Tag Archives: false flag

Un film comme les autres [1968)

I took the road less-traveled.

And then I cheated

But there is no cheating this.

A film adrift in the cosmos.

My grasp of French is not good.  Watching this film is not the same as ordering a sandwich at Subway in rural Quebec–and I am not very good at that (to put it mildly).

This film is saturated with revolutionary philosophy, theory, literary allusions.

Fortunately for me there were subtitles available…in Italian.

My grasp of Italian is non-existent.  Ok, maybe that’s a bit harsh.  I can get the general gist by way of Spanish similarities.

My grasp of Spanish is poor.

Wow.  What a quandary!

What am I even doing watching this film?!?

Well…because Jean-Luc Godard is my favorite director.

This film, however, might be rightly considered the official starting point of his years in the collaborative collective known as the Dziga-Vertov Group.

But any way you cut it:  this is a difficult film.

What are my own thoughts about it?

It is an exercise in minimalism.  It’s like Hitchcock’s Rope minus a plot.

But something has replaced plot.  That something is context.

As I watched this it became clear that the May ’68 events in Paris were the essential detail about which a viewer must have knowledge to understand this film (especially if said viewer is fluent in neither French nor Italian).

The other aspect which occupied my mind during the viewing (as my brain was blowing gaskets from hearing French and “reading” Italian simultaneously) was the “strategy of tension” connected to the false-flag terror attacks (Operation Gladio) in Italy in the 1970s and 80s.

Mai ’68.

General strikes.  de Gaulle.  Latin Quarter.  Situationist International.  Nanterre.  Sorbonne.

Rive Gauche.  Molotov cocktails.  Agents provocateurs?

Daniel Cohn-Bendit.  Nantes.  Nanterre. (WESTXLAYERTWO)

Renault.  Billancourt.  Paris Commune.  1871.

Sous les pavés, la plage!

“Ne travaillez jamais”  –Guy Debord (1953)

Graffito.  Graffiti.

Wikipedia leaves out the Debord quote, but the article is generally good.

Title:  May 1968 events in France

I should however mention that Godard’s exclusion from the cinema portion at the bottom of the article is eye-popping.

So be forewarned:  if you want to know the truth you will have to dig deeper.

BETWEEN SUBTLE SHADING AND THE ABSENCE OF LIGHT LIES THE NUANCE OF IQLUSION

1q84.

IT WAS TOTALLY INVISIBLE HOWS THAT POSSIBLE ? THEY USED THE EARTHS MAGNETIC FIELD X THE INFORMATION WAS GATHERED AND TRANSMITTED UNDERGRUUND TO AN UNKNOWN LOCATION X DOES LANGLEY KNOW ABOUT THIS ? THEY SHOULD ITS BURIED OUT THERE SOMEWHERE X WHO KNOWS THE EXACT LOCATION ? ONLY WW THIS WAS HIS LAST MESSAGE X THIRTY EIGHT DEGREES FIFTY SEVEN MINUTES SIX POINT FIVE SECONDS NORTH SEVENTY SEVEN DEGREES EIGHT MINUTES FORTY FOUR SECONDS WEST X LAYER TWO

strategia della tensione

SLOWLY DESPARATLY SLOWLY THE REMAINS OF PASSAGE DEBRIS THAT ENCUMBERED THE LOWER PART OF THE DOORWAY WAS REMOVED WITH TREMBLING HANDS I MADE A TINY BREACH IN THE UPPER LEFT HAND CORNER AND THEN WIDENING THE HOLE A LITTLE I INSERTED THE CANDLE AND PEERED IN THE HOT AIR ESCAPING FROM THE CHAMBER CAUSED THE FLAME TO FLICKER BUT PRESENTLY DETAILS OF THE ROOM WITHIN EMERGED FROM THE MIST X CAN YOU SEE ANYTHING Q ?

Anni di piombo

Fear, propaganda, disinformation, psychological warfare, agents provocateurs, false-flag terrorists (sounding familiar?)

If you live in the USA it should.  Same goes for UK.  And Canada.  And France.  And Norway.  Ad nauseam.

But the initial testing was in Italy.  One might also mention Greece and Turkey.

