PHANTASMAGORIA

in technicolor yawn

[clethras]

[opencommunion]

it is frightening and disturbing to hear Yoav Gallant call Palestinians "human animals" but I want those who are just tuning in to be aware that this dehumanizing rhetoric isn't new. The occupation has been calling Palestinians animals since the very beginning. Moshe Dayan, who orchestrated numerous massacres in his role as defense minister during the 1967 war, called Palestinians "jackals." Yitzhak Shamir, two-term prime minister and perpetrator of the 1946 King David Hotel bombing and 1948 Deir Yassin massacre, said Palestinians are like "grasshoppers; you need to stomp on them every once in a while." Prime minister Ehud Barak, decorated with military awards from both the IOF and the US, said in 2000 that Palestinians are like "crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more." General Rafael Etain, after instituting a policy of mass arrests without cause which is still practiced, bragged in 1983 that "all the Arabs will be able to do is scuttle around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle." Deputy defense minister Eli Ben-Dahan said in 2013, "to me, they are like animals, they aren’t human." for decades the IOF has described their regularly scheduled massacres as "mowing the grass"; in 2021 national security strategist David M. Weinberg wrote in the Jerusalem Post, "Just like mowing your front lawn, this is constant, hard work. If you fail to do so, weeds grow wild and snakes begin to slither around in the brush." In 2014, legislator Ayelet Shaket proposed that the mothers of murdered Palestinian men should be killed along with their sons: "They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there. They have to die and their houses should be demolished so that they cannot bear any more terrorists." In 2002, IOF chief of staff Moshe Ya'alon compared Palestinians to a "cancer" to be eradicated. In 2000, Ovadia Yosef, Chief Sephardic Rabbi of Israel, said "how can you make peace with a snake?" These are all statements made publicly by public officials, not behind closed doors. Characterizing a population as vermin is textbook strategy for justifying genocide, and what the occupation does to Palestinians is even more dehumanizing than what they say

[itscolossal]

Barriers Made of Concrete and Oyster Shells Mitigate Erosion and Offer Alluring New Habitats on Australia’s Coastline

[mydarkenedeyes]

Kyungho Lee

[crossconnectmag]

Paris-born Street Artist: Seth Globepainter

Instagram & shop

Follow CrossConnectMag for more

[endilletante]

National Geographic, february 1983, Beirut, up from the rubble, photographs by Steve McCurry.

[david-koblesky]

Best seat in the house

[fictionadventurer]

I think the Hunger Games series sits in a similar literary position to The Lord of the Rings, as a piece of literature (by a Catholic author) that sparked a whole new subgenre and then gets blamed for flaws that exist in the copycat books and aren’t actually part of the original.

Like, despite what parodies might say, Katniss is nowhere near the stereotypical “unqualified teenager chosen to lead a rebellion for no good reason”.  The entire point is that she’s not leading the rebellion. She’s a traumatized teenager who has emotional reactions to the horrors in her society, and is constantly being reined in by more experienced adults who have to tell her, “No, this is not how you fight the government, you are going to get people killed.” She’s not the upstart teenager showing the brainless adults what to do–she’s a teenager being manipulated by smarter and more experienced adults. She has no power in the rebellion except as a useful piece of propaganda, and the entire trilogy is her straining against that role. It’s much more realistic and far more nuanced than anyone who dismisses it as “stereotypical YA dystopian” gives it credit for.

And the misconceptions don’t end there. The Hunger Games has no “stereotypical YA love triangle”–yes, there are two potential love interests, but the romance is so not the point. There’s a war going on! Katniss has more important things to worry about than boys! The romance was never about her choosing between two hot boys–it’s about choosing between two diametrically opposed worldviews. Will she choose anger and war, or compassion and peace? Of course a trilogy filled with the horrors of war ends with her marriage to the peace-loving Peeta. Unlike some of the YA dystopian copycats, the romance here is part of the message, not just something to pacify readers who expect “hot love triangles” in their YA. 

The worldbuilding in the Hunger Games trilogy is simplistic and not realistic, but unlike some of her imitators, Collins does this because she has something to say, not because she’s cobbling together a grim and gritty dystopia that’s “similar to the Hunger Games”. The worldbuilding has an allegorical function, kept simple so we can see beyond it to what Collins is really saying–and it’s nothing so comforting as “we need to fight the evil people who are ruining society”. The Capitol’s not just the powerful, greedy bad guys–the Capitol is us, First World America, living in luxury while we ignore the problems of the rest of the world, and thinking of other nations largely in terms of what resources we can get from them. This simplistic world is a sparsely set stage that lets us explore the larger themes about exploitation and war and the horrors people will commit for the sake of their bread and circuses, meant to make us think deeper about what separates a hero from a villain.

There’s a reason these books became a literary phenomenon. There’s a reason that dozens upon dozens of authors attempted to imitate them. But these imitators can’t capture that same genius, largely because they’re trying to imitate the trappings of another book, and failing to capture the larger and more meaningful message underneath. Make a copy of a copy of a copy, and you’ll wind up with something far removed from the original masterpiece. But we shouldn’t make the mistake of blaming those flaws on the original work.

[himalayev]

DkrRU0eDGE

[yourstrulys]

Iris van Herpen ～ Shift Souls (SS 2019)

[lolshr]

i truly feel like i don’t fit anywhere

[itscolossal]

Highways and Rivers Form Capillaries on Anatomical Paper Organs by Katrin Rodegast

[opticallyaddicted]

ETAM CRU (Sainer & Bezt)

Art from half of Etam Cru - Sainer

[itscolossal]

Human Anatomy Baked Into Polymer Desserts by QimmyShimmy

[itscolossal]

Vibrant Pulses of Color Expand Across Urban Walls in Murals by Jan Kaláb

[crossconnectmag]

Paintings by Xiao Wang

Xiao Wang is a Chinese painter who lives and works in the US. He studied at Glasgow School of Art in Scotland where he received the BFA degree in Painting and Printmaking. He continued his study at San Francisco Art Institute and earned his MFA degree in Painting. In his work, he uses dramatic colors and thin glazes to render realistic figures, objects, and scenes that evoke a sense of mystery. Wang currently lives and works in San Francisco, CA.

Artist website.

Our Facebook. Note: The page is addictive!

posted by Margaret from tu recepcja via

[crossconnectmag]

Tatiana Kamshilina’s Adorable Illustrated Gifs

Tatiana Kamshilina (Tatiana KawKaw on Tumblr) is from Voronezh, a city in central Russia, and has a degree in architecture, and makes her living doing illustration and 3D visualization related to her degree.  However, she loved to draw, then learned to animate on the internet, and like many others became hooked, saying “….it’s like magic, seeing how your character becomes alive and starts moving on its own. Once you’ve made your doodles alive there’s no turning back!”  Within her delicate, childlike drawings and simple animations is great sophistication.  Her characters feel lifelike in the way they swing their legs or rock back and forth on a sled while reading and her looping is always seamless and clever.

Posted by David

More unique art on Cross Connect Magazine:

Facebook || Instagram