Who is fit to lead the moral regeneration of a broken society?

If you are anywhere in the British Isles, it is difficult to think about anything else this week than the riots that flared up across England. The wanton looting and extensive property damage were not only ferocious, but pervasive, stretching across a range of cities, suggesting a deep-seated problem.

Explanations for the riots have varied. During the riots, Conservative British Prime Minister David Cameron claimed the riots were pure and simply criminality. However, in a speech after the riots, he backtracked slightly. Although he felt the behaviour of the protestors and the influence of gangs, particularly, were still the main problem, he acknowledged a plethora of other causes for a broken society.

These included problems in the education system and family breakdown, and, as a result, he promised to transform the lives of around 120 000 families and parents. He talked of a “slow-motion moral collapse”. He acknowledged the need to show higher moral standards across society, noting the banking crisis, the abuse of expenses by UK Members of Parliament (MPs) and the phone hacking carried out by journalists as examples of “greed, irresponsibility and entitlement”. In essence, he called for tougher security measures and a social fightback.

That said, he did not feel that race, government cuts or poverty were the main causal factors. In contrast, Labour leader Ed Miliband said inequality was a factor, and he, too, noted that rioters were greedy, immoral and selfish, much like some bankers, MPs and journalists. He felt a commission of inquiry and national conversation were necessary to address the issue.

Despite the eloquent words of both politicians, however, as I read through the speeches, I found myself feeling somewhat queasy. The reason for this was that I struggled to believe the promises implicit in either analysis.

Will the lives of thousands be turned around? Will the gap between the rich and poor narrow? Will bankers, who were bailed out, ever pay taxpayers back or have their bonuses curtailed? Would another commission uncover the truth? I doubt it.

Maybe I am cynical and my jaded view of the world is not fair on politicians who, in many cases, are doing their best. But if I feel like this as I read the speeches on my shiny Macbook, in my middle-class suburban home, how estranged must people without my level of social security feel?

I am not sure if politicians in the UK, and South Africa for that matter, realise how little faith the vast majority of the public have in them. Everyday, it seems to me, ordinary folk feel they have less and less chance of influencing the direction of the State.

Iraq War Protestors London
15th February 2003
Credit: Simon Rutherford / CC BY

In Britain, when a million people marched against the Iraq War, they were ignored. When the public were morally outraged at MPs fiddling their expense claims, a few MPs were prosecuted, but most were given the chance to pay the money back (maybe the looters could also get off if they returned their goods?).

In South Africa, when people voice their opinion about government corruption, they are deemed racists or sell-outs. Or, when black South Africans point to the excesses of white businesses living large on apartheid gains, they are dismissed as misguided insurrectionists.

Feeling estranged from the State, especially a democratic State, does not fully explain or justify violent riots and unrest, but my point is that I fear that those in power have not grasped the disconnect between themselves and the populace. This makes any talk of political leaders leading the charge in repairing the social and moral fabric of society sound farcical.

Moral and community reconstruction is not something you can do to others. Fixing a moral collapse starts, in the throwaway words of popstar Michael Jackson, with the man in the mirror. This means questioning your own moral compass, acting against injustice, toning down the rhetoric and throwaway solutions, and taking more time to listen to others respectfully.

This article by Brandon Hamber was published on Polity and in the Engineering News on 25 August 2011 as part of the column "Look South". Copyright Brandon Hamber.

The curious case of voting for no one

The gap between my writing this article and your reading it will be an interesting one. Right now, I am sitting in Belfast, watching the outworking of the 2010 British election as it swings from one potential outcome to another. By the time you read this article, however, the question of which poli- tical parties will be ruling the country will, more than likely, be resolved.

The 2010 election result in the UK, as everyone knows by now, produced a hung Parliament. This means that, of the 650 seats up for grabs, no single party managed to secure a majority of 326. The Conservative Party won 306, the Labour Party 258 and the Liberal Democrats 57. Faced with this scenario, either the Conservatives could have formed a minority government or at least two of the parties had to form a coalition to make an overall majority.

At the moment, that is while I write and not as you read, there is no coalition deal or minority government. The Liberal Democratic Party is locked in negotiations with the Conservative Party and the Labour Party.

The point I wish to make, however, does not concern my political soothsaying abilities (or lack thereof), or ultimately who gets into bed with whom, politically speaking, but rather concerns why Britain found itself in the curious predicament of a hung Parliament in the first place.

Clearly, no one really won the election. The coalition that is inevitably running the show as you read this article no doubt told the British electorate it has a mandate to govern, but the truth is this mandate exists only if the political parties in question work together. On one level, this is a ringing endorsement for consensus politics; on another, it points to the fact that the British public largely did not trust any one party to govern.

Given the recent history of British politics, this is not surprising. Tony Blair systematically undermined public confidence by driving home decisions that the majority did not support, such as the Iraq war. Gordon Brown was gifted the office of Prime Minister without an election, and dozens of MPs were shown to be systematically feathering their own nests during the expenses scandal. This has left many people in the country feeling profoundly distrustful of politicians, or, at the very least, the political parties they represent.

