Hawaiian Nuclear Alert commentary
Future historians will note that the turning point in Hawaiian independence came with the mistaken statewide nuclear alert of Jan 13, 2018. People were told they were going to die horribly. Further, for as yet un-ascertained reasons, air raid alarms were set of on US military bases and some TV stations broadcast a confirmation of a nuclear attack in progress. Not an alert, not a warning, they were told shelter in your homes its too late to seek shelter elsewhere and good luck goodbye.
People put their kids in the bathtub and prayed. People filled the H3 tunnel seeking shelter with their vehicles. People at work had to decide to shelter in place, or whether to try to spend their last few minutes on Earth with their spouse, or else with one of their children. People broke out the 100 year old scotch and went to a good vantage point.
Except for the latter, the rest of these folks are going to have lifetime scars. And the media response was very flat and un-empathetic like, oh no big deal. Really, was it no big deal that a million people saw their lives pass before their eyes and contemplated losing their loves, their family, all that they had worked for in the blink of an eye. Or, in the alternative, living out their remaining weeks in agony as their connective tissue dissolved.
This will never, ever be forgotten by the people who experienced it. It will have political consequences, hopefully positive ones, down the road.
Hawaii Panics After Alert About Incoming Missile Is Sent in Error
Copyright © 2018 Henry Edward Hardy
Trump, Year 2
We all know the pain of being separated from one beloved person.
Multiply that times 800,000 and you have the inevitable outcome of Trump’s plan to exile the Dreamers.
Pain and sadness, criminalization and forcible expulsion from the country for people who were brought here as children and grew up here.
In many cases, this is the only home, the only language, the only culture and nation they have ever known.
I just can’t get my brain around how anyone in the political class is even considering talking about this.
A hateful, horrible, hideous idea.
The eight thousand expelled Cherokees of the Trail of Tears times one hundred.
This is an expression of a genocidal hatred that goes beyond mere dumbass racism into the realm of intentional evil on a massive scale for fun and profit.
Trump, Year 2
Copyright © 2017 Henry Edward Hardy
Thoughts on policy toward North Korea
So the UN has put even more stringent sanctions on North Korea. I don’t see where that is going to force North Korea into abandoning its nuclear and ICBM arsenal and development. At best the sanctions slow the nuclear program by limiting access to hard currency.
Maybe, maybe, a more adept US administration could persuade North Korea into joining the Test Ban Treaty. They could commit first to no atmospheric testing, which would essentially cost them nothing since they haven’t been conducting atmospheric tests. However, more competent administrations have tried and failed to contain North Korea using negotiated agreements.
Absent a US-Russian-Chinese agreement to go in and denuclearize North Korea by force, the US has to accept that North Korea is a nuclear state and has no intention of denuclearizing, ever.
North Korea looks at states like Ukraine and Libya which did denuclearize, and later saw their governments overthrown by US-backed coups, and this doesn’t look like a good scenario to them.
Engaging in a florid war of words with the North Koreans, with insults like “Little Rocket Man,” is a spectacularly bad and unwise strategy. They are on the paranoid side of insecure, so we should be as stolid and predictable and imperturbable as possible. Enduring a million “dotards” is better than enduring a single nuclear strike on the US or its allies.
China is most concerned with a break-up of NK with loose nukes and a huge refugee crisis on their borders, and that would be a horrible situation. The US needs to not squeeze NK so hard that it collapses into warlords or a Mad Max-like anarchy.
The best option I can present is make the best of a bad situation. Treat them like Pakistan, more or less. If the US simply refuses to give NK a seat in the club of nuclear powers, it loses all chances of NK ever adhering to customary law, and it invites NK to make some kind of demonstration, which could go hideously wrong in a number of ways.
Copyright © 2017, 2018 Henry Edward Hardy
First Thoughts on the Last Jedi
==SPOILERS AHEAD!!!==
This is my reaction after just having seen The Last Jedi at the theater. If you haven’t seen the film then stop reading because spoilers and also I’m making reference to events in the film without explaining them to the point of view of someone who hasn’t seen the film.
Well, long story short, or perhaps I should say, long story excessively long, a big disappointment.
Going in to the film, I wanted to know who is Rey? Who is Snoke? What happened to Ahsoka, Kanan, and Space Aladdin aka Ezra? What is in the ancient books of the Jedi? How does Leia die (hopefully heroically)? Why is it time for the Jedi to end?
Are those crystal wolf things Loth-Wolves? Did Han survive his Disney death in the shaft?
And most of all, I wanted to see Luke kick some ass. And smarmy emo Adam Driver handed his.
Well if you were looking forward to any of those things, rest assured, none of those things are in this movie. None of them. For this manufactured committee-made story-line the awesome Clone Wars and Rebels and their bespoke characters were/are being terminated, why?
