#twilight zone invasion | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

literary-illuminati · 8 months

Text

Book Review 58 – The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin

I originally put a hold on this at the library back in the spring, so by the time I actually got my hands on it I��d entirely forgotten why I’d asked for it specifically. Still, in general I’d been meaning to read more Le Guin (and more classic sci fi/stuff written in previous generations, generally), so it isn’t too mysterious. It’s definitely a meaty read as far as cultural artifacts go, but I must admit that as a reading experience it left me a bit cold.

The story takes place in the distant and futuristic year of 2003, in a Portland that’s rather worse for the wear – overpopulation, widespread and crippling malnutrition even in American cities, a war in the Middle East threatening to spiral out into nuclear Armageddon, climate change has led to mass resettlement away from the coasts, and also its always raining. Into this comes Gregory Orr, a man whose dreams can retroactively change reality. Horrified by this, he almost overdoses on stimulants to avoid sleep – and is basically given court-ordered ‘voluntary’ therapy. Dr. William Haber, after taking a bit to believe him, starts using the magic of hynpotherapy and also Orr being kind of a pushover to trigger, manipulate, and direct his magic dreams and start trying to retroactively fix the world. Because it turns out hypnosis-induced dreams have a lot in common with asshole genies, side effects include a pandemic killing the majority of humanity, an alien invasion, everyone having identically coloured grey skin, and eventually the execution of anyone discovered to have a inheritable medical condition for eugenics reasons. Eventually Haber believes he’s discovered a way to induce the same dreams in himself, and when he tries just kind of breaks reality and himself at the seams. Before he does, he finally cures Orr of the dreams, and amid the ruins he gets a girlfriend (who had in other versions of reality been his lawyer and then dead and then his girlfriend) and settles down to a good life working with his hands.

The overall feel of the book is, like, Seeing Like A State as Twilight Zone episode. There’s a distaste for capital-P Progress – for top-down utopias, technocratic utilitarianism, psychiatry and eugenics and public health initiatives, tolerance through the erasure of differences, bureaucratic work, lives without strife and struggle, and just generally measuring the marigolds – that absolutely pervades the work. It is good and virtuous, the book seems to (or outright does) say, to help people you know and directly around you, and in the face of an apocalypse you do whatever you can. But otherwise, in the course of normal life, thinking you can really improve the world is the height of hubris, and thinking you have any duty to is just disguised megomania – anti-overpopulation efforts lead naturally to democidal plagues, trying to cure cancer to brutal eugenics regimes. The good life is a grounded one, where you have a job where you work with your hands and do something constructive, and don’t mess around with dangerous dreams – the only alternative is playing a cruel god over the masses.

The aesthetic and political revulsion towards 20th century modernism is of a piece with what else I’ve read of Le Guin, but the sort of conservative, struggle-idolizing quietism it puts forward as the positive alternative kind of took me by surprise.

Speaking of overpopulation – as an artifact of anxieties about the future and science, the book is just fascinating. Written in 1970, it really does take it as almost a given that in thirty years overpopulation would be an acute crisis. The numbers actually aren’t far off – a global population of 7 billion is mentioned – but this is taken to mean a world where childhood malnutrition is a fact of life for the average American in the Pacific Northwest, and there’s so much demand for grain-as-foodstuff that a psychiatrist can’t afford brandy. Hypnosis is also treated with a level of seriousness and gravitas that these days its only shown in self-conscious pulp and fetish porn. On the other hand, the fact that a book written in 1970 is talking about ‘the greenhouse effect’ and how climate change is going to cause ruinous natural disasters is, well, deeply depressing.

Completely tangential from everything else – so the only female character in the book is Heather Lelache, a lawyer Orr goes to for help and then a couple reality iterations later starts falling in love with. Or properly speaking after he accidentally dreams her out of existing in the process of abolishing racism, he dreams her back and it’s functionally an entirely different and much meeker and milder person (like, she gets POV chapters, the change in internal monologue is striking) and also goes from ‘lawyer’ to ‘legal secretary’, and he continues falling in love with and marries her. This is never really called out or commented upon but it did strike me enough that I wanted to bring it up as interesting.

Anyway, don’t regret reading this, but probably the Le Guin I’ve gotten the least out of, overall.

#book review #classic sf #the lathe of heaven #le guin #sff

45 notes · View notes

futa69 · 3 months

Text

You're already a fan of the ancient astronaut theory.

Here's a list of books, movies, TV shows, and video games featuring ancient astronauts. (revised)

▪︎Edison's Conquest of Mars (1898)

▪︎The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

▪︎Analog Science Fiction and Fact (1930)

▪︎At the Mountains of Madness (1931)

▪︎Childhood's End (1953)

▪︎Forbidden Planet (1956)

▪︎Quartermass and the Pit (1958)

▪︎The Twilight Zone (1959)

▪︎The Sirens of Titan (1959)

▪︎The Flintstones (1960)

▪︎Doctor Who (1963)

▪︎Hercules Against the Moon Men (1964)

▪︎Known Space (1964)

▪︎Star Trek (1966)

▪︎2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

▪︎Chariots of the Gods (1968)

▪︎The Bible & Flying Saucers (1968)

▪︎Horror Express (1972)

▪︎Rendezvous with Rama (1973)

▪︎Land of the Lost (1974)

▪︎The Spaceships of Ezekiel (1974)

▪︎The Outer Space Connection (1975)

▪︎Space: 1999 (1975)

▪︎The Sirius Mystery (1976)

▪︎The Earth Chronicles (1976)

▪︎Star Wars (1977)

▪︎Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

▪︎The Manna Machine (1978)

▪︎Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)

▪︎Battlestar Galactica (1978)

▪︎Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1978)

▪︎Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979)

▪︎Alien (1979)

▪︎Hangar 18 (1980)

▪︎Valis (1981)

▪︎The Thing (1982)

▪︎Xevious (1982)

▪︎Super Dimension Fortress Macross (1982)

▪︎The Transformers (1984)

▪︎Cocoon (1985)

▪︎Bio Booster Armor Guyver (1985)

▪︎The Legend of Zelda (1986)

▪︎Predator (1987)

▪︎Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988)

▪︎Red Dwarf (1988)

▪︎The Gods of Eden (1989)

▪︎Moontrap (1989)

▪︎Spriggan (1989)

▪︎Total Recall (1990)

▪︎Babylon 5 (1993)

▪︎The X-Files (1993)

▪︎Stargate (1994)

▪︎Neon Genesis Evangelion (1994)

▪︎Fingerprints of the Gods (1995)

▪︎Encounter with Tiber (1996)

▪︎Final Fantasy (1997)

▪︎Earth: Final Conflict (1997)

▪︎The Fifth Element (1997)

▪︎Space Island One (1998)

▪︎Naked Pictures of Famous People (1998)

▪︎Dilbert (1999)

▪︎Futurama (1999)

▪︎Star Ancestors (2000)

▪︎Mission to Mars (2000)

▪︎Halo (2001)

▪︎Ice Age (2002)

▪︎Alien vs. Predator (2004)

▪︎The Orion Zone (2007)

▪︎Mass Effect (2007)

▪︎Assassin's Creed (2007)

▪︎Outlander (2008)

▪︎Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

▪︎Marvel Cinematic Universe (2008)

▪︎Spore (2008)

▪︎Knowing (2009)

▪︎The Fourth Kind (2009)

▪︎Ancient Aliens (2009)

▪︎Borderlands (2009)

▪︎The Great Airship of 1897 (2010)

▪︎Dark Void (2010)

▪︎The Ancient Alien Question (2011)

▪︎Cowboys and Aliens (2011)

▪︎Battle: Los Angeles (2011)

▪︎Paul (2011)

▪︎John Carter (2012)

▪︎Prometheus (2012)

▪︎Iron Sky (2012)

▪︎Man of Steel (2013)

▪︎Beyond the Sky (2018)

▪︎Resident Alien (2021)

▪︎Moonfall (2022)

▪︎Prey (2022)

▪︎65 (2023)

8 notes · View notes

eriquin · 11 months

Text

The Trolley Problem, Part 7

Formerly Time Travel. Steve gets some advice from his dad, or Dadvice.

(master post)

Part 7:

When Monday morning rolled around, he had to drag himself back to school. He had a math test on Wednesday and a history paper due on Friday but he couldn’t bring himself to care when he knew he only had two weeks left to figure out how to keep everything from going to hell. Nancy kept batting her eyelashes at him whenever they passed in the hall and it flustered him in a way that passed for lovesick to his friends, but he knew better. He could play out their whole history in his head—that was one of the things he remembered clearly—and there was no way he could repeat it. The weirdest part of everything was how much older he felt. Three years was a long time for someone his age, and those three years had been especially long.

Steve tried again to think this through, but kept running up against his lack of imagination. The best thing he could think of was to fight the demogorgon and keep it from abducting Will, but he was absolutely certain that he wouldn’t be able to fight it by himself, and also that screwing that up might get both him and Will killed. This was the kind of thing that Dustin would have figured out, but on his own he was pretty lost.

He brought it up with his dad that night, in an attempt to try to get his thoughts in order and an outsider perspective on it. “What if you had a kind of outrageous story? How would you get people to believe it?”

Dad was flipping through the channels, looking for something to watch. He put the remote down and turned to look at Steve. “Is this about your sports predictions? Do I need to go make a bet somewhere?”

Steve shook his head. “No, it’s not that. Well, it’s kind of that.” He rubbed his chin and tried to think of how to explain it. “It’s more like... What if I’m thinking of some kind of story I want to tell, like for a book? But it’s a kind of weird, science fiction or horror thing. How do I make people believe it?”

“People in real life, or people in your book?”

Steve grimaced. “I mean... I want the people in the book to act like real life people. Like, if you had someone who knew something terrible was going to happen, but he could only make a difference if he could get people to believe him before it started happening, how could he do that?”

Dad gave him a concerned look. “Steve, did you have a vision of something terrible happening?”

He sighed and rubbed his forehead, knowing this wasn’t going to get him anywhere if he tried to be serious about it. “Yes. Hawkins is going to be split by an earthquake and overrun with monsters from another world.”

It took a second, but Dad laughed. “Oh, that kind of story. Like the Twilight Zone. Okay, let’s go back a tick. Where is this coming from?”

“I was just thinking about how, like, that baseball game? What I really had had a vision, and it was for some kind of disaster or something that I couldn’t just wait around to see happen. Then I thought how that’d make a cool story.” He shrugged sheepishly. “Creative writing class, you know? I wanted to write up something about our bet and it kind of got away from me.”

Dad scratched his chin in the same way that Steve did when he was thinking. With his beard, it made him look wiser. “So you’re writing this story, and you want to find some way for the people in the story to believe your prophecy maker?”

“Yeah, like... If it was set hundreds of years ago, they would’ve burned him at the stake. Or maybe if it’s in the far future, they have, like, mind reading equipment, but if it was set today, or even five or ten years ago? How would you do that?”

“And what’s the disaster he’s trying to prevent? Some kind of monster invasion?”

Steve hemmed and hawed and voiced what he was sure his dad was thinking. “That’s a bit much, isn’t it?”

Dad chuckled. “A little bit.”

“Maybe I should go with something more mundane, like a murder. Or, like, a big accident. But it’s got to be preventable.” He furrowed his brow. “But if it was something super weird, like monsters, that’d be really hard for him to convince anyone to help. They’d probably just lock him up for being crazy.”

“I mean, it’s your story. Maybe people can just believe him?”

Steve shrugged. “I mean, I guess,” he said. “But don’t I need to convince the reader, too? Like, doesn’t the person reading the story need to believe that the people believe him?”

Dad laughed again. “Oh, you’re thinking ahead. I like that. Yes, a good story has to convince the reader as well. So if you are going to go with monsters, maybe your protagonist lies and says it’s something more mundane, like a murder or a plane crash or something. At least, until he can get people to help him.”

“Or something...” Steve tapped his finger on his arm, thinking. “Hah, maybe instead of monsters, it’s a Russian infiltration of an American town, and he has to be careful who he talks to because they might be spies.”

“Oh, now you’re talking,” Dad said. “Spy thriller plus time travel. That’d be something interesting.”

“Or a secret government experiment that he’s not supposed to know about.” Steve raised his eyebrows. All of these ideas were a little too close to home, but it was nice to see Dad humoring his imagination.

“Wild stuff,” he said. “Let me know if you write it up. I want to read it.”

#time travel #the trolley problem #my writing #stranger things #steddie

29 notes · View notes

thetimelordbatgirl · 1 year

Note

So many MCU fans are saying using AI for the Secret Invasion opening works because it's meant to capture an uneasy feeling, and I'm just sitting here like... have you even seen the opening to The Twilight Zone?

"It's meant to capture an uneasy feeling." Intros that did that without having to use AI, something that steals art from the artists they could have hired: *Twilight Zone. *Grizzly Tales For Gruesome Kids. *Goosebumps. *Fucking Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey's intro of all things (aka the only good part of that whole mess).

Hell, you can easily find art on Deviantart that gives an uneasy feeling or just on the internet in general. So there is literally zero defense for the MCU here. They could have easily hired artists to do an intro to make you feel uneasy, but no, they decided to use AI and just show they don't care about artists in the process.

#anti mcu #mcu critical #they also did this during a strike as well #like way to show you don't care about anyone who helps make your shows and movies #and way to go to mcu fans for showing they dont care #as long as they get their stupid movie or show they happy to defend it

27 notes · View notes

thewolfparadox · 9 days

Text

Liv Marko

Hunter | Bladedancer | Awoken

Appearance

5'0"

Light lavender skin with white markings below eyes and on chin

Yellow eyes

Armor is white, purple, and gray

Cloak is dark purple and asymmetrical with a gold/tan fur trim

Traits

Very motivated/determined, throws herself into things headfirst

Not afraid to be blunt with others

Self-critical, constantly asks herself how she can be better and has a hard time forgiving herself for screwups

Puts on an act of bravado for those outside of her clan

Generally avoids confronting her emotions

Alignment: Chaotic god

Love Language: Quality time + Physical touch

Background

Revived on Earth during the early City Age

Tristan joined her fireteam during the mid-City Age

She met Kai during Twilight Gap

TTK: Liv's fireteam was called in by Cayde to assist Jade and Kaedro in establishing a transmit zone on the Dreadnaught

Liv helped Kaedro steal Crota's soul

Red War: Liv instigated the effort to retake Titan and helped Jade find Ikora + led a force of snipers in the City invasion

Post-Forsaken: Liv went to assist Petra in the Dreaming City

She accidentally formed a mental connection with an Ahamkara

Fun Facts

Her ship is named Pandora

She assisted in defeating Oryx

She does yoga in her spare time

She's pansexual

She wields dual Arc Blades

Rhys (Ghost)

Worries about Liv and her clanmates

Tries to coax her into talking about things that bother her

Playful when not in stressful situations

All OCs

#destiny 2 #destiny the game #my ocs #liv marko #chasing fate

3 notes · View notes

robbyrobinson · 2 years

Text

Jordan Peele: The Multiverse Theory

So going into this, I am not suggesting that Nope, Get Out, and Us take place in the same universe because, reasonably speaking, it is improbable that all events can happen one after another, especially in the case of Us's ending.

Instead, I find that the films all take place in a different universe (which is fitting because Peele was the host of the short-lived 2019 iteration of The Twilight Zone), but the one thing that connects them all is the divine.

