Yes, were radio signals etcetera actually detected the other day emanating from 'Hercules' (?solar system, I thought I heard), from a planet 'H et al', it'd certainly be a thing way out of not only left or right field - but any field. An amazing, unprecedented discovery by humankind and its deified techno-scientific community itself.
Life that can be shown or proven to exist elsewhere in our universe is certainly 'something to write home about' - and then some. Something to celebrate - at least in theory; though the intentions and character of such 'beings' need by no means necessarily of course be benevolent. Surely logic alone would suggest a malevolent race might just as easily exist 'out there' in 'the deep unknown' as its opposite.
But the underlying presupposition ever given to such stories, either by the newsmakers themselves or the various reporting arms thereof - whether overtly stated or merely covertly suggested or insinuated - is that such would 'somehow-or-other' put permanent paid to the oft-cited - and moreover, I respectfully suggest, more often imagined than actual - 'human-centric Christian conception of the universe' and/or the supposedly concomitant belief of some that life exists nowhere else, indeed can exist only upon Planet Earth.
Yet withal the foregoing I would likewise not claim that many Christians and churches in our day and age - not just in centuries past - have indeed not held, if usually blindly and unthinkingly, to just such a narrow concept of the creatorship of the God of the Universe. There indeed unfortunately is some substance to the accusation, at least in terms of official *churchianity and *Religiosity Incorporated - ever an opponent and adversary of true religion, from the days of Galileo and Copernicus through to our own; and no doubt on into the future. 'Old (ornery) habits die hard', as they say.
Nevertheless I would also - again, ever so respectfully - submit that such is of course el typical 'bogey-man' catch-all pretext to somehow serve as a convenient trojan horse oftentimes employed to thereby usefully and conveniently discredit Christianity and Christians and thereby consign it and all its adherents to the proverbial scrap-heap of history - at least as far as all thoughtful, reasonable people are concerned.
But of course it is all a smokescreen, for the 'Good Book' itself, the Holy Bible of Christianity - and certainly even its Older Testament of not just Christians but also Jews **and Israelites, and at times even - supposedly - Muslims - makes it abundantly clear that there is indeed life elsewhere in the Universe. And not only at the very heart of the Universe itself, variously depicted or described at 'the third heaven/s', as Heaven itself in both the Scriptures as well as in Western society at large (but also other societies generally throughout our world).
For just a sampling of such biblical 'commentary' upon the subject - which, yes, I am only too well aware will inevitably - as ever - tend to incur the charge of 'my interpretation' etcetera - how about the following, just for starters, at least to whet your appetite...
* ''...we [Paul and his fellow apostles] have been made a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men?'' 1 Corinthians 4:9 (Scripture taken from the New King James Version. (c) 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.) (All italics strictly mine!)
* ''Do you not know that we shall judge angels? How much more, things that pertain to this life?'' 1 Corinthians 6:3 (NKJV)
* ''And in the midst of the throne, and around the throne, were four living creatures full of eyes in front and in back.'' Revelation 4:6 (NKJV)
* ''...from within it [i.e. 'a whirlwind...coming out of the north, a great cloud with raging fire engulfing itself' et al] came the likeness of four living creatures [with] the likeness of a man. Each [with] four faces, and each [with] four wings...And their whole body, with their back, their hands, their wings, and their wheels that the four had, were full of eyes all around." Ezekiel 1:4,5,6; 10:12 (NKJV)
* ''Then I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels around the throne, the living creatures, and the elders; and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice: "Worthy is the Lamb [W]ho was slain To receive power and riches and wisdom, And strength and honour and glory and blessing!" And every creature which is in heaven and on the earth and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, I heard......Now I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals; and I heard one of the four living creatures saying with a voice like thunder, "Come and see." Revelation 5:11,12,13;6:1 (NKJV)
* '''When he cried out, seven thunders uttered their voices. Now when the seven thunders uttered their voices, I was about to write; but I heard a voice from heaven saying to me, "seal up the things which the seven thunders uttered, and do not write them." Revelation 10:3,4 (NKJV)
* '' I watched till thrones were put in place [set up], and the Ancient of Days was seated...A thousand thousands ministered to Him; ten thousand times ten thousand stood before Him.'' Daniel 7:9,10 (NKJV)
* ''And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great, fiery red dragon...[whose] tail drew a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth." Revelation 12 3,4 (NKJV)
* ''Therefore rejoice, O heavens, and you who dwell in them." Revelation 12:12 (NKJV)
*But my own all-time favourite, natural and understandable enough for someone who's been drafting a lay-person's guide to the Book of Job - apparently the very oldest in the whole Bible - for the past decade or so, though its study has engrossed my interest since becoming a Christ-follower now some 33-plus years ago now, are these from Job:
* ''Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth...when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?" Job 38:4,7 (NKJV)
* ''Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan [margin: the Adversary] also came among them...Again, there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them to present himself before the LORD.'' Job 1:6; 2:1 (NKJV)
*Terms I am ever endeared to a one-time 'love of my life' (if only in my own mind and heart!) Aussie Brisbanite Judy Birch for coining, even if it's extremely doubtful she was the first person ever to employ such 'apt as' terminology. (Though the add-on 'Incorporated', I must hasten to add, is entirely my own 'creation'!)
**Choosing on this occasion to distinguish between the two following my recent in-depth study of the doctrinal theory of 'British Israelitism', which I've discovered to my rather pleasant and moreover utter surprise holds more than a smidgen of biblical credibility and validity.
*** And though the following, rather sizeable section of scripture from the Apocalypse is usually taken as strictly metaphorical - at least in my own as well as the general evangelical 'tradition' - if it were perchance pertaining to a number and variety of hitherto unknown and yet somewhere existent 'species' of being, well - as the songwriter once said : ****''What a wonderful, wonderful world {or make that universe!] that would be!'' Or as my personal favourite hymn writer might have put matters: *****''All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small...all things wise and wonderful, the LORD God made them all!''
''Then out of the smoke locusts came upon the earth. And to them was given power, as
the scorpions of the earth have power. And they were not given
authority to kill them, but to torment them for five months. Their
torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it strikes a man. The shape of the locusts was like horses prepared for battle. On their heads were crowns of something like gold, and their faces were like the faces of men. They had hair like women's
hair, and their teeth were like lions' teeth. And they had breastplates
like breastplates of iron, and the sound of their wings was like the
sound of chariots with many horses running into battle. They had tails
like scorpions, and there were stings in their tails...And thus I saw
the horses in the vision: those who sat on them had breastplates of
fiery red, hyacinth blue, and sulfur yellow; and the heads of the horses
were like the heads of lions; and out of their mouths came fire, smoke,
and brimstone. By these three plagues a third of mankind was killed -
by the fire and the smoke and the brimstone which came out of their
mouths. For their power is in their mouth and in their tails; for their
tails are like serpents, having heads; and with them they do harm." Revelation 9:3,5,7-10;17-19 (NKJV)
****'What A Wonderful World' by 'Alpert'/'Cook'.
*****'All Things Bright And Beautiful' (1848) by Cecil F Alexander.
Tuesday, August 30, 2016
Friday, July 15, 2016
Sunday, June 26, 2016
Beyond Brexit: The Morning After
The 'liberal' arm of the Western media alongside its illegitimate half-brother, the establishment intelligentsia - aka 'the elite' - really has its knickers in a knot this time, and understandably so. Having formed an unholy huddle, they are literally beside themselves, in an ungodly haste, as they rather desperately seek to reconcile themselves to, let alone accept, a very inconvenient truth: a few days ago they lost the Brexit vote - and not just by the skin of their teeth. So we now have the spectacle of some of their number - a limited group, admittedly, and even fewer leading figures amongst them - hastily engaging in the extremely unseemly, unedifying spectacle of publicly raising hell and high water over a result they can barely stomach. This while conflating each and every possible short- and long-term ramification and permutation of especially their doomsday economic repercussions issuing from the United Kingdom's still astonishing 'take the world (and punters) by storm' decision to exit the European Union late last week.
In this highly undignified process - spurred on to new depths by self-appointed media, including some of NZ's own correspondents in the UK - we see folk unprepared to leave any stone, rock or pebble even unturned in their quest to magnify each and every apparent instance of 'democracy gone wrong', whether later regrets and misgivings by less committed exit voters, alleged broken or lying-through-one's-teeth promises by Brexit campaigners themselves, and supposedly too narrow a vote margin to warrant a proper 'mandate' in such a constitutionally all-important issue, to name the main ones. Conceding that the last of these doubtless would have more than a semblance of merit were those the long-time, well-established pre-conditions of referenda in the UK per se - for example, one British Bremainer's claim that all such decisions be approved by at least 60% of voters provided a 75% turnout was obtained - any half-awake onlooker however cannot but 'retort' that everyone knew the score before the vote took place to begin with, and so it's a teeny-weeny bit late to cry spilt milk at this stage of proceedings.
Moreover, as New Zealand's inimitable television personality and political commentator Paddy Gower, on TV3's The Nation this morning, in answer to someone posing the hypothetical question, '[But] is it[i.e. the referendum result] a[n] [actual] mandate?' replied: "Yes, it's a mandate...In a democracy you only need 50.1%, and they[i.e. the Brexiters] got it...so, yes, they [do] have a mandate." And a much more comfortable margin - and hence mandate - than 50.1%, it must surely be conceded. But in the frantic attempt to somehow or other invalidate what has taken place, we are seeing far more desperate manoeuvres still, and far less plausible ones.
Some such as TV3's well-known reporter and presently UK correspondent 'on the [referendum] ground', Tova O'Brien, are visibly extremely upset, even livid with how things have gone. Thus - among various remarks about the feeling supposedly now pertaining on the streets of the UK, or at least the strongly pro-Bremain city of London where O"Brien was stationed - we had her echoing the claim that many UK referendum voters simply didn't know what they were doing, citing especially heavy traffic upon an internet site in the immediate aftermath of the vote. Thus the allegation that such 'traffic' was especially noticeable - apparently scoring most hits over recent days - around the questions 'What is the EU?'; '*and 'Who's [actually] in the EU?' somehow could be taken for a given that Brexit voters didn't really know what they were doing full stop.
What utter piffle, and exceedingly unscientific to boot. As if correlation ipso pronto can be taken as proof of causation! Not to mention the possibility of deliberate spiking by Bremainers to give this very impression in the aftermath of the vote, and thus seek to readily and speedily discredit and thus invalidate it. Indeed, it's in what this late rearguard action by the Bremainers signifies and reveals that's the real problem.
Such journos seem wholly unable to straddle that old standby of the trade, a thing called objectivity and balance. A rather obvious thing I know, and usually simply automatically assumed of any and every journalist. But increasingly less evident on all manner of media fronts, completely irrespective of ideological or politically partisan standpoint. Personally, while reporting for and eventually editing my high school's student paper for four years that was considered rather basic: a must, an essential, an absolute requirement if you will. But perhaps journalism no longer demands that? It would appear not.
But in a far more general sense we've been presented with the scene of individual media supposedly bowling up and randomly stopping ye average citizenry in the streets. Folk who, it now all too conveniently appears, were extremely unwitting voters for exiting Europe. However now 'all is forgiven', they see the extreme error of their recalcitrant ways. And all this is gleefully dragged up by such journos as if to somehow prove the entire vote process, and thus outcome, a complete fraud. That people didn't really know what they were doing, and so, ipso facto, the referendum result doesn't count; that it's in effect invalid.
The implication thus clearly being that many Brexiters on the day - or at the very least sufficient to have effectively swayed the result the other way - were somehow fooled, hoodwinked, almost coerced against their will and better judgment, into voting in a way that they suddenly, 'miraculously', the morning after, now see to have been a delusion, a great, almost unforgivable mistake and error of judgment.Or so the narrative seems to run.Yes, the entire nation's been sold a fraudulent bill of goods, and it stinks to high heaven, and we're simply not going to put up with it.
As if the prospect of plenty of voters post-election (or referendum) - whether sooner or later - with 'buyer's remorse' is somehow a new or unusual phenomenon, or even for that matter would necessarily be confined to Brexit supporters. As if a similar number of 'Bremainers' couldn't have been dragged out of the proverbial woodwork regretting they weren't on the winning side, regretting that they too hadn't supported the historic move to leave the European Union.
And now, for the very latest, we have the unbelievable prospect of people flailing about to somehow get a new poll, or at least an on-line petition presumably demanding such, to reverse a referendum result they simply find unpalatable. It would seem pretty well every man, woman, canine and moggy available is hastily being requisitioned to call for, nay, to verily demand a re-vote. Or so some mischief-making media and vocal Bremainers would have us all believe.
Isn't 'democracy' such a pain in the neck, as well as in the proverbial?!?! That is, when(ever) it doesn't go quite the way one wants, when one doesn't get the result one was hoping for, and more often than not actually voted for? But of course! The point is, haven't we all been there at some time or other? And we know we need to bite our well-bloodied and bruised lip and 'simply suck it up', as some put it these days. Or as British export/ex-pat and former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Michael Cullen once memorably put it: "We won, you lost, (now) eat that!" (Or words to that effect.)
How about this for the much larger Brexit vote than expected?: doubtless it's far from a novel idea, but didn't something quite similar happen in the last British election, which was supposed to be much closer than it in fact was? And didn't pollsters, pundits and the like come to the conclusion that voters in pre-polling were simply embarrassed or ashamed - for whatever reason, presumably not wanting to seem prejudiced or overly conservative when responding to opinion pollsters - for voting the way they did? And so this newly-prevalent belief that the referendum really ought to have gone the other way is not just simply mistaken, if anything the margin would've been far larger - for leaving - were it not, as I maintain elsewhere, and doubtless numerous others do as well - for that awful, ghastly assassination of Labour M.P. Jo Cox. Yes, she really was - in every way, apparently - a model of political integrity and then some; a veritable shining light of a politician, despite her misguided - but thoroughly genuine, well-argued and admirably passionate - perspective on the Brexit referendum.
Excuse me if I'm somehow misinformed, but I've ever and always been under the impression that 'democracy' didn't always deliver the outcome one wanted, so one simply had to 'grin and bear it' as it were. And preferably with good grace, including and especially in conceding defeat. To his immeasurable credit British Prime Minister David Cameron, ever the statesman whatever one might think of his politics, readily did just that by quickly falling upon his sword. Likewise freshly-challenged Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in a similar spirit, in response to those on his (Bremain) side of the debate, claiming the 'result was too close to constitute a proper mandate', simply responded: "The people have spoken." And even German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been remarkably subdued if visibly almost biting her lip and keeping her own - vocal - oar out of the debate both pre- and post-referendum.
And whatever her views on the referendum one cannot but admire the ever eloquent, gutsy, stroppy and charismatic Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, and her sheer nerve and verve in the aftermath of the two recent impacting referenda she's been involved in. Such altogether genuine staunchness, tenacity, and passionate conviction are oh so rare to see in any politician these days, yet Cameron himself rose to similar heights, at times, during the recent referendum. Which reminds me of another long-deceased politician or two with similar qualities, both British as it turns out.
Having been toppled upon this very issue, what would Margaret Thatcher have not given to have seen Friday's result? But someone she was often compared to, though most regard him as a monolith in stature above and beyond almost any other 20th Century politician, or rather statesman, and thus essentially and altogether in a league of his own - was of course Winston Churchill.
Churchill was known for many things, not least his inspirational rallying words to a war-weary Britain in World War 11. He was also often noted as the author of a famous remark or three upon democracy. In one of these he characterized it as essentially a pretty cruddy system, with very little to show for its great claims. That was, until one stopped for a second and reflected upon all the others. And so one can only hope that, whatever bad feelings and disappointments some Britons and ex-pats feel over the Brexit vote, they take a leaf out of Winston's book, and accept that however flawed and problematic, democracy Westminster- and Western-style is still and ever remains the best of an admittedly bad bunch.
Yes, we all can and do feel genuine grief when life doesn't go all our own way, and naturally especially when we suffer great loss. In our confusion and tears we tend to lose our way at times. But perspective, they tell us, is everything. And so, lamenting Bremainers, I suggest you do what the Python crew once counselled: 'Al-ways lo-ok on the bri-ght si-de of life, (ditto, ditto)'. It sure makes life a whole lot easier in the long run. And as for the referendum just past, hey, you'll get over it as well...one day soon.
*Though I (originally) heard the second question as 'What does it mean to leave the European Union?'
Regardless, all such enquiries evidently signalling the supposed brain-deadness of Brexit voters, and thus, in one very fell and much-maligning swoop, automatically discrediting and invalidating their votes, suggesting they weren't even fit to cast one in the very first instance!
In this highly undignified process - spurred on to new depths by self-appointed media, including some of NZ's own correspondents in the UK - we see folk unprepared to leave any stone, rock or pebble even unturned in their quest to magnify each and every apparent instance of 'democracy gone wrong', whether later regrets and misgivings by less committed exit voters, alleged broken or lying-through-one's-teeth promises by Brexit campaigners themselves, and supposedly too narrow a vote margin to warrant a proper 'mandate' in such a constitutionally all-important issue, to name the main ones. Conceding that the last of these doubtless would have more than a semblance of merit were those the long-time, well-established pre-conditions of referenda in the UK per se - for example, one British Bremainer's claim that all such decisions be approved by at least 60% of voters provided a 75% turnout was obtained - any half-awake onlooker however cannot but 'retort' that everyone knew the score before the vote took place to begin with, and so it's a teeny-weeny bit late to cry spilt milk at this stage of proceedings.
Moreover, as New Zealand's inimitable television personality and political commentator Paddy Gower, on TV3's The Nation this morning, in answer to someone posing the hypothetical question, '[But] is it[i.e. the referendum result] a[n] [actual] mandate?' replied: "Yes, it's a mandate...In a democracy you only need 50.1%, and they[i.e. the Brexiters] got it...so, yes, they [do] have a mandate." And a much more comfortable margin - and hence mandate - than 50.1%, it must surely be conceded. But in the frantic attempt to somehow or other invalidate what has taken place, we are seeing far more desperate manoeuvres still, and far less plausible ones.
Some such as TV3's well-known reporter and presently UK correspondent 'on the [referendum] ground', Tova O'Brien, are visibly extremely upset, even livid with how things have gone. Thus - among various remarks about the feeling supposedly now pertaining on the streets of the UK, or at least the strongly pro-Bremain city of London where O"Brien was stationed - we had her echoing the claim that many UK referendum voters simply didn't know what they were doing, citing especially heavy traffic upon an internet site in the immediate aftermath of the vote. Thus the allegation that such 'traffic' was especially noticeable - apparently scoring most hits over recent days - around the questions 'What is the EU?'; '*and 'Who's [actually] in the EU?' somehow could be taken for a given that Brexit voters didn't really know what they were doing full stop.
What utter piffle, and exceedingly unscientific to boot. As if correlation ipso pronto can be taken as proof of causation! Not to mention the possibility of deliberate spiking by Bremainers to give this very impression in the aftermath of the vote, and thus seek to readily and speedily discredit and thus invalidate it. Indeed, it's in what this late rearguard action by the Bremainers signifies and reveals that's the real problem.
Such journos seem wholly unable to straddle that old standby of the trade, a thing called objectivity and balance. A rather obvious thing I know, and usually simply automatically assumed of any and every journalist. But increasingly less evident on all manner of media fronts, completely irrespective of ideological or politically partisan standpoint. Personally, while reporting for and eventually editing my high school's student paper for four years that was considered rather basic: a must, an essential, an absolute requirement if you will. But perhaps journalism no longer demands that? It would appear not.
But in a far more general sense we've been presented with the scene of individual media supposedly bowling up and randomly stopping ye average citizenry in the streets. Folk who, it now all too conveniently appears, were extremely unwitting voters for exiting Europe. However now 'all is forgiven', they see the extreme error of their recalcitrant ways. And all this is gleefully dragged up by such journos as if to somehow prove the entire vote process, and thus outcome, a complete fraud. That people didn't really know what they were doing, and so, ipso facto, the referendum result doesn't count; that it's in effect invalid.
The implication thus clearly being that many Brexiters on the day - or at the very least sufficient to have effectively swayed the result the other way - were somehow fooled, hoodwinked, almost coerced against their will and better judgment, into voting in a way that they suddenly, 'miraculously', the morning after, now see to have been a delusion, a great, almost unforgivable mistake and error of judgment.Or so the narrative seems to run.Yes, the entire nation's been sold a fraudulent bill of goods, and it stinks to high heaven, and we're simply not going to put up with it.
As if the prospect of plenty of voters post-election (or referendum) - whether sooner or later - with 'buyer's remorse' is somehow a new or unusual phenomenon, or even for that matter would necessarily be confined to Brexit supporters. As if a similar number of 'Bremainers' couldn't have been dragged out of the proverbial woodwork regretting they weren't on the winning side, regretting that they too hadn't supported the historic move to leave the European Union.
And now, for the very latest, we have the unbelievable prospect of people flailing about to somehow get a new poll, or at least an on-line petition presumably demanding such, to reverse a referendum result they simply find unpalatable. It would seem pretty well every man, woman, canine and moggy available is hastily being requisitioned to call for, nay, to verily demand a re-vote. Or so some mischief-making media and vocal Bremainers would have us all believe.
Isn't 'democracy' such a pain in the neck, as well as in the proverbial?!?! That is, when(ever) it doesn't go quite the way one wants, when one doesn't get the result one was hoping for, and more often than not actually voted for? But of course! The point is, haven't we all been there at some time or other? And we know we need to bite our well-bloodied and bruised lip and 'simply suck it up', as some put it these days. Or as British export/ex-pat and former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Michael Cullen once memorably put it: "We won, you lost, (now) eat that!" (Or words to that effect.)
How about this for the much larger Brexit vote than expected?: doubtless it's far from a novel idea, but didn't something quite similar happen in the last British election, which was supposed to be much closer than it in fact was? And didn't pollsters, pundits and the like come to the conclusion that voters in pre-polling were simply embarrassed or ashamed - for whatever reason, presumably not wanting to seem prejudiced or overly conservative when responding to opinion pollsters - for voting the way they did? And so this newly-prevalent belief that the referendum really ought to have gone the other way is not just simply mistaken, if anything the margin would've been far larger - for leaving - were it not, as I maintain elsewhere, and doubtless numerous others do as well - for that awful, ghastly assassination of Labour M.P. Jo Cox. Yes, she really was - in every way, apparently - a model of political integrity and then some; a veritable shining light of a politician, despite her misguided - but thoroughly genuine, well-argued and admirably passionate - perspective on the Brexit referendum.
Excuse me if I'm somehow misinformed, but I've ever and always been under the impression that 'democracy' didn't always deliver the outcome one wanted, so one simply had to 'grin and bear it' as it were. And preferably with good grace, including and especially in conceding defeat. To his immeasurable credit British Prime Minister David Cameron, ever the statesman whatever one might think of his politics, readily did just that by quickly falling upon his sword. Likewise freshly-challenged Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in a similar spirit, in response to those on his (Bremain) side of the debate, claiming the 'result was too close to constitute a proper mandate', simply responded: "The people have spoken." And even German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been remarkably subdued if visibly almost biting her lip and keeping her own - vocal - oar out of the debate both pre- and post-referendum.
And whatever her views on the referendum one cannot but admire the ever eloquent, gutsy, stroppy and charismatic Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, and her sheer nerve and verve in the aftermath of the two recent impacting referenda she's been involved in. Such altogether genuine staunchness, tenacity, and passionate conviction are oh so rare to see in any politician these days, yet Cameron himself rose to similar heights, at times, during the recent referendum. Which reminds me of another long-deceased politician or two with similar qualities, both British as it turns out.
Having been toppled upon this very issue, what would Margaret Thatcher have not given to have seen Friday's result? But someone she was often compared to, though most regard him as a monolith in stature above and beyond almost any other 20th Century politician, or rather statesman, and thus essentially and altogether in a league of his own - was of course Winston Churchill.
Churchill was known for many things, not least his inspirational rallying words to a war-weary Britain in World War 11. He was also often noted as the author of a famous remark or three upon democracy. In one of these he characterized it as essentially a pretty cruddy system, with very little to show for its great claims. That was, until one stopped for a second and reflected upon all the others. And so one can only hope that, whatever bad feelings and disappointments some Britons and ex-pats feel over the Brexit vote, they take a leaf out of Winston's book, and accept that however flawed and problematic, democracy Westminster- and Western-style is still and ever remains the best of an admittedly bad bunch.
Yes, we all can and do feel genuine grief when life doesn't go all our own way, and naturally especially when we suffer great loss. In our confusion and tears we tend to lose our way at times. But perspective, they tell us, is everything. And so, lamenting Bremainers, I suggest you do what the Python crew once counselled: 'Al-ways lo-ok on the bri-ght si-de of life, (ditto, ditto)'. It sure makes life a whole lot easier in the long run. And as for the referendum just past, hey, you'll get over it as well...one day soon.
*Though I (originally) heard the second question as 'What does it mean to leave the European Union?'
Regardless, all such enquiries evidently signalling the supposed brain-deadness of Brexit voters, and thus, in one very fell and much-maligning swoop, automatically discrediting and invalidating their votes, suggesting they weren't even fit to cast one in the very first instance!
Friday, June 24, 2016
Free At Last - Free At Last - Thank the LORD, Britain is Great Again & Free At Last
Yippee!! Britain is free once more and can be great again. Independence Day has arrived at last!
May she now shine forth anew, in majestic splendour, in all her God-given glory, giving glory to the One Who has freed her from her servitude and favoured her with His own especial glory and honour. Her days and weeks and months and years and decades of hard servitude to faceless, unfriendly Eurocrats whose ultimate designs - including her as part of a United States of Europe submitting in obeisance and dutiful obedience to Europe's one-time masters and the centuries-long head thereof - I respectfully submit were anything but peaceable and godly.
I - and many others, I'm sure, scarcely believed it possible, and indeed were resigned today to an eventual loss...even the United Kingdom Independence Party leader himself. So fickle can voters be and so often disappointing are electoral results. But democracy has spoken, so to those on the losing side, I suggest it's best to accept that, as the old Western cowboy put it: 'Ya wins some and ya loses some.' But life goes on.
Congratulations - and Celebrations! Take a bow, you beauties - as Samwise Gamgee would say: "You've proven your [sterling] quality" this day.
May she now shine forth anew, in majestic splendour, in all her God-given glory, giving glory to the One Who has freed her from her servitude and favoured her with His own especial glory and honour. Her days and weeks and months and years and decades of hard servitude to faceless, unfriendly Eurocrats whose ultimate designs - including her as part of a United States of Europe submitting in obeisance and dutiful obedience to Europe's one-time masters and the centuries-long head thereof - I respectfully submit were anything but peaceable and godly.
I - and many others, I'm sure, scarcely believed it possible, and indeed were resigned today to an eventual loss...even the United Kingdom Independence Party leader himself. So fickle can voters be and so often disappointing are electoral results. But democracy has spoken, so to those on the losing side, I suggest it's best to accept that, as the old Western cowboy put it: 'Ya wins some and ya loses some.' But life goes on.
Congratulations - and Celebrations! Take a bow, you beauties - as Samwise Gamgee would say: "You've proven your [sterling] quality" this day.
Thursday, June 23, 2016
Independence Day in the United Kingdom? Will Britain Become Great Again? Putting in a word for the value of independents and independent-thinking
As a mini-post sandwiched within my main brexit blogposts, on both this blogsite and my other, original one, i.e. http://nuffsaid:consideryourself-frombothsidesnow.blogspot.co.nz/ (or .com/), how about this for a novel idea? True, genuine independence of thought/attitude, conviction, expression and action is ever a sign of strength, never of weakness. Except perhaps in toddlers still going through potty training and the like. Or maybe in newly-minted adolescents being oppositional towards their parents for the sheer sake of it.
And so this is simply to place upon the record my unavoidable disdain and utter contempt for those so-called political pundits and their media fellow-travellers especially who have heartily enjoyed the recent spectacle of Boris Johnson and David Cameron et al (especially in the British Conservative Party) battling it out tooth and nail, hammer and tongs, in the public domain over the long-running Brexit debate and finally arrived referendum. Petty partisanship aside - which such commentators evince so easily it's much like kiddies drooling over anticipated ice-cream cones and chocolate chippies - but if such really believe, as they invariably profess in the very next breath, in the value of participatory democracy and the need to have intelligent, informed public debate upon important matters, then they should surely applaud such a spectacle. Yes, they may secretly hate and despise 'the Tories' and find the sight of them 'tearing each other to shreds' not only less than edifying but moreover a bit of a hoot to boot, but have they ever stopped to consider the following?
Isn't it really rather a refreshing contrast, especially compared to New Zealand in particular, to see the ruling government isn't simply crammed and stuffed full of yes-men and yes-women, who ever and always take their cues from the man (or less frequently, woman) at the top? Who actually display real independence of mind and outlook and are not so highly insecure that to defend the holy grail of 'unity at all costs' they constantly paper over any real or simply perceived differences? Or does God's Own by contrast have a bunch of John Key clones and/or robots rather than real men and women in our corridors of power?
If such had their way we and our world never would have seen the likes of Sir Winston Churchill bestride the corridors and ultimately annals of history, and I for one believe we'd have a far poorer world as a result. No, not materially poorer - and Mr Cameron (and Mr Key), there really are some things money cannot buy, and that matter a heckuva lot more than healthy finances, such as a healthy and noble independence of spirit and life - but I wager to guess the once great and glorious nation of Britain (and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) might have suffered a whole lot more from Hitler and his Nazis had Mr Churchill not been there at the time. Yep, true independence is a virtue and not a vice.
And so this is simply to place upon the record my unavoidable disdain and utter contempt for those so-called political pundits and their media fellow-travellers especially who have heartily enjoyed the recent spectacle of Boris Johnson and David Cameron et al (especially in the British Conservative Party) battling it out tooth and nail, hammer and tongs, in the public domain over the long-running Brexit debate and finally arrived referendum. Petty partisanship aside - which such commentators evince so easily it's much like kiddies drooling over anticipated ice-cream cones and chocolate chippies - but if such really believe, as they invariably profess in the very next breath, in the value of participatory democracy and the need to have intelligent, informed public debate upon important matters, then they should surely applaud such a spectacle. Yes, they may secretly hate and despise 'the Tories' and find the sight of them 'tearing each other to shreds' not only less than edifying but moreover a bit of a hoot to boot, but have they ever stopped to consider the following?
Isn't it really rather a refreshing contrast, especially compared to New Zealand in particular, to see the ruling government isn't simply crammed and stuffed full of yes-men and yes-women, who ever and always take their cues from the man (or less frequently, woman) at the top? Who actually display real independence of mind and outlook and are not so highly insecure that to defend the holy grail of 'unity at all costs' they constantly paper over any real or simply perceived differences? Or does God's Own by contrast have a bunch of John Key clones and/or robots rather than real men and women in our corridors of power?
If such had their way we and our world never would have seen the likes of Sir Winston Churchill bestride the corridors and ultimately annals of history, and I for one believe we'd have a far poorer world as a result. No, not materially poorer - and Mr Cameron (and Mr Key), there really are some things money cannot buy, and that matter a heckuva lot more than healthy finances, such as a healthy and noble independence of spirit and life - but I wager to guess the once great and glorious nation of Britain (and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) might have suffered a whole lot more from Hitler and his Nazis had Mr Churchill not been there at the time. Yep, true independence is a virtue and not a vice.
Wednesday, June 22, 2016
Hey, Milady Was Right All Along, Yes, the Iron Lady Was Right All Along...About Europe & the European Union, Anyhow
Yes, the freighted, fraught moment has now almost well and truly arrived, and come 48 hours or so, it'll be all over bar the shouting, and screaming, and stomping etcetera. But I 'speak' facetiously, and without the due moment such an occasion clearly deserves, however it transpires. An occasion, a decision linked with and to everything from the fall of Western or at least so-called European 'civilization' through to the long-feared and anticipated World War Three and its cataclysmic results. Yes indeed, so argue some of the protagonists involved, and seemingly every bit believers of their own hyperbolic spin and imaginative speculation.
And though the same of course accuse their opponents, the Brexiters, of creative largesse equally bordering upon the fanciful and the fantastic, by for example appealing not only to terror-evoking mock-ups of swarming refugee hordes sweeping into and subsuming the British Isles but moreover to feared and loathed historical images of Hitler, Napoleon et al and their unhinged, unashamed and - for a time anyhow - seemingly unstoppable megalomaniacal fantasies of European and ultimately world domination and even subjugation, nevertheless the difference in content and degree - if admittedly not intensity - between the two sides I would suggest is anything but finely-balanced. And so, like the much-maligned Nigel Farage, the newly ridiculed as a mini-UK Trumpesque figure, the endearingly irascible and inimitable Boris Johnson - and their fellow-travellers - I would contend that evocations of the dystopian and even the frighteningly phantasmagoric(al) - *for the lay reader's 'information' (and Yours Truly's often challenged memory as well) '(eliciting or evoking) a fantastic series of illusive images' (et al) - is far more the province thus far of the Bremain brigade than the Brexiters. Inasmuch as 'the end of all things' as Tolkien's Sam Gamgee phrased it, or 'the end of the world' as many others have long described it, by a country mile methinks 'trumps' (again, any similarity to anyone else now living wholly unintended and purely a by-product of an occasionally challenged vocabulary) a tempestuous time in intra-national relations. (According to my longtime and ever trusty (1988 edition of the) Chambers Concise Dictionary.)
But where, oh where - my oh my oh my - does one possibly begin - much less end - in seeking to do justice to this now hugely contentious matter, one which has pretty well continuously dogged the steps, nipped at the heels of each and every pretender to the leadership mantle of the Tory (i.e. Conservative) Party of (the once - but no longer?) Great Britain since the days of their much-loved and equally-loathed but irrespective ever-memorable Margaret Thatcher herself. For who or which political junkie can soon forget the circumstances of the Iron Lady's demise those fateful days in 1990, just as the decades-long Cold War was finally being wrapped up good and proper; indeed just prior to the final and overwhelming episode in that exponentially escalating and accelerating anticlimax in superpower relations - the Fall of Communism in the Soviet Union, the U.S.S.R., and its rapid disintegration into fifteen republics of dramatically differing size, population, geography and economic and military power. Following all so quickly the citizens' uprising in and/or fall/breakup of one after another of what were aptly termed the 'domino nations' of the then Eastern Europe.
From the (11-year? - my guesstimate) nine-ten-and-a-half-*15-year struggle in Poland through the nine-month (actually four-and-a-half-five year) multi-layered often genocidal ethno-national crisis in (Yugoslavia?) through the nine-week (actually four-five days) fall of Czeckoslovakia to the nine-day (actually four-six-eleven month) implosion of Eastern Germany to the nine-hour (in fact eight to twenty-two to twenty-three month) capitulation of Hungary; on through the entire 'pack' of eight Eastern European satellite states including Romania (three to four days, similarly to Czechoslovakia) and Bulgaria (three months); Albania ever being the odd one out, and I'm still a bit unsure of its transition process and timeline.
Toppling just like a series of so many interconnected dominoes 'till they all fell down' as the nursery rhyme goes.
(*'De-communizing' events in Poland evidently began with a Workers Defence Committee being established in 1976, around four years before Lech Walesca's celebrated Solidarity Union showed up on the scene; and of course both Hungary and Czechoslovakia had major uprisings both ruthlessly suppressed back in the 50s and 60s. And as with Poland's pre-Solidarity history, I was also surprised to learn of an uprising of some note in East Germany back in 1953.And even the Soviet Union itself was seemingly no exception to this trend, effectively taking just four months when things really started to roll. But that's the point in a very real sense, for as is far better known internationally vis-a-vis the then Union of Soviet Socialist Republics than in regards to any of its eight other 'satellite' Communist Bloc states, the process of reform began years before when Mikhail Gorbachev took the helm, even arguably decades earlier under the unpredictable regime of Nikita Khruschev.).
So the actual specific number of days, months and years involved in each of these nation's ideological transitions is really a matter of which particular events one focuses upon and therefore is somewhat of a subjective measure per se. (If my memory serves me aright, and it usually does, if admittedly occasionally forgoing me; since I can't presently relocate an excellent Time/Newsweek cover story or three on the same from that time period, I'll have to leave it at that for tonight.)***As it transpires now, I'll admit some degree of challenged status to that acclaimed memory, though due to the rather 'mixed and matched' chronologies I've thus far reviewed, it's really quite open to anyone's interpretation. Suffice it to say, however, that my distinct overall recollection was one of exponentially-accelerating events, and somewhere somehow I recall one particular digit/number, and then was dramatically impressed at the time as I saw how this applied to pretty well each and every one of the nations specified, only the particular 'unit' involved - be it years, months, weeks, days or hours - seemed to progressively shrink as time progressed and as the set of 'domino' nations went from a mere mini-spill or drip to a complete deluge.or rout.
Part Two: So What Did the Iron Lady Have Right, if not the Might to enact/enforce?
And though the same of course accuse their opponents, the Brexiters, of creative largesse equally bordering upon the fanciful and the fantastic, by for example appealing not only to terror-evoking mock-ups of swarming refugee hordes sweeping into and subsuming the British Isles but moreover to feared and loathed historical images of Hitler, Napoleon et al and their unhinged, unashamed and - for a time anyhow - seemingly unstoppable megalomaniacal fantasies of European and ultimately world domination and even subjugation, nevertheless the difference in content and degree - if admittedly not intensity - between the two sides I would suggest is anything but finely-balanced. And so, like the much-maligned Nigel Farage, the newly ridiculed as a mini-UK Trumpesque figure, the endearingly irascible and inimitable Boris Johnson - and their fellow-travellers - I would contend that evocations of the dystopian and even the frighteningly phantasmagoric(al) - *for the lay reader's 'information' (and Yours Truly's often challenged memory as well) '(eliciting or evoking) a fantastic series of illusive images' (et al) - is far more the province thus far of the Bremain brigade than the Brexiters. Inasmuch as 'the end of all things' as Tolkien's Sam Gamgee phrased it, or 'the end of the world' as many others have long described it, by a country mile methinks 'trumps' (again, any similarity to anyone else now living wholly unintended and purely a by-product of an occasionally challenged vocabulary) a tempestuous time in intra-national relations. (According to my longtime and ever trusty (1988 edition of the) Chambers Concise Dictionary.)
But where, oh where - my oh my oh my - does one possibly begin - much less end - in seeking to do justice to this now hugely contentious matter, one which has pretty well continuously dogged the steps, nipped at the heels of each and every pretender to the leadership mantle of the Tory (i.e. Conservative) Party of (the once - but no longer?) Great Britain since the days of their much-loved and equally-loathed but irrespective ever-memorable Margaret Thatcher herself. For who or which political junkie can soon forget the circumstances of the Iron Lady's demise those fateful days in 1990, just as the decades-long Cold War was finally being wrapped up good and proper; indeed just prior to the final and overwhelming episode in that exponentially escalating and accelerating anticlimax in superpower relations - the Fall of Communism in the Soviet Union, the U.S.S.R., and its rapid disintegration into fifteen republics of dramatically differing size, population, geography and economic and military power. Following all so quickly the citizens' uprising in and/or fall/breakup of one after another of what were aptly termed the 'domino nations' of the then Eastern Europe.
From the (11-year? - my guesstimate) nine-ten-and-a-half-*15-year struggle in Poland through the nine-month (actually four-and-a-half-five year) multi-layered often genocidal ethno-national crisis in (Yugoslavia?) through the nine-week (actually four-five days) fall of Czeckoslovakia to the nine-day (actually four-six-eleven month) implosion of Eastern Germany to the nine-hour (in fact eight to twenty-two to twenty-three month) capitulation of Hungary; on through the entire 'pack' of eight Eastern European satellite states including Romania (three to four days, similarly to Czechoslovakia) and Bulgaria (three months); Albania ever being the odd one out, and I'm still a bit unsure of its transition process and timeline.
Toppling just like a series of so many interconnected dominoes 'till they all fell down' as the nursery rhyme goes.
(*'De-communizing' events in Poland evidently began with a Workers Defence Committee being established in 1976, around four years before Lech Walesca's celebrated Solidarity Union showed up on the scene; and of course both Hungary and Czechoslovakia had major uprisings both ruthlessly suppressed back in the 50s and 60s. And as with Poland's pre-Solidarity history, I was also surprised to learn of an uprising of some note in East Germany back in 1953.And even the Soviet Union itself was seemingly no exception to this trend, effectively taking just four months when things really started to roll. But that's the point in a very real sense, for as is far better known internationally vis-a-vis the then Union of Soviet Socialist Republics than in regards to any of its eight other 'satellite' Communist Bloc states, the process of reform began years before when Mikhail Gorbachev took the helm, even arguably decades earlier under the unpredictable regime of Nikita Khruschev.).
So the actual specific number of days, months and years involved in each of these nation's ideological transitions is really a matter of which particular events one focuses upon and therefore is somewhat of a subjective measure per se. (If my memory serves me aright, and it usually does, if admittedly occasionally forgoing me; since I can't presently relocate an excellent Time/Newsweek cover story or three on the same from that time period, I'll have to leave it at that for tonight.)***As it transpires now, I'll admit some degree of challenged status to that acclaimed memory, though due to the rather 'mixed and matched' chronologies I've thus far reviewed, it's really quite open to anyone's interpretation. Suffice it to say, however, that my distinct overall recollection was one of exponentially-accelerating events, and somewhere somehow I recall one particular digit/number, and then was dramatically impressed at the time as I saw how this applied to pretty well each and every one of the nations specified, only the particular 'unit' involved - be it years, months, weeks, days or hours - seemed to progressively shrink as time progressed and as the set of 'domino' nations went from a mere mini-spill or drip to a complete deluge.or rout.
Part Two: So What Did the Iron Lady Have Right, if not the Might to enact/enforce?
Friday, June 17, 2016
Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is Part Two (of two)
Yet as far as we know Mr Tanczos was never investigated for thus flagrantly transgressing well-known law, much less prosecuted for such. And so, as best we can surmise, he kept right on breaking the law [which declares marijuana an illegal substance and ipso facto the smoking, let alone possession thereof an illegal act], thus effectively declaring his contempt for the very law (in a general sense) that as a member of Parliament he was elected to - change, yes, if at all possible and advisable, but - first and foremost to uphold and affirm. And therefore legislation - as all the rest - Mr Tanczos, like the next person, could quite justifiably be expected to observe; indeed, law implicitly demanding the allegiance and obedience of all New Zealand's citizens, utterly irrespective of whether they voted Nandor (c/o his Green party list) into office or not. However, as again is well-known, or at least openly on the public record, Mr Tanczos was notorious for holding such an "Up yours!" attitude and approach - in relation to the orthodox establishment, that is - and this for me was only re-confirmed by two quite unrelated by equally pertinent - if wholly anecdotal - sources: one, an unofficial representative of a major and generally respected institution of our land (at least in times gone by); the other, involving a member of our extended family, or rather, as I prefer to put it, at present one of our various 'outlaws' (as opposed to in-laws). But of course I exaggerate.
If my memory serves me aright - and it usually does, whatever other multitudinous faults I'm evidently more than guilty of - the first occasion was either 'on the grapevine', as a matter of fairly general knowledge, or - much more likely - conveyed to me c/o Jim Mora's much-esteemed 4-5 p.m. weekday Panel on RNZ National - formerly National Radio - by a well-known New Zealander with pertinent connections in either our education and/or justice system. Whatever, so 'rumour' had it that NZ secondary school principals up and down our fair land were especially pissed off - not to put too fine a point upon it! - by Mr Tanczos' seeming open flouting of the dope-smoking law of the land; both by partaking of the nasty weed, and even more worryingly, by thus manifesting open contempt for and willingness, nay readiness to openly violate the very laws that he, as an elected member of Parliament, was elected to uphold. In the process setting a terrible and lamentable 'example' for school children throughout the length and breadth of our fair land to take up the habit, and moreover in school time and on school grounds, "and stuff the law and the cops"!
My 'out-law''s comment, on the other hand, was seemingly comparatively minor, and related to his apparently overhearing - alongside some others apparently during some 'gig' he was staging/hosting in our city (i.e.Dunedin) on a city street a good decade-and-a-half ago now - Mr Tanczos making a highly dismissive and disparaging remark about 'the cops'., the specific details of which I regretfully cannot recall. Which although clearly no hanging offence, nevertheless evinced the worrisome fact that he evidently did not hold 'the boys [and girls] in blue' in the sort of regard one might hope our elected representatives might; or at least - if they didn't - they might (hopefully) be far more discreet about or even simply keep to themselves. (Having long ago now left a phone message for him to confirm as much, one can only assume that that seems to also be his own recollection of what he once shared with me.)
The - logical - upshot of all this to the long-time push - in certain quarters - for the legalization or at least decriminalization of cannabis? Or, rather, in this instance, to the medical marijuana debate, reignited over recent weeks in various ways such as by the likes of Helen Kelly and Associate Health Minister Peter Dunne, and followed by discussion thereof by RNZ National in particular; but much more significantly two Sundays ago now on TV1's Sunday, where a full half-hour programme-length coverage was provided by host Maherangi Forbes, a show in which a former kiwi now residing in Colorado, America, was interviewed extensively about the situation now pertaining there, specifically with regards to the implications for New Zealand if we followed suit.
Before I - very shortly - do (elaborate upon the connection), let me lastly introduce yet another (very) 'high-profiler', if long (a half century almost) dead 'celebrity'/'mover and shaker' - and all the rest. Someone usually s/elected either by so-called experts or ye average citizenry (of especially the Western world) amidst the top handful of world-moving figures - for good (or ill, for that matter) - of the previous century. Who today ranks - alongside one of his mentors, India's nonviolence independence campaigner Mohammes (popularly known as Mahatma) Gandhi - as one of the 20th Century's foremost, indeed history's most highly regarded and respected political activists. The individual is of course none other than American 1960s civil rights leader Martin Luther King, a man who faced - and openly agitated against - a literal plethora of unjust and oppressive laws of his beloved U S of A. And who always argued ever so eloquently - by pen, speech and much more significantly by literally laying his life on the line over and over again regarding, before finally laying it down by losing it in the cause - against each and every one of those laws that he found so intolerable and even abhorrent.
But - and here the chasm draws yawningly wide and deep between himself and the two political activists (Nandor Tanczos and Helen Kelly, that is) I've particularly singled in on - I'm too small-fry, for sure, to try to take on the eminent and venerable Helen Clark! - unlike those two (or so it appears, but may Ms Kelly prove an exception if it comes to that, which undoubtedly it won't) MLK was only too willing (and prepared), and of course saw this realized, as alluded to already, on various occasions such as his imprisonment in Alabama and the later firebombing of his Atlanta home - to be treated to and with the full force of the law if need be, for the inviolable principles he adamantly and unflinchingly stood for. Principles he ever saw as light years ahead of the laws of the land which then almost sacredly enshrined segregation and discrimination.
Mr King believed that, in the final analysis, if one's cause be right and just, one must - just as the One he so admired and loved and ever sought to emulate, Jesus Christ Himself - be willing to suffer and even, if need be, die for those things one really, truly believes in. Much less suffer incarceration for the same. That, however unjust the law may well be, it is the law nonetheless, and so wields legitimate sway over the citizenry in a democratic land, however flawed. Even while 'doing despite' to said, selfsame law out of admirable nonconformity and noncompliance. Yet ever willing and prepared to suffer the consequences of said noncompliance - whatever these may well be.
And so I would contend that Ms Kelly (as Mr Tanczos in times past) has every reason to 'rail against' whatever laws such may entirely justifiably have every reason to consider unjust. But unless such are also ultimately willing to 'come under' selfsame laws' temporal jurisdiction - in all their manifold ramifications - then they are merely echoing the sentiments of the original transgressor of all divine law, the archrebel Lucifer himself (or more aptly itself, for as CS Lewis ever so ably and eloquently argues, it's awfully hard to assign a gender to a .............- whatever he wrote!); yes, the sentiments and the motivating, actuating principles of 'the great dragon, that ancient serpent, called the devil, and Satan'. And thereby are holding all earthly laws likewise up to ridicule and contempt, and thus show they deserve no special favour/s from said law, the relevant legal authorities involved - and moreover its enforcers - whatsoever. However originally or ultimately 'just' their cause may well be.
Or, as someone - perhaps Aesop - once put it, 'what's good for the goose is (likewise) good (enough) for the gander'. Rather than the popular sentiment apparently ever growing in adherence - which sentiment incidentally was the title of an opinion piece on NZ's then - and arguably still present - culture of 'golden handshakes' to ex-/former-CEOs: 'if the government and cops are all crooks, you might as well be one too'!
If my memory serves me aright - and it usually does, whatever other multitudinous faults I'm evidently more than guilty of - the first occasion was either 'on the grapevine', as a matter of fairly general knowledge, or - much more likely - conveyed to me c/o Jim Mora's much-esteemed 4-5 p.m. weekday Panel on RNZ National - formerly National Radio - by a well-known New Zealander with pertinent connections in either our education and/or justice system. Whatever, so 'rumour' had it that NZ secondary school principals up and down our fair land were especially pissed off - not to put too fine a point upon it! - by Mr Tanczos' seeming open flouting of the dope-smoking law of the land; both by partaking of the nasty weed, and even more worryingly, by thus manifesting open contempt for and willingness, nay readiness to openly violate the very laws that he, as an elected member of Parliament, was elected to uphold. In the process setting a terrible and lamentable 'example' for school children throughout the length and breadth of our fair land to take up the habit, and moreover in school time and on school grounds, "and stuff the law and the cops"!
My 'out-law''s comment, on the other hand, was seemingly comparatively minor, and related to his apparently overhearing - alongside some others apparently during some 'gig' he was staging/hosting in our city (i.e.Dunedin) on a city street a good decade-and-a-half ago now - Mr Tanczos making a highly dismissive and disparaging remark about 'the cops'., the specific details of which I regretfully cannot recall. Which although clearly no hanging offence, nevertheless evinced the worrisome fact that he evidently did not hold 'the boys [and girls] in blue' in the sort of regard one might hope our elected representatives might; or at least - if they didn't - they might (hopefully) be far more discreet about or even simply keep to themselves. (Having long ago now left a phone message for him to confirm as much, one can only assume that that seems to also be his own recollection of what he once shared with me.)
The - logical - upshot of all this to the long-time push - in certain quarters - for the legalization or at least decriminalization of cannabis? Or, rather, in this instance, to the medical marijuana debate, reignited over recent weeks in various ways such as by the likes of Helen Kelly and Associate Health Minister Peter Dunne, and followed by discussion thereof by RNZ National in particular; but much more significantly two Sundays ago now on TV1's Sunday, where a full half-hour programme-length coverage was provided by host Maherangi Forbes, a show in which a former kiwi now residing in Colorado, America, was interviewed extensively about the situation now pertaining there, specifically with regards to the implications for New Zealand if we followed suit.
Before I - very shortly - do (elaborate upon the connection), let me lastly introduce yet another (very) 'high-profiler', if long (a half century almost) dead 'celebrity'/'mover and shaker' - and all the rest. Someone usually s/elected either by so-called experts or ye average citizenry (of especially the Western world) amidst the top handful of world-moving figures - for good (or ill, for that matter) - of the previous century. Who today ranks - alongside one of his mentors, India's nonviolence independence campaigner Mohammes (popularly known as Mahatma) Gandhi - as one of the 20th Century's foremost, indeed history's most highly regarded and respected political activists. The individual is of course none other than American 1960s civil rights leader Martin Luther King, a man who faced - and openly agitated against - a literal plethora of unjust and oppressive laws of his beloved U S of A. And who always argued ever so eloquently - by pen, speech and much more significantly by literally laying his life on the line over and over again regarding, before finally laying it down by losing it in the cause - against each and every one of those laws that he found so intolerable and even abhorrent.
But - and here the chasm draws yawningly wide and deep between himself and the two political activists (Nandor Tanczos and Helen Kelly, that is) I've particularly singled in on - I'm too small-fry, for sure, to try to take on the eminent and venerable Helen Clark! - unlike those two (or so it appears, but may Ms Kelly prove an exception if it comes to that, which undoubtedly it won't) MLK was only too willing (and prepared), and of course saw this realized, as alluded to already, on various occasions such as his imprisonment in Alabama and the later firebombing of his Atlanta home - to be treated to and with the full force of the law if need be, for the inviolable principles he adamantly and unflinchingly stood for. Principles he ever saw as light years ahead of the laws of the land which then almost sacredly enshrined segregation and discrimination.
Mr King believed that, in the final analysis, if one's cause be right and just, one must - just as the One he so admired and loved and ever sought to emulate, Jesus Christ Himself - be willing to suffer and even, if need be, die for those things one really, truly believes in. Much less suffer incarceration for the same. That, however unjust the law may well be, it is the law nonetheless, and so wields legitimate sway over the citizenry in a democratic land, however flawed. Even while 'doing despite' to said, selfsame law out of admirable nonconformity and noncompliance. Yet ever willing and prepared to suffer the consequences of said noncompliance - whatever these may well be.
And so I would contend that Ms Kelly (as Mr Tanczos in times past) has every reason to 'rail against' whatever laws such may entirely justifiably have every reason to consider unjust. But unless such are also ultimately willing to 'come under' selfsame laws' temporal jurisdiction - in all their manifold ramifications - then they are merely echoing the sentiments of the original transgressor of all divine law, the archrebel Lucifer himself (or more aptly itself, for as CS Lewis ever so ably and eloquently argues, it's awfully hard to assign a gender to a .............- whatever he wrote!); yes, the sentiments and the motivating, actuating principles of 'the great dragon, that ancient serpent, called the devil, and Satan'. And thereby are holding all earthly laws likewise up to ridicule and contempt, and thus show they deserve no special favour/s from said law, the relevant legal authorities involved - and moreover its enforcers - whatsoever. However originally or ultimately 'just' their cause may well be.
Or, as someone - perhaps Aesop - once put it, 'what's good for the goose is (likewise) good (enough) for the gander'. Rather than the popular sentiment apparently ever growing in adherence - which sentiment incidentally was the title of an opinion piece on NZ's then - and arguably still present - culture of 'golden handshakes' to ex-/former-CEOs: 'if the government and cops are all crooks, you might as well be one too'!
Thursday, June 16, 2016
Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is: Part One (of two)
(Written 14th April, 2016)
So here we have it, once again: a(nother) declaration of absolute defiance - of the law of the land - and the evident, undisguised actions to match; on this occasion by Helen Kelly, former long-serving Secretary of the CTU, the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions.
But do I - can anyone, for that matter - really fault Ms Kelly, whether one identifies with or subscribes to her particular brand of left-wing unionist ideology or otherwise? Or who in their right mind, so to speak, if push came to shove - and upon virtually their death-bed, as it were - would not, in her situation, do the very same sort of thing? I.e. use whatever was available to one to save, maintain, and/or prolong one's life: to the very latest moment. Provided s/he felt that life was really still worth living, that is.
A rhetorical question if ever there were one, surely. Because equally certain is the answer of pretty well everyone, isn't it, wouldn't it be? Indeed. So again, can we really blame Ms Kelly for doing anything and everything in her increasingly disappearing power to prolong her life? Hardly.
And for that matter it seems a welcome and refreshing contrast to the endless hype our media has dished up to us over preceding months and years as to the need - the imperative supposedly - of bringing in voluntary euthanasia upon our kiwi populace. For here is someone - a high-profile personality, no less - who is evidently quite unprepared to simply lay down and die, or to unhesitatingly, submissively take the treatment meted out by New Zealand's orthodox medical fraternity as if it were the be-all-and-end-all, the final word as it were, on the all-important matter of one's personal health and well-being, and moreover in this instance of very survival itself. Someone with a mind to think and decide for herself, and the will to follow through with commensurate actions.
But here we once again are confronted with our originally-stated dilemma, are we not? That is, does not everyone - irrespective of background, position or status in our society - have the right, the privilege to be treated 'equally before the law'? Or put it another way - perhaps much more aptly, in this very instance - does anyone, again, irrespective of said background, position or status, have the privilege or right on the other hand to be given 'special treatment' before the law of the land? Which special treatment, favouritism quite bluntly, would arguably not be accorded Joe or Jane Average Citizen in the selfsame circumstances.
The answer, I'm sure you'll readily agree, is most certainly not! No, a thousand times "no" - whatever the situation or circumstances. One only needs to recall the pro-euthanasia advocate, Lucretia Seales, also of Wellington, not all that long ago. And let's for now put to one side the ever-present possibility, indeed oftentimes reality, of 'police discretion' in our land.
No, what we are presented with here - and let's give her all due credit, Ms Kelly neither sought to deny nor downplay the reality of her law-breaking nor claim she ought not to suffer the appropriate consequences for disregarding and breaking the law - is nothing less than a flagrant and public, if nevertheless perfectly understandable in the circumstances, show of defiance toward our legal system itself. Essentially calling the bluff, as it were, in probably the well-justified assurance - which some might well term presumption, even arrogance - that, like the proverbial dog that's all bark and no bite, the authorities that be will just 'do the usual' and look the other way.
Seeing as Ms Kelly's such a well-known, high-profile figure and all. And especially since the likes of former Prime Minister and now would-be Secretary-General of the United Nations, Helen Clark - not to mention seemingly endless numbers of other high-profile New Zealanders - have almost invariably, pretty well to a woman or man, managed to escape the clutches of the justice system; which myself and many others, rather less endearingly - and with remarkably little effort - see as much more an injustice system; Yes indeed, 'justice' that others of us lesser mortals are never so fortunate - or 'blessed' if you prefer - as to be able to evade. Oh, to be so lucky, I hear you say!
And so very lucky do some indeed appear to be (treated), don't they? And in this regard my mind reverts unavoidably to - no, not U.N.-Secretary-General wannabe Clark, with her own aforementioned succession of 'mini'-scandals from Paintergate to Corngate through to Speedgate - to name just a few, or at least those most easily identified or readily recalled - but wholly another former member of Parliament who served our nation in its halls of power concurrent with Ms Clark's nine-year tenure at the helm of NZ's levers of power in (what once was known as, anyway) 'God's Own'. A Mr Nandor Tanczos, whom I'm sure you'll readily recall.- unless you're a 'young 'un', as some comic-strip character once put things. Yes, the now married with children, then youngish, radical, pot-smoking Green Party M.P. with the unforgettable dreadlocks - whose graffitied facial image is still occasionally encountered in the odd urban centre's inner-city alleyway (and the like).Someone who - with all his immeasurable intellect, incisive reasoning and powers of perception and insight into the 'New Zealand project', early 21st Century and all, and his undoubted commitment to spirituality, let's give him due credit - also 'thumbed his nose' not only more generally at the 'establishment' itself but also more particularly and specifically at the very rule per se of the powers-that-be, i.e. at the law of the land itself, and in an equally open and defiant manner.
So here we have it, once again: a(nother) declaration of absolute defiance - of the law of the land - and the evident, undisguised actions to match; on this occasion by Helen Kelly, former long-serving Secretary of the CTU, the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions.
But do I - can anyone, for that matter - really fault Ms Kelly, whether one identifies with or subscribes to her particular brand of left-wing unionist ideology or otherwise? Or who in their right mind, so to speak, if push came to shove - and upon virtually their death-bed, as it were - would not, in her situation, do the very same sort of thing? I.e. use whatever was available to one to save, maintain, and/or prolong one's life: to the very latest moment. Provided s/he felt that life was really still worth living, that is.
A rhetorical question if ever there were one, surely. Because equally certain is the answer of pretty well everyone, isn't it, wouldn't it be? Indeed. So again, can we really blame Ms Kelly for doing anything and everything in her increasingly disappearing power to prolong her life? Hardly.
And for that matter it seems a welcome and refreshing contrast to the endless hype our media has dished up to us over preceding months and years as to the need - the imperative supposedly - of bringing in voluntary euthanasia upon our kiwi populace. For here is someone - a high-profile personality, no less - who is evidently quite unprepared to simply lay down and die, or to unhesitatingly, submissively take the treatment meted out by New Zealand's orthodox medical fraternity as if it were the be-all-and-end-all, the final word as it were, on the all-important matter of one's personal health and well-being, and moreover in this instance of very survival itself. Someone with a mind to think and decide for herself, and the will to follow through with commensurate actions.
But here we once again are confronted with our originally-stated dilemma, are we not? That is, does not everyone - irrespective of background, position or status in our society - have the right, the privilege to be treated 'equally before the law'? Or put it another way - perhaps much more aptly, in this very instance - does anyone, again, irrespective of said background, position or status, have the privilege or right on the other hand to be given 'special treatment' before the law of the land? Which special treatment, favouritism quite bluntly, would arguably not be accorded Joe or Jane Average Citizen in the selfsame circumstances.
The answer, I'm sure you'll readily agree, is most certainly not! No, a thousand times "no" - whatever the situation or circumstances. One only needs to recall the pro-euthanasia advocate, Lucretia Seales, also of Wellington, not all that long ago. And let's for now put to one side the ever-present possibility, indeed oftentimes reality, of 'police discretion' in our land.
No, what we are presented with here - and let's give her all due credit, Ms Kelly neither sought to deny nor downplay the reality of her law-breaking nor claim she ought not to suffer the appropriate consequences for disregarding and breaking the law - is nothing less than a flagrant and public, if nevertheless perfectly understandable in the circumstances, show of defiance toward our legal system itself. Essentially calling the bluff, as it were, in probably the well-justified assurance - which some might well term presumption, even arrogance - that, like the proverbial dog that's all bark and no bite, the authorities that be will just 'do the usual' and look the other way.
Seeing as Ms Kelly's such a well-known, high-profile figure and all. And especially since the likes of former Prime Minister and now would-be Secretary-General of the United Nations, Helen Clark - not to mention seemingly endless numbers of other high-profile New Zealanders - have almost invariably, pretty well to a woman or man, managed to escape the clutches of the justice system; which myself and many others, rather less endearingly - and with remarkably little effort - see as much more an injustice system; Yes indeed, 'justice' that others of us lesser mortals are never so fortunate - or 'blessed' if you prefer - as to be able to evade. Oh, to be so lucky, I hear you say!
And so very lucky do some indeed appear to be (treated), don't they? And in this regard my mind reverts unavoidably to - no, not U.N.-Secretary-General wannabe Clark, with her own aforementioned succession of 'mini'-scandals from Paintergate to Corngate through to Speedgate - to name just a few, or at least those most easily identified or readily recalled - but wholly another former member of Parliament who served our nation in its halls of power concurrent with Ms Clark's nine-year tenure at the helm of NZ's levers of power in (what once was known as, anyway) 'God's Own'. A Mr Nandor Tanczos, whom I'm sure you'll readily recall.- unless you're a 'young 'un', as some comic-strip character once put things. Yes, the now married with children, then youngish, radical, pot-smoking Green Party M.P. with the unforgettable dreadlocks - whose graffitied facial image is still occasionally encountered in the odd urban centre's inner-city alleyway (and the like).Someone who - with all his immeasurable intellect, incisive reasoning and powers of perception and insight into the 'New Zealand project', early 21st Century and all, and his undoubted commitment to spirituality, let's give him due credit - also 'thumbed his nose' not only more generally at the 'establishment' itself but also more particularly and specifically at the very rule per se of the powers-that-be, i.e. at the law of the land itself, and in an equally open and defiant manner.
Friday, June 10, 2016
A false[deceptive] balance is - indeed, in every way - an abomination: Why 'peace in the Middle East' ever proves so very elusive
It remains incomparably one of the best sources of world news - on this, that, and especially the other. Nevertheless, like everything and everyone else, the BBC is far from a perfectly reliable purveyor of the issues of our day, and nowhere is this more the case than in various 'moral issues' of great controversy, on religious (and 'cultural') matters and even figures of note, and on political controversies causing major schisms throughout our present-day world - with two notable exceptions: 'World Have Your Say' with Jackie Leonard; and 'Outlook' with Jo Fidgen. Thus, while tuning into BBC World Service Radio early this morning, I heard a brief report on Israel being in the process of passing a new law preventing the release of the bodies of Palestinian perpetrators of murderous violence upon Israeli civilians; following on from the unprecedented rash/spate of 'random acts of unkindness' as in unprovoked stabbings, often fatal, that have been occurring - initiated by both Israelis upon Palestinians as well as Palestinian upon Israelis, incidentally - mostly in Jerusalem.
Thus Mr [Liebermann:sp?], Israel's newly-installed Defence Minister (I believe), has been enacting this new law, clearly as a way of retaliating against the Palestinian community, in particular in its connection to the Palestinian Authority - ever seen as initiating or ultimately behind any orchestrated campaign of violence against Israeli citizens (though of course not necessarily directly involved; except by implication. As Israel of course has long had a large Palestinian Arab population, and indeed, when combined with Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank, Palestinians constitute a greater proportion of the present population than Israeli Jews - the essential reason the latter are so wary of the sometimes touted 'one state solution' to the incessant Israeli-Palestinian conflict.)
What grabbed my attention - as in made me involuntarily stop and pay closer attention, though to say I was surprised is hardly the case - was simply the following: after announcing the above-mentioned new law being enacted in response to another recent killing - this time in Israel's post-resettlement capital, Tel Aviv - the BBC correspondent, as if to say (echoing Yours Truly's other blogsite name): 'Nuff Said: this is the final, unchallengeable word on the matter', thus - implicitly - rejecting and dismissing all future consideration of the question, declared, in response to the above report and specifically to the lack of perceived justification (on the part of the BBC, presumably) for such a law: "the head of the Palestinian Authority" - i.e. Mahmoud Abbas - "condemned all attacks on innocents/innocent civilians in Israel."
As if such a typically weak-kneed, arguably entirely worthless and trivializing 'condemnation' was all that the situation required or demanded, or would - to any right-minded person - be sufficient to stem the tide (of) recent (months), the outpouring of brutal violence of Israel's two major ethnicities against each other (in especially Jerusalem). One is almost tempted to wonder whether the reporter actually really, truly believed what he'd just reported, or - much more likely - wanted to believe it - probably simply so as to be able to dismiss any further consideration of the matter from his mind; 'out of sight, out of mind' kinda thing.But irrespective, Mahmoud's simplistic response, and the reporter's ready, unquestioning acceptance of this as anything remotely approaching an adequate response, themselves parallel and even highlight the gulf that currently exists in our world between apologists for the worldwide campaign of terrorism conducted in the wake of 9/11, and those who simply cannot accept - whatever the supposed provocation - human beings carrying on a way which is simply barbaric, inhuman and indeed devilish and beastly.
Thus such softminded 'thinking' - if one can possibly dignify it with such a term - is exactly why the 'few and far between' 'condemnation' of ISIS/ISIL/DAYISH/DAYESH and Al Qaeda and the like - such as their African equivalents Al Shabab and Boco Haran - has justly earned its own unsparing condemnation by Westerners and others. These people are not merely perplexed by but outright appalled that these fellow-travellers not only evidently see no need to apologize on their 'compatriots'' behalf, ashamed - by obvious implication - in even being associated, if only by religious affiliation, with such subhumans; but more significantly perhaps, the generally Western apologists for such terrorists apparently see nothing the matter with these fellow Muslims themselves failing to do so[i.e. condemn these terrorists], whilst earnestly and constantly seeking to reassure the rest of us that, for example, 'Islam is a religion of peace' and no-one need suppose any possible danger from the unprecedented influx of Middle Easterners throughout the Western world but especially throughout 'Western Europe'. (Yes, even pre-Syrian refugee deluge, and personally, I've no time for those scapegoating such tragic-stricken folk; it's well-known these days that ISIS 'plants' its terrorists in their midst to foment further troubles by deliberate design.)
Certainly any so-called condemnation of such folk by Muslim authorities and leadership around the world has consistently failed to make a skerrick of difference to the situation, still less to the terrorists themselves(and presumably also other would-be terrorists). Supposedly these Muslim authorities and their leadership around the globe are as shocked and horrified - like everyone else, or rather all reasonable-minded folk - by the barbaric beheadings, both individual and group; the mass suicide bombings (for a contradiction in terms; most people surely wouldn't have any objection if such folk simply took themselves out of circulation - a 'good riddance' as we used to say); and other associated mass slaughters of innocent civilians throughout much of the Middle East and parts of Western Europe. No, sadly - but all too predictably enough - interestingly, quite unlike the consistent and entirely realistic response of the noble Kurds, Jordan's heroic military-king, and even Egypt's restored military government - such 'responses' are much more akin to slapping someone with the proverbial wet bus ticket and/or seeking to cover a gaping wound with a mere sticking plaster. It clearly won't do, it just isn't - remotely - credible, and those trying to pawn off on their rightly-concerned populations such specious 'solutions', are, to use Mitt Romney's memorable words but in an entirely different context, simply trying to take the rest of us for a bunch of suckers.
However, to return to the main matter in discussion, it is always best to apply impartiality in all such matters. And so, on the other hand, until the present Israeli Government is brought to account for its own horrific barbarity against innocents in its invasion of Gaza in mid-2014 (I believe), yes, its own genocidal massacre of Gazan innocents in hospitals, schools and elsewhere for which Palestinians are presently seeking to bring it to the International Criminal Court, nothing will change; in the Middle East anyhow, in the never-ending Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And yes, though I accept it's also high time the world started to pay some and proper attention to the very real threats to the every existence of Israel and its people by all manner of officials and politicians and other leaders in the Palestinian territories and Iran especially - and stop simply throwing it under the proverbial rug as per usual, it's still all too and tragically true that Israel still quite definitely has some very serious blood on its hands. and until it deals with that uimaginably appalling blind spot in its own mirror, nothing is going to change in the Middle East. That much is only too glaringly obvious - and then some.
Sunday, May 22, 2016
Armenia, My Apologies for an wholly unintended ABSENTIA for the past ten months or so...
...entirely due to my utter inability to access my blogsites until under a month ago...
but I feel compelled to express outrage, even indignation on behalf of the countless millions - some suggest up to 150 million wholly innocent but allegedly heretical kids and adults - mercilessly put to death in an almost endless array of ways, in utterly barbaric fashion, by an age-old, much venerated institution headed by an individual across the millennia whose latest, much-revered and extolled-and-adulated-to-the-rafters manifestation had the sheer effrontery, the cheek to visit Turkey in mid-2015 I believe and thereupon accuse Turks of having committed genocide against an entire race, i.e. Armenians, who around the time, the start of World War One - that 'great' 'war to end all wars' (yeah, right!) - did indeed apparently engage in JUST SUCH A GENOCIDE. Sadly 'aided and abetted' apparently, or so we've now belatedly learnt (a few weeks back or so, on New Zealand TV News - but only in an oblique/somewhat indirect way, I readily concede) by our (i.e. kiwi) forces themselves. No, and A THOUSAND TIMES NO, our troops were not remotely involved in such medieval barbarism, and so doubtless I ought to rephrase how I expressed the previous thought, but sadly what our troops' arrival DID apparently do was contribute - wholly inadvertently, I'll readily concede - to supplying the Turkish forces with an all-too-convenient pretext for unleashing hostilities in that particular direction, i.e. against Armenians in their midst. And the atrocities they thus committed were indeed shameful in the extreme.
But what I DO and EVER WILL have a problem with is for that afore-alluded-to religious leader, yes none other than Pope Francis - no, not 'His holiness', THAT TITLE is ever and always reserved for ONE alone, 'Who shares His (ineffable) glory with no-one else' - himself to declare on behalf, presumably, of all upstanding citizenry upon Planet Earth - through the centuries - his condemnation of such brutality/barbarity/genocide. As Aesop himself would say without batting an eyelid, methinks it's a matter of the pot accusing the neighbouring kettle of some discolouration, and quite frankly, it simply won't wash.
Wednesday, April 27, 2016
'If I had a friend like Ben...'
YIPPEE, many months on, and I'm finally back...on my blogsite...a little older, and hopefully just a little wiser - which admittedly might not be all that hard, I hear some say... .
But be that all as it well may - yes, my technical cyber skills are infamous, almost a legend in themselves/in their own right - but, hooray...against all the odds, and all the scam-artists and viruses and other cyber-menaces seemingly constantly seeking to wreak utter havoc with this pleb's insatiable urge to write, to pen, to reflect upon the events and personas of the present day and age...I'm back, and more determined than ever... .
And so, without further adieu, this blogpost is dedicated to an obscure computer technician I spoke with today on the phone, late in the day...and his many and various computer-savvy colleagues - but especially to himself, i.e. 'Ben' (without whom I'd be still utterly unable to type these words, to a local, national and - hopefully - international audience): though I cannot now recall each and every word and verse/stanza of one of the three (definitely non-typical, associated with the Jackson Five, and/or written for a special occasion, like the '85 Ethiopian Famine) Michael Jackson songs I ever cared for, as I used to sing along while tapping this 70s hit out upon our family piano back in my teenage years - [I could do a whole lot] if [only] I had a friend like Ben... .
So thanks a whole lot Ben - and your other anonymous colleagues - and may you be blessed for all your well-appreciated if financially-uncompensated efforts for this lowly would-be blogger from nowhere (transposed = -as some have supposed- 'erewhon', though actually that should really be 'erehwon'), n(ew)z(ealand) - incidentally also the tome title of an old-fashioned nz-based 'sci-fi' of a sorts from the late 1800s, by the English writer Samuel Butler... .
Saturday, August 22, 2015
Brief Tributes To An Unlikely Threesome...
To three men totally unrelated by nationality, background or general worldview, no doubt...whose 'passing' I've been thus far unable to acknowledge (c/o el typical internet 'black/blockout')...
*To Val Doonican, Entertainer/Singer Extraordinaire, who graciously condescended to vouchsafe for me, then a pre-teenage whippersnapper basically from nowhere, his autograph upon an old photo of his he kindly forwarded in the mail/old-fashioned post.
*To David Nobbs, creator/director (I believe) of the inimitable, inestimable, inomparable 'The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin', a comedy almost wholly in its own league - alongside Fawlty Towers - which I've never tired of watching and re-watching.
*To Dr Khaled al-Assad, a rare 'specimen' of dedication and devotion to things and artifacts that transcend a mere mortal life... . To say that he 'died in action', 'engaged in service' seems somehow to trivialize his accomplishments, which were no doubt way overshadowed by the person he was - "a very nice, very good man" who "was nice to the big [people] and to the small."; apparently "All the people liked him."
May I 'say', in the immortal words of the beloved Apostle John: "the light shineth in [the] darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not." "And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved."
"For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: which sh[o]w the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another."
Dr al-Assad was one of those rare gems whom many might dismiss as an obsessive crank, an obstinate old fool, but he knew what really mattered, and gave his life in sacrifice thereof. Not so his murderers - whom I will not dignify to identify or describe, but about whom 'the sweet psalmist of Israel' might well have 'remarked': "[But] the ungodly are not so: but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away. Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment. For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish."
Wednesday, July 22, 2015
And while we're reflecting upon songs (and stars) of yesteryear...
...it's oh so sad to learn, only tonight (from my brother), that the song - in my view, obscenely hijacked, by the Coca-Cola Corporation...a company which once, like my own Christian denomination, shared the distinction (when no-one else did) of being located in each and every nation-state on the corner of the Globe (though unsure if that applies - in either case - to that little but ever significant piece of real estate known as the Holy See, i.e. the Vatican, a geo-political power that, utterly belying its geographical size or populace, today once more wields a religio-political influence upon world affairs unseen or unheard of since probably the time of the Great Protestant Reformation of the 1500s) - 'I'd like to teach the world to sing - in perfect harmony', was itself originally composed by said CCC as an advertising gimmick (or suchlike). A song in my view of such profundity that its 'co-option' (as I choose to see it) by the world's most popular and egregious pedlar of physical poison (next to and alongside the five Western powers still 'downloading' the dangerous, destructive 'elixir' of sodium fluoride upon their respective populations, quite apart from releasing its carcinogenic et al cousin compound 1080 upon the same) is a truly disheartening thing to say the least... ...and yet fails to detract one iota from the song's worth or quality in and of itself... This blogpost is my way of 'celebrating' - not! - this week's apparent 100th (or whatever) anniversary of said Coca-Cola Corporation...whose profiteering pirates and poisoners incorporated, may they reap the 'rewards' they so richly deserve for helping rot the teeth (among other things) of so many...contributing to humanity's teeth what the likes of Rothmans and Pall Mall et al have so long contributed to the lungs of so many others...
You Were Always On My Mind...You Were Always On My Mind: Thank you, and sleep in peace, Wayne Carson...
Four nights ago for some reason I still cannot quite fathom, the title and recurring refrain of this inescapable song of yesteryear, its haunting, brooding melody and simple yet oh so profound lyrics kept returning to my mind and conscious awareness...
So recurring were the tuneful words of the song's chorus that I sought eagerly among my 385-odd record collection to uncover the singer and/or particular LP containing it, but all to no avail...though it seemed to me the likes of Frank Sinatra or Burt Bacharach might have brought it to fame (and fortune)...
Little was I to know that only days later was its (to me, anyhow, never known) writer to leave this life...but that eerie reality came home to me this morning upon BBC News, where they mentioned none other than Wayne Carson, and a couple of other songs he'd composed, of which only one (or the three) I recollected at all, but not as anything great.
And then the penny dropped (as I recalled my weird experience Saturday night, as 'You were always on my mind' was at last cited...and its composer...who just so happened (and happens) to share a surname which means and has meant an awful lot to me...shared by a lady who might have meant an awful lot more to me if I hadn't let nerves and fear - those many (almost 22-odd) years ago in the US of A - consume me.
But thank God and praise the Lord for their fellow namesake Ben Carson, whose impeccable credentials - of character - place him head and shoulders, heart and soul, above and beyond any of his various and sundry Republican party rivals for the presidential nomination in 2016...not least of all the Self-Trumpeteer himself, a 'man' (if he ain't rather a mouse, to adopt the old adage) who has had the audacity, some would say the sheer nerve, to 'call out' and seek to cut down someone (Senator John McCain of Arizona) who had the ill-fortune to be captured in Korea, or was it Vietnam, and undergo torture as a prisoner of war for five long and rather miserable years...decrying and disparaging his status as a war hero, when said Trump himself epitomized sheer cowardice in the same, seeking (and obviously wildly succeeding) in five times apparently evading the draft, a fellow who didn't even have the courage of his convictions - as my own Dad certainly did, and suffered in consequence - to go to prison (or the equivalent in a labour camp and/or army barracks) for however long, because he happened - in The Don's case, it would seem quite evidently, not, to suffer whatever might befall him for being a man of integrity, a man of principle...
So rest in peace Wayne, go well Ben, and Elizabeth, all I can say with the immense benefit which hindsight ever provides, is 'You've been [oftentimes] on my mind'...and in my heart...
Saturday, July 18, 2015
And by the by, while the Western media loses no time in pursuing Queen Elizabeth the Second's supposed childhood Nazism, how about that selfsame media 'fessin' up to its absolute, unremitting double standards on that particular score...And no, I couldn't frankly give a toss about Wild Harry's Naziesque party escapades...it's also relatively small fry in the scheme of things...but surely - in view of all the regaling, celebrating and metaphorical wining and dining being entered into and engaged in by one and all over Pope Francis these days (admittedly oftentimes for good reason it would seem) - to maintain proper balance, ever and always a basic tenet of true journalistic ethics, least when I spent years deeply involved in the same on my high school newspaper - a little more investigation into the two previous pontiffs is called for: firstly, re the highly-acclaimed, long-serving John Paul the Second, who evidently never corrected the longstanding, incorrect media impression that he'd been at all, let alone deeply involved in the WW11 Resistance Movement, when none other than renowned author David Yallop long since uncovered the absolute falsity of such a pretension; and the media's very hands-off approach to *Pope Benedict the 16th's neo-Nazi youth, surely deserving of a far more in-depth, thorough investigation than the pitiful, pitiable, pathetic excuse for such we were all well and truly dished up with at the time...(*And that's not even reflecting upon how said mainstream (BBC in this instance) media, after loudly, repeatedly and rather insistently suggesting that he'd be facing no less than a citizen's arrest upon arrival in the U.K. (for what transpired, back in 2009 or 2010 I believe, as a well-feted, celebrity success, as appears from a video of the same I made of BBC footage at the time) for his well-publicized involvement in effectively covering up for various high-profile Roman Catholic cardinals and/or archbishops by repeatedly failing to follow up or through upon requests from numerous Catholic laity to properly investigate the same, instead effectually and continually sweeping the same under the proverbial carpet, despite maintaining for years, even decades prior, the position of head of the Roman Catholic Church's modern Inquisition (as it was indeed called, if in far more elaborate terminology admittedly, in a very recent incarnation of the same). Or perhaps it's a matter of who happens to be the geo-political flavour of the month, or to paraphrase George Orwell: we're all equal (and entitled to identical treatment from the powers that be, especially the legal authorities), but a few of us just so happen to be a little more powerful and influential than all others...Which surely, seeing as we've just celebrated the 800th, I believe, anniversary of the Magna Carta, isn't what its authors had in mind...or is it? But then other major geo-political leaders of recent years - the likes of Tony Blair and George Dubya - have managed to evade citizens' arrests and/or prosecution by the International Criminal Court for their own involvement in war crimes and/or wilfully misleading their respective citizenry, Sudan's President has once again evaded the same, Bashir Al-Assad, Benjamin Netanyahu et al routinely get away with the same or some might legitimately claim far worse...while Germany's Angela Merkel - alongside her Eurocratic colleagues-in-arms - has the sheer gall to heavy little old Greece into repaying comparatively insignificant monies when set, in relative terms, against the massive reparation debts owed by her own country following its barbarity and evil inflicted upon so many of its own and others in the 1930s and 1940s, which debt was freely and generously forgiven and forgotten by one and all and resulted in placing both it and its Eastern ally Japan on the sound economic footings in subsequent years and decades which saw both countries racing to the summit, the very zenith, of modern Western technological supremacy, and then some...'Nuff said? Methinks so!
Sure, the Pope looks real cute in that new outfit, and what a trickster, using that eaterie (or whatever) in South America for a redressing number: what a dag!...But hey, all I really wanna know, is how come the Vatican recently interposed to stay proceedings against a high-profile Polish archbishop/cardinal being arraigned on charges of child abuse/paedophilia etcetera...or could it happen to somehow implicate a former very high-profile pope from that thar part of de world? Just wonderin', truly...
Saturday, June 27, 2015
Wednesday, June 24, 2015
Dear Haley Barbour, Gary Cleary & Doug Brennan, South Carolina Republican Governor and legislators
At long last, a couple, no, three Republicans with the guts, the 'balls', (if you'll excuse my utter crassness), to stand out from the crowd, to deviate from the beaten track...to show that there are still a (if comparatively) few politicians in that land willing and prepared to go out on a limb and stand for principle; even if (and when) it'll - and it most assuredly will, so the South Carolinian opinion polls declare - inevitably cost them, and big...perhaps even finishing off their public careers.
But hey, if one's career is thus ended, because one allows one's emotions to correspond with the realities one's facing, is confronted with, and let's those have their full force, their true gravitas and bearing - upon one's political views and moreover decisions - then all power to such...and 'thank goodness' there are still such fibre-laden individuals in the land of the living. Eat your heart out, folks: Abe Lincoln and JFK would've been proud of y'all! And so is this lowly kiwi pleb... .
But hey, if one's career is thus ended, because one allows one's emotions to correspond with the realities one's facing, is confronted with, and let's those have their full force, their true gravitas and bearing - upon one's political views and moreover decisions - then all power to such...and 'thank goodness' there are still such fibre-laden individuals in the land of the living. Eat your heart out, folks: Abe Lincoln and JFK would've been proud of y'all! And so is this lowly kiwi pleb... .
Monday, June 22, 2015
Friday, May 22, 2015
ISIS: Iconoclasts (S.S. Revisited) Incorporated
In what struck me as an astonishing insight/'revelation' - as I revisited the History Channel's dvd set, 'Nostradamus: 2012', specifically its first dvd (by the selfsame title) early yesterday afternoon...I repeat, I was simply astonished/stunned - beyond measure...
Well aware as a prophecy buff, and moreover - (for a fraction under) three-some decades now - belonging to a Christian 'tradition' well-known for the same (i.e. its prophetic/end-time emphasis/understanding)...that prophecy is best understood 'after the fact'[i.e. event outlined] - since every man and his dog is otherwise only too capable of and willing to indulge in endless fanciful, imaginative interpretations of pretty well anything, and indeed everything under the sun - well into this long (one-and-a-half hour-long dvd) upon the predictions/'prophecies' of the likes of Nostradamus, the Mayans, Hopi Indians, (ancient) Egyptians, the Order of Freemasons et al...relating to whether, as a species, we're presently 'approaching a massive cosmic collision, a global environmental disaster, or an Armageddon-like religious showdown'...as I was 'saying', I was suddenly brought up short...
For it was indeed rather difficult to fully credit what I had - once again, this time with 'gobsmacking' impact - stumbled upon/across...
For amidst the seven-fold collection of symbolic image-adorned cards 'transmitted' by the alchemist Nostradamus was this rather stunning one:
*An 'S', much like a sibilant snake diagonally curled/draped around/across an upraised blade held by the hand at the end of an outstretched arm. Quite apart from such (ISIS) instantly springing to kind - no doubt, for all sorts of obvious reasons - its' hugely impactful role in majorly significant worldwide-impacting conflict at present, its characteristic (brutal and bloodthirsty, yet simplistically crude and primitive) weaponry...but what then hit me across the face as it were was my then (involuntary, even quite natural and logical) 'setting' of this symbolic image penned/drawn by Nostradamus all those centuries ago in its clear and obvious context...which was 'the coming [December 21st, 2012] Galactic (Re)-alignment'...
And then it hit me in all its raw power...said upraised sword 'en-tentacled' by its menacing-looking letter S was pointing - as the contributers to said dvd pointed out themselves, in fact - right up towards, even 'into' the point of this 26,000-year galactic (re-)alignment...- i.e. (and here I admit being a word buff no doubt helped immensely) right up into the very eye of said GRA, i.e. the very 'eye of the (coming) storm'...
And tell me, prithee, what does an S wrapped around an I (eye=I in symbolic shorthand, if you will) suggest...and no, you're no brain surgeon or Einstein for so guessing, I assure you...
But as if that alone were not anough to give me the goosebumps and then some...as if that alone were insufficient - in and of itself - to readily 'commend' such an interpretation to an impartial mind/disinterested onlooker, amidst the various and sundry 'quatrains' of the ever-enigmatic 'Nostradamus' was one disturbing yet eerily up-to-date poetic 'offering'(just a little earlier in said dvd) citing how 'the (ancient) pyramids of Geza' would be destroyed...an unimaginable prospect even in comparatively recent times, one would presume, yet now 'all of a sudden' an all-too-imminent prospect on the very near horizon for humanity...
Yes, no longer quite so unimaginable, as we warily watch and await these neanderthals from the Dark Ages even now - this very day, or rather night - entering the ancient historic city of Palmyra and preparing to wreak their will upon humanity's shared collective treasures of yesteryear...
Important and (as I see it) Necessary Caveats (to the foregoing)
Well aware that any 'offering'(of mine) such as this will be seen by some as only playing into the hands of such terroristic thugs and inhuman barbarians - about which, incidentally, a new neighbour - evidently as a number of others in modern-day Western society - apparently disbelieves, supposing such stuff all a media fabrication/conspiracy to keep one and all of us in the dark about what's really going on 'and down' upon Planet Earth - by thus 'naming' and identifying them as the subject, God forbid!, of prophetic writing...since they are evidently only too willing to be seen as fulfilling some apocalyptic end-time scenario role in world events...be that as it well may, I nevertheless feel it my duty to alert anyone willing to listen that the One Above 'is not ignorant of the wiles [of such, the devil's little henchmen - and women)'...and so, doing nothing without alerting His servants upon Earth, is not desirous of our remaining in naive ignorance a moment longer that we in fact do...
Moreover, as events now move rapidly into Syria, I am once again reminded of the various cryptic messages in Michael Drosnin's The Bible Code and The Bible Code 2, in which he reveals the notable place of Syria in final end-time military scenarios, perhaps - if we homo sapiens fail to heed due warning, resulting in a nuclear 'cataclysm' - itself mercifully limited maybe to Israel and in particular Jerusalem as things really start to wind down upon this Earth...
Interestingly, and as many of the contributers to aforementioned Nostradamus dvds often remind viewers, whether December 12th, 2012, as the time of the 26,000-year galactic realignment of our Milky Way, represents the actual 'end of all things' or rather 'the beginning of the end', i.e. the countdown thereto, is really one of personal conjecture and interpretation, and so to those who instantly dismiss anything related to such prophetic surmising as unworthy of any educated person's perusal much less credence, I would simply 'beg' this of you...go along to a dvd rental etc and view such programming in its entirety and then see where you stand...
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
I'll Stick With Barnaby rather than depthless Depp...
Undoubtedly my undying partiality for David L Wolper's inimitable, insurpassable, all-time wondrous original - and for me anyway, only 'true', authentic, ever-memorable - version of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory(starring/showcasing Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka and Peter Ostrum as Charlie)has much to do with it, but - from word go - I've never had a lot of time for, much less been a fan of, 'celebrity' Johnny Depp... ...and so, following very recent events in Aussie, in particular after viewing Campbell Live's refreshing item on the tail-end of last Friday evening's (May 15th)show...all I can 'say' is: At last! A politician (Australian Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce) any self-respecting *anti-politico (can readily respect, and then some... Though, truth be told, I quietly and earnestly breathed a prayer that the two pooches in question, what're their names, **Pistin and Peaches? -whatever!...might have their lives spared: after all, who likes to hear of innocent defenceless pets being 'put down' through no fault of their own... ...still, my view of Mr Depp and his entourage of press supporters no doubt, in this regard anyway, is pretty well in synchrony with that of 'ye average true dinkum Aussie'... 'Stuff you', mate, get real...and get yourself together...and stop 'strutting your stuff' (though you probably really believe it)...somehow supposing that your 'big name', your endless fame and fortune etcetera, can in some way get you off the hook where 'us', your fellow 'lesser mortals', Joe and Jane Pleb, wouldn't have a chance, a brass razoo in fact, of getting dealt with similarly... Yes, 'power corrupts...(etc)', but all power to Mr Joyce - hopefully no relative (near or far) of our (i.e. God's Own) own Minister Joyce...yep, he's 'called out' Mr Depp for the ............ he apparently is...simultaneously giving all of us 'little guys' (and gals) a rare politician to look up to...in a day and age of endless policy 'wonks', gutless wonder wannabe politicos parading themselves as anything but... And how appropriate for John Campbell to air the item following one tub-thumping NZ Minister known of recent times as one only to happy and willing to throw his not inconsiderable weight around...and get away with stuff which, again, us lower-level 'plebs' never would or could have... And what a refreshing contrast in this instance where the shoe is well and truly upon the other foot...i.e. the politician is the one here doing the naming and shaming (rather than (some among the ranks of) the so often high and mighty realm of generally elitist actors and actresses who never tire of pronouncing upon matters political...contrasting this, in my own mind, anyway, almost without even trying, with some of our own (again, Aotearoa-New Zealand) politicoes of recent years (e.g. brain-fading P.M. John Key with ponytailgate and his predecessor Helen Clark with her own litany of paintergate, speedgate etc...). *classiless names well-befitting such a non-star as JD, anyhow.. *Including, surely, that British fella in the news of late (who fatefully-, or rather fatally-endorsed unsuccessful British Labour's here today, skedaddled tomorrow, leader Ed Miliband (David's younger brother; I say that as a David myself with an older brother), what'shisname, ah yes - at last: Russel(l) Brandt (I believe...) **Or were they 'Peaches and Cream' pr'haps?
Monday, May 18, 2015
A Brief Catalogue of Bouquets to Bestow & Brickbats to Bequeath...
*The United States' InJustice System...0-2 out of 10 *That Sugar Film...8/10 out of 10 *Lee Kuan Yew...A Good, even Inimitable Innings *Malcolm Fraser...Proof That Principle Ever Trumps Political, Ideological Partisanship *The British Election Result: Victory of The Personally Secure over their Opposite No. *Barnaby Joyce versus Johnny Depp: The Sheer Superiority of Depth Over Vain Vacuity *Euthanasia NZ-style Revisited: A Debate the Self-Opinionated Media Refuse to Let Lie All posted in brief simply due to being chronically time-challenged, computer-compromised and techno-thwarted of recent times, and moreover 'today' to mark/celebrate my 50th Year and 5th month to the day...
Sunday, March 22, 2015
Recklessly Precipitating the Infamous 'Doomsday Clock' Ever Closer to the Midnight Hour
Benjamin Netanyahu - all my one-time admiration has now completely vanished, vamoosed, like the proverbial puff of smoke...admiration, that is, for the man's steely resolve, determination, 'principle(s)' - if of a rather perverse, twisted sort, at least ever since he and his cohorts unleashed criminal barbarity upon the innocents of Gaza (bearing in mind that not all those supposedly targeted there were 'innocents', but surely they bore the brunt of Israel's appalling inhumanity, yes genocide last year)...
...yes, he is nothing less (nor more) than an unregenerate warmonger driving the world, this Planet Earth - at the very least the Middle East (I hear some saying, not such a bad thing either - if that were 'all' it meant, i.e. a regional, 'localized' war - seeing as that region seems the main instigator, the chief culprit in inexorably plunging this globe) - into scenes of bloodshed, slaughter and wanton barbarity not seen since the very depths of the Dark Ages or the two world wars (the Holocaust excepted) themselves...ever more inexorably toward an all-out nuclear *Apocalypse, maybe even global *annihilation itself...the much-fabled *Armageddon of John the beloved's Revelation even.
Oddly enough, almost a cardboard cutout (as in the perverse 'alter ego' as it were) of his 'opposite number'...i.e. Isis - in thus - apparently - believing himself to be the fulfiller (**indeed arguably means of fulfilment) of ancient (doomsday) prophecies (contained in various scriptures)...
And note well the uncanny proximity of his recent 'completely unexpected' (landslide) re-election (victory) to Friday's 'triple whammy' of interstellar events, rare ****solar eclipse included, itself 'recalling' and echoing the biblical 'markers' of unwonted *****'signs in the heavens' *****('sun, moon and stars'), all serving to prefigure the very last days of Earth's rather checkered history, and the ever more imminent Return of the Messiah and associated 'End of the World'...could well and truly send a veritable chill down the spine of any objective observer, any punter out there looking on...
And these 'two' (i.e. Netanyahu and Isis, an odd 'couple' were there ever such) have recently been joined, or rather re-joined, by a third 'co-conspirator', itself no stranger to belief in and firm adherence to biblical prophecy, or moreover the historical enactment/unfolding thereof...i.e. the U.S. Republican 'Right'...no, wrong, which - - would, ******apparently, like nothing else than to (if none too gently) 'help' secure its part in the fulfilment of said biblical prophecies supposedly centering around the nation-state of Israel.
Such inglorious 'part' it has indeed now 'played' in its unprecedented, unbelievable and quite frankly traitorous, treasonous gall - worthy of the most severe criminal penalty in the United States, i.e. the death penalty or capital punishment (*******itself arguably befitting former American Vice-President Richard Chaney and President George W Bush for their respective parts in the Iraq War (#2)...- in seeking an unheard of unWhite House-sanctioned Congressional Address by Israel's leader, and then publicly-repudiating and effectively giving formal notice of future revoking (via an open letter from the US Congress to Netanyahu) President Obama's noble if likely ultimately unavailing efforts to get the Iranians to and around the the nuclear negotiating table...surely not a bad thing in view of the possible, potential, and increasingly glaringly obvious alternative, let alone the Iranians' admirable, commendable efforts of late in constituting one of the biggest bulwarks in the (Iraqi-based) fight-back against Isis...indeed in thus helping drive back (bigtime) the Isis push into Kurdistan... . (Such 'insubordinate' actions, I humbly submit, that were they even proposed much less enacted by a congressional Democratic Party majority opposition to a sitting Republican president - whether of the ilk of 'George W' or otherwise - would meet almost universal opprobrium and condemnation across the U.S. political landscape, yet the Republicans seem likely to emerge completely unscathed by the whole sordid affair.)
But none of these three protagonists/powers that be apparently want peace - even 'at minimal cost' - but rather seem ever so determined - and may I add it's no idle overstatement - in their apparent hell-bent quest (and in uncanny unison) to hurl/jettison this planet to the very edge/precipice of nuclear winter/ destruction...
Yes, indeed, the so-called Doomsday Clock has now well and truly inched a couple seconds, yea even arguably minutes closer to that fateful 'midnight hour' (except that post-9/11 it'd already moved so close to midnight that there haven't been all that many moments left remaining anyhow)...'simply' as a result of their various, criminal, recklessly foolhardy, but oh quite and ever so deliberate...race to oblivion...
May God Almighty help us all - because believe you me, nothing else will...
*Meaning here of course the end of all things, rather than the biblical book of endings, the aforementioned Book of Revelation, though the term is often interchanged for the same. Interestingly, all three 'concepts' (though I almost shudder to use such an abstract term for 'things' with such horrendous yet oh-so-down-to-earth, practical (and moreover ineradicable) consequences) of annihilation, Apocalypse and Armageddon used in conjunction remind me all of a sudden of an ancient biblical prophecy alongside an 'interpretation' of the same in an early 21st Century tome by a distinguished Jewish author, namely Michael Drosnin's The Bible Code and The Bible Code 2. To leave a little suspense and surprise for the avid reader, but to whet his or her appetite for such things, let me simply refer them to Isaiah 29:1-8, and TBC pp.130-133-135/136. And say that Jerusalem, Iran, Syria, Libya, and moreover, devastating (?nuclear-type?) weaponry are all writ large in the particular scenario depicted, itself enough (though admittedly read two-three years ago now by myself) to make me reconsider some of the points I've been making in this blogpost in accusation of Netanyahu at least. And scarily in synchrony with that deceased 20th Century 'apostle' of prophecy, Herbert Armstrong, which prophetic view his successors in 'the Church of God' have been bringing out of late upon their Sunday morning TV slot - though unfortunately jettisoning his Scriptural teachings on the Creator's and Redeemer's Seventh-Day Sabbath in a sad attempt to curry favour with aforementioned 'religious right' American fundamentalists, who will, for their own part, before all that long I suspect, themselves help precipitate - with the tacit but hearty blessing and sanction of a current world leader of no mean repute - not only their own nation, but the entire globe, into a crisis over religious liberty that will rapidly divide this world into but two classes: those adhering at all costs to their Maker and Remaker in upholding an institution whose origins date back to the Creation itself, and those who choose the easy way out - whether by actively rebelling against such by deliberately choosing to trample upon such or by simply acquiescing in such an ungodly arrangement, by passively merely 'going along, going along, going along'...with the crowd of humanity.
I'll add one hopeful though nevertheless somewhat realistic caveat to the just aforementioned: that scenario may well be the outcome for this planet and its inhabitants if the various 'actors' don't mend their ways, but thankfully, whereas in biblical prophecy much is conditional upon the response of human beings both individually and collectively, likewise in the various biblical codes uncovered by Drosnin & Co over recent years and decades...there ever seems room for that most inexplicable, unaccountable element of human life that makes life on Earth so simultaneously unnerving and exhilarating - so constantly 'predictably unpredictable': that much-maligned element of human choice/freedom/free will...
**As so graphically detailed/spelt out in the History Channel's spellbinding and uncannily ***accurate. 'Nostradamus: 2012: Hindsight Is 20/20. Foresight is 2012' - in particular in Parts three and four, 'God Vs Satan: The Final Battle', and Apocalypse: The Puzzle of Revelation'.
***If not in 2012 as the ultimate end-date of history, but then that's another matter for another discussion...such as I've already discussed, actually, over two years ago in fact, upon my other blogsite, http://consideryourself-frombothsidesnow.blogspot.com/ (or .co.nz/) - in a number of blogposts, in fact...
****In relation to said extremely rare 'blood (red) moons' of recent times, not only are these - in terms of human observation - extremely few and far between, exceedingly rare cosmic 'events', there have been a highly forboding succession of such interstellar 'signs' since 2012/2013 (I believe)...over the 20th Century associated with such pivotal historic events as the re-establishment of Israel in Palestine in 1948 and the re-capturing of Jerusalem in the 1967 War...and last year (in my view) with the unprecedented events of Israel's bloodthirsty bombing the hell out of Gaza, which event singlehandedly I would humbly submit, has itself done more than anything previous and possibly anything still to come to - rather permanently, I sadly suggest - turn the world's population and its political leadership decidedly against Israel and its people.
*****The 'Good Book' itself, of course, makes numerous mention of such 'signs in the heavens' - embracing 'sun,.moon and stars'[no doubt including various interplanetary bodies not only suns like ours] in all manner of places, both Older Testament and Newer Testament, including - especially - in the prophetic delineation by Jesus Christ (and his beloved disciple John) of the final days of Earth's 'His-story'...
******See e.g. their (ofttimes) ideological bedfellows the 'Neo-Conservatives' et al.
*******That is, if one truly, genuinely believes in 'justice', that one law ought to apply to one and all, to both leaders and 'subjects' etc etcetera etcetera etcetera - i.e. if one's profession to such noble virtues is not mere ideological hyperbole, just more empty, vacuous intellectual bombast and hype.
...yes, he is nothing less (nor more) than an unregenerate warmonger driving the world, this Planet Earth - at the very least the Middle East (I hear some saying, not such a bad thing either - if that were 'all' it meant, i.e. a regional, 'localized' war - seeing as that region seems the main instigator, the chief culprit in inexorably plunging this globe) - into scenes of bloodshed, slaughter and wanton barbarity not seen since the very depths of the Dark Ages or the two world wars (the Holocaust excepted) themselves...ever more inexorably toward an all-out nuclear *Apocalypse, maybe even global *annihilation itself...the much-fabled *Armageddon of John the beloved's Revelation even.
Oddly enough, almost a cardboard cutout (as in the perverse 'alter ego' as it were) of his 'opposite number'...i.e. Isis - in thus - apparently - believing himself to be the fulfiller (**indeed arguably means of fulfilment) of ancient (doomsday) prophecies (contained in various scriptures)...
And note well the uncanny proximity of his recent 'completely unexpected' (landslide) re-election (victory) to Friday's 'triple whammy' of interstellar events, rare ****solar eclipse included, itself 'recalling' and echoing the biblical 'markers' of unwonted *****'signs in the heavens' *****('sun, moon and stars'), all serving to prefigure the very last days of Earth's rather checkered history, and the ever more imminent Return of the Messiah and associated 'End of the World'...could well and truly send a veritable chill down the spine of any objective observer, any punter out there looking on...
And these 'two' (i.e. Netanyahu and Isis, an odd 'couple' were there ever such) have recently been joined, or rather re-joined, by a third 'co-conspirator', itself no stranger to belief in and firm adherence to biblical prophecy, or moreover the historical enactment/unfolding thereof...i.e. the U.S. Republican 'Right'...no, wrong, which - - would, ******apparently, like nothing else than to (if none too gently) 'help' secure its part in the fulfilment of said biblical prophecies supposedly centering around the nation-state of Israel.
Such inglorious 'part' it has indeed now 'played' in its unprecedented, unbelievable and quite frankly traitorous, treasonous gall - worthy of the most severe criminal penalty in the United States, i.e. the death penalty or capital punishment (*******itself arguably befitting former American Vice-President Richard Chaney and President George W Bush for their respective parts in the Iraq War (#2)...- in seeking an unheard of unWhite House-sanctioned Congressional Address by Israel's leader, and then publicly-repudiating and effectively giving formal notice of future revoking (via an open letter from the US Congress to Netanyahu) President Obama's noble if likely ultimately unavailing efforts to get the Iranians to and around the the nuclear negotiating table...surely not a bad thing in view of the possible, potential, and increasingly glaringly obvious alternative, let alone the Iranians' admirable, commendable efforts of late in constituting one of the biggest bulwarks in the (Iraqi-based) fight-back against Isis...indeed in thus helping drive back (bigtime) the Isis push into Kurdistan... . (Such 'insubordinate' actions, I humbly submit, that were they even proposed much less enacted by a congressional Democratic Party majority opposition to a sitting Republican president - whether of the ilk of 'George W' or otherwise - would meet almost universal opprobrium and condemnation across the U.S. political landscape, yet the Republicans seem likely to emerge completely unscathed by the whole sordid affair.)
But none of these three protagonists/powers that be apparently want peace - even 'at minimal cost' - but rather seem ever so determined - and may I add it's no idle overstatement - in their apparent hell-bent quest (and in uncanny unison) to hurl/jettison this planet to the very edge/precipice of nuclear winter/ destruction...
Yes, indeed, the so-called Doomsday Clock has now well and truly inched a couple seconds, yea even arguably minutes closer to that fateful 'midnight hour' (except that post-9/11 it'd already moved so close to midnight that there haven't been all that many moments left remaining anyhow)...'simply' as a result of their various, criminal, recklessly foolhardy, but oh quite and ever so deliberate...race to oblivion...
May God Almighty help us all - because believe you me, nothing else will...
*Meaning here of course the end of all things, rather than the biblical book of endings, the aforementioned Book of Revelation, though the term is often interchanged for the same. Interestingly, all three 'concepts' (though I almost shudder to use such an abstract term for 'things' with such horrendous yet oh-so-down-to-earth, practical (and moreover ineradicable) consequences) of annihilation, Apocalypse and Armageddon used in conjunction remind me all of a sudden of an ancient biblical prophecy alongside an 'interpretation' of the same in an early 21st Century tome by a distinguished Jewish author, namely Michael Drosnin's The Bible Code and The Bible Code 2. To leave a little suspense and surprise for the avid reader, but to whet his or her appetite for such things, let me simply refer them to Isaiah 29:1-8, and TBC pp.130-133-135/136. And say that Jerusalem, Iran, Syria, Libya, and moreover, devastating (?nuclear-type?) weaponry are all writ large in the particular scenario depicted, itself enough (though admittedly read two-three years ago now by myself) to make me reconsider some of the points I've been making in this blogpost in accusation of Netanyahu at least. And scarily in synchrony with that deceased 20th Century 'apostle' of prophecy, Herbert Armstrong, which prophetic view his successors in 'the Church of God' have been bringing out of late upon their Sunday morning TV slot - though unfortunately jettisoning his Scriptural teachings on the Creator's and Redeemer's Seventh-Day Sabbath in a sad attempt to curry favour with aforementioned 'religious right' American fundamentalists, who will, for their own part, before all that long I suspect, themselves help precipitate - with the tacit but hearty blessing and sanction of a current world leader of no mean repute - not only their own nation, but the entire globe, into a crisis over religious liberty that will rapidly divide this world into but two classes: those adhering at all costs to their Maker and Remaker in upholding an institution whose origins date back to the Creation itself, and those who choose the easy way out - whether by actively rebelling against such by deliberately choosing to trample upon such or by simply acquiescing in such an ungodly arrangement, by passively merely 'going along, going along, going along'...with the crowd of humanity.
I'll add one hopeful though nevertheless somewhat realistic caveat to the just aforementioned: that scenario may well be the outcome for this planet and its inhabitants if the various 'actors' don't mend their ways, but thankfully, whereas in biblical prophecy much is conditional upon the response of human beings both individually and collectively, likewise in the various biblical codes uncovered by Drosnin & Co over recent years and decades...there ever seems room for that most inexplicable, unaccountable element of human life that makes life on Earth so simultaneously unnerving and exhilarating - so constantly 'predictably unpredictable': that much-maligned element of human choice/freedom/free will...
**As so graphically detailed/spelt out in the History Channel's spellbinding and uncannily ***accurate. 'Nostradamus: 2012: Hindsight Is 20/20. Foresight is 2012' - in particular in Parts three and four, 'God Vs Satan: The Final Battle', and Apocalypse: The Puzzle of Revelation'.
***If not in 2012 as the ultimate end-date of history, but then that's another matter for another discussion...such as I've already discussed, actually, over two years ago in fact, upon my other blogsite, http://consideryourself-frombothsidesnow.blogspot.com/ (or .co.nz/) - in a number of blogposts, in fact...
****In relation to said extremely rare 'blood (red) moons' of recent times, not only are these - in terms of human observation - extremely few and far between, exceedingly rare cosmic 'events', there have been a highly forboding succession of such interstellar 'signs' since 2012/2013 (I believe)...over the 20th Century associated with such pivotal historic events as the re-establishment of Israel in Palestine in 1948 and the re-capturing of Jerusalem in the 1967 War...and last year (in my view) with the unprecedented events of Israel's bloodthirsty bombing the hell out of Gaza, which event singlehandedly I would humbly submit, has itself done more than anything previous and possibly anything still to come to - rather permanently, I sadly suggest - turn the world's population and its political leadership decidedly against Israel and its people.
*****The 'Good Book' itself, of course, makes numerous mention of such 'signs in the heavens' - embracing 'sun,.moon and stars'[no doubt including various interplanetary bodies not only suns like ours] in all manner of places, both Older Testament and Newer Testament, including - especially - in the prophetic delineation by Jesus Christ (and his beloved disciple John) of the final days of Earth's 'His-story'...
******See e.g. their (ofttimes) ideological bedfellows the 'Neo-Conservatives' et al.
*******That is, if one truly, genuinely believes in 'justice', that one law ought to apply to one and all, to both leaders and 'subjects' etc etcetera etcetera etcetera - i.e. if one's profession to such noble virtues is not mere ideological hyperbole, just more empty, vacuous intellectual bombast and hype.
Wednesday, January 7, 2015
Battling On Beyond Belief, with Armies and Enemies Galore: Hobbit film Instalment #3: An Unexpected Desolation, But Not of Smaug's Making
So what may we conclude about this third instalment upon the Jacksonesque reinterpretation of JRR Tolkien's great kids' fantasy story, The Hobbit? Well, far as this dude's concerned, it's an adequate film, rendered moreover in classic, even inimitable Peter Jackson Et Al style, but, alas - in the final analysis - one all too soon forgotten, much less fodder for writing home about. So where does it go wrong - if my preceding comments are to mean anything at all? As well as, in fact, right, if I'm to do my own previously-posted notes and observations the justice they deserve?
To avoid relitigating each and every last point and/or issue, angle and nuance thereof raised in my previous three blogposts upon 'The Battle of the Five Armies', let's cut to the chase, and deal with some broad, overarching aspects and themes relating thereto, ones that bear directly upon the significance, the poignancy and power, the utility if you will, of this third and final take upon Tolkien's classic childrens' adventure tale. On how - if in any way or in any real sense at all - the Five Armies actually adds value, if you will, to JRR's literary legacy: as in, say, expanding upon the impact, the pathos and power, the sense and force, the understanding of Tolkien's original story. Whether this particular interpretation or take upon The Hobbit really contributes anything meaningful to the literary tome left us a little over *77 years ago by JRR Tolkien, thanks to George Allen and Unwin 'running with it', as it were, following the chance or indeed providential reading, nay devouring of the story by ***Stanley Unwin's 10-year-old son Rayner, who 'gave it the thumbs up and the rest is history.'
Beginning on the positive side of the ledger, giving the good news (on the topic) first, my overriding impression is that this final flick certainly shows great consistency with the previous two cinematic adaptations of Tolkien's work (or, more correctly, five such (already-produced and screened) filmic reinterpretations, if we include the three Lord of the Rings 'sequels', termed such only inasmuch as, in strict Tolkienesque chronology, they are successors to the current Hobbit 'prequels'.). As such it is typically and thankfully full of, yea overflowing, with el usual super-abundance of superlative visual effects, action and even carefully-nuanced characterizations of certain key members of the cast, most notably Bard (the Bowman, Dragon-Slayer and Saviour of Esgaroth), Alfrid, Chief Advisor of the Master of Lake-town, Smaug the Chiefest and Most Terrible of Calamities, the Elvenking Thranduil and his warriors of note Tauriel and Legolas, and Thorin, Gandalf, Balin and Dain Ironfoot (aka comedian extraordinaire, Billy Connolly). Not to ignore the ongoing, superb performance of Bilbo Baggins, though his role in this film I feel is, though not necessarily less impressive in delivery, somewhat played down in scope and/or prominence at least.
Yes, we are treated to an ongoing roller-coaster ride, for sure, of fast-moving, coherent, suspense-laden action and plot moving toward the much-heralded, climactic Battle of the Five Armies and its immediate aftermath/denouement: Thorin's death; the reconciliation of all the forces of good; and ultimately Bilbo's gracious exit from the scene with chief adventurer Gandalf the Grey and a distinctly ungracious reception by one and all Baggins' kith and kin upon his home-coming in Bag-End. Yes, the ending, in its complete de-escalation of the plot and ****anticlimactic return of our hero Bilbo the Adventurer to the supposed comforts of home in quiet little Hobbiton - in both quintessential Tolkien substance and style - thereby pays long-overdue credit and tribute to JRR's remarkable literary instincts and good sense. For arriving at said comfy Bag-End residence we see Mr Baggins - as were Frodo, Samwise Gamgee, Pippin and Merry in Tolkien's original storyline in The Lord of the Rings (if definitely not so in the Jacksonesque take thereupon!) - 'greeted' not only by ignorance of his great world-saving adventures, but by positive indifference thereabouts and even utter contempt for his very (and moreover now justly-esteemed) personage; 'in absentia' this being misunderstood, misinterpreted, misconstrued in the worst possible light and with the worst possible construction placed thereupon - to be duly charitable to Bilbo's 'folks' and townspeople.
Anyhow, suffice to say, in their own unique, truly inimitable way and style, Jackson & Co sweep one and all up and along in their usual cinematic tsunami of action-studded, exciting, suspense-dripping action and adventure... . So much so, in fact - but of course! - we can hardly breathe a breath till it is all over, rover, all too soon, nuff said, 'that's all she wrote'. Before we can barely blink an eye (under our 3D glasses, themselves under our regular ones if you happen to be 'four-eyed' like me). So far so good, that's for sure...and yet... .
And yet - as I've alluded to already - when I later, even immediately afterwards, outside the picture theatre, sought to involuntarily, instinctively, intuitively as it were, reflect upon said experience...nothing no nothing stuck nor came back to me, sprang readily to mind, nothing really 'grabbed me', leapt out at me from said experience...much to this Jackson devotee's very real disappointment, you can be sure!
*Incredibly, not only did the Hobbit finale premiere upon the 77th anniversary year of the first printing of The Hobbit, December 7th (NZ time) and/or the 8th (Northern Hemisphere time) would've actually been **77 years and 77 days to the date, and my own (recent) ****50th birthday would've constituted the 77th year and 88th day!
**When I discovered this fact - around the 3rd or 4th of December, to be sure - I'd meant to inform Weta Workshop et al, but I missed doing so and realized anyhow that they'd probably not be able to transfer the start date at such a late stage anyway even were they to consider my point an interesting and moreover valid one!)
***Info well known and freely available, provided in this instance by Sarah Oliver's An A-Z of JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit: An Unendorsed Colourful and Critical Guide Celebrating the Movies. (Completed and published perhaps even before, or at least simultaneous with, the release of the first film.)
****Even more amazingly to this devoted hobbit-worshipper, the Hobbit trilogy's grand finale this year not only happened to coincide - in an incredible way, as just outlined - with my own first half century, but just a little over two months following what would have been my beloved Grandma's 111th! In addition the New Zealand premiere of Battle of the Five Armies also coincided with my own (one-time fellow LOTR and Hobbit devotee, till the politics thereof skewed his views thereof to the nth degree and beyond) nephew's *****22nd ('tweens, to paraphrase Tolkien), or came a day or two (at most) prior. The first and second films' premieres likewise coincided with CJB's birthday, moreover he like myself at one point was also actively looking into trying to secure a role as an extra upon the movies (c/o auditioning in Oamaru, a stone's throw up the road). But ultimately only I went up, and as readers of my blogsite will be well aware, I didn't manage to cut the mustard; otherwise I'd have been one of the many townspeople in the various Lake-town scenes (in movies #2 and #3), shot around the North Otago township/village of Twizel, which I believe also featured in the Rings' films, or at least Fellowship of the Ring, that is those (like the first and/or second Hobbit flicks) featuring Bree and its infamous bar.
****I noticed also yesterday, as I now start re-reading The Hobbit once more for perhaps the fourth time, that Bilbo's own adventures 'never arrived, until Bilbo Baggins was grown up, being about fifty years old or so...'!
*****My fascination with all these various and assorted 'milestone' birthdays, or, more correctly, 'birth-anniversaries' as my beloved (might've been )'step-dad', Richard Welch, used to put it, is simply the fact - as all devoted Tolkien afficionadoes would only be too well aware - that Bilbo and Frodo of course celebrated their 111th and 33rd respectively in the immediate run-up to Frodo setting out with his three cobbers on their quest with the one ring, and also - as I only rediscovered just the other day, Bilbo's own original adventure likewise coincided with his own 50th. So the seeming synchronicity with such is rather striking to me, to put it mildly.
******In yet another serendipitous twist - in light of my essential evaluation of this final film, and moreover in terms of my view of the relative diminishing 'quality' of the two preceding ones - I'm more than just a little intrigued that my trusty Chambers Concise Dictionary provides the following entry definition to the word 'anticlimax': 'a ludicrous drop in impressiveness after a progressive rise.' Hey, what can I say, but 'nuff said'!
*******Disclaimer: As with previous blogposts, I have scrupulously avoided listening to or reading all but the most cursory references to (as in 'reviews' of) this final hobbit film (as of 'penning' these four blogposts, indeed as of the present moment still), one way I feel I can legitimately critique them without being unduly influenced by others' views, opinions and/or prejudices. Indeed even my brother, loath to do the same and thus spoil my cinematic experience, and who'd invited me along with my two young 'all things Lord of the Ringish-loving' nephews, to the midnight premiere for my 50th, refused to even say whether he and they actually really enjoyed the experience or otherwise...and indeed I'm still not altogether all that sure.
To avoid relitigating each and every last point and/or issue, angle and nuance thereof raised in my previous three blogposts upon 'The Battle of the Five Armies', let's cut to the chase, and deal with some broad, overarching aspects and themes relating thereto, ones that bear directly upon the significance, the poignancy and power, the utility if you will, of this third and final take upon Tolkien's classic childrens' adventure tale. On how - if in any way or in any real sense at all - the Five Armies actually adds value, if you will, to JRR's literary legacy: as in, say, expanding upon the impact, the pathos and power, the sense and force, the understanding of Tolkien's original story. Whether this particular interpretation or take upon The Hobbit really contributes anything meaningful to the literary tome left us a little over *77 years ago by JRR Tolkien, thanks to George Allen and Unwin 'running with it', as it were, following the chance or indeed providential reading, nay devouring of the story by ***Stanley Unwin's 10-year-old son Rayner, who 'gave it the thumbs up and the rest is history.'
Beginning on the positive side of the ledger, giving the good news (on the topic) first, my overriding impression is that this final flick certainly shows great consistency with the previous two cinematic adaptations of Tolkien's work (or, more correctly, five such (already-produced and screened) filmic reinterpretations, if we include the three Lord of the Rings 'sequels', termed such only inasmuch as, in strict Tolkienesque chronology, they are successors to the current Hobbit 'prequels'.). As such it is typically and thankfully full of, yea overflowing, with el usual super-abundance of superlative visual effects, action and even carefully-nuanced characterizations of certain key members of the cast, most notably Bard (the Bowman, Dragon-Slayer and Saviour of Esgaroth), Alfrid, Chief Advisor of the Master of Lake-town, Smaug the Chiefest and Most Terrible of Calamities, the Elvenking Thranduil and his warriors of note Tauriel and Legolas, and Thorin, Gandalf, Balin and Dain Ironfoot (aka comedian extraordinaire, Billy Connolly). Not to ignore the ongoing, superb performance of Bilbo Baggins, though his role in this film I feel is, though not necessarily less impressive in delivery, somewhat played down in scope and/or prominence at least.
Yes, we are treated to an ongoing roller-coaster ride, for sure, of fast-moving, coherent, suspense-laden action and plot moving toward the much-heralded, climactic Battle of the Five Armies and its immediate aftermath/denouement: Thorin's death; the reconciliation of all the forces of good; and ultimately Bilbo's gracious exit from the scene with chief adventurer Gandalf the Grey and a distinctly ungracious reception by one and all Baggins' kith and kin upon his home-coming in Bag-End. Yes, the ending, in its complete de-escalation of the plot and ****anticlimactic return of our hero Bilbo the Adventurer to the supposed comforts of home in quiet little Hobbiton - in both quintessential Tolkien substance and style - thereby pays long-overdue credit and tribute to JRR's remarkable literary instincts and good sense. For arriving at said comfy Bag-End residence we see Mr Baggins - as were Frodo, Samwise Gamgee, Pippin and Merry in Tolkien's original storyline in The Lord of the Rings (if definitely not so in the Jacksonesque take thereupon!) - 'greeted' not only by ignorance of his great world-saving adventures, but by positive indifference thereabouts and even utter contempt for his very (and moreover now justly-esteemed) personage; 'in absentia' this being misunderstood, misinterpreted, misconstrued in the worst possible light and with the worst possible construction placed thereupon - to be duly charitable to Bilbo's 'folks' and townspeople.
Anyhow, suffice to say, in their own unique, truly inimitable way and style, Jackson & Co sweep one and all up and along in their usual cinematic tsunami of action-studded, exciting, suspense-dripping action and adventure... . So much so, in fact - but of course! - we can hardly breathe a breath till it is all over, rover, all too soon, nuff said, 'that's all she wrote'. Before we can barely blink an eye (under our 3D glasses, themselves under our regular ones if you happen to be 'four-eyed' like me). So far so good, that's for sure...and yet... .
And yet - as I've alluded to already - when I later, even immediately afterwards, outside the picture theatre, sought to involuntarily, instinctively, intuitively as it were, reflect upon said experience...nothing no nothing stuck nor came back to me, sprang readily to mind, nothing really 'grabbed me', leapt out at me from said experience...much to this Jackson devotee's very real disappointment, you can be sure!
*Incredibly, not only did the Hobbit finale premiere upon the 77th anniversary year of the first printing of The Hobbit, December 7th (NZ time) and/or the 8th (Northern Hemisphere time) would've actually been **77 years and 77 days to the date, and my own (recent) ****50th birthday would've constituted the 77th year and 88th day!
**When I discovered this fact - around the 3rd or 4th of December, to be sure - I'd meant to inform Weta Workshop et al, but I missed doing so and realized anyhow that they'd probably not be able to transfer the start date at such a late stage anyway even were they to consider my point an interesting and moreover valid one!)
***Info well known and freely available, provided in this instance by Sarah Oliver's An A-Z of JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit: An Unendorsed Colourful and Critical Guide Celebrating the Movies. (Completed and published perhaps even before, or at least simultaneous with, the release of the first film.)
****Even more amazingly to this devoted hobbit-worshipper, the Hobbit trilogy's grand finale this year not only happened to coincide - in an incredible way, as just outlined - with my own first half century, but just a little over two months following what would have been my beloved Grandma's 111th! In addition the New Zealand premiere of Battle of the Five Armies also coincided with my own (one-time fellow LOTR and Hobbit devotee, till the politics thereof skewed his views thereof to the nth degree and beyond) nephew's *****22nd ('tweens, to paraphrase Tolkien), or came a day or two (at most) prior. The first and second films' premieres likewise coincided with CJB's birthday, moreover he like myself at one point was also actively looking into trying to secure a role as an extra upon the movies (c/o auditioning in Oamaru, a stone's throw up the road). But ultimately only I went up, and as readers of my blogsite will be well aware, I didn't manage to cut the mustard; otherwise I'd have been one of the many townspeople in the various Lake-town scenes (in movies #2 and #3), shot around the North Otago township/village of Twizel, which I believe also featured in the Rings' films, or at least Fellowship of the Ring, that is those (like the first and/or second Hobbit flicks) featuring Bree and its infamous bar.
****I noticed also yesterday, as I now start re-reading The Hobbit once more for perhaps the fourth time, that Bilbo's own adventures 'never arrived, until Bilbo Baggins was grown up, being about fifty years old or so...'!
*****My fascination with all these various and assorted 'milestone' birthdays, or, more correctly, 'birth-anniversaries' as my beloved (might've been )'step-dad', Richard Welch, used to put it, is simply the fact - as all devoted Tolkien afficionadoes would only be too well aware - that Bilbo and Frodo of course celebrated their 111th and 33rd respectively in the immediate run-up to Frodo setting out with his three cobbers on their quest with the one ring, and also - as I only rediscovered just the other day, Bilbo's own original adventure likewise coincided with his own 50th. So the seeming synchronicity with such is rather striking to me, to put it mildly.
******In yet another serendipitous twist - in light of my essential evaluation of this final film, and moreover in terms of my view of the relative diminishing 'quality' of the two preceding ones - I'm more than just a little intrigued that my trusty Chambers Concise Dictionary provides the following entry definition to the word 'anticlimax': 'a ludicrous drop in impressiveness after a progressive rise.' Hey, what can I say, but 'nuff said'!
*******Disclaimer: As with previous blogposts, I have scrupulously avoided listening to or reading all but the most cursory references to (as in 'reviews' of) this final hobbit film (as of 'penning' these four blogposts, indeed as of the present moment still), one way I feel I can legitimately critique them without being unduly influenced by others' views, opinions and/or prejudices. Indeed even my brother, loath to do the same and thus spoil my cinematic experience, and who'd invited me along with my two young 'all things Lord of the Ringish-loving' nephews, to the midnight premiere for my 50th, refused to even say whether he and they actually really enjoyed the experience or otherwise...and indeed I'm still not altogether all that sure.
Wednesday, December 24, 2014
Bullet-Pointed Inventory of The Battle of the Five Armies
So let me run through what I see as the major flaws/foibles and successes/strengths of the third and final Hobbit film, which we'll presume is PJ et al's *'lucky last' cinematic interpretation of JRR Tolkien's fantasies. These - with much 'after the fact' additional fleshing out - I am simply repeating in the exact order in which they occurred to me on Tuesday the 16th of December (New Zealand time), with a **plus or a **minus immediately preceding each one, signifying whether that point is to me on the positive or negative side of the ledger, i.e. a bouquet or a brickbat.
+Bilbo Baggins - Master of the (perfectly placed, carefully enunciated, and adeptly put) Understatement.
+Lotsa rather effective love metaphors (cf Song of Songs in the Good Book's Older Testament).
+Tauriel/Kili and Legolas/Thranduil were very carefully and effectively - if rather unTolkienesquely, let's be honest - portrayed.+Especially good characterization/character development of the three elves.
+/-Alfrid (the Master of Lake-town's #1 civil servant, courtier, PR consultant and general bootlicker): as in Hobbit film #2, very well done - but what became of/where'd his Master disappear to? (Or, as my brother informed me, was he in fact not vaporized by, but rather landed upon and squashed to death and a million odd smithereens, as Smaug impacted upon the Long Lake in his final death descent? Most probably.)
--The fabled Arkenstone itself? Not all that impressive; in fact I was distinctly unimpressed. For the very 'heart of the (Lonely) Mountain', surely PJ & Co could've come up with something, anything, much better, i.e. a gemstone - in colour, texture, shape and size, in sheer, pure outward glory, splendour and overall majesty - more truly befitting royal status? Would that have really been too much to ask? As a bare minimum any of Earth's present-day super-abundance of precious metals and crown jewels of say India or Burma, or some Middle Eastern emirate or caliphate even would've sufficed, one would have presumed. I mean, really. (As so often happens in my life - 'beset' by odd, bizarre serendipities, felicities, synchronicities or what some would merely term 'coincidences', but which I prefer to see as mini-Providences or even minor miracles (of a sort) - just a few minutes ago (4/1/2015) NZ TV One's nightly 6 p.m. News featured an item about a comet presently passing over Planet Earth and/or through its ionosphere: this little 'beastie' from outer space, named ***LoveJoy apparently, glowing with a stunning bright blue radiance like the most majestic, dazzling midday sky, is exactly, precisely, in every which way in fact what the Arkenstone ought to have looked like. So take good and proper note, Sir Peter, and realize what a little more time and effort could have done...transforming an utter fizzer into something to write home about. At least you got the general colour of the Mountain's 'Heart' right, though even that was a little fuzzy and hazy around the edges.)
-Bilbo oughta have become invisible during the major battle finale - again, as in Tolkien's original story; and not only for this reason, as Mr Baggins was quite obviously hardly any sort of a match for the various orc/goblin etc adversaries accosting, confronting and tackling him (and his associates and other allies) from all directions. (See similar remarks vis-a-vis Bilbo Baggins and the wolves/wargs at the very end of film #1.)
++(Cinematically) effective as in well wrought, powerfully portrayed battle royales - especially those between Azog and Thorin, and Bolg, Tauriel and Legolas. Yet, oddly enough, unlike the two earlier Hobbit and three Lord of the Rings films, in this particular instance it seemed somewhat appropriate, being, after all, effectively 'the Battle of the Five Armies' (and much more significantly, of course, of Smaug's demise). Surprisingly, for Peter Jackson, not overdone (in terms of what was 'necessary' to make the film, as they say, a 'goer'), and, as I say, if ever such high dudgeon-based action were justified, it was in this film (of the six). Though such fighting did probably absorb, when Smaug's death-dealing siege of Esgaroth is included, well over half this final film, the comparative portion of the book, by sharp contrast, actually constituted just under a sixth (less than 16%) of its contents, I've only now uncovered to my surprise; and for the barely three pages devoted to Smaug actually attacking Esgaroth, only seven measly pages concerns the topic/title of this final film, i.e. the battle of the five armies!) Not that I really find such warfare something I particularly enjoy, much less consider an apt or accurate reflection of Tolkien's relevant tomes (i.e. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings), but if any of the six Hobbit/LOTR films seemingly deserved such treatment, one might have supposed it was this one. But once again, closer inspection proves vastly otherwise! (It wouldn't escape an observant reader of this and earlier posts just how much PJ et al's rendition of JRR's works has gradually, insidiously, imperceptibly lowered my otherwise once high expectations, so that as this grand finale has at last shown its head not only has mediocrity now apparently become the norm and trumped all in its inexorable path, Tolkien-Jackson devotees such as myself now indeed expect no more, and are thus almost content with that rather sad and sorry status quo.) How have the once mighty cinematographers fallen!
++Much more realistic (cf LOTR) in terms of the multiple deaths of the protagonists.
+/-Billy Connolly is well utilized - as far as he is in fact used - but strangely vanishes off the page in the various mini-battle finales (such as those aforementioned ones between both Azog and Bolg and 'the [various and assorted] goodies').
++Good - if rather belated - reversion to Tolkienesque ending - unlike LOTR. Hence much more realistic and true to JRR's tome, as in (again, cf the third LOTR film - not) Bilbo, much like Frodo, Sam, Pippin and Merry in Tolkien's The Return of the King, arriving home not to cheers, hurrahs and general, well-earned acclaim - i.e. what he (and they) properly deserved, a heroes' welcome - but rather to a general divvying up of Bilbo Baggins' (& Co's) assorted lifetime goods, hoardings and everyday stuff. Of course, upon arrival back in Bag-End, Mister Baggins by his very, if unwelcome, presence, promptly puts an end to these unwarranted proceedings, putting swift paid to all those unjustified consequences of assuming he'd suffered a premature demise. As ****one wag famously described a similar past occurrence: "Rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated."
+/-Am glad that Billy Boyd (Pippin in LOTR) secured some sort of a role in the film, if 'only' in the musical score 'The Last Goodbye' at the very end. Though actually, unlike both the preceding Hobbit flicks and especially the three Lord of the Rings' films, I'm constrained to say that musical scores in The Five Armies were neither especially well done nor for that matter all that noticeable much less memorable. In fact, I have to add that I've absolutely no lasting memory of any tunes let alone lyrics from film #3, though a haunting one remains from one of the first two flicks, something about going in search of dragon treasure and the like, upon an adventure the end thereof being still completely unknown and eliciting much trepidation. That one, whatever it was, did have a certain 'catchiness' and haunting broodiness to it, enabling easy recall; indeed readily coming into mind just now for the first time in possibly yonks when I simply tasked my mind to recollect any such tunes and words still residing within one of memory's vaults.
+/-The film early on seemed to constantly jump back and forth between various settings with their respective actors and thus evoked a sense of the Rings' films especially following the splitting up of the Nine Companions; such 'cutting' in and out actually serving the useful purpose of keeping the viewer upon his or her toes and in a state of unremitting suspense thus only enhancing the tension and dramatic effect.
+/-Fine characterization of Thorin: his stubbornness ('purest' obstinacy), 'dragonsickness' and relationship to Bilbo are conveyed with aplomb; but his death, though welcome as one of the film's realistic elements (see above), appears uncannily reminiscent of Boromir's death 'speech' in PJ's Fellowship of the Ring, belatedly apologizing for not having had the prescience to discern the reality of Bilbo Baggins' (cf Frodo's) loyalty and devotion to the cause. (See also my criticisms of Hobbit #2 film's disconcertingly frequent echoes/repeats of other major Rings' film scenes and speeches.)
+/-Despite the relatively (as in appropriate to the source text) fitting ending (as above) - and admittedly it was probably much too hard to show Bilbo's return alongside Gandalf et al all the way back to Bag End or at least Hobbiton - it is a bit strained at times vis-a-vis frequent and all too obvious attempts to tie together all three Hobbit and Lord of the Rings films (is too much like 'with the benefit of hindsight' etc), though such touches as re-inserting Bilbo - at the start and end of the Hobbit saga - in his older Ian Holm manifestation, is obviously necessary to tie the two trilogies together, notwithstanding these 'touches' do come over as increasingly forced and unnatural in my view.
+Thranduil's (the Elven-king's) imperious coldness, severity is well-depicted.
+Alfrid's weaselly/cowardly and money-grubbing tendencies is a brilliant touch.
+/+The Lakeshore (cf LOTR film#2) is well shot/very realistically done (set similarly along some Central Otago lakescape?)...and Lake-town residents' well-founded anger at Alfrid and his Master (who has now vamoosed, leaving his dutiful, most devoted servant to cop all the blame and opprobrium) is well-depicted.
+Bard's kids - very 'quaint'(ly done) and appropriate in both attire and sober, serious demeanour (again, cf the Two Towers film).
-The talking raven, Roac son of Carc, could have been used to much better effect, as in actually doing just that, i.e.talking, communicating in actuality with the likes of Bard and the dwarves, as in Tolkien's tome. As opposed to Bard et al simply instinctively, intuitively knowing precisely what to do, which was the most appropriate course of action to take in the circumstances - whether in terms of unveiling, literally uncovering Smaug's best kept secret, the hollow beside his left breast, or as in the tread of footsoldiers coming towards the Lonely Mountain as the imminent 'battle of the five armies' drew ever closer, or for that matter Bilbo's being informed that 'Hi-ho, Smaug is Dead, the Dragonbeast is dead, the Dragonbeast is dead, hi-ho, the wicked Smaug is dead' (in the inimitable manner of The Wizard of Oz) rather than - as the film erroneously depicted - his being able to espy such as occurring merely by the dancing of light and flame upon the far horizon.
+Effective villains/battle sites [Stone/Mountain Trolls etc: cf Thunder 'Trolls' in film#1]. The snowy mountain fastnesses and melting ice crusts are realistic, as is the poignant, literally gripping moment when Azog stabs Thorin from below, piercing his battle-hardened and weary feet from beneath, another more realistic touch, showing there's life in the old rogue yet.
+Villains (especially Azog/Bolg) were thus realistically portrayed here, not being easily defeated let alone killed off (for good).
+Odd but effective 'touch' having King Thorin himself thus die, and before he gets to taste the joy of securing Smaug's vast treasure hoard for good and ever after, but as in the book, this realistic scene only enhances the credibility of the story as a whole.
+Nice good-bye scene of Bilbo with the ?nine/ten? remaining/surviving dwarves, not only Thorin, but Fili and Kili also suffering martyrdom for the cause I believe.
-Not so/very much is seen of the other company dwarves this time, including Balin, the overall emphasis indeed being distinctly non-dwarvish, upon such new stars/novas as Bard (and the Lake-'men' generally), Tauriel, Thranduil and Legolas.
Introductory scene of the Chief Villain, the Dragon Smaug, beseiging Lake-town is well-enacted/depicted - featuring no Jacksonesque el typical (though they do work very well in The Lord of the Rings flicks, and in the first Hobbit film anyhow) backgrounder or flashback. Yes, Smaug here in his final moments is every bit as downright scary, vengeful and fire-breathe-ingly nasty as he should have been, as his well-earned reputation warranted.
Radagast the rustic, country bumpkin wizard is okay, if merely adequate here, though the eagles are well done again. Whereas 'the Lady Galadriel' - shades if not major overtones of 'Mother Mary' of Roman Catholic 'Mary, Mother of God' in/famy (which I realize is no great insight or new revelation) - is also okay, if a little strained (in trying to connect Lord of the Rings' and Hobbit films; again, cf Hobbit films#1 and 2.)
+/- Six-minute specially-designed Introduction adequate - as far as it went - but really neither here nor there (as in a useful add-on). Better for Jackson/Tolkien afficionadoes to invest in proper backgrounder dvds (like those accompanying the Lord of the Rings films).
-/+Way too many un-credible close shaves for Bilbo Baggins, whereas compare and contrast and note well the highly credible near-killing of Gandalf.
+/-Scenery at the start is typically kiwi-ish picturesque, yet somehow, unaccountability - it pains me to say this and quite frankly I didn't think I'd (ever) be doing so - unrealistic, as in somewhat unpersuasive; like picture painting, cf actual photo shot.
+Depiction of Thorin's unaccountable, 'death'll first freeze over before I'll ever back down, and even then I won't', stubbornly senseless intractableness - seen in relation to other characters, not only Bard the Bowman and Dragon-Slayer, but moreover his fellow (special company) dwarves - i.e. both friends and kindred and foes alike - is especially effectively portrayed, being almost a master-stroke of the film's characterization...and unfortunately one of the very few really good examples thereof in Battle of the Five Armies.
+Billy Connolly's much-vaunted entrance a welcome and interesting respite, even a foil of a sorts to other characters/the situation in general. But ultimately a bit of an anticlimax, as no sooner are we introduced to Dain, King of the Northern Dwarvish Kingdom than, hey presto, we see no more of him.
+Thorin et al's determination to go in a 'to the death' pursuit of Azog, Bolg et al [Enemy Head Honchos Inc.] is a somewhat useful addition to Tolkien's original narrative.
+Much more creative licence and liberty is employed in this third Hobbit film, but generally to good effect, effectively capturing the essential spirit of Tolkien's book despite it all.
+/-The Master's attempt at all conceivable costs, whatever utter shredding to his erstwhile fastly vanishing credibility, to escape from Lake-town like the proverbial rat from the sinking ship - and many of his former townspeople, in days, weeks and years to come, no doubt would've considered that an all too fitting symbol and metaphor for their former Mayor - is effectively portrayed, but as I say above, he shouldn't have henceforth disappeared entirely from the story.
+Hobbiton folks' utter ignorance of Bilbo's adventure and the consequent raiding of all his personal effects they are able to lay their grubby little paws upon, is very well and quite cleverly depicted.
(Something pretty well only alluded to in previous films, including and especially Fellowship of the Ring, though the extent to which and the way in which that film in particular dealt with Lobelia Sackville-Bagginses is brilliantly portrayed for all that, however brief and savagely succinct the 'mention' therein may well be.)
+Refreshing greens and hues of Hobbiton's and Bag-End's rich, earthy setting and surrounds at very end following the exhausting, long drawn out battle scenes around the increasingly desolate and forlorn-looking Lonely Mountain.
+Galadriel's and Saraman's and Elrond's mini-battle royale with Sauron is well portrayed - especially his speedily returning might, readily sapping Gandalf's and Galadriel's energy reserves/life forces. But, and it's no small but, as I remarked in one or other of my various blogposts upon Hobbit films one and two, if Sauron is really this very powerful already, what could possibly have delayed him 60-odd years from making - c/o his henchmen, the nine Ringwraiths, so memorably and skilfully and powerfully, hauntingly rendered in PJ's Fellowship of the Ring - his raid upon the Shire in pursuit of the 'One Ring to rule them all'?
+Use/employment of neighbouring mountains and vistas is good.
+/-The re-employment of Beorn (and Radagast: see above) is again okay as far as it went.
So what sort of initial conclusions can one make about this third and final part of Peter Jackson Et Al's second Tolkien trilogy? Overall, some rather brilliant touches, innovations and creative genius displayed in this final Hobbit film, but so many of my responses seem to reflect a sense of mere adequacy, of that mediocrity-eliciting term 'okay', that overall - upon (soon-arising) reflection if not admittedly upon initial impression - one cannot avoid the idea that the whole Jacksonesque take upon Tolkien has ended more with a whimper than a bang, fizzling out much like a damp squib or a Guy Fawkes sparkler that has simply failed to really kindle much less flare up...a disappointment upon all manner of fronts even if said movie nevertheless featured some powerful portrayals and characterization, some stunning settings and scenery, and several brilliant touches and master-strokes. But if nothing else, Smaug the Dragon, the Chiefest of Calamities, goes out in the blaze of infamy and inglorious splendour well befitting JRR's exquisitely-depicted portrayal of said 'giant worm'. At least Smaug the Terrible fails to disappoint, and perhaps that is a redeeming feature of The Battle of the Five Armies that makes it all worthwhile, alongside Bilbo's sadly inglorious return to his home, where his kindred could frankly care less that he has just managed to save their collective bacon for a little while longer from not only a Dragon but Sauron's soon-coming wrath. As One has well said, and indeed has Tolkien well portrayed in The Lord of the Rings even if this was completely absent from Sir Peter Jackson's Return of the King: "A prophet is not without honour except in his own country, among his own relatives, and in his own house." So Master Baggins, you're amidst some very esteemed company indeed!
*I'm assuming, that is, that he and his crew are finally completely through seeking to convert JRR's classic fantasy tomes to movie format, seeing as the only likely contender, The Silmarillion - Tolkien's own especial favourite - is, aside from exceedingly complex in nature, apparently more of an historical take upon all things Middle Earthian than a strictly go to woe narrative as such. Then again, if PJ Et Al were to seek to also adapt this book, approval would again have to be sought, and I somehow strongly suspect such authorization would now be a lot less likely to be given than heretofore...but it's only a strong suspicion.
**Double (or even triple) ratings naturally being reserved for especially positive/negative efforts.
***Confirmed to me a couple weeks later by an astronomical buff I happened to almost literally bump into, who - admittedly, perhaps simply to be agreeable, but he seemed totally genuine - also agreed with me that the famed Arkenstone had indeed been a bit of a let-down.
****Or was it in fact post-World War Two United States President Harry Truman, in regards to his presumed election defeat in 1948 - as opposed to his premature death - as in the notorious and much-lampooned, with the benefit of hindsight, U.S. newspaper proclaiming his imminent defeat by Republican challenger Thomas Dewey on election night prior to all the votes being counted?
+Bilbo Baggins - Master of the (perfectly placed, carefully enunciated, and adeptly put) Understatement.
+Lotsa rather effective love metaphors (cf Song of Songs in the Good Book's Older Testament).
+Tauriel/Kili and Legolas/Thranduil were very carefully and effectively - if rather unTolkienesquely, let's be honest - portrayed.+Especially good characterization/character development of the three elves.
+/-Alfrid (the Master of Lake-town's #1 civil servant, courtier, PR consultant and general bootlicker): as in Hobbit film #2, very well done - but what became of/where'd his Master disappear to? (Or, as my brother informed me, was he in fact not vaporized by, but rather landed upon and squashed to death and a million odd smithereens, as Smaug impacted upon the Long Lake in his final death descent? Most probably.)
--The fabled Arkenstone itself? Not all that impressive; in fact I was distinctly unimpressed. For the very 'heart of the (Lonely) Mountain', surely PJ & Co could've come up with something, anything, much better, i.e. a gemstone - in colour, texture, shape and size, in sheer, pure outward glory, splendour and overall majesty - more truly befitting royal status? Would that have really been too much to ask? As a bare minimum any of Earth's present-day super-abundance of precious metals and crown jewels of say India or Burma, or some Middle Eastern emirate or caliphate even would've sufficed, one would have presumed. I mean, really. (As so often happens in my life - 'beset' by odd, bizarre serendipities, felicities, synchronicities or what some would merely term 'coincidences', but which I prefer to see as mini-Providences or even minor miracles (of a sort) - just a few minutes ago (4/1/2015) NZ TV One's nightly 6 p.m. News featured an item about a comet presently passing over Planet Earth and/or through its ionosphere: this little 'beastie' from outer space, named ***LoveJoy apparently, glowing with a stunning bright blue radiance like the most majestic, dazzling midday sky, is exactly, precisely, in every which way in fact what the Arkenstone ought to have looked like. So take good and proper note, Sir Peter, and realize what a little more time and effort could have done...transforming an utter fizzer into something to write home about. At least you got the general colour of the Mountain's 'Heart' right, though even that was a little fuzzy and hazy around the edges.)
-Bilbo oughta have become invisible during the major battle finale - again, as in Tolkien's original story; and not only for this reason, as Mr Baggins was quite obviously hardly any sort of a match for the various orc/goblin etc adversaries accosting, confronting and tackling him (and his associates and other allies) from all directions. (See similar remarks vis-a-vis Bilbo Baggins and the wolves/wargs at the very end of film #1.)
++(Cinematically) effective as in well wrought, powerfully portrayed battle royales - especially those between Azog and Thorin, and Bolg, Tauriel and Legolas. Yet, oddly enough, unlike the two earlier Hobbit and three Lord of the Rings films, in this particular instance it seemed somewhat appropriate, being, after all, effectively 'the Battle of the Five Armies' (and much more significantly, of course, of Smaug's demise). Surprisingly, for Peter Jackson, not overdone (in terms of what was 'necessary' to make the film, as they say, a 'goer'), and, as I say, if ever such high dudgeon-based action were justified, it was in this film (of the six). Though such fighting did probably absorb, when Smaug's death-dealing siege of Esgaroth is included, well over half this final film, the comparative portion of the book, by sharp contrast, actually constituted just under a sixth (less than 16%) of its contents, I've only now uncovered to my surprise; and for the barely three pages devoted to Smaug actually attacking Esgaroth, only seven measly pages concerns the topic/title of this final film, i.e. the battle of the five armies!) Not that I really find such warfare something I particularly enjoy, much less consider an apt or accurate reflection of Tolkien's relevant tomes (i.e. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings), but if any of the six Hobbit/LOTR films seemingly deserved such treatment, one might have supposed it was this one. But once again, closer inspection proves vastly otherwise! (It wouldn't escape an observant reader of this and earlier posts just how much PJ et al's rendition of JRR's works has gradually, insidiously, imperceptibly lowered my otherwise once high expectations, so that as this grand finale has at last shown its head not only has mediocrity now apparently become the norm and trumped all in its inexorable path, Tolkien-Jackson devotees such as myself now indeed expect no more, and are thus almost content with that rather sad and sorry status quo.) How have the once mighty cinematographers fallen!
++Much more realistic (cf LOTR) in terms of the multiple deaths of the protagonists.
+/-Billy Connolly is well utilized - as far as he is in fact used - but strangely vanishes off the page in the various mini-battle finales (such as those aforementioned ones between both Azog and Bolg and 'the [various and assorted] goodies').
++Good - if rather belated - reversion to Tolkienesque ending - unlike LOTR. Hence much more realistic and true to JRR's tome, as in (again, cf the third LOTR film - not) Bilbo, much like Frodo, Sam, Pippin and Merry in Tolkien's The Return of the King, arriving home not to cheers, hurrahs and general, well-earned acclaim - i.e. what he (and they) properly deserved, a heroes' welcome - but rather to a general divvying up of Bilbo Baggins' (& Co's) assorted lifetime goods, hoardings and everyday stuff. Of course, upon arrival back in Bag-End, Mister Baggins by his very, if unwelcome, presence, promptly puts an end to these unwarranted proceedings, putting swift paid to all those unjustified consequences of assuming he'd suffered a premature demise. As ****one wag famously described a similar past occurrence: "Rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated."
+/-Am glad that Billy Boyd (Pippin in LOTR) secured some sort of a role in the film, if 'only' in the musical score 'The Last Goodbye' at the very end. Though actually, unlike both the preceding Hobbit flicks and especially the three Lord of the Rings' films, I'm constrained to say that musical scores in The Five Armies were neither especially well done nor for that matter all that noticeable much less memorable. In fact, I have to add that I've absolutely no lasting memory of any tunes let alone lyrics from film #3, though a haunting one remains from one of the first two flicks, something about going in search of dragon treasure and the like, upon an adventure the end thereof being still completely unknown and eliciting much trepidation. That one, whatever it was, did have a certain 'catchiness' and haunting broodiness to it, enabling easy recall; indeed readily coming into mind just now for the first time in possibly yonks when I simply tasked my mind to recollect any such tunes and words still residing within one of memory's vaults.
+/-The film early on seemed to constantly jump back and forth between various settings with their respective actors and thus evoked a sense of the Rings' films especially following the splitting up of the Nine Companions; such 'cutting' in and out actually serving the useful purpose of keeping the viewer upon his or her toes and in a state of unremitting suspense thus only enhancing the tension and dramatic effect.
+/-Fine characterization of Thorin: his stubbornness ('purest' obstinacy), 'dragonsickness' and relationship to Bilbo are conveyed with aplomb; but his death, though welcome as one of the film's realistic elements (see above), appears uncannily reminiscent of Boromir's death 'speech' in PJ's Fellowship of the Ring, belatedly apologizing for not having had the prescience to discern the reality of Bilbo Baggins' (cf Frodo's) loyalty and devotion to the cause. (See also my criticisms of Hobbit #2 film's disconcertingly frequent echoes/repeats of other major Rings' film scenes and speeches.)
+/-Despite the relatively (as in appropriate to the source text) fitting ending (as above) - and admittedly it was probably much too hard to show Bilbo's return alongside Gandalf et al all the way back to Bag End or at least Hobbiton - it is a bit strained at times vis-a-vis frequent and all too obvious attempts to tie together all three Hobbit and Lord of the Rings films (is too much like 'with the benefit of hindsight' etc), though such touches as re-inserting Bilbo - at the start and end of the Hobbit saga - in his older Ian Holm manifestation, is obviously necessary to tie the two trilogies together, notwithstanding these 'touches' do come over as increasingly forced and unnatural in my view.
+Thranduil's (the Elven-king's) imperious coldness, severity is well-depicted.
+Alfrid's weaselly/cowardly and money-grubbing tendencies is a brilliant touch.
+/+The Lakeshore (cf LOTR film#2) is well shot/very realistically done (set similarly along some Central Otago lakescape?)...and Lake-town residents' well-founded anger at Alfrid and his Master (who has now vamoosed, leaving his dutiful, most devoted servant to cop all the blame and opprobrium) is well-depicted.
+Bard's kids - very 'quaint'(ly done) and appropriate in both attire and sober, serious demeanour (again, cf the Two Towers film).
-The talking raven, Roac son of Carc, could have been used to much better effect, as in actually doing just that, i.e.talking, communicating in actuality with the likes of Bard and the dwarves, as in Tolkien's tome. As opposed to Bard et al simply instinctively, intuitively knowing precisely what to do, which was the most appropriate course of action to take in the circumstances - whether in terms of unveiling, literally uncovering Smaug's best kept secret, the hollow beside his left breast, or as in the tread of footsoldiers coming towards the Lonely Mountain as the imminent 'battle of the five armies' drew ever closer, or for that matter Bilbo's being informed that 'Hi-ho, Smaug is Dead, the Dragonbeast is dead, the Dragonbeast is dead, hi-ho, the wicked Smaug is dead' (in the inimitable manner of The Wizard of Oz) rather than - as the film erroneously depicted - his being able to espy such as occurring merely by the dancing of light and flame upon the far horizon.
+Effective villains/battle sites [Stone/Mountain Trolls etc: cf Thunder 'Trolls' in film#1]. The snowy mountain fastnesses and melting ice crusts are realistic, as is the poignant, literally gripping moment when Azog stabs Thorin from below, piercing his battle-hardened and weary feet from beneath, another more realistic touch, showing there's life in the old rogue yet.
+Villains (especially Azog/Bolg) were thus realistically portrayed here, not being easily defeated let alone killed off (for good).
+Odd but effective 'touch' having King Thorin himself thus die, and before he gets to taste the joy of securing Smaug's vast treasure hoard for good and ever after, but as in the book, this realistic scene only enhances the credibility of the story as a whole.
+Nice good-bye scene of Bilbo with the ?nine/ten? remaining/surviving dwarves, not only Thorin, but Fili and Kili also suffering martyrdom for the cause I believe.
-Not so/very much is seen of the other company dwarves this time, including Balin, the overall emphasis indeed being distinctly non-dwarvish, upon such new stars/novas as Bard (and the Lake-'men' generally), Tauriel, Thranduil and Legolas.
Introductory scene of the Chief Villain, the Dragon Smaug, beseiging Lake-town is well-enacted/depicted - featuring no Jacksonesque el typical (though they do work very well in The Lord of the Rings flicks, and in the first Hobbit film anyhow) backgrounder or flashback. Yes, Smaug here in his final moments is every bit as downright scary, vengeful and fire-breathe-ingly nasty as he should have been, as his well-earned reputation warranted.
Radagast the rustic, country bumpkin wizard is okay, if merely adequate here, though the eagles are well done again. Whereas 'the Lady Galadriel' - shades if not major overtones of 'Mother Mary' of Roman Catholic 'Mary, Mother of God' in/famy (which I realize is no great insight or new revelation) - is also okay, if a little strained (in trying to connect Lord of the Rings' and Hobbit films; again, cf Hobbit films#1 and 2.)
+/- Six-minute specially-designed Introduction adequate - as far as it went - but really neither here nor there (as in a useful add-on). Better for Jackson/Tolkien afficionadoes to invest in proper backgrounder dvds (like those accompanying the Lord of the Rings films).
-/+Way too many un-credible close shaves for Bilbo Baggins, whereas compare and contrast and note well the highly credible near-killing of Gandalf.
+/-Scenery at the start is typically kiwi-ish picturesque, yet somehow, unaccountability - it pains me to say this and quite frankly I didn't think I'd (ever) be doing so - unrealistic, as in somewhat unpersuasive; like picture painting, cf actual photo shot.
+Depiction of Thorin's unaccountable, 'death'll first freeze over before I'll ever back down, and even then I won't', stubbornly senseless intractableness - seen in relation to other characters, not only Bard the Bowman and Dragon-Slayer, but moreover his fellow (special company) dwarves - i.e. both friends and kindred and foes alike - is especially effectively portrayed, being almost a master-stroke of the film's characterization...and unfortunately one of the very few really good examples thereof in Battle of the Five Armies.
+Billy Connolly's much-vaunted entrance a welcome and interesting respite, even a foil of a sorts to other characters/the situation in general. But ultimately a bit of an anticlimax, as no sooner are we introduced to Dain, King of the Northern Dwarvish Kingdom than, hey presto, we see no more of him.
+Thorin et al's determination to go in a 'to the death' pursuit of Azog, Bolg et al [Enemy Head Honchos Inc.] is a somewhat useful addition to Tolkien's original narrative.
+Much more creative licence and liberty is employed in this third Hobbit film, but generally to good effect, effectively capturing the essential spirit of Tolkien's book despite it all.
+/-The Master's attempt at all conceivable costs, whatever utter shredding to his erstwhile fastly vanishing credibility, to escape from Lake-town like the proverbial rat from the sinking ship - and many of his former townspeople, in days, weeks and years to come, no doubt would've considered that an all too fitting symbol and metaphor for their former Mayor - is effectively portrayed, but as I say above, he shouldn't have henceforth disappeared entirely from the story.
+Hobbiton folks' utter ignorance of Bilbo's adventure and the consequent raiding of all his personal effects they are able to lay their grubby little paws upon, is very well and quite cleverly depicted.
(Something pretty well only alluded to in previous films, including and especially Fellowship of the Ring, though the extent to which and the way in which that film in particular dealt with Lobelia Sackville-Bagginses is brilliantly portrayed for all that, however brief and savagely succinct the 'mention' therein may well be.)
+Refreshing greens and hues of Hobbiton's and Bag-End's rich, earthy setting and surrounds at very end following the exhausting, long drawn out battle scenes around the increasingly desolate and forlorn-looking Lonely Mountain.
+Galadriel's and Saraman's and Elrond's mini-battle royale with Sauron is well portrayed - especially his speedily returning might, readily sapping Gandalf's and Galadriel's energy reserves/life forces. But, and it's no small but, as I remarked in one or other of my various blogposts upon Hobbit films one and two, if Sauron is really this very powerful already, what could possibly have delayed him 60-odd years from making - c/o his henchmen, the nine Ringwraiths, so memorably and skilfully and powerfully, hauntingly rendered in PJ's Fellowship of the Ring - his raid upon the Shire in pursuit of the 'One Ring to rule them all'?
+Use/employment of neighbouring mountains and vistas is good.
+/-The re-employment of Beorn (and Radagast: see above) is again okay as far as it went.
So what sort of initial conclusions can one make about this third and final part of Peter Jackson Et Al's second Tolkien trilogy? Overall, some rather brilliant touches, innovations and creative genius displayed in this final Hobbit film, but so many of my responses seem to reflect a sense of mere adequacy, of that mediocrity-eliciting term 'okay', that overall - upon (soon-arising) reflection if not admittedly upon initial impression - one cannot avoid the idea that the whole Jacksonesque take upon Tolkien has ended more with a whimper than a bang, fizzling out much like a damp squib or a Guy Fawkes sparkler that has simply failed to really kindle much less flare up...a disappointment upon all manner of fronts even if said movie nevertheless featured some powerful portrayals and characterization, some stunning settings and scenery, and several brilliant touches and master-strokes. But if nothing else, Smaug the Dragon, the Chiefest of Calamities, goes out in the blaze of infamy and inglorious splendour well befitting JRR's exquisitely-depicted portrayal of said 'giant worm'. At least Smaug the Terrible fails to disappoint, and perhaps that is a redeeming feature of The Battle of the Five Armies that makes it all worthwhile, alongside Bilbo's sadly inglorious return to his home, where his kindred could frankly care less that he has just managed to save their collective bacon for a little while longer from not only a Dragon but Sauron's soon-coming wrath. As One has well said, and indeed has Tolkien well portrayed in The Lord of the Rings even if this was completely absent from Sir Peter Jackson's Return of the King: "A prophet is not without honour except in his own country, among his own relatives, and in his own house." So Master Baggins, you're amidst some very esteemed company indeed!
*I'm assuming, that is, that he and his crew are finally completely through seeking to convert JRR's classic fantasy tomes to movie format, seeing as the only likely contender, The Silmarillion - Tolkien's own especial favourite - is, aside from exceedingly complex in nature, apparently more of an historical take upon all things Middle Earthian than a strictly go to woe narrative as such. Then again, if PJ Et Al were to seek to also adapt this book, approval would again have to be sought, and I somehow strongly suspect such authorization would now be a lot less likely to be given than heretofore...but it's only a strong suspicion.
**Double (or even triple) ratings naturally being reserved for especially positive/negative efforts.
***Confirmed to me a couple weeks later by an astronomical buff I happened to almost literally bump into, who - admittedly, perhaps simply to be agreeable, but he seemed totally genuine - also agreed with me that the famed Arkenstone had indeed been a bit of a let-down.
****Or was it in fact post-World War Two United States President Harry Truman, in regards to his presumed election defeat in 1948 - as opposed to his premature death - as in the notorious and much-lampooned, with the benefit of hindsight, U.S. newspaper proclaiming his imminent defeat by Republican challenger Thomas Dewey on election night prior to all the votes being counted?
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