The Lives Of Others

Rarely do I see a movie that makes a profound impact on me, but the movie The Lives Of Others will be one to remember and reflect on for a long time to come.

Set in East Germany in 1985, Stasi (the name of the secret police of East Germany) Captain Weisler is assigned to monitor the conversations and actions of playright Georg Dreyman. Weisler is the prototypical communist apparatchik: dry, boring, and gray. Through his undetected surveillances of Dreyman's conversations, Weisler begins to grow progressively more sympathetic to the internal conflicts of Dreyman. Dreyman, you see, is a loyal East German, which is so infuriating to his writer buddies (all of whom are subversives) that he's alienating them. Only after a good friend and brilliant stage director, who is blacklisted by the powers-that-be, kills himself does Dreyman secretly turn on the government. Weisler, through his perpetual listening, does as well. I'll not spoil the movie for those of you who plan on seeing it. (Please note, it's all in subtitles.) But I will say that it is a positive affirmation that the joys of thinking and saying are deeply rooting in all of us, and when they're denied, it is soul destroying.

I certainly hope that this movie gets more viewership than the digusting hagiography of Che Guevara, "The Motorcycle Diaries". If one wants to know what living in communism is really about, go see this movie if you can.

Lay Down With Dogs....Get Up With Fleas

Bet Nancy Pelosi never thought this would happen........

A Post St. Patrick's Day Post

I came across this article a few years back in the New York Press (a free publication here in NYC) written by a fellow by the name of William Bryk. Bryk focuses specifically on New York history, and this one piece particularly interested me. Dagger John Hughes was a fightin' Irish priest who came to New York, amongst the famine Irish. He also was responsible, in no small way, for preserving the religious freedoms of the Irish Catholics to worship here in the States, as well as being perhaps the first to raise the famine Irish up from the squalor, crime, and decadence they had fallen into here in the States, specifically in places like New York and Boston. His story is here.

May the road rise up to meet you, and may the wind be at your back.

Greetings, Mein Froinds!

I've not been blogging much these days, due to myriad reasons, amongst them being that a.) haven't much to say, and b.) too damn tired after work to think, much less blog. Thirdly, I don't have an internet connection in my new apartment, as I'm in-between having an old Mac G4 that is still running OS9.2 and am waiting to get a fresh, new Mac....which I haven't purchased yet. So it goes. So in the interest of re-aquainting myself with this blogging phenomenon, I'll cover a few topics here and there for posterity's sake, add a few (hopefully) trenchant observations, and the world will unfold as it should. On with it.....

• This hasn't exactly been front page news, but it hasn't exactly been relegated to the back pages either. However the story of Ali Reza Asghari's defection is a potentially seismic one. Mr. Asghari supposedly was high up in the Islamic Republic of Iran's government from the very beginning in '79, was the prime mover behind the creation and formation of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and has an intimate knowledge of the inner workings and plans of the Ahmedinejad government. He knows of their intelligence workings, as well as their quest for atomic power. He is currently being held somewhere in northern Europe, but he might already be in the U.S. The amount of information Asghari could spill is really quite extraordinary. Keep an eye on this story and see how it plays out.

• If anyone hasn't seen the Chris Simon two-handed smash across Ryan Hollweg's chin, you can see it here. Nasty, nasty. Simon is probably looking at suspension for the rest of the season (including playoffs), and well into next season. I'm all for "old time hockey", but Simon's actions were plain ol' assault. Tsk, tsk.

• How uptight must Hillary Clinton be about Barack Obama's upsurge? She was thinking the nomination was hers for the the taking, and now this junior senator with all of two years of experience is kicking her ass and stealing her benefactors (like David Geffen)? The nerve! You know you're in trouble when even the writers of the National Review start complimenting your rival.

• I don't think, at this point, that Obama is going to get the nomination. Hillary has been slated for the nomination since 2000. However, I do think that Obama could take a piece out of her, and if Hillary reacts as nastily as I think she inevitably will, it could alienate many Democratic voters, not the least of which are the African-American voting bloc.

• Recently a movie was released called 300, based on the Battle of Thermopylae. For those unaware of what this event was, much less its significance, let me brief you: Thermopylae was a mountain pass in Greece that the Persians had to get past if they were to successfully conquer Greece. A few thousand Spartans, Thebans, and Thespians held off approximately 500,000 Persians, thus buying critical time for the Athenians to prepare their defenses, as well as to arm their navy for the eventual Battle of Salamis. Eventually, the Spartan king, Leonidas, sent everyone home, save 300 Spartans. For three days, the Persians were held off. All of the Spartans, including Leonidas, were eventually rubbed out. But Thermopylae is one of the great "last stand" historical events in history. More than that, its significance was and is huge, as it served to preserve a Greek democracy that inevitably would've been snuffed out by the totalitarian Persian king, Xerxes. This battle, which took place in 480 B.C., has tremendous significance, even 2500 years later. More than anything, it shows that free men would rather die on their feet than live on their knees. Time and again, whenever democratic societies, or even moderately free societies, have ever come into conflict with repressive ones, they win. One need only look at the Cold War, WWII, the Greco-Persian Wars, the Punic Wars, the Napoleonic Wars, etc. Free peoples don't sell off their freedom cheaply and thus preserve their freedoms, whereas the armies of totalitarian states gain nothing by winning; they merely preserve the right of imperial rule for their masters.