Just got back from seeing The Good Shepherd

[montanacowboy]

and all I can say is OSCAR big time, altho I am getting tired of seeing my hero, Matt Damon play a sonofabitch lately. The movie was so intense and so timely also, as I look at it in perspective to today = what kind of stuff is going down in Iran and Iraq behind the scenes and how bad is it.

Really makes you think about the games they play with our lives - the Skull and Bonesman, the monied classes and bastards who run the world from their safe little havens using the rest of us like piss ants.

Well DUers, on that happy note - a Happy Christmas to all and to all a goodnight!!

[H2O Man]

1. It sounds interesting.

I look forward to seeing it.

[SharonRB]

2. We saw it Friday night.

It was great, as scary as it was in many ways. I also wondered how true to life the Skull & Bones stuff was.

I've also seen "History Boys," "Volver," and "Blood Diamond" in the last couple of days. Tomorrow will be "Dream Girls." They've all been really good movies -- "Blood Diamond" was very disturbing and violent, but excellent.

[jwirr]

10. I haven't seen it yet but mention of Skull & Bones reminds one that

bush sr. was in the CIA, head of the CIA and a bones man. So there could be a lot of reality to the plot. I know in the 60s-70s we blamed a lot of the Vietnam War on them. We had little trust.

[Imagevision]

3. Our CIA made the intel mistake, but nonetheless, easily got us into the Iraq war

Long enough for shrub to say;
"it doesn't matter if we were wrong on wmd's --

Saddam was a bad guy"

[undergroundpanther]

4. Do ya think

Any of these movies will help people NOT trust rich elitist,pampered pigs that live to play ganmes with OUR lives? Maybe even motivate some to learn to DISOBEY authority and feel revlusion twords the upper class thugs?

[stansnark]

11. "OUR lives" tonight thank god it's us instead of them

we get off easy. author of "Killing Hope", William Blum I believe,estimates CIA and it's policies are responsible for 6 million deaths since it's inception.

[On the Road]

5. My Favorite Matt Damon Son-of-a-Bitch Character

had to be Loki. (If you can call him that.)

"Hey, you know, fuck you, man. Any moron with a pack of matches can set a fire. Raining down sulphur is like an endurance trial man. Mass genocide is the most exhausting activity one can engage in, outside of soccer."

[TahitiNut]

9. "If I had a dick, I'd go get laid. But we can do that next best thing." "Let's kill people."

:rofl:

The absolute best choice of any movie in casting God. Alanis Morissette was made for that role.

[bagimin]

6. Saw it last night........

a one star snoozefest.

[leftofthedial]

7. the only hope for this world is a real revolution

98% of us against the uberwealthy

If we don't do it, we ARE piss ants.

[stansnark]

12. alas, will never happen

even FDR instituted just enough reform to avoid populist revolution.known for saving capitalism from itself.

[Lisa]

8. you might be interested in reading "All the Shah's Men"

It looks at the role of the CIA, in particular Kermit Roosevelt, in overthrowing Iran's democratically-elected government and bringing the tyrannical Shah to power. I got so upset, reading about how a privileged upper-class guy got off on playing "secret agent" while totally ignoring the effects he was having on other people's lives, that I had to take a break before I could finish it. Some good friends of mine lost a family member to the Shah's secret prisons. And to think that if the CIA and those British oil companies hadn't interfered, Iran would have a more open and democratic society, the fundamentalists probably wouldn't have taken control (and there wouldn't have been a hostage-taking), and America would enjoy considerable respect and even admiration in Iran today.

[stansnark]

13. bigger than just iran

let them nationalize oil industry and prosper and those kinds of ideas will spread. ever see "Queimada" (or "Burn!" in usa) with Marlon Brando ? same as it ever was.

[Hippo_Tron]

14. Throwing out Mossadeq was the dumbest thing we've ever done in the middle east

And it was all because he wouldn't sell cheap oil to the British. Iran was actually a liberal democracy like Bush is proclaiming that he wants in the middle east but we didn't like who they elected and so we threw them out.

As I recall though, the Shah was already technically Iran's leader as of 1941 but the real power was vested in the Prime Minister and the democratically elected government, thus the Shah was merely a figurehead similar to the monarchy in Britain. This system continued until the 1970's when the Shah threw out the democratic system and started autocratic rule. Please correct me if my history is wrong.

[Lisa]

15. sounds about right ...

The book explains it in more detail, but from what I can recall (from what my Persian friends have told me), the idea was for Iran to have a parliamentary system, the way a lot of monarchies in the world now operate (the UK, Netherlands, Scandinavia, Japan, etc.).

The thing that really struck me was how much America was admired, not just in Iran, but in the Middle East generally. My friends told me that after the coup, a lot of people could not believe that the US had been involved ... if so, they reasoned, it had to be that the British had tricked the US into helping them. They did not trust Britain at all, after its imperialist occupation of the region -- but they really looked up to America as a role model. I have to admit that I started to cry, when I heard that, just thinking of the lost opportunities.