Angel Studios (VidAngel) Scores Big Box Office Win: "Sound of Freedom"

[Grug the Neanderthal]

20 minutes ago, MustardSeed said:

Insouciance is all I can think to describe my reaction to whether or not he has buddies “backing him up.”  I just don’t believe it based on absolute absence of public support. 

So you’re accusing me of lying then?

[Calm]

34 minutes ago, Grug the Neanderthal said:

strongly doubt they would say anything publicly. I’m sure they have no desire to have to deal with the gaslighting and ganging up that I have to deal with. And I don’t blame them

Well then I hope they will write me privately.  I will take their concerns seriously, though no promises I will agree with their interpretation (in the sense that is what I really meant, not that is how they understood me).  I can’t promise agreement when I might have valid reasons not to.

I do promise I will not share their names with anyone else on the board or who will know them, even if I am tempted to do so.*** I can also promise if I understand why what I said is confusing enough to come across as gaslighting, I will sincerely try to be more clear in what I say, though no doubt I will fail at times because I know I can easily be confusing with too much info and run ons.

*** I sometimes use my daughter as a sounding board and reality check and names might be used with her to keep the discussion straight, but she never reads the board herself.  She is so not interested in the subjects discussed her, a painful loss for me as my son was into history and apologetics and I had lots of fun with him.

Edited July 14, 2023 by Calm

[The Nehor]

26 minutes ago, Grug the Neanderthal said:

So you’re accusing me of lying then?

I don’t trust anyone who uses this rhetorical trick. It hasn’t steered me wrong yet.

Edited July 14, 2023 by The Nehor

[bsjkki]

5 hours ago, MustardSeed said:

I’ll skip it then. 

I’ve heard mixed reviews. The movie was made in 2018 and inspired by real people and events. Dramatic license freely admitted. I just had a Trump hating talk show host say people should run to see it. I don’t really understand how people disagree about being against child trafficking. I have not seen it. Don’t know if I will see it because I have a hard time purposely viewing something that involves such evil. The more real the evil is, the harder to view. 

I find it sad the topic and movie have fallen into our political hellscape.
 

[Calm]

2 hours ago, bsjkki said:

I’ve heard mixed reviews. The movie was made in 2018 and inspired by real people and events. Dramatic license freely admitted. I just had a Trump hating talk show host say people should run to see it. I don’t really understand how people disagree about being against child trafficking. I have not seen it. Don’t know if I will see it because I have a hard time purposely viewing something that involves such evil. The more real the evil is, the harder to view. 

I find it sad the topic and movie have fallen into our political hellscape.
 

The article linked to above says it avoids showing depictions of exploitation of children and use the reactions of the people seeing it instead to convey it.  I think that is a good thing. It always seems strange to me when someone makes a movie that has an abundance of what they say they are protesting, especially exploitation of children.  Still I won’t be watching it as I prefer to study issues without emotional distractions.  I don’t need music or visuals to understand they are horrors and if there is anything I can do, I can do it better without such distractions.

Edited July 14, 2023 by Calm

[Tacenda]

7 hours ago, bsjkki said:

I’ve heard mixed reviews. The movie was made in 2018 and inspired by real people and events. Dramatic license freely admitted. I just had a Trump hating talk show host say people should run to see it. I don’t really understand how people disagree about being against child trafficking. I have not seen it. Don’t know if I will see it because I have a hard time purposely viewing something that involves such evil. The more real the evil is, the harder to view. 

I find it sad the topic and movie have fallen into our political hellscape.
 

Luckily to me, it wasn't as dark feeling as I thought it might be and the child actors were amazing. I think it was done well in regards being able to stomach it. It ended on a good note, but come to find out, that it didn't end factually was a let down. It really made me want to help the cause, do something, anything to stop it. It's right in our neighborhoods for crying out loud. Parents even traffic their own children, I heard or read an interview with a young woman that was in the US. It does feel very bleak. And you should see me at a park with my granddaughter, just yesterday I took her to a splashpad and was following her everywhere and if she took off I panicked. I do this everywhere because of children being approached by kidnappers in my own hometown and surroundings. I do think we need to tackle the child porn viewer problem as well. So I'd love to be behind doing that too. Just let me at 'em kind of thing. 

[Rain]

58 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

Luckily to me, it wasn't as dark feeling as I thought it might be and the child actors were amazing. I think it was done well in regards being able to stomach it. It ended on a good note, but come to find out, that it didn't end factually was a let down. It really made me want to help the cause, do something, anything to stop it. It's right in our neighborhoods for crying out loud. Parents even traffic their own children, I heard or read an interview with a young woman that was in the US. It does feel very bleak. And you should see me at a park with my granddaughter, just yesterday I took her to a splashpad and was following her everywhere and if she took off I panicked. I do this everywhere because of children being approached by kidnappers in my own hometown and surroundings. I do think we need to tackle the child porn viewer problem as well. So I'd love to be behind doing that too. Just let me at 'em kind of thing. 

It can be so scary when you know the possibilities.

[The Nehor]

There are also much closer to home examples of sex trafficking. Some of our foster care systems have pipelines to sex trafficking. Florida is probably the most egregious example right now.

[BlueDreams]

19 hours ago, bluebell said:

I haven't seen it but I'm worried that it does overdramatize the issue and make it a caricature of the events.    

Yeah, I haven't seen it and won't for that very reason (plus I already have heard these type of stories IRL....that's not my idea of entertainment). The man it features tends towards drama and I don't fully trust him because of it. I'm sure he does good, i just don't trust dramatic flourishes period.

 

With luv,

BD  

[MustardSeed]

Related topic, I won’t watch those gotcha trip shows where the guy poses as a child hook up and then exposes them on television I can’t remember his name. Very popular. Way too often. He uses an underage child to greet the predator. I’m so disgusted by that. a real child. Can you imagine the trauma incurred? 

[bluebell]

7 minutes ago, MustardSeed said:

Related topic, I won’t watch those gotcha trip shows where the guy poses as a child hook up and then exposes them on television I can’t remember his name. Very popular. Way too often. He uses an underage child to greet the predator. I’m so disgusted by that. a real child. Can you imagine the trauma incurred? 

Ew.

I've never watched those shows but I've heard of them.  What parent would sign their kid up for that??

[BlueDreams]

6 minutes ago, MustardSeed said:

Related topic, I won’t watch those gotcha trip shows where the guy poses as a child hook up and then exposes them on television I can’t remember his name. Very popular. Way too often. He uses an underage child to greet the predator. I’m so disgusted by that. a real child. Can you imagine the trauma incurred? 

I've never thought of that....I also thought I'd love to be apart of catching a baddy and I looked super young for at least 8 years into my adulthood.

But I'd prefer not to be around a creep for longer than 10 seconds. I also had that experience as a child when we visited my grandfather. I was in the car, with my parents, and he never entered the space....but the look he gave me is one of my strong teen memories. Not ever day you see evil staring back at you. 

 

With luv,

BD

[MustardSeed]

15 minutes ago, BlueDreams said:

I've never thought of that....I also thought I'd love to be apart of catching a baddy and I looked super young for at least 8 years into my adulthood.

But I'd prefer not to be around a creep for longer than 10 seconds. I also had that experience as a child when we visited my grandfather. I was in the car, with my parents, and he never entered the space....but the look he gave me is one of my strong teen memories. Not ever day you see evil staring back at you. 

 

With luv,

BD

Yep. Yuck.
 

I saw a clip on TikTok, they used an eight year old girl. Chris Hanson I think his name is.  So disturbing. 

[LoudmouthMormon]

1 hour ago, The Nehor said:

There are also much closer to home examples of sex trafficking.  Some of our foster care systems have pipelines to sex trafficking. Florida is probably the most egregious example right now.

Such an odd stance to take, IMO.   So, because the movie depicts aspects of child trafficking that are further away from other aspects of child trafficking, the movie isn't as valuable?  I mean, you're correct, but it's so weird to say "you're not paying attention to the correct parts of the issue in the correct way". 

