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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!
The guy's not really a liar, he's just very, very out there in terms of his views. Which isn't to say he isn't right a lot of a time. He's got his head on a lot straighter than a lot of radicals, like say, the REAL liar, the subject of the film... Fill in initials of world leader here. Not the place to discuss it? EVERYONE should be discussing the deceit and warmongering of our supremely selected self-declared messenger of God.
Think about it... you could easily convince some computer-illiterate person of the superiority of Windows over Linux, or vice versa, without telling a single lie. It's all about withholding the right info, and presenting it in the desired light.
Before the number of comments goes through the roof, I'd like to comment on this topic from a non-political perspective.
I first studied Michael Moore in college, in a film class, when the only major work he had done was Roger and Me. This was at it's nature a political film, but the political venom was many notches below his last two movies (Columbine and 9/11).
The prime point that EVERYONE should remember is that Michael Moore can be used as a case study of why to be wary of 'documentaries'. His style as a director is textbook in the art of time manipulation for the purpose of making a point where one would not have existed before.
I will provide an example: In Roger and Me, he had a clip where Ronald Reagan visited Flint Michigan, promising to bring economic properity that did not exist during the end of the 1970s. The film then explained that GM immediately closed a plant and laid off thousands of workers.
This example implies that one led to another directly. In fact, there was a gap of 7 years between the two events; one when Reagan was a candidate in 1979...the other in 1986 when the cuts were announced.
Just remember: he is manipulating to make a point, but to say it is true would be untrue.
This is just one example; I'm surprised no one has written a book on Michael Moore, because there is a lot of evidence that could be covered.
Personally, it's entertainment. If you are spending your hard earned money looking for truth or fact, please look elsewhere.
And from the standpoint of someone who is an American, I think many of us would like to see that too... if only because it would be a great change of pace after having our civil liberties pissed on by.... certain individuals.
http://mediagoblin.org/
sorry, never post before being awake(corrected text): My wife and I saw this movie two days ago at 11 am, and I was floored by it for the rest of that day, the following day, today, and probably will be for a good while. This movie really shouldn't be seen just as a "we hate bush movie" although many will interpret it as that. Rather it's more along the lines of here is _all_ the corruption ( on the oil side of the equation... no mention of drug money) that goes on in our lovely government, even under other admins ( yes iirc clinton's admin wasn't made to look very good either...though to be fair, wasn't demonized like the bushes (and shouldn't be for that matter) ). I must add that while everything is the movie has been checked, I found it interesting that he really didn't try to make the democrats look all that much better then the republicans.. the feel I got was that republicans and saudi(es) are evil and the democrats are clueless-- and not there when you need them... in the best case senario. This move is not for the light hearted, but everyone should see it (as it will be the source of much controversy). I can see why this movie was a winner of the canies award. Regardless of if one thinks that Michael Moore is a crackpot or not, the actual footage speeks for its self ( and in some cases quiet amusingly (if that's a word) so).
From the http://www.politicalusa.com/columnists/schlussel/s chlussel_014.htm link:
See How to Deal with the Lies and the Lying Liars When They Lie about "Bowling for Columbine". He addresses the above criticism about half-way down:first off the film is incredible. the theatre here showing it was selling out every showing, including the matinees, something ive never seen. at the end the audience gave some nice loud applause.
its always odd as an "outsider" to watch americans. anyone that speaks out about the government is branded a radical, an extremist. round here in canada this is absolutely normal, the evening news has all sorts of people saying all sorts of critiques about the government and its not odd for people to talk about it on the street. and its not a group of people that do, EVERYONE does. no one looks at you funny, no one says you are anti-canadian. a term that is not used at all, either is unpatriotic. this is a states thing, its used to shut you up, make you feel bad. its wrong. moore isnt an extremist, he is a hero. exposing truths is patriotic. dont listen to the shills that call you names. the amount of brainwashing you poor people get is also astounding. i dont claim to live in some perfect society but its night and day with some things and i hope this movie wakes up many people to reality.
That's simply not true, and is perhaps a sympton of the relativism (moral and otherwise) that pervades "liberal" thought today.
