Cannes' Palme d'Or goes to Michael Moore 1856
An anonymous reader writes "The Palme d'Or of the Festival de Cannes was presented this year by Charlize Theron to Fahrenheit 9/11 by Michael Moore. I don't know if it's the first time this prize is awarded to a documentary, but I guess it's rare enough to be mentioned, especially given the problems this film encounters."
Documentary? (Score:5, Insightful)
His movies would be more credible if he didn't try to present them as documentaries. They're not documentaries. They're commentaries.
Nothing wrong with that at all, but let's just be clear about it. Up front.
Just curious.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Documentary? (Score:5, Insightful)
Watching History Channel in Istanbul, sometimes it amazes me. You know what I mean...
Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
ummm... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Some questions (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Some questions (Score:5, Insightful)
Any website which needs to mock the physical appearance of someone to make a point shouldn't really be trusted.
Re:Documentary? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
> I haven't seen the thing and I am sure it is politically biased, but certainly I would like to make that determination myself rather then seeing Buena Vista kiss presidential ass and decide that it is not gonna distribute it for fear of losing tax breaks in Florida...
Disney's veto of the Miramax distribution has probably made it 10x the political bombshell it would have been otherwise.
Censorship (Score:3, Insightful)
I know the topic of censorship is near and dear to the Slashdot community. I hope people can see that the right wing has a history of using money to censor media outlets in this country. This is a good example of that as is the holy war the FCC has declared on broadcasters.
The liberals in this country want open and free discussion. the conservatives think that they can get away with censoring the liberals by labeling everything opposed to them as indecent.
Want more information on the republican campaign to quiet the liberal voice check out howardstern.com [howardstern.com]. (warning, site may be offensive to compassionate conservatives).
Re:Some questions (Score:3, Insightful)
So are Bush's best buddies.
Re:Well... (Score:3, Insightful)
Nowhere in the Constitution is it written that freedom of speech implies that private organizations are obligated to provide a soapbox. Therefore, despite what Moore claims, their decision is not censorship.
Art OR politics (Score:4, Insightful)
What a bunch of pussy footers (Score:4, Insightful)
Fuck that. Until the rest of the 150 million or so people who haven't been utterly brainwashed by this administration find the gonads to say something more than, "But, he has no exit plan..", Moore is the mouthpiece of the home of the brave, as far as I'm concerned.
Re:Documentary? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:As Much As I Agree (Score:5, Insightful)
Documentaries (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't have to do a damn thing to verify his movie - I just sit back and see who sues him. I mean, the gun lobby alone is very, very large, and determined... if there was a single thing in Bowling that could even be remotely picked apart by a lawyer, it would happen. But it hasn't.
By the way, I'd like to make another point to the Slashdot crowd at large - Documentaries are NOT supposed to be "objective". News reporting is supposed to be objective. You have never, ever seen an 'objective' documentary that wasn't trying to inform you of some plight, or problem, or point of view. Ever.
Cannes and Abu Ghraib (Score:2, Insightful)
But even more than Moore's documentary, I hope more and more images and video keeps coming out of Iraq in regards to the abuse, torture, rape and slaughter of Iraqi citizens, most of whom are guilty of no crime. That more than anything is Bush's legacy, his mark upon the world and truly the images that best define our Fascist Leader and his doctrines.
Re:Documentary? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ryan Fenton
The truth was already a problem. MM is showing it. (Score:2, Insightful)
Trouble with Michael Moore's films is that they hit close to home, and people don't like it. Just because it's uncomfortable, doesn't mean we should ignore it.
Mike.
Re:Documentary? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:which was actually a Documentary (Score:4, Insightful)
Both only show you what they wanted you to see, one wanted you to see a beautifull ocean and a story about great explorers on a great ship... the other wanted you to see a bad Bush & co.
Jeroen
Re:Some questions (Score:1, Insightful)
That he presents his work as documentary. That is a word with a specific meaning. Take the getting a free gun at the bank scene. In fact, the bank would give you a voucher that could be used at a gun store, once all the regular checks were done. The scene was completely staged - that makes it fiction, not documentary. Moore's films take place in an America that doesn't, and never, existed - it's no more real than a sci-fi or fantasy movie.
Re:As Much As I Agree (Score:5, Insightful)
Now that sounds like WMD and Iraq.
Re:Documentary? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Well... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Documentaries (Score:4, Insightful)
Ummm, that's complete bullshit.
A real documentary is supposed to DOCUMENT something. In fact, here's the definition from dictionary.com:
Documentary: "Presenting facts objectively without editorializing or inserting fictional matter."
I have seen PLENTY of real documentaries. Turn to the discovery channel or PBS and you're likely to find one right now.
Re:Some questions (Score:5, Insightful)
As a non-US citizen I even have to wonder what people in the states gets so worked up over in the first place, he's just a reporter who wants to illuminate problems in the society and he happens to have a real knack for storytelling and presentation.
But maby it's just that truth hurts...
/greger
Re:As Much As I Agree (Score:3, Insightful)
Some factual errors yes, but overall quite good (Score:3, Insightful)
That being said, I'd say bowling for columbine was rather good. Yes parts of it exploited sensationalism and there were some factual errors, but it
Also...give one of Moore's books a skim sometimes. I wouldn't have expected it, but Moore does a better job providing evidence for his claims then the supposedly more prestigious Noam Chomsky. Noam likes to make wild claims while assuming you'll take his word for it...Moore at least cites his sources.
-Chris
Re:As Much As I Agree (Score:4, Insightful)
moron.
If you're gonna... (Score:1, Insightful)
(Come on, someone calling Wes Clarke "slimy"?!?!?)
Give me a break... (Score:5, Insightful)
First, as much as I like Stern, he only is qualified to discuss the proper techniques for tossing bologna at a stripper's butt. His political views are based on whatever pads his pocketbook.
Second, there is not an active "campaign" to censor or quiet Michael Moore -- or at least I didn't get the e-mail or fax. He could only wish that the US Government would try to censor him. It would be even more $$$ in his pocket. Moore and his slavish followers claim that disagreeing with him is the same as trying to silence him.As a part of my civil liberties, I have the freedom to not pay to watch his "documentaries", buy his books, view his TV shows or wear his t-shirts. Or do I have to spend my money supporting the companies that support him. That's not an effort to quiet him, its an effort to make sure my money doesn't make it into his pocket. He is already a rich, union busting fat cat.
The liberals in this country want open and free discussion.
As long as you ignore all the campaigns against Fox News and talk radio hosts plus speech codes on college campuses, I would agree.
Re:Some questions (Score:5, Insightful)
in fact in one interview his main complaint was that a lot of the stuff in f.9/11 which people say is "new" is not new at all - he just asked around to find it. essentially he said, "i'm just a schmuck who only graduated from high school with no training in journalism - how is it that i found this stuff and "real" journalists didn't?"
as a person who has followed tech "journalism" for years, i can actually answer his question. but like him, i don't much like the answer.
Re:Documentary? (Score:5, Insightful)
Michael Moore is a bigmouthed troublemaker.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:-1 Offtopic (Score:2, Insightful)
Good crap people. Why does everybody feel this incessant fucking need to classify everything as an EPIC FUCKING STRUGGLE. Guess what?
Open source is a damn ideology. Not an attack.
You are not an insurgent for using linux. You are not sticking it to the man when you release an OSS program.
You are not. And I repeat -- you are not -- keeping Bill Gates awake at night.
ARGH!
Re:Documentary? (Score:2, Insightful)
Any documentary is biased, just as anything else presented in any media. The ideas displayed are filtered through not only the director, but also the editor, and finally the viewers of that idea.
Now, that doesn't mean that a person could be overly biased, or that a person could--deceptively--claim to be unbiased. It been my experience with Michael Moore that he's neither, though certainly that could be personal taste.
A few years ago, before Bowling for Columbine, I emailed him--I'm an aspiring director-and was pleased to actually get a thoughful and down to earth responce... so there's my bias.
Re:Message or Money? (Score:2, Insightful)
your suggestion that releasing the movie for free on the net is moot as (although ianal) he would likely face serious legal issues as he had to borrow money to make the film in the first place (i wont bother going on about how disney/miramax funded then retracted)
click here [slashdot.org] for some insight on war profiteering
Re:Some questions (Score:3, Insightful)
Bush's verbal gaffes cost us all something; respect in the eyes of the world. At one time we had a lot of it, and we have since squandered it and everyone hates us. Is Bush's plan for keeping Americans in line to make it so bad out there for us that we never leave home, so we never find out just how fucked up our nation has become compared to many genuinely civilized countries?
His monkey faces, well, they're just fun to laugh at.
Re:Documentary? (Score:5, Insightful)
Fiction presented as fact, eh? Sounds like libel to me. I wonder why the NRA haven't sued yet? I mean, you make it sound like an open and shut case, right?
Nope, Moore tells the truth. He presents it in a very biased way, and completely ignores any facts that don't agree with his thesis, but the things he does present are facts. They have to be, or he'd be spending the next couple of years in court.
Re:Documentary? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sigh.... (Score:1, Insightful)
I visit slashdot for geek news, when I want bias and or political commentary, I'll watch CNN or Fox News. Political banter on slashdot, especially Michael Moore, who is quite divisive, only serves to inflame tempers.
Re:Art OR politics (Score:4, Insightful)
And maybe Jimmy Carter won the Nobel on the basis of his Habitat for Humanity and election work throughout the world.
Problem is that I'm not sure if you're kidding or not. I think you're being facetious...
I'm a big fan of science fiction; detractors of SF always say that the ideological elements are too raw, too much on the surface. But it is precisely because of this that I enjoy it so. When China was perceived as a threat there was a huge upsurge in the number of "hive mind" bad guys in SF. "Enemy Mind" looked at the same issues as a recent winner that talked of two enemy combatants in the Middle East that were thrown together. The rawness is, in an odd sort of way, reminiscent of Kafka's "Metamorphosis".
But on to documentaries... The party line is that Moore is full of falsehoods and is creative with the truth. Hmm. So are the administration's recent Medicare ads (the ones which the GAO decided were illegal). I want to see this movie. I want to see "Passion of the Christ". I want more coffee. It's probably time for some. I'm just rambling anyway. I think my foot is asleep.
Re:Some questions (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm not exactly a fan, but what worries me in Bowling for Columbine is not his misuse of facts (it's not a factual documentary, its perspective is far wider than something that is documentable in a 2hr flick), but rather that the actual theme of the film always is backgrounded by its critics.
The fact that Charlton Heston didn't say "From my cold, dead hands!" at the Denver meeting has absolutely nothing to do with what the film says by showing Heston say that in the context. Bowling for Columbine is not about Heston, it's about American culture. Heston is part of the American culture, and his fondness for weapons is definately a very American fondness for weapons.
But is Moore's depiction of Heston right? No, Heston is quoted out of context in a very dishonest way. It's dishonest towards Heston, and that's not nice. But Moore's critics don't claim to defend Heston and other people who have been misused in the movie, they claim the movie is a poor documentary: It's factually wrong. But the way they make their claims, is by not talking about what the film is about. They have to ignore its theme to criticize it, and treat it like a documentary about Heston, Lockheed Martin and K-Mart.
Bowling for Columbine is a poor documentary, not because it's factually wrong, but because discussion of it will always be discussion of two different films. Noone will learn much from it, because those who disagree with it will always see it in a way that never challenge their views, and those who already agree will not learn anything because it's factually imprecise.
This is not "News for Nerds" (Score:2, Insightful)
Personally, I place Moore in the same category as Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl [brightlightsfilm.com].
Re:Documentary? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's his perfect right. Feel free to produce a rebuttal.
What does it all mean, Alfred? (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of people claimed that movie was very anti-gun, but it was hard for me to conclude that. I'm basically kind of neutral on guns, and I didn't feel like the movie really said anything one way or the other on that part of it. I think it did try to make the point that Americans were too violent, even fond of violence, and that guns allow for more serious consequences, but I think we all know that. He clearly didn't like the NRA's political activism, but he didn't really go after the Second Amendment. At least I didn't notice it, and I certainly should have. (I think the Second Amendment was exactly what the Civil War was about--and it lost. Thanks and a tip of the hat to that great Republican Abraham Lincoln.)
It's going to be interesting to see how BushCo tries to spin their way out of this one. It sounds like he's just collected the facts and shown them in an ugly light--but very artistically. Dubya was probably not amused. Maybe it contributed to his little accident over the weekend? If so, BushCo better watch out for the klutz label. It certainly didn't help Ford in his campaign. (Interestingly enough, I never bought it at the time, and still don't. I don't know how a couple of clumsy stumbles got taken so far out of proportion.)
Re:Well... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Documentary? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Censorship... (Score:5, Insightful)
The film is obviously already produced and they are ordering a company they bought to not distribute it. Their decision is motivated by political pressure, and they are willing to abandon profit in order to appease their Bush overlords (Jeb and Dubya).
a private company should not be able to pick and chose what it stands behind
Miramax picked it, Buena Vista, who bought Miramax some time ago, told 'em no.
I wonder what the shareholders will think of this. They invested in a company who decides to refuse profits, that isn't kosher. Of course, Eisner might be doing the only profitable thing: Protecting the theme park tax credits, in which case this is an instance of political censorship.
Either way, it is censorship, because no matter what your deficient education led you to believe, censorship is not something that only governments can do, nor is it only evil when governments do it.
Re:Some factual errors yes, but overall quite good (Score:4, Insightful)
I appreciate that he tries to give us an angle which is different from what the corporate media present to the average US citizen (and the world at large), but using Milosevic-era Serbian TV footage to shed light on the Balkan conflict is a bit like using WWII Nazi footage to shed light on the holocaust.
Michael Moore is a populist. That said, his sources and conclusions are often more reliable than those of the mainstream media, so his work is important. Just keep a healthy distance and don't accept everything he says as gospel. I'm sure he doesn't want you to either.
Moore's films are documentaries? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:How is that relevant? (Score:4, Insightful)
As bad as the stuff in prison was, at least we don't resort to live decapitations, like Bergs or Pearl's in Pakistan. There's something about ANY political or religious movement that can endorse that kind of medieval behavior that's sickening, in the same way Nazism is.
Re:Documentary? (Score:5, Insightful)
Current
- Cannes' Palme d'Or goes to Michael Moore - 264 comments
- Finally Geeks Available in Action Figure Form - 86 comments (posted 40 minutes earlier)
- What To Wear On Mars - 61 comments (posted 90 minutes earlier)
- Microchips to Save Peru's Alpacas - 58 comments (posted 315 minutes earlier)
It certainly interests enough people, although maybe it is just a slow day today.Re:Documentary? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hell, I don't even have a suggestion as to how to work around this issue. I think that's exactly the goal of the division, too. Get people so bogged down in shouting people down for being "red" or "blue" without ever touching a real issue. Very clever of them, isn't it?
Re:Documentary? (Score:2, Insightful)
ignorant AC doesn't deserve an answer, but this 'leftist' and 'liberal' bullshit is just pathetic. The 'founding fathers' would be yelling for Bush's head on a pike by now. Hey A. Coward, come hang with me for a bit and see how 'leftist' i am. Quit being such an ignorant prick.
Re:Documentary? (Score:1, Insightful)
Yeah, nasty stuff like liberties for women.
Re:Release it to the web! (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, his message has always been "its wrong to get paid for work you did", it sure wasn't "its wrong to destroy people's lives to make more money".
He also conviently forgets about the places he's exploited, like Flynt Michigan.
And its also wrong to move.
You should never move to another town, especially not if your hometown is an economic wasteland ever since the company that employed most people moved out. Also, never ever go live near where you will find the talent you need for your company. New York is no place for a filmaker to live, Flint has plenty of cameramen and editors and everything a film company needs...
Sheesh.
Heres some stuff that matters... (Score:4, Insightful)
moron? (Score:2, Insightful)
Learn to READ (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Second documentary (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, I know. Here goes my karma bonus. Well, I won't post it as an AC.
Re:This is not "News for Nerds" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Some questions (Score:3, Insightful)
I've got no problem with bias - but Moore is way beyond bias and into making stuff up that supports his prejudices but no basis in reality.
Re:Documentary? (Score:2, Insightful)
Fox news is to News what the WWF is to Sport.
Or McDonalds to Gourmet Dining
Re:Cannes and Abu Ghraib (Score:5, Insightful)
1) You're so stupid you think beeing forced to walk around in female underware is the problem here? They've been routinely tortured and abused, and several of them have been murdered by american prison guards while in prison. This is not the same thing as being killed with a weapon in hand, or while attacking someone. If you think this is acceptable treatment of prisoners, why don't you move to china or something? You clearly dont belong in 'the land of the free', and neither does you current administration.
2)The people in prison where suspected terrorists/criminals. Most of them might be guilty, but I promise you, some where/are not (even your own army commanders admit this).
Next time you're unfairly put in prison, knowing it'll probably take a year before you're aquitted, remember when the guards are beating you to death that "it's ok, I am after all a suspected terrorist"
Asshole...
Re:What a bunch of pussy footers (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't live in the US, so i can verify his claims. From what i read and hear, however, it does seem that criticism against Bush is generally regarded as not a wise move, and is to be avoided.
Well, I do live in the US, and I can plainly tell you that whatever news source is telling you that criticizing Bush is "to be avoided" is full of BS. You have a God-given right to criticize the government and no one can change that.
If you don't believe me, just pull up a tape of Michael Moore's speech at the Oscars.
Re:Documentary? (Score:1, Insightful)
Duh, get some critical thinking skills yourself.
Just like you do? (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean just like you selectively choose comments to illustrate YOUR extreme anti-moore views? How about this line from the Washington Post?
What's remarkable here isn't Moore's political animosity or ticklish wit. It's the well-argued, heartfelt power of his persuasion. Even though there are many things here that we have already learned, Moore puts it all together.
Its real easy to point fingers, isn't it?
Re:Documentary? (Score:5, Insightful)
-B
Re:Some factual errors yes, but overall quite good (Score:5, Insightful)
The last time I saw someone accuse Chomsky of not having a solid ground for his evidence (during a talk at the JFK school of government, video is online, and highly recommended) Chomsky came back with the exact quoation.
Very embarassing for the accuser
When he does talks, you will notice that he has a small piece of paper with his references to back up his assertions.
That being said, I would agree that Moore's books are easier to crunch through than Noam's.
My personal favorite Noam book (because its easier to digest, its a set of interviews) is called `Understanding Power', is a book that you can pick at any point.
Miguel.
