As Tim Dunlop has noted, that dodgy and fact altering infotainment program called The Path To 9/11 is being shown on Channel Seven on Sunday night without the protest currently being seen in the US.
Do you democratic duty and ring Channel Seven, point out that you are a great supporter of the prime minister’s views on accurate historical information, and that you therefore request them not to show the film until such time that producers fix the well-documented errors.
Their phone number is Ph: (02) 8777 7777
Elsewhere: Dave Tiley summarises the fairytales.
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/node/241
I’ve never heard of this show, but I assume since this site and RTS are railing against it, it must have a right-wing bias.
Do you plan a similar citizen boycott if any of the major networks decide to show similarly fact-challenged documentaries like “Bowling For Columbine”?
Wait a sec, I thought LP was against 9/11 censorship.
Not interested in accuracy as far as 9/11 goes Yobbo? It’s about the right using 9/11 as their personal political plaything.
Don’t be an ass CL it’s about accuracy.
Phil, are you seriously suggesting that a political party that periodically holds sway over American government should be able to browbeat networks into altering their fare on the basis of accuracy? Where does that end – fines, jail, revocation of licences, what?
Thanks silkworm for that link to internationally renowned source of high-brow analysis, smirkingchimp.com.
From a review in the notoriously right-wing New York Times:
Unfortunately, the adult-in-chief was more interested in blowjobs than he was in getting bin Laden.
Bubba sighed, people died.
One of the loudest voices for cesnoring ABC is Sandy Berger – who stole and destroyed “sensitive after-action reports on the Clinton administration’s handling of al-Qaida terror threats.”
Gee, I wonder why.
Phil, there’s a mispelling in the title.
Yep, your Clintonitis is firmly in place, and Michael Moore is fat.
It happened on Bush’s watch (it appeared My Pet Goat was riviting reading) after he was warned and took no notice – such great national security credentials. This infotainment program is simple a Republican attempt to rewrite a bit of history.
Sandy Berger didn’t steal any reports. This is a lie perpetrated by Republicans and Neocons.
C.L,
When Channel Seven et al. start showing Bowling for Columbine at 8:30 on a Sunday and Monday night, yes, I will complain (well, not complain, dismiss it as a hunk of steaming shit, as I fully have with this particular film); lies are politic-neutral I believe.
But that will never happen, so let’s focus on what actually is getting shown, instead of imagining what people would do if Salo was on instead of Sunrise.
I notice that this “docudrama” is a Disney Production
Which of the following is it to be badged?
Shock-and-Awe Land (ex-Adventureland)?
Axis-of-Evil-Land (ex-Frontierland)?
Faith-based Land (ex Frontierland)?
Rapture-Land (ex Tomorrowland)?
This is Harvy Keitel in a C and L transcript from television interview. He stars in the film.
End of story.
Harvey Keitel’s political donations.
Silkworm, Berger did steel documents and pled guilty to the charge. [Judge Fines Berger $50,000 For Stealing Secret Docs].
You’re free to complain when it’s aired, patrick. You’re not free to exert power to have it re-written or withdrawn before it is aired. Not in a democracy.
Imagine if the Liberal Party organisation here in Australia started a massive letter-writing campaign to change the script or scenes in OUR ABC’s currently in-production series on the waterfront dispute. Lefties’ heads would explode – as they did when the ABC Board decided not to publish a biography of Alan Jones.
The hypocrisy is astonishing.
I suppose Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, beloved of the left everywhere, and recently enthusiastically adopted by terrorist insurgents in Iraq as propaganda for their own cause, was not propaganda?
So in CL’s democracy it all right to massage the facts in order to further you a political excuse for your failure to do the job in advance of catastrophe. I await the Republican inspired docudrama on New Orleans. In that event CL will be there saying it was all Clinton’ fault the levees broke.
In fact there is a lot of disquiet in the Liberal ranks about the ABC’s doco and you can’t rule Board pressure to spike the thing before it airs. I seem to recall a recent exmple on that score.
Lets go back in time and read Katz and co’s protests on the fiction known as Fahrenheit 9/11.
No, Katz is too busy trying to get Saddam out of court and reinstated as President.
You are a fine one to discuss Disney Katz, I think FantasyLand is your home.
F 9/11 was a polemic and was treated and recognised as such, accepting your distaste for MM and F9/11 do you then feel it’s right and proper that the same be done from the right regarding this event?
Now that’s hypocrisy.
Hey what happened to my comment.
Who are you to define hypocrisy when you havent seen the film?
