UTR: Day of the Falcon (2011)

Finally a grown-up movie set in the Arab world.  This Is one of the most memorable and epic films I’ve seen in a while, with an international cast, a wonderful poignant story, real issues and intense action.

Drawing obviously from Lawrence of Arabia, Day of the Falcon works better in my opinion.  For several reasons, not least of which is the idea of a British imperial white man (Lawrence) leading the Arabs, I don’t find that film the immaculate classic that others may.

But Falcon features Antonio Banderas in a harsh role as an emir of an Arabian tribe and pitted against his rival, the Sultan of the neighboring tribe.  In a deal, upon the conclusion of a battle, the Sultan’s two sons are taken as hostages to live with the emir and to insure the peace.  The disputed desert region is to be a no man’s land, owned by no one.  When oil is later discovered in the no man’s land, it sets the stage for different world views, different traditions and different approaches to this newly-discovered resource.  That conflict has been at the center of world politics ever since.

It’s a travesty that a film of this caliber apparently lost money, and was not embraced by audiences.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgH2wkiaIQ8

Greenwald Kicks Bill Maher’s Ass

Glenn Greenwald calls out bigoted imperial apologist Bill Maher for his biased, blinkered views, and it looks like he might not be returning to that TV show.  That’s the way it works.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYG7GR13DnU&feature=player_embedded

I can’t stand Bill Maher, a really loathsome despicable propagandist who masquerades as a critic.  File him with Rush, Sean and Beck.

Who’s “Misha?” #bostonbombing

MAJOR UPDATE!

“MISHA” may be a HOAX, a red-herring, the creation of the Tsarnaev brother’s uncle Ruslan

Ruslan Tsarni / Tsarnaev is CIA: MUST READ

The Mayor of Boston was quick on the draw last Sunday morning, telling the world that the two Tsarnaev brothers acted alone to bomb the marathon.

So who’s this clown?

A Bald, Red-Bearded Exorcist Named Misha May Have Radicalized Tamerlan Tsarnaev

“According to reports by the AP and Daily Mail, family members point the finger at a man identified only as Misha, a friend whom Tamerlan knew through a local mosque. Misha is described as a bald, red-bearded, 30-year-old Armenian convert to Islam who “claimed to be an exorcist who is fighting with demons.”

Is Mr. Misha an undercover FBI informant?  Or does he work for some other entity, even better for deniability?  Why was the FBI so quick to have the Boston Mayor give the story of the two brothers working without others before they could possibly know such a thing?

In a real democratic republic the press would be asking these questions day and night and not settling for bullshit like David Lindorff ran into.

 

Tamerlan’s Youtube Account

Guys and Gals,

We really need to take that pill in the The Matrix and get a handle on reality.  You can’t make this shit up, it’s far too crazy.  Tamerlan may or may not have a Youtube account with a very, very, very Al Qaeda propaganda video.  I was just there.  Screenshots below.  It could disappear at any time.  Check the date. YOU MAY NOT WANT TO GO TO THAT PAGE YOURSELF, AS WE KNOW AMERICANS ARE ACTUALLY MONITORED BY THE AUTHORITIES, WHILE CHECHEN TERRORISTS…NOT SO MUCH.

Youtube Video assocated with the name Tamerlan Tsarnaev:

(YOUTUBE)/watch?v=uJknGtKV34I&list=PLPuUsYCtPwgb_NBDc_Y2PdenExr6BFSrz&index=6

Name on Account: sam232690

Date posted: July 4th, 2012

Yeah, FBI has no idea about this guy.  Seems like a non-suspicious chap going about his business.  Maybe the Russians don’t like him, but he seems like a straight up dude to us.

Et tu, TED?

Betray Friends’ Privacy to Comment?

 

I was ready to “Login with Facebook” over on TED’s website, when their privacy invading app told me they were taking my email address and other info – including my friend’s info and video information.  And I stopped.

Who gives them the right to stick these data mining marketing tricks into their message board?

Fuck you, TED. We live in an invasive, privacy destroying Brave New World of aggressive marketing yuppies with no scruples.  Rudeness is being normalized.  You can’t even have a conversation with a human for more than two minutes without them pulling out some tappy tappy device in the middle of it.  The humans are resembling cyborgs more and more, slaves to the devices.

Anyway, I wanted to comment on Maajid Nawaz’s talk about extremism allegedly running rampant across the globe far and ahead of democracy.  Some of his claims make more sense in particular Arab countries than they apply to the rest of the globe.  Some of his thinking is constrained and limited in scope, and that is the point I wish to make. The talk, and the world view behind it, are completely missing the larger picture of empire, global hegemony by the US and friends.  Behind the scenes the real exercise of power grinds on to coopt and derail popular movements, to benefit extremists when convenient, to fund and arm military dictators, which is very often convenient, to protect brutal human rights abusers when they provide strategic benefit, and etcetera.  This is not a new or novel understanding.