Re:Documentary? (Score:2, Insightful)
Michael Moore? Thats front page.
Re:Documentary? (Score:3, Insightful)
perl -pi -e 's/moore/bush/g' post.efaust93
insightful, huh?
Re:Documentary? (Score:4, Insightful)
You feel what?
Jesus H. Christ! How far to the extreme deep right are you exactly?
Example: When the U.S. troops invaded Bagdad, a CNN reporter stood outside a palace and commented that the soldiers were taking "souvenirs" from the palace. He even mentioned that most of those were solid gold.
Souvenirs? They were looting the palaces of the conquered!
But since CNN is the Pentagon News Network, they spewed that outrageous piece of doubletalk with a straight face. He even seemed proud that these soldiers were looting!
Re:Yes!! (Score:3, Insightful)
This is history in the making. I'm really curious to see what the American public is going to make of this movie and what they will do next.
You think Moore was booed at the Oscars because the people in that crowd disagreed with him? Hardly. It was the equivalent of modding his rant off-topic.
As with any other over-the-top commentary made in the US, the movie will be revered by the extremists on his side, reviled by extremist opponents, and tuned out by thinking people who would rather shed light than heat on a controversial topic.
This is not censorship; it's moderation.
Re:Documentary? (Score:5, Insightful)
Um. Ok, assuming you're correct, where is the hypocrisy in that?
Shouldn't the President of the United States be expected to hold the truth in a higher regard than a filmmaker?
What a joke. (Score:4, Insightful)
As Michael Eisner has said before, we are a company that is founded on ideals of the American family backbone
Not "is founded", but only was founded. Huge Corporations are driven by the bottom line and dreams of ultimate control. Disney has recently been behind so many things that undermine the rights and values of the American Family, this is simply no longer a credible position for Disney.
It is not just groups at one end of the spectrum that feel that Disney is the enemy.
And for slashdot context, what does Disney have against free software that I should be forbidden from playing the DVDs I purchase using free software? And why do they think their shallow mutations of the rich public domain from which they drew their stories should never fall back into public domain, as it was supposed to occur in American society. Is control of all computing and content by monopoly corporations a Disney value, too? How is it not censorship? Most corporations have done something from time to time to show they actually are aware of community and consumer issues and concerns, but clearly not Disney. Why acknowledge the consumer when you can control the market?
Re:apparently the French hate America (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sigh.... (Score:1, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Documentary? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Well... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Documentary? (Score:1, Insightful)
because
> I'm as interested this movie as the next guy,
Re:Documentary? (Score:3, Insightful)
The CIA and FBI didn't need any help not sharing any info; they've historically done it on their volition, rightly or wrongly.
Re:Some questions (Score:3, Insightful)
Good, finally someone else who understands this. The first Michael Moore film I saw was Roger and Me, in a Contemporary Issues class in HS (yes, it sounds like a blow-off class, but believe me six 5-7 page papers per semester is not blow-off). The teacher told us not to take the film at face value, but rather to write down questions we had during it, and then do some research and answer our own questions.
People are confusing documentaries and nature films. Of course a documentary has an agenda - it has to, it's primarily an answer to a question the filmmaker has. The director is not going to spend millions of dollars to prove himself wrong.
If anyone takes his films as fact, they're stupid. His films (and documentaries in general) are designed to make you think. You have to approach them with an open mind, but not an impressionable one. Bowling for Columbine did not make me think "My god, the gun industry is evil and Charlton Heston should be put to sleep". It instead raised questions (not the least of which was "Was Moore fair in his filmmaking?"). I then went and did some reading afterwards, and formed my own views on the gun situation in America. And I expect Fahrenheit 911 (assuming I ever get to see it) will do the same.
You cannot hope to understand an issue unless you look at both sides, and then form your own opinion for yourself. Go to see his movies to be entertained (entertainment != comedy, remember - I'm not saying gun control or 9/11 were funny) and to have your views challenged and to raise questions of your own. Do not go to see them to get told what to believe.
Re:Documentary? (Score:5, Insightful)
For people exclaiming "OFF TOPIC" (Score:1, Insightful)
So
This deserves much more interest than you think (Score:5, Insightful)
This is really an important move from Cannes, the cinema culture, or the society in general.
Even Moore said "Jesus, what have you done ?" to the Jury when he came to receive his prize.
Cannes, the most pedantic cinema club, gave the Palme to a movie that is mostly a work made to make sure Bush won't be president anymore.
This is one of the most important socio-political event this year !
Re:Documentary? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Documentary? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fair AND balanced (Score:3, Insightful)
Once convicted of a felony, you have LOST your right to vote. Period
Let me tell you something, you fucking retard. The government decides what is and isn't a felony. The government decides what laws are and aren't enforced and who to investigate. By disenfranchising felons, the government decides who can't remove them from power.
Lets put it to example. Tomorrow, fair use is overturned, copyright becomes (even more) criminalized penalty-wise and the government finds an effective means of identifying any and all copyright infringers.
Bang. Instantly, we're looking at the ability to arrest anyone (75%+ of the populous) and charge them with a felony. As already pointed out, selective enforcement is a reality, so the government will only round up the people unlikely to vote for them in the future. Felons can't vote, and will never again be able to change the path of government.
Before I go any further, I want to say that both the Left and the Right would abuse this, depending on who was in power.
Now, to put it in more realistic terms, look at the Farce, er, War on Drugs. Millions of Americans go to jail for having a fucking joint. Many of them will never be able to effectively change the laws that they don't agree with. You lay it out like the Law of Man == the Law of God.
"We live by the rules". What naivety. I am willing to wager that you don't know the rules of the land you live in. Every rule, from city to county to state to nation. And they accuse the leftys of being politically naive..
Re:Documentary? (Score:1, Insightful)
Given his waning but still ludicrously large popularity, it would appear that to many Americans, the need for bigger and moere trumps the truth thing.
For Example? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Documentary? (Score:3, Insightful)
You are slightly missing the point. The Republican administration is toeing the Murdoch party line.
"Stuff that Matters." (Score:2, Insightful)
As an American, a poli sci major, and a history freak, what Bush & friends are doing is unprecedented. Sure we have started false wars, or adventures as bombastic William Buckley callously refers to them, but never on this scale.
Bush & friends are at war not just profiteering in Afghanistan and Iraq, but are celebrating major victories on their war on people. Health care, over time, education, pollution and the environment, civil liberties, have all taken major blows by this oligarchy.
"I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power."
--Thomas Jefferson to W. Jarvis, 1820.
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/6529/notebook/j
The previous poster who brought up Operation Northwoods should be acknowledged too. At the same time we have the Gulf of Tonkin, the burning of the Reichstag etc. etc.
Well I feel better now. What Bush is doing is truly the "stuff that matters" and considering how little opposition we have to his reign of terror, Mike Moore's movie will be something I will watch, even if I have to fly to China to see it!
Re:Documentary? (Score:2, Insightful)
Here's the very definition [reference.com]: "Presenting facts objectively without editorializing or inserting fictional matter, as in a book or film."
BTW, he's not showing you "clips" or "documents," he's showing you parts of clips, parts of documents, edited together to prove his points and make his agenda. Those are not the hallmarks of any real documentaries.
Re:Documentary? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Second documentary (Score:2, Insightful)
There probably are people out there who do a serious and thorough job of analyzing and discussing facts, but can you name one?
Re:What a bunch of pussy footers (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok, that is known. The problem is, are people 'using' that right or are they too afraid to do so? (they have interest not to, or being characterized unamerican so on)
Of course they are using it, people here protest the war all the time. In Philadelphia, the mayor's office was even allowing protesters to lay in the streets and block traffic during rush hour. Do a google search and I am sure you will find numerous websites in the USA that are critical of the Bush Administration. Unless someone claims they are going to shoot the guy, it is perfectly legal to make such speech.
Of course, if other people want to think that protesters are anti-American scum, then that is their right as well. Freedom is a 2 way street you know. For example, I think the guy who wrote this [dailycollegian.com] is a total asshole, but being the USA, he has a right to be a total asshole and to be criticized for being such.
And his latest movie can not be distributed to US cinemas as far as i know.
Disney choosing to not distribute Moore's work is not censorship. The only reason Disney not distributing the film is that they are afraid that people who hate Michael Moore's guts will go ahead and boycott other Disney products in retaliation, which as free people we have the right to do. Miramax went ahead and bought back the rights and is currently seeking their own distributor. Even Moore himself admitted [nzherald.co.nz] that he knew for over a year Disney wasn't going to distribute his film. But in the end, I am sure he will have no problems whatsoever finding a distributor. Mayhe he could do what Mel Gibson did with The Passion of The Christ and form his own company to distribute the film.
The only "problems" are in the US (Score:2, Insightful)
GeeDubya, just keep repeating to yourself: "It's only a movie, it's only a movie, it's...."
left v right--DOH! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Documentary? (Score:5, Insightful)
<efaust93> Bold text, refutation of previous allegation with no supporting evidence, contrarian allegation with no supporting evidence.
Welcome to the deep political commentary of slashdot! Tune in next week, when we'll discuss the 2000 election as if it were a black or white issue.
