APRIL 2003

..

Moore Film To Claim Ties Between Bush, Bin Laden Clans

'Fahrenheit 911' To Be Financed Through Gibson's Company

POSTED: 1:04 p.m. EST March 28, 2003 UPDATED: 9:28 p.m. EST March 28, 2003

While he caused a big furor at the Oscars Sunday with his controversial remarks about President George W. Bush, documentary filmmaker Michael Moore is hardly finished with taking the commander in chief to task.

According to Variety online, Moore is putting together a deal with actor Mel Gibson's production company to finance "Fahrenheit 911," a documentary that will trace the roots of terrorism against the United States.

But perhaps most shockingly, Moore will also spell out alleged dealings between two generations of the Bush and bin Laden clans, according to Variety.

"The primary thrust of the new film is what has happened to the country since Sept. 11, and how the Bush administration used this tragic event to push its agenda," Moore said in the Variety report.

Moore said the film "certainly does deal with the Bush and bin Laden ties," and "asks a number of questions that I don't have the answers to yet, but which I intend to find out." The trade paper said Moore has done research for the film for a year.

Described as a "circumstantial" tie, the Variety report said that the business relationship began with former President George Bush and Saudi construction magnate Mohammed bin Laden, the father of Osama -- a relationship that endured.

"The senior Bush kept his ties with the bin Laden family up until two months after Sept. 11," Moore said.

Moore plans to release "Fahrenheit 911" in time for France's Cannes Film Festival in 2004 -- a release timed to come before the presidential election that fall.

Variety said that Gibson's Icon Productions acquired the rights to back Moore's film by laying out an eight-figure bid in upfront cash. Moore's recent Oscar-winning documentary about the American gun culture -- "Bowling for Columbine" -- was shot for $3 million and has earned nearly $40 million worldwide.

The filmmaker received a standing ovation as he marched toward the podium for his "Columbine" win Sunday night in Hollywood, Calif. However, the atmosphere changed as Moore's defiant acceptance speech progressed.

Moore, who invited his fellow documentary nominees onstage in a show of "solidarity," said, "We like nonfiction and we live in fictitious times. We live in a time when we have fictitious election results that elect fictitious presidents."

The crowd half-cheered and half-jeered with his remarks, but the sounds turned to mostly boos as he went on: "We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons, whether it's the fiction of duct tape, or the fiction of orange alerts -- we are against this war Mr. Bush. Shame on you Mr. Bush, shame on you."

The jeers drowned out the remainder of Moore's speech, as he said, "Any time you have the pope and the Dixie Chicks against you, your time is up!"

Michael Moore:
"I've invited my fellow documentary nominees on the stage. They're here in solidarity with me because we like nonfiction. We like nonfiction and we live in fictitious times. We live in a time where we have fictitious election results that elect a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons. Whether it's the fictition of duct tape or fictition of Orange Alerts, we are against this war, Mr. Bush. Shame on you, Mr. Bush, shame on you. Any time you've got the Pope and the Dixie Chicks against you, your time is up." (raucous mixture of booing, cheers and applause starting at midpoint and continuing until exit music)

Showing their awareness of these times, the following artists (and a few producers) were seen on camera at the 75th Academy Awards wearing either a silver dove or a peace symbol and/or flashed a peace sign while on camera: (in relative order of appearance) Amy Madigan, Josh Brolin, Harvey Weinstein, Chris Cooper, Rob Marshall, Don Carmody, Sir Ben Kingsley, Adrian Brody, Sylvia Plachy, Richard Gere, Brendan Fraser, Salma Hayek, Beatrice De Alba, Michael Douglas, Daniel Day Lewis, Julie Taymor, Martin Scorsese, David Lee, Michael Moore, Michael Donovan, Colin Farrell, Bono, Gina Davis, Susan Sarandon, Pedro Aldomovar, Scott Rudin, Stephen Daldry, Joel Grey, Angelica Huston and Meryl Streep.

