West African Socialist Federation? President H.P. Lovecraft? More Fun Alternate Timelines

The good old alternate history forum serves as another place where I can find content to blog about, even though I'm no longer a member. Here are a couple interesting ones I found over the last couple weeks.

African Yugoslavia: A West African Story-In this one, a mutiny by French African soldiers who haven't been paid for their World War II service kicks off a war of national independence in what's now Mali beginning in 1944. The French's heavy-handed response (in real life this resulted in a massacre) turns more and more of their African subjects--and in particular their African soldiers--against the government. Various rebel groups unite under a clique of intellectuals advocating "African socialism" who in real life became the leaders of independent Senegal, Mali, etc. Faced with a prolonged war in the interior of French West Africa when they've been bled white by World War II and fighting against rebels in Southeast Asia as well, the French ultimately cut their losses and concede independence. What results is an authoritarian left-leaning African federation that refuses to cooperate with the Soviet Union--as the title suggests, basically Yugoslavia in Africa. The author appears to be from West Africa himself and has very detailed knowledge of the history, cultures, and personalities involved, so it's a pretty interesting read.

The King In Yellow: The Presidency of H.P. Lovecraft-In real life, author H.P. Lovecraft was a socially-inept recluse and starving artist, but this is one of many things that change as a result of the dying Dowager Empress failing to poison her imprisoned reformist nephew, the legitimate Qing Emperor. He regains the throne and purges Manchu reactionaries, provoking a three-sided Chinese civil war and ultimately the partition of China. Ripples from these changes include a healthier and more prosperous family life for the young Lovecraft, who serves in this timeline's version of World War I, begins publishing his own political magazine, and ultimately runs for office. 

Although it would be easy to portray Lovecraft as essentially an American Hitler (after all, they were both starving artists in their younger days and extremely, extremely racist), Lovecraft's real-life views were a lot more complex, especially as he grew older. What happens is interesting--he governs as functionally a New Dealer, with a secret society/government agency whose member use his real-life fictional creations as titles (in deliberate mockery of the Ku Klux Klan) that serves as his muscle. There are a lot of in-jokes pertaining to Lovecraft's real-life fictional writing, although in this timeline that exists only as poetry books he writes to deal with wartime PTSD. The wider geopolitical situation is complex...in addition to a divided China, Mussolini stays a socialist and becomes dictator of Italy after WWI as part of a wider Communist bloc that includes the Soviet Union and a Communist Germany where historical Communist leader Rosa Luxembourg (who tried to overthrow the nascent Weimar Republic and ended up getting shot and thrown into a river) is ultimately succeeded by none other than real-life Nazi Joseph Goebbels. This is less bizarre than it sounds--earlier in his Nazi career, Goebbels was part of a more left-wing faction (which emphasized the "socialist" part of National Socialist) before throwing in with Hitler and his more right-wing clique that was supported by the military and the industrialists.

Oh, and Nikola Tesla is heavily involved in this world's Manhattan Project. :)

Great Minds Think Alike: The Dutch East India Company Finds Gold and My Afrikaner Timeline

Although I'm still self-banned from the alternate history forum to avoid Internet political drama and save time for my writing projects, I do drop in unlogged-in from time to time to see if there's anything cool in the public sections.

Well, here's a new timeline entitled "The Dutch Strike Gold: A Timeline of VOC Exploits in Southern Africa." In our history it's my understanding that the Dutch East India Company (whose Dutch acronym is VOC) restricted Dutch settlement to the coastal regions of what was then their Cape Colony, preventing further expansion into the rural areas. The movement of the Dutch into the interior, the Great Trek, came much later on, after the British seized the Cape during the Napoleonic Wars and many Dutch didn't want to live under their rule.

In this timeline, however, a VOC expedition into the interior discovers gold, prompting mass emigration to the colony from the Netherlands, France, and other parts of Europe. The Dutch begin moving into the interior well ahead of schedule, eventually putting them right in the crosshairs of the nascent Zulu Empire under the rule of the charismatic and highly dangerous Shaka Zulu. Shaka's conquests triggered the Mfecane, a period of widespread warfare and conquest in southern Africa that led to the formation of many new states and killed between one and two million people. Things get...interesting, although one positive consequence might be better relations between the Boers and neighboring African peoples, including possible intermarriage rather than what ultimately became apartheid.

This reminded me quite a bit of my own alternate timeline, "Apartheid Superpower," in which my space-war short story "Coil Gun" (included in Digital Science Fiction: Pressure Suite) and espionage novelette "Picking Up Plans in Palma" (available as part of the collection Digital Science Fiction: Cosmic Hooey as well) are set. My timeline is rather spotty in the early days, but it features a similar situation in that the Dutch settle southern Africa much earlier and in larger numbers, ultimately expanding all the way to the Sahara Desert and Ethiopia by land and into Arabia and India by sea.

(In case that sounds familiar, the world is both a homage to and critique of S.M. Stirling's Draka novels, the first three of which are combined in The Domination and the fourth novel Drakon. I elaborate a bit on that in this post here.)

Given how hostile the disease environment is toward Europeans and their livestock once one gets sufficiently north into Africa, that took some...creativity. For starters, the Afrikaner Confederation is founded independently of the Netherlands and VOC, allowing for more flexibility. What ends up developing is more akin to the Massachusetts Bay Colony than an outpost focused on providing way stations for the trade with India and nothing else. Secondly, a Spanish attack on Cape Town (complete with several leading citizens being burned at the stake for refusing to abandon Protestantism) traumatizes the Afrikaners and prompts them to greatly militarization. Thirdly, having the VOC side with Cape Town instead of Amsterdam when Revolutionary France seizes control of the Netherlands (in TongaTui's timeline the VOC and its African colonies side with France) allows the nascent Afrikaner Confederation to pretty much inherit all the VOC's assets throughout Asia and lots and lots of money, allowing for the Confederation to dominate southern Asia by the time of World War III.

However, dealing with malaria, the tsetse fly, etc. with pre-19th Century medical knowledge proved a tougher hurdle. I had the Afrikaners transplant cinchona trees to their lands in Africa and Asia (the anti-malarial quinine is made from the bark), something someone commenting on the timeline pointed out would be that era's equivalent of the Moon Landing. TongaTui's timeline is probably much more realistic than mine; it's certainly more conservative and better-researched.

So if you're interested in alternate history set in Africa, check out TongaTui's timeline and my timeline, as well as the published works linked to above.

Prussian Generals In Austrian Service and a Tougher Italian Fight for Ethiopia

Awhile back I posted about an alternate timeline featuring our world's Frederick the Great defecting to Austria and having a major impact on world history (early ending of serfdom in Russia, earlier and larger American Revolution, and much more). It was a pretty good timeline and it's still going.

Well, here's another alternate timeline featuring a real-life Prussian general in Austrian service, "The Great Silent One: Moltke the Austrian." In this one, the Prussian military genius Moltke the Elder moves to the Austro-Hungarian Empire as a child. Instead of serving on first the Prussian and then the German Imperial general staff, instead he enters the Hapsburg army and makes his way to their general staff instead. Nothing really significant differs from our world until the Austrians battle the French in the Sardinian War. Then things start getting really, really different. Highlights of the timeline include the humbling of Prussia, the continued survival of Napoleon III's regime in France (and its increasingly anti-British turn), a wiser Nicholas II of Russia influenced by his reformist grandfather and not his reactionary father, and French interfering in the Spanish-American War.

Things aren't looking good for the British as Europe seems to be developing an alternate-timeline version of the Three Emperor's League of Napoleonic France, the enlarged Hapsburg Empire, and Romanov Russia, but given how the French have annoyed the Americans already, it's possible an Anglo-American rapprochement will happen at around the same time.

Moving onward, there's another interesting timeline, "The New Conquering Lion of Judah, Ras Imru!" Ras Imru was a cousin of the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie and one of Ethiopia's most successful generals during the second Ethiopian-Italian war, at one point menacing the Italian rear before his army was wrecked by aerial bombardment using poison gas. Although many often think of the second war as being a one-sided beating of the Ethiopians by Mussolini and company, the Italians weren't doing too well early on. Heck, even later on the Ethiopians had the chance to inflict a major defeat on the Italians that they lost due to feasting before battle for a week.

(I'm MerryPrankster, although I haven't posted in years because the site--especially the political discussion forums--are time sinks.)

In this scenario, the timeline's author uses my suggested point of divergence that the Ethiopians attack the Italians at Maychew earlier and beat them. Despite winning the battle, the Ethiopians know they won't be able to defend the capital against the Italians once the rainy season ends, so they set up a provisional capital at Gore, more defensible against the Italians, and begin implementing long-run plans for a guerrilla war in areas under Italian occupation. The success at Maychew and Ethiopian diplomacy at the League of Nations convinces the League to end the arms embargo to "both sides" that benefited the somewhat-industrialized Italians (who could manufacture their own weapons) but kept the Ethiopians disarmed. Weapons ordered by the Ethiopians but impounded in other European colonies start flowing in, while foreign journalists have more freedom to cover the war (and thus publicize the Ethiopian cause).

In the last update the Ethiopians have abandoned the capital of Addis Ababa (with the exception of some stay-behinds who bushwhack Italian and Eritrean troops entering the city), but the war's not over yet...

Movie Review: Black Panther (2018)

The Marvel Cinematic Universe continues to roll along with Black Panther, featuring one of the first black superheroes and a character first introduced in Captain America Civil War. Although I'm not black, I've seen how much this movie has meant to African-Americans of my acquaintance and I saw some very positive reviews, so I hoped it was good. I had President's Day off, so I went to go see it.

And now the review...

The Plot

T'Challa (Chadwick Boseman) returns to the African nation of Wakanda, which despite its rustic, backward appearance has very advanced technology based on vibranium, to be formally crowned king after his father's death. There we meet intelligence agent Nakia (Lupita Nyong'o)--who is also his ex-lover--his regal mother Ramonda (Angela Bassett), and his smart-alecky tech genius sister Shuri (Letitia Wright).

Unfortunately, the arms dealer and troublemaker Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis), whom we last saw hobnobbing with Ultron in Avengers: Age of Ultron, is back. He's made an alliance with Special Forces veteran Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan), who seeks use Wakanda's advanced technology to avenge the mistreatment of black people by Western society.

Trouble ensues...

The Good

*The worldbuilding is very well-done. I'm not familiar with African culture, music, etc. beyond television documentaries and books for the most part, but the dancing, music, etc. sound very African. This article here goes into more detail about the effort and research that went into developing Wakanda for the film. The use of Lesotho in particular as a basis for "primitive" Wakanda makes a lot of sense--Lesotho retained its independence in part due to its mountains, much like how Wakanda's mountains allow it to maintain itself in isolation from the outside world.

*There are a lot of laugh-out-loud and delightfully smart-ass comments from the characters. I particularly liked Shuri, T'Challa's sister who reminds me sometimes of my own little sister. Even the grim Killmonger gets some snarky lines, which I enjoyed as well. The Stan Lee cameo is also pretty funny.

*The cast in general is very impressive. A lot of big-time names in this movie.

*The political and cultural grievances that drive Killmonger are unfortunately quite real. I have an M.A. in world history with a U.S. History minor and I'm well aware of slavery (and its successor, convict leasing, which is not as well-known), colonialism, the assassination of people like Martin Luther King Jr., guns and drugs in the 'hood, etc. I liked how they made Killmonger, an orphaned child of the ghetto, since that makes him a foil for T'Challa, the wealthy and well-respected ruler of the one African country never to be colonized.

(Ethiopia was briefly conquered by Italy and Liberia was a fiefdom of Firestone rubber despite retaining its political independence.)

*Ulysses Klaue is a white South African and although he's not above doing business with blacks, that doesn't mean he doesn't have his cultural prejudices. He describes the Wakandans as "savages" and refers to Killmonger as "boy" at one point--not necessarily out of any personal meanness or maliciousness, but it's still disrespectful. That's a nice little bit of personality/cultural quirk there.

*The movie is only rarely dull, and those parts are typically at the beginning. Once Killmonger arrives in Wakanda it never lets up.

*Nakia's and T'Challa's breakup seems to have been caused by philosophical differences--T'Challa supports the country's historical isolationism like his father, while Nakia wants to use their technological advances to help others. When we first meet Nakia she's pretending to be the prisoner of a group of African warlord-types who are taking women in headscarves to an unknown but probably unpleasant fate--they reminded me a lot of the women captured by Boko Haram--and one of their soldiers is a child or young teen. That a spy working for an African superpower would focus on solving problems in Africa makes a lot of sense.

The Bad

*Although Wakanda's architectural styles are very African, a lot of the technology they have (monorails, hover-bikes and boards) are the same or more high-tech versions of real-world technologies from outside Africa. Another character is wearing a Western suit and tie, albeit with a rather different color scheme. Wakanda is supposed to be isolated from the rest of the world, but yet they've developed pretty much the same technology tree in isolation from outsiders? Europe got the dhow sail from Arabs and gunpowder and the compass from China; they didn't independently develop them themselves.

In the comics, Captain America's shield was made of Wakandan vibranium, much like how uranium from the Belgian Congo was used in the atomic bombs. There's also back-story of contacts between the U.S. and Wakanda during WWII. It would've been more interesting if Wakanda's wealth and technological advancement was less extreme of a secret--there's trade and intellectual exchange with the outside world, even if the Wakandans hold the best cards close to their chest so to speak. The African kingdom on which Wakanda was based dealt with Europeans from a position of strength due to its wealth and geographic defenses rather than hiding and Wakanda could be the same way. Perhaps they could have alluded to T'Challa's grandfather having met Howard Stark or something similar to build deeper connections with the wider wider of The Avengers and explain the technological and cultural overlaps. Wakanda does have agents, diplomats, etc. in the outside world who could have brought in concepts like bikes, monorails, etc., but there's nothing indicating they brought with them monorail plans, machine tools, etc.

I'd always figured Wakanda was like a petrostate, using the wealth from its vibranium to build an advanced society, but that requires trade. Even if they kept the full extent of their wealth and power secret to avoid getting conquered by greedy outsiders, I think they kind of overdid it a little bit.

*One character is kind of a loose end and we don't know what exactly happened to them. Given their relationship to T'Challa, I would think there'd be even more emotional resonance involving their actions and the film would be sure to mention their fate. Their actions were foreshadowed well, but could have been foreshadowed better and, given their actions and relationship to T'Challa, they'd have more conflict about it.

*There were a couple of look-at-my-watch moments, but not many.

The Verdict

Like a black version of Dune or Game of Thrones and a worthy member of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Lots of real-world issues are explored without being preachy and annoying. 9.0 out of 10.

Movie Review: The Legend of Tarzan (2016)

I've historically not been interested in the Tarzan mythology, even though I remember getting a kid version of Tarzan of the Apes at the elementary-school book fair long ago. However, I saw the trailers for the jungle-history-adventure film The Legend of Tarzan and they looked really cool, so I decided to go see it.

How was it?

The Plot

John Clayton (Alexander Skarsgård), an English aristocrat raised by apes in the African jungle but ultimately returned to civilization after rescuing missionary's daughter Jane Porter (Margot Robbie) from a violent ape, is asked to visit Belgian King Leopold's Congolese colony on behalf of the British government. He declines, but is asked by George Washington Williams (Samuel L. Jackson) to accept the invitation in order to help him investigate rumored mass enslavement of Congolese by Leopold's regime, which as far as the outside world knows is a humanitarian venture whose purpose is to educate the natives, spread Christianity, and protect them from Arab slavers.

Taking up Williams' offer, he returns to the village on the edge of the Congolese jungle where Jane's father taught the locals English and where he was a local legend "Tarzan," an evil spirit who could control the animals of the jungle. The village is attacked by Force Publique soldiers under the command of Belgian official Leon Rom (Christoph Waltz), who intend to trade Clayton to African chief Mbonga (Djimon Hounsou), whose son Tarzan had killed years before, in exchange for a hoard of diamonds. Williams and Clayton escape but Jane and many of the villagers are captured by Rom's men, who take them upriver into Mbonga's domain. Clayton, Williams, and a posse of African villagers pursue...

The Good

*One generally doesn't associate "jungle action-adventure movies" with really good acting, but I was impressed with the actors in this one, especially the supporting cast. Robbie impresses as Jane, who's quite spunky and not the sort of damsel who easily ends up in distress (or has problems getting out of it). Jackson's Williams is pretty cool, especially when he opens up about his past and the reasons why he's trying to expose Leopold's misdeeds. Waltz plays Rom in an oily and cunning way that reminds me very much of Aidan Gillen's Littlefinger from Game of Thrones. And Hounsou, even though he's not onscreen very much, does a great job conveying a grieving and very, very angry father.

*I like the tie-ins with real history. Both Rom and Williams are real people, while the enslavement and exploitation of the peoples of the Congo by the Congo Free State (the king's personal project, not affiliated with the Belgian government until the revelation of his crimes made it radioactive) was a very real and evil thing. If anything, the film downplays the regime's cruelty--we see generic colonial crimes like Africans being killed or taken as slaves, but none of the especial horrors that led to the death of ten million people, half of Congo's population. Read King Leopold's Ghost if you want to know more. The movie doesn't need to be pushed into R territory with excessive additional violence, but perhaps a scene of villagers with missing hands or dying en masse of starvation because the men are all collecting rubber and the women and children are all being kept hostage (so nobody is actually growing food) could be included.

*Per the above, the tale of a colonial-era white guy as king of the African jungle could run into all sorts of problems in an age where the wider culture (or at the very least cultural arbiters and gatekeepers like movie critics, studio VIPs, academics, etc) are much more sensitive to charges of racism. I remember someone online openly wondering if the Tarzan story should even be retired completely as a relic of a less-enlightened time. However, the film retains unaltered the characters of Tarzan (the white "king of the jungle") and Jane (his white American wife) while at the same time depicting black people as something other than violent spear-chucking villains and/or helpless people who need Tarzan to save them from the peril of the week. Heck, instead of being a "White Savior," Tarzan would much rather stay home in Britain and it takes Williams to get him to go back to Africa in the first place. Williams, although not as ludicrously fit as Tarzan, is essentially his equal, while Mbonga, instead of being another howling savage from central casting, is developed as a character. And when Tarzan goes to war, he has a posse of African allies backing him up.

*There's some really good foreshadowing. Tarzan's skills and physical power are shown in little doses before he goes into full Tarzan mode--he can hear Williams cracking nuts in a meeting when nobody else can and he climbs a tree on his English estate by pulling himself several feet up onto a branch with only one arm. The fact that hippos, not crocodiles or lions, are the most dangerous animals in Africa is revealed well before we even get to Africa, let alone before the hippos become a problem. And Tarzan's ability to mimic animal mating calls is revealed pretty early in the film too. There's a whole arsenal of Chekhov's guns put on display before they're fired, instead of New Powers As The Plot Demands.

*Rom is clearly a villain, but during a conversation with the captive Jane he reveals a lot of the issues driving him and they're all quite understandable. Everybody is the hero of their own story and although Rom's deeds clearly make him a bad guy, he has intelligent and even sympathetic motivations.

*Although I had some problems with the script (I'll get to those later), one thing I definitely appreciated is just how funny it is. Jane's first meeting with the young Tarzan many years before the story begins is downright hilarious, as is Williams' character in general. There are a lot of funny bits in the movie and I rather appreciate them.

*The older Tarzan works depicted gorillas as murderously homicidal and violent (probably due to limited scientific knowledge at the time), but in reality gorillas are much less violent than the smaller chimpanzees. The movie gets around this by specifically differentiating the "Mangani" apes that raised Tarzan from gorillas, who are explicitly described as "gentle."

The Bad

*There are some really draggy bits in the first third or so of the movie, before the Claytons return to Africa. Things get better later on, fortunately.

*Skarsgård is not nearly as interesting or impressive as Clayton/Tarzan as Jackson, Robbie, Honsou, and Waltz are as the other characters. The movie could have depicted him as someone having problems fitting in with civilization and only being really "free" once he's returned to the jungle (I think that was a major aspect of one of the 1980s Tarzan movies), but that vein isn't really mined very much. I've heard Skarsgård is a great actor, so that might be on the script.

*Many African cultures are polygamous and even if the (fictional) culture of Opar does not allow the practice, larger families would have been the norm. I doubt Tarzan would have killed Mbonga's only son. Make it his eldest son and that would be fine. Heck, it could have been any son, not just the eldest.

*The historical Force Publique would have been recruited from the local population and thus would have been mostly black, with white officers. In the film we see an occasional black guy in the Force Publique, but they mostly seem to be white European mercenaries. Obviously one can't be too picky about historical accuracy, especially if one wants a happy ending given the history of the Congo, but if one is concerned depicting Africans complicit in the European conquest of other Africans will annoy people, it could be made clear why they're fighting. Give them agency, if you will, like the movie is clearly doing with Mbonga. Rom could explicitly be depicted recruiting poor and outcast Africans with the promises of money or power, recruiting soldiers from one tribe with the promise of them getting to kill their rivals, etc.

*We could see more of the reasons Rom has for doing what he does in other scenes beyond his conversation with Jane. The climactic battle would be a very good place for it--when things go poorly it's him who keeps the villains going. His issues simply will not let him give up. This would also make him more impressive.

*The climactic battle--not going to go into a lot of detail for reasons of spoilers--is over way too quickly. I would have prolonged it, which would also allow for Tarzan's African allies to do more.

*The villainous Rom is depicted as fiddling on his rosary a lot and claims to have been very close to his local priest as a child. However, the real-life strong Christian faith that drove Williams (he was a Baptist minister as well as a soldier and diplomat) to challenge Leopold's cruelty is absent from his character completely. Other reviewers have referred to Jane as the daughter of a missionary and although that's not explicit, it seems to me that's the only plausible reason her father is teaching English to remote African villagers. There are purely secular NGOs like Doctors Without Borders today, but it is my understanding that back then the kind of people who did the stuff the elder Porter did (i.e. traveling to remote places and educating the people) would have been Christian missionaries like Dr. Livingston.

Given the times, the overwhelming majority of Westerners would have been at least nominally Christian, but only the evil Rom is depicted as being such and that left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth.

*We're told that Tarzan and Jane had lost a child and that's why Tarzan is reluctant to have Jane accompany him back to Africa, but the impact on them could have been explored more deeply. Even a miscarriage, let alone the death of a newborn or older child, will leave its wounds, but that only seems important in one scene. Jane could be clearly depressed in England and Tarzan could agree to have her accompany him, despite his concerns for her safety, in the hopes that a trip will lift her spirits.

*The British Prime Minister trying to get Tarzan to support Leopold's venture on the grounds it would give the natives jobs is anachronistic. The idea that a government's duties including keeping people employed was not common back then, especially in more laissez-faire Britain. I would have had him play the "white man's burden" card--he could believe the claims that Leopold's government is educating and protecting the natives who Tarzan knew as a young man. Only Williams is skeptical, since as as a black man he would have reasons to distrust white paternalism.

The Verdict

Surprisingly well-done, but with a few flaws. Definitely worth the $4 I paid to see it at North DeKalb Mall's AMC (which has first-run movies for matinee prices I haven't seen in many years) and worth a matinee price at a more expensive place. 8.0 out of 10.

Book Review: Independence Day: Crucible (2016)

Last week I saw the big-budget science fiction epic Independence Day: Resurgence, a film that left much to be desired. Here's my review. The podcast Myopia: Defend Your Childhood will be doing a special podcast to discuss the film, much like we did for Jurassic World last summer. I'll also do a "how I would have done it" post like what I did for the original Mortal Kombat and Star Wars The Force Awakens, but until then, content yourself with my review of Greg Keyes' new novel Independence Day: Crucible that covers the twenty years after the original Independence Day...

The Plot

Twenty years have passed between the War of 1996 in which the genocidal Harvester aliens were narrowly defeated on the Fourth of July. Independence Day: Resurgence opens up with a world at peace, transformed by the widespread adoption of alien technology and where petty human feuds have been put away to face a dangerous universe. Only the dregs of the Harvester threat remain, locked in battle with warlords in central Africa, and they're obviously on the way out.

How did we get from Captain Steve Hiller (Will Smith) and Dr. David Levinson (Jeff Goldlum) walking away from the fallen fighter with cigars alight to this brave new world? Well, read Independence Day: Crucible and find out...

The Good

*Keyes captures the character voices really well. He does a particularly good job capturing Hiller and Dr. Levinson, in particular Hiller's swagger and penchant for one-liners and Dr. Levinson's Goldblum-esque verbal tics.

*Keyes comes up with a creative use for the aliens' tentacle-driven telepathy--controlling captured humans so the aliens can use human weapons. Hiller, flying a mission in support of Russian troops attacking aliens dug into an old Soviet base after the fall of the City Destroyers, finds out the hard way.

*We see how the friendship between Dylan Dubrow-Hiller (Will Smith's stepson) and the young Jake Morrison (Liam Hemsworth's character) begins. We also see that Dylan had longstanding romantic feelings for Patricia Whitmore, which I said in my review would have improved the characterization in the film no matter how cliched love triangles are in an age of young-adult dystopias like The Hunger Games. We also see the "territory issues" he develops with Jake over Patricia, which should have made it into the movie. We also see the chip on his shoulder the orphaned Jake has due to his familial situation and childhood poverty, his resentment of Dylan, and how Dylan desperately wants to get out from under his stepfather's shadow, all of which are only vaguely touched on in the movies.

*There's a whole back-story for Dikembe Umbutu, the Congolese warlord who controlled the only intact City Destroyer. In the movie we see his lingering anger at his father who, fearing the return of colonialism, refused to allow outsiders to support his people in their war with the remaining aliens and his zeal for defending both his people and all of mankind when the Harvesters return. In the book we follow him for twenty years, from when he's an art student in Britain to his return to his homeland in the aftermath of the first invasion to how he turns against his increasingly-insane father. There's also a whole back-story for the territory he controls--it was originally a province of the Republic of Congo, which broke up after the aliens destroyed the capital Kinshasa.

*The book is clearly built on 1990s geopolitics. Pre-Putin Russia is largely irrelevant and the major international relationship is between the United States and China. When President Whitmore meets with the leader of China (a junior member of the Politburo who took over after most of it died with Beijing), the major issues are Taiwan and Tibet. The one-child policy so hated by human-rights activists comes up several times. This makes a lot of sense--Russia in the 1990s was in a bad place and getting hammered by the aliens would make it worse. China was on the rise and the hammering from the aliens was compensated with all the goodies captured alien technology could provide.

*There's plenty of foreshadowing for Captain Hiller's fate, especially once we start getting into the middle of the book.

*We meet Jiang, future commander of Earth's lunar defense system, and he's just as much of a hardass as he is in the movie even though he's much younger.

*There's friction between Dr. Levinson and his father about children (namely how he and his ex-wife, whom he later remarried, didn't have any) and religion as well. I don't remember the first movie very well but I think the elder Levinson didn't like his son's choice of career, calling him a TV repairman. Here they've just found new issues to fight about.

*Keyes' is very detail-oriented and builds on small stuff from the original movie. Boomer (the dog belonging to Capt. Hiller and his family) appears early in the book, while Hiller's "I COULD HAVE BEEN AT A BARBECUE!" is expanded into a strong love for grilling out.

*The book depicts how much life sucks for ordinary people, even in a wealthy country like the United States, after the invasion. Jake is part of a group of summer campers in the California countryside whose families either die with Los Angeles or are scattered and cannot find them. The "lost boys of Sudan" come to mind. The head of the camp tries to keep them safe in the mountains, but his son's leg injury forces him to bring them down into a refugee camp where his son ends up dying for lack of antibiotics. The group takes control of an abandoned motel, fills the pool with dirt to grow their own food, and becomes the nucleus of a de facto orphanage that ends up including the young Charlie, who arrives on his own after the death of a relative who was raising him after his immediate family was killed.

*The book also explores the problem of poverty and education. Jake and Charlie are two of the few from their orphanage who get an education worth a damn owing to their native intelligence and extreme drive to succeed. Most of their peers end up uneducated due to their poverty and lack of opportunity. The gulf between poor schools and wealthy schools is already an issue in our world--the losses both materially and in lives inflicted by the aliens exacerbate an an already-existing problem. The only other time I can remember the effects of an apocalypse on the educational system is the novel Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle in which a group of survivors defend a nuclear plant from an anti-technology cult so their grandchildren don't become illiterate peasants fearing thunder gods.

*The book also explores how many cities simply were not rebuilt after the invasion. I would think many of them would simply because the reasons they existed in the first place would still be there and most survivors would want to return home, but there would only be limited funds and many higher priorities. New York, Los Angeles, Mumbai, etc. would likely be rebuilt at least to a degree after such an event, but I could imagine many smaller or less important cities declining or returning to nature entirely.

The Bad

*The aftermath of the alien invasion could have taken books to cover. The early chapters told from the perspective of the young Dikembe describe a battle with alien survivors in the north of England, while the long battle with the aliens back in his homeland is condensed into a few chapters. Hiller helps Russians fight an army of alien survivors, but that's only one chapter. I doubt Keyes would be given a whole series to cover what happened and he's doing the best he can with what he has, but I would have loved some more detail.

*I don't really find the back-story for Jake and Charlie (played by Travis Tope in the movie) particularly interesting, even if it is a serviceable way to explain what the aftermath of the alien invasion is like for orphans and people not named Levinson, Dubrow-Hiller, or Whitmore. Props for Keyes for trying to show how much life for those who aren't part of the pre-war upper class or war heroes and their families sucks, but it just isn't that interesting.

*We don't see any of the youth and back-story for the Chinese pilot Rain (Angelababy) until nearly halfway through the book, although we do meet her father during the last battle with the first invaders. It would have been interesting to see her grow up amid the rebuilding of China, just like we see the US through the eyes of Dylan, Patricia, Jake, and Charlie. Instead we first meet her when she's 13 and her younger childhood, which we see with the other characters, is summarized.

*I still think New York, Los Angeles, and Mumbai--cities explicitly described in the book as being abandoned--would be rebuilt. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were, after all, and they were probably proportionately more damaged. I could easily imagine the metro areas being largely intact even if the aliens wiped out the high-density urban cores. Rebuilding could proceed from there.

*Racism probably declined rapidly owing to the alien threat and the probability large-scale population movements would have led to interracial/intercultural relationships forming that in other circumstances would not. However, it would be more realistic if the idea Patricia chose Jake instead of him due to his being black at least occurred to Dylan. Even if he immediately becomes angry at himself for thinking such a thought about a girl he'd known since he was a child and had been close friends for years, even though Dylan doesn't have the massive chip on his shoulder Jake does, the thought might pop up whether he likes it or not.

Assuming he was eight years old (the same age as his actor Ross Bagley) in the first film, he would have spent his elementary school years in pre-war Los Angeles not long after the 1992 riots. Even if the world became immediately color-blind after 1996 (doubtful), racism and class prejudice (his mother is unmarried and works as a stripper) would have left its mark on him. This article here includes an account from an African-American man who was given "the talk" about the dangers of getting into trouble with police when he was seven years old.

The Verdict

If the characterization for Jake, Dylan, and Patricia present in the novel actually made it into the movie, it would be much, much better. Keyes also makes a manful effort to world-build, something I always appreciate. However, the book is a mile wide and an inch deep owing to the need to cover so much history in a relatively short space. 7.5 out of 10.

If it were cheaper I'd have fewer problems recommending it, but it's not worth the $7.99 I paid for the Kindle version. I considered ordering a used print version, but with shipping, handling, and tax it would have been equal to or more expensive than the electronic version and taken me longer to get it. I would strongly recommend you either wait for the price to drop or see if your local library has it.

News Article Roundup 6/6

It's been a long time since I've done a "News Article Round-Up" post featuring interesting news articles and commentary. Here goes...

Michael Bay is Giving "Britain's Loneliest Dog" 15 Minutes of Fame-Not only has Michael Bay included this no doubt incredibly sad and bored shelter dog in Transformers: The Last Knight, he's also going to try to get her adopted. I've got friends who criticized Michael Bay for his various excesses, I wrote "The Revenge of the Fallen Reboot" because I was so disappointed with Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, and I never even bothered with Transformers: Age of Extinction, but I think this is a really cool thing to do.

The Zoo That Wants To Release Wild Elephants In Denmark-This article is about "rewilding," or restoring places to their pre-human state. Some of the more radical variants involve bringing lions, tigers, elephants, etc. to North America and Europe. There's this article I found on The Atlantic that describes the emptying of rural parts of the U.S. So long as people aren't forcibly displaced or endangered by more dangerous types of wildlife, that doesn't seem like a bad idea to me. The reintroduction of wolves in various places doesn't seem to have caused problems.

This is Africa's Most Overlooked Achievement And It's Changing the Lives of Millions-Africa is one of many places that's skipped a generation of technology--for example, areas that never had landline phones now have lots and lots of mobile phones. This article describes another area where Africa has "skipped a generation"--a lot of rural villages now have small-scale solar power and wind power as opposed to feeding off gigantic industrial power-plants. This is pretty cool, as it provides Africans with modern technologies while at the same time avoiding the environmental problems gigantic power plants, huge power-line infrastructures, etc. Decentralized power generation would be the way to go for the whole world and it looks like Africa's leading the way.

Engineered bacterium inhales carbon dioxide and hydrogen and excretes fuel alcohols-Get enough of this going and goodbye greenhouse effect. I have heard some concerns about the bacteria potentially getting out of control and causing problems, but perhaps there's the possibility of engineering them so they can't reproduce beyond a certain point? Think the "terminator gene" to avoid GMO plants spreading their genes to wild plants.

Ten Slavic Spirits and Monsters You've Probably Never Heard Of-For those of you who are into writing science fiction, fantasy, and horror, here are some new critters for you to use.

Enter Hiero Desteen, Pursued By Mutant Wolverines-This isn't really a news article per se, but it's still pretty cool. It's a linked series of blog posts in which the blogger, who's a college professor somewhere, re-reads and comments on the novel Hiero's Journey. I first read that novel in high school and it was a big influence on my Wastelands series. I re-read both the first book and the sequel The Unforsaken Hiero recently and they're still fun. The blogger's comments are also pretty darn funny, including the following commentary on the first chapter:

Things are looking dark for Hiero, and it appears that our novel is about to become a short story, when of a sudden Gorm the Bear comes out of hiding and bites S'nerg in the balls.This was probably the point at which, while I was first reading Hiero's Journey, I realized I was going to finish the novel. You just don't get mutant-bear groin-biting in conventional stories.

I hope all of the above content interested you...

Two New Cool Alternate Timelines For You...

I'm still self-banned from the alternate-history forum until sometime in June at least, and I might re-up said ban until the end of the summer at least in order to focus on finishing Little People, Big Guns over the summer (the small press I've been in contact with says 30,000 words max). However, I do drop in from time to time just to read and found a couple cool ideas.

*Here's the first one, Twilight of the Valkyries. This is a super-detailed account of what have happened if the July 20 plot had successfully killed Adolf Hitler. A former member of the site (he got banned, although I can't remember why) proposed that the ultimate beneficiary of the plot would not have been the Schwarze Kapelle anti-Hitler conspiracy within the military but the ambitious Panzer commander Heinz Guderian, who had a substantial force of tank trainees nearby and could crush the SS and Home Army both. The timeline's creator has clearly done his (or her, although almost all site members are male) research. There are hints that he's using the "Salt the Earth" scenario I posted about earlier as a model--the French Communist resistance leaders in Paris are watching the inter-German fighting eagerly.

I'm using a Guderian-rides-Valkyrie-plot-to-power scenario as the basis for a dieselpunk world I'm fiddling with, so I'm definitely watching this one eagerly.

*This is a more obscure one, based on a little-known mutiny by the Force Publique against King Leopold's rule in the Congo. It's called Mameluke Congo and postulates that if the mutineers had a single charismatic leader, they might have been able to eject Leopold's regime from the Congo completely. It turns out the Force Publique in this period was ludicrously heavily armed and Soverihn makes the case they could maintain control of the entire ex-colony and deter outside intervention, especially if the European Great Powers are all trying to keep others from taking the Congo rather than uniting to crush a challenge to white power in Africa.

(In case you're wondering, the Mamelukes were a slave military caste that ultimately took control of Egypt. The Force Publique in this scenario would adopt a sort of collective identity of their own that would transcend the tribes from which they'd been recruited.)

At present the timeline goes all the way into a delayed WWI in which the Congo is allied to the Central Powers and proceeds to ravage the Allies' African colonies--until the Royal Navy swoops in and cuts off their trade. It's not clear at this point whether the Congolese will survive the wider war, even though it does look like the Central Powers are winning.

LEGEND OF TARZAN (2016) and THE BFG (2016) Trailers

Here are a couple more interesting movie trailers I found in the last couple days.



I first heard of The Legend of Tarzan courtesy of a comment a fellow writer made online. I forgot about it for a bit, then remembered it and hit YouTube to learn more. As far as I know it's been a long time since there's been any live-action Tarzan material--Casper Van Dien was in the box-office bomb Tarzan and the Lost City and there was a live-action WB television series featuring an American teenage heir to a corporate fortune instead of a British nobleman that if I remember correctly got canceled pretty quickly.

Based on the trailer the movie looks really cool. It seems to be set in the colonial era with all the steamships and Maxim guns (and even features the British Punch magazine from that era), but it also has all the unknown-civilizations stuff from an old-school Edgar Rice Burroughs story. Not sure when precisely it's coming out, but it certainly looks fun.

And now for the next one, which I was alerted to the other night by my friend Nick. It's a film adaptation of Roald Dahl's novel The Big Friendly Giant, which I remember reading in the third grade.



I like the trailer's style--they basically introduce the idea of giants and giants abducting people and end with the little girl saying that this is how the story begins. It's a good way of hooking the audience and getting them to want more.

Blast from the Past Movie Review: Congo (1995)

Well, for the latest episode of the film podcast Myopia: Defend Your Childhood, we watched the 1995 film Congo, adapted from the Michael Crichton novel. Yours truly served as the humble defendant. So did this adventure in diamond prospecting in the heart of Africa hold up? Listen to the podcast here and find out...

The Plot

After an expedition to find blue diamonds that could revolutionize the communications industry is mysteriously massacred, TraviCom head honcho R.B. Travis (Joe Don Baker) dispatches Dr. Karen Ross (Laura Linney) to search for survivors--including his son Charles (Bruce Campbell)--and find the diamonds too. Along the way she joins forces with Dr. Peter Elliott (Dylan Walsh) and the gorilla Amy, whom he taught to speak using a bracelet that translates sign language. Also on the expedition is Herkemer Homulka (Tim Curry), a Romanian philanthropist who is much more than he seems, and Charles Munro (Ernie Hudson), "a great white hunter...who happens to be black." They make their way to the lost city of Zinj, only to encounter grisly horror...

The Good

*Although I've complained about film and television adaptations of books deviating from the source material many times before, simplifying the book's complicated plot actually made sense. If they wanted to keep the entire storyline--which included a race with a rival European-Japanese team and some material about white mercenaries in Africa--it would have made more sense to make it a one-season-and-done television series the way some British shows are. Either that or it'd be something resembling The Lord of the Rings, which they might not have had the budget for.

(Oh but that would have been cool, especially if the two rival expeditions physically clash with each other the way the Fellowship of the Ring and the Uruk-Hai do and the perils of man and nature were cranked up to 11.)

*The actors generally do a good job. Ernie Hudson is the most entertaining as Munro, while Linney and Walsh performed well too.

*The opening is generally well-done and gets to the "expedition gets massacred" pretty quickly. The eyeball sequence is straight from the book.

*There are some good quick bits of exposition, including Dr. Ross's and Charles' previous relationship--they were engaged ("I almost married him!"). If it weren't for the melodrama afterward, that would have been great. Amy's nightmares are also explained quickly without undue info-dumping, as well as a tribal revolt breaking out in Zaire.

*There are some nice little bits of comedy, including an African security official who doesn't know who Kafka is (and gets very upset), a corrupt African soldier, the "great white hunter" joke, and, "I don't have a price. I'm not a pound of sugar, I'm a primatologist." Yes, I liked that line. Here's a YouTube video of the detention scene, which has a lot of the comedy.

*The film has a very good orchestral score.

*Amy is played by a person in a suit, but she generally looks good and not, well, fake. The gorilla suit can even manage facial expressions.

*Once they actually get to Africa, everything moves along at a nice quick pace. It's never boring.

*Instead of Checkov's Gun, we have a Checkov's airplane. :)

The Bad

*The National Geographic-style opening of the film in which we see a bunch of picturesque shots of the African savanna and are gradually introduced to the original expedition rolling in aboard their vehicles got to the vehicles a little too slowly. They could've saved a couple minutes depicting the vehicles from the get-go.

*Although the opening is generally well-done, Bruce Campbell's scream of terror was not well-delivered.

*Back in Houston when the TraviCom head people learn about what happened to the expedition and decide to send a follow-up team, things get melodramatic. Dr. Ross is apparently still touchy about Charles and since she was engaged to him, she's probably privy to a lot of father-son issues, but it didn't come off well. Openly berating and threatening one's employer doesn't seem like a good way to stay employed, let alone get sent off on an important expedition. Maybe if the senior Travis had thrown some zinger about how he wouldn't put up with that if she weren't almost his daughter-in-law that might be better. Dr. Ross is a cool character (in both senses of the word) generally, but on the subject of Charles she gets really irrational and destructive.

*The senior Travis is a cranky jerk with few to no redeeming qualities. A bit two-dimensional.

*There's what comes off as an obvious product placement for the game Doom--yes, the original--pretty early in the film.

*Tim Curry's Romanian accent sounds rather annoying. Fortunately you get used to it pretty quickly.

*Why is the ape flying in the passenger area with everybody else? Maybe it was a private charter and so the ordinary rules don't apply, but I would think animals would generally go with cargo.

*The scene where some natives perform a ritual to recall the soul of a catatonic man goes on for too long. The point--a nice bit of local color and "we're not in Kansas anymore"--is made pretty quickly, but the ritual goes on for at least twice as long as it needs to.

*A character is wounded but dies for no apparent reason. Another character who survives in the books dies in the film. Not sure why they needed the change--either way, he's still not going to be joining the group, nor would the group stop for him.

The Verdict

A nice jungle adventure to see once. 8.0 out of 10.

Independent French Equatorial Africa After Limited Nazi Victory?

Here's another goodie from the alternate-history forum. The member whose handle is Jonathan_Edelstein came up with the idea that in the event of a German-British peace early in WWII (his idea is that Hitler dies in 1941 before the invasion of the Soviet Union and his successors decide to postpone the plan to finish Britain first), not all of France's colonies would submit to the Vichy regime even if it was recognized as the legitimate government of France as part of a compromise peace.

In particular, he suggested French Equatorial Africa might rebel against the new government and ally with the Free French. The basis for this is that the governor of French Equatorial Africa was Félix Éboué, the only black French colonial governor in the French Empire at the time and possibly the only black colonial governor anywhere, ever. Éboué decides he has no future under Vichy and rebels using Chadian troops, gambling on Vichy France's lack of a navy to avoid immediate invasion.

According to Edelstein, Éboué's government wouldn't be a fully decolonized state, but a sort of paternalistic limited-franchise regime with a lot of French government officials and a strong influence by the Catholic Church. He also suggested the different factions within the state could be at odds with each other, including the Catholic civilian government on the coast, the Muslim Chadian soldiery, etc.

The user whose handle is Pikers3 said he doubted it would last long. In order to maintain its legitimacy, the Vichy regime would have to claim all of France's colonies and could not tolerate a rival French state anywhere. With Britain at peace with Germany and (Vichy) France, the Germans and what remains of the loyalist French navy will invade Éboué's state (possibly with the support of Franco, who is no longer deterred by the threat of British attack) and quickly take control. There might be Free French troubles in the interior, but that'd be it. He said historians would remember this as the last gasp of the Free French.

However, there is a way around this. Depending on how long it takes until Britain is brought to the table, the German and Vichy surface navies could be totally wrecked in the meantime. The German fleet took heavy losses invading Norway and the British waged war against the Vichy regime as a co-belligerent of the Nazis, including at one point attacking and sinking much of the French navy lest the Nazis get it. If the Germans and the Vichy allies bring the British to the table by fighting a war of attrition at sea and in the Middle East and North Africa, they might have no surface navy left by the time this is done.

In that case, although the Germans could blockade French Equatorial Africa's ports with submarines, no surface navy means no immediate invasion of FEA. FEA could putter along for years as some kind of blockaded unrecognized state in the vein of Rhodesia.

I'll send this to Jonathan_Edelstein and see what he thinks...

Sicilian Empire? Venetian Constantinople? Super Bulgaria? Check out "Basilicus Sicilia"

Here's another alternate-historical treat for you, my loyal readers. It's called "Basilicus Sicilia."

In our history, the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II was one of the most fascinating characters. He was born and grew up in Sicily, the cosmopolitan heart of the Mediterranean. He spoke six languages and was a major patron of the arts and sciences. He became Holy Roman Emperor and ruled over Germany and much of Italy and was often at loggerheads with the Papacy, which excommunicated him repeatedly and at one point even claimed he was the Antichrist. He had a reputation as a religious skeptic (the truth of that is rather dubious given how the people writing about him were churchmen who had a political beef with him), but waged Crusades all the same.

In this timeline, Frederick's attempt to become Holy Roman Emperor is defeated by Otto IV, but he remains in power in Sicily and southern Italy. Still the genius he was in our history, he renounces his bid to be Emperor in exchange for Sicilian independence and large ransoms for the prisoners he's taken and instead begins a campaign of conquest in North Africa. A Catholic empire ruling over a large Muslim population is a tricky thing, but Frederick's upbringing in very diverse Sicily proves very helpful here. He takes direct control of parts of the Holy Land while Crusading and forces his nobles into submission, establishing himself as Europe's first absolute monarch. His successors continue his work, establishing a very interesting Mediterranean empire.

"Butterflies" from this event include:

*Bulgaria becomes a powerful Balkan state, causing the collapse of the Latin Empire of Constantinople. The Venetians end up with possession of the city itself, creating the position of "Junior Doge" to govern it.

*The Byzantine successor state of Trebizond reconciles with the Nestorian heresy common among the Christian Mongols and becomes a friend of the Ilkhanate. As a result, they are the first Christian state to use cannon.

*The Angevin Empire (England, much of Ireland, and much of France) remains intact rather than the infamous King John losing most of its continental possessions to the King of France. We still have something resembling the Magna Carta in this timeline, fortunately.

So if you're interested in another medieval Mediterranean might-have-been, check this out.

False Prophet Coming To America

I found the link below on Facebook courtesy of my friend Gary.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/01/10/witch-hunter-ukpabio-spreads-her-poison-here/

Ignore the anti-Christian bias in the article--although it's there, that's not a good reason to just write it off.  Here are some more "friendly" or neutral sources that describe just how destructive this belief system is.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,568140,00.html

http://articles.cnn.com/2009-05-18/world/nigeria.child.witchcraft_1_witches-nigeria-abuse?_s=PM:WORLD

http://theweek.com/article/index/205188/africas-child-witch-hysteria

Although the writer of the opening article and others have used this idiocy as a club to beat Christianity in general, this kind of thing goes against the Bible itself.

For starters, although there are Biblical accounts of possessed children, the child acts in truly bizarre ways--not like someone who has malaria or is simply undisciplined.  Even Pat Robertson's people call this a bunch of nonsense.

As the CBN article pointed out, exorcism consists of invoking the name of Jesus, not anything remotely resembling physical abuse.  And not only are these so-called preachers abusing children, they're charging the parents for it.

Compare them with the Apostle Paul, who did not covet anyone's silver (Acts 20:33).  In fact, he worked as tent-maker to sustain himself while he preached (Acts 18:1-3).

Furthermore, Jesus said to let the children come to him (Mark 19:14) and said anyone who caused them to sin, it would be better they be drowned in the ocean (Matthew 18:6).  I remember an account from an Irishman who abandoned believing in Christianity in the midst of being molested by some Christian Brothers and I can imagine children victimized in the name of these "Christian" teachings reaching the same conclusions.  And let us remember Jesus will judge humanity on the treatment of "the least of these" (Matthew 25:31-46).  And although Romans 2:24 in context refers to Jews whose bad behavior brought the worship of God into disrepute, it can also be applied to bad behavior of Christians as well.

Lest any Christian defend this kind of thing or any anti-Christian say that this false prophet is Biblically correct by pointing out the Bible describes witchcraft, let's examine some translation issues.  The word in Galatians 5:16-23 translated as "witchcraft" is the Greek word pharmakeia, which pertains to drugs.  Exodus 22:18, which says to not permit "witches" to live, has also been translated as "poisoner."

And let's look at the history of the church.  Up until the early modern period, the more typical teaching in Christianity was that witches in the supernatural sense did not even exist. This view began to change and that is what spawned the witch-hunts that killed up to 100,000 people in Europe.

Jesus said "by their fruits you shall know them" (Matthew 7:16).  The "fruit" of this belief in child witches is destructive to children (to say the least) and the good name of our Lord, and furthermore, it is not even Biblically based.  Based on that verse alone, we can judge Helen Ukpabio a false prophet.

American Christians should not support Ukpabio or her belief system.  In fact, the persecuted "witch children" of West Africa surely count among "the least of these" we are commanded to serve.  Stepping Stones Nigeria is assisting children who have been driven away by their families due to their supposedly being "witches" and they deserve our support far more than a "ministry" that sows only bad seed.

And we can join the protest against Ukpabio and her ideas here. There's a petition to deny her entry to the U.S., which you can sign here.

In Support of the Egyptian Protesters...

We're now several days into the protests in Egypt and things are not looking good for President Hosni Mubarak's semi-dictatorship.  The ruling party's headquarters in Cairo has been looted and set on fire, police stations have been looted of arms, some policemen have defected to the protesters, and the soldiers seem remarkably unenthusiastic about restoring order--they're letting protesters climb around on their vehicles. Mubarak has demanded his Cabinet resign, I imagine throwing them to the wolves to protect his own skin.

On Neal Boortz this morning, Boortz and a caller who was a Navy vet discussed how they think the fall of Mubarak could lead to the takeover of the country by Islamist theocrats and this new regime would control the Suez Canal, "the most important waterway in the world."

However, it seems to me the Muslim Brotherhood has mellowed since the days when they assassinated Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian president who signed the peace treaty with Israel as part of the Camp David Accords.  If I recall correctly, they even have representatives in Egypt's parliament and have denounced al Qaeda and been denounced in return.

This CNN link indicates that the Brotherhood is weakened and hasn't been involved in the protests.  This MSNBC link quotes the protestors' Facebook page describing their demands.  Basically they want to be rid of Mubarak and his son, whom he wants to succeed him North Korea-style, have free elections, and end the state of emergency that has been used to justify repression of dissent and judicial torture.  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution had a more detailed article about the protestors' demands, but I cannot find it right now.

The link also describes the protests as including both Christians and Muslims and rich and poor.  One Muslim man tried to shout an Islamist slogan and was hushed up by the protesters, indicating that most of them aren't interested in a theocracy.

This link indicates the protests are about freedom and democracy, something we as Americans should get behind. U.S. President Barack Obama has told Mubarak not to order the protests crushed and I think the $1.5 billion per year the U.S. has been paying Egypt since the Camp David Accords were signed is at risk.  Good for him.  If the U.S. is seen as backing a corrupt, oppressive regime in this time of crisis and said regime falls, it will give "street cred" to the most anti-American elements of Mubarak's opposition.  And that, controlling the Suez Canal, is not something we can afford.

Hopefully Mubarak, like the ruler of Tunisia and his mafia-like family, can take the hint and scram.  One of the links mentions several limousines went to the airport and several private jets took off afterward, so perhaps the rats are abandoning the sinking ship.

Go freedom!