Freyburg

As if Iraq isn’t enough of a godawful mess, now Aryan Nations graffiti is starting to show up in Baghdad. Members of hate groups are enlisting in the U.S. military in order to “prepare for the coming race war,” and strapped recruiters are looking the other way. Yeesh.

A site I don’t think I’ve ever praised, but is way past due for a shout-out, is No Media Kings, by indie media tyro Jim Munroe, who self-published a couple of novels after leaving Harper Collins and then went on to create a one-man media powerhouse through his website and various other venues. It’s the sort of thing that’s at once inspiring and a reminder that I can be a lazy, “one blog post a day ought to do it” kind of fella.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again..it’s really weird to see the military as the rational actors in United States politics, but it appears that Bush and Co. are well and truly madmen, and that the Pentagon is not pleased about it.

Thanks to a policy of co-opting the intelligentsia, to the detriment of the workers and peasants the Communist revolution was built on.

The New York Times has an interesting article about Oliver Stone’s 9/11 film, due in August. Stone repeatedly says he isn’t making a political movie, that it won’t be anything like JFK or Natural Born Killers, and that it’s a retelling of the day from the perspective of two Port Authority workers who were caught in the collapse and survived.

That’s all well and good, but in that case, why have Stone at the helm? Controversy and avant-garde filmmaking are what he excels at, though sometimes it goes off the rails (witness Alexander or NBK). Stone’s a good filmmaker, and JFK is an amazing piece of work, but if he’s doing this film in a “Hollywood” style, there’s plenty of other people in the business just as capable of delivering the goods.