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Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911 Thread


DudeAsInCool

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I saw the trailer last weekend when we went to see The Stepford Wives. It ought to cause a nice little stir in conservative Kentucky. They're trying to get the rating changed from "R" to "PG" so that more teenagers will see it and get the idea of what a fiasco the Iraq invasion became, and how deceitful the Bush administration was in the rationale for initiating it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3804427.stm

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It looks good. All of the things I see in the trailer are things that he's been saying for over a year, but I imagine that it's even more powerful when all the ducks are in a row.

This is the wmp link if you trust their evil codec:

http://www.fahrenheit911.com/trailer/windows/large.php

btw- sinister looking avatar koop

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Ok so they're going to try to turn more young people into nutty activists or what?

it's a commercial venture... I would also argue that not everything Moore says is nutty...

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No, they just want more money.

I watched the trailer.... pretty fancy - but I think he's up to his predictable ways with editing to portray negativity.

What's up with the GW Bush golf shot? Does Moore think th president should be working 24/7 with no breaks? I can see what he was trying to do by including that... making him look like he doesn't care - but wtf? The president can't golf? He gets mics shoved in his face 24/7, and if that happens on his time off while he's golfing? Shit, I'd do the same thing...

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a Bush fanboy either, but I'm against mudslinging.

I think Bush and co royally f'ed up with the WMDs in Iraq. That's what cost him my vote for 04. That destroyed the war's credibility...

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Not exactly :lol:

What I meant is that people tend to flip out and get all worked up over shit like this, without knowing all the facts. When it comes to Moore and his directorial ways, you're definitely not getting all the facts, and you're seeing information presented in a misleading manner.

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Roger Ebert's review of Farenheit 9/11:

'9/11': Just the facts?

June 18, 2004

BY ROGER EBERT FILM CRITIC

A reader writes:

"In your articles discussing Michael Moore's film 'Fahrenheit 9/11,' you call it a documentary. I always thought of documentaries as presenting facts objectively without editorializing. While I have enjoyed many of Mr. Moore's films, I don't think they fit the definition of a documentary."

That's where you're wrong. Most documentaries, especially the best ones, have an opinion and argue for it. Even those that pretend to be objective reflect the filmmaker's point of view. Moviegoers should observe the bias, take it into account and decide if the film supports it or not.

Michael Moore is a liberal activist. He is the first to say so. He is alarmed by the prospect of a second term for George W. Bush, and made "Fahrenheit 9/11" for the purpose of persuading people to vote against him.

That is all perfectly clear, and yet in the days before the film opens June 25, there'll be bountiful reports by commentators who are shocked! shocked! that Moore's film is partisan. "He doesn't tell both sides," we'll hear, especially on Fox News, which is so famous for telling both sides.

The wise French director Godard once said, "The way to criticize a film is to make another film." That there is not a pro-Bush documentary available right now I am powerless to explain. Surely, however, the Republican National Convention will open with such a documentary, which will position Bush comfortably between Ronald Reagan and God. The Democratic convention will have a wondrous film about John Kerry. Anyone who thinks one of these documentaries is "presenting facts objectively without editorializing" should look at the other one.

The pitfall for Moore is not subjectivity, but accuracy. We expect him to hold an opinion and argue it, but we also require his facts to be correct. I was an admirer of his previous doc, the Oscar-winning "Bowling for Columbine," until I discovered that some of his "facts" were wrong, false or fudged.

In some cases, he was guilty of making a good story better, but in other cases (such as his ambush of Charlton Heston) he was unfair, and in still others (such as the wording on the plaque under the bomber at the Air Force Academy) he was just plain wrong, as anyone can see by going to look at the plaque.

Because I agree with Moore's politics, his inaccuracies pained me, and I wrote about them in my Answer Man column. Moore wrote me that he didn't expect such attacks "from you, of all people." But I cannot ignore flaws simply because I agree with the filmmaker. In hurting his cause, he wounds mine.

Now comes "Fahrenheit 9/11," floating on an enormous wave of advance publicity. It inspired a battle of the titans between Disney's Michael Eisner and Miramax's Harvey Weinstein. It won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. It has been rated R by the MPAA, and former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo has signed up as Moore's lawyer, to challenge the rating. The conservative group Move America Forward, which successfully bounced the mildly critical biopic "The Reagans" off CBS and onto cable, has launched a campaign to discourage theaters from showing "Fahrenheit 9/11."

The campaign will amount to nothing and disgraces Move America Forward by showing it trying to suppress disagreement instead of engaging it. The R rating may stand; there is a real beheading in the film, and only fictional beheadings get the PG-13. Disney and Miramax will survive.

Moore's real test will come on the issue of accuracy. He can say whatever he likes about Bush, as long as his facts are straight. Having seen the film twice, I saw nothing that raised a flag for me, and I haven't heard of any major inaccuracies. When Moore was questioned about his claim that Bush unwisely lingered for six or seven minutes in that Florida classroom after learning of the World Trade Center attacks, Moore was able to reply with a video of Bush doing exactly that.

I agree with Moore that the presidency of George W. Bush has been a disaster for America. In writing that, I expect to get the usual complaints that movie critics should keep their political opinions to themselves. But opinions are my stock in trade, and is it not more honest to declare my politics than to conceal them? I agree with Moore, and because I do, I hope "Fahrenheit 9/11" proves to be as accurate as it seems.

http://www.suntimes.com/output/eb-feature/...tr-moore18.html

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that's a very thoughtful essay, thank you.

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What's up with the GW Bush golf shot? Does Moore think th president should be working 24/7 with no breaks? I can see what he was trying to do by including that... making him look like he doesn't care - but wtf? The president can't golf?

Sure Presidents should get breaks. But if you recall, during Bush's first term in office he was on a month long stay at the ranch when 911 took place. Im sure it wasnt all relaxation, but at the time, I thought it was kind of slackish, before all the hell broke loose.

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Sure Presidents should get breaks. But if you recall, during Bush's first term in office he was on a month long stay at the ranch when 911 took place. Im sure it wasnt all relaxation, but at the time, I thought it was kind of slackish, before all the hell broke loose.

Wasn't he reading to preschoolers at the time the planes hit the towers? I think he stayed there too when he was told about it. Not only is that slacking...why would he stay in a room with children when all hell's breaking loose? The man's a moron in my book.

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Well, here is Christopher Hitchin's scathing review of Moore's film for Slate. Hitchins, one time writer for The Nation, and currently with Vanity Fair, was an early supporter of the war against Iraq. Hitchin's doesnt care much for Moore. I once attended a lecture of his at UCLA in which he railed against Clinton for lying about his marijuana smoking, and then said he saw him smoking it himself; afterwards, outside, I overheard Robert Scheer of the LA Times and Ariana Huffington talking in flabbergasted tones: "Did you hear that? He made that up!" So I now take Hitchin's with a grain of salt, because he like a number of passionate political writers, get so wound up on their beliefs, they begin to accept them all, even when they arent true. That said, alot of what he says is interesting about Moore's film. I will add my own comments below:

Unfairenheit 9/11

The lies of Michael Moore.

By Christopher Hitchens

Posted Monday, June 21, 2004, at 12:26 PM PT

http://slate.msn.com/id/2102723/

Moore: Trying to have it three ways

One of the many problems with the American left, and indeed of the American left, has been its image and self-image as something rather too solemn, mirthless, herbivorous, dull, monochrome, righteous, and boring. How many times, in my old days at The Nation magazine, did I hear wistful and semienvious ruminations? Where was the radical Firing Line show? Who will be our Rush Limbaugh? I used privately to hope that the emphasis, if the comrades ever got around to it, would be on the first of those and not the second. But the meetings themselves were so mind-numbing and lugubrious that I thought the danger of success on either front was infinitely slight.

Nonetheless, it seems that an answer to this long-felt need is finally beginning to emerge. I exempt Al Franken's unintentionally funny Air America network, to which I gave a couple of interviews in its early days. There, one could hear the reassuring noise of collapsing scenery and tripped-over wires and be reminded once again that correct politics and smooth media presentation are not even distant cousins. With Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, however, an entirely new note has been struck. Here we glimpse a possible fusion between the turgid routines of MoveOn.org and the filmic standards, if not exactly the filmic skills, of Sergei Eisenstein or Leni Riefenstahl.

To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of "dissenting" bravery.

