Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire
By Sut Jhally and Jeremy Earp
"A highly meritorious effort to raise public awareness and understanding, work that is particularly crucial in advance of the coming election, which may well cast a long shadow over the country's future."— Noam Chomsky, Professor of Linguistics, MIT
"By helping us understand how fear is being actively cultivated and manipulated by the current administration, Hijacking Catastrophe stands to become an explosive and empowering information weapon in this decisive year in US history." — Naomi Klein, author, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies
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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 virtually no meaningful public debate about the radical turn US policy has taken since 9/11. Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire is a riveting collection of 28 interviews with leading political thinkers that shows how the Bush administration has used the trauma of 9/11 and the war on terrorism to advance a radical and longstanding neo-conservative plan for global geopolitical domination. At the same time, it will clarify the ideological vision that has driven US international and domestic policy since 9/11, and will examine the political strategies that have been used to sell this ideological vision to the American people.
This collection includes interviews with Tariq Ali, Benjamin Barber, Noam Chomsky, Marc Danner, Fernando Suarez del Solar, Shadia Drury, Daniel Ellsberg, Michael Franti, Stan Goff, William Hartung, Bill Israel, Janine Jackson, Chalmers Johnson, Michael Klare, Karen Kwiatkowski, Norman Mailer, Zia Mian, Mark Crispin Miller, Kevin Ramirez, Scott Ritter, Vandana Shiva, Norman Solomon, Greg Speeter, Immanuel Wallerstein, Cindy Williams, Jody Williams, and Max Wolff.
Sut Jhally is Professor of Communication at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Founder and Executive Director of the Media Education Foundation. He has written broadly on issues of media, advertising, politics and popular culture.
Jeremy Earp has worked as a journalist, and has taught at Northeastern University, the University of Massachusetts, and New School University. He is a producer with the Media Education Foundation.
6"x 9" • 312 pages• paperback • ISBN 1-56656-581-2 • $17.50
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Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire, narrated by Julian Bond was first made into a film. Below are the reviews as found on the following URL:
http://www.hijackingcatastrophe.org/index.php?module=ContentExpress&func=print&ceid=8
"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
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"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
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***1/2 "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 Mathews | New York Daily News
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"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
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"Provocative ... Whatever your political positions, this is an important and enlightening documentary to see before any election year discussions."
Spirituality and Health Magazine
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"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
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Kerry and the ‘Antiwar’ Left
‘Hijacking Catastrophe’ is a
great movie
Justin Raimondo | Antiwar.com
July 7, 2004
As Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 cleans up in movie theaters nationwide, and with antiwar documentaries all the rage these days, I went to see another, less heralded account of how and why we were lied into war: Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear, & the Selling of American Empire, and it is (almost) everything I hoped Moore's opus would be. Narrated by Julian Bond (yes, that Julian Bond), this film zeroes in on a subject completely neglected by Moore: the key role played by the neoconservatives in agitating for and rationalizing the invasion of Iraq… read more...
The Movie Moore Should Have Made
Fahrenheit 9/11 Meets its Match
Michael Ewens | Antiwar.com
July 22, 2004
Anyone demanding an intelligent and factual analysis of the march to war on Iraq need only look to Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear and the Selling of American Empire (HC hereafter). Released by the Media Education Foundation and written by Jeremy Earp and Sut Jhally, this documentary immediately focuses on the right question: why did the United States government attack Iraq, a nation that posed no threat to U.S. national security? The film covers the crucial element of all the motivations that led to the war: ideology. While also discussing oil, domination and military strategy, the film rightly concentrates on the existence of a small but influential cabal of Bush administration neoconservatives forever bent on spreading American power and influence. This simple answer to a complicated question represents HC’s greatest strength… read more…
Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire
Dennis Harvey | Variety
July 13, 2004
A short, sharp addition to the fast-growing body of docus indicting the current Bush administration, “Hijacking Catastrophe” 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… read more...
Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire
John McMurtrie | San Francisco Chronicle
July 16, 2004
Like “Fahrenheit 9/11,” but free of satire, the gripping documentary “Hijacking Catastrophe” accuses the Bush administration of exploiting people’s fears of terrorism to justify the invasion of Iraq. The administration’s goal, the film contends, is to forge a more powerful U.S. empire through military might… read more…
Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire
Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski (Air Force, Ret.) | Lewrockwell.com
August 14, 2004
Better than anyone to date, the Media Education Foundation has quietly and accurately documented the most important history of 21st century imperialism thus far in their recent video and DVD release, Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire. Hijacking Catastropheis 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" ... read more…
Beat the Bush: Another documentary exposes the president as a right-wing imperialist
Melissa Levine | San Francisco Weekly
July 14, 2004
Hijacking Catastrophe , a documentary about the co-opting of 9/11 by the Bush administration, begins with a chilling quotation. "The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders," the screen reads. "That is easy... All you have to do is tell them that they are being attacked... and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." Uh-oh. This sounds like the deep cynicism of a despot. Machiavelli? Nope. Stalin? Nope. The brooding music prepares us for the worst: The quote is from Hermann Goering, at the Nuremberg War Trials...
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