Debating how high a pile of bodies reaches is a grubby business, and
statistics have a habit of stripping humanity out of an argument. But
the human cost matters. The occupiers refused to count the dead, leaving
it to wildly differing estimates.
The Iraq Body Count’s conservative figures are at least 172,906 violent
deaths; the Iraqi government and the World Health Organisation
estimated up to 223,000 killed in the first three years; one study even
estimated over a million had died. When much of the city of Fallujah was
razed and hundreds killed by US forces – who used white phosphorous,
which strips the skins from people’s bodies – the cruise missile
liberals fell largely silent.
-- Owen Jones, "What a tragedy that we couldn't stop the war in Iraq despite marching in our thousands" (Independent).
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Truest statement of the week II
All this blood, and for what? In 2005, Ayad Allawi – a former CIA agent
originally installed as Iraqi Prime Minister – argued that “people are
doing the same as [in] Saddam’s time and worse”. Human Rights Watch
warns that “the Iraq people today have a government that is slipping
further into authoritarianism”, listing “draconian measures against
opposition politicians, detainees, demonstrators, and journalists,
effectively squeezing the space for independent civil society and
political freedoms in Iraq”. Iraq is now 150th out of 179 countries in
the World Press Freedom Index, worse than Russia or Zimbabwe; and the US
government-funded Freedom House rates Iraq 6 for civil liberties and 6
for political rights, with 7 being the worst. No wonder Tony Dodge, an
Iraq expert at the LSE, warns that “Maliki is heading towards an
incredibly destructive dictatorship”.
-- Owen Jones, "What a tragedy that we couldn't stop the war in Iraq despite marching in our thousands" (Independent).
-- Owen Jones, "What a tragedy that we couldn't stop the war in Iraq despite marching in our thousands" (Independent).
A note to our readers
Hey --
Another Sunday.
First up, we thank all who participated this edition which includes Dallas and the following:
The Third Estate Sunday Review's Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess and Ava,
Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude,
Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man,
C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review,
Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills),
Mike of Mikey Likes It!,
Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz),
Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix,
Ruth of Ruth's Report,
Wally of The Daily Jot,
Trina of Trina's Kitchen,
Marcia of SICKOFITRDLZ,
Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends,
Isaiah of The World Today Just Nuts,
and Ann of Ann's Mega Dub.
And what did we come up with?
Another Sunday.
First up, we thank all who participated this edition which includes Dallas and the following:
The Third Estate Sunday Review's Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess and Ava,
Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude,
Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man,
C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review,
Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills),
Mike of Mikey Likes It!,
Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz),
Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix,
Ruth of Ruth's Report,
Wally of The Daily Jot,
Trina of Trina's Kitchen,
Marcia of SICKOFITRDLZ,
Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends,
Isaiah of The World Today Just Nuts,
and Ann of Ann's Mega Dub.
And what did we come up with?
Owen Jones got his first truest this week.
And he also got his second.
The protests build but the international press seems reluctant to note that -- or really to even cover the protests at all.
They thought they'd said it all but the sexism didn't stop and they were forced to return to the topic. Ava and C.I. write an instant classic.
Jon Schwarz Tweets the embarrassing John Brennan confirmation hearing.
Dona discusses two Congressional hearings with Ruth, Wally, Kat, Ava and C.I.
Norman Solomon worked harder than anyone last week to dispell the lie that Colin Powell didn't lie to the UN.
Paul Bremer got some shoes thrown at him.
Look, I (Jim) wrote a piece all by myself!
We had a Justin Bieber piece planned -- I'm not joking. It was written, we had the illustration. But we were too late posting. (It was about the concert he was doing opposite the Grammys.) We wondered why we could offer instead and Jess suggested we grab C.I.'s writing about Lynne from one of last week's snapshot and use it.
Repost from Senator Patty Murray's office.
Repost from Workers World.
Mike and the gang wrote this and we thank them for it.
Editorial: Iraq protests continue to be ignored
Friday, protesters turned out in Iraq yet again. In fact, they did so in the largest numbers so far since this latest wave of protests kicked off in December. And that could have been a story, probably should have been.
Yet the media ran with violence. While it was a violent day, the interesting thing there was that the week before (see our "Editorial: The US press loves to spit on Iraqis"), the press was running with Nouri al-Maliki's false allegation that the protesters were the ones doing the violence. For example, apparently when not taking part in the continuous sit-in in Mosul, they were launching attacks. Who knew Iraq had discovered -- and perfected! -- human cloning.
