Michael Moore's New Film Leaked To BitTorrent

Jared writes "Michael Moore was afraid the Feds might sieze his new documentary Sicko, a scathing indictment of the US health-care system, because part of it was filmed in Cuba despite the US embargo. So he stashed a copy of the film in Canada just to be safe. He might as well not have bothered — the film has shown up on BitTorrent and P2P networks everywhere. So it's safe now."

Uh Oh...

Whether you like him or not, believe what he says or not, you have to agree that Michael Moore is influential.

If you are for P2P, I'm not sure if this is the guy you would want on the other side of the debate.

Re:Uh Oh...

Moore isn't on the other side of the P2P debate. He has stated several times that he would rather someone pirate his work than not see it at all. The studios, on the other hand, might be totally different animals!

Re:Uh Oh...

He achieves the top objectives of a film maker, to get the audience to think about the topic and discuss it. Whether it is right or wrong is optional.

Re:Uh Oh...

Well, fortunately, this is not a Politically-based documentary. Watch the movie and you'll see it takes swings at both Republicans and Democrats without holding his punches. It's about a system that is broken, and needs to be fixed somehow.

It's a very good movie, you should definitely watch it. even if it's not 100% accurate, it still brings up a shitload of valid points that Americans should definitely think about.

Re:Uh Oh...

What bothers me especially is that he will distort positions where the facts already support his claims, just to make them support him 'better'. For instance, in Bowling for Columbine, he presented gun-related fatality statistics for various countries, and stated that this demonstrates how that the US has 'more' gun crime than Japan and Canada (or wherever, I don't recall precisely). The US does in fact have more gun crimes per capita than Japan or Canada - but since it has a higher population, the contrast seems bigger if the numbers are presented as (meaningless) absolute values instead of values per capita.

Yes, you're right, but the good thing when he says that this way is that people who notice and oppose this go and calculate it for themselves, and then see the gross misproportion of the gun deaths in USA vs the rest of the civilized world. The others ... they already see the point so no need to enlighten them more.

Re:Uh Oh...

I'm sure the guy means well, but I don't share his views, I don't trust his facts, and I don't plan to watch this movie.

Begging your pardon, but that alone isn't a great reason not to watch the movie. Truth is, there are no 'trustworthy' collections of facts, for all facts are collected by interested parties, tainted at the very least by preconceptions. Even in hard sciences this human subjective effect cannot be entirely banished (thouh it is minimized). That you don't trust the guy's facts doesn't mean that you won't get anything valuable from the film.

In point of fact, I think that because you don't take all his facts at face value that you may gain more from the film than someone who is critically unreflective, because you have a motivation (from your prior experiences and conceptions of Moore) to remain aware, and thus have a a sense of which facts to accept and which to take skeptically. You know, for example, that his distortions tend to be pro-populist, a bit histrionic, and has a tendency for broader generalizations than are warranted; taking that information, you know exactly how seriously to take each scene with histrionic antics and also to filter through towards the narrower facts that might have inspired overebullient sweeping statements.

As a conservative, I read The Nation as much as I read the Wall Street Journal. I even sat down and read Obama's "Audacity of Hope" a month or so ago. Just because I didn't believe every bloody word (of any of those three) doesn't mean I don't/didn't gain valuable understandings of different perspectives and exposure to different arguments from those publications. And when an argument was sufficiently intruiging, it spurred me to search for corroborative and refutative evidence; sometimes, I was honestly surprised by the results.

I also tend to believe that Orwell was right when he said that all public (and many private) issues are political issues at bottom, and so those entanglements are unavoidable. What is more important in documentary filmmaking as well as other documentary enterprises is the ability for the viewer/reader to be able to identify probable biases. Our obsession with unencumbered facts is damn unhealthy, because it tends to convince us to outright ignore or minimize the importance of issues that seem too one-sided.

The Speech

I don't know about Heston being old. I don't know how old he was at the time. From what little I have read about Heston's response to Moore, he is not going to waste any more of his life on responding to jerks, or something like that. I'll try to look it up later.

As for the speech, here [hardylaw.net] is a comparison someone transcribed from F911 and from Heston's actual speech.

Here [michaelmoore.com] is a link to Moore's website where he responds to attacks on his movie. The page is long and there is a lot there, so I'll copy the text where Moore responds to this specific charge. I'm going to leave it as is, without correcting the paragraph/formatting errors.

The oddest of all the smears thrown at "Bowling for Columbine" is this one: "The film depicts NRA president Charlton Heston giving a speech near Columbine; he actually gave it a year later and 900 miles away. The speech he did give is edited to make conciliatory statements sound like rudeness." Um, yeah, that's right! I made it up! Heston never went there! He never said those things! Or.... The Truth: Heston took his NRA show to Denver and did and said exactly what we recounted. From the end of my narration setting up Heston's speech in Denver, with my words, "a big pro-gun rally," every word out of Charlton Heston's mouth was uttered right there in Denver, just 10 days after the Columbine tragedy. But don't take my word - read the transcript of his whole speech. Heston devotes the entire speech to challenging the Denver mayor and mocking the mayor's pleas that the NRA "don't come here." Far from deliberately editing the film to make Heston look worse, I chose to leave most of this out and not make Heston look as evil as he actually was. Why are these gun nuts upset that their brave NRA leader's words are in my film? You'd think they would be proud of the things he said. Except, when intercut with the words of a grieving father (whose son died at Columbine and happened to be speaking in a protest that same weekend Heston was at the convention center), suddenly Charlton Heston doesn't look so good does he? Especially to the people of Denver (and, the following year, to the people of Flint) who were still in shock over the tragedies when Heston showed up. As for the clip preceding the Denver speech, when Heston proclaims "from my cold dead hands," this appears as Heston is being introduced in narration. It is Heston's most well-recognized NRA image - hoisting the rifle overhead as he makes his proclamation, as he has done at virtually every political appearance on behalf of the NRA (before and since Columbine). I have merely re-broadcast an image supplied to us by a Denver TV station, an image which the NRA has itself crafted for the media, or, as one article put it, "the mantra of dedicated gun owners" which they "wear on T-shirts, stamp it on the outside of envelopes, e-mail it on the Internet and sometimes shout it over the phone.". Are they now embarrassed by this sick, repulsive image and the words that accompany it?

At this point, there's nothing more to say, really. Judge for yourselves if Moore is being honest or dishonest.

Re:Uh Oh...

but aspiring to present both arguments in as equal a light as possible.

There has never been a time in history where a journalist with any self worth has tried to break a discussion of fact into two opposing arguments, and present both the one he knows is wrong and the one he believes is right as "equal".

A journalist's job is to report the truth, not invent debates.

Re:Uh Oh...

But you're assuming that these topics are simple, kindergarten, black-and-white issues. It's like you're saying, "A journalist would never present 2+2=4 AND 2+2=5 in the same light." Well duh... of course he wouldn't. But this isn't kindergarten, and these questions don't have easy answers. That's why it's the journalists job to present ALL of the facts (even the ones that don't support his personal opinion) and let the viewer draw their own conclusion.

Take the topic of enacting socialized medicine in the US. Does it suck that so many people don't have health care? I think so. Would it suck if the gov't took more of my money to pay for someone else to have an operation? I think so. Do people get into situations sometimes where they need help (i.e. free medical care). I think so. Will people take advantage of the system by needlessly going to the doctor all of the time just because they know it's going to be free? I think so. Will it be a benefit to the millions of Americans who have no health care coverage? I think so. Will it be a detriment to the other millions of Americans who already have quality health care at a low cost through their employers or other means? I think so. Are there positives? Of course. Are there negatives? Of course. And the journalist should present all of them.

