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Nagorno-Karabakh and the Passover Feast: Hollywood’s Glorification of the Arms Trade

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David Packouz (L) and Efraim Diveroli
By Richard Edmondson | Fig Trees and Vineyards | April 7, 2016

From Ukraine to North Africa to the Middle East, and most recently in the Caucasus with the outbreak of hostilities between Azerbaijan and Armenia, death and destruction are on the prowl in multiple wars, while at the same time international laws governing armed conflict are rapidly being cast onto the rubbish heap.

Many of these wars have been instigated by powers outside the countries in which they are being fought, and the tide of violence threatening to engulf the world now is unprecedented in history. You would think that at such a time, Hollywood would have better taste than to make a movie glorifying the arms trade.

But of course, you would be wrong.

Scheduled for release in August, “War Dogs” is based on the real life story of Efraim Diveroli and David Packouz, two twenty-something Jews who got involved in the arms trade and ended up bidding on Pentagon contracts, in the process scoring deals to supply weapons, ammo, and other military equipment to forces the US was arming in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Their story was told in a 2011 Rolling Stone article which detailed their passion for money-making, recreational drug use, and their predilection for shady business dealings. “Packouz and Diveroli met at Beth Israel Congregation, the largest Orthodox synagogue in Miami Beach,” the story informs us, and then goes on to describe how they landed some lucrative contracts, including one worth $300 million, all while operating a small company known as AEY, a shell company Diveroli’s father had set up. All of this was in the years 2005-2007.

For decades, weapons had been stockpiled in warehouses throughout the Balkans and Eastern Europe for the threat of war against the West, but now arms dealers were selling them off to the highest bidder. The Pentagon needed access to this new aftermarket to arm the militias it was creating in Iraq and Afghanistan. The trouble was, it couldn’t go into such a murky underworld on its own. It needed proxies to do its dirty work — companies like AEY. The result was a new era of lawlessness…

One evening, Diveroli picked Packouz up in his Mercedes, and the two headed to a party at a local rabbi’s house, lured by the promise of free booze and pretty girls. Diveroli was excited about a deal he had just completed, a $15 million contract to sell old Russian-manufactured rifles to the Pentagon to supply the Iraqi army. He regaled Packouz with the tale of how he had won the contract, how much money he was making and how much more there was to be made….

Diveroli, by the way, is the nephew of celebrity rabbi Shmuley Boteach, a staunch supporter of Israel and author of several books, including one entitled “Kosher Sex”–a book in which he “breaks down sexual taboos” while  pioneering “a revolutionary approach to sex, marriage, and personal relationships, drawing on traditional Jewish wisdom.” Boteach has also run inflammatory ads in the New York Times defending Israel, and in 2012 was bankrolled by Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson in an unsuccessful campaign for Congress.

So in other words, while Boteach was doing the TV talk show circuit advising Americans how to improve their sex lives, his nephew Diveroli was finding his niche in the “murkey underworld” of arms trafficking.

Above all, Diveroli cared about the bottom line. “Efraim was a Republican because they started more wars,” Packouz says. “When the United States invaded Iraq, he was thrilled. He said to me, ‘Do I think George Bush did the right thing for the country by invading Iraq? No. But am I happy about it? Absofuckinglutely.’ He hoped we would invade more countries because it was good for business.”

The big $300 million deal they landed found them purchasing stocks of Chinese-made ammunition in the Balkans and transporting them to Afghanistan, but a US embargo against Chinese weapons meant the whole thing had to be carried out clandestinely. The ammo was repackaged in cardboard boxes with no Chinese lettering. But some of the ammo was quite old, a number of the crates were infested with termites, and the two ended up being indicted for fraud and pleading guilty. And now we have a forthcoming Hollywood movie about their endogamic escapades.

It’s tempting to dismiss “War Dogs” as just another piece of Hollywood trash, but of course it comes as millions are coping with the destruction of homes and lives in the bogus war on terror and as whole nations are being torn apart. In Syria, the US has aligned itself with so-called “moderate” rebels, equipping them with vast stocks of weapons, many of which have ended up in the hands of ISIS, while in Yemen, we have assisted Saudi Arabia in an air campaign which, as of January 2016, had resulted in 2,795 killed and 5,324 wounded.  At least 62 civilians were killed by coalition airstrikes in December alone, reports the UN, which was more than twice the number killed in the previous month. Many others have been left homeless.

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A girl drinks from a leaking street pipe in Yemen, where millions now have no access to drinking water

But this hasn’t stopped the US from continuing to fuel the fire, so to speak. According to Defense News, the State Department has facilitated $33 billion worth of weapons sales to its Arab Gulf allies since May of 2015. The weapons–including anti-armor missiles, attack helicopters, and ballistic missile defense capabilities–have been sold to the six countries that make up the Gulf Cooperation Council, or GCC. These would of course be some of the same countries that have been supplying arms to ISIS while also carrying out war crimes in Yemen.

“In addition, the U.S. government and industry also delivered 4,500 precision-guided munitions to the GCC countries in 2015, including 1,500 taken directly from U.S. military stocks — a significant action given our military’s own needs,” said David McKeeby, a spokesman with the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs.

How much of this ordnance may have ended up in the hands of not-so-moderate terrorists is unclear, but in December of 2015, Amnesty International published a report entitled “Taking Stock: The Arming of the Islamic State,” which found that the terrorist army “now deploys a substantial arsenal of arms and ammunition, designed or manufactured in more than 25 countries.”

A lot of this was looted or captured from poorly secured Iraqi military stocks, says the report, but illicit weapons transactions also seem to have played a considerable role in building up the ISIS arsenal–and some of the “chain of custody” evidence cited in the report, including a cache of weapons transferred from Croatia to the Free Syrian Army, sounds almost eerily similar to the sort of shady weapons trafficking operation run by Packouz and Diveroli.