This distrust has even deeper historical roots. There obviously was a desire to do away with the Labour Party and Brown’s bumbling style of governance. But, equally, given the long shadow of Margaret Thatcher and the drastic impact her reign had on the poor in Britain, no one wanted to give the Conservatives an unfettered opportunity to dominate government either.

In Northern Ireland, the picture was similar. Although people continued to vote for the large parties like the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), at the same time, the people chose to decapitate some of the very same political parties. For example, the leader of the DUP, and First Minister of Northern Ireland, Peter Robinson, who has been defend- ing himself over various financial and other scandals, lost his seat after holding it for three decades.

So, I do not know what the new coalition in the UK will look like, but I imagine it is in place by now. No single party will be able to legislate freely. Compromise will be the order of the day. This could prove to be the ‘third way’ Blair was always looking for or an unmitigated disaster as previous political enemies try to work together.

Either way, the people have spoken. The message is clear: if politicians want an unequivocal mandate, then they need to govern for the people and not for themselves. I wonder how long it will take for the South African electorate to figure that out.

This article by Brandon Hamber was published on Polity and in the Engineering News on 21 May 2010 as part of the column "Look South". Copyright Brandon Hamber.

With great power comes great obfuscation

With great power comes great responsibility” is one of those lines that, despite being uttered in a Spiderman movie, will linger on in social consciousness.

The statement is a catchy version of a line in a Roosevelt speech (which, incidentally, he never gave because he died the night before): “Today, we have learned in the agony of war that great power involves great responsibility”.

This may well, in turn, come from the Bible, which, in the book of Luke, states: “From the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.”

Whatever its origins, the assertion is evocative and, as I sat watching Tony Blair give evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war, I could not get the line out of my head.

The quote came to mind for three reasons.

Firstly, the way George W Bush and Blair painted Saddam Hussein as the incarnation of evil and the West as the saviours of the Iraqi people was as fantastical as a Hollywood blockbuster.

Secondly, the full quotation in the movie, although cheesy, is rather profound in the context of the Iraq war. In the film, the line is used in relation to a school bully who used to torment the young Peter Parker before he transformed into Spiderman. Spiderman’s uncle warns: “But just because you can beat him up doesn’t give you the right to. Remember, with great power comes great responsibility”. This is a warning Bush and Blair would have done well to heed in relation to the bully, Hussein.

Finally, Blair’s blind obstinacy that he did the right thing and had no regrets about his actions has left me questioning if he really does take responsibility for his actions. In the Chilcot Inquiry, Blair claimed that “there is not a single day that passes” without him thinking about his responsibility. Blair claims he had multiple responsibilities, including the responsibility to protect the country. But everyone now knows that Hussein was not a threat to the UK. Yes, Hussein was harming his own people, but it is difficult to sustain an argument that you care about ordinary Iraqis with over 95 000 civilian deaths on your hands.

Based on Blair’s insistence (on another TV show) that, even if there were no weapons of mass destruction, he still would “have thought it right to remove [Hussein]” one can only conclude that Blair sees responsibility as being tied to his personal opinion of what was right or wrong. But taking a difficult decision because you think it is right and you have the power to do it, particularly when most ordinary people could see it was ill advised, does not negate the real responsibility that comes with such actions.

I find it hard to understand how one can feel responsible for, yet not regret or feel the need to apologise for, an ill-planned and ill-executed war that has by all accounts been a disaster.

When asked recently about the number of inquiries into the war by a US channel, Blair commented that he felt it was hard for people to simply disagree on a matter these days. Rather, he added, people had a tendency to think there was “some great deceit” or “conspiracy” rather than just to accept that people “have different points of view and hold them reasonably for genuine reasons”.

But what Blair does not appear to understand is that we are not talking about a disagreement about whether Pepsi is better than Coke, or whether Batman would beat Spiderman in a fictitious fight. Disagreement in the Iraq case meant that politicians, led by Blair, rammed through a political decision to kill thousands of people – a decision that millions of ordinary people in the UK and in the rest of the world opposed. Taking responsibility, in this case, means accounting for the deaths that followed one’s decision – not rationalising why you thought it was a good idea.

This article by Brandon Hamber was published on Polity and in the Engineering News on 26 February 2010 as part of the column "Look South". Copyright Brandon Hamber.

Shoe today, bomb tomorrow

There were not many highlights in the George W Bush Presidency. But one event, other than the occupation of Iraq, that stands out in my mind was the shoe-throwing attack on Bush by Iraqi journalist Muntadar al-Zaidi.

As everyone knows by now, Zaidi, as an insult and a form of protest against the illegal occupation of Iraq by the US, hurled his shoes at Bush during a news conference in Baghdad last December.

For his troubles, Zaidi has been imprisoned, allegedly tortured and potentially faces two years in jail. He has also become an international icon. Zaidi’s internment has led to protests and shoe throwing has become a global phenomenon and a symbol of resistance.

George Bush ducks the thrown shoe 

U.S. Federal Government / Public domain

Shoes were left at US embassies around the world as part of the demands to release Zaidi. Various protest groups have engaged in symbolic acts of shoe flinging. Antiwar group Code Pink tossed shoes at a Bush effigy outside the White House. Others have engaged in similar acts. Another creative initiative included building an enormous sculpture of a shoe to commemorate Zaidi’s bravery. The sculpture was built by children at an orphanage in Tikrit. Earlier this month, in a copycat attack, a protestor wishing to register his disgust at the Chinese human rights record threw his shoes at the Chinese Prime Minister, Wen Jiabao, during a speech at Cambridge University.

In short, shoe throwing is catching on and I am not surprised. There are so many global events that ordinary people have less and less control over these days. Wars are waged in the name of regular citizens when, in fact, many want nothing to do with warmongering. Many of us fantasise about doing things differently or forcing governments to be agents of peacemaking rather than peace breaking. But it is normally impossible to get your voice heard.

Peaceful protests are becoming increasingly ineffective against counterattacks from media agencies controlled by governments. Tight security makes it difficult to get near political leaders to express your opinions. Blogs, letters and email petitions are popular ways to register disagreement but they are often only read by those who share your views rather than those in power. There is a popular sentiment that political leaders now live in a detached bubble and, even in democracies, the only time you can register your protest in a meaningful way is in the ballot box every couple of years.

People need an outlet and many are fed up with being disempowered from decision-making. Hurling shoes provides a relatively harmless way (well, as long as hobnailed boots are not used) of effectively registering your opinion. Shoes are readily available, easy to transport and simple to get through security checks since most of us wear them (unless you are Zola Budd).

Of course, I am not advocating unbridled shoe chucking every time we are unhappy. But we should salute the courage of those who choose to register their voice in a way that is direct, yet, broadly speaking, a symbolic gesture of disgust rather than a hard-core act of violence. I know such a comment is controversial and I wonder how Gandhi would feel about it. Is shoe tossing, especially if you miss, an act of peaceful protest? I do not know. I also acknowledge that Zaidi’s act was not particularly professional from a journalistic perspective, and he might have caused Bush a mild head injury, causing him to do something rash, like starting a war without planning it.

But, equally, we must acknowledge the frustration felt by ordinary citizens the world over who feel excluded from politics and marginalised from key decisions. We must find ways for average people to be heard and influence global events, whether in Iraq, South Africa, or the US. Without this, a shoe today will be a bomb or a gun tomorrow and that would be no laughing matter.

This article by Brandon Hamber was published on Polity and in the Engineering News on  12 February 2009 as part of the column "Look South". Copyright Brandon Hamber.

The war and peace legacy

Being a columnist can be taxing. The relentless search for interesting topics to waffle on about is never ending. However, now and then, a week comes along where so much happens that it is difficult to decide where to start. The week starting May 7 was one such week.

Ian Paisley, George W. Bush and Martin McGuinness
Credit Chris Greenberg / Public domain

In that week, the Northern Ireland peace process reached a decisive climax. Ian Paisley, of the DUP, and Martin McGuinness, of Sinn Fein, were sworn in as First and Deputy First Ministers of the Northern Ireland Assembly. The DUP, which had said that it would never sit down with Sinn Fein because it considers Sinn Fein a terrorist organisation because of its links with the Irish Republican Army, agreed to share power. In turn, Sinn Fein set aside the likelihood of a united Ireland, at least in the foreseeable future, and agreed to participate in a devolved administration within the UK.

If that was not enough, in the same week, Tony Blair took the plunge, which had been pending for months, and announced his resignation date – June 27. Of course, the two events are related. Blair chose the date for announcing his departure because it was close to the Northern Ireland deal. With his legacy literally bombed to pieces in Iraq, Blair was desperate to link his exit with something positive.

This is not to say he simply jumped on the Northern Ireland peace train at the last minute. He had played a significant role in it. He kept the peace process high on his agenda, more so than any other British Prime Minister. Shortly after coming to office, he agreed to face-to-face talks with Republicans in 1997. The last British Prime Minister to do that was Lloyd George, some time after World War I.

While Blair was waging war in the rest of the world, he visited Northern Ireland a remarkable 37 times to help ensure the peace. McGuinness, who, no doubt, still feels the British have a lot to answer for in Northern Ireland, was quoted in the Guardian earlier this year, saying: “Tony Blair and Iraq is almost like a total contradiction of Tony Blair and Ireland.”

So why the split personality? And why did he become Bush’s lackey over Iraq?

My theory is that, after nearly a decade in power, he became more concerned with his global legacy than bottom-up change. I am not sure if he even saw the full significance of Northern Ireland in his own backyard until it was all he had left.

The destruction of the Twin Towers gave him an opportunity to cement his place in history. He felt this was his Churchillian moment to be heralded a saviour of the so-called free world. He misguidedly backed the wrong horse.

In Africa, his record is mixed. He showed concern, calling the continent a “scar on the conscience of the world”. He set up the African Commission and pushed debt relief. This has had an impact; for example, debt relief in Mozambique meant half a million children were immunised.

Yet, as much as things moved under his premiership, they have also fallen short and poverty certainly ain’t history. The G8 committed itself under his leadership to a $5,4-billion increase in support to sub-Saharan Africa; since 2004, it has increased by $2,3-billion.

