Far Right Whackjob Allen West Turns Out to Be Antisemitic, Right Wing PJ Media “Shocked!”

Far Right Whackjob Allen West Turns Out to Be Antisemitic, Right Wing PJ Media “Shocked!”

A Far Right kook is also Anti-Semitic?

Inconceivable!

A shakeup at Right Wing PJ Media, where former Congressman Allen West has been fired, or resigned, or something.

Imagine their shock to discover that this bigoted, crazed far right nutjob is also antisemitic.

Former Congressman Allen West is leaving his job at Pajamas Media after an altercation with a female staffer in which he allegedly called her a “Jewish American princess,” BuzzFeed learned on Thursday.

[…]

Two sources familiar with what happened told BuzzFeed that West had gotten into an argument with a female employee and called her a “Jewish American princess” while telling her to “shut up.”

Reached by phone, West told BuzzFeed he was leaving his job voluntarily, though one source familiar with the situation told BuzzFeed he had been fired. He did not deny that an exchange with the employee had occurred, but said it hadn’t led to his leaving the company.

“No I didn’t get fired,” West said. “I’m leaving to pursue political aspirations. That’s it. There’ll be a statement that comes out and it’s effective in October.”

Related articles

• Allen West Reportedly Loses His Job Over a Politically Incorrect Slur (theatlanticwire.com)
• Allen West Out At PJ Media (buzzfeed.com)
• Allen West Is Gone from Another Job Following Alleged Anti-Semitism (gawker.com)
• Allen West out at PJ Media after ‘altercation’ (politico.com)
• Allen West humiliates himself again, by @DavidOAtkins (digbysblog.blogspot.com)
• Allen West Out At PJ Media (huffingtonpost.com)
• Allen West Out At PJ Media (freshwaddabrooks.com)

Moses vs Santa Claus (for those who are yet to see it) and other hilarities

Moses vs Santa Claus (for those who are yet to see it) and other hilarities

No intro needed. Just pretty funny!

 

And while you’re here, this is sheer genius:

 

And more genius (Jesus as a racist):

 

And Charlie Brooker on the Pope resigning:

 

And finally, this is sheer brilliance (if you are easily offended by swearing, stay clear):

 

 

– See more at: http://skepticink.com/tippling/2013/02/28/moses-vs-santa-claus-for-those-who-are-yet-to-see-it/#sthash.vAV5m0vB.dpuf

Related articles

• Black Mirror saw Charlie Brooker nail the zeitgeist (metro.co.uk)
• Charlie Brooker’s second Black Mirror drama ‘White Bear’ is another work of dark and twisted genius (mirror.co.uk)
• Philosopher submits gibberish fake abstract and gets accepted on theological conferences (theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com)

If You’ve Never Heard of Anthony Jeselnik

Now you have!

Anthony Jeselnik on Jim norton down and dirty on HBO

The whole thing is a gem, but note from 4:28 (Source: youtube.com)

Watch his new show “The Jeselnik Offensive!”

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• Lisa Lampanelli Believes She Can Use the Word ‘Nigga’ Because It Has an A on the End (jezebel.com)
• The Tonight Show with Jay Leno – Anthony Jeselnik (hulu.com)
• Nerdist Podcast: Anthony Jeselnik (nerdist.com)
• The Series Premiere of ‘The Jeselnik Offensive’ Debuts Tuesday, February 19 at 10:30 p.m. ET/PT (tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com)
• Anthony Jeselnik: Caligula DVDs (starpulse.com)
• Do This Today: The Jeselnik Offensive (lifeabsorbed.com)

Oscar Prints the Legend of Argo

Oscar Prints the Legend: Argo’s Upcoming Academy Award and the Failure of Truth

  One year ago, after his breathtakingly beautiful Iranian drama, “A Separation,” won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, writer/director Asghar Farhadi delivered the best acceptance speech of the night.

“[A]t the time when talk of war, intimidation, and aggression is exchanged between politicians,” he said, Iran was finally being honored for “her glorious culture, a rich and ancient culture that has been hidden under the heavy dust of politics.” Farhadi dedicated the Oscar “to the people of my country, a people who respect all cultures and civilizations and despise hostility and resentment.”

Such grace and eloquence will surely not be on display this Sunday, when Ben Affleck, flanked by his co-producers George Clooney and Grant Heslov, takes home the evening’s top prize, the Best Picture Oscar, for his critically-acclaimed and heavily decorated paean to the CIA and American innocence, “Argo.”
Over the past 12 months, rarely a week – let alone month – went by without new predictions of an ever-imminent Iranian nuclear weapon and ever-looming threats of an American or Israeli military attack. Come October 2012, into the fray marched “Argo,” a decontextualized, ahistorical “true story” of Orientalist proportion, subjecting audiences to two hours of American victimization and bearded barbarians, culminating in popped champagne corks and rippling stars-and-stripes celebrating our heroism and triumph and their frustration and defeat.  Salon‘s Andrew O’Hehir aptly described the film as “a propaganda fable,” explaining as others have that essentially none of its edge-of-your-seat thrills or most memorable moments ever happened.  O’Hehir sums up:

The Americans never resisted the idea of playing a film crew, which is the source of much agitation in the movie. (In fact, the “house guests” chose that cover story themselves, from a group of three options the CIA had prepared.) They were not almost lynched by a mob of crazy Iranians in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar, because they never went there. There was no last-minute cancellation, and then un-cancellation, of the group’s tickets by the Carter administration. (The wife of Canadian ambassador Ken Taylor had personally gone to the airport and purchased tickets ahead of time, for three different outbound flights.) The group underwent no interrogation at the airport about their imaginary movie, nor were they detained at the gate while a member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard telephoned their phony office back in Burbank. There was no last-second chase on the runway of Mehrabad Airport, with wild-eyed, bearded militants with Kalashnikovs trying to shoot out the tires of a Swissair jet.

One of the actual diplomats, Mark Lijek, noted that the CIA’s fake movie “cover story was never tested and in some ways proved irrelevant to the escape.” The departure of the six Americans from Tehran was actually mundane and uneventful.  “If asked, we were going to say we were leaving Iran to return when it was safer,” Lijek recalled, “But no one ever asked!…The truth is the immigration officers barely looked at us and we were processed out in the regular way. We got on the flight to Zurich and then we were taken to the US ambassador’s residence in Berne. It was that straightforward.”

Furthermore, Jimmy Carter has even acknowledged  that “90% of the contributions to the ideas and the consummation of the  plan was Canadian [while] the movie gives almost full credit to the  American CIA…Ben Affleck’s character in the film was only in Tehran a  day and a half and the real hero in my opinion was Ken Taylor, who was  the Canadian ambassador who orchestrated the entire process.”

Taylor himself recently remarked that “Argo” provides a myopic representation of both Iranians and their revolution, ignoring their “more hospitable side and an intent that they were looking for some degree of justice and hope and that it all wasn’t just a violent demonstration for nothing.”
“The amusing side, Taylor said, “is the script writer in Hollywood had no idea what he’s talking about.”

O’Hehir perfectly articulates the film’s true crime, its deliberate exploitation of “its basis in history and its mode of detailed realism to create something that is entirely mythological.” Not only is it “a trite cavalcade of action-movie clichés and expository dialogue,” but “[i]t’s also a propaganda movie in the truest sense, one that claims to be innocent of all ideology.”

Such an assessment is confirmed by Ben Affleck’s own comments about the film.  In describing “Argo” to Bill O’Reilly, Affleck boasted, “You know, it was such a great story. For one thing, it’s a thriller. It’s actually comedy with the Hollywood satire. It’s a complicated CIA movie, it’s a political movie. And it’s all true.”  He told Rolling Stone that, when conceiving his directorial approach, he knew he “absolutely had to preserve the central integrity and truth of the story.”

“It’s OK to embellish, it’s OK to compress, as long as you don’t  fundamentally change the nature of the story and of what happened,” Affleck has remarked, even going so far as to tell reporters at Argo’s BFI London Film Festival premier, “This movie is about this story that took place, and it’s true, and I go to pains to contextualize it and to try to be even-handed in a way that just means we’re taking a cold, hard look at the facts.”

In an interview with The Huffington Post, Affleck went so far as to say, “I tried to make a movie that is absolutely just factual. And that’s another reason why I tried to be as true to the story as possible — because I didn’t want it to be used by either side. I didn’t want it to be politicized internationally or domestically in a partisan way. I just wanted to tell a story that was about the facts as I understood them.”
For Affleck, these facts apparently don’t include understanding why the American Embassy in Tehran was overrun and occupied on November 4, 1979.  “There was no rhyme or reason to this action,” Affleck has insisted, claiming that the takeover “wasn’t about us,” that is, the American government (despite the fact that his own film is introduced by a fleeting – though frequently inaccurate¹ – review of American complicity in the Shah’s dictatorship).

Wrong, Ben.  One reason was the fear of another CIA-engineered coup d’etat like the one perpetrated in 1953 from the very same Embassy. Another reason was the admission of the deposed Shah into the United States for medical treatment and asylum rather than extradition to Iran to face charge and trial for his quarter century of crimes against the Iranian people, bankrolled and supported by the U.S. government.  One doesn’t have to agree with the reasons, of course, but they certainly existed.

Just as George H.W. Bush once bellowed after a U.S. Navy warship blew an Iranian passenger airliner out of the sky over the Persian Gulf, killing 290 Iranian civilians, “I’ll never apologize for the United States of America. Ever. I don’t care what the facts are.”  Affleck appears inclined to agree.

If nothing else, “Argo” is an exercise in American exceptionalism – perhaps the most dangerous fiction that permeates our entire society and sense of identity.  It reinvents history in order to mine a tale of triumph from an unmitigated defeat.  The hostage crisis, which lasted 444 days and destroyed an American presidency, was a failure and an embarrassment for Americans.  The United States government and media has spent the last three decades tirelessly exacting revenge on Iran for what happened.

“Argo” recasts revolutionary Iranians as the hapless victims of American cunning and deception.  White Americans are hunted, harried and, ultimately courageous and free.  Iranians are maniacal, menacing and, in the end, infantile and foolish.  The fanatical fundamentalists fail while America wins. USA -1, Iran – 0.  Yet, “Argo” obscures the unfortunate truth that, as those six diplomats were boarding a plane bound for Switzerland on January 28, 1980, their 52 compatriots would have to wait an entire year before making it home, not as the result of a daring rescue attempt, but after a diplomatic agreement was reached.
Reflecting on the most troubled episodes in American history is a time-honored cinematic tradition. There’s a reason why the best Vietnam movies are full of pain, anger, anguish and war crimes.  By contrast,

“Argo” is American catharsis porn; pure Hollywood hubris.  It is pro-American propaganda devoid of introspection, pathos or humility and meant to assuage our hurt feelings.  In “Argo,” no lessons are learned by revisiting the consequences of America’s support for the Pahlavi monarchy or its creation and training of SAVAK, the Shah’s vicious secret police.

On June 11, 1979, months before the hostage crisis began, the New York Times published an article by writer and historian A.J. Langguth which recounted revelations relayed by a former American intelligence official regarding the CIA’s close relationship with SAVAK.  The agency had “sent an operative to teach  interrogation methods to SAVAK” including “instructions in torture, and the techniques were  copied from the Nazis.”  Langguth wrestled with the news, trying to figure out why this had not been widely reported in the media.  He came to the following conclusion:

We – and I  mean we as Americans – don’t believe it. We can read the accusations,  even examine the evidence and find it irrefutable. But, in our hearts,  we cannot believe that Americans have gone abroad to spread the use of  torture.
We can believe that public officials with  reputations for brilliance can be arrogant, blind or stupid. Anything  but evil. And when the cumulative proof becomes overwhelming that our  representatives in the C.I.A. or the Agency for International  Development police program did in fact teach torture, we excuse  ourselves by vilifying the individual men.

Similarly, at a time when the CIA is waging an illegal, immoral, unregulated and always expanding drone execution program, the previous administration’s CIA kidnappers and torturers are protected from prosecution by the current administration, and leaked State Department cables reveal orders for U.S. diplomats to spy on United Nations officials, it is surreal that such homage is being paid to that very same organization by the so-called liberals of the Tinsel Town elite.

Upon winning his Best Director Golden Globe last month, Ben Affleck obsequiously praised the “clandestine service as well as the foreign service that is making sacrifices on behalf of the American people everyday [and] our troops serving over seas, I want to thank them very much,” a statement echoed almost identically by co-producer Grant Heslov when “Argo” later won Best Drama.

This comes as no surprise, considering Affleck had previously described “Argo” as “a tribute” to the “extraordinary, honorable people at the CIA” during an interview on Fox News.
The relationship between Hollywood and the military and intelligence arms of the U.S. government have long been cozy.  “When the CIA or the Pentagon says, ‘We’ll help you, if you play ball  with us,’ that’s favoring one form of speech over another. It becomes  propaganda,” David Robb, author of “Operation Hollywood: How the Pentagon Shapes and Censors the Movies” told The Los Angeles Times. “The danger for filmmakers is that their product —  entertainment and information — ends up being government spin.”

Awarding “Argo” the Best Picture Oscar is like Barack Obama winning a Nobel Peace Prize: an undeserved accolade fawningly bestowed upon a dubious recipient based on a transparent fiction; an award for what never was and never would be and a decision so willfully naïve and grotesque it discredits whatever relevance and prestige the proceedings might still have had.*
So this Sunday night, when “Argo” has won that coveted golden statuette, it will be clear that we have yet again been blinded by the heavy dust of politics and our American mantra of hostility and resentment will continue to inform our decisions, dragging us closer and closer to the abyss.
***** ***** *****
* Yes, in this analogy, the equivalent of Henry Kissinger is obviously 2004’s dismal “Crash.”
*****
¹ The introduction of “Argo” is a dazzingly sloppy few minutes of caricatured history of Iran, full of Orientalist images of violent ancient Persians (harems and all), which gets many basic facts wrong.  In fact, it is shocking this intro made it to release as written and recorded.

Here are some of the problems:
1. The voiceover narration says, “In 1950, the people of Iran elected Mohammad Mossadegh, the secular democrat, Prime Minister.  He nationalized British and U.S. petroleum holdings, returning Iran’s oil to its people.”

Mossadegh was elected to the Majlis (Iranian Parliament) in 1944. He did not become Prime Minister until April 1951 and was not “elected by the people of Iran.” Rather, he was appointed to the position by the representatives of the Majlis.

Also, the United States did not have petroleum interests in Iran at the time.

2. After briefly describing the 1953 coup, the narrator says Britain and the United States “installed Reza Pahlavi as Shah.”

Wow. First, the Shah’s name was not Reza Pahlavi. That is his father’s (and son’s) name. Furthermore, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was not installed as Shah since had already been Shah of Iran since September 1941, after Britain and the Soviet Union invaded and occupied Iran and forced the abdication of his father, Reza Shah Pahlavi.
During the coup in 1953, the Shah fled to Baghdad, then Rome. After Mossadegh had been forced out, the Shah returned to the Peacock Throne.

This is not difficult information to come by, and yet the screenwriter and director of “Argo” didn’t bother looking it up. And guess what? Ben Affleck actually majored in Middle East Studies in college. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t graduate.

The rest of the brief intro, while mentioning the torture of SAVAK, glosses over the causes of the revolution, but lingers on the violence that followed.  As it ends, the words “Based on a True Story” appear on the screen. The first live action moment we see in “Argo” is of an American flag being burned.

So much for Affleck’s insistence that “Argo” is “not a political movie.”

Still, as Kevin B. Lee wrote in Slate last month, “This opening may very well be the reason why critics have given the film credit for being insightful and progressive—because nothing that follows comes close, and the rest of the movie actually undoes what this opening achieves.”

He continues,

Instead of keeping its eye on the big picture of revolutionary Iran, the film settles into a retrograde “white Americans in peril” storyline. It recasts those oppressed Iranians as a raging, zombie-like horde, the same dark-faced demons from countless other movies— still a surefire dramatic device for instilling fear in an American audience. After the opening makes a big fuss about how Iranians were victimized for decades, the film marginalizes them from their own story, shunting them into the role of villains. Yet this irony is overshadowed by a larger one: The heroes of the film, the CIA, helped create this mess in the first place. And their triumph is executed through one more ruse at the expense of the ever-dupable Iranians to cap off three decades of deception and manipulation.

And brilliantly concludes,

Looking at the runaway success of this film, it seems as if critics and audiences alike lack the historical knowledge to recognize a self-serving perversion of an unflattering past, or the cultural acumen to see the utterly ersatz nature of the enterprise: A cast of stock characters and situations, and a series of increasingly contrived narrow escapes from third world mobs who, predictably, are never quite smart enough to catch up with the Americans. We can delight all we like in this cinematic recycling act, but the fact remains that we are no longer living in a world where we can get away with films like this—not if we want to be in a position to deal with a world that is rising to meet us. The movies we endorse need to rise to the occasion of reflecting a new global reality, using a newer set of storytelling tools than this reheated excuse for a historical geopolitical thriller.

*****
UPDATE: February 25, 2013 – On the heels of Oscar Night’s unsurprising coda (made all the more bizarre by the inclusion of Michelle Obama, surrounded by awkward-looking military personnel, presenting the Best Picture to “Argo” from the White House, providing a deeply disturbing governmental imprimatur to the entire proceedings), The Los Angeles Times published a report Monday morning about how “Argo” is being perceived in Iran by Iranians themselves.
The conclusion is clear from the headline: ‘Argo’s’ Oscar gets a thumbs-down in Iran. Journalists Ramin Mostaghim and Patrick J. McDonnell quote several Iranians who have seen the movie, bootlegs of which are widely available, all of whom clearly have a better grasp on, not only the politics, but also the art (or lack thereof) of cinema itself.  “The perception that the film portrayed Iranians uniformly as bearded, violent fanatics rankled many who recall that Iran’s 1979 revolution had both secular and religious roots — and ousted a dictatorial monarch, the shah of Iran, reviled as a corrupt and brutal puppet of Washington,” Mostaghim and McDonnel explain.  Here’s what we hear from Iranians themselves:

“I am secular, atheist and not pro-regime but I think the film ‘Argo’ has distorted history and insulted Iranians,” said Hossain, a cafe owner worried about business because of customers’ lack of cash in a sanctions-battered economy. “For me, it wasn’t even a good thriller.”

“I did not enjoy seeing my fellow countrymen and women insulted,” said Farzaneh Haji, an educated homemaker and fan of romantic movies who was 18 at the time of the revolution. “The men then were not all bearded and fanatical. To be anti-American was a fashionable idea among young people across the board. Even non-bearded and U.S.-educated men and women were against American imperialism.”

“As an action film or thriller, the film was good, but it was not believable, especially the way the six Americans escaped from the airport,” said Farshid Farivar, 49, a Hollywood devotee, as he stretched his legs in an office where he does promotional work. “At any rate, it was an average film and did not deserve an Oscar.”

The piece ends with the reporters speaking with Abbas Abdi, one of the revolutionary students who planned the seizure of the American Embassy in 1979 and who spent some time in prison a decade ago for criticisms of the Iranian government:

In a brief telephone interview on Monday, Abdi said the Oscars had plummeted to the feeble level of Iran’s own Fajr Film Festival, not exactly one of the luminaries on the international movie awards circuit.
“The Oscars are now vulgar and have standards as low as our own film festival,” he said. “The Oscars deserve ‘Argo’ and ‘Argo’ deserves the Oscars.”

USA Today also has an Oscar follow-up entitled, “Tourists see a different Iran reality than ‘Argo’ image,” which details the warmth, generosity and hospitality of Iranians experienced by travelers when visiting Iran.

Related articles

• Iran dismisses “Argo” best picture Oscar (cbsnews.com)
• Argo’s Oscar and the failure of truth (mondoweiss.net)

THE UNBELIEVERS

THE UNBELIEVERS Official Trailer (Richard Dawkins & Lawrence Krauss)

‘The Unbelievers’ follows renowned scientists Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss across the globe as they speak publicly about the importance of science and reason in the modern world – encouraging others to cast off antiquated religious and politically motivated approaches toward important current issues.

The film includes interviews with celebrities and other influential people who support the work of these controversial speakers, including:
Ricky Gervais

Woody Allen

Cameron Diaz

Stephen Hawking

Sarah Silverman

Bill Pullman

Werner Herzog

Tim Minchin

Eddie Izzard

Ian McEwan

Adam Savage

Ayaan Hirsi-Ali

Penn Jillette

Sam Harris

Dan Dennett

James Randi

Cormac McCarthy

Paul Provenza

James Morrison

Michael Shermer

David Silverman …and more.

Follow us at: www.unbelieversmovie.com

http://www.twitter.com/@unbelieversfilm

http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Unbelievers/451679344852916

continue to source article at youtube.com

 

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• A Feature Film About Atheism – Brought to you by Dawkins and Krauss (blogs.scientificamerican.com)
• Lawrence Krauss: Stop Validating Ignorance (susananthony.newsvine.com)
• Is This Movie the Next Religulous? (patheos.com)
• Movie Trailer: “THE UNBELIEVERS” (skeptical-science.com)
• HumanistLife : ‘The Unbelievers’ Official Trailer (humanistlife.org.uk)

Propaganda and UFOs in Movies and Television

Propaganda and UFOs in Movies and Television with Comments from Robbie Graham

Big bucks are spent manipulating belief systems via the big screen.

In the novel ‘1984’, author George Orwell described life under a totalitarian regime in which a disingenuous Ministry of Truth regularly rewrote history to effectively promote the state. It might therefore be considered darkly ironic that the Central Intelligence Agency changed the ending to the movie version of the story. The change portrayed a less morally defeated main character than contained in the book and against the specific instructions of Orwell. The CIA apparently did not want movie goers to think Big Brother was all that bad.

That was the case according to Frances Stonor Saunders, author of the 2000 book, ‘The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters’. Stonor Saunders further reported the CIA purchased the film rights to Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’ following his death in 1950. Agents were dispatched to visit Orwell’s widow and secure the rights so the Agency could present a more overtly anti-Communist message than the author saw fit to do in his original classic novel. Orwell used a tale of political unrest among animals on a farm to metaphorically suggest the fundamental difference between greedy, power hungry capitalists and greedy, power hungry Communists was impossible to discern, a point that seemed to have sat no better with the actual CIA than it might have sat with the fictional Ministry of Truth.
It is clear the media is used for propaganda purposes. The sources of such propaganda may represent a wide range of individuals and organizations, and the range of motives may be just as broad.

UFO censorship and propaganda
A review of such events in ufology might quickly turn our attention to insights provided by researcher Robbie Graham. A self-described independent scholar, Graham reports on such topics as processes by which Hollywood’s UFO movie content is shaped and the resulting impact on popular perception. According to his Blogger profile, Graham holds a Masters degree with Distinction in Cinema Studies from the University of Bristol and a First Class Honours degree in Film, Television and Radio Studies from Staffordshire University. He maintains the blog ‘Silver Screen Saucers’, has contributed content and interviews to numerous venues, and has collaborated on research projects with Matthew Alford. Their work includes a 2011 paper titled, ‘A History of Government Management of UFO Perceptions through Film and Television’, which presents many items of potential interest.

One such item involved a 1958 CBS broadcast in which the network subsequently admitted it was subjected to official censorship. During a televised discussion about UFOs in which military officers participated, the microphone of U.S. Navy Major Donald Keyhoe was cut. The major was muted when he made apparently unapproved statements, including suggesting UFOs were real machines under intelligent control. Nine days later, CBS director of editing, Herbert A. Carlborg, acknowledged that “pre-determined security standards were in place” and that deviations thereof were not authorized for release, resulting in the censorship.

Graham and Alford inform us that during the 1980’s the Department of Defense assisted in the production of a UFO fantasy film for children, ‘Invaders from Mars’. The DoD granted full cooperation, including providing Major Fred Peck and Chief Warrant Officer Chas Henry of the Los Angeles Public Affairs Office to assist the director. What’s more, a retired public affairs officer, Captain Dale Dye, prepared extras for the film.

There are many such examples. Government agencies clearly have certain levels of interest in productions involving UFO-related subject matter and controlling public perception of alleged alien space travelers. The history is long and well documented.

Some of the more recent events on the time-line include the splash Chase Brandon made in 2012 when he cannonballed into the deep end of the pool of ufology. Described by Graham and Alford as a 35-year veteran of the CIA, Brandon was apparently employed for some 25 years in undercover covert operations prior to his assignment in 1996 as an Entertainment Liaisons Officer. He was then involved for ten years in shaping film scripts, characters and concepts.

Brandon also claimed he knew about an official cover-up of alien bodies retrieved from Roswell or some such stuff. Such circumstances arguably give added meaning to the now classic line from ‘The Wizard of Oz’, “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.”

Just how influential are intelligence agencies in manipulating UFO-related film scripts, info presented in documentaries and so on? “Very influential,” Graham informed me via email, but that is by no means to suggest Hollywood is entirely controlled by the powers that be, because of course it is not.

“Whatever effect UFO movies have on our perceptions of the phenomenon,” Graham continued, “it is largely the result of a natural cultural process whereby Hollywood creatives feed off of existing UFO literature and debate, and incorporate these ideas into their narratives. Just because a film contains specialized UFOlogical detail does not mean it has been produced at the behest of the US government for acclimation or disinformation purposes. More often than not, it means the screenwriter has read one or more books on UFOs or watched some documentaries on the subject and thought it would be cool to incorporate some of these ideas into a fictional story.

“That said, and as Matthew Alford and I showed in our peer reviewed article, the US government and military have demonstrated a very keen interest in Hollywood’s UFO output since the early years of the phenomenon and have, on occasion, monitored and successfully interfered in the production process of UFO-themed movies and documentaries. So, is there a Hollywood UFO conspiracy? Yes and no.”

Motives
Identifying motives for the vast majority of investors in film and other forms of media is simple enough. Some want to increase public awareness of topics in which they have personal interests. Some are artists and support the arts. Many, of course, desire to profit from their financial investments.

In the case of government manipulation of media and resulting perceptions about UFOs, motives become more difficult to conclusively identify. The fact such manipulation occurs is clear enough, but precisely why it happens is the subject of debate.

Some would argue a gradual disclosure of an alien presence is taking place. Others would disagree, suggesting such a gradual disclosure is highly unlikely for reasons including it has seemingly been crawling along at a snail’s pace for over 60 years.

Others still would suggest government interference in the Hollywood-portrayed UFO phenomenon might be indicative of efforts to cover up an alien presence – not disclose it. Arguments to this effect commonly include citing circumstances of official censorship of potentially relevant events. Those who support such theories and the extraterrestrial hypothesis also tend to suggest the topic is intentionally made to appear silly in an official attempt to devalue its likelihood and oppress serious public consideration.

Yet others argue government manipulation of public perceptions about UFOs might be due to it being a scam – that select members of the powers that be actually want us to believe in a nonexistent alien presence. Supporters of this school of thought suggest the intelligence community finds it advantageous to conduct some of its covert operations, such as certain projects involving advanced aircraft or psychological experiments, within the confusion and resulting cover provided by an alien meme. Some suspect the intelligence community has essentially perpetrated an alien hoax for numerous advantageous reasons.

Perhaps the truth is found somewhere among and between such possibilities, not entirely within or without any of them. Perhaps certain events indeed involve circumstances that confound many of us, but in reality have nothing whatsoever to do with interplanetary spaceships or their alleged occupants, interesting and fascinating as correct explanations might actually be. And perhaps sometimes the intelligence community indeed manipulates perception of such circumstances for many reasons.

Robbie Graham on UFOs in the movies
“Feature films and documentaries influence our opinions about pretty much everything, including UFOs,” Graham explained, “to a very great extent indeed. Outside of the UFO community – which is relatively very small – almost no one reads factual UFO literature (and most UFO literature isn’t very ‘factual’ anyway). For most people, ideas about UFOs and potential ET life come via TV and cinema – either in the form of ‘factual’ documentary series (such as ‘Ancient Aliens’, for example), or, more traditionally, through the fantastical imaginings of Hollywood creatives. TV and cinema are, without question, the two biggest ‘spoons’ feeding us ideas about UFOs and ET life.”

Graham suggested cinema is more powerful than television, lingering much longer in the memory. He gives television its due in cultural influence, but described cinema as having a mystical ability to completely detach us from our physical environments while creating a vivid realm of perception.

“But regardless of the medium through which they are screened, movies can pack a punch that we feel for weeks, months, or even years afterward. The power of the story – of storytelling – is primal, and essential. Movies, in their slick, neatly packaged, self-contained way, serve to narrativize the frustratingly non-narrative, and therefore unpredictable and confusing events, processes, and ideas that constitute our world. Life rarely makes sense, but movies usually do, and in that we take comfort – rightly or wrongly.”

How does Graham assess the overall accuracy of UFO documentaries, films based on true stories and similar such productions?
“Most TV documentary series about UFOs are sensationalized pap,” he replied. “This is a shame, because even the worst of them do include demonstrably factual and important information about the phenomenon; sadly, this information is usually presented in the tackiest and most hyperbolic manner, which has the effect of discrediting the actual material.”

Graham thinks there are a handful of very good documentaries dealing with the UFO issue, including ‘Out of the Blue’ and ‘I Know What I Saw’ by James Fox. This would be the case, Graham added, even though Fox himself criticized what Graham termed “the impossibly ridiculous” National Geographic TV series, ‘Chasing UFOs’, in which Fox appeared last year.

As for films, Graham gives thumbs ups to the 1994 TV movie ‘Roswell’ by Paul Davids, ‘Fire in the Sky’ about the Travis Walton saga and ‘Communion’, in which the Whitley Strieber story is presented. The films do not always represent details in entirely accurate manners, Graham observed, but the films are nonetheless memorable and reasonable portrayals of the stories.

“So, while some UFO movies are arguably quite accurate in their depiction of certain aspects of the phenomenon, I think it’s impossible for any UFO movie to give an entirely accurate depiction of the phenomenon as a whole because, quite simply, no one in the world can claim to have a complete understanding of what we’re dealing with. Still, it’s fair to say that the vast majority of UFO/alien-themed movies take a considerable amount of artistic license with the UFO phenomenon as experienced by millions of people. And that’s absolutely fine, of course – Hollywood is interested in entertaining, not educating. But we do need to constantly remind ourselves of this fact, especially when watching films dealing with the UFO/ET issue: movies, no matter how realistic they are in the events they depict (and regardless of the nature of the events they are depicting), are not real life. They are, at best, reflections of our reality, snapshots of it, simulations of it, skewed and distorted through the ideological framework of those who have made them.

“Movies masquerade as the final word on a given topic. No matter what the subject, and regardless of how much that subject has already been written about and debated, once it is committed to film – once it has received the full Hollywood treatment – it is embedded in its glossy cinematic form firmly and forever into the popular consciousness.”

Commenting further on the extent such films result in largely inaccurate beliefs held by the public, Graham continued, “Cinema and TV are meme generators, or at least meme magnifiers. Think, for example, of the idea of ‘Little Green Men’. Actually, although little green beings were reported in the Hopkinsville, Kentucky ‘farm siege’ of 1955 and the ‘little green men’ term itself was coined by the press in their reporting of that event, it was Hollywood that took this meme and ran with it in the 1957 movie ‘Invasion of the Saucer Men’, in which little green men terrorize a small town in rural America. One of the characters describes the alien she encounters as ‘a little green man.’ Hollywood has thrown the ‘little green men’ meme at us ever since in movies too numerous to list (though the ‘Toy Story’ movies immediately spring to mind, as do ‘Planet 51’ and ‘Aliens in the Attic’). But actually, as anyone who has studied this subject knows, green beings – little or otherwise – are almost never reported by UFO witnesses.”

What does Graham think is most important for us to understand about the relationship between the film industry and UFO subject matter?
“Quite simply, when it comes to our understanding of UFO phenomena and our expectations regarding potential extraterrestrial life – make no mistake about it – movies matter… perhaps more even than anything else.  As audiences, we should therefore seek to actively engage with Hollywood’s depictions of UFOs and extraterrestrials – to look up from our popcorn once in a while and acknowledge that such phenomena spring first and foremost not from the minds of Hollywood creatives, but from the fabric of our lived historical reality. By more actively engaging with Hollywood’s UFO movies, we enhance our ability to distinguish UFO fact from fantasy, and to more easily identify and understand the political thinking behind instances of government manipulation of UFO-themed entertainment products.”

Looking ahead
Taking a look forward on the time-line of television and UFOs, we might turn our attention to an item that stated, “We’re seeking subjects for the first season of a new TV show for a leading US cable network.” The item specified interest in people who “have had an extraterrestrial encounter, seen a UFO, been abducted” or similar, and was posted on several UFO-related discussion forums and blogs. The post stated experts were available to help, yet provided no details other than a relatively generic hotmail address. However, one website which published the post identified a Lauren James as a contact.
Your writer sent emails to the hotmail address provided and requested permission to ask some questions about the upcoming production in order to include responses in a blog post. No replies were received from Lauren James, helpful experts or anyone else, for whatever reasons.

While there may of course be many reasons the involved parties might prefer to not field questions about their project, they might nonetheless choose to take the nature of the genre into ample consideration in the future and plan accordingly. Distrust understandably tends to figure rather prominently within the UFO community, and providing reasonable amounts of information tends to be much more of the solution than the problem.

Items on the film and UFOs horizon include The John Mack Project, which includes a forthcoming movie from Denise David Williams of MakeMagic Productions. David Williams reports that she secured the life rights to the late researcher of alleged alien abduction, Dr. Mack, apparently giving her exclusive access to and portrayal of the information contained in his books, personal archives, journals, manuscripts and similar such property.

Further research suggests the subject of life rights has become increasingly relevant when producing documentaries and films based on what are promoted as true stories. Obtaining such rights stands to become important when telling a story or retelling it if the story has previously been presented in another media or context. Life rights may also become relevant to ensure due consideration and/or compensation is provided to researchers who invest significant amounts of time and resources in a story.

Beliefs
A wide variety of individuals, corporations and agencies are clearly competing to influence your beliefs about alleged extraterrestrial visitors, for whatever ultimate reasons. Successfully accomplishing the task has apparently been identified as worthy of substantial amounts of money and sustained effort.

Ultimately, we are each responsible for that which we choose to believe, as well as how we arrive at such choices. Please recognize and be mindful of how you make your decisions.
Sanctity of free thought should be cherished and encouraged to thrive. Consciously develop your process of making intellectual choices, honor and respect your process, and do not allow it to be overtly or covertly hijacked.

 

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Fatwa Fear | Islamic Fanatics Attack All-Girl Rock Band

Kashmir all-girl rock band gives up singing after fatwa

by FP Staff

ALSO SEE

• Kashmiri all-girls band faces threats online, CM orders probe

Pragash Band, an all girls rock band from Kashmir have decided to stop singing, after receiving a string of death and rape threats on their social media pages, as well as on their mobile phones.

The all-girls band, which came to limelight in late December last year after their performance at the annual ‘Battle of the Bands’ competition, had defied the convention by stepping into the male-dominated field of music.

They since received abusive and hate messages on their Facebook page, including from extremists who said the teenage girls should be raped and then drowned. The message read, “Post this status in advance. The three band girls raped in Jammu and thrown in river.”‘

Screengrab from CNN-IBN

The Times of India quoted Adnan Mattoo, owner of Band Inn, a musical academy where the girls trained, as saying that their talent is ‘astonishing’.

‘They are just 15 and too young to face such abuse.  They are hurt. They cried, but I tried to convince them to continue”, he told the newspaper.

The girls troubles were only compounded after the Grandmufti of Jammu and Kashmir Bashiruddin Ahmad termed singing as “un-Islamic” and asked them to abandon it.

The Grandmufti issued a decree, terming singing as un-Islamic.

“I have said that singing is not in accordance with Islamic teachings,” Ahmad told PTI.

The cleric said he advised the members of Pragash Band to “abandon” singing as it is against Islamic teachings and will not help them in playing any constructive role in the society.

“Society cannot be built or developed by doing un-Islamic acts like singing. I have advised these girls, and other Muslims as well, to stay within the limits of modesty as prescribed for them,” he added.

However, support has been pouring in from all corners on social networking sites for the band and Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has also backed them.

Omar came out in support of the girls yesterday saying police will probe the threats.

“I hope these talented young girls will not let a handful of morons silence them,” he said.

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Who Would You Rather?

Who Would You Rather?

I know, asking “Would I rather hump on Gerard Butler or Mel Gibson?” is like asking “Would I rather end up at the top of the CDC’s Most Wanted list or would I rather have my genitals banned by Jewish people, black people, gay people, women people, hispanic people, jacuzzis, etc….?”

So apparently, Mel Gibson and Gerard Butler are friends and together they terrorized Miami over the weekend. These pictures have got me craving an IV drip full of Gatorade and menudo, because they look like two hungover and hairy nutsacks in sunglasses. They’re like two rejected members of The Pussy Posse. But you know, Gerard is a genius for hanging out with Mel Gibson. Because next to Mad Mel, Gerard looks like a fresh piece of fresh ass and you completely forget that his crotch probably smells like a Limburger cheese and tonsil stones sandwich and you don’t even care that when he unzips his pants, an unidentified wart mysteriously grows on your genitals. Who cares! Give me Gerard! Give me a mysterious kind of STD! But don’t give me Mel Gibson!

Besides, call me vanilla, but when a sweaty piece is grunting over my back, I really don’t want to hear him moaning about how Jews are evil. I also don’t want a piece to threaten to burn my house down if I don’t tickle his huevos. Oh, and don’t call Mel’s ballsack “huevos” or he’ll demand to see your papers and call INS on you. That’s a total orgasm killer.

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Boy in the bunker: new details emerge about ‘menacing’ captor Jimmy | Alabama hostage standoff enters sixth day

Boy in the bunker: new details emerge about  ‘menacing’ captor Jimmy

Alabama hostage standoff enters sixth day

The hostage standoff in Midland City continues, as the town prepares to bury  the school bus driver killed by the suspected gunman.

As an Alabama stand-off and hostage drama enters a sixth day, more details  have emerged about the suspect at the centre, with neighbours and officials  painting a picture of an isolated man with few friends and no close family.

Authorities say Jim Lee Dykes, 65 – a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War  known as Jimmy to neighbours – gunned down a school bus driver and then abducted  a five-year-old boy from the bus, taking him to an underground bunker on his  rural property.

    He doesn’t like law enforcement or the government telling him what to do.  He’s just a loner.The driver, 66-year-old Charles Poland, was being buried on Monday  (AEDT).

Menacing … Ronda Wilbur, a neighbour of  Jimmy Lee Dykes, points as she  speaks with the media about encounters she’s had with him at the scene of the  shooting and hostage taking in Midland City, Alabama. Photo:  Reuters

Dykes, described as a loner who railed against the government, lives up a  dirt road north of Dothan in the south-east corner of the state. His home is  just off the main road north to the state capital of Montgomery, about 130km  away.

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The FBI said in a statement that authorities continue to have an open line of  communication with Dykes and they planned to deliver to the bunker additional  comfort items such as food, toys and medicine. They also said Dykes was making  the child as comfortable as possible.

Republican Rep. Steve Clouse, who represents the Midland City area, said he  visited the boy’s mother on Thursday and she was “hanging on by a  thread.”
“Everybody is praying with her for the boy,” he  said.
Clouse said the mother told him that the boy has Asperger’s  syndrome, an autism-like disorder, as well as attention deficit hyperactivity  disorder, or ADHD.

Along the red dirt road … A Google satellite image of Dykes’ property,  where a boy is being held in an underground bunker. Photo: CNN  screengrab

Government records and interviews with neighbours indicate that Dykes grew up  in the Dothan area and joined the navy, serving on active duty from 1964 to  1969. His record shows several awards, including the Vietnam Service Medal and  the Good Conduct Medal. During his service, Dykes was trained in aviation  maintenance.

Later, Dykes lived in Florida, where he worked as a surveyor and a long-haul  truck driver although it’s unclear for how long.

He had some scrapes with the law there, including a 1995 arrest for improper  exhibition of a weapon. The misdemeanour was dismissed. He also was arrested for  marijuana possession in 2000.

Tense … Authorities, including the FBI, wait at the scene. Photo:  AP

He returned to Alabama about two years ago, moving onto the rural tract about  90 metres from his nearest neighbours, Michael Creel and his father, Greg.

Dykes was known around the neighbourhood as a menacing figure who neighbours  said once beat a dog to death with a lead pipe, threatened to shoot children for  setting foot on his property and patrolled his yard at night with a flashlight  and a firearm.

Michael Creel said Dykes had an adult daughter, but the two lost touch years  ago.

Jim Lee Dykes, 65. Photo: Reuters

Another neighbour, Jimmy Davis Jnr, told CNN he had been shown around the  underground bunker by Dykes himself about nine months ago.

”He told me it was a storm shelter,” Mr Davis Jnr said.

“It actually had cinder blocks going down as steps and it was covered up with  two sheets of plywood nailed together with hinges and stuff as a door to open to  it.”

Mr Davis Jnr said Dykes had also buried a PVC pipe in the ground leading to  the bunker, so he could hear cars and people approaching from above.

The shelter was about a metre underground and negotiators were speaking to  Dykes through the pipe, James Arrington, police chief of the neighboring town of  Pinckard said.
“He will have to give up sooner or later because  (authorities) are not leaving,” Arrington said. “It’s pretty small, but he’s  been known to stay in there eight days.

Chief Arrington confirmed that Dykes held anti-government views, as described  by multiple neighbours: “He’s against the government – starting with Obama on  down.”
“He doesn’t like law enforcement or the government telling him  what to do,” he said. “He’s just a loner.”

AP, with theage.com.au

 

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Hell’s Angel: Mother Teresa by Christopher Hitchens | The Old Hag of Calcutta

The Old Hag of Calcutta

Hell’s Angel: Mother Teresa by Christopher Hitchens (1 of 3)

Part 1 of 3 – During her lifetime Mother Teresa had become synonymous with saintliness. But in 1994, three years before her death, journalist Christopher Hitchens made this provocative film asking if her reputation was deserved.

Hell’s Angel: Mother Teresa by Christopher Hitchens (2 of 3)

Part 2 of 3 – During her lifetime Mother Teresa had become synonymous with saintliness. But in 1994, three years before her death, journalist Christopher Hitchens made this provocative film asking if her reputation was deserved.

Hell’s Angel: Mother Teresa by Christopher Hitchens (3 of 3)

Part 3 of 3 – During her lifetime Mother Teresa had become synonymous with saintliness. But in 1994, three years before her death, journalist Christopher Hitchens made this provocative film asking if her reputation was deserved.

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https://theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com/2015/12/19/mother-teresa-sadistic-religious-fanatic/

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• Mother Teresa Saint or Sinner? (lunaticoutpost.com)
• https://theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com/2015/12/19/mother-teresa-sadistic-religious-fanatic/

 

“Dr House” On God, Reason and the Religious | Quotes and Video Clips

A selection of humorous and entertaining video clips, with Dr House commenting on God, religion and faith!

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Who We Are In The Dark: Zero Dark Thirty & Torture…

Who We Are In The Dark: Zero Dark Thirty & Torture…

Posted by Darren

That Zero Dark Thirty should come under fire for its use and portrayal of torture is not surprising. The film deserves to spark debate about how we respond to these sorts of threats, and critically examine our claim to the moral high ground. However, the debate seems overly simplistic. It has been suggested that the controversy over torture cost director Kathryn Bigelow a Best Director nomination, and that’s a shame. The fact she’s felt to the need to respond to these relatively shallow commentaries is less than heartening.

Zero Dark Thirty has a lot to say about torture. It’s a lot of thoughtful and insightful and nuanced stuff, and Zero Dark Thirty actually gets to the nub of the issue, very clearly condemning the culture of “enhanced interrogation”, in a way that is much more effective than any of the commentators seem to realise.

I’m fascinated by the role of morality in cinema, and our reaction towards the various ways that it can be presented. Sometimes, earnest condemnation of a particular philosophy or movement or practise is necessary. Most would agree, for example, that Schindler’s List is a tremendously powerful piece of cinema that is not diminished by the direct approach it takes to its subject matter. There is not ambiguity in its depiction of a historical atrocity, because there is not ambiguity about that historical atrocity. Sometimes we need to be confronted with these powerful and shocking images so that we might move closer to comprehending the horror of what occurred.

However, sometimes that earnestness can be too much – particularly for recent events. There is a reason that The Washington Times referred to The Dark Knight as “the first great post-Sept. 11 film.” One of the most powerful explorations of murky War on Terror morality came from a blockbuster about a man dressed as a bat chasing a clown around Chicago. More earnest films like Lions for Lambs or Rendition had tackled the issues too bluntly, trying to reduce an entire moral quagmire into a selection of glib moral cliff notes far too simplistic to really delve into the issues.

Let’s talk about torture. It’s an issue that has dwelt on the public consciousness for quite some time. Even before those iconic images of the prisoners in Abu Gharib were released, the question of how we respond to the threat of global terrorism plays a significant role in defining the morality of the twenty-first century. It’s worth noting that Zero Dark Thirty is not set at the same level as those abuses occurred. The torture depicted in the film is not conducted by a bunch of soldiers recording their actions for their own perverse pleasure.

The “enhanced interrogation” in the film is mostly conducted by Dan, the CIA operative played by Jason Clarke. Clarke is not a low-level army officer. He’s a veteran CIA officer. He keeps (and feeds) monkeys. He has a PhD and is characterised as quite intelligent. He uses words like “tautology”, and it’s clear that he has some idea what he is doing. While he manipulates those people in his custody, he is consistently portrayed as level-headed and rational. He’s not an angry sadist lashing out some pent up frustration or aggression at a hapless victim.

Reading that description, it’s easy to see how the film could be argued to be “pro-torture”, as many of its detractors have claimed. Certainly, it avoids making easy choices that could be read as condemnation. After all, quite a few of the conventional criticisms of torture are not really handled here. There’s a stock supply of arguments that people who object to the application of torture will present to support their position. There’s the question of what happens if we torture the wrong person, for example. Or the question of whether we can trust the information we receive under torture.

Neither of these arguments against torture gets a lot of space in Zero Dark Thirty. If anybody in the film is wrongly accused, we never hear about it. There’s never a moment of realisation where our investigators pick on a character we know to be innocent, or who later turns out to be innocent. Of course, we have only the word of the characters that these suspects are guilty. A few give up information that would point to their guilt, but there are a couple who we don’t see offering anything insightful or meaningful. So, in its portrayal of torture, the film never really delves into the question of guilt of the victim.

Similarly, we never question the information we receive under torture. Early in the film, the operatives fail to stop a high-profile terrorist attack. Quite simply, they do not “break” the suspect in time. The attack goes ahead, and people die as a result. This might seem to acknowledge the fact that torture doesn’t work, but it’s hardly a black-and-white condemnation. After all, no other method of information-gathering proves more effective, and the torture of the same suspect proves to ultimately pay off.

The CIA agents rather shrewdly trick their suspect into thinking that he broke and then get him to reveal all his information over a nice meal together in the sunshine. Some might argue that this is not a depiction of torture procuring vital information, but that is a bit over-simplistic. After all, the trick is only possible due to the short-term memory loss that develops as a result of the sleep deprivation, which is a method of torture employed by the CIA.

So Zero Dark Thirty avoids these two easy arguments against torture. However, I wouldn’t consider that as evidence of a pro-torture bias. Those arguments aren’t the root of the reason that we condemn torture. There’s a reason that they are used so frequently, but they aren’t the core of the issue. We use the “wrong victim” argument and “incorrect information” argument to attack the practicality of torture. They’re easy to relate to, and to understand. They are possibilities, of course, and they grab us because they directly affect us.

Somebody we know could be wrongly tortured. We could be wrongly tortured. It’s easy enough to see how such an argument makes a compelling case against torture. Would you really trust the state not to make a mistake? Would you really give the government that much power? It’s a raw, visceral, powerful argument – but it’s not the heart of the issue. Similarly, the argument about incorrect information is easy enough to understand. Would you really do that to a person if nothing of use would come from it? I mean, even if you knew you had the right person? And, based on that other argument, that’s a big “if.”

These arguments are appealing. They are easy to understand. They are useful in the argument against torture. However, they dance around the central point. They are practical arguments that skirt around the real moral issue. After all, surely if you are against torture, you should be against torture even in situations where you have the right person and it will give you the information that you need? Because if you accept that there is one case where torture would be justified by meeting a set of hypothetical circumstances, then it becomes a numbers game.

If it’s right to torture that one guy to save thousands of lives, then can we balance the possible mistake against that metric? Fighters may be dispatched to shoot down a hijacked passenger airplane; innocents will die, but more lives will be saved. If your objections to torture are purely practical, then it becomes a simple question of scaling the numbers. How many lives does “enhanced interrogation” have to save before you’re willing to write off one mistake, one miscalculation, one error?

These arguments are susceptable to the “ticking clock” scenario, one very common in the early years of 24. The notion that torture is only objectionable because of the chance of harming an innocent party, or because it is potentially ineffective, suggests that there are situations where one might somehow be able to mitigate those risks, or counter them entirely. These objections to torture are easy to understand, and are quite appealing, but they also belie the root philosophical problem with torture.

Any sincere objection to torture must be grounded in the notion that any application of torture – no matter what surrounding circumstances or outside concerns – is inherently immoral. Torture is wrong, even if you are torturing a guilty party. Torture is wrong, even if it will get you the information you want. The fact that the party might be innocent and the information may be incorrect are concerns, and are very serious possibilities, but they don’t form a fundamental objection to the philosophical idea torture. And it is shallow to suggest that just because a movie doesn’t play to either of these arguments, it must be “pro-torture.”

A strong argument against torture must be rooted in the concession that it might be possible to torture a guilty person, and it might be possible to garner useful information from it. In Zero Dark Thirty, the nugget that leads to Bin Ladin doesn’t originate under torture, but the revelation of this pre-existing piece of information during torture solidifies its importance to our lead character, Maya. In the opening scenes of Zero Dark Thirty, a terrorist is tortured and he gives information that prompts our protagonist to find Osama Bin Ladin, years later.

And – here’s the thing – it’s possible for Zero Dark Thirty to show an effective use of torture and still condemn it. In fact, its condemnation is stronger because it concedes the appeal of torture. The CIA did not have a systemic policy of “enhanced interrogation” because the technique was entirely useless. It trained interrogators and operated secret facilities because those methods produced information that was of use. From a purely financial and resource-driven point of view, there wold be no reason to use “enhanced interrogation” if it didn’t work. And it is very important to concede that just because it could be useful doesn’t mean that it’s right.

A fundamental objection to torture doesn’t care if torture is completely entirely effective. It doesn’t care that the person being tortured might be guilty. The fundamental objection to torture doesn’t believe that torture can be mitigated or tempered by success. Torture taints. It doesn’t just taint when it fails, it also taints when it succeeds. Every time it is used, it says something about our society. Not every time it is used against an innocent, or every time it fails to stop an attack. Every single time torture is used, it diminishes us and says something about our way of life that we should be ashamed of.

And that is what Zero Dark Thirty argues. Those torture scenes are damn uncomfortable to watch, and they should be.The CIA might use the term “enhanced interrogation”, but what we see is cold-blooded torture. We see waterboarding up close. We see suspects kept awake and delirious. We see them walked around on leads like dogs. We see them locked in boxes. We see them beaten. We see them tied up so long that they soil themselves.

This isn’t meant to be heroic. This is mean to be unnerving, disturbing and sickening. It is tough to watch. It is repulsive. There is no ambiguity there. Dan suggests that there’s “no shame” if Maya wants to stand outside. We might suggest that there’s no shame if Kathryn Bigelow had opted to whitewash all this out and pretend it never happened. Certainly the temptation must have been there. After all, if she had left these scenes out, the film would have probably generated less controversy. Personally, I bet she’d have an Oscar nomination.

However, to leave those scenes out would have been dishonest. It would have been cheap, and it would have avoided a vital issue. It is very easy to rationalise and justify torture if we ignore the fundamental unpleasantness of the act, the way that it cheapens us and undermines our authority and morality. This conduct isn’t fiction, and neither is the idea that it might provide workable intelligence. To ignore either reality is to do a disservice to an anti-torture argument. To pretend it’s not there, or to pretend it is always ineffective, cheapens any stance against this.

These scenes taint our view of the characters, and they should. Maya doesn’t directly participate in the first torture scene, but she is compromised by association. She enables. She passes Dan the water to waterboard a suspect. She uses the information garnered. Maya never directly tortures. Later on, she even uses a surrogate pair of hands. However, the film is absolutely unequivocal. She is torturing. And that torturing taints her.

We see that with Dan as well. He might be smart, and he might be educated, but it’s clear that he has been tainted by what he is doing. Mid-way through the film, he opts to get out of the torture unit. And he complains about the death of his monkeys. It’s a moment that exists to make his priorities clear. This is a man who routinely tortures and causes suffering to human beings. At the end of it all, however, the only sympathy he has is for a bunch of monkeys. If you want to talk about the dehumanising effect of torture, it doesn’t get more effective than that.

Zero Dark Thirty doesn’t opt for a feel-good simplistic condemnation of torture. Instead, it dares to suggest that torture is inherently abhorrent even if you torture the right people and get the right information. It’s a brave and thoughtful argument, and one well constructed. It’s a shame that so many missed the point.

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Catholic Priest Indicted In Suspected Crystal Meth Drug Ring

Kevin Wallin, Connecticut Priest, Indicted In Suspected Crystal Meth Drug Ring

By Meredith Bennett-Smith

 

Kevin Wallin, a priest in Connecticut, was arrested and indicted on suspicion of distributing crystal meth.

A prominent and respected Connecticut priest has been indicted along with four other men in an alleged plot to sell crystal meth.

Monsignor Kevin Wallin and another suspect, Kenneth “Lyme” Devries, were arrested Jan. 3, after law enforcement discovered evidence of meth, drug paraphernalia and drug packaging materials at Wallin’s home, reports the San Clemente Times.

The U.S. Attorney’s office claims that Wallin sold shipments of methamphetamine to an undercover cop six times between September 2012 and January 2013. Wallin is believed to have received the meth from California.

Wallin had been pastor of the St. Augustine Parish in Bridgeport, Conn., for nine years, before stepping down last summer, according to NBC.

On Jan. 16, the Diocese of Bridgeport released a statement in response to the indictment. The statement called Wallin “a gifted, compassionate and accomplished priest,” and said that his arrest and indictment by the grand jury both shocked and concerned his colleagues.

Apparently, the Monsignor had gone on sabbatical prior to stepping down as St. Augustine’s pastor. During that time, he stopped talking with his Diocese, worrying his fellow priests.

“As a result, his faculties for public ministry were suspended in May 2012, and he has not been reassigned,” the Diocese of Bridgeport’s statement read. “To date, he has not spoken directly with diocesan officials, though the Diocese stands ready to help as it has throughout the past two years. We ask for prayers for Msgr. Wallin during the difficult days ahead for him.”

During his long career as a priest, Wallin, 61, served as pastor of St. Peter Parish in Danbury from 1996 to 2002 and was an aide to Bishops Walter Curtis and Edward Egan, according to The Connecticut Post. Egan later became a Cardinal.

Wallin was arrested after a joint task force made up of federal DEA agents and the Connecticut State Police used wire taps, drug buys and surveillance to uncover the alleged drug ring, according to the Post.

“The hard work of the DEA and the Connecticut State Police in this case resulted in the dismantling of what we allege was a significant methamphetamine distribution organization that spanned from California to Connecticut,” U.S. Attorney David Fein told the Post.

All five suspects are being charged with participating in a drug distribution conspiracy, according to The Hartford Courant, and all are being held without bail.

If convicted, Wallin faces a minimum of 10 years on the conspiracy charge, plus an additional 20 years on other charges.

The Courant attempted to reach out to Wallin but was unsuccessful.

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Raving Lunatic Alex Jones “Spits” On Co-Lunatic Glenn Beck

Alex Jones rails against Glenn Beck: Jefferson would spit on you, you little b*stard

By Eric W. Dolan

                                             

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones slammed conservative personality Glenn Beck on Monday, attacking his supposed libertarian credentials.

“Glenn Beck is despicable,” Jones told The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur. “He has five guys watching everything I do, taking my news articles. Listen, four or five year ago he wouldn’t talk about any of this stuff. Now he takes it but spins it in a neocon way, and I’m sick and tired of him. He’s a punk. He called me a fascist. This is a guy who made jokes about torture and said it was a great thing. This is a guy who supports drones. This is a guy that supports the PATRIOT Act.”

On his radio show last week, Beck claimed Jones was not a conservative and also said Jones was being used by the media to push for more restrictions on firearms. Beck’s comments came after an eccentric interview between Jones and CNN’s Piers Morgan.

“I’m a constitutional libertarian who loves freedom, and my views are my own, and that little piece of trash needs to know this,” Jones continued. “You jackass mainline conservatives don’t speak for me. You’re the ones that have discredited true conservatism and libertarianism. Thomas Jefferson would spit on you, you little bastard, you little piece of trash. That’s what I have to say to Glenn Beck. I’m sick of him.”

But Jones, who has mastered the art of monology, wasn’t finished there. The prominent conspiracy theorist claimed he was the driving force behind conservative radio talking points.

“I saw that 15 minute clip where they attacked me. They looked scared because they’re a bunch of nelly punks who can’t stand the fact that I’m the one who’s turning the ship around. I’m the one that’s got all the conservative hosts aping my information and my talking points, because I’m original and I’ve done the research. I’m leading the pack and all these fake jackass conservatives know it.”

Watch video, courtesy of Current TV, below:

http://current.com/shows/the-young-turks/videos/alex-jones-to-glenn-beck-thomas-jefferson-would-spit-on-you

http://current.com/shows/the-young-turks/videos/cenk-uygurs-extended-unedited-interview-with-alex-jones-part-1

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Viral Video Recap Features Google’s Year In Review

Viral Video Recap Features Google’s Year In Review

Cats, Felix Baumgartner, Psy and more cats — this week’s most popular and iconic videos feature everything from the inspiring to the adorable to the hilarious.

Google compiled a Year In Review video posted on December 12. The nearly three-minute clip starts with Baumgartner’s jump from 24 miles above the earth and progresses into clips of other history-making moments this year: Oscar Pistorius’ competing in the Olympics as the first athlete to have carbon-fiber artificial legs; clips from this year’s presidential debates; images from the Arab Spring and the protests in Greece, plus some adorable animal videos that kept us entertained.

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Does ‘LOL’ Really Mean ‘Lucifer Our Lord’?

Does ‘LOL’ Really Mean ‘Lucifer Our Lord’?

Posted by Ben Weitzenkorn

Digsby IM, Email, and Social Networks in one easy to use application! http://digsby.com

CREDIT: Pecold / Shutterstock.com View full size image

 

When we “laugh out loud” online, are we really praying to Satan, the prince of darkness himself?

The answer is no, but an image posted by a user on the social news site Reddit is warning the Internet otherwise.

According to the directive, which is meant to be shared “with Christians,” the classic and ubiquitous “LOL” acronym stands for “Lucifer our lord,” something the image’s creator doesn’t find funny at all.

“BEWARE: Stop using the abbreviation ‘LOL,'” the hastily made image that invokes the same qualities as a Westboro Baptist Church sign reads. “‘LOL stands for ‘Lucifer our Lord.’ Satanists end their prayers by saying Lucifer our Lord,’ in short, “LOL.’ Every time you type ‘LOL’ you are endorsing Satan.”

If the warning, posted by Redditor DkryptX, in the “atheism” subreddit, were true, there would be a lot of Satanists on Twitter.

“I met the prime minister in overalls lol,” pop star Justin Bieber tweeted from Instagram in one such example. Columnist Roland Martin also has a habit of ending his tweets with “LOL.”

“Can someone please tell him that YOLO means ‘Youth Obeying Lucifer’s Orders?”” joked another Reddit user. Fans of the rapper Drake might disagree. The former star of the TV series “Degrassi: The Next Generation” popularized the “you only live once” acronym recently.

Still, the image warns “Do not use ‘LOL ever again!”

Other sarcastic comments on Reddit repurposed “swag” to mean “Satan’s wishes are granted,” “ROFL” as “rise, our father Lucifer,” and “BRB” as “Beelzebub rules below.” Who knew that saving keystrokes was such a devilish pursuit?

To most people, however, ROFL means “rolling on floor laughing” and BRB is simply “be right back.”

For language prudes, the outing of these “real” definitions may come as a relief. According to commenters the Reddit thread, WTF isn’t an offensive question at all. It really means “worship the fallen.”

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‘Happy Atheist’ Ricky Gervais Rewrites Pat Robertson

‘Happy atheist’ Ricky Gervais rewrites Pat Robertson

By Nick Ramsey

Video here:-

http://tv.msnbc.com/2012/11/27/happy-atheist-ricky-gervais-rewrites-pat-robertson/

On the latest edition of MSNBC’s The Last Word, host Lawrence O’Donnell relied on some wise words from comedian Ricky Gervais to rewrite some less-than-wise words from religious television host Pat Robertson.

In a recent edition of his show, The 700 Club, Robertson accused atheists of trying to ruin the Christmas holiday:

“Well, it’s Christmas all over again. Uh, the Grinch is trying to steal our holiday… Atheists don’t like our happiness. They don’t want you to be happy, they want you to be miserable. They’re miserable so they want you to be miserable. So they want to steal your holiday away from you.”

That flies in the face of something comedian Ricky Gervais, a vocal atheist, wrote about Christmas two years back. Just before Christmas in 2010, Gervais wrote an article for The Wall Street Journal explaining his atheism.

Gervais also wrote a follow-up three days later taking questions from Wall Street Journal readers. It is from that second post that O’Donnell found the right words to rewrite Pat Robertson’s claims on atheists who “want to steal” Christmas from Christians. Gervais wrote that he celebrates Christmas in the following way:

Celebrating life and remembering those that did, but can no longer… They are not looking down on me but they live in my mind and heart more than they ever did probably. Some, I was lucky enough to bump into on this planet of six billion people. Others shared much of my genetic material. One selflessly did her best for me all my life. That’s what mums do though. They do it for no other reason than love.

Gervais ended his piece by wishing “Peace to all mankind. Christian, Jew, Muslim and Atheist.” That led to O’Donnell’s conclusion, “the happy atheist Ricky Gervais is actually more Christ-like than the Reverend Pat Robertson.”

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Tommy Emmanuel | Guitar Boogie!

Another version of Arthur Smith’s “Guitar Boogie”. This version by Tommy is one of my favourites. Great playing by the guitar master!

Tommy Emmanuel | Guitar Boogie!

 

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Tears In Heaven

The Brilliant Eric Clapton!

Tears In Heaven

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Jewish Right Wing Extremists Suspected of Extorting Tupac Shakur

JDL Suspected Of Extorting Rapper Tupac Shakur, Others, FBI Says

The legacy of Rabbi Meir Kahane continues. The FBI has released files on the murder of rapper Tupac Shakur, revealing that the Jewish Defense League (JDL) was suspected of “extorting money from various rap music stars via death threats, including Tupac and another performer, Eazy-E.

Files show FBI suspected JDL of extorting Tupac

Jewish Defense League threatened famously murdered rapper, provided bodyguards for hip-hop stars, according to released FBI documents.
By LAHAV HARKOV • Jerusalem Post

The FBI has released files on the murder of rapper Tupac Shakur, revealing that the Jewish Defense League (JDL) was suspected of “extorting money from various rap music stars via death threats, including Tupac and another performer, Eazy-E.

“The scheme involves (name redacted) and other subjects making telephonic death threats to the rap star,” the files, declassified this week, explain. “Subjects then intercede by contacting the victim and offering protection for a fee. The victim and their family are taken to a ‘safe haven’, usually a private estate, and are protected by gun-toting body guards associated with the Jewish Defense League.”

After the victims were brought to the “safe havens,” the JDL would allegedly “convince the victim they have worked a ‘deal’ out…and the threats cease. The victim then pays the subjects for the protection services rendered and resume their normal lifestyle with no fear of further death threat.”

An unidentified source identified Eazy-E as a target of the JDL’s extortion before he died from AIDS. Another source, from within the JDL, “had also reportedly targeted Tupac Shakur prior to his recent murder in Las Vegas, Nevada.”

Tupac was shot four times in Las Vegas in September 1996, and died several days later. The circumstances surrounding his murder remain unclear.

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Catholic Pervert Remains Papal Knight

Child abuse suspect Savile still Vatican knight

This video from Britain is called Exposure – The Other Side of Jimmy Savile | 2012 | Full Documentary.

Via: -http://dearkitty1.wordpress.com/

From Associated Press:

Vatican says it cannot posthumously remove Jimmy Savile’s papal honor; condemns sexual abuse

Saturday, October 27, 6:24 PM

LONDON — The Vatican said Saturday it never would have given Jimmy Savile his papal knighthood had it known of allegations the British TV star was a child sex predator, but that it can’t rescind the honor now that he has died.

The Catholic Church of England wrote to the Holy See last week, asking it to consider whether it could posthumously remove the honor awarded to Savile because of the many recent child sex abuse allegations against him. Savile, a much-loved BBC children’s television host, died last year at age 84. …

Savile was made a Knight Commander of St. Gregory the Great by Pope John Paul II in 1990 for his charity work. He was also knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to charity and entertainment.

But police now believe Savile to be one of the most prolific sex offenders in Britain in recent history, with a “staggering number” of people reporting abuses by him after his death.

Some 300 potential victims have come forward with abuse allegations, police said. Most of them say they were abused by Savile, but some say they were abused by other people, Metropolitan Police said Friday.

See also here.

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Jihad Watch Is A Deceptive Blog By Race Baiter Robert Spencer That Seeks to Start World War III

Jihad Watch Is A Deceptive Blog By Race Baiter Robert Spencer That Seeks to Start World War III.

Via:- pibillwarner

RIGHT WING EXTREMISTS….Robert Spencer crawled out of the wood work and into the relative limelight circa 2003 when he started Jihad Watch http://www.jihadwatch.org/. Ever since then it has been a long journey into the bizarre ranks of the pantheon of right wing blog stars with an occasional foray to bless the mere mainstream mortals with his personal knowledge of Islam (which is limited as he does read Arabic). He receives stupendous applause and adulation from the cult following that has sprung up since his site was created — the little “counter-Jihadis” who in the late middle of their lives have found a new purpose to life; hate of Muslims as defense of the West.

As per the Southern Poverty Law Center: ROBERT SPENCER ORGANIZATION Runs the Jihad Watch website, a project of the David Horowitz Freedom Center. Co-founder with Pamela Geller of Stop Islamization of America and the American Freedom Defense Initiative. Spencer has been known to fraternize with European racists and neo-fascists, though he says such contacts were merely incidental. Benazir Bhutto, the late prime minister of Pakistan, accused Spencer of “falsely constructing a divide between Islam and West” in her 2008 book, Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy, and the West. Spencer, she wrote, presented a “skewed, one-sided, and inflammatory story that only helps to sow the seed of civilizational conflict.”

Robert Spencer posts articles of his gal pal Pamela Geller and follows her where ever she goes, he helped her to set up the phony ‘Muslims Against Sharia’ website run by dirtbag Alex Potter.  Pam Geller of Atlas Shrugs & Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch created the Faux organization called “Muslims Against Sharia” which included no Muslims.

Robert Spencer’s  blog, Jihad Watch, has served as a portal into the realm of propaganda against Islam and Muslims. It works at one and the same time to confuse and conflate issues and news related to Islam and Muslims. A man murders his wife and for Spencer it is not a question of domestic violence but honor killing that derives its roots from the Quran. There are a type of Gobbelsesque Nazi tactic employed by Robert Spencer that highlight the pre-set prejudiced conclusion he begins with; the maxim he seems to be working from is all Muslims are guilty, before proven innocent.

From information obtained from a Federal Subpoena served on Enter.net inc it has been revealed that the owner of the http://www.reformislam.org/  website that used the phony name of “Muslims Against Sharia” with a phony president listed as Khalim Massoud is actually American Starlex Inc run by a Alex Dobin (possibly Alex Porter) out of Omaha NE, see  verification from Enter.Net web hosting company.  There are no “Muslims” at “Muslims Against Sharia”.

The fraudulent Muslims Against Sharia website, reformislam.com, has been terminated, see link http://www.reformislam.org/.  The website hosting company EnterNet has discontinued service TO the phony Muslims Against Sharia website.

“Muslims Against Sharia” and “Terror Free Oil” both appear to have been fronts for the David Horowitz Freedom Center in California, both websites for “Muslims Against Sharia” and “Terror Free Oil” solicited donations to be sent to P.O. Box 55089 Sherman Oaks, CA 91499-1964 for the David Horowitz Freedom Center, so is Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch he is paid directly form David Horowitz. Dirtbag David Horowitz set up the violent Black Panthers and the BLA in the 1960′s and early 1970′s with a scam organization that sucked money out of the State of California.

The Educational Opportunities Corporation was a California Corp. with registered agent Huey P. Newton. The Panther “Learning Center” at 6118 EAST 14th Street OAKLAND CA 94621 was a scam, the Black Panthers were using the Center as a vehicle by which to embezzle millions of dollars in California education funds set up by David Horowitz.

David Horowitz has written that he recommended that the Black Panther Party hire a bookkeeper, Betty Van Patter, who was then working for David Horowitz at Ramparts. Betty Van Patter (killed December 13, 1974) was a bookkeeper for the Black Panther Party who was raped, beaten and murdered (Stomped). After serving as a bookkeeper for Ramparts magazine, Betty Van Patter became an aide to Panther leader Elaine Brown in 1974, after being introduced to the Black Panther Party by David Horowitz.

After Betty Van Patter disappeared, David Horowitz called a Black Panther Official (possibly Elaine Brown) and said, “ You have to find Betty!”  The Black Panther official said, “That woman? She knew all our secrets.  She knew too much. You told me I could trust her!  Several Days later the same Black Panther official called David Horowitz, “David if you should get run over by a car, I’d be really upset as people would say I did it.”  

The David Horowitz Freedom Center in California is an ultra right wing organization that solicits donations with a variety of websites, Robert Spencer’s “Jihad Watch” is one, to support conservative political candidates around the nation. There is a grass roots campaign run out of the David Horowitz Freedom Center in California that uses an extensive array of direct mail companies to contact like minded individuals around the USA seeking donations to help elect conservative candidates.  This is all very political.

The website http://www.terrorfreeoil.com/ for the ‘Terror-free’ oil scam appears to have been shut down when you click on the link you are directed to the web hosting company ENTER.NET

From a reliable source in the Intelligence Summit, via a phone call to my office last year, Alex Porter the so called CTO of the Intelligence Summit and the spokesperson for the ‘Terror-free’ oil scam has left the USA and is in hiding, possibly in Russia.  I am actively seeking an address location for Alex Porter in the USA, I will find this dirtbag Alex Porter

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US Judge Holds That Paranoid Schizophrenic Beliefs Are Identical to Christianity

Florida Okays Execution of Schizophrenic Man in Direct Violation of Supreme Court Ruling

By Rania Khalek

• 

  (Photo: World Coalition Against the Death Penalty / Flickr)The Florida Supreme Court has ruled that the state can proceed with the execution of 64-year-old John Erroll Ferguson, despite its finding that he is a paranoid schizophrenic. The decision will be appealed to the US Supreme Court.

  The Florida Supreme Court has ruled that the state can proceed with the execution of 64-year-old John Erroll Ferguson, despite its finding that he is a paranoid schizophrenic. The Justices upheld the ruling of a lower court, which found that Ferguson’s “Prince of God” delusions, while “genuine”, are not “significantly different than beliefs other Christians may hold.” Gov. Rick Scott has since signed a new death warrant with the execution scheduled for Tuesday, October 23 at 6 p.m.

  Christopher Handman, one of Ferguson’s attorneys, tells Truthout that Florida’s method for determining competency is “overly restrictive” and “out of step” with the Constitution, as determined by the US Supreme Court. He says they will appeal to the Supreme Court for a stay and ask that they hear his case.

  Ferguson was sentenced to death for a 1977 mass murder in Miami Dade, which he committed shortly after the state released him from a mental hospital against the warnings of several state-appointed psychiatrists. During his incarceration, state appointed experts have continued to diagnose him with paranoid schizophrenia.

  The prosecution initially argued that Ferguson was faking his symptoms. But that was shot down last week by Bradford County Eighth Judicial Circuit Judge David Glant who found the testimony of Ferguson’s experts “credible and compelling” and ruled that Ferguson’s delusions are “genuine.” Nevertheless, Glant ruled that Ferguson is competent for execution because his beliefs are in keeping with Christian teachings.

  Ferguson expresses the belief, among other things, that he is the “Prince of God” chosen to fight two antichrists alongside Jesus – after which he will rule the world with multiple wives. In his mind, his incarceration is part of a “hardening” process designed by God to prepare him to return to earth after his execution and save America from a communist plot.

  Ferguson’s delusions represent a “relatively normal Christian belief, albeit a grandiose one,” concluded Glant. “There is no evidence in the record that Ferguson’s belief as to his role in the world and what may happen to him in the afterlife is so significantly different from beliefs other Christians may hold so as to consider it a sign of insanity.”

  Ferguson’s attorneys immediately appealed Glant’s decision to the Florida Supreme Court, which upheld the lower court’s ruling, though they ditched the “his delusions are totally normal Christian beliefs” part.

  “This is the first time the Florida Supreme Court has had an opportunity to consider the state’s methods for determining competency since the Supreme Court decided Panetti,” Handman told Truthout, referring to a Supreme Court ruling that clarified competency standards.

  The US Supreme Court initially banned executing the mentally ill in Ford v. Wainwright (1986), specifically if the inmate lacks the “ability to comprehend the nature of the penalty.” The Court expanded on that view in Panetti v. Quarterman (2007), a case brought forward by a psychotic Texas inmate whose case closely resembles Ferguson’s.

  Panetti had schizoaffective disorder that led him to believe the state wanted him dead to stop him from preaching. Though Panetti recognized the factual rationale behind his death sentence – that he was found guilty of murdering his ex-wife’s parents – the Supreme Court held that “[a] prisoner’s awareness of the State’s rationale for an execution is not the same as a rational understanding of it.” Furthermore, the Court reasoned that executing a prisoner who “has no comprehension of why he has been singled out and stripped of his fundamental right to life” undermines the concept of retributive justice.

