Al Qaeda threat

[Guest Toe]

Dagger must be out doing a little grinding..

[Guest Orange Gloves]

Don, I still maintain that this movie is fiction. I watched the movie again so it is fresh in my mind. There are certainly clips and bits that are spread through this work that are not fiction but when Moore intentionally misleads the viewer, it becomes fiction.

From ARTFL Project: 1913 Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary. I have “edited” it to save band width. If Moore can do it, so can I

Fiction (Page: 556) .

2. That which is feigned, invented, or imagined; especially, a feigned or invented story, whether oral or written. Hence: A story told in order to deceive; a fabrication; -- opposed to fact, or reality.

4. (Law) An assumption of a possible thing as a fact, irrespective of the question of its truth. Wharton.

The full definition I quoted is at http://machaut.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/WEBSTER.sh?WORD=fiction

The Denver NRA meeting was scheduled months in advance. Not a reaction to Columbine. The Heston speech that Moore represents as taking place after the Buell Elementary shooting (Flint) actually came from a speech he gave some eight month later, in Flint, during the US Presidential campaign.

The Lockheed Martin “missile” segment: This plant makes orbital launce vehicles and has a US Government contract to decommission ICBM’s.

The B52: The plaque actually reads… Flying out of Utapao Royal Thai Naval Airfield in southeast Thailand, the crew of 'Diamond Lil' shot down a MIG northeast of Hanoi during 'Linebacker II' action on Christmas eve 1972.

It goes on and on.

You will never hear of me defending the NRA and I am a gun owner and user. They are way to right wing and single minded for me. The bank scene? WOW! That was just to crazy to need any help from Moore. The Michigan maniacs? Scary.

Don, you asked, “The audience gets to make up their mind, don't they.” Most certainly they do. Unfortunately the audience is led to believe they are seeing a documentary when they are not. When Moore started manipulating, creating and “editing” events he devalues the product and the message. There is so much good material out there that a true “non-fiction” documentary could have been made with the same desired impact.

Mark

[DEFCON]

but, is Canada really any different?

[Don Hudson]

DEFCON;

Re "but, is Canada really any different?"

No, not at all. We just think we are. In fact, Canadian's are as disconnected from their Parliamentarians as the Americans are from their policy-makers in Washington.

Back-benchers in our Canadian Parliament have absolutely no power, no voice, and no future if they try to do something about the former two. Not even in Great Britain is that the case.

[DEFCON]

Right on Don.

[Don Hudson]

Mark;

Re "Unfortunately the audience is led to believe they are seeing a documentary when they are not."

I have to say how much I appreciate your response. I take it seriously as something that requires a pause and some information-gathering, thank you.

If that's the case, then we agree on one thing certainly, and that's your comment, "There is so much good material out there that a true “non-fiction” documentary could have been made with the same desired impact."

I have no heros, at least in this kind of discourse. I pay attention however to those with flashlights which shine however briefly, on interesting, not-taken-for-granted notions about how our world really works.

cheers,

Don

[Guest flyersclub]

I saw Bowling for Columbine 3 times, took my teenager and encouraged everyone I know to watch it. I see Moore's film as an attempt to raise questions ... and to make us think. I didn't feel manipulated, I can think for myself, but he raised some interesting stats and I went forward and did more research for myself. The trouble with the U.S. conservative regimes is the press cover up and hide a a lot of the facts ... it's hard to get a clear answer on issues. There have been interesting articles in Canadian publications by Americans about the surprising difference in the reporting on the war in Iraq between CNN and CBC. So when you watch anything Moore does, take it at face value and then go from there ... ask questions yourself ... he doesn't have all the answers but at least gets people thinking. IMO.

[Guest shibui]

Hope you pick better authors than you do directors, Don. When I was at University there were always any number of terminally-aggrieved sandalistas ready to take on the latest "issue". But they didn't do it for money and by-and-large they respected humand dignity. Can't say the same for your boy in the hat.

It's Mark Steyn's take below and as I couldn't possibly better it I pass it along unaltered.

"Bowling For Columbine is the latest documentary from Michael Moore, the left-wing multi-millionaire provocateur in his usual cunning disguise as an all-American lardbutt loser – baseball cap, unkempt hair, untucked shirt. This time, the nominal subject is American violence, but, by now, connoisseurs of Roger And Me and Moore’s TV work know that, whatever the subject, the routine never varies: He turns up at company headquarters unannounced and demands to see the chairman. The receptionist says he’s not available, and Moore merrily films the stand-off before moving on to some other target. If he showed up to see me without making an appointment, I’d tell him to piss off and then fire a warning shot. If I showed up to see him unannounced and accompanied by a camera crew, his people would do the same.

But, usually, folks are nicer than that. And so you can’t help noticing that, for a champion of the little guy, he goes to an awful lot of time and effort to make the little guy look like a chump. Moore has no interest in digging deep into his subjects, when all the fun’s to be had on the surface of American life – the squeaky receptionists, the bored security guards, the bland PR women, the square company guy in the suit, the State Police trooper with the infelicitous phrasing, the bozo in the pool hall… His vision of America as a wasteland of gun kooks, conspiracy theorists and perky brain-fried mall clerks will doubtless have them rolling in the aisles in London this weekend. In New Hampshire, there were only four other moviegoers in the theatre. But Moore, a great favourite with the BBC, now does his shtick with an eye to the non-American market.

