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Michael Moore's New Film Leaked To BitTorrent
Jared writes "Michael Moore was afraid the Feds might sieze his new documentary Sicko, a scathing indictment of the US health-care system, because part of it was filmed in Cuba despite the US embargo. So he stashed a copy of the film in Canada just to be safe. He might as well not have bothered — the film has shown up on BitTorrent and P2P networks everywhere. So it's safe now."
Whether you like him or not, believe what he says or not, you have to agree that Michael Moore is influential.
If you are for P2P, I'm not sure if this is the guy you would want on the other side of the debate.
Sunny
Be my Friend
To paraphrase a certain someone.... "Real men don't stash copies of their possibly illegal movies in other countries. They leak them to BitTorrent and let the world mirror them." -Michael Moore
Can someone explain to me the reasoning behind the bans on cuba. There are much nastier places that people are allowed to deal with. I always get a kick living in vancouver because anywhere there might be american tourists, there is usually a big sign saying "cuban cigars".
----
Go canucks, habs, and sens!
Remember that the most important thing about Michael Moore isn't that he's fighting to change the health care system, it isn't that he's tried to open America's eyes about the severe gun violence problem, it isn't that he's tried to do his bit to stop George W Bush's war in Iraq, it isn't that he's tried to get capitalism to actually fulfill the promises of helping all citizens and not just the richest, it isn't any of those things. None of those things are important.
The most important thing is that he's fat and his voice is a little whiny. If you can't see that and channel your rage accordingly, I feel sorry for you dirty hippies.
...set of lies and twisted "truths" from this nutjob, who wouldnt know the actual truth if it came up and bit him.
Because we all know the President Bush tells the truth and would never mislead us.
Whatever you make of MM, the point he makes in this movie is both a profound and necessary wake-up call. It's the kind of movie you don't even need to have an open mind to appreciate. If you're still dubious about state-funded healthcare then this should open your mind for you.
How about this one? Universal coverage for 1/2 of what we're paying.
The ______ Agenda
here are two takes on it, one interesting, and the other bordering on the ridiculous. first, apparently michael moore himself approves of people sharing. he was quoted to have said that:
"I make these books and movies and TV shows because I want things to change, so the more people that get to see them the better, so I'm happy when that happens. I think information and art, ideas should be shared."
So far so good, hats off to the guy for the message.
Now, onto part two. The funny thing is that there are some people in the so-called "blogosphere" (who seem to disagree with Moore), who have posted the movie for download, pasted a ton of ads on their website, and then gone to write something like so:
"Now I fully expect [...] Moore's people asking me to take this down. Which I will, because unlike Moore and most liberals I actually do respect things like copyright laws and property rights. "
Ain't that sweet, and ain't people on the internet nice -- you rip someone off while saying you "respect" copyright, you're making money off ads on it, and you have the audacity to say the movie is all bulshit. Cheers for the copyright 'lovers' on teh internet, really.
How simple minded do you have to be to assume that hating Michael Moore equals loving Bush?
Need a fancy medical scan? (MRI, PET, etc.)
Depending on the political power your region of the country holds, you may be out of luck. It's not the market (number of sick people) which determines where these devices are installed. It's pure politics, and the resulting distribution is not even remotely fair.
That's not really an improvement.
...and Michael Moore is one of the few people with enough influence who has the sense to keep harping on it. I just saw Sicko (via bittorrent) and it was very good.
Of course as a nation we really are insane; most people still don't see the problem with putting the richest corporations in charge of absolutely everything and calling it "freedom".
Caveat Utilitor
Our problems do not come from a "failure" to socialize medicine. When I was up in Canada, the news was that brain scanners were mostly going to places with powerful politicians. Quebec got an unfair share. Money was disappearing for political reasons. Over in the UK, people are being sent to France for surgery because they'd die on the waiting lists if they didn't go. Here in the USA we install brain scanners (lots of them too) where there will be patients and we don't die on waiting lists for anything other than an organ transplant -- and that only because we made it illegal to pay the dead person's estate.
Our real problems are:
Some of these problems are not really solvable. Economics is what it is, people like new technology, and nobody wants to see their little children die. The lawyers have some mighty lobbiests, but a change would at least be theoretically possible. The same goes for the co-pay insurance system, which could be replaced by a sliding scale or percentage system. (example insurance fix: the patient's payment must increase by at least 10 cents for every dollar of the treatment cost up to "$200 for $2000", then by 1 cent per dollar thereafter)
Since when is flatulence "Flamebait"? ...oh...
Blank until
Because we all know the President Bush tells the truth and would never mislead us.
The fact that Bush has often misled the american people does not prove that Michael Moore is telling the truth.
There is no such thing as the free market, because access to every market is controlled by special interest gatekeepers. If you don't believe me, just try visiting the NYSE and buying some shares directly. Free market think tanks are as prone to special interest pleading as anybody else - unless you really believe, say, that the Cato Institute takes money from the oil and tobacco industries and is totally uninfluenced by it.
And here in the UK, we have had to move away from the medical profession being allowed to regulate itself as a result of numerous scandals. Although the great majority of physicians are doubtless more altruistic than the majority of society, it's been said that trade unions are like dishwater - the scum rises to the top.
I think that experience in Canada, the UK and most of Europe shows that you must be able to vote for the people that control the health care system, because there are too many ethical, special interest, and economic factors to be left to people acting blindly in their own interests. Adam Smith never foresaw a world of mega-corporations, and his understanding of capitalism was a long way short of that of Marx.
Pining for the fjords
...set of lies and twisted "truths" from this nutjob, who wouldnt know the actual truth if it came up and bit him.
I kind of liked The Onion's take on it:
Half Of Nation Outraged At New, Not-Yet-Released Michael Moore Film
[...]
"This film is absolutely tasteless and misguided, and I can't believe theaters are even showing it," said GOP presidential candidate Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS), who, along with the rest of the nation, has not yet seen the film.
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
Actually if you watched the movie, no wait if you even watched the promo's you would know he didn't go to Cuba to show how great Castro medical centers were. He went there as he heard that suspected terrorists got free and better health care then most Americans and tried to get to Gitmo to get health care.
/. pointing out anything positive on the movie get down rated, while those calling Moore fat seem to be get positive ratings.
I also find it funny that a lot of posts on
Sure make fun of the guy. It is easier to ignore the actual message that the US private Healthcare system is a total mess.
Because we all know the President Bush tells the truth and would never mislead us.
Because when someone disagrees with a liar they are automatically telling the truth.
For example, I too think Bush is a liar. Also, your hair is on fire.
Bush, Rush, Coulter etc. vs Clinton, Moore, Franken, etc... it's the circus part of the bread and circus formula. Their goal is to really change very little but get you all worked up about it in the process.
Or when sounded as A, as in neighbor or weigh.
Sorry, ex-English teacher, had to say something. (Sidenote: always nice to see an old spelling mistake in a new word. I see far too much of "concieve" and "beleive" and not nearly enough "siezing". Of course, that is because I don't typically teach children older than middle school, and they don't have much call to say "seizure" unless it is in the context "Spelling nearly gives me a seizure".)
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
"Because we all know the President Bush tells the truth and would never mislead us."
Right, so piling on more mistruths is totally justified. I feel full of insight, now.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Actually if you watched the movie, no wait if you even watched the promo's you would know he didn't go to Cuba to show how great Castro medical centers were. He went there as he heard that suspected terrorists got free and better health care then most Americans and tried to get to Gitmo to get health care
What does that mean though? If the US government didn't give free and good healthcare to people detained indefinitely at gitmo, the public would complain. Quite rightly in my opinion. Part of the vast death rate of Russian soldiers captured by the Germans (and vice versa) in WWII was caused by denying them healthcare. And the cost of providing healthcare to detainees is probably negligable anyway if you look at it as a percentage of the vast cost of keeping gitmo open.
Like everything else he does it's stunt designed to show the irony of the situation. But it only does that until you start to think about what would happen if things were the reverse of what they are. And then it doesn't seem so ironic anymore.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
IMO these statements about there not being government funded health care in the US are all bullcrap.
Why do I say that? Well, personal experience. My income is about $12,000 a year, and about two months ago I had an operation to diagnose a kidney disease. That is, this was not life threatening, but for diagnostic purposes. I didn't have to wait two years either, rather I only waited about a month and a half.
What did I pay for it? Nothing. No co-pay, no co-insurance, no cost for anethesia, no deductable. Nothing. Nada. Even my prescription drugs are free, everything from simple pain killers to the latest and greatest name brands. Who paid for it all? The state of Arizona. One acronym: AHCCCS. Similar programs exist in all 50 states.
If this isn't providing health care to those who can't afford it, then I don't know what is. It has all of the benefits of private health care, in fact it works into the private health care system, so you get all of the same doctors and everything you would get in most private health care plans. The particular plan I am on is called Health Choice AZ, and there are many such plans to choose from, including a few PPO plans. I am not making any of this up, google it and you shall see. The information is sitting right at your fingertips.
Why do people like Michael Moore completely omit this fact when they bash America's health care system? They act as though poor people get nothing here - its just not true. If our health care system was like Canada's, hell I could be on dialysis right about now with how long it would have taken for me to get a proper diagnosis. I don't know about anybody else, but I wouldn't trade our current health care system for anything else.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
Michael Moore is a pretentious hack. Every time I want to see his smirking face like he's teaching the world a thing or two I want to gouge my eyes out.
Every time I hear Ann Coulter talk about the liberal media bias I want to light something on fire and throw myself in it.
So which am I, fucktard GP? Right or Wrong? Left or Right?
I'm a goddamn self-critical thinking American who realizes we've fucked up but also realizes that distorting the truth in a documentary is probably the worst thing you could ever do for the industry. You want to present an opinion - cool, say it's your fucking opinion. But saying right is left and the sky is actually a pretty shade of lime and presenting that as not coming from you, but coming from facts is the lowest thing you could do in documentary journalism. It's as bad as any (insert ideology) media bias and worse for the hard-working true blue documentarians who want to present both sides of an issue but are shown that doing that isn't sexy enough, that they won't get the respect they so richly deserved by allowing both sides to speak and letting the audience decide, or by presenting their opinion and letting the audience decide whether it's right or wrong.
Moore makes me as sad and pissed off for my America as any other partisan lobby-owned political hack.
Quid-pro-quo, ne?
Stay the fuck out of our world, and we'll stay out of your politics.
- These characters were randomly selected.
Yeah, sure, except US politics affects the rest of the world. US politics is everybody's politics.
Ho! Haha! Guard! Turn! Parry! Dodge! Spin! Ha! Thrust!
http://www.spinsanity.org/columns/20021119.html - here you go. Educate yourself on the man.
Note: These are the same people who wrote this - no fans of the current president.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5335853/site/newsweek/
Michael Isikoff, co-writer of the MSNBC piece, also wrote this.
There're your specifics, sir. The man is not a true documentarian, and makes the whole practice look worse than Geraldo Rivera journalism.
Except Al Franken actually tried to change things. Instead of ranting like an idiot, he sat around for 3 hours and talked to experts, pundits, wonks and Norm Ornstein. It's one thing to say your opposition is wrong, it's another to spend a few hours and go indepth and discuss actually *why* they're wrong using things like truth(which has a liberal bias, wierdly enough).
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Ironically its become what he tried to remove.
Huh? You can disagree all you want with Castro, you can't accuse him of having become anything like his predecessors.
While freedom of speech is undoubtedly stiffled in Cuba, it's a comparatively safe place. Opponents might be sent to jail, but they're not tortured. Women's right are respected. Religious rights are respected. No child labor. Education is good. There doesn't seem to be massive corruption, at least compared to similar countries.
Compare this to current US allies.
I dunno, Saudi Arabia. Not only isn't there any of the rights afforded to Cubans, but they don't even have any of those that the Cubans lack; try to exercise freedom of speech in Saudi Arabia, and see how long your head stays attached to your spine.
You could also take China. No freedom of speech, rampant corruption, massive inequalities, and on top of that atrocious environmental violations. It's only nominally communist, when Cuba has at least what looks like true equality among its citizens.
Compared to many places in the world, Cuba is a sweet place to live. That doesn't make it an ideal place, far from it. But considering how much the US spends on trying to "fix" it, and how it focuses on it, this is a major fraud in my opinion.
Florida is a "swing state" with many cuban voters. They left cuba for a reason and that reason is that they hate Castro. So much so that they would rather see the family and friends they left behind live in poverty than give any legitimacy to Cuba by trading with them. So any party that would get rid of the idiotic embargo (China is a preferred trade partner for crying out loud!) loses the Cuban vote in Florida and thus lose any election.
THAT is why the embargo is still in place.
We would, if you could stay the "frak" out of our business.
USA still has a lot of international say and use it in a not so civilized way at times.
Stop kidnapping our citizens and send them to Guantanamo for no good reason.
Stop keeping "secret" prisons in our countries.
Stop your european missile shield program.
Stop invading souvreign countries to protect american profit interests.
Stop pushing SW-patents and other bad ideas onto the rest of the world.
Stop being the top polluter in the world.
etc...
Your politics affect us, and as long as that's the case, we really can't stay the "frak" out of your politics.
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
Most countries with universal health care do not have "socialised" health care.
France, Germany, etc, have "socialised" health insurance.
Care itself is mostly private. Doctors, dentists, pharmacists have private practices. A majority of hospitals are state-run, but there are plenty of private hospitals, too.
You are free to go to any doctor you want.
"Leaked to BitTorrent" just gives the anti-piracy jerks more ammunition to use against BitTorrent. At the very least, change it to "Leaked via P2P" or even better, just "Leaked".
Everyone knows what you mean. I actually use BitTorrent exclusively for legitimate downloads (yes, I realise that sounds unlikely, but it's true) and I would be very disappointed if use of it was criminalised because of clueless lawmakers who are deriding their information from subjects like this.
Look, I'm actually more to the left than he is, as usually is the case in Europe. What by US standards counts as "conservative" and "liberal", in most of continental Europe would pass for "ultra-conservative" and "conservative". Yeah, we're a bunch of commie mutant traitors like that ;)
I even agree with some of his points. Well, dunno about this particular movie, but I ended up buying a couple of his books because the back cover said they were "hilarious." (Ooer. Americans must be quite a cheerful and fun loving folk, if even that kind of bitter whine counts as "hilarious".)
That said, his endless "auugh, the government is out to get me" is starting to look stupid already, for a start. Look, if the government wanted to silence him, he'd be silent already. If America was the kind of fascist oligarchy that he always describes, he probably wouldn't even be alive at this point, or at least someone would have framed him for something already and sent him to a maximum security jail.
This is just yet another such publicity stunt, for conspiracy theorists. How about waiting until the government actually does something about it, before "leaking" the movie? Or if he wants to distribute it via P2P, fine, that's a mighty fine way to distribute your works, really. But it's just a choice of distribution, not some great act of resistance against fascism.
Hyperbole (like metaphors, similes, and everything else) is like a condiment in food. If half your dish is salt or pepper, you probably overdid it. Same here. Not only it makes his bitter whine sound even more bitter, it doesn't even serve his purposes that well, since you never know what's a genuine assessment and what's another of his over-the-top hyperboles. It's like the boy who cried wolf: by the time you've described something as a totalitarian plot for the 1000'th time, noone (sane) takes it seriously any more.
Such ego-stroking stunts are just that kind of bad hyperbole. Yes, probably some people above would dislike his point, but some might even agree with him. Either way, he's _not_ going to end up with the Gestapo on his doorstep and with the SS burning his movies and book, either.
