Invisible wars...

...are wars that are one-sided because they are conducted remotely with the aid of technology; at the receiving end of such wars are the defenseless poor, who are designated "enemy combatants" against their consent or knowledge.

The "enemy combatants" die in this warfare without firing back a single shot, because missiles are launched against them when they were sleeping, or are going about their business of daily living.

While the rules of war in the 21st century hasn't changed--still heavily rigged in favor of winners and those who write the rules--the technology, and consequently, the definitions of who or what constitutes the "combatant" have.

Madira Tahir's 2013 Documentary, The Wounds of Waziristan, is about such wars and such enemy combatants. The films makes me wince, but it also makes me feel I understand; I understand why we would like to flock to imaginary landscapes and histories of a Hogwarts (of Harry Potter fame).

Because Waziristan-like realities are too hard to bear.

The only just war (in my eyes)

Is the war on poverty.

America celebrates the 50th anniversary of what I consider to be its one and only just war--the war on poverty. One of the many points of inception of America's war on poverty was the passing of the food stamp act in 1964.

Food stamps, along with Medicaid and Head Start, among others, were foremost among the anti-poverty programs primarily conceptualized during the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson.

The first recipients of the food stamps program were residents of McDowell County, the poorest county in West Virginia. 

LBJ took a poverty tour of West Virginia in 1964 and was appalled to see first hand the desolation of the Appalachian region.

The Times has an interesting look at McDowell County fifty years later.

Return of the erudite vampire

Jim Jarmusch's Only Lovers Left Alive, has something I appreciate--adult vampires instead of the odious teenage ones (a.k.a. The Twilight Saga twits). 

Having familiarized myself with the vampire ecology in Bram Stoker's Dracula, I believe vampires to be intelligent adult creatures who have more than sex and chastity on their mind.

Count Dracula, was above everything else, an artist, an erudite adult male. Jarmusch brings back the adult erudition back to vampirism in his new film on a refreshing class of vampires who are lovers of old-world creativity and art in classic Bohemian style. 

The female lead, Eve, played by the gorgeous Tilda Swinton, packs her suitcases with classics and Adam, her male counterpart decorates his walls with pictures of famous artists. Adam and Eve's muse, quite fascinatingly is Christopher Marlowe, one of Europe's original literary outlaws who was both spymaster and erudite poet and playwright who dismissed Shakespeare as a plagiarist and populist with grave literacy problems.

Marlowe, Adam and Eve look upon the present as a present of zombies, comprised of ordinary humans who have squandered and/or lost their ability to appreciate art. 

Movie critic A.O. Scott describes Only Lovers Left Alive as "a generational protest against the zombie kids and their enablers, digitally distracted creatures who don’t appreciate the tactile, sensual glories of the old things."