| 'If you keep telling people something untrue loud and long enough, they're apt to believe it'  After a hyper-politicized year, a crop of this year's nominees for best picture at the Academy Awards on Sunday resonate with conflicts and divides that define modern American life.
None of the nominees directly address the Donald Trump era. But the American film industry is clearly grappling with societal fault lines that the ex-President widened during his time in power. The movies take on race, violence, a corrupt and discriminatory justice system, democracy under attack, immigration, Great Recession economic dislocation, workers' struggles in low-wage jobs, and the nature of political resistance. Sound familiar?
Take this line in "Mank," a biopic of the alcoholic screenwriter of "Citizen Kane": "If you keep telling people something untrue loud and long enough, they're apt to believe it." It's impossible not to think of the alternative reality that Trump imposed on America for four years -- and in which his millions of supporters still live.
Uproar over race, policing and the US criminal justice system is mirrored in "Judas and the Black Messiah," about the FBI's infiltration of the radical Black Panther movement. It's also a subplot in "The Trial of the Chicago 7," which portrays democracy under siege in 1968 from malignant leaders.
Two of the movies are classic meditations on the seductive promise, myth and ambivalent reality of the American dream. Economic deprivation and the loss of identity it brings animate "Nomadland," a film about an itinerant worker who journeys between temporary jobs across a haunting American West landscape while living out of her van. In "Minari," a South Korean immigrant couple struggle to put down roots, literal and metaphorical, for their young family in the tough soil of Arkansas.
This year's picks underscore a recent movement in the academy to feature greater racial and social diversity. In a reflection of America's broader polarization, conservatives argue Hollywood is hostage to politically correct liberal propaganda. But these nominees don't ring with tokenism. They are serious and patient, and most are subtle. Each in a way is like a single act of a grand political tragedy unfolding in America from the 1930s to the recent past. The world and America India reported the world's biggest-ever 24-hour spike in Covid-19 cases.
UK lawmakers declared China's treatment of Uyghurs a "genocide."
And a rare tropical cyclone is approaching one of Africa's most populated cities.
Meanwhile in America, New York City is suing Big Oil for misleading consumers about climate change.
President Joe Biden is preparing to declare the massacre of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire a "genocide."
And US Capitol Police allegedly were told to only watch for "anti-Trump" protesters on January 6.  Superyacht Project 817 barely squeezed through the canals of Holland. Climate math On Thursday, the Biden administration released much-anticipated carbon emission reduction targets for the year 2030 (known as nationally determined contributions, or NDCs), which stated the US will reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 50-52% from the 2005 levels.
But why 2005? That year was likely chosen because emissions peaked around that time -- and that makes the goal look bigger than it actually is. US emissions started slowly decreasing year over year between 2005 and 2007. Compared with 2005, the US is already down about 12% -- consider it a head start!
Emissions are global, and to prevent catastrophic climate change, countries must work together to reduce them. There is no hard and fast rule on how much each country should contribute to the global cut.
Instead, each country sets its own nationally determined contribution, pledging to reduce its emissions in reference to some previous year, to show the progress it is making toward eventually getting its emissions down to zero (which is ultimately what it will take to end our human-induced warming of the planet). Each country can also select its own base line for progress. Just like the US, most pick a year when their emissions peaked.
But in reality, these nationally determined contributions are not worth the official government letterhead they are printed on if the countries do not follow through with their commitments. We need to see concrete plans on how the US, and other nations, will actually bring emissions down. These plans will include transition to renewables, the electrification of transportation, etc.
Until this happens, think of Thursday's climate summit declarations as the environmental equivalent of a January 1 weight-loss resolution. It is a good start, but without following through with diet and exercise, nothing is going to change. -- CNN meteorologist Brandon Miller writes for Meanwhile Thanks for sticking with us through the week.
On Friday, Chad holds a state funeral for President Idriss Deby. Afghan Foreign Minister Mohammed Hanif Atmar, Pakistani Foreign Minister Shan Mahmood Qureshi and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu hold a joint news conference. On Saturday, demonstrators are expected to protest outside the Association of Southeast Asian Nations headquarters in Jakarta as leaders discuss the coup in Myanmar. Russia plans to close off parts of the Black Sea until October 31 to foreign warships. And Sweden's traditional "cow release" will take place online due to Covid-19.
And on Sunday, a socially distanced Academy Awards ceremony takes place in Los Angeles. View in browser | All CNN Newsletters
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