<3

The tactics of low budget filming ahahahahahahhaaaa... I would be pissed if someone cut down the tree in my yard though! My side, your side, my side, your side -- MY TREE. Sounds like it was a lot of fun -- and stress lol.

Love me some Akira Kurosawa, tooooo. Yoooooooo! Also made Seven Samurai AKA The Magnificent Seven. I love the cross pollination between Japanese, American and Italian cinema. Not to mention British, French, Spanish, German and Russian. (Sorry for leaving your country out, all cinema is connected tbh.)

Anyway, love the scene at the end of A Fistful..More where Clint goes around colleting all the dead bodies on his wagon. Its such a great closer. And Good the Bad and the Ugly is epic af, not low budget at all -- it's a dang war film! If you haven't seen these films, at least watch the g, the b, and the u. It's a grand spectacle.

Duck You Sucka footage in there, which is not an Eastwood film, it's about an Irish terrorist's (James Coburn, the guy who got his luggage shot by Mel Gibson in... Cant remember the name of that film) involvement in the Mexican Revolution. The kill count is pretty impressive. Fuckin good movie, from the Once Upon a Time tril.

Where has this been all my life?!?
Doin' tricks and decking chicks, it's Italian Spider-Man!
*promote

Never heard of him before now, but even in Chinese history records of his voyages were scattered or omitted, due in part possibly because his voyages went against the wishes of a previous ruler. He made seven voyages between 1405 and 1433, the Wikipedia article mentions nothing about colonization efforts so that's probably why East Africa doesn't speak Chinese.
On the other side we have Christopher Columbus who was in all the history books here in America and was regularly celebrated. Until we got more honest with our history, now it's Indigenous People's Day in many places (That Italian Asshole Day just doesn't look as good on a calendar I guess).
If the Chinese had taken over the world then maybe we would be reading about someone else discovering the Americas (and probably called something else too) but as it stands Europeans did and that's who winds up in the history books.

So European culture is to blame for all this? You 'll have to be more specific, what have the Europeans done that nobody else have managed to do?

As far Johansson's role in the movie goes, I can take her or leave her really, they could have cast an Asian action star and I would have been fine with that. But the choice of Johansson was less about nerds like me and more about getting everyone else into the theater. Oh, and I think Idris Elba would make an awesome James Bond, just sayin.

Pardon me, shots. It was a criminal level of incompetence. Yet neither the Commander who gave 'conflicting statements'(lied) nor the Officer have been charged with anything, even at this late date. Additionally, something else I forgot was that they let the victim bleed while handcuffed for 20 minutes without providing any first aid or making it a priority that he was treated. It was lucky that he didn't bleed out or go into shock.

But this is the type of thing I am talking about and was referencing to @bareboards2. I mean, I'm white and of Italian descent, so I could do damn near anything to an officer and not be killed. I even conceal carry, although they know that as soon as they see my license or run my plates. Yet we have people of color that are being run rampant over, be it racism or fear of a different culture/people. Like in that video where the guy was shot and the female officer's husband was in the pursuit helicopter saying that he looked like a mean black dude. We simply can't keep this up.

I fail to see how the depiction of the luna dance is offensive to Hawaiians. I wonder if she would be offended by my DVD copy of Lilo & Stitch? Or my wife's Lilo bobblehead.

Some history: Protestants banned hula in the 19th century, so the celebration of this traditional dance seems to me to be empowering versus the censorship of what the Protestants called "heathen". Sure, the introduction of the Portuguese ukulele and other Western aesthetics changed the art form, but it's practiced in both modern and traditional forms today.

You also can't simply demonize the cross-pollination of cultures, because cultural values are always changing. Hawaiian and Polynesian culture went through many changes and forms long before anyone from the West showed up on their shores. The luau itself is partly symbolic of women's rights (as well as lower class rights) in Hawaiian culture, as before the luau, women were not allowed to eat the same food as men, and commoners could not eat with royalty or eat their royal Hawaiian food.