For one thing, if you insist on classifying the entire world as left/right you miss a huge degree of differences. What's the difference in right/left terms between hitler, stalin, mao, and gandhi? Probably not as much as you think. Not to mention that right and left mean very different things in Britain (where I *believe* the terms originated) mainland Europe and America. Not to mention, Republicans wouldn't even fit in with most Right wing parties in Europe, many of which aren't classicaly liberal at all. Besides which, saying America is far-right is pretty ridiculous. We may not be as bad a social state as mainland Europe, but it's only a matter of degree.
question, where do the classical liberals fall? The Austrian economists? Popular Swiss ideology? Norwegians? What about Nationalist socialist parties?
Making the US to be some extreme right wing country is nuts.
sorry for rambling.
There is something you have to understand about Michael Moore's movies and truth. Everything he shows on video is true. He doesn't photoshop it, it actually happened that way. But if you pay attention to the filmography and the context in which he shows this true footage he implies other things. What happens is that people go and say "you said this, it isn't true!" when in fact he technically only implied it. The only facts in his movie are the ones you hear him say outright.
"According to XXX inserst statistic Y here".
Often he asks questions in his movies like
"If X is true and Y is true, does that make Z true?"
People will sall him a liar if Z is in fact false. But he never said Z was true, he only asked. I met this man at U of R just after he won his oscar. He is extremely meticulous in the details and the information. Nobody is going to slip one by. For every fact he actually stated as fact he has evidence to back it up.
How he gets you is that the average american ingoramus who walks away from one of his movies believes that Z is true. He never said it was, but the masses will walk away believing it like the sheep they are.
Now, I don't agree with Moore. He is really a socialist green party hippy type underneath. Let me tell you, I like my Adam Smith. Even before this movie I was determined to vote against Bush. And after I get this movie in a format where I can watch it piece by piece I can extract the facts from the implications and get a lot more ammo to use against that corporate asshat.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Fahrenheit 9/11: A Conservative Critique
by William Norman Grigg
I just returned from viewing Fahrenheit 9/11 here in Appleton, WI. I went to the 1:30 PM showing, which was - astonishingly - sold out. The crowd was overwhelmingly white and middle-class (this IS Wisconsin, remember), ranging in age from early teens to retirees. The people were polite, friendly, well-mannered (something we shouldn't take for granted on the part of contemporary theater crowds). There was tumultuous applause at the end, punctuated by a moment of reflective silence as we read the dedication card invoking those murdered by terrorists on 9/11, and those murdered through state terrorism in the aftermath.
The film itself very much reflects its creator: It's shaggy, flabby, occasionally witty, and frequently infuriating. It will have a HUGE impact because Moore - his facile leftist economics notwithstanding - has nailed his case against the Bush regime flush to the plank. It will be all but impossible for anybody who sits still and watches this film to view Bush the Lesser as anything other than a petty, spiteful, dim-witted, bloody-handed little fool - and the figurehead of a murderous power elite. This explains why the Bu'ushists are threatening to go Abu Ghraib on Moore: They're busted.
The most powerful moments in the film are those that humanize U.S. troops, several of whom are shown on-screen criticizing the regime. A major arc of the film is devoted to a Flint, Michigan housewife from a military family whose son, just prior to being killed in Iraq, wrote a letter condemning "George 'I wanna be like my Daddy' Bush" for staging this useless, unjust war. Moore himself, who narrates the film (and makes himself too much a part of the story, incidentally) observes that the largest immorality of this entire enterprise is the actions of a dishonest president lying our country into war and forcing decent young men (and women) to do immoral things.
It should be pointed out as well that the film - despite being lambasted as an exercise in unalloyed Bush-bashing - doesn't spare Democrats who acquiesced in Bush the Lesser's power grabs and his criminal war against Iraq. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle comes off particularly poorly, which in his case merely requires a recording device of some kind.
An interesting encounter immediately after seeing the film underscores its fundamentally non-partisan nature. Some poor schlep had positioned himself outside the theater with a clipboard soliciting signatures on a nominating position for a would-be Democrat congressional candidate. A couple of people seized the petition and started to sign. Impertinent sort that I am, I asked, "What's this fellow's position on the war?"
The scribbling stopped, and several sets of eyes focused intently on the hapless volunteer. "Well, um, ah, he thinks we should do something," he began, stammeringly. "Ah, he just thinks we should be more careful." On hearing this, a lady looked at her husband, who had signed the petition, and snapped, "Scratch off your name." I told the volunteer that I'm what most people would regard as an "ultra-conservative - not just a `conservative' - but if your guy came out against the war I'd vote for him, and knock on doors." "Well, I can't really address all the details of his positions," the increasingly flustered guy responded. "Just let him know what I said," I suggested, telling him that there are a lot of people who have the same point of view.
I chatted with several other people as they left the theater, all of them roughly my age (early 40s) and of similar economic and cultural background. Each of them indicated that he or she would urge friends to see the film - which means that it will have "legs" even if the GOP and FEC were to choke off advertising somehow.
There were no screaming Bolsheviks (one viewer had an anti-animal rights T-shirt) or marijuana-scented bohemians in the crowd. This wasn't the sort of crowd you'd see at a Phish concert, or storming McDonald's at an an
Ron Paul
Check out their links page for plenty of sites by people working to track down inaccuracies in Moore's works and an article about how Ray Bradbury is annoyed that Moore stole the title from his similarly titled book without asking and without returning his calls to Moore.
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"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
Michael Moore is bringing to the big screen things that all American news sources ignored while the rest of the world knew perfectly well about it. If anything Moore is showing Americans that they have been duped by the US media. The facts he brings out were commonly seen in the rest of the world except the US. I'm talking about the staged elections, the blacks not being allowed to vote, the false "intelligence", the lacking weapons of mass desctruction, etc...
If anything Moore balances out the very biased news sources you guys have in the states with a refreshing bit of reality. This war was for oil and weapons money and Ben Laden has more chances of being unearth by France than by the US.
I see people keep saying 'our' country. I'm not from the USA and I've never been there and neither have many other /.'ers , but this I can say, whatever happens there with regards to mass political moves there does affect us in smaller countrys.
Many of the problems we could face tomorrow would be a direct result of Bush and friends. They tend to have 'something' agaist other races/cultures.
Politics does cross over to 'geekland' when it starts passing laws on patents/privacy and other arb laws that effect us on the other side of the pond.
The USA != The known world.
Also, Penn and Teller aren't exactly unbiased themselves
In most countries, the head of state and the executive leader are two different people. The President or Monarch is the one who gets your loyality and respect, but he's just a figurehead with relatively little influence over the day to day running of the country.
The Prime Minister, on the other hand, is the one with all the power, but who doesn't feel entitled to any loyalty or automatic respect on account of his position. In fact, the Prime Minister has to withstand a barrage of criticism on a constant basis from the opposition. This is very healthy since it keeps the government on its toes.
Can you imagine G W Bush having to go through a weekly American equivalent of Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons? That would be entertaining!
Drill baby drill - on Mars
No, because humans want and need to know more about what's going on than just bare facts. Facts with no context aren't helpful. Saying that 10 men killed 100 men has no context. Why did they kill them? Who were the killers, who were the dead?
Here's another example:
10 men killed 100 men. The same 10 men drove into town.
10 men killed 100 men. The killers drove into town.
10 US soldiers killed 100 men. The killers drove into town.
Suddenly the word killer in the third example takes on a different meaning. Are "our boys" killers? Of course not! But "killers" is certainly an objective word in the second sentences. Because in the third example, assuming you're an American who supports our troops and I'm not claiming I am, by giving us more accurate information about the people who killed, suddenly a purely objective word in the second sentence takes on a negative connotation. People generally don't like the word "killer" applied to someone they support.
Think about how Fox news and CNN differ in their reporting of people who set off a bomb to specifically kill other people and purposely die in the act. CNN calls them "suicide bombers" indicating that they are people who kill others and commit suicide at the same time. Fox calls them homicide bombers, which I think is less accurate because it does not indicate that the bomber was committing suicide on purpose in the process.
But both descriptions tell us more about what happened then "an individual set off a bomb and purposefully died". Because we know that the words "suicide bomber" and "homicide bomber" have a particular political bias, and that knowledge gives us more information, not only about what happened but about the people presenting the news.
Everything else, while interesting to a human who can have a 'viewpoint' or stance, is irrelevant.
Hardly irrelevant when humans are the ones parsing the events and reacting to them. What you say may very well true in an academic discussion, but we're talking about the real world. We need to know more information to put it into context.
There are more elaborate examples than the suicide bomber/homicide bomber distinction. For example, what do you call the island approximately 120 miles southeast of China? Do you call it Taiwan or do you call it the Republic of China? The name you choose tells us about your politics. Or if you were doing an article about it would you refer to it as "That Island off the Coast of China" to avoid the various human viewpoints? http://www.worldpress.org/Asia/1671.cfm has more information about the name change.
he Carlyle Group, which has rather extensive ties to the Bush Family/Administration and the Bin Ladens
I guess you didn't read your own link. According to the Wikipedia article, it also has ties to many prominent Democrats, including leftist money-man George Soros and the daughter of Madeline Albright. The same Wikipedia article says the bin Ladins sold their stake in the company two years ago.
I've followed this story quite closely, and I have NEVER seen any person from Disney say such a thing. So please provide a link or direct quote with a source for it. I do not believe this is accurate, but if it is, I'd like to know it.
You SEEM to be parroting the party line of the Michael Moore crowd on this issue. I tend to think it's more of an effort by Disney not to be involved in something that was going to be highly controversial and potentially spawn new calls from conservative to boycott the company. Think about it. If he had wanted to KILL the film, he could have. Disney owned the piece. It could have been stuck in a vault for no one to see. He simply didn't want Disney involved in the distrubution, for legitimate business reasons.
Just for the record, I don't like the Bush administration, but I also don't like Michael Moore's tendency to play fast and loose with the facts, either. This seems to be a case in which his supporters are alleging something with no basis in fact, just as Moore has shown a repeated tendency to do in his films. Even if you agree with Moore's conclusions about things, his arguments are greatly weakened by his willingness to lie and mislead his audience about details.
Go google on images from Vietnam, that were played on the six o'clock news. Try the famous picture of the girl on fire with napalm, that was plastered everywhere.
This is what war *IS*. Blood and death and shattered bodies: this is the real world, not some video game or "action movie". You are, as the citizen of a democracy, *SUPPOSED* to vote on things - and I refer to Bush, Cheney, Rummy et al, as "things" - that affect the real world. If you voted for them, you voted for *this*.
Too real for you? Want to live in a fantasy, and keep your kids in a fantasy?
My kids have to live in the real world, as I do.
No 'R' rating.
mark
Comment removed based on user account deletion
No one has mentioned the PNAC in any of this. Established in the spring of 1997, the Project for the New American Century is a non-profit, educational organization whose goal is to promote American global leadership. Read their manifesto, it states in plain english that in order for a one world government (read the US) to happen the American people would have to be shocked into it, with someling like a 'new Pearl Harbor'. Look at some of the names of people belonging to this organization(terrorist group).
This is real.
*DrugCheese rants*
Hindsight is 20/20.
The events of that day were shocking, unprecedented and went against all experience with terrorist hijacking attempts.
NOBODY knew what was going on.
NOBODY claimed responsibility for the attacks.
NOBODY knew if it was accidental or intentional. Granted the second plane seriously reduced the possibility of accident and the Pentagon clinched it. But Don't forget somewhere in there a plane crashed in a field as well and nobody was real sure what had happend there. As clear as it all has become now, it was confusing as hell when it happend.
Given the complete unreal nature of the whole event I do not find finishing the reading of a very short book to a class to be an unreasonable action.
It wasn't a carpet bombing of Washington or some other american target.
It was not a claimed terrorist action.
It was not a WMD attack.
What would those 10 minutes have bought? Even with 20/20 hindsight I want to know if someone can come up with something he specifically could have done that would have changed the course of events from the time he was first informed of the second plane that would have altered the events of that day.
As far as endangering the kids goes? He and consequently they were about as well protected as could be from any kind of conventional attack. Even from an airspace invasion there is generally a hot set of air cover in the air or ready to go wherever the president is. If the military complex could not have acted to prevent a kamikazi run on the president once they knew it was a possibility ( ie the second plane and pentagon strikes ) then it is severely lacking.
However for a second lets assume there was indeed a plane with his name on it and they knew he would be at that school at that time etc.... What would his leaving have done besides save his skin anyway ? Or do you really think the terrorists could really have adapted those plans in real time had his location changed? Whatever increased level of deffense from all air attacks there was could be inacted just as well at that location as at any other so the kids where in no greater danger than they had already been placed in having the POTUS visit their school in the first place. Either the plane could have been intercepted or not... and whehter or not he was there would have been a moot point because the likely hood of them altering the target had he left would have been remote at best.
Your pet peeve is that there were only two extreme reactions. My pet peeve is questioning the reaction in light of what was learned well after those 10 minutes instead of considering it from the level of utter confusion of those 10 minutes.
Not saying you didn't. All in all I think you have made one of the more reasoned responses I have seen. I just wanted to throw another interpretation out there.
I don't ask you to be me. I only ask you not expect me to be you.
I was going to let this lie, but there's just too much FUD in here.
Salis, are you a historian? I am the erstwhile editor of an electronic historical periodical on post-Roman Britain; I am preparing to relaunch it in the coming months as a peer-reviewed journal. I have presented at academic conferences. I don't just read history obsessively, I actually practice the craft. And while my knowledge of WW2 is not as great as other periods, I know what a consensus means and how it's formed. I didn't claim there was one yet on FDR's pre-knowledge of Pearl Harbor; I said one was forming. Primarily from younger historians who are working solely from primary sources, and lack the hero-worship of the G.I. Generation. I don't know if it's true or not, but there is plenty of evidence to suggest it.
I addressed Hitchens' main point. His primary thesis is a straw man argument: that Moore's actual opinion does not gel with the opinion Hitchens would like to project on Bizarro Moore from the parallel dimension where things happened differently. Hitchens projects onto more policies and answers that Moore does not give. Moore asks questions; Hitchens sticks answers in his mouth and then points to how contradictory the answers he supplies for Moore are.
I said Moore's treatment of pre-war Iraq was suspect. However, is your contention that no child in Iraq ever flew a kite? Saddam was a heinous mass murderer, but no dictator, no matter how cruel, can be oppressing everyone all the time. Saddam was very nice to the Sunnis, for example. Most of Saddam's genocide was committed in the 1980s and 1990s, and while the terror of the Fedayeen cast a pall over all Iraqi life, the sun still shined on Baghdad during the day, and there were still far more moments of peace than of strife. In every country on earth, no matter how despotic, most people are just trying to get by.
You need to do a lot more reading on Al Jazeera. They are hated in the Arab world for being pro-American. Only in America are they considered propaganda for terrorists; most of the world considers them the opposite. This says something about journalistic integrity and objectivity when both sides hate you.
Moore's three Bush-esque sentences were highly suspect. The shootings at planes patrolling the no-fly zone, however, is the strongest argument against their literal truth. Whether these constitute an "attack on America," i.e., an act of war, is debatable. I do not take either side of that debate, and I find those three sentences very misleading. But, like Bush's claims of ties between al-Qaida and Saddam, they are literally true. It's a very fine line of deception that Moore walks for three lines like a highwire.
That it's better to get Saddam before he gets WMD's is a very different (and much better) case than the argument that he had WMD's. You should definately be working for the White House, Salis; you're much smarter than they are!
I don't like Saddam, and I take his removal as the silver lining of this situation; a situation that has plunged Iraq into chaos and threatens to tear the region apart in horrific civil war, has strengthened al-Qaida more than they could have ever imagined, and begun the neoconservative campaign for the Pax Americana (a cause they have outlined publicly in detail many times). It may have doubled the size and power of al-Qaida and planted the seeds of a new Roman Empire, but it did get rid of Saddam. There is at least that. But with other tyrants far worse than him at large, I take little consolation in that.
I nowhere insult Hitchens. I did not lower myself to the logical fallacy of the ad hominem, especially as so much of my argument relied on pointing out the logical fallacies in Hitchens' argument. I challenge you to cite a single, solitary line in my rebuttal where I insulted Hitchens. I made many pointed remarks about the weakness of his argument, but I never commented on the man himself except to put to bed the contention that this was a "lib fight
Jason Godesky