The Arab world in particular should know well the machinations of Uncle Sam in propping up oil dictators and overthrowing the disobedient ones.  Iran’s actual democracy was destroyed in 1953 by the CIA, and even admitted to.  This is not covered up today. Nawaz focuses a lot on Egypt, without mention of US support of Mubarek right up until his ouster by one of their torturer friends in the Egyptian military.  The Egyptian military receives more than a billion dollars in so-called military “aid” every year, $1.3Bn as of 2010.  What are they purchasing with this graft? Pakistan has also received much.  Saudi Arabia and Bahrain receive quite shockingly positive media when their people rise up demanding democracy – and are brutalized, tortured and imprisoned for their efforts.  US leaders smile and change the subject. To fail to mention any of this obvious undemocratic imperial meddling is a credibility killer, in my view.

Nawaz himself is a former “extremist,” already taken in by one set of dogmas.  One wonder if this new prevailing democracy myth he ascribes to is similarly processed in extremist fashion? As far as fighting for democracy and against Islamic militant extremism, we again must examine the facts on the ground.  In 1979 the Mujahadeen, the precursor to “Al Qaeda,” were created, armed, trained and imported into Afghanistan to overthrow the pro-Soviet government.  Decades of horror and destruction followed, which persists to this day.  That particular US supporting of extremism was launched under Jimmy Carter of all people. Today, the Al Nusra Brigades in Syria are doing the empire’s dirty work.  These absolute extremists, with a blood drenched record of terrorism that exceeds Al Qaeda’s record already, are part of the current imperial strategy to topple dominoes.  Al Nusra is supported directly and unequivocally by US client regimes Saudi Arabia and Qatar and are hosted and given free passage on NATO state Turkey’s territory to invade Syria next door.  US CIA are also on the other Syrian border in Jordan, arming and training fighters.

How does any of this fit into the picture that Nawaz paints during his talk? His is a sin of omission.  The myth prevails rather than the reality.  I’m all for democracy and promoting it, but let’s not close our eyes and play fools.

And TED, you can go to hell for daring to demand personal contacts from people commenting on your website.  Have some shame and some tact, basic etiquette.  To talk to you in the street you first demand my mother’s Facebook posts, and which videos she watches?  And my sister’s dog photos?  Can I say my comment then?

Target Iran: Argo’s CIA Heroes vs. A Separation

 

Iran, Politics, and Film: “Argo” or “A Separation”?

by Jennifer Epps

On the spectrum of recent U.S. films about intense life-and-death conflicts between Persians and “our guys’, the most propagandistic, militaristic, and reactionary position is occupied by the reprehensible live-action cartoon 300. You could call this the “Kill Them All” position. On the opposite end of that spectrum, the most humanistic, egalitarian, and psychologically insightful position is occupied by the exquisite drama The House of Sand and Fog — a chamber piece that shows how misunderstandings can spiral tragically out of control. You might call this the “Human Decency” position.

Somewhere in the middle of those two extremes lies the new movie Argo,  directed by Ben Affleck for Smokehouse Pictures, the production company owned by George Clooney and Grant Heslov. Argo  is about the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979, and how the CIA came up with an unlikely rescue plan for six of the Americans hiding outside of the embassy: they would pretend to make a sci-fi movie. The premise has enormous potential, and it’s easy to see why it would be attractive to Hollywood. Unfortunately, the finished product is nowhere near the “Human Decency” end of the spectrum. I think its liberal makers would be surprised and actually ashamed if they realized how much more it leans towards 300.

There is no doubt that Argo is a very ambitious film. It wants to be life-and-death serious, funny, and exciting all at once, and to join historical accuracy with breathless pacing, jokey put-downs of Hollywood, and an absurdist scheme at the story’s core. As Affleck confided in an interview, it is also ambitious in its delicate tonal balance. It aims to be a taut suspense thriller that also provides some history of the strained relations between the U.S. and Iran, and it tries to re-create the 1970′s vibe without being too cheesy or campy. All the while, of course, it is designed to be commercial, with a budget of $44 million — the L.A.Times  alleges that this makes it “one of the season’s more daring gambles, the kind of movie most studios stopped making in the last decade.”

At the same time, it seems to want to leave us with the takeaway that even in a nightmarish scenario, bitter differences can be resolved without bombing anyone. (At the premiere, the audience applauded President Carter’s voiceover explaining that in the end we got all the hostages out, and we did it peacefully). The movie does show that deciding against a bloodbath can take courage and foresight. And perhaps this is what Affleck, Clooney, and Heslov believe made the movie the right thing to do right now — even at the risk of stoking the fires of warmongers here at home in 2012, by raising the spectre of Americans imperiled by Iran.

Well, it achieves all those goals in spades, and I applaud its ambitions and its aplomb. But I wish it was considerably more ambitious.

Argo catapults between, as Affleck put it to the L.A. Times, “three different themes and three different worlds: the CIA, Hollywood, and the Iran tensions.” Affleck’s quote is informative: the third theme or world that he organized the film around was “Iran tensions’, not Iran itself. Not even the Iranian revolution. The subject is the threat to Americans. Argo is about the plight of 6 Americans hiding out in Tehran after the embassy is seized, and it cuts away only to strategic debates at CIA headquarters as agent Tony Mendez (Affleck) struggles against bureaucratic inertia, or to comic relief scenes in Hollywood between John Goodman and Alan Arkin. No matter where our wheels touch down, it’s Americans who matter. This is a movie that views Iran in the 1970s from the living-room where the 6 are hiding — and the blinds are closed.