Incidentally, contrary to popular belief, Michael Moore did not miraculously appear from thin air the moment he stepped up to make his Oscar speech and hurt your feelings! He actually existed before that. In fact, he even existed during the Clinton administration. And while I wasn't following him ver closely during that time, I can tell you "Oh, you won't hear anything from moore about Comrade Clinton. He's a saint in the eyes of the left." does not appear to describe his behavior of the period at all. He seems to have criticized Clinton quite a bit. His only film without a journalistic aspect was a wag-the-dog-esque 1995 effort called "Canadian Bacon", in which a Clinton stand-in attempted to fabricate a cold war in order to rally "patriotism" and get the populace to support him blindly. He was one of the loudest voices in the whole "vote Nader, if you vote for Gore you'll be throwing your vote away, he's no better than Bush" thing. Now, he *was* among the people who refused to admit Clinton did anything wrong with the entire Monica Lewinsky scandal and refused to see the impeachment hearing as nothing but a trumped up, politically-motivated abuse of power, but that's hardly unreasonable.
BBC? Haahaaah! Unbiased?!! HAAHaahaa (Score:1, Insightful)
*ALL* news sources have a bias. You're simply doomed if you can't see the bias in whatever your favorite source happens to be.
I used to read the People's Daily World everyday (before the Soviet Union collapsed and it became the People's Weekly World..heh) but I was quite aware I was reading Soviet/communist propaganda.
I shall repeat: *all* news is biased and it is a requirement of thinking people to recognise that bias and take it into account. Not just in what they say and report but what they don't say and don't report.
Re:Michael Moore is a bigmouthed troublemaker.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Documentary? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:As Much As I Agree (Score:3, Insightful)
If I also recall correctly, Moore was told as early as the summer of 2003 that the movie was not going to be released by Disney. He waited until the election year to scream 'censorship'.
While I've got your eye here, I want to take a moment to bitch about Michael Moore's use of the word 'censorship'. The guy repeatedly complains that Disney is 'censoring' his work. It seems to me, anyway, that Disney should have final say in what they do and don't release - they're not a government agency, they're a freakin company. Moore has the right to say what he wants to say, but where does he get the idea that he can force companies into distributing his ideas for him? I might as well call the Today show and demand that Katie Couric interview me so that I can go off on her about her liberal bias! Why can't some people (yes, read: liberals) tell the difference between the government telling you that you can't say something and a company telling you they're not going to spend their money to broadcast your ideas?
(Yeah, I have Karma to burn)
Re:Documentary? (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't talk for the NYTimes, but I'm confident that the BBC has never attempted to assert its right to distort stories or to transmit outright lies. Why don't you read my response and then respond again?
Re:Documentary? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Documentary? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Entertainment ppl in France pick Anti-Bush movi (Score:3, Insightful)
FYI, if you read through the responses below, you'll find that four of the nine jurors were Americans. Only one was French.
Re:Documentary? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Second documentary (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, in Europe this man's ideas were also the direct cause of the foundation of the powerful social-democratic parties in Western Europe, like the German SPD [archiv.spd.de], French SFIO [factmonster.com] or the Swedish SDAP [sweden.se]. Marx is as much responsible for Gulag and Stalin as he is responsible for the fact that in Denmark there is simply no such thing as poverty - while the unemployment rate is lower than in the good ol' US of A.
I'm glad you mentioned that and gave me some opportunity to write something leftist for a change
Be for something, rather than against something. (Score:3, Insightful)
Persons outside the U.S. regularly try to influence U.S. politics. Kerry even publicly acknowledged his support outside the U.S. (note to Kerry: you need support inside the U.S. to win the election). And I can understand why, seeing as we're the current lone superpower. Check out this site [tellanamericantovote.com], for example.
It does remind me, though, of Cringely's article on "how to compete with Microsoft." [pbs.org] Other countries should turn their focus to living their own lives and improving their own nations, rather than focusing on America. Hating America, blaming America, trying to influence American elections, killing Americans, financing folks who kill Americans, toadying to America, etc. won't improve their lives. And it puts the U.S. in a catch-22. We get blamed for everything: for fixing it, for not fixing it, for ignoring it, for not ignoring it, etc. The U.S. is a convenient distraction for many countries' and movements' leaders. Think how much they could accomplish if they focused on being for something, rather than against America.
I didn't vote for Bush in the last election. I would rather vote for Lieberman or Hillary than Kerry. Dean was a disaster. Why? Hillary and Joe are for something, and have specific ideas and goals in mind. Dean was only against Bush. Kerry is a pathetic waffler, and is primarily anti-Bush, rather than pro-anything.
So, maybe this is "one of the most important socio-political events this yeat" -- but the Euros politicizing a film festival to influence U.S. elections is... pathetic.
Come on! No one needs America to fail in order for them to succeed. That's such horrible, negative, zero-sum, defeatist thinking!
Succeed! Form a new, powerful EU nation! We Americans will be cheering you!
Re:Documentary? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Art OR politics (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not anti-MM, but the fact that this movie is elected as the best movie at a French film festival at this moment in time, smells a little like freedom fries to me. (maybe politics shouldn't have anthing to do with cuisine either
X.
Re:Documentary? (Score:5, Insightful)
But this movie is not being censored by those in power (which in the US are the oil billionairs and the two media conglomerates) because it is a commedy but because it raises valid issues that threaten them and are hard to counter. The truth about the republican party's ties with terrorists is embarrasing and in retrospect even more foolish than it was then. But it is the truth that Donald Rumsfeld was personally involved in making sure Saddam Hussein gained access to US produced WMDs (which is why he was so sure Iraq had them). Also during that time, US money flowed to such noble characters as Bin Laden. In fact Rumsfelds career started with his political involvement during the Vietnam war (another of the US long list of military triomfs). Very embarrasing indeed and well known & documented. We don't need Micheal Moore to prove these points but just to bring them to the attention to those who need to decide on the political future of the politicians involved. And that is why he is being censored. This message is exremely dangerous to Bush and his associates.
Bush needs stupid, misinformed, ignorant fools to vote for him. There are plenty of those left in the US so IMHO he shouldn't be worried, yet. Despite massive evidence to the contrary there is still some 40% of the electorate who figures that this Bush character is doing a fine job. Witness the power of the media.
Re:Just curious.... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's "Anti-American sentiment reaches such height that Moore's crap won the fucking Palme d'Or."
And that's news. Any way you slice it.
Re:Where are the pictures from Saddam's era? (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, wait, we can't show the torture and murders that went on back then, that's not fair.
Once a brutal dictator like Saddam Hussein becomes your moral compass, you have lost. Completely. Finito.
Personally (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that since there's no commonly defined clear demarcation for "left" or "right", this means that people can play the neat trick of constantly reassigning those words to whatever is most convenient at the moment. A favorite tactic seems to be to "prove" something in a piece where you mostly talk about "left" vs "right" while constantly tweaking the definitions of both terms. For example, in one paragraph the word "right" might be used to refer to the current presidential administrators and its followers, in the next paragraph the Coulter/Limbaugh set, in the next libertarians; or in one paragraph the word "left" might refer to extremist feminists, in the next paragraph people who oppose the WTO, in the next current congressional Democrats. The neat thing about this trick is that if you're careful about how you skew your use of these terms, you can (for example) make a flat-out statement about separatist lesbian feminists and then trick the reader into thinking you've shown it applies to Bill Clinton.
Another favorite tactic, and the most common one, seems to be to define "conservative" to be "anyone I agree with" and "liberal" to be "anyone I disagree with", or vice versa...
I personally suspect that anyone that I can catch playing these linguistic games doesn't have anything worthwhile to say, since they're hiding behind ambiguous labels rather than actually arguing in concrete terms. So I try to ignore anyone who talks about "left" vs "right" without clearly identifying which groups they mean by those labels.
Unfortunately the false "liberal"/"conservative" dichotomy has saturated our culture so completely that this policy is very difficult to follow.
Re:Documentary? (Score:5, Insightful)
Fact: The little boy was the class thug, already suspended from school for stabbing another kid with a pencil, and had fought with Kayla the day before. Since the incident, he has stabbed another child with a knife.
Fact: The uncle's house was the family business -- the neighborhood crack-house. The gun was stolen and was purchased by the uncle in exchange for drugs.The shooter's father was already serving a prison term for theft and drug offenses. A few weeks later police busted the shooter's grandmother and aunt for narcotics sales. After police hauled the family away, the neighbors applauded the officers. This was not a nice but misunderstood family.
I think Moore is a bit nutty, but this part of the critique strikes me as very disturbing on a level more fundamental than just logic and fact.
Moore's naive protrait is of a disturbed boy from a struggling family who shoots a girl without known reason. The critique is saying that the boy has a history of violence and a bad family. As if that makes elementary school murder completely understandable now?
If anything it seems that these facts greatly strengthen Moore's argument. His mother wasn't selling drugs and for her to make a clean living she couldn't be there to raise him.
Factually he is still a youngster, his family is certainly struggling, and they gave no reason for him to shoot someone other than casting him as being inherently evil. Apparently they are just saying that we shouldn't be sympathetic to the boy?
Is this not very disturbing to anyone else?
Re:Documentary? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Documentary? (Score:1, Insightful)
Stop watching FOX news, the french dont run the festival, and they are not the only ones who hate him and his administraton. There are so many people in the USA who want him impeached / imprisioned for what he has done.
Most of the world hates him, its just a small % of americans who dont care, and a smaller % who like him that got him in office, but sure as hell wont keep him there.
Re:Documentary? (Score:3, Insightful)
Or, to pose the same question in a different manner:
If the article had concluded the opposite (specifically, a point of view that agrees with your own), would you take everything it claimed blindly without considering the source?
