@auroraluciferi The first thing to know is that there’s a lot of historical context here. One of the biggest moves of Kissinger’s career (and one of the few good ones) was masterminding Nixon’s trip to China in 1972. This laid the foundation for the eventual formal recognition of China by the US, and set up the framework for a potentially cooperative relationship between two of the world’s most powerful countries. Part of Kissinger’s motivations were to exploit the Sino-Soviet split, but the final result was a US approach towards China that was far more manageable than the “pretend they don’t exist” policy of 1949-1979. He is widely respected in China for this reason.
To understand the why requires looking closer at the complexities of Kissinger’s worldview. He advocated for closer ties with China for the same reason that he’s recently been advocating for a less-aggressive approach to Russia. His brand of realism says that it’s perfectly acceptable for “great powers” to dominate weaker nations, but that these powers need to be careful about how they interact with each other. A coup in Chile was fine because Chile couldn’t do anything to hurt us. But China had nuclear weapons, a UN Security Council seat, and the world’s largest population. We couldn’t afford to mess with them without facing consequences, and thus we needed a qualitatively different approach than the one we took towards, say, Cambodia. Based on China’s own actions in southeast Asia in this period, I would argue that his views on this matter overlapped with those of some Beijing officials.
The more timely explanation for China to invite Kissinger is one you picked up on: to signal that they want a return to a calmer relationship with the US. His views are drastically different from the increasingly anti-China sentiments prevailing in Washington DC today, and Beijing wants to highlight a concrete example of how US-China relations could improve— Kissinger is that example. His record of anti-communist interventionism matters less than the fact that he’s willing to talk.
And Keanu says something really interesting to me on the first John Wick. He comes to me and he goes, “Look, just so you know, little bit of advice, when you edit, once a week, you should see the edit on the big screen.” And I’m like, OK, we’ll try. Later, alone with him, I’m going, “Well, why?” He’s like, “I’m a big-screen actor.” And I had no fucking idea what that meant. I thought it meant a movie star. And he’s like, “No, no, no, no.”
And he started talking to me about non-verbal acting, like gestures, motions. And he’s like, “Look, when you see me on a little monitor and I give this little look, it’s one thing. But when you see it on a 40-foot screen, that look’s going to say a lot. That’s what I want to play this guy as. So just please be aware of it, so when we punch in on the closeups, it’s going to mean something.” And it kind of really clicked for me right there.
I’ve always been fascinated by non-verbal gesture, body language. Keanu would go through and strip his dialogue down. It was like, “No, no, nope. I’m just going to cuddle the puppy.” In the first John Wick, he doesn’t talk for 32 minutes. Try to sell that one to a studio: You have Keanu Reeves and you’re not going to let him talk.
i’m staying with my parents a couple weeks until my new apartment is ready so they sit and watch me play zelda whenever they have a minute. and they always say stuff like “doesn’t link get lonely?” and “don’t you think he’s tired from running everywhere?” and “does he have a home?” like exactly exactly thats what i’m always saying. they have got to get on tumblr
Most of the uranium used to build the atomic bombs were mined in Shinkolobwe in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Congolese people had to work in the uranium mines without protection. Exposure to uraniun could result in negative health impacts such as: renal failure, decreased bone formation, cancer, issues with fertility etc. The labor of the Congolese people for the Manhatten Project were kept secret until recently, and still no research has been conducted on the long-term consequences of uranium intake in the people at the extraction site in the Congo.
And this is why the narrative surrounding Oppenheimer (the man himself and the film) makes me angry. The atomic bombs are a product of colonialism. It was a bomb funded by a settler colony (USA), it’s materials are dug from a colony (DRC) by colonized people (the Congolese) and tested on colonized lands (Hispanic village of Tularosa and Mescalero Apache Reservation). But, the narrative that always gets perpetuated is of the tragedy of a brillant White man and his deadly creation, the many Black and Brown people who became collateral damage of the creation are always erased. And it says A LOT about whose labor and pain matters.
After the War, debate raged about what to do with the Bomb. Throughout 1945-1946 there was serious discussion at the UN (which mattered a great deal more then than it does now) about banning atomic weapons, and there was a realistic chance that the US might go along with it. US Secretary of State James Byrnes was having none of that. He used his leverage with his political protégé, Harry Truman, to schedule a “test” (i.e., political demonstration) at Bikini Atoll, occupied by the US Navy. The Bikini natives were rounded up against their will and relocated to an uninhabited island. Problem was, there was a good reason no one lived there - it had no lagoon or protective reef, so fishing was impossible. By the time the US Government got around to checking on them the Bikinians were facing starvation. They got passed around from one agency to another while Congress thumbed its nose at a legal decision that the US Government owed the Bikinians reparations for confiscating their home.
To this day they have not been allowed to return to Bikini.
Twitter is being horrendously racist towards Asian, Hispanos and Indigenous people trying to talk about this, so please boost these posts at least here.
my favorite thing about this post is all the people who chose to use the default icon defending themselves in the notes like no stop it just put a picture up
Loving this energy
*wipes tear* they learn tumblr culture so fast … the spite … the malicious compliance of it all … I’m so proud
The atomic bombings did not save lives. They didn’t end the war. The Japanese leadership didn’t even respond to them. We had already so thoroughly brutalized Japan at that point that the loss of two medium sized cities was a drop in the bucket. We annihilated over 30 Japanese cities before we dropped the bombs. The real reason we dropped them was to demonstrate to the Soviets that we had them. The Japanese surrendered because the Soviets were also about to launch an invasion and the Japanese Empire knew they’d get better terms negotiating with us.
Isn’t this just reverse saying trans men can’t wear skirts? Is it not the exact same thing?
A DeSantis staffer (Nate Hochman) allegedly retweeted one of those fashwave montage videos praising him as being further right than Trump, but then quickly removed it upon realizing that the video ends on this
There’s some unconfirmed speculation that the account posting these videos is run in-house by the DeSantis campaign, though it’s unclear whether they’re actually making them or finding them online and then re-sharing them
Hochman was named as one of the people in the Desantis campaign who was amplifying Pedro Gonzalez, who was so far-right that he was called out by Breitbart. (!)
Another was Christine Pushaw, Mikhail Saakashvili’s former publicist. Saakashvili was an ally of the Georgian Legion, home to many of the Nazis fighting for Ukraine, and at trial not long ago, he was compared by his lawyer to “our brave Azov boys”.
I don’t really like the plot point that Soren finds out he’s Branded in Begnion bc like. Seems unrealistic that he wouldn’t know. I mean this kid studied in Melior, studied at churches, knew a lot of shit.
But this becomes infinitely funnier to me bc Nasir tries to blackmail him with this info later and like. What was he gonna do if Soren didn’t know. He just assumed he knows. But Soren actually didn’t until like a few weeks ago. Man got insanely lucky with his blackmail plot.
the feeling of learning is legitimately so cool. there’s a little whoa sound effect that plays in your brain whenever you read a sentence that expands reality for you a tiny bit
When you have to spend 45 minutes arguing the plot of a doll movie cause your political movement is definitely winning in the marketplace of ideas and you attempted to grow a beard to hide your botched lip filler in your old navy outlet Jean jacket.