I am saying that in the multiverse of Peele movies, God's one recurring plot is eradicating mankind for their perceived wickedness. As for what started it all? Well, it could be a variety of reasons such as him sending his son to act as an emissary only for him to be killed by mankind. Even before that, God had already performed mass extinction events on humans such as the flood.

However, every time in every universe where mankind grew gradually irredeemably evil, God would send calamities or plagues to wipe out the wicked. Now for the examples of where I would say God sent a calamity to destroy evil.

There is Chris from Peele's directorial debut Get Out. While Chris doesn't wipe out mankind or anything of that sort, he does take out a "great evil" in his universe: the Armitage family. As many know or may not, the Armitages appeared to be a normal family. Well, they had their odd quirks such as Dean having to constantly tell Chris that he would have voted for Obama a third time if he could. It's that classic "I'm so not racist" mindset that a lot of these progressive liberals attest to.

However, despite their claims, they secretly run an operation where they kidnap African Americans so they could harvest their bodies by putting a white person's brain into their bodies thus condemning them to the Sunken Place where they can only watch their bodies being operated against their consent. Chris would have become one of the victims of the surgical procedure, but he is able to escape and massacres each member of the Armitage family except for Rose who dies because the man her grandfather was piloting temporarily reclaimed control of his body.

The next indication is more obvious: in Us, Red claimed that she felt that she was being tested by God and was under the impression that he was directing her to lead a Tethered invasion on the surface world which by far is the most nearly effective of God's plans. Nearly every American citizen, except for the main family, of course, is slain by their doppelgangers who then form a long line in reference to the "Arms Across America" campaign. But who is to say the US was the only country that dabbled around in making doppelgangers?

So in what way were mankind proving themselves to be wicked yet again for God to initiate their destruction? A variety of reasons but, in particular, they committed idolatry by having their possessions be their "gods" such as when Mrs. Tyler was asking her smart house device to call the police though that ends badly for her. They also coveted what their neighbors wanted under the assumption that they were entitled to own bigger or better than the person next to them. And, of course, they had no care for the (literal) lower class. So the classic case of the haves vs. the have-nots.

Getting to Nope, there is the popular theory that Jean Jacket is an angel due to its resemblance to those biblically accurate angels like the Ophanim/Wheels (even though I more lean towards the idea that it is just an atmospheric jellyfish and/or alien being that another extraterrestrial race brought in). But for the sake of this argument, let's say that God did send JJ with the purpose of destroying humanity whose latest crime against the Almighty was an obsession with achieving the perfect spectacle. I am willing to say that even before JJ was used as a vessel for God's wrath, that was one of the reasons behind Gordy rampaging on the set.

Because mankind had grown desperate to do whatever is possible to make it big, that also includes treating animals with zero respect to their nature and likening them to living props there to give the paying folks a quick laugh. That would mean that the shoe in that scenario was being held up by a supernatural force likely as a means for Jupe to see it. For whatever reason, God felt like sparing him that day the most reasonable being that Jupe could use the massacre as a lesson on what NOT to do and hopefully not face his wrath.

Which we all know he fails by profiting off his tragedy and believing he was in tune with animals.

As for why God would specifically situate JJ in Hollywood? Well, think about all the rumors and allegations of deplorable stuff that happen in Hollywood ranging in different rates of escalation. Hollywood, at least as far as Peele is concerned, is no different from the likes of Sodom and Gomorrah, two towns destroyed by God in Genesis due to being a cesspool of corruption.

In particular, what the humans are being tried for is the lack of empathy when it came to screwing other people over for their betterment the most damning case being Jupe feeding OJ's horses to JJ. Jupe does this because he naively believes that he understood what he originally thought were aliens operating the spacecraft. However, because of his behavior, he instead loses favor with God and is deemed as "wicked" and sentenced to destruction inside of JJ.

Of course, JJ is killed at the end of Nope which does stop its rampage for the time being. However, this is merely just because God wills this with his anger being satiated. At least until another universe in the Peele multiverse does something that will curry his wrath once more.

#jordan peele #get out #us #nope #tethered #jean jacket #theory #divine wrath

143 notes · View notes

dimalink · 8 months

Text

Monsters schoolboys – all starts with a cassette

Pixel art for today based on videogame Monster Party for game console NES. And these are amazing 8 bits!

And this is my drawing about the same theme. Human schoolboy and human duck in other world of twilight zone try to catch aliens mutants from spiral spiritual galaxy.

Schoolboy with his friend duck are saving world from invasion of otherworld monsters. They are doing these by nights. And by the day they are going to school. And here are some mystical tape Lady Gaga with album that is not exists – my little monsters. It is also in this deal someway. It is starts after human duck brings to human schoolboy this cassette to listen. And now they need to save the world! And listen to the music!

Second world is dangerous to planet Earth. So, turn on record and go to a strange world. Interaction between monsters and humans can start also in other parts of planet. So, maybe, you are not alone. Of course, you are not alone. With you – cassette – My little monsters and your friend human duck! He is learning in a duck school. He knows a little about monsters and how to send them back.

Album My Little Monster definitely worth it to listen and it is blowing mind record! It is lots of adventures ahead! And human duck is already running to you with a bag. He just ends school for today. And it is soon evening. So, beautiful red dawn!

10 notes · View notes

mycorrectviews · 8 months

Text

Beyond the Carnage: Credo of a democratic Zionist

October 2023

No Monopoly on Barbarism

We buried our cousins in four freshly dug graves at Kibbutz Revivim, 40 miles as the crow flies from the killing fields of Kibbutz Beeri where they made their home. Chen, a burly farmer, the kind of guy you want in your corner; Rinat, a veteran social worker; 17 year old Alon and 14 year old Ido. Two smaller siblings survived when Rinat and Alon spread their bodies over the little ones, like a blanket at bedtime, taking the bullets in a final act of love. Hundreds of people wept in silence, an extended family of farmers from agricultural communities across the Gaza envelope, dozens of them young men and women on "funeral" leave from their reserve units, rifles slung over their civilian clothing. Rinat had texted the family that dark October morning, as I huddled with my partner and nine-year-old son in our own safe room, just 10 miles north of Beeri. We were sure that Chen – veteran of an elite IDF reconnaissance unit – would get them out. Electricity and cell phone service were down all morning at our kibbutz as fighting raged on the perimeter fence. By the time we received her message, she was likely dead, as scores of heavily armed killers hunted for Jews -- Gazan civilians in tow, rounding up livestock and home appliances like shoppers on black Friday. Did the Hamas warn them that their own homes would soon be reduced to rubble by the inevitable IDF response? For 21 hours I stood at the threshold of our safe room, listening for sounds of the battle raging at the edge of our own kibbutz, knowing that if they broke through, we'd be next. Only the resourcefulness and bravery of a handful of volunteers kept the killers at bay until we could evacuate. At Revivim, rows of fresh graves extended beyond the funeral site, waiting to receive another hundred members of Kibbutz Beeri. It was a scene to be repeated throughout the country for other communities who shared the same fate. At Kibbutz Nir Oz, a quarter of the population was murdered. A day before I had debated a friend about whether the massacre resembled the German Einzatzgruppn or 19th century Russian pogroms. Either way, I reflect, Islam has no monopoly on barbarism. And Israelis are not immune either.

The Jewish State or the Boer State

Siblings and schoolmates eulogized the Even-Segev family in a quiet ceremony, closed to the press, soft Hebrew music playing in the background. The grief was palpable, but the word "revenge" was not to be heard. No room in their hearts for gratuitous hatred or racism. Never was. These folk work with Bedouin farmers and colleagues on a daily basis, and many remember a time when personal and commercial interaction with the Gaza Strip was routine. Here in the Negev, civil society has a depth and breadth that crosses ethnic boundaries and ideological preconceptions.

Elsewhere, however, things look different. Right wing groups have draped banners from overpasses around Israel demanding revenge, as if a dose of their sickening screed could reverberate through a society already numbed by atrocity. They may be right. Just over the Green Line in the West Bank, nationalist fanatics are already creating their own, violent fantasy world. Since October 7th, at least seven Palestinian farmers have been shot dead by Israeli settlers. The occupation of this swath of Palestinian territory was once justified by the need to secure a defensive line along the Jordan rift valley, a formidable geographic barrier against invasion from the east. No longer. Today the IDF is tasked with protecting the 460,000 Israeli settlers who live between the Jordan and Israel's internationally recognized boundaries to the West under a separate and unequal legal regime designed to preserve and extend their hegemony; and controlling their 2.6 million Palestinian neighbors who subsist in a legal twilight zone, bereft of political rights, their civil liberties and freedom of movement curtailed and their land often confiscated for Israeli use. Former Mossad chief Tamir Pardo, has called this apartheid. Indeed, today's West Bank might be properly described as a kind of Boer state, where armed colonists are the law and even the Israeli army treads lightly for fear of incurring settler wrath. Israel's infantry provides the muscle that keeps armed Palestinian groups at bay. But security coordinators in the settlements – settlers who are deputized, armed and trained by the IDF – often call the shots on the ground. A pervasive atmosphere of lawlessness invites violence against Palestinians. Brutal and primitive in its tactics, it has included defacing mosques, burning fields, destroying olive groves and vandalizing property. In the Palestinian village of Hawara, perpetrators set 200 buildings and 30 cars ablaze, killing one resident. Now, with the armed force of the IDF massed on Israel's northern and southern borders, their wildest fantasies may seem within grasp.

Hamas or no Hamas, the Boer state is a dilemma of our own making. No Israeli government, save those of Yitzhak Rabin and Ariel Sharon, has had the courage – or the incentive – to defy settler political clout. This must change. Once this war is over and the IDF eradicates the Gazan terror regime, Israel must be asked to choose: advanced American weapons systems or housing developments on the West Bank. Israel needs robust US military aid to survive. But every home, industrial zone, municipal subsidy, road, streetlight, or sewage pipe for Israeli settlements in the West Bank should be deducted from that sum. Put these funds in an escrow account to help relocate settlers to new homes within within the Green Line. Or use them to compensate Palestinians for loss of income due to restricted access to farmland.

