Another Great Download

Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry is campaign propaganda. The easiest definition on Dictionary.com of propaganda is "information that is spread for the purpose of promoting some cause". Obviously, since this movie was made with the purpose of supporting Kerry and defending him from the Swifties it meets this rather low standard.

That being said, I thought at the outset of the movie that it would be pretty boring propaganda; that it would essentially be a Kerry commercial that just lasted an hour and a half. In reality the movie sets into relief the antiwar movement of which Kerry was a major part and is frequently both terribly moving and enlightening to a person of my age that has never really gotten a feel for what things were like then. Now surely I'm no expert now on the period or the geopolitical events of the day, but this was the first time I heard the story being told directly and almost exclusively by the people who were the part of it.

As a Kerry commercial it's quite effective as well. It's amazing how well spoken Kerry was at 27 and even more amazing how poignient some of his comments made against Vietnam are in relation to our current situation with Iraq specifically and with terrorism generally. If everyone could see this movie Kerry wouldn't have to explain Vietnam anymore, he wouldn't have to respond to the despicable Swifties that have dogged him ever since he dared utter a negative word about the war in Vietnam, and he certainly wouldn't have to explain concepts like "global test" in the face of talking heads who just love to say that it's something it isn't.

To that end, you may download the movie here, though I'm not a hundered percent sure this is sanctioned by the movies producers. I think the best way to do this is download and watch the movie now, and then try to get to the theaters to see it or to buy the DVD when you can just so you're throwing some money their way.

I downloaded the movie with BitTorrent and I think I averaged over 300kb/s and it took about an hour to get the whole thing, so I definitely recomend going that route.