Most astonishingly, Dickopf was the head of INTERPOL from 1968-1972.
So here is one Nazi (an SS member) that the CIA paid.
And INTERPOL was headed by a Nazi.
And that particular Nazi, Dickopf, was also on the CIA payroll while he was head of INTERPOL.
What if there were Ukrainian Nazis that shared this kind of cozy relationship with the CIA?
There were.
You may know Operation Paperclip.
You probably think scientists.
But there was more (and less) to it.
People avoided Nuremberg merely because the CIA found them useful.
And what this movie points out is important.
How did the CIA control former-Nazis?
By threatening to reveal their past Nazi actions.
Such was the case with Dickopf.
His Nazi activities only came to public attention after his death.
After his usefulness had been gleaned by the CIA.
Of course the Soviets had an analogous program.
Operation Osoaviakhim.
You probably know of Wernher von Braun.
SS.
1937-1945.
A Major in the SS.
Major von Braun.
I believe my father crossed paths with von Braun at Redstone Arsenal.
They did not meet.
But they were there at the same time.
Strange, isn’t it?
Nazi Wernher von Braun worked with Walt Disney (the man) on a series of films about space travel.
1955-1957.
Let me repeat, Disney worked with a Nazi.
For two years.
Von Braun took music composition as a boy from Paul Hindemith.
One of my texts as a music theory and composition undergraduate was by Hindemith.
There is solid testimony that Von Braun picked slave laborers from the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp.
There is solid testimony that this Nazi SS Major did nothing to help those who were being tortured and worked to death.
But to Von Braun’s credit, he was (supposedly) arrested by the Gestapo for “not being Nazi enough”.
He was considered a defeatist who knew the war wasn’t going well.
He complained that he wasn’t working on a spaceship.
And POOF, a young female dentist reported him.
Himmler, who was trying to angle in on the production of V-2 rockets, had him charged as a communist sympathizer.
There was also fear that Von Braun, who piloted his own plane, might defect to England.
There were 14 tons of paper (!) documents on the V-2 rocket which Von Braun hid in the Harz mountains.
These were located by Army Counterintelligence (who blocked and have me blocked on Twitter).
Wernher von Braun and his brother Magnus turned over the V-2 rocket technology to the USA (and not the Soviet Union) because they ostensibly perceived the Americans to be “guided not by the laws of materialism but by Christianity”.
Hmmm.
SOUNDS good.
To flesh out the story, I should mention that Wernher von Braun conspired to be captured by the Americans (and not by the Soviets).
Von Braun and his team were housed at Fort Bliss (near El Paso, TX).
Von Braun and team then spent the next 20 years in Hunstville, Alabama.
Redstone Arsenal.
The war we are currently facing is a face-off between two nuclear powers (USA and Russia).
The USA owes its development of rocketry in a large part to a Nazi.
There are American satellites in space because of a Nazi (beginning in 1958 [Explorer 1]).
The idea and dream of traveling to Mars can largely be attributed to this same Nazi.
In 1946, this Nazi had become an Evangelical Christian after attending church in El Paso.
Pretty amazing, eh?
Makes for a good story, doesn’t it?
But is it true???
But let’s get another Nazi into the picture, shall we?
What about Kurt Debus?
The first director of Kennedy Space Center.
A NASA Nazi.
SS.
Debus joined the SA (Brownshirts) in 1933 and the SS in 1940.
By the way, Von Braun signed an affidavit where he erroneously said that he joined the SS in 1939.
He actually joined in 1937.
Hmmm.
Debus was with Von Braun at Fort Bliss.
He was also with him at Redstone.
This roving band of merry Nazis.
In the summer of 1966-67 (southern hemisphere), Von Braun went to Antarctica.
Hmmm.
And guess who came up with Space Camp for kids?
You guessed it.
A Nazi!
[Von Braun]
Jawohl!
So America (and the Soviet Union) took credit for “defeating” the Nazis.
But both countries pilfered important (and not-so-important) Nazis for various purposes.
And now Putin says he is fighting Naziism in Ukraine (which I believe).
Gerald Ford (a 33rd-degree Freemason) awarded the National Medal of Science in Engineering to Wernher von Braun in 1977.
The highest science honor that can be bestowed by the American government.
Good job, Nazi!
Von Braun is buried in Alexandria, Virginia.
Nazis like Von Braun were given American citizenship.
The U.S. Navy took Herbert Wagner.
The U.S. Army took 127 rocket scientists (including Von Braun).
The Bureau of Mines (pre- Department of Energy) took seven synthetic fuel specialists.
The USAF really liked the imported Nazis.
They took 260 of them.
Did Operation Paperclip continue until 1990?
If so, continue in what sense?
Paperclip wasn’t CIA per se.
It was run by the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency.
So we could start by calling it an OSS (CIA’s predecessor agency) and Army CIC (counterintelligence corps) program.
Only problem is, the CIA came into existence in 1947.
So in what way was Paperclip NOT a CIA program?
Hmmm.
Paperclip appears to have been overseen by the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
So you would have:
Army Intelligence
Naval Intelligence
Air Force Intelligence
and
State Department?!?
For instance, Magnus von Braun (Wernher’s brother) had an INSCOM dossier.
Fascinating.
Wernher von Braun’s dossier has never been made public.
Hmmm.
The U.S. military helped Kurt Blome escape to Argentina to avoid trial for human experiments conducted at Ravensbruck.
Ravensbrück.
But the CIA wanted assets.
And access.
We’re not talking about the commonly-known scientists like Wernher von Braun.
We’re talking more about people such as Paul Dickopf.
Let me reiterate, the head of INTERPOL (Dickopf) from 1968-1972 was on the CIA payroll.
We’re not talking about Camp Ashcan and the 86 Nazi leaders in Luxembourg.
But it falls somewhere in the realm of Safehaven, doesn’t it?
Let’s talk about Klaus Barbie.
U.S. “intelligence services” (CIA?) employed Klaus Barbie and helped him escape to Bolivia.
Barbie was a master of torture (as disgusting as that sounds).
This was applied in Bolivia.
Why would the United States support such a thing?
In an effort to “fight communism”, of course.
I agree that communism is bad.
And should be fought.
Indeed, capitalism and communism ought to fight each other (as ideological concepts) on the “battlefield” of economics.
But torture is unacceptable.
It is evil.
To what extent did the “U.S. intelligence services” simply (and cynically) “look the other way” in regards to Barbie torturing people in Bolivia?
We are talking about 1980.
The “Cocaine Coup”.
But you gotta go back to 1973.
And Kissinger.
In Chile.
Pinochet.
To what extent were Italian Fascists allowed to set up camp in Chile by their “intelligence services” (DINA)?
To what extent were Italian Fascists (supported by the Kissinger State Department) responsible for the overthrow of democratically-elected socialist Salvador Allende?
Pinochet.
To what extent did this 1973 coup rely upon Italian Fascists?
Where were these fascists coming from?
Were there any Nazis involved in Chile?
Where had these people been since the end of WWII?
In Francisco Franco’s Spain, perhaps?
When did Franco die?
1980s?
What role did Italian Fascists (who fought on the same side as the Nazis in WWII) play in the Operation Gladio false-flag bombings in Italy?
