Category Archives: Post Human

Call it a dagger of the mind or the stuff of wicked dreams, but as the COVID-19 death toll climbs and election day nears in my homeland, Ive begun to think of the Donald of Manhattan as the Thane of Cawdor, otherwise known as Macbeth.

It all started back in January. During his failed defence of democratic norms, House impeachment manager Adam Schiff made reference on the Senate floor to a CBS News report in which a Trump confidant said that key senators were warned, Vote against the president and your head will be on a pike. His remark drew gasps of not true from Republican senators whove heard far worse on a nearly daily basis from the Twitter account of their partys standard bearer.

The phrase head on a pike brought me back to the final scene of Roman Polanskis 1971 film Macbeth. After the hero, Macduff, unceremoniously hacks off the usurpers cursed head and proclaims the time is free, those whove been freed shove a pike into Macbeths noggin. For a few fleeting moments, we see the gruesome scene from the perspective of the fallen kings dying eyes: looking up, instead of down, at his subjects and witnessing their elation at his demise. In my thought experiment, Macbeth is not the senators but Trump. And Macduff is neither Schiff nor any other member of the House or Senate. He is Joe Biden, the former vice president and longtime Delaware senator whose only living son the US president has done his best to destroy.

Former Vice President Joe Biden. Photo: Reuters/Brendan McDermid/File

The analogy is not perfect. Trump has little of the courage, eloquence or self-knowledge of the mighty Macbeth. And its unlikely that Melania has anything like the malign influence Lady Macbeth had over her husband. Nevertheless, by targeting Bidens only surviving son, Hunter, with accusations of corruption for his former seat on the board of Ukrainian gas giant Burisma Holdings, and tying nearly$400 million in military assistance to Ukraine to a desired investigation into Burisma and the Bidens, Trump, like Macbeth, may have set in motion his own political demise, not by a cowering Senate but a disillusioned electorate.

Like Trump, Macbeth, decides to target his rivals families. Hes won the crown by murdering the king not uncommon in Shakespeare. But later, in one of the most heartless decisions in all of Shakespeares tragedies, he sends his henchmen to murder Macduffs entire family, Wife, children, servants, all. This, you may recall, is in addition to the murder of Macbeths friend and comrade in arms, Banquo (and attempted murder of his son), among whose descendants a king is prophesied.

Macbeth and Banquo encounter the Witches for the first time. Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Thodore Chassriau, Muse dOrsay, Public Domain

One tends to think that Shakespeare hoists too much tragedy on the shoulders of his heroes. But real life is often far more tragic. In 1972, after being elected senator of his home state of Delaware for the first time, Biden lost his wife and daughter, Naomi Christina, in a car accident. Neilia was 30 years old, and Naomi, lovingly called Amy, had just turned one. Bidens two sons, Hunter and Beau, 2 and 3 at the time, were critically injured in the accident. Biden wouldnt leave their bedside and was sworn in as senator from their Wilmington hospital room.

The boys recovered and eventually went home with their father, who took the train home each night from Washington to Wilmington to be with them, and continued doing so for decades. Biden remarried in 1977, and his wife Jill and he welcomed their daughter, Ashley, into the world in 1981. As he explained in a 2015 commencement speech at Yale, it was in part the tragedies he overcame but more importantly the enduring bond with his family that allowed him to maintain a healthy perspective on what it means to serve the American people.

Also Read: Hollow Man in the Confederacy of Dunces: The Phenomenon of Donald J. Trump

Ambition is really important, he said. You need it. And I certainly have never lacked in having ambition. But ambition without perspective can be a killer. I know a lot of you already understand this. Some of you really had to struggle to get here. And some of you have had to struggle to stay here. And some of your families made enormous sacrifices for this great privilege. And many of you faced your own crises, some unimaginable. But the truth is all of you will go through something like this. Youll wrestle with these kinds of choices every day. But Im here to tell you, you can find the balance between ambition and happiness, what will make you really feel fulfilled. And along the way, it helps a great deal if you can resist the temptation to rationalize.

The speech was given while his son Beau, a former attorney general of Delaware and recipient of the Bronze Star for his service in Iraq, battled brain cancer at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. At the age of three, Beau survived the car accident that claimed the lives of his mother and sister and fractured his brother Hunters skull. Two weeks after his father delivered this speech, Beau succumbed to brain cancer on May 30, 2015. He was 46 years old.

Our common pain is now the coronavirus pandemic, not unlike the plague in Shakespeares time, having claimed more than 140,000 lives in the US alone (on July 20) and threatening the lives and livelihoods of millions more.

It is again Macbeth that most fully captures the anxiety and misery our nation is currently experiencing, where political tribalism and social insecurity seem to deepen with each passing day; with each new protest and each new death by a disease that has itself become grotesquely politicised. The carnage wrought by Macbeth and Lady Macbeths unmoored ambition takes place in an atmosphere of plague and paranoia, where physical ailments are amplified by psychological and emotional distress. As Ross says to Macduff when the latter returns to Scotland after Macbeths ruthless ascent to power:

Alas, poor country,Almost afraid to know itself. It cannotBe called our mother, but our grave, where nothing,But who knows nothing is once seen to smile;Where sighs and groans and shrieks that rend the airAre made, not marked; where violent sorrow seemsA modern ecstasy.

The bard would never be so prosaic, but its no surprise that the remedy for controlling a deadly pandemic and restoring faith in government is one and the same: Trust. Laurie Garrett, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of The Coming Plague told us as much at the onset of the now global pandemic in a February 15 column for Foreign Policy: An epidemic cannot be fought and won unless the bonds of trust between governments and people can survive the grief, confusions, emotions and medical challenges of the battle.

US President Donald Trump. Photo: Reuters/Joshua Roberts/File

Clearly, that trust has broken down between much of the US and Donald Trump, who much like Macbeth, imprisoned yet empowered by his all too human vanity, ambition and moral nihilismmay not fully believe but behaves as if:

Lifes but a walking shadow, a poor playerThat struts and frets his hour upon the stageAnd then is heard no more: it is a taleTold by an idiot, full of sound and fury,Signifying nothing.

Literary historian Stephen Greenblatt, in his 2018 book Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics, never mentions Trump by name, but his passages on Macbethinfer parallels. The internal and external censors that keep most ordinary mortals, let alone rulers of nations, from sending irrational messages in the middle of the night or acting on every crazed impulse are absent, he writes. All tyrants are enemies of the future, he continues, not only in the figurative sense, by undermining the rule of law and the ties that bind; but in Macbeths case, in the literal sense, by destroying the offspring of those who might bring stability and prosperity to the kingdom.

The truest line of that Yale commencement speech Biden gave five years ago about why he commuted from Washington back to Wilmington every night to see his young boys was this: [T]he real reason I went home every night was that I needed my children more than they needed me. Its hard to imagine a better reason for Macduff to return to his plague-ridden Scotland and challenge Macbeth, or to avenge the tyrants assault upon his pretty ones.

Michael Judge, a former deputy features editor at The Wall Street Journal, is a US-based poet and freelance journalist.

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Sound and Fury: Seeing the Trump-Biden Contest Through the Eyes of Macbeth - The Wire

At least six Black children were killed during the Fourth of You Lie weekend. They werent doing anything wrong, just attending a community picnic, or going to visit a grandmother, or riding in a car.

One of the children, Secoriea Turner, 8, lived in Atlanta. The day after the killing, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, emotionally addressed the killers.

You shot and killed a baby, she said. This random Wild, Wild West, shoot em up because you can, has got to stop. It has to stop. She went on to say, Enough is enough. You cant blame this on a police officer. You cant say this is about criminal justice reform. This is about some people carrying weapons who shot up a car with an 8-year-old baby in the car. For what?

In Washington, 11-year-old Davon McNeal, ironically attending an anti-violence cookout organized by his mother, was shot in the head. An 18-year old has been arrested, and there are two other suspects.

In Atlanta, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco and New York, our children are being murdered. We can get thousands to the streets for a Black Lives Matter protest. How many can we get out for Natalia Wallace, 7, killed in Chicago, or Jace Young, 6, of San Francisco who was killed attending a birthday party?

In 2019, 692 children under the age of 12 were killed or injured. In 2014, 603 were killed or wounded. The Gun Violence Archive, which has been counting gun deaths since 2013, states there were 733 child deaths or injuries in 2017, the peak year since the organization began collecting the data.

The murdered children are never the intended victims. Instead, somebody with more firepower than sense shoots into a crowd, not caring who they hit. And theyve been killing our children.

I could write dissertations about why angry and unemployed young men are running around with guns, settling scores and securing reputations with no regard for others. But Im sick of the sociological explanations and the excuses. Im with Mayor Bottoms. Enough is enough. How do we stop it? How do we dismantle the gun culture that dominates so many of our inner cities? Will it take new laws? Harsher penalties for illegal gun use?

Conservatives are right to say we may lose fewer Black lives to police violence than to street gun violence. Even as we resist police brutality, structural racism and other inequities, we must fight the enemy within, the callous young men who engage in gunplay on public streets when anybody could be walking by. How to get through to them?

Dr. Cornel West, a professor emeritus at Princeton University, once described these young men as nihilistic, believing that life has no intrinsic value, simply not caring about social norms and moral values. Anyone who would shoot a deadly weapon into a crowd has no regard for human life. And perhaps one could argue that these young men do not value human life because human life has not valued them.

But Im sick of making excuses for sociopaths, even as I understand the forces that created them. These shootings have to stop!

I love looking at Black children, looking at their small, partly unformed faces and wondering what kind of adult they will evolve into. Too many gun-toting criminals ensure that some of our children wont have the opportunity to grow up.

Class differences among African-Americans mean that some fall asleep to the sounds of gunfire while others know shooting from television.

When we say it takes a village to raise a child, what happens to the villagers that would rob a child of life? We need to call these villains out. We need to ask their associates to call them out.

When you say Black Lives Matter when you march and chant, think of 11-year Davon McNeal, 6-year-old Jace Young, 8-year-old Secoriea Turner or 7-year-old Natalia Wallace. Their Black lives matter, too. What must we do to protect our children?

The writer is an author, economist and educator.

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The enemy within, by Julianne Malveaux - Richmond Free Press

I know a lot of you are missing summer-blockbuster season, and I'm certainly not thrilled to be missing it, either, given that this year's lineup of delayed potential hits includes a new Christoper Nolan, a new Pixar, and a new Wes Anderson (even if Wes Anderson and blockbuster hardly belong in the same sentence). But here's a short list of previously scheduled titles that you and I thus far haven't seen due to closed cineplexes: Top Gun: Maverick. Wonder Woman 1984. Ghostbusters: Afterlife. The James Bond continuation No Time to Die. A Quiet Place Part II. Minions: The Rise of Gru. Candyman. And, lest we forget, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run. So, you know . Silver linings.

To be fair, some of those sequels might be good. Hell, some might be great. And some might be so great that our experiences dwarf even the fond feelings we have for their cinematic inspirations. So as we continue to cross fingers that something anything will soon be playing at a theater near us, let's take a look at five direct sequels from 1980 to 1993 that, for me, are all significant improvements on the blockbusters that preceded them. And even though I strongly considered including it, you're welcome, in advance, for my decision to not cite Ghostbusters II. There's only so much hate mail a reviewer can take.

Addams Family Values: Considering the movie had Raul Julia playing Gomez, Anjelica Huston portraying Morticia, Christoper Lloyd enacting Uncle Fester, the deadpan cutie Christina Ricci channeling Wednesday, and Carel Struycken the giant from Twin Peaks! glaring and groaning as Lurch, the casting for 1991's The Addams Family was the main reason everyone I knew wanted to see it. In the end, the casting was really the only reason to see it, and I consequently, politely avoided director Barry Sonnenfeld's 1993 sequel when it debuted around Thanksgiving. Plenty of others did, too. Yet in a kooky-spooky-ooky slapstick crammed with jokes, the biggest one turned out to be on those of us who prematurely dismissed the film and waited for home video to see it, because Sonnenfeld's follow-up is just about flawless for what it aims to be nothing more, or less, than 90 minutes of madly inspired, laugh-out-loud silliness. On paper, the subplots may sound only mildly promising: Gomez and Morticia have a new, apparently indestructible baby (Pubert!); Fester falls in love with a money-grubbing murderess; Wednesday and Pugley go to summer camp. In practice, though, the script by that fiendish wit Paul Rudnick is flooded with deliciously nasty jokes most of the best ones delivered by Joan Cusack as a venomous Black Widow and everyone involved seems encouraged to aim toward the highest peaks of comic lunacy imaginable. They all get there, and I've watched Sonnenfeld's outing many times over just for the zany pleasures of Peter MacNicol and Christine Baranski as hyper-chipper camp counselors and Wednesday escaping the Harmony Hut and offering the series' most hilarious/terrifying sight ever: Ricci's fixed-straight-line mouth slowly, painfully morphing into a hideous smile. She's scaring me! screams a fellow camper. Me, too, kid. I'd be traumatized if it weren't so freaking funny.

The Empire Strikes Back: Nowadays, the world-building nature of franchise culture dictates that sequels don't end so much as end, leaving us with cliffhangers and credit cookies designed to get us psyched (and shell out more dough) for future adventures a year or more down the line. So unless you saw Star Wars' first sequel in the summer of 1980, there's probably no way to adequately describe how unsettling it was to exit The Empire Strikes Back with so many unanswered questions: Would Han Solo remain forever frozen in carbonite? Was the turncoat Lando Calrissian actually to be trusted? Was Darth Vader really Luke Skywalker's fa- ? Um . Spoiler Alert? Leaving director Irvin Kershner's sci-fi mind-blower as an 11-year-old, I remember being dazed and overwhelmed, like I'd seen something too majestic, too adult, to fully grasp. I also remember wanting to get home and play with my Star Wars action figures (in their Vader-mask carrying case) pronto, because this startling upgrade on George Lucas' 1977 blockbuster did a miraculous job of expanding the Jedi universe in your mind: You not only wanted to re-enact the film in moveable plastic, but create your own conceivable follow-ups to the one you just saw. Today, of course, Empire is largely considered the finest of the nine films in the three Star Wars trilogies, and certainly a more polished work than its immediate forebear better written, better acted, better at conveying mood and atmosphere and crisis. Given the expanded visual palette and additions of Yoda, Lando, the gutted Tauntaun, Laugh it up, fuzzball, et cetera, it's also more fun than Star Wars, even if we pre-teens did cry Ee-e-e-ew-w-w! when Han and Leia kissed. Now that we're adults, we only say that when Leia kisses Luke. I'd explain why, but ya know . Spoilers.

Gremlins 2: The New Batch: Plenty of unimaginative sequels get mileage merely from re-staging their first films' setups in new locales, and at first glance, you could say that's what director Joe Dante is doing in the follow-up to his 1984 smash trading Gremlins' sleepy small town for the interiors of an imposing Manhattan skyscraper. But what Dante has actually done is far more subversive: He's traded the real world of the original for the cartoon universe of a Looney Tunes short. I mean this almost literally. Before the sequel's narrative gets underway, that familiar Looney Tunes logo with its accompanying peppy score pops on-screen, and audiences are right (if a little confused) to expect a Chuck Jones animated short to precede the movie. In quickly becomes clear, however, that these early slapstick antics involving Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck are connected to the movie, and all throughout, the tone is so deliriously manic and over-the-top that you wouldn't be surprised for human co-stars Zach Galligan and Phoebe Cates to share scenes with Porky Pig. The first Gremlins is a terrific time, but 1990's Gremlins 2: A New Batch is the superior one because it's so breathtakingly nuts: the brainy beastie voiced by Tony Randall; the New York, New York musical sequence; the unholy half-gremlin/half-spider creature; the unexpected film break followed by shadow puppetry and the threat of a Hulk Hogan smack-down. Absolutely nothing about Dante's follow-up is meant to be believed, and its exuberant I can't believe it! fearlessness and gonzo unpredictability make it one of the most joyously satisfying of all 20th-century-blockbuster sequels. And man how I wish we had a new one now, given that John Glover's villain in the film is an eccentric billionaire named Daniel Clamp. Who else is up for seeing Dante's gremlins thrive in the White House?

Superman II: As previously mentioned, my 1980 screening's largely young crowd audibly reacted, not entirely favorably, to Han's and Leia's Empire Strikes Back kiss. Yet just one summer later, in the sequel to 1978's Superman the Movie, our hero and Lois Lane were shown lying in bed together presumably naked, presumably after having sex and our packed auditorium primarily composed of kids didn't make a peep. I'm guessing we were all in shock. And Superman II was a shock, partly because director Richard Lester had the nerve to stage the formerly unthinkable. (What could that union have possibly been like?!? I might've asked, had 12-year-old me known what I was talking about.) Mostly, though, it was shocking to see so much that was treated with portentous seriousness in the original the trio of Phantom Zone captives, the cataclysmic action finale handled with a breezy insouciance that was sometimes inseparable from parody. In their brief 1978 appearances, the malevolent Ursa, Non, and General Zod seemed pretty darned scary. In Superman II, though, they're enjoyably evil, and consequently mesh perfectly with a presentation that goes for laughs whenever possible; everything from Lois' planned unmasking scoop at Niagara Falls to the flying baddie knocked into the neon Coca-Cola billboard is designed to get you giggling. Christopher Reeve, meanwhile, appears intent on making you think about, and actually feel for, his dual identities as Clark Kent and Superman, and that this sequel works as well emotionally as it does as a comic-book kick is testament to Reeve's and the indispensable Margot Kidder's touchingly profound understanding of character. The visuals may be slapdash; they were in the original, too. But like Gene Hackman's expression when revealing Lex Luthor's endgame Australia! the majority of Lester's movie is one massive grin.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day: I'll readily go on record citing James Cameron's 1986 Aliens (which I wrote about in April) as my all-time-favorite sequel. But if I had to name the blockbuster follow-up that most successfully expanded, complicated, and improved upon its source material, I'd probably go with this other Cameron sequel 1991's Oscar-winning sci-fi-action behemoth that's like the mighty-oak version of his original Terminator. That isn't meant to suggest that 1984's unstoppable-killer saga was an acorn. When I re-watched the film a decade ago, I was impressed at how well that scrappy, nihilistic little thriller held up a quarter-century after unleashing Arnold Schwarzenegger's pitiless, catchphrase-happy cyborg upon an unsuspecting world. T2, though, is T1 super-sized. (I was tempted to write on steroids, but in deference to Arnold's bodybuilder past .) Its chase scenes are louder, longer, and more intricately choreographed; its time-travel possibilities more complexly designed; its relentlessly grim worldview more open to spontaneity and humor. (There's a lot of E.T. in Edward Furlong's attempts to humanize Schwarzenegger's inhuman protector.) Best of all, while Michael Biehn's absence was unfortunate (if understandable), Linda Hamilton's Sarah Connor transformed from perplexed victim to bona-fide, Sigourney Weaver-style ass-kicker, allowing the performer to create an iconic heroine whose anguished gravitas continually kept the movie from merely being exceptionally realized popcorn entertainment. The success of Cameron's epic led to more sequels than I can remember, including one from last autumn that's only memorable for being so disheartening. None of them, however, hold a candle to this wildly effective audience-grabber with its supple liquid-metal effects and frighteningly dead-eyed Robert Patrick, and precious few sci-fi films have ever landed the perfect blend of emotionalism and corn that accompanies Schwarzenegger's final thumb's-up descent into molten lava. Hasta la vista, baby. See you, for increasingly diminished returns, in a dozen years.

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Second-Round Knockouts: Five Sequels That Improve on Their Blockbuster Originals - River Cities Reader

"Untitled (Private)," William S. Burroughs, 1986.Courtesy photo

"Secret Service Agent," William S. Burroughs.Courtesy photo

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The Beat Generation literary lions William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg are together again in a new show at the Gonzo Gallery in downtown Aspen.

The pop-up gallery which this week expanded into a large commercial space at the corner of Hyman Avenue and Hunter Street from its more modest adjacent space will open a new exhibition Friday presenting side-by-side the visual art of these eternally rebellious American authors.

Their lives were works of art, said gallery director Daniel Joseph Watkins. They were writers, of course, and their work spread into the visual realm as well.

The show includes 27 works by the pair, among them black-and-white photos by each, shotgun art and collages by Burroughs from the 1980s and 1990s and drawings by Ginsberg from the same period.

The pair, both of them lightly fictionalized by Jack Kerouac in On the Road and elsewhere, emerged as polar ends of the Beat movement: Ginsberg the poet who birthed the watershed Howl and later the Flower Power peace movement; Burroughs the brilliant nihilist and prose innovator behind Naked Lunch and Junky known for his cut-up method.

Their later-in-life artwork reflects those differing viewpoints. Titled Flower Power x Fire Power, the show aims to display how Ginsbergs peace-loving and gentle outlook existed harmoniously with Burroughs scabrous and grim life philosophy from the Beats brief 50s heyday through their deaths in 1997.

They were pushing each other and their differing viewpoints forced them to rethink some of their perspective on things, Watkins said.

Curator Yuri Zupancic noted that Burroughs and Ginsberg were in dialog about visual art in correspondence from soon after they met in the 1940s, and both were serious visual artists. But they rarely exhibited their work.

They felt pressure in their time not to present themselves as visual artists, said Zupancic. It was taboo, in a way, to present yourself as more than one type of artist.

Curators like Zupancic, through galleries like the Gonzo and museum shows like Beat Generation at the Pompidou Center in Paris in 2016, have in recent years shed light on the Beats, Burroughs and Ginsberg as interdisciplinary artists.

Anyone interested in the mythical lives of the Beat Generation authors will find some delight in seeing the photographs in the show, which capture the pair as well as Beat figures like Gregory Corso and Peter Orlovsky together in Tangier where Burroughs, a Kansan, spent much of his life and of Burroughs with fellow expat author Paul Bowles.

The artworks on view ranging in price from $750 to $32,000 include Burroughs paintings on file folders from the early 1990s and his works of shotgun art from Watkins collection (a March 2013 show at an earlier iteration of the Gonzo Gallery focused solely on Burroughs shotgun art and included rare pieces from the Burroughs archive in Kansas).

