Posted on 02/25/2006 6:02:52 PM PST by blam
Outcry in Germany as anti-Semitic film sells out
By Tony Paterson in Berlin
(Filed: 26/02/2006)
A virulently anti-Semitic film about the Iraq war has provoked a storm of protest in Germany after it sold out to cheering audiences from the country's 2.5 million-strong Turkish community.
Valley of the Wolves, by the Turkish director Serdan Akar, shows crazed American GIs massacring innocent guests at a wedding party and scenes in which a Jewish surgeon removes organs from Iraqi prisoners in a style reminiscent of the Nazi death camp doctor Joseph Mengele.
US soldiers storm a wedding party in a scene from the film
Bavaria's interior minister admitted last week that he had dispatched intelligence service agents to cinemas showing the film to "gauge" audience reaction and identify potential radicals.
Edmund Stoiber, the state's conservative prime minister, has appealed to cinema operators to remove what he described as "this racist and anti-Western hate film" from their programmes.
The £6 million film, the most expensive Turkish production ever made, had already proved a box office hit in Turkey, where it first opened last month at a gala attended by the wife of the country's prime minister.
The production went on general release in Germany a fortnight ago and has had full houses ever since. More than 130,000 people, most of them young Muslims, saw the film in the first five days of its opening. At a packed cinema in a largely Turkish immigrant district of Berlin last week, Valley of the Wolves was being watched almost exclusively by young Turkish men. They clapped furiously when the Turkish hero of the film was shown blowing up a building occupied by the United States military commander in northern Iraq.
In the closing sequence, the hero is shown plunging a dagger into the heart of a US commander called Sam, played by Billy Zane. The audience responded by standing up and chanting "Allah is great!"
Afterwards, an 18-year-old member of the audience said: "The Americans always behave like this. They slaughtered the Red Indians and killed thousands in Vietnam.
"I was not shocked by the film, I see this on the news every day."
The nature of the film and the enthusiastic reception given to it by young Muslims, has both shocked and polarised politicians and community leaders.
Bernd Neumann, the culture minister in Chancellor Angela Merkel's government complained last week that the reaction to the film "raises serious questions about the values of our society and our ability to instil them".
Kenan Kolat, the head of Germany's Turkish community, insisted that a ban on the film would make matters worse. "If it is withdrawn, it will raise levels of identification with the film," he said. "A democracy must be able to endure films that it doesn't approve of."
Alin Sahin, the film's distributor in Germany, argued: "When a cartoonist insults two billion Muslims it is considered freedom of opinion, but when an action film takes on the Americans it is considered demagoguery. Something is wrong."
But those arguing for a ban on Valley of the Wolves appeared to have won a partial victory last week when Cinemaxx, one of Germany's largest cinema chains, announced that it was withdrawing the film.
I believe there was a scene in Caleb Carr's The Alienist where a photograph was faxed. The book was set around the turn of the century.
The Left have never told the complete truth, but you know that because you're a Leftie yourself.
Maybe that's why Whittaker Chambers, a one-time member of the Communist Party USA who recovered from that perverted ideology, noted that in America "the left can only take power through deception."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1585679/posts
Nice link...thanks. (I've had a copy of Witness on my shelf for several months. I need to work it up to the "on deck" position. It seems I am much faster at buying books than at reading them.)
LOL --- yes, I have a pile next to me just waiting for me to see what's in between their covers.
"Is Valley of the Wolves any less true than any of Michael Moore's movies? What's the problem? If Fahrenheit/911 can play at any theater in the US this trash should be able to be seen in any theater in Germany"
I agree 100%. It's time the Germans be confronted with the fifth column that exists in their very own country. It's sad really. After WWII, the Germans were so afraid of appearing xenophobic, of being the great Aryan race, that they opened their doors to anyone and everyone. And the Turks came, to do the low paying jobs, just like the illegal Mexicans do in our country. However, Mexicans are Christian, and Turks are Muslim. Big gigantic difference. Muslims owe no allegiance to the country they live in, they owe their allegiance to their religion.
