Fahrenheit 9/11 breaks box office records in Britain

[YaddaYadda]

Re: Fahrenheit 9/11 is pure propaganda, so you obviously can't claim to care about truth

> Again, you keep harping on one particular point in the film.

I could harp on points throughout the film, as there are deceptions from beginning to end. But this would be too tedious for a Morrissey board. If you were interested in knowing about these deceptions you would be reading the journalists who have been scrutnizing the film in recent weeks. Such as Spinsanity, Michael Isikoff, and others. I also see no need to do so because the Unocal propaganda says it all about Moore's agenda and the credibility of his film. The type of innuendo he makes leads people further away from truth, and encourages paranoid conspiracy theories. This is why the movie will be very popular amongst our enemies in the Middle East, but hey...as long as Michael Moore-on gets rich and famous, and Bush is harmed, who cares, right?

I'm sure a good documentary could be made attacking a president's ties and entanglements with big business to the detriment of the country. That film is not Farhenheit 9/11. Michael Moore has zero interest in anything except propaganda. His track record is so disgusting in this regard, I find it insulting when someone tells me I should waste any further time with his work, because that will just mean I'll have to spend many hours fact-checking everything only to come to the conclusion the movie was a bunch of bullshit just like his last one. It's about as stupid as people who were telling me
Bill Clinton was a serial killer in Arkansas.

Farhenheit 9/11 is a movie I did go to see, and it will be the final time I ever waste time on that idiot again. It's like someone asking me to read "The Way Things Ought To Be" by Rush Limbaugh to get "informed." You're laughable. Also, Michael Moore refers to jihadists in Iraq as "minutemen," so he's not even on the same side as I am.

Furthermore, as an additional example of why it's pointless to go point by point through the movie (others already have...), I saw Moore appear on ABC for an interview with Stephenopolous, who challenged him on another deception. Moore's response to it was another lie, a lie told in the hope that ABC would not check the film's transcript. ABC did check the transcript, and once again it's obvious Michael Moore-on doesn't care about honesty whatsoever.

ABC NEWS:

STEPHANOPOULOS: You have a scene when you're up on Capitol Hill encountering members of Congress, asking them if they would ask their sons and daughters to enlist … in the military. And one of those members of Congress who appears in the trailer, Mark Kennedy, said you left out what he told you, which is that he has two nephews serving in the military, one in Afghanistan. And he went on to say that, "Michael Moore doesn't always give the whole truth. He's a master of the misleading."

MOORE: Well, at the time, when we interviewed him, he didn't have any family members in Afghanistan. And when he saw the trailer for this movie, he issued a report to the press saying that he said that he had a kid in—

STEPHANOPOULOS: He said he told you he had two nephews.

MOORE: … No, he didn't. And we released the transcript and we put it on our Web site. This is what I mean by our war room. Any time a guy like this comes along and says, "I told him I had two nephews and one was going to Iraq and one was going to Afghanistan," he's lying. And I've got the raw footage and the transcript to prove it. So any time these Republicans come at me like this, this is exactly what they're going to get. And people can go to my Web site and read the transcript and read the truth. What he just said there, what you just quoted, is not true.

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This Week followed up with the office of Rep. Kennedy. He did have two nephews in the military, but neither served in Iraq. Kennedy's staff agrees that Moore's Website is accurate but insists the movie version is misleading. In the film, Moore says, "Congressman, I'm trying to get members of Congress to get their kids to enlist in the Army and go over to Iraq." But, from the transcript, here's the rest:

MOORE: Is there any way you could help me with that?

KENNEDY: How would I help you?

MOORE: Pass it out to other members of Congress.

KENNEDY: I'd be happy to — especially those who voted for the war. I have a nephew on his way to Afghanistan.

 

[YaddaYadda]

Re: Fahrenheit 9/11 is pure propaganda, so you obviously can't claim to care about truth

Michael Moore-on is absolutely Orwellian.

Do you want me to provide you with Orwell quotes to prove it? Or can we just stop this silliness now? You hate Bush, fine. That doesn't mean you should be so foolish as to buy into Michael Moore-on's worldview and deceptive presentation of events.

It's so laughable how you people eat up this moron's films and don't even see that he is making pure propaganda. I really thought Morrissey fans were more sophisticated......

 

[flying aspidistra]

Re: Fahrenheit 9/11 is pure propaganda, so you obviously can't claim to care about truth

I should clarify something.