When did this start?
If Gladio was a stay-behind network (and it was), when was it formed?
Immediately after WWII?
Yes.
But the communists lost the first elections in postwar Italy.
Gladio didn’t really get kicking with their false-flag bombings (blamed on communists) until the 1970s.
And this is just one country’s (Argentina’s) commander for Operation Condor.
Same thing in Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay.
Now you see why Uruguay called for Kissinger’s arrest.
Because Kissinger oversaw this program (apparently).
What time period are we talking about?
1968-1989.
We are talking about 60,000-80,000 deaths under Operation Condor.
Who was targeted?
The left-wing.
Communists.
Socialists.
But also right-wingers who “weren’t right-wing enough”.
It seems the CIA had a big role in this.
U.S. government operation.
Support often “routed” through CIA.
The U.S. military was concerned about “perceived threats” and “subversives” in Latin America.
Similar to Operation Gladio.
The end justifies the means.
A brute-force way of preventing communist takeovers.
Dirty.
Clumsy.
Evil.
Fighting one evil (communism) with another (murder/torture).
But what brought Operation Condor into being?
It was a series of coups.
Paraguay (1954).
Brazil (1964).
Bolivia (1971).
Uruguay (June 1973).
Chile (September 11, 1973).
Peru (1975).
Argentina (1976).
Wow.
That is SEVEN coups in 22 years.
And FIVE coups in FIVE years.
In five DIFFERENT Latin American countries.
How the fuck did that happen?
Did they all just spontaneously get infected with anti-communist fervor???
It seems our CIA was “watching” dissidents in Argentina and Uruguay.
And don’t forget about the Brazilian “death squads”.
With whom the CIA worked.
This communism thing must be really powerful.
Granted, it’s a fucked-up, inefficient system.
A perverted, perverse system.
But was it really necessary to “disappear” and murder all these people over???
Why not just let capitalism show its merits?
Capitalism is a value-creating juggernaut (it is!).
Why did the U.S. government feel so threatened by communism?
One reason was the USSR (which no longer exists).
All those Soviet Republics.
That giant monolithic block.
Let’s name ’em:
Armenia
Azerbaijan
Belarus
Estonia
Georgia (Tbilisi, not Atlanta)
Kazakhstan
Kyrgyzstan
Latvia
Lithuania
Moldova (Moldavian SSR)
Russia
Tajikistan
Turkmenistan
Ukraine
Uzbekistan.
Wow.
How many is that?
15.
The U.S. has 50 states.
So we are more impressive, right?
The USSR covered about 8.6 million square miles.
The USA covers about 3.7 million square miles.
The Soviet Union was twice as big as America.
And it was (WAS!) communist.
And it had (and HAS!) nuclear weapons.
ICBMs.
Intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Hell, they even have hypersonic missiles now.
And the USA doesn’t.
So Russia (the main successor) could definitely fuck us up (WIPE US OUT).
But that’s not what they wanna do.
They just want us to get the fuck off their doorstep.
Because if they wipe us out, they know we will also (simultaneously) wipe them out.
And we should understand this equation too.
But apparently we don’t.
Because we have led a NATO (Now A Terrorist Organization) that has continuously gobbled up former Soviet territories for the past 30 years (since the fall of the USSR in 1991).
But I understand why America was concerned.
I understand the concept of fighting communism in Vietnam.
I respect those soldiers who went.
Maybe that war needed to happen.
Maybe the United States was right for fighting.
But let’s be frank: what’s the strategic significance of Vietnam?
There is none.
Unless you’re in the heroin business.
Which may be the main reason we were ACTUALLY there.
Same with Afghanistan.
Heroin.
Poppies.
Oil?
The pipeline across Afghanistan?
Sure, maybe.
But that never materialized.
And why were we in Bolivia?
And Peru?
Cocaine.
Perhaps.
The “Cocaine coup” in Bolivia.
1980.
When the mafia took over the country.
With the help of Klaus Barbie.
Who worked for American intelligence (CIA?).
By the way, Russia is still the biggest country on Earth.
6.6 million square miles.
But they didn’t come to Mexico.
They don’t have a mutual-defense treaty with Canada.
They don’t have troops and military bases on our border.
Hell, they don’t even have nukes in Cuba anymore (Havana being 230 miles from Miami).
Tallinn (Estonia [part of NATO]) is 230 miles from Saint Petersburg, Russia.
Are there nukes in Tallinn?
Probably not.
But there are NATO troops in Estonia.
Right on Russia’s fucking border.
And same with Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Norway.
NATO was not content to border Russia with merely Norway for 50 years (since 1949).
NATO saw fit to add Poland in 1999 and the Baltic countries in 2004.
FIVE NATO members border Russia.
That is unacceptable.
USAoutofNATO.
Now!
NoMoreNATO!
America first!
Who founded Operation Condor?
Pinochet?
Hmmm.
Don’t forget about Orlando Letelier.
Car bomb.
D.C.
Pinochet.
Operation Condor.
30,000 dead in Argentina alone.
Nuns.
Anyone even tangentially-Marxist.
I hate Marxism as much as the next capitalist (I am a proud capitalist!), BUT YOU DON’T FUCKING KILL MARXISTS JUST BECAUSE THEY HAVE ADOPTED AN INEFFICIENT ECONOMIC PHILOSOPHY!!!
Violent Marxists are another thing.
I have no tolerance for violent Marxists.
Whether they be BLM or Antifa.
But there should be a proportionate riposte.
If somebody commits and arson, YOU ARREST THEM.
You don’t just indiscriminately kill people.
Rule of law is the best way.
Rule of man is a pitfall.
There is, however, a problem.
The 2020 election was stolen.
And I believe Trump left office.
I believe he threw us to the wolves.
I believe our military leaders are pussies.
But Vladimir Putin, who was presented with an immediate threat on his doorstep (a creeping invasion by NATO that he personally oversaw and had patience for FOR 30 YEARS), actually did something.
So I respect Putin more than I respect Trump.
Putin, at this rate, is going to save Russia.
Trump, at this rate, will have no America left to save.
I respect Putin more than I respect the American military’s top leaders.
The American military, at this rate (if they ever decide to actually PROTECT the country), will have no America left to protect.
Death flights.
Taking dissidents out to sea by plane or helicopter and dropping them in the water.
Argentina.
Chile.
Disgusting.
Something the French also apparently did in Algeria.
Bodies washing up in Buenos Aires.
1977.
Kidnapped babies.
Illegal adoptions.
Babies taken to punish mothers who are in jail.
Don’t have a different economic philosophy.
Or we will kidnap your children.
Disgusting.
Latin America as one big network of torture and psychological warfare.
DINA in Chile (Pinochet) and SIDE in Argentina.
Propaganda.
Counter criticism.
Cultivate national pride.
I love America!
I really do.
But the best thing for America to do right now is to get the fuck out of NATO.
America first!
Operation Condor was going to murder a Uruguayan opposition politician.
And leaders of Amnesty International.
That’s pretty fucked-up!
Operation Condor really had a “if you see something, say something” mentality.
A big police state across the entirety of Latin America.
