Slashdot Mirror
Fahrenheit 9/11 Discussion
xerid writes "I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 last night, and the theatre was packed & sold out for each showing. Today, I read on Michael Moore.com about the movie breaking records. However, what I haven't seen was coverage on Slashdot, about the movie's opening day." I saw the film on friday and was really impressed. But while it speaks much truth, and has many funny parts as well as truly heartbreaking ones, I don't know how many votes it will sway. But since there is very little other news so far today, why not talk amongst yourselves!
I was introduced to this absolutely astonishing documentary called "The truths and lies about September 11th". It's basically a video recording of a seminar held in the University of Portland by this guy called Mike Ruppert. I was sceptical to begin with, since i was expecting this to be just another conspiracy theory but i was proven wrong. He runs a website http://www.copvcia.com I suggest you check it out. As for the documentary that i saw - its an incredibly well-structured presentation, with ample proof for everything that is said during its course. No speculations, just plain evidence.
Back up this statement with facts, Coward. Or better yet: make a movie about it, and distribute worldwide. :-)
>This guy already did.
Check out this. I'm a pretty radical guy and I don't care much for moore either. The man got too big for his head.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Although Micheal Moore is a "documentary maker", his documentaries don't stand up to tough analysis. He has apparently used rather dodgy editing techniques (Charlton Heston's tie changes colour in what is supposedly one speech) and staged events and presented them as real (getting a shotgun from a bank). Although I am left wing and I enjoy Micheal Moore movies, I see them as the same type of documentary as The Office or This is Spinal Tap.
Decode these
Cato receives funding from the oil industry, and had Fox News head honcho Rupert Murdoch as a director. Now that's what I call fair and balanced reporting!
Here are all the things found wrong with Bowling. Some news sources have accused Fahrenheit of doing the same thing.
Vote for new mod!!! Score:-2,Imbecile
There is a pretty good response to this article here. Not sure if Moore himself has responded yet.
While there is a bit of this movie that isn't really informational and is meant to appeal to emotion, there are some VERY disturbing pieces of infomration given:
-21 members of the Bin Laden family were flown out of the country on special chartered flights on September 13 while all other flights were grounded. They were NEVER questioned on Osama at all and there is no clear reason why they were given free flight out without interrogation.
-Prior to the war in Afghanistan, there were plans on the board to put in a gas pipeline through the country. Members of the Taliban visited Texas regarding the issue. The project was abandoned after the US bombed Afghanistan in 1999. After the recent war, Hamid Karzai was made the leader. The papers were signed giving the green light for the pipline. Prior to being the leader, Karzai was a consultant for one of the companies trying to build the pipeline.
-Prior to 9/11, Bush had been on vacation over 40 percent of his time in office. During one of those vacations, he was given a security brief that outlined Osama bin Laden training his agents to fly planes in the US as tools of terror. Condi Rice talked about that memo in some of the investigations. Nothing was done about it.
-Pre 9/11, many Bush administration officials are ON THE RECORD as saying that Saddam Hussein didn't have any weapons of mass destruction nor was he capable and wasn't a threat. AFTER 9/11, their tune was exactly opposite. Why?
-Condi Rice is on camera saying "There is a definite connection between Iraq and 9/11." We now know that isn't true.
There are many more points he made that I think MUST be addressed by the Bush administration. If they cannot dispute them, then in my opinion any person with one ounce of thought ability should never consider voting for him.
It's not just the fact that Michael Eisner of Disney did not want Disney to distribute the film. Fahrenheit 9/11 won the highest prize, the Palm D'Or, at the recent Cannes competition! It is only the second documentary in history to do so. The film received the longest standing ovation in the history of the Cannes festival!
This story in Fahrenheit 9/11 is relevant to Slashdot because the situation is far worse than Michael Moore says. I put together links to 2 other movies and 35 books that say there is an extremely serious problem: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government. Slashdotted? Try:
http://www.hevanet.com/peace/usgovcorruption.htm. Michael Moore is reporting things EVERY Slashdot reader and every person in the world needs to know. It they get their way, you WILL become poorer.
People like the movie because they like the movie! Fahrenheit 9/11 is selling out everywhere. Today in the Sports [!] section of the Kansas City Star is an example. The writer, Jason Whitlock, says:
"Fahrenheit is the most powerful movie I've ever seen. Not even Moore's heavy-handed, pro-Democrat slant could undermine his indictment of Bush's reaction to 9/11. The movie appears to have struck a chord with American moviegoers. I spent all Friday afternoon and evening driving from North Carolina theater to North Carolina theater trying to see the movie. The showings were all sold out. I snagged one of the last tickets to a mid-day Saturday showing."
Judging from the stories, other reactions in the U.S. are even more enthusiastic than this. A theater with 10 screens in Portland, Oregon scheduled 18 showings for today, Sunday, June 27, 2004, in reaction to the movie's popularity on Friday and Saturday.
(Reading the Kansas City Star commentary, 'Fahrenheit' powerful, persuasive, requires free registration. Be wary, the company says it will send you email, so you might give a trash email address, or use a free trash email address at Mailinator.com or DodgeIt.com. Judging from the registration information, if you give a real postal mail address, they may send you unwanted mail, also.)
The movie is breaking all-time theater records all over the United States.
and here is a rebuttal to Hardy Law.
OK... He claimed Bush let some Bin Laden family members out of the country during the air lockdown. This is not true. They were clearly let out of the country after the air restrictions were lifted. And yes, they are the same Bin Laden family is the infamous Osama belongs to, but just because one family member is evil doesn't have to mean the rest are evil.
As a side note, the Bin Ladens are a family of oil tycoons, just the people Bush would want to slowly corrupt.
Uh, libel isn't protected by the First Amendment and isn't free speech. If someone can truthfully say something bad about the film or Moore, there's little he can do about that.
However, if someone's going to go out and say that Moore made up the camcorder version of the kids' reading in Florida, or that it happened on another day and Moore spliced it in under lies, that's what I believe Moore is saying is reason for a lawsuit.
Remember, slander and libel are *NOT* protected free speech in America.
Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different. -- Earl of Chesterfield
Actually, I consider every single news flash regarding SCO more importan than a movie that you believe will make a fundamental impact on the future of how politics are played out in America, because I believe Michael Moores Fahrenheit 9/11 is little more than a heavily biased satire with truth buried so deep beneath the surface of the film that it is impossible to know what to trust and what to discard as satire.
See the movie. I have, and Moore lists (just about) every single source he uses up front. Newspaper articles, dates, firsthand accounts from relevant experts... you can't say Moore is distorting what so-and-so says when so-and-so is saying it right into the camera.
Moore is definitely biased, but at least he admits his bias, and gives you his supporting evidence up front. Which is more than the Bush Administration has done vis-a-vis Iraq.
--R.J.
Electric-Escape.net
I wouldn't take anything the Washington Times says without a a few shakers of salt. The thing that first caught my eye was their obvious right-wing bias; but what really took the cake for me is that the paper is owned by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Yes, the tie changes color because Moore splices together different bits and pieces to get Heston to sound like a real villain.
l ingforcolumbine /scenes/hestonrally1.htm
It's dishonest and it's wrong.
Here's the "changing tie" claim on bowling for truth (scroll down to the section "Timeline Trickiness").
http://www.bowlingfortruth.com/bow
You will see a very interesting image, a collage of 3 images from Bowling for Columbine-- Heston in blue tie, a billboard, and Heston in a red tie. These are 3 consecutive images from Bowling for Columbine.
Ask yourself why is the billboard image cropped so much that it is not readable?
The billboard as shown in the movie (I'm working from memory here) is an advertisement for the upcoming Denver NRA event at which Heston speaks while wearing the blue tie.
The grandparent poster claimed, "Charlton Heston's tie changes colour in what is supposedly one speech"
But, according to bowlingfortruth.com in the movie you are introduced to Charlton Heston with his trademark catchphrase, then you are shown a billboard that says there will be an NRA Annual meeting in Denver, then you are shown a scene from the Heston speech at Denver, where Heston is wearing different clothes, in a different room, with a different backdrop.
Dishonest how? Wrong why?
Or are you just picking nits because you cannot find any actual factual errors in the movie?
I think the bowlingfortruth.com site is the best thing that could have ever happened for F911. That is, it prepared Moore for the nitpicking and distortion that will be done to F911. There isn't a single word in F911 that hasn't been thoroughly researched and verified by a team of fact checkers.
Send lawyers, guns, and money. Dad, get me out of this.
Actually, the majority of bin Laden's did leave the country during the lockdown. Only one family member was evacuated in the weeks following and it was made public almost immediately. He was a student was begining to be harrassed. The issue of course is that none of them including hte last was questioned. What makes this crimial is the fact that the family was still in touch with Osama. The movie talks about this event as the wedding of one of Osama's sons. It didn't go on to quote the poem that the son read regarding the destruction of the USS Cole
n +p oem&sourceid=mozilla-search&start=0&start=0&ie=utf -8&oe=utf-8
http://www.google.com/search?q=osama+wedding+so
google search.
The Bin Laden family gained much more of their wealth through construction. They have been the main firm in the service of the Saudi king to build roads and infrastructure. Oil came later and certainly it's no shock that the Bush family would want to continue positive relations with wealthy Saudi elite.
Moore commented Friday during an interview with the syndicated program Good Day Live that he may include the undedited video from that classroom event as an extra on the DVD version.
It's a debatable issue whether the president should have cut his visit to the classroom short when he was told that a second plane had hit the second tower. The principal of the school says that Bush did the right thing because running out of the classroom would have scared the kids... however those kids would eventually be told to stand quietly in the backround as the president made his first comments to the world about the 9/11 events. Moore claims that the president put those kids at risk because the president could have been a target in such a crisis, but he was a moving target and the hijackers only went after stationary ones.
Didn't he say or imply that bin Laden family members left the US while all flights were grounded and without interviews, when in fact they left after flights resumed and they were made available for interviews, with some interviewed and some not? (The fact that some weren't is not good, but Moore's "facts" are wrong.)
Didn't he say Bush spent 42% of his time on vacation, when in fact Bush spent 42% of his time not at the White House (including weekends), but often working those days? Many of these days included meetings with foreign dignitaries, etc, but the meetings occurred in Crawford or at Camp David.
Let's see, did he not imply that the Taliban visited Bush in Texas while he was governer, when in fact Bush did not meet with them and they were in the country at the invitation of the Clinton administration?
Didn't he say that the Secret Service only guards the Saudi embassy, when in fact it's uniformed division guards many embassies?
Didn't he make a big deal of Bush et al getting hair/makeup care before public appearances, making them appear vain and shallow? If that's legitimate, I guess nearly all public figures and most women qualify. Sheesh, what a misuse of "facts"!
We could go on, but the fact is Moore is vociferous and entertaining, but not terribly talented nor concerned with the truth. If you think this is a documentary with a "whole fact-checking team" behind it, you are naive indeed. I edit videos for a living and know it's trivial to edit things together to make anyone look like a fool or villan. Heck, If I had three hours of Moore footage, I could make him look worse than anyone he's slashed.
From the Seattle Times: For example, in Osceola County, Fla., Walt Disney World receives the farming break on 1,600 acres of pasture, timber and nurseries where it grows plants for its theme parks. The land, worth $194 million, is taxed as if it were worth $12.3 million, according to the county land records office. Disney spokeswoman Jacquee Polack said the company keeps a buffer of undeveloped land around the park, but she acknowledged some of this property will be developed.
But this probably wasn't what Moore was thinking about... :-)
What, me worry?
Yes - from Common Dreams (who, in turn was quoting the Israeli newspaper Haaretz):
link for your convenience.
Another link
Too many to even list here, but here's a typical example (from the Center for American Progress claim vs. fact db):
Bush knew, or should have known, that his claim was false.
Sean
Also, I think you seem to have trouble differentiating between a lie and operating on false assumptions.
That's very much true. There is a problem though when you get your false assumptions by ignoring evidence that goes against your predrawn conclusions, and consider unreliable evidence most important because it agrees with them. Most of the whitehouse's intelligence on iraq was taken from chalabi, and the iraqi defectors he brought in to tell them what they wanted to hear. The CIA at that point had documented chalabi as a fraud, with clear evidence of a long campaign of lying and evidence of him cooperating with iran, but the bush administration ignored this and instead chose to believe someone known to be a fraud. At the same time they dismissed what the weapons inspectors were saying as bogus. Ignorance of the law is not a defense in a criminal court, and I think being ignorant of the facts on purpose should not be a defense in the court of public opinion.
But, hey, you want a clear lie from bush, here is one.
And that's just where it starts, do a little googling on "bush lies", and you'll turn up tons of lies he has personally told on a wide range of subjects.
Ofcourse, it is hard to catch him personally in a lie, because he always gets someone in his administration to do the lying for him. They call it plausible deniability, and for me it doesn't fly. He can't not be aware of the liars on his administration. That he not only tolerates them, but supports them, proves he approves of the lies.
WHY would Bush lie about WMD's?
I don't think he knowingly lied about that pre-invasion. I think he chose to believe the fabricated evidence that pointed to iraqi wmd's. Still, that just makes him incompetent instead of a liar. That's the problem, you can't look at reality and not go "either bush is incompetent, or he's a liar."
This is a point that I am tired of correcting people on. This did not happen as you are lead to believe in the movie. On September 13th commercial flights had already resumed, but private flights were still restricted. Permission came, not from the President, but from Richard Clarke who was a hold-over from the Clinton White House and not a Bush puppet. 22 of the 26 people that were on that flight WERE, in fact, interviewed and cleared by the FBI prior to leaving.
http://articles.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m12 82/is_18_55/ai_109411350
The funniest thing about this, is that everyone who watches the movie leaves with the same wrong impression: that while all other airplanes are stuck on the ground, the bin Ladins are give special permission from the President to be the only plane flying. The fact is, that this is a clear case of spin-doctoring. It is common in politics. This is a way of saying TRUE things, but leading people to specific conclusion that may not be accurate. Moore is a master of this kind of work.
Don't get me wrong, I like Moore's work, but at respect him as an Artist... not as a champion of truth.
Bush may have a relationship with the bin Ladin family, but when you are lead to believe that the bin Ladins were given special treatment because of that relationship, it can piss people off. However, this never happened. It is clear that Bush cannot be blamed for the bin Ladin family and Saudi nationals leaving the country... if you know the facts, it just cannot be substantiated; but Moore, knowing the facts, misleads his film-goers.
I'm not saying don't see the movie. I think everyone should see the movie. Moore has crafted a relevant, entertaining movie. But it IS a commercial movie, and commercial movies are made in order to make money. So, go out an enjoy the film, just don't trust everything you think you hear. Double-check the facts before assuming that your conclusions are correct.
- just my $0.02
"Perhaps most amazingly, votaries of 'diversity' insist on absolute conformity." -- Tony Snow
No, Moore did not claim that the Bin Ladens were let out during the lockdown. He says they flew out on the 13th, which was when the FCC was starting to let planes get off the ground again. Regardless, they were the close family members of the main suspect and were shipped out with no serious questioning about the crime, in direct contravention of all normal police policy. Also, seeing as members of the family were seen with OBL late in the 90s, that hardly indicates that he was disowned.
In the interests of dialog, I'll try to respond to this when I get back (I have a wedding to go to), but I believe this article is deeply flawed. An example I can whip out real quickly: The person who wrote the article states that the 9/11 commission found that the bin ladens left the country after the airspace had been re-opened. This is a VERY deceptive statement. on September 13th, the air space had been re-opened, but no passengers were allowed to fly until sept 14th. Sept 13th was used to reshuffle the airplanes back to where they should be so that flights could resume the 14th.
No passengers were allowed, *except* for these special charter flights that took the Bin Ladens and the Saudi royalists out of the country.
Hitchens then states that Clark allowed these flights - and thus Moore is a liar.
Well, these saudis were allowed to fly befor anyone else, were not questioned, and were allowed to do so by a member of the Bush administration (Clark was indeed a member of the bush administration, or do you dispute that fact as well). Not one iota of this contradicts Moore and Ferenheit 9/11.
Once again, Moore uses facts, while the talking heads on the right jsut say wheever they want to, so long as it's consistant with their idology - facts be damned.
I'll try to reply more to it when I get back from the wedding.
- The unexamined life is not worth leading -
Ok, you asked for it:
F 40 B13FA35590C768CDDAC0894DC404482
l m. moore.reut/
9 086.sh tml
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=
Also, if you don't want to register:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/Movies/06/02/fi
Or
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/05/28
Dude, it was all over the national news for weeks. It DID happen and Disney DID refuse to distribute the film...
Regarding open source alternatives to Lexis-Nexis et. al., I think that we're starting to see the emergence of these sources with the Groklaw project. Groklaw right now is confined to a narrow issue, but it publishes primary source material and commentary that is superior to many paid services, and in an open source fashion. It is only possible for Groklaw to do this, however, by focusing on a single issue.
I hope that we will see more open source political projects like Groklaw in the future for other important issues.
> a similar bombing campaign against Yugoslavia
> some years ago. The same international laws
> were broken then as well.
You're probably referring to Article 2 Section 4 of the U.N. Charter, which is not the Same Thing as international law. Anyway, you may also wish to read Articles 11 (1) and 39 of said charter which seem to make provisions for enforcing human rights norms. You might argue that these would also apply to the Iraq war, but I seem to recall that the WMD argument was the main rationale used for justification.
I would be curious to hear how these are "similar bombing campaign[s]".
The poster to which I replied made the following claim: "Michael Eisner is quoted in the press as saying that he didn't want to risk having certain tax benefit revoked...." I challenged the truth of that statement. None of the replies to me so far have even remotely supported the poster's original statement, and none of the links you provided have any link from Eisner saying any such thing, so what you're saying is not responsive to what I said.
http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/conspiracytheories/
The Fifth Estats, a Canadian investigative show on CBC, had already done a documentary on 9/11 and literally EVERYTHING Moore says in his film is backed up by this episode (see link). In fact they had even MORE DAMAGING evidence which Moore does not include in his film to which I can only assume he HELD BACK that information in fear of a complete backlash from the American public.
It's very frightening what the Americans are ignoring about Bush. They have been so completely duped that even in the face of truth they can't come to grips with the fact the the Bush family is simply not out for the good of the American people.
I'm so happy to be Canadian, and proud to not have gone to war to line the pockets of your president and vice president.
PLEASE follow the link above and read everything you can from the online report (originally a tv documentary). PLEASE keep an open mind on the subject.
> What would have happened differently had the man jumped
> up out of his seat screamed out "HOLY SHIT KIDS, WE'RE
> GOING TO FUCKING DIE!" and then run out of the room?
I love how some people would like to believe that Bush had only two options: sit there are read "My Pet Goat" or get up screaming his head off that everyone was going to die.
The fact is before the event started, Bush was told that a plane crashed into the World Trade Center. Bush, not 6 weeks earlier had been given a briefing called "Bin Laden Determined to Attack in the United States". Bin Laden had also tried to destroy the World Trade Center in 1993. Bush also knew by this time that Bin Laden was behind the U.S.S. Cole attack. I would hope that the man who is in charge of protecting our country would have thought, "I'm going to delay this photo op, since this might be serious." But, hey, maybe that's too much to ask.
So Bush sits down. Kids start reading. Bush is told a second plane crashes. At this point, a leader would tell the kids, "Keep up the good work reading. Thank you for inviting me today, but I'm being called away -- 'president stuff'," and he would have walked out.
There is absolutely every reason to believe that Bush was needed at the beginning of this. Bush is the only person who could give the order to scramble military jets to shoot down civilian aircraft if necessary. It was later determined that Cheney gave this order and no proof could be made that Cheney checked with Bush first, although he claimed the order came from Bush.
What does Bush do instead? He sits there. Eyes looking around. Then he picks up the "My Pet Goat" book. He reads the damn thing. He sits there for close to 10 minutes. I read his reaction as Bush waiting for someone to tell him what to do.
I hope the book was worth it.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
Is it true that for 7 minutes after Bush was told that the second plane hit the WTC, he continued to read to elementary schoolkids?
According to the Memory Hole, is is.
May we live long and die out
Yeah, the documented link between Osama and Hussein:
Osama: Can we use your country to build some terrorist training camps?
Hussein: Go bugger off, you fool!
end of link.
Do your homework.
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
Do you (does anyone, for that matter) *really* think Bush and Hitler are comparable in any way that's remotely important?
Yes.
But also, everyone should be aware of the page in which Moore responds to the people who claim he twisted facts:
Moore's considerably-less-famous response page.
Ack.
Those guys should have spent some time with real leftwing radicals. I mean, come on guys, there are places on the world, wehere gun control is whole heartedly supported by the conservatives, and they and the socialists keep overall tax burden far above 50% with a straight face. Where unions as you know them are a state guaranteed right and hold 50%-1 vote on every company board.
Where the real lefties are so far removed from reality that you ask yourself what universe they come from. Hey, check out Germany's (really) beloved 'Secretary of State/Foreign affairs Secretary' Joschka Fischer, who started his political career personally knowing qiute a few of the 70's Terrorist luminaries, or our somehwat despised "Environment Minister", who not-so-long-ago used to be menmber of a real orthodox communist group ("orthodox" meaning "unconditionally loyal to Moscow" - we used to joke about those Spartakus guys in university that they would open their umbrella as soon as it started to rain in Moscow)
Oh, and go to France, Britain, Spain, Italy, Greece, you name it - you will find all shades of real socialists and communists there as well.
As for Europe, Mr. Kerry (like Clinton before him) is a moderate conservative, while Mr Bush would probably grouped with the likes of Haider, LePen and Fini as a borderline extreme right-wing populist (though his habit to name fundamentalist christian ayatollahs to top governement posts is a practice not seen anywhere in Europe these days).
NYTimes By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS - Published: May 4, 2004
"WASHINGTON -- U.S. commanders plan to keep U.S. troops at their current levels in Iraq -- about 135,000 -- until the end of 2005, Pentagon officials said Tuesday."
Most poor rock and roll one hit wonders that make it big and successfull forget were they came from and end up tanking.
Ah, but after Roger & Me, Moore didn't have a lot of success except for the books, until Bowling for Columbine. Canadian Bacon did poorly (I'd say deservedly so), Pets or Meat I've only even seen mentioned in two places (one of which I found today), The Big One just followed Moore's book tour, and T.V. Nation and Awful Truth were not profitable.
And the thing about Bowling for Columbine, arguably Moore's first really big success since Roger & Me: The movie is not anti-gun.
It's anti-NRA, it's anti-Charleton Heston, it's (weirdly) anti-Dick Clark, it's anti-nightly news, it's anti-James Nichols, it's anti-atmosphere of fear.
But it shows that Canada has more guns per capita than the United States, and a much lower gun-related murder rate. If anything, it shows that American paranoia is responsible for that more than guns.
Bowling for Columbine is arguably Moore's most centered work to date. People who complain about it lying miss the entire point -- none of the supposed lies that I've heard dispute the essential core of the movie.
It's true that he probably is a little too active in going after Heston, and Dick Clark, but I understand why he did it.
Even if he was an average poor boy in the beguining doesn't mean he isn't a "limousine liberal" now. As a matter of fact, it apears that he is even less then that and mainly a machine schill for the liberals.
There are machine shills all over the place. The right's outnumber Moore at least ten-to-one; talk radio and Fox News prove that handily. And I don't think he is one, even then. I'd say that shills don't fall on their face, creatively, as often, but instead stick to safe projects.
It would apear that apeasing them is what really counts to moore in this day and age.
Success makes alot of people forget who they are/were and often is the failing point that make people who have achived drop back to were they came from.
Granted. But until someone shows me otherwise, I will continue thinking well of Moore.
(Yes, that's a challenge. Someone out there, show me something damning. I want to know where these rumors come from, if there's anything to them.)
The problem is that this time around they don't like any of it. They dispise the roots that help image them into a person admired and successfull that even you become a fanboy.
Oh my friend, I know I'm a fanboy. Do a Slashdot search connecting "MilenCent" to "Nintendo" and you'll have all the proof you want of that. I don't dress up as Link for Halloween, mind you....*
I am not a Michael Moore fanboy however; a fanboy wouldn't complain about Canadian Bacon, The Big One, or the one-note tone of his books. I do admire Bowling for Columbine, however, and I'm looking forward to Farenheit 9/11. I think the man does good work, and whatever flaws they have are a result of his earnestness more than any calculated shill-factor.
* This comment is part of a blatant bid to get "Michael Moore" connected to "The Legend of Zelda" in Google searches. Rupees! Flint, Michigan! Heart Containers! General Motors! Ganondorf! John Ashcroft!
People in the top 2% of wealth pay over 90% of taxes.
uh, no.
taxes vs. income (see "Share of Income vs. Share of Taxes")
According to the CBO, the top 1% paid 23% of all federal taxes. However, they also made 16% of the nations income, and more interestingly, posessed 39% of the nation's wealth (see here, or just google "us wealth distribution")
Pay 23% of all taxes, and get 39% of the wealth? Sounds like a good deal to me.
I will address your comments in order:
1) To hide, destroy or otherwise make WMDs disappear at the numbers of tonnes claimed by the administration prior to the war would at the least cause an observable environmental impact. This impact could be used to determine the ultimate fate of such weapons, whether or not they were destroyed, so it is a stretch to believe there were any weapons in the first place.
2) Iraq's armies were crippled by the effects of 10 years of sanctions that left the Army without funds to feed it's troops in the field. Iraqi soldiers were stealing food from local populations in places where they were fortunate enough to be near sustinence, and starving in forward desert deployments at the time the US invaded. Don't tell me they could have carried out an offensive, that idea is completely ludicrous.
3) The one place in the world where there is serious Oil expertise is the Middle East. Oil in Texas is a hit or miss proposition, and more wells have been put in and gone dry in a week than have been left there. As far as Hialliburton goes, many of the contracts they received were for delivering food, war materials, and even the mail - perhaps there are other organizations more adept at delivering these things, and other companies should have been part of the bidding process.
M
Oh, I think Ray is aware of this... I Sing The Body Electric was the exact title of a Walt Whitman poem before he appropriated it for his story.
Off the top of my head, Something Wicked This Way Comes is a Shakespeare quote, while The Golden Apples Of The Sun is a Yeats quote.
I'm sure there are others, but that should suffice to show that Bradbury knows damn well that it's permissible to reference another's work in a title.