Zero Dark Thirty and the U.D

Bigelow - Picture by Time

Zero Dark Thirty, the latest blockbuster from Hollywood's war porn queen Kathryn Bigelow (who brought us the Hurt Locker), is in cinemas now and drawing much debate on the use of torture to secure information from prisoners.

The film centres around a raw recruit in the C.I.A Maya, played by Jessica Chastain, as she joins an intelligence team and her pursuit of the illusive Osama Bin Laden, intent on bringing him to American justice. The first hour of this movie focuses heavily on the tactics of torture, which at first Chastain is uneasy with, until she becomes hardened to the perceived merits and benefits of torturing someone to provide results. After all, military intelligence is a results driven business and business in this world are bodies in bags.

The movie depicts the various scenes of terrorist acts since 2001, starting with a black screen and the harrowing voices of victims in the twin towers in their last moments to control operators, through to the marauding gun men of Mumbai in 2008. It does not however show us any of the terrorist acts committed by the U.S. and UK governments on our behalf that have taken place during the same time frame. Time and again we hear how many people were killed during the attack on the twin towers, but not once do we hear how many civilians have been killed at the hands of our troops at the direction of their commanders in chief, George W. Bush, Tony Blair, Barack Obama and David Cameron respectively. We know exactly how many troops have been killed or maimed by the insurgents since operations began in 2001 but not how many children have been orphaned or suffered loss of limbs, robbing them of their fundamental right to play. We even know how many journalists have been killed in the different theatres of operation. When it comes to the civilian casualties of these wars, we are given estimates in the tens of thousands or 'thereabouts'.

To say it is one sided is to put it mildly.

It is of course highly likely that the Pentagon had access to the script; it is not uncommon these days for the Pentagon to review scripts before they commit to helping directors with the use of equipment or military personnel for scenes. This was exposed in a documentary on Al Jazeera called Hollywood and the War Machine where they interviewed a man from the Pentagon's Hollywood department, Phillip M. Strub, who features in a tremendous list of credits for military movies. It is here that Hollywood come cap in hand for access to specialist machines and personnel in exchange for the military having influence over the script. What we are left with as consumers is a one sided, watered down version of whatever the director's original vision of a movie was.

Zero Dark Thirty is another example of what some call 'war porn', which salutes the godly duty of servicemen and women of our armed forces to do 'what is necessary' to get the job done. What it fails to mention is the Geneva Convention relative to the treatment of Prisoners of war, specifically Article 3, which clearly outlines what is prohibited. There was no mention of this during the two hours and thirty minutes but there was a candid comment from one of the main characters who said: "Do not be the last person caught holding the dog lead." This was reference to the revelations in 2004 at Abu Ghraib and just about sums up the feeling towards torture in many areas of the state.

It should be remembered the feeling by general society of the treatment of prisoners during World War Two at the hands of the Japanese for example. These people were armed combatants that were caught by an opposing military force. Some of the people that have been subject to the torture and indefinite detainment subject to the rushed through terrorism laws, have been done so solely on the suspicion of terrorism in some way.

Django unchained and uncut.

Quentin Tarantino's new movie Django Unchained has hit the big screens and divided opinion. Following Kill Bill and Inglorious Basterds I was hoping for a return to form.

Much of the complaint has been around Tarantino's blood lust and overt displays of gore. To complain about this however is as worthwhile as complaining about an England football team under performing at a major tournament, it happens.

The film Django is set in 1858, two years before the civil war and during a time of open slavery. The movie centres around two slaves, marries and then sold and separated for attempting to run away. One of these slave, Django (Jamie Foxx) is found by a charismatic German bounty hunter, Shultz (Christopher Waltz), in chains on route to a plantation. His offer to buy Django is refused with murderous results as the bounty hunter dispatches with the slavers and 'frees' Django to assist him with collecting a bounty.

The relationship between the two men is interesting in as much as Shultz is uneasy at freeing Django, only to hold him until they find the men Shultz is hunting. Django is a key witness as he knows what the men look like.

The movie unfolds to become one about love and friendship as Django is intent on finding his wife. The relationship between the two men blossoms as Shultz agrees to help Django find and free his wife. The pair up and become a team, Shultz casually compares the bounty hunting life to that of a slaver stating "slavers deal in bodies for cash and bounty hunters deal in corpses for cash." The first scene Django rides into town draws more than a handful of comments or stares.

