George Orwell

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japie
japie
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27 Mar 2012 12:51pm
I had to nip into the Public Library today in order to get some printing done. Whilst waiting for a computer to become available I picked up a copy of John Le Carre's Our Kind of Traitor which I have not read.

On the second page I came across these two paragraphs:

"Last term he had delivered a series of lectures on George Orwell under the title ' A Stifled Britain?' and his rhetoric had alarmed him. Would Orwell have believed it possible that the same overfed voices which had haunted him in the 1930s, the same crippling incompetence, addiction to foreign wars and assumptions of entitlement, were happily in place in 2009?

Receiving no response from the blank student faces staring up at him. he had supplied it for himself: no, Orwell would emphatically not have believed it. Or if he had, he would have taken to the streets. He would have smashed some serious glass."

That really rang a chord with me. I admit to being a bit of a bolshy bastard but over the past thirty years since I left school, all geared up for a world on the cusp of a technological revolution which would free humanity from poverty and lassitude, I have become severely disillusioned with the status quo.

Of late I have come to view the majority of my fellow human beings with a jaundiced eye. They strike me more and more like a herd animal, conditioned and incapable of critical thought or action.

Help me please, surely I am not alone! Let us group together and smash some serious glass!
Wollemi
Wollemi
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27 Mar 2012 1:03pm
You will be glad to hear that Julian Assange wishes to become a Senator in the Australian Parliament.
Stuthepirate
Stuthepirate
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27 Mar 2012 12:35pm
Diplomatic Immunity for Julian might be a little too late
evlPanda
evlPanda
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27 Mar 2012 1:17pm
I totally agree, believe it or not, just in a different way.

Yes, humans are a herd animal. Correct. Yep. That is what they are. Uh-huh. You've got that right. They always were.

I don't think I've fully digested just how deep it goes yet, myself. It seems bottomless. I know Japie you harp on a lot about it, but for many of us you are simply in the teenage rebellion stage of realising, and you've simply left one herd for another.

Obviously I look like an arrogant prick now, but I'm probably in the same situation myself without being able to see it, for I have come to believe that you can't ever leave the/a herd. There are always people with a similar viewpoint, just in different numbers. Now you and I are just in a different herd. We're still a herd creature, looking for others like ourselves, trying to get others to join our herds, that's the point of this post, right?. Just look at the gay marriage thread.

As for incapable of critical thought I'm with you there. The vast majority of people, everywhere, never learnt critical thinking. And I don't think they will in our lifetimes.

Aaaand I'm going to go a little into the looking glass here, a touch mad perhaps: Critical thought seems to lead eventually to a kind of fractal world, split infinitives, endless criticism and self recognition, a hall of mirrors. You keep recognising your own biases in your opinion, you can't escape it, and on top you realise that you are collective thought, the sum of your life's experiences influenced by others who have been influenced before them since forever. No escape. I suspect that thought itself is the enemy (that sentence is so easy to misinterpret, and so very hard to explain in words). In the end it seems to have very little meaning.
</madness>

I want to know what gives life meaning, and what meaning actually is. I'm now far less interested in the truth. I can tell you how many blades of grass are on my front lawn, it's a truth, and it's utterly meaningless. Whereas I can tell you a fictional story, or draw you a picture, or play a song, and it has a lot of meaning. In other words I want the blue pill (or was it the red?).

(Whoah, heavy/3 coffees)

edit: I think the world has gone far, far more Huxley than Orwell. Reality TV especially seems to suggest this. Idiocracy seems far more likely than 1984.

I suggest watching/reading nothing. I suggest not watching any youtube, not reading any books, no newspapers. Eschew all knowledge, clear cache, unlearn, erase, get to truly know yourself first and foremost.
theDoctor
theDoctor
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5786 posts
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27 Mar 2012 1:32pm

Japie, watch a movie called ' brotherhood of the bell'

You can see it full length on youtube, a mid seventies hollywood movie that was initially banned upon release then just covered and hidden and forgotten about...

Sailhack
Sailhack
VIC
5000 posts
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27 Mar 2012 2:29pm
Panda...for what comes across as a senseless caffeine-induced rant, you do make a lot of sense. My dilemma has always been, where do you find individualism? It's not where you look and think "wow, that person's an individual" because there's a fair chance that they are of a herd and there are thousands just like them.

