Hasta La Gadget!

Netflix released a teaser trailer for the first of their four-part “Gilmore Girls” revival series on Wednesday, in which Lorelai (Lauren Graham) asks Rory (Alexis Bledel) a very important question:

Of course, we all knew the answer, but Oliver confirmed it himself during his appearance on “The Late Show” later that day. 

“Lorelai, the answer is yes, I do find you hot. And I’ll tell you why. I’m a red-blooded male with a in-built heat detector and my heat detector registers you as en fuego,” he said.

The feeling seems to be mutual for Graham, who returned the compliment in a tweet directed at Oliver early on Thursday morning. 

The teaser trailer also had Graham’s character pondering whether Amy Schumer would like her, which of course, was also quickly confirmed by the star herself. 

Something tells us this is going to be a theme for the Netflix show …

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Indonesia is preparing to execute at least 14 people Thursday on drug trafficking charges in one of the largest mass drug executions in the nation’s history, according to multiple human rights groups and media reports. 

Executions are by firing squad and typically take place at night in Indonesia. Authorities are supposed to give those on death row 72-hour notice of the date. These 14 inmates were told earlier this week to expect their executions by the end of the week.

But according to Amnesty International, the families of the 13 men and one woman were only notified Thursday morning that the executions would take place the same day, 24 hours earlier than initially expected. That late notice is “contrary to Indonesian law and international standards,” the human rights group said.

Several human rights organizations have condemned the state-sanctioned killings and have called on Indonesian President Joko Widodo, also known as Jokowi, to commute the sentences of the four Indonesians and 10 foreign nationals.

“Jokowi should not become the most prolific executioner in recent Indonesian history,” Rafendi Djamin, Amnesty International’s director for South East Asia and the Pacific, said in a statement Thursday. “He still has time to pull back from these unlawful executions, before inviting global notoriety.”

If the latest executions proceed as planned, Widodo, who has been in office since October 2014, will have carried out the death penalty more times this century than any other Southeast Asian country and any other Indonesian leader, Amnesty International said.

Four of the individuals expected to be put to death on Thursday have clemency appeals that have yet to be heard, according to Djamin. He said there are “serious fair trial concerns” with several other prisoners’ cases. 

“At a time when a majority of the world’s countries have turned their back on this cruel and irreversible punishment, President Jokowi is recklessly hurtling in the wrong direction,” said Djamin.

Human Rights Watch also condemned the planned executions.

“President Jokowi should acknowledge the death penalty’s barbarity and avoid a potential diplomatic firestorm by sparing the lives of the 14 or more people facing imminent execution,” Phelim Kine, deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. “Jokowi should also ban the death penalty for drug crimes, which international law prohibits, rather than giving the go-ahead for more multiple executions.”

According to Cornell Law School’s death penalty database, there are about 134 people currently on death row in Indonesia and about half of them were convicted of drug crimes. With Thursday’s planned deaths, Widodo will have executed 28 individuals during his tenure. By comparison, under Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, his predecessor from 2004 to 2014, there were 21 executions in total.

