NON-Proposal - Benedict Cumberbatch’s HBO Movie About Brexit

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Editorial Comment – The addressee of the following e-mail, George Kunath, is one of the former NYC partners of John Karls. George was, inter alia, their worldwide coordinating tax partner on Mobil Oil. George and John have had a weekly mutli-hour gabfest for 31 years, and counting.


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Subject: Benedict Cumberbatch’s HBO Movie About Brexit
From: john@johnkarls.com
Date: Wed, January 30, 2017 6:03 am
To: George Kunath
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Dear George,

During our weekly multi-hour gabfest on Monday, you inquired whether I had seen the subject movie.

You opined that it was a “hit piece” on Brexit supporters as well as a “hit piece” on President Trump and lamented that in your Naples FL winter digs, you are forced to watch DirectTV live (vs. DVR’d) from one of your other homes via something called “sling”.

Especially because you had been unable to read quickly enough the movie’s closing written “indictments” of the biggest Republican donor in the 2016 U.S. election.

I was able to dredge up the subject movie. The closing written “indictments” screen-by-screen, were:

(First Screen) Dominic Cummings delivered an estimated one billion targeted ads to voters through AgregateIQ in the lead-up to the referendum.

(Second Screen) Arron Banks admitted that LeaveEU also hired a data firm specializing in the psychographic profiling and targeting of voters – Cambridge Analytica.

(Third Screen) He now denies that money changed hands.

(Fourth Screen) It has been revealed that both companies are linked to billionaire businessman Robert Mercer.

(Fifth Screen) Who was the single biggest Republican donor in the 2016 U.S. election.

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Benedict Cumberbatch’s Background --

When you asked whether I knew who Benedict Cumberbatch was, it was nice to have a photographic memory, literally, for anything I consider important or interesting because most movie buffs, like us, would have no idea who he is. [As we have discussed many times, everyone has a photographic memory and it is only a question of accessing it.]

I immediately identified him as the actor who played Sherlock Holmes in the BBC’s 2010-2017 TV series of 13 episodes. [“Interesting” because the BBC and Benedict Cumberbatch obviously are NOT superstitious.]

And I immediately added that he was the actor in “12 Years A Slave” (which won the 2014 Oscar for Best Picture) who played one of the three successive slave owners of Solomon Northrup, a free black man who had been a husband and father in upstate New York until he was kidnapped in 1841 while visiting Washington DC and sold into slavery.

[Both “interesting” and “important” because “12 Years A Slave” (the book on which the movie was based) was the focus for our 2/12/2014 Reading Liberally meeting for which my 1/10/2014 proposal had left me in its wake covering all bets in any amount that it would win the Oscar for Best Picture even before the Golden Globes on 1/12/2014 -- primarily because of its social importance and the fact that Brad Pitt was both a producer and the player of a small but important part in the movie in the course of which he delivered a “SERMON TO AMERICA” while looking directly into the camera!!!]

I also mentioned that I thought Benedict Cumberbatch had won an Oscar for Best Actor, but couldn’t remember the movie. [An “unimportant” (to me) tidbit -- it was actually only a 2015 Oscar NOMINATION for Best Actor for playing Alan Turing in “The Imitation Game.”]

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JSK Observations on the HBO “Brexit” Movie

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First, I agree that Benedict Cumberbatch intended his “Brexit” movie to be a “hit piece.”

Not only because the movie’s intro admitted that it was a FICTIONALIZED account based on true events.

And not only because early on in the movie Cumberbatch, who plays the part of Dominic Cummings (who headed the officially-recognized Leave-Brexit Organization – the British Government recognized only one group as the official Stay Campaign and only one group as the official Leave Campaign) --

is asked in his Dominic Cummings role whether what he did was illegal and he looks into the camera with a “knowing” look intended to imply that it was --

a standard gimmick for implying something that is NOT true is true.

[Britain does not lower the standard for DEFAMATION in the case of “public figures” like the U.S. Supreme Court did!!!]

But also because news accounts report that Cumberbatch rushed his “Brexit” movie to TV screens in order to air during the current Brexit debates in the British Parliament.

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Second, Cumberbatch missed the mark!!!

At least in my opinion.