The reality is that if they were coordinating violence, they'd make sure the most violent day of the week would be something other than Friday. Traditionally, when protests take place in Iraq, they do so on Friday. After morning prayers, Iraqis protest. That is the pattern, has been the pattern for over two years now.
So now the press could dismiss Nouri's paranoid ravings, right? If they'd been paying attention, they could have. Instead, in the face of evidence to the contrary, they let the false charges stand. They let the false charges stand via bad reporting or just silence. In fact, Friday only one outlet grabbed the protests that hadn't covered them the week before. Liz Sly (Washington Post) observed, "With their huge turnouts, these largely peaceful demonstrations have the potential to present a far bigger challenge to Maliki’s hold on power than the violent and still stubbornly persistent insurgency, which continues to claim scores of lives every month without any discernible impact on the political process."
"These largely peaceful demonstrations."
And yet, according to Nouri, these are 'terrorists.'
That's Nouri's allegation and that's what the international press let stand. They could have called him out. They should have called him out.
How bad was it? Neoconservatives Kimberly and Frederick W. Kagan wrote a column for the Washington Post that provided more honesty than a great deal of the reporting from western outlets: "Eighteen days of protests in Egypt in 2011 electrified the world. But more than twice that many days of protest in Iraq have gone almost unnoticed in the United States."
Indeed.
-------------------------------------------
Photos are the property of Iraq Spring Media Center.
Yet the media ran with violence. While it was a violent day, the interesting thing there was that the week before (see our "Editorial: The US press loves to spit on Iraqis"), the press was running with Nouri al-Maliki's false allegation that the protesters were the ones doing the violence. For example, apparently when not taking part in the continuous sit-in in Mosul, they were launching attacks. Who knew Iraq had discovered -- and perfected! -- human cloning.
The reality is that if they were coordinating violence, they'd make sure the most violent day of the week would be something other than Friday. Traditionally, when protests take place in Iraq, they do so on Friday. After morning prayers, Iraqis protest. That is the pattern, has been the pattern for over two years now.
So now the press could dismiss Nouri's paranoid ravings, right? If they'd been paying attention, they could have. Instead, in the face of evidence to the contrary, they let the false charges stand. They let the false charges stand via bad reporting or just silence. In fact, Friday only one outlet grabbed the protests that hadn't covered them the week before. Liz Sly (Washington Post) observed, "With their huge turnouts, these largely peaceful demonstrations have the potential to present a far bigger challenge to Maliki’s hold on power than the violent and still stubbornly persistent insurgency, which continues to claim scores of lives every month without any discernible impact on the political process."
"These largely peaceful demonstrations."
And yet, according to Nouri, these are 'terrorists.'
That's Nouri's allegation and that's what the international press let stand. They could have called him out. They should have called him out.
How bad was it? Neoconservatives Kimberly and Frederick W. Kagan wrote a column for the Washington Post that provided more honesty than a great deal of the reporting from western outlets: "Eighteen days of protests in Egypt in 2011 electrified the world. But more than twice that many days of protest in Iraq have gone almost unnoticed in the United States."
Indeed.
-------------------------------------------
Photos are the property of Iraq Spring Media Center.
Media: The never-ending sexism
"After all, the director's chosen subject was the male subject of war." Yeah, we're back on the topic of Katharyn Bigelow and Zero Dark Thirty. Back in December, we wrote "Media: The allure of Bash The Bitch" and thought we'd said all we needed to.
We quoted the idiotic Bret Easton Ellis, "The Hurt Locker also felt like it was directed by a man. Its testosterone level was palpable, whereas in Sofia Coppola's work you're aware of a much softer presence behind the camera."
"After all, the director's chosen subject was the male subject of war." That sexist sentence comes for Yale professor David Bromwich.
Really, piggie? War is a male subject? Gee, someone should have told Anne Frank that. She could have left the attic, right? Because she was a girl and war didn't effect her, right? Silly Anne, up in that attic, hiding for her life, not realizing that since this was World War II and war is a "male subject," she could just leave at any point and be fine and dandy.
Or, to cite a more recent example, Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi. The 14-year-old Iraqi who was gang-raped March 12, 2006 in Iraq by US soldiers James Barker and Paul Cortez while her parents and five-year-old sister were murdered in the next room by US soldier Steven D. Green. She should have shouted, "I am a girl! War is a male subject!"
That would have made it all go away, right?
As we noted last time, you have to be really educated to be as stupid as people like Bret Easton Ellis or David Bromwich.
War is gender neutral. And female artists have not imposed a ban upon themselves when it comes to the topic of wars. Among novelists, Merce Rodoreda's The Time of the Doves and Jayne Anne Phillips' Machine Dreams immediately come to mind.
But among writers across the board, we immediately thought: Hannah Arendt.
Political theorist Hannah Arendt was of the liberal persuasion. That didn't stop some on the left from slamming one of her greatest works The Origins of Totalitarianism. The problem with the book, for some on the left, was that she called out the work of Stalin. Many of the crackpots calling out Arendt then share similarities with the crackpots calling out Bigelow today.
And maybe they need to get honest. Not just about being something other than Democrats -- though that would be helpful. But maybe they need to get honest that it's not the torture angle that has their jockey briefs in a wad. No, it's the fact that Barack Obama ordered Osama bin Laden killed. It's interesting to listen to these people or to read them and notice that they stay silent on that part of the film. But the reality is that in real time, they weren't silent at all. They booed and they hissed the killing of bin Laden. Since Zero Dark Thirty is the story of the hunt for bin Laden and since the third act is invading the compound where he's hiding, this isn't a minor detail.
Attorney and radio host Michael Ratner, to offer one example, was once very vocal about the fact that he felt a crime was committed when the US government killed Osama bin Laden. He began backing away from that position -- he still holds it but is less vocal about it -- when he realized that there was no popular support for it.
So if the third act is something he ethically opposes, maybe he was never going to be an objective voice on the film to begin with and maybe if he had any real sense of ethics he would have noted that he didn't agree with the outcome (murder of bin Laden) so he was never going to enjoy the film?
Kathryn Bigelow has directed an important film about one of the most important periods in our country's history. It's a film that will make you think. If you're a thinker. If you're a knee-jerk reactor, the film will just have you exploding and frothing at the mouth because it didn't offer the simplistic and cartoon version of events you need to feel safe.
Jason Clarke (who was so good in The Chicago Code) plays Dan. Dan tortures. Onscreen, we see him repeatedly torture Ammar (Reda Kateb) Dan isn't thrilled when torture is pulled. Dan leaves the black site and goes back to the US but not before warning Maya (Jessica Chastain) not to be the fall guy for changing administrations.
Dan brutally tortures. And life would be so much easier for many if Bigelow had shown him with a spouse or significant other that he beat or maybe had him looking at kiddie porn on the computer. Instead, Dan's a likable person when he's not torturing. By not being a cartoon, Dan really forces the audience to confront the thesis Arendt proposed in Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. In fact, substitute "Dan" for "Eichmann" in the following:
The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together.
Kathryn Bigelow's film does not endorse torture. It does show the use of torture. It captures that moment in time when American leaders decided that torture was okay and when people in the chain of command then began using torture as ordered to, that moment in time when the American people wanted to play dumb and distract themselves with some diversion instead of screaming at the top of their lungs, "WE DON'T TORTURE!"
Now you can see the film for many reasons and enjoy many things about it. But what's surprising to us is that the people screaming the loudest against the movie are missing the point of the film.
Again, from Arendt:
"I am certainly tough and I am ready to help solve the Jewish question," Kube wrote to his superior in December, 1941, "but people who come from our own cultural milieu are certainly something else than the native animalized hordes." This sort of conscience, which, if it rebelled at all, rebelled at murder of people "from our cultural milieu," has survived the Hitler regime; among Germans today, there exits a stubborn "misinformation" to the effect that "only" Ostijuden, Eastern European Jews, were murdered.
Nor is this way of thinking that distinguishes between the murder of "primitive" and of "cultured" people a monopoly of the German people.
What Michael Ratner apparently needs, to get his feet out of the pool of guilt that all of us Americans are standing in, is a character -- possibly named Michael -- who runs through the film insisting, "Torture is wrong! Torture is wrong!" He needs some sort of an out, an exception, a waiver.
Tough. You don't get that. The country was attacked on 9-11. Bully Boy Bush made the decision that violence would not be investigated and prosecuted but would instead begat more violence. What should we have done? Like Michael Ratner, we protested, we marched, we rallied, we spoke out. It didn't stop the events from happening -- the sort of events captured in Kathryn Bigelow's film.
It's a very dark period and the movie gets at that. But some 'film critics' like Michael Ratner and Glenn Greenwald need a film that claims torture happened because those involved were bad and evil people. That's not what happened.
