CONTROL! START MOVIE!
THE TRIALS
OF HENRY KISSINGER
Arte-TV, 9. April; 2004, 20:45
Documentary by Alex Gibney & Eugene
Jarecki
Release Date: August 19, 2003
Is Henry Kissinger, Nobel Laureate and
the most famous diplomat of his
generation, also a war criminal? Provoked
by the Christopher Hitchens book (The
Trial of Henry Kissinger, Verso, 2001),
filmmakers Eugene Jarecki and Alex Gibney
construct a documentary that is both
brilliant legal brief and chilling
psycho-drama. Confronting the charges
that Kissinger undermined LBJs
Vietnam peace talks (in order that Nixon
be elected), engineered the secret
bombing of Cambodia, orchestrated the
coup that toppled Chilean President
Allende, and approved Indonesias
use of U.S. arms to massacre 100,000 East
Timorese, The Trials of Henry Kissinger
explores how a young boy who fled Nazi
Germany grew up to become one of the most
powerful men in U.S. history. The Trials
of Henry Kissinger also tackles the
question of whether principles of
international law applied by Americans to
their enemies are also applicable to
Americans ¾ or whether such laws are
only written for the losers of conflicts.
The film caused a sensation when it
played at the Human Rights Watch Film
Festival in 2002 and was a national hit
in its 2003 theatrical run.
Featuring previously unseen footage,
newly declassified government documents,
and revealing interviews with both ardent
Kissinger supporters such as Alexander
Haig, Brent Scowcroft and William Safire,
and detractors like Seymour Hersh,
William Shawcross, and
Christopher
Hitchens, The Trials
of Henry Kissinger is a movie that
informs and fascinates truly
stranger than fiction. (Newsday)
ratenco ratenco ratenco ...
Leave poor Henry alone
hes such a nice dinner guest!
Oh, Mr. Rockefeller is with us
again ... You are quoting what the
WASHINGTON POST wrote when research with
regard to Kissingers crimes still
took place in niches.
In niches!
Although his misdeeds caused misfortune
to millions of people around the world
when he operated as:
teachable adjutant and confidant
of your son Nelson, Mr. Rockefeller, well
versed in conspiratorial pushing of
economic and political agendas within
several U.S.-administrations
planner of covered American
operations from Indochina to Iran, from
Chile to Rhodesia
partner of politicians and
executives who at home and in
other parts of the world ended up
as lawbreakers behind bars
In niches?
The self-assessed Sturmgeschütz
der Demokratie the
Assault Gun of Democracy, the
German news magazine DER SPIEGEL
found in 60 Years of Contemporary
History space for Henry Kissinger
... as a congratulant!
CONTROL! START DVD!
Der
Spiegel - 60 Jahre Zeitgeschichte /
DVD
2007 - Spiegel TV - Hamburg
>Kissinger talking in German with
regard to the significance of the
magazine:
Niemand kann ignorieren, daß der
SPIEGEL einen wichtigen Beitrag macht,
ohne den man sich die Entwicklung in
Deutschland nicht vorstellen kann.
>Translation:
No one can ignore that the SPIEGEL
has provided an important contribution;
without it there is no way to understand
Germanys development.
>Kissinger talking in German about the
significance of the founder and late
publisher Rudolf Augstein:
Ich habe nicht immer mit all seinen
Kriegen übereingestimmt, mit allen
Schlachten, die er geführt hat, aber ich
habe immer großen Respekt für seine
Werte gehabt und ihn menschlich besonders
geschätzt, denn das war ein Freund, auf
den man sich verlassen konnte.
>Translation:
I did not always agree with all his
wars, with all battles he did lead, but I
had always great respect for his values
and I have treasured him as a human being
because this was a friend you could rely
on.
Out of ones wits
would be someone who had expected that
the good friend Rudolf Augstein would
have allowed more than a niche in DER
SPIEGEL to have the deeds of Kissinger
investigated in 60 Years of
Contemporary History.
Different experiences made
Augsteins former comrade-in-booze
Franz Josef Strauss. His Chile-trip in
1977 made headlines: he received a
honorary doctor-title by the faculty of
law, he found praising words for
Pinochets military dictatorship and
he spent a night in the Colonia Dignidad
of sectarian Paul Schäfer who faced in
Germany a warrant of arrest for abuse of
children.
Fifteen years earlier, Strauss had
stumbled over the SPIEGEL-Affair
What caused Augstein and now the
editor of this SPIEGEL-DVD to
adapt the one as a friend and the other
one as an enemy?
CONTROL! START DVD!
Der
Spiegel - 60 Jahre Zeitgeschichte /
DVD
2007 - Spiegel TV - Hamburg
>Translation of German commentary and
of Augsteins filmed statement:
The fact that Strauss advanced as
Augsteins most liked enemy has a
long history.
(Rudolf Augstein:) In 1957 it was
unanimous opinion: This one not!
I
had invited to my home, and there, as
almost everywhere when Strauss and I
would meet, it was an occasion to tipple.
And, ump
this Strauss behaved very
filthy.
The wine-consuming editorial meeting at
Augsteins residence establishes the
SPIEGEL-opinion, that this man who is
comparing the Soviets with indecent
assaulters does not only lack manners but
can become dangerous in his drive for
power. Strauss should never become
chancellor, that is the password issued
by Augstein.
CONTROL! LET TEXT ROLL!
AUGSTEIN
Author: Dieter Schröder
Publisher: Siedler, ISBN-13:
978-3-88680-782-6
September 2004
CHAPTER 15 (Excerpts)
Multiple Personality
Asked what values of friends would mean
most to him, Augstein answered in a
FAZ-questionnaire that there are
not many. He had only a few. Most
were mentioned by him as just-friends
because nothing much connected him with
them unless he found them interesting
momentarily or he would find it
decorating to be connected with their
names ...
There were exceptions like Hans-Dietrich
Genscher, who was the only politician he
kept permanent contact with right to the
end, or Henry Kissinger whose judgement
and sympathy was important to him. He was
confounded when Kissinger was cross with
him because of a massive critique of his
memoirs and would not make contact for
quite some time. That was unusual because
he would never consider what others were
thinking of him
He admired people whom he considered as
originals, half-good, half-bad; the
abysmal fascinated him. And he deplored
it that they were dying out.
The enlightener and truth-seeker Augstein
liked the game of disguise:
Someone who calls me a cynic
honours me, I like to be a cynic.
...
... If they are fair, then his editors
will remember the good and the bad sides
of the man Augstein; if they feel deeply
hurt, they will mostly think of his
negative ones.
Jacobi whose memories are friendly says,
he was a wicked defender of his
interests; he decided for
himself what is good and what evil, what
is wrong and what right. ...
Friendship between men as a pointer
to the perception what is good and what
is evil?
Yes, Señor Galeano and
religious search for reason!
When Rudolf
Augstein died important
scenes of his life were replayed: his
arrest in October 1962 and his release at
the beginning of 1963. In-between there
had been one hundred and three days of
remanding-custody for suspicion of
alleged high treason. Hundred and three
days provided Augstein with much time to
read. One book he did read in prison
captivated him: Albert Schweitzers
Geschichte der
Leben-Jesu-Forschung
History of Research into the Life
of Jesus. Schweitzers
negative consideration of all attempts to
write a biography of Jesus triggered with
him the question: Who, actually,
was this Jesus?
He went on to search for Jesus
Menschensohn Jesus Son
of Humankind, a book he was about
to write, and he discovered: without
Emperor Constantine and without the
distribution channels of the Roman Empire
Christianity would have remained as a
tiny sect. In classical Rome, astrologers
and chess-clubs were much run after than
those couple of Christians with their
curious cult.
In Constantine, who introduced
Christianity as state religion of the
Roman Empire, Augstein saw someone
unscrupulous, who choose from
the available teaching about gods this
Christianity as cement for the endangered
world power. This alliance, says
Augstein, went along with the betrayal of
the original teachings of Early
Christianity.
Augstein had left the Catholic Church
already in 1968. In early 2000, he was
convinced that no one needed the church
anymore: In the society of the
twenty-first century there is no role
left for the church., he said.
However, one had to differentiate between
church and Christians: Without
Christians the world would be
poorer.
He respected that Christians choose
relevant professions and would spend
pastime and money, some even their lives
We have heard: the abysmal
fascinated Augstein, people
whom he considered as originals,
half-good, half-bad. One of John Le
Carrés façon? One like Kissinger? One
like Judas?
During his bible-studies, he must have
come across the contradictory figure of
this traitor and of the
consequence: without Judas no
crucifixion! Without crucifixion
no resurrection!
The evil as tool to carry through
the good? Or vice versa? Was it
good or evil when U.S.-president William
H. Taft declared in 1912:
4 The
day is not far when three star-spangled
banners will mark our territory in three
equal distances: one at the North Pole,
the other one at the Panama Channel and
the third one at the South Pole. It will
be turned into a fact that the whole
hemisphere belongs to us as it belongs to
us in a moral sense already thanks to our
racial superiority.
You know what comes to my mind? The
accusers of Henry Kissinger should learn
from American law-history: you can get at
big shark even with a tiny fish knife!
Al Capone, called scarface a
countryman and contemporary of Mr.
Rockefeller was the boss of a
gangster-syndicate in Chicago. He was
accused to have participated in countless
gang-murders and in 1931 he was sentenced
to eleven years imprisonment, and for
what? For proven tax-offences!
Now, a petitesse of the constitution of
the United States of America is the fact
that personalities of public service are
prohibited to accept a foreign patent of
nobility without consent of the congress.
No title of
nobility shall be
granted by the United States; and no
person holding any office of profit or
trust under them, shall, without the
consent of the Congress, accept of any
present, emolument, office, or title, of
any kind whatsoever, from any king,
prince, or foreign state.
In addition, no public servant of the
United States of America is allowed to be
of service for a foreign country
Perhaps, this hint may help once you
continue your search for tracks left by
Sir Heinz Alfred Kissinger within the
rail-system of contemporary world
history.
Señor Galeano, we thank you for
this hint
And, perhaps, the
question may also play a role why Queen
Elizabeth II., Head of the Commonwealth,
has provided so many noble titles to
powerful American citizens, for example
to Norman Schwarzkopf, Colin Powell,
Casper Weinberger, Ronald Reagan, George
Bush (Senior), Rudy Giullani, Alan
Greenspan ...
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