Duty to Warn

It’s a common conceit that any new series of superhero movies has to start with the origin. It doesn’t matter if 90% of the world’s population already knows that the death of Batman’s parents drove him to become a ludicrously rich vigilante, or that Superman came from the planet Krypton, or that Spider-Man was bitten by a radioactive spider. Movie studios are convinced that the story still needs to be retold on the screen, and then retold yet again if the series gets a new lead actor or director or executive producer or key grip. It’s a rare case—say, the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy—where the first movie of a superhero series gives us anything terribly new. More often they come into their own with the second movie. With the origin retelling out of the way we get The Dark Knight, we get Iron Man 2, we get The Avengers. We get Captain America: The Winter Soldier. There was one thing that made Captain America: The First Avenger different from most superhero franchise setups: It was a World War II movie, a period piece. As a result, The Winter Soldier had to carry a little of the weight of setting up Cap’s supporting cast since the bulk of them have died of old age by now.

Fifteen years ago, NATO was bombing Yugoslavia. This may be difficult for people to grasp who believe the Noah movie is historical fiction, but: What your government told you about the bombing of Kosovo was false. And it matters. While Rwanda is the war that many misinformed people wish they could have had (or rather, wish others could have had for them), Yugoslavia is the war they're glad happened -- at least whenever World War II really fails as a model for the new war they're after -- in Syria for instance, or in Ukraine -- the latter being, like Yugoslavia, another borderland between east and west that is being taken to pieces. The peace movement is gathering in Sarajevo this summer. The moment seems fitting to recall how NATO's breakout war of aggression, its first post-Cold-War war to assert its power, threaten Russia, impose a corporate economy, and demonstrate that a major war can keep all the casualties on one side (apart from self-inflicted helicopter crashes) -- how this was put over on us as an act of philanthropy. The killing hasn't stopped. NATO keeps expanding its membership and its mission, notably into places like Afghanistan and Libya.

High above the Bowling Green town dump, a green energy revolution is being won. It’s being helped along by the legalization of marijuana and its bio­fueled cousin, industrial hemp. But it’s under extreme attack from the billionaire Koch Brothers, utilities like First Energy (FE), and a fossil/nuke industry that threatens our existence on this planet. Robber Baron resistance to renewable energy has never been more fierce. The prime reason is that the Solartopian Revolution embodies the ultimate threat to the corporate utility industry and the hundreds of billions of dollars it has invested in the obsolete monopolies that define King CONG (Coal, Oil, Nukes & Gas). The outcome will depend on YOUR activism, and will determine whether we survive here at all. Four very large wind turbines in this small Ohio town are producing clean, cheap electricity that can help save our planet. A prime reason they exist is that Bowling Green has a municipal­owned utility.

OKCupid members arriving at the site via a Firefox browser today are being asked to make a choice and stand up against anti-gay bigotry. At the center of the controversy is Firefox's new CEO, Brendan Eich, who donated money in support of California Prop 8 back in 2008. Visitors to the site browsing with Firefox received a special message from OKCupid stating, “Hello there, Mozilla Firefox user. Pardon this interruption of your OkCupid experience. Mozilla’s new CEO, Brendan Eich, is an opponent of equal rights for gay couples. We would therefore prefer that our users not use Mozilla software to access OkCupid.” Visitors were then offered redirect tabs to download alternatives to the Mozilla Firefox web browser. The move is a bold piece of activism in a tech industry becoming more willing to flex its political muscle. The Prop 8 ballot measure instituted a statewide ban on gay marriage in California after winning at the polls with the help of large donations from the right wing. It temporarily redefined marriage in California as specifically a union between a man and a woman.

Oh lethal, ticklish topic. So many people love guns and swear by them — many of them people with whom I am otherwise in essential political agreement. And it’s not like I relish a debate about “gun control,” a tug-of-war about limits that offends most gun lovers and causes weapon-buying sprees after every mass murder. But the topic is unavoidable. The gun industry is part of the military-industrial complex and its advertising war aimed at the American reptile brain is centered around a permanent state of fear and, even more significantly, helplessness. Most people, or at least most gun owners, think “disarmed” means “disempowered” and the debate, such as it is, ends there. The quote above is from an extraordinary essay by poet Judy Juanita, which gets at the spiritual dimension of the matter: “The Gun as steel metaphor carrying the human urge to dominate and lay waste to an enemy or perceived threat. Guns as import and export. Hollywood’s Gun, its cinematic ordnance, is the United States’ international calling card. “The Gun is oh-so-social as it erases human inequality. Anyone can obtain one and point . . . shoot . . .

Recent news out of Iowa has redirected attention to 2016 yet again. While most Democrats are staying focused on the tough slog ahead of this November’s midterms, a select few are more than preoccupied with a certain former Secretary of State who may or may not be, but almost undeniably is running for President in 2016.

According to a new Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday, Hillary Clinton leads New Jersey Governor Chris Christie 48% to 35% among Iowa voters. These numbers are striking because Christie was leading Clinton by 5 points in a Quinnipiac poll in December. The Governor’s Bridgegate fiasco having largely contributed to the downslide, it is still fair to say the gulf is impressive and will undoubtedly provide wind for the sails of Clinton supporters. As the clear and steadfast front-runner for the Democratic nomination at the moment, numbers like these confirm what one already suspects about Secretary Clinton’s decision to run.

Who knows, soon we might see headlines and cable TV shows asking: "Is Dianne Feinstein a whistleblower or a traitor?"

A truthful answer to that question could not possibly be “whistleblower.” It may already be a historic fact that Senator Feinstein’s speech on March 11, 2014 blew a whistle on CIA surveillance of the Senate intelligence committee, which she chairs. But if that makes her a whistleblower, then Colonel Sanders is a vegetarian evangelist.

In her blockbuster Tuesday speech on the Senate floor, Feinstein charged that the CIA’s intrusions on her committee’s computers quite possibly “violated the Fourth Amendment.” You know, that’s the precious amendment that Feinstein -- more than any other senator -- has powerfully treated like dirt, worthy only of sweeping under the congressional rug.

A tidy defender of the NSA’s Orwellian programs, Feinstein went on the attack against Edward Snowden from the outset of his revelations last June. Within days, she denounced his brave whistleblowing as “an act of treason” -- a position she has maintained.

White flight, corporate flight . . .

I grew up just outside Detroit and have felt an ache in my heart for this bleeding city for so many years now. It’s long been one of the country’s designated loser cities, beginning in the 1960s, when change hit it hard. The phrase at the time was “urban blight,” a social cancer with unexamined causes that, in the ensuing years, has gotten progressively worse.

A year ago this week, the city, which is predominantly African-American, lost its self-governance when the Republican governor of Michigan appointed an emergency financial manager, an overboss with powers superseding that of all elected officials — including the ability to rewrite laws, break contracts, privatize services and much more — on the premise that only an autocrat could straighten out the city’s disastrous finances. Four months later, Detroit made headlines as the largest city to file for Chapter 9 bankruptcy, but of course it wasn’t “the city” that did so; it was the emergency manager.

The city, in all its soul and complexity, had been reduced to a single voice: the voice of austerity and, of course, corporate interests.

The frontrunner to become the next president of the United States is playing an old and dangerous political game -- comparing a foreign leader to Adolf Hitler.

At a private charity event on Tuesday, in comments preserved on audio, Hillary Clinton talked about actions by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin in the Crimea. “Now if this sounds familiar, it’s what Hitler did back in the ’30s,” she said.

The next day, Clinton gave the inflammatory story more oxygen when speaking at UCLA. She “largely stood by the remarks,” the Washington Post reported. Clinton “said she was merely noting parallels between Putin’s claim that he was protecting Russian-speaking minorities in Crimea and Hitler’s moves into Poland, Czechoslovakia and other parts of Europe to protect German minorities.”

Clinton denied that she was comparing Putin with Hitler even while she persisted in comparing Putin with Hitler. “I just want people to have a little historic perspective,” she said. “I’m not making a comparison certainly, but I am recommending that we perhaps can learn from this tactic that has been used before.”