Friends,
I really loved DON’T LOOK UP! But note SPOILER ALERT that the government uses drones to try to take out the comet. Remember it is only a movie. So join us on Tuesday, December 28 at 4 PM in a demonstration against JHU’s swarming drones research. The organization Ban Killer Drones is promoting actions on December 28th, the Christian Feast of the Holy Innocents, calling for an end to drone attacks. The recent report in the New York Times, "Civilian Casualties Files," is another reason to take action. Besides the call for actions, Ban Killer Drones is urging concerned citizens to lobby House Democrats to investigate the U.S. military’s systematic cover-up of civilian casualties caused by its drone-dependent air wars, urging them to conduct an investigation into the numbers and identities of all people killed by U.S. drones in the past twenty years.
So on Tues., Dec. 28 we will hold our Ban Killer drones support demonstration at Johns Hopkins University at 33rd and N. Charles Sts. from 4 to 5 PM. Contact Max at mobuszewski2001 at Comcast dot net or 410-323-1607. You may consider contacting President Ron Daniels and telling him that the university should reject all military contracts, including those for killer drone and nuclear weapons research. The president’s mailing address is Office of the President, 242 Garland Hall, The Johns Hopkins University, and 3400 N. Charles St., Baltimore, Maryland 21218. You can also reach his office by Phone: (410) 516-8068, Fax: (410) 516-6097 or email: president@jhu.edu. Kagiso, Max
Climate
Denial Satire "Don't Look Up" Now Top Film on Netflix Worldwide
"Absolutely
love to see a climate movie hitting this huge a global audience on the world's
largest platform," said journalist David Sirota, who co-created the story
for the film.
December 27, 2021
The new feature film "Don't Look Up," a dark comedy satirizing the complacency and mendacity of elites in the face of an existential threat to human civilization, is now the most popular movie on Netflix worldwide, according to data compiled by FlixPatrol.
"Absolutely
love to see a climate movie hitting this huge a global audience on the world's
largest platform," journalist David Sirota, who co-created the story for
the film, tweeted Monday. "An amazing
success for the team that made the movie and for everyone who has been
spreading the word."
An
allegory of the human-caused climate emergency and other civilizational
dangers, "Don't Look Up" follows two low-level astronomers as they
attempt to alert political leaders and the rest of the world to a massive comet
barreling toward Earth.
The
film's scientists, played by Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio, soon
discover that few can be bothered to care, let alone act, in the face of
impending annihilation.
"This
is the worst news in the history of humanity, and they just blew us
off," Dr. Randall Mindy, DiCaprio's character, says following a
meeting at the White House.
As the
movie's political leaders dither, Peter Isherwell—a mega-rich Silicon Valley
tech guru played by Mark Rylance—discovers that the apocalyptic comet
contains more than $30 trillion worth of precious metals needed to manufacture
electronic goods. Buoyed by that revelation, the federal government proceeds to
partner with Isherwell on a plan to break the comet into pieces and mine its
contents.
"This
might all sound far-fetched—the stuff of comedy whimsy—were it not for the fact
that Isherwell is clearly a sendup of real-world tech billionaires like Elon
Musk and Jeff Bezos who are very much convinced that saving the human species
from extinction might be extraordinarily lucrative," Tyler Austin Harper,
assistant professor of environmental studies at Bates College, wrote in his review of the film for Slate.
Watch
the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbIxYm3mKzI.
Adam
McKay, the film's director, told Space.com in a
recent interview that the plot of "Don't Look Up" is
"a Clark Kent-level disguise for the climate crisis."
"We're
not trying that hard with disguising it," he said. "You hear the news
not mention [the climate emergency] and then they go right to a commercial for
a gas-driven car or an oil company. It's conflict of interest, it's careerism.
It's a lot of people who are financially insecure. And it takes a lot of guts
to raise your hand at that newspaper meeting and go, 'Why don't we have a giant
headline that says, 'Oh, my God, we're all going to die!'"
But
as The Intercept's Jon Schwarz wrote in his review of the movie,
"The good news, if there is any, is that when the lights come up at the
end, you'll realize that in reality we're only half an hour into this
story."
"We
can still save ourselves if we want to," he added. "And part of that
will have to be much more human creativity like this, in service of
understanding the horrifying destination toward which we're heading."
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Feel free to republish and share widely.
Donations can be sent
to Max Obuszewski, Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 431 Notre Dame Lane, Apt. 206,
Baltimore, MD 21212. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at]
comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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