Haskell Wexler talking:
I am angry. I am—I see how the American public is being confused, lied to and given theater, to make us buy that war is the way to have peace, and to use a journalist like Jim Foley, who was truly a journalist—wants to search for the truth, actually was out amongst them, and volunteered to work with my film group in Chicago, which were there documenting an anti—anti-NATO demonstration. In fact, he himself took a camera, and I have 30 minutes of film of him talking to people in Chicago, so that he was not a person detached, objective journalist. He realized that our foreign policy is destructive, when you had a humanitarian crisis that hurt him deeply that he saw in Syria.
And a funny thing is, the government knew what his position is, with all the surveillance, was—and on just students in Chicago who were opposing NATO and the war, the taking of their computers, certainly the look into journalists and their points of view. If they didn’t know before, when James Foley took a camera to work with me and my fellow Chicago filmmakers in an anti-NATO film, there’s no question on what side of the fence he’s on. And the government functions on “you’re either 100 percent for us, or you’re the enemy.” And that’s why a lot of our discussions and other interviews was Jim talking about the other, how authorities can establish who the other is, and once they’re other, they’re less than human, they’re less than smart, and you can do anything to them, because you have to teach them a lesson. So, for them to use him as a poster boy for more violence is obscene, and I think that the country has to know it’s obscene.
I decided to make “Four Days in Chicago” film because Chicago is my hometown. And in 1968, when another antiwar demonstration was there, the power of the police and the state went in there and suppressed them brutally, and later it was called a police riot. And then, when the Occupy was announced to be in Chicago, the Chicago Tribune had an article that the mayor—quoted the mayor saying that this is not going to be like ’68. And actually he mentioned my film, Medium Cool, and he said they’re going to deal with these people in a new way. And so, I decided I better go back to my hometown and find out what’s there. And I went there with two West Coast filmmakers who were ex-Chicago people, Andy Davis and Mike Gray, and with the help of a lot of young people in Chicago, we made a film called Four Days in Chicago.
Diane Foley, James Foley’s mother, who did an interview last night with CNN’s Anderson Cooper. She said officials told her she could face prosecution if she tried to raise a ransom to free her son. She said the U.S. had also refused to exchange prisoners or carry out a military rescue effort early on.
I’m trying to get over my anger, that I expressed early, about the theatrical utilization of the opposite of what James Foley, and try to concentrate on what lessons we have from this situation. And I thought—I saw James Foley’s mother, and I thought here’s a brave, good woman, sort of representing everything that America is all about, and she’s saying that our government is not telling the truth. And our media, in the main—maybe a few breakthroughs now, certainly with you, but otherwise—are saying that—what they call America being “war-weary.” It’s not we’re just tired of fighting war, but we’re tired of being deceived and having that deception taken from all the needs that we have in America today.
the spokesperson for the family of the other beheaded journalist, Steven Sotloff, spoke to CNN on Wednesday, Barak Barfi, and said Sotloff was sold to ISIL by other so-called moderate Syrian rebels.
Steven Sotloff said, “For the first time, we can say Steven was sold at the border. Steven’s name was on a list that he had been responsible for the bombing of a hospital. This was false. Activists spread his name around. We believe that the so-called moderate rebels that people want our administration to support, one of them sold him probably for something between $25,000 and $50,000 to ISIS. And that was the reason that he was captured.”
the government—that is, our military government— and I’m saying that it’s far more deeply militaristic than we even realize—that our government is going to do whatever it’s going to do. It’s certainly shown that about Syria. But they have to develop new theatrical events to make it seem like something good—you know, dropping bombs and then humanitarian aid, as the public thing is today of a new policy. So I think we have to know how the forces are, and to realize there is plenty in this country that will see through the sham before it’s too late.
— source democracynow.org
Haskell Wexler, legendary cinematographer, journalist and director, perhaps best known for his 1969 film, Medium Cool. He has won two Academy Awards for cinematography in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Bound for Glory. He worked with journalist James Foley in 2012, before Foley returned to Syria, where he was kidnapped and brutally killed by ISIS.