Two lapels had small pins the shape or form of which I could not identify, those of Peter O'Toole and Kirk Douglas. Douglas had a strip of blue ribbon visible under his lapel pin as well. Frank Pierson was wearing either a button with the Oscar statue on it, or a yellow ribbon on a black background, it was difficult to see which.

Controversy Over Gibson's
New Film 'The Passion'

Jews And Christians Hurl Charges

Note - The following Letters to the NY Times
reflect the intensity of the debate
From Robert H. Countess
boblbpinc@earthlink.net
3-18-3

 

ADL Letter to The New York Times Magazine

 

March 12, 2003 Letter to the Editor The New York Times Magazine

 

To the Editor: We are concerned that Mel Gibson's cinematic attempt to portray the suffering of Jesus and the crucifixion in his new film, "The Passion," could call up a dangerous anti-Semitic canard that has for centuries been used to validate the persecution and wanton killing of Jews. ("Is the Pope CatholicÖEnough?" Mar. 9)

 

The centuries-old charge of deicide against Jews, simply put, that "the Jews killed Christ," has been discredited by history and unequivocally rejected by the Roman Catholic Church in the 1965 Vatican proclamation, "Nostra Aetate." Yet the deicide charge against Jews still has staying power among fringe movements and even in some mainstream segments of the Catholic Church. A film graphically portraying the life of Christ, one that aims to lay the blame for the death of Christ "where it belongs" - code words for deicide - could turn back the clock on decades of interfaith work toward mutual respect and understanding, work that has been championed by Pope John Paul II and prominent Jewish and Catholic leaders.

 

Just what is "the truth" that Gibson wishes to tell? Christian Scriptures themselves relate conflicting accounts of the death of Jesus. The truth is always in the eye of the beholder. The danger is that an old-style retelling of Christ's passion, given the imprimatur of a high-profile and iconic Hollywood celebrity like Mel Gibson, could serve as a toxic recipe for religious hatred.

 

Sincerely, Abraham H. Foxman > National Director >>

 

Reply from Robert Countess to Abe the FOX-man at the ADL:

 

Dear Abe and the New York Times:

 

Mr. Foxman made a glaring admission in his propaganda screed when he stated that "Truth is always in the eye of the beholder."

 

What he ERRED in omitting is that HIS truth is ALWAYS in HIS EYE as Director of the ADL and thus is truth skewed toward protecting HIS agendum of spinning news stories so as to protect HIS ideology that Jews are ALWAYS the eternally persecuted by the [Talmudically driven concept of] subhuman Goyim, with Jews NEVER being personally responsible for what they have negatively experienced at the hands of these subhumans.

 

Therefore, readers of the NYT have been presented once again with a twisted picture of reality.

 

Abe's attacks on the Gospels cannot be allowed to go unchallenged by a few of us Christians who have that rare expertise in New Testament Greek language and textual study. His blatant attack does not stand up to a careful scrutiny of the relevant texts.

 

What Abe seeks to do is to REVISE the texts and their clear message SO THAT THE TEXTS EITHER CONTRADICT THEMSELVES OR ELSE THEY SUPPORT HIS OWN SPINNING.

 

Example: the Gospels do NOT place the contemporaneous BLAME for the crucifixion of Jesus on every single distributed Jew in/around the year A.D. 29. Rather, they place the blame on the Jewish LEADERS--the Abe Foxman types of A.D. 29, shall we say?--who met together in the High Priest Caiaphas' palatial mansion, informally, since the evening was a Passover type of special sabbath. This Sanhedrin-ist meeting was NOT a full 71 member official meeting, yet was held in order to examine the arrested Jesus, an arrest apparently instigated by these Jewish Pharisees and Scribes and Lawyers and Sadducees who HATED Jesus and His teaching and His upsetting of their Temple "get-rich" money-changing scam and his upsetting [physically and violently!] their "Wall Street-esque"] euro-dollar-franc-mark-ruble tables in the Outer Court of the Temple itself precinct.

 

To be sure, these LEADERS had much at stake in their dominating the masses of illiterate and ignorant and nescient "Jews." Jesus was a religious and economic threat to their vested interests and Jesus HAD TO BE STOPPED.

 

When the texts report that the Sanhedrinists brought false witnesses, whose alleged eyewitness testimony conflicted with each other [Mark 14:56], I am reminded of the Jewish show-trial of John Demjanjuk in the specially arranged theater [a theater!] in Jerusalem in the 1980s when several alleged eyewitnesses were sworn to tell Foxman's "truth" ["always in the eye of the beholder"] that this Cleveland autoworker, retired, was "Ivan the Terrible" who genocided Jews with diesel exhaust in Treblinka gas chambers to the tune of several hundred thousands.

 

University of California Irvine Professor Elizabeth Loftus [nee the Jewess Beth Fishman of Brooklyn] witness memory expert admitted in chapter nine of her book WITNESS FOR THE DEFENSE [St. Martin's Press] that she refused to help the Demjanjuk defense because of her Jewish commitment to the [Sanhedrinist] interests of Israel. The Jerusalem--where Jesus was also condemned in a show-trial in A.D. 29 or so--show-trial saw similar Jewish eyewitnesses contradict each other and the historical evidence; and the Israeli Supreme Court under the glare of international media had little alternative but to release Demjanjuk, even though "Sanhedrinist" Harvard Professor of Law Alan Dershowitz stated that Demjanjuk should not have been released since HE WAS NO DOUBT GUILTY OF SOMETHING !!!

 

Foxman's "truth" is ALWAYS self-serving, that is, there is NO objective and fixed TRUTH but only TRUTH for narrowly-defined Judeo ethnic-centered GOALS.

 

For readers who wish to explore this in gruesome detail, I suggest Professor Kevin MacDonald's brilliant trilogy that begins with A PEOPLE THAT SHALL DWELL ALONE [Praeger] and concludes with the recent paperback edition THE CULTURE OF CRITIQUE with its devastating PREFACE of 93 pages. This amazing trilogy leaves NO doubt that Judeo ethno-centric shenanigans are harmful to the masses of subhuman Goy peoples over whom the Foxman-Caiaphas ilk run roughshod either OFTEN or PERENNIALLY.

 

Saying all this opens me to ADL smears of familiar kitsch-type "anti-Semitism" shouts from the Oi-veying minority in our midst, but then I must always remember what my Jewish friend [and a truly righteous JEW, unlike the perfect hypocrite Foxman (and yes, I must admit that NO ONE is perfect!] Dr. Alfred Lilienthal said at the National Press Club building over a decade ago: "Bob, you must remember that an anti-Semite used to be someone who hated Jews; now an anti-Semite is someone that Jews hate."

 

Al was correct then and is still correct now.

 

Jesus, if He were to hold a press conference at the NPC in D.C. today, and expose the Sanhedrin and Talmud and the ADL of B'nai B'rith types of our day for what they are--nefarious organizations that don't give a fig, as we say, for the Truth of Abrahamic religion--would be denounced on CNN and other Jewish owned or dominated media outlets as a "self-hating Jew" or worse and worthy of deportation to Siberia or Iraq, but more likely to Israel for a new show-trial [without Professor Loftus to help His defense team!]. Then, I would anticipate in my scenario that Jesus would be hanged like Adolf Eichmann [since gassing might be difficult to arrange in a single evening] and buried carefully so that a garden tomb might not have a large round stone that could be conveniently rolled away and thus a resurrection story to be spread.

 

In conclusion, NYT readers deserve a fuller picture of what lies behind the Foxman and Rabbi Hier animus of hatred for Mel Gibson's UNCONTROLLED-by-Jews-movie on the last 12 hours of Jesus' arrest, torture, sham trial, condemnation, transfer to Pilate for Roman legal condemnation, and then crucifixion, and burial. Readers deserve to SEE the Gibson movie for themselves and as FoxNews loudly proclaims hundreds of times a week, "We Report. You Decide." ["Inquiring Minds" want to know why Foxman seeks to control THIS movie rather than Hollywood sex films or Time-Warner gangsta rap music videos and CDs instead.]

 

Foxman is indeed afraid. He has a solid basis for his fear since the Gibson movie may well represent the Gospels in their power and clarity. But I submit as an expert in NT Greek that Jews in general have no need to fear anything at all. Jews need to read the Gospels for themselves and SEE that Pharisees et alia of the Foxman-Hier-Wiesel-Berenbaum types [mutatis mutandis] were the Jews who framed Jesus and condemned Him to death and pressured, even bribed the pagan Pilate [he needed impetus to affix his signature to the death warrant since he had no interest in Talmudic charges of blasphemy and related religious conundrums] to sign off in approval of their extermination of the hated Jesus of Nazareth.

 

Mel "Braveheart" Gibson just might do the World a great service with his film in that the movie could initiate a long overdue open discussion of what has historically been called "the Jewish Problem" [or by Th. Herzl "the Jewish Question"]. MacDonald's scholarly trilogy is wonderfully framed but MUCH too scholarly for the average reader. But a Hollywood type film with blood and gore and torture and screams of pain and hate and subterfuges and hypocrisy unbounded by Jewish religionist overseers? THAT is the medium with the message for movie goers in 2003.

 

Little wonder Abe and his ilk want to either REVISE it or STOP it.

 

Only time will tell if the pre-film publicity will increase attendance or if the Jewish threats will lead "Braveheart" himself to back down and offer Congressman James Moran-like groveling apologies [for telling the truth].

 

Was there a "Deicide"? That is, was Jesus God and did humans kill Him? This is a question of both historical and theological parameters.

 

If the eventual outworkings of TIME and if there is a Heaven and all associated with Eschatology in Christian [Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant varieties] beliefs is shown to substantiate that Jesus was the Son of God as in the Trinity concept, THEN indeed there was in/around A.D. 29 a Deicide.

 

That takes care of both the historiographical and theological concerns.

 

On the other hand, the general theology of Christianity holds that every human being was personally, though not contemporaneously, responsible for the death of Jesus the Christ since all are sinners [Romans 3:23]. Thus, Jews and Goyim are responsible as sinners. And if Jesus died FOR sinners, THEN each and every Jew and Goy is called upon to repent and accept personally the efficacy of the Atonement for THEIR sins. There is, therefore, NO special guilt for Jews then or today. Both Jews and Gentiles stand on the same level ground at the foot of the Cross alike in both their guilt and their opportunity for salvation.

 

Unless Foxman and his little band of hatemongers repent and accept Jesus as their personal Savior from sin, THEN Christian theology [regardless of Vatican II] pronounces him and his band to be indeed guilty.

 

Is there any more that really needs to be said from the Christian viewpoint? Perhaps the time is at hand with Easter week this April 13-20th for Abe and his fellows to attend services and listen to Bach's PASSION CHORALE "O Sacred Head Now Wounded" and Handel's "Messiah" and other great musical arrangements of the Christian Church. Would Abe and his band be moved to repentance by these? I have no crystal ball to predict the resultant response, but I do predict that such an ecumenical attendance COULD improve Jewish-Christian relations enormously. After all, Foxman and his fellows are ALWAYS trying to get Gentiles to attend synagogues on Friday evenings in order to SHOW the "T-word"--TOLERANCE.

 

Perhaps Mel Gibson's efforts might lead to a "putting the shoe on the other foot" for a change!

 

"Braveheart" just might go down in the history books for bringing about a turn of events that Billy Graham just never could accomplish with his crusades.

 

Sincerely,

 

Robert H. Countess, Ph.D. Ancient Greek boblbpinc@earthlink.net 28755 Sagewood Circle Toney, AL 35773 USA Phone (256) 232-4940 Cell (256) 653-7598 Fax (256) 232-4940

 

Tue, 11 Mar 2003 18:19:44 -0800 (PST)
   From: Nashid Abdul-Khaaliq <nkhaaliq@yahoo.com>
Subject: Mel Gibson Family Under Fire For Holocaust Denial!

