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Tuesday, March 02, 2004 |
It was confirmed today that Mel Gibson's controversial film The Passion of the Christ has surpassed Jackson's biggest LOTR money-maker Return of the King at the boxoffice. In the opening five days, 'Passion' sold over $125 million dollars. It has also been confirmed that Gibson's unique marketing strategy--advertising to churches--and the controversy over the film's anti-Semitism helped amass the interest and ticket sales.
In other related news–On Monday, according to the London-based Telegraph, French distributers declined to release the film, stating that the current environment in France is already anti-semitic and showing this film would be like "throwing oil on fire."
The debate over the film is highly sensitive in France, where a spate of fire_bombings of synagogues and Jewish schools and attacks on rabbis over the past year has led Israel to denounce it as the most anti_Semitic country in Europe.
Anger with Israel among France's large and growing Muslim population, combined with the strength of Right_wing parties in some French districts, have contributed to an atmosphere which has alarmed political and Jewish leaders.
Last year Paris police were forced to set up a dedicated unit to deal with anti_Semitic crimes. Schoolteachers complain that they face a hostile reaction among Muslim students when trying to teach the history of the Holocaust, which some equate with Israel's actions against Palestinians in the occupied territories.
Today, Tarak Ben Ammar, a film distributor in France, will be the distributor for the film, releasing it in time for Easter in April. As reported by Stuff Co out of New Zealand, Ammar is "a major film broker with business ties to media tycoon Rupert Murdoch and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Bersluconi...[who] produced Franco Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth and Roberto Rossellini's The Messiah in the 1970s, [and] has also been involved in the production of such popular films as the Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark series."
Of his interest in the film, Ammar had this to say:
"I thought it was my duty as a Muslim who believes in Jesus, who respects and was brought up in the three (monotheist) religions, to have this film shown to the French and let them judge it for themselves," he told TF1 television.
The debate about the anti-Semitism factor of the film will continue throughout its release around the world. I hope Europe sees the film as an artistic and dramatic work of entertainment about a tragic and violent event sacred to many. I hope, like American audiences (thus far), that the sacredness of the event stays on a sacred level--that it will be used to edify personal faith in the Christ rather than used as a fallacious justification for hatred and violence.
Time, however, might prove to be our historian on this.
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A good friend sent me this post from Bob Dreyfus titled "Who's Terrorizing Who?" written on February 25, 2004. I liked it because it asked a few of the same questions I've been thinking about lately. And two events occurred today that also make Bob's post noteworthy. 1) Bill Nichols of USATODAY reported a UN report that there have not been WMD in Iraq after 1994. 2) An explosion today in Baghdad, that killed over 140 Iraqi's, was blamed on Al Qaeda.
The Bush administration told us that Iraq was a major threat to the United States, and they got it wrong: no weapons of mass destruction, no ties to Al Qaeda. Maybe they were just wrong, maybe they lied?but no threat. Could they be wrong about terrorism too? Could they be exaggerating the threat to the United States from terrorism? Is it possible that the Bush administration wants to scare American voters into staying with President Bush in 2004 by hyping the threat of terrorism?
Yesterday George Tenet, the director of the CIA, told Congress that the threat of
terrorism is never going to end, predicting that Islamic fundamentalists will continue to
attack us, even if Al Qaeda disappears.
The steady growth of Osama bin Laden's anti-U.S. sentiment through the wider Sunni
extremist movement and the broad dissemination of Al Qaeda's destructive expertise
ensure that a serious threat will remain for the foreseeable future?with or without Al
Qaeda in the picture.
They have autonomous leadership, they pick their own targets, they plan their own attacks. For the growing number of Jihadis interested in attacking the United States, a spectacular attack on the U.S. homeland is the 'brass ring' that many strive for-with or without encouragement by Al Qaeda's central leadership.
In other words, President Bush's Global War on Terrorism will go on forever. (At the
Pentagon, they use the acronym GWOT, pronounced "gee-what." Which sounds a lot like jihad.)
But the reality is that since 9/11, there has been no terrorism in the United States at all. None. Not a single American has even been punched in the face by an angry Islamic militant, as far as I know, since then. If there is this global enemy with vast powers out to get us, where is it? Why hasn't it attacked us? It's certainly not because our highly competent Department of Homeland Security is doing its job so efficiently.
Of course, by the hour we are creating the very threat Tenet warns us about. Iraq, which
formerly didn't harbor international terrorists, is reportedly creating them in batches now.
Vice Admiral Lowell E. Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency told Congress
yesterday (without any seeming irony) that Iraq is now the spawning ground for terrorism:
Iraq is the latest jihad for Sunni [Muslim] extremists. Iraq has the potential to serve
as a training ground for the next generation of terrorists where novice recruits develop
their skills, junior operatives hone their organizational and planning capabilities, and
relations mature between individuals and groups.
Let me get this right. A year ago, we now know, Iraq didn't support terrorism. Today it could be their "training ground." Some anti-terrorism war that was!
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Reuters reported yesterday that the cartoonist of the famous Doonesbury cartoon has offered a reward of $10,000 dollars for proof that Bush served in the Alabama National Guard. The offer has elicited over 1,300 responses but no credible proof has come from them. Here's more from the report:
With so much controversy surrounding Bush's National Guard service, a credible witness would have turned up by now if there was one, said Garry Trudeau.
"You can be sure some very motivated people have tried to find a witness who can establish
Bush's presence at Dannelly Base beyond a reasonable doubt," said the creator of the politically irreverent and satirical daily cartoon. "Anyone who could do so would almost certainly have surfaced by now."
"Doonesbury" first posted the award on Monday.
The White House has released documents from Bush's Vietnam War-era service record in the Texas Air National Guard they say show the president fulfilled his duties at the Dannelly Base. But Democrats accuse him of skipping duty.
The documents offered no new evidence to show that Bush actually turned up for duty in Alabama during the latter part of 1972 -- a period when Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe says he was absent without leave.
Earlier this week, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee denounced the contest as a "silly stunt." Trudeau agreed.
"She's right," he said. "But as a simple investigative cartoonist, I don't have a very big tool
kit."
Trudeau also said he doubted proof of Bush's service -- or lack thereof -- would affect his support in the November presidential election. "For me, stunt cartooning is mostly about keeping busy. If it tips a national election, well, that's just gravy," he said.
He said he planned to pay the $10,000 from his own money.
"What else am I going to do with a huge tax cut I didn't need? One of the unintended
consequences of Mr. Bush's generosity toward the Great Un-needy is that I'm now a fat cat," he joked.
He also said he realized it was "counterintuitive" for him to support Democrats because he
considered Bush to be "God's gift to cartoonists."
A doonesbury.com Web site features a Witness Registration Form for submitting online testimony.
The prize money will be paid by Trudeau in the form of a donation to the United Service Organization, or USO, which entertains U.S. troops.
A cutoff date is still in the works, he said.
Will Trudeau get a winner? Even if he doesn't, this was one clever campaign.
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