It’s been awhile since I last posted now that I’m working on another project, but that’s not to say I’ve been ignoring the “real world.” In my last post I noted that if you think things can’t get any worse, we find that Trump has only just gotten started with three long years left. And so I occasionally make my way to social media news sites like MeidasTouch which has even gotten the attention of the Trump regime. But then there is the X “homepage” that is clearly Elon Musk’s own page, to fill with such nonsense and hypocrisy that I occasionally feel the need to respond to:
I also posted this on Musk’s X page:
One thing I dislike about this is when I feel a need to respond to a Trumper with no sense of human decency or respect for human life, and they just keep on, and on, and on. We are finding out that there has been least one other murder of a U.S. citizen nearly a year ago by ICE thugs that was covered-up and only discovered after a FOIA request. After all this time to allow for the invention of a cover story (with the apparent aid of local police) and the likely destruction of evidence (including video), there are people who yet still believe the lies and not their eyes after the murder of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, this time concerning the U.S. citizen with no criminal record, Ruben Ray Martinez, age 23.
According to the one non-law enforcement witness in an incident that occurred in the wee hours of the morning on a highway, the victim was told by police where and when to move around an accident scene they had secured, and his car was already moving when ICE agents suddenly jumped in front of the vehicle that the witness said was only crawling forward. Why were ICE agents even there? Certainly not for traffic control; they probably caused the accident at the scene and this shooting was a convenient "cover story”—which sounds suspiciously like the one what DHS initially pulled out of their fundaments to use in the Good killing before video evidence forced people to believe their eyes, not the administration’s lies. In this case, physical “evidence”—including the vehicle and other forensic evidence—was likely “lost” or destroyed, and thus no help to any grand jury in the case. After all, this killing occurred in Texas, not Minnesota.
Naturally most of the defenders of the killing simply asserted that the victim should have done this or that rather than what the ICE agents should not have done (like targeting random people for no reason save skin color or stepping in front of an already moving vehicle). One person claimed that ICE wasn’t involved at all, that it was “HSI” and people should “read the story.” I pointed out that HSI is a branch unit within ICE, and whatever their purpose was, it was well reported that their resources—like that of the CBP—was being “diverted” to "help" ICE reach their "quota," and now they, like ICE and the CBP, had a killing of a U.S. citizen who had no criminal record to their “credit.”
I jumped into the following “conversation” after “George” responded to someone who asserted ICE has become a criminal gang that has stopped complying with the law:
G: Like those they are pursuing.
Like this US citizen without a criminal record who was simply following local police instruction to drive around an accident scene until ICE got involved because of racial profiling?
G: Race is always on the racist's mind. Every problem boils down to race. No matter what color one is one must lock the windows and doors at night. No matter what color one is, there are some parts of town to be avoided like the plague.
I can read between the lines there; what we are talking about here is state-sanctioned violence against a group of the kind history saw at another time and place.
G: All your remarks mean is that it is okay for illegals to be violent, but the slightest shift in direction of the violence is anathema.
Racist stereotyping. Thanks for clearing that up for us.
G: You are the one obsessed with color. You are just looking at your own reflection in my classes(sic).
I am not "obsessed" with color. It is Trump, Miller and their true believers who are "obsessed" with "color." And when you say "No matter what color one is, there are some parts of town to be avoided like the plague" we know you need to look at yourself in mirror to see who is "obsessed" with "color."
G: You have a serious logic fault that is serious. How would I know who hangs around in an area that I have never been?
Look at this guy and his "logic." Now he is saying he has "never been" to the places he calls "the plague."
G: Thanks for revealing the "attitude." The supposed "worst" neighborhood in my city is a place I've never been. Show your ultra liberalism and move there--show us all?
This is what the problem is: I speak from observation and I like many people don't like what we see today. You and an unfortunate number of people in this country create their own "reality" that is a reflection of their inner demons. You don't like the way "your" world "looks" and you have to dehumanize certain groups (those in the "plague" neighborhoods that are the "ghettos" that people like you de facto consigned them to), thus it is people like you (and Trump) who are too cowardly, hypocritical and self-obsessed to look at that mirror and see the darkness behind the pale reflection.
G: I explained carefully and considerately in polite language who you are. The system thought it was so nasty that it deleted it. Score one for you--Yahoo is on your side.
Oh really? I've had plenty of comments deleted merely for one word that was a perfect description of the person being responded to. Don't worry, people like you are wrongly "protected."
G: Talking to the mirror again, I see.
If you have trouble talking sense then just, you know...Believe me, most of us see it. Ever wonder how many other US citizens have been killed by ICE that we don't know about because they have been hidden like this one was for a year? You trust the people doing that? Of course you do, because you only care enough to give excuses for the killers. Most of us here see that.
G:The mirror is free. Keep talking
I needed to put an end to this in way that anything else he had to say would only expose his own hypocrisy more:
You know what I see in the mirror? A 66-year-old college-educated veteran. I've seen a lot in this world. including even Republicans recognizing the corruption within their own party during Watergate and the Iran-Contra affair. What do we see today? A convicted felon "president" who has convinced people like you that as long as he is "transparent" about his lies, his crimes and corruption, there is "nothing to see." Just spend your time attacking vulnerable groups and call them all "criminals."
My email told me he sent a “response” to that, but I just hit the “trash” button. Of course it isn’t just U.S. citizens being killed. CBP is denying any involvement in the death of Nural Amin Shah Alam, who they just happened to be dropped off as a “courtesy” at a coffee shop after hours nowhere near his home without notifying his family, in freezing weather. The nearly blind refugee had apparently been accosted by Buffalo police in January and beaten because the non-English speaker did not heed their “commands” to drop a curtain rod he was using as a walking cane.
Alam was later transferred to CPB. Who knows what treatment he received there being nearly blind and unable to understand what the agents were “commanding” of him, and when it was ultimately “discovered” that he was legally in the country without a deportation order, the CPB did what federal agents always do in these cases, which is just dump him somewhere outside like he was a piece of trash.
Meanwhile, Republicans are busy faking they are doing “important” things. Hillary Clinton was deposed to give “evidence” in the Epstein case that degenerated into discussions on UFOs and “pizzagate” after Republicans couldn't get her to say anything else but that she never met Epstein or Maxwell, or communicated with them at all. The only thing apparently derived from her husband’s testimony that was of use was his mention that Trump told him that he and Epstein were “great friends,” and later that Trump told him he and Epstein parted ways over a real estate deal that Trump had cheated Epstein on (if you have “friends” like Trump, who needs “enemies”). But more importantly a precedent had been set, and Trump and Melania (“Sweet Pea” to Maxwell) have no defense left from being called to testify under oath themselves.
Interestingly, the Epstein files contain information on his purported suicide that if given any credence are bound to enliven "conspiracy theories" about who in 2019 going forward had the most to gain from Epstein remaining silent. The following videos (copy and paste)...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gSGUFbOLo0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRiQQscAfvk
...make some interesting conjectures; for example, it was noted that Epstein first shared a jail cell with a man charged with murder and appeared to have a sadistic streak. We are told that Epstein subsequently was placed in a suicide watch cell. Then he was returned to a regular cell that he was supposed to share with another inmate because he was "suicidal" and someone could keep him "company."
But for some unexplained reason there was no "cellmate," and although Epstein was supposed to be checked every 2 hours, for some reason no one checked on him on the night in question for 8 hours. The actual position he was found in and the location of the "rope burns" around his neck also called into question how he could have "hanged" himself. And then there was that guy in the orange jumpsuit seen sneaking up that ladder.
But of course Pam Bondi (who has been vacating federal corruption charges against her brother's clients) has assured Trump that he has nothing to worry about and he can go on being as corrupt and criminal as he pleases. He is now trying to get other countries to invest in his Mediterranean vacation spa aka "Board of Peace,” Now we see Trump bombing Iran again, with the latest news that the Supreme Leader Khamenei has been, well let’s be frank, assassinated by Trump and Netanyahu, the man the ICC has charged with war crimes. Analysts are "speculating" that Trump did this as a "favor" to Israel.
This is not what “peace makers” do, but while most of the American media has been sanewashing Trump’s need for violence both at home and abroad so he can be seen as “great” and not a blood-thirsty maniac on the cusp of dementia and the insanity that follows, The Guardian noted the attacks by the U.S. and Israel was unprovoked and without legal basis, just as was the murder of people on those little boats who posed no “threat” to Americans despite Trump’s wild claims. This is what cowards do, pick on weaker opponents. With Putin, Trump is in "if you can't beat-em, join-em" mode while thousands continue to die in war criminal Putin's illegal war in Ukraine. And Trump gave his fellow murderer the red carpet treatment on U.S. soil.
Yet things may not turn out as Trump “hopes,” as the CIA is reporting the likelihood the current regime will be replaced by the even harder-line Revolutionary Guard. Big “surprise” there for this fool; I mean we are supposed to trust the "judgment" of this man?:
You can tell "peace" isn't on his mind; it's either his way, or you better find your way to the nearest bomb shelter.
Here we have a man who as soon as he was done putting on a “show” kidnapping Maduro and his wife, he allowed the regime in Venezuela to remain in place, losing interest in the country after oil companies showed no interest in investing in the country’s oil infrastructure. And of course Trump wants us to forget how he just walked away from North Korea and its nuclear arsenal out of sheer boredom. In Cuba, Trump is trying to starve the people in order to convince them that it is the Cuban regime and not Trump who is the villain causing their misery.
Oh well, I suppose at my age I need to "relax" more and let the people who are supposed to be insuring the survival of the human race do the right thing, but that can't happen if voters insist on allowing the billionaire Prince Prosperos and their (mainly Republican) "nobles" protect themselves and their greed in their castles while outside the people suffer the plagues of lies and indifference to their troubles, whether they choose to "see" it or not.
To "relax," my principle "hobby" is my film collection and while I won't ever watch half of them, the ones I do watch help me to understand the world from the perspective of others. Films of political and social concerns are unsurprisingly being seen of having little value in today's narcissistic world, but there are "films" that in spite of themselves tell us more than they intended about the current state of affairs.
Take for example that awful "documentary" Melania that Jeff Bezos paid $75 million (including “promotion") to curry “favor” from Trump (Disney refused to go higher than $14 million)—which he apparently “paid” for not out his own pocket or Amazon's but that of the jobs of 300 Washington Post reporters and editors and the latest layoff of 16,000 Amazon employees (by the way, I'd say that about two-thirds of the employees in the Amazon-leased building in Seattle that I currently work in will be vacated and moved to Bellevue are H1-Bs, given that I rarely hear them speak English).
And being a movie buff, it can't be surprising when Trump's unlawful acts, such as the tariffs that the Supreme Court took its sweet time to declare unconstitutional (with Brett Kavanaugh "dissenting" for the pathetic reason that it would be too much "trouble" to refund) would "touch" me.
So it was that I was in search of a Blu-ray title that was OOP and found on eBay a "new" and "sealed" copy from a seller in Canada that was cheaper (due to the exchange rate) than the used copies being sold in the U.S. Unfortunately I didn't take into account the possibility that this purchase would turn out to be much more expensive than I anticipated.
My first inkling that there was a problem was the unexplained "delay" even after it supposedly cleared customs. When I finally did receive the item from Fedex it wasn't "new" or "sealed" anymore...
...apparently to "insure" the disc case contained a "disc" and not fentanyl. Then ten days later I received this...
...which essentially doubled the price of the item. Think of what this has done to business that still traded with Canada before the Supreme Court finally stepped in. Just plain stupid.
I seem to like talking about films as much as watching them; I mean why else would I spend so much money building-up my collection, considering it an "event" when WAC finally got around to releasing the Gable/Harlow pre-coder Red Dust on BD, as was Excalibur just released by Arrow with a new 4k transfer from the original camera negative, and the pre-code favorite Trouble in Paradise is finally making its BD debut courtesy of Criterion in April.
Some genres I just naturally like even if they don't have an obvious "political" angle to them, like the Italian giallos that Arrow has been busy putting out on BD. I am also sure to watch any mostly Seventies "art" films by Polish directors, who we are told disguised their anti-government views during the Communist years by producing “subversive art” that disdained “traditional norms.” Since Polish films were largely state-funded, the more “subversive” they were, the more likely they were to get past the censors who could not see the “political” statements that were being made.
We don’t see many of those kind of films anymore, and the ones we do see are of course not made by American directors. For example Poor Things would certainly pass for an “art film” by Seventies’ standards, and it was made by a Greek director. In any case, all of the films I’ve looked at on this blog I was motivated to do so because they had some political or social “merit” I thought was important (at least to me) and assisted in forming my political and social beliefs. Frankly, we rarely see that in today’s films or even in music; why is it that an oldster like Bruce Springstein is singing about Minneapolis, and not a “contemporary” self-promoting narcissist like Taylor Swift? I think I just answered my own question there.
Sometimes an "old" film actually does tell us more about what is happening in our day-to-day lives today more than we realize. Take for example the 1983 film WarGames. On the surface it is an anti-war film about a "kid" messing with things he shouldn't be, but as many have pointed out it is even more prescient today in the time of out-of-control AI. Trump, we are told, has "blacklisted" the AI company Anthropic for its refusal to remove "liberal" controls protecting privacy rights and guardrails against military misuse. OpenAI apparently is offering no such guardrails against dangerous misuse.
Some even older films remind us that we need to hold ourselves to account when faced with adversity. Screen Archives is still selling what is left of its dwindling stock of Twilight Time BDs at relatively cheap prices, and another look at what they have brought the 1967 film The Incident to my attention. In this film a couple of punks terrorize the passengers of a subway car into mindless submission…
…having left it to a Vietnam vet returning home with a broken arm (played by Beau Bridges) to finally say enough was enough when one of the punks began harassing a little girl in the arms of her father:
After he somehow incapacitated the punks despite suffering a stab wound, the soldier has a question for his Army buddy that could have been asked of everyone else on the car:
Perhaps we can see that people in this country are being pushed too far by Trump and his lawless goons and thugs, but in relative terms we are still only seeing that lone soldier actually standing up and doing something about it.
Sometimes you need an example, say of one person taking a stand against all odds. Take Franco Nero’s original Django. He’s on a mission of vengeance for the murder of who we later discover was his Mexican wife by neo-Nazi/KKK types. This Italian spaghetti western is far from subtle in its politics or social messaging…
…and in the coffin he is dragging is his “secret weapon” to even his chances of winning this first battle:
Of course it is an American oligarch who with the aid of corrupt government forces taking out a troupe of populist revolutionaries...
…and Django, despite his hands being crushed, invites him and his masked thugs to a showdown…
…in the cemetery where his wife is buried, using her gravestone to balance his gun…
…and lay them all out, one bullet each, as he leaves with his mission finished (for this film anyways):
I’m going to end this with an alternative view of the world in the 1967 French film King of Hearts. A Scottish soldier (Alan Bates) is tasked to diffuse a German bomb in a French town during WWI alone. He apparently is “expendable.” The townspeople know that they will all die if they stay, so they evacuate the town—except that they forgot to tell the inmates at the local insane asylum. The soldier arrives in town where he is chased by German soldiers into the asylum, where he mingles with the inmates and identifies himself as the “King of Hearts” from a hand of playing cards he is holding. The inmates appear to believe he really is their king after a long absence.
The Germans leave in exasperation, mistakenly leaving all the doors open to the asylum and allowing the inmates to simply walk out:
Once free, they the create their own identities in a make believe world of peace, harmony and good times, carrying along the befuddled soldier for the ride:
But the film asks us who is really the insane people in this world. After the soldier has successfully diffused the bomb the Scottish and German soldiers return and end-up massacring each other…
…as the soldier—saved by the women, who whisked him away before he marched off--seems to be the only one who really “understands” what or why this has happened:
As the inmates have had enough of the “real world” and return to the asylum…
…the soldier is given a medal, but when he is instructed to go to another town to prepare to blow it "sky-high," he decides to go AWOL, shed the attire denoting the position that a truly “crazy” society has forced him to accept, and join the more sensible society at the asylum:
