Nathan Tyree: Zombies are Coming

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Night of the Living Dead spawned two film series:

The Dead and The Living Dead

The Dead includes:

Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, Land of the Dead and Diary of the Dead.

These films split apart to seed several new series. First:
In Europe Dawn of the Dead was released as Zombi.
Zombi was followed by Zombi 2 and Zombi 3. Then Lucio Fulci (who directed the Zombi films) went on to make City of the Dead (not technically a sequel, but heavily inspired by Romero’s work).

Dawn of the Dead was recently remade.
There will soon be a sequel to the remake of DotD.

Day of the Dead was followed by Day of the Dead Contagion (an unauthorized sequel, which was then followed by Children of the Living Dead).

Day of the Dead is also being remade.

Night of the Living Dead has been remade twice: Once as a shot for shot remake and once in 3-D.

Then we have the Living Dead.
The Genealogy is simpler here:

Return of the Living Dead followed by
RotLD2 through RotLD5.

None of this even begins to consider the homage, rip off, inspired by, etc films that were to follow George A. Romero’s classic horror film.

Should we talk about Zombie Holocaust? How about 28 Days Later? Junk. Maybe? Shaun of the Dead?

Why am I thinking about zombies? It’s that time of year.








Dawn of the Dead and Return of the Living Dead

Zombi 2 Day of the Dead Return of the Living Dead 2

Zombi 3 Day of the Dead Contagion Land of the Dead RotLD 3

Dawn of the Dead (remake)
RotLD4&RotLD5
Dawn of the Dead 2

Diary of the Dead

Night of the Living Dead 3-D

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Nathan Tyree: 1984 Redux

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Congress has passed, and POTUS has signed, a new bill that erases the ideas of freedom and liberty. The Torture bill wipes out 200 years of American values and principles in one fell swoop. This new law does away with Habeas Corpus (a move not undertaken since the Civil War).


Under this bill you can be held in secret, tortured, tried in secret with secret evidence and secret witnesses. You may not even have the right to attend your own trial (or even know that it is going on). That's right kiddies, now you too can become one of the disappeared. Wanna hear the really funny part? Section 940j of the bill makes it illegal for any judge to question the legality of the bill. Good stuff, huh?

Is your skin crawling yet?

This bill applies to "Enemy Combatants," a term to be defined later in any way that the Administration wishes. It could apply to you.

How about now? Skin starting to creep?

I remember when we used to vilify the Soviets for behaving just this way. How times have changed.

The Real Axis of evil (Imperialists, Fascists and Christian Conservatives) has dragged this nation so far right that it will take a lifetime to return us to normalcy. They control the Presidency, both houses of Congress and the judiciary. Even if the Democrats manage to take back both houses of the legislature (which seems increasingly likely) we can’t hope to see real change for decades.

How did we get here? Simple: a wacko minority in the Republican party was dissatisfied with the Republican status quo. These people thought that Goldwater was a pansy liberal and had no truck with the libertarian core values that many Republicans held. Men likje Bill Cristol and Karl Rove knew that on their own they could never seize any real power. They needed fellow travelers. They needed a group that was actually large enough to influence elections. They found their dupes in the Christian Right.

Evangelicals care only about their twisted idea of morality and the drive toward theocracy. Rove and company knew that they could throw these people a few bones and get them on board. Gay marriage, flag burning and school prayer were the bones they decided to start with. Abortion also went high on the list.

Never mind that the imperialist fascists cared not a wit about these issues. They would deliver the votes they needed. That’s what’s happened. It doesn’t help that the American left is fractured and in disarray. As long as ‘protest’ candidates like Nader are taken seriously it will be very difficult for the Democrats to take real control. Until the left comes together, and Christian Conservatives learn that they are pawns in a sick game, things wont really change.

End of rant.

Oh, and it seems that more people are learning the dangers of Voting Machines.

Comments (9)

Nathan Tyree: Did you just say "Ho"?

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In California the GOP is trying to intimidate Hispanic voters by sending out Spanish language letters telling that if they attempt to vote they could be charged with a Crime.



Think that's bad? In ten states the Republicans are running ads calling Black Women Hos. Check out a partial transcript of the ad:

BLACK MAN #1: "If you make a little mistake with one of your 'hos,' you'll want to dispose of that problem tout suite, no questions asked."

BLACK MAN #2: "That's too cold. I don't snuff my own seed."

