Mogwai, "Yes I Am a Long Ways from Home"

Great music video by a band called Mogwai. The song is called, "Yes I Am a Long Ways from Home." Beautiful song, makes you want to hug the whole world. Love it. Sounds a bit like the space-rock of old. Reminds me somewhat of a French band called "Gong."

Hezbollah Fighting in Homs

Fascinating video shows Hezbollah fighting in Homs. At first I thought it was Al Qusayr, but I think it is Homs instead. The video was all in Arabic, so it was hard to figure out what they were talking about. Here you see the high spirits of the Hezbollah fighters as they move into the bombed out, ruined city. Take note of the horrific footage where the fighters find a room full of men, bound and executed. Who executed them? Who knows? My guess would be rebels, but it's hard to say for sure. At one point, they meet a Christian, still living in the ruins of his home, who complains that the rebels were vicious to the Christians. Towards the end of the video, Hezbollah takes a couple of prisoners and seems to treat them fairly. Hezbollah has pumped a large force into Syria, and I think that was the right thing to do. Hezbollah's army is so good that they are quickly turning the tide in favor of the Syrian regime. Their victory at Al Qusayr was a huge defeat for the rebels. Now Hezbollah will move onto Homs and then onto Aleppo and Irbil Province. If the rebels are defeated in the north, the war will for all intents and purposes be over. The Arab Sunni world is outraged that Hezbollah has gotten involved in the Syrian Civil War. Some Gulf countries have recently started throwing out Lebanese Shia who are residing there in revenge for Hezbollah's role in Syria. This war is increasingly turning into a Sunni-Shia sectarian conflict.

PFLP-GC Battling Syrian Rebels in a Syrian Palestinian Refugee Camp

This is a great video showing fighting between the PFLP-GC and the Syrian rebels in a Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus. The rebels entered the camp where the PFLP-GC has a huge presence, and the PFLP-GC, a very well-armed and well-trained force, fought the rebels. The Syrian Army unfortunately would not enter the camp to help the PFLP-GC fight the rebels. Quite a few of the Palestinians in the camp, including PFLP-GC members, joined the rebels to fight against their Palestinian brethren. However, over time, the PFLP-GC defeated the rebels and rousted them from the camp. In the meantime, much of the camp was destroyed.

The Palestinians are getting dragged into this conflict despite their best efforts to stay out of it. The PFLP-GC is a pro-Syrian split from the PFLP group. The group is an old-line secular group that used to include quite a few Christian members. They strongly oppose the new radical Islamist turn that the Islamic world has been moving towards. They consider these new Islamists to be intolerant and fanatical.

The PFLP-GC has high praise for the Syrian regime. It is true that Syria has treated Palestinians better than most Arab regimes. Palestinians are allowed to work in Syria, whereas they often cannot work in other places. In addition, the PFLP-GC says that Syria still stands with the Palestinians while the rest of the world has abandoned them. There is certainly quite a bit of truth to that statement.

In terms of its relationship with Israel, the PFLP-GC is a pretty hardline group. Recently in the West Bank, there was a gathering of Palestinians at which both Hamas and the PFLP-GC spoke. Both groups praised each other although the PFLP-GC is about as secular as Hamas is Islamist. The reason both groups praised each other is because both of them take a very hard line against Israel.

The fighting in Syria has split the Palestinian movement badly. In particular, the PFLP proper has called for the PFLP-GC to be thrown out of the PLO (the PFLP-GC, along with a number of other organizations, is part of the larger PLO) for needlessly endangering the lives of Palestinians by getting involved in the Syrian Civil War. One might argue that as the rebels entered the camp, the PFLP-GC had little choice but to fight. Some say that the PFLP-GC is fighting alongside the Syrian army in other places in Syria, but this is dubious. The PFLP-GC also has training camps and a presence in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, in particular in the south of Lebanon.

This group is rather unpopular among Palestinian groups, but after reading an interview with some of their elder members who edit and write the party's newspaper, I rather like them. Old-time secular Arab nationalists, just like the Palestinians used to be.

The Perfect Date

Hilarious video of a US comedian portraying "the perfect date" on a video dating site. A barrel of ticks!

The Psycho 5 Year Old

This is actually a pretty humorous video. This is from a news clip interview of a 5 year old girl who takes part in talent shows and her mother. Through the whole video, the child is making hilarious faces at the camera. It turns out that she can see herself on a video screen in the studio and she is making faces in order to see them on the screen the same way one might make faces in the mirror.

The range of faces she makes is very wide, and it shows that by age 5, most children already have a very well-developed personality. Amazingly well-developed, in fact. Although the theory is controversial, some personality theorists say that the personality is formed in full by age 7. That is a bit of an overdraw, but I see what they are talking about. In fact, all adults with personality disorders have a disorder that has roots in childhood.

This does not mean that they are blameless, but they hardly chose their personality. I doubt if any of us did. Our personalities developed in the same way that our face and bodies did, as forces of nature and largely free of willfulness. Even the pathological structures of a personality disorder are best seen as the best defensive way that the child had for dealing with the life that they were thrown into. People deal with life the best way they can, and they build up the best defenses that they can logically think up. In that sense, even psychopathology has "rational" roots as the individual tries to carve an adaptive path in order to function best in whatever environment they find themselves in.

Food Fight at Wallmart

This is a video of a food fight at a Wall-mart in Jacksonville, Florida. I found it on a site that was talking about Black riots. The site has a White racist perspective in that it claims that all of these riots are Black people rioting and deliberately targeting White people in the riots. Sadly, there have been some cases of this which we really ought to discuss on this site. Especially at fairs in the Midwest, young Blacks have gone on rampages, calling them things like "Beat Whitey night."

In some of these riots, only White people were targeted. Although the site lists many recent Black riots and flashmobs, most of these have not targeted White people at all. Some were just general Black riots at fairs and whatnot. The rioting often began with rival Black gangs targeting each other. In other cases, young Blacks flash-mobbed shopping malls for the purpose of stealing stuff. Although these riots targeting Whites are an incendiary issue, we really do need to look into them. The 'Beat Whitey" riots do seem to be increasing in recent years, as is "Polar bear hunting" and "The knockout game."
 
The White nationalist and White racist perspective on this is that US Blacks are declaring war on White people. This seems overdrawn to say the least. Another one of their lines is that this behavior has increased since Obama took office. "Obama has empowered the Blacks,and now they feel strong, so they are declaring war on us," is the line. The problem with this ugly line is that Blacks in the US can apparently never be empowered because they will just use it to attack White people. We must always keep them down so they don't feel empowered enough to attack us.

Raise their self-esteem, and they will just go after Whitey. That is a very depressing analysis, and I certainly hope it is not true. As I noted, this Wal-mart riot was said to be one of the "Beat Whitey" riots. In fact, it is called "Food fight at Wal-mart." If you look at the video, all it shows is a crowd of ghetto Blacks acting all wild and crazy in a Wall-mart. The odd and disturbing thing about this is that these Blacks act like this is their idea of a great time.

As a White person, if I were at this scene, this crowd would spell "dangerous place" and "someone is going to get hurt" to me, and I would try to get the Hell out of there as fast as possible. But many of these Blacks are laughing, smiling and hooting it up like they are having the time of their lives. It is as if they find chaotic, dangerous scenes exhilarating or something. I have noticed this many times before - that ghetto Blacks actually seem to get off on wild, insane, chaotic, dangerous, urban jungle like scenes that would send most White people running for the exits. I really don't understand Black people at all.

Scientific Fart Analysis

This fascinating video shows what actually happens when you fart. This is shot with some sort of an X-ray camera similar to what they use in airports. It shows a heavy person taken from the side. When the person farts, a large black cloud leaves their ass and shoots out into the atmosphere, polluting the whole damn world!