That cartoon version of reality may provide happy thoughts and pleasant dreams but it doesn't do a damn thing to provide understanding of how a nation that once knew torture was wrong ended up using torture as a first and foremost resort.
It would help if people discussing the film would see it. There's a lie that Ammar gives up information after he's water boarded. How that lie got started, who knows? But David Denby certainly popularized it in his review for The New Yorker, "Yet, in attempting to show, in a mainstream movie, the reprehensibility of torture, and what was done in our name, the filmmakers seem to have conflated events, and in this they have generated a sore controversy: the chairs of two Senate committees have said that the information used to find bin Laden was not uncovered through waterboarding." And because The New Yorker no longer has functioning fact checkers, it first appeared in a 'report' by Dexter I-Lied-About-Falluja-And-Let-The-US-military-vet-my-copy Filkins: "Bigelow maintains that everything in the film is based on first-hand accounts, but the waterboarding scene, which is likely to stir up controversy, appears to have strayed from real life. According to several official sources, including Dianne Feinstein, the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, the identity of bin Laden’s courier, whose trail led the C.I.A. to the hideout in Pakistan, was not discovered through waterboarding."
People have repeatedly latched onto the lie in slamming the film. You can't get through a comment thread on any article about the film without somebody bringing that up. But in the film itself, the water boarding does not produce a name. How do you miss that? In fact, in the shooting script, the scene's end is described as, "Dan and Maya exit. They've learned nothing."
Throughout the film's public life, sexist attacks have taken place. Some feminists, like ourselves, have stepped forward but not enough, not nearly enough.
The newest sexist spin is put out by human filth Bob Somerby who insisted upon going goo-goo over Jessica Chastain to the point that he resembles an online Peeping Tom and flasher. It may be confusing for some who tried to read his multiple 'reviews' on the film so let's make it clear: Jessica Chastain is never naked before the camera. She's not shown in the shower or in bed. It's only Bob Somerby's dirty little mind that 'sees' things that just aren't there.
He rails against the film while explaining he likes his films with female leads to have them being innocent girls on the verge of becoming women (My Brilliant Career) or government whores (Notorious). Yes, he truly did set up the virgin-whore dichotomy in his review.
He feels that Bigelow focuses on Chastain's beauty. We don't know where he's coming from. In the film, Jessica Chastain really doesn't qualify for beautiful. In person and in other roles, sure. But she's not going for that in her portrayal of Maya. Bob Somerby also sees the film progressively undressing her. Again, there's no nudity and we were confused by what the hell the old fool was slobbering over this time. According to him, as the film progresses, Chastain's blouses plunge more or she's seen wearing t-shirts.
Now we get why he misses the points of the film -- he was too busy staring at Chastain's breasts the entire time to notice plot elements.
Fueled by a brief interview Irin Carmon (Salon) badly conducted with Zero Dark Thirty screenwriter Mark Boal, Somerby insists that new print ads featuring Chastain's face are trying to rebrand the film in the marketing.
He really does live in fear of feminism, doesn't he?
Chastain is nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award. Many consider her to be a real contender in the category and some feel that this is the strongest chance Zero Dark Thirty has of taking home a statue. So that's reason one for the new ads. Reason two? She's not an actress in a hot film. She's the lead in two box office hits now. Mama has earned $64 million (through Friday) in four weeks of release (Zero Dark Thirty, through Friday, had made $83 million at the box office). It's always funny to watch know-it-alls who know nothing about the industry tell us why something is happening.
The sexism never ends. Like when Senators Dianne Feinstein, John McCain and Carl Levin embarrassed themselves with the letter calling for censorship -- yes, government officials insisting on altering a film from the director's intended version qualifies as censorship -- whether it's the insertion of a title card or a call for deletions.
That cry for censorship was shameful. And they've backed off that call. In part because former CIA Director and the outgoing Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has praised the film as has former US House Rep. Jane Harman. But also because it was made clear that a line had been crossed.
With that checked off the list, let's return to the three senators and their little letter calling for censorship to note the sexist aspect of it.
Zero Dark Thirty is a film released by Sony Pictures. The senators complain to "Chairman and CEO Sony Pictures Entertainment" Michael Lynton. That position actually has a co-chair. Amy Pascal is the Co-Chair of Sony Pictures Entertainment and the Chair of Sony Pictures Entertainment Motion Picture Group. How telling that the Senate -- where sexism is institutionalized -- would blow off Pascal and make their appeal to Lynton.
Or did it just not occur to them that a woman could be in charge?
