'Last action hero?'

Eastwood has always been in the 'action' movie genre, the 'war' film dances on the edges of 'action' films. This outing from Eastwood has all the marks that he has tired of making and being part of 'action' films and is trying to break out of the mould, sadly I think it is a task beyond his capacity.

More to the point with all this return to the battlefield (primarily of WWII) is a sinking feeling that the USA is tearing out a page from history to rhyme again...

A witness, in the TV series 'World at War' (BBC TV), related about his experiences in Japan in the mid-late 1930's, when the Manchurian war was dragging on about how the nature of cinema and stage performances became more martial in makup. Until the point was reached that all stage performances were only military ones and those cinemas that displayed 'other' than military films were being closed down...

Are we starting the next chorus?

Readers may be interested in a very good article in the November 2005 issue of Harper's by Lawrence Weschler titled Valkyries Over Iraq: The Trouble with War Movies.

Sometime in the 1970s I read from a book called (I think) THE TWENTIETH CENTURY BOOK O FHTE DEAD. The writer argued that there may have been a time when most of the dead and wounded were in the military, but, with the developement of technology, changed targets with all out war, and more nations involved in wars, the %'s changed. The categories of dead were shaped like a pyramid, with the military being a smaller and smaller % of the dead at the peak of the pyramid, and the base of the pyramid,all civilians, got broader.

When I watched the 1st Gulf War on tv, I thought that that war was 'set up'by the STAR WARS trilogy that would have been seen by most of the Western combatants and cheerleaders.
I thought that all the WWII analogies leading to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were set up by SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, BAND OF BROTHERS, and the book on the last good war.
I sometimes wonder if these movies do not show us the past war so much as set us up ot accept the next one.

(Sorry, fiat, but while the first sequence in PRIVATE RYAN is quite graphic, the movie, for me, becomes a rehash of cliches about the time that sniper shoots the other sniper ah-la- Robin-Hood. Thereafter it is a blunt morality tale.)

Maybe something like Brecht's MOTHER COURAGE, something about the most prevalent causes, effects and casualties of war, would be the way to depict a modern war accurately.

I caught a part of a European film (subtitles, for uniligual dummies like me)on tv the other evening about the war during the break up of Yugoslavia (this focusing on Croatia) which told mostly civvie street stories.That film seemed human to me.
One of the few films on battlefield chaos and cauldron of violence that caught my attention was Wolfgang Petersen's STALINGRAD.

(Hmmm...random thoughts on war and film...but,ANYWAY, I'll go and see this movie because of some other films that Eastwood has done...BIRD,MILLION...BABY, MYSTIC RIVER and so on...)

Great review. But...

Is there an intelligent person somewhere who doesn't already understand war?

I doubt it.

It's murder and suffering and lies and death; and body parts and tissue flying through the air; and blood and guts sticking to the bottom of boots; lying purveyors of shock and awe and human wave teenage soldiers being mowed down for nothing.

Anybody who doesn't already have a war film running in his/her head needs a good talking to.

Hard to beat All Quiet on the Western Front - the original 1930 B & W one, not the John Boy remake of course from 1979 or 80.

I don't know the figures offhand, but it was claimed that WW2 was the first modern war, where more civilians were killed than military. Mainly, thanks to aerial terror bombing, because the bombers couldn't hit military, or industrai targets, so they went after bedroom communities, later hotly denied. Even the CBC was forced to cancel some documentaries proving it. I survived many such raids and have seen their effects in Europe and in England for years after the war.

Of course, medieval wars, like the Mongol and Hun invasions have wiped out whole countries.

It was also estimated, that it took 30,000 riflebullets to kill 1 enemy. Now , with fully automatic weapons it takes probably 200,000.

In other words, the infantry, especially the draftees, are only there to put bodies into the battle, so the generals can say "I have...", but otherwise are quite useless. On the other hand, mobile forces, as they're used in Afghanistan and Iraq, are totally useless for occupation.

I agree with you that "Private Ryan's" first part was the most realistic, although, when we talk about snipers, anybody should know that one can not take quick potshots with a telescopic sight. I was one of them myself and the only things we could hit were stationary targets.

There are very few good movies, but many extremely good books on war. Try to get
hold of Theodor Plievier's trilogy of "Stalingrad", "Moscow" and "Berlin". They're novels, but by a German writer who was in Russia through the war.

On the documentary side, Cornelius Ryan's "Last Battle" is priceless. on page 257 of my copy he write: "part of the Third Panzer Army front was held by inferior troops: aged Home Guardsmen, a few Hungarian units..." which was my contribution to WW2 at 17. Even if we were inferior, especially against Russian mass attacks that had more bodies than we had machinegun bullets.......

Ed Deak.

I always liked this passage, Ed, from The Rommel Papers.

It was written posthumously by Rommel's son and reports of the time when the Field Marshall was recovering from the injuries he'd sustained in Normandy from a RAF straffing run that killed his ADC.

He's talking about the utter futility of going on at that point - which I guess was before - or about the same time you'd have gotten into it:

"...Sometimes we had as many casualties on one day as during the whole summer of fighting in Africa in 1942. My nerves are pretty good, but sometimes I was near collapse. It was casualty reports, casualty reports, casualty reports, wherever you went. I have never fought with such losses. If I hadn’t gone to the front nearly every day I couldn’t have stood it, having to write off literally one more regiment every day…And the worst of it is that it was all without sense or purpose. There is no longer anything we can do. Every shot we fire now is harming ourselves, for it will be returned a hundred-fold. The sooner it finishes the better for all of us.”

His son then mentions Hitler’s ravings about new weapons and the chance of turning things around.

Rommel goes on:
“Rubbish, …Nobody has any such weapons. The only purpose of these rumours is to make the ordinary soldier hand on a bit longer. We’re finished, and most of the gentlemen above know it perfectly well even if they won’t admit it. Even they aren’t so stupid that they can’t recognize facts that anybody could work out on the fingers of one hand.” (pp 496 – 97 The Rommel Papers.)

Ironically, I often think of those words when I read your posts about what’s happening to our culture and our economy.

errata
should be 'hang' on a little bit longer of course

Ed, I am also a military history buff. The Germans have made some excellent war films. The best was Stalingradmade by Sud Deutsche Rundfunk in the late 1980's I believe. Almost as good was Downfallmade last year.

Of course the RAF intentionally bombed civilian areas. Their bombing was so primitave it could not hope to hit specific targets. Arthur Harris was quite forward in his desire to "dehouse" Germany.

It is really a moot point. Artillery did 80% of the killing in WW2 and 75% in WW1. Infantry weapons just keep the two sides far enough apart to call in a fire mission.

War is a rotten business best avoided by all.

Dear God. Please let me clobber the other guy. That's the problem right there and a belief in the afterlife.

I agree with the artillery part, plus, of course, mortars, which is also a form of artillery. When I was working as an orderly in a MASH hospital after the war, specializing in legwounds and amputations, the vast majority wounds were from mortars, and the majority of leg amputations were caused by forstbite, landmines and accidents.

If there was a general who should have been shot after WW2 as war criminal, it was Bomber Harris and his American counterparts. The Germans tried, but never came near their murdering records.

As far misleading the public is concerned, the Germans never knew where the frontlines were, until the "enemies" walked into their town. I never forget an incident when we were coming out of the lines, about 30 of us left in my company, starved out, hungry and dirty.

We got into a Silezian city by the name of Goerlitz, now I believe in Poland, and a boy, about 14, came up beside me and asked where we were coming from? "From the front", I replied. "Where is the front?", "At Siegesdorf". The kid's face suddenly got distorted with fear, as he ran away. Siegesdorf was about a day's walk from there and they had no idea what was going on.

When our sister division, in training near Hannover, was thrown in against the British, they surrendered, saying they came to fight Russians, not Brits. We were immediately disarmed and made into work troops, marching in the night, digging ditches and building tanktraps during the days, which the locals filled up right after we left.

We were marching South towards Munich, starving and stealing anything we could get hold of. We were promised that we'll be reequipped and reorganized when we reach Hitler's Alpenfestung. We turned East into Austria, and the end of the war caught us near Voecklabruck. There was no bloody Alpenfestung, no food, no new uniforms and weapons.

I was lucky, ending up in hospital with a right ankle swollen to the size of a football, form a scratch I received from a Russian mortar in February, but my friends ended up in US POW camps, where tens of thousands of German and satellite troops starved to death in the early months after the war. Many were shot when they went crazy from hunger and thirst.

This is something very few people have ever heard of. Some estimates quote a half million dead, but that could be too high. Nevertheless, it was also a major war crime.

I maintain that all generals should be shot, from all sides, after every war, because they're all guilty of mass murder.

Ed Deak.

The best war film I have seen recently is Paths of Glory.

The best war film that was made recently (in the last ten years) is, for my money, Starship Troopers.

I cannot get enough of this underrated (frankly, generally loathed) science fiction movie, a berserk melange of teen idol-romantic triangle cheese, and horrifying carnage in which said sappy teens are ripped apart and thrown towards the camera like sticky confetti.

That the whole thing is framed as a pro-fascist Army recruitment film generated by an incompetent future government that started the war for no reason, is the sweet sweet icing.

Thanks, you guys for explaining myself to me--I'm obviously from another planet. As long as you guys--yammer, ed deak--alcibiades-G.West enjoy war films there will always be more wars.

The names of the soldiers raising the flag way back when were mentioned. did you know that Ira Hayes was a Indian, came home as a hero for a little while, ended up drunk and dead in a ditch. Johnny Cash was heavily criticized for singing about Hayes. Dying drunk and poor doesn't fit the You All image of wars. My God the US veterans had to pay for their own monument in Washington. After a large number of years in the military I have never seen a war movie that didn't make me feel a bit sick, then angry that someone was making money glorifying the killing of others. Lucky me I nev er had to ill but was fully prepared to do so. In the Falkland war, the priests were blessing the troops before leaving. That was done on both sides. The famous song about the Australian guys coming back shot to hell and who didn't want to be recognized by anyone.I recall the German army belt buckle said God with us. God is always with all the sides I guess. War is no video game. The one in Iraq right now has a very large number of American youth crippled for life. The lucky ones are the dead ones. We can write movies about them. The really badly wounded ones slip from our sight rather quickly.Like Irah Hayes.

DPL said: "After a large number of years in the military I have never seen a war movie that didn't make me feel a bit sick, then angry that someone was making money glorifying the killing of others."

