Tag: Apocalypse Now

“i love the smell of napalm in the morning”

Riding Chariots of Fire

The tens of millions of Americans planning to vote for Romney and Republican candidates or Obama and Democratic candidates still don’t seem to understand how broken the political system is, they still can’t seem to grasp that there isn’t much point in voting when Wall Street owns 90 percent of the politicians.  They don’t like to think about politics, they can’t see the relentless corporate agenda behind all of the two-party system posturing, but they’ve seen plenty of movies, so maybe it can all be explained to them this way . . .  

The two-party system has torched you like The English Patient, your civil liberties are Gone With the Wind, open your newspaper and all you see is Pulp Fiction.  Nixon said he’d bring us together again, but we got Haldeman and Ehrlichman and their Little Shop of Horrors, Reagan promised morning in America, but we got Dog Day Afternoon, Bush promised compassionate conservatism, but we got the Texas Chain Saw Massacre, the bankers and corporations promised jobs and prosperity, but we got Apocalypse Now.  

Put your popcorn down and tell me, do you understand what’s been happening here YET?

No?

Well here’s a red-white-and-blue clue for you . . .

capitalism  

TGIF – Which is Your Favorite War Movie?

Crossposted at Daily Kos



A scene from For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943)

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War Films often acknowledge the horror and heartbreak of war, letting the actual combat fighting or conflict provide the primary plot or background for the action of the film.  Typical elements in the action-oriented war plots include POW camp experiences and escapes, espionage, personal heroism, “war is hell” brutalities… tough trench/infantry experiences, or male-bonding buddy adventures during wartime. Themes explored in war films include combat, survivor and escape stories, tales of gallant sacrifice and struggle, studies of the futility and inhumanity of battle, the effects of war on society, and intelligent and profound explorations of the moral and human issues.

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Pleased To Meet You, Hope You Guess My Name

America gets everything it wants.   It wants oil, and for its sins, it’s getting oil.  70,000 barrels a day of it, coming ashore on the Gulf Coast with more on the way, flowing like black blood from that gaping wound in the earth, ripped a mile deep by the weapons of greed, held in the hands of stormtroopers of profit, nothing can stop it, no one can staunch it, that black blood will keep spilling all over our shores, through the loop current out into the Gulf Stream, up the East Coast and across the Atlantic, written on the waves like a message from Hell.    

Tell me no more of your plans to control this, tell me no more of your feeble response, the sea will not hear you, the tide will not heed you, the poison is spreading above and below. Our fate has been written in carbon emissions, in ozone depletion and polar cap melting, in black bloodstains of horror on the face of the deep.  

The devastation unleashed by BP/Transocean/Halliburton is already orders of magnitude worse than Katrina and there’s no end in sight.  A billion words have been written about this disaster, but the enormity of it is beyond words, only two words come even close to describing it . . .    

Apocalypse Now Pictures, Images and Photos

Corporate greed and political corruption have triggered this catastrophe in the Gulf, there is endless suffering ahead and no way to avoid it . . .

These are people used to surviving disaster.  It seemed there was nothing they couldn’t handle.  Until this spill.  Oysterman Buck Battle, who lost his house to Katrina, calls the oil spill “the monster of monsters.”

“I’ve never heard so much fear in people’s voices,” says Mike Tidwell, author of “Bayou Farewell,” which chronicled southern Louisiana’s long legacy of environmental problems. “A hurricane is an event with a beginning, a middle and an end.  This is more like a nuclear accident offshore and a radiation cloud is coming in.  There’s a sense of doom.”

This Is the End

Everyone gets everything he wants.   I wanted a mission, and for my sins, they gave me one. Brought it up to me like room service.  It was a real choice mission, and when it was over, I never wanted another.  

Your mission is to proceed up the Wasilla River, pick up the trail of returned designer clothes, follow it and learn what you can along the way.  When you find Sarah Palin, infiltrate her team by whatever means available and terminate her political future.

Terminate her political future???

She’s up there in Alaska operating without any decent restraint, totally beyond the pale of any rational human conduct.  She’s still in office commanding the Alaska National Guard, she’s stark raving mad, but she’s going to run for president in 2012 anyway.

I mentioned the turkey beheading incident and suggested that Palin’s been terminating her political future at a pretty good clip all by herself, so why send me up there?  But they wouldn’t take no for an answer.    

I was going to the worst place in the world and I didn’t even know it yet.  Palin was out there somewhere, still ranting about Katie Couric and Charlie Gibson, still raving about liberal media treachery, descending into madness hundreds of Bridge to Nowhere miles from here.

I looked out the window.  Juneau . . . shit, I’m still only in Juneau.  I braced myself for the harrowing journey ahead, a journey that would snake through Alaska like a frozen circuit cable–plugged straight into . . .

Hell, Michigan Sign Pictures, Images and Photos

‘Charlie Don’t Surf!’ McNamara, Kurtz, and the Only Real Freedom

It’s a quiet time now, as we wait for the transition  to happen and our new President to let us know what duties and obligations we citizens have in terms of helping out. A good time for some intellectual recreation with some things other than the day’s  political news for a change. Hope you enjoy …

What was Indochina? What did it mean? And what visual images suggest themselves? For me, I have never been able to shake the image in Coppola’s film “Apocalypse Now” of the American Colonel Kilgore (Robert Duvall) who tells his staff that a seaside village with wonderful surfing conditions is to be bombed flat  so that he and his staff can get a bit of surfing in before dinner. When one of his offers warns him that Charlie controls that village, Kilgore screams: “Charlie don’t surf!” It is self-evident and rational that he has a RIGHT to that beach because he can make better use of it. Kilgore’s proclamation is the paradigmatic image of one type of rationality, the type of rationality that manufactures sensible alibis for horrific acts. The rationale he manufactures to justify his right to a particular stretch of beach is really no more or less dubious than the alibis that our first protagonist, Robert McNamara, offered during the American misadventure in Indochina. Our other protagonist, Coppola’s fictional Colonel Walter E. Kurtz, faces the same conditions as does McNamara, but Kurtz’s refusal to tolerate what he calls “the stench of lies” drives him insane and then kills him.

My ‘Brothers’ Want Their Proud Name Back!!

When you hear the term “Swiftboat” what comes into your mind?

I already know your answer, but it isn’t the meaning for those who served on nor any Navy Personal who served In-Country Vietnam.

Not to far back a small group of misguided Navy personal, who served aboard ‘Swiftboats’ in ‘Nam, took that once proud name and used it for their political purposes and gains, with some others joining them, who not only never served on  swiftboats, and the extremely dangerous missions they were sent into, but some never served at all, in the Military nor In War/Occupations!

Shame On You T Boone, Shame

Your word has turned to slime, hope the business world is paying attention, though you’ll always find

snakes like you to deal with and make some bucks, and I’m sure many already have learned about you

through your years of building your billions.

What’s this all about? Well,