Piazza Fontana.  Aldo Moro.  Henry Kissinger.  Threats.

l’Ulivo.  2000 Italian Parliamentary Commission report.  Strategy of tension was supported by United States.

On this subject Wikipedia is not very good.  It is misleading.  It is covering up for something.  Of course, I am speaking about the English version.

My initial “cheating” was looking at a translated copy of the Un Film comme les autres page on Italian Wikipedia.  The optimist in me hopes that this strange film “about nothing” (most would probably say) inspired the Italians even more than the French.  Present availability of this film might bear this out.  The pessimist in me sees some Italian opportunists out to make a buck (knowing that this film is available in no other territory).  But the subtitles support the former assertion.  If you are an English monoglot, good luck!

George H.W. Bush refused to comment.  Of course he did!  Operation Gladio.

1990.  Seems so long ago that the European Parliament had the balls to condemn NATO and the US for the terrorism of Operation Gladio.  Here Wikipedia succeeds.

Title:  Operation Gladio

That’s cause the EU doesn’t really care about its people either anymore.  Yes, we know…European Coal and Steel Community, etc. etc. etc. ad nauseam.

CIA director William Colby was quite candid about this whole operation in his memoirs, it seems…  No wonder he died in a “boating accident” in 1996.

On the other hand…  “The CIA can neither confirm nor deny the existence or non-existence of records responsive to your request.”   Well that’s very fucking helpful, FOIA.  Works like a charm!

I recommend Daniele Ganser’s work as well as that of Gianfranco Sanguinetti.

If you’ve made it this far, then you understand the gist of the film under review.  That’s what I tell myself.  I’m like one of those students in the weeds…trying to understand it all as the sun hits the hair of the beautiful girl in the yellow socks.  There are no faces in the summer colors…just glimpses…glints.  Memory is black and white.  Recollections of a man with a movie camera.

-PD

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Dirty Harry [1971)

Cops get a bad rap.  It’s only fitting that Kinney National Company, by way of their 1969 purchase of Warner Bros.-Seven Arts film company, should bring you this message.  Kinney National Services, Inc. was the product of a 1966 merger between Kinney Parking (as in, parking lots) Company and National Cleaning Company.  The former, a New Jersey operation, was owned by three gentlemen…at least one of which was a mobster:  Abner Zwillman.  But wait, it gets richer…

Before Kinney Parking Company was publicly listed in 1960, it merged with the funeral home (!) company Riverside.

Ah yes…Abner Zwillman.  Newark.  Cut numbers…  Tosches.

Zwillman did alright for himself…  Dated Jean Harlow…

Along with Al Capone, Zwillman controlled the movie projectionist union.  Histoire(s) du cinema.

Funny that an extortionist should start a company which would eventually make a film about an extortionist.

Zwillman died an untimely death by hanging…just before he was to appear before a U.S. Senate committee organized crime hearing. 1959.

Another chthonic founder of Kinney Parking Company was Manny (Emmanuel) Kimmel.  Keep in mind, folks–this developed into Time Warner!  Yeah.

Along with the racketeer/bootlegger Zwillman, Kimmel used his garages to store the liquor which the former was smuggling into the U.S. from Canada in armored WW I trucks during Prohibition.  The FBI “compelled” him to testify in two notable mafia trials (including Zwillman’s).

Kimmel…legendary New York horseracing bookie, blackjack card-counter, “compelled” witness.

Kimmel and Zwillman (to say nothing of Sigmund Dornbusch) circuitously brought you the film Dirty Harry.  Oh, the irony!

And thus it starts:  perhaps the most quintessential American movie.  No, dear friends, you cannot watch this with commercial interruptions on AMC…no way.

And TCM has been slow to “get it”…though their screening format is superior.

Don Siegel hits a vein–a gusher–with this one!

From that first rifle scope focus…that first glamorous victim…that icy blue summer swimming pool atop the roof suddenly tinged with blood…

We could have mentioned Vito Genovese.  Meyer Lansky.  Bugsy Siegel…

But we will focus on the immensely talented Don Siegel.

In Don Siegel we encounter the difference between American montage and French montage:  not at all the same thing.