Exactly!

While I'm sure that not a single war movie director would admit to glorifying the killing of others, all of them are just tickled pink to make money from their war movies.

War is the legal mass murder of human beings. It can only be entertainment to people who are already brain dead.

So if you have a favourite war movie it's because you're lacking a certain kind of neuron--those that convert visual images into emotional experiences.

When I got as far into Woodend's brilliantly written review as, "The battle of Iwo Jima lasted 35 days and reaped a bumber crop of blood and bodies," I was already experiencing this sentence as though I was there, walking though a field of corpses, smelling the blood and the shit, cowering from the bomb that would cause my head to explode.

So who needs a movie?

Dalton Trumbo's book "Johny Got His Gun" should be read by all those who promote war. Any person of conscience would recoil in horror at the thought of those mutilated survivours. Their disgraceful treatment by the societies that put them in harms way should serve as a sobering reality to us all. I wonder how many "basket cases" are lying in hospital gurney's right now, victims of terrible wounds suffered during the Iraq war. Censoring the returning of caskets is nothing compared to the utter silence maintained by the government when it comes to casualties of this ghastly magnitude. A public awareness of the true horrors of armed conflict wouldn't be good for the businesses that profit from war.

And you know, of course, what happened to Trumbo himself - there's a lesson there too about critics of war.

So right, KitsCommuter--on two scores. I read that book over and over again 30 years ago or so. Trumbo wanted to write a book that said everything there is to say about war. In my estimation he succeeded.

Regarding the war wounded--my very good friend, a retired ubc professor, worked for W.H.O. during the Vietnam War. A couple of weeks ago we were discussing that very subject of the terribly injured soldier. She talked about visiting the American soldiers who were horribly injured with facial disfigurations--some almost totally blown away, many missing large chunks--noses, mouths.

She said that hospitals were specifically built in Germany for these gruesomely disfigured men because the Defense Department didn't want them showing up in the United States--until they were patched up as presentably as possible--and contributing to the Anti-War effort.

Truman, I write about war, economics and politics all the time, not because I like, but because I hate the subjects and the criminals who promote them.

Some of the war films, like the one I mentioned, "Private Ryan", are useful from the point that they show the reality of the total idiocy and criminality of war and the military.

The military survives on lies: The privates lie to the NCOs, the NCOs lie to the officers, the officers lie to the NCOs the men and the generals, the generals lie to the officers, the public and the government.

The whole caboodle exists on secrecy and lies, which is then called "national security".

A tank rolls over a foxhole and turns around to squash the occupant(s) into the dirt and then their families are informed that the poor buggers died as "heroes".

This is what war is about and has been since the "heroes" were falling off scaling ladders, attacking some lord's castle so that their own lord can take it.

In the name of some god, and now of "freedom and democracy" of course.

Ed Deak.

Ed Deak says, "Truman, I write about war, economics and politics all the time, not because I like them but because I hate the subjects and the criminals who promote them."

I hate war, too, Ed, but as you well know there was a problem with letting Hitler and the Nazis have their own way, and so it just might sometimes become mandatory. And I don't automataically consider everyone at anytime who ever pomoted war to be a criminal.

So you hate, not only war, but economics and politics too, eh, Ed.

Why would you hate economics and politics?

I don't believe you.

As long as people are able to enjoy a film about war, there will be war.

When a huge majority of people begin to consider war films in the same light as child pornography, wars will become unlikely, or at least of questionable entertainment value.

This will, of course, signal the emergence of a new kind of human being, with an abundance of mirror neurons and enough courage to resist the peer pressure to do evil.

Ron Yamauchi claims that he, "can't get enough a "beserk melange...of horrifying carnage in which sappy teens are ripped apart and thrown towards the camera like sticky confetti."

Then he continues about something or other being the "sweet icing on the cake."

So I naturally ask myself what kind of a human being enjoys such images?

Ed, would you agree that Yamauchi is responding to war films as though they are entertainment?

Are you, Ron?

Truman
This:

is all I've posted on this subject.

Somehow this makes me a lover of war-porn?

I think you're over the top on this subject although I was almost as put off by yammer's comment above as I was by his single entry in another debate here at Tyee a while back where he said it was okay to do whatever one wanted with the Taliban because they were sub-human.

Did you miss that?

I have some concerns about yammer too.

Truman Green

I think the key word here is enjoy. It is not that one enjoys a war movie much in the same way they would enjoy a ride at an amusement park. It is the lasting impression one has from the movie that is important. A war film that would have merit would leave the viewer with a clearer picture of the truly horrific nature of war. If it is all gung ho patriotic bullshit then the movie has served no other purpose than to reinforce the aims of those who propagate war and who benefit from it.

There are film's out there that serve to illuminate the horror and stupidity of it all. When I think of war now those first few minutes of Saving Private Ryan come immediately to mind. I can almost taste the fear those soldiers must have had as they made there way along the beach. It painted a picture in my mind as to what war is really all about and gave me a visceral impression of the true, terrible nature of conflict itself. That lasting impression serves to temper one's impulse to join in the rally cry when the call to arms is heralded by the war mongers.

I'll second Ron Yamauchi's opinion on Paths of Glory, and add two more -- Dr. Strangelove and Full Metal Jacket. I think it's indicative of how bankrupt war movies are as a genre that all three are Stanley Kubrick films. Not much needs to be said about Dr. Strangelove. Paths also indicts those who instigate wars at the expense of those who actually fight or endure them. All three utterly reject war. But Full Metal Jacket is toughest to watch as it shows how an army turns young innocents into soldiers who will kill others just like themselves.

There are others, of course. Volker Schlondorff's Circles of Deceit comes to mind. The main point is, though, that it is possible to make a war movie that doesn't succumb to the usual temptations. Sure, the violence in Saving Private Ryan was hard to take, but at the film's core is a heroic conceit and what passes for a happy ending.

Charles Campbell:
You’re joking!

The first 25 minutes of Saving Private Ryan is a revelation - and a revolution in reproducing a simulacrum of reality on film.

The rest of it is melodrama of the worst, most Yank-centric kind. As phony as any other heroic conceit about war as any I've ever seen. IT wasn't the violence that was the problem.

Paul Fussell, another unremitting critic of war, wrote a fascinating piece in Slate that compared Ryan with the 10-part TV series Band of Brothers which Spielberg also made.

I think it's still a worthwhile read in conjunction with this subject so I sussed out the article from Slate's archives and I'll post it below here for anyone who's interested.

The comments after are also worth a quick glance.

http://www.slate.com/id/114810/

And, in case someone out there needs to be disabused about what kinds of degrading behavior war can enitice out of ordinary men, the reader ought not forget some of the following facts about the 'greatest generation'.

Source: Kenneth V. Iserson, M.D., Death to Dust: What happens to Dead Bodies?, Galen Press, Ltd. Tucson, AZ. 1994. p.382.

Really no surprise that we are getting another Hollywood cycle of war films .
The war machine demands propaganda and my take on this Eastwood effort is that it is in its purest form-propaganda .
Can you forget the US Navy recruitement film 'Top Gun' with Tommy Cruise .
Nope, this is just more jingoistic tripe from the dream factory .
Have to agree the opening 20,minutes of 'Private Ryan' are rivetting and stunning in their intensity .
And from vets I understand that is the way it was . Bodies dropping on all sides and having to wade through body parts to reach the beach. Ghastly business .

I'd like to nominate Born On The Fourth of July. I saw it with my late mother-in-law who volunteered as a therapist at a VA hospital in California during and after WW2. When the credits roled she turned to me with tears in her eyes and thanked me for getting the video. She said it was an accurate portayal of what the men and their families experienced even though it was the Vietnam War in the movie.

Movies can be invaluable in helping people understand that war involves no glory. That they are most often used as propaganda is one of the hazards of all art.

Saw that one recently Nana. Can't forget the squalid vet's hospital in the Bronx that Tom Cruise's character Ron Kovic ended up in. The indifference he encounters after he returns home is in glaring contrast to his naive sense of patriotism that pervades the first part of the movie. He eventually realizes the lie that has been told him and that his sacrifices (paraplegic) mean nothing to the average person. As I watched Born on the Fourth of July I couldn't help but think of Gary Sinise's excellent portrayal of Lt. Dan in Forrest Gump, who depicted an equally disillusioned Vietnam vet.

I'm really confused now.

I would have thought that all of you bright (no sarcasm intended, honest) people would already know everything there is to know about war.

Are you saying that a war film can teach you something you don't already know?

None of the films mentioned could teach me anything I don't already know.

So do you think I'm just delusional?

Once war's on film and people line up to see it, war has become a product--that is to say, trivialized.

Who isn't surprised that they're actually making a movie about the assassination of President Bush while he's still in office?

Why do you suppose that movie is being made?

So you need a drama about war to teach you stuff about war...

Good point, Kitscommuter, about the average person not being the least bit interested in a paraplegic war vet--other than to get away so as not to share the suffering.

But then, didn't you already know this?

What's the lesson in Born on the Fourth of July or Private Ryan or Full Metal Jacket or Paths of Glory that we don't already know?

Okey, let's look at it from another perspective.

All of these films were made so that tens of millions of dollars would change hands.

So you're absolutely sure it's just not the entertainment value that makes you guys appreciate these movies?

"The first 25 minutes of Saving Private Ryan is a revelation - and a revolution in reproducing a simulacrum of reality on film." Yes, more or less, and as a result it was hard to take. It was supposed to be a sort-of lesson in the horror of war, and that part of the film worked its intended purpose, at least, although I think like the violence did what it usually does in a war movie, which is to set us up for the hero's revenge or good and right's triumph or whatever. There's no hero in Full Metal Jacket. There's hardly a person to like. When the American soldiers succeed in subduing their tormenter, it's horrifying. It's remarkable that Dr. Strangelove was made and widely seen in, what was it, 1963? And Paths of Glory in 1957? Attacking the judgment and motivation of western generals? Is there another film like Full Metal Jacket that shows in painful detail how a soldier in wartime is made — through calculated dehumanization — from the day of his recruitment?

It's not about what you or I or any others posting here may already know Truman. It's about those people, movie goers or not, whose perceptions of war have been shaped by a mindless entertainment industry. Your point is well taken, that war is and has been exploited to make millions for Hollywood studios. But if at least some of the previously mentioned viewers walk out of a war movie (I should say anti-war movie) shaking their heads in disgust at the wanton carnage that war brings about then to me that is a positive thing.

