Sri Lanka searches for an end to ethnic bickering and a durable peace. Yet, a film that finger-points ethnically has broken out in the island's capital.
Clergymen in Sri Lanka are recommending Mel Gibson's film "The Passion of Christ" in sermons and they are packing cinema.
Next, some newspaper columnists have taken to giving promotional writing for the film free. These newspapers are pushing audiences - quite beyond Sri Lanka's small Christian minority - to see the film.
Why and how is this happening?
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Full-blown fascism is a new phenomenon to many countries but in Canada's "Globe and Mail" newspaper, Rick Salutin had a message. He wrote on Feb. 27, 2004."
"Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ is essentially, not just incidentally, a moment in the life of George W. Bush's America."
Then, James Carroll had commented in the Boston Globe on Feb, 24, 2004."
"THE PASSION of The Christ" by Mel Gibson is an obscene movie. It will incite contempt for Jews his prejudiced selection of details and his invention of dialogue and incidents, cause one serious problem, very much at the expense of Jews.'
"But the impact of his perverse imagination on a sacred story, coming at a time when the world is newly riven with primal violence in the name of God, threatens an even more grievous problem. The subject of this film, despite its title, is not the Passion of the Christ, but the sick love of physical abuse, engaged in for power.'
"Going well beyond anything in the Gospels, Gibson's film emphasizes Roman virtue and Jewish venality by inventions."
How really did this Mel Gibson market this film in America and push it overseas? Market manipulation
Australia's 'The Age' newspaper spread the news that European Competition Commissioner Mario Monti plans to charge Hollywood's largest studios with trying illegally to limit competition in Europe.
Commissioner Monti aims to boost competition in the $49.5 billion European pay-TV market by making access to content, including films such as 'Die Another Day' and professional sports, easier.
Last month, Commissioner Monti forced Rupert Murdoch's British Sky Broadcasting Group to give competitors access to some English Premier League soccer games. Hollywood's real 'president'
At Syracuse University, in its 'Daily Orange' paper, senior magazine major Patrick Hedlund wrote on April 6, 2004, entitling his story, 'Bush: the real Hollywood president'."
"Oh, how storybook.'
"First President Bush handles Sept. 11 with patriotic poise, vowing swift revenge on the perpetrators. He then wages a war on terror that includes a tangential invasion of Iraq, captures Public Enemy No. 2 Saddam Hussein and in an act of bad-action-movie heroism, corrals Osama just in time to renew his Mad magazine subscription to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It's an epic drama that has played out for most of Bush's presidency?" and in most of the Die Hard movies and will come full circle with the announcement of bin Laden's apprehension.'
"This act will epitomise President Bush and the Bush family's American reign by proving that through all of George Jr.'s muddling, diplomatic shortcomings and vehement conservatism, he is still the best man for the job. Centrists everywhere, terrified like the rest of us by terrorism's reality, will swing in favour of a Bush candidacy that allocates funds for advanced battlefield-motorcycles instead of public schools. Now we can finally sleep at night.'
"We remain comfortable, even in the face of allegations from former Bush counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke saying that the administration could have better defended against terrorism before Sept. 11 and possibly prevented it. Bush's war on Iraq, which ties directly to his business interest in Iraqi oil, is justified when a grovelling Saddam Hussein is removed from his dirt hole and paraded to the public as a man beaten. Who knows what the President and his empire stand to gain from this calculated move but, in the end, Bush appears a poster child for the American dream."
Richard Deats wrote on March 19, 2004, "Literalists like Mel Gibson, who go to ancient texts but ignore the political and historical context in which they were written; who dust off and exhibit ancient calumnies but ignore what careful study and history have taught us, create untold mischief. Gibson's movie is singularly unhelpful at this time in history, when religious zealotry, intolerance and violence are a threat to civil society in many countries, including our own. In blatantly anti-Semitic countries, the film could be downright dangerous." (http://www.forusa.org/media/for-statement-pass-31904.html) Film-maker Mel Gibson and his hasty backers have suppressed the essential message of the Last Supper and the Crucifixion.
I quote from Matthew 26:26-28:
"And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, 'Take, eat; this is My body.'
"Then He took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, 'Drink from it, all of you. For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins." (NKJ)
Christians see that Christ wanted them to treat his sacrifice on the cross as the last and final one.
This message is not a tribal but cosmopolitan one. Christ wanted his followers to cease the ritual sacrifice of cattle, sheep, goats and other animals so as to PROJECT blame for problems to other tribes or internal 'enemies'.
Christianity as a non-sacrificial faith is not alone. It has a consistency with Buddhism. Half a millennium years before, 'Ahimsa' (not causing hurt to other beings) had became central to Buddhist doctrine. It has remained the core of the Five Precepts ('Pansil') that any Buddhist house-holder observes.
So if you have long ceased going to movie theatres after the days of James Bond and Rambo but feel impelled to see this production ?" view it as a counterfeit of the faith it tries to name. It is an example of ethnic finger pointing and brutality that the world must shun.
