FAVORITE TV SHOW LIST UPDATE, THE FOLLOWING, AND BLACK MIRROR

Recently created a list in IDMB of my favorite 100 TV shows. http://www.imdb.com/list/pj_-_EmlZE4/ Not be confused with the favorite 50 tv show list I made on my blog a few years ago (I won’t post a link but can easily search in blogspot).  The list has changed a bit.  Recently reviewing Kojak episodes and that really was a great show – great writing, great understanding of its characters and a fabulous hero in Theo Kojak totally synergy with the star Telly Savales (who looms large on the screen, take up a lot of acting space) so I’ve moved Kojak up the list.  On the flip side, after a fantastic first season and a good start to its second season, HOMELAND has tuned into crazy illogical mush as if they were writing it as they went along with no thought of continuity. Blow up CIA headquarters? Sure Carrie’s pregnant? Why not kill off Brody in Iran? Nifty.  Compare HOMEALND to BREAKING BAD where parts were put together years before they were filmed and the end result makes total sense.  HOMELAND has dropped a few places on my list.

Two new series I’ve enjoyed and added to the list are THE FOLLOWING and BLACK MIRROR.

One might argue that THE FOLLOWING is as guilty as HOMELAND of full on errors in logic (I’ve never seen the FBI portrayed as much as inept bunglers).  How many times has Kevin Bacon’s character wandered into trouble without back-up????  James Purefoy is miscast as the serial killer/cult leader villain.  He’s more like a bond villain, more Ernst Stavros Blofeld rather than Hannibal Lecter.  But THE FOLLOWING works because of the sheer amount of adrenalin pumping furiously in each and every scene.  Never seen a faster moving TV shows, all high points, all moments of great drama and it is not afraid to kill off characters left and right. I should also note I just watched the second season opener and its pace is much slower and seems more interested in actual detective work.

  

BLACK MIRROR is an anthology show wherein all the stories are loosely about the same subject - Social media particularly its commercialization of everything, the bombardment of advertising through the Internet, the dehumanization of people through too much information, too much interaction that is through a machine.

All six episodes that have been released so far were excellent especially the second one which showed a dystopian future where people pedal for credits on a stationary bicycle to fuel a pop culture that had taken over everything.  Powerful, imaginative, visionary stuff with high production values and intricately plotted stories full of Rod Serling Twilight Zone irony pointed in the direction of the current and growing disconnect between people and life caused by being online.  The six episodes in order of preference – 2,5,1,4,6,3      

A REVIEW OF THE STRONG AND THE WRONG

Here’s a very nice recent review of my latest book THE STRONG AND THE WRONG.  I love it when a reviewer really gets what I’m trying to say.

 http://beachsloth.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-strong-and-wrong-by-raj-dronamraju.html

ARIEL SHARON ROT IN HELL

Ariel Sharon was the original terrorist.  Decades before the first Palestinian suicide bombing, he was deliberately targeting civilians including women and children in military actions that served no purpose other than to create fear and ethically cleanse the Palestinians much like the Nazis actions towards Jewish citizens of the countries they occupied in World War II.

In 1953, Ariel Sharon commanded Unit 101 a clandestine military outfit whose sole purpose was launching attacks on Palestinian villages not even bothering with the pretence of hunting for enemy combatants. Instead, they were notorious for the indiscriminate murders of men, women, and children.  Done again as part of a greater ethnic cleansing – to force Palestinians to leave their land so Israelis could take it over.

The village of Quibya was a perfect example of Sharon’s anti-Arab bloodlust.  From the United Nations report “One story was repeated time after time: the bullet splintered door, the body sprawled across the threshhold, indicating that the inhabitants had been forced by heavy fire to stay inside until their homes were blown up over them.”

Throughout Israel’s different wars in the 60’s and 70’s, Sharon was notorious for executing unarmed captives without trial, bulldozing houses with people in them, one massacre after another, war crime after war crime. 

But Sharon’s mass murdering capabilities reached its peak with the Lebanon War.  After the attempted assassination of Israel’s Ambassador to England in 1982 (by a member of the Abu Nidal group not the PLO), the Israelis used this as an excuse to attack the PLO stronghold in Southern Lebanon and Sharon went much further than his original orders and pushed forward to Beirut itself.  After an orgy of killing, bombing often with phosphorus, and shooting, the war crimes reached their apex with the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp massacre in which after promising Palestinians refugees safe passage, the Israeli allowed in their proxies the Lebanese Phalange who proceeded to massacre (and also rape some of) the camps remaining inhabitants mostly old people, women, and children.

While this was going on, the Israeli army shot flares into the night sky to give the Phalange better visibility for killing and prevented those inside the camp from escaping.  Sharon may have lost his position as Defense Minister as a result of this mass murder but in a sociopathic Nazi state like Israel, it only made him more popular.

The only benefit of all this was that it killed Sharon’s plan for a greater Israel, Israel controlled territory throughout the whole Middle East as outlined here http://www.globalresearch.ca/greater-israel-the-zionist-plan-for-the-middle-east/5324815

Biding his time until winning the office of Prime Minister for himself, Sharon contented himself by fighting any peace deals between Israel and the Palestinians and becoming the main advocate of illegal settlements in the West Bank.

During his campaign for PM, Sharon deliberately riled up Palestinians by walking through the Al Aqsa Mosque which is the equivalent of Hitler walking through Knesset.  He needed the Palestinians as a foil and they rose to the occasion.  Once he was PM, he went back to his old pattern of not differentiating between combatants and non-combatants most noticeably in the siege of the West Bank town of Jenin wherein he removed the bodies of many of the dead Palestinian civilians having learned the lesson of not leaving behind evidence of a massacre.

Sharon’s eulogizers are busy perpetrating the myth that he was a great peacemaker because he withdrew from Gaza.  It was in Israel’s best interest to withdraw from Gaza and use it as a sort of giant jail.  The real prize is the West Bank and settlements there only increased during Sharon’s time as PM.  A Palestinian state is further from being realized not closer as a result of Sharon’s actions – by essentially separating even more Gaza and the West Bank and also East Jerusalem he kills the contiguous state plan.  This has been the secret plan of every post-Oslo Accords Israeli government.

Ariel Sharon was no better than Adolph Hitler and he employed the tactics of Osama Bin Laden only on a much larger scale.  I don’t believe in hell but if there is one he is certainly roasting there.  In a way, Sharon is responsible for me not paying taxes anymore.  After leaving the US in 2002 and seeing President George Bush kiss the ass of this mass murderer and also launch the Iraq War, I figured I could no longer support the morally bankrupt foreign policy of America.

Ariel Sharon was an evil man but he was the type of evil the amoral and racist West embraces.  Zionism is brother to White Supremism and fanatical Christian dogma.  Such ideologies will always lead to mass murder as they regard vast sections of the Earth’s peoples as subhuman.    

THREE POLITICAL PREDICTIONS FOR 2014

Starting 2014 with a few political predictions

1.) At least two perhaps as many four or even five incumbent Republican senators will lose their primaries to Tea party challengers.  There are polls showing Thad Cochran (who has been in the senate since 1978) already behind challenger Chris McDaniel, a state senator,  and that is many months before the primary.  Lindsay Graham faces three different challengers in his primary and SC rules means a run-off between the top two vote getters most likely Graham and state senator Lee Bright.  Milton Wolf, a radiologist who has never held political office(and is Obama’s second cousin twice removed), is giving Pat Roberts a run for his money in Kansas.  In Tennessee, current senator former governor and presidential candidate Lamar Alexander also faces a tough challenge in state rep. Joe Carr. 

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Texas senator John Cornryn also face challenges although those are not so threatening.

2.) Hillary Clinton’s main challenger in the Democratic primaries, who will hit her from the left and be set up as the alternative to her, will be Maryland governor Martin O’Malley who has an excellent progressive record and who I expect to run sort of an Obama 2008 meets Howard Dean 2004 type of campaign.  Elizabeth Warren is fantastic but she is very clear about not running for president and has not set up an exploratory committee or done anything to show she has changed her mind.  Andrew Cuomo is sitting on the sidelines and may enter the race but only if Hillary does not.  Former Montana governor Brian Schweitzer is in and is trying to position himself as an alternative to Hillary but there is no way he could be considered a progressive – Very anti-gun control, with foreign policy ties to neo-con organizations.

3.) Chris Christie’s bridge scandal will have legs and will drag on bleeding him out and permanently weakening him both as governor of New Jersey and as a future candidate for the presidency.  50/50 chance he does not even run for the presidency and if he does he will be out by the New Hampshire primary early next year, finished as a candidate.  He has always been viewed with suspicion by the conservative wing of the Republican party, tea party folk do not like him, and winning the presidential nomination was always going to be an uphill battle for him.

I wrote more about Chris Christie here when discussing Mitt Romney’s VP choices http://rgdinmalaysia.blogspot.com/2012/04/handicapping-mitt-romneys-vice.html

Also I’m not going to predict this yet as it is far too early but I think the Democrats will keep control of the Senate and the Republicans will keep control of the House but with fewer seats of the majority party (espc. In the senate)