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Markets are ruled right now by fear.
The stockmarket is finished.
The governments don’t rule the world, Goldman Sachs rules the world.
In less than twelve months the savings of millions of people is gonna vanish, and this is just the beginning.
The biggest risk people can take right now is not acting.
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This is the best article I’ve found so far (“best” as in – in my opinion – being fair and balanced):
Imperial Delusions: Ignoring the Lessons of 9/11 by Robert Jensen, journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
[…]
If the new boss sounds a lot like the old boss, it’s because the problem isn’t just bad leaders but a bad system. That’s why a critique of today’s wars sounds a lot like critiques of wars past. Here’s Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assessment of the imperial war of his time: “[N]o one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read: Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over.”
Will our autopsy report read “global war on terror”?
That sounds harsh, and it’s tempting to argue that we should refrain from political debate on the 9/11 anniversary to honor those who died and to respect those who lost loved ones. I would be willing to do that if the cheerleaders for the U.S. empire would refrain from using the day to justify the wars of aggression that followed 9/11. But given the events of the past decade, there is no way to take the politics out of the anniversary.
We should take time on 9/11 to remember the nearly 3,000 victims who died that day, but as responsible citizens, we also should face a harsh reality: While the terrorism of fanatical individuals and groups is a serious threat, much greater damage has been done by our nation-state caught up in its own fanatical notions of imperial greatness.
That’s why I feel no satisfaction in being part of the anti-war/anti-empire movement. Being right means nothing if we failed to create a more just foreign policy conducted by a more humble nation.
[…]
>The opening scene of The Plague Dogs (1982) really sets the tone.
A dog being subject to repeated drowning experiments. Outside the thunder roars, the rain comes down hard and a cold wind blows.
This is not Disney.
Two dogs escape from a British government animal testing lab – Animal Research (Scientific and Experimental), A.R.S.E. – and roam the grey and wintry Lake District in search of a new master, or rather, in search of a good human. The facility spreads the rumour that the animals are carrying bubonic plague, so being hated by humans and not knowing how to survive, they decide that they’ll have to ”live by our teeth and kill”.
This is a highly impressive, very realistic movie. It’s free from cool effects (even though the animation work is superb if you’re into old school stuff), kind of slow at times, and most importantly: it’s severely depressing, painful and sad.
Obviously, it still remains an underground movie since it actually has got something to say (something like this: The only way to free yourself from the cruelties of mankind is to die, so when the dogs swim out to sea in the end, they choose death instead of being killed by humans…). People with a short attention span probably won’t like it, and some scenes are pretty rough. It got censored due to graphical content, and only 8,000 copies of the uncut film exists on tape. It’s on YouTube, though.
Even though the dogs’ constant self-pitiness might become tedious after a while, I think the overall darkness and sadness of it all makes up for that. True animal friends most likely will cry when watching. Hell, you don’t even have to be a fanatic animal lover to be touched by this one. Anybody reaching the conclusion that mankind sucks ought to cry every once in a while.
The realism is a huge factor as well in making this a classic movie. Rowf’s fear of water, the death scenes and the dialogue are just a few examples of that.
I come to think of Grave of the Fireflies (a superb movie that everyone should see at least once) when watching The Plague Dogs, not really because they’re both animated films, but because of the depressing mood and the realism. Sometimes, stories like these are told more efficiently in comics and animated movies.
[Snitter, trapped in a garage, is hallucinating about his old home]
Rowf: Snitter! Can you hear me?
Snitter: I’m inside my head now. And it’s where I should be.
Rowf: This is no time for one of your turns!
The Tod: Come on out, ya great fool! Sharp with ye, now, before we’re all caught!
Snitter: I can’t come out. If I do, I’ll go mad again.
———-
OTHER GREAT MOVIES OF THE 80’s:
Manhunter (1986)
A Short Film About Killing (1988)
Threads (1984)
The Quiet Earth (1985)
The Thing (1982)
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A science outpost at the South Pole, winter 1982. Unexplainable madness. Burnt human remains and melted bodies. A heavy storm. Alien mutations taking over and imitating the human body, leaving the few inhabitants scrambling in a paranoid, claustrophobic frenzy as they try to determine who’s infected and who’s not. Darkness descends. Extreme tension. Pretty soon it’s every man against every man – bellum omnium contra omnes – and within them: The ultimate in alien terror.