It seems to me that the farther away one has been from wars, the more they gravitate to the films that supposedly depict war. Wonder why do many combat veterans ended up sort of twisted. In our family my father did WW1, two brothers and a sister did WW2.all in the army. I was too your so joined in 1950, in the Air Force. My oldest brother was declared dead a couple of times after massive injuries, but lived to a ripe old age with a big chunk taken out of his side. I have never heard any of them talk about their experiences and would hazard a guess that they really didn't go to watch war movies. The Us military is most helpful when some guy is making a war movie, best equipment and how often do you want this to be done. It's good PR as they always need more people. My gosh right here in Canada the military have now lowered the physical fitness level to about as low as it could go, people are being recruited that are older than I was when I retired. Wars make money for some, widows and now widowers. And of course lots of damaged bodies and minds. General Dellaire became a drunk from war effects and seeing those thousands of civilians hacked to death. There has to be a better way. Eastwood never could act but now as he ages its time to make movies about wars. Was he ever in one?

Yeh! DPL He was in:
Heartbreak Ridge - a turkey about the US adventure in Grenada; Kelly's Heroes - bit part; Where Eagles Dare - minor role; I think there may be others and some TV war work but that's about it. Not too memorable as I recall

Charles:
Full Metal Jacket impressed me too btw. There was another early Kubrick film with a very youthful Kirk Douglas about the French in WWI, Something or other about Valor I think. I'm sure you could find it on the internet. As I recall it was a devastating critique about officers and military pride and honour as well.

It is called "Paths Of Glory" and Douglas produced it beside acting in it. It took over 20 years to make back the investment, but it's a classic.
http://www.filmsite.org/path.html

War films are History written by the VICTORS.

Any film we see is NOTHING MORE THAN PROPAGANDA.

And the young empty headed youth whose hormones are raging are enticed by the adventure and romantacism of THE GLORY OF BATTLE.

J

Where Eagles Dare is an Eastwood War pic .
Paths of Glory is the Kubrick film with Kirk Douglas.

You beat me to it Nana .
Totally agree. Kubrick was a genius .

Like Herr GOEBBELS.

Clockwork Orange shows the mentality at work.

Violence,begets violence.

Tagline for' Paths of Glory'
BOMBSHELL! the roll of the drums... the click of the rifle-bolts... the last cigarette... and then... the shattering impact of this story... perhaps the most explosive motion picture in 25 years!

I gotta pay attention .

Okey, let's look at it from another perspective.

All of these films were made so that tens of millions of dollars would change hands.

Generally speaking I concur but with a few reservations. I would argue that there is a world of difference between "All Quiet on the Western Front" or "Cross of Iron" and something like "Saving Private Ryan" or "The Bridge at Remagen." No doubt there has always been an element of trying to make a buck in any hollywood production, but does anyone believe that Kubrick believed that "Paths of Glory" was going to be a huge money maker? A movie like that wouldn't even get off the ground in today's hollywood: they main characters are French! Who could pitch that to a studio?

I never viewed war movies as more than entertainment. Finding one grandfather's collection of "Soldier's Diaries" and a box of his things from WW1 when I was very young gave me a pretty good idea of what went on. Photos of his Scout Platoon taken periodically throughout the war, often annotated with notes on who was wounded or killed. These are a few entries from Feb 1917 followed by his entries for Vimy Ridge:

12th
On patrol with Sgt Ashby and scout {Longman} in right front. 10 PM to 1AM.

13th
On patrol from S16 to Popes Nose with Scout {Longman} from 7PM to 10PM

14th
Noel [Kendall] shot in stomach by our own LP at 3:30 this AM. Got him to field Amb. [later in a different pen] Got word tonight that Noel died of wounds. Pointless. On trench patrol tonight.

3rd
Battle practice this afternoon. Met Pat {Lortie}

4th
Nothing doing today except battle practice.

5th
Left { } L'Abbe this AM and relieved 1st Bn in frontline.

6th
On patrol with Paine tonight. Final mapping.

7th (Easter Eve)
On patrol with Dutch cutting lanes through wire [this is the night before the attack on Vimy Ridge. The lanes were the routes through the German wire]

8th/9th
On patrol. Scouts who are not in the attack went out tonight. Heavy shelling. Can Corps attacked this AM I was attached to first wave. CL Smith Killed E Matthews wounded. Attack very successful, came back to support trenches this PM.

10th
Very cold today with lots of {faded out }. Don't know when we are to be relieved. Burying dead all day.

Reading three years of his diaries, plus the stories from a still living grandfather, stories from my Dad about WW2 and the pain when he and his living brother get together and realise that it has been over 60 years since they last saw my uncle who was KIA in Italy leave no illusions in my head about that nature of war.

[/]

t49 both your points are valid...probably for most war films, but we are talking about an art, so there is a gradation. Goya and Picasso both painted war...but so did Norman Rockwell.
(Wasn't that amazing that Guernica was covered the day Colin Powell went to lie at the UN.)

I raised four boys who were not allowed toy guns or TV. When they could go to the movies on their own, they picked action movies...about war/not about war it didn't matter. They were raised in an anti-war household and we had plenty of political discusions about things with the kids.

There is no doubt that the war propaganda film worked for years on less sophisticated audiences. I don't think it's working so well now. Reality came home when the technology to make their own films came to the American soldiers.

(

You're right Nana. Shows one can't rely on memory for everything. thanx

Do anti-war films stop war? Or do the young people who don't understand war just say, "Holy crap, did you see that body flying through the air? Cool."

Except those that aren't. "Stalingrad" and "Das Boot" are two examples of war films that had exposure to North American audiences and were not produced "by the VICTORS." US films about Vietnam are definatley not the product of the victors but many do qualify as propaganda.

When one defines "propaganda" that broadly there is very little that would not qualify as such. Unfortunately such definitions are almost Orwellian in their destruction of subtlety and nuance. If "any film" qualifies as "propaganda" then any writing regarding such subjects must also be guilty of being "propaganda." This is the point where one may enter a realm where paranoia rules.

Late to this discussion but must chime in with support for Yammer. I too love Starship Troopers--everytime it comes on the tube I am forced to watch. A question: Is it intentional or just an accident of the dramatic form that the characters in ST so closely resemble the cast of Archie comics?

Re: Paths of Glory--I am a huge Kubrick fan, huge. But I recall being very disappointed by Paths of Glory. It had been built up to me as one of the great war films. I recall thinking it was rather ham-fisted and obvious, especially the pompous buffoon of a general. But I supposed I must re-visit it.

Conversely I am no big Spielberg cheerleader. But credit where due: I have rarely been so hard-hit as by the opning half hour of Saving Private Ryan. I still recall gripping my armrest for dear life.

Some of my favourite war movies,

Lawrence of Arabia,
Bridge Too Far,
Zulu,
Das Boot,
Stalingrad
Paths of Glory,
Master and Commander,
Dr Strangelove,
Full Metal Jacket,
Gettysburg,
Enemy at the Gates,
and Henry V (for the St Crispin's speech alone).

See what I mean? Burgess and Yamauchi think Starship Troopers, intended for 25-year old adolescents, is just wonderful.

Cool, eh you guys, especially when those teenagers bodies getting ripped into pieces.

Do you think Burgess learns anything from war films? Other than, Yamauchi's
education of "...horrifying carnage in which said sappy teens are ripped apart and thrown towards the camera like sticky confetti"--about which Yamauchi just "can't get enough."

These guys are WRITERS.

Cool, eh, Steve and Ron.

War is part of the human experience. Movies about war are just as legitimate as movies about crime, relationships, families etc.

If there were no movies about war it wouldn't stop war. War predates film. If tomorrow they stopped producing movies about people falling in love it wouldn't stop it from happening outside theatres.

For an interesting read on the above try reading FLYBOYS, by James Bradley. Interesting perspective on the Americans and warfare. There is a section on George Bush Senior being shot down in WWII and what happened to his two crewmen. Maybe George Jr. is trying to live up to Dad?

Frank, I have always thought A Bridge Too Far is one of the great unjustly overlooked war films. It came out at the wrong time--the era of the epic war film was ending. But it told a downbeat story with scrupulous accuracy. Even the more unlikely stories in the film were taken from Cornelius Ryan's non-fiction account.

Truman, you're completely right. I am filled with shame and self-loathing. What I meant to say was, I hate all films except Winter Light by Bergman. And only for the choreography.

Just to be clear--Burgess and Steve Burgess are different people. Both good-looking, I'm sure.

Hey Frank, long time no see. How about the canucks the other night. Pulled that one out of the fire didn't they?

What I meant to say, Steve, is that immature people will never learn anything from war films--anti or pro, but will just love the cool images of giant bugs killing teenage soldiers-- Yamauchi and Burgess, for example--and the grown-ups don't need to see a film to understand what war is.

So they're all probably irrelevant as educational tools.

No need for self loathing, Steve. We're all what we are.

I saw a bit of that big bug movie on tv.
Incredibly stupid movie. It's all about spectacle.

Thomas49, you're exactly right on.

Took me a while to figure out what's going on, but these movies are all garbage and propaganda--if not for a certain nation or regime or administration--then for the continued insensitivity towards other peoples' suffering. Just part of the mix.

Many viewers are so accustumed to seeing violence, car-crashes and so on, that they probably relate to war movies the same way: they assume it is a made-up film using stunt men, fake explosions and simulated scenery.
Audiences walk away from violent films, admiring how "real" it looked.
But do they realize that at least some of these films portray the bloody mess that war is?
Entertainment is what people go for, hardly anyone go to a feature advertized as a "documentary"

Truman Green wrote:

I think you are being a bit too hard on those guys. Way too hard.... A significant amount of males in their late teens or early 20s would gladly go to war for a cause they feel is just.

I am in my early thirties now, and only now do I understand the impact of war. And it is only because I have a young child.

When I look at him, I think of the bombing of civilians. It does not matter what side, decade, or place you live in. How can you cause the death of a child and feel comfort?

It took me to have a child of my own to feel pain, shame, and empathy mixed into one emotion. Children are children.... they want to play, feel happy, and please the people around them.

I would have never cried for the children of Dresden or the Jews who suffered in concentration camps a few years ago. But it hits me now that I have my own child.

Once I could have pulled the trigger, but now I am not so sure.

The following lines never used to screw me up, but they do now....

Movies do very little emotionally. I enjoy the action and drama, but these lines move me.