In late 2002, almost a year after the al-Qaida assault on American society, I had an onstage debate with Michael Moore at the Telluride Film Festival. In the course of this exchange, he stated his view that Osama Bin Laden should be considered innocent until proven guilty. This was, he said, the American way. The intervention in Afghanistan, he maintained, had been at least to that extent unjustified. Something—I cannot guess what, since we knew as much then as we do now—has since apparently persuaded Moore that Osama Bin Laden is as guilty as hell. Indeed, Osama is suddenly so guilty and so all-powerful that any other discussion of any other topic is a dangerous "distraction" from the fight against him. I believe that I understand the convenience of this late conversion.

Fahrenheit 9/11 makes the following points about Bin Laden and about Afghanistan, and makes them in this order:

1) The Bin Laden family (if notexactly Osama himself) had a close if convoluted business relationship with the Bush family, through the Carlyle Group.

2) Saudi capital in general is a very large element of foreign investment in the United States.

3) The Unocal company in Texas had been willing to discuss a gas pipeline across Afghanistan with the Taliban, as had other vested interests.

4) The Bush administration sent far too few ground troops to Afghanistan and thus allowed far too many Taliban and al-Qaida members to escape.

5) The Afghan government, in supporting the coalition in Iraq, was purely risible in that its non-army was purely American.

6) The American lives lost in Afghanistan have been wasted. (This I divine from the fact that this supposedly "antiwar" film is dedicated ruefully to all those killed there, as well as in Iraq.)

It must be evident to anyone, despite the rapid-fire way in which Moore's direction eases the audience hastily past the contradictions, that these discrepant scatter shots do not cohere at any point. Either the Saudis run U.S. policy (through family ties or overwhelming economic interest), or they do not. As allies and patrons of the Taliban regime, they either opposed Bush's removal of it, or they did not. (They opposed the removal, all right: They wouldn't even let Tony Blair land his own plane on their soil at the time of the operation.) Either we sent too many troops, or were wrong to send any at all—the latter was Moore's view as late as 2002—or we sent too few. If we were going to make sure no Taliban or al-Qaida forces survived or escaped, we would have had to be more ruthless than I suspect that Mr. Moore is really recommending. And these are simply observations on what is "in" the film. If we turn to the facts that are deliberately left out, we discover that there is an emerging Afghan army, that the country is now a joint NATO responsibility and thus under the protection of the broadest military alliance in history, that it has a new constitution and is preparing against hellish odds to hold a general election, and that at least a million and a half of its former refugees have opted to return. I don't think a pipeline is being constructed yet, not that Afghanistan couldn't do with a pipeline. But a highway from Kabul to Kandahar—an insurance against warlordism and a condition of nation-building—is nearing completion with infinite labor and risk. We also discover that the parties of the Afghan secular left—like the parties of the Iraqi secular left—are strongly in favor of the regime change. But this is not the sort of irony in which Moore chooses to deal.

He prefers leaden sarcasm to irony and, indeed, may not appreciate the distinction. In a long and paranoid (and tedious) section at the opening of the film, he makes heavy innuendoes about the flights that took members of the Bin Laden family out of the country after Sept. 11. I banged on about this myself at the time and wrote a Nation column drawing attention to the groveling Larry King interview with the insufferable Prince Bandar, which Moore excerpts. However, recent developments have not been kind to our Mike. In the interval between Moore's triumph at Cannes and the release of the film in the United States, the 9/11 commission has found nothing to complain of in the timing or arrangement of the flights. And Richard Clarke, Bush's former chief of counterterrorism, has come forward to say that he, and he alone, took the responsibility for authorizing those Saudi departures. This might not matter so much to the ethos of Fahrenheit 9/11, except that—as you might expect—Clarke is presented throughout as the brow-furrowed ethical hero of the entire post-9/11 moment. And it does not seem very likely that, in his open admission about the Bin Laden family evacuation, Clarke is taking a fall, or a spear in the chest, for the Bush administration. So, that's another bust for this windy and bloated cinematic "key to all mythologies."

A film that bases itself on a big lie and a big misrepresentation can only sustain itself by a dizzying succession of smaller falsehoods, beefed up by wilder and (if possible) yet more-contradictory claims. President Bush is accused of taking too many lazy vacations. (What is that about, by the way? Isn't he supposed to be an unceasing planner for future aggressive wars?) But the shot of him "relaxing at Camp David" shows him side by side with Tony Blair. I say "shows," even though this photograph is on-screen so briefly that if you sneeze or blink, you won't recognize the other figure. A meeting with the prime minister of the United Kingdom, or at least with this prime minister, is not a goof-off.

