Proudly Afro-Peruvian/Illicitly Azkhenazi-but-Ashmed American George Zimmerman
Elsa Cayat of Charlie Hebdo in Peru 2013
Misinformation.
A Depiction of the Spanish Inquisition - Misinformation.
Closer to the Truth.
Darkest Peru
Suriname - Jonestown v.3.11
(Note the road and inland waterway infrastructure (Lack of))
"Why don't you just go ahead and nationalise the damn oil company?
It's your country. David Rockefeller isn't the government"
Senator Robert F. Kennedy,
Addressing an audience in Peru
Peruvian mum of twins, Belgian law student among Brussels dead
Brussels (AFP) - They came from Peru, Morocco, North America and Europe, and their lives -- whether as a mother, civil servant, student or missionary -- were just as diverse.
This is the picture slowly emerging of those caught up in the airport and metro bomb attacks in Brussels on Tuesday, which killed 31 people and left 300 injured, 61 critically.
Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said around 40 nationalities were among the dead and wounded, reflecting the cosmopolitan nature of Brussels, Europe's symbolic capital.
They included citizens of Britain, Colombia, Ecuador, France, Germany, Hungary, Portugal, Romania, Spain and the United States.
Among the first fatalities named was Adelma Marina Tapia Ruiz, a 37-year-old woman from Pucallpa in the Peruvian Amazon, who had lived in Belgium for nine years.
She was killed in the two blasts at Brussels airport, where she had been about to travel to New York with her Belgian journalist husband Christophe Delcambe and their three-year-old twin daughters.
The others survived the blast as the girls had run off and Delcambe had chased after them, though one of the girls was wounded by flying debris.
"They took away everything she wanted to do with her life," her brother Fernando Tapia told Peruvian media, after she was identified by the foreign ministry in Lima.
Tapia had studied as a chef and wanted to open a restaurant in Brussels, the family was quoted as saying.
Doctor Muriel Brugmans, who treated her in hospital, said on Facebook: "Tonight I'm thinking very much about my patient, mother of two adorable little girls.
"She was... so worried for her daughters."
Who we?
Dr. Tony Martin -
The Sephardic Jewish Role In The African Slave Trade to the Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch Empires in the New World
CHARLIE HEBDO AND PERU
Peruvian Jews represent an important part of the economics and politics of Peru.
Have the 'dead' Charlie Hebdo staff moved to Peru?
"Never averse to investigating her own psyche, last summer Cayat flew with Charbonnier and other Charlie Hebdo contributors to Peru, with the intention of ingesting peyote."
Bernard Maris, a top economist, was a journalist at Charlie Hebdo.
Bernard Maris is a member of the Roger Leray freemason lodge in Paris (Grand Orient de France).
He taught microeconomics at the Central Bank of Peru.
Charlie Hebdo allegedly had an office at 56-62 Boulevard Davout.
In 2011, the alleged Charlie Hebdo offices at 56-62 Boulevard Davout were allegedly attacked with a petrol bomb.
Apparently, there have never been any pictures of the Charlie Hebdo staff at 56-62 Boulevard Davout.
26 Rue Serpollet
Reportedly, there was a Charlie Hebdo office at 26 Rue Serpollet.
In June 2014, a French blogger 'Mardi' published a post about Charlie Hebdo sharing the building at 26 Rue Serpollet with offices of the 'Prefecture de Police de Paris'.
On this Paris business directory, the address of Charlie Hebdo (Charlie Hebdo Hara Kiri)was changed on 6 January2015, the day before the 'shootings'.
It would seem that the Charlie Hebdo address was changed, on various Paris business directory sites, on the day before the shooting of 6 January 2015.
The address was changed from Rue Serpollet to Rue Nicolas Appert.
It would appear that Charlie Hebdo was never located at either Boulevard Devout (petrol bombing), or 10 Rue Nicolas Appert (shooting), but, that these addresses were used to stage false flag events.
The deeply Satanic and anti-Christian Charlie Hebdo. Jesus sodomizing God.
3: The anti-Christian Charlie Hebdo sold very few copies, was deep in debt, and needed some publicity.
The Charlie Hebdo 'shootings' apparently led to Charlie Hebdo making €21 Million.
The 'non-sheep' have seen through the false-flag attack.
A French website called Panamza reported on (1) the crisis actor girlfriend of Charbonnier, Jeannette Bougrab, and (2) the 'murder' of the Police Inspector on the same day as the alleged attack and (3) the finances of Charlie Hebdo.
1) France had just helped Muslims; as with The Masonic Norway attack this was the trigger! 2) Hebdo reportedly owned by a Rothschild corp;
3) French investigating police chief suicided;
4) Date/name gematria has JEWISH MASONIC MAFIA written all over!
Cabala Numerology on the "CHARLIE HEBDO ATTACK" on "1/7/2015": Chaldean: (Jewish-Masonic fingerprint) Vowels-21(3) Masonic Favorite Number both 2+1(sex magic) and the "3"! Total-13(4) Anagram of Pi see: 1) Pi Basis of Judaism 2) Weapons of Jewish MAFIA Consonants-10(1) eloHIM 'gods'/phallus their favorite toy. Pythagorean: (Jewish-Masonic fingerprint) Vowels-21(3) eloHIM 'gods'/phallus their favorite toy. Total-74(11) Does not boad well as its one from "Clocks strikes 12" ( Saturn reaper) Consonants-10(1) eloHIM 'gods'/phallus their favorite toy. If you're in the UK or Sweden you'll want to see this video as you're marked with 9/11 style numerology for a 'fall'! 11-"does not boad well as that's one before the Saturn 12 reaper! UK/Sweden flag falling (See 3 images/half way down blog page) of the Boston Cabala Bombing Rituals that starred Solomon's Temple at the finish line!
