Taking Something Away From the Man

Real Steel is the tale of Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman), a washed-up boxer in over his head in the world of robot boxing.

Fuelled by the demand to watch two participants entirely obliterate each other to the death, robot boxing has seen automatons replace human fighters. Think of it as Bloodsport as waged by droids.

Kenton's life is that of mounting defeats and ever-increasing debt until he swings a shady deal for custody of his son Max (Dakota Goyo) with the boy's wealthy uncle. Max eventually helps Charlie stage a whirlwind comeback to a championship match with the robot boxing world champion, a robot by the name of Zeus.

In the world of Real Steel, human boxers no longer compete. Outpaced by the rise of Mixed Martial Arts and eventually cast aside entirely in favour of robots, the risk once accepted by human fighters is now shunted onto these robots.

In a perfect world, something like that would be great... for everyone but the fighters themselves.

People who frequently watch science fiction films have probably seen Star Trek: Insurrection, wherein the crew of the USS Enterprise travel to a planet populated by the Ba'Ku. They are believed to be a primitive society who has never developed the technology necessary to travel through space, but in actuality are an advanced society that has chosen to live in nearly Ahmish fashion.

One of the Ba'Ku, Sojef (Daniel Hugh Kelly), tells the crew that "we believe that when you make a machine to do the work of a man, you take something away from the man."

There is something to be said for this. But when applied to basic, day-to-day, menial tasks, that is one thing. When applied to longer-term pursuits, it's entirely another.

In Real Steel, robot boxers such as Atom, Zeus and Midas are controlled by humans, but the operators are reduced to the level of software. They operate the fighter, but never themselves fight. Theoretically, they experience all the thrill of fighting without ever actually having to take a punch.

But unlike with human righters, the operator is entirely interchangable. The operator may be able to pilot their fighter to victory, but never really win themselves. They may pilot their fighter to a championship, but never really become the champion.

The operators are at very little risk. As the film shows -- although it doesn't depict a Robot Jox-esque disaster (or, for that matter, a Reno Airraces-esque disaster) -- the operators and their spectators do face the risk of being injured by flying debris.

But they aren't at risk of being harmed by another fighter. They never have to take the punch, they never have to be knocked out. They'll never experience a concussion, never be afflicted by post-concussion syndrome.

Which is nice. But is it worth surrendering the opportunity to enjoy their successes for themselves, in their own name?

Those who would gleefully ban boxing, MMA fighting, air racing, or any other hazardous sport in favour of some kind of remote-controlled alternative would almost certainly believe it is.

As the example of Charlie Kenton suggests, the competitors themselves probably wouldn't be so keen. And while the film predictably concludes with Kenton celebrating having led his robot to a triumph of sorts, it's fair to speculate on whether his satisfaction would last, or if it would be eclipsed by the opportunity to step into the ring and win a championship with his own fists.

If humanity starts building machines to pursue human excellence, people like Charlie Kenton would be denied the opportunity to achieve it for themselves.

Humans denied the opportunity to pursue human excellence: it's as chilling an idea in a fictional world as it is in the real world.

Once Upon a Time in Mexico, There Was a Revolution

Robert Rodriguez's Mexico Trilogy presents an image of a land of desperation. Lawful authority has absconded from the countryside, leaving the people to fend for themselves against powerful criminal cartels.

As the concluding chapter, Once Upon a Time in Mexico begins, El Mariachi (Antonio Banderas) is living in a town of guitar-makers. He lives a monk-like existence, simply trying to pass his time in peace.

Yet a desire for revenge continues to burn within him. When Cucuy (Danny Trejo) extracts him from the village -- under threat of violence to its peaceful inhabitants -- he is presented with an opportunity not only to seek his revenge for the murder of Caroline (Salma Hayek, who appears in flashbacks), but also justice for Mexico as a whole.

For the first time, lawful authority makes a prominent appearance in the Mexico Trilogy. Ajedrez (Eva Mendes), an AFN agent, Jorge (Ruben Blades), a former FBI Agent, a Mexican General, Marques (Gerardo Vigil), and the President of Mexico, identified only as El Presidente (Pedro Armendariz) occupy the plot of the film.

It should be noted that being representative of government is by no means representative of lawful authority. Sands (Johnny Depp) is a corrupt CIA agent, and so represents a government, but clearly represents no lawful authority.

Moreover, being representative of lawful authority by no means imparts legitimacy or virtue. Ajedrez is deeply corrupt, and working for Armando Barillo (Willem Dafoe), the drug lord plotting a coup d'etat against El Presidente.

In order to prevent El Presidente from cracking down on his drug operation and the base of power he's been building, Barillo wants to supplant El Presidente with a military dictatorship led by General Marquez. Marquez, in turn, was a client of Desperado's Bucho.

Following the death of Bucho, Marquez hunted El Mariachi until his disappearance, and murdered Caroline along the way.

Sands contracts El Mariachi to kill Marquez once he has finished killing El Presidente. Sands true goal, however, is much more selfish: he wants to siphon a personal fortune off of the coup d'etat and siappear.

Moreover, Sands uses the personal stakes of nearly everyone involved to his advantage: El Mariachi's desire for revenge against Marquez, Jorge's desire for revenge for the torture and murder of his partner by Barillo. The personal stakes of others are Sands' source of power.

Barillo's source of power is different: his source of power is his seemingly-generous gifts to the residents of rural Mexico, building them homes with the spoils of his criminal enterprises.

Marquez's source of power is the loyalty of the soldiers under his command. With implied continual grift supplied by Barillo, he's able to maintain that loyalty quite amply.

El Mariachi, however, formulates his own plans. Instead of killing El Presidente, he plans to kill General Marquez, and eliminate the most potent threat to the President's lawful authority. He knows that only El Presidente can rid Mexico of Barillo and deliver true freedom, peace, and justice to the people of Mexico.

If El Mariachi represents the libertarian impulse of personal liberty, El Presidente represents his counterpart in terms of lawful authority.

Amidst the ambition of El Presidente is a genuine desire to deliver freedom to the people of Mexico. El Mariachi recognizes this. He realizes that he, as an individual, cannot accomplish this.

What he can do is help eliminate Barillo's most powerful henchman, and thus make it possible for lawful authority to reassert itself in the countryside.

Amongst the anarchy raging in the Mexican countryside, it's easy to mistake the lack of lawful authority for freedom. But the people there recognize that they have no freedom. Their freedom is firmly constrained by the coercion of the military-backed drug cartels.

The coup d'etat is finally too much for the people to bear. They take to the streets and they fight for the lawful authority of El Presidente. As imperfect as Mexico's democracy may be, the citizens decide that their imperfect democracy, and their imperfect leader, are worth waaging a revolution over: a revolution against the corrupt military backing the drug cartels that have effectively enslaved them.

At the end of the film, freedom has not yet returned to Mexico. But (at risk of divulging too much of the film's ending) it's clear that it can.

Although El Mariachi represents the libertarian spirit of Mexico, El Presidente represents its hope for law and order.

For its only amidst law and order that libertarian hopes for personal liberty can truly survive. As the Mexico Trilogy concludes, there is, at last, hope.

Desperado and the Desperation of Feminism

At the conclusion of El Mariachi, the film's titular character is left with even the simplest of his dreams shattered.

The woman he loves has been killed in a fit of rage by Mauricio, a gringo ganglord. He's been shot in the hand, ruining his dreams of becoming a great mariachi.

As Desperado begins, El Mariachi (now played by Antonio Banderas) is now a man possessed by rage. Killing Mauricio hasn't satisfied his desire for revenge, and he now seeks to vanquish Bucho (Joachim de Almeida), Moco's criminal patron.

El Mariachi has adjusted to life as a gun slinger remarkably well.

