BURN HOLLYWOOD BURN

Di

 



"L.A. is vast. It is a city and a county. It is a global place, a Pacific Rim space, a ‘Third World’ metropolis. It has all the contradictions of the world and all the world is condensed in it. The homes of rich, poor, middle class, Black, white, Asian, Latino have burned. Fire is coming for all of us”  

Viet Thanh Nguyen

 


The totality of the destruction of these flames is impossible to comprehend. 

They’ve consumed museums, schools, mobile home parks, senior centers, stores, restaurants, encampments, apartment buildings, fire stations, countless homes, and many historical and cultural landmarks. 

It’s hard to keep track. 

Tens of thousands of people have been displaced. The historic Black community of Altadena has been decimated. People have died, animals have suffocated, and families across the economic spectrum have lost everything.


Yes, Mike Davis and others predicted much of this, but never at this scale or with this ferocity. 

Like much of the West, Southern California has long been shaped by wildfires. We know the extremes of these disasters could have been mitigated had the city instituted stricter building codes decades ago, preserved agricultural buffers, and restricted the development of homes in the more fire-prone areas of Topanga, Malibu canyons, and the foothills of the San Gabriels. 



“The Joshua trees are very flammable. They’ll die, and they won’t come back”.

And yes, as Davis rightly pointed out, native California plants adapted to the region’s wildfire were replaced by invasive grasses brought along by European settlers looking to “green” the browning landscape, only to increase fire risk. These fires, in part, are colonial blowback.

But it doesn’t explain everything. What caused these flames is still unknown. Arson is suspected, and there are worries that downed powerlines initiated the first spark, more casualties of California’s faltering electric grid. 

What is known is that these fires, Eaton and Palisades, are the worst the city has witnessed in terms of size and damage. 

The prime culprit, which mainstream media almost universally refuses to address, is our rapidly warming climate.

The summer of 2024 was the hottest ever. 

We live amidst the most radical climate upheaval in human history, full of fury and unpredictability.

This year, dry, hurricane-level Santa Anas blowing from the Great Basin were the strongest we’ve experienced in over a decade, exceeding 75 mph. 

Fire loves wind, and wind spreads fire. 


On its own, the Eaton fire is the worst Los Angeles has ever experienced; combined with the fire in the Palisades, it is all unfathomable. 




Over 5,000 structures have burned in the Palisades alone.

The number of homes destroyed in Altadena and Pasadena remains unknown, but 8,000 are still at risk. 

Combined, these fires are the most costly in U.S. history.

Burn, Hollywood, Burn?

JOSHUA FRANK Counterpunch




Fire can burn
Burn Babylon

Babylon falling 
Babylon fall!






“The climate crisis reveals that our civilization has never really been organized around science, contrary to the usual Enlightenment narrative. It is organized around capital. Science is embraced when it serves the interests of capital and is often ignored when it does not”
Jason Hickle




The Santa Ana winds have haunted the dreams of southern Angelinos for decades. Like the Chinooks of the Rockies and the Mistrals of the Rhone Valley, these winds play on the mind. 

They tell you they’re coming for you. 

Van Gogh believed the mistral inflamed his madness. Another kind of madness seems to be inflicting LA, the madness of boundless consumption.

In the chaparrals of southern California, the warning of the Santa Anas has always been: fire. Fires that race down hillsides and canyons faster than any Tesla can drive. Fires that leap roads, highways, malls. Fires that ride on the wind. 

This is not new. The Santa Ana winds come with the territory–that territory being the desert basins behind the coastal mountains and canyons. They are katabatic winds that rush downhill, dry and fierce, as they pour through the Cajon, San Gorgonio, and Soledad passes. Geography makes them. 

Climate change and a rapacious real estate industry that has remained deaf to their message have turned them into killers.

The boundaries between the natural and the manufactured have been shredded, both on the ground and in the atmosphere. 

The buffer zones are gone and now nothing is standing between you and the wind.

Roaming Charges: Hurricane of Fire

Jeffrey St. Clair Counterpunch




President-elect Donald Trump was sentenced to no punishment in his historic hush money case.

