Michael Moore praises suspected WikiLeaks source

Michael Moore praises suspected WikiLeaks source

Associated Press
Aug. 20, 2010

HAGERSTOWN, Md. — Filmmaker Michael Moore is praising an Army private suspected of releasing classified war records to WikiLeaks and said he would contribute to his defense.

Moore tells The Associated Press in an interview that he considers Pfc. Bradley Manning a courageous patriot for exposing what Moore called "war crimes."

The Oscar-winning filmmaker said Thursday he will contribute to a legal defense fund for the 22-year-old former intelligence analyst, who faces up to 52 years in prison.

Manning is charged with leaking video of a U.S. Apache helicopter attack that killed 11, including a Reuters news photographer and his driver. Investigators call Manning a person of interest in the release of 77,000 Afghanistan war logs that WikiLeaks published online in July.

I think leaking stuff like that every once in a while is a good thing, it adds transparency to something ordinary people know little to nothing about.But of course it can't threaten people's lives.

Well, these leaks will threaten many lives... Afghan and Americans in Afghanistan. You ok with that?

Not the video, only the documents that are leaked. To answer your question, check the post above yours.

BubbleBliss wrote:
Not the video, only the documents that are leaked. To answer your question, check the post above yours.

Being a veteran of the US military, i find any statement of the sort offensive. This kid is charged under military law with leaking classified material. He leaked over 150,000 diplomatic cables, more than 90,000 intelligence reports on the war in Afghanistan and that video of a military helicopter attack. It's all classified information. He broke the law. In fact, he's what i call a traitor.

Here's a question: is it okay to cover it up when the military fooks up?

I agree with classified information being classified. It's classified for a reason... But when that reason isn't clear (or legitimate or legal), then what? How do we ever get to the truth? Or does the truth not matter in these instances? :silent:

i_luv_miley wrote:Here's a question: is it okay to cover it up when the military fooks up?

You can say fuck here. We're big boys.

Nothing was covered up. Did something questionable happen? Yeah. A coverup is when something is attempted to bring into the open and deflected/suppressed. There are ways to bring questionable behavior into the light... even when in the military.

i_luv_miley wrote:I agree with classified information being classified. It's classified for a reason... But when that reason isn't clear (or legitimate or legal), then what? How do we ever get to the truth? Or does the truth not matter in these instances? :silent:

It's hard for me to answer that question. I blame it on bad commanders in the field for allowing things to be done in the manner that they were done. When someone makes a mistake, it's a different thing.

My main argument here isn't whether bad things should allowed to continue, it's about a member of the military doing something illegal by military and US law. What this kid did is treason. If a civilian (maybe a reporter) could dig up some shit like this and then report it, then it's not as egregious to me. But with the attitude of today's media, i'd probably find it suspect to start with. If their sole purpose is to find dirt, then i'd have a problem with that. If they found dirt while doing honest coverage of the war, then i wouldn't bitch.

I guess I'm confused. I thought that it was Michael Moore who you were calling a traitor. But judging by your above comment, I guess I'm wrong. I apologize, Tex. As for the other person mentioned in the article, I'm not familiar with military protocol and so I'm in no position to comment... But having said that, I will comment anyway. At least to reiterate what I said above. Even though it may be irrelevant in this case, even the military should be held accountable (by an outside source) when something is obviously wrong. Okay, I think that they can (and should be able to) "police" themselves the majority of the time. I have no problem with that. But what bugs me, and brought on my previous post, is when the military (or government) covers up something just for the sake of "Well, we don't want our troops to look bad, so we'll just bury it in bull-plop." We've seen that happen and it's wrong, and it was from that that I based my previous comment on.

TexasBlue wrote:You can say fuck here. We're big boys.

When it comes to public forums, I've developed my own "censorship-chip". I'm not against the words of course, but I've just never felt the need to actually use them in public. Well, except in that one place, that is... Besides, it's more fun to say fook, fork or fuqua or fluffyfeathers and other sheet like that.

i_luv_miley wrote:I guess I'm confused. I thought that it was Michael Moore who you were calling a traitor. But judging by your above comment, I guess I'm wrong. I apologize, Tex. As for the other person mentioned in the article, I'm not familiar with military protocol and so I'm in no position to comment... But having said that, I will comment anyway. At least to reiterate what I said above. Even though it may be irrelevant in this case, even the military should be held accountable (by an outside source) when something is obviously wrong. Okay, I think that they can (and should be able to) "police" themselves the majority of the time. I have no problem with that. But what bugs me, and brought on my previous post, is when the military (or government) covers up something just for the sake of "Well, we don't want our troops to look bad, so we'll just bury it in bull-plop." We've seen that happen and it's wrong, and it was from that that I based my previous comment on.

Nope. Moore is free to say whatever he wants. I expect this out of him. I also have no iota of respect for him either. That kid is a traitor and committed treason by it's very definition. The military is held to a rigid standard and is overseen by civilian leadership for a reason. That's why generals are questioned in front of congress to start with. We don't have a corrupt military.

i_luv_miley wrote:When it comes to public forums, I've developed my own "censorship-chip". I'm not against the words of course, but I've just never felt the need to actually use them in public. Well, except in that one place, that is... Besides, it's more fun to say fook, fork or fuqua or fluffyfeathers and other sheet like that.

But it's fun to cuss! Fook is my favorite word.

Fooking internet went out around 4pm yesterday here.

TexasBlue wrote:

BubbleBliss wrote:
Not the video, only the documents that are leaked. To answer your question, check the post above yours.

Being a veteran of the US military, i find any statement of the sort offensive. This kid is charged under military law with leaking classified material. He leaked over 150,000 diplomatic cables, more than 90,000 intelligence reports on the war in Afghanistan and that video of a military helicopter attack. It's all classified information. He broke the law. In fact, he's what i call a traitor.

