Fahrenheit 9/11, or was it Kelvin?

Michael Moore is a Moore-on
A Dissenting Opinion

So I did the unthinkable today and actually paid money to hear Michael Moore's blatant stupidity and I went to see his movie. The reviews I had read were all to the effect of "decide for yourself, you have to go see it" sort of like what they were for "Passion." While both were equally controversial, I'd see "Passion" again before I sat through another minute of "Fahrenheit"'s conspiracy-theorizing and Bush hate-mongering. At least that had a message of peace and hope inherent in the violent images and rude depiction of the basest of human behavior. Moore, on the other hand, dedicates the latter half of his movie to showing the images of dead bodies, wounded civilians, burned and beaten American corspes, and implying that our military had no other goal in Iraq than to kill women, children, and non-combatants with reckless disregard for the homes and lives of the Iraqi people.

He defines his movie from the introduction showing footage from a Gore victory celebration in Florida, then proceding to blame the Fox News channel for denying the Democrats their victory when Brit Hume reported that Bush had won the state by a 1% margin with 97% precincts reporting. Later, he draws some abstract connection between the executive at Fox calling the election and the Bush family. The first 20 minutes of discussion of the "stolen" election leads to blaming the Supreme Court for electing Bush rather than the American people deciding, during which time I kept thinking, "wow, it's nice to whine and complain that the rules should be disregarded because they're not fair when you're losing, isn't it?". And, as the titles are rolling, he flashes images of corporate symbols with a diatribe about how corporations have become the religion of this country, and that we're being manipulated by advertiser "priests" into a self-centered, greed-motivated society bent on conquering, or at least owning the world.

About 90 minutes into the film, Moore does the only somewhat redeeming thing in the whole film when he shows 3 minutes of footage of Americans being attacked by terrorists in Iraq, starting with a scene with 2 Marines discovering and then setting off an IED (Improvised Explosive Device). The next scene is one that should have been seen 24/7 on every news channel in the free world for the fundamental barbarity it entailed. This was footage of the 4 American soldiers who were killed in Fallujah, their corpses burned, and then used as trophies by a mob of Iraqis. One man was beating the burnt torso of a soldier with a stick while another corpse was tied to the back of a jeep and drug through the streets while Iraqis threw rocks and spat at it. The scene culminated with a shot of 2 of the corpses hung high from a yardarm in the streets while men fired Kalishnikov's into the air and celebrated. They fucking celebrated! And they act like we're the barbarians! We don't burn corpses of enemy dead. We don't hold limbs or heads as trophies. We don't string up dead Iraqi soldiers (or civilians, either, Moore) in the streets firing M-16s into the air! These barbaric people who need to be dealt with like the animals they are and be put down, and the same goes for the kind of sadistic shits who would drive cars loaded with explosives into crowded markets or restaraunts...

Moore ignores any reference whatsoever to Iraqi combatants. Watch the movie. Not a single image or word refers to any Iraqi combatant, dead or alive, nor to terrorists. In fact, the bin Laden family was depicted as closely tied to the Bush family personally and through business relations, including large donations to Bush companies. Osama bin Laden is treated only casually as an enemy, without an eighth of the malice Moore reserves for Cheney, Bush, and the rest of the administration. He blames Fox News for duping the American public with biased reporting, when in fact, they go to extreme lengths on every show they do to present all sides of every story they report. In short, he is so mired in his own hate for the Bush administration and our country that he fails to give any consideration to the other side of the argument. He states that Iraq had not threatened the United States or killed an American citizen. I guess he missed Desert Storm in 1991 when several hundred of our soldiers were killed by Iraqis in their own lust for oil (and the ability to ship it out of Kuwaiti ports). I guess he missed the threats against Bush's life that made national news in 1998 when Saddam kicked out all UN inspectors - images where Saddam stood atop a balcony in front of his people with a rifle raised high over his head speaking of the American jackals and his personal distaste for Bush Sr...

He speaks of the death tolls of American troops and the "countless thousands" of Iraqi civilians who have been killed and he asks "for what?" Yet he fails to mention the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis exterminated by Saddam with mustard gas (weapon of mass destruction, people) and buried in mass graves. He's the Arabian Milosevic. And we were to ignore this because we didn't find a massive stockpile 12 years after we told them to get rid of them with 17 UN resolutions, and 5 years after he'd kicked all foreign inspectors out of the country for 2 years? Come on! We know he got rid of them. If the cops were after your stash, you'd get rid of it wouldn't you? Even President Putin of Russia and President Clinton before he left office agreed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, based on information provided by British intelligence.

So, what it comes down to is one of the most biased and distorted assertions of "truth" ever produced for the mainstream media. Moore is an individual who portrays himself as well-informed through his documentation of opinions and happenings in this world, and yet his own film shows such a clear lack of information that completely discredits him. On the way into the theater, they had a copy of Moore's "Stupid White Men" which struck me as ironic, considering his own picture was on the cover under those words, and yet, the image was quite fitting. Don't you think?

