WikiLeaks paper reveals US officials intervened to cancel New Zealand's Labour Party fundraising event for Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11
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A cable
from July 30, 2004, reveals that the US officials put high pressure
on the then Government of New Zealand to cancel a fundraising event
for Michael Moore's documentary Fahrenheit 9/11*,
under the umbrella of the Labour Party. Although the event appears to
be an initiative of the then Cabinet Minister for the Environment,
Marian Hobbs, the pressure reached the highest levels of the
government, up to the Prime Minister.
The
annoyance of the US side for this event was so intense that the then
US ambassador appeared to approve the nickname "Boo Boo"
for Hobbs. Additionally, he estimated that the US pressure was
eventually successful, as the "fiasco", as he
describes it in the comment at the end of the cable, "may
only have been averted" because of the phone calls by the US
embassy.
This is
another evidence for a series of US interventions against documentaries about the 9/11 attacks that were not aligned with
the US official narratives.
Key
parts:
Embassy
Wellington learned July 30 that GNZ [Government of New Zealand]
Cabinet Minister for the Environment Marian Hobbs was reportedly
hosting a special screening of Michael Moore's controversial movie
"Fahrenheit 9/11" as a local Labour Party fundraising
event.
DCM
[Deputy Chief of Mission] contacted the Prime Minister's office to
ask whether it could shed some light on the matter and was told by PM
office staff that they were not aware of the issue but would look
into it. DCM then contacted Minister Hobbs' office but the
Minister's office declined to make her available to discuss the
matter. Hobbs' staff later informed Embassy that Hobbs would not
be hosting the fundraiser. However, she would be attending the
event.
Comment:
There's
a reason this particular Minister is nicknamed "Boo Boo"
Hobbs. That said, it is probable that this potential fiasco may
only have been averted because of our phone calls - it is
apparent to us that neither the Minister nor anyone else in the
Labour government seems to have thought there was anything wrong with
a senior Minister hosting such an event.
Full
cable:
*
Fahrenheit 9/11 is a 2004 American documentary film directed, written
by, and starring filmmaker, director and political commentator
Michael Moore. The film takes a critical look at the presidency of
George W. Bush, the War on Terror, and its coverage in the media. In
the film, Moore contends that American corporate media were
"cheerleaders" for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and did not
provide an accurate or objective analysis of the rationale for the
war or the resulting casualties there.
The
film generated intense controversy, including disputes over its
accuracy. The title of the film alludes to Ray Bradbury's 1953 novel
Fahrenheit 451, a dystopian view of the future United States, drawing
an analogy between the autoignition temperature of paper and the date
of the September 11 attacks; one of the film's taglines was "The
Temperature at Which Freedom Burns".
The
film debuted at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival and received a
20-minute standing ovation, among the longest standing ovations in
the festival's history. The film was also awarded the Palme d'Or, the
festival's highest award. The film is the highest grossing
documentary of all time.
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