Early on in El Mariachi, the titular character muses that nothing ever changes. In Desperado, this has held to be true.

The only thing that has changed is El himself. He has set about building himself a reputation as a man to be feared, and he has succeeded, to the extent that anyone dressed in black and carrying a guitar case -- which describes nearly any mariachi in Mexico -- is shaken down and searched for weapons.

In fact, there now seems to be no one better at what he does than El Mariachi himslef. With daring and gusto he shoots down an entire barful of Mexican toughs.

Conditions in Mexico have only deteriorated since the events of El Mariachi. Even as Bucho's men hunt him, he is also hunted by an assassin sent by Bucho's Colombian suppliers. Played to perfection by Danny Trejo (Hollywood's prototypical big, scary Mexican), the knife-throwing assassin tears into Bucho's men before being killed.

Under such conditions, everyone in the town lives in a state of quiet desperation, helping Bucho run his operation out of a simple lack of safe alternatives.

But if trying to live free as a man under the reign of such chaos is difficult, it's even harder for women.

When El Mariachi meets Carolina (Salma Hayek), she is immediately struck by him. As with most of the townspeople, she acquiesces to participation in Bucho's activities, allowing her book store to be used as a front for portions of Bucho's criminal enterprise.

In falling in love with El Mariachi, she seems to become dependent on him for her way out. But appearances are very deceiving. In time, Caroline learns to be every bit as lethal as her lover.

Caroline shares with him a libertarian love of freedom. Bucho has managed to take her freedom of action and freedom of association away from her. It's through the conscious choice of helping El Mariachi when he is wounded -- on two occasions -- that she begins to recover that freedom.

When she leaves with him, it's of her own free choice. It may be the first free choice she has made in a long time.

Even though El Mariachi clearly has a hand in providing her with that choice, it's Caroline herself who finds the will to exercise it.

Caroline learns to be feminine, beautiful, powerful, masculine, and free all at the same time. It's a reminder that the approach to liberty espoused by libertarianism is actually the ideal condition for feminism to thrive.

El Mariachi: Robert Rodriguez's Libertarian Parable

In 1995, Robert Rodriguez made El Mariaci for a mere $7,000. While making the film he had few ambitions for it as a major film -- it was produced as a Mexican b-movie.

For many, a mariachi would seem to be a strange fit as the lead character in a film fusing the best elements of Hong Kong action films and psychological westerns.

For Rodriguez, however, it was only natural. Growing up in San Antonio, Texas, mariachi bands are a staple of the local culture: they hold a particular appeal for tourist crowds.

Throughout the three films spawned by the appeal of El Mariachi, Rodriguez creates one of film's most compelling libertarian parables. His films outline the precariousness of libertarianism amongst criminal anarchy.

At the beginning of El Mariachi, Rodriguez's title character -- played in this film by Carlos Gallardo -- is a humble man with humble wants. Hitchhiking from town to town, all he wants is to find a good woman to love and settle down to a quiet life playing his music.

He's come to regard the elusiveness of this simple dream with a dereliction of hope. Nothing seems to change in Mexico, least of all for him.

In between bouts of begging for work, he spends his time honing his craft in order to become as good a mariachi as his father and his grandfather. For all his hard work, he's regarded as less valuable than an electric keyboard.

If El Mariachi didn't have bad luck, he'd have no luck at all. His misfortune takes a turn for the disastrous when he winds up in the middle of a gang war between Maricio (Peter Marquardt) and Azul (Reinol Martinez).

Rodriguez's Mexico has something deeply in common with the real-life Mexico: where the law doesn't mean little, it means nothing at all. Prison guards barely acknowledge the bribes they are handed as duelling squads of gunmen enter and exit with impunity.

It's in this environment that El Mariachi meets his misfortunate. Like Azul, he dresses in black and carries a guitar case. The difference is that El Mariachi's case actually holds a guitar, while Azul's is loaded with guns.

In the early goings, El Mariachi has no such defences. His only option is to flee, in a chase scene so brilliantly filmed despite the production's meagre budget as to leave no doubt as to the scope of Rodriguez's talents.

Domino (Consuelo Gomez), the owner of a local bar, allows him to take refuge in her apartment. He quickly falls in love with her. In time, she begins to share his affections.

Their love isn't to last. In a fit of jealous rage, Mauricio kills Domino. After killing Moco (which is Spanish for "booger"), El Mariache is driven into a life as a desperado, living on the run from Mauricio's powerful allies.

There is no authority to answer to in Rodriguez's Mexico. By default, the life of any Mexican not aligned with a gang or drug cartel must live the life of a libertarian.

Libertarians value personal freedom above nearly all else. They recognize few legitimate constraints on individual freedom. For libertarians, freedom of action, freedom of thought, and freedom of association hold complete primacy. For libertarians, the legitimate role of law is to protect individual freedom and private property.

Yet it isn't the personal security necessary for the primacy of individual freedom that reigns in Rodriguez's Mexico -- it's the worst kind of anarchy.

Like libertarians, anarchists believe in the primacy of individual freedom, especially freedom of association. Anarchists tend to imagine that only in the absence of lawful authority can individual freedom truly thrive.

Yet in the absence of lawful authority, and its protections of individual freedom and private property, the anarchy that emerges is simply chaos.

A libertarian can only live free if he can live in peace. The anarchy of Rodriguez's Mexico makes it nearly impossible for men such as El Mariachi to live in peace.

Anarchists often imagine that they are natural allies of libertarians. The chaos that explodes in the absence of potent lawful authority everywhere in the world where it lacks -- from Mexico to the Sudan -- demonstrates the polar opposite:

El Mariachi makes its case quite clearly; anarchy is the enemy of liberty -- especially for libertarians.

Total War... It's Hard on the Kids

Apparently "young adult invasion" is actually considered a literary genre in some corners.

Written by John Marsden, Tomorrow: When the War Began is a novel, set in Australia, pitting a band of teenagers against professional soldiers for the control of Australia.

The film opens in very WB-esque fashion, with Ellie Linton (Caitlin Stasey) and six firends camping in a secluded corner of Australia. Upon returning to their homes, they find their families missing, the power shut off, and the phone lines dead.

In time, they learn the harrowing truth: Australia has been invaded by "the Coalition", a group of Asian countries (which may or may not include China). Their families are being held in internment camps.

They eventually learn via radio broadcasts that the Coalition has invaded Australia for its territory. They eventually conclude they really have only one option: fight back.

It's a remarkably similar scenario to that presented in Red Dawn: one in which an ordinary day at school is suddenly interrupted by the landing of Soviet paratroopers in the schoolyard. The mid-western United States has been overrun by a communist invasion.

Former football hero Jed (Patrick Swayze) lead a rag-tag collection of teenagers to become a battle-hardened guerilla unit.

Throughout each film, the horrors of the war take a deep psychological toll on the youths. In Tomorrow, Ellie nearly kills stoner Chris Lang (Andy Ryan) when he falls asleep while he's supposed to be keeping watch for Coalition patrols. In Red Dawn, Robert (C Thomas Howell) sends the surviving members of their unit -- those not killed by enemy action or killed for betraying their friends -- back across allied lines without himself and Jed, noting that the two of them are "all used up".

In Tomorrow and Red Dawn each group has at least enjoyed the benefit of ever having had the opportunity to be kids. Many of the youths involved in total wars today are not nearly so fortunate.

Total war, of course, is the condition of all-encompassing warfare between two groups. Throughout Africa, many ongoing civil wars -- including the ongoing conflict in Libya -- are total wars. There is no real distinction between combatants and non-combatants: everyone is a target.

The psychological effect of total war on children is undeniably striking. But if the west thinks that total war is only an issue in the most remote reaches of Africa, they're wrong.

There are forces waging total war against the western world today, and they very much are recruiting their own children in their war against the west. Al Qaida and the Taliban have press-ganged young girls into cells of suicide bombers. In Pakistan, "suicide bomber" has become a children's game.

These cells of child terrorists can't strike at the west in our backyards -- just yet. In the meantime, Al Qaida and the Taliban have settled for using these suicide bombers to target and intimidate their own people.

Just imagine what the total war Al Qaida and the Taliban are waging against civilized values are doing to those children.

Regardless of whether the war would actually be fought on US soil, Australian soil, in Africa, or in Afghanistan and Pakistan, total war is always hard on the kids.

The World Could Use a Hobo With a Shotgun

Rarely will one ever find a film as distinctly Canadian as Hobo With a Shotgun.

It isn't the kind of film normally associated with Canada. It seems to take a certain comedic thrill in the brutality of its violence; not the kind of quality normally associated with a Canadian film.

But Hobo With a Shotgun, based on a mock trailer produced for the Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez joint double-feature Grindhouse, comes with tons of Canadian street cred. Filmed in Dartmouth Nova Scotia, the film features cameos by George Stroumboulopoulos and a trailer park boy, and even features a bizarre reference to The Raccoons.

The film features Rutger Hauer as the titular Hobo, who goes unnamed throughout the film -- much like The Bride in Tarantino's Kill Bill, and Sergio Leone's "Blondie", the man with no name.

The hobo is a simple transient, riding the rails into Hopetown. Hope has long since abandoned Hopetown, and the hobo has little ambition to bring it back. His dreams are simple: he wants to earn $50 so he can buy a used lawnmower from a pawnshop.

But when he witnesses Slick (Gregory Smith) accosting prostitute Abby (Molly Dunsworth), the hobo cannot simply let things pass. Considering that he had already witnessed Slick and his brother Ivan (Nick Bateman) committing a murder, he should have known better.

Slick and Ivan are sons of Drake (Brian Downey), the cartoonish villain who has corrupted nearly every corner of Hopetown, transforming it instead into the dystopic "Fucktown".

Pushed too far by the filth of Fucktown, the hobo turns in his humble dreams of mowing lawns for a living for a new way of life -- as a hobo with a shotgun.

He quickly begins to clear out Fucktown's criminal underbelly with extreme prejudice. Infuriated that anyone would so forcefully cut into his action, Drake declares open season not only on the hobo, but on all hobos. He threatens to kill all of Hopetown's children unless the citizens take up arms against the city's homeless population and kills them all.

The desperation to protect their children turns the citizens of Hopetown into vicious murderers.

Of all the residents of Hopetown, only one man has the courage to stand up to the denizens of Fucktown: the titular hobo with a shotgun.

It takes some stretch of the imagination to claim that Hobo With a Shotgun has a coherent theme. But if it actually had one, it would be the corrosive effect that desperation has on human society.

Left to their own devices by police who are in cahoots with a man who mass murders children, the citizens of Hopetown simply turn all of their rage on the most helpless people of all: homeless people who have no one to stand up for them.

Yet when crime is allowed to deepy take root, it isn't ordinary citizens who actually suffer the most. It's the most helpless and defenseless members of society: the people who sleep in the very streets where these crimes are allowed to run so rampant.

Certainly, not every homeless person is an innocent victim. Some of them get themselves into the situations they're in by getting too deep into a drug habit. Others are themselves involved in crime in order to survive.

But among the homeless population of any city are some truly innocent victims. For one thing, the homeless population features a disproportionate number of people with mental illnesses. Many homeless teenagers on Canadian streets are not runaways, as many people would believe, but children kicked out by parents unwilling to care for them.

When drug- and crime-related violence overwhelms city streets, its these people who are least equipped to cope with it, and least equipped to protect themselves. They're the unseen victims of crime.

There are things Canadians can do to help: the first is to either support local homeless shelters and youth emergency shelters. If you can't donate your money, donate your time.

The other -- perhaps even more important -- thing is to not allow a single crime to pass unreported on the streets of Canadian neighbourhoods. And if police are unresponsive to reports, to be active pressuring police to tackle crime anywhere and everywhere it rears its head.

The title of this blogpost is actually facetious. The last thing the world actually needs is a vigilante hobo with a shotgun. But there are some places in Canada where strong citizen engagement is going to be necessary to prevent that kind of bloodbath.

Are We Prepared For an Alien Invasion?

With NASA and other groups continually searching for intelligent life, humanity has rarely seriously turned is attention to a very important question:

What would happen if intelligent life found us first? What would happen if it were hostile? There are, of course, a variety of scenarios on the issue, but there are basically two:

The first is that of a hostile alien invader that is simply too powerful for humanity to repel. The alternative is that of an alien invader that humanity can just barely confront.

Of course, this is an issue that can't be ignored indefinitely. Someday humanity will have to consider precisely how it will address these kinds of threats.

In the scenario presented in Battle: LA, the solution is very simple: guns. Lots of guns, and people who know how to use them. In the film, alien invaders seize the major cities of the world, and indiscriminately kill everyone they see. Defenseless humans die by the thousands.

Imagine them doing that in a state like Arizona or Nevada. Both states have open carry laws, meaning that citizens with the proper licences can carry their firearms. Or in states like Montana, where countless militias are not only well-armed, but well-trained.

Certainly, it helps to have masses of supremely-competent and courageous marines to turn back the tide. But when an alien hell-bent on annhiliating the human race sees you as something standing between it and your stockpiles of cheesy poofs, you don't want to have to wait around for the 82nd airborne. No, what you need is an AK-47 aimed squarely at ET's head.

There is, of course, the other scenario: one in which the alien invaders cannot be overpowered by conventional arms.

The government can prepare us for that, too: by criss-crossing the skies with planes emitting a specialized biological weapon -- one harmless to humans but that would be deadly to other forms of life -- could effectively innoculate the planet against habitability for extraterrestrials (and possibly Kimodo Dragons, which are fucking evil anyway).

That was, when aliens come looking for human brains to power their drones, as in Skyline, they'll be the ones dropping like flies.

The other solution to prevent this kind of scenario is to make human brains entirely unsuitable to any kind of practical use. This means we must begin slashing education funding immediately, and that everyone between the ages of seven and thirteen should immediately be forced to read Enormous Thriving Plants and Sister Sage's Musings on a daily basis. This should be enough to reduce the human brain to hate-filled mush, and make it undesirable to any brain-craving alien race that may happen to wander by our corner of the cosmos.

Last but not least, Canadians need to figure out a way to make Paul Hellyer -- Lester Pearson's former Minister of Defence -- the Prime Minister of Canada. Hellyer has been spreading the news about UFOs for decades, and if anyone knows how to confront a hostile alien force, it's him.

It's a very simple issue: extraterrestrial invaders are the ultimate illegal alien. Whether we care to consider it or not, a border fence will not keep those illegal aliens out... possibly unless we electrify the shit out of that fence.



Quite naturally, April fool's. As a side note, no one should ever watch Skyline. It is quite literally the worst thing to ever exist, although ETP & SSM aren't far off.

Canadian History X

White supremacy in Canada -- particularly in Alberta -- took centre stage recently, as a white supremacist group held a rally in Calgary.

The rally was, fortunately, met with a great deal of resistance from the local community. But underpinning that resistance is an encouraging fact: no where in Canada can these white supremacist groups survive on their own. In Alberta, white supremacist groups have been offering financial support to racists willing to move to Alberta from other parts of the country.

When these sorts of rallies are held, it seems that the natural impetus of Canadian society is to analyze Canadian history and Canadian society to determine what contributes to the creation of these movements in the first place.

The focus is, more often than not, on national history. Far too frequently do we bother to pay attention to personal history.

In American History X, the question of personal history in the adoption of white supremacist beliefs are explored when Danny Vinyard (Edward Furlong) turns in a book report on Mein Kampf to his high school history class. His principal, Dr Bob Sweeney (Avery Brooks) instructs Danny to instead write a report on his brother Derek (Edward Norton), just released from prison for the murder of two black men.

Dr Sweeney declares this to be a specialized history course: he dubs it "American History X".

Derek turned to white supremacism after his father, a Los Angeles firefighter, is shot while battling a blaze in an unidentified predominantly-black neighbourhood. His life quickly spirals into a morass of violence, not only against what he sees as the racial antagonists of his neighbourhood.

Following going to prison, Derek has had a change of heart. Racial loyalties on the inside are not what they are on the inside. Now Derek is a victim of the violence, as opposed to its perpetrator.

However, Derek makes an unexpected friend: Lamont (Guy Torry), a black man who works with him in the prison laundry room. In time, Derek begins to turn away from his white supremacist ideology, and leaves prison determined to turn Danny away from it too.

It isn't merely Derek's and Danny's personal experience in being turned to white supremacism that is useful for understanding how the ideology takes root, it's Derek's and Danny's experience in turning away from white supremacism that are useful in turning people away from the ideology.

The typical assumption is that white supremacists are bad people. This assumption is very natural, but it overlooks what may be a key question in approaching the subject:

If Canadian white supremacists were to participate in a Canadian History X history course, what would they produce? And what would it tell us about how to conquer racism?

Rambo and the Revisionist Cultural History of Human Rights

Like its predecessors, Rambo is unapologetically unrelenting in its brutality. The film opens with a jumbled collection of news clips documenting the unrest in Burma (formerly Myanmar), and the government's respose to civil dissent.

This is quickly followed by Burmese soldiers turning dissident villagers loose in a minefield and forcing them to run. Those who aren't killed by landmines -- which explode in their unrelentingly grisly fashion -- are slaughtered with machine gun fire.

The beginning of the film finds John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) living in Thailand, where he works capturing snakes for a snake-fighting ring.

Rambo is approached by a group of missionaries hoping he'll guide them up the river into Burma, where they hope to put a stop to the fighting. They're going unarmed into a war zone. They don't stand a chance: of stopping the genocide taking place there, or even of surviving.

At first Rambo refuses to help them; he's attempting to put his days of fighting behind him. Following a passionate and idealistic appeal from Sarah (Julie Benz), Rambo eventually agrees.

If viewers have any doubt whether or not Rambo still has it, an encounter with a boatload of pirates erases any doubt.

Rambo's passengers are outraged by the casual alacrity with which he dispatches their assailants, even though he has saved their lives. He takes them the rest of the way up the river and leaves them to their task.

After Rambo departs, the village the missionaries are helping comes under attack by the Burmese army. Mortar and machine gun fire tear the villagers and missionaries alike to shreds, while flame throwers are used to burn the village out of existence.

The army spares no one. Men, women, children. The brutality of crimes against humanity is captured in what may be one of the most uncompromising and haunting portrayals in the history of Hollywood film.

After arriving back at his home in Thailand, Rambo already knows what happened to the missionaries. As he tries to sleep, his dreams are haunted with flashbacks to the things he has experienced during his life as a combat soldier.

Even now he knows he cannot "turn it off".

Days later, Rambo is approached by Reverend Arhur Marsh (Ken Howard), who asks Rambo to lead a group of hired mercenaries on a rescue mission.

Rambo is forced into battle once more, on a personal mission that will force him to confront the demons of his past, and finally bring him home.

As noted previously, popular theory holds that Rambo 2 represented a symbolic attempt to re-fight the Vietnam war so that the United States could emerge as the winner.

There's more to it than that, but there's also much in the film to support that interpretation.

In Rambo, however, this particular narrative takes a stark twist: now, instead of re-fighting wars the United States fought and lost, Rambo is confronting humanitarian abuses it chose never to fight in the first place.

It isn't merely the genocide in Burma that the film symbolically re-writes, it's also genocides in Rwanda and Darfur.

In this sense Rambo represents a revisionist cultural history in which the west is artificially granted reprieve for its failure to defend its own values abroad. After all, human rights are a western innovation that carries little weight in other parts of the world.

With a United Nations that allows countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia and China (among others) to pay lip service to this concept in exchange for membership in the international community, there is little reason for countries like Burma or the Sudan to take them seriously; particularly when they realize that the progenitors of these ideas won't fight for them.

Until the west musters the will to fight in favour of human rights anywhere and everywhere it becomes necessary, revisionist films like Rambo will be the last remaining outlet for these values.

Creating the Monster?

Released in 1988, Rambo III was a statement.

There's a brazen Cold War character to the film: set in Afghanistan, it was filmed while the Soviet occupation was still ongoing. The production of the film amounted to Americans rubbing salt in wounds that the Soviets were still suffering -- it's tantamount to the Soviet Film Ministry producing a film about the Vietnam war during the early 1970s.

Rambo III finds John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) completely adrift, reduced to using skills, honed fighting the Vietnamese, as a pit fighter in Thailand.

Colonel Samuel Trautman (Richard Crenna) approaches Rambo with another mission: to travel into Soviet-occupied Afghanistan and help the Mujahideen drive out the Soviet occupiers.

At first Rambo declines until Trautman is captured by the Soviets. Rambo must reprise his mission to rescue his last remaining friend.

Rambo travels alone to Peshawar where he makes contact with the Muhajideen and leads them in their fight against the brutal Colonel Zaysen (Marc de Jonge). At first the Mujahideen doubt him, but his skills help them put the Soviets on their heels.

By the film's end, Rambo has rescued Trautman and returns with him to the United States, leaving the Afghans to continue their fight. History knows how the war ended -- with the Soviet Union retreating from Afghanistan. However, the film ends with a tributary message to the people of Afghanistan.

Many have looked to Rambo III as evidentiary either of western naivete toward Afghanistan now, or western naivete toward Afghanistan in the 1980s. Take your pick.

Of course, the argument that American support for the Mujahideen helped create the Taliban is categorically false. The Taliban didn't exist as a political or paramilitary force until later in the 1990s. Moreover, the Taliban originated in Pakistan, not Afghanistan.

This isn't to say that the abandonment of Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal -- leaving the country destitute and desperate -- didn't help foster an environment that allowed the Taliban to come to power, and Al Qaeda to flourish.

So did the United States create the monster of Talib Afghanistan? It seems that the answer is a combination of yes and no.

This doesn't necessarily provide the answer as to whether or not western troops belong in Afghanistan right now. However, it does point to important considerations moving forward.

NATO must not lose its appetite to help defeat the Taliban. Equally important is not to slack off on nation-building after the Taliban is finally gone.

Otherwise, we simply risk creating another monster.

Leave No Man Behind

Following the end of the Vietnam War, many historians have argued that the United States' faith in itself had been shaken -- that the first and, to date, only military defeat the US ever suffered deeply wounded its public consciousness.

Many have argued that Rambo: First Blood 2 was symptomatic of those wounds. Popular theory holds that the film is an attempt to re-fight the Vietnam War, this time with the United States emerging as the victor.

There may be a case for that. But the film also presented the United States with another opportunity: that to go back and make good on what has become a popular mantra for the US Marine Corp:

Leave no man behind.

In the film, John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone), serving prison time for his rampage in First Blood, is approached with an offer from the United States government: participate in a reconnaissance mission to help identify and recover US servicemen still behind held in Vietnam.

Rambo agrees, and sets off for Vietnam. His mission is to reconnoiteur only -- he is forbidden from engaging the enemy. However, when he stages a rescue of a mistreated POW, the commander of the mission, Marshall Murdock (Charles Napier), calls off the recovery. Rambo is left in enemy hands.

