Vermont has no coast. It's inland.

Peroxide,

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Spoiler Alert!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The first half of MD is a dream, the second half is reality, or at least the subjective reality of Naomi Watt's character. Give the movie a second watch with that in mind and you just might enjoy it.

I can also give a pretty good interpretation of the impenetrable 'Lost Highway'. If enough people request it, I'll rewatch it and blog it on a sift post.

PS: I have no fucking clue how to interpret INLAND EMPIRE. It has shape, form and logical emotional arcs, but I don't think there is a clear-cut plot to unravel. It's just abstract. For the record, I like IE quite a bit.

That's a simplistic argument to make, that Russians 'tried' democracy and it failed. The fact is that Russian's never got to experience democracy at all, with the coming of Yeltsin into power the centralized market system was thrown out overnight for a capitalist economy, workers were issued shares for the companies they worked in, the Russian currency collapsed, pensions were stopped, all due to western economists (who arrived in droves) believing that the spirit of entrepreneurship would suddenly infect the souls of people who lived under communist rule for over 60 years.

But what happened was that some individuals within that system started buying out the shares from the workers who needed to sustain themselves at that point, seizing massive control of various industries, thus creating the oligarchs. The same people who now own various football clubs in the UK.

The people as a whole felt robbed, they blamed democracy for that, failing to see how the economic reforms worked against them, instead of blaming the transition many more people assumed it was democracy that was at fault. What should have been a long term phased switch into a market economy like the one seen with China was rushed within the space of a few years, incomes and welfare of course fell. Look at how gradually China introduced free market zones, by cordoning them off to small regions, then allowed foreign direct investment there. The whole motto of their capital development was "import 1st product, assemble 2nd product, manufacture 3rd product".

The current Putin government is full of KGB cronies who have muscled their way into acquisition of the most important sectors of the economy, most significant of them being the oil sector, which is wholly responsible for the economic boom in Russia. The war in Iraq and possible war with Iran has seen the Oil price soar year on year since 2000 and Putin's coming into power and the economic boom in Russia, that's not coincidental. This is why Putin visited Iran, instability in the Middle East sustains the high oil price and Russia's development.

Putin did give something to the Russians, and that is pride in their nation, a seeming return to the heyday of the Soviet Union with it's planting of flags in the Arctic, stance against the American government and nuclear armed patrols that hark back to the Cold War era. But it also came with government control of oil resources, elimination of civil rights, elimination of freedom of press, state control of media, needless military expansionism, Byzantine rule of government, political oppression through assassination of those who oppose the government.

Just this past month he imposed a collective freeze on food prices until after the elections sometime in January, this was done so as to keep the appearance to Russia's poor that the economy was doing well when in reality food prices across the world are rising, once elections are over they can remove the freeze.

A good article on "Why Putin Wins" is Sergei Kovalev's article , who gives a realistic breakdown of Russia as it is now and what is its future. As Scott Horton says in "What Putin Wants":

The challenge will be for America more than for Russia. In America, there is still a hope that the democratic process can work to effect a rollback of creeping authoritarianism and a restoration of the beacon of hope that the land once held up to the world. In Russia, all sight of that beacon is lost.

Your argument that non-democratic states like Kingdom of Saudi Arabia offer a higher standard of living is ridiculous, most of the population lives in poverty as the wealth is concentrated in the Royal family and even then only through the continual oil production, almost everything it produces is sustain through government subsidization, much more of its products are simply imported. Jordan differs because they possesses a technocrat King who believes in development, that doesn't mean tomorrow a tyrant will take power.

And am sorry but slave like hours on minimal wage for 90% of the population making Nike shoes does not translate into a higher standard living for the Chinese as a whole, not to mention that development is confined to the coastal areas, while inland China lives in poverty due to lack of investment and encroaching desert taking away valuable agricultural land. China possess an incredible amount of income disparity, firms are still mainly controlled by the Chinese government. It is true that there is slowly an emergence of a middle class, that is being educated abroad and not going back to mainland China, because opportunities in the west are much better.

