Islam is at the heart of an emerging global anti-hegemonic culture that combines diasporic and local cultural elements, and blends Arab, Islamic, black and Hispanic factors to generate "a revolutionary black, Asian and Hispanic globalization, with its own dynamic counter-modernity constructed in order to fight global imperialism. (say what!)
I caught part of the Republican Convention on Tuesday night and it reminded me of an old Boondocks strip:
Caesar [holding a newspaper]: Joe Lieberman say's he's the only Democrat who could beat George Bush. Huey: He's right - wait - did he say "beat" or "be"? Caesar: Beat. Huey: Oh, never mind. He's crazy
So today for the third week in a row I've unsuccessfully tried to see the local production of The Last Days of Judas Iscariot. (Once it was due to a misunderstanding about the date, but the other two times the show was canceled altogether). (Unfortunately today was the last potential show so I'm basically out of luck for now... maybe later on I'll write a reflection piece on the position of Judas in Islam)
Instead, this afternoon I went to a multiplex to catch Don Cheadle in Traitor. I don't want to give any spoilers but I will say that I mostly enjoyed the movie. In fact, except for the swearing and a few other bits, I might even recommend it as a great movie for Muslims to see in Ramadan. In many respects it covered some of the same ground as the television series Sleeper Cell... although Don Cheadle's performance was far superior to Michael Ealy's, and the other terrorist characters in Traitor (at least, those with lines) were more realistic and less cartoonish than those in Sleeper Cell.
Given the current political situation, I suspect that we have seen neither the last nor the best of such stories in tv and film. In fact, I think it would be amazing to see a film along the lines of No Way Out which had an African-American Muslim central character whose ultimate agenda wasn't as clear as the protagonists in the previous examples.
Wow, I don't feel ready. It will either start tomorrow or the day after. I think I need to do some thoughtful grocery shopping tonight along with some spiritual inventory-taking.
I should say that I still definitely plan on voting for Obama and I think that some of Heru's criticisms are a bit misdirected. On the other hand, I often think that the United States would be better off with with a parliament so that other voices (for example, like those represented by Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente) could have a voice in the government.
At the same time, it is a bit unclear to me how things would shake out after all the political dust settled under a parliament: There would be Greens and Socialists but there would also be Libertarians. The Democratic Party might clarify its status as a center-left labor party. But then Republicans would probably break-up into an economic and a social conservative group. And you'd also see a more vocal (possibly separate) role for anti-immigrant voices, the hawks, the theocrats and others. More later?
I don't believe that all those "Clinton supporters" are really defecting over to McCain... some of those have to be Republicans who are just trying to mess with the polls. After all, why wouldn't the angry progressive left-of-center women (other than Rosanne) go over to Cynthia McKinney & Rosa Clemente?
Shoot, if Hillary had gotten the nomination and I didn't feel cool about how it went down and I lived in a "safe" state, I would totally vote for them. An African-American woman for prez with an Afro-Latina for VP running on a totally progressive platform?
I just added a number of posts to Third Resurrection which you might like to check out (including the one below) and I'll probably put a few more up in a couple of days.
I recently discovered the blog Fire of Ashk which posted a clip of some Naqshbandi followers of Shaykh Nazim doing dhikr in a circle, where one excited brother starts to breakdance:
You may have heard of Jerome Corsi's Obama Nation which represent's his attempt to "Swiftboat" the Democratic presidential candidate. If so you might also be interested in checking out the pdf of Unfit for Publication which is a point-by-point rebuttal of many of the dishonest claims in Corsi's work. Corsi himself seems to be a pretty foul kind of bigot who compares Islam to a virus and makes a number of negative comments about "rag heads" and Catholics.
With the help of Netflix and the bargain bin at Blockbuster I've finally finished seeing the George Romero zombie oeuvre (Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead plus their remakes, along with the more recent Land of the Dead and Diary of the Dead).
In my opinion, the remake of Night of the Living Dead is the best of the lot, followed by Diary of the Dead. I think the original versions of Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead were better than their remakes. (The social commentary is more effectively delivered and I prefer the original "slow zombies" to the new "fast zombies").
Land of the Dead is somewhere in between. To be honest, it was a bit disappointing but mainly because I had hyped it up in my mind (it was the last Romero movie I had left to see and it was a bit hard to find) but still, it was an interesting allegory of the Bush administration (at least that was Romero's stated intention) and in some ways, quite Grenada-esque.
John Edwards isn't running for president and currently does not hold any public office while the media seems to be paying a lot of attention to this whole John Edwards adultery story (either that or I'm watching too much FOX) On the other hand, John McCain is running for president and does currently hold public office and yet there seems to be very little discussion of the character questions raised by McCain's treatment of his first wife.
And then on top of that you have Cindy McCain's own issues... I don't mean her drug addiction (which is basically a medical question) but stealing drugs from her own charity in order to get satisfy that addiction is a serious ethical lapse.
... but with all the news reports about Russia attacking Georgia, has anyone else been thinking about renting Red Dawn at the videostore? While we are on the subject, does anyone else remember the mini-series Amerika?
McCain: This is a clear choice that the American people have. I had the courage and the judgment to say I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war. It seems to me that Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign.
I was just thinking about this statement the other day. Even if we grant that McCain is willing to adopt unpopular stances regarding the Iraq Waq it definitely doesn't follow that he is making objective decisions based only on what is best for the United States. McCain is also a Vietnam veteran with a son currently in Iraq. So his emotional investment in the conflict is certainly sufficient to explain some of his positions as well.
1. After Obama'sFISA vote I'm finally starting to wish that McKinney had a chance of winning this election. Obama's still my choice but his vote took some of the shine off. Before this I basically viewed him as someone whose ideals I strongly agreed with, but who occasionally had to make some difficult pragmatic compromises with current political reality in order to get elected. Now I'm slightly less certain of where his real convictions lie.
2. This mantra that "the surge worked" seems really silly to me. From the perspective of anyone who opposed the Iraq War on philosophical or ideological grounds (e.g. because they are pacifists, because the conflict didn't satisfy their particular conditions for a just war, because they don't believe the US should be an empire, etc.) the surge's "success" just demonstrates our own technical proficiency in doing the wrong thing. It's like complimenting the DC sniper for his marksmanship.
I've previously mentioned Anida Yeou Esguerra on Planet Grenada (see the day after and anida esguerra. And also check out atomicshotgun.com). Here is a spoken word piece, "Morning Papers" from Marlon Unas Esguerra on Def Poetry Jam. I don't know about specific theologies but it is my understanding that both identify as Asian American and Muslim spoken word artists.
And, if you are in a time-and-zombie-killing mood, you might want to check out Sean T. Cooper's simple, but entertaining series of free online Boxhead Games.
Also, you may have seen some of the books in Open Court Publishing Company's series on Popular Culture and Philosophy which brings together a group of authors to philosophically unpack the content behind the Harry Potter novels, South Park and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I'm in the middle of checking out The Undead and Philosophy: Chicken Soup for the Soulless. (I'll probably do a review in part two of this blog entry once I'm done)
For some reason zombies and zombie movies have been more on my radar these days. Both Shaun of the Dead and the remake of Romero's Dawn of the Dead were on tv earlier today. And a few weeks back Land of the Dead (starring John Leguizamo) was on. And during the days in between I've been making ample use of the bargain DVD bins at Walmart and Blockbuster in order to further explore the genre.
To begin with, I would argue that George Romero's 1990 remake of his own Night of the Living Dead is actually one of the all-time greatest films (one of my favorites in any case). It is a well-crafted story centering around seven personalities who arrive at a farmhouse while being threatened by zombies all around them. In spite of the small cast (not counting the zombies of course) and minimal setting, Romero manages to pack a surprisingly rich set of interactions and relationships, invoking issues of race, gender, age, family into a story full of suspense, conflict, social commentary and irony.
Most subsequent zombie films are similar in the sense that they explore zombie outbreaks in the confines of a specific (even if large) area such as a shopping mall (Dawn of the Dead), an army base (Day of the Dead), in and around a graveyard/mortuary/medical warehouse (Return of the Living Dead) and an airplane (Flight of the Living Dead... which could have just as easily been called Zombies on a Plane).
An interesting exception is George Romero's Diary of the Dead. The somewhat self-referential movie follows a group of film students and their professor who were working on a horror picture out in the woods when they get news of the zombie outbreak. But since the group has at their disposal a Winnebago full of gasoline and video equipment, the characters are able to travel to different locations and settings sense of the impacts of the zombie phenomena. (a hospital, a militia headquarters, a middle-class home, an upper-class home, etc.) which gives a more varied and global sense of the scope of the zombie problem. In fact, unlike many zombie films which portray localized outbreaks caused by some mysterious virus or chemical spill, in the Diary of the Dead the cause leans more to the theological. The basic rules of life and death seemed to have changed all over the world simultaneously. As one of the characters in another Romero zombie film explains, "When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth." In any case, Diary... contains a bit more social criticism and philosophical reflection than most of the other films in the genre, and I would argue that after Night... it is the second-best zombie film I've ever seen.
This isn't superdeep but it still weirded me out... I recently used Mapquest to get directions somewhere and on a whim clicked on "street view" to look at locations around my apartment. It turns out I could see a side view of my car online! It makes me wonder where the images are coming from. Black helicopters? Unmarked surveilance vehicles driving through my neighborhood Anyone know?
I just found out that they are making a film version of Dan Brown's angels and demons set for release next year. (It came up for me because an actress who plays one of the characters in Vanishing Point also has a role in Angels and Demons). In theological terms it probably won't be as controversial as The DaVinci Code, but apparently the Catholic Church has still refused to give permission for filming at the various historical Italian Churches which are part of the story's original setting.
I just finished watching the film Vantage Point last week. The central idea behind the film is how ones perception of reality radically depends on ones point of view. It demonstrates this idea by telling and retelling the story, from different perspectives, of a terrorist attack in Salamanca involving the President of the United States (POTUS).
The movie was good and generally entertaining. I just have a few comments and nits: 1. There was at least one discrepancy between the stories: During the iteration which follows Forrest Whitaker's character (an American tourist with marital problems back home), there are two secret service agents who appear at the end at a crucial moment but are absent from the corresponding scene in the final iteration of the story.
2. A second slight weakness in terms of the construction of the story: At a crucial point, the main terrorist leader who has clearly established his callous disregard for human life during the rest of the film, makes a surprise move actually swerves to avoid hitting a little girl.
3. Finally (and here is the "Grenada-esque" bit) maybe this is just as further example of how everything depends on perspective but the terrorists' motivations aren't made totally clear in the film. In one iteration, a member of the President's staff says that a group called Mujahideen Brigade with connections to Morocco is planning an attack on the President. But when we follow the terrorists, there are few, if any, clues to their ideology and all of them, even the sleeper agent, speak nothing but Spanish.