In a perfect world, Michael Moore would not exist. One of my strongest reactions to "Fahrenheit 9/11" came about, oh, the moment when he left a camera running on a bereaved mother wailing for her dead son. Hitting below the belt is never pretty, and using a scene like that is almost automatically a huge distortion.

Some of us, though, hold that the other side has been distorting things for quite awhile now. If I don't attack Michael Moore it's because maybe if we'd had a few "wackos" like him speaking up before the war we might have avoided the mess we're in. The recent upswing in liberal pop commentators (Al Franken, Michael Moore, Air America) is not pleasing to me because it's a fresh wind of truth breezing through the country. It's pleasing because a few people finally have the balls to battle the Right on their terms (such as the lame "treason" accusation, which I notice you use as well as Ann Coulter).

What I do appreciate about "Fahrenheit 9/11" is that, conspiracy theories aside, it asks some questions that are not being asked. The troubling part of people's reaction to it-- yours included-- is that no one is attempting to answer these questions. Everyone's picking out his favorite innacuracy in the film and squatting on it. It's a case of penny wise, pound foolish.

For example, the transcript quoted by ABC is certainly a black eye to Moore. But no one is talking about the point of that scene-- which is that the rich minority send poor kids off to die in foreign wars. I commend ABC for fact-checking; why not do a segment on who the military recruiters target, and why? How about a "20/20" episode about companies profiting from the war? The degree of influence the Saudis have in the U.S. economy and government? The U.S. policy of using covert operations to subvert democracies over the last forty years? What about examining the contention that the U.S. is against these "barbarian" terrorists when-- as "F911" showed, and most of us already knew-- the Saudis can be just as savage, while a top official in the new, democratic Iraqi government recently boasted of "cutting off the hands and beheading" insurgents?

Similarly, why don't we forget about Unocal and just think about this: The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq stink of profiteering and the abuse of power. Whatever the reasons the U.S. gave for its recent wars, time has shown that either those reasons were totally false or, to give Bush and his thinktank the benefit of the doubt, much more complicated and problematic than they let on and much less about all the bromides they fed to the American people. Perhaps I could respect those who support these wars if they would simply address the real issues instead of hiding behind ridiculous things like "90 nation coalitions", "freedom and democracy", and "preserving American values".

Last thing-- Orwell has been recruited to every side of every argument a million times before. Orwell would be disgusted with just about everyone in this tragic debacle.

 

[Aaron]

Re: Fahrenheit 9/11 is pure propaganda, so you obviously can't claim to care about truth

I feel like you are playing a game of semantics here... Unocal dropped out of the consortium in 1998 (as you love saying), but the consortium continued and they have agreed to build the pipeline. In fact they signed the agreement 5 days after former Unocal consultant, Hamid Karzai, took office. Many people still refer to it today as the Unocal pipeline, and some of the people involved fully expect Unocal to eventually come back into the consortium to help them build it.

But Unocal is ultimately a small player in the larger scheme. The fact is that oil is a valuable strategic resource. Without oil, life as we know it stops. After 9/11 it became clear to anyone paying attention that the US could not rely on its current trading partners. Most of the attackers were from Saudi Arabia, which is the US's largest supplier of oil. A trans-Afghanistan pipeline is vital to ensuring a continuous flow of oil.

But then, the Bush Administration knew this before 9/11. The Bush Administration immediately began talks with the Taliban after taking office. The proposed pipeline was discussed often. On May 15th, 2001 a US Official delivered the following message to the Taliban via a Pakistani delegate regarding the pipeline: "Either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs."

Would the US have invaded Afghanistan if 9/11 didn't happen? The optimist in me says that the pipeline was not enough, but we will never know. My guess is that there would have been more bombings of Afghanistan, but like I said, who is to say?

Would the US have invaded Afghanistan if there was no pipeline deal? Probably.

It's funny how we view the movie so differently. Some people see it and say "Lies" and "Propaganda." I saw the movie, and my response was "big deal."

- Bush was at his Texas ranch a lot before 9/11... so what, many people work from home.

- Bush is connected to many rich people including the Bin Ladins (one of the richest families in Saudi Arabia)... again, is this a surprise to anyone? Money and power go hand in hand.

- The Bin Ladins got special treatment after 9/11... again, are we suprised? Rich and connected people get special treatment. And I'm not at all worried that the FBI didn't interview Osama's second cousin twice removed.

- That damned pipeline... You say that it couldn't have anything to do with the Afghanistan invasion. I say, that the government better be thinking about ways to ensure the oil supply. Even with a Prius (we get 45 mpg), my wife and I can't get to work without oil.