Director Brian De Palma enjoys fighting the wars and conflicts engaged by the U.S. Military from his ivory tower in Hollywood. Mr. De Palma should embed with Rangers or Marines and get a real taste of war, which would pass for reality, something De Palma fails to completely register in his mind.
“Redacted”, a new film about the real-life rape and killing of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl by U.S. soldiers who also murdered her family stunned the Venice festival, with shocking images that left some viewers in tears.
Did Hitler cause the erstwhile moviegoers to become tearful when the Nazi’s murdered millions, a significant part of the European history? Is De Palma simply an anti-war nut or missing out on the brutality of Saddam Hussein, Adolph Hitler, Pol Pot…..should we go on?
No, it’s Brian De Palma’s goal to denounce the U.S. Military in the enhanced version of John Kerry and Jane Fonda by making movies and showing them at festivals across the pond.
The fools at Reuters write:
Inspired by one of the most serious crimes committed by American soldiers in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, it is a harrowing indictment of the conflict and spares the audience no brutality to get its message across.
De Palma, 66, whose “Casualties of War” in 1989 told a similar tale of abuse by American soldiers in Vietnam, makes no secret of the goal he is hoping to achieve with the film’s images, all based on real material he found on the Internet.
“The movie is an attempt to bring the reality of what is happening in Iraq to the American people,” he told reporters after a press screening.
Reality of war that Mr. De Palma found on the Internet! How did he corroborate and fact check his material? Did Mr. De Palma include the beheadings that are on the Internet, performed openly by al-Qaeda in Iraq? Did he show the child, baked in an oven by al-Qaeda, and served up for lunch to the child’s family? Did De Palma show film of the Hussein rape and torture rooms, all available on the Internet?
No, of course De Palma wants to show the reality of war, not the brutality of regimes and dictatorships who stay in power by oppressing their citizens and intimidating them by filling up mass graves, not before raping wives, daughter, sons and running fathers through giant human shredders.
Halfway between documentary and fiction, “Redacted” draws on soldiers’ home-made war videos, blogs and journals and footage posted on YouTube, reflecting changes in the way the media cover the war.
“In Vietnam, when we saw the images and the sorrow of the people we were traumatizing and killing, we saw the soldiers wounded and brought back in body bags. We see none of that in this war,” De Palma said.
“It’s all out there on the Internet, you can find it if you look for it, but it’s not in the major media. The media is now really part of the corporate establishment,” he said.
It’s difficult to understand the mind of a Left-Wing Nut and Socialist Liberal who apparently hates America enough to showcase his films in Europe, denouncing the military all the way back to Vietnam based on “information’ dug up on the Internet.
Did De Palma include documentary footage of troops landing at Iwo Jima, did he show footage from D-Day and Normandy? Did De Palma reference the heroes lying dead on the beaches from fighting to stop tyranny that threatened the freedom of the world?
The answer is NO, because the mentality on the left is to hate the Armed Forces of the United States and depict them as murderers and rapists while ignoring their heroic acts of unselfish behavior to liberal oppressed people and give them a chance at freedom.
“When I went out to find the pictures, I said (to the media) give me the pictures you can’t publish,” he said, adding that because of legal dangers he too had to “edit” the material.
“Everything that is in the movie is based on something I found that actually happened. But once I had put it in the script I would get a note from a lawyer saying you can’t use that because it’s real and we may get sued,” De Palma said.
“So I was forced to fictionalize things that were actually real.”
It’s real and had to be edited and fictionalize it to depict the reality De Palma thinks is accurate. De Palma believes the mainstream media is failing to print the real story but he doesn’t mention the embedded, independent journalists like Michael Yon, Bill Roggio and his group at The Fourth Rail, this would be too real and too true. It would bring out the facts and he might get sued.
The film, shot in Jordan with a little known cast, ends with a series of photographs of Iraqi civilians killed and their faces blacked out for legal reasons. Does De Palma tell the audience how these Iraqi’s were killed? He let’s the audience assume it was the U.S. Military.