Actually, they can make me cry.

Re Truman

"Is a war film entertainment" -- do I "enjoy" Starship Troopers?

Doi, and double doi.

Of course war films are entertainment. Hello? What are they to you -- punishment? That's how I feel about horror films, so I avoid them.

War, though, is interesting. I'm not repelled from the images of combat, because the issues behind each scene can be abstracted on so many levels: culture, camp, politics, the evolution of the sophistication of North American cynicism expressed as anarchism, etc etc.

Not to mention the virtues of war as backdrop to storytelling -- of drama, or comedy -- less often as romance.
It provides conflict, opportunity for interaction, y'see.

Re G West

Can you actually cite where I said it was alright to do anything to the Taliban because they are subhuman?

I think they should be shot at, but not "anything goes" -- I do not think we should eat them, for example.

I did call them "brainless subhumans", without realizing that such hearty, crude denigrations of those who are admittedly co-members of the species would cause you offense and worry. I apologize for that, and invite your submission of an acceptable substitute.

More thoughts on Starship Troopers

Starship Troopers is an *especially* easy-to-defend example of an "enjoyable" war film, because it is so patently intended to both arouse and criticize the feelings of self-righteous bloodthirstiness that we associate with patriotism and the concept of a noble war.

The characters, in particular the hero John Rico, are, indeed, sympathetic protagnists who, within the structures of their happy-face fascist society, learn to excel, to lead, to become strong, and to be useful. You can root them on, while deploring their mission and the horrific consequences to both themselves and their enemies -- the movie wants you to do both.

The effect on the viewer is a curious push-pull between being manipulated into cheering, and being manipulated into recoiling in disgust at both the underlying motivations and the sickening tastelessness of the effects crew (which is defensible as a way of showing the shocking, graceless carnage of war).

It's great.

But if you take the position that all war, being evil, can never be "enjoyable", then I can respect that.

Ron Yamauchi-Yammer, glad you came on the forum. If truth be known, I have more respect for you than any other writer around because you had the guts to acknowledge that the HIV/AIDS hypothesis is just a massive marketing propaganda effort and genocide by pharmacorpia.

Incidentally, great progress is being made on that issue, (a trial in Australia, for instance) and some day all the Aidists--from Clinton to Lewis--might at least be held morally accountable for the crimes they have committed, pretending that a harmless retrovirus can destroy the human immune system, when anyone with half a brain can figure out that it's a toxic syndrome that's responsible--not a viral infection.

So you were a moral icon to me and when you seemed to trivialize (at least to me) this very painful issue with images of teenagers being blown up, and claiming to hold Starship Troopers as your favourite war movie, I was very critical--actually kind of hurt.

For me, reading Woodend's perfect review was like experiencing a war. I don't have the luxury (as do most people) of being able to think about these awful things without, to some degree, experiencing them, so all of her images and insights were upsetting--like reading Johnny Got His Gun.

Morally, I think being entertained by or "enjoying" a dramatic representation of something that real people suffered through (think Khymer Rouge) is a bit of a desecration of their memory.

This is the main reason why I would never see a Eastwood-like hollywood business venture. I'd feel like a degenerate and idiot sitting in a movie theatre where one was playing.

But I have to admit I DID enjoy Dr. Strangelove, which was intended as a Swiftian satire and comedy. But then, I can barely think of Peter Sellers without starting to giggle. And Slim Pickens riding that rocket. Hilarious.

All the best, Ron.

Moat

Yes, but how do you determine what a just cause is? How does one disseminate the lies and propaganda from the truth? Many a young fool has ventured forth to do battle for king and country only to pay for that miscalculation with their lives. Or worse in my opinion, to end up a physical and mental "basket case" neglected by an uncaring society.

That is one of the wonderful things about having a child. The love one experiences for their own offspring serves as an awakening to the feelings of others. One can finally imagine the consequences of warfare when one realizes that all those statistics of war have mothers and fathers too. When one imagines the pain brought about by the harm or lose of their own child then a sense of empathy and responsibility is engendered towards others.

When I was 16, my mother sent me up on a tree, but not to pick apples. She was a local air raid warden and although it was in the summer, the tree had no leaves. They were blown off by a bomb blast and the intestines of a 11 year old girl from my school were hanging from the branches.

I had to lift them off and scrape them into a box already containing scraps of human flesh and hair that looked like washrags rolled in dirt. 11 people were killed in that house, including 2 little girls, one of them, who went over to play.

There was a fighter training base, the largest tank repair workshop in the country, an aircraft factory and a large railway repair workshop surrounding our community. Not one of them received a single bomb till the end, but the village was carpet bombed several times.

Now we have the daily, several overflights by USAF B52 bombers over our house, in the middle of BC, training to mass murder thousands somewhere on Earth, to protect the profitability of US multinationals. I curse every time I see, or hear them.

Ed Deak.

Hi Truman:

Well, morally I can see your point about desecrating the memories of actual victims of war, but by that logic you should be avoiding all subject matter that involves real-life death or even harm. That imposes severe limit on the subject matter of your allowable viewing -- you'd be basically left with romantic comedies.

I'm not denying that some movies trivialize and therefore help to numb the impact of tragedy. But surely there's a median between avoiding the topic and doing it disrespectfully.

Which brings me to a Totally Off Topic Side Chat: the rethinking-AIDS concept. Thanks for your comments, but I'm trying to stay somewhat neutral on it, out of an abundance of caution.

Mentioning it to people tends to yield two responses: wary incredulity that mainstream science could be so far off track, and incensed offense because they or their loved ones actually *are* treating their HIV and think you're being a total homophobe or something by bringing up Duesberg's theory (i.e. that the immune disease "AIDS" has a toxicological rather than viral cause).

I myself would be interested in reading an article to see what if anything Vancouver folks are contributing to this debate. Why don't you, Mr. Published Novelist Who Reads This Area Meticulously?

'Bridge on the River Kwai' pretty well sums up the insanity of war .
British soldiers must build a railway bridge for the Japanese so they build a,really, good one only to have it blown to smithereens by Brit commando's .

Fiat lux

I think there are few others who post here on the Tyee who have anywhere near the understanding of the true horrific nature of war as you do Ed. It seems far too often one has to experience the reality of bloodshed before one realizes what it really means to see death and destruction all around. We live in a society that surrounds us with images of brutality and mayhem, but shields us from the obscene abomination that senseless violence and war really are. We watch as bodies are blown apart on the movie screen but we do not get drenched in the blood and viscera of our celluloid victims. Their screams pass as we move on to the next scene. We are not trapped in a foxhole having to endure their shrieks of agony for hours on end.

Violence in our society is sanitized, packaged, marketed and distributed for consumption to the masses. Our "news" is carefully edited to ensure that the scenes of war that are depicted are not too "disturbing", and we are given ample forewarning so that we may turn our heads or walk out of the room. The net effect is to desensitize, to numb our reactions, to get us accustomed to violence as an abstraction that has no basis in our realities. In that way war can be propagated without much dissent from the masses. Fortunes can be made from the sale of armaments. It's all good for the industrialist's and their shareholders who profit from this. In a situation where there may be potential hostilities an arms vendor will sell product to one side, creating an opportunity for another vendor to sell product to the opposing party. And sales opportunities abound as arms vendors clamour over each other to exploit the next conflict. Disgusting!

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=2d383264-f486-4305-9336-d6178d88f3b2&k=70609

Yammer
Yes.

Do you want me to?

Here it is, from the 'Operation Backfire' Thread

The second half of Elizabeth Rubin's long piece of investigative journalism is in the New York Times Magazine today. You can link to it here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/29/magazine/29taliban.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

When I was young I used to try to read "All Quiet on the Western Front." I never yet have made it through the whole novel as I always found it too depressing. I have always felt I got the point though, I wasn't dumb enough to have to have the point driven home for that many pages.

G West:

Wow, hard-hitting investigation there bud. Especially since you highlighted the phrase that I cited myself as using -- you're like Sherlock Holmes.

This is what *you* said, dum dum: "I was almost as put off by yammer's comment above as I was by his single entry in another debate here at Tyee a while back where he said it was okay to do whatever one wanted with the Taliban because they were sub-human. Did you miss that? I have some concerns about yammer too."

Did I say you should do whatever one wanted? No, I said that the West needs to keep up the heat on these fellows. (Do you object to "fellows"?)

You said 'I think it is incumbent upon the western nations to keep up the heat on this movement. For the good of us all, it needs to be fought.' A movement which you said was made up of people who are SUBHUMAN.

Is the connection so difficult to make?

It is exactly the same thing that the west - the same people who collected Japanese skulls as souvenirs - said about the Japanese in the last war.

It represents the de-humanization of the enemy and it is repellant - and ought to be so to any 'civilized' person.

The strange thing is, Yammer, I can also point to a conversation you had on another thread earlier where you took the opposite point of view in a discussion with Ron Erwin - What, if anything, do you really believe?

To carry on the trend of sanitizing war. The reallity is worse than many think. 'Bloody Buna' by Lida Mayo is an eye opener to the reall horror of war. The Japanese soldiers were mandated to 'live off the land'. When they ran out of provisions they ate their prisoners, the locals, and then their own dead in that order. The Americans kept secret for fifty years the fate of airmen captured on Chichi Jima as being too horrible for the public consumption. They were killed for the dinners of the Japanese Officers. (Flyboys by Bradley) We don't hear or see this in the films. But then if Hollywood can make a buck.......

I am pretty sure you have heard about Marshall McLuhan and possibly even read his THESIS called The Medium Is The Message.

Any FILM STUDENT will tell you film is the imaging of thought. As is painting and writing.How well i write,paint or film will eventually creep into your thought processes either positive or negative .Look around you,every one wants to bend your ear and empty your wallet.

Writing,painting,film...propaganda or art,advertising or what???

Back 2 McLuhan .

The point is that the idea of killing someone else is so much more palatable when it is the 'other' that's being killed. Truman's point was well taken; it has been a long tradition in films ostensibly about war.

We demean ourselves whenever we pretend that our targets in combat deserve to die because of who or what they are.

The only justification for war is self-defence. When attacked.
Period.

The absolute intellectual bankruptcy of the idea of a pre-emptive war is being written in blood every day in the cities, towns and villages of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Art may occasionally find a way to hint at that reality, but, very infrequently.

