Ezra Klein is just another trickster, a stand-in for the Democratic Socialists of America

 Christopher Nolan's Trojan Horse

... Now we need those who would remake this world. 

Yeah, thanks a lot

 

OF COURSE The Grauniad is DELIGHTED with a reinvention of the Odyssey which turns it into an epic ordeal of anguish and postwar disillusion

 ... arriving back to their prewar state emotionally or spiritually . . . may never happen at all ... 

Just like England. Vote Labour.

 

 

 

I don't think this dingbat has ever read the Odyssey or even cares what it says

 Did Nolan?

Nolan’s ‘Odyssey’ Confronts Civilization’s Original Sin 

... I was struck by the deeper prophetic truth of the film’s final statement: Someday, the dawn will break, and all will be made new. And like Odysseus, the leader of the house will return—welcoming the humblest beggar, wielding justice like a well-strung bow, and offering mercy to all who lay down their arms before him.

Cunning Odysseus only had slaughter in mind, not mercy, hid the weapons, and slew them all, save two righteous for whom Telemachus his son had interceded:

So, noble Odysseus remained in the hall, planning with Athene’s aid how to kill the Suitors. At once he spoke to Telemachus winged words: ‘We must hide the weapons away, all of them, Telemachus. If the Suitors miss them and question you, deceive them with placatory words, and say: “I’ve moved them out of the smoke from the fire, since they no longer look as they did when Odysseus left them behind and sailed for Troy, but are all grimy where the draught from the hearth has reached them. Zeus, son of Cronos, has filled my heart with an even greater fear, that you might start a quarrel amongst yourselves, and wound each other, and so bring shame on the feast and your cause. Iron itself draws a man towards it.”’ ... 

-- Homer, Odyssey XIX

... When the Suitors saw Antinous fall, there was uproar throughout the hall, and they leapt from their seats in fear, running to the walls to find a shield or a stout spear of which there were no sign.

... Leodes ran forward and clasped Odysseus’ knees, and begged with winged words: ‘Odysseus, respect the suppliant at your knees: I ask for mercy. I swear I have never wantonly wronged a woman of your house, in word or deed. Instead I tried to restrain others from doing so. But they would not listen, or keep their hands from evil, and so through foolish wantonness they meet a cruel fate. And I, though I am only their innocent priest, will die with them. It is true one gets no thanks for good deeds.’

Resourceful Odysseus gave him an angry look and said: ‘If you were really their priest you must often have prayed that the day of my joyful return would be long delayed and that my loyal wife would go with you and bear you children. For that you will not escape a sorry death.’

With this he grasped the sword in his strong hand that Agelaus had dropped on the ground nearby as he fell, and struck Leodes hard on the neck, so that while he was still trying to speak his head bit the dust. ...

-- Odyssey XXII 

 

Since it's not about Homer let me fix that for ya

 Somebody should make a movie about the actual Odyssey, instead of a movie about the West's Achilles heel, its introspective conscience since the defeat of Athens in 404 BC, the volume on which was turned up to 11 by Christianity.

Nothing defines the West like its failure of nerve. 

 

Nolan’s “Odyssey” Is a Defense of Western Christian Civilization

Garrett Exner, Providence

 

... [Christopher Nolan] never sought to make a film straightforwardly depicting Odysseus’s Late Bronze Age journey around the Mediterranean.

 

... In the Homeric epic, Odysseus is not troubled by the sack of Troy. He understands it as a glorious victory. Yet Nolan chooses to show the sack of Troy as a descent into violence and hate, culminating in the desecration of Athena’s temple and even the beheading of Athena herself. Instead of being proud of sacking Troy, these acts inspire severe post-traumatic stress and moral injury in Odysseus. This is not a bastardization of The Odyssey, but a thoughtful update in light of the Christian morality that has come to define the West.  

 

Through the film Nolan clarifies this through the use of Christian themes . . .. 

This should win the Academy Award for something

 

Steve Sailer on communist fellow traveler J. Robert Oppenheimer the movie: wut, lol, yikes, sheesh, um, holy cow, and yeah that's California

admirably (perhaps excessively) historically accurate

the welcome clarity of the sound

the porkpie hat with the wide Western brim 

the movie is overly critical of Oppenheimer 

a nuclear weapon hasn’t been used in anger since 1945 

Oppenheimer had a long track record of misjudging Stalin’s character . . . as head of the world’s most glamorous academic organization, the Institute for Advanced Studies, a job at which he was superb due to his polymathic near-infallibility of judgment

I try to hold glass-half-full opinions of scientists like Oppenheimer and Millikan and admire them for their historic accomplishments rather than cancel them for their mundane political opinions [even though] The Soviets tested their first fission bomb in 1949, largely due to having (at least) four spies at Los Alamos [thanks to J. Robert Oppenheimer's mundane political opinions]

Here.

Oppenheimer's deep involvement with the communist Haakon Chevalier began as early as 1937 at UC Berkeley

Allan H. Ryskind, here:

The FBI had opened a file on Oppenheimer as early as 1941, after he had failed to immediately inform superiors that three men in Berkeley, California, had been solicited to obtain nuclear secrets for the Soviet Union and that both he and his brother Frank had been urged to help them. One of his colleagues at the University of California at Berkeley was Haakon Chevalier, who worked with Oppenheimer on various Communist enterprises and who urged him to give Soviet Union Premier Josef Stalin what he wanted.