This masterpiece is like H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness (1936), Alien (1979), The Shining (1980) and Apocalypse Now (1979), all rolled into one.
Reservoir Dogs (1992) and The X-Files got some massive inspiration here as well.
The Thing (1982) has got that lovely, cheesy 80’s feeling, like when the technical aspects of movie making just started to develop into more hi-tech areas, and when people not quite knew how to handle their new tools but used them anyway. The drug-induced social realism featured in many movies of the 70’s is replaced by a bit plastic colours and feelings, quite noticeable stylistically, but also musicwise and how the camera works and moves. It’s like people stopped thinking and let the machines do most of the work. In other words, the 80’s cheese is a bit stiff, but that’s the great charm about these fantastic movies.
None the less, The Thing is probably the most realistic among the ”mainstream” horror movies of the 80’s, or, for that matter, amongst mainstream horror movies over all. There are a lot of eerie scenes. The one where they find the sarcophagus made of ice, for example, or when blood is drawn from each man to determine who is infected… Very creepy! The editing and sound is amazing in these scenes, and the music, the dark heartbeat-like rhythms made by Ennio Morricone, is crafted for worship. Here are the sounds of isolation, paranoia and darkness.
As for the alien, still to this day I think it’s pretty cool. Not as professional as in Alien, but hey… Disfigured corpses melting into each other rule, and that’s a fact.
It’s not all gloom and doom, though. In the beginning, it’s actually quite funny.
The mad Norwegian screaming: ”Se til helvete og kom dere vekk. Det er ikke en bikkje, det er en slags ting! Det imiterer en bikkje, det er ikke virkelig! KOM DERE VEKK IDIOTER!!” (”Get the hell outta there. That’s not a dog, it’s some sort of thing! It’s imitating a dog, it isn’t real! GET AWAY YOU IDIOTS!!”).
The black dude on roller skates: ”Maybe we’re at war with the Norwegians?”
And MacReady, who simply cannot distinguish between Norway and Sweden, yelling ”Hey, Sweden!” as he enters the Norwegian outpost.
That’s funny.
I believe this is the one movie that got me into horror and science fiction in the first place. I remember watching an old grimy VHS copy back in the 80’s, and now some 25 years later, I’ve got this awesome Blu-Ray edition. Both versions are cool, but if I could I’d mix the dirty picture quality of the VHS and the sound quality of the Blu-Ray, making it the ultimate ultimate in alien terror!
John Carpenter’s The Thing is a remake of Howard Hawks’ The Thing From Another World (1951). Sad to say, I still haven’t seen the original, although I own it. I guess I’m pretty stupid.
And now I hear there’s a prequel ready to launch in November 2011. We’ll see how that goes…
Until then:
It’s gonna get a hell of a lot worse before it gets any better.
———-
OTHER GREAT MOVIES OF THE 80’s:
Manhunter (1986)
A Short Film About Killing (1988)
Threads (1984)
The Quiet Earth (1985)
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The only way to fully understand the scale of our influence is to witness the world without us.
Enter a desolate world.
>Impending doom. As for the riots in London, I refer to this article:
Chomsky on demoralized societies – October 9, 2008
As for the American chaos, you may want to read this one:
The Crash, The Israel Lobby and The Change of Attitude – November 25, 2010
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Now, let’s not forget about discussing who and what made Breivik a terrorist.
Here are two opposing views.
1. On the Radicalization of Anders Breivik by David Wood at Answering Muslims, who claims that ”none of the people being blasted by the media [Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller, Geert Wilders etc] had anything to do with Breivik’s extremism” and singles out mainstream media as the beast to blame.
2. Who inspired Anders Breivik? by Justin Raimondo at Antiwar.com, who in previous columns ”clearly assigned them [Spencer, Geller etc] their share of guilt” and now reexamines the issue ”in light of their vigorous denials”.
Watch and read them both.
