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Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire

Another Activist Doc Offers Familiar Arguments,
Recaps News Footage

by Michael Atkinson, September 7, 2004

The election-year insta-docs keep rising like sunflowers from the Bush admin cow pile; this week, we have a Media Education Foundation–produced primer on neocon world-shaping, post–9-11 skullduggery, and Iraqi Freedom duplicity. More or less a Bud Abbott alternative to Fahrenheit 9/11's Lou Costello, the film sticks closely to well-established facts—the revelation of pre–9-11 plans to attack Iraq, Paul Wolfowitz's age-old rationales for global dominance, the self-contradictory public statements (read: lies) of virtually every major broker on the Bush team, etc.—and nicely, if redundantly, complements the familiar news footage with opinionated talking heads (Chomsky, Mark Crispin Miller, profs, vets, etc.). At only 68 minutes, the exploration of many avenues is abbreviated—a damning montage of broadcast-graphics peacockery about the military might we've used to kill over 10,000 Iraqi civilians is too brief, and barely supports the chilling thesis that we are gradually being transformed into a type of Trojan war culture, collectively fetishizing weaponry and death. All in all, Hijacking is less a movie than a litany of arguments intended as, or at least only useful as, a brickbat in the discourse, aimed at your neighbor's Republican noggin. Of course, such is the sloping forehead of Middle America that the facts and footage of cut-and-dried, homicidal hypocrisy collected here seem to have already been forgotten, or bizarrely dismissed as irrelevant, a few years or months later. Only the rare flexibly minded conservative will benefit from the refresher course—if you know one, buy his or her ticket.

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Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear and the Selling of American Empire

by Karen Kwiatkowski

Better than anyone to date, the Media Education Foundation has quietly and accurately documented the most important history of 21st century thus far in their recent video and DVD release, Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear, and the Selling of American Empire.

Hijacking Catastrophe is powerful, understated, straightforward and educational. In a single meticulously organized hour of evidence and analysis, viewers are treated to a thoughtful explanation of modern American empire, neo-conservatism as a driving force for the current Bush administration, and something I have not seen before, a real economic analysis of what is driving some of our current "global war on terror." For more