Michael Moore's New Film Leaked To BitTorrent 1088
Jared writes "Michael Moore was afraid the Feds might sieze his new documentary Sicko, a scathing indictment of the US health-care system, because part of it was filmed in Cuba despite the US embargo. So he stashed a copy of the film in Canada just to be safe. He might as well not have bothered — the film has shown up on BitTorrent and P2P networks everywhere. So it's safe now."
Uh Oh... (Score:3, Insightful)
If you are for P2P, I'm not sure if this is the guy you would want on the other side of the debate.
Those evil cubans! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Uh Oh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Saw it a few days ago (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Uh Oh... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:yet another... (Score:5, Insightful)
The U.S. has gone completely mad... (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course as a nation we really are insane; most people still don't see the problem with putting the richest corporations in charge of absolutely everything and calling it "freedom".
Re:Those evil cubans! (Score:4, Insightful)
No, noone can. There is no reasoning behind the bans on Cuba. It's purely emotional.
Re:Remember, guys (Score:3, Insightful)
He is not the voice of reason... he is the voice of another opinion. Nothing wrong with that, but his tactics are not to provide information, insight, or raw un-spun feeds of a particular problem, but to provide you with his opinion on the matter. If you agree with him.. he's happy. If you don't... you're working for W, Haliburton, or the Illuminati.
I don't mind him making movies one bit... more power to him. But the truth is always under his expertly edited hand... and it often times is his truth. It's a delicate line he's walking... he's dangerously skirting the outer edges of propaganda... and most people are unaware because they see the term "documentary" and immediately consider it's like the hygiene films in Jr. High. "Wash up, Susie!" (Not that some of those weren't propaganda laced with horrible acting as well... heh)
real sources of our health care problems (Score:5, Insightful)
Our problems do not come from a "failure" to socialize medicine. When I was up in Canada, the news was that brain scanners were mostly going to places with powerful politicians. Quebec got an unfair share. Money was disappearing for political reasons. Over in the UK, people are being sent to France for surgery because they'd die on the waiting lists if they didn't go. Here in the USA we install brain scanners (lots of them too) where there will be patients and we don't die on waiting lists for anything other than an organ transplant -- and that only because we made it illegal to pay the dead person's estate.
Our real problems are:
Some of these problems are not really solvable. Economics is what it is, people like new technology, and nobody wants to see their little children die. The lawyers have some mighty lobbiests, but a change would at least be theoretically possible. The same goes for the co-pay insurance system, which could be replaced by a sliding scale or percentage system. (example insurance fix: the patient's payment must increase by at least 10 cents for every dollar of the treatment cost up to "$200 for $2000", then by 1 cent per dollar thereafter)
Re:Saw it a few days ago (Score:5, Insightful)
"If the system is motivated by short term profit, there is always a benefit to denying care"
Re:yet another... (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that Bush has often misled the american people does not prove that Michael Moore is telling the truth.
"Fair and effective free market" (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no such thing as the free market, because access to every market is controlled by special interest gatekeepers. If you don't believe me, just try visiting the NYSE and buying some shares directly. Free market think tanks are as prone to special interest pleading as anybody else - unless you really believe, say, that the Cato Institute takes money from the oil and tobacco industries and is totally uninfluenced by it.
And here in the UK, we have had to move away from the medical profession being allowed to regulate itself as a result of numerous scandals. Although the great majority of physicians are doubtless more altruistic than the majority of society, it's been said that trade unions are like dishwater - the scum rises to the top.
I think that experience in Canada, the UK and most of Europe shows that you must be able to vote for the people that control the health care system, because there are too many ethical, special interest, and economic factors to be left to people acting blindly in their own interests. Adam Smith never foresaw a world of mega-corporations, and his understanding of capitalism was a long way short of that of Marx.
Re:real sources of our health care problems (Score:4, Insightful)
In America, you do need a few thousand dollars though.
Re:The U.S. has gone completely mad... (Score:5, Insightful)
We are stuck with a significant portion of the population, Red states, that when given this choice:
1) Bring universal health care up to the levels other developed countries in the world enjoy
2) Leave the US health care system in the mess it currently is and not have to admit the free market is a failure in the area of health care
Will eagerly go for option 2)
If someone's grandmother needs to die in order to avoid admitting something so fundamental to right wing dogma in the US is broken, so be it.
Re:yet another... (Score:5, Insightful)
Because when someone disagrees with a liar they are automatically telling the truth.
For example, I too think Bush is a liar. Also, your hair is on fire.
Bush, Rush, Coulter etc. vs Clinton, Moore, Franken, etc... it's the circus part of the bread and circus formula. Their goal is to really change very little but get you all worked up about it in the process.
Re:Saw it a few days ago (Score:5, Insightful)
But that's the rub. You don't want health care to be fair (which, in free-market terms means ability to pay). You want a health care system which covers everyone who needs covering, and which treats humans like their lives have value.
With the extraordinary costs of health care, that's the last thing you want to have based purely upon free market principles. "I can zap you again to try to restart your heart, but it will cost you an additional 35 dollars for this service. Sign here and we will proceed."
Which is not to say that you don't have a valid point: there is a lot which is wrong with our health care system above and beyond not having a social safety net... such as relying upon employers to maintain health insurance, lawsuits every time something goes wrong, not enough investment in preventative and curative medecines, and a reliance upon the expensive and the extravagent over the effective. And that doesn't even address overburdened doctors who never know their patients.
But the free market is not going to solve this problem. This problem exists in a moral, social, and economic grey realm which the market has been particularly bad in the past at dealing with.
Re:yet another... (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, so piling on more mistruths is totally justified. I feel full of insight, now.
Re:Those evil cubans! (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Those evil cubans! (Score:4, Insightful)
Canada private backup != P2P authorization (Score:1, Insightful)
P2P enthusiasts seem to love hearing that Michael Moore doesn't seem to hate them, but the fact is he is an entertainer that wants to be paid. In principle he (and every other film maker out there) would prefer you pirate their film rather than not seeing it at all, but please don't forget that he'd MUCH prefer you to spend money to watch the film.
WikiMoore (Score:3, Insightful)
That said, I haven't seen Sicko, but I do agree with Moore that health insurance is essentially legalized gambling. It's also essentially a redistribution of wealth from the healthy to the unhealthy, with lots of middle men taking their cut along the way. The big question, though, is how do you fix it without making the average quality of health care worse?