I think it's a fair question. One which you will no doubt avoid. I made my claim ("FOX News isn't fair and balanced") and offered evidence of my claim. You (and several others) have done nothing to refute the claim other than trying to change the subject. If you think FOX News is doing a great job, please provide evidence that directly refutes mine. Do not distract the issue.
=Smidge=
Re:Documentary? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Documentary? (Score:1, Insightful)
No.
Bill Clinton lied under oath in his testimony when charged with sexual harassment, denying the accuser her day in court.
The issue was never about whether he had sex with a consenting partner. The issue was always about whether he used his office as governor to engage in a pattern of illegal sexual harassment of NON-consenting partners, OBSTRUCTED JUSTICE by PERJURY when accused of these crimes in order to escape justice, and if so whether a person who does this should be in charge of federal law enforcement.
Bill Clinton's actions have resulted in the gutting of the employee sexual harassment laws by creating the "Clinton Defense": If it's OK for the guy at the top, it's OK all the way down.
The remains of the feminist movement have beet totally discredited by their support of him, and public slandering of his victims (such as their characterizing one as "trailer trash" who should be honored to be noticed by someone like Clinton).
George Fucking W. Bush lied about a cause for a war [...]
Lied? Or believed the reports of the intelligence community that Sadam had NOT destroyed his weapons and was making more, while Sadam was busy doing everything in his power to convince the world he had something to hide from the inspectors? Rememer: It wasn't just GFingWB who thought the Tyrant of Bagdhad was still well armed with CBW devices and close to having nukes.
Now whether that was because he WAS hiding something, was trying to convince his neighbors that he was still to dangerous to attack, was trying to salvage his pride, was trying to avoid further exposure of his mass-torture and mass-murder operations, or was just a loon, doesn't really matter. The point is that he could have avoided this whole thing by NOT letting his people play games with the UN inspectors.
By the way: Now that the remaining anti-western forces in Iraq have ACCIDENTALLY set off a nerve-gas shell randomly drawn from an Iraqui arms cache, thinking it was an explosive shell, do you STILL believe that all the WMDs were really gone?
Not to mention the lost of your respect and good name in the international community
"Loss of respect"?
The world is now on notice that if knock the chip off the shoulder of the USA you just MIGHT find it accepts the challenge and you get pounded into the ground. Seems to me that creates a LOT more respect than whining to the United Petty Dictators for permission to hit back every time the US is punched.
The world is now ALSO on notice that the US does its flat-out damdest to avoid suppressing others religions and culture - even to the point of endangering and losing the lives of its own troops. And that if its troops screw up and start oppressing those under they control, the US will ADMIT it, INVESTIGATE it, REMOVE them from their posts and TRY them for crimes. Many in the Muslum world are now asking each other why they allow their OWN leaders to do less.
[as a result] you visit a foreign country and say you're an American, and you'll be treated with as much respect as an Arab in your own USA.
I wish that were true. It would be a MAJOR improvement to the way we've been treated in the past.
Re:Documentary? (Score:3, Insightful)
No, that's the job of the politicians...
Re:And? (Score:3, Insightful)
Hollywood? Why? This is the Canne film festival. What does Hollywood have to do with it? Did you even read the article?
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
As Michael Eisner has said before, we are a company that is founded on ideals of the American family backbone...
What utter crap. Kill Bill was a Disney film. What family ideals does Kill Bill espouse? You've been hoodwinked, boy.
Re:Documentary? (Score:3, Insightful)
Which many believe is exactly what he does.
Just like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Rice...
Re:Documentary? (Score:5, Insightful)
Its a relly well done movie. The scenes are trully awesome, the editing is, as far as I remember, inpecable. Those Nazis sure had a great sense of style and aesthetics.
Doesn't make me a white supremascist. And I won't attack the obvious qualities of the film because it was funded by a genocidal maniac. In fact, that gives the movie a second level, on top of the message it was meant to send, you can see that a monster painted himself as a saviour. Its a fascinating historical document and should serve to show to people that propaganda is a powerful tool indeed.
No Child Left Behind
Clean Forest Initiative
Clean Air Act
Man, those sure sound good...I wonder if there is any past document that could show me that a monster can sugarcoat his actions in a veil of grandiose benevolence...hmmm...
Re:Documentary? (Score:5, Insightful)
There wasn't much in Bowling for Columbine that could be called fiction. It was mostly speculation that America's obsessions with war, guns and violence are intertwined and aren't particularly healthy. Fact is America is one of the world's most violent developed nations. There were some specific things in it he severely stretched to make his point, not like anyone on the right would ever do that... Coulter..cough..Limbaugh..cough.
When you get to subject matter of Fahrenheit 9/11 its pretty hard for anyone to be sure of what the truth is. Moore is presenting his take on it which may or may not be accurate. One of the problems is the Bush administration has been actively classifying and suppressing just about everything about the Saudi role in 9/11 and the Bush family's excessively close ties to the Saudi's and the Bin Laden family. If you recall they blacked out the entire section on Saudi Arabia's complicity in the congressional report on 9/11 and there were a lot of pages on it. They have also aggressively suppressed all information about the fact that they let airplanes spirit members of the Bin Laden family and other unidentified Saudi's out of the U.S. right after 9/11 at a time when no American could get off the ground.
It is a simple fact that the Bush family has long running ties to people in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait including the Bin Laden family and it colors their dealings in the area, in the opinion of some it clouds their judgment. George H.W. Bush had active business dealings with them when he was at Zapata Oil. He has an active relationship with them today in his role as spokesman for the Carlysle group which is one of Saudi Arabia's major defense contractors.
To be honest I don't know how anyone continues to defend the Bush family especially the current administration. All indications are that they were completely had by Iran, who through Ahmed Chalibi suckered [newsday.com] them in to invading Iraq which is now doing massive damage to America's standing in the world, is making the world more dangerous and is costing the U.S. dearly in blood and money. THe Truth about Chalibi [counterpunch.org].
How do you keep supporting an administration dumb enough to be had by the Iranian's. What are you going to say when the Shia's take power in Iraq as soon as they get a fair election and Iraq turns into an Iranian influenced theocracy and all of America's sacrifice was for worse than nothing.
At LSU commencement Bush joked about being a "C" student. He is proof anyone can be President in America, even someone as intellectually challenged as he is, of course it helps to be from a wealthy and influential family so you can get elected on name only. Bush is great on rhetoric but he simply lacks the intellectual depth to make good decisions when it comes to the enormously complex areas like foreign affairs and economics. The fact that his administration was had by Iran is a case in point. It was his job to take Chalibi skepticially especially considering a long string of red flags about his ethics and motives, but he, Cheney, Perl and Wolfowitz fell for it hook, line and sinker and its costing the U.S. dearly.
Making people think... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Documentary? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Documentary? (Score:5, Insightful)
Saddam was well contained did not pose any imminent thread and held in contempt by Islamists for being secular.
The strategists of this Iraq war were dreaming of starting a chain reaction of political change in the Middle East. They may get their wish fulfilled. The irony is that even if those countries were to switch to a full blown democracy the first fair election would almost always bring fundamentalists into power (as has happened when Algeria experimented with democracy a decade ago).
This administration played with fire when invading Iraq. The odds were always against them and they played their hand so badly the situation is almost beyond salvaging.
In all fairness I think Bush should be reelected because it'll be a terrible burden for any other administration to have to deal with the inherited mess of Bush's making.
Two sides to a story. (Score:1, Insightful)
For example, in Switzerland, there are about 5 main political parties, two left-wing parties, one central, and two right-wing parties. This leads to a balanced system. In the states, all the news reporters and government officials are all saying the same thing (doesn't it get boring?), and thank god the Michael Moore gets up and says the other side of the story, I would go as far as saying that there should be many more M. Moore's in the US.
Luckily M. Moore is quite a vociferous man!!
Re:Documentary? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, I'd say the "right" numbers would be that 100% of the people think Shrubya is failing miserably as a leader.
But perhaps that's just me.
Re:Abu Ghraib and Cannes (Score:5, Insightful)
What was becoming known as the Iraqi Prisoner Torture Scandal is now known as the Iraqi Prisoner Abuse Scandal, or even the Iraqi Prisoner Mistreatment Scandal. The word Torture is quickly becoming the elephant in the middle of the room. We all know that those people in those photographs are being tortured. What else can one call it when a jailer pours acid on a prisoner's head?
We're all accustomed to seeing torture in movies, or on the news. But in these situations, the torturer is always an alien figure, usually over-the-top, characterized in broad strokes. The great cinematic torturers, such as Laurence Olivier in Marathon Man, or the captors in The Deer Hunter, have one thing in common: They're not Americans. The Vietnamese soldier photographed shooting his prisoner in the head: Not American. Lynndie England: American.
An American torturer is repellent, alien to our cultural mindset. We're so unaccustomed to the sight that it's doubly disgusting. The racist undercurrent of our popular media feeds back on us in this situation, and tells us that Americans, white Americans, don't do this. They're the good guys. But these soldiers are just average Joe and Jane America, and they did do this. We are they, and they are us, and that means that as a country, we are ashamed.
