One man will now decide whether or not China invades Taiwan.
That could lead to a World War.
It’s very possible that the dictator will need something to distract the population as Covid continues to drag down the economy.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Economist was at the Party Congress.
Summer 2022, their lawyers are doing everything possible to avoid payouts.
As I feared, Westjet airlines will not compensate me for being stranded at an airport overnight.
They are pretending there was a delay at my international connection in Toronto — my Westjet flight from Europe landed on time and I planned a long layover just-in-case.
My Toronto flight departed 80 minutes late causing me to miss a connection by about 10 minutes.
The problem had nothing to do with my international connection.
My cost was only about $100 and time — so I don’t think I’ll take Westjet to small claims court this time. But if I did, I’m sure I’d win.
In Coach Education we have a concept called ETHICAL ACTION.
If you see something you think is wrong, take action.
Record what you saw in a diary. Keep records.
Videotape what you saw.
Notify authorities in a respectful, diplomatic way.
Ideally you ask the (possible) offender: “Why are you doing that? I don’t understand.”
People wonder why I’m so vocal about the high crimes of Donald Trump.
Ethical action. That’s why.
Trump inspired smarter people in Florida to enact a law called Don’t Say Gay. That’s like passing a law called Don’t Say Black. Don’t Say Latino.
We should take ethical action against people who discriminate when their Constitution clearly states that ALL ARE CREATED EQUAL.
Support the lesser of two evils if both sides are bad.
Martin Niemöller was a Lutheran pastor. Initially a supporter of Adolf Hitler and a self-identified antisemite. Later best known for his opposition to the Nazi regime during the late 1930s and for his widely quoted 1946 poem:
“First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
As a teenager I loved Follett’s World War II thriller, “Eye of the Needle” (1974).
Follett got even more famous writing historical fiction: Kingsbridge Series ➙ Century Trilogy.
In 2021 he published a geopolitical thriller — Never. Quite a departure.
Never is set in today’s world.
The sprawling saga is a fictionalized story of our world stumbling towards a nuclear war that nobody wants.
It begins in the Sahara Desert. Islamic terrorists, drugs and human trafficking.
The American President Pauline Green is a 4′ 11″ Republican. A former gymnast. Of course she’s challenged on the right by a Trumpy populist. Top of the American agenda is a revolt in North Korea. Rebel military have seized the nuclear weapons.
A high-ranking Chinese Intelligence official offers insight into the mindset of that superpower.
This book is terrifying as you can see how a nuclear war could start. In fact, I’m affected enough to no longer want to travel to Taiwan or Korea for hiking. They are both too close to nuclear attack.
As always, Follett writes great love stories. It’s the human stories that separate his work from other authors.
Click PLAY or watch an interview on YouTube.
Another book with a similar plot is 2034: A Novel of the Next World War (2021).
I rejoined Netflix mainly to watch Don’t Look Up.
Be sure to watch the credits. There are 3 endings.
Satire that reminded me of both Swift’s A Modest Proposal and Wag the Dog.
Something between a star-studded Hollywood blockbuster and an amateur YouTube documentary. Very original editing.
You’ve never seen DiCaprio like this. He had a lot of input on the script.
The cast is great. Best is Jonah Hill who plays a Don Jr. idiot appointed by his mother as the insanely unqualified Chief of Staff.
The Republican tribe is urged to NOT LOOK UP at the planet busting comet. And deny what they can see with their own eyes. 😀 It parallels the American idiocracy of covid denial, for example. Apathy, incompetence and self-interest.
Denial of science.
It’s certain ReTrumplicans will hate this film.
This movie came from my burgeoning terror about the climate crisis and the fact that we live in a society that tends to place it as the fourth or fifth news story, or in some cases even deny that it’s happening, and how horrifying that is, but at the same time preposterously funny.[10]— Adam McKay, writer, director, and producer of Don’t Look Up
The best resource I’ve seen so far on the very alarming and complicated topic.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Back in the 1990s I was completely convinced that Google and the internet would make the world a much better place.
If people had more information, they’d be able to make better decisions.
It turned out to be mixed. Smart people make better decisions.
But many are overwhelmed, disinterested and easily confused.
UPDATE – Deanna Kreisel posted a rebuttal to the Wade Davis article:
The Unraveling of “The Unraveling of America”
Wade Davis is a Colombian / Canadian professor of anthropology and the BC Leadership Chair in Cultures and Ecosystems at Risk at the University of British Columbia.
One brilliant man.
A recent article of his in Rolling Stone sums up how COVID-19 signals the end of the American era.
In a dark season of pestilence, COVID has reduced to tatters the illusion of American exceptionalism. …
No empire long endures, even if few anticipate their demise …
In 1940, with Europe already ablaze, the United States had a smaller army than either Portugal or Bulgaria. Within four years, 18 million men and women would serve in uniform, with millions more working double shifts in mines and factories that made America, as President Roosevelt promised, the arsenal of democracy.
When the Japanese within six weeks of Pearl Harbor took control of 90 percent of the world’s rubber supply, the U.S. dropped the speed limit to 35 mph to protect tires, and then, in three years, invented from scratch a synthetic-rubber industry that allowed Allied armies to roll over the Nazis. At its peak, Henry Ford’s Willow Run Plant produced a B-24 Liberator every two hours, around the clock. Shipyards in Long Beach and Sausalito spat out Liberty ships at a rate of two a day for four years; the record was a ship built in four days, 15 hours and 29 minutes. A single American factory, Chrysler’s Detroit Arsenal, built more tanks than the whole of the Third Reich.
In the wake of the war, with Europe and Japan in ashes, the United States with but 6 percent of the world’s population accounted for half of the global economy, including the production of 93 percent of all automobiles. …
COVID-19 didn’t lay America low; it simply revealed what had long been forsaken.
As the crisis unfolded, with another American dying every minute of every day, a country that once turned out fighter planes by the hour could not manage to produce the paper masks or cotton swabs essential for tracking the disease. The nation that defeated smallpox and polio, and led the world for generations in medical innovation and discovery, was reduced to a laughing stock as a buffoon of a president advocated the use of household disinfectants as a treatment for a disease that intellectually he could not begin to understand.
… With less than four percent of the global population, the U.S. soon accounted for more than a fifth of COVID deaths. …
Odious as he may be, Trump is less the cause of America’s decline than a product of its descent. As they stare into the mirror and perceive only the myth of their exceptionalism, Americans remain almost bizarrely incapable of seeing what has actually become of their country. …
If Trump were gone tomorrow, the USA is still screwed because of FOX News and right wing media. And the GOP.
If a vaccine were available tomorrow, half of Americans would refuse to take it.
Wade Davis:
… even should Trump be resoundingly defeated, it’s not at all clear that such a profoundly polarized nation will be able to find a way forward. For better or for worse, America has had its time. …
What can be said that hasn’t already been said?
It’s fantastically well done.
Elisabeth Moss as June Osborne must win every acting award.
Madeline Brewer as Janine should win the rest. And Ann Dowd as Aunt Lydia, of course.
In season 2 I could finally relate to Yvonne Strahovski as Serena Joy Waterford. Her backstory is fascinating.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
… That all said, I’m not sure I can continue with season 3. It’s too violent. Too sad. Too believable in an age where a potential leader of the Gilead theocracy is VP. ☹️
Rick McCharles 