C.L., you are right that Sandy Berger removed documents, and he was fined for this. However, it still remains unclear whether he took original documents or copies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Berger
It’s counterproductive for detractors of this program to go into panic mode and to demand pre-emptively its removal.
Libertarians were the first to discover that an attempt to ban something was the best possible free advertising.
Much better to wait for the program to air and then to ridicule it to death.
After all, the Left is far better at satire and ridicule than the Right.
When we play the banning game, we’re playing on the home ground of the Right.
When we play the ridicule game, we’re playing on our patch.
[Assumes martial pose in jumpsuit and scary helmet] Bring it on!
Ditto Dunlop, he has formed his opinion from thin air. The fact that nobody has yet to see the film has not sufficient reason to with hold their review of it.
Bullshit dressed as informed commentary more likely.
rog, the film was sent out to reviewers last week. Plenty of people have seen the film, which is what is fueling these reports.
Here’s one piece from a review article, citing Richard Clarke’s reaction to a key scene where he utterly rejects its factuality:
Rob sez:
“I suppose Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, beloved of the left everywhere….”
Now this is simply false. Serious people on the Left don’t take MM seriously. I haven’t watched F9/11 or Bowling for Columbine because I can’t be bothered with political confectionary whether it be from the Left or Right.
In a democracy CL, the fruitcakes from the Australian Family Association are entitled to ring Channel Ten and complain that Sponge Bob Square Pants cartoons promote homesexuality and Lefties are entitled to complain about Conservative propaganda dressed up as impartial information. Its called free speech.
Steve, that’s fine. It’s not fine for the Democratic National Committee to bully a network so as to diminish that network’s free speech. (Veiled threats have also been made against the network’s broadcasting licence). Are lefties now suggesting scripts for political movies, dramas and documentaries be vetted by political parties?
Here’s a taste of what the ABC condensed.
The official 9/11 Commission included a declassified Presidential Daily Brief that showed President Clinton was advised on Friday, December 4, 1998: “Bin Ladin Preparing to Hijack US Aircraft and Other Attacks.”
Even that didn’t lead to resolution.
Nothing was done. “Mike’s” reaction: “I’m sure we’ll regret not acting last night.”
Indeed.
The capture operation was then given over to Afghan tribals. Later still, the plan was changed to include the Northern Alliance:
That left everyone in the loop confused.
Early 1999, still nothing being done. Interestingly, Richard Clarke was then unaware of later Democrat orthodoxy which insisted bin Laden had nothing to with Iraq:
On it goes:
“Berger suggested sending one U-2 flight, but Clarke opposed even this.”
“Though Berger and Clarke continued to indicate interest in this option, the AC-130s were never deployed.”
“Schoomaker proposed to Shelton and Cohen that Special Operations become a supported command, but the proposal was not adopted.”
“Lieutenant General William Boykin, the current deputy under secretary of defense for intelligence and a founding member of Delta Force, told us that ‘opportunities were missed because of an unwillingness to take risks and a lack of vision and understanding’.”
FINALLY, they’ve got bin Laden!
“Clarke wrote to Berger’s deputy on February 10 that the military was then doing targeting work to hit the main camp with cruise missiles and should be in position to strike the following morning.”
No strike was launched.
The ABC mini-series had to condense all of this and did so with perhaps too much charity to President Clinton and his nitwit advisers.
Thanks for 9/11, you retards.
As the Oracle said, Know Thyself.
Here is another review titled “Why does the Left hate the path to 9/11″ http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/HughHewitt/2006/09/07/why_does_the_left_hate_the_path_to_911 , to keep the balance as it were;
Tigtog is right but the network did not attempt to virally inform a spectrum of interested parties, ABC simply favoured those with a particular world view and declined to provide the same information to those with an opposing view, they deserve to be condemned for it.
Town Hall and Hewitt? Thanks for confirming my last comment Rog. That’s the thing the only reviewers are from a single end of the spectrum. Why?
Thanks for 9/11, you retards.
Actually, I withdraw that. The terrorists were responsible and that shouldn’t be downplayed in any accountability war.
But the responsibility buck stops with the Clintonistas and that’s a fact. They believed they could appease, delay and finesse their way to a hypothetical resolution that itself had no sense of urgency or disciplined resolve. Their culpability is quite simply shocking, notwithstanding the point made above about where the absolute moral responsibility truly lies: with bin Laden and his fellow mass murderers.
You can shout for the rooftops CL but no amount of creative blame avoidance will change the fact that it was Bush and Co that were on watch for some time before 9/11 happened and they’ve botched the so-called WoT.
Now they are attempting to massage the history of 9/11 in order to avoid the uncomfortable results coming from that.
Ah yes.