You would think that he'd find a less obvious rant (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:About that Cuban healthcare... (Score:1, Insightful)
The other half is the number per year.
While I am quite aware that so-called "tort reform" is just another way to fuck over the little guy, it doesn't help to have half-assed arguments against it. Please add more ass next time.
Re:yet another... (Score:4, Insightful)
Michael Moore is a pretentious hack. Every time I want to see his smirking face like he's teaching the world a thing or two I want to gouge my eyes out.
Every time I hear Ann Coulter talk about the liberal media bias I want to light something on fire and throw myself in it.
So which am I, fucktard GP? Right or Wrong? Left or Right?
I'm a goddamn self-critical thinking American who realizes we've fucked up but also realizes that distorting the truth in a documentary is probably the worst thing you could ever do for the industry. You want to present an opinion - cool, say it's your fucking opinion. But saying right is left and the sky is actually a pretty shade of lime and presenting that as not coming from you, but coming from facts is the lowest thing you could do in documentary journalism. It's as bad as any (insert ideology) media bias and worse for the hard-working true blue documentarians who want to present both sides of an issue but are shown that doing that isn't sexy enough, that they won't get the respect they so richly deserved by allowing both sides to speak and letting the audience decide, or by presenting their opinion and letting the audience decide whether it's right or wrong.
Moore makes me as sad and pissed off for my America as any other partisan lobby-owned political hack.
Re:I blame Michael Moore for Bush's winning (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I blame Michael Moore for Bush's winning (Score:3, Insightful)
The main reason Bush won is that the Democratic party couldn't offer a good alternative. Nobody liked Kerry, including the people who voted for him. Kerry was a mediocre candidate. So many people hate Bush that Kerry almost won anyway, but the people who didn't hate Bush didn't feel compelled to vote for Kerry.
A bigger reason is the ties between the GOP and the "religious right"; a lot of Christians somehow got the idea that the Republican party is the party that God supports, while the Democrats are Godless heathens. I'm not sure if this idea originated with the GOP trying to attract Christian voters, or if it originated with religious leaders who aligned themselves with the GOP in an effort to influence public policy, or some combination of both. Fortunately, it looks like people are starting to wake up, and the Democrats stand a good chance of convincing Christians that voting for a Democrat isn't a sin.
Of course you're right that they're all crooks, but that's OK - our government was brilliantly structured deliberately with this idea in mind. As long as everybody in politics is an evil greedy bastard who thinks only of himself, everything generally works out OK. The problem is that this system doesn't take political parties into account at all, and party loyalty messes everything up. The last mid-term elections helped to straighten this out a little bit - on November 8th 2006, there was a sudden massive attitude shift in the White House. I don't expect things to get any worse for awhile; the downward spiral has stopped. Of course this attitude shift came far too late to actually help anything in Iraq, but it may help with other issues like global warming and healthcare.
Re:I blame Michael Moore for Bush's winning (Score:5, Insightful)
Stay the fuck out of our world, and we'll stay out of your politics.
Re:Those evil cubans! (Score:3, Insightful)
Those of them who are actually old enough to have ever lived in Cuba.
Given how much a few thousand votes in Florida can matter, no politician wants to risk pissing these folks off. Funny how such a small group can be so influential because they live in the right state.
Quite a bit of US foreign policy appears to be controlled by interest groups. Be they the Israeli lobby and the various corporate interests which have made a mess of Central and South America.
*shakes fist at electoral college*
More a case of failing to follow the advice of George Washington about avoiding foreign entanglements.
Instead you have politicans (and political candidates) literally standing in line to show how they value foreign interests above Americans.
Re:I blame Michael Moore for Bush's winning (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, sure, except US politics affects the rest of the world. US politics is everybody's politics.
Re:Those evil cubans! (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll take a shot. Voters in Florida.
It's purely emotional.
Might depend on whether you're the one voting, or the one up for re-election.
Personally, I think Cubans (the ones in Florida) should just "get over it". Easy to say not having ever been in their shoes, but then, again, they were never in Castro's shoes (boots) either.
Re:Uh Oh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well maybe you should watch it again, or at all: he never said canadians never locked their door. What he showed was that, usually, in small town Canada, people didn't lock themselves *inside*. You see him walking up to a porch, pushing an unlocked door and asking "is there anyone in here?", and the lady of the house comes, surprised but not frightened.
Here's the thing about Michael Moore: he's criticized for movies he didn't make, and things he never said. I believe it's called "strawman".
Re:Canada not so nice (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Remember, guys (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't really know what other people, or teh internets, have to say specifically about this, but I am under the impression that this is a propaganda piece. That's part of what I'm interested in seeing. I do boring research on this crap all the time, but I want someone to produce something like this I can watch and go 'OOOooo, that's interesting!" while comfortably not forming a whole belief system around it.
What's the worst that could happen, people try to academically challenge his info? The US healthcare system sucks, and someone needs to shake up a lively discussion of how it can be fixed. I have a lot of ideas, and I'd be curious to see if any of them are suggested in the film.
Re:inertia, saving face, not rocking our boat (Score:3, Insightful)
The issue isn't that he is good or bad. The issue is that he isn't a "friend" or puppet of the US Government. The former rather ironically since Castro was perfectly happy to have normal relations with the US...
Re:Uh Oh... (Score:3, Insightful)
That's the same as with oh-so-many "artists" who rant away how they would rather see their songs pirated than not heard. It does not matter jack whether they say they would, as long as their studios keep hunting down copiers, they can say whatever they like, it does not matter. They can easily say what they want, they have no say in the question whether copying is persecuted or not.
Lots of publicity, lots of stunts (Score:3, Insightful)
Pretty much what everyone else does that tries to sell an opinion rather than giving you unbiased information.
He's also a master of publicity. He didn't cart those people who fell through the US social network to Canada or Mexico, no, it had to be Cuba. Why Cuba? It makes little sense in a medical way, but it does make a lot of sense when you think about it from the point of publicity and when you try to create a lot of discussion.
And a more interesting question, would they have gotten the same treatment if they were Cuban or was it a publicity stunt for Cuba as well? That's a question that isn't answered.
