REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

British military reveal Iraq torture/

POSTED BY: MAGONSDAUGHTER
UPDATED: Wednesday, May 8, 2013 03:53
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Monday, April 1, 2013 11:09 AM

MAGONSDAUGHTER


Maybe not new, but in the light of that Academy Award nominated piece of gose about Bin Laden's death, I thought it was good to revisit.

All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.

Quote:


Camp Nama: British personnel reveal horrors of secret US base in Baghdad

Detainees captured by SAS and SBS squads subjected to human-rights abuses at detention centre, say British witnesses

British soldiers and airmen who helped to operate a secretive US detention facility in Baghdad that was at the centre of some of the most serious human rights abuses to occur in Iraq after the invasion have, for the first time, spoken about abuses they witnessed there.

Personnel from two RAF squadrons and one Army Air Corps squadron were given guard and transport duties at the secret prison, the Guardian has established.

And many of the detainees were brought to the facility by snatch squads formed from Special Air Service and Special Boat Service squadrons.

Codenamed Task Force 121, the joint US-UK special forces unit was at first deployed to detain individuals thought to have information about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. Once it was realised that Saddam's regime had long since abandoned its WMD programme, TF 121 was re-tasked with tracking down people who might know where the deposed dictator and his loyalists might be, and then with catching al-Qaida leaders who sprang up in the country after the regime collapsed.

Suspects were brought to the secret prison at Baghdad International airport, known as Camp Nama, for questioning by US military and civilian interrogators. But the methods used were so brutal that they drew condemnation not only from a US human rights body but from a special investigator reporting to the Pentagon.

A British serviceman who served at Nama recalled: "I saw one man having his prosthetic leg being pulled off him, and being beaten about the head with it before he was thrown on to the truck."

On the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, a number of former members of TF 121 and its successor unit TF6-26 have come forward to describe the abuses they witnessed, and to state that they complained about the mistreatment of detainees.

The abuses they say they saw include:

• Iraqi prisoners being held for prolonged periods in cells the size of large dog kennels.

• Prisoners being subjected to electric shocks.

• Prisoners being routinely hooded.

• Inmates being taken into a sound-proofed shipping container for interrogation, and emerging in a state of physical distress.

It is unclear how many of their complaints were registered or passed up the chain of command. A Ministry of Defence spokesperson said a search of its records did not turn up "anything specific" about complaints from British personnel at Camp Nama, or anything that substantiated such complaints.

Nevertheless, the emergence of evidence of British involvement in the running of such a notorious detention facility appears to raise fresh questions about ministerial approval of operations that resulted in serious human rights abuses.

Geoff Hoon, defence secretary at the time, insisted he had no knowledge of Camp Nama. When it was pointed out to him that the British military had provided transport services and a guard force, and had helped to detain Nama's inmates, he replied: "I've never heard of the place."

The MoD, on the other hand, repeatedly failed to address questions about ministerial approval of British operations at Camp Nama. Nor would the department say whether ministers had been made aware of concerns about human rights abuses there.

However, one peculiarity of the way in which UK forces operated when bringing prisoners to Camp Nama suggests that ministers and senior MoD officials may have had reason to know those detainees were at risk of mistreatment. British soldiers were almost always accompanied by a lone American soldier, who was then recorded as having captured the prisoner. Members of the SAS and SBS were repeatedly briefed on the importance of this measure.

It was an arrangement that enabled the British government to side-step a Geneva convention clause that would have obliged it to demand the return of any prisoner transferred to the US once it became apparent that they were not being treated in accordance with the convention. And it consigned the prisoners to what some lawyers have described as a legal black hole.

Surrounded by row after row of wire fencing, guarded by either US Rangers or RAF personnel, and with an Abrams tank parked permanently at its main gate, to the outside observer Camp Nama seemed identical to scores of military bases that sprang up after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Once inside, however, it was clear that Nama was different.

read morehttp:// www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/01/camp-nama-iraq-human-rights-abuse
s


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Monday, April 1, 2013 12:58 PM

HKCAVALIER


Hey Magon's,

Did you see Zero Dark Thirty?

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Monday, April 1, 2013 11:58 PM

MAGONSDAUGHTER


Yeah, that's what I was referring to.

Hated it with a passion. A morally deficient film on so many levels.

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Tuesday, April 2, 2013 10:51 AM

MAGONSDAUGHTER


I don't have a review in me for that film. I was disturbed it's morality free zone. I think it demonstrated that the US is a morally bankrupt nation. I found nothing profound in it. It was devoid of characterisation or meaning. It was myopic in its world vision. What more can I say? I hated Argo slightly less but felt similar sentiments around that film as well.

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Tuesday, April 2, 2013 11:27 AM

FREMDFIRMA


Quote:

Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
I don't have a review in me for that film. I was disturbed it's morality free zone. I think it demonstrated that the US is a morally bankrupt nation. I found nothing profound in it. It was devoid of characterisation or meaning. It was myopic in its world vision.


Agreed.
Ultimately and universally repulsive on more levels than I though possible.

We have seen the true enemy, and all we needed to do was look in the nearest mirror.

-F

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Tuesday, April 2, 2013 5:40 PM

HKCAVALIER


Frem and Magon's,

I thought that was the point of the movie. I don't blame the film makers for the fact that people didn't get the message. It's a stultifyingly bitter pill to swallow. I think placing the pov deep inside the black sites was a courageous choice, but it certainly limited the film's ostensible access to anything resembling moral clarity. The movie worked as a kind of horror film for me.

The central horror of the film for me wasn't the torture, but the lengths we went to, the extraordinary financial commitment we made--as a nation, as a people--to revenge and assassination. The moment I will never forget is when one of the SEALs inadvertently murders one of the women in the house and turns to his buddy to say, (don't have the exact quote in my head) "Shit. I hate this," exactly as if his shoe had come untied in the middle of a track meet. The banality of evil, indeed.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Tuesday, April 2, 2013 8:31 PM

MAGONSDAUGHTER


I tried to find that in the movie. I thought, this is an Oscar nominated film, I must be missing something here because I couldn't get it, really couldn't get what the filmmakers were trying to do. I felt that they have approached this topic in the guise of impartiality, but what they have done is ending up endorsing immoral behaviour and attitudes through their very LACK OF JUDGEMENT.

I thought the non Americans, much like in Argo, were dehumanised and stereotyped. The film allowed us to feel nothing for their plight except the mild distaste for torture which the agent demonstrated.

My main thought after seeing it was 'huh?'

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Wednesday, April 3, 2013 5:28 AM

STORYMARK


Quote:

Originally posted by HKCavalier:
Frem and Magon's,

I thought that was the point of the movie. I don't blame the film makers for the fact that people didn't get the message.



Some folks don't get that depicting something isn't endorsing it.




Excuse me while I soak in all these sweet, sweet conservative tears.

"We will never have the elite, smart people on our side." -- Rick "Frothy" Santorum

"Goram it kid, let's frak this thing and go home! Engage!"

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Wednesday, April 3, 2013 10:40 AM

FREMDFIRMA



I feel about the same as Magons about this, and while I grok what they tried to do there, HKCav and Piz...

Thing is, I think we all know most of the folks who SHOULD be shamed by such a thing were in fact all but masturbating to it and considering a celebration of our supposed superiority.
And for damn sure the marketing of it was engineered to appeal to them, absolutely.

Those who know the horror of all this need no reminder and so all it did in the end was stroke the same kinda bastards who supported such measures in the first place and that is the last goddamn thing we need, okay ?

On top of that, the horror goes even deeper for me being that I know quite well Bin Laden has been dead since the week of Dec 16th 2001 and all of this is just more lies and excuses to cover the original lies and excuses, turning him into some demented version of a modern Emmanual Goldstein.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SnowballLie

Unless you mean to tell me you actually believe this bullshit, complete with handy burial at sea and convenient plane crash coincidentally killing all the witnesses, cause I sure don't, remember these are the same folks who fed us WMD and Jessica Lynch and all those other flimflam faery tales so they ain't exactly working from a plethora of credibility here.

Which means we spilled all that blood, destroyed our credibility, integrity, reputation, what little there was of it given our meddling, wrecked our economy and gave the real enemies, our so-called protectors, unprecedented power and wealth, and for what ?

*shaking head*

I don't need a film to tell me how stupid, how wrong, how evil it all is - not when I was calling it so back when my voice was drowned completely out in a chorus of rage, hate and intolerance, and especially not when I was looking at the very foundation of this torture system being practiced on our defenseless youth every goddamn day, which is without a doubt where they tested and refined most of these techniques, I'll have you know.

And most of all, the LAST thing we need is to give the goddamn Jackals of our society more material to conveniently misinterpret into justification of all this madness, and frankly I think that is the only result of this whole mess.

-Frem

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Wednesday, April 3, 2013 3:06 PM

DREAMTROVE


Frem



I haven't seen the movie, I saw the preview and an interview and found myself doubting the command flow as represented. I also doubt the authenticity of the claim, and I doubt that anyone would be politically able to back out of it once they had dragged the president and cabinet into the situation room with the promise of Bin Laden. Also, heard about the non-factual representation of torture as being a source of the information. I guess I have to see the film. Maybe it's a good date movie

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Thursday, April 4, 2013 7:54 AM

FREMDFIRMA


Quote:

Originally posted by G:
I mean consider the risk a studio runs of having the first one be more obviously questioning of US policy? Whatever you may want and believe, that ain't happening, that movie isn't going to get made for decades, if ever. So I'm saying half full and thank god for that.


Oh it got made, Piz - just not HERE.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valley_of_the_Wolves_Iraq
And yes, the few americans involved in it's filming took heaps of shit for it.

While I'd say its a bit overblown, that *IS* how a lot of people over there see us, and they are not without substantial cause for it, but instead of admitting it we play this crap like ZDT and point and say (very blatantly insincerely) "isn't it terrible?" while simultaneously laughing up our fucking sleeves about how badass we supposedly are ?

Fuck. That. Noise.
Quote:

If it gets your reaction Frem, then it's working isn't it?

Not really - the film itself isn't getting that reaction, feeding the jackals more propaganda to wank it to and celebrate what should be shameful is.

A MUCH better treatment of the subject matter was Black Hawk Down, showing up the complete idiocy of Steeles asinine plan and the epic disaster that unfolded from it, and far more realistic behavior on behalf of the soldiers, such as them leaving their 60-gunners to swing in the breeze, the complete incompetence and helplessness of our units when out of radio contact cause their training deprives them of all common sense and initiative, and the absolute futility of trying to "help" people who know damn well WHAT THAT "HELP" WILL COST THEM.