Eventually they find the wife is being held at a well known plantation called Candie Land by a man named Calvin Candie, played by Leonardo Dicaprio and supported superbly by Samuel L. Jackson, who plays the head 'house negro' and is perhaps the worse villain of the two.
The film at this point sways a bit from its path. It is essentially a revenge movie regarding the history of slavery, more than once there are references to a black man being paid to kill white men, though the word black is not the one necessarily used to describe him.

Having at times been gripping we then slip back into some of the more familiar scenes of Tarantino action, with outlandish gun fights and exploding guts and gore which are quite needless. With enough compelling nods to the great spaghetti westerns of the past Tarantino decides to almost undo ninety minutes to two hours of excellent work with a shoot out that may find some looking at their watch. The film around this time could have drawn to a natural conclusion but we instead get another forty odd minutes riding around the wild south and shoot outs.

Despite this slight stammer towards the end Django Unchained is still thoroughly enjoyable and entertaining, my Tarantino days now have a worthy addition. The negative comments coming from some quarters are unfounded and centre, as previously stated, on the excessive gore content of the movie. There have also been some complaints about the excessive use of abrasive language, particularly around the use of derogatory terms, which is difficult to understand considering the period and topic on which it was set. You would not watch a Shakespeare play and then complain about the form of English being spoken would you?

Tesco launch uni-quorn meat

There is so much that could be said about the great Tesco fiasco of horse meat in their burgers but I would imagine most of it has already been said.

Not Banksy

Where's Banksy when you need him? 

The jokes of course are doing the rounds, with my personal favourite being the veggie burger made from uniquorn meat but I am not here to tell cheap jokes.

What I will do instead is give a good link to some great documentaries that will better address the Tesco issue that has occurred this past week, far better than the mainstream media has dealt with it at any rate.

Top Documentaries is an almost one stop shop for all your documentary needs Films for Action  is another good site for the documentaries listed below:

Food Inc;

Home;

Blue Gold:Water Wars;

Tapped;

The Cove.

The documentaries outlined here are but a sample of the information available to you at the end of your finger tips, courtesy of the Internet. I have written about some of them before, namely The Cove and Blue Gold. They will fundamentally change the way you look at Coca-Cola and dolphins, though I do urge caution before watching The Cove as it is pretty savage in its depiction of the treatment of dolphins by SeaWorld trainers in Taiji Japan.

Enjoy, with love

From the NNI team.

Madness of a service society

As the relatives make their way back to the four corners of the planet I am left with a lingering question, why do people applaud airline pilots on arrival at their destination?

My partner began to explain how Ryanair flights are regularly greeted with a round of applause when the plane reaches its destination on schedule. I began to say how I had never flown Ryanair when my memory banks fired up and recalled the traumatic experience of being almost stranded in Berlin following the marathon in 2011. An experience that Ryanair saw fit to charge me over £400 for, for the pleasure of my company to get back to England. Once I had regained my composure following a Gene Wilder outburst of "WH-WH-WH-WHAT?!" I weighed up the cost of staying in Germany for another four weeks versus having to remain civil for two hours on a plane full of mercenaries. 

One thing was for certain, I was never going to applaud that arrival.

As a younglin the thought of air travel always filled me with dread, until I took my first flight at the age of 16. If I had been told of the time honoured tradition of applauding the pilot for doing their job I may perhaps have never set foot upon a plane in the first instance. It is not something I find fills me with confidence, after all, I never applauded a taxi driver for getting me to the pub in one piece and on time, though I may have come across one or two that deserve a round of applause for getting me home in my younger, more reckless days. So why do people feel compelled to applaud an airline taxi driver?

When you consider that medium to long haul flights will set you back £400 plus, then the very least you would expect is to land safely and comfortably.

Some will cite the precision and skill associated with flying and landing an aeroplane, loaded with passengers and cargo but when you take away the take off and landing what is left? The autopilot mainly, but I do not see people bending over backwards applauding SKYNET for getting to their holiday/work destination on time. More often than not in my limited experience I have found that most pilots seem to wait until they are about a foot off of the ground before they then seem to switch off the engine, smashing into the tarmac, making some men and women scream and breaking glass in the drinks cabinet...yet still some applaud. Though this may have been more of a case of nervous release.

