IN THE NEWS
America, how long will you sacrifice your children on the altar of gun worship?
May 27, 2022
America’s great appeal to the world was its promise of possibility. It presented itself as virgin territory, a tabula rasa where a society could form anew, free of the past, and where individuals might do the same, reinventing themselves, renewing themselves, starting over. It was a myth, of course: it took no account of those people who were already there, and whose lives and lands were taken, or of those who had been brought to America in shackles. But it was a powerful myth all the same, one whose grip on the global imagination lives on: witness the success of the stage show Hamilton in seducing yet another generation into the romance of a new world and its revolutionary creation.
... full articleIt was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived.
“Nunca voy a estar más cerca de ganar que en 1999. A Cronenberg esa pregunta le perseguirá de por vida [el porqué no le dio la Palma].”
(“I will never be closer to winning than in 1999. Cronenberg will be pursued for the rest of his life by this question [as to why he did not give him the Palme].”)
-quote by Pedro Almodóvar from the article on 18 May, 2022 by Gregorio Belinchón in El país, titled:
Los jurados en Cannes, una historia de dictaduras y malas decisiones o cuando Cronenberg no quiso que Almodóvar ganara
(The Cannes juries, a history of dictatorships and bad decisions, or when Cronenberg did not want Almodóvar to win)
I cannot accept to be portrayed as embittered for not receiving the Palme d’Or… It is true that some days ago, I wrote for the Spanish newspaper El País that I was the closest to win the damned Palme with “All About My Mother.” I was referring to the enthusiastic reaction from the critics and the audience.
‘What are we doing?’ After the Texas school shooting, Sen. Chris Murphy speaks for us all
May 25, 2022
“What are we doing?”
That’s what Sen. Christopher S. Murphy (D-Conn.) asked after 21 people, including 19 children, were killed during a mass shooting at a Texas elementary school on Tuesday, a little more than a week after what authorities have called the racially motivated murder of 10 people in a Buffalo, N.Y., supermarket.
“There’ve been more mass shootings than days in the year. … Our kids are living in fear,” he said.
A longtime supporter of gun control legislation, Murphy was specifically addressing his colleagues in the Senate chambers. “Why go through all the hassle of getting this job, of putting yourself in a position of authority if your answer, as the slaughter increases as our kids run for their lives, we do nothing?”
The five-minute clip went viral in part because he could have been speaking to every American when he said: “This wasn’t inevitable. This only happens in this country. Nowhere else … and it is a choice. It is our choice. To let it continue. What. Are. We doing?”
... full articleI am patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it.
In Response to Texas Massacre, Right-Wingers Want More Guns and Cops in Schools
May 25, 2022
Ten days after an 18-year-old male, clad in body armor and wielding a semi-automatic weapon, walked into a grocery store in Buffalo and killed 11 people, targeting ten Black patrons, another 18-year-old male, wielding a fully loaded weapon walked into an elementary school in Uvalde Texas and killed 21 people, 19 of them children under the age of 10.
The echoes of the Charleston massacre in 2015 and the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012 are deafening. Yet it just keeps happening.
... full article