Moore speaking on health issues before sympathetic congresspeople.
C O N T R O V E R S Y

Michael Moore’s documentary Sicko (2007) has attracted its fair share of critics among the liberaloid guardians of the status quo, and, naturally, rabidly negative and mendacious reviews from the right. But a film of this importance, that has managed to touch off a desperately needed debate about the nature of the “health care” system in the US, and the grasping values underscoring it, has also elicited criticism from the left. In this series of posts we cover the more compelling arguments.

EXHIBIT 1
IN PRAISE OF “SICKO” BUT WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE U.S. HEALTHCARE SYSTEM DIES?

By Carolyn Baker
Dateline: Sunday, 12 August 2007

It had to happen, but it took so long-indeed, too long, for a courageous filmmaker to rise up and put the abysmal U.S. healthcare system under a microscope in order to reveal how utterly pathological it has become. On one level, Moore repeated a blatant flaw in his craft so obvious in “Bowling For Columbine” and “Fahrenheit 911″ in that he almost always fails to fully connect the dots and take his work to the next level, and “Sicko” was no exception. Nevertheless, the film left me laughing, cheering, and crying and particularly gleeful regarding memos sent by management throughout the Blue Cross system warning employees of the possible side-effects of “Sicko” on their company’s image. Read the rest of this entry »

Michael Moore and former Sen. Geo. McGovern

C O N T R O V E R S Y

BY DAVID WALSH \ Dateline 7 July 2007 | Originally at WSWS

Sicko, written and directed by Michael Moore (2007)

NOTE: Please search for other articles on this same subject on Cyrano’s Journal’s archives.

Sicko is documentary filmmaker Michael Moore’s critique of the American health care system. Despite the director’s undoubted sincerity and flair for showmanship, it’s a terribly limited work, weaker than Fahrenheit 9/11, his 2004 response to the Bush administration’s “war on terror.” Read the rest of this entry »

By Ben Aris in Berlin and Duncan Campbell in Washington DC
Dateline: Saturday September 25, 2004 / The Guardian (UK)

Far-fetched satire or irrefutable revelations?

Rumours of a link between the US first family and the Nazi war machine have circulated for decades. Now the Guardian can reveal how repercussions of events that culminated in action under the Trading with the Enemy Act are still being felt by today’s president

Read the rest of this entry »

BY CHIP BERLET
Originally at The Public Eye - Vol. 18, No. 3

Introduction

John Calvin (Jean Cauvin), the main architect of one of protestantism’s most severe sects, and moral inspiration for New England’s Puritans. The curious thing is that while Calvinism, in general, provided a big legitimacy boost to capitalism, the Puritans hewed to a doctrine that had much more in common with old Catholic doctrine in regard to commerce.

Why are increased sentences and the severe punishment of those convicted of crimes so popular and prevalent in U.S. culture? Since the late 1970s our society has accepted increasingly rigid and vengeful ways of punishing those convicted of crimes. Behind this trend is the momentum of 250 years of a strain of religious philosophies brought to our shores by Pilgrims, Puritans, and other colonial settlers influenced by a Protestant theology called Calvinism. Today, many ideas, concepts, and frames of reference in modern American society are legacies of the history of Protestantism as it divided and morphed through Calvinism, revivalist evangelicalism, and fundamentalism. Even people who see themselves as secular and not religious often unconsciously adopt many of these historic cultural legacies while thinking of their ideas as simply common sense. Read the rest of this entry »

PAUL HARRIS, New York Correspondent Dateline: The Observer (U>K>)| Sunday July 22, 2007


Henry Kravis, Jewish-American financier of legendary fame for his LBO sleight-of-hands, and loyal Bush/GOP supporter. The cesspoool of high finance has rarely produced an specimen as disgusting as Kravis, and all his millions can’t hide that simple fact. He more or less personifies the mores of the American plutocracy. Unfortunately, he’s got plenty of playmayes and imitators

The American Dream of riches for all is turning into a nightmare of inequality. But a backlash is brewing, reports Paul Harris in New York.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Be sure to read our companion article by Michael Parenti, “The Rich are Our of Sight,” right on this journal.

On the surface, Mark Cain works for a time-share company. Members pay a one-off sum to join and an annual fee. They then get to book holiday time in various destinations around the globe. But Solstice clients are not ordinary people. They are America’s super-rich and a brief glance at its operations reveal the vast and still widening gulf between them and the rest of America. Read the rest of this entry »