The Bureau opened its file on Oppenheimer after he had attended a December, 1940, meeting at Chevalier's home that was also attended by the Communist Party's California state secretary William Schneiderman and its treasurer Isaac Folkoff, each of whom was being wiretapped by the FBI.

In early 1943, Chevalier had a brief conversation with Oppenheimer in Chevalier's kitchen, with Chevalier mentioning that a scientist, George Eltenton, could transmit information of a technical nature to the Soviet Union about our progress on the highly secretive atomic bomb project that Oppenheimer was working on.

He initially rejected the overture to assist Eltenton but failed to report the incident until August of 1943. His failure to promptly report what was clearly a Soviet espionage effort would become central to the decision to revoke his security clearance. Oppenheimer did not report the recruitment effort until six months later. In subsequent interviews with Army security, he admitted he had been approached, but he refused to name Chevalier or anyone else who might have been involved. Not until December, 1943, in response to a direct order from Groves, did he name Chevalier.

From 1937 to 1942, he was a member at Berkeley of what he called "a discussion group," which was later identified by fellow members Chevalier and Gordon Griffiths as a "closed" or "secret" unit of the Communist Party for Berkeley faculty.

 

Why I won't be patronizing Oppenheimer by seeing it: He was a Stalinist and a traitor

 Daniel J. Flynn, here:

As described in this column previously, Pavel Sudoplatov, so high-ranking that the Soviets placed him in charge of murdering Leon Trotsky, maintained in his autobiography that “Oppenheimer supplied … the Soviet Union with crucial information for it to successfully test its own atomic bomb in 1949.” He details Oppenheimer’s role, “which included allowing moles access to secret data to copy it, and describes him as ‘knowingly part of the scheme.’”

Material from the files of both Soviet and U.S. intelligence supports Sudoplatov’s claim: “An Oct. 2, 1944, memo from the Soviet archives, signed in receipt by chief of secret police Lavrentiy Beria, identifies Oppenheimer as a ‘member of the apparatus of Comrade [Earl] Browder’ who ‘provided cooperation in access to research for several of our tested sources including a relative of [the Communist Party USA leader].’”

Venona project decrypts refer to Oppenheimer under a codename, monikers in most but not all circumstances reserved for Soviet assets. A decoded March 1945 intercept “instructs Soviet agents to ‘re-establish contact with “Veskel” … as soon as possible.’ Veskel, the National Security Administration determined conclusively, referred to Oppenheimer.”

In The Venona Secrets, late authors Herb Romerstein and Eric Breindel wrote: “In May [of 1945] the Rezidentura sent Moscow another report from [Theodore] Hall on atom bomb research. It revealed the locations of work being done and the names of the heads of each research group. All of the names were clearly written out except one, that of J. Robert Oppenheimer, who was listed as ‘Veskel,’ the head of Los Alamos.”

Oppenheimer’s critics lacked this information in 1954, so one better understands their restrained classification of him as merely a security risk rather than charging that he lacked, in the words of President Dwight Eisenhower’s Executive Order 10450, a “complete and unswerving loyalty to the United States.” What’s the excuse of the NBC News Studios documentary airing on MSNBC for omitting so much information from credible sources in the U.S. and U.S.S.R. intelligence apparatus painting a grim picture of Oppenheimer’s trustworthiness? ...

Oppenheimer donated large sums to Communist causes, subscribed to Communist publications, and married a Communist. Other associates in the party included his brother, sister-in-law, landlady, the girlfriend who later became his mistress, and numerous students. He attended secret meetings of Communist professors while teaching at Berkeley.

 Most damning of all, Haakon Chevalier, a friend and professor at Berkeley, approached Oppenheimer with the idea of passing on Manhattan Project secrets to the Soviet Union. Oppenheimer did not report this event to his superiors for many months and, when he did, described the events dishonestly, i.e., by omitting both himself and Chevalier from the story. Rather than steer clear of someone petitioning him to commit espionage, Oppenheimer continued to see Chevalier socially for years.

Hey Nolan You Hypocrite, Your "Home" Is Full Of Blood, Real And Imagined

There's nothing innocent and hopeful about the place you live in, you fraud.

Quoted here:

"The movie theater is my home, and the idea that someone would violate that innocent and hopeful place in such an unbearably savage way is devastating to me.”

Democrat Senator Pat Leahy Of Vermont Loves Violent Batman Film "Best Of The Three"

 

As reported here at The Hill:

The Vermont Democrat and big-time Caped Crusader fan got a sneak peek of “The Dark Knight Rises” at an advance screening Sunday in his home state and says he “Loved it.” The flick, which hits theaters Friday, is the last installment in the three-part series starring actor Christian Bale. ...

When asked how “The Dark Knight Rises” compares to the first two “Batman” films in director Christopher Nolan’s trifecta, the unlikely big-screen star beamed, “I liked it the best of the three.”

From a review which refuses to spoil it (how do you spoil what's already reeking?):

After the murderous clown heist, things slip downhill. A man's face is filleted by a knife, and another's is burned half off. A man's eye is slammed into a pencil. A bomb can be seen crudely stitched inside another man's stomach, which subsequently explodes. A trussed-up man is bound to a chair and set alight atop a pile of banknotes.

A plainly terrorised child is threatened at gunpoint by a man with a melted face. It is all intensely realistic. Oh but don't worry, folks: there isn't any nudity.

 

 

And by the way, the director of the film appears to have contributed funds to Sen. Pat Leahy's political campaign in 2010. Did I mention he was the Democrat Senator from Vermont? Not to be confused with the Socialist Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders?