About My Blog

My blog is about history, popular culture, politics and current events from a democratic socialist and Irish republican perspective. The two main topics are Northern Ireland on one hand and fighting anti-Semitism, racism and homophobia on the other. The third topic is supporting the Palestinians, and there are several minor topics. The three main topics overlap quite a bit. I have to admit that it’s not going to help me get a graduate degree, especially because it’s almost always written very casually. But there are some high-quality essays, some posts that come close to being high-quality essays, political reviews of Sci-Fi TV episodes (Star Trek and Babylon 5), and a unique kind of political, progressive poetry you won't find anywhere else. (there are also reviews of episodes of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and reviews of Roseanne)

(my old blog was not showing up in Google search results AT ALL (99% of it wasn't being web-crawled or indexed or whatever) and there was another big problem with it, so this is a mirror of the old one although there will be some occassionnal editing of old posts and there will be new posts. I started this blog 12/16/20; 4/28/21 I am now done with re-doing the internal links on my blog) (the Google problem with my blog (only 1% of this new one is showing up in Google search results) is why I include a URL of my blog when commenting elsewhere, otherwise I would get almost no visitors at all)

(The "Table of Contents" offers brief descriptions of all but the most recent posts)

(I just recently realized that my definition of "disapora" was flawed- I thought it included, for example, Jews in Israel, the West Bank and the Golan Heights, and with the Irish diaspora, the Irish on that island. I'll do some work on that soon (11/21/20 I have edited the relevant paragraph in my post about Zionism))

(If you're really cool and link to my blog from your site/blog, let me know) (if you contact me, use the word "blog" in the subject line so I'll know it's not spam)

YOU NEED TO READ THE POST "Trump, Netanyahu, and COVID-19 (Coronavirus)" here. It is a contrast of the two on COVID-19 and might be helpful in attacking Trump. And see the middle third of this about Trump being a for-real fascist.

Friday, October 30, 2009

Star Trek: The Next Generation Reviews D

This is one of my posts where I “review” Star Trek episodes. I will be giving each one a star rating. I sometimes will make some comments about non-political parts of them that I like or don’t like. I’ll sometimes use the issues raised in the episode to discuss similar issues in real life. And I will sometimes simply high-light the progressive politics of ST. ST is in-line with the three original themes of this blog, as I explain in the first ST post where I offer some general thoughts about ST.

I’m not very familiar with The Original Series and there might be some small amount of material there that would affect what I say about Star Trek (i.e. how often religion is mentioned)

Lastly. multi-culturalism is such a pervasive theme in ST that I only comment on it when it goes beyond the norm (i.e. inter-species partners).

“Datalore” See this for a plot summary.

A non-political episode. I give it two stars out of five.

“Angel One” See this for a plot summary.

This is a fairly political episode. It’s about a matriarchal society where males are considered stupid and are denied the vote. It’s sort of illustrating for men what women have gone through during many centuries and across most of Earth. One of the planet’s leaders label those who dissent “anarchists.”

Lastly, it also includes the Federation’s opposition to the death penalty.

I give it three stars out of five.


“11001001” See this for a plot summary.

A non-political episode. I give it two stars out of five.

“Too Short A Season” See this for a plot summary.

The political aspect of this episode is the issue of giving weapons to one or both sides in a conflict. I’d say that this is always a bad idea, considering which States are manufacturing weapons (and ships, planes, etc.). I imagine South Africa might be closest to being ethical arms dealers. In general, the world needs less arms and arms dealers are fairly repulsive (for more of my thoughts on that see this where I discuss the episode “Business As Usual”).

When I think of anyone selling/giving arms to both sides in a conflict, that is a horrible idea. Sometimes giving arms to one side (for example the Soviet Union giving training and arms to the ANC’s military wing) is good, but aiding both sides simply results in a longer war with all that that entails.

I give it two stars out of five.

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