No matter. The video that was leaked brought up a trial that would have otherwise never happened. Somebody needs to watch the military and since there is almost no transparency on how the wars are fought, things like this add to that. I say again though, only if it doesn't put people in danger.

What i'm telling you is when it's a member of the military that's doing it. If he see's something questionable, he can send a message to his congressman (or call) if he can't get it resolved thru military channels. Not all generals are aware of little shit going on. To leak it to a foreigner with an apparent agenda is wrong and a violation of the UCMJ.

TexasBlue wrote:Nope. Moore is free to say whatever he wants. I expect this out of him. I also have no iota of respect for him either. That kid is a traitor and committed treason by it's very definition. The military is held to a rigid standard and is overseen by civilian leadership for a reason. That's why generals are questioned in front of congress to start with. We don't have a corrupt military.

And that's cool. Of course, I agree with his politics. But yeah, some of his "tactics" are stupid. But hey, he's a film maker. He does deal with important issues though.

Michael Moore is a fat slob loser that makes pointless worthless movies that no self-respecting human watches.

lol. I've never met a left winger that actually likes him.

TheNextPrez2012 wrote:Michael Moore is a fat slob loser that makes pointless worthless movies that no self-respecting human watches.

The_Amber_Spyglass wrote:lol. I've never met a left winger that actually likes him.

You just did.... ILM.

The_Amber_Spyglass wrote:lol. I've never met a left winger that actually likes him.

As Tex said, you have now. What I like about him is that he deals with those issues from a people point-of-view. And what he says (about how things affect real people) is real... Of course, some of his tactics are stupid - and some are probably illegal. But again, he's a filmmaker. He's not a politician. He doesn't make policy. He exposes political hypocrisy. And yes, I do appreciate that.

I think Moores films are interesting. He does bring up some things he researched that we'd probably not hear about on the news and ILM is right, he does display things from an average American's point of view. I don't put too much political trust into his films because films like those leave a wide open area for bias and partial reporting, but I do like the individual stories/cases he puts in his movies.

There's a lot of stuff that counters what he says, btw. This is just the tip of the iceberg....
http://www.moorewatch.com/


then........
Expose' of Michael Moore's lies about Cuban health care

The one thing I do like about him is that some of the minor points he makes are often the most compelling.

Take Bowling For Columbine for example. Whatever you think of US gun laws, at one point he tries to suggest in a tongue in cheek manner that right wingers who think that gun laws are irrelevant to the Columbine shooting and in their determination to blame heavy metal music ought to look at bowling (hence the title) as another potential cause because those boys had gone bowling the night before and were keen players.

BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE

Documentary or Fiction?

-David T. Hardy-

Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine" won the Oscar for best
documentary. Unfortunately, it is not a documentary, by the Academy's own
definition.

The injustice here is not so much to the viewer,
as to the independent producers of real documentaries. These struggle in
a field which receives but a fraction of the recognition and financing of
the "entertainment industry." They are protected by Academy
rules limiting the documentary competition to nonfiction.

Bowling is fiction. It makes its points by deceiving and by misleading
the viewer. Statements are made which are false. Moore leads the reader
to draw inferences which he must have known were wrong. Indeed, even
speeches shown on screen are heavily edited, so that sentences are assembled
in the speaker's voice, but which were not sentences he uttered. Bowling
uses deception as its primary tool of persuasion and effect.

A film which does this may be a commercial success. It may be entertaining.
But it is not a documentary. One
need only consult Rule 12 of the rules for the Academy Award: a documentary
is a non-fictional movie.

The point is not that Bowling is biased.
No, the point is that Bowling is deliberately, seriously, and consistently
deceptive.

1. Willie Horton. The first edition of the webpage had a section
on falsification of the election ad regarding Willie Horton (the convict,
not the baseball star). This was one of the earliest criticisms of Bowling--Ben
Fritz caught it back in November,
2002.


To illustrate politicians' (and especially Republican politicians')
willingness to play the "race card," Bowling shows what purports
to be a television ad run by George Bush, Sr., in his race against Governor
Dukakis. For those who weren't around back then -- Massachusetts had a
"prison furlough" program where prisoners could be given short
releases from the clink. Unfortunately, some of them never came back. Dukakis
vetoed legislation which would have forbidden furlough to persons with
"life without parole" sentences for murder, and authorities thereafter
furloughed a number of murderers. Horton, in prison for a brutal stabbing
murder, got a furlough, never returned, and then attacked a couple, assaulting
both and raping the woman. His opponents in the presidential race took
advantage of the veto.

The ad as shown by Moore begins with a "revolving door" of
justice, progresses to a picture of Willie Horton (who is black), and ends
with dramatic subtitle: "Willie Horton released. Then kills again."
Fact: Bowling splices
together two different election ads, one run by the Bush campaign (featuring
a revolving door, and not even mentioning Horton) and another run by an
independent expenditure campaign (naming Horton, and showing footage from
which it can be seen that he is black). At the end, the ad ala' Moore has
the customary note that it was paid for by the Bush-Quayle campaign. Moore
intones "whether you're a psychotic killer or running for president
of the United States, the one thing you can always count on is white America's
fear of the black man." There is nothing to reveal that most of the
ad just seen (and all of it that was relevant to Moore's claim) was not
the Bush-Quayle ad, which didn't even name Horton.

Fact: Apparently unsatisfied with splicing the ads, Bowling's
editors added a subtitle "Willie Horton released. Then kills
again."

Fact: Ben Fitz also noted that Bowling's editors didn't bother
to research the events before doctoring the ads. Horton's second arrest
was not for murder. (The second set of charges were aggravated assault
and rape).


