Global

As earthquakes struck SoCal a theatrical aftershock rocked the L.A. stage on July 6 with the West Coast premiere of Scraps. Geraldine Inoa’s brilliant, powerful play is at the cutting edge of the stage and screen cycle of productions reacting to the surge of police and vigilante killings of African Americans and/or the judicial system’s unjust mistreatment of Blacks. And Scraps is among the best of these works protesting racial injustice and inequity perpetrated (and perpetuated) by those perps/twerps - the “men” in blue and in robes (sometimes black, sometimes white).

Inspired by Michael Brown’s murder, Inoa’s Scraps focuses on how these injustices reverberate in the minds and lives of loved ones left behind after these discriminatory slayings occur. This may surprise some because according to racial tropes, African Americans aren’t sophisticated enough to have unconscious minds, but Inoa begs to differ. 

By “the Obama wars” I don’t mean some overgrown infants on television screaming racist insults or pretending that opposing racism requires cheering for Obama.

I mean: the widespread indiscriminate murder of human beings with missiles — many of them from robot airplanes — let loose to threaten any non-white country on earth by Obama and expanded by Trump. I mean the catastrophic destruction of Libya — still continued by Trump. I mean the war on Afghanistan, the vast bulk of which was overseen by Obama, though Bush and Trump have had minor roles. I mean the assault on Yemen, begun by Obama and escalated by Trump. I mean the war on Iraq and Syria escalated first by Obama and then by Trump (following the de-escalation locked in place by Bush though Obama fought it tooth-and-nail).

The true story of British whistleblower Katharine Gun is public. The new movie dramatizing that story, with Keira Knightley in the starring role is called a thriller. And that it is.

How can a known event be made into a suspenseful thriller? In part this is possible because the story is a complex one that few know the details of, and in part because most people don’t know anything about anything. There’s too much information in the world, and most of it is useless or worse. The story of a whistleblower who took great risks to expose the greatest possible crimes by people holding the most power in the world is not the bit of information that has been most repeated over the past 16 years since it happened. In fact, it’s hardly been mentioned at all in corporate media.

I recommend not reading anything about Katharine Gun until after you see Official Secrets. And what I write about the movie here will avoid revealing much at all.  But feel free to go watch the movie first and then come back to this.

Turning their backs on the human rights principle of voluntary informed consent as decreed in the Nuremberg Code, countries are fast-tracking involuntary vaccine mandates for school-age children. Adults are next. This is an egregious violation of human rights.

Mercury, Aluminum, and other adjuvants are in vaccines. Inadequate testing is the norm. There are no tests that show interactions of one vaccine with another — or with other medications. There is no financial liability in the US for vaccine manufacturers as they cannot be sued for any and all the injury and death caused by their products. Vaccines are therefore a giant experiment.

The Nuremberg Code is a set of research ethics principles for human experimentation set as a result of the subsequent Nuremberg trials at the end of the Second World War. The New England Journal of Medicine wrote:

The odds are now very strong that Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders will be the Democratic presidential nominee. New polling averages say they account for almost 70 percent of support nationwide, while no other candidate is anywhere near. For progressives who want to affect the news instead of just consume it, active engagement will be essential.

I have previously written many articles describing one or more aspects of the dysfunctional nature of the typical human mind, together with an explanation of how this came about and what we can do about it. See, for example, many of the articles republished in ‘Key Articles’ and the source documents ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.

I have also explained that it is this dysfunctional psychological foundation that generated the behaviors, as well as the political, economic, legal and social institutions (such as capitalism), that are driving the multifaceted and existential crisis in which humanity now finds itself.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Israel has taught the Philippine Army for the
first time how to fight Muslim separatists and communist guerrillas,
the latest tightening of relations between the two nations which
includes Israeli weapons sales and sharing intelligence about
international Islamist extremists.

Even though Israeli boots were on the ground just in the capital
Manila, it risked alienating some of the Philippines' nearly six
percent Muslim population who live mostly in the south.

They are already battered by years of increasing Islamist demands for
independence and the subsequent worsening violence in a country that
is more than 80 percent Roman Catholic.

Perhaps to dampen any controversy, only about 10 Israeli Defense Force
(IDF) soldiers trained 180 Philippine Army troops who can now then
teach those lessons to other soldiers.

The June 26-July 4 Counter-Terrorism Trainer's Training (CTTT) focused
on how to fight an insurgency in urban and rural zones and use combat
technology.

"The CTTT is the first training collaboration between the Philippines

Spider-Man movies generally pit the reluctant superhero against two powerful foes: (1) a monster bent on mass destruction and (2) teenage angst. The monster is always vanquished in the end, while the angst survives to be dealt with all over again the next time around.

That’s fortunate, because Peter Parker’s struggles with his youthful insecurity are usually more entertaining than his alter ego’s struggles with the monster du jour.

This is truer than ever in Spider-Man: Far From Home, mostly because the comic-book hero resides in the ever-expanding Marvel Universe. Marvel’s battles tend to be so big and frantic—and so computerized—that they lose the ability to thrill us.

Thank heavens that Peter (engagingly played by Tom Holland) is as humble and angsty as ever. When Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) orders him to help fight a new class of baddies called the Elementals, Peter declines because he’s more interested in finding the right moment to declare his love for longtime crush MJ (Zendaya). And when he learns that the now-deceased Iron Man has bequeathed him a powerful technological weapon, he insists that he’s unworthy.

Had Friday’s 7.1 earthquake and other ongoing seismic shocks hit less than 200 miles northwest of Ridgecrest/China Lake, ten million people in Los Angeles would now be under an apocalyptic cloud, their lives and those of the state and nation in radioactive ruin.    

The likely human death toll would be in the millions. The likely property loss would be in the trillions. The forever damage to our species’ food supply, ecological support systems, and longterm economy would be very far beyond any meaningful calculation. The threat to the ability of the human race to survive on this planet would be extremely significant.     

The two cracked, embrittled, under-maintained, unregulated, uninsured, and un-inspected atomic reactors at Diablo Canyon, near San Luis Obispo, would be a seething radioactive ruin.