Science - Critical Theory

Nixon (1995) HQ "Do you ever think of death, Dick?"

Oliver Stone's talents as a director may be erratic but they shine at full strength in the richness of this scene depicting an uneasy agreement between President Richard Nixon and CIA director Richard Helms.

Stone's trademark of combining aesthetic precision with playful creativity gives this scene a spinning prism-like effect, flashing light into a myriad of shadowy and suggestive areas. However the historical inaccuracy of Oliver Stone's works is often held up. My view is that watching a film is like experiencing another person's dream.

A film cannot really re-create people or events. It is inherently too subjective. Stone's "dreams" make me especially curious to know more about historical figures and events and in that sense I appreciate them. I do not watch them expecting to see "what really happened". Hopkins is a puppet, Stone a puppeteer creating questions and intrigue. Like them we have to find our own truth about Nixon and Helms.

William Butler Yeats

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere.  The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst  are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out  when a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert a shape with lion body and the head of a man. A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it    Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.    The darkness drops again; but now I know  that twenty centuries of stony sleep were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,  and what rough beast, its hour come round at last,  slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Reconstruction: America After the Civil War - Part 1 | Full Documentary.

This documentary explores the pivotal period in American history following the Civil War, known as Reconstruction (1865–1877). It examines the struggles, progress, and setbacks faced by formerly enslaved African Americans as they sought political, social, and economic freedom.

The immediate aftermath of the Civil War The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments and their impact The rise of Black political power and Black Congressmen The Freedmen’s Bureau and efforts to support newly freed people Racist backlash, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, and systemic obstacles How Reconstruction shaped America’s future 🕰️ Historical Context: Reconstruction was a turning point in U.S. history, laying the foundation for the Civil Rights Movement while also exposing deep racial divides that persist today.

Reconstruction: The Fight for Black Freedom | America After the Civil War (Part 2).

Reconstruction: America After the Civil War – Part 3 | Full Episode.

Reconstruction: America After the Civil War – Part 4 | Full Episode.

Oregon Fire Disaster Escalates | Bench & Beachcomb Merge Into 40,000+ Acre Inferno.

Oregon Fire Crisis Escalates | July 27, 2026 Update The Bench and Beachcomb fires near Warm Springs have merged into a single perimeter — now mapped at 40,296 acres and 0% contained as of Sunday night. Oregon leads the nation with 21 active large fires, nearly 400,000 acres burned statewide, and no containment relief in sight for the next 48 hours.

Report from Tehran: Amid More U.S./Iran Bombing, Trump Warns Iran Is "DEAD...Will Pay the Price".

After the downing of an Apache helicopter near the Strait of Hormuz, the United States and Iran have begun trading missile and drone strikes in the most serious escalation of hostilities since the April ceasefire agreement. President Trump posted on social media Wednesday morning that Iran has taken “too long to negotiate a deal” and would now have to “pay the price!!!”

For more, we speak to Mohammad Eslami at Tehran University, who says Trump’s “lies and broken promises” have shattered Iranians’ trust in a diplomatic solution. “Every night, there are lots of peoples chanting all around the street against Trump. And also, … unfortunately, many of them are chanting against negotiation with Donald Trump,” he says. “Right now they are asking the Iranian [forces] to retaliate.”

The Most Powerful El Niño In Recorded History is Forming in the Pacific Ocean.

An exceptionally strong El Niño, called Super El Niño, is rapidly developing in the Pacific Ocean, with forecasts suggesting it could rival the most powerful events on record. Last time it happened in 1877, it wiped out 4% of Earth's population due to heat waves, drought and pestilence.

00:00 Predictions of a Super El Niño 00:40 What is an El Niño? 02:40 How to Measure an El Niño 04:20 Effects on the Atlantic Hurricane Season 05:50 North America 07:20 UK & Europe 07:44 South America 08:10 Amazon Basin 08:20 Australia

1957 the RB47 UFO incident video.

UFOB | Your UAP Library

Clarence Thomas' SHOCK BIZARRE Speech EXPOSED.

Sidney Blumenthal and Sean Wilentz unravel Clarence Thomas’ weird speech on the Declaration of Independence and trace it back to its sources in the John Birch Society and a host of bizarre extremists.

Legal AF

The Paranoid Style in American Politics - Richard Hofstadter

MAGA FREAK Steve Bannon Pees his Pants.

Trump is caught lying about the survivors willing to testify in the Jeffrey Epstein case and Steve Bannon has an accident on stage.

Pope Leo and Archbishop and Martyr Oscar Romero

Earlier I wrote that great tactics mean nothing if you have no strategy, looking at Trump’s war on Iran. Watching the story of one of Hegseth’s minions, Undersecretary of Defense Elbridge Colby, at work, makes it clear that when it comes to the war on the Vatican, Trump & Co. don’t even have good tactics. The story that kicked off this public mess came from (of all places) Bari Weiss’ old project, The Free Press, which various outlets then picked up and ran with, like this from “The Letters from Leo”:

In January, behind closed doors at the Pentagon, Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre — Pope Leo XIV’s then-ambassador to the United States — and delivered a lecture. America, Colby and his colleagues told the cardinal, has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world. The Catholic Church had better take its side. As tempers rose, an unidentified U.S. official reached for a fourteenth-century weapon and invoked the Avignon Papacy, the period when the French Crown used military force to bend the bishop of Rome to its will. That scene, broken this week by Mattia Ferraresi in an extraordinary piece of journalism for The Free Press, may be the most remarkable moment in the long and knotted history of the American republic’s relationship with the Catholic Church. Ferraresi obtained accounts from Vatican and U.S. officials briefed on the Pentagon meeting. According to his sources, Colby’s team picked apart the pope’s January state-of-the-world address line by line and read it as a hostile message aimed directly at the administration. What enraged them most was Leo’s declaration that “a diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force.”

10 STEPS TO RESIST FASCISM AND DEFEND DEMOCRACY.

In this episode, Meidas Canada is sharing footage of a press conference held April 8, 2026 at Canada's House of Commons (Ottawa, ON) where host and former Member of Parliament Charlie Angus laid out 10 commandments of resistance to fascism.

Trump PANICS as F-15 SHOT DOWN IN WAR!!

Meidas Touch reports on the breaking news of an F-15 being shot down by Iran and the search and rescue effort under way as Trump panics.

MeidasTouch

What Patton Said to the Nazi Commander Who Burned a Village Alive.

In the winter of 1944, as Patton's Third Army swept through Alsace, his soldiers found something that no military training had prepared them for. A village that no longer existed. Burned walls. Collapsed roofs. And survivors who had been waiting months to tell someone what had happened. What Patton said when he walked through those ruins, and what he said when the SS commander responsible was finally brought before him, became the most important statement any Allied general made about what this war was actually being fought for. This is that story.

The War Cabinet

Americans need to watch this, read this: Days after Daily Mail Implicates Stephen Miller in Alex Pretti Murder, Daily Mail Responds with Boobies - emptywheel

The most important passage from the Daily Mail (archive link) you need to read this week are these paragraphs describing how, in advance of the Alex Pretti murder, Stephen Miller had ordered DHS goons to “vanquish [protesters] through force of arms.”

The most damaging episodes were the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, which Miller was at the center of.

During his 10am calls with immigration leaders, Miller was demanding agents be sent out to areas in Minneapolis where DHS knew there was a heavy presence of protesters to ‘force confrontations,’ two DHS senior sources told the Daily Mail.

One official noted that Miller repeatedly urged agents to engage protesters so the administration could win the ‘PR battle.’

‘Miller said on these calls, “If we let them have the perception that their protesting is successful, then the administration will never successfully prosecute interior operations to remove aliens,”‘ a DHS source recalled to the Daily Mail.

‘So we need to engage these protesters, and we need to vanquish them by force of arms. They need to be vanquished by any force necessary,’ Miller reportedly told immigration leaders, according to the source.

Mere hours after a Border Patrol and ICE agents fatally shot Pretti, an ICU nurse, Miller called the victim an ‘assassin’ on social media.

‘This is why he f***ing needs to be fired. It’s absolutely nuts,’ another senior DHS official familiar with the calls told the Daily Mail. ‘He’s the architect of Renee Good and Alex Pretti’s deaths.’

I already pointed out, the day that Renee Good was shot (after which Trump surged more goons into Minnesota) that there was circumstantial evidence that Miller was giving Greg Bovino orders to directly confront protestors,

[Greg] Bovino said he took his instructions from the Executive Branch, whether Trump or Kristi Noem.

Trump Voters Can't Comprehend This SIMPLE Logic: They are Stupid.

Gen Z interviewer Adam Mockler talks with one Trump Supporter who brings up an interesting point; why do so many college-educated people vote Democrat?

Rebel HQ

Conspiratorial cults lead to constructing a reality immune to normal cause and effect relationships.  Their essential relationships are all dysfunctional. Their traits include low education and poor job opportunities.  They long for someone to be their savior. 

The Big Freeze A New Reality.

As the rapidly warming Arctic pushes its glacial weather south, stretching the polar vortex, more extreme and dangerous cold blankets North America. It’s not a passing event. As nighttime temperatures plunge into the single digits, heavy snow remains frozen. In this video, Climate scientist, Paul Beckwith explains how climate change is bringing colder winters and offers some suggestions for people who may not be prepared.

What can you do when temperatures plunge so drastically? If you must go outside, to avoid hypothermia, layer warm clothes, wear insulated gloves and hat, and protect your face and neck with a scarf In your home, You might let indoor faucets drip slightly to prevent pipes from freezing Cover doors to the outside and to rooms you don’t heat with blankets Close curtains to retain heat Plug electric heaters into the wall, not to an extension cord On the road, Don’t go if you don’t have snow tires and roads are icy Keep extra warm clothes in your car in case of a breakdown Have emergency kit, food and water in your car, Keep your cell phone changed and in a warm place (Batteries can fail in extreme cold).

TOKYO (AP) — Senior U.S. and Japanese officials tend to shy away from anything but very careful public comments about Japan’s 1941 sneak attack on U.S. forces at Pearl Harbor. So there was embarrassment, confusion and unease on Saturday in Japan after President Donald Trump casually used the World War II attack to justify his secrecy before launching the war against Iran.

The Japanese discomfort was compounded by the fact that Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi was sitting awkwardly at Trump’s side as he spoke.

Partly, the reaction is linked to the crucial security and economic role that the U.S. plays for Japan, its top ally in the region. Put simply, Japan needs to make sure the U.S. relationship thrives. That’s why Takaichi was in Washington.

But it’s also a reflection of just how fresh the political debate about Japan’s role in World War II remains here, even 80 years after its end.

Senior leaders, including Takaichi, have argued that Japan has apologized enough for what happened in the war. Takaichi herself has recently hinted at visiting Tokyo’s controversial Yasukuni Shrine, where Japanese war criminals are honored among the 2.5 million war dead.

It is, however, somewhat startling for Japan to see these history questions spill over into a White House summit.

On Thursday, when asked by a Japanese reporter why he didn’t tell allies in Europe and Asia ahead of the U.S. attack on Iran, Trump cited Pearl Harbor to defend his decision, saying, ‘Who knows better about surprise than Japan? Why didn’t you tell me about Pearl Harbor, OK?”

The liberal leaning Asahi newspaper said in an editorial Saturday that Trump’s comments “should not be overlooked.”

“Making such a remark to justify a sneak attack and boast about its outcome is a piece of nonsense that ignores lessons from history,” Asahi said.

Claims of rudeness

Social media reaction has ranged from accusations of ignorance and rudeness by the U.S. president to claims that he didn’t see Japan as an equal partner. There were calls for Japan to protest what Trump said.

Tsuneo Watanabe, a senior fellow at the Sasakawa Peace Foundation, said in an online opinion piece published in the Nikkei newspaper Saturday that the comment signaled that Trump was “not bound by existing American common sense.”

“I get the impression that the comment was intended to bring the Japanese reporter (who asked the question) or Ms. Takaichi into complicity in order to justify his ‘sneak attack’ on Iran during diplomatic negotiations and without telling allied countries,” Watanabe said.

There’s also a feeling that an unspoken understanding exists between U.S. and Japanese leaders to tread carefully on the subject. Both sides need each other, with Washington relying on Japan to host 50,000 troops and an array of powerful hi-tech weapons, and Japan relying on the U.S. nuclear umbrella to deter hostile, nuclear-armed neighbors.

Japan’s post-World War II constitution bans the use of force except for its self-defense, but Takaichi and other officials are now seeking to expand the military’s role.

When it comes to U.S.-Japan reconciliation, many here look to the example of former leaders Barack Obama and Shinzo Abe, who in 2016 paid tribute together at the Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor and at the Hiroshima Peace Park.

It is actually amazing that the entire human species is still around: