Do you wonder why only Harvey Weinstein is taking the fall? Was he too fat and ugly for us to imagine despoiling young actresses? I like to think it’s because he produced truly awful movies.
I am heartened to see that articles about the tolerance of Weinstein’s abuse of power do make the link to our Womanizer in Chief, but again, Trump is also low hanging fruit. Certainly the casting couch is still an active element of Hollywood. It pervades patriarch-dom.
By HE I mean Dr. Frankenstein’s penultimate scientific industrial creature, Capitalism. Everything I know about bringing down the system I learned from horror movies. Maybe. Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker knew not only the evils to be feared, but which fears paralyze evil. For Frankenstein is was fire. For Dracula, daylight. Pretty damn spot on.
The Second Amendment sidearm may protect you from troops quartering in your house and raping your maidens, but guns don’t have the stopping power to bring down man-made monsters. Capitalism is preoccupied about being immolated however. Maybe that’s why people can easily get a license to concealed carry, but will serve years in prison for possession of incindiaries. Molotov cocktails have stopped heavy tanks. Whether or not fire brought down the WTC, the state definitely doesn’t want you to have it. Mankind’s first tool. DIY.
Frankenstein the Modern Prometheus was undeterred by bullets. Like every undead monster since, Frankenstein was held off by fire.
Dracula was likewise impervious to human might. His bloodsucking immortal reign was vulnerable to daylight. By outward appearance, vampires represent our most jaded celebrities, thought their immortality and superhuman power more closely resembles our corporate trusts, or the sociopath olygarchs They too cannot be shot down or beaten, so long as no one believe they exist Exposed to light vampires are reduced to ashes. As moviegoers know, that takes some clever thinking, on top of the laborious coming around to believing vampires for the evil they are. Dragged into the light of day, Nosferatu is history.
When the police show up at your door dressed like this, I assumed the ‘Protect” means for them not you. They have done a great job of selling America the “Protect and Serve” but do you really need it? In February 1955, the Los Angeles Police Department, through the pages of the internally produced BEAT magazine, conducted a contest for a motto for the police academy. The winning entry was the motto, “To Protect and to Serve” submitted by Officer Joseph S. Dorobek. In my seventy six years of life, I can count on one finger the times I’ve had to call the “Serve and Protect” guys. And that was only at the insistence of my Insurance agent who had refused to pay the claim until the police were notified.
It did not escape my attention, as I explained to my Insurance agent “Why call the police now? the burglars are already gone, along with my stuff. I’m sure most people fail to notice that the police only show up after a crime; Not before, so where then does the “Protect” come into the equation. It should also be noted; to this day, that the police have never caught the burglar or returned any of my stuff.
When I was ten years old, I and some of my friends went to the East-town theater, I saw my first Frankenstein move. That night when my mother told me to go upstairs and go to bed, I refused as I was sure Frankenstein was waiting up there under my bed to get me. I was so scared, I almost shit my pants. In my feverish state of mind, I even thought my mother was conspiring with Frankie so that he could get me. It took me a few years of growing up to figure out, Hollywood was about making movies and money, if they had to scare the shit out of a ten year boy, so be it.
The “Protest and Serve” police join a long list of groups and people who use the fear factors to promote their own agenda for their own benefit. And of course the police can protect you from most of them.
You might recall some of them; The black man is coming to rob you and take your white women, the brown man is coming to take your jobs, the government is coming to take your guns, the IRS is coming to get your money, the devil is coming to get you for sinning, but then of course you can purchase absolution from guess who?
And who among us could ever forget; “Reefer Madness” the propaganda film that was sure to send you out into the streets beginning a career of robbing and raping and those were only two of the milder things that could happen after just one puff. I’m sure the big pharmaceutical companies had much to do with this as they also had their fears of losing their addicted customers.
And of course the police were always there to protect you from all this mayhem and madness, all except the devil and IRS, these areas are covered by your local church and lawyers.
And then we come to the granddaddy of all fears; The “Terrorist” you might remember him? They were that group of rag tag guys we saw on Fox News, swinging on monkey bars somewhere over in Afghanistan. The “Terrorist” were primarily the responsibility of the US army and Geo Bush. But then we discovered some of those “Terrorist” hiding in something called a cell, here in America.
So now we would need to call in the local police departments to protect us. The Army was so appreciative of the police help, they gave much of their equipment to help protect us from this new threat. The police were always there to protect us no matter where that threat might come from.
As we saw on January 26th 2015, when this elite “Protect and Serve” police force, discover a 17 year old unarmed girl sitting in a car, in an alley on the east side of Denver, putting four bullets in her, resulting in her tragic death and suffering of all those who loved her.
It is heartbreaking to look into the eyes of this young woman, Jessica Hernandez and see her as a threat and to think she was murdered by the Denver Police Department with no repercussions to any of her killers. You might think I’m being too hard on the Denver Police Department. Well!
We have all seen those funeral processions as they wind their way to the graveyard escorted by the “Protect and Serve” police. Not quite sure why a deceased person needs protection or what the hurry is to get them in the ground but my question is; Did those same “Protect and Serve” police that murdered this young girl, also escort her hearse to the graveyard? This is just too difficult and emotional to think about.
I know little about fine art photography, darkroom craft or print collecting, but I will foolishly assert this: the future of the two dimensional print is the time-dimensional print. It’s only with the evolution of high definition that I dare say it, video. THE FUTURE OF 2D IS NOT 3D IT’S 4D. (Actually 3-D is a tech injected myopia, by 4D I mean two dimensions plus time plus sound) I do know that photo technology for everyman has breached the fourth dimension, mounted paper prints are a throwback for older generations like mine, who think of the past in terms of stills. Before us it was black and white. Moving picture snap shots are no gimmick. Purists can mourn losing the split-second frozen in time, but who can argue that elapsed time does not add an infinity of fractions more? Yes color film lost the contrast of monochrome, just as paint left the shading of charcoal. Movies have long since eclipsed slide shows and now it’s time that single-frame photographers step up to digital video, same fixed shot, same composition, time exposure set to however long will hold the viewer’s gaze. Soon online videos will embed as smoothly as static images, and two dimension visuals will be lifeless.
And like its archival predecessors, devoid of the information we already want to glean from the past.
I offer two examples for this argument. If modern galleries can break the silence barrier, the visual arts would also benefit by retaining the dimension of sound too.
Michael Deppisch’s montage of the 2010 Nashville flood.
Hector Thunderstorm Project by Murray Fredericks
Hector Thunderstorm Project from Murray Fredericks on Vimeo.
Amazon booted Wikileaks from its cloud server service, at the behest of Zionist warmonger Joe Lieberman. Twittered Wikileaks in response:
“If Amazon are so uncomfortable with the first amendment, they should get out of the business of selling books.” The corporate media is already censoring “Cablegate” with misdirection, describing the leaked diplomatic cables as indelicate embarrassments, as opposed to incriminating revelations of America’s imperialist anti-democratic outrages. The Interpol has declared an international manhunt of the Wikileaks founder based on scurrilous accusations of sexual misconduct, Canada is calling for Julian Assange’s execution via US drone, our politicians want to prosecute the Australian Assange under the draconian 1917 US Espionage Act. Amazon’s cowardly deed today is a reminder of the private sector’s omniscient control over everyone’s access to information. Imagine a world where whistleblowers are denied whistles. Shopping bags only please. On Amazon’s internet no one can hear you scream.
While the US media is scolding Wikileaks spokespeople for shaming US diplomacy, the free presses are reporting about the cables which detail the US abuse of diplomatic cover to supply intelligence data, some of it intended to direct US/Israeli drone strikes. The collusion of foreign governments to help the US circumvent international law, US complicity in the Honduran coup, among many other crimes.
Bradley Manning allegedly confessed leaking Cablegate to FBI informer Adrian Lamo, describing the trove of damning revelations thus:
“Hilary Clinton and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning and find an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available in a searchable format to the public. Everywhere there is a U.S. post there is a diplomatic scandal that will be revealed. It is open diplomacy, worldwide anarchy in CSV format. It’s Climategate with a global scope and breathtaking depth. It is beautiful and horrifying.”
Although an estimated half million US government operatives had access to these cables, only 20-year-old intelligence analyst Manning had the conscience to recognize the immorality being kept from public view. That’s a military culture of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, of which discrimination against sexual preference is the smallest consequence.
Have you read any of the objective coverage of the damning cables? What’s been released is only a fraction, so as not to overwhelm a media which can only focus on a single soundbite at a time. Is the absence of cables critical of Israel evidence that Julian Assange is actually MOSSAD? Rather, and I’m not alone in pointing this out, the dearth of diplomatic cables to and from Israel indicates the streamlined collusion with the US. Only in Tarantino movies do hired killers have dialog. Old comrades don’t regale each other with revelations about Quarter Pounder versus Le Royale. Israeli and US diplomats have nothing to have to keep abreast about.
Is Assange really CIA/MOSSAD/AIPAC? I’d say the smears against him more likely are. When the same voices disparaging Assange ALSO find themselves horrified by the revelations of the US diplomatic cables, is when I’ll start giving them some credibility. Nobody’s so cynical that they cannot be shocked about US indifference to its inhumanty. Noam Chomsky calls it the US’ hate of Democracy.
American World Cup viewers tuning in to watch their team face England on Saturday might be excused confusion about their adversary’s flag. Instead of the British Union Jack, English fans waved a red and white standard usually only glimpsed in movies where knights fight dragons, crusades, or Braveheart.
That’s the red cross of Saint George, dragon-slayer, minus the diagonal white-on-blue X of Scotland’s Saint Andrew and the red X of Ireland’s Saint Patrick. Where British dominion is concerned, natural resources and labor are commonwealth, assertion of athletic dominance is forever England.
But the England team crest, with the three lions passant-guardant, dates to lionhearted King Richard, the early realm’s warrior expansionist. Technically the heraldic cats are léopards, because the royal houses ruled in the language of the French, and these three show the empire’s spots: Team England’s badge invokes the era when “England” included the conquered Scotland, Ireland and Wales.
As far as world onlookers cared, the first round pairing of USA versus England was an intramural match among conspiratorial members of the Coalition of the Willing. At best one could only root for the good cop colonizer. Early enough in the game, a score fumbled past England’s goalie portended the Gods’ ambivalence over the outcome. Like Olympic teams, the FIFA contenders are groupings of soccer all-stars whose day jobs mean playing side by side, for either Man United or Real Madrid apparently. It’s hard to expect that team allegiances would defer to nationalism any more than to the federation’s television revenues. The achievement of a tie for match USA – England guaranteed to string along the barely interested American TV audience.
England, Scotland and Ireland were grandfathered into FIFA because, despite not being standalone sovereign nations, they originated the competition. Indeed Britain invented football, whose spread across the world is owed to European colonialism.
Sovereignty is no small distinction when it comes to legitimizing sports teams. Taiwan and Tibet are not recognized by China for example, as the Korean halves reject each other, as the US might object to Puerto Rican or Hawaiian bids for succession.
Today a pretense of sovereignty is enough to field a national soccer team. Take Iraq, Afghanistan and Israel, for example, and I needn’t stop there. By what standard are they independent entities versus US client states? They have their own flags, for all the US cares, and I daresay American pride would be sacrificed for the political gain of either of these puppets excelling their master in sport. A success in sporting circles would only bolster the facade of their indigenous national sovereignty.
Does it say something about the difference between contemporary empires and past, that the US doesn’t need to stamp the red, white and blue unto its colonial projects? Nor dominate them in the arena?
We can contrast America’s far-flung possessions and occupations with the British Commonwealth, whose flags closely mimicked mother Britain’s theme. But I’d like to clarify Ireland’s representation on the British flag. The cross of St. Patrick whose outline informs the Union Jack, represents Ireland before her independence. Still occupied Northern Ireland has a flag which duplicates England’s but for the addition of a loyalist co-opted red hand at its center.
While England holds fast to Scotland’s oil and Ireland’s loyalists, when it comes to sport, she wants all the credit.
A Gaza Flotilla PR mishap, as minor as a participant speaking out of place, was seized upon by one reporter to suggest rivalry between co-sponsors of the relief convoy due to convene Saturday at Gaza’s door. When an interviewee said “Free Palestine Movement” instead of “Free Gaza,” the reporter recalled scenes from Monty Python’s Life of Brian and the mortal rivalry between the “People’s Judean Front” and the “People’s Front of Judea,” often understood to lampoon the PLO and it splinter groups. Haha. But why didn’t the reporter mention Python’s other irreverent terrorist gang also fighting the Roman occupation: the uber-Zionist Nazirene? Because Otto and the Nazirene, that’s right, not Nazarene, were cut from the video when control was wrestled from Monty Python for the rights.
Why the offense? Because they wore swastika-like Stars-of-David and they goose-stepped? Because they followed a small-mustached leader named Otto who dreamed of a racially pure state for Jews only?
I’m surprised that more Monty Python fans aren’t livid at the suggestion the classic has been censored for all posterity. But only those who saw Life of Brian in the theater, or can pick up an out-of-print paperback of the screenplay, would know what lines successive viewers don’t hear to memorize.
Lines like these between Eric Idle and Graham Chapman:
OTTO: It’s time, you know … Time that we Jews racially purified ourselves … We need more living room. We must move into the traditionally Jewish areas of Samaria.
BRIAN: What about the Samaritans?
OTTO: Well, we can put them in little camps. And after Samaria we must move into Jordan and create a great Jewish state that will last a thousand years.
Imagine a Zionist depicted using Hitler’s expression “living space!” Lebensraum meant a homeland where the German people could live unmolested, with room for their population to grow.
Associating Zionists with Nazis has always meant courting trouble. Does it sound incredible that defenders of Israel would take a knife to Monty Python’s work? Know any other blockbuster movies of the late 70s which mysteriously shed memorable scenes when they reemerged on video?
Criterion recently released a DVD with extras that purport to include the deleted scenes, you can see them on Youtube, but they are actually outtakes with bits missing still, in particular the lines above.
I wrote about this at length in an earlier post, when I came upon the missing dialog just by chance. In that post I also transcribed the full text of the censored scenes.
Back to the joke made at the Free Gaza Movement‘s expense. Hopefully the organizers can laugh it off. Really Jerusalem-based reporter Jackie Rowland was making hay of an email shown to her by a participant being compelled to switch the word “Palestine” for “Gaza” because they were not authorized to speak officially for the “Free Gaza Movement.” With any improvised collection of activists, only those tasked should speak for the whole. Especially someone who may have been admonished beforehand not to present themselves as a spokesman.
I cannot presume to know what were the motives in this instance, but it’s been my experience that characters bent on disrupting the work of activists often put themselves before the cameras to sabotage the message. Leaders have to guard against that tactic.
The reporter should have know as much. Imagine interviewing Rush Limbaugh and taking him at his word that he represented the White House.
The activist should have made that fact more clear. It certainly was disingenuous of the reporter however, because it would be easy to confirm that there was no such group, instead of concluding that rival non-profits were vying for taking credit for the convoy. In that way Jackie Rowland’s article seemed like a mean-spirited laugh.
The groups which have brought the multi-million dollar enterprise together that is the Gaza Freedom Flotilla appear to me to be far from adversaries, otherwise how could this be the ninth unified attempt?
The same cannot be said for Fatah and Hamas of course, nor of the extremists in Israel.
The latest reports have the relief convoy meeting in the international waters off of Gaza on Saturday. The story has been playing well in the international press, and is beginning to see daylight in the US. Apart from those with a Zionist slant, two decent reports emerged today in the WSJ and Time.
Can someone please explain to me what it means to fly this flag? The POW-MIA flag is ubiquitous these days around veterans. Our town hall flies this black flag halfway below the Stars and Stripes. When the latter is at half mast, the former hangs indecorously low. Which reminds me of a pirate ship stalking a wavering Old Glory.
I understand POW and MIA, and “you are not forgotten.” But there is no flag for the veterans, the dead or wounded, to whom does this lone flag speak and why?
Since the Gulf War, the US military maintains that it loses track of none of its soldiers. We’ve had POWs but they’ve been returned, and we’ve had MIAs whose bodies have been found. One was recovered even recently, though it was the body of a pilot lost over Iraq, understood to have died. Casualties at sea are still sometimes unrecoverable, but at least something about American war-making proficiency now permits us to confirm deaths even sans corpus. Supposedly.
US military engagements between those wars, and later, have been kept outside public scrutiny, or not officially admitted. As a result, they’ve added no POWs or MIAs for the home front to worry over.
Which leaves Vietnam, from whose era comes the dark silhouette of a bent inmate in the shadow of a prison guard tower. According to the last report, there remain 1728 American soldiers missing in action in Indochina. They are unaccounted for — it might be more fair to say–not missing persons, expected to turn up.
During the Vietnam War, the MIA list gave hope that your soldier wasn’t among the fallen. It was a hope that loved ones could cling to for even years after the fall of Siagon. On the radio, a Dick Curless hit from 1965 continued to resonate even as the war receded from memory. “Six Times a Day” told of a bride in post-WWII Germany who met the trains every day, awaiting the return of her German soldier, held by the Soviets in war-reparation labor camps until the Russians considered them to have atoned. Was this what we expected Vietnam was doing?
Six times a day the trains came down from Frankfort
The night he came ten years were almost through
She held him close and said I knew you’d be here
He said I had no doubt you’d be here too
American wives were determined to wait even longer, except evidence of post-war prisoners never came. There was speculation of a cover-up, suspicions which politicians like John Kerry and John McCain do little to assuage. After the war, some believe that prisoner GIs were left behind, whom the North Vietnamese hoped to exchange for war reparations. Instead of paying, it’s conjectured that the US government chose to deny the existence of those men. No American diplomat has ever confirmed the scenario, and no surviving GI has ever surfaced.
The closest we’ve come to rescuing POWs was at the movies, when Rambo went back for a jailbreak and to do-over America’s lost war.
Even as the rumor persisted, the fate of the abandoned POWs is assumed to have been execution at the hands of their former foe, presumed so exasperated and bitter. The general consensus today, no matter the theory, is that no veteran is anticipated to step alive from the sad lists of the Vietnam MIA.
If they are presumed dead, then what separates an MIA from the dead, who we honor together with all veterans? The Vietnam MIA have been added to the Vietnam Memorial. How now is their memory any different?
Even recently I’ve seen relatives of those MIA conduct special ceremonies on Memorial Day, with the empty place setting, the chair, the vase and rose, etc. It looks to me as though the family members have even passed the ritual down to grandchildren who would not even have know the missing soldier. But this ceremony isn’t conducted for the regular dead, who are also missing from the family table, it’s reserved for the missing dead. And so I wonder at the distinction.
MIAs represent casualties who fell off the books. If a soldier’s capture is confirmed, his status changes to POW, otherwise soldiers come up missing through desertion, treason, malfeasance, or physical obliteration. Mother nature can dispose of bodies, but the most common cause of disappearance is owed to the inhuman scale of mechanized war. As weapons grew more powerful, physical bodies more frequently disintegrated. Missing bodies today, even looking back retrospectively, are the result of human beings eclipsed by machine violence. In the engagements America has chosen from Vietnam onward, usually the technology for the big violence is our side’s alone. Which is not to implicate friendly fire. Often USAF air strikes are called in over battlefields strewn already with GI fatalities.
At first the act of flying a POW flag was aimed at the Vietnamese, to remind all around us, with a sideways glance at our enemies, of our concern for our soldiers. Perhaps the MIA component was an urging to Vietnam as well, after the war, to put effort into recovering US soldier remains. Over the decades, I’m not sure that Vietnam could have shown itself more cooperative. If archeological digs are today able to unearth more evidence, it’s not because the Vietnamese weren’t trying.
Who today are we addressing with the POW-MIA flags? I see these flags usually paired with the Red, White and Blue. But those are directed at our foes.
If a soldier’s relation has question to suspect their soldier is an MIA, isn’t that a beef to take up with the US military? The POW-MIA flag seems to say, we don’t trust you, don’t lie to us about our boys in uniform. We don’t want you smashing their bodies to smithereens, or leaving them behind and not telling us. The POW-MIA flag is a renegade message which says: we support the troops, but not their mission. Give them back.
Flying the POW-MIA flag is so unpatriotic, it’s patriotic.
1. Celebrity activists have joined to condemn the Toronto Film Festival’s celebration of the movie industry of Tel Aviv, inappropriate while an Israeli regime ruthlessly exterminates its Palestinian Problem by seizing their lands, driving them into exile, and interning those who refuse to leave in the ghettos of Gaza and the West Bank, then making warm fuzzy movies about it.
2. Iraqi Bush Shoe-Thrower Muntadhar al-Zaidi has been freed! He says he was tortured for his act, but he didn’t regret it. “I got my chance and I didn’t miss it,” he said, now missing a few teeth. The US media is equating Joe Wilson’s affront to earnest debate to al-Zaidi’s internationally-hailed angry repudiation of a lying mass-murderer. Good luck with that.
3. Activists have been arrested for protesting war recruiting in a Philadelphia mall where children were being offered an “Army Experience Center”. Alright, arrests are not good news, in particular when they include the OpEdNews reporter covering the action, but it’s always encouraging to see Americans stand between Army recruiters and their prey.
Note on #1: Signers of the complaint to the TIFF, who include Naomi Klein and Howard Zinn, explain that they are protesting the festival’s framing of the Israeli films, they are not “black listing” the films as the defenders of Israel charge. To me, equating a protest of the festival to blacklisting smacks of decrying “anti-Semitism.”
The chief celebrities rushing to counter the TIFF complainants are, according to the Toronto Star: Jerry Seinfeld, Natalie Portman, Sacha Baron Cohen , Lisa Kudrow, David Cronenberg, Minnie Driver, Simon Wiesenthal Center founder and filmmaker Marvin Hier, Cineplex Canada CEO Ellis Jacob, Norman Jewison, Lenny Kravitz, Sherry Lansing (former head of Paramount Studios), producer Robert Lantos, the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto and the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles. Interesting pattern?
In the interim, a UN probe determines war crimes were committed in Gaza incursion, and US envoy seeks to reach compromise with Israel over illegal settlements.
Armchair freedom fighters like me count on there remaining some parity between the forces of oppression and man’s inexorable drive to be free. Masses can repel the few, nonviolence can shame the hesitant, terrorism can haunt the genteel, IEDs can pick off the occupiers, training can dispatch the sentries, but how to overcome automatons? We’ve confronted impregnable drones in scifi movies, and now such drones have become reality. They’re bits of nothing in the air really, but a literal boatload of firepower has got their back.
The Economist reports that drones can monitor the activity of shoeboxes from an altitude of near-space, beyond the range of an RPG fired from a hot air balloon. A drone’s vulnerability remains its communications channels, but even intercepting those is outside the realm of non-military technology.
While drones reduce the exposure of real soldiers to harm’s way, they increase a military force’s effectiveness. Drones are lauded as cheaper to operate as conventional jet fighters, but in reality their functionality draws on greater resources. The Economist writes of a drone the size of a corporate jet called a Global Hawk, which requires a staff of 20 to 30 to operate. Many more than would be necessary inside a C130 gunship, but of course, almost all of them manning new killing devices.
