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happeningthang
Joined: 26 Apr 2003
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 Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2008 1:15 pm Post subject: |
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I enjoyed the fact that Charlie shares a PA with Ricky Bobby.
Interesting to see some different kinds of 'heroes' in a major hollywood film with a corrupt politician Tom Hanks and Julia's "Minutewoman". |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2008 2:02 pm Post subject: |
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After reading the book and seeing the movie, I have to say I was a bit disappointed in the movie. I had to remind myself that it it was just that- a movie. You can only cram so much into a 2 hr segment.
Between the two, I would suggest reading the book, which is excellent. It doesn't ignore Wilson's faults and is an interesting glimpse into what took place (keyword: glimpse).
As far as BB's cut-and-pastes go, it seems as though those authors did not read the book but merely did a google search of Charlie Wilson and then wrote an article about him. He is much more complex, interesting, and positive than they make him out to be. That being said, I admit the movie nearly does the opposite of them, by glossing over his faults for the most part. |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2008 10:08 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
| The British govt was also there for its own reasons. MI6. Interesting that the Guardian shows no interest in discussing the problem that we cannot really look at Britain's role in this except through American reporting: as you know, the British govt declines to declassify any documents pertaining to intelligence agencies and covert operations. Again, the Guardian, ironically but unsurprisingly, a British newspaper, seems far more centered on the American govt than the British in such matters. As I said, classic U.S.-centrism. |
You appear to have confused the individual, Lakshmi Chaudhry, with a huge media entity known as The Guardian. Suddenly Chaudhry is The Guardian. Hmmm. And because he hasn't mentioned the British involvement this is clear evidence that the nefarious Guardian has a policy of ommitting mention of any unsavoury British activity. In fact I clearly recall post 9-11 The Guardian making great mention of British involvement, along with the involvement of the Saudis and Pakistan. Perhaps you ought to do some proper research before drawing such convenient conclusions from one article. Anyway, I'm not particularly surprised none of this was mentioned considering the scope of the article, which was mostly focussed on the film The Kite Runner. A better example please!
| That very rude and insolent bugger known as Gopher wrote: |
| Big_Bird wrote: |
| This would be an interesting film. |
Sounds like you remain content asking the Guardian and Counterpunch how you should think about this film and that is that. But have you read the book or seen the film? |
Where have I indicated how I think about this film, apart from providing some balance to your nasty thread, hmm? One of the articles I highlighted (the last one) is actually very complimentary about the book, and recommends it as 'a thoroughly good read.' And my comment about the topic of RAWA being an interesting topic for a film? Evidence that I have been brainwashed by The Guardian, eh? Don't make me laugh, matey! That comes about from having followed the activities of RAWA since the nineties, long before 911. I have nothing but sheer admiration for the courage of those women. The story of their endevours could make for fascinating reading or screenplay. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2008 11:02 pm Post subject: |
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| Big_Bird wrote: |
| Where have I indicated how I think about this film, apart from providing some balance to your nasty thread, hmm? |
Please be specific. Show me where my thread was "imbalanced" and "nasty" before you posted the Guardian and Counterpunch nonsense -- "Slaughter and Forgetting" and "Worst Movie of the Year." Your third source even seems to buy into Crile's Great Man theory uncritically. In any case, can neither you nor your sources talk about anything without sneering at it...? |
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loose_ends
Joined: 23 Jul 2007
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| Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2008 11:06 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
| Big_Bird wrote: |
| Where have I indicated how I think about this film, apart from providing some balance to your nasty thread, hmm? |
Please be specific. Show me where my thread was "imbalanced" and "nasty" before you posted the Guardian and Counterpunch nonsense -- "Slaughter and Forgetting" and "Worst Movie of the Year." Can neither you nor your sources talk about anything without sneering at it...? |
i'm gonna have to agree with gopher on this one.
how was he being unbalanced? |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2008 11:14 pm Post subject: |
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| loose_ends wrote: |
| Gopher wrote: |
| Big_Bird wrote: |
| Where have I indicated how I think about this film, apart from providing some balance to your nasty thread, hmm? |
Please be specific. Show me where my thread was "imbalanced" and "nasty" before you posted the Guardian and Counterpunch nonsense -- "Slaughter and Forgetting" and "Worst Movie of the Year." Can neither you nor your sources talk about anything without sneering at it...? |
i'm gonna have to agree with gopher on this one.
how was he being unbalanced? |
It was written playfully and not intended as a serious claim. Clue: the Blytonesque use of 'nasty.' |
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Nowhere Man
Joined: 08 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 12:04 am Post subject: |
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[quote]Quote:
...the flamboyant Texan congressman who engineered a $1bn covert CIA operation. [/quote]
Classic U.S.-centrism.
The American govt eventually contributed $500 million per year to this operation through CIA. The Americans universally wanted to kill Soviets -- and not their proxies. Payback for the Soviets' involvement -- the mirror image of this operation in many respects -- in the Vietnam War. Soviet forces came out into the open; here was an opportunity to tie them down and bleed them.
The Saudis, on their own initiative, and for their own reasons, matched this dollar for dollar. Thus the billion. What were the Saudi govt's motives? Organs like the Guardian could not care less. Indeed, the Guardian implicitly writes out its $500 million annual contribution to the war and carelessly credits it to the American govt. |
Did the Saudi money not go towards the CIA program?
If it did, I don't really see how saying he engineered a $1bn CIA program is not accurate. You're spinning.
| Quote: |
| As far as BB's cut-and-pastes go, it seems as though those authors did not read the book but merely did a google search of Charlie Wilson and then wrote an article about him. |
Based on what? |
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loose_ends
Joined: 23 Jul 2007
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| Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 12:17 am Post subject: |
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| Big_Bird wrote: |
| loose_ends wrote: |
| Gopher wrote: |
| Big_Bird wrote: |
| Where have I indicated how I think about this film, apart from providing some balance to your nasty thread, hmm? |
Please be specific. Show me where my thread was "imbalanced" and "nasty" before you posted the Guardian and Counterpunch nonsense -- "Slaughter and Forgetting" and "Worst Movie of the Year." Can neither you nor your sources talk about anything without sneering at it...? |
i'm gonna have to agree with gopher on this one.
how was he being unbalanced? |
It was written playfully and not intended as a serious claim. Clue: the Blytonesque use of 'nasty.' |
What serious claim?
A movie review? |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 12:22 am Post subject: |
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| loose_ends wrote: |
| Big_Bird wrote: |
| loose_ends wrote: |
| Gopher wrote: |
| Big_Bird wrote: |
| Where have I indicated how I think about this film, apart from providing some balance to your nasty thread, hmm? |
Please be specific. Show me where my thread was "imbalanced" and "nasty" before you posted the Guardian and Counterpunch nonsense -- "Slaughter and Forgetting" and "Worst Movie of the Year." Can neither you nor your sources talk about anything without sneering at it...? |
i'm gonna have to agree with gopher on this one.
how was he being unbalanced? |
It was written playfully and not intended as a serious claim. Clue: the Blytonesque use of 'nasty.' |
What serious claim?
A movie review? |
Sigh. I teasingly described another poster's thread as "nasty." Is that too complicated? |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 12:41 am Post subject: |
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| Nowhere Man wrote: |
| I don't really see how... |
And this is hardly surprising. The Saudi money contributed to the Saudi program.
Last edited by Gopher on Thu Jan 03, 2008 12:45 am; edited 1 time in total |
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loose_ends
Joined: 23 Jul 2007
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| Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 12:42 am Post subject: |
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| Big_Bird wrote: |
| loose_ends wrote: |
| Big_Bird wrote: |
| loose_ends wrote: |
| Gopher wrote: |
| Big_Bird wrote: |
| Where have I indicated how I think about this film, apart from providing some balance to your nasty thread, hmm? |
Please be specific. Show me where my thread was "imbalanced" and "nasty" before you posted the Guardian and Counterpunch nonsense -- "Slaughter and Forgetting" and "Worst Movie of the Year." Can neither you nor your sources talk about anything without sneering at it...? |
i'm gonna have to agree with gopher on this one.
how was he being unbalanced? |
It was written playfully and not intended as a serious claim. Clue: the Blytonesque use of 'nasty.' |
What serious claim?