It must be a horrifying revelation to many Germans to see this movie playing to sold-out audiences of primarily all Muslim men movie-goers who are cheering wildly and eating this movie up as the gospel truth according to Mohommed. The Germans better be very wary of those in their midst. Glad the movie showed in Germany so the Germans can know what they are now up against.
Yup. Chambers wrote one of the best books I've ever read titled: Witness.
"Witness" should be required reading for all high school students. It would better ready them for the Leftie professors.
"The Indians refer to this march as the "Trail of Tears" and even though it took place after Jackson's presidency, the roots of the march can be found in Jackson's failure to uphold the legal rights of Native Americans during his administration.
It's in all the history books. Should lefties by silenced for telling the truth?"
A few comments from a past Andrew Jackson thread by our brilliant and scholarly fellow Freepers to put your comments regarding Jackson into a realistic perspective, rather from your liberal PC one:
"I'm not a Jackson admirer generally, but he gets a bum rap on Indian removal. If one examines his realistic options, one is forced to conclude that removal was his least bad alternative. Georgia was ready to drive out the Cherokees and believed themselves legally and constitutionally and even morally entitled to do so. (The Cherokee Nation was organized long AFTER Georgia as a political entity and was run by men who were 3/4 or 7/8 white). It served as a haven for outlaws from Georgia justice.) In order to save the Cherokees from Georgia, Jackson would have had to fight a civil war against Georgia. At this very time Jackson was in a crisis with SC over the tariff that threatened civil war. The Trail of Tears was a tragedy, no doubt about it, but it averted greater tragedies."
"The Cherokee were given two years to move. Acting on the advice of a corrupt tribal leadership, they stayed. I don't want to downplay what Jackson did (I had ancestors in the Cherokee Nation at the time), but they were just as screwed over by their own leadership as they were by the Federal government."
"As to the Indians and the trail of tears, I don't know about the Cherokee, but the Choctaws were sold out by their leaders. Many of the leaders received a lot of money and property for helping to force the Choctaws into OK. "Twas ever thus!!"
"The number taught in schools of Cherokee deaths on the road to Oklahoma is around 4000. The real number may be a tenth of that--remember that the scholars are motivated to put America in as bad a light as possible. Many descendents of Appalachian southerners, (like myself) are also of Cherokee descent. I have no motive in discounting the tragedy--particularly the tragedy of a people native to the beautiful Blue Ridge forced to give over their land and become, abruptly, dwellers of a semi-desert. But it is likely that about 400 people died along the way, and not of starvation. Since about 40,000 made the forced move, this is not entirely an abnormal death rate even under better circumstances. The 400 number is backed by contemporary (to the time) accounts of deaths. Many have assumed that these were lies, but why lie? At the time, no one felt sorry enough for the Indians to bother to lie."
"The native population of North America, as large as 15 million in 1500, had been reduced to less than 250,000 by 1890."
"Wow...15 million native Americans sounds like a lot for that time period, But I don't have any better numbers. Does anyone know the size of the Comanche population during the 1800's. They were as unimaginably cruel and murderous as these f#@kin islamic jihadist inbreds. Everyone hated them including other Indian tribes. They killed pretty much everything that ever walked, crawled, flew or swam. Their favorite sport was to torture and mutilate their enemies (that's anyone that was not Comanche) then barbeque them alive and upside down over a nice hot fire. I'm not sure they ever survived in very large numbers. The US army ended up having to kill most of them I think because of their unrepentent murderous nature. I'd be curious to know what the surviving Comanche population is. It might be of some interest to our islamic jihadist friends as well since they are likely headed toward a similar fate."
"More Indians were killed and enslaved by Mexicans and other tribes, than by Americans."
Eleni by former NYT-reporter Nicholas Gage...
...which recounts the tourture and murder of Gage's mother during the communist attempt to take Greece after WWII. What really stands out for me is the fervent young commie schoolmaster willing to do unspeakable crimes to bring his village to heel. Of course, there is a movie, which is less compelling than the book but still pretty good.
(I am struck by the passion you express for Witness -- I have heard it before -- so I really must get on with that one.)
Eleni by former NYT-reporter Nicholas Gage...
...which recounts the tourture and murder of Gage's mother during the communist attempt to take Greece after WWII. What really stands out for me is the fervent young commie schoolmaster willing to do unspeakable crimes to bring his village to heel. Of course, there is a movie, which is less compelling than the book but still pretty good.
(I am struck by the passion you express for Witness -- I have heard it before -- so I really must get on with that one.)
I haven't read Eleni. Maybe I should order it too?
I am a little surprised, though, that anyone is willing to go there with LIBERALLARRY. He is aruguing it because it supports the case for the moral equivalence of America's actions with the barbarities of Islamo facist terrorism. Everyone concedes that America was guilty into the 19th century of major crimes against humanity when measured by contemporary standards. Butchering and enslaving the hapless other was pretty much the way of the world until a sort of moral enlightenment started to take hold in the West in the mid-19th century. It seems not yet to have taken hold in the Arab world.
All our history has to be remembered and faced but I don't see going through it with someone who only wants it use the discussion for dishonest rhetorical purposes.
(None of my business, really, at this point, and I shouldn't probably post this. I see LARRY as exactly the equivalent of Michael Moore spewing his bile at America. I hate that everyone doesn't just want to scream at him like I do.)
"(None of my business, really, at this point, and I shouldn't probably post this. I see LARRY as exactly the equivalent of Michael Moore spewing his bile at America. I hate that everyone doesn't just want to scream at him like I do.)"
Your intentions are correct. However, you mistake my motives for posting the counter-info about Andrew Jackson and the Trail of Tears. Many people read Freeper threads, and all may not be as well informed as others about things historical. My intention was to inform and to counteract a one-sided presentation by a PC idiot who himself is not well-informed.
His being a Michael Moore type is well worth screaming at, however, just in case anyone has a proclivity to swallow any part of his argument, I posted what I did for all to see. One must attempt to remain dispassionate in the face of the moral relativists, and refute their claims, rather than just let them lie out there for all to see, unanswered. Hence my post.
Thanks for your polite response. You might well have told me to mind my own business ;-)
As I said, in war everyone is ruthless. And often in peace as well.
And of course there were also nice, honorable people on all sides too.
Of course.
Are the Germans trying to pretend that they never killed anybody? Are the Turks pretending that they never killed anybody?
Yes and yes. It's called propaganda. Don't tell me you haven't noticed the difference between a true story and a Hollywood true story.
telling the truth is one thing, but slanting the truth and channeling hatred at one target is something else
The best way to deal with this is free expression. As soon as you allow the thought police to censor you start down the road to Hell. There will always be Lefties and Righties, with all the various reasons and motivations for adopting such positions. If it turns our that the Turks and other Muslims can't be assimilated, can't learn to peacefully coexist with different religions and points of view, can't modify their beliefs enough, then expel them. Deport them. That may seem contradictory but I don't think it is. I'm only arguing for a wider range of toleration than you, only saying that it's better to tolerate hate speech than to try to ban it.
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Nobody ever told the complete truth...not least because no human being knows it. Grow up.
The PC left makes us out to be evil for doing that. We weren't. It's the way of the world. Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten.
The Inidans were doing that to each other long before we got there. Europeans were doing the same thing...and finally destroyed their own power in the two suicidal world wars of the last century. We took the Indians' land as much to prevent other Europeans from taking it as for our own benefit.
But we did take it - and extirminate them and their culture in the process. There's no denying it. And it's better to tell all sides of the story than try to prevent some from telling only one side.
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