Julian Assange Interviews the President of Ecuador

VIDEO HERE

http://assange.rt.com/correa-episode-six/

Now that Assange has lost his court battle fighting extradition, we may lose this valuable asset in the fight for freedom and truth globally. The charges brought by Sweden against Assange appear to be bogus, trumped up, and politically motivated in the extreme. This is a direct assault on whistleblowers and those who expose official crimes.

Rafael Correa, the current president of Ecuador, gives a brisk defense of Assange’s activities and the value of Wikileaks during the interview.

French Anti-Bond – Double One Seven: OSS-117

0SS-117 is a superspy like no other. The perfect response to the naked British imperialism of his compadre, OSS-117 approaches international relations in a more honest, yet absurdly comic, way. Two films have been released so far in the re-launched series, Cairo: Nest of Spies (2006) and Lost in Rio (2009). The spoof, it turns out, is not only aimed at James Bond but at the original OSS-117 himself.

The original author of the OSS-117 series of books, Jean Bruce, wrote a very Bond-like franchise that appeared 4 years prior to Ian Fleming’s hero. Bruce, his wife and his daughter went on to pen more than 200 OSS-117 novels. Several films were released in the late 50s and 60s.

This new incarnation however is something else entirely. Jean Dujardin is not so much subduing the third world for the glory of France as exposing the arrogance and ignorance of French imperialism, the hubris of the men who came before. In a brilliant satire of French patriarchy and racism, the new OSS-117 tells the story of the Cold War era in what turns out to be a blatantly more honest light. Free from the obligatory nationalist flag waving, this look back at the 1950s and 60s pits modern ideas against the entrenched old order. OSS-117 is an unrepentant ambassador of the old guard, blundering forward through every situation without tact or self-awareness – somewhat relevant to current events.

The genius is that his missteps reveal cultural biases at every turn, and aren’t simply for creating a meaninglessly goofy character to gawk at. He’s misogynistic, racist, full of himself, slow on the uptake and a serial womanizer. In most scenarios at least one of these traits will work against him and get him into deeper and deeper trouble.

I’m hoping the series continues, as the films to date have been hilarious.

U.S. Veterans Protest, Throw Their Medals at the NATO Summit

This is pretty significant. Veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan give back their medals and dispute the lies and failed policies that sent them to war.

Hillary Clinton Admits the U.S. Government Created al-Qaeda

Apparently the Secretary of State of the United States of America is also a “crazy conspiracy theorist.”

What Clinton does not admit to is the role of foreign intelligence, particularly Pakistan and Saudi, in maintaining the Al Qaeda network after she claims the US broke off relations. The Pakistani relationship with Al Qaeda remains unbroken to this day. The US financial support of Pakistan also remains unbroken to this day, to the tune of multiple billions of tax dollars per year.

Recall also 15 of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi, most of them given US entry visas straight from Saudi Arabia.

According to the White House’s own mythology, Osama Bin Laden was living in Pakistan right next to one of its major military bases when he was killed by an assassination team. The Pakistani government protested greatly when bin Laden was allegedly killed, and our relations with Pakistan are highly strained right now. NATO supply lines into Afghanistan have been severed, and remain closed through Pakistan.

The “Al Qaeda threat” has been a useful boogeyman for western warmongers to use as a cassus belli in multiple conflicts around the world. They were imported into Bosnia and Kosovo in the late ’90s which led to the NATO bombardment of Serbia. They were imported into Libya last year, which led to the NATO bombardment of that nation, and the overthrow of an independent national leader who didn’t take orders from Washington (Qaddafi). They were used in Chechnya to keep the Russians occupied on their southern borders. Al Qaeda affiliated fighters are currently entering Syria in an attempt to overthrow that nation, and Iran is also in the crosshairs. The US complicity with extremist Jihad militants is well-documented and studied (see globalresearch.ca).

A small fraction of US citizens know any of this. Hence, a complete failure of democracy and the easy manipulation of foreign policy by elite criminals.

The Power Principle (2012)

The true story of US Imperialism since World War 2. Entire film is online, free here.

