Raising the standard
Earlier today as the leaders of the Stormont Administration prepared to roll out the red carpet for George Bush and Gordon Brown 100s of people took to the streets to voice their opposition. At one point during the city centre rally éirígí activists gained access to City Hall, removed the Union Jack which flies above Belfast 365 days a year and in an act of solidarity and defiance raised the Iraqi flag along with a banner much to the delight of the assembled crowd.
This protest follows on from their closure of the US consulate a few days ago. 
If the flags flies for 365 days a year perhaps this was the day for its scheduled non-flying?
Sorry didn’t see this post earlier, damn time zones,
@Robbie
“the atrocities which saw 2 million south east Asians killed”
Didn’t the stalinist north Vietnamese kill any civilians, before, during and more importantly after the Vietnam war? Now who’s being a revisionist? Americans? Big bad bullies; stalinist thugs? Nice cuddly “agrarian reformers”, history for the school playground.
“Don’t you know your Rambo films? ”
Ah yes because of course the three Rambo movies (only one of which was actually set in Vietnam if memory serves me) were the only movies Hollywood ever made about Vietnam.
Apocalypse Now, the Deerhunter, Hamburger Hill, Born on the Fourth of July, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Casualties of War, etc etc, weren’t about Vietnam were they and they certainly showed the Americans in a very favourable light didn’t they?
‘Apocalypse Now, the Deerhunter, Hamburger Hill, Born on the Fourth of July, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Casualties of War.’
Now now Harry, as previous, must get the movies right at least! First off, Rambo films are big stuido spectaculars, i.e. far more of an audience, box-office, exposure. This is not to say the more independent films did not do well at the Box Office too. Now remember Rambo was a Vietnam Vet, thus utilising his killing technique throughout the trilogy. There is much dreadful dialogue in ‘First Blood’ mumbled away by Stallone about Vietnam Vets being ‘let down’ by ‘the guys out in Washington’, and opening with the search for his mate out in ‘Nam. You must have seen the way the Vietnam setting is recreated (very clever) in the Washington state where the action takes place, so John Rambo can fight out a glorious guerilla adventure! The second film is set almost entirely in Vietnam, the third in Afghanistan…see a pattern anywhere?
‘they certainly showed the Americans in a very favourable light didn’t they?’
They were made by American directors and American casts and crews – some of whom (Oliver Stone for instance) were actual Vietnam vets. So why would Americans make these films about themselves if they did not believe their behaviour to have occasionally been heinous? Perhaps you should attack Americans who make, and go to see, these films about themselves. Did they make it up for fun?
One redeeming aspect is the films you mention are at least much better than the Rambo/Hollywood blockbusters.
My point that Hollywood is a bastion of the culturally liberal far left in the United States and deliberately misrepresented the role of the US in Vietnam, was responded to by you with the following sneer:
“You know the lunatic fringe is out when the attacks on ‘Liberal Hollywood’ proceed apace.”
Yet you ask:
“So why would Americans make these films about themselves if they did not believe their behaviour to have occasionally been heinous?
So I will state it again, Hollywood is not representative of mainstream American opinion but is in fact a bastion of the culturally liberal far left and deliberately misrepresented the role of the US in Vietnam, I hope that clears up that issue.
Thus it is that you are wildly mistaken if you believe that the Rambo genre is representative of Hollywood’s interpretation of the Vietnam war (despite not actually being set in the Vietnam War and showing small town American “redneck” society in an extremely bad light, but then when did small town conservative America get a decent representation in Hollywood in the past 40 years?).
It is not, Stone’s version of brutal, thick, bloodthirsty Americans murdering innocent Vietnamese with no countervailing version of the brutality of the Stalinist North Vietnamese is in fact the mainstream Hollywood version of the Vietnam war.
I hope I have cleared up your previous misconceptions about this issue.
Harry I have already explained how the genesis of those dreadful rambo films is the inane American right-wing frustration at defeat in south-east Asia; I have already explained how the first film is propelled by this stupid dynamic, and that the second is entirely set in Vietnam.
‘It is not, Stone’s version of brutal, thick, bloodthirsty Americans murdering innocent Vietnamese with no countervailing version of the brutality of the Stalinist North Vietnamese is in fact the mainstream Hollywood version of the Vietnam war.’
Given that the central character of Platoon, Chris, is based on Stone himself, and Born On the Fourth of July is Ron Kovac – YET ANOTHER real Vietnam vet – this would suggest that the script and direction came from somehwere very real and possessing as much verismilitude as possibly required. Why do you think they were portraying the US forces as having behaved this way? What have they got to gain by doing this? I would suggest you take a look at every other account of the Vietnam War and the devastation wrecked over the land through Agent Orange – even Rambo acknowledges that! – napalm, and various random murderousness would hint Stone and the others in ‘liberal’ Hollywood were dead on about what went on.
‘Hollywood is not representative of mainstream American opinion but is in fact a bastion of the culturally liberal far left and deliberately misrepresented the role of the US in Vietnam’
And I have proved that the promulgation through Hollywood studios, with Hollywood money, with Hollywood actors and crews of fare like ‘Rambo’ and other action spectaculars (John Milius’s work, I’m thinking, ‘Red Dawn’ you won’t know him) proves that this is not the case. You have confused the independent sector with the very system you say is so out of touch with the rest of America. Quite explicitly this is different from ‘Hollywood’ – the official line is Rambo, not Apocalypse Now, and the Deer Hunter is particularly dubious on its ‘liberal’ credentials – I have to say the depiction of the Vietnamese as violent little men much given to gambling and Russian roulette, not to mention ending the film with the central characters singing ‘God Bless America’ would deviate from the idea of that nonetheless extraordinary film being ‘liberal’…
Not to mention Don Siegel and Clint Eastwood’s work at the time during the ’70s, Dirty Harry, Play Misty, quite explicitly on the right politically…
You haven’t seen any of these have you Harry? I mean really. Its one thing politicking, but do get the movies right and accurate, lest you bump into someone who really knows what they’re talking about.