But this piece of tripe ?
Might as well have made a flick showcasing the attempt to carry out that "Final Solution" plan without laying judgements and then pretend there's some kind of moral lesson behind it, when all you'd really be doing is feeding monsters what they want to see.

Again, in the end the folks you'd want to reach are already horrified, and the folks you'd hope to reach are wanking to it, so you've accomplished naught but desensitizing people to it, which IMHO was exactly the goddamn plan, otherwise they'd not have recived the aid of the Military-Intel folks in creating this travesty.

-Frem

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Sunday, April 14, 2013 2:14 PM

MAGONSDAUGHTER


I know that this film was a critical success, and I think it is technically well done. I just felt very strong revulsion at it, and its abhorent morality. I disagree with previous posters who claim that the film depicts events without endorsing them. Filmmakers use their craft to demonstrate their own implicit values around events, even documentary film makers do this. Some do it like hitting you on the head with a hammer "this is what you should think audience" and some do it with subtlety, but the filmmakers own moral perspective is always at the heart of any film. To believe that a film simply depicts events and that the filmmaker has no part in constructing a narrative within a moral framework is naive thinking.


This film critic describes it more elequently than I can.

Quote:



The problem with the torture ingredient, which is covered repetitively and at length over the first hour, is not that Ms Bigelow depicts it; it’s the fact that she shows it without any moral or historical perspective. Neither her film nor her heroine cares anything for the tortured.

The film is interested purely in whether the torturers — who otherwise seem like decent guys — gain anything from the exercise. And in the film, if not in real life, they do.

There was the opportunity here to examine a complex, important subject central to the history of our time. However, complexity, depth and character are not Ms Bigelow’s forte. She is very much an action director, and the most memorable sequence — where another female CIA agent (Jennifer Ehle) awaits an informer — involves suspense and explosive action.

Zero Dark Thirty is very much in tune with Hollywood action movies and gung-ho American foreign policy. It begins with terrified voices of people about to die in 9/11 and ends by giving us the catharsis of violent revenge.

The only other idea in its head is to glorify female determination and persistence in a world dominated by men.

Frankly, that’s a superficial, foolish and parochial way to approach the war on terror, and this is a silly, at times despicable film that never remotely deserved an Oscar nomination. Compared with this, Team America: World Police was a think piece.


From the Daily Mail

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Sunday, April 14, 2013 2:48 PM

JONGSSTRAW


Billions of taxpayer dollars over ten years to kill one man. What a joke. And all because Bush gave the Taliban 30 days grace period to turn over Bin Laden. If he had bombed Kabul on 9/11, or dropped in 50 special ops guys, he could have killed 'em all....Bin Laden, Al Zawahiri, and Mullah Omar. Instead, we've squandered tens of billions of dollars and thousands of lives for nothing. And Zawahiri and Omar are just waiting it out until we leave. I'm sure they'll appreciate the upgrades in accomodations we've provided for their return.

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Sunday, April 14, 2013 3:35 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.


Just curious - if things could have been so much 'faster, better, cheaper', why do you think they were done the way they were done?

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Sunday, April 14, 2013 5:53 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.


Just to add - this is a serious question. I can think of many assorted reasons why things were done the way they were done, but not one particular outstanding reason why.

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Sunday, April 14, 2013 7:45 PM

HKCAVALIER


Hey Magons,

Yeah, that is so not the movie I saw. How does all that square with Ms. Bigelow's own professed pacifism? Is she lying? Totally incompetent as a film maker? A pathetic, greedy sellout?

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Sunday, April 14, 2013 8:30 PM

MAGONSDAUGHTER


Quote:

Originally posted by HKCavalier:
Hey Magons,

Yeah, that is so not the movie I saw. How does all that square with Ms. Bigelow's own professed pacifism? Is she lying? Totally incompetent as a film maker? A pathetic, greedy sellout?

HKCavalier



No idea. Is that for me to guess at? Shouldn't a film stand alone without having a film maker profess to certain views?

You seem to imply that I have missed certain undertones to the film that make the narrative some sort of anti war, anti intelligence movie. Yes, I did miss all that, if it existed, but I'm not the only one.

From wiki
Quote:



The film has been both criticized and praised for its handling of subject matter, including the portrayal of harsh interrogation techniques, commonly classified as torture. The use of these techniques was long kept secret by the Bush administration. (See Torture Memos.) Glenn Greenwald, in The Guardian, stated that the film takes a pro-torture stance, describing it as "pernicious propaganda" and stating that it "presents torture as its CIA proponents and administrators see it: as a dirty, ugly business that is necessary to protect America."[65] The critic Frank Bruni concluded that the film appears to suggest "No waterboarding, no Bin Laden".[58] Jesse David Fox writes that the film "doesn't explicitly say that torture caught bin Laden, but in portraying torture as one part of the successful search, it can be read that way."[66] Emily Bazelon said, "The filmmakers didn't set out to be Bush-Cheney apologists", but "they adopted a close-to-the-ground point of view, and perhaps they're in denial about how far down the path to condoning torture this led them."[67] Journalist Michael Wolff slammed the film as a "nasty piece of pulp and propaganda" and Bigelow as a "fetishist and sadist" for distorting history with a pro-torture viewpoint. Wolff disputed the efficacy of torture and the claim that it contributed to the discovery of bin Laden.[68] In an open letter, social critic and feminist Naomi Wolf criticized Bigelow for claiming the film was "part documentary" and speculated over the reasons for Bigelow's "amoral compromising" of film-making, suggesting that the more pro-military a film, the easier it is to acquire Pentagon support for scenes involving expensive, futuristic military equipment. Wolf likened Bigelow to the acclaimed director and propagandist for the Nazi regime, Leni Riefenstahl, saying: "Like Riefenstahl, you are a great artist. But now you will be remembered forever as torture's handmaiden."[69] Author Karen Joy Greenberg wrote that "Bigelow has bought in, hook, line, and sinker, to the ethos of the Bush administration and its apologists" and called the film "the perfect piece of propaganda, with all the appeal that naked brutality, fear, and revenge can bring".[70] Peter Maass of The Atlantic said the film "represents a troubling new frontier of government-embedded filmmaking".[71]

Jane Mayer of The New Yorker, who has published The Dark Side, a book about the use of torture during the Bush administration, criticized the film, saying that Bigelow was

"milk[ing] the U.S. torture program for drama while sidestepping the political and ethical debate that it provoked". She said: by "excising the moral debate that raged over the interrogation program during the Bush years, the film also seems to accept almost without question that the CIA's 'enhanced interrogation techniques' played a key role in enabling the agency to identify the courier who unwittingly led them to bin Laden."[72]

The author Greg Mitchell wrote that "the film's depiction of torture helping to get bin Laden is muddled at best – but the overall impression by the end, for most viewers, probably will be: Yes, torture played an important (if not the key) role."[73] Filmmaker Alex Gibney called the film a "stylistic masterwork" but criticized the "irresponsible and inaccurate" depiction of torture, writing:

"there is no cinematic evidence in the film that EITs led to false information – lies that were swallowed whole because of the misplaced confidence in the efficacy of torture. Most students of this subject admit that torture can lead to the truth. But what Boal/Bigelow fail to show is how often the CIA deluded itself into believing that torture was a magic bullet, with disastrous results."[74]

Philosopher Slavoj Žižek, in an article for The Guardian, criticized what he perceived a "normalization" of torture in the film, arguing that the mere neutrality on an issue many see as revolting is already a type of endorsement per se. Žižek proposed that if a similar film was made about a brutal rape or the Holocaust, such a movie would "embody a deeply immoral fascination with its topic, or it would count on the obscene neutrality of its style to engender dismay and horror in spectators." Žižek further panned Bigelow's stance of coldly presenting the issue in a rational manner, instead of being dogmatically rejected as a repulsive, unethical proposition.[75]

The journalist Steve Coll, who has written on foreign policy, national security and the bin Laden family, criticized the filmmakers for saying the film was "journalistic", which implies that it is based in fact. At the same time, they claimed artistic license, which he described "as an excuse for shoddy reporting about a subject as important as whether torture had a vital part in the search for bin Laden".[34] Coll wrote that "arguably, the film's degree of emphasis on torture's significance goes beyond what even the most die-hard defenders of the CIA interrogation regime [...] have argued", as he said it was shown as critical at several points.[34]

U.S. Senator John McCain, who was tortured during his time as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, said upon watching the film that it left him sick – "because it's wrong". In a speech in the Senate, he said, "Not only did the use of enhanced interrogation techniques on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed not provide us with key leads on bin Laden's courier, Abu Ahmed, it actually produced false and misleading information."[76] McCain and fellow senators Dianne Feinstein and Carl Levin sent a critical letter to Michael Lynton, chairman of the film's distributor, Sony Pictures Entertainment, stating, "[W]ith the release of Zero Dark Thirty, the filmmakers and your production studio are perpetuating the myth that torture is effective. You have a social and moral obligation to get the facts right."[77]


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Monday, April 15, 2013 2:07 AM

KWICKO

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)


Quote:

Originally posted by Jongsstraw:
Billions of taxpayer dollars over ten years to kill one man. What a joke. And all because Bush gave the Taliban 30 days grace period to turn over Bin Laden. If he had bombed Kabul on 9/11, or dropped in 50 special ops guys, he could have killed 'em all....Bin Laden, Al Zawahiri, and Mullah Omar. Instead, we've squandered tens of billions of dollars and thousands of lives for nothing. And Zawahiri and Omar are just waiting it out until we leave. I'm sure they'll appreciate the upgrades in accomodations we've provided for their return.




Try *TRILLIONS*.



"I supported Bush in 2000 and 2004 and intellegence [sic] had very little to do with that decision." - Hero

"I was wrong" - Hero, 2012

Mitt Romney, introducing his running mate: "Join me in welcoming the next President of the United States, Paul Ryan!"

Rappy's response? "You're lying, gullible ( believing in some BS you heard on msnbc ) or hard of hearing."

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Tuesday, April 16, 2013 3:17 AM

MAGONSDAUGHTER


Quote:

Originally posted by G:


We saw different films. You saw the film that a lot of Amerika haters saw. That's fine, that film exists, I just get pissed when they think they are the only ones that own that hatred, that the overwhelming percent of the US must love it and think it's rah rah glory filmmaking. Many of us do not - again, FOX isn't the majority.



We saw the same film, we just have different opinions of it.

Are you saying I'm an 'Amerika hater' because I didn't like this film? Or that only 'Amerika Haters' dislike this film? That's pretty spec.


Quote:



And just curious.. you know that the Team America was scathing satire right?



You do realise that comment was from a quote and not my own. I haven't seen Team America. Don't know much about it.


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Tuesday, April 16, 2013 4:11 AM

HKCAVALIER


Quote:

Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
We saw the same film, we just have different opinions of it.

Okay, something's wrong when commonplace rhetoric like "we saw different films" is taken literally and turned into contention. You don't honestly believe that G or I meant that there are literally two different films called "Zero Dark Thirty." So what's going on with you?

Quote:

Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
Quote:

Originally posted by HKCavalier:
Hey Magons,

Yeah, that is so not the movie I saw. How does all that square with Ms. Bigelow's own professed pacifism? Is she lying? Totally incompetent as a film maker? A pathetic, greedy sellout?



No idea. Is that for me to guess at? Shouldn't a film stand alone without having a film maker profess to certain views?

You seem to imply that I have missed certain undertones to the film that make the narrative some sort of anti war, anti intelligence movie. Yes, I did miss all that, if it existed, but I'm not the only one.


I read ALL those reviews before seeing the movie. My entire FB community was up in arms about this "disgusting movie" without having seen it because of those "reviews." I realized I was gonna have to see the movie myself and judge for myself.

It's not for you to guess at. It's for you to consider. Having seen the film myself I believe the folks who condemn it are projecting a lot of intention onto this film that I didn't see and interviews with Ms. Bigelow do not reflect. You and I agree that the subject matter of this film is disgusting. In a sane world the documents and testamony upon which this film were based would be used as evidence in a war crimes trial. But they're not and won't be. It's a disgrace.

I don't blame the film. You apparently do and that speaks to the motives of the film makers. So: How does all that square with Ms. Bigelow's own professed pacifism? Is she lying? Totally incompetent as a film maker? A pathetic, greedy sellout?

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Tuesday, April 16, 2013 7:30 AM

STORYMARK


Quote:

Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
I know that this film was a critical success, and I think it is technically well done. I just felt very strong revulsion at it, and its abhorent morality. I disagree with previous posters who claim that the film depicts events without endorsing them. Filmmakers use their craft to demonstrate their own implicit values around events, even documentary film makers do this. Some do it like hitting you on the head with a hammer "this is what you should think audience" and some do it with subtlety, but the filmmakers own moral perspective is always at the heart of any film. To believe that a film simply depicts events and that the filmmaker has no part in constructing a narrative within a moral framework is naive thinking.



So, by that "logic" Steven Spielberg is a Nazi sympathizer, and David Fincher endorses serial killing.

What a silly way to approach the world.

Again - just depicting that it happened (quick point of fact: it DID happen) does not mean they endorse it. Its overly simplistic and frankly stupid to insist otherwise.

Pretending it did not happen - denying the ugly reality of it - would be more harmful, I feel.




Excuse me while I soak in all these sweet, sweet conservative tears.

"We will never have the elite, smart people on our side." -- Rick "Frothy" Santorum

"Goram it kid, let's frak this thing and go home! Engage!"

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Tuesday, April 16, 2013 11:40 AM

MAGONSDAUGHTER


Quote:

Originally posted by Storymark:


So, by that "logic" Steven Spielberg is a Nazi sympathizer, and David Fincher endorses serial killing.

What a silly way to approach the world.

Again - just depicting that it happened (quick point of fact: it DID happen) does not mean they endorse it. Its overly simplistic and frankly stupid to insist otherwise.

Pretending it did not happen - denying the ugly reality of it - would be more harmful, I feel.






You seem unable to understand how filmmakers construct narratives. None of them 'just' depict events. They choose how to tell a story and the values that they hold are implicit or explicit in their storytelling.


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Tuesday, April 16, 2013 1:21 PM

STORYMARK


Quote:

Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
Quote:

Originally posted by Storymark:


So, by that "logic" Steven Spielberg is a Nazi sympathizer, and David Fincher endorses serial killing.

What a silly way to approach the world.

Again - just depicting that it happened (quick point of fact: it DID happen) does not mean they endorse it. Its overly simplistic and frankly stupid to insist otherwise.

Pretending it did not happen - denying the ugly reality of it - would be more harmful, I feel.






You seem unable to understand how filmmakers construct narratives. None of them 'just' depict events. They choose how to tell a story and the values that they hold are implicit or explicit in their storytelling.




BWAHAHAHA!

You telling me how filmmakers work.... that's freakin priceless!

So, you're saying Spielberg IS a Nazi sypathizer then, beause he "chose" to depict them. Jesus.

Aparently you think its more honest to pretend bad things never happen....

You are, just simply, wrong.



Excuse me while I soak in all these sweet, sweet conservative tears.

"We will never have the elite, smart people on our side." -- Rick "Frothy" Santorum

"Goram it kid, let's frak this thing and go home! Engage!"

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Tuesday, April 16, 2013 10:35 PM

MAGONSDAUGHTER


I think you've really missed the point here, quite badly.

All film makers construct a narrative. Narratives depict values. This is the nature of storytelling. You cannot have a narrative without values. This is storymaking 101.

EG Spielberg's narrative in Schindlers list depicted the increasing brutality and depravity suffered upon Jewish people in Europe. You can't mistake his values system ever because he is a filmmaker that plies it on with a trowel. There is not much subtlety in his films.

Nazi propagandists in the 30's made films depicting Jewish people as the 'rats of Europe'. Their values were also quite lacking in subtelty.

I think the issue with Bigelow is that she tried to depict events of extreme brutality and complexity in a neutrally toned narrative and that is probably where my issue with her lies. You can't be neutral about brutality without collusion and I believe that is what she does, collude in her film. It could have been a fascinating topic to cover, which could have been done in a way that really examined the moral blackhole that the US dug itself into, but she turned her back on that.

You obviously disagree and I have no problem with that. However if you would really like to discuss this with me, I'd prefer that we kept the tone a bit friendlier, otherwise I can't really be bothered.




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Tuesday, April 16, 2013 11:17 PM

AGENTROUKA


I kinda gotta agree with Magonsdaughter here. In principle, at least, since I have not seen the film nor do I intend to.

Whenever you depict something, you make a choice in how to do it, an that choice reflects an attitude or intention toward your subject matter.

Aiming for a neutral depiction is not a neutral choice. There is an intention behind it. I can't and won't judge what that intention is for this movie, or if it is truly neutral, not having seen it. But in theory, at least, it invites discussion over how very sensitive subjects are treated - or should be treated.


On a barely related note, since "Schindler's List" was mentioned, I recently watched Claude Lanzmann's "Shoah". Good god, that's a masterpiece of a film. It uses a lot of restrained, no direct commentary, doesn't depict anything, but just through the use of editing and interview technique it creates a statement that is unmistakable. Blew me away.

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Wednesday, April 17, 2013 1:40 AM

MAGONSDAUGHTER


Quote:

Originally posted by G:


Of course we literally saw the same film, but we each brought different backgrounds with us so we interpreted it differently. Just like the critics we each quoted. They were on different sides of the torture discussion - lots of smart people all very certain of what they saw and yet not in agreement. It's more like an inkblot test.
I'm guessing that the majority of people who hate Amerika would have the same reaction to the film you had. Do you hate the US? You tell me? You could just hate the popular media version of the US that you see from where you live - I'm not sure what that looks like but I know other countries can focus on the negative aspects of the US (to be fair, we make it easy and they run with it).



You're a bit paranoid, matey. Do you honestly think that the only reason someone could hate this film is because they hate America? Hard to take you seriously after that, sorry.

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Wednesday, April 17, 2013 11:14 AM

MAGONSDAUGHTER


1. I was pretty close 're the hate america' thing, so I'm hardly twisting your words against you.
2. The fact that you ask this says more about your response to me than anything else
3. Have you read my posts over the past5 years? You know all those dozens of one where I call for jihad against the great satan. Sheesh.
4. Am I supposed to admire the fact that this film could not tell the darker truths because the US public cannot stomach them? Plenty of films made in Hollywood have managed to be brave about difficult subjects - 'Three Kings' 'The Thin Red Line' 'Black Hawk Down' mentioned by Frem already, many, many more. Schindler's List was a mainstream Hollywood film. The fact that you are saying this, actually proves my point more than anything else.





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Wednesday, April 17, 2013 5:28 PM

HKCAVALIER


Aw geez.

Schindler's List was made nearly 50 years after the events it depicts. Production on ZDT was begun less than two years after the death of OBL! There is no way in hell a Schindler's List could have been made in 1947 and not because the American people would have been too squeamish. It's just the nature of art and human beings; processing these kinds of atrocities takes time. Movies about the first decade of the 21st century will be a lot more polished and morally settled in 50 years, I promise.

This is so frustrating. ZDT is clearly not the movie a lot of people wanted. But that doesn't make it a pro-torture movie. ZDT is about life in the black sites. That's where the movie for the vast majority of its running time takes place. In the black sites, there was no balanced view.

So folks are saying that showing what actually went on in the black sites is not enough? That depicting torture graphically and absolutely unglamorously is not enough? Showing (however briefly) that the torture DID NOT give them unique intel. but only served to corroborate already existing intel. is not enough? That the horror of being plopped down in that hateful bubble without a compass, where torture is just a job and political assassination is a policy to be pursued with every fiber of one's being is not chilling enough?

Naw, what we need is a nice anti-torture PSA dropped in the middle of the movie, or some charmless scene of Chastain having doubts or the lead torturer committing suicide years later or something. But that would be a different (and, come to think of it, more Spielbergian) film. Kathryn Bigelow's movie is showing us that none of that happened. No one who had second thoughts about what they were doing in the black sites would have been allowed to set foot there. Workaday CIA employees tortured and killed detainees and then went on about their lives.

Does anyone here really need a movie to tell them that torture is bad? 'Cause I sure don't. I don't need a film maker to confirm my prejudices by inserting a line or two that agrees with me. I don't expect an artist to make up for the moral failings of my government or my fellow man. I want an artist to map that failing, to present that failing in as much felt detail as possible. I need an artist to look into the souls of these people who don't understand that torture is intrinsically evil and show me what in god's name is going on in there.

And on that score, I think Bigelow delivered. Not as thoroughly as the movie they make in 50 years about the Bush era will deliver, but for a movie just two years after the events it depicts, it was a thoroughly chilling document. If she’d showed her hand and made the thing anti-torture in the After School Special sort of way all those terrible reviews seem to crave, it would have been dismissed as a screed.

It is not pro-torture, any more than it is pro-political assassination and the casual murder of innocent women and old men (horrific actions that the film also depicts, without comment, but which have scared up not a peep of outrage from the critical establishment). That so many intelligent people would see this movie and imagine that it endorses torture is just another indicator of how morally adrift our nation, our world--our species--has become.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Wednesday, April 17, 2013 8:13 PM

MAGONSDAUGHTER


Quote:

Originally posted by HKCavalier:
Aw geez.

