Exploring the Option

Mmm. Part of Act's problem is the fact that weapons manufacture is a money making industry, however astute the analysts are in assessing potential conflict. Certainly the Russian Federation can reignite the Cold War, but as the ruthlessness of the IS group illustrates, the technical ease of mobility, excepting the invalid class, threatens all state models, none of which are as secure as they seem, not even Canada, with its territorial expanse equivalent to the US, which points to how science fiction writers like Daniel Keys Moran may not be so far off the mark.

His Last Dancer franchise, for those not in the know, was about forced global hegemony under the UN, clones, and cyborg AI's gradually taking over. Unwittingly, spastic purchased the last novel in the series, and know only that the United States was the last sovereign territory to fall, defeated by French forces, (oddly enough). A little too melodramatic for my taste, and I could not enter into all the concluding story lines, but for a wildly vacillating future dystopia, Moran's dismal voice was a lens over my own. For all we know, France may indeed be the first to advocate the death of territorial sovereignty. If the third world war is an advent, however, I am not sold on Putin's paranoia or Xi Jinping's muscle flexing being the primary trigger to put an end to the global leadership of the US. Libya might have a domino effect on Egypt, Erdogan may push to expand Turkey's regional dominance, as it may be under a nationalist Muslim banner, but is neither Sunni nor Shi'ite, moving my pieces on the board with the same fallacy toward predictable scripts, but one thing is certain: State governance is being outstripped by meta data, which presents its own vulnerability.

Last Legs, Abrogated

"The various kinds of sovereignty do not necessarily covary."-- Stephen D. Krasner

Frankenheimer's direction in The Horsemen is not necessarily New Wave, but it could not have been what it is without David Lean coming beforehand, and now stands as a favorite of spastic's hothead youth, previously unknown but for nostalgia television. The cinematography is rich, splendid, in colors of beauty and brutality, its thematic aims not so clearly deciphered, not quite about man's destructive capacity with his livestock either. Who knew camels would kill each other at the behest of their trainers? 

Frankenheimer seems to focus solely on man and beast in contention, without tipping the scales one way or the other. It is left for viewers to wonder why Omar's Uraz chooses to cripple himself instead of mending properly after breaking his leg, but it is similar to the way I may choose to bring this to an end and dump myself on the street. Obstinate individuals need the contest, and yet Uraz makes it extreme. After he has a concealed amputation and a victory ride on Jahil, the game trained warrior horse of his father, he rejects his village and goes off with a Taliban-like mountain herder who trains his goat to be a lethal killer at the bong of a drum roll. It is a weird quiet film that admires the defiance of natural anarchy as a way of life, something quietly eroded in progressive sensibility, and yet beneath the surface, the wealth of the developed world is under tremendous strain, analogous to the ephemeral doll like perfection of Leigh Taylor Young in Soylent Green. Given the actual state of civilization depicted on location, it is the actress as a trophy fuck who seems unreal, almost as if doctored for a commercial. Her upkeep must have cost a fortune, and her fate, left to its inferences as Charlton is carried away, wounded, mortally or not, protesting the horror of manufactured cannibalism. I'm not the first person to point out that liberalism unwilling to recognize limits invites catastrophe.

The conception of sovereignty is nonsensical, but some states are more sorereign than others. After 9/11, once I had all the facts, I actually would not have occupied Kabul. We should have wiped out Saudi Arabia, and the subsequent genealogy of events would have been different. Afghanistan, as a state, doesn't seem to function, and as with anything else, nation builders need to get out of the way.

Nylon and Chiffon

"I see oranges flying across the room."

Tavis Smiley grates on my nerves. The voice, the necessity of hustling through the segment, and chucking aside implosions away from PBS singularity, he is only a few decibels below cable news reactionaries of whom I view very little. But I paused for Robert English, who gave the most succinct capsule analysis of Ukrainian sectarian strife I have yet come across.

I may annoy my unseen overlords at Examiner/Clarity Media, and I did a wee bit of research on my no contract lovable slave driver-- let me put it this way-- I like the work, dislike Clarity's methods, and, if I get a chance, will one day assassinate Nero, in the vain hope that Claude Rains resurrects Caesar, which in translation means aggregation has an evil, sometimes egregious, tilt. But I may annoy Examiner once again and attempt to hone my analysis skills on Ukraine's crisis. Blame George Will; he gave me the idea to worry about semi-autonomous regions. Slowly moving onto my throne of institutional elder (I can hear Tavis ping Quincy: "What is going on with this dowager woman? I have access to the Pope and she infringes on the hospitality of the sisters man, hiding behind that pity.") I actually remember this man calling for a free Ukraine.

How the world has evolved since Watergate, but, by the same token, the developed world is in a post-ideological cataclysm. Not that I wish to defend Stalinism, but what is a Ukrainian national identity? neo-Nazism?

Say American. Say English. Say Russian, French, Italian, even Canadian, and we get a rough picture of pansy ass loggers getting back at their shared border neighbors with Wolverine. But the Crimea? What I know of the Crimean War I distilled from watching Trevor Howard get the Empire's hands dirty.

Clarity actually owns The Weekly Standard, and it would doubtlessly baffle Examiner's manager, if she actually exists and I persist in tracking down a live body, if I ask her for a name before I submit my portfolio, all of picturesque humility. I respect Will Self. Let him know that through the food chain.