People in general don't deal with shame very well. We all of us, naturally, try to take shameful moments and acts and deal with them by softening the blow in our minds. One deals with the memory of keen embarrassment by finding the humor inherent in the situation. One deals with a past infidelity by rationalizing that since nobody will ever know, nobody will ever be hurt. The word adultery becomes fling, fling becomes indiscretion. These rationalized lies may even be necessary for us to move on with our lives, and not be locked into paralysis by our inability to deal with our darker natures. Certainly the press were quick to jump upon language which allowed them to lessen the shock. As anyone who's regularly read a newspaper in their lives knows, this is not something journalists are wont to do.
It is not yet time to move on. Let's at least agree in this instance to call it like it is: Torture. Americans, acting on behalf of America, tortured the hell out of these people.
Read it again. Say it out loud, hear it, listen to it, accept it. If you are a patriot, as I am, feel the way it hits your stomach and stays there, destroys your appetite, knocks down the straightness of your shoulders. Americans, acting on behalf of America, tortured the hell out of people. Don't let the words change for you, and slide the full truth of what has happened away. As one who loves this country, it's maybe too painful to look directly into the truth of this matter for too long. As one who loves this country, being seared by the shame our countrymen have brought down on us is a necessary step toward making things right. Gaze full-on into it, and let it make you humble again.
Stop your apologist comparison of the wrong thing we did in one situation to the wrong things other people do in similar situations, as if their abhorrent behavior somehow justifies or lessens the severity of our own.
Re:Documentary? (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean when he disregarded CIA reports filled with caveats, taking passages that only supported his side and were convenient for his case, and discarding the doubts that CIA officials had? Or when he disregarded the findings of weapons inspectors made since the 1990's? Or when he refused to listen to the "yellowcake uranium" claim being disproven? Heck, I knew about that disproof in late 2002, it made some headlines in anti-war sites.
"...while Sadam was busy doing everything in his power to convince the world he had something to hide from the inspectors?"
Didn't Saddam turn over something like 13,000 pages of documents? Didn't he cave in and allow UN inspectors anywhere in Iraq?
It boils down to this, Bush and Rumsfeld and Cheney declared that Iraq was an "imminent threat" and tried to link it to Al Qaeda. Both turned out to be false. In addition, they had claims that they knew were the WMDs were. "We know where they are" one said, indicating that they knew exactly where they were stored. Even Colin Powell's UN speech seemed to sure, but it all turned out to be completely false, and none of it has been substantiated since.
"The world is now ALSO on notice that the US does its flat-out damdest to avoid suppressing others religions and culture"
Then you haven't been paying attention. The US promotes General Jerry Boykin, the general who goes to a church and tells the people that Muslims worship an idol and not a real god? Mr Grainer, the guy who tortured Iraqis in Abu Ghraib, beats the people until they curse Allah and Islam? The US is doing military incursions into Karbala and Najaf, some of the holiest cities to the Shiites? They knocked down a minaret, flattened half of a sacred mosque, and put bullet holes into the dome of the Imam Ali mosque (which is really frightening to all Shiites worldwide).
"Now that the remaining anti-western forces in Iraq have ACCIDENTALLY set off a nerve-gas shell randomly drawn from an Iraqui arms cache, thinking it was an explosive shell, do you STILL believe that all the WMDs were really gone?" Two US soldiers suffered slight reactions to the gas. This was probably just an old 1980s shell of the sort used against the Kurds and Iranians, and its been suggested that many of these remain or are still operative. There are still rusty tanks rotting on the border between Iraq and Iran, it's not that hard to imagine someone could pick up a shell. The insurgents who used it may not even have known what it was. (It was not marked). A couple left-over stray such shells does not prove that there were WMD in Iraq in any signifcant sense. No doubt it will set off a frenzy among the latter-day Juan Ponce de Leones looking vainly for the Fountain of WMDs. It is virtually a non-story.
Interesting link... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why should I think that Mr. Moore's films are any more accurate than his version of the events that the web page's author recounts?
Re:Oh for God's sake... (Score:4, Insightful)
These days politics has more of an impact over technology than anything else.
If more people were politically active and aware, instead of playing computer games all day, maybe we wouldn't be in the mess we're in.
Re:Making people think... (Score:2, Insightful)
This is very true. But then again, most documentaries are commentaries. The director picks a side, viewpoint, or political statement and shows the film from that standpoint.
In college I took a film class that studied different types of films. During the documentary section we watched several. 2 of them were about the same topic, but from opposite sides (obviously made by different people).
Besides, isn't that the whole point of a documentary? To expose a situation (perhaps from a biased point of view) to invoke discussion or exposure of some kind?
Anyway, you pretty much hit it right on the head if you ask me. Just adding my
Right... (Score:1, Insightful)
Why Michael Moore is important (Score:5, Insightful)
I have seen all his movies and some parts I think are incredibly illuminating and others are obviously embellished or distorted, but one thing is for sure: Debate on these issues is productive and there aren't enough outlets for the types of messages he's promoting in our media today, and even if you don't like what he stands for, it's probably incredibly important, even if you disagree with him, that you support his right to express himself. That you recognize that he is passionate about what he believes in and shouldn't be cut down by pedantic, ignorant, sweeping judgements. Otherwise, you will inevitably find at some point, you'll be in his situation as well.
The fact of the matter is that Moore documents his work exponentially better than his ideological rivals in most cases. His underdog status necessitates this, and that's good for everybody. It's also worth noting that the majority of Moore's critics prefer to criticize Moore, the fallible, sometimes-inconsistent MAN (as if any of us are standards by which others should be judged), and completely disregard his work and the issues he raises.
To dismiss him is to bury your head in the sand whether you agree with his agenda or not.
Re:And? (Score:5, Insightful)
CLASSIC ignorant, mean-spirited response.
Don't address the issues he raises. He's FAT, therefore his work has abstolutely no integrity or relevance.
If anything, Moore is a litmus test to identify the free thinkers from the brain dead. Thank you for so efficiently demonstrating this.
It has encountered problems? (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, does anyone believe this movie received the Palm d'Or on its merits? The judges at Cannes were making a slap at Bush, nothing more.
No breaks for you (Score:4, Insightful)
No, the campaign to censor dissenting views is not overt, it's very much sub-rosa. And it has a great deal more to do with the carrot than the stick.
Large US media companies have billions, even hundreds of billions, riding on various expansion efforts that must be approved by government regulators-- government regulators who are currently under the control of a conservative administration and Congress. It's difficult for you and I to appreciate the sheer pressure that those billions put on corporate executives, but a dispassionate view of the situation should make it apparent: as the leader of a large media corporation, you can't afford to make enemies of the people who determine your company's financial future. You don't have the liberty to think about what's right and wrong, or care about free speech-- your mandate is simply to insure your investors the highest possible return.
So what are you supposed to do when some tiny, insignificant portion of your corporate empire puts the entire company at risk? You do exactly what Disney has done to Moore's film: you squash it like a bug. Not because the film is bad, incorrect, or unlikely to sell tickets. You do it because, as Disney has said up front, it's simply not worth it to piss off the people who will be ruling on your next merger or expansion plan. The very fact that Disney has admitted this and cited it as the reason for ditching the film takes these sentiments out of the hypothetical. This really is happening, and a firm as large as Disney is actually concerned that publishing this film will cause them political difficulties.
And in the end, that's the issue here. All your talk about not paying to watch Moore is irrelevant-- you won't even get the opportunity to protest his film, because the decision has already been made. For you, for me, for all of us. And it's entirely and unabashedly political.
One more thing: I do personally believe that the Democratic party is less likely to operate in this fashion than the Republicans are, if only due to disogranization and the lingering presence of a few idealists. But when one side plays dirty, it's only a matter of time before their opponents learn the game too. So by looking the other way now, you insure that the next slimy liberal president will be the one determining what's ok for you to read, see and hear.
Re:Give me a break... (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, no, Moore and his slavish followers claim that prohibiting an owned subsidiary of yours which you normally treat as autonomous [imdb.com] from distributing one of Moore's films is the same as trying to "silence him".
Perhaps there's someone somewhere who *does* think that it's censorship to, say, give a Michael Moore movie a bad review, but since I've never actually met this person, it seems like you're pushing something of a straw man here.
> The liberals in this country want open and free discussion.
As long as you ignore all the campaigns against Fox News and talk radio hosts plus speech codes on college campuses, I would agree.
Wait. What "campaigns" I've seen against Fox News and Rush Limbaugh aren't to get them, say, pushed out of their airwave and cable distribution channels and attempt to limit their medium for reaching their customers, but rather campaigns to encourage individual viewers not to support or watch those on the grounds that they display poor journalistic integrity. Didn't you just imply that disagreeing with someone shouldn't be considered the same thing as "silencing" them?
Also: What on earth are "speech codes on college campuses" and, if (as I assume?) this refers to something performed by the administrators of certain colleges, why do you consider college administrators to be representative of whoever or whatever "liberals" are?
Re:Documentary? (Score:3, Insightful)
Bullshit. Reporters like Bob Woodward try to present the facts and opinions from all sides and let the reader decide. Moore is an embarrassment to journalism because he starts with an agenda, presents facts that support that agenda, and ignores facts that contradict his agenda. This happens on both the left and the right, and "documentaries" by these types need to be taken with a grain of salt.
Shooting at Buell Elementary in Michigan (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Documentary? (Score:4, Insightful)
Apologist ranting? Sure. Is it weak? No. It highlights the basic premise of the film, which is what most detractors miss. It'd be one thing if he's entirely off base and just making shit up, but this simply isn't so.
His basic premise is that our culture is violent and the media is a fear mongering machine that plays to the common denominator. It was a culturally driving force since the 1950's and the "Red Threat." Which was fueled more by fear than anything real. Flash forward to today where violent crimes are sensationalized and the media has gotten sloppy with how they report the facts.
(Some could argue that the Spanish-American war was another example of sloppy journalism gone wrong.)
Another great example was buying ammo in the Canadian Wal-Mart. Moore wasn't just "a regular citizen", he's a regular citizen who obtained a firearms importation license in Canada. Through "regular film editing," that part was never mentioned by Moore.
You miss the point again. The overall point was that ammo was being sold in *Wal-Marts.* While the requirements to own and purchase ammunition in Canada may be different than in the US, the fact that Wal-Mart carries them even in Canada highlights the fact that it's somewhat accessable.
Moore is a troll, but a good one (Score:4, Insightful)
Everything you see is biased. From the choice of what to put in and leave out, the angles the subjects are shot at, the way they're lit, the juxtapositions they use.
At least Moore is OBVIOUS about it. He's not changing ads in the background and making the goal of so many movies to obtain financial and a hot girlfriend that you don't even think about it any more.
Moore generates DEBATES, just like this one. Which in the end is much more valuable than a boring movie that no one sees or talks about. Trolls are annoying when they bring up the same argument, but NOT when they incite debate on topics that people really NEED TO THINK ABOUT. Voter apathy is at an all time high. The candidates all try to sound alike to avoid offending anybody. We NEED blatantly biased opinions back in our society, so people can have real discussions about real issues.
But I agree that we should have the chance to see it before we argue any more.
Re:What a bunch of pussy footers (Score:3, Insightful)
And was he not booed? Weren't the Dixie Chicks pulled off Clear Channel for making anti-Bush statements oversees?? Open your eyes.
Re:Documentary? (Score:4, Insightful)
The conclusion *I* got from that scene wasn't that guns were available, but rather the kid equated the gun to something cool or fun. Something to take to school. And since the mother wasn't around to raise her child, she couldn't teach him that guns aren't toys.
Re:Documentary? (Score:4, Insightful)
So success in Iraq, i.e. free democratic country is more like Nazi Germany's goal, and failure in Iraq, defined as civil war or theocracy, is less like Nazi Germany's goal? I would argue that if failure means more death and less freedom in Iraq, and you want this so Bush is not re-elected, maybe you should question your motives and values.
Re:What a bunch of pussy footers (Score:5, Insightful)
I found that there is a culture of intimidation in the US (where I currently live again). A colleague of mine actually told me that she is afraid to show her political leanings because she knows that her boss doesn't share them and she's afraid that she wouldn't get a promotion if he knew. I never heart a similar sentiment expressed to me in Germany. Back there it was perfectly normal to strike up a conversation about politics at the office e.g. at your lunch break.
In Corporate America more often then not policies discourage the employees to discuss such controversial topics.
Democracy can not work without public discourse. I think this is actually the underlying reason why the democractic processes are so broken in the US - people in this country do not talk about political topics any more because they are afraid they may offend somebody and fear the repercussions.
Re:Documentary? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't see anything in that definition that says one has to cover all sides of an issue to make a documentary. I also don't recall Moore ever describing himself as a journalist.
From the NYT:
"I did not set out to make a political film," Mr. Moore said at a news conference after the ceremony. "I want people to leave thinking that was a good way to spend two hours. The art of this, the cinema, comes before the politics."
As it should be. The very best documentaries are at least as much art as they are a recitation of facts. I mean I can only watch the History Channel or Bob Woodward for so long before getting bored with whatever they are documenting this afternoon.
Re:Documentary? (Score:5, Insightful)
Excuse me, but I still think they're selfish, self-centred and insensitive. The correct thing to do would have been to cancel, postpone or relocate. But no, they were more worried about their meeting going ahead than the feelings of those in Columbine. I couldn't give two hoots whether that would have cost them money even if they had insurance, or inconvenience them - there was only one correct thing to do, and that was not to hold that meeting in that place at that time. And yes, I was working in an office 10 miles away when the shooting occurred and know people with children in the school.
Re:Documentary? (Score:4, Insightful)
The flights were so poorly screened the Saudi's could have been using them to fly out co-conspirators in the 9/11 attack. The fact is the Saudi's, not the Iraqi's, were knee deep in complicity in 9/11, and its just as disturbing that the Bush administration has consistently sought to suppress any information on these special flights. Letting them rush their nationals out without some thoughtful investigation was simply inappropriate.
It reminds you of a similar incident where the Pakistani's were also allowed to secretly fly their intelligence people out of Afghanistan after the Taliban fell, though Pakistani's intelligence was knee deep in complicity with Al Qaeda and the Taliban and some of them could well have been co-conspirators in 9/11 planning.
Re:Give me a break... (Score:3, Insightful)
That is the kind of quid pro quo corruption that makes me loathe the politicians involved here. Taxes should ideally be written objectively and uniformly, not shaped to favor political contributors or large capital enterprises.
Re:Documentary? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll take honest bias over fake integrity any day.
I liked "Bowling for Columbine," but I understood it to be an indictment of the U.S. media -- especially local TV. Broadcast news in this country is in the business of selling fear and creating opinion. Period. Moore himself, in Columbine, noted that guns couldn't be the problem, and gun ownership couldn't be the problem, as other countries not only allow gun ownership, but have higher rates of gun ownership than the U.S. -- but they also have less gun-related crime. Canada, for example. But Canada also doesn't have the indefensible cesspit that is the U.S. broadcast media establishment. Just watch your "local news" sometime. It is sickening.
Re:Documentary? (Score:4, Insightful)
You've gotta be joking.
Re:What a bunch of pussy footers (Score:3, Insightful)
From what i read and hear, however, it does seem that criticism against Bush is generally regarded as not a wise move, and is to be avoided
Which you disagreed with. My point was Moore was booed by a bunch of fellow artists and entertainment industry people (generally considered 'left leaning') for criticizing Bush in public, and he was somewhat cut off by the producers/network.
As for the Dixie Chicks, Clear Channel owns the majority of the stations in the US, and if even a band with their kind of sales can be pulled by them, don't you think you should be alarmed? There's some major markets where CC controls ALL the commercial stations, if I'm not mistaken.
The point is not that they're being censored, but that it's being made inadvisable to criticize Bush, for fear of your product being pulled or people not wanting to be associated with you. That IS a chilling climate, censorship notwithstanding.
9-11 we were all NYers. (Score:3, Insightful)
The is not such a thing as anti-US sentiment anywhere, it is simply that the US is too unruly to just sit down and say nothing about it.
Heck, surely you would say that somebody complaining because you are beating him with a baseball bat harbours unfounded anti-you sentiments....
They aren't going to hate us anyway (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at our record, in the Middle East, Africa, Central and South America. How many freely elected governments have we toppled in the last 30 years? Dozens. How many corrupt dictators have we installed? Dozens. How many evil bastards have we ignored because they were our 'friends?' Dozens again. If anyone is really misinformed enough to debate the facts on this, I'll find some links, it's not hard to do.
Fear will never solve the problem. Aggression leads to aggresion, always. That is the primary reason we still have war and the primary reason most religions teach tolerance and forgivness.
You can't bully humanity into not producing bullies.
Re:Debunked My Ass (Score:1, Insightful)
American foreign policy has zero correlation with the crime rates in the US; our interventions during the 50s and early 60s did not cause the crime rate to shoot up, but Prohibition did during the 20s and early 30s. The end of vietnam did not result in a decline in crime but the Gulf War on TV marked the peak of violence in the US and saw 12 years of declining murder rates. Wars fought in Bosnia, Gulf war 2, sporading bombings of southeast europe and Iraq did nothing to stem the decrease in violence.
"Americans cheer the killing of children, yet wonder why their own children grow up to be more violent than those in other nations."
1 american does this and "Eloquence" feels the need to present the views of that blogger as the views of all 290 million of us. I can find countless more examples of non Americans cheering the murder of children that he chooses to ignore.
Re:Michael Moore is a bigmouthed troublemaker.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure... but running for President isn't necessarily the most practical way to get the changes you want. Take Ralph Nader as Exhibit A -- he's doing just that, and the most likely effect of his campaign will be a better chance of Bush being re-elected. In this case, I think Moore is using his talents (and he is a very talented provocateur/gadfly/showman) to promote change more effectivly than he ever could by becoming a politician (as you almost said yourself, people would never vote for him).
You don't need to be a millioinaire. You don't need to be a war hero. You don't need to be a lawyer or even have a degree. You don't need to have a full head of hair or perfect teeth. You need to have been born in the United States and you need to be at least 35. That's all.
That is the what they teach in the schools, of course... but I just don't see that happening in practice. In practice, you need to have truckloads of money to get your message out, and so you either need to be a millionaire, or you need to be able to milk money out of the people or companies that are... in which case you are now (to a greater or lesser degree) representing their interests instead of your own. The Internet helps somewhat in this regard, of course (see Howard Dean), but it's not enough IMHO.
You know what this country really needs? Another presidential election where nobody gets the majority of electoal votes.
You'll probably get it too -- the country is so evenly divided that the winner of the 2004 presidential election will very likely not have a majority. I don't see how it would help, though... two of the last three Presidential elections were won that way (2000 and 1992), and people pretty much shrugged it off each time.