It was the first criminal prosecution and first conviction of a former U.S. president and major presidential candidate. 

In roughly six minutes of remarks to the court, a calm but insistent Trump called the case “a weaponization of government”.

Trump was charged with fudging his business’ records to veil a $130,000 payoff to porn actor Stormy Daniels. She was paid, late in Trump’s 2016 campaign, not to tell the public about a sexual encounter she maintains the two had a decade earlier. He says nothing sexual happened between them and that he did nothing wrong.

Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchan chose a sentence that sidestepped thorny constitutional issues by effectively ending the case.

Trump gets no-penalty sentence in his hush money case, while calling it ‘despicable’

MICHAEL R. SISAK, JENNIFER PELTZ, JAKE OFFENHARTZ MICHELLE L. PRICE AP




La pornostar Stormy Daniels ha reso Donald Trump il primo presidente pregiudicato degli Stati Uniti.

All'anagrafe Stephanie Clifford, a marzo compirà 46 anni.  Nata a Baton Rouge, Louisiana, cresciuta da una madre single che non si occupava di lei, durante gli anni del liceo ha iniziato a lavorare negli strip club per mantenersi. 





Dallo strip al porno, in film di cui nel tempo è diventata anche regista, scegliendo un nome d'arte ispirato alla sua marca preferita di whiskey.

L'incontro con Trump è avvenuto nel 2006, pochi mesi dopo la nascita di Baron, il figlio di Trump e Melania, durante un torneo di golf a Lake Tahoe, in California, dove la Daniels lavorava come escort. Ha raccontato di essere stata avvicinata da una guardia del corpo di Trump, e di aver poi trascorso la notte nella stanza di albergo del tycoon, con il quale è rimasta poi in contatto, tanto che Trump le offrì di partecipare al suo show televisivo, 'The Apprentice'.




La vicenda arriva sui giornali la prima volta nel gennaio 2018 quando il Wall Street Journal rivela che, l'allora presidente, Trump aveva ordinato, prima delle elezioni del 2016, di pagarle 130mila dollari per il suo silenzio.

A marzo Daniels intenta una causa contestando la validità dell'accordo di riservatezza da lei firmato: a rappresentarla era Michael Avenatti, un intraprendente avvocato amante dei riflettori che diventa un ospite fisso in TV.



Avenatti finisce coinvolto in una mega inchiesta federale per truffe ai suoi clienti, Stormy Daniels compresa, per la quale viene condannato a 14 anni.

La donna presenta anche una denuncia di diffamazione contro Trump. Daniels perde entrambe le cause, per quella di diffamazione viene anche condannata a pagare 300mila dollari di spese legali. 

L'allora avvocato personale e 'mastino' del tycoon, Michael Cohen, che materialmente consegnò il denaro alla Daniels, accusato di violazione delle leggi sul finanziamento delle campagne elettorali e di evasione fiscale, nel 2018 si dichiara colpevole e testimonia che fu Trump ad ordinargli di effettuare il pagamento. Accuse per le quali viene condannato a tre anni di carcere.
 


In una seguitissima testimonianza al Congresso, Cohen punta il dito contro il suo ex boss, affermando che Trump gli aveva chiesto di mentire.

Sulla base delle dichiarazioni di Cohen, il procuratore di Manhattan Cy Vance avvia l'inchiesta che ha portato all'incriminazione di Trump per frode aziendale.

Trump condannato per processo Stormy Daniels, chi è la pornostar

Adnkronos




A pochi giorni dall’annuncio della chiusura del suo programma di fact-checking (scegliendo lo stesso sistema di X), 

Meta ha dichiarato che la società guidata da Mark Zuckerberg dirà addio anche ai suoi Programmi per la Diversità, l’Equità e l’Inclusione (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Programs), pensati per la tutela delle minoranze. 

In una nota interna rende noto che “il panorama giuridico sta cambiando” e che alcuni programmi, tra cui il Diverse Slate Approach, non sono più “attuali”.

Il gigante tecnologico con sede a Menlo Park, in California, ha dichiarato che la Corte Suprema degli Stati Uniti “ha recentemente preso decisioni che segnalano un cambiamento nel modo in cui i tribunali si approcceranno al tema".

