The War of the Worlds

[cinemabon]

Gentlemen, civility, please, I beg you.

This site is a film site. F I L M ! This is not the Johnny come lately debate society on the war issues in your lives. I appreciate your enthusiasm but this thread had to do with a work by a gifted filmmaker. He was not drawing comparisons to wars or terrorists acts. He was trying to make his own interpretation of a literary work.

I would plead for some calm, here. This is how bad feelings get started between members. One of the great things about this film site is that we, those of us who call ourselves members, are a group interested in discussing the various aspects of films and filmmakers. I admire each and every one of you or I would not return to site looking for validation. The contributors to this site are educated in the arts, the sciences, and many of us continue to work in those fields. So please, do not throw confrontations about as if we were at war with ourselves (which we are not!).

I would remind you of the words by H. L. Menken:

"Imagine the creator as a stand up comedian and at once the world becomes explicable."



You both have valid points of view that belong in a different forum.

[Johann]

Yep, we've gone over this territory before.
And you still aren't listening.


Loony? Conspiracy theory?
That's just what I'd expect from a Bush-fluffer like you.

Connect the dots.
Why can't you look past Saddam?
Why can't you see that Bush ain't there to bring peace?
What mysterious magic potion is preventing you from seeing what is really going on?

You say I have no proof.

No WMD's is proof.
Bush's father is proof.
The cost of a barrel of oil is proof.
Fahrenheit 9/11 is devastating proof.
Bush's behavior, speeches and actions have been ample proof.

Anything there that satiates your bizarre thinktank mind?

Hypothetical: I could present you with an audio recording (a la Watergate) that would devastate all your claims, but you'd find some way to dismiss it or ignore it or twist it to make me seem like I'm "loony" or on a conspiracy witchhunt.

I surmise there's nothing under God's blue sky that would convince you or even make you think for more than ten seconds that Bush is corrupt and that this war is all about oil.


Unfortunately, sadly, regrettably.

[Johann]

I plead for calm & peace as well.

But remember: we must live with war.
Here, there, and everywhere.

Good thing my army of one is superior...

[tabuno]

stevetseitz: This people of our world are perhaps a century or two away from being on the same page. The united force will be democratic capitalism.

tabuno: I am intriqued by the notion that our world is a century or two from being on a the same page as this idea in my mind is an astute and foward thinking expectation of the future. In the short term, however, I believe that capitalism is fraught with dangerous and negative consequences that promotes competition and greed, encourages profits and division among people, and it allows for inordinate, inequitable distortion of wealth between the rich and the poor. One way to ensure that capitalism doesn't tear society apart is intervention and oversight based in part on an enlightend democratically elected government. Today Americans are too ill-informed, general lazy in regards to the public interest to make good consumer decisions that allows them to become pawns of corporate greed. Yet I would still agree with steveseitz comments with the above understanding.

[stevetseitz]

>>No WMD's is proof.<<

Clandestine WMD programs are proof of a threat. State sponsorship of terror has been proven. If you can't connect those dots Johann. I can't help you.


>>Bush's father is proof.<<

Of what exactly?

>>The cost of a barrel of oil is proof.<<

And, how praytell does that help Bush? Cheap, abundant oil would help Bush far more than expensive oil. Bush could have played ball with Saddam like Germany, France and Russia and cut under the table deals in the U.N. "Oil for food" program. If he had done so the last election would have been an utter landslide. Instead, Bush made the hard and sometimes unpopular decision to deal with what he saw as a problem (state sponsorship of terrorism) instead of bequeathing it to his successor.

If Bush had taken the easy way out more innocents would have died in Iraqi mass graves and terrorists would continue to receive training, intelligence, weapons, medical treatment and logistical support at the whim of Saddam Hussein.


>>Fahrenheit 9/11 is devastating proof.<<

Please. It's been de-bunked so many times that it couldn't even be considered a DOCUMENTARY!!!




Tabuno: You are quite correct that capitalism is not without it's flaws, but that's what makes it perfect for us as flawed humans. It's a system that works with human nature instead of a retread of a failed collectivist concept.

