Sunday, October 14, 2007

Mainstreaming Islam in America. Prelude to Trouble?


Earlier this week, we noted that New York City was lighting the Empire State Building green in celebration of Ramadan. Over at the Pentagon, community outreach efforts have helped legitimize some U.S. Islamic groups with covert or overt ties to extremists, a problem that also is occurring at the FBI and Justice Department.

Officials said the Pentagon's problem was highlighted by a recent Marine Corps ceremony marking Ramadan. The little-noticed "iftar," or fast-breaking, was held Sept. 26 at the Washington Navy Yard in Southeast and was hosted by Marine Corps Deputy Commandant Gen. Robert Magnus. Washington Times.

In Hollywood, there is a genre of films that sees the war on terror as being a sinister US Government plot.

What is going on? IMO it has all the classic signs of a public complacency and a failure to appreciate the nature of the threat that we face from the world of Islam. It probably means we are well overdue to get hit again soon. The mainstreaming of Islam is the very last thing the Islamists want.



Hollywood in all-out assault on America's 'war on terror'
By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles Independent
Published: 14 October 2007
A generation ago, Hollywood movies doubting the goodwill and sincerity of the American government were invariably shot through with a sense of paranoia – nervy, unsettling films such as The Conversation, or All the President's Men.

Now, though, with the Iraq war dragging on, the bad faith of the US government seems to be almost a given in the movie business. A slew of new features, looking either at Iraq or the "war on terror", or both, is about to hit the screens, and almost all dwell on the dark side of the American experience.

This week sees the release of Rendition, about an Egyptian-American mistaken for a terrorist and shipped off to north Africa to be tortured under US supervision. Later in the autumn comes Redacted, a shocking, cinéma-vérité style look at the true nature of combat in Iraq from Brian De Palma.

Already out in the United States are In the Valley of Elah, the story of a soldier killed by his unit so he wouldn't spill the beans on atrocities they committed in Iraq, and The Kingdom, a Jamie Foxx action vehicle that uses an attack on a US army base in Saudi Arabia as its backdrop.

Also coming are Lions for Lambs, directed by Robert Redford, about two friends who go to Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11, Grace Is Gone, in which John Cusack plays the husband of a soldier killed in Iraq, and Stop Loss, in which Ryan Phillippe is a soldier who defies an order to return to combat.

Not so long ago, Hollywood was famously shy of taking stories ripped from the headlines. In the early 1970s, a film-maker wanting to address the war in Vietnam had to do so obliquely – as Robert Altman did in M*A*S*H, set in Korea.

Now, newspaper and magazine articles are getting optioned all the time – In the Valley of Elah, for example, is based on a feature in Playboy – and studios have a thirst to be seen to be relevant. Whether that works is another matter. Rendition, which stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Reese Witherspoon, has had a mixed reception. Variety magazine complained that it "drains the life out of an obviously explosive subject".

A Mighty Heart, about the murder of The Wall Street Journal's Daniel Pearl, became a star vehicle for Angelina Jolie, who played his widow, Mariane. Asra Nomani, a colleague of Pearl's, complained that the film reduced the couple to ciphers, proving how difficult Hollywood finds it to rise above the superficial.



35 comments:

  1. The Eggheads at you-know where drive me nuts!
    Shoulda spent my time at the Bar!
    My latest message there:
    ---
    Any of you "George is never wrong" folks want to defend Traitor in Chief Globalist George and his Pinko Justice Dept on THIS One?
    ---
    OUTRAGE BUILDING OVER BUSH STANCE ON MEXICAN MURDERER:
    Illegal immigrant rapist-murderer Jose Medellin is getting some high-profile help at the Supreme Court today. The Bush Administration is siding with the "World Court's" view that his death sentence should be tossed because poor Jose wasn't told he could confab with the Mexican consulate after his arrest. This is a total insult to states' rights, victims' rights, and American sovereignty.

    The Texas court said the judicial branch, not the White House, should decide how to resolve the Mexican cases. It also said Medellin wasn't entitled to a new hearing because he failed to complain at his original trial about any violation of his consular rights and had therefore waived them.

    Remember, this is just the camel's nose inside the tent. This is not the end," he warned.

    Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz, who is arguing on behalf of the state court system and its death penalty, said it is unusual to be litigating against the U.S. along with Medellin.