What I think this country really needs is a well-devised system of public campaign financing (to make politicals less about who can best sell his soul to the special interests, and more about the interests of the voters), and a voting system other than winner-take-all, so that the "spoiler" problem is removed, and people are allowed to vote for the candidate they really prefer rather than having to vote strategically to block the majority candidate they dislike the most. Not that I'm holding my breath for either, anytime soon.
Re:Documentary? (Score:4, Insightful)
Success in Iraq would lead to a US government that continues to believe that it is acceptable to pre-emptively invade foreign countries under false justifications, and then retroactively change the rationale whenever necessary. (The invasion supposed to be about Weapons of Mass Destruction, remember? Hussein was an immediate threat to America, and all that?) Such a precedent would be (in fact, is) extremely destabilizing -- if every country felt morally allowed to do such things, "because the USA does it" -- how many more unjustifiable wars can we expect in the future?
Additionally, I seriously doubt that "a free democratic Iraq" was a primary goal of the invasion -- that was just the politically correct window dressing used (along with spurious connections to WMD and Al-Quaeda) to sell the war to the American public. The real reasons for the war had a lot more to do with securing long-term access to oil and "shocking and awing" other nations' governments into political obedience (not that we're likely to succeed in either of those goals, either).
I would argue that if failure means more death and less freedom in Iraq, and you want this so Bush is not re-elected
Pick a scenario:
maybe you should question your motives and values.
My values tell me to promote peaceful, honest, respectful solutions to our nation's problems, and to the world's problems. Bush's Iraq invasion ran roughshod over all of that, and resulted in tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths (so far... there are undoubtedly more to come) and to the destruction of America's image as a country of genuine ideals. If it takes a painful failure to remind us of the costs of irresponsible behaviour, perhaps it is worth it to make sure that such a horrible debacle doesn't happen again.
Re:Documentary? (Score:4, Insightful)
No, it's pretty accurate. I didn't vote for Bush in 2000. I won't vote for him this year either. But that doesn't mean I have to rally behind the Michael Moore and pretend that his lies are the truth.
His last documentary opened with a Willie Horton political ad. Unfortunately, that ad was doctored. It wasn't genuine. It was a splice of two other ads, with a Moore added caption.
He then proceeds to show the NRA holding meetings immediately after school shootings, even though in the first case (Denver) the meeting was scheduled months in advance, and in the latter (Flint) the meeting was months after the shooting took place. During this segment, Moore showed a Heston speech that was a complete fabrication. Moore spliced together words from different speeches. You can even see the Heston's coat and tie change!
Other fabriciations abound throughout the movie. Moore doesn't make documentaries, he makes fiction.
Re:Why Michael Moore is important (Score:2, Insightful)
However, it's pretty inaccurate to describe Chomsky as liberal (in the political sense of the word). He describes himself as a social anarchist, and he usually doesn't get involved in the liberal/conservative aspects of the US political debate. He is more concerned with the power structures (government, media, military-industry, corporations) of the US. And Liberalism is just as much a part of the power structure in the US as Conservatism is (well, almost as much :>).
I think your characterization of Chomsky as Liberal though, is a good example of how well the Conservative propaganda that labels liberals as anti-american/unpatriotic, has succeeded.
Re:Documentary? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's very disturbing to me that Michael Moore would deliberately slant this event to portray his own ideology. It's bad enough that a disturbed kid from a crack house would shoot another kid. But to pretend that this was a normal kid from a healthy family is beyond the pale.
Re:Moore is a troll, but a good one (Score:2, Insightful)
No, he's not. He edits clips out of context, he distorts people's message. He creates parodies out of people he depicts in his works.
It's typical propaganda. Gets sort of boring after awhile.
Re:And? (Score:1, Insightful)
Because he's fat he doesnt know what hes talking about?
Instead of modding crap like this 'interesting' i think what you meant to put it to was -1 flamebait. Thanks.
Re:Documentary? (Score:2, Insightful)
What's even sadder is the BBC is OWNED by the government, and they are more 'truthful' and attack the government more then privately owned companies that are chickenshit.
Like the CBC in Canada, the BBC has guarenteed funding so they can say what ever they want (no one laid off because of low profits). If the government tried to silence them but cutting funding there would be a public outcry. As well since these stations are government owned, they have to 'prove' to the public they are not beholden to the government by attacking the government itself!
Get a public news broadcaster, America.
Re:Moore is a troll, but a good one (Score:2, Insightful)
Raises valid points, but less than ideal tactics (Score:4, Insightful)
It was a good movie, raising very valid points.
However, from what I read in the media about Fahrenheit 9/11, Michael Moore used the wrong tactics.
For example, he emphasizes the Bush Family / Bin Laden Family business connections. So what? Bin Laden's family are big time construction businessmen, with huge projects all over the region. Bin Laden's father established this business a long time before Osama was born.
Bin Laden's family disowned him a long time ago (early 90s). This is not like Bush was a friend of Osama or something.
The throwing of irrelevant but sensational bits of data into the debate never helps, and if the neo-cons and their apologists do it, there is no need for those trying to be objectives to mimic this tactic.
This is very much like the other "quasi facts" that are drummed up against Saudi Arabia for example, and etched into the collective psyche of Americans. For example: the allegations that the royal family or officials or the people knowingly funded Bin Laden. Or that Bin Laden was paid "protection money" by the Saudi government (nice Mafia reference there!). These are presented to the American people as undisputed facts. The fact is: the Saudis stripped him of his citizenship very early in the 90s, before he declared any kind of war on America! As for the alleged "funding", it is never stated that this was mismanagement by some charity officials that lead to some money making its way to Bin Laden, and not that royal family/officials/Saudis intentionally funded him against America. Nor does it mention when this happened. It may have happened in the 80s when he was in a jihad against the USSR, something that America wholeheartedly supported.
I am against Bush's ill conceived policies all the way, but using these tactics will not help confront those stupid policies.
Nevertheless, it raises some good points that Americans need to think about.
P.S. Another good documentary that features Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky and others, is "The Corporation". Really worth a look by all readers of Slashdot.
Re:Documentary? (Score:3, Insightful)
"Pick a scenario"? How about none of the above? Your (1) dystopia and (2) utopia scenarios have really opened my eyes that Bush and America's dominance are the root of all evil.
I agree with your stated values. Peace is the ideal, but it is the compromises you are willing to make to achieve peace that defines the value and morality of that ideal.
Re:What a pig (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Last time a documentary got the Palme d' Or... (Score:2, Insightful)
Agree to a point (Score:3, Insightful)
Roger and Me was funny, but in the end, Moore was taking potshots at a CEO for killing his home town's economy, not because of his care for the noble common worker. He destroys that image of nobility by finding the most embarassing people in the town and editing them to look like idiots.
Every corporation has the right to do their business as they see fit. Hacking at GM won't fix Ford, Mercedes, Chrysler, Honda , Toyota, or any other car maker deciding to outsource.
Columbine completely ignored the responsible gun owner. It completely ignored the real 2nd amendment debate. It completely ignored the REAL reasons behind Columbine. All it did was make fun of rural folks and make trite commentary about the 2nd Amendment. Here's a hint, you can't sum up this issue in an hour if the framers and Supreme Court have been analyzing it for 200 years without a conclusion.
Now, of course, we have 9/11. Where Moore takes many disparate bits of half-truths and puts them together to form a path to a delusional conclusion that Bush knew about, and aided and abetted those that caused 9/11. When I got to watch this in rough cut, it felt like the psuedo-science used on Fox for their Moon Landing hoax and their Alien Autopsy "documentaries".Using Occham's razor, consider this RATIONALLY....What is more likely;
A: President and his staff miscalculate the determination of some Islamic radicals and get caught with their pants down in a modern Pearl Harbor. After the fact, they do some favors for their closest Arabic Middle East ally to get their help in tracking down the bad guys. They also kick out bin Laden's extended family because they may become targets of hatred, and the bin Laden family is close to the Saud Royals.
or B: The President decided that there is no way American citizens would ever discover his hand in a huge plot requiring 100+ operatives to pull off and KNOWINGLY decides to kill 10,000 + (remember, he would have had NO idea how many would die in a structure holding 40k) Americans so he could go to war in Iraq. In addition, he rewards the peple who helped him. Even though everyone would KNOW he helped them and it would increase his chances of being caught. Further, this President would have to assume these terrorists would only hit the targets they promise to hit, and that the terrorists would still do this if Bush asked them.
Yeah, B does sound a lot more like f-ing fiction when you put it in context. Moore is a once- entertaining filmmaker who has become angry and bitter. I would vigorously defend his right to make and show his films, but I won't go see them in theaters. They aren't MUST SEE, and he certainly isn't making "important" work anymore. He's a Netflix rental for me. One of about 20 programs I will see in a month. That's about the respect and value he deserves.
Re:1600 posts and counting (Score:1, Insightful)
And that while nobody here has actually seen it yet.
Re:Documentary? (Score:3, Insightful)
Or how about Chile, where democratically elected president was overthrown in CIA-backed coup? Replacing the president was Augusto Pinochet, another brutal military dictator.
Re:Documentary? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to a greater danger. It works the same in any country."
Scary stuff, and oh so real. Even in modern-day USA.
Re:Just curious.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Documentary? (Score:1, Insightful)