Of course there is the old adage about art imitating life, and, on some level the fact that Hollywood would make a film about two Jews and then go on to entitle it “War Dogs” is perhaps not surprising. This, keep in mind, coming at a time when evidence of Israel’s support for terrorists in Syria is as clear as the hand in front of your face. And of course who could forget the lovable Victoria Nuland and her famous “f**k-the-EU” comment, mouthed off at a time when her State Department was busy engineering a coup in Ukraine?

In fact, efforts by Zionist Jews to create instability and instigate wars are getting to be about as common as fireflies on a summer night. They’re not always easy to spot, but you know they’re out there because they occasionally involuntarily light up, as when someone like Nuland gets caught in a taped phone conversation.

And now it looks like certain fireflies have moved into the Caucasus where they seem to be taking advantage of a long-simmering dispute between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. On April 2, intense fighting broke out followed by a series of charges, counter-charges, claims and counterclaims, made by both sides. According to the Armenians, it started with an offensive launched by Azerbaijani troops using tanks and artillery. Azerbaijan, on the other hand, insists it was responding to large-caliber weapons fire from inside the ethnic Armenian-controlled Nagorno-Karabakh area. So who is telling the truth? Or are both sides lying?

Hard to say for sure, but a couple of knowns are worth mentioning: A) Armenia is closely allied with Russia, and, B) Azerbaijan, too, has ties, including trade ties, with Russia, but it also is closely aligned with Turkey and maintains extensive trade relations with Israel. And the trade with Israel has been especially heavy in the area of military procurement.

Israeli drones, anti-aircraft and missile defense systems have been supplied to Azerbaijan in the wake of a $1.6 billion agreement struck between the two countries in 2012. Israeli companies are also active in the Azerbaijani telecommunications, agriculture, water supply medical technology, and energy sectors. That makes for a lot of sayanim on the ground inside a relatively small country.

Perhaps no surprise, then, that Armenian forces shot down an Israeli drone on April 2–the very day hostilities broke out.

The ThunderB drone is known for its light weight, 62 pounds, and its long flying time–25.5 hours–on a single tank of fuel. It is made by an Israeli company known as BlueBird, which reportedly may be about to be purchased by Elbit Systems.

And then on Tuesday came news of yet another Israeli drone spotted over Nagorno-Karabakh–this one believed to be a Harop drone, made by Israeli Aerospace Industries. The Harop is also known as a “suicide drone” in that rather than firing a missile at a target it simply becomes the missile itself, ramming the target and destroying it.

According to Gordon Duff, senior editor at Veterans Today, the key to understanding the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict is to recognize “that Azerbaijan is a client state of Israel and the CIA.” He adds that Azerbaijan has as well become “the regional operating center for Google Idea Groups,”  which he refers to as the “shadow CIA.”

Google Ideas was formed in 2010. At that time Google CEO Eric Schmidt tapped the State Department’s Jared Cohen to direct the new venture, dubbed as a “think/do tank.” In late 2015, Google was reorganized under a parent company called Alphabet, Inc., and in February of this year Google Ideas was rebranded as “Jigsaw”–although it is still run by Cohen and still affiliated with Google.

Cohen, by the way, is also an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and during his years with the State Department (2006-2010) he worked closely with Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton, and became a strategic advisor in US policy toward Iran. Jigsaw’s mission is to “use technology to tackle the toughest geopolitical challenges, from countering violent extremism to thwarting online censorship to mitigating the threats associated with digital attacks,” says Schmidt.

Sounds nice, but a purview of Jigsaw’s website–fittingly kind of creepy and dark-looking–suggests that virtually all of the “activists” it has provided support to seem to be from countries with governments the US seeks to overthrow. And indeed, in 2012 Wikileaks released a cache of emails concerning Cohen’s activities in the Middle East, including one, apparently written by Cohen himself, in which he discusses efforts to stir up trouble in Iran:

I wanted to follow-up and get a sense of your latest thinking on the proposed March trip to UAE, Azerbaijan, and Turkey. The purpose of this trip is to exclusively engage the Iranian community to better understand the challenges faced by Iranians as part of one of our Google Ideas groups on repressive societies. Here is what we are thinking: Drive to Azerbaijan/Iranian border and engage the Iranian communities closer to the border (this is important because we need the Azeri Iranian perspective).

So here, it seems, we have Cohen basically setting up shop on the Iran-Azerbaijan border. It should be noted that both Azerbaijan and Armenia border Iran, while Azerbaijan also shares a border with Russia. A conflict breaking out in this region could easily spill over into Russia or Iran–both of which have called for the two warring parties to adhere to a 1994 ceasefire agreement.

But of course, such a spillover would advance certain geopolitical interests. For one thing, it would pose a dilemma for Russia at a time when it is engaged in Syria. Sergei Zheleznyak, vice speaker of the Russian state Duma, has voiced the view that a “third force” is behind developments in Nagorno-Karabakh. According to the Russian News Agency Tass :

“It is clear that the force that continues to fan the flames of war in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Caucasus dissatisfied with the peacekeeping and counter-terror success of Russia and our allies in Syria is interested in the speedy exacerbation of the protracted conflict in the Nagorno-Karabakh region,” the parliamentarian wrote on his Facebook page on Saturday.

According to Zheleznyak, “neither Azerbaijan nor Armenia essentially need this exacerbation now.” He noted that “there is every likelihood that this provocation has been organized by a third force,” adding that “information on its presence is beginning to leak out.” In view of this, he drew attention to the fact that “at night in the mountains it is enough to have a few trained armed persons who know the opposing sides’ balance of forces to provoke them to open reciprocal ‘reprisal’ fire.”