A movie review? |
Sigh. I teasingly described another poster's thread as "nasty." Is that too complicated? |
I read ur response wrong.
Confused your use of 'it'.
sorry....runnin along now... |
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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 5:04 am Post subject: |
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Incredible American pap, propaganda.
Really amazing how anyone could take anything about this movie seriously. It would have been much better filmed as an animation. But then again, this is an election year.....same old , same old..... noble savage.
But yeah good acting, so good so many here were fooled. And they didn't once even have to play the "bombs bursting in air, gave...."
Gopher, did ya have a flashback?
DD |
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Nowhere Man
Joined: 08 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 6:46 am Post subject: ... |
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| Quote: |
Nowhere Man wrote:
I don't really see how...
And this is hardly surprising. The Saudi money contributed to the Saudi program. |
The Saudi program was separate from the CIA program? |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 10:49 am Post subject: |
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| ddeubel wrote: |
Incredible American pap, propaganda.
Really amazing how anyone could take anything about this movie seriously. It would have been much better filmed as an animation. But then again, this is an election year.....same old , same old..... noble savage.
But yeah good acting, so good so many here were fooled. And they didn't once even have to play the "bombs bursting in air, gave...."
Gopher, did ya have a flashback?
DD |
What is propaganda? Have you seen the movie? Read the book? Do elaborate please. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 11:09 am Post subject: |
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| ddeubel wrote: |
| Incredible American pap, propaganda. |
This is how the Afgani antiSoviet guerrilla war looks when a journalist reconstructs the event from Charlie Wilson and his friends' perspective. No more no less. And as another poster noted, these people are hardly hero-worshipped in the film -- Wilson is clearly corrupt and Joanne Herring is a right-wing religious fanatic.
If the scene where the Agency granted Wilson honors upsets you, that would be too bad. Because that truly occurred and remains part of this story.
In any case, I have already elaborated, at least in part, on George Crile's perspective's shortcomings and limitations. If you like I will reiterate them, as I see it:
Crile presents a story that seems to exceed Great Man theory; it downplays and fails to explore Oval-Office decision-making; professional historians call this kind of purely narrative book "a journalistic account"; it contains no real analysis. Hardly surprising. Again, Crile is not a professional historian but rather a 20/20 producer.
On the other hand, Crile does a nice job telling the story as Wilson, Herring, Gust Avakratos, and their friends and colleagues saw it. This oral- and memory-based history, too, is part of the historical record. And this is the book's value and how we should cite it. This seems to be what Bucheon Bum sees when he calls this book "an interesting glimpse."
Nevertheless, Crile, like everyone else who writes on this war, remains U.S.-centric. Insufficient discussion of the British role and British motives (Britain refuses to declassify dox); no awareness or discussion of Pakistan's decision-making and on-the-ground activities in Afganistan; no one has yet probed too deeply why the Pakistani govt sometimes took India and its interests into account when planning and conducting its operations in Afghanistan (this would require Pakistan and India to declassify dox; something neither has ever done); Saudi interests are merely touched on and not fully explored (that is, the religious war)...
The list goes on.
Our information about this event may or may not change after the American govt declassifies the Reagan Administration's foreign-affairs dox at some point in the near future. At the miminum, we will know more than we do now. At the moment, we have all presidents to Nixon (see, for example, the FRUS series at state.gov).
We also have the former Soviet Union's dox. But Crile, if memory serves (I am not at my library at the moment), never addresses or cites them.
However this may be, you still seem to need to pronounce something absolutely right or absolutely wrong, Ddeubel. Better: in your particular case, absolutely just or absolutely injust. Hardly surprising. This remains the predominant personality type on this board. I would have thought the film's preaching about failing to follow through with an aid program at its end would have appealed to you. Apparently not.
As for the rest of us, I estimate that Freethought, Bucheon Bum, and I are the only ones here who have even cracked the book. |
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