Now, I think Moore's films are important as counter-spin to the spin of our corporations and government, but you have to realize that this is what is is: spin. It's not "the awful truth".
Re:inertia, saving face, not rocking our boat (Score:3, Insightful)
Huh? You can disagree all you want with Castro, you can't accuse him of having become anything like his predecessors.
While freedom of speech is undoubtedly stiffled in Cuba, it's a comparatively safe place. Opponents might be sent to jail, but they're not tortured. Women's right are respected. Religious rights are respected. No child labor. Education is good. There doesn't seem to be massive corruption, at least compared to similar countries.
Compare this to current US allies.
I dunno, Saudi Arabia. Not only isn't there any of the rights afforded to Cubans, but they don't even have any of those that the Cubans lack; try to exercise freedom of speech in Saudi Arabia, and see how long your head stays attached to your spine.
You could also take China. No freedom of speech, rampant corruption, massive inequalities, and on top of that atrocious environmental violations. It's only nominally communist, when Cuba has at least what looks like true equality among its citizens.
Compared to many places in the world, Cuba is a sweet place to live. That doesn't make it an ideal place, far from it. But considering how much the US spends on trying to "fix" it, and how it focuses on it, this is a major fraud in my opinion.
Re:Saw it a few days ago (Score:5, Insightful)
Ever since Adam Smith, it's been known that a perfect free market is impossible, you can only approximate one. The better an area of commerce meets the necessary preconditions, the closer it will approximate a truly free market. The medical industry fails utterly to meet some of the most important preconditions for a functional free market.
Ideally, you want perfect information -- this means everybody knows exactly what they're buying and selling, and knows and understands all their available options. The better the market's information, the freer; whereas the less various agents within the market know, the less functional that market will be. It's pretty easy to meet that condition for breakfast cereal, but you need years of higher education to get in the ballpark when it comes to medical treatment.
Another important precondition for a free market is elasticity of demand. Medicine has almost zero. If Doctor Jones has a half-off special for fixing broken legs, people don't rush out to get their leg broken now to take advantage of it. If the cost of cast materials rises, people don't look at their budget and decide they'd be better off if they wait a couple months before they break their leg skiing! What's more, people are frequently unable to shop around and seek out the best supplier, especially in emergency conditions. This further weakens the market forces that would ordinarily weed out the inefficiencies and reward the most competitive.
Another important facet is having low or no barriers to entry. The harder it is to enter the marketplace and offer goods or services, the less free that market becomes as inefficient actors are more easily tolerated by the market due to the slow growth of competition. If all it takes to sell butt-scratchers is to stand on a street corner offering them, competition rises easily to meet demand. Medicine requires years of study to get a license, and this drags down the responsiveness of the market, and further increases the tendency to become bloated and inefficient.
This also ignores the garbage-collector effect. If only people who have money get medical care, people without money get sick and can incubate illnesses and epidemics that will adversely affect those with medical care, too -- just as a neighbor who can't pay for a privatized garbage pickup will have trash pile up, stinking up the neighborhood
Hopefully America will realize it benefits everyone to have universal health care, not just the poor. I mean, we blow more cash than any other industrialized nation, and get mediocre care at best. Our wealthiest citizens are less healthy and don't live as long as the wealthiest in the U.K., and they spend a fraction of the money we do. It's friggin' staring us in the face! Well, behind the smokescreen of bullshit that gets kicked up by the HMO and Pharma industry shills, who want us to believe our medical care is hot shit on a silver platter.
Oh, and don't even get me started on for-
All about Florida voters (Score:5, Insightful)
THAT is why the embargo is still in place.
We'd love to, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
We would, if you could stay the "frak" out of our business.
USA still has a lot of international say and use it in a not so civilized way at times.
Stop kidnapping our citizens and send them to Guantanamo for no good reason. [guardian.co.uk]
Stop keeping "secret" prisons in our countries. [washingtonpost.com]
Stop your european missile shield program. [state.gov]
Stop invading souvreign countries to protect american profit interests. [cnn.com]
Stop pushing SW-patents and other bad ideas onto the rest of the world. [wired.com]
Stop being the top polluter in the world. [nationmaster.com]
etc...
Your politics affect us, and as long as that's the case, we really can't stay the "frak" out of your politics.
Re:Uh Oh... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a very good movie, you should definitely watch it. even if it's not 100% accurate, it still brings up a shitload of valid points that Americans should definitely think about.
Re:Remember, guys (Score:5, Insightful)
If Bush's businesses were funded by the Saudis, that may matter. If prominent Saudis (related to Bin Laden, no less) were flown out of the country without being interviewed by the FBI when the rest of the non-military planes were grounded, that may matter. If the Saudi ambassador is so close to the Bushes that he has a pet name and is considered a close personal friend, that may matter. If Cheney still owns stock in Haliburton and stands to make money off of it when he steps out of office, that may matter.
I've seen concerted efforts to discredit Moore, and they always hinge on a different interpretation of the facts, not catching him in an outright falsehood. The facts he puts on the table need to be on the table, and Fox sure as hell isn't going to put them there. If his facts are correct and the facts indicate that something was awry, then we needed to look at that. We chose not to. We allowed cries of "he's biased!" to trump the question of "are his facts correct and what conclusion do they lead to?" Even if smoking guns can't be found, there were a lot of things brought to light by his movie that looked fishy as hell.
If you want to see bias, look at an Ann Coulter book. At least Moore's references check out.
Re:Saw it a few days ago (Score:2, Insightful)
Pick a random person. Would you like them to be your doctor? No?
The supply of acceptable doctors is limited. Sorry. If we offer everyone all the care they need or claim to need, we won't be able to satisfy the demand. We can make people wait, causing many to die. We can hire McDonald's fry cooks to do surgery, causing many to die. We can have arbitrary quotas or a lottery, causing many to die.
Hey, I want utopia too, but...
Don't mix up health care and health insurance (Score:5, Insightful)
France, Germany, etc, have "socialised" health insurance.
Care itself is mostly private. Doctors, dentists, pharmacists have private practices. A majority of hospitals are state-run, but there are plenty of private hospitals, too.
You are free to go to any doctor you want.
Don't vilify BitTorrent (Score:4, Insightful)
Everyone knows what you mean. I actually use BitTorrent exclusively for legitimate downloads (yes, I realise that sounds unlikely, but it's true) and I would be very disappointed if use of it was criminalised because of clueless lawmakers who are deriding their information from subjects like this.
MM is a troll (Score:4, Insightful)
I even agree with some of his points. Well, dunno about this particular movie, but I ended up buying a couple of his books because the back cover said they were "hilarious." (Ooer. Americans must be quite a cheerful and fun loving folk, if even that kind of bitter whine counts as "hilarious".)
That said, his endless "auugh, the government is out to get me" is starting to look stupid already, for a start. Look, if the government wanted to silence him, he'd be silent already. If America was the kind of fascist oligarchy that he always describes, he probably wouldn't even be alive at this point, or at least someone would have framed him for something already and sent him to a maximum security jail.
This is just yet another such publicity stunt, for conspiracy theorists. How about waiting until the government actually does something about it, before "leaking" the movie? Or if he wants to distribute it via P2P, fine, that's a mighty fine way to distribute your works, really. But it's just a choice of distribution, not some great act of resistance against fascism.
Hyperbole (like metaphors, similes, and everything else) is like a condiment in food. If half your dish is salt or pepper, you probably overdid it. Same here. Not only it makes his bitter whine sound even more bitter, it doesn't even serve his purposes that well, since you never know what's a genuine assessment and what's another of his over-the-top hyperboles. It's like the boy who cried wolf: by the time you've described something as a totalitarian plot for the 1000'th time, noone (sane) takes it seriously any more.
Such ego-stroking stunts are just that kind of bad hyperbole. Yes, probably some people above would dislike his point, but some might even agree with him. Either way, he's _not_ going to end up with the Gestapo on his doorstep and with the SS burning his movies and book, either.
More importantly, there are always two sides to each issues. There's rarely a free meal: to get X you give up some Y, or viceversa. And neither extreme is an utopia, so you have to figure out your own least crappy compromise among all possible crappy compromises. Which is why there's a political debate and more than one party and platform. One thinks that it's totally worth giving up X to get more Y, one thinks the opposite, one thinks the balance is good enough as it is, one wants to give up both X and Y to gain Z, and yet another one runs around with pencils up its nose and thinks it's an airplane.
The reason why the government does X instead of Y, may not always be the best, may not always even be honest, but aren't always "let's oppress someone for the fun of it either" either. Whether it's about health care or letting the Bin Laden family fly away after 9/11, there are real issues ranging from costs to international relations to ideology behind those choices. And by ideology I mean "what we think is best for the economy", not just "let's be neo-conservative because the conspiracy told us to". Those ideas might well be wrong (everyone can't be right at the same time, or you wouldn't need more than one party), but painting one side with the broad brush of "auugh, they're all bought by their industrialist friends and trying to silence me" is just an ad-hominem.
Stances basically saying "my version is by definition perfect, and everyone else is a fascist peddling crooked crap solutions" aren't really doing anyone any good.
Or at least I hope it's hyperbole, because otherwise he'd have to be paranoid schizophrenic to actually believe all that. But I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. It's probably hyperbole.
Re:Those evil cubans! (Score:1, Insightful)
I feel dumber having read your post (Score:2, Insightful)
We invent new technology, expect to use it, and expect that costs won't rise. Huh? We're expecting to get more for less. That only works for computer hardware. (in a socialist medicine system, quotas and delaying tactics are used to fight this problem)
When costs rise, we don't expect higher than average margins. All the HMOs have experienced major returns recently, and Moore's film mentions this. He doesn't speculate on why, however. Which I think is a bit unfortunate.
The attitude is "I'll pay anything to save my dying children!". We then act all offended that the hospital bill heads toward infinity. Since death is common (100% of your children will die!) you can expect to pay until you can pay no more or until we run out of technology to sell you. (as above, socialist systems deny you this choice)
How much is another six months worth to you personally? How much additional loans would you take out to extend your life by six months (or ten years)? In a free market scenario, you take out as many loans as you can to support yourself and your family to survive. The children of the poor will suffer poor care while the children of the rich will live life to the fullest money can buy. This is a (if not the) fundamental problem with free market health care. Life extending health care's value approaches infinity. All I can say is, your phrasing makes you a bastard, and by your own logic you should kill yourself now to spare the potential expenses you'll incur in living life.
Simple economics is causing all service industries to be relatively more expensive. The factory worker is now more productive because he has huge machines. The high-tech worker is absurdly productive because he only produces digital data which is trivial to replicate. The hospital worker, like the college professor, is not getting such huge productivity increases. Widgets and software can be sold cheaply while still paying the workers well, but hospital services can not be made cheap while paying the workers well. Because everything is relative, hospital costs skyrocket.
So despite the heavy economic incentive currently available, no huge increase in productivity is being found. There's likely a large number of reasons for this, like the definition of productivity, the unintended drug-prohibition side effect of junkies faking illnesses in ERs to get a fix, and a lopsided bargaining table with HMOs. But even if that's all bunk or acceptable, there's still a failure of the market to find inefficiencies.
Over in India, patients have a very limited ability to sue for malpractice and pain and suffering and... Medicine is cheap there....Before a jury, it looks good to have done more intervention.
How on earth does malpractice insurance correlate with the price of medicine? They're two fundamentally different aspects of health care and it's becoming clear you don't understand it. Drug companies in the US defend their pricing strategy as recovering costs. By "costs" they mean "paying universities for their findings, free samples for doctors, and buying large ads telling you to ask your doctor about a specific drug".
Cesearian is in no way a cover your ass maneuver. It correlates with an increased mortality rate, quite sharply. It seems most critics feel this is because the hospital can charge more for a C-section than a normal birth. Recall that at the same time our insurance agencies are booming hospitals are becoming broke. I'd wager a good number is also due to vanity.
Our health insurance is too good at insulating us from the costs of various procedures. We don't shop around for a good deal.
Bullshit. My last insurance had a premium and high deductibles. I'm not about to go shopping for diseases I don't have. Others might (re: drug addictions), but good luck. And if the expensive lot downtown is truly expensive, your HMO probably doesn't have it on its "preferred" list -- their primary legitimate objective is to reduce
Re:Uh Oh... (Score:2, Insightful)
Just because he hits out at Republicans and Democrats doesn't mean he's suddenly right.
even if it's not 100% accurate
We should hold documentaries to the same factual accountability as we do journalists. But maybe we already do, these days, and I'm just behind the times.
gee thanks (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Uh Oh... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Uh Oh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, this is a criticism that I have a real hard time getting behind, because the implicit assumption that it requires is that everyone is simply too stupid to be trusted understanding that in a two-hour film, not every nuance or exception to a comment need be expressed aloud. Documentarians should be able to make the basic assumption that people don't turn off their brains while watching.
To put it mildly, you would have to be a fscking idiot to believe that *nobody* in Toronto locks their doors. You know that. I know that. Michael Moore knows that. Michael Moore also has only 120 miuntes to say everything he wants to say, and so he can generalize to a point where he *should* feel comfortable with assuming the audience knows that he is talking about trends rather than a hard law of behavior. Anybody with a reasonably functional mind would come away from that scene under the impression that Moore is making the point that Torontoans care less about locking their doors when home than Americans, who are by-and-large both the subject and audience of the film. That assertion anecdotally and for me experientially also seems eminently correct. If he were forced to qualify every statement to absolute precision, he wouldn't be able to say anything interesting or thought-provoking. Neither would anyone else.
I have my own criticsms of M. Moore, and they tend towards my perception that he uses manipulative tactics too often, I imagine intended to elicit sympathy through emotional appeals of pity or indignation, but for me it is simply distracting and wearying. For example, I thought that much of Bowling for Columbine was interesting and thought-provoking, but I hated the part where he badgered poor Mr. Heston, particularly the part with the photograph. Similarly, in F9/11, the end part with the mother wailing and gnashing her teeth was an off-key ending that marred his larger points with cheap and exploitative melodrama.
Re:Remember, guys (Score:3, Insightful)
This may be true to a degree, but the whole of American media is like this. Everything we see and hear is cherry-picked information, manipulated and molded facts to point rather unceremoniously to a conclusion they wants us to come to. Almost every word emanating from the White house and the Government is like this. Do you really think Fox News is telling you the whole unvarnished story? Do you think the media and Government is giving us the complete unbiased story about what the American Government is really doing in the world? The American people are among the most brainwashed people on earth. At least the residents of the Soviet Union realized they were being fed constant propaganda by the media.
Re:Uh Oh... (Score:3, Insightful)
In the same vein, eating ice cream doesn't make you more likely to die by drowning, but it's the same thing that causes more ice cream to be sold, that causes more people to die by drowning.
Re:why is cuba bad? compared to russia (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Uh Oh... (Score:3, Insightful)
Every door that M. Moore knocked on and opened during the Toronto segment was during the day. Kind of obviating the whole "but what about the thieves" aspect of the argument, since during the day while people are present in the house, thievery is unbelievably uncommon. I imagine that more (probably most) Torontoans lock their doors at night. His narrow point was that by-and-large, Toronto residents were not so reflexively paranoid and fearful of their fellow man to habitually lock their doors while at home during the day; the only reasonable motivation for locking a door in that circumstance would be to isolate oneself for fear of violent or personal crimes. And on that point, by-and-large, I think he's right.
Interestingly, he did interview a woman a little later in the film who had been burgled, (by a roving band of bored kids looking for booze) and she seems a little more blase about the whole experience than I would expect many Americans to be. She may be an exception in Canada too, but every experience I've had in Canada and with Canadians leads me to believe that even if rare, her reaction is more common there than here in America.
Re:Distorting the truth? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Uh Oh... (Score:3, Insightful)
In politics, it's damaging because of the power such things have. But we also expect them to lie. That's what they do.
In journalism, it's damaging because journalism - be it print, broadcast, or documentary - is meant to peel back the bullshit of politics. We're supposed to trust these people to give it to us straight, because we know politicians are, have been, and always will be, full of shit.
So if we can't trust the watchdogs, how are we ever going to be able to make an informed decision on electing better politicians and smacking down and out the ones that are full of egregious lies and fabrications?
Re:Uh Oh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sarcasm aside, yeah, that's right. Texts (both typed and film) have minimum entry levels for knowledge-base, experiences, and intelligence. When a person is speaking or writing, often he or she has to just make a basic assumption that someone is minimally intelligent, informed, capable of critical thought, etc., and write off those that don't. Behind every statement of any worth is a trove of unspoken hypotheses and assumptions. Requiring that they be spelled out for the uninformed and the stupid is ridiculous and unfair unless the text is intended for those specific audiences.
And he can't say "whatever he wants" in the sense that you mean. He just doesn't have to spell out his points as if we were all born yesterday, and in that narrow sense he can take liberties with the expected intelligence of his audience.
So if membership in the "Cool kids club" is typified by being able to think even cursorily about what is being presented instead of being a passive receptacle for whatever you happen to view, that's the one I want to be in. Don't you?
Re:I live in the US, and I have 100% free health c (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Distorting the truth? (Score:2, Insightful)
It's very easy to say it stands up to scrutiny when you just as quickly dismiss what's presented as character assassination.
Re:That's just scaremongering (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:gee thanks (Score:3, Insightful)
Bias vs. Lies (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm tired of all of this crap about Moore's documentaries being nothing but lies. His documentaries are heavily biased against the Bush administration and the direction of the country, but, for the most part, his facts are pretty accurate. This new documentary was created to point out how bad the national health care situation is currently. His using Cuba to demonstrate national health care shows his bias, but it doesn't make his point less accurate or factual. Health care in this country is screwed up. When needing medical care could mean years, or even decades of extreme debt, even when you have "insurance" (if it can be called that with the crap these companies pull), we have an issue.
I'm tired of the ad hominem attacks here. If you disagree with the man, fine. If you don't want to watch the movie, fine. But if you want to disagree with him as vocally as many do here, counter his facts, stop the BS and petty name calling.
Re:yet another... (Score:2, Insightful)
And they're making millions of dollars in the process.
Re:yet another... (Score:5, Insightful)
I've watched this movie, and he's glossed over the fact that our (the UK) NHS infrastructure is a bit shoddy. Sure, it's one of the best in the world, but it's a giant money hole.
Also, it appears to be an advert for Clinton. Would have been nice to see this party-neutral. Ah well.
If you ignore the partisan politics, this is a fantastic film with one important message: Societies are not judged by how they treat their heroes, but how they treat the bottom rung. Only with universal healthcare, free at the point of need (that's need, not want - no free boobjobs, obviously) can the US elevate it's status as one of the worst infant mortality rates, poor general health and positively narcissistic health corporation which have done nothing but bolster corporate profits.
The US is a fantastic place, but I'd never want to live in a country that didn't care about everyone - regardless of whether they're a billionaire or a meth-addict in dire straits.
Re:Remember, guys (Score:3, Insightful)
You may not be able to read, but he was talking about he, the OP said "I've seen concerted efforts to discredit Moore, and they always hinge on a different interpretation of the facts, not catching him in an outright falsehood"
And that's the site you link to, its not called lies - because there are no lies. Its called "Deceits" because if you are stupid enough you might have felt "deceived" (strangly enough its mostly americans who don't seem to get it). I remember people were looking at those so called 50 deciets and all of it is just anohter point of view and spin
Re:Canada not so nice (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is a for-profit health care system and lack of coverage for those that cannot afford it. Pointing at the lack of an adequate number of MRI machines in Canada is not a flaw in the idea of universal health care coverage, it's an implementation problem.
We can observe all the other universal and single payer systems out there and design around the flaws. That's really an advantage we have in this country for waiting so long to implement. Sucks for those that cannot afford health care until we get the system in place, but hopefully we'll be able to put a system in place that solves many of the problems seen elsewhere.
Re:Canada not so nice (Score:3, Insightful)
"It's not the market (number of sick people who can afford it) which determines where these devices are installed."
Re:yet another... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll tell you why: The concept that both might be right or wrong in some instances escapes some people. That, and we live in a society where people in power will skew "the truth" to make themselves look good, regardless of the reality of things. When was the last time you heard a president apologize for being wrong about something? Anything? Show humility?
Re:That's just scaremongering (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Uh Oh... (Score:3, Insightful)
Frankly, and speaking here as someone who's married to a journalist and works at a newspaper, I am sick to fricking death of the whole "objective coverage" line that people keep insisting on, even when their obvious bias shows through...Fox News, I'm looking at you.
What we need is a few solid outlets who are willing to dig and hold people accountable, even at the cost of objectivity. The crap that people get away with now blows my mind, that a politician can claim, "I never said that" and no one but the fricking "Daily Show" has the stones to throw up a clip of them saying it.
So while Michael Moore isn't my favorite person, and while he does indeed grate on my nerves, I completely respect him for being a person who is willing to sift through the crap and put together a argument backed up by hard video data in an attempt to prove his point. Yea, it's biased, but the "objective" outlets are just ignoring this stuff, and it needs to be seen.
Lies (Score:3, Insightful)
Nope, Sorry (Score:3, Insightful)
And I have friends in Canada, who wish they were back in America, and health care is one of the big reasons why. The amount of time spent waiting for service is unbelievable. They've told me they wait, in some cases, a month for service. I can't take that. Even though I'm apparently paying less than a Canadian, I'd gladly pay more for prompt medical service.
Re:Saw it a few days ago (Score:3, Insightful)
We should be able to offer everyone basic medicine without criminalizing private health care. Guess what? The rich will always get better care, so don't try to legislate that away.
Re:Uh Oh... (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not the same (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know what Michael Moore's arrangement with Lionsgate is, but I suspect that he has a much higher financial interest in his movies than the vast majority of musicians do in their CDs.
At any rate, I'm going to go see it in the theater. Aside from being the right thing to do, I really enjoy Michael Moore's movies and I'd like to encourage him to make more by voting with my dollars what is worth paying to see and what isn't. Here's the trailer [michaelmoore.com], it looks like it might be his best one yet.
Re:yet another... (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact that Bush has often misled the american people does not prove that Michael Moore is telling the truth.
Re:Canada not so nice (Score:5, Insightful)
We trust government-run firefighters, police and military. Why is it that a government-run firefighting system can be trusted to rescue people from a burning building, but somehow government-run healthcare can't be trusted to treat them? Are firefighter EMTs worse at their job than hospital EMTs?
And just look at our military. Is it wasteful? Without a doubt. But does it have the tradeoffs that Canadian/European militaries have? Not by a long shot. So why should government-run health care in America automatically be a disaster? Why should we even expect to have to make the same tradeoffs that other nations make? This is America ffs; we've got a ridiculously large national ego. If Canucks and Euros can make it work, why the hell wouldn't we be able to do it better?
It seems to me that we should expect American government-run health care would still be the best on the planet.
And last I checked, I'm already paying about twice as much for less healthcare today than a decade ago when our nation last talked about healthcare. Private healthcare clearly hasn't protected us from massive increases in costs and cutbacks in service.
So why again, are we defending a system that's built to incentivize denial of service? Why again are we defending a system that is clearly incompatible with free-market assumptions? (Healthcare is not a good the consumer can walk away from, so the consumer will always lose.)
I simply don't see how it is that American government-run police, firefighting, emergency response, and national defense can be trusted -- can be the best in the world at what they do -- but government-run healthcare is still a boogeyman.
Re:Uh Oh... (Score:4, Insightful)
Take the topic of enacting socialized medicine in the US. Does it suck that so many people don't have health care? I think so. Would it suck if the gov't took more of my money to pay for someone else to have an operation? I think so. Do people get into situations sometimes where they need help (i.e. free medical care). I think so. Will people take advantage of the system by needlessly going to the doctor all of the time just because they know it's going to be free? I think so. Will it be a benefit to the millions of Americans who have no health care coverage? I think so. Will it be a detriment to the other millions of Americans who already have quality health care at a low cost through their employers or other means? I think so. Are there positives? Of course. Are there negatives? Of course. And the journalist should present all of them.
You can't just focus on the side that makes your case look good... you can't just parade the "lost causes" in front of the camera and say, "Socialized medicine will fix this". You have to point out the things that it will break as well. For every person who will go from getting no coverage to getting some coverage, you have to point out the people who will go from getting fast, quality coverage to getting slow, lesser quality coverage (I should know... I'm Canadian by birth, and my brother was on a waiting list for over 9 months for a simple operation... the last surgery I needed --now that I'm in the US-- required about a two week wait). For every person who can't afford coverage and will get it for free, you'll have to point out all of the people who _can_ afford it and are getting it for a very good price, who will end up losing more money in taxes than what it costs them right now (My wife, for example, gets coverage through her work for free... I get it for a very low cost through my work... if our taxes went up to pay for this, we'd both end up on the losing-side --financially and in the quality of the coverage).
The most important thing to remember in this debate is that you're talking about forcing the entire nation into doing something, whether they agree with it or not. The same goes for any of these other major debates. And when you're talking about doing something like that, you can't play games with the "facts". We need to hear it all.
WATYF
Re:Are you serious? (Score:3, Insightful)
I mean, wouldn't Heston have sued the pants off of MM and his studio (for libel?) if they had done what you suggest?
I'm not a big fan of MM's methodology - I think he is a bit deceptive in his presentation. But I hope he isn't that bad (or stupid). Also, I'm a little surprised that your post got modded to five when it contains a big accusation with no reference.
Also, I don't buy the defense that Heston is old and it is nasty of MM to do this to poor old Heston. If Heston is old and can't give interviews then he shouldn't be the president of the NRA (or was he a director by then). It was very appropriate that MM should have interviewed the head of the NRA.
Re:yet another... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Uh Oh... (Score:1, Insightful)
Great comment, this is the hardest thing to get past. After all, he is the person who has done all of the research to produce his documentary; for Moore to disregard facts and tell half truths is sad.
Re:Uh Oh... (Score:3, Insightful)
A journalist's job is to report on facts and their context. If they make no effort to examine both sides of a story, they are injecting their personal bias. That may work for advocacy journalism, but isn't reporting.
An example: In 1996, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, and later, CNN, were absolutely certain that Richard Jewel, the man who reported the satchel to the police shortly before it exploded, was responsible for the Centennial Olympic Park bombing. They spent days gathering evidence of why he did it. They knew that they were right and so only gathered information that supported their contention. Their ratings went up as people watched the guilty come to justice. Only one problem: he didn't do it. They had crossed over from reporting what happened to supporting their contention, and someone who should have been considered a hero was pilloried.
This is what can happen when a reporter is sure that they know "the truth".
Re:About that Cuban healthcare... (Score:2, Insightful)
WATYF
Jose Posada Carriles (Score:3, Insightful)
Well pardon me if I don't have much trust in avowed terrorists.
Re:yet another... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, there is widespread speculation that a recession is coming, fueled mainly by the crisis in the housing market, but people speculate about the market all the time. This speculation is coming from economists in general, and is certainly not limited to the left wing.
Also, the Film Actors Guild (FAG) was a fictional organization in the film "Team America: World Police". The acronym is part of the humor. So, while your point of view is legitimate, you may want to research your assertions before throwing bile at fictional entities.
Also, while Moore undoubtedly plays up certain aspects of his films for entertainment value and to prove his point, he does often bring up quite a few good points that are solidly based on fact. To ignore a point of view out of hand merely because it comes from a source you find distasteful is closed-minded.
Re:yet another... (Score:4, Insightful)
It is sort of ironic to have a Moore supporter accuse the other side of discrediting the intelligence of the viewers.
Re:Canada not so nice (Score:5, Insightful)
That's pretty similar to the US system:
If you can afford it, you pay to use the American MRI machine.
Except for the part about waiting for a Canadian machine to open up if you can't afford that.
Here in the US, if you can't afford it, you just wait to die.
Re:Canada not so nice (Score:3, Insightful)
First, all the excuses are pretty hollow and trite. "You have to wait forever", "you have to travel far for advanced care", "mired in beaurocracy", blah blah blah. All of this may be true, but when you're American and you have no health insurance and you can't afford any treatment, suddenly all those "drawbacks" don't sound so bad. I'd rather have to wait for a couple of weeks to get a serious ailment looked at (if that's even true, but there's conflicting anecdotes) then not get treated at all because I can't afford it. Plus, most of those accusations could easily and accurately be levelled at the current American private healthcare system.
(And don't bother kidding yourself with this gibberish about how an American hospital can't turn you away for nonpayment. While I doubt they'd kick you out of the ER if you had a gunshot wound, try getting a broken bone dealt with, or some kind of illness you can't identify, if you can't pay. Lotsa luck, champ.)
Second, I don't think anyone in America is seriously proposing a single-tier system where everybody is exactly on the same playing field. The idea is to provide healthcare for free for those who need it. If you want a specific doctor or a specific hospital or want faster treatment or more tests run or more advanced technology or whatever, you're welcome to pay for it then (or supplement yourself with private insurance).
Finally, such a plan would never involve more taxes if our government wasn't so tax-happy. God forbid we divert funds from pork spending and multiply redundant agencies all doing the same job, eh? Feel free to go through this list [lsu.edu] -- I'm sure we could all agree on at least a third of these to be totally eliminated and nobody would notice the difference. There are like five agencies doing the same job as the FDA in there, for starters. Just because the government's solution to everything is "tax more" doesn't mean that's how it has to be.
It is telling that most other first-world, developed nations (not all) provide some baseline healthcare system for their citizens, and America is one of the very few that doesn't. We're so enamored with this notion that "free market capitalism solves everything!" that we can't see that our system isn't all that "free market" to begin with. Most critics' complaints eventually boil down to waving away the benefits of universal healthcare with a "Yes, yes, but that's socialism," as though socialism is immediately understood by all to be evil and no more discussion could possibly ensue. It's a weak argument, and it's sad.
Re:Most of medical care can be market driven (Score:3, Insightful)
- Information - There is no shortage of information available on proper proactive care and the most common illnesses and conditions, as well as their most common and effective treatments. Patients are awash in information today.
However, it is almost impossible to shop around for the best price. We don't know the actual cost of treatment and it is impossible to tell what the cost is going to be upfront. A basic physical at one office may not include the same bloodwork as another office. You can't compare services to get accurate price comparisons.
- Elasticity - The numbers of people who get sick are not dependent on market forces, but where they go is. If people had to pay for their own strep treatment, don't you think they'd drive an extra 15 minutes to the next clinic to save $50? If it's not a life-threatening emergency--and most medical visits are not--then there is elasticity.
