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Uncontrollable Patriotism

PROTEST IN D.C.

HAMAS GATHERS IN FRONT OF THE WHITE HOUSE
HAMAS GATHERS IN FRONT OF THE WHITE HOUSE
TYLER BASS of The Elf Wax Times Live Reporting Team is at the anti-war protest rally in Washington, D.C. Here we are in front of the White House, where the march began. The protesters are currently marching from LaFayette to 16th. These pictures are extremely high-resolution. They are in descending order starting at the top and going down (sorry we were in a hurry).an absurd caricature of a hippie
An absurd caricature of a hippie.
tyler bass: anti-war march on Washington, D.C. March 20, 2010
tyler bass: anti-war march on Washington, D.C. March 20, 2010

Imperial March music plays in the background. It is rumored that Hamas has infiltrated the protest group and plans to bring down Democracy from the inside out. This is why the Public Works Department is fining the ANSWER Coalition into the ground.

tyler bass: protesters en route to Halliburton
tyler bass: protesters en route to Halliburton
thousands of people march down the street
thousands of people march down the street
at the park?
A drum circle settles the angry crowds.
big sign bigger buildings
this guy with the "kill the bill" sign was a Ron Paul supporter, and a 9/11 Truther who believes the World Trade Center was rigged with explosives and fell due to a controlled explosion and not the airplanes crashing into buildings

On the WTC, our reporter asked this man, who is a Ron Paul supporter and a 9/11 Truth Movement…advocate-guy, “Ron Paul said he doesn’t believe there were bombs in the World Trade Center.”

He responded, “[He has] to say that because he’s a politician.”

To which we asked, “Why are you going to vote for someone who’s just gonna lie to get elected?”

protest march

indict bush now

2
The Islamic holocaust.

134

11
Indict the previous president for what's happening now. It's all his fault.

10

if you look closely, you can see Al Qaeda
if you look closely, you can see Al Qaeda

Roughly five or six thousand people attended the protest rally to march.

A few people were arrested or detained. Earlier in the day, a group of people belonging to Iraq Veterans Against War (IVAW) tried to put down a mud stencil on the sidewalk. The police got mad about it and cited a statute under D.C. law that you can’t put out a mud stencil. Protesters were no longer allowed near that area.

Wayne Brauer and Matthieux Chiraux were detained. Cindy Sheehan was arrested for who knows how many times in a row. She’s planning to camp somewhere, too.

Nader showed up but would not speak to reporters. At least not Elf Wax reporters.

Ramsey Clark, Saddam Hussein’s attorney was present but also would not speak to us.

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Uncontrollable Patriotism

ANTI-WAR PROTEST IN WASHINGTON, D.C.

ANSWER Coalition
ANSWER Coalition

Washington, D.C.–Tomorrow, Americans will march on the White House in protest of the ongoing war occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. Demonstrators Thursday called Bush and Obama’s wars an “illegal war for empire.”

The ANSWER coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) has been fined $7,500 for putting up signs in a move by the government that Brian Becker of the ANSWER Coalition said is “trying to limit or eviscerate or criminalize grassroots organizing itself.”

They were fined for handing out leaflets and putting up posters and signs, which the Department of Public Works has demanded the organization’s members remove.

Becker said that for eighteen months they have been targeted, accumulating between seventy and eighty thousand dollars in fines.

President of Veterans for Peace Mike Ferner said, “We will not be leaving Iraq and Afghanistan unless enough people in this country stand up.”

Organizers say the Afghanistan conflict is “Obama’s War,” just as Iraq was Bush’s war, and there is no difference between the two Presidents’ war policies.

Becker said a growing number of people oppose “the expanding war in Afghanistan, the continued occupation Afghanistan, [and] the continued occupation of Iraq.”

Cindy Sheehan, who garnered public attention in 2005 for camping outside President Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Tex. said, “Some people have abandoned the antiwar movement, have abandoned peace, since Obama’s been president. But we need to re-create a movement.”

Pondolfino of Military Families Speak Out said Thursday, “I’m the proud mother of an active-duty infantry soldier…We love and support our troops. And it is because we do that we will vocally show our opposition whenever our government sends them to ill-advised, immoral, unwinnable wars.”

Tyler Bass will report in to The Elf Wax Times via cell-phone, sending large photographs of the demonstration as it unfolds throughout the day, starting in LaFayette park across the street from the White House, and throughout the march on Washington in which tens of thousands of people are expected to participate.

