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destroyscythe-heck · 2 years

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An incomplete list of cursed things that happened in a dream I had about a live action Gundam Wing movie when I took a nap yesterday

1. There was an orchestral cover of “Everybody” by the Backstreet Boys playing during like the boys setting up for the big final showdown

2. The dialogue I remember was mostly MCU style quips and snarky stuff

3. Duo’s character basically got completely gutted and replaced with him being the standard stock action movie comic relief

4. Hilde, Dorothy, Mike Howard,and the Manganac corps all got completely cut

5. Wufei got done realizing dirty “because nobody liked Wufei anyway so it’s fine if he’s just an unsympathetic dick who gets bullied the whole time”, it was very mean spirited and probably also really really racist with how he was handled

6. Relena also got completely gutted to to just make her “Heero’s love interest who is a girl who sometimes also talks about how pacifism is neat” probably to make her seem less “annoying” or “pushy” or “preachy” or “SJW-ish” because people would mock the movie on YouTube

7. Quatre was being played by a white actor but it was justified in the story by none of the Winner kids being the same race or even looking related at all because their parents got a bit creative during the Gattaca-ing of their army of test tube babies

Also out of the script the people making the movie said they were justified in doing that because they added more new diversity by casting Trowa as black and a “plus size” actress to be Sally (Both of which I am ok with but we went through this with the live action Winx Club show, you can’t erase some pre existing diversity and then pretend it’s okay by adding something new, you definitely could have had kept Flora in the show and cast a plus size Latina actress) Also (Yes I’m still mad about that because Flora and Tecna were my favorite Winx Club characters, and erasing her to have Terra be there was complete BS because again, plus size Latina actresses exist)

(Winx Club rant tangent over)

8. Noin was the cookie cutter generic type of “stronk female character ™️” that hasn’t really been anything groundbreaking since the 80’s and also showed that you completely missed the point of why people like Ripley from Alien

9. Treize actually had a motivation this time! But it seemed like it was written by somebody who still thinks that “Illuminati Confirmed” is the cutting edge of the hip cool meme culture for the youths

10. Kathrine and Trowa kissed and then later had a completely out of character-ly dramatic freak out when they found out that they are actually siblings in a cheap attempt to make fun of Luke and Leia Skywalker

11. Une was a complete caricature of herself, like she was so Sat A.M. cartoon villain obviously evil that you’d really wonder why anyone is comfortable having her as an underling because it’s so obvious that she’s that evil and would sell you to satan for one corn chip, but it seemed like if you snatched her glasses off her face she could go from skinning adorable puppies alive with one hand while pressing the big red button with the other to wanting to go bake cookies with Relena or whatever

12. I know that Heero already wasn’t the most emotional character ever but you could have literally replaced him with a mannequin wearing a wig, a green tank top, bike shorts, and a pair of Timbs (for product placement reasons) in his scenes and nobody would notice

13. The already incredibly shallow criticism of drone warfare that was done with the mobile dolls was somehow watered down even more

14. Sally’s rebel group became a stand in for the US army who were obviously supposed to be the good guys

15. The old scientist dudes who started Operation Meteor were also evil because they were also in the Illuminati who are playing both sides with earth and space and the original Operation Meteor was a false flag attack meant to cause total chaos on earth for reasons

16. But everyone ended up okay because the boys got found by Sally and the thinly veiled stand in for the US Army

17. Zechs had a complete mental breakdown when he left OZ and him forming White Fang himself from the remains of the colony rebels was him having a Joker arc

18. … because Relena said she didn’t love him anymore and was mad at him for becoming a war criminal even though he actually could remember what the Sanc Kingdom was like and how their dad was Mr. Pacifist Mc Pacifismface, but she didn’t say all that aloud. Just only that she didn’t love her brother anymore and only that

19. But he ended up okay and perfectly good because during the climactic Libra fight Noin was there and she kissed him and made him not the Joker anymore through the power of redemption arc love

20. And finally, there was a really prominent fart joke featuring Duo Maxwell in like the first 5 minutes

#from the ashes #phoenix speaks #Gundam #gundam wing #heero yuy #duo maxwell #trowa barton #quatre raberba winner #wufei chang #zechs merquise #relena peacecraft #relena darlian #lucrezia noin #lady une #treize khushrenada #completely and totally cursed #I’m amazed that I didn’t wake up in a cold sweat screaming

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mandala-lore · 3 years

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Tarot Reading Specials:

I used to do free short readings on tumblr for anons and got pretty good feedback, plus I always get great feedback from friends and family. I'm also unemployed until the fall (I hope to be working again by then) so I decided to open up some cheap tarot readings with costs and short descriptions below. :)

I tend to give thorough and straightforward readings as best I can - but we can get as mystical and complicated as you like. I've been doing this for years and I have a good relationship with my decks (Yugioh has nothing on me!)

I have several decks to choose from, including: the Fairchild (the very popular one sold at like Barnes & Noble lol), Medieval Italian, Mucha, Steampunk, Illuminati, and the classic Waite. I'll briefly describe the "personality" of each deck below and provide some pictures. I also have Gorey's Fantod pack and the Egyptian Oracle, both of which are a bit different and I explain below.

