Blasterbot's recommended movie
Blasterbot
Well-known member
more people need to see this. it is a hard watch due to the subject matter. but damn.
more people need to see this. it is a hard watch due to the subject matter. but damn.
more people need to see this. it is a hard watch due to the subject matter. but damn.
it wouldn't surprise me to find our lefties aren't big fans of his anti-pedo and anti-sex slavery stances. from what I can see it is that he didn't condemn QAnon enough for their tastes? I don't know.@The Whispering Monk @Blasterbot (leftist) wikipedia lists a few controversies about the founder... do they have any validity or it is partially/completely hogwash?
Criticism and investigations
The group says it disavows conspiracy theories, though founder Tim Ballard was criticized for refusing to condemn the QAnon conspiracy theory.[45][46][47]
A September 2020 Vice News article called O.U.R. a "QAnon-adjacent charity," and said the "organization has embraced followers of that particular baseless conspiracy theory, rather than condemning it the way that other anti-trafficking charities have"—even though the organization claims no association with the group, and its website "vaguely disavows conspiracy theories." The Vice article quoted Ballard telling The New York Times a month prior, "Some of these theories have allowed people to open their eyes. So now it's our job to flood the space with real information so the facts can be shared." A spokesperson for O.U.R told Vice that they're "not affiliated with the group QAnon in any way, shape or form, and to date we have had no interaction with them."[45][46][47]
In a December 2020 article, Vice News said that Tim Ballard embellished O.U.R.'s role in the rescue of a trafficked woman, stating that they did not find "outright falsehoods but a pattern of image-burnishing and mythology-building, a series of exaggerations that are, in the aggregate, quite misleading".[1]
A 2021 follow-up article further criticized O.U.R.'s practices, including using inexperienced donors and celebrities as part of its jump team, a lack of meaningful surveillance or identification of targets, failing to validate whether the people they intended to rescue were in fact actual trafficking victims, and conflating consensual sex work with sex trafficking.[48]
A 2021 article in Slate criticized an armed 2014 raid conducted by O.U.R. in the Dominican Republic, which was filmed live by a camera crew to use in a proposed reality TV show, saying that it was likely to have traumatized the trafficked children.[3] Anne Gallagher, "the leading global expert on the international law on human trafficking",[49] wrote in 2015 that O.U.R. had an "alarming lack of understanding about how sophisticated criminal trafficking networks must be approached and dismantled" and called the work of O.U.R "arrogant, unethical and illegal".[3][50]
In 2022, the O.U.R. falsely claimed that it had entered a partnership with American Airlines.[51]
Tim Ballard
Tim Ballard and Katherine, his wife, have nine children, ages 23 to 6.[52] Two children, sold to Ballard, in a sting operation, in Haiti, were adopted by Tim Ballard.[52]
it wouldn't surprise me to find our lefties aren't big fans of his anti-pedo and anti-sex slavery stances. from what I can see it is that he didn't condemn QAnon enough for their tastes? I don't know.
I don't know a whole lot about it. a lot of the complaints are from Vice so that is a bit of a red flag. the slate article says the way they go about things is wrong. but that is likely a difference in goals. the feds want to dismantle the organizations collect evidence and put those responsible behind bars. this organization appears to be more about rescuing the kids. the final complaint that he adopted 2 kids he "purchased" in a sting is kind of a nothing burger to me. glad that they found a home that will care for them.
Well...I hope they really do, but the most action I've seen from the Feds on this was actually under Trump. In fact, Tim Ballard and O.U.R. were aided by Trump, while he was President, on at least one occasion, and Trump never touted that fact. (which, frankly, is astonishing and tells me that Trump isn't pure blowhard).the feds want to dismantle the organizations collect evidence and put those responsible behind bars.
Yeah, Tim Ballard tells this story in an interview with Glenn Beck. Gonna have to see if I can find it.the final complaint that he adopted 2 kids he "purchased" in a sting is kind of a nothing burger to me. glad that they found a home that will care for them.
Fair Trump really stepped it up with going after human traffickers. Don't think it has been maintained in the Biden years. It is rather sad that we have more slaves than ever nowadays and a fair few are kids stuck in that hell.Well...I hope they really do, but the most action I've seen from the Feds on this was actually under Trump. In fact, Tim Ballard and O.U.R. were aided by Trump, while he was President, on at least one occasion, and Trump never touted that fact. (which, frankly, is astonishing and tells me that Trump isn't pure blowhard).
Yeah, Tim Ballard tells this story in an interview with Glenn Beck. Gonna have to see if I can find it.
It's one reason I whole-heartedly support O.U.R. and recommend them to everyone looking for a charitable cause.Fair Trump really stepped it up with going after human traffickers. Don't think it has been maintained in the Biden years. It is rather sad that we have more slaves than ever nowadays and a fair few are kids stuck in that hell.
