"Whoever claims the right to redistribute the wealth produced by others is claiming the right to treat human beings as chattel." — Ayn Rand
The 1962 film The Manchurian Candidate is a 1962 American Cold War political thriller film starring Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh and Angela Lansbury. The picture was directed by John Frankenheimer from an adaptation by George Axelrod of Richard Condon's 1959 novel.
The central concept of the film is that the son of a prominent, right-wing political family has been brainwashed as an unwitting assassin for an international Communist conspiracy. The Manchurian Candidate was nationally released on Wednesday, October 24, 1962, at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The plot is as follows:
During the Korean War, the Soviets capture an American platoon and take them to Manchuria in Communist China. After the war, the soldiers return to the United States, and Staff Sergeant Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey) is credited with saving their lives in combat. Upon the recommendation of the platoon's commander, Captain Bennett Marco (Frank Sinatra), Shaw is awarded the Medal of Honor for his supposed actions. In addition, when asked to describe him, Marco and the other soldiers automatically respond, "Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life." Deep down, however, they know that Shaw is a cold, sad, unsociable loner, Marco describing him as "not hard to like. He's impossible to like!".
Marco — who has since been promoted to Major — suffers from a recurring nightmare in which a hypnotized Shaw kills two fellow soldiers before the assembled military brass of communist nations, during a practical demonstration of a brainwashing technique. Marco wants to investigate, but receives no support from Army Intelligence as he has no proof. However, Marco learns that another soldier from the platoon, Allen Melvin (James Edwards), has had the same nightmare. When Melvin and Marco separately identify some of the men in the dream as leading figures in communist governments, Army Intelligence agrees to help Marco investigate.
Meanwhile, Shaw's mother, Mrs. Eleanor Iselin (Angela Lansbury), drives the
Mrs. Iselin is the American "operator" responsible for controlling Raymond, who was conditioned in Manchuria to be an unwitting assassin whose actions are triggered by a Queen of Diamonds playing card. When he sees it, he will obey the next suggestion or order given to him by anyone. When given instructions to kill selected targets, he must also kill any witnesses and never remember his actions, making him the perfect assassin. It is revealed that Shaw's heroic action was a false memory implanted in the platoon by the communists in Manchuria, and that they were covertly returned to the American lines when their conditioning was completed; the actions for which Shaw was awarded his Medal of Honor never took place.
Raymond briefly finds happiness when he rekindles a youthful romance with Jocelyn Jordan (Leslie Parrish), the daughter of Senator Thomas Jordan (John McGiver), one of his stepfather's political rivals. Raymond had previously courted Jocelyn in order to get at his parents in a Romeo and Juliet-style romance, but they then genuinely fell in love, both she and her father being the nearest thing Raymond has ever had to having friends. Mrs. Iselin broke up the relationship for obvious political reasons, but now facilitates the couple's reunion as part of her scheme to garner the support of Senator Jordan for her husband's own sudden vice presidential bid.
Jocelyn, wearing a Queen of Diamonds costume outfit, inadvertently hypnotizes Raymond at a costume party thrown by the Iselins and the couple elopes. Although pleased with the match, Senator Jordan makes it clear to Mrs. Iselin that he will move for her husband's impeachment if he makes any attempt to seek the vice-presidential nomination. Raymond's conditioning is then triggered by his mother and he is sent to assassinate Jordan. Jocelyn happens upon the scene and is also shot dead as a witness to the event. Raymond has no knowledge of his actions and is genuinely grief-stricken when he learns of the murders.
In the course of Marco's investigation, he discovers the role of the Queen of
In a cynically moving scene, Mrs. Iselin asserts that she did not know that it was her son who was to be selected by the Communists, who apparently chose him to be the assassin because they believed it would solidify their own hold and control over her. Furious, she vows that once in power she will "grind them into the dirt".
Marco's attempt to free Raymond appears to have failed. Raymond enters the convention hall disguised as a Catholic priest and takes up a position to carry out the assassination as he was instructed, using a rifle with a scope. Marco and his supervisor, Colonel Milt (Douglas Henderson), arrive at the convention to stop him. As the Presidential nominee (Robert Riordan) makes his speech, Raymond instead takes his revenge and saves the country by shooting his stepfather and mother dead. He then commits suicide in front of Marco while wearing his Medal of Honor.
I have seen this film at least five times and own the DVD version. I consider it as one of the best political thrillers of the genre and a good example of how Hollywood used to make films with a punch.
Of course in 2004 Hollywood attempted to remake the film by turning Condon's 1959 novel upside down and showing global corporations as the villains. The new plot goes something like this:
Major Bennett "Ben" Marco (Denzel Washington) is a war veteran who begins to doubt what is commonly known about his famous Army unit. During Operation Desert Storm, Sergeant First Class Raymond Shaw (Liev Schreiber) supposedly rescued all but two members in his unit, of which Marco was the commanding officer. This made Shaw a war hero, gained him the Medal of Honor, and launched him into a career in politics. One of Marco's former NCOs, Corporal Al Melvin (Jeffrey Wright), contacts him and says that he has had some 'dreams', and mentions himself, Marco, and Shaw inside a big room, with confusing memories of the lost army unit. He is clearly deranged, but he shows Major Marco some images he has drawn from the dreams, including one of a tattooed woman.
The members begin to come together in a dystopian near-future America
After Shaw is nominated, Marco begins investigating what really happened during the war. He finds an implant inside of his back, and, having it analyzed, realizes that it is a nano-technological experiment dating from the Gulf War, connected with Manchurian Global, an international weapons manufacturer with major political connections, including former prime ministers, trust-fund terrorists, ayatollahs, and the Shaw family. Marco also finds a newspaper clipping with a person in a photograph whom he recognizes as a scientist from his nightmares. Looking him up, he finds that his name is Atticus Noyle (an anagram of Dr. Yen Lo, an evil Chinese brainwasher from the original 1962 film), a genetic engineer and soldier of fortune, who used to work for Manchurian global, on a nanotechnology experiment.
Marco shows this to Tom Jordan, who, although he doesn't entirely believe the story, does realize that there is a strong possibility that Raymond Shaw was brainwashed, and confronts the Shaws about this. When he suggests that Raymond bow out gracefully from the campaign, Eleanor Shaw pretends to think that this is an idiotic ruse to eliminate competition. Taking matters into her own hands in fear and desperation as the conspiracy is hours away from being revealed, she 'activates' her son. In a trance-like state, under his mother's orders, Raymond Shaw murders Tom Jordan and his daughter.
Eleanor Shaw is furious at Manchurian Global because they gave her their word that the brainwashing conspiracy could never have been found out, and while it's true that she was trusted with their technology, they were trusted with her son. As she becomes more and more controlling, it is soon revealed that the Vice-Presidential spot is not what she has in mind for her son, but the presidency. On election night, the newly elected president will be assassinated, and the planned assassin of Shaw's running mate is none other than Marco himself, who was also brainwashed in the war. With the help of the FBI, Marco arranges a private meeting with Shaw in a school where he was to cast his vote. Marco tries once again to convince Shaw of what is happening to him and that there is a deeper link between them that Manchurian technology has not managed to obliterate. Shaw seems to agree, and gives Marco his Medal of Honor, which he says he does not deserve. Marco takes it, and Shaw receives a phone call from his mother, who wants to talk to Marco. Marco answers it, and is soon "activated" by her.
After Eleanor Shaw activates her son, he becomes helpless and weak. The latent ambiguity of their relationship is revealed when Eleanor washes down her son, kissing him repeatedly on the lips and stroking the back of his neck. They then get ready to go to the election party.
Shaw and Marco begin to regain a conscious state even while under Manchurian Global's control. At the election night celebration party, the newly elected Shaw and Major Marco realize what must be done. Shaw leads his mother onto the stage with him, moving them into the spot where the President should be and blocking Marco's shot. Marco then fires one shot, killing both of them as they hug. Just before Marco can kill himself (which had been part of Eleanor Shaw's plan), FBI Agent Eugenie "Rosie" Rose (Kimberly Elise) stops him by shooting him in the shoulder. The FBI seemingly covers up Marco's involvement, framing a Manchurian Global conspirator with the shooting. In the last scene, Rosie takes Marco to the compound he was brainwashed in, apparently in conjunction with the FBI investigation. Marco realizes what has happened, and lets the sea take away a picture of the "lost platoon" along with Shaw's Medal of Honor.
If you have never seen the original version of the film you might enjoy the 2004 remake. I did not, as I kept thinking back to Condon's novel. Remakes always leave me with a bad taste, as the film-makers in an attempt to draw in a new audience always change the plot and the original story. This is also true of other films based on political thriller novels like Tom Clancy’s Clear and Present Danger and The Sum of All Fears where the bad guys were changed from Arab terrorist to a neo-Nazi group for reasons of political correctness after 9/11.
Now we move on to the life story of Barack Obama. The latest hubbub revolving around Barack Obama is one concerning his claim of birth. According to an article in the London Telegraph Obama’s first publisher issued a short bio to go on the bust jacket promoting his first book that he was born in Kenya. Tim Stanley writing in the Telegraph reports:
“Whatever you think of Breitbart.com’s punishing vetting process, it has exposed just how little work the mainstream media did in investigating candidate Obama back in 2008. Not all of Team Breitbart’s revelations have been election-deciders, but they have often been stuff that a simple Google would have uncovered. If they revealed tomorrow that he’d had his own cross-dressing-themed sitcom on primetime TV in the 1980s, I wouldn’t be surprised.
The latest find is a fascinating inversion of the birther conspiracy. Breitbart.com has discovered that in 1991 Barack Obama’s literary agent (who also represented New Kids on the Block) published a booklet that included a biography of the future President. The audience was “business colleagues” in the publishing industry and it was designed to promote Obama’s anticipated first book (later abandoned) called Journeys in Black and White. Here’s how it describes the author’s origins.
Barack Obama, the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review, was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii. The son of an American anthropologist and a Kenyan finance minister, he attended Columbia University and worked as a financial journalist and editor for Business International Corporation.
The key phrase here is “was born in Kenya" – and this bio line was apparently being used as late as 2007.
Today, the President has satisfied all right-minded folk that he was in fact born in Hawaii. Breitbart.com itself has always rejected the absurd cult of birtherism. In fact, this story is really the opposite of birtherism – Breitbart infers that in the past Obama encouraged people to think that he was born abroad in order to establish an identity as an authentic, exotic voice in the debate on racial politics.
Obama’s old literary agent has issued a terse statement to the effect that the wording was all her fault and she never consulted her client. If that’s true, she’s a bad agent. A different agent, quoted by Breitbart.com, disagrees. He told the website “that while ‘almost nobody’ wrote his or her own biography, the non-athletes in the booklet, whom ‘the agents deal[t] with on a daily basis,’ were ‘probably’ approached to approve the text as presented.”
If we accept that Obama didn’t provide the biography, it would seem highly unlikely that he didn’t get a chance to vet it. Accepting that he didn’t do that either, it’s incredibly strange that the literary agent approached by Breitbart.com does not remember Obama calling the agency to register a complaint and make a correction. My mother spent a lot of her childhood in Grenada. If my literary agent told people I was born in the Caribbean, I’d at least pick up the phone to set the record straight.”
Now I have had a book published and before it went to print I reviewed my biography very carefully to insure its accuracy and that it conformed to what I wanted to say about myself. So either Obama reviewed his bio and found it accurate or he was willing to go forward with a bold-faced lie to sell his book.
Whether Obama was born in Kenya is not the point of my concern. The preponderance of evidence backs up his claim that he was born in Hawaii. My concern focuses on who is the real Barack Obama. Here is what we know about Barack Obama. He was probably born in Hawaii to an American citizen and his father was a Kenyan exchange student who left for Harvard University shortly after Barack’s birth and eventually returned to Kenya to serve as a minister in the communist government there. His mother then moved to Seattle to attend college and become a left-wing activist. At some point his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, met an Indonesian by the name Lolo Soetoro, who was attending college in Hawaii. When Suharto, a military leader in Soetoro's home country, came to power in 1967, all Indonesian students studying abroad were recalled, and the family moved to the Menteng neighborhood of Jakarta. From ages six to ten, Obama attended local schools in Jakarta, including Besuki Public School and St. Francis of Assisi School. He also attended a local Madras where he studied the Quran.
In 1971, Obama returned to Honolulu to live with his maternal grandparents, Madelyn and Stanley Armour Dunham, and with the aid of a scholarship attended Punahou School, a private college preparatory school, from fifth grade until his graduation from high school in 1979.Obama's mother returned to Hawaii in 1972, remaining there until 1977 when she went back to Indonesia to work as an anthropological field worker. She finally returned to Hawaii in 1994 and lived there for one year before dying of ovarian cancer.
While in Hawaii Obama met Frank Marshal Davis, a known communist, who was one of Obama’s first mentors. Following high school, Obama moved to Los Angeles in 1979 to attend Occidental College. In February 1981, he made his first public speech, calling for Occidental to divest from South Africa in response to its policy of apartheid. In mid-1981, Obama traveled to Indonesia to visit his mother and sister Maya, and visited the families of college friends in Pakistan and India for three weeks. Later in 1981, he transferred to Columbia University in New York City, where he majored in political science with a specialty in international relations and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1983. He worked for a year at the Business International Corporation, then at the New York Public Interest Research Group.
Two years after graduating, Obama was hired in Chicago as director of the Developing Communities Project (DCP), a church-based community organization originally comprising eight Catholic parishes (where he met the radical priest Michael Pfleger and Rev. Jeremiah Wright) in Roseland, West Pullman, and Riverdale on Chicago's South Side. He worked there as a community organizer from June 1985 to May 1988. He helped set up a job training program, a college preparatory tutoring program, and a tenants' rights organization in Altgeld Gardens. Obama also worked as a consultant and instructor for the Gamaliel Foundation, a community organizing institute. In mid-1988, he traveled for the first time in Europe for three weeks and then for five weeks in Kenya, where he met many of his paternal relatives for the first time. He returned to Kenya in August 2006 for a visit to his father's birthplace, a village near Kisumu in rural western Kenya.
In late 1988, Obama entered Harvard Law School. He was selected as an editor of the Harvard Law Review at the end of his first year, and president of the journal in his second year. During his summers, he returned to Chicago, where he worked as an associate at the law firms of Sidley Austin in 1989 and Hopkins & Sutter in 1990. After graduating with a J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard in 1991, he returned to Chicago. Obama's election as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review gained national media attention and led to a publishing contract and advance for a book about race relations, which evolved into a personal memoir. The manuscript was published in mid-1995 as Dreams from My Father.
Obama was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996, succeeding State Senator Alice Palmer as Senator from Illinois's 13th District, which at that time spanned Chicago South Side neighborhoods from Hyde Park – Kenwood south to South Shore and west to Chicago Lawn. Once elected, Obama gained bipartisan support for legislation that reformed ethics and health care laws. He sponsored a law that increased tax credits for low-income workers, negotiated welfare reform, and promoted increased subsidies for childcare. In 2001, as co-chairman of the bipartisan Joint Committee on Administrative Rules, Obama supported Republican Governor Ryan's payday loan regulations and predatory mortgage lending regulations aimed at averting home foreclosures.
Obama was reelected to the Illinois Senate in 1998, defeating Republican Yesse Yehudah in the general election, and was reelected again in 2002. In 2000, he lost a Democratic primary run for the U.S. House of Representatives to four-term incumbent Bobby Rush by a margin of two to one.
In January 2003, Obama became chairman of the Illinois Senate's Health and
In Obama’s campaign for the United States Senate once again the ugly head of the Chicago machine snake rose to his support. He had no real record to run on and his tenure in the Illinois State Senate was lackluster at best. In 2004, Obama ran for the U.S. Senate seat to be vacated by Sen. Peter Fitzgerald. Despite opposition in the Primary Election from tough challenger Blair Hull, Hull would collapse after pressure from journalists unsealed his divorce files, with Obama taking 54% of the vote. Following his victory, Obama squared off against Republican Jack Ryan, who ultimately had to drop out of the race due to a lawsuit from the Chicago Tribune that forced the unsealing of his divorce records. Alan Keyes was chosen as the new GOP candidate. Keyes had gained much attention as a conservative firebrand in his unsuccessful presidential campaigns in 1996 and 2000. A Marylander, Keyes had established legal residency in Illinois with the nomination, the only requirement to run for office. The Chicago Tribune sarcastically greeted Keyes by editorializing: "Mr. Keyes may have noticed a large body of water as he flew into O'Hare. That is called Lake Michigan."
After a campaign in which Keyes called Obama's position on abortion, "the slave-holder's position", accused gays and lesbians of being "selfish hedonists", and claimed that Jesus would not vote for his opponent, Obama won handily in the general election, receiving 70% of the popular vote to Keyes's 27%.
It should be noted here that Anita Dunn, who worked on Barack Obama's campaign and held a White House position, formerly worked on Hull's campaign as a media strategist. Blair Hull was identified as 'Candidate C' in the famous Blagojevich scandal to sell Barack Obama's former Senate seat.
Like Ben Marco the first question I have is who financed all of Obama’s education. Columbia University is not inexpensive. All along Obama’s career he seems to have financial angels on his shoulders. Many of these angels are members of the Chicago political machine like Valerie Jarrett an Iranian born socialist. Jarrett along with other Marxists like Van Jones, Carol Browner, Anita Dunn, Tony Rezko, and scores of other fellow travelers are all close advisors to Obama.
Like the character Raymond Shaw Obama has been influenced (brainwashed if you will) by a cadré Marxists and Communists with Valerie Jarrett acting like Obama’s mother figure and the character Eleanor Iselin in the film.
Another question I have pertains to Obama’s grades at Occidental, Columbia and Harvard and what did he write. We know he never published anything while president of the Harvard Law review, but nothing of his college transcripts. Every candidate for president has had his college transcripts made public and the papers they wrote made public including Hillary Clinton, George Bush, John Kerry, and Al Gore. Even Michelle Obama’s Princeton thesis; “Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community" was made public. Why not Barack Obama?
How many times have you heard from the Obama supporters and his media sycophants how brilliant Barack Obama is? The mantra goes that he is the most brilliant person ever to occupy 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Even his opponents have a hard time challenging this statement. How many times have you heard how likeable Barack Obama is? This is like hearing the phrase; “Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life." This Obama mantra goes on and on without challenge of his transcripts or grades. Even his tenure as a lecturer on Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago is somewhat a fraud. He was never a professor and his knowledge of the Constitution and the mind of the framers is suspect.
Obama’s record is full of associations with Marxists and Communists. As a State senator he voted present over 100 times and the only legislation he is known to take a stand on was the Illinois Born Alive Bill, which would have prohibited the killing of a fetus that had survived a failed abortion. He voted against the bill four times.
Throughout his life Barack Obama has done nothing or written anything of importance except his own self-serving autobiography and an ideological treatise on his Marxist beliefs. Even these books are suspect and there are claims they were written by others including his friend and confident the former Weather Underground unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayres.
He never managed any large group of people or organization. He never worked for a private for profit firm. He never started a business or hires people or signed the front of a paycheck. He has lived off the largess of others, mainly his Marist angels. He has always been the product of his puppet masters and never had an original thought in his life. He certainly cannot be compared with Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, or Lincoln yet he is considered by the media and his sycophantic supporters as the most brilliant person ever to occupy the White House.
He has made it to the top of the political rung with his ability to read a teleprompter with words written by others, his enchanting smile, his ability to talk hood speak, and his Mussolini-like chin tilt. This is what his puppet masters saw in him when they began to prepare him for the presidency. Even to this day his likeable quotient is way above his competency ratings.
Obama will rail against the evil corporations and investment bankers, but will go to these entities for his financial support, which they gladly give with the hope of having influence over him and the policies of the government. This support will come as his managers know how to milk the golden goose of politics for their money. This corporatism is much akin to the Fascism of Mussolini, but his Marxist supporters do not make such fine distinctions when there is money to be had
As Obama’s mentor Saul Alinsky wrote in his book Rules for Radicals:
“The tenth rule of the ethics of rules and means is that you do what you can with what you have and clothe it in moral arguments. …the essence of Lenin’s speeches during this period was “They have the guns and therefore we are for peace and for reformation through the ballot. When we have the guns then it will be through the bullet.” And it was — P.36-37 or Rules for Radicals.”
Obama’s puppet masters will do anything to get the guns Lenin was talking about. They may be metaphorical guns while the real weapons are the coercive power of the government. This is what ObamaCare is all about; it is the metaphorical bullets Lenin was talking about. As for Obama’s corporate and entertainment industry supporters I refer to another Alinsky quote:
“I have on occasion remarked that I felt confident that I could persuade a millionaire on a Friday to subsidize a revolution for Saturday out of which he would make a huge profit on Sunday even though he was certain to be executed on Monday. — P.150 Rules for Radicals.”
I have included this short video, which summarizes the story of Barack Hussein Obama. I have covered most of the bullet points shown in the video presentation, but there are a few I have passed over for brevity or for which I could find no immediate documentation. On the whole the video can be considered an executive summary of this blog post.
This is the hollow man we have in the White House, a person of no great intellect or moral foundation formed, prepared and managed by the dark Marxist forces of the Chicago political machine and the foundations financed by the greatest puppet master of them all — George Soros — that want to transform the United States into a socialist utopia. Be it Marxist masterminds or corporate puppeteers Barack Hussein Obama is a true Manchurian Candidate.
Just watched Manchurian Candidate and was struck by the parallels of this story to the Obama fabricated BS foney story and how Valeire Jarrett is like Eleanor, the character played by Meryl Streep. Frightening, but I believe this guy is THE MANCHURAIN CANDIDATE! I have always said Valerie Jarrett is his RASPUTINESS!
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