"The Silence" "a short film)

   Sometimes I don’t have time to watch two-hour films.  “The Silence” last 15 minutes. If you can make an impactful film within fifteen minutes, you’re doing well. Professional critics thought so too for “The Silence” was nominated in short categories at film festivals.

  The plot? Well, there is no plot, a condition which corresponds pretty much to real life.  It’s only in books and movies that life has a plot. We will find out while watching this film that the two characters of consequence, a mother and daughter, are in free-fall.

Opening scene is a waiting room in what we soon find out is a hospital. A cool and fateful mood is established with blue filters. There is no music, a quiet austerity dominates.

Twelve or thirteen-year-old Fatma (yes, that’s the correct spelling) and her Kurdish mother are sitting on plastic airport style seats along with seven or eight others waiting to be seen by a doctor.   Fatma’s  mother wears a head scarf, according to her Kurdish custom.  There is a language problem.  

Location is Italy but that matters not. It just happens to be where the filmmakers were living. Fatma’s mother is grievously ill, according to the doctors; she’s got an advanced stage of breast cancer. The doctors call for immediate hospitalization.    Devastating news to Fatima and her mother.

 Fatima and her mother are grimly quiet throughout.    The acting is realistic, understated, unsentimental. This is what makes it work.  If given the Lifetime treatment with cascades of tears and anguished sobs, it wouldn’t work. 

Fatma has a nervous habit of picking at her fingernails, one of two signs of   emotional distress. The other is when she puts her fingers into her ears because she’s a child and can’t bear to hear any more.

Film ends with Fatma and her mother staring into a future which may not be one.  There is no mention of husband or brother or anyone who might provide support. 

Why would you watch this film?  I don’t know, maybe to confirm your frailty.       

Bryan Kohberger Defense and the Straw Man Argument

 

According to Kai Eiselein of the New York Post, accused killer Bryan Kohberger “appeared to have two gashes near his chin and bruises on his neck” during his court appearance Jan. 12, 2023. Whether these abrasions are real or caused by shadows, I couldn’t tell from video. Chanley Painter of Court TV suggested the abrasions were the result of shaving.    

But that’s not the topic du jour so far as I’m concerned.  I’m very much interested  in legal matters pertaining to the Idaho Student Murders.  I’ve informally come in contact with a few attorneys on Twitter  to ask about the process of discovery.  While answers varied slightly, I got the impression the process is already in motion 

I’m particularly focused on a story from Inside Edition.  The defense discovery requests to the prosecution asks for the things you might expect.  But there is one item  which states as follows: "Any written or recorded statements by a co-defendant, and the substance of any relevant oral statement made by a co-defendant whether before or after arrest in response to interrogation by any person known by the co-defendant to be a peace officer or agent of the prosecuting attorney, or which are otherwise relevant to the offense charged."

This is a reference to what Inside Edition referred to as a “mystery co-defendant.”    The "mystery co-defendant" is a straw man argument, designed to put the prosecution on its back foot.

You can be sure Kohberger has read a lot of case work during his academic career.  In his planning or contemplation of his attacks, he likely   came up with ideas of how to throw prosecution off if caught.  Didn’t Ted Bundy use these same words: "Was anyone else arrested?”

If this defense strategy is allowed into the case, the prosecution will have to respond to it.   If prosecution responds with a "no co-defendant,” the defense will say prosecutors didn't follow up. 

Imagine the havoc that would occur if either defense or prosecution does come up with another individual with connection to the murders. I don’t think there is one, but a phantom ‘mystery co-defendant’ could accomplish the same purpose.  

I can tell you right now there are thousands of people ready to believe in a mysterious accomplice to the crimes.  The defense knows this.  They   will hire PIs to find a host of potential ‘co-defendants.’ They will manage to get these phantoms into the court record.  The intent is that the prosecution will find itself chasing  shadows.

It doesn’t matter if a thousand clowns believe that Bryan Kohberger was not the criminal mastermind of these murders and was a mere accomplice. The danger is rather that a single juror might believe Kohberger's attempt at thwarting justice.  

Is Kaylee Goncalves Former BF Jack DuCoeur being Persecuted?

 

On the day before Christmas, the New  York Post published this story:  Vilified ex-boyfriend of slain Idaho student Kaylee Goncalves is devastated: family .  The “vilified” ex-boyfriend mentioned here is Jack DuCoeur, a young man and University of Idaho student who lives now with his parents in Coeur D’Alene, Idaho. 

The article addresses concerns of his family through the voice of his aunt, Brooke Miller, who describes DuCoeur as a devastated innocent who has lost the love of his life.  This needed to be said, in the interest of fairness, and in the context of presumed innocence.

It is wise to protect the innocent from false accusations. However, suspicions of Jack DuCoeur, in the context of his relationships, are inevitable. In fact, he’s not the only one hurt by unfair insinuations of guilt. The attention focused on the case is   immense.  Few people have been spared from suspicion of committing the murder or assisting.

 One Inan Harsh, a garrulous restaurant chef, is but one example.  One Jack Showalter is another. The driver who drove Kaylee and Madison home was suspected.  Fanciful 'suspects' seem to crop up everywhere.  In one of the most egregious  examples, even the two women who lived on the first floor have been suspected of participating in the murders.  

They too must be “devastated.” Some reports have them traumatized from discovering the crime.    Rampant speculation about the murders has also suggested serial killers, cult killers, boastful fraternity bros, and even a parent or two. 

  No one is safe from suspicion of murder in this case, a condition that creates massive problems for police who have to sift through a massive adulterated crime scene to separate DNA, thousands of tips, conduct hundreds of interviews, and who knows what else.

Yet the slaughter of four young people at the dawn of their lives is an occurrence so horrible that wounded feelings must be secondary to the task of finding the killer(s) and making him/them pay.  I don’t think Jack DuCoeur has been any more the subject of suspicion than others.

