Michael Moore - - - auch sein Haß auf uns Deutsche ist scheinbar grenzenlos - 500 Beiträge pro Seite

[Freiherr-vom-Stein]

Hallo zusammen,

die Zeit heilt alle Wunden?
Irgendwann wird einem vergeben, bei Wohlverhalten?
Oder zumindest wird mit dem Anspucken aufgehört?

Mich kotzt es so an.
Immer und immer wieder, Jahrzehnt für Jahrzehnt, wird die Sippenhaft aufrechterhalten.
Und dabei sollten sich die anderen einmal an die eigene Nase fassen.
Ich will nichts beschönigen. Es war sehr schlimm.

Aber daß Michael Moore solch einen Text absondert, hätte ich nicht gedacht.
Ich bin zutiefst erschüttert und spucke aus vor diesem Ignoranten, der überhaupt keine Ahnung hat.


----------------------------------
Germany still hasn`t paid for its sins - and I intend to collect

DID I Miss the most exciting part of the fiftiethanniversary festivities celebrating the end of World War II? You know, when every single German got down on his or her knees, begged for forgiveness, climbed into boxcars in a show of empathy, and then promised to devote one day`s salary each week to a Holocaust survivor`s family. Man, that must have been a sight. | Did you miss it, too? I`m being a little too harsh, you say, on a country that has already repented and most of whose citizens weren`t even alive for all the killing? Hmmm. Let`s go to the tote board: 6 million Jews murdered 3 million Catholic Poles murdered 500,000 Gypsies murdered 12,500 homosexuals murdered

Those, plus the Communists, Jehovah`s Witnesses, and other undesirables, bring us to a grand total of nearly 10 million defenseless humans slaughtered in the Holocaust. This figure does not include the 400,000 Americans who died in the war (fighting Germany and its partners, the Japanese and Italians), the 25 Million Soviet citizens killed or starved to death, plus the millions of other Europeans, Africans, and Asians who died at the hands of what was considered to be the most intelligent, most civilized, most advanced society on earth. And to think, it all happened not many years ago. We continue to live with the results of this tragedy. All of our families, Jewish and non-Jewish, were somehow touched by this event. My dad`s brother, Lawrence, was killed near Manila. The map of the world is forever screwed up by World War II, and whether it`s Bosnia or the Middle East or skinheads terrorizing the residents of Idaho, you can trace the roots of these conflicts back to what the Germans did. And what was Germany`s punishment for these sins? They got to become one of the richest countries in the world! And it took only three decades! How on earth did we let this happen? Today the average German enjoys a standard of living that has no equal. A factory worker in western Germany last year made an average wage of $29 an hour. In the U.S., that same worker made $19. The American worker annually has to put in nearly 200 hours more on the job than his or her German counterpart. That`s five 40-hour weeks the Germans get paid and don`t have to work while they`re earning 50 percent more per hour than we Americans. And even though Germany is 25 times smaller in size than the U.S., and has one-third fewer workers, its gross domestic product, per capita, is nearly the same as that of the U.S.

Can you imagine, as someone`s grandmother was being shoved into the ovens at Auschwitz, an angel appearing to her and saying, "Don`t worry, the Germans are going to be rewarded by the rest of the world with so much wealth, they won`t know what to do with it"? Don`t get me wrong. I`m not suggesting that we should have treated Germany the way we did after World War I, humiliating them into submission and starving the country to death. Those conditions certainly created the climate for Hitler to be elected by a majority of the German people. And since the war, many Germans have lived their lives denouncing what their parents did. Young Germans today—if they aren`t shaving their heads and beating immigrant domestic workers—are actually very progressive, pacifist, and well-meaning individuals who just happen, through no fault of their own, to be living the good life. The war may seem like a long time ago, and the work of only a few evil Nazis, but, according to Daniel Goldhagen, the author of Hitler`s Willing Executioners, the German government has cataloged more than 330,000 average, everyday Germans who physically participated in the daily slaughter of the Jews. Thousands of those Germans are still alive today. In fact, there are over 12 million Germans still kicking around who were fifteen years or older during World War II. And what have these Germans done to make some kind of reparation for their sins? "We don`t call it reparation," said the woman on the phone at the German Information Center. "It`s restitution." Okay, so how much "restitution" has Germany decided each life they exterminated is worth? Well, according to them, nothing. They won`t make any "restitution" for the dead, it was explained to me. But here`s the good news. They will make up for any property loss the Jews suffered. So if you lost a few candlesticks in the Holocaust, step right up for your deutsche marks. Lost your life? Too bad. No geld for your loved ones. But . . . if you can prove that you spent "at least six months in a concentration camp," were "confined in a ghetto," or were "forced into hiding for a minimum of eighteen months," then you can collect about $350 to $600 a month from the generous Germans. You say you were only tortured in Dachau for five months and twenty-nine days? Too bad! Sue the Germans and you might get a one-time settlement of $3,000. To date, Germany has doled out $68.3 billion in "restitution" payments. If we break that down for everyone they killed in the Holocaust, how much is it for each of the 10 million they butchered? The answer: $6,831. That`s it—$6,831 per mother, father, infant, girl, and boy they gassed, burned, shot, or buried alive. Not a bad price to pay, if it means you can end up one day as the wealthiest nation on earth. As far as I`m concerned, $6,831 per innocent life is not enough. Not that any amount would be "enough," but my life and your life are worth a little more than $6,831. I know some of you are saying, "Hey, Mike, the survivors got to move to Israel after the war. Didn`t giving them that land make it up to them?" Well, I don`t think Israel was actually "given" to them. The British were ruling the place (then called Palestine), and suddenly all these Holocaust survivors with nowhere else to go started arriving and the Brits didn`t like that one bit. But they didn`t have the energy to fight the Jewish guerrillas after having just lost most of their British empire, so they just bagged the place and said, "Fine, you want this, it`s yours." Most Arab residents were not consulted in the deal. I have never understood why giving the Holocaust survivors Palestine/Israel was such a great gift. Have you ever been there? It`s a friggin` desert! There`s nothing there! Israelis like to tell you, "We`ve made the desert bloom!" Talk about rationalizing something . . . I`m telling you, it`s 100 percent sand, rock, and more sand. Why did we think we were making it up to them by placing them in a horrible environment that has cost them even more lives in more wars? Because the Bible said so? When did the world start going by that book? If we had really wanted to do what was right—and punish the Germans—we should have given the survivors the state of Bavaria. Now, that`s one beautiful piece of real estate! And it would have cost the Germans plenty. Turning Palestine into Israel didn`t hurt the Germans one single bit. But losing Bavaria to the Jews would have really kicked those bastards where it counted. Israel has only 10,840 square miles; Bavaria has over 28,000! Israel has few, if any, natural resources; Bavaria is rich in minerals, forests, and water. Since the war, the Israelis have been surrounded by hostile enemies who want them dead; Bavaria is surrounded by the beautiful Alps containing a few goats and those three guys in the Ricola commercial. I guess it`s probably too late to correct this mistake by moving Tel Aviv to Munich and forcing the Germans to go and try to make the desert bloom. I`d say that Germany got off real easy. Only 20 percent of its war criminals were ever put on trial. Many who fought in World War II are still alive. And where do you think they all are today?