This is no small contribution, but it typifies his leadership style – a style emblematic of many politicians. He came to power with a populist mandate, but, over time, he lost the common touch. Blair is about vision over capability and rhetoric over delivery, and his biggest weakness is that he believes his own hype. Sometimes this pays off, as it did in Northern Ireland but, mostly, over time, it belly-flops. If you don’t believe me, just ask the average Iraqi, or next time you are in the Middle East, try to find your way with the so-called road map he helped broker.

This article by Brandon Hamber was published on Polity and in the Engineering News on 1 June 2007 as part of the column "Look South". Copyright Brandon Hamber.

The meaning of money

There is something about money I do not get. I understand bartering. Two people exchange things that have roughly equal value. But modern money as a concept makes little sense. Milton Friedman, in Money Mischief, writes that money, as we know it, has no intrinsic value and what gives it value is that it is used for exchange. He goes on to say that the value is what we attribute to it, and all money is ‘credit’ money, a contractual IOU for an incomplete exchange. As Aristotle said, the value of money is “derived not from nature, but from law”.

So money is made by the meaning we give it yet, at the same time, it apparently makes the world go around. If you do not have it, your life can be miserable. Nevertheless, money or, to be precise, currency, which is the physical embodiment of the idea of money, cannot buy happiness – only a new iPod or a fridge. But the more money one is talking about the less concrete the notion gets. Bill Gates, for example, is apparently worth $27-billion, but he does not have $27-billion dollars in the same way a person has 1 000 cattle.

He is a rich man with jets and houses but, mainly, he has more IOUs than the rest of us. His bank does not have a vault with $27- billion crisp $100 bills in it, ready for Bill to dive into whenever the urge takes him.

Governments have enormous amounts of unseen money. At a government level, finance is based on promises and IOUs. It is about shuffling budgets of virtual money and meeting obligations. These obligations boil down to where they want to commit make- believe dosh. These choices can have tragic and visible consequences.

Money means different things to different people. I recall working with a community group in South Africa and discussing a grant to support people around the truth commission. One community member commented: “We have been thinking that we don’t want to use the money for that – rather, we want to share the grant out between us.” The group would have preferred an instant R500 each rather than a long-term, less tangible benefit. Money as a thing, or at least the objects R500 could buy when you are poor, was more important. The man had a point, but the donor would have seen it differently. Donor and grantee had conflicting desired outcomes. But what determines these outcomes? Who controls these fantasy purse strings? A recent report in the UK claimed that lack of resources in the security services led to the London bombings last year. But at the same time the country spends £3-billion a year on the occupation of Iraq. The US government finds $100-billion a year for its Iraq folly. When the amounts of money get this astronomical, the meaning of the money becomes even more ephemeral. The only way to make sense of it is to break figures down into numbers we think we can compute. My calculations go like this: the UK and US governments are spending roughly $110-billion a year in Iraq. This is five times the gross domestic product (GDP) of Mozambique and is the equivalent of about 20% of the annual GDP of South Africa.

But even more staggering is that the money invested in making this war is more than the Iraqi GDP, estimated at $97-billion in 2005. Does this incredible statistic make sense to anyone? I once met a businessperson who told me he owed his bank half a million pounds, or R5-million. I remember thinking he was the only person I knew who was rich enough to be half a million pounds in debt. Does that make sense to anyone? Answers on a postcard, please.

This article by Brandon Hamber was published on Polity and in the Engineering News on 26 May 2006 as part of the column "Look South". Copyright Brandon Hamber.

The unequal cost of lying

There is nothing more tragic than watching a public figure fall from grace. Recently, the UK witnessed a spectacular. Charles Kennedy, leader of the Liberal Democrats, the third most powerful political party in the UK, resigned after denying and then later admitting he had a drinking problem. Allegedly, the problem was not that he was an alcoholic, but that, when asked about his drinking habits a few months earlier, he had denied it, thus effectively lying. This opened the door for accusations of dishonesty, which ensured his political demise.

The controversy surrounding Kennedy is a familiar one in politics. Remember the attempted impeachment of Bill Clinton? The issue was not that he had an affair with Monica Lewinsky, but that he initially denied having “sexual relations with that woman”.

Machiavelli says that governments have different rules to individuals when it comes to honesty. From a Machiavellian perspective, one wants politicians who can tell lies. Telling lies can, in some circumstances, protect the interests of the State and its citizens. This distasteful truth is offset by democracy. Democracy demands a bond of trust between citizens and the State. You must trust your political leaders enough to know they will lie or keep secrets, only if absolutely necessary and to defend life. If they lie to the electorate for other reasons, they should be held accountable.

However, lying is a tricky business, and a government’s access to power often means that it can shape how a ‘lie’ is understood. According to the online encyclopaedia, Wikipedia, a lie is a declarative statement to another person, that one believes to be false, made with the intention that the other person may believe that statement to be true. In other words, lies, by definition, involve active deception. Politicians seldom own up to any form of deception. Take, for example, what I would call the recently invented ‘honest lie’ introduced during the Iraq war scandal. When Tony Blair claimed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that they posed a “serious and current threat” and was subsequently proved to be wrong, he said it was the fault of the intelligence services. He claims he believed the information presented to him and, as such, had not lied. He sincerely, or so he says, told the nation what he thought was true. He told a sincere lie.