The cover story being used to try to smuggle the 6 hideaways out of Tehran is that they are location-scouting for a movie, so the day before they are to escape, they go out in public to make their aliases more believable. Do we, on the pretend location scout, finally see some of Tehran’s cultural landmarks? Do we get a sense of an ancient civilization and a sophisticated culture? Do we have any panoramas of people going about their business in the complexity of a metropolitan city? No, because the Americans’ expedition is just as claustrophobic as the scenes in their lair — Affleck crowds them into a van, squeezes the van in a vice as they are swarmed by furious protesters, and then jostles them around in a packed bazaar that turns hostile. Of course, he’s doing this deliberately for the tension it creates in them and in us. But throughout the film, the Iran we see in the news clips and the Iran we see dramatized are all on the same superficial level: incomprehensible, out-of-control hordes with nary an individual or rational thought expressed.

After a brief (albeit important) animated storyboard introduction that contextualizes the events of 1979 with some history, it is the storming of the American embassy which begins both the film proper and our exposure to the Iranian revolution. You wouldn’t know from this film that, despite years of persecution during Iran’s westernized government, the communist Tudeh Party was also out organizing workers’ strikes during the turmoil of the Shah Pahlavi’s overthrow. The movie does stress that the U.S. helped overthrow the democratically-elected prime minister Mohammad Mossaddeq in 1953 because he dared to nationalize Iran’s oil, and then backed the Shah and his use of the notorious SAVAK secret police to kidnap and torture the Shah’s opponents. These are obviously excellent points to make. But Argo glosses over the diversity of opinion in Iran and the intellectual ferment before the theocratic lockdown, making the culture look exactly the way an insular American public has come to believe all Islamic countries look. The film offers only scant insight into how  the Islamists came to win over a country that had previously been quite secular and sophisticated.

Very, very few Iranian characters are individualized in Argo, and most of the time when we see Iranians on-screen, their words are not translated for us. Take Farshad Farahat’s character. He is an officer in the Revolutionary Guards, one of the final terrifying obstacles the escaping protagonists must face at the airport. Farahat tries not to play stupid or cartoonish like so many ethnic villains in Hollywood movies, but most of the little he has been given to say is un-translated, so Farahat has to do almost all of the work with his eyes. The movie apparently never intended much more for him: his character’s name is merely “Azzizi Checkpoint #3″.

Another Persian, Reza (Omid Abtahi), makes an appearance in the marketplace in Tehran. His defining characteristic is whether the Americans can trust him. When he is friendly, his words are translated. When an altercation breaks out, there are no subtitles.

And even the point of the jokey snippet of dialogue that is translated seems to be to mock his idea of a Hollywood movie even more than Argo sends up the fake sci-fi B-movie. This dialogue emphasizes his cultural Other-ness, making him sound as sexist and out-of-touch as a Sacha Baron Cohen creation.

Nowhere, in a caper that exists in part to celebrate movie magic, is it mentioned that Iran has its own cinematic tradition – though if the Argo  creative team had ever seen the award-winning 1992 tribute film Once Upon a Time, Cinema  they would have seen clips from old Iranian movies dating all the way back to the silent era. By the time Argo is set, a number of Iranian film festivals had been in existence several years, including the Tehran International Film Festival ‘to promote the art of Cinema that expresses humanitarian values and promotes understanding and exchange of ideas between nations’. And there were already several film and television schools in Iran, including a decade-old  government-financed School of Television and Cinema which students attended for free. 480 feature films were made in Iran between 1966 and 1973; filmmakers, like other Iranian artists and intellectuals, had plenty to call attention to under the Shah’s oppressive regime. In fact, the Iranian New Wave, which launched in 1969, should have been known to Argo ‘s Foreign Service professionals who had spent their leisure time in Tehran; with filmmakers as respected as Dariush Mehrjui and Abbas Kiarostami already active. By the late seventies, movies were already the key form of mass entertainment in the country. Yet Affleck has the Revolutionary Guards gawking and giggling over the storyboards and poster for the fake Hollywood movie like awe-struck children.

A Muslim Scholar Defends Free Speech

“And for those who are reacting, because some of those have chosen to react in a violent way it confirms the prejudices of a segment of western society, of the hegemonic part, and the prejudices about Islam being violent for instance, that Muslims resort to violence. The moment you react in a certain way and Muslim groups have been doing it ever so often, you merely strengthen that stereotype about Muslims. So you’re, in a sense, contributing to hegemonic politics in both ways. One by helping the hegemon and number two by sort of denigrating the hegemonized through the hegemonized community’s own stupidity in a sense, by sort of resorting to violence when there’s really no reason to resort to violence.

You can always respond to provocations of this sort in other ways. If it is a film that has been made, perhaps you can make another film that corrects some of those misconceptions and stereotypes. If a book is written you respond with a book. And if let us say certain false ideas are in the public realm, you debate, you discuss. This is what one should do.