Most people probably assumed Zheleznyak, in talking about a “third force,” was referring to Turkey–and certainly Turkey’s downing of a Russian jet in Syria factors into the equation. But another element that perhaps figures even more prominently is the “clash of civilizations” that hardcore Zionists have long salivated over the thought of.

We might theorize that ISIS was created with a two-fold objective: one was to break apart Syria and bring about the overthrow of Bashar Assad, while the other was to jockey into existence a clash of civilizations between Christians and Muslims. In both of these objectives it has failed. Assad is still standing, and while the rise of ISIS certainly inflamed anti-Muslim sentiments in the West, it has not resulted in the all-out war between Christianity and Islam that would have played so well into the hands of the Jewish state.

But where the ISIS plan failed, the conflict in the Caucasus could well succeed. Armenia is predominantly a Christian state, while Azerbaijan is mostly Muslim. A war between these two could galvanize public opinion in the region along religious lines. Regional political alignments and the history of the Armenian genocide are also to be considered. Turkey, though sharing a border with Armenia, has openly sided with Azerbaijan. Russia, on the other hand, has remained officially neutral. However, an RT report filed April 5 shows journalist Murad Gazdiev reporting from inside Armenian Karabakh trenches.

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Armenian Genocide–young girls crucified on crosses

So where is Israel in all of this? Officially it doesn’t seem to be saying much about it, but in May of 2015, the Jewish Daily Forward published an article entitled, “Why Israel’s Alliance with Azerbaijan is so Shortsighted.” The writer, Christopher Atamian, takes the Jewish state to task over its refusal to recognize the Armenian genocide as well as for its lucrative arms contract with Azerbaijan, a country he refers to as an “authoritarian regime that is fueling regional conflict.”

“This is the same country that attempted to wipe out the entire Armenian population of Nagorno Karabakh in 1991 before losing a bloody war against the Armenians,” he adds.

What he leaves unspoken, of course, is that Israel’s refusal to recognize the Armenian genocide is tantamount to holocaust denial. More than 1.5 million Armenians were massacred from the years 1915 to 1922, and the Jewish state’s silence on the matter became a particularly hot-button issue last year on the genocide’s 100th anniversary.

Zheleznyak, the Duma vice speaker, seems for his own part to be offering sage advice to both parties in the current conflict, noting that Russia’s president as well as its government agencies “urge Armenia and Azerbaijan to cease fire and not to allow to draw them into someone else’s insidious game, as long as it is still possible.”

“As long as it’s still possible” is of course the key question. The more people die, the further recede the possibilities of the regional players not getting trapped or caught up in the “insidious game”–and the greater  grow the chances of the conflict’s becoming the parabolic curve that ignites World War III.

Should that come to pass, maybe Diveroli and Packouz will vie for ringside seats–although it doesn’t appear they’ll especially want to sit next to each other. According to the article in Rolling Stone, the two had a major falling out.

“Listen, dude, if you f**k me, I’m going to f**k you,” one of them warned during an argument over money.

“Whatever,” replied the other.

One wonders why they didn’t name the movie “War Pigs” rather than “War Dogs.” Perhaps it wouldn’t have been kosher enough.

In the past year in Israel we’ve seen an arson attack on a Palestinian home which left a mother, father and their 18-month-old baby dead; we have seen a video of Jewish settlers dancing and celebrating the attack by stabbing a photo of the baby; we have observed continued expropriation of Palestinian land in the West Bank, including one of the biggest land grabs in recent years–579 acres near the Dead Sea; and more recently we have seen a second video showing an Israeli soldier executing a wounded Palestinian with a gunshot to the head.

The execution video showed Israeli soldier Elior Azaria pump a bullet into the head of 21-year-old Abdul Fattah Sharif, as he lay on the ground wounded and barely moving. The murder took place on Purim, the Jewish holiday which celebrates the massacre of thousands of Gentiles, as told of in the Book of Esther. The next holiday on the Jewish calendar is Passover, coming up on April 22-23. The significance of Passover is laid out in twelfth chapter of Exodus:

On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn–both men and animals–and I will bring judgement on all the gods of Egypt. I am the Lord. The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are; and when I see the blood I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.

This is a day you are to commemorate; for the generations to come you shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord–a lasting ordinance… And when your children ask you, ‘What does this ceremony mean to you?’ then tell them, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt and spared our homes when he struck down the Egyptians.’

It seems that both Purim and Passover are in essence celebrations of the deaths of non-Jews. Suppose Gentiles observed holidays each year in which we celebrated Jewish deaths? What do you suppose would be said of it?

Whatever one’s views of Judaism may be (there are some admirable sentiments expressed in the Old Testament as well as some repellent ones), Zionism has morphed from the simple idea of a homeland for a specific group of people into a supremacist ideology that has had appalling consequences–not only for its victims but also even for its adherents, dehumanizing them to a degree never thought imaginable.

Zionism is the great Passover feast that has become a celebration of war.

April 8, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Film Review, Mainstream Media, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

‘9/11 was a gift to the NSA …’

globinfo freexchange – March 25, 2016

This was probably the most impressive revelation derived by the documentary A Good American watched by the blog at the 18th Documentary Festival of Thessaloniki.

The exceptional documentary by Friedrich Moser deconstructs completely the image of the National Security Agency, one of the most powerful intelligence agencies in the world. Through the revealing stories of former NSA employees who became whistleblowers – like William Binney, Diane Roark and Thomas Andrews Drake – the agency appears that it has become a field of personal ambitions and money hunting through huge funds from the central government.

Moreover, the experienced, top analyst, William Binney (who is the central figure of the documentary), deconstructs the myth of an organization that is supposed to be pioneer in new technologies. He presents NSA as an organization which had certain difficulties to follow the explosive progress of the computer technology during 1990s, in order to modernize its obsolete equipment as fast as possible.