OK this is funny

Honest Movie Trailers…

TRANSFORMERS

TWILIGHT

The Dictator (2012)

Possibly the most offensive and racist film since Birth of a Nation, but the white American critics aren’t calling it so. A sampling of professional critics shows an omission of this aspect, opting instead to focus on the “gross out” elements, which are safely condemned by the (faux) intelligentsia. Most just call it vaguely “offensive,” and leave it at that. Ignoring blatant brown-face racism when it’s slapping you in the face seems disingenuous, to say the least. As is typical today, racism against Arabs isn’t considered racism in contemporary American groupthink.

Cohen’s latest assault on the Arab race attracted my attention as the most obvious political film of recent months. Given his oddball nature and complex, sometimes conflicting views, I opted to hand over my six bucks for a matinee ticket this afternoon. I came out of the experience having laughed all of once. The creative use of a pair of dolphins was about it. Mostly I was disgusted at the crass use of war propaganda as a plot device.

The story revolves around US and Israeli claims against Iran and its nuclear program. The setting is changed to a fictional dictatorship in N. Africa, but the arguments are identical. The targeted nation is run by a “mad dog” who cannot be allowed to possess nuclear weapons, according to Western leaders. Footage includes none other than Barack Obama issuing threats to that effect. The backdrop is real and no joke. The war threats are taken from real life, real violations of international law (threatening force in international relations, a violation of the UN Charter, Article 2). The nuclear issue in both the media and in the film is a one-sided Western dominated narrative. The US nuclear arsenal and the Israeli nuclear arsenal are not mentioned, nor is their purpose: deterrence. Cohen’s Dictator serves as a proxy for the Iranian president, or the Mullahs, whom are the unstated targets of the satire. He, like them, is a “mad dog” lunatic whose purpose in life is to attack Israel, without any reason or provocation of course — the Palestinian question appears nowhere. This is the glue smeared all over this propaganda film. The rest is formula comedy.

The clearly racist nature of the characters was hard to stomach, portrayed by an unabashed Zionist with no hope for balance or nuance. All of this was to be expected going in, but I had to see it for myself knowing millions of my countrymen would arrive shortly after. In America, Zionist war propaganda is not challenged, not by critics, not by news anchors and certainly not in the bought and paid for Congress.

The film seems to be riding something just short of a love-fest in the mainstream media, hovering above 60% by critics and audiences alike. Orwell’s “two minutes of hate” comes to mind. The Dictator is disposable humor at the expense of Arab stereotypes and will do nothing to further race relations or peace in the world. The character is so ludicrous that it’s hard to consider the piece as anything more than fantasy, but that’s clearly not the intent when including current war propaganda front and center.

Cohen’s one almost-redeeming moment calls out US domestic policies as being those of a dictatorship. In a lengthy list of dictatorial recommendations from the Dictator we hear what has already transpired since 9/11. This was the sort of complexity and irreverent independence I was pining for at the time of ticket purchase, but it certainly didn’t make up for such a hate-fest clearly aimed at a particular race of people. The Dictator is the sort of vile propaganda that inspired me to start the Political Film Blog in the first place, and so an unreserved two thumbs down.

Standard Operating Procedure (2008)

America’s unending descent into Naziism and barbarism are somewhat investigated in this Errol Morris documentary. I say somewhat, because the investigation falls flat and is highly limited, constrained primarily to the collection of characters who were prosecuted for taking the pictures of themselves abusing Iraqis.

Notably, not one Iraqi voice is permitted. No human rights lawyer is included. The only people included who are opposed to these atrocities are Army personnel and a private mercenary interrogator from CACI! There’s balance. One can get more “fair and balanced” discussion on Fox News occasionally.

Morris gets statements from General Janis Karpinsky, the figurehead of the US prison system in Iraq, who was quite out of the loop in regard to the torture and systematic “softening up” of prisoners nightly. The fact that it was her job to know what was going on in the facilities under her command never seems to enter the discussion. Her testimony helps establish the Army’s cover-up, however. She does name her superior officers and establish some complicity.

In previous investigations of Karpinsky, Rumsfeld’s torture memo came up (Rumsfeld’s Memo on Interrogation Techniques), but was not included here. The director, Errol Morris, repeatedly drops the ball and fails to connect the dots regarding the command responsibility. He spends so much time giving an open microphone to people like Lynndie England, that the expected hard-hitting investigation of the policies and the policy-makers never happens. Far from establishing the chain of evidence and prosecuting those people for establishing a torture gulag, the case is left mostly to insinuation and hearsay.

