Fahrenheit 911

Mike Moore used to be a good guy until he got greedy with fame & fortune. I loved "Michael & Me", "Chuckles the corporate clown", and "TV Nation". However, lieing, bending the truth, and misleading people is the wrong way to get a point across - and I say this to both the conservatives & liberals becase they both do it!

I recall a quote where someone said: "You should alter your views to see the facts, not alter the facts for your views."

My .02 worth!

MR_E

 

I never implied otherwise, BLD; and Rush Limbaugh has always been very clear that he's an entertainer rather than a journalist. But the fact of the matter is that if you flip to Fox News and are not a rabid fan of the network, it's almost impossible to tell whether you're watching news or commentary. They're not distinguished in the way they are on, say, CNN.

I don't see how Fox can claim to be balanced; the few liberals they work with on a regular basis are either extremely moderate (Alan Colmes) or mind-numbingly irritating. The true "fair and balanced" TV show of yore is and was CNN's Crossfire, which pits top-rank conservatives against top-rank liberals (I fondly remember the glory days of Buchanan v. Kinsley). Crossfire was specifically designed to give conservatives and liberals equal voice, and I don't see how anyone could ever claim that it has a liberal bias. The Capital Gang also has a decent liberal:conservative balance, with William Novak holding the right flank and the rest of the participants representing a broad spectrum. Compare to Fox News, where liberals are given the freakshow treatment.

Fox can claim to be many things, but the "fair and balanced" label is a joke. I suppose there may be an imperceptible (to me) liberal bias in the way other networks report news, but they at least make an effort to give conservatives the opportunity to argue their case in a dignified way, as part of the network establishment. Fox News does not extend the same courtesy to liberals.


Cheers,

 

Agreed. In this respect he's much like Rush Limbaugh: Great with opinions, but not always so reliable when it comes to the facts.


Cheers,

 

The Nine Lies of Fahrenheit 9/11

The Nine Lies of Fahrenheit 9/11

Fahrenheit Lie #1

National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice is depicted in the movie telling a reporter, “Oh, indeed there is a tie between Iraq and what happened on 9/11.”

The scene deceptively shows the Administration directly blaming Saddam and his regime for the attacks on 9/11 by taking her comments out of context. Now read the entire statement made by Ms. Rice to the reporter:

“Oh, indeed there is a tie between Iraq and what happened on 9/11. 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 led people to drive airplanes into buildings in New York.” (CBS News, November 28, 2003 Interview)

Fahrenheit Lie #2 In the film, Moore leads viewers to believe that members of bin Laden’s family were allowed to exit the country after the attacks without questioning by authorities. o The September 11th commission, on the other hand, reported that 22 of the 26 people on the flight that took most of the bin Laden family out of the country were interviewed and found to be innocent of suspicion. (Sumana Chatterjee and David Golstein, “Analyzing ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’: It’s Accurate To A Degree,” Seattle Times, 07/05/04)


The commission reported that “each of the flights we have studied was investigated by the FBI and dealt with in a professional manner prior to its departure.”


Fahrenheit Lie #3

Moore claims that James Bath, a friend of President Bush from his time with the Texas Air National Guard, might have funneled bin Laden money to an unsuccessful Bush oil-drilling firm called Arbusto Energy.

Bill Allison, managing editor for the Center for Public Integrity (an independent watchdog group in Washington, D.C.), on the other hand, said, “We looked into bin Laden money going to Arbusto, and we never found anything to back that up,” (Sumana Chatterjee and David Golstein, “Analyzing ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’: It’s Accurate To A Degree,” Seattle Times, 07/05/04)


Fahrenheit Lie #4
The movie claims that the Bush administration “supported closing veterans hospitals.”

“The Department of Veterans 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” (Dave Kopel, Independence Institute, “Fifty-nine Deceits In Fahrenheit 9/11,” http://i2i.org/ Accessed, 07/11/04)

But Moore’s film fails to mention that the Department also proposed building new hospitals in areas where needs were growing, and also proposed building blind rehabilitation centers and spinal cord injury centers (News Release, Department of Veterans Affairs, www.va.gov, 10/24/03)

Fahrenheit Lie #5

Conspiracy theories abound about the reasons for the War on Terror, but none is more outlandish than the one propagandized in Moore’s film: that the Afghan war was fought solely to enable the Unocal company to build an oil pipeline (the plan for which was abandoned by the company in 1998).

