Cal Thomas on Oliver Stone's 9/11

[Dreams End]

Do we need any further evidence that the end times are upon us?<br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr><br>World Trade Center' is a world class movie<br>By Cal Thomas<br>Thursday, July 20, 2006<br>Send an email to Cal Thomas<br>        <br>Email It<br>Print It<br>Take Action Book Club<br>Read Article & Comments (10) Trackbacks(0) Post Your Comments<br><br>I have a long list of favorite patriotic movies, including "Victory at Sea," "Yankee Doodle Dandy" and "Sands of Iwo Jima," but Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center" is right up there with the best of them. It is one of the greatest pro-American, pro-family, pro-faith, pro-male, flag-waving, God Bless America films you will ever see.<br><br>What? Oliver Stone, who hangs out with and praises Fidel Castro? Oliver Stone, who indulges in conspiracy theories and is a dues-paying member of the Hollywood left? Yes, THAT Oliver Stone.<br><br>"World Trade Center" is the story of five men who volunteered to enter the twin towers on Sept. 11, 2001 in their role as officers of the Port Authority Police Department (PAPD). Three of them died and two, Will Jimeno (played persuasively by Michael Pena) and Sergeant John McLoughlin (played magnificently by Nicolas Cage), were buried in the rubble. These are real men who love their wives and children and are not afraid to say so. They are religious men who pray without shame or reserve. In fact, Jesus makes an appearance in Jimeno's hallucination, carrying a bottle of water to quench his thirst). Treating faith as genuine and with respect has only recently made a comeback among filmmakers.<br><br>"World Trade Center" is several stories folded into one. It not only tells of the bravery of the PAPD officers, but the faith, strength and fears of their wives. It is also the story of an ex-Marine who, after watching the carnage on television, goes to church to ask God what he should do. He emerges believing God wants him to go to Ground Zero. This is far from fanaticism. It is spirituality at its deepest and most profound.<br><br>That man, Dave Karnes (played by Michael Shannon), put on his old Marine uniform and managed to slip through police lines where he hooked up with another Marine vet. It was Karnes who found McLoughlin and Jimeno and directed rescuers to their location.<br><br>There is another element to this film that should be recognized and applauded. It is the overwhelming number of men and women of differing ethnicities in police and fire department uniforms who were so much a part of the good that shone forth through evil on that terrible day. At a time when we are engaged in a battle over illegal immigrants and the future of American culture, it should be encouraging to see so many who recently came from elsewhere behave like most Americans think real Americans should behave. They did, because they are real Americans.<br><br>In the press packet about the movie, Oliver Stone is quoted as saying: "Although my politics and John and Will's may be different, it didn't matter; we all got along. I can make a movie about them and their experiences because they went through something that I can understand. Politics does not enter into it - it's about courage and survival."<br><br>One of the five who died, Dominick Pezzulo (played by Jay Hernandez) survived the first tower collapse, but not the second. The real Will Jimeno says of his friend, "He was a cop, a schoolteacher, a father, a son, but in the end, he was a great American."<br><br>Movies like "World Trade Center" - and "United 93," which preceded it - don't come along very often. More should.<br><br>There are many scenes that will cause audiences to reach for the tissues, but the last one is a true resurrection moment. As Jimeno, first, and then McLoughlin are lifted out of what could have been their graves, they are passed from hand-to-hand along a gauntlet made up of their colleagues, more than 50 of whom are real-life members of the PAPD, the NYPD and FDNY who were flown to Los Angeles for the scene.<br><br>Whatever one thinks of Oliver Stone, the man knows how to make movies. This is one of his best. It deserves an Oscar in so many categories. It also deserves the thanks of a grateful nation. Go and see it beginning Aug. 9 and make him a large profit so he might consider inspiring us again, as his predecessors so often did during Hollywood's Golden Age.<br> <br><!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.townhall.com/columnists/CalThomas/2006/07/20/world_trade_center_is_a_world_class_movie">link</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--><hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--> <p></p><i></i>

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

Ouch, my eyes. The Thomas toxins...<br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>There are many scenes that will cause audiences to reach for the tissues, <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>but the last one is a true resurrection moment.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> As Jimeno, first, and then McLoughlin are lifted out of what could have been their graves, they are passed from hand-to-hand along a gauntlet made up of their colleagues, more than 50 of whom are real-life members of the PAPD, the NYPD and FDNY who were flown to Los Angeles for the scene.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>And America rose again like a great Phoenix to put in Iraq yet another Phoenix Program like the one in Vietnam.<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/valentine04082004.html">www.counterpunch.org/vale...82004.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Phoenix is another one of those self-defeating obsessions that Americans have, only they try to keep this one secret, because it amounts to genocide by quota. That's right, CIA officers had to neutralize 1800 Vietnamese civilians every month to meet their corporate quota. They went about this in two ways.<br><br>Phoenix in Iraq, as in Vietnam (and Israel), is a two-tiered program. The upper-tier is a secret war of midnight assassinations and arrests of intellectuals and spiritual leaders deemed politically threatening to the Bush/Bremer puppet regime. This aspect is carried out by CIA officers and mercenaries dressed in mufti, often posing as "contractors" like the four unfortunates murdered and mutilated in Fallujah a few days ago. These are the killers the American media is forbidden from outing at the cost of their pathetic lives. These are also the Israeli-advised guys and gals who cheerfully drew up the hit-lists of Saddam's Ba-ath and Sunni "henchmen", and organized the Iraqi-led militias that have provided the Iraqi Underground with much of its data. As we now know, this aspect of the CIA's Phoenix Program is penetrated up the gazoom, just as it was in Vietnam.<br><br>The lower-tier Phoenix Program in Iraq, like the one in Vietnam, consists of CIA officers and Iraqi collaborators operating undercover of military "cordon and search" operations, like the one in Fallujah. In Vietnam, CIA officers--undercover of military "cordon and search" operations--went into villages that supported the resistance, in hopes of catching or killing civilian leaders, while the military polished off the guerrilla forces. The My Lai massacre was the ultimate example of this flawed policy in Vietnam; Sabra and Shatilla was Israel's infamous version in Lebanon. <hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>Did these first-responders attend the movie? They might've had different thoughts about those buildings coming down.<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/html/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/met_WTC_histories_full_01.html">graphics8.nytimes.com/pac...ll_01.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br> 9/11 NY Emergency Oral Histories+Dispatch Tapes<br><br>Their witness reports are in 503 transcripts available at the New York Times website.<br><br>EXAMPLE:<br>Banaciski, Richard (pdf file) Firefighter (F.D.N.Y.) 12/6/01<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/9110253.PDF">graphics8.nytimes.com/pac...110253.PDF</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br>page 3:<br>"It seemed like on television they blow up<br>these buildings. It seemed like it was going all the<br>way around like a belt, all these explosions."<br><br>EXAMPLE:<br>Deshore, Karin (pdf file) Captain (E.M.S.) 11/7/01<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/9110192.PDF">graphics8.nytimes.com/pac...110192.PDF</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br>page 15:<br>“Somewhere around the middle of the World Trade Center there was this orange and red flash coming out. Initially it was just one flash, then this flash just kept popping all the way around the building and that building had started to explode. The popping sound, and with each popping sound it was initially an orange and then red flash came out of the building, and then it would just go all around the building on both sides, and the explosions were getting bigger, going both up and down and then all around the building.<br>I went inside and told everybody that the other building, or there was an explosion occurring up there and said I think we have another major explosion.”<br><br>EXAMPLE:<br>Derubbio, Dominick (pdf file) Battalion Chief (F.D.N.Y.) 10/12/01<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/9110064.PDF">graphics8.nytimes.com/pac...110064.PDF</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br>page 5:<br>"It was weird how it started to come<br>down. It looked like it was a timed explosion..."<br><br><br><br><br><br> <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=hughmanateewins>Hugh Manatee Wins</A> at: 7/26/06 1:07 am<br></i>

[Avalon]

I saw Superman this week. I felt that the segment with the shuttle/plane problem was manipulative, and was playing on our memories of the Columbia disaster and Flight 93 plummeting down in Pennsylvania. I haven't seen any of the 9/11 mockumentaries, and don't wish to, though I probably will have to at some point just to get a handle on what fictions are entering our collective memory.<br><br>FWIW, there was a lot of gratuitous violence in the Superman movie that might come as a surprise to those taking younger kids. It was leavened for me at least by Lex Luthor reminding me of a smarter Jeff Gannon. <!--EZCODE EMOTICON START :D --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/happy.gif ALT=":D"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> <p></p><i></i>