A quick look at three news items from the holiday weekend:
First up, actor and sponsor of the TriBeCa film festival, Robert De Niro, has been duped by a dodgy documentary. Late last week he announced that he had forced the organisers of the film festival to include a new exploitation doco by anti-vaccination fraudster Andrew Wakefield, Vaxxed.
Wakefield, a disgraced former doctor, is the man responsible for fooling many parents into thinking that there is a link between the MMR child vaccine and autism.
De Niro, who is the parent of an autistic child, said he wanted the film included because it is “critical that all of the issues surrounding the causes of autism be openly discussed and examined.”
After a few days of discussion with actual doctors, De Niro has done a reverse ferret and announced the film will not be shown, saying “My intent in screening this film was to provide an opportunity for conversation around an issue that is deeply personal to me and my family. But after reviewing it … we do not believe it contributes to or furthers the discussion I had hoped for.”
It’s good that the flaky film has been dropped, but sad that it will probably benefit financially from the exposure in the news. Anti vaxxers, like climate change deniers, need to know that the discussion is over.
Second bit of good news, the town of Palmyra has been liberated from the clutches of ISIS. The bad news is that it’s now been taken over by the Syrian army. The rout of the ISIS forces has been helped by strategic bombing from the Russian Air Force, who still haven’t actually gone away, despite running out of hospitals to bomb.
Palmyra is one of the world’s greatest historical sites. ISIS have blown up much of the historical infrastructure, but there is hope that some antiquities remain.
In a broader geo-political sense, the loss of Palmyra is a major blow to ISIS, and the phony caliphate looks to be shrinking fast, hence the shift to distraction attacks in Europe.
Lastly, this weekend marks the centenary of the Easter Rising. One hundred years ago, Irish citizens attempted to throw off the shackles of British imperialism. They didn’t succeed immediately, but it was a significant step toward the establishment of a free Ireland.
The British regime acted brutally to suppress the nascent Irish liberation movement, murdering many of the leaders in the weeks afterwards. The most vicious killing was that of James Connolly, who was already dying of a gunshot wound to the leg. Connolly was shot while strapped to a chair, as he could not stand.
Remember James Connolly the next time you see the NZ flag.
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