The president is also captured in a well-worn TV news clip, on a golf course, making a boilerplate response to a question on terrorism and then asking the reporters to watch his drive. Well, that's what you get if you catch the president on a golf course. If Eisenhower had done this, as he often did, it would have been presented as calm statesmanship. If Clinton had done it, as he often did, it would have shown his charm. More interesting is the moment where Bush is shown frozen on his chair at the infant school in Florida, looking stunned and useless for seven whole minutes after the news of the second plane on 9/11. Many are those who say that he should have leaped from his stool, adopted a Russell Crowe stance, and gone to work. I could even wish that myself. But if he had done any such thing then (as he did with his "Let's roll" and "dead or alive" remarks a month later), half the Michael Moore community would now be calling him a man who went to war on a hectic, crazed impulse. The other half would be saying what they already say—that he knew the attack was coming, was using it to cement himself in power, and couldn't wait to get on with his coup. This is the line taken by Gore Vidal and by a scandalous recent book that also revives the charge of FDR's collusion over Pearl Harbor. At least Moore's film should put the shameful purveyors of that last theory back in their paranoid box.

But it won't because it encourages their half-baked fantasies in so many other ways. We are introduced to Iraq, "a sovereign nation." (In fact, Iraq's "sovereignty" was heavily qualified by international sanctions, however questionable, which reflected its noncompliance with important U.N. resolutions.) In this peaceable kingdom, according to Moore's flabbergasting choice of film shots, children are flying little kites, shoppers are smiling in the sunshine, and the gentle rhythms of life are undisturbed. Then—wham! From the night sky come the terror weapons of American imperialism. Watching the clips Moore uses, and recalling them well, I can recognize various Saddam palaces and military and police centers getting the treatment. But these sites are not identified as such. In fact, I don't think Al Jazeera would, on a bad day, have transmitted anything so utterly propagandistic. You would also be led to think that the term "civilian casualty" had not even been in the Iraqi vocabulary until March 2003. I remember asking Moore at Telluride if he was or was not a pacifist. He would not give a straight answer then, and he doesn't now, either. I'll just say that the "insurgent" side is presented in this film as justifiably outraged, whereas the 30-year record of Baathist war crimes and repression and aggression is not mentioned once. (Actually, that's not quite right. It is briefly mentioned but only, and smarmily, because of the bad period when Washington preferred Saddam to the likewise unmentioned Ayatollah Khomeini.)

That this—his pro-American moment—was the worst Moore could possibly say of Saddam's depravity is further suggested by some astonishing falsifications. Moore asserts that Iraq under Saddam had never attacked or killed or even threatened (his words) any American. I never quite know whether Moore is as ignorant as he looks, or even if that would be humanly possible. Baghdad was for years the official, undisguised home address of Abu Nidal, then the most-wanted gangster in the world, who had been sentenced to death even by the PLO and had blown up airports in Munich and Rome. Baghdad was the safe house for the man whose "operation" murdered Leon Klinghoffer. Saddam boasted publicly of his financial sponsorship of suicide bombers in Israel. (Quite a few Americans of all denominations walk the streets of Jerusalem.) In 1991, a large number of Western hostages were taken by the hideous Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and held in terrible conditions for a long time. After that same invasion was repelled—Saddam having killed quite a few Americans and Egyptians and Syrians and Brits in the meantime and having threatened to kill many more—the Iraqi secret police were caught trying to murder former President Bush during his visit to Kuwait. Never mind whether his son should take that personally. (Though why should he not?) Should you and I not resent any foreign dictatorship that attempts to kill one of our retired chief executives? (President Clinton certainly took it that way: He ordered the destruction by cruise missiles of the Baathist "security" headquarters.) Iraqi forces fired, every day, for 10 years, on the aircraft that patrolled the no-fly zones and staved off further genocide in the north and south of the country. In 1993, a certain Mr. Yasin helped mix the chemicals for the bomb at the World Trade Center and then skipped to Iraq, where he remained a guest of the state until the overthrow of Saddam. In 2001, Saddam's regime was the only one in the region that openly celebrated the attacks on New York and Washington and described them as just the beginning of a larger revenge. Its official media regularly spewed out a stream of anti-Semitic incitement. I think one might describe that as "threatening," even if one was narrow enough to think that anti-Semitism only menaces Jews. And it was after, and not before, the 9/11 attacks that Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi moved from Afghanistan to Baghdad and began to plan his now very open and lethal design for a holy and ethnic civil war. On Dec. 1, 2003, the New York Timesreported—and the David Kay report had established—that Saddam had been secretly negotiating with the "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il in a series of secret meetings in Syria, as late as the spring of 2003, to buy a North Korean missile system, and missile-production system, right off the shelf. (This attempt was not uncovered until after the fall of Baghdad, the coalition's presence having meanwhile put an end to the negotiations.)