Quite the contrary. Even alternative media has been largely silent about him. There has been little mention of where he lived and what he was doing the morning of the murders, except to say he was playing video games and then fell asleep.  

Similarly, there is no mention of how and when Murphy (the dog) went from the apartment in the video of Adam L. (cleared by police) and dog Murphy (cleared by police) (and some have conjectured that DuCoeur lived there too) to the murder victims’ house.

Much of the suspicion stems from the end of his his long-term relationship with Kaylee Goncalves. This is not unusual. Close family members and friends are first to be interviewed in many murder cases.  Too, some suspicions arise from the vagaries of police public statements. 

Some of the principals in this nightmare of a case have been ruled out definitively, others less clearly.  With regard to Jack DuCoeur, the   New York Post story mentioned above quotes a  Facebook post by Moscow police:  “Detectives do not believe the male Kaylee and Madison attempted to contact numerous times on November 13th is involved in this crime.”  

The  ‘male’ in the Facebook post is said by Kaylee’s sister Alivea to be “Jack.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Drip-Drop on the #Idaho Student Murders

 One of the smartest True Crime commentators, better than major media, is this crazy looking kid who calls himself "Drip-Drop," has tattoos under his coal black beady eyes, and runs a YouTube channel called "Crime Circus."

He's smart, well-spoken, clear in his locutions, and best of all, puts the facts and rumors together with   a dead-pan style  reminiscent of a media icon  .  I don't know how old he is, maybe   late teens, early twenties, hard to tell with his makeup style. 

  I've been reading lots of MSM stuff and a smaller amount of 'alternative' stuff because I don’t have time to register and navigate the deep, dark Web.  But this boy’s videos on YouTube  (I think  he has a Patreon too but I don’t go there) about the Idaho student murders are better than what I've got from the too gullible MSM. 

The FBI and/or major TV news/crime networks should dip him in water, remove the tats, dress him in Gucci, pay him a lot of money, and put him on network TV. Or leave him just the way he is because that's his business, not mine. 

You can find him by googling "Crime Circus." He's worth a look. 

Idaho Student Murders: How to Make Sense of the “Unconscious Person” Call

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If it happened in a novel, people reading it would say it didn't make sense. But what happened in real life during the early morning hours of November 13, 2022 wasn’t  meant to make sense.

 Everyone with a heartbeat knows the score by now:  Four University of Idaho students were murdered in a rented house during the wee hours of November 13.  

The murder victims are: Madison Mogen, 21, of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho; Kaylee Goncalves, 21, of Rathdrum, Idaho; Xana Kernodle, 20, of Post Falls, Idaho; and freshman Ethan Chapin, aged 20. Also living in the house where the four were murdered were  Dylan Mortensen and Bethany Funke,   two female students who were not attacked. 

There are as yet no suspects, as the investigations moves into a third week. The Moscow community of about 26,000 people lives in terror of a prowling psycho-maniac. Authorities speaking to media have walked back statements describing the horror as a “targeted attack, and then reiterated the characterization.” 

 An additional irony is that authorities have said  that the building, not the occupants, may been the target of the attacks, a speculation that makes little sense. Targeted buildings are typically attacked by arsonists.

The murder scene was horrific, described as a “mess,” all four victims being stabbed to death with a K-Bar style military knife. Such a bloody mess was the murder scene that the police forensics teams assigned to the case will take weeks to process blood and other evidence found at the scene. Some of it is just now coming in.

Astonishing to many people is the fact that two other female students were at home at the time of the vicious attacks.    Police say Dylan and Bethany came back to their apartment roughly an hour earlier than the four murder victims. 

Police won’t say specifically where each of the four victims were found but did say the murders took place on the second and third floors of the three-story building.  It is believed, yet unconfirmed, that Ethan Chapin and Xana Kernodle were found dead on the second or middle floor where the kitchen and common living room were located. A sliding door to the second floor kitchen was open when police arrived.

Also unconfirmed is that Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves, close friends since elementary school, were found slain on the top floor. During a memorial service, the father of one of the girls let slip that the two victims lay dead in the same bed.

 People were puzzled by the language used by authorities when the crimes were first reported.  A police spokesman said it was approximately 11:58 a.m. November 13^th when they received a call regarding an “unconscious person” at the house where the four victims were stabbed to death.  

Public reaction to this statement was and still is one of  incredulity. A person phoning in to police describing   an abattoir as an “unconscious person” seems outrageous without details. In the statement, there is a level of cognitive-dissonance  on the order of describing Attila the Hun as a mean guy.  

But there is an alternative explanation circulating on social media, not  confirmed by authorities, that makes perfect sense.  It requires some imagination. The two survivor girls on the bottom floor wake up in the morning, go upstairs to the second floor, where they discover an unimaginable horror.

They are panicked,  so distraught they   can only think to run screaming out of the house to the street.  One of the girls, Bethany or Dylan, tries to call police   but is so unnerved she can   cannot put words together.   She faints, drops her cell phone. 

Another person  comes to her aid, picks up the cell phone, and tells the police dispatcher   there is an “unconscious person” lying on the ground in front of the apartment. The “unconscious person” referred to by police is not one of the slaughtered victims. It is one of the young surviving women on the bottom floor. This version of the “unconscious person” phone call makes sense where nothing else would.    

Police respond to the report of the "unconsciouis person." They find the four murder victims. 

Also puzzling is how four students could be stabbed to death in their bed on two floors above without the bottom floor occupants hearing it. CourtTV interviewed a detective and investigator of many crime scenes who said that it was not an uncommon occurrence.    

Aside from academics, college culture involves socialization, relationships, parties, passion, music, and angst.  Dylan Mortensen and Bethany Funke believed the sounds coming from the upper floors were the sounds of partying. Or perhaps it was just as authorities suggested; the two surviving women were asleep.

 In any case, police have taken pains to make clear that Dylan and Bethany had nothing to do with the evil on the floors above them.  Same for the person who drove Maddie and Kaylee home.  Also for the boy who spoke to them by the food truck.    Police have also been careful to say that the six phone calls made to Kaylee’s on and off boyfriend, Jack (DuCoeur, according to a New York Times article)   were a separate private matter unrelated to the investigation.

With those avenues ruled out, the case is wide open to speculation. There is good reason for wild theories. Police are holding facts close and being extra careful of information released.  Touching off the investigation was indeed a phone call about an “unconscious person” at the address.

Note: Police are rightly holding information close to the vest so as not to despoil a criminal prosecution. I don’t want to make their jobs more difficult, nor do I want to create more suffering, more anguish for the victims’ parents, relatives, friends.  I’m trying to be constructive, rather than destructive, I’m motivated by anger that such horror could be inflicted on young lives just as I would feel if the victim was my own daughter.. I’m not in Idaho. Most of what I’ve written has been put into public discourse from sources I deem reliable.   I want the case to be solved. I believe it will be solved.

   

Paul Pelosi Attacker Said to Live in "Hippie Collective."

 They don’t call it Berserkly for nothing.  Because Berkley, California is where Crazy Davey David Depape called home until he was jailed for violent assault and attempted murder in the home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. 

  Speaker Pelosi was the alleged target of the attack but it happens she was in D.C. with her multi-person armed guard.  Eighty-two-year-old Paul Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi’s husband, was not so lucky. He became a victim of the vicious attack.

Paul Pelosi survived the bludgeoning and is expected to recover from life-threatening wounds, a cracked skull among other injuries.  According to Pelosi family members, Depape brought a hammer to the Pelosi house, used it to smash windows and gain entrance. There he confronted Paul Pelosi and demanded to know where Nancy Pelosi was.

An NBC report describes David Depape and Paul Pelosi both holding on to a hammer when police arrived for a “welfare check” at approximately 2:30 a.m.. The same article says police arrived in time to witness the attack with Depape striking Mr. Pelosi multiple times in the head and body.  It is unknown whether police were alerted by a direct alarm from the Pelosi residence or whether Mr. Pelosi called 911 before the violent attack.

Police quickly disarmed Depape but one wonders if they might have saved Mr. Pelosi from near fatal injury if they’d shot him.  Perhaps there were good reasons police did not fire on Depape. Or perhaps there were poor reasons why they didn’t. 

Were the two men tangled so close that a police bullet might have accidentally struck Pelosi? Or were police worried about police department policy more inclined to sanction officers who use their weapons than the dangerous and violent criminals who require their presence.

Police are still in the early stages of the investigation. A neighbor who wished to remain anonymous  said   Depape lived in a school bus parked in a driveway of a Berkley home.  The home itself was described as a “hippie collective.”  A resident of that home refused to speak in detail with FBI visitors who arrived on his doorstep to inquire about Pelosi’s attacker. Another person says that he lived in a different school bus parked nearby.

More details will emerge with a police press conference set to begin moments from now.

Noah Hawley's Novel "Before the Fall" : Review

 

 Before the Fall is a novel written by Noah Hawley in 2016.  You may have heard of Hawley, mainly through television. He’s been as showrunner for FX Productions, best known for Fargo, but also wrote the scripts for other productions.  He’s won literary awards and accolades from the publishing set.   ?’ 

Okay so while I had trouble in the beginning of the novel I found it interesting anyway.  The author makes use of typical American TV cultural memes to keep the pot boiling. It makes for an entertaining read.

What gave me trouble in the beginning was that it required a great deal effort to accept the novel’s basic premise — that hero-protagonist Scott Boroughs swam to shore from   a plane crash  about ten miles out from Martha’s vineyard with a four-year-old on his back.    The indelible bond between the four-year-old child and the man, an aspiring but failed artist,  figures in later plot developments. 

    Hawley goes a long way and does much research in order to convince you  as to how the Great Swim occurred.  (Hint: It has to do with a once well-known body-builder/health-nut character named Jack LaLanne.) That was a tale in and of itself,  

I had already made the leap because what’s wrong with bypassing a device or two if awork is entertaining and you feel like reading? .   

Jacket blurb has it right that this is a character driven novel.  Character is one of the novel’s strengths, not only with reference to hero Scott, but with several of the other characters like the flight attendant, the crash investigators, the pilot, the co-pilot. . .    

I liked what I learned of private airlines and the way they operate.  This was well researched, I thought.   Once I got over the   hurdle that the MC would swim all that way, I began to enjoy the plot development. There was a certain consonance in events which gave the rest of it a strong sense of reality.    

While the story gets bogged down and fat in the middle as many novels do, the author generally keeps the action flowing at a high level.  This is one of the writer’s earlier novels.  I’d pick up another one if it so happens.   

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                                                                               

Ukrainian Border Guards Fake Action on Front Line

 

You tap into the internet where your eye catches a headline:  “Ukrainian Border Guards Pummel   Russians on Front Line.”  Open the site and up pops a video made by a digital marketing firm called Viral Press.  All the video shows (with a thrumming soundtrack) is a few supposedly Ukrainian soldiers (you can’t even be sure of that) loading ammo into small artillery, light machine guns, and a tank. 

Now unless you’re a complete idiot, you will realize no ‘Russians’ are being ‘pummeled’ and that the video is up for sale to anyone with a motive for buying it.  Likely buyers might be the Ukrainian propaganda arm, financial facilities with investments in the Ukraine (purposeful “the”), and the U.S. state department under Anthony Blinken.

Note: Viral Press and other sites are making money from playing off on your bad instincts.  Be careful of what you read no matter where it comes from.  Especially consider the source.  Journalism has deteriorated from the days when responsible organizations required verification of facts through three different and respected sources before they’d even think of publishing the story.