I reckon that's the beauty of escapism - getting away from it all, purging the rubbish we have pushed on us every day and simply enjoying yourself without interruption...because in reality, the current is too strong to swim against, and if we change the current to the direction we want, sooner or later we'll want to go against the mainstream again.

I enjoy the fiction & untruths that come my way in my life...because that's what it is - mine. I realise that if I step out to find the 'real meaning', I'll lose what is important in my life - family, friends & social interraction that I enjoy. Some 'individuals' do stray from the 'norm', and good luck to them - but it's not for me at this point of time...baa.
theDoctor
theDoctor
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27 Mar 2012 3:32pm


TheDoctor is a true individual, his mind escaped many years ago...

He's like one of those old bearded wise sages that spends their life sitting under a tree, eating wild mushrooms and meditating.....

Except his not old...

...or wise

Doesn't have a beard...

Doesn't meditate...

..or sit under a tree
badinfluence
badinfluence
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538 posts
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27 Mar 2012 2:46pm
...and are the so-called individuals just doing it for affect...or is that effect...I always mix the two up. I think you get what I mean?

Just following the exclusive "Individual Herd" instead of another exclusive herd.

We are what we are...we're not what we're not. Biopsychosocially, we are herd animals...we cannot defy it...instinctively or intuitively and it will come out despite our best efforts to suppress it and look 'sophisticated'.

Personally, I lurve discussions like this!! It adds much to this Forum. Keep it up...and how are those kids evlPanda?? It is of paramount importance that we as parents cultivate a new generation of critical thinkers!!

Fab Tuesday Thinkers
Trace

GreenPat
GreenPat
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4105 posts
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27 Mar 2012 5:00pm
evlPanda said...

I'm now far less interested in the truth.


I think a lot of individuals get far too hung up on 'the truth', and expend far too much time and energy trying to find it. Whether or not homosexuals should be allowed to marry, or whether or not the world is in the grips of a reptilian conspiracy, or various other questions that potentially have 'true' answers, just isn't going to make a difference to most people.

Sure, if you're a homosexual who wants to marry, or a reptilian overlord, the truth to that answer could be important to you, but I'm not going to join your herd in your quest for your answer. It's just not important to me.
SP
SP
10982 posts
SP SP
10982 posts
27 Mar 2012 3:30pm
I thought, it hurt. I stopped.

But why are we seeking individualism ? And What will being an individual achieve , surely the definition means it would be of little use to society so how does individuality help make the human race better?
to me it is just something that has been fed to the herd? Free thinkers are more important?

May as well seek an easier goal, happiness. It can be found in little moments every day.

Is it 4.20 yet
petermac33
petermac33
WA
6415 posts
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27 Mar 2012 5:03pm
Julien Assange is clearly controlled oppposition. Yes he exposes truth,irrelevant truth in the scheme of things,getting your trust and then accepts the official fairytale!

How obvious is that ffs?

In many parts of the world you only need to look up to the sky to see the truth,and please not lingering water vapor.

The combination of lack of logic and denial see to it that the herd are being led up the garden path.

And now we are about to be asked to support the military industrial complex by bombing Iran.
Haircut
Haircut
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6491 posts
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27 Mar 2012 8:20pm
google found one

paddymac
paddymac
WA
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27 Mar 2012 6:28pm
evlPanda said...

I suggest watching/reading nothing. I suggest not watching any youtube, not reading any books, no newspapers. Eschew all knowledge, clear cache, unlearn, erase, get to truly know yourself first and foremost.


Sounds a little like what Henry David Thoreau was trying to achieve in Walden. Of course, now I can't recommend that you read it...
stamp
stamp
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2798 posts
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27 Mar 2012 8:34pm
petermac33 said...



The combination of lack of logic and denial see to it that the herd are being led up the garden path.



the combination of delusion, completely unfounded accusation, fallacious reasoning and total disregard for science of any reputable kind gives your arguments the credibility of a retarded cattle dog...

stuk
stuk
NSW
894 posts
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27 Mar 2012 9:37pm
Ask yourself this: When the Council for civil Liberties come on the news raising awareness about this or that do you:

a: Think, good someone raised this
b: Could'nt care less
c: Bastards, interfering with government process

It might give you some insight as to where you sit?
SP
SP
10982 posts
SP SP
10982 posts
27 Mar 2012 6:51pm
petermac33 said...