Number of dead as a result of Operation Condor:
Paraguay: 2,000
Chile: 3,196
Uruguay: 297
Brazil: 366
Argentina: 30,000
Archives of Terror.
Archivos del Terror (Spanish).
Arquivos do Terror (Portuguese).
Found in a police station in Paraguay.
4 tons of documents.
[14 tons for V-2]
Operation Condor: 50,000-90,000 people killed in South America
Condor ended in 1983 after Argentina’s defeat in the Falklands War.
The military dictatorship was ousted and democracy restored.
Desaparecidos.
The disappeared.
Perpetrators of Operation Condor who were executed:
General Carlos Prats (Chile)
Uruguayan MP Zelmar Michelini
Uruguayan MR Héctor Gutiérrez Ruiz
former Bolivian President Juan José Torres
Argentina was involved with the Cocaine Coup of Klaus Barbie in Bolivia.
1980.
Italian fascists in South America.
December 1977.
Two French nuns and several founders of Madres de la Plaza de Mayo disappeared.
Put on death flights.
Dropped in the ocean.
Remains washed up on beaches south of Buenos Aires in December 1977.
Remains identified.
A commission.
COVID.
Forced disappearances.
Crimes against humanity.
Kudos to writer Ernesto Sabato.
Argentina.
Getting to the bottom of the 30,000 dead/missing/disappeared.
Life in prison:
Jorge Rafael Videla (Argentina [d. 2013])
Emilio Eduardo Massera (Argentina [d. 2010]) P2 Masonic lodge member
Roberto Eduardo Viola (Argentina [d. 1994])
Armando Lambruschini (Argentina [d. 2004])
Orlando Ramón Agosti (Argentina [d. 1997])
Omar Graffigna (Argentina [d. 2019])
Leopoldo Galtieri (Argentina [d. 2003])
Jorge Anaya (Argentina [d. 2008])
Basilio Lami Dozo (Argentina [d. 2017])
In 1986 and 1987, amnesty laws were passed to protect military officers involved in human rights abuses.
What?!?
No more prosecutions of the Dirty War.
In 1989-90, the leaders of the junta were pardoned.
An attempt at “healing”…
FUCK THAT!!!
Massera was pardoned in 1990 and lived to be 85 (d. 2010).
Massera imprisoned again in 1998.
Viola was pardoned in 1990 and died four years later.
Viola served a mere seven years in prison.
Lambruschini pardoned in 1990.
Later came under house arrest (2003).
Died 2004.
But here’s an interesting fact.
Lambruschini’s 15-year-old daughter was murdered in 1978 when a bomb was placed under her bed by an Argentine left-wing guerrilla organization.
Equally disgusting.
All because one side loves communism and the other side hates communism.
Fucking idiots!
But Operation Condor started in 1975.
So was this payback?
Either way, it’s disgusting.
Murdering children is the lowest of the low.
Total insanity.
Total EVIL!
Agosti.
Convicted of eight counts of torture.
Served a mere three years and nine months.
Was accused of 88 murders.
11 abductions of minors.
Was pardoned in 1990.
Graffigna was initially acquitted.
2003 arrested again.
Was not sentenced until 2016.
Was found responsible for the abduction, torture, and murder of a married couple in 1978.
The woman was eight-months-pregnant.
The child was born and given to an Air Force Intelligence operative.
Galtieri was sentenced in 1986 to 12 years in prison for human rights violations during the Dirty War.
He was pardoned in 1989.
Still received an Army pension for the rest of his life.
Invited to military parade in 2002.
New charges of kidnapping of children and disappearance of 18 people brought against him in 2002.
Because of his poor health, he was allowed to remain at home.
Bullshit!
Anaya was acquitted in 1985.
Spain intervened in 1997 because some of their citizens had disappeared during the Dirty War.
Extradition requested.
Request denied.
Criteria amended.
Proceedings proceed.
Extradition ceased.
Overturned.
Extraditions continue.
Heart attack.
House arrest.
Dozo was acquitted in 1985.
1989 sentenced to eight years.
Pardoned in 1990.
Didn’t even lose his rank.
Came under same extradition request from Spain.
What happened?
Lived until 2017.
Brazil’s military dictatorship lasted 21 years.
1964-1985.
Brazil also had a bullshit amnesty law that protected the human rights abuses of the military leaders.
In 1978, the Uruguayan Army crossed into Brazil and kidnapped two activists and their children: ages five and three.
The Uruguayan Army made the mistake of capturing two Brazilian journalists during this operation.
This probably saved the lives of the couple and their children.
Otherwise they would have been tortured and dropped in the ocean on a death flight.
But the couple was tortured and imprisoned for five years.
The children were sent to live with grandparents in Montevideo because the whole operation had been fucked up by the presence and arrest of the Brazilian journalists (and the ensuing international attention of this particular case).
In the case of the Brazilian reporters, they were actually kidnapped by the Brazilian military regime.
Uruguay also passed a bullshit amnesty law.
No one ever got in trouble for torturing the couple.
It is likely that two ex-Presidents of Brazil were assassinated as part of Operation Condor.
João Goulart (“heart attack” )and Juscelino Kubitschek (“car accident”).
Goulart was likely poisoned.
Pinochet was arrested in London in 1998.
The “big wedding” was Franco’s funeral in Spain.
That’s when Pinochet met Italian fascist Stefano Delle Chiaie.
It is quite possible that Pablo Neruda was murdered by the Pinochet regime.
Reagan finally withdrew support for Pinochet after the Chilean Army set two protestors on fire.
We’ll end with this.
Colonia Dignidad.
Chile.
Germans.
Nazis.
Internment, torture, and murder of dissidents in the underground tunnels of a farm known as the Dignity Colony (Colonia Dignidad).
1970s.
During Pinochet regime.
Leader of Colonia Dignidad: Paul Schäfer.
German fugitive.
Colonia Dignidad later changed its name to Villa Baviera.
This facility existed about 200 miles south of Santiago from 1961-2005.
Sexual abuse and torture of young children were committed there.
Torture and execution of political dissidents (under Pinochet) were committed there.
Schäfer spent a mere five years in prison at the end of his life.
He had been a rumored child molester (in Germany) since 1945.
He lost his job as an Evangelical preacher on account of this.
In 1959, he was charged with sexually abusing two boys.
He fled.
The Chilean ambassador to Germany invited him to Chile.
He set up a cult near Parral, Chile (the Colonia Dignidad).
Schäfer had a bit of David Koresh about him.
A coup against Salvador Allende was organized at Colonia Dignidad by Germans including Roberto Thieme.
Schäfer began punishing children in his cult by electric shocks to their genitalia.
After the coup, Colonia Dignidad became a secret detention, torture, and execution center for DINA (the National Intelligence Directorate under Pinochet’s military government).
Then the biological weapons production began.
#biolabs
Nazis in Ukraine.
CIA Nazis.
CIA protecting Ukrainian Nazis after WWII who should have been subject to Nuremberg.
Schäfer used sedatives on children and then raped them.
The farm contained “subterranean living containers”.
Tunnels.
Schäfer was charged with all matter of crimes.
He fled.
He was found in 2005 in Buenos Aires.
There was a plethora of military weaponry buried at Colonia Dignidad.