You can certainly request privacy and I'll DM you with your results, but otherwise I'll simply post and tag you with your results. I also ALWAYS provide a photo so you can choose to explore the imagery of your cards on your own too.

Prices go like this: I'll do single card quick readings for free!

2 card readings also free if you REBLOG this post

Otherwise:

2-3 cards $3

4-5 cards $5

6-8 cards $8

9-12 cards $15

13+ cards $20

And starting at $20 I'll design a unique spread for you with at least 5 cards (we'll need to DM for this probably). Price will go up slightly for more cards, but we would discuss that.

The Egyptian Oracle works differently, so any reading with it will be $20

I prefer to use venmo but if that doesn't work for you, we can discuss other options. Feel free to respond to this post OR dm me; please provide your venmo name if you request a paid reading so that I can confirm payment. :)

My venmo is: @Lore518

I'll also use ANY spread you send me or find I've reblogged or used before. Some of my favorites that I find most useful would be:

Want/Need or Do/Don't for 2 cards (free if you reblog this post!)

3 cards: I'll interpret your birth cards (you'll need to tell me your birthday); a simple Past, Present, Future reading; or Sun, Moon, Star

4 cards: simple P,P,F with an added meditation card; or Lessons to Learn

5 cards: Full Moon (works best around full moon but I do have charged candles to help); Communication spread (for you and a spirit or another person); or As Above, So Below

6 cards: I'll interpret your birth cards in conjunction with another's (again, I'll need birthdays); Identification spread (for identifying mysterious spirits or energies in your life); or New Moon (see above for Full Moon)

7 cards: Comparability (for you and anyone else)

8 cards: Shadow Self; New Home; or Wellness

9 cards: Disasters Come in 3s

10 cards: Tree of Life

11 cards: Planets; or Identify and Communicate with a spirit or specific energy in your life

12 cards: Year Ahead

You can also send me any spread you find elsewhere and would like me to use!

Feel free to browse this blog or my side blog fool-in-the-storm for explanations of these and MANY other spreads. You can also message me for a recommendation of a specific spread based on your circumstances.

You can request ANY spread with ANY deck I own. However, I would prefer to use the Fantod pack only for readings of 4 cards or less. And the Egyptian Oracle is very different so I only use 1 specific spread with it. I explain all this below where I discuss my decks, if anyone is curious.

I've also decided to offer these special rates, based on my preferences and familiarity with certain spread and deck combos. Take a look because you can save a few bucks if you choose one of these:

$3 Basic Reading: 4 card spread with Past, Present, Future, & meditation card with the Fairchild deck. A wonderful all-around reading adaptable for all sorts of situations, with my oldest/favorite deck.

$5 Birth Cards with Waite deck: I'll read yours and 1 other's birth cards in relation to each other with the Waite deck. This deck is new to me so I'd love any opportunity to get to know it with simple, predictable spreads like this. :)

$6 Shadow Self with the Illuminati deck. This deck is all about casting light on hidden aspects of our lives, so it pairs great with this spread. Get to know your shadow self, or begin exploring how to discover your shadow self.

$6 New Home spread with the Mucha deck. This is one of my favorite combos. If you're moving into a new place or beginning a new experience, this is a great choice for an overall reading. The Mucha deck is gorgeous and very approachable.

$10 Disasters Come in Three's with the Fairchild OR Mucha deck. Another one of my favorite combos. This spread identifies recent or upcoming potential issues in your life and gives some advice. These decks are my "friendliest" so I find they work best.

$12 Spirit or Influence Identification and Communication spread with the Fairchild deck. This is a complicated, nuanced spread I do often to help me ID or locate specific energies (spiritual or from people around me) influencing my life.

$12 Disasters + Lessons combination spread (see below) with Fairchild or Mucha deck.

$12 Planets spread with the Waite deck. Again, this deck is new to me so I welcome any opportunity to explore it with a predictable spread. Use this combo to discover the planets current influence on your life, or how you're currently interacting with planetary energies.

$12 Year Ahead with the Fairchild deck. We can adapt this to read from today onward, OR to reflect on the past months of this year and predict the subsequent months. This is a standard spread, with 1 card for each month.

Another fun thing to consider is combination spreads that might work best for you. For example, I love to do a Disasters in 3s spread, then use the leftover deck from whichever disaster I choose to do a further Lessons spread. This process can help refine your understanding of a reading and grant further guidance. :)

Anyway thanks for reading! Please consider reblogging and asking for a FREE 2-card reading to test me out. Single card readings (extremely simple) are also free for now.

Below I've described some of my experiences with my decks AND I'll explain why the Fantod and Egyptian Oracles are so different, for anyone considering their options. :)

-+-+-+-+-

Fairchild Deck: a lot of people (me!) use this as their starting deck. It's a friendly but enigmatic deck with simple but classic imagery. I have a strong bond with mine and I usually get the most inspiration out of it. I also find it's a "no nonsense" deck that doesn't sugar coat.

This deck is extremely versatile and well-worn (there are pros and cons to this).

Mucha Deck: probably my most beautiful deck. I prefer to use this when I'm feeling down or particularly worried/anxious, as it has a way of responding hopefully while also respecting my feelings. If you're not used to tarot this probably sounds crazy but this deck has the gentlest energy of all my decks.

Medieval Italian: this deck is funky in a lot of ways. To be perfectly honest, we don't also work well together but in a way that can be good. This deck forces me to really focus and meditate on what I'm seeing, feeling, and thinking. It also has a way of making me recognize when I'm contradicting myself or trying too hard to spin things.

It's also a deck with a rich history, related to but different from the classic Waite deck.

Steampunk: I don't use this deck often as I find the imagery confusing and the energy pretty intense. But it's useful for getting a unique spin on shorter readings, especially when I've hit the wall with my more preferred decks. I need to spend more time with it before I feel I can rely on it for longer or more complex readings.

Illuminati: No, not like the conspiracy group. I rely on this deck when I'm feeling particularly lost or if I want to interact with foreign energies. I find it has a way of forcing me to confront things I try to repress, ignore, or just plain don't understand yet. A great choice for longer readings or spiritual readings.

A.E. Waite: my newest addition but by far the most well-known. The Waite deck features classic imagery, but this deck has a beautiful rainbow sheen to it! I'd love any opportunity to explore this new deck further with small readings before I dive into complex ones.

Fantod: Edward Gorey's twist on a tarot deck. It only has 20 cards, which is why I prefer it for short readings. It also has a sense of humor, so don't expect huge personal revelations from this one. I think it works best for someone who enjoys using tarot to meditate on, rather than use as a straight divination tool.

Egyptian Oracle: a family friend gifted me this. She had owned it for years and never used it, so I had a chance to experiment with it. Like the Fantod pack, it's entirely different from standard tarot and I prefer to only use the 13-card spread its booklet recommends. Feel free to DM me for more details. This would be a good option for anyone who is familiar with tarot and wants to try something entirely different. I find it works best for financial, professional, and introspective readings.

At the moment these are the only decks I own, although I find it's also possible to use a regular deck of playing cards too!

I'm also open to doing Dream Interpretations (starting at $20), Palm, Tea Leaf, or Rune readings (starting at $10) but to be totally honest, I think these are less accurate, especially online. Dream interpretations I think also work best when I know more about a person, so I'd prefer to give you a tarot reading about it. Consider asking me to choose or design a spread if you want to tell me a bit about your dream (it might end up being cheaper too!)

Thanks so much for reading and/or reblogging, even if you choose not to request a reading. :)

#tarot #tarot reading #fortune telling #tarot cards #free tarot #please consider a reblog thank u so muchhhhhh #making any little bit of side cash would be so welcome rn #but also i have lots of free time and i would LOVE to do this #mine #blog related #long post

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shootdatscreen · 7 years

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MAC DEMARCO = ILLUMINATI CONFIRMED

FACTS :

If you play simultaneously his last and first albums in reverse, you can hear a conversation of Mac DeMarco and Joseph Votel about a suspicious meeting in the Area 51.

Mac DeMarco has claimed that his music only purpose was to entertain BUT according to this graphic, the number of listeners who has developed symptoms of mind control and brain washing has DOUBLED BY 11. Symptoms include : Headaches, nausea and feeling of doing things against your will. If you or someone you know have listened to Mac DeMarco, please join immediatly the UDMTPTF (Un-DeMacro the people Task Force).

Mac DeMarco never said anything about not being an illuminati.

The government of the United States of America doesn’t want you to know about this but a young informatician manage to decode the barcode of Mac DeMarco’s Salad Days and it is scary. It is 817949019471. Do you know what 8+1+7+9+4+9+0+1+9+4+7+1 is equal to? You guess it : 911 !! Coincidence? I think not.

Mac DeMarco is born April 30, 1990. He is 27. Do you know what happened to Jimi hendrix, Brian Jones, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrisson, Jean Michel Basquiat, Kurt Cobain (and so many more) when they where 27? THEY DIED. Coincidence? I think not.

If you are not convinced yet, feel free to contact me so I can give you many more reasons why Mac DeMarco = Illuminati.

Please share this information as much as possible since more and more people get brainwashed by his music. Also the government will take this post down really soon so spread the word!

#mac demarco #conspiracy #illuminati #confirmed #truth #music #lies #US #9/11 #jet fuels can't melt steel beams #plot #area 51 #secret #UFO #brainwash #mind control #meme #dank

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bloodtroth · 5 years

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The Official Grindeldore Fandom Rules

The Most Important Rules

1. Never forget Grindeldore is canon and enjoy the satisfaction that no one can do anything about it cause it’s officially confirmed

2. Lose a bit (or all) of your social life in order to worship the ship

3. ALWAYS support other grindeldore shippers

Headcanons

4. Have Albus understanding Snape’s “Always” because of Gellert

5. See Grindeldore as an old married couple.

6. Have Vinda be Gellert’s confidante who knows everything about him and thus about Grindeldore.

Reblogging

7. When you see the blood pact scene, reblog

8. When you see a picture of a cat with heterochromia, yell “Gellert!” and reblog

9. If you see the gif set with JKR confirming they had a “love relationship”, reblog.

10. Reblog fanart, especially @bluecrownedbird ‘s cute comics

Posting

11. Either write drunk shitposts about these ridiculous idiots or spout profound borderline-pretentious shit about them. Know no middle ground between the two

12. Vague post about the main HP fandom’s anti-JKR and anti-Dumbledore opinions.

13. Make a meme or an incorrect quote of your own at least once.

Things we make fun of

14. Make fun of Travers

15. Make fun of Gellert for being jealous and for his break up haircut

16. Make fun of fans who still think Gellert is straight.

17. “Gee, nice socks, Albus!!!”

HP & FB

18. Reread Deathly Hallows a fifth, tenth, twentieth time, scouring for any and all hints that you might have missed every other time.

19. Grumble about the Deathly Hallows film version of Gellert's death/non-canon betrayal of Albus.

20. Wait impatiently 626 days more to watch fantastic beasts 3 and hope for some fluffy young grindeldore flashbacks

21. Think Antonio deserved better

Fanfic

22. Read every confirmed or suspected gay writer of the 19th/early 20th century and then try to emulate their style when you write summer of 99 fics

23. Go through all the popular Grindeldore fics, move on to the very short ones no one knows and finally succumb to the pressing urge to write your own.

24. Read all the angst, complain that there is no fluff, write more angst.

25. Tag all of your fics on AO3 with ‘canon gay relationship’ because you CAN now

26. Write your own slashy version of the Blood Pact scene

27. Make regular Oscar Wilde references in fanfictions

28. Read 35 Owls at least twice

Songs & Videos

29. Make every song about Grindeldore, especially bad break up and Taylor Swift songs.

30. Have a playlist of 60+ songs entitled “greater good” or “closer than brothers” or “death’s masters” or something to that effect filled with songs that remind you of them

31. Watch all the grindeldore video edits (especially the angsty ones) and then cry for hours

MIsc

32. Own at least one (1) piece of Harry Potter merch that relates to Grindeldore (e.g. Deathly Hallows jewellery or the Blood Pact necklace)

33. Leave the sign of the Deathly Hallows anywhere you go, alternatively draw it on your arm or wear a piece of jewellery or clothing that includes the sign (Bonus for: “No, this is not an Illuminati sign, muggle!”)

34. Write ‘ggad’ & ‘grindeldore forever’ everywhere. including school desks, your friend's notebooks etc

35. Try and inform as many people as possible that there is a Gelert brand of socks in the UK. Coincidence? No way!

(the people who contributed to this list are myself, @inessencedevided @lesbianleta @tianeve-q @intpdreamer @liesweliveby @mirroroferisedx @dreamingbrownie @dreamerinthedark @primaryblueberry @musicalmskitty @hannahtheshipper @ourgreatergood @selfconfessedfangirl @albusgellertalways )

#grindeldore #crack #the official rules #35 rules in fact ;)

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wu-band · 7 years

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Why are we doing an essay oh i mean a literacy initiative in band…what is this system

#the economy is corrupted #bush did 9/11 #illuminati confirmed #i hate school #does god exist

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ssportsnews · 2 years

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'Surf Bibang' Jeong Hyeong-don and Kwak Jae-sik fight each other

Mystery maniac Jung Hyung-don and Dr. Kwak Jae-sik, who refutes with scientific logic, gave a laugh with their quarrelsome chemistry.

On the afternoon of the 5th, MBC's 'Surprise: Secret Room' talked about the first theme 'prophecy'.

On this day, Jung Hyung-don opened up about his prophecy that was hot on the Internet. In 'Infinite Challenge' 10 years ago, he predicted the global trend of 'squid game' and mentioned 'fake man' 7 years ago. "I'm afraid to talk," he confessed, "I got caught. I just did it." He honestly said, causing laughter.

Jung Hyeong-don, a 'surprise' maniac, drew attention by forming a conflict structure with Kwak Jae-sik, who refutes the mystery based on scientific logic.

Starting with Nostradamus, who predicted major events in the world such as Chernobyl and the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, Giuserino Novurega Daruz, who argued that "80% of mankind will disappear in 2043, such as the global plague," and "Earth orbit in 2023." It caused a conflict of opinion by examining the opinions of various prophets, such as Baba Vanga, who predicted that there will be changes in

First, Kwak Jae-sik said, “I forget ordinary things,” and scientifically analyzed the feeling that dreams and reality are connected, as a confirmation bias. If you're going to reveal all the doubts..." he said, showing an uncomfortable look.

Next, about Baba Vanga, who predicted the Chernobyl nuclear accident, the election of Barack Obama, and Trump's corona19 confirmation, Jeong Hyeong-don expressed his belief that "he prophesied until the date of his death and died on the day he predicted on July 11, 1996." Then, Jae-sik Kwak speculated that "probably we talked about several dates, and one of them got caught."

Jung Hyung-don complained, "Since when did you become so crooked?" and pointed out, "Why did you appear on a program that didn't fit?" To this, Jae-sik Kwak responded, "He gave me money," causing laughter. As Kwak Jae-sik's rebuttal continued on prophecy cards, the Illuminati, and the time traveler, Jung Hyung-don showed a sarcastic attitude, saying, "I will not listen," and presented a quarrelsome chemistry.

Meanwhile, 'Surprise: Room of Secrets' is a special edition spin-off talk show for the 20th anniversary of 'Mysterious TV Surprise', which contains in-depth stories of 'surprise' such as mystery, history, and conspiracy theories.

토토검증소 https://www.totosearching.com/

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back-and-totheleft · 3 years

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Stone, cold sober

Re-telling the story of September 11 with a measured hand and lightness of touch hithertoo unhinted at, director Oliver Stone proves a more serious thinker than his paranoia-soaked canon would suggest. Here, he explains how his experiences as a soldier in Vietnam framed his outlook on life and art.

The introductory handshake comes with an additional squeeze of the wrist and a roguish smile.

“You’re Irish. I can tell.”

No. Your correspondent hasn’t been transported back to a disco in the 1970s. Instead, she’s in New York’s Regency Hotel meeting Oliver Stone. That twinkling opening gambit has brought about a Proustian rush of wayward tabloid headlines. I remember that idiotic book on the making of Natural Born Killers, with its scurrilous tales of loose ladies, psilocybin mushrooms and cocaine abuse. I recall that story about the director commandeering the Warners corporate jet to do peyote in the Mexican desert while making The Doors. I remember too how the set of Alexander reputedly became an extravagant saturnalia. Sure enough, I can effortlessly picture this man partying down with Colin Farrell, a duel study in swaggering Dionysian charm.

Though Stone insists his appetite for debauchery has been greatly exaggerated, he’s always owned up to unruly habits. Yes, he does have a fondness for marijuana dating back to time spent on the frontline in Vietnam. He has also ‘expanded his consciousness’ with the occasional psychedelic. But driving offences from last year and 1999 have, he claims, more to do with pre-diabetic medication unwisely knocked back with alcohol than exotic marching powders.

Still, it’s an impressively scandalous record for a man of his years. Stone is 60 now, though you’d say he were a decade younger if you suddenly spied him on the street. In person he’s imperturbably casual, far more relaxed than the ‘madman’ headlines might lead one to suppose. His glowing tan is offset by a bright yellow polo shirt and he sits way, way back in his chair holding your gaze all the while.

Accommodating and easy in his manner, you’d be hard-pressed to identify this individual as Oliver Stone – Controversial Filmmaker. That is, nevertheless, to whom we speak. Stone boasts a fearsomely uncompromising reputation as a screenwriter and director. Throughout the ‘80s when the post-classical frisson of counter-cultural Hollywood had fizzled and poachers died off or turned gamekeeper, only Stone kept the faith, authoring politically conscious cinema at a time when the Academy was honouring Driving Miss Daisy.

His screenplay for rapper’s favourite Scarface set the frenzied pace and ultra-violent tone that would later characterise his visual style. But Stone was too engaged with the world to become the new Brian De Palma. Salvador, his first major film as director, probed the gulf between the ideals of American foreign policy and realpolitik. Platoon, Wall Street, JFK and Nixon would further confirm his interest in micro and macro conspiracies and establish him as an outlaw auteur.

Though he’s now rueful about being stereotyped or “pinned like a butterfly”, he was a good sport about it, appearing as a conspiracy nut in Dave and Wild Palms.

“You know, I’ve never really regarded myself as a political filmmaker”, he tells me. “I consider myself a dramatist. I always get involved with people more than the politics. With the movie JFK, for example, the book by Jim Garrison had a lot of theory. I was more interested in making him part of that story. And Oswald fascinated me. If you watch that film it is really a trail of people played by great actors. Nixon, despite the whiff of conspiracy, is truly a psychological portrait of a man. Many people in the right wing thought it would be a hatchet job but I really made him apathetic. I refuse to be pigeon holed. I am not a political guy. I don’t go to rallies. I am not an activist. I don’t have the time because I’m busy being a writer.”

He may deny the role of agitator, but his opinions, both off and onscreen suggest otherwise. His most recent work in the documentary sector includes Persona Non Grata, an examination of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and two features about Cuban president Fidel Castro, Comandante and Looking for Fidel. (Stone has described himself as a friend and an admirer.)

He has, before now, referred to the events of September 11th as a ‘revolt’ and expressed an interest in the work of Richard Clarke, the former White House counter-terrorism advisor whose book Against All Enemies accuses the Bush administration of ignoring the al-Qaeda threat, then linking the group to Iraq, contrary to all evidence.

“We Vietnam vets, in particular, found it very difficult”, says Stone. “We had the backing of the world in Afghanistan. We were rounding up the main suspects. Then we go into Iraq with no support. Militarily, it was stupid. It was overreaching. And any American who travels can tell you how the rest of the world is resentful. What the hell are we doing in Iraq when the enemy was 4000 al-Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan?”

When it was announced last summer that Stone would direct World Trade Centre, a film focusing on ‘first response’ police officers trapped by the Twin Towers collapse, many eyebrows were raised. “To allow this poisoned and deranged mind… (to recreate 9/11) in the likeness of his vile fantasies is beyond obscene,” raged one conservative commentator. But World Trade Center, it transpires, is Stone’s least obvious work even by his own consistently innovative standards. The towers do not fall back and to the left. There is no grand plot or secret ruling elite. “This is not a political film in any sense”, insists Stone. “It harks back to Platoon in that respect. In Vietnam, we didn’t sit around talking about LBJ. And the truth is, I don’t think we can say for sure what happened during 9/11. We spent more investigating Bill Clinton’s blowjobs than the destruction of the World Trade Centre. Whatever was going on in the background, if you look at the forest through the trees, it seems to me that what has happened since is far worse than what happened that day. So the politics and conspiracies behind that day, whatever they may be, are not as relevant as where we are now.” Completely eschewing polemic, the movie instead offers a heartfelt portrait of ordinary fellows on the front line. Stone’s traditional constituency are, needless to say, horrified, and assorted doublespeak statements have been issued attacking World Trade Center as “non-conspiratorial lies.”

John Conner, a leading voice in the Christian branch of the 9/11 Truth Movement, went so far as to ask the following– “Was Stone used by the Illuminati as an unknowing pawn to whitewash the 9/11 conspiracy theories to the masses? Was he approached with the project and coerced into a commitment to occupy his time in attempts to thwart any other 9/11 angle from being used? Is Stone a pawn in the game? Perhaps Stone didn’t know at the time, and found out too late.”

Oddly, however, like Paul Greengrass’ United 93, Stone’s film has found champions from either end of America’s bipolar political spectrum, often the same folks who had previously dismissed him as a pinko malcontent. L. Brent Bozell III, the president of the conservative Media Research Center and founder of the Parents Television Council — a latter day Mary Whitehouse in trousers — called it “a masterpiece” and sent an e-mail message to 400,000 people saying, “Go see this film.” Cal Thomas, the right-wing syndicated columnist and contributor to The Last Word, wrote that it was “one of the greatest pro-American, pro-family, pro-faith, pro-male, flag-waving, God Bless America films you will ever see.”

“I just felt this was a great story dying to be told,” explains Stone. “It may not be like anything I have done before, but Heaven And Earth wasn’t like anything I had done before. Nor was U Turn or Natural Born Killers. I do jump around and each film is a different style. This isn’t like United 93 which was a brilliant piece of vérité. This is more like a classic John Ford, William Wyler or even Frank Capra film. Against tremendous odds this rescue takes place. This has the traditional Hollywood tropes of emotional connection to four main characters from the working class.

"I would love to bring Hollywood back to that, making films where people actually work for a living, not sit around making things happen with a remote control like that Adam Sandler film. Born On The Fourth Of July was blue-collar. So was Any Given Sunday. Although it’s about elite athletes, it was about work. They had to punish their bodies for their lifestyle.”

A marriage of disaster movie and combat zone drama, World Trade Centre follows Port Authority officers Sergeant John Mc Loughlin (Nicolas Cage) and Will Jimeno (Michael Pena) on a doomed rescue mission into the Twin Towers. On September 12th, they were among the last survivors to be pulled from the rubble. Though the original script by newcomer Andrea Berloff read like a relocation of Beckett’s Endgame, Stone has widened the remit to include the rescuers and the anxious wives at home. As a director noted for working within a decidedly masculine milieu, was it a challenge to represent domesticity, I wonder.

“Oh yes,” he admits. “That was a big challenge. On the surface this is a very simple story of catastrophe and rescue and heroism. But if you go beyond the cliché it is very fresh. Everything the rescuers did was dangerous. We assume rescues just happen, but it is hard work. These men really crawled into places where they thought they would die. It took hours to get them out. I tried to show some of that digging. But an even bigger cliché in these circumstances is the waiting housewife. Actually, it goes further than that. Each of these women died that day. They sit there as the hours pass and the only news is no survivors. You knew no one would come out of there. The buildings were so pancaked. So it was like death for them. I wanted to portray that. I wanted them smelling the sheets from the previous night where they had slept. Again it’s a cliché but the idea was to take the cliché and make it fresh.”

Another subplot concentrates on Staff Sergeant Dave Karnes (Michael Shannon) a Christian marine in Wilton, Connecticut, who watches events on TV and tells his colleagues that America is now at war. Once he decides that God wants him to go to New York he heads to Ground Zero with a flashlight and eventually hears the two cops in the debris. A postscript before the final credits informs us that Kearns has since served two tours of duty in Iraq.

“It’s a remarkable and weird story,” Stone admits. “But that’s how it happened. I also think Kearns represents a significant sector of the American population when he says, ‘We’re going to need some good men to avenge this’. For many people, revenge was their first thought.”

And there you have it. For all the pigeonholing as a conspiracy theorist, facts are of paramount importance to Stone. He spent two-and-a-half years researching JFK. He spent three years immersed in Persian history for the much-maligned Alexander. It was a labour of love and the ill-tempered critical reception seems to have cut to the quick.

“I’m a historical dramatist,” he explains. “I wasn’t a Kennedy assassination junkie at the time, nor was I a 9/11 junkie. But I love the past. It hurts when I read someone claiming that I’ve fabricated something. But then you make a film like Alexander and scholars say you have it right, but critics say it’s all wrong.”

Similarly, while Stone has been at pains to represent those involved in the World Trade Centre disaster as faithfully as possible, he has not been able to quell dissent completely. The widow of Dominick Pezzulo – a cop portrayed in the film - has accused Jimeno and McLoughlin of cashing in on the tragedy by selling their story to Paramount. There have also been mutterings about the film being too soon.

“I know,” nods Stone. “But I honestly think it is the right time. The Killing Fields was made five years after those events in Cambodia. During World War II, Hollywood made propaganda films. Casablanca, made in 1941, takes a very anti Nazi position even before we declared war. The Vietnam movies took longer to make, but life goes faster now. I would say to you the consequences of 9/11 are so bad that we better look back now and understand what happened on that day. When you leave it too long, events become mythologized. Watching Pearl Harbor, you’d think we won that battle. This is the epicentre of 9/11, but there are many stories that still need to be told.”

Though personal and more modest in scope than the $63 million budget might suggest, the director does hope that his intense focus on McLoughlin and Jimeno has a wider relevance.

“They did not have a clue as to what was happening,” he says. “They knew it was a terrorist attack but there was no discussion of politics. They’re cops. They are far more likely to talk about pop culture, whether it is Starsky And Hutch or GI Jane. It wasn’t Bergman down in that hole.

So I am not claiming this movie will answer all the questions. But let’s say you go to a psychiatrist and all your life you have been repressed because you were raped when you where 14. Perhaps the psychiatrist says, ‘Let’s go back to that day’. They make you remember that day and it changes all the defences you had built up. So perhaps by undoing the screw, the secret at the beginning, you can take some of the armour off.”

The events of 9/11 may be difficult to disentangle, but no more so than the filmmaker himself. Born in New York City to a Jewish father and Catholic mother, William Oliver Stone was raised Episcopalian by way of compromise. His parents divorced after his father, a conservative Republican, conducted various extra-marital affairs with family friends. Young Oliver spent much of his subsequent childhood in splendid isolation between private schools and five star hotels - ‘a cartoonish Little Lord Fauntleroy’ by his own account.

Still, Stone needs neither bullfighting nor marlin fishing to confirm his Hemingwayesque credentials as an artist. He attended Yale and dropped out twice before enlisting to fight as an Infantryman in Vietnam. Mixing with the lower orders and smoking pot soon transformed the spoiled youngster into a military hero. He was wounded twice in action and received the Bronze Star with ”V” device signifying valor for “extraordinary acts of courage under fire,” and the Purple Heart with one Oak Leaf Cluster.

Soon after the war, he was arrested at the US-Mexico border for possession of marijuana. His father bailed him out but the experience served to radicalise him. Later, meeting understandably embittered veterans such as Ron Kovic pushed Stone further to the left.

He has, however, wooed Hollywood despite the often overtly political nature of his films. He won his first Academy Award as the screenwriter of Midnight Express and has been further honoured for directing Platoon and Born On The Fourth Of July.

Now, after World Trade Centre, has attention and lavish praise from the likes of Bill O’Reilly turned his head? Not bloody likely.

“People are people,” he tells me. “I think people have to take care of themselves and their families first. But there are bigger questions now. The ecological movement want us to clean up, but how can that work when there is always the issue of jobs? It’s a very selfish world and avarice triumphs over the green imperative. After Katrina, there was a tremendous outpouring of help. That was also true when the tsunami hit Indonesia. People are very generous in America and there are some very fine Americans. Unfortunately, a lot of them don’t have passports. Most of them don’t know where Iraq is. And a lot think al Qaeda and Iraq are the same thing. There’s a problem with the education levels. American television keeps people trapped. The news is very superficial and mostly filled with advertisements and rapes and murders. If you travel in the country and you stay in the smaller places you find very limited resources. If America spent the same amount of money as we spend on embassies and CIA stations around the world on our major cities with the goal of helping bring those cities to a way of life that was democratic and economically viable, we would have a tremendous success in this country. Instead, we have an international presence and I don’t know if it is worth it. All we are doing is promoting a system which is now suspect all over the world. We have broken our constitution repeatedly since 2001.”

He smiles cynically.

“I don’t think pictures of soldiers pointing their naked dicks in Abu Ghraib has helped us at a local level either.”

He’s still got it.

-Tara Brady, “Stone cold sober,” HotPress, Sept 19 2006 [x]

#oliver stone #World Trade Center #hotpress #dui #arrests #iraq #Iraq War

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seymour-butz-stuff · 4 years

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You can be aware of the alt right and the white supremacists and QAnon and the rest of them and be concerned, maybe even scared of meeting with their violence in a specific context. But taking a deep, sustained look at the scope and reach of these conspiracy theories is something different.

Since Neiwert is my coworker at Daily Kos, readers would reasonably suspect the fix was in if I tried to write a standard book review of Red Pill, Blue Pill. What I want to do instead is sketch out four key things I learned from the book, information that will expand my understanding of not just far-right extremists but U.S. politics more generally going forward, as well as two big questions I have after reading the book—one of them an urgent question in the context of the upcoming elections.

First, let’s be clear that there’s a difference between believing in a conspiracy—and conspiracies do happen!—and believing in a conspiracy theory. Conspiracy theories, Neiwert explains, “almost universally feature qualities that contrast sharply” with the limits of real-life conspiracies, including that they allege much larger conspiracies than the generally narrow scope of real-life conspiracies and involve far more people than could ever successfully keep such a major secret.

But while conspiracy theories violate the rules of actual conspiracies, they do have their own rules, which relates to maybe the biggest thing I learned from Red Pill, Blue Pill:

What we see now with QAnon, incels, white supremacists, and more builds on decades of conspiracy theories.

Conspiracy theorists “never believe just one conspiracy theory but rather an interconnected web of them,” Neiwert writes. That interconnected web of conspiracy theories “represent a deeper truth about their world while repeatedly reinforcing their long-held prejudices and enable them to ignore the real, factual (and often uncomfortable) nature of the changes the world is undergoing.”

Today, that means a set of theories building on decades of anti-government sentiment, centuries of anti-Semitism, the concept of “cultural Marxism,” and, of course, white supremacist beliefs. You throw together “cultural Marxism” and “political correctness” and the Illuminati and general hatred of women and people of color and Jewish people, stir in a lot of bits and pieces of birtherism and 9/11 trutherism, accusations that Sandy Hook was a false flag and its victims were crisis actors, and conspiracy theories based on the same old hatreds and insecurities become something new. Pizzagate looks outlandish and then chunks of it are lifted into QAnon, which is even more outlandish, but in the new form it really takes off.

The contours of these conspiracy theories, ever shifting but drawing on so many of the same ideas and building on each other, make clear what a big, big problem we’re looking at. Any one such theory may seem fringe (until it doesn’t anymore), but the constant churn of them shouldn’t be underestimated. And understanding the degree to which they’re interconnected shows both the difficulty of breaking their hold and the importance of preventing them from taking root to begin with.

Conspiracy theorists have probably killed more people in recent years than you remember.

Many of—though unlikely all—the cases Neiwert summarizes may ring a bell. But speaking for myself, seeing Timothy McVeigh and Eric Rudolph and Stephen Paddock and Anders Breivik and Elliot Rodger and Dylann Roof and Alek Minassian and Jeremy Christian and Buckey Wolfe and Brenton Tarrant and Lane Davis one after another, with connections drawn between the specifics of what they believed, the conspiracy theory mode of their beliefs, and the crimes they committed is in itself a powerful case that conspiracy theories are incredibly dangerous. The men on this list have killed their family members, they have killed strangers, they have killed with guns and bombs and vehicles and knives, and they didn’t just do it out of nowhere. Neiwert traces the killers’ embrace of conspiracy theories and their spiraling descents to the point at which they became killers, in many cases mass killers.

Law enforcement investigators refused to connect the dots between the most deadly mass shooting in U.S. history and Stephen Paddock’s obsession with guns, hatred of the government, opposition to taxes, and interest in 9/11 conspiracy theories. “That meant,” Neiwert writes, “that the deadliest mass shooting by an individual in American history was committed for reasons that law enforcement officials couldn’t explain—to the victims, their families, the survivors, or to the public. The conspiracy theories that Paddock believed in, in this calculus, could not count as a motive.”

In other cases, of course, killers left behind manifestos explaining their hatred of the groups they’d targeted for murder, and offering a road map of the conspiracy theories woven into the planning of their crimes.

People often get into conspiracy theories gradually, but the ways people are taught to do research can inadvertently lead them into conspiracy theory rabbit holes. And social media algorithms speed the process.

As you may have read—or observed personally—social media platforms, YouTube in particular, constantly funnel you to content they think you might like, which is to say content you might click on and bring them more revenue. Neiwert quotes sociologist Zeynep Tufekci’s TED talk explaining how it works: “The algorithm has figured out that if you can entice people into thinking that you can show them something more hardcore, they’re more likely to stay on the site watching video after video going down that rabbit hole while Google serves them ads.” When people start with right-wing content, that means in practices that they quickly get funneled into white supremacist and conspiracy theorist content.

But people’s own searches for information can produce similar results. Neiwert looks at Dylann Roof’s famous, radicalizing search for “black on white crime.” Information scientist Safiya Umoja Noble has explained that Roof’s “very framing of the problems of race relations in the U.S. through an inquiry such as ‘black on white crime’ reveals how search results belie any ability to intercede in the framing of a question itself.” That is, if you search for a term that only the far right uses, you’re going to get a lot of white supremacist search results.

Information scientist Michael Caulfield suggested to Neiwert that, in such searches, “students are practicing info-literacy as they’ve learned it”—they search for a term, and then they search for factual confirmation of the first results they find, often researching quite deeply within that one mode. But what they don’t do is step back and question the framing of those results. To help people learn not to embrace false claims and conspiracy theories, Caulfield has developed a model called SIFT: Stop; Investigate the source; Find better coverage; Trace claims, quotes, and media to the original context.

Coaxing someone out of the grip of conspiracy theories is very difficult. Preventing them from getting wrapped up in CT to begin with can be a lot easier.

The big question, of course, is how we break the hold of conspiracy theories on individuals and on the nation’s politics. Neiwert makes clear that even at the person-by-person level, it is incredibly difficult. (Though he has a lot of advice for trying that may be highly relevant for friends and family members of QAnon adherents who are facing such a tough situation.) But the first step he offers is “the most effective way of overcoming the effects of ‘red-pilling’ is immunizing people beforehand.” That’s where SIFT comes in, for one thing.

Psychologist Stephan Lewandowsky also told Neiwert that a colleague “finds that if you expose people to a small dose, just like a vaccine, of the conspiracy theory up front, then it finds less traction when people are actually exposed to it. So you can educate, sort of protect people against conspiracy theories, but of course the crucial is you got to get to them first, because if you try to do it after they’ve already been exposed to it then it’s far less effective.”

#2 #qanon #trump #maga #trump derangement syndrome #q

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