We ask why Mr. De Palma didn’t film in Iraq, in the provinces where al-Qaeda and insurgents brutalize the real population and depict the real suffering of the Iraqi people? That would be too difficult for Mr. De Palma and might expose the truth about war and terrorism.
A followup to Hillary’s Little Green House is entitled, “Democrats Race To Return Cash From Big Donor” appearing in The Wall Street Journal. [Subscription]
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and other prominent Democrats scrambled to unload thousands of dollars of contributions from one of the party’s leading fund-raisers, amid questions about his fund-raising techniques and news that a warrant for his arrest has been languishing in California since the early 1990s.
The Clinton’s have a knack for finding folks of Asian decent with lurid criminal backgrounds, attending their fundraisors, accepting their money and then going into denial that they never knew the background of the generous felon. We suppose Bill Clinton didn’t know Marc Rich was a fugitive on the run when he pardoned him.
[Norman Hsu] went beyond his $23,000 in personal contributions to Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Hsu had raised well over $1 million for the New York senator’s presidential campaign, making him one of her top 20 “bundlers.” His reach extended well beyond the presidential race, as he has also raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for House and Senate Democrats and governors across the country.
Is this the “Culture of Corruption” Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton frequently discuss? Is this the ”Culture of Corruption” Charles Schumer smirks about on the Senate steps and Sunday talk shows?
Earlier this week, Clinton campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson responded to questions about Mr. Hsu by saying,
“There has been no question about his [Norman Hsu] integrity or his commitment to playing by the rules, and we have absolutely no reason to call his contributions into question.”
I bet Mr. Wolfson is wearing Hillary teeth marks in his arse from that unsubstantiated statement. The Los Angeles Times reported that Mr. Hsu had legal troubles in his past, and that he faces arrest in California after failing to appear for sentencing more than a decade ago on charges stemming from a business deal.
We find it odd that Mr. Hsu could travel to California for well-publicized fundraisers and never face arrest. What about Mr. Hsu’s lawyers, are they too in denial? Until yesterday, Mr. Hsu had a California fundraiser scheduled for the Clinton campaign late next month.
Mr. Smetana, currently a deputy attorney general in California, said that without the help of the Internet, it was difficult to track him down.
“You could look through phone books, but which phone books?”
How did Brody Mullins at The Wall Street Journal connect the dots? Try public records Mr. Smetana!
Speaking of denial, here is Mr. Hsu’s latest statement on the subject of charges:
I believe I properly resolved all of the legal issues related to my bankruptcy in the early 1990s. Therefore, I was surprised to learn that there appears to be an outstanding warrant — as demonstrated by the fact that I have and do live a public life. I have not sought to evade any of my obligations and certainly not the law.
After pleading no contest to state theft charges, Mr. Hsu faced a penalty of three years in prison, and was responsible for paying restitution of the entire amount to investors, Mr. Smetana said in an interview.
“He was supposed to be sentenced, but he didn’t appear,” Mr. Smetana recalled. “He faxed a letter, saying he had an emergency. And he never came back.”
Life Imitates Seinfeld
Mr. Hsu’s legal troubles come from allegations that he raised money from a group of investors, but failed to deliver on his promises. The business plan, essentially, was to buy latex gloves cheaply in Asia and sell them for a profit. More than a dozen people lost more than $1 million, according to Ronald Smetana, who handled the case for the California attorney general’s office in the early 1990s.
This wasn’t Vandalay Industries, makers of latex gloves who George Costanza had an alleged interview with for a salesman’s position, was it? Comedy and satire, beyond Al Franken, meet the Democrats “Culture of Corruption.”
Return to Sender
Other Willing Participants
Others who said they would return donations from Mr. Hsu include Pennsylvania Rep. Joe Sestak, New York Rep. Kristen Gillibrand, Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry and comedian Al Franken, who is running for a Senate seat in Minnesota.
“We regularly review contributions as we receive them,” Mr. Wolfson said yesterday. “We will continue our practice of scrutinizing contributions and, should we have a basis to return a contribution, we will do so.”
