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Reel Time with Richard Ades: Mobility-impaired Norwegian discovers life, love through gaming

Boy at a desk gaming

This article first appeard on Reel Time with Richard Ades

Growing up with a degenerative muscular disease, Mats Steen found it harder and harder to take part in everyday life. As a result, the young Norwegian spent most of his time playing video games.

“His world seemed so limited,” said his father, Robert.

Finally, at the age of 25, Mats succumbed to his condition. That’s when Robert and his wife, Trude, realized that their son’s world hadn’t been so limited after all.

The reason is revealed in Benjamin Ree’s unconventional documentary The Remarkable Life of Ibelin.

The film explains that Robert, after losing Mats in 2014, announced the sad news to followers of his son’s blog, “Musings of Life.” The grieving father expected that to be the end of it, but he soon was inundated with condolences from people around the world who had come to know Mats through their shared love of the video game World of Warcraft.

Join the World, not the U.S. Empire

https://worldbeyondwar.org/join-the-world-not-the-u-s-empire/

Remarks upon acceptance of Real Nobel Peace Prize, Oslo, Norway, November 10, 2024.

It’s wonderful to be here with many of you whose work I’ve known but whom I’ve rarely if ever been with in person. I am very grateful to John Jones and Tomas Magnusson for arranging this event. I am thrilled to be here at the start of what I expect will be years of terrific work by the Lay Down Your Arms Foundation — an appropriate name here in the House of Literature. The great Fredrik Heffermehl, who has been gone from us for nearly a year now, often stressed the influence on Alfred Nobel in the creation of the Nobel Peace Prize by Bertha von Suttner, the author of the 1889 novel Lay Down Your Arms.

SURJCO’s After-Election Meeting

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Sunday, November 10, 2024, 1:30 – 3:00 PM
Driving Park Branch of the Columbus Library, Rooms 1-2, 1422 East Livingston Avenue
Join Showing Up for Racial Justice - Central Ohio for an after-election debrief. At this meeting, we will debrief the election results and discuss our next steps.  

Your Body, Trump's Choice

The Mourning After: GREEP Zoom #198

We begin our special Thursday zoom with poetry from our Laureate MIMI GERMAN.

Host Harvey “Sluggo” Wasserman recounts the astounding 2004 comeback of the Boston Red Sox to end the 86-year “Curse” of not having won a World Series since 1918.

The great ANDREA MILLER updates us on what happened with her Center for Common Ground grassroots phone calling operations.

MYLA RESON questions the veracity of the votes cast in this election.

KPFK Board Chair TATANKA BRICCA wonders about the tally in Georgia and North Carolina.

JOHN STEINER adds to the dialogue on what we all do going forward.

ALEX WILLIAMS emphasizes his misgivings about what happened has happened to the US since Reagan.

Questions about the votes of black and Latino men are raised by DOROTHY REIK.

Jennifer Karius Working polls in Allegheny Co. PA stating that people were missing from poll books.

Indivisible’s MIMI SPREADBURY from Pennsylvania questions why so many voters in Allegheny County (Pittsburgh) were turned away from the polls, and later celebrates the victory of a money-limiting referendum in Maine. 

The Israeli soccer hooligans get what they deserve in Amsterdam

"The attack on the Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam was not because they were Jews but because they were thugs who started provoking everyone until they received their punishment. The ugly truth about the Amsterdam incident is the Western media has adopted and promoted the Israeli narrative that the attack was anti-Semitic and a pogrom against Jews.
 
Even the Jewish Forward editorial today took issues with Israeli and global leaders today who denounced the attack on the hooligans as a modern-day pogrom. The editorial argued, "The Merriam-Webster Dictionary is more blatant.

Will Trump appoint RFK Jr. as Director of the Department of Health and Human Services?

In reading the postmortems for the Harris/Biden failed Presidential campaign, democrats and progressives are quite concerned about the possibility of RFK Jr. overseeing the safety laws on food production and point to his mythical antivax positions. Oh what a horror! In my way of thinking, this comes down to three major issues, those being food safety, Covid (mRNA) vaccines, and childhood vaccines. If democrats believe this is a negative for the Trump administration, they should think again. My reasoning is that Bobby Kennedy is likely correct, and that his efforts could easily result in positive outcomes for the American people.

Before I explain further, I moved to Thailand in 2022 as a result of Trump and the MAGA crowd that follows him.

"Massive Voter Disenfranchisement Allegation"

At the risk of sounding like a voter conspiracy theorist, I forward the following facts and observations about the presidential election that we have just endured for the perusal of you, the readers.
In the spirit of full disclosure, it should be noted that I firmly believe that a few particular conspiracy theories - more than one person involved, which constitutes a "conspiracy", as opposed to "lone nut shooters" - provided to avid readers and serious historians over the past 60 years by numerous investigative authors concerning the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F.

Stop The Gloat

They lived through Trump 1.0

People who have been deported

There are a lot of news articles speculating about what could happen to immigrants under a Trump 2.0 administration. Let’s hear some first-hand accounts of what did happen during Trump’s first term. These are the family separations that didn’t appear in the national spotlight.

“My skin itched of the mud stuck to my body, drying.”

A woman working at Corso’s Garden Center in Sandusky buried herself in a flower bed to hide during the Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid at her workplace in 2018. What started with an offer of donuts in the break room (a ruse) turned into a dystopian nightmare for people who were working and trying to take care of their families. “I never expected anything like this to happen. When I saw them coming, I ran. And I ran and ran and ran until I hid under a bed of flowers, and I buried myself under the dirt and cried in silence. All I could think about was my kids, I have three. A lot of us have some children who need us.”

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