MOOOOOOVE Over, I'm Gonna Eat Me Somma 'Dat Crap

"Yum yum yum yum! I love me some fast food!"

If the statement above expresses how you feel, you should very much watch the movie Fast Food Nation. You will say "No I shouldn't, I'm content." Whether or not you want to, doesn't change the fact that you should.

This movie is about the quite literal "crap" that the wealthy food industry promotes to us as delicious food. It might be early in the blog for this, but let me say there is some irony here. This movie intends to expose lies and marketing to the naked eye. At the same time this movie is full of sex that doesn't need to be there. Be it the TV audio of a lesbian sex scene that a character is watching or the few sex scenes (at least one with nudity). I understand that maybe the later scene may have some merit, since it is displaying manipulation of immigrants, but of course the women in those scenes are very attractive. It's using its own form of lies and marketing to sell a movie to expose different lies and marketing. Ugh.

I won't spoil the whole movie, but this film addresses corporate fat-cat corruption, the governments imposition oh private property, treatment of illegal immigrants, quality of our food, and misguided rationalizing of why these wrongs must be done.

This is not a documentary. It is a movie. But the theme and content of the movie is designed to be an echo of reality, just with fictional characters and companies. I would compare it to Blood Diamond in that regard (I highly recommend that movie as well).

I really like the way the present that the problem isn't just with us eating crap-filled, low-grade, fake food; but rather it is in the deterioration of our way of living by the overcrowding of "convenience" and corporations, rather than simplicity and humility. That is what separates this film from one like Supersize Me. Supersize Me warns consumers of the harm that may come to us, privately, from eating fast food. Fast Food Nation warns people of the harm that may come to us, collectively, by feeding into the machine. It is not just personal, but systemic outcome.

Maybe this analysis has turned you off from the movie. I do believe that this is what it was going for, but if you want to watch it just for a few of the aspects, you will still get something out of it.

And people think I'm crazy for not eating meat.

Hurry Up And DON'T Pay Your Income Tax!

I recently watched a documentary by Aaron Russo, America: Freedom to Fascism.

I wasn't totally sure what the movie was about and I can't remember what led me to watch it, but it certainly brought up some interesting points.

I'll summarize what it's about kind of, but wikipedia does a much better job of it.

It starts out talking about how there is no legal backing for a federal income tax. It is actually unconstitutional to have an federal income tax. But if you do not pay this tax the IRS has a FIT about you not paying your F.I.T. They put people in jail all the time, seize assets, and actually raid houses and business, when they can't even back the Federal Income Tax with a law.

Many IRS works are challenged to find the legal backing for this and cannot find anything. The higher ups who are questioned have nothing of any merit to say in defense of this tax.

We feel like the U.S. couldn't function properly without the citizens paying this tax; however, there was no Federal Income Tax before 1913, and things worked fine then. In face, most of the money paid towards the F.I.T. goes toward paying of interest of the U.S.'s debt to the Federal Reserve.

This is the second big argument of the movie. The Federal Reserve is ridiculous... it's not "federal" at all... it's a bunch of private banks that are not the government, but they can in some ways control the government since they control the money. These banks are the ones who print our money. They can create currency out of thin air that is backed by nothing but credit. Where paper money should be a receipt for something of real worth (gold, silver) it is now a receipt for the paper it is printed on... it has no merit.

It is for this reason that we see the U.S. dollar plummeting. We keep printing money that is backed by nothing. And the thing is, we don't even know the state of the gold that should be backing it. Where is the gold, where did it go, how much of it is there?

The U.S. can pay all of its bills on the other taxes that are legal taxes. The Federal Income Tax goes toward paying our debt and then the rest of it goes...? It's missing. Unaccounted for. Gone.

To real truth is that I didn't understand everything in the documentary the first time around, but I got a good gist. I also know that a documentary is inherently biased in almost every situation (except for anything Michael Moore has done, obviously). I have found misquotes (or at least not full quotes) from this documentary. The wikipedia page has a lot of criticisms of the documentary; but, these don't seem to argue the real points being made, only some of the minor backings of the points.

I would check out the movie if you can. There are some clips on the website, which I linked to at the beginning. If you want to borrow my copy, you can do that too.

I certainly think there is a lot of corruption in this country that gets fluffed over by politicians energizing with passionate talk of the "freedom" of our country. We certainly appear to be free, and we certainly are free-er than other countries, but are we as free as we think?

Thoughts are encouraged.