Jared Kushner, slumlord millionaire

Netflix has just released the six episodes of the second season of its excellent Dirty Money series that looks at all the corruption that is around. It focuses on the wealthy and big businesses that are corrupt and get rich at the expense of poor and vulnerable people. Back in 2019, I wrote about one episode in the first series that looked at the corrupt practices of the giant bank HSBC that was enabling the laundering of drug cartel money. In the second series they focus on Wells Fargo bank, the incredibly corrupt prime minister of Malaysia, ‘dirty gold’ that is produced using illegal mining and environmental destruction, abuse and exploitation of the elderly, and companies that pollute the environments of small towns. They are truly the scum of the Earth.
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Music nostalgia

One of the reasons we remember certain songs so fondly is because they kindle old memories, if not of specific events then of certain periods in our lives. There were plenty of songs that I enjoyed, especially in my teens and twenties when popular music played such a big part of my life. But one can never remember them at will though sometimes all it takes are the opening bars of a song to have the memory of that song come flooding back.

So I was delighted when I was sent this website called The Nostalgia Machine. Pick a year and then click on the ‘Hit Me’ button and it brings up some of the hit songs from that year. I just randomly chose 1967 and I found so many songs that I used to love that I had forgotten, such as Something Stupid by Frank and Nancy Sinatra.
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Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers (2017)

I watched this 2017 production by the New York City Metropolitan Opera company two nights ago and really enjoyed it. I thought that it was a superb production, well sung. I learned that the only other time that the New York Met had put on this little-performed opera was way back in 1918 featuring opera legend Enrico Caruso.

The story is set in a pearl diving fishing village in ancient Sri Lanka, though this production had people in modern dress, seemingly in the 1950s. It tells of two close friends Zurga and Nadir who both fall in love with the same woman Leila. They agree to preserve their friendship by not pursuing her any further. She in turn becomes a priestess that requires a promise to keep her face veiled from everyone and remain a virgin. Leila later becomes the priestess of the village where Zurga is the leader but he does not recognize the veiled woman. But Zurga becomes intensely jealous when he discovers that Leila and Nadir had indeed secretly pursued their love before their earlier parting, and that on meeting again after she became a priestess in the village, they still loved each other. When it is discovered that they met secretly, it causes a major uproar.
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Europe was central to the spread of Covid-19

One of the features of the current pandemic is that the more developed countries especially in Europe seem to have been hit the hardest in terms of the current number of cases. Joe Penney writes that Europe was also the hub from which cases spread to the rest of the world.

As Covid-19 cripples the U.S. and ravages many countries in the world, politicians are battling to craft a narrative of who is to blame for its damage. The virus started in China, of course, but narratives of how it went from epidemic to global pandemic often leave out a crucial element: the role of Europe.
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Andrew Lloyd Webber to stream his musicals for free

Andrew Lloyd Webber will be streaming, free-of charge, one of his musicals for 48 hours every weekend, starting each Friday night. The first one, currently streaming, is a 2000 production of Joseph and the Technicolour Dreamcoat starring Donny Osmond, Joan Collins, and Richard Attenborough.

It will be available to watch on the YouTube channel The Show Must Go On for 48 hours, starting on Friday at 7pm GMT. The series will continue every Friday for the next few weeks.

Next weekend’s musical will be Lloyd Webber’s 2012 production of Jesus Christ Superstar, starring Tim Minchin, Mel C. and Chris Moyles.

(Note that the time given is GMT (or UTC), which is one hour earlier than the current daylight savings time in the UK.)

I am not a huge fan of Webber but I did love the 1973 film version of Jesus Christ Superstar. This was perhaps because his some-time lyricist Tim Rice did a superb job with the lyrics for that show. I don’t know how well this version will compare musically with that film. But I do know that Webber is immensely popular and so I pass this information on for those who like his work and would like to see more.

Trump fires inspector general who passed whistleblower complaint on to Congress

Late on Friday night, Donald Trump fired Michael Atkinson, the inspector general for the intelligence community, whom he chose for the post in 2017. The inspector general’s position is supposed to be to act as a kind of ombudsman and guardian to ensure that the government agency that they monitor is being true to its mission. Atkinson, a 15-year veteran of the justice department, was the person who received the whistleblower complaint about Trump’s extortion phone call to the Ukrainian president and thought it merited being passed on to Congress. All this was standard procedure.
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There is no vaccine or cure for willful ignorance and stupidity

The New York Times has published a map based on cell phone tracking data that shows how different regions compare in terms of the daily distance traveled during this period of people being asked to stay at home as much as possible. The overall average has dropped from five miles per day to less than a mile a day, which is a huge drop. But the drop has not been uniform. At a casual glance it looks like the southern regions have people traveling more.
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