But the most mind-blowing revelation comes from Binney’s NSA colleague Thomas Drake. At one point, Drake recalls how a Senior Military Officer dismissed Osama bin Laden as “a raghead spouting off about a fatwa in the desert” in response to their intelligence reports on Al Qaeda in the late 90s. After the events of 9/11, Drake quotes his former NSA boss Maureen Baginski who reportedly said “9/11 was a gift to the NSA, we’re gonna get all the money we need and then some.” [1]

Although one could claim that behind this story is hidden a conflict of interest concerning two rival projects proposed to the NSA, there is plenty of evidence that ThinThread, the project developed by a small group around Binney, was rejected against Trailblazer, only because Trailblazer was promoted by a powerful lobby inside the NSA.

Indeed, as also presented in the documentary: NSA whistleblowers J. Kirk Wiebe, William Binney, Ed Loomis, and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence staffer Diane Roark complained to the Department of Defense’s Inspector General (IG) about waste, fraud, and abuse in the program, and the fact that a successful operating prototype existed, but was ignored when the Trailblazer program was launched. The complaint was accepted by the IG and an investigation began that lasted until mid-2005 when the final results were issued. The results were largely hidden, as the report given to the public was heavily (90%) redacted, while the original report was heavily classified, thus restricting the ability of most people to see it. [2]

Additionally, in July 2007, armed FBI agents raided the homes of Roark, Binney, and Wiebe, the same people who had filed the complaint with the DoD Inspector General in 2002. Binney claims they pointed guns at his wife and himself. Wiebe said it reminded him of the Soviet Union. None of these people were charged with any crimes. In November 2007, there was a raid on Drake’s residence. His computers, documents, and books were confiscated. He was never charged with giving any sensitive information to anyone; the charge actually brought against him is for ‘retaining’ information. The FBI tried to get Roark to testify against Drake; she refused. [3]

The documentary also reveals that the project ThinThread not only was much cheaper, but had two additional advantages: it was much more effective and was designed to protect the personal data of millions of citizens who were not related with terrorist activity.

Although NSA leadership rejected ThinThread three weeks prior to 9/11, in a secret test-run of the program against the pre-9/11-NSA database in early 2002, the program immediately found the terrorists. [4]

No one should expect intelligence agencies to be composed by “angels” who follow strictly a moral code. The dirty role of US and other agencies around the world for many decades is well known.

Yet, this documentary uncovers something much worse. Nothing has left from the original mission that the NSA supposedly serves. The protection of citizens against terrorist attacks has become irrelevant in front of the big money targeted by the corrupted groups of interests inside the agency. It seems that nothing has been remained unaffected from the rotten culture of “money and power above all and by all means” that dominates in today’s societies.

[1] Greed, Corruption & Cover-Up At The NSA, http://artvoice.com/2016/03/04/greed-corruption-cover-up-at-the-nsa/#.VvQZ_Y_PHLc

[2] Trailblazer Project, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trailblazer_Project

[3] Thomas Andrews Drake, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Andrews_Drake

[4] A Good American (2015), Plot Summary, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4065414/plotsummary?ref_=tt_ov_pl

March 27, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, False Flag Terrorism, Film Review, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

Film Review: Olvidados

By José Raúl Guzmán | NACLA | September 17, 2015

Forgotten / Olvidados is one of the most important Bolivian films to emerge recently, marking a high point of technical achievement for the country’s film industry. The film serves as powerful indictment of the military personnel who were responsible for thousands of deaths and disappearances of political dissidents in Latin America during Operation Condor, estimated at 30,000 forced disappearances, 50,000 deaths, and 400,000 arrests. Beginning in 1975 the political campaign of repression spanned across Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Brazil, Uruguay, and Paraguay—carried out by the right-wing military dictatorships and backed by the CIA. The ruthless campaign of suppression targeted opposition movements, including students, Marxists, Communists, and political parties that were deemed threats to the authoritarian governments. ­­

Mexican actor, Damián Alcáraz plays General José Mendieta, a callous official tasked with the arrest, torture of dissidents under the guise of Operation Condor. General Mendieta shows some initial reluctance at carrying out the orders from his superiors. In his old age, the atrocities he committed in the past start to weigh on his psyche. The ruling class responsible for spearheading forced disappearances has rarely faced the justice system or been made to answer for their crimes. The perpetrators of such atrocities have grown old and frail, dying of old age, something denied to the many victims they executed.

After General Mendieta suffers a heart attack during a walk around the city, in which he encounters one of his former victims, he begins to craft a letter to his son Pablo (Bernardo Peña), now living in New York. In the letter he admits his involvement in the campaign of terror. In flashbacks we see how he was one of the masterminds of Operation Condor, where students, activists, and political opponents were followed, their meetings infiltrated by military personnel; when the order arrived, soldiers descended, forcibly taking their targets in broad daylight. The journalist Marco (Carlos Cotta) and his wife Luíca (Carla Ortiz) are among those taken by the military.

“Ramon Diaz. Thirty-nine. Monica Paz. Twenty-five. Luis Maldini. Sixty. Horacio Belette. Forty-two, Laura Gonzalez. Forty-three,” a jailed, dissident utters the names and age of those he shared his jail cell with the night before, but were taken away in the dark of the night by military forces. The repetition of their names serves as a mnemonic device to keep the identities alive, should any of the newly arrived prisoners manage to escape alive. While imprisoned the dissidents argue over their ideals that led to their imprisonment asking if their involvement in pursuit of social justice was it worth it.

