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Last updated on May 20th, 2017 at 10:09 am
The same old truther lines from little-known Australian filmmaker Gillian Norman:
It was all too convenient. Convenient that the American air defenses yawned and rolled over when they heard reports that planes had been hijacked. Handy that the missile batteries surrounding the Pentagon failed to respond and the CCTV cameras just happened to blink out. Convenient that the approaching plane did a big loop to crash – supposedly – into the unoccupied backside of the edifice, luckily missing the military brass. Images of red flashes of explosions at lower levels of the collapsing Twin Towers, shown in the earliest reports and never seen again, were a big giveaway, as was the immediate finger pointing to bin Laden on the basis of faked evidence of the miraculous survival of a hijacker’s passport in the rubble of the WTC, and the convenient idiots’ guides to flying a plane, so fortuitously found in a parked car. All so very opportune.
Kyle: Really? But what makes Norman interesting is that while truthering on about Australia being “complicit in America’s war crimes”, Norman seeks – and is given – government funding to pursue her truthy anti-US film hobby:
The following feature films have been financed so far during the 2005/2006 period …
EMPIRE AMERICANA (Feature-length documentary)
Uplink Media
Producers: Gillian Norman, Danny Schecter
Director/Writer: Gillian Norman
Sales and Distribution: Madman Cinema
Synopsis: An intimate examination of America’s quest for empire and the impact on a grateful world of the emerging Empire Americana as the guardian of democracy, policing the planet to extend peace and freedom.
That might be the polite, grant-requesting summary of Norman’s film. This probably gives a more accurate idea:
As dark warclouds descend over the nations, a powerful Empire Americana presents itself on the global stage as a beacon of freedom to a world in peril; an Empire driven by a radical ideology that pursues total war in a quest for global dominion.
Norman also received government help for her more overtly truthy film ShadowPlay, the international sale of which was promoted by the South Australian Film Corporation:
Gillian Norman, producer-director of Upstream Media recently attended Strategic Partners sponsored by the SAFC …
Pitching a provocative docudrama, ShadowPlay, exploring charges that 9/11 was an inside job contrived to advance American Empire, Gillian was offered an international distribution agreement and met a potential Canadian co-producer.
Thank you, South Australian Film Corporation, for helping raise awareness of trutherdom.
For Gillian Norman who also participated in AIDC’s MeetMarket, “Strategic Partners has pioneered an initiative that has provided invaluable support to many producers, and has shown that – ironically in an age of cybercommunication – it’s the facilitated face-to-face meeting that gets the handshakes.”
The AIDC – Australian International Documentary Conference – is another government-funded group. Sounds like a conspiracy theory right here, doesn’t it? Sadly for Norman, the government handouts apparently ended last year:
The Australian Film Corporation had recently after a 2 hour plus meeting with Gillian put ShadowPlay at the top of the list of documentaries to receive a post production grant of 85k. Unfortunately the board (not the critics, who love it) has decided that it has missed out, I wonder why?
Probably because it looks like this.
Gillian Norman fans who crave more may enjoy her conversation with NYC meditation teacher Paula Gloria about 9/9/07 terror attacks on Sydney that never happened. Paula Gloria fans may enjoy her dancing for peace … after four minutes or so, following a phone call for peace.
What amazes me is the number of out-right falsehoods in that first quote. Either Gillian has never looked beyond the “truther” sources, or is willingly believing the lies.
Posted by Rob Crawford on 2008 03 27 at 02:13 PM • permalink
I assume she’s the one whose arms look like the hindlegs of a water buffalo?
#1: Pentagram! Haw! That’s right: the nerve center of the American empire, filled with generals in flowing black capes and admirals carrying pitchforks. And every other Thursday, the ritual hippie sacrifice featuring a red-hot bayonet colonoscopy. It’s starting to look like political imbecility is a dominant gene.
Another gaggle of morons who would never be heard unless the government had funded their delusions. Psychiatric medication is a lot cheaper.
Posted by Mystery Meat on 2008 03 27 at 02:30 PM • permalink
I’m surprised that countries like Australia haven’t risen up in revolt against our brutal imperial rule.
The oppression our imperial possessions endure is staggering.
Posted by Dave Surls on 2008 03 27 at 02:45 PM • permalink
”…powerful Empire Americana …”
In the Spock-with-a-beard universe, maybe.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2008 03 27 at 02:52 PM • permalink
9/11 was an inside job contrived to advance American Empire
Is that like American Idle?
Posted by Mr. Bingley on 2008 03 27 at 03:01 PM • permalink
I noticed that her film interveiwed Scott Ritter.
Now there’s someone you want in your camp.Well, unless it’s a Girl Scout camp.