Il DEI è sotto accusa perchè "suggerisce un trattamento preferenziale di alcuni gruppi rispetto ad altri”. L’azienda si concentrerà invece “su come applicare pratiche eque e coerenti che attenuino i pregiudizi per tutti, indipendentemente dal background”.

La mancanza di diversità razziale e di genere nella Silicon Valley è oggetto di discussione da tempo negli Stati Uniti. Secondo l’ultimo rapporto, grazie ai programmi DEI Meta ha raddoppiato il numero di dipendenti neri e ispanici negli Usa.

Dopo lo stop al fact-checking, Meta elimina anche i programmi per la diversità, l’equità e l’inclusione

Il Fatto Quotidiano




The move comes after Zuckerberg has joined other Silicon Valley leaders in cozying up to Donald Trump. Meta pledged a $1m donation to the president-elect’s 20 January inauguration. Earlier this week, UFC president and CEO Dana White, a Trump ally, was added to the company’s board.

Meta is one of several companies ending DEI efforts, including McDonald’s, Walmart, Ford and Lowe’s. Many of those companies have voluntarily walked back their diversity initiatives, while others were specifically targeted by far-right groups.

Meta terminates its DEI programs days before Trump inauguration

Adria R Walker The Guardian





Europe’s Socialist parties have demanded the European Union take action against Elon Musk and his X social media platform over his alleged “manipulation” of the continent’s politics.

The Party of European Socialists (PES) blasted Musk for his support of what it described as “one particular far-right party”.

The party in question was most likely the Alternative for Germany (AfD), whose co-leader, Alice Weidel, will appear on a podcast with Musk.

“The PES is alarmed by the spread of disinformation and possible attempts at interfering in several national elections through social media”, PES President Stefan Löfven said.

“We cannot allow any infringement of our democratic processes”.

AfD MEP Mary Khan said that Musk’s decision to talk with Weidel would be “a historic milestone” that exposed millions of people to the party’s views. "Musk is using X to give a platform to political views that are excluded by the mainstream media. Protecting free speech and increasing political engagement with our citizens is vital for a healthy democracy”, she added.

Giacomo Filibeck, the group’s General Secretary, encouraged the European Commission to implement the Digital Services Act (DSA) against the tech mogul. The legislation allows Brussels to impose certain censorship rules on social media platforms such as his X.

Musk insisted the current SPD-led government in Germany was failing in its obligation to businesses, repeatedly writing on social media and in the German press that the AfD was now the “only party that can save Germany”.

He also lashed out at the UK’s left-wing Prime Minister Keir Starmer, whom he suggested should be jailed for what the billionaire alleged was the PM’s failure to tackle migrant-related crime and child-grooming gangs.





Più o meno a metà del confronto con Elon Musk, Alice Weidel ha definito Hitler "un comunista". 

Dopo questa sparata, sessanta tra università e centri di ricerca hanno deciso di lasciare X. 

Lo storico Andreas Wirsching ha detto: "Si tratta di un falso storico, che viene fuori costantemente tra le destre più estreme". 

"Per responsabilità di Hitler furono perseguitati, chiusi nei campi e ammazzati non solo decine di migliaia di comunisti, ma anche innumerevoli socialisti e sindacalisti".

200 avvocati hanno chiesto di accelerare il processo per mettere al bando Afd, che per la Weidel è un partito "conservatore e libertario".

Nell'appello dei giuristi si legge: "Afd è un partito nemico della costituzione. Diffonde informazioni false, sabota i processi democratici e incita sempre più apertamente all'odio". 

Da qui la richiesta di vietarlo. Si tratta di una misura prevista dall'ordinamento tedesco. È il Tribunale costituzionale di Karlsruhe a decidere ma la richiesta deve partire dal Governo, dal Senato federale o dal Bundestag.

La sentenza più famosa risale al 1956 quando fu vietato il Partito Comunista di Germania. Qualche anno fa, invece, Karlsruhe bocciò la richiesta di mettere al bando i neonazisti della Npd.

"Hitler era un comunista": università tedesche in fuga da X dopo il duetto Alice Weidel-Elon Musk

Rainews





Claim: "[The National Socialists] nationalized the entire industry. ... The biggest success after that terrible era in our history was to label Adolf Hitler as right and conservative. He was exactly the opposite. He wasn't a conservative. ... He was a communist, socialist guy", Weidel told Musk.

In a follow-up interview with the German broadcaster ntv, she repeatedly emphasized: "I don't deviate from this either: Adolf Hitler was a leftist".

DW fact check: False

"What Ms. Weidel is saying is sheer nonsense", German historian Thomas Sandkühler told DW via email.

Michael Wildt, a prominent historian of the Third Reich, also told DW that Weidel's claim was "huge nonsense".

SHe should have said that Hitler was a fake socialist.

"Hitler fought Marxism fiercely and brutally right from the start", Wildt said, "the first victims to be imprisoned, tortured and killed in the concentration camps in 1933 were leftists, communists, Social Democrats and socialists".

"Economically, communism aims to overcome private property, to overcome a profit-oriented economy and to transfer the most important means of production (like mines and factories) and natural resources into common property", Thomas Weber, historian and author of the book "Becoming Hitler: The Making of a Nazi", told DW.  

The political movement of National Socialism was not in fact socialism. And it did not just emerge during Hitler's time, but had already emerged after World War I, becoming increasingly entrenched toward World War II. "National Socialism was extremely nationalist, anti-democratic, anti-pluralist, antisemitic, racist, imperialist and anti-communist", according to the Brandenburg Center for Political Education website.

The racist exclusion of minorities up to and including genocide played a central role in the ideology.

National Socialism benefited from some of the ideas of socialism, using them to win working-class votes en route to taking power in 1933. However, the Nazi labor and social legislation that followed led to the suppression, persecution and murder of communists, Social Democrats and trade unionists.

National Socialism cannot be equated with socialism. 


For years, “misinformation” has been a convenient scapegoat for governments worldwide to suppress inconvenient truths. 

Now, in the UK, the term threatens to become a legal cudgel, ready to pummel any narrative that strays too far from the government-approved script.

The Online Safety Act, sold to the public as a safeguard against harm, contains provisions that are broad enough to suppress not only malicious lies but also legitimate criticism under the guise of protecting the public. 

Perhaps the most insidious element is the creation of a disinformation advisory committee under Ofcom. This unelected body will have the power to define what counts as “misinformation”, aligning platforms’ moderation policies with government narratives.

It’s easy to imagine how this committee could become a government lapdog. If dissenting views about rape gang scandals—or any politically sensitive issue—are labeled misinformation, platforms would have little choice but to silence those voices.

Starmer’s embrace of censorship is historical. When riots broke out in the summer of 2023, his government oversaw the arrest of individuals for inflammatory social media posts. While some cases involved genuine incitement, others targeted people simply expressing anger at systemic failures or “misinformation”. 

Keir Starmer’s Censorship Playbook

Christina Maas




The anniversary of January 6 mark final collapse of centrist delusions.

Justin Trudeau, once the global poster child for progressive liberalism, announced his resignation as Canada's Prime Minister. Meanwhile in Washington, Donald Trump prepared to return to power.

The convergence of these events represents the definitive end of an era.

The limits of liberal centrism proved fatal. Unable to deliver material improvements in people's lives while preserving the interests of their donor class, these supposed saviors watched their support collapse.

Justin Trudeau was a leader who could speak the language of social justice while reassuring financial markets, who could kneel at Black Lives Matter protests while expanding oil pipelines, who could champion feminism while maintaining corporate power structures.


Trudeau became the archetype of what liberals imagined could defeat the rising tide of right-wing populism. International media swooned over his "sunny ways" and apparent commitment to progressive causes.

The reality never matched the image. 

Behind the woke platitudes and photo ops, Trudeau's government consistently served the interests of Canadian capital. 

Liberal democracy's crisis stems from its own internal contradictions. The same free market capitalism that centrist leaders champion has hollowed out democratic institutions, atomized communities, and created the precarious conditions that drive authoritarian appeals. 

