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APCP
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Posted: Thu 2004-07-01 18:22
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| Politics: Anarcho-capitalist |
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What is wrong with guns? More guns, less crime, that's the truth.
The U.S. of A. is number one in crime. < link
But...
The UK has more crime per capita than the U.S. of A. < link
The saying "More guns, less crime." is true.
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Solitary Poet
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Post #3131
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Posted: Thu 2004-07-01 18:31
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| Politics: Libertarian-Capitalist |
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Come on! If you outlaw guns only violent crooks will have guns. On the other hand, if you go into a bank or a store to rob it and you know that every other person around you has a gun, you just might think twice. I'm already peaved over the fact that it's against the law to cary a sword in publick. I love swords and wont the right to have one with me every were I go.   
Scratch that, if you outlaw guns only Outlaws and Patriots will have guns. As you all know you can't spell Patriot without riot and riots are fun!    
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Why I don’t believe in “world peace”, by S. Poet
World peace would inevitably lead to lethargy of the human race and it’s eventual extinction. It’s adversity that fuels change; chaos is what moves things forward. It is not religion that fuels war, but opinion and individuality that drive people into conflict.
As long as humans are free to think and disagree there will be conflict and war. The individuality and uniqueness of free thought, that form the mote of the soul, are the causes of war. To end war you must destroy the human soul, you must cease to be human.
If there is nothing left to fight for, there is nothing left to live for. World peace is suicide.
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oBrien
Junior Spy
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Posted: Fri 2004-07-02 01:25
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| Politics: Social Democrat |
Country: American Empire |
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| Be More Dilligent in Your Research Next Time! |
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guess we got on the subject of guns and gun control, eh? guess that sort of thing is inevitable in a thread involving Michael Moore.
| Capitalist Pride wrote: |
What is wrong with guns? More guns, less crime, that's the truth.
The U.S. of A. is number one in crime. < link
But...
The UK has more crime per capita than the U.S. of A. < link
The saying "More guns, less crime." is true. |
i have some issues with this gross oversimplification of the issue. if you'd have bothered to look into the details of the study, you would find the following statistics for the United States:
- Murder: 0.04 per 1000 (notice this is higher than any other fully industrialized nation -- notice none of the European countries are even in the list).
- Murders with Firearms: 0.02 per 1000 (higher than any other fully industrialized nation!).
- Rapes: 0.30 per 1000 (only Canada and Australia are higher among fully industrialized nations).
- Manslaughters: we're not even on the list (Portugal, Norway, and Finland are).
- Assaults: 7.70 per 1000 people (we're way at the top of the list here!).
with that more accurate analysis of the lists of the various crimes, those that obviously or are more likely to pertain to the issue of gun control, the results look rather grim for the United States. it pays to read your material with a little more dilligence than you would a comic book. however, there is also a caveat offered on that very same page you cited, it's a footnote down at the bottom:
| Nationmaster.com wrote: |
| Definition: Note: Crime statistics are often better indicators of prevalence of law enforcement and willingness to report crime, than actual prevalance. Per capita figures expressed per 1000 population. |
so, it doesn't necessarily prove either side of the issue, that having or banning guns would, by themselves, encourage or dissuade violent crimes. both sides have their merits, and crime is more the result of social conditions than the existence of weapons: people can kill each other easily with crowbars, a two-by-four, a large rock, or even their bare hands. i would much prefer for us to keep our guns, as the founders of the country intended for us to be able to rebel against the government if it were to get out of line and all legal attempts to save it proved fruitless. but, i also don't want irresponsible fools or dangerous sociopaths wandering around with highly efficient killing machines, either.
what i did prove was that you misrepresented the data.
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A Priori
Outer Party
Post #3153
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Posted: Fri 2004-07-02 01:33
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| Politics: Democratic-Socialist |
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| Capitalist Pride wrote: |
| What is wrong with guns? More guns, less crime, that's the truth. |
I think BB's Polimatch App sums up my postition on guns best:
| Quote: |
| Guns are OK, but there should be waiting periods and background checks. |
I have never read anything on gun control that has yet led me to swing one way or t'other. There appears to be mountains of evidence on each side. What should I think? I'm not a very dogmatic guy. Maybe it's because I've read too much on the subject.
I hate sitting on the fence, but there appears to be nowhere else to sit. |
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oBrien
Junior Spy
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Posted: Fri 2004-07-02 03:54
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| Politics: Social Democrat |
Country: American Empire |
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| I Owe the Forum an Apology |
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sorry about the confrontational and personally insulting tone to my last post, Capitalist Pride, and everyone else: i'm down to only one cigarette a day, so i tend to start feeling extremely antagonistic by the late afternoon. i'll make a concerted effort to keep it civilized: many a thread have been ruined by flame-fests.
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The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. |
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oBrien
Junior Spy
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Posted: Sat 2004-07-03 19:39
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| Politics: Social Democrat |
Country: American Empire |
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| Let's get back on topic, please |
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to bring us back on topic here, here is a synopsized report issued by the Institute for Policy Studies on the costs of the war in Iraq, released June 24, 2004:
| From Paying the Price: The Mounting Costs of the Iraq War |
- Total number of coalition military deaths between the start of war and June 16, 2004: 952 (836 U.S.)
- Of those 952, the number killed after President George W. Bush declared “an end to major combat operations” on May 1, 2003: 693
- Number of U.S. troops wounded in combat since the war began: 5,134 (Number ill or injured in “non-combat” incidents estimated to be over 11,000)
- Number of U.S. troops wounded in combat since President George W. Bush declared “an end to major combat operations” on May 1, 2003: 4,593
- Number of civilian contractors, missionaries, and civilian workers killed: 50-90
- Number of international media workers killed: 30
- Iraqi civilians killed: 9,436 to 11,317
- Iraqi civilians injured: 40,000 (est.)
- Iraqi soldiers and insurgents killed prior to May 1, 2003: 4,895 to 6,370
- The bill so far: $126.1 billion
- Additional amount to cover operations through 2004: $25 billion
- What $151 billion could have paid for in the U.S.:
- Housing vouchers: 23 million
- Health care for uninsured Americans: 27 mil.
- Salaries for elementary school teachers: 3 mil.
- New fire engines: 678,200
- Head Start slots: 20 million
- Estimated long-term cost of war to every U.S. household: $3,415
- Amount contractor Halliburton is alleged to have charged for meals never served to troops and for cost overruns on fuel deliveries: $221 million
- Kickbacks received by Halliburton employees from subcontractors: $6 million
- Percentage of Americans who now feel that “the situation in Iraq was not worth going to war over.”: 54
- Percentage of Iraqis who said they would feel safer if U.S. and other foreign troops left the country immediately: 55
- Percentage of U.S. soldiers in Iraq reporting low morale: 52
- Percentage of soldiers who said they would not re-enlist: 50
- Percentage of wounded unable to return to duty: 64
- Number of soldiers whose tours of duty have been extended by the Army: 20,000
- Percentage of reserve troops who earn lower salaries while on deployment: 30-40
- Fraction of National Guard troops among U.S. force now in Iraq: 1/3
- Percentage of U.S. police departments missing officers due to Iraq deployments: 44
- Effect on al Qaeda of the Iraq war, according to International Institute for Strategic Studies: “Accelerated recruitment”
- Estimated number of al Qaeda terrorists as of May 2004: 18,000 with 1,000 active in Iraq
- Percentage of Iraqis expressing “no confidence” in U.S. civilian authorities or coalition forces: 80
- Iraq’s oil production in 2002: 2.04 mil. barrels/day
- Iraq’s oil production in 2003: 1.33 mil. barrels/day
- Price of a gallon of gasoline in the U.S. in May 2004: more than $2
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Lt. Vanish
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Posted: Sun 2004-07-04 02:57
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| Politics: Libertarian-Socialist |
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Hey, I label myself as a "liberal" or a "Democratic-Socialist" but this is exactly why I support everyone's right to bear arms and detest any "gun-control" efforts just as much as I detest the "usual" supporters which usually have no problem stampeding over the rest of my God-given liberties and freedoms.
Now if we can get someone like me who fervently believes in all the amendments in the Bill of Rights, not just the First or Second. We need someone who is in the ACLU and the NRA...the only people that come to mind are Ron Paul of Texas and James Trafficant of Ohio. Of course, Trafficant was destroyed because he dared to stand up to the establishment.
Anyone who wishes to arm themselves would be free to do so. Anyone who wished to have consensual sex with an adult should be free to do so. Anyone who wishes to protest or belong to an advocacy group should be free to do so without government intrusion. Just as it's wrong to catalogue and keep a database of guns, it's also wrong to do so with human beings. Power and authority is never a means, it is an end. The natural conclusion of authoritarian police-state powers such as those granted (or proposed) akin to the Patriot Act would come down to gun registration. You cannot believe in the Second and not fight for the First with your life, nor the opposite. The First protects the Second, and vice-versa. If you let the government impose on any right any bit, it will grow until there are no more rights.
| George Orwell wrote: |
| That rifle on the wall of the labourer's cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there! |
| Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote: |
| I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery. |
| Lysander Spooner in Trial by Jury wrote: |
| All restraints upon man's natural liberty, not necessary for the simple maintenance of justice, are of the nature of slavery, and differ from each other only in degree. |
| William Pitt wrote: |
| Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves. |
I support defending all of the Bill of Rights for all of the people!
FYI - Canada has less violence because of its culture, social and educational systems. It also has much fewer people. Conversely, when Australia outlawed guns, their crime rates in urban areas rose exponentially. I don't have details so don't ask me. Everyone else seems to be better versed in this subject. My cause is with defending the First Amendment, because there seem to be far fewer supporters than for the Second.
(And thanks to BB for the quotes!) |
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Lt. Vanish
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Posted: Sun 2004-07-04 03:05
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| Politics: Libertarian-Socialist |
Country: Fascist States of America |
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Again, I thought this post was about Fahrenheit 911, not Bowling for Columbine. F911 denounces Bush and his neocon pimps, (whom the great majority of us detest anyway), so what gives? I'll use any ammunition against them that I can get.
Moore isn't the first to denounce them and he won't be the last. Iacoka [don't know or care how to spell his name], Reagan Jr., and a few Navy Admirals (whose names I can't recall because I don't consider them as important as the first two), have recently denounced Bush and his tyrannical dynasty. We do this ourselves (most of us) every day in this forum.
Just add Moore to the ever-growing list of Thought-Criminals (along with our own names), and be done with it!
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James
Inner Party Leader
Post #3494
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Posted: Mon 2004-07-12 04:25
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| Politics: Libertarian-Capitalist |
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Let's look at the facts here:
Whether you agree with Moore or not, his movies have little in the way of objective fact in them, and are pretty much pure propaganda. Placing them under the banner of entertainment, and not documentary.
How are the news anchors any better? They are better looking... And they cost less... That's pretty much it.
Either I can watch propaganda from some good looking people for free, or I can pay $9 to watch a fat, ugly man give me just about the same propaganda. Or the secret third option: watch something that doesn't pretend to be factual, and exists to entertain honestly.
Or I could read, but I'm illiterate.
The bottom line: Moore is propaganda, and he isn't even very good propaganda, waste your time on something better, like I plan to.
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Big Brother
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Posted: Mon 2004-07-12 04:54
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| Politics: Libertarian-Syndicalist |
Country: American Empire |
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| Where's the Beef? |
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What exactly does M&M get wrong in F911? I haven't seen it yet, and I haven't really heard anybody talk about any specific "lie" in his film.
The only thing I've heard is that in the sequence where he tries to get congressman to sign up their kids for military service in Iraq, one of the congressmen replied that his Nephew was in the service --- but M&M didn't include that in his film.
I don't know if that counts as a "Lie". In general, the point he was trying to prove was correct --- The wealthy seem fairly adept at staying out of the service. This isn't universal, but there is a strong grain of truth to the fact that politicians and other people in power can pull string to keep their kids "safe" (Ahem - GW - Ahem)
And in general, M&M was correct -- none of the congressman he interviewed had kids in the military (A nephew may be close – but that’s not what M&M was asking.)
"Politicians hide themselves away. They only started the war. Why should they go out into a fight?... They leave that role to the poor." - Black Sabbath, "War Pigs"
So yes, it is a slightly slanted view --- Propaganda --- but is it really all a "bunch of lies"? I'm going to have a little bit of free time from work this week, so I plan on finding out for myself soon. I'm curious to see exactly what he is "lying" about in F911. |
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APCP
Outer Party
Post #3531
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Posted: Mon 2004-07-12 21:41
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| Politics: Anarcho-capitalist |
Country: Confederate States of America (C.S.A.) |
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| Bill wrote: |
| BB wrote: |
| But what he omitted was statistical information that shows that many other nations with guns don't have the same problems as America |
He did contrast the position in the US with that of Canada, a country with similar numbers of guns but, with less gun related violence and pointed out the difference in attitude between the two neighbours towards gun ownership. |
Keep in mind though...
Just because Canada has less gun murders, that does not mean that they have less murders overall. On another forum I talked to a liberal Canadian, and quite shockingly, he agreed with me for perhaps the first time.
"Edit: You're right [name confidential], when Moore asked why Canada had so few gun murders, the reason is not because of guns or anything like that. In Edmonton, 90% of the murders are with knives, bats, fists or a car."
Statistics are always misleading unless you have a sit and take a good long thought about them.
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Lt. Vanish
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Post #3533
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Posted: Mon 2004-07-12 21:52
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| Politics: Libertarian-Socialist |
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For the most part, I found it truthful. He did say that only one Congressman had a son in the military, and that man voted against the war with Iraq. This is not excluded from the movie because he never asked him. In fact, Moore said "only one" man in Congress had any kids in the service.
One thing he gets wrong is that Bush took those Saudis out of the country on the 13th. Richard Clarke did that, and said he has no regrets. He did it because he has had to evacuate people from foreign countries before since he knows what danger they would have been in. He also told the FBI to question them or take statements if they wished, which they didn't. The FBI signed-off on all of them. This guy has 49 siblings, they are all probably innocent. Even if they weren't, Bin Laden and Al-Quaeda are no longer a threat. There are so many splinter groups now after the Abu Garhib and other atrocities in Iraq that new terrorist groups have sprung up and there are now twice the number of terrorist attacks in only three years.
Anyone ever see the movie The Battle of Algiers? Well, this is what Richard Clarke spoke of when he talked about the irrelevance of all those people. He says there are so many things that the Bush Administration has screwed up that you shouldn't have to make up stories.
Also, he uses some footage from the Gulf War, which is fine, because it shows how many people even then hated the other Bush.
What the movie does say that is true are the links of the Saudis to the Carlyle Group, how all these Fortune 500 companies supported this war because of all the money they'd make from it, and how Prince Bandar was invited to the White House on the 12th for a State dinner. Ol' George H. W. Bush has since visited Saudi Arabia to visit the royal family, and it is true that the Saudi's give assloads of cash to Bush and his campaign, and he invited the Taliban over to thank them for their support before the fact.
The best part is at the end when he quotes a very famous passage from George Orwell, which I won't spoil for you. When you hear it though, it will hit you like a rubber club and you will immediately recognise it.
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"If a man hasn't found something he is willing to die for, he isn't fit to live."
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APCP
Outer Party
Post #3537
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Posted: Mon 2004-07-12 22:45
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| Politics: Anarcho-capitalist |
Country: Confederate States of America (C.S.A.) |
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Yes, supposedly only one member of congress had a son in Iraq, but that doesn't mean that another doesn't have a daughter, step-daughter, step-brother, nephew, cousin, friend, etc. in Iraq.
| Quote: |
| Also, he uses some footage from the Gulf War, which is fine, because it shows how many people even then hated the other Bush. |
No, it's not. He uses it at times in which he DOESN'T tell people it's from the Gulf War. They assume it's from the recent war, and start to blame Bush more and more.
About the Carlyle Group...
Too bad that G. Bush Sr. resigned from it before the Iraq War.
| Quote: |
| The best part is at the end when he quotes a very famous passage from George Orwell, which I won't spoil for you. When you hear it though, it will hit you like a rubber club and you will immediately recognise it. |
Shit, I can't remember the quote. Could you PM it to me?
Now I hate Moore more than ever. Why? Well, my half-brother went to the movie, and now he's so anti-Bush, it's sad. He also actually believe that Kuwait was slant drilling. :sigh: You think he wouldn't be such a hippie with our dad being a Vietnam veteran.
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Big Brother
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Post #3810
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Posted: Sat 2004-07-17 04:01
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| Politics: Libertarian-Syndicalist |
Country: American Empire |
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| M&M is a liar! |
Post Rating: 0.0/4 (0 votes cast) |
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I just saw the film, and I have one quick comment.
At the end of F911, M&M reads the following quote from George Orwell....
"It does not matter if the war is not real. For when it is, victory is not possible. The war is not meant to be won, but it is meant to be continuous. A hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance, this new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. the war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or east Asia but to keep the very structure of society in tact"
This is all well and good. I quite impressed to see the film end with this little ode to the master himself. But there is only one problem....
This quote is not from George Orwell... It is from the friggin movie.
I just had to share that little factoid with the world. I'll have more comments on the film later... |
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Bill
Committee Member
Post #3822
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Posted: Sat 2004-07-17 12:18
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| Politics: X-tremely Silly Party |
Country: Airstrip One |
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Post Rating: 0.0/4 (0 votes cast) |
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| Capitalist Pride wrote: |
| Bill wrote: |
| BB wrote: |
| But what he omitted was statistical information that shows that many other nations with guns don't have the same problems as America |
He did contrast the position in the US with that of Canada, a country with similar numbers of guns but, with less gun related violence and pointed out the difference in attitude between the two neighbours towards gun ownership. |
Keep in mind though...
Just because Canada has less gun murders, that does not mean that they have less murders overall. On another forum I talked to a liberal Canadian, and quite shockingly, he agreed with me for perhaps the first time.
"Edit: You're right [name confidential], when Moore asked why Canada had so few gun murders, the reason is not because of guns or anything like that. In Edmonton, 90% of the murders are with knives, bats, fists or a car."