"When I want you people to do my thinking for me, I will have a tag on my toe!"
-Boondock Saints

I think the Saudis get it...

I may have mentioned this before, or I may not have, but I get newsletters from a group called aboutsaudiarabia.net on a fairly regular basis which include information regarding major political actions by the Saudi government. It's interesting because this is not a pro-American group, rather it is a decidedly pro-Saudi, pro-Islam group so I feel that I can get past a certain element of jingoism that filters through in the American media in regards to the affairs of other countries.

Today, the King of Saudi Arabia, King Fahd, released a statement offering terrorists a last chance to surrender and be offered fair treatment by the government. "If the rational accept this, they will find safety. And if the arrogant reject it, then by God, tolerance will not prevent us from striking them with all the power we derive from our reliance on God Almighty."

Personally, I love how this is worded. It uses the same Islamic fundamentalist language to communicate to these people who use their religion as an excuse to do pretty much everything their religion prohibits. I can't have more respect for a man who intends to bring security and prosperity to his country and truly seems to understand the problems in his way. He understands how the terrorists think and clearly understands how best to motivate them. Calm discussion and diplomatic compromise which many Americans, and certainly those countries who seem to stand contrary to America on every issue, seem to think is the ideal simply does not work. You can't ask crazy people willing to take a knife and saw off the head of an innocent and hold it up before cameras, blood oozing from the wound, to negotiate rationally. These people need to be dealt with authoritatively and as King Fahd implies, violently and with extreme prejudice.

I would have loved to see our own President release this statement, however our President seems to lack the understanding of the role of leadership necessary to take a stand on an issue. Rather, our President plays politics, spending more time trying to figure out how best to place his ass crack firmly on the center of the fence, rather than showing a little intestinal fortitude and taking a stand. Real leadership is inspirational and motivational precisely because it does inspire and it does motivate, and Bush seems to do neither. He speaks slowly, attempting to assume a certain air of dignity destroyed by the Clinton escapades. He uses and even tone and a Shatner-esque delivery that is so halting that any feeling behind the words is lost. How can you inspire your audience if it looks like you're waiting for the next line on the teleprompter?

As I said before, King Fahd seems to truly understand terrorism and how to deal with it, and I think it's because he is seeing it every day in his country, whereas the last time we saw it in ours was three years ago. I've spoken with people who lost family in the bombing on the internet, and even they seem to have forgotten, lost in the Denial stage of grieving having pushed the entire thing from their mind. They want to go on living their lives and not worry about it, but what pisses me off is that those terrorists don't forget why they did it. They're out reminding themselves daily, and they're pissed as hell, and entirely delusional. President Bush may understand that, but he can't seem to make us understand that, whereas this Saudi king seems to be perfectly capable of reminding his people.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is real leadership.

"I see pride. I see power. I see a badass mother, who don't take no crap off of nobody." Bush needs to take a good look in the mirror and tell himself that until he can tell the swing voters, and the Kerry supporters that, and if he does, he'll find that the war will swing 180° and we'll be winning instead of losing...

Secularism in public schools

For those of you who haven't noticed, I usually find interesting things then use them as inspiration for some kind of rambling or rant of some sort on this blog, and usually they're more political than people like to read. That's ok, it's my rambling emporium, so I can ramble about whatever I want!

A Southern Baptist Convention held recently with the intent of deciding for that church, one of the most conservative Protestant churches in this country, whether or not they should homeschool children to protect them from a secular public school system. They question whether the school system in this country is too secular?

In principle, I tend to agree with them based on my own experiences. There were many opportunities to study "world religions" offered in my high school, where kids could learn about Islam, Hinduism, Judeaism, etc. What was absent was an opportunity to study Christianity, even in an academic sense. I got more of that when I was in college, but by and large the emphasis was on non-Christian religions. The idea being that since most of us are Christian, that we already know all we need to know and don't need to learn about it.

The truth is that regular church attendance, even the Christmas and Easter (C&E Christians) services are at all time lows according to every statistic I hear floating around or catch in magazines. Even if they go, kids are so eager to get out of church that they don't really learn anything. I didn't even though I was active in my church for most of my childhood. I knew about the same basic information about Christianity as I did about every other major world religion, and I think that holds true for the majority of kids in public schools today.

Thing is, there are a number of people in this world with such weak spines that they get offended about anything, particularly religion. The ACLU sued (unsuccessfully, btw) last month to get a miniscule cross removed from the bottom left corner of the Los Angeles city seal. A man named Michael Newdow thought that having his daughter recite "under God" was pushing Christianity on her unfairly and took his lawsuit, at the expense of the taxpayer, to the Supreme Court. There is constant controversy about prayer in school, display of the ten commandments in school, and other similar issues, with the majority of decisions leaning towards removing these icons from schools, and indeed, all public and government buildings. At the same time, symbols of Judeaism (such as the menorrah) and Islam (the star and crescent) are not receiving the same scrutiny. A suburb in New York state flatly rejected a proposal to build a nativity scene in front of the city hall building, but did allow menorrahs, Kwanzaa symbols, and the star and crescent to be displayed in the building at the same time.

Hypocritical? I think so. Anti-Christian bias? I think so too. Do I think kids should be kept home by concerned parents? No. They need to interact with other kids, because those social skills are fundamental to success in this country. Concerned parents should give their children a strong moral education at home and be sure they are active in their local churches and volunteer agencies. But denying them the exposure to the real world in order to shield them is a poor way to raise a child. Many Mormon families do this only to have their kids go buck wild when they get out for the first time, and the same is true for other religions that practice the same life experience restrictions.

Is the public school system secular? Yes, and the much misinterpretted "separation of Church and State" (which, btw, does NOT appear anywhere in the text of the U.S. Constitution) has been abused by liberals to attempt to remove all mention of spirituality from the public forum, but liberals with no spines and no concept are a subject for another blog.

Good night.

Senseless Violence

Now, I'm no pacifist. I support the war in Iraq. I believe Saddam needed to go. I believe they had weapons of mass destruction, and I believe that terrorists were being trained in that country. I don't believe Bush has managed the war properly, and I believe the American media has done more to hurt our country than the Iraqi military, the Bhaa'thists, and the terrorists combined. However, what strikes me as we approach the handover of power to Iraqi officials on June 30th is the level of senseless violence.

Car bombs are being detonated on an almost daily basis, and they're killing civilians, not soldiers. One killed the future Education Minister of the Iraqi regime. Hell, an Iraqi geography professor was ambushed and shot a couple of days ago. Of all the people to want to kill - a geography professor? Of all the influential people, of all the potential targets out there, a geography professor? Who's next, Abu the plumber? This reminds me of rhetoric I hear from Palestinian rights groups (ie. terrorist groups like Hamas). They want to kill anyone who is even remotely connected to their perceived enemy. These people share a train of thought with the people who killed Nick Berg (a man who was there to serve the Iraqi people, a civilian, and a pacifist) simply because he was Jewish and American. That's pretty weak.

What baffles my mind is that regardless of all of these killings, regardless of all this reckless, misdirected hate, there are people in OUR country who can't see this as a threat! They don't understand how people who think like this could potentially cause a few problems for our country, and not just in higher gas prices. Why are we in Iraq? Because we need to confront these people and let them know who we are from personal experience, not just from Sunday morning "sermons" that border on political rallies, and not just from Al-Jezeera. There are a number of crazed animals in that country and as soon as they start behaving as such, they need to be treated like any rabid dog and be put down. That's right. For the good of humanity, these militant people need to be put down. If you pick up an AK-47 and shoot at civilians, you need a bullet in the head, and that's why we have the American military there.

And don't think they're just going to pack up and come home after June 30th either. No. No. Despite the fervent hopes of all liberals out there, our boys are not coming home after June 30th. Iraq is a powder keg, a bomb that our State Department and Department of Defense have taken upon themselves to diffuse. We're going to be there until we're sure it's diffused. If we hear ticking or a fuse crackling, we're going to stay and keep working on it. I don't think the public is really aware of that fact. Our military is going to be guarding oil wells, pipelines, authority figures, training troops and police, aiding in the rebuilding of infrastructure and other jobs of that nature for a long time, because the minute we leave, the terrorists are going to start hitting hard, killing anyone in a business suit, Iraqi police uniform, Iraqi military uniform, or position of civic power. We can't have that kind of senseless violence anywhere, anytime, and for the love of God, the UN can't seem to see that.

Bunch of random stuff

I'm doing my clinicals at Provena-Covenant hospital now and I'm completely blown away by how much better the atmosphere there is compared to Carle. All last semester was an incredible stress-fest, and while most of the people there were very knowledgeable and professional, they didn't seem as friendly or as eager to help. Don't get me wrong, they aren't bad people, but I'm definitely clicking a lot better at Covenant and (this is the sweet part), they're looking for an Ortho tech, desperately in fact!

Tae Kwon Do is awesome, but it's kicking my butt right now. Spinning kicks are much harder than they look in the movies. They make you dizzy, and they require a LOT of practice to get the form right. I fall too stinking much doing those! Even Master Hyong laughed at me one day when I fell flat on me arse trying to do a spinning straight leg kick, overrotated, lost my balance and almost did a backflip. On the other hand, they've been getting better, just in time for my knees to start being annoying again.

I've also talked to 3 of my friends who I haven't spoken with in forever this week and it has been great! Megan, you're awesome, and I'm really impressed that you're doing so well with your running. You'll do fine on the MCAT, so don't stress about it. If you've been testing at 30 with Kaplan, you'll probably have no problem getting that 33+ you were after. Tammie, long time, no see. I gotta talk you into meeting us for Bix. Brad, sorry to cut you off on the phone the last time we talked. You've always got some crazy drama going on... you gotta stop attracting deranged women!

Alright, enough randomness for one day. See y'all later and happy blogging!

P.S. Leave comments =D

Race, Political Correctness, and Bill Cosby

Apparently, on May 17th, the NAACP got more than it bargained for when it invited Bill Cosby to speak at it's 50th Anniversary of the Brown vs. Board of Education dinner. Apparently, Cosby made some "controversial" comments that offended more than a few people who wanted to hear a few jokes and have a good time. Unfortunately, Howard University, which hosted the dinner, won't release a transcript of his words and most reports are going off of a Washington Post transcript which I can't find anywhere in it's entirety... which annoys me, because I hate having conclusions fed to me by media outlets who want to dumb down issues and sensationalize comments by taking them out of context.

However, I did manage to find a list of some comments that were made here. Yes, it's a pay-for-access thing, you get one look, then you have to register and pay. The comments are there and I did copy all of them to this blog. Here they are:

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"With names like Shaniqua, Taliqua and Mohammed and all of that crap, and all of them are in jail. Brown versus the Board of Education is no longer the white person's problem. We have got to take the neighborhood back.... They are standing on the corner and they can't speak English."

"People marched and were hit in the face with rocks to get an education, and now we've got these knuckleheads walking around.... The lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal. These people are not parenting."

"We have millionaire football players who can't read. We have million-dollar basketball players who can't write two paragraphs."

"I am talking about these people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit. Where were you when he was 2? Where were you when he was 12? Where were you when he was 18 and how come you didn't know that he had a pistol? And where is the father?"

"People used to be ashamed... [Today] a woman has eight children with eight different `husbands,' or men or whatever you call them now."

"We as black folks have to do a better job.... Someone working at Wal-Mart with seven kids, you are hurting us. We have to start holding each other to a higher standard."

"The incarcerated? These are not political criminals. These are people going around stealing Coca-Cola. People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake and then we run out and we are outraged, saying, `The cops shouldn't have shot him.' What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand?"

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So, what's the big deal? Well, the deal is that these people didn't want to hear that many of the problems people face in this world are self-inflicted. Lack of effort, lack of willingness to conform, and pride seem to stand in the way of success. Dr. Cosby has earned a PhD, speaks grammatically correct English, and has worked hard in the entertainment industry to make his fortune and his name. He understands the difficulties that face people of color because he has overcome them all, and it is precisely this perspective which has created such a controversy within the black community.

To be fair, many of the things that he said are directly applicable to poor people of every culture, particularly today where poverty is somewhat glorified by a prominent subculture. Simple lessons such as taking responsibility for one's own actions rather than blaming someone else, work hard and you'll be successful, education is the key to success in the modern world, and parents need to be parents are clearly Cosby's emphasis; while he speaks to an African-American audience, his message should be taken seriously by all of us.

Where this message is lost, however, is in the politics - the political correctness. Personally, I hate political correctness. Basically, all it means is lying so you look good when the truth would offend someone. As a culture, we are so afraid of offending others, that we are willing to distort the truth and kid ourselves about sensitive issues this way. The NAACP leadership was offended to hear Dr. Cosby speak the truth instead of painting a rose-colored picture of black history. The black community was offended to hear it, because it placed the blame solidly on it's shoulders for it's own social standing. My question is: Is the truth so offensive that our entire society should lie about it?

Cosby's right of course. When 70% of African-American 4th graders do not read at the 4th grade reading level, there is a problem specific to the African-American community. When things like the mortality rate, poverty rates, literacy rates, crime rates, high school graduation rates, employment rates, and practically every other measure of success in our society shows African-Americans in bad situations, there is a problem that the African-American community itself must address. And Cosby is right to say that the problem is not white people. I've worked with black surgeons who are every bit as intelligent and capable as white or Asian MDs, so clearly it is not impossible to make it if one is motivated.

So, motivation becomes the key to success, and personally, I think that many people are simple not motivated by traditional measures of success, especially young people. They're motivated by games, entertainment, movies, sports... anything but learning, business, work, and the things that are really necessary to succeed in modern society. Ask people if they want to succeed, and the answer is obvious: yes. Ask them if they're willing to make it happen in terms of specifics and you'll get mixed results. Cosby just wants to see better parenting to make sure that motivation to succeed is more prevalent in the black community.