I'll push this article again, as something I wish all good humans would read.  If you skip the movie, at least please read this article.

https://www.5280.com/girls-next-door/

 

[Tacenda]

So MS's has a podcast with Vice reporters and links to their articles, so not sure how good Vice is or not or how true. But this first one has Ballard leaving O.U.R. https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7z74x/tim-ballard-sound-of-freedom-operation-underground-railroad-stepped-away

And this disturbs me the most so far: https://www.vice.com/en/article/4a3apm/anti-trafficking-group-with-long-history-of-false-claims-gets-its-hollywood-moment

As VICE News has previously reported, a number of OUR’s claims about its work are dramatically overstated or without clear documentary evidence. People who have volunteered for OUR have raised concerns that it could actually have been creating demand for trafficking victims, by going to foreign countries on undercover “missions” that, at times, have seemed to consist of walking around bars and sex clubs asking for underage girls. The organization's support for law enforcement has at times been wildly exaggerated and involved OUR taking credit for agencies’ operations after making relatively trivial donations, and its much-touted aftercare program for survivors has at times involved things like placing women with unqualified providers and even fabricating a college graduation ceremony. 

In another story uncovered by VICE News, OUR heavily marketed its role in the rescue of “Liliana,” a young trafficking survivor, with Ballard telling a fanciful story about this rescue in Congressional testimony and in op-eds and media appearances in which he called for a border wall. She in fact rescued herself, and did not meet OUR representatives until years after she’d done so, when she was preparing to testify against her traffickers in court. The organization led a bizarre, blundering attempted rescue on the Haiti-Dominican Republic border based on intelligence sourced from a Utah psychic medium. (The same psychic went on to work as an executive director for an OUR-backed group, an adoption grant organization called Children Need Families, founded by Ballard’s wife Katherine.) Meanwhile, OUR’s sister organization the Nazarene Fund, founded by right-wing media personality Glenn Beck, claimed without a lot of direct evidence to have evacuated endangered people from minority religious groups out of Afghanistan during the chaotic period after the U.S. withdrawal from the country. And in a more minor, and weirder, incident, Ballard recently claimed that OUR was “collaborating” with American Airlines, which was also not true in the sense that most people would understand it; the organization bought an ad with a third-party service that airs programming on some American flights. 

And these links followed that I've yet to read thoroughly:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7zjyg/operation-underground-railroad-touts-non-existent-partnership-with-american-airlines

https://www.vice.com/en/article/7kvana/inside-the-shadowy-antisex-trafficking-group-our

https://www.vice.com/en/article/qj8j3v/operation-underground-railroad-criminal-investigation-human-trafficking-tim-ballard-jim-caviezel-qanon

https://www.vice.com/en/article/akgq8a/anti-trafficking-charity-operation-underground-railroad-has-another-murkyrescue-story

https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvxev5/inside-a-massive-anti-trafficking-charitys-blundering-overseas-missions

https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7a3qw/a-famed-anti-sex-trafficking-group-has-a-problem-with-the-truth

[The Nehor]

The crazy associated with this movie continues.

Tim Ballard, the guy the movie is about, has been fired from the organization due to allegations of misconduct.

It is also loosely tied to Fabian Marta. He helped crowdfund the movie. He is a piece of work. He was basically a professional child groomer. He hosted sugardaddy/sugarbaby parties and was recently arrested for abducting and confining a child. He was a QAnon believer too. I don’t blame anyone involved with the movie for this. Something isn’t discredited because they took money from a scumbag. Still, the irony is pretty stark.

[MorningStar]

I saw it. Not enough pedophiles died in the movie. 

[bluebell]

1 hour ago, The Nehor said:

Tim Ballard, the guy the movie is about, has been fired from the organization due to allegations of misconduct.

Do you have a reference for this?  I've heard that he stepped down to focus on his other groups (which he has a few I guess) but he is still heavily involved in promoting the film and I didn't hear that he was fired.  It's very possibly true, I'd just like to see where the information is coming from.

[The Nehor]

23 minutes ago, bluebell said:

Do you have a reference for this?  I've heard that he stepped down to focus on his other groups (which he has a few I guess) but he is still heavily involved in promoting the film and I didn't hear that he was fired.  It's very possibly true, I'd just like to see where the information is coming from.

Sorry, he wasn’t fired. There were reportedly complaints against him and he resigned because of them.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7b3ex/tim-ballard-left-operation-underground-railroad-after-investigation-into-claims-made-by-employees?utm_source=reddit.com

[bluebell]

20 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

Sorry, he wasn’t fired. There were reportedly complaints against him and he resigned because of them.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7b3ex/tim-ballard-left-operation-underground-railroad-after-investigation-into-claims-made-by-employees?utm_source=reddit.com

So it sounds like he left the organization, and that there was a/some complaints against him a year ago.  But I'm not seeing where OUR is claiming that he left because of those complaints.  I found that article a little confusion though, with the editorializing mixed in with the other information, and definitely could have missed something.  

[teddyaware]

1 hour ago, bluebell said:

So it sounds like he left the organization, and that there was a/some complaints against him a year ago.  But I'm not seeing where OUR is claiming that he left because of those complaints.  I found that article a little confusion though, with the editorializing mixed in with the other information, and definitely could have missed something.  

https://www.deseret.com/utah/2023/5/12/23717081/davis-county-attorneys-office-closes-investigation-into-operation-underground-railroad

[Calm]

 

2 hours ago, The Nehor said:

Sorry, he wasn’t fired. There were reportedly complaints against him and he resigned because of them.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7b3ex/tim-ballard-left-operation-underground-railroad-after-investigation-into-claims-made-by-employees?utm_source=reddit.com

I really dislike it when truth is claimed confirmed based on silence.  I do not believe it does.  It raises the probability in some cases, like this one I believe…but perhaps the spokesperson was a honest, stickler for the rules kind of person and refused to share with Motherboard even when given a way to do it without exposing their self simply because they had promised not to.  And that they would rather the company’s name be used given how publishing personal names names tends to attract unwanted attention, such as hate mail.  Why read that request as an admission of guilt?

Quote

Motherboard reporters responded by asking an OUR spokesperson if they disputed the information in the letter; they responded by asking for their statement to be attributed to OUR, rather than a specific individual. The reporters responded that they could only read this as confirmation of the letter’s accuracy and provided a secure means of contact through which the spokesperson could reach them to dispute their reporting without worrying that outside parties would be able to see that they’d violated confidentiality agreements. The reporters did not hear more from the spokesperson.

A representative for Ballard did not respond to requests for comment. The person or people controlling the email address from which the letter was originally sent did not respond to requests for comment.

If not responding means they are admitting guilt, then the email sender appears to be guilty as well by that standard.

Edited August 4, 2023 by Calm

[bluebell]

14 minutes ago, Calm said:

 

I really dislike it when truth is claimed confirmed based on silence.  I do not believe it does.  It raises the probability in some cases, like this one I believe…but perhaps the spokesperson was a honest, stickler for the rules kind of guy and refused to share with Motherboard even when given a way to do it without exposing their self simply because they had promised not to.  And that they would rather the company’s name be used given how publishing personal names names tends to attract unwanted attention, such as hate mail.  Why read that request as an admission of guilt?

If not responding means they are admitting guilt, then the email sender appears to be guilty as well by that standard.

That bothered me as well. I know on here, sometimes I don’t respond to a question or comment because I don’t think the response will solve anything and there are better uses of my time. 

[gopher]

On 8/4/2023 at 3:05 PM, The Nehor said:

The crazy associated with this movie continues.

Tim Ballard, the guy the movie is about, has been fired from the organization due to allegations of misconduct.

It is also loosely tied to Fabian Marta. He helped crowdfund the movie. He is a piece of work. He was basically a professional child groomer. He hosted sugardaddy/sugarbaby parties and was recently arrested for abducting and confining a child. He was a QAnon believer too. I don’t blame anyone involved with the movie for this. Something isn’t discredited because they took money from a scumbag. Still, the irony is pretty stark.

According to the Angel co-founder Neal Harmon, Fabian was one of 6,678 people who invested an average of $501 each into the Sound of Freedom.  Harmon said anyone who met the legal criteria could invest in the movie, just as you can invest in the stock market.  So the attempts to make it sound like Fabian was a major source of funding for the movie is suspect.  It seems to be in someone's best interest to tear down this movie.  I haven't seen it and probably won't, but I have donated to the organization in the past by participating in 5k races.

[Calm]

Do we know how much Fabian donated?  Crowdfunding is a different form of funding where who supports the project is not controlled by the one doing the project, though it is very useful in identifying who is attracted to the work.  If primarily child groomers were supporting a crowdfunding project, I think we need to look at the project and find out why, but if they are one or two of many others who would never look at a child that way, that says nothing about the project imo.

No one would have an issue with Marta donating to cancer surgery in the sense they would draw the conclusion that the surgery was likely inappropriate or the doctors were mistaken in attempting to remove the cancer even if it was creepy that someone known for grooming kids did this and we might be worried it would be used as an opportunity by him to groom. 

Edited August 5, 2023 by Calm