http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.movies.local.indian?hl=en
rec.arts.movies.local.indian@googlegroups.com
Today's topics:
* SOME CONTRIBUTIONS OF HINDUS TO THE HUMAN CIVILIZATION - 3 messages, 2
authors
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.movies.local.indian/t/90ae30ce0d33f5da?hl=en
* BREAKING - Emirates plane grounded due to terror scare *** Jai Maharaj posts
- 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.movies.local.indian/t/725ecec1c5d54f37?hl=en
* super hot - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.movies.local.indian/t/d18eb9181198a5fa?hl=en
* BHARAT MAP DURING RAMAYAN TIMES; MAP OF SHREE RAM'S TRAVEL THROUGH THE
FORESTS - 2 messages, 2 authors
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.movies.local.indian/t/dbb8a750725a162b?hl=en
* WHY DR. JAI MAHARAJ IS A STUPID RETARDED FUCKASS - 4 messages, 2 authors
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.movies.local.indian/t/fd4b73d9c7c8aeb4?hl=en
* 'Avatar' Gets 'Dear John' Letter (pro-military movie kicks lib movie to #2
for box office) - 2 messages, 2 authors
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.movies.local.indian/t/fdb63fea3c19a701?hl=en
* Hollywood Has Seen the Enemy...Avatar's success had nothing to do with its
gassy pantheistic blather, but try telling Hollywood that. - 2 messages, 2
authors
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.movies.local.indian/t/c8a4583a80527323?hl=en
* INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON EVMs AT IIT, CHENNAI, FEB. 13, 2010 - 1 messages,
1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.movies.local.indian/t/f6066abac0052208?hl=en
* AVATAR'S SAVAGE MESSAGE - 2 messages, 2 authors
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.movies.local.indian/t/e0024addba5f52e3?hl=en
==============================================================================
TOPIC: SOME CONTRIBUTIONS OF HINDUS TO THE HUMAN CIVILIZATION
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.movies.local.indian/t/90ae30ce0d33f5da?hl=en
==============================================================================
== 1 of 3 ==
Date: Sat, Feb 6 2010 11:18 pm
From: Hunter
kangarooistan wrote:
> On Feb 7, 12:32 pm, use...@mantra.com and/or www.mantra.com/jai (Dr.
>>
>> Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
>> Om Shanti
>
> Anybody looking at the facts of ancient history can soon see the
> Indian technology was several thousands of years AHEAD of so called
> western world , until Christians and jews turned up to SAVE you , why
> do some Indians cling to western masters and attack Muslims
Hahahaha you truly are an idiot kanga, you do realise that doc jai here
is one of the greatest culprits when it comes to promoting hatred of
Muslims? Nothing to do with "western masters" as he hates Westerners as
much as he hates Muslims. You two are perfect for each other, you're
both deluded hate-filled fuckheads...... Funny to watch you licking his
crotch though considering his total hatred of all things Islamic, makes
you look pretty fucking stupid.
== 2 of 3 ==
Date: Sun, Feb 7 2010 1:27 am
From: kangarooistan
On Feb 7, 5:18 pm, Hunter <hunte...@iinet.net.au> wrote:
> kangarooistan wrote:
> > On Feb 7, 12:32 pm, use...@mantra.com and/orwww.mantra.com/jai(Dr.
>
> >> Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
> >> Om Shanti
>
> > Anybody looking at the facts of ancient history can soon see the
> > Indian technology was several thousands of years AHEAD of so called
> > western world , until Christians and jews turned up to SAVE you , why
> > do some Indians cling to western masters and attack Muslims
>
> Hahahaha you truly are an idiot kanga, you do realise that doc jai here
> is one of the greatest culprits when it comes to promoting hatred of
> Muslims? Nothing to do with "western masters" as he hates Westerners as
> much as he hates Muslims. You two are perfect for each other, you're
> both deluded hate-filled fuckheads...... Funny to watch you licking his
> crotch though considering his total hatred of all things Islamic, makes
> you look pretty fucking stupid.
Do uou think I should NOT talk with people who dont AGREE with me on
everything
gollty mate , should I ask what religion he is BEFORE I reply ????
HOW can we TEST the strength of our theories if we DONT put them on
the table
i can go on moderated groups where EVERYBODY agrees with me if Im
interested or unsure of my ability to debate the BIG issues
NOBODY agrees with kanga on every thing , the BEST new ideas can be
LEARNED from speaking with people outside your inner circle
The white colonial period was the most DESTRUCTIVE era in all mankinds
history
By the time its over half of all humanity will be DEAD, if we continue
on the same path , EVERYBODY can see the white christian and jewish
empires are DYING before our very eyes
We need to share IDEAS to start REBUILDING once they keel over
We must identify the REAL terrorists so we can end the WARS mate
THEN we can start rebuilding
kanga
Checkout the docos is ya like ancient Egypt mate looks like some great
TV in Aussie land
kanga likes Indians mate , I named one of my own sons Mohandas after a
Hindu man [ Gandhi } yes Im a Muslim , and Leonardo after the great
inventor ,
MUSLIMS always honour brilliance , always have
Even the great SALADIN was not arabic nor turk or persian , GOD
gives brains out to every people
SMART PEOPLES worked that out long ago ,muslims always accepted this
fact every people has its genius / gifted scholars , often holding
SENIOR positions in every muslim society you see non muslims
Send to a friend
http://www.sbs.com.au/schedule/SBSONE/2010-02-07/SBS%20Adelaide
#
Singapore Subway - The new metro line, the longest in the world, in
Singapore, and French expatriates living in Singapore; and Tasmanian
Success Story - The story of Robert Clifford, Tasmania's most
successful ever shipbuilder. Presented by Silvio Rivier. (From France
in French and English, English subtitles and renarration) (Documentary
Series) G CC WS
# 6:30
World News Australia
Send to a friend
#
Up-to-date reports and analysis of the major national and
international news stories of the day in Australia's only world news
service. (An SBS Production) CC WS
# 7:35
The Pharaoh's Lost City
Send to a friend
http://www.sbs.com.au/schedule/SBSONE/2010-02-07/SBS%20Adelaide
#
Lost Worlds - Archaeologists in the central Egyptian desert have made
an extraordinary find: an ancient cemetery where 1,000 people from the
Pharaoh's lost capital of Amarna are buried. This program looks at why
this great city only survived one generation before mysteriously
vanishing from history. (From the UK in English) (Documentary) CC WS
# 8:30
Why Can't We Predict Earthquakes?