Morris ignores the John Yoo and Alberto Gonzales torture memos that expose the Bush White house approving their evasion of the Geneva Conventions. He ignores the use of the term “military necessity” as a condition for abusing prisoners, a clear red flag. He ignores the torture deaths of previous prisoners in Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan, and the extensive investigations that had come before such as General Taguba’s report. Also, the statements of high officials like Dick Cheney in defense of drowning torture. Morris could have also included the widespread torture performed by US client regimes including SAVAK in Iran and the South Vietnamese government, which did much of America’s dirty work thorughout that conflict. Even today, the US insists on sending its victims to known torture states for interrogation, an unlawful program called “rendition” that Barack Obama has not discontinued. America’s close relationships with dictators who use torture is well-documented and irrefutable.

But Morris, in typical liberal apologetic style, opts for a Pollyanna attitude about the entire matter. His claim is that America somehow lost its way and its values, never considering that this way has been the way since anyone can remember; ask a native American. Morris treats Standard Opertaing Procedure as more of a pet art project about the Abu Ghraib photographs themselves, than as a criminal investigation of numerous war crimes.

A clue to the man behind the movie is found in Morris’ director’s commentary, when he asks a jaw-dropping rhetorical question of the audience: “Do the ends of bringing freedom to Iraq justify the means of abandoning America’s core values and principles?”

What universe does this man inhabit?

RT: FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds Releases Book

Sibel Edmonds Website
http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/

FBI stalled for over a year, would not approve the text. Sibel released it anyway, at great risk. Get the book here: CLASSIFIED WOMAN: The Sibel Edmonds Story

 

Pick Me, Mitt Romney (Short / NSFW)

A pitch for the vice-presidential nomination.

The Island President (2011)

“The Island President” and the Maldives Coup: Ground Zero for Climate Change & Human Rights

by Jennifer Epps 

Watching The Island President, an environmentalist documentary that is also an inspiring biography of a unique national leader — the Maldives’ first democratically-elected president, Mohamed Nasheed — it is painful to be reminded that the Copenhagen climate change conference at the film’s climax was not only inconclusive, but happened more than 2 years ago. Since then, the UN Climate Conferences in Cancun and Durban have inched us closer to international co-operation on global warming, yet still have not produced a binding agreement to make cuts to carbon emissions. But The Island President, winner of the 2011 People’s Choice Award for Best Documentary at the Toronto Film Festival, makes a vital contribution to the struggle for hearts and minds on the most serious dilemma of our time.

Director Jon Shenk (co-director of the award-winning doc The Lost Boys of Sudan) shot 200 hours of film of President Nasheed’s first year in office as Nasheed campaigned to secure a future for the Maldives, a virtually sea-level nation of atolls in the Indian Ocean which will be completely wiped out by global warming. It obviously took some time to construct a narrative out of the intimate and engaging  footage. But Shenk and his editor have succeeded in assembling a fascinating portrait of a pioneering administration and a historic mission to rescue the lowest country on earth — and although The Island President  depicts events from 2009, the film couldn’t be more
topical.

The documentary is urgently needed because, first of all, the story of how the remarkable figure at the center of this film came to power in the Maldives is an inspiring tale of a courageous people’s non-violent resistance against oppression. As an activist, Nasheed and a massive pro-democracy movement used Mahatma Gandhi’s tactics to topple the brutal dictatorship of Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, resulting in 2008 in the country’s first multi-party elections, a peaceful revolution that the American environmental leader Bill McKibben calls a “precursor of the Arab Spring”. Secondly, the next U.N. climate change conference starts in  about two weeks in Bonn, Germany, and the deadline to achieve concrete progress is now.  Though climate change is not expected to hit with full-force for decades, we are almost upon the “Tipping Point’ — a point of carbon saturation that will, if nothing is done before then, create its own self-generating momentum and override cuts in CO2 emissions going forward. The climate “tipping point’ is now estimated to be the year 2017.

Thirdly, we’re in an election year in the U.S., and the well-funded climate change deniers have gained ground — thank you very much, corporate media. (Part of this is due to how the Republican primary season has dominated coverage. For example, an 8-month Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting study of the four TV network Sunday morning talk shows, released April 12^th, found that Republicans accounted for 62% of partisan roundtable guests and 70% of partisan one-on-one interviews.)