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Sunday, May 25, 2014

MLK, JFK, 9/11: An Odyssey of Truth. “Our Responsibility to Create Peace by Facing Lies”

Film Review of Allan Weisbecker’s “Water Time: Surf Travel Diary of a Mad Man”  ~The film’s message is our individual responsibility to create peace by facing lies.

water time
Allan Weisbecker, a longtime surfer, has lived a monk-like quest for purity of mind, which he seeks on the waves.
Well known in the surfing world for his semi-autobiographical novels since 1986, when his “Cosmic Banditos” became a cult phenomenon, Weisbecker has now produced an autobiographical film.
This film is an odyssey of truth, which operates at several levels, using music, cascading imagery, and recorded interviews. The scenery is beautiful, the music eclectic, and the message compelling – a message reflecting anguish at the bogus pretexts for war.
Weisbecker’s best friend Donnie was killed in Vietnam, just as President Kennedy was planning to withdraw US troops. But then JFK was also killed, within months of voicing his turn towards peace in his American University speech of June 10, 1963, in which he said:
“I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living – not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women. Not merely peace in our time, peace in all time. For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet; we all breathe the same air; we all cherish our children’s futures, and we are all mortal.”
These stately words roll on behind the death scenes of JFK and Donnie.
Weisbecker also reminds us of JFK’s 1961 address to the U.N., in which he said:
“We in this hall shall be remembered either as part of the generation that turned this planet into a flaming funeral pyre, or the generation that made a vow to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.”
The impetus for this film came in 2008, when Weisbecker took his laptop and his dog on a filming odyssey of surfing communities. During his trip, he filmed the responses of some 60 people to whom he presented what he considered irrefutable photographic evidence that the assassination of JFK had been an inside job.
What he discovered was an uncanny lack of curiosity – even resentment – from people who did not want to be put in a “mood of discomfort.” Having never heard any of this evidence in the media, some of the people even declared Weisbecker mad.
Such reactions, Weisbecker said, illustrated what Orwell’s Newspeak called crimestop, “the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, on the threshold of any dangerous thought.”
Moving on then to the evidence about the MLK and RFK assassinations, the Oklahoma City bombing, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing – where “not enough people were killed” to launch a war – and, finally, the attacks of 9/11, where enough people were killed.
The film’s message is our individual responsibility to create peace by facing lies.
Weisbecker’s film, on which he had been working since 2008, illustrates the way in which this medium can communicate in ways that are impossible to the written word alone.
One reviewer described the film as the “masterpiece of an eccentric genius in search of the perfect wave.” Another called it “a visual tour de force.” Still another called Weisbecker’s interactions with his interviewees “priceless.”
Having been made in the interests of truth, not money, the film can be viewed freely: Go to banditobooks.com (or http://banditobooks.com/02_15_2014_index.php), hit “enter the site,” then scroll down to the box on the lower right that says “Free Viewing,” then follow instructions.
David Ray Griffin is the author of 9/11 Ten Years Later.

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