    Then Medellin appealed again to the U.S. Supreme Court, which announced last May it would hear his case. His lawyer, Donald Donovan of New York, will argue this week that Bush was correct when he took action to comply with the World Court's decision.
    ---
    Luckily, there is hope, as even Justice Kennedy doesn't seem to like these bastards getting in his face and telling him he can be over-ruled by the World Court.
    Let's hope and pray!

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  2. As if more good reasons are needed to go on a diet and stop patronizing crap food eateries like Burger King. Same, as it applies to crap food served on the idiot box.

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  3. Immiscible, that's the word. Picked it up from Habu. But it's what I think too. Islam and America, Islam and the constitution, are immiscible. As long as they have their book, it will be taken seriously by many, and it spells trouble, in River City, worse than pool.

    I gave up the tv, for the most part, now I have to give up the movies too? Quess the only thing for a guy like me is go back to the reruns of the golden age of tv, and doze, and dream....

    If we had a movie without any contemporary politics, and little or no sex, and no violence, what would it be? It's sort of hard to imagine such a movie, sign of the times.

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  4. A lot of us rednecks around here may find ourselves one fine day in Mandatory Re-education Seminars :-(

    Conducted by Ash :)

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  5. As Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho so vividly demonstrates, Pastor Wilson presiding, it's bad enough to have the Bible around to be mishandled by inexperienced and prejudiced nincompoops, let's not add the koran to the fires of thoughtlessness.

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  6. OK, but why not add a certain North *Korean* to a stake upon a pile of faggots?
    That Fire'd be swell!

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  7. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNPTVqI91EY

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  8. A poll released today shows 70 percent of American evangelical Christians see global warming as a "serious threat" to the future of the planet.

    Conducted by Ellison Research, the survey indicates a majority of evangelicals agree with 85 Christian leaders who signed an Evangelical Climate Initiative unveiled Feb. 8 that calls for government action to deal with so-called global warming. The initiative includes a campaign of newspaper, TV and radio ads.

    Signers of the initiative include, among others, Rick Warren, pastor and author of "The Purpose Driven Life," Rich Stearns, president of World Vision, Commissioner Todd Bassett, national commander of The Salvation Army, and David Neff, executive editor of Christianity Today.
    ---
    Why Hewitt regards that phoney Rick Warren as an honorable person is beyond me. (not being a lawyer)
    SOB came back from Syria to tell us what a great place it is.

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  9. Ah hell, Doug, that 70% they just see it as part of the prelude to the 'end times' or some such drivel.

    Aloha Akbar!!

    goodnight

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  10. Nite,
    Aloha (Al)-Akbar!

    ---
    MORE ON THE MEDELLIN NIGHTMARE: Check out the Supreme Court Oral Arguments in this heartbreaking and outrageous case.

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  11. Doug,

    I'm afraid you have to understand computer upgrades to understand President & Commander-in-Chief Bush's plans to implement new upgraded laws in America's outdated nativist lawbooks.

    Global laws, like Windows Vista, may have a few bugs, but we have had many development cycles to work through with Bush and will have many more when President and Commander-in-Chief Clinton leads America.

    I don't know why one need be so hopeless about trying to police the notoriously jingoistic and racist Supreme Court, who might not understand the subtleties of World Law, having had their nativist noses in national books their whole lives. Americans have a saying about cracking eggs to make omelettes; in a few decades time, Americans will have their omelletes and we can all honor the cracked eggs for sacrificing their lives to the Globally popular practices of rape, murder and pillage.

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  12. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  13. Satan is a rebel. A rebel that rebels against the unjust regime of a cosmic tyrant. Satan looks for ways to discredit the tyrant. He could search in places like the Bible for contradictions and faults. But God does not exist. What does exist is the edifice of collectivism, created by subhumans for superhumans.

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  14. duece, the "mainstreaming of Islam, discredits its' radicalizm.

    Of course the Muslims of America are welcome a Burger King. If they are welcome in the Americas, which they are. President Bush and our Representitives have made that clear.

    If, as you say
    "The mainstreaming of Islam is the very last thing the Islamists want. "

    It should be the center of our "Soft Power" efforts, which it is, as demonstrated by Burger King.

    While political power grows from the barrel of a gun, cultural transformation, in the post-midern mode, is not a military function.

    Burger King, Mickey D's, Britney and Paris, that's the backbone of our team's efforts.

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  15. So, I'm watching Mr Cosby on Meet the Press, thinking ...

