Michael Moore censored

[posted to the Marxism list by long-time Vancouver activist Tony Tracy]

Globe and Mail alters truth

The Globe and Mail describes itself as "Canada's National Newspaper" and
is published in Toronto. In recent years, it has regularly published the
writing of well-known progressive activists such as Naomi Klein (largely
in order to stake out an audience and position in relation to the
competing "national" Canadian newspaper, the National Post, which is
unappologetically rightwing in it's editorial and news coverage).

On Friday, September 14th, The Globe and Mail printed parts of a letter
written and e-mailed to interested parties by film maker Michael Moore the
night after the morning of the recent terrorist attack in New York. In the
spirit of the famous observation that "The first casualty of war is
truth", the paper's editors gutted Moore's political observations, added a
few pieces of text and placed it under the headline "Safety/Me and my
airport".  In a small effort to offset this, I reprint the letter below.
The portions printed by the Globe start about 1/5 of the way into the
letter and end about 1/2 way through; the section is bounded here by a
line of "===". The Globe's additions are enclosed within [ ]. removed text
is marked by X's;  e.g. Xremoved textX. If I might paraphrase, the
remaining, unprinted, text suggests that what happened, while abhorent,
should, perhaps, not be unexpected and offers reasons for this view. I
believe I have cut and pasted from the original email correctly, but I am
human and apologize for any errors.

I have found a web site for this:
http://www.michaelmoore.com/2001_0912.html.


From: "Michael Moore" <mikemail@cloud9.net>
To: <michaelmoore-l@cloud9.net>
Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2001 3:10 AM
Subject: [Mike's Message] Death, Downtown

Death, Downtown

Dear friends,

I was supposed to fly today on the 4:30 PM American Airlines flight from
LAX to JFK. But tonight I find myself stuck in L.A. with an incredible
range of emotions over what has happened on the island where I work and
live in New York City.

My wife and I spent the first hours of the day -- after being awakened by
phone calls from our parents at 6:40am PT -- trying to contact our daughter
at school in New York and our friend JoAnn who works near the World Trade
Center.

I called JoAnn at her office. As someone picked up, the first tower
imploded, and the person answering the phone screamed and ran out, leaving
me no clue as to whether or not she or JoAnn would live.
It was a sick, horrible, frightening day.

On December 27, 1985 I found myself caught in the middle of a terrorist
incident at the Vienna airport -- which left 30 people dead, both there and
at the Rome airport. (The machine-gunning of passengers in each city was
timed to occur at the same moment.)

I do not feel like discussing that event tonight because it still brings up
too much despair and confusion as to how and why I got to live. a fluke, a
mistake, a few feet on the tarmac, and I am still here, there but for the
grace of.

Safe. Secure.


============================START OF PRINTED EXCERPT===================

               ...  XI'mX [I am] an American, living in America. I like my
illusions. I walk through a metal detector, I put my carry-ons through an
x-ray machine, and I know all will be well.

[Won't it?]

Here's a short list of my experiences lately with airport security:

* At the Newark Airport, the plane is late at boarding everyone. The
counter can't find my seat. So I am told to just "go ahead and get on" --
without a ticket!

* At Detroit Metro Airport, I don't want to put the lunch I just bought at
the deli through the x-ray machine so, as I pass through the metal
detector, I hand the sack to the guard through the space between the
detector and the x-ray machine. I tell him "It's just a sandwich." He
believes me and doesn't bother to check. The sack has gone through neither
security device.

* At LaGuardia in New York, I check a piece of luggage, but decide to catch
a later plane. The first plane leaves without me, but with my bag -- no one
knowing what is in it [or who it belongs to].

* Back in Detroit, I Xtake my timeX ['m slow] getting off the commuter
plane. By the time I have come down its stairs, the bus that takes the
passengers to the terminal has left -- without me. I am alone on the
tarmac, free to wander wherever I want. So I do. Eventually, I flag down a
pick-up truck and an airplane mechanic gives me a ride the rest of the way
to the terminal.

* I have brought knives X,X [and] razors; and once, my traveling companion
brought a hammer and chisel. No one stopped us.

Of course, I have gotten away with all of this because the airlines
consider my safety SO important, they pay rent-a-cops $5.75 an hour to make
sure the bad guys don't get on my plane. That is what my life is worth --
less than the cost of an oil change.

Too harsh, you say? Well, chew on this: a first-year pilot on American
Eagle (the commuter arm of American Airlines) Xreceives around $15,000 a
year in annual payX [is paid about 15,000 a year].

That's right -- $15,000 for the person who has your life in his hands.
Until recently, Continental Express paid a little over $13,000 a year.
There was one guy, an American Eagle pilot, who had four kids so he went
down to the welfare office and applied for food stamps -- and he was eligible!

Someone on welfare is flying my plane? Is this for real? Yes, it is.
So spare me the talk about all the precautions the airlines and the FAA is
taking. They, like all businesses, are concerned about one thing -- the
bottom line and the profit margin.

Four teams of X3-5X [three to five] people were all able to penetrate
airport security on the same morning at 3 different airports and pull off
this heinous act? My only response is -- Xthat's allX [is that all]?

=========================== END OF PRINTED EXCERPT  ===============

Well, the pundits are in full diarrhea mode, gushing on about the
"terrorist threat" and today's scariest dude on planet earth -- Osama bin
Laden. Hey, who knows, maybe he did it. But, something just doesn't add up.

Am I being asked to believe that this guy who sleeps in a tent in a desert
has been training pilots to fly our most modern, sophisticated jumbo jets
with such pinpoint accuracy that they are able to hit these three targets
without anyone wondering why these planes were so far off path?

Or am I being asked to believe that there were four religious/political
fanatics who JUST HAPPENED to be skilled airline pilots who JUST HAPPENED
to want to kill themselves today?

Maybe you can find one jumbo jet pilot willing to die for the cause -- but
FOUR? Ok, maybe you can -- I don't know.

What I do know is that all day long I have heard everything about this bin
Laden guy except this one fact -- WE created the monster known as Osama bin
Laden!

Where did he go to terrorist school? At the CIA!

Don't take my word for it -- I saw a piece on MSNBC last year that laid it
all out. When the Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan, the CIA trained him
and his buddies in how to commits acts of terrorism against the Soviet
forces. It worked! The Soviets turned and ran. Bin Laden was grateful for
what we taught him and thought it might be fun to use those same techniques
against us.

We abhor terrorism -- unless we're the ones doing the terrorizing.
We paid and trained and armed a group of terrorists in Nicaragua in the
1980s who killed over 30,000 civilians. That was OUR work. You and me.
Thirty thousand murdered civilians and who the hell even remembers!

We fund a lot of oppressive regimes that have killed a lot of innocent
people, and we never let the human suffering THAT causes to interrupt our
day one single bit.

We have orphaned so many children, tens of thousands around the world, with
our taxpayer-funded terrorism (in Chile, in Vietnam, in Gaza, in Salvador)
that I suppose we shouldn't be too surprised when those orphans grow up and
are a little whacked in the head from the horror we have helped cause.

Yet, our recent domestic terrorism bombings have not been conducted by a
guy from the desert but rather by our own citizens: a couple of ex-military
guys who hated the federal government.

 >From the first minutes of today's events, I never heard that possibility
suggested. Why is that?

Maybe it's because the A-rabs are much better foils. A key ingredient in
getting Americans whipped into a frenzy against a new enemy is the
all-important race card. It's much easier to get us to hate when the object
of our hatred doesn't look like us.

Congressmen and Senators spent the day calling for more money for the
military; one Senator on CNN even said he didn't want to hear any more talk
about more money for education or health care -- we should have only one
priority: our self-defense.

Will we ever get to the point that we realize we will be more secure when
the rest of the world isn't living in poverty so we can have nice running
shoes?

In just 8 months, Bush gets the whole world back to hating us again. He
withdraws from the Kyoto agreement, walks us out of the Durban conference
on racism, insists on restarting the arms race -- you name it, and Baby
Bush has blown it all.

The Senators and Congressmen tonight broke out in a spontaneous version of
"God Bless America." They're not a bad group of singers!

Yes, God, please do bless us.

Many families have been devastated tonight. This just is not right. They
did not deserve to die. If someone did this to get back at Bush, then they
did so by killing thousands of people who DID NOT VOTE for him! Boston, New
York, DC, and the planes' destination of California -- these were places
that voted AGAINST Bush!

Why kill them? Why kill anyone? Such insanity.

Let's mourn, let's grieve, and when it's appropriate let's examine our
contribution to the unsafe world we live in.

It doesn't have to be like this.

Yours,
Michael Moore
mmflint@aol.com

Louis Proyect
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