![]()
Michael Rothschild![]()
Journalist, Author, Expert Witness[
West Hollywood, California, Stati Uniti d'America
Self Employed
University of Iowa
Sito Web personale
Mike is journalist and expert witness specializing in conspiracy theories and fringe beliefs. With hundreds of media appearances, including live TV, podcasts, documentaries, and radio; Mike is one of the foremost pop communicators on how conspiracy theories spread and why people believe them. He has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, NPR, the BBC, and been interviewed by the New York Times, Washington Post, the New Yorker, Vice, the Daily Beast, and dozens of other national and international outlets.
His book "The Storm is Upon Us" was an Amazon bestseller, and his new book "Jewish Space Lasers" will be released in September. Mike has also testified to Congress on the dangers of election disinformation, provided written testimony to the January 6th Committee, spoken at numerous conferences, and written articles for Time, the Globe and Mail, NBC News, the Daily Dot, and many others. Finally, Mike has worked as an expert witness in cases related to the 2020 Election conspiracy industry, as well as QAnon and other conspiracy theories.
Rolling Stones said:Tim Ballard, head of the anti-sex trafficking nonprofit Operation Underground Railroad (O.U.R.), in a feature film that casts the operator as a Batman-style savior for kids sold into the sex trade.
Rolling Stones said:It's a stomach-turning experience, fetishizing the torture of its child victims and lingering over lush preludes to their sexual abuse. At times I had the uncomfortable sense that I might be arrested myself just for sitting through it. Nonetheless, the mostly white-haired audience around me could be relied on to gasp, moan in pity, mutter condemnations, applaud, and bellow "Amen!" at moments of righteous fury, as when Ballard declares that "God's children are not for sale."
Rolling Stones said:Apart from its relentless messaging, the movie is hobbled by a near-total absence of procedural logic. That original rescue is only possible because Ballard is standing at the exact right spot of a U.S.-Mexico border station at the very moment his target tries to cross. Lucky!
Rolling Stones said:Earlier, Ballard convinces an imprisoned child porn peddler facing a sentence of 30 years to help him contact traffickers in exchange for an immunity deal, needlessly posing as a pedophile himself to gain trust. When the guy fulfills his end of the bargain, Ballard has a dozen police officers swarm the diner they're in to… arrest him again? Wait, how was he sprung from custody in the first place? Doesn't matter as long as the drooling creep with requisite glasses and pervert mustache gets his head slammed against a table once more.
Rolling Stones said:if Mira Sorvino, who plays his wife Katherine, spent more than a day on set, you'd never know it: she's there for all of two minutes, offering brief words of encouragement while Ballard spends weeks undercover as a louche sex tourist in Central America.
Rolling Stones said:Meaning it will surely do no good to point out Sound of Freedom's hackneyed white savior narrative.
Rolling Stones said:Or its wildly immature assumption that abused and traumatized children go right back to normal once the bad guys are in handcuffs.
Slate said:People acted like they were at Top Gun.
Slate said:The pedophiles and child traffickers in Sound of Freedom are sweaty, sharp-toothed deviants, as they've been depicted in movies as far back as Fritz Lang's M nearly a century ago.
Slate said:It's the heroic brother and sister in this film who work to save each other. They are the true heroes." That's a noble sentiment, but the movie doesn't come close to bearing it out. It's overwhelming focused on Ballard
Slate said:Even in the movie, most of the children Tim Ballard rescues are an afterthought, an anonymous gaggle of the saved. After one Colombian raid, he's told that 54 children have been freed, but his concern turns immediately to the one missing: a young girl, Rocio, whose brother Miguel he has already rescued after the boy was trafficked into the U.S.
Slate said:. Angel Studios' website may bill the company as "the leading alternative to Hollywood," but if you released Sound of Freedom under the Cannon Films logo and sold it as an undiscovered vigilante classic of the mid-1980s, no one would be the wiser. (The only thing it's missing is a scene where the hero lustily disembowels a pedophile, but this is a family movie.)
Slate said:let me state for screenshotting purposes that I am opposed to child sex trafficking
Completely agree.Pretty sure this movie is absolutely not a family movie. it is rated R for a reason.
There have been a lot of outright lies being spread about The Sound of Freedom. Reviews keep showing up when I log into my browsers opening news page and I have to rant about it somewhere before I explode!
This is the Rolling Stone article that got a lot of clout.
![]()
‘Sound of Freedom’: Box Office Triumph for QAnon Believers – Rolling …
archived 9 Jul 2023 19:25:52 UTCarchive.is
It should be pretty easy to demolish these interpretations but spoilers ahead.
There are no exciting gun battles, martial arts fights, ninja style infiltrations, or superheroics in this film. There is exactly ONE scene which could be considered an action scene. Nick Ballard in this movie is not Batman.
The theater I was in was pretty packed but I didn't hear any prayers or 'Amens' or bullshit like that. The scenes of child exploitation were very disturbing but they weren't arousing in the least unlike what the journalist seems to strongly imply. Also there have been a lot of movies that have shown far more 'graphic' depictions of trafficking. The last Rambo movies comes to mind as being more graphic in showing trafficking victims. This movie on the other hand, has more emotional impact in spite of not showing as graphic exploitation. Singling this film out is hypocrisy.
