Project: Blog Different

Welcome back faithful reader(s)! I hope everyone reading this had a lovely Christmas/Hanukah/Kwanza/New Years/Festivus/Etc, and is looking forward to 2009.
The topic for this post is going to be the apocalypse, the end times, the end of the world, what have you. If that’s a little intense for a Monday afternoon, you might want to read elsewhere, but if you do stick around, I’m going to discuss the Israel/Palestine Conflict as well as the flick Southland Tales.

Here we are in early 2009, and the never-ending conflict in Israel continues. It seems every year or so there is some new reason (or a continued old reason) for strife, but always centered around Israel vs. Palestine, Judaism vs. Islam, People vs. People, Religion vs. Religion. This incarnation of the conflict has Israeli forces invading the Gaza region after being provoked by Palestinian rocketeers in previous months. The media’s coverage of the conflict has been interesting to say the least. The American media for the most part (lead by the fine folks over at Fox News) has showed a borderline holy Israel defending themselves against the terrorist Palestinians. Much on the international news, and more critical American media outlets have placed heavy blame on Israel for the invasion, portraying the Palestinians as the victims. This latter coverage has come to really upset many of my Jewish friends. The former coverage, as well as the complete lack of impartiality from the American government and the incoming Obama administration have outraged a good Muslim friend of mine.

It’s important to realize that neither peoples really support the conflict in majority, and that this is really the work of extremists from both sides. You might say, “well…the Palestinians elected Hamas, so they knew what they were getting into”. To begin with, think of all the bollocks which gets worked into our own election system here in the United States. Then realize, that this is one of the most soundly run voting systems in the world, probably behind some of the parliamentary systems in Europe. After realizing that, then head over to the Palestinian Election System which lacks a lot of the safeguards of our own (not superb) system. So its entirely possible the election wasn’t that representory of the people to begin with, second even if it was 100% legit, a party or administration in power rarely represents more than 50% of a nation, usually more like 35-40%. On top of that realize that the main opposition party to Hamas is the Fatah Party which the U.S. as well as Israel has been opposed to for the past few decades, and in fact was the reason the U.S. pushed for Hamas to gain some power in Israel to break up the Fatah Party’s lock on power.

My Take- People killing people is people killing people. It doesn’t matter if they have shiny uniforms on with brand new guns or if you are wearing scraps of clothes and are using Soviet era rocket launchers. Of course Hamas shouldn’t periodically fire rockets at Israeli targets, but at the same time Israel doesn’t have to respond with a full out war in Gaza. What makes it all even worse is that Gaza is one of the most heavily populated areas in the world and that civilians are being killed left and right. Even the non-civilians engaged in this are basically forced to risk their lives as Israel has a mandatory military.

If the U.S. is going to play world policeman (which is a debatable item), this is the first place we need to step in. We need to drop our 100% Pro-Israel stance and go in as a neutral firm, but not militant, power, and work with both sides, as well as Egypt, Syria, and other surrounding nations to create not only a cease fire but a more long term solution for giving some more land and rights to Palestinians while forcing Hamas to constitutionally respect Israel as a nation. Obviously easier said than done. It’s no wonder that most people seem to believe the end of the world will begin in the Middle East, and specifically Israel where the world’s three main religions began.

On a lighter note regarding the Apocalypse though, I viewed the film Southland Tales last week: a musical, action, dramatic-comedy about the end of the world. The film is directed by Richard Kelly (of Donnie Darko fame), and stars Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Sean William Scott, Justin Timberlake, and Sarah Michelle Geller. It also has a host of cameos and smaller role parts played by one of the most diverse and just plain awesome casts I’ve ever seen (Kevin Smith, Norah Dunn, 3+ Saturday Night Live alums, Wally Shawn, and many others.

The film takes the story of Revelations and sets it in an alternate 2008 in which the U.S. has been attacked with a Nuclear bomb and the government has become more militant and controlling of the people’s lives (in a realistic manner though, not far from reality), in which a company called USident has taken the Patriot Act to a new level and now controls all Law Enforcement, Fire Depts., Military, and most other similar organizations.

The film debuted in 2006 at Cannes with awful reviews, and was released later that year to slim Box Office results. I only heard of it because Kevin Smith discussed shooting it in his book “My Boring Ass Life”. The script is messy, the plot is convoluted, the acting looks forced at times, yet I really enjoyed it and was engrossed in it. I’ve owned for a week and already watched it twice as well as all the extra feature content. I’ve wanted to discuss it with my friends and coworkers and convinced my parents to Netflix it. Even though I have a deep rooted hatred for Justin Timberlake’s music from both N’Synch and especially his solo career, he was quite good acting in Tales and one of the film’s high points for me was a lip synching drug induced hallucination of him singing the Killers’ “All These Things That I’ve Done” while Marylyn Monroe-esque nurses dance about him. Despite its flaws, I walked away really enjoying the film on both surface entertainment levels, as well as deeper levels regarding the film’s social commentary on entertainment, government, resistance, religion, and just how easily the world could shift in harsh directions, if not end. Yet, it’s a comedy!