The battle cry of the anti-capitalist has always been to lament the "gap" between the rich and the poor.

I say the "gap" is good. I say celebrate the "gap". Here is why:

In any society, from a laissez faire capitalist paradise to a strict communist totalitarian economy, there will always be someone (probably many) with absolutely nothing. Zero. Zilch. For whatever reason, be it gambling, drugs, bad luck, lack of ambition, whatever.

So, the wealth of the poorest citizen remains a constant. The richest citizens, the Rockefellers, Carnegies, Waltons, Gates, etc. keep getting richer.

All the "gap" really tells us is how wealthy a society is. If the gap isn't widening it is then that we need to start worrying.

>>One way to ensure that capitalism doesn't tear society apart is intervention and oversight based in part on an enlightend democratically elected government.<<

True and if we ever apply the same basic economic principles to our education system that work in every other industry (i.e. performance based pay) , Americans could be the brightest, most active and informed citizens in the history of the world. But that's a subject for another post! :)

[tabuno]

stevetseitz: "All the "gap" really tells us is how wealthy a society is. If the gap isn't widening it is then that we need to start worrying."

tabuno: My hypothesis is that there comes a point in any society that a large enough gap between the rich and poor, especially without much of a middle class, that that society will crumble and destroy itself through civil war or revolution when the majority of the people become so impoverished and upset at the rich, elite class that they denounce the economic system, loose trust in their government to provide a fair and equitable society, where the rich become powerful and use the system to their own benefit and where democracy becomes not a society based on people votes but on money votes. A rich/poor society inevitably becomes a democracy in name only where the people don't govern, but just a singular class of people, those who control the economic power of a country, the media, and eventually the government itself, not for the people but for themselves. I'm worried that America is beginning to show evidence of this decline and division that could threaten to tear our country apart. The final war against America may come not from the outside but from the inside.

[Johann]

Clandestine WMD programs are proof of a possible threat.
Did the U.S. prove beyond any doubt that they were there?

NO.

I say again: NO. No weapons. No weapons? No threat. Simple as that.

You don't go to war on perpetual weapons or perpetual threats.
History will show you to be irresponsible. (especially this war- the death toll and financial cost is far too high).

Read Gore Vidal's PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE.
He'll set you straight.


Are you aware that the Bush family are oil barons?

Do you purposefully avoid that fact? Are you ignoring the fact that the Bushes are a business-based family? They have been for many many moons.

How difficult is it for you draw the connection between what their stock in trade is and this war?

How difficult, Steve?

Think about it for a while (I know it's hard for you- you work for homeland security- they sign your cheques).
Do some ruminating on the possibility that Bush isn't the "tough on terrorism" dude he proclaims to be. (After all, members of his administration ignored terror threats and downplyed the idea that they would be attacked).

Think about that for a while, while I scrape some resin out of my bong.

[stevetseitz]

Tabuno: I feel the "gap" is a straw man. It depends on how MANY poor you are talking about. It's important to remember that even the "poor" in the western world enjoy the highest standard of living ever seen on the planet. The luxuries we take for granted are constantly being replaced by new innovation advertised to us via every media outlet. Many of the poor are poor only by comparison to the super rich. It's important to remember that there are more millionaires than homeless people in this country.


Johann: >>Clandestine WMD programs are proof of a possible threat.
Did the U.S. prove beyond any doubt that they were there?

NO.<<

Read David Kay's report to Congress. In it he details his findings about DOZENS of clandestine WMD programs in Iraq. Republicans say that Saddam with WMD destruction is too great a threat to allow. Democrats suddenly demand to see stockpiles of WMD. It's a classic logical fallacy. You argue against a totally different point.



I say again: NO. No weapons. No weapons? No threat. Simple as that.<<

Nope. Not that simple at all. By the time there ARE weapons, it's too late and young Muslim men are walking into New York, Los Angeles and Vancouver, B.C. populated areas with dirty bombs in their backpacks.



