Our Horrible World - The Not-So-Pacific Ocean

Everything about this blog is esoterically violent, I can admit to that. Ranging from my style of writing in the original stories, the media (videogames, comics, movies) I’ve talked to you guys about, and the world events I had decided to input my thoughts. I’m not sure if I can or if I should excuse myself for running the place like this. I will say though, tonight might be the worse night. Last night an odd mutual follower at Tumblr who’s name will remain censored, and at times I think he’s another spam account, posted on his blog the following Youtube video that has to be the closest thing to a snuff film allowed to be shown on that site. With that mentioned I hope I’m being very clear here that what follows is incredibly disturbing:

If this is another CreepyPasta hoax or another promotion for V/H/S/3 then holy crow these people are doing their job right. Censored Tumblr blog quotes an unnamed source for a possible explanation of what we just saw: 

Men shot at sea: Fiji police told gruesome video showing men being shot at sea originated in Somalia

Fijian police have been told that four men apparently killed at sea in a video posted on YouTube were most likely Somali pirates shot by fishermen after a failed hijacking attempt.

The police have asked Interpol for help verifying a video which appears to show the brutal killing of men at sea.

A graphic video posted on YouTube in Suva on Monday shows four men being shot as they cling to debris in the ocean.

Gunshots come from one of several boats surrounding the men, and blood is seen in the water.

Men on the boat, which is reportedly a tuna fishing vessel, are seen laughing and posing for photographs at the end of the video. The video’s contents have not been verified.

The YouTube post says the victims were Fijian and were shot just outside Fijian waters.

However, Fiji Tuna Boat Owners Association president Graham Southwick says Taiwanese boat owners and contractors in Suva have told police they believe the footage relates to a failed hijacking off Somali last year.

"They … said we know about this incident, it’s a very famous incident and this didn’t happen in Fiji, it happened off the coast of Somalia," Mr Southwick told Pacific Beat.

"And the graphic pictures you see of people gunned in the water are not Fijians, but Somali pirates that attempted a hijack of some Taiwanese vessels that attempted a hijack that backfired and they all got gunned down.

"The debris floating in the water is the wreckage of a Somali pirate boat that got rammed by one of the Taiwanese boats."

Police in Suva say there is no clear evidence to identify the victims, or pinpoint where and when the apparent murders took place.

"We have not received any formal complaints and I have not yet seen the video," Fiji assistant police commissioner Rusiate Tudravu told Radio Australia earlier on Tuesday.

Fijian authorities have asked Interpol and police in neighbouring Pacific countries for assistance in establishing the facts.

The men on the boat from which the shots are fired can be heard speaking in Mandarin and interpreters for Television New Zealand have identified Taiwanese, Thai and Vietnamese voices on the video.

One man can be heard saying: “Shoot, shoot, shoot”.

Someone says: “If you see anyone, just kill. Look ahead there: one and two.”

A man can also be heard giving out instructions, telling another man at the front of the boat to “be prepared”. 

Chinese characters reading “Safety is number one” can also be seen on the side of one of the boats.

Let me stop here for a moment and note a few things: so far I’ve watched this video twice, so my research as always might be tepid. But the first observation I’d like to make is that the victims don’t look either Somali or Fijian. When I watched it last night they looked Asian, from more or less the same Southeastern ethnicity as the people gunning at them. Giving it a second view and browsing at the comments in the Youtube page, one of the posters suggests they were actually Iranian, and indeed if you look closely at the facial features of one of the victims at 7:17 through 7:20, you can tell he may be Middle Eastern. As for the attackers, Southeast Asians, the characters on the ship are indeed Chinese, and the captain or whoever is at the bullhorn, is speaking in Mandarin. Moving on:

Violence on Pacific seas ‘relatively common’: Southwick

Despite confusion over the video’s authenticity, Mr Southwick, says violence often erupts at sea, and crew members go missing.

"This particular type of incident of being shot in the water and all that stuff is, you know, [is] extremely unusual, but conflicts and fights and murders on the high seas, on fishing boats, is relatively common," he said.

"In the Pacific there would probably be half a dozen a year at least, but usually it’s the result of some sort of a conflict or fight or something on the boat, and the report usually comes back that, either he fell over the side, or whatever, and then there’s nothing much anybody can do very much about it.

"If they die of natural causes, they’re usually stuck in the freezer and brought back in at some stage of the game. But this would be extremely rare I’d say, this deliberate slaughter of people that got off the boat."

Mr Southwick says authorities have the call sign and details of at least one of the ships and will be working to identify crew members who could shed light on this gruesome maritime mystery.

Right then. 

I’m having a hard time searching for this, but I remember reading a book couple of years ago about how some of those fishing boats in Japan are actually run by Yakuza, getting people who can’t pay their debts to just work it off, this reminded me of that. Look up also the Korean Crab Wars for another interesting look on how all Hell breaks loose there more often than the mainstream news will let on.

Interestingly, a theory for how that video found itself uploaded in the first place is that it was probably one of the attackers getting mugged and having this recording stolen. If that’s true then it’s a pretty much karmic way to get caught doing something fucked up like that!

Stay safe.

- AA

I’m not full of spite! (Al reviews a movie for you!)

(Ha ha, monthly updates?? Who knows!)

            I’ve figured that making Wednesday nights ‘Hump Day Movie Time’ is a fun idea after all so I fired up Netflix and like always, watched the first thing that caught my attention faster. This time around I went on a nostalgic trip finding Mad Max, apparently they recommended it to my nephew because he had been watching Young Justice. Good for him! Pretty sure I was his age when independent Puertorrican TV station Super Siete, today known as TeleIsla, would show it constantly, probably once every month! A small bit of mockery from all this back in the day, this being a local network they would show a dub in Spanish of this movie. And at my age at the time I would have fairly good bilingual skills, I knew what ‘Mad’ meant, and that Max was a name obviously, but for some, admittedly fitting reason, this dub would blare out in that thick Centralamerican accent the title: “¡Motociclistas Salvajes!” (Savage Bikers)

Without fail my reaction and anyone sitting with me on the family hall when that happened would be: “LOL what?!” He’s Max, and he’s mad! Why couldn’t these people ever go with that? ‘¡Max El Furioso!’ or ‘¡La Furia de Max!’, that would’ve made more sense for conventional translating! Of course when you revisit a classic like this as an adult you figure a couple of things out, Max is the protagonist but the movie is Toecutter’s biker gang, and the idea of being trapped in a Dystopia with these sinister savages. It’s something of a speculative horror from decades ago, movies like this, Escape From NY, Terminator, Predator, they all get this reputation of being testosterone-driven manly and brainless. Mad Max in specific for all the cool bikes and his revved up raging muscle car, and the sequels to these movies gladly run with that, but watching again you get this idea that at the start it was meant to disturb. For instance in Escape From NY, once Snake makes his landing and the movie starts proper, you get reminded this is a John Carpenter movie with the killer thriller synthesizer playing as he’s being stalked without noticing by the first wandering psychos in the island that spot him. I read some time ago that this was meant to be satire and critical for how violent New York and every other big city in the US had become during the 80’s, so that should make it doubly meaningful. So, returning to Max, the bikers most definitely become the movie in this sense not when they wrecked that flashy hot rod earlier or even when they set Goose on fire, but at the climax stalking his wife on her way back from the beach, and how from there it all progressively goes to Hell.

This was fun to revisit figuring that out, and another thing I’d like to mention is how I’m more into this state of the dystopia in the series than how it gradually got worse in Road Warrior and Beyond Thunderdome.

For the last time: GET, OFF, THE STAGE‼

I know these sequels were the true codifiers of the post-apocalypse and inspired some of the best anime and videogames of all time like Fist of the North Star and even to this day Borderlands. But this one being closer to the near future, it just seems not only more believable for the time but also more creative. You get the sense that there’s a lot more to look at with a society trying to keep it together after the big unnamed near future collapse, instead of the barren soulless wastelands of the sequels that all look the same. It’s a bigger effort to sell you the balls to the wall bizarre idea of the future they had when they made this movie, with the settings like the remote police station and how the chief is trying to run it, and all the other characters like Toecutter himself or his right hand man Zanetti, a random punk that looks like he stepped right out of a Depeche Mode video, feeling more intimidating than some generic burly 10 foot grunt wearing football armor just to get poked to death by Kenshiro. Revisiting this he became my favorite character, probably because of how I couldn’t even remember him when I was younger with the strong osmosis of those burly bikers, making anyone think they’d all just plain look the same at every turn.

And that’s just it, this became a hit because it was also full of personality. And today it’s still great to watch, so consider this blog highly recommending it. Unfortunately the series had to evolve into something different, it was still successful like that, and it doesn’t mean I don’t like it either. Color me now even more hyped for Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy on Fury Road next year.

 But mostly Charlize Theron.

- AA