Big Green Ogres

A British newspaper, reporting on "Fahrenheit 9/11", says it "has been rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America, meaning no one under 17 can see it.". R can be seen by those 17 or younger if they have suitable supervision. And NC-17 can't be seen by 17-year-olds.

Update: The Guardian has since done a stealth edit, saying the film "has been rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America, meaning no one under 17 can see it unless accompanied by an adult." And while my statement about the R classification was technically correct, 17-year-olds can see an R-rated film without supervision.

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You can't make this stuff up (warning: web site possibly overloaded). If you did, Mike Moore would sue. (Heads up from LGF reader rumpole)

The company distributing filmmaker Michael Moore’s Bush-bashing movie “Fahrenheit 9/11” says it won’t reject an offer of help from Middle East terrorist organization Hezbollah.

The excuse given for accepting Hizb'allah's offer was “We can’t go against these organizations as they could strongly boycott the film in Lebanon and Syria.”

And how much revenue would the film get in Lebanon and Syria?

Maybe it isn't about the money. Mike was willing to boycott Israel and apartheid-era South Africa with the film "Roger and Me" on the grounds that they practiced segregation. A fair enough call for South Africa, but one of the main demands by Israel's critics is to remove Jews from the West Bank and Gaza - they are demanding that Israel practice segregation. (Incidentally, hizb'allah sponsor Iran and the countries distributors are so interested in, the United Arab Emirates and Syria all practice segregation)

Either Moore has grown more capitalistic since "Roger and Me", or he regards Israel as worse than Hizb'allah.

But really, willingly getting help from a terrorist organization to help promote your movie? How low can you go? And how many Moore fans will tolerate this?

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In order to further some ideology, a person was in a deep pit covered by wooden planks. He suffocated.

Why do people do stunts such as burying themselves? In part, to get media attention. I know, I'm media, I'm giving it attention, but I'm not mentioning his cause or anything.

A reaction to his death was pretty pathetic too.

"It's all god's will," one devotee said.

"Perhaps his mission on earth had come to an end. We still revere him as god's own representative on earth."

He wasn't the messiah, he was a very reckless person, and now he's dead.

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Madonna says she pulled the anti-war video for her American Life single last year, fearing a "lynch-mob" patriotism, saying "I have children to protect and I just didn't think it was the right time.".

As far as is publicly known, the only people who've threatened her children have been Palestinian terrorists, but apparently she's known for a while what the greatest threat is.

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The Sydney Morning Herald, via The Guardian, claims that the eight-digit code for launching nuclear weapons was, for many years, 00000000.

Kind of puts lousy password practices by lesser mortals in perspective.

Other references to Spaceballs: All Things Christie, F'n Geeks and comments in Nuke-free zone.

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Quagmirista Paul McGeough writes a full-blown rant in this article. It starts off with

There is a growing sense that Americans have become victims of September 11 in a way that has blinkered their democratic instincts.

So now the hard questions are being put in a pre-September 11 context. Would Americans ordinarily tolerate a president who lies and exaggerates? A leader who uses fear to manipulate his people to his own ends? A president whose staff blow the deep cover of a CIA agent as political payback? A president whose Administration channels billions of dollars to crony corporations on false pretexts? A president who deems torture acceptable?

And goes downhill from there.

The only bit that caught my attention was him saying

In less than two weeks the US-led occupation of Iraq gives way to the saddest little "sovereign" government the world has seen in a while.

The saddest government in the world?

In the same paper, Vaclav Havel, former president of the Czech Republic and someone who knows first hand about dictatorships, describes the horrors of North Korea's dictatorship, and urges decisive action against it.

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David Hicks has recently been charged by the US. In some ways, charging him is a mistake, as it gives credibility to the notion that the US is required to either charge the detainees at Guantanamo bay with an offence or release them.

The US is under no such obligation. They are entitled to keep David and the rest until the Taliban and Al Qaeda either surrender or the US makes peace with them.

I'm not certain what to make of the charges, or reports that he decided to return to the front lines after seeing footage of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the side of the terrorists and the regime protecting the murderers.

But I will comment on reports of one of his new names being "Abu Muslim al Austraili". It reeks of him being a wannabe. "Abu X" means "father of X", and is a popular choice for Nom de Guerres. For example, Abu Mazen, Abu Bakar Bashir, Abu Jihad. "Al X" means something like "the person from X", for example Muqtada al-Sadr, Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti. So his name translates roughly as "Father of Muslim from Australia".

Really. Is this the best Osama could recruit from here?

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East Timor (who have the crocodile as a national icon) does not exist.

At least, this is the opinion of OPEC, an organisation whose membership reads like an extended axis of evil. Visit OPEC's web site, click on "Member countries", check out the area designated as belonging to Indonesia and therefore not East Timor and ask "Dude, where's their country?". (For those wondering where East Timor is, a map is available on this link).

This had better not be the start of a new trend. There have been many cases exposed by the blogosphere of maps of the middle east that don't have Israel in them. Many Islamists reject East Timor leaving the Dar-al-Islam, and no doubt want to take it back by jihad. "Mainstream" organizations such as OPEC failing to recognise East Timor only makes things that much worse.

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Now really, it's rude enough being alive when no one wants you, but showing up uninvited to the blogosphere?

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