Always a Reason to Kill Jews

Some folks insist on seeing Palestinian victimhood and Jewish malfeasance whenever innocents are killed, like some uncontrollable, Pavlovian response, no matter how Orwellian the logic. Thus on October 8th, with the killing still in progress, Mohammed R. Mhawish explained in 972 magazine that "for us [Palestinians]. . . It is the moment when we defend our very existence and right to live peacefully in freedom." UN Secretary General Antonio Gutteres ruffled a few feathers when he proclaimed that the October 7th massacre "did not happen in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subject to 56 years of suffocating occupation." Without justifying the murder spree itself, Gutteres seems to have identified its cause as the 1967 war. More often than not however, critics of Israel point to the blockade imposed on Gaza in 2007, after the Hamas took over the enclave, as the proximate source of violence. "The international community has for years neglected the plight of the 2.3 million Palestinians living under a 16-year-long Israeli siege," explains Jonathan Kuttab of the Arab Center in Washington, DC. Indeed, back in 2008, the Red Cross had already warned that 70% of Gaza's population suffered from food insecurity and chronic malnutrition as a result of Israeli policy. Perhaps mass murder is a natural response from people who have been starving to death for 15 years, though one wonders if it is biologically possible to starve for so long while building an arsenal of tens of thousands of rockets, hundreds of miles of military tunnels, and highly trained death squads. Or perhaps one might ask why food was lacking, if it was lacking, with such plentiful military resources on hand. But the ultimate reason Hamas does its thing, according to some observers, is the Naqba, the displacement of 700,000 Palestinians by Israel in the war of 1948, ground zero – we are told – of the Arab Israeli conflict. Historian Ilan Pappe sums up the events of October 7th with the pithy insight that "[Israel's] present genocidal policy towards Gaza are [sic] part of the ongoing Naqba." 2007, 1967, 1948, take your pick. But don't stop there. In 1929, long before the Naqba, Palestinian marauders killed 133 Jews in Hebron, Safed, Jaffa and Jerusalem, most of them ultra-orthodox, with no connection to the Zionist movement, many of them neighbors with whom they had lived for years. As Hillel Cohen painstakingly explains in his landmark study, Palestinians had come to see all Jews as representatives of the same Zionist enterprise. So it was and so it is. Any organized Jewish national presence in this land, apparently, is a legitimate cause for "armed struggle." Perhaps it is time someone reexamined the causal relationship between this culture of death and the Naqba, occupation and blockade that followed.

When a Zionist Sees Palestine in the Mirror

Palestinian nationalism may be irredeemably poisoned by nihilism, but Palestinian identity itself defines the very humanity of millions of people, some two million of them Israeli citizens. If our democracy is to rise again after the war, we must learn to distinguish between the two and embrace the latter – nuanced as the idea may be. I have devoted my own career to building a more inclusive paradigm of shared culture for Jews and Arabs in the Negev. Below the surface, civil society may now be laying its foundation. In the midst of the crisis, dozens of grass roots initiatives are mobilizing Jews and Arabs for collective action to help everyone in need, from Jewish farmers in the Western Negev to the unrecognized Bedouin villages in the east. Some 15 Arab citizens have been killed by Hamas rockets and another dozen were murdered or kidnapped on October 7th. In this wartime emergency, even the most innocuous display of Palestinian colors can lead to arrest, termination at work or suspension from university. This will have to stop. In the end, Jews must be able to see in the pain, pride and determination of the Palestinians a reflection of our own. No, we cannot bridge the unfathomable political gulf that separates us. But a dose of mutual respect would serve us well.

Rethinking Ukraine

The international show of support for Israel so far has been impressive. Biden, Macron, Scholz, Sunak, Ursula Von der Leyen – leaders from across the democratic world have rushed to embrace Netanyahu, a man whose signature contributions to Israeli diplomacy have been to drape Likud headquarters with a massive poster of Vladmir Putin, embrace Victor Orban and glorify Donald Trump. It must be humiliating for Bibi to bend the knee in gratitude to the liberal order he has done so much to disparage, but this is no mere personal matter. America's massive resupply of military hardware – a replay of Nixon's strategic airlift in 1973 -- and the deployment of two carrier strike groups to protect Israel against a regional conflagration, should be a stark reminder to Israel's political class as a whole that sometimes you have to choose sides. Israel's flirtation with Russia and the Visegrad bloc was, perhaps, the product of Bibi's own delusions of self importance, but Israel's shameful failure to support Ukraine in its struggle to survive was an act of cowardice that crossed political lines. Biden's Oval Office address linking aid to Ukraine and Israel was a formative statement, and something this country would do well to ponder. Israel turned a cold shoulder to Ukraine, it is widely assumed, for fear of provoking Russia to launch its S-300 antiaircraft rockets in Syria against Israeli jets, thereby limiting our ability to strike Iranian proxies in that country. Those rockets are a serious consideration, to be sure, but if Biden is willing to take political risks for Israel, we can show a little moral fiber as well. Russia has interests at stake in Syria too, and striking Israeli jets would put those at risk. In 1970 Soviet personnel manned Egyptian anti-aircraft batteries that fired on Israeli planes, and Israeli jets held dogfights with Russian pilots over the Suez Canal. Not a few Russian servicemen paid with their lives. When the present crisis is over, the time will come for Israel to take a stand – for Ukraine, and for the democratic prospect writ large.

Going Home

No, I'm not a farmer. Everything I know about wheat comes from the back of a cereal box. For the past six years I've been at Kibbutz Nir Am, never of Nir Am. It was simply where I slept and parked my car before heading off to work in the morning. But something has broken in my own suburban, residential paradigm. The government says kibbutzim such as Nir Oz will take years to rebuild. Nir Am, we hope, will bounce back sooner. While my family is settling in to its temporary refuge in Jerusalem, we are eager to get back to our community on the Gazan border fence, replant and rebuild. Rehabilitating the kibbutzim and the towns of the Gaza envelope, caring for the orphans and shattered families, reconstructing the homes, nurturing devastated communities back to emotional health, and weaving the multicultural fabric of life back together in the Negev will be the final challenge of my generation, and the first one for that of my son. We owe it to our country. We owe it to Chen, Rinat and their kids.

#israel #middle east #palestinians #politics

3 notes · View notes

abysswatchers420 · 1 year

Text

my favorite class i ever took in college was a scifi elective that my lit2 prof taught and we would watch the twilight zone, star trek, the 70s invasion of the body snatchers and read slaughterhouse 5. i got to write a paper about cybernetic augmentations and my primary sources were deus ex human revolution and will gibson's neuromancer and, fuck that was so fun! i miss that professor, i hope hes alive and well

#dxhr is actually one of my most fave games. always kinda wished it was more open world and less linear but ykno

8 notes · View notes

dreaminginthedeepsouth · 1 year

Photo

Credit where due. Biden warned of the Russian invasion. He reacted wisely and flexibly. And now he has gone to Kyiv to give hope. We haven’t had a statesman like this in a long time. [Timothy Snyder]

* * * *

The gift of Joe Biden. :: February 21, 2023

Robert B. Hubbell

Joe Biden is a gift to American democracy. A public servant who was in the twilight of his career stepped up during a moment of political and constitutional crisis for his country. Few thought he had a chance to win the nomination, much less the presidency. He endured the most violent and oppositional “peaceful transfer of power” in our nation’s history. He was handed the slimmest possible majority in the Senate—a fifty-fifty split with a tie-breaking vote from the Vice President. His presidency was been undermined by GOP leaders who refuse to this day to say that “Joe Biden won the 2020 election.”

Against all odds, he succeeded in a legislative agenda that compares favorably to the most respected and successful presidents. People who did not vote for him or who voted for him begrudgingly have come to admire and respect his success—even if they profess uncertainty about or opposition to a re-election bid by Biden.

Biden is not perfect. Far from it. But he was the right person for the toughest job in the world at the toughest time in a half-century for the nation he sought to lead. And yet, at every opportunity, pundits, commentators, and media provocateurs pronounce his career finished. Again and again, he proves his critics wrong and surprises us by displaying a second wind, a new gear, a moment of disarming sincerity, an unexpected feistiness, or political shrewdness that brings us up short. We are reminded that we underestimate Joe Biden at our peril.

Over Monday, Joe Biden did something no other modern American president dared do—visit an active warzone not under the control of US troops. The trip was audacious and risky but vitally important to Ukraine, NATO, Europe, and the world. In traveling to Kyiv and appearing in public aside President Zelenskyy as air-raid sirens blared in the distance, Biden delivered tangible and dramatic signs of US support for Ukraine and determination to stop Putin’s expansionism.

The visit by Biden was a blow to a faltering Putin—and was understood as such by Russian “military bloggers” with millions of followers on Telegram. The ultra-nationalist military bloggers called Biden’s visit a humiliation for Putin, noting that Biden was able to travel safely to Kyiv while Putin was effectively imprisoned in his own country by rising discontent. More to the point, Putin could not have traveled into Ukraine even if he dared venture beyond the walls of the Kremlin. His troops lack weapons, protective gear, ground support from tanks, air support from bombers and fighter jets, and the discipline and will to protect Putin if ventured into Ukraine.

The New York Times covered Biden’s visit with grudging admiration and respect for his courage. See NYTimes, Inside Biden’s Surreal and Secretive Journey to Ukraine. Per the Times,

In an audacious move meant to demonstrate American resolve to help Ukraine defeat the Russian forces that invaded a year ago this week, Mr. Biden traveled covertly to Kyiv . . . The visit produced an indelible image of the two presidents striding to a memorial for fallen soldiers in broad daylight even as an air-raid siren blared, a show of defiance of Moscow quickly beamed around the world.

Never in Mr. Biden’s lifetime had a president ventured into a war zone that was not under the control of American forces, much less on a relatively slow-moving locomotive that would take nine and a half hours to reach its destination. During that time, he was potentially exposed to circumstances beyond the control of the hypervigilant security phalanx that normally seeks to shield a commander in chief from every conceivable physical danger and minimize his time outside a hardened shelter.

Since Abraham Lincoln rode to the front lines outside Washington to watch battles in Northern Virginia during the Civil War, no sitting president has gotten that close to combat.

A Russian journalist called Biden’s visit a “demonstrative humiliation of Russia,” while a Telegram account managed by active-duty Russian military officers posted the following sarcastic comment:

Almost a year after the beginning of the Special military operation, we are waiting in the Russian city of Kiev for the president of the Russian Federation, but not for the President of the United States.

I could go on, but you get the point. In a daring move, Biden has bolstered Ukraine, weakened Putin, and reminded the world that the US still has leaders willing to demonstrate the bravery and commitment required for Western unity. It was not so long ago that a prediction of rain caused an American president to cancel a 60-mile trip from Paris to honor US and French soldiers killed in World War I in the Aisne-Marne Operation. In contrast, Biden stood in public as a Russian MIG took to the air in Belarus, only 20-minutes away from where Biden was participating in an outdoor ceremony to honor fallen Ukrainian soldiers.

As the unhappy Russian military bloggers wrote on Telegram, who would have thought that nearly a year after Russia’s invasion, it would be Joe Biden visiting a defiant and free Ukraine? In America, who would have thought that it would be an 80-year-old Joe Biden who would take a risk avoided by all US presidents since Lincoln? Whatever happens with Biden’s hoped-for second term, he has exceeded all expectations, broken new ground, and changed all of us for the better. Joe Biden is a gift to America that it was not expecting—but desperately needed.

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

#Robert B. Hubbell #Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter #Joe Biden #War in Ukraine #President Zelensky #kyiv #history #Presidents Day

13 notes · View notes

nelson-riddle-me-this · 11 months

Note

What is a sci-if movie that you like?

My leanings in sci-fi are towards the more ?literary? style of science fiction say in the 50s and 60s - more Twilight Zone-y. I've liked Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) for a long time - the 50s sci-fi B-movie vibes are immaculate!

5 notes · View notes

constantviewings · 11 months

Text

A (Not So) Weekly Wrap-Up - Black Mirror Special

FULL SPOILER WARNING FOR SEASON 6 OF BLACK MIRROR

Overall Thoughts

I think I’m done with Black Mirror, and I think Charlie Brooker is to because most of these episodes completely disregard the shows formula and message to the point where it’s unrecognisable outside of the title screen. Every episode runs at least ten to twenty minutes too long and somehow leaves concepts unexplored. At the end of every episode I was left unsatified at the lack of exploration into the consequences of prior events: How does Davis feel about the fact that he was raised by two serial killers? etc. I’ll review every episode, but you’ll be able to tell that I on;y really enjoyed two of them...anyway

Joan Is Awful

An average woman is stunned to discover a global streaming platform has launched a prestige TV drama adaptation of her life - in which she is portrayed by Hollywood A-lister Salma Hayek.

By now, I’m sure you’ve heard all kinds of jokey titles like Joan is Awful IS AWFUL, and I’m not here to repeat them. The concept is a little conceited but is pulled back around by the reveal at the end that we are watching one of many realities. Like I mentioned in my overall thoughts, the episodes fails when it comes to expanding on the consequences and how it impacts the characters. for example: imagine being layer 1 Joan and finding out you’re entire existence is fake and you’re actaully the digital likeness of Annie Murphy, that would fuck you up right? But we don’t see how that makes layer 1 Joan feel and I wish we did.

Loch Henry

A young couple travel to a sleepy Scottish town to start work on a genteel nature documentary - but find themselves drawn to a juicy local story involving shocking events of the past.

I can easily see how this and Beyond the Sea would be people’s favourite episodes of the season and, while this one’s up there, it isn’t quite my favourite (we’ll get there). While this episode has one of those gut-wrenching twists akin to The National Anthem and Shut Up and Dance, enough happens after the reveal to distract me and it left me unfullfilled. I also feel like it meanders too much before starting the story proper and then doesn’t set a solid tone. It tries to be scary, then shicking, then emotional but it doesn’t sit with these long enough to quite grasp any of them.

Beyond the Sea

In an alternative 1969, two men on a perilous high-tech mission wrestle with the consequences of an unimaginable tragedy.

FINALLY WE’RE EXPOUNDING ON THE CONSEQUENCES....sort of. I have the fewest notes on this episode, because it’s the most ‘Black Mirror-y’ of the season. I want to immedietely sing Aaron Paul’s praises, I had no doubt that he was going to deliver on an insane level. Calling back to my overall thoughts, the episode is just too long and I was bored just after the halfway mark; maybe that’s a me problem, maybe that’s the episodes problem.

Mazey Day

A troubled starlet is dogged by invasive paparazzi while dealing with the consequences of a hit-and-run incident.

This was the point in the seasonn where I just about gave up... now I know you’ve seen endless amounts of criticism for this episode and it is entirely warranted. Plainly put, this is not a Black Mirror Episode, this is a rejected Twilight Zone concept and I half expected Rod Serling to start talking as it zoomed out of the diner at the end. I also would have loved to have actually watched the transformation, but it was accompanied by TWO WHOLE MINUTES of flashing lights and I would prefer to not risk hospitalisation when watching a TV show thanks :)

Demon 79

Northern England, 1979. A meek sales assistant is told she must commit terrible acts to prevent disaster.

We have reached my personal favourite episode. Is this a Black Mirror episode? No, it’s an extended Inside No. 9 episode. Did I have a lot of fun watching it? Yes. This episode has some fun humour sprinkled through and the dynamic between Nida and Gaap is great.

#Film Review #Black Mirror #Black Mirror season 6 #WGA Solidarity

2 notes · View notes