Friday, January 31, 2014

Nuclear Savage filmmaker accuses media of cover-up of impact of US nuclear weapons testing on Pacific people


“The bomb will not start a chain reaction in the water, converting it all to gas and letting all the ships on all the oceans drop down to the bottom. It will not blow out the bottom of the sea and let all the water run down the hole. It will not destroy gravity. I am not an atomic playboy.”
– Vice Admiral William P. Blandy, Bikini bomb test commander, 25 July 1946 


WHEN the military scientists of an advanced technological nation deliberately explode their largest nuclear bomb (and 66 others) over Pacific islands and use the opportunities to study the effects of radiation on nearby native people, which group is best described as “savage”?

And what should you call the people who prevent a documentary about these American post-war crimes from reaching a wide audience in the United States?

Nuclear Savage is a recent documentary film that explores American nuclear weapons testing in the Marshall Islands, 1946-1958 - and particularly the secret Project 4.1: an American experiment in exposing Pacific Islanders to overdoses of radiation – deliberate human radiation poisoning – just to get better data on this method of maiming and killing people.

The public broadcasting establishment has spent more that two years keeping this story off the air.

Friday, January 24, 2014

East Timor's shocking saga of the principal, the minister and a schoolgirl

The controversial image on a Timorese Facebook group.
By Alex Tilman of Di'ak Ka Lae? Timor-Leste Reconsidered

OPINION: THIS STORY will make you cringe! Last month photos of a middle-aged man (one of which is reproduced here) embracing what looked like a uniformed schoolgirl inside a car, lip-locked, surfaced on a popular Timorese Facebook group.

It was soon revealed that the middle-aged man is the principal of a Catholic high school in Dili, the Colegio de São Miguel in Rai Kotu (Comoro), and the alleged uniformed schoolgirl, one of his students.

Needless to say, the photo instantly stirred a controversy surrounding what most people see as a highly inappropriate and despicable relationship between teacher and student even though no other detail of the relationship exists.

Various individuals, including members of Parliament, called for criminal investigation and the principal's sacking. Most were appalled by the principal's behaviour, yet there were a persistent few who attempted to trivialise the significance of this photo.

The case is currently being heard in a court (see article below). But the nature of the controversy took on a new twist after journalists confronted Timor-Leste's Vice-Minister of Education in charge of secondary education, Virgilio Smith.

Friday, January 10, 2014

Now the feared Caveman Chabal is a 'currency fairy'



FRENCHMAN Sebastien Chabal used to be one of the most feared players in world rugby. And the tough second division Lyon forward has just been handed a three-week suspension for a punch that knocked out Agen’s Marc Giroud.

But the long-haired beast hardly looks scary in his new moonlighting role off the rugby field - dressed as a fairy for an Irish peer-to-peer currency conversion company's TV advert.

The 36-year-old sneaks up on a couple looking to exchange their holiday money, before introducing himself as “a fairy... a currency fairy”.

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Dodging censorship to see The Act Of Killing

DRAFTHOUSE FILMS have announced their award-winning controversial, shocking and surreal film The Act Of Killing about the Indonesian anti-communist massacres in the 1965-66 purge - screened at the New Zealand International Film Festival last year - is now available on video on demand.

Winner of more than 50 awards internationally, appearing on more than 40 official critics' top ten lists, and shortlisted for best documentary at this year's upcoming Academy Awards, Joshua Oppenheimer's groundbreaking documentary The Act Of Killing is finally available to watch everywhere.

At the time of checking, 352,000 people had seen the trailer.

In this chilling and inventive documentary, executive produced by Errol Morris and Werner Herzog, the unrepentant former members of Indonesian death squads are challenged to re-enact some of their many murders in the style of the American movies they love.

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