Because Britain has conducted a “War on Workers” that is very similar to America’s “War on Workers” that our Reading Liberally group has repeatedly concluded (since reading Dana Milbank’s “Homo Politicus” and Robert Kuttner’s “The Squandering of America” for our 2/14/2008 meeting 11 years ago) has been waged for the last 25 years in the form of exporting American jobs via so-called “free trade” agreements and in the form of reversing the outcome of the American Civil War by importing “slave laborers” (illegal immigrants who cannot complain about any conditions meted out to them for fear of being reported to ICE) by what we have always defined as the billionaires who “own” both political parties, who “own” many, if not most, of the members of the Mainstream Media, and who “own” many members of academia.

And what Cumberbatch’s “Brexit” movie is complaining about is the fact that what the officially-recognized “Leave-Brexit” organization did was to use information regularly sold by social-media organizations such as Facebook to identify the “forgotten” workers whose jobs had long-since been exported by The Establishment!!! And who had been left destitute ever since!!!

According to Cumberbatch’s “Brexit” movie, the officially-recognized “Leave-Brexit” organization was able to identify and contact 3 million such workers whose jobs had been exported and who had been out of work for many years!!!

Which, according to Cumberbatch, swung the election because “Leave” only won by 1.5 million votes!!!

What an elitist Cumberbatch is!!!

It is impliedly “illegal” to identify workers whose jobs have been exported in order to alert them to what was at stake in the Brexit referendum???

What could be more anti-Democratic than Cumberbatch’s Brexit complaint???

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Third, Cumberbatch’s Claim That Racism Was Involved

Typical of “The Establishment” Elites to play the race card!!!

At least Cumberbatch was careful NOT to accuse the officially-recognized “Leave-Brexit” organization of racism!!!

Instead, Cumberbatch featured prominently and repeatedly the comments of a few Members of Parliament about the possibility of uncontrolled immigration from Turkey if the European Union should, sometime in the future, admit Turkey as a member.

[Turkey is a member of NATO but NOT the European Union.]

This may be part of the reason for the Brexit Movie’s up-front disclaimer that it is fictionalized.

Not only because stoking such fears seems rather silly since admission to the European Union requires, inter alia, approval by each of the member countries -- so Britain already had a veto power over Turkey’s admission. [Though I will be the first to admit that most political arguments anywhere in the world are silly!!!]

But also because this issue was addressed at the 11/27/2018 meeting of the Salt Lake Committee on Foreign Relations and our expert speaker (Theodore Bromund, Senior Research Fellow in Anglo-American Relations at the Heritage Foundation's Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom) claimed that the two driving forces behind Britain leaving the EU, after not joining until 1973, were (A) British resentment over the EU’s devastation of British agriculture following the outbreak of “Mad Cow Disease” in Britain in 1986, and (B) British resentment against immigrants FROM HUNGARY!!!

[NB: I am NOT endorsing the views of our SLCFR expert, but only reporting them.]

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Cumberbatch’s Closing Claims About Arron Banks and Robert Mercer

Very dramatic!!!

Just like Robert Mueller’s indictments!!!

And Mueller’s SWAT teams sent to arrest each of his victims!!!

But who was Arron Banks???

Cumberbatch played the role of the head of the officially-recognized “Leave-Brexit” organization.

[It would appear that Cumberbatch’s closing claim was meant to prey on the viewer’s confusing whomever Arron Banks was with Cumberbatch’s own character, Dominic Cummings.]

So I’d have to view the movie all over again to discover who Arron Banks was, and I don’t have the stomach for that. [Obviously, I didn’t consider his character “important” or “interesting” or I would have remembered it.]

The dramatic revelation about Robert Mercer???

“The single biggest Republican donor in the 2016 U.S. election.”

Cumberbatch is intentionally preying on the ignorance of movie goers!!!

Candidate Trump was famous for being “self-funded” until late in the campaign.

[Just like the Democratic primary campaign of Bernie Sanders, who was the only other 2016 candidate in either party fighting on behalf of American workers, was famous for being largely funded by contributions of less than $100, and therefore also NOT beholden to “Establishment” donors.]

So even if Cumberbatch’s misleading claim about Robert Mercer is true, Cumberbatch’s claim is misleading because it is obviously referring to the allegedly-largest contributor to what we have always called “The Right-Hand Puppet of The Establishment’s Kabuki Theater” as distinguished from “The Left-Hand Puppet of The Establishment’s Kabuki Theater.”

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As you have probably surmised if you have read this far, I don’t think Cumberbatch’s “Brexit” Movie is worth the attention of a Reading Liberally meeting.

And if someone else proposed it, I would not plan to attend.

Your friend,

John K.