The Right, having been slapped all over the reality based world:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14703848
finds refuge in the made-for-prime-time fantasy world of Disney Corporation.
Have faith fellahs.
When you wish upon a star,
Makes no difference who you are.
When you wish upon a star,
Your dreams come true…
And keep dreaming.
I notice that the Age is talking about a video showing “al-Qaeda leaders preparing the September 11 attacks”.
Might silence some of the 911 conspiracy theorists.
We’ll have to agree to disagree, Phil.
The consistent theme from the US is that interest rates and fuel prices are squeezing voters, Tinkerbell.
“…. it was Bush and Co that were on watch for some time before 9/11 happened …
I think most analysts are agreed that it took Al Qaida at least two years to plan and prepare the 9/11 attacks. So strictly speaking the crucial decisions and preparations were made during Clinton’s watch.
Extract from Chimpo’s farewell speech, January 2009:
Oh, great riposte, Katz.
Thanx Rob.
One of the big problems of the 90s was the change in how the CIA gathered intelligence. The change to more reliance on electronic means rather than good old fashioned human intelligence adversely affected intelligence gathering.
The Lewinsky scandal was tawdry but it was far from merited the obsessive scandal it became. Around this time, when Clinton did attempt to strike at Al Qaeda, he was accused of diverting attention from the Lewinsky scandal. That may be partly true but is should have been the other way around.
It is stupid to try and assign blame to either Clinton or Bush in the lead up to 9/11. Both missed opportunities and intelligence but is it also a failure of the aggressively zero-sum game political process.
The biggest failure was the FBI.
Field agents reported that there were people who said they only wanted to learn how to fly planes, not to land them. Hello!!
But by the same token the whole scenario of 9/11 was so radically different from anything experienced before, it’s not hard to see why so many people failed to imagine the worst.
In any case, even if OBL had been killed by some cruise missile strike or other, there is no guarantee that anything that has happened since would have been averted.
The world is just beginning to acquaint itself with the true nature of al Qaida: diffuse, multi-nodal, outsourcing, protean, media savvy: just like the model of the post-modern corporation.
Remember when al Qaida was dismissed as some medieval hangover? Wrong, wrong wrong.
Talking about the War on Terror, i’ve just done my gothic makeover of Saddam over at poligoths.
Fidel Catro will be next i think, but still musing as to who i should morph him into.
Important point and it does explain a lot of the governmental and intelligence failures leading up to the attacks. It was an audacious plan. It will never likely happen again but prior to 911 was not something that, for good reasons, was ever considered.
A former Clinton aide reportedly says the mini-series conflates various incidents but is “100% factually correct“.
At the bottom of Rob’s Worldnetdaily link is an ad for “NukAlert 24/7 Radiation Monitor & Alarm! Compact Keychain!” And if wingnuts have taught us anything, it’s that the standard response to people like Patterson is to note that he has a book to sell, thus nothing he says can be taken seriously.
“just like the model of the post-modern corporation.”
Crap – now corporations are post thingumy jig ?
On this whole issue please all take a deep breath and remember it is a TV show.How much truth is there on the tube ?
As Frank Zappa said – “I’m the slime oozing out from your TV set”.
What Patterson said may very well be true Rob:
But what version of the show did he view?
[Both quotes from Rob's source cited above.]
PS, I agree wholeheartedly with Frank Zappa.
Channel Ten advertised World Poker Tour at 11 p.m. last night. I tuned in to watch it, but they changed it without warning to In Plane Sight, one of the better conspiracy documentaries on 9/11. Did anyone else get to see it?
Yes Silkworm, I’m in Perth and I’m watching it right now. It is of course total and utter nonsense from top to bottom, in a way that The Path to 9/11 could never hope to match. After reading all about it here, I’m sure LP-ers of sound mind and good conscience will:
Their phone number is Ph: (02) 9650 1010.
But if scenes have been conflated then that destroys the idea that it is 100% factually true. Depending on what has been change, reviews of of those who have seen the preview copies indicate at least two incidents (conflated or not) simply did not happen.
They don’t call it the Wing Nut Daily for nothing Rob.
I’m with boredinHK. It is just a TV show and I expect the commercial networks couldn’t give a fig about whether the 911 movies are factually based or not and if they accurately portray events. It is all about cashing in via ratings.
9/11 and the heroin connection:
http://www.madcowprod.com/
See also http://www.madcowprod.com/04182006.html for more dirt.
Out of 200 flight schools in Florida, why did the terrorists choose to attend a drug trafficking school?
For the record, Hopsicker vehemently disagrees with the thermite-brought-down-the-twin-towers theory.