-------------------
Disclosure, Ava and C.I. know Kathryn Bigelow and Amy Pascal. Piece corrected to note "War is gender neutral." (As opposed to "War is not gender neutral." Ava and C.I. say they have no idea what they were thinking when they typed.)
We quoted the idiotic Bret Easton Ellis, "The Hurt Locker also felt like it was directed by a man. Its testosterone level was palpable, whereas in Sofia Coppola's work you're aware of a much softer presence behind the camera."
"After all, the director's chosen subject was the male subject of war." That sexist sentence comes for Yale professor David Bromwich.
Really, piggie? War is a male subject? Gee, someone should have told Anne Frank that. She could have left the attic, right? Because she was a girl and war didn't effect her, right? Silly Anne, up in that attic, hiding for her life, not realizing that since this was World War II and war is a "male subject," she could just leave at any point and be fine and dandy.
Or, to cite a more recent example, Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi. The 14-year-old Iraqi who was gang-raped March 12, 2006 in Iraq by US soldiers James Barker and Paul Cortez while her parents and five-year-old sister were murdered in the next room by US soldier Steven D. Green. She should have shouted, "I am a girl! War is a male subject!"
That would have made it all go away, right?
As we noted last time, you have to be really educated to be as stupid as people like Bret Easton Ellis or David Bromwich.
War is gender neutral. And female artists have not imposed a ban upon themselves when it comes to the topic of wars. Among novelists, Merce Rodoreda's The Time of the Doves and Jayne Anne Phillips' Machine Dreams immediately come to mind.
But among writers across the board, we immediately thought: Hannah Arendt.
Political theorist Hannah Arendt was of the liberal persuasion. That didn't stop some on the left from slamming one of her greatest works The Origins of Totalitarianism. The problem with the book, for some on the left, was that she called out the work of Stalin. Many of the crackpots calling out Arendt then share similarities with the crackpots calling out Bigelow today.
And maybe they need to get honest. Not just about being something other than Democrats -- though that would be helpful. But maybe they need to get honest that it's not the torture angle that has their jockey briefs in a wad. No, it's the fact that Barack Obama ordered Osama bin Laden killed. It's interesting to listen to these people or to read them and notice that they stay silent on that part of the film. But the reality is that in real time, they weren't silent at all. They booed and they hissed the killing of bin Laden. Since Zero Dark Thirty is the story of the hunt for bin Laden and since the third act is invading the compound where he's hiding, this isn't a minor detail.
Attorney and radio host Michael Ratner, to offer one example, was once very vocal about the fact that he felt a crime was committed when the US government killed Osama bin Laden. He began backing away from that position -- he still holds it but is less vocal about it -- when he realized that there was no popular support for it.
So if the third act is something he ethically opposes, maybe he was never going to be an objective voice on the film to begin with and maybe if he had any real sense of ethics he would have noted that he didn't agree with the outcome (murder of bin Laden) so he was never going to enjoy the film?
Kathryn Bigelow has directed an important film about one of the most important periods in our country's history. It's a film that will make you think. If you're a thinker. If you're a knee-jerk reactor, the film will just have you exploding and frothing at the mouth because it didn't offer the simplistic and cartoon version of events you need to feel safe.
Jason Clarke (who was so good in The Chicago Code) plays Dan. Dan tortures. Onscreen, we see him repeatedly torture Ammar (Reda Kateb) Dan isn't thrilled when torture is pulled. Dan leaves the black site and goes back to the US but not before warning Maya (Jessica Chastain) not to be the fall guy for changing administrations.
Dan brutally tortures. And life would be so much easier for many if Bigelow had shown him with a spouse or significant other that he beat or maybe had him looking at kiddie porn on the computer. Instead, Dan's a likable person when he's not torturing. By not being a cartoon, Dan really forces the audience to confront the thesis Arendt proposed in Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. In fact, substitute "Dan" for "Eichmann" in the following:
The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together.
Kathryn Bigelow's film does not endorse torture. It does show the use of torture. It captures that moment in time when American leaders decided that torture was okay and when people in the chain of command then began using torture as ordered to, that moment in time when the American people wanted to play dumb and distract themselves with some diversion instead of screaming at the top of their lungs, "WE DON'T TORTURE!"
Now you can see the film for many reasons and enjoy many things about it. But what's surprising to us is that the people screaming the loudest against the movie are missing the point of the film.
Again, from Arendt:
"I am certainly tough and I am ready to help solve the Jewish question," Kube wrote to his superior in December, 1941, "but people who come from our own cultural milieu are certainly something else than the native animalized hordes." This sort of conscience, which, if it rebelled at all, rebelled at murder of people "from our cultural milieu," has survived the Hitler regime; among Germans today, there exits a stubborn "misinformation" to the effect that "only" Ostijuden, Eastern European Jews, were murdered.
Nor is this way of thinking that distinguishes between the murder of "primitive" and of "cultured" people a monopoly of the German people.
What Michael Ratner apparently needs, to get his feet out of the pool of guilt that all of us Americans are standing in, is a character -- possibly named Michael -- who runs through the film insisting, "Torture is wrong! Torture is wrong!" He needs some sort of an out, an exception, a waiver.
Tough. You don't get that. The country was attacked on 9-11. Bully Boy Bush made the decision that violence would not be investigated and prosecuted but would instead begat more violence. What should we have done? Like Michael Ratner, we protested, we marched, we rallied, we spoke out. It didn't stop the events from happening -- the sort of events captured in Kathryn Bigelow's film.
It's a very dark period and the movie gets at that. But some 'film critics' like Michael Ratner and Glenn Greenwald need a film that claims torture happened because those involved were bad and evil people. That's not what happened.
That cartoon version of reality may provide happy thoughts and pleasant dreams but it doesn't do a damn thing to provide understanding of how a nation that once knew torture was wrong ended up using torture as a first and foremost resort.
It would help if people discussing the film would see it. There's a lie that Ammar gives up information after he's water boarded. How that lie got started, who knows? But David Denby certainly popularized it in his review for The New Yorker, "Yet, in attempting to show, in a mainstream movie, the reprehensibility of torture, and what was done in our name, the filmmakers seem to have conflated events, and in this they have generated a sore controversy: the chairs of two Senate committees have said that the information used to find bin Laden was not uncovered through waterboarding." And because The New Yorker no longer has functioning fact checkers, it first appeared in a 'report' by Dexter I-Lied-About-Falluja-And-Let-The-US-military-vet-my-copy Filkins: "Bigelow maintains that everything in the film is based on first-hand accounts, but the waterboarding scene, which is likely to stir up controversy, appears to have strayed from real life. According to several official sources, including Dianne Feinstein, the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, the identity of bin Laden’s courier, whose trail led the C.I.A. to the hideout in Pakistan, was not discovered through waterboarding."
People have repeatedly latched onto the lie in slamming the film. You can't get through a comment thread on any article about the film without somebody bringing that up. But in the film itself, the water boarding does not produce a name. How do you miss that? In fact, in the shooting script, the scene's end is described as, "Dan and Maya exit. They've learned nothing."
Throughout the film's public life, sexist attacks have taken place. Some feminists, like ourselves, have stepped forward but not enough, not nearly enough.
The newest sexist spin is put out by human filth Bob Somerby who insisted upon going goo-goo over Jessica Chastain to the point that he resembles an online Peeping Tom and flasher. It may be confusing for some who tried to read his multiple 'reviews' on the film so let's make it clear: Jessica Chastain is never naked before the camera. She's not shown in the shower or in bed. It's only Bob Somerby's dirty little mind that 'sees' things that just aren't there.
He rails against the film while explaining he likes his films with female leads to have them being innocent girls on the verge of becoming women (My Brilliant Career) or government whores (Notorious). Yes, he truly did set up the virgin-whore dichotomy in his review.
He feels that Bigelow focuses on Chastain's beauty. We don't know where he's coming from. In the film, Jessica Chastain really doesn't qualify for beautiful. In person and in other roles, sure. But she's not going for that in her portrayal of Maya. Bob Somerby also sees the film progressively undressing her. Again, there's no nudity and we were confused by what the hell the old fool was slobbering over this time. According to him, as the film progresses, Chastain's blouses plunge more or she's seen wearing t-shirts.
Now we get why he misses the points of the film -- he was too busy staring at Chastain's breasts the entire time to notice plot elements.
Fueled by a brief interview Irin Carmon (Salon) badly conducted with Zero Dark Thirty screenwriter Mark Boal, Somerby insists that new print ads featuring Chastain's face are trying to rebrand the film in the marketing.
He really does live in fear of feminism, doesn't he?
Chastain is nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award. Many consider her to be a real contender in the category and some feel that this is the strongest chance Zero Dark Thirty has of taking home a statue. So that's reason one for the new ads. Reason two? She's not an actress in a hot film. She's the lead in two box office hits now. Mama has earned $64 million (through Friday) in four weeks of release (Zero Dark Thirty, through Friday, had made $83 million at the box office). It's always funny to watch know-it-alls who know nothing about the industry tell us why something is happening.
