[a topic first covered by this space here]

According to this NY Times article, which exhibits that subtle combination of ‘here are the facts’ reporting with unquestioned (and unquestionable, in polite society) assertions so typical of contemporary media, Hamas has “sworn to the destruction of Israel.”

Well that being the case, surely we can all agree with Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni who told her “Fox News Sunday” hosts that Israel’s aggression is necessary “…to change the realities on the ground, and to give peace and quiet to the citizens in southern Israel.”

Case closed.  Let the bombs fall!   And since they’re being dropped by the world’s ‘most humane military’ it’s a sure bet that all casualties are ‘bad guys’.  Except for those which aren’t.  Those deaths make our heavily armed humanitarians and their enablers in Washington and other capitals weep for what the monsters made us do.

But is Hamas what it’s made out to be?

Here’s Lenin’s Tomb on the “Myth of Hamas Rejectionism” –

Israel’s opponents are always rejectionist, refusing to acknowledge the Jewish state’s repeated olive branches and fanatically insisting on a maximalist programme. Thus, the late Yasser Arafat could never be Israel’s much sought after ‘partner in peace’. This image was never accurate. The PLO spent the 1990s engaged in a drastic reduction of its aims and aspirations, eventually coming close to negotiating a two-state settlement at Taba, before Ehud Barak called off the discussions. Former Clinton aide Robert Malley pointed out that far from Arafat rejecting a ‘generous offer’ from Israel (as has been alleged), “it could be said that Israel rejected the unprecedented two-state solution put to them by the Palestinians, including the following provisions: a state of Israel incorporating some land captured in 1967 and including a very large majority of its settlers; the largest Jewish Jerusalem in the city’s history [and] security guaranteed by a US-led international presence”.

Still, the myths persisted throughout the assaults on Jenin and Rafah, throughout the bulldozings and massacres, until Arafat died under seige. Mahmoud Abbas is so craven that it is difficult to depict him as a sinister rejectionist. Instead, Sharon insisted that Abbas use the scant resources of the Palestinian Authority to pursue a war against Hamas, even as the settlement building continued and the wall was erected, with Palestinian farmland being destroyed and the economy crushed. This was itself one of the causes of the surge in support for Hamas which, contrary to prevalent misconceptions, was far more pragmatic in its ability to work with other forces, such as the PFLP (despite the latter’s occasional sectarianism).

[...]

full

Grim.   But at least we can look forward to President Obama changing US-Palestinian relations and  putting the brakes on Israeli violence.

Oh wait, cancel that:

…David Axelrod, appearing on CBS’s Face the Nation, did reaffirm Obama’s commitment to the “special relationship between the United States and Israel” in a way that suggested general sympathy for the Jewish state’s actions.

Speaking a day after Israeli airstrikes, targeting and destroying Hamas facilities in Gaza, killed more than 275, Axelrod said the president-elect, from on-the-ground experience, understood the urge for retaliatory action.

Last July, Obama visited Sderot, a southern Israel town on the border of the Gaza Strip that has taken the brunt of Hamas attacks, Axelrod reminded host Chip Reid. “He said then that when bombs are raining down on your citizens, there is an urge to respond and act to try to put an end to that. That’s what he said then. I think that’s what he believes.”

[...]

full

Oh liberals,  is there no humanitarian murder you won’t eagerly condone?

Not being a masochist I had no intention of seeing “The Day the Earth Stood Still” remake until it hit the torrents or the DVD bargain bin.

But a group of friends insisted I go.  They even offered to pay.  I couldn’t say no (though I did end up paying…bastards).

Going in, I expected to be dismayed by the new movie’s thematic drift from the original.  So I was surprised to find I disliked it for a totally unexpected reason.

The aliens are dull, unimaginative douchebags.    I’m not talking about the SFX, which is fine.   I mean that the aliens are very poor problem solvers.

…

After a lot of hemming and hawing and looking deeply into Jen Connelly’s impressively green eyes, Klaatu reveals his purpose: there aren’t many habitable planets in the galaxy.  They’re a precious resource.  We’re wrecking this one with our uncontrolled atmospheric carbon experiment.

To preserve the Earth’s biosphere, we must die.

At first, that grim-liciousness plays right into our current mood, which I call eco-moralizing (self flagellation, as opposed to a positive program of de-carbonization).  But if you’re alert, you blink a few times and then notice a narrative problem: Klaatu’s civilization commands god-like nanotech.  They can remake worlds.  In fact, they’re planning to use this terraforming skill on Earth to get rid of us in an epic sweep of grey, nanobot dust.

Since they can change planet surfaces, atmospheres, and pretty much everything else about a world what the hell prevents them from turning, say, Mars into a chillier version of Ohio?  Or scrubbing our atmosphere clean of excessive C02e and saying, ‘go thou, and sin no more‘?

And then there’s the question of how these aliens got to their current state.  Surely they didn’t climb down from the luminescent Zoopflarp trees of their home world and immediately get to work building interstellar craft.  They must have passed through their own Chrysler Sebring and Britney Spears period before ascending to a state of sublime knowledge.

Who are these assholes to interrupt our development? Do they tour the galaxy like super powered child services agents, looking for bad parents?

Pretty much the whole film zips by and the only person to sort of raise these questions is John Cleese during his four or five line walk-on.

Terrible.

Oh, and here’s another view, from Gawker’s Alex Carnevele.

This is the story of the jpeg found below which shows a silent film playing on my PSP. It’s also a petite tale of our age of terror and wonder.

Why was a silent film playing on my PSP?   Read on.

Years ago — never mind how many — I sat in my apartment drinking Merlot while lounging like Louis XVI.

Of course, I was trying to forget a woman. She had dirty blond hair, amazing legs and the curiously arousing habit of biting my neck in public. She practiced her neck biting fetish on me for a while and then decided to move to Utah, taking all the gifts Aphrodite gave her to that snowy outpost.

“Will you come with me?”

“Where?”

“To Utah, silly!”

Alas, the answer was no.

If only she’d planned to move somewhere distracting like Reykjavik, Iceland, we’d probably have 8 kids by now and be celebrating the fifth anniversary of our hot mess divorce by listening to Bjork.

Back to the apartment, and the Merlot…

On the television, a documentary was playing featuring the narration talents of Old Blighty actor Kenneth Branagh. The doc was about the history of Universum Film AG, or UFA, the national film company of Germany from 1917 to the Gotterdamerung year of 1945 (Did I tell you the story of my Grandfather? He served in a segregated tank battalion and rained fire on Nazis. “Grandpop, is it wrong to kill?” “Yes. Unless it’s Nazis in which case squeeze the trigger and reload as needed.”)

At one point, the work of noted director/screenwriter F.W. Murnau (the man who gave the world “Nosferatu”) was discussed. An extended scene from Murnau’s 1926 film, “Faust” moved on my tv screen.  Mephistopheles and Faust are riding on a cloud to the east as the world rolls beneath them.

It was a remarkable sequence filmed in a beautiful, silvery black and white. I longed to see the rest of this movie.

Years passed, wars were fought, beloved dogs died, loves’ labors were lost. I always remembered “Faust” and the scene which flowed like cinematic butter.

But would I ever see it?

The answer is yes, because it’s now in the public domain and available from Archive.org.

I downloaded it, merged in a subtitle file and converted the media type to a PSP compatible form of mpeg.

All of which gave me a chance to watch this remarkable film while riding on a commuter train. The woman sitting next to me leaned over slightly, glanced at the screen and smiled.

I wonder what Murnau would think of a West Philly boy who spent his youth playing pick up hoops with rats and turning to roaches for sage financial advice watching his movie on a science fictional device in a world in which the Americans are occupying Mesopotamia, a black fellow is President Elect, a space station orbits the globe, the Chinese are a major power and his movie is freely available at the press of a button.

Our world, and our mundane lives, are far stranger than anything dreamt of by Murnau’s UFA colleague, Fritz Lang, for “Metropolis”.