OK Robbie, so just to prove me devastatingly wrong, list me all the movies that have been released by Hollywood in recent years about Iraq/Afghanistan/The War on Terror, call it what you will.
How many of them actively support the US forces?
If you believe that Hollywood is right wing, (Dirty Harry and one or two 1970′s cop movies are not, like Rambo, evidence of a trend but rather the tiny exceptions that prove the massive rule) and that it mainly produces movies with a conservative, right of centre political slant then I’d love a puff of whatever you’re smoking when you go to the cinema.
It’s absolutely ludicrous to suggest that Hollywood and Hollywood actors and Hollywood directors and producers are anything other than la-la land left wingers, no one seriously questions that. I could name a handful of “right wing” Hollywood celebrities, if given some time, and even then most of them would be over sixty, trying to list all left wing Hollywood celebrities would overload the imdb data base.
‘OK Robbie, so just to prove me devastatingly wrong, list me all the movies that have been released by Hollywood in recent years about Iraq/Afghanistan/The War on Terror, call it what you will.
How many of them actively support the US forces?’
Quite clearly, Harry, this is an attempt to move the goalposts once again. Where are the answers to my facts and considerations on Hollywood and the Vietnam films? Where is your answer to my suggestion that the Deer Hunter is not a ‘liberal’ film given its appalling depiction of the Vietnamese? I shall come back to your fatuous evasion in due course.
Many films made about Iraq and the War on Terror may have a negative or critical perspective – why-ever on earth would that be? – though you are quite wrong to see all the films ont his subject as having a liberal ethos: this is your facile reductionism at play again, and it shall be denounced every time. Quite clearly you don’t sdee many films Harry, but what about for instance a disturbingly stupid hagiographical film based on Bush’s story called DC 9/11 about a US president under fire? This film is clearly a sympathetic, and idiotic, portrayal of Bush as its central hero, played by Timothy Bottoms.
Furthermore, as I have argued before and you still refuse to acknowledge, what about the great many action specaculars and thrillers throughout the years which have continually painted anyone with brown skin or Arabic as a crazed fundamentalist pschopath? Everything from Executive Decision to (even something intriguing like) Spielberg’s Munich has indulged in this habit.
‘If you believe that Hollywood is right wing, (Dirty Harry and one or two 1970’s cop movies are not, like Rambo, evidence of a trend but rather the tiny exceptions that prove the massive rule) and that it mainly produces movies with a conservative, right of centre political slant then I’d love a puff of whatever you’re smoking when you go to the cinema. ‘
Utter ignorance on this subject. There are a number of Hollywood figures known to have Republican or right-wing views. You clearly know very little of this subject, so presumably this will pass over your head, but more recently, Don Silver, Jerry Bruckheimer, obviously Arnie and Mel Gibson, James Woods, Kurt Russell, Robert Duvall and Richard Schikel have all expressed right wing views. This is not taking into account older known right wingers like Eastwood, Don Siegel, and John Milius, not to mention the tradition going back to ol’ Wayne himself. Now someone like Bruckheimer are big-time Hollywood producers Harry, pedlars of the type of tosh that constitutes mind-numbing, right-wing garbage. They, not the independent ‘liberal’ sector, have the control in Hollywood. So once again you have been found wanting in the knowledge department and lacking in intelligence. Interestingly though, whereas you persistently and stupidly deny the work of this non-existent ‘liberal’ cabal, I have always separated the work of people I have disagreed with politically from their politics, and find myself loving some of Eastwood’s films for instance. This is the final idiosy in your repertoire.
So you respond to my assertion that there are a handful of rightwingers in Hollywood and most of them are getting on a bit by listing a handful of Hollywood rightwingers most of whom are getting on a bit.
Wow devastating come back!
Do you want me to now start listing all the lefties in Hollywood? Seriously do you? Have you got a year or two of your life that you don’t have any need for?
The old canard about Arabs being the bad guys is a bit of a myth unless the movies actually depict historical incidents where the Arabs were actually, you know, the bad guys (Munich?). Mostly the bad guys are vaguely European ultra chic ‘terrorist/criminals’, Russian Mafia, Colombian drug cartels or rogue CIA operatives. Even Tom Clancy’s movie The Sum of All Fears where the villains are supposed to be Arab had the villains miraculously morphed into Russians. Actually the bad guys in Hollywood have been depicted with snooty English accents for the best part of a quarter of a century now.
You are indeed correct that I have never heard about DC9/11, get rave reviews did it? A great blockbuster? Big name stars in the cast were there?
How did it compare say to Redacted, Syriana, Lions for Lambs, Fahrenheit 911, Rendition, In the Valley of Elah, Stop Loss, The Kingdom? Was there a Brian de Palma directing? Robert Redford? Stars like Tom Cruise, Meryl Streep, George Clooney, Reese Witherspoon, Jake Gyllenhaal?
But knock yourself out, continue to live in your whacky La-La land where Hollywood is a bastion of conservative right wing movie making but forgive me if I choose to live in the real world.