You can't just focus on the side that makes your case look good... you can't just parade the "lost causes" in front of the camera and say, "Socialized medicine will fix this". You have to point out the things that it will break as well. For every person who will go from getting no coverage to getting some coverage, you have to point out the people who will go from getting fast, quality coverage to getting slow, lesser quality coverage (I should know... I'm Canadian by birth, and my brother was on a waiting list for over 9 months for a simple operation... the last surgery I needed --now that I'm in the US-- required about a two week wait). For every person who can't afford coverage and will get it for free, you'll have to point out all of the people who _can_ afford it and are getting it for a very good price, who will end up losing more money in taxes than what it costs them right now (My wife, for example, gets coverage through her work for free... I get it for a very low cost through my work... if our taxes went up to pay for this, we'd both end up on the losing-side --financially and in the quality of the coverage).

The most important thing to remember in this debate is that you're talking about forcing the entire nation into doing something, whether they agree with it or not. The same goes for any of these other major debates. And when you're talking about doing something like that, you can't play games with the "facts". We need to hear it all.

WATYF

Re:Uh Oh...

I remember scene in Bowling for Columbine when he stated people in Toronto don't lock their doors. This is an exaggeration to put it mildly.

Well maybe you should watch it again, or at all: he never said canadians never locked their door. What he showed was that, usually, in small town Canada, people didn't lock themselves *inside*. You see him walking up to a porch, pushing an unlocked door and asking "is there anyone in here?", and the lady of the house comes, surprised but not frightened.

Here's the thing about Michael Moore: he's criticized for movies he didn't make, and things he never said. I believe it's called "strawman".

Re:Uh Oh...

Okay, this is a criticism that I have a real hard time getting behind, because the implicit assumption that it requires is that everyone is simply too stupid to be trusted understanding that in a two-hour film, not every nuance or exception to a comment need be expressed aloud. Documentarians should be able to make the basic assumption that people don't turn off their brains while watching.

To put it mildly, you would have to be a fscking idiot to believe that *nobody* in Toronto locks their doors. You know that. I know that. Michael Moore knows that. Michael Moore also has only 120 miuntes to say everything he wants to say, and so he can generalize to a point where he *should* feel comfortable with assuming the audience knows that he is talking about trends rather than a hard law of behavior. Anybody with a reasonably functional mind would come away from that scene under the impression that Moore is making the point that Torontoans care less about locking their doors when home than Americans, who are by-and-large both the subject and audience of the film. That assertion anecdotally and for me experientially also seems eminently correct. If he were forced to qualify every statement to absolute precision, he wouldn't be able to say anything interesting or thought-provoking. Neither would anyone else.

I have my own criticsms of M. Moore, and they tend towards my perception that he uses manipulative tactics too often, I imagine intended to elicit sympathy through emotional appeals of pity or indignation, but for me it is simply distracting and wearying. For example, I thought that much of Bowling for Columbine was interesting and thought-provoking, but I hated the part where he badgered poor Mr. Heston, particularly the part with the photograph. Similarly, in F9/11, the end part with the mother wailing and gnashing her teeth was an off-key ending that marred his larger points with cheap and exploitative melodrama.

Re:Uh Oh...

Sarcasm aside, yeah, that's right. Texts (both typed and film) have minimum entry levels for knowledge-base, experiences, and intelligence. When a person is speaking or writing, often he or she has to just make a basic assumption that someone is minimally intelligent, informed, capable of critical thought, etc., and write off those that don't. Behind every statement of any worth is a trove of unspoken hypotheses and assumptions. Requiring that they be spelled out for the uninformed and the stupid is ridiculous and unfair unless the text is intended for those specific audiences.

And he can't say "whatever he wants" in the sense that you mean. He just doesn't have to spell out his points as if we were all born yesterday, and in that narrow sense he can take liberties with the expected intelligence of his audience.

So if membership in the "Cool kids club" is typified by being able to think even cursorily about what is being presented instead of being a passive receptacle for whatever you happen to view, that's the one I want to be in. Don't you?

MM is a troll

Look, I'm actually more to the left than he is, as usually is the case in Europe. What by US standards counts as "conservative" and "liberal", in most of continental Europe would pass for "ultra-conservative" and "conservative". Yeah, we're a bunch of commie mutant traitors like that ;)

I even agree with some of his points. Well, dunno about this particular movie, but I ended up buying a couple of his books because the back cover said they were "hilarious." (Ooer. Americans must be quite a cheerful and fun loving folk, if even that kind of bitter whine counts as "hilarious".)

That said, his endless "auugh, the government is out to get me" is starting to look stupid already, for a start. Look, if the government wanted to silence him, he'd be silent already. If America was the kind of fascist oligarchy that he always describes, he probably wouldn't even be alive at this point, or at least someone would have framed him for something already and sent him to a maximum security jail.

This is just yet another such publicity stunt, for conspiracy theorists. How about waiting until the government actually does something about it, before "leaking" the movie? Or if he wants to distribute it via P2P, fine, that's a mighty fine way to distribute your works, really. But it's just a choice of distribution, not some great act of resistance against fascism.

Hyperbole (like metaphors, similes, and everything else) is like a condiment in food. If half your dish is salt or pepper, you probably overdid it. Same here. Not only it makes his bitter whine sound even more bitter, it doesn't even serve his purposes that well, since you never know what's a genuine assessment and what's another of his over-the-top hyperboles. It's like the boy who cried wolf: by the time you've described something as a totalitarian plot for the 1000'th time, noone (sane) takes it seriously any more.

Such ego-stroking stunts are just that kind of bad hyperbole. Yes, probably some people above would dislike his point, but some might even agree with him. Either way, he's _not_ going to end up with the Gestapo on his doorstep and with the SS burning his movies and book, either.

More importantly, there are always two sides to each issues. There's rarely a free meal: to get X you give up some Y, or viceversa. And neither extreme is an utopia, so you have to figure out your own least crappy compromise among all possible crappy compromises. Which is why there's a political debate and more than one party and platform. One thinks that it's totally worth giving up X to get more Y, one thinks the opposite, one thinks the balance is good enough as it is, one wants to give up both X and Y to gain Z, and yet another one runs around with pencils up its nose and thinks it's an airplane.

The reason why the government does X instead of Y, may not always be the best, may not always even be honest, but aren't always "let's oppress someone for the fun of it either" either. Whether it's about health care or letting the Bin Laden family fly away after 9/11, there are real issues ranging from costs to international relations to ideology behind those choices. And by ideology I mean "what we think is best for the economy", not just "let's be neo-conservative because the conspiracy told us to". Those ideas might well be wrong (everyone can't be right at the same time, or you wouldn't need more than one party), but painting one side with the broad brush of "auugh, they're all bought by their industrialist friends and trying to silence me" is just an ad-hominem.

Stances basically saying "my version is by definition perfect, and everyone else is a fascist peddling crooked crap solutions" aren't really doing anyone any good.

Or at least I hope it's hyperbole, because otherwise he'd have to be paranoid schizophrenic to actually believe all that. But I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. It's probably hyperbole.

Re:MM is a troll

Hyperbole (like metaphors, similes, and everything else) is like a condiment in food. If half your dish is salt or pepper, you probably overdid it.

If America was the kind of fascist oligarchy that he always describes

I don't think Moore ever called America a "facist oligarchy" - that must be your exaggerated representation of his perspective. A little hyperbolic, don't you think?

by the time you've described something as a totalitarian plot for the 1000'th time

1000 times? Really? Did you count them? Surely that's a bit of an exaggeration.

he's _not_ going to end up with the Gestapo on his doorstep and with the SS burning his movies and book, either.

Again, I can't recall Moore expressing any concern about the Gestapo or the SS doing these things. Perhaps you just brought up Nazis and book-burning as a sort of over-the-top caricature of the concerns Moore does express?

Stances basically saying "my version is by definition perfect, and everyone else is a fascist peddling crooked crap solutions" aren't really doing anyone any good.

I was worried that your interpretation of Moore's message is a bit extreme, and possibly borders on what's called "putting words in his mouth" (after all, he never said that, and you'd have to stretch quite a bit to interpret anything he has said into such a statement)...

But seeing how strongly you oppose hyperbole and exaggeration, I can see you'd never resort to such tactics.

"Real men don't back up..."