I originally deleted this from the main webpage, because in the VHS version
of Bowling Moore had the decency to remove the misleading footage. But as
Brendan Nyhan recently wrote in Spinsanity, he put
it back in in the DVD version! He did make one minor change, switching
his edited-in caption to "Willie Horton released. Then rapes a woman."
Obviously Moore had been informed of the Spinsanity criticism. He responded
by correcting his own typo, not by removing the edited in caption, nor by
revealing that the ad being shown was not in fact a Bush-Quayle ad.

2. NRA and the Reaction To Tragedy. A major theme in Bowling is
that NRA is callous toward slayings. In order to make this theme fit the
facts, however, Bowling repeatedly distorts the evidence.

A. Columbine Shooting/Denver NRA Meeting. Bowling portrays this
with the following sequence:


Weeping children outside Columbine;
Cut to Charlton Heston holding a musket and proclaiming "I have
only five words for you: 'from my cold, dead, hands'";
Cut to billboard advertising the meeting, while Moore intones "Just
ten days after the Columbine killings, despite the pleas of a community
in mourning, Charlton Heston came to Denver and held a large pro-gun rally
for the National Rifle Association;"

Cut to Heston (supposedly) continuing speech... "I have a message
from the Mayor, Mr. Wellington Webb, the Mayor of Denver. He sent me this;
it says 'don't come here. We don't want you here.' I say to the Mayor this
is our country, as Americans we're free to travel wherever we want in our
broad land. Don't come here? We're already here!"

The portrayal is one of an arrogant protest in response to the deaths
-- or, as one reviewer
put it, "it seemed that Charlton Heston and others rushed to
Littleton to hold rallies and demonstrations directly after the tragedy."
The portrayal is in fact false.


Fact: The Denver event was not a demonstration relating to Columbine,
but an annual meeting (see links below), whose place and date had been
fixed years in advance.

Fact: At Denver, the NRA cancelled all events (normally several
days of committee meetings, sporting events, dinners, and rallies) save
the annual members' voting meeting -- that could not be cancelled because
the state law governing nonprofits required that it be held. [No way to
change location, since under NY law you have to give 10 days' advance notice
of that to the members, there were upwards of 4,000,000 members -- and
Columbine happened 11 days before the scheduled meeting.] As a newspaper
reported:

In a letter to NRA members Wednesday, President Charlton Heston and
the group's executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre, said all seminars,
workshops, luncheons, exhibits by gun makers and other vendors, and festivities
are canceled.

All that's left is a members' reception with Rep. J.C. Watts, R-Okla.,
and the annual meeting, set for 10 a.m. May 1 in the Colorado Convention
Center.

Under its bylaws and New York state law, the NRA must hold an annual
meeting.

The NRA convention April 30-May 2 was expected to draw 22,000 members
and give the city a $17.9 million economic boost.

"But the tragedy in Littleton last Tuesday calls upon us to take
steps, along with dozens of other planned public events, to modify our
schedule to show our profound sympathy and respect for the families and
communities in the Denver area in their time of great loss," Heston
and LaPierre wrote.

Fact: Heston's "cold dead hands"
speech, which leads off Moore's depiction of the Denver meeting, was not
given at Denver after Columbine.
It was given a year later
in Charlotte, North Carolina, and was his gesture of gratitude upon
his being given a handmade musket, at that annual meeting.

Fact: When Bowling continues on to the
speech which Heston did give in Denver, it carefully edits it to
change its theme.

Moore's fabrication here cannot be described by
any polite term. It is a lie, a fraud, and a few other things. Carrying
it out required a LOT of editing to mislead the viewer, as I will show
below. I transcribed Heston's speech as Moore has it, and compared
it to a news agency's transcript, color coding the passages. CLICK
HERE for the comparison, with links to the original transcript.
Moore has actually taken audio of seven sentences, from five different
parts of the speech, and a section given in a different speech entirely,
and spliced them together. Each edit is cleverly covered by inserting a
still or video footage for a few seconds.

First, right after the weeping victims, Moore puts on Heston's "I
have only five words for you . . . cold dead hands" statement, making
it seem directed at them. As noted above, it's actually a thank-you speech
given a year later in North Carolina.

Moore then has an interlude -- a visual of a billboard and his narration.
This is vital. He can't go directly to Heston's real Denver speech. If
he did that, you might ask why Heston in mid-speech changed from a purple
tie and lavender shirt to a white shirt and red tie, and the background
draperies went from maroon to blue. Moore has to separate the two segments.

Moore's second edit (covered by splicing in a pan shot of the crowd)
deletes Heston's announcement that NRA has in fact cancelled most of its
meeting:

"As you know, we've cancelled the festivities, the fellowship
we normally enjoy at our annual gatherings. This decision has perplexed
a few and inconvenienced thousands. As your president, I apologize
for that."

Moore then cuts to Heston noting that Denver's mayor asked NRA not to
come, and shows Heston replying "I said to the Mayor: As Americans,
we're free to travel wherever we want in our broad land. Don't come here?
We're already here!" as if in defiance.

Actually, Moore put an edit right in the middle of the first sentence,
and another at its end! Heston really said (with reference his own WWII
vet status) "I said to the mayor, well, my reply to the mayor is,
I volunteered for the war they wanted me to attend when I was 18 years
old. Since then, I've run small errands for my country, from Nigeria to
Vietnam. I know many of you here in this room could say the same thing."
Moore cuts it after "I said to the Mayor" and attaches a sentence
from the end of the next paragraph: "As Americans, we're free to travel
wherever we want in our broad land." He hides the deletion by cutting
to footage of protestors and a photo of the Mayor before going back and
showing Heston.