Statistics are always misleading unless you have a sit and take a good long thought about them. |
I was about to respond with some statistics (I'm pretty sure Canada's murder rate is lower than the US) but, the stat's page on the Interpol web site (one we have referred to in previous threads) says "The International Crime Statistics are only available to authorised police users.
WHY? (I have emailed them to ask)
Edit:
Canada v. US Murder rates (per 100,000)
Year 2000
Canada 1.77 (from http://www.statcan.ca/english/Pgdb/legal12b.htm)
US 5.5 (from http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm) |
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Big Brother
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Post #3843
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Posted: Sat 2004-07-17 21:28
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| Politics: Libertarian-Syndicalist |
Country: American Empire |
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| More of F911 |
Post Rating: 0.0/4 (0 votes cast) |
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The basic layout of the movie is as follows...
1) Starts off with the election of 2000. Claims that Gore would have been president if it wasn’t for the all-powerful Bush family. (But fails to mention that there were some shenanigans on both sides of the isle)
2) After the credits, it shows what Bush was doing during his first 8 months in office... nothing.
3) The screen goes black -- BOOM, scream, cry....
4) Shows bush's response to 911.
5) Shows the Bush family's ties to Saudi Arabia and the Bin Laden family
6) Shows video of the war in Iraq, and a lengthy section on the mother of a soldier who was killed.
7) Ends with the Orwell "quote" from "War is Peace".
In general, I think he spent too much time "exposing" the Bush family's ties to the Saudi's, and not enough time discrediting the claims of WMDs.
The blacks in the theater appeared to think that they were at some sort of religious revival. When one of the interviewees said that he used to be a Republican and now he is a Democrat, the dark-proles stood up and cheered. Apparently they missed the part about how the Democrats supported the war and the patriot act.
(Moore does mention this fact briefly, but does not specifically name one of they Dems who voted for this crap... John Kerry)
As far as absolute "lies", I can't really say I saw any. (Except for incorrectly attributing the Orwell quote) In fact, I think he could have said a lot more about the “lies” of WMD in Iraq. I suppose the reason for not delving too far into this was because he didn’t want to look like a “liar” if some WMDs were to turn up. But my primary problem with the film is that I think it left many in the theater with false impression that the getting rid of Bush will solve all the problems in government. It won't. |
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zombywuf
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Posted: Sun 2004-07-18 13:27
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| Politics: Complete Idiot |
Country: Scotland |
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| So I saw the damn film.... |
Post Rating: 0.0/4 (0 votes cast) |
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To me Michael Moore films are ruined by the fact that you're constantly aware that you're watching Michael Moore. I can never tell if he's trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator or if he is the lowest common denominator. He's had a couple of TV shows here in the UK and he generally came accross as an idiot.
He's certainly very good at following the money, but he also is not averse to inventing the evidence should it be needed. I also think he could have provided better analysis. For example the footage at the begining with Bush vacationing implied to me that here was a man who didn't realise that the game of ziggurat climbing politics ends when you reach the top. From what he was saying about the "work" he had to do it sounded like the usual closed door shady dealings that are usual to engage in when you're climbing the ladder, but not the running of a country. MM didn't seem to even think about mentioning this.
I also really wish he hadn't kept using that stupid edge detect video filter to make people look evil.
To me the most impotant line in the film was this one:
"Sit closer son, we don't often read every bill that gets passed."
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If you can read this you've gone too far. |
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oBrien
Junior Spy
Post #4130
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Posted: Wed 2004-07-21 20:08
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| Politics: Social Democrat |
Country: American Empire |
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| TO HELL WITH AMERICA!!! |
Post Rating: 0.0/4 (0 votes cast) |
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still, this film is actually quite good, at least as any film by Michael Moore goes. i really couldn't find any obvious significant lies, as opposed to the film Bowling for Columbine. Moore's tricks in this film involve less blatant dishonesty than manipulation of images.- president Bush sitting in the classroom, looking very much like a dope who is barely keeping himself from crawling out of his own skin. this is used in conjunction with the images of Bush on vacation in Texas to suggest that he is an incompetent leader. add the story of his failed business Arbusto, and the image is complete of a man who is himself incompetent, but has managed to successfully ride the coattails of his father, by the help of those who desired his success, into the vaunted role as world leader he now occupies. this is true, of course. even conservatives who have brains admit to this and express a desire for a better, at least more intelligent and saavy conservative president.
- the representatives objecting to the elections results, all of them black of course, raising their objections against the election results, pleading desperately for the support of a senator, only to be rebuffed by some honky stiff because none of the senators (funny how they are almost all white males, hunh?), even from the Democratic party!, would back them -- this is for me the most heart-wrenching and terrifying moment of the film, and it was left for the most part alone -- there was no need to edit this at all, really. it was on this day that i switched over to the Socialist party and emailed the Democratic party of my disdain for them. those bastards are complicit in the bloodless coup that was president Bush's election. president Bush isn't legally entitled to his post, which means even violent action taken against him is sanctioned by the spirit, if not the letter, of the Constitution. but no one will, and i am sure the Department for Homeland Security will turn it's basilisk gaze toward me upon discovering these words. to hell with them -- they are little different from the old SS, and should be tarred and feathered, then hung publically along Columbia Blvd!
- that oilman, edited out of footage of the first Gulf War: oh yeah, this is a blatant lie, but it is used to underscore a main point of Michael Moore's, that we are there for the oil, or rather not directly and immediately for the oil that is in Iraq, but as an extension of our hegemonistic poltics in the Middle East designed to control prices over oil in favor of us. our major allies are now Turkey, Isreal, Saudi Arabia, and i can see the goal is to include Libya, Iraq, and Afganistan. the day the fields dry up will be a day of rejoicing for many, though i wouldn't be surprised that it will coincide with a world population crisis, famines and droughts borne out of global environmental changes, and emerging pandemics to bring us proud, deluded, misguided humans to their knees in a wave of blood, and smoke. so be it -- we aren't worthy yet to take on the mantle of rulers of the earth, anyway.
- soldiers in Iraq rocking out, especially that one soldier singing that song by Cake: sure, it is a pretty one-sided view that heavily suggests our soldiers are barbarians. this part reminded me very much of that segment near the end of the film Apocalypse Now, where they are at the bridge and Lance is tripping out on acid. war is surreal and barbaric, and reduces humans very quickly to entities the eyes of the civilized wish to shun. Moore does no disservice in forcing his fellow Americans to come face-to-face with the fact that we have not sent out cherubs and seraphs into the foray, but fallible, temperamental humans -- young humans, at that! Americans are very self-deluded people, who fight like hell to maintain a false ideological and moral environment around them that maintains their egos and comfort -- when the blood flows, we are sheltered from it with euphemistic phrases, nationalistic pride, and washed-out images in a heavily pro-current-ruling-class media -- we have spent decades learning how to sanitize our preceptions of the world around us to meet or needs for...what? that, i think, is what we forgot. safety and comfort? what about empathy, truth, brilliance, honesty, and art? perhaps this is part of the horrible tranformation that can occur when a people doesn't need to fear for it's life.
- that poor woman who lost her son in Iraq, who -- rather than turning her son into some sort of cross between a saint and a warrior hero, as so many do because they can't bear to think their child died wasted their life in the pursuit of something less than patriotism, justice, and definitely not defense -- realized the error of her ways and opened her eyes to scaly beast that lurks within the corridors of power, that sent her son out to die in a miserable wasteland of our own making, merely to serve the ends of hegemonistic interests and further line the pockets of the oligarchs. i think Moore did another service to the people in bringing home the cost of war, especially a war that will probably go down in history as being as, if not more, controversial and distatsteful as the Vietnam War. but, i rather wish he would have limited her presence in the film -- he kind of dragged that one out too much, i think, to the point of being distatsteful and partially defeating his own purpose in using her to begin with.
- Moore and that brave soldier -- who i am very proud of for having the courage to risk great discomfort to declare publically, and in uniform his disagreement with the war, the justification for by his Commander in Chief, and declaring his resolve not to return to Iraq (a true hero is a man to stand up for ethically sound beliefs, even in the face of jail!) -- petitioning congresspersons to encourage their children to enlist in the military, while somewhat sophmoric, brings home a point we all know, or would if we were honest with ourselves: wars are initiated by the well-to-do, generally for their gain, but are fought by the poor -- who will most likely reap none of the rewards, for the rich do not share their spoils, even with each other if they could manage not to. civilization, as a whole, has been until very recently a construction of greedy, powerful people to maintain their wealth and power, but when the machinations of the word and the pen fail, the sword must be drawn, but none of these oligarchs are foolish enough to die for their own ambitions. eliminate wealth, proerty, and superstition (or to be more general, but accurate, irrationality), and perhaps the world will be a better place...perhaps
to hell with this country, ultimately, for it is the people who have allowed it to become such a corrupt, imperialistic entity as it is. that's right: i blame the people and society of this country, along with the actual leaders -- people in democratic nations don't have the same excuses people do where they don't have power over their own governance.
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Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. |
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RAK
Minster of Plenty
Post #4134
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Posted: Wed 2004-07-21 21:23
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| Politics: Socialist |
Country: Ireland |
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Post Rating: 0.0/4 (0 votes cast) |
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I saw it today, the comedy at the start was certainly good, and it painted a picture of George Bush at the start which stayed with me during the whole film.
| Quote: |
To me the most impotant line in the film was this one:
"Sit closer son, we don't often read every bill that gets passed." |
Yes, indeed it was a very important act, and I liked when Michael Moore started to read the Patriot Act out loud.
The comedy was certainly important, and I think the film was good: It wasn't necessarily aimed towards the well-read intellectual.
_________________
"Rejection of technology ruins a good mind." - RAK
* * * * * * * * * *
INTERNET NEWS SERVICES
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oBrien
Junior Spy
Post #4184
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Posted: Fri 2004-07-23 04:47
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| Politics: Social Democrat |
Country: American Empire |
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| 9-11 Report (summary) |
Post Rating: 0.0/4 (0 votes cast) |
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for some real-life fahrenheit 9/11, i present to you this day's news, or rather one version of it, from CNN -- i got it from here: http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/07/22/911.report/index.html. guess it's time for me to email the prez, my senators, and rep to "urge" them to not sit on their hands until the next presidential work day after this election ... isn't that sometime around late-january, usually a couple weeks to a month after the swear-in? what a bunch of lazy damn presidents we have! anyway, i'm going to try to get my hands on the report fairly soon. i have the patriot act 1, but still haven't read it -- i sometimes think these things are purposefully drafted up in the driest, most difficult-to-wade-through legalese/duckspeak (to slightly abuse the newspeak word).
notice how no mention of saudi money or sinister carlyle group machinations are made? indeed, even without their mishievous schemes, our government is perfectly capable of screwing us out of sheer incompetance! anyone here put any stock into the conspiracy theory that they just let them plow into the WTC, for the dual purpose of subjugating the people through fear and breach of freedoms, and a perpetual war in some blasted wasteland? i still don't, so far.
| From CNN |
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The chairman of the panel investigating the attacks of September 11, 2001, said his commission found that the "United States government was simply not active enough in combating the terrorist threat before 9/11."
Thomas Kean and his fellow panelists cited a "failure of imagination" that they said kept U.S. officials from understanding the al Qaeda threat before the attacks on New York and Washington that killed nearly 3,000.
The independent National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States released its findings on Thursday in a 570-page report. ...
... Some Republican lawmakers have said Congress is unlikely to take any action on the report until next year. But Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut urged their colleagues to take action quickly. ...
... Bush told reporters the report contained "some very constructive recommendations" and that he looked "forward to working with responsible parties within my administration to move forward on those recommendations."
As expected, the report calls for a national intelligence chief and a counterterrorism center modeled on the military's unified commands.
It also proposes the creation of a joint congressional committee to oversee homeland security. ...
... Among the failures:- Neither Bush nor his predecessor Bill Clinton understood the gravity of the threats posed by terrorists because the leaders could not imagine such attacks.
- The CIA was limited in its effort to try to capture al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants in Afghanistan by the agency's use of proxies.
- Terrorism was not the top national security concern and missed opportunities to thwart the attack indicate the government's inability to adapt to new challenges.
- The failure of the CIA and FBI to communicate with each other -- sometimes because of "legal misunderstandings" -- led to missed "operational opportunities" to hinder or break the terror plot.
- The CIA did not put 9/11 hijacker Khalid Almihdhar on a "watch list" or notify the FBI when he had a U.S. visa in January 2000 or when he met with a key figure in the USS Cole bombing. And the CIA failed to develop plans to track Almihdhar, or hijacker Nawaf Alhazmi when he obtained a U.S. visa and flew to Los Angeles. Both men were on American Airlines Flight 77 that crashed into the Pentagon.
- The FBI failed to recognize the significance of Almihdhar and Alhazmi's arrival in the United States or the significance of al Qaeda member Zacarias Moussaoui's training and beliefs after his arrest in Minnesota in August 2001.
The report will be on sale in bookstores for $10. It will also be available online and through the Government Printing Office.
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i sure as hell am not going to pay for it -- i don't think i've paid for anything off the internet yet! wait, never mind, but fastmail deserves their $15 -- they're the best!
_________________
Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. |
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oBrien
Junior Spy
Post #4187
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Posted: Fri 2004-07-23 05:26
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| Politics: Social Democrat |
Country: American Empire |
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| THIS is the best part! |
Post Rating: 0.0/4 (0 votes cast) |
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| Lt. Vanish wrote: |
| The best part is at the end when he quotes a very famous passage from George Orwell, which I won't spoil for you. When you hear it though, it will hit you like a rubber club and you will immediately recognise it. |
 no way!!! the best part of the whole film, and the one that is perhaps the least edited, most honest presentation of any view or point is the part early in the film where all those black representatives from the disputed and recounted (and recounted again, remember?) districts in florida stood up to voice their grievances with the election results. not a single senator supported them, and as time went by you could hear and see their desperation and anger, as each of them were shot down with these words by the speaker "do you have any support from a member of the senate?" it was both heart-rending and infuriating -- not a single goddamn senator stood up for them -- not even kerry, byrd, daschle, mccain, feinstien, or hell, even my home state senator wyden (who i never really hear much of - he has a nice web site, though!)
on a side note, though related in terms of usage as a reference, i found this cool searchable online 1984! it's what i used to verify the fact that that quote at the end of F911 is in fact not from the book, but may be from the movie -- i didn't verify that, so i can only take Big Brother's word for it -- and i do.
_________________
Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. |
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Big Brother
Administrator
Post #4188
Joined: 14 Feb 2004
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Posted: Fri 2004-07-23 05:51
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| Politics: Libertarian-Syndicalist |
Country: American Empire |
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| Re: 9-11 Report (summary) |
Post Rating: 0.0/4 (0 votes cast) |
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| oBrien wrote: |
i sure as hell am not going to pay for it -- i don't think i've paid for anything off the internet yet! wait, never mind, but fastmail deserves their $15 -- they're the best! |
You don't have to pay for it. Fox News has it available online...
9/11 Commission Report (7.4mb pdf)
Executive Summary of Report (5.8mb pdf) |
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oBrien
Junior Spy
Post #4204
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Posted: Fri 2004-07-23 22:41
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| Politics: Socialist |
Country: American Empire |
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| Letter to "President" G.W. Bush |
Post Rating: 0.0/4 (0 votes cast) |
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this is a copy of the email i sent "president" bush a few days ago. i misused the phrase "in lieu of" to mean "as a result of", rahter than "in the palce of", but other than that i didn't screw up too badly. like the guy, if he ever even reads it, would understand more than 40% of the vocuabulary: they may as well randomly select presidential candidates out of those who failed to pass their G.E.D. requirements!
| oBrien wrote: |
you are a criminal who bloodlessly usurped the throne of executive power, who rode into washington d.c. much as mussolini did rome, only with less popular support and eloquence. you are a friend to the wealthy, enemy to the poor - you would destroy our capacity for production by offshoring work and our capacity for brilliance and innovation by eroding away the already teetering foundations of an education system barely fit for a third-world nation. you are the destroyer of law and justice by invading a country that intelligence has all but exhonerated of ill-will toward us or the capacity to realize such an ambition, spying on citizens at home, and imprisoning people without trial in your tropical gulag. your continuation of our hegemonistic politics and lust for control of a resource that is a great destroyer of the world threatens our safety and livelihoods of people in the middle east. you are an enemy of humanity, supporting countries who engage in severe human rights abuses: china and israel. you are the enemy of sanity, with your mad dream of miniaturizing nuclear weapons. you are an enemy of the earth itself - by extension all life on it - eroding away environmental controls over already insufficient protections and sanctuaries.
let us look into a future, a hypothetical one wherein you and your kin reign:
the sky kills, and the air is bereft of birds' songs, being replaced instead by the hum of plague-bearing insects. the land bears little fruit in what scattered plots that remain arable after untold small-scale nuclear wars and pollution. the wealthy live safe in underground cities or in orbit, luxuriously eating artifically flavored, synthesized substances and drinking the last of the potable water available, while their lackeys live in slums, forever looking over their shoulder in fear of being waylaid by the secret police, desperate criminals, or dying in a fiery exposion. they are barely literate, and die young due to lack of health care, yet they toil 60 to 80 hours a week - while the wealthy die of boredom and ennui after two pampered centuries, at most lifting a finger to shuffle money from one investment to the next.
wanted: george w. bush: for crimes against the people of the united states, the sovereign nation of iraq, the global community, the earth and humanity as a whole, and even that imaginary god - who supposedly stands for love, peace, justice, and charity.
what you should have done differently:- decreased the defense budget - increased environmental, educational, and social funding and reforms.
- publicly denounced and ended all support of and economic parlance with china and israel.
- pushed for regulation of world trade for the purpose of protecting american manufacturing jobs and insuring tolerable conditions for workers in developing and third-world nations.
- initiated a world-wide ban on all nuclear weapon production and research, strenthening UN authority over this by means of a US-EU cooperative investigative/military body.
- signed the kyoto treaty! better yet, strengthened the UN capacity for oversight of global environmental protections by means of a US-EU cooperative investigative/military body.
- proposed constitutional amendments abolishing the electoral college, reinstating the popular vote, and limiting supreme justice seats...say, to 6 or 8 years.
- supported campaign-finance reforms.
