Category: Media

Two weeks ago, as a result of the horrific Boston Bombing, three people were killed, and over 200 innocent bystanders were seriously injured. Some of whom had their legs blown off. Others were so injured that they will have to undergo multiple surgeries.

In the wake of this tragedy, Robert Redford and his Hollywood production company have produced and recently provocatively, mass released his film, The Company You Keep that appears to be sympathetic to homegrown American terrorism and homegrown terrorists.

Before analyzing Redford’s political message or messages in The Company You Keep, a little historical background is in order.

In the late 1960s and 1970s The Weather Underground Organization (a.k.a. The Weathermen) was a militant wing of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).

The SDS, based in many American colleges and universities throughout the U.S., was formed to primarily protest the then American involvement in the Vietnam War. Its modes of protests were sit-ins, peaceful demonstrations in Washington and on campuses, the occupation of some university administration offices and minor civil disobedience.

The more militant Weathermen, (some of whom were former SDS leaders), preferred more violent means of protest.

They believed that the SDS mode of civil disobedience and protest was insufficient and inadequate. And had failed to sufficiently influence American popular opinion and the then American government about the horrors of America’s involvement in the Vietnam War and in other American foreign adventures.

The Weathermen, wanted to “bring the war home” back to America. Accordingly, The Weathermen targeted American government buildings which represented America’s war effort, and bombed them and tried to blow them up.

The Weathermen publicly claimed that they did not want to hurt any Americans so they gave advance notice of their targets so as to encourage the building’s occupants to exit prior to the buildings being bombed.

The Weathermen also engaged in armed robberies. And tragically, during one armed robbery of a Brinks’ truck, three Brinks’ security guards were killed. Two of the killers were Weathermen lovers, who had just dropped off their one year child at the baby sitter, before the armed robbery.

Wow! Shades of the film, The Company You Keep. But much more honest, true and brutal.

On another occasion, three Weathermen, while preparing bombs in a New York Greenwich Village townhouse, accidentally blew themselves up. The bombs that they were preparing contained nails, not too dissimilar to the type of nail bombs prepared and recently exploded by the Boston bombers a few weeks ago. At the time, investigators believed that these bombs were intended to be exploded at an upcoming officers’ dance, nearby at Fort Dix, New Jersey, in which there would have been significant loss of life and serious injury. This speculation was confirmed in the unpublished memoirs of Mark Rudd, a Weatherman leader, in 2005.

Harvey Klehr, the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Politics and History at Emory University in Atlanta said, “The only reason that they (the Weathermen) were not guilty of mass murder is mere incompetence. I don’t know what sort of defence that is.”

Apparently, the Weathermen organized into underground cells. They amassed weapons and explosives and learned how to use them. One of their goals was to engage in guerrilla warfare against the American government. This appears like al Qaeda, American style, at least 30 years before al Qaeda hit the States.

Robert Redford is the producer, director and star of this film.

This is his film. Redford, 76, plays a 60-ish single dad to a 11-year-old daughter. He is a public interest lawyer and a former Weatherman, who has been hiding from the authorities, under a different identity, for 30 years. Because he was accused of being one of the Weathermen who was involved with the murder of the one bank security guard, during a bank robbery by the Weathermen.

One of the driving forces of this film is Redford’s character’s efforts to reconnect with his former Weathermen, in order to clear his name.

Robert Redford has always been a serious actor and filmmaker and very socially and politically conscious.
To his credit he has produced, directed and starred in an intelligent and thought-provoking film that is very political.

But having thrown down the gauntlet, what is Redford’s political message?

What does he mean to say about homegrown terrorists and homegrown terrorism? Especially in light of 9/11 and the recent Boston Bombing?

This is not merely an entertaining flick about events in the 1960s and 70s. This is a political film that is using the anti-Vietnam war protests and the Weathermen to comment upon American political life today. And current American domestic and foreign policies.

Julie Christie (Mimi), plays a former Weatherman, and former lover of Redford (Jim/Nick) with whom they had a child, but who was given up for adoption, as they went underground. Near the end of the film, Christie opines to Redford to the effect, that what has gone on in the past (the American government killing millions of people in Vietnam and in other countries) is still going on today.

I am not sure what Redford’s own personal views are, but here are some of the political messages conveyed by his film characters, the former Weathermen, in this film.

In police custody, Susan Sarandon (Sharon) one of the bank robbers, party to the murder of the security guard, talked about how back how then, in the ’60s and ’70s, the American government committed genocide in Vietnam. She referred to the infamous My Lai massacre in Vietnam.

She also mentioned that the American government killed Americans in the United States. She cited how Ohio National Guards killed students at Kent State and city and state police killed students at Jackson State. And that America then forced its young men to go to war in Vietnam against their will pursuant to a compulsory draft.

When Shia LaBeouf, (Ben) the reporter, confronted Sarandon, about the murder of the one security guard in the bank, she admitted that “mistakes” were made.

But when LaBeouf asked Sarandon, would she do it again, presumably today, under similar circumstances, she confessed she would do the same thing, providing her children or her parents would not be affected. In other words, she had no remorse for killing that one bank security guard.

Similarly, when Redford confronted Julie Christie, another former Weatherman, Christie launched into a political diatribe against the American government then and now killing millions of people, implying that America’s recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are no different than when the U.S. was fighting in the Vietnam War. She also accused the American government now of destroying the environment (an issue close to Redford’s character’s heart).

When Redford confronted Christie about the killing of the bank security guard and the fact that the guard was a father, Christie justified that murder by stating that America was killing thousands of fathers in foreign lands.
Christie also had no remorse for killing that one bank security guard.

The Redford character seemed to have some remorse for the death of the bank security guard. But he did not out right condemn the death or condemn the Weathermen movement. He explained his leaving the Weathermen because he outgrew it.

I am assuming he outgrew his youthful idealism.

As an artist, Redford has the right to mould the historical record to fit his narrative or political point of view.

Redford’s film omits the fact that three Brinks’ security guards were killed as opposed to one bank security guard. And they were killed by Weathermen lovers with a one year old child. And Redford’s glaring omission of the fact that three Weathermen had blown themselves up preparing bombs that may have actually injured or killed American military.

Also Redford glosses over and omits the fact that the Weathermen were a violent radical American group that amassed weapons and explosives with the intent of not only blowing up buildings, but killing and maiming innocent Americans.

Redford’s sanitizing of the Weathermen and all these obvious and glaring omissions, are very troubling to me.

These omissions suggest to me that Redford wanted to whitewash the Weathermen. To better serve the film’s narrative. The film’s point of view.

Through the two most forceful Weathermen characters in the film, Sarandon and Christie, Redford focuses the film on the terrible deeds the American government did in Vietnam and in other wars. Not the morality or criminality of the violent terrorist actions of the Weathermen.

According to the Sarandon and Christie characters, the actions of the Weathermen were a justified response to the militaristic actions of the American government in Vietnam and in other foreign countries and to the American Government’s violent actions against its own people in the U.S.

In other words, the root causes of domestic terrorism in the U.S. are America’s militaristic foreign policies and its aggressive policies on its own people.

And the Sarandon and Christie characters have no remorse for the killing of the bank security guard.

The only alternate view in the film was expressed very succinctly by a minor character, Anna Kendrick, (Diana), a young FBI field officer, who witnessed the Sarandon interview in prison. Her comment to her friend LaBeouf, the reporter, was that he was hypnotized by Sarandon. She implied that Sarandon was not an idealistic freedom fighter, but a terrorist. Kendrick argued, “Terrorists justify terrorism.”

I share this view.

What troubles me about the film, The Company You Keep, is that this film seems to identify more with and be more sympathetic with the views of the homegrown terrorists, the Sarandon and Christie characters.

Which is particularly disturbing in light of the recent Boston Bombing.

I think Robert Redford has some serious explaining to do.

The last few days have been very difficult for most Canadians. The horrors of the Boston terrorist attack last week shocked us. The announcement that two Canadian residents have allegedly planned to blow up a VIA passenger train bound from Canada to the U.S., has stripped we Canadians of our fragile immunity to al-Qaeda-like violence.

Gone forever our smugness, vis-a-vis our neighbors to the south. Our sense of moral superiority.

And dare I say, among some Canadians. And some Canadian political leaders. Our own unique brand of good old Canadian Schadenfreude. Simply defined as pleasure derived from the misfortune of others.

(You have to hand it to those Germans. They have given the world, great cars like Beemers and Audis, speedy autobahns and a rich expressive language. But I digress.)

Recall post 9/11, our leaders Liberal Jean Chretien and NDP Leader Alexa McDonough, took pleasure in scolding the Americans for bringing the 9/11 terrorist attacks upon themselves. McDonough in the House of Commons argued:

“In the wake of these terrifying events, we need to reflect on the kind of international community we have created, where the images of mass destruction in the United States last week saw some Palestinian children actually dancing in the streets, where an international community can allow 5,000 children a month to die of malnutrition in Iraq, or hunger and preventable disease can claim the lives of thousands and thousands of children in the too many impoverished nations of the world.
We have to ask ourselves and consider what it means. What kind of political leadership funds and trains the likes of the mujahedeen and Osama bin Laden to overthrow the Afghanistan government and then gets caught out when these same people turn their evil skills on their former supporters?
Unless and until we base our policies and our allegiances on long term values, as the Prime Minister said this morning, and not on short term strategies, we will continue to create the monsters that come back to haunt us.”

But those who have been doubly hurt by the Boston bombing and the recent arrest of the two alleged Canadian terrorists on Monday, are the vast majority of hard-working, law-abiding Muslim Canadians.

Because once again, Canadian Muslim men, or Canadian converts to Islam, are seen to be planning, organizing or actively engaging in terrorist activities. Some in Canada. Or some in troubled and dangerous countries on the other side of the world.

Rosie DiManno recently in the Toronto Star reminded us of the following sad and disturbing list of Canadian Muslim men:

“Radicalized high school students from London, Ont., lured to a distant desert in Algeria…A young man from the GTA suspected of leading a suicide attack in Mogadishu. Somali Canadians from Edmonton who’ve vanished into the jihad wind…And the Toronto 18″

However, this time there was a marked difference. This time the Toronto Muslim community and some Muslim leaders became actively involved with RCMP, CSIS, and the authorities. And this time they were instrumental in stopping this alleged terrorist attack from becoming a horrible reality.

Apparently, the original tip, about one of the alleged conspirators, to the authorities came from a Muslim community leader.

It also seems that some members of the Muslim community have been working with CSIS and the RCMP since 9/11 in a joint effort to fight the rise of terrorist behavior within the community and to educate the Muslim community about the dangers of certain forms of radical Islam which promote, champion and encourage this type of terrorist and violent behavior.

Accordingly, this week in the House of Commons both PM Harper and NDP Opposition Leader Mulcair joined together and commended the Muslim community for helping the security forces thwart this alleged terrorist plot. And in the process, probably save many people from death or grievous injury.

I too, would like to take this opportunity to humbly salute and commend the Toronto Muslim community and those leaders who helped the authorities avoid a terrible terrorist outcome.

I also do not dispute the Canadian Muslim leader who stated that those people who engage in criminal activity have nothing to do with the Islamic faith.

However, the harsh and brutal reality is that terrorism is the expression of a violent ideology, that has disturbingly taken root among some Muslims.

As the above list of Canadian Muslims so indicates.

Accordingly, I hope and pray that the Canadian Muslim community never returns to business as usual. And collectively buries its head in the sand. But continues to work co-operatively and effectively with Canadian authorities to prevent any future terrorist plots, as true and honorable Muslim Canadians, who care about Canada and their fellow Canadians.

Call off the search. The Root Causes have been found.

And you can thank the often maligned UN, ably represented by Richard Falk, an official with the United Nations Human Rights Council, for digging deep and coming up with these root causes for the recent Boston terrorist attack.

Recall Justin Trudeau, in his now famous CBC interview, post Boston bombing, suggested that we have to look for the root causes. You know.

As Trudeau stated, “Now we don’t know now whether it was, you know, terrorism or a single crazy or, you know, a domestic issue or a foreign issue, I mean, all of those questions. But there is no question that this happened because there is someone who feels completely excluded, completely at war with innocents, at war with a society. And our approach has to be, okay, where do those tensions come from?”

In my above Huffington Post article, I objected to Trudeau’s comments, which seemed to blame American society for the Boston bombing.

Well, this was apparently akin to accusing Justin Bieber of lip synching “Believe.”

Justin Trudeau’s cult followers attacked me mercilessly. They attacked my character, my education, my Lionsgate connection. And they accused me of being a Harper neo-con, and Ezra Levant’s evil twin. I was pilloried. Tarred and feathered.

But I emerged unbowed, and am back to report that according to Professor Richard Falk, Justin Trudeau was on the right track. Apparently American foreign policy is to blame for the Boston bombings.

Wow! I didn’t see that coming.

In an online Foreign Policy piece that no longer seems to be accessible, Professor Falk supports the view that the Boston bombings were a direct result of American drone attacks on innocent women and children in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and of Americans torturing Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib. And of course, the old standby — Falk also blames the U.S.’s one-sided support of Israel, at the expense of the Palestinians.

Falk argues, quoting W. H. Auden, “Those to whom evil is done/do evil in return.”

According to Falk, the Americans brought these Boston terrorist acts upon themselves. The Americans have only themselves to blame. Falk also suggests that the United States has created international tensions which led to these terrorist attacks on its soil.

This is similar to Trudeau’s conclusion, as above noted, that tensions in American society and intentional tensions created by American society may be root causes of the attacks. In other words, the killing and maiming of all those innocent people at the Boston marathon can be rationally explained as a by-product of America’s many geopolitical acts of attempted global domination.

This sounds a lot like Liberal Prime Minister Chretien explaining the root causes of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In a CBC interview, post 9/11, Chrietien opined, “And I do think that the Western world is getting too rich in relation to the poor world and necessarily will be looked upon as being arrogant and self-satisfied, greedy and with no limits. The 11th of September is an occasion for me to realize it even more.”

Justin Trudeau appears to be following in the footsteps of his Liberal elders. And such perceptive professors and UN representatives as Richard Falk.

Now, the feminist writers from the very well-respected Toronto media, NOW Magazine and the online rabble.ca, did not openly come out and lay the blame for the latest Middle East public relations debacle at the feet of Israel. But I’ll buy a free dinner at the vegan, slow food, locavore Toronto restaurant of your choice if you can find one article in either paper that explicitly and substantially criticizes Hamas and the Palestinians for their terrible and discriminatory mistreatment of women in Gaza. And especially the most recent incident of discrimination against Palestinian women: the cancelling of a UN-sactioned marathon because the Hamas Government refused to permit Palestinian women in Gaza to participate.

According to a Hamas spokesman, women running alongside the men would be contrary to Islam and the customs and practices of Palestinians. “We don’t want women and men mixing in the same race,” Gaza’s Cabinet secretary, Abdul-Salam Siam, said. “We don’t want any woman running uncovered.” Apparently, Hamas leaders believe that fully-covered women riding on the backs of motorcycles or smoking water pipes are also contrary to Islam and Palestinian customs.

According to the article, about 216 Palestinian women and 119 women from other countries were prepared to participate in the race. And these women were prepared to dress modestly. Most of the women were going to wear full length running pants and long-sleeve shirts, as they had done in previous Gaza runs. But it was not enough for the Hamas rulers.

The banning of women from the proposed Gaza marathon by Hamas occurred, coincidentally, a few days before International Women’s Day. Talk about really bad timing. It is at moments like these that I believe God, whoever he or she may be, has a bizarre sense of humour.

The frustrating part of the failed race is that even under the most conservative interpretations, Islam has no specific ban against women running. So Hamas and the Palestinian men in Gaza cannot properly justify this overt discrimination on religious grounds.It seems that the mere sight of the movement of a woman’s body, no matter how fully clothed, just makes Palestinian men uncomfortable. Therefore Palestinian women should be seen, and mostly stationary. Otherwise they will be viewed as immodest and probably on the verge of being wanton.

Why, in the name of the holy trinity of Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem and Germaine Greer, aren’t Canadian feminists raising a huge bloody stink about this?

If this marathon had been cancelled in Israel for these reasons, such militant feminists as Susan Cole and Judy Rebick would be heading to the barricades. Naomi Klein and Maude Barlow would be frothing and fulminating on CBC. The Canadian universities would be ablaze with renewed anti-Israeli fervor.

But because this is occurring in Gaza, there is not a murmur. Not a peep. It is like the Silence of the Feminist Lambs.

I challenge everyone to search on NOW and rabble.ca’s sites for the phrase “discrimination against Women in Gaza” — or any variation thereof. Do you find any significant articles calling out Hamas or Palestinian men on their mistreatment of women? Or is all the criticism reserved for Israel?

Curious, I went on the rabble.ca website and typed “banning of women from Gaza marathon” in its search window. Relevant results? None. Nil. Gornisht. ( That’s Yiddish, for nothing).

I then typed in the words “Women in Gaza.” The following stories and headlines came up as results: “Massacre in Gaza: Israel Strikes Kill More Than 200” (Dec 30, 2008); “January Protests Against Israeli Assault on Gaza” (Jan 31, 2010); “Israel Launches Airstrikes on Gaza Again” (November, 2012)

Go on the NOW website, and type, “banning of women from the Gaza marathon” into the search box. The response you’ll get: “No Results”. That is “bupkis,” babe.

I also invite to go on the NOW website and type “Women in Gaza”. You will be provided with stories about a vigil against the occupation of Gaza and about the pull out of Gaza by Israel. Nothing about the cancelled marathon.

Why is that? Are these feminists so angry and hostile to Israel, and so supportive of the Palestinian cause, that they cannot rationally bring themselves to criticize Palestinian men who mistreat women?
Don’t Palestinian women deserve concern and empathy?

There is a famous Latin saying: res ipsa loquitur. The thing speaks for itself.

The blatant failure of Canadian leftist feminists to speak up against the banning of women from the Gaza marathon by Hamas, speaks for itself. And this silence, ain’t pretty.

On Friday the US State Department dropped a stink bomb on the US anti-Keystone environmental movement. When this Department released a 2,000-page draft environment impact statement on the controversial Keystone XL pipeline project.

Specifically, the State Department report concluded “the approval or denial of the proposed Project is unlikely to have a substantial impact on the rate of development in the oil sands, or in the amount of heavy crude oil refined in the Gulf Coast area.” (as reported in a Washington Post article dated, March 1)

This State Department report based its conclusion on the fact that the oil-sands producers will eventually find new routes to markets, including the growing use of rail cars to transport crude oil around North America.

Basically, the Keystone XL pipeline will not contribute to the warming of the planet.

Talk about your “Inconvenient Truth”. Ouch. That really hurts the anti-Keystone types, big time!

On the other hand, you can just see the executives of TransCanada, the developers of Keystone, doing happy dances around their boardroom table, in the oil-rich Canadian city of Calgary.

I can imagine Russ Girling, CEO of TransCanada, barely suppressing his glee when he stated, referring to the above State Department Report, that “This report again confirms that the US is going to continue to import oil for decades into the future. This isn’t an issue of alternate energy versus fossil fuels. This is really just a question of where do you want to get your oil from, given that you’re going to need it.”

So the US will still have to import oil for its energy needs. For the foreseeable future. To date the US also imports oil from Venezuela.

Recall that the anti-western, anti-capitalist socialist leaders of Venezuela hate the US guts, ideologically speaking.” Emperor for Life Chavez and Venezuela are unreliable suppliers of oil to the US. But let us put aside these very real national security concerns. Let us stick with the science.

The very same US State Department has concluded in a recent report that Canadian oil from the Alberta oil sands is at or below Venezuelan oil in terms of GHGs ( greenhouse gases). Guess what? The unintended consequences of blocking the Keystone pipeline, will be continued oil imports from Venezuela to the US. And greenhouse gas emissions increasing , together with all those nasty emissions arising from the trucks and trains needed to transport Venezuelan oil throughout the US.

Talk about pouring oil sands on the US environmentalists’ wounds.