Thus, in spite of the film's loaded bias against the work of the mind, you can grasp even while watching it that Michael Moore has just said, in so many words, the one thing that no reflective or informed person can possibly believe: that Saddam Hussein was no problem. No problem at all. Now look again at the facts I have cited above. If these things had been allowed to happen under any other administration, you can be sure that Moore and others would now glibly be accusing the president of ignoring, or of having ignored, some fairly unmistakable "warnings."

The same "let's have it both ways" opportunism infects his treatment of another very serious subject, namely domestic counterterrorist policy. From being accused of overlooking too many warnings—not exactly an original point—the administration is now lavishly taunted for issuing too many. (Would there not have been "fear" if the harbingers of 9/11 had been taken seriously?) We are shown some American civilians who have had absurd encounters with idiotic "security" staff. (Have you ever met anyone who can't tell such a story?) Then we are immediately shown underfunded police departments that don't have the means or the manpower to do any stop-and-search: a power suddenly demanded by Moore on their behalf that we know by definition would at least lead to some ridiculous interrogations. Finally, Moore complains that there isn't enoughintrusion and confiscation at airports and says that it is appalling that every air traveler is not forcibly relieved of all matches and lighters. (Cue mood music for sinister influence of Big Tobacco.) So—he wants even more pocket-rummaging by airport officials? Uh, no, not exactly. But by this stage, who's counting? Moore is having it three ways and asserting everything and nothing. Again—simply not serious.

Circling back to where we began, why did Moore's evil Saudis not join "the Coalition of the Willing"? Why instead did they force the United States to switch its regional military headquarters to Qatar? If the Bush family and the al-Saud dynasty live in each other's pockets, as is alleged in a sort of vulgar sub-Brechtian scene with Arab headdresses replacing top hats, then how come the most reactionary regime in the region has been powerless to stop Bush from demolishing its clone in Kabul and its buffer regime in Baghdad? The Saudis hate, as they did in 1991, the idea that Iraq's recuperated oil industry might challenge their near-monopoly. They fear the liberation of the Shiite Muslims they so despise. To make these elementary points is to collapse the whole pathetic edifice of the film's "theory." Perhaps Moore prefers the pro-Saudi Kissinger/Scowcroft plan for the Middle East, where stability trumps every other consideration and where one dare not upset the local house of cards, or killing-field of Kurds? This would be a strange position for a purported radical. Then again, perhaps he does not take this conservative line because his real pitch is not to any audience member with a serious interest in foreign policy. It is to the provincial isolationist.

I have already said that Moore's film has the staunch courage to mock Bush for his verbal infelicity. Yet it's much, much braver than that. From Fahrenheit 9/11 you can glean even more astounding and hidden disclosures, such as the capitalist nature of American society, the existence of Eisenhower's "military-industrial complex," and the use of "spin" in the presentation of our politicians. It's high time someone had the nerve to point this out. There's more. Poor people often volunteer to join the army, and some of them are duskier than others. Betcha didn't know that. Back in Flint, Mich., Moore feels on safe ground. There are no martyred rabbits this time. Instead, it's the poor and black who shoulder the packs and rifles and march away. I won't dwell on the fact that black Americans have fought for almost a century and a half, from insisting on their right to join the U.S. Army and fight in the Civil War to the right to have a desegregated Army that set the pace for post-1945 civil rights. I'll merely ask this: In the film, Moore says loudly and repeatedly that not enough troops were sent to garrison Afghanistan and Iraq. (This is now a favorite cleverness of those who were, in the first place, against sending any soldiers at all.) Well, where does he think those needful heroes and heroines would have come from? Does he favor a draft—the most statist and oppressive solution? Does he think that only hapless and gullible proles sign up for the Marines? Does he think—as he seems to suggest—that parents can "send" their children, as he stupidly asks elected members of Congress to do? Would he have abandoned Gettysburg because the Union allowed civilians to pay proxies to serve in their place? Would he have supported the antidraft (and very antiblack) riots against Lincoln in New York? After a point, one realizes that it's a waste of time asking him questions of this sort. It would be too much like taking him seriously. He'll just try anything once and see if it floats or flies or gets a cheer.

Indeed, Moore's affected and ostentatious concern for black America is one of the most suspect ingredients of his pitch package. In a recent interview, he yelled that if the hijacked civilians of 9/11 had been black, they would have fought back, unlike the stupid and presumably cowardly white men and women (and children). Never mind for now how many black passengers were on those planes—we happen to know what Moore does not care to mention: that Todd Beamer and a few of his co-passengers, shouting "Let's roll," rammed the hijackers with a trolley, fought them tooth and nail, and helped bring down a United Airlines plane, in Pennsylvania, that was speeding toward either the White House or the Capitol. There are no words for real, impromptu bravery like that, which helped save our republic from worse than actually befell. The Pennsylvania drama also reminds one of the self-evident fact that this war is not fought only "overseas" or in uniform, but is being brought to our cities. Yet Moore is a silly and shady man who does not recognize courage of any sort even when he sees it because he cannot summon it in himself. To him, easy applause, in front of credulous audiences, is everything.

Moore has announced that he won't even appear on TV shows where he might face hostile questioning. I notice from the New York Times of June 20 that he has pompously established a rapid response team, and a fact-checking staff, and some tough lawyers, to bulwark himself against attack. He'll sue, Moore says, if anyone insults him or his pet. Some right-wing hack groups, I gather, are planning to bring pressure on their local movie theaters to drop the film. How dumb or thuggish do you have to be in order to counter one form of stupidity and cowardice with another? By all means go and see this terrible film, and take your friends, and if the fools in the audience strike up one cry, in favor of surrender or defeat, feel free to join in the conversation.

However, I think we can agree that the film is so flat-out phony that "fact-checking" is beside the point. And as for the scary lawyers—get a life, or maybe see me in court. But I offer this, to Moore and to his rapid response rabble. Any time, Michael my boy. Let's redo Telluride. Any show. Any place. Any platform. Let's see what you're made of.

Some people soothingly say that one should relax about all this. It's only a movie. No biggie. It's no worse than the tomfoolery of Oliver Stone. It's kick-ass entertainment. It might even help get out "the youth vote." Yeah, well, I have myself written and presented about a dozen low-budget made-for-TV documentaries, on subjects as various as Mother Teresa and Bill Clinton and the Cyprus crisis, and I also helped produce a slightly more polished one on Henry Kissinger that was shown in movie theaters. So I know, thanks, before you tell me, that a documentary must have a "POV" or point of view and that it must also impose a narrative line. But if you leave out absolutely everything that might give your "narrative" a problem and throw in any old rubbish that might support it, and you don't even care that one bit of that rubbish flatly contradicts the next bit, and you give no chance to those who might differ, then you have betrayed your craft. If you flatter and fawn upon your potential audience, I might add, you are patronizing them and insulting them. By the same token, if I write an article and I quote somebody and for space reasons put in an ellipsis like this (…), I swear on my children that I am not leaving out anything that, if quoted in full, would alter the original meaning or its significance. Those who violate this pact with readers or viewers are to be despised. At no point does Michael Moore make the smallest effort to be objective. At no moment does he pass up the chance of a cheap sneer or a jeer. He pitilessly focuses his camera, for minutes after he should have turned it off, on a distraught and bereaved mother whose grief we have already shared. (But then, this is the guy who thought it so clever and amusing to catch Charlton Heston, in Bowling for Columbine, at the onset of his senile dementia.) Such courage.

Perhaps vaguely aware that his movie so completely lacks gravitas, Moore concludes with a sonorous reading of some words from George Orwell. The words are taken from 1984 and consist of a third-person analysis of a hypothetical, endless, and contrived war between three superpowers. The clear intention, as clumsily excerpted like this (...) is to suggest that there is no moral distinction between the United States, the Taliban, and the Baath Party and that the war against jihad is about nothing. If Moore had studied a bit more, or at all, he could have read Orwell really saying, and in his own voice, the following:

The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to taking life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists, whose real though unacknowledged motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writing of the younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States …

And that's just from Orwell's Notes on Nationalism in May 1945. A short word of advice: In general, it's highly unwise to quote Orwell if you are already way out of your depth on the question of moral equivalence. It's also incautious to remind people of Orwell if you are engaged in a sophomoric celluloid rewriting of recent history.