Moore “suggests that one of the first official acts of Afghan President Hamid Karzai … was to help seal a deal for … Unocal to build an oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea through Afghanistan to the Indian Ocean. It alleges that Karzai had been a Unocal consultant.” (emphasis added) (Sumana Chatterjee and David Golstein, “Analyzing ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’: It’s Accurate To A Degree,” Seattle Times, 07/05/04)

Unocal spokesman, Barry Lane, says unequivocally, “Karzai was never, in any capacity, an employee, consultant or a consultant of a consultant,” and Unocal never had a plan to build a Caspian Sea pipeline. (Sumana Chatterjee and David Golstein, “Analyzing ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’: It’s Accurate To A Degree,” Seattle Times, 07/05/04)

Moore mentions that the Taliban visited Texas while President Bush was governor to discuss a potential project with Unocal.

While Moore implies that then-Governor Bush met with the Taliban, no such meeting occurred. The Taliban delegation did, however, meet with the Clinton Administration on this visit. (Matt Labash, “Un-Moored From Reality; Fahrenheit 9/11 Connects Dots That Aren’t There,” Weekly Standard, July 5-July 12 Issue)

Fahrenheit Lie #6 Even readily available figures are exaggerated for effect in Fahrenheit 9/11. The claims have a basis in reality, making them believable, but are false nonetheless. ü In the film, Moore asks Craig Unger, author of House of Bush, House of Saud, “How much money do the Saudis have invested in America, roughly?” to which Unger responds, “Uh, I’ve heard figures as high as $860 billion.”

The Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy reports that worldwide Saudi investment approximated $700 billion – a figure much lower than Unger alleges the Saudi government to have invested in the U.S. (Tanya C. Hsu, Institute For Research: Middle Eastern Policy, “The United States Must Not Neglect Saudi Arabian Investment,” www.irmep.org, Accessed 07/11/04)  The Institute reports that 60 percent of that $700 billion – roughly $420 billion, less than half of what Unger “heard” – was actually invested in the United States by the Saudi government.

Fahrenheit Lie #7

“Moore’s film suggests that [President] Bush has close family ties to the bin Laden family – principally through [President] Bush’s father’s relationship with the Carlyle Group, a private investment firm. The president’s father, George H.W. Bush, was a senior adviser to the Carlyle Group’s Asian affiliate until recently; members of the bin Laden family – who own one of Saudi Arabia’s biggest construction firms – had invested $2 million in a Carlyle Group fund. Bush Sr. and the bin Ladens have since severed ties with the Carlyle Group, which in any case has a bipartisan roster of partners, including Bill Clinton’s former SEC chairman Arthur Levitt. The movie quotes author Dan Briody claiming that the Carlyle Group ‘gained’ from September 11 because it owned United Defense, a military contractor. Carlyle Group spokesman Chris Ullman notes that United Defense holds a special distinction among U.S. defense contractors that is not mentioned in Moore’s movie: the firm’s $11 billion Crusader artillery rocket system developed for the U.S. Army is one of the only weapons systems canceled by the Bush administration.” (Dave Kopel, Independence Institute, “Fifty-nine Deceits In Fahrenheit 9/11,” http://i2i.org/ Accessed, 07/11/04)

“There is another famous investor in Carlyle whom Moore does not reveal: George Soros. But the fact that the anti-Bush billionaire [Soros] has invested in Carlyle would detract from Moore’s simplistic conspiracy theory.” (Dave Kopel, Independence Institute, “Fifty-nine Deceits In Fahrenheit 9/11,” http://i2i.org/ Accessed, 07/11/04)

Fahrenheit Lie #8
Not revealing relevant facts is dishonest enough. But to paint the Bush Administration as sympathetic and friendly to the Taliban prior to September 11, is not only dishonest, but maliciously so. ü Moore shows film of a March 2001 visit to the United States by a Taliban delegation, claiming that the Administration “welcomed” the Taliban official, Sayed Hashemi, “to tour the United States to help improve the image of the Taliban.”

But the Administration did not welcome the Taliban with open arms. In fact, the State Department rejected the Taliban’s claim that it had complied with U.S. requests to isolate bin Laden.

To demonstrate even further the Administration’s contempt for the Taliban and its illegitimacy, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher – on the day of the terrorist regime’s visit – said, “We don’t recognize any government in Afghanistan.”

Fahrenheit Lie #9
Moore does more than simply downplay the threat posed to the U.S. by the former Hussein regime in Iraq. He goes so far as to assert that Saddam “never threatened to attack the United States.”