We find Peckinpah as an assistant.

Friends…

Hell, Siegel even directed Baby Face Nelson in 1957 (a couple years before Zwillman was suicided).

But the big story?  The big scoop???  Clint Eastwood.

Eastwood was born in San Francisco (the setting of Dirty Harry).  11 pounds and 6 ounces.

The mid-60s were good to Eastwood…three spaghetti westerns helmed by Sergio Leone with Clint in the lead.  All three were financial successes…low-budget and high box office return.

By 1971 Eastwood had just completed his directorial debut:  Play Misty for Me.

But let’s not forget the Finks who wrote Dirty Harry’s script:  Harry Julian Fink and R.M. Fink!

The Finks were joined by Dean Riesner and John Milius.

Now they just needed a villain.  A mashup of the Zodiac Killer and actor Andy Robinson provided just the right level of disgust for audiences to swallow the vigilante Harry Callahan.

Yeah, a butcher knife and a hard-on is probably probable cause…though D.A. Rothko would likely disagree.

The Smith & Wesson Model 29…we’re talking about a handgun that approaches three pounds (depending on barrel length).

I know what you’re thinking.  Did he just put two unrelated phrases ass-to-ass on purpose or on accident?

Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I’ve kinda lost track myself.

Scorpio…

Signed crosshairs.  Benicia.  Vallejo.  Lake Berryessa.  Presidio Heights.

This was real.

Well, Harry’s usual hot dogs had not kept him in the greatest cardio shape, though he admirably runs from payphone to payphone.  It’s a pretty ingenious plot device.  The thrilling uncertainty would do Hitchcock proud.  Yes, Hitch would direct two more films after Harry Callahan hit the world’s stage.  One can’t help wondering if he saw this masterpiece.

When Eastwood stabs Scorpio in the leg…that is cinema.  It’s not far from the iconography of Kubrick’s The Shining or Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre (though it predates both).

When Eastwood steps into the arena (sand) of Kezar Stadium, we know there will be blood.  Would you torture a psychopath to save an innocent teenage girl?  These are the types of questions which came to dominate Clint Eastwood’s amazing career.

Even smalltime shits like Scorpio understand the concept of the good old false flag, but it doesn’t work.

And then like Superman with no name…sun at his back on the railroad trestle…Eastwood hops the short bus.

“But being this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya, punk?”

It’s too long to be a haiku, but it floats…

-PD

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Tomorrow Never Dies [1997)

“We won’t be signing off until the world ends. We’ll be on, and we will cover the end of the world, live, and that will be our last event . . . we’ll play ‘Nearer My God to Thee’ before we sign off.”  Ted Turner.  1980.  Launch of CNN.

Ah, but let’s back up to 1973 when Rupert Murdoch bought the San Antonio Express-News.  Somehow this Aussie weaseled into the U.S. market with that acquisition (in my home town) and now his empire has spawned the most virulent threat to the world:  Fox News.

The news ticker began on 9/11/01 over at Fox and has continued till the present time.  Let me demonstrate:  fear fear fear fear fear fear fear fear fear fear fear fear fear fearfearfearfearfearfearfearfear ISIS ISIS ISIS ISIS ISIS ISIS ISISISISISISISISISISISISIISISIS Iran Iran Iran Iran Iran Iran IranIranIranIranIranIranIranIran.

Well, one of these two men (Turner and Murdoch) said something wise back in 2006.  “They’re a sovereign state. We have 28,000. Why can’t they have 10? We don’t say anything about Israel — they’ve got 100 of them approximately — or India or Pakistan or Russia.”  [–Ted Turner]  Now that’s a statement I can get behind.

But let’s be honest:  the perceived enemy of Fox News on the national landscape (Democrats) have had their chance.  Obama lost my confidence when he failed to truly investigate 9/11.  Not only that, he “killed” bin Laden:  thereby solidifying the false narrative which has passed by our eyes each day like that doomsday ticker at the bottom of the screen.