The argument that ANY government policy has a potential to achieve strong economy is simplistic, the market system works because various agents start to develop products and services to supply a demand of other agents. That requires freedom of enterprise, the ability to freely form business solutions. That means reform laws that actively invite business activities to take place. Communism or centralized market economy does not lead to a strong economy because the demand and supply signals do not exist, the government decides what is important to produce and does it. It leads to a mis balance and a concentration of power in the hands of the few, this is why the USSR failed, and why China started to put in place free market reforms in the 80s. States in the Middle East still sustain their perverse development through oil money, without which all of them would quite realistically fail, as they are overly reliant on foreign labor and are not actively developing their skilled labor force, not to mention the sheer amount of corruption that occurs between those in high office and citizens.

Your mention of a few democratic states that are in poor shapes is simplistic again, they are not failures of democracy but rather a lack of proper reforms and rule. Brazil is doing rather well now actually even though government corruption is still rife as is political instability. Nepal is constitutional monarchy, where the King has assumed emergency powers and holds all executive power so I have no idea why you lumped it in there. Albania on the other hand has had successive government instability with the neighboring war, socialist, democratic governments in succession, the economy however is steadily developing even though stability has been hard to attain since 1990.

The idea behind democracy is that citizens can have a say in where their nation is heading, being elected to government doesn't make saints out of people where they suddenly selflessly try to achieve economy development for the people as a whole. The African nations where strong armed authoritative ruler one after the other prove this, as does Hugo Chavez who after winning the trust of the poor is now concentrating all executive power under his own control, as does Iran where Mahmoud's promises to the poor for oil revenue sharing amounted to nothing but continuous tensions and sanctions from the west.

I think you need to further broaden your understanding of the complexities of government rule and policy with regards to economic development as they are rather basic right now.

hmmmm...no mixed feelings...could the culprits in the debacle, be a combination of the historically corrupt politicians of the state, the engineers who originally decided to build these crap levees that the Dutch studied, and concluded that even they were at a loss to come up with any solutions, and the folks now whining, because they chose to "dig in" below sea level, without educating themselves as to the state of affairs of planet Water. Sometimes, you have to abandon your sentimental attachment to the past, and move forward, in this case, inland, as the damn water encroaches......

The maps will change in our lifetime.....

"[Yet...still people believe that there is science out there that shows global warming is not happening. I can not express how annoying I find that.}-someone, anyone, please, help me to describe the annoying feeling inside, when reading a statement like this-No-the science is there MH, half of it is being pimped to her worshipers, the other denied access to the cathedral.

Glad I could annoy you.


If in fact, his primary mission was to alert the world to the dynamics of earth change, why pick a politically charged issue that has everything to do with big oil and corporate megalopoly....add to that, the flavor-of-the-week Hollow-wood bandwagon, and you've got a media manipulation, that refuses to die-In steps the legacy of Alfred, who also gave the world dynamite, fitting bit of synchronicity-

The reality of global warming is this, kiddies-There ain't a damn thing we can do about it but 2 things-Tell the world the truth, and have them living like there's no tomorrow till the sea levels, seismic, and weather patterns, drive most folks further and further inland who can afford it, or let the elite, and those in the know, continue to spin fanciful stories, as they all race to ensure, that their little empires weather the storm.

The folks in the know??..They are preparing hidey-holes, at the masses expense-We aught to kill them all, on fucking principle!


Political-environmentalista, probably paved the way for NAFTA to grow like the boil that it has become....he deserves this diluted award as much as Arafat did...

yah lol i was going to say that + all the ice that resides on moutains ore other inland aireas

is it probable, that preparations will be made for the inevitable map change.....yes, that's why one moves inland-

If Humans ceased immediately all emmissions artificial and contrived, would this slow down, or reverse this cyclical phenom.....not likely, doomsayers.