Tag Archives: Palestine

Ici et ailleurs [1976)

God, the horror of struggle

in Palestine Godard filmed

the sadness of conditions

with such beauty of technique

ingenuity of filmic form

And then came the editing.  Back to France.

It was his film and her film.  Anne-Marie Miéville.

Someone with whom he could discuss film.

No more actresses.  A life partner.

And an agitator.  Critique yourself.

Of course Marx offered useful tools.  But there is more than Marx.

And the universe expanded.  You must turn to the images.

Why is the actress not acting?  And why is that beautiful?

Above and beyond (aside from) the fact that she is beautiful.

Just one.  Anne-Marie points it out.  The way things are done.

Early computer console script glowing green and blinking.  Always blinking.

Someone has captured the wrong image.  In the diffusion the stronger image has been diffused.

It was Hitler.  Israel.  Golda Meir in some sort of act of allegiance.

And Godard’s obsession with finding the double s in nature.  kiSSinger, for instance.

The anger of the filmmaker.  Who bombed the editing studio?  Certainly not Arabs.

Certainly not.  Find the true history.  Only one filmmaker was truly brave and crazy.  Godard.

Must be both to be this brave.

The wrong frame again.  “It’s silly to die for an image.”  But not silly to accept death for the survival of your community.

Of course.  Of course.  Bravery.  Simple.

A sad, pathetic Palestinian village.  And how did they come to be pinned in thusly?

Like livestock.

But the true beauty is cautious.  Scared.  Yes.  Tentatively walking the perimeter.

An image which will live a thousand years in the hearts of every serious soul who sees it.

Nameless.

Nothing shocks as much as the bloody face in Amman.  More than the Holocaust.  That the root cause could continue.

A transference of power abuse.  The short step to fascism.  Leaving out a few crucial details.  Voila.

The man in Amman.  Dead.  Text flashing backwards.  Mirrored.  On top of front-facing font.  Palimpsest.

Expired.

Perhaps there was a bad translation somewhere.  Muselmann in the camps.  Not guardspeak.

We don’t know.  I don’t.

Perhaps.

You say for money, to take an unpopular stand.  A pittance.  Film stock.  Plane tickets.

But they did finally recognize that they were borrowing a revolution.  Because making one was too costly.

At home.  France.  Texas.  Ici.  And the endless possibilities of ailleurs.  Elsewhere.  And here.  Here.

They only meant to send a statement.  Probably.  And the film sat for five years.  1970-1975.

But some images are too beautiful.  Too powerful.  Too important.  Indelible.

Godard never forgot.  Anything.  The camps.  Palestine.  Ghettos.  Prisons.  1789.

Only art speaks.

Study and respect.  Change your world.

I have ordered the images from room service.  And Google has only given me a popularity contest.

Click and vote.  Perhaps.

For film to destroy your soul so beautifully and so hard.

Ah, now I can’t even talk like everyone else.

A hard-earned style which jettisoned pretense long ago.

Almost fashionably dead.  To the doubters.

Mais, sanguine!

-PD

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Magnum Force [1973)

It begins like Vertigo…like Vivre sa vie…that barely noticed, unnecessary action of a person more or less staying still.  Blinking perhaps.  It is not quite corpsing.  More subtle.  It is a bold statement from director Ted Post.  By the end of the credits we feel like those early audiences of The Great Train Robbery:  staring down the barrel of a gun.

Post does a remarkable job of continuing the suspense of the previous film in this series (Dirty Harry) while working with an even more complex (and germane to our present times) plot.  Inside job.

Over the course of the film we are made to suspect several different people…all of these essentially variations on the inside job trope.  Almost like a continuum of LIHOP and MIHOP.

It begins with the strange rookie cops…taking some target practice in the middle of the night.  Traffic cops.  Kinda like those strange power-downs and repairs at the WTC leading up to 9/11/01.  Something weird going on…

Eastwood smells it like the late John O’Neill of the FBI.  But let’s back up to Briggs:  Hal Holbrook.  Reminds us of another “Lieutenant”…Richard Holbrooke.  Should we be surprised that Richard’s original name was Goldbrajch?  Of course not.  Should we be surprised that he attended Brown University?  Of course not.  [see:  Victoria Nuland, Roberta Jacobson, etc.]

