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Topic: fahrenheit 9/11
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KnickerZohnonnof
VoivodFan
Member # 272
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posted August 05, 2004 09:20
    
Finally, thanks to a free ticket (well, I was never going to pay to see a Mike Munroe film!) got to watch this last night...They should have renamed it 'The Gospel According To Mike Moore' There was little in it that I did not know already. But there are a few things I'd like to point out. I believe the reason at the time for moving the Bin Laden's out of the US was down to specific threats made to the family - The family Bin Laden have no specific links to terrorist organisations. So what if George Bush Snr has dealings with powerful figures within Saudi Arabia? I do believe his line of work is oil? It has been known for years that money for terrorist activiy has come out of Saudi Arabia. You could say every country that has interests and operations within that country are also culpable - that pretty much indicts the whole of the west, not just the US or the Bush family. Bush's reactions when informed about the 9/11 attacks were typical of what I would expect of a leader of a major democratic country. Yes he should have continued with his engagement - there was no evidence at the moment he was informed of the first plane hitting the towers that there was a terrorist attack underway, therefore it is not a national emergency. When he is in the engagement and informed of the second plane you can visibly see his face become very pensive, and it is clear he now realises the situation is grave. It does not suprise me he continues with the engagement however - but from what I remember of news reports at the time it was cut short and he left very soon after those images shown in the film. Also, what isn't known is what was said to him - it could well have been something like 'A second plane has hit the world trade centre, we're going to clear the skies and find out where these two planes have come from.' The president is merely a figurehead - at this stage he can do nothing whatever, so to just get up and leave would be pointless. Therefore Mike Moore's comments are immature and needless. All through the film I got the sense that all Mike was trying to do was to find any way possible to make his allegations stick. The sequence where clips of Bush saying Iraq and Al Qaeda was one such example. The news report where Bush makes the statement about Iraq and Al qaeda being linked is fair enough - that was a foolish mistake on Bush's part because there was no intelligence to suggest this. But the sequenced part would make you think he said that all the time and from what I remember he only made such a claim once or twice at the most. Using the emotion of grief to put a point across is always going to stir up an audience. Also, the images of broken bodies and people being shot is also a grim sight. But this is what war is - a bloody and messy affair - people will get hurt and many will die on both sides. If you took that film as the definitive version of how this thing panned out then you would rightly be angry. But the truth is not here, nor is it with the Allies, but somewhere in between. The film has a bias that is totally anti war, and therefore will always attempt to discredit those who support it. The allies will always try and present the good things whilst playing down the negatives. At the end of the day, whether you support the actions in Iraq or not, the one thing we should all be doing is uniting behind our people in there and give them our support, because they need it. The most glaring omission was when the 'coalition of the mighty' was read out. The UK wasn't mentioned once! Spain? Italy? Japan? Australia? All absent from the film, yet all on duty at the start of operations. And for me this was the point at which the film lost any credibility. It was clear that, just as I had asserted in many posts here about the 'alternative' media, the film would distort the truth in order to further the producer's opinion, just as many of the anti bush websites have done and still do. At the end I felt frustrated. The film never made a telling blow, nor did it make me question whether my opinions about this need to be revisited. I saw a lot of propaganda aimed at getting bush voted out at the elections later this year, showing him in the worst possible light that he could muster. Effectively this was a party election broadcast for the Democrats. My conclusion as I left the auditorium: I'm glad I didn't pay to get in! It was, as I expected, an extraordinarily one-sided look at an issue that has been on the burner for many years. Unbalanced documentaries like this merely reinforce my belief that the media cannot be trusted to give a balanced report of a specific issue. Conspracists the world over will love it. Those of us who stand away and think about it a bit harder will see it for what it is - propaganda. And before the bush haters start their usual attacks let me put this on the record, just so you don't get it all wrong (again). I think Bush is one of the worst presidents your country has voted for. He is intellectually challenged, does not respond well when pressured in interview situations and many of his policies I consider to be ludicrous to put it mildly. I only agree with the action the coalition has taken in Iraq. The rest, especially environmental policy, reeks of multi nationals who don't want their profit margins squeezed. Is this clear enough? -------------------- Hail Santa...
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K
VoivodFan
Member # 6
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posted August 05, 2004 12:05
quote:
Originally posted by Mezcalhead:
The economy is rising, unemployment is going down...you could say that jobs are being shipped overseas which is a very real and dangerous situation for the American worker.
ECONOMY
Not Necessarily the News This is what happens when you don't read the news. Data released over the last week revealed that economic growth has slowed dramatically, consumer spending has plummeted and the federal deficit is projected to reach an all-time high. President Bush's take on the economy: "we've turned the corner and we're not going back." PRESIDENT IGNORES SLOWING GDP GROWTH: In his radio address yesterday the president said, "our economy is gaining strength." But the president ignored new data indicating "the nation's economy grew at a slow-paced 3 percent annual rate in the second quarter [down from 4.5 percent in the first quarter], renewing concerns about weak overall recovery and the potential for mediocre future job growth." As American Progress Analyst Brian Deese writes, we are now forced to wonder "what happens when consumer spending is no longer driving our economic train?" PLAYING GAMES WITH THE FEDERAL DEFICIT: In Ohio on Saturday, the president pledged that his administration "will not overspend your money." The day before, the Office of Management and Budget estimated "the budget deficit will grow to $445 billion in fiscal year 2004." The projection is $70 billion more than the 2003 deficit. In 2003, the administration projected the 2004 deficit to be $307 billion. The administration claims the $445 billion deficit is positive news because, due to stronger than expected economic growth, the figure is below its deficit projections released in February. In fact, economic growth is "in line with what the administration projected when it released its earlier deficit projection." What accounts for the lower estimate? According to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, "the administration's February forecast artificially inflated the projected deficit for 2004, apparently so that subsequent downward adjustments in the deficit estimate could be presented as progress." BUSH'S ESTIMATES EXCLUDE COSTS OF HIS OWN POLICIES: Bush insisted yesterday that "we remain on pace to reduce the deficit by half in the next five years." But the administration's 2009 budget projections are not credible because they omit "the cost of a number of the administration's own policies." For example, revising the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) – a proposal favored by the administration and bipartisan majorities in Congress to prevent a massive tax hike on the middle class – is projected to cost $57 billion in 2009. The president also fails to include the cost of the multi-year defense blueprint and the cost of the continued fight against terrorism. Even assuming that expenditures in Iraq and Afghanistan decrease in future years – which is far from certain – the administration excludes at least $70 billion in defense costs for 2009. BUSH DISTORTS JOB CREATING RECORD: Bush also bragged that many of the jobs created over the past year have been "in high-growth, high-paying industries." But according to USA Today, "Jobs in lower-wage industries and regions are growing at a faster pace than higher-wage jobs." As a result, the job growth that has occurred "is less potent for the economy because the majority of new work isn't accompanied by fat paychecks." RECORD NUMBERS LAID OFF, REHIRED AT LOWER WAGES: According to a newly released government report, "layoffs occurred at the second-fastest rate on record during the first three years of the Bush administration." During Bush's presidency, "the layoff rate reached 8.7 percent of all adult jobholders, or 11.4 million men and women age 20 or older." More disturbingly, "56.9 percent of those who said they were re-employed also said they were earning less in their new jobs than in the jobs they had lost." 
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KnickerZohnonnof
VoivodFan
Member # 272
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posted August 06, 2004 09:50
quote:
Originally posted by Simon6:
Knicker,
the "action taken in Iraq", which just was an illegal invasion of a sovereign country, sucked, to put it mildly.
In your opinion, not mine. quote:
Originally posted by Simon6:
Iraq is getting a terrorist center now (as I knew from the beginning of the invasion).
I think it always had indirect involvement with terrorism anyway. Not just against its own people but in the immediate area. I do believe there were funds to support families of suicide bombers in Israel, and encouragement of this activity? quote:
Originally posted by Simon6:
So according to you, if that's the only good thing Bush did, there is really not much left, don't you think ?
Now I'm confused. What point are you making here exactly? -------------------- Hail Santa...
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Luna
VoivodFan
Member # 389
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posted August 10, 2004 10:52
Here's a 'forgotten' US history lesson that makes it imperative that we
WOMEN vote--regardless *how* we vote. Alice Paul's papers are at the
Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at Radcliffe
College.
*****************************************************************************************
The women were innocent and defenseless. And by the end of the night,
they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their
warden's blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly
convicted of "obstructing sidewalk traffic."
They beat Lucy Burn, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head
and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air. They
hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron
bed
and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was
dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits describe the
guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching,
twisting and kicking the women. Thus unfolded the "Night of Terror" on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden
at
the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson
to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket
Woodrow
Wilson's White House for the right to vote. For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their
food--all of it colorless slop--was infested with worms. When one of
the
leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a
chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until
she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was
smuggled out to the press. HBO's movie, "Iron Jawed Angels," is a graphic depiction of the battle
these women waged so that I could pull the curtain at the polling booth
and have my say. I am ashamed to say I needed the reminder the movie
affords us. All these years later, voter registration is still my passion. But the
actual act of voting had become less personal for me, more rote. Frankly, voting often felt more like an obligation than a privilege.
Sometimes it was inconvenient. The
right to vote, she said, had become valuable to her "all over again." In the movie, it is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try
to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she
could be permanently institutionalized. And it is inspiring to watch
the
doctor refuse. Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn't
make her crazy. The doctor admonished the men: "Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity." -------------------- What the fuck is wrong with drinking tea?
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C'mon baby, move down to Joja....just don't tell Meg or Vodfan.
