Global
The United States of America spends something like $80 billion annually on intelligence gathering and analysis. When the CIA was founded by the National Security Act in 1947 the intention was to create a mechanism that would warn about an imminent threat. The memory of Pearl Harbor in 1941, when Japan attacked the U.S. naval base was still fresh, and the legislation was popularized by the slogan “no more Pearl Harbors.”
In spite of the dedication of considerable resources and manpower, there have been some major intelligence failures in the past seventy years, starting with the inability to anticipate the breakout of the Korean War and including the embrace of false intelligence on Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction. But the most recent failure is perhaps more consequential than either Korea or Iraq.
When I found out Sacred Fools was mounting a play about Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin I immediately set out to review The Art Couple. Not only had I read about those Post-Impressionist painters and their cohabitation together in the so-called “Studio of the South”, I’d seen this depicted in films such as Vicente Minnelli’s 1956 Lust for Life starring Kirk Douglas as Van Gogh and Anthony Quinn as Gauguin. In 2017 AFI Fest screened Robert Altman’s 1990 Vincent & Theo, with Tim Roth as Vincent and Wladimir Yordanoff playing Gauguin. (BTW, Quinn won the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for portraying Gauguin - up to that point it was the briefest onscreen appearance to strike Oscar gold.)
Here is an incomplete list of some of the culprits:
A) Foreign Mining Corporations (PolyMet, Glencore, Twin Metals, Antofagasta, etc);
Minnesota’s Elected Politicians/Accomplices (both Corporate-influenced “Liberal” Democrats, and “Conservative” Republicans); Minnesota’s “Regulatory” Agencies that are Supposed to be “Natural Resource Protectors” (Including the DNR, the PCA, and the US Forest Service); and Most Area Newspapers; Most Area Television Stations; All the Area’s Chambers of Commerce; Minnesota Power (Electric Utility); the Trump Administration; Regional Labor Unions: and Dozens of Suppliers/Businesses that will Temporarily Profit from Supplying the Mining Industry While Simultaneously Risking the Permanent Poisoning of the St Louis River Watershed, Including Lake Superior
Anyone reading the scientific literature (or the progressive news outlets that truthfully report this literature) knows that homo sapiens sapiens is on the fast track to extinction, most likely some time between 2025 and 2040.
For a taste of the evidence in this regard focusing on the climate, see ‘Climate Collapse and Near Term Human Extinction’, ‘What They Won’t Tell You About Climate Catastrophe’, ‘Release of Arctic Methane “May Be Apocalyptic,” Study Warns’ and ‘7,000 underground [methane] gas bubbles poised to “explode” in Arctic’.
The week before British playwright Terry Johnson’s stage version of Charles Webb’s 1963 novella The Graduate and Buck Henry and Calder Willingham’s 1967 screenplay premiered at Laguna Playhouse, I happened to re-watch the classic movie on the IFC or Sundance Channel. I was struck by a number of things and wondered how could one translate its cinematic language to the medium of theatre, with real life movie star Melanie Griffith stepping into the role Anne Bancroft immortalized, that lecherous lush Mrs. Robinson?
After all, its helmer, Mike Nichols - who actually had previously been a theatre director whose movie debut was the 1966 adaptation of Edward Albee's Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - won the Best Director Oscar for The Graduate, which was only his second movie. And it was lensed by legendary director of photography Robert Surtees, who won three Best Cinematography Oscars, including for 1959’s Ben-Hur, and was Oscar-nommed another dozen times, including for The Graduate.
Since Pepper Potts in the very first Iron Man movie in 2008, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has given us solid, well-written women – in supporting roles. And when it comes to feature films, that’s where it’s kept them. Even the testosterone-saturated DC Comics movies managed to give Wonder Woman a movie of her own – and one that stood out from the mediocrity of the rest of them – before Marvel Studios did the same for any of their women.
But there are signs that they’re slowly getting the idea: The fans of the MCU deserve movies about women, too, and not just as friends and teammates and love interests to white guys played by men named Chris.
We’ve gotten a couple good woman-led TV shows out of the MCU so far – the Captain America spin-off Agent Carter and the Netflix exclusive Jessica Jones – and the Wasp gets to share title billing for Ant-Man and the Wasp, but until recently there was only one upcoming movie on their slate with a solo female character. That would be Captain Marvel, which is already filming with Brie Larson as the title character, scheduled for next year.
Trying to make sense about the recent silencing by non-human YouTube robots of many valuable, patriotic, truth-telling YouTube journalists
The report below is taken directly from Corbett Report # 332 by Gary G. Kohls, MD
“Those who question the government narrative and mainstream consensus are extremists who need to be dealt with. We can’t have free-thinking individuals roaming around our streets, spreading their damn truth!”
“In 2008, Cass Sunstein, a law professor who would go on to become Obama’s information “czar,” co-authored a paper entitled “Conspiracy Theories,” in which he wrote that the “best response” to online “conspiracy theories” is what he calls “cognitive infiltration” of groups spreading these ideas.”
It should come as no surprise to anyone that the Donald Trump administration has recently affirmed that it has a perfect legal right to remain in Syria as long as it wishes because it is fighting terrorism. The argument goes something like this: Congress has approved a bill that permits the US military to seek out and destroy al-Qaeda and associated groups wherever they may be. It is part of what is referred to as the Authorization to Use Military Force or AUMF. According to the White House, an associated group, the Islamic State in Syria (ISIS), remains currently active in Syria and the United States military presence is therefore legal until the group is completely eliminated, requiring no additional legislation or authority to remain in the country.
How close, how intimate, have you ever gotten with Greenland?
A new documentary called Stella Polaris, directed by Yatri Niehaus — part of Chicago’s tenth annual Peace on Earth Film Festival — takes you on a meditative journey to this lonely, extraordinary island, to its melting ice, its rampaging waters and crumbling glaciers, where climate change is a part of daily life, and where the native people have wisdom and heart to offer the rest of us.
It begins with a slow meditation on the beauty of the ice. Then, six minutes in, a wall of ice suddenly crashes into the ocean.