And so we dig deeper:

Georgia Guidestones.  1980.  “..until the world ends. We’ll be on, and we will cover the end of the world, live, and that will be our last event.”  Hmmm.  1980.  Population reduction.  Let’s see:  7 billion – 500 million= 6.5 billion.  Ok, so the Georgia Guidestones would seem to be advocating the death of about 92% of humanity.  So, let’s see:  there’s the 1%…and then the 7% they decide get to come along for the ride.

Wendi Deng.  Deng Wenge.  Wenge…hmmm.  Mao!  Cultural Revolution.  1966-1976.  Purge.  Violent class struggle.  Youths of the Red Guards.  Of course Deng was born in 1968 so her name might be kinda akin to Deng Endlösung or Deng Kristallnacht had she been born in late-1930s Germany.  Back to Mao…how many were fatally purged?  30,000?  100,000?  400,000?  750,000?  1.5 million?  3 million?

MBA.  Yale.  Los Angeles.  News Corp.  Hong Kong.  Rupert.  Tony Blair.  Hmmm…

Well, in any case:  Happy Birthday to Mr. Murdoch who turns 84 years young tomorrow.  Hi Rupert!

Tomorrow never dies.

Spottiswoode.  48 Hrs.  Walter Hill.

Holly Palance.  Jeremy Prokosch.  I always thought it was Jeremiah.

And my jeremiads…

Divorced 1997.  Check.  The omen…

Bruce Feirstein.  He dreamt up this outlandish (hardly) plot.  Political commentator on Fox News.  Vanity Fair contributor (say hi to Tosches for me).  Film producer in China.  Hmmm…

Ah, but the kicker is changing light bulbs on Newark Airport runways:  Feirstein’s high school job.  That really takes the cake.

Flight 93.  Cell phone calls from 40,700 feet in 2001 (NPR, June 17, 2004).  I’ve always hated NPR, but they make the case that much simpler.  In the words of astute observers:  strictly impossible.

The dialog in Tomorrow Never Dies is actually pretty good, but what can compare to the anonymous writing prowess found in such phrases as, “Hey! Hey! Give it to me. Give it to me. Give it to me. Give it to me. Give it to me. Give it to me. Give it to me. Give it to me.”  I mean, really:  that is some heady scriptwriting to give to a non-SAG actor like “Ziad Jarrah” or whichever of the fictitious bogeyman was purported to be speaking at the time.

Ah, but we are supposed to think of Robert Maxwell says Feirstein.  Yet, just like in Godard’s Made in U.S.A., we run into Donald E. Westlake.  Hmmm…

Significantly, villain Elliot Carver (Jonathan Pryce) is made to utter the phrase “new world order.”  Indeed.

Opening the same day as Titanic.  Let’s see:  groundbreaking for The Pentagon?  September 11, 1941.  The CIA’s overthrow of Salvador Allende and his assassination?  September 11, 1973.

I am urged to see these as coincidences.

And Henry Gupta?  Are we to think of A.Q. Khan who was born in Bhopal?  And Enron?

Ah yes:  1974.  ISI.

“We have 28,000. Why can’t they have 10? We don’t say anything about Israel — they’ve got 100 of them approximately.”

I wish I had a Murdoch quote to balance this out.  I don’t think his 2006 fundraising for Hillary Clinton or his New York Post support for Obama would have quite the same effect, but it’s worth noting.  “Yeah. He is a rock star. It’s fantastic. I love what he is saying about education. I don’t think he will win Florida… but he will win in Ohio and the election. I am anxious to meet him. I want to see if he will walk the walk.”  [Rupert Murdoch on whether he had anything to do with the Post’s pro-Obama push in 2008]

Rothschild.  Waterloo.  Niall Ferguson makes a valiant effort to rehabilitate Nathan, but is it true?  It seems there are at least some scruples at the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

We’ve heard the concept…playing both sides against one another.  Indeed, funding both sides.  Hedging.  Divide and conquer.

It’s very important that the “right” weapons be found.  High stakes.  Fighting the Soviets.  Afghanistan.  Charlie Wilson’s War.  Maybe call this guy in Israel.  Fake it till you make it.  Make it to fake it.  Make it fake.

And so the James Bond franchise presciently taught the world about false flags back in 1997, but was anyone listening?