The strength of the film lies in its painfully accurate portrayal of torture. The most powerful scenes occur in the jail cells, when the dissidents are subjected to torture and in the streets where protesters voice their opposition to the military dictatorship. The torture techniques used by the US officials in the Middle East against perceived terrorist threats were perfected decades earlier—in the CIA backed campaigns against political opponents in Latin America. When torture is still glorified by some political circles, the realistic portrayal of the toll of electrocution, water torture, rape, and isolation, dispels the fantasy that torture can be a useful method to extract information. The film makes evident, that anyone under duress will say what is needed to end the pain.

It is less successful in offering insight into the history of the region, offering but a glimpse of archival footage of US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and a brief look at the training of soldiers at the infamous School of the Americas by US military personnel.

Forgotten was directed by Mexican Carlos Bolado, whose filmography has focused on social justice themes including Tlateloco: Verano del 68, the documentary about the 1968 student massacre in Mexico City, and Colosio: The Assassination, a film about the murder of Mexico’s presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio.  Filmed over 3 months in Bolivia, Chile and New York, the Chilean desert offers a lush backdrop—a jarring contrast against the brutality of the military repression.

The film was written and produced by actress Carla Ortiz who was born in Cochabamba, Bolivia. The film was years in the making, with Ortiz saying “that we urgently need to recuperate our historical memory, in order to not let history repeat itself” adding “it is important for the Americans to understand what their government keeps doing wrong or keeps on abusing its power for their benefit.” The disappearance of students, activists, and political dissidents, and the continued impunity and lack of prosecutions of the perpetrators of Operation Condor remains an injustice that plagues Latin America.

With the one-year anniversary of the disappearance of forty-three students from the Teachers College in Ayotzinapa, Mexico approaching, Forgotten reminds us that military repression has a long and painful history across the continent, the tactics employed by repressive military forces now, have been perfected through decades of forced disappearances of dissidents.

The film opens in theaters on September 18, in New York and October 2, in Los Angeles followed by a December release on HBO Latino.

September 18, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Film Review, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Venezuelan Film in Indigenous Warao Language an Oscar Hopeful

Gone With the River, or Dauna: Lo que lleva el río in Spanish, directed by Venezuelan-based Cuban filmmaker Mario Crespo.

Gone With the River, or Dauna: Lo que lleva el río in Spanish, directed by Venezuelan-based Cuban filmmaker Mario Crespo. | Photo: Twitter | ‏@anagaly20
teleSUR | September 11, 2015

A Venezuelan movie spoken almost entirely in the Indigenous Warao language was selected last week to represent the country in the 2016 Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film.

The 10 members of the National Association of Cinematographic Authors unanimously chose the film on the Indigenous Warao tribe for “the universality of the theme, its cinematographic values, the poetic presence of nature, and the profound glance into the Warao culture,” El Universal reported.

Gone With the River, or Dauna: Lo que lleva el río in Spanish, directed by Venezuelan-based Cuban filmmaker Mario Crespo has already been selected earlier this year by the Berlin Film Festival for its “NATIVe” program, especially dedicated to films on Indigenous people.

The film tells the story of Dauna, a member of the Warao tribe who is forced to confront cultural norms and traditions after deciding to move away from her people located in the Orinoco delta to pursue academic interests.

“The story serves as a vehicle to speak to the audience about the need to understand multiculturalism, and understand that women, whether she is indigenous or wherever she is, have as much right as men to grow and excel,” the director said.

The film was shot at the Orinoco delta where the Warao people have historically been located and is spoken almost entirely in the Warao language.

Warao is spoken by about 28,000 people primarily in northern Venezuela, Guyana and Suriname.

RELATED:

Argentina Creates Indigenous Film School

September 12, 2015 Posted by | Film Review | , | Leave a comment

What the epidemic of TV and movies about zombies and doomsday viruses is really trying to tell us

By Craig McKee | Truth and Shadows | August 2, 2015

Be afraid. Be very afraid. Of what may come. Of each other.

If movies and television in the last few years are any indication, we have so much more to fear in this world than losing a job or a relationship or our health. Our “entertainment” is telling us that a terrifying future could arrive at any time in the form of a doomsday virus that threatens to wipe out civilization and all of us with it.

Over the past decade, the sheer number of movies and television shows that have focused on killer contagions that threaten humanity with death or some kind or horrible transformation is reaching—forgive me for this—epidemic proportions. And there are more being made all the time. There are so many that it has become impossible to see these shows and movies as being made simply because the topic is “popular.” Something else is going on. It’s downright weird.

These entertainment vehicles seem to be telling us that the things that hold our civilization together can disappear overnight. People can turn into vicious creatures, literally feeding off each other as our emotional connections and our biology betray us. The more fundamental message we get is: Don’t trust anyone. Fear your neighbor. Isolation is survival.

Movies and TV shows about killer plagues are not new; they have been around for decades. In the 1970s, during a very cynical and anti-establishment time, we had “infectious” David Cronenberg horror flicks like Shivers (1976) and The Brood (1979), the film version of Michael Crichton’s cautionary novel The Andromeda Strain (1971) and George Romero’s zombie plague in The Crazies (1973).

Of course, Romero really kick-started the modern popularity of zombie films with Night of the Living Dead (1968), Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Day of the Dead (1985). After 20 years away from the series, Romero discovered the resurgence of interest in zombies over the past 10 years, so he made three more films on the subject. And in recent years, Dawn of the Dead (2004) and The Crazies (2010) have been remade. The tagline for The Crazies now is “Fear Thy Neighbor.”

These films and programs are not only showing us what might happen if a catastrophic viral outbreak were to take place, they are also introducing us to the idea of what life might be like if society broke down and we no longer had anything resembling security or technology or rights.

To try to figure out why we have been seeing this bizarre and disturbing trend, it is necessary to consider the concept of “predictive programming.” This refers to the use of entertainment and other cultural artifacts to introduce us to planned societal changes. As we come to see these potential changes as familiar, we also have an easier time imagining them to be normal, acceptable, and inevitable. Frequently, storylines show us the proliferation of video surveillance, electronic eavesdropping, RFID chips, facial-recognition software, and retinal scans to identify us, watch us, and track us. We’ve also become used to the routine appearance of police in full SWAT gear and the accompanying depictions of martial law.

The truly dangerous thing is that we’re getting used to all of it—and that’s the idea. When we saw actual martial law imposed in Boston during the search for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev after the Marathon “bombing,” we didn’t blink an eye. Media commentators didn’t even address the question of whether the limited imposition of a police state was in any way justified. No one seemed to mind that innocent people were being forced to close their businesses and remain in their homes, at least until they were forced to leave them at gunpoint to allow for illegal and unconstitutional searches. It was all seen as a reasonable response to a “bomber” on the run.

How did our familiarity with martial law through entertainment aid in our acceptance of this violation of individual rights in Boston? And is it beyond the realm of possibility that powerful interests that want to stifle dissent and tighten controls over all of us would exert influence over which subjects are given vastly increased dramatic treatment? Is it unreasonable to see entertainment as a form of thought control?

The Planet of the Apes series (the first one began in 1968) is now being remade, and guess what caused the apes to take over the world this time? Yup, you guessed it. As we see in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014), a virus sweeps the globe and kills most of humanity. This leads to a shutdown of all technology, another theme that has become significant with TV shows like Revolution and Under the Dome.

In the ‘90s we had the TV mini-series of Stephen King’s opus The Stand (1994) and the Terry Gilliam sci-fi fantasy 12 Monkeys (1995)—both of which saw most of humanity wiped out by a virus—and Wolfgang Petersen’s Outbreak (1995), which brought us martial law and the possible bombing of a town to destroy an Ebola outbreak.

When it comes to TV success with the apocalyptic zombie genre, it’s tough to top Frank Darabont’s The Walking Dead, which debuted in 2010. So it would seem reasonable to suggest that other producers have simply jumped on the bandwagon. And in some cases this is undoubtedly true. But one “hit” can’t come close to explaining the incredible proliferation of these shows. We also have, starting later this month, a prequel to The Walking Dead called Fear the Walking Dead, which shows how the plague that created all the zombies got started. The catch phrase on the poster is “Fear Begins Here.”

Starting in 2008, The History Channel produced the documentary series Life After People, which looked at what would happen to the Earth if people suddenly disappeared. Another British show called Survivors, which ran from 2008 to 2010, looked at a virulent flu virus that wipes out most of humanity. Then we have The Last Ship (2014), which follows the exploits of a group of survivors after 80% of the world’s population has been wiped out by a global viral pandemic. Helix (2014) looked at a viral outbreak in a scientific outpost in Antarctica that turns victims into zombie-like creatures.

Guillermo Del Toro has created another contagion show called The Strain (2014) that features a plague spread by ancient creatures that feed off humanity. That one gives us zombies, vampires, and a mysterious infection all in the same show. One of the heroes is from the Center for Disease Control, an organization that pops up often in these programs. A new show called Zoo, based on a James Patterson novel, looks at another pandemic that turns animals against humans. And there is Z Nation, which is about yet another plague that causes yet another zombie apocalypse.

It gets really interesting when we note that shows about plagues in past decades are being remade now as if we didn’t have enough shows on the topic already. Both The Stand (2015) and The Andromeda Strain (2008) have been remade as TV mini-series while 12 Monkeys (2015) has been turned into a TV show. Tagline for The Andromeda Strain, “It’s a Bad Day to be Human.”

Starting to get the picture? Starting to see a pattern? We haven’t even really got into the feature films yet.

There have also been many movies in the last few years that combine zombies with the notion of a viral plague. We have World War Z (2013) about a zombie pandemic that threatens humanity with the UN coming to the rescue; 28 Days Later (2002), about animal rights activists who release animals that carry a deadly virus; and the sequel, 28 Weeks Later (2007), which shows us London under martial law as it tries to regain control after the plague, only to lose it again. By the way, World War Z 2 is coming out in 2017. For more examples of zombie/plague movies—and there are a lot—check out the list later in this article.

But not all plague films deal with zombies; some are just about mass death and the end of the world that we know. Recently, we’ve had Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion (2011) with its telling slogan “Nothing Spreads Like Fear.” Other posters for the film (one shown above) feature this teaser: “Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t touch anyone.” I kid you not. Parts Per Billion (2014) gives us an apocalypse for the mature set (thanks to stars Frank Langella and Gena Rowlands) with its schmaltzy tag, “When the World Ends, Will Love Survive?” Yuck.

So we have seen epidemics combined with zombies, but we’ve also seen them connected to the idea of an alien invasion in aptly named films like The Invasion (this 2007 film is the fourth based on the 1955 novel The Body Snatchers), The Signal (2014), and Slither (2006), which combines aliens, zombies, and an epidemic. In 1982, we had The Thing (which was a remake of the 1951 thriller The Thing From Another World) and its delightful slogan “Man is the Warmest Place to Hide.” Not shockingly, this alien contagion thriller was remade in 2011. It appears that we literally can’t get enough of these films. Ironically, it is the aliens that are infected at the end of War of the Worlds (2005).

We even have comedy and romantic zombie movies like Shaun of the Dead (2004), Zombieland (2009), Warm Bodies (2013) and the TV show iZombie.

Here is a list—undoubtedly incomplete—of films made since 2000 that deal with people being “infected” with some kind of virus that leads to horrifying consequences:

  • Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014): Some sort of global plague has wiped out most of humanity, giving apes a definite leg up.
  • Retreat (2011): A couple in a remote cottage get a visitor who tells them that an airborne killer disease is sweeping Europe. Tagline: “No neighbours. No help. No escape.”
  • Slither (2006): An alien plague infects a small town with really disgusting slithering slug-like things.
  • Dawn of the Dead (2004): A global plague creates flesh-eating zombies while people hide in a mall.
  • The Invasion (2007): Aliens use a plague to take over people’s minds and flatten out their facial expressions.
  • I Am Legend (2007): The last man on Earth talks to himself a lot and fends off zombie-like survivors infected with a virus that wiped out humanity.
  • The Crazies (2010): Residents of a small town become insane killers after a mysterious toxin infects their water supply. It’s considered too late to bring in bottled water.
  • Parts Per Billion (2008): A global pandemic kills millions, and three couples get all romantic and sad about it.
  • Contagion (2008): Another global pandemic kills millions very unpleasantly. Revealing tagline: “Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t touch anyone.”
  • World War Z (2008): A UN employee attempts to save the day as he tries to find a cure for a zombie pandemic that threatens humanity.
  • Shaun of the Dead (2008): A light-hearted look at zombies trying to eat everyone in an English village.
  • Warm Bodies (2008): A romantic comedy about a young woman falling for a surprisingly engaging zombie. A rare optimistic film on the topic.
  • Cell (2015): A mysterious signal is broadcast that turns people into maniacal “zombie-like” killers.
  • The Signal (2008): A pulse is transmitted that turns people into maniacal killers: zombies, if you will.
  • Zombie Apocalypse (2011): A zombie plague kills 90% of the American population.
  • Quarantine (2008): Residents of an apartment building are infected with a virus that turns them into bloodthirsty killers of the zombie variety.
  • Quarantine 2: Terminal (2011): They thought they had it contained, but passengers on a plane are infected with the same virus, and it turns them, as you might expect, into bloodthirsty killers.
  • [Rec] (2007): Firefighters enter an apartment building and are attacked by the victims of a terrifying virus who have turned into zombies.
  • [Rec]2 (2009): Cops in riot gear go into the building with the terrifying virus, and they find out that riot gear doesn’t work against zombies.
  • [Rec]3: Genesis (2012): A couple’s wedding is ruined when the guests turn into zombies and kill everyone.
  • [Rec]4: Apocalypse (2014): They try to isolate a virus in the middle of the ocean that turns people into zombies, but it doesn’t work. More zombies.
  • The Happening (2008): A mysterious plague causes people to begin committing suicide. Many watching this movie had a similar impulse.
  • Virus Undead (2008): A virus carried by diseased birds causes corpses to reanimate in search of human flesh.
  • Pontypool (2009): People are driven mad by a virus carried by the spoken word.
  • Flight of the Living Dead (2007): A virus causes people to turn into zombies on a plane. (A line you won’t hear in the film from Samuel L. Jackson: “I have had it with these motherf*#king zombies on this motherf#@king plane!”)
  • I Am Virgin (2010): The survivor of a global pandemic is hunted by other survivors. Not sure where the virgins come in.
  • Blindness (2008): An epidemic of blindness causes society to break down. People become disagreeable without literally turning into zombies.
  • Extinction (2015): They thought the cold had killed all the zombies, but they were wrong. I guess regardless of the movie, you still have to shoot them in the head.
  • Doomsday (2008): A virus kills millions and a wall is built around Scotland to contain those infected. 25 years later the virus is back and lots of things get blown up.
  • Mulberry St. (2006): A deadly infection in Manhattan causes humans to “devolve into blood-thirsty rat creatures.” Actual rats are not sure what to make of this.
  • Resident Evil (2002): A lab accident causes hundreds to turn into flesh-eating creatures. The story continues in Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004), Resident Evil: Extinction (2007), Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010), Resident Evil: Retribution (2012), and Resident Evil: The Last Chapter (coming in 2016).
  • Bio-hazard: Degeneration (2008): A Japanese film about a deadly virus being deliberately unleashed.
  • Cabin Fever (2002): Five college kids rent a cabin and are infected by a flesh-eating virus.
  • Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever (2009): A flesh-eating virus is spread through bottled water.
  • Cabin Fever 3: Patient Zero (2014): The flesh-eating virus is back, this time on an island.
  • The Roost (2005): The undead arise on a farm.
  • Carriers (2009): Four friends fleeing a global pandemic find out they are carriers.
  • The Thaw (2009): An Arctic research expedition releases a deadly prehistoric parasite.
  • Mutants (2009): A couple hides from the zombie apocalypse spread by a virus only to find one of them is infected.
  • Last of the Living (2009): A virus turns people into zombies, essentially.
  • Mission Impossible 2 (2002): Tom Cruise and his team try to recover a man-made bioweapon virus.
  • Day of the Dead 2: Contagium (2005): Army loses control of bacteriologic weapon that changes human DNA. Conflict ensues.
  • Infection (2004): A Japanese film about a virus that breaks out in a hospital. You’d think that would be convenient, but it isn’t.
  • Ultraviolet (2006): A virus gives a woman super powers in the future. (Now this sounds like fun!)
  • Fatal Contact: Bird Flu in America (2006): An avian flu is transmitted to humans, as the title fully explains.
  • The Terror Experiment (2010): A terrorist tries to expose the government’s biological warfare weapon, a deadly virus that causes people to kill each other as viruses in movies tend to do.
  • Zombie Strippers! (2008): A zombie epidemic sweeps through a strip club. Still looking for the virgins from the other movie.
  • The Veil (2005): A town is infected by a deadly virus and military types are sent in to find survivors.
  • Antiviral (2012): Obsessed fans pay to have viruses injected from celebrities. If this sounds like the plot of a David Cronenberg film, it should because it was the directorial debut of his son, Brandon.

Incredible, isn’t it? Over the top? I would add “disturbing.” That’s 55 movies, and it’s not a comprehensive list. All of these have come out since 2000 and all but six of them just in the last decade.