For the most part war films are propaganda designed to make us feel better about ourselves. Watching the ads from our NEW CANADIAN GOVERNMENT for Canadian Forces recruitment these days it is hard not to know that fact in your own gut.

In my view.

Yes,fiat, I see those b52 s as well, sometimes they cross paths, one heading north north east and the other returning. The paths (contrails unless I get out my binocs) vary jsut enough so that I cannot figure out where they might be heading. Sometimes there are several a day doing the run to where ever, Central Asia, I suppose.
WE should get our military to protect our air space from these foreigners.

In a way, these planes represent an image much different than what you have described a couple of times above about warfare. They are clean,professional, technological wonders, in contrast to your experiences on the ground, getting the consequences. Sometimes warfare is presented to us a a technological problem with technological solutions...more something worked out on computer screens (like this), hitting faceless masses from great distances away.

At the end of the 1940s and beginning of the 1950s, I was a snotty school kid; we lived or visited often in St James (Wpg) out on Portage where the Deer Lodge Hospital is. At that time it (Deer Lodge Hospital) was a vets'facility. I still remember on sunny spring and summer days when the nurses would bring out the guys who were patients. There were many with parts of their bodies gone. What I especially remember, tho, were the fellows form the Great War who had been gassed. They were brought out in wheel chairs, and they sat, skeletal,grey, immobile, looking out at the street, trees and sky. They (to me) never seemed to move.
A couple of scenes from the USA film, THE DEER HUNTER, remind me of what I saw back then when I was a kid.

A couple of anti war movies I saw during the 1960s (besides Trumbo's JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN) were one Italian and one Japanese movie about the soldiers in WWII. The Italian movie was a comedy about a soldier trying to make it home after Italy had surrendered (late 1943, I think) and all the troubles he and civilians had with outside soldiers, partisans, and local politicos.
The Japanese movie showed us a decimated battalion of Japanese soldiers trying to get to the other side of the island without being slain by the Americans.This film was not a comedy at all. The soldiers were shown as gaunt,(references to surviving on 'monkey meat') frightened and just trying ot survive.

Both films were filled with images of squalor, desperation, random murder and fear. I thought at the time that defeat sure brings out good anti war movies.

By the way, I thought that LITTLE BIG MAN, MASH, AND SOLDIER BLUE were not bad anti war films from USA during the Vietnam conflict.

More recently, the opening of the film, KANDAHAR, showing the view from the helicopter of the people running to the air strip in a herk jerky fashion, and then revealing what was wrong with them just before cutting to the story itself, while shorter in minutes than the opening of PRIVATE RYAN, burned an image and an attitude into my mind. (I believe this film was released just prior to, or concurrent with the attacks by us good guys on Afghanistan)

For sure, tho, film is a powerful medium for getting us all thinking the ways we do about warfare.

the bbc film "conspiracy" with kenneth branagh was an excellent portrayal of the german mindset.

slaughterhouse five is also deserving of a mention.

Billy Pilgrim ! You shilling for Vonnegut or WHAT ? Remember,you are nothing more than a figment of his imagination.

Keep up your postings and WE may eventually believe you are REAL.

NOW,TELL US ABOUT THE DRESDEN FIRE BOMBING AGAIN,BILLY !

Let's see, Thomas49 says Kubrick is a Nazi. "Violence begets violence." I guess that means that violence in art begets violence in life. I saw a different Clockwork Orange, one that asked 'Is the cure worse than the disease?' And perhaps even 'Does the cure cause the disease?' But no, art that portays things is apparently the equivalent of those things. Sticking with Kubrick's films based on provocative novels, we should surmise that Lolita is child porn and Nabokov is a kiddie diddler. Truman, who agrees with thomas49 that Kubrick is a Nazi, and thinks all war films make war possible (see child porn issue, above), thinks Dr. Strangelove is a giggle, especially Slim Pickens riding the nuclear bomb. Now I'm really confused. At least I understand Ron Yamauchi and Steve Burgess, who I personally know to be quintessential adultescents, being a juvenile duffus myself, but at least they have a taste for a little intellectual consistency. I'm sitting here wondering, given that depicting evil seems to be seen as the equivalent of evil, are Truman and Thomas49 raging libertarians or do they want to see the depiction of evil in art licensed by the state?

Charles
Truman starts out with an idea, but almost always goes too far.

As to 'art' and its relationship to violence, I think there's some interesting research being done in the area of video games and violent acting out by children. So far as I've followed it preliminary conclusions seem to point to the fact that there is a causal connection - at least among a subset of subjects.

In a time when the economic pressures and tensions on the family are increasing, I don't think the idea that we should be discussing the role of pictorial and representational violence is such a dumb idea. Do you?

We know that advertising seems to be an effective way to sell soap. Are you so sure that it isn't a pretty good way to promote other kinds of attitudes and behavior?

Why do you suppose the information about the 'uses' of Japanese skulls was so prominent in the pictorial journals during WWII?

Have you seen those ads for the Canadian Forces? If so, don’t you feel you’re being manipulated?

"Das Boot, the longer version in German was pretty accurate.we chased submarines in the 60's and even did a day or two on board. Two places I would never want to be in war. tanks and submarines and I;' not claustrophobic. The German submarine service had a horrible death rate. No wonder as the movie shows, some guys simply cracked up. Their favourite on the surface record was "It's a long way to Tipperary. I show it to my grandkids. None of them have any desire to join the military and that's just fine with us. But they all do the Nov.11th parade. I don't go. Too many bad memories. Many of the folks I had joined up with were retreads from WW2. Most didn't say much about their experiences. My kids asked a chum of mine( Two years in a aircrew prison camp compliments of Hitler) was it like Hogan's heroes'. Howie just said. No guys it sure wasn't . When he got back to Canada his own mother didn't recognize him. he was a shadow and looked old at 25. When my oldest brother returned it took quite a while for him to be fairly normal in his actions.Almost4 and a half years in the army overseas. Never mentioned any of it. war movies, Mostly BS. But Das Boot summed it up much better than some phony US movie

All of the things G West says above are true. And then we have representation issues that arise from the most violent video games and advertising and political propaganda being applied to artwork by the likes of Nabokov and Burgess and Kubrick. "Intent" is a big grey area ripe for abuse and backfilling and obfuscation by both the offender and the offended. But implying that those who created Clockwork Orange (both versions) are Nazi equivalents when most people see the film and the book as an indictment of both gang and government violence suggests a certain failure to discriminate, don't you think? It's an issue that concerns me, because I frequently see efforts by the left and right to decry and even censor art they don't appear to understand. It's common, and insidious, and actually quite dangerous.

As I said, Truman often goes to far. That said, he's a valuable contributor much of the time.
Still, discrimination isn't always bad and we can often learn from each other's over-reaching too.

Lately I think it's much more insidious on the right than the left - Tyee editors to the contrary.

;-)

should be 'too' far. DO you think you guys could work on an edit function Charles?

Personally, I think it would be a lot more useful than more DISSENT. We have enough of that already!

LOL

Ed:

At least THESE lads had booty to drive them on.......

I quite liked Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The White Comapny"
as well as anything written by Bernard Cornwell about pre-medieval England.

Back in the time when the "generals" fought as well...............

I couldn't agree more with you.

Read McLuhan,before you put your words into the mouths of others.

Kubrick was intent on epic ideology sold to simpletons...ala 2001 space odyssey and he was a true storyteller as he showed with How I Learned To Love The Bomb/Dr.Strangelove.Picking Peter Sellers to play the many roles was GENIUS only because Sellers was a GENIUS.

So,Goebbels was a communications GENIUS,Kubrick was a communications GENIUS,Peter Sellers was a communications GENIUS,DW Griffiths was a communications GENIUS...

So it looks like the only DUMMIES are in the AUDIENCE .

Or ENLISTING...

Long before hostilities erupted on July 12, Hezbollah construction teams had gone out and modified numerous Lebanese homes. Sometimes with, but most the time without, the homeowner's permission, workers began adding on a large, single-function room. These rooms were unique for, when completed, they lacked an essential element of all rooms -- a door. Each room was sealed shut -- but only, and immediately, after an object was placed inside.

Often homeowners and neighbors did not know what exactly was entombed within the room as the object's insertion and the subsequent sealing of the room normally took place at night -- with the object always kept under wraps.

The residences Hezbollah selected for these unsolicited "home improvements" were chosen for their proximity to the Israeli border. When the fighting started after Tel Aviv responded militarily to Hezbollah's July cross-border raid, resulting in the deaths of three Israeli soldiers and the capture of two more, the purpose of the covert home improvements became evident to the owners -- though many were destroyed by Israeli air strikes before they could be activated.

When war erupted in southern Lebanon, designated leaders of Hezbollah combat teams received envelopes, each containing an address of one of the modified homes. The team quickly deployed to its assigned location, immediately breaking through an exterior wall of the sealed room. Each envelope contained aiming and firing instructions for the object prepositioned inside the room before it was sealed -- a surface-to-surface missile atop a launcher. After removing part of the room's roof to allow for unobstructed flight and on command, the team was to fire the missile, raining death and destruction down upon Israel's civilian population.

There was one major flaw in Hezbollah's home-conversion-to-missile-launch-site plan: Their construction activities had not gone unnoticed by Israeli intelligence. Closely monitoring Hezbollah's activities, they knew in advance the locations of most sites. As each room was completed, it had been added to Israel's target list so, once fighting started, it could quickly be destroyed -- its civilian hosts in many cases becoming collateral damage due to Hezbollah's illegal use of such a tactic.

Logjam 603
What are you talking about?

This is the war movies, violence and iconography site. You are obviously looking for another discussion.

If I were you I'd try the Glavin site at the bottom of the page - straightshooter there will be more than willing to accomodate you.

I'll bite logjam. If the Israeli's were so sharp they knew where all the bad guys were operating from, how come they blew up a UN observation building plainly marked on the maps. They did it because they felt like doing it. George wouldn't complain and of course Steve Harper never complained either. Back to war movies, for those of you who like that sort of thing. I think you all should get into the archives and see the bodies stacked and burn at assorted prison camps in WW2, or some of the clips from assorted US prisons in the Iraq fiasco. Check out the Vietnamese kids running terrified down the road and one young woman in particular who was naked as her clothes were burned off. Or something about Rwanda, or MIA Lie where the US troops simply tried to kill everyone in a village but were stopped by one oftheir own helicopter pilots who offered to shoot them all if they didn't stop. The guy in charge of the killing got court Marshalled, then some President pardoned him.A few bits of Hiroshima or Nagasaki might be right up your alley as well. Those are real people being chopped up not some US pretending hero. By thwe way, real pilots keep their oxygen mask hooked up something the movie guys have yet to do.