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Politics

Less Truth, Moore Manipulation

Ever since Roger & Me hit the film festival circuit in 1989, Michael Moore has established himself to be a distinctive documentary filmmaker. With the release and wide popularity of his 2002 documentary, Bowling for Columbine, Moore gained attention from a wider audience whom perhaps weren’t as familiar with his work; however, his omissions and questionable techniques began to be somewhat evident. Then, along came Fahrenheit 9/11, a 2004 documentary following the events of the September 11th attacks and the response from the Bush administration, misleading us into occupation in Iraq. Easily Moore’s most successful and controversial film, Fahrenheit 9/11 is guilty of both covering up omitting information with film methods and crafting its own political agenda with a slanted style, a well-known characteristic of Moore. Indeed, Fahrenheit 9/11, through Michael Moore’s selected film techniques and biased and populist rhetoric, creates and argues its own political agenda, stating that Bush manipulated the events of 9/11/2001 to create unwarranted war in Iraq. Though, ironically, Moore is accountable of the same reductionism proposed.
Throughout the film, it is obvious that Michael Moore was extremely careful with the shots and editing he used in order to mask his omitted facts and sway viewers into believing everything he says is true. One of the film’s first examples is the coverage, or lack thereof, of the 9/11 attacks at the World Trade Center. Moore decided to exclude video footage and instead solely use carefully selected audio of the explosions and people crying and yelling for help, all against a blank screen. By removing the video, Moore is cueing the viewer’s personal visual memories of the events, adding much more emotion. In addition, if he would’ve shown the attacks, the emotions would be those of anger and retaliation, not those of sorrow and sympathy. Right after this scene, the video fades back in; showing the looks of shock and horror on bystanders’ faces as debris rains down from the sky, all juxtaposed with sounds of violins much like a sad part in a narrative film. These early shots and sounds prompt the emotions of sorrow from the viewer and get them involved from the start.
Secondly, another example of Moore using his film experience to his advantage is in the scene where President Bush is reading a book to elementary school students as the second plane crashed into the World Trade Center. Instead of immediately reacting after being told “America is under attack,” Bush kept his cool for seven minutes before getting up and heading for safety. However, Moore stretches these seven minutes out to feel like a lifetime by showing Bush calmly sitting and pondering his next move along with the time at the bottom of the screen to remind the viewer that minutes are passing by. Usually, in any emergency where the president’s security is threatened, the secret service takes control and decides the president’s next move. Moore does not mention this though and instead makes Bush seem as if he doesn’t care and/or doesn’t have a clue what to do next when the nation was under attack.
Finally, one last example of Moore’s use of manipulative editing occurs during the scene where President Bush is shown announcing his plan to bomb Iraq in “shock and awe” fashion. Moore mentions that his film crew went to Iraq the day before the bombings and documented Iraqi life. What is shown onscreen is children running around, frolicking around a Ferris wheel carelessly, all while Saddam Hussein’s evil regime was still in power. The next images we see are bombs exploding over Baghdad and the destruction and sorrow caused by the “shock and awe” campaign. One can’t help but to think of the similarities between the aftermaths of these bombings and the attacks of September 11th as we again see people crying for help after chaos has erupted. What Moore has done here though is depicted Saddam’s Iraq as a peaceful, happy place where kids play freely and happily, when in reality this was far from the truth. Moore’s film crew obviously went to one of the more peaceful places in Iraq and got incredibly lucky with the footage. When this happy footage is shown right before the explosions of the bombs and their aftermath, it makes the Bush Administration seem heartless and only looking invade countries that they can gain from. Although this example is much more blatant than others, it still proves the point that Michael Moore’s selected film techniques are used in such a way to covertly sway the viewer’s opinion without seeming overly direct.
Not only is Moore an expert at manipulating film techniques, he also has a way with rhetoric, choosing almost always to go along with populist opinion and never offering opposing viewpoints. Throughout Moore’s films, he has always picked one person to buffoon through his use of archive footage and film manipulation. In Roger & Me, his target was Roger Smith, CEO of General motors, while in Bowling for Columbine, his target was the National Rifle Association and its president at the time, Charlton Heston. With Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore was sitting on a goldmine by picking George W. Bush, who is no stranger to bumbled speeches and misquotes. Basically, all Moore had to do was get his hands on archive footage making Bush look foolish and juxtapose them right where his points were being made. In the summer of 2004, a majority of the U.S. was already questioning Bush’s misuse of power. Before the film was even released, there was mass controversy regarding the issues discussed in the film. Even the title itself, which derives from Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, caused some controversy with Bradbury asking Moore to change the film’s title (Fahrenheit 9/11 controversy). These controversies had an adverse effect, creating publicity and causing it to open up at the box office with 23.9 million. With most viewers knowing the context of the film before entering the theatre, Moore was basically preaching to a choir.
Another known characteristic of Moore’s films is that he always finds a way to get his hometown, Flint, Michigan, involved. In Fahrenheit 9/11, he does so by encountering a mother who lost her son in the conflict in Iraq. It is at this point in the film where Moore tones down his usual blaring music along with visuals and shifts the focus solely on the woman’s struggles dealing with the loss of a son. If viewers weren’t already emotionally tuned in to Moore’s rhetoric, now they have a first-hand look at the personal side of war. It is interesting to note that in this scene, Moore makes it seem as if the mother, Lila Lipscomb, had made a complete change in her opinions of the war. In the beginning, Lipscomb states that she loves America and supports the president every step of the way; however, her opinion seems to take a 180-degree turn when she goes to the White House. Dr. Kelton Rhoads, an expert in psychology, did a bit of research of his own and uncovered that Lipscomb had voted for Al Gore in the 2000 election and claimed that Bush had stole the election (Rhoads).
Lastly, as much as Moore suggests that Bush duped a nation into agreeing with his unprovoked invasion of Iraq, Moore himself is just as guilty of the same reductionism by duping his viewers with film manipulation and populist opinion. Moore portrays Bush throughout the movie as being a manipulative leader even with the first shots of him preparing himself before addressing the nation. However, Moore is a true master of manipulation and hides it well by using ambiguous film techniques instead of straightforward facts to push his opinions on people seamlessly.
To conclude, Fahrenheit 9/11 was a successful documentary that’s triumph over viewers was mainly due to Michael Moore’s skilled film techniques and populist rhetoric that its audience would hardly question with a first viewing. However, when examined closely, the film is guilty of using these skills to its advantage and duping all of those who watch and believe everything stated is true. In conclusion, through its selected film techniques and populist rhetoric, Fahrenheit 9/11 is a success in terms of creating and arguing its own political agenda. Though, one must argue the overall success of the film when George W. Bush was reelected and still in office.