Julien Assange is clearly controlled oppposition. Yes he exposes truth,irrelevant truth in the scheme of things,getting your trust and then accepts the official fairytale!

How obvious is that ffs?



He might just be a guy who thought something was a good idea at the time then had a whole nation want to put him away so just went this ain't worth it if I say x I'll get out of it.

Freedom is a huge value to most people.

Stuk.. Depends what it is, sometimes I think, who cares, sometimes I think glad someone raised it and sometimes I just think uughh... As for
Politicians, a government which governs less is a good government ( someone maybe able to put the right words up here as we have Thoreau fans)




cisco
cisco
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12365 posts
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27 Mar 2012 10:03pm
japie said...
Of late I have come to view the majority of my fellow human beings with a jaundiced eye. They strike me more and more like a herd animal, conditioned and incapable of critical thought or action.

Help me please, surely I am not alone! Let us group together and smash some serious glass!


Maybe the jaundiced eye is to be expected as one matures after having seen a broad spectrum of life.

That puts me in mind of some of the backpackers, who after having done it for a few years, become you might say, addicted to the lifestyle, and only stay in one place long enough to make enough money to continue travelling.

I have met people in their 40s like that.

I tend to think that if human kind were not "herd animals", the species might not have survived to this day.

Re:- "conditioned and incapable of critical thought or action." It appears to me that a large proportion of the population is like that from their actions during the day and going by what the media puts out as "entertainment", their night time behaviour confirms it.

Re:- "Let us group together and smash some serious glass!" Is that not what political parties are supposed to be all about??

A healthy draught of scepticism is part of my daily diet and I look for the ulterior motive or hidden agenda in just about everything I see in the media.

Though I look for it I do not automatically assume it is there.
GreenPat
GreenPat
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4105 posts
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27 Mar 2012 11:20pm
Glass is half empty (so let's smash it): All the technology and stuff and we're still watching reality (nothing of the sort) tv and can be herded around by a retarded cattle dog. Poverty and lassitude is rife while morality and decency is hard to find.

Glass is half full (so let's drink out of it): Science (eg. medicine) is at a point where we are living longer and in more comfort than ever before. Communication and access to information is easier and faster than ever before, and despite the glass half empty herd, there still seems to be progress in fields like quantum mechanics and clean energy now and then.
japie
japie
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7146 posts
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28 Mar 2012 7:11am
theDoctor said...


Japie, watch a movie called ' brotherhood of the bell'

You can see it full length on youtube, a mid seventies hollywood movie that was initially banned upon release then just covered and hidden and forgotten about...




My five month old computer had a terminal seizure ten minutes in to watching this. If I did not know better I, (I cleaned the screen using cleaning fluid),I would be a little bit suspicious
japie
japie
NSW
7146 posts
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28 Mar 2012 7:28am
evlPanda said...

I totally agree, believe it or not, just in a different way.

I suggest watching/reading nothing. I suggest not watching any youtube, not reading any books, no newspapers. Eschew all knowledge, clear cache, unlearn, erase, get to truly know yourself first and foremost.


I am reading, apart from the John le Carre novel, the power of now by Eckhart Tolle. Trying to empty my mind!

There is nothing wrong with being a herd animal. I guess I should not have included that in my post as that is not what I wanted to focus on but stuff it, I have so why not address it.

My own assessment of human beings is that on the whole they are quite "nice" which is what one would suspect from a species which has reportedly evolved in and from highly socially dependent groups. We have a tendency to look after one another because I reckon that at the basest level most understand that we need one another to survive. Is that not one of the essential requirements for humans, human company?

No, what I am on about is not the fact that we are so bloody susceptable to moving with the herd but the fact that the herd is steered by the carnivors on the edge.

Have a look at how we live on a day to day basis. Very few people look to violence as a solution to problems and yet as a state we are in a state of incessant war with one country or another. This does not reflect our nature so it is obviously driven by people who are very different to the average Jimmy.

I blame the psychopaths

Now I will go and shift some concrete
whippingboy
whippingboy
WA
1104 posts
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28 Mar 2012 11:51am
Come on it's not that bad.

It's not like our media is controlled by some sort of Hypocritical criminal organisation.