Maybe Loggy is trying out a movie plot....

I cannot remember the whole story or all the players...but i do remember a young COLIN POWELL doing his best UNCLE TOM impersonation for the military.

yes sir boss,all them children wuz armed ta the max and the pregnant wimen was hiding bombs and the disabled old men wuz really kung foo fighters...

that was real War Porn , the kind of obscene acts only COWARDS could legitamize

Thomas49, yeah, the only dummies ARE in the audience, or enlisting. Well said.

And we're supposed to have revelations about war from Toms Cruise and Hanks and Eastwood and the like, who's probably made 500 hundred mill or so doing wars and violence.

They're not going to get the point, Thomas49, but you did a good minmalist effort.

By the way, Charles, why complain at my response to Yammer and Burgess, when you admit that they're both "adultecents," and that you're a "juvenile dufus."

I'd have thought you would have appreciated my fantastic insight into the personalities of all three of you guys.

However, I will admit that you did tip me off regarding yourself with this about Full Metal Jacket or Private Ryan, I think:

"It was supposed to be a sort of lesson in the horrors of war, and that part of the film worked its intended purpose."

I used to be a teaching assistant in a high school. And I recognize that statement as exactly how my grade ten students would have written about this kind of war film.

And I'm thinking: Kee-riste, these people are adolescents, which you admit you are.

Charles, didn't you know about the horrors of war before you saw the film?

If not, why not?

Like Thomas49 says--maybe not all, but most--of these films are purposefully aimed at immature people--the same people who willingly line up to get their faces shot off.

If you get to be 47 years old and there's still lessons to be learned from war films, well--as long as there's till a preponderance of immature adults--there will always be wars.

Which, as you'll recall, was my original hypothesis.

I'd also be interested in knowing what "efforts by the left (and right) to decry and censor art they don't understand," you're talking about.

Can you supply some examples were people on the left are trying to get specific kinds of art censored?

Exactly DPL.

If these idiots want to see war films and learn "lessons," as Charles Campbell claims, they should go find some real war films--not psychopaths financing private planes and Aspen condos pretending that they're teaching LESSONS.

Might be hard to find, but I'm sure there's footage around of all these massacres, mutilations and genocides.

I bet you can get some really good stuff about the recent Yogoslavia war where the Serbs murdered 6000 young men in a town--all in a few days.

Why not go for REAL footage to get your "horrors of war" lessons.

Thomas 49 your memory of the Vietnamese war is a bit obscured, Colin Powell had nothing to with My Lai, it was Lt William Calley who recevied a court Martial for the massacre committed in My Lai

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mylai/Myl_intro.html

You might want to check this out woody - before you go too far out on THAT limb:

http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:zvKNC2wgh4IJ:www.consortiumnews.com/archive/colin3.html+Colin+Powell+and+vietnam&hl=en&gl=ca&ct=clnk&cd=2

In addition, THOMAS 49, I see no humor in your uncle tom rendition in regards to Colin Powell, in fact I think its demeaning and insulting to the black people.

Or, if you prefer, this, from the Nation, May 2, 2001 - by David Corn

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20010514/corn20010502

Sorry to disabuse you, but, if you like I can provide more evidence.

Thomas 49, as usual, knows of what he speaks.

Or this, from US Veterans Dispatch:
http://www.usvetdsp.com/story13.htm

G West this is an insert from the site that you provided,

Here's one more. Includes a couple of quotes about killing civilians.

http://www.disinfo.com/archive/pages/dossier/id803/pg1/

Powell was part of the cover up woody - not the massacre itself.

I present evidence on both sides of the question and you can decide for yourself.

As to Powell's record - his performance before the United Nations that helped make the dishonest case for Iraq has to be what will be most remembered about the man.

Like so many others in the Bush administration - he should have walked out - but he didn't.

G West, don’t get me into a pissing match at his hour ok, its about my bed time now, sh!t don’t you ever sleep Garf

I knew Powell was in Vietnam, but I didn't know about all his lying and suckholing in defence of American soldiers who shot Vietnamese civilians for fun and games.

(Did you read that story about that American chopper pilot who ordered his gunner to shoot his own men if they harmed another Vietnamese civilian? Fantastic! In the face of all that peer pressure the guy had to have a special gene for decency and courage!)

But I knew exactly what kind of a psycho Powell was by watching him gloat in a press conference during the first Iraq invasion about how the American army was (referring to Iraqi soldiers) going "cut them off and kill them."

He loved it.

And Woody, I appreciate your point, but I'm black myself and I don't think Thomas49's out of line with his "Uncle Tom" impersonation of Colin Powell. (I acknowledge that other black people might disagree with me). Powell got up the chain of command by being an Uncle Tom for his superiors and an incredible liar for forty or so years.

Did you see him lying his face off at the UN--about WMDs in Iraq--for his boss and fellow killers?

Garf I agree 101% with you regarding Powell and Iraq, your bang on the money on that one.

Nothin' to it woody. Since about 4:30 this afternoon I've done up the accounts and rendered a bill to a client for about $5000.00; had dinner; raked the yard; had tea and cake with a lady friend; laid up about 12 posts on the Operation Backfire thread - it's in the archives now - for a poor deluded kid who thinks he's going to do god's work over there and posted the stuff I did on this thread to boot. I also read the editorials in tomorrow's new york times, an article on the violence in Oaxaca, posted two or three files on another site, sent some email, showered and had a bowl of ice cream.

How about you?

Pretty lazy day I'd say.

Sleep tight dude.

Oh I also read the stuff on the Guardian website.

Truman Green asked,

Yes I sure did, ok,good night all.

Truman,
This is way off topic, but, I thought you might be interested:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,6-2427975,00.html

And here's another old file I pulled up from my archives - Chris Hitchens on Colin Powell.

Also from the Nation:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20010122/hitchens

G.West-Alcibiades, Stephen Jay Gould was a huge evolutionary faker. This is macabre, I admit, but I predicted that a man as conflicted as he must have been could never live longer than 65 years. I was right. I read every one of his books (about 12, I think) One in which he actually claims that the complexity of the human eye is not a contraindication to "selective adaptation" because each of the components of the human eye--iris, cornea, lens, retina, etc ACTUALLY EXISTED IN PRECURSOR ORGANISMS WITH TOTALLY DIFFERENT functionality. He also played with a mechanism by which all of these mind-numbing specialties arrived together in the human eyeball.

Gould actually had huge doubts about Darwin's ideas. He called his rationalization "punctuated equilibrium," a silly idea he came up with to excuse conventional Darwinism from its insistence that natural selection worked its magic in a smooth continuum.

He's typical of a certain convention in modern science in which researchers invent a plausible hypothesis to explain discoveries which put into doubt the original theories with which they have been working, and which have been responsible for their grant money and continued interest from publishers.

Gould's big lie was that "punctuated equilibrium" didn't basically throw the whole idea of evolution by natual selection into the garbage can--which it did.

Some neo-darwinians--believe it or not--have begun to claim that "transitional species," (the missing link, for instance) are no longer necessary for the natural-selection-evolution hypothesis to be valid.

But I know you only brought this up, Alcibiades, as a ploy.

It's probably just by 50 dollar computer system, but is anybody else finding it impossible to get on to the Glavin thread?

I keep getting that, "This page cannot be displayed," notice.

Same here. So it's not your computer - mind you mine's not worth any more than that. My kids call it a 'welfare' system.

Funny. It cost about $4500 4 1/2 years ago.

Not it's not worth a plugged nickel.

I think the editors are in the process of posting a new story onto the site.

Thomas 49 referred to Colin Thomas as an "Uncle Tom" for testifying at the UN. What an astoundingly stupid and offensive statement. A black man becomes Secretary of State, does something that thomas 49 disapproves of, and is called "Uncle Tom?" Please tommy, give us the list of acceptable jobs for a black person.

And don't stop. What about Don Rumsfeld? What's your race-based critique of him?

Colin Powell, not Thomas, of course.

Before I go to the studio and get back to work selling false ideas of the Amerikan dream,I will point out the UNCLE TOM was affixed to the very young and up and coming Colin Powell because of the MISINFORMATION he was forced to convey to the American Public,to DOWNPLAY the massacre and DEFUSE the situation.

I did not write those articles at the time of the massacre,I did not call Colin Powell an UNCLE TOM ,his fellow Americans did...AND THEY WERE JUSTIFIED.

Colin Powell had no where to go but UP THE LADDER,good looking ,bright,well educated and admired by both Blacks and Whites around the world.

The only problem was he was in the military,the old WHITE BOYS KLUB,where the only thing a lot of the Blacks did was the DIRTY WORK...POINT MAN ON PATROL or like poor Colin Powel a LIASON OFFICER to wash the DIRTY LAUNDRY in public.

As for Rumsfeld and his HILLBILLY GARBAGE that is in the Whitehouse,they no longer have Colin Powell to do their DIRTY WORK.

Now,Colin Powell is hopefully...HIS OWN MAN.

"free at last" as one of my heros is quoted in his famous"I Have A Dream" speech.

Of course,SB,you would have had to have lived thru these times to know this info and I know yer still a young pup,so keep on learning and keep on with your own writing,because we both know how EASY it can be ,to be,TAKEN OUT OF CONTEXT.

Thomas49, don't let Burgess play the fake race card on you. There is no better
phrase to describe Colin Powell than "Uncle Tom."

And, as a Tyee poster commented a while back, "Auntie Tom" is perfect for Condaleeza Rice.

For more regarding her Auntie Tom background there's plenty at google.

I noted his lack of CORRECT INFORMATION in his reply and I read him when the tyee profers his articles,so,I know he is a fair weather intellectual,he has not stood the test of time yet.

But there is HOPE for him and others out there that did not experience those times and like myself will read others who have the experience of other times.I like the historical first hand evidence given here by the likes of Frank and ed deaks and as well as understanding that those postings are particular windows out of which we can peer and see what it was like for those,while we sit in the comfort of our homes.

few history lessons are like those taught on these pages.

got 2 get 2 work , have a good day Truman,et al...

Thomas49, do you think Steve's mistaken use of "Colin Thomas," instead of Colin Powell, was a kind of freudian slip, in which he unconsciously made note of that other Uncle Tom, Supreme Court judge, Clarence Thomas, thereby completing the well-known trilogy of black American Uncle Toms?