2006: Schäfer sentenced to 20 years for abusing 25 children.
He was found guilty on five counts of child rape.
The compound was surrounded by barbed wire and had searchlights and a watchtower.
There were underground prisons.
There may have been cooperation between the BND (Klaus Barbie’s employer from 1965 onwards) and Colonia Dignidad.
Only German was spoken inside the colony.
Children were “imported” from German.
Schäfer first arrived in the early-1960s with kidnapped children.
Illegal adoptions.
Torture in the tunnels.
Torture specifically tailored to their personality.
At least 100 murders at Colonia Dignidad.
A Soviet-born math professor from Penn State disappeared while hiking near Colonia Dignidad in 1985.
Escapees of the colony claim that the facility housed former Nazis.
But who did Chilean secret police operative Michael Townley report to about the DINA/Colonia Dignidad links?
Fucking INTERPOL!!!
Was the head of INTERPOL in 2005 also on the CIA payroll (as the head of INTERPOL from 1968-1972 had been)???
What Townley seems to have done right is expose Colonia Dignidad as a LABORATORY ON BIOLOGICAL WARFARE!!!
Biological experiments were done on political prisoners at Colonia Dignidad.
Now here is the fucking kicker.
The CIA and Simon Wiesenthal have both proven that Josef Mengele was at Colonia Dignidad.
This South American network for escaped Nazis was partially supported by Juan Perón in Argentina.
Was Klaus Barbie at Colonia Dignidad?
I would not doubt it.
Former SS and Gestapo TAUGHT torture methods at Colonia Dignidad to the Chilean secret police.
Just as Barbie would later do in Bolivia–teaching the Bolivian military.
Hartmut Hopp was Schäfer’s “right hand man” at Colonia Dignidad.
He went with Schäfer at age 17 to Chile in 1961.
Michael Townley, an American-born former agent of Chile’s DINA (wait…what?!? how the fuck did he get that job???) pled guilty to the 1976 car-bombing murders of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Karpen Moffitt.
There was a plea bargain.
He was not extradited to Argentina (where he was wanted for the 1974 murders of Chilean General Carlos Prats and his wife).
He was convicted in absentia in Italy for the 1975 murder attempt on Bernardo Leighton.
What was Townley’s specialty (apart from being a prolific assassin)?
Chemical and biological weapons.
And who did he develop these for?
For his employer DINA.
With the help of Colonel Gerardo Huber and DINA biochemist Eugenio Berríos.
Townley moved to Chile in 1957 at the age of 15.
His dad worked for Ford.
In Chile.
Townley came back to Miami.
Hooked up with anti-Castro Cubans.
Prats and his wife were killed with a radio controlled car bomb.
Enter Italian fascists again.
Townley was the go-between for DINA and Avanguardia Nazionale.
Enter Stefano Delle Chiaie again.
Connection to DINA.
Townley got a mere five years and two months in jail for the murders of Letelier and Moffitt.
Whether truthful or not, DINA’s now-deceased chief Manuel Contreras claims that Townley was partially working for the CIA when he murdered Letelier and Moffitt.
This was around the time that Lt. Gen. Vernon Walters was Deputy Directory of Central Intelligence (CIA).
Walters proposed an American military intervention in Italy in 1961 if the Socialist Party had won.
Townley give us the goods on the Laboratorio de Guerra Bacteriológica de Ejército (Bacteriological Warfare Laboratory of the Army) that was located at Colonia Dignidad.
Carmelo Soria (a Spanish diplomat) was assassinated in 1992 with sarin gas produced at Colonia Dignidad.
It is thought that Pablo Neruda was assassinated with an injection of Staphylococcus aureus.
The sarin gas was produced with the expertise of biochemist Eugenio Berríos.
Other bioweapons Berríos produced were anthrax and botulism.
Berríos also produced cocaine for Pinochet.
There is a suspicion that he worked for both drug traffickers and the DEA.
Former Chilean President Eduardo Frei Montalva was likely killed with a poison devoloped by Berríos.
Did Operation Condor continue as La Cofradia?
Don’t underestimate Chile’s role in Haiti.
MINUSTAH.
Eduardo Aldunate Hermann.
Berríos producing “black cocaine”.
Gerardo Huber also worked on the DINA biochem program.
Stepan Bandera.
2010.
Awarded title Hero of Ukraine.
By Viktor Yushchenko.
Banderites.
Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia.
Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN).
And here’s the magic bullet, you fuckers:
Mykola Lebed.
Leader of OUN-B.
Responsible for the genocide of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia.
Died in 1998 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (aged 89).
Why?
Because he had “a relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency during the Cold War”.
His Prolog (or Prologue) Research Organization in New York (where he emigrated) was funded by the CIA.
Lebed gathered intel on the Soviet Union.
The CIA paid him for this.
The CIA shielded Lebed (as late as 1991) from prosecution for war crimes (aka “his wartime connections to the Nazis”).
How many people did Lebed massacre?
50,000-100,000.
And the CIA hired him.
Yes.
Putin is right.
Ukrainian Nazis exist.
And they have for a long time.
And we’re not just talking about the Azov Battalion.
Lebed was the chief of a Nazi Abwehr school for espionage and sabotage in 1939-1940.
Lebed took over Stepan Bandera’s faction in western Ukraine.
During AND AFTER the Cold War, the CIA supported the OUN.
What groups are we talking about?
Svoboda.
Right Sector.
Ukrainian National Assembly — Ukrainian National Self Defense.
Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists.
Babi Yar/Babyn Yar.
Ukrainian Auxiliary Police.
Made up of people from Ukrainian People’s Militia.
Svoboda. 2014. Euromaidan. Major role.
Yatsenyuk (installed by U.S./Soros coup) had three Svoboda ministers.
Sich Battalion formed by Svoboda for war in Donbass.
Why is billionaire Ukrainian Jew Ihor Kolomoyskyi an apologist for Svoboda?
He’s the second or third richest person in Ukraine.
Kolomoysky has triple citizenship: Ukraine, Israel, and Cyprus.
I have never come to you with such an important message, my dear friends.
The United States is now under martial law (although it has not been announced).
There has been/will be a military coup.
Trump will be President for the next eight years.
This according to Dr. Steve Pieczenik.
Dr. Pieczenik is my intellectual hero.
In the arts, my intellectual hero is Jean-Luc Godard.
But in philosophy, it is Dr. Pieczenik.
Life is art.
But art must be guided by a philosophy.
And so I have learned (over the past five years), from Dr. Pieczenik and Donald Trump, to honor the military and to honor law enforcement.
And it appears the military are about to save our asses.
Because our election was stolen.
It was stolen in a myriad of ways.
Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney warned us in the days leading up to the election that it would be stolen.
He told us about The Hammer (computer program) and Scorecard (an app run on that program).
And then we saw it happen.
As an insomniac, I was personally awake and exercising when Wisconsin miraculously shifted from Trump to Biden at 4 a.m.
Trump told us on the night of the election that this would happen.
He said (to paraphrase), “I don’t want them to find any ballots at 4 a.m.”
And that’s precisely what they did.
And WHEN they did it.
Who?
The powers that installed Joe Biden.
Or attempted to install him.
Joe Biden cannot be President.
