[lbo-talk] MM on terrorist threat, circa 2003

snitsnat snitilicious at tampabay.rr.com
Thu Jul 7 10:02:23 PDT 2005


At 12:46 PM 7/7/2005, Carrol Cox wrote:
>I just glanced at the Google entries without accessing any of them, but
>I presume you mean the phrase, "There is no terrorist threat in this
>country." No need to be subtle. That is a simple empirical fact. There
>must be around a thousand causes of unnecessary death or injury that are
>far more threatening than terrorism to u.s. residents.
>
>Carrol

Sure, but we're talking to ordinary 'merikans Carrol and that's not the way they see it. Heck, you can't even tell some lefties on _this_ list that cops have a lower job death rate than a lot of other occupations. You have to lay a lot of ideological groundwork and education for people to nod and accept your interpretation as if it made sense. You don't have to be a gungho warmonger to find the statement odd. Just my mom. :)

what he actually said was this: "There is no terrorist threat. There is not terrorist threat. Yes, there have been horrific acts of terrorism, and yes, there will be acts of terrorism again. But that doesn't mean that there is some massive terrorist threat." Apparently,t he words are captured in a personal video taken at the speech and listed at wikiquote.

This from a Greencine review of Farenhype 911:

The film structures itself largely around a statement Moore made at a public appearance, shown in grainy handheld footage, that "there is no terrorist threat." He goes on to say, "Yes, there have been horrific acts of terrorism, and yes, there will be acts of terrorism again. But that doesn't mean that there is some massive terrorist threat." His statement is repeated and countered throughout the film. Whether you are swayed by the film or not is largely dependent on whether you agree with this statement. It is an assertion full of promised misinterpretation. It largely agrees with Maureen Dowd's recent assessment of the situation on The Daily Show - that you cannot wage a war against a technique. Moore is not saying that there aren't existent terrorists that pose a threat to the United States. What he's against is the universally accepted concept that they pose a massive unified ongoing threat that we should fear from day to day and can classify as a specific enemy. In FahrenHYPE, the word "terrorist" is synonymous with "Islamic extremist," and the most vociferous commentators are New York Jews that lived through the terrorist attacks of September 11th and sincerely fear this threat.

"Finish your beer. There are sober kids in India."

-- rwmartin



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