Moore has Heston then triumphantly announce "Don't come here? We're
already here!" Actually, that sentence is clipped from a segment
five paragraphs farther on in the speech. Again, Moore uses an editing
trick to cover the doctoring, switching to a pan shot of the audience as
Heston's (edited) voice continues.

What Heston said there was:

"NRA members are in city hall, Fort Carson, NORAD, the Air Force
Academy and the Olympic Training Center. And yes, NRA members are surely
among the police and fire and SWAT team heroes who risked their lives to
rescue the students at Columbine.

Don't come here? We're already here. This community is our home.
Every community in America is our home. We are a 128-year-old fixture of
mainstream America. The Second Amendment ethic of lawful, responsible firearm
ownership spans the broadest cross section of American life imaginable.
So, we have the same right as all other citizens to be here. To help
shoulder the grief and share our sorrow and to offer our respectful, reassured
voice to the national discourse that has erupted around this tragedy."
"NRA members are, above all, Americans. That means that whatever
our differences, we are respectful of one another and we stand united,
especially in adversity."

I recently discovered that Moore has set up a new webpage to respond
to a chosen few points of criticism, one of which is his, er, creative editing
of Heston's speech. Click here for a
link to his page, and for my response to his attempted defense of what he
did. Basically, Moore contends that he didn't mean for the viewer to get
the impression that "cold dead hands" was spoken at Denver --
that just "appears as Heston is being introduced in narration."

B. Mt. Morris shooting/ Flint rally. Bowling continues by juxtaposing
another Heston speech with a school shooting of Kayla Rolland at Mt. Morris,
MI, just north of Flint. Moore makes the claim that "Just as he did
after the Columbine shooting, Charlton Heston showed up in Flint, to have
a big pro-gun rally."


Fact: Heston's speech was given at a "get out the vote"
rally in Flint, which was held when elections rolled by some eight months
after the shooting ( Feb.
29 vs Oct. 17,
2000).

Fact: Bush and Gore were then both
in the Flint area, trying to gather votes. Moore himself
had been hosting rallies for Green Party candidate Nader in Flint a few
weeks before.

Here's the real setting, as reported in the Detroit
Free Press one day after Heston's speech:

What do Al Gore, Charlton Heston, Jesse Jackson, Lee Iacocca, and George
W., Laura and Barbara Bush all agree upon?

That Michigan is a really big deal right now. The candidates, their
wives, mothers, and pals are here this week, as post-debate spin control
ebbs and political ground control overtakes Michigan with 20 days left
to Election Day.....Democratic nominee Gore is to campaign in Flint tonight;
Texas Gov. Bush is to visit a Macomb County factory Thursday. . . . . For
Republicans, other surrogates include former auto executive Lee Iacocca
touting Bush at a luncheon today in Troy, and Tuesday's visit by National
Rifle Association President and movie-Moses Charlton Heston.

For the Democrats, the Rev. Jesse Jackson is seeking to mobilize black
voters for the Gore ticket Thursday at Detroit's King High School, and
Energy Secretary Bill Richardson will do the same at an Arab-American Chamber
of Commerce dinner Friday in Livonia.

How does Moore trick the viewer into believing that this speech, given
in this context, was actually a defiant response to a shooting in a nearby
town months before?

Moore creates the impression that one event was right after the other
so smoothly that I didn't spot his technique. It was picked up by Richard
Rockley, who sent me an email.

Moore works by depriving you of context and guiding your mind to fill
the vacuum -- with completely false ideas. It is brilliantly, if unethically,
done,. Let's deconstruct his method.

The entire sequence takes barely 40 seconds. Images are flying by so
rapidly that you cannot really think about them, you just form impressions.


Shot of Moore comforting Kayla's school principal after she discusses
Kayla's murder. As they turn away, we hear Heston's voice: "From my
cold, dead hands." [Moore is again attibuting it to a speech
where it was not uttered.]
When Heston becomes visible, he's telling a group that freedom needs
you now, more than ever, to come to its defense. Your impression: Heston
is responding to something urgent, presumably the controversy caused by
her death. And he's speaking about it like a fool.
Moore: "Just as he did after the Columbine shooting, Charlton Heston
showed up in Flint, to have a big pro-gun rally."
Moore continues on to say that before he came to Flint, Heston had been
interviewed by the Georgetown Hoya about Kayla's death... Why would this
be important?

Image of Hoya (a student paper) appears on screen, with highlighting
on words of reporter mentioning Kayla Rolland's name, and highlighting
on Heston's name (only his name, not his reply) as he answers. Image is
on screen only a few seconds.

Ah, you think you spot the relevance: he obviously was alerted to the
case, and that's why be came.
And, Moore continues, the case was discussed on Heston's "own NRA"
webpage... Again, your mind seeks relevance....

Image of a webpage for America's First Freedom (a website for NRA, not
for Heston) with text "48 hours after Kayla Rolland was prounced
dead" highlighted and zoomed in on.

Your impression: Heston did something 48 hours after she died. Why else
would "his" webpage note this event, whatever it is? What would
Heston's action have been? It must have been to go to Flint and hold the
rally.

Scene cuts to protestors, including a woman with a Million Moms March
t-shirt, who asks how Heston could come here, she's shocked and appalled,
"it's like he's rubbing our face in it." (This speaker and the
protest may be faked, but let's assume for the
moment they're real.). This caps your impression. She's shocked by Heston
coming there, 48 hours after the death. He'd hardly be rubbing faces in
it if he came there much later, on a purpose unrelated to the death.


The viewer thinks he or she understands ....