This change didn't happen until the 1800s, so it's likely that this level of equality within the Hawaiian culture is due in part to European contact, including the the King who himself became a Christian -- and yet also encouraged the luna dance.

When cultures make contact with each other, they become entangled. They influenced us and we influenced them -- and they're Americans now so deal with it. I once had pictures of Italian Americans on my wall (Godfather/Scarface posters) and my grandma has a Jew on her crucifix. Neither of us are Italian or Jewish. LOL

Even if you were to extend the definition to "Eurasia", as he no doubt does, it ignores something critical. The aboriginal Americans were masters of biotechnology. We have found the antecedents of maize, tomatoes, and potatoes, and they vary from utterly inedible to kinda poisonous. Over time, they transformed these noxious weeds into the crops that today keep billions of people alive. Imagine Italian cuisine without tomatoes. I would argue that maize was the Mezoamerican cathedral, a visible sign of their supremacy over the natural world.

I'm sure it would help. Like @ChaosEngine says above about French and Italian, knowing one helps with the other.

I know a native Spanish speaker who has no trouble understanding Portuguese without really studying it (as far as I know)... but it's one step too far for me.

Sweet, I can add Italian Rapier to the list of things I am an expert at after watching youtube!

That was really interesting.
I can speak some very basic high school level french.

Although I haven't spoken it in many years, when I was in Italy last year, I found I could read almost anything I needed to in Italian (i.e. basic things like signs, menus, descriptions on paintings).

And even though, French and Spanish are less closely related, I found written Spanish was relatively easy to understand too.

Still haven't mastered kiwi yet.

Your video, Italian Rapier in Two Minutes, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

I'm far enough away from these issues to admit that I don't have anything like concrete knowledge on the subject, but I feel like I should mention some of the more obvious counterpoints to some of the things he's said in this video. Otherwise I'd get that dirty echo chamber feeling, and no amount of showering seems to wash that away. Could be I'm just a masochist, though, who enjoys arguing.

I think there's racism in every culture. I think it's often much more subtle than described in the video, often even subconscious. I also think that modern western culture is among the least racist cultures to have ever existed, despite our many complaints.

I guess I'll talk about Libya first. The west (the white people he was talking about) is continuously demonized for supporting tyrants and the like. Yet when they participate in overthrowing a clear example of a extravagant super villain tyrant, they are demonized for that. I'm not saying they didn't have other motives, I'm just saying that it's an example of a tautology. No matter which choice they make they are labeled racist.

Now, when beleaguered folk make a desperate attempt to dangerously cross a sea, well knowing the risks they are incurring, it is again the fault of the Italians for not rescuing then with sufficient alacrity. Yes, many of them are coming from countries the west had a hand in destabilizing. But it would be pretty racist for you to demand that the Italian navy take full moral responsibility for the actions of other western nations, simply because they are white too. Also, if the only number you pay attention to is the number that drown, your bias is showing.

Next the issue of the Commonwealth. It seems absurd to expect the UK to treat former colonies populated by citizens that had moved there the same as former conquests that have since shrugged off the yoke of empire. The justifications for this discrimination would seem to be a combination of racism, cultural chauvinism and sober pragmatism. The latter two factors clearly scale with the gap between the culture of the colony in question and the home country, and probably ought to in some sense.

The incarceration thing is tougher to poke holes in, and clearly a much more touchy subject. Once could argue all sorts of justifications for why more members of ethnic minorities are apprehended, but it's nebulous and smells of bias and chauvinism, at best ending in a chicken vs egg conundrum. But once you're in police custody, I think can agree on demanding a higher level of equality of outcome. So I checked out a charity called Inquest who had compiled pretty comprehensive stats on police custody deaths since 1990. Here's a link: http://www.inquest.org.uk/statistics/bame-deaths-in-police-custody
To summarise, since 1990, ethnic minorities have made up a total of 153 out of 1557 deaths in police custody, or roughly 10%. Given that they currently make up 13% of the population, that seems to be well within an acceptable range of results, so I was confused at first. Then I thought maybe he had misspoken and had meant to say state custody, or inmate deaths. So again I looked for some numbers, and again Inquest had the most comprehensive data, broken down by year and ethnicity etc. Again here's a link: http://www.inquest.org.uk/statistics/deaths-in-prison
It shows 453 out of 3963 prison deaths are suffered by ethnic minorities. This seems almost perfectly in line with the 13% population of said minorities. So again, I'm a bit confused by the point he's making.

All of that said, I think I agree with the sentiment of his presentation, which perhaps confuses me even more.

I know it's Colbert's shtick and I never really got into it, but still...

"I have friends who live and work in London. They said "don't worry,we're very sensible people."

What's sensible for people in London might not be sensible for people in Salford. Or Boston. Or Wolverhampton. London, or the South-East in general, is as representative of the UK as the East/West Coast is of the US.

The hinterland has been drained at the expense of the center, on both a global and a national scale. If you live and work in the City of London, things might look quite ok, and whatever issues there are only need some reforms to no longer be an issue. But if your factory, the factory that provided jobs for the people in your home town, closed down ten, twenty years ago and now the best you can get is zero-hour contracts, then no, things are not ok.

People up top keep telling you that the economy is growing, that everyone's gonna be better off, that it's ok for multinational corporations and rich individuals to optimise their taxes, while they cut your welfare. Banks get a bailout, you get to pay the bedroom tax.

So no, your sensible friends, if they exist, live in a different universe than many of their countrymen. That's the disconnect we've been talking about.

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"The British economy is tanking. The pound has plunged to its lowest level since 1985... The Dow lost 611 points."

Again, so what? If the economy is growing and it has no effect on you, why should you give a jar of cold piss about the value of the pound or the stock exchange? Arguably, a drop in the exchange rate of the pound makes it easier for you to export your goods and raises the prices for imports, thereby encouraging you to produce the shit yourself. The UK does have a sovereign currency, unlike the Spanish, the Greeks, the Portuguese or the Italians who have to suffer internal devaluations, because Wolfgang Schäuble says so.

"Equity losses over $2 trillion"

Why should that matter? QE has pushed up stock prices beyond any resonable level, so what meaning do these book values hold? Not to mention that a lot of people made a shitload of money by shorting these stocks, including George Soros against Deutsche.

"There'll be no more money"

QE never trickled down anyway, makes no difference. Corbyn's people call their version "QE for the People" and "Green QE" for a reason: the previous version was only meant to prop up banks and stock values.

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On a more general note, the hatred, the racism, the xenophobia... in most cases, it's a pressure valve. You leash out against someone else, you need someone to blame. The narrative is that we're living in a meritocracy, which makes it your fault that you didn't inherit an investment portfolio. So you start blaming yourself. You're a fuck-up. You worked hard and not only didn't climb the ladder, you actually went down. There's depression for ya. Guess what happens if someone, a person of perceived authority, then comes along and tells you it's not your fault, it's the fault of the immigrants. That narrative is very appealing if history is any indication. Even the supposedly most prosperous country in the EU, Germany, has the very same issue in the eastern parts, where there is no hope for a meaningful job.

People need work, meaningful work. Wanna guess how many of those "xenophobes" would be out in the street protesting against immigrants if they had a meaningful job with decent pay? Not to many would be my guess.

So the likes of Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson are providing the narrative. But the lack of social cohesion is a result of market fundamentalism, of Thatcherism, of Third Way social-democrats leaving the lower half of the income distribution to the wolves. You can't exclude large swaths of the population from the benefits of increased productivity, etc. Social dividend, they called it. It's what keeps the torches and pitchforks locked away in the barn.

Never been to Italy, but as someone of Italian heritage I can say with 100% conviction that if something can be done wrong, it is my fellow Italians that can figure out a way to do it. Plus, it did look like his underwear had a bit of a issue. I hesitate to speculate further.