Oh hang on, what's this in the Financial review !!
japie
japie
NSW
7146 posts
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29 Mar 2012 12:23am
I posted this same post on my alumni website. It is a very ragged group of men who survived a particularly crap catholic boarding school in Tanzania where the inmates were systematically beaten and often sexually abused. I have no doubt that this is the root cause of my bolshiness and my passionate loathing of bullies and misplaced authority.

One of my friends, a guy I met when pursuing some form of justice and spent five days in the uk with in 2010, a free thinker and now great mate, posted this link to an interview with John le Carre.

It is very worthwhile watching as it gives the viewer an insite into the reality behind three of his recent novels.

www.democracynow.org/2010/10/11/exclusive_british_novelist_john_le_carr
petermac33
petermac33
WA
6415 posts
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29 Mar 2012 2:14am
I listened to the video.Believe he is a complete shill,similiar to Julien Assange. He still gives credence to the man in a cave theory ffs.
japie
japie
NSW
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29 Mar 2012 11:42am
petermac33 said...

I listened to the video.Believe he is a complete shill,similiar to Julien Assange. He still gives credence to the man in a cave theory ffs.


Peter, due respects mate but John Le Carre is a best selling eighty year old novelist with 20 odd books to his name. He has a reputation for taking on the establishment and exposing injustice. I find it difficult to compare him in anyway to Assange other than the fact that he is male and human.
GreenPat
GreenPat
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29 Mar 2012 11:09am
Neither of them are reptilian overlords?
evlPanda
evlPanda
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29 Mar 2012 12:29pm
(long post)

The Teachers were just, for they had been appointed by the Councils, and the Councils are the voice of all justice, for they are the voice of all men. - Ayn Rand


Ooh look, a whole lot of Eckhart Tolle quotes from my Kindle:


Pleasure is always derived from something outside you, whereas joy arises from within. The very thing that gives you pleasure today will give you pain tomorrow, or it will leave you, so its absence will give you pain. And what is often referred to as love may be pleasurable and exciting for a while, but it is an addictive clinging, an extremely needy condition that can turn into its opposite at the flick of a switch. Many “love” relationships, after the initial euphoria has passed, actually oscillate between “love” and hate, attraction and attack. Real love doesn't make you suffer. How could it? It doesn't suddenly turn into hate, nor does real joy turn into pain.

Imagine the Earth devoid of human life, inhabited only by plants and animals. Would it still have a past and a future? Could we still speak of time in any meaningful way? The question “What time is it?” or “What's the date today?” — if anybody were there to ask it — would be quite meaningless. The oak tree or the eagle would be bemused by such a question. “What time?” they would ask. “Well, of course, it's now. The time is now. What else is there?”

All of these things you will have to relinquish sooner or later. Perhaps you find it as yet hard to believe, and I am certainly not asking you to believe that your identity cannot be found in any of those things. You will know the truth of it for yourself. You will know it at the latest when you feel death approaching. Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret of life is to “die before you die” — and find that there is no such thing

Here is the key: End the delusion of time. Time and mind are inseparable. Remove time from the mind and it stops — unless you choose to use it

Have you ever experienced, done, thought, or felt anything outside the Now? Do you think you ever will? Is it possible for anything to happen or be outside the Now? The answer is obvious, is it not?


Him and both the Krishnamurtis say the same thing.

I think you are most influenced by whoever you read the most. You can be reading Rand and easily become utterly anti-communist for instance. They are all top of their game, and very convincing writers and importantly thinkers.

Like falling asleep, some spiritual tasks require a more glancing approach.


As a result I prefer these days something more like Oscar Wilde, Portrait of Dorian Gray. An excellent book once you get used to the somewhat pompous language. There's gold scattered throughout the pages.


We are punished for our refusals. Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind and poisons us. The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret. The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful. It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also.

"They say that when good Americans die they go to Paris," chuckled Sir Thomas, who had a large wardrobe of Humour's cast-off clothes. "Really! And where do bad Americans go to when they die?" inquired the duchess. "They go to America," murmured Lord Henry.

He was always late on principle, his principle being that punctuality is the thief of time.

When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.

The worship of the senses has often, and with much justice, been decried, men feeling a natural instinct of terror about passions and sensations that seem stronger than themselves, and that they are conscious of sharing with the less highly organized forms of existence.

"You will never marry again, Lady Narborough," broke in Lord Henry. "You were far too happy. When a woman marries again, it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again, it is because he adored his first wife. Women try their luck; men risk theirs."