But is that different from the situation with Kennedy? When asked publicly if he was an alcoholic, he said no. What we know about alcoholism is that it is common for those afflicted to fail to recognise their condition. In this sense, perhaps, he equally lied in all sincerity. But is it only the sincerity of a lie that matters, and not its consequences? The sincerity of a lie seldom matters to the victims of it. This is undoubtedly the case for the colleagues who had to cover for Kennedy when he was allegedly too drunk to perform his public duties or to Iraqi civilians and allied soldiers killed as a result of alleged misinformation.

Clearly, individuals are treated differently to governments. If an individual acts against another in ‘preemptive self-defence’, having been misinformed about the level of threat, she or he must face the law and pay the price. If a politician, on the other hand, causes the death of thousands based on misinformation about the level of threat, it is apparently entirely excusable. Unlike active deception, incompetent deception is seemingly completely forgivable when it comes to politicians.

If one man’s inability to be honest about his fondness for a tipple is enough to topple him and cost him his political career, then another man’s failure to ensure that information used to end the lives of thousands is accurate, no matter how sincerely he believed it was, should be equally damning.

This article by Brandon Hamber was published on Polity and in the Engineering News on 20 January 2006 as part of the column "Look South". Copyright Brandon Hamber.

Cost of War

Check out this interesting site called the Cost of War...rather revealing.

Iraq wants South African-style TRC

The Mail and Guardian reports, "Human Rights Minister Bakhtiar Amin said on Tuesday he wanted to create a truth and reconciliation commission for Iraq, modelled on the experiences of post-apartheid South Africa. Such a commission, 'based on confessions and pardons, would be a way to strengthen the feeling of national unity', said Amin, following his return from talks in Amman with United Nations agencies". Why does this worry me!

Wild Week with "Fahrenheit 9/11" by Michael Moore

Michael Moore has published a letter about his movie Farenheit 911, worth a little read. I have published it below:

6 July 2004

Friends,

Where do I begin? This past week has knocked me for a loop. "Fahrenheit 9/11," the #1 movie in the country, the largest grossing documentary ever. My head is spinning. Didn't we just lose our distributor 8 weeks ago? Did Karl Rove really fail to stop this? Is Bush packing?

Each day this week I was given a new piece of information from the press that covers Hollywood, and I barely had time to recover from the last tidbit before the next one smacked me upside the head:
** More people saw "Fahrenheit 9/11" in one weekend than all the people who saw "Bowling for Columbine" in 9 months.
** "Fahrenheit 9/11" broke "Rocky III's" record for the biggest box office opening weekend ever for any film that opened in less than a thousand theaters.
** "Fahrenheit 9/11" beat the opening weekend of "Return of the Jedi."
** "Fahrenheit 9/11" instantly went to #2 on the all- time list for largest per-theater average ever for a film that opened in wide-release.
How can I ever thank all of you who went to see it? These records are mind-blowing. They have sent shock waves through Hollywood - and, more importantly, through the White House.

Montclair Film / CC BY

But it didn't just stop there. The response to the movie then went into the Twilight Zone. Surfing through the dial I landed on the Fox broadcasting network which was airing the NASCAR race live last Sunday to an audience of millions of Americans -- and suddenly the announcers were talking about how NASCAR champ Dale Earnhardt, Jr. took his crew to see 'Fahrenheit 9/11' the night before. FOX sportscaster Chris Myers delivered Earnhardt's review straight out of his mouth and into the heartland of America: 'He said hey, it'll be a good bonding experience no matter what your political belief. It's a good thing as an American to go see.' Whoa! NASCAR fans - you can't go deeper into George Bush territory than that! White House moving vans - START YOUR ENGINES!

Then there was Roger Friedman from the Fox News Channel giving our film an absolutely glowing review, calling it 'a really brilliant piece of work, and a film that members of all political parties should see without fail.' Richard Goldstein of the Village Voice surmised that Bush is already considered a goner so Rupert Murdoch might be starting to curry favor with the new administration. I don't know about that, but I've never heard a decent word toward me from Fox. So, after I was revived, I wondered if a love note to me from Sean Hannity was next.

How about Letterman's Top Ten List: 'Top Ten George W. Bush Complaints About "Fahrenheit 9/11":

10. That actor who played the President was totally unconvincing 9. It oversimplified the way I stole the election 8. Too many of them fancy college-boy words 7. If Michael Moore had waited a few months, he could have included the part where I get him deported 6. Didn't have one of them hilarious monkeys who smoke cigarettes and gives people the finger 5. Of all Michael Moore's accusations, only 97% are true 4. Not sure - - I passed out after a piece of popcorn lodged in my windpipe 3. Where the hell was Spider-man? 2. Couldn't hear most of the movie over Cheney's foul mouth 1. I thought this was supposed to be about dodgeball

But it was the reactions and reports we received from theaters around the country that really sent me over the edge. One theatre manager after another phoned in to say that the movie was getting standing ovations as the credits rolled - in places like Greensboro, NC and Oklahoma City -- and that they were having a hard time clearing the theater afterwards because people were either too stunned or they wanted to sit and talk to their neighbors about what they had just seen. In Trumbull, CT, one woman got up on her seat after the movie and shouted "Let's go have a meeting!" A man in San Francisco took his shoe off and threw it at the screen when Bush appeared at the end. Ladies' church groups in Tulsa were going to see it, and weeping afterwards.

It was this last group that gave lie to all the yakking pundits who, before the movie opened, declared that only the hard-core "choir" would go to see "Fahrenheit 9/11." They couldn't have been more wrong. Theaters in the Deep South and the Midwest set house records for any film they'd ever shown. Yes, it even sold out in Peoria. And Lubbock, Texas. And Anchorage, Alaska!

Newspaper after newspaper wrote stories in tones of breathless disbelief about people who called themselves 'Independents' and 'Republicans' walking out of the movie theater shaken and in tears, proclaiming that they could not, in good conscience, vote for George W. Bush. The New York Times wrote of a conservative Republican woman in her 20s in Pensacola, Florida who cried through the film, and told the reporter: 'It really makes me question what I feel about the president... it makes me question his motives'

Newsday reported on a self-described 'ardent Bush/Cheney supporter' who went to see the film on Long Island, and his quiet reaction afterwards. He said, "It's really given me pause to think about what's really going on. There was just too much - too much to discount." The man then bought three more tickets for another showing of the film.

The Los Angeles Times found a mother who had 'supported [Bush] fiercely' at a theater in Des Peres, Missouri:

'Emerging from Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11,' her eyes wet, Leslie Hanser said she at last understood. My emotions are just....' She trailed off, waving her hands to show confusion. I feel like we haven't seen the whole truth before.'"

All of this had to be the absolute worst news for the White House to wake up to on Monday morning. I guess they were in such a stupor, they "gave" Iraq back to, um, Iraq two days early!

News editors told us that they were being "bombarded" with e-mails and calls from the White House (read: Karl Rove), trying to spin their way out of this mess by attacking it and attacking me. Bush spokesman Dan Bartlett had told the White House press corps that the movie was "outrageously false" -- even though he said he hadn't seen the movie. He later told CNN that "This is a film that doesn't require us to actually view it to know that it's filled with factual inaccuracies." At least they're consistent. They never needed to see a single weapon of mass destruction before sending our kids off to die.

Many news shows were more than eager to buy the White House spin. After all, that is a big part of what "Fahrenheit" is about -- how the lazy, compliant media bought all the lies from the Bush administration about the need to invade Iraq. They took the Kool-Aid offered by the White House and rarely, if ever, did our media ask the hard questions that needed to be asked before the war started.

Because the movie "outs" the mainstream media for their failures and their complicity with the Bush administration -- who can ever forget their incessant, embarrassing cheerleading as the troops went off to war, as though it was all just a game -- the media was not about to let me get away with anything now resembling a cultural phenomenon. On show after show, they went after me with the kind of viciousness you would have hoped they had had for those who were lying about the necessity for invading a sovereign nation that was no threat to us. I don't blame our well-paid celebrity journalists -- they look like a bunch of ass-kissing dopes in my movie, and I guess I'd be pretty mad at me, too. After all, once the NASCAR fans see "Fahrenheit 9/11," will they ever believe a single thing they see on ABC/NBC/CBS news again?

In the next week or so, I will recount my adventures through the media this past month (I will also be posting a full FAQ on my website soon so that you can have all the necessary backup and evidence from the film when you find yourself in heated debate with your conservative brother-in-law!). For now, please know the following: Every single fact I state in "Fahrenheit 9/11" is the absolute and irrefutable truth. This movie is perhaps the most thoroughly researched and vetted documentary of our time. No fewer than a dozen people, including three teams of lawyers and the venerable one- time fact-checkers from The New Yorker went through this movie with a fine-tooth comb so that we can make this guarantee to you. Do not let anyone say this or that isn't true. If they say that, they are lying. Let them know that the OPINIONS in the film are mine, and anyone certainly has a right to disagree with them. And the questions I pose in the movie, based on these irrefutable facts, are also mine. And I have a right to ask them. And I will continue to ask them until they are answered.

In closing, let me say that the most heartening response to the film has come from our soldiers and their families. Theaters in military towns across the country reported packed houses. Our troops know the truth. They have seen it first-hand. And many of them could not believe that here was a movie that was TRULY on their side -- the side of bringing them home alive and never sending them into harms way again unless it's the absolute last resort. Please take a moment to read this wonderful story from the daily paper in Fayetteville, NC, where Fort Bragg is located. It broke my heart to read this, the reactions of military families and the comments of an infantryman's wife publicly backing my movie -- and it gave me the resolve to make sure as many Americans as possible see this film in the coming weeks.

Thank you again, all of you, for your support. Together we did something for the history books. My apologies to "Return of the Jedi." We'll make it up by producing "Return of the Texan to Crawford" in November.

May the farce be with you, but not for long,

Michael Moore www.michaelmoore.com mmflint@aol.com

P.S. You can read letters from people around the country recounting their own experiences at the theater, and their reactions to the film by going here.

P.P.S. Also, I'm going to start blogging! Tonight! Come on over and check it out.

Original Source.

Torture at Abu Ghraib

The stories have been all over the news for days now, so I am sure most have you have read about it extensively. However, I would recommend the various pieces by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker of late. Key question how far up does the responsibility go? Well worth the read.

The Gray Zone by Seymour Hersh.

Chain of Command by Seymour Hersh

America War Dead and Princess Diana

A friend, Dom, just dropped me an email to note the irony of the fact that the US is said to be furious over the publication of photos of the coffins of American Iraq war dead (see BBC article), in the same week as it is found OK to publish pictures of a dying Diana. Strange old world. The BBC article also highlights the following stats, 135,000 US troops in Iraq, tour of duty extended for 20,000, 91 US soldiers killed in April (and hundreds of Iraqis, unofficial sources say) and nearly 600 US troops killed since 1 May 2003. What a waste all round.

Therapy with New Labour

Sent an article by Catherine Bennett entitled "We'll move on when we're ready, Dr Blair" to my mailing list recently, I simply couldn't resist...very amusing...all about Blair, closure and wanting to move on too quick, "therapeutic language" and government, forgiveness, etc....read it...you'll see...

Hutton Shmutton

Today the much anticipated Hutton Report was released in the UK. Surprise, surprise the Blair government was cleared on any under-handed dealings in the release of Dr Kelly's name to the media...an activity which ultimately applied sufficient public pressure upon Kelly that he took his own life. In addition, the government was cleared of falsifying evidence that WMD existed in Iraq when they produced their so-called dodgy dossier. Blair declared grinning like a cherub that “The allegation that I or anyone else lied to this House or deliberately misled the country by falsifying intelligence on WMD is itself the real lie". Ho-hum...so despite no WMD and several thousand Iraqi civilian deaths...Blair's hands are clean...all we know now is that he apparently did not deliberately mislead the British public. All I can conclude is that Britain must have accidentally gone to war then? Now there is a first...

Continuing Collateral Damage: Iraq

The war on Iraq and its aftermath exacted a heavy toll on combatants and civilians, who paid and continue to pay the price in death, injury and mental and physical ill health. Between 21,700 and 55,000 people died between March 20 and October 20, 2003 (the date on which this report went to press), while the health and environmental consequences of the conflict will be felt for many years to come. See the Continuing Collateral Damage Report.

When will WMD be found?

Was thinking: I bet the famous Weapons of Mass Destruction will astonishingly be found the week the Hutton Inquiry is to report on its findings regarding the death of Dr David Kelly, or am I just cynical, or do I really understand the spin machine?

Weapons of Mass Destruction

Want to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, click here.

Scholars Feel Helpless as They See Their Campus Destroyed

Scary article in New York Times today about the destruction of Basra University.

Response to my Anti-Iraq War Posts

Below is a message I received via the comments page on my site. Thought I would post it in the interests of free speech and all that. Interesting, to see how people react and how being anti the war in Iraq gets you painted as being pro-Saddam Hussein. Dare I say, it also seems that nuance, along with the truth, is the first casualty of war. Alas.

From Steve Smith to Brandon Hamber (27/4/2003)

You do NOT speak on behalf of MOST of this country, as you claim to do. In 1939 there were sweet, idealistic, naievettes, such as yourselves who said Adolf Hitler should be left alone to merrily exterminate whoever he chose. How lucky you are to be able to run a website like this, because there WERE people who were brave enough to stop that particular despot. YES some civilians have been killed in the Iraq war, Somewhere in the very low thousands. Now I do not want to trivialise this number of innocent people killed, indeed I have watched daily news reports , and have felt like crying, after seeing some of the images, especially of children, maimed or killed and having their lives torn apart.However, how many HUNDREDS UPON HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of innocent people have had their lives wrecked, or died through Saddam Hussein, who if he hadn't been stopped, had the capacity AND the appetite to continue doing this, and much worse, and then even when he had passed, there would be his sons to continue his line, and what do you think THEIR sons would be like? ANd so it would doubtlessly continue.And the motive for this war?- Some sceptics would say a war on Islam.-Then why are hundreds of thousands of Muslims allowed to live and practise their religion, and build their own mosques in the the U.K and the U.S.A? What was the involvement of our 2 countries in the former Yugoslavia?-To protect MUSLIMS from ethnic persecution. Someones argument to not hold water somewhere. Are there any oil reserves in this area? I think not. So, onto the subject of oil. Others would say thats the true motive for this war. Oil for food yes, as was the case in the past what does any oil, or any other resorce producing counry do, in effect? Would it be so wrong anyway? -When the civilised world is so dependant on the black stuff?- Thats YOUR, I repeat YOUR way of life!

Response to Steve Smith by Andie Miller

"In 1939 there were sweet, idealistic, naievettes, such as yourselves who said Adolf Hitler should be left alone to merrily exterminate whoever he chose.How lucky you are to be able to run a website like this, because there WERE people who were brave enough to stop that particular despot."

And what about George Bush? Who's to stop that particular despot?

Hindsight is an exact science.

"Someones argument to not hold water somewhere. Are there any oil reserves in this area? I think not. So, onto the subject of oil. Others would say thats the true motive for this war. Oil for food yes, as was the case in the past what does any oil, or any other resorce producing counry do, in effect? Would it be so wrong anyway? -When the civilised world is so dependant on the black stuff?- Thats YOUR, I repeat YOUR way of life!"

It seems curious (and a little scary), Steve, that you start off your argument by justifying bringing down Saddam, and end up by admitting that the war may just be about oil anyway.

I think native New Yorker, Douglas Rushkoff would agree with you on that, though he frames it differently:

Regards, Andie
South Africa

Saturday, December 07, 2002

Rich against Poor

Douglas Rushkoff

I've been mulling the various polarities offered by our statesmen and corporate cronies as they prepare us for war and a general realignment of powers. The rising conflicts have been presented as Judeo-Christian vs. Muslim, Democratic vs. tryant, US vs. Iran, Bushes vs. Husseins, etc.

But I think what the US current regime exposes through its policies and actions is a much less complex and more typical struggle: rich against poor. The Bush regime's economic, environmental, and military adventures can all be understood quite easily as the maintenance of the short-term interests of the wealthy over the long-term interests of the poor.

The Bush regime is not simply 'in bed' with the oil industry. This is not a question of undue influence or corporate donations. The Bush regime is the oil industry. VP Cheney's own oil industry dealings have yet to be surrendered to independent investigators, and will likely be kept secret unless the Supreme Court demands they be released - something Cheney, no doubt, thinks will be delayed until after he is dead.

Likewise, Kissinger's first act as independent investigator of the 9/11 incident has been to bury his own client list.

Bush's first real action after 9/11, meanwhile, was to work with the Saudis to fly his partners, the Bin Laden family, safely and secretly out of America.

These are not indications of some abstract "conflict of interest" that require our analysis. They are the very simply understood actions of a single, coordinated group. Not a "conspiracy," but a collaboration. The only real question unanswered about the invasion of Iraq, for example, is who will get which piece of the spoils.

Bush and his regime are businesspeople, who are doing business with fellow, powerful businesspeople in other parts of the world. They trade mostly in oil, which is why they need to maintain global dependence on oil (rather than helping to develop alternative energy resources). They monopolize these transactions through the exploitation of the poor, which is why they need to implement economic policies (in the US) and dictatorial policies (in the Arab world) in order to maintain power.

The main difference between the tactics of the Bush regime and those of their partners in the Arab world is the particular methodology through which they keep their people stupid enough not to fight back. In the United States, citizens are led to believe that Bush and his team are part of an anti-elitist, populist backlash against the over-intellectualized and effeminate liberalization of government by homosexuals, feminists, anti-Christians, and other democratic party members. Bush will also be 'strong,' and defend us against dark peoples, everywhere.

(Even the wealthy in the United States - the people who advise me at my own bank, in fact - use self-imposed stupidity and denial in order to bring themselves to the point where they can support Bush. It is in their short-term economic interests to do so. So they use whatever mythology they can to convince themselves that Bush's leadership actually makes sense on some Judeo-Christian, ethical, or democratic level.)

In Arab countries, like Saudi Arabia, the people are kept stupid mostly through anti-Semitism. "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" is published not by an undeground Nazi press, but by the government. Prince Nayef, Saudi Arabia’s minister of the interior, still tells his people that the 9/11 attacks were part of a Zionist plot. (Of course, the Saudi government also supports Al Qaeda, but this is only to keep the attacks pointing at regimes other than their own. If Israel were to disappear, the Saudis would be attacked next. That's why they need to keep the Jews in everyone's mind as the #1 enemy.)

Whichever method of maintaining public ignorance is utilized, the result is the same. Nationalism, xenophobia, and a surrender of power and influence to the wealthy.

The way this system may ultimately break down - and the reason why global networks and genuine communication between people is so important - is through the comparison of means of oppression. Americans are good at seeing the way that the Saudi people are being duped, and Saudis are probably pretty good at seeing how Americans are being duped. This is because the stories being told us are incompatible.

As soon as people can understand this very simple equation:

Bush says Arabs bad.
Arabs says Bush bad.
Bush and Arabs make business deals together at the expense of their people.

...things could get interesting.

Then again, this is why genuine international communications networks - like this one - are in big danger. It's also why the people we fear most stand very little chance of being allowed to get online.

Iraq War: Where is the True Danger

by Slavoj Zizek

We all remember the old joke about the borrowed kettle which Freud quotes in order to render the strange logic of dreams, namely the enumeration of mutually exclusive answers to a reproach (that I returned to a friend a broken kettle): (1) I never borrowed a kettle from you; (2) I returned it to you unbroken; (3) the kettle was already broken when I got it from you. For Freud, such an enumeration of inconsistent arguments of course confirms per negationem what it endeavors to deny - that I returned you a broken kettle... Do we not encounter the same inconsistency when high US officials try to justify the attack on Iraq? (1) There is a link between Saddam's regime and al-Qaeda, so Saddam should be punished as part of the revenge for 9/11; (2) even if there was no link between Iraqi regime and al Qaeda, they are united in their hatred of the US - Saddam's regime is a really bad one, a threat not only to the US, but also to its neighbors, and we should liberate the Iraqi people; (3) the change of regime in Iraq will create the conditions for the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The problem is that there are TOO MANY reasons for the attack...

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