tagged w/ Micheal Moore
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A panel discussion held at the New School among people involved with the occupation movements. Some of whom we might know such as Naomi Klein, Michael Moore
Enjoy this 2 hour video as they discuss things as they are and their suggestions for the future. This is all our moments, solidarity from abroad! : )
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZc1YBpw0QgA panel discussion held at the New School among people involved with the occupation... more
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Yesterday WikiLeaks did an amazing thing and released a classified State Department cable that dealt, in part, with me and my film, 'Sicko.'
It is a stunning look at the Orwellian nature of how bureaucrats for the State spin their lies and try to recreate reality (I assume to placate their bosses and tell them what they want to hear).
The date is January 31, 2008. It is just days after 'Sicko' has been nominated for an Oscar as Best Documentary. This must have sent someone reeling in Bush's State Department (his Treasury Department had already notified me they were investigating what laws I might have broken in taking three 9/11 first responders to Cuba to get them the health care they had been denied in the United States).
Former health insurance executive Wendell Potter recently revealed that the insurance industry -- which had decided to spend millions to go after me and, if necessary, "push Michael Moore off a cliff" -- had begun working with anti-Castro Cubans in Miami in order to have them speak out and smear my film.
So, on January 31, 2008, a State Department official stationed in Havana took a made up story and sent it back to his HQ in Washington. Here's what they concocted:
XXXXXXXXXXXX stated that Cuban authorities have banned Michael Moore's documentary, "Sicko," as being subversive. Although the film's intent is to discredit the U.S. healthcare system by highlighting the excellence of the Cuban system, he said the regime knows the film is a myth and does not want to risk a popular backlash by showing to Cubans facilities that are clearly not available to the vast majority of them.
Sounds convincing, eh?! There's only one problem -- 'Sicko' had just been playing in Cuban theaters. Then the entire nation of Cuba was shown the film on national television on April 25, 2008! The Cubans embraced the film so much so it became one of those rare American movies that received a theatrical distribution in Cuba. I personally ensured that a 35mm print got to the Film Institute in Havana. Screenings of 'Sicko' were set up in towns all across the country.
But the secret cable said Cubans were banned from seeing my movie. Hmmm.
We also know from another secret U.S. document that "the disenchantment of the masses [in Cuba] has spread through all the provinces," and that "all of Oriente Province is seething with hate" for the Castro regime. There's a huge active underground rebellion, and "workers there readily give all the support they can," with everyone involved in "subtle sabotage" against the government. Morale is terrible throughout all the branches of the armed forces, and in the event of war the army "will not fight." Wow -- this cable is hot!
Of course, this secret U.S. cable is from March 31, 1961, three weeks before Cuba kicked our asses at the Bay of Pigs.
The U.S. government has been passing around these "secret" documents to itself for the past fifty years, explaining in painstaking detail how horrible things are in Cuba and how Cubans are quietly aching for us to come back and take over. I don't know why we write these cables, I guess it just makes us feel better about ourselves. (Anyone curious can find an entire museum of U.S. wish fulfillment cables on the website of the National Security Archive.)
So what do you do with about a false "secret" cable, especially one that involves you and your movie? Well, you wait for a responsible newspaper to investigate and shout what it discovers from the rooftops.
But yesterday WikiLeaks gave the 'Sicko' Cuba cable to the media -- and what did they do with it? They ran it as if it were true! Here's the headline in the Guardian:
WikiLeaks: Cuba banned Sicko for depicting 'mythical' healthcare system
Authorities feared footage of gleaming hospital in Michael Moore's Oscar-nominated film would provoke a popular backlash
And not one scintilla of digging to see if Cuba had actually banned the movie! In fact, just the opposite. The right wing press started to have a field day reporting a lie (Andy Levy of Fox -- twice -- Reason Magazine, Spectator and Hot Air, plus a slew of blogs). Sadly, even BoingBoing and my friends at the Nation wrote about it without skepticism. So here you have WikiLeaks, who have put themselves on the line to find and release these cables to the press -- and traditional journalists are once again just too lazy to lift a finger, point and click their mouse to log into Nexis or search via Google, and look to see if Cuba really did "ban the film." Had just ONE reporter done that, here's they would have found:
June 16, 2007 Saturday 1:41 AM GMT [that's 7 months before the false cable]
HEADLINE: Cuban health minister says Moore's 'Sicko' shows 'human values' of communist system
BYLINE: By ANDREA RODRIGUEZ, Associated Press Writer
DATELINE: HAVANA
Cuba's health minister Jose Ramon Balaguer said Friday that American filmmaker Michael Moore's documentary 'Sicko' highlights the human values of the island's communist-run government... "There can be no doubt this documentary by a personality like Mr. Michael Moore helps promote the profoundly human principles of Cuban society."
Or, how 'bout this little April 25, 2008 notice from CubaSi.Cu (translation by Google):
Sicko premiere in Cuba
25/04/2008
The documentary Sicko, the U.S. filmmaker Michael Moore, which deals about the deplorable state of American health care system will be released today at 5:50 pm, for the space Cubavision Roundtable and the Education Channel.
Then there's this from Juventudrebelde.cu (translation by Google). Or this Cuban editorial (translation by Google). There's even a long clip of the Cuba section of 'Sicko' on the homepage of Media Roundtable on the CubaSi.cu website!
OK, so we know the media is lazy and sucks most of the time. But the bigger issue here is how our government seemed to be colluding with the health insurance industry to destroy a film that might have a hand in bringing about what the Cubans already have in their poverty-ridden third world country: free, universal health care. And because they have it and we don't, Cuba has a better infant mortality rate than we do, their life expectancy is just 7 months shorter than ours, and, according to the WHO, they rank just two places behind the richest country on earth in terms of the quality of their health care.
That's the story, mainstream media and right-wing haters.
Now that you've been presented with the facts, what are you going to do about it? Are you gonna attack me for having my movie played on Cuban state television? Or are you gonna attack me for not having my movie played on Cuban state television?
You have to choose one, it can't be both.
And since the facts show that the movie played on state TV and in theaters, I think you're better off attacking me for having my films played in Cuba.
¡Viva WikiLeaks!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-moore/viva-wikileaks-sicko-was_b_798586.htmlYesterday WikiLeaks did an amazing thing and released a classified State Department... more
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As Bradley Manning, accused of spilling the Afghan war logs to WikiLeaks, hires a lawyer and prepares to fight government charges, Philip Shenon shares new details about his predicament—including an expected $100,000 legal bill.
Bradley Manning, the alleged WikiLeaks leaker, is about to come out fighting.
A spokesman for Manning’s legal defense fund tells The Daily Beast that the 22-year-old Army intelligence specialist has finally chosen a civilian lawyer to represent him against charges he illegally provided a huge library of classified military documents and videos to WikiLeaks earlier this year.
After weeks of public silence, the spokesman said, Manning is determined to fight criminal charges that could send him to prison for decades.
“My understanding is that Manning’s appointed military defense attorneys were trying to pressure him into taking a deal, but he wasn’t interested,” said Jeff Paterson, project director of Courage to Resist, a California-based war-resisters group that has been working with WikiLeaks to raise money for Manning’s defense.
“Our expectation is that he’s going to fight the charges,” Paterson said.
A Defense Department spokesman had no immediate comment Monday on Manning’s defense plans. Manning’s military lawyers in Iraq have declined repeated requests for interviews.
Courage to Resist, which is being actively supported by the filmmaker Michael Moore in organizing the legal defense fund, says that it has raised about $50,000 for Manning, an amount that it expects WikiLeaks roughly to match.
Paterson confirmed a report in the Associated Press((http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gnn4wgF9VWmECeiuNLaW7spvS32wD9HU0E8G1) that the civilian defense lawyer is David Coombs of Providence, Rhode Island. Coombs is best known for defending Army Sgt. Hasan Akbar, charged in a deadly 2003 attack on fellow U.S. military members in Kuwait. Akbar is awaiting execution for murdering two officers.
Paterson said Coombs had already talked with Manning by telephone, and that the lawyer will oversee a defense team that will also include uniformed military counsel.
Paterson said that Manning has also begun to receive visitors, including a close friend from Boston who met with the young soldier last weekend at the brig at the Marine base in Quantico, Virginia, where Manning has been held for the last several weeks. According to Paterson, the friend found Manning in reasonably good spirits.
“We got a sense that he was actually in pretty good physical and mental condition, considering the fact that he’s facing decades in prison,” Paterson said.
Manning’s state of mind and his plans for defending himself against the criminal charges have been a mystery since his arrest in June in Iraq on suspicion of leaking the material to WikiLeaks. He was held for several weeks in Kuwait before his transfer late last month to Quantico.
Paterson said that his group expected Manning’s total legal bill to come to about $100,000 and that his group was continuing to raise money through its website on his behalf (since Manning will be brought to trial in a military court, the Pentagon will cover many of the costs of his case). The initial $50,000 was raised from more than 800 donors, most of them first-time contributors to Courage to Resist. The site is also selling a range of “Free Bradley Manning” paraphernalia(http://www.bradleymanning.org/), from T-shirts to buttons to posters.
The move by Courage to Resist to find a lawyer for Manning followed initial fruitless efforts by WikiLeaks to provide the suspect with civilian counsel.
Still, Paterson said, Manning should be able to mount a strong defense.
“It’s one thing to say that a 22-year-old Army private first class could do all this, and it’s another thing to prove it—and to prove that it really did any damage,” Paterson said. “I think there are going to be details about this case that are going to surprise people. It’s not going to be the open-and-shut case that the government has portrayed it to be.”As Bradley Manning, accused of spilling the Afghan war logs to WikiLeaks, hires a... more
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