The military-sports complex in all its glory

It is routine to see overt and ostentatious displays of patriotism at sporting events in the US. Of course, these days ‘patriotism’ means symbolic acts like singing the national anthem and God Bless America, praising the military and the police forces by having them involved in ceremonies such as hauling out a massive American flag onto the field, military flyovers, the cameras panning to service members in the crowds and thanking them for their service, and even reunions where service members returning from one of the many never-ending wars are shown meeting their family members at the game.
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If you want to see your reflection, you need to smile

There is an old belief that when you smile, your spirits get lifted, as do the spirits of those around you. When you look in a mirror, do you smile? This is not something that people may do consciously and until I saw this video below about the invention of a mirror that shows the image only when people smile, I couldn’t recall whether I usually smiled or not. With this mirror, I would know.

What about the translators?

There has been much speculation about what Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin said at their two-hour long private meeting in Helsinki. Trump likes these one-on-one meetings and had one with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un too, prior to the later meeting with aides. But of course, these meetings are not exactly one-on-one and hence not entirely private. Along with them were two translators.
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The complex political legacy of Jackie Robinson

Jackie Robinson is known mainly for the fact that he was the first black baseball player in the major leagues. He was an anti-Communist and thus he was persuaded to speak against Paul Robeson before HUAC, the House Un-American Activities Committee, but he knew that he was being used as a pawn by the white power structure. While that appearance tarnished his image and resulted in him being called an Uncle Tom and an Oreo, largely forgotten is the fact that the rest of his life was devoted to advancing the cause of black athletes and breaking down color barriers and pushing for integration in every aspect of society. And his actions have reverberated down to this day.
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Sometimes we need a feel-good story, so here’s one

20-year old Walter Carr was due to start a new job with a moving company near Birmingham, Alabama. But the day before his first day was to start at 8:00am, his car broke down. Since he lived 20 miles away, he decided to walk through the night to get to work on time. When the owner of the moving company heard about the dedication of his new employee from the woman whose stuff Carr was scheduled to move, he drove from Tennessee to give him his own car, a 2014 Ford Escort.
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Politics, professional sports, and racism

The put-down of ‘shut up and play’ and ‘stick to sports’ has been used to try and silence athletes, especially black ones, who have taken stands against police brutality and other forms of injustice. In his excellent book The Heritage about black athletes and politics that I reviewed earlier, Howard Bryant writes about how this has always been the case against any black athletes who dared to take a political stand that was not submissive to white power.
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An unusual statement from Trump

At the joint press conference following their summit meeting, Donald Trump made an unusual statement where he seemed to suggest that he was more inclined to believe Russian president Vladimir Putin rather than his own intelligence agencies about Russia’s role in US elections.

“My people came to me, [Director of National Intelligence] Dan Coats came to me and some others, they said they think it’s Russia. I have President Putin, he just said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be.”

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Greenwald and Cirincione debate the merits of the Trump-Putin summit

The issue of Russia and Donald Trump’s relationship with Vladimir Putin has become the subject of great debate in the US, with much heat but less light. In this discussion on Democracy Now!, Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshare Fund, takes the position that the recent summit was a bad idea and gives his reasons. Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept disagrees. The discussion is much more substantive than what you usually get on commercial talking head TV.

The problem of single-use plastic pollution

The problem of plastic pollution has come to the fore, thanks to the work of environmental groups who have highlighted the toll it is taking on the oceans and marine life. Much of the damage comes from the sheer volume of plastic items that are used just once and then thrown away. This website by a company called SLOActive that markets sustainable, eco-friendly swimwear has data on the harm that plastics are doing and what we can do to mitigate the damage. The numbers are staggering. About 1.15 to 2.41 million tons of plastic are said to annually enter the world’s oceans via rivers.
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