So long as the empire has an unlimited budget to spend, Freedom Fighters are fucked, and terrorists will be the only recourse. The only target available to the adversary of a drone, is the command center which controls it. Be it in America, or a distant military base, that’s where the enemy will have to strike.
Or the American public will have to renounce the budget which affords this technology.
You may not be bothered by the notion that remote-operated drones can monitor human activities and rain destruction upon them when appropriate. The old, “what have I to fear if I’m doing nothing wrong?” Wait until you are the wrong side of the oppressors. Coca Cola kills union organizers in Colombia. Walmart would probably like to kill you in their parking lot if you are leaving with a shopping cart filled insufficiently relative to you debit card balance. They already know it, but a drone in their hands will give them the ability to find you.
It’s your last chance to see the EARTH FIRST! ROADSHOW as it passes through Denver, on its way to the Round River Rendezvous. Tonight, 7PM at Capitol Hill’s Gypsy House Cafe, at 13th and Marion.
From High Country Earth First:
A multi-dimensional presentation with an introduction to and history of Earth First!, News from the front lines of the radical environmental movement, information on local campaigns and struggles, puppet shows, skill sharing, music, movies, and much more!
Come to the Tuesday night event to learn more about High Country Earth First!, Colorado’s very own Earth First! group, and all of the awesome campaigns we are kicking off!
Ex-soldier bragged about Iraqi rape, deaths then celebrated at a barbeque from Reuters. “Iraqis were horrified by the crime, one of a series of incidents involving U.S. soldiers that strained relations with the Iraqi government. But the onset of Green’s trial three years later is not resonating with most Iraqis, observers there say. The incident was portrayed in the 2007 movie “Redacted” by director Brian De Palma, who complained the film was censored by the studio. Its graphic images shocked many viewers.”
From wikipedia we read that…
‘Commentator Bill O’Reilly has called for protests of Redacted and against Mark Cuban. O’Reilly claims that the film demeans American soldiers and may incite violence against them, and he has called on ticketholders to bring signs to Dallas Mavericks games and all theaters showing the movie, stating ‘Support the Troops’.[18] Mark Cuban has responded, saying “The movie is fully pro-troops. The hero of the movie is a soldier who stands up for what is right in the face of adversity… I think that the concept that the enemy will see these films and use it as motivation is total nonsense. We have no plans of translating these movies to Arabic or other middle eastern languages…It’s really easy to hate, its really hard to think issues through on their own merits. Anything that makes people think about issues is a good thing.”‘
You can see the film Redacted online for free and it is well worth it. Don’t let these right Wing creeps like Bill O’Reilly get away with what you can see or not see. It never got a chance at your local cinema but most good films never do either. There are just far too many American idiots like O’Reilly out there and unfortunately, many of them get their marching orders from Fox and Murdoch, if not their actual salaries like Master Scissor Bill himself does.
At the behest of the Vatican, Bishop Richard Williamson apologized for offense caused by his statements regarding WWII historical records of the Nazi concentration camps. But Pope Benedict weighed the bishop’s statement as insufficient. Now he’s demanding a full retraction before he will reconsider the latter’s excommunication. Being urged to recant may be a scandal in papal circles, but history buffs and cineasts have only ever seen truth-clinging heretics assailed with cries to “RECANT!”
Google it yourself. Oddly this development puts Bishop Williamson in esteemed scientific and theological company. But this is just historical revisionism. Especially aimed against closely held popular beliefs, revisiting the official version of the Holocaust is like backing a losing horse still too early after the “fact.” However, has blasphemy ever met with other than an officially disgusted welcome? Certainly the challenging argument only compounds its offense by deeming to compare itself to earlier, now orthodox, heresy.
One might well wonder where this episode is leading. Has the Pope been oblivious to the Holocaust issue, as his spokesmen would have us believe, or is the German pontiff deviously reopening the official discussion?
As with any reform, leaders may be receptive, but know in the meanwhile that their subjects are the hardest to win over. The brunt of resistance is thus diverted toward the heretic, until the case is made. Only in the movies do champions of the status quo look unbecoming in defeat. In the real world the holdouts are populist champions representing the overwhelming majority of adherents.
Bishop Richard Williamson’s public statements have caused great offense, and the Pope’s recent move to make peace with the renegade Williamson, among others, has reignited the fury of the Bishop’s critics. But of what import do non-Catholic opinions have on the subject of how the Vatican administrates its ranks? Surely a bishop’s personal, non-religious views, soon return to obscurity.
By throwing the ball back in the Bishop’s court, Pope Benedict unquestionably directs the media spotlight back on the “question” of the Holocaust. It’s hard to imagine that he expects anything other than a firm committed stand by the bishop. What are men of faith but what they believe?
At stake is more than the rehabilitation of Bishop Williamson, but the soul of modern Germany. A re-characterization of the Nazi death camps would mean reassessing the collective guilt of Europe’s non-Jews. It might also mean a reprieve for the German People whose national identity for generations has been defined by their participation in the most unspeakable of evils.
I’m not sure why the Pope’s having once been a Hitler Youth is always dismissed out of hand. Although perhaps, for the sake of argument, that’s as it should.
The Vatican might also gain something themselves by bringing more light to critical analysis of the Holocaust. They could be seeking a possible mitigation of their infamous role in the Nazi genocide. There’s no escaping the evidence that the Catholic church collaborated with Hitler. If they can paint his “Final Solution” as less homicidal, their actions can perhaps be adjudged as more pragmatic.
There have been many effective antiwar movies made through the years, but the most moving antiwar movie about the US wars in Central America that our population funded back in the late ’70s and ’80s is a movie called Innocent Voices. It came out in 2005 and got little notice inside the US although it deserved to win the Academy Award for the best foreign film of that year. However with Bush firmly in power and the US government committing atrocities in Afghanistan and Iraq as elsewhere and as before, the film got downplayed here at home.
The film takes place in El Salvador and examines the lives of the children there during the ’80s. As grim a picture as the film paints, the reality was even worse, as the massacre at El Mozote underlines. I recommend watching this film with children ages 10 and above. They need to know why it is important to protest US war making and why it is relevant to them. as children.
To get a good idea of the themes of this film, be sure to check out all 3 of the clips on the link given above. This is definitely a film worth watching and I only wish that more Americans knew about it.
I think it’s time to colorize The Grapes of Wrath. And I don’t mean the Turner Classics process exactly. It may help to dumb down the artistic contrast of the black & white for a contemporary audience palate of splashy Disneycolor, but how about trying to make Steinbeck’s theme more accessible to today’s spoon-fed viewers? Let’s colorize the skin of the poor migrant workers to reflect the inhumanly-treated populations of today’s displaced im-migrants of color.
I can’t remember where I come down on colorizing the old movies. No one’s insisted on infusing CMYK into Ansel Adams or Picasso’s sketchbook, why are masterpieces filmed in black and white supposed to be pigment deficient? We don’t presume to dub dialog over the silent movies made before the age of the talkies. As yet. Of course, Ted Turner was concerned for reviving interest in old intellectual properties, many of which were already in-artful. And perhaps his salesmanship maneuver has been proven effective. When my family sat down to watch Grapes of Wrath, the grey image tuned a number of youthful eyes away.
Like Dorothea Lange’s famous photographs, John Ford’s film depicted disadvantaged Okies with whom the American audience could identify. We may not know what it feels like to be forced off our homes, but how the families cope with the hardship, we all can recognize. I’m curious how the film was received by Californians in 1940, coming less than ten years after the original plague of destitute Oklahoma refugees. How would the characters have faired with our sympathies if they had been played as coarse hillbilly Crackers with guns and a poor person’s chip-on-the-shoulder desperation?
The poor protagonists of The Grapes of Wrath were weakened skinny po-folk, who staked their relief on the strength of a single hopeful job listing flyer, who protested their oppression without resorting to violence, and who accepted hardship as their lot. Seeing into their daily lives, viewers were shown a dignified, earnest people who treated others with respect and compassion. Antagonist characters in the film were less charitable, taking advantage of the hard-luck migrants with guile, violence and authority. People into which the Oklahoma refugees traveled, New Mexico, Arizona and California, treated the migrants like vermin. Even as onlookers might express admiration for the Okies’ determination to cross Death Valley, the better fed Californians held them in disdain for not knowing enough to be in such a predicament. The Okies were blamed for their own poverty. They threatened to burden everyone’s already depleting resources. Only the viewers understood the unfair actions which had landed the otherwise self-sufficient sharecroppers to have to leave their livelihoods.
The circumstances of the Dust Bowl cum great depression era forced removal of the small Oklahoma farmers is eerily familiar to today’s economy and its foreclosures. Homesteaders find themselves made homeless, as a consequence of business decisions between corporations, banks and regulators. The Oklahoma farmers wanted to point their shotguns to warn the financial disruptors from their land, but found the conduits of the dirty work were their own neighbors and relatives. Everyone was merely following orders from someone higher up. That the system could be at fault, left the victims with no clear recourse.
Here’s the classic eviction exchange.
THE MAN
I can’t help that. All I know is I got my orders.
They told me to tell you you got to get off,
and that’s what I’m telling you.MULEY
You mean get off my own land?THE MAN
Now don’t go blaming me. It ain’t *my* fault.SON
Whose fault is it?THE MAN
You know who owns the land–the Shawnee Land and Cattle Company.MULEY
Who’s the Shawnee Land and Cattle Comp’ny?THE MAN
It ain’t nobody. It’s a company.SON
They got a pres’dent, ain’t they?
They got somebody that knows what a shotgun’s for, ain’t they?THE MAN
But it ain’t *his* fault, because the *bank* tells him what to do.SON
All right. Where’s the bank?THE MAN
Tulsa. But what’s the use of picking on him?
He ain’t anything but the manager, and half crazy hisself,
trying to keep up with his orders from the east!MULEY
Then who *do* we shoot?THE MAN
Brother, I don’t know. If I did I’d tell you.
But I just don’t know *who’s* to blame!
There was a lot more in The Grapes of Wrath which could inform a modern world view. The dreaded “Cats” for example. These were the Caterpillar tractors which were shown ravaging the land like locusts, arriving to demolish the houses of the reluctant dispossessed. Bulldozers are still used for that function today. In fact, Caterpillar manufactures armored versions to deploy in war zones for the destruction of houses. Palestinians have shown to be less reluctant than the poor Okies about trying to shoot the bulldozer drivers who are taking aim at their homes. Israel is expanding its settlements in Palestine with the aid of Caterpillar tractors which clear the land of its recalcitrant invadees.
Likewise, the union busting strategies portrayed in Grapes of Wrath are the same used today. Police officers are called in when work supervisors encounter workers who show too much skepticism for the employer’s scam. Troublemakers are arrested lest the workforce succeed in organizing itself. Instigators are paid to infiltrate a social event and start a fight, to give law enforcement the excuse to break in and make its calculated arrests. Casual viewers may think the famous 1939 film depicts a bygone age. Not at all.
Director John Ford made sure that the Okie migrants were deathly skinny, while everyone else, from gas station attendants to deputized union-busters, was immaculately dressed and well fed. But the audience could identify with both sides, because both were white. Imagine if the displaced peoples were not the same color.
Today’s migrant workers are hispanic. They are illegal immigrants, just like Okies passing through the Arizona checkpoint in Steinbeck’s novel.
GUARD
Where you going?TOM
California.GUARD
How long you plan to be in Arizona?TOM
No longer’n we can get acrost her.GUARD
Got any plants?TOM
No plants.GUARD
Okay. Go ahead, but you better keep movin’.
Could a modern audience appreciate the travails of a Mexican family in an exact same predicament? Mexican farmers have been forced from their land in an even less polite manner today. They have similar claim to their homesteads, some of them even have indigenous claims. But American and Mexican corporate interests have been forcing the Mexicans to flee. The migration north is not about seeking fortune; picking lettuce it most certainly is not. The work our illegal immigrants are willing to do is out of desperation and subsistence. Corporate America reserves our agricultural work for migrants because it’s cheaper. Otherwise American citizens have devised unions to ensure that workers are paid an honorable wage. Exploitation of the illegal immigrant is simply a bypass of decent labor practices meant to protect everyone.
In selfish, protectionist terms, hiring illegal immigrants undermines the strength of unionized labor. Ultimately the exploitation of others dehumanizes us all.
I wish Americans could see The Grapes of Wrath as a projection of the ongoing injustices suffered by all exploited migrants. As well-fed American citizens leading prosperous lives, wouldn’t it be our responsibility to help the victims of our system? Instead, we are those cold-hearted leather-jacketed Californians herding them into lives of slow death by hard labor and starvation.
The Grapes of Wrath offered a strong Socialist message, disguised in a protagonist who did not yet have all the answers. Before setting out to light the way, Henry Fonda’s character says this to his mom:
TOM
…maybe I can do sump’n. Maybe I can jus’ fin’ out sump’n.
Jus’ scrounge aroun’ an’ try to fin’ out what it is that’s wrong,
an then see if they ain’t sump’n could be done about it.
But I ain’t thought it out clear, Ma. I can’t.
I don’t know enough.MA
How’m I gonna know ’bout you?
They might kill you an’ I wouldn’t know.
They might hurt you. How’m I gonna know?TOM
Well, maybe it’s like Casy says, a fella ain’t got a soul
of his own, but on’y a piece of a big soul–the one big soul
that belongs to ever’body–an’ then…
Then it don’t matter. Then I’ll be all aroun’ in the dark.
I’ll be ever’where–wherever you look. Wherever there’s
a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there.
Wherever there’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there.
I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad
–an’ I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re
hungry an’ they know supper’s ready.
An’ when our people eat the stuff they raise,
an’ live in the houses they build, why, I’ll be there too.
I had to see The Grapes of Wrath in high school. It was required. Are schools today trying to infuse students with social wisdom? How about a Grapes Redux starring people of color? Imagine this closing line, spoken by a dark skinned mother, about the hardship that is her people’s fate:
MA
…Maybe that makes us tough. Rich fellas come up an’ they die, an’ their kids ain’t no good, an’ they die out. But we keep a-comin’. We’re the people that live. Can’t nobody wipe us out. Can’t nobody lick us. We’ll go on forever, Pa. We’re the people.
George Carlin died yesterday. Here’s his 2007 bit on Who Owns You.
Transcript of THE SEVEN DIRTY WORDS prepared for FCC:
Aruba-du, ruba-tu, ruba-tu. I was thinking about the curse words and the swear words, the cuss words and the words that you can’t say, that you’re not supposed to say all the time, [’cause] words or people into words want to hear your words.
Some guys like to record your words and sell them back to you if they can, (laughter) listen in on the telephone, write down what words you say. A guy who used to be in Washington knew that his phone was tapped, used to answer, Fuck Hoover, yes, go ahead. (laughter)
Okay, I was thinking one night about the words you couldn’t say on the public, ah, airwaves, um, the ones you definitely wouldn’t say, ever, [‘]cause I heard a lady say bitch one night on television, and it was cool like she was talking about, you know, ah, well, the bitch is the first one to notice that in the litter Johnie right (murmur)
Right. And, uh, bastard you can say, and hell and damn so I have to figure out which ones you couldn’t and ever and it came down to seven but the list is open to amendment, and in fact, has been changed, uh, by now, ha, a lot of people pointed things out to me, and I noticed some myself.
The original seven words were, shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits. Those are the ones that will curve your spine, grow hair on your hands and (laughter) maybe, even bring us, God help us, peace without honor (laughter) um, and a bourbon. (laughter)
And now the first thing that we noticed was that word fuck was really repeated in there because the word motherfucker is a compound word and it’s another form of the word fuck. (laughter) You want to be a purist it doesn’t really — it can’t be on the list of basic words.
Also, cocksucker is a compound word and neither half of that is really dirty. The word — the half sucker that’s merely suggestive (laughter) and the word cock is a half-way dirty word, 50% dirty — dirty half the time, depending on what you mean by it. (laughter) Uh, remember when you first heard it, like in 6th grade, you used to giggle. “And the cock crowed three times,” heh (laughter) the cock — three times. It’s in the Bible, cock in the Bible. (laughter) And the first time you heard about a cock-fight, remember — What? Huh? naw. It ain’t that, are you stupid? man. (laughter, clapping) It’s chickens, you know, (laughter)
Then you have the four letter words from the old Anglo-Saxon fame. Uh, shit and fuck. The word shit, uh, is an interesting kind of word in that the middle class has never really accepted it and approved it. They use it like, crazy but it’s not really okay. It’s still a rude, dirty, old kind of gushy word. (laughter)
They don’t like that, but they say it, like, they say it like, a lady now in a middle-class home, you’ll hear most of the time she says it as an expletive, you know, it’s out of her mouth before she knows. She says, Oh shit oh shit, (laughter) oh shit. If she drops something, Oh, the shit hurt the broccoli. Shit. Thank you. (footsteps fading away) (papers ruffling)
Read it! (from audience)
Shit! (laughter) I won the Grammy, man, for the comedy album. Isn’t that groovy? (clapping, whistling) (murmur) That’s true. Thank you. Thank you man. Yeah. (murmur) (continuous clapping) Thank you man. Thank you. Thank you very much, man. Thank, no, (end of continuous clapping) for that and for the Grammy, man, [‘]cause (laughter) that’s based on people liking it man, yeh, that’s ah, that’s okay man. (laughter) Let’s let that go, man. I got my Grammy. I can let my hair hang down now, shit. (laughter)
Ha! So! Now the word shit is okay for the man. At work you can say it like crazy. Mostly figuratively, Get that shit out of here, will ya? I don’t want to see that shit anymore. I can’t cut that shit, buddy. I’ve had that shit up to here. I think you’re full of shit myself. (laughter) He don’t know shit from Shinola. (laughter) you know that? (laughter) Always wondered how the Shinola people feel about that (laughter) Hi, I’m the new man from Shinola. (laughter) Hi, how are ya? Nice to see ya. (laughter) How are ya? (laughter) Boy, I don’t know whether to shit or wind my watch. (laughter) Guess, I’ll shit on my watch. (laughter) Oh, the shit is going to hit de fan. (laughter) Built like a brick shit-house. (laughter) Up, he’s up shit’s creek. (laughter) He’s had it. (laughter) He hit me, I’m sorry. (laughter)
Hot shit, holy shit, tough shit, eat shit, (laughter) shit-eating grin. Uh, whoever thought of that was ill. (murmur laughter) He had a shit-eating grin! He had a what? (laughter) Shit on a stick. (laughter) Shit in a handbag. I always like that. He ain’t worth shit in a handbag. (laughter) Shitty. He acted real shitty. (laughter) You know what I mean? (laughter) I got the money back, but a real shitty attitude. Heh, he had a shit-fit. (laughter) Wow! Shit-fit. Whew! Glad I wasn’t there. (murmur, laughter)
All the animals — Bull shit, horse shit, cow shit, rat shit, bat shit. (laughter) First time I heard bat shit, I really came apart. A guy in Oklahoma, Boggs, said it, man. Aw! Bat shit. (laughter) Vera reminded me of that last night, ah (murmur). Snake shit, slicker than owl shit. (laughter)
Get your shit together. Shit or get off the pot. (laughter) I got a shit-load full of them. (laughter) I got a shit-pot full, all right. Shit-head, shit-heel, shit in your heart, shit for brains, (laughter) shit-face, heh (laughter) I always try to think how that could have originated; the first guy that said that. Somebody got drunk and fell in some shit, you know. (laughter) Hey, I’m shit-face. (laughter) Shitface, today. (laughter)
Anyway, enough of that shit. (laughter)
The big one, the word fuck that’s the one that hangs them up the most. [‘]Cause in a lot of cases that’s the very act that hangs them up the most. So, it’s natural that the word would, uh, have the same effect. It’s a great word, fuck, nice word, easy word, cute word, kind of. Easy word to say. One syllable, short u. (laughter) Fuck. (Murmur) You know, it’s easy. Starts with a nice soft sound fuh ends with a kuh. Right? (laughter) A little something for everyone. Fuck (laughter) Good word.
Kind of a proud word, too. Who are you? I am FUCK. (laughter) FUCK OF THE MOUNTAIN. (laughter) Tune in again next week to FUCK OF THE MOUNTAIN. (laughter)
It’s an interesting word too, [‘]cause it’s got a double kind of a life — personality — dual, you know, whatever the right phrase is. It leads a double life, the word fuck. First of all, it means, sometimes, most of the time, fuck. What does it mean? It means to make love. Right? We’re going to make love, yeh, we’re going to fuck, yeh, we’re going to fuck, yeh, we’re going to make love. (laughter) we’re really going to fuck, yeah, we’re going to make love. Right?
And it also means the beginning of life, it’s the act that begins life, so there’s the word hanging around with words like love, and life, and yet on the other hand, it’s also a word that we really use to hurt each other with, man.
It’s a heavy. It’s one that you have toward the end of the argument. (laughter) Right? (laughter) You finally can’t make out. Oh, fuck you man. I said, fuck you. (laughter, murmur) Stupid fuck. (laughter) Fuck you and everybody that looks like you. (laughter) man.
It would be nice to change the movies that we already have and substitute the word fuck for the word kill, wherever we could, and some of those movie cliches would change a little bit. Madfuckers still on the loose. Stop me before I fuck again. Fuck the ump, fuck the ump, fuck the ump, fuck the ump, fuck the ump. Easy on the clutch Bill, you’ll fuck that engine again. (laughter)
The other shit one was, I don’t give a shit. Like it’s worth something, you know? (laughter) I don’t give a shit. Hey, well, I don’t take no shit, (laughter) you know what I mean? You know why I don’t take no shit? (laughter) [‘]Cause I don’t give a shit. (laughter) If I give a shit, I would have to pack shit. (laughter) But I don’t pack no shit cause I don’t give a shit. (laughter) You wouldn’t shit me, would you? (laughter) That’s a joke when you’re a kid with a worm looking out the bird’s ass. You wouldn’t shit me, would you? (laughter) It’s an eight-year-old joke but a good one. (laughter)
The additions to the list. I found three more words that had to be put on the list of words you could never say on television, and they were fart, turd and twat, those three. (laughter)
Fart, we talked about, it’s harmless It’s like tits, it’s a cutie word, no problem.
Turd, you can’t say but who wants to, you know? (laughter) The subject never comes up on the panel so I’m not worried about that one.
Now the word twat is an interesting word. Twat! Yeh, right in the twat. (laughter) Twat is an interesting word because it’s the only one I know of, the only slang word applying to the, a part of the sexual anatomy that doesn’t have another meaning to it. Like, ah, snatch, box and pussy all have other meanings, man. Even in a Walt Disney movie, you can say, We’re going to snatch that pussy and put him in a box and bring him on the airplane. (murmur, laughter) Everybody loves it. The twat stands alone, man, as it should. And two-way words. Ah, ass is okay providing you’re riding into town on a religious feast day. (laughter) You can’t say, up your ass. (laughter) You can say, stuff it! (murmur) There are certain things you can say its weird but you can just come so close.