He cannot be Commander in Chief.
He is publicly compromised by China.
He took money (as I understand, while still Vice President) from China.
This was exposed in emails on Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell”.
Joe Biden is doubtless “the big guy” who got a 10% cut of his son’s shady dealings.
The big guy.
But this goes much, much deeper than Joe Biden.
If Dr. Pieczenik is correct, what we will see over the next seven days will be a multitude of arrests.
Think ABSCAM, but on an infinitely-larger scale.
This is, very much, the rolling up of a public corruption ring.
But it is a ring which has invaded every area of our Federal government.
I don’t relish it.
I wouldn’t think the military would particularly relish it either.
Except that it is just.
9/11 was not the work of 19 beardy guys with boxcutters.
It was, far more so, the work of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld (to name but two).
Two wars were started because these traitors engineered the controlled demolition of Manhattan’s two tallest buildings.
And for nearly 20 years, those crimes have gone unpunished.
The U.S. military has had to fight the endless (and in many cases pointless) wars which have ensued.
I have no problem with a military veteran’s vote counting as two votes (in relation to mine).
What will the next seven days bring?
We citizens have tried to get the information out.
It has been exactly like 9/11.
The media lacks basic journalistic curiosity.
The end of “one vote, one person” coupled with Biden as Commander in Chief would be the death of America.
China has engineered it.
From COVID-19 to fake mail-in ballots.
No judge in the entire country would look at the evidence.
Lin Wood tried.
Sidney Powell tried.
Jenna Ellis tried.
Rudy Giuliani tried.
And only 147 of our 535 Federal legislators gave a fuck about election fraud.
By way of a false-flag attack on the Capitol (thanks CIA), no evidence was put in front of the American public.
The courts failed.
Congress failed.
And China is heavily invested in our media companies.
Which means that a certain narrative will prevail.
And that narrative will be crafted to please the stockholders.
We have done our part.
I have put in two months.
I have crammed evidence out into every crevice of the internet.
I have done it for two months straight.
Now it appears that our last hope is our military.
Martial law is warranted when court systems are no longer functioning.
Because of corruption, our court systems are no longer functioning.
Is a military coup ever warranted?
What if a country was so thoroughly infested by corruption that it could no longer function?
I believe that is the very situation we are in now.
Our voting system needs major overhauling.
It has been exposed as being nonfunctional.
There may be entire agencies of our government which have outgrown their usefulness.
And they will not go quietly into the night.
And so it very well may be that the Second American Revolution will be a military coup.
In these times of censorship, I am quite aware that I am not allowed to voice approval of this coup.
“If my thought dreams could be seen/they’d probably put my head in a guillotine”
I am also quite aware that my blog is surveilled.
Every blog is surveilled.
I am quite certain that I am (and have been) on “lists” for much of the past 20 years.
So, by writing this blog post, I am helping to alert all who might be interested that a military coup appears imminent in the USA.
I have no ability to stop this coup.
And I have no part to play in this coup.
But I have a right to say that my vote should count.
And my vote didn’t count.
The Supreme Court failed me.
Congress failed me.
It appears that Mike Pence failed me.
The news media has most certainly failed me.
Trump tried every legal means.
And by doing so, he has displayed that our system is fundamentally broken.
I did all I could as a concerned citizen.
But I will not resort to violence.
I will simply report what I hear.
This is what Steve Pieczenik has said.
I like Steve Pieczenik.
I love him.
I love all who love our American flag.
I love all who love our history of rebellion against tyranny.
I love all who honor our founding fathers.
I love all who honor our military.
I love all who respect our police.
This is a great war between the military and corruption.
There will be some military who are found to be corrupt.
Perhaps General Mattis.
Definitely General Clapper.
And what of Mark Milley?
I reserve the right to let his actions create a true impression in my mind.
General McInerney is an American hero.
It is from him that we learned “tactical deception”.
I am a simple citizen.
I don’t have a job.
I have two college degrees.
I have mental challenges.
I have love in my heart.
And fire in my veins.
The thought of America ending at the hands of Joe Biden boils my blood.
But it is now beyond my capability.
I now know that my vote doesn’t count.
Because of Dominion Voting Systems (among other reasons).
Because of Ruby Freeman (among other reasons).
Because of foreign election interference (cyber warfare).
I love our country.
I look at General Flynn, and I see someone who also loves our country.
The military cannot turn a blind eye to election fraud.
It was an attack upon our critical infrastructure.
It was an attack on the mechanisms of democracy.
America is out of balance.
It is now up to the military.
What will they decide?
What have they been working on?
What have they been investigating?
Is there a plan?
We should find out this week.
If Joe Biden is sworn in, then it is a fairly strong indication that there was no plan.
But I find it exceedingly-hard to believe that such lack of planning would be possible.
Every mechanism of our government (including our military) would have had to fail in order for an illegitimately-elected traitor (money from China while in office) to assume the role of Commander in Chief.
I am willing to die for my country.
I am willing to die for the hope that liberty might live on.
I cannot, with a good conscience, consign future generations to the totalitarian tendency of communism.
I cannot, as a citizen, be fine with turning the keys to the kingdom over to Beijing Joe.
I have done my part.
I have fought the good fight.
I have won the race.
My name is Paul Etheredge.
I spent decades searching for the truth about 9/11.
Everyone laughed at me.
I used my own money to buy books on the subject.
I delivered pizzas.
I listened to Alex Jones.
I worked hard for those books.
I am willing to be proven wrong.
But we cannot build our house on shifting sands.
We cannot continue to progress as a country if we constantly reinforce big lies.
At some point the truth must come out.
This may be the most consequential week in American history.
May God help us and bless us.
I ask this in the name of the Prince of Princes–the King of Kings.
I ask this in the name of Jesus Christ who died on the cross so that we might live with God the Father in heaven.
I ask that the Holy Spirit be with us and guide our actions.
May we move with swift, merciless love.
May we protect.
May we be merciful warriors.
May we protect and teach.
May God open the eyes of Americans to the corruption which surrounds us.
May God bring us peace for our repentance.
May God have mercy on the souls of those who harmed children.
May God have mercy on the souls of those who staged false-flag terror attacks.
May God have mercy on the souls of those who sent our young men and women to die in foreign lands…all for a buck.
May God mercilessly shut down the center of corruption.
May God mercilessly rid our land of the cancer of secrecy.
May God cancel those who have usurped powers they do not rightfully wield.
But reinserting ourselves in history, it is rather obvious that communism soldiered on mostly in the East.
Let’s not forget Vietnam and Laos (both still communist to this day).
Thus, Wind from the East.
Yes, Peter Wollen, there’s definitely some Brecht in here.
Especially in that scene when a fucking horse finally shows up 🙂
Not much of a Western without a horse.
So there is eventually one horse for Gian Maria Volontè.
Volentè, of course, really WAS in Westerns (about five years previous).
A couple of those great Sergio Leone “spaghetti Westerners” with Clint Eastwood: A Fistful of Dollars and also For a Few Dollars More.
So kudus to Godard, Gorin, and the whole Dziga Vertov Group for getting Volontè.
But really the star is the beautiful redhead Anne Wiazemsky, who passed away just nine days ago.
It is no wonder Godard fell in love with her.
As he had fallen for Anna Karina previously.
But Wiazemsky was a mind.
A beauty, but a total 180 from Karina.
Of course, neither marriage worked out.
But Wiazemsky is lovely in this film.
Indeed, she is one of the few breaths of air in the whole picture.
There are certainly some suffocating scenes.
The opening shot is interminable.
Slight movements.
But eventually things get rolling.
Sorta.
Wiazemsky is splashed with blood as she is repeatedly choked by Volontè.
A bizarre scene.
Also part of this amalgam was Daniel Cohn-Bendit.
I thought I was seeing Mozambique.
It colored everything I was watching.
I was looking out for poisonous snakes.
Godard would eventually make it to Mozambique…later in the 1970s…but I was merely confused.
I mean, here’s a film that until recently was available only as a Japanese DVD (with no English subtitles).
That is the version I watched.
I hear there is another release of this film recently with other of the Dziga Vertov work, but I am happy enough (for the time being) to have seen it as a Frenchman might have in 1970.
My French was tested.
Allors…
This is a rather experimental film.
Perhaps it is no great masterpiece.
But it teaches that we can go backwards or forwards through time by way of cinema.
Forwards with imagination, and backwards in reality.
We were already beyond this point, and yet we have been blessed to return.
And to honor the one friend I have ever known from that beautiful continent.
A native of Chad.
Tchad.
And a former resident of Côte d’Ivoire.
Because I love geography.
But, even more, I love people.
And I am pleased to report that this documentary, about ZIMBABWE, is a masterpiece.
Directed by a Dane (as in Denmark) by the name of Camilla Nielsson.
And currently available in the U.S. for streaming on Netflix.
It is a recursive process.
For so long I cried.
When I thought of slavery.
When I saw the beautiful face of a black man.
And the teeth with many gaps.
I now know.
I can say.
My dear friend.
You look like you may have come from Zimbabwe.
But recursion may become tiresome.
So we will plop with geography for a moment.
Sadly ignoring Chad and Ivory Coast for the time being, we must locate (firmly) Zimbabwe on a map.
Champagne Castle.
Remove your sanctions.
Remove your sunshades.
Looks like South Africa (south)…and Botswana (west)…additionally Mozambique (east)…and gets hairy from there.
But you needs must only remember that the two Zs flock together: Zimbabwe and Zambia.
And so to the north (by way of northwest [not possible]) is Zambia.
Lusaka.
And over Angola is Luanda.
Lusaka.
Luanda.
You are really getting the hang of this 🙂
Have you thought about working for the State Department?
Recursive.
Going back.
But wait…there’s less!
Just remember that Zimbabwe is southeast Afrique.
Not on the coast.
That’s -zambique.
But landlocked.
Have you ever heard the rot of colonialism?
No no.
Have you ever heard a landlocked brass band?
The pitiful, wailing clarinets…
Landlocked is potentially poverty.
At the mercy of your neighbors.
Over land. Over sea.
One. Two. If.
Recur thyself!
No…
We must say it: MUGABE!
A big, fucking rockstar of totalitarianism.
Nah…
Dictatorshit!
Yes. His dictator shit!
As when the Dalai Lama was a boy.
And they kept his turds.
Because he was some kind of golden child.
But President Mugabe (since 1980) will forever have the ignominy of that desafinado military band behind him.
Celebrations like dirges.
Gloriously out of tune!
Nothing slight about it!!
And every head bows…and every knee genuflects in fealty.
A spry 93 years old.
And President of Zimbabwe for a mere 37 years.
He ain’t a king.
And worse: he’s only 4th on the list of usurping motherfuckers!
You’d have to go to shitholes like Angola (ahh, Luanda…), Cameroon, and the kicker (!) Equatorial Guinea to find jerks who have managed to outlast the black Hitler.
But I like Mugabe.
[what?????????]
No, no…let me explain.
First: the guy does have a Hitler mustache. More or less.
But that’s not why I like him. I don’t dig Hitler.
Wait…do I like Mugabe?
Well, there’s a time and place for everything (and everyone).
As you watch Democrats (mercifully…for all involved…NOT about the U.S. Democratic Party), you might grow attached to the various fuckers involved.
Politicians.
Lawyers!
But Third World lawyers.
Some sad shit…
But most importantly: brave, noble human beings.
You wanna see a real revolution?
Watch this film.
You wanna see some real sacrifices for democracy?
Watch this film.
To be sure…democracy is ugly!
And we Americans are the best at it.
Anything goes!
Fight, fuck, kill…but more like lie, cheat, deceive…yeah.
Democracy brings out the worst in people.
But it arrives at the best result.
It’s a goddamned crucible.
Just to think…that the master copy of the Constitution of Zimbabwe (ostensibly the subject of this film) was on a fucking Dell laptop.
Dell.
Right up the road from me.
Round Rock.
In the Westerns…
&
Michael Dell’s Horatio Alger story…at UT-Austin.
Even closer to me.
And #vault7.
So that we know that every scintilla–every Oxford comma was hacked by the CIA and/or NSA and known throughout the Five Eyes…even before the leaked hard copy hit newsstands in Harare.
Ah!
Another capital…
Reçu.
I can never go back. Enough. TO give you a full telling.
I guess Paul Mangwana is still alive.
This.
The character that grows on you.
From chuckling social engineer.
To political operative shitting his pants.
How do you say “damage control” in Shona?
Exactly.
And Susan Rice is a bitch.
But that’s neither here nor there.
Because Democrats so precisely parallels the recent U.S. election.
The drama. Allegations.
The swaggering strongman.
Yeah…Juan Williams would ride to town on that correlation.
So is Trump Mugabe?
Fuck no.
Not yet.
And probably not ever.
But liberals will have a field day with this possibility.
Social justice warriors will mouth off like the surly reporter from South Africa.
What an asshole!
And so we sympathize with Mr. Mangwana.
What a precarious position he was put in!
To try and bring the illusion of constitutionality to the ZANU-PF party.
But wait a minute…wait a minute…you ain’t heard nothing yet!
Remember, remember…that a black leader can repress black people.
America thought it was fine and dandy…and candy-shop clean when it elected CIA agent Barack Obama.
That turned out to be a big mistake.
One doesn’t investigate one’s own employer pursuant to crimes against humanity (9/11) when such equates to biting the hand that feeds.
Obama lost control.
And tried to get a little African in his lame-duck months.
Oops.
Yes…only democracy in the Middle East? Israel? You’ve got to be joking.
And Zimbabweans were so hopeful after the Mwangana/Mwonzora conclave wrapped up its two-year-overlong constitutional convention.
Got a little #MAGA in you?
Check out how a constitution is crafted.
If wasn’t all ass-kissing in Philadelphia.
Some genuinely contentious points.
And the Obamacare “Repeal and Replace” that just narrowly failed.
Think that wasn’t stressful?
Freedom Caucus gonna be outta jobs.
Saving their butts.
Sorry fuckers…
But I wouldn’t take their job for anything.
To be in that position.
Because.
We live a little while.
And then we die.
And so Camilla Nielsson deserves a Nobel (or at least a can of General Snus)…because she captured REAL, FUCKING LIFE here.