    How could ANUONE dispute what the guy is saying?

    Who he called the "Yes, but ..."

    Especially now, when there are smaller numbers of children in the average family.

    Rather "Old School", but not trying to "conserve" the status que. Becoming a Radical.

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  16. Crass commercialization of Ramada Inn dan.

    Commercially demean Islam's holiest days, like post-modern Christmass or Easter have been, in the "West".

    Secularize the sectarians through the commercialization of Mohammed.

    IBECing Islam

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  17. Typical EBer Eyeball after hard night at the Bar.

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  18. Wow, Incredible picture, Bob.

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  19. That was a good article you posted about the oil the other day, Rufus.

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  20. Romney still ahead in New Hampshire Poll but just barely, and the Hampshirites still dithering about when the vote is to be.

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  21. Future Is Nuclear

    May I help J.F.(Jim Fischer)? I worked at the Nuclear Testing reservation at Arco, Idaho, in the early 1960's. I designed and tested control rod drives and safty systems on working nuclear reactors. A coal-burning plant was being considered in southern Idaho for the purpose of generating electricity. When nature made coal it came with plenty of radioactive elements in it like uranium, thorium and other bad stuff.

    I would not live anywhere near a coal-fired plant. Coal-burning electrical generating plantgs have put more radioactive waste into the air and surrounding environment than all the atomic bomb tests to date. Think about the radioactive ash left behind! I would live next door to a nuclear plant generating electricity. Now that man has figured out to play with nukes, this is the safest industry ever. The coal business is perhaps one of the most dangerous industries.

    The French have a reasonably good systemor dealing with nuclear waste. They are using a system developed by and in the USA. The nuclear wasteis diluted and then placed into liquid glass, cooled, then sealed in a stainless steel cask, then buried in a well in the ground. The only thingthat would interrupt the cask would be a volcano, and even then it is safeto say the problem would be local and likely could be contained. I believe all of the reactors in the world, except Russia and friends, are designed in the USA. If the USA isserious about becoming energy independent, the only way is to build lots of nuke plants and, at low-load times, use the electricity to make hydrogen gas out of water for fuel.

    Bill Hauf
    Lewiston

    from the letters to the editor today

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  22. Peace Concert Cancelled Because the islamist are breathing threats against it, of course.

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  23. DR: So, I'm watching Mr Cosby on Meet the Press, thinking ...How could ANUONE dispute what the guy is saying?

    "There are Black Muslims standing on the street corners and they say so forth and so on, and we’re laughing at them because they have bean pies and all that, but you don’t read "Black Muslim gunned down while chastising drug dealer.”"You don’t read that. They don’t shoot down Black Muslims. You understand me. Muslims tell you to get out of the neighborhood. When you want to clear your neighborhood out, first thing you do is go get the Black Muslims, bean pies and all. And your neighborhood is then clear. The police can’t do it." (Bill Cosby, May 2004)

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  24. Who clears the neighborhood of the black muslims?

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  25. Yeah, they said the same thing about the Mafia, and the Mahdi Army. Send in th Marines to kill the Black Muslims, then hire more police.

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  26. Please, realize: My fight is not with the "black" part.

    My fight is with the "Muslim" part. Black, Pink, Purple, or Otherwise.

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  27. I don't know much about "bean pies" but, like the Mormons, the young Muslims of Mr Louis Farrakhan's organization are well kept and drug free.

    They are known to shoot back. too.
    Louis Farrakhan has a compound here in Phoenix, never a negative thing about it.

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  28. Yeah, until they cut your throat some night. We'll miss you, Rat.

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  29. I doubt that, rufus.
    Not through the gate, nor over the fence, then past the dogs.

    No, they stay in their compounnd, I stay in mine. Worked so far, containment and deterence works just fine, with those US citizens.

    Flows both ways, I guess.

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  30. The Black Muslims may be well behaved and well dressed, for now. But Farrakhan is nuts. I've heard him breath fire against the Jews, and say Judaism is a 'gutter religion', and have himself introduced as 'the messiah'.

    The Christ Churchers here are well behaved, for now, and well dressed, they even have a dress code in their school. Well behaved, for now. Pastor Wilson is nuts, a covenantal Christian, a believer in the final battle, the coming of Christ in glory after a fit kingdom is established on earth.

    I wish all these type of people would just go to hell and leave everybody else alone.

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