Time Travel News
A train derailment, a surfeit of low flying “spy balloons.”
Over the past fortnight media coverage of notable events has looked a bit spotty.
Consider:
Government messaging on a February 3 East Palestine Ohio derailment/chemical spill…
and…
Surveillance balloons in the sky.
America pauses to contemplate multiple violations of its air space. A sovereignty violation/passive aggression in the sky. What are those balloons about? Does anyone know?
Meanwhile, on land East Palestine Ohioans contemplate another form of ‘passive aggression,’ that of the neglect variety. Who’s in charge of managing internal refugees? Is that FEMA, HHS or EPA? Corporate lobbyists? The in-laws in Rhode Island?
After the state troopers visit your home on February 4 and ask you to evacuate, who tells you when it is safe to return?
Really ‘safe to return?’
The EPA guy visiting the derailment site one week later sounded like he was delivering lines right out of Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People. No, that’s not an upcoming Netflix period piece. “Enemy” was written and staged in 1882, 141 years ago. (1)
February 19
This just in. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg demands Norfolk Southern, railroad carrier, make the residents of East Palestine, “whole.” Whatever that means. (2) Not mentioned in his comments were two other reported freight derailments, one in Louisiana, one in Michigan within the past thirty days.
Outrages like vinyl chloride and helium have an afterlife.
While America was contemplating White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s frustrated looks from the White House Press Briefing Room podium and Secretary of Defense Austin’s explanation during a cable interview that lots of stuff happens when the radar screen gets a tweaking, here’s a sampling of the stories over the last 2 weeks America ‘missed’ or failed the news cycle memory test:
UK strikes, ‘unaffordable inflation,’ worst economy since Thatcher years…
Israeli protestors with lots to protest: Supreme Court corruption, Bibi accountability, Orthodox minority setting the government agenda, passive defense of Russia’s invasion…
Increased violence in the “other Palestine…”
And after a year of relentless invasion of Ukraine, again Russia massing troops inside Eastern Ukraine…
DC politicization of the January 6, 2021, coup attempt…
Lots of unanswered questions. But cheer up, America, two celebrated ‘real news’ documentaries are coming our way… for our ‘consideration.’ It’s Oscar season.
“January 6,” by Gedeon and Jules Naudet, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January and has been nominated for several film critic awards (3)
“Farha,” by Darin J. Sallam, a documentary about the 1948 “annexation” of Palestine is Jordan’s Official entry to the International Film Category, 2023 Oscars (4)
What was that about ‘life imitating art…?’
February 19–20
Notes
1-An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen, first performed in 1882 https://www.google.com/search?q=An+Enemy+of+the+People+by+Ibsen&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari
2-Court case filings in Norfolk Western train derailment
4-https://jordantimes.com/news/local/jordan-submits-‘farha’-consideration-95th-academy-awards
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