She doesn’t tell you what to think.
She says (in effect): “figure it out”.
Here’s the facts. Figure it out.
“I have seen what I have seen”, wrote Ezra Pound in his second Canto.
I can’t explain it.
Some drumming.
Women making turkey noises.
Weird, macarena dances.
And a little boy gets beaten to death.
All to write a new constitution.
And Douglas Mwonzora is right: Mugabe is evil.
That is a totally valid perspective.
Having seen this film.
[ahh…]
One source.
Never was anything decided on the basis of one source.
But circumstantial runs up against direct.
Very good, Eric Bolling!
And Tony Shaffer was better with MacGuffin.
But that’s just because this is Dossier du cinema.
Not cool enough for diacritics.
One final word…
Mugabe persists from the Soviet era.
Figure it out.
Is he a friend of NATO?
Do the geopolitical math.
Ruminate on AFRICOM.
Pound…was no patriot. Of his own country. In a traditional sense.
And the most I can bring you is this.
This attestation to genius.
The genius of Democrats by Camilla Nielsson.
And the sad face of former Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai…leader of the opposition MDC party.
Sad.
Like his face had been bashed in few too many times.
And maybe we don’t wanna know.
But the cowed look says it all.
And Douglas Mwonzora risks it all.
Three days in jail without food or water. Plus another 18 days to make it a full three weeks.
Yes, it is only right that a young female director should bring us this story.
This documentary.
Ms. Călugăreanu, born in 1981.
Because this film is very much about the 1980s.
VHS.
Videocassettes.
And the situation in Romania.
Chuck Norris is merely a placeholder.
A meme which has undergone a certain détournement.
But there is no substitute for communism in this tale.
Perhaps, authoritarianism.
You see…
if you tell people to do one thing…and you’re really heavy-handed about it,
they will almost certainly do the opposite.
At some point.
And Ms. Călugăreanu’s very persuasive hypothesis is that videocassettes brought down the Ceaușescu regime.
And so there is very little way around this impasse without talking political economy.
First, let us address the very astute current Russian minister of culture Vladimir Medinsky.
The esteemed Mr. Medinsky has famously (?) called Netflix “U.S. government…mind control”.
Or at least that’s how The Washington Times (who needs the Post?) framed it.
But let’s investigate.
Let’s have Mr. Medinsky’s words and not just a CliffsNotes, elevator-pitch summation of them.
He says [translated],
“And, what, you thought these gigantic startups emerge by themselves? One schoolboy sat down, thought for a bit, and then billions of dollars rained down from above?”
That is pursuant to the funding which helped birth Netflix (and, presumably, other American companies with what Mr. Medinsky feels is a global, insidious reach).
He continues [translated],
“It turns out that that our ideological friends [the U.S. government] understand perfectly well that this is the art form that is the most important…”
Ahh, cinema…
And Vladimir Lenin himself knew it!
Mr. Medinsky then seems to evoke the Leonard Cohen of “Tower of Song” when he says [translated],
“They understand how to enter everyone’s homes by getting into every television with the help of Netflix…”
Leonard Cohen (God rest his soul) said it thus:
“Now you can say that I’ve grown bitter but of this you may be sure
The rich have got their channels in the bedrooms of the poor.”
Ah!
What a lyric!!
And that was in 1988!!!
So our director, Ilinca Călugăreanu, knows that of which she speaks.
Because the grip of Ceaușescu was beginning to slip.
But let’s give Mr. Medinsky one more say [translated],
“And through this television, [they get into] the heads of everyone on Earth. But [Russians] don’t grasp this.”
Ok.
Now why was Mr. Medinsky so upset?
Well, because Netflix undertook a vast expansion this past summer.
Indeed, the article from which I’m pirating these quotes (yes, translations are intellectual property) dates from June 23, 2016.
The same article notes pointedly that Netflix’s expansion into Russia, plus a vast number of new territories, means that the streaming service is now available in 190 countries worldwide.
Wait a minute…
How many countries are there, you might ask? 196. Or 195.
Poor Taiwan, they just can’t catch a break.
So then you might say, well…what the fuck?!?
What countries is Netflix NOT in???
It appears those countries are China, North Korea, Syria, and…Crimea?
Suffice it to say, the international “community” is not unanimous in their appraisal of Crimean statehood.
Is it part of Russia?
Is it part of Ukraine?
What do the words Republic of Crimea even mean if its not an independent country?
Which brings up the specter of “frozen conflict zones”.
I’m guessing that Netflix might be unavailable in Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia, and Transnistria.
But I digress…
Because we are on to more specific matters.
There are at least two major ways in which Americans can view the Romanian communist period as it has been depicted in motion pictures.
First, Americans can sympathize with the repression of the Romanian people.
Any doubters should do a little digging on the PATRIOT Act.
Indeed, the psychosis of surveillance (which is mentioned in Chuck Norris vs Communism) could not field a more forbidding bogeyman than the National Security Agency.
And so, dear peoples of the world, would you feel more or less safe living in the same country in which the NSA is headquartered?
Exactly.
Second, Americans could extrapolate Ms. Călugăreanu’s hypothesis to mean that countries such as China will eventually implode as a result of the fulminating combination of repression and technology (even, perhaps, with a starring role for entertainment).
All of that is to say that movies COULD bring down China or North Korea or even Iran.
[Notice the non-Netflix countries…Syria is without, but apparently Iran does have the service.]
Which is to ultimately say, Mr. Medinsky’s fear is completely warranted.
What is at stake in Russia?
The fall of Putin.
A sea change in leadership.
And I will be quite frank.
There is no doubt that Netflix’s catalog is heavily biased towards globalist propaganda.
One of the most glaring areas is India.
I can’t tell you how many watery, transparent premises there are on Netflix which are some permutation of a young person rebelling against a repressive culture.
It’s almost like they’re churning these formulaic films out in a factory.
Boy marries girl from lower caste. Mayhem follows.
Girl goes to human rights court. Happily ever after…
Boy rebels against father’s traditional ways [read: religion].
I mean, at a certain point it’s just pathetic.
But we must hand it to Netflix for some (SOME) of their selections.
Actually, I have found a good many gems on the site.
But it is a very biased (and historically-uninformed collection).
In general, history doesn’t exist for Netflix.
Unless that history is the Holocaust.
Then, of course, there are a plethora of scenarios to “inform” you about the Nazis.
Make no mistake (my best Obama voice), the Nazis were bad.
Really bad.
But do we need 10 fucking films about the Holocaust?
And if Schindler’s List is the zenith of the genre, God help us…
But I digress again…
Chuck Norris vs Communism is a very beautiful film.
It’s about rebellion.
It’s about the little things we do to assert our existence.
And in this case, it’s about a translator (a voiceover dubbing artist) who reached the hearts of innumerable Romanians.
Irina Nistor.
Whether it was Chuck Norris, or Jean-Claude Van Damme, or Sylvester Stallone, Irina’s voice made the dialogue come alive in Romanian.
But it was a subversive activity.
“Imperialist” films were not allowed in Romania.
But Romania was falling apart.
To take the interviewees of our documentary at their word, their lives sucked…without “video” night.
But we must be clear.
Everything (EVERYTHING) about this enterprise was illegal in Romania.
First, the videos had to be smuggled across the border.
Then they had to be copied and dubbed (voiceover).
Then they had to be distributed.
Then some brave schmucks took the risk of screening these films on their TV sets (for a few lei, of course).
But it was dangerous business.
Especially if you were the kingpin.
So it is then strange to meet this kingpin of video piracy face to face.
Zamfir.
Not the guy with the panpipes.
No, this was Teodor Zamfir.
Made a pretty penny.
But the fascinating thing (by Călugăreanu’s hypothesis) is that he completely changed Romanian culture.
The seeds of revolution were sown by Dirty Dancing, Last Tango in Paris, The King of Comedy…
And especially by the action films.
Rocky, Rambo, Lone Wolf McQuade…
And so, if you want to piss off a communist (or socialist, or whatever they’re going by these days), you can go with the familiar tack,
“Didn’t they already try that? Wasn’t it an immense failure?”
I don’t know.
But I don’t doubt the faces of those who lived through Ceaușescu.
No national cinema has been nearly as effective as the Romanian in communicating to the West just what life under communism was like.
And so Romania becomes our lens into the Soviet Union and its satellite states.
I know there are Russians who fondly remember communism.
Let’s be clear: capitalism can also suck.
Change and upheaval can be deadly.
They say, “Watch the price of eggs” (to demonstrate how a free market dictates prices).
But we see a very similar discontent in the Middle East.
Is this democracy?
Fuck this!
Yes, America has made some mistakes.
And so we should watch everything with a critical eye.
Be your own critic.
Be like Emerson.
Be bold.
And then double back.
Waffle.
Live by palimpsest.
Because you are the ultimate philosopher.
For your life.
I can’t tell you.
And you can’t tell me.
We have to learn.
It must be the right time.
To receive a particular lesson.
I draw courage from Irina Margareta Nistor.
But most of all, I draw courage from the Romanian people.
Perhaps my country’s Hollywood crap (the stuff I took for granted) was just the stuff necessary in the dark times.
Entertainment. Ass kicking. Escape.
But the Romanian cinema of today inspires me beyond words.
And so let us remember, whether we are capitalists or socialists, the price paid by the people of Romania in December 1989.
Was it 1,100 people?
11,000 people?
110,000 people?
It’s troubling that nobody knows for sure.
But even if it was a thousand people.
They didn’t just get trampled by goats or run over by garbage trucks.
It wasn’t a bloodless revolution.
At least 1000 people.
They saw their moment.
They seized on a moment.
They capitalized on their opportunity.
There was something which impelled them not to just sit at home and listen.
I salute these brave souls who went out into the streets.
For a thousand people to have died, it seems rather inconceivable that there wasn’t an attempt made by the government to “restore order”.
That’s the line which can’t be crossed.
That’s when a government has lost its legitimacy.
Some stories are twisted.
And full-blown civil wars do erupt.
But it appears, in the end, that repression lost.
And repression, censorship, and heavy-handed tactics (whether adopted by socialists or capitalists) should, by historical lesson, be most strictly avoided.
It is human nature.
The people will not tolerate being treated like livestock.
And something as seemingly inconsequential as VHS tapes can tip the balance.
You watch them once. They wash over you. Very little effect.
And then you are stranded at the end of the world.
Just you and Górecki’s third symphony.
Yes, you pack away some life beneath your belt.
You ingest the poison trickery of the world.
Et voila!
The film comes to life.
All the Frenchies start out looking the same in black and white.
You furiously follow the subtitles.
But the film presents meaning the second time around.
First were the forms.
A donkey. Some sluts. Bad memory.
Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne is so forgettable the first time around.
All we remember is the Bois.
Conflated with some lines of Céline’s Voyage…
But this is the real deal.
Maria Casarès was like the Alida Valli of The Paradine Case here.
Indeed, it just may be that Hitchcock lifted the essence of his criminally underrated film (no pun intended) from Bresson’s minor masterpiece of two years previous.
Whatever the case may be, Casarès is absolutely diabolical as Hélène.
Revenge is a dish best served.
Simmer, reduce, garnish, and serve.
Revenge revenge revenge.
And yet we feel for Hélène.
And so in the grand mystery of the spheres we wonder, “What is God if not an impossible camera angle?”
A crumpled note.
Our hearts torn to shreds.
And always raining.
Like some goddamned B-movie with a thunder sheet in the wings.
If I didn’t hook you at first, then you’re not still with me.
HOW TO BLOG:
brevity.
The oppression of Twitter.
So we must think of the greatest tricks of all time.
The recent Microsoft Tay psyop. To make Trump and his followers look stupid.
As if he needs any help.
But a very real conspiracy none the less.
For some events are so transparent.
And some pure whores like Agnès (Elina Labourdette) have that bullshit detection meter straight out of The Shining.
Preternatural, if not supernatural.
We might think we’re being tricked.
Too good to be true IS.
“Deceit deceives itself.” Guy Debord. D.N. Smith.
It is a very delicate story.
The crystallization of immense pain.
Vanity, yes.
But also human nature. Survival of the ego.
A hurt so deep as to propel plans. Special plans. Operations.
Some countries blow up their own cities.
The old “self-inflicted wound” ploy…as Clouseau would call it.
Orwell was very clear about this in 1984. The government is firing rockets at its own people.
Because it is only natural to assume an outside enemy as culpable, the true authors slip by.
And as the narrative becomes codified and accepted…and everyone has come back to the NFL, and hockey, and soccer…then the beast can’t be disturbed.
The beast which knows not its own power.
The beast whose abuse rises from below.
The Lilliputians in charge condescend upwards.
All bark and no bite.
And the beast bites the wrong lands.
Afghanistan. Iraq.
With each passing year the creation myth (9/11) requires inference upon inference upon inference to justify the next humanitarian bombing.
Libya. Syria.
Very few understand the importance of replacing due process with death by Hellfire missile.
Yemen.
No wonder the video game makers consult with the Pentagon.
A seamless transition from energy drinks in mom’s basement to the joysticks of drone strikes.
Far afield.
From those ladies.
Those ladies who have been used.
Sold a false bill of goods.
A very sloppy expression. Arcane.
Left dangling like a modifier.
And so we want to go back to a simpler time.
Before we gave up on our dreams (in the blink of an eye).
I call out to cold regions. Cold rooms.
I call out to cold hearts. Mixed response.
But the one true miracle is to push onwards.
No more sugar-coating the shite she dished out.
She was a real bitch.
And I was as mad as any painterly glass of absinthe ever existed.
I can’t forget.
No, never.
But I can forgive.
Not much here to steal or ruin.
A very marginal existence.
I can sleep because of a girl.
A dream of a girl.
A girl I don’t even know.
She is hope.
A sort of personification of liberty.
And when will we revolt from this life and bolt?
One step at a time.
Not hasty.
So many years piled on my shoulders.
This is, by the way, a film review.
Not caring how ridiculous I look.
Take your best shot.
World, shut your mouth.
I was no trick.
I’ve been desperate. Money troubles. My ethics in the gutter.
But given a second chance by the universe I made an important decision.
paulydeathwish 