  Ferguson, like Panetti, thinks that the state wants him dead not because of his crime, but as part of a conspiracy. According to testimony from George W. Woods, an expert in neuropsychiatry who examined Ferguson three times in the last year, Ferguson expresses a belief that “the guards [are] soldiers and communists” who are “going to kill him because they know he is the prince of God and that he has the power and can control the sun,” and that “he has more power than Jesus.”

  Ferguson also lacks any understanding of the consequences of execution. He believes death penalty is no match for his special powers which prevent him from ever being killed and that “just like Jesus, you’ll come and look and you won’t find me there [in my grave]”.

  Despite all of this, the Florida Supreme Court held that only a factual “awareness” of his crime and the reasons for his sentence are required for Ferguson to qualify as competent. At the same time, the Court denied that Ferguson “believes himself unable to die or that he is being executed for any reason other than the murders he was convicted of in 1978.”

  “The State has taken a hardline view that Panetti didn’t change anything,” says Handman. “[Panetti] amplifies the Ford requirements and clarifies the way it’s supposed to be approached because a lot of the lower courts had applied this overly restrictive conception of what it means to be insane. Florida’s statute currently embodies that same flawed conception.”

  It’s now up to the US Supreme Court to correct that flaw, because, contends Handman, “No justice will be served by executing a very sick, elderly man.”

Related articles

• FL Judge: Schizophrenic death row inmate’s Jesus visions no crazier than many Christians’ (freethoughtblogs.com)
• Judge: schizophrenic man can be put to death because his Jesus vision is basically the same as all Christians (deathandtaxesmag.com)
• Florida inmate found fit to be executed despite mental illness (rawstory.com)

The Second Coming of Mohammed, Mormon Founders Dream | Christopher Hitchen’s Reveals Mormon Origins

“I Will Be a Second Mohammed” – Mormon Founder, Joseph Smith

From left to right: Joseph Smith, Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammed

Hitchens on Mormons Part 1 of 2

Truth is my god. The only path to truth is evidence (convincing and sufficient evidence). Faith is not a path to truth as people have demonstrated by having had faith in many fraudulent persons and schemes throughout history. Divine revelation is not a path to truth as is proven by the incompatible revelations found in today’s competing human religions – they simply cannot all be true. Indeed the only real path to truth ever known to humanity is sufficient and convincing evidence.

Hitchens on Mormons Part 2 of 2

From the chapter entitled ‘Lowly Stamp of Their Origin — Religion’s Corrupt Beginnings’ of his book God is Not Great, Hitchens explains the origins of the Smith Cult.

“I Will Be a Second Mohammed” – Mormon Founder, Joseph Smith

 In the heat of the Missouri “Mormon War” of 1838, Joseph Smith made the following claim, “I will be to this generation a second Mohammed” “So shall it eventually be with us—‘Joseph Smith or the Sword!’ ”[1]

[1] Joseph Smith made this statement at the conclusion of a speech in the public square at Far West, Missouri on October 14, 1838. This particular quote is documented in Fawn M. Brodie, No Man Knows My History, second edition, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971), p. 230–231. Fawn Brodie’s footnote regarding this speech contains valuable information, and follows. “Except where noted, all the details of this chapter [16] are taken from the History of the [Mormon] Church. This speech, however, was not recorded there, and the report given here is based upon the accounts of seven men. See the affidavits of T.B. Marsh, Orson Hyde, George M. Hinkle, John Corrill, W.W. Phelps, Samson Avard, and Reed Peck in Correspondence, Orders, etc., pp. 57–9, 97–129. The Marsh and Hyde account, which was made on October 24, is particularly important. Part of it was reproduced in History of the [Mormon] Church, Vol. III, p. 167. See also the Peck manuscript, p. 80. Joseph himself barely mentioned the speech in his history; see Vol. III, p. 162.”

Similarities between Muslims and Mormons

Thomas S. Monson, the current “Prophet” of the LDS Church

Other similarities between Islam and Mormonism include, but are not limited to:

• A founding prophet who received visits from an angel, leading to revelation of a book of scripture;
• An emphasis upon family, and the family unit as the foundation for religious life and the transmission of values;
• Insistence that their religion is a complete way of life, meant to directly influence every facet of existence;
• A belief that theirs constitutes the one and only completely true religion on the earth today;
• Belief that good deeds are required for salvation just as much as faith;
• Assertions that modern Christianity does not conform to the original religion taught by Jesus Christ;
• Belief that the text of the Bible, as presently constituted, has been adulterated from its original form;
• Rejection of the Christian doctrines of Original Sin and the Trinity;
• Strong emphasis upon education, both in the secular and religious arenas;
• Belief in fasting during specified periods of time;
• Incorporation of a sacred ritual of ablution, though each religion’s rite differs in form, frequency and purpose;
• Belief that their faith represents the genuine, original religion of Adam, and of all true prophets thereafter;
• Prohibition of alcoholic beverages, gambling, and homosexual and bisexual practices;
• Belief that one’s marriage can potentially continue into the next life, if one is faithful to the religion;
• Belief in varying degrees of reward and punishment in the hereafter, depending upon one’s performance in this life;
• Special reverence for, though not worship of, their founding prophet;
• Emphasis upon charitable giving, and helping the downtrodden;
• An active interest in proselytizing nonbelievers;
• Strong emphasis upon chastity, including modesty in dress; and
• A clergy drawn from the laity, without necessarily requiring collegiate or seminary training.
• A division of the religion into a minimum of two parties after the death of the founding prophet, with one party claiming that leadership should continue through the prophet’s descendents, and the other party rejecting this idea

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IMAGINE

Nice acoustic guitar arrangement by Adam Rafferty

John Lennon classic

Religious Nutcase Kirk Cameron Causes The American Taliban To Drool

Kirk Cameron: “God IS the Platform”

The Christian Taliban movement

Wingnuts

Today’s moment of right wing religious fanaticism comes from former child star Kirk Cameron, who says, “one of our parties is wondering whether the name God should be in the platform,” but according to America’s founding fathers, “God is the platform!”

The crowd cheers this line in a very disturbing way.

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Doctor Who: Asylum of the Daleks (Review)

Doctor Who: Asylum of the Daleks (Review)

Posted by Darren

“This is Christmas!” the Doctor declares, addressing the Parliament of the Daleks early in the episode. Really, Christmas was merely the last time we saw him, but it’s been so long since the last new episode of Doctor Who that it does almost feel like Christmas. This year, showrunner Steven Moffat has promised big budget spectacle. There will be no two-parters and, instead, each instalment will feel like a forty-five-minute summer film. Asylum of the Daleks feels like a fairly efficient prototype for that storytelling model, while still perhaps hinting at the things to come as the Doctor enters his fiftieth year on British television.

Moffat’s crack at writing a Dalek episode…

This is really Moffat’s first attempt to write a “Dalek” episode. Sure, he’s written stories including the monsters before, like The Pandorica Opens and The Big Bang, but this is the first to focus solely on the genocidal maniacs and (arguably more importantly) the first with a title to include “… of the Daleks.” I think that’s fascinating, if only because – as a writer, Moffat has gravitated rather consciously towards what might be dubbed “his own thing.”

While Russell T. Davies would end his seasons by bringing back fan favourites like the Daleks or the Cybermen or the Master, Moffat has generally used the season finalé to round-out the year’s story-telling, to offer something a bit bold and perhaps a bit less obviously crowd-pleasing. So it’s interesting to see Moffat open a season with the most crowd-pleasing of Doctor Who monsters. It’s always fun to see a writer working outside their comfort zone, and it is very weird to see Moffat doing an entire episode based around a very classic concept, rather than something more distinctly his own.

Plunging into a new season with Matt Smith…

It’s very clear what Moffat wants to do here. As he outline in interviews before the series started, he wants to make the Daleks scary again:

Kids are supposedly frightened of Daleks but they take them to bed. Is there a way we can make them scarier, get them back to being more monstery? I hope they will leave them outside their bedroom doors, was my response to that. There is a tremendous temptation to go kitch and sweet with the Daleks. You shouldn’t. They are insane tanks.

Of course, there’s only so much a writer can do. The Daleks are, for better or worse, almost as deeply engrained in our popular consciousness as the good Doctor himself. You can use the word “Dalek”and everybody knows what you’re talking about. They aren’t treated as objects of fear in the collective mind, but objects of ridicule. The very word conjures up a (literal) tinpot dictator screaming nonsense in a shrill voice, often while spinning around uncontrollably.

Graveyard of the Daleks?

That’s not to suggest that it’s impossible to make the Dalek’s scare again. I think that, for all its faults, Dalek did a good job of that years ago. The problem is that you can’t keep them scary. They’ll always vary from episode-to-episode. After all, Russell T. Davies gave us the all-conquering Daleks of The Parting of the Ways and the campy sass-talkin’ Daleks of Doomsday. It really depends on the episode in question to sell the Daleks as a credible and convincing threat. I think it’s impossible to “rehabilitate” the collective cultural opinion of the monsters, if only because the BBC itself is the one pumping out plush Dalek teddy bears. Squeeze them and they say “Exterminate!”

In Hollywood, they say that you are only as good as your last movie. In television, the Daleks are only as good as their last episode. While it has – following this logic – been quite a while since they’ve been really good at all, Asylum of the Daleks does a pretty good job establishing the pepperpot maniacs as credible monsters in their own right, to the point that it feels much more like a Dalek mission statement than Victory of the Daleks, the first Dalek episode of the Moffat era. There, the episode seemed to exist merely to finally reverse Russell T. Davies’ repeated genocide of the creatures. Here, Moffat seems to work to make them actively scary.

Shining some light on the matter…

Asylum of the Daleks does open with the monsters at their lowest ebb. In a way, it follows the reverse arc of most Dalek episodes. In the past, Dalek episodes have introduced the creatures as serious threats, only for the Doctor to undermine them towards the end. Here, Moffat opens with the creatures looking almost pathetically weak. “Save us!” the Daleks chant as the teaser fades. “Save us! Save us! Saaaaaave us!” Our plucky heroine has been introduced seeming to keep an entire planet of Daleks at bay for over a year using nothing more than a few boards of wood, while being so blaisé about the monsters on her doorstep that she bakes soufflé.

However, over the course of Asylum of the Daleks, Moffat continually builds up the monsters as a threat in their own right. Both of those opening images are brutally subverted. Our survivor is not who she appears to be, and the Daleks actually plan to save a bit of bother by blowing up the Doctor with their asylum – killing two birds with one gigantic explosion. In a way, Moffat seems to set out the same thing that show set out to accomplish with Victory of the Dalekstwo years ago.

One flew over the Daleks’ nest…

That episode also began with the Daleks at their weakest possible point (“WOULD! YOU! CARE! FOR! SOME! TEA?!”) and then sought to reveal them as a grand galactic threat in their own right. The notions seemed to be that you might elevate their stock by allowing the monsters to “win one” for a change. However, the episode was somewhat undermined by the fact that it interpretted “win one” as “produce a bunch of toyetic new models and run off like cowards into outer space.” It was more Stalemate of the Daleks than Victory of the Daleks.

The ending of Asylum of the Daleks feels a more successful one for the monsters. They don’t get to kill the Doctor, but they do succeed in getting him to do their dirt work. They accomplish their goals, but miss out on the perk of killing him. The Doctor doesn’t “win”by any stretch. He loses a new friend in a rather brutal manner. He just about manages to avoid losing at least one of his companions.

Primed and ready for action…

Indeed, the closest thing to a victory he earns in confronting his foes is the fact that they don’t remember who he is. (Incidentally, preventing them from planting another of their brutal traps – next time presumably intending to kill him.) While it isn’t a clear victory for either side, the Daleks emerge as a much more credible threat going forward.

There are, of course, other very “Moffat” ideas that exist to enhance the scare factor of these most iconic of monsters. The notion of Daleks that have literally hallowed out human beings so that they could live inside is a terrifying one. It’s a creepy image, especially as the eye-stalk does emerge through a clean portal, but instead breaks the skin, evoking Ridley Scott’s Alien for a family friendly audience. Indeed, the line that they come “still only at night” feels like a shout-out to Newt in Aliens.

They’ve really cornered the market…

While those creepy human-Daleks are introduced early on, it’s the notion of the “nano-cloud” that makes the monsters so unsettling in a way that they haven’t been in a while – the fact that they can animate any matter – “living or dead” – in their own image is much creepier than people on Dalek ships in weird fetish gear. The thought that they can “subtract love and add hate” without you really realising it is unsettling, as is the notion that you might be a Dalek without even realising it.

In fact, the early part of the episode does a wonderful job of exploring the relationship between the Doctor and the Daleks. It’s fascinating how clearly they seem to understand each other, while completely failing to grasp the most essential facets. The Doctor understands the Daleks are bred to hate, and knows the plan that they have concocted to simultaneously wipe out him and the rogue elements. However, he’s aghast at they “divine hatred” that they see as “beautiful.”

Tough crowd…

At the same time, they seem to understand him quite well. Perhaps, in some ways, even better than he does himself. They bring Rory and Amy along, if only because, as they state, “the Doctor requires companions.” It’s a truth that the character himself seems to be denying at the moment – and experience has taught us that he lacks the self-awareness to see that this is a very bad thing. And still, despite their understanding of him, they fail to grasp that he will inevitably escape because… well, that’s what he does.

It’s interesting that Moffat actually takes the time to reverse the direction that Russell T. Davies took the Daleks. I like the revelation that he is “the Predator of the Daleks”, and I love the fact that the interplay between the Doctor and the Daleks in this reluctant team-up reveals so much of each. (“This conversation is irrelevant!” serving as perhaps the most obvious expression of the philosophical conflict between the two.) So it’s interesting that Moffat takes the time to effectively re-write that dynamic, erasing the Doctor from the Daleks’ memory banks.

(Eye) stalking their prey…

To be fair, maybe he has a point. Maybe that dynamic ha splayed a part in humbling the creatures – making them too casual and too familiar to the Doctor. After all, it’s hard to construct a credible threat when they shake in their little space boots at the very mention of his name. So now they meet as equals. It’s quite similar to how Moffat used the “tear” to quietly tidy up his predecessor’s continuity. I also love how the Doctor seems almost insulted as he asks, “You made them forget me?!”

That seems like it might be a nod to the series’ fiftieth anniversary, coming up. The episode leans pretty heavily on the notion of legacy and memory. There’s the discussion between Rory and Amy about kids, which is quite a potent piece of drama for a family show, but also the fact that the Daleks forget the Doctor and the final plea, “Remember me! Remember me!” (Speaking of which, how weird was it to hear Nicholas Briggs speaking in his Dalek voice in an almost conversational manner? The man’s vocal performances continue to impress.)

Alone with every genocidal pepperpot…

Of course, Moffat’s re-writing of Dalek history does raise a few questions, retroactively. After all, the opening sequence has the Daleks efficiently corralling the Doctor in a fiendish plan. It’s a fantastic reversal of their needless complex schemes that often end up backfiring, portraying the monsters as strong and ruthless. However, it begs the question of why – if the Doctor is such a pain – they never did this to simply exterminate him in the first place? The nano-cloud is a brilliant idea, but it makes it seem a bit strange it never came up before. Still, that’s something for others to figure out. It works well here, and it makes them a pretty convincing threat. And that is undoubtedly the most important thing.

It also feels a bit strange to meet “the Parliament of the Daleks” with the “Prime Minister” at its head. What do they do, sit around and talk exterminating policy? Do they hold constituency elections? Is there a Dalek election by-law? I really liked the “Holy Dalek Emperor” from The Parting of the Ways, but I always saw the Daleks as a distinctly fascist species.  (In fact, Moffat’s reference to “divine hatred”seems to reference that most daring and most wonderful of Davies’ take on the monsters.)

If David Tennant were around, I would make a “Beam me up, Scotty” reference here…

Even using terms associated with democracy feels kinda strange in relation to the creatures. Did they vote on the plan to coopt the Doctor? Still, it’s not a problem, just a small element that feels a little out of place. I can’t help but wonder if Moffat was trying a bit of blunt social satire, like he did in The Beast Below.

The episode’s twist also feels just a little bit familiar. After all, Moffat did the “person-isn’t-really-a-person” twist not too long ago, in Silence in the Library, another story of a girl interacting with the Doctor’s adventures from a secure location who turns out to be part of some ghastly mechanised operation, with an element of tragedy concerning the state of her humanity in this altered and distorted form.

Come to a dead stop…

I will confess to being a bit disappointed (as I was in Closing Time) with the revelation that Amy became a model. It’s a shame that character has been defined by jobs that involve her looking appealing to men. Not to suggest, of course, that there is anything wrong with Amy enjoying a career as a model, it just seems that her skillset has not really evolved. She’s still defined by her job as “really, really good looking”, albeit just in a less sleazy context.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to seem puritanical or anything. However, it seems strange that the recurring theme of the new series has been that the Doctor has allowed his companions to grow as individuals through their interactions. Rose became a super extra-dimensional secret agent. Martha became a kick-ass medical professional and alien invasion specialist. The great tragedy of Donna was that she was eventually denied the growth that stemmed from her time with Doctor. So it feels strange that Amy’s character development is measured in becoming a “pretty face”on a billboard.

Carry on regardless…

That said, it’s interesting that Moffat chose to have Amy and Rory break up. Of course, it’s inevitable the pair will get back together, but I like the idea that largely adult concerns – well, almost – could come between the two. The notion of a couple being unable to conceive feels quite an adult development. Of course, Amy’s decision to kick Rory out instead of actually talking about or dealing with it is undoubtedly childish. That said, it feels like a place to begin a second character arc for the pair. Amy has still not quite “grown up” enough to deal with these adult problems in a mature manner, so it feels appropriate that her “raggedy Doctor” has returned to help her through it.

Still, it’s great to have the team back. And it’s certainly a blockbuster start to the year. The sequence with the Dalek missiles destroying the asylum did look a bit gnaff in an eighties sort of way, but the rest of the production was pretty stylish. I especially like how Moffat effectively structured the episode like a James Bond or Mission: Impossible type plot, with the teasure spent putting the gang together, only for the group to be tasked with a nigh-impossible task. It does go a long way towards adding a cinematic feeling to proceedings, which seems to be what Moffat is trying to do. It’s really quite effective tea-time telly.

Graveyard of the Daleks?

While I certainly hope that we might get something a bit quieter at some point this year (or next), it certain accomplishes what it set out to do. If they can do twelve more of these, I’ll be very impressed. It’s a great way to ring in a fiftieth anniversary.

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Non-Review Review: The Avengers (aka Avengers Assemble)

Non-Review Review: The Avengers (aka Avengers Assemble)

Via Darren

The Avengers has a lot of geeky charm to it – the sort of giddy “this is so cool!” spectacle that appeals to the popcorn-munching child in each of us. That’s more than enough help it coast through a somewhat muddled first act, through a stronger second act and into a truly awesome finale. I think that the carefully choreographed large-scale action sequence that caps the film off might be worth a ticket alone. While there seem to be some very fundamental problem juggling a cast this large in a movie that technically a sequel to at least four films, Joss Whedon knows his audience well enough to ensure that most of the individual moments are satisfying, even if the overall film feels a tad uneven.

Three of a kind…

I think it’s worth reflecting on what an interesting accomplishment The Avengers actually is. Whatever you might think about big-budget franchise films, the structure of Marvel’s super hero films has been incredibly interesting. The movie follows four different character arcs from five different films. While there was a fairly minimal overlap with each other in terms of basic plotting, they all lead it to this single film. Most franchises tend to develop in a logical progression one film at a time, with threads flowing from one to the next. Instead, plot points, characters, macguffins and dynamics all pour towards The Avengers from all possible angles.

It’s certainly daunting, and I can’t imagine that it was an easy task for Whedon or fellow writer Zak Penn to smooth each of those streams into one gigantic pool of film footage. There’s no getting around it: The Avengers isn’t perfect. There are significant flaws, especially during the first act when Whedon is tasked with re-introducing all these characters and plot points from earlier films to audiences who may have seen some, but not all, of the previous films.

In the Nick of time…

To be fair to Whedon, every character gets a fair share of lovely moments. Each member of the ensemble is effectively characterised. I had worried, based on the trailers and the towering financial success of Iron Man and Iron Man 2, that this would essential by Iron Man & His Amazing Friends, but it isn’t at all. There are some problems with this approach evident early in the film – at times, the script can’t seem to decide if it’s introducing or reintroducing characters to the audience.

On the one hand, Captain America gets a whole twenty-second flashback encapsulation of his film including spliced footage. On the other, Thor’s back story is only fleetingly and obliquely referenced and the script makes the slyest possible references to the last Hulk film. In fact, all of those references seem to gently prod the studio, affectionately mocking the final cut and using a deleted scene as an emotional hook.

A smashing time…

Still, Whedon is sure to give each character at least one or two impressive character moments or telling interactions with one another, and uses each member of his ensemble effectively in the finale. This is an understandable approach, and probably the fairest to all involved, but it has problems. Some of these are practical – as it seems to take Thor a few hours to bother to pick up his hammer while we catch up with everybody else – but some are fundamental.

The most obvious is that the movie lacks a viewpoint character. Towards the start of the film, it looks like we might be watching Steve Rogers adjust to the modern world packed with men in metallic suits, green rage monsters or ancient gods. When Nick Fury arrives with a dossier, Steve asks, “Trying to put me back in the world?”As the movie starts, it seems like Steve’s confusion about the complexities of modern living might make him a focal point for reconciling the rather different bunches of characters and backgrounds.

Not a Thor loser…

However, he’s swept aside pretty quickly, and put on an even keel with Iron Man and Thor. Of course, Thor doesn’t get the smoothest introduction at all. He literally drops out of the sky – apparently sent by his father, despite the fact that Branagh’s Thor apparently saw Asgard permanently separated from Earth. Thor’s dialogue with Loki quick handwaves that plot point, and it also brushes over something that worked rather well in their own film. We discover that Thor learned about his brother’s adoption off-screen, and any impact this has on their relationship is downplayed.

Indeed, the mythos established in Thor was always going to be the toughest to tie into The Avengers. Iron Man is just a dude in a suit. Captain America is a soldier on steroids. The Hulk is a big green rage monster created by a science experiment gone wrong. Thor is… an alien who is actually a god. You’d imagine that would raise a few eyebrows among the superhero types. Especially since Thor’s brother Loki is given the task of playing the villain in this movie. However, Whedon seems to just sort of gloss over that quite quickly, with Iron Man dismissing him as “Shakespeare in the park.” Cap gets a nice character-defining line (“there’s only one God, ma’am, and I’m fairly sure he doesn’t dress like that”), but you’d expect a bit more.

Don’t you know he’s Loki?

It’s a bit of a shame, because Tom Hiddleston’s Loki was perhaps the most compelling antagonist in the entire series of Marvel movies, the one with the most tragic motivations and most relatable ambitions – not necessarily to conquer worlds, but to prove himself worthy of his father’s love. Here, there’s none of that. Though Hiddleston is as graceful as ever, Loki could really be any character with any motivation. There’s no sense that he’s plotting to destroy the planet for any reason other than for the sake of evil.

His character motivation seems to be that he hates freedom. While that does fit with the mind control schtick (or, literally, stick) that he’s been given, it feels a bit strange. After all, we’ve already had a film featuring one of the team battling a character who hated freedom (and was obsessed with the same cosmic artifact), so surely it would have made sense to bring back that delightfully one-dimensional red-faced Nazi. There are a few hints that Loki is actually being coerced into orchestrating this invasion, but the angle is never developed – as it might have made for a more powerful scene with his brother.

Of gods and super-men…

That’s not to dismiss the work that Hiddleston does here. Like the rest of the cast, he gives it his all. However, Loki worked as one of the best four-colour villains brought to the big screen because Hiddleston found an unlikely humanity in his character. Unlike the other baddies in the other Marvel films, you actually understood why Loki did what he did, rather than chalking it up to “he’s insane” or “it’s the third act and we need a fight sequence.”

Hugo Weaving did that sort of shallow cackling foe quite well, as did Jeff Bridges, but it feels like a bit of a waste of Hiddleston’s talents – if only because the actor seems intent on keeping his performance dignified and restrained rather than chewing through the scenery. In fact, it seems like Loki’s only really included in order to reference the original comics – Loki was, after all, the first villain to face the team, and did unite the characters in Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s Avengers #1.

You just can’t get good staff these days…

His actions here aren’t really too well-planned-out, save to fulfil the same plot functions. In many ways, Whedon does feel a little too attached to his source material. We get a bizarre mind-control plot that exists only to reference one character’s brief comic-book-history as a villain. We get a costume for Captain America that is far too bright, although it does look much better when he takes off his mask. Part of me wonders why they couldn’t keep his costume from Captain America: The First Avenger.

On the other hand, Whedon’s film is powered by a geeky sense of fun, with everything else coming second to that. It causes the biggest problems early on, as he struggles to get the pieces in place. (Given how much foreshadowing was incorporated into earlier films, I’m amazed at how much heavy lifting The Avengers has to do.) Once he gets to the point where he can actually play with his toys, it becomes a lot more fun.

Keeping Coul under pressure…

Whedon is clearly overjoyed to be working with these icons, and it bleeds through into enthusiasm on screen, with even the awesome Agent Coulson awkwardly geeking out about Captain America. “I was watching you while you were sleeping,” he suggests. Realising how awkward that sounds, he rephrases, “I meant I was with you when you were unconscious.” Coulson even has a set of Captain America trading cards in near mint condition (“boxed a bit around the edges”), and it’s not too difficult to imagine Whedon tackling his subjects with similar affection.

During the second act, things begin to click together. In particular, we start to detect the Whedon-esque touches that must have been sacrificed from the first act to keep everything running relatively tight. There is an obscenely geeky pleasure in seeing these toys playing together in the same sandbox, watching Chris Evan’s old fogey butting heads with Robert Downey Jr.’s arrogant and ego-centric playboy, or Chris Hemsworth’s Thor making casual remarks from outside everybody’s frame of reference. (“I got that one!” Cap declares of one pop culture reference, desperate to prove he’s not thatout of touch, while Thor looks confused.)

Bringing the hammer down…

It seems like a bit of a spoiler to even mention it, but Whedon does use a few of the storytelling tricks and tropes that he’s picked up from years working in the industry. It’s easy to deride some of these tricks as cheap emotional manipulation, but I generally think that Whedon uses them because they work so well. There are moments in the second act where the gigantic science-fiction-fantasy-superhero mish-mash suddenly becomes decidedly real, and Whedon uses these tricks of the trade to anchor it somewhat, to keep the story relatively human.

While the first act has serious problems, and the second act represents a considerable improvement, the final action sequence is something to behold. It might be worth the price of a ticket on its own, to be frank. Whedon effortlessly juggles even primary character each getting a moment or several to shine. (That’s Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Nick Fury for those keeping score.)

They’ve got him under Loki and key…

To be fair, Marvel’s movies have traditionally had a bit of bother with their third acts, tying everything down to a massive fight, but Whedon manages to produce the year’s best action sequence. Ironically, the only movie released so far this year that might have a more energetic third act is Cabin in the Woods, which Whedon co-wrote. In an era where it seems that Hollywood has forgotten how to make an action climax work, largely thanks to Michael Bay’s work on Transformers, it’s strangely refreshing.

There’s no confusing quick cutting, no jumping back and forth. Rather than intercutting seven action sequences, Whedon cleverly queues them up. It works remarkably well, because it allows each little sequence to flow before moving on to the next one. Iron Man has a problem. Iron Man and Hawkeye deal with that problem. Thor has a problem. Thor deals with that problem. Captain America spots a bad guy. Captain America deals with that bad guy. It’s an efficient way of managing a final confrontation, and Whedon deserves credit for his work here.

Suits you, sir…

Even before we reach that finale, there are nice moments. There’s a rather enthusiastic brawl between Thor and the Hulk which stands out as one of the few times the Hulk has really worked in live action. Whedon takes fiendish delight in throwing his cast through objects (walls, trees, conveniently stacked crates) and it works as visual shorthand – there’s a genuine sense of the level of power going on here. It is pure and unashamed geekery, but there’s nothing wrong with that.

Whedon’s Hulk deserves special mention, given how much trouble the character has proven to be in the past. I love The Incredible Hulk far more than most, but I think that the creature himself was still awkwardly handled. I still think the decision to recast the role of Bruce Banner was a mistake.

The Hulk gets Ruffalized…

Ed Norton looks like a nerdy guy carrying a shedload of deep-rooted personal issues and might have a very nasty side underneath his cold exterior. Mark Ruffalo, on the other hand, looks like he might pinch the last biscuit in the packet on a day he’s feeling especially bold. While Banner gets considerable focus here, perhaps to help mitigate against the multiple failed movies, Ruffalo lacks a certain edge.

It is worth noting, though, that Whedon and Penn’s script seems to go out of its way to mock the somewhat troubled final cut of Leterrier’s Incredible Hulk. When Banner claims to have discovered the secret to managing “the other guy”, Black Widow mocks him, “What’s your secret? Yoga?” The final opening sequence of Leterrier’s Hulk (which I quite liked) saw Banner using regulating breathing exercises and other techniques to manage stress.

Back in black…

Later on, in a tense a moment, Banner confesses to attempting suicide as a means of resolving his problems – a reference to the rather powerful deleted opening sequence that was cut from the film against Norton’s vocal objections. By the way, this isn’t the time, but I would buy the hell out of a “Writer’s Cut” of The Incredible Hulk. C’mon Marvel, you know you want my money.