- offered amnesty to all death-row inmates in lieu of the numbers of those exhonerated by DNA evidence.
these are merely a few ideas for you to mull over. i hope your seat is wrested from you LAWFULLY in this election. but, most of all, i hope one day you will see yourself for the man you truly are and learn the way of being a force of true good for your fellow humans, rather than a promulgation of the festering wounds that have followed us since we first gathered together in communities: greed, powerlust, lack of empathy, ignorance, shortsightedness, and lies. |
i should have mentioned the war on drugs, too, but at the time it didn't occur to me. hell, since i'm pushing matters as far as i am, the abolishion of money and property may also be good ideas!
_________________
Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. |
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Big Brother
Administrator
Post #4215
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Posted: Sat 2004-07-24 03:33
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| Politics: Libertarian-Syndicalist |
Country: American Empire |
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| Re: THIS is the best part! |
Post Rating: 0.0/4 (0 votes cast) |
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| oBrien wrote: |
on a side note, though related in terms of usage as a reference, i found this cool searchable online 1984! it's what i used to verify the fact that that quote at the end of F911 is in fact not from the book, but may be from the movie -- i didn't verify that, so i can only take Big Brother's word for it -- and i do.[/size] |
You'd better. 
About 1 hour, 8 minutes into the movie version of Ninteen Eighty-Four, Winston reads from "Goldstein's Book"...
"In accordance with the principles of doubthink it does not matter if the war is not real, or when it is, victory is not possible. The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous. The essential act of modern warfare is the destruction of the produce of human labour. A hierarchical society is only possible and the basis of poverty and ignorance. In principle, the war effort is always planned to keep society of the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects. And its object is not victory over Eurasia or Eastasia, but to keep the very structure of society in tact."
Although this is not exactly what Orwell wrote, the filmakers fairly accurately summed up the ideas presented in the third chapter of Goldstein's Book/, "War is Peace".
For comparison, this is the "quote" from F911...
"It does not matter if the war is not real, or when it is, victory is not possible. The war is not meant to be won, but it is meant to be continuous. A hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. This new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or Eastasia but to keep the very structure of society in tact"
Here is what was said in F911 (and in the film version of 1984), and what George Orwell actually wrote. Most of the inspiration came from chapter 3 of Goldstein's Book, "War is Peace". But the sources from 1984 are scattered about, are not in the same sequence as presented in the film quote.
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F911/Movie - "It does not matter if the war is not real, or when it is, victory is not possible."
1984 - "Meanwhile no Inner Party member wavers for an instant in his mystical belief that the war is real, and that it is bound to end victoriously, with Oceania the undisputed master of the entire world."
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F911/Movie - "The war is not meant to be won, but it is meant to be continuous."
1984 - "Here it is necessary to repeat what has been said earlier, that by becoming continuous war has fundamentally changed its character"
1984 - "As for the problem of overproduction, which has been latent in our society since the development of machine technique, it is solved by the device of continuous warfare (see Chapter III), which is also useful in keying up public morale to the necessary pitch."
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F911/Movie - "A hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance."
1984 - "In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance"
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F911 - "This new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed."
1984 - "For when [the past] has been recreated in whatever shape is needed at the moment, then this new version is the past, and no different past can ever have existed."
(This was not in the movie version of the quote. And this is the only part of the quote that does not get its source from Goldstein's Book. This is something Winston said himself.)
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F911/Movie - "In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation."
1984 - "In principle the war effort is always so planned as to eat up any surplus that might exist after meeting the bare needs of the population. In practice the needs of the population are always underestimated, with the result that there is a chronic shortage of half the necessities of life; but this is looked on as an advantage."
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F911/Movie - "The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or Eastasia but to keep the very structure of society in tact"
1984 - "The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact."
(But F911 added the word "either" in front of Eurasia -- the movie did not say this)
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So yes, the general meaning of the words remain true to what Orwell actually wrote. But, perhaps Mr. Moore should have paid my site a visit before attributing Orwell with this quote.
But despite all of this, I am pleased that M&M decided place the "words" of Orwell so prominently in his movie.
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Big Brother
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Posted: Sat 2004-07-24 05:52
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| Politics: Libertarian-Syndicalist |
Country: American Empire |
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| Re: Idiodic Americans |
Post Rating: 0.0/4 (0 votes cast) |
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Remember back when I went off on that radio guy who threw an hour long fit about how much of a "lie" F911 was -- even though he had never seen it?..
| 2004-06-28 Big Brother wrote: |
I was listening to the radio this morning ... St. Louis AM 550 (A generally non-political AM talk radio station) ... when they started discussing M&M's F911.
This fucking idiot Kevin Slaten ... This complete fucking MORON (Yeah, that's better) starting going off on M&M. He must have used the word "LIAR" about 20 times within a span of 2 minutes, and also sprinkled with a little "M&M is an un-American Terrorist" about 3 times.
After his little 2-minute hate, he started listing off all of M&M's "Lies"...
1) In B for C, M&M talked about a shooting in Flint Michigan that really wasn't in Flint Michigan.
Yeah... It was in an area just to the north of Flint. But it's like me saying I'm from St. Louis, when in fact I don't even live in Missouri... I live about 15 minutes to the East. But If I told somebody I was from Belleville, they'd probably have no idea what I was talking about. It is entirely legal to say that this shooting took place i Flint, even though it didn't take place in the city proper.
Actually, I'm not going to go through them all here. Most of M&M's "lies" are of the sort shown above...
More of B for C's "flaws" can be found HERE
About the worst one was that he took clips from several different Charlton Heston speeches and spliced them together to give the impression that everything Charlton said was from a speech in Colorado.... and some of the things he said were taken out of context.
But again... this makes it propaganda (Taking people's real words out of context... not exactly a lie.) Charlton Heston really did say those things. Just not all in one speech, and when you see what he said in context it does not sound quite as "crazed" as M&M made it appear.
But, anyway.. Another one of M&M's "lies" is that he tries to portray himself as a "regular guy" when in fact he had made quite a bit of money from his movies and books -- but how does this differ from any of the politicians that claim to be "average joes"... At least M&M really was pretty much an "average guy" before he became a success.
So yes... M&M is a propagandists... but no more so than "Bill O'Riley, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Jerry Falwell, Dennis Miller, John Ashcroft, Dick Cheney, Condelezzia Rice, etc."...
And this is what drives me mad. If that radio moron is going to call M&M a "Liar and a terrorist" because of the way he spins his material, is he going to hold the "rich and powerful" to the same standard? I mean, after hearing this guy ramble on for a half an hour about how "evil" Michael Moore is, I now think I have a better understanding of how it was possible for the Nazi's to come to power ... This guy truly believes every bit of crap that the president and his press secretary says. I have yet to here this guy call Bush a "liar and a Terrorist" for lying about WMD's, Saddam's Al Qaeda Connection, Saddam’s Nuclear programs, etc, etc. ... and for starting a war based on those lies.
And I can guarantee he wont. In fact, from other things this moron has said, it sounds like he really believes the official line about Iraq --- That we invaded to stop terrorism and liberate the Iraqi people.
Kevin Slaten ....
You are a Fucking Moron.
Actually, this idiot finally amitted (after a caller asked) that he has never actually seen any of M&M's films!!! What a fucking moron!!
If any of you Euros want to hear some of the insane propaganda we Americans have to listen to, 550 offers their broadcast on the internet HERE
And bear in mind, that 550 isn't even a political station. (Rush lives on AM 1120 KMOX) 550 mainly focus on Sports and other "entertainment" type talk shows. The only political types are Crane Durham (Who hosts a show called "Nothing But Truth" from 9pm-12am Central... Who is, I should mention, also a complete fucking moron)... and that ex-sports-commentator-turned-amateur-Nazi I spoke of earlier, who's 2-hour hate airs from 9-11am Central) |
Well.. Kevin Slaten has become an unperson. His page on KTRS's web site has been vaporized. He has been lifted clean out of history. Good riddance.
I'm all for people who speak their mind. But if you are going to call a film-maker a "liar" and "terrorist", you should at least see the movie first. Or at the very least, have some idea of what the movie said before suggesting that the film-maker should be "arrested and shot".
"As far as I know, none of the facts in the movie have been refuted. That is, I think the evidence in the movie is accurate." - Bill Clinton,(Nova TV (Dutch), 7/14)
OMG!... Did I just post a Bill Clinton quote?... And one that deals with truthfulness, no less?
But Bill is actually right in this case. I have yet to hear of any "lies" in M&M's work (except for the Orwell quote thing I mentioned)
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APCP
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Posted: Sat 2004-07-24 06:59
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| Politics: Anarcho-capitalist |
Country: Confederate States of America (C.S.A.) |
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I can name one lie off the top of my head.
Moore blames the Bin Ladens getting out of the US on Bush, but it was Richard Clarke that did this, not Bush.
Check out this site and read it all. It shows his lies in F911.
http://fahrenheit_fact.blogspot.com/
If Orwell knew how gullible y'all were, he'd be turning in his grave. Didn't any of you learn to question "sources"?
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Big Brother
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Posted: Sun 2004-07-25 00:48
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| Politics: Libertarian-Syndicalist |
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| Capitalist Pride wrote: |
I can name one lie off the top of my head.
Moore blames the Bin Ladens getting out of the US on Bush, but it was Richard Clarke that did this, not Bush.
Check out this site and read it all. It shows his lies in F911.
http://fahrenheit_fact.blogspot.com/
If Orwell knew how gullible y'all were, he'd be turning in his grave. Didn't any of you learn to question "sources"? |
Ok. Let's question your source.
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Fahrenheit Fact no. 1: Groups affiliated with Hezbollah have offered to help distribute Fahrenheit 9/11
The Guardian reports that groups related to Hezbollah have offered to aid in the distribution of "Fahrenheit 9/11" in the Middle East.
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Good for them.
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Fahrenheit Fact no. 2: On 9/11, George W. Bush did not sign the order for Saudis to leave the U.S.
As it turns out, the flights were approved by Richard Clarke- former terrorism official and author of the less than complimentary "Against all Enemies". Even though Moore is technically correct when he states that the "Whitehouse" approved the flights, the requests never "went any higher" than Clarke.
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The film says that the flights were approved by "the highest levels of government" and "the white house".... which is true.
The speculation is whether or not Bush knew about it. One would think that the president must have been aware of these flights -- the only ones allowed to leave the country. It seems unlikely that Bush was not aware of what was happening. But, yes... it was not Bush's signature on the document. But the film doesn't claim it was.
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Fahrenheit Fact no. 3: Michael Moore has called civilian contractors in Iraq "War Profiteers"
In this post on his web site, Moore calls civilian contractors in Iraq "war profiteers".
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Is this a lie? Are these companies "donating" their time to "the cause", or are they profiting off of the war?
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Fahrenheit Fact no. 4: Three members of the 2004 Cannes jury have ties to Miramax
Three members of the 2004 Cannes Jury- including the chair, Quentin Tarantino- have ties to Miramax, the main US studio and Disney entity responsible for "Fahrenheit 9/11".
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Ok... 3 out of 10 have "ties" to Miramax. But the last time I checked Miramax decided not to release this film....
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Fahrenheit Fact no. 5: Michael Moore had abuse footage months beforehand; did not notify DOD
Michael Moore had footage of Iraqi prisoner abuse (not at Abu Ghraib) months before the scandal broke and did not notify the Department of Defense.
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Who was M&M "protecting" by not adding this footage to the film. The soldiers?... the Government?...
This sounds like a lose-lose situation for Moore. If he doesn't add the footage, he is accused of hiding "evidence". If he does show it....
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Fahrenheit Fact no. 6: Moore distorts Bush "vacation days"
Moorelies.com has an article about how the "vacation days" were calculated:
It's obvious that these "vacation days" include weekends. (You can do the math: 250/x=42/100; x=595 days=1.63 years). Okay, 42% is a lot of vacation, but weekends account for 29% of our time. I'm sure that a lot of this "vacation" time is just Bush going to Camp David for the weekend. Can we really fault the President for going to Camp David on weekends? If you take out weekends, you get 42%-29%, or 13% of the time that Bush was on vacation.
Okay, this is still a lot, although 13% looks a lot better than 42%. Over a year, 13% is about 6.76 weeks of the year--which is still much more than most of us. But we know that Bush's vacations are generally working vacations. For example, he has hosted visits from leaders like Putin, Fox, and many others there. This hardly seems like a real vacation.
As Hitchens points out today, there are a lot of problems with Fahrenheit 9/11. It's pretty clear that Moore's "vacation time" allegation is one of them.
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I guess the point the film was trying to make was that Bush should have done more. I know that if I were elected president, I wouldn't probably wouldn't be taking any days off. But when your job is to nothing more than protect the status qou, there really isn't all that much to do.
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Fahrenheit Fact no. 7: Moore is preparing to sue critics of his film
From the New York Times (reg required):
Mr. Moore is readying for a conservative counterattack, saying he has created a political-style "war room" to offer an instant response to any assault on the film's credibility. He has retained Chris Lehane, a Democratic Party strategist known as a master of the black art of "oppo," or opposition research, used to discredit detractors. He also hired outside fact-checkers, led by a former general counsel of The New Yorker and a veteran member of that magazine's legendary fact-checking team, to vet the film. And he is threatening to go one step further, saying he has consulted with lawyers who can bring defamation suits against anyone who maligns the film or damages his reputation.
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So Moore hired fact-checkers to verify the things he said in the film?... Damn him! And he hired lawyers to protect him from lawsuits -- and sue people that libeled him? That bastard!
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Fahrenheit Fact no. 8: Disney told Moore over a year ago that they would not distribute
Disney mouthpieces also said Miramax was informed nearly a year ago that the company wouldn't distribute Fahrenheit 9/11. Miramax apparently hoped Disney would change its corporate mind. Moore apparently was convinced that would happen, or else Miramax would use another distribution outlet for Fahrenheit 9/11 to reach theaters, which is what it did with the controversial Dogma in 1999. That film, with its satire of Roman Catholicism, also was disavowed by Disney.
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Ok...
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Fahrenheit Fact no. 9: Vice-Chairman of the 9/11 commission applauds Bush for the infamous "7 minutes"
Michael Moore points out that during the attacks on 9/11, President Bush remained in the Florida classroom in which he was situated for five to seven minutes after he had learned of the attacks, which is true, and independently verifiable. Moore sneeringly mentions that Bush was reading to the students from a book called My Pet Goat and uses scorn and mocking to imply that it was stupidity and incompetence that kept the President in the classroom.
The Vice Chairman of the 9/11 Commission has a different opinion:
If the 9/11 commission isn't worried about Bush's reaction, why should we be worried?
"Bush made the right decision in remaining calm, in not rushing out of the classroom," said Lee Hamilton, vice chairman of the Sept. 11 commission and a former Democratic congressman from Indiana
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Again, if you were president, what would you do?
Yes... the most important thing on the morning of 911 was not to upset the 30 or so kiddies in that Florida classroom.
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Fahrenheit Fact no. 10: Unocal gave up pipeline project 3 years before Afghan war
In "Fahrenheit 9/11" one of the many accusations made concerns the war in Afghanistan. Moore essentially implies that the reasoning for the military action was to benefit Unocal Corporation through the construction of an oil pipeline. But the company, which had planned to build the pipe in the mid-90's, gave up the project in 1998, three years before.
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But the agreement to build the pipeline was signed after the invasion, wasn't it?
It sure doesn't sound like the project was given up, does it?
And they still haven't found Bin Laden, have they? That was the goal of the Afghan invasion, wasn't it?
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Fahrenheit Fact no. 11: "House of Bush, House of Saud" not publishable in the UK for legal reasons
The book "House of Bush, House of Saud", which Moore relies on as a source for his film, is in legal trouble in the UK - to the point of not being published.
[...]
"Essentially it's been quashed,"
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Ohhh... So there the Bush family really doesn't have any financial ties to the Saudis. I feel so much better now.
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Fahrenheit Fact no. 12: Moore's congressmen have ties to terrorists and the U.N. "oil for food" scandal
As Debbie Schlussel points out in her "Fahrenheit 9/11" review, Jim McDermott, a Congressman Moore interviews during the film, has participated in a trip to Iraq funded by an organization called Life for Relief and Development. They seem like great organization. From the AP:
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So the Democrats are scumbags too? No way.
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Fahrenheit Fact no. 13: Bush's Air National Guard service misrepresented The International Herald Tribune's review points out that Moore is continuing to make issue of Bush's Air National Guard service:
As the camera pans across copies of Bush’s records from the Texas Air National Guard, and Moore reads that the future president was suspended for missing a medical examination, we hear a familiar electric guitar riff; it takes you a moment to remember that it comes from a song called ‘‘Cocaine.’
But in reality, it is far from questionable. From National Review(1):
[article goes through Bush's first 4 years with the Guard, then in the 5th year...]
The records indicate that, despite his move to Alabama, Bush met his obligation to the Guard in the 1972-73 year. At that time, Guardsmen were awarded points based on the days they reported for duty each year. They were given 15 points just for being in the Guard, and were then required to accumulate a total of 50 points to satisfy the annual requirement. In his first four years of service, Bush piled up lots of points; he earned 253 points in his first year, 340 in his second, 137 in his third, and 112 in his fourth. For the year from May 1972 to May 1973, records show Bush earned 56 points, a much smaller total, but more than the minimum requirement (his service was measured on a May-to-May basis because he first joined the Guard in that month in 1968).
Bush then racked up another 56 points in June and July of 1973, which met the minimum requirement for the 1973-74 year, which was Bush's last year of service. Together, the record "clearly shows that First Lieutenant George W. Bush has satisfactory years for both '72-'73 and '73-'74, which proves that he completed his military obligation in a satisfactory manner," says retired Lt. Col. Albert Lloyd, a Guard personnel officer who reviewed the records at the request of the White House.
All in all, the documents show that Bush served intensively for four years and then let up in his fifth and sixth years, although he still did enough to meet Guard requirements. The records also suggest that Bush's superiors were not only happy with his performance from 1968 to 1972, but also happy with his decision to go to Alabama. Indeed, Bush's evaluating officer wrote in May 1972 that "Lt. Bush is very active in civic affairs in the community and manifests a deep interest in the operation of our government. He has recently accepted the position as campaign manager for a candidate for United States Senate. He is a good representative of the military and Air National Guard in the business world."
Beyond their apparent hope that Bush would be a good ambassador for the Guard, Bush's superiors might have been happy with his decision to go into politics for another reason: They simply had more people than they needed. "In 1972, there was an enormous glut of pilots," says Campenni. "The Vietnam War was winding down, and the Air Force was putting pilots in desk jobs. In '72 or '73, if you were a pilot, active or Guard, and you had an obligation and wanted to get out, no problem. In fact, you were helping them solve their problem."
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That's quite a record.
How fortunate it was that he wanted to get out of the guard just as "the Vietnam War was winding down."
Of course, I can't really blame Bush for wanting to avoid Vietnam. If anything, it shows that he is not as "stupid" as everyone believes. If I was alive back then, I would have simply burned my draft card instead of taking this "lesser military" option. But then again, flying a jet might be pretty cool.
;)
In any case, this is something for the Hawks to complain about -- how their "wartime" president preferred to fly over the Gulf of Mexico instead of the Gulf of Tonkin. Personally it doesn't bother me. But then again, I wouldn’t be sending troops off to Iraq either.
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Fahrenheit Fact no. 14: Legislative sons in active service
In one particularly tasteless portion of the film, Moore attempts to flag down a few congressmen and "convince" them to sign their children up for military service, thus implying that our legislators represent an "elite" who will not send their sons and daughters to die in unpopular foreign wars (a'la Vietnam). Despite the fact that no national draft has been instituted and that military service is voluntary, Moore has presented us with a half-baked half-truth.
For instance, Brooks Johnson, the son of Senator Tim Johnson (a democratic senator from South Dakota), is currently serving with distinction in the 101st Airborne.
Also, regardless of what you think of Senator Joseph Biden (D-DE), it's undeniable that he helped to pin the bars on his son, Beau Biden, who is a member of the Delaware Army National Guard (there's a picture of him being sworn in here).
Although Beau isn't in the line of fire (he is currently practicing as a judge advocate), he is a military serviceman nonetheless.
Another interesting fact: Attorney General John Ashcroft, defender of the much-maligned Patriot Act and punching bag of the liberal left, has a son who is currently on active duty in the Middle East. His name is Andrew Ashcroft, and he serves in the Persian Gulf aboard a naval destroyer called the USS McFaul (you can find the reference a few paragraphs down here).
Furthermore, new evidence reveals that Representative Kennedy (R-MN), one of the lawmakers accosted in Fahrenheit 9/11, was censored by Michael Moore.
According to the Star Tribune, Kennedy, when asked if he would be willing to send his son to Iraq, responded by stating that he had a nephew who was en-route to Afghanistan. He went on to inform Moore that his son was thinking about a career in the navy and that two of his nephews had already served in the armed forces, Kennedy's side of the conversation, however, was cut from the film, leaving him looking bewildered and defensive.
What was Michael's excuse for trimming the key segment? Kennedy's remarks didn't help his thesis:
"He mentioned that he had a nephew that was going over to Afghanistan," Moore recounted. "So then I said 'No, no, that's not our job here today. We want you to send your child to Iraq. Not a nephew.
' "
Kennedy lambasted Moore as a "master of the misleading" after viewing the interview in question.
But that's not all. Another ambushed legislator, Representative John Tanner, was accosted by Moore while he was rushing to get to the floor of Congress. The Hill reports that Tanner"[...] didn't even know who Michael Moore was [...] He asked me if I voted for the war and if I'd send my children to the war. I told him I did and that my children were full grown."
posted by Grant @ 23:37
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The point is that the working class bears most of the military burden. Stopping congressmen in the street may be a slightly strange way of demonstrating this --- A pie chart would be good enough for me.
Black, Hispanic Casualties Not Disproportionate
That site examines the numbers. While demonstrating that blacks are not disproportionably represented in the military, it does say...
"If anybody should be complaining about battlefield deaths, it is poor, rural whites," Moskos noted. "Actually, it's mostly the white working class that is going to die in Iraq." His prediction has come true. A casualty is more likely to be a white man from West Virginia or Idaho than a minority from Harlem or East L.A.
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Fahrenheit Fact no. 15: Happy and healthy in Iraq?
Here's what an Iraqi (resident of Baghdad since 1980) thought of the portrayal in "Fahrenheit 9/11":
Moore shows scenes of Baghdad before the invasion and in his weltanschauung, it's a place filled with nothing but happy, smiling, giggly, overjoyed Baghdadis. No pain and suffering there. No rape, murder, gassing, imprisoning, silencing of the citizens in these scenes.
Excuse me is this my Baghdad you talk about ,that Baghdad I live in for more than 20 year[s] ,with all what we lived through[?] How could we be happy and smiling...how can we can be Happy ,and I['ve had] friends executed. I got b[r]others in jail ,how? We can be happy, and we got nothing to eat, how? we can be happy ,and we got nothing to live for...Iraq was ruled by a regime that had forced a sixth of its population into fearful exile, maybe you have the answers?
[...]
He's absolutely right. Anyone wondering about the state of Iraq before our liberation should go to www.massgraves.info.
A compelling (but EXTREMELY GRAPHIC) depiction of Saddam's torture can found here and here (links provided by pulse15217). However, BE WARNED - these movie clips are not for children or the faint of heart. We here at Fahrenheit Fact take no responsibility for any and all trauma suffered while watching them. However, they do serve to provide a fitting contrast to the pre-war images of happy, smiling Iraqis that Moore presents in F-9/11.
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Yes... I think Moore's representation of how "great" it was in Iraq under Saddam was greatly overdone. But I guess the point he as trying to make is that there are more Iraqis dying after the Invasion than before.
And we still have yet to see if the new government will be much better... or whether it will even survive.
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Fahrenheit Fact no. 16: All embassies have Secret Service protection
NARRATOR: Even though we were nowhere near the White House, for some reason the
Secret Service had shown up to ask us what we
were doing standing across the street from the Saudi embassy.
MICHAEL MOORE: We're not here to cause any trouble or anything. Uh, ya know, is
that...
OFFICER: That's fine. Just wanted to get some information on what was going on.
MICHAEL MOORE: Yeah yeah yeah, I didn't realize the Secret Service guards foreign
embassies.
OFFICER: Uh, not usually, no sir.
(Emphasis mine)
But the agent was wrong- Moore does not mention this. He allows us to believe that only the Saudi Embassy has secret service protection, which is untrue. For example, the Secret Service has this to say:
After several name revisions, the force officially adopted its current name, the United States Secret Service Uniformed Division in 1977. While protection of the White House Complex remains its primary mission, the Uniformed Division's responsibilities have expanded greatly over the years.
They now protect the following:
* the White House Complex, the Main Treasury Building and Annex, and other Presidential offices;
* the President and members of the immediate family;
* the temporary official residence of the Vice President in the District of Columbia;
* the Vice President and members of the immediate family; and * foreign diplomatic missions in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area and throughout the United States, and its territories and possessions, as prescribed by statute.
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Ok. But these were the words of the Secret Service agent himself. And it was the SS Agent who decided to be a part of this segment... Moore was just standing across the street from the Embassy 'minding his own business."
But yes... Moore used this to imply that the Saudis get special treatment by this government. Naught, Naughty.
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Fahrenheit Fact no. 17: 75-80% of "$1.4 billion" Saudi connection false
Newsweek writes:
June 30 - In his new movie, “Fahrenheit 9/11,” film-maker Michael Moore makes the eye-popping claim that Saudi Arabian interests “have given” $1.4 billion to firms connected to the family and friends of President George W. Bush. This, Moore suggests, helps explain one of the principal themes of the film: that the Bush White House has shown remarkable solicitude to the Saudi royals, even to the point of compromising the war on terror. When you and your associates get money like that, Moore says at one point in the movie, “who you gonna like? Who’s your Daddy?”
More even uses the number $1.4 billion:
Is it rude to suggest that when the Bush family wakes up in the morning they might be thinking about what's best for the Saudis instead of what's best for you? Or me? 'Cuz $1.4 billion doesn't just buy a lot of flights out of the country, it buys a lot of love.
But Newsweek kindly informs us:
Moore derives the $1.4 billion figure from journalist Craig Unger’s book, “House of Bush, House of Saud.” Nearly 90 percent of that amount, $1.18 billion, comes from just one source: contracts in the early to mid-1990’s that the Saudi Arabian government awarded to a U.S. defense contractor, BDM, for training the country’s military and National Guard. What’s the significance of BDM? The firm at the time was owned by the Carlyle Group, the powerhouse private-equity firm whose Asian-affiliate advisory board has included the president’s father, George H.W.
Bush...Leave aside the tenuous six-degrees-of-separation nature of this “connection.” The main problem with this figure, according to Carlyle spokesman Chris Ullman, is that former president Bush didn’t join the Carlyle advisory board until April, 1998—five months after Carlyle had already sold BDM to another defense firm...“The figure is inaccurate and misleading,” said Ullman. “The movie clearly implies that the Saudis gave $1.4 billion to the Bushes and their friends. But most of it went to a Carlyle Group company before Bush even joined the firm. Bush had nothing to do with BDM.”
(all emphasis mine)
So Moore ends up being $1.18 billion off- %75-80 of his Bush/Saudi connection is verifiably untrue.
-a_sdf
posted by curtis @ 18:12
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This sounds like a valid point.
If you read what Moore actually said, his statement is true. But Moore certainly did choose his words very carefully and attempted to mislead.
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Fahrenheit Fact no. 18: Bush isn't the only one in Carlyle
Many thanks to Newsweek for their Moore article. Here's another gem from the article: Did you know that the Democratic Party is just as involved in the Carlyle group?:
Its founding and still managing partner is David Rubenstein, a former top domestic policy advisor to Jimmy Carter. Among the firm’s senior advisors is Thomas “Mack” McLarty, Bill Clinton’s former White House chief of staff, and Arthur Levitt, Clinton’s former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. One of its other managing partners is William Kennard, Clinton’s chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. Spokesman Ullman was the Clinton-era spokesman for the SEC
Also, George Sorros, much-beloved mogul of the far-left, is also in Carlyle.
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Again... I am certainly no fan of the republicrats. And agree that Moore should have done more to show that the Democratic faction of the Republicrats can be just as bad as the other.
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Fahrenheit Fact no. 19: Unger questions Bush/bin Laden relationship
A constant theme of "Fahrenheit 9/11" is Moore's attempt to link Bush with bin Laden. From the film:
NARRATOR: So where did George W. Bush get his money? One person who did invest in him was James R. Bath. (cut to "Trust Agreement") Bush's good friend James Bath was hired by the bin Laden family to manage their money in Texas and invest in businesses. (zoom in on 'Salem bin Laden' signature) And James Bath himself in turn invested in George W. Bush.
Moore uses Unger as a main source for many of the Bush/Saudi connections in the movie. But Unger himself doubts the Bush/bin Ladin connection. Newsweek writes:
Leaving aside the fact that the bin Laden family, which runs one of Saudi Arabia’s biggest construction firms, has never been linked to terrorism, the movie—which relied heavily on Unger’s book—fails to note the author’s conclusion about what to make of the supposed Bin Laden-Bath-Bush nexus: that it may not mean anything. The “Bush-Bin Laden ‘relationships’ were indirect—two degrees of separation, perhaps—and at times have been overstated,” Unger writes in his book. While critics have charged that bin Laden money found its way into Arbusto through Bath, Unger notes that “no hard evidence has ever been found to back up that charge” and Bath himself has adamantly denied it. “One hundred percent of those funds (in Arbusto) were mine,” says Bath in a footnote on page 101 of Unger’s book. “It was a purely personal investment.”
------------------------
Yes. But as Moore says, it doesn't "look good" that the Bush family has had financial ties to the Bin Laden family and the Suadis... The people who were "really" responsible for 911.
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Fahrenheit Fact no. 20: Condi doesn't think Iraq was involved in 9/11
Remember this quote from Condi Rice about Iraq in Fahrenheit 9/11?:
“Oh, indeed there is a tie between Iraq and what happened on 9/11."
How about the whole quote:
"It’s not that Saddam Hussein was somehow himself and his regime involved in 9/11, but, if you think about what caused 9/11, it is the rise of ideologies of hatred that lead people to drive airplanes into buildings in New York.”
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Ohhh.. So the administration didnt try to tie Saddam with 911. I must have misheard them.
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Fahrenheit Fact no. 21: Bush was raising money for charity during "have mores" quote
From an old(er) CNN.com article:
They [Bush and Gore] traded barbs Thursday night during the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation dinner which, while known for its irreverence and political wit, also raised $900,000 for health care programs in the Archdiocese of New York.
What else?:
Bush looked out over the well-dressed audience and declared it an impressive gathering of the "have and have-mores."
"Some people call you the elite, I call you my base," he said.
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Again.... I don't get what this response is trying to say. Bush said it. He may have meant it as a joke, but I think it is a true statement.
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Fahrenheit Fact no. 22: Gore didn't win "every recount scenario"
In Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore asserts that Gore won the election, even after vote recounts. From the film:
NARRATOR: And hope that the other side will just sit by and wait for the phone to ring. And even if numerous independent investigations prove that Gore got the most votes...
JEFFREY TOBIN: If there was a statewide recount, under every scenario, Gore won the election.
Now, it is true that many post-election investigations claimed Gore had won. But under every scenario? Turns out, no. From the LA Times:
WASHINGTON — If the U.S. Supreme Court had allowed Florida's courts to finish their abortive recount of last year's deadlocked presidential election, President Bush probably still would have won by several hundred votes, a comprehensive study of the uncounted ballots has found.
But if the recount had been held under new vote-counting rules that Florida and other states now are adopting--rules aimed at recording the intentions of as many voters as possible--Democratic candidate Al Gore probably would have won, although by an even thinner margin, the study found.
The study provides evidence that more Florida voters attempted to vote for Gore than for Bush--but so many Gore voters marked their ballots improperly that Bush received more valid votes. As a result, under rules devised by the Florida Supreme Court and accepted by the Gore campaign at the time, Bush probably would have won a recount, the study found.
Since the study was launched, the nation's debate over the Florida recount has cooled and Bush, whose legitimacy as president already was accepted by a large majority in January, has won massive public approval for his leadership of the war against terrorism.
The study, a painstaking inspection of 175,010 Florida ballots that were not included in the state's certified tally, found as many as 23,799 additional, potentially valid votes for Gore or Bush.
The significance of these ballots depends on what standards are used to weigh their validity. Under some recount rules, Bush wins. Under others, Gore wins.
So yes, Gore did win some recount scenarios. But so did Bush- clearly at odds with the "every scenario" Bush loss claim that "Fahrenheit 9/11" makes.
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I agree. The margins here were so thin that it is difficult to say that either of these two guys "really" won the election.
A choice had to be made, and it was made -- the original election result stood.
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Fahrenheit Fact no. 23: Privacy laws force White House to black out Bath's name
Moore makes a big deal out of the "blacked out" name in Bush's military records, in fact, he even suggests the removal of the name is part of the larger Bush conspiracy:
I already had a copy of his military records - uncensored - obtained in the year 2000. And there is one glaring difference between the records released in 2000 and those he released in 2004. (image of “records,” black marks) A name had been blacked out. In 1972, two airmen were suspended for failing to take their medical examination. One was George W. Bush. And the other was James R. Bath.
But privacy laws say that the White House cannot release Bath's personal information:
No agency shall disclose any record which is contained in a system of records by any means of communication to any person, or to another agency, except pursuant to a written request by, or with the prior written consent of, the individual to whom the record pertains, unless disclosure of the record would be--
[...]
Also, please note that the way the law is implemented, the White House would not have had to black the name out in 2000, but would have in 2004.
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Hmmm... OK. I guess Moore jumped the gun on this one. But is does not change the fact that the money manager for the Bin Ladens invested in GW's first business.
It's a small world, after all.
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Fahrenheit Fact no. 24: Fox called Florida for Gore first; CBS was the first network to retract the Gore result
In Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore makes the assertion that the Fox News Channel was the reason that other networks began to call Florida for Bush instead of Gore
[...]
Here's a timeline of the network projections, from an article soon to be published
in National Review by David Kopel:
In fact, the networks which called Florida for Gore did so early in the evening—before polls had even closed in the Florida panhandle, which is part of the Central Time Zone. NBC called Florida for Gore at 7:49:40 p.m., Eastern Time.
This was 10 minutes before polls closed in the Florida panhandle. Thirty seconds later, CBS called Florida for Gore. And at 7:52 p.m., Fox called Florida for Gore.
Moore never lets the audience know that Fox was among the networks which made the error of calling Florida for Gore prematurely. Then at 8:02 p.m., ABC called Florida for Gore. Only ABC had waited until the Florida polls were closed.
The premature calls probably cost Bush thousands of votes from the conservative panhandle, as discouraged last-minute voters heard that their state had already been decided, and many voters who were waiting in line left the polling place. In Florida, as elsewhere, voters who have arrived at the polling place before closing time often end up voting after closing time, because of long lines. The conventional wisdom of politics is that supporters of the losing candidate are most likely to give up on voting when they hear that their side has already lost.
(Thus, on election night 1980, when incumbent President Jimmy Carter gave a concession speech while polls were still open on the West coast, the early concession was widely blamed for costing the Democrats several Congressional seats in the West. The fact that all the networks had declared Reagan a landslide winner while West coast voting was still in progress was also blamed for Democratic losses in the West.) Even if the premature television calls affected all potential voters equally, the effect was to reduce Republican votes significantly, because the Florida panhandle is a Republican stronghold; depress overall turnout in the panhandle, and you will necessarily depress more Republican than Democratic votes.
At 10:00 p.m., which network took the lead in retracting the premature Florida result? The first retracting network was CBS, not Fox
Over four hours later, at 2:16 a.m., Fox projected Bush as the Florida winner, as did all the other networks by 2:20 a.m.
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Ok.
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Fahrenheit Fact no. 25: Moore claims Saudis have $100 billion more invested in America than is believed they have invested in the entire world
From Dave Kopel:
Moore asks Craig Unger: “How much money do the Saudis have invested in America, roughly?”
Unger replies “Uh, I've heard figures as high as $860 billion dollars.”
Instead of relying on unsourced figures that someone says he “heard,” let’s look at the available data. According to the Institute for Research Middle Eastern Policy (a pro-Saudi think tank which tries to emphasize the importance of Saudi money to the United States), in February 2003 total worldwide Saudi investment was at least $700 billion. Sixty percent of the Saudi investments were in the United States, so the Saudis had about 420 billion invested in the U.S.—a large amount, but less than half of the amount that Moore’s source claims he “heard.” (Tanya C. Hsu , “The United States Must Not Neglect Saudi Arabian Investment” Sept. 23, 2003.)
From the Institute for Research Middle Eastern Policy:
In February 2003, total worldwide Saudi investment, including investment in the United States and Europe, was conservatively estimated at U.S. $700 billion. The United States received approximately 60% of the global Saudi investment allocation. (See exhibit #2)
)
Note that this is their worldwide investment, not their US investment.
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Ok. He "heard" wrong. But 60% of $700 billion still is a lot of money.
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Fahrenheit Fact no. 26: Rep. Porter Goss does have a toll-free number
One of the things Moore slams Rep. Porter Gross for is supposedly not having an "800 number". From Dave Kopel:
Defending the Patriot Act, Representative Porter Goss says that he has an “800 number” for people to call to report problems with the Act. Fahrenheit shoots back than Goss does not have such a number; the ordinary telephone number for Goss’s office is flashed on the screen.
You’d never know by watching Fahrenheit, but Rep. Goss does have a toll-free number to which Patriot Act complaints can be reported. The number belongs to the Committee which Goss chairs, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
The number is (877) 858-9040.
Although the Committee’s number is toll-free, the prefix is not “800,” and Moore exploits this trivial fact to create the false impression that Goss lied about having a toll-free number.
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Ok. Now that I have the "877" number, maybe I should give them a call.
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Fahrenheit Fact no. 27: Saddam has murdered Americans
Many thanks to Dave Kopel, who's forthcoming article on Fahrenheit 9/11 provides many, many factual problems with the film, as well as providing us with a lot of facts. Here he addresses the assertion that Saddam never "murdered" an American:
Fahrenheit asserts that Saddam’s Iraq was a nation that “had never attacked the United States. A nation that had never threatened to attack the United States. A nation that had never murdered a single American citizen.”
[...]
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But Iraq didn't threaten to attack the United States... and the Iraqi government wasn't part of 911.
As to how many Americans the Iraq' government has "murdered"... that may have been an exaggeration. But I don't think it warranted a $200+ Billion dollar war in order to deal with this "threat".
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Fahrenheit Fact no. 28: Bush policies regarding military pay misrepresented
The David Kopel piece soon to be published in NRO continues to be a major resource. One of Fahrenheit 9/11's biggest claims is the reduction in funds for members of the military. But Kopel points out that Moore can't even get those facts straight:
Bush “supported closing veterans hospitals” says Moore. The Bush Department of Veteran’s Affairs did propose closing seven hospitals in areas with declining populations where the hospitals were underutilized, and whose veterans could be served by other hospitals. Moore does not say that the Department also proposed building new hospitals in areas where needs were growing, and also building blind rehabilitation centers and spinal cord injury centers. (For more, see the Final Report of the independent commission on veterans hospitals, which agrees with some of the Bush proposals, and with some of the objections raised by critics.)
According to Moore, Bush “tried to double the prescription drug costs for veterans.” What Bush proposed was raising the prescription co-pay from $7 to $15, for veterans with incomes of over $24,000 a year. Prescription costs would have remained very heavily subsidized by taxpayers.
Bush, announces Moore, “proposed cutting combat soldiers’ pay by 33%.” Not exactly. In addition to regular military salaries, soldiers in certain areas (not just combat zones) receive an “imminent danger” bonus of $150 a month. In April 2003, Congress retroactively enacted a special increase of $75, for the fiscal year of Oct. 1, 2002 through Sept. 30, 2003. At first, the Bush administration did not support renewing the special bonus, but then changed its position.
Likewise, Congress had passed a special one-year increase in the family separation allowance (for service personnel stationed in places where their families cannot join them) from $100 to $250. Bush’s initial opposition to extending the special increase was presented by Moore as “cutting assistance to their families by 60%.” (Edward Epstein, “Pentagon reverses course, won’t cut troops’ pay,” San Francisco Chronicle, Aug. 15, 2003.)
Even if one characterizes not renewing a special bonus as a “cut,” Fahrenheit misleads the viewer into thinking that the cuts applied to total compensation, rather than only to pay supplements which constitute only a small percentage of a soldier’s income. An enlisted man with four months of experience receives an annual salary more than $27,000. (Rod Powers, “What the Recruiter Never Told You: Military Pay.”)
In 2003, Congress enacted a Bush administration proposal to raise all military salaries by 3.7%, with extra “targeted” pay increases for non-commissioned officer. NCOs are lower-ranking officers who typically join the military with lower levels of education than commissioned officers. (Sgt. 1st Class Doug Sample, “Defense Department Targets Military Pay Increases for 2004,” American Forces Press Service.)
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Sounds like Moore misrepresented the numbers. But it does not alter the fact that Bush has often been on the "other side" of the pay issue for servicemen.
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Fahrenheit Fact no. 29: Watch this drive, Yassir!
Here's another one of Moore's myriad misrepresentations, this time involving one of the most quoted scenes in F-9/11. The Media Research Center had this to say:
The TV ads for Michael Moore’s “documentary” Fahrenheit 9/11 feature a mocking clip of President Bush on a golf course. Bush declares, “I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorists killers,” and then Moore jumps to Bush adding, as he prepares to swing at a golf ball, “now watch this drive.”
Tuesday night on FNC’s Special Report with Brit Hume, Brian Wilson noted how “the viewer is left with the misleading impression Mr. Bush is talking about al-Qaeda terrorists.” But Wilson disclosed that “a check of the raw tape reveals the President is talking about an attack against Israel, carried out by a Palestinian suicide bomber.”
-TRC
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Moore didn't "jump" to the segment where Bush says "now watch this drive". It was part of the same sequence.
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Fahrenheit Fact no. 30: Moore's military double-think
One of the biggest themes in Fahrenheit 9/11 is the humanity of war and the brave and noble sacrifices made by our troops to appease Bush's war lust. One particularly moving segment of the film traces Lila Lipscomb and her emotional reaction to her son, Michael Peterson's, death. Moore is right there with her, the very picture of consolation and regret.
New evidence, however, reveals that Mike's reverent attitude towards our soldiers may be a very recent development.
In a May 17th article for The Guardian, Moore stated,
"When you see the movie you will see things you have never seen before, you will learn things you have never known before. Half the movie is about Iraq - we were able to get film crews embedded with American troops without them knowing that it was Michael Moore. They are totally f***ed."
A fluke? Not quite. On the 14th of April, 2004, Moore authored the following post on his website:
"The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not "insurgents" or "terrorists" or "The Enemy." They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow -- and they will win."
Later on, when addressing the possibility of U.N. help in the Iraqi conflict, Moore says the following:
"There is a lot of talk amongst Bush's opponents that we should turn this war over to the United Nations. Why should the other countries of this world, countries who tried to talk us out of this folly, now have to clean up our mess? I oppose the U.N. or anyone else risking the lives of their citizens to extract us from our debacle. I'm sorry, but the majority of Americans supported this war once it began and, sadly, that majority must now sacrifice their children until enough blood has been let that maybe -- just maybe -- God and the Iraqi people will forgive us in the end. "
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Yes. Moore had it out for the troops. That's why he didn't include the footage mentioned in item #5.
And I myself have questioned the usage of the word "terrorist" to describe Iraqis fighting against the occupation of their own country.
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Fahrenheit Fact no. 31: Large number of Congress people are veterans
Moore does his best in Fahrenheit 9/11 to present U.S. Congress people as wealthy, ignorant aristocrats who send poor soldiers to die in a war zone to which they will not commit their own children.
However, a bit of research shows us that our representatives and senators may not be as aloof as Moore implies:
According to a tally compiled by Richard Aragon and John Rossie, 101 of the men and women sitting in the House of Representatives formerly served in the military.
Of these, 17 saw active duty in combat zones. When we consider that there are 435 seats in the House, we see that close to a fourth of them gave a portion of their lives to the U.S. military.
The Senate numbers are even more surprising. Of the 100 U.S. Senators, 36 of them are former military servicemen (9 of whom saw combat duty). That means a little over a third of America's senators once served in the very vocation Moore implies they know nothing about.
-TRC
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Moore doesn't hide this fact. The first congressman he interviews mentions that he served in the military.
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Fahrenheit Fact no. 32: 20 Counties ignored voter removal list
One of the segments in "Fahrenheit 9/11" concerns the fiasco surrounding the removal of convicted felons from the voter rolls in Florida. From the film:
NARRATOR: Second, make sure the chairman of your campaign is also the vote count woman. And that her state has hired a company that's gonna knock voters off the roles who aren't likely to vote for you. You can usually tell 'em by the color of their skin.
[...]
"The error rate was 9.9 percent for whites, 8.7 percent for Hispanics, and only a 5.1 percent for African-Americans."
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Yes... Claiming with authority that Gore "really won" the election is the largest blunder of this film.
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Fahrenheit Fact no. 33: The Iraq-Al Qaeda connection
From the film:
PRESIDENT BUSH: Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists. Including members of al Qaeda.
VP CHENEY: There was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda.
PRESIDENT BUSH: Saddam / al Qaeda / Saddam / al Qaeda / Saddam / al Qaeda / Saddam / Saddam / Saddam / al Qaeda
SECRETARY RUMSFELD: It is only a matter of time before terrorists states armed with weapons of mass destruction develop the capability to deliver those weapons to US cities.
SECRETARY POWELL: What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence.
PRESIDENT BUSH: This is a man who hates America. / This is a man who cannot stand what we stand for. / His willingness to terrorize himself. / He hates the fact, like al Qaeda does, that we love freedom. / After all, this is a guy that tried to kill my dad at one time.
REP. JIM MCDERMOTT: They simply got people to believe that there was a real threat out there, when in fact there wasn't one.
SECRETARY RUMSFELD: You get told things every day that don't happen. It doesn't seem to bother people.
NARRATOR: Of course, the Democrats were there to put a stop to all these Falsehoods.
Moore groups the Iraq/Al Qaeda connection under the word "falsehoods". But there is a well-documented Iraq/Al Qaeda connection.
Dave Kopel writes:
...consider the facts presented in Stephen F. Hayes's book, The Connection : How al Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America (N.Y.: HarperCollins, 2004). The first paragraph of the last chapter (pp. 177-78) sums up some of the evidence:
Iraqi intelligence documents from 1992 list Osama bin Laden as an Iraqi intelligence asset.Numerous sources have reported a 1993 nonaggression pact between Iraq and al Qaeda. The former deputy director of Iraqi intelligence now in U.S. custody says that bin Laden asked the Iraqi regime for arms and training in a face-to-face meeting in 1994. Senior al Qaeda leader Abu Hajer al Iraqi met with Iraqi intelligence officials in 1995. The National Security Agency intercepted telephone conversations between al Qaeda-supported Sudanese military officials and the head of Iraq's chemical weapons program in 1996. Al Qaeda sent Abu Abdallah al Iraqi to Iraq for help with weapons of mass destruction in 1997. An indictment from the Clinton-era Justice Department cited Iraqi assistance on al Qaeda "weapons development" in 1998. A senior Clinton administration counterterrorism official told the Washington Post that the U.S. government was "sure" Iraq had supported al Qaeda chemical weapons programs in 1999. An Iraqi working closely with the Iraqi embassy in Kuala Lumpur was photographed with September 11 hijacker Khalid al Mihdhar en route to a planning meeting for the bombing of the USS Cole and the September 11 attacks in 2000. Satellite photographs showed al Qaeda members in 2001 traveling en masse to a compound in northern Iraq financed, in part, by the Iraqi regime. Abu Musab al Zarqawi, senior al Qaeda associate, operated openly in Baghdad and received medical attention at a regime-supported hospital in 2002. Documents discovered in postwar Iraq in 2003 reveal that Saddam's regime harbored and supported Abdul Rahman Yasin, an Iraqi who mixed the chemicals for the 1993 World Trade Center attack...
The Iraq Al-Qaeda connection is well-documented, and hardly a "falsehood" as Moore claims.
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Here is how "well-documented" the Saddam-Bin Laden relationship is...
The Case of the Misunderstood Memo
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Fahrenheit Fact no. 34: the 8/06/01 PDB
In "Fahrenheit 9/11", Moore implies that George W. Bush never read the August 6th
PDB:
..."Or perhaps he just should have read the security briefing that was given to him on August 6, 2001 that said that Osama bin Laden was planning to attack America by hijacking airplanes..."
Dave Kopel writes:
Castigating the allegedly lazy President, Moore says, "Or perhaps he just should have read the security briefing that was given to him on August 6, 2001 that said that Osama bin Laden was planning to attack America by hijacking airplanes."
Moore supplies no evidence for his assertion that President Bush did not read the August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Brief. Moore's assertion appears to be a complete fabrication.
Moore smirks that perhaps President Bush did not read the Briefing because its title was so vague. Moore then cuts to Condoleezza Rice announcing the title of the Briefing: "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." Here, Moore seems to be playing off Condoleezza Rice's testimony of the September 11 Commission that the contents of the memo were vague.
However, no-one (except Moore) has ever claimed that Bush did not read the Briefing, or that he did not read it because the title was vague. Rather, Condoleezza Rice had told the press conference that the information in the Briefing was "very vague."
From the film:
"Or perhaps he just should have read the security briefing that was given to him on August 6, 2001 that said that Osama bin Laden was planning to attack America by hijacking airplanes. (shot of Bush at a meeting, date-stamped August 6, 2001) Or maybe he wasn't worried about the terrorist threat because the title of the report was too vague."
It turns out that the Bush administration claims that the contents of the memo- not the title- were vague:
"Now, on August 6th, the President received a presidential daily briefing which was not a warning briefing, but an analytic report. This analytic report, which did not have warning information in it of the kind that said, they are talking about an attack against so forth or so on, it was an analytic report that talked about UBL's methods of operation, talked about what he had done historically, in 1997, in 1998. It mentioned hijacking, but hijacking in the traditional sense, and in a sense, said that the most important and most likely thing was that they would take over an airliner, holding passengers and demand the release of one of their operatives. And the blind sheikh was mentioned by name as -- even though he's not an operative of al Qaeda, but as somebody who might be bargained in this way.
I want to reiterate, it was not a warning. There was no specific time, place or method mentioned. What you have seen in the run-up that I've talked about is that the FAA was reacting to the same kind of generalized information about a potential hijacking as a method that al Qaeda might employ, but no specific information saying that they were planning such an attack at a particular time.
Moore is correct when he notes that the Aug. 6th memo talks about an impending attack on the United States. At the time, however most evidence suggested an overseas attack, not one in America:
There is one other FAA IC in this period, issued on August 16th, where the FAA issued an IC on disguised weapons. They were concerned about some reports that the terrorists had made breakthroughs in cell phones, key chains and pens as weapons
There are a number of other ICs that were also issued; we don't think they were germane to this, but I'm sure you can get the full record of all of the ICs that were released from Transportation.
I want to reiterate that during this time, the overwhelming bulk of the evidence was that this was an attack that was likely to take place overseas. The State Department, the Defense Department were on very high states of alert. The embassies were -- have very clear protocols on how to button up; so does the military. That was done. But at home, while there was much less reporting or chatter at home, people were thinking about the U.S. and the FBI was involved in a number of investigations of potential al Qaeda personnel operating in the United States."
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Here is Michel Moore's response to this one....
Factual Back-Up for Fahrenheit 9/11: Section Two
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Fahrenheit Fact no. 35: Moore misrepresents newspaper headlines, dates
(via Moorewatch):
From Bill Flick at the Pantagraph:
Moore's flick: bowling for movie edits
In my e-mail today is a note that joyfully begins, "YOU ARE A HORSE'S (REAR
FLANK)!!!"
Another fan announces I want to "only dirtbag" and "find trivial error" with Michael Moore for the "public service ... he has otherwise done."
Yet another says I "obviously ... don't fully research (my) newspaper columns" and that the writer plans to type out a letter to the editor to really let me have it.
What set off this latest love-fest was a small blurb that appeared in this space a week ago on a curious scene in Michael Moore's otherwise entertaining movie, "Fahrenheit 9/11."
In a flash-second early on, the movie shows various newspaper headlines on coverage of the presidential election of 2000, and one of them is from the alleged Dec. 19, 2001 edition of the Bloomington, IL Pantagraph.
Golly, we thought. What an honor.
Just for fun, we went back to the Dec. 19, 2001 editions, to ogle the headline and paper shown in the movie.
But somehow there was no such news story in that day's paper.
We found that curious.
How could a news headline that never appeared in the Dec. 19 paper appear in a copy of the Dec. 19 paper shown in the movie?
Now we learn how.
The Pantagraph headline shown in the movie -- "LATEST FLORIDA RECOUNT SHOWS GORE WON ELECTION" -- actually appeared in our Dec. 5 edition.
Illogically, if not inexplicably, a page apparently was "pasted together" to look like an actual Pantagraph page for the movie shot.
And here also is why we could never find the news story.
It never was one.
Instead it was the headline atop a letter to the editor, significantly blown up to make it look like a news story.
Since the original column blurb appeared on this page, it found its way on the Internet.
It was posted on something called moorewatch.com. It appeared on Yahoo. It became a link on the national library site, LISNews.com. It became part of a reaction link of the Moore movie on CBS.com.
Someone then took the time to slow down the film, frame-by-frame, and take an actual picture of the alleged Pantagraph page. (It is reprinted here, as it appears at moorewatch.com. The red line has been added by someone at the Internet site to show the page's date is wrong in the movie.)
(Due to a desire not to suck up the Pantagraph's bandwidth, the image can be viewed here.)
With all that, suddenly it became a flash point in something on the Internet known as weblogs -- they are chat rooms of sorts -- and, to make a short story long, that is how my e-mail in-box is overflowing with folk apparently short with me because they think I have bashed Moore for factual inaccuracy, if not manipulation.
Which, uh, I have.
Of special humor -- to local observers, at least -- is the world's reaction to a "Pantagraph."
In the weblogs, people wonder why "a magazine" would make the movie.
They wonder what was our point and, in one writer's case, "what was (my) underlying goal." (To get home by about 6 is always my goal, by the way.)
Our own personal favorite is a writer who, tongue-in-cheek, declares at moorewatch.com: "Duh! Come on! You all know that the Bush and bin Laden families OWN the Bloomington Pantagraph! They simply had all of their distribution recalled and reprinted with Dec. 5 instead of 19 to totally discredit Moore!"
Golly. How conniving.
Despite our requests, we should add that Michael Moore remains silent to our repeated pleas for a comment.
We promise not to even edit them.
Moore or less, of course.
Why is Moore mis-representing headlines?
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Again... this is about the 2000 election.
But it appears that Moore did "enhance" this article for the big screen. But, I don't think he made it look like a "Front-page story". In any case, I wonder why he couldn't have just shown a real article on this subject to show in his film. I'm sure one existed somewhere .
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oBrien
Junior Spy
Post #4258
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Posted: Sun 2004-07-25 06:16
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| Politics: Libertarian-Syndicalist |
Country: American Empire |
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| Something Moore Forgot to Mention |
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i was wondering where you've been, Big Brother -- now i know. by the way, so you guys can check my sources, i got the following from:
one thing Moore forgot to mention was the gross ineptitude with which the 9/11 debacle was handled by the military. i mean, these huge commercial jet liners manage to stray off course for around an hour through some of most heavily defendable airspace in the country, and not a single one was shot down? above is a map of the flight paths of the four hijacked planes. see all those air force bases -- out of 28, 7 were on high alert status!
even more interesting are the responses to each of these flights by the air force:- flight 11: none!
- flight 175: when the hijacked plane was 9 minutes from the world trade center, the f-15's from Otis air force base -- over 100 miles away -- were crawling at a mere 540 mph of the 1,665 mph top speed. an f-15's cruising speed is 570 mph, and the impact speed of the hijacked plane was calculated a around 530 mph. --> at top speed, making allowances for acceleration, the planes could have touched wings with their targets in about 4 1/2 minutes. the range of a sparrow AIM-7 is just over 30 miles. so, let's make it 80 miles ... about 3 1/2 minutes to target acquisition, leaving about 5 1/2 minutes for the missiles to travel the 30 miles and destroy the plane -- no problem. even if we allow the missiles 1 1/2 minutes, flight 175 would have been 35 miles away from the world trade center!
- flight 93: none? we now know the hijackers crashed the plane to avoid having their plans thwarted while getting torn to pieces by the desperate passengers. --> my hat's off to you guys!
- flight 77: what a clusterf**k here! the plane was known to be hostile for about 45 minutes, so instead of scrambling the f-16's that were ready at fort andrews -- just 11 miles away from the pentagon -- f-16's were scrambled from langely -- 120 miles south! so, where do they head? toward new york first, and that at only 600 mph! oh, but then someone changed their mind and redirected them to reagan intl airport (in d.c.)! can i hear a WTF?! from the congregation?
now, bear in mind that these planes have been in the air for anywhere between 80 - 110 minutes after having both veered off course AND turned off their transponders! remember when payne stewart's lear jet failed to respond to air traffic controller communications in 1999? f-16's were scrambled to intercept just 20 minutes afterward! the faa and norad have well-established procedures to follow in the case a plane fails to respond to communications and/or deviates from its flight path -- the above is an example of these procedures in effect: essentially, the air traffic controller calls up the ff, who coordinates action with norad, after which fighters are scrambled to intercept the plane to offer it assistance and/or escort it to the nearest available runway.
here are the 3 of the handful of relevent government documents pertaining to the handling of a hijacked plane:as moot as the point may be, since none of the scrambled fighters got anywhere close enough to even intercept the two hijacked planes they were supposedly sent after, from the above documents only the secretary of defense has the authorization to issue the command for lethal action against a suspicious/hostile aircraft! the field commanders hands are tied. vice president cheney finally authorized lethal force to be taken, but only between 0956 - 1006 -- too damn late!
so, basically, we have a story where everyone sat on their hands and dropped the ball: the faa, norad, the fighter pilots, even dick goddamn cheney himself. where are the tapes of the conversations between the air traffic controllers and the faa? they have been mysteriously destroyed, of course. given the multitude of entities involved in this enormous error, the likelihood that it occurred as a result of chance is reduced significantly enough for me to side with the conspiracy theorists that claim the white knew what was going on and deliberately allowed the attacks on 9/11 to happen! what other conclusion is more probable to arrive at? read up on this matter and ask yourself this.
if such is the case, then a great number of heads need to roll -- how many people died?! around 3000 in the world trade center alone. for what? so this administration could push through a shady patriot act to spy on its citizens (but don't worry about increasing security in our ports), increase the military budget to something that eclipses the defense spending of all other nations on the world combined, and then roll over the borders of afganistan and iraq to increase our military presence in the middle east?
i am sick with rage -- my fellow americans would rather watch the titties on tv than use their heads and march on white house, demanding a real 9/11 commission and real accountability for those responsible for this travesty. i'm tired of writing my senator, and the next time i march on the streets, they'll have us corralled into a little area where no one but a bunch of goons with assault rifles can see us (referring to the current state of "security" for the national democratic convention).
_________________
Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Last edited by oBrien on Sun 2004-07-25 18:54; edited 1 time in total |
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Big Brother
Administrator
Post #4262
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Posted: Sun 2004-07-25 17:35
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| Politics: Libertarian-Syndicalist |
Country: American Empire |
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| Re: Something Moore Forgot to Mention |
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| oBrien wrote: |
i was wondering where you've been, Big Brother -- now i know.
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Yes. That was quite a bit of information to go through. A lot of the complaints were rather frivolous, but there were a few genuine complaints. It appears that Moore did have a tendency to exaggerate numbers.... or I should say... that he included a lot of footage in this film of other people exaggerating the numbers. But that is no excuse.
| oBrien wrote: |
one thing Moore forgot to mention was the gross ineptitude with which the 9/11 debacle was handled by the military. i mean, these huge commercial jet liners manage to stray off course for around an hour through some of most heavily defendable airspace in the country, and not a single one was shot down? above is a map of the flight paths of the four hijacked planes. see all those air force bases? |
I hope I don't confuse everybody too much, but now I'm going to come to the defense of Bush.
There was no reason to shoot these planes down.
Planes had been hijacked many times over the last few decades. All of them were taken someplace ... they landed ... and in general, all the hostages survive. Nobody had ever hijacked a plane and slammed them into a building. Shooting the planes down would have been a highly irrational act.
Of course, some people wonder...
Was United Flight 93 shot down on Sept. 11?
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Big Brother
Administrator
Post #4268
Joined: 14 Feb 2004
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Posted: Sun 2004-07-25 19:38
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| Politics: Libertarian-Syndicalist |
Country: American Empire |
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| The Actual Quote |
Post Rating: 0.0/4 (0 votes cast) |
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As a public service, I have created an MP3 which contains the “Orwell quote” from F911 plus the original quote from the movie.
F911-Quote.mp3 
1.1mb - 2:29 minutes
As you can see, the quote is not exactly the same. Moore removed this little bit...
"In accordance with the principles of doubthink..."
...which is forgivable. But he also removed another line from the Movie quote....
"The essential act of modern warfare is the destruction of the produce of human labour. "
...and inserted this line in its stead...
"This new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed. "
This line is not from the movie -- it is from the novel. This means that M&M must have had a copy of the book -- but he apparently did not notice that the rest of the movie quote did not actually come from the novel.
BTW... I also sent an e-mail to Mr. Moore concerning this issue. I know he probably isn't getting many e-mails these days, so I know he'll have no problem getting back with me.
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oBrien
Junior Spy
Post #4271
Joined: 29 Jun 2004
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Posted: Sun 2004-07-25 20:47
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| Politics: Socialist |
Country: American Empire |
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| I don't buy it at all!!! |
Post Rating: 0.0/4 (0 votes cast) |
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| Big Brother wrote: |
There was no reason to shoot these planes down.
Planes had been hijacked many times over the last few decades. All of them were taken someplace ... they landed ... and in general, all the hostages survive. Nobody had ever hijacked a plane and slammed them into a building. Shooting the planes down would have been a highly irrational act. |
there was no reason to shoot the first plane down
the first plane to have hit anything was flight 11, into the world trade center, at 0846 hours. it left the logan intl airport in boston at 0759 hours. at 0814 flight 11 fails to respond to an air traffic controller's instruction to climb to 35,000 feet, and at 0820 flight 11's transponder stopped signalling it's iff identification (identification, friend or foe). during this interval flight 11 devatied form its flight plan. that leaves 26 minutes for an intercept to be scrambled after it -- it took less time for the payne stewart's lear to have ben intercepted back in 1999 (see previous post for link)! given the number of air force bases in the vicinity, i find it difficult to believe that flight 11 wouldn't have been intercepted, though of course lethal action wouldn't have been authorized against it in time, i'm sure. however, as my previous post indicates, no action was taken against it at all!
now, after one plane has already plowed into the world trade center, you would think the subsequent planes would have been intercepted and at some point long before 0956 lethal force would have been authorized against any aircraft suspected of being hijacked and heading toward potential military or civilian targets! there was also an isreali intelligence officer aboard flight 11, too, incidetnally? coupled with the fact that odigo, an israeli-owned instant messaging company was warned of an attack against the world trade center at 0645, i find it difficult to believe that this attack came as sucha complete surprise: it seems at least the israelis knew something about it!
but i digress. what about the other flights? here is a list of when each flight's transponder stopped signalling it's iff, deviated from the flight plan, and then crashed into its target:
- flight 175: departed logan intl airport at 0814,
- communication with air traffic control ceased at 0841,
- no transponder signal at 0842,
- faa notifies norad flight has been hijacked at 0843,
- transponder stops singnalling iff at 0846,
- deviates from flight plan at 0849,
! flight 175 imapcts world trade center at 0902.
--> that's about 20 minutes of suspicious activity, which started at roughly the same time the first plane hit the world trade center, roughly 40 minutes after suspicious activity began with flight 11.
- flight 77: departs dulles intl airport at 0820,
- last radio communication at 0850,
- transponder stops signalling and deviates from course at 0856,
- pulls a 180 degree turn-around at 0859,
- w.virgina flight control notices unidentified airplane heading east 0905,
- faa notifies norad flight 77 has been hijacked at 0924,
- after having somehow been "lost" for 37 minutes, washington air traffic controller sees flight 77 and warns dulles intl airport at 0933,
- military c130 identifies as 767, moving low and fast at 0936,
! imapcts western section of pentagon at 0937.
--> how does a plane get "lost" in american airspace for 37 minutes? what about those two phone calls from barbara olson? here we have a plane that is exhibitng suspicious activity for 47 minutes -- 45 before any action was taken, and then it was a clusterf**k (see previosu post).
- flight 93: departs newark intl airport at 0842 scheduled at 0801,
- american airlines warned of potential cockpit intrusion at 0900,
- hijacked between 0910 - 0920,
- first signs of struggle in the cockpit occur at 0928,
- deviates from course, turning 135 degrees, at 0935 (shortly before this cockpit requests new flight plan heading for washington d.c.),
- transponder signal stops at 0940,
! crahes in pennsylvania between 1003 - 1006. before this a number fo calls from passnegers have been made to emergency workers (included is that call to the 911 operator)
--> that's between 43 and 56 minutes of suspicious activity! again, no orders to intercept were issued!
sorry, Big Brother, but i just don't buy it. all of these planes could have been at least intercepted, and there was plenty of time for the defense secretary to issue the authorization for lethal force in the case of flights 175 and 77 ... flight 93 would have been difficult to judge as a hostile target if the pilots intercepting the plance would have arrived at the time when the hijackers were pitching and rolling the plane in an effort to throw off the attacking passengers. still, i know how the military works to a degree, and i am fairly positive action would have been taken if the plane had approached any potential military or civilian targets. at any rate, only two of the planes had orders to intercept, and both of these only flew at around 30% of their maximum speed capability! this is ridiculous, and just stinks of something rotten: all the way down from the white house, to the department of defense, to norad and the faa. such a magnitude of ineffective (in)action, involving so many variables and levels of command reeks of a predetermined plan, not a "failure of the imagination", as those bastard senators claim.
face it, it was avoidable, but was deliberately allowed to happen, and the senate commission is covering this administration's ass, because if word were to get out that this was allowed to happen, the citizens would get outraged and the government would be rocked to its foundations -- which is exactly what is needed!!! we need to do something about this, and i could use any ideas or suggestions you all may have. they've gone too damn far, and have before -- remember the nulcear tests in nevada and bikini atoll?
--> sorry about the spelling errors, but i am too exhauseted to go through this and correct them, as i normally try to do.
_________________
Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. |
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Solitary Poet
Committee Member
Post #4272
Joined: 29 Jun 2004
Posts: 455
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Posted: Sun 2004-07-25 21:06
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| Politics: Patriot |
Country: Evil Empire |
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| M&M |
Post Rating: 0.0/4 (0 votes cast) |
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_________________
Why I don’t believe in “world peace”, by S. Poet
World peace would inevitably lead to lethargy of the human race and it’s eventual extinction. It’s adversity that fuels change; chaos is what moves things forward. It is not religion that fuels war, but opinion and individuality that drive people into conflict.
As long as humans are free to think and disagree there will be conflict and war. The individuality and uniqueness of free thought, that form the mote of the soul, are the causes of war. To end war you must destroy the human soul, you must cease to be human.
If there is nothing left to fight for, there is nothing left to live for. World peace is suicide.
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Big Brother
Administrator
Post #4273
Joined: 14 Feb 2004
Posts: 3002
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Posted: Sun 2004-07-25 21:47
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| Politics: Libertarian-Syndicalist |
Country: American Empire |
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| Re: I don't buy it at all!!! |
Post Rating: 0.0/4 (0 votes cast) |
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| oBrien wrote: |
there was no reason to shoot the first plane down...
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I agree. After the second plane hit the tower at around 9am, it was known that this wasn't just an accident. And only after this time does it become apparent that these things must be shot down. So, for the first two planes it is understandable how no action had been taken. Even if they knew there was "something funny" going on, nobody in their right mind would think of scrambling jets and blowing these hijacked planes out of the sky. There was no reason for them to behave otherwise.
But once it became apparent what the intentions of the hijackers were, who had the authority to give the order to shoot them down? Shooting civilian planes out of the sky would be quite an order for anybody to give. I'm sure that they would want authority from the top. But where was Bush?... He was too busy reading "My Pet Goat" in Florida.
Would this be something that the military was prepared to take on themselves?
I agree that our "Department of Defense" didn't do all that good of a job at defending us. (But then again, defense really isn't the DOD's primary job, is it?... or at least, it hasn't been for quite some time.) I suppose you could claim that the war planners let us down --- That they should have had a plan in place for this eventuality. But who would have thought that somebody would hijack 4 planes at the same time and use them all as human-guided missiles?
Al Qaeda truly had an original battle plan. I don't think anybody really saw this coming.
But it is interesting that Flight 93 "crashed" 3 minutes after Flight 77 dropped in on the pentagon. That's why I think there is some serious credence to the theory that was shot down.
I can only imagine that once Flight 77 brought it all home to the big wigs in the pentagon, they probably freaked out. At this point, I'm sure one of them jumped on the phone and gave the order to blow flight 93 out of the sky. And 3 minutes later, it was scattered across a field.
So yes... the response was extremely slow. But I don't know that it was purposeful --- I just think nobody knew what the hell to do.
Hindsight is always 20/20. |
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Big Brother
Administrator
Post #4283
Joined: 14 Feb 2004
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Posted: Mon 2004-07-26 11:10
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| Politics: Libertarian-Syndicalist |
Country: American Empire |
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| Re: The Actual Quote |
Post Rating: 0.0/4 (0 votes cast) |
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It looks like the folks of moorewatch.com enjoyed my little comments on the Orwell Quote.
| From moorewatch.com |
This is interesting.
[-my comments on the quote-]
Moore has always struck me as a Cliff’s Notes, I-saw-the-movie-why-should-I-read-the-book kind of guy anyway.
Not a huge deal or technically a “lie,” but still...it’s telling in that he never seems to get anything quite right, does he? Yet another out-of-context, creatively-edited tug on the ol’ heartstrings, and accuracy be damned.
Thanks to R.L. for the heads-up.
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They quote me... I quote them... where does the vicious circle end?
But does my anti-censorship policy make my site Ugly?
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carldiesturmer
Minister of Truth
Post #4286
Joined: 18 Feb 2004
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Posted: Mon 2004-07-26 15:07
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| Politics: Anarcho-capitalist |
Country: American Empire |
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| "they didn't know, right... |
Post Rating: 0.0/4 (0 votes cast) |
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do you remember Operation Bojinka?
A plan deviced by philipino muslim terrorists, involving the use of commercial liners to attack landmards.
| From http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Operation%20Bojinka |
Operation Bojinka (also known as Project Bojinka, Bojinka Plot, Bojinga or Bodžinka, from Arabic The expressions Arabic and Classical Arabic usually refer to ?al luGat ul?\\arabi:yat ulfus'X\\a: ( Literally: the pure Arabic language - اللغة العربية؛الفصحى ) which is, according to Arabic speakers, both the language of present-day media across North Africa and the Middle East (from Morocco to Iraq) and the language of the Qur'an. The expression media includes not only television, radio, newspapers and magazines, but also all written matter, including all books, documents of every kind, and reading primers for small children.
..... Click the link for more information. : بجنكة; -- slang in many dialects for explosion An explosion is a sudden release of mechanical, chemical, or nuclear energy in a violent manner, usually with the generation of high temperature and the release of gases. An explosion causes pressure waves in the local medium in which it occurs. Explosions are categorized as deflagrations if these waves are subsonic and detonations if they are supersonic (shock waves).
Most common artificial
..... Click the link for more information.
and pronounced Bo-JIN-ka, except in Egyptian where it is Bo-GIN-ka) was a planned large-scale terrorist
1. Terrorism is a tactic of violence that targets civilians, with the objective of forcing an enemy to favorable terms, by creating fear, demoralization, or political discord in the attacked population.
2. "Terrorism" is also used as a pejorative characterisation of an enemy's attacks as conforming to an immoral philosophy of violence, in a manner outside of warfare, or prohibited in the laws of war.
..... Click the link for more information. attack and precursor to the September 11 Terrorist Attacks
The September 11, 2001 attacks were a series of coordinated terrorist suicide attacks against The Pentagon and the World Trade Center in the United States on September 11, 2001. They were the first highly lethal attack by a foreign force on the U.S. mainland since 1814. With a death toll of nearly 3,000, the attacks exceeded the toll of approximately 2,400 dead following the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in the territory of Hawaii, which provoked U.S. entrance into World War II in 1941.
..... Click the link for more information.
.
The term can refer to the "airline bombing plot" alone, or that combined with the "Pope assassination plot" and the "CIA plane crash plot". The first refers to a plot to destroy 11 airliners on January 21 January 21 is the 21st day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. There are 344 days remaining (345 in leap years).
Events
* 1189 - Philip II of France and Richard I of England begin to assemble troops to wage the Third Crusade.
* 1276 - Innocent V becomes Pope.
* 1643 - Abel Tasman discovers Tonga.
* 1789 - The first American novel, The Power of Sympathy or the Triumph of Nature Founded in Truth
..... Click the link for more information. and 22 January 22 is the 22nd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. There are 343 days remaining (344 in leap years).
Events
* 1771 - Spain cedes Port Egmont in the Falkland Islands to England.
* 1824 - Ashantis crush British forces in the Gold Coast.
* 1840 - British colonists reach New Zealand.
* 1863 - The January Uprising broke out in Poland, Lithunania and Belorussia. The aim of the national movement was to regain Polish-Lithuanian-Ruthenian Commonwealth from occupation of Russia.
*
..... Click the link for more information. , 1995 Centuries: 19th century - 20th century - 21st century
Decades: 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s - 1990s - 2000s 2010s 2020s 2030s 2040s
Years: 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 - 1995 - 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000
This is a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). It has a Golden number of 1. Beginning of the International Decade of the World's Indigenous People (1995-2005): http://www.unesco.org/culture/indigenous/
..... Click the link for more information. , the second refers to a plan to kill John Paul II John Paul II (Latin Johannes Paulus), original name Karol Józef Wojtyła (born May 18, 1920), the bishop of Rome and head of the Roman Catholic church since 1978, the first non-Italian pope in 455 years and the first ever from a Slavic country.
His crusades against political oppression have been widely praised, and his trips abroad—100 by the year 2003—have attracted enormous crowds (some of the largest ever assembled). With these trips, John Paul has covered a distance far greater than that traveled by all other popes combined. They have been an outward sign of the efforts at global bridge-building between nations and between religions that have been central to his pontificate.
..... Click the link for more information.
on January 15
January 15 is the 15th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. There are 350 days remaining (351 in leap years).
Events
* 1559 - Elizabeth I of England is crowned in Westminster Abbey.
* 1582 - Russia cedes Livonia and Estonia to Poland.
* 1759 - The British Museum opens.
* 1777 - American Revolutionary War: New Connecticut (present day Vermont) declares its independence.
*
..... Click the link for more information. , 1995 Centuries: 19th century - 20th century - 21st century
Decades: 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s - 1990s - 2000s 2010s 2020s 2030s 2040s
Years: 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 - 1995 - 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000
This is a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). It has a Golden number of 1. Beginning of the International Decade of the World's Indigenous People (1995-2005): http://www.unesco.org/culture/indigenous/
..... Click the link for more information. , and the third refers a plan to crash a plane into the CIA CIA redirects here. Alternate meanings in CIA (disambiguation).
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is the United States' foreign intelligence agency, responsible for obtaining and analyzing information about foreign governments, corporations, and individuals, and reporting such information to the various branches of the US government. It also maintains a vast covert military apparatus, which during the Cold War was responsible for a number of clandestine campaigns against foreign governments, leaders, and citizens. Its headquarters is in Langley, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C.
..... Click the link for more information.
headquarters in Langley, Virginia Langley is a place in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States. It is the site of the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency. Langley is located at 38° 56' 47" N, 77° 9' 33" W.
..... Click the link for more information.
and other buildings. Operation Bojinka was prevented on January 6 January 6 is the 6th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. There are 359 days remaining (360 in leap years).
Events
* 871 - Alfred of England defeats the Danes in the Battle of Ashdown
* 1066 - Harold Godwinson crowned King of England
* 1205 - Philip of Swabia becomes King of the Romans
* 1540 - King Henry VIII of England marries Anne of Cleves.
* 1661 - The fifth monarchy men unsuccessfully attempt to seize control of London.
*
..... Click the link for more information. and 7 January 7 is the 7th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 358 days remaining (359 in leap years).
The day is 人日 (Jinjitsu), 七草の節句 in Japan.
Events
* 1325 - Alfonso IV becomes King of Portugal.
* 1558 - France takes Calais, the last continental possession of England.
* 1566 - Pius V becomes Pope.
*
..... Click the link for more information. , 1995 Centuries: 19th century - 20th century - 21st century
Decades: 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s - 1990s - 2000s 2010s 2020s 2030s 2040s
Years: 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 - 1995 - 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000
This is a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). It has a Golden number of 1. Beginning of the International Decade of the World's Indigenous People (1995-2005): http://www.unesco.org/culture/indigenous/
..... Click the link for more information. , but some lessons learned were apparently used by the planners of the September 11 terrorist attacks
The September 11, 2001 attacks were a series of coordinated terrorist suicide attacks against The Pentagon and the World Trade Center in the United States on September 11, 2001. They were the first highly lethal attack by a foreign force on the U.S. mainland since 1814. With a death toll of nearly 3,000, the attacks exceeded the toll of approximately 2,400 dead following the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in the territory of Hawaii, which provoked U.S. entrance into World War II in 1941.
..... Click the link for more information.
. This article will cover all three plans.
The money handed down to the plotters originated from Al-Qaida Al-Qaida (القاعده in Arabic, and also transliterated as al-Qaeda, al-Qa'ida, al-Quaida, el-Qaida, äl-Qaida and is Arabic for the foundation) is an Islamist paramilitary movement which is widely regarded as a terrorist organization, especially in the West. It is led by Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri.
..... Click the link for more information. , an international terrorist
1. Terrorism is a tactic of violence that targets civilians, with the objective of forcing an enemy to favorable terms, by creating fear, demoralization, or political discord in the attacked population.
2. "Terrorism" is also used as a pejorative characterisation of an enemy's attacks as conforming to an immoral philosophy of violence, in a manner outside of warfare, or prohibited in the laws of war.
..... Click the link for more information. organization which was then based in Sudan
The Sudan is also a geographic region, part of which lies in the country of Sudan.
Republic of Sudan
Jumhuriyat as-Sudan
جمهورية السودان
coat of arms
(In Detail) (Full size)
National motto: ?
Official language Arabic
..... Click the link for more information.
. Philippines authorities say that Operation Bojinka was developed by alleged Al-Qaida operatives Ramzi Yousef Ramzi Ahmed Yousef or Ramzi Mohammed Yousef (also transliterated as Ramsi Yousef, Ramzi Youssef, and other ways), birth name possibly Abdul Basit Karim. He is believed to be one of the masterminds behind the first World Trade Center attack. He is also an alleged Al-Qaeda terrorist and agent.
Yousef used Najy Awaita Haddad, Paul Vijay, Adam Sali, Adam Adel Ali, Adam Khan Baluch, Doctor Adel Sabah, Doctor Richard Smith, and 14 other aliases to obscure his identity.
..... Click the link for more information.
and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (also transliterated as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, and other ways) (b. 1964/5) is widely reported to have been the military head of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization.
He also was reportedly the mastermind of the foiled Operation Bojinka plot, the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings, the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the Bali nightclub bombings, the failed bombing of American Airlines Flight 63, the murder of Daniel Pearl, and other al-Qaeda attacks.
..... Click the link for more information.
while they were in Manila
For other meanings of the word, see Manila (disambiguation).
Manila (Maynila in Filipino) is the capital city of the Philippines. The city stands on the eastern shore of Manila Bay on the island of Luzon. Despite pockets of grinding poverty, it is one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world and its metropolitan area is the country's economic, cultural, educational, and industrial center. Manila is often called the Pearl of the Orient.
..... Click the link for more information.
, Philippines The Republic of the Philippines is an island nation consisting of an archipelago of 7,107 islands lying in the tropical western Pacific Ocean about 100 kilometers southeast of mainland Asia. The country is one of the most predominantly Roman Catholic nation in Asia and one of the most westernized. Spain and the United States, who have both colonized the country, have been the two biggest influences on Philippine culture—a unique a blend of East and West.
..... Click the link for more information. in 1994 Centuries: 19th century - 20th century - 21st century
Decades: 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s - 1990s - 2000s 2010s 2020s 2030s 2040s
Years: 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 - 1994 - 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999
This is a common year starting on Saturday. International year of the Family
Events
January 1994
January 1994
Sunday
..... Click the link for more information.
and early 1995 Centuries: 19th century - 20th century - 21st century
Decades: 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s - 1990s - 2000s 2010s 2020s 2030s 2040s
Years: 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 - 1995 - 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000
This is a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). It has a Golden number of 1. Beginning of the International Decade of the World's Indigenous People (1995-2005): http://www.unesco.org/culture/indigenous/
..... Click the link for more information. .
Several media outlets, including TIME
TIME is a weekly American news magazine, similar to Newsweek and U.S. News and World Report. A European edition (TIMEeurope, formerly known as TIMEatlantic) is published from London. TIMEeurope covers the Middle East, Africa and (since 2003) Latin America. An Asian edition, (TIMEasia), is based in Hong Kong.
The first issue of TIME
..... Click the link for more information.
Asia Alternative meanings: Asia (mythology), Asia Minor.
Extent
1. The continent of Asia is defined by subtracting Europe and Africa from the great land mass of Africa-Eurasia. The boundaries are vague, especially between Asia and Europe: Asia and Africa meet somewhere near the Suez Canal. The boundary between Asia and Europe runs via the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmara, the Hellespont, the Black Sea, the ridges of the Caucasus, the Caspian Sea, the Ural River and the Ural Mountains to Novaya Zemlya. See also Eurasia.
..... Click the link for more information.
http://www.time.com/time/asia/features/malay_terror/hambali4.html, wrongly claim that the word Bojinka means "loud bang" or "explosion" in Serbo-Croatian Serbo-Croatian (srpskohrvatski or hrvatskosrpski) is a name for a language of the western group of the South Slavic languages.
Serbo-Croatian was one of the official languages in former Yugoslavia, the other two were Slovenian and Macedonian. It continues to be used (under different names) in today's Serbia and Montenegro, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina and is still reasonably well understood in FYR Macedonia and Slovenia. The language is also spoken by Serbian and Croatian minorities in Austria, Hungary, Albania, Italy, Romania and elsewhere.
..... Click the link for more information.
.
Not all media or text that refers to Operation Bojinka will call it by that name.
Financing
The money that funded Operation Bojinka came from Osama bin Laden
Sheikh Usamah bin Muhammad bin Awad bin Ladin (born March 10 or July 30, 1957), commonly known as Osama bin Laden (أسامة بن لادن), is the leader and head of al-Qaida, widely regarded as the most extensive terrorist organization in the world. He is a member of the immensely rich bin Laden family with intimate connections in the innermost circles of the Saudi royal family. The bin Laden family publicly distanced themselves from Osama bin Laden, several months after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
..... Click the link for more information.
and Hambali Riduan Isamuddin (also transliterated as Riduan Isamudin, Riduan Isomuddin, and Riduan Isomudin), better known by the nom de guerre Hambali, born as Encep Nurjaman (April 4, 1966 - ) was the leader of Indonesian terrorist organization Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), which is allegedly has a partership with Al Qaeda.
Hambali's Ambitions
Hambali may have been as far up as Al-Qaeda's operations in Southeast Asia. He was often described with the term of "Asia's Bin Laden", or more specifically, "The Osama Bin Laden of Southeast Asia". Some media reports describe him as Bin Laden's lieutenant for Southeast Asian operations. Other reports describe him as a peer.
..... Click the link for more information. , and from front organizations operated by Mohammed Jamal Khalifa.
Wali Khan Amin Shah, an Afghan, was the financier of the plot. He funded the plot by laundering money through his girlfriend and other Manila women, several of whom were bar hostesses and one of whom was an employee at a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant. They were bribed with gifts and holiday trips so that they could open bank accounts to stash funds.
The transfers were small, equivalent to about 12,000 to 24,000 Philippine pesos (500 to 1000 U.S. dollars), and would be handed over each night at a Wendy's or a karaoke bar. The funds went to "Adam Sali", an alias used by Ramzi Yousef. The money came through a Filipino bank account owned by Syrian Omar Abu Omar, who worked at International Relations and Information Centre, an Islamic organization run by Osama bin Laden's brother in law, Mohammed Jamal Khalifa. [1]
A company called Konsojaya also provided financial assistance to the Manila cell by laundering money to it. Konsojaya was a front company that was started by the head of the group Jemaah Islamiyah, an Indonesian named Riduan Isamuddin, also known as Hambali. Wali Khan Amin Shah was one of the board of directors of the company.
Planning of Operation Bojinka
As soon as Yousef arrived in Manila along with other Arab Afghans that were making cells in Manila, he started to work on making bombs. Yousef had shown up in Singapore with Khan earlier in fall 1994. The two got their Philippine visas in Singapore. It was likely that Al-Qaida sent him to Manila to plot and implement a terrorist attack against the United States.
His first operational test of his bomb was inside a mall in Cebu City. The bomb detonated several hours after Yousef put it in a generator room. It caused minor damage, but it proved to Yousef that his bomb was workable.
He left Manila for several days, but was met by Al Qaida emissaries upon his return to Metro Manila. They asked him to attack United States President Bill Clinton, who was due to arrive in the Philippines on November 12, 1994 as part of a five-day tour of Asia. He thought of several ways to kill the president, including placing a bomb on Clinton's motorcade route, firing a Stinger missile at Air Force One or the presidential limousine, and killing him with a chemical weapon called phosgene. However, he abandoned the idea as it would be too hard to kill the President. However, he would then incorporate his plan to kill the Pope into Operation Bojinka.
In 1994, Yousef and Khalid Sheik Mohammed started testing airport security. Yousef booked a flight between Kai Tak International Airport in Hong Kong and Chiang Kai Shek International Airport near Taipei. Mohammed booked a flight between Ninoy Aquino International Airport near Manila and Kimpo International Airport near Seoul.
The two had already converted fourteen bottles of contact lens solution into bottles containing nitroglycerin, which was readily available in the Philippines. Yousef taped a metal rod to the arch of his of foot in place of the detonators. Yousef and Mohammed wore jewelry and clothing with metal to confuse airport security. They packed condoms in their bags to support their alibi that they were meeting women. [7]
On December 8, Yousef moved into the Doña Josefa Apartments under the alias Najy Awaita Haddad and purported himself to be a Moroccan. Edith Guerrera, the manager, laughed with the receptionist after the two men asked for new registration forms. "Perhaps they have forgotten their names," she said as the first ones were torn up. Yousef had accidentally put his "real name" on the first form. He didn't want to get discovered too early. [1] [12]
Yousef had booked Room 603 in advance. He had made an 80,000 Philippine peso ($3,300 U.S.) deposit, and had added 40,000 pesos ($1,665 U.S.) up front before taking the elevator to Room 603. [12]
A conspirator named Abdul Hakim Murad came to Manila with Yousef and stayed at that apartment.
The apartments are located in the Malate district, 200 meters away from the embassy of the Vatican City in the Philippines, and 500 meters down the street from Manila Police Station No. 9 on Quirino Avenue. One of the windows at Suite 603 looks down on the path that the Papal motorcade was to take. Middle Easterners often rent units there to hang out at nightclubs in the Malate district, which are often nonexistent in their home countries. [1]
People were suspicious of the men in Room 603. The men renting the apartment were very secretive. According to Guerrera, "They gave me the impression that they were here to study," said Mrs Guerrera. "They looked like students. They double locked the door when they were inside or out. They didn't ask the room boy to clear up the room." The men, who had chemical burns on their hands, were carrying boxes and never hired other people to carry them up. The boxes contained chemicals bought from suppliers in Manila and Quezon City in Metro Manila. Yousef would use these to make his bombs. [12] [9]
Mohammed purported himself to be a Saudi or Qatari plywood exporter named Abdul Majid. Yousef and Mohammed had already started planning Operation Bojinka. [9]
According to Abdul Hakim Murad, Yousef got an idea for crashing a plane into the CIA from Murad while at the apartments. According to Murad, Yousef replied, "OK, we will think about it," before heading off with Khalid Shaikh to Puerto Galera for scuba diving.
At the time, Khalid Sheik Mohammed was staying at a lavish apartment across the street from a person that would become the President of the Philippines. He often went trips elsewhere to promote Konsojaya. [9]
On December 1, Shah placed a bomb under a seat in the Greenbelt Theatre in Manila to test what would happen if a bomb exploded under an airline seat. The bomb went off. Several patrons got injured. [12]
On December 11, 1994, Yousef built another bomb, which had one tenth of the power that his final bombs were planned to have, in the lavatory of the aircraft and left it under his seat, 27F, after he got off the plane from a flight that arrived in Cebu. Yousef had boarded the flight under an assumed name. The aircraft was Philippine Airlines Flight 434 using that aircraft on a Manila to Narita route. Yousef had set the timer for four hours after he got off the aircraft. The bomb exploded while the aircraft was over Minami Daito Island, near Okinawa, Japan. A Japanese businessman named Ikegami was killed after the bomb detonated. The Boeing 747-200 safely made an emergency landing. None of the aircraft's other two-hundred and seventy-two passengers were killed, although 10 passengers in front of Ikegami were injured. None of the crew members were killed. Yousef then planned which flights to attack for Phase I.