The fact that David Wood is not even mentioning Fjordman (Peder Jensen) is very odd, since Fjordman’s influence on Breivik’s ideology is massive. Anyone who cares to read the manifesto (PDF) must see that, and anyone reading the manifesto should come to the conclusion that Breivik is an extreme narcissist with a Messiah complex. What he writes about himself and others has proven not to be trustworthy.
Hence, when David Wood speaks so eloquently about Breivik it’s all based on Breivik’s own words in the manifesto, which is also very odd. I’m not saying Breivik’s a complete liar, just that he’s lying. A lot.
The publishers of the Gates of Vienna blog (where Fjordman is a frequent contributor) encourage us to read their articles and check their links. Justin Raimondo did just that, and found some really sick stuff written by some freak named ”El Inglés”. Here are some quotes from an article entitled On Vigilantism – Part One, published on Gates of Vienna, April 5 2010. There are many more.
Altering the response of the apparatus of state to Muslim crime may well emerge as one of the most obvious motivations for vigilante activity. If one is concerned about Somali drug-dealing and the lack of effective response by the state, then executing a few Somali drug-dealers and then calling a national newspaper with a) the justification for the killing and b) the calibre of the handgun used in the executions (for purposes of establishing one’s identity) will be likely to focus a certain amount of attention on the problem. […]
In contrast, any group of European vigilantes intent on taking the law into their own hands vis-à-vis Muslim crime would not suffer this restriction. Exceptional brutality will always have the potential to repel supporters and potential supporters, but it stands to reason that vigilantes in, say, Denmark, visiting impromptu justice on Arab street thugs in Copenhagen will have a much higher threshold of violence they have to cross before such revulsion starts to work against them. Indeed, everyday Danes tired of the Muslim crime now contaminating their country may well look to such people as their saviours, affording them support of various types. This will open up the potential for exceptional violence. […]
The efficacy of non-lethal violence in persuading these people to behave themselves in a more civilized manner is likely to be close to be zero. This leaves vigilantes with only one obvious option, which is to kill off the people in question. This will have the twin effects of a) making it impossible for them to engage in further crime, and b) creating at least some possibility that others like them might decide on a change of career.
The first comment on this article is by Fjordman. He does not condemn the maiming, beating and killing, but rather:
A thought-provoking essay from Inglés, as usual. May I also suggest that we cultivate a form of pan-European ethnic solidarity when it comes to stopping and reversing Third World immigration and removing the Globalist traitor class. Perhaps we can call it “white Zionism.” Since European group solidarity appears to be what the powers-that-be fear the most, perhaps that’s what we should give them.
I’d like to see a video by David Wood where he discusses the influence of Fjordman and Gates of Vienna in relation to what Breivik actually did.
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In Sweden we have this blog named Politiskt Inkorrekt (Politically Incorrect), which is one of the most visited sites in our country. ”We tell it like it is, straight, without any kind of censorship.”
This blog is now being run by leading people of Sverigedemokraterna (SD, the Sweden Democrats), and it’s filled to the brim with hatred and lies. Lately they’ve been running this ”terrorism against Israel is more justified than terrorism against Norway” crap, for example.
Today they published an article entitled Något är ruttet i Norge – elitens anti-semitism (”Something is rotten in Norway – the Anti-Semitism of the elite”). In short, they praise the freaks in a Canadian TV-show who blame the people of Norway for being anti-Semitic. In other words, they sympathize with what Anders Behring Breivik did, saying that the young people who participated in the AUF summer camp at Utøya had themselves to blame for taking a stand for the suppressed people in Palestine.
This is not the stance taken by extremist underground Muslim-hating websites only (like David Horowitz’s Frontpage, to pick one of many examples). In many ways, this is the official Zionist stance. Jerusalem Post:
”The youth camp he attacked was engaged in what was essentially (though the campers didn’t see it that way, no doubt) a pro-terrorist program.”
It would be interesting to hear what the people who voted for and sympathize with Sverigedemokraterna think about this. Are you against your own people, all of a sudden? Are you against your fellow Norwegians? Because that’s what SD is all about these days.