Strike The Root Blog

The Devil Came on Horseback: Documentary by a retired Marine captain who takes a job as a military observer in troubled Sudan. He witnesses and photographs daily atrocities by the Sudanese Arab government against the Africans in Darfur. After 6 months he returns to the US seeking a solution from the US government. Of course, he receives none and only token, “car ribbon” support from individuals. Though his concern is admirable the good captain never seems to realize that the state is not the answer, but the problem.

I Know I’m Not Alone: Musician Michael Franti travels to Baghdad and the occupied Palestinian territories to talk to people about living in an occupied land. He also shares his music with them while listening to theirs. Very moving at times.

Pierrepoint: Interesting biopic based on the life of Britain’s premier executioner from 1938-55 who hanged over 600 people, including many Nazi war criminals.

No End In Sight: Documentary gives a blow by blow account of the failed occupation of Iraq by the US military and USG’s ignorant, incompetent, and arrogant policy makers.

Journey From the Fall: Vietnamese drama about a family’s ordeal after the fall of Saigon in 1975. A man’s wife, mother, and grandson escape the country (part of the massive exodus of boat people) as the father tries to escape the re-education camps where he is held captive.

Home of the Brave: You know a war has gone on too long when Hollywood is putting out movies about it long before the war is over. Samuel Jackson does his usual fine work as one of several Iraqi war veterans who have trouble readjusting to home life and relationships. All of them come back with physical, and even more troubling, mental scars. Every generation seems to be surprised that people come back from war screwed up in the head- some much more so than others, of course. No one seems to realize that those who’ve volunteered have already suffered a lapse of reason, morality and sound judgment long before they fly across the world and confront the state’s latest enemy.

Talk to Me: Don Cheadle is very entertaining playing the part of Petey Green, a maverick radio DJ in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. Mr. Green wasn’t afraid to broadcast the truth, whether people were ready for it or not.

Best of the Colbert Report: About 3 hours of Stephen Colbert, much of it hilarious. The best material is his interviews with idiot Congress critters.

Innocent Voices: This one will rip your heart out. Drama based on a true story about a family and their village who work to survive the El Salvadoran civil war in the 1980’s. The Salvadoran army tries to stay one-up on the rebels by “recruiting” (what civilized people call kidnapping) all boys that reach the age of 12. All the state’s terror is supported, of course, by US military thugs and your tax dollars.

Michael Palin- Pole to Pole: Monty Python’s Michael Palin travels from the North Pole to the South Pole-   as much as possible by land and water. He encounters a variety of cultures, each with its own unique values and problems. Everyone should have the opportunity to take such a trip.

Reign Over Me: Adam Sandler plays a grief-stricken widower who loses his entire family in one of the 9/11 planes. An old college buddy, played by Don Cheadle, tries to help him escape the alternate reality that Sandler has created to deal with his pain. Perhaps, it’s sometimes better to allow individuals to deal with their post-traumatic stress on their own terms rather than force therapeutic treatment upon them.

Amazing Grace: An inspiring historical drama about William Wilberforce, the 18^th century politician who crusaded for the elimination of the British slave trade; a business protected, of course, by the British state. Watching this made me wonder if there is an equivalent personality out there to now take on the elimination of the state, itself. Sorry, Dr. Paul, it’s not you.

Make sure to watch and listen to Jimmie Vaughn (“a free independent, sovereign Texan”) performing Down with Big Brother at a recent Texas Independence Day celebration in Austin, Texas.

Don’t want no shackles, Don’t want no shackles on me.

I say, ‘Down with Big Brother, always trying to track and trace me!’   

I just happened to come across some news while web surfing this morning that has made me a little sad for the loss. Though I knew he’d been seriously ill for quite some time, I had no idea that the sci-fi writer/pop philosopher and all around Discordian funnyman Robert Anton Wilson shed this mortal coil four days ago.

Though his philosophy was fundamentally at odds with my own (he advocated a view of reality as being rather plasticene and pliable), there was always a wonderfully anarchistic, anti-authoritarian streak in his writing…and when he was funny, he was very funny as there was frequently truth at the heart of his satire, which, of course, is why we laugh at satire in the first place.

He frequently described himself as a libertarian and an anarchist, though in other writings he decribed European/Canadian-style democratic socialism in rather glowing terms, so his politics often confused me. Perhaps he was sort of a libertarian, decentralist socialist? In any event, he was frequently critical of the Federal Reserve’s monopoly over money and credit, describing its inflationary fiat currency as “bio-survival tickets” designed to create anxiety amongst the population. Overall, I think he had a pretty good grasp on the perverse relationship between the state and its subjects:

“Every authoritarian structure can be visualized as a pyramid, with very few at the top and very many at the bottom, as in the flowchart of any corporation or bureaucracy. On each rung, participants bear a burden of nescience in relation to those above them. That is, they must be very, very careful that their natural sensory activities as conscious organisms—the acts of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling, drawing inferences from perception, etc.—be in accord with the wishes of those above them. This is absolutely vital; job security depends on it. It is much less important—a luxury that can easily be discarded—that these perceptions be in accord with actual reality.”

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Thoughts on some recent rental viewings:

I’ll open with a photo essay on boondocking, the practice of RV-ing off the grid. Seems like it might be pleasantly subversive.

Thanks, Rob, for the invite. I reserve the right to use this space to debunk your movie reviews. (Miller’s Crossing not recommended?! You seem deranged.)