: A clever and cutting critique of media coverage on terrorism after September 11th. </i>
When you consider that all the major news outfits on TV, Cbale and Print are wildly liberal just what the fuck are these people complaining about? (Yes I know all abot AM radio and FOX (which ain't so far to the right.))
Americans are violent. Just watch our TV shows. Attacking us will sure be your demise. And (apparently) if we can't find you we will kill someone else. Best to leave US alone.
This
You'll love this
This has been a test. Had this been a real emergency, we would have fled in terror and you would not have been informed.
I am as pissed off as ever. I am as angry as I was then but not at all frightened. The last Little Red Corvette section reminded me that there are people in this country who don't deserve to live here. People who just want the free ride. People who have never considered giving of themselves. People who do not know personal loss and feel guilty about it. People whose shallow lives are bolstered by their Stockholm Syndrome fetish. People who latch onto one silly fucking thing after another in an attempt to gain crediblilty as a member of humanity.
The scumbags who made that waste of film will have hopefully forgotten to have gotten the rights to one of those clips and will be sued blind.
America is not NAZI Germany. George Bush got Cs in College, he's not a dolt. In fact, if you consider grade inflation, he's probably a better student than an A+ student is now. I don't think he's going to be hanging out at Mensa meetings anytime soon but Thank God we don't have some liberal-washed intelligensia in Office now kow-towing to our atackers. Trying to understand them.
Understand this. Humans like wars. We've had big ones about every 21 years since, oh I don't know, forever. 21 years is about how long it takes to make a new crop of humans to have a war. Humans will always like wars -- deal with it.
This
Apparently, you don't have to make a coherent argument if you just string together a set of newsclips. Maybe this is why these people have resorted cutting and pasting footage.
There was a lot of footage of explosions, weapons going off, but where was the one clip that really mattered about 9-11? They didn't show any planes crashing into buildings because then you'd have realized that maybe all this rhetoric about good and evil actually had some substance and that there is no peaceful solution to someone who wants to kill you and your family and your fellow citizens.
This video attempted to portray the war on terrorism as a war against Islam, when in fact, our leadership has gone out of its way to repudiate that exact contention. Warring against a group of radical militant Islamists is not the same as warring against Islam the religion.
"When you care enough to send the very best!"
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
Splitting the vote between Iraq, War on Terror, and Economy.
A better indication would have been War vs. Economy, then see if folks want to finish the job on 'Terror' or start a new war to git Saddam, IMO.
So, once again, the point is, when we're attacked, we must do nothing, since we "had it coming."
You know, we could do something a little more constructive than more of the same thing that obviously contributed to these problems in the first place.
But of course you wouldn't like that.
You wouldn't get to see all that action on cnn.
Bombs are fun just as long as they don't fall on us, huh?
How, pray tell, is bombing random countries solving the problem that a lot of people feel they have reason to hate the west?
The survivors are not going to like us one fucking bit more once the dust settle, i can absolutely positivly guarantee you that.
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
Was that a Froidjin slup?
Meanwhile, where did the "War on Terror" go, anyway? It seems to have been morphed into Desert Storm II by George Bush II...
Who has yet to show that Iraq had thing one to do with the collapsing Towers or crushed Pentagon...
So WTF, git the folks all riled for WAR, but can't find the enemy, so jist aim them guns at an easier target???
Whats the logic there, "one War is as good as another"??
Sounds more like Deliverence than a Noble Cause to me...
OK So I just awoke to this onslaught. My partner stayed up late and gave out the direct links to Michael. We are being crushed. I beg that you try and Watch&Vote the movie on Sundance. They have a Kontiki downloadable version. Also any more people with a little extra bandwidth please contact me and help mirror our videos. Even before this slashing we were notified by our video hosting vendor that we were blowing through bandwidth due to growing interest in our other investigative 9/11 piece "Aftermath: Unanswered Questions of 9/11". We need help hosting vids and getting our info out to the public. Finally, If you like our stuff and want to help support a blood, sweat and tears project, buy our dvd and/or sign up for our mailing list. Thanks for the attention. Love and (r)evolution GNN
I suspect I'll get flamebait for this...but honestly, my intention is simply to voice an opinion: I thought that movie was boring!