-PD

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Licence to Kill [1989)

It may sound like heresy to say it, but this is the third great James Bond movie up to this point in the series.  Furthermore, it is particularly rich that it came out during the presidency of George H.W. Bush.  The pleasant surprise is that Carey Lowell takes the cake as hottest Bond girl through the first 16 films.  These are controversial claims and allusions.  Buckle up.

1974.  The first great Bond film.  There is no denying the palpable rush of Dr. No–no topping the exotic sensuality of From Russia with Love.  It has less to do with Connery, perhaps the best Bond, than it does with cinema.  The first great James Bond film came under the watchful eye of auteur Guy Hamilton.  He lives.  The Man with the Golden Gun.  Yes, it was a Roger Moore film.  So sue me.

1985.  The second great James Bond film.  Travesty of travesties!  He’s going to name two from the 80s.  Yes, that’s right.  A View to a Kill.  John Glen made an auteurist bid with this flick.  Again with the Roger Moore.  John Glen lives.

1989.  The third perfect Bond film.  John Glen achieves immortality.  Hyperbole.  Hyperbole.  This is to take nothing away from our cherished Guy Hamilton.  He too made more that just Golden Gun.

But let us stretch out a bit…  What makes these three films so strong?  Answer:  the villains.  Christopher Lee.  Christopher Walken.  And Christopher…er, Robert Davi.

George H.W. Bush.  There was a book from 1992 called The Mafia, CIA and George Bush written by Pete Brewton.  That’s back when there was only one George Bush known on the world stage.  Middle initials were unnecessary.  I haven’t read the book in question, but it bears mentioning that I remembered the pithy title mistakenly…as The CIA, Drugs, and George Bush.  There’s more than an Oxford comma’s difference between the two…obviously.

1998 brought the world a book called Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion by Gary Webb.  I have not read this book either.

So what, you may be asking, is my fucking point?

Let me note a few poignant books I have read.  9/11 Synthetic Terror:  Made in USA by Webster Griffin Tarpley.  Crossing the Rubicon by Michael Ruppert.  The Big Wedding by Sander Hicks.  9/11 The Big Lie (L’Effroyable imposture) by Thierry Meyssan.  Pentagate also by Meyssan.  The Shadow Government:  9/11 and State Terror by Len Bracken.  The Arch Conspirator also by Bracken.  Body of Secrets by James Bamford.  America’s “War on Terrorism” by Michel Chossudovsky.  The 9/11 Commission Report:  Omissions and Distortions by David Ray Griffin.  The Bilderberg Group by Daniel Estulin.  Inside Job:  Unmasking the 9/11 Conspiracies by Jim Marrs.  The Terror Conspiracy also by Marrs.

If you’re still reading you are likely laughing or transfixed.  And again I can sense the question:  what is the fucking point?

Well, dear reader, it is that I can wholeheartedly agree with Mark Gorton’s reservations regarding George H.W. Bush.  I used to think Dick Cheney was the scariest guy in the world (thanks Mike Ruppert).  Donald Rumsfeld always seemed in the running.  But after reading Gorton’s fastidious research, I concur that the prize should probably go to Poppy Bush.

At wikispooks.com, one can find the following articles by Gorton:

Fifty Years of the Deep State

The Coup of ’63, Part I

and

The Political Dominance of the Cabal

Gorton is not your average conspiracy theorist.  His degrees are from Yale, Stanford, and Harvard (respectively).  His business successes include founding LimeWire and the Tower Research Capital hedge fund.

And that brings us to sex.

Carey Lowell.  With her androgynous hairstyle, she still (because of?) manages to be the hottest Bond girl through the first 16 films.  Sure, Timothy Dalton is great, but Carey Lowell is fan-fucking-tastic.  The message of the establishment is that if you don’t play by the rules, you don’t get the sex cookie.  Carey Lowell is not an establishment actress in this movie.  Her character is the anti-Bond girl in some respects.  For this series, anyway, that’s as good as it gets.  Until Anamaria Marinca is cast alongside (or as) 007, the bar is memorably set by Lowell.  Perhaps as I critically watch the more recent films I will find other Bond girls who truly stand out in a believable way, but Lowell takes the cake through the first 16 films.

Lowell lived in Houston for awhile.  Back to Bush.  Right down the road is the scariest man in the world?  Dear readers…the Internet remains free for only so long.  Soon we may have to get all Bradbury and become book people.  If Carey ever gets tired of Richard Gere, maybe she’ll meet us in the forest.  I’ll be Histoire(s) du cinema.  The book.

-PD

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Spies, Lies & Naked Thighs [1988)

“Made-for-TV movie” used to have such a cheap ring to it and this flick would be defying the odds to have aged well, but it is surprisingly charming in a Night Court/Roxanne sort of way.  Often on my site I take the opportunity to wax geopolitical under the pretext of reviewing a rather vapid film.  I think, for once, I’m going to stick to the basics.  There are just too many endearing qualities about this bastard film for me to dissect the gross ethno-cultural generalizations at any great length.

I was reminded recently about Airplane! (1980).  Indeed, I picked the wrong week to quit tobacco.  So, sometimes we have to revel in the yucks and let some water go under the bridge (or some such hackneyed expression).

This movie depicts Arabs as blood-thirsty caricatures, but if you haven’t figured out that the Charlie Hebdo attack was a false flag by now…you’re never gonna get it.  If you didn’t look up Operation Gladio the last time I mentioned it, then you probably just don’t give a fuck about the truth.

Ah, touchy touchy…  Yes, I’m tired of the 24/7 propaganda of Fox News.  Same goes for MSNBC, CNN, all of them.  All crap.  The only, ONLY person I saw get it right and write an elegant article about it was Paul Craig Roberts.  It was a featured story at infowars.com.  It should be cached there.  If you want to know the truth about the recent wave of fake terror, look there.  HOWEVER, I must say that the quickest to call BS were Wayne Madsen and Webster Tarpley.  Madsen’s pithy comments are usually right on the money.  He can be found at waynemadsenreport.com.  Tarpley is at tarpley.net.

Ok, now we’ve really deviated from film review.  Wow.  See, that exercise in not caring did not work.  Sorry guys.  I care.

So, basically two Arabs in this film draw their short swords (gladio, anyone?) at the very beginning of this film during an argument on the floor of the UN General Assembly.  Actually, it is a very cheap made-for-TV rendering, but that is ostensibly what we are to be looking at.  And so they insult one another and act like animals (comical, of course) and one infers that the other is involved in bestiality with his camel.  Ah, another time…  It’s almost like rewatching 48 Hours.  Some of that humor is just TOO RAW now.

But anyway, blah blah…a generic Asian character is cinematically accused of eating dog.  You know, those sort of ethnic stereotypes from this chestnut:  1988.

But…BUT…it IS a charming movie.  If you can get past all that other stuff as the world is being manipulated into further war through Islamo-Gladio, then there is much to like about this little classic with Harry Anderson from Night Court and Ed Begley Jr. from Spinal Tap (ha!).  Linda Purl is actually pretty darn good in this.  Same for Wendy Crewson.  Hey, director James Frawley obviously didn’t have a big budget here…and so this is a nice little homage to the Pink Panther series and other spy spoofs.  Oh, pro tip:  my “espionage” category is all spy spoofs…so far!  Might have to keep you people on your toes.  Ah, but it’s not like anyone is actually reading this.  So to the bought-and-paid-for enemies of humanity (the intel agency assassins/military special ops) who continue to turn bloody trick after trick like the prostitutes you know you are:  fuck you.

-PD

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The Living Daylights [1987)

It has been famously noted that it took thinkers Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell 86 pages (not to mention the entire Volume I) of their three-volume Principia Mathematica to prove that 1+1=2.  The James Bond franchise is similarly long-winded due in part to its serial nature, yet some poignant geopolitical nuggets of knowledge do “explode within the spectacle” to quote Guy Debord.  However, we are best served for this Bond installment to remember those words of Ira Gershwin from George’s “Love Is Here To Stay” that “in time the Rockies may crumble/Gibraltar may tumble.”  George Gershwin wouldn’t live to see the fruit of his labors as he died from a brain tumor at the tender age of 38 before The Goldwyn Follies (1938) was released with Kenny Baker singing the classic melody which George had crafted…