Send to a friend
#
Asks why hasn't science worked out how to predict when and where the
next big quake is going to happen and tells the story of the men and
women who chase earthquakes and try to understand this mysterious
force of nature. (From the UK in English and Mandarin, English
subtitles) (Documentary) CC WS
# 9:30
China's Capitalist Revolution
Send to a friend
http://www.sbs.com.au/schedule/SBSONE/2010-02-07/SBS%20Adelaide
#
Twenty years on from the massacre at Tiananmen Square this series
attempts to answer why capitalism contributed heavily to the tragic
events of that day, revealing an interpretation of the motives of the
demonstrators that may well overturn the conventional view in the
West. (From the UK, in English and Mandarin, English subtitles)
(Documentary Series) (Final) CC WS
== 3 of 3 ==
Date: Sun, Feb 7 2010 2:50 am
From: Hunter
kangarooistan wrote:
> On Feb 7, 5:18 pm, Hunter <hunte...@iinet.net.au> wrote:
>> kangarooistan wrote:
>>> On Feb 7, 12:32 pm, use...@mantra.com and/orwww.mantra.com/jai(Dr.
>>>> Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
>>>> Om Shanti
>>> Anybody looking at the facts of ancient history can soon see the
>>> Indian technology was several thousands of years AHEAD of so called
>>> western world , until Christians and jews turned up to SAVE you , why
>>> do some Indians cling to western masters and attack Muslims
>> Hahahaha you truly are an idiot kanga, you do realise that doc jai here
>> is one of the greatest culprits when it comes to promoting hatred of
>> Muslims? Nothing to do with "western masters" as he hates Westerners as
>> much as he hates Muslims. You two are perfect for each other, you're
>> both deluded hate-filled fuckheads...... Funny to watch you licking his
>> crotch though considering his total hatred of all things Islamic, makes
>> you look pretty fucking stupid.
>
> Do uou think I should NOT talk with people who dont AGREE with me on
> everything
Not at all, but rather than stick your foot in your mouth and exposing
your own stupidity, ignorance and bigotry by assuming the only Hindu
that attacks Muslims has "Western masters" you might want to scrape the
shit out of your ears and eyes and have a better look at what's going
on. His particular ilk hate everyone except Hindu Indians, and that
means ESPECIALLY Muslims, but also includes Westerners, Christians and a
lot more. I've had many arguments with these fuckwits defending both
Muslims and Christians from their vile attacks of hatred.
The average Indian is a good sort, but doc jai and his pals are
hate-filled lunatics. Just like you are. Only your unreasoning fuckwit
hatred seems to be reserved for whites and Christians, theirs is for
EVERYTHING EXCEPT Indian Hindus.
==============================================================================
TOPIC: BREAKING - Emirates plane grounded due to terror scare *** Jai Maharaj
posts
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.movies.local.indian/t/725ecec1c5d54f37?hl=en
==============================================================================
== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Sun, Feb 7 2010 1:23 am
From: usenet@mantra.com and/or www.mantra.com/jai (Dr. Jai Maharaj)
Emirates plane grounded due to terror scare
Zeenews Bureau
Sunday, February 7, 2010, 14:02 IST
Mumbai - An Emirates airline plane enroute to Dubai aborted take-off
at the Mumbai airport on Sunday after an anonymous caller rang up to
say that there was a terrorist onboard.
The Emirates Mumbai-Dubai flight EK-502, carrying about 356
passengers, was already on runway and scheduled to take off at 9.58
am when the anonymous call came at 9.30 am, an airport official said.
Following the call, the flight was called back from the runway and
all passengers deplaned.
"Checking is on now," an airport official said, adding two passengers
were being questioned.
Sources said the anonymous caller gave specific information that the
terrorist was occupying seat no 17F.
The development comes in the wake of a threat of terrorists possibly
hijacking an Indian plane and crashing it either in an Indian city or
in the UK.
More at:
http://www.zeenews.com/news602257.html
Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti
o Not for commercial use. Solely to be fairly used for the educational
purposes of research and open discussion. The contents of this post may not
have been authored by, and do not necessarily represent the opinion of the
poster. The contents are protected by copyright law and the exemption for
fair use of copyrighted works.
o If you send private e-mail to me, it will likely not be read,
considered or answered if it does not contain your full legal name, current
e-mail and postal addresses, and live-voice telephone number.
o Posted for information and discussion. Views expressed by others are
not necessarily those of the poster who may or may not have read the article.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This article may contain copyrighted material the use of
which may or may not have been specifically authorized by the copyright
owner. This material is being made available in efforts to advance the
understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic,
democratic, scientific, social, and cultural, etc., issues. It is believed
that this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title
17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without
profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included
information for research, comment, discussion and educational purposes by
subscribing to USENET newsgroups or visiting web sites. For more information
go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
If you wish to use copyrighted material from this article for purposes of
your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the
copyright owner.
Since newsgroup posts are being removed
by forgery by one or more net terrorists,
this post may be reposted several times.
==============================================================================
TOPIC: super hot
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.movies.local.indian/t/d18eb9181198a5fa?hl=en
==============================================================================
== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Sun, Feb 7 2010 3:09 am
From: balu
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hot lip to lip kiss
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super lip kiss
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==============================================================================
TOPIC: BHARAT MAP DURING RAMAYAN TIMES; MAP OF SHREE RAM'S TRAVEL THROUGH THE
FORESTS
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.movies.local.indian/t/dbb8a750725a162b?hl=en
==============================================================================
== 1 of 2 ==
Date: Sun, Feb 7 2010 6:36 am
From: uNmaiviLambi
On Feb 6, 11:29 pm, use...@mantra.com and/or www.mantra.com/jai (Dr.
Jai Maharaj) wrote:
> Forwarded message from V.
>
> Saturday, February 6, 2010
>
> Bharat map during Ramayan Times; Map of Shree Ram's travel through
> the forests
Fascinating. Thanks
== 2 of 2 ==
Date: Sun, Feb 7 2010 10:17 pm
From: Mirza Ghalib
On Feb 7, 6:36 am, uNmaiviLambi <tripurant...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Feb 6, 11:29 pm, use...@mantra.com and/orwww.mantra.com/jai(Dr.
>
> Jai Maharaj) wrote:
> > Forwarded message from V.
>
> > Saturday, February 6, 2010
>
> > Bharat map during Ramayan Times; Map of Shree Ram's travel through
> > the forests
>
> Fascinating. Thanks
Your map shows Ayodhya way south of the Ganga river.
As shown it appears closer to River Mahanadi that
flows through Orissa.
==============================================================================
TOPIC: WHY DR. JAI MAHARAJ IS A STUPID RETARDED FUCKASS
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.movies.local.indian/t/fd4b73d9c7c8aeb4?hl=en
==============================================================================
== 1 of 4 ==
Date: Sun, Feb 7 2010 7:58 am
From: stevetv
X-No-Archive:
The reason's because Dr. dumbass is so stupid, he posts an article
entitled "Why Avatar is actually the 26th biggest movie", but the
article was written on January 26th. That was twelve days ago, you
piece of monkey shit! Now that it's February 7th, Avatar is higher
than 26, right?
Please castrate yourself before you pass your stupid gene down to
future generations. And I hope you're tried and executed for
practicing under a fake doctor's license. No one as idiotic as you
could make it through the first day of dogcatching class, let alone
graduate with a doctorate.
