April: What I'm reading, watching, & listening to.
Movies: The Donut King; JFK
When the communist Khmer Rouge regime won a bloody civil war and took control of Cambodia in 1975, refugee Ted Ngoy and his family fled to the United States. He began baking donuts and quickly built a multi-million dollar empire, employing only Cambodian refugees who are still in business today. This is a heartwarming tale of the American dream built on America's favorite sweet - donuts!
Earlier this year I went down an Oliver Stone rabbit hole - I watched The Putin Interviews, Platoon, and listened to Stone on various podcasts when I realized I hadn't seen his infamous conspiracy theory movie JFK. The film details New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison's (Kevin Costner) 1969 investigation into President Kennedy's assassination - the only such case ever brought to court. With a cast of actors including Tommy Lee Jones (Clay Shaw), Gary Oldman (Lee Harvey Oswald) and Danny Devito (David Ferrie), the movie is a wild ride if not a bit long. In 1992, one year after the film's release, renewed public interest prompted President George H.W. Bush to sign the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act which released all declassified documents for public viewing and established the Assassination Records Review Board. Even if you aren't a fan of conspiracy theories, JFK is still worth a watch for its insight into this turbulent era of American history.
Music: The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, Woodstock
I suppose in keeping with the '60s vibe I've been into lately, I downloaded a bunch of music (yes I still download music) from the 1960s: the Woodstock Festival's live album, Jimi Hendrix's Band of Gypsies album, Santana's self-titled album, Jefferson Airplane's Surrealistic Pillow, and The Doors self-titled album. I grew up listening to a lot of these bands and I keep coming back to their albums. I have a few records from the '60s, and even more albums in my iTunes library but realized I was missing several key albums. Music from this era always makes me feel good and strangely reminiscent.
Podcasts: Criminal: Breaking into the FBI
This episode of the Criminal podcast highlights how the robbery of an FBI building led to the first ever investigation of the FBI and the subsequent revealing of the FBI's illegal tactics against political activists.
In 1971, a group of brave men and women broke into an FBI building in Pennsylvania. Their plan was to take as many documents as they could to prove that the FBI was spying on antiwar activists. They called themselves the Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI. The group successfully robbed the building, sorted the documents and released them to several newspapers, and were ultimately published by the Washington Post. The documents proved the extent to which the FBI was monitoring, surveilling, and infiltrating not only political activists, but also black power groups and the black community as a whole. One document contained the term COINTELPRO. Subsequent Freedom of Information Act requests to the FBI to release documents on this program were denied, until a 1975 Senate committee investigated the FBI and other intelligence agencies. COINTELPRO was an illegal FBI counter-intelligence program designed to subdue movements which threatened U.S. politics.
TV: Q: Into the Storm
Cullan Hoback's HBO docuseries Q: Into the Storm is a comprehensive investigation into the QAnon conspiracy, the catalyst for the attack on the U.S. Capitol building by supporters of President Trump on January 6, 2021. Hoback dives deep into internet security and privacy, free speech and information warfare. The series is a primer on other internet mysteries like Cicada 3301 and takes a look at a string of white-nationalist shooters who found a community on imageboards 4chan and 8chan. Who is Q? Is it Ron Watkins, 8chan admin and son of 8chan's founder, Jim Watkins? Was it a government or military psy-op? Even if the series doesn’t quite wrap up the mystery behind the anonymous poster who claimed that President Trump would save the world from a cabal of bloodthirsty pedophiles, Into the Storm is an in-depth look into a real movement in US politics during the Trump years.
KW