I caught a film last night called "Buried" on FX I believe.  It was a 1 man show starring Ryan Reynolds about a civilian contractor who was kidnapped and buried alive by blackmailers in Syria.  It's the kind of small, non-commercial films a big time actor can do as a vanity project to show off his acting skills or for political reasons etc.  The entire film takes place with him inside this box communicating with the outside world on a cell phone.

It is of course very depressing, and tho RR gets on my nerves, he did a good job with the acting.  Just to spend all the time in the box on the set is real commitment to his acting craft.  But what is most interesting about the movie is how the FSoA Goobermint REALLY deals with these kidnappings and ransom demands, which happen a whole lot more often than we hear about on the MSM.

Forget all those feel-good movies where the ex-pat runs to the US Embassy and gets help.  The State Dept policy is not to negotiate with terrorists.  Basically, that ended with the Hostage Crisis back in the 70s, which featured Ted Koppel reporting on it on the late night newz show.  It made Ted's career and was the begining of the "Nightline" newz show.  Ted was also a war correspondent before that in Vietnam.

Those were the days before our Fascist Goobermint took control over the newz media and restricted what they can show to prevent the kind of opposition that the reporting from Vietnam fed into.  Now on YT I can't even turn up any clips of those reports, just a vid of old Ted talking about it.

Anyhow, because of this, now instead of talking to any State Dept person, the victim is given some NGO rep to talk to who serves as the intermediary.  This person does everything he can to convince the victim to NOT make a vid which the kidnappers will put up on YT, and YT also shuts them down shortly after they go up.  Under the "National Security" excuse.  This is why we never hear about this or see it, even though it happens regularly over there to journalists, civilian contractors, AID workers etc.  As they said in the film, in some neighborhoods this is the only way to make any money.

Even just contacting anyone at all to help him was almost impossible, and if your family isn't rich enough to pay a ransom demand, you can't raise the money through a crowd funding effort on social media either.  The ONLY people who will ever get any real help have to be rich and famous or politically important.  The companies that hire people to do this make them sign contracts indemnifying them from any obligations or responsibility, and in this case even falsely accused the guy of having an affair with another worker in order to terminate his employment before he died so they wouldn't have to pay insurance money to his family.  Listening to the lawyer on the phone with him while he is buried alive will make you want to puke and confirm all the worst things you ever heard told about lawyers.

Hopefully this film will convince anyone thinking of taking a job with one of the firms that supplies contract workers in MENA that no matter how high the pay is, the risk is just too great and not worth it.  If you do take such a job, make sure you go over there with a cyanide pill and be ready to bite down on it as soon as you get kidnapped.  I can think of no more horrible way to die than to be buried alive.  Because it takes so long to die, it's even worse than dying in a fire I think.

The fact our Goobermint so actively prevents these events from being reported on, it turns this into a death sentence for the victims.  It doesn't reduce the incidence of its occurence, because the folks doing it keep doing it whether or not they get paid.  If they don't get paid the first time, the victim dies and they try again.  What it shows is that our Goobermint doesn't give a shit about you if you're poor.  Nether do the companies that do the hiring.  Basically, it should be illegal for American companies to run these kind of operations, but without them the military couldn't function because they fill the logistics role. 

Desperate people will do anything when the company waves a big paycheck at them, but despite supposedly being "fully informed" about the risks, the fact is they are not fully informed.  They aren't told the truth about how many people are really kidnapped or how often they are actually rescued if it happens.  The real answers are it happens often and they almost never get rescued.

The only reason this film even got made and got on FX is because Ryan Reynolds made it.  He has gone way up in my regard for him as an actor and as a person.  I still find many of his mainstream movies annoying though. lol.

RE