So it is I shall continue to wonder why it is we applaud a pilot for just doing their job and perhaps I shall begin a craze of applauding the taxi driver, bus driver and train driver for coming to a safe stop, on time or not.

To new beginnings

Another new year is upon us with less than two earth hours remaining as I sit with a coffee waiting to see in 2013 (twenty-thirteen), a year some had believed would not come to be if the Mayan prophecy had anything to do with it.

Fortunately the mass hysteria surrounding the Mayan prophecy was a result of misunderstanding/ interpretation and here we are, approximately 7billion people, waiting for the dawning of a new year, according to our man made time devices. Some will be no doubt be drinking alcoholic beverages and singing merry songs, others will be laying wondering where their next meal will come from, all will be hoping that 2013 will bring with it better fortunes than the one that goes before it.

A strange custom of new year resolutions, which according to History.com dates back 4000 years to the Babylonian times, whereby they made promises to earn favour from their gods and start off their year on a good foot, continues today with people making resolutions to lose weight, quit smoking...the list is non exhaustive, as you may well know having made them yourselves. 

More often than not today, they are of a self serving nature and are seldom kept. 

This of course is a wide generalisation and I am sure there are many out there who would disagree and tell of a long list of resolutions they have made and kept. What always irked me growing up however was why someone would wait until the new year, to make a change to something in their life that matters? I was once told that time is like a wolf, it is hungry, preys on the unsuspecting and does not stop. 

Life is a series of moments called now and in waiting all we do is to do ourselves a disservice. There is a saying that says there is no time like the present.

So it is with new years, millions of people across the planet will be plotting their to do lists for 2013 that the majority of which could have started at any time in 2012 if they chose to. To wait for the turning of a new year for some is but an excuse, for others a symbol of regeneration. What does the new year mean for you?

Peace poppy campaign ignites in Luton

The great poppy debate has been raging for decades with the sight of the red poppy seemingly becoming more of a politically correct statement rather than being one of true meaning.

In recent years we have seen the BBC rush to ensure Huw Edwards was suitably attired with a Red Poppy after a member of the public complained halfway through a show that he had not put one on and another presenter, Jonathon Ross had a poppy superimposed on his suit so as to be sure not to upset anyone.

In Luton on Sunday 11th of November the peace poppy row exploded in a show of aggression by Kevin Carrol of the EDL and Police Commissioner Candidate for the town against a local peace campaigner and his son.

Peace campaigner Marc Scheimann press secretary to Luton TUC, attended with his four year old son Luton Remembrance Day outside Luton Town Hall by the War memorial, after the two minutes silence, religious speeches of commemorance the parade marched away, Marc & Kiran Scheimann approached the rear of the memorial to lay a white peace poppy wreath. Each year since 1989, Marc has laid a peace wreath to remember his German and British grand fathers who both lost their lives on the two opposing sides during the World War Two, the reason for why he wears a red and a white poppy.

For twenty four years Marc has respectfully done this with the understanding of the Luton public without any problem, until this year when English Defence League deputy & far right British Freedom Party candidate for the Bedfordshire Police and Crime Commission, Kevin Carroll made the exception. Waving a clenched fist and using aggressive gesturing he shouted at Kevin before speaking to three police officers that he hopes to lead after the November 15th elections.

Two Officers approached Mark and requested his name, address and telephone number, which he gave. They asked Mark to step back for a moment because they felt he was causing breach of the peace by his actions. Mark stated that it was only a very small minority of the public shouting and they were all connected with Kevin Carroll. After a few minutes Mark and his son laid their peace reef flanked by two police officers. They asked him to leave straight away but stated he had the right to have time to pay his respect and talk to members of the council including our two MPs. Mark feared for the safety of his peace reef so stood close by it with the two officers, one at each side.

Kevin Carroll approached Mark pointing with a closed fist and pointed at the wreath laid by Mark and his son.

A twenty something woman suddenly made a grab for the wreath, shouting and made a grab to remove the wreath from the wires. Mark dived forward letting go of his sons’ hand to fall on the wreath preventing its’ theft whilst the officers took no action.