Don't Bother to Read, You already Know: Fake News and the One-Trick Western Media

 So. . . . one of today's headlines from a news aggregator site called Benzinga:   Vladimir Putin Has Extended The War In Ukraine To 'A Second Front' In Europe: Expert

 Notice first of all that the headline is tagged "Expert" after the eye-catching phrase "Second Front." Who is this so-called 'expert'?  That would be Daniel Yergin, vice chairman of S&P Global.   

Note also that all information about this 'news' is derived from a Yahoo Finance article, previously published, the purpose of which is to sell advertising. 

 In other words, this is a low content article ripped off from another news source.  There are dozens of articles just like it all over the 'meta'. . .(spare me)  which are actually wobbly repetitions of what everyone with two brain cells to rub together already knows:

The EU countries are in energy crisis mode. Germany stands out because that's where the Russian gas pipeline comes into western Europe.  There are two other pipelines, one through Ukraine, the other through Poland, but these were  closed due to Ukraine and  political pressure from the U.S.  

With Russian energy coming through these pipelines at 20 percent capacity, you know that western Europe can't stockpile enough gas/oil to last through a Russian winter.  The German recommendation is that the European countries should right now cut down their energy usage by 15 percent.  This is a largely symbolic  as-if'we-are-doing-somethingfeel-good message because it can't be enforced and is strictly voluntary.  The economies of western Europe are not a monolith, much as the U.S. , the British, and Germany would like you to believe.  They're all different, all with different needs, capacities, strengths and weaknesses.  

This "second front" idea has little or nothing to do with the military fight in Ukraine.  It's the result of a U.S. led cabal of western leaders putting harsh sanctions on Russia, openly attempting to destroy the Russian economy, and forcing them to withdraw troops from Ukraine.  The hypocrisy of the sanctions are phenomenal in that the EU/US expect Russia to continue delivering oil and gas even as they punish Russia's economy with largely failing sanctions.  

There is no 'second front,' there is only the same front, the same conditions that existed at the start of the war, with the difference  now that conditions are far worse in Ukraine than they were before the EU/US sponsored sanctions began to have some effect.  

So far the sanctions have boomeranged.  Responding to the sanctions against them, the Russians have found new allies and new markets for  in India, China, and throughout the developing world. The Russian Ruble is stronger than ever.  While people in the U.S. are suffering high energy prices and food inflation, people in other countries are dying because of the immense stupidity of the Russia-Ukraine war, to which there is no end in sight. 

The Madness of Ukraine News Coverage

 

If the war between Russia and Ukraine were a TV comedy show you’d laugh your ass off.  But it’s not.  It’s a meatgrinder, a war that started in 2014 and has gotten deadlier with the Russian Special Military Operation’ Feb 2022,  conceived to rid Ukraine of Nazi infiltration and to protect the persecuted Russians of the Donbass region. 

If a person wanted to find any hilarity at all in it, you would look to the headlines in American media.  Not surprisingly, you would find that most reporters would have been given hand-written notes by MI6 and CIA flaks about what to say in the day’s ‘coverage.’

There are, of course, hard and fast rules for westerners covering the war in Ukraine:

 You must always mention that Russian targets are civilian occupied apartment houses,  aid workers,   churches, hospitals, food supplies and especially mothers pushing   tots around in strollers.

You must always remember that Ukraine soldiers, foreign mercenaries, and native Banderite militias always hit only military targets squarely and without ancillary damage. 

You must always emphasize that foreign mercenaries rally to Ukraine’s flag out of moral outrage and not for the $1000 to $2000 dollars a day they are paid from Ukraine or, more likely, from American and British coffers.  If we are to believe Ukraine’s claim that there are 20,000 of them fighting against the Russians, you’d come up with a figure of $30 million a day (using the mid 1500 dollar figure) and where does a besieged Ukrainian government get a billion a month to pay the mercenaries?  You can guess that the piggy-banks of the western powers are increasingly stressed  while their citizens are hurting from high inflation, crime (in the U.S), supply shortages,  bad leadership or none at all.

You must ignore the existence of Azov and Right Sector Nazis and other groups similarly espousing anti-semitism, white power, ethnic cleansing, and other forms of hate.

You must never mention that Ukraine's President Zelensky is fueled by amphetamines and has degenerated into a raving mad and psychotic paranoid driven by blood-lust.  

You must never point out that Russia now owns approx. one-third of The Ukraine and is on its way to owning more of it.  

So. . . . one of today's headlines from a news aggregator site called Benzinga:   Vladimir Putin Has Extended The War In Ukraine To 'A Second Front' In Europe: Expert

 Notice first of all that the headline is tagged "Expert" after the eye-catching phrase "Second Front." Who is this so-called 'expert'?  That would be Daniel Yergin, vice chairman of S&P Global.   

Note also that all information about this 'news' is derived from a Yahoo Finance article, previously published, the purpose of which is to sell advertising. 

 In other words, this is a low content article ripped off from another news source.  There are dozens of articles just like it all over the 'meta'. . .(spare me)  which are actually wobbly repetitions of what everyone with two brain cells to rub together already knows:

The EU countries are in energy crisis mode. Germany stands out because that's where the Russian gas pipeline comes into western Europe.  There are two other pipelines, one through Ukraine, the other through Poland, but these were  closed due to political pressure from the U.S.  

With Russian energy coming through these pipelines at 20 percent capacity, you know that western Europe can't stockpile enough gas/oil to last through a Russian winter.  The German recommendation is that the European countries should right now cut down their energy usage by 15 percent.  This is a largely symbolic  as-if'we-are-doing-somethingfeel-good message because it can't be enforced and is strictly voluntary.  The economies of western Europe are not a monolith, much as the U.S. , the British, and Germany would like you to believe.  They're all different, all with different needs, capacities, strengths and weaknesses.  

This "second front" idea has little or nothing to do with the military fight in Ukraine.  It's the result of a U.S. led cabal of western leaders putting harsh sanctions on Russia, openly attempting to destroy the Russian economy, and forcing them to withdraw troops from Ukraine.  The hypocrisy of the sanctions are phenomenal in that the EU/US expect Russia to continue delivering oil and gas even as they punish Russia's economy with largely failing sanctions.  

There is no 'second front,' there is only the same front, the same conditions that existed at the start of the war, with the difference  now that conditions are far worse in Ukraine than they were before the EU/US sponsored sanctions began to have some effect.  

So far the sanctions have boomeranged.  Responding to the sanctions against them, the Russians have found new allies and new markets for  in India, China, and throughout the developing world. The Russian Ruble is stronger than ever.  While people in the U.S. are suffering high energy prices and food inflation, people in other countries are dying because of the immense stupidity of the Russia-Ukraine war, to which there is no end in sight. 

 

 

A Greek God's Account of The Ukraine Russia War

 

                                 Ukranian  Azov Nazi band, weaponized by U.S.A.

Listen to the thunder. The guns, the bombs, the heavy artillery.  

The gods are fighting, the gods are at war.  Some more powerful than others.   They marry amongst themselves, have children.  There’s the problem.

Bred   from their own families, the marriages produce idiots.   And because the gods seek entertainment, they send these idiots to live among mortals. 

To make matters worse (and more entertaining), the gods have chosen their blighted progeny to become heads of government. Fulfilling the purposes of the gods, these cretinous heads of government are assigned duties. 

Duties are prioritized.  Top priority is to find reasons to wage war.  Only this will satisfy the gods that their investment in mortals was worth the time.

The gods have succeeded.   Ukraine   defined us according to   the addresses on the letters and bills we received from the postal service.  Those said we belonged to Ukraine.   Russia identified us in accordance with the language we speak, the culture we share,  and the customs we inhabit.

It was an uneasy peace we shared, but a peace nonetheless.  Until one day the gods, bored and disposed toward mischief,   decided to add a  third element into the mix.  “We shall declare ourselves independent,” they proclaimed.   In their declarations, they tried valiantly to avoid offending Ukraine, directly to the west, nor Russia, directly to the east.   

Not offending neighbors made a great deal of sense, but only for a little while.  As it often does, reality came knocking. So did the heavy artillery. The gods were having a field day.

Not so for the rest of us, who spend much of our time explaining ourselves. We must explain to the Ukrainian militias that we are patriotic Ukrainians.  We explain to the Russians that we are patriotic Russians too.   

But the bombs keep coming, the missiles keep flying, the soldiers keep dying, the mothers and children keep crying, while governmental idiots like President Joe Biden  in Washington D.C.  feed weapons into this hell and are applauded by false gods.

Force Majeure: Can a Man Admit to Cowardice in the Face of Danger?

 

I just watched a Swedish sub-titled film called “Force Majeure.” (BTW, an acquaintance tells me the film is titled “Snow Therapy” in France) The crazy thing is that it’s listed on IMDb as a comedy-drama. I get the drama part. And yeah, if you like to laugh at other people’s relationship problems you might get a few chuckles out of it. 

Uncomfortable moments are always funny.  That would be all though; it’s not laughing out loud funny. You’ve have to be borderline psychotic to double over in laughter at the unraveling relationship of Ebba and her husband Tomas.    

The style of “Force Majeure” is minimalist, objective, and realistic. Characters don’t make speeches that move the plot. Communication between Ebba and Tomas is broken, often interrupted as life with children is. There are abrupt and jarring jumps between scenes alternating between majestic mountains and the daily round of necessary human activity.  

 You see much brushing of teeth. You see a little boy’s difficulty in taking a pee after peeling off layers of winter clothing.  You see a mom squatting in a grove of fir trees on the mountain doing the same. You see the family sleeping four abed, the children irritable and sensitive to their parents’ anxieties.  Yeah, and there’s a lot of snow.  In fact, there are constant explosions reverberating in the night as the caretakers detonate dynamite to lesson the chance of avalanches.

Okay so the story is about   a married couple on vocation at a chic ski resort in the Alps.  They have two beautiful blonde children, a boy maybe six, a girl maybe eight. Parents are attractive with middle-class sensibilities and interests.  After a day of skiing, they’re at a restaurant overlooking the mountain. Suddenly, and with muffled dynamite blasts in the distance, a mountain of snow begins rolling down the mountain toward the outdoor restaurant where people are dining and drinking.

The panic is comprehensible your next thought it is that film is too predictable.    It’s not, though. The avalanche stops at the resort’s edge. Even so, the diners are lost in a snowy fog, shepherding their children, and in Ebba’s case looking for her husband.

That introduces the plot.  With this clear and present danger of avalanche, the husband has fled, leaving the wife to shelter the children.  Ebba first takes it in stride, doesn’t make a big deal of it. Yet it irks her. Until this wall of snow threatened to crush them, she felt safe, safe with her handsome charming husband. 

Ebba’s thinking the male should be a protector of the species. It’s a kind of unwritten law which goes all the way back  to the cave man era. However, now she’s thinking her husband is a coward. ‘Wow I have two kids with this man and he ran when the snow came down.’ Can she ever feel safe with him?

I think all couples of longstanding relationships have experienced what comes next.  You’re in the company of friends, maybe having dinner together, a few drinks at the local pub, a coffee klatsch.  Something or other.      Your wife/partner/sig-other/whatever is of course telling the story of the near crushing avalanche.  And horror of horrors, she tells the guest how you ran off and left her with the children.  She’s telling it in a matter-of-fact way, not at all vindictive, with a look of mild disappointment.

But you’re a man, see, and men are supposed to take care of women and children. So the husband takes issue. He tells the story in a different way. Ebba says ‘no it wasn’t that way.’ It goes on. The guests become uncomfortable in the extreme.  They try to change the subject but neither Ebba nor her husband Tomas will let it alone.

I point out this happens with a thoroughly modern couple, not a couple of stranded Neanderthals from the Ice Age. Buried, repressed, mocked or scorned, the male ego is built on the bedrock of masculinity and, in the eyes of others, is expected.

I hope I didn’t say too much. It’s a film worth watching even if I did.  There’s much about the film I did not say.

American Rust: A Book about the Destruction of the American Heartland and the people in it.

 

Philipp Meyer is a talented writer. “American Rust” is his first book.  Allegedly.  Because a ‘first book’ doesn’t include all those thousands of words lying in a half-finished manuscript in the drawer. 

I mention this because the writing style is evolved, not in its formulative stages.  The prose (should be another word for it) is intuitive, and reflective of mixed Pennsylvania Dutch sentence structure coupled with a Joycean stream of consciousness model that gets into the reader’s head.  

The novel is well-grounded and generally well researched.  Characters are real, not the idealized   social types popular with people thinking literature and writing should remain within the aegis of academic preferences, aspirations, and fantasies.  

Politics don’t figure much in this novel in any except in incidental ways.  Meyer’s story captures the feelings and sensations of a time not entirely passed.  The destruction of the post WWII industrial base. Same things happening in fictional Buell are still happening or have happened in so many small and even large towns of America.  Heavy and light industry shipped to Asia.

At the center of “American Rust”  are two long-time high school friends, Isaac, an undeveloped would be something tethered to  his crippled father in a small dead town with no future prospects.  Then there’s his bosom buddy Billie Poe, former star athlete, volatile, also talented but fated to fail. Like with everyone else, he has ideas but fails to act on them.

The two young men share a special and unique bond. Billy, or “Poe” as he’s characterized in the text, pulled Isaac out of the icy cold waters of  a river.  Apparently, Isaac inherited the suicide gene. His mother filled her pockets with rocks and drowned herself in the river

 Their families are part of it too. 

Grace is Billie Poe’s mother who missed her chance of an upgrade by sacrificing her life to raising Billie, even if her feet are stuck in the physical and emotional mire of Buell.  

There’s a background focus on the decline of  American manufacturing.     This is about people in a small town in western Pennsylvania (referred to as ‘Pennsyltucky’ be people trying to denigrate the place) who are struggling to get by as the times they are a changing.’ Think of Billy Joel’s anthemic song “Allentown:”

‘Well, we're living here in Allentown
And they're closing all the factories down
Out in Bethlehem, they're killing time
Filling out forms, standing in line

That’s the tapestry upon which the plot is built.  This speaks of the decline of the American steel industry  and old-school manufacturing in general. Bethlehem Steel was a giant economic force in Pennsylvania’s   Lehigh Valley.  About 300 miles west, near Pittsburgh, is fictional Buell Pa where things seem even worse.  

 The Lehigh Valley has survived, been rejuvenated to some extent. The giant rusted hulk of the legendary Pennsylvania steel mill has been turned into a museum. Across the road from it is a shiny new gambling casino which employs a large number of people though not nearly as many as the steel industry supported.  

Buell has not survived.  Or it’s on life support, and so are the people who live there, it seems.  Buell is a monument to abandoned factories,  rusting machinery and      double-wide trailers where Isaac’s best friend lives with his arthritic mother.

This books does a lot of things well.  I particularly liked the way the writer created the tense, interlocking reationships between the four principal characters. That much is tight. 

What’s not tight about the novel is that the Isaac character spends too much time engaging in masturbatory philosophical meanderings which do little for the plot.  Some of it does help to define the character;  too much of it gives you heartburn.  Granted, this was not a large impediment to me enjoying the book. 

My hit on the end of the book is ambiguous just as the writer probably intended.  The characters came out bruised, dented, and changed forever but they’re still breathing and marching forward.  I like that — the scrappy determination of small town America.  Maybe ‘cause that’s where I was at during a particular period of my life.

I’d be looking at reading this writer again perhaps. So. . . B-plus or A-minus. C’est la meme chose.

 

 

 

Paramount TV Series "1883" (The Bad Old Days of the West)

 

The Paramount TV series “1883” is worth a look if you like realistic westerns. It’s supposed to be a prequel of the contemporary western series “Yellowstone.” I don’t see how that fits yet but maybe that’s because I’ve only watched Episode 1. 

I mentioned realism and that comes to mind early in the segment when a band of Indians attacks a wagon carrying a family and its supplies heading for available and fertile lands in Oregon.  I certainly appreciate the contribution that Native Americans have made to our great country, and I certainly appreciate the fact they came here first.  What I do not appreciate is the often repeated meme of the ‘noble savage.’ European whites were cruel in their treatment of the first peoples but Indians were often more merciless to their captives from other tribes and groups. 

The opening scene in 1883 finds you watching arrows penetrating a helpless women would-be settler.  Another warrior rides down on another fallen woman to take her hair which he triumphantly holds up for his colleagues to see.  This kind of thing needs balance, of course. Later on in the episode we see a public bazaar situation in which a vendor is advertising his wares including Indian scalps from various tribes.

Underlying this film is the basic cruelty and harshness of the environment, the rapacity of some of its citizens, an entire feeling of disorder and mayhem.  A pickpocket gets hung on a public street, no law enforcement involved.  Bandits freely roam the country.  A drunken fat man tries to rape a teenager.  Good guys Shea Brennan and Thomas, played respectively and realistically by Sam Elliot and LaMonica Garrett don’t shrink from casting out a husband and wife team afflicted with smallpox.  It’s on the moral edge — the Sam Elliot character lost both his wife and daughter to the disease, leaving him crouched in the dirt with the barrel of his six-gun pointed up into his head.

He decides against it.  He and Thomas find a life of sorts, guiding a group of feckless European  immigrants to their dreamland in the west. Yeah, I could watch some more of that, especially if it sustains the impact and tension of the first episode.  

GIVEN “COLD” GUN, ACTOR ALEC BALDWIN KILLS CINEMATOGRAPHER HALNYA HUTCHINS

 UPDATE:  The whole mystery of this tragic occurrence lies in answering one question:  What came out of the barrel of the gun Alec Baldwin fired in the direction of camera operator Halnya Hutchins.  