Schindler's List was made nearly 50 years after the events it depicts. Production on ZDT was begun less than two years after the death of OBL! There is no way in hell a Schindler's List could have been made in 1947 and not because the American people would have been too squeamish. It's just the nature of art and human beings; processing these kinds of atrocities takes time. Movies about the first decade of the 21st century will be a lot more polished and morally settled in 50 years, I promise.



You know I never brought up Spielberg, but was trying to respond to the 'so you are saying spielberg is a nazi' nonsense that was directed at me. I don't think the two films should be compared, but since it was mentioned I was describing how a film maker's values are demonstrated via narrative.

Quote:

This is so frustrating. ZDT is clearly not the movie a lot of people wanted. But that doesn't make it a pro-torture movie. ZDT is about life in the black sites. That's where the movie for the vast majority of its running time takes place. In the black sites, there was no balanced view.

It seems frustrating for you that I don't share your views, but plenty of people out there do. Clearly, looking at Rotten Tomatoes there is more aclaim than criticism so I am in the minority. Nevertheless, my views remain strong.

My criticism has never been that it is 'pro torture' but that it aims for a kind of neutrality around all those events which I don't personally find enough. As I said in a previous post neutrality around violence and abuse = collaboration.

Quote:

So folks are saying that showing what actually went on in the black sites is not enough? That depicting torture graphically and absolutely unglamorously is not enough? Showing (however briefly) that the torture DID NOT give them unique intel. but only served to corroborate already existing intel. is not enough? That the horror of being plopped down in that hateful bubble without a compass, where torture is just a job and political assassination is a policy to be pursued with every fiber of one's being is not chilling enough?


yep, I'm saying it wasn't enough. I'm a pretty squeamish person who doesn't manage violence in movies very easily. I watched it without too many qualms. The scenes were horrible, but they didn't fill me with outrage, there was little focus on the victims as suffering humans. In some way the 'mild disgust' experienced by the agent is kind of transferred to the viewers.

Quote:

Naw, what we need is a nice anti-torture PSA dropped in the middle of the movie, or some charmless scene of Chastain having doubts or the lead torturer committing suicide years later or something. But that would be a different (and, come to think of it, more Spielbergian) film. Kathryn Bigelow's movie is showing us that none of that happened. No one who had second thoughts about what they were doing in the black sites would have been allowed to set foot there. Workaday CIA employees tortured and killed detainees and then went on about their lives.


You don't need a public service announcement to demonstrate values within a story line. You don't have to be heavy handed about it. But I do think of the Three Kings film where there was enough in it to allow you to see clearly what the POV of the film maker was.

Quote:

Does anyone here really need a movie to tell them that torture is bad? 'Cause I sure don't.

Well fuck yes they do. They surely do. Had enough conversations with Americans to know this is not a topic to pussy foot around. People will watch this film and find it a vindication of torture.

Quote:

I don't expect an artist to make up for the moral failings of my government or my fellow man. I want an artist to map that failing, to present that failing in as much felt detail as possible. I need an artist to look into the souls of these people who don't understand that torture is intrinsically evil and show me what in god's name is going on in there.

Which Bigelow did not achieve in this film We didn't see into anyones soul. We know nothing more about the motives or impact of people that use torture, or the impact on those who have been tortured. THAT IS THE POINT.

Quote:

And on that score, I think Bigelow delivered. Not as thoroughly as the movie they make in 50 years about the Bush era will deliver, but for a movie just two years after the events it depicts, it was a thoroughly chilling document. If she’d showed her hand and made the thing anti-torture in the After School Special sort of way all those terrible reviews seem to crave, it would have been dismissed as a screed.

The idea that depicting torture and murder as being morally repugnant is so outside the norm of mainstream America that a film maker would be condemned for doing to is terribly worrying to me.


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Thursday, April 18, 2013 7:26 PM

MAGONSDAUGHTER


Oh god, can I be more clear?

I hate the way the US managed the whole Iraq/Afghanistan situation. I hate the fact that the use of torture, rendition, use of indefinitely locking up people without trial was condoned, accepted or excused by so, so many people. I think the US government travelled down a morally reprehensible path with much of what happened during the Bush years. Yep, hated all that. So yeah, I hated the film because I think it colludes with all those things I despise.

Maybe you like the film because you accept all those things as being 'necessary'. So let me ask you are you someone who condones torture and thinks it was necessary in the 'war on terror'? Then that would explain wht we have different reactions. Is this the first time that it has occured to you that people's individual value systems inform whether they like or dislike something?

As to whether it was the right time to make the film I wanted, or it wouldn't have been a commercial success. WTF do I care? I'm not financing them. None of that is my responsibility. I watch them, enjoy them or not.

Now if this was just another Tom Cruise kinda blockbuster, I wouldn't even bothered. It would have been the usual mindless Hollywood crap that gets churned out that I don't watch. But this film was a critical success, and Acadamy nominated, so I was interested. And then disappointed when I saw it. Don't know what I expected, but clearly something different.


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Tuesday, May 7, 2013 8:47 PM

MAGONSDAUGHTER


A bit more on these topics

Quote:

The full extent of collaboration between the CIA and the makers of the movie Zero Dark Thirty has been revealed in a memo obtained by website gawker.com using America's freedom-of-information laws.