Kathleen Kennedy, you’re no George Lucas or Dave Filoni. And Rian Johnson, you’re no Lawrence Kasdan. Looking forward to the last half of the last season of Rebels, otherwise, I think that Kennedy, Abrams &co have just about driven this franchise over the shark as has happened to poor old Star Trek. Did anyone say “spore drive?”
Anyway, the Force went back to sleep, and nobody cared. There was zero audience interaction at the packed theatre. When I saw Thor Ragnarök and Rogue 1 at the same venue (AMD 12 Assembly Row Somerville, MA USA) , the crowd was very engaged, laughing, snarking cheering, and crying in the case of Rogue 1. Not so here, more’s the pity. 2 of 5 stars.
Copyright © 2017 Henry Edward Hardy
What happens to Kanan, Ezra and Ahsoka in season 4 of Star Wars Rebels?
What happens to Kanan, Ezra and Ahsoka in season 4 of Star Wars Rebels?
==possible spoilers==
This article assumes the reader is familiar with Star Wars Rebels. If not, you can catch up on any unfamiliar people at wookiepedia or tvtropes.
So what happens to the “Cowboy Jedi” Kanan Jarrus and his padewan, Ezra Bridger?
We now know that Hera and Chopper and possibly/probably clone trooper Capt. Rex survive and participate in the battle on Yavin 4 in Star Wars (the original movie). Do Kanan and Ezra die? Go into exile? Turn to the dark side?
Let’s take it in turn.
My guess is that yes, Kanan will die. I think the tragedy of that is being set up with his interactions with Hera Syndulla, particularly their almost-kiss in Rebels Season 4, Ep 3 “The Occupation”
There’s no way that Kanan would voluntarily be separated from Hera again. The last time that happened, they lost Ahsoka and Kanan lost his sight. Therefore, there’s almost no way that Kanan would have not been at the battle of Yavin 4. And as the only known surviving member of the old Jedi Order except for Obi-Wan and Yoda, surely he would have been notable and a commander in the Rebel Army in Rogue One and Star Wars. So have to think there is a good possibility he gets a tearjerking heroic death and Hera soldiers on without him.
In the alternative, since Kanan is in many ways an expy of the bitter, dissolute, but then redeemed, blind ponytailed Jedi Master Rahm Kota from the non-canon game The Force Unleashed, maybe Kanan was on Yavin 4 and had his own “hero of another story” arc as Kota did and the cell in Rogue One did.
Ezra is more complicated. With his flirtation with the dark side, certainly I could see him going that way, although I kind of doubt he is Snoke. He could go back to being a street rat and live underground like Kanan used to after order 66. He might die with Kanan, or on his own, heroically, although it would be fairly brutal to kill off the teenage point of view character on an (allegedly) kids cartoon show.
What about Anakin Skywalker’s former Padewan, Ahsoka Tano? You can see a lot of my previous speculation here.
I’m going to put forward my own, I wouldn’t even call it a theory or speculation, but a story I like going forward. There’s one new piece of canon information which is pretty amazing which I want to introduce here. There was another Jedi Master who survived Order 66 besides Yoda, Obi-Wan, and, until she was captured and executed, Master Luminara.
According to Darth Vader #6, Master “Madame” Jocasta Nu, the Coruscant Jedi Temple chief librarian, survived Order 66. And she spent the years after compiling holograms she had saved or recovered. Was this preparation for refounding the Jedi Order? Or perhaps preparing a “time capsule” for a future time?
In the latter case, perhaps Madame Nu’s archive provided part of the basis either for Luke’s failed New Jedi Order, which Kylo Ren corrupted/destroyed, or perhaps his new, “Dai Bendu” or “Je’daii” grey, not-Jedi order which succeeds it.
Or, perhaps, just as with the Temple of the Whills and Ahch-To, and the abandoned Jedi Temple on Lothal, there is another temple on some place such as Dantooine, Dathomir, Ilum, or Tython to which Madame Nu, Ahsoka, Kanan, Ezra and whatever “children of the force” they can salvage form a hidden order unknown to Luke and the Skywalker and Solo clans (at least, yet.) That is what I would do if I were them in ep 7,8 era, get the heck out of Dodge and lay low for a few hundred or thousand years.
So here’s to Madame Nu and hoping she avoids Darth Vader! Because if a non-force-powered Clawdite could take her down in Clone Wars, I don’t give much for her chances against Darth Vader at an even more ancient age in the time of the classic movies or ep 7,8,9 era.
What do you think?
May the Force be with you!
Jocasta Nu
Copyright © 2017 Henry Edward Hardy
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