The Bourne-Moby-Voldemort Identity

Just saw The Bourne Ultimatum yesterday.

On the plus-side: A fun, action-packed summertime popcorn thriller ... with a moral:

Never volunteer to be a remorseless, unquestioning killer for the State.

In the minus column: Gratuitous overuse of the "shaky-cam." You want to communicate to your viewers the chaos and disorientation that attend (I imagine) a man-to-man fight-to-the-death with an equally-trained and even more remorseless killer? Okay, fine. Shake away.

But in a quiet, subdued, face-to-face meeting in a café between a newspaper reporter and his mysterious insider source? C'mon ...

But I digress.

Each of the three films ends with the same song, "Extreme Ways," by a fellow named Moby. Since I'm a certified "credidiot" (one of those people you see in theatres sitting all the way through the final credits), I tried to pay attention to the lyrics this time. What I heard intrigued me, so I looked 'em up on-line.

Wow. In the context of the Bourne films, Moby's lyrics sure seem to express the lament of a remorseless, unquestioning killer for the State.

"So, just who is this Moby?" I wondered. So I went to his website. Where I read the following post in his journal:

i was just in washington dc for a day, and while there i was wearing my 'republicans for voldemort' t-shirt.

granted it's a fairly subtle literary reference (as the harry potter books have only sold, i believe, 300 million copies, and the movies have only been seen by a billion people or so), but i'm still surprised at how many people respond to the t-shirt as if i were really endorsing a republican candidate named voldemort.

every now and then someone will stop me and say 'your t-shirt is very funny, where'd you get it?', but more often than not i get dirty looks from democrats ('boo, hiss, dirty republican') and approving looks from republicans ('yahoo! another member of the cabal!').

but this isn't about politics, it's about my excellent t-shirt (and no, i don't remember where it came from. i think that someone might've given it to me in a bar?) and how surprising it is that the vast majority of americans seem to be unfamiliar with the central antagonist in the most successful book franchise of all time.

isn't that surprising?

i think it's surprising.

maybe if the t-shirt didn't look so authentic. ...

What a hoot! Pulling one over (quite unintentionally) on both Republicans and Dems, both sides thinking he's supporting a GOP candidate named Voldemort!

Just Warriors ~ Just Wars

Just Warriors ~ Just Wars is my new weblog, dedicated to a biblical consideration of war and the waging of war. Anticipated topics:

• foreign policy
• principles of national defense
• raisng, training and equipping an army
• conscription
• individual ethics in war
• Just War doctrine
• international law

... etc. & so forth.

As a Christian, it is my view that God is the final measure of justice, and that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are given to man by inspiration of God to teach us, among other things, how to do justice and live justly — whether in peace or in war.

I invite you join in the discussion.

Benson on the Pat Tillman cover-up

Steve Benson's editorial cartoon from the 2 August 2007 Arizona Republic:

Which kinda makes me wonder: If they did it to Pat Tillman and his family, how many others have they done it to?

The pornography of violence

War is also the pornography of violence. It has a dark beauty, filled with the monstrous and the grotesque. The Bible calls it "the lust of the eye" and warns believers against it. War allows us to engage in lusts and passions we keep hidden in the deepest, most private interiors of our fantasy life. It allows us to destroy not only things but human beings. In that moment of wholesale destruction, we wield the power [of] the divine, the power to revoke another person's charter to live on this earth. The frenzy of this destruction — and when unit discipline breaks down, or there was no unit discipline to begin with, frenzy is the right word — sees armed bands crazed by the poisonous elixir our power to bring about the obliteration of others delivers. All things, including human beings, become objects — objects to either gratify or destroy or both. Almost no one is immune. The contagion of the crowd sees to that. ...

It takes little in wartime to turn ordinary men into killers. Most give themselves willingly to the seduction of unlimited power to destroy, and all feel the peer pressure to conform. Few, once in battle, find the strength to resist. Physical courage is common on a battlefield. Moral courage is not.

~ Chris Hedges, "The Death Mask of War"

Harry Potter: How bureaucracy enables tyranny

Hermione gave a shaky laugh ... "What's Voldemort planning for Hogwarts?" she asked Lupin.

"Attendance is now compulsory for every young witch and wizard," he replied. "That was announced yesterday. It's a change, because it was never obligatory before. Of course, nearly every witch and wizard in Britain has been educated at Hogwarts, but their parents had the right to teach them at home or send them abroad if they preferred. This way, Voldemort will have the whole Wizarding population under his eye from a young age."

~ Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows, p. 210

In his essay "Harry Potter and the Half-Crazed Bureaucracy," law professor Benjamin Barton examines what the Harry Potter series has to say about government and bureaucracy. (After reading the abstract, scroll down to the bottom to download Barton's 21-page .pdf essay.)

Barton got me thinking about the power of ideas, especially among young people. Witness the popularity of Ron Paul's freedom message among the 18-25 year-old crowd — many of whom grew up reading Harry Potter.

Will we get fooled again?

It seems to me that the U.S. is spoiling for a fight with Iran. Allegations have been made for what seems to be the better part of a year that Iran is in violation of a nuclear non-proliferation treaty. And of course, there is the more recent charge that the government of Iran is supporting the Iraqi insurgency — i.e., killing American soldiers — with training, men and arms.