One reviewer:
Heston "held another NRA rally in Flint, Michigan, just 48
hours after a 6 year old shot and killed a classmate in that same town."
Another:"What
was Heston thinking going to into Colorado and Michigan immediately
after the massacres of innocent children?"


Let's look at the facts behind the presentation:


Heston's speech, with its sense of urgency, freedom needs you
now more than ever before. As noted above, it's actually an election rally,
held weeks before the closest election in American history.

Moore: "Just as at Columbine, Heston showed up in Flint
to have a large pro-gun rally." As noted above, it was an election
rally actually held eight months later.

Georgetown Hoya interview, with highlighting on reporter mentioning
Kayla and on Heston's name where he responds.

What is not highlighted, and impossible to read except by repeating
the scene, is that the reporter asks about Kayla and about the Columbine
shooters, and Heston replies only as to the Columbine shooters. There is
no indication that he recognized Kayla Rolland's case. It flashes
past in the movie: click here to see it frozen.

"His NRA webpage" with highlighted reference to "48
hours after Kayla Robinson is pronounced dead." Here's where it gets
interesting. Moore zooms in on that phrase so quickly that it blots out
the rest of the sentence, and then takes the image off screen before you
can read anything else.


(It's clearer in the movie). The page is long gone, but I finally found
an archived
version and also a June 2000 usenet posting usenet
posting. Guess what the page really said happened? Not a Heston trip
to Flint, but: "48-hours after Kayla Rolland
is pronounced dead, Bill Clinton is on The Today Show telling a sympathetic
Katie Couric, "Maybe this tragic death will help.""
Nothing to do with Heston. Incidentally, if you have the DVD version
and the right player, you can freeze frame this sequence and see it yourself.
Then go back and freeze frame the rally, and you'll make out various Bush
election posters and tags.

Yep, Moore had a reason for zooming in on the 48 hours. The zooming
starts instantly, and moves sideways to block out the rest of the sentence
before even the quickest viewer could read it.


By the way, when interviewed by a reporter for the Times
of London, Moore had to admit the point: "When I spoke to Moore
last week, he confirmed Hardy's point about the date of the speech, but
angrily denied the allegation that he had misled viewers."

If this is artistic talent, it's not the type that merits an Oscar.

C. Heston Interview. Having created the desired impression, Moore
follows with his Heston interview. Heston's memory of the Flint event is
foggy (he says it was an early morning event, and that they then went on
to the next rally; in fact the rally was at 6
- 7:30 PM. and the last event of the day.). Heston's lack of recall
is not surprising; it was one rally in a nine-stop
tour of three States in three days.


Moore, who had plenty of time to prepare, continues the impression he
has created, asking Heston misleading questions such as: "After that
happened you came to Flint to hold a big rally and, you know, I just, did
you feel it was being at all insensitive to the fact that this community
had just gone through this tragedy?" Moore continues, "you
think you'd like to apologize to the people in Flint for coming and
doing that at that time?"

Moore knows the real sequence, and knows that Heston does not. Moore
takes full advantage.


As noted above, Moore's deception works on reviewers. In fact, when Heston
says he did not know about Kayla's shooting when he went to Flint, viewers
see Heston as an inept liar:


"Then, he [Heston] and his ilk held ANOTHER gun-rally shortly
after another child/gun tragedy in Flint, MI where a 6-year old child shot
and killed a 6-year old classmate (Heston claims in the final interview
of the film that he didn't know this had just happened when he appeared)."
Click here



Bowling persuaded these viewers by deceiving them. Moore's creative
skills are used to convince the viewer that things happened which did not
and that a truthful man is a liar when he denies them.


A further question: is the end of the Heston
interview faked?


3. Animated sequence equating NRA with KKK. In an animated history
send-up, with the narrator talking rapidly, Bowling equates the NRA with
the Klan, suggesting NRA was founded in 1871, "the same year that the
Klan became an illegal terrorist organization." Bowling goes on to
depict Klansmen becoming the NRA and an NRA character helping to light a
burning cross.



This sequence is intended to create the impression either that NRA and
the Klan were parallel groups or that when the Klan was outlawed its members
formed the NRA.

Both impressions are not merely false, but directly opposed to the real
facts.



Fact: The NRA was founded in 1871 -- by act of the New York Legislature,
at request of former Union officers. The Klan was founded in 1866,
and quickly became a terrorist organization. One might claim that while
it was an organization and a terrorist one, it technically became an "illegal"
such with passage of the federal Ku Klux Klan Act and Enforcement Act in
1871. These criminalized interference with civil rights, and empowered
the President to use troops to suppress the Klan. (Although we'd have to
acknowledge that murder, terror and arson were illegal long before that
time -- the Klan hadn't been operating legally until 1871, it was operating
illegally with the connivance of law enforcement.)

Fact: The Klan Act and Enforcement Act
were signed into law by President Ulysess S. Grant. Grant used
their provisions vigorously, suspending habeas corpus and deploying
troops; under his leadership over 5,000 arrests were made and the Klan
was dealt a serious (if all too short-lived) blow.

Fact: Grant's vigor in disrupting the
Klan earned him unpopularity among many whites, but Frederick Douglass praised
him, and an associate of Douglass wrote that African-Americans "will
ever cherish a grateful remembrance of his name, fame and great services."

Fact: After Grant left the White House,
the NRA elected him as its eighth president.

Fact: After Grant's term, the NRA elected General Philip Sheridan,
who had removed
the governors of Texas and Lousiana for failure to suppress the KKK.
Fact: The affinity of NRA for enemies of the Klan is hardly surprising.
The NRA was founded by former Union officers, and eight of its first ten
presidents were Union veterans.

Fact: During the 1950s and 1960s, groups of blacks organized
as NRA
chapters in order to obtain surplus military rifles to fight off Klansmen.


