In Cambridge Kill the Messenger

Kill the Messenger [see trailer] Showing Thursday, July 16, in Cambridge [please download & distribute flyer] Based on the true story of journalist Gary Webb. Kill the Messenger takes place in the mid 1990s, when Gary Webb uncovered the CIA's past role in importing huge amounts of cocaine into the U.S. that was aggressively sold in ghettos across the country to raise money for the Nicaraguan Contras rebel army. Despite enormous pressure not to, Webb chose to pursue the story and went public with his evidence, publishing his series 'Dark Alliance' in the San Jose Mercury News in 1996. As a result Gary experienced a vicious smear campaign fueled by the CIA. At that point Webb found himself defending his integrity, his family, and his life. From Dave Lindorff's, Brought to You by the CIA: America's Drug Crisis, Counterpunch, Oct 28, 2009: "...Kudos to reporters Dexter Filkins, Mark Mazzetti and James Risen, for their lead article today reporting that Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of Afghanistan'™s stunningly corrupt President Hamid Karzai, a leading drug lord in the world's major opium-producing nation, has for eight years been on the CIA payroll." "For the whole sordid tale [of the CIA orchestrated hit pieces on Gary Webb] read Alex Cockburn's and Jeffrey St. Clair's Whiteout: the CIA, Drugs and the Press." "...where the US goes, the drug trade soon follows, and the leading role in developing and nurturing that trade appears to be played by the Central Intelligence Agency. Your tax dollars at work." "Americans, who for years have supported a stupid, blundering and ineffective 'War on Drugs' in this country, and who mindlessly back 'zero-tolerance' policies towards drugs in schools and on the job, should demand a 'zero-tolerance' policy toward drugs and dealing with drug pushers in government and foreign policy, including the CIA." "For years we have been fed the story that the Taliban are being financed by their taxes on opium farmers. ...recently we've been learning that it'™s not the real story. Taliban forces in Afghanistan, it turns out, have been heavily subsidized by protection money paid to them by civilian aid organizations, including even American government-funded aid programs, and even, reportedly, by the military forces of some of America'™s NATO allies. ...the opium industry, far from being controlled by the Taliban, has been, to a great extent, controlled by the very warlords the US has allied itself, and, as the Times now reports, by Ahmed Wali Karzai, the president's own brother." "President Obama'™s 'œnecessary' war in Afghanistan is nothing but a sick joke. From William Blum's A brief history of CIA involvement in the Drug Trade: "The Nationalist Chinese army, organized by the CIA to wage war against Communist China, became the opium barons of The Golden Triangle, the world's largest source of opium and heroin. Air America, the ClA's principal airline proprietary, flew the drugs all over Southeast Asia .... A laboratory built at CIA headquarters in northern Laos was used to refine heroin." "The Nugan Hand Bank of Sydney was a CIA bank in all but name. Among its officers were a network of US generals, admirals and CIA men, including former CIA Director William Colby, also one of its lawyers. Nugan Hand Bank financed drug trafficking, money laundering and international arms dealings." When/where doors open 6:40; film starts promptly 7pm 243 Broadway, Cambridge - corner of Broadway and Windsor, entrance on Windsor rule19.org/videos Please join us for a stimulating night out; bring your friends! free film & free door prizes[donations are encouraged]feel free to bring your own snacks and soft drinks - no alcohol allowed "You can't legislate good will - that comes through education." ~ Malcolm X UPandOUT film series - see rule19.org/videos Why should YOU care? It's YOUR money that pays for US/Israeli wars - on Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Palestine, Libya. Syria, Iran, So America, etc etc - for billionaire bailouts, for ever more ubiquitous US prisons, for the loss of liberty and civil rights... Booklets will be available of the CIA's "Simple Sabotage Field Manual", and SDS's 1962 publication The Port Huron Statement