Kiefer Sutherland - Son of Leftist Donald Sutherland - Sells Out to the CIA and Rupert Murdoch
Edited by Alex Constantine
" ... 'FBI APEC Seattle, FBI used CIA-kidnapped children as prostitutes for blackmail,' but we're the good guys,' thinks Kiefer Sutherland. ... Children were attacked as enemy combatants by US special forces at OKC Murrah daycare, and flown into the Pentagon and WTC 911. But you aren't feeling any pain, are you? Kiefer Sutherland is the happy face of Air America. Look at Kiefer instead of Porter and The Boys. .... "
http://www.mail-archive.com/cia-drugs@y ... 08610.html
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Fox Show "24": Torture on TV
By Jon Wiener, The Nation.com
January 15, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/46757/
"24" is back on Fox TV -- the hit show starring Kiefer Sutherland, which premiered Sunday night, once again features at least one big torture scene in every episode -- the kind of torture the Bush White House says is necessary to protect us from you-know-who.
The show is much more convincing than the White House at making the case for torture; its ratings have gone steadily up over the last five years, while Bush's ratings have gone steadily down.
In "24," Sutherland plays special agent Jack Bauer, head of the Counter Terrorism Unit. He fights some of his biggest battles not with the dark-skinned enemies trying to nuke L.A., but rather with the light-skinned do-gooders who think the head of the Counter Terrorism Unit should follow the rules.
Back in season four, for example, the bumbling bureaucrats released a captured terrorist before he could be tortured -- because a lawyer for "Amnesty Global" showed up whining about the Geneva Conventions. Jack had to quit the Counter Terrorist Unit and become a private citizen in order to break the suspect's fingers.
It's especially unfortunate to see Kiefer Sutherland play the world's most popular torturer -- because his father, Donald Sutherland, has been a prominent antiwar activist since Vietnam days and starred in some great films critiquing fascist politics, including "MASH" and Bertolucci's "1900" -- and also because Kiefer's grandfather, Tommy Douglas, was Canada's first socialist premier, and was recently voted "the greatest Canadian of all time" -- because he introduced universal public health care to Canada. The grandson meanwhile is being paid $10 million a season by Rupert Murdoch to shoot kneecaps, chop off hands, and bite his enemies to death (Sunday's special thrill).
The show's connection to the Bush White House and the conservative establishment became explicit last June, when Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff appeared alongside the show's producers and three cast members at an event sponsored by the Heritage Foundation to discuss "The public image of US terrorism policy." The discussion was moderated by Rush Limbaugh. The C-SPAN store sells a DVD of the event--price reduced from $60 to $29.95. Sunday night's two-hour premiere again argued not just that torture is necessary but that it works -- and it's also really exciting to watch. The show as usual made the "ticking time bomb" case for torture: we need to torture a suspect, or else thousands, or millions, will die in the next hour.
It's the same case made by Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, who proposed that judges ought to issue torture warrants in the "rare 'ticking bomb' case," and by University of Chicago law professor and federal judge Richard Posner, who has written, "If torture is the only means of obtaining the information necessary to prevent the detonation of a nuclear bomb in Times Square, torture should be used." He added that "no one who doubts that this is the case should be in a position of responsibility."
Thanks to "24," tens of millions of TV viewers know exactly what Dershowitz and Posner are talking about. As Richard Kim pointed out in The Nation in 2005, those are the cases where "the stakes are dire, the information perfect and the authorities omniscient." Of course that's a fantasy of total knowledge and power, and of course the U.S. has never had a real "ticking time bomb" case -- but Jack Bauer faces one every Sunday night on Fox.
http://www.alternet.org/story/46757/
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" ... The torture and wrongful imprisonment and lawlessness of the U.S. indicates a country that has become very cruel and very stupid under Bush the second. ... "
TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE
by Chris Knipp
"Alex Gibney's Taxi to the Dark Side, a documentary about America's use of torture, takes its title from a remark made by Dick Cheney to Tim Russert on the Meet the Press program of September 16, 2001 that to fight the war on terrorism, 'We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will.' ... America has developed a culture of guilty-as-charged, of hysterical attacks on imagined enemies. The popular jingoistic TV program 24, starring Kiefer Sutherland as a CIA agent who "saves" millions by torturing mad terrorists with ticking bombs in Times Square, is symptomatic of this mindset. A Dark Side talking head asserts no such person has ever been captured, but if he were he'd have the commitment to die rather than reveal information about his plot. Yet a survey showed after the Abu Ghraib scandal that the American public still considered torture a desirable method. ... "
http://www.cinescene.com/knipp/taxidark.htm
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TV Illusions vs. Reality
Thinking about Extraordinary Rendition
www.strangecultureblog.com
JULY 10, 2007
" ... Last month I wrote about my disappointment with torture being used as a form of entertainment/sexual perversion in films like Hostel II, Grindhouse, and Captivity which are in theaters this year.
"Yet, when I read or think about extraordinary rendition and torture as it applies to terrorism, I do not think of films like those, rather I think of Fox's hit television program 24. There has been many episodes where innocent and guilty people alike get tortured. Almost always, the scenes are horribly gruesome and absolutely unejoyable. And in the world of Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) torture (without government approval) is just part of the job. Yet, when I watch 24 I don't get angry, because I connect and trust Kiefer Sutherland general discretion. But when I research about the alleged use of extraordinary rendition by the United States and other countries it is very disheartening and unsettling. ... "
http://www.strangecultureblog.com/2007/ ... ition.html
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KIEFER SUTHERLAND - SUTHERLAND'S CIA ENCOUNTER
www.contactmusic.com
KIEFER SUTHERLAND was amazed when he was told off by a member of the CIA for setting too good an example in hit TV series 24. Sutherland, who plays federal agent JACK BAUER, unwittingly placed higher expectations on real-life agents with his action-packed portrayal. He says, "I'll tell you a funny thing. I was in a ski lift and the guy there with me told me that he worked for the CIA and said he was a fan of the show. "He told me I had made his life difficult because when he was a way in Europe for four months, his mother got really upset with him being away for so long. "Apparently she said to him, 'You should be more like Jack Bauer because he gets things done in a hurry.'"
30/05/2006 17:30
http://www.contactmusic.com/new/xmlfeed ... 30_05_2006
