#they see gaza as this far away problem and middle easterns as not human

[greencarnation]

Can you imagine if the French invaded Britain and killed a bunch of people displaced a bunch more and then shoved what was left into like. Aberdeen. And then bombed the shit out of Aberdeen for 75 years and didn't let anyone leave. And if you tried to get out they killed your whole family and called you a terrorist. And the whole world was like omg you're barbarians France has a right to defend itself even though that's literally not even France it's Britain, France just invaded and stuck French flags everywhere. And then France killed 20,000 people mostly British kids in like a month but if anyone says hey maybe France should stop killing the kids then they're anti-French and they support terrorism and genocide. That would be crazy right

[utilitymonstermash]

Taleb:

One of the problems of the interventionista — wanting to get involved in other people’s affairs “in order to help” — results in disrupting some of the peace-making mechanisms that are inherent in human affairs, a combination of collaboration and strategic hostility. As we saw in the Prologue 1, the error continues because someone else is paying the price.

I speculate that had IYIs and their friends not gotten involved, problems such as the Israeli-Palestinian one would have been solved, sort of — and both parties, especially the Palestinians, would have been better off. As I am writing these lines the problem has lasted seventy years, with way too many cooks in the same tiny kitchen, most of whom never have to taste the food. I conjecture that when you leave people alone, they tend to settle for practical reasons.

[...]

Imagine [Nero1] the absurdity of Arab states prodding the Palestinians to fight for their principles while their potentates are sitting in carpeted alcohol-free palaces (with well-stocked refrigerators full of nonalcoholic fermented beverages such as yoghurt) while the recipients of their advice live in refugee camps. Had the Palestinians settled in 1947, they would have been better off. But the idea was to throw the Jews and neo-crusaders in the Mediterranean; Arab rhetoric came from Arab parties who were hundreds, thousands of miles away arguing for “principles” when Palestinians were displaced, living in tents. Then came the war of 1948. Had Palestinians settled then, things would have worked out. But, no, there were “principles.” But then came the war of 1967. Now they feel they would be lucky if they recovered the territory lost in 1967. Then in 1992 came the Oslo peace treaty, from the top. No peace proceeds from bureaucratic ink. If you want peace, make people trade, as they have done for millennia. They will be eventually forced to work something out.

Moldbug:

Under the Wilsonian interpretation, this right to judge has been removed from Israel and Gaza, and transferred to Washington, our honest—or, depending on your point of view, dishonest—broker. Our single global sovereign.

Result: Arabs persistently refuse any settlement, always involving concessions in their favor, which Israel will accept. As diplomats put it, they will “not take yes for an answer.” Small wonder, as the conflict is essentially their national industry at this point. War continues for sixty years, on and off, and bids fair to go on for the next sixty.

Note that in none of this analysis have we considered the actual merits of the case Palestine v. Israel. We have simply observed that the old international law, generally perceived as brutal and bellicose, results in peace. And the new international law, generally perceived as civilized and humanitarian, results in war. This would not be the first such inversion.

War is, generally, more evil than peace. So our evil detector is going off. But we have only begun to scratch the surface of the evil in this case.

There is actually an English word which refers to the Palestinian case. The word is irredentism. The fit is perfect: “Irredentism is any position advocating annexation of territories administered by another state on the grounds of common ethnicity or prior historical possession, actual or alleged.” The origin of the term is also worth a look. And irredentism can also be considered a special case of revanchism.

But you seldom see these terms used in relation to the Middle East conflict, because both have acquired a distinct odor of… evil. It’s all too easy to understand how irredentism and revanchism are the polar opposite of peace. Peace means accepting the results of history. Irredentism means the Welsh Liberation Front, demanding the return of London from those notorious human-rights violators, the Saxons.

Moreover, one question too seldom asked is why irredentist violence occurs. After all, changes in borders, even mass population transfers, are ubiquitous throughout history. Focusing on our own era for a moment, we have the expulsion of the Germans from Eastern Europe, the expulsion of the Jews from Egypt, and the expulsion of the pieds-noirs from Algeria. In each of these cases, a population of millions was expelled at gunpoint from land they had lived on for generations, an enterprise blatantly inconsistent with “the rights of humanity.” And resulting in a complete absence of irredentist violence, or even political organization. So far as I know, not a single pipe bomb has been detonated by any victim of any of these expulsions.

Why? Perhaps these particular peoples are just genetically docile. A racial characteristic. Or a cultural one, at least. Can these factors be ruled out? Of course not.

But there’s another troubling factor, which is that none of the docile expellees enjoyed the sympathy of the “international community.”For the Germans, this is obvious. The Jews and pieds-noirs were expelled by Arab nationalists—who, as we’ve just seen, did enjoy that sympathy. (Or see, for example, Suez.)

[maneatingbadger]

Review - Wonder Woman (2017)

TL;DR: Wonder Woman is good. It has problems. See it, and discuss the problems. Also, airplanes. 

Wonder Woman (2017) is a good film. If you haven’t seen it yet, you should. (Trailer)

Wonder Woman is an important film. Women led and directed it. The character is a feminist icon and welcome change from ongoing male dominance of the superhero genre, at least on the big screen (can’t comment on comics). 

Wonder Woman is a long film. At just over 140 minutes runtime it never drags, but evening theatergoers may be shocked at the lateness of the hour when they exit, as I was last night. 

Now for some rambling thoughts (mild spoilers ahead). 

Wonder Woman is set in the waning days of World War I, a change from her Second World War origins that initially gave me pause. The mainstream moral authority of the Allies in WWII has its complexities, yet they pale in comparison to the more prominent clash of competitive imperialism a couple decades earlier. But Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), aka Diana Prince, is a superhero. Her joining the Allies is a foregone conclusion, and my apprehensions were almost immediately justified (and remained so almost to the very end) when downed pilot Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) calls himself “a good guy” and points at the Germans on the beach as “the bad guys.” Then he explains how the Ottoman Empire is keeping the Kaiser supplied with munitions, so now the faceless, menacing Turks join the evil German monolith. WWII at least had Nazis to punch, but you can’t read All Quiet on the Western Front and come away feeling the German Army in WWI was total evil. 

Then again, maybe you can. Rows of women sitting behind me fucking applauded and cheered as Diana cut swaths through German infantrymen. Never mind that some of them were undoubtedly conscripts, never mind that a German soldier was as patriotic as a Brit or Frenchman, never mind that war is hell and both sides learned that quickly. I can’t believe I’m praising this aspect of Captain America: The First Avenger, but at least Red Skull’s Hydra soldiers were basically Star Wars Stormtroopers circa Original Trilogy: totally made up and combat ineffective. It didn’t matter how many Hydras Steve Rogers and his Brooklyn Boy Band killed, because they were Bad Guys™ and also usually faceless behind masks. But they chose to set Wonder Woman in the actual fighting of WWI, not Marvel’s faux war within (and beyond) a war, and wanton slaughter is rarely a point of satisfaction in the far-from-perfect Hollywood war genre. I certainly never cheered as Tom Hanks’s unit outflanked and suppressed German bunkers in Saving Private Ryan, or when Japanese defenders repeatedly ambushed Marines in Letters from Iwo Jima. Yet we’re supposed to feel inspired by Wonder Woman singlehandedly disposing of fifty poor German boys because she looks good doing it?

Of relevance: The PG-13 rating (and associated lack of gore and violence you might expect from a dedicated WWI period piece) may contribute to some viewers’ lack of empathy for the wounded or dead. I’m not saying Wonder Woman should have been an R-rated war flick, because 1) that’s not what it was ever going to be, and 2) the audience most urgently needing this movie is young girls, so the more accessible the better. But the end result is still a fairly tame view of Western Front conditions. And the lack of blood from Diana cutting her way through German squads with a sword is desensitizing and immersion-breaking. 

Also of relevance: Diana at one point accuses a Scottish sniper (Ewen Bremner)—and more general practitioners of fighting from a distance, e.g., artillery—of fighting without honor because they do not necessarily see those they kill (or, in the case of generals and other REMFs, those they send off to die). There’s a lot to unpack here. The Amazons are a warrior society that worships leading from the front. An obvious drawback to that is when General Antiope dies on the beach: The Amazons lose their top commander (among others) in a skirmish to a small bunch of German sailors. Considering the qualitative and quantitative differences, that is not a favorable exchange ratio. Beyond that, snipers (like drone pilots) arguably see their targets in a much more intimate fashion than any other soldier does, thanks to their scopes (or camera turrets) and the long periods of observation that can precede pulling the trigger. We’ll cut Diana some slack because the Amazons have no concept of ranged warfare beyond the bow, but the notion of “honor” is also complicated. Michael Moore and others have voiced their hatred for snipers as cowards, as if war is a gentleman’s duel. Ethics in war usually applies to noncombatants and enemies who surrender: Those, in other words, who aren’t fighting you, are vulnerable, and have been found throughout history to merit protection. Killing them is cowardly, a point Diana also makes, but killing enemy combatants isn’t. If it were, what “honor” exists in racking up body counts against foes that cannot physically harm you? A sniper hides, a demigod is, well, a demigod, both are practically immune from preventative counters or immediate retaliation. Whither honor, Diana?

Diana’s concern for civilians hit by indiscriminate weapons like artillery and gas is curious in light of Gadot’s compulsory service in the IDF and support for Israel’s bloody 2014 Gaza campaign. This deserves more attention than I or anyone will give it, and I apologize for a level of compassion fatigue those in Gaza, Jordan, and the West Bank surely recognize all too well. Fans are forced to choose between a white feminist cinematic triumph and a marginalized and oppressed community (that this is a conundrum itself speaks volumes), no one wants to tackle Israel-Palestine on top of misogyny, and those sympathetic to Palestinians are losing the PR fight. It shouldn’t be a binary solution set: I gladly join the chorus hailing the film as an important cultural touchstone, and I embrace criticizing Gadot for her support of apartheid, occupation, and, ironically, civilian casualties, especially as she somehow manages not to choke on lines like “I’m willing to fight for those who cannot fight for themselves” or “only love can truly save the world.” Again, when Israeli fighters bomb hospitals, whither honor?

The above point also touches on larger intersectionality concerns that I’ll let other takes explain. 

Captain America aside: Like The First Avenger, Wonder Woman is an origin story about a gorgeous, invincible hero fighting the Germans for the Americans in Europe that ends on a multi-engined doomsday-device-carrying German bomber—hijacked on a suicide mission to save the day by a guy named Steve!

Back to WWI: I was fully prepared to write this movie off as “The Western Allies are good, the Central Powers and Turks are evil, and justice wins in the end.”  But Trevor neatly resolved my qualms in a short monologue while trying to convince a disillusioned Diana to keep helping him. Can’t find it online yet, but it goes something like “Maybe we’re all at fault! Maybe none of us deserve saving!” Diana gradually realizes that humans don’t need the malign influence of Ares, the Greek God of War and primary antagonist, to keep fighting and killing each other, that WWI was never divisible into “good” and “bad guys,” and this is after Chief (Eugene Brave Rock) the Blackfoot character’s almost throwaway line that Trevor’s people drove his off their land “in the last war.” Before those moments, Wonder Woman’s WWI setting was terrible; after them, it was at worst imperfect, a hit-and-miss attempt to address violence as a human phenomenon waged by problematic protagonists. I wish they’d addressed that earlier and more inclusively (the Germans and Turks still resonate as one-dimensional “bad guys”), but I’m impressed at how centrally and effectively that message played out in the end. 

The WWI setting brings us to the level of realism, continuity, and historical accuracy, oft-losing propositions for Hollywood in general at the best of times that tend to fare even worse in the superhero genre. To this day I will not forgive Marvel for its patently ridiculous modern-day helicarriers. But Wonder Woman misses the mark by less than I feared. Here’s what I was able to catch in one viewing: 

The Fokker Eindecker that Trevor flies to escape from Ottoman Turkey was the first operational fighter with a gun synchronized to shoot through the spinning propeller, allowing fixed guns on the centerline for improved accuracy. 

Eindeckers were deployed in the Middle East between 1916 and 1917, though they were mostly replaced by Fokker D.7’s when Wonder Woman rolls around a year a later. Still, props (get it?) to the movie for spotlighting a lesser film star and not the cinematically overused Camels and triplanes.

Note that Trevor escaped from Turkey in a light aircraft with a top speed of 76 knots and endurance under two hours. Even assuming a generous range of 200 miles from the Turkish coast, he can only splash down in the Black Sea or eastern Mediterranean, a rough clue to the location of the edge of Themyscira’s shield barrier. Then he and Diana take a small single-masted sailing vessel from there to London, a voyage of nearly 3,000 miles depending on where he crashed. 

The internet speculates that Themyscira may not exist on our temporal or spatial plane and therefore lacks a permanent location. This 1) could mean the island was closer to the UK when the two set out by boat, and 2) accounts for the island’s obscurity in a heavily trafficked area until Trevor’s fighter and the pursuing German warship blundered into it. Still, you’d think Zeus could have done better than a shield blocking only visible light.

Speaking of that warship, the ensuing beach battle has holes. The novelization disposes of the Kriegsmarine surface combatant on a coral reef, and I do recall wondering why the ship seems to roll and rise at an angle in the background at one point, but this was only a few frames and barely registered on my fellow viewers. Then its rowboats hit the beach in a horrifying demonstration of what happens when technological superiority is overwhelmed by the numerical variety. Passages came to mind from The Gun by CJ Chivers about the use of rapid-fire Maxim and Gatling guns against native tribes in European colonies, specifically the change in outcome when those guns jammed and a handful of soldiers confronted tribal human waves with muskets, bayonets, and bare hands. Similarly, the German riflemen open fire to deadly effect, but the Amazons overwhelm their rate of fire with a frontal cavalry charge. It doesn’t hurt that the Amazons are Made in Olympus, pursue a ridiculous fitness and training regimen, and fight like badasses. 

But they don’t confront Trevor until after the Germans are slain, though he wears a German disguise and grabs a rifle from a sailor in the melee. He is an armed male intruder, and only Diana recognizes his actions as friendly, yet he isn’t killed in the confusion or even threatened at sword- or bow-point afterward.

Speaking of swords, bows, and horses, the Amazon way of war could be much more effective if they emerged a century or even half a century earlier, in the heyday of post-Napoleonic fighting. Queen Hippolyta’s claim that they have nothing to fear while hiding in paradise already failed as an argument to shelter Diana from training; unexamined is what that level of sheltering applied to Amazon society as a whole portends if and when Themyscira finds itself exposed to an ever-advancing outside world. If Diana had come out a quarter century later, she would have confronted heavier and more destructive weapons probably beyond the protective envelope of her shield (unless it’s vibranium, though Wikipedia says an indestructible goat hide, which I like even more) and wrist/ankle bracelets. Her run through No Man’s Land was remarkably devoid of shrapnel, explosives, and weapons fire despite the whole trench line of German regulars shooting at an upright target, and she was stopped cold by machine-gun nests: Imagine 88mm shells from a line of King Tigers or 500lb bombs from diving Stukas. 

She may be a rapid-healing demigod immune to poison gas, but we also see her bleed and block bullets rather than take them. Modern weaponry can hurt and even kill her. And I haven’t even mentioned nukes.

Back to rivet counting: I can’t find any good images yet of the large German bomber from the climactic scene, but it appears to be a fictional version of the so-called Riesenflugzeug or “giant aircraft” bombers produced by Zeppelin-Staaken. 

Like the historical Zeppelin-Staaken R.VI, the movie version appears to have four engines (one Giant was even fitted with a fifth in the nose), but the movie plane has them arranged in four separate forward-facing engine nacelles. The R.VI by contrast had twin-engine pairs with one “pusher” and one “puller” propeller each. I’ll probably also come back to this once that scene is posted online.

The tank whose tracks are used to restrain Wonder Woman at the climax seemed to have the rhomboid shape of a British heavy tank, though the setting is a German-held airfield. 

The Germans captured a number of British heavy tanks of various marks and genders, so perhaps this is a pre-owned model. Again, I’ll be better able to confirm that once the scene is uploaded.

Poison gas is the movie’s most salient and best-realized WWI characteristic.

That about does it for first-runthrough nitpicking (IMDB has more on wristwatches and trouser zippers).

Oh, Rupert Gregson-Williams’s soundtrack is typical superhero fare that didn’t leave much of an impression, but the end credits piece before Sia’s single sounded awful familiar. I later thought I heard elements of Jeremy Soule’s Supreme Commander and Forged Alliance, Ramin Djawadi’s Pacific Rim, and Tom Holkenborg’s Mad Max: Fury Road OSTs, but maybe that’s just me.