Does this simply reflect our anxiety about the state of the world? Is it a depiction of some of the things we fear most about the future? Or could it be an effort to cause anxiety, to distract us from the atrocities routinely carried out by the elites who currently run things in our world? What is the military-industrial-entertainment complex (as dubbed by Fox Mulder in an episode of The X-Files) trying to tell us? Is it trying to prepare us for things to come? Does it want us to be ready to meekly accept what the horrors that our elite rulers have in store for us?

It’s interesting that in the late 1990s and early 2000s—especially prior to Sept. 11, 2001—we had a lot of movies that featured aircraft and asteroids and monsters crashing into buildings like the World Trade Center. I wonder what they were preparing us to accept then…

And now we have epidemics, including man-made ones, threatening to wipe out humanity over and over and over again. And in the midst of all this “interest” in epidemics, we had a real Ebola outbreak in Africa last year that made a brief appearance in North America.

Ever get the feeling the powers that be know something we don’t?

It seems that this explosion of films and TV about contagions and plagues is telling us several things. It tells us that we shouldn’t worry about fixing the world so that it has justice, peace and freedom; we should just be glad the lights work and that we can watch football once a week. The alternative is going back to basics in an effort to outsmart flesh-eating zombies. No more football, and probably no more lights.

These movies and TV shows tell us that living in peace, co-operation, and connectedness with others on this planet is an illusion, a luxury we can’t afford when survival is on the line. In the end, it’s eat or be eaten. The message is that we must be suspicious of each other, mistrustful of each other, isolated from each other, and when it comes down to it, we have to struggle against each other to survive.

As with all forms of control, it’s about fear. People who are afraid, don’t question, don’t challenge—they will do what they are told. They don’t look up the food chain at the psychopaths that are truly feeding off this world; they look sideways, at their neighbors. And they fear and suspect them instead.

August 3, 2015 Posted by | Film Review, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

BBC’s shameful film: Children of the Gaza war

By John Hilley | Zen Politics | July 9, 2015

A truly disgraceful piece of distortion from the BBC’s Lyse Doucet.

The title of this film is a clear hint of the propaganda to come, based, as ever, on the fatuous ‘two sides’ narrative. There was no ‘war’, only another orchestrated massacre, a campaign of civil terror, in order to maintain Israel’s wicked, illegal siege. From the first minute of this shoddy film, one just wants to urge Doucet: tell the truth, give the context!

Yes, children suffer and die, but why is this happening? Why have so many Palestinians been murdered? Why have over 500 children been slaughtered? Why are an entire population, notably the children, so deeply traumatised? Tell the truth, provide the context!

Israel is the aggressor force. Gaza is the key target. It lies in ruins. Yet, this truly despicable film affects to argue that Sderot is part of the same ‘war zone’.

Continual reference is made to Israel targeting populated areas from where, it’s claimed, Hamas were launching rockets, just part of the loaded message that Hamas are largely responsible for the carnage.

A key section of the film is given over to Hamas fighters, youth camp training and wielding weaponry. But there’s not a single frame of an Israeli soldier, or the mass military operation engaged in the attempted annihilation of Gaza’s people. There’s no questioning, either, of how Israel has socialised so much of its youth to hate and fear Palestinians.

CI24g8GWcAQHxjPStanding at a Hamas training camp, Doucet laments: “For the outside world it’s hard to comprehend why parents would put children in situations like this.” But there’s no exploration of how Israel as a militarist, occupying state has conditioned so much of its own population to join in the historic oppression and mass murder of Palestinians. Indeed, the word ‘occupation’ is never used.

At one point, Doucet sits with the smiling Gazan kids and asks one of them: ‘Why do you want to be a journalist?’ The child replies in lovely innocence: ‘So I can tell people what’s going on in wars like this one’. If only Doucet could aspire to that same basic aim. One might ask Doucet, in turn: Why do you want to be a stenographer rather than a journalist?

We see more pictures of Gaza’s ruins. Doucet says: “The donors promise a lot. But politics on all sides gets in the way.” This is the extent of her ‘explanation’ of the carnage Israel has caused, the devastation it’s unleashed, its refusal to help rebuild.

Doucet’s grating commentary, over inappropriately lilting music, continues, with affected questions on whether the hate and suspicion can ever be overcome.

A scene of more families coming to settle in Israel’s border locale raises not a word of comment on the nature of Israel’s land appropriation, historic displacement of people and enduring occupation. The indoctrination of Israeli children in defending this is never mentioned, nor is the stark privilege of Israeli kids against the appalling conditions and despair of the children in Gaza. Doucet just smiles and says nothing of the staggering disparities.

I hope the families that Doucet interviewed in Gaza get to see how they’ve been used and exploited in this shabby, deceitful film.

An end credit announces that both Israel and Hamas could be indicted for war crimes, and that: ‘In May and June there were more rounds of rockets fired from Gaza and Israeli airstrikes’, the clear inference, as throughout this deeply-loaded film, that Israel is always ‘responding’ to provocative weaponry.

This is one of the worst examples of ‘two sides’ reportage ever shown. Israel couldn’t have hoped for a greater piece of mitigating hasbara. Doucet’s film is one of the most shameful pieces of ‘war journalism’ ever put out by the BBC.

She doesn’t lack human empathy for the suffering Palestinian kids, such as little Syed, still haunted by the murder of his brother and three cousins on Gaza’s beach. What she lacks, much more profoundly, is a sense of compassionate duty to say why these appalling things happened, and are still happening, to name the principal perpetrators, to be a witness for truth and justice.

Doucet’s film is an abuse of journalism, and, in its pretentious evasions, an abuse of Gaza’s suffering children.

July 9, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Film Review, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , | Leave a comment

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