Phase I
The details of Phase I were found in the evidence discovered in the investigation into Room 603 in the Doña Josefa (for more information, see Section: The evidence in Room 603)
If Phase I of Operation Bojinka was pulled off, it would have been the most devastating terrorist attack in history in terms of casualties. |
| From http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/600300/posts |
Operation Bojinka's bombshell
Matthew Brzezinski, SPECIAL TO THE STAR
Toronto Star
January 2, 2002 Wednesday Ontario Edition
Six years before Sept. 11, Philippine policewoman helped crack a terrorist cell linked to Osama bin Laden
It was already evening, here on the other side of the international date line, when the first plane struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Aida Fariscal had gone to bed early on Sept. 11, only to be awakened by a frantic colleague. "Quick," he instructed, "turn on your television."
"We told the Americans about the plans to turn planes into flying bombs as far back as 1995," he complained to reporters. "Why didn't they pay attention?"
The footage of the hijacked airliner bursting into flame made Fariscal bolt upright. "Oh my God," she gasped. "Bojinka."
For the retired Philippine police officer, that word and the nightmare scenario it evoked had receded into distant memory these past six years. Sometimes weeks went by without her even thinking about the terrorist plot she had foiled so long ago. But there it was, after all this time, unfolding live on her television. "I thought, at first," she tells me, "that I was having a bad dream, or that I was watching a movie." But as the burning towers came crashing down under their own weight, disbelief turned to anger. "I still don't understand," she says, "how it could have been allowed to happen." We are having lunch in a busy Manila shopping centre, not far from the Dona Josefa Apartments, where it all started, where she - and the CIA and the FBI - first heard the words "Operation Bojinka." Fariscal has insisted on a corner table, so she can keep an eye on the other patrons and the shoppers beyond the restaurant's greasy glass partition. Old habits, she explains, die hard, and, after a life of fighting crime, she always takes precautions, especially now that she is off the force, a widowed grandmother living on a pension in a small one-bedroom apartment. |
http://www.heritage.org/Research/AsiaandthePacific/BG1496.cfm
| Quote: |
Recently rediscovered intelligence reports from 1995 reveal that the Abu Sayyaf may have provided logistical support for Ramzi Yousef. In January 1995, while investigating a routine apartment fire, Philippine authorities uncovered the details of a plan called Operation Bojinka, a blueprint for terrorism that included a plot to kill the Pope as well as the bombings of 11 unidentified U.S. passenger jets. 5 More disturbing, however, are revelations that Operation Bojinka also included a plan to hijack a commercial airliner and crash it into the Central Intelligence Agency's headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
It turned out that the apartment belonged to Ramzi Yousef, and that the fire began when a bomb exploded prematurely. With the information provided by Philippine authorities, the Federal Bureau of Investigation was able to arrest Yousef a month later in Pakistan. |
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Big Brother
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Post #4409
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Posted: Fri 2004-07-30 05:40
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| Politics: Libertarian-Syndicalist |
Country: American Empire |
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Post Rating: 0.0/4 (0 votes cast) |
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After looking at all the "mistakes" Michael Moore makes in his documenturies, I have to wonder...
Who is this guy working for?
Some of these mistakes are so stupid... so easily corrected... and deal with numbers that are so large they are meaningless to most people -- why does M&M feel the need to fuck it up? Is he just lazy, or does he think that stretching the truth will score him some points?
No... all it does is give his critics a window to attack him. He is just doing them a favor by leaving these little morsels to gnaw on.
Out of those "35 Fahrenheit Facts", most of them weren't really "lies". Most were either differences of opinion or other little "factoids" about M&M or his film. But lets take a look at some of the more relevent ones...
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Fahrenheit Fact no. 6: Moore distorts Bush "vacation days"
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M&M got this number from the Washington Post. They, in turn, got this number by including weekends as well.
And really, what the Washington Post said was...
| From The Washington Post |
News coverage has pointedly stressed that W.'s month-long stay at his ranch in Crawford is the longest presidential vacation in 32 years. Washington Post supercomputers calculated that if you add up all his weekends at Camp David, layovers at Kennebunkport and assorted to-ing and fro-ing, W. will have spent 42 percent of his presidency ‘at vacation spots or en route
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Notice that they say "at vacation spots"... not "on vacation".
But, in the interest of fairness (ha-ha), M&M included footage of Bush stumbling to defend all of this by saying basically "ummm. We getting a lot of stuff done. You know... we're working on things and stuff... you don't have to be in Washintion DC to get stuff done."
(I was paraphrasing there)
So yes... it was a it of a stretch to say that he was "on vacation" 42% of the time.
But I think what M&M was trying to say was this --- This is the Presidency were are talking about here. It is the most important elected position in the country, and possibly in the whole world. It is a full time job. And if that is too much for you, maybe you shouldn't have applied for the position.
Like I said before... If I were president, I'd think I'd be pretty busy... especially the first few months. Hell, the job I have right now is nothing compared to the presidency, yet so far this year I have only had about 12 days off... and no vacation. (It's friggin' JULY, for christ's sake.) But berfore 911, bush had already taken 4 weeks of vacation (plus weekends). What a loser.
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Fahrenheit Fact no. 13: Bush's Air National Guard service misrepresented The International Herald Tribune's review points out that Moore is continuing to make issue of Bush's Air National Guard service:
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After reading their entire response, Bush's military record doesn't look so bad.
It only looks bad to "hawks" because Bush was able to use this "one weekend a month" as a way to avoid Vietnam. And once Vietnam came to an end, he didn't seem too interested in fulfilling his obligation to the guard. The guard was only a part-time job... he only had to show up a few times a year. So, I wonder what GW was doing during the rest of the month... but (snort-snort) it could explain why (snort-snort) he didn't want to show up for a medical exam. (Snort-Snort)
Then there is the issue of how he got in the guard in the first place. I understand that they had one hell of a waiting list... yet the Director of the CIA's son had no problem getting in. I wonder why that was.
But in all fairness, you can't blame Bush for not wanting to help "liberate" Vietnam. But by that same token, perhaps he shouldn't be forcing the reserves (other people who only signed up for a weekend a month) to go aid in the "liberation" of Kuwait.
So yes... I don't think it's fair to call Bush a "deserter". But he isn't exactly a "war president" either.
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Fahrenheit Fact no. 15: Happy and healthy in Iraq?
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yes... M&M's attempt to portray Saddam's Iraq as a happy little playground did go a bit over the line.
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Fahrenheit Fact no. 17: 75-80% of "$1.4 billion" Saudi connection false
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Really... this one was true. But only if you listen to what M&M said very carefully.
"Lets say one group of people, like the American People, pay you $400,000 dollars a year to be president of the united states. But then another group of people invest in you, your friends, and their related businesses, 1/4 Billion dollars over a number of years. Who you gonna' like? Who's your daddy? Because that's how much the Saudi Royals and their associates have given the Bush Family... (long pause) ... and their friends ... and their related businesses ... in the past three decades."
So if start with the Bush family... expand out to their inner circle of "friends"... and add every business they have been associated with... and look to see how much money the Saudis have invested in those businesses over the last three decades.... what dollar amount do you come up with? 1.4 billion dollars.
But the long pauses might lead people to believe that the Saudis gave this money directly to Bush....... and his friends.... and the business that they currently own. So yes.... this is..... deceiving.
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Fahrenheit Fact no. 22: Gore didn't win "every recount scenario"
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Correct. Gore didn't win in "every recount scenario"... just most of them. But even there, the margin of victory was only a handful of votes.
But Moore isn't the one who says this... he shows a clip of somebody else saying it, which is just as bad.
But I have to agree. Out of all the "Misrepresentations" in the film, saying that Bush "stole" the election is the worse. That election was so close that the "margin of error" associated with error-prone voting machines and poorly compiled voter lists makes it possible for Gore to say that he really should have won IF...
But for every "IF" the Dems could come with, Bush could come up with one of his own. I think that is why the Supreme court decided to let the original result stand. Any other course of action would be viewed as further "tinkering" with this election, and it was wise of them not to go down that road.
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Fahrenheit Fact no. 25: Moore claims Saudis have $100 billion more invested in America than is believed they have invested in the entire world
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This is another case of Moore including footage of somebody else getting the numbers wrong. and although he admits at the time that it was only a rough estimate, Moore had enough time during editing to get the correct numbers. So, if the number is really only 60% of the "guess", why not just get the number right? $870 billion dollars is such a huge number, most people can't even comprehend it. So what is gained by saying $860 Billion (860,000 Million) instead of $520 Billion (520,000 Million)? The difference is meaningless to most people, so why offer your critics something they can complain about?
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Fahrenheit Fact no. 28: Bush policies regarding military pay misrepresented
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Yes. M&M tried to make these numbers seem much larger than they were. Saying that Bush "doubled" the amount soldiers pay for prescriptions sounds a lot worse that saying that they have to shell out "an extra 8 bucks".
But then again, a president who asks so much of the military should not be trying to cheat them out of any pay.
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Fahrenheit Fact no. 32: 20 Counties ignored voter removal list
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Yes... but M&M did not create this myth of "Blacks being denied the right to Vote". I heard this many times in the media, and it wasn't until I read "Fahrenheit Fact's" response did I learn how baseless this claim was. So, you can't entirely blame M&M for regurgitating something that every freakin' democrat said after the election.
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Fahrenheit Fact no. 35: Moore misrepresents newspaper headlines, dates
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Yes... M&M did some editing here. And this is just another example of laziness. When that "study ' was released that claimed that Gore "really won" the election, the story was reported by all the major news networks. I'm sure some paper somewhere decided to make this a headline item. But MM was just too lazy to go looking for it, so instead he altered a "letter to the editor" and flashed that on the screen instead.
So lazy, yes... but this was an actual news item... of a study that managed to have Gore winning the election by 40 or so votes... which in turn must have had some sort of margin of error... which in turn can hardly be called "proof".... etc, etc.
========================================================
So to get back to the original question… Who is M&M really working for? He could have easily corrected these “errors” without harming the general thrust of the film. But he left them in there, just so critics could find a reason to complain.
I mean… why quote Orwell when you know damn well it’s from the movie. M&M had a copy of the book in front of him --- he included a line in from the book in the F911 quote that wasn’t in the 1984 film quote. He could have easily seen that the quote was not actually in the book, but he didn’t bother. I can understand why he used the the Movie quote --- A full reading of "War is Peace" would have taken too much time. The movie quote sums up Orwell's entire point in just a few lines.
And to go further… there are several points that, if I were making this movie, I would have mentioned. But he didn’t. Instead, he focused solely on the “personal” economic motivation for protecting the Saudis, and focused on the death of one soldier.
I would have done a lot more. And I would have not given my opponents so many “mistakes” to citizen. I mean, if it weren’t for the few mistakes cited above, the Bushies really wouldn’t have any bases for calling this movie a “complete lie”. But because Moore included some of the unnecessary “lies”, it gives them a way out. We all make mistakes... but most of us do not have a team of "fact checkers" looking over our work before we release it. There is no excuse for making any of the above mistakes.
If you’re going to shoot an arrow into your opponents, you shouldn’t use a tip that can be easily pulled out. |
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Big Brother
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Posted: Sat 2004-07-31 03:58
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| Politics: Libertarian-Syndicalist |
Country: American Empire |
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Michael Moore debates Bill O'reilly.
(A link to the video of the debate is available on that page) |
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zombywuf
Outer Party
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Posted: Fri 2004-08-06 04:25
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| Politics: Complete Idiot |
Country: Scotland |
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Post Rating: 0.0/4 (0 votes cast) |
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| Big Brother wrote: |
| Quote: |
Fahrenheit Fact no. 32: 20 Counties ignored voter removal list
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Yes... but M&M did not create this myth of "Blacks being denied the right to Vote". I heard this many times in the media, and it wasn't until I read "Fahrenheit Fact's" response did I learn how baseless this claim was. So, you can't entirely blame M&M for regurgitating something that every freakin' democrat said after the election.
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"Based on the numbers of successful appeals, blacks were less likely to have been improperly placed on the purge list."
Gotta wonder exactly what is involved in that appeals process.
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So to get back to the original question… Who is M&M really working for? He could have easily corrected these “errors” without harming the general thrust of the film. But he left them in there, just so critics could find a reason to complain.
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"No one ever went broke underestimating the stupidity of the American people"
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And to go further… there are several points that, if I were making this movie, I would have mentioned. But he didn’t. Instead, he focused solely on the “personal” economic motivation for protecting the Saudis, and focus on the death of one soldier.
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The focus on the death of a single soldier was purely to bring home that when you get that phone call/telegram all the glory of fighting for freedom suddenly seems quite hollow and empty.
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Big Brother
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Post #4657
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Posted: Sat 2004-08-07 03:38
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| Politics: Libertarian-Syndicalist |
Country: American Empire |
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Post Rating: 0.0/4 (0 votes cast) |
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| From Fahrenheit 911; The Other Half of the Story |
Fahrenheit 911; The Other Half of the Story
Analysis by G. Edward Griffin
© July 19, 2004
Four months before the 2004 presidential elections in the U.S., film producer, Michael Moore, released a feature-length documentary film entitled Fahrenheit 911. It was a powerful condemnation of the George W. Bush Administration with particular focus on the U.S. war in Iraq. Moore compiled an amazing collection of video clips showing Bush and key members of his Administration in off-guarded moments and in situations where a lack of sincerity was glaringly evident. The story that emerges shows the Bush family closely allied with Saudi princes and the bin Ladin Family in business ventures that profit from war production and from the vast oil reserves in the Middle East. It hammers hard on the human suffering caused by a war, not to destroy a terrorist stronghold, but to gain access to oil resources and provide lucrative government contracts. Moore’s creative talent was applied with precision and resulted in what may become a new genre of political filmmaking. The effect was devastating to Bush and his supporters who were left with little defense except to claim that the production was biased and that certain statements were not correct.
This is my analysis of Fahrenheit 911:
1. The program is biased, and certain statements are not entirely correct, but every important fact it portrays is true.
2. In addition to profits from oil resources and government war contracts, there is a second motive that also drives U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and elsewhere. It is the creation of a New World Order based on the model of collectivism, and it is supported with equal vigor by leaders of both major political parties. Mr. Bush and his team are deeply committed to that goal. [For an in-depth examination of this agenda, see The Future Is Calling in the Issues section of the Freedom Force web site.] Fahrenheit 911 gives no attention to that agenda and even goes so far as to claim that it plays no role in these events. That theme was advanced in a statement from one of the on-camera experts who said, “This has nothing to do with conspiracies or political agendas. It’s all about oil and making money.”
3. Omission of this bi-partisan political agenda makes it possible to deliver the message that America’s problems in the Middle East are caused by greedy, war-mongering Republicans who are in power and that the obvious solution is to replace them with humanitarian, peace-loving Democrats. This message was implied throughout the film, but it broke through in clear language when a young soldier said, “I used to be a Republican, but when I get back home, I’m going to work hard to get Democrats elected.” If the film had acknowledged the New World Order agenda of the Bush Administration, it would have led to the fact that leaders of the Democrat Party, including its presidential candidate John Kerry, share the same vision, and the partisan message would not have been possible.
4. The carefully crafted content of the film and the timing of its release make it clear that it was conceived as a covert campaign tool for the Democrat Party and the John Kerry campaign. It follows what I call the Quigley Formula, based on the strategy advocated by Professor Carroll Quigley, President Clinton’s mentor when he was a student at Georgetown University. In his book, Tragedy and Hope, Quigley explained the value of allowing people to believe that, by choosing between the Democrat and Republican parties, they are determining their own political destiny. To a collectivist like Quigley, this is a necessary illusion to prevent voters from meddling into the important affairs of state. If you have ever wondered why the two American parties appear so different at election time but not so different afterward, listen carefully to Quigley’s approving overview of American politics:
| Quote: |
The National parties and their presidential candidates, with the Eastern Establishment assiduously fostering the process behind the scenes, moved closer together and nearly met in the center with almost identical candidates and platforms, although the process was concealed as much as possible, by the revival of obsolescent or meaningless war cries and slogans (often going back to the Civil War). [...] The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to the doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can “throw the rascals out” at any election without leading to any profound or extreme shifts in policy. [...] Either party in office becomes in time corrupt, tired, unenterprising, and vigorless. Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party, which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies.
[Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time (New York: Macmillan, 1966), pp. 1247-1248.]
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Inevitably, the mind turns to the question: Was this the intention of Michael Moore? My opinion – no, that is too strong a word – my suspicion is that Moore probably was not consciously implementing the Quigley Formula. However, there are powerful economic factors that would have compelled him to follow it in any event. Anyone who has done as much research into this matter as he has must have come across voluminous information about the political agenda. However, if any of it had appeared in his film, it would have been unacceptable to the Democrat Party. Without the enthusiastic support of that powerful sector, there would have been small chance for film distribution and even less for box-office success.
Many people want simple solutions for political problems. They are not interested in complexities. When confronted with the fact that both major parties are committed to the same agenda, their reaction is: “OK, but who ya gonna vote for?” That, of course, reveals that they don't really understand the Quigley Formula. They honestly believe that their vote for one of the two major presidential candidates makes a difference. This simplifies things a lot for them, because all the complex issues can be boiled down into just one decision: “Who ya gonna vote for?”
In the real world, things are not that simple. First, presidents are not yet absolute monarchs, although that clearly is the trend. Their power still can be curtailed by Congress. We may not have much influence in the election of a president, but we can, with sufficient effort at the precinct level, have significant effect on the outcome of Congressional races.
Second, there are candidates from other parties who may be worthy of our support. “But he can’t win,” is the common response. My reply is so what? Elections are not football pools in which the object is to win a bet. The purpose of an election is, not to pick winners, but to support candidates who reflect our political philosophy. Even if a candidate does not win, the size of his vote is a visible measure of the number of people who support his philosophy, and that can become an important element in shaping public policy. There is no virtue in voting for a winner if he is a collectivist dedicated to our enslavement.
Casting votes and working for candidates, as important as those activities are, represent merely the entry-level of political activism. As long as candidates and issues are chosen by collectivists, there is no hope for meaningful reform. The real action lies in participating in the process that selects the candidates and defines the issues. This is possible only by seeking influence and leadership in political parties, government agencies, educational institutions, media organizations, and other power centers of society. That is the mission of Freedom Force.
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