To paraphrase a certain someone.... "Real men don't stash copies of their possibly illegal movies in other countries. They leak them to BitTorrent and let the world mirror them." -Michael Moore

About that Cuban healthcare...

http://www.therealcuba.com/Page10.htm [therealcuba.com] Because it's so damn good. Can't wait to have it provided to me when I'm older.

Michael Moore, you're such a fucking blowhard!

Re:About that Cuban healthcare...

How about this one? [canadian-healthcare.org] Universal coverage for 1/2 of what we're paying.

Canada not so nice

Need a fancy medical scan? (MRI, PET, etc.)

Depending on the political power your region of the country holds, you may be out of luck. It's not the market (number of sick people) which determines where these devices are installed. It's pure politics, and the resulting distribution is not even remotely fair.

That's not really an improvement.

Re:Canada not so nice

Hey, we can keep picking countries, and inevitably all of them will have tradeoffs in order to facilitate universal healthcare. Right now, though, I'm willing to argue that a non-optimal distribution of MRI devices, in an age where travelling hundreds of miles is commonplace (though certainly not convenient), is less of a concern than restricting the devices only to a certain portion of the market. (That is, those who'll pay.) I fail to see the difference between the two in principle: not everyone gets low-cost access (in economic terms) to the MRI device. It's just that the cost of travel is easier, these days, to pay.

Re:Canada not so nice

In Canada it basicaly works like this: if you can afford it, you pay to use an American MRI machine, as well as paying your travel costs to get over the border. If you CAN'T afford it, you wait until a Canadian machine opens up, and pray you don't die in the meantime. I'm not sure how that's any better than the US system.

That's pretty similar to the US system:
If you can afford it, you pay to use the American MRI machine.

Except for the part about waiting for a Canadian machine to open up if you can't afford that.
Here in the US, if you can't afford it, you just wait to die.

Re:Canada not so nice

Hey, we can keep picking countries, and inevitably all of them will have tradeoffs in order to facilitate universal healthcare.

I don't even buy the conceit that government run health-care will be necessarily worse.

We trust government-run firefighters, police and military. Why is it that a government-run firefighting system can be trusted to rescue people from a burning building, but somehow government-run healthcare can't be trusted to treat them? Are firefighter EMTs worse at their job than hospital EMTs?

And just look at our military. Is it wasteful? Without a doubt. But does it have the tradeoffs that Canadian/European militaries have? Not by a long shot. So why should government-run health care in America automatically be a disaster? Why should we even expect to have to make the same tradeoffs that other nations make? This is America ffs; we've got a ridiculously large national ego. If Canucks and Euros can make it work, why the hell wouldn't we be able to do it better?

It seems to me that we should expect American government-run health care would still be the best on the planet.

And last I checked, I'm already paying about twice as much for less healthcare today than a decade ago when our nation last talked about healthcare. Private healthcare clearly hasn't protected us from massive increases in costs and cutbacks in service.

So why again, are we defending a system that's built to incentivize denial of service? Why again are we defending a system that is clearly incompatible with free-market assumptions? (Healthcare is not a good the consumer can walk away from, so the consumer will always lose.)

I simply don't see how it is that American government-run police, firefighting, emergency response, and national defense can be trusted -- can be the best in the world at what they do -- but government-run healthcare is still a boogeyman.

Re:About that Cuban healthcare...

Actually if you watched the movie, no wait if you even watched the promo's you would know he didn't go to Cuba to show how great Castro medical centers were. He went there as he heard that suspected terrorists got free and better health care then most Americans and tried to get to Gitmo to get health care.

I also find it funny that a lot of posts on /. pointing out anything positive on the movie get down rated, while those calling Moore fat seem to be get positive ratings.

Sure make fun of the guy. It is easier to ignore the actual message that the US private Healthcare system is a total mess.

Those evil cubans!

Can someone explain to me the reasoning behind the bans on cuba. There are much nastier places that people are allowed to deal with. I always get a kick living in vancouver because anywhere there might be american tourists, there is usually a big sign saying "cuban cigars".

Re:inertia, saving face, not rocking our boat

While freedom of speech is undoubtedly stiffled in Cuba, it's a comparatively safe place. Opponents might be sent to jail, but they're not tortured. Women's right are respected. Religious rights are respected. No child labor. Education is good. There doesn't seem to be massive corruption, at least compared to similar countries.

No, you're wrong. People are tortured daily in Cuba. Their religions are mocked. They have no access to education.

Haven't you ever heard of Guantanamo Bay?

What? That's run by the USA? Oh.

HAL.

Re:Those evil cubans!

Can someone explain to me the reasoning behind the bans on cuba.

No, noone can. There is no reasoning behind the bans on Cuba. It's purely emotional.

Re:Those evil cubans!

No, noone can. There is no reasoning behind the bans on Cuba.

I'll take a shot. Voters in Florida.

It's purely emotional.

Might depend on whether you're the one voting, or the one up for re-election.

Personally, I think Cubans (the ones in Florida) should just "get over it". Easy to say not having ever been in their shoes, but then, again, they were never in Castro's shoes (boots) either.

Re:Those evil cubans!

You see, the Cubans stole our casinos and overthrew our puppet government. Then they didn't let us take them back over. Fricking commies!

All about Florida voters

Florida is a "swing state" with many cuban voters. They left cuba for a reason and that reason is that they hate Castro. So much so that they would rather see the family and friends they left behind live in poverty than give any legitimacy to Cuba by trading with them. So any party that would get rid of the idiotic embargo (China is a preferred trade partner for crying out loud!) loses the Cuban vote in Florida and thus lose any election.

THAT is why the embargo is still in place.

more success stories

Other movies BitTorrent has recently saved are Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Ocean's Thirteen, and Knocked Up. Thank god for BitTorrent!

Remember, guys

Remember that the most important thing about Michael Moore isn't that he's fighting to change the health care system, it isn't that he's tried to open America's eyes about the severe gun violence problem, it isn't that he's tried to do his bit to stop George W Bush's war in Iraq, it isn't that he's tried to get capitalism to actually fulfill the promises of helping all citizens and not just the richest, it isn't any of those things. None of those things are important.

The most important thing is that he's fat and his voice is a little whiny. If you can't see that and channel your rage accordingly, I feel sorry for you dirty hippies.

Re:Remember, guys

he's dangerously skirting the outer edges of propaganda

I don't really know what other people, or teh internets, have to say specifically about this, but I am under the impression that this is a propaganda piece. That's part of what I'm interested in seeing. I do boring research on this crap all the time, but I want someone to produce something like this I can watch and go 'OOOooo, that's interesting!" while comfortably not forming a whole belief system around it.

What's the worst that could happen, people try to academically challenge his info? The US healthcare system sucks, and someone needs to shake up a lively discussion of how it can be fixed. I have a lot of ideas, and I'd be curious to see if any of them are suggested in the film.

Re:Remember, guys

I've only watched the Fahrenheit 9/11 movie, so I'm not a Moore expert. But he didn't just give me "his opinion." He didn't just stand there and say "I'm a liberal who hates Bush. I'm smart, so believe me." He gave evidence, linked to sources in the mainstream media, government reports, interviews, and other verifiable sources. He pointed out stuff that looked fishy as hell, that anyone using just their common sense, rather than their political loyalties, would want to think about a bit. Everyone who wants to discredit him says "he's biased!" as if there is any sentient mammal who isn't biased. Pointing out something that is true of all humans doesn't refute any argument.

If Bush's businesses were funded by the Saudis, that may matter. If prominent Saudis (related to Bin Laden, no less) were flown out of the country without being interviewed by the FBI when the rest of the non-military planes were grounded, that may matter. If the Saudi ambassador is so close to the Bushes that he has a pet name and is considered a close personal friend, that may matter. If Cheney still owns stock in Haliburton and stands to make money off of it when he steps out of office, that may matter.

I've seen concerted efforts to discredit Moore, and they always hinge on a different interpretation of the facts, not catching him in an outright falsehood. The facts he puts on the table need to be on the table, and Fox sure as hell isn't going to put them there. If his facts are correct and the facts indicate that something was awry, then we needed to look at that. We chose not to. We allowed cries of "he's biased!" to trump the question of "are his facts correct and what conclusion do they lead to?" Even if smoking guns can't be found, there were a lot of things brought to light by his movie that looked fishy as hell.

If you want to see bias, look at an Ann Coulter book. At least Moore's references check out.

Saw it a few days ago

Whatever you make of MM, the point he makes in this movie is both a profound and necessary wake-up call. It's the kind of movie you don't even need to have an open mind to appreciate. If you're still dubious about state-funded healthcare then this should open your mind for you.

Re:Saw it a few days ago

The point being made in sicko does make some sense, it is

"If the system is motivated by short term profit, there is always a benefit to denying care"

Re:Saw it a few days ago

I guess I'll repost this; I posted it here late last week, but because I'm a no-good AC, nobody saw it. Might as well save myself some typing, eh? :) .. Medicine CAN'T operate as a free market. I know it's heresy on /. to go questioning the utility of the free market fairies to make everything in the universe better, but it's the truth. The free market, while a good thing, is not the answer to every question, and is the wrong solution for many of them.

Ever since Adam Smith, it's been known that a perfect free market is impossible, you can only approximate one. The better an area of commerce meets the necessary preconditions, the closer it will approximate a truly free market. The medical industry fails utterly to meet some of the most important preconditions for a functional free market.

Ideally, you want perfect information -- this means everybody knows exactly what they're buying and selling, and knows and understands all their available options. The better the market's information, the freer; whereas the less various agents within the market know, the less functional that market will be. It's pretty easy to meet that condition for breakfast cereal, but you need years of higher education to get in the ballpark when it comes to medical treatment.
Another important precondition for a free market is elasticity of demand. Medicine has almost zero. If Doctor Jones has a half-off special for fixing broken legs, people don't rush out to get their leg broken now to take advantage of it. If the cost of cast materials rises, people don't look at their budget and decide they'd be better off if they wait a couple months before they break their leg skiing! What's more, people are frequently unable to shop around and seek out the best supplier, especially in emergency conditions. This further weakens the market forces that would ordinarily weed out the inefficiencies and reward the most competitive.
Another important facet is having low or no barriers to entry. The harder it is to enter the marketplace and offer goods or services, the less free that market becomes as inefficient actors are more easily tolerated by the market due to the slow growth of competition. If all it takes to sell butt-scratchers is to stand on a street corner offering them, competition rises easily to meet demand. Medicine requires years of study to get a license, and this drags down the responsiveness of the market, and further increases the tendency to become bloated and inefficient.

This also ignores the garbage-collector effect. If only people who have money get medical care, people without money get sick and can incubate illnesses and epidemics that will adversely affect those with medical care, too -- just as a neighbor who can't pay for a privatized garbage pickup will have trash pile up, stinking up the neighborhood ... until his neighbors realize it affects them, too and they start a monthly collection amongst themselves to pay for it. (And then they get together with other neighborhoods that do the same thing, which makes it cheaper, and eventually they realize that a non-profit citywide trash pickup would be even cheaper and more efficient in cost, time and energy use, and you end up with *gasp* Socialized Garbage Collection!)

Hopefully America will realize it benefits everyone to have universal health care, not just the poor. I mean, we blow more cash than any other industrialized nation, and get mediocre care at best. Our wealthiest citizens are less healthy and don't live as long as the wealthiest in the U.K., and they spend a fraction of the money we do. It's friggin' staring us in the face! Well, behind the smokescreen of bullshit that gets kicked up by the HMO and Pharma industry shills, who want us to believe our medical care is hot shit on a silver platter.

Oh, and don't even get me started on for-

"Fair and effective free market"

Put bluntly, when did a think tank ever have to deal with the real world? And would you trust a trade union to propose a fair and effective system that in any way ran counter to the special interests of its members?

There is no such thing as the free market, because access to every market is controlled by special interest gatekeepers. If you don't believe me, just try visiting the NYSE and buying some shares directly. Free market think tanks are as prone to special interest pleading as anybody else - unless you really believe, say, that the Cato Institute takes money from the oil and tobacco industries and is totally uninfluenced by it.

And here in the UK, we have had to move away from the medical profession being allowed to regulate itself as a result of numerous scandals. Although the great majority of physicians are doubtless more altruistic than the majority of society, it's been said that trade unions are like dishwater - the scum rises to the top.

I think that experience in Canada, the UK and most of Europe shows that you must be able to vote for the people that control the health care system, because there are too many ethical, special interest, and economic factors to be left to people acting blindly in their own interests. Adam Smith never foresaw a world of mega-corporations, and his understanding of capitalism was a long way short of that of Marx.

Re:Saw it a few days ago

a fair and effective free market health care system

But that's the rub. You don't want health care to be fair (which, in free-market terms means ability to pay). You want a health care system which covers everyone who needs covering, and which treats humans like their lives have value.

With the extraordinary costs of health care, that's the last thing you want to have based purely upon free market principles. "I can zap you again to try to restart your heart, but it will cost you an additional 35 dollars for this service. Sign here and we will proceed."

Which is not to say that you don't have a valid point: there is a lot which is wrong with our health care system above and beyond not having a social safety net... such as relying upon employers to maintain health insurance, lawsuits every time something goes wrong, not enough investment in preventative and curative medecines, and a reliance upon the expensive and the extravagent over the effective. And that doesn't even address overburdened doctors who never know their patients.

But the free market is not going to solve this problem. This problem exists in a moral, social, and economic grey realm which the market has been particularly bad in the past at dealing with.

Don't mix up health care and health insurance

Most countries with universal health care do not have "socialised" health care.

France, Germany, etc, have "socialised" health insurance.

Care itself is mostly private. Doctors, dentists, pharmacists have private practices. A majority of hospitals are state-run, but there are plenty of private hospitals, too.

You are free to go to any doctor you want.

Re:Don't mix up health care and health insurance

You've hit the nail on the head, by friend.

This very complex debate is extremely simple, when you boil it down to this one salient fact. An insurer should not be able to pick and choose the insured.

The point of insurance is to spread risk. Once they're allowed to focus risk, it's no longer insurance. It's healthcare-brokering.

i don't see how this is news, but

here are two takes on it, one interesting, and the other bordering on the ridiculous. first, apparently michael moore himself approves of people sharing. he was quoted to have said that:

"I make these books and movies and TV shows because I want things to change, so the more people that get to see them the better, so I'm happy when that happens. I think information and art, ideas should be shared."

So far so good, hats off to the guy for the message.

Now, onto part two. The funny thing is that there are some people in the so-called "blogosphere" (who seem to disagree with Moore), who have posted the movie for download, pasted a ton of ads on their website, and then gone to write something like so:

"Now I fully expect [...] Moore's people asking me to take this down. Which I will, because unlike Moore and most liberals I actually do respect things like copyright laws and property rights. "

Ain't that sweet, and ain't people on the internet nice -- you rip someone off while saying you "respect" copyright, you're making money off ads on it, and you have the audacity to say the movie is all bulshit. Cheers for the copyright 'lovers' on teh internet, really.

The U.S. has gone completely mad...

...and Michael Moore is one of the few people with enough influence who has the sense to keep harping on it. I just saw Sicko (via bittorrent) and it was very good.

Of course as a nation we really are insane; most people still don't see the problem with putting the richest corporations in charge of absolutely everything and calling it "freedom".

Re:The U.S. has gone completely mad...

Insanity has nothing to do with it.

We are stuck with a significant portion of the population, Red states, that when given this choice:

1) Bring universal health care up to the levels other developed countries in the world enjoy

2) Leave the US health care system in the mess it currently is and not have to admit the free market is a failure in the area of health care

Will eagerly go for option 2)

If someone's grandmother needs to die in order to avoid admitting something so fundamental to right wing dogma in the US is broken, so be it.

real sources of our health care problems

Where care is mandated or the patient can't shop for a good price, government funding might make sense. You're not in a position to discuss alternatives if you have a cracked skull and bleeding brain. Other than that though...

Our problems do not come from a "failure" to socialize medicine. When I was up in Canada, the news was that brain scanners were mostly going to places with powerful politicians. Quebec got an unfair share. Money was disappearing for political reasons. Over in the UK, people are being sent to France for surgery because they'd die on the waiting lists if they didn't go. Here in the USA we install brain scanners (lots of them too) where there will be patients and we don't die on waiting lists for anything other than an organ transplant -- and that only because we made it illegal to pay the dead person's estate.

Our real problems are:

• We invent new technology, expect to use it, and expect that costs won't rise. Huh? We're expecting to get more for less. That only works for computer hardware. (in a socialist medicine system, quotas and delaying tactics are used to fight this problem)
• The attitude is "I'll pay anything to save my dying children!". We then act all offended that the hospital bill heads toward infinity. Since death is common (100% of your children will die!) you can expect to pay until you can pay no more or until we run out of technology to sell you. (as above, socialist systems deny you this choice)
• Simple economics is causing all service industries to be relatively more expensive. The factory worker is now more productive because he has huge machines. The high-tech worker is absurdly productive because he only produces digital data which is trivial to replicate. The hospital worker, like the college professor, is not getting such huge productivity increases. Widgets and software can be sold cheaply while still paying the workers well, but hospital services can not be made cheap while paying the workers well. Because everything is relative, hospital costs skyrocket.
• Over in India, patients have a very limited ability to sue for malpractice and pain and suffering and... Medicine is cheap there. Over here, some doctors must pay millions of dollars per year for malpractice insurance. That means you pay. You also pay for unnessesary tests and other procedures caused by a cover-your-ass mentality that has taken hold. This is particulary true of caesarean births, which are dangerous and were once rare. Before a jury, it looks good to have done more intervention.
• Our health insurance is too good at insulating us from the costs of various procedures. We don't shop around for a good deal. We then pay high rates because the money ultimately comes from us. When I lacked insurance, I was very careful to demand prices over the phone from multiple providers. Now I just have my $20 co-pay, so why should I care? The price is the same for me no matter where I go. I pick the fancy place on an expensive downtown lot!

Some of these problems are not really solvable. Economics is what it is, people like new technology, and nobody wants to see their little children die. The lawyers have some mighty lobbiests, but a change would at least be theoretically possible. The same goes for the co-pay insurance system, which could be replaced by a sliding scale or percentage system. (example insurance fix: the patient's payment must increase by at least 10 cents for every dollar of the treatment cost up to "$200 for $2000", then by 1 cent per dollar thereafter)

Re:real sources of our health care problems

You don't need brainscanners and the latest and greatest tech to get treatment for common ailments.

In America, you do need a few thousand dollars though.

Hmmm....

Michael Moore may indeed use misleading tactics, but at least he misleads you in the right direction.

If his new documentary really was in trouble, then who's to say he didn't leak it to the internet himself, it's definitely safe now. I think anyone would do the same.

I blame Michael Moore for Bush's winning

I am not American, nor do I play one on TV; but, if I were, I would be pretty damn pissed at Moore for his rather large contribution to Bush's reelection.
Through his fact twisting, and sometimes outright lies in Fahrenheit 9/11 he provided a rallying point for the conservatives who could justly point to Moore's lies and misrepresentations and then unjustly paint all liberals with the same brush. A lot of previously neutral voters were swayed to the right by this.

(This, of course, assumes one is not happy with Bush having been reelected, which seems to be the case with most Slashdotters. If you are happy with Bush's win, go ahead thank Moore. Personally I couldn't care less who won. As far as I am concerned, most of them, dems and GOPers, are crooks.)

Re:I blame Michael Moore for Bush's winning

Quid-pro-quo, ne?

Stay the fuck out of our world, and we'll stay out of your politics.

Re:I blame Michael Moore for Bush's winning

Yeah, sure, except US politics affects the rest of the world. US politics is everybody's politics.

We'd love to, but...

Stay the frak out of our politics.

We would, if you could stay the "frak" out of our business.
USA still has a lot of international say and use it in a not so civilized way at times.

Stop kidnapping our citizens and send them to Guantanamo for no good reason. [guardian.co.uk]
Stop keeping "secret" prisons in our countries. [washingtonpost.com]
Stop your european missile shield program. [state.gov]
Stop invading souvreign countries to protect american profit interests. [cnn.com]
Stop pushing SW-patents and other bad ideas onto the rest of the world. [wired.com]
Stop being the top polluter in the world. [nationmaster.com]
etc...

Your politics affect us, and as long as that's the case, we really can't stay the "frak" out of your politics.

.haeger

Well..

Now everybody can see it. Isn't that what he wants? ;P

Old news

The torrent has been about for at least two weeks, other news sites reported it last week.

I guess you stick a torrent on /. and can expect a few more seeds.....

Editors: I before E, except after C

Or when sounded as A, as in neighbor or weigh.

Sorry, ex-English teacher, had to say something. (Sidenote: always nice to see an old spelling mistake in a new word. I see far too much of "concieve" and "beleive" and not nearly enough "siezing". Of course, that is because I don't typically teach children older than middle school, and they don't have much call to say "seizure" unless it is in the context "Spelling nearly gives me a seizure".)

LEAKED TO BITTORRENT!!!! OMG!

That's the second time this week!

Canada private backup != P2P authorization

This is NOT a news story. Just because Michael Moore was worried enough to store a copy in Canada, there is no relevance to P2P. EVERY movie shows up on P2P; there is no relationship here between P2P and Michael Moore/Cuba.

P2P enthusiasts seem to love hearing that Michael Moore doesn't seem to hate them, but the fact is he is an entertainer that wants to be paid. In principle he (and every other film maker out there) would prefer you pirate their film rather than not seeing it at all, but please don't forget that he'd MUCH prefer you to spend money to watch the film.

WikiMoore

Michael Moore movies are like Wikipedia articles with one editor. Tons of links to questionable articles from all over the Internet, filled with POV content and unverifiable original research, and generally achieving no community consensus on anything. But be sure to cite it early and often in every term paper you write on the subject!

That said, I haven't seen Sicko, but I do agree with Moore that health insurance is essentially legalized gambling. It's also essentially a redistribution of wealth from the healthy to the unhealthy, with lots of middle men taking their cut along the way. The big question, though, is how do you fix it without making the average quality of health care worse?

You would think that he'd find a less obvious rant

Moore has made a name for himself by making documentaries holding a far leftist slant wherein he rants about the evils of conservative politics, but if you ask virtually any conservative if the current health-care system is working, they will undoubtedly say no. If they don't, their either completely out of touch, or lying. Now, if this is a documentary showcasing the benefits of a government run, full coverage tax-paid health-care system, then that would fit his style and I wouldn't have even bothered commenting, since I don't actually like him or his movies. But if all this is doing is dramatizing how bad it is currently, well, that boat already sailed and he's wasting his time and money. I don't like him, but I believe he and other political filmmakers are doing an important thing, generally, bringing political discourse to the mass market. But just making a doom and gloom movie about how bad the current health care system is, is not going to tell anyone anything they don't already know, is not going to get people to care about issues they don't normally (because everyone cares about their own health already), and is generally no better than making fiction. Which is fine, but since the movie is probably not very entertaining, pretty much demotes him from "mostly useless" to "completely useless".

Maybe he should try living somewhere else...

Like Cuba. Or how about India? I have lived in India for a year now on business. Medical care is amazingly cheap here, and there are some good hospitals. But you can be darn sure if anything really bad happens to my health I'm heading straight back to the States for treatment and I won't mind paying out the whazoo for it.

I live in the US, and I have 100% free health care

IMO these statements about there not being government funded health care in the US are all bullcrap.

Why do I say that? Well, personal experience. My income is about $12,000 a year, and about two months ago I had an operation to diagnose a kidney disease. That is, this was not life threatening, but for diagnostic purposes. I didn't have to wait two years either, rather I only waited about a month and a half.

What did I pay for it? Nothing. No co-pay, no co-insurance, no cost for anethesia, no deductable. Nothing. Nada. Even my prescription drugs are free, everything from simple pain killers to the latest and greatest name brands. Who paid for it all? The state of Arizona. One acronym: AHCCCS [google.com]. Similar programs exist in all 50 states.

If this isn't providing health care to those who can't afford it, then I don't know what is. It has all of the benefits of private health care, in fact it works into the private health care system, so you get all of the same doctors and everything you would get in most private health care plans. The particular plan I am on is called Health Choice AZ, and there are many such plans to choose from, including a few PPO plans. I am not making any of this up, google it and you shall see. The information is sitting right at your fingertips.

Why do people like Michael Moore completely omit this fact when they bash America's health care system? They act as though poor people get nothing here - its just not true. If our health care system was like Canada's, hell I could be on dialysis right about now with how long it would have taken for me to get a proper diagnosis. I don't know about anybody else, but I wouldn't trade our current health care system for anything else.

watch the movie before you run your mouth off

One of the main points of the movie isn't people without insurance - it's people with insurance who think they are covered but find out they are screwed when they hit their benefit caps when hit with a serious illness/accident. Start paying attention to the numbers of charity events in your area ment to help people pay medical bills. Start paying attention to policies that pay for organ transplants but not the $3,000 a month people have to spend on the anti-rejection drugs.

The state of the American health care system is atrocious, and anyone who defends it is either ignorant, a crazy Libertarian, or a tool for the insurance industry.

Re:I live in the US, and I have 100% free health c

A lot of the problem isn't with the poor. It is in the gap between poor enough to be granted state-funded medi-care, and rich enough to afford health-care on your own. They are the working poor.

The people who get lost are those working low-wage jobs and are just making ends meet. The state doesn't recognize them as being poor enough to need assistance, and to these people it is more important to put food on the table than purchase independent health-insurance. If they get sick, often what little health-insurance they may have through work will not cover their needs. This leaves them with enormous medical bills, and no way to pay them.

Actually I think the poor are well looked after in the states, if you are unable to work or qualify for state-assistance you can be better off than people who work two jobs and make just enough money to scrape by. It's the people in the middle that fall between the cracks. I only have heard anecdotal evidence that that gap is getting larger... but I don't have any real evidence at hand to justify that statement so it could be false.

Also...

you can find it on Google Video.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9006414844 032752909 [google.com]

Usenet

It was on usenet the middle of last week. ant.

whatever..

I wish there was a Michael Moore in my country as well. I'm not debating he is correct or wrong, or if he is using the right words. I just adore people that put a fair amount of altruism to shake the grounds of what is right.

It's on Google Video too...for now

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9006414844 032752909&hl=en [google.com] Torrent, schmorrent.

google video

It's on Google Video too [google.com]

who cares?

movies get pirated on bit torrent all the time before they hit theaters, why does this get its own front page story?

michael moore reminds me a lot of jack thompson - if the media would just stop giving him so much attention, he would fade away.

Lots of publicity, lots of stunts

Moore is about publicity. I don't say his documentaries are wrong, faked or anything, just that he knows how to push buttons and he knows the art of leading a story by omission. He's not lying to you. He just leaves a few key informations out to give you his side of the view.

Pretty much what everyone else does that tries to sell an opinion rather than giving you unbiased information.

He's also a master of publicity. He didn't cart those people who fell through the US social network to Canada or Mexico, no, it had to be Cuba. Why Cuba? It makes little sense in a medical way, but it does make a lot of sense when you think about it from the point of publicity and when you try to create a lot of discussion.

And a more interesting question, would they have gotten the same treatment if they were Cuban or was it a publicity stunt for Cuba as well? That's a question that isn't answered.

Now, I think Moore's films are important as counter-spin to the spin of our corporations and government, but you have to realize that this is what is is: spin. It's not "the awful truth".

Re:Lots of publicity, lots of stunts

Apparently the Cuban health care and education systems are amongst the best in the world and are available to all Cubans. Most of Cuba's hardships seem to come from the trade embargoes enforced by the US.

http://www.worldpress.org/Europe/1659.cfm [worldpress.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Cuba [wikipedia.org]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1739773. stm [bbc.co.uk]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/52 32628.stm [bbc.co.uk]
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43b/185.html [hartford-hwp.com]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Cuba [wikipedia.org]

Michael Moore a fraud?

I know everyone loves M. Moore and his message and I would be the first to root for him...if he was genuine. This guy seems to have no journalistic integrity, at least there is enough information out there to be very skeptic. He likes to manipulation just the same as the people is he critical of. Just for some balance: http://www.hardylaw.net/Truth_About_Bowling.html [hardylaw.net]. (I am not affiliated with this site in any way, just a random google pick. There are plenty of other sources, just google for "michael moore fraud".)

Compulsory health insurance... The third way

It isn't a case of either fully private or fully social health systems. Both have their problems. Fully private misses the poorest who can't afford it, fully social always has limited funding and waiting lists.

The third way is "Compulsory health insurance". You don't need to run a huge health service, or even manage a state health insurance system. It seems to work in several European countries, (Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany) the poorest benefit from the lower premiums which are brought about by the universal coverage. It doesn't prevent the state from providing a healthcare system, neither does it require it to do so.

 

UK Health care

People are saying that the UK health system isn't perfect, and you can be damn sure they're right.
HOWEVER - You don't HAVE to use it. We have private health care, too. But what the NHS does provide is a health care service for people that wouldn't be able to pay for it, elsewise.
People may (and have) argue "Well why would I pay tax that goes towards the NHS if I'm also paying for Private Health care?" But again, I think a free health service is vital for the well-being of the country. Also, our taxes cover the fire service, which I have never had to call.

So don't think the ONLY option in the UK is to use the NHS, there's private options, too.

Don't vilify BitTorrent

"Leaked to BitTorrent" just gives the anti-piracy jerks more ammunition to use against BitTorrent. At the very least, change it to "Leaked via P2P" or even better, just "Leaked".

Everyone knows what you mean. I actually use BitTorrent exclusively for legitimate downloads (yes, I realise that sounds unlikely, but it's true) and I would be very disappointed if use of it was criminalised because of clueless lawmakers who are deriding their information from subjects like this.

SiCKO also on Youtube

SiCKO got also uploaded in full on Youtube. http://www.i4u.com/article9613.html [i4u.com]

Nothing remarkable about this, in fact...

I downloaded it directly off visualvendetta.com a few days ago, and thats no a warez site or anything. I get the impression Moore just cares about getting the word out rather than making money.

an obvious RIAA plot

once again they are flooding the p2p networks with garbage in order to try and destroy it.

Bias vs. Lies

I'm tired of all of this crap about Moore's documentaries being nothing but lies. His documentaries are heavily biased against the Bush administration and the direction of the country, but, for the most part, his facts are pretty accurate. This new documentary was created to point out how bad the national health care situation is currently. His using Cuba to demonstrate national health care shows his bias, but it doesn't make his point less accurate or factual. Health care in this country is screwed up. When needing medical care could mean years, or even decades of extreme debt, even when you have "insurance" (if it can be called that with the crap these companies pull), we have an issue.

I'm tired of the ad hominem attacks here. If you disagree with the man, fine. If you don't want to watch the movie, fine. But if you want to disagree with him as vocally as many do here, counter his facts, stop the BS and petty name calling.

The Michael Moore Porn Leaked?

The first thing I thought of was that a new fast food eating orgy was leaked. It is horrible to say, but that is about the only thing that man can be an expert on.

Just remember...

...everytime you watch a Michael Moore production, he eats a kitten.

Documentary? Please.

Anyone who thinks that Michael Moore makes documentaries doesn't know the meaning of the word. Just to help some people out, here's the definition of the word: documentary (dk'y-mn't-r) pronunciation adj. 1. Consisting of, concerning, or based on documents. 2. Presenting facts objectively without editorializing or inserting fictional matter, as in a book or film.

Moore's films have very little to do with fact and more to do with his personal agenda. A real documentary will use 100% facts, not just pick facts that only support your view and then fill in the holes with opinions.

Nick

Michael Moore's next documentary:

It will be leaked to Bittorrent, and it is called: "Journalisticality," a film documenting Michael Moore documentaries and how they are fake.

My head asplode.

SEED IT!!

Come on guys!!! I'm stuck at 93%!!!

Leaked, right!

This guy is so transparent. And huge amounts of people are gullible enough to be moved by it. It's not hyperbole to liken this to the bigtime propaganda days of "Work makes Freedom" and "A lie told often enough is the truth".

He and the left are dedicated to ruining this country; the one that defended Europe and basically freed the world last century, one of the first (if not THE first) to outlaw slavery, and the power keeping the crazies from slaughtering their neighbors ever since.

If Moore wanted to spread the propaganda around, putting it onto BT is about the best place to do it; that's the exact same content reachable by DemocracyPlayer and many others. When people capable of buying an entire media network turn their money to making a mass appeal spring from nowhere, making millions of tiny sources of propaganda is the way to go. And it's working.

Just remember Rosie's words: "Fire doesn't melt steel!"

my health care costs double every five years

I've been tracking premium plus out-of-pocket since 1990s and they've average 14% increase per year. If they dont increase the premium a lot in a year, then they raise the deductable or co-pay percentage. Extrapolating into the future to medicare age, the amount is like the "grains of rice on the chessboard" - astronomical. Medicare isnt so great either, its costs are increasing rapidly too.

Waste of Bandwidth

Subject line says it all.

Link to Torrent

Someone asked for a link to the torrent. You can find it here [thepiratebay.org]

Just watched it. Not bad quality but the sound goes out of sync for a couple minutes in the middle.

Awesome documentary.

Moore BS from the master

This is just like the news stink he ginned up before Fahrenheit 9/11 where he claimed that Disney yanked a distribution deal that never existed. The only thing Moore is beholden too is money. He makes as much of it as he can and gives out as little of it as possible (just see the complaints from various employees of his).

This is nothing but another PR stunt.

"leaked to BitTorrent" is really a distorted title

Am I the only one who thinks the title is flawed? Are pirated programs described as "leaked to Zip files?" BitTorrent is of course nothing more than a method or protocol, the title makes it sound like it's some actual entity. Sure, there's no ambiguity in what the title means, but it is inexact, and it bugged me.

He Doesn't Care

From: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070618/en_nm/moore_si cko_dc;_ylt=AlCwA3Q_lgqYCdEP6.QZgqLMWM0F [yahoo.com] Separately, Moore said he would not prosecute those already circulating bootleg copies of the still-unreleased documentary on the Internet. "I'm happy for people to see my movie. I'm not a big fan of the copyright laws in this country," he said.

Just watched the movie and...

It felt to me like the debate over switching from PC to Mac. I can stick with what's comfortable (PC/USA) and continue along my merry way ignoring the fact that some people are doing things differently (Mac/Europe), and claim that I've lived my whole life doing things this way, and it's good enough. On the other hand, I can switch over to the new system (which has been highly idealized) and spend a good deal of time learning to get things done in a new fashion. The price of entry is nontrivial for the new system, and I will have to leave behind a lot of things that I love.

The third option, which is Michael Moore's approach, is to take what you like out of the other system and bring it into the one you are familiar with. Whether you lobby Microsoft or the US government, no one will pay much attention to you unless you are in a position of power within that system. The process will be lengthy and difficult (and most likely buggy at first), but this change is ultimately necessary in order to keep the masses from migrating and/or killing off the system.

Yes, this analogy isn't perfect, and I didn't include Linux because the analog would be to make a new country which everyone can live in for free, or something like that...but anyway these are the three basic responses one has in response to a distaste with their system. Hopefully we can fix this problem a little easier than in 1861, the last time we were 50 years behind the rest of the Western world.

Shoot the messenger.

I understand that a lot of people don't like Michael Moore for various political reasons based on his political history and work. That is hardly relevant though to the simple fact that PEOPLE DIE HERE YOUNGER THAN ANY OTHER WESTERN COUNTRY. That seems like cold hard science to me, and is instructive, to say the least.

Don't shoot the messenger if the message is important and necessary, no matter how much you don't like getting the message. I myself am a victim of the US health care system, and it is most certainly and horrifically broken, to say the least.

rhY

Re:yet another...

...set of lies and twisted "truths" from this nutjob, who wouldnt know the actual truth if it came up and bit him.

Because we all know the President Bush tells the truth and would never mislead us.

Re:yet another...

How simple minded do you have to be to assume that hating Michael Moore equals loving Bush?

Re:yet another...

The primary criticism of the Bush "prosperity" is that the economic growth is being driven primarily by firms outsourcing high-paying jobs overseas. So, the bulk of the wealth that is being created is going to the already very wealthy, while the middle class is exchanging their previous high-paying jobs for lower paying jobs. Most of the jobs being created are low-paying service sector jobs.

Yes, there is widespread speculation that a recession is coming, fueled mainly by the crisis in the housing market, but people speculate about the market all the time. This speculation is coming from economists in general, and is certainly not limited to the left wing.

Also, the Film Actors Guild (FAG) was a fictional organization in the film "Team America: World Police". The acronym is part of the humor. So, while your point of view is legitimate, you may want to research your assertions before throwing bile at fictional entities.

Also, while Moore undoubtedly plays up certain aspects of his films for entertainment value and to prove his point, he does often bring up quite a few good points that are solidly based on fact. To ignore a point of view out of hand merely because it comes from a source you find distasteful is closed-minded.

Re:yet another...

Because we all know the President Bush tells the truth and would never mislead us.

The fact that Bush has often misled the american people does not prove that Michael Moore is telling the truth.

Re:yet another...

What's your excuse for continuing the attempt to redefine the debate?

Re:yet another...

Because we all know the President Bush tells the truth and would never mislead us.

The fact that Bush has often misled the american people does not prove that Michael Moore is telling the truth.

The difference between Bush and Moore, is that Bush maintains he is telling the truth, even when the facts suggest otherwise. Moore claims only to give an opinion, and is frequently on record as saying his movies are 'op-ed pieces'.

Re:yet another...

Because we all know the President Bush tells the truth and would never mislead us.

Because when someone disagrees with a liar they are automatically telling the truth.

For example, I too think Bush is a liar. Also, your hair is on fire.

Bush, Rush, Coulter etc. vs Clinton, Moore, Franken, etc... it's the circus part of the bread and circus formula. Their goal is to really change very little but get you all worked up about it in the process.

Re:yet another...

Except Al Franken actually tried to change things. Instead of ranting like an idiot, he sat around for 3 hours and talked to experts, pundits, wonks and Norm Ornstein. It's one thing to say your opposition is wrong, it's another to spend a few hours and go indepth and discuss actually *why* they're wrong using things like truth(which has a liberal bias, wierdly enough).

Re:yet another...

"Because we all know the President Bush tells the truth and would never mislead us."

Right, so piling on more mistruths is totally justified. I feel full of insight, now.

Re:yet another...

Mod parent and his/her brothers and sisters. Getting sick of this "you're either with one or the other" bullshit.

Michael Moore is a pretentious hack. Every time I want to see his smirking face like he's teaching the world a thing or two I want to gouge my eyes out.

Every time I hear Ann Coulter talk about the liberal media bias I want to light something on fire and throw myself in it.

So which am I, fucktard GP? Right or Wrong? Left or Right?

I'm a goddamn self-critical thinking American who realizes we've fucked up but also realizes that distorting the truth in a documentary is probably the worst thing you could ever do for the industry. You want to present an opinion - cool, say it's your fucking opinion. But saying right is left and the sky is actually a pretty shade of lime and presenting that as not coming from you, but coming from facts is the lowest thing you could do in documentary journalism. It's as bad as any (insert ideology) media bias and worse for the hard-working true blue documentarians who want to present both sides of an issue but are shown that doing that isn't sexy enough, that they won't get the respect they so richly deserved by allowing both sides to speak and letting the audience decide, or by presenting their opinion and letting the audience decide whether it's right or wrong.

Moore makes me as sad and pissed off for my America as any other partisan lobby-owned political hack.

Re:Distorting the truth?

No, we're heard that crap since "Roger and Me." You only paid attention since his last outing.

http://www.spinsanity.org/columns/20021119.html [spinsanity.org] - here you go. Educate yourself on the man.

Note: These are the same people who wrote this [amazon.com] - no fans of the current president.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5335853/site/newsweek/ [msn.com]

Michael Isikoff, co-writer of the MSNBC piece, also wrote this [amazon.com].

There're your specifics, sir. The man is not a true documentarian, and makes the whole practice look worse than Geraldo Rivera journalism.

Re:Distorting the truth?

It's not like the film specifically mentioned the background check, and then showed footage of Moore filling in the form in the film. Oh, wait, it did.

2 minutes, 23 seconds in, the bank manager says "We have to do a background check". If you watched less than 2 and a half minutes of the film, why should I listen to your opinion about it?

gee thanks

I wish I had read your posts before replying to 2 others. I agree that Michael Moore is a hack, but I think that his 9/11 movie raised some important questions. I just wish he hadn't been in the movie. The evidence he presented was so eloquent that all he had to do was not screw it up, but his very screen presence is so obnoxious that people want to disbelieve him, even if all the evidence comes from independently verifiable sources. He is an impediment to his own message.

Re:Slightly off topic, but Michal Moore...

Since when is flatulence "Flamebait"? ...oh...

Re:yet another...

...set of lies and twisted "truths" from this nutjob, who wouldnt know the actual truth if it came up and bit him.

I kind of liked The Onion's take on it [theonion.com]:

Half Of Nation Outraged At New, Not-Yet-Released Michael Moore Film
[...]
  "This film is absolutely tasteless and misguided, and I can't believe theaters are even showing it," said GOP presidential candidate Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS), who, along with the rest of the nation, has not yet seen the film.

Some cigars are hand-rolled.

But Independence is rolled with love [google.com].

Re:yet another...

Please post an actual lie that Michael Moore had in his movies. The arguments in Fahrenheit 9/11 were presented in terms of evidence--government documents, congressional transcripts/testimony, interviews, books, etc. You can interpret the facts differently if you wish, but that doesn't mean he's lying.

I've read a bit of the "Michael Moore is a liar" threads here and elsewhere, but their content is, from what I've seen, limited to re-interpreting the facts a different way, just leaving out the facts that led to his conclusion, all the while pretending that he's just spouting foundationless opinion, a la Rush Limbaugh.

Re:yet another...

For me, I don't see him as lying, I see him as bending the truth.

I've watched this movie, and he's glossed over the fact that our (the UK) NHS infrastructure is a bit shoddy. Sure, it's one of the best in the world, but it's a giant money hole.

Also, it appears to be an advert for Clinton. Would have been nice to see this party-neutral. Ah well.

If you ignore the partisan politics, this is a fantastic film with one important message: Societies are not judged by how they treat their heroes, but how they treat the bottom rung. Only with universal healthcare, free at the point of need (that's need, not want - no free boobjobs, obviously) can the US elevate it's status as one of the worst infant mortality rates, poor general health and positively narcissistic health corporation which have done nothing but bolster corporate profits.

The US is a fantastic place, but I'd never want to live in a country that didn't care about everyone - regardless of whether they're a billionaire or a meth-addict in dire straits.

Re:yet another...

Okay, I'm going to take your post, and do to it what Michael Moore does with the video he shoots:

Please post an actual lie that Michael Moore had in his movies. The arguments in Fahrenheit 9/11 were presented in terms of evidence--government documents, congressional transcripts/testimony, interviews, books, etc. You can interpret the facts differently if you wish, but that doesn't mean he's lying.

I've read a bit of the "Michael Moore is a liar" threads here and elsewhere, but their content is , from what I've seen, limited to re-interpreting the facts a different way, just leaving out the facts that led to his conclusion, all the while pretending that he's just spouting foundationless opinion, a la Rush Limbaugh .

ZOMG, you just said Michael Moore is pretending that he's Rush Limbaugh!!!!

Now if you said that was a lie, and that you said no such thing, and I retorted saying those were your words, who would be right? I dare say you would be. It is a lie, and not a "bending" of truth.

Here is an example: In the movie "Bowling for Columbine", Michael Moore wanted to paint the NRA as a nasty gun club that lacked compassion for the Columbine shooting. Here is how he did it. First he spliced in some video of children crying outside columbine, then cut to Charlton Heston saying "from my cold, dead, hands", then cut to a billboard about an NRA meeting in Denver while Michael Moore tells us that after Columbine Charlton Heston decided to have a pro-gun rally in Denver, then cut to a video of Heston's speech (except utilizing the above demonstrated edit job to alter the message).

The problem with this is that Heston's "cold, dead, hands" speech wasn't even from his Denver speech. And after the Columbine shooting, the NRA didn't suddenly decide to hold a gun-rally. Their National Convention has been planned to be there for years. And it wasn't even a pro-gun rally, as all the exhibits and committee meetings were canceled in respect of the recent tragedy. The only thing not canceled was the members meeting, which could not be canceled due to state laws governing non-profits.

When you imply something untrue by using careful editing and splicing, you are lying. I'm sorry that we live in a world where lying is so casually dismissed (thanks to our current and last president), and that lying about somebody we don't like is okay. But the fact remains that Moore is a liar and his "documentaries" aren't worth the film they're printed on.

Re:yet another...

The problem with this is that Heston's "cold, dead, hands" speech wasn't even from his Denver speech... When you imply something untrue by using careful editing and splicing, you are lying

So you're saying that everyone who saw BfC, including you, completely missed the fact that Heston was wearing a different suit, in front of a different podium, with different lighting and camera angles? The point to including the "cold, dead hands" bit was not to fool the viewers, it was to say "here's Charlton Heston, he's the president of the NRA, here's the kind of shit he thinks and says..." Generally the people who say that Moore was trying to "trick" the viewers have an agenda to push and completely discredit the intelligence of the viewers in the process.

Re:yet another...

It would have been more apparent had they not put the NRA billboard between the two scenes. And I doubt most people noticed the different suit, lighting, etc. But even if you ignore that part, the part about the mayor telling him not to come there and that they were already there...that is blatantly deceptive editing and is dishonest.

It is sort of ironic to have a Moore supporter accuse the other side of discrediting the intelligence of the viewers.

Re:yet another...

Moore is crediting viewers with the mental capacity necessary to follow an idea through multiple scenes, of seeing the continuity in different speeches. The underlying continuity is there, and the splicing of scenes is meant to illustrate that, not to trick you into thinking this was all one speech.

I saw that part of the film. I am anti-gun, and I still didn't reach the conclusion that Moore is said by his critics to have foisted on me. That's part of what I find odd about the criticisms of his movies. Politically I'm in his neighborhood (roughly), but I never saw what everyone says he is showing. I take hyperbole for hyperbole, rhetorical questions for rhetorical questions, metaphor for metaphor, and so on--I guess I'm not literalist enough to feel that he's trying to lie to me. The main ideas of the film are what matter to me, and oddly, I haven't seen those questioned. I just see them thrown out altogether, sight unseen, because Moore spliced two speeches together and "that means we can't trust him."

Re:The problem I have with Moore is....

### I never watched "Bowling for Columbine,"

Then go watch it, the movie isn't contra guns, in fact it comes to the conclusions that guns are not the real problem and the real issues are lie elsewhere, i.e. "climate of fear". But yeah, its of course much easier to bash him for no good reason, then to actually take time and watch what he has to say...