BLACK MAN #1: "Maybe you do have a reason to vote Republican."

You can read more about that ad Here.

It leaves one wondering: what the hell is wrong with these people? Are they this racist? Can they possibly be this stupid? Either way, I really think that the Dems are going to take both houses of congress.

In other news, the Texas race for Governor is going to go to the Republican because the three decent candidates are splitting the anti-Perry vote

incumbent Rick Perry (R),is at at 35%,
Both Chris Bell (D) and Kinky Friedman (I) are in a tie for 2nd place with 23%. Carol Keeton Strayhorn brings up the rear of the pack with 15%.

That's really a damn shame. Any of the other three would be good choices. Kinky is the least of the three, but certainly the most fun.

As we ramp up to the election, don't forget to check out Electoral Vote. It's a great informative site!







And, as Always:

Comments (4)

Nathan Tyree: Islamo-Fascism?

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Arguing with someone here I got to thinking about current trends in right wing propaganda. A favored hot button word of the moment is "Islamo-Fascist." This label gets tossed about by loutish radio hosts and Fox news talking heads on a daily basis now. I can think of no more absurd epithet than this.

Before we can understand why this construction is absurd and internally incoherent we have to understand each of its parts. First let's look at Fascism.

Fascism isn't any easy term to define. It tends toward the nebulous. However, these attempts are a good start:

"Fascism is a radical political ideology that combines elements of corporatism, authoritarianism, nationalism, militarism, anti-anarchism, anti-communism and anti-liberalism."

-Wikipedia

"Fascism is a set of ideologies and practices that seeks to place the nation, defined in exclusive biological, cultural, and/or historical terms, above all other sources of loyalty, and to create a mobilized national community"

-Kevin Passmore in Fascism: A Very Short Introduction


Perhaps the best person to turn to is Fascism's creator, Benito Mussolini. Ol' Benito, before being killed in nasty ways, famously said the fascism was simply a corporate take over of the government.

Now, what is Islam? Islam is a monotheistic religion. In is part of the Abrahamic tradition (like Christianity and Judaism). Islam's main tenet is complete surrender to God. All else (country, family, community) must be subservient to religion.

So we see that in fascism the state is all important. In Islam religion is all important. This is a contradiction. It is akin to calling someone a left wing reactionary. As an insult it just doesn't make any damn sense.

Maybe Rush should learn that you can't just add "fascist" as a modifier to any term and create a good insult.


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In other news: being gay? Well, that's just as bad as Treason

Comments (3)

Nathan Tyree: Here's a First

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A Blog entry that cites sources:

"A fair and complete recount would have resulted in Gore, not Bush being elected [President]."

- Congressional Report on Election Fraud


Anyone capable of reading a newspaper knows the Al Gore was the real winner of the 2000 presidential election. But, not as many people know that John Kerry really won the 2004 election.

That year, in Ohio, John Kerry was the likely winner. Voting machines were tampered with, counts were faked and poor and minority voters were intimidated to create a favorable outcome for bush. (1)

Before the 2004 election congressman Peter King (a Republican) was video taped saying: "it's all over bu the counting and we'll take care of that... we won." (2)

Really, though, they couldn't have stolen an election. Really. But then, the GAO seems to think that they did. (3.) According to the exit polls Kerry should have won by around 5 million votes. Yet the official tally gave it to W by three million (4).

"The reliability of exit polls is so generally accepted that the Bush administration helped pay for them during recent elections in Georgia, Belarus and Ukraine. Testifying before the House Committee on International Relations Dec. 7, John Tefft, deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, explained that the Bush administration funded exit polls because they were one of the “ways that would help to expose large-scale fraud.” Tefft pointed to the discrepancy between exit polls and the official vote count to argue that the Nov. 22 Ukraine election was stolen."

- (4)

So, what happened?

It was rigged, that's what (4). Overseas voters were not allowed to vote (5), Voters were intimidated and tricked (1), and voting machines were used to generate fake votes for Bush (6). Remember, the president of Diebold (the company that makes the voting machines) promised to deliver the election to Dubya (6).


So, why am I still obsessed about an election that was stolen two years ago? Because it could happen again. As the mid-term elections approach we must be vigilant. We must not allow our democracy to be stolen.








1. http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/ohiostatusrept1505.pdf
2. Diary of a Political Tourist
3. http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2005/1529
4. http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/1970/
5. http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10432334/was_the_2004_election_stolen
6. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0828-08.htm

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