== 2 of 4 ==
Date: Sun, Feb 7 2010 1:08 pm
From: usenet@mantra.com and/or www.mantra.com/jai (Dr. Jai Maharaj)
Forwarded message
How did it make 1.8 billion dollars if it only sold 77 million
tickets. That's more than $20 a ticket.
I just saw the movie. It was a great visual movie. Story was so-so,
or as my daughter says "Ferngully with tall smurfs".
There were also plot points stolen from star trek, pohohantas, and
Orson Scott Card's Enders series (specifically the Children of the
Mind portion) -- complete with the slightly-different named Aiuas
living in trees after they die.
And you had Eragon and the dragon-bonding.
Cameron wasn't much for originality. But he loves senseless killing.
And vengeance.
Posted on Tuesday, January 26, 2010 by CharlesWayneCT
End of forwarded message
Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti
== 3 of 4 ==
Date: Sun, Feb 7 2010 1:10 pm
From: usenet@mantra.com and/or www.mantra.com/jai (Dr. Jai Maharaj)
Forwarded message
It is a DUMB movie.
Spectacular 3D but a very pedestrian movie.
2 posted on Tuesday, January 26, 2010 by Touch Not the Cat
End of forwarded message
Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti
== 4 of 4 ==
Date: Sun, Feb 7 2010 1:26 pm
From: usenet@mantra.com and/or www.mantra.com/jai (Dr. Jai Maharaj)
Forwarded message
'I Believe in Eco-Terrorism': Does James Cameron Live In a Malibu
Mansion? by Pam Meister
Avatar's far worse than simply a pedestrian film. It's a reflection
of Cameron's ideology/activist propaganda. Here's a revealing quote:
Just when you think certain celebrities couldn't get any more
obnoxious, we are treated to an interview with last night's Golden
Globe winner, James "I'm the King of the World" Cameron in
Entertainment Weekly. On page 35 of the latest edition of the print
version, Cameron responds to the following criticism of his latest
film "Avatar":
EW: "Avatar" is the perfect eco-terrorism recruiting tool."
JC: Good, good. I like that one. I consider that a positive review. I
believe in ecoterrorism."
Did you catch that...? "I believe in ecoterrorism."
Avatar is just another ultra-liberal propaganda peddling film dressed
up in a eye catching Versace, bling and all.
Cameron can take his hypocritical eco-terrorist Avatar and go pound
sand.
Posted on Tuesday, January 26, 2010 by This Just In
End of forwarded message
Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti
==============================================================================
TOPIC: 'Avatar' Gets 'Dear John' Letter (pro-military movie kicks lib movie to
#2 for box office)
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.movies.local.indian/t/fdb63fea3c19a701?hl=en
==============================================================================
== 1 of 2 ==
Date: Sun, Feb 7 2010 12:46 pm
From: usenet@mantra.com and/or www.mantra.com/jai (Dr. Jai Maharaj)
'AVATAR' GETS 'DEAR JOHN' LETTER! Love Story Drops Technopic Out
Of #1; $32.4M Breaks Record For Super Bowl Wkd
By Nikki Finke
Deadline Hollywood
Saturday February 6, 2010
SUNDAY AM UPDATE: So Avatar was done in by a chick flick no less!
Despite the monster winter storm on the East Coast, Relativity's
sappy military-themed love story Dear John opened to a much bigger
than expected $13.8 million Friday and $12.4M Saturday (down only -
10%) from 2,969 North American theaters. Which means the pic based on
the Nicholas Sparks novel and distributed by Sony/Screen Gems, has
broken Avatar's 7-week reign atop the domestic box office despite
higher 3D ticket prices. G.I. Joe's Channing Tatum and Mamma Mia!'s
Amanda Seyfried scored a $32.4M weekend compared to Avatar's 23.6M.
"It's not only the dragon slayer, but by a lot," one Sony exec gushed
to me. Dear John is also Screen Gems best ever debut and the biggest
Super Bowl weekend opener, topping Hannah Montana's $31.1M. Females
made up 84% of the opening weekend audience, while 64% of the
moviegoers were under age 21.
Twentieth Century Fox's technopic took in $6.1M Friday (-18%, another
amazing hold) and $11.3M Saturday for a $630M cume that's broken
every highest grossing record in Hollywood and the world. Dear John's
overperformance is due to several factors: A running time of only 102
minutes, which offset the higher ticket prices for Avatar which
clocks in at 160 minutes. And some great field marketing by Jeff
Blake and his team, including a premiere on the North Carolina base
at Fort Bragg as well as promotions at 51 Army bases worldwide.
From Paris with Love posterMeanwhile, Lionsgate's 3rd place From
Paris With Love starring John Travolta and directed by Taken helmer
Pierre Morel is very soft. The R-rated pic opened with only a $3
million debut Friday but did +33% better Saturday for $4.0M from
2,722 runs for an underperforming $8.1M weekend.
This also was the start of Crazy Heart's 8th week, but this marks the
first fully national week of release. That's because the Fox
Searchlight film scored a Best Actor Oscar nomination for Jeff
Bridges, considered the shoo-in for that category. The pic expanded
into 819 theatres and will likely expand further on February 12th
into 1,000+ dates. As a result, Crazy Heart reached the Top 10 this
weekend for the first time in its run. It's also having the strongest
post-Oscar nod bounce.
Meanwhile, Summit Entertainment worked with exhibitors who wanted to
run The Hurt Locker after it was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar.
This, in spite of the fact that the DVD has been selling quite well
since January 12th. The weekend estimate was $123K (+439%) playing at
110 theaters (+72). Its North American cume to date is now $13.4M.
Here's the Top 10 as of Sunday:
1. Dear John (Relativity/Sony) NEW [2,969 Theaters] Friday $13.8M,
Saturday $12.4M, Weekend $32.4M
2. Avatar (Fox) Week 8 [3,000 Theaters] Friday $6.1M, Saturday
$11.3M, Weekend $23.6M, Cume $630
3. From Paris With Love (Lionsgate) NEW [2,722 Theaters] Friday
$3.0M, Saturday $4.0M, Weekend $8.1M
4. Edge of Darkness (Alcon/Warner Bros) Week 2 [3,066 Theaters]
Friday $2.3M, Saturday $3.5M, Weekend $7M, Cume $29M
5. Tooth Fairy (Fox) Week 3 [3,218 Theaters] Friday $1.6M, Saturday
$3.5M, Weekend $6.5M, Cume $34.3M
6. When in Rome (Disney) Week 2 [2,456 Theaters] Friday $2.0M,
Saturday $2.5M, Weekend $5.5, Cume $20.8M
7. Book of Eli (Warner Bros) Week 4 [2,820 Theaters] Friday $1.5M,
Saturday $2.5M, Weekend $4.8M, Cume $82.1M
8. Crazy Heart (Fox Searchlight) Week 8 [819 Theaters] Friday $1.07M,
Saturday $1.9M, Weekend $3.6M, Cume $11.1M
9. Legion (Sony) Week 3 [2,339 Theaters] Friday $1.06M, Saturday
$1.7M, Weekend $3.4M, Cume $34.6M
10. Sherlock Holmes (Warner Bros) Week 7 [1,805 Theaters] Friday
$790K, Saturday $1.3M, Weekend $2.6M, Cume $201.5M
THURSDAY 5 PM: Will Avatar get a Dear John letter? Is this the
weekend James Cameron's technopic falls to #2? That's what the
Hollywood experts are thinking. Online ticket sales, where buyers
tend to skew young, show Relativity's Dear John is leading Avatar on
Fandango 51% to 31% -- the first time Avatar has fallen out of #1
since the pic opened. This weekend would be the 8th in a row that
James Cameron's 3D technopic could stay No. 1 at the domestic box
office. But distributor Sony/Screen Gems is sneaking in that sappy
love story Dear John starring G.I. Joe's Channing Tatum and Mamma
Mia!'s Amanda Seyfried and directed by Lasse Hallström, and the
studio thinks it can knock off Avatar. "They are not suckin' on a
crack pipe. It's possible," a Fox exec admitted to me just now.
Both PG-13 pics look to make around $24M this weekend unless the
expected East Coast monster snowstorm depresses attendance. But Dear
John's running time is only 102 minutes, which could offset the
higher ticket prices for Avatar which clocks in at 160 minutes. And
then there's the Super Bowl which will hit Avatar harder. As one of
my box office gurus analyzes, "Dear John needs to beat Avatar on
Friday. But Avatar probably wins Saturday. Then Dear John should win
Super Bowl Sunday. Should be fun."
Also stealing some of Avatar's testosterone will be John
Travolta/Jonathan Rhys-Meyer's R-rated From Paris With Love directed
by the real star of Taken, director Pierre Morel. This Lionsgate pic
has an even shorter running time of 95 minutes so it may open to $12M
for the weekend. "Paris has some life to it," a rival studio exec
tells me. "Decent awareness, best among males over age 25. That does
not bode well for the Sunday spanking they will take."
Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti
o Not for commercial use. Solely to be fairly used for the educational
purposes of research and open discussion. The contents of this post may not
have been authored by, and do not necessarily represent the opinion of the
poster. The contents are protected by copyright law and the exemption for
fair use of copyrighted works.
o If you send private e-mail to me, it will likely not be read,
considered or answered if it does not contain your full legal name, current
e-mail and postal addresses, and live-voice telephone number.
o Posted for information and discussion. Views expressed by others are
not necessarily those of the poster who may or may not have read the article.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This article may contain copyrighted material the use of
which may or may not have been specifically authorized by the copyright
owner. This material is being made available in efforts to advance the
understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic,
democratic, scientific, social, and cultural, etc., issues. It is believed
that this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title
17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without
profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included
information for research, comment, discussion and educational purposes by
subscribing to USENET newsgroups or visiting web sites. For more information
go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
If you wish to use copyrighted material from this article for purposes of
your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the
copyright owner.
Since newsgroup posts are being removed
by forgery by one or more net terrorists,
this post may be reposted several times.
== 2 of 2 ==
Date: Sun, Feb 7 2010 2:02 pm
From: nick
On Feb 7, 3:46 pm, use...@mantra.com and/or www.mantra.com/jai (Dr.
Jai Maharaj) wrote:
> 'AVATAR' GETS 'DEAR JOHN' LETTER! Love Story Drops Technopic Out
> Of #1; $32.4M Breaks Record For Super Bowl Wkd
>
> By Nikki Finke
> Deadline Hollywood
> Saturday February 6, 2010
>
> Here's the Top 10 as of Sunday:
>
> 3. From Paris With Love (Lionsgate) NEW [2,722 Theaters] Friday
> $3.0M, Saturday $4.0M, Weekend $8.1M
>
> 4. Edge of Darkness (Alcon/Warner Bros) Week 2 [3,066 Theaters]
> Friday $2.3M, Saturday $3.5M, Weekend $7M, Cume $29M
>
Scientologist weird guy kicks drunken Catholic weird guy to #4 for box
office.
==============================================================================
TOPIC: Hollywood Has Seen the Enemy...Avatar's success had nothing to do with
its gassy pantheistic blather, but try telling Hollywood that.
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.movies.local.indian/t/c8a4583a80527323?hl=en
==============================================================================
== 1 of 2 ==
Date: Sun, Feb 7 2010 12:56 pm
From: usenet@mantra.com and/or www.mantra.com/jai (Dr. Jai Maharaj)
Avatar's success had nothing to do with its gassy pantheistic
blather, but try telling Hollywood that.
By Jonah Goldberg
National Review Online
Friday, February 5, 2010
It's Oscar time. Unfortunately -- or perhaps fortunately -- I haven't
seen anywhere near all of the contenders. For that reason alone, I
can't write an Oscar column. Then throw in the fact that I think the
Oscars are one of the most overhyped events in American life. They're
almost as bad as the Grammys were when they were still around.
Wait, they still have those? Really?
OK, well, the Oscars are still overrated.
But I do love movies, and I'm fascinated by what they say about
American life. Of course, movies don't always reflect or articulate
what moviegoers are thinking. Often they merely express what
Hollywood thinks Americans are thinking or what Hollywood thinks they
should believe.
For instance, over the last decade, Hollywood has unleashed a stream
of high-profile films directly or indirectly about the war in Iraq.
Nearly all of the polemical anti-war films bombed. Robert Redford &
Co. were desperate to remake Coming Home and other anti-war films,
but Americans weren't interested. The few war movies that did well
pretty much avoided the sort of preachy jeremiads you'd expect to
hear at Susan Sarandon's book club. For instance, The Hurt Locker --
nominated for Best Picture -- largely ignores the debate over the war
and instead tells a gripping story about our troops' heroism. The
Kingdom, another War on Terror movie, was a hit despite the best
intentions of director Peter Berg, who wanted it to be a parable
about the cycle of violence. It succeeded because it was a good
action movie that depicted Americans as heroes.
It's a bit funny, then, to hear some people claim that Avatar, with
its cartoonish environmentalism and hackneyed attacks on the military
and those evil corporations, is proof that Americans love serious
left-wing preaching with their popcorn. "For years," writes Patrick
Goldstein in the Los Angeles Times, "pundits and bloggers on the
right have ceaselessly attacked liberal Hollywood for being out of
touch with rank and file moviegoers, complaining that executives and
filmmakers continue to make films that have precious little resonance
with Middle America." The last laugh is on them, cackles Goldstein,
because Avatar "totally turns this theory on its head."
I'm sure Goldstein's right. No doubt James Cameron could have made
Avatar for $300 million less and still made a fortune. After all,
audiences didn't need the 3-D digital magic, explosions, giant
aliens, or spectacular backdrops. All they wanted was an extended
lecture about the evils of corporate America and the cruelty of the
military, and some gassy pantheistic blather about the need to get
back to nature. Why, Cameron could have simply recorded a poetry jam
at Barbra Streisand's house and still put out the highest-grossing
film ever.
Goldstein's effort is a good example of how critics and historians
want to impose significance on films that may not be there.
Early Cold War movies from the 1950s rank pretty high as targets for
film-school vivisection. For decades, film historians have insisted
that Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) is a thinly veiled (and
paranoid) allegory about Communist infiltration. The movie ends with
the protagonist screaming directly into the camera: "They're here
already! You're next! You're next!"
The funny thing is that the filmmakers never saw it as an allegory
about anything.
That doesn't mean Body Snatchers didn't reflect Cold War anxieties.
But it's a good reminder that filmmakers aren't always aware of their
inspirations and that sometimes the best way to articulate a larger
message is to not try to.
Indeed, when Hollywood tries too hard, it usually comes out lame. The
original Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) was driven by a fear that
the Cold War would turn hot and mankind's propensity for violence
would destroy the world. The 2008 remake with Keanu Reeves -- playing
yet another emotionally impaired, semi-stupid, quasi-robotic savior
figure -- was a predictably lame lecture about how humans (i.e.,
Americans) are bad stewards of the environment. It wouldn't have been
so annoying if it weren't for the fact that the same movie is made
nearly every year.
Since the end of the Cold War, Hollywood has been in desperate
pursuit of enemies. You'd have thought that 9/11 would have provided
a great opportunity for Hollywood to find a worthy enemy. But it
turned out that moviemakers were more comfortable depicting jihadi
terrorists before 9/11 than after (rent The Siege and Executive
Decision if you don't believe me). They've tried (and retried)
aliens, drug kingpins, bad weather, and the always-enjoyable zombies.
But, with a few exceptions, Hollywood is still most comfortable with
the idea that the enemy is really us.
- Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online and
the author of Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American
Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning. © 2010 Tribune Media
Services, Inc.
More at:
http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=YTk4MDRjZjBiNGU3YzlmMWIwNTQ4MjU5ZTM5MGZiYzI=
Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti
o Not for commercial use. Solely to be fairly used for the educational
purposes of research and open discussion. The contents of this post may not
have been authored by, and do not necessarily represent the opinion of the
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o If you send private e-mail to me, it will likely not be read,
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e-mail and postal addresses, and live-voice telephone number.
o Posted for information and discussion. Views expressed by others are
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FAIR USE NOTICE: This article may contain copyrighted material the use of
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owner. This material is being made available in efforts to advance the
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that this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as
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If you wish to use copyrighted material from this article for purposes of
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Since newsgroup posts are being removed
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this post may be reposted several times.
== 2 of 2 ==
Date: Sun, Feb 7 2010 7:39 pm
From: RichA
On Feb 7, 3:56 pm, use...@mantra.com and/or www.mantra.com/jai (Dr.
Jai Maharaj) wrote:
> Avatar's success had nothing to do with its gassy pantheistic
> blather, but try telling Hollywood that.
>
> By Jonah Goldberg
> National Review Online
> Friday, February 5, 2010
>
> It's Oscar time. Unfortunately -- or perhaps fortunately -- I haven't
> seen anywhere near all of the contenders. For that reason alone, I
> can't write an Oscar column. Then throw in the fact that I think the
> Oscars are one of the most overhyped events in American life. They're
> almost as bad as the Grammys were when they were still around.
>
> Wait, they still have those? Really?
>
> OK, well, the Oscars are still overrated.
>
> But I do love movies, and I'm fascinated by what they say about
> American life. Of course, movies don't always reflect or articulate
> what moviegoers are thinking. Often they merely express what
> Hollywood thinks Americans are thinking or what Hollywood thinks they
> should believe.
>
> For instance, over the last decade, Hollywood has unleashed a stream
> of high-profile films directly or indirectly about the war in Iraq.
> Nearly all of the polemical anti-war films bombed. Robert Redford &
> Co. were desperate to remake Coming Home and other anti-war films,
> but Americans weren't interested.
The same "people" who created monsters like American/Freedom hating
communists (and indirectly, the Nazis), crazed environmentalists and
the hippy horror of the 1960's have the same genetic make-up as those
in Hollywood now. Their job, to destroy the West, is never over, and
they'll keep at it. When a movie like, "Swimming to Cambodia" makes
$300M, I'll believe they are in-key with the mainstream of America and
we know that will never happen.
==============================================================================
TOPIC: INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON EVMs AT IIT, CHENNAI, FEB. 13, 2010
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.movies.local.indian/t/f6066abac0052208?hl=en
==============================================================================
== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Sun, Feb 7 2010 2:52 pm
From: usenet@mantra.com and/or www.mantra.com/jai (Dr. Jai Maharaj)
Forwarded message from S. Kalyanaraman
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Intl. Conf. on EVMs at IIT, Chennai, 13 Feb. 2010, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Politics/Elections
Contact: Save Indian Democracy (US)
Email: saveindiandemocracy.org@gmail.com
Web: http://saveindiandemocracy.org
Ph: 981-015-6791 (India), 986-602-1393 (India), 732-368-0122 (US)
Conf Details: http://saveindiandemocracy.wordpress.com/conferences/
New Delhi (Feb 1, 2010): The event organized by Save Indian Democracy
is at IIT Chennai, Central Lecture Theater (CLT) from 6:30PM to
8:30PM.
International experts who are pioneers and have significantly altered
the course of usage of EVM's in their countries are invited to India
by Center for National Renaissance. Details of experts from
Netherlands, Germany, United States drawn from legal, political and
academic arenas in their countries is given below. (Detailed bio-
data is given at the end).
What is EVM and what are the issues related to EVMs? EVMs are
electronic voting machines that are used in India for more than two
decades by Election Commission of India (ECI). India went full with
EVM in most recent two elections (2004 and 2009). Many activists
have been raising concerns about EVM as far back as 2001 but their
increased usage has seen spate of PILs etc from different political
parties, activists as well as encouraged demonstrations of tamper-
ability of similar EVMs build based on ECI published specifications.
The concerns are not just reliability of EVMs but serious allegations
of tampering.
At the same time India was initially moving towards EVMs as a way to
use technology for improving efficiency, internationally also
several countries have moved into that direction with some countries
making huge investments running into millions of dollars. But what
is the international scene today. All over Europe, several
countries (Germany, Netherlands, Ireland) rejected EVMs or canceled
early during feasibility studies (Italy etc). In US, more than 21
states banned EVMs or require paper trail and 18 additional states
use paper trail in state or local jurisdictions.
Are there lessons for India from International Experience? Are EVMs
in India significantly different from EVMs used internationally?
Should we be concerned? What, if any, are threats to Indian
Democracy?
The planned activities are geared to bring an open discussion on
these issues with international and national experts and help protect
Indian Democracy.
Details of international experts:
1) Rop Gonggrijp, Netherlands Computer hacker, successful
Entrepreneur who is instrumental in banning of EVMs in Netherlands
due to security reasons, in spite of huge investments made by
Netherlands in EVMs
Dr. Till Jaeger, Germany Attorney who argued the landmark German
Supreme Court Judgment that effectively banned EVMs in German
Elections
Dr. David Dill, USA (via Video Conference) University of Stanford,
pioneer for reformation of usage of EVMs in US elections that
resulted in 21 states in US either ban EVMs or require paper trail
and additional 18 states require paper trail in state or local
jurisdictions. Founder of Verified Voting Foundation. In 2004, Dr
Dill received the Electronic Frontier Foundation's "Pioneer Award"
http://www.eff.org/awards/pioneer/2004.php
for "for spearheading and nurturing the popular movement for
integrity and transparency in modern elections."
Dr. Alex Halderman, USA Computer Science Professor, University of
Michigan, noted expert of Electronic Voting Security who demonstrated
first voting machine virus, lead team of Scientists from Princeton
and Berkeley for "Top to Bottom" review of California EVMs.
DETAILED BIO DATA OF INTERNATIONAL EXPERTS
Rop Gonggrijp, Netherlands Computer hacker, successful Entrepreneur
who is instrumental in banning of EVMs in Netherlands due to security
reasons, in spite of huge investments made by Netherlands in EVMs
[image:
?ui=2&view=att&th=1265d4da1c4c38e3&attid=0.1&disp=attd&realattid=ii_1265d4da1c4c38e3&zw]
Born on Feb 14, 1968, Rop Gonggrijp is Dutch hacker, founder of
internet service provider (IPS) XS4ALL, instrumental in exposing the
vulnerabilities of Electronic Voting Machines to The Netherlands that
resulted in banning of EVM machines in spite of huge investments made
into them. Mr. Gonggrijp is now considered a key figure in the
growing international movement for election transparency and
verifiability.
Known as teenage hacker in his young days, Rop Gonggrijp founded
hacker magazine Hack-Tic in 1988 and was considered major security
threat by authorities of Netherlands. In 1993, he and others around
Hack-Tic founded ISP XS4ALL that is first ISP that offered internet
access to private individuals which he sold the company to former
enemy Dutch-Telecom. After he left XS4ALL, he founded ITSX, a
computer security evaluation company which was bought by Madison
Gurkha in 2006. In 2001, Mr. Gonggrijp started work on Cryptophone,
a mobile telephone that can encrypt conversation. Since 1989, Mr
Gonggrijp has been main organizer of hacker events held every four
years that are attended by thousands of hackers across the world.
After his home city of Amsterdam switched to electronic voting in
2006, mr. Gonggrijp started publicly questioning the security of the
voting machines in use in The Netherlands as well as oppose the
inherent lack of transparency when the vote count only happens inside
a computer. With Amsterdam now also using computers, The Netherlands
(pop. 17M) was 100% electronic voting. "We do not trust voting
computers", the organisation founded by mr. Gonggrijp, has managed to
convince the dutch public and government that the machines were not
worthy of the trust placed in them.
After two government-appointed committees could do nothing but agree
with the organization's point of view, voting computers were
abolished and the country is now once-again voting using hand-counted
paper ballots. The municipal election officials will probably never
like the paper ballots as much as they liked the machines, but the
recent elections for European Parliament passed without incident.
Mr. Gonggrijp also co-authored the CCC technical report on voting
computers as requested by the German contitutional court and he is a
key figure in the growing international movement for election
transparency and verifiability.
Dr. Till Jaeger, Germany Attorney who argued the landmark German
Supreme Court Judgment that effectively banned EVMs in German
Elections
[image:
?ui=2&view=att&th=1264365b69f98e9e&attid=0.1&disp=attd&realattid=ii_1264365b69f98e9e&zw]
Born in Dec 1969, Dr. Till Jaeger, is attorney from Germany who
successfully argued the landmark German Supreme Court Judgment that
effectively banned the usage of Electronic Voting Machines in
Germany's elections for reasons of transparency and verifiability.
"Dr. Till Jaeger has been a partner at the law firm JBB Rechtsanwälte
since 2001.
He advises large and medium-sized IT businesses as well as government
authorities and software developers on matters involving contracts,
licensing and online use. Till Jaeger also covers conventional areas
of copyright law and entertainment law.
One particular focus of Till Jaeger's work is on the legal issues
created by open source software. He is co-founder of the Institute
for Legal Aspects of Free & Open Source Software (ifrOSS),
contributing to its work with academic publications, lectures and
seminars in the fields of software law and copyright law.
Till Jaeger represented the physicist and software-engineer Dr.
Ulrich Wiesner at the German Constitutional Court in the proceedings
regarding complaints requesting the scrutiny of the elections to the
16th German Bundestag. This lawsuit ended successful with the
decision that the German Federal Voting Machine Ordinance is
unconstitutional for lack of transparency and violation of the
principle of democracy.
Till Jaeger graduated in law from the University of Mainz and has
also studied in Dijon, France. He started his legal clerkship in
Brandenburg in 1996. After that, he was given a DFG scholarship to
attend a post-graduate course on EU law and the protection of
personal rights in Munich. In 1999-2000 he wrote his Ph.D. thesis on
copyright law at the Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property,
Competition & Tax Law Munich."
Dr. David Dill, USA (via Video Conference) University of Stanford,
pioneer for reformation of usage of EVMs in US elections that
resulted in 21 states in US either ban EVMs or require paper trail
and additional 18 states require paper trail in state or local
jurisdictions. Founder of Verified Voting Foundation.
[image:
?ui=2&view=att&th=1264365e40268b18&attid=0.1&disp=attd&realattid=ii_1264365e40268b18&zw]
David L. Dill is a Professor of Computer Science
http://www-cs.stanford.edu/
and,
by courtesy,Electrical Engineering <http://www-ee.stanford.edu/
at Stanford University
http://www.stanford.edu/
He has been on the faculty at Stanford since 1987. He has an S.B. in
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (1979), and an M.S and Ph.D. from Carnegie-
Mellon University (1982 and 1987).
Prof. Dill has been working actively on policy issues in voting
technology since 2003. He is the author of the "Resolution on
Electronic Voting", which calls for a voter-verifiable audit trail on
all voting equipment, and which has been endorsed by thousands of
people, including many of the top computer scientists in the U.S. He
has served on the California Secretary of State's Ad Hoc Task Force
on Touch-Screen voting, the Citizens DRE Oversight Board of the Santa
Clara County Registrar of Voters, and on the IEEE P1583 Voting
Equipment Standards Committee. He has testified on electronic voting
before the U.S. Senate and the Commission on Federal Election Reform,
co-chaired by Jimmy Carter and James Baker III. He is the founder of
the Verified Voting Foundation http://verifiedvotingfoundation.org/
and VerifiedVoting.org http://verifiedvoting.org/
and is on the board of those organizations. In 2004, he received the
Electronic Frontier Foundation's "Pioneer Award"
http://www.eff.org/awards/pioneer/2004.php
for "for spearheading and nurturing the popular movement for
integrity and transparency in modern elections."
Prof. Dill has research interests in a variety of areas, including
computational systems biology and the theory and application of
formal verification techniques to system designs, including hardware,
protocols, and software. He has also done research in asynchronous
circuit verification and synthesis, and in verification methods for
hard real-time systems. From July 1995 to September 1996, he was
Chief Scientist at 0-In Design Automation. http://www.0-in.com/
Prof. Dill's Ph.D. thesis, "Trace Theory for Automatic Hierarchical
Verification of Speed Independent Circuits" was named as
aDistinguished Dissertation by the Association for Computing
Machinery (ACM), and published as such by M.I.T. Press in 1988. He
was the recipient of an Presidential Young Investigator award from
the National Science Foundation in 1988, and a Young
Investigatoraward from the Office of Naval Research in 1991.
He has received Best Paper awards at International Conference on
Computer Design in 1991 and the Design Automation Conference in 1993
and 1998. He was named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 2001 for his contributions to
verification of circuits and systems, and a Fellow of the ACM in 2005
for contributions to system verification and for leadership in the
development of verifiable voting systems. In 2008, he received the
first "Computer-Aided Verification" award, with Rajeev Alur, for
fundamental contributions to the theory of real-time systems
verification.
Dr. Alex Halderman, USA Computer Science Professor, University of
Michigan, noted expert of Electronic Voting Security who demonstrated
first voting machine virus, lead team of Scientists from Princeton
and Berkeley for "Top to Bottom" review of California EVMs
[image:
?ui=2&view=att&th=12643661dfc65e82&attid=0.1&disp=attd&realattid=ii_12643661dfc65e82&zw]
Born in Jan 1981, Dr. John Alexander Halderman, is a Computer
Science Professor from University of Michigan, is noted expert on
electronic voting security who demonstrated first voting machine
virus, served as a technical expert in California's "Top to Bottom"
voting systems review leading a team of scientists from Princeton and
U.C. Berkeley.
J. Alex Halderman is a professor of computer science and engineering
at the University of Michigan, where his research spans applied
computer security and tech-centric public policy. Professor
Halderman is a noted expert on electronic voting security. In 2006,
he conducted the first public, independent security review of a
touch-screen voting machine, the Diebold AccuVote TS, and
demonstrated the first voting machine virus. He later served as a
technical expert in California's "Top-to-Bottom" voting systems
review, leading a team of scientists from Princeton and U.C.
Berkeley. In addition to exposing voting security flaws, he has
investigated ways to improve the security and efficiency of the
election process by making smarter use of technology.
Professor Halderman earned his Ph.D. in computer science at Princeton
University with a dissertation focused on studying computer security
failures in order to strengthen future designs. Besides electronic
voting, his research interests include Internet security, data
privacy, digital rights management, and cybercrime. He was a
founding member of Princeton's Center for Information Technology
Policy, where he continues to hold an appointment as a visiting
research collaborator.
Web site http://www.cse.umich.edu/~jhalderm/
Dr. Gitanjali Swamy, PhD Berkeley, MBA Harvard, (In 2000,
demonstrated to then Election Commissioner M.S. Gill the
vulnerabilities of chips in EVMs)
End of forwarded message from S. Kalyanaraman
Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti
o Not for commercial use. Solely to be fairly used for the educational
purposes of research and open discussion. The contents of this post may not
have been authored by, and do not necessarily represent the opinion of the
poster. The contents are protected by copyright law and the exemption for
fair use of copyrighted works.
o If you send private e-mail to me, it will likely not be read,
considered or answered if it does not contain your full legal name, current
e-mail and postal addresses, and live-voice telephone number.
o Posted for information and discussion. Views expressed by others are
not necessarily those of the poster who may or may not have read the article.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This article may contain copyrighted material the use of
which may or may not have been specifically authorized by the copyright
owner. This material is being made available in efforts to advance the
understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic,
democratic, scientific, social, and cultural, etc., issues. It is believed
that this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title
17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without
profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included
information for research, comment, discussion and educational purposes by
subscribing to USENET newsgroups or visiting web sites. For more information
go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
If you wish to use copyrighted material from this article for purposes of
your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the
copyright owner.
Since newsgroup posts are being removed
by forgery by one or more net terrorists,
this post may be reposted several times.
==============================================================================
TOPIC: AVATAR'S SAVAGE MESSAGE
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.movies.local.indian/t/e0024addba5f52e3?hl=en
==============================================================================
== 1 of 2 ==
Date: Sun, Feb 7 2010 5:59 pm
From: usenet@mantra.com and/or www.mantra.com/jai (Dr. Jai Maharaj)
Avatar's Savage Message
By Edward Hudgins
The Atlas Society
December 24, 2009 - James Cameron's new film Avatar is loaded with
fresh, eye-popping special effects, all in a new, cutting-edge 3-D
that sets the standard in cinema technology. It is also loaded with
tired, mind-numbing leftist clichés embedded in old, reactionary
themes that set a new low for political propaganda.
The plot as avatar
An avatar is, originally, the embodiment of a Hindu god. Today the
term also refers to an embodiment or personification of some
principle, attitude, or view of life; online it's a graphic image
that represents some person or thing. Cameron's movie is filled with
avatars, but not just the strange, hybrid creatures to which the
title refers. We also see them in the silly, subtle-as-a-brick-to-
the-head parallels that he makes between current events and his
imagined world. Let's turn to the story. (Warning: Spoilers ahead!)
The planet Pandora, a beautiful, verdant jungle paradise, is an
avatar for anywhere the American military might show up. It contains
the costly and rare substance Unobtainium, an avatar for oil, which
is critical to the Earth's economy. The private company Resources
Development Administration, an avatar for Halliburton, has set up
operations to ravage the planet to extract that substance. The
problem is that this planet is inhabited by ten-foot-tall blue aliens
called the Na'vi, living in primitive, pre-technological conditions.
The company employs a private army, an avatar for Blackwater as well
as the American military. As is explained, "Back home they fight for
freedom. Here they're hired guns for the corporation." The
mercenaries are led by the evil Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang), who
gives cartoon villains a bad name. He's gung ho simply to clean out
the "savages" by force, an attitude avatar representing how Cameron
and his ilk see American history and foreign policy. See, it's the
evil military-industrial complex in your face!
The company's administrator on Pandora says that the corporation's
investors would prefer to avoid the bad PR that they'd garner by
killing off all the Na'vi, but they're even more concerned about
avoiding a bad balance sheet. See, capitalism leads to killing!
The corporation has made half-hearted attempts to win the hearts and
minds of the Na'vi by teaching them English and setting up schools
and roads for them. How white of them! But it hasn't worked. Still,
it would be better to figure out what the "blue monkeys" (see,
Americans are racist!) want and somehow to get them to leave the
potential prospecting property.
Mind to body
Enter the scientists. A team led by Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney
Weaver) has mixed human and Na'vi DNA to produce avatars. These Na'vi
bodies can be operated by the human whose DNA is used. The human's
mind is linked to and controls the avatar as the human rests on a
techno-bed to which he or she is wired. Humans can't breathe the
atmosphere of Pandora, but their avatars can. So perhaps an avatar
can re-contact the Na'vi, who aren't very fond of the nasty, callous,
heartless American—err, sorry, Earthling--soldiers who tend to gun
them down at the least imagined provocation.
Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is a crippled ex-Marine who volunteers
to operate an avatar. His dual mission is to look for a peaceful way
to move the Na'vi out and to provide military intelligence to the
evil colonel for the probable removal of the Na'vi by force.
Pandora living paradise
Jake is thrilled with his avatar body, which allows him to walk and
run again on healthy albeit alien legs. But he becomes lost in the
jungle and captured by the Na'vi who, rather than execute him, decide
to show him their ways in spite of their suspicions about this
"dreamwalker," this demon who's part human and somehow controlled
from afar.
You can predict the rest of the story from here. Jake goes native in
an interplanetary Dances with Wolves. Here Cameron can't offer a
parallel with the real targets of America and its military today.
After all, Islamists are bloodthirsty fanatics who will chop off your
head for having ideas that differ from their own primitive
superstitions, who treat women like chattel, and who see it as the
height of virtue to blow up other people's children. Cameron instead
gives us (in the Na'vi) a cross between how he imagines American
Indians and tribes of the rain forest to be. Much more sympathetic!
Jake wins the trust and respect of the Na'vi by passing all the
challenges required to be a warrior. He is declared one of The
People. And he falls in love with the Na'vi woman who helped him
along his path.
One with the world
In the process, Jake learns about the Na'vis' religion and their
unique relationship to their world. When they hunt and kill an animal
they thank it for its body as its spirit goes to Eyra, their god.
When they ride or fly on the backs of Pandora's fantastic fauna, the
Na'vi must entwine special nerve threads at the ends of their long
hair with those of the animals in order to form a mental and
spiritual bond. They also can entwine their nerve hairs with a tree
that allows them to hear the memories of their ancestors. They are
literally one with nature!
The Na'vi talk incessantly about flows of energy. And there's the
Tree of Souls at the center of their world. The scientists who
created the avatars find that it has a strange, unexplainable flux
field around it. Can you say, "May the Force be with you?"
Needless to say, the military moves in with helicopter gunships and
heavily armed infantry to lay waste to the forest and the Na'vi. So
the Na'vi, lead by Jake in his avatar, unite with other tribes and,
like the army of primitive desert "Fremen" in Dune or the teddy-bear
Ewoks in Return of the Jedi, use their command of the environment and
its animals to beat the evil masters of technology. In the end, the
Na'vi load the captured Earthlings onto their ships to send them back
to their dying world on which all that was green has been destroyed.
Savage myth
In Avatar Cameron perpetuates the enduring, seductive, yet morally
false myth of a Garden of Eden or lost paradise inhabited by noble
savages. This myth has done no end of harm to humanity. In modern
times, it found its voice in Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
In the eighteenth century the Enlightenment had dragged Europe out of
the Dark Ages, setting individual happiness as a legitimate moral
goal, showing that the human mind could understand the movements of
the planets and the biology of the human body, and discovering ways
to produce the material means for prosperity. Then Rousseau stood
before human progress and shouted, "Stop!"
He argued that in the state of nature humans were governed by two
instincts: self-preservation and pity for others. We thus lived in
idyllic harmony with our fellows and our world. But when we started
to think, to use our minds, we worried about the future. That's when
all the trouble began. We sought private property to give us personal
security. In the process, we became selfish and put ourselves as
individuals in conflict with others. We created creature comforts
that cut us off from our natural world and our natural selves.
Civilization was the enemy of our virtue.
This, of course, is moral nonsense. A look at primitive peoples from
the prehistoric to the original inhabitants of America to the odd
jungle tribe today shows brutality, superstition that leads to
ostracism and murder, and institutionalized human sacrifice along
with the occasional "respect" for animal spirits. And, in fact,
virtue consists in disciplining our appetites and urges, in the light
of reason, toward our individual well-being, which will also lead us
to respect our fellows and deal with them based on mutual consent.
There are noble and virtuous individuals in primitive as well as
advanced societies. But there's nothing noble about ignorance of
one's world. There's nothing noble about the impotence over one's
world that comes from one's ignorance. There's nothing noble about
being unable to build adequate shelters against the forces of nature,
produce adequate food against famines, or discover adequate medicines
against illness.
It is the height of irony -- to say nothing of hypocrisy—for Cameron,
the master of movie-making technology, to have as the theme of this
movie the utter evil of technology.
Talk to the trees
In Avatar, Cameron helps the modern environmental movement continue
to morph into a new religion of Gaia worship that, disguised as a
love for nature, is anti-human in its essence.
This new cult treats "nature" itself as a conscious, living entity at
odds with and morally superior to human beings. Of course, a strong
counterargument is that the world itself, the environment itself, is
not a conscious entity. Only we humans are self-conscious, living,
breathing creatures with free will who must choose to act and to seek
values. Human life is our standard of value, and to survive and
flourish we must make use of the materials of our world.
In Avatar, Cameron gives us a sci-fi version of the Gaia
superstition, showing the Na'vi living in an animate and conscious
world, in which animal and human minds can join, in which we can talk
to the trees as we would with our friends and family. Of course,
that's not the reality. That's not the world. But powerful images
like those in Avatar have nothing to do with reality. Unlike rational
arguments, they can create and reinforce deadly ideas in a culture.
If you want great special effects and an action-packed popcorn
thriller, you'll certainly enjoy Avatar. But hopefully Cameron has so
overplayed his hand with his politically correct plot that audiences
will leave the comfort of the theater with an appreciation for
technology and no desire to flee to a jungle or support the sort of
public policies that would reduce our civilization to savagery.
- - -
Hudgins directs advocacy and is a senior scholar at The Atlas Society, the center for Objectivism.
For further reading:
Edward Hudgins, "Star Wars and the politics of republics." May 21, 2002.
http://www.atlassociety.org/cth--511-Star_Wars_and_politics_republics.aspx
Edward Hudgins, "Star Wars: Are the Sith Selfish?" May 25, 2005.
http://www.atlassociety.org/cth--1610-Star_Wars_Are_the_Sith_Selfish.aspx
More at:
http://www.atlassociety.org/cth-43-2267-Avatar.aspx
Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti
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== 2 of 2 ==
Date: Sun, Feb 7 2010 6:35 pm
From: "Arindam Banerjee"
> Savage myth
>
> In Avatar Cameron perpetuates the enduring, seductive, yet morally
> false myth of a Garden of Eden or lost paradise inhabited by noble
> savages. This myth has done no end of harm to humanity. In modern
> times, it found its voice in Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Humanity meaning pirates and prostitutes?
Cheers,
Arindam Banerjee
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