More importantly, there are always two sides to each issues. There's rarely a free meal: to get X you give up some Y, or viceversa. And neither extreme is an utopia, so you have to figure out your own least crappy compromise among all possible crappy compromises. Which is why there's a political debate and more than one party and platform. One thinks that it's totally worth giving up X to get more Y, one thinks the opposite, one thinks the balance is good enough as it is, one wants to give up both X and Y to gain Z, and yet another one runs around with pencils up its nose and thinks it's an airplane.
The reason why the government does X instead of Y, may not always be the best, may not always even be honest, but aren't always "let's oppress someone for the fun of it either" either. Whether it's about health care or letting the Bin Laden family fly away after 9/11, there are real issues ranging from costs to international relations to ideology behind those choices. And by ideology I mean "what we think is best for the economy", not just "let's be neo-conservative because the conspiracy told us to". Those ideas might well be wrong (everyone can't be right at the same time, or you wouldn't need more than one party), but painting one side with the broad brush of "auugh, they're all bought by their industrialist friends and trying to silence me" is just an ad-hominem.
Stances basically saying "my version is by definition perfect, and everyone else is a fascist peddling crooked crap solutions" aren't really doing anyone any good.
Or at least I hope it's hyperbole, because otherwise he'd have to be paranoid schizophrenic to actually believe all that. But I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. It's probably hyperbole.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
What's your excuse for continuing the attempt to redefine the debate?
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
I've read a bit of the "Michael Moore is a liar" threads here and elsewhere, but their content is, from what I've seen, limited to re-interpreting the facts a different way, just leaving out the facts that led to his conclusion, all the while pretending that he's just spouting foundationless opinion, a la Rush Limbaugh.
One of the main points of the movie isn't people without insurance - it's people with insurance who think they are covered but find out they are screwed when they hit their benefit caps when hit with a serious illness/accident. Start paying attention to the numbers of charity events in your area ment to help people pay medical bills. Start paying attention to policies that pay for organ transplants but not the $3,000 a month people have to spend on the anti-rejection drugs.
The state of the American health care system is atrocious, and anyone who defends it is either ignorant, a crazy Libertarian, or a tool for the insurance industry.
I wish I had read your posts before replying to 2 others. I agree that Michael Moore is a hack, but I think that his 9/11 movie raised some important questions. I just wish he hadn't been in the movie. The evidence he presented was so eloquent that all he had to do was not screw it up, but his very screen presence is so obnoxious that people want to disbelieve him, even if all the evidence comes from independently verifiable sources. He is an impediment to his own message.
I am from the US. I went to see my doctor about a year ago and she wanted an MRI. She called the hospital and I was in the machine within the hour. And to tie this in with a post below... everyone should have quick access to these machines. Even for small, "non-emergency" reasons. Considering that a headache is not an emergency but the cause may be, I would like my prognosis now please.
the issue is the middle class. they are the ones saddled by bills and unable to afford health insurance, and ineligible due to income level for the wonderful arizona program you love
the poor and the rich in the usa get just dandy healthcare. the rich can afford it out of pocket, and the poor benefit from generous state and federal programs. it is the middle class who are screwed by the us healthcare system
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
While freedom of speech is undoubtedly stiffled in Cuba, it's a comparatively safe place. Opponents might be sent to jail, but they're not tortured. Women's right are respected. Religious rights are respected. No child labor. Education is good. There doesn't seem to be massive corruption, at least compared to similar countries.
No, you're wrong. People are tortured daily in Cuba. Their religions are mocked. They have no access to education.
Haven't you ever heard of Guantanamo Bay?
What? That's run by the USA? Oh.
HAL.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
I'm tired of all of this crap about Moore's documentaries being nothing but lies. His documentaries are heavily biased against the Bush administration and the direction of the country, but, for the most part, his facts are pretty accurate. This new documentary was created to point out how bad the national health care situation is currently. His using Cuba to demonstrate national health care shows his bias, but it doesn't make his point less accurate or factual. Health care in this country is screwed up. When needing medical care could mean years, or even decades of extreme debt, even when you have "insurance" (if it can be called that with the crap these companies pull), we have an issue.
I'm tired of the ad hominem attacks here. If you disagree with the man, fine. If you don't want to watch the movie, fine. But if you want to disagree with him as vocally as many do here, counter his facts, stop the BS and petty name calling.
Clones are people two.
For me, I don't see him as lying, I see him as bending the truth.
I've watched this movie, and he's glossed over the fact that our (the UK) NHS infrastructure is a bit shoddy. Sure, it's one of the best in the world, but it's a giant money hole.
Also, it appears to be an advert for Clinton. Would have been nice to see this party-neutral. Ah well.
If you ignore the partisan politics, this is a fantastic film with one important message: Societies are not judged by how they treat their heroes, but how they treat the bottom rung. Only with universal healthcare, free at the point of need (that's need, not want - no free boobjobs, obviously) can the US elevate it's status as one of the worst infant mortality rates, poor general health and positively narcissistic health corporation which have done nothing but bolster corporate profits.
The US is a fantastic place, but I'd never want to live in a country that didn't care about everyone - regardless of whether they're a billionaire or a meth-addict in dire straits.
Okay, I'm going to take your post, and do to it what Michael Moore does with the video he shoots:
.
Please post an actual lie that Michael Moore had in his movies. The arguments in Fahrenheit 9/11 were presented in terms of evidence--government documents, congressional transcripts/testimony, interviews, books, etc. You can interpret the facts differently if you wish, but that doesn't mean he's lying.
I've read a bit of the "Michael Moore is a liar" threads here and elsewhere, but their content is , from what I've seen, limited to re-interpreting the facts a different way, just leaving out the facts that led to his conclusion, all the while pretending that he's just spouting foundationless opinion, a la Rush Limbaugh
ZOMG, you just said Michael Moore is pretending that he's Rush Limbaugh!!!!
Now if you said that was a lie, and that you said no such thing, and I retorted saying those were your words, who would be right? I dare say you would be. It is a lie, and not a "bending" of truth.
Here is an example: In the movie "Bowling for Columbine", Michael Moore wanted to paint the NRA as a nasty gun club that lacked compassion for the Columbine shooting. Here is how he did it. First he spliced in some video of children crying outside columbine, then cut to Charlton Heston saying "from my cold, dead, hands", then cut to a billboard about an NRA meeting in Denver while Michael Moore tells us that after Columbine Charlton Heston decided to have a pro-gun rally in Denver, then cut to a video of Heston's speech (except utilizing the above demonstrated edit job to alter the message).
The problem with this is that Heston's "cold, dead, hands" speech wasn't even from his Denver speech. And after the Columbine shooting, the NRA didn't suddenly decide to hold a gun-rally. Their National Convention has been planned to be there for years. And it wasn't even a pro-gun rally, as all the exhibits and committee meetings were canceled in respect of the recent tragedy. The only thing not canceled was the members meeting, which could not be canceled due to state laws governing non-profits.
When you imply something untrue by using careful editing and splicing, you are lying. I'm sorry that we live in a world where lying is so casually dismissed (thanks to our current and last president), and that lying about somebody we don't like is okay. But the fact remains that Moore is a liar and his "documentaries" aren't worth the film they're printed on.
2 minutes, 23 seconds in, the bank manager says "We have to do a background check". If you watched less than 2 and a half minutes of the film, why should I listen to your opinion about it?
A lot of the problem isn't with the poor. It is in the gap between poor enough to be granted state-funded medi-care, and rich enough to afford health-care on your own. They are the working poor.
The people who get lost are those working low-wage jobs and are just making ends meet. The state doesn't recognize them as being poor enough to need assistance, and to these people it is more important to put food on the table than purchase independent health-insurance. If they get sick, often what little health-insurance they may have through work will not cover their needs. This leaves them with enormous medical bills, and no way to pay them.
Actually I think the poor are well looked after in the states, if you are unable to work or qualify for state-assistance you can be better off than people who work two jobs and make just enough money to scrape by. It's the people in the middle that fall between the cracks. I only have heard anecdotal evidence that that gap is getting larger... but I don't have any real evidence at hand to justify that statement so it could be false.