.4. Shooting at Buell Elementary School in Michigan. Bowling depicts
the juvenile shooter who killed Kayla Rolland as a sympathetic youngster,
from a struggling family, who just found a gun in his uncle's house and
took it to school. "No one knew why the little boy wanted to shoot
the little girl."



Fact: The little boy was the class thug, already suspended from
school for stabbing another kid with a pencil, and had fought with Kayla
the day before. Since the incident, he has stabbed another child with a
knife.

Fact: The uncle's house was the family business -- the neighborhood
crack-house. The gun was stolen and was purchased by the uncle in exchange
for drugs.The shooter's father was already serving a prison term for theft
and drug offenses. A few weeks later police busted the shooter's grandmother
and aunt for narcotics sales. After police hauled the family away, the
neighbors applauded the officers. This was not a nice but misunderstood
family.

Links:1.,
2, 3, 4, 5,
6,
7, 8,
9,
10,
11,


5. The Taliban and American Aid. In discussing military assistance
to various countries, Bowling asserts that the U.S. gave $245 million in
aid to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan in 2000 and 2001.



Fact: The aid in question was humanitarian
assistance, given through UN and nongovernmental organizations,
to relieve famine in Afghanistan. [Various numbers are given for the amount
of the aid, and some say several million went for clearing landmines.]


6. International Comparisons. To pound home its point, Bowling
flashes a dramatic count of gun homicides in various countries: Canada 165,
Germany 381, Australia 65, Japan 39, US 11,127. Now that's raw numbers,
not rates -- Here's why he doesn't talk rates.

Verifying the figures was difficult, since Moore does not give a year
for them. A lot of Moore's numbers didn't check out for any period
I could find. As a last effort at checking, I did a Google search for each
number and the word "gun" or words "gun homicides" Many
traced -- only back to webpages repeating Bowling's figures. Moore is the
only one using these numbers.


Germany: Bowling says 381: 1995 figures put homicides at 1,476,
about four times what Bowling claims, and gun homicides at 168, about half
what it claims: it's either far too high or far too low. ( Jörg Altmeppen
has emailed me a link to a German site putting the figure at Moore's 381,
in 1998 -- I have
to depend upon his translation here, as German is one of the languages
in which I can only curse.).

Australia: Bowling says 65. This is very close, albeit
picking the year to get the data desired. Between 1980-1995, firearm homicides
varied from 64-123,
although never exactly 65. In 2000, it was 64, which was proudly proclaimed
as the lowest number in the country's history.

US: Bowling says 11,127. FBI
figures put it a lot lower. They report gun homicides were 8,719
in 2001, 8,661 in 2000, 8,480 in 1999. (2001 UCR, p. 23). Here's the table:

[You can download the entire report, in .pdf format, by clicking
here; look for pt. 2 at p.23.] To be utterly fair, this is a count
of the 13,752 homicides for which police submitted supplemental data (including
weapon used): the total homicide count was 15,980. But what weapon, if
any, was used in the other homicide is unknown to us, and was unknown to
Moore.

After an email tip, I finally found a way to compute precisely 11,127.
Ignore the FBI, use Nat'l Center for Health Statistics figures.

These are based on doctors' death certificates rather than police investigation.
Then -- to their gun homicide figures, add the figure for legally-justified
homicides: self-defense and police use against criminals. Presto, you
have exactly Moore's 11,127. I can see no other way for him to get it.

Since Moore appears to use police figures for the other countries, it's
hardly a valid comparison. More to the point, it's misleading since it
includes self-defense and police: when we talk of a gun homicide problem
we hardly have in mind a woman defending against a rapist, or a cop taking
out an armed robber.

Canada: Moore's number is correct for 1999, a low point, but
he ignores some obvious differences.

Bias. I wanted to talk about fabrication, not about bias, but
I've gotten emails asking why I didn't mention that Switzerland requires
almost all adult males to have guns, but has a lower
homicide rate than Great Britain, or that Japanese-Americans, with
the same proximity to guns as other Americans, have homicide rates half that of
Japan itself. (And, after posting this, got an email saying that Switzerland
doesn't require all adult males to own guns -- not everyone is in the national
militia. Here's an encyclopedia
reference to their system. 36% of entire population is enrolled in
the militia -- which must mean a very great part of the adult male population,
" All of Swiss society celebrates shooting, and skill with the rifle.
For example, each year Zurich shuts down a whole day for its "Boys'
Shooting Festival."" Sounds like a plan to me.)

And, oh, yes, there is an extremely interesting
paper by Canadian criminologist Gary Mauser, presented at a colloquium
in, appropriately enough, the Tower of London, and addressing international
comparisons of firearms laws and firearm crime rates. I highly recommend
reading, if you're interested in serious research rather than Moore's flashing
numbers. Okay, they're mentioned, now back to our regularly scheduled program.


Actually, international comparisons lead to some interesting points.
Here's a webpage
which gives worldwide homicide rates. The U.S. comes in at 23rd place. It
only made the list by edging out Armenia and Bulgaria. Its former rival
as a superpower, the states of the former Soviet Union, absolutely flatten
it in this competition. Russia has four times the US rate. Ukraine and Estonia
have twice its rate. Even Poland ranks higher. South Africa's showing is
ten times the US rate! Hmm-- another point from a different
section of that site. In rape rates per 1000 population, the US ranks
ninth, at .32, just ahead of Iceland and Papua New Guinea. Canada is fifth,
at .75, over double the US rate, and Australia is third with .80.

7. Miscellaneous. Even the Canadian government is jumping in.
Bowling shows Moore casually buying ammunition at an Ontario Walmart. He
asks us to "look at what I, a foreign citizen, was able to do at a
local Canadian Wal-Mart." He buys several boxes of ammunition without
a question being raised. "That's right. I could buy as much ammunition
as I wanted, in Canada."