Burroughs shotgun art, a body of work the author began making in the 1980s, created imagery made by shooting paint onto and holes through nontraditional art surfaces like targets, books and posters. Among the most striking in this show are a colorful metal no trespassing sign shot up and sun-faded, and Secret Service Agent, a sepia-toned poster of a man in a suit pointing a gun at the viewer, with a Burroughs-drawn red target on it and gunshots through the paper.

Aspenites may be familiar with the shotgun art form through the works of Hunter S. Thompson, with whom Burroughs collaborated on artworks and who made his own beginning in the 1990s. Thompsons longtime creative partner Ralph Steadman also worked with Burroughs on shotgun art pieces. One is included in the Gonzo Gallery show.

The show also includes a handful of absurdist ink-on-paper drawings by Ginsberg from the 1980s (the double entendre-inspired Dragon Coming a highlight), a bullet casing signed by Burroughs, ephemera and posters.

With social distancing practices and mask wearing mandatory inside the Gonzo in keeping with public health restrictions, the gallery is hosting receptions Friday and Saturday night. Outside on Sunday evening it will stage a panel discussion with the Ginsberg Trusts Peter Hale, former Burroughs estate curator Yuri Zupancic, musician and activist DJ Spooky and Watkins.

atravers@aspentimes.com

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Gonzo Gallery in Aspen showcases the visual art of William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg - Aspen Times

The arson attack on Nantes Cathedral is a terrible yet apposite metaphor for our troubled times. We do not know who tried to destroy this beautiful place of worship, but we should understand the significance of the action.

Attacks on churches in France, common in recent years, have been carried out by anarchists, nihilists, Islamists and others. But regardless of the cause or lack of one behind this attack, its symbolism is unmistakable.

Churches and cathedrals stand for religious faith, of course. They represent Europes Christian heritage, too. They are part of our cultural and national identities.

Some have stood for hundreds of years, physical monuments to the long sweep of history, and a reminder, through wars, plagues, recessions and depressions, of the continuity of the institutions and traditions of our societies.

The Church is just one institution, and Christianity just one traditional belief, that for generations have encouraged us to compromise with one another, and make sacrifices for one another, in the name of community. They have taught us to pursue not only our own material benefit but the common good.

Other institutions have played similar roles of course, such ascharities, trades unions and philanthropic foundations. And other beliefs systems, from other religions to political creeds such asconservatism and social democracy, have also sought to foster a sense of solidarity to build a cohesive society.

And yet Western countries are today hardly cohesive societies. In Britain, the wealth of the richest 10 per cent of families is five times higher than the wealth of the bottom half of all families combined. With children's life chances defined more by their parents' prosperity than talent, social mobility is in crisis. With the working class demonised and despised by many, social solidarity is in crisis too.

Then there is the pernicious effect of cultural liberalism and militant identity politics. While elites debate the number of black students at Oxbridge with guilt and urgency, few acknowledge that white students are less likely to go to university than any other ethnic group, and white working-class boys fare worse than anybody else at school.

While the powerful engage in exclusively elite equality debates, such asthe number of women on boards, they give little thought to the availability and affordability of childcare for low-income parents.

Those who try to raise the plight of the white working-class are often written off as racists and cranks. And those who argue in favour of unifying identities made possible by patriotism, or our attachment to more local communities are lampooned as reactionary and ridiculous.

Like letters through a stick of rock, running through each of these problems is liberalism, the ideology that made our modern Western world.

The pursuit of the common good has little place in liberalism, for liberalism is principally concerned with the maximisation of individual freedom. Liberals have always tended to underestimate how the freedom of the rich and powerful can undermine the freedom of the poor and powerless. But it is only now that this reality is becoming so blatant, prevalent and, in the eyes of many, inevitable and even legitimate.

So we have a mirage of meritocracy, in which many of those who reach the top do so not through their own achievement but the headstart handed to them by their parents.

Believing they succeeded on their own merits, however, they feel they owe little to those who "failed" to make it. This is just one reason we see a selfish corporate class, paying themselves sky-high wages and marking one anothers homework, tax avoidance by rich families and big business, and faltering support for progressive taxation and universal public services.

Also to blame is the misplaced universalism of liberalism. Partly because much of liberal thought starts with a misconceived "model" of human nature and political organisation, liberals underestimate the cultural and institutional context and history of communities and countries.

They assume we are all rational freedom-seekers, the same the world over. This leads liberals to all sorts of flawed judgments about foreign policy (think Iraq), democracy (think European Union) and immigration.

Viewing countries as little more than a platform, upon which anybody from anywhere in the world can live and work with only minimal obligations towards others, liberals support mass immigration.

In fact, they are often maniacally in favour of it, because for many of them, borders are a restraint on freedom, and culturally diverse countries are more likely to put irrational attachments to majority culture and identity behind them.

But study after academic study shows that the more diverse a society becomes, the less trust and reciprocity there is, and less willingness to pay taxes to fund universal public services and welfare systems.

Liberalism attacks the institutions and traditions that bring us together, in part because they are seen as hindrances in the pursuit of freedom. But this destructiveness is also down to the problematic relationship liberalism has with the idea of inevitable progress.

Because some liberal thinkers justify pluralism and tolerance on the basis that they create trial and error that leads to an increasingly perfect society, liberalism can become illiberal and intolerant: conservatives who worry that change can bring loss and not just gain, institutions and traditions that ask us to put others first, and beliefs that seek to achieve the common good are mocked, undermined and attacked.

The irony is, the more we see the full extent of the crisis of Western society, it becomes clearer that liberalism has always depended on those very institutions and traditions and ways of life it attacks.

Perhaps liberalism can survive without Christian virtues and stable national identities, but we cannot yet know that for sure.

And so we return to the tragedy of Nantes Cathedral. We saw on Saturday a place of worship going up in flames, but without a greater willingness to pursue the common good, it will be more than a cathedral that succumbs to fire. The very basis of Western civilisation will be in serious danger.

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Liberalism made the Western world, but now it is destroying it - Telegraph.co.uk

A bizarre snapshot of the surface of Mars has recently resurfaced along with the conspiracy theory that it shows a human bone.

Some people think they can see a femur amongst rubble on the Red Planet but this theory was debunked by NASA long ago.

The photo was actually taken back in 2014 by the Curiosity Rovers MastCam.

Its still used by conspiracy theorists to claim that there was once human life on Mars.

This is because it shows a piece of rubble that looks quite similar to a human thigh bone.

A NASA spokesperson previously explained: Seen by Mars rover Curiosity using its MastCam, this Mars rock may look like a femur thigh bone.

Mission science team members think its shape is likely sculpted by erosion, either wind or water.

If life ever existed on Mars, scientists expect that it would be small simple life forms called microbes.

Mars likely never had enough oxygen in its atmosphere and elsewhere to support more complex organisms. Thus, large fossils are not likely.

When people attribute human likeness to objects it can be due to a phenomenon called pareidolia.

According to Science Alert, this condition can make the brain process visual information too quickly and leads to people jumping to conclusions.

The Mars human bone conspiracy isnt the first time people think theyve spotted life on the planet.

There have also been claims of things like a Mars Bigfoot or Mars mushrooms.

As NASA has already noted, if there is life on Mars its likely to be microbes and not anything resembling humans.

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Crackpots claim they have spotted human bone on Mars but its just a rock - New York Post

SINGAPORE: Singapore scientists testing a Covid-19 vaccine from US firm Arcturus Therapeutics plan to start human trials in August after promising initial responses in mice.

More than 100 vaccines are being developed globally, including several already in human trials from the likes of AstraZeneca and Pfizer, to try and control a disease that has infected more than 8 million people and killed over 430,000 worldwide.

The vaccine being evaluated by Singapore's Duke-NUS Medical School works on the relatively-untested Messenger RNA (mRNA) technology, which instructs human cells to make specific coronavirus proteins that produce an immune response.

"The fact that it replicates and triggers a very balanced immune response, both in terms of the antibody and killer cells - those are welcome properties," Ooi Eng Eong, deputy director of the school's emerging infectious diseases programme, told Reuters on Tuesday.

Antibodies stick to the virus and prevent it from infecting cells, while killer cells, another arm of the immune system, recognise infected cells and destroy them, he said.

The mRNA approach has not yet been approved for any medicine so its backers, which also include US biotech firm Moderna , are treading uncharted territory.

Because of that, Ooi said longer studies were needed to ensure its safety.

"The most optimistic case is that it's about this time next year, that we will have a vaccine," Ooi said.

Ooi is also working on a monoclonal antibody treatment for Covid-19 and will begin safety trials on healthy people this week, before testing on Covid-19 patients in the coming months.

Ooi said potential deployment of the treatment could be faster than the vaccine, without giving an exact timeline.

Antibodies are generated in the body to fight off infection. Monoclonal antibodies mimic natural antibodies and can be isolated and manufactured in large quantities to treat diseases.

Tiny city-state Singapore has one of the highest infection tallies in Asia, with more than 40,000 cases, largely due to mass outbreaks in dormitories for its migrant workers.

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Singapore to start human trials of Covid-19 vaccine in August - Bangkok Post

The onslaught of COVID-19 has brought with it a health emergency of global proportions. This has presented a huge challenge to national leaders, to health systems worldwide, and to citizens. Unfortunately, it also became an excuse for human rights violations that are showing few signs of diminishing.

We all understand that governments have needed to act swiftly to protect their populations from the COVID-19 pandemic. And we understand this may demand extraordinary measures. However, a state of emergency must be proportionate to its aim, and only remain in place for as long as absolutely necessary. If law enforcement or the military are given additional powers, it must be clear why. If public gatherings are banned and citizens are forbidden to move freely, these rules must be applied to everyone and not just to the supporters of opposition parties, to people with a particular religion, or to those with a certain skin colour. Arrests and fines must be well-justified and never arbitrary.

All 57 countries of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) have committed to upholding democracy and the rule of law, even during states of emergency. And let us be clear: there is no situation in which it can be necessary, legitimate or proportionate to dismantle the separation of powers that lies at the core of any democracy. On the contrary, it is the democratic checks and balances that ensure our governments work in our interest - and not the other way round. A strong state is one that speaks with its citizens and respects their rights.

We are not only facing the challenges the health emergency itself has thrown at us. Those challenges that are approaching in the aftermath are at least as great; the social, the economic, the generational, and the digital divide, as people who were previously in a precarious situation find themselves in ever greater danger of tipping into poverty and isolation. For women, too, whose jobs are often less secure and worse paid, the threat both of poverty and of exposure to violent partners during lockdown has brought suffering where it was supposed to bring safety.

In this situation, inclusiveness is not a luxury. It is a vital aspect of recovery and of security. The current circumstances are proving once again the accuracy of the OSCEs comprehensive security approach, which rests on the three pillars of the political and military, the economic and environmental, and the human dimension. Political leaders who tolerate human rights violations or exacerbate tensions between different communities for short-term (and short-sighted) political gain are therefore jeopardising social cohesion in the longer term. As we have recently seen, those who feel excluded may also have the sense that they have nothing to lose.

It is because democracy and human rights lie at the root of the solutions to the challenges we are facing, and also because they have been so massively affected by the events and decisions of recent months, that the OSCEs Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), which I have the privilege to head, is monitoring them so closely.

We are calling out intolerance wherever we see it, and working towards a broader understanding that it is through the strength of our diversity that we will overcome this crisis. Having seen health workers and carers from such a multitude of backgrounds, ethnicities, and religions saving lives at the risk of losing their own, this is the time to appreciate their contribution and celebrate our common strength.

The pandemic has been a time of particular hardship for already marginalised communities. Take the Roma, for example, who are often squeezed into overcrowded housing in congested neighbourhoods. Or migrants and refugees across the OSCE region, living in overcrowded camps in unsanitary conditions, and lacking even minimal protection against infection.

But while intolerance and inequality are at the root of many of the difficulties we face, there are others. One of the key checks to prevent abuses of power are democratic elections, and election observation is one of ODIHRs flagship activities. COVID-19 has made it temporarily impossible for us to deploy our traditional forms of observation mission, but we are using this time to further develop our observation methodology, which has evolved over many years in response to changing situations. The pandemic has also created immense challenges for the rule of law in many countries as the democratic balance of power has tilted towards the government. For democracy to function, the curfews and lockdowns cannot be allowed to prevent parliaments and courts from continuing their work.

For all the difficulties I have listed above, our recent monitoring has brought home to me the fact that the democratic architecture is still standing, and with some innovation, its doors remain open. In spite of the disruptions to parliaments across the region, many of them have demonstrated an admirable flexibility and commitment in adapting to the current circumstances. And although the situation of migrants in camps is dire in many places, the agreement by a number of EU countries to host unaccompanied children demonstrated that this crisis is also an opportunity to show solidarity.

Despite the many challenges, I therefore remain resolutely optimistic. I have other reasons for this, beside the pandemic and the opportunities it brings for a renewed commitment to our shared values. This month, we mark the thirtieth anniversary of the Copenhagen Document, in which all states of the OSCE expressed their conviction that the protection and promotion of human rights and fundamental freedoms is one of the basic purposes of government.

This may appear self-evident today, but in 1990, it was dynamite. In this slim text of just 26 pages, nation states that had been declared enemies for decades on both sides of the Iron Curtain pledged to develop and strengthen democracy based on the rule of law, to hold free elections, and to guarantee the fundamental freedoms of conscience and religion, as well as the freedom to gather and to protest, and explicitly recognised the importance of civil society for the protection of these rights.

The states that signed the agreements in Copenhagen, and in Paris later the same year, were both farsighted and courageous. They were not only laying out the basis for the development of the regions fledgling democracies, but also looked beyond the immediate challenges to a time of peace and growing prosperity. In 1990, this was anything other than inevitable. The challenges of that time were colossal, and only appeared surmountable to many people because of the optimism that reigned at the time, the we can do it atmosphere.

30 years ago, democracy was not treated by leaders of long-established democracies as a zero-sum game. There was an understanding that democratic dialogue means to start at different standpoints and arrive at common solutions. Post-pandemic, we need to regain that sense of possibility, of the positive change that each individual can make and the enormous difference that these changes can make on societies collectively.

Respecting human rights is the response of humanity to the shared problems faced by humanity, now as it was 30 years ago.

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We have an opportunity to tackle human rights challenges post-COVID-19. We need to take it View - Euronews

Veteran writer Dan Abnett talks about working on Valiant's Rai, his love of the science fiction genre, and what it likes building worlds.

Debuting back in November, the latest Rai on-going series from Valiant has been a wild ride so far. Writer Dan Abnett and illustratorJuan Jose Ryp have created a rich worldfull of action, humor, anda surprising amount of heart.WithRai's first collected volume set to arrive on August 5th and the series resuming on August 19th with the release of Issue 6 now's a good time to get in on the ground floor.

Dan Abnett spoke with Screen Rant about his love of working in the science fiction genre, what it's been like to work with Juan Jose Ryp, and what fans of Rai can expect in the future.

Related: Bloodshot is BLADE, Not Iron Man For Valiant's Movie Universe

This series is a continuation of your previous mini-series Fallen World, which also starred Rai. What made you want to get involved with the character initially?

Dan Abnett: I was actually invited to do it by Valiant. Lysa Hawkins, the editor, knew my enthusiasm for science fiction and world-building and asked me if I would be interested. I was already working on the Rai series when Valiant then asked me if Id like to helm the Fallen World series which would form the foundation, and that made a lot of sense. Lysa clearly knew me well, because these are exactly the sort of characters and situations that appeal to me.

In the first volume of Rai we encounter everything from techno-dinosaurs to roving gangs of post-apocalyptic scavengers to data-stealing virtual monsters. What kind of freedom does the science fiction world of this book offer you and Juan Jose Ryp creatively? Does the genre present any unique challenges?

Dan Abnett: Well, a great deal. I actually love - genuinely - writing within restricted parameters, like writing stories to fit in a pre-established universe. I enjoy the challenge of trying to tell the best possible story in a world that's already created, and in comics you get to do that a lot because there are several, notable big universes out there. This series is set in the wonderful Valiant Universe, so those rules certainly apply - but theres also the exhilarating free rein of it being the future of that universe, with lots of room to invent and establish new things. Weve created, as you say, a lot of very wild and wide-ranging concepts and characters. We did it because its fun, but it wasnt just a matter of using our creative freedom with abandon. We wanted, as quickly as possible, to establish the future world, to show its range, diversity and potential. So the variety is part of the essential storytelling.

Your words and Juan Jose Ryps artwork are gelling together fantastically in this series. Whats the collaborative process like between you two?

Dan Abnett: Thank you. I think Juanjos work is truly great. When we started, it looked like everything was going to be pretty straightforward - Id write scripts and Juanjo would draw them. But very quickly, I realized how much he had bought into the world too, as much as me, and how much effort he was putting into realizing it: not just inventing cool looks for some of the ideas, but rendering them in staggering detail so they became utterly believable. So his art started to push my writing: I felt confident to come up with things knowing that he would deliver them brilliantly and that nothing would fall flat or seem throw-away. I cant praise him enough.

Rai takes place in a world that has some fairly bleak aspects to it yet theres a lot of humor throughout each issue. Was finding a balance between action and humor a conscious decision?

Dan Abnett: Yes, and I thought it was necessary. You can be as inventive as you like, but after a while it becomes just an exercise in impressive ideas. A storys got to have a heart, and to me the heart is always character. Rai and the rest of the cast have got to have their own voices, so we feel they are distinct people. Thats what makes you care and keep reading. And humors a very important part of personality. Its a natural human function, it makes us warm to people, and its very effective cutting or off-setting darker moments and bleaker events. Having a character like, say, Raijin, be quite funny is entirely in keeping with who he is and how his personality works, and it also counterpoints the harsher action to great effect.

While part-synthetic, Rai is also striving to fulfill his human potential in attempting to de-weaponize himself. Is the question of what it means to be human something youre trying to explore in Rai thematically?

Dan Abnett:I guess so, in simple terms. There are a lot of characters in this series who arent strictly human - they are post-human, but that doesnt mean we shouldnt get to explore their humanity, or find out how they identify with the species that they derived from. But I also think this is about technology - we live in a world that already worries about the consequences of truly sophisticated technology. Rai is a product of technology too, so he is - in effect - a piece of hyper-sophisticated tech taking responsibility for itself, and exploring the positives and negatives of tech at that sort of level. The moment we build technology that is, to all intents and purposes, self-aware and capable of its own decision-making, there is an obligation to make sure it is capable of taking responsibility for its activities. Technology is a tool, and when the tool can use itself, it had better know why.

It feels like the heart of the series is the relationship between Rai and his (technically older) brother Raijin. Whats it been like exploring the dynamic between those two characters?<

DA:Yes, that really is the core - that and the relationship of the two brothers to their AI father. Its all about family! The relationship between the pair is really interesting and rewarding. They are very similar, but they dont see eye to eye. Despite the way he looks - like a pre-teen child - Raijin is, of course, older than Rai. Hes an earlier model, and effectively Rais big brother. Rai outclasses him in his size, power and abilities, so Raijin compensates with his experience, his maturity, acting almost as a conscience, or at least a better angel, trying to influence Rais sometimes bleak and singular world view.

On top of writing for comics, youre also a novelist. Whats it like going between the two mediums? What are some of the challenges/advantages?

DA:I enjoy both very much. I suppose its the same imagination, its just being channeled into different formats. There are things I would do in a novel that I wouldnt attempt in a comic, and vice versa. There are some ideas that come along where I think, thats definitely got to be a comic, or that would work much better in proseand to be honest, I have no difficulty switching between the two (three, actually, because I sometimes write games too!). I often, for example, spend the morning writing the next chapter or two of my latest novel, then switch to comic scripting in the afternoon. I find just that change in technical format keeps me fresh and engaged, and benefits both. It also helps ease the inevitable exhaustion of staying in the same place for too long. No matter how much you like something, the creativity can begin to dry up unless you keep things moving. I once said, in all innocence, I dont like to stay in the same universe for very long and people laughed, but I was completely serious. It works for me.

Can you say anything about what fans can expect as the series moves forward?

DA:Theres lots of great stuff coming, including the introduction of two major threats, and a new main supporting character. As I said, this is really about Rai and Raijin, so well see their relationship develop, and their ideas about the world and what they should be doing evolve. But people are also really enjoying the flashes of present-day Valiant Universe that are cropping up in this future iteration, and I have to say weve got a couple of staggering examples of that on the way.

A big thanks to Dan Abnett for taking the time to talk with us.Rai's first collected volume will be released August 5 and the series sixth issue resuming soon after on August 19.

Next: Was Bloodshot's Ending Real Or A Simulation?

Who is Ulysses, The Superman of Planet Earth?

Patrick Brennan is a writer and critic who loves horror, comics, and horror-comics. In the past he's written for publications like Rue Morgue, Talking Comics, and Under The Bed magazine. He lives in New Brunswick with his wife, son, and very needy cat.

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Exclusive: Dan Abnett On Writing Rai And What's To Come - Screen Rant

It looks like a human bone, but its just a Mars rock (Nasa)

There are plenty of odd-shaped rocks littering the dusty, barren landscape of Mars.

One thing that isnt up there, however, are human bones.

Despite this, there are a few reports emerging at the moment of what looks like a human femur lying casually on the surface of the Red Planet.

In fact, this was a picture snapped way back in 2014 by Nasas Curiosity rover. Because the internet is the internet, its now resurfaced as some kind of proof that creatures once walked the surface of Mars.

Nasa itself even took the time to debunk this theory six years ago.

Seen by Mars rover Curiosity using its MastCam, this Mars rock may look like a femur thigh bone. Mission science team members think its shape is likely sculpted by erosion, either wind or water, a spokesperson for the space agency wrote in a blog post.

If life ever existed on Mars, scientists expect that it would be small simple life forms called microbes.

Mars likely never had enough oxygen in its atmosphere and elsewhere to support more complex organisms. Thus, large fossils are not likely.

Anyone seeing something familiar in an object perhaps a rock looks like a spoon or a cloud looks like a face is experiencing whats known as pareidolia. It happens when your brain unintentionally picks out patterns or familiar shapes in visual information.

Despite the fact Mars was once covered with water, experts are reasonably sure it never hosted complex life. Or rather, if there was once complex life there we havent found any evidence of it since scientists first starting exploring the planet back in the 60s.

So, just to reiterate, there arent any human bones littering the Martian landscape, despite what you may see reported around the internet at the moment.

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No, we haven't found a human bone on Mars - Metro.co.uk