Mr Carroll seeing that his hopes had been thwarted stated shouting again saying many times over: “You’re just a scumbag, you and the Wakehams (fellow peace campaigners) hate troops. 
“When I’m police commissioner, I will make sure you are locked up in jail for this."

Mark replied that he hoped Carroll would lose his deposit getting less than 5 % of the vote.

His actions and tirade clearly demonstrate if doubt ever existed that he does not just hate Muslims, but all people what ever the colour of their skin, who dare to hold an opinion different to his.

Is this the democracy that the people who we remember died for?

Slash and burn debate rages on

The Fire Brigades Union (FBU) have shown a change of tact this week in the build up to their lobby of parliament with their 'They slash, you burn' campaign that featured in a number of newspapers. 


The advert has caused ripples through various outlets, accusing the FBU of scare mongering and preying on the fears of the public. Andrew Haldenby from the independent think tank Reform has written a particularly vociferous article featured in the Telegraph against what he calls a "misleading campaign" by the FBU challenging the facts of their statements.


But before we get into the facts as Mr Haldenby likes to claim, let us take a look at Mr Haldenby and Reform itself.


Reform was co-founded by Haldenby in 2001, he later became director in 2005. More interestingly however and previously to his time with Reform, he worked at the Centre for Policy Studies and the Conservative Party (1995-1997) where he became head of the political section of the Conservative Research Department, with the responsibility of briefing the Shadow Cabinet Minister and Leader for key media interviews and appearances. Before even this latest outburst Haldenby has been a regular mouth piece for political propaganda for the Conservatives. Two previous articles that have featured in the last three years in The Telegraph show that Haldenby knows not to bite the hand that feeds. 


Of the NHS and cuts to medicine for patients Haldenby thought it would 'do' the NHS some good, adding this: "One NHS doctor described the list to me as follows: “Nothing worrying there – most are obscure drugs or very specialist or downright ridiculous – neutrogena, gluten free pizza bases". Anyone with even shred of knowledge (or decency for that matter) would have questioned the claim that a gluten free pizza base should not be on the NHS prescription list. There are a section of our society that suffer with something called Coeliac disease, which is an allergy to gluten and wheat, that could lead to bowel cancer if the individual continues to eat wheat based food. Gluten is basically the stuff that makes our bread chewy. At £2.98 for a loaf of gluten free bread that tastes like cardboard, I am sure you would appreciate a little help at the check out when food prices are already soaring beyond some peoples means to cope.


In Haldenby's other article, again in The Telegraph, he focused on the upcoming cuts prior to the last general election, where he stuck his flag firmly in the camp of 'cuts not taxes' in true Tory spirit.

He said: "The politicians will inevitably sugar the pill by talking about a reduction in "management" and "administration". In the past two days, David Cameron and Gordon Brown have promised to "protect front-line services", implying that it is managers, accountants, secretaries and so on who face the axe.

"Yet however appealing it sounds, this would be the wrong approach. 

"The waste in the public services lies, very largely, in that "front line". The NHS will become more efficient only when doctors and nurses are employed in different ways and its buildings used in different ways. A pledge to protect the "front line" will just compound the current problems

this kind of approach would make public services less efficient – which is why it hasn't worked in the past".

So there we have it, a brief history of Mr Haldenby and the rhetoric he sits behind, in a newspaper that gives him the right platform and audience he desires.

The FBU and its members have long made the claim that to do their job both safely and efficiently you need firefighters that are fully trained and fully equipped on fire engines. The fact of the matter is the cuts for the fire service since this unman dated government have been in office has been back loaded for the upcoming two years. The first two years of the governments cuts were only a small percentage of the proposed twenty five percent total by the government but the net result of this so far is the loss of 1457 frontline firefighter jobs across wholetime, retained and control. The potential cull of frontline jobs in the coming two years based on these figures will leave services decimated across the UK and severely handicap their resilience in dealing with incidents.

This may sound like some to now be the rhetoric and drum banging of 'the union' but unfortunately for the cuts deniers this is a message that has been echoed by the Chief Fire Officers Association (CFOA).

CFOA are warning of 'a perfect storm' within the fire service as the government pushes ahead with its cuts agenda in a recent publication. In it they said: "That English FRSs are facing a 'perfect storm' of financial pressures which, if not addressed, may lead to a drastic reduction in firefighting capacity, increases in community risk, loss of vital prevention work and a threat to maintaining national resilience. This comes at a time when there is a high likelihood of an increase in demand for our prevention and response services as a consequence of an gaining population and as deprivation increases due to the economic recession". A damning report from a group made up of Chief Fire Officers from across the UK and one that supports the view and facts outlined by the FBU, which must be a first.

Still the debate rages and the FBU advertising campaign has divided opinion, but at least it has got people talking. The Department for Communities and Local Government have waded in on the issue, supporting Mr Haldenby's claims that the FBU are scare mongering with partisan campaigning.

A spokesman for the Department for Communities and Local Government said:

"The FBU is wrong and trying to scare the public with its partisan campaigning. It is disgraceful to suggest that sensible savings cannot be made in areas like procurement, joint working and tackling outdated working practices.

“Their wilful scare-mongering overlooks that fire-related deaths and arson have been falling and continue to fall.

"Every part of the public sector needs to play its part in cutting the deficit we have inherited from the last Administration. Contrary to the FBU claims, we have protected frontline uniformed services as much as possible. Fire and rescue authorities only need to make savings of 2.2% of their spending in 2011-12 and just 0.5% in 2012-13: there is significant scope to deliver these without harming the quality and breadth of the service that the public receive.” The omission here of course are the savings to made in 2013-14 but why would you arm the public with full facts?

The statistics now being thrown around are arbitrary, as is always the case with statistics, it depends on how you read and manipulate them.

The previous twenty four months may well have shown a drop in arson fires but is this because of the work done in prevention by firefighters and the support departments or because of the record breaking rain that has occurred during the holiday periods when most kids would have been out fire setting? No one set of figures can be used to prove or disprove a theory without looking at all the evidence at hand. Unfortunately this is not a scientific method or approach used by partisan governments or Senior Mangers it should be added. The DCLG claim that fire related deaths have been falling is also true, but again this statement has to be taken in context. Fire deaths have steadily fallen over the past thirty years, and yes firefighter personnel have also reduced in this period, but this is not to say that there is no correlation between the number of firefighters and the number of fire deaths. Key legislation has been implemented in this time that has helped reduce fire deaths, namely the Furniture and Furnishings Regulations 1988, Health and Safety Legislation and the Health and Safety Executive, all of which have been cut, compromised or relaxed.

Another issue with the statement that fire deaths have reduced is again with how a cause of death is established by a coroner. 

Two of examples are whereby a fire started by a child striking a match, resulting in the death of his brother and mother was recorded as a malicious fire by the coroner, another case where a man who had been drinking died as a result of injuries received jumping out of a window with his home on fire.

Add to this that the fire service statistics for rescues of members of the public are no longer recorded properly and Freedom of Information requests are required to collate the data, something that has created no end of work for the FBU and is a scandal in itself. Since 2004 the Fire and Rescue Services Act has made it a statutory duty for firefighters to rescue the public. This has formed the basis for role maps (that are open to interpretation) and a variety of incidents including (but not limited to) road traffic collisions and water rescue that we attend if called in an emergency. Some managers would have us do a lot more than this, some of which is clearly way outside our role maps.

In short accidental fire deaths represent a small percentage of the rescues carried out daily across the UK by firefighters.

Another omission from both Mr Haldenby and the DCLG on accidental fire deaths and the decrease in the number of them is the correlating INCREASE in the number of people dying when they do occur. Government statistics show that the number of people dying when a fire does occur is increasing and unfortunately we have had a number of high profile cases just this year that support this evidence. Alongside this there has been a general increase in attendance time of 20% as opposed to 10 years ago, which the government has blamed congestion for, but this increase in attendance time has occurred at both day and night attendance performance indicators. Is this due to the modernisation program embarked upon by management across the UK? Who knows, but what is certain is that some FRSs across the UK have dealt with this issue by increasing the attendance times for incidents, meaning that you and I will have to wait longer for a fire crew to turn up if we are ever in a situation unfortunate enough to warrant dialing 999.

Once again I would urge you to check those facts yourself. Ask a firefighter, go to one of YOUR community fire stations and ask the question. Email your councillor or why don't you contact the brigades themselves and see what they have to say.

Don't believe the hype, the media is manipulating you. Ask more questions.