If by “attack the United States” one interprets this claim to mean that Saddam never threatened to send troops to the United States, then Mr. Moore has a point. But Saddam Hussein clearly sought to attack the United States within his own sphere of influence, even though he didn’t have the resources to attack U.S. soil from his side of the world:

On November 15, 1997, “the main propaganda organ for the Saddam regime, the newspaper Babel (which was run by Saddam Hussein’s son Uday), ordered: ‘American and British interests, embassies, and naval ships in the Arab region should be the targets of military operations and commando attacks by Arab political forces.’” (Dave Kopel, Independence Institute, “Fifty-nine Deceits In Fahrenheit 9/11,” http://i2i.org/ Accessed, 07/11/04)

In addition, “Iraqi forces fired, every day, for 10 years, on the aircraft that patrolled the no-fly zones and staved off further genocide in the north and south of the country,” (Source: New York Times, 12/1/03).

; Saddam Hussein also provided safe haven to terrorists who killed Americans, like Abu Nidal; funded suicide bombers in Israel who certainly killed Americans; and ran the Iraqi police, which plotted to assassinate former President George Bush.

 

CRITICISM OF FAHRENHEIT 9/11

CRITICISM OF FAHRENHEIT 9/11

Newsweek Columnists Isikoff & Hosenball: Moore “Twists and Bends” The Facts. “But for all the reasonable points he makes, on more than a few occasions in the movie Moore twists and bends the available facts and makes glaring omissions in ways that end up clouding the serious political debate he wants to provoke.” (By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, “More Distortions From Michael Moore,” Newsweek Online, 6/30/04)


Christopher Hitchens: Fahrenheit 9/11 “Sinister Exercise In Moral Frivolity.” “To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of ‘dissenting’ bravery.” (Christopher Hitchens, “Unfairenheit 9/11; The Lies Of Michael Moore,” Slate, 6/21/04)


Former NY Mayor Ed Koch: Fahrenheit 9/11 “Propaganda” And “Screed.” “I am a movie critic, so I went to see “Fahrenheit 9/11.” The movie is a well-done propaganda piece and screed as has been reported by most critics. It is not a documentary which seeks to present the facts truthfully. The most significant offense that movie commits is to cheapen the political debate by dehumanizing the President and presenting him as a cartoon. … Now that no WMDs have yet been found, was the invasion to end the reign of Saddam Hussein, who had killed and tortured hundreds of thousands of his own citizens, still supportable? Moore thinks not. I think, yes. The movie’s diatribes, sometimes amusing and sometimes manifestly unfair, will not change any views. They will simply cheapen the national debate and reinforce the opinions on both sides.” (Ed Koch, Op/Ed, “Koch: Moore’s Propaganda Film Cheapens Debate, Polarizes Nation,” World Tribune, 6/29/04)


Washington Post Columnist Richard Cohen: Fahrenheit 9/11 “Silly” And “Incomprehensible.” “I brought a notebook with me when I went to see Michael Moore’s ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ and in the dark made notes before I gave up, defeated by the utter stupidity of the movie. … ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ is not, as proclaimed, a sure sign that Bush is on his way out but is instead a warning to the Democrats to keep the loony left at a safe distance. … Moore’s depiction of why Bush went to war is so silly and so incomprehensible that it is easily dismissed. As far as I can tell, it is a farrago of conspiracy theories. … It is so juvenile in its approach, so awful in its journalism, such an inside joke for people who already hate Bush, that I found myself feeling a bit sorry for a president who is depicted mostly as a befuddled dope. I fear how it will play to the undecided.” (Richard Cohen, “Baloney, Moore Or Less,” The Washington Post, 7/1/04)

 

I saw it today. I really enjoyed it. Moore took a few cheap shots, but it was far less controversial than I had expected. The irony in it all is that all of the Bush administration's duplicity regarding Iraq is before us, in plain sight. Sometimes it takes a Michael Moore, however, to make us look.

 

Ultimately, I don't think it matters whether the film is accurate or not. From what I've seen, it does not PERSUADE audiences. Rather, it reflects and supports their pre existing rage.

Again, I have NEVER seen the kind of red fury in the populace I see now. Please note that my district sent a rabid right wing candidate to congress in 2002. A lot of people are upset, including what appears to be a significant number of republicans.

 

Tom,
Please tell me you're kidding! I've never seen a "top-rank" conservative on Crossfire. Buchanan -- give me a break; Novak -- again, give me a break.

The broad spectrum on the Capital Gang is this -- one conservative against three liberals. Yea, that's real balanced!

The fact is Fox always has a conservative and a liberal arguing every single issue. They ALWAYS give both views. And think about this, they have Greta Van Sustern, Geraldo, Alan Colmes, Juan Williams, etc...as either hosts or guests that appear on a regular basis. Please tell me what conservative hosts they have hosting a news program on CNN, MSNBC, or CNBC.

BLD

 

Ihave not seen the movie but may do so for entertainment. Based on what I saw on anews program it is not a documentary. This news program showed where clips were taken out of context and sewn together in the documentary (famous comment on terrorism made to look post 911), or just plainly inaccurate such as the stuff about Saudis being let out of air space before anyone else while all others were locked down. A bit dishonest but I do not think anyone but die hard democrats would call it a documentary.

Actually, I was amused when discussing this with a democrat who would not hear that there was any possibility that Farenheit 911 was not a completely accurate, unbaised documentary. That is how basic propaganda is sold to mindless masses.

North

 

mindless masses?

"mindless masses"?

Thing is, the "mindless masses" are also known as "the electorate".

I am not reproving you, North. My daughter is working on a master's degree (B&M) in a public policy area. She has had me read some remarkable authors concerning the growth of "government by expert" where the uncredentialed, the "mindless masses", simply aren't heard in Congress.

This, so say these authors, results in a sham democracy and disengagement of ordinary citizens.

As one of the "credentialed" who has been involved in state government much of my career, I find this a very disturbing thesis. The very idea that "I am a lawyer and therefore know best" sounds an awful lot like "I am a minister and I know best" or "I am an economist and I know best". (Think WTO riots.)

 

Re: mindless masses?

That should be the campaign slogan of 99% of the politicians in Massachusetts.

 

No, but you see what I'm saying. Any "expert", including lawyers and ministers and social scientists and even public health doctors are loyal to sources of "authority" that are NOT the electorate and therefore work to impose a social order that is essentially anti-democratic.

In my case, for example, I work to sustain the "rule of law", seeking to impose the principals of the common law upon the activities of government and the populace. But the common law is not and never has been the result of elections. While it is certainly true that legislatures pass statutes in derogation of the common law, the vast majority of private law remains unlegislated. Even where there is a statute, its interpretation takes place according to the common law rules.

My expertese in applying these principals gives me a voice in government wildly more influential than that of a common citizen. That disturbs me; it looks anti-democratic. because the source of my "authority" is NOT the people!

 

Michael Moore Quotes

"Micheal Moore deos not hate America, he lives in it, he proudly excerces his freedoms in it. One of those freedoms is the ability to stand up and say to the world that our leader is a bad man who duped his people, stole an election and used a terrible tragedy to settle some scores with a government that had nothing to do with the attacks on this country. The man lied, period."

From David Brooks in the New York Times. He sounds pretty "anti-American" to me.

Moore interview the British newspaper The Mirror, speaking about Americans:

"They are possibly the dumbest people on the planet . . . in thrall to conniving, thieving smug [pieces of the human anatomy]," We Americans suffer from an enforced ignorance. We don't know about anything that's happening outside our country. Our stupidity is embarrassing."

Speech to a large crowd in Munich:
"That's why we're smiling all the time. You can see us coming down the street. You know, `Hey! Hi! How's it going?' We've got that big [expletive] grin on our face all the time because our brains aren't loaded down."

Speech to a Cambridge crowd:
"You're stuck with being connected to this country of mine, which is known for bringing sadness and misery to places around the globe."

Speech in Liverpool:
"It's all part of the same ball of wax, right? The oil companies, Israel, Halliburton."

Following Spetember 11th:
"We, the United States of America, are culpable in committing so many acts of terror and bloodshed that we had better get a clue about the culture of violence in which we have been active participants."

Speech in Berlin:
"Don't be like us. You've got to stand up, right? You've got to be brave."

An open letter to the German people in Die Zeit:

"Should such an ignorant people lead the world?" Don't go the American way when it comes to economics, jobs and services for the poor and immigrants. It is the wrong way."

In an interview with a Japanese newspaper:
"The motivation for war is simple. The U.S. government started the war with Iraq in order to make it easy for U.S. corporations to do business in other countries. They intend to use cheap labor in those countries, which will make Americans rich."

On the Iraqui Uprising:
"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." \

Yeah Right moore does not hate america

 

http://www.infowars.com/saved%20pages/alex/page_6.htm

"Two years ago, "9/11: The Road to Tyranny," a real documentary by Alex Jones, had most of the "facts" Moore uses in his scatter-shot diatribe. Jones released his film for free on his Web site www.infowars.com,...."


----

http://www.breakfornews.com/Alex&Me.htm

"The difference between Michael Moore and Alex Jones comes down to this:

Moore profits from 9/11 --with 20/10 hindsight-- after the event. Whereas, Jones predicted 9/11 --on air in July, 2001; made a better movie: '9/11: Road to Tyranny'; and virtually gives it away."


These two articles are very interesting to me.
Good day.