9/11

Has anybody (the Bush family, for example) sued Michael Moore for libel yet?

Of course, there are only two defences to a libel suit.

1) I didn't print or broadcast it.

2) It's true.

Deane

Misrepresentation isn't libel. And if you're a public figure in the US then (I think) you have to show malicious intent and damage to win a libel suit, otherwise it's free speech. Bush just won an election, it would be hard to show his career was damaged.

The lack of libel suits says nothing about the accuracy of any impression you might have drawn from his film. Let's see if Moore sues over this...

Paul

Tom you are right. I had to stop posting regularly on a very enjoyable forum (US based 90% US patrons). After 9/11 it got a bit ghung ho but after the "war" in "Irack" started any postees even slightly critisising GWB/war were pilloried as "Commie Motherfucker Traitors" etc. It left no room for rational discussion and avery bad taste.

BTW there seems to a real problem with the Bush/others view of the timings of information received on 9/11

Howard

quote:

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Originally posted by Tom Alves:
I looked at he document that led to Farenhype. _The Fifty-nine Deceits in Fahrenheit 911_ Having gone through it with my usual care I would reckon 20% might be worth considering. The other 80% was as unfounded, dubious, irrelevant and manipulative as the accusations the film lays against Moore.

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Link to a summary of "The 59 Deceits"

<sarcasm on>

Hey...

* Zell "I stabbed my fellow Dems in the back by giving the keynote address at the Republican National Convention, denouncing Kerry" Miller

* Ann "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity" Coulter, and

* David "look at me; I coined the 'Axis of Evil' phrase" Frum -- not to mention a few Fox News and National Review contributors -- are featured in this documentary.

Well, if that doesn't speak to the film's honesty and impartiality nothing does.

<sarcasm off>

Joe

Moore has said that Farenheit 911 was an opinion/editorial piece. This would appear to be an op/ed piece as well.

Jim

That's "misrepresentation of the facts".
Unless its Koch who has to use "lies" and other inflamatory language so someone will listen to him.

quote:

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Originally posted by Paul Ranson:
Misrepresentation isn't libel. And if you're a public figure in the US then (I think) you have to show malicious intent and damage to win a libel suit, otherwise it's free speech. Bush just won an election, it would be hard to show his career was damaged.

The lack of libel suits says nothing about the accuracy of any impression you might have drawn from his film. Let's see if Moore sues over this...

Paul

---

Paul

You make good points. I shot off my post before going to bed and my computer is very old, without speakers, so there was little point in watching the clip to which Jim Lawson's post linked. I agree that the lack of libel suits says nothing about the accuracy of impressions that are drawn from Moore's film and, of course, I retract the vague argument that was implied in my rather simple-minded post.

As a general comment on Moore's film though, I would like to state that, as a consumer, I appreciated that his bias and agenda for the film was very clearly stated from the outset. Most documentaries aim their material at a twelve year old's level of understanding. I felt that Moore's film expected a little more than that from the viewers and the statement of bias and agenda formed part of that expectation.

Deane

And here it is -- bin Laden's secret hideout as printed in The Times in Novemeber 2001 and subsequently endorsed by Rumsfeld in a TV interview:



My favourite but is the Hydro-electric power plant powered by "mountain streams".

Full story here

"The Lancet, a publication not known for sensational headlines published the results of a survey carried out in Iraq which showed that since the outbreak of this war, civilian casualties amount to over 100.000"

I am extremely dubious about that survey. There should be more bodies and, assuming a ratio of 5:1 for deaths to injuries, far more injured people if 100,000 have been killed.

Matthew

I thnk the original version of the picture was in the Eagle comic in the 50s to illustrate an underground city <g>

Derek

<< >>

quote:

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There are, however, some facts which are irrefutable, even by the Neo-Cons.

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Are you going to give us any of these facts then?

Paul

quote:

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Originally posted by Joe Petrik:
<sarcasm on>
* _David_ "look at me; I coined the 'Axis of Evil' phrase" _Frum_ -- not to mention a few Fox News and National Review contributors -- are featured in this documentary.

<sarcasm off>

Joe

---

Is this the same Frum that is quoted in an Israeli paper saying that Arafat is gay and is dying of AIDS?

The same guy. He is an ex-speech writer for GWB and was on the Question Time US Election Special the other week if you saw that.

The article quoting him is from National review Online which is the Freeper loons jounal of choice.

Matthew

Mekon,

quote:

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Is this the same Frum that is quoted in an Israeli paper saying that Arafat is gay and is dying of AIDS?

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I don't know about such an allegation in an Israeli paper, but Frum said as much in his National Review diary.

Joe

quote:

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Originally posted by VCL:
The Lancet, a publication not known for sensational headlines...

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Wasn't it The Lancet whose sensational headlines about HRT doubling women's chances of getting cancer resulted in thousands of statistically challenged GPs taking their patients off HRT? [This is not a rhetorical question - at least in the sense that I don't know the answer].

'VCL' why not go and read the report? It's freely available at the Lancet web site. And it's 'mortality'.

It's an interesting report, I think Matthew's sanity check regarding the wounded and 'where are the bodies' is relevant. The '100000' number is actually 95% likely to be somewhere between 8000 and 194000, which seems a very wide bell curve to be drawing firm conclusions from.

Two interesting points are that the percentage of deaths attributed to accidents remains the same before and after the invasion. I'd have expected it to drop as a percentage. And that the mortality rate has remained the same or dropped post-invasion in the northern areas.

Paul

Much more comfy and also later endorsed by Rumsfeld in a TV interview...

"The '100000' number is actually 95% likely to be somewhere between 8000 and 194000, which seems a very wide bell curve to be drawing firm conclusions from"

I'm not sure why the error range is quite so wide or even if this is particularly unusual or not.

However, it is my understanding that, statistically speaking at least, totals of 8,000 or 194,000 are extremely unlikely and a real value somewhere around 98,000 is very likely. So whilst the report might be flawed I'm not sure that you can draw that conclusions from a statistical POV. I'm no statistics expert though.

What does seem odd is that everybody else seems to think that casualties since the official end of the war number about 15,000 to 20,000. It's not at all clear why The Lancet study should imply a number an order of magnitude larger than other evidence would indicate. And there there is the lack of bodies and injured people in hospitals.

Matthew

PS I note that 15,000 to 20,000 dead is still an awful lot of people and it's obvious that being blown up or shot by somebody is a significant risk for Iraqis.

I think, from memory, that random samples are 'normally' distributed (The Central Limit Theorem?). In this case the 'bell' of the normal distribution of possible casualties is flat and wide rather than tall and narrow.

There are a lot of problems with the methodology, mostly dictated by circumstance, driving about with a GPS and knocking on random doors isn't a safe occupation in Iraq. I'm astonished they were able to get any data from Fallujah.

Apparently there are other numbers available for Iraqi mortality rates over the last 20 years or more, and some indication from these that the Lancet survey under-estimates the pre-war mortality rate, which consequently increases their estimate of casualties. There's no mention in the Lancet report of existing data of this kind. Not that I can find anything other than infant mortality rates on the Internet tonight.

Anyway the report is well worth a read. Similar reports from after the 91 Gulf war show that 400 000 babies died in Iraq as a consequence of UN Sanctions. Obviously that was politically less useful, since it was 'UN' and 'Bill Clinton'.

Paul

But Saddam era Iraq is well down the world league for infant mortality. On a par with Nepal or India. The sanctions induced baby loss in Iraq is minor compared with the baby loss in other parts of the world that haven't been subject to UN sanctions but have been subject to incompetent government. What about all those dead babies? 15% of live births in some places.

Paul