This scene is actually set up by having Nick Ballard, the protagonist, get a picture identification of the child smuggler/pedophile from a child porn peddler he gains the trust of. He also gets a picture of the child to be smuggled and a timeframe of when they will be crossing the border. They then arrest the child porn peddler so they can interrogate him more. THEN at the border crossing it shows a Border Patrol Agent standing on a rooftop with optics, scanning the incoming traffic and then reporting over the radio that she'd ID'd the driver in a particular line of traffic leading to a particular lane checkpoint at the port of entry. Ballad thus is waiting at that exact right spot when his target tries to cross. Not luck... the scene was set up... completely.
The Online Child Porn Peddler is "sprung" from custody because there's a scene where Ballard is talking to his Supervisor, a man named Frost, asking him "for a week" to gain said Child Porn Peddlers trust. They then have scenes where Ballard gains the trust of the Child Porn Peddler and promising that he can knock years off of the Child Porn Peddlers sentence (not immunity) if he gets Ballard access to a smuggled child.
The re-arrest occurs after Ballard gets the Child Porn Peddler to agree to that, and sends Ballard proof that he is smuggling a child over the border so Ballard can rape the child. Ballard then states that the Child Porn Peddler will be arrested for something charge relating to Sex Trafficking of Children as opposed to just distributing Online Child Pornography.
The journalist is lying so hard that it has to be intentional.
She's actually in the movie more then two minutes and in several "short" scenes. Most of her interaction with Ballard's character is via the phone and text messages because most of the movie takes place in Colombia. However she is fleshed out a fair bit stating how she feels the trafficked children are like hers since they are the same age, and she reassures him when Ballard quits Homeland Security to rescue a bunch of children in Colombia.
Ballard furthermore never spends any time in Central America, much less undercover. Most of the movie takes place in SOUTH AMERICA. Colombia specifically. Not Central America. The
Author must've not paid attention to how the entire last two thirds of the movie repeatedly states that it's taking place in Colombia, with maps often shown of Colombia, Colombia and Cartagena and Bogota all being mentioned repeatedly and all of the major characters besides Ballard being Colombian, including a former Cali Cartel member.
Ballard is the only "White Savior" here. Literally everyone that helps him is a native Colombian whether Law Enforcement, private financiers and other civilian investigators. A special message at the end of the film calls the victims who survived and persevered the true heroes.
There is absolutely no assumption about this being made. The only relevant scenes show that children are happy to be free from being sexually trafficked, seeing their loved ones again and not being raped for the rest of their lives. The movie shows their trauma quite a bit actually, the author mentioned that earlier because he found it "lush" while all of the Boomercons around him found it disturbing.
Here's the article from Slate that popped up this morning that made me roll my eyes.
![]()
Sound of Freedom movie: In a crowded theater, I saw what this movie i…
archived 10 Jul 2023 23:49:36 UTCarchive.is
Absolutely no one was cheering in the theater even when the children were being rescued. This person is a liar already. The idea that the audience was cheering in this film like it was Top Gun seems almost unfathomable to me. This was not a happy summer action movie.
One online porn peddler is shown as a creepy nerd with glasses, another pedophile smuggler is shown as an overweight White male. Yet other pedophiles are depicted as a pair of rural farmworkers or country folk. One is shown as a older White male who just looks like a middle aged tourist. Some are shown as random Latino males, some athletic, some fat, some not. Most trending towards middle aged.
There are two storylines in this film. One is Ballard's and the other is the smuggled siblings. It's literally the second plot in the story. Lots of films follow this format. Why does this Author want to spend more time following the children being sexually exploited? How much more sexual abuse does he want to see onscreen?
Slate Writer, "The movie focuses on Ballard too much."
Also Slate Writer, "The movie isn't focusing on the siblings enough"
They spent multiple scenes after freeing over fifty children dealing with freeing fifty children. But yes, he was also focused on freeing the sister of one particular child he had rescued earlier. The children weren't even anonymous. They used several of the same cast members as trafficked victims to the point you recognized them and a few had particular focus on them. Also it was in these scenes that are supposedly an anonymous afterthought that the film gets its name. 'The Sound of Freedom' actually arose out of the celebration that Ballard and the other rescuers were witnessing from these children now being free.
This is another monstrous lie. There is nothing schlock about this film like there is with a Cannon film such as Deathwish or Joe or Missing in Action. It's not an action movie. It's not schlock. Its not shock value entertainment. Why do all of these writers compare this film to lust inducing schlock and exploitation films?
After what I've read from this writer, I suspect in my opinion only, that this is exactly what someone who actually supports child sex trafficking would say.
It amazes me how a film like 'The Sound of Freedom' is receiving so much of a concerted effort to try and tarnish it. There's scripted effort going on to push people NOT to see it.
The Enemy at work among us is my only conclusion.
Pretty sure this movie is absolutely not a family movie. it is rated R for a reason.