I don’t know who downloaded that stencil idea I threw up on my facebook page , but you got to stop. You might get arrested! I’ve been getting emails from concerned citizens, so I had to go out and see for myself and took some pix. Wow, you guys have been doing some tasty tagging. But that’s illegal!
If you’ve been looking for it, here it is. I’m gonna watch Obama talk and then I’ll respond to this article, probably…
I think Dave Gilson actually liked the film as a film but was afraid to admit it openly and could only hint at it? Unfortunately, I didn’t solve all the problems of ‘coherence’ in the 9/11 truth movement well enough for Mr. Gilson… And for the record, Mr. Gilson, I didn’t send you the DVD unsolicited, you asked for it.
Click through on the pix above (yes, you have to click through 2x to get it large enough) to read the article. Or click through here to buy the magazine online for $10. It’s worth every penny. I still love Mother Jones.
Two Boots Pioneer Theater. 155 E 3rd St. New York, NY 10009 (3rd Street & Avenue A)
http://www.twoboots.com/pioneer/
Thr Sep 11 9pm – buy tix
Fri Sep 12 9pm – buy tix
Sat Sep 13 9pm – buy tix
Sun Sep 14 9pm – buy tix
Mon Sep 15 9pm – buy tix
Tue Sep 16 9pm – buy tix
Wed Sep 17 9pm – buy tix
Thr Sep 18 9pm – buy tix
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http://cinemaduparc.com/english/homeen.html
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For more information about the Washington DC venue below, or click.
I don’t think America is stupid. I think we can understand that there are Machievallian forces at work at the highest levels of power. Perhaps the most important concept I had hoped to insert into collective world consciousness with the film Able Danger is the concept of “The Patsy.” The Fall guy. The Scapegoat. The Dupe. Otherwise known as the ‘Lone Gunman.’ Let me begin by saying, as a relevant aside, that recently Seymour Hersh disclosed that Cheney had a plan to dress up Navy Seals like Iranians and have them attack U.S. installations and troops in order to justify attacking Iran.
Setting up a ‘patsy’ that can be blamed for a terrorist or war-like aggression — that motivates military or legislative action is STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE. We need to pierce the veil and see past the curtain. It’s not that tricky.
Are you buying Ivins’ suicide? I know all the facts aren’t in, and let’s be honest, they never will be, but this Anthrax “suicide” reminds me of the “suicide” of Dr. David Kelly. You remember him? He’s the British top weapons expert that was told to by Tony Blair to “sex up” his report on weapons of mass destruction. He was told to “sex it up” several times, in fact. That’s because his original report, which the public has never seen, apparently didn’t really justify claiming Sadam Hussein had WMD’s. So he was told repeatedly to “sex it up,” until it was sexy enough to be the irrefutable proof of WMD’s and justification for war. It was basically ONLY David Kelly’s “sexed up” report that served as justification for the US claims of intelligence of WMDs. And, to summarize, when it turned out there was no WMDs, Blair and the world pointed the finger was pointed at Kelly. Kelly then went to the press that he was pressured to falsify his report. And then he turned up dead and the standard investigative procedure was side stepped on direct orders from Blair in the context of some the largest protests in the history of England. I think if you ask most people in England they’ll tell you they don’t believe David Kelly committed suicide. Thom Yorke of Radiohead’s wrote a hit song about it, Harrodown Hill, but it still didn’t really penetrate the consciousness of Americans.
In the Ivin’s Anthrax case we were to blame Al Qaeda. In the case of Kelly we were to blame Sadam Hussein for his weapons of mass destruction. In reality, it appears we’ve got two guys patriotically doing their job and taking the fall when the curtain is pulled back and it is revealed that Oz is a harmless patriot following orders.
Why does such controversial material only make it onto the internet? Because our mainstream media is owned by the same corporate oligarchy that sells our energy and our weapons systems. Slate dubs it The Anthrax Truth Movement; Just after the 9/11 attacks—and weeks before the anthrax letters were found—the White House distributed the antibiotic Cipro to staffers, including those traveling with Vice President Dick Cheney. This has drawn the attention of many on the conspiracy fringe. Why would the White House have handed out an antibiotic used to treat exposure to anthrax—unless, maybe, possibly, our government knew something that we didn’t?
The ideas of MOTIVE is central to most conspiracy theories about 9/11: Hawks in the White House derived the greatest benefit from the attack (it helped their case for war, see PNAC), so we ought to suspect them of the crime. The White House has long declined to explain why it handed out the Cipro. In 2002, the conservative group Judicial Watch, which represented postal workers in Washington, sued the White House for documents relating to the case, but the suit went nowhere. Larry Klayman, the founder of Judicial Watch, has been quoted as saying, “We believe that the White House knew or had reason to know that an anthrax attack was imminent or underway.” (Klayman is no longer with the group, and a spokesman disavowed his comments.).
Don’t forget; The anthrax attacks were concurrent with the debate of Bush’s Patriot Act by Congress and the media. The Senators who received anthrax letters were trying to amend the Patriot Act to protect civil liberties and the innocent. Two Senate democratic leaders received anthrax letters mailed the same day that Senator Feingold blocked an attempt to rush the bill through without discussion or amendments. Senator Leahy received an anthrax threat after he expressed reservations about the Bill. As Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, he managed the debate on the Bill. Senate Majority Leader Daschle received the first Senate anthrax letter as he led the opposition to the original version of the Bill. After receiving the anthrax letter, Daschle switched from supporting a 2 year limit on the Bill, later defending a 4-year sunset clause as the “appropriate balance.” No Republican received an anthrax letter. The House and Senate buildings were closed and not reopened until after the Patriot Act was passed. The Supreme Court was shut down with an anthrax scare the day after the constitutionally-challenged Patriot Act was signed by President Bush.
Who had a motive? Who had a grudge against Brokaw? Who wanted to frighten or manipulate Congress? First to get it to adjourn indefinitely, leaving Bush with the power of the purse. Second to get the Patriot Act Passed in all its fascist glory, without even being read. Who?
It’s as plain as the nose on your face. Why is the major media pussyfooting around it? Are they still terrified?
And with regard to the Anthrax killer ‘lone gunman’ let’s review; The FBI briefing seemed unlikely to quiet all doubts about the case, as suggested by the feelings of a worker at the State Department’s mail facility in Sterling, Virginia, who became severely ill from anthrax spores in the facility in October 2001. When asked if he would attend the briefing, the worker, David Hose Sr., said, “Not on your life.” “I don’t believe a thing they are giving out,” Hose said in a telephone interview on Wednesday morning. “The guy’s dead. They hounded him to death. It is an easy way out.”
The friend, a fellow scientist who spoke on the condition that he not be named, said Ivins had repeatedly denied sending the anthrax letters and was particularly upset at what he considered to be the FBI’s aggressive questioning of his children, Andrew and Amanda, both 24, as investigators tried to get them to turn on their father. “He said, ‘I’m innocent of these charges,’ ” the friend said. “He was absolutely shocked they were going after him like this.” Through much of the year, the friend said, Ivins was drinking large amounts of vodka, combined with Ambien and prescription tranquilizers. After being found unconscious in his home in March, he spent four weeks in a treatment program at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland After that he spent another four weeks in treatment at the Thomas Finan Center in Cumberland, Maryland, being released to go home to Frederick in late May.
Ivins was just a patsy. He was in many ways a person who just followed orders. He was probably told he was doing his duty for his country and how he would be remembered as a hero. He was probably sick to his stomach when he found out what they did with his Anthrax but he knew if he talked he was a dead man.
Again, the media fails us refusing to ask the basic question: Why did Ivins send Anthrax to Daschle and Leahy?
Interestingly, 3 of the videos that I had picked out for this blog entry were no longer available by the time I wanted to publish it 2 days later.
How many times did you have to watch this movie to follow everything Bogart was saying? Isn’t that what makes it great? That it’s right there in front of you, but it’s so hard to follow. A shudder still goes up my spine every time he gives it to her. Every line out of his mouth is a gem. What’s so important about the Maltese Falcon thematically to 9/11 you might ask? The concept of the fall guy, the sap, going over for it. I had hoped to make the point that, yes, it’s true that the 19 hijackers may have hated the US and indeed flew planes into the buildings. But also that they were set up. They were recruited, indoctrinated, trained and facilitated by an iran-contra like secret government agency. Perhaps that secret government agency was called Able Danger. We’ll never know. They destroyed all the data relevant to their program in March 2001. 2.5 terabytes of data, supposedly equal to 1/4 of the printed books in the library of congress, according to Webster Tarpley.
Of course I always loved the Maltese Falcon, but for me as a modern viewer, I never liked Mary Astor. I never found her attractive personally and in that sense she failed as a femme fatale. I just didn’t get why Bogart fell under her spell. It wasn’t until I found out that she was the sexpot of the day, the Paris Hilton of her time, that her understated sexuality in the film made sense.
Able Danger is fiction, but was inspired in large part Vox Pop. First and foremost Vox Pop is a place to bring your laptop, surf the internet, drink insanely strong fair trade coffee, peruse the bookshelves for books that didn’t seem to appear anywhere else that posed and answered questions I had been wondering why weren’t be answered in the mainstream media, and ultimately where I could meet the community I lived in. Vox Pop is one of those rare businesses with soul.
When I discovered that the owner of the store, Sander Hicks, wrote a 9/11 conspiracy book called ‘The Big Wedding,” my initial reaction was, the same as I imagine most of America’s would still be, I thought, ‘What a kook! He’s wasting his time writing about conspiracy theories?’ It was only because I was such a fan of the cafe itself that I read his book. And that’s when I fell down the rabbit hole. It’s a short book, and it’s entertaining, but it’s a dense big-picture-read chock full of political and personal intrigue. ‘Gonzo Journalism’ is how I first heard it described, It was so well written and well documented that I spent the next year reading and researching 9/11.
Once again, the movie is fiction. The Able Danger story line is right out of a Dashiell Hammett novel. But the Vox Pop Cafe/Bookstore is real. The Big Wedding is a real book. The idea was to make a hero out of the man I initially considered a cook, to place his maverick investigative journalism into the context of a Sam Spade adventure. He is the modern day Don Quixote taking on windmill-dragon of our collective understanding of truth as determined by the corporate oligarchies that control mainstream media. If there was a Vox Pop in every community, I think things would be a bit different ’round here.
Why is this the greatest film? Because it’s so funny. It takes the most serious subject ever known to the history of man and forces us to laugh while we watch the end of the world. At the same time its one of the most profound films ever made; top two. Happens to be Kubrick’s second most profound film, but it’s his only comedy right? Why is it so profound? Because the end of the world really will come about because of some moronic ideology –every dogmatic ideology is moronic — and Strangelove is profound because we can laugh at it in the movie — the film teaches us to laugh at our moronic ideologies. It forces us to laugh at them. Laugh at them and give them up or perish. It is comedy as the most profound sign of intelligence. I like to pretend to believe that this film actually helped and continues to help us authentically understand our world. All the characters are perfect caricatures, which is to say they’re the perfect comedic ideals, the platonic forms, comic archetypes..
Strangelove is the film I always wanted to make. This is perfect art. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have the hubris to believe Able Danger approaches Strangelove, by no means. I just like writing the two movies in the same sentence — please don’t hold that against me. Oh no! Now some critic is going to hold one up to the other, and the bright light of the Strangelove sun will blind her to the moon that is reflecting it’s light. I woudn’t have ventured a comparison myself, but when, at the Q&A following the Brooklyn Film Fest Opener the comparison was made by someone in the audience, there was a lump in my throat and my heart quietly danced for joy. Somebody got it.
In conclusion, I’ll point out that Mccain, for example, is one kind of caricature;
