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Messages - The Legendary Shark

#16
Off Topic / Re: Top o' the morning
17 March, 2024, 02:41:54 PM

"Here's to you and here's to me, I pray that friends we'll always be, but if by chance we disagree, the heck with you and here's to me!"

Happy St. Paddy's, JBC - I hope the revels delight!



#17
Off Topic / Re: This is the News!
15 March, 2024, 08:22:19 AM

Israel gives more than just credence: Netanyahu: Money to Hamas part of strategy to keep Palestinians divided. (Jerusalem Post.)

#18
Off Topic / Re: This is the News!
14 March, 2024, 07:51:49 PM
Lorenzo makes an excellent point. Where were people like me while all this was going on in the past?

Personally I didn't really understand the situation, thinking it was some ancient and complicated religious feud I simply wasn't informed enough to comment on beyond the most basic blanket condemnations of human-on-human violence. However, my understanding deepened as a result of the October 7th attacks. While the mainstream media proceeded from the assumption that the current situation basically began on October 7th, the better alternative media reports set the current events in the context of the last seventy five years (and more) and suddenly it didn't seem so complicated any more. Israel has been stealing Palestine for nearly a century, village by village, farm by farm, home by home. That's the core of the problem, religion's just the excuse. Now I understand. Now I see the barbarity of it. Now I feel "qualified" to comment and justified in feeling anger towards those enabling or excusing this failure of our collective humanity.

More importantly, where was the government or the BBC? Everything I've learned comes from publicly available and ostensibly reliable sources (Amnesty International, the UN, etc.) documenting horrific events stretching back decades. How were journalists and politicians not condemning this history of atrocities all along? How is it that, on the contrary, anyone who did criticise the situation ended up being viciously harangued or fired or smeared as a racist?

The sickening way our government is responding makes me feel like one of the characters in Mitchell & Webb's excellent Are we the Baddies? sketch.

So yeah, I am late to this party - but I'm here now and, as you all know, I always bring a bit of punch...


#19
Creative Common / Re: Does my Art look big in this?
14 March, 2024, 07:09:29 PM

Yes, excellent work. A spooky ethereal sheen going on - nice!

#20
Off Topic / Re: This is the News!
14 March, 2024, 03:44:14 PM
I would speculate on two reasons. Firstly, this is a horrible subject. It's hard to look at, it's hard to think about, it's hard to remain unemotional on and it's impossible to justify. It's hard to believe that our national and international bodies don't want to stop this, so maybe they have access to better figures that indicate things aren't as bad as doom-mongers like me proclaim. Trust me, I'd like to believe that these figures are wildly inflated as well or that the whole tragedy is just an AI generated media psi-op designed to keep us all scared and in our places. That might make for a good Netflix series but it's unlikely to be the truth. Maybe Lorenzo, being (like the rest of us) a good person at heart, simply doesn't believe that humans can be so coldly vicious to one another because he couldn't act that way himself, or even imagine himself doing so. It's a perfectly understandable reason to reply as he did.

Secondly, there seems to be a media battle over whether sharing such information is antisemitic or not, which is another very uncomfortable topic. This is not to say that Lorenzo accused me of this or anything else, he did not, just that the current philosophical climate may have influenced his post in that great care has to be taken separating propaganda, bigotry, and facts. In this sense, he is right to question the figures and to not take anything at face value - a crime of which I am somewhat guilty here. While that graphic came from the TwiXter feed of Philippe Lazzarini, the Commissioner-General of UNRWA, and was brought to my attention by an alternative media source I believe in, I haven't actually gone and checked the source data for myself. This is me guilty of passing on received knowledge based entirely on other people's opinions. The figures will not be accurate in either column for obvious reasons, but I have a fair amount of confidence that these are at least ball-park figures and not antisemitic at all. Inherently anti-Zionist, yes, but nothing else.

In the final panel, this is a very emotional subject and it's easy to allow emotion to drive our words, as you and I both know all to well, Funty me old china, and it's fine for emotion to play a part - it's the fuel for every campaign - but fuel is no good without an engine, and that engine is our rational half. Our control structures rely too much on manipulating emotions to  the detriment of rationality. As with most things, a balance is required.

TL;DR - I welcome Lorenzo's engagement in the subject.

#22
Film & TV / Re: Current TV Boxset Addiction
13 March, 2024, 08:47:37 PM

Yeah, I'm enjoying Constellation but I have the horrible feeling that it might go all Lost on me. Just finished that Richie guy's The Gentlemen and quite enjoyed it (would Theo James make a good Bond?), and I'm also loving the new iteration of Shōgun and the sumptuous world of The Regime. What with The Bad Batch, Krapopolis, Halo, Resident Alien and The Completely made-up Adventures of Dick Turpin, I'm rather spoiled for choice at the moment.

And only five months to wait until the next Umbrella Academy!

#23
Off Topic / Re: This is the News!
13 March, 2024, 06:22:32 PM

#24
Film & TV / Re: Nostalgia TV
12 March, 2024, 07:52:24 PM

Cheers, I enjoyed that!

#25
General / Re: Cybermatt is great but I miss...
08 March, 2024, 08:34:19 PM

And could you imagine the legal ball-ache of chasing up all those permission agreements?

I hereby give permission, though, just to get the ball rolling...

#26
Creative Common / Re: Judge Dredd - Who goes There?
05 March, 2024, 04:51:47 PM

Thanks, GGG!  :)

#28

Naked Gun, Airplane, and Police Squad! are all great - but ruined Forbidden Planet for me.

#30
Off Topic / Re: This is the News!
02 March, 2024, 10:24:40 AM
Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 01 March, 2024, 01:15:42 PMPalestine: A Video Essay by Shaun

Probably one of the best at-arms-length reflections on the ongoing massacre and Israels damnable attempts to downplay or outright whitewash it, and in addition to the evergreen issue at hand it also addresses something I see precious few people considering, that of the antisemitic policies of Israeli law enforcement and the IDF in the Gaza strip and West bank that either proactively decry the governments actions or offer aid to Palestinians in their immediate communities.
Harrowing, monstrous.

A good video, I thought, that gets the basics across pretty well.