Cutting to the case, okay it's a western. You're not going to have a semi-auto drawn from a holster of a guy wearing spurs and a cowboy hat.   You think about revolver then.  

If the script calls for a shot looking at the front end  of a revolver and the camera goes into close-up, you'll see the hollow dark barrel and the bullets in the chambers.  These 'bullets' will be what show business armorers call "dum-dums."

 A dum-dum will look exactly like a real bullet or live round but it will have the gunpowder removed. You will see a projectile on the business end, exactly like a live and deadly round but it will not fire.  

If firing such a weapon is required by a film script, there will be a cut to another shot where the revolver will be loaded to fire  with blank cartridges. Blank cartridges will not have a projectile on the business end, though it may have wadding of some type, harmless to anyone out of blast range.

So the essential question is this:  What kind of projectile exited the barrel of the gun that killed Halnya Hutchins and wounded director John Souza? The best explanation I've heard to date is one by film armorer Dutch Merrick, a true expert in the field.  

There was a lot of information packed into an excellent interview conducted with Merrick by Julie Grant of CourtTV.  It's worth watching for many reasons, but particularly for the possibility mentioned by Merrick that the projectile from a dum-dum worked loose and lodged in the barrel. 

 Without knowing this had occurred, the film armorer might have loaded a blank round into the revolver as is typically done when you need a lot of bang and fire coming out of the gun but with no bullet or projectile.  

If this is what happened, it would be tantamount to firing a live and deadly round - period. If you think this is far-fetched, then watch the interview Julie Grant conducted with Merrick.

 Merrick recounts the story he'd heard regarding the death of /Bruce Lee's son - Brandon Lee.    Here's the link. 

EXT. – DAY – BONANZA CREEK RANCH NEW MEXICO  

A movie production crew waits inside the rustic 1880s chapel-like building for the filming of an American western “Rust,” starring co-producer and major star Alec Baldwin in the role of a wizened grandpappy in flight with his thirteen-year old grandson.

There is to be a shooting scene.  What they’re all waiting for is the six-gun.  Behind the camera is rising cinematography star  Halnya Hutchins, 42.  Behind or next to her is   director Joel Souza, 48. 

Assistant Director Dave Halls goes to a roll-cart where the supposedly tightly controlled prop weapons are kept.  He brings the revolver to Alec Baldwin, describing the piece as a “cold” gun — meaning it was safe to shoot.    The shot is done in closeup. The audience feels the tension. Baldwin is supposed to unholster his gun and point it.  He does this twice, the second time with a bang.  A live round of some sort comes out the barrel killing Hutchins and wounding director Souza.  

Halnya Hutchins is dead of a gunshot wound to the chest.  Souza   is wounded in the shoulder by the same projectile but survives. A horrible thing, a thing that should never happen, a thing that reminds people of Brandon Lee who died in similar fashion on a movie set of the 1990s.

Questions to be Answered

Why are live rounds even allowed to be on a movie set controlled by film people? This is unconscionable. There is absolutely no reason for live rounds to be on the set especially around people who are obviously not familiar with weapons-handling.

The armorer in charge of the weapons is Hannah Gutierrez.  Where she was when Hall picked up the weapon is unknown?  Were the weapons left unattended for any length of time? Was a live round in the cylinder of one of the three guns on the weapons cart?  Were the other revolvers also loaded with live rounds?  Why, why, why?

Why was Assistant Director Halls even allowed to declare the gun was “cold” — meaning safe to operate for filming purposes?

Why were earlier reports by film production staff of unsafe weapons handling practices ignored?

Why did several production staff members walk off the set complaining about pay and working conditions?

What was the caliber of bullet that could pass through Hutchins and strike Souza?  All reports say that there was only one bullet fired but one has to wonder amongst the talk that there was a previous accidental discharge during the week prior to this tragedy.

Editor’s Note:  We offer our sincere condolences and prayers to Halnya Hutchins, her 8 year old child, and husband Matthew, to all those who knew them.  We hope it is accurate that director Souza is recovering and that his recovery continues.

SEPTA Passengers Watch and Take Video While Woman is Raped on Moving Train

                            Fiston Ngoy:  Philadelphia Train Rapist (Alleged) 

UPDATED INFORMATION:  The DA with jurisdiction over the case declines to pursue prosecution for any passengers who witnessed the attack and did not come forward.  He promised that anyone who did come forward would not be prosecuted.  

So by now you may have heard of Fiston Ngoy, the 35 year old SEPTA attacker who raped a woman on a moving Philadelphia train. It happened around 10:00 p.m. on October 13. Most accounts have it that Ngoy boarded the train, sat down beside her, began grabbing at her breasts.  She pushes him away several times as seen on the train’s surveillance camera.  He persists, gets even more aggressive, tears off her clothing and rapes her. 

So you may be thinking okay, night in Philly, the woman’s had a few beers, the train cars are empty or nearly empty.  She shouldn’t have been on that train alone that time of night. Everyone knows the homeless ride the trains all night long if they’re not booted off.  The blame-the-victim scenario, you know?

Ngoy was unarmed when arrested, and we have no details about his martial abilities, but let’s stipulate that he was a fit 35 year old man, and there were a few people in that train car who were truly scared  and unable to act. Fine,  except that these same terrified people were not too terrified to point their smartphones at the attacker and his victim as the rape went on for approximately 8 minutes.  All this according to video surveillance.

 It’s indisputable there were several people in that train car who did not call 911 nor attempt to intervene in any way but were willing to post videos on name-your-favorite-social-media.

 Sick right? So okay, that’s the news if you didn’t’ already know. But is that where we’re at now? Looks like we are.  Yet I know people who, the minute such an attack began, would have been all over the perpetrator like a cheap suit.  Choke him out in no time. Think of that crew who sacrificed their lives by bringing down Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pa.

I’m not one of those people, though.  I’m not brave. Every time I’ve  had to fight I fought but I was always afraid. If the other guy were a bum, malnourished and weak, I’d make easy work of it.  But that wouldn’t   be my luck and really   sometimes you just don’t know.

I’m too long in the tooth to get into a fair scrap with a thirty-five year old guy of man-strength.  Not to say I wouldn’t throw punches if he came for me. But my choices would be slim.

 I can punch a little even in my dotage so I would probably do it. I might get lucky. Either way I’m going to get fucked up.  I might as well get fucked up putting some lumps on the other guy.

 How long I can punch is another thing. With that adrenaline going you get a little boost but it soon tires out an old body.   After that initial surge, if you haven’t handled your business, you’re fresh out of adrenaline courage. Fucked, in other words.   

I don’t want to lose teeth, I don’t want to lose an eye, I don’t want to get my head pounded into the floor — all of which (and worse) I’ve seen happen.

Which brings me to my first choice. See if the guy is armed. I would not do anything if he were armed except hit the emergency line, get off at the next stop,   call 911.

But if I stayed on the train I would look for an escape route.  I would then pull the emergency strap line running above the windows of the train.  I  would get   up behind the guy get an arm around his neck, try to choke him out, and hope for the best. If all that failed, I would take the escape route. Maybe he'd come after me, maybe he wouldn't.

In the case of this female victim, all it took to stop the attack was a transit worker who stumbled onto the scene and called 911. The story goes that the police arrived three minutes later and took the man off and down.  The poor woman was in shock, in  a hospital, supposedly recovering.

I guess that’s relative. I don’t know how you really recover from such a thing but maybe she’s strong.

I seriously wonder what those people on the train car were thinking, what they felt, why they didn’t do anything.  That’s something I don’t know. I’d like to know and so are the police. They’re investigating, looking at video, preparing a variety of charges.

There’s always something you can do in such situations. Am I wrong? What would you think? What would you do? 

I’d like to know. It would make me feel better if you told me you would try even if you knew deep down you wouldn’t. 

The Silence of the Laundrie Parents

 

Much has been written and reported about Gabby Petito’s murder.  There is no need to extensively revisit what is largely known.  She was traveling with boyfriend Brian Laundrie on a vlogging tour of the western states when she was murdered.

 The boyfriend genius returned to his parents home on September 1^st with her van, her credit cards, and her money without telling anyone what happened to her.  Gabby’s parents kept asking what happened to their daughter but all they heard from the Laundrie family is crickets chirping in the night.

  The manner of death was announced as homicide. What wasn’t announced until a few days ago was the cause of death: strangulation.

 Strangulation makes it personal. Strangulation fits the domestic violence profile.  Strangulation fits the videos we’ve seen and the accounts we’ve heard about of Brian Laundrie’s abuse of his girlfriend.   

The autopsy report also said that Gabby Petito’s body had been lying out in the open for a period of about three or four weeks. 

This puts the day she was murdered very close to the day she was last seen, the day boyfriend Brian Laundrie slapped Gabby around and made a huge ass of himself at the Merry Piglets Diner in Jackson Hole Wyoming. The date was August 27, according to Nina Angelo, who dined in the same restaurant that day. The date was confirmed by restaurant employees and by receipts.

This theory corresponds with the suspicious email Gabby’s parents received that very same day  . The email referring to “Stan” the grandfather whose name Gabby would never use in this third-party way of referring to him.  

Gabby’s mom thinks the email was sent by Brian Laundrie to cover up her murder at his own hands.  She’s probably right.

Everyone has an angle on the case and so do I.  My angle on this story concerns the non-responsive behavior of Brian Laundrie’s parents.  

   It’s not unusual for parents to cover for their children who make serious mistakes in life. Go to the visiting rooms of any prison and you’ll see. But how many of those supportive friends and family members would cover up for murder?   

Can they pretend a death was accidental or in self-defense when the medical examiner first informs the public the manner of death was homicide?  Can they forgive the murder of a woman they said was like a daughter to them?

Don’t they feel guilty in plotting   the escape of an adult son who is a ‘likely suspect’  in the murder of a young woman who’d been living with them for a long time? We all know that people are not required  by law to assist police. But   to shut the door to police and Gabby’s parents, is a monstrous unspeakable act that defies the laws of civilized people.

Now with both the manner of death and cause of death made public, the   Laundrie parents are under tremendous pressure.  They’re experiencing a modern version of drip torture 2.0.  This case is not rocket science.

 The police likely have enough evidence to conclude that Brian murdered Gabby. They’re working on proving it.  While they’re doing so they’re under no obligation to release details that will help the Laundrie’s lawyer. 

A suspect in a murder case may make several mistakes and still escape justice.  Cops make a single mistake in a murder investigation and a killer can go free. Remember Johnny Cochran: “If it (the glove) doesn’t fit, you must acquit?” It was an absurd tactic but ti worked.

Police okayed the medical examiner releasing that first report that the manner of death was homicide. This was intended to put pressure on the  parents who refuse to talk except in carefully planned and lawyerly phrases. Their silence is offensive. Even people as numb to Gabby’s human life as the Laundries must feel something.   

The ‘homicide’ announcement was firepower directed over the bow.  The “strangulation” announcement October 12 is a direct blast to the Laundrie quarterdeck. 

With homicide being the manner of death, and strangulation being the cause of it, any line of defense is necessarily limited.  You can’t claim accident.  All you can do is claim someone else strangled her.

I know it’s not fashionable to claim that the police are handling any case with a high degree of intelligence and concern. But they’re handling this one perfectly, and in a way that reminds me of the casual but shrewd inspector in Fyodor Dostoevski’s great novel “Crime and Punishment.”

Raskolnikov crumbled under the pressure. So too will the Laundries — in one way or another and however long it takes — they will be eventually crushed under the weight of their monstrous disregard of that poor girl’s life.