Project Palisade

I never hear anyone talk about Birdy? She’s a phenomenal generational British singer but I never hear her mentioned. It’s artists like her and Aloe Blacc who silently release inspirational music and saved the 2010s from being an absolutely dumpster fire of musical incompetence. Now, this isn’t exactly my musical genre, I like to say I’m somewhere between 2000s pop and R&B to 1990s punk and alt rock, but this is that sort of song you catch yourself playing while in the passenger seat of a car; being the center of your own personal music video supercut, and the feeling that the world is yours. “Wings”, to me, sounds like it’s got a sort of awe-enhancing beat to it that commands inspiration on one side, and on the other side delivers an ambient parallel that almost feels like “pleasant sadness”. Oxymoron, I know, but it’s a vibe that’s hard to describe. Listen to “Read All About It” by Emeli Sande or “Iris” by the Goo Goo Dolls and maybe it’ll make a little more sense? I...

2019 has been a radical change in expectations. With the peace negotiations between the U.S. and North Korea as well as the conquering of ISIS and the hopeful end to the Syrian Civil War in sight, the expectations for a peace-filled year in 2019 were not overly optimistic. At the time. However, radical religious zealots have been the cause of some of the worst tragedies this year, the most significance ones being the bombings and shootings in New Zealand, Nigeria, and now Sri Lanka. On April 21st, 2019 - Easter Sunday - suicide bombers blasted and tore open 3 churches and 4 hotels across Colombo, Negumbo, and Batticaloa, killing 290 people and wounding 510. The tragedy spanned three major Sri Lankan cities and killed both natives and foreigners. Sri Lanka Bombing Map credit to  Allison McCann ,  Julie Shaver ,  Jin Wun, and K.K. Rebecca Kai. Sri Lanka, referred to as the "teardrop" of the subcontinent, historically, has always been a sacred island. It's cu...

Hello, Palisaders! Time for your usual, semi-monthly "State Of The Union" rip-off where we discuss what's new with Project Palisade. Palisade's hosting an "Earth Day" collaborative event this Monday, April 22nd, where members from anywhere can snap a photo of something "eco-friendly" they did that day and post it to the group Facebook event , where at the end of the day we'll compile them into a collage/video for everyone. We figured this would be one of the few events where anybody can participate and get involved and hopefully see if we can make this an annual event. Palisade recently reached its 8th pact - DMR Solutions this month. DMR is another promotions based group like H2H and Shadow Channel which will hopefully help to combine the resources of all of our pacts so far and help them to accomplish their goals. The fundraiser for Lasting Hope has raised $182 out of $1000 so far on our Facebook fundraiser and will be continuing u...

Nice and tame one for my first post huh… Well, as I'm sure everyone knows there was recently an attack in New Zealand, Christchurch to be more specific on March 15th, 2019. 50 Muslims lost their lives as a result, 2 mosques were targeted by a man named Brenton Tarrant, labelled by the media as "far-right". In the politics segment of Palisade we do try to be as non-bias as possible, but how can you be non-bias over mass murder? Maybe it's payback for ISIS? Well in New Zealand that is unlikely. Point is you can't be non-bias with this. It was terrible. Now while I personally disagree that this man was far-right, but political spectrum stance is for another blog. We can all agree he was a nutjob. This attack took place over 2 mosques, Al-Noor and the Linwood Islamic centre. Brenton Tarrant used numerous guns and almost car bombs, they never detonated. With the goal of deterring immigration and Muslim immigration to non-Muslim lands, regardless of anyone's ...

For whatever reason, it’s become borderline impossible to create a good teen movie. I mean you risk either incredibly bad acting, pacing that makes you want to walk out of the theatre, themes that are just not accurate to actual teen life-style and culture, or dialogue that just makes you want to punch a baby? Superbad avoids these problems. It will be my generation’s classic movie, I can already tell. The millennial version of Swingers , another film I hope to review soon. I find this film highly underrated. It’s talked about, but it’s also talked down about because the “acting-level” wasn’t quality enough. Well I got something to say about that: it doesn’t matter. It’s still an enjoyable film. The movie Clerks didn’t have high-quality acting, but I still love it to this day. Superbad had comedy when it was appropriate. This film didn’t include throwaway lines, it just included back-and-forth comedic dialogue that actually introduced characters, introduced the small...

A flag of Islamic State militants is pictured above a destroyed house near the Clock Square in Raqqa.  (photo credit: ERIC DE CASTRO/ REUTERS) I believe ever since Raqqa, Iraq was liberated from ISIS in 2017 by the U.S. led coalition, ISIS has been in a massively weakened state leaving it more feeble at every stronghold across borders. Unfortunately, their presence is still maintained across a crescent-shaped enclave stretching from Mauritania to Algeria just beneath the Sahara Desert. Boko Haram is still terrorizing areas and has been most recently attributed to the deaths of 32 Christians in Yola, Nigeria. Then when Ghouta was attacked again in 2018 with yet another instance of Assad being an immoral warmonger and gassing his own people, it was very possible a resurgence would arise from ISIS enclaves near Damascus, the hardest of their territories to reach. But slowly, even with sparse retaliations like the Manbij attack which killed 5 Americans and I myself wro...