Truman,you are a naughty fellow!But I don't think SB is that educated to make that kind of slip.

As I stated"he is a fair weather intellectual" only bringing his brain into gear when he THINKS IT IS SAFE.

later gator!

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/October2006/301006Operation.htm
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/October2006/301006Censorship.htm

The CBC Documentary shown on the Passionate Eye last year called Operation Hollywood. Illustrative of the role the military plays in the making of war movies, i.e. full cooperation if they like the script or script changes and none if they don't. The Pentagon wants moving recruitment posters.

Yes, Nana, in fact I bet a person could decipher the sincerity of an "anti-war" film with its "sort-of lessons in the horrors of war," according to Charles Campbell, by counting the number of F16's, B52s and aircraft carriers the military has made available to the producers.

I went over to the Glavin thread and disappointedly noted that there was another 'dissent' column up, only to see that it wasn't a new column, but the same old column with ALL THE COMMENTS ERASED.

I wonder what that means?

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8163.htm

Here's the full length version of Operation Hollywood.

Yes Truman, I checked out the Dissent thread....and the comments are indeed gone.
Hello Editor...what's the explanation for that?

Unless the erasing of the comments on the Glavin thread is just a technical problem, I bet Glavin's gone for good, in which case I'll be making up "I love Tyee" signs out of plywood and marching up and down the King George Highway at rush hour.

G West said to me: You said 'I think it is incumbent upon the western nations to keep up the heat on this movement. For the good of us all, it needs to be fought.' A movement which you said was made up of people who are SUBHUMAN.

Is the connection so difficult to make?

Yeah, it is. I am saying that the Taliban should be fought by the West, that the West should not accomodate radical Islam, which is inimicable to our values.

Ideally they could be defeated without military means. But while they are blowing up embassies and hijacking planes, it is a combat situation as well as (although, perhaps less than) a war that will be ultimately won psychologically, via appeal to humane values.

My feeling about shooting wars is that you should shoot back.

But I never said it was ok to do "anything" to them. I don't want to be lumped in with those who only seek a military solution, and/or a solution at any cost. For example, I'm very disturbed by the apparent endorsement of quasi-torture techniques by the Bush regime. The Geneva Conventions and habeus corpus should be adhered to. It makes no sense to defend our values by crapping on them.

It is exactly the same thing that the west - the same people who collected Japanese skulls as souvenirs - said about the Japanese in the last war.

It represents the de-humanization of the enemy and it is repellant - and ought to be so to any 'civilized' person.

Dully earnest, but true. It would be wrong to think of the Islamists as merely "brainless subhumans." The shock troops of theocracy are also its victims.

However, don't bait me with appeals to my racial identity, because I don't believe in that weak-minded herd mentality at all.

The strange thing is, Yammer, I can also point to a conversation you had on another thread earlier where you took the opposite point of view in a discussion with Ron Erwin - What, if anything, do you really believe?

I don't know what discussion you're referring to; is it really so strange to disagree with Ron Erwin?

Perhaps you can point to something else, but I've been very consistent in opposing theocracy generally and Islamism specifically. I find it useful to do so in Tyee talkbacks when people succumb to the idea that the enemy of your enemy (oppressive corporate Amerikkka) is your friend, or at least benign.

At the same time, I'm disappointed with the way that the war has been handled and was never that sure that invasion was the best way to handle the situation.

G West said to me: You said 'I think it is incumbent upon the western nations to keep up the heat on this movement. For the good of us all, it needs to be fought.' A movement which you said was made up of people who are SUBHUMAN.

Is the connection so difficult to make?

It puzzles me why you think I am for doing "anything" to these people.

Clearly I am saying that the Taliban should be fought by the West, that the West should not accomodate radical Islam, which is inimicable to our values.

But ideally they could be defeated without military means. Indeed, I think that conversion to Reformation values is the key, as it was in the West.

Meanwhile, while they are blowing up our embassies and hijacking our planes, it is a combat situation. My feeling about shooting wars is that you should shoot back.

But I never said it was ok to do "anything" to them. I don't want to be lumped in with those who only seek a military solution, and/or a solution at any cost. For example, I'm very disturbed by the apparent endorsement of quasi-torture techniques by the Bush regime. The Geneva Conventions and habeus corpus should be adhered to. It makes no sense to defend our values by crapping on them.

It is exactly the same thing that the west - the same people who collected Japanese skulls as souvenirs - said about the Japanese in the last war.

It represents the de-humanization of the enemy and it is repellant - and ought to be so to any 'civilized' person.

You're right. Dully earnest, but right. It's wrong to think of the Islamists as merely "brainless subhumans." The shock troops of theocracy are also its victims.

However, don't bait me with appeals to my Japanese identity. Some soldiers collected body parts? Well, men in wartime often act badly. It's not worse for me because they were Japanese body parts. Japanese soldiers did vile things too -- do a search for Unit 731 sometime, but not before eating.

The strange thing is, Yammer, I can also point to a conversation you had on another thread earlier where you took the opposite point of view in a discussion with Ron Erwin - What, if anything, do you really believe?

I don't know what discussion you're referring to! (And is it really so strange to disagree with Ron Erwin?)

I thought I had been fairly consistent, actually. Both in opposing theocracy generally and Islamism specifically, and in criticizing mistakes in the way that the war has been conducted, e.g. illegal treatment of captives.

Sorry about the double post.

Yammer
I have no idea what your identity is - I simply used the most flagrant example of dehumanizing people I could lay my hands on.

Thanks for the apology.

As for the comment you made to Ron Erwin, I agreed with what you posted in response to something ignorant he'd written. If you're interested, you can search for it in the archives.

I don’t want to take it any further. That fact that you are of Japanese ancestry is completely irrelevant. We all ought to hold ourselves to certain standards of personal behavior.

The fact that someone doesn't, however, does not reduce their status as a human being.

I'll take your word for it and assume this was a slip. I further assume the fact you've admitted it to be an indication of character on your part. You could have just let it slide.

Cheers.

Yammer
Not only is Radical Islam not a threat to us....it has been fostered by the western intelligence agencies from the very beginning. It's called divide and conquer. The British paid Ayatollah Khomeini's up-keep while he was living in exile in Paris and Osama was a CIA agent. PUHLEEZ!

Just look at all the benefits of the War Of Terror from increased arms sales to loss of liberty.

http://www.ynetnews.com/home/0,7340,L-4176,00.html

Here's something that should cause you to give your head a shake!

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=TUC20061029&articleId=3620

Depleted Uranium Death Toll among US War Veterans Tops 11,000
Nationwide Media Blackout Keeps U.S. Public Ignorant About This Important Story

by James P. Tucker Jr.

So far, there has been only documentary coverage of this issue.

Nana,

My brain may be shaken already -- my mom recently copped to dropping me out of the layette. But as far as fear of radical Islam goes, it didn't come from reading American propaganda, or being deceived by Bush 43.

I did refugee work for a decade, interviewing about two thousand claimants and witnesses. This also obliged me to read publications from Amnesty International, Reporters without Borders, the UNHCR, the US Department of State Annual Human Rights Reports, Human Rights Watch, etc etc.

Islamic regimes are not the only abusers of human rights, but with remarkable consistency you can see that their governments (or where they pressure the government, as in Nigeria) withhold the due process and personal freedom rights that we take for granted here in Canada.

Despite the problems of the West -- like Walmart and too many people smoking on terraces -- people flee here from Islam, not the other way around.

I also believe that Islam is not confined to "their" countries, that it is a colonizing religion. When I hear that some mullahs want sharia courts in Canada, that's scary.

But thanks to you, Nana, we know all of those human rights reports were false. No one really wants to run away from those theocrats -- they are all CIA plants!

What you say is true, but so is what I'm saying. Your truth is being used as the excuse in the war for resources abroad and the war against our freedom here. Luckily an increasing number of people are waking up to it.

Yammer
Did you see the interview between Prince Aga Khan and Peter Mansbridge on the weekend?

You're generalizing from limited knowledge again. If we judged Christianity from the 700 Club and Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson among others, we'd have some pretty strange ideas about Christians; or if we based our feelings about Jews on the revings of Meyer Kahane; I could go on but I think you know that.

Nana wrote:

"What you say is true, but so is what I'm saying. Your truth is being used as the excuse in the war for resources abroad and the war against our freedom here. Luckily an increasing number of people are waking up."

That's the absolutely best yet!

That exact juxtaposition of words is the most revealing I've ever read regarding the manipulation of public opinion by the purveyors of permanent conflict between Islamic and Western societies.

Yammer, this is the game being played by the marketers of permanent war: that because there is an undeniable, authoritarian aspect in Islamic societies under which few of us would prefer to live, there is an existential prerequiste for hatred and suspicion between the West and Islam.

This is the big lie currently in use to provide the rationale for permanent war.

The fakers and manipulators always use the most useful truth to recruit soliders and citizens for their wars and economic ventures.

G West:
There are terrorists in every religion (I'm not sure about atheism) but trying to make an equivalence is tenuous. Abortion clinic shootings, for example, are rare and condemned among Christians even though many Christians do not believe in abortion.

Islam has a problem in that the critical mass of moderate believers is silent regarding the activities of the Osamaists. And for good reason: the religion punishes apostacy, and apostacy is determined and sanctioned locally.

Tru and Nana:

You're quite right, the West's response to Islamic extremism is currently being commanded by an untrustworthy, incompetent, exploitative, and repressive regime under the nominal command of Bush 43. What makes you think I don't think that's a horrendous state of affairs?

rkewen posted:

Hard to read All Quiet at times, for similar fare, with some moments of tenderness, and less focus on the slaughter try Seven Men of Gascony. Based in the Napoleonic period its commentary includes the comradeship of arms and the persistence of memory. I think I like if for the ending...

Since film is art, take it for that, if the canvas is filled with blood and guts then that is the message, no different than the 'hole' images of the post WW1 vets in europe. I suspect that the same emotional connection to the taking of lives by the last of the WW2, Korea and Vietnam generation is now coming to a fever pitch.

Why is more the important question, and what effect will such images have?

Better war films than the ones mentioned here are The Pianist and Schindlers List.

Yammer,
Is that shorthand for 'I didn't see mansbridge's interview with the Aga Khan?'

Do you 'know' anything about what christianists believe - or Kahane's followers?

Do a bit more research and stop pretending.

If a soldier tests positive twice for drugs, he or she will be sent for counselling, he said.

"If they correct their ways, then they're available for deployment later on," said Mr. O'Connor, who rejected reports that as many as one-third of 1,000 troops failed the drug tests.

This from an article on the sidebar...

HEY!

Yeh, saw it Harald. Tried to point it out to a raging militarist called History1 who claims he's a CF hero on the Operation Backfire thread - It's still popping days after it slipped off the board here - in 'views'

Garth: no, I didn't see that interview. Why, would it invalidate my ten years of research and interviewing?

I doubt it Yammer - you seem pretty convinced of your own infallability. The Aga Khan simply and quietly made the point that if we in the west think we know much about the reality of Islam we aren't likely to be terribly accurate since much of our opinion is based upon incomplete and highly media-influenced information.

He's been a leader of a great many Muslims world wide for a lot longer than ten years.

He's also very familiar with western culture - having attended University in the US.

It wouldn't invalidate your experience but it might place it in a less prejudicial context, and make you realize you really aren't much of an authority.

My view. Too bad you missed it, you might have learned something.

At one time I had many friends in Ismaili-Muslem community, of which the Aga Khan is leader. He is customarily thought of as 'God,' to them, and are encouraged to think this way.

'Nuff said.

I tend to think of him as Bennie Hinn with race horses in Ireland where he lives far away from the madding crowd.

See: tithing, Ismaili. Jeez, if I could get some followers to give me ten percent of everything, I bet I could get an interview on cbc, too, and a reputation for doing good works, especially if I got to keep 90% of the ten percent.

Truman
I don't know about the aga Akan's personal fortune - I suppose it's no bigger than Jerry Falwell's or Billy Graham's, and probably a lot smaller than Bill Gates's.

I do know the Aga Kahn's charities have done and are doing a great deal of good in places all round the world. Lots of Christian religions tithe too Truman so that's highly normative for religion in general - and doesn't negate the point I was making to Yammer.

If we believe all Muslims fall into the islamofascist mold, as Yammer clearly does, we are being neither fair nor accurate.

I’m not much of a proselytizer for religion as a rule, but, when I can see clearly that his followers don’t fit the negative image Yammer appears to promote I think if would be irresponsible not to mention it.

Hey Ron (Yammer). Those doctors in Argentina who were accused with causing the transmission of hiv were all ACQUITTED on the grounds that there's no actual proof that hiv causes Aids.

Mainstream Media refuses to cover the story, hoping not to offend Aidist Pharmacorpia and various purveyors of African Aids deaths like a certain special UN envoy whose name rhymes with Beaven Dufus and another big name who "didn't have sex with that woman, Monica Lewinsky."

There's another big trial going on right now in Australia. A guy is charged with spreading Aids by spreading HIV.
Never heard of it, Ron? I wonder why?

The judge has already made a few comments that suggest he's having trouble with the possibility that the Aidists could possibly be wrong.

I think it could go either way. The Perth Group is sending scientists to present the DISSIDENT position.

Decency may win out afterall. But Justice...I doubt it. Half the medical scientists, Aids doctors et al would be in jail, and trillions of doctors would need to be paid out in medical malpractice lawsuits.

My prediction is that the case against the defendant will be thrown out due to the emerging controversy and scientific doubt that Aids is caused by HIV.

I'm not hugely confident, though.

Will you cut it out, G.West, please.

You know perfectly well that using the Aga Khan as an authority on Islam is like using Merck Pharmaceuticals as an authority on anti-retrovirals.

Slight bias, eh. (Hint: Khan made his billions off Islam)

Besides, Yammer's got it exactly CORRECT about the religion; (Check out the Talmud, and the Torah, too though, Ron, eh) he just doesn't quite understand that the benevolence or lack of same has absolutely NOTHING to do with the war on terror as it is manifested in either Iraq or Afghanistan.

But Yammer's smart for a young kid. He'll get it.

In fact, I'll predict that within one year Yammer will have completely moved back from his flirtation with Terry Glavinism--even if he doesn't see it yet.

For instance, G.West, did you take note of who Glavin trots out as an expert on the Iraq war: the Iraqi Ambassador to Canada. Now is this guy obligated to say certain things, do you think?

The correct answer, G.West, is:

"Yeah, Truman, I see what you mean."

In any event, G.West. This should catch you up on your hero's loot.

http://www.despardes.com/NewsExplorer/112405-aga-khan.html

On Glavin -
He's not worth the time. Have you checked out his blog. Anyone who claims to thrive on stirring up dissent who then leaves the party and goes next door to make rude comments about the guests is a ..............you can fill in your own description.

As for the Aga Kahn. I knew all about that stuff already: I still say he's no better or worse than any other religious leader - perhaps a lot better from what I've read of his schools and universities. In addition, my main point was simply that it's wrong to demonize the OTHER, which is, in my opinion, what Yammer was doing.

Some days ago, he had the balls to admit he was out of line and I respect that, however, he's still dropping all kinds of ad hominem references to the specific pathology of Muslims and I think he has a ways to go in this humanizing exercise.

Now, as to your final point about religion generally, I'm inclined to be pretty neutral about the negative/positive balance in that area.

There's plenty of bad, but a plethora of good too. In the end, none of them seems much better or worse than all the others and each sect/denomination has its saints and devils.

As long as all the adherents recognize the common humanity shared by their co-religionists AND that of all the other groups including atheists like you and agnostics like me (which I readily admit needs a lot of work) then I think I'd be sanguine about the whole deal.

OK?

Garth: Once again, I have to defend myself against your straw man. I never said that all Muslims are Islamofascists. I did say that the moderate majority of Muslims clearly has a problem controlling its fascist wing, and no wonder since the religion is unusually well-guarded against defections via the death penalty for apostasy and the tradition of decentralized fatwa.

That's not dehumanizing the Muslims, it's pointing out an interesting reality that might not occur to the average Canadian, whose encounters with religion are likely to be the sort of wishy-washy Judeo Christianity I got in Sunday school -- God's ok, not a bully, let's sing kumbaya.

I'm quite aware of that the Ismailis are different, thanks. Given your no doubt extensive research via television, perhaps you could brief us on the situation of minority variations of Islam, such as the Bahai'i and the Ahmadis.

I disagree Yammer.

I don't think you've been sufficiently discriminating in your remarks. Even the language you use here, to wit:

this indicates a fundamental unwillingness to recognize the diverse character of the Muslim faith, and, the essentially leaderless quality of its hierarchy. You can't say those kinds of things about the religion of more than a billion people and not be appallingly ignorant.

DO you think it’s up to, say Lutherans or Anabaptists to ‘control’ the beliefs and activities of Jerry Falwell and the moral majority? Is it up to Catholics to rein in the extremes of those who believe in the ‘Rapture’? The absurdity of your formulation hardly needs any further elaboration.

In addition, I see, in your attitude toward what I've said, exactly the same uncalled for prejudice that I find troubling about almost everything you post here: No matter what the subject. Even your views on media matters have an unnecessarily critical edge when it comes to disagreeing with others. You think you’re hot stuff and you love trying to sock it to others in a personal and essentially crude fashion. It’s happened here time and time again. Instead of dealing with the fundamentals of our disagreement, you seed your posts with such things as ‘dum dum’, ‘dully earnest’, and ‘learned from TV research’ – and you talk to me about straw men. I don’t think so yammer.

I don't think you've ever done any extensive research into comparative religion or you wouldn't post nonsense. On the other hand, you continue to make the kind of stupid generic statements you just did. Apparently, your self-described ‘extensive practical education’ in human nature hasn't taught you much about understanding and empathy. In fact, I don't think you've learned much at all - your friend Truman to the contrary.

Your remarks were, and continue to be, dehumanizing and dismissive to Muslims and their beliefs. All of this isn’t too surprising in someone who started out by calling a particular group of his fellow men sub-humans. Sorry, but I don’t think you’ve really changed your views.

Garth:

1. Re not recognizing diversity of the Muslim faith:

Of course I see diversities; it was I who pointed out the example of the Bahai and the Ahmadis as minority Muslim groups who are different and suffering for it. (Incidentally, if you do not know what that means, try the US DOS religious freedom reports for Iran and Pakistan, respectively.)

My point, which you continue to miss (or else, more troublingly, have no problem with) is that the decentralized nature of Islam makes it easier for local clerics to issue fatwas, and instigate charges (e.g. apostasy) against opponents. This makes it hard for reformers to operate freely (consider the examples of Ayatollahs Hossein Ali Montazeri and Hassan Yousefi Eshkevari).

2. Do I think it is up to the Lutherans, say, to control the Moral Majority?

Yes, it is, and yes they do. The Left has a hard time with religion generally (I include my own, atheistic self in that), but I am seeing more and more attempts by Christians to assert the humane, compassionate, egalitarian aspects of their faith, in opposition to the Christian Coalition and Focus On the Family types. Liberal theologians like Tom Harpur have written compelling and cogent critiques of the Christian right. And both the right and left openly condemn the shootings of abortion doctors. Not to mention that pop culture in the West is pretty derisive and cynical about religion.

3. You don't like how I think I am hot stuff:

Well, sorry. It's more that I object to being misquoted. Here again, Garth, you do it -- I never claimed to have extensive practical research into "human nature", or, for that matter, maintaining a gentle, placating tone when replying to stuffy, officious, prating hotheads on blogs. I said I had ten years of research and interviews regarding refugee-producing situations, one of which is: living under theocracy.

1. I didn't ever misquote you.

2. If you think mainstream religion is putting the breaks on the whackos, you haven't been paying attention and I can't help you.

3. I don't think you're an expert of any kind and I know you're not hot stuff as much as I can see you think you are. Sad.
- want a quote on that?

4. Pop culture is about as relevant to the world's problems as pop rocks - those little candies that used to burst into splashes of flavour in your mouth. Pretty good description of your writing actually.

5. Most of the people who live under theocracies, like Americans, are pretty happy to be there - just as most of the residents in Singapore don't realize they aren't free either.

6. I've read Tom Harpur. If you think he has any relevance as an antidote or response to christianists you really are out of touch.

So, my responses stand - unanswered. You are about as relevant as Doug Coupland, and a lot less read, not that it matters.

As to this description:
stuffy, officious, prating hotheads on blogs - It has YOU to a T. LOL

I'm not stuffy!

I think you are...it's why I find your writing so trite and forgettable.