As the murder trial for George Zimmerman begins, his father has released an emotional and highly unusual e-book, publicly opining on all aspects of the case. The book by Robert Zimmerman Sr., called “Florida v. Zimmerman: Uncovering the Malicious Prosecution of my Son, George” was released today on Amazon for $3.99.
The most striking chapter is called “Who Are The True Racists,” an apparent effort to rebut claims that his son’s actions were racially motivated.
Previously, Zimmerman Sr. “believed generally racism was a thing of the past.” He says that, personally, he hadn’t encountered much racism, even though his wife is Hispanic. But after his son shot and killed Trayvon Martin, however, Zimmerman learned that racism is “flourishing at the insistence of some in the African American Community.”He then goes on to list various black leaders and organizations that he believes are racist:
Congressional Black Caucus.“[A] pathetic, self-serving group of racists… advancing their purely racist agenda.” He later adds that “all members of Congress should be ashamed of the Congressional Black Caucus, as should be their constituents.” And finally: “They are truly a disgrace to all Americans.”
The NAACP.“[S]imply promotes racism and hatred for their own, primarily finical, interests” and “without prejudice and racial divide, the NAACP would simply cease to exist.”
NAACP President Benjamin Jealous.“[W]hat I would expect of a racist.”
Trayvon Martin’s funeral director. A “racial activist and former head of the local NAACP.”
Benjamin Crump, Natialie Jackson and Darrly Parks, attorneys for Travyon Martin’s family. “The scheme team.”
The National Basketball Players Association.
Black Chamber of Commerce.
National Association of Black Law Enforcement Officers.
National Black United Fund.
United Negro College Fund.
While stopping short of explicitly calling President Obama a racist, Zimmerman Sr. does say that Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have “shamelessly” sought to exploit his son’s case “to obtain great advantage in the African-American community.”
Zimmerman Sr. says that because of Holder’s decision to investigate whether Trayvon Martin’s death violated federal civil rights laws, the FBI did not have “adequate resources to investigate clearly identified potential terrorist [sic] in the Boston area.” Now, “tragically, we have suffered the consequences of Mr. Holder’s politically motivated decisions.”
The second statement, certainly, represents something approaching the absolute truth of the matter, and the day that it ceases any longer to be the case cannot come a day too soon, when it does indeed it does come, assuming it eventually actually will, given enough time;
The first statement though, were we to accept it to be true, we must first acknowledge the fact that the NAACP was from it's inception a Jewish organisation, founded by Jews, funded by Jews, administereed by Jews and conceived for the purpose of assissting the cause of Jewish acceptance, advancement and assimilation by White Anglo-Saxon American nativist institutions - so, that being the case, what does that say, exactly...?
"The NAACP wants us all to become white by amalgamation, but they are not honest enough to come out with the truth. To be a Negro is no disgrace, but an honor, and we of the UNIA do not want to become white. We are proud and honorable. We love our race and respect and adore our mothers. We Negroes should be proud of our ancestry. God and Jesus Christ were black. Let us return to Motherland Africa and establish a nation strong enough to lend protection to the members of our race scattered all over the world."
- Marcus Garvey
Mining the Golden Mountains of Suriname With An Ex-Rebel Leader
Gold is everywhere in Suriname, from political power to what the locals wear on their fingers, the effects of gold mining seep into all aspects of society. The industry is a necessary source of income for many Surinamese, but it's also destroying the environment, bad for public health, and rife with corruption.
The USA / CIA had several plans for an invasion in Suriname to overthrow the Bouterse regime in the period 1982-1984. Lots more details on this can be found at the following link:http://blog.kareldonk.com/researchnot...
In the above video: Surinamese citizens ("Resistance Fighters" led by Roy Bottse) were trained in a secret camp in French Guyana by American Soldiers of Fortune (Dr. John and Boss). According to the US mercenaries, they were "retained by the Council for the Liberation of Suriname last year to prepare military options that would enable the council to regain their country from the dictator Bouterse."
In 1980, Desi Bouterse took power in Suriname in a military coup.
He remained in power until about 1988.
In 1999, a court in the Hague convicted Desi Bouterse in absentia for allegedly leading an international cocaine cartel.
A photo of an armed woman from a Facebook page belonging to Stephanie Bouterse.
In 2010, Desi Bouterse was elected, by the parliament, to lead Suriname.
A New York Times report stated that Desi Bouterse's election created "fears of a possible return to the time when Suriname, once a magnet for Western mercenaries and Colombian drug cartels, was renowned for its openness to criminal enterprise."
Dino Bouterse, reportedly a top drugs gangster. "Bouterse is a significant drug trafficker," says Derek Maltz, special agent-in-charge with the US Drug Enforcement Administration.
Desi has been friends with castro's Cuba.
Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with Surinamese President Desi Bouterse
China is giving Suriname aid and low-interest loans.
"The truth is, actually, Putin, in all of our meetings, is scrupulously polite, very frank. Our meetings are very businesslike. He never keeps me waiting two hours like he does a bunch of these other folks...