The failures of figures like Trudeau reveal the bankruptcy of what have called "repressive democracy"—a system that maintains the formal structures of democratic governance while emptying them of substantive content. 

We need a democratic socialist vision that expands democracy into all spheres of life—economic, social, and political, embracing it as an ongoing project of collective liberation.

Harris, Trudeau, and the Fall of Our Noeliberal Saviors

PETER BLOOM Common Dreams




“No child is born in the wrong body”.

In her latest intervention on transgender issues, JK Rowling, the the 59-year-old Harry Potter author, said there were “no trans kids” but only adults believing in “an ideology”.

Rowling was responding to a critic who said they wished she would use her “immense power for good” and labelled her “hateful focus” on transgender children as “hurtful and unnecessary”.

“There are only adults like you, prepared to sacrifice the health of minors to bolster your belief in an ideology that will end up wreaking more harm than lobotomies and false memory syndrome combined”.

Rowling claimed children were also watching TikTok videos “of surgeons selling the idea that bodies can be modified like Lego”.

“Schools affirm kids’ trans identities behind parents’ backs”, she went on. 

“Many parents are struggling to protect kids from a Zeitgeist telling them that anxieties about puberty, sexuality and growing up can be fixed by lifelong reliance on Big Pharma and by doctors who make Frankenstein look ethical”.

Rowling has been criticised for her staunch views on gender identity and allowing trans women into women-only spaces and competing in women’s sport – but has denied accusations of transphobia.

The author decided to speak about transgender issues because she believed she was witnessing “the greatest assault of my lifetime” on women’s rights.

Rowling was branded transphobic by activists in 2020 and shunned by some actors from the Harry Potter films.

JK Rowling says ‘no child is born in the wrong body’

Tom McArdle The Telegraph







Hadronization is the process by which elementary particles called quarks and gluons join together to form protons and neutrons — the components of atoms. 

Rithya Kunnawalkam Elayavalli, a high-energy nuclear physicist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, spends their days observing hadronization and trying to formulate a theory that explains it. 

They’re part of the Sphenix and STAR experiments at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) in New York, as well as a member of the CMS experiment at CERN near Geneva. 

Their research studies the behavior of quarks and gluons in the aftermath of collisions, during the sub-millisecond time span in which these particles move freely before they hadronize anew.

To Kunnawalkam Elayavalli, it’s similar to holding the multiplicity of genders they experience as a nonbinary person.

In Tennessee, anti-trans legislation is some of the most regressive in the country. 

The best understanding of quarks and gluons that we know comes from the theory of quantum chromodynamics, which was developed in the 1970s. We call it “chromo” because we introduced this new concept called "color charge". Quarks and gluons can have three different charges, and physicists named those three things red, blue and green. You also can have antiquarks, which means you have anti-colors: anti-red, anti-blue and anti-green.

We needed something that came in threes that when added together becomes a zero quantity. Color was a reasonable term to use. With light, when you combine red, blue and green together, you get white light, which is neutral. And if you combine a color and its anti-color, you also get white. Similarly, quarks and gluons by themselves carry color charges, and all the hadrons are color-neutral combinations of those quarks and gluons. 

Everything we see in the world is color neutral.

Quarks have three color charges. Gluons have two color charges.

When quarks and gluons group into the hadrons, the theory breaks down into the region that we call nonperturbative — noncalculable — physics. 

We call it the Little Bang. At some point, it reaches the temperature at which quarks and gluons convert to hadrons.

The simple fact that gluons carry multiple color charges means they are fundamentally nonbinary creatures. And they are the cornerstone of everything around us.

This is a more colorful aspect of nature. It tells us that there’s something more than just the binary positive or negative charge. You have a lot more color choices. You have a lot more flavors in the soup.

The Physicist Decoding the Nonbinary Nature of the Subatomic World

HENRY CARNELL Quanta Magazine




A coroner has issued a warning about the effects of antidepressants prescribed by a Buckingham Palace doctor to the son-in-law of Prince and Princess Michael of Kent before his suicide.

