How Yukong Moved the Mountains (French: Comment Yukong déplaça les montagnes) is a 1976 French documentary film about China directed by Joris Ivens. This film, whose title references the old Chinese story of an old man who moved the mountains (Yugong Yishan), deals with the last days of the Cultural Revolution. At 763 min it is one of the longest films by running time.

Alien III? Didn’t that already happen back in the ’90s? By no less than William Gibson, the author of Neuromancer?

Yes, Alien3 was and still is a thing. Possibly much to the chagrin of many fans of the franchise. But, before that happened, there was an attempt at a script written by William Gibson (father of see above). According to the Alien vs. Predator wiki, Gibson’s script was the first of 10 commissioned sequels to Alien and Aliens and was written in 1987 only to be re-written in 1988 and the studio accepted neither.

Ultimately, the 1988 script is what was uncovered in the last couple of years and came to life as a five-issue comic book arc last year as well as this audio drama.

The first major change that is obvious is that this story does not revolve around Ellen Ripley, the iconic character played by Sigourney Weaver throughout the original run of four movies. Instead, the focal characters are, at least in the beginning, the other three survivors aboard the USS Sulaco with Ripley — Colonial Marine Corporal Dwayne Hicks, the android Bishop, and the little girl Newt whom Ripley saved in Aliens.

When Bishop’s cryo-stasis fails, the upper half of his body (as you recall, he was torn in half by the alien queen at the end of Aliens) becomes aware of, but can do nothing about the fact that the Sulaco has drifted into territory controlled by the Union of Progressive Peoples (UPP). UPP Commandos board the Sulaco and one is immediately attacked by a facehugger that has been surviving inside Bishop’s severed torso. Once the attack is over, the UPP, assuming this to be some sort of biological attack on themselves by the Marines, recovers Bishop’s torso for a data dump, but sends the Sulaco and the remaining three residents on their way.

The Sulaco soon docks with the space station Anchorpoint where another attack occurs. Ripley’s cryotube is damaged resulting in her going into a deep coma (hence her lack of facetime in this drama), but both Hicks and Newt are awakened and otherwise unharmed. The remainder of the story focuses on the spread of alien matter throughout Anchorpoint and its disastrous results.

While I missed Ripley, I have to admit that having a story centered on Hicks and Bishop was pretty cool. They were, admittedly, two of my favorite characters from Aliens and I always wanted a more appropriate conclusion to their stories than what happened in Alien3. What made this audiobook even sweeter was that Audible managed to sign both Michael Biehn and Lance Henriksen to voice their respective big-screen characters in the drama. I loved that!

Unfortunately, despite having Biehn and Henriksen back in the saddle, Gibson’s Alien III script only rates as “interesting.” As a standalone space drama, it’s decent and worth a listen if you can separate it out from its predecessors. It has an intriguing new twist to the alien mythos, one that will easily tear the Alien fandom into either love-it or hate-it factions (based on the mixed reviews on Audible.com, it already has). But the drama itself was lacking the sense of impending doom of previous movies and I really didn’t latch onto any of the new characters like I have in just about every movie released under the Alien banner. Perhaps subsequent listens will fare better. Clocking in at 2:16, it would be pretty easy to give it another shot.

On October 20, 2011, Libya’s Muammar al-Gaddafi was brutally murdered by a mob of NATO-backed ‘rebels’, after first being beaten and violated in the most barbaric fashion. History leaves no doubt that not only was the Libyan leader murdered on this day but Libya itself.

The regime-change crew who dominate Western governments have a long indictment sheet against their names. Since 9/11 they have wrought havoc and human misery on a grand scale in their determination to reshape and own a world that has never been theirs to own. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya – Syria currently embroiled in a pitiless conflict for its survival as a secular, non-sectarian state – this is the miserable legacy of nations which speak the language of democracy while practising the politics of domination.

Of the aforementioned victims of Western imperialism, there is a strong argument to be made that Libya’s destruction constitutes an especially grievous crime. After all, in 2010, the year before it experienced its ‘revolution’, the United Nations Development Programme considered Libya a high development country in the Middle East and North Africa. In concrete terms this status translated to a literacy rate of 88.4%, a life expectancy of 74.5 years, gender equality, and various other positive indicators. In addition, Libya enjoyed 4.2% economic growth in 2010 and could boast of foreign assets in excess of $150 billion.

Compare this record to Libya in 2016. According to testimony provided by US Army General David Rodriguez to the US Senate Armed Services Committee in March, it is a failed state, with the general estimating it would take ‘“10 years or so” to achieve long-term stability in what is a “fractured society”’.

There is currently no single government or authority in Libya whose writ runs in the entire country. Instead three competing authorities control their own fiefdoms. The internationally recognized government is the Government of National Accord (GNC), led by Fayez al-Sarraj, is based in the capital, Tripoli. There is also the Government of National Salvation, led by Khalifa Ghwell, which is also based in Tripoli. The third centre of power, meanwhile, is located in Tobruk in the east of the country. It is headed by an anti-Islamist general, Khalifa Haftar, who leads the Libyan National Army (LNA). Economically, oil revenues, responsible for 90% of revenue under Gaddafi, have halved, violence is widespread, and since 2011 Daesh has managed to gain a foothold, though in recent months the terrorist organization has come under huge pressure in its stronghold of Sirte from forces representing the GNC.

The impact of the chaos that has engulfed the country since Gaddafi was overthrown and murdered can be measured by the flood of Libyans who have attempted the perilous journey across the Mediterranean with the objective of reaching Europe. In the process untold thousands have perished.

UN Security Council Resolution 1973, passed in March 2011, marked the end of the Arab Spring and the beginning of the Arab Winter. The mass and popular demonstrations that succeeded in toppling Tunisian dictator Ben Ali and is Egyptian counterpart Hosni Mubarak were not replicated in Libya. Instead, in Benghazi, where the anti-Gaddafi movement was centred, Islamists predominated. There was no nationwide mass movement in Libya, such as those that swept across Tunisia and Egypt, and no popular support for toppling a government and leader who presided over a society that enjoyed the highest standard of living of any in Africa.

Loyalist Gaddafi forces were defeated by NATO not the opposition forces emanating from Benghazi. Indeed it was at the point at which the country’s armed forces were approaching Benghazi, preparatory to crushing the uprising, when NATO intervened – based on the lie of protecting civilians when in truth it was intent on regime change.

Gaddafi’s crime in the eyes of the West was not that he was an authoritarian dictator – how could it be when their closet ally in the region is Saudi Arabia? His crime in their eyes, it was revealed in a tranche of classified Clinton emails, released by Wikileaks in January of this year, was his intention of establishing a gold-backed currency to compete with the euro and the dollar as an international reserve currency in Africa. In this regard the then French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and then US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, were key actors in pushing for NATO intervention. Libyan oil was also a factor.

The classified emails prove beyond any doubt that what took place in Libya was a monstrous crime for which those responsible have yet to be held accountable. On the contrary, Sarkozy is currently in the process of preparing a political return as French president, while Hillary Clinton is favorite to win the race for the White House against Republican nominee Donald Trump.

Of the two, it is Clinton who was filmed clapping her hands and laughing at the news of Muammar Gaddafi’s murder in 2011. It is Clinton who pressed for the military intervention that ended in Libya’s destruction. And it is Hillary Clinton who has the gall to present herself as a moral giant in comparison to her rival for the US presidency.

The Libyan people may well disagree.

The first Buddhist cave monuments at Ajanta date from the 2nd and 1st centuries B.C. During the Gupta period (5th and 6th centuries A.D.), many more richly decorated caves were added to the original group. The paintings and sculptures of Ajanta, considered masterpieces of Buddhist religious art, have had a considerable artistic influence.

There is one thing that I’m looking forward to seeing in the upcoming remake of The Lion King. I can’t wait to see Pumbaa’s farts in live-action (or is it in CGI?). Hopefully, this is something that will be featured in the film, though I don’t feel like seeing the film in a cinema. I might see it on home video. I can confess that I haven’t yet seen any of Disney’s live-action remakes of the company’s “classic” animated films. No, wait. I have seen The Jungle Book (2016). It was fine, I suppose. It’s definitely not a film that I’d want to see again. There was nothing in it that I found to be particularly memorable. But today’s post won’t be about Disney films. It will be about the fact that the cars that were made in the 1990s look better than the cars that are made nowadays. In other words, the cars from back then don’t look like eggs on wheels. I’m thankful that the film Captain Marvel (2019) reminded me of this. But today’s post won’t even be about this interesting matter. It will be about books. My interpretation is as follows. When it comes to the West, the books (fiction and non-fiction) that have been released in the last several decades aren’t particularly good. This is because Western Civilization is slowly but noticeably in decline, and, therefore, people in the West are no longer brought up to be creative and productive. The education system in Western countries is bad. This is why there’s almost no scientific progress and intellectual progress in the West anymore. Because of this, when it comes to literature, Western authors write books that are unoriginal, uninspired, dull, and badly-written. And I’m not just talking about books that are meant for mass consumption. Even the best-written books these days are usually dull, not very memorable, and without flair. Such is the situation not only when it comes to books. This applies to all of the arts and sciences in the West. According to Carroll Quigley, the latest Age of Expansion (under industrial capitalism) of Western Civilization came to an end in 1929. It’s only in the Age of Expansion of a civilization when the greatest and most original works are made. So, if we take the latest Age of Expansion of Western Civilization as an example, the great works in the arts and sciences were made particularly in the 19th century and definitely before the beginning of the second half of the 20th century. Since the industrial revolution began in England, the British forged ahead in the 19th century. In this way, the British (and also the French) were kind of like the Greeks in Classical Civilization or the Arabs in Islamic Civilization. In the “Victorian Era”, and even earlier, the British made outstanding contributions to the arts and sciences. In addition, they dressed well, they were cultured, and they colonized places. It’s no wonder that people used to say that one Englishman is worth as many as ten Americans or fifteen Canadians. Well, people allegedly used to say this. The same can’t be said about the British today, though, even now, in the presence of many gross, vile, and useless Brits, they remain some of the most cultured people in the West. Notable British writers of the Victorian Era include Lewis Carroll, Charles Dickens, Emily Bronte, George Eliot, and H. G. Wells. But let’s not forget about Jane Austen. Charles Darwin wrote his hugely influential book, ‘On the Origin of Species’ (1859), at that time as well. Well, the point that I’m making is that if you’re going to read something by, for example, British writers, you’d better read what they wrote in the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century, when they could still write well. In addition, the great Western philosophers lived at that time. These people can be thought of as intellectual giants if one compares them to today’s philosophers, who are intellectual midgets. I’m not even sure if there are any philosophers from the present time that are worth mentioning. If we take the Dutch as an example, it’s naturally worth looking at what the Dutch made in the “Dutch Golden Age”, when commercial capitalism functioned as an instrument of expansion in the Dutch Republic. At that time, Christiaan Huygens discovered Saturn’s moon Titan, Joost van den Vondel wrote Lucifer (1654), and Johannes Vermeer painted “The Milkmaid”. When it comes to scientific contributions, Carl Sagan, for example, went over what the Ancient Greeks and the Dutch achieved in his book Cosmos (1980). But an even better introduction to science is William Cecil Dampier’s well-written book ‘A History of Science’, which was first published in 1929, when there was still significant scientific progress in Western Civilization. The following is a part of what Dampier wrote about the “Islamic Golden Age”.

“Between 620 and 650, under the stimulus of Muhammad, the Arabs conquered Arabia, Syria, Persia and Egypt. A hundred and fifty years later, Harun-al-Rashid, the most famous of the Abbasid Caliphs, encouraged translations from Greek authors, and thus helped to initiate the great period of Arab learning. At first the advance was slow, for new terms and constructions, suitable for the expression of philosophic and scientific thought, had to be formed and incorporated into the Syriac and Arabic languages. As in the analogous revival of learning which took place in Europe in the later Middle Ages, the first task of the Arabs, and of the races under their influence, was to recover the hidden and forgotten stores of Greek knowledge; then to incorporate what they recovered in their own languages and culture; and finally to add to it their own contributions. For two centuries after the death of Muhammad, there was intense theological activity in Islam. The atomic system of Epicurus, and the problems of time and space raised by the paradoxes of Zeno, stimulated the Muslim mind, which may possibly have been influenced also by the Buddhist atomism of India.”

With all of this in mind, I’m not saying that only the best of literature is worth reading. I myself enjoy reading different books that were written by popular English and American writers before the 1990s. The same applies to music, films, and art. I find that I can’t enjoy most of what has been made in the USA after the 1980s. Therefore, my favorite novels by popular establishment writers like Clive Cussler, David Morrell, or Stephen King were written before the 1990s. For example, Doctor Sleep (2013) is a novel by Stephen King that was praised by some people, particularly by the bought and paid for professional critics. But, when I read this novel, I found it to be rather dull, like the rest of King’s novels from the last two or even three decades. The same applies to science-fiction, but, in this case, because I very much like the genre, I enjoy reading pretty much everything up to the 2000s. Sometimes, out of curiosity, I even read what has been written in the last two decades. But quality and originality aren’t the only standards that have gone down in the last several decades. I find that there’s more and more irrationality as well, to say nothing of propaganda. This isn’t surprising to me, as someone who reads sociology from time to time. Here’s something that Quigley wrote about the matter in his book ‘The Evolution of Civilizations: An Introduction to Historical Analysis’ (1961). This is taken from the chapter about Classical Civilization. This chapter, by the way, seems very relevant if we think about what has been happening in the USA for the last several decades.

“There were three basic ideas of this oligarchic group: (1) that change was evil, superficial, illusory, and fundamentally impossible; (2) that all material things were misleading, illusory, distracting, and not worth seeking; and (3) that all rationally demonstrable distinctions, including those in social position (especially slavery), were based on real, unchanging differences and not upon accidental or conventional distinctions. These three ideas together would serve to stop all efforts at social change, economic reform, or political equality.

These ideas, which we might sum up under some such comprehensive term as Pythagorean rationalism, were, of course, not irrational, yet they led, ultimately, to mysticism and served the same purpose of providing an ideology for the vested-interest groups that irrational thinking usually does in the Age of Conflict of any civilization. In the Age of Conflict of Classical antiquity these idea generally triumphed, although they were challenged, generally with little effect, by the later Aristotle (after 343 B.C.), by Epicurus and Lucretius, and by numerous minor thinkers in the late Hellenistic and Roman periods. When, in the latter period, some of the sophist ideas, such as the conventional nature of slavery, became widely accepted, they were combined, as in Stoicism, with resignation and acceptance of the external appearances of things to a degree that entirely canceled the dynamic and progressive influence they had possessed when advocated by the Sophists.

It might be pointed out at this time that the triumph of the vested-interest groups (the oligarchy) in the struggles of the Age of Conflict of Classical civilization resulted in the social, political, and economic triumph of the oligarchy over the progressive and revolutionary forces. This led to the survival of the works of the intellectual supporters of oligarchy, such as Plato, Xenophon, and Cicero, and to the loss of most of the works of the opposite side, such as the writings of the Sophists and Ionian scientists; the rich were willing to pay for making copies of works favoring their position and would not pay for the copying of opposition works. Thus we have today the writings of Pindar and Xenophon, but have lost those of Anaxagoras and Epicurus.

Moreover, it should be pointed out that the oligarchic victory over the forces of progress and equality did not ensure survival to the victors in the long run, or the ending of the opposition’s ideology. Quite the contrary. The military tyranny that arose as a consequence of the oligarchy’s efforts to maintain slavery and social inequality by force eventually took over the control of Classical society in its own name and liquidated the oligarchy and the Classical culture it had maintained. In a similar way the ideological writings of the supporters of oligarchy survived, but many of the ideas of their nominalist opponents became generally accepted. Thus individualism, the natural equality of all men, the conventional and unnatural character of slavery, and the belief that social distinctions rested on force rather than on real differences became generally accepted in the Stage of Universal Empire, but without in any way destroying the continued existence as institutions of slavery, social inequality, law, or public authority. Of course, in the very long run, with the disappearance of these institutions it might be argued that the ideas that challenged them won out, but this occurred only with the death of Classical society as a whole.”