There are moments, psychologists tell us, when the passion for sin, or for what the world calls sin, so dominates a nature that every fibre of the body, as every cell of the brain, seems to be instinct with fearful impulses. Men and women at such moments lose the freedom of their will. They move to their terrible end as automatons move. Choice is taken from them, and conscience is either killed, or, if it lives at all, lives but to give rebellion its fascination and disobedience its charm. For all sins, as theologians weary not of reminding us, are sins of disobedience. When that high spirit, that morning star of evil, fell from heaven, it was as a rebel that he fell.

"My dear boy," said Lord Henry, smiling, "anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there. That is the reason why people who live out of town are so absolutely uncivilized. Civilization is not by any means an easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by which man can reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by being corrupt. Country people have no opportunity of being either, so they stagnate."


This type of fiction is, I think, totally different to say Dan Brown. To quote my favourite author of the moment, Wallace:

Fiction's about what it is to be a ****ing human being."


And finally, while we are talking about this herd instinct, I think it's more like gangs really, and influence:


There was something terribly enthralling in the exercise of influence. No other activity was like it. To project one's soul into some gracious form, and let it tarry there for a moment; to hear one's own intellectual views echoed back to one with all the added music of passion and youth; to convey one's temperament into another as though it were a subtle fluid or a strange perfume: there was a real joy in that--perhaps the most satisfying joy left to us in an age so limited and vulgar as our own, an age grossly carnal in its pleasures, and grossly common in its aims...
japie
japie
NSW
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29 Mar 2012 6:01pm
GreenPat said...

Neither of them are reptilian overlords?


I don't know, Assange has a vaguely lizardy look about him
japie
japie
NSW
7146 posts
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29 Mar 2012 11:09pm
evlPanda said...

(long post)

Do you cut and paste from kindle?

For a few years now, ( it sometimes takes me a while to do things), I have been thinking about getting one of those mini scanner things that look a bit like a pen which you can run across text. I often find stuff which really rings a chord but am too lazy or disorganised to write it down.

I recently bought an Ipod touch from a bloke who was scratching to get some cash together. I was doing a bit of a search today and lo and behold, aside from music Itunes has a pretty good range of reading material. Am going to buy A Perfect Spy and will do some experimenting with cut and paste.
cisco
cisco
QLD
12365 posts
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1 Apr 2012 11:55pm
theDoctor said...


Japie, watch a movie called ' brotherhood of the bell'

You can see it full length on youtube, a mid seventies hollywood movie that was initially banned upon release then just covered and hidden and forgotten about...




"Brotherhood of the Bell" is no doubt a depiction of fact but presented over dramatically and easily discredited. (Dean Jeagger and Glen Ford two of my fave actors BTW).

This movie, "Hidden Agenda", is a bit more contemporary and a lot more credible in depicting how the minions of the NWO operate and who the minions are.

"The Wind that Shakes the Barley" is a good watch too in the vein of "In the Name Of the Father".


evlPanda
evlPanda
NSW
9207 posts
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2 Apr 2012 10:42am
japie said...

evlPanda said...

(long post)

Do you cut and paste from kindle?



When you 'sync' all your annotations and quotes are uploaded to "the cloud". You can then reread them online. It's simple but quite cool.

Every Kindle has its own account with your books, highlights and annotations that you can share. You can read your books on PC via a little download too. All-in-all there's really not much to a Kindle, they should almost be free. It just does what it is supposed to do really well.

e.g.
kindle.amazon.com/

^ Not sure if they are my highlights or not, but you get the idea.
log man
log man
VIC
8289 posts
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2 Apr 2012 12:22pm
cisco said...

theDoctor said...


Japie, watch a movie called ' brotherhood of the bell'

You can see it full length on youtube, a mid seventies hollywood movie that was initially banned upon release then just covered and hidden and forgotten about...




"Brotherhood of the Bell" is no doubt a depiction of fact but presented over dramatically and easily discredited. (Dean Jeagger and Glen Ford two of my fave actors BTW).

This movie, "Hidden Agenda", is a bit more contemporary and a lot more credible in depicting how the minions of the NWO operate and who the minions are.

"The Wind that Shakes the Barley" is a good watch too in the vein of "In the Name Of the Father".





I haven't got round to the movie yet but ....music by...Stewart Copeland....
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