But as I said a while ago I think this is something that’s alien to at least that segment of the Muslim world, partly because of the influence of the religious elites.“
-Dr. Chandra Muzaffar (14:35)

Freedom From Religion

Freedom From Religion

Joe Giambrone

“Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst.”
-Thomas Paine

Would Paine be charged with “blasphemy” and hauled off to the Middle East for execution?

“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God.  It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
-Thomas Jefferson

I’ve undergone a mild transformative awakening these past two weeks.  For many years I tried to stay out of the religious questions, the smears, the ambitions of competing religious orders, the propaganda of those who would denigrate their competitors – you probably know the usual culprits. Except for the blatantly silly cults like the Mormons, Scientologists and Jehovas; I mean I’m only a human and a satirist.

But now, faced with a sustained, coordinated assault on freedom of expression, all of it emanating from one direction with one clearly-defined goal, I’m starting to dig in my heels and take Thomas Paine’s warning to heart. Article after article by angry Muslim writers seek to end the First Amendment in America, but only in regard to their religion of course.  We just won’t be allowed to talk about Islam freely, and the manner in which we discuss their religion will be dictated by … whom?

“Freedom of thought is the only guarantee against an infection of people by mass myths, which, in the hands of treacherous hypocrites and demagogues, can be transformed into bloody dictatorships.”
-Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov

I’ve read half a dozen Muslim writers, and a few others, this week arguing that we must clamp down on speech in the United States, but I’ve found not a single one that stood up to defend the concept of freedom of expression.  Nor did I find the term “theocracy” or acknowledgment thereof, which is the reality in a number of Muslim countries today.  We can’t discuss freedom of speech and religion without taking note of theocracy, entrenched, official religious institutions and their dogmas.  Do we really want to cast off the lessons of the Enlightenment and take a step several centuries backward?  Rash, poorly thought-out rants seek simply to exploit this current hysteria, in my opinion.

“Once you attempt legislation upon religious grounds, you open the way for every kind of intolerance and religious persecution.”
-William Butler Yeats

I’ve seen enough from the local religions, where my small western town is essentially drowning in churches and Walmart shoppers.  These show up at the front door on Saturday mornings, book in hand, ready to fish for new members and new revenue streams.  I’ve considered penning a lengthy pamphlet to hand back, one that offers the opposing arguments concerning their central mythology. But if new church v. state legal erosions come to pass, could such a pamphlet be the first step to death row?

Where I live, for a sizable fee of course, you can even attend ‘prophecy school.’  I shit you not.  They’re raking in the rubes by the planeload barely a mile from where I type this.   The would-be prophets must book early though because classes are limited to, “between 300-400 to keep it to a smaller more intimate setting.”  There they also speak of an, “ever increasing government of God.”  The “students” of this “prophecy” program are reminded that the, “word ‘tithe’ means ‘tenth’ and it is a way of honoring God with the first 10% of our income.”  Honoring whom?  They really pack ‘em in for the live event stuff, and so be advised, “…no refunds will be given 21 days prior the event.”

As Jesus said, “All sales are final.”

“No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!”
-Monty Python

I’m afraid many of us see the world differently, very, very differently.  I’m simply not impressed by your fairy tales, whomever you are, as they were concocted by primitive peoples who would run away from a vacuum cleaner.  I’m hoping that the rationality of progress will show these myths to be less than proven, and their iron traps on the minds of millions will rust and crumble away over time.

Thus we have the ultimate fear of the religious zealot (the professional Mumbo Jumbologist), that his fancy talk will one day lose all power over his minions.  In this competition, this lust for power, it’s not the spiritual kind of magical power that accumulates, but the very real political kind which results from influencing the flock, the group mind.  Uniformity of thought and monolithic conformity is to be desired.

Organizations with so many members are by nature dangerous. They soon insulate themselves from conflicting messages, and then they seek to eradicate the opposition, to tear down society’s barriers, which keep them in
check.  For why should they be restrained?  After all, they are correct in all matters.  God said so.

“Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprize, every expanded prospect.”
-James Madison

We in the U.S. have enough problems with the local religious zealots without a sustained assault by angry foreign fundamentalists who would seek to interfere in what we can or cannot say here.  I’ve laid out my basic case for defending free speech, but the crux of it is that we must tolerate ideas that we personally oppose or find “blasphemous,” or else we simply don’t support freedom of expression.  And if you don’t support freedom of expression, you’d best take more than a couple minutes’ rant figuring out what it is you do support.  People have a right to disagree.  People have a right to satirize. People have a right to “insult.”  People have a right to “blaspheme.”  People have a right to tell you that you’re wrong.

Like it or not, you can disagree all you want legally in America. What you cannot do is banish speech you find objectionable.  Once that becomes an established norm then any speech can be banned.

If we were to toss the First Amendment in the dumpster in response to the Muslim world’s current demand for sacredness, why could we not just ban Islam in America?

Why not ban all mention of that religion and eradicate it here?

If freedom of expression has no value, why then freedom of religion?

Conversely, why not make the President of the United States a holy figure?

The American President as God’s Holy Messenger on Earth could be considered a Prophet.  He could be considered God.  He could be considered whatever religious concept anyone can imagine, the moment you erase  the separation of church and state.  The Congress could be anointed Apostles of the Holy Government.  The United States could redefine itself as the Glorious Manifestation of God’s Rule Over Planet Earth.

Where does it end?

It ends at the freedom to say “no.”  No, he’s not a God; he’s not a Prophet.  There will be no “establishment” of religion in the U.S. There will be freedom of speech.  Actually it’s already been said.  Get over it.

“When it comes to bullshit, big-time major league bullshit, you have to stand in awe, in awe of the all-time champion of false promises and exaggerated claims: religion.”
-George Carlin

The Emperor Opines

Barack Obama spoke Tuesday at the UN in one of the most cynical, historically revisionist pieces of propaganda I’ve ever read in my life.

But I do agree with his point defending freedom of speech:

“I know there are some who ask why don’t we just ban such a video.  The answer is enshrined in our laws. Our Constitution protects the right to practice free speech … I accept that people are going to call me awful things every day, and I will always defend their right to do so.”

If Obama had stopped there, this would be a triumph.

But, this explanation was but one tiny slice of the propaganda barrage that Barack Obama employed.  A modern magician, Obama’s soothing words seek to hypnotize and to create the illusion that the empire has disappeared.  Like an elephant behind rotating mirrors.

Says Obama:

“[True democracy] depends on the freedom of citizens to speak their minds and assemble without fear, and on the rule of law and due process that guarantees the rights of all people.”

I should do an expanded article on that one presidential whopper, so dripping with hypocrisy that the floor of the General Assembly needed mopping up.  Obama, whose Homeland Security engineered the crushing of the peacefully-assembled Occupy Wall Street movement across the nation, and is currently fighting tooth and nail in a federal appeals court to destroy due process and detain suspects without charge indefinitely, presents himself as the savior of the world.

“Those in power have to resist the temptation to crack down on dissidents.”

He means in other countries.

“The United States of America will always stand up for these aspirations for our own people and for people all across the world.”

Except, apparently, when they demand an end to corruption and Wall Street superfraud.

“Now let me be clear, just as we cannot solve every problem in the world, the United States has not, and will not, seek to dictate the outcome of democratic transitions abroad.”

I’m not sure if this was intended as a comedy routine.

It is the main endeavor of the United States foreign policy to dictate the outcomes of democratic transitions abroad.  It’s hard to entertain the notion that it does much of anything else.  The NED, IRI, Freedom House, State Department, CIA, and numerous foundations loosely connected to the federal government have their toxic tentacles sucking on every corner of the globe, every so-called “democratic” transition.  Even in Russia the government must pass new laws to register these meddlers as “foreign agents” whose purpose is plainly to “seek” to enforce Washington’s will in foreign elections.

When foreign democracies are aligned against the empire, it resorts to military coups, bribes, covert sponsorship of terrorist networks and every variety of fabricated propaganda imaginable.  Obama’s claim that the U.S. “has not, and will not” seek to push their choices onto foreign countries does not even pass the laugh test.  I can’t even imagine the reactions of educated and informed representatives in the UN General Assembly.

Obama also resorts to insinuation, trying to pretend that the Benghazi attack was an outgrowth of the “Innocence of Muslims” film protests, so as to avoid the actual motivations of those who assassinated the ambassador.  In Bush-esque pairing of “9/11″ and “Saddam” and “mushroom cloud,” Obama associates the embassy attack with the movie protests, over and over.

There is no evidence that this film was a factor in the coordinated military attack in Benghazi.  The evidence suggests a highly-planned, well-manned military assault worked out long before the movie trailer became an issue.  One eyewitness reported no protest at all, and at about 9:30pm “125″ well-armed members of a militia stormed the villa.

“And extremists understand this, because they have nothing to offer to improve the lives of people, violence is their only way to stay relevant.  They don’t build.  They only destroy.”

Says the man who has covertly supported the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (still on the State Dept. terrorist list!), and the Free Syrian Army terrorists, and has now taken the bold step of legitimizing the MEK terror cult, with its record of international terrorism against Iran and others.

“It is time to leave the call of violence and the politics of division behind. “

While at the start of the speech, Barack Obama proudly said:

“We intervened in Libya alongside a broad coalition…”

A violent and extremist coalition.  More than 60,000 Libyans have been killed so far in this debacle.

“…and with the mandate of the United Nations Security Council.”

This is a bald lie.  There was no authorization to bomb ground targets in Libya.  This clear deception should be called out, as should the associated war crimes of that episode.

“And as we meet here, we again declare that the regime of Bashar al-Assad must come to an end…”

Again, a call for further violence.  Is the “Peace Laureate” hearing his own contradictory statements?

This request for war making authority coincides with well-documented covert U.S. support to militias, mercenaries and Al Qaeda connected terrorists committing massacres across Syria.  The presence of these foreign terrorists in Syria has been the primary reason for the bloodshed to date.  The Syrian government has been responding to armed gangs running amok and committing mass murders.

Iran

It doesn’t take too long for Obama to get to the next big call for war, the main attraction of his ‘war is peace’ illusioneering.

“In Iran, we see where the path of a violent and unaccountable ideology leads.”

Obama does not mean Operation Ajax and the 1953 killing of democracy in Iran by the CIA.  Funny how well phrases can fit so interchangeably.  Bush often said lines like this that could apply to U.S. policy in a different context.

“Iranian people have a remarkable and ancient history…”

Best to jump back to ancient, and then right up to the current situation with a notable gap in the middle of the time line.  Training the illegitimate Shah’s death squads and torturers gets an understandable omission.

“So let me be clear: America wants to resolve this issue through diplomacy, and we believe that there is still time and space to do so. But that time is not unlimited.”

So this is another clear threat of war, a belligerent statement in violation of the UN’s own Charter.  At the podium of the UN itself.

“We respect the right of nations to access peaceful nuclear power, but one of the purposes of the United
Nations is to see that we harness that power for peace.”

And Obama controls 5,000 nuclear bombs, most of which are now being “modernized.”  Netanyahu controls hundreds of nuclear bombs, and Israel has never signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty in the first place.  Iran controls exactly zero nuclear bombs, and yet they are the boogeyman, as Saddam Hussein previously controlled exactly zero nuclear bombs and was the boogeyman of his day.

“History shows that peace and progress come to those who make the right choices.”

As defined by Washington, New York and London.  Small countries, which elect leaders considered the “wrong choices” — history shows — are attacked by Washington, by its proxy armies and overthrown.  There is the list of current official enemies.  There was also the coup in Honduras, Aristide in Haiti, the Sandinistas of Nicaragua. They made a coup attempt on Hugo Chavez in Venezuela as well.  In Chile we know of Pinochet’s reign of terror after the people elected Allende, who was murdered.  Similar fates have befallen the wrong democratically-elected ruler in nation after nation. One thing that all these violent overthrows had in common was that the bloody hands of the United States and often of its CIA were involved.

“The war in Iraq is over. American troops have come home.”

And no one has been charged with that illegal act of belligerence, a war of aggression in violation of the UN Charter.  The accumulated evil of that assault could be considered a Crime Against Humanity.  Studies put the number of deaths over 1 million since 2003. Previous to that, 1.5 million died as a result of U.S. mandated sanctions, and there was also the first Gulf War and hundreds of thousands of casualties.  As many as 4 million Iraqis fled their homes and have since become refugees.

There is clearly one law for the superpower and a different law for everyone else.  There also seems to be one reality for the emperor and a different set of facts for the rest of us.  War is peace.  Freedom is slavery.  Amen.

In Defense of Free Speech

President of Egypt, Mohammad Morsi

(Published at Counterpunch)

by Joe Giambrone

Freedom of speech is essentially dying by the day here in the modern world.  Threats are real and slippery slope test cases have been piling up to where we must seriously address this issue if we are to avoid slipping into Orwellian double-speak and mandated speech stripped of unacceptable ideas.  For it is about the ideas, not the words themselves.  The words spoken are merely a fixed form that represents the underlying thoughts to be communicated.  Censoring out speech means censoring out ideas that one finds objectionable for whatever reasons.

And that’s unconstitutional.

Amendment One: 

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

This bad movie trailer, “The Innocence of Muslims,” essentially 14 minutes of terrible acting and visual effects with deliberately offensive situations and dubbed dialogue, is now being used as evidence in order to change the law of the land in the United States.  More than a few commentators have suggested that the United States clamp down on such expressions, as it may offend people.

So what?

Yes.  So what?  As the line goes, “Maybe you need to be offended.”

The answer to speech you disagree with is … (drum roll) … MORE SPEECH.  If people are in disagreement with the historical situation portrayed in that film, they have an opportunity to present their own case, their own historical evidence, their own version of the matter.  By rendering this topic to the realm of sacred cows, it would eliminate all dissenting discussion and ideas.

Who gets to decide then what the actual historical record is?

Who gets to decide how much we can question this dogmatic interpretation?

We don’t rewrite the U.S. Constitution based on the possibility that someone somewhere might be offended by something.  Nor should we.  That truly is akin to religious fundamentalism, to Sharia Law.  These are bedrock principles of our nation that are not negotiable, despite the endless assaults on freedom of expression, which we should be well aware of and actively oppose.

I don’t agree with the messages of that movie trailer, but in America we have a right to put the ideas out into the world without fear of government crackdown (at least we used to; we’re supposed to).  Other less free regimes and societies respond that what is good for their citizens should be enforced here as well.  Examples will follow.

What has been proposed, since time immemorial, is to create sacred cow issues around religion and – of course – Israel, whereby American citizens, previously protected by the First Amendment, would face legal repercussions for uttering unacceptable speech.  And that’s just plain unacceptable.  As an American, raised from birth on this notion of “freedom” which is beamed from every transmitter, you should find wholesale assaults on First Amendment “freedoms” to be problematic at the very least.  Once the framework for establishing sacred cows is put into practice, it is only a matter of time before the list of unacceptable ideas grows into an abomination that warps the very fabric of our culture.  I could argue that it is already happening.

In my days hanging out on the ACLU forums, we debated a lot of free speech issues.  These were the days of the “Communications Decency Act,” (1996) a patently unconstitutional law that was passed by the house and senate and signed by none-other-than William Jefferson Clinton.  The Act was immediately struck down by federal courts for infringing on citizen’s First Amendment rights.  But first it passed the congress.  Then the president’s desk.  It was blatantly unlawful in this country, and yet it passed without reservation.  That was a frightening moment, a watershed moment that could have gone either way.  It was clear then that unconstitutional laws could pass the congress and the president’s desk (ie. PATRIOT ACT).  Our rights were under attack and would continue to be, into the foreseeable future.  Like today.

One of the popular articles currently circulating on this topic is by “peace activist”, “radio commentator” and “columnist” Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich.  She makes a quasi-legal case for quashing free speech in regard to Islam:

“There is a precedent to curbing free speech when deemed harmful.   In a landmark Supreme Court hearing — Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47 (1919) , the actions of Schenck, an anti-war individual who had printed and distributed leaflets in order to discourage enlisting servicemen, was not afforded protection under the First Amendment. The issue before the court was whether Schenck’s actions (words, expression) were protected by the free speech clause of the First Amendment.”

Of course this is a mind-numbingly terrible Supreme Court decision.  Such an assault on freedom of expression has scarcely had such glaring cases as this to point at.  How much damage resulted from prohibiting military recruits from hearing the arguments against going off to fight wars?  This is a fascistic ruling, in contravention of the spirit of the First Amendment, and should clearly be struck down, not praised and regurgitated.

Notably president Wilson himself campaigned on the platform of keeping the United States out of the war in Europe.  A deceit, a Big Lie.  This period is a dark stain on America where propaganda was institutionalized, financed by the government; surveillance of citizens was instituted; mail was opened; people were arrested for political crimes.  That a self-professed peace activist would cite this case in a positive light is a bit baffling.

The ruling itself was a so-called violation of the recently passed “Espionage Act” (1917).  Mailing flyers was now considered the trumped-up act of “conspiracy to obstruct the recruiting and enlistment service.”  Telling the people who would go kill, die and be maimed the truth about the war could now be considered a “conspiracy.”  This is a clear eradication of ideas that the government decided should not be spread.  This sort of mind-control could lead to good things in the world?  Seriously?

Soraya continues with another monumentally terrible development that should have all of California on the phone to the capitol, screaming into their ears:

“August 2012, California passed a resolution (House Resolution 35) against criticism of Israel. What is perhaps more revealing than the Resolution itself, is the desire and the power to curb “free speech” (read Resolution).”

This corruption has not yet been tested in the courts, and could likely be struck down, like the Communications Decency Act before it.  This bill creates a specially selected group and grants exceptional, extraordinary rules in relation to this group.  The law attempts to regulate speech on the campuses of California, whereby criticism of Israel is equated with anti-Semitism and officially condemned.

“(2) speakers, films, and exhibits sponsored by student, faculty, and community groups that engage in anti-Semitic discourse or use anti-Semitic imagery and language to falsely describe Israel, Zionists, and Jews, including that Israel is a racist, apartheid, or Nazi state…”

Granted, it doesn’t seem to apply if the “racist” or “apartheid” charge isn’t “falsely” applied.  So, perhaps former president Jimmy Carter can still talk about his book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid at the colleges of California. But then again, that isn’t particularly clear from this vague, broad wording that attempts to prohibit negative descriptions of the policies of a foreign country.  This is an example of the slippery slope continual chipping away at bedrock freedoms, here in the U.S.

What Soraya has revealed is the tendency to use bad precedents to enact more bad laws based on bad reasoning.

“Perhaps for the protestors [in the Middle East], it is hard to understand that the [American] President’s kill list allows the assassination of American individuals ” based merely on patterns of behavior ” yet he is not able to exercise power to curb speech denigrating Islam.  Why has there been no will to put a stop to these insults and the ensuing violence?”

Besides using Obama’s war crimes and felony murders as a legal precedent, Soraya brings up several other issues at once.  A little clarification is in order here.  Killing American citizens without due process is murder and an impeachable crime.  We should be clear on that, and not accept excuses to the contrary.  The constitution is very clear about due process, warrants, various amendments establishing the rights of the accused and the right to a fair trial.  Violating this is criminal.  We should not tolerate these abuses at all.

As for the “insults” and the “ensuing violence” these are obviously two different things.  Someone can insult without violence becoming the response.  Why is violence not the responsibility of the perpetrator of said violence? Why is the alleged culprit here only the one doing the insulting?  Standard legal norms place the blame for violence on those committing it.   Stretching such blame to others may work in an organized crime setting, where underlings are part of a conspiracy, a hierarchical organization that issues orders.  However, this linkage does not extend to such random connections as those who watch videos that someone else posted, the two having no personal connection whatsoever to one-another.  In no way is a movie trailer to be used as a causative factor in the perpetration of violence half a world away.  That has no basis in any law, as far as I am aware.

Further, there is quite a lot of evidence that the violence at the Benghazi, Libya embassy, and the murder of the American diplomats had nothing whatsoever to do with the film trailer at all, and was a coordinated military attack in revenge for the killing of Al Qaeda’s “number two” commander in June of this year – a Libyan.  Benghazi has been a seething cauldron of radical Islamist violence since the days when Qaddafi quite rightly told us so. These were casualties in an ongoing war, and quite unrelated to this free speech debate over a “film.”

If it was just Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich, I may have not been inspired to respond.  But, we see other more notable figures pressing for a U.S. government crackdown on speech.  Of course the Muslim Brotherhood’s new president of Egypt, Mohammad Morsi, has weighed in on the film.  Morsi personally told Barack Obama to impose, “legal measures which will discourage those seeking to damage relations … between the Egyptian and American people.”  Another report quotes Morsi demanding “assurances from the U.S. government to prevent any infringement on the sacred.”  Arrest warrants have been issued in Egypt for the filmmaker, as well as for the pastor Terry Jones.  Some reports claim that the “blasphemy” charges carry the death penalty there.

One might expect such a response from Egypt, but from the Russian parliament?  Aleksey Pushkov, the Russian chairman of the Parliamentary Committee for Foreign Affairs has also weighed in on U.S. freedom of speech:

“This has nothing to do with freedom of speech. The freedom of speech is not covering a lot of other things that are considered banned in the West. Otherwise they would not be so eager in attempts to put Julian Assange in jail … Attacks on Islam and its sacred things – this is not the freedom of speech but the freedom of hatred …”

In fact it is most certainly a freedom of speech case.  Freedom of speech protects unpopular ideas, the views we oppose.  It is not selectively restrictive.  Pushkov’s point about Julian Assange is well taken, and there is no U.S. case against him that should stand.  Rumors of secret grand juries and, of course, the covert manipulation to get him on the false Swedish charges of “rape” are in play.  Assange is another case entirely, in a league of his own.

As for the “freedom of hatred”, we actually retain that right in the United States.  You can hate whomever you want.  Don’t believe me?  Post a Youtube video about anything.  You will be hated on.  The inverse, the outlawing of “hate” carries more problems than it solves.  You have the right to express your hatred, thus exposing your arguments to scrutiny in the light of day.  They can then be countered.  The resulting synthesis is understanding. To eliminate the bad ideas through government repression is to attempt to circumvent the natural debates and discussions that ideas carry.  Bad ideas can be refuted, not by the guillotine, but by presenting their antitheses. We call this civilization, and I’m for it.

Violence has erupted across the Middle East this week, and that’s unfortunate.  Is the motivation for this violence confined to the “Innocence of Muslims” film trailer?  Or are there myriad other factors involved?  Are sections of the Middle East pissed off about a lot more than bad Youtube videos?  I think the evidence is unequivocally going to support that thesis.

Let’s not get muddy in our thinking and accept that people are burning U.S. embassies solely because of this movie. It was not produced by the U.S. government, nor even by an American director.  The creator is Egyptian!

The U.S. though has been a perpetrator of violence, coercion, covert support and numerous machinations for a long, long time.  Engaged in war after war, sometimes covertly supporting these same groups that wish to burn U.S. embassies today, the foreign policies of the U.S.A. should take center stage here.  They are conflicted, scattershot, always intrusive and often destructive of entire societies (sanctions, bombing campaigns, including NATO’s extensive bombardment of Libya).  Imperial meddling tends to make a lot of enemies, and this number has steadily increased since the escalations 11 years ago essentially declared war on Islam.  U.S. military personnel routinely referred to Middle Easterners as “Hadjis”, “ragheads”  and even “sand niggers” as they decimated Iraq and Afghanistan.  Even torture, rape and murder were broadcast across the globe, as Americans at home turned the channel to something more lighthearted.

People saw and felt how Islamic populations were treated as compared to other populations, even here in the U.S. itself, where people of south Asian descent were summarily rounded up after 9/11.  In a move reminiscent of the rounding up of Japanese Americans in World War Two, the federal government pointedly imposed a racist us versus them dichotomy that persists to this day.

It’s far easier to discuss bad movies and how we should punish the bad filmmakers than to attempt to reconcile massive war crimes that span numerous countries and several administrations, both Republicrat and Demogogue.  But isn’t that how it always plays out?  You can’t talk about the bipartisan rampage.  You can’t call out where both the Dems and the Repugs agree in their imperial ambitions.  It’s better to focus on other issues, side issues like bad filmmakers and too much free speech.

Joe Giambrone is a filmmaker and author of Hell of a Deal: A Supernatural Satire. He edits The Political Film Blog, which welcomes submissions. polfilmblog at gmail.

Traitor (2008)

DVD: Traitor

Blu-ray: Traitor

Traitor plays with fire, and ends up a little wet.

It’s hard to tell what’s guiding this thing along.

Is it the “reality” that the filmmakers believe they are throwing up on the screen?

Is it the need to present an alleged “even handed” treatment of America’s foreign policy and wars?

Is it the need to have some stuff blow up, in Hollywood formulaic fashion?