LOS ANGELES / ABC - Mel Gibson and his parents are under fire today
from a leading Jewish group for reportedly anti-semitic impulses in
the former's new film and the latter's denial that Al Qaeda executed
the Sept. 11 attacks.

The actor's father, Hutton Gibson, told The New York Times he flatly
rejected that the terrorist group led by Usama bin Laden had any role
in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon Sept. 11.

"Anybody can put out a passenger list," the elder Gibson told The Times.

"So what happened? They were crashed by remote control."

He and the actor's mother, Joye Gibson, also told The Times that the
Holocaust was a fabrication manufactured to hide an arrangement
between Adolf Hitler and "financiers" to move Jews out of Germany to
the Middle East to fight Arabs.

"Go and ask an undertaker or the guy who operates the crematorium
what it takes to get rid of a dead body," Hutton Gibson told The
Times. "It takes one liter of petrol and 20 minutes. Now six million?"

Said Joye Gibson: "That weren't even that many Jews in all of Europe."

Rabbi Marvin Hier, head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, shot back.

"To bigots and antisemites, no amount of evidence of scientific proof
is ever enough. In their world, only hate matters."

The comments from the Gibson family come just after the actor built a
church in near Malibu that caters to a revisionist version of
Catholocism. According to The Times, the church has a congregation of
70, including the star of such films as "Braveheart" and "Conspiracy
Theory."

Mel Gibson, a devout Catholic, is directing and co-wrote an upcoming
movie "The Passion," rooted in a theological movement known as
Catholic traditionalism that seeks to return the faith to its
pre-1962 period, before the Pope issued what is known as Vatican II,
a series of proclamations that did away with the notion that Jews
were responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus.

"If the new film seeks to undo that," Hier told The Times, "it would
not be uncovering truth. Rather, it would unleash more of the
scurrilous charges...directed against the Jewish people, which took
the Catholic Church 20 centuries to finally repudiate."

LA Rabbi Asks Mel Gibson to Reconsider Jesus Film
Sat March 8, 2003 01:52 PM ET
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A prominent Jewish leader on Friday asked actor Mel Gibson to make certain that his new film on the last 12 hours in the life of Christ does not portray the Jews as collectively responsible for the crucifixion.
Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said he was concerned because an article to be published in the New York Times Magazine portrays Gibson as a traditionalist Catholic opposed to the reforms of Vatican II.

Heir said, "Obviously, no one has seen 'The Passion' and I certainly have no problem with Mel Gibson's right to believe as he sees fit or make any movie he wants to. What concerns me, however is when I read that the film's purpose is to undo the changes made by Vatican II."

He said that Vatican conclave was convened to deal with several critical issues, including the rejection of the notion that the Jews were collectively responsible for the death of Jesus.

"If the new film seeks to undo Vatican II ... it would unleash more of the scurrilous charges of deicide directed against the Jewish people, which took the Catholic Church 20 centuries to finally repudiate," he said.

Gibson is completing the self-financed film on the last 12 hours in the life of Christ and a friend of the Gibson family is quoted as telling the Times that Gibson will graphically portray the intense suffering of Christ, "perhaps as no film has done before." Gibson is directing the film.

The friend, Gary Giuffre, a traditionalist Catholic, also said that the film will lay the blame for the death of Christ where it belongs -- a reference that some traditionalists believe means the Jewish authorities who presided over his trial, the article said.

A spokesman for Gibson had no comment, saying he had not seen the article. Sources close to the actor said Gibson's religious views and those of his family were known.

Discussing his film in a recent TV interview, Gibson was asked whether his account might particularly upset Jews. He said, "It may. It's not meant to. I think it's meant to just tell the truth."


"Strive as in a race to achieve the
 goal of excellence in all that you do."

 

http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=entertainmentNews&storyID=2348305