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 Sunday, June 23, 2002
 The Guardian, London Times and BBC are better sources of news on U.S politics than any U.S. paper, including the New York Times, so the net result is that we have politics run by polls of people who are not told the truth. One bright spot on tv, Bill Moyers Now, will talk about polling this Friday (PBS, check local time).
[MLWebblog]
6:33:17 PM 
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A pseudo-review and a few thoughts about the movie and some comparisons to the Philip K. Dick short story on which it's based. Also, if you're a Dick fan (it sounds bad, but I mean it in the best way), you might be interested in this paper I wrote a few years ago on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (popularly known as "Blade Runner"). It makes heavy use of Baudrillard, and I was partially inspired to write it by my first few viewings of "The Matrix," so fans of either of those sources might find it interesting as well. 1:47:48 PM
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I recently watched "Black Hawk Down"; I don't often go to "war" movies in theaters, but I do sometimes rent them, and this one is great for demonstrating just about everything that's wrong with current U.S. foreign policy and the supposed "war on terror." In a way, it's a typical U.S. war movie in that it doesn't ask many questions about the U.S. killing people and just focuses on the struggle of U.S. troops to stay alive. If the film has any argument other than "our soldiers are heros," it seems to be that bad leadership failed to give U.S. troops enough support to do their mission, so lots of U.S. troops died. But it fails to tell viewers anything -- anything -- about the conflict or why it was supposedly necessary for U.S. troops to go kidnap a bunch of Somalis w/out the knowledge or permission of the U.N. peacekeeping force the U.S. was supposedly a part of. The film assumes that this unilateral U.S. mission was a-ok. Whatever. Here's part of what one of the actors had to say about the film:
Warlords, dictators and terrorists are normally okay with the U.S., as long as they do the bidding of U.S. corporate interests. In fact, the U.S. promoted Aidid for a time. He belongs on that long list of former U.S. allies who commit atrocities with impunity, but once they step out of line are denounced as the "new Hitler"--a list that includes the likes of Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic.
You might also want to check the Black Hawk Down Exposed site if you want a bit more information about the film and its backstory, as well as this review from Salon.com. But perhaps the best short piece to cover the main reasons the film is so problematic is "Both Savior and Victim" by George Monbiot. Calling the film of "Black Hawk Down" a "stunning misrepresentation of what happened in Somalia," Monbiot covers how and why U.S. troops were in Somalia in the first place and provides more details of how they escalated and perpetuated the battles they found there:
The [U.S.] special forces, over-confident and hopelessly ill-informed, raided, in quick succession, the headquarters of the UN Development Programme, the charity World Concern and the offices of Medecins sans Frontieres. They managed to capture, among scores of innocent civilians and aid workers, the chief of the UN's police force. But farce was soon repeated as tragedy. When some of the most senior members of Aideed's clan gathered in a building in Mogadishu to discuss a peace agreement with the United Nations, the US forces, misinformed as ever, blew them up, killing 54 people. Thus they succeeded in making enemies of all the Somalis. The special forces were harried by gunmen from all sides. In return, US troops in the UN compound began firing missiles at residential areas.
Quite obviously, the film version of "Black Hawk Down" leaves out a lot of important information. And why would a mainstream Hollywood blockbuster want to so badly misrepresent U.S. military intervention in foreign nations? Why would director Ridley Scott, with the help and blessing of the U.S. Department of Defense and the former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff want millions of Americans to get a completely wrong idea of how the U.S. military works and what it does? Monbiot puts the answer this way:
What we are witnessing in both Black Hawk Down and the current war against terrorism is the creation of a new myth of nationhood. America is casting itself simultaneously as the world's saviour and the world's victim; a sacrificial messiah, on a mission to deliver the world from evil. This myth contains incalculable dangers for everyone else on earth.
Indeed. 9:30:51 AM
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