Good Morning 2009

I haven’t had the chance to sit down and do some real blogging in so long. So here are some updates…

I wanted to blog about some movies I’ve seen recently, but haven’t yet had the chance. In particular: Valkyrie, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and Che (I haven’t gotten a chance to see Milk yet). In case I don’t get around to blogging about them, I’d definitely recommend all of them, Valkyrie and Che in particular.

Che is a 4 hour film (it will be a two-part film when its in theaters again this year), that follows his life, first with the victorious guerilla war in Cuba, and then with the unsuccessful guerilla war in Bolivia. I saw it in a gigantic theater in New York City in December with a few hundred other people. Very powerful film!

And as I’m a sucker for love films, especially ones staring Gaspard Ulliel professing his love for another man, Paris, je t’aime (”Paris, I love you”, 2006) was quite good as well.

I’m currently reading Speaking Treason Fluently: Anti-Racist Reflections from an Angry White Male by Time Wise, and The German Revolution: 1917-1923 by Pierre Broué. I plan on doing a thorough review of the latter, but that will take me a couple of months, as its almost 1,000 pages long, and will take me a fair amount of time to do it justice. So far I’d definitely recommend it to others interested in the fascinating history of the German Revolution, and the failures that laid the groundwork for the Nazi takeover of Germany. I’ll undoubtedly be reading his The Revolution and the Civil War in Spain: 1934-1939 soon after I’m done with this one.

I’ve been reading a bunch by Darwin as well, and tons of stuff on materialism, biology, and complementary holism. I’ve already received several messages from people who can’t seem to find the usefulness of Darwin as he relates to politics. Marketeers quote Darwin to apologize for horrible atrocities and that means he’s off limits? Strange reasoning. Not going to stop me. Perhaps my words aren’t yet precise enough. If that’s the case, hopefully that will improve (evolve?) with practice.

Finally I don’t have the emotional energy to write much about it now, but my heart goes out to the Palestinians, and all those who are struggling with them. The crimes of the US-backed Israeli government must be halted as soon as possible. We much work to bring about peace by forcing our government to divest from the Israeli state and pressure it into a genuine peace process.