He’s constantly interested in being seen as our peer and as working with us, because he’s not completely stupid. He understands that Russia’s overall position in the world is significantly diminished."
Obama’s theory here is simple :
Ukraine is a core Russian interest but not an American one, so Russia will always be able to maintain escalatory dominance there.
Over the past year, John Kerry has visited the White House regularly to ask Obama to violate Syria’s sovereignty. On several occasions, Kerry has asked Obama to launch missiles at specific regime targets, under cover of night, to “send a message” to the regime. The goal, Kerry has said, is not to overthrow Assad but to encourage him, and Iran and Russia, to negotiate peace….Obama has steadfastly resisted Kerry’s requests, and seems to have grown impatient with his lobbying. In recent National Security Council meetings, Obama’s strategy was occasionally referred to as the “Tom Sawyer approach.” Obama’s view was that if Putin wanted to expend his regime’s resources by painting the fence in Syria, the U.S. should let him. By late winter, though, when it appeared that Russia was making advances in its campaign to solidify Assad’s rule, the White House began discussing ways to deepen support for the rebels, though the president’s ambivalence about more-extensive engagement remained.
Obama would say privately that the first task of an American president in the post-Bush international arena was “Don’t do stupid shit.” Obama’s reticence frustrated [Samantha] Power and others on his national-security team who had a preference for action. Hillary Clinton, when she was Obama’s secretary of state, argued for an early and assertive response to Assad’s violence. In 2014, after she left office, Clinton told me that “the failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against Assad … left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled.” When The Atlantic published this statement, and also published Clinton’s assessment that “great nations need organizing principles, and ‘Don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle,” Obama became “rip-shit angry,” according to one of his senior advisers. The president did not understand how “Don’t do stupid shit” could be considered a controversial slogan. Ben Rhodes recalls that “the questions we were asking in the White House were ‘Who exactly is in the stupid-shit caucus? Who is pro–stupid shit?’?” The Iraq invasion, Obama believed, should have taught Democratic interventionists like Clinton, who had voted for its authorization, the dangers of doing stupid shit. (Clinton quickly apologized to Obama for her comments, and a Clinton spokesman announced that the two would “hug it out” on Martha’s Vineyard when they crossed paths there later.).
‘Friday, August 30, 2013[:] ….While the Pentagon and the White House’s national-security apparatuses were still moving toward war (John Kerry told me he was expecting a strike the day after his speech), the president had come to believe that he was walking into a trap—one laid both by allies and by adversaries, and by conventional expectations of what an American president is supposed to do. In Situation Room meetings that followed the attack on Ghouta, only the White House chief of staff, Denis McDonough, cautioned explicitly about the perils of intervention. John Kerry argued vociferously for action.”
[Samantha] Power sometimes argued with Obama in front of other National Security Council officials, to the point where he could no longer conceal his frustration. “Samantha, enough, I’ve already read your book,” he once snapped. …Biden, who ordinarily shared Obama’s worries about American overreach, argued passionately that “big nations don’t bluff.”
[Cameron of the UK and Saudi Ambassador Jubeir demanded an attack. But Germany’s Merkel was opposed and refused to take part. When the British House of Commons also refused to go along, Obama paused.]
Obama also shared with McDonough a long-standing resentment: He was tired of watching Washington unthinkingly drift toward war in Muslim countries. Four years earlier, the president believed, the Pentagon had “jammed” him on a troop surge for Afghanistan. Now, on Syria, he was beginning to feel jammed again.
The prime minister of France, Manuel Valls, told me that his government was already worried about the consequences of earlier inaction in Syria when word came of the stand-down. “By not intervening early, we have created a monster,” Valls told me. “We were absolutely certain that the U.S. administration would say yes. Working with the Americans, we had already seen the targets. It was a great surprise. If we had bombed as was planned, I think things would be different today.” The crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, who was already upset with Obama for “abandoning” Hosni Mubarak, the former president of Egypt, fumed to American visitors that the U.S. was led by an “untrustworthy” president. The king of Jordan, Abdullah II—already dismayed by what he saw as Obama’s illogical desire to distance the U.S. from its traditional Sunni Arab allies and create a new alliance with Iran, Assad’s Shia sponsor—complained privately, “I think I believe in American power more than Obama does.” The Saudis, too, were infuriated. They had never trusted Obama—he had, long before he became president, referred to them as a “so-called ally” of the U.S. “Iran is the new great power of the Middle East, and the U.S. is the old,” Jubeir, the Saudi ambassador in Washington, told his superiors in Riyadh.
Amid the confusion, a deus ex machina appeared in the form of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. At the G20 summit in St. Petersburg, which was held the week after the Syria reversal, Obama pulled Putin aside, he recalled to me, and told the Russian president “that if he forced Assad to get rid of the chemical weapons, that that would eliminate the need for us taking a military strike.” Within weeks, Kerry, working with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, would engineer the removal of most of Syria’s chemical-weapons arsenal—a program whose existence Assad until then had refused to even acknowledge.
This was the moment the president believes he finally broke with what he calls, derisively, the “Washington playbook.” I have come to believe that, in Obama’s mind, August 30, 2013, was his liberation day, the day he defied not only the foreign-policy establishment and its cruise-missile playbook, but also the demands of America’s frustrating, high-maintenance allies in the Middle East—countries, he complains privately to friends and advisers, that seek to exploit American “muscle” for their own narrow and sectarian ends. By 2013, Obama’s resentments were well developed. He resented military leaders who believed they could fix any problem if the commander in chief would simply give them what they wanted, and he resented the foreign-policy think-tank complex. A widely held sentiment inside the White House is that many of the most prominent foreign-policy think tanks in Washington are doing the bidding of their Arab and pro-Israel funders. I’ve heard one administration official refer to Massachusetts Avenue, the home of many of these think tanks, as “Arab-occupied territory.” [Leon Panetta was another hawk.]
He described a relationship with Putin that doesn’t quite conform to common perceptions. I had been under the impression that Obama viewed Putin as nasty, brutish, and short. But, Obama told me, Putin is not particularly nasty. “The truth is, actually, Putin, in all of our meetings, is scrupulously polite, very frank. Our meetings are very businesslike. He never keeps me waiting two hours like he does a bunch of these other folks.” Obama said that Putin believes his relationship with the U.S. is more important than Americans tend to think. “He’s constantly interested in being seen as our peer and as working with us, because he’s not completely stupid. He understands that Russia’s overall position in the world is significantly diminished.
Obama’s theory here is simple: Ukraine is a core Russian interest but not an American one, so Russia will always be able to maintain escalatory dominance there.
Right after Obama’s reversal, Hillary Clinton said privately, “If you say you’re going to strike, you have to strike. There’s no choice.”
Here is Prince Turki’s attempted defense of the Kingdom:
‘A top Saudi Arabian intelligence chief said on Monday that President Barack Obama failed to appreciate all that the kingdom has done to stabilize the Middle East, fight terrorism and support American priorities, hitting back after the president called Middle Eastern governments “free riders” on US initiatives. “You accuse us of fomenting sectarian strife in Syria, Yemen and Iraq,” Turki al-Faisal, a Saudi prince and former ambassador to the United States and Britain, wrote in an open letter published Monday in the English-language Arab News. “You add insult to injury by telling us to share our world with Iran, a country that you describe as a supporter of terrorism.” Al-Faisal’s letter was a response to comments Obama made in a much-discussed interview with The Atlantic magazine in which Obama referred to the Saudis and other allies as “free riders” who push the United States to act but contribute little themselves. Obama has long been cooler toward the Saudis and other Arab allies than his predecessor, but his willingness to forcefully criticize them stunned many in Washington’s foreign policy establishment.’
"Mr Le Pen’s original quoted remarks run directly counter to the official line of his daughter and his party.
They have suggested that the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket are the final proof that France faces an “enemy within”, which has been created by immigration and open EU borders."
It was much easier to resist in London than to resist in France."
Le Pen,
1965 French Presidential Campaign
"Vote for the crook, not the fascist."
2002 Chirac Presidential Run-off Campaign Slogan
Paris attacks: Jean-Marie Le Pen says French terror attacks were work
The Charlie Hebdo massacre may have been the work of an “intelligence agency”, working with the connivance of French authorities, according to Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the far right Front National.
In an interview with a virulently anti-Western Russian newspaper, Mr Le Pen, 86, gave credence to conspiracy theories circulating on the internet suggesting that the attack was the work of American or Israeli agents seeking to foment a civil war between Islam and the West.
His comments – only partially retracted in an interview with the French newspaper Le Monde today – provoked outrage amongst French politicians. They will also infuriate Marine Le Pen, his daughter, and successor as leader of the FN, who has been trying to distance the party from her father’s extreme and provocative remarks.
Mr Le Pen stood down as FN leader three years ago but remains President-for-life. He made the comments in an interview with Komsomolskaïa Pravda , a newspaper which had already blamed the United States for the terrorist mayhem in France.
Charlie Hebdo: Mourning in Paris
“The shooting at Charlie Hebdo resembles a secret service operation but we have no proof of that,” the newspaper quoted Mr Le Pen as saying. “I don’t think it was organised by the French authorities but they permitted this crime to be committed. That, for the moment, is just a supposition.”
To justify his comments, Mr Le Pen pointed to the fact that one of the Kouachi brothers, who carried out the Charlie Hebdo massacre, left his identity card in a crashed getaway car. He compared this to the “miraculous fact” – beloved by conspiracy theorists – that one of the passports of the 9/11 hijackers was found on the ground in New York after two planes collided with the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in 2001.
Mr Le Pen made two other provocative remarks in the interview. He said that the 1,500,000 who marched “against hatred” in Paris last Sunday were not “Charlies” but “Charlie Chaplins” (ie clowns). He also said that there were 15,000,00 to 20,000,000 Muslims in France – three or four times the generally accepted figures of 5,000,000 people who are practising Muslims or have Muslim backgrounds.
In an interview with Le Monde today, Mr Le Pen repeated his suspicions about the identity card but said he “could not recall” talking about “secret services” to the Russian newspaper.
Mr Le Pen’s original quoted remarks run directly counter to the official line of his daughter and his party. They have suggested that the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket are the final proof that France faces an “enemy within”, which has been created by immigration and open EU borders.
Conspiracy theories of the kind espoused by the elder Le Pen sprang up on the internet within hours of the Charlie Hebdo attacks. They have been repeated in recent days by some – not all - young Muslims in France, torn between identifying with the Kouachi brothers and insisting that they were stooges of the French authorities, Washington and Israel.
The French “pope of conspiracy theories”, Thierry Meyssan, now based in Damascus, insisted that the Charlie Hebdo massacres were “ordered by US neo-cons and liberal hawks”. An American conspiracy site, McLatchy, has claimed that the Kouachi brothers were working for French intelligence.
Hotel Terminus is sidetracked by director Ophuls' pent-up feelings
HOTEL TERMINUS
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF KLAUS BARBIE
Produced and directed by Marcel Ophuls.
At the Coolidge Corner Cinema.
By MANAVENDRA THAKUR
DIRECTOR MARCEL OPHULS HAS produced in HOTEL TERMINUS: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbiea film that is as disappointing as it is successful. No one makes epic documentaries the way Ophuls does, and indeed, the highly complex film is a monumental exploration of both the Nazi past and its remnants in the present. But 18 years after Le Chagrin et la Piti'e("The Sorrow and the Pity") established his international reputation, Ophuls seems to have forgotten his famous ability for understated lamentation and downplayed the demonstrated clarity of his vision.
And when the foremost documentarian of the past two decades forgets the virtues of patience, adopts the tone of a polemic, and ends up mocking his subjects on camera, the initial reaction of surprise can only give way to dismay and, ultimately, sadness.
Why Ophuls chose this path probably has much to do with the circumstances under which the film was made. Originally, Ophuls was to have written a series of articles for The Nation magazine about the war crimes trial of Klaus Barbie, the ex-Gestapo chief known as "the Butcher of Lyons" who was extradited from Bolivia to France in 1983. But the trial's starting date kept getting pushed back, and Ophuls grew more and more frustrated as the delays mounted. As his funds began to dwindle, Ophuls and his assistants decided to raise money for a film instead. Ophuls began filming interviews with those who had known Barbie during and after the war as a way to continue research into Barbie's past, and by the time Barbie's trial came to an end in July 1987, Ophuls had accumulated about 120 hours of footage. As the film began to take shape, Ophuls decided to make the trial into the film's logical, if somewhat anti-climactic, culmination rather than its centerpiece.
Ophuls originally intended to write a series of articles for The Nationmagazine about the war crimes trial of Klaus Barbie, the ex-Gestapo chief known as the "Butcher of Lyons." Barbie was extradited from Bolivia to France in 1983. But as delays in the trial date mounted, Ophuls grew more and more frustrated and decided instead to begin filming interviews with those who had known Barbie during and after the war. By the July 1987 end of Barbie's trial Orphuls had accumulated 120 hours of footage.
From the final cut of the film, it is apparent that many persons approached by Ophuls would rather bury the Nazi past than address it forthrightly. Typical of the American intelligence officials who recruited and shielded Barbie from prosecution is Robert Taylor, who evaluated Barbie in 1945 as "an honest man" and "a Nazi idealist." When asked four decades later what he meant by those words, Taylor can only shrug and reply "I don't know."
Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Front party in France, even goes so far as to claim that the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust is less than the universally accepted figure of six million.
Unfortunately, Ophuls reacts to provocative remarks like these by venting his impatience and anger as he makes fun of and argues with his subjects. At one point, Ophuls even includes a mock telephone call to a prospective interviewee, with himself playing the part of the reluctant subject, to demonstrate the typical evasions, half-truths, and denials that he encountered while making the film.
Clearly, the remarks made in the film are inflammatory enough to outrage anyone, but it was precisely for transcending reactionary emotionalism that Ophuls was so widely praised in the past. Far from leading the way with wisdom and clarity as he might have done earlier, Ophuls ends up lashing out with sarcasm and bitterness instead, and it is this tendency that imbues the film with a harsher edge that borders on the polemical.
Polemical filmmaking per se is hardly something to be avoided at all costs. In the proper place and time, it can be the most effective way to call attention to a problem ignored in the past. The Holocaust, however, has been the subject of countless bombasts. In fact, there have been so many that the repeated warnings to "never forget" have begun to take on an increasingly perfunctory nature. Ophuls must be aware of this since he himself has addressed the Nazi past several times, and so one wonders why he reacts as though he were being rebuffed by interviewees for the first time.
The answer is that Ophuls is approaching polemicism from the other side -- he told The New York Times that "I'm thoroughly fed up. I was fed up even before I started The Sorrow and the Pity." Ophuls also characterized the film's tone as "an angry flippancy," explaining that "It was one way, my way, at this stage of my life to deal with that period [the Nazi past]." One can only respect the honesty of such an admission. It is nevertheless most unfortunate that the remark also demonstrates the loss of what the film could have been, and one can only regret that Ophuls did not find the strength within himself to conquer his frustration.
But Ophuls' awareness of the complexity of reality remains as sharp as ever, and that alone is enough to carry the film far beyond the simplifications found in television documentaries. Ophuls' films are four and a half hours long precisely because he refuses to insult the intelligence of the audience by packaging decades of history into ready-made and predigested chunks. The thematic issues that underlie Barbie's story are as rich and complex as the geographic and historical span is broad, and Ophuls' film rises to the occasion.
This is most apparent in the film's last hour, where Ophuls concentrates on Jacques Verg'es, the left-wing lawyer who vehemently defended Barbie inside and outside the courtroom. Like the strong-willed defense counsel in Stanley Kramer's Judgment at Nuremburg (1981), Verges argued that the atrocities Barbie was accused of committing were necessary to ensure the success of the Nazi regime. Verges brilliantly underscored his arguments by reminding the French prosecutors and public that France justified its own tortures and atrocities in Algeria with precisely the same claim. This one issue alone immediately raises wrenching dilemmas about moral relativism, historical accuracy, personal motivations, legal precedents, and a host of others. Ophuls, to his immense credit, presents the vast complexities involved without exaggerating or simplifying any of them.
Ophuls also has a startling ability to foster debate among people who are not directly speaking to each other. His technique is to ask penetrating questions to one person, ask similar or follow-up questions to another person, and then feed the answers back to the original person to compare responses. This is, of course, the classic role of a moderator, but there is a crucial difference between Ophuls and, say, Ted Koppel. That difference is the power of editing afforded by the medium of the film, an ability which is considerably more flexible than cutting off a speaker or interrupting a heated discussion. This difference has the direct and immediate result of introducing an added element to the criteria by which Ophuls' work should be judged: the ability to edit the large amount of footage into a coherent, meaningful whole.
On this score, Ophuls is most successful on a micro level, i.e. editing within a single conversation rather than among them. If a typical television news reporter wishes to edit a person's statement by removing, say, the second sentence, the standard practice is to show the person speaking the first sentence, then cut to a brief reverse-angle shot of the reporter nodding or listening intently as the interviewee starts the third sentence in voice-over, and finally cut back to the interviewee completing the third sentence. As those who saw Broadcast News might recall, this technique is nothing but pretense since the shots of the reporter are filmed after the interview is over and the camera has been moved to the other side of the room. Ophuls, to the other hand, just cuts to a shot of a building or location that is relevant to the topic under discussion. This not only is more honest, it actually helps to reinforce the points being made by either the speaker or by Ophuls. This is such a simple way to avoid deceiving viewers that it is astounding that television news reporters did not adopt the technique years ago.
In terms of macro or structural editing, Ophuls is not always as successful, since much of the film was shot while waiting for the trial to begin. For instance, Ophuls devotes considerable time near the beginning of the film to a discussion of whether a man named Ren'e Hardy was the one who betrayed French Resistance leader Jean Moulin to the Nazis. While the issue presents fascinating insights into the inner circle of Resistance leaders, the only connection it has with Barbie is that Barbie was the officer whose unit arrested Moulin in what came to be known as the Caluire incident. One senses that Ophuls was unable to probe beyond the factual details of Barbie's actions and therefore focused on a peripheral, if still-raging, debate about Hardy's guilt or innocence. Similarly, Ophuls opens the film by interviewing some elderly residents of Lyons as they leisurely play billiards, of all things.
But these opening moments are deceptive since, four hours later, the film often proceeds at such a furious pace that one is forced to focus on what is being said instead of worrying about the speaker's identity. And when Ophuls travels to South America and finds a thoroughly familiar indifference to the Nazi past among Barbie's neighbors, one begins to understand why many in the Third World, victimized by superpower colonialism and facing the pressures of day-to-day survival, respond strongly to Verges' trial defense of Barbie. "I wanted to show what violins Verg'es was playing on," said Ophuls to The New York Times. "Very potent, aren't they?"
It is reassuring to realize that Ophuls' expertise in knowing what to film remains intact after all these years. It is that ability, after all, which brings so many fascinating points to light and fuels the film's progress toward artistic success. That is why it is so unfortunate that the film became sidetracked by Ophuls' pent-up feelings. One can only hope that his resort to didacticism was cathartic enough to allow Ophuls to reach in his next film the moving and inspiring heights he was known for in the past.
BARBIE IS A SPECTER IN A CABINET RIFT IN FRANCE
PARIS, May 19— With Klaus Barbie's trial in its second week, the former Gestapo official's name has been invoked in a dispute within France's governing conservative coalition.
The dispute involves cooperation with the extreme-right National Front of Jean-Marie Le Pen, which has called for the expulsion from France of illegal immigrants, primarily North Africans.
Prime Minister Jacques Chirac summoned Cabinet ministers to an informal meeting today in a bid to smooth over the rift opened up within the Cabinet last week by Michel Noir, the 43-year-old Minister of Foreign Trade.
Mr. Noir comes from Lyons, where Mr. Barbie is being tried for crimes against humanity as the city's wartime Gestapo chief. Mr. Noir's father was deported to a Nazi concentration camp. Toleration of Fascism
In a front-page article in Le Monde, Mr. Noir, who belongs to Mr. Chirac's neo-Gaullist party, asserted that the lesson of the Barbie trial is that the Government should accept defeat in next year's presidential election rather than join with the National Front.
Mr. Noir said France collaborated with Nazi Germany after its defeat in 1940 because of the ''feebleness'' of prewar leaders who tolerated the spread of fascist ideas.
Such ideas are on the increase again in France, he wrote, citing renewed signs of racism, anti-Semitism and glorification of the Nazi movement. He cautioned that the Government should fight extremism, avoid using immigration as a gimmick to win votes, and refuse any electoral alliance with the National Front. ''Are we ready to sacrifice our soul so as not to lose the elections?'' he asked.
Mr. Noir's appeal, some political analysts said, may partly have been an effort to capitalize on public interest in the Barbie trial to discredit the National Front by identifying its racial policies with those of the Nazis. Support Is Needed
But it embarrassed many Government members. While opposed to the National Front, they recognize that Mr. Chirac will need its support if he is to capture the presidency from the Socialists in next year's elections, and favor a more subtle approach.
In particular, France's tough-minded Interior Minister, Charles Pasqua, has been trying to counter Mr. Le Pen's appeal by taking an equally firm attitude on questions like illegal immigration and pornography.
Mr. Le Pen has announced that he will run for the presidency and has embarked on a vigorous campaign, under the slogan ''French people first,'' that centers on the issues of North African immigrants and acquired immune deficiency syndrome.
He is calling for the expulsion of illegal immigrants and immigrants without jobs as well as the quarantining of AIDS patients in special detention centers, asserting that the fatal disease can be transmitted through sweat.
The chances of Mr. Le Pen winning power himself are negligible. But his National Front has 35 seats out of 577 in the French Parliament and a steady 10 to 13 percent in public opinion polls. So it could decide the result of the presidential contest in the runoff between the two most popular candidates.
At today's Government meeting Mr. Chirac appealed to Ministers to close ranks and end the dispute, saying the Government must be true to its own ideals but not reject those who sympathize with the National Front. MAN HELD IN PLOT ON BARBIE
LYONS, France, May 19 (Reuters) - A gunman disguised as a doctor was detained by the police today after he slipped into St. Joseph Prison in an attempt to assassinate Mr. Barbie, the police said.
The man, carrying an old revolver, gained entry to the jail by showing guards medical orders issued by a Paris hospital to take urine samples of the prisoner, the police said. Mr. Barbie has boycotted his war-crimes trial since last Wednesday.
"When pestilence swept through the whole known world and notably the Roman Empire, wiping out most of the farming community and of necessity leaving a trail of desolation in its wake, Justinian showed no mercy towards the ruined freeholders. Even then, he did not refrain from demanding the annual tax, not only the amount at which he assessed each individual, but also the amount for which his deceased neighbors were liable."
"...By its nature, Zionism concentrates ultra-nationalism, chauvinism and racial intolerance, excuse for territorial occupation and annexation, military opportunism, cult of political promiscuousness and irresponsibility, demagogy and ideological diversion, dirty tactics and perfidy... Absurd are attempts of Zionist ideologists to present criticizing them, or condemning the aggressive politics of Israel's ruling circles, as antisemitic... We call on all Soviet citizens: workers, peasants, representatives of intelligentsia: take active part in exposing Zionism, strongly rebuke its endeavors; social scientists: activate scientific research to criticize the reactionary core of that ideology and aggressive character of its political practice; writers, artists, journalists: to more fully expose the anti-populace and anti-humane diversionary character of the propaganda and politics of Zionism..." (highlights preserved)
8 SOVIET JEWS SEEK TO COMBAT ZIONISM
MOSCOW, April 1— Eight Soviet Jews - writers, scholars, a military man and a cinematographer -published a statement in Pravda today that criticized ''international Zionism'' for purporting to speak on behalf of Soviet Jews.
The group's statement in the Communist Party paper also proposed the establishment of an ''anti-Zionist committee of the Soviet public.''
The eight Jews, led by Col. Gen. David A. Dragunsky, said they ''resolutely protest'' the efforts by ''Zionist leaders'' to convince the world that there is any such thing as a ''Jewish question'' in the Soviet Union.
A senior American diplomat here expressed concern over the formation of the committee, which he said could be the start of an effort to build a barrier between Soviet Jews and Jews in the West.
Soviet Jews involved in the emigration movement also voiced fears that the committee would be used to create an official image of a satisfied and loyal Jewish population, and to justify a crackdown on would-be emigres and unofficial displays of Jewish religion and culture. Jewish Emigration Falls Off
Jewish emigration has slowed to a relative trickle in recent months - 125 people left in February - after the departure of more than 50,000 at its peak in 1979.
The Pravda ''appeal'' made no mention of Jewish emigration, perhaps in keeping with its assertion that there was no ''Jewish question'' in the Soviet Union.
But the statement came shortly after the conclusion of a World Conference on Soviet Jewry in Jerusalem, at which Moscow's treatment of Soviet Jews came under hard and sustained attack.
It was apparently to counter criticism of this sort that Moscow decided to found the anti-Zionist committee. Officially sanctioned ''public committees,'' most notably the Committee for the Defense of Peace, are generally recognized as adjuncts of the state and its policies, and dissident Jews reported before the announcement that Jews in prominent positions were being urged to join the new group.
The statement in Pravda followed standard Soviet propaganda in linking ''international Zionism'' with the ''global strategy'' of ''American imperialism.'' But the subsequent characterization of Zionism was unusually harsh. 'Filthy Maneuvers and Perfidy'
''In its essense,'' the statement said, ''Zionism concentrates in itself extreme nationalism, chauvinism and racial intolerance, justification for territorial seizures and annexations, armed adventurism, the cult of political permissiveness and impunity, demagoguery and ideological diversions, filthy maneuvers and perfidy.''
The statement said Zionism sought to falsify the nationality policy of the Soviet Union. ''Soviet Jews contemptuously reject efforts by Zionist propagandists to meddle in their life, they angrily condemn the lies and slander against the socialist fatherland,'' the eight Jews said.
The founders of the new committee described as ''absurd'' any effort to equate criticism of Zionism or the Israeli leadership with anti-Semitism.
''It is well known,'' they wrote, ''that Soviet people - genuine internationalists - resolutely reject any forms of chauvinism, including Zionism and anti-Semitism.'' An Active Struggle
There followed specific appeals to workers, farmers, intellectuals, scientists, artists and journalists to mount an active struggle against Zionism, suggesting that the Kremlin planned a broad campaign.
Articles in Soviet newspapers in the last few days have detailed cases of emigre Jews who found life in the West intolerable and returned to the Soviet Union, or of others who received emigration permits but chose to stay.
Moskovskaya Pravda, the main daily in the Soviet capital, concluded a three-part series on the subject today by raising questions about the concept of ''reunification of families,'' the rationale used by the Soviet authorities for letting Jews out in the past.
The paper quoted Berta Moiseyevna, described as an aging woman who had decided with her husband not to join their daughters in the West even when granted permission to do so.
''For me, a mother, it's difficult to understand why all these emigrations have become possible,'' the woman was quoted as saying. ''They say it's for the reunification of families. I don't understand why it's necessary to abandon parents to be reunified with some mythical uncles or aunts. This is not reunification, but separation.''
Some readers thought the articles ominous in their proposal of a possible justification for declining future applicants for emigration. ---- U.S. Assails Soviet Move
WASHINGTON, April 1 (Reuters) -The State Department today sharply criticized the Soviet attack against Zionism, calling it an ''anti-Semitic diatribe.''
''The United States Government calls upon the Soviet Government to cease its so-called anti-Zionist propaganda campaign,'' the department said in a statement.
Soviet Jewish Anti-zionist Denied Visa by State Dept
WASHINGTON (Jun. 9)
A spokesman for the State Department has confirmed that the Department refused to issue a visa to Soviet General David Dragunsky, who is the chairman of the Anti-Zionist Committee of the Soviet Public.
Dragunsky, who supports such theories as that Zionists, during World War II, worked hand-in-hand with the Nazis to kill Jews and other innocent victim was scheduled to speak before a luncheon of the Jewish Section of the Communist Party, U.S.A.
According to the State Department spokesman, Dragunsky was denied the visa only because he applied too late. For Soviet officials of certain rank and status, he said, they must apply for an entry visa at least 30 days before the date of arrival. The spokesman said Dragunsky simply did not comply with that time frame. A representative of the Communist Party U.S.A. ‘s Jewish section, when queried by a Jewish Telegraphic Agency correspondent about the visa denial, responded, “so?” and hung up the telephone.
Glenn Richter, director of the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry in New York, monitors closely the activities of Dragunsky and his committee. Richter characterized the Jewish general as a “self-hating Jews of the worst kind,” and as “the Soviet Union’s token Jew.”
U.S. Denounces Soviet Book As ‘viciously Anti-semitic’, Calls It Officially Sanctioned
WASHINGTON (Jun. 30)
The State Department sharply denounced as a “viciously anti-Semitic work” a recently published book in the Soviet Union which attempts to eliminate any distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.
“Such anti-Semitic propaganda under the guise of anti-Zionism or any other cover is absolutely unacceptable,” Department deputy spokesman Alan Romberg said. He added that the United States “condemns its hate filled message.”
The book, “The Class Essence of Zionism, ” was published in Kiev by the hardline Soviet propagandist Lev Korneyev and warmly reviewed in the official Communist press. It alleges, among other things, that Jews collaborated with the Nazis in exterminating hundreds of thousands of people during World War II.
Romberg called the book “one manifestation of officially sanctioned Soviet anti-Semitism .” He said these continuing propaganda efforts include anti-Semitic broadcasts and articles and also the formation several months ago of the “Anti-Zionist Committee of the Soviet Public.”
U.S. TO SPEAK OUT
“The U.S. government has spoken out against this campaign aimed at both the state of Israel and Jewish activists within the Soviet Union and will continue to denounce the Soviet government approved anti-Semitism whenever it shall appear,” the department spokesman said.
According to a report in the JTA earlier this month, the book claims that Zionists and Jews are partly responsible for violent anti-Semitism in Europe from the Czarist pogroms to the Nazi Holocaust; the idea that all Jews are citizens of a Jewish nation “automatically puts Jews in the role of a fifth column in any state;” and that Zionist agents provoked the Russian and Ukranian pogroms before World War I “in order to increase emigration from the country.”
Korneyev, who holds a doctorate in history and is regarded as an expert on Zionism in the Soviet Union, has employed some of the most virulent anti-Semitic techniques used in Russia, such as asserting that Jews in ancient times were involved in commerce and that “profit was their ideology.”
FOCUS OF CLASH
Komeyev’s book also became the focus of a clash of two members of the Anti-Zionist Committee where at a June 6 press conference in Moscow, it was claimed that all Jews desirous of leaving the Soviet Union have already left. The clash, as reported by the Institute of Jewish Affairs, the research am of the World Jewish Congress, was between Samuel Zivs and Yuri Kolesnikov on alleged Zionist collaboration with the Nazis during World War II.
When reporters questioned Zivson the Korneyev book, he responded that the Committee “will struggle against improper exposition in such booklets that unfortunately do appear.” But Kolesnikov, himself the author of novels on “Zionist collaboration ” defended Komeyev’s work. Kolesnikov claimed that during the war, Zionists “not only failed to protect their coreligionists but betrayed them, wholly with the gestapo and SS.” He claimed that Adolph Eichmann was executed by the Israelis to prevent the “sacred secrets” of their collaboration from becoming public.