Captain Phillips Empathizes with Al Qaeda as Kenyans Die
By Chriss Street
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As the
movie thriller ‘Captain Phillips’, about economically depressed Somali
hostage-taking al Qaeda pirates, opens the New York Film Festival this
week, the real Somali al Qaeda pirates were murdering and holding hundreds of
hostages in a Nairobi, Kenya shopping mall. Hollywood always likes to
take credit for “life imitating art”,
because they believe “What is found in life and nature is not what is
really there, but is that which artists have taught people to find there,
through art.” American Navy SEALs use stealth and daring to
successfully rescue hostages in ‘Captain Phillips.’ But with at least
62 dead after four days of battle between the Somali pirates and the combined
forces of the Kenyan military and Israeli commandos, al-Qaeda has
successfully demonstrated that their art is maximizing civilian mayhem and
terror.
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Director
Paul Greengrass, who dramatized in 2006 the 9/11 terrorist hijacking of “United
93”, filmed many of the movie’s scenes at sea to capture a hyper-realistic
feel. He stated that instead of telling a simplified
tinsel-town story of the brutality of the hijackers and the courageous captain,
played by Tom Hanks, to have sought a more nuanced point of view, highlighting
the entrenched economic problems that cause people to resort to piracy in the
first place, “On the one hand, you are getting a very exciting film, and on
the other hand, one that rewards the watcher without lecturing you.”
Greengrass
says he isn’t interested in finding heroes and villains. Instead, he tried to
employ his jumpy, documentary style to show events as they actually happened. “You
understand the pirates’ desperation and the danger they pose,” he says, “but
you understand their humanity too.” In one key scene Mr.
Phillips—nicknamed “Irish” by his captors—tells one of the Somalis
hostage-takers that there must be job opportunities in Somalia besides “being
a fisherman and kidnapping people.” The pirate responds, “Maybe in
America, Irish.”
On the
real world stage in Nairobi, thick oily black smoke poured from the Westgate
mall on September 23rd, after rescuers blew a hole in the roof to
gain better positions to attack the al Qaeda-linked terrorists of al Shabaab terrorists,
who are understand they are on a suicide mission and have no intention of
surrender. A senior official tried to reassure the media by claiming the
police were “closing in”,
but the government has repeated similar stories for days. Al Shabaab
leader Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage in a radio address broadcast from Somalia
stated, “Israelis and Kenyan forces have tried to enter Westgate by force
but they could not.” He added, “The mujahideen will kill the
hostages if the enemies use force.”
The
female villain in this al Shabaab full-length feature is the “White Widow”
Samantha Lewthwaite, the fugitive former wife of one of the infamous 7/7 bombers. Her 19 year old husband Germaine
Lindsay and three friends boarded three London Underground trains and a bus on the morning of July 7, 2005, then
killed 52 civilians and injured 700 more by blowing themselves up.
Lewthwaite was reported to be in the mall shouting orders in Arabic to the
mujahideen during the initial attack. Al Shabaab hostages were then lined
up and executed with AK-47s if they failed to name the Prophet Mohammed’s
mother or recite passages from the Koran – proof they were non-believing
“kafirs.”
Adding
to the international appeal for a future movie script, Al Shabaab has been
expanding its recruitment outside of Somalia to build a more multi-ethnic generation of
African fighters and it has been reported that 10% of their total
forces are now “Kenyan
Mujahideen.” U.S. intelligence told news services over 50 Americans have also traveled to their training
camps in Somalia. Last month, al-Shabaab released a video from a training
camp showing three young men claiming to be from Minneapolis. One future
martyr, stated:
“This
is the best place to be honestly,” one of the men says. “I can only tell
you from my experience being here, that you have the best of dreams, you eat the
best of food, and you’re with the best of the brothers and sisters who came
here for the sake of Allah. If you guys only knew how much fun we have over
here. This is the real Disneyland, you need to come here and join us and take
pleasure in this fun.”
It is
unclear if timing of the release of ‘Captain Phillips’ inspired the al Shabaab
attack. But successfully attacking an upscale shopping center, taking
hundreds of hostages, and then holding off a nation’s military for days, will
provide al Qaeda movie producers with plenty of “artistic” hyper-realistic feel
for their upcoming recruiting films.
Listen
to Chriss Street and Paul Preston on
“AGENDA 21 Radio”
Streaming Monday through Friday at 6-9 AM Pacific Standard Time
“AGENDA 21 Radio”
Streaming Monday through Friday at 6-9 AM Pacific Standard Time
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