Bitter Vengeance: Zero Dark Thirty and a Killing Spree in Southern California

The Los Angeles Times delivers the news, and the post-modernist goods.

First, Zero Dark Thirty

We’re in the final weeks of Oscar voting, which means that the Los Angeles Times—home paper for most members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences—is able to fatten its bottom line by running ads touting the various Oscar contenders.

On Thursdays, there’s the insert “The Envelope”—a supplement that runs during awards season and features puff pieces and human interest stories on the various nominees nestled in ads placed by the movie studios to tout their Oscar offerings.

However, Hollywood types don’t necessarily have the 7-days-a-week subscription.  Many of them only take the weekend package, which includes the crucial Friday Calendar (i.e. Arts and Entertainment) section.  Crucial because most movies open on Fridays, and that’s when the reviews run.

Since we’re in the Oscar home stretch, the Friday Calendar section is stuffed with full-page and three quarter page color ads for the Best Picture Oscar nominees.  

On my way past the ads to the comics, I was brought up short by the full page ad for Zero Dark Thirty.

As should be evident to anyone with a forebrain, the studio and creative team is fighting back mightily against the “torture lover” stigma that has apparently crimped ZDT’s Best Picture hopes.

Kathryn Bigelow got to make her case in a cover story for Time; screenwriter Mark Boal took to the LA Times and almost every other media outlet to advertise his abhorrence of torture and his concerns about the McCarthyesque tinge to Senate calls to investigate the movie’s depiction of torture in the hunt for bin Laden (a hot button issue for Hollywood, with its bitter and shameful memories of the House Un-American Activities Committees investigation of movie industry leftists in the 1950s, and the subsequent blacklist).

Anyway, for the Friday Calendar section, somebody decided to pull out all the stops in order to wrench the focus away from the people getting tortured in the movie to the…Passion of Maya!

Under the usual tombstone listing of critic encomia, there is a black and white picture of Jessica Chastain looking vulnerable and sorrowful…with an apparently Photo-shopped tear trickling down her cheek…all the way to her jawline!

Available only in the print edition!  Because, as you can see from the left, the tear, though clearly visible on the full page ad, doesn’t lend itself well to digital reproduction.  Accident...or design?

Now, one of the best and bracing parts of the movie, to my mind, was that Jessica Chastain didn’t cry.  She was an unapologetic, vengeful, vindictive hardass when it came to hunting bin Laden, with an intensity that was unsettling, unnerving, and rang true to my idea of the kind of person who is 110% gungho on a career of hunting humans on behalf of the government.

Well, if this desperate piece of overreach sinks ZDT’s Oscar campaign, I guess this ad might be remembered as The Bitter Tear of Kathryn Bigelow.

The other fascinating story in today’s print edition of the LA Times could be found on the front page, albeit obscured by a full-page wrap promoting Argo for Best Picture.

The Southland (as we refer to Los Angeles and its environs stretching south to Orange County and west to the Nevada border) is transfixed by the horrific story of a killing rampage allegedly carried out by one Christopher Dorner.

Dorner is African-American, so for the purposes of the yahoos who populate Yahoo! News comments, I suppose he can be slotted into the Scary Black Man With a Gun or SBMWAG category.  

Since he served in the military, we could amend the classification to SBMWAG  And Advanced Weapons Training or SMBWAGAAWT.

However, the most interesting and disturbing part of the story is that Dorner is an ex-cop allegedly targeting cops and their families because of his resentment at getting kicked off the force four years ago.  Make it SBMWAGAAWT Shooting Cops or SBMWAGAAWTSC.

He allegedly shot the daughter of the police captain who defended him (unsuccessfully) at his hearing, and her husband, as they sat in a parked car in Irvine down in Orange County.  Then he apparently turned up almost a hundred miles away and wounded two cops and killed another in two shootouts in Riverside County.  

The response of the police has been an understandable combination of anger and fear as they have combed the southern reaches of the state searching for Dorner, and stationed units to protect the families of officers possibly targeted.

Dorner appears to have abandoned his vehicle—a blue Nissan Titan pickup truck—and is testing his survivalist skills in the hilly terrain of the national forest around Big Bear Lake.

The pickup truck was featured in a couple paragraphs deep in the story:

As news of the shootings crackled across police radios before dawn, the hunt for Dorner’s Nissan Titan pickup truck intensified.

   About 5:20 a.m. in Torrance, two women were delivering the Los Angeles Times from their blue pickup when LAPD officers spotted the truck.

   The police apparently mistook the truck for Dorner’s and riddled it with bullets. The women, a mother and daughter team, were rushed to a hospital.

   The mother, who is in her 70s, was shot in the shoulder. She was listed in stable condition. Her daughter was injured by shattered glass.

   Hours later, the truck — perforated by numerous bullet holes — sat on the street near the home of an LAPD official who was cited in the manifesto and was under LAPD protection. Beck said the department was investigating the circumstances of the shooting.

   “Tragically, we believe this is a case of mistaken identity,” he said.

…

   About 25 minutes after that shooting, Torrance police opened fire after spotting another truck similar to Dorner’s at Flagler Lane and Beryl Street. No one was reported hurt.

   “If I had a [Nissan] Titan, I would park it today,” said Walter Howe, 60, at a Torrance Starbucks.

The LA Times thoughtfully declined to splash photos of the bullet-riddled pickup truck driven by its delivery folk on the front page.

But the actions of the Torrance Police Department, motivated by an undefinable combination of murderous panic and homicidal rage, brought home the idea that, in certain circumstances, the veneer of control, competence, and fairness that reconciles many Americans to the activities of the security state can be stripped away in a matter of hours.

When that happens, it’s a matter of blood, not just tears.

Darfur Tragedy and Farce

The March 13 LA Times article by Edmund Sanders, Darfur’s rebels pose latest threat to the displaced, isn’t going to give a lot of comfort to the Save Darfur forces.

By describing a state of affairs in which it is the Darfurese militias, and not the Khartoum-backed janjaweed, that are terrorizing the immense Gereida refugee camp, antagonizing the AU peacekeepers, and forcing the withdrawal of foreign aid workers, the Times is stripping away the robe of noble victimhood that enfolds Darfur.

In doing so, it also implies that, even if the Bush administration discovers a new kind of diplomacy beyond blundering, braindead opportunism; the Chinese acquire some moral backbone; the Sudanese government ceases its depredations against the Darfurese; and Bashir is packed off to The Hague for crimes against humanity, Darfur is still going to be a pretty screwed up and miserable place.

Sad but true.

But what brought my grim reflections on Darfur’s future to a sudden halt was these grafs:

Many accuse the Arab-dominated Sudanese government of encouraging the rebel split by pursuing a divide and rule strategy, bribing some of the groups while bombing others.

In May, the government signed a peace agreement with one SLA faction led by rebel leader Minni Minnawi, who received a plum government job in exchange. Other rebel commanders rejected the deal, leading to further splits, power struggles and aggressive behavior.

(Insert sound of phonograph stylus voomping to a halt)

Fortunately, my obscure China blog is available to rebut this absurd piece of spin and remind its gentle readers that it was not the Sudan regime that foisted the peace agreement—and Minni Minnawi—upon the long-suffering people of Darfur.

Here is the incriminating photo of Minnawi meeting with the cynical, thoughtless ass who thought bribing and promoting this divisive and incapable gangster could advance his plans for Darfur:

Photo: Jason Reed, Reuters

Courtesy of China Matters and through the magic of cut and paste, the backstory from September 2006:

Quote

In June of this year, Robert Zoellick of the U.S. State Department and Hilary Benn of the U.K. inserted themselves in African Union negotiations for two days and tried to solve Darfur with an agreement that can be described charitably as half-assed.

It was signed with only one of the rebel groups, Minni Minawi’s Sudanese Liberation Army, which took its (presumably generous) payday and disintegrated in a vortex of banditry; it made no provisions for restraining or disarming the Janjaweed; and indeed made virtually no demands on Khartoum while leaving the burden for security on the hapless AU force.

A negotiator for one of the rebel groups provides some insight into the Darfur Peace Agreement:

The US engineered peace for Darfur, commonly known as Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) is both “fake and unsustainable”. Its prime engineer Mr Robert Zoelick and his arch Experts produced a document that turns out to be a mockery of international diplomacy. As Professor Reeves said, the DPA was borne dead right from day one. In addition to the government of Sudan, the only other signatory of the DPA was Minni Minnawi and his SLM fraction, erroneously and persistently promoted to be the biggest Darfur “rebel” group. Subsequent attempts to create a force out of Minnawi by the international community, the AU and the Government of Sudan came to naught. The US too was involved in this fiasco, culminating in Minnawi’s visit to the White House. The visit was by means ill-advised.


That the DPA is dead if not borne so is beyond doubt. Mr. Pronk, the UN Special Representative to Darfur described it as “severely paralysed, does not resonate with Darfur people and requires major rewriting”. Lashing Minnawi to sign the agreement, Mr Zoelick warned him: “I could be a very good friend but could also be a nasty enemy”. Well Mr, Minnawi chose “a very good friend”. Mr President, I trust you concur with us that any agreement that is an outcome of bullying cannot guarantee “lasting and sustainable peace”.

Mr. Minnawi has so far failed to sell the DPA to Darfur people.

Both of his public rallies in Alfashir and Khartoum had to be cancelled. But he is not the only one who failed to recommend the DPA in a public venue to Darfur People. Mr. Egeland, the Head of UN Humanitarian Operations had a tragic experience. His attempt to recommend the DPA to Darfur IDPs [internally displaced persons—ed.] ended up with his interpreter lynched in front of him. If the IDPs do not think that the DPA is good for them, who else does?


For “lynched” read “beaten and hacked to death”.


As reported above, President Bush even took the extraordinary step of meeting with Minni Minawi in July 2006, and made what sounds like a futile and humiliating attempt to cajole him into behaving like a genuine American client.


From the Washington Post:


Bush told the rebel leader that his forces must refrain from violence and pressed him to forge an alliance with other factions in Darfur to broaden support for a peace agreement, [NSC spokesperson] Jones said.…Jones had no comment on how Minnawi responded.


When a policy’s success relies on inviting a powerless, semi-retired, and risk-adverse bandit to the White House for a dispirited jawboning session, you can say that policy is in trouble.


From the same article:


Minnawi faces rising opposition to his leadership among commanders in northern Darfur, including those from his Zaghawa tribe, according to the United Nations.


"He signed under incredible U.S. pressure and was probably given a lot of promises by the U.S. and the U.K.," said Jemera Rone, a Sudan specialist with the advocacy group Human Rights Watch. "I'm sure he feels that the U.S. government now owes him and the people of Darfur quite a lot."


A report issued earlier this month by the U.N. mission in Sudan cited allegations by displaced Sudanese that Minnawi's faction "was indiscriminately killing, raping women and abducting" civilians.


"That agreement is not working, and one of the many reasons is Minni Minnawi," Kenneth H. Bacon, president of the advocacy group Refugees International, wrote last week in a letter to Bush.


Refugees International said yesterday that Minnawi's forces have conducted a "reign of terror" in North Darfur by beating and raping women, killing young men and displacing thousands of people. Bacon asked Bush to "please stress" to Minnawi that the rebel leader "must honor the terms of the Darfur Peace Agreement and stop fighting."

Endquote

It took the LA Times seventh months to catch up, and they still screwed up the story.

Journalists!