Yes it says “moootes” but I got no cow jokes.
Will Kyle Rittenhouse receive a “fair trial”?: The jury selection took one day. For a double murder trial! One of his lead attorneys quit that day. Jurors admit they are afraid of what will happen when they make “the wrong” verdict. The message here is loud and clear. This isn’t just a murder trial. This is about the broader question of whether some types of political violence are acceptable, even necessary. Rittenhouse is on trial for shooting men who pursued him and made moves to grave his gun, something that is seen on video, testified by at least one witness, and written out in the state’s own complaint. Circuit Court Judge Bruce Schroeder thinks he can gavel the politics out of the trial. He’s wrong. There is no way to remove the “politics” and no way this will be a fair trial. Kyle will be sacrificed on the altar of “please don’t riot in my town”. And he will be destroyed forever.
Save the wolf: Indigenous activists are pushing Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to safeguard gray wolves after the expiration of federal protections allowed hunters to kill hundreds of the animals. The administration removed the gray wolf from the list of endangered species last year, effectively handing off enforcement to the states. In the first major hunt following the move in February, Wisconsin hunters killed more than 200 wolves, roughly one-fifth of the state’s population. On Friday, tribal leaders made their case in a meeting with Assistant Interior Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland, a citizen of the Bay Mills Indian Community in Michigan. They’re urging the agency to grant emergency protections to wolves before permanently relisting them, while also taking away federal gaming funds from states that allow for aggressive hunting of wolves. Hundreds of tribes across the U.S. and Canada have joined together in the effort to shield wolves, signing a treaty last year stating that wolves are essential to local ecosystems as well as Native American culture and tourism. Save the WOLF. Yes, Yes, Yes.
Sad to hear: Actor Dean Winters. Law and Order SVU, Oz, NYPD Blue, and of course “Mister Mayhem” for Allstate Insurance. In June of 2009 Winters contracted a bacterial infection and went into cardiac arrest for over two minutes during an ambulance ride across Central Park. Paramedics revived him, but he suffered through multiple operations and gangrene, which resulted in the amputation of two toes and half of a thumb. Dean Winters is still in constant agony. There is no cure. But he is still acting and is planning several new projects. This is the definition of courage. Stay strong and safe.
I’m thinking sooner: Last week, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) deployed gunboats in the Sea of Oman and swarmed around the U.S. Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS The Sullivans (DDG 68). Footage of the encounter was released by Iranian media sources. The footage showed the IRGC gunboats swarming around an oil tanker and pointing machine guns at the nearby U.S. warship. How soon before this harassment turns into another incident like; The USS Pueblo, which was attacked and captured by North Korean forces on 23 January 1968, in what was later known as the “Pueblo incident” or alternatively, as the “Pueblo crisis”.
What an image: A large, naked Scottish man exposed himself as Joe Biden’s motorcade drove by his house. Biden’s motorcade was enroute to the COP26 climate summit from Edinburgh to Glasgow when a naked man stood at his window and took pictures of Biden driving by. Are they saying he was a man with a large body, or a “large” MAN? Well, now you know what they wear under the kilt.
Unknown piece of history: The Japanese American internment camps are fairly well documented. Less well known are the stories behind German P.O.W.’s kept in America. But now Israeli documentary film-makers Daniel Sivan and Mor Loushy have singled out one such extraordinary tale for their latest joint project, Netflix’s short film Camp Confidential, drawing attention to a highly covert military operation only recently released from behind redaction-marker bars. The black-op facility tucked away in northern Virginia’s Fairfax county sounds like something out of a pulp paperback: Jewish soldiers, many of them refugees from the devastation in Europe, watched over Nazi prisoners of war in a surreally domestic setting. Sounds interesting. Especially when you consider it housed such notables as spymaster Reinhard Gehlen and rocket scientist Wernher von Braun. Bulldozed after the war and buried in secrecy until the National Parks Service unearthed some remnants in the early 2000s. I will be looking for this one.
Staying in Honolulu this weekend. Will see my new Grandson, and a good friend from Alaska. Have fun yourselves.
Storytellers Blog 