Granted, I think I only plodded through the first 4 minutes before deciding it probably wouldn't be going anywhere.
The whole movie could've been one third the length if only they had shown each clip once rather than doing that not-clever repetitive thing for every single stupid out-of-context scene.
Maybe if I was patient enough to view the whole movie I would've seen wonderfully insightful people singing the praises of Bin Laden, Patty Murray style.
Pure Krunk.
I watched this whole thing...
Funny how there is not a sigle image about the "real" events of 9/11.... not a single shot of jets slamming into the 2 towers...not a single shot of people running in horror down the streets of new york, not a single shot of people mourning the loss of their loved ones....
How quickly those who wish to destroy america from the inside sweep these events under the carpet to serve their agenda... thankfully they are but a tiny radical minority of the people in this great nation.
-- Given enough time and money, Microsoft will eventualy invent UNIX.
That perhaps the question should have never come up? What does it matter legally that Willy is getting some blowjobs?
If you'd like to talk about violating the law, how about Bush 43's admitted crackhead days?
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
... that was the point... mocking all those that cannot help boasting they knew it before everyone else.
If you're really interested in a good analysis of the Bush administration's motives in Iraq, check out this article. The conclusion is that it is primarily about oil, specifically control over the price of oil.
Seeing as GNN has been rendered inoperable by the /. deathstar, you can check out S-11 Redux along with 55 minutes of GNN's other short fim content on our DVD. You can order it here. This would also really help with the now massive streaming bill.
FYI: Our videos have been selected for short film and video festivals in Europe, Canada and the United States. Crack the CIA was the overall winner of the Live Action Category of the 2002 Sundance On-Line Film Festival.
The fact that a person doesn't vote for a particular representative in no way lowers that representative's responsibility to represent that person. There is no "my Republican President" or "my Democratic President", only THE President.
Personally, I think the idea of the two party system is driving this country to ruin. The politics of positions means that individual politicians that wish to gain more influence must play with the party line, and the party lines are more and more apart from the stated positions of the parties. Democratic shouldn't inherently mean inflated budgets based on welfare economies and pro-abortion, and Republican shouldn't always mean Bible-thumping preachers of the rich. The country is bigger than that and our politicians should be bigger than that.
It would be really, really nice if we didn't have psychotics for citizens. Things would be so simple, we could point at other countries' psychotics and say 'You keep those people in line!'.
And we still should, because we are NOT the only country with psychotics and maniacs running around loose.
But we gotta remember to smack our OWN psychotics down if we expect anyone else to do the same in our support.
If anyone reading this (who's not a psychotic) is nodding thoughtfully, I hope to hell you vote. It looks like a citizen's obligation to society is not as passive as it appeared to be. It looks like we have to continually make some efforts to clean our government just like you have to clean a stove that gets used to cook on. Here's hoping our government doesn't get so filthy it's not worth cleaning...
Proven oil reserves in "thousand million barrels":
Canada:
1981: 8.5
1991: 8.0
2000: 6.4
Total Middle East:
1981: 362.6
1991: 661.6
2000: 683.5
Source: BP statistical review of world energy - Oil and Gas Journal posts very similar numbers, and World Oil posted numbers varying by somewhere in the neighborhood of 0.05%, by my quick off-the-cuff glance. It's true that Canada may potentially have much more oil, but statistics about unproven reserves are even less reliable for comparison's sake.
The Christian Science Monitor reports that Canada has 4.7 billion barrels of reserves, and is the No. 3 supplier of crude oil to the US, behind Saudi Arabia and Mexico.
The US gets somewhere between 25% and 45% of its oil from the Middle East, depending on where you look. Not that the statistics are the end-all and be-all, anyway... the real question is, is there a compelling strategic need to maintain a reasonable amount of control over current oil production (even "less than 20%" as you claim is a very substantial amount of oil), is there a staggeringly humongous amount of money to be made by the oil industry in the Middle East and Central Asia, and do George Bush, Dick Cheney, the S.S. Condoleeza Rice, Hamid Karzai, and others have substantial investments, holdings, and interests in the oil industry? Will these people likely continue with or go back to the oil industy after their term is up? Are most of their backers, family, family friends, and business associates from the oil/energy industries?
The US already uses its political leverage to increase oil production in Canada. You may notice they don't need to send the 101st Airborne to do so, as they may in more unruly parts of the world. If you do even the slightest bit of research, you might find that some Canadians feel that NAFTA and other agreements has already basically ceded their oil to US interests. And the US managed to do that without having support a coup, as they did, whaddaya know, just recently in Venezuela.
Your facts are wrong and your reasoning is faulty. If you truly want to be better informed, take a look at The Economist or the BBC, for starters.
Yeah, GNN does good stuff. That's almost a year old though. Check out my latest favorite guerilla film called "The Fellowship of the Ring of Free Trade":
You can watch it here.
Synopsis:
"Now, for the first time ever, the hidden prophecies of J.R.R. Tolkien's classic epic, The Lord of the Rings, are decoded in this accurate re-edit of Peter Jackson's blockbuster motion picture. Unknownst to many readers, The Lord of the Rings - once thought to be merely a story of archetypal struggle between good and evil - has been found to contain astute prophetic messages about the impending crisis of capitalist modernity. Numerous scholars and linguists have already deciphered the main theme of The Lord of the Rings as being the freedom of ordinary people to be left alone from the ruling elites. However, Tolkien's hidden messages about the disasters of capitalism and the insightful predictions about the current political climate have not been made public until now. The Fellowship of the Ring of Free Trade includes subtitles of the decoded dialogues in painstaking detail and the true identities that the story's characters represent within the prophecy. Hado i philinn!" "Mordor is in our midst." - J.R.R. Tolkien
It's not a crime to get a blowjob. It is a crime to smoke some crack. Fix the drug laws or put Bush 43 in jail, I say.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
You may think people hate the US because of US's success, but maybe it's this "I'm American, we control the world, piss off you foreigner" arrogance of yours that makes people hates the US.
:)
Bin Laden himself says he only wants the US out of Saudi Arabia, he wants his holy land to be left alone. Yes, laugh at that concept, "Ha holy land", how did you like it when some foreigners attacked the country. Of course we're not going to see that happen any time soon.
The truth is, the world is controlled by one regime, the fucking US-regime. And anyone who disagrees with him does get his head chopped off, only you don't hear about it, why not, because who owns the source you get your news from? Fucking US corporations. Look at Venezuela. Venezuela elected a president that wants less "Globalisation" and more for his people. That makes it harder for US corporation to extract maximum profit out of the country, and what do you get? A coup attempt, with which the US allegedly helped, but Bush evidently immediately congratulated, to see Chavez returning to power only 2 days later. Too bad he's now losing again, the US propaganda being too influential.
Too bad you're a fucking chicken-shit AC, hiding behind your oh so great country.
Why does Bush all of the sudden announced he wants Saddam's head? Because he wants to control the region and the oil underneath it. Lucky for him, September 11 happened, giving him shit-high approval ratings to do whatever he wanted. After September 11, there was an all out flight ban, but why did a plane fly out from New York to Saudi Arabia, with 11 members of the bin Laden family, flown out by the government? Who, in the 80's, owned stocks of Bush & Co's oil companies? The Bin Laden family.
Yes, this will definitely get my name in the NSA/CIA database. Funny.
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
Hello, All.
This looks like a mightily interesting movie. However, I have no Window box around to watch it - only 6 Linux PCs.
(The last Window PC I abandoned 7 years ago).
Is there a way, how to see *.wmv movie in Linux? Plugin or cossover, that does not require windows media player?
Woud anyone send me windows media player binary that works in Wine?
Thanks
Regards,
Petrus Vectorius
Grab it at magnet:?kt=gnn_redub_bb.mov or gnutella://gnn_redub_bb.mov . Too bad slashdot eats p2p URLs so I can't give you a nice clickable link.
"Bin Laden himself says he only wants the US out of Saudi Arabia, he wants his holy land to be left alone."
He also said he wants every christian, jew, hindu, and atheist in the entire world dead.
Greetings: It had art value? I watched it and thought it was 100% value and content free! They try to make a point and end up being more pointless than reality TV.... FPK3
"Ah Mr. Gibbon, another damned, fat, square book. Always, scribble, scribble, scribble, eh?" (The Duke of Gloucester, o