The year is 1987 and some children are out watching the cattle about a stones-throw away from their village in Southern Sudan. Two brothers, Mamere and Theo Deng, like to play a game where they recite their family’s lineage hand over hand in the sand. First Grandfather … Second Grandfather ….Third Grandfather… The family’s history is remembered through the spoken word and it is drilled into their heads at an early age. A young girl shakes her head in dismay as the brothers fight over who won the game.
Suddenly, gunshots are heard, a helicopter flies overhead and their young lives are changed forever.
The Good Lie follows a group of refugee children as they flee Northern Islamic soldiers, walking hundreds of miles to a Kenyan refugee camp where they live for the next 13 years. With the help of Christian relief services, thousands of refuges like them (known as “the lost children”) would eventually be relocated to the United States.
This touching movie is about their struggle to reconcile their tragic pasts with their strange new life in America with the help of a cynical employment counselor (Reese Witherspoon).
It’s difficult to describe the horror and hardships these children faced at such an early age. Soldiers from the North destroyed the Deng family’s village and slaughtered all the residents – all except Abital, Mamere and Theo’s little sister, who survived by playing dead. At one point during their difficult trek to Ethiopia, the children were forced to drink their own urine to survive. Later on, they ran into a large group of refuges heading in the opposite direction. It turned out the Ethiopia way wasn’t safe. Too many soldiers. So they headed towards the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya with their new friends, Jeremiah and Paul.
After walking hundreds of more miles, and experiencing more horrors of war – including losing Theo to Northern Sudanese soldiers, the group arrived at the camp, where they stayed for the next thirteen years. As young adults, the opportunity finally arose for them to leave the camp and resettle in America.
In one of the more heart-wrenching scenes in the movie, Mamere, Theo, Jeremiah and Paul are forced to split up with Abital. Because a host family wasn’t found for her in Kansas City, she was shuttled off to Boston all by herself and away from her only family.
Upon arriving in Kansas City, the men were met by employment agency counselor Carrie Davis (Witherspoon), who had been enlisted to help find them jobs— which turned out to be easier said than done considering the language barrier and their lack of familiarity with basic things like straws, light switches and telephones. They seemed too “strange” for their first potential employer – the manager of a Waffle House.
As great as Witherspoon is in her part, she was upstaged by the refuges (played by Arnold Oceng, 28, Ger Duany, 35, Emmanuel Jal, 34, and Kuoth Wiel, 25,) Duany and Jal are real-life “Lost Boys” who fled Sudan in the nineties.
“This is my story. This is Ger’s story. I’m acting myself in the movie,” said Jal n an interview with People Magazine. “It’s an opportunity to broaden our voices.”
Jal was forced to become a child soldier before escaping to Nairobi, Kenya, where he made a life for himself as a rapper, eventually moving to London.
“The war has ripped apart my family: My mom was claimed by the war, all my uncles except two, my brothers and sisters were scattered. I have still have scars of the war,” Jal continued. “People only know the physical scars, but war can rob people’s souls. They don’t know the internal scars that take a lifetime to heal.”
Both Jal and Duany say the film was an outlet to help them reconcile. “It’s an opportunity for me to heal,” says Duany. The model and actor, who had a role in I Heart Huckabees, spent four years in a refugee camp in Ethiopia and also fought as a child soldier. In 1994, Duany relocated to Des Moines, Iowa, as a refugee.
Both admit it was difficult filming – and then watching – the movie. “I was very emotional with this movie,” Duany says. “But we have to be strong; we have to educate the world.”
I won’t tell you what “the Good Lie” is – but I will say that this movie is well worth watching to find out.
Welcome to the Watcher’s Council, a blogging group consisting of some of the most incisive blogs in the ‘sphere, and the longest running group of its kind in existence. Every week, the members nominate two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council.Then we vote on the best two posts, with the results appearing on Friday morning.
You can, too! Want to see your work appear on the Watcher’s Council homepage in our weekly contest listing? Didn’t get nominated by a Council member? No worries.
To bring something to my attention, simply head over to Joshuapundit and post the title and a link to the piece you want considered along with an e-mail address (mandatory, but of course it won’t be published) in the comments section no later than Monday 6PM PST in order to be considered for our honorable mention category. Then return the favor by creating a post on your site linking to the Watcher’s Council contest for the week when it comes out on Wednesday morning
Simple, no?
It’s a great way of exposing your best work to Watcher’s Council readers and Council members while grabbing the increased traffic and notoriety. And how good is that, eh?
It’s that time of year again – when end of the year “Best of” lists litter the internet.
I rather enjoy taking stock of my biggest hits at the end of the year. I’m always surprised at what ended up being the most popular. Sometimes posts make an immediate impression. Other times they become sleeper hits – rediscovered on Facebook or whatever months after they were posted. Sometimes posts get steady traffic from Google searches.
One of my most popular posts in the past year didn’t make the list because it was actually posted in November of 2013: Video: Trey Gowdy Rips MSM For Media Malpractice On Benghazi.During the height of the ObamaCrash fiasco, the Republicans held a press conference on Benghazi and Rep. Gowdy ripped the media a new one because of their stunning lack of curiosity on a number of unanswered questions on Benghazi. That post has been a steady hit magnet all year, and for that I give it an honorable mention even though it’s a actually a late 2013 post.
Without further ado, here are ND’s top 10 posts for 2014:
I was one of several bloggers who jumped on this theme in the wake of several news stories that highlighted the massive corruption and straight up criminality of Democrats.
Conservative writer Michael Walsh likes to call modern Democrats a Criminal Enterprise masquerading as a political party. The best way to understand them, he once told Rush Limbaugh, “is as the unholy love children of 1930s big-city political/gangster machines and 1960s Alinskyite Communists — now out and proud.”
Sounds about right. They are out and proud – and the beaten down and demoralized Republicans are perpetually in a defensive posture because that’s the only way they know how to respond to the criminally insane psychos who are currently running things. Recall how they reacted when Ted Cruz tried to go on the offense last Fall on the government shutdown. Crouching, trembling fear. “They’ll blame us!!!!” Meanwhile, the Gangster in Chief was shutting down open air national parks and monuments and booting wounded vets from war memorials. They tried to shut down privately owned hotels and museums.
Because they are criminally insane.
Last week, Al Sharpton and fellow Dems in Cincinnati gave a woman who was convicted of voter fraud a hero’s welcome – — at a voter rights rally.
They are criminally insane.
Dingy Harry rails against private entrepreneurs and philanthropists the Koch Brothers on the Senate floor for a daily two minutes of hate.
I was kidding of course. Obama’s speech stunk on ice and you could hear a pin drop during all of the obvious applause lines. It was mortifying. This was Obama’s speech before the American Legion at their convention in Charlotte NC, last August. The one where Obama got off on the wrong foot almost immediately by pathetically botching the word “adjutant” which he pronounced, “Adsnt…”
Watch him pause, grimace and sweat in distress as he sees the word coming, knowing that he has no idea how to pronounce it. It’s not as bad as “corpseman” – but close.
“I want to thank the entire leadership team for welcoming me here today, including your……. National…uh…(gulp)… Adsnt –uhh — Dan Wheeler…
Ay yi yi. Over five years in office, and the Commander-in-Chief still doesn’t know how to pronounce all his military titles. But he does know the correct pronunciation for Pockistahn, Tallybahn, and ISIL (the cool kids say ISIL – not ISIS.)
Then he found a way to bring up his birthday again. I swear to God.
No big links, but FBed quite a bit plus the enticing title probably helped.
From February. Mike V. did his due diligence on CT gun-grabber Michael Lawlor and the results were eye-opening to say the least.
If you haven’t yet read Mike Vanderboegh’s superb expose and take-downof Michael Lawlor, Connecticut Governor Dannell Malloy’s “hatchet man” on the State’s gun control efforts, you need to stop everything and read it, right now. Take it all in and know that there are many more such men and women peppered throughout the Democrat/Media Complex – right to the highest reaches of government. And I do mean highest.
From June 1 – one of the biggest stories of the year.
When I saw Bowe Bergdahl’s father on the news yesterday – with his Talibanesque beard speaking Arabic (supposedly so he could better relate to his son’s captors) I thought, “okay…something is wrong with this picture.”
The good news of his son’s release was tempered by the fact that Obama released five Gitmo prisoners in exchange. Later in the day, when we found out who those prisoners were- five top Taliban commanders – some of whom had committed war crimes – all of whom were deemed to be a risk to Americans – the “good” news was tempered even further.
Then more and more information came out about Bowe – who had deserted his company in the middle of the night and walked straight into the arms of the Taliban, and the whole thing really began to stink.
Leave it to Judge Jeanine to ask the politically incorrect question on a lot of peoples’ minds.
Now that the meaning of the Michael Brown fiasco has sunk in – a lot of people can no longer deny the truth and are going on the record finally to call out Obama as the racial demagogue he is.
Judge Jeanine Pirro is the latest of many and as usual didn’t mince words in excoriating Emperor Obama of the Community Organized Republic, for fanning the flames of racial hatred and divisiveness.
“Tonight, Americans once hopeful that after electing the first African American president, the issue of race would be a thing of the past, are left with Barack Obama, who stokes the flames of racial hatred, resentment and divisiveness, Pirro began. “A man who instead of healing the nation and overcoming any racial divide, prefers to take sides based not on facts but on color – to prejudge situations based not on sworn testimony and evidence, but conjecture and a one size fits all resentment.”
Pirro then asked a question a lot of white Americans have been silently wondering: “Now every young American who loses his life should be a concern to the man in the White House,but why is it that we only hear from him when the death involves a person of color?”
She continued, “James Foley, an American who never committed a crime and was beheaded is nothing more than a blip in the president’s golf game. Mr. President why do you send white house official to brown’s funeral but no one to James Foley’s memorial service.”
Linked by Ace of Spades HQ, with lots of shares on Twitter and Facebook.
Fox Newsaired a special, Saturday night called “Enemies of the State” which focused on everyday Americans who somehow found themselves in the crosshairs of their own government. Fox News reporter John Roberts talked to Wayne Hage, a rancher battling the Bureau of Land Management over his cattle farm.
Linked by Doug Rosswith lots of FB and twitter shares.
2014 was a particularly bad year for Obama and the military.
Upon his introduction at the graduation ceremony at the US Military Academy at West Point, Obama, the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, received only a light smattering of applause with an aborted attempt at standing O by a small handful in the audience and none of the cadets.
It really did look bad for him. How he actually won his lawsuit with such a high bar to prove defamation – remains a mystery.
esse Ventura may have to get his reputation back some other way – his lawsuit against slain hero Chris Kyle’s widow and children is not going so well.
Ventura’s defamation lawsuit has been playing out in a Minnesota court for a week now as he seeks punish the estate of late “American Sniper” author and former Navy SEAL Chris Kyle. Ventura is suing Kyle’s widow Taya and his two children because of the damage done to his reputation by a story Kyle told about him in his autobiography.
Chris Kyle, who served in Iraq and had 160 confirmed kills, making him the deadliest marksman in American military history, mentioned Ventura by name as the person he punched at a bar popular with Navy SEAL personnel in Coronado while promoting his book American Sniper in 2012. Kyle claims Ventura had been loudly and obnoxiously slamming the Iraq War and the troops who fought it, during a wake for Michael A. Monsoor, a Medal of Honor recipient and Navy SEAL who had been killed in action in Iraq. Kyle, having heard enough, hauled off and decked Ventura. Allegedly.
Witness after witness came forward Tuesday to claim they heard at least part of Ventura’s ranting and saw parts of the fight – although there is a dispute about exactly where it occurred.
By far my biggest post of the year. I think a lot of people heard the negative buzz when the movie was released. When it went to video, they looked it up on the internet. Some people weren’t bothered by the anti-American “surprise” ending. Others found it egregious and felt like they were punched in the gut.
If you’ve seen the trailer for “Non-Stop”, you probably thought – wow, that looks pretty good! Looks like a real nail biter – my kind of movie.
I was definitely planning on seeing it. Until the word got out.
On an international flight over the Atlantic, burnt-out alcoholic flight marshal Bill Marks (Neeson) is hoping for a nice easy flight in first class where after sneaking a smoke and drink he might even be able to catch a little shut-eye. A text message informing him that one person on the flight will die every twenty-minutes unless $150 million is wired to an account, ruins that plan.
Counting pilots and crew, there are around 150 souls on board. Marks has 20 minutes to figure out which one is the bad guy. Red herrings abound. Is it one of the many actors whose faces we recognize but names we can’t remember? People start to die. Marks is fingered as the hijackert. Who’s doing this? Why are they doing this? What is their motive?
Here’s the answer:
It turns out that the villain is not a hijacker but a terrorist — someone who wants to murder everyone on the plane to further a political goal.
You ready…?
The terrorist is a 9/11 family member. Yes, you read that right; the terrorist is a 9/11 family-member who lost a loved-one in the World Trade Center on that terrible September morning.
It gets worse…
After 9/11, this 9/11 family member-turned-terrorist then joined the military but found himself disillusioned by the pointless wars.
And now…
The 9/11 family member-turned-terrorist is upset because America hasn’t done enough to ensure there will never be another 9/11. And so he figures that if he can get an air marshal blamed for a terrorist attack, America will wake up and anally probe us before we’re allowed on a plane, or something.
It gets worse…
The villain’s sidekick is a member of the American military willing to murder 150 innocent people for a payday.
It gets worse…
The one passenger on the plane who is forever helpful, kind, reasonable, noble, and never under suspicion is a Muslim doctor dressed in traditional Muslim garb including a full beard.
No big links, but lots of FB and twitter shares. Also, a steady trickle of Google searches.
Nice Deb 