From the Archives: Gov. Terry McAuliffe touts Virginia film industry at Charlottesville movie fest

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on November 6, 2014. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site was scheduled to go dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

Gov. Terry McAuliffe touts Virginia film industry at Charlottesville movie fest

On the opening night of the 2014 Virginia Film Festival on November 6, Governor Terry McAuliffe (D-McLean) came to Charlottesville to introduce the world premiere of Big Stone Gap, which was directed by screenwriter Adriana Trigiani and based upon her best-selling novel.

Big Stone Gap was filmed entirely in its namesake Virginia mountain town and stars Jenna Elfman, Jasmine Guy, Ashley Judd, and Patrick Wilson. All four actors and Trigiani spoke at a press conference at the Paramount Theater prior to the film's screening, and Governor McAuliffe made a surprise appearance as it ended.

McAuliffe took that opportunity to boast about Virginia's film industry and the economic benefits it generates.

“We are so excited about our film industry,” he said, pointing to figures from 2012 that indicate there was “about $380 million of economic activity here in the Commonwealth,” creating 3,000 jobs.

Governor McAuliffe noted that Ithaca, a new film set in California during World War II and based on William Saroyan's The Human Comedy, is being made in Virginia by producer Tom Hanks and director Meg Ryan and that the AMC Revolutionary War-era television drama, Turn, is filming its second season here.

He listed Killing Kennedy, Killing Lincoln, and Steven Spielberg's Lincoln as significant films made in Virginia. “This is a great place to make movies and we really are working hard to bring more movies in,” McAuliffe said.

Spending the night with Bo Derek
On a personal note, the Virginia governor mentioned that actress Bo Derek spent the night at the executive mansion in Richmond, being careful to add that “my wife was there” and that he had recently “had a beer with Tom [Hanks].”

McAuliffe said that “we're really trying to bring folks into Virginia,” and touted the state's natural and historical resources.

“Look at the mountains,” he said. “We've got the beaches, but we've got the history. You look at the Capitol, which was designed by Thomas Jefferson. You've got Mount Vernon.”

Virginia, he said, has “assets that no other state in America can replicate. Jamestown, Williamsburg – we've got it all.”

Justifying subsidies
Asked by the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner how he responds to critics who suggest that giving taxpayer money, in terms of subsidies and tax credits, to Hollywood producers is a transfer of wealth from the middle class to the wealthy, McAuliffe did not blink.

“We give tax credits and incentives to many different businesses,” he replied. “I just had a major announcement yesterday in Appomattox for a pharmaceutical company from China.”

If a business comes to Virginia “to create jobs and [if] you look at the economic return of almost $400 million in 2012 and 3,000 jobs, compared to the modest incentives we give,” McAuliffe explained, “what I look at as governor is return on investment. Investment in the film industry in Virginia [has] a great return on investment and we need to do more of it.”

The Virginia Film Festival continues in and around Charlottesville through Sunday, November 9.

SUGGESTED LINKS

Gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe hosts campaign kickoff event at PVCC
Library of Congress collects pornographic films, violent video games
Va. Film Festival to feature politicians from Goldwater & LBJ to Nixon & Bush
Porn king Larry Flynt defends free speech in Charlottesville
Witness to 1963 Kennedy assassination speaks at Virginia Film Festival

Original URL:  http://www.examiner.com/article/gov-terry-mcauliffe-touts-virginia-film-industry-at-charlottesville-movie-fest

No News Is New News: Revisiting the Somali Crisis of 1992-93

With the release on October 11 of the new Tom Hanks' movie, Captain Phillips, which is about the capture of an American cargo ship by Somali pirates; with the attack on the Westgate mall in Nairobi by Somali terrorists affiliated with al-Shabaab; and with this week's anniversary of the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu (later chronicled in the book by Mark Bowden, Black Hawk Down, and the 2002 Ridley Scott film of the same name), it seemed timely to revisit the Somali crisis of 1992-93 by looking at old video.

The video, in this case, is an episode of “On the Line,” which was produced by the Voice of America (VOA) for its Worldnet television network. The date was October 8, 1992. The occasion was the George H.W. Bush administration's lame-duck decision to send American troops to Somalia to protect the deliveries of humanitarian assistance, which had been obstructed by thugs and warlords.

On the Line: Crigler, Sincere, Untermeyer, Natsios

This troop deployment came to an insidious end just a year later, when the Clinton administration decided, after the debacle later portrayed in Black Hawk Down, that U.S. forces should be withdrawn from Somalia.

The guests on “On the Line” that day were Andrew Natsios, at the time director of the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance within USAID and President Bush's special representative for humanitarian assistance in Somalia; Frank Crigler, the penultimate U.S. ambassador to Somalia (1987-90), who had retired from the Foreign Service earlier that year; and myself, then the director for African affairs at the International Freedom Foundation in Washington.

The host of the program was Chase Untermeyer, then director of the Voice of America and later U.S. Ambassador to Qatar.

Untermeyer asked me to explain the causes of the conflict in Somalia. My reply:

The causes are deep-seated, of course. The collapse of the government could have been a temporary power vacuum in which another government would come to power quickly. But in fact we see rival factions arising all over the place and the fact is that these factions are hostile to the humanitarian aid that's coming into the country and that is what is causing the technical problems in solving the disaster.

He asked Natsios, “Who is in charge in Somalia?” Natsios replied:

In terms of Somalis, no one is in charge of Somalia. In fact, I wish this were a civil war, at least we could negotiate with the two sides as we've done all over the world. In the Angolan civil war, the Mozambican civil war, the Sudan civil war, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, this is not like that. Even if the warlords agreed, they don't control half the militias. There are just bands of young thugs running around with guns who are high on the drug called khat, an amphetamine. They are uncontrollable and they don't answer to anybody.

Then Untermeyer said, “Mr. Sincere, is it correct to refer to Somalia as a country. Does it have any semblance of national order or rule at the moment?”

I answered:

I think that the best description for Somalia today was actually written by Thomas Hobbes 400 years ago, [in] Leviathan:  it's the state of nature, a war of all against all. It's something almost unprecedented in 20th century history. We're simply unused to a situation like this. And that is why it's so difficult for the United States, the other Western democracies, and the United Nations to get a handle on this and to actually help the situation.

Ambassador Crigler added to my response:

Let me comment on that, Chase, because I think this is a situation that's not going to remain unique. I don't believe it's unique even today. I think we're seeing something not unlike that in Yugoslavia, or what's left of Yugoslavia, and even, as we speak, in Georgia in the former Soviet Union – a situation in which the state of nature seems to be the only substitute for a repressive state structure.

(I find it interesting that both Georgia and the former Yugoslavia have settled into stability, with several former Yugoslav states joining NATO and the European Union. Somalia remains anarchic by comparison.)

Crigler continued:

The state structure in Somalia was really imposed from without, in any case, there was never really a nation-state as we know it in Somalia before, and that has collapsed since [President Mohammed] Siad-Barre's fall because that rigid structure is no longer there and simply crumbled of its own and there was nothing left to take the place of it. What has happened over the years under that rigid structure is that people have lost the talents for settling their ethnic differences by peaceful means. Traditionally, as Andrew [Natsios] was suggesting, the elders were able to moderate those differences. Those skills were lost during this period of repression and I'm afraid that's not a unique situation we're going to see in the world today.

Later, Andrew Natsios suggested that, if the rival Somali factions didn't resolve their own problems, the United States would withdraw its troops. (That prediction came true, if in tragic fashion.) Untermeyer asked me if I agreed that that is a good policy. I said:

I think it's the best policy. This is ultimately up to the Somali people to solve for themselves. Order cannot be imposed from outside. Humanitarian assistance cannot be provided if rival clans are actually shooting the humanitarian assisters. It's a tragic situation and it is ultimately up to the Somali people to get together and say, “We no longer want to have this war. We must live peacefully.” And it's not up to us to impose that on them. We can prod them, we can cajole them, but beyond that, there's not much we can do.

At that point, Untermeyer asked Ambassador Crigler about Somalia's strategic importance, and then posed the same question to me. My answer:

Well, certainly, from a geopolitical standpoint, Somalia always will have a strategic value to the United States and to any rivals the United States might have. But I think the point should be made that a comparison has often been made that the United States is paying more attention to Yugoslavia than to Somalia and the accusation has been leveled that this may be of racist origin but in fact the amount of aid that the United States has sent to Somalia has far outstripped what's been sent to Yugoslavia in the same period of time. I don't think the United States has fallen down on the job in this at all but the fact is that the hostility that we're facing in the region is blocking our ability to solve the problem.

Twenty-one years later, and we are still facing a region that is blocking our ability to solve the problem.

Here's the complete video of episode 24 of “On the Line,” just under 20 minutes, as recorded in the VOA studios on October 8, 1992: