Introducing St Wars to the kids. Questions: 1) When U Owen says he needs Luke the most at harvest, what harvest is there on a desert planet? 2) Why does L want to transmit his application to the academy (of the Empire) when he just got excited about C3PO’s story of the rebellion?
So Owen harvests water? Not a crop? That’s an odd verb choice
Next, I forgot just how lucky Lucas got casting Alec Guiness, Peter Cushing, and James Earl Jones. And getting John Williams to do the music. They add a lot of depth to what’s basically a fairy tale.
Even Guiness can’t save dialogue like ‘you’ll never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.’
Next the bar scene...is what? the Muppets of the 1970s after the the wildest, drug-fueled bender of all time?
Han shot first.
The general staff of the Death Star have phenomenally bad haircuts and sideburns
Wait! Han just said ‘traveling through hyperspace ain’t like dusting crops.’ So does that mean Owen was raising crops after all? On a desert planet? (I haven’t seen the original in years.)
‘It’s all a lot of simple tricks and nonsense’ is a good line for Solo.
Ok. We’re back. The kids had to sleep yesterday. Next question: how did Obi-wan go creeping around the Empire’s most important military installation without getting caught?
Princess Leia has the most amazing cosmetics in the history of political prisoners
So what’s going on with Princess Leia’s hair? Seriously. Are those swirly muffiny things really her hair? No way
Why do they have to maneuver down the trench to the exhaust port? Why not just approach it from above?
Wait, did Lucas really name the overweight pilot ‘Porkins’? Good grief
What is ‘Beggars Canyon back home’?
There’s something really endearing about the first one, with all the models and almost no CGI. Even when Ben and Vader are schwacking away at each other, and you can tell the Vader guy can barely see. At least it’s real, not CGI. And I forgot how much quotable dialogue there is.
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2. Trump doesn’t actually care about the details of SK investment; he just wants to market it as a ‘win’ on Fox
So the S Koreans are stuck with whatever thrown-together ‘framework’ emerges from the disorganized, competing interests within the Trump administration
3. The US
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visa system has been a mess for decades, and xenophobic MAGA wants it that way
So the SKs don’t know how to get in the needed work-force to operationalize Trump’s deal. They end up getting arrested, bc Trump’s gov't is a disunified, disorganized mess which can't prioritize or
fundamentalists in the M East rather than US general interest
- undermines NATO which has kept the peace for 80 years in a core area of US FoPo interest
- believes autocracies like Russia or N Korea are credible counterparties
- rejects alliances which supplement US power
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& enable US global power projection
- thinks trade wars with allies enhance US power
- is guided in foreign policy by his own ego quirks - loathing for Zelensky & female leaders, admiration for dictators - rather than US national interests
running, deep-seated hatred for UKR independence, it is hard to believe this whole thing actually turned on a far-away event 16 months earlier: the 2020 US election. Indeed, the belief that the whole world turns on US decisions is a particular American hubris, probably derived
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from our long-running superpowerdom. But it is not true. Other countries have agency independent of us, especially great powers like RU.
2. Vance and MAGA did not know that UKR had no pathway to victory for the last 3 years
This is lazy retrodiction – using contemporary info
1. This sure looks like a soft or semi-coup, like a SK version of January 6 in the US.
Declaring martial law in response to the gridlock of divided government is just a ridiculous rationale.
And declaring late at night, when half the country is
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asleep is hugely suspicious.
2. It was remarkably inept. In fact, it looks impulsive, as if Yoon decided this the same day
The declaration targeted the media, opposition, & public political expression. That would require a sweeping move across the country to enforce.Instead
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the military and police at the legislature gave away to opposition MPs almost immediately.
Yoon seemed to have no plan to deal with the predictable explosion of public protest. SK has a vibrant street protest culture, including militant labor unions. Did he really think the