Thomas Kingston, 45, whose marriage to Lady Gabriella at Windsor Castle in 2019 was attended by the late Queen, killed himself after “suffering adverse effects of medication he had recently been prescribed”, an inquest found.

The coroner, Katy Skerrett, warned the medication used could lead to more deaths without a change in guidance and labelling about the risks.

After complaining of poor sleep and stress at work as a financier, Kingston had initially been given the antidepressant sertraline and zopiclone, a sleeping tablet, by a GP at the Royal Mews surgery, a practice at Buckingham Palace used by royal household staff.

Kingston returned to the surgery saying they were not making him feel better and his doctor moved him from sertraline to citalopram, a similar drug in a type known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs).

In the days leading up to his death, Kingston had stopped taking medication and toxicology tests showed caffeine and small amounts of zopiclone in his system.

Skerrett questioned whether there was adequate communication of the risks of suicide associated with such medication.

She also raised concerns about whether the current guidance to persist with SSRI medications, or switch to an alternative SSRI medication, was appropriate when no benefit had been achieved.

Skerrett said this was especially concerning when “adverse side effects are being experienced”.

The coroner’s concerns echo those of Kingston’s widow, Lady Gabriella. In a statement read out by Skerrett, she said: “I believe anyone taking pills such as these needs to be made more aware of the side effects to prevent any future deaths.

Skerrett said Kingston took his own life while “suffering adverse effects of medication he had recently been prescribed”.

Dr David Healy, a psychiatric medical expert, said the guidelines and labels for SSRIs were not clear enough about the risks of going on the drugs in the first place or what the effect could be when moving from one to another.


LETTURE




A posthumous novel by the American writer and cultural anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston has been published.

In this novel, Hurston looked to redefine the legacy of Herod, who reigned as king of Judaea from 37 BCE to 4 BCE. 

In a 1953 letter to her editor Hurston wrote, "You have no idea the great amount of research that I have done on this man. No matter who talks about him, friend or foe, Herod is a magnificent character".




“I have been in sorrow’s kitchen and licked out all the pots”. 

Raised in the “pure Negro town” of Eatonville, Florida, Hurston recalls how her happy childhood, along with those of seven siblings, came to an abrupt end aged 13, when her mother died.

Hurston mined those experiences in her sharp and insightful writing in the exciting heyday of the Harlem Renaissance when, as the poet Langston Hughes writes, “the Negro was in vogue”. 

The privations of her childhood and adolescence also informed her empathic approach towards the subjects of the anthropological work of the 1930s Federal Writers’ Project in the backwash of the Great Depression.




As a trained anthropologist, Hurston often travelled by herself. Funding from a Guggenheim fellowship allowed her to travel to Jamaica and Haiti in 1936 and 1937 to “investigate [their] folklore and native customs”, a trip that resulted in the travelogue "Tell My Horse". 

Hurston revelled in mischief and provocation. She invests that spirit in her protagonists too, who sometimes seem like versions of herself, and that makes her fiction thrilling to read. 




In "Their Eyes Were Watching God", her heroine, Janie (who, like Hurston, marries three times), was inspired by voodoo mythology, in particular the legend of Erzulie. 

Janie is a romancer and dreamer, and the book questions whether she can ever outpace this fate. She refuses to play the role expected of her, regardless of the danger she faces because of this. 

Hurston has created a remarkable protagonist, seeming to herald the rebellious heroines of the civil rights era 30 years later.

In 1928, Hurston travelled to Alabama in search of Cudjo Lewis, born Oluale Kossola, an 86-year-old man then believed to have been the last living abducted African to have been on the final slave ship to the US; the last “Black Cargo”, who embodied the tragedy and legacy of enslavement.




Hurston totally immersed herself in Kossola’s life and the book that came from her many interviews with him, "Barracoon", is a heart-rending tale of loss and trauma. 




The 21 short stories of love and hate in Hurston’s "Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick" are inflected with the grammar and idioms of African American folk culture. The tales, which shock and delight, reflect the changing demographic caused by the great migration of millions of southerners to the north, spurred on by “boweevil in the cotton and the devil in the white man”.
Colin Grant The Guardian

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