The three-page internal memo details a series of discussions between the CIA's Office of Public Affairs – essentially its PR unit – and screenwriter Mark Boal in which the agency requested changes to the script. Of the four direct requests for change, Boal acceded to three.

From an Agency perspective, the purpose for these discussions was to help promote an appropriate portrayal of the Agency and the Bin Laden operation.

The memo is a record of five conference calls between October 26 and December 5, 2011, in which Boal ''verbally shared the screenplay'' of Kathryn Bigelow's movie about the hunt for, and assassination of, Osama bin Laden.

The memo notes that ''from an Agency perspective, the purpose for these discussions was for DPA officers to help promote an appropriate portrayal of the Agency and the Bin Ladin [sic] operation''.
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Not everything contained in the memo has been revealed. Its author notes that Boal was advised ''to be mindful'' of using character names that were ''very similar'' to the names of real-life agents in the field. This is followed by a large slab of redacted text, presumably in which the specific names of concern were noted.

Next, the memo notes an issue of veracity around the opening scene in which the film's central character, Maya (Jessica Chastain), is present for an interrogation using various torture techniques. In the movie as released, Maya does not participate in the interrogation, but the memo suggests that is not how the scene was originally written.

''For this scene we emphasised that substantive debriefers did not administer EITs [enhanced interrogation techniques – that is, torture] because in scene he had a non-interrogator, substantive debriefer [that is, Maya] assisting in a dosing [that is, waterboarding] technique.''

The memo adds that ''Boal said he would fix this''.

As Gawker's Adrian Chen notes, the significance of that change is enormous.

''The decision to have Maya abstain from the torture was as significant artistically as it was factually,'' Chen writes. ''Her ambivalence was a key part of her character, and critics picked over every detail of the torture scenes, including Maya's status as an observer rather than a participant, for meaning in the debate over torture that the movie sparked.''

The memo also noted objections to an interrogation scene in which a dog was used, arguing that ''such tactics would not be used by the Agency''.

Again the filmmakers were more than accommodating – ''Boal confirmed ... that the use of dogs was taken out of the screenplay'' – despite the well-documented use of dogs to harass prisoners at Abu Ghraib. (Admittedly, Abu Ghraib was under military control, though CIA officers were involved in interrogations there.)

Another scene of concern that was removed from the screenplay involved a CIA officer firing rounds from an AK-47 after drinking at a rooftop party in Islamabad. ''We insisted mixing drinking and firearms is a major violation and actions like this do not happen in real life.''

Once more, ''Boal confirmed he took this out of the film''.

The one point on which Boal stood his ground was the film's inclusion of scenes in which Maya pores over videotaped interrogations in search of any clue that might have been previously missed. ''We made the point ... that detainee sessions were not videotaped and used for research and analysis,'' the memo notes.

This assertion flies in the face of the revelation in the US District Court that in 2005 the CIA had destroyed 92 videotapes of post-9/11 interrogations of suspects, in direct violation of a judge's order in 2004 that it produce said tapes for the court.

Boal did object to this point, but not on grounds of veracity – rather, because including such a scene was dramatically convenient. ''He said he understood [interviews were not taped] but visually this is the only way to show research in an interesting cinematic way. We understood but reiterated this didn't happen. We did not request Boal take this scene out of the movie.''

It is possible to read that last exchange as a polite dance designed to save face on both sides while allowing for an outcome that more accurately mirrors the ''known knowns'' of Donald Rumsfeld's famous equation. But the acquiescence to the agency's more egregiously disingenuous demands raises real concerns about how far the filmmakers were willing to go in order to secure the CIA's collaboration and, ultimately, tacit endorsement of Zero Dark Thirty.

Raha Wala, a lawyer with anti-torture organisation Human Rights First, has called the revelation ''the latest in a long line of concerning suggestions that the CIA is trying rewrite history about these so-called enhanced interrogation programs''.

The release of the memo comes a day after a group of civil liberties groups sent a letter to US President Barack Obama urging him to ensure the CIA did not exert undue influence over the White House response to last month's Senate inquiry into the treatment of detainees, which found ''indisputable'' evidence of torture approved at the highest levels.

''As the primary agency under review, the CIA should of course be able to review and provide feedback on the Committee's report,'' the signatories to the letter wrote. ''But it is important the agency's view not be submitted without an independent analysis from other parts of the Executive Branch.

''Most importantly, your administration has a responsibility to ensure that the Executive Branch response to the study is not driven by individuals who might be implicated in the CIA's use of torture.''

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/movies/cia-vetted-scenes-in-zer
o-dark-thirty-memo-20130508-2j7ft.html#ixzz2SgGDjrPt



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Wednesday, May 8, 2013 3:53 AM

BYTEMITE


Quote:

Raha Wala, a lawyer with anti-torture organisation Human Rights First, has called the revelation ''the latest in a long line of concerning suggestions that the CIA is trying rewrite history about these so-called enhanced interrogation programs''.


In truth I doubt this program is the first time the CIA has tortured. Maybe the first time officially, or them having been caught out on it.

Honestly, I think this is what the culture surrounding national security concerns is, has been and has always been since the two main groups formed just after WWII. This is the problem that comes up when you put paranoid self-righteous xenophobes in charge of collecting volatile information and allow them to tell themselves that the ends justify the means.

And yes, they're totally going to creep into the investigation to obstruct justice and do another cover-up. Standard Operating Procedure.

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