If Michael Moore had had his way, Slobodan Milosevic would still be the big man in a starved and tyrannical Serbia. Bosnia and Kosovo would have been cleansed and annexed. If Michael Moore had been listened to, Afghanistan would still be under Taliban rule, and Kuwait would have remained part of Iraq. And Iraq itself would still be the personal property of a psychopathic crime family, bargaining covertly with the slave state of North Korea for WMD. You might hope that a retrospective awareness of this kind would induce a little modesty. To the contrary, it is employed to pump air into one of the great sagging blimps of our sorry, mediocre, celeb-rotten culture. Rock the vote, indeed.

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Hitchin's seems to paint a picture of pacifists (without necessarily including Moore) and even includes an Orwellian quote to support his contention that they are 1) effete intellectuals who are anti-American/UK, 2)members of small religious sects, or 3) humanitarians who object to war and can't compute beyond that; and that the anti-American/UK contingent are really for totalitarianism. Further he seems to suggest that the pacifists were against the removal of Saddam Hussein. Hey, Christopher - Up yours! The bulk of the pacifists you criticize feel that the Iraqui war has heightened terrorism, not lessened it... We are against seeing our mean and women coming home in body bags. We believe the US acted prematurely in invading Iraq without building a real international consensus like we in did '92. We dont think the removal of Saddam Hussein required 28 billion dollars and an invasion and all those lost lives. (But we werent against it--in fact, we never understood why he was supported way back when) And we feel that the real focus on terrorism has been dilluted by this excursion.

Hitchen's flippantly makes fun of Moore's criticisms of the US's growing "military-industrial complex," media politicians, the notion that our armed forces volunteers are more than likely to come from low economic backgrounds, and the fact that the military forces were stretched on two fronts between Iraq and Afganistan--as if none of the above have any real merit--they do. He also criticizes Moore's assertion that Bush was lazy during his first year in office--well, in my opinion he spent about 1/3 of it on his ranch, not keeping his eye on the ball for terrorism, despite warnings from the outgoing administration.

Hitchen's does point out that it was Richard Clarke who approved the skylift of the Bin Laden family on 9/11 from the US. Perhaps if the Bush White House wasn't so secret, then the public could be more understanding about what they were doing and why. It's this secrecy that kept much of the public in the dark about the Taliban and their connection to Bin Laden--and why there wasnt initial support from the anti-war quarters (including Michael Moore, whom he criticizes for such a stance).

Bottom line--Hitchins is as full of it as Moore, but I'd rather see Moore's film than read a Hitchin's book these days--Hitchin's gotta knock that chip off his shoulder, and he is as biased for the war as Moore was against it.

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LOS ANGELES - Michael Moore (news) and his distributors lost their appeal Tuesday to lower the R rating for "Fahrenheit 9/11," his scathing assault on President Bush (news - web sites)'s actions before and after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Lions Gate Films and IFC Films, the movie's distributors, said an appeals board for the Motion Picture Association of America rejected their request to reduce the rating to PG-13.

The R rating prohibits those 17 and younger from seeing "Fahrenheit 9/11" without an adult.

The movie, which won the top honor at last month's Cannes Film Festival (news - web sites), was rated R for "violent and disturbing images and for language." The movie's images include an Iraqi man tossing a dead baby into a truckload of bodies, Iraqis burned by napalm and a public beheading in Saudi Arabia.

ttp://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=493&u=/ap/20040622/ap_en_mo/film_fahrenheit_9_11_rating_1&printer=1

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Fahrenheit 9/11: on P2P Everywhere

By Jon Newton 6/22/04

OT but not really, right now, when you go to your favourite p2p network for a look around, what do you see?

The Chronicles of Riddick? Sure. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban? But of course. The Stepford Wives and The Day After Tomorrow? Yes. And et cetera.

The 256MB Rio Cali is available on Amazon

But what's there that you wouldn't normally expect to see? Full-length (including screeners) and shrunk down versions of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, or 911 as it is on the nets.

The movie opens in the US 'officially' on Friday. We say 'officially' because it opened in the US and the rest of the world online quite a while back and no doubt, some of the reviews that are out there already were based on p2p downloads rather than cinematic experiences.

Why all the fuss?

Well, it's a documentary and documentaries don't usually show up in any strength. Fahrenheit 9/11 has attracted so much attention because it shines a blinding, high-energy light directly on US president George W. Bush - just when he doesn't need it.

The Super Size Me McDonald's documentary was another unexpected box-office hit, as was Canada's The Corporation which went from zip to fame in a matter of days. And there are lot more documentary movies like these which are also doing well

They're based on fact, not fiction, and they show things as they really are rather than as the Korporate Kommunity wants you to think they are.

The public has always wanted to know what's really going on - the truth - but until now, the various 'establishments' around the world have been able to use the media for their own purposes. But not any more, which isn't to say the mainstream print and electronic outlets have suddenly decided fact is better than fiction.

Significant numbers of the major media outlets are owned by, or have direct and indirect links to, the entertainment industry which spends billions on advertising. They do not, however, own the Net, as much as they'd like to and as strenuous as their efforts are in that direction.

Nor do their adverting dollars have any effect online where every person with a computer and who can log on is a publisher, with all that implies.

But what's really interesting (and frightening for corporate interests of all kinds) is what's in the wings.

The Net is in the process of turning the entertainment industry onto to its, well, gluteous maximus. That's because for the first time in history, 'consumers' can, and do, completely bypass the corporate bullshit to make up their own minds about whether or not they want a product, service, you name it.

Mp3 - compressed music files - started the rot (from Big Music's point of view ; ). All of a sudden, people didn't have to fork out ridiculous amounts of money for cookie-cutter 'product' from the Big Five record labels. They could quickly find out whether or not tunes were good or bad from fellow music lovers, not from hacks paid by the music industry to pump releases up. On top of that, there are millions of tunes by independent artists from cultures around the world available on p2p networks for absolutely nothing.

Coming up right behind mp3s are highly compressed movies. And hand-held movie players - devices which'll store films on hard-drives or on cards. So it won't be long before people will be sharing music movies via WiFi handsets, with all that implies for the Korporate Kommunity.

You'll see more and more issues highlighted in documentaries made by amateurs and pros. And their makers won't have to worry about whether or not Walt Disney, and the like, will screen or promote them and subject matter will be constrained only by film-makers' imaginations.

p2pnet and Down Hill Battle are currently running a movie contest because we know that in the 21st century, movies are the way messages get across. Thanks to the entertainment industry, it's a visual world and if a picture is worth a thousand words, what's a movie worth - especially if it's put together by Jane and John Doe rather than by Warner Bros, or one of the other major studios?

In the same way that musician, anywhere, regardless of age or sex, can now go online and reach an international audience, any amateur (or pro, come to that) film-maker can do the same.

Sooner or later the entertainment industry will have to come to terms with p2p because the times, they are a changin'. And fast.

http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/...renheit911.html

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The public has always wanted to know what's really going on - the truth - but until now, the various 'establishments' around the world have been able to use the media for their own purposes.

Y'know, no matter how slanted or factually incorrect F9/11 might be, it's about time that the public got to see ANYthing in the media that wasn't stamped w/the whitehouse's seal of approval. my mother used to say 'they can dish it out but they sure can't take it' and i agree, all these naysayers rising up to say the film is crap, let them say whatever they want as long as there's another viewpoint to be considered so the public can make up its own minds.

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Y'know, no matter how slanted or factually incorrect F9/11 might be, it's about time that the public got to see ANYthing in the media that wasn't stamped w/the whitehouse's seal of approval.

I would like to know what media your watching.. I cant turn on the TV, or pick up a newspaper without hearing or seeing someone critizing Bush for something or Bush Bashing.

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I agree Nulls. The media is so left winged........

Gimme a break. The media didnt sound so leftwing when they went after Clinton for two years nonstop. It's a bullshit argument, and the label is tossed out there, without specific reasons or particulars...

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Gimme a break. The media didnt sound so leftwing when they went after Clinton for two years nonstop. It's a bullshit argument, and the label is tossed out there, without specific reasons or particulars...

I still agree Nulls. The media is so left winged.............. :bigsmile:

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