#ambulance 2022 | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

fading-event-608 · 4 months ago

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Recently the syndicate of chemists in Lebanon has issued a statement warning people to not go near the blast sites due to alleged use of depleted uranium by Israel. (link - you need to scroll till the statement in Arabic). The screenshot of their statement on twitter was shared here on Tumblr and I’ve seen multiple people expressing scepticism regarding the source. Some people linked an article (link) from anti-Hezbollah 'democratic' newspaper 'L’Orient Today' to ‘fact-check’ - because of course they can’t read Arabic and are discontent with a twitter link.

This is my short summary of the article: they confirm that Israel has used Depleted Uranium (DU) weapons, not only in Lebanon but also in Gaza in June of this year and between October and December of last year. They establish a history of the use of Depleted Uranium, and include examples of its use in Iran in 2003. Israel doesn't directly talk about their use of DU, but neither are they hiding it - because there is no law that forbids the use of these bombs by Israel, there is no treaty regulating the use of DU weapons. There were several resolutions calling for a moratorium on the use of DU weapons in the UN and EU Parliament, the latest of which was in 2022, but these have failed to stop their use (those who have used them also includes both Russia and Ukraine). The article ends with an ominous addition that the Israeli army has been found guilty multiple times of using white phosphorus, which IS prohibited against civilians or civilian property under international law. (You probably can already tell that their defense is that they do not use it against civilians)

There is another article that was published in early September this year - LINK - I highly encourage you to read this one yourself, as it is quite short, especially when considering the amount of information it contains. As this one is more easily accessible, I won’t summarize it - please take it in yourself. I will say, however, that this article’s author, one Dr. Busby, worked with colleagues to conduct several investigations into the use of uranium-based weapons in both Lebanon and Gaza. In 2006, Dr. Busby asked his colleague to collect multiple samples from a crater left by what was suspected to be Depleted Uranium weapons. Samples from an ambulance air filter were also taken. Dr. Busby and company found not only the presence of depleted uranium but also of Enriched Uranium. Here’s the paper: link.

Enriched Uranium. In 2006.

By 2024, all of the laboratories that Dr. Busby had used to Conduct the investigation have closed their doors either to him or in general. Busby’s letters to the UN, as well as papers detailing evidence of the use of enriched and depleted uranium are either dismissed or ignored, rendering it unlikely that there will ever be the “official” source for these claims that certain people now see fit to demand. And even if the UN did accept those letters and did push for ban of those weapons - would Israel comply? Genocide is ‘illegal’ under international law, and Israel still faces the case in ICJ, but what will that ICJ do if they rule that Israel is guilty? What would UN do if they accept evidence of Israel using uranium-based weapons? Scold them and write a fine?

The aspect of the deployment of nuclear weapons considered the most horrific is - and has always been - the fallout. The idea that all nuclear weapons would leave evidence - again, fallout - behind was born into the cultural consciousness through various cold war era PSAs, as well as other media inspired by these horrors, potential and otherwise. The weapons Israel is using here do not create fallout, however. But do not mistake them as harmless - they are still highly carcinogenic. They cause birth defects, as well as various other illnesses - mysterious illnesses, or at least mysterious until doctors attempting to treat them register that their patients have been exposed to enriched uranium, after which point the mystery goes away.

In a sense, the horrors advertised by cold war PSAs and films like Doctor Strangelove, the promise of some explosive end brought about by some fool in the US pushing the wrong button - these serve to draw a veil over the continued use of nuclear weapons that have been ongoing since this technology was first harnessed for violence. This is a severe danger to the people of Gaza, and we can’t ignore it simply because we have developed in our minds too much faith in the loosest understandings of nuclear warfare.

I think many of you are familiar with a boiling frog story. The story goes that if you put a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will try to climb out. But if you put it in warm water and very slowly heat it, it will be so accustomed to the temperature it will eventually be boiled alive. It’s not very authentic, of course - in reality the frog will try to jump out as soon as it deems the water temperature uncomfortable. Just like you would try to get out of the bathtub as soon as it gets too hot for you or try to warm yourself up when you spend too much time outside in winter.

But some of it still rings true. At what point will the UN, or ICJ, or some other white savior wannabe decide that Israel has done too much? What is that ‘too-much’ point that makes them try to protest, and what would that protest be?

As in case with Tumblr, it seems that the boiling point, in fact, has already passed and people grew accustomed to deaths of Palestinians. There are thousands of posts about the situation in Gaza, and the whole Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria… They get a lot of attention by both zionists and Palestine supporters. There are also hundreds of Gazans that came to Tumblr in hopes to escape the genocide by asking people to cover evacuation and survival costs. Do they get the same attention? Barely. Arguably zionists are more invested in interacting with those posts - they mass report them and harass Palestinians. And even if the fundraiser post gets a lot of attention, it does not necessarily translate into a lot of donations - people just assume that someone else will donate instead of them.

You can’t stop Israel all by yourself. You can’t convince the UN or try to progress the ICJ case by yourself. You can, however, do small acts that will contribute to Palestinian resistance. Go protest, go boycott, and please, please, please, go donate to Palestinian fundraisers.

Falastin’s family are under constant threat in Gaza. She’s been fundraising to save them since late June, and yet they’ve only recently gotten to just over 5% of their total goal - a little short of $10,000 USD. They’re still in Gaza, and still in need of funds for survival. The longer they are trapped there, the more they need - not just for food and water, but also for medicine, shelter, and clothes. Each time they’re displaced, due to inadequate time to pack, they lose more supplies, and their needs increase. Give what you can so that they can survive this, and please share their fundraiser as much as you’re able regardless of whether you can donate, just in case someone you know might be able to help. Not just here on Tumblr, on other social media, talk to your friends, coworkers, family, in group chats and in discord servers.

Please keep in mind conversion rates before donating:

10$ = 103 SEK

25$ = 260 SEK

50$ = 519 SEK

100$ = 1,038 SEK

#free palestine #falastin

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cursepoem · 2 years ago

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Year in Review 2022 — Part 6 — Top Ten Movies

10. Top Gun: Maverick (dir. Joseph Kosinski) I'm an easy mark here, ever-fascinated by the arc along which Tom has orchestrated his career, and whatever we call this current era. To call him a singular performer sells it short; it's hard to think of a single artist or performer in any field that has functioned in such a way, throughout all these enigmatic phases. There's a very reasonable impulse to draw him in the lineage of Jackie Chan and Buster Keaton, but neither of those guys were fucking sex symbols, they didn't have the spectre of an actual cult lurking just out of frame, they never played Frank T.J. Mackie! (No fault of their own, obviously.) Tom has just had so much baggage, both earned and not, so much meta-text informing his work and our reading of it, and through it all he continues to exude the same magnetism all the while contorting himself into this physical martyr for our entertainment. He simply cannot exist unless he is killing himself onscreen for us, physically, metaphorically, all of it. And what's more, the guy just really fucking loves movies. The near-maniacal agency he's asserted on virtually every level of production, the collaboration he's cultivated with McQuarrie, deep down the man still has this childlike wonder with what movies can do, and say what you will about the guy, but after everything that is a beautiful and rare thing that should be protected at all costs.

So on to Maverick. This is the perfect vehicle for the Tom experience; he gets to employ all the painstaking precision while pouring on the nostalgia to remind us all what going to the movies is about. Sure, I expected to enjoy this movie, but I was not prepared to feel the depth and swell of feelings that I did. It was e-mo-tion-al. For something as obvious and dumb as Hangman's third act reversal to genuinely send my lip aquiver means you're just doing something right from a moviemaking perspective.

9. Pearl (dir. Ti West) Ti West is a guy I root for, but do not exactly ride for. He's at his best when playing with pastiche, devoting himself to classic genre tropes and aesthetics often beyond even the point fetishization, and the results are varied. He's a guy that seems to have more good ideas than you can actually point to in his movies, which isn't necessarily a knock or even his fault I don't think. It's no coincidence that his best achievement by far is also the first time he's really spent exploring character, when his other films were often antagonistic to them (I'll never get over Greta Gerwig's death in House of the Devil). Pearl is such a refreshing turn, a promise that yeah, there might be more to this guy than his VHS-era horror movie dioramas lead on.

And really, it's Mia Goth who deserves all the credit in the world here. Looking at her filmography, the choices she makes, the artists she seeks out, she has proven herself to be a legit little weirdo in the best possible way. That so many people try and fail at faking this quality makes it all the more satisfying when someone like Goth genuinely goes all in. I honestly feel fortunate that these two have found one another; in Ti West, Goth has a director who will never tell her no, who will push her to go bigger, broader, past all reasonable sense. And that's precisely what his movies have always needed, something larger than the scaffolding he's so complacently proficient at building. Her performance her is manic and fascinating, animated and chaotic in a way that repulses and seduces in equal, unsettling measure. But for all the goose-stabbing, all the apocalyptic dance numbers, all the immolation, the most striking part of her performance is a shockingly tender monologue. The camera stays still for what feels like the first time all movie and the unexpected deftness of the writing shines through with what is revealed. All the while, Goth delivers it masterfully, vulnerably, and it somehow works. Between that scene and the insane closing credits alone, this was one of the best performances this year.

I also have to mention how cool it is that these two pulled a trilogy out of nowhere. Even though I didn't really care for X (it's pretty much the worst of West's tendencies all at once), shooting the two back-to-back and announcing a third feature the same week that Pearl opened shows that West in some new and totally invigorated mode. Beyond the effect of his collaborator, he's found a way of working within budget constraints that seems to energize and inspire. It's almost dare I say it Soderberghian, and you know i'm an easy mark for that. Here's hoping that MaXXXine reaches the bar these two have set with Pearl.

8. Triangle of Sadness (dir. Ruben Östlund) Östlund is a Renaissance painter of cringe, able to cull a veritable gyre of political and philosophical tension out of a single moment of everyday awkwardness. Triangle is deliberately uneven, pushing you away and winning you over in turns throughout; there is ample exposition (thankfully more thematic than plot-wise, though) leading up to the (unfortunately literal) explosive setpiece before becoming a much more raw movie in its back third. In stranding his principals on a desert island, stripping them of signifiers of wealth and the power structures they suggest, Östlund literalizes his metaphor in a pretty ingenious way. He takes on the familiar tropes and gags from any shipwreck scenario while turning a cynical eye on his characters as they establish new, lopsided power structures informed by altogether base and sometimes arbitrary human currencies.

Between this, the loathsome Glass Onion, and The White Lotus, we're seeing a whole lot of commentary on the rich, with this year's Infinity Pool signaling that we're far from through here. To me, this is a fool's errand, a surface-level pandering to what's left of Twitter, willfully turning a blind eye to anything deeper than limp satire. Dear lord the last thing I need is to be explained that Elon Musk is bad, actually, by Rian fucking Johnson by way of Edward Norton, of all people. Triangle at least has the benefit of being mostly fun.

7. Petite Maman (dir. Céline Sciamma) Sciamma's latest is as haunting as it is clever, throwing out all the usual trappings of its magical realist framework to instead delve into the rich emotional resonances that it allows. The result is heartbreaking and beautiful, a tender meditation on memory and family that, looking back now, suggests a brutal double-feature with Aftersun, both films artfully interrogating the relationship between child and parent through time. Can't think about either too hard or for too long or I'll lose my shit.

6. Three Thousand Years of Longing (dir. George Miller) This one was an unexpected gift. Not knowing how Miller would follow-up Fury Road after so long, and with the threat of a prequel ever looming, I had no clue what to expect from this very welcome diversion. Miller's fairytale hits all the beats you would want it to, its delightful frame narrative soaking up all the chemistry of the leads before giving way to lush enactments of timeless parables. It's a joy to see the use of all the memorable visual effects flexed in Fury Road to be employed here for such a different outcome. DJ Big Driis plays his djinn with such a believable world-weariness, so perfectly balancing his desperate impatience with obligatory deferral. The games he and Tilda play around one another,

5. AmbuLAnce (dir. Michael Bay) What a fucking banger. Instant classic, already firmly cemented in the Bank Heist Mount Rushmore. What is there to say, really; this is a movie that has your jaw on the floor, heartbeat racing, adrenaline pumping for the entire duration. Any movie that can elicit such an intensely visceral reaction surely can be forgiven its faults, none of which are anywhere egregious enough to puncture your awestruck suspension of disbelief or distracting enough to interrupt the breakneck pace. And pace is everything here, rushed along by the plunging drone shots that punctuate the converging plotlines, new tricks alongside the maestro of explosions' familiar touches. Whoever is asleep at the wheel of the Fast franchise better be taking notes; the past few entries have all been desperately missing just an ounce of the juice that Bay squeezes out of every shot here. They just don't make 'em like this any more, and with this one, Bay seems to put everyone else on notice to step the fuck up.

4. Tár (dir. Todd Field) Let me just get this out of the way up front so there's no confusion on where I stand here: Lydia Tár is a real person and she did nothing wrong. The third feature from the acclaimed co-inventor of Big League Chew, Tár revolves around an absolute powerhouse of a performance. It is a rigorous and commanding film, one that demands your attention and almost punishes you for being anything less than totally enraptured by it. It is rare that I would use the word "relevant" to describe a movie and even rarer that I would consider that quality to be among a movie's strengths, but I was honestly taken with how it handles some very contemporary cultural questions. The Juilliard scene is so jarring, the tension between us not yet knowing if the film is condoning the diatribe of its title character or poking fun at it. The discussion that it invites can be a fruitful one, and one that should lead to somewhere more nuanced than this aforementioned binary so long as we avoid the pitfalls of certainty that both of its principals cannot seem to stray from. I found it surprisingly satisfying to see a scene like this play out here alongside so many lesser, groan-worthy attempts to tackle "cancel-culture" (to think that that Spotlight-but-make-it-Me Too movie was out around the same time! I could barely make it through the trailer.)

Beyond the cultural conversation though, and honestly in its own way strengthening it, this is a ghost story, one that unfolds with a masterful subtlety. Mood and tone take over, warping the shared perception of both the viewer and title character as guilt deepens and takes on external forms. It's reminiscent of Personal Shopper in these ways, where we feel haunted not by what is depicted but how. Through this haunting we're able to see with a sort of dramatic irony how Tár internalizes and navigates the thorny trappings of her own life and fame and influence that she's so confident in dispelling when it comes to others. For her, it is not even a question of forgiving some genius virtuoso or other for their shortcomings or foibles; she barely acknowledges they exist at all; art and genius absolve. We watch her squirm as the heat gets turned up, making frail attempts to cover her tracks all the while deluding herself into thinking she's maintaining the haughty guard of her persona. The eye on her remains cool and almost objective, Field's deft restraint allowing us to bring our own experience into the character. I think that's a lot of what's polarizing about the movie, and what makes it so powerful; it's become so rare that we are allowed our autonomy as an audience, that we're not told precisely how to feel about characters we can easily deem either good or bad.

Also, for as seriously as Tár takes herself, the film itself has a wonderful and cutting sense of humor, from Cate Blanchett threatening a child to the hilarious knife-twist of the closing scene.

3. Decision to Leave (dir. Park Chan-Wook) One of the deepest and most wrenching love stories I've ever seen on film. Decision to Leave is in some ways more grounded than the sumptuous The Handmaiden, but twists and diverts from its detective story frame in unexpected ways to follow these two doomed and inextricably linked characters. With these last two especially, Park slyly belies the early notoriety earned with his still shocking Vengeance trilogy, revealing himself (or maybe just reminding us) that he is just simply one of the most skilled and creative technical directors out there. Decision to Leave is unforgettable, it is mean, it is precisely my kind of feel-bad flick. That chainmail glove is just about the coolest shit I've ever seen.

2. Nope (dir. Jordan Peele) The most effective proper spectacle in recent memory, assisted greatly by understated promotion, impeccable sound editing, and a sublime sense of scale. Peele has such a sense of the enigmatic, weaving all these striking, unforgettable images that resonate with one another as his films unfold. In an age where trailers tend to show every major plot point, we take for granted just how unsettling and captivating it can be to not know where a movie will go from once scene to the next. The opening of Nope is so transfixing precisely because you have zero context and Peele exploits this tension to its fullest throughout.

One of the many things that astounds me about Nope is just how many narrative and thematic levels it's operating on. This is a movie about making movies, about the new and brutal ways that American people are becoming further disenfranchised, about a reflexive type of contemporary isolation, about desensitization and stunted attention spans, about legacy ... I guess it's about aliens, too. It's a western, it's science fiction; the use of genre does so much to inform each of these readings. It's so packed full of ideas and nothing is wasted, nothing is arbitrary. As with Arms Across America Us, here Peele continues creating his own winking Mandela-effects; don't lie and tell me you didn't scour the internet to see if Gordy's Home was real or to research the identity of the "Plate 262" rider. Peele has such a way of capturing, of inventing, a collective imagination.

As with his other features, the casting here is spot-on; Peele has an incredible way of working with actors, of capturing chemistry. Keke Palmer and Daniel Kaluuya are so much fun to watch together, such perfect foils to one another. Steven Yeun's Chris Kattan monologue is an absolute all-timer.

With each effort, Peele makes me think more and more of Hitchcock, of Shyamalan. I watch his movies and just feel so fortunate that we have his singular voice right now, especially at such a nadir of moviegoing. This guy is operating within a rich tradition of the spectacular, masterfully employing genre to interrogate potent and present anxieties. His works are time-capsule pieces, perhaps the most telling of our era. I just want him to keep making whatever the hell he wants with whatever amount of money he needs to do it.

1. Aftersun (dir. Charlotte Wells) This movie just simply does things I've never seen before, operating in some of the subtler and more poetic reaches of what cinema is capable of as an art form. We're witnessing memory as it is formed and recalled simultaneously. This is slowly revealed in flash-forward, leading up to the jaw-dropping climax that is stirring to the core, a frenetic fever-dream frame narrative that punctuates the softness of the impressionistic and nostalgia-drenched camcorder brushstrokes. Paul Mescal's character is a ghost haunting the reflective surfaces of resort swimming pools and mirrors, an indefinite form captured obliquely against the screen of a turned-off television. His daughter can only ever conjure him in these fleeting and enigmatic ways; he is not his own person yet to her, only sketched in the ways she that sees and needs him. Such is the inevitable tragedy of the relationship, made all the more harrowing by the simmering turmoil he bares in private that she can only naively intuit. This film is so intimate and personal it almost feels like my own memory, my own aching and secret guilt reflecting on the selfishness of childhood, on taking something precious and formative for granted after it's too late to recover. This movie just fucking wrecks me in irreconcilable ways the more I think about it.

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