Say, they found another dozen artillery shells filled with Sarin and mustard gas. I guess that doesn't count either. Just how much do they have to find before some of you will admit that it exists.
Posts by Daga
-
1029/11(Film) - Freedom burning alright
by catchthis inso have you seen the film yet?
what was your impression of it?
here was mine: .
-
-
-
102
9/11(Film) - Freedom burning alright
by catchthis inso have you seen the film yet?
what was your impression of it?
here was mine: .
-
-
Daga
MOORE'S THE PITY
By JONATHAN FOREMANEmail Print Reprint June 23, 2004 -- For all its clever slickness, Michael Moore's "Fahren heit 9/11" does not stack up to such brilliant but evil art as Leni Riefenstahl's propaganda films for Hitler. But it is art in the sense that any piece of effective political propaganda ? Julius Streicher's "Der Sturmer" magazine, the famous Che poster from Alberto Korda's photo, even the anti-Goldwater mushroom-cloud TV ad put out by LBJ ? can be taken as art.
Alert critics will doubtless point out its artistic flaws. For example, its most moving sequence ? which features audio from the World Trade Center attacks played over a black screen ? is a direct ripoff of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's 11-minute segment in the 2003 film "9/11/01"
What makes "Fahrenheit 9/11" notable is that feature-length movie-house agitprop is a relatively rare and new thing, and that so far it has been treated (for instance by the Cannes Film Festival jury) as something more than the clever (if breathtakingly sleazy) political propaganda that it is.
And the film does offer some valuable lessons for everyone ? though not in its topics: 9/11, Osama bin Laden, Iraq, the "stolen" 2000 election, the Bush administration's fondness for the Saudis, the U.S. armed forces' supposed recruiting from the "starving" unemployed masses or any of the mutually exclusive conspiracy theories the movie puts forward.
No, the lessons of "Fahrenheit 9/11" have to do with the general degradation of our political discourse, the gross dishonesty of our most feted "documentary" filmmaker and with what Michael Moore's super-popularity in Hollywood and France adds to what we already know about the ignorance and intellectual poverty of the movie industry and the pathetic, spiteful hostility of our French "allies."
That said, the Bush administration might want to consider how the Department of Homeland Security's silly color-coded terror alerts play neatly into the hands of its most paranoid or devious opponents (especially when those alerts coincide with adverse poll results).
And the "forgotten" soldiers who have lost arms and legs in the Iraq and Afghan wars (there's some moving footage of amputees) should neither be forgotten nor remembered only by people like Moore, who would use that suffering for their own ends.
But you certainly don't have to be a fan of Bush or his policies to be offended by "Fahrenheit 9/11" lies, half-lies and distortions, or by Moore's shockingly low expectations of his audience:
* Moore's favorite anti-administration interviewee is former National Security Council aide Richard Clarke. Yet the film never mentions that it was Clarke who gave the order to spirit the bin Laden family out of America immediately after 9/11. Moore makes much of this mystery; why didn't he ask Clarke about it ?
* At one point of the film, he portrays GIs as moronic savages who work themselves up with music before setting out to kill. Later, he depicts them as proletarian victims of a cynical ruling class, who deserve sympathy and honor for their sacrifice.
* The film's amusing (if bordering on racist) Saudi-bashing sequences rely for their effect on the audience having forgotten that President Bill Clinton was every bit as friendly with Prince Bandar (or "Bandar Bush," as Moore calls him) and the Saudi monarchy as his successor. In general, the movie is packed with points that Moore assumes his audience will never check, or are either lies or cleverly hedged half-lies:
* Moore says that the Saudis have paid the Bush family $1.4 billion. But wait ?the Bushes aren't billionaires. If you watch the film a second time you'll note Moore saying that they paid $1.4 billion to the Bush family and (added very quietly and quickly) its friends and associates.
* Moore asserts that the Afghan war was fought only to enable the Unocal company to build a pipeline. In fact, Unocal dropped that idea back in August 1998. Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan are looking at the idea now, but nothing has come of it so far, and in any case Unocal has nothing to do with it.
* In a "congressmen with no kids at war" stunt, Moore claims that no one in Congress has a son or daughter fighting in America's armed services, then approaches several congressmen in the street and asks them to sign up and send their kids to Iraq. His claim would certainly surprise Sgt. Brooks Johnson of the 101st Airborne, the son of Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.). And for that matter the active-duty sons of Sen. Joseph Biden and Attorney General John Ashcroft, among others.
The most offensive sequence in "Fahrenheit 9/11"'s long two hours lasts only a few minutes. It's Moore's file-footage depiction of happy Iraq before the Americans began their supposedly pointless invasion. You see men sitting in cafes, kids flying kites, women shopping. Cut to bombs exploding at night.
What Moore presumably doesn't know, or simply doesn't care about, is that the building you see being blown up is the Iraqi Ministry of Defense in Baghdad. Not many children flew kites there. It was in a part of the city that ordinary Iraqis weren't allowed to visit ? on pain of death.
And if Moore weren't a (left-wing) version of the fat, bigoted, ignorant Americans his European friends love to mock, he'd know that prewar Iraq was ruled by a regime that had forced a sixth of its population into fearful exile, that hanged dissidents (real dissidents, not people like Susan Sontag and Tim Robbins) from meathooks and tortured them with blowtorches, and filled thousands of mass graves with the bodies of its massacred citizens.
Yes, children played, women shopped and men sat in cafes while that stuff went on ? just as people did all those normal things in Somoza's Nicaragua, Duvalier's Haiti and for that matter Nazi Germany, and as they do just about everywhere, including in Iraq today.
Moore has defended deliberate inaccuracies in his prior films by claiming that satirists don't have to tell the exact truth. Fair enough. But if you take the lies, half-lies and distortions out "Fahrenheit 9/11," there isn't much of anything left.
Home
NYPOST.COM, NYPOSTONLINE.COM, and NEWYORKPOST.COM
are trademarks of NYP Holdings, Inc.
Copyright 2003 NYP Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved. -
25
Which books.......
by Lehaa inwhich books helped you when you first left the jw organisation?.
and if in australia, where can i get them?.
also what exactly does "the borg" mean?
-
-
Daga
Can't believe no one has mentioned Apocalypse Delayed by Jim Penton. It's one of the best. Probably as good as the Franz books. Frankly I didn't think much of Visions of Glory.
-
67
What Are You READING?
by patio34 inokay, it seems it's high time we had another thread like this!.
for serious reading, i have exceptions to the rulers by amy goodman (goes great with fahrenheit 911!
)the curse of adam by bryan skyles (i think) (it predicts the extinction of males.
-
-
Daga
The Bell Curve, Up From Slavery, Useful Idiots and The Haunted Wood
-
180
Dateline--Fahrenheit 911
by patio34 inmichael moore is being interviewed tonight on nbc dateline @ 8 est and then he'll also be on david letterman at 11:30 est.. p.s.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/gossip/story/203263p-175365c.html.
heated exchange at 'fahrenheit'?.
-
-
Daga
Great article, especially since Hitchens is a leftly.
-
9
Anyone in Fife, Scotland?
by neverthere in.
sorry to ask in such a public way but i am looking for an answer for a question that only someone from fife can answer.. diana
-
-
Daga
The Kingdom Hall down the street from the Turkish place is in Aberdeenshire. It's also down the other street from the William Wallace statue. At least that's the way I remember it.
-
9
Anyone in Fife, Scotland?
by neverthere in.
sorry to ask in such a public way but i am looking for an answer for a question that only someone from fife can answer.. diana
-
-
Daga
Hey meat pie, ever been in the Kingdom Hall down the street from the Turkish restaurant?
-
5
History was made today: first private sub-orbital flight
by observador inthe privately funded spaceshipone made its first flight to out of the earth's atmosphere today.
this craft is one of the contenders for the x prize, which will give $10 mil to anyone who can build a craft to carry 3 people out of earth's atmosphere, bring them safely back to ground and repeat it all with the same craft within 2 weeks.. http://www.cnn.com/2004/tech/space/06/21/suborbital.test/index.html.
does anyone know the other contenders?.
-
-
Daga
Amazing event. I hope it's just the beginning of private enterprise performing manned missions.
-
45
Experience about not bringing our own food to the convention
by NikL inisn't this special?
this is an e mail making the rounds......
remember the letter that was read to all congregations regarding going out to get food during the break.
-
-
Daga
Selected families are allocated the 'privilege' of providing box lunches for visiting Bethel people, etc. It's considered to be quite a plum to be included in this group.
With regard to people being disfellowshipped or reproved for using non-approved hotels, I suspect that's just as much BS as the story that started this thread.
-
178
US Hostage, Paul Johnson, Beheaded
by DevonMcBride inhttp://www.cnn.com/2004/world/meast/06/18/saudi.kidnap/index.html report: u.s. hostage beheaded al arabiya says new video shows killing
friday, june 18, 2004 posted: 1:38 pm edt (1738 gmt) .
(cnn) -- an arabic tv news network said friday that american hostage paul johnson jr. has been beheaded by his saudi captors.
-
-
Daga
These people are so foreign in nature to Westerners that it's hard to think that they are the same species. They glory in this slaughter, and they will continue to do it as long as they have the chance. Now they've got some poor South Korean and they're going to do the same thing to him. This tactic is clearly not working but they carry on because they like doing it. They like the horror and disgust, it's an affirmation to them of their superiority. There is only one way to stop this and that's to kill the leadership. You'll notice there's been a dramatic reduction in the number of Israeli victims of terror since the Israelis started taking out the terrorist leadership.