The life of a film extra

I have often wondered, while watching scenes from some film or TV show that takes place in a public setting, about the people who are seen in the background doing everyday things. How many are they paid professionals who do this as a living? When a superhero film was shot in Cleveland some years ago, they sent out an appeal for people to appear as extras for a few street scenes and I think many responded just for the chance to be in a film. It involved just hanging around a lot, apparently. I don’t know if they got paid at all.
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Russiagate and the new Red Scare

Katie Halper interviews Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone and Aaron Maté of The Nation about how much of the mainstream media glommed onto the Trump-Russia collusion story, predictably called ‘Russiagate’, for so long to the exclusion of many other important stories, and left themselves wide open to the kind of blowback that they are now experiencing because of the Mueller report seemingly saying (at least as far as the released short summary goes) that there was no such collusion. The entire interview is well worth reading but here are a few excerpts. (MT refers to Taibbi, AM to Maté, and KH to Halper.)
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The scandal of professional wrestling

I have never seen the appeal of professional wrestling because violence, even if simulated, makes me cringe so I never watch it. Also, even with scripted fights, there is real wear and tear on the body and actual injuries. The scandal of professional wrestling is not that the whole thing is faked because everyone knows that. It is that the wrestlers are treated like dirt by the monopolistic WWE and its owner Vince McMahon that results in many of them dying young and poor, as John Oliver points out in this expose.

Taking a lighter look at Brexit

Four indicative proposals for Brexit were selected by the speaker for debate and voting and just now it was announced that all four failed to get a majority, joining in the dumpster the eight from last week. The closest that lost by just 3 votes (273 to 276) was one proposed by a pro-European Conservative Ken Clarke though most of his party voted against it. This was seen as a minimally disruptive Brexit that would consist of a UK-wide customs union with the EU.

A disappointed Clarke reportedly said that “his customs union did not get a majority because some people’s vote supporters would not back it because they only wanted to back a second referendum. And some MPs would not back it because they wanted common market 2.0, even though they would have been happy with the customs union plan too, he says. He says he sometimes thinks this house is not very good at doing politics.” That seems like an understatement.
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Atheism and agnosticism in Asia

Signe Cohen argues that Asian countries have long had various forms of atheism and agnosticism that while not explicitly denying the existence of any gods, treats them as largely irrelevant.

The Buddha himself rejected the idea of a creator god, and Buddhist philosophers have even argued that belief in an eternal god is nothing but a distraction for humans seeking enlightenment.

While Buddhism does not argue that gods don’t exist, gods are seen as completely irrelevant to those who strive for enlightenment.
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A fourth vote on May’s plan?

On Monday, the British parliament will votes on a new set of indicative votes, hoping to find one that contains the elusive formula that can gain a majority that will pass as a legislative option, after the previous such exercise sent all the options to defeat. It now appears that Theresa May is also planning to put forward her thrice (or twice depending on how you view the third vote) defeated Brexit plan to parliament for a fourth vote later in the coming week. This time she has upped the stakes and threatened to call for a general election if it fails, no doubt hoping that the fear of Jeremy Corbyn winning the election and becoming prime minister will scare the hell out of all the Conservatives and neoliberals within the Labour to vote to pass her plan.
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Why US-North Korea talks collapsed

You may recall that the summit meeting between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un held with much fanfare in Vietnam at the end of February ended abruptly, with a scheduled luncheon of the two leaders canceled and both parties leaving Vietnam immediately after with no joint communiqué. This was a sign that things ended badly but there was no explanation for what happened.

We now have some insight. Reuters says that it has seen a document that Trump gave Kim on that final morning that contained demands that had long been rejected by North Korea and they decided that the US was not serious and that it was not worth talking anymore.
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The Saudi spying operation in the US exposed

Remember the story of photographs of Jeff Bezos that the National Enquirer and its parent organization AMI was trying to use to blackmail Amazon and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos to stop his investigation into how they got the photos and issue a statement saying that he absolved them of all wrongdoing? Instead Bezos went public and gave his investigator Gavin De Becker all the resources he needed to continue his investigation.

Now De Becker says that he has completed his investigation and issued a statement that is quite extraordinary.
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Behind the scenes of Blackadder

I am always intrigued by the creative process and so am a sucker for documentaries along the lines of “The Making Of …”. Some of you may be familiar with the British TV comedy series Blackadder. I came across this program that goes behind the scenes of this show and talks to the writers and actors about how they conceived the show and their experience in being part of it.