Canadian officials have pointed out that the buy is faked
or illegal: Canadian law has since, 1998, required ammunition buyers
to present proper identification. Since Jan.
1, 2001, (sorry--link broke--it was a Canadian government info site)
it has required non-Canadians to present a firearms borrowing or importation
license, too. (Bowling appears to have been filmed in mid and late 2001).


While we're at it: Bowling shows footage of a B-52 on display at the
Air Force Academy, while Moore scornfully intones that the plaque under
it "proudly proclaims that the plane killed Vietnamese people on Christmas
Eve of 1972."


The plaque actually reads that "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." This is pretty mild compared to the
rest of Bowling, but the viewer can't even trust Moore to honestly read
a monument.


(As
Spinsanity notes, Moore goes even farther in his add-on DVD. There,
he tells us, "And they've got a plaque on there proudly proclaiming
that this bomber, this B-52, killed thousands upon thousands of Vietnamese
-- innocent civilians.")

8. Race. Moore does not directly state that Heston is a
racist--he is the master of creating the false impression --but reviewers
come away saying "Heston looks like an idiot, and a racist one at that"
Source. "BTW,
one thing the Heston interview did clear up, that man is shockingly racist."
Source.


The remarks stem from Heston's answer (after Moore keeps pressing for
why the US has more violence than other countries) that it might be due
to the US "having a more mixed ethnicity" than other nations,
and "We had enough problems with civil rights in the beginning."
A viewer who accepts Moore's theme that gun ownership is driven by racial
fears might conclude that Heston is blaming blacks and the civil rights
movement.

But if you look at some history missing from Bowling, you get exactly
the opposite picture. Heston is talking, not about race, but about racism.
In the early 1960s, the civil rights movement was fighting for acceptance.
Civil rights workers were being murdered. The Kennedy Administration, trying
to hold together a Democratic coalition that ranged from liberals to fire-eater
segregationists such as George Wallace and Lester Maddox, found the issue
too hot to touch, and offered little
support.

Heston got involved. He picketed discriminating restaurants. He worked
with Martin Luther King, and helped King break Hollywood's color barrier
(yes, there was one.). He led
the actors' component of King's 1963 march in Washington, which set
the stage for the
key civil rights legislation in 1964.

Here's Heston's
comments at the 2001 Congress on Racial Equality Martin Luther King
dinner (presided over by NRA director, and CORE President, Roy Innes).
More on Heston.
Most of the viewers were born long after the events Heston is recalling.
To them, the civil rights struggle consists of Martin Luther King speaking,
people singing "We Shall Overcome," and everyone coming to their
senses. Heston remembers what it was really like.

If Heston fails to explain this in Bowling, we've got to note that Moore
(despite his claim that he left the interview almost unedited) cut a lot
of the interview out. Watch closely and you'll see a clock on the wall
near Moore's head. When it's first seen, the time is about 5:47. When Heston
finally walks out, it reads about 6:10. That's 23 minutes. I clocked the
Heston interview in Bowling at 5 1/4 minutes. About three-quarters of what
Heston did say was trimmed out. [Why the clock indicates six o'clock, when
Moore is specific that he showed up for the interview at 8:30 AM, will
have to await another investigation!]


9. Fear. Bowling probably has a good point when it suggests that
the media feeds off fear in a search for the fast buck. For an interesting
analysis of this, showing how crime news skyrocketed (largely displacing
international coverage) even as crime fell, click
here.

Bowling cites some examples: the razor blades in Halloween apples scare,
the flesh-eating bacteria scare, etc. The examples are taken straight
from Barry Glassner's excellent book on the subject, "The Culture of
Fear," and Moore interviews Glassner on-camera for the point.


Then Moore does exactly what he condemns in the media.
Given the prominence of schoolyard killings as a theme in Bowling for
Columbine, Moore must have asked Glassner about that subject. Whatever
Glassner said is, however, left on the cutting-room floor. That's
because Glassner lists schoolyard shootings as one of the mythical fears.
He points out that "More
than three times as many people are killed by lightning as by violence
at schools."


This is as close as Moore comes to having a thesis, an explanation for
homicide rate differences. But here he falls flat on his face. As one of
his interviewees notes, over a period when homicide rates were falling,
media coverage of murder increased by 600%. Okay, flip it around. When media
coverage of homicides increased 600%, homicide rates fell. So much for Moore's
explanation. In fact, so much for all of his attempted explanations. During
the 1990s, homicide rates in the US went into their steepest decline in
decades, with handgun homicides leading the way. That was the same period
that saw the welfare reform laws, the bombing in Serbia, several million
firearms sold each year -- everything, in short, that Moore condemns. (For
one source, just go back up the page to the FBI statistics: between 1997
and 2001, firearm homicides fell from 10,729 to 8,719, and 1997 was after
the biggest drop had occured.

I suppose we might go farther, and ask if Moore's film is not illustrative
of what it condemns. Moore argues that the media (a) distorts reality, and
(b) hypes fear of other Americans, because (c) fear is good for a fast buck.
Moore distorts reality, hypes fear of other Americans ("are we nation
of gun nuts, or just nuts?") and, well, made several million fast bucks.

10. Guns (supposedly the point of the film). A point worth making
(although not strictly on theme here): Bowling's theme is, rather curiously,
not opposed to firearms ownership.

After making out Canada to be a haven of nonviolence, Moore asks why.
He proclaims that Canada has "a tremendous amount of gun ownership,"
somewhat under one gun per household. He visits Canadian shooting ranges,
gun stores, and in the end proclaims "Canada is a gun loving, gun
toting, gun crazy country!"