>>Are you aware that the Bush family are oil barons?

Do you purposefully avoid that fact? Are you ignoring the fact that the Bushes are a business-based family? They have been for many many moons.<<

What does that even mean? Business-based?!? Does that mean they don't make their living by harvesting organically grown crops and selling them at the farmer's market? Every politician has financial backing including Clinton, Gore, Kerry, and Edwards. If you can show how Bush has benefitted one iota because of the war in Iraq please do so, otherwise you are simply trying to use the appearance of impropriety to do your debating for you.

[Johann]

Kay's report is just that: a report.

These geniuses decided that it was enough to go to war.
Sorry, I don't buy it or endorse it.
There is little Bush and co. have done to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that this situation required bombs, death and destruction.


Whether Saddam was "making" or "planning to make" weapons the fact remains that you do not arbitrarily drop bombs and invade with your green machine unless you are fully justified.
God, I sound like a fucking broken record here..

Pre-emptive strikes are cowardly. COWARDLY. And in this case it's shown Bush to be a callous ignoramus- look at what Rummy said when his own troops asked why they have to scrounge for armour:

"You go to war with the army you have, not the army you want" Thanks Don!

It's nice to know that your #1 defence leader/rep cares about your well-being. Go scrounge some more, you cannon fodder, you!

Their actions toward troops is appalling. Cutting veteran benefits? They should be beheaded on the white house lawn!
A soldier puts his life on the line for you and then you take away his rights? It's even more appaling when you consider Bush deserted the Air National Guard. A deserter has control over so much!

Business based means business-based. They are a business-based family. Have been for eons. Oil is the business- it's quite lucrative in case you didn't know.

You're talking out your ass if you think they have no interest in oil.
Of course they will never in a millin years admit what they're doing, but they give us enough clues and circumstantial evidence to safely come to the conclusion that they are in neck-deep in the oil game- THE GLOBAL OIL GAME.

I have no proof *de facto* because they are so adept at covering up and lying and sneaking and hiding.

Can I get a Hell Yeah?

[tabuno]

stevetseitz: I feel the "gap" is a straw man. It depends on how MANY poor you are talking about. It's important to remember that even the "poor" in the western world enjoy the highest standard of living ever seen on the planet. The luxuries we take for granted are constantly being replaced by new innovation advertised to us via every media outlet. Many of the poor are poor only by comparison to the super rich. It's important to remember that there are more millionaires than homeless people in this country.

tabuno: Working with the poor as a social worker in the United States, I get to experience the devastation and the ruin to families and their children. Actually, the opposite is true - what is poor in other countries is a travesty and a horror almost to great to imagine and to think that the United States is spending $87 billion for freedom while the starvation and misery of hundreds of millions around the world goes unheard. The comparison to the very poor is a straw man actually because the very poor are beyond starvation, it is about literally dying. The poor in America however, are still in desparate need as drug addiction, domestic violence, unemployment is eating away at the soul of the American poor and beginning to creep up into the middle class while the rich become users and takens oblivious to the waste and dispair around them.

[stevetseitz]

>>Kay's report is just that: a report.<<

Kay was sent in to find facts and gather evidence regarding Iraq's capabilities

>>These geniuses decided that it was enough to go to war.<<

Uhhh, It was AFTER the war.


>>Sorry, I don't buy it or endorse it.<<

Who cares what you buy or endorse? Kay was recognized as a unbiased and reliable source of information by both sides of the political spectrum. His report includes the following:

"From birth, all of Iraq's WMD activities were highly compartmentalized within a regime that ruled and kept its secrets through fear and terror and with deception and denial built into each program;

2. Deliberate dispersal and destruction of material and documentation related to weapons programs began pre-conflict and ran trans-to-post conflict;

3. Post-OIF looting destroyed or dispersed important and easily collectable material and forensic evidence concerning Iraq's WMD program. As the report covers in detail, significant elements of this looting were carried out in a systematic and deliberate manner, with the clear aim of concealing pre-OIF activities of Saddam's regime;

4. Some WMD personnel crossed borders in the pre/trans conflict period and may have taken evidence and even weapons-related materials with them;

5. Any actual WMD weapons or material is likely to be small in relation to the total conventional armaments footprint and difficult to near impossible to identify with normal search procedures. It is important to keep in mind that even the bulkiest materials we are searching for, in the quantities we would expect to find, can be concealed in spaces not much larger than a two car garage;

6. The environment in Iraq remains far from permissive for our activities, with many Iraqis that we talk to reporting threats and overt acts of intimidation and our own personnel being the subject of threats and attacks. In September alone we have had three attacks on ISG facilities or teams: The ISG base in Irbil was bombed and four staff injured, two very seriously; a two person team had their vehicle blocked by gunmen and only escaped by firing back through their own windshield; and on Wednesday, 24 September, the ISG Headquarters in Baghdad again was subject to mortar attack.

What have we found and what have we not found in the first 3 months of our work?

We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002. The discovery of these deliberate concealment efforts have come about both through the admissions of Iraqi scientists and officials concerning information they deliberately withheld and through physical evidence of equipment and activities that ISG has discovered that should have been declared to the UN. Let me just give you a few examples of these concealment efforts, some of which I will elaborate on later:

· A clandestine network of laboratories and safehouses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service that contained equipment subject to UN monitoring and suitable for continuing CBW research.

· A prison laboratory complex, possibly used in human testing of BW agents, that Iraqi officials working to prepare for UN inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the UN.

· Reference strains of biological organisms concealed in a scientist's home, one of which can be used to produce biological weapons.

· New research on BW-applicable agents, Brucella and Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF), and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin were not declared to the UN.

· Documents and equipment, hidden in scientists' homes, that would have been useful in resuming uranium enrichment by centrifuge and electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS).

· A line of UAVs not fully declared at an undeclared production facility and an admission that they had tested one of their declared UAVs out to a range of 500 km, 350 km beyond the permissible limit.

· Continuing covert capability to manufacture fuel propellant useful only for prohibited SCUD variant missiles, a capability that was maintained at least until the end of 2001 and that cooperating Iraqi scientists have said they were told to conceal from the UN.

· Plans and advanced design work for new long-range missiles with ranges up to at least 1000 km -- well beyond the 150 km range limit imposed by the UN. Missiles of a 1000 km range would have allowed Iraq to threaten targets through out the Middle East, including Ankara, Cairo, and Abu Dhabi.

· Clandestine attempts between late-1999 and 2002 to obtain from North Korea technology related to 1,300 km range ballistic missiles --probably the No Dong -- 300 km range anti-ship cruise missiles, and other prohibited military equipment.

In addition to the discovery of extensive concealment efforts, we have been faced with a systematic sanitization of documentary and computer evidence in a wide range of offices, laboratories, and companies suspected of WMD work. The pattern of these efforts to erase evidence -- hard drives destroyed, specific files burned, equipment cleaned of all traces of use -- are ones of deliberate, rather than random, acts."



>>Whether Saddam was "making" or "planning to make" weapons the fact remains that you do not arbitrarily drop bombs and invade with your green machine unless you are fully justified.<<

And just what, in your mind, is justification for taking military action and toppling a regime that sponsors terror. How many innocent lives must be lost to terrorism before President Johann decides to say, "You know what? It's time we make the tough decision and deal with this problem."

Or would you just ignore it and wait for another 9/11 or more London bombings in major western cities?


>>Pre-emptive strikes are cowardly. COWARDLY.<<

Destroying the capability of an enemy to harm you is basic strategy in any conflict. To NOT do so is idiotic. Is a Navy SEAL a coward when he throws a flash-bang into a room prior to entering and engaging a target? He has struck preemptively at the senses of his opponent, effectively neutralizing his ability to inflict harm.


>>Business based means business-based. They are a business-based family. Have been for eons. Oil is the business<<

And how exactly has Bush benefitted from the Iraq war?

>>I have no proof<<

Thank you.

>> *de facto* because they are so adept at covering up and lying and sneaking and hiding.<<

Hmmm, and here I thought you just called him a callous ignoramus...You can't have it both ways! Either he is a diabolical genius and master strategist who has the ability to fool every major media outlet and silence any opposition or he is a bumbling, moron, who couldn't devise a winning strategy to save his life.

Well? Which is it?

[Johann]

Uhhh- your factoids and BUSHit is giving me a massive migraine Steve-O

President Johann would train a small group of "assassins" to smoke Bush out of his ranch at 2am and put him on trial for


WAR CRIMES

[Johann]

Oh, and Steve- if Kay's report was after the war then that makes it even more suspect!

MORE SUSPECT


Down with the Fascist. Nazi. Imperialist. Conservative Christian. Right-wing Repulican. Straight White American Males.


BOO YAH GRANDMA

[Johann]

I love your "can't have it both ways" shit.

First, Bush is surrounded with people smarter than him, people who dress him in the morning, people who cut the crust off his favorite sandwiches for him and people who work feverishly hard to make sure his speeches make him look good. He is obviously not making every decision- he's clearly, positively, certainly a puppet.


Second, (in direct relation to the above) HE'S AN IDIOT.
He's illiterate. He can't speak in front of people. He smirks, which is evidence of him knowing he's full of shit. He knows that people with brains (everyone but him and his admin) know that he's a fucking retard.

Canadians aren't the only ones laughing at your President.
The world is.

You WANT him for your President?! You Re-Elected him?
What does that say about the U.S. of A?

"We Lack 'em Dumm" should be the new national anthem.

A horrifying war, driving your national deficit to record-breaking levels and ruining american politics are only a few of Bush's achievements. The list of his accomplishments is beyond shocking.
And the American people do nothing about it.

There should be a 200-million man march on Washington to throw that clown out of office. Break down the White House gates, go into YOUR HOME- The White House is YOURS America- you get in there and CLEAN FUCKING HOUSE.

[stevetseitz]

>>President Johann would train a small group of "assassins" to smoke Bush out of his ranch at 2am and put him on trial for


WAR CRIMES<<

It is asinine statements like these which destroy any credibility your side might have in this debate. If you disagree with policy, fine. Do so in a rational, logical manner and support your argument. So far all you have been able to do is stutter out "War is bad. " and "Oil!". You will have to do better. You haven't even adressed Iraq's state sponsorship of terror or the human rights conditions within the country under Saddam Hussein.


>>Oh, and Steve- if Kay's report was after the war then that makes it even more suspect!<<

Kay's report was from data collected by teams of agents sent to Iraq. If you seriously believe that Bush was able to alter the content of the report you are more loony than I previously gave you credit for. As far as I am concerned I hope you keep believing and parroting these laughable conspiracy theories, it undermines any meaningful impact you could have on political debate.


>>Down with the Fascist. Nazi. Imperialist. Conservative Christian. Right-wing Repulican. Straight White American Males.<<

Another idiotic statement that proves you know nothing about which you speak. Right wingers by definition cannot be either "nazi" nor "fascist".

Communism and fascism are merely kissing cousins of the LEFT. The appellation of "communism" comes from the Latin root communis, which means "group" living. Fascism is a derivation of the Italian word fascio, which is translated as "bundle" or "group." Both fascism and communism are forms of coercive group living, or more succinctly, collectivism. The only substantial difference between the two is fascism's limited observance of private property rights, which is ostensible at best given its susceptibility to rigid government regulation. In 1933, the Hitler candidly admitted to Hermann Rauschning that: "the whole of National Socialism is based on Marx!" Nazism (a variant of fascism) is derivative of Marxism. The historical conflicts between communism and fascism were merely feuds between two socialist totalitarian camps, not two dichotomously related forces.

SCHOOL IS OUT, SON.

>>HE'S AN IDIOT.<<

He got better grades at Yale than Al Gore and about the same as John Kerry. What Ivy league school did you attend? Or do you just claim to be all-knowing from the keyboard of your computer?