BEN AFFLECK – MORGAN FREEMAN – THE SUM
OF ALL FEARS – 2002
This is a film that was essential at the time when it came
out and that is all the more important today as a generic film on global
tension in a time when tension is seen as some aphrodisiac drink by some
politicians.
In 2002, one year after 9/11, the same year when the invasion
of Afghanistan was ordered and performed and one year before the similar strike
was ordered and performed in Iraq, this film showed that politicians are
constantly manipulated by various factions in various agencies or out of them,
and what’s more are the victims of all sorts of plots from isolated but
networked individuals, isolated since they are representing no one at all and networked
because they are half a dozen and they are engaged in some “project” that makes
them both dangerous and tied up together. To step out means to be eliminated
radically to death.
That was a strong call against any limitless war project
against terrorism because it was inevitably going to rekindle the animosity
between the USA and Russia, especially since the Russian president in the film
is typically a personification of Putin though the film insists too much on the
fact that he does not really control his military or even the political system
at all that is still in the hands of the old Soviet Communists. This last fact
is just not feasible since Putin was the last generation of security top
officers, working outside the USSR mostly trained by the KGB under Brezhnev. That
could maybe have been right for Gorbachev but cannot be true for Putin, though
like any state there are contradictory motivations among the bureaucrats or civil
servants. This is perfectly well shown on the American side where the President
is surrounded by people who have very contradictory opinions from extreme war
mongers to rather conciliatory peaceful minds.
But the film has to be taken today as a generic film about
the danger of nuclear war in our modern world and we have to keep in mind the
opposition between Trump’s USA (and I insist on the fact we are talking of the
USA under the leadership of Trump) and North Korea. Or as for that China and
Russia, not to speak of Iran, Syria, Turkey and so many other countries in the
world. All those who defy the absolute leadership Trump wants to represent and
impose after the USA definitely lost it in Iraq after having partially lost it in
Vietnam.
Of course North Korea is a mystery. Their young leader may
be considered as easily manipulatable though from what me know or may know he
seems to be strong-headed too and able to get rid of people who are in his way,
including his uncle and his own brother. That might be because he is under
control from one faction in the upper tiers of the regime, or he has his own agenda
and he has managed to bring enough people around his agenda to be secure.
On the other hand, Trump on the American side is impulsive
and does not know what even medium range thinking is all about. He fired the
FBI director in the worst possible way but he certainly had not foreseen the
backlash after this event, with a first official reason from employees, and
then another one completely different from the President himself that caused
the worst possible speculations, accusations, and amplified backlash effects by
connecting the firing with the Russian investigation, and this firing brought
the private memos of the Director on the various conversations he had had with the
president and that brought the next wave of tsunami rage bringing the suspicion
of possible corrupted obstruction of justice, which is impeachable. Unpredictable,
impulsive and what’s more unable to say in any way “I was wrong but I have
changed my mind and I am sorry about what I said before” and this last
characteristic is strong in appellate courts where he has to defend his travel
bans and runs into the contradiction between his strongly anti-Muslim
declarations during the campaign and the fact he has never stepped back and
clearly said he had changed his mind on this point before signing the two
executive orders of his travel bans against seven at first and then six dominantly
Muslim countries.
In the film you have the Israelis connected – is it
accidentally or is it openly – with the descendants of Nazi war criminals and
other Nazi continuers who try to correct what they call the stupidity of Hitler
who went at war against the USA and the USSR instead of doing what the modern
world makes very easy, i.e. to make the USA and the USSR fight each other to
death and then the surviving Germans would have been able to pick the pieces
and draw the chestnuts from the roasting pan without burning their paws too
much. Today we know that Israel was vain enough to use cyberwar weaponized
software devised by the Americans, probably within the NSA in 2007-2009, on
their own and with some modification against Iran’s nuclear project in such a
reckless way that it went out public on the Internet. And even more advanced in
time we know the latest global cyber-attack by criminal hackers used a
ransomware that had gone public “accidentally” but that had been devised by the
NSA as a cyber-war weapon to be used against terrorist organizations (and some
other nation states of course). Adding a line or two of code to turn a
weaponized tool exploiting a vulnerability in Windows Operating System to turn
it into a ransomware is rather easy and possible for small hacking groups,
whereas they could not devise the whole software because they do not have the
means nor the time nor the equipment to do it on their own.
When politicians get engaged in such at-the-brink cliffhanging
procedures and actions there is no way to say whether they will back up in time
or that they will let the whole world go the way this reckless procedure is
bound to go. And the film is just that.
Of course it is a film and it has to be both frightening but
also with a certain hopeful dimension. That hopeful line is provided on both
sides by some individuals who have the intelligence, the stamina and the guts
to play it cool and just push the right button at the right time to block the
most dangerous developments. And at this level the film is most pregnant with
human reason and human vision. And it is these human reason and vision that
make me consider a man like Donald Trump has nothing to do in the White House.
He is dangerous and he may cause a political and military catastrophe before the
end of the year. Here again he has to be humble and he is not able to be. He
has to admit the USA have been wrong all along with North Korea when they
refused to implement the agreement negotiated with North Korea so long ago no
one remembers in spite of Jimmy Carter’s recollections about it since he was the
main negotiator. At the time there was not even the slightest nuclear allusion.
But now it is too late. The USA have to negotiate with North Korea as a nuclear
power, one nuclear power to another nuclear power and they can ask a few other
nuclear powers to help like in Asia Russia, China, India and Pakistan. But Trump
will never be able to do that on his own. He will have to be forced to do it by
a global alliance that might get the attention of Congress.
This film is a masterpiece then and it is the recipe how to
avoid the Apocalypse that will destroy the red Babylon and the Red Babylon is
the Red Republican Party in the USA. This Republican Party will have to be
destroyed if they do not want to put Trump on the side, and they better accept
the voice of reason and the vision of sanity. This film will remain prophetic
for a long time because humanity being what it is there will always be a crisis
situation of some sort developing among the nation states of this planet. They
get that from the milk they drink after birth and the diapers they are wrapped
in on minute one after birth, after being checked and measured and made ready
to be given to the mother wrapped up in some kind of diaper and a woolen
blanket. The germ of it is in our genes.
Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU
OLDER REVIEW ON AMAZON, 5 December 2007
Propaganda is hateful, especially
when it smells antisemitic
This film could have been a good one. It came out after 9/11
but before Iraq, at the time of Afghanistan. It is about the "final"
confrontation between the USA and Russia. A nuclear terrorist attack is
organized in Baltimore so that the USA may believe it comes from the Russians
and may start the procedure leading to a full out nuclear war. From the very
start the theory that is illustrated here is that terror in the world is
organized by the Israeli secret services with the help of some western
autonomous adventurers and with the complicity of the hard liners in the
Russian and Ukrainian armies.
Then the whole story is difficult to believe because of the
total lack of real believable hard facts. The American president appears as
quite manipulated by his own military personnel and his State and Defense
Secretaries, without speaking of the CIA. The Russian president appears just as
much manipulated but with maybe a little bit more nerve. The whole plot fails
because a small CIA intellectual agent manages to speak to the Russian
president directly via the red telephone and make him take the decision to halt
his alert, a decision that the US president immediately imitates. How can we
believe that.
The Weapons of Mass Destruction are quoted in some remote small sentence somewhere
unimportant but the propaganda is clear. The various actors of this plot are
then eliminated one after the other in the most radical way possible. That's a
shame in a way because the film is rather well made and acted but it is obvious
war propaganda that supports the theory pretending the world is being
manipulated if not controlled by the Israelis, a resurgence of sorts of the old
hitlerian anti-semitism of old. I guess some believe that good old
hate-theories can always be revived in a way or another, with a little bit of
upgrading if necessary.
Dr Jacques
COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne
& University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
ANCIENNE CRITIQUE SUR AMAZON.FR, 5
décembre 2007
La propagande de guerre fleurit toujours abondamment aux USA
Un film sorti
après les attentats de septembre 2001 mais avant la guerre en Irak,
probablement en même temps que la guerre en Afghanistan. Une histoire de
politique fiction à peine crédible, mais c'est la piste terroriste israélienne
qui est développée ici : les services secrets israéliens en connivence avec les
purs et durs dans l'armée ex-soviétique et maintenant russe ou ukrainienne. On
est après Eltsine mais pas très clair sur le président américain qui apparaît
comme manquant pour le moins d'information et manipulé facilement par ses
propres extrémistes dans l'armée ou la diplomatie, ni sur le président russe
qui semble tout aussi soumis à des pressions mais pourtant plus lucide et prêt
à nettoyer son écurie.
On découvre en même temps que l'attentat nucléaire qui
doit provoquer la destruction mutuelle des USA et de la Russie a été fait avec
du plutonium volé par la CIA aux USA et fourni aux Israéliens en 1968 pour en
faire une bombe qui sera perdue quelque part dans le Sinaï. De fil en aiguille
on va tout droit à l'ordre final et c'est un petit agent intellectuel de la CIA
qui parle directement avec le téléphone rouge au président russe qui accepte
d'arrêter son ordre d'attaque, ce en quoi le président des USA le suit.
Puis
les comploteurs sont tous éliminés radicalement d'un côté comme de l'autre. On
cite les armes de destruction massive, mais on nous raconte la fable que ce ne
sont ni les Russes ni les Américains qui veulent la guerre, mais qu'ils sont
les victimes d'un complot international mené par les Israéliens et quelques
autonomes d'origine occidentale. C'est dommage que ce film soit trop plein de
propagande car les acteurs jouent relativement bien et le film est assez bien
ficelé. Il y a de l'argent pour les films de propagande militaire aux Etats-Unis.
Dr Jacques
COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne
& University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
# posted by Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU @ 7:22 AM