Holbrooke served with “diplomats” like John Negroponte and Frank Wisner.  Negroponte attended Yale…specifically Davenport College.  Ah, Davenport…the alumni of this residential college include both Bush presidents, William F. Buckley Jr. (we’re really racking up the CIA/Skull & Bones points so far), Samantha Power, etc.  It should be noted the physical proximity of the Skull & Bones “Tomb” to this residential college:  literally a stone’s throw (right around the corner).

Wisner established the Operation Mockingbird propaganda program on behalf of the CIA.  He also established “stay-behind” networks in Europe post-WWII.  One can’t help wonder if these were the same (the Italian one at least) which were (was) activated for the false-flag terror in Italy as part of the “strategy of tension” (Operation Gladio).  We won’t even get into Mossadegh and Árbenz.  We will, however, point out the very interesting word found within the Iranian PM’s name depending on transliteration:  Mossadegh vs. Mosaddegh.  It seems Wikipedia is going with the latter spelling (interesting considering the recent admission [finally!] by the CIA that they overthrew the democratically-elected leader of Iran in 1953).

Back to Holbrooke…managing editor of Foreign Affairs (the official CFR publication) from 1972-1976.  Holbrooke, like all good spooks, eventually ended up on Wall Street (Lehman Bros.)  Ugh…  Did you know the American Academy in Berlin has a Henry Kissinger Award???  …and that it was awarded to George H.W. Bush in 2008?!?  Talk about a double whammy!!  This “cultural exchange” was the brainchild of Holbrooke.

Chalk up for Holbrooke membership in the Trilateral Commission.  He was also on the steering committee of the Bilderberg Group (I refuse to capitalize).  All of this is a long set up to say that Hal Holbrook’s character Briggs couldn’t be more like Richard Holbrooke in terms of apparent philosophy.

When people like Briggs and Holbrooke have former Airborne Rangers and Special Forces at their disposal, things will end very badly for all involved.  Unfortunately, the four rookie cops are some sick fucks!  They’ve bought into the twisted philosophy of their ringleader Briggs.  The Lieutenant must have been an early pioneer in the militarization of American police.

But the fuckers in charge forgot to check the titty bank (and the snatch bank).  Enter Clint Eastwood.

The super-death in Technicolor and Panavision is not enough to shake the monk Harry Callahan from his herringbone duty.  A can of Schlitz and a cold burger:  Harry gets the job done.

Yeah, Davis is a little too prompt to the crime scene…kinda like FEMA on 9/11 with their Tripod II drill which so serendipitously helped Rudy Giuliani establish a new base after his bunker was brought down by controlled demolition (WTC 7).  It’s splitting hairs to fixate on the date (September 10th, 12th, either way).  They were there at Pier 29.  Strange, don’t you think?

Bless you Ted Post, John Milius, and Michael Cimino for bringing us this death squad wake up in 1973.  Rogue elements.  It’s what people like Alex Jones have been saying all along.  It’s not the whole police force.  It’s not the whole CIA.  It’s not the whole military.  The criminal segments are elements (with high-level moles).

Enter Jade Helm.  We hope Steve Quayle is wrong, but the idea is not outlandish (knowing what we do about our government).

May God make me misjudged.  Like Callahan.  The death squads can’t persuade him.  Not like this.

Ruppert’s ghost lives on in cached posts.
It’s who you least suspect.  No, not quite.  Open your eyes.

We hate the goddamn system, but rough justice works both ways.  Abide by nothing, expect the same.  Dirty Harry is the cleanest of the bunch.

May God help us to survive the outgunned moment.  Maybe it’s the USS Forrestal.  James was right about Palestine.  And now Wayne Madsen has strangely dispensed with the Drew Pearson citation.

Here be monsters!

-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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