Florida!
It`s true. Tens of thousands of Germans, many of them of World War II age, have permanently moved to the state of Florida. German investment in Florida has increased by nearly 200 percent in the past five years. According to the Tampa Tribune, together with the British, the Germans provide over 50 percent of the total manufacturing jobs in Florida. They have over $1.8 billion invested in the state. Over on the southwest coast, just in the counties of Collier, Lee, and Charlotte, there are as many as 86,000 Germans. On a recent trip to southwest Florida, I arrived at the airport in Fort Myers, which has extended its runway so that nonstop jumbo jets to and from Germany can land there. I noticed German flags flying from houses. Everywhere I went there were signs that were printed in German: RAUCHEN VERBOTEN!—NO SMOKING. Menus in restaurants were printed in English and German. They are buying up property and businesses and settling in for the good life. And more and more of their friends from the fatherland are joining them. I am of two minds regarding this German invasion of Florida. On the one hand, I hate Florida. It`s full of bugs, humidity, and stupid people running around with guns. And it`s got those nutty Cuban exiles. If there were a pair of scissors big enough, I wish we could just snip the state where it hangs off the rest of the country. There is a part of me that likes the fact that all these ex-Nazis are moving there to terrorize the people of Florida. Serves them right. The Right-Wing Cubans versus the Geriatric SS in a fight to the finish! I`d pay money to watch that one on Pay-Per-View. On the other hand, it is ironic that right there in south Florida are thousands of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. Is it right that those Jewish men and women who fortunately survived the Germans` slaughter should have to be reading menus written in German to accommodate their new "neighbors"? I don`t think so. I have a solution. We all know that Florida is infamous for German tourists being murdered there. I do not believe this phenomenon is the result of gang-related violence. I think it`s payback time. One by one, the survivors are getting their revenge. Somebody with a sense of justice has armed the elderly residents of Miami Beach, pointed them in the direction of Fort Myers, and let them loose to even the score. Who would have thought that the Germans would make it this easy for them, foolishly moving to the area that contains the highest concentration of Jews outside of New York? What were these Jerries thinking—that the Moskowitzes were going to "live and let live," and "turn the other cheek"? Obviously these Germans forgot about the tote board. I say arm every bingo player south of Fort Lauderdale and let`s celebrate the real end of World War II. So—RUN FOR YOUR LIFE, KLAUS! And Happy 50th Anniversary!!

Quelle:
http://friends.uta4you.at/flo/misc/Michael_Moore_-_Germany.p…

[tradervick]

Erst beschmutzt der Scheißer das eigene Nest und fällt dabei auf die Schnauze und jetzt hat er die old germans mal wieder am Wickel. Spielberg ist wohl zu lange nicht mehr aktiv gewesen.

So einen Kerl nennt man Kotzbrocken.

[calm trader]

ROFL
Selten so gelacht. Das sollte man wirklich nicht so ernst nehmen. Moore ist eben ein Aufmerksamkeitsgeiler Typ. Der tut alles tun um immer wieder in die Schlagzeilen zu kommen
calm

[sinus1234]

ja ist schon schlimm sobald man nur das wort türke in mund nimmt wird man schon als rechts abgestempelt.

[Sep]

ei, sinus, dann nimms halt nicht in den Mund, und gut ist.

Wer ist denn dieser Moore ?

[sinus1234]

und wie soll ich dann jemand nennen der aus der türkei kommt.Ist ja nicht beleidigend gemeint aber die meisten Leute fassen das gleich so aud´f

[superior]

Das Michael Moores Äußerungen über Deutschland erst jetzt auch hier langsam bekannt werden, wundert mich nach dem vielzitierten Bestseller "Stupid White Man" schon etwas . Aber damit konnte man ja auch so wunderbar den vorherschenden Antiamerikanismus bei uns pflegen und begründen .

Der Text, der alle Deutschen pauschal als Nazis abstempelt und zum Mord an den Deutschen in Florida als Holocaust-Rache aufruft, stammt aus dem Buch "Querschüsse - Downsize This". Dieses Werk erschien bereits 1997, wurde aber erst jetzt, im Zuge des Erfolgs von Stupid White Man, auch bei uns auf den Markt gebracht .

Das Buch soll keine Satire sondern eine Anklageschrift sein . "Selten ein so dummes und verallgemeinerndes Buch gelesen", schrieb ein Rezensent .

[ToskanaOskar]

payback time


unglaublich und wir deutschen kaufen seine scheiss bücher auch noch wie verrückt..

[Huckleberry]

wenn die zahlen zu den entschädigungen stimmen, sollten wir den juden tatsächlich bayern überlassen.

die lieben lederhosen können wir ja dann nach israel umsiedeln. dann wären wir auch gleich den stoiber los! :-))

ich kann mir allerdings nicht vorstellen, dass die angaben tatsächlich stimmen. vor allem die mindestzeiten zur haft in kz etc.

kennt sich da jemand aus?

[kyron]

Kriege und Ausrottung kommt offensichtlich mit uns Menschen.

Manchmal wàhlt das Leben jemand aus, um eine Bestimmung auszufùhren.
Manchmal offenbart sich die Bestimmung positiv,
manchmal eben negativ,
es ist nicht in unsere Hand gegeben.

Das zu akzeptieren, anzunehmen, gibt Klarheit,
gibt das Erlebnis einer Harmonie mit dem Leben.

[nichtdie]

also, von Michael Moore halte ich nach seinen amerikafeindlichen Ausfällen sowieso nicht viel. Ein vertrottelter irregeleiteter linker Pseudointelektueller, dessen Weltbild durch den Zerfall seines Lieblingsregimes in der SU ganz aus den Fugen geraten ist. Von denen trifft man auch hier in Deutschland welche zufauf ...

Aber an diesen hier in #1 vorgebrachten Äußerungen, was soll daran denn falsch sein?

[Jarrod23]

Michael Moore ist oberflächlig und somit die Gestalt dessen, was er zu kritiseren vermochte. Sowas kann man nicht für voll nehmen.

[ViccoB.]

nichtdie:

Bitte nicht! Ich dachte, man könnte mit Dir vernünftig diskutieren.

Vicco

[spicault]

[maeusefaenger]

Michael Moore ist ein bischen dumm, denn seinen bisherigen Verlautbarungen ist zu entnehmen, dass er nichts von Politik versteht bzw. die Welt nicht nimmt wie sie ist.

Aber mit seiner moralischen Meßlatte findet er natürlich seine Anhängerschaft.


maeusefaenger

[spicault]

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 he never uttered. Bowling uses deliberate 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. Lockheed-Martin and Nuclear Missiles. Bowling contains a sequence filmed at a Lockheed-Martin manufacturing facility near Columbine. Moore intones that the missiles with their "Pentagon payloads" are trucked through the town "in the middle of the night while the children are asleep." Moore asks whether knowledge that weapons of "mass destruction" were being built nearby might have motivated the Columbine shooters.

After Bowling was released someone checked and found that the Lockheed-Martin plant does not build weapons-type missiles; it makes rockets for launching satellites.

Moore`s website has his response:

"[T]he Lockheed rockets now take satellites into outer space. Some of them are weather satellites, some are telecommunications satellites, and some are top secret Pentagon projects (like the ones that are launched as spy satellites and others which are used to direct the launching of the nuclear missiles should the USA ever decide to use them). "

Nice try, Mike.

(1) that some are spy satellites which might be "used to direct the launching" (i.e., because they spot nukes being launched at the United States) is hardly what Moore was suggesting. Quote:

"So you don`t think our kids say to themselves, `Dad goes off to the factory every day, he builds missiles of mass destruction. What`s the difference between that mass destruction and the mass destruction over at Columbine High School?`"

(2) One of that plant`s major projects was the ultimate in beating swords into plowshares: taking the Titan missiles which originally had carried nuclear warheads, and converting them to launch communications satellites and space exploration units.

2. NRA and the Reaction To Tragedy. A major theme in Bowling is that NRA (National Rifle Association)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 canceled all events (normally several days of committee meetings, sporting events, dinners, and rallies) save the annual members` meeting; that could not be cancelled because corporate law required that it be held. [No way to change location, since you have to give advance notice of that to the members, and there were upwards of 4,000,000 members.]


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."


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.

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.

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.

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 a morning event; in fact the rally was at 6 - 7:30 PM.). 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 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)."

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.


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.


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 the Taliban government of 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.

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:



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. Okay, they`re mentioned, now back to our regularly scheduled program.

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, 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.

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. 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."

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?

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 this art -- a dishonest art. Moore does not inform his readers: he plays them like a violin.

David T. Hardy

[Sep]

Erkenne ich hier leichte Absetzbewegungen von Moore, unserem Kronzeugen für amerikanische Dämlichkeiten.

Machen wir es einfach so :

Mit den Amerikanern, da hat er Recht gehabt. Was die Deutschen angeht, sicherlich nicht.

Oder aber: Er hat weder Recht, was die Amis angeht, noch was uns angeht.

Schlecht wäre ja nur, wenn er mit beiden polemischen Sichtweisen einen wahren Kern beschriebe.


SEP

[kyron]

@ SEP

Machen wir es noch einfacher:

Weder hat er recht, noch hat er nicht recht,
er hat recht, aber nicht ganz unrecht,
er hat recht und unrecht gleichzeitig,
weder hat er unrecht, noch hat er recht,
er hat mehr unrecht als recht,
mehr recht als unrecht,
von recht und unrecht kann keine Rede sein.

[xylophon]

Ich find den Typen zwar eh scheiße, aber was solls.
Er hat ja den Deutschen mit Film und Buch jetzt einiges Geld abgeknöpft, kann er ja dann an Opfer des Faschismus weiterleiten, wenn es ihm solch ein Bedürfnis ist...

[kyron]

Man kommt ins sinnieren



Gibt es einen Mangel an Dumme?
Sie ùberleben alle und alles!

Soviele grosse und bedeutende Mànner sind gestorben und
gegangen,

hm,

mir geht es auch gerade nicht sooo gut.

[Sep]

xylo, 19, schon länger ?

[xylophon]

Wenn das schon länger sich auf den ersten Halbsatz bezieht, ja, eigentlich schon. Solche Typen kenn ich genügend persönlich, verdrehen die Wahrheit immer so, wie es ihnen gerade passt, fühlen sich unglaublich wichtig und sehr subversiv, in Wahrheit haben sie einfach nur schlechtes Benehmen und könnten letztlich für jede Seite ihren Humbug verbreiten, weil ihnen an der Wahrheit nichts liegt, sondern an Propaganda. In einer TV-Kritik hab ich mal was kluges darüber gelesen, wie mies er mit den Subalternen (Vorzimmerdamen usw) der großen Chefs umgeht, zu denen er vordringt, der Held der Arbeiterschaft. Und wie er deren (Chefs) Worte aus dem Zusammenang reißt...sehr treffend, vgl. auch den engl. Text zu Columbine oben...

Soll man sojemanden gut finden?? Selbst wenn er in 100 % aller Fälle meine Meinung verbreiten würde, er ist halt ein Lügner und Tatsachenverdreher. Da sind mir politische Gegner, die ein wenig Aufrichtigkeit aufbringen, weitaus lieber.

[puhvogel]

Na, da haben wir aber viel schlimmere etatmässige Lügner hier an Board.
Das schlimme ist hier wieder mal, dass vieles absolut kritiklos übernommen wird, weil es zu den eigenen Vorurteilen passt. Einige offensichtliche Fehler und Manipulationen waren für mich schon erkennbar, den nackten Zahlen habe ich aber zugegeben geglaubt.
Der Junge trifft den Zeitgeist total, und ich frage mich, wo sich all die Käufer seiner Bücher hier verstecken. Vmtl. Schiss in der Hose.

Umgekehrt fand ich seinen Auftritt bei K-Mart schon imposant , und ich hoffe doch, dass das nicht gefakt war. Udn es stelt sich für mich auch die Frage, ob die Zahlen von David T. Hardy stimmen und ob er der NRA nahesteht. Google und NRA gibt zusammen mit seinem Namen eine Menge Suchergebnisse.

[xylophon]

ich würde sogar darauf wetten, dass der Kritiker der NRA nahesteht, dennoch ist seine Kritik berechtigt.

Ähnliches gilt für Greenpeace, die spätestens seit dem Zeitpunkt, wo sie Lügen in Zusammenhang mit BrentSpar eingeräumt haben mit dem Zusatz, diese seien aber nötig gewesen und hätten sich gelohnt - von mir keinen Cent mehr bekommen, egal wie toll ihre Ziele sind.

[Eviva]

actually may be, even me, ,,, did I waste my time in reading this ?

Spicault & Freiherr v. St., A big thank you


Wie kann es denn sein, daß dieser Mensch, den Oskar in der Hand haltend, to the Mr. President sagen konnte:
Shame on ... ?!

Warum sprang denn da niemand auf die Bühne und schrie:
Halt, es ist keine Dokumentation ?
Es ist eine zusammengeschnipselte Täuschung ! ?
C. Heston schaute tatenlos zu, ob dieser weltweiten MedienMassenManipulation ?
Der Mensch M.M. ist ein Künstler in der Täuschung ?

Ja und uns Lesern kommt gleich die Möglichkeit in den Sinn, auch die Widerlegung sei ein Fake ?

Wer bezahlten Eintritt für den Film, wer kaufte das Buch ?
Geldzurückgarantie ob des aufgesessenen Betruges ?


-----

Xylophon, im Gegenteil, er würde für die Schaukämpfe sein Geld hergeben:

( laut lesen kommt am besten )

And it`s got those nutty Cuban exiles.
If there were a pair of scissors big enough, I wish we could just snip the state where it hangs off the rest of the country.
There is a part of me that likes the fact that all these ex-Nazis are moving there to terrorize the people of Florida.
Serves them right.
The Right-Wing Cubans versus the Geriatric SS in a fight to the finish!
I`d pay money to watch that one on Pay-Per-View.
On the other hand, it is ironic that right there in south Florida are thousands of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust.
Is it right that those Jewish men and women who fortunately survived the Germans` slaughter should have to be reading menus written in German to accommodate their new "neighbors"?
I don`t think so. I have a solution.
We all know that Florida is infamous for German tourists being murdered there.
I do not believe this phenomenon is the result of gang-related violence.
I think it`s payback time. One by one, the survivors are getting their revenge.
Somebody with a sense of justice has armed the elderly residents of Miami Beach, pointed them in the direction of Fort Myers, and let them loose to even the score.
Who would have thought that the Germans would make it this easy for them, foolishly moving to the area that contains the highest concentration of Jews outside of New York?
What were these Jerries thinking—that the Moskowitzes were going to "live and let live," and "turn the other cheek"? Obviously these Germans forgot about the tote board. I say arm every bingo player south of Fort Lauderdale and let`s celebrate the real end of World War II.
So—RUN FOR YOUR LIFE, KLAUS! And Happy 50th Anniversary!!

Der Text ist also von 1997 ?!



Wir sehen wiedermal, wie wichtig umfassende Information ist.




Eviva

[xylophon]

Zum ersten Teil: vielleicht, weil der Film "Kunst" ist und da geht es nicht um Wahrheit, sondern auch um Verpackung. Zur Zeit tobt doch der Streit um ein Buch eines bekannten Autors, der eine Ex-Freundin und deren Mutter, beide sehr prominent, in seinem neuesten Roman so genau gezeichnet hat, dass sie gegen die Veröffentlichung (und den Eindruck, sie wären in allen - auch den dazuerfundenen Passagen - real getroffen.) klagen, bislang erfolgreich, was manche Künstler sehr ärgert.
Vom künstlerischen Standpunkt hat der - von mir nicht gesehene - Film also wohlmöglich einen Oskar verdient. Man sollte nur nicht glauben, er schildere die Realtität.


Wenn ich 25 im 2. Teil richtig verstehe, dann soll er halt den jüdischen Bewohnern Floridas, die unter Speisekarten mit deutscher Schrift leiden, Waffen kaufen, von seinen in Deutschland erzielten Tantiemen. Damit sie die deutschen Touristen in Florida dezimieren können...könnte allerdings bei entsprechendem Nachweis sein Ableben in einer Todeszelle bedeuten, zumal in Florida der Bruder von Bush regiert, der ihn mit Sicherheit nicht begnadigen würde, aus Familientradition und aus Familienehre

[Eviva]

Man sollte nur nicht glauben, er schildere die Realtität.

Leider bekam er den Oskar in der Sparte Doku und nicht in der Sparte Film. Verwechselte er Doku mit Fiktion ?

Was ist aus dieser OskarVerleihung geworden ?
Plastikpreise für Plastikmenschen = Plastikgeld.
Die "beste" Hauptdarstellerin bekam "einen" für die Rolle als männermordende Prostituierte.

Quatsch mit Soße.

[xylophon]

Ich glaube, dass ein guter Dokumentarfilm nicht unbedingt (allein) dadurch sich auszeichnet, dass er besonders genau die Realtiät schildert. Ein parteiischer Dokumentarfilm kann durchaus künstlerisch wertvoll sein, allerdings sollte dann eben auch klar sein, dass er parteiisch ist.

Aber ich bin kein Mitglieder der Akademie....

[achmed7]

!

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