Seems the Democrats haven’t been scrutinizing very much, The Wall Street Journal had to help them out. “Culture of Corruption”, Indeed!
The Federal Election Commission has fined one of the last cycle’s biggest liberal political action committees $775,000 for using unregulated soft money to boost John Kerry and other Democratic candidates during the 2004 elections.
America Coming Together (ACT) raised $137 million for its get-out-the-vote effort in 2004, but the FEC found most of that cash came through contributions that violated federal limits.
The group’s big donors included George Soros, Progressive Corp. chairman Peter Lewis and the Service Employees International Union.
While the NY Times and Liberal media banter about allegded lewd bathroom activity and the “culture of corruption” in the Republican Party, the Liberals have William Jefferson (D-LA) freezing money, accepting bribes from FBI agents while continuing to hold office, Hillary Clintons Little Green House and Socialist George Soros leading the corruption parade to election victories.
John McCain and Russ Feingold should be proud of their Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA, McCain–Feingold Act, which actuall reformed very little. While crying fowl over the use of 527′s by the Swift Boat Veterans, who were also fined, the Leftists were busy illegally laundering millions of dollars to support their ilk.
America Coming Together (ACT) raised $137 million for its get-out-the-vote effort in 2004, but the FEC found most of that cash came through contributions that violated federal limits.
ACT was among a new breed of political committee, known as 527 groups, that stretched campaign finance rules on their way to shaping the 2004 elections. Operatives used the 527′s, named for the section of the IRS code under which they were registered, to spend money on politics outside the FEC’s purview.
The FEC said the fine “represents only a tiny fraction” of the amount ACT spent illegally on the 2004 elections. The FEC should start looking and if the Democrats want to truly investigate something they should get a Special Prosecutor to go after the Anti-American Soros so he’ll stop buying influence to demolish a Democracy.
Source: The Politico
Three weeks before election day in 1996, Gore attended a fund-raiser at the His Lai Buddhist Temple in Los Angeles.
The event raised $140,000, despite federal laws that prohibit holding partisan political events at institutions with tax-exempt status.
Some of the temple’s nuns and monks, who had taken vows of poverty, admitted to serving as illegal “straw” donors, writing checks for up to $5,000 and receiving immediate reimbursement from temple officials.
“I did not know it was a fund-raiser,” Gore said in 1997, contending that he believed he was attending a goodwill event.
Exactly what Gore knew may never be completely clear. But the episode suggests that Gore’s zeal for election money in 1996 eroded his judgment, sense of propriety, and usual attention to detail.
Not to be outdone by hubby Bill and his strange cast of characters who swirled around the 1996 Clinton campaign. At the center of Bubba Bill’s controversy was improper contributions and alleged links between the contributors and the Chinese government was James Riady, scion of the shadowy Hong Kong-based Lippo Group, who returned to Asia and never cooperated with investigators. Pauline Kanchanalak, whose $253,000 in contributions had to be returned by the DNC, decamped to her native Thailand. Little Rock restaurateur Charlie Trie, a major-league fund-raiser and recipient of wire transfers from the Bank of China in Hong Kong, took up residence in Beijing to avoid questioning.
Hillary Clinton has an Asian connection in a tiny, lime-green bungalow that lies under the flight path from San Francisco International Airport. Wall Street Journal reporter, Brody Mullins, reports six members of the Paw family, each listing the house at 41 Shelbourne Ave. as their residence, have donated a combined $45,000 to the Democratic senator from New York since 2005, for her presidential campaign, her Senate re-election last year and her political action committee. In all, the six Paws have donated a total of $200,000 to Democratic candidates since 2005, election records show.
Must be simple folks, living a simple life, in a simple dwelling, with six people who have enough money and interest in politics to donate the maximum legal amount but are humble enough to cram themselves into a little green house under an international airport pathway.
That total ranks the little green house with residences in Greenwich, Conn., and Manhattan’s Upper East Side among the top addresses to donate to the Democratic presidential front-runner over the past two years, according to an analysis by The Wall Street Journal of donations listed with the Federal Election Commission.
How do the Paws do it?
Records show they own a gift shop and live in a 1,280-square-foot house that they recently refinanced for $270,000.
William Paw, the 64-year-old head of the household, is a mail carrier with the U.S. Postal Service who earns about $49,000 a year.
Alice Paw, also 64, is a homemaker.
One child account manager at a software company.
Another child is an “attendance liaison” at a local public high school.
A third child is an executive at a mutual fund.
The Paw family, all living in the little green house in the flight path of an international airport. How cozy, indeed.
Enter Norman Hsu
Norman Hsu, a wealthy New York businessman in the apparel industry who once listed the Paw home as his address, according to public records.
Mr. Hsu is one of the top fund-raisers for Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign. He has hosted or co-hosted some of her most prominent money-raising events. News stories in the mid-1980s said he criticized trade policies that made it harder to import goods from China.
The Standard Campaign Response
Clinton campaign spokesman, Howard Wolfson, said in an email:
“Norman Hsu is a longtime and generous supporter of the Democratic party and its candidates, including Senator Clinton. During Mr. Hsu’s many years of active participation in the political process, there has been no question about his integrity or his commitment to playing by the rules, and we have absolutely no reason to call his contributions into question.”
There Are Questions Now
Kent Cooper, a former disclosure official with the Federal Election Commission, said the two-year pattern of donations justifies a probe of possible violations of campaign-finance law, which forbid one person from reimbursing another to make contributions.
“There are red lights all over this one,” Mr. Cooper said.
You’re with us, or against us!
Mr. Hsu has pledged to raise $100,000 or more for Mrs. Clinton, earning the title of “HillRaiser” along with a few hundred other top financial backers of her campaign. Mr. Hsu is half way to his goal with the Paw family alone.
Mr. Hsu threw a party at New York City hot spot Buddakan where he grabbed the microphone from the deejay and shouted:
“If you are supporters of Hillary for President 2008, you can stay. Otherwise, get out.”
Donation Paper Trail
The Paw family is just one set of donors whose political donations are similar to Mr. Hsu’s. Several business associates of Mr. Hsu in New York have made donations to the same candidates, on the same dates for similar amounts as Mr. Hsu.
No one in the Paw family had ever given a campaign contribution before the 2004 presidential election, according to campaign-finance reports.
Paws become generous donors
In July 2004, five members of the family contributed a total of $3,600 to the presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry.
On Dec. 23, 2004, Mr. Hsu and one Paw family member donated the then-maximum $4,000 to Hillary Clinton’s NY Senate campaign.
In March 2005, Paw individuals gave a total of $17,500 to Mrs. Clinton.
In 2007, Alice Paw and four of the Paw children have donated the maximum $4,600 to Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign.
Denial
Mr. Hsu, in an email last night wrote:
“I have NEVER asked a single favor from any politician or any charity group. If I am NOT asking favors, why do I have to cheat…I’ve asked friends and colleagues of mine to give money out of their own pockets and sometimes they have agreed.”
Political Integrity
A Clinton campaign spokesman, Howard Wolfson, said in an email:
“Norman Hsu is a longtime and generous supporter of the Democratic party and its candidates, including Senator Clinton. During Mr. Hsu’s many years of active participation in the political process, there has been no question about his integrity or his commitment to playing by the rules, and we have absolutely no reason to call his contributions into question.”
If we’re to believe something isn’t rotten in the little green house then we are also left to believe Hillary Clinton is the little old lady who lives in a shoe. Poor Hillary has so many donors she doesn’t know what to do. Except deny, deny, deny.
To top things off, Mr. Hsu is a fugitive from justice since 1992, when he reportedly pleaded no contest to a charge of grand theft, agreed to serve three years in prison and then vanished. Ms. Clinton has no trouble find him.
Source on Gore: “Inventing Al Gore“, p.313-4 & p.319-22
Story source: The Wall Street Journal [subscription]
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