That may explain the extraordinary amount of sucking up to Canada in this movie, which, while gratifying to insecure Canucks and self-loathing Americans, may be of less interest to third parties. Moore’s thesis, such as it is, is that America’s murder rate is the consequence not just of the country’s love of guns but of deeper currents of paranoia and fear in the American psyche. To that end, he crosses the Michigan border into Ontario, where one Canadian after another tells him that they don’t lock their doors. The level of guns per capita in Canada is similar to America but the murder rate is much, much lower. Ergo, it must be because Americans are living in fear while Canadians are much more socially progrssive.

Whatever, dude. Unlike Moore, I have homes on both sides of the border and it’s the Quebec one I keep locked. By the time you read this, I’ll be in New York, but my home in New Hampshire will be unlocked, and so will my car at the airport, the key in the ignition. By contrast, in Quebec it’s illegal to leave your car unlocked, even if you stop for a pee on an ice floe up by Hudson’s Bay. Pace Moore, Canada has vastly lower rates of handgun ownership. Long gun ownership is much closer, but, statistically, Canadians are slightly more murderous than Americans in this sphere: in the US, there are 1.7 homicides per 100,000 long guns; in Canada, it’s 1.9. So British visitors to North America should be aware they’re more likely to be killed by a homicidal Canadian rifleman than an American one. On the overall murder rate, if Moore’s interested in “cultural differences”, it seems odd that he should avoid the most obvious one: Alberta Report’s Colby Cosh, a braver man than I, points out that black Americans are 13% of the US population but commit over half the murders. Once you factor those out, non-black Americans murder at about the same rate as Canadians.

But by now Moore’s waddled on in search of other targets – like, er, American foreign policy, the subject of a zippy little montage set to Louis Armstrong’s “What A Wonderful World”, Satch’s final “Oh, yeah” coming as the second plane slices through the World Trade Center and the caption informs us: “Osama bin Laden uses his expert CIA training to murder 3,000 people.” This is so glib, so pat, that I wouldn’t be surprised if it doesn’t elicit bursts of applause in British cinemas.

His finale is more problematic. Moore doorsteps Charlton Heston, President of the National Rifle Association, and, sportingly, Chuck invites him in for a chat. The tubster starts badgering Heston to apologise for appearing at a campaign event held in Flint, Michigan, a few days after young Kayla Rolland had been shot at school by a fellow six-year old. Heston resists, but Moore, the bullying pacifist, keeps on at him, until Heston politely ends the interview and walks away. If you can identify any point to this stunt, let me know.

I don’t mind a bit of selective manipulation, but here’s what Moore, touting his picture of poor dead Kayla as a badge of his compassion, doesn’t tell you: the boy who killed her had been dumped by his drug-addicted mother and moved into his drug-dealing uncle’s crack house, where the young lad didn’t have a bed of his own and so curled up on a pile of blankets under which he happened to find a stolen gun. The uncle was wanted for theft: no cops troubled him. The crack house rang with gunfire every night: nobody bothered to investigate. The woman, whom Moore paints as the victim of Michigan welfare policies, was an unfit mother, but the state’s fetishisation of “biological parenting” ensured that nothing Mommy did to the kid would persuade them to remove him from her care. I don’t think Kayla Rolland’s murder has much to do with a “culture of fear” or gun control or Charlton Heston or any of Moore’s other diversions. But she’s served her purpose, and now we know where Michael Moore stands: every child has the right to grow up in a gun-free crack house."

[Guest MDA]

or sharpening....

[Don Hudson]

Shibui;

Well now, that is a point of view, and well-crafted at that!

[Mitch Cronin]

"in the US, there are 1.7 homicides per 100,000 long guns; in Canada, it’s 1.9. So British visitors to North America should be aware they’re more likely to be killed by a homicidal Canadian rifleman than an American one."

Something slightly wrong with his conclusion there... something about total numbers he seems to be conveniently ignoring...

So much for his credibility.

[UpperDeck]

Defcon...you acolyte...(look it up). There is a name for that process as part of the Catholic liturgy; you ask the question and hosanna the response.

[Mitch Cronin]

Yea Man, Tell it to us brother.

[Guest shibui]

Yeah, this Steyn chappie is even out to the right of me (a position I didn't know existed in this universe) but he has an enviable ability to turn a phrase.

[Azure]

I didn't even see the movie, yet. Question all, I don't care if you read the Sun or the local rag, question all.

[Don Hudson]

Shibui;

Its very good writing, if not a bit polemical, but entertaining nevertheless and there's probably some verifiable facts there as well. I'm not always sure where the interface is between polemics/ideologies and a simpler inquiry about what's what.

There are some very good writers all along the spectrum between left and right and I am at home with many positions from end to end although less so with left-wing intellectuals which believe that universities are oases of free or critical thinking, or folks like Falwell or Buckley but I find I'm most at home with McLuhan's approach: "In the vortex of process, there are no fixed points of view. Understanding is never a point of view".

[Mitch Cronin]

... not sure about the interface, but the point of divergence seems to be when one draws conclusions and shows all data with a slant, while the other continues with unbiased inquiry.