Posted by Rob Crawford on 2008 03 27 at 03:04 PM • permalink
Synopsis: An intimate examination of America’s quest for empire and the impact on a grateful world of the emerging Empire Americana as the guardian of democracy, policing the planet to extend peace and freedom.
Maybe we should just send her the dvd of Team America and save you guys 85k.
Posted by Mr. Bingley on 2008 03 27 at 03:49 PM • permalink
As dark warclouds descend over the nations, a powerful Empire Americana presents itself on the global stage as a beacon of freedom to a world in peril; an Empire driven by a radical ideology that pursues total war in a quest for global dominion.
you mean MWAHAHAHA
Posted by Old Tanker on 2008 03 27 at 04:00 PM • permalink
Can I get some love from my Australian subj….uh, peeps??
Actually, I’m a really nice overlord, promise!!!
Posted by Old Tanker on 2008 03 27 at 04:33 PM • permalink
You’d think the actual results would indicate: no empire, so not much quest. Perhaps that’s just another example of Chimpy’s incompetence—he can’t even get that imperialism and empire thing right.
Oh well. I guess that’s how Dark Lord Karl works—one day that Empire will just appear, and peace and freedom will be upon us.
A guy can dream, can’t he?
“Handy that the missile batteries surrounding the Pentagon”
Missile batteries surrounding the Pentagon??!!
Ummmmm. The only thing surrounding the Pentagon pre-9/11 was an enormous field of parking lots.
I know I can’t remember any missile batteries.
Posted by memomachine on 2008 03 27 at 05:05 PM • permalink
- ‘US radical ideology’
Yeah, like wanting about 100 nations in the UN to have democratic elections and listen to their people.
St Kev is not so radical, signaling ahead of time that the UN is fine by him as it is.As for Gullible Gill, she’s getting the same results from Australian money sources as the US ones that funded a whole series of anti-war film flops in the US.
Very clever artistic ‘populists’.
No conspiracy there?
- #26
Thanks for that link Pogs. It’s well done.
Certainly fatwa material.
Wilders will be on the Behead Top 40 in no time. (Oh, wait, I think I saw him there already.)Of course some would say “Ah, but that’s only happening in Eruope”, and/or “Ah, but that’s only a small percentage…”This is what their Holy Book extols (and the Surahs and Hadiths); this is what is drilled into their children from the very beginning of their lives.
It’s sick. It must be a mental illness. Brainwashing.
And none of them seem to see it that way.
The expression Empire Americana is meant, I think, to create an impression of erudition.
The mix of English and Latin draws more attention to what she does not know – the Latin for Empire – possibly basing her expression on Pax Americana*. I suspect the phrase she is looking for runs along the lines of Imperium Americana, or something. It is a pretty weak bluff to conceal ignorance.
I expect that the entire movie is in keeping with this pretentiousness.
*I do not know Latin well – so I will nnot vouch for the grammar.
Posted by Toiling Mass on 2008 03 27 at 06:42 PM • permalink
Since such folk are so hopeful and excited about having the US as a real, legit enemy, why don’t we, here in the US start treating them as actual enemy?
We can reach out and kill anyone, anywhere, any time. Just ask the truthers. They’ll tell ya.
And, since we’re going to do the time, regardless of our actual actions, why not have the fun and joy of actually doing the crime?
- Weren’t there a number of other buildings which also collapsed along with the twin towers in New York on 9/11? What’s the ‘truther’ explanation for those?
Oh hell, there are thousands of questions those fools have no answer for!I wonder why Bin Laden keeps taking credit for something that, according to these nutters, he didn’t do!
I would like to know why The Evil Americana Empire of Death went to the trouble of shearing-off all those lightposts in the Pentagon parking lot.
I’m referring to the poles which all happened to be badly damaged in roughly the same spot…as if, oh I don’t know…the edge of an airplane wing had slammed into them.
Norman is yet another Pommie Socialist Bastard that leaches off Australian taxes to fund their dreams of a workers’ paradise to rival North Korea.
Anyone want to bet that she came out to Australia during the Thatcher era to ‘escape the harsh, brutal reign of the Tory fascists’? Uh, huh.
In this case, it’s even worse because my hard-earned cash is going to support a project so moronic that not even the Labor Party believes in it. Thank God that funding was eventually pulled.
Oh, and by the way, there haven’t been any SAM sites around Washington since the Nike sites were closed down in the early 1970’s – which is vivid proof (if any more were required) that this lunatic woman’s thinking congealed sometime around 1973.
Posted by Apparatchik on 2008 03 27 at 07:20 PM • permalink
People called Americana they go the ‘ouse?
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2008 03 27 at 07:33 PM • permalink
If i ever meet her shes getting a face full of spit for this line.
“..Australia only needed 88 young tourists to be torn apart in a false flag Bali disco bombing to persuade John Howard to jump onboard..”
No reasoning, arguement or persuasion from me, just my dried spit crusting on her boil of a head.
Fuck I hate truthers, they are supperating chankers on the genitals of a slug.Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2008 03 27 at 07:38 PM • permalink
Trooferism is the ultimate in malignant narcissism, and a whole new class of attention whoring.
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2008 03 27 at 07:41 PM • permalink
- #25
’US radical ideology’Since when have conservatives been radical?
Marcia Langton, Aboriginal activist, used the same to describe Howard’s recent Oz conservative Government.Aunty has been quoting Kevni as saying that he sees Australia as a ‘mid-size activist country’
WTF?
Kev the activist?
Guess he’ll be speaking ‘truth to power’ the next time he chats with Premier Hu?
… pleeze!
Who is Gillian Norman? Is she Gillian Brown, the maker of a creationist video titled From a Frog to a Prince? Both Brown and Norman are linked to Keziah Video Productions and have remarkably similar bios. From Norman’s most recent videos (hard to call them films) she seems to have a pathological hatred of the United States and of its president. This seems at odds with theFrog Prince video supporting creationism, which has strong support on the religious right in the US, the very people supposedly pulling the strings of GWB.
But then I read this from Prayer News: “Gillian Brown of Keziah Productions, who were contracted to produce the video From a Frog to a Prince for us”.
Left me wondering if Gillian Brown/Norman’s real business was making “propaganda” films for anyone with the cash to pay for them, any topic, any perspective the customer wants. That led to the question was she therefore contracted to make Shadowplay and these other conspiracy films for someone and if so whom?
- This is yet, another example of why taxpayers money should not be earmarked for this type of navel gazing crap. Let them get private financing, if they can. Some of the films financed by Film Finance look as bad as the best, that were made by the old Soviet Union.
#27. Kae. Have you noticed that the moderately successful Australian films, have all had private sector financing to some degree.
It is available elsewhere. I would also suggest the movie “Obsessions”.
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2008 03 27 at 08:41 PM • permalink
#5- Sounds remarkably like certain caliphate-craving chaps who are semingly invisible to the likes of Gillian; seriously, if we had any sort of media actually committed to public interest, the public funding of this sort of insane self-indulgence would be heralded (and the feed tube removed from these dingbats). Much easier to swallow lines slung by self-interested fear-mongers. BTW, did anyone have the misfortune to see Channel 7’s Today Tonight last night (yes I know, but I was getting kebabs ready, and there’s no digital feed in the kitchen, 7 is the only analogue signal that’s decipherable on the portable. Must fix that)? For a minute I thought I’d stepped into a wormhole, and the 7.30 Report was on- it lead with a “story” on the deadly weather that was about to descend on us from climate change (oddly enough they didn’t mention that broadcast and consumption of TV signals would be partially to blame), then an item about couragous dingbats trying to keep Woolworths out of Mullumbimby (because if it did open they’d have to take jobs there or lose their benefits), followed by another piece featuring the brilliant insights of Clive Hamilton. Either some wag slipped acid into the Gaggia during that morning production meeting, or the infiltration of the media by the mungbean mafia is more serious than we’ve previously imagined.
- So this morning I hear that the Nederlander gubmint is denouncing this Fitna movie because its sole purpose is to be offennnnnnnnsive. These troofer douchebags, who IMHO are providing cover for the mullahs (what the fuck other practical purpose DO they serve?) are getting no static from anybody. Well, except from each other, as we see on another thread, but you know what? That’s not enough. I watched Fitna and it filled me with unkind feelings toward various bunches of persons, but ESPECIALLY these lying-scum “truthers.”
No, I don’t want their freedom of speech to be suppressed. I just want them to be violently killed, preferably by each other. It’s a fine line … okay no it’s not.Posted by formerly Huck Foley on 2008 03 28 at 05:47 AM • permalink
Well, I suppose the “missile batteries” are hidden behind panels on the top and sides of the building. Sort of like Bablyon-5’s defense grid, though hopefully it’s now like the New, Improved one from Season 3 and not the Adequate one from Season 1.
Posted by Patrick Chester on 2008 03 28 at 01:47 PM • permalink
‘The last decent film financed by the U.S. government was an army training film called “How do you know she doesn’t have gonorrhea?”’
I love romance movies.
Posted by Dave Surls on 2008 03 28 at 06:52 PM • permalink
#52 Fitna has been pulled from Liveleak.
Death threats.
But it’s on youtube here
and
herePosted by carpefraise on 2008 03 29 at 09:43 AM • permalink
The second link is a place from which you can download FITNA.
Be quick!
Posted by carpefraise on 2008 03 29 at 09:44 AM • permalink
From Tim’s first link comes the first question in a Q & A session with Gillian:
I chuckled at their foolishness.