However, the Hulk himself is something else, when he finally breaks out. I suspect it’s a combination of the visual effects used and the manner that Whedon treats the creature. The Hulk truly is the strongest there is. It’s the best portrayal of the green goliath I have ever seen. Grafting Ruffalo’s face on to the monster makes him look almost pathetic, illustrating that Banner is trapped inside, while Whedon lets rip in some truly impressive action sequences. The Hulk and Thor wrestling atop an alien monster heading to Grand Central Station is a wonderful moment, as is Loki’s defiant last stand against the monster.

Sliding into gear…

Aside from the four leads, Whedon does a solid job with his impressive supporting cast. Finally, Samuel L. Jackson is allowed to do something other than foreshadow a movie coming several years down the line, and Fury works remarkably well as a manipulator. There’s a welcome hint of ambiguity to how the character manages his band of heroes, even if we never doubt that Fury is trying to assure the best possible outcome. While I wouldn’t have been too bothered about a Nick Fury solo film before, I would love to see him handle some problems without the spandex crowd cramping his style.

The other character who gets a lot of development, surprisingly given the movie if not given the director, is the Black Widow, played by Scarlett Johannson. It’s become a cliché to talk about Whedon writing strong female characters, especially because it gives so many other writers a pass for doing the opposite, but the importance of the Black Widow to the film comes as quite a welcome surprise given the fact that there are so few successful superheroine films. Okay, there isn’t enough room for a full arc, but Whedon manages to give her some decent characterisation – hinting at a shady past, and at a more human side beneath her cold exterior. It’s telling that she gets to check off quite a few important plot points – dealing with Loki, Barton and the portal.

Human S.H.I.E.L.D…

There’s a lot to like, but there are some fundamental problems. For example, Whedon seems to have a bit of difficulty with his central theme. I know Whedon has an affection for old-fashioned superheroics, but is he trying to make a comment on post-9/11 America. As Captain America struggles to keep up with all the changes, Nick Fury notes, “We’ve made some mistakes along the way. Especially recently.” Loki seems to conspire with terrorists. Fury engages, without qualm, in the sort of super-surveillance that gave Batman pause in The Dark Knight.

In contrast, Whedon’s superheroes seem to reject such ambiguities and uncertainties, seeming refreshingly heroic in a morally complex world. Even the Hulk doesn’t seem that conflicted or tormented any more (“Hulk,” Cap commands, “Smash!”) while Tony Stark is genuinely committed to changing the world through green energy and seems to have found a stable relationship with a woman he loves. However, I’m not sure if Whedon’s romanticism is undermined by the fact that these unambiguous heroes still have close ties to more morally dubious black ops agents, and are still lied to and manipulated by Fury even afterthey’ve called him out on it.

Ironing out some kinks…

In fairness, Whedon isn’t too heavy-handed, and maybe that’s a good thing. He accepts that these are inherently silly and childish constructs. “Do not touch me,” Thor insists during the mandatory “two heroes fight” sequence. “Then don’t take my stuff,” Iron Man responds, and the most epic playground scrap ever commences, Hell, Whedon at one point seems to even answer the question of what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object, as Thor’s Hammer and Cap’s Shield collide.

Sometimes it seems tough for creators and fans to concede the somewhat shallow and playful nature of these archetypes – that they are ultimately toys in a sandbox – and it takes considerable skill for a writer to acknowledge that while still treating them with respect and skill. Whedon does both remarkably well, and it’s clear that he loves having the opportunity to play with these toys without taking any of them too seriously.

Stripped for action…

The Avengers is a flawed film, but it has enough charm to carry it through a somewhat rocky first act. From there, it just climbs, reaching the most impressive superhero action sequence I think I’ve ever seen. It’s a mess of a film, but it’s a glorious and enjoyable and occasionally awesome mess of a film.

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Non-Review Review: Dark Shadows

Via:- Darren

I really liked Dark Shadows. Of course, the film comes with the proviso that it’s probably nothing at all like anybody is expecting, at least based on the trailers. While there are elements of a comedy about a vampire lost in time, Tim Burton is far too busy constructing an elaborate spoof of a gothic melodrama to every really develop that thread. Instead, it’s a movie that seems wry and self-aware more than it is side-splittingly hilarious, an old-fashioned homage to the melodramatic horrors of old rather than a compelling story in its own right. I don’t think anybody could argue that this is truly “classic” Burton, measured against Ed Wood or Batman Returns. However, it is a director who seems to be having a great deal of fun playing with some rather esoteric toys.

Collins family values…

Of course, Dark shadows is an adaptation of the classic seventies soap opera about the Collins family – it was sort of like Genera Hospital if General Hospital featured vampires, ghosts and werewolves embroiled in a generational history of a New England family. So it isn’t really that similar, to be entirely honest. However, Burton seems to be using that familiar brand to play with the sort of crazy over-the-top gothic melodramatic nonsense one might imagine from a soap opera, but with a healthy dose of the supernatural to boot.

The plotting is very clearly structured in homage to those trashy soap operas. It seems that barely a scene goes by without somebody revealing an ominous secret, or Barnabus stumbling across some evil that has taken root in his family home. Sometimes it’s the revelation that a previously trustworthy character is planning to steal from their next of kin, or that somebody’s motives for assisting Barnabus aren’t entirely altruistic. At one point, almost completely out of the blue (save one line of foreshadowing dialogue towards the start of the film), it’s the revelation that there’s a werewolf in their midst. “Yeah,” the person confesses, “I’m a werewolf, so what? Can we not make a big deal about it?”

A strange chain of events…

The movie wears its ridiculousness on its sleeve. Trapped alone, Barnabus begins monologuing, referring to himself in the second person. The structure is gleefully ridiculous, as plot points are picked up, played with for a few minutes, and then resolved. In a delightful bit of seventies pseudo-science, one of the family proposes to cure Barnabus of his vampirism using blood transfusion. Don’t ask where they get the copious amounts of human blood necessary to run the operation, or why a psychiatrist is perfectly trained to do that sort of thing. It would spoil the joke. Towards the end, as the evil villainess Angelique Bouchard reveals the ridiculous and improbably ways she has laid the Collins family low, matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard seems more confused than upset. Very little of these revelations are set up, like so many soap opera twists.

Hell, there’s even a “special guest musical performance” very much in the style of television stunt-casting, which would seem like the musician promoting his album… were the film actually released in 1972. Burton even throws in a perfectly trashy vampire love scene, injecting more energy into one ridiculous sequence than the entirety of Breaking Dawn, Part I. Still, the film’s style is more of an ironic smirk than a beaming grin. Given the massive commercial success of the bland Alice in Wonderland, it feels like Burton indulging his more esoteric sense of humour.

Sink your teeth into this…

It isn’t just the script that’s in on the joke. Johnny Depp is very much in scenery-chewing mode here. It seems like we’ll never see the same nuance and depth he brought to roles like Donnie Brasco or Ed Wood, but his approach works here. It’s very melodramatic, very over-the-top, with every line delivered with the utmost ridiculous sincerity. His timing is impeccable, and his style faultless. Even his silent reactions are perfectly overstated. It’s not a performance with an abundance of nuance, that’s entirely the point – it’s all heightened melodrama, and Depp is at the very peak.

Depp is perfectly matched by Eva Green as the vamp witch Angelique. Green has a sultry style all her own, and chews on the scenery with impunity. Indeed, it almost reminds me of Jack Nicholson’s villainous turn in Burton’s Batman, complete with lost of evil smiling and a gloriously theatrical style. And the rest of the cast get in on the joke too. Special mention must be made of Helena Bonham Carter as Dr. Julia Hoffman and Jackie Earle Haley as Willie Loomis. Carter is a wonderful actress, and she’s perfectly used as the self-medicating psychiatrist coping with the stress of a job… that doesn’t seem very stressful at all. Haley is an underrated performer who wonderfully underplays the role, simply going along with everything that’s happening. His reactions are quite priceless.

Home, sweet gothic home…

The cast make their dramatic pronouncements in the most garish manner possible. There are lots of sudden jerks and movements as the actors deliver shocking revelations in a manner clearly designed to wring every ounce of dramatic tension from the moment – it is very much in the spirit of parody, as they emulate the sort of worst excesses one might imagine from a daytime television cast. Motivation speeches (“fight on, Barnabus!”) are delivered with stern conviction, and rhyming spells (“burn, baby, burn!”) are read like Shakespearean soliloquies.

Even Burton and his direction get in on the act. One of the best gags is the way that Burton repeatedly cuts away to the image of waves crashing against the rocks. It’s obviously an attempt to imitate a seventies television director trying to imitate an autuer, hoping to add some depth to a shallow and trashy plot by using visual metaphors, even if they don’t fit. The best use sees the camera cutting to the waves as Dr. Hoffman explains “doctor-patient confidentiality” to Barnabus, which is one of the film’s best visual gags.

Vamping it up…

More than that, though, Burton makes sure the camera is always moving, as if frantically trying to keep our attention – particularly during the sequence where Angelique discovers the Barnabus has woken up. It’s deliciously over-stated, like absolutely everything else, and that’s why it worked so well, at least to me. The period setting is overwhelming and garish – to the point where the soundtrack is constantly reminding us of the decade – but that’s entirely the joke. It wouldn’t work if Burton reigned himself in at all. One can spot the horror conventions he brings to the film – from pea soup to bleeding walls – all done with a measure of self-awareness.

Of course, there’s a catch. It is, pretty much, a one-note joke extended over two hours. That is, to be fair, a bit much and I can see the film easily wearing its welcome out, especially with viewers who might have been expecting something just a bit different, and just a bit more conventional. After all, sometimes it is quite difficult to tell the difference between a spoof of a bad film, and a bad film itself. I’d make an argument that Dark Shadows is an extremely earnest and affectionate parody, but I accept that the target market is probably quite small. I suspect that the film will be quite divisive on release, but I hope that opinion might come around, as has happened with a few earlier Burton films.

(Sea)horsing about…

Still, there’s a lot of interest going on under the hood. The most obviously interesting facet of the film is Barnabus himself. As portrayed by Johnny Depp, we’re invited to imagine him as the hero of the story, struggling against a witch trying to destroy his family. However, the movie has a great deal of fun playing with that expectation. Surprisingly for a relatively straight-forward summer film, the movie is remarkably candid about his feeding habits. He slaughters a construction crew on waking, and then goes after a hippy commune, even after they are nice to him. Offered a glass of blood by Angelique, he’s initially hesitant, until she confirms, it’s not from anyone he knows. Because presumably that makes his habit okay.

Although the movie allows him to state his version of events, presenting an account where he is chased out of town by a mob and buried alive, struggling against the odds to keep his family afloat, the script seems to accept that this is a somewhat biased version of events. He confesses to feeding on some of the villagers later on, somewhat justifying their response to him. He’s also shown to be exceptionally manipulative and self-centred, with no real prospect for growth or development. He sleeps with Angelique knowing full well she is in love with him, while he just wants quick and easy sex. Even when he’s besotted with the family’s nanny, Barnabus is still something of a sex machine, hooking up with both his sworn enemy and Dr. Hoffman.

Road to redemption…

And even Hoffman sees through him more than anybody else in the film. “He’s a murderer!” she argues, before confessing that she didn’t go to the cops because he’s handsome and fascinating. That’s hardly a ringing endorsement – the only reason that she doesn’t inform the authorities is because he looks like Johnny Depp. Sure, Barnabus wants what is best for his family, and gets a tender moment or two with the family’s youngest son, but he’s also portrayed as a sinister hypocrite. Though he laments being used as a tool by Angelique, he has no hesitation about overwriting the free will of others. There’s some measure of irony in the fact that he uses it on people who are actually following his own code of honour. When a fisherman refuses to be bought and swears loyalty to Angelique, Barnabus doesn’t convince him to switch affiliations through reason and debate, but instead hypnotises him.

Indeed, Dark Shadows is filled with incredibly inadequate men, perhaps reflecting the time where it was set. This was, after all, the era where feminism was truly coming into its own. For better or worse, the most ambitious characters all seem to female, and the real heroes of the Collins household are the two women who head it – David’s deceased mother and Michelle Pfeiffer’s stern Elizabeth Collins Stoddard. Sure, Angelique is hardly the image of female empowerment, hopelessly devoted to Barnabus and fixated on his rejection, and Dr. Hoffman is revealed to be fixated on her physical appearance, but it’s interesting that so many of the men turn out to be completely useless. That arguably includes Barnabus himself, given how the final confrontation between Angelique and the family plays out.

Out of his Depp?

At least the women are proactive and ambitious, while the men are petty and ineffectual. The surviving male Collins, the sniveling Roger, is shown to have a wandering eye, a lust for money and no interest in his son. Willie, the family’s loyal groundskeeper, is prone to drinking and sleeping and mumbling to himself. It’s interesting that that’s no reference to Elizabeth Collins Stoddard’s lover and Carolyn Stoddard’s father. He may have just died, but Carolyn seems to imply he simply ran out on them. However, neither Elizabeth or Carolyn ever fixate on him or discuss him.

While Depp might be the biggest name above the poster, it’s possible to argue that Barnabus isn’t the real hero of the piece. He provides the money necessary for the family to find its feet, but Elizabeth seems just as capable of managing the family and holding them together. While references are made to Barnabus’s “business acumen”, Elizabeth seems to take an active role in the restoration of the family industry, studying plans and appearing in photos (while Barnabus seems more preoccupied with restoring the house).

Hot shot…

Hell, Barnabus isn’t even the traditional Burton leading character, although he might seem it. He is an outsider, and a stranger, but the movie doesn’t portray him as a misunderstood monster. If anything, his actions justify the label – brutally feeding and murdering those around him. Bella Heathcote’s Victoria Winters arguably fits the traditional Burton mold better, once her wonderfully soap-opera-esque mysterious past is revealed.

Victoria literally sees the world differently, and her cheesy flashbacks, set to an Alice Cooper song, are the most emotional moments in an otherwise light film. Like Bruce Wayne or Edward Scissorhands or Ed Wood, she is the person who must learn to accept her strange habits and gifts as an inherent part of her identity – even if the world would brand her a freak. Barnabus has no such conflict – while he might want to be normal, he accepts and exploits his otherness with comfortable ease.

It’s Johnny Lee Miller time…

The fact that Victoria seems to fit the traditional Burton mold is just a lot less apparent than it might seem, because Heathcote doesn’t have a screen presence to match her distinguished co-stars, and because she’s a weird person arriving in a story populated with other weird characters. She doesn’t drive the plot, because she’s the least interesting person in the film, but Dark Shadows is a far more transformative experience for her than it is for Barnabus or any other character.

I suspect I’ll be in the minority on this one, but I liked Dark Shadows. I really did. I think that, if you accept it for what it is, it’s a fun little film, if not the most essential one.

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Atheist Chicks Angelina Jolie And Jennifer Aniston’s Bikini Battle (PHOTOS)

Angelina Jolie And Jennifer Aniston‘s Bikini Battle (PHOTOS)

http://www.celebuzz.com:

It’s a feud that the public loves to fuel. Angelina Jolie, 36, and Jennifer Aniston, 43, have been at odds (in the media at least) ever since Brad Pitt, 48, divorced Jen and shacked up with Angelina.

Read the whole story at www.celebuzz.com

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