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gromit

Posted: Mon Sep 23, 2013 6:42 am

Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9008 Location: Shanghai

Actually that article did mention in passing the cancelled train tunnel.
___________________________________________
An interesting article on Hamas.
To Summarize: Hamas decided to ditch Assad, aligning themselves with other Muslim Brotherhood groups. So they threw their support behind Morsi and the new Egyptian MB Gov't. Resulting in being left without any patrons after the Egyptian military coup and Iran cutting off their funding for ditching Assad. Running Gaza was never any great shakes, with or without the Israeli (and Egyptian) blockade. But now Egypt is even cracking down on the smuggling tunnels, as they suspect Hamas of helping the Sinai Bedouin uprising. Of course, Hamas actually won the West Bank elections a while back and various outside players helped Fatah takeover. Etc.
But interesting to see what happens next, with Hamas running out of money and friends.

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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number.

marantzo

Posted: Mon Sep 23, 2013 9:45 am

Guest

Hamas was created by the Muslim Brotherhood. It was a spin-off.

gromit

Posted: Mon Sep 23, 2013 1:34 pm

Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9008 Location: Shanghai

marantzo wrote:

Hamas was created by the Muslim Brotherhood. It was a spin-off.

Yes, but like most things Palestinian, it doesn't fit neatly into the ME narrative.
Hamas has been supported/funded by Iran, and those Shiites aren't fond of the Sunni MB. While Palestinian extremists such as Hamas aren't as devout as MB fundamentalists elsewhere. So previously Hamas was estranged from the MB movement.
Anyway, it looks like another instance of Palestinians making poor choices and being left high and dry without many options or friends.

Last edited by gromit on Mon Sep 23, 2013 2:06 pm; edited 1 time in total
_________________
Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number.

gromit

Posted: Mon Sep 23, 2013 2:03 pm

Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9008 Location: Shanghai

Coincidentally, I just finished watching a 2012 film, Inch'Allah, set in and around Ramallah. The writer/director, Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette**, is Canadian, and she centers the film around a young Canadian doctor, who works at a UN maternity clinic serving poor Palestinians. She befriends one of her patients and ends up going to the refugee camp to visit her and her family a number of times, allowing her to see a different side of things. She is friends with a neighbor who is an Israeli border guard. The border crossing and the security wall become key elements of the film.

The young doctor tries to deal with people not politics, and naively tries to have her two friends get along. But the politics and mistrust seep into everything, and even the Canadian doctor finds herself getting somewhat involved in the politics when she tries to help people and right an injustice.
Though it seems to aim for a semi-neutral approach, it definitely displays a liberal North American sympathy on the issues.

Most of the film is presented in a realist manner, with a lot of handheld camerawork and tight close-ups. But then the final two scenes switch to a much more poetic, arty, resonant style. I liked the look/editing and the contrast it made with the rest of the film, but I don't think it fit in well with the final theme. Not a great film, but fairly well done, and an interesting look at life in and around The Wall and a Palestinian refugee camp.

It helps to know going in that this is a Canadian film and that the lead character is Canadian. It took me a while to figure out she was an outsider. I wasn't sure why she spoke French with her Israeli friend (and it still seems more likely they'd speak English ...)

** Her mother, Manon Barbeau, is a Québécois documentary filmmaker. And her grandfather was a cinematographer.

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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number.

marantzo

Posted: Mon Sep 23, 2013 4:56 pm

Guest

Well she is from Quebec and has a french name (and parents). Israel has a population that comes from many countries. Many of them are from all over Europe. The border guard might have parents who came from France, or maybe he came from there himself.

When I was in Israel in the early sixties, I had a problem sometimes talking to Israelis Different areas of the country had immigrants from different countries (in those days). I would talk in English or Yiddish or French and often, it didn't work. My Hebrew was very limited. So the people I met when hitch hiking or checking out at a boarding house, the languages were often Russian, Polish, German (know very little), Spanish etc. For some reason Yiddish was unknown among the younger Jewish Israelis. Apparently Israel brought back Hebrew and didn't want Yiddish to be one of the tongues. When I was in Israel in the 90's almost everyone spoke English except for the recent immigrants.

gromit

Posted: Wed Sep 25, 2013 8:14 am

Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9008 Location: Shanghai

8 Punctuation Marks That Are No Longer Used

¶ I think this could be a little better written/organized; still it's interesting₴

_________________
Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number.

bartist

Posted: Wed Sep 25, 2013 9:07 am

Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6950 Location: Black Hills

Really.~

Am reading Lawrence Wright's "Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief" - has some jaw-dropping and sometimes scary stories about celebs and their connections to the thetan worshippers. After reading about Cruise's involvement, I'm not sure I'm ever going to be able to watch him in another movie. He comes across as insane and intolerant. The odyssey of Paul Haggis, through belief to rejection of the church, is pretty interesting. You come to respect him as a disillusioned seeker.

_________________
He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days.

gromit

Posted: Wed Sep 25, 2013 10:02 am

Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9008 Location: Shanghai

I like the way that Scientology underscores how all religions and mythologies are fairly wacko.

_________________
Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number.

bartist

Posted: Wed Sep 25, 2013 6:13 pm

Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6950 Location: Black Hills

Seems to combine all the worst features of religion into one vicious package.

Hubbard was quite the bullshit artist - that part of the story is pure entertainment.

_________________
He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days.

gromit

Posted: Thu Sep 26, 2013 1:27 am

Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9008 Location: Shanghai

I like how the Gods are all-powerful, yet when they want to reveal some truth, they tend to talk to one isolated individual and have him spread the word, since that's such a proven and effective method ...

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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number.

Joe Vitus

Posted: Thu Sep 26, 2013 2:05 am

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 14498 Location: Houston

gromit wrote:

I like the way that Scientology underscores how all religions and mythologies are fairly wacko.

Isn't that a bit like saying the Eva Peron's foundation for the poor underscored how duplicitous all charitable organizations are?

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You've got a great brain. You should keep it in your head.

-Topher

jeremy

Posted: Thu Sep 26, 2013 2:09 am

Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 6794 Location: Derby, England and Hamilton, New Zealand (yes they are about 12,000 miles apart)

What do celebrated heterosexual actor, Thomas Cruise Mapother IV (AKA Tom Cruise) and media-person of no-fixed talent, Peaches Honeyblossom Geldof, have in common? Well, apart from both having a dubious grip on reality, they are also members of the Church of Scientology. Cruise, of course, is an Level Seven Operating Thetan (OTVII) in that church, which, in terms of relative rank, makes him a cardinal to Peaches’ catholic schoolgirl…but we won’t run with that analogy. Being such a high level thetan also means that Cruise possesses powers over the physical world that the rest of us lesser muggles would regard as supernatural. And that he has purged himself of lots of limiting traits associated with the human condition.

I actually think that Tom Cruise is a very good actor, but, for some reason, I also find him to be an unsympathetic one, especially when playing a romantic lead. It’s as though he’s inhabiting the role of a fictional character and that of a normal person at the same time. As the Incident of his professing love for Katie Holmes atop Oprah’s sofa, I think he finds this second role the more challenging of the two. It could be that his apparent reticence to give us a glimpse of the real Tom Cruise is related to the utterly false rumours about him being gay, but I suspect that it is due to either there being no real Tom Cruise of note beneath the mask, or, as I believe is more likely, that he really is one of the lizard people.

In what maybe a case of optimism triumphing over experience, we have now learned that Tom Cruise is in search of a new wife. Unfortunately, by drawing up a list of requirements for his bride to be, and then, like some fairy tale monarch, sending his minions to seek her out, romantic Tom has opened himself up to yet more ridicule. So Cinders, are you a “brainy” woman in your mid-to-late thirties, in the entertainment industry and a member of the Church of Scientology? If so, you may be given the chance to go the ball and audition for role of the next Mrs Tom Cruise.

In fairness to Tom, he’s probably desperately keen to avoid a repeat of his last marital disaster, in which his wife, Katie Holmes, the less famous half of TomKat, all but snuck away under cover of darkness. As with Princess Diana before her , the erstwhile ingénue Katie has since proved highly adept at taking on a powerful man backed by an entrenched, controlling organisation. Some unfortunate turn of events aside, like a car crash, say, it now seems likely she will be given sole custody of Tom’s only natural child Suri, and wrest her away from the entirely benign and loving embrace of the Church Of Scientology.

Being roughly the same age as Tom, I was interested to note that his ideal partner would still be in her thirties - sorry ladies, Four-O means no go. Slightly troublingly, it appears that we also have a number of other things in common: it goes without saying that we’re both handsome devils in great shape; we each have our unique way of viewing the world; he has money and I don’t; and we share a penchant for dancing around the house in our underwear (best not picture that) though I prefer ska, indie and dance to Bob Seger.

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I am angry, I am ill, and I'm as ugly as sin.
My irritability keeps me alive and kicking.
I know the meaning of life, it doesn't help me a bit.
I know beauty and I know a good thing when I see it.

gromit

Posted: Thu Sep 26, 2013 3:36 am

Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9008 Location: Shanghai

Joe Vitus wrote:

gromit wrote:

I like the way that Scientology underscores how all religions and mythologies are fairly wacko.

Isn't that a bit like saying the Eva Peron's foundation for the poor underscored how duplicitous all charitable organizations are?

Nope.

_________________
Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number.

billyweeds

Posted: Thu Sep 26, 2013 4:55 am

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City

Jeremy--Not to suggest that Tom Cruise is definitely gay, but how are you so totally convinced (to the point of surety) that he is not? Do you have some personal evidence? If so, please give.

jeremy

Posted: Thu Sep 26, 2013 6:11 am

Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 6794 Location: Derby, England and Hamilton, New Zealand (yes they are about 12,000 miles apart)

No, I remain most ensure, which my faux-certainty was meant to imply.

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