Frank Miller's film "300" trailer and great historical analysis of parallels with war on terror

http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/300.html ^

[Names Ash Housewares]

The clash of east and west is truly ancient.

The lastest trailer for "300" is must see!

http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/300.html

[Names Ash Housewares]

Must read....

Spartans, Traitors, and Terrorists

http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2006/jyulo_terrorists_aug06.asp

"There is more complexity with the position the West is in today, pit reluctantly against a savage, though familiar, adversary. Greece was a small confederacy of city states, loosely held together by simmering, yet potent, ideas. These, though appearing inconsequential next to Xerxes' army, inevitably vanquished a physically superior foe. The modern West manifests a mixed response to this threat, from withdrawal and appeasement by socialist Spain, to tenacious confrontation by the United States and United Kingdom. Indeed it does seem that the latter two nations stand without too many allies in these dark times -- a fitting homage to Leonidas and his three hundred."

[alwaysconservative]

I've watched the trailer a number of times already, and definitely plan to see this movie. And there is no doubt that with Gerard Butler as King Leonidas in this true tale, it will be a visual feast as well as an object lesson.

[SunkenCiv]

The Spartan sacrifice of a mere 300 in a holding action at Thermopylae was just a PR move to recover Sparta's standing with the rest of Greece -- the Spartans had refused to help about ten years earlier, leaving Athens to face the Persians at Marathon, where the superior Persian force was whipped. Shortly after Thermopylae, the Athenians also defeated the Persians in the naval battle of Salamis. The Spartans participated in the Battle of Plataea, which was ended the Persian invasion plan, but during the Peloponnesian War with Athens (and the Delian League, which gradually fell away), the Spartans built a navy using money from the Persians.

Meanwhile, the Spartans lived for centuries as a master race, with compulsory pederasty, mass enslavement of their neighbors for many miles around, and a society that has seldom been surpassed for lack of liberty. Sparta is not a worthy comparison with ourselves (unless one counts San Francisco's leather fetish gay community).

[Names Ash Housewares]

I would never think anyone then was equivalent comparison to what we are today.
Simply that we have an "evolutionary" common political system ancestor so to speak. That if the Persian empire had conquered Greece. Would modern democracies exist?

I guess my point is, we had a dog in that fight and that outcome led to us today.

[SunkenCiv]

Sparta wasn't a democracy.

[rmlew]

1. Persia was not a horrid empire.
2. The Athenians were nice. The Spartans were a brutish militaristic culture built on eslaving other Greeks, the Helots.
3. The Spartans did not fight alone. They were protected by an Athenian dominated navy and joined by 1000 from Thebes.

PS. I will definitely see this movie, if only to see the audience reaction to the line "Come, take them".

[Names Ash Housewares]

My whole view is this,

If the newborn Greek concept of democracy had been snuffed out because of a victorious Persian empire, how would the course of human history been changed?

I do not equate the Spartans with George Washington here.

Only that their sacrifice was a small part of the equation of Persia NOT snuffing out the seeds of the concept of Greek democracy.

Had the Spartans and Greeks NOT resisted Persian rule, would we exist? I think not. How much longer would it have taken for democracatic ideas to take root again? if at all?

Wether Persians were not horrid, or Spartans were nasty is not my point.

I simply state, we had a dog in that fight. Because those events eventually led to western style democracy today.

Sometimes small events can have great influence.
300 Spartans (with help sure) resisting the Persians as well as they did must have had a powerful psychological effect at the time.

[Wormwood]

This trailer packs more Testosterone in 2 minutes than Lord of the Rings packed into nine hours.

I think I need a cigarette.

[Names Ash Housewares]

"This trailer packs more Testosterone in 2 minutes than Lord of the Rings packed into nine hours."

Thank God.
Miller's stuff generally doesn't screw around.

[Wormwood]

Miller's stuff generally doesn't screw around.

Damn straight!

He's like the love child of Dashiell Hammett and Robert Howard.

And in my opinion, he wrote the single greatest comic book of all time: The Dark Knight Returns.

[weegee]

The whole concept of stability is a concept of death.

It's part of my problem with the Bambi concept of natural history, where everything is beautiful and cute and benign. It's not the world. The world isn't like that at all.

You're either 'prey, you're an 'enemy', or you're 'ignored'.

Now think about all the islands. Island wildlife was wiped out because people could walk up to them with a stick and hit it on the head because it's much easier to kill something that doesn't see you as an enemy. By the time they realized it, they were extinct.

Ray Mendez, mole rat specialist, quoted from the documenty Fast, Cheap, & Out of Control (1997)