AMY GOODMAN: A little-noticed story surfaced a couple of weeks ago in the Army Times newspaper about the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team. “Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months,” reported Army Times staff writer Gina Cavallaro, “the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.” Disturbingly, she writes that “they may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control” as well. The force will be called the chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive Consequence Management Response Force. Its acronym, CCMRF, is pronounced “sea-smurf.” These “sea-smurfs,” Cavallaro reports, have “spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle,” in a combat zone, and now will spend their 20-month “dwell time” — time troops are required to spend to “reset and regenerate after a deployment” — armed and ready to hit the U.S. streets....
FOR THE FULL STORY, CLICK HERE.
It gets worse:
NAOMI WOLF: On October 1, 2008, President Bush deployed a brigade — which means three to four thousand warriors — somewhere in America. We do not know where they are deployed though citizens have informally reported to me having seen military vehicles and troops in Georgia and Alabama. We do know that their official mandate according to the first report is “crowd control” as well as action in the event of a mass civilian catastrophe. Initial reports described their technology “module package” as involving Tasers and rubber bullets.... The First Brigade is Bush’s force: they are not answerable to Congress or to the Governors of states: they are answerable to the Commander in Chief. In an Alternet posting, I interviewed Air Force Colonel (retired) David Antoon who noted that the troops must obey the president, even if he asks them to arrest Congress or fire on civilians or attack media outlets. If they do not obey orders, he notes, they face five years in prison.... Antoon himself calls the deployment “ominous.” Troops on our streets makes us something less than a democracy: one definition of a police state is when a leader sends his own military units into civilian streets. Meanwhile the civilian policing of citizens is becoming more brutal. Hundreds of preemptive arrests took place in St Paul, dozens of journalists were arrested.... In St. Paul, funds were sent in advance to pay off the lawsuits against police forces that were guaranteed to arise from the planned abuse of citizens. This sort of thing is happening across the country. The tactic has established a closed circle that has turned citizens’ law enforcement agencies into contractors of a state that is directing acts of increasing severity against US citizens. Now a military brigade is being deployed....
FOR THE FULL STORY, CLICK HERE.
Click here to see an interview with Naomi Wolf conducted in early October 2008.
For the past five years or so I hve been hearing rumors that Halliburton has been building (and has now finished building) 800 prisons throughout the USA, not yet functioning, but just waiting for the right crisis. I have not found reliable evidence for the specific quantity, readiness, functionality, locations, or details, but you might be interested in taking a look at page 5 of this Halliburton press release dated 26 January 2006: KBR has been awarded a contract announced by the Department of Homeland Security’s United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) component. The Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity contingency contract is to support ICE facilities and has a maximum total value of $385 million over a five-year term. The contract provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the United States, or to support the rapid development of new programs.... Now, really, what are the chances of “an emergency influx of immigrants into the United States”? And what are the “new programs” that could come under “rapid development”?
FOR THE FULL PRESS RELEASE, CLICK HERE.
What little I know about this 16mm color documentary is that it was shot simultaneously with Rossellini’s 35mm feature film, India — matri bhumi, and that Rossellini returned to the Cinémathèque Française when the authorities chased him out of India for his scandalous affair with his married scenarist, Sonali Sen Roy. He still needed to finish shooting the 35mm feature (in studio sets in Europe), but could only raise the funds by selling the 16mm footage to French television. So he turned the raw 16mm footage over to Tinto Brass to edit. The result was a four-hour ten-part television series broadcast in black and white — in Italy! — beginning in January 1958, with Rossellini and the television host discussing the footage as it unspooled. It was later broadcast on French television from January through August 1959 (presumably with a French TV host interviewing Rossellini in French this time round), under the title J’ai fait un beau voyage (I Had a Fine Trip). This documentary seems never to have been shown publicly since that time.
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Am I to take it from this photo and caption that L’India vista da Rossellini was a precursor to Mystery Science Theatre 3000????? (Source: Fernaldo Di Giammateo, “Rapporto sull’India di Roberto Rossellini,” Radiocorriere · TV, 4–10 January 1959, pp 16–17.) |
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This opens as a documentary, but soon switches to fictional stories of life in India, written by Sonali Sen Roy in collaboration with Fereydoun Hoveyda. When the authorities ran Rossellini from the country, he completed filming the few leftover shots in France and Italy. Brass’s true name, Giovanni Brass, is listed in the credits as one of the assistant directors, but what his rôle was precisely, I’m not sure. India — matri bhumi was released in April 1960 to approximately no boxoffice. The original French-language version of this film was recently reprinted from inferior materials, and the Italian-language version is missing significant footage and is reprinted from even worse materials. The original negatives seem to have vanished. If you know where they are hiding, please write to me!! Thanks!!!!!
French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard was impressed: “India goes against all standard cinema: the image is only the complement of the idea which provokes it. India is a film of an absolute logic, more socratic than Socrates. Each image is beautiful, not because it is beautiful in itself... but because it’s the splendor of the true, and because Rossellini takes off from the truth. He has already departed from the place most others won’t even reach for another twenty years.”
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| This young guy is washing some elephants | These old folks are not washing some elephants |
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| Ramù the Monkey with her human |
This film was shown in the US, but only in black-and-white 16mm, and was a boxoffice dud.
We are offering a bounty for a good video of L’India vista da Rossellini or of the complete, French-language India — matri bhumi. If you know where we can get these, write to us.
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SOURCES:
ImagiDanse, screening held on 26 June 2001
New York Anthology Film Archives, screening in June 1998, with an essay by Fereydoun Hoveyda
Rossellini and His Project on Islamic Civilization
(A wonderful essay especially relevant in the current
political context)
| Directed by | Roberto Rossellini |
| Written by | Fereydoun Hoveyda, Roberto Rossellini, Sonali Senroy DasGupta |
| Original story by | Roberto Rossellini |
| Original music | Philippe Arthuys |
| Cinematography by | Aldo Tonti |
| Assistant Editor | Giovanni Brass |
| Negative | Gevacolor, Ferraniacolor, Kodachrome |
| Music | Philippe Arthuys |
| Editor | Cesare Cavagna |
| Produced by | Aniene Film, Rome Union Générale Cinématographique, Paris |
| with the aid of | Indian Films Development |
| Format | 1:1.375 • monaural |
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| The incomplete Italian version is available on DVD in Japan, with optional Japanese or Chinese subtitles. It’s in the North American/Japanese system, NTSC, but it’s coded Region 2, which will not play on most US/Canadian equipment. | |