This is not a sig.
The fact that Bush has often misled the american people does not prove that Michael Moore is telling the truth. The difference between Bush and Moore, is that Bush maintains he is telling the truth, even when the facts suggest otherwise. Moore claims only to give an opinion, and is frequently on record as saying his movies are 'op-ed pieces'.
Schnapple
Completely UNTRUE. Unless you're talking ELECTIVES.
From personal experience, myself, I was having passing out spells. Totally random. My blood pressure was fine, so nothing was deemed critical and life threatening. I had an untrasound that day and bloodwork. Took me 3 weeks to get a MRI, mind you, I live in Toronto. Turns out, I'm OK.
Having said that, one of my lawyers here at work, her partner had an aneurisym a couple years back. He went into the hospital literally last weekend (in Montreal) as he was having a pain threshold of 10 (whatever that means to him) headaches. He was in the emergency, and within 3 hours had a CAT scan, and an MRI.
The difference between the people you've talked to and the people, including myself, who've got these done quickly is EMERGENCIES. Electives take a while, if you're at risk and require emergency support - you're bumped to the head of the line. That's how it works. Even if you're rural - you may have to travel to a city centre to get the required attention - but you get it, in the time required to save your life.
Party?!? What kind of party is this? Where's the damn keg?
Virtus Junxit Mors Non Separabit
Apparently the Cuban health care and education systems are amongst the best in the world and are available to all Cubans. Most of Cuba's hardships seem to come from the trade embargoes enforced by the US.
. stm2 32628.stm
http://www.worldpress.org/Europe/1659.cfm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Cuba
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1739773
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/5
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43b/185.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Cuba
As for the speech, here is a comparison someone transcribed from F911 and from Heston's actual speech.
Here is a link to Moore's website where he responds to attacks on his movie. The page is long and there is a lot there, so I'll copy the text where Moore responds to this specific charge. I'm going to leave it as is, without correcting the paragraph/formatting errors.
At this point, there's nothing more to say, really. Judge for yourselves if Moore is being honest or dishonest.
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
The primary criticism of the Bush "prosperity" is that the economic growth is being driven primarily by firms outsourcing high-paying jobs overseas. So, the bulk of the wealth that is being created is going to the already very wealthy, while the middle class is exchanging their previous high-paying jobs for lower paying jobs. Most of the jobs being created are low-paying service sector jobs.
Yes, there is widespread speculation that a recession is coming, fueled mainly by the crisis in the housing market, but people speculate about the market all the time. This speculation is coming from economists in general, and is certainly not limited to the left wing.
Also, the Film Actors Guild (FAG) was a fictional organization in the film "Team America: World Police". The acronym is part of the humor. So, while your point of view is legitimate, you may want to research your assertions before throwing bile at fictional entities.
Also, while Moore undoubtedly plays up certain aspects of his films for entertainment value and to prove his point, he does often bring up quite a few good points that are solidly based on fact. To ignore a point of view out of hand merely because it comes from a source you find distasteful is closed-minded.
It would have been more apparent had they not put the NRA billboard between the two scenes. And I doubt most people noticed the different suit, lighting, etc. But even if you ignore that part, the part about the mayor telling him not to come there and that they were already there...that is blatantly deceptive editing and is dishonest.
It is sort of ironic to have a Moore supporter accuse the other side of discrediting the intelligence of the viewers.
I saw that part of the film. I am anti-gun, and I still didn't reach the conclusion that Moore is said by his critics to have foisted on me. That's part of what I find odd about the criticisms of his movies. Politically I'm in his neighborhood (roughly), but I never saw what everyone says he is showing. I take hyperbole for hyperbole, rhetorical questions for rhetorical questions, metaphor for metaphor, and so on--I guess I'm not literalist enough to feel that he's trying to lie to me. The main ideas of the film are what matter to me, and oddly, I haven't seen those questioned. I just see them thrown out altogether, sight unseen, because Moore spliced two speeches together and "that means we can't trust him."