After the arrival of Russian Lieutenant Colonal Podovsky (Steven Berkoff) in the Vietnamese camp, Rambo is tortured until he stages a daring escape.

Rambo even returns to the camp and liberates the POWs. He leaves no man behind.

At the end of the Vietnam war, nearly 2,000 Americans remained unaccounted for in Vietnam. To date, less than 600 have been accounted for.

While the United States had agreed to pay war reparations to Vietnam in exchange for the POWs, the government didn't deliver, and the POWs were withheld. Many of them never returned.

The urgency that no man be left behind clearly wasn't always shared by the US government, but is still felt by many even today. John McCain's efforts to account for POWs have proven to be a noble, if sometimes maligned portion of his record.

During the 2008 election, many slanderous tales were told about McCain being a collaborator during his time as a POW. There was absolutely no truth to them.

One of McCain's proudest records as a Congressman -- as a member of the House of Representatives or the Senate -- has been keeping diplomatic channels open with Vietnam in order to account for POWs still missing.

The likelihood of recovering any POWs alive had already grown slim by the 1980s. Today, many American POWs remain unaccounted for. There is almost no chance any of them are still alive. However, McCain has spent much of his career attempting to arrange the return of their remains to their families.

No Rambo-style mission into Vietnam is known to have ever been staged, let alone successfully free POWs.

Diplomacy has remained the last, best hope to recover these POWs. For many years, John McCain has been their Rambo -- even after their passing.

James Cameron, Avatar and the Craziness of Globalization Studies

It must be wonderfully liberating to study in a field such as Globalization Studies, where ideologically-soothing rhetoric so often tends to supplant facts.

Globalization studies tends to boil nearly any problem down to two basic themes: capitalism and racism, typically with very few facts -- if any at all -- offered to support them.

A typical case is an essay being distributed by University of Lethbridge Globalization Studies professor -- and 9/11 truther-in-residence -- Dr Anthony J Hall.

In one such essay, entitled "Avatar Meets the Bowl With One Spoon", Hall suggests that the brutal treatment of the Na'vi in the film is comparable to the treatment of aboriginal communities in Alberta's Athabaska region.

Fortunately for Hall, his discipline seems like it doesn't require a discussion of the facts. If it did, Hall would have to admit that the pertinent facts don't support his argument.

Hall writes:

"Huge amounts of energy and fresh water are required to extract fossil fuels from the bogs of the arctic watershed. While the profits from this activity enliven the urban cultures of, for instance, Calgary, Houston, Dallas, and Beijing, the liabilities in terms of high rates of cancer and the loss of indigenous political economies are borne disproportionately by the Cree and Dene peoples of the region."

A statement like this is so rife with error and counter-factuality that it's hard to know where to begin.

First off, the economic activity derived from oil sands development development also benefits aboriginal communities in the Athabasca regions. They benefit not only from direct revenue from royalties collected from oilsands operations on their land, not only from related businesses operated by local First Nations, but also in terms of aboriginal employment.

Moreover, Hall ignores key portions of Alberta Health Service's report on Fort Chipewyan that notes that the communities' rates of cancer are actually within natural variation, and could simply appear elevated due to increased rates of detection.

Moreover, a key indicator of an environmental cause to elevated rates of cancer is not present in Fort Chipewyan -- notably, the lack of elevated cancer rates in children.

This merely deals with the factual/conceptual errors in Hall's essay. It isn't the only area in which it suffers.

It also suffers from the presence of a key logical fallacy: the false equivalency.

As Avatar unfolds, it becomes clear that the kinds of abuses perpetrated by the RDA mining company are possible because there seems to be no legally-recognized sovereignty over Pandora. No government holds any jurisdiction over it. It is, for the purposes of human legality, a lawless planet.

The situation in Alberta is not even remotely equivalent. Companies operating in the Athabasca region are subject to multiple levels of jurisdiction. They are subject to the jursidction of Canadian law, Albertan law, as well as the restrictions and requirements imposed by First Nations on whose land they operate.

This isn't to say that there aren't any issues related to legal jurisdiction anywhere in Alberta. The ongoing state of affairs regarding the Lubicon Cree, where oil development proceeded without a settlement of the treaty status of the group -- who have never signed a treaty with the government of Canada -- remains legally intolerable.

But this is not the situation in Fort McMurray, where local Cree and Dene populations have frequently asserted their jurisdictional rights, and have received the cooperation of the companies working on their land.

In short, the scenario in Avatar, with Na'vi being swept aside by overwhelming military power, and the scenario in Fort McMurray, wherein aboriginal communities have benefited from the cooperation of oilsands developers, are not nearly the same.

Dr Anthony J Hall is fortunate that he works in an academic field where rhetoric consistently out-muscles fact. His theories may be accepted by the remarkably-insular academic circles in which he travels, but it won't find traction in a more rigourous intellectual environment.

Why Do We Fight? Redux

Why We Fight presents numerous threads of director Eugene Jarecki's take on post-9/11 American foreign policy. Dominant in those threads seems to be a left-wing interpretation of the actions of the United States since 9/11 -- peppered with references to "American Empire".

But more compelling, and perhaps more illuminating are some of the personal stories of post-9/11 America. One of those is the story of retired NYPD officer Wilton Sekzer, whose son was in the World Trade Centre on 9/11, and died therein.

In the film, Sekzer tells his story of seeking comfort in the days following 9/11. In his case, he did this by asking the US military to dedicate a bomb to his son's memory during the opening days of the Iraq War.

Eventually disillusioned by the war -- he had been led to believe that the war was a retaliatory campaign for 9/11 -- Sekzer comes to regret having asked for this.

He seems to have reached a sobering revelation about the waging of war as a measure of revenge.

Not everyone in the United States has reached this realization. The plan of Pastor Terry Jones of Florida's Dove World Outreach Centre, a non-demoninational evangelical church, to burn a Koran on 9/11 -- which, at most recent reports, had been cancelled -- demonstrates this.

Revenge per se wasn't the stated motivation for Jones' announced intention to host a Koran burning. Rather, he had reportedly planned it in response to the building of the controversial Ground Zero mosque (located not at Ground Zero, but within a few city blocks of it).

But the pettiness that pervades notions of revenge positively saturates Jones' pledged act.

There should be little doubt that Jones regarded his planned Koran burning as an act of revenge for 9/11.

But revenge isn't a valid justification for any act, especially not for acts such as these. It's an emotional response.

To fight a war in Iraq or Afghanistan with revenge as the motive would be wrong. The only valid justification for waging such conflicts is to ensure the security of the states waging them, or international security as a whole.

There is no credible question that removing the regimes in place in each state at the time of the invasion would benefit international security as a whole. Whether the Iraq war, more specifically, actually achieved that goal is credibly a matter of some debate.

The question of why the Iraq war was fought, and the relationship of that decision to the events of 9/11 will remain a crucial question for not only the United States, but for the world as a whole.

When going to war, it's crucial to know why we fight. It cannot be for revenge.

The Last Resort of the Downtrodden & Desperate

There's a reason why so many Hollywood films are fascinated with the topic of vigilante justice -- because public sympathy exists for it.

From films like Harry Brown to films like Death Wish, audiences seem to find a great deal of sympathy with the visions contained in those films: worlds where crime has grown so out-of-control that ordinary citizens have become powerless to stop it, even with the meagre help offered by the law.

Two of the most recent films to address this topic, Defendor and Kick-Ass -- each of them brilliant in their own way -- have approached this topic with a tongue-squarely-in-cheek attitude, and yet haven't shied away from the central tenet that makes these films so appealing: that there very much does seem to be a problem.

In Defendor, Arthur Poppington (Woody Harrelson) is, by day, an extremely unassuming construction worker. He stands by the roadside all day, and holds a sign directing traffic.

By night, however, Poppington is Defendor, a vigilante who fights crime in his own way. His arsenal of weapons ranges from marbles (with or without a slingshot) to jars of wasps. Then there's his standby, a WWII-era trench club.

Poppington does, however, have one other problem: he's either mentally ill, or developmentally challenged. (The film doesn't explain which.)

His chief (imagined) adversary is Captain Industry, the man he holds responsible for his mother's death. (The film's twist on this particular delusion is so predictable as to actually be an afterthought.)

Hunting for Captain Industry eventually leads Poppington to cross paths with Chuck Dooney (Elias Koteas), a legitimately corrupt undercover cop working for Kristic (Alan C Peterson), a Serbian national (former war criminal) who trafficks in humans and drugs.

Dooney is legitimately a dangerous individual. Even after taking a beating at his hands, Poppington is permanently set across his path when Kat Debrofkowitz (Kat Dennings), identifies Kristic as Captain Industry. Her true intention is to take advantage of Poppington (he pays for $40 a week for information about Kristic, but she steals much more than that), but in time he comes to view her as a friend.

Following an arrest for assaulting Kat's father -- who he believes has abused her -- Poppington and Defendor become front page news. An enterprising graffiti artist even paints a gorgeous mural of him, emblazoned with the words "Fight Back".

In Kick-Ass, Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson), a naive high-schooler hopped up on too many comic cooks, decides to don the guise of Kick-Ass (no shit, that's his real name) and fight crime.

After being stabbed by a pair of assailants and run over by a car (the driver leaves the scene immediately after), Lizewski is essentially rebuilt like the $6 million man.

As a result of the metal plates used to rebuild him, Lizewski is now more resilient to pain than he was before. He can now absorb some fairly epic beatings in the course of his activities as Kick_Ass -- a prerequisite for any superhero.

Lizewski's exploits as Kick-Ass win him many fans and admirers. It also attracts the attention of Big Daddy (Nicholas Cage, channeling Adam West) and Hitgirl (Chloe Moretz).

Unlike Lizewski, who's basically just a dumb thrill-seeking teenager, Big Daddy and Hitgirl are the real deal. They dispatch members of the criminal underworld with extreme prejudice and zeal. Where Kick-Ass uses a pair of twin billy clubs, Big Daddy and Hitgirl prefer shotguns and katanas.

Big Daddy and Hitgirl, however, share something in common with Defendor's Poppington that Lizewski doesn't -- a grudge against a local crime boss.

As a police officer, Big Daddy was known as Damon Macready. In order to get him off the case, a crimeboss by the name of Frank D'Amico (Mark Strong) sets Macready up. While Macready is in prison, his wife turns to drugs, and eventually dies of an overdose -- but not before giving birth to Mindy.

After being released from prison, Damon resolves that he will raise Mindy to be the absurdly lethal Hitgirl -- a character so casual and efficient in her extermination of criminal scum that she managed to offend many commentators.

What Poppington and Damon Macready ultimately share in common is a pure social desperation that sets them on the path of costumed vigilantism. Poppington because he has no other way of dealing with the world he is confronted with; Macready because he has been stripped of the most lawful means of going after his adversaries.

There are few things more desperation-inducing than watching the community in which one lives degenerate into a criminal cesspool. Not only do some people really live in neighbourhoods as beleaguered by crime as those in Kick-Ass and Defendor.

Like Arthur Poppington and Damon Macready, many of them long for the means to fight back.

And citizens can fight back -- but not by dressing up as a costumed vigilante. That's just stupid.

Rather, citizens can fight back by refusing to allow a single crime to go unreported in their communities. They can fight back by refusing to vote for a single political candidate who refuses to adopt a realistic attitude toward crime.

That means voting for no candidate who doesn't accept that punishment of offenders and protection of society from them is every bit as important as rehabilitation and crime prevention. They can even join a political party and demand that none of the candidates shall be soft on crime.

They can keep pressure on politicians in their communities, and demand that before they attempt to fund their personal pet projects, they fund the hiring of more police officers to protect their communities.

Even left to their own devices, the desperate and downtrodden can fight back.

But they need to refuse to take no for an answer.

Is Hollywood Really Anti-Christian? (Part One)

An argument has long existed that Hollywood is anti-Christian.

Many of the portrayals of Christians in Hollywood films are far less than flattering. Meanwhile, a perception exists that films that present Christianity in a positive light tend to get a bad rap from so-called Hollywood elites (unless there is some kind of controversy involved).

To Save a Life is such a movie, and at least one of the actors cast in the film seem to think the film has gotten a bad rap.

To Save a Life opens with a funeral. Jake Taylor (Randy Wayne) is mourning the loss of a friend whom he turned away from in High School. His social circle is a simple one: his girlfriend Amy (Deja Kreutzberg), his best friend Doug Moore (Steven Crowder), and -- because Jake is the star of the school basketball team -- everyone else in the school.

Jake is naturally troubled, considering that Roger (Robert Bailey Jr) shot himself right in front of him.

He's eventually pulled into the orbit of Chris Vaughn (Joshua Weigel), a local pastor, and decides to change his life, even over the objections of his friends.

Criticisms of the film are apparently disquieting at least some of the film's cast months later.

Moore isn't a particularly appealing character, and it would be hard to pretend that other actors haven't played such characters better. But a January, 2010 review of the film in the New York Times seemed to offend Crowder enough to write a column on it for Fox News -- eight months later.

In the column, Crowder treats the review as symptomatic of anti-Christian hostility:

"The Hollywood elitists hated it. Surprisingly in most of the nasty reviews, the arrogant critics praised the film for its high-production quality and more than capable cast. What they had a problem with…was its Christian message."

Depending on the eye one has for such details, there may very well be enough in the review to justify Crowder's response to it -- although one may also argue that an actor taking the time to single out and respond to a bad review is rather unbecoming.

The review does suggest that the film has an agenda, but doesn't go so far as to state what the author -- Anddy Webster -- thinks that agenda is. He accuses the film of exploiting school shootings in order to advance that agenda; although the shooting portrayed in the film is more of a "Jeremy"-style suicide than a Columbine-style mass murder.

To Crowder, these kinds of reactions to the film isn't stemmed in the comparative merits of the film -- or whether the critic liked it. For Crowder, the response to the film is stemmed in anti-Christian hostility rooted in liberalism:

"There’s really only one answer. The movie’s message of salvation is decidedly Christian. In the film, the main character, Jake, turns his life around through his relationship with God. Not only God, but the worst kind of God as Tinseltown would see it… the evil, Judeo-Christian God. – Cue the dramatic chipmunk.

You see, See, Jesus to liberals is like the squat-rack to metrosexual gymrats; they avoid it like the plague. They hate it, because it’s a lot of work. Whether you see Jesus as nothing more than a mythical figure or not, there’s no doubt that living your life in a Christ-like manner is a lot harder than the hedonistic lifestyle reflected in Hollywood."

Certainly, this conflicts with at least one particular genre of film: the stoner film, in which characters who would (for lack of a more appropriate term) be considered losers find ways out of their problems without ever changing the lifestyle habits that have led their lives to the sorry state they're in.

Changing a lifestyle is hard. Some film genres have given their characters the option of taking the easy way out. In the end, the characters haven't improved their lot at all, yet have solved their problem of the day. Then again, these films don't tend to do very well with the critics either.

Vaughn challenges Jake to explore his spiritual side without sacrificing his sense of self. However, it becomes clear to Jake that he has to make soem changes in his lifestyle.

Jake eventually has to confront Christian philistinism not only in those in the church, but also in himself.