Or as he put it elsewhere,
"then I learned that Canada has 7 million guns but they don't kill
each other like we do. I thought, gosh, that's uncomfortably close to the
NRA position: Guns don't kill people, people kill people."

Bowling concludes that Canada isn't peaceful because it lacks guns and
gun nuts -- it has lots of those -- but because the Canadian mass
media isn't into constant hyping of fear and loathing, and the American
media is. (One problem).


Which leaves us to wonder why the Brady Campaign/Million Moms issued
a press
release. congratulating Moore on his Oscar nomination.
Or does Bowling have a hidden punch line, and in the end the joke is
on them?


One possible explanation: did Bowling begin
as one movie, and end up as another?

Incidentally, Moore has issued a webpage responding to criticism. In
so doing, he actually admits that much of the above criticism is accurate.
He did splice the Willie Horton ad, and Heston's "cold dead hands"
was never spoken at Denver, and his statistics do stem from those of the
Center for Disease Control, which include self-defense and police shootings
of perps. As far as the rest of the criticisms above -- strange, but Moore
doesn't have an answer. Here's my response.


Conclusion

The point is not that Bowling is unfair, or lacking in objectivity. The
point is far more fundamental: Bowling for Columbine is dishonest.
It is fraudulent. To trash Heston, it even uses the audio/video
editor to assemble a Heston speech that Heston did not give, and sequences
images and carefully highlighted text to spin the viewer's mind to a wrong
conclusion. If there is art in this movie, it is a dishonest art. Moore
does not inform his readers: he plays them like a violin.

A further thought, on a topic far broader (no pun intended) than Moore.
Moore's film is unquestionably popular. He's attracted an almost-cult following.
And judging from the emails I've received, plenty of his followers don't
care a bit about whether they were misled. Can broader lessons be learned
from this?

Suppose for a moment that Moore's behavior can be explained as a product
of Narcisstic Personality Disorder, that he fits the clinical symptoms to
a T, that indeed Bowling is a grand acting out of this character disorder.
Does its popularity suggest something of far greater concern than one more
narcissist in Hollywood? And does that in turn hold a key to mass slayings?Click here for some thoughts on that score.


David T. Hardy [an amateur who has for the last year been working on
a serious bill of
rights documentary], to include the Second Amendment.
dthardy at mindspring.com ["at" instead of "@" used
to confuse those blasted spam robots]


P.S.: I don't have Moore's $4 million budget (and wound up paying over
a thousand in bandwidth overruns, before I found a new host), but if you
could see the way to contribute ten or twenty dollars to this research,
and to preparing a real documentary, please click below.







A few additions:

Links to other Moore & Bowling sites.

Some criticisms not given on this page.

Did Moore appropriate large portions
from a webpage?

Equal time: emails critical of this page.

A brief reply to two responses I've received:


Objectivity: (sample email): "Your entire article is retarded.
We're talking about making FILM. ALL film is subjective. Have you not even
taken an entry level course in film before?"

Response: The point is not that Bowling is non-objective, or
biased. The point is that it is intentionally deceptive.

Nothing is real: The camera changes everything, etc., so in video
there can be no truth or falsity. Sample: "tv and movies, newspapers
or even documentaries *are* constructions, not "the truth" ("truth"
is subjective personal opinion/experience, which would be impossible to
commit to videotape or celluloid)."

Response: This certainly has given me some insight into how some
in the media view things! Can we agree upon one core premise: to deliberately
deceive a viewer is wrong?

Talk basic ethics. Is that what you teach your kids? Truth and lies
are ultimately the same, all that matters is whether you're good at it?
And don't give me the claim that filmmaking is somehow different, all
filming departs from reality, so truth and lies exist for written media
and not for film. All communication is symbolic; the use of verbal and
written symbols to convey ideas. If anything, a documentary film purports
to be less symbolic and more real: the viewer is shown things, and assumes
he is himself seeing reality, rather than hearing a speaker's description,
possibly unfair or deceptive, of it. If anything, this should imply a greater
duty to avoid conscious deception than would apply to the written and spoken
word.

Equally to the point: Moore himself repudiates these defenses, insisting
that every iota of his film is objectively true. "I can guarantee
to you, without equivocation, that every fact in my movie is true. Three
teams of fact-checkers and two groups of lawyers went through it with a
fine tooth comb to make sure that every statement of fact is indeed an
indisputable fact.... [F]aced with a thoroughly truthful and honest film,
those who object to the film's political points are left with the choice
of debating us on the issues in the film or resorting to character assassination."
Source.
Moore makes people think. This at least has some merit to it.
But deception is not the way to inspire clear thinking. For that matter
... if the purpose is to inspire thought, how about giving some data? Homicide,
firearm homicide, and gun use in self-defense have been extensively studied
for forty years now. Kleck, Zimring, Bordua -- there is no shortage of
experts here. And there is a lot of data on other matters, such as relationship
of media coverage to crime. Yet the viewer hears none of this: in terms
of substance, Bowling is thin as an oil slick. The viewer is left with
Moore the criminologist looking at a TV screen and proclaiming TV news
just has to be the answer -- and not stopping long enough to reflect that
if homicide rates fell when news coverage of them went up 600%, this is
a most peculiar answer.

Moore isn't really any more reliable than Limbaugh or the FOX commentators. They all get paid to talk and send a political message, that's it.

CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, New York Times, Washington Post, Atlanta Journal Constitution and the Boston Globe; They all get paid to talk and send a political message, that's it.

No, they present the news and people watch it, that's how they get paid. Limbaugh & Co. work for stations that do the same thing but pay THEM to be as entertaining and captivating as possible when talking about news and politics.