Our film begins in the skies above Gibraltar.  Yes, that strange entrance to the Mediterranean which traces its present “ownership” back to a Hapsburg pretender and the Treaty of Utrecht (1713).  Though it is a picturesque start, it may seem rather inconsequential to the movie as a whole.  However, it is a germ–a microcosm of what the film proceeds to spin out.  Down on “the Rock,” an MI6/SAS drill is “flipped” by a Soviet infiltrator.  Flipping drills (going “live”) has been a noted hallmark of false flag terror attacks in the past 15 years, however the ones doing the flipping have almost certainly been the ones running the drills (military/intelligence).  Drills serve “nicely” to provide a net of plausible deniability…i.e., “Hey, we were just running a drill.”  In flipping a drill, simulated elements (such as a fake bomb) become real elements.  [“Real bullets” as they say in The Three Amigos.]  This sort of funny business has been going on at least as early as the 1993 WTC bombing.  Other, more sophisticated operations would follow.

The salient point for our film is false flag activities.

I must take pause a moment to note that my computer shut itself down as I was delineating a particularly pithy detail of false flag operations.  This gives me pause because it calls to mind all number of the dark arts…from Stuxnet to the obviously fake “North Korean” hacking of Sony.  Ah, yes…  We all walk a thin line.  Who am I to be preaching about scruples?

Ah, well…what we have here is a film.  I was apprehensive about Timothy Dalton, but he really was superb in this (thus my fears were unfounded).  Maryam d’Abo is so stunning and adorable in this flick.  The living daylights…fear.

Scare.  Bully.  Frighten.  Sometimes a good scare can me merciful.  Kyrie.  But take a look back at the “strategy of tension” in Italy.  Take a look back at those falsely-attributed bombings (false flags).  Look up Gianfranco Sanguinetti.  Learn how Aldo Moro was threatened by Henry Kissinger.  Learn how the Italian government found out that the bombings were actually carried out by NATO intelligence.  It was called Operation Gladio.

Yes, in the service of protecting “liberty,” many atrocities have been committed.  If you have never drawn even a momentary parallel between the state of Israel and the Nazis (that would be, to clarify, the Palestinians now in the role the Jews occupied circa WWII), then your imagination may not be operational.  This aspect of imagination is not one of fantasy, but rather conceptualization.  Abstraction.  Analogy.

But really, I’m just a bloke with a crappy laptop, so what do I know?  One person can’t change the world, right?  Every platform from Facebook to WordPress is infiltrated and screened…keywords which don’t make it through the digital sieves then mark a person or blogger as insurgent.

Ah, that word.

But what we have here is a film which goes from Gibraltar to Afghanistan.  We see the raw opium.  We hear the phrase mujahidin.  We see an Oxford-educated character leading a branch of resistance against the Soviets. We see Operation Cyclone in full effect.  And thus, we see what 9/11 was really about (as regards Afghanistan).  Of course some other details must be alluded to, such as when our Soviet defector is smuggled out of Czechoslovakia via the Trans-Siberian Pipeline into Austria.  And the cherry on top would be to read today’s front page news that according to some estimates the U.S. “war on terror” has cost $14 million an hour since its inception.  Where do you think all of that money is going?

Brad Whitaker.  The character played by Joe Don Baker.  That is the final detail.  Weapons.  Arms.  Planes.  Helicopters.  Any intelligent person incapable of drawing some startling conclusions based on the simplest of displays (a double feature of Wag The Dog and J.F.K. for instance) really has a problem with logic.

Ah, but it’s no use against normative/positive purists.  The battle lines have been drawn.  What you are reading is one of the closest things to what was formerly known as “the media.”  In deference to Ralph Waldo Emerson, I will be willing to admit I was wrong (in the strongest of language) should that prove to be the case.  My zeal from watching a rather vacuous-but-enjoyable adventure film stems from an urgency that something is exceedingly rotten in “Denmark.”

I could mention a dozen books which would make The Living Daylights more poignant viewing, but none of them are film criticism.  And so I shall leave you with but one…the best on the subject.  9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA by Webster Griffin Tarpley.

-PD

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