Everyone is familiar with the Christian philistine: a selfish, self-righteous, judgemental and hypocritical individual who considers thsemelves to be "saved", and has nothing but contempt for those who are not.

Hollywood films are full of them.

To Save a Life seems to acknowledge the existence of such Christians. Moreover, it actually confronts that kind of individual, and challenges them to be more the way they believe they want to be.

There's a reason why the judgemental, hypocritical and holier-than-thou Christian is so popular in many Hollywood films -- such as the upcoming Easy A. It's because such Christians exist. They should by no means be taken to represent the whole of Christianity, but they very much do exist.

Critics whose personal impressions of Christianity are married to this preconception will find To Save a Life particularly challenging.

Those most decidated to maintaining their preconceptions typically don't enjoy challenges.

Many Christians themselves may find it even more challenging. They may enjoy the challenge even less.

How the Canadian Left Waged Inception Against the Public

In Inception, Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is an extractor. With the use of specialized equipment, he can slip into the mind of another individual and steal their secrets.

With a little more work, he can even plant ideas within the minds of his subjects.

The Canadian left has managed just such a feat within the minds of Canadians. But unlike Cobb, who uses a sleep-induction/mind-link machine, the "specialized equipment" of the Canadian left is the state itself.

The Canadian left long ago stumbled upon a subtle means on inception -- quietly installing their agenda as public policy, then allowing the Canadian public to justify it to themselves after the fact.

They accomplished this through a combination of expansion in the size of government and the subversion of civil society in order to meet specific ideological ends.

Barry Cooper refers to this as the "embedded state" - state organs dedicated to increasing the reach and influence of government throughout Canadian life.

Through a variety of QUANGOs -- quasi-autonomous non governmental organizations -- the Canadian left has embedded their own ideology within this embedded state.

They've used Canada's Secretary of State -- a rarely-scrutinized office empowered to disperse funding to civil society organizations -- to accomplish this end.

This began during the Prime Ministerial tenure of Pierre Elliot Trudeau. As Prime Minister, Trudeau directed the Secretary of State to fund and, if necessary, create NGOs.

This had two consequences. It eliminated the need for sivil society organizations to appeal to private citizens for financial support, and allowed the government to make choices that would ideologically benefit the governing party.

A key example is the public funding of pro-abortion organizations while denying funding to their anti-abortion opponents.

The result has been a status quo on abortion where Canada has no abortion law whatsoever. Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada national director Joyce Arthur suggests that groups that plan to change this should not only be denied public funding, but should also be denied the ability to raise funds as charitable organizations, while pro-abortion organizations should be allowed these privileges because their goals are "not political" because they reflect the view of "mainstream Canadians".

But according to a recent poll on the topic of abortion, that mainstream may be much smaller than Arthur believes.

A recent poll concluded that only 21% of Canadians are even aware that Canada has no abortion law.

According to that poll, sampled Canadians believed:

-41% of Canadians believed that abortions are only available within the first trimester.

-15% of Canadians believed that abortions are only available within the first trimester if a woman's life is at risk, if she was raped, or if her unborn child will be born with serious complications.

-10% of Canadians believed that abortions are only permissable if a woman's life is at risk, if she was raped, or if her unborn child will be born with serious complications.

Only 27% of those polled favoured the status quo.

Conversely, Arthur believes that abortion should be formally legalized within Canadian law, but that no restrictions should be placed upon it. She declares that restrictions on abortion would be "unnecessary, cruel, and discriminatory".

Clearly, 73% of Canadians disagree with her -- which would mean that, according to Arthur's bizarre definition of "mainstream" Canada, only 27% of Canadians are within that mainstream.

When polled, Canadians do voice their support for the status quo. The problem is that they don't know what that status quo is.

Arthur further insists that anti-abortion groups cannot justify charitable status based on their educational efforts. She declares them to be deceptive; propaganda. Yet, it seems that the "educational" efforts of groups like the ARCC are a good deal more deceptive.

The National Action Committee on the Status of Women funded many pro-abortion groups who have helped foster this particular rhetorical environment.

It's no wonder that so many Canadians seem to think they share what are actually the ARCC's extremist views on abortion: groups nestled close to the core of Canada's embedded state have spent a long time convincing them that they do.

That the Canadian government has been providing funding to such organizations created an artificial sense of respectability for them -- and considering the iron-fistedly censorious nature of Arthur and the ARCC (they've been involved in efforts to ban anti-abortion groups from University campuses), any respectability afforded is purely artificial.

The Canadian left resorted to these tactics because they must not have known that they couldn't achieve their agenda without monopolizing support from the state.

After 40 years of this kind of subtle manipulation, it's no wonder that the left has managed to convince Canadians that they share their agenda -- even when they apparently aren't fully aware of what that agenda really is.

As Stephen Harper continues to tighten the screws on this kind of ideological self-indulgence, Canada's left will have to begin to find its own resources, and start forging its own reputation as opposed to piggy-backing their message on the back of the government.

Drug Cartels Represent a Clear and Present Danger

In 1994, it was widely believed that Central American drug cartels represented a clear and present danger to the United States.

16 years later, it may have gotten worse yet.

In Clear and Present Danger (released guess when?), Tom Clancy creation Jack Ryan (Harrison Ford) is handed one of the most dangerous jobs an American intelligence operative could be given: go to Colombia and get a handle on the drug cartels there.

When the government freezes assets held by the Colombian cartels in American financial institutions, druglord Ernesto Escobado (Miguel Sandoval) orders his lieutenant, Felix Cortez (Joaquim de Almeida) to launch a devastating retaliation in which Ryan himself is nearly killed -- from which he narrowly escapes.

What Ryan doesn't know is that CIA operative John Clark (Willem Dafoe) is leading a secret mission to kill Cortez and Esbobedo. But when an airstrike aimed at killing Escobado also kills women and children at the site of the attack, attention is drawn to this black op that was never supposed to have taken place, but was quietly authorized by National Security Advisor James Cutter.

When Ryan begins to pick up the trail of the op, the special forces unit in Colombia is cut off from assistance and overtaken.

The only option left is for Ryan and Clark to team up in order to rescue the remnants of the unit -- a mission which will lead them into a direct confrontation with Esbobedo and Cortez.

16 years later, the situation on the United States' border with Mexico continues to deteriorate, as drug-related violence spills over the border and US citizens come under fire.

The security of the US/Mexico border has deteriorated to the degree that armed Mexican Bavy helicopters have been spotted in US airspace over Texas.

This could have catastrophic consequences for the United States.

For example, should the US attempt to help get a handle on Mexican drug cartels by freezing their assets, the likelihood that a retaliation similar to the one depicted in Clear and Present Danger occurring is more and more likely. It's also more and more likely that such a retaliation could occur within US sovereign territory.

The time for the United States to get a handle on their border security -- and start pressuring the government of Mexico to more robustly pursue their country's drug cartels -- is now.

This clear and present danger cannot be ignored any longer.

Patriots & Citizens

There's something to be said for an international thriller author so well-respected that American administrations have asked them for advice on the topic of national security.

Tom Clancy is just such an author.

Through his novels, Clancy has often directed attention to many of the dark corners of the world.

In Patriot Games -- produced as a movie in 1992 -- Clancy examines Irish Republicanism and the Irish Republican Army.

In Patriot Games, Clancy's chief protagonist, Jack Ryan (Harrison Ford) is taking a working vacation in Russia when he witnesses an assassination attempt on a member of the royal family by IRA terrorists.

Though retired from the CIA, Ryan bolts into action. He seizes a weapon from one of the terrorists and shoots another dead. British police quickly intervene and capture Sean Miller (Sean Bean).

Despite the best efforts of a particularly sleazy British lawyer who blatantly lies in suggesting that Miller was merely a ski-mask wearing bystander who was assaulted by Ryan.