The sexism never ends. Like when Senators Dianne Feinstein, John McCain and Carl Levin embarrassed themselves with the letter calling for censorship -- yes, government officials insisting on altering a film from the director's intended version qualifies as censorship -- whether it's the insertion of a title card or a call for deletions.
That cry for censorship was shameful. And they've backed off that call. In part because former CIA Director and the outgoing Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has praised the film as has former US House Rep. Jane Harman. But also because it was made clear that a line had been crossed.
With that checked off the list, let's return to the three senators and their little letter calling for censorship to note the sexist aspect of it.
Zero Dark Thirty is a film released by Sony Pictures. The senators complain to "Chairman and CEO Sony Pictures Entertainment" Michael Lynton. That position actually has a co-chair. Amy Pascal is the Co-Chair of Sony Pictures Entertainment and the Chair of Sony Pictures Entertainment Motion Picture Group. How telling that the Senate -- where sexism is institutionalized -- would blow off Pascal and make their appeal to Lynton.
Or did it just not occur to them that a woman could be in charge?
-------------------
Disclosure, Ava and C.I. know Kathryn Bigelow and Amy Pascal. Piece corrected to note "War is gender neutral." (As opposed to "War is not gender neutral." Ava and C.I. say they have no idea what they were thinking when they typed.)
Tweet of the Week
Last week, the Senate Intelligence Committee held a hearing on the nomination of John Brennan to be the new Director of the CIA.
Jon Schwarz
As you listen to the Brennan hearing, remember 6 years ago Jay Rockefeller explained senators have no power vs the CIA: http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/001436.html …
Brennan and Panette hearings
Dona: It's time for another Congressional hearing update. Thursday morning, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Panetta is outgoing. Chuck Hagel is the nominee to be the new Secretary of Defense. Thursday afternoon, CIA Director nominee John Brennan appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Reporting on those hearings, C.I. offered "Iraq snapshot" and "Thoughts on today's Senate Intell hearing (C.I.)," Ava went with "The disgraceful Dianne Feinstein (Ava)," Wally with "Brennan likes torture (Wally)," Kat with "Brennan tries to weasel" and Ruth offered "If Leon Panetta told the truth . . .." If you thought the two hearings were unrelated, Lindsey Boerma (CBS News) provides the connection today, reporting that Senator Lindsey Graham is threatening to place a hold on the nominations of Hagel and Brennan "until the White House explains its garbled talking points following the Libya attack." Ruth, you attended both Thursday hearings and you also cover Benghazi, the Libya attack that claimed the lives of Americans Glen Doherty, Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods and Chris Stevens, at your site. What you do make of it?
Ruth: I applaud it, actually. He is doing something similar to what Vice President Joe Biden did in 2005 when he was Senator Joe Biden and Bully Boy Bush had nominated John Bolton to be the US Ambassador to the United Nations. I do think the administration has failed to provide answers on this. I think a number of Democrats in Congress who said 'let's wait for the report' decided, once the report was released, to change tactics and start saying, 'Let's focus on improving things.' I do not believe the American people have gotten honest answers -- all these months later. Tomorrow, it will be five months since the attacks and I do not feel we know any more than we did then. It is time for accountability.
Kat: I would just add that I support Ruth's position 100%.
Dona: I was just going to bring you in because two weeks ago you reported on another hearing, the Hagel hearing, and you focused on, as your title made clear, "Lindsay Graham."
Kat: Right. I thought he did a great job in that hearing. It played out popularly online as you were for him if you were a Republican and you were against him if you were a Democrat. I don't play that game. I've been to too many Congressional hearings to reduce them to partisan calls. Graham took Hagel's statements and asked serious questions and did so in an applause worthy manner.
Dona: Alright. Let's move over to Brennan. This hearing was not impressive, according to the press. Wally, one thing that stands out about Brennan in the hearing that conveys that?
Wally: Water boarding is when you simulate drowning. You do it to intimidate or scare someone into believing that they will drown. It's done to Geena Davis' character in Long Kiss Goodbye. That it's torture has been established. That the US government can call it that is not in doubt. But there was Brennan insisting that he could not make a ruling there, couldn't apply the term because he's not a lawyer.
Dona: He is Barack's National Security Advisor, right?
Wally: Correct. And if he can't apply torture to water boarding, exactly what advice does he provide to Barack Obama.
Dona: Good point. Ava, the hearing was unimpressive all the way around. Wally spoke of the witness, John Brennan, could you explain the problem with the Senate Committee?
Ava: Certainly. Dianne Feinstein is the Chair of the Committee. Background, Bully Boy Bush created monarch powers for the office when he declared that he had the right to indefinitely detain an American citizen. Jose Padilla would be an example of someone he tried to do that with. Barack has expanded that. He claims he has the power to order the execution of anyone -- including American citizens -- and to do so without any oversight or check on his power. Well DiFi to the rescue. Apparently having settled on one bad wig means DiFi has time to ponder and think and what she's come up with is that the Congress needs to create a court, similar to the secretive FISA Court, that would 'review' Barack. Such a secretive court would, of course, be concealed from the public so there would be no openess, no transparancy. But even worse, DiFi is saying, "Sure the president can execute anyone he wants and let's make it official by creating a court where he can get permission." This is disgusting and Dianne Feinstein's actions are unconstitutional and shameful.
Dona: Let me bring back in Ruth to talk about her post. Ruth, you were the only one reporting on Panetta's testimony.
Ruth: Right. I focused on it and specifically on how, he stated, there was not time to deploy to Benghazi after word of the attacks. He gave excuses like lack of refueling place and claiming that fighter jets do not have their weapons at the ready so those would have to be loaded -- excuse me? If there is an attack on Albany, is Mr. Panetta saying it will take hours to arm an F-16?
Dona: Right. I was also curious about the issue of the drone. That's been in dispute.
Ruth: Sure. Secretary Panetta testified, as the State Department's Charlene Lamb had last year, that a drone was overhead during the attack. Video of the attack was captured as it happened. This detail was not accurately reported on by many outlets when Ms. Lamb testified last year. It has been ignored since. So it was news that Mr. Panetta testified about it.
Dona: Kat, the hearing on Brennan provided you with what?
Kat: The knowledge that Barack really did not grab the best and brightest by any means. Brennan was better than Hagel the week before but a pet rock would have been better than Hagel. Judging him based upon a basic standard for honesty, he was evasive and embarrassing.
Dona: We are pressed for time so I have saved C.I. for last. Your thoughts regarding anything.
C.I.: Okay. Well, Brennan's avoidance of water boarding has led to whispers in DC that torture continues under Barack -- that wouldn't be surprising to most people. I think it was hilarious and telling that Feinstein worked overtime to silence the people --
Dona: CODEPINK.
C.I.: Right. She wanted to silence those who objected to The Drone War but she was more than happy to let those who promote it and push it lie. She was happy to let Brennan lie, she was happy to help him lie. Dianne Feinstein never looked worse than she did at that hearing. She was an embarrassment. Ava's anger is very real and there's a reason for it -- we sat through that hearing. Dianne Feinstein is an embarrassment. You'd have to go back to the John Roberts confirmation hearing to find Dianne making a bigger ass and fool of herself. She really should be ashamed. CODEPINK was the only one present for the hearing doing real accountability. Dianne objected to them and silenced them -- possibly due to her own shame for being so ineffectual.
Dona: Alright and that sounds like a wrap up. We're using Isaiah's "Barry O's Favorite Topic" as our illustration. And our e-mail address is thirdestatesundayreview@yahoo.com.
Hero of the week: Norman Solomon
Activist and author Norman Solomon had a busy week.
It was the 10th anniversary of Colin Powell's lie-soaked presentation to the United Nations where Colin Powell used one falsehood after another to try to make the case for war on Iraq. It's how Powell earned his "blot."
Norman didn't just have to confront the lies Powell told, he also had to stand up against an MSNBC sweetheart, a Consortium News darling, Powell's guy pal Larry Wilkerson who wants you to know that Colin Powell didn't lie, no, he didn't, not Collie, not sweet Powell, not him.
You'd be shocked if you sat there and added up all the websites that reposted Lawrence Wilkerson's latest revisionary nonsense. You'd be even more shocked if you realized that these were left websites.
While Wilkie tried to spin, Norman Solomon turned out a column of truth, went on Democracy Now! and debated Larry (Amy was so supportive of Larry, wasn't she?) and then discussed Powell's presentation on CounterSpin.
Last week could have gone a different way. A lot of people seemed afraid -- like Amy Goodman -- to call out Wilkerson. If Norman was worried, he didn't show it.
But he did make the case in text, in video and in audio that Powell lied.
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