Slashdot Mirror
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'.
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?
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.
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?
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.
... 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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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