Upon being led out of the courtroom, Miller swears revenge against Ryan. Following a violent rescue from British custody, he travels to the United States to make good on his threat. He targets Ryan's wife and daughter, and very nearly succeeds.

Ryan responds by returning to the CIA to help work the case.

The battle between Ryan and Miller is a confrontation between patriots. But it's by no means a battle between good citizens.

Miller is a patriot, as all the members of the IRA -- and Sinn Fein -- were.

Patriotism is considered by many to be a key element of good citizenship. But patriotism alone doesn't necessarily make good citizenship.

Miller may be a patriot, but he is not a good citizen. By turning to terrorism he has abandoned the tools of the citizen -- democracy and the rule of law. He has given up making his arguments in the course of democratic discourse and has decided to attempt to take what he wants by intimidating the British.

Some of the members of Sinn Fein -- a political party closely linked to the IRA, although often against the better desires of individuals such as Gerry Adams -- were good citizens by virtue of substituting political action for terrorism. Those such as Paddy O'Neil (Richard Harris), who funnelled funds raised under the guise of Sinn Fein to the IRA unequivocally were not.

Jack Ryan, meanwhile, is a good citizen.

Though, by his occupation, he must often engage in acts of violence, he does so firmly within the rule of law, even when those more powerful than him threaten consequences if he does.

Many would argue that the cause of the IRA and Sinn Fein was actually just. As a Canadian of predominantly Irish ancestry, this author admits to feeling some degree of sympathy for the aim of such individuals, even if rejecting the means by which they pursued it.

The tools of citizenship will always remain the best and most just means of pursuing any political end.

Although they are often patriots, terrorists are, by their very definition, not good citizens.

A Strange Movie to Pick a Jingoism Fight Over

Warning: the following post contains significant spoilers about the movie The Expendables. Those still interested in seeing this film should consider themselves forewarned.



To the tune of $35 during its opening weekend, movie audiences seem to be enjoying The Expendables.

Film critics like the LA Times' Steven Zeitchik, not so much. In a blogpost that continues to draw more and more attention to itself, Steven Zeitchik casts suspicious aspersions on what he terms the alleged patriotism of the film.

What ensues is enough to make one doubt if Zeitchik even boethered to see the film before writing about it.

Exhibit A for Zeitchik seems to be a remark made by General Garza (David Zayas), the military dictator of a tiny (and fictional) Central American island.

In the film, Garza declares that "we will kill this American disease". Zeitchik either didn't pay attention to the seconds before this announcement, or simply never saw the film.

This statement immediately followed a tense confrontation with James Munroe (Eric Roberts), a former CIA agent gone rogue who is financing Garza's regime in return for a share of the cocaine he plans to export from the island.

During the confrontation, Garza returns Munroe's money, and accuses him of hiring Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone) and the Expendables to kill him.

Zeitchik denounces the film for allegedly casting the villain with a lack of post-war moral ambiguity. But how's this for moral ambiguity? Crushed by rejection by his daughter Sandra (Gisele Itie), Garza begins to feel ashamed of how he has been running his country. Garza apologizes to his men for his selfishness, and promises that he will rid his country of the influences that had led him so astray: namely, Munroe.

Moments before his balcony address, Garza tells Sandra "you are who I should have been."

The General's reign ends with Munroe himself shooting him in the back. If the bullet didn't kill him, the long fall to the ground that follows certainly does.

Whether or not Garza's conscience attack would have taken will thus not be seen. He could spiral back into tyranny. Or he could transform himself into a benevolent ruler.

In the case of Munroe, at surface there seems to be no moral ambiguity -- until one considers that he originally built this operation for the CIA, and merely cut them out when he realized he wasn't going to get a share.

Moreover, Church -- the Agency broker -- hasn't hired Ross and company to kill Garza (and Munroe) as an act of benevolence. Rather, they want to get back in control of the island and the drug operation.

Ross and company -- who, upon appearances, may also feature a British and Chinese national, and so couldn't strictly be described as American -- may well have delivered the island into the hands of its people and a new era of freedom.

Or, they may have simply set the island up for the installation of a new dictator by the CIA.

Zeitchik's screed against the film has even driven Sylvester Stallone onto FOX News' O'Reilly Factor, in which he is forced to defend his film for its alleged patriotism. His initial statement, "I didn't do nuttin'", is really all the defense that is required.

As it pertans to Steven Zeitchik, he's clearly offered criticism about a film he hasn't yet seen. If there is any greater statement on the sad state of film criticism -- where denouncing a film without having seen it is deemed acceptable -- one would struggle to imagine what it is.

Serenity Now for Utopian Social Planning

This is the 100th Nexus of Assholery post about movies. To date, your not-so humble scribe has written about the political messages in films ranging from Hotel Rwanda to Live Free, Die Hard to The Rainmaker.

These posts may become an even-more regular feature on The Nexus. Stay tuned to see what's next!



When the Fox network made the decision to cancel Firefly, fans of the show -- styling themselves "Browncoats" after the rebels on the series -- decided to wage their own Battle of Serenity.

They won. The result was Serenity, the big-screen adaptation of the show (and, indirectly, Halo ODST, the characters of which were based on the cast of Firefly, and even voice-acted by the actors from the show).

The film picks up where the series left off, with Malcolm Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) leading the crew of the Serenity on a payroll robbery.

Leading Jane (Adam Baldwin), Zoe (Gina Torres) and the psychic River Tam (Summer Glau), their robbery is interrupted by Reavers, humans driven deranged and cannibalistic.

Reynold's adventures eventually lead him into the sights of an Alliance assassin (Chiwetel Ejiofor) intent on killing River in order to secure any secrets she may have gleaned from Alliance politicians.

As it turns out, the secret River unknowingly possesses is even darker than anyone could have imagined: the secret of the Reavers.

The origin of the reavers relates closely to the underplot of the entire Firefly franchise: a big government "Alliance" that has imposed itself upon outlying worlds outside of its core territories by military force. Their self-proclaimed goal is to improve the lives of all humanity.

Simply put, the Alliance is essentially Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan in space.

The Alliance dabbles in all sorts of utopian experiments as only big government can manage. The one that ranspires on the planet Miranda truly takes the cake.

Planet Miranda is a former Alliance colony that has essentially been erased from history. It also happens to be smack-dab in the middle of territory controlled by the Alliance.

The Alliance secretly dosed their colonists there with a drug that would minimize aggressive impulses. Unfortuantely, it had two sinister side effects. One, shown in a portion of the population, caused them to become suicidally docile. These colonists stopped eating, and essentially just allowed themselves to starve to death.

The other side effect caused a portion of colonists to become far more aggressive than previously imagined. They became the Reavers.

In response to this revelation, Reynolds delivers one of the most stirring libertarian speeches in the history of cinema:

"You all got on this boat for different reasons, but you've all come to the same place. So now I'm asking more of you than I have before. Maybe all. Sure as I know anything, I know this: they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, ten? They'll swing back to the belief that they can make people... better. And I do not hold to that. So no more runnin'. I aim to misbehave."

Reynolds is determined to see the Alliance's secret exposed to the universe, and so sets off to see Mr Universe (David Krumholtz) in order to make it happen. However, the Alliance assassin is determined to prevent this, and so kills Mr Universe, and prepares to kill Reynolds and his crew.

It's a reminder that when the would-be architects of utopia fail, and the results of their work is instead becomes dystopic, they will do anything to prevent that from becoming public knowledge: even kill.

Serenity may have provided the most succinctly conservative message ever offered by a Hollywood film -- even one made nearly unwillingly by film executives who never understood the value of what they had.

The simple message of Serenity -- beware the so-called progressive masterminds who believe they know what's best for you, better than you do -- holds as true in the modern day as in a fictional and dystopic future.