Before I cut, I, uh, want to, ah, thank you for listening to my words, man, fellow, uh space travelers. Thank you man for tonight and thank you also. (clapping whistling)
He was dressed like Hunter S. Thompson… even had the silly cigarette holder (unlighted ciggie, of course, he was on a public bus, remember)
Usually the Iraq vets I meet on the bus and can immediately tell are vets are the ones with the Walter Reed hardware attached to what’s left of their limbs.
This guy didn’t have pieces missing, not that immediately showed.
He was just short of cryin’ drunk, or phasing from fightin’ drunk to “cryin’ about yer daddy drunk”. Mentioned that he had just got back, two tours of duty there but he survived, dammit, he’s still alive…
said he hates the country but still fought for it.
Offered me a cigarette… on the bus offered me a cigarette…
Said he managed to get out with a Dishonorable Discharge for drug use. That DD part is important, but let me get through the rambling part of the story first, m’kay?
Another Iraq vet called him “Hunter” and he said “Yeah, I know, he was one of my favorites too” and mentioned a couple of movies of Thompson’s work… and that he was “over there” when Gonzo blew his brains out.
Kind of a time warp thingie, that both of them had, they identified the time of his suicide as “last year”. It’s Important, so pay attention…
After the Hunter guy gets off the bus, the other made some teasing remark… I said, yeah, it’s a clear case of PTSD (it was, too…)
He said, “yeah, you’re right, that’s what the VA is treating me for” important …
I mentioned my brother-in-law Al, who came back from the Nam with both PTSD and Malaria..
He softly whistles and says “damn, that’s a helluva combination” and I was getting off the bus right then.
Here’s where all the things stack together, the stuff I tagged as Important.
Drug use is a major symptom of PTSD. So is legalized drug use like alcohol. So is a time warp of three years.
I wasn’t goint to mention the Hunter S. deal to him, when somebody’s at that stage of drunk any suggestion of suicide is dangerous.
But they gave him a Dishonorable after two tours of duty in Iraq.
For exhibiting a symptom of PTSD.
The guy who mentioned that he was being treated by the VA, I didn’t have the time to remind him, the Hunter S. guy, said he had a Dishonorable.
NO medical treatment even for something that’s service related or, in this case, actually CAUSED by his service.
There’s a deal the VVAW and IVAW people have mentioned, that the Pentagoons are deliberately culling people with PTSD as “Disciplinary” or “behavioral” problems, even Dishonorable Discharges, precisely for that reason.
They broke them, but they don’t want to pay to fix them.
But that’s just a “Lefty Conspiracy theory”, right?
Missed this anniversary date April 19, 1995. …13 years later still no real investigation or explanation other than the “lone nut” theory. Although it is fact that multiple bombs were found, then ignored and covered up. Also it is known that FBI withheld thousands of documents in the trial.
Anyone who by now does not understand state sponsored terrorism should look back in history to 1963 when Kennedy and MacNamara would not approve CIA/Army Intelligence Joint Chiefs OPERATION NORTHWOODS, a false flag operation to implement CIA covert acts against Americans, blame them on Fidel Castro, then launch a full scale military invasion of Cuba.
Oklahoma City was a practice run for 9-11 and to begin restricting civil liberties. Operation Northwoods was the template. Ain’t it great living in a country run by Pentagon criminals? I know it’s delusional to think we’ll ever get to the bottom of these events and put the actual perpetrators in jail. A fascist-capitalist system won’t allow that. I just want to pass this info along. For the record.
www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/OK/ok.html
whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/OK/bombs/bombs.html – Proof of Additional Bombs
911research.wtc7.net/non911/oklahoma/index.html – good analysis
911busters.com/OKCB/index.html – Audio of witnesses
americanfreepress.net/html/okc_cover-up_.html
americanfreepress.net/html/okc_bombshell.html
911review.com/precedent/decade/okc.html
www.apfn.org/apfn/okc_coverup.htm
Alex Jones Investigative piece.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6m88MAsR8I
– Excellent coverage as the event unfolded. Original new footage etc…
www.serendipity.li/more/ok_bomb.html
www.geocities.com/northstarzone/OKC.html
www.hourofthetime.com/okcbombingcoverup.html
www.stopcovertwar.com/McVeigh.html
www.patshannan.com/gagantwo.html – Pat is director writer of Murder in the Heartland dvd.
okc.digitalstyledesigns.com/movies/CharlesKey1.mov
I can’t get these to work. I get not found or redirected to a postage stamp site. These were sites by people in OK City
www.okctruth.com/
www.okcbombing.org/News Articles/ckey_bio_indepth.htm
1995 interview with Dale Phillips, Charles Key, Chris Emory
www.blackopradio.com/black216a.ram – Part 1
www.blackopradio.com/black216b.ram – Part 2
RELATED MATERIAL:
MP3: Jesse Trentadue on The Alex Jones Show
Nichols Fingers FBI Agent Directing McVeigh in OKC Bombing By Name
New OKC Revelations Spotlight FBI Involvement In Bombing
Ashcroft Gagged Nichols From Exposing McVeigh’s OKC Bombing Conspirators
The Trentadue Files: New documents offer details of the FBI’s secret OKC investigation
FLASHBACK: In the matter of Kenneth Michael Trentadue
FLASHBACK: McVeigh Video Destroys OKC Bombing Official Story
propagandamatrix.com/articles/february2007/230207insidejob.htm
The American business community, the Democratic and Republican Parties, and the US government they control have destroyed the dollar. Simply put, they pumped it up with empty air, and now nobody wants to use it as international currency. Look at the 3 alternative currencies: gold, the Euro, and barrels of oil. All these alternatives have real use value based on real evaluation of what they can buy, while the paper dollar has nothing other than the Pentagon to back it up now. Take it or bake, is how they want others to shake.
What the paper dollar actually has to back it up, is only our promise to pay the national debt sometime. However, our government acts more like international gangsters rather than any type of legitimate business men. Gangsters are pretty damn iffy, hence the dollar is plummeting in real value recognized by others.
I include a barrel of oil as true and valued currency in today’s world, along with gold and the Euro. Remember those Mad Max movies? Remember how scarce petroleum was the key to survival in those movies? Thank our American ‘leaders’ for creating the new Mad Max movie we are now part of the cast of.
The dollar is dead, How Long Live the Empire?! Remember The Empire of Mad Max’s world? Good luck, Kids. The Empire is turning you into rats that will scurry around for survival. It’s not the movies any more. It’s what the supposedly responsible American business community has done for y’all. It’s Mad Max’s world!
Paul Roberts’ asks, ‘Who is going to bail us out?’ Good question, so see his answer for yourself.
Forget Michael Moore. Forget all the other liberal/ Left movies out there, but go see Ratatouille. Rats to power!
The same director that directed the movie, The Incredibles, has made a movie where French rats once again come to power and overthrow elite snobbery and capitalistic trash to improve basic food consumption for the masses. Power to the rats, and rats to power!
The Soviet Union may have fallen, China is capitalist-roading it, but subversion is still alive. Maybe those rats that ‘infested’ that New York Taco Bell just a while back were merely trying to better the menu? Ratatouille!
The biggest political problem in the US is that Americans hate their neighbors, and our neighbors hate us as well. We have all been taught that the common folk have no good qualities, and that only the corporate world of top dogs is competent at least, unlike ourselves and our neighbors who supposedly know nothing and can do nothing right.
That is a big problem since it it precisely the reverse of what is actually true. In a corrupted society like the US, it is mainly the criminal element that rises to the top and not the non criminal. Contrary to popular opinion promoted in countless cop shows and Hollywood movies, the criminal element is not principally made up of taxi driver robbers, convenience store hold up men, and Bonnie and Clyders all at the bottom of society.
The criminal class is not principally engaged in drug sales out in the bad ol’ ‘Hood’. Can you guess where and how you can find them? Hint… the main body of criminals are quite well dressed compared to most of the folk you probably deal with in your personal life. ‘Clothes make the man’ is a good line of reasoning, but the well dressed folk is what one should be suspect of in the search for criminality in America. Criminals most often have a fine wardrobe.
So why do Americans hate their neighbors so much, and hence hate themselves, too? Who teaches them this self hate? Why do they adore, admire, aspire, and put the powerful criminal class ahead of themselves all the time? It is a complicated question without perhaps a single answer? But one thing is for sure, Americans hate the common man, the common worker. They hate themselves. And that is the principal barrier to any change being made possible for Americans.
Americans hate themselves and their neighbors. Instead, they prefer being delusional and thinking that the better off classes are better than themselves. They hate themselves for being ‘poor’, and think that that comes about because they are somehow defective and therefore more sinful unlike the better set crowd. This perhaps is the real reason that American folk refuse to much work together with their neighbors for change. Instead, they look for ‘leaders’ to follow, always find them, and then discover they have gone nowhere once again… led by their noses.
Led by criminals… well dressed ones, but even more criminal… they are led by well addressed and admired criminals. Our countrymen’s love of the wealthy and their desire to become wealthy means Americans no longer much aspire towards being a democratic society, as possibly our ancestors once did several centuries ago. Instead, they seem most often to hate their lower class neighbors and follow the upper class criminals they hardly know, even when given a choice.
I have become my dad. I remember when he thought my interests too extreme, when decorum appeared all but lost on my generation. What were the offensive bits? I don’t remember. Comic books? TV? Mr. Bill?
This is one of a popular series on YouTube, and the dead-pan stupidity is pretty funny. It doesn’t work for me when it’s a sniper talking to himself.
Here I am freaking out about generations succeeding mine. Have I a leg to stand on? You tell me if this should be a 13-year-old’s MySpace pick. Is this what comes of already watching violent R-rated movies, and playing first-person-assassin video games like the Godfather?
Shall I describe for you the Godfather game? You’re a hood, working your way up through the ranks by doing jobs for the boss. You shoot cops, shake down merchants, and take out other gangsters, while knocking off anyone in your way. You know these games: shoot first, there is no ask-questions button on the joystick. Now say an innocent bystander witnesses your deed. You kick, punch, or knife him or her until they stop calling for help. You can shoot them if you’re not worried about drawing more attention. Makes sense of course.
The next gangland game coming up? A first-person-shooter based on Brian dePalma’s SCARFACE, which itself staged more gratuitous violence than all of Frances Coppola’s films put together. Already kids are announcing themselves entering the room, air-Uzi in hand, with heavy accent: “Say hello to my little friend!”
Snipers
Really. We have American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan picking off everything that moves through their sniper scopes. Our boys, all they can be, are shooting toddlers like they were bugs to torment, women because they can’t have them, old men out of spite, boys for sport, and babies because nits make lice.
What do we hope to be breeding?
I did a quick google and came across probably a good 15 book clubs in the Colorado Springs area. That is a surprise to me, since I, like many, only think book clubs when I think Oprah Winfrey Show.
I always thought that at least this was one good thing Oprah actually was doing, trying to interest people in reading some again. Lord knows they need to read a little bit more in the US, as most everywhere else, too. So when the peace group PPJPC decided to start one, I thought it a good idea, though the selection of Jimmy Carter’s new book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, seemed to me at first to be an unfortunate choice. I was mistaken.
I almost didn’t go since I didn’t want to waste my money on Jimmy Carter’s nonsense, but then I thought well why the hell not go and read some of the book in the bookstore instead of buying it? I am glad I did, because I thought our discussions of this book on the three different nights the club has been going were all quite interesting. What was great was the way Steve Saint, organizer of the club, allowed for everyone to participate so well. This was quite a contrast to how much of the affairs at the PPJPC ‘teach’ and preach at people more than allow everyone to give their input.
More than Jimmy Carter’s writings, the discussion was more about the Middle East itself and the current political situation in Israel/ Palestine. We need more opportunities where people can just talk to each other about current political issues in a relaxed manner, and this is what I think will make the PPJPC book club a lot different than the other myriad book clubs around town.
Next book up for discussion is not yet determined, but it will probably provoke a good political discussion, too. I would recommend on checking it out, though the next meeting might well be 2 weeks from now, on Monday’s more than likely. It’s a good opportunity to just be able to sit around and talk, without having to drink or hustle. All ages can attend, and that’s part of what made the Carter Apartheid book discussion so interesting.
Keep up the good work, PPJPC, and I hope that when we get a working dvd player, that the political film club can get itself going, too. Got an old unused one around the house? Then think about donating it and watching some movies at the Justice and Peace Center with others. What movie would you like to see? What book would you like to discuss? I voted for ‘Johnny Got His Gun’ next. It’s short and a classic.
It looked for a while that the Bush Administration would use WOMD as their excuse to attack Iran. Then came along all the rhetoric that Iran was led by anti-Jewish leaders who were rearing to go at Israel with nuclear weapons. Then Iran was accused of destabilizing Lebanon, as if the US and israel had not done that themselves. But at last, we get to the current grand lie that the US media is using to sell Bush’s new strategy to regionalize the war to Iran and Syria. It can be summed up as, ‘Don’t blame US for the mess in Iraq, Iran did it! We going to kick their ass!’
The beauty of this line of unreason by the US government is that it not only takes all the blame of Bush and his cronies for the debacle there in Iraq, it takes the blame of the Iraqis themselves. For weeks Bush and all the gang have been blaming Iraqis for what has befallen them, with statements that US ‘patience’ was not unlimited and blah, blah, blah. There were exhortations that the Iraqis must get their act together, etc. The US ruling class love to think of themselves as the adults, and their colonial victims as children! Bad Iraqis! Go to your room now! But that line of crap was getting quite old real fast with the American and world public.
So with this new propaganda blitz to encourage the American dummy to support yet more bloodshed in the Middle East, it’s just great to be able to blame, get this, Iranian Muslim militancy for what’s gone wrong in Iraq.
“Shucks, Folks. We done nothing wrong. I take full responsibility, it’s the Iranians that are attacking our troops that done the damage, not I, George Bush.” How clever! So let’s go bomb them!
One of the most incredible nonsense possible to see, is the bipartisan pretense that the US is there to help Iraqis out. Hell we’re not there for our own health, but because the Iraqis need us. Damn Iranians now messing that up! How dare they interfere in their neighboring country, when we have come halfway from around the world to show the dumb Arabs how to build democracy. “Stay out, you terrorist bastards! Our patience is limited. You attack our troops, as we know you are already doing, and we’ll nuke you before you can develop nucler weapons!”
The fun thing about this new threat to National Security that must be blown up, is the Hollywood will now get to make new movies where American heroes (one Black, and the other White) now will get to route out and shoot down Persian terrorists, instead of the Pentagon standard Arab ones! This will be the White House inspired movie script… US soldier super-heroes save innocent Iraqi children’s lives from Persian super-villians, who are on the verge of killing them all off with chemical weapons, even as they laughingly munch on Gi Joe’s candy handouts. Thank you, US Department of Defense.
Don’t blame Bush, Iran did it! So we’ll have to blow them up, too. Shop till you drop, American consumers. Or, Stop Escalation
In these days of anti-immigrant hysteria and pasty White Wing conformity of the Pat Robertsons, Ann Coulters, Cal Thomases, and Tom Tancredos amongst us, it is fantastic to have the Sundance Film Festival rewarding good movies about Spanish speaking immigrant experiences with their top prizes.
These films deserve a much broader audience than they are getting, and the stories they tell help humanize people that our government and its nutty allies are actively trying to dehumanize and oppress. Quinceanera won in 2006,and Padre Nuestro just won top prize this year. Can’t wait to see both.