Alan Bickley

I think Twitter is a waste of my time. However, since everyone else is here, I might as well be too.

[Alan Bickley @GabbSean]

A rare, pained insider call for genuine change: pragmatic statecraft, regional integration, and security through diplomacy rather than perpetual confrontation.
Read the full article from the Libertarian Alliance: https://t.co/V6tsCUaoOJ
#IsraeliVoice #Reckoning #MiddleEastPeace

[Alan Bickley @GabbSean]

Just published: “Reckoning Long Overdue: My View as a Secular Israeli on the Collapse of Our National Strategy”
A secular Israeli born in Tel Aviv offers a frank, bitter assessment of Israel’s failed national strategy — from over-reliance on US power and evangelical alliances to settlement policies and refusal of regional accommodation.
Full article: https://t.co/Feb7n21bE7
#Israel #SecularIsraeli #Libertarian

[Alan Bickley @GabbSean]

He criticises messianic elements, dehumanising rhetoric toward Palestinians and Arabs, and the illusion that external support could substitute for hard diplomatic work. The result: exhaustion, internal radicalisation, and a precarious future as a garrison state.
Full essay: https://t.co/Feb7n20DOz
#IsraelStrategy #PoliticalReality #Libertarianism

[Alan Bickley @GabbSean]

A provocative take: men should care deeply about their bodies. Simple habits — proper eating, consistent training, and self-command — matter far more than therapeutic framing.
Read the full article from the Libertarian Alliance: https://t.co/H5ibCQmLqX
#PhysicalExcellence #AntiMediocrity #Health

[Alan Bickley @GabbSean]

Just published: “Bodybuilders, Bulimia, and the Terror of Looking Good”
A fierce response to academic research that pathologises male bodybuilders for caring about their appearance and compares them to men with bulimia.
Full article: https://t.co/H5ibCQmdBp
#Bodybuilding #Libertarian #Fitness

[Alan Bickley @GabbSean]

True eating disorders involve self-destruction. Bodybuilding, even at its most obsessive, generally moves toward order, strength, and control. The real cultural failure is the normalisation of decay and the discomfort with excellence.
Full essay: https://t.co/H5ibCQmdBp
#FitnessCulture #Libertarianism #SelfImprovement

[Alan Bickley @GabbSean]

From Newton to Fomenko and Illig, the piece explores why some find conventional chronology unsatisfying — and why the probabilistic weight of evidence still favours the mainstream view despite its imperfections.
Full essay: https://t.co/tt0jTV3S6I
#IntellectualHistory #Revisionism #Libertarianism

[Alan Bickley @GabbSean]

Just published: “Dissident Chronologies and Why the Past Refuses to Move”
A reply to Laurent Guyénot that examines the recurring urge to radically revise historical timelines — including the “Phantom Time” theory claiming three centuries were invented in the early Middle Ages.
Full article: https://t.co/tt0jTV3S6I
#Chronology #History #Libertarian

[Alan Bickley @GabbSean]

From Newton to Fomenko and Illig, the piece explores why some find conventional chronology unsatisfying — and why the probabilistic weight of evidence still favours the mainstream view despite its imperfections.
Full essay: https://t.co/tt0jTV3S6I
#IntellectualHistory #Revisionism #Libertarianism

[Alan Bickley @GabbSean]

Not an easy or conventionally enjoyable watch, but a compelling and impressively uncompromising one. A strong recommendation for those who appreciate dark, unflinching cinema.
Read the full review from the Libertarian Alliance: https://t.co/SQ17v0Yujv
#VipersHex #JapaneseCinema #BleakFilm

[Alan Bickley @GabbSean]

Just published: “The Viper’s Hex (2017) Review – A Bleak and Unsettling Descent into Tokyo’s Underworld”
Expecting lurid supernatural exploitation, the reviewer found something far more disturbing: a grim, controlled psychological descent through Tokyo’s sex trade, exploitation, and despair.
Full review: https://t.co/SQ17v0XWtX
#VipersHex #JapaneseFilm #Horror #Libertarian

[Alan Bickley @GabbSean]

Visually and sonically impressive, with a tone that offers no relief or sentimentality. It subverts expectations and delivers something bleaker and more honest about human limits and commodified bodies.
Full piece: https://t.co/1SEjS5GR26
#IndieHorror #Cinema #Libertarianism

[Stephan Kinsella @NSKinsella]

https://t.co/qgvZbhwY7D
https://t.co/lYGAcTaZaw
Fascinating. Almost makes me wish I had done one of the softer humanities degrees like history instead of engineering or law.

Naah. Not really. You can always read up on it. @GabbSean

"There is a particular kind of intellectual temperament that finds established chronology almost impossible to leave alone. I touched on this in my earlier article on historical dating and the construction of chronology. Once you realise how much of ancient and medieval dating was assembled retrospectively—from regnal lists, synchronisms, king lists, astronomical observations, scattered inscriptions, and later harmonisation projects—it becomes difficult not to wonder whether the whole thing might shift under pressure. Historical chronology can look less like a finished cathedral than a giant scaffold erected over many centuries. Some people see this and become cautious. Others become intoxicated.

The temptation is understandable. If chronology is assembled rather than handed down complete, then perhaps the assembly went wrong, or was even made wrong. Perhaps centuries have been duplicated. Perhaps whole civilisations have been displaced in time. Once that suspicion takes hold, every coincidence begins to look like evidence and every gap begins to look deliberate. The imagination starts to race ahead of the evidence.

This impulse has a long history. One sees it in Isaac Newton’s attempts to compress ancient chronology. One sees it later in Nikolai Morozov and, in a much more extravagant form, in Anatoly Fomenko, who virtually dissolved Antiquity into the Middle Ages. Gunnar Heinsohn shortened whole civilisations into overlapping strata. Heribert Illig erased centuries entirely. The pattern is often similar. A real anomaly is noticed. A genuine difficulty is identified. Then, instead of treating it as a local problem, it becomes the key that supposedly unlocks all history.

Laurent Guyénot belongs within this tradition, though perhaps now with increasing reluctance. His earlier work moved into some very radical territory indeed. Alexander and Caesar were treated as potentially fictional; Rome and Constantinople seemed capable of changing places in history; the first millennium itself looked unstable. Yet unlike many revisionists, he appears willing to retreat when evidence pushes back. He now accepts that Late Antiquity possesses a genuine chronological sequence and that some of his earlier ideas simply do not work."

[Alan Bickley @GabbSean]

A rare, honest, and discomforting reflection from inside the conflict — neither triumphalist nor naively optimistic. Worth reading for anyone interested in the human and political complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian situation.
Read the full article from the Libertarian Alliance: https://t.co/jMTlg5iLjJ
#Israel #Palestine #PoliticalEssay

[Alan Bickley @GabbSean]

Just published: “A Liberal Israeli Considers an Impossible Peace”
A thoughtful Israeli writer reflects on losing faith in traditional peace processes after decades of failed negotiations and accumulating tragedy. He confronts Palestinian grievances while facing the hard limits of idealism.
Full article: https://t.co/jMTlg5iLjJ
#IsraelPalestine #Libertarian #MiddleEast

[Alan Bickley @GabbSean]

The essay explores the exhaustion of liberal hopes, the realities of power, historical dispossession, and whether any settlement can satisfy both justice and security in a conflict shaped by deep mutual fear and trauma.
Full essay: https://t.co/jMTlg5iLjJ
#LiberalPerspective #Geopolitics #Libertarianism