Last week I favorably reviewed the Brazilian comedy The First Temptation of Christ that has drawn protests from Christian groups because of its suggestion that Jesus may have been gay. Now the protests have spawned violent offshoots that have attacked the filmmakers’ offices with firebombs.
Police are investigating a fire-bomb attack on the Rio de Janeiro office of a production company behind a controversial Christmas special aired on streaming service Netflix.
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Jaime Hoffman, the athletic director of the liberal arts Occidental College, had a meeting with college’s general counsel, head athletic trainer, head football coach, and president and decided that because of the declining enrollment in their football program that resulted in too few eligible players to fully field a team and the danger that injuries posed to their smaller and more inexperienced players, that they cancel the remaining games of the season
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Those who recall the first Superman film starring Christopher Reeve will I am sure remember the scene where he is heartbroken that he could not arrive in time to save Lois Lane from death when she falls into a crevasse, if I recall correctly. So what does he do? He flies around the world at high speed in a direction opposite to the Earth’s rotation and by doing so he reverses the flow of time so that events go backwards and Lois emerges from the depths and he can rescue her. This was laugh-out-loud funny bad science.
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The fallout over the editorial in the evangelical magazine Christianity Today calling the impeachment and removal of Donald Trump continues with an editor from another publication The Christian Post resigning after the magazine decided that they would write an editorial in support of Trump.
Evangelical support for US President Donald Trump is back in the spotlight after the resignation of a leading journalist for Christian Post magazine.
Journalist Napp Nazworth’s departure follows an op-ed from another Christian outlet calling for Mr Trump’s removal.
On Monday, journalist Napp Nazworth announced he was “forced to make the difficult decision to leave The Christian Post”.
Mr Nazworth – a political editor and near 10-year veteran of the Christian magazine, whose Twitter biography includes the hashtag #NeverTrump – said the publication “decided to publish an editorial that positions them on Team Trump”.
He continued: “I can’t be an editor for a publication with that editorial voice.”
This is one truly weird film. I watched it because the capsule description said it was a comedy and it had many well-known good actors such as Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, Olivia Colman (who seems to be in everything these days), Ben Whishaw, and John C. Reilly. I did not laugh even once. Instead I watched it with a kind of curious fascination, trying to figure out to what the hell it was all about, what message the film makers were trying to convey. I still don’t know.
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Donald Trump panders shamelessly to the US military and one of the things he has done is pardon those people who have been disciplined by the military for doing awful things. This despite the fact that the military is very reluctant to punish wrongdoing done to the victims of US wars and invasions and even when it rarely does so, the punishments are very mild. The case of Eddie Gallagher is particularly striking.
Video recordings of testimony given by Gallagher’s troops have emerged where they say that he was ‘evil’.
A Navy Seal platoon leader controversially cleared of war crimes by Donald Trump was a “toxic” character who was “OK with killing anything that moved”, according to fellow Iraq veterans who reported his conduct to military investigators.
…Gallagher was convicted in July of posing with the dead body of a teenage Islamic State captive he had just killed with a hunting knife. He was granted clemency by the president in November in a decision that angered military chiefs.
In the interviews, conducted by navy investigators looking into Gallagher’s conduct during a tour of duty in Iraq in 2017, fellow platoon members told of a ruthless leader who stabbed the captive to death for no reason then forced his troops to pose for a photograph with the corpse.
…At his court martial, Gallagher was acquitted of murder but demoted in rank for the lesser charge of posing with the body – a decision Trump reversed.
…Another platoon member, medic Corey Scott, said: “You could tell he was perfectly OK with killing anybody that was moving.”
Note that the only punishment Gallagher suffered for his atrocities was a demotion in rank but even that was too much for the panderer-in chief.
Imagine what would be the reaction if some Iraqi or Afghan person had done something similar to a US soldier occupying their country and had then been pardoned by the political leadership.
But the US has never cared about the fact that it is a rogue state that has double standards. It takes that for granted.
I came across this article about a clash between supporters of fox hunting and protestors.
Police are investigating after a man appeared to use a dead fox to attack a vehicle containing anti-hunting activists.
As dozens of hunts took place across the UK on Boxing Day, a man alleged to be a supporter of a hunt in North Yorkshire was filmed hitting the window of a van with the animal’s body.
Blood and hair were left smeared across the glass and a group from the Hunt Saboteurs Association (HSA), activists who monitor and disrupt purported illegal hunting, claimed the vehicle was damaged.
The apparent attack occurred at midday on Thursday when a group of people approached the activists before a man was seen sprinting towards the van attempting to hide his face and brandishing the dead fox, which he then used as a weapon.
In general, I tend to be optimistic about the human condition but on occasion, I come across stories that shake that sense of positivity. The radio program The World had a segment on December 12th about the trauma suffered by content moderators tasked by Facebook with viewing videos on the site to see if they should be removed. Having to watch video after video of the most appalling things in rapid succession resulted in many of them suffering psychologically and Facebook did not seem to have in place sufficient resources to help them deal with it. Some of the moderators, who are contractors and not Facebook employees, are now suing Facebook. One of them Chris Gray, who worked in its Dublin office, was interviewed on the program.
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Recent events in the UK have resulted in a new word being added to the political lexicon and that is ‘Corbynizing’. This is the label given to the concerted effort orchestrated by the right wing Israel lobby in the UK, the Conservative party, much of the establishment media, and Blairite neoliberal members of the Labour party to discredit and undermine Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn by suggesting that he is an anti-Semite and/or a coddler of anti-Semites, in an effort to remove him from the party leadership and also to distract attention from the progressive platform that the party put forward.
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