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The 50th Seattle International Film Festival opens May 9th and runs through May 19th. This year’s SIFF features a total of 207 shorts, documentaries, and narrative films from 84 countries. The brick-and-mortar event will be immediately followed by a week of select virtual screenings from this year’s catalog (April 20-27) on the SIFF Channel. SIFF has certainly grown exponentially since its first incarnation in 1976 (in case the math is making you crazy, festival organizers “skipped” the 13th event; you know how superstitious show people get about Scottish kings and such). Compare the numbers: In 1976, the Festival boasted a whopping 19 films from 9 countries, with one lone venue (the venerable Egyptian Theater, pictured at the top of the post). This year, there are 8 venues. Then again, there were only 13 people on the staff in 1976 (compared with 110 now). Regardless of how large or small the staff, the one constant over the decades has been the quality of the curation.
What a joke Either Ted Cruz is so assured of winning that he believes he has the room to try to present himself as a human being or he’s seeing something in his polling that has him nervous. Whatever it is, it isn’t going to work: There are two sides to Ted Cruz, the Republican senator says. The self-described conservative warrior has opposed most big compromise legislation. He voted against the infrastructure law, the Chips Act and the recent Ukraine-Israel aid package. He has also opposed many of President Biden’s nominees, including almost all of his cabinet picks and his choice for the Supreme Court. On his popular podcast, he regularly rips into Democrats, particularly on immigration issues and Israel. His latest book was called “Unwoke,” which charges that the Democratic Party is “controlled by Cultural Marxists.” Yet here in Cypress, over sub sandwiches and cookies in a community clubhouse northwest of Houston, Cruz is rolling out a softer, bipartisan side to try to appeal to independents and Democrats as he faces a competitive challenger this fall in the red-leaning state.
The bipartisan duo also praised schools that brought in police to violently quell protests and connected the demonstrations to the TikTok ban.
The post In No Labels Call, Josh Gottheimer, Mike Lawler, and University Trustees Agree: FBI Should Investigate Campus Protests appeared first on The Intercept.
As Matthew Yglesias pointed out this probably isn’t being shared on Tik Tok but young people should know about it if they care about the plight of oppressed people around the world: Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton writes in his book that Trump encouraged the Chinese dictator to continue building concentration camps used to detain millions of Uighur Muslims: “At the opening dinner of the Osaka G-20 meeting in June 2019, with only interpreters present, Xi had explained to Trump why he was basically building concentration camps in Xinjiang. According to our interpreter, Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do. The National Security Council’s top Asia staffer, Matthew Pottinger, told me that Trump said something very similar during his November 2017 trip to China.” I feel pretty confident that Trump will be much, much worse on every level than the current administration. But it appears people have forgotten how bad he was and aren’t aware of how bad he’s planning to be. As for the Uighur camps, Trump seems to be taking the idea and running with it.
Australian university students are setting up encampments in universities across Australia. They are not only calling for an end to the war on Gaza and freedom for Palestinians, they are calling for key changes needed in Australian universities’ relationships with Israel, including divestments in weapons research and development and sales and the cessation of links Continue reading »
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana, 1905. In the summer of 1968, I was assigned to the Central Intelligence Agency’s task force on the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. The task force met around the clock in the CIA operations center, which was outfitted with myriad television screens. Continue reading »
In the coming year, there will be an election for the Australian Parliament, at a time when the very future of human civilisation is precarious. Three important books have appeared in recent months that should be read by politicians and their constituents, everywhere. The first, “How to Fix a Broken Planet”, is by acclaimed, Canberra Continue reading »
This was not always my view. Like most people I examined where I could minimize my tax – where there were offsets to be gained through education, membership of professional bodies, charity donations, equipment, including computer hardwater/software/paper etc. I also had shares and a rental property so used negative gearing and imputation credits. It all Continue reading »
The Westminster Town Hall Forum in Minneapolis in the US recently hosted the leading economist, Professor Keyu Jin, from the London School of Economics, where she spoke insightfully on where China has come from – and why – and where it is headed – and why. You can watch the entire presentation here: The German-American Continue reading »
“But… did he say it on a college campus? Otherwise, it’s just not news. Sorry, them’s the rules,” said one journalist sardonically. In just the latest example of a top Israeli official openly calling for the elimination of Gaza and the 2.3 million Palestinians who live there, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Tuesday demanded the destruction of Continue reading »
That cover is a perfect illustration of Trumpian projection. The Enquirer claimed that it was Hillary Clinton who was doing exactly what he and David Pecker had conspired to do. “Explosive story that will change the election” “Bribe reporters to bury the truth” “Pay hush money to hookers” “Hide her sleazy affairs” It’s never a bad idea to assume that anything Trump accuses his opponent of doing is what he’s doing himself.
Ruby gets an "interactive" lesson in how The Butterfly Effect works in this clip from BBC & Disney+'s Doctor Who S01E01: "Space Babies."
The last 4 hours of psychic breakdown: Does he post anything else? Yes. He reported some of those 12 hours later. He also posts “polls” showing him beating Biden by 10 points, memes of him as Hercules, 007 and Jesus and the like, endorsements of fringe MAGA candidates and articles by right wingers saying Biden is senile. But these psychotic bleats are what he writes in his own words. Yes, they are an illustration of a very disturbed mind. But they are also cult leader propaganda messages to his flock, emotional and relentlessly repetitive. I don’t know how many of them are actually reading this stuff but I think it penetrates their minds when you combine it with his rallies, the right wing media and their constant campaign fundraising messages. It’s insane. And it’s powerful.
I think this is yet another piece of evidence that people are just not paying attention —- to anything, apparently. I’m fairly shocked at the age breakdowns but the rest seems predictable under the circumstances. This is such an ugly situation. Pray for a ceasefire and the toppling of Netanyahu. Nothing good can happen until that does.
Today marks the 46th anniversary of the murder of Altab Ali, a 25-year-old Bangladeshi Sylheti textile worker, who was killed in a racially motivated attack on 4 May 1978 in East London, as he walked home from work. This was not an isolated incident. Two weeks before Altab Ali’s murder, 10-year-old Kennith Singh was stabbed […]
Play it safe or go for broke? Both Donald Trump and Joe Biden are in pursuit of “double hater” voters who dislike them, Axios reports. Whether this bloc stays home or turns out to vote this fall is a serious wildcard. Double haters “represent an extraordinarily broad range of views,” including Old-guard Republicans, Pro-Palestinians, and Techno-optimists (Elon Mush and fellow travelers). Plus, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “independent campaign has collected enough signatures to appear on at least three swing-state ballots, could win as much as 38% of the double hater vote, according to a Monmouth poll out this week.” Axios: Axios fails to mention independent voters (unaffiliateds, no party preference, etc.). My estimates here show a sizable group from hundreds of precincts where indys lean heavily blue but turn out far less than their country cousins out in red counties. Those are votes Democrats leave on the table. Many of them, too, are “a plague on both your houses” voters Democratic campaigns ignore at their peril.
CELEBRATING Youth Week on 15 April, Key Community Group hosted a ‘Monday Funday’ and invited the local community to join in. The fun-filled event was held at the company’s headquarters on West High Street, Coffs Harbour. Advertise with News of The Area today. It’s worth it for your business. Message us. Phone us – (02)...
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FRANKIE has been found and will be singing his one-off falsetto in the upcoming production of Jersey Boys, the story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons in Coffs Harbour. Late last year News Of The Area put out a call out to local singers to audition for the role of Frankie, a challenge owing...
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AUSTRALIA is in the grip of a paediatric body image crisis, with 77 percent of young Australian adults reporting suffering from body image distress (Milton et al., 2021). This in turn has severe mental health consequences, with those affected by body image distress 24 times more likely to develop depression and anxiety (McLean et al.,...
The post Tackling Australia’s body image crisis with tools and resources appeared first on News Of The Area.
Plus, free tax filing pays off, electric vehicles work double time, and pharmaceutical giants face scrutiny for outrageous pricing.
Hope Hicks testifies It seems the news has already moved on from Hope Hicks, judging by the headlines. But there were gasps in the overflow room when she enterered the Manhattan courtoom Friday to testify under subpoena in Donald Trump’s criminal trial. When she briefly broke down on the stand and the judge called a pause, newsies scrambled to report the drama. But ahead of that, Olivia Nuzzi of New York Magazine posted a thread with observations on Hicks worth noting: Some things to know about the prosecution’s next witness, Hope Hicks: her relationship with the Trump family began in 2012 when she began doing PR for Ivanka from an outside firm. She joined the Trump Org. By the winter of 2014, when Donald Trump was preparing to run for the GOP nom, she was part of a tiny circle of his trusted advisers. For most of the 2016 campaign, the staff was the Island of Misfit Toys. Hardly anyone had traditional political experience. At least half the staffers were possibly literally, clinically insane. Her general competence and normal-ness and likability made her an outlier. She was good at managing the principal. She was good under pressure.