violence

MEXICO CITY — Three film students in southwest Mexico go out to film a homework assignment; they are kidnapped and killed, their bodies dissolved in acid.

The gaping chasm between reality and unreality is exemplified by recent contrasting statements about journalism from two veteran reporters. On the one side we have Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s Middle East editor, who enjoys a public image of principled honesty and a supposedly fierce commitment to news balance and impartiality.

Above: Protest against US war in the Middle East in Los Angeles from DreamsTime.com.

Do you think it is that simple to travel around the Middle East? Think twice!
Ask Palestinians, about trying to get from a point A to a point B in their own nation.
Some time ago, sitting in an old Ottoman hotel in Bethlehem, I asked a waiter what it takes to travel from there to Gaza, where he said, several of his relatives were living. He looked at me as if I had fallen from the Moon:

Rapper, Donald Glover, aka Childish Gambino, made a music video called This Is America that features him shooting a black choir with an automatic rifle. It's not clear exactly what the message of the video is supposed to be - if there even is a message - but the take away is that bizarre body gyrations and random murder is ... well, America. We are waiting to see if YouTube or Go Daddy will feel moral outrage by this normalization of murder and close down Glover's Internet access.

Progressive online commentary about Monday’s van attack in Toronto has focused on the influence of “toxic masculinity”. The analyses should be expanded to include the alleged perpetrator’s ties to a powerful patriarchal institution that is Canada’s biggest purveyor of violence.

Western culture is clearly obsessed with rules, guilt, submissiveness and punishment.
By now it is clear that the West is the least free society on Earth. In North America and Europe, almost everyone is under constant scrutiny: people are spied on, observed, their personal information is being continually extracted, and the surveillance cameras are used indiscriminately.
Life is synchronized and managed. There are hardly any surprises.

Oh, what fun it truly was to experience the “bomb cyclone” in January in New England: the snowfall gave a sense of peace and calm, the winds were less strong than predicted, and the snow, while heavy, was not dense enough to take down trees and power lines in most areas. The following period of intense cold through February and March in the eastern half of the US, on the other hand, seems a harbinger of climate instability which will most likely worsen in upcoming years.

In lieu of building his promised wall between the U.S. and Mexico, Donald Trump ordered National Guard troops to the border. General James Mattis authorized the deployment of up to 4,000 troops to beef up border security, though they will not be permitted to perform law enforcement missions. Where precisely they will be and for how long is not yet clear.

Peru, Espinar (Cusco Province), 4 April 2018 – Violent attacks have been carried out by the copper mining giant Glencore’s security forces and Glencore-contracted national police on defenseless women and even children, on the poorest of the poor segment of Peru’s population. Glencore is a Swiss registered Anglo-Swiss mining corporation, exploiting mineral resources in developing countries around the globe, where they pay almost no taxes, as their profit center is in Switzerland, in Baar, Canton Zug, one of the Cantons, that has the lowest tax rates in Switzerland.