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Hijacking Catastrophe
9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire
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Hijacking Catastrophe
9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire
The 9/11 terror attacks continue to send shock waves through the American political system. Continuing fears about American vulnerability alternate with images of American military prowess and patriotic bravado in a transformed media landscape charged with emotion and starved for information. The result is that we have had little detailed debate about the radical turn US policy has taken since 9/11.
Hijacking Catastrophe places the Bush Administration's original justifications for war in Iraq within the larger context of a two-decade struggle by neo-conservatives to dramatically increase military spending while projecting American power and influence globally by means of force.
At the same time, the documentary argues that the Bush Administration has sold this radical and controversial plan for aggressive American military intervention by deliberately manipulating intelligence, political imagery, and the fears of the American people after 9/11.
This update of the critically acclaimed documentary features the theatrical version of the film, along with ten new post-election interviews with prominent political observers on topics ranging from the 2004 presidential campaign to the Democratic Party's struggle to define itself in a time of war.
Narrated by Julian Bond, Hijacking Catastrophe features interviews with more than twenty prominent political observers, including Pentagon whistleblower Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, who witnessed first-hand how the Bush Administration set up a sophisticated propaganda operation to link the anxieties generated by 9/11 to a pre-existing foreign policy agenda that included a preemptive war on Iraq.
Joining Kwiatkowski in a wide-ranging, accessible, and ultimately empowering analysis of American foreign policy, media manipulation, and their global and domestic implications, are former Chief UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter, former Pentagon analyst Daniel Ellsberg, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Jody Williams, author Norman Mailer, MIT professor Noam Chomsky, Code Pink founder Medea Benjamin, defense policy analyst William Hartung, author Chalmers Johnson, and Army Special Forces Master Sergeant Stan Goff (Ret.).
At its core, the film places the deceptions of the Bush Administration within the larger frame of questions seldom posed in the mainstream: What, exactly, is the agenda that drove the administration's pre-war deceptions? How is 9/11 being used to sell this agenda? And what are the stakes for America, Americans, and the world if this agenda succeeds in being fully implemented during a second Bush term?
Sections: Intro | Blueprint for Empire | Hijacking Fear | "Things Related and Not" From 9/11 to Baghdad | Empire | Sorrows of Empire | "Bring it On" | Politics of Hope
Filmmaker Info
Executive Producer: Sut JhallyWritten and Directed by: Jeremy Earp & Sut Jhally
Producer: Jeremy Earp
Editor: Kenyon King
Camera: David Rabinovitz
Sound Design: Thom Monahan
Original Music: Thom Monahan
Post-Production Supervisor: Kenyon King
Associate Producer: Bathsheba Ratzkoff
Graphic Artist: Michelle Rojas
Motion Graphics: Ulysses Design
Film Festivals
Official Selection, 2008 One World Berlin Human Rights Film FestivalOfficial Selection, 2005 Big Sky Documentary Film Festival
Official Selection, 2004 Wine Country Film Festival
Official Selection, 2004 Vancouver International Film Festival
Awards
Related Links
Press Reviews
Praise for the Film
"Openly polemical but also sobering ... You don't hear phrases like "take over the world" often these days without a James Bond movie review attached, but Hijacking Catastrophe makes a convincing case with simple methods ... The filmmakers are definitely playing hardball."- Anita Gates | New York Times
"Powerful, clear and moving."
- Matt Damon
"A powerful little film ... Drives home even deeper the message that Fahrenheit and its ilk attempted to deliver ... More sober, yet no less sobering, than Moore's alternately clownish and gut-wrenching diatribe, Hijacking Catastrophe presents the facts without any funny business. Which is not to say it's dull. This film presents its argument in a way that is cogent, concise and engaging."
- Michael O'Sullivan | Washington Post
"The best of the Bush-bashing documentaries .... There's nothing like facts to prosecute a case, and this documentary about the Bush administration's pre-9/11 determination to invade Iraq is nothing if not fact-based. With meticulous detail, it lays out the case that the World Trade Center attacks triggered a mechanism in place among conservatives for at least a decade ... If you're in the mood for a horror movie, this ought to do you."
- Jack Matthews | New York Daily News
"The Bud Abbott alternative to Fahrenheit 9/11's Lou Costello."
- Village Voice
"While shunning Fahrenheit 9/11's audience-friendly mix of tough reporting and clownish bombast, this contentious documentary is equally angry and just as provocative."
- Time Out New York
"This has been the year of the political documentary, and Hijacking Catastrophe is the best film in this genre to date ... One of the best pieces of journalism of recent years."
- TomPaine.com
"Provocative ... Whatever your political positions, this is an important and enlightening documentary to see before any election year discussions."
- Spirituality and Health Magazine
"In a year that has brought us Fahrenheit 9/11, Control Room, and The Corporation, a week after the Republican National Convention we now have Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire. Of these sorts of documentaries, this is the one you absolutely have to see, and bring at least one friend along."
- Gay City News New York
"The latest bracing jolt of anti-establishment filmmaking."
- The Oregonian
"A great movie ... a solid hour of hardcore factual reporting ... Has the narrative tension of a good detective story, tracing the documentary evidence straight back to the neoconservative suspects in this case of the WarParty vs. the American People."
- Justin Raimondo | Editorial Director, Antiwar.com
"A devastating critique of the Bush administration's drive to war ... Startling, troubling, but also energizing."
- Howard Zinn
"Brilliantly exposes US imperial designs. Fast paced and well edited, it is essential viewing."
- David Barsamian | Alternative Radio
"Like the Rosetta stone, Hijacking Catastrophe contains a necessary and crucial key for translating Washington's mystical and symbolic description of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and it will guide future generations as well as our own."
- Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski (Air Force, Ret.)
"Gripping ... sober, yet ultimately uplifting."
- San Francisco Chronicle
"A great movie ... a solid hour of hardcore factual reporting ... Has the narrative tension of a good detective story, tracing the documentary evidence straight back to the neoconservative suspects in this case of the WarParty vs. the American People."
- Justin Raimondo | Editorial Director, Antiwar.com
"Goes beyond simple Bush-bashing to paint a horrifying portrait of organized U.S. imperialist expansion and public deception stretching back to the early Reagan era."
- Daily Variety
"As sober and scarifying as a pilfered confidential file."
- San Francisco Bay Guardian
"A more-serious-than Moore indictment of U.S. policy in Iraq."
- Leah Garchik | San Francisco Chronicle
"This is the best, most complete explanation of the motives, the underlying ideology, behind the Bush administration's headlong thrust into war with Iraq on the heels of 9/11 I have seen. It answers the question so many citizens are asking with increasing frequency, 'We know it's about oil - but is that all'"
- Wilson "Woody" Powell | Executive Director of Veterans for Peace
"Hijacking Catastrophe is a film every citizen who cares about democracy should see."
- Michael Leonard | President, National Society of Newspaper Columnists
"A solid piece of work - important, righteous and worth seeing."
- San Francisco Weekly