This goes back to the information problem. You can't call a doctor's office and ask for a quote on Strep throat treatment. Which antibiotic should I use? Don't know, since I may be alergic to some and not know what is available. Is the doctor going to continue to treat me under the original quote if I have an antibiotic resistant strain? Medicine is too difficult to quote correctly so the information and elasticity argument fall apart. It is the exact reason we have health insurance. We need to smooth out the costs and we do so through shared cost in health insurance.
The second problem with elasticity is the desire to deal with a single doctor regardless of price. This is a business built on relationships and is not extremely price sensitive. If my Doc charges $50 more than the guy down the street, I will probably still go to him because of trust.
- Barriers to entry - Of course it's still hard to get a doctor's license. But it turns out that many of the services above can be performed by nurse practioners or physican assistants. And, this is not an issue with who is paying, but rather with the nature of the service. Many other specialized-skill markets suffer from this deficiency.
Furthermore, it's not like medical care is the only market that has the aspects you describe. In fact the conditions you describe are true for many specialized professions. For instance the legal market suffers from all the same deficiencies in information, elasticity, and barrier to entry. Same with civil engineering.
However, legal and civil engineering are easily priced and compared and not universally needed. I don't think most people in the US have ever used a lawyer or civil engineer. Why should they? Also, the barrier to entry on a cost level for legal and civil engineers are dramatically different than doctor's. The degree is obtained in far fewer years (think med school and internships) and the equipment to run the practice is minimal.
What many people do is look at the medical system and envision a system that is mostly provided by government, with some private service on top. But that system sucks when it comes to flexibility and innovation. A better system is one that is mostly private markets, with the governement picking up the few at the bottom, who the market does not serve. It works for food and housing and legal care.
Actually, it works fairly well for legal services since they aren't universally required, but works horribly for food and housing. If it worked so well, why do we have a huge number of homeless and hungry people? The traditional answer is mental "health" problems of the people on the streets, but you have backed yourself into a corner with that argument.
--Keith
Re:Uh Oh... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Canada not so nice (Score:3, Insightful)
The other side of the coin is that when health care is free, then everyone abuses it because it costs them nothing. "I don't feel well, I demand an MRI!", and so on...
Another issue is that we divide the world into "rich" and "poor", when the reality is that many are in-between and can chose to get this help when they feel they really need it. To steal an example from earlier in this thread - if my retired dad had a knee problem, and I had the family savings to get him an MRI and chose to do so, I would be very frustrated when I wasn't allowed to do so. It's a limit to my freedom. You from the outside may say "it's not necessary", but maybe his bad knee is creating a major drain on my family, ruining his own self-esteem (trapped, depending on others), etc. Why can't I decide that this is an important situation?
In the end, it's a question of an ethic of "fair play" vs an ethic of "personal responsibility" - do we all depend on a Nanny state to make our decisions for us, or do we depend ourselves and take our chances in an unfair world?
-Jeff
Re:yet another... (Score:4, Insightful)
I saw that part of the film. I am anti-gun, and I still didn't reach the conclusion that Moore is said by his critics to have foisted on me. That's part of what I find odd about the criticisms of his movies. Politically I'm in his neighborhood (roughly), but I never saw what everyone says he is showing. I take hyperbole for hyperbole, rhetorical questions for rhetorical questions, metaphor for metaphor, and so on--I guess I'm not literalist enough to feel that he's trying to lie to me. The main ideas of the film are what matter to me, and oddly, I haven't seen those questioned. I just see them thrown out altogether, sight unseen, because Moore spliced two speeches together and "that means we can't trust him."
Re:Are you serious? (Score:3, Insightful)
If there was an especially terrible fatal auto accident, and 10 days later there was an automobile convention in Detroit, no-one would say that the auto makers were politicizing the tragedy... the only people who would accuse the auto companies of "politicizing a tragedy" would be people who already have a beef with the auto companies and are using it as a pretense to attack them.
Likewise, saying the NRA was politicizing a tragedy because they had their NRA conference in Denver, a conference they planned a year before the tragedy, only makes sense if you accept the gun-control ideology. Only a gun-control nut or someone with a beef against the NRA would make the connection between the two.
Re:All about Florida voters (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:yet another... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Don't mix up health care and health insurance (Score:4, Insightful)
This very complex debate is extremely simple, when you boil it down to this one salient fact. An insurer should not be able to pick and choose the insured.
The point of insurance is to spread risk. Once they're allowed to focus risk, it's no longer insurance. It's healthcare-brokering.
Re:Uh Oh... (Score:3, Insightful)
In Bowling for Columbine, there aren't a lot of specific "lies", but there are half-truths and information left unsaid. It is not that he lies, it is that he deceptively edits and "gives his opinion" on things. This is what people dislike about him. I suppose his skill at editing and film creation are definitely signs of a great filmmaker, but his ethics suck.
The bomber memorial feature was not honoring the bombing of Vietnam, the plaque said it was for shooting down a MiG with a defensive cannon (a rare feat) and for the crew who served it. Sure, the bomber was probably involved in bombing North Vietnam, but the memorial was for that.
Heston definitely said the words he said (as Moore claimed defending his film against detractors), however, the context of his words were changed to make it seem as if he was being more callous in the face of Columbine (one speech was from just after the event, while the other was a year later at North Carolina -- his wardrobe changes slightly between the scenes, but can be hard to notice). The 1999 NRA's meeting could not be cancelled due to charter rules (they must gather at least once a year for elections and other things), but many events were cancelled out of respect (Moore actually editted out the part of Heston's speech that mentioned the cancellations). Additionally, those meetings are set up a year or two in advance due to the number of people who attend (20-40,000). The Denver meeting coincided with Columbine by pure chance.
It did portay that the KKK and the NRA as being similar and linked together. Such links would likely be nonexistent as the NRA was founded by Union officers, some of who the KKK would rather see dead (both General Sheridan and Ulysses S. Grant served as NRA presidents; Grant had outlawed the KKK in 1871). These officers had been concerned over the marksmanship of their troops, so they wanted an organization to promote accuracy and use of the shooting sports among the general population.
There are others. There are no outright "lies", but there are half-truths, omissions, and a lot of emotion and opinion. An unwary viewer could fall victim to these traps.