After the "justifications" for our invasion of Iraq — WMD threats, unmanned chemical-weapons drones able to attack Europe in 45 minutes, mushroom clouds, links to 9/11 via al Quaida and Osama Bin Laden, yellow-cake uranium, aluminum tubes etc. — turned out to be bogus, you'll excuse me if I don't just readily accept these latest neo-con saber-rattlings at face value.

Indeed, I recently read what appears to be a quite plausible challenge to the now-standard claim that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is threatening to "wipe Israel off the map." (Why anybody thinks that a militarily adept and nuclear-armed Israel is somehow unable to defend herself against possible Iranian aggression and thus in need of U.S. interposition is a discussion for another time.)

In his 26 May 2007 essay "'Wiped off the Map' – The Rumor of the Century," Arash Norouzi goes into much detail in order to show that Ahmadinejad's supposed threat against Israel was actually a mis-translation into English of Ahmadinejad, in a 2005 conference called "The World Without Zionism," quoting an old observation by the Ayatollah Khomenei. Norouzi also puts Khomenei's statement — and Ahmadinejad's use of it — back into the original context from which it has been torn:

Ahmadinejad acknowledges that the removal of America's powerful grip on [Palestine] via the Zionists may seem unimaginable to some, but reminds the audience that, as Khomeini predicted, other seemingly invincible empires have disappeared and now only exist in history books. He then proceeds to list three such regimes that have collapsed, crumbled or vanished, all within the last 30 years:

1. The Shah of Iran – the U.S. installed monarch
2. The Soviet Union
3. Iran's former arch-enemy, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein

In the first and third examples, Ahmadinejad prefaces their mention with Khomeini's own words foretelling that individual regime's demise. He concludes by referring to Khomeini's unfulfilled wish: "The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time. This statement is very wise." This is the passage that has been isolated, twisted and distorted so famously. By measure of comparison, Ahmadinejad would seem to be calling for regime change, not war [Norouzi's italics — F.G.].

Stating that the "regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time" is certainly not the same as threatening to "wipe Israel off the face of the earth."

The alleged mistranslation of Ahmadinejad's 2005 quote from an old speech by the Ayatollah Khomenei has been discussed at least a year ago, by Juan Cole in May 2006:

Ahmadinejad was not making a threat, he was quoting a saying of Khomeini and urging that pro-Palestinian activists in Iran not give up hope — that the occupation of Jerusalem was no more a continued inevitability than had been the hegemony of the Shah's government.

Whatever this quotation from a decades-old speech of Khomeini may have meant, Ahmadinejad did not say that "Israel must be wiped off the map" with the implication that phrase has of Nazi-style extermination of a people. He said that the occupation regime over Jerusalem must be erased from the page of time.

Note that neither Cole nor Norouzi are apologists for Ahmadinejad or his world-view. Norouzi concludes his essay with this statement:

Iran's president has written two rather philosophical letters to America. In his first letter, he pointed out that "History shows us that oppressive and cruel governments do not survive." With this statement, Ahmadinejad has also projected the outcome of his own backwards regime, which will likewise "vanish from the page of time."

And Cole states:

I should again underline that I personally despise everything Ahmadinejad stands for, not to mention the odious Khomeini, who had personal friends of mine killed so thoroughly that we have never recovered their bodies. Nor do I agree that the Israelis have no legitimate claim on any part of Jerusalem.

But they certainly don't think the widespread and belligerent accusation that Iran intends to wipe Israel off the face of the map ought to be allowed to go unchallenged, for it would seem to lend credence to the American interventionists' view that Iran is nation full of Islamist zealots bent on developing nuclear weapons in order to eradicate the nation of Israel, and that it is thus somehow America's obligation to militarily intervene on behalf of our only ally in the Middle East.

Having some fun with the opposition

The silly season has officially begun: Today we received our first fund-raising letter of the 2008 presidential race, from the campaign of "Baghdad" John McCain!

When we first saw the words ENCLOSED: PRESIDENTIAL PHOTOGRAPH emblazoned across the front of the envelope in bold red letters, we thought Sen. McCain was being just a tad premature. I mean, he hasn't even been elected yet!

But it turns out that he meant this "Presidential Photograph":

The caption reads:

My friend, this photo with President Reagan is one of my personal favorites. It is my pleasure to share it with you. I thank you for your support.

Best wishes,
John McCain

Whenever we receive fund-raising letters from causes or campaigns that we'd rather drink dirty ditchwater than support, we like to return all the stuff they sent us — including the envelope it came in — and using their own postage-paid "Business Reply" envelope!

But this time we did something a little different. I didn't want to confuse Baghdad John's campaign volunteers. ("Huh? Why'd they use our return envelope to send us back everything we sent them, but with no flippin' money? Oh well ... break time!") So instead, in completely feigned appreciation for Sen. McCain sending us one of his "personal favorite" photos, we returned the favor by sending this photo to the McCain campaign (in their postage-aid envelope, of course):


Included was this brief letter of explanation:

Dear McCain Campaign:

Thank you for the photo of Sen. McCain with President Reagan.

In gratitude, it is our pleasure to share with you this photo of Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) with President Reagan. Even though we live in Phoenix, AZ, we consider Rep. Paul to be our congressman. (It's a liberty thing. You wouldn't understand.)

Incidentally, we hope you'll do two things for us:

1) Next time you see Sen. McCain, tell him we said that he needs to find honest work in the private sector; and

2) consider ditching that overspending, gun-grabbing, liberty-killing warmonger ... and come volunteer instead for Ron Paul's campaign!

Yours for peace and liberty,
Frank [lastname]