Truth is Hidden

The film Lions for Lambs is an honest attempt to portray the spicy geopolitical climate in its raw, unedited and costly truth. The film takes place in three films, one between two brother's in arms, another between a student and his teacher and another between a journalist and a pathocratic senator. Each vignette offers an illuminating look at the reality of our situation, and I mean our because each one of us can somehow fit into the film itself.

The brother's in arms are interestingly, two previous students of the professor we're introduced to. We're shown their military adventure in Afghanistan as they attempt to fulfill a new strategy issued by the senator. Their characters are bold, courageous, and strong-willed. They have an incredible power of conscience, and a desire to do what is right. Their failing? They lack accurate psychological knowledge of the men who lead them. They are Lions for Lambs.

The pathocratic senator is played exceedingly well by Tom Cruise. I'd never thought I'd enjoy his performance as much as I did in this film. He shows a psychopathic ability to mix words, to tug on a normal man's emotions, to lie with the cunning conviction he is right, more then that - that he is righteous - because he possesses a pathological nature that prevents him from seeing, thinking or believing otherwise. The journalist who shares his entire vignette is played by Meryl Streep, and her desire to honestly do her job and do it right comes through strong. She is invited by the senator for an hour to discuss the 'new strategy' in Afghanistan, and to help relay it to the public. She does an excellent job of asking the questions anyone of conscience would ask, and we can see Cruises' character's pathology if we pay attention.

The last vignette is between Robert Redford, who plays a professor at an unnamed California University and a student of his that shows much promise. The student has potential, but feels as if he'd be happier with a 'normal life', keeping his head down, getting a good job, and making the best out of his life without trying to play a big role in world events. He makes a good argument, but is countered by experience, wisdom and an understanding which he cannot quite grasp due to his youth. For the greater part of the interaction we're not even sure if an impact is made, if his armor is dented, but there is hope reflected in the very last scene that makes the entire bit worth it.

The core of the film is a display of the reality of our situation here in America. Our politicians are self-serving, lying, pathological monsters who are irredeemable and incapable of change. The establishment that is Mainstream Media is saturated with people who are solely 'doing their job' or so they think, by reporting what they are told - propaganda or not. Some of them are damn good people, who have a strong conscience, but due to circumstance (mostly age and financial obligations) cannot change. Their potential to be something different has dried up.

Then we are shown the best and the brightest. Two out of three of which ended up believing their abilities would best be used serving this country in it's war effort. They had the conscience, the dedication and the will to do something new, bold and dramatic - but they didn't have the knowledge that would have allowed their effort to really make an impact, and the results are given to us dramatically.

The third student is a wild card, we're really not sure what he does by the end of the film, but we're given hope that he may attempt something great - to succeed or fail matters not, but that he may attempt it gives us hope. In my mind I saw all of us as that third student. Young, smart, definitely lazy and more interested in social life and girls then knowledge and wisdom which would allow him to fight to change the world. He is the future, the potential future, it exists only as a potential because it is possible, but extremely difficult to manifest. It can only happen with dedication, conscience, and knowledge - which are much more difficult to acquire then a video game, television show, sports event or event a really hot lay.

That is the core of the film, if we want to make an impact, to make positive changes to our world, to become our potential as individuals and as a society we have to want it, we have to try for it, and we have to make it a daily effort.

Orbital Look @ the Myanmar Cyclone

It does seem we're in for a HOT summer, and I don't just mean temperature-wise. Perhaps you've heard of the recent troubles in Asia, with that nasty quake in China (killed 9-12k) and the doubly nasty cyclone (killed 22k) the scary thing is while both are likely natural earth based phenomenon I can't help get this nagging feeling out of my head that somehow, meteorites and comet debris may be connected.

Take a quick look at this article. It's apparent from even a causal skimming that there have been some nasty impacts, fires, quakes and tidal waves caused by stray astral debris. Even thinking about it makes me remember the Tsunami that hit a few years back - remember? They said it was caused by an 'earthquake deep undersea' but what if they lied? Wouldn't be the first time, and most certainly won't be the last.

Beyond that, gas is at $4 a gallon in some places and I find myself wondering how I am going to afford to drive anywhere. That's basically 50$ a tank, and since I fill up on average of 3-4x a month thats huge increase. It also doesn't show signs of halting, especially with all the talking heads, AIPAC, and the Neo-con establishment beating the drums of war, eying up Iran like a pedophile eye's up a six-year-old on the playground. The odd parallel is that if you investigate these psychopathic monsters there's much circumstantial evidence that they do indeed rape children. Hell our army was doing it in Iraq, you don't think it was 'a few bad apples acting on a whim' do you? Are you that far from reality? Read that last link. This stuff was institutionalized. Here's some more examples of what our government has been up to:

Choosing the Dark Side: Torture, Rendition & International Law

Maher Arar, a Canadian-Syrian telecommunications engineer, gave the public a detailed picture of that world in November 2003, when he told the story of his rendition to torture. Arar was detained at JFK Airport in September 2002, and then sent by the United States to Syria, via Jordan. He was held there in a dark, coffin-like cell, and brought out to be beaten with electrical cables.

"The cable is a black electrical cable, about two inches thick," Arar explained in a narrative of his experiences. "They hit me with it everywhere on my body."

The Torture Drawings the Pentagon Doesn't want you to see

On the Monday before last [February 11] a white male came to do the force-feeding. They gave him only ten minutes training, then he did three of the eight men being fed that day, including me. He screwed the tube into my nose, not slowly, and not using lotion. I had flu at the time and my nostril was closed. It made it much harder. I was in the chair. I could barely talk, and my mouth was covered with the mask they put on. I was waving my hands.

"That's very painful!" I eventually said. There were tears streaming down my face. "I am meant to do this to you," the man said, harshly. "If you don't like it, don't go on strike." He would not look me in the eye. He did not look in the least bit ashamed. He never said sorry, or paused when I was in pain. I almost thought he seemed happy that he was doing it.

Nightmare at Guantanamo Bay

At the age of 19, Murat Kurnaz vanished into America's shadow prison system in the war on terror. He was from Germany, traveling in Pakistan, and was picked up three months after 9/11. But there seemed to be ample evidence that Kurnaz was an innocent man with no connection to terrorism.

"They used to beat me when my head is underwater. They beat me into my stomach and everything," he says.

"They were hitting you in the stomach while you're head was underwater so that you'd have to take a breath?" Pelley asks,

"Right. I had to drink. I had to...how you say it?" Kurnaz replies.

"Inhale. Inhale the water," Pelley says.

"I had to inhale the water. Right," Kurnaz says.

Kurnaz says the Americans used a device to shock him with electricity that made his body go numb. And he says he was hoisted up on chains suspended by his arms from the ceiling of an aircraft hangar for five days.

Murat Kurnaz, US Torture Victim

There's trouble in Lebanon, again, another civil war apparently. Nothing happens in Global Events unless 'The Secret Team' engineers it - that much is obvious to anyone with two-firing neurons and a curiosity only satiated by research. This author seems to think a wider war encompassing all of the middle east is 'inevitable', he doesn't really seem to understand why though.

Dick Cheney, Pathocrat, Enjoys baby-eating, S&M, and genocide.

I just can't help but feel our world is spiraling into utter darkness. I suppose that is what we as a society are 'asking for' as long as we believe the lies of the psychopaths on high. Accounting must be done after all and we can only let these monsters run up our karmic-credit card bill so high before we all have to pay it.

I feel for parents and lovers, so naive and so unaware of the darkness lurking just around the corner. I want to scream, to shout, to warn everyone - but it seems no one can hear my cries, warnings abound yet ignored. The signs are there for those who can see them, before dawn can break - night must fall.

Last week there was a conference in Silver Spring, MD - right outside of DC. It was a gathering of Iraq and Afghani combat veterans who had the bravery, honesty, and decency to share the reality of what's happening over there - since it's obvious we can't get it from our psychopathic mainstream media. I'm gonna clip a few articles that were especially deep and revealing and I hope you can afford the time to read some of them, and share them with your friends and family. Word of mouth and through the internet are the only ways this information is being shared, I hope you can appreciate the implications and thus understand just how important talking about this stuff is.

Pentagon holds 60,000 Americans 'Prisoners of War'
By Penny Coleman, AlterNet. Posted March 26, 2008.

gt. Kristofer Shawn Goldsmith was one of the many soldiers and Marines, veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, who gave testimony at last weekend's Winter Soldier investigation. They spoke from personal experience about what the American military is doing in those countries. They gave examples of what they had done, what they had been ordered to do, what they had witnessed, how their experiences had wounded them, both physically and psychically, and what kind of care and support they have, or most often have not gotten since coming home. The panel Goldsmith was on was called "The Breakdown of the U.S. Military," so he surprised the audience when he said that he was going to talk about prisoners of war.

He was not, however, going to talk about the three soldiers listed as missing in action on the Department of Defense website. He was referring to those who have been the victims of stop-loss, the device by which the president can, "in the event of war," choose to extend an enlistee's contract "until six months after the war ends." The "War on Terror" is this president's excuse for invoking that clause. Because that war will, by definition, continue as long as we insist that there is a difference between the terror inflicted on our innocents and the terror inflicted on theirs, American soldiers are effectively signing away their freedom indefinitely when they join the military. They are prisoners of an ill-defined and undeclared war on a tactic -- terrorism -- that dates back to Biblical times and will be with us indefinitely.

According to U.S. News and World Report, there are at least 60,000 of them.

[snipped]

Winter Soldier 2008: A Marine Mom’s Eyewitness Account of the Testimony
by Elaine Brower
Common Dreams

I have spent the past seven-plus years as an activist against the policies of George W. Bush and his regime. Already, my son has completed 2 tours of duty as a U.S. Marine, first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq. So my life has been forever altered by the events of the past 7 years. Still, when I initially made plans to attend the Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW)’s Winter Soldier event, I intended to cover it from the perspective of an independent journalist.

However, after spending almost four days within the halls of the National Labor College in Silver Spring, Maryland, meeting new members of IVAW, as well as many old friends from Veterans For Peace, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out and other anti-war groups, and listening to the testimony of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, I realized I can no longer be an objective reporter. So I decided to write this story from the perspective of a Marine mom; one who is adamantly opposed to the so called “war on terror”, the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and any other wars that this government is cooking up.

On Friday, Day 2, testimony began at 9 AM with a panel about the “Rules of Engagement”. Speakers from the Army and Marine Corps. — people that I have known for the last few years — recounted the atrocities that they not only witnessed but participated in. Anyone who is interested can listen online at www.ivaw.org/wintersoldier. But about halfway into that panel, I lost my objectivity. The stories they were telling about the rules of engagement they learned while training at boot camp, or on a military base “back home”, were the same as what I had heard from my son. I broke down sobbing. The photographs they were showing on the five viewing screens of bloodied bodies torn apart by close gunfire, 50-calibre Machine guns, rocket launchers, and every other damn weapon our great military industrial complex has created, were all too familiar to me. When my son returned home from both war zones, he was so eager to share his stories and pictures.

I could not fathom that my son, whom I raised to be a Catholic, whom I took to Sunday school, who received Communion and Confirmation, had not only been a participant in such horrors, but had pictures to prove it. I immediately told him that I would not listen to his stories or look at those pictures. He could speak with his father. My response may seem too many as being hard on my son, who only wanted to unload what he was feeling on his mother. But I couldn’t come to terms with it then — or now.

Watching and listening to the testimony made me very ill. Here were these young men and women, handsomely dressed, some wearing medals, talking about how they shot civilians who were holding nothing more threatening than a cell phone, groceries, a shovel, a white flag, or a pair of binoculars. Anyone deemed suspicious by the particular soldier or Marine on watch was fair game, subject to the orders, “Take ‘em out!” The Rules of Engagement, as stated by Garrett Rapenhagen were “a joke and disgrace, and ever changing.”

[snipped]

Winter Soldier 2008: Who Supports the Troops?
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet at 7:30 PM on March 14, 2008.

If I were a far better writer, I might -- might -- be able to convey the intensity of these Winter Soldier hearings.

On the way in were a few dozen right-wing protesters organized by the "Gathering of Eagles" -- a spin-off from the "Vietnam Vets for Truth" started during the 2004 campaign to go after Kerry. I've seen them at antiwar protests, and what struck me was that their messages were unchanged -- 'support the troops.' The concept that those giving testimony inside were the troops -- several with chests weighed down with decorations and metals -- was the definition of cognitive dissonance.

There was a heavy police presence surrounding the site of the hearings -- the campus of a local college in Silver Springs, Maryland. Snipers watched from rooftops, a mobile command post was set up and cops outnumbered protesters 2-1.

The panels were heart-breaking and gut-wrenching. Many of these vets are so young, and yet they've seen more than most of us can imagine. We talk about what the military is doing in our names, but to hear from people who were there doing it themselves, is something quite different. They talked about getting their first "kill," of having no clue what the mission was, of being in a clusterfuck of unbelieveable scope.

[snipped]

I hardly know what to say... these poor young men and women signed their lives away thinking that they were helping to defend their country, that they were fighting for ideas like Freedom, Truth, Justice, Equality and Peace. The ultimate irony is that Psychopaths command these men and women. They use them, like cannon fodder, or their own personal brute squad, and put them to use doing the most inhuman, unimaginable, degrading sort of violence and cruelty I've ever had the displeasure to read about. What's worse - as soon as you sign your papers you belong to them. They own you indefinitely, not for four years, six years, or however many years they tell you, they use this 'stop-loss' bullshit so they can keep you indefinitely, effectively taking away your life. It's like killing you only worse, you have to serve them. If that's not the Vampire-Zombie-Ghoul metaphor brought to life then I don't know what is. They've bitten you with their 'legal papers' and now your their slave. Frightful and Real.

I wish there was more I could do. I wish I had powers beyond that of a mere mortal, that I could fight these inhuman monsters directly. Unfortunately it seems our collective fate that we must discover the truth for ourselves, at our own pace, and that each and every one of us must wake up from this nightmare in order for it to cease. Everytime we watch TV, read a mainstream newspaper or get our news from the radio we choose to believe the lie. We sacrafice our free will and the free will of others and literally give it to the psychopaths who run the media and government. I wish this was just the conspiratorial ramblings of a paranoid twenty-something, but as time goes on it becomes so obvious that Psychopaths Rule Our World. They are evil, by definition - that is what they are, and they cannot change even if they wanted to. It will take a society of normal people, strong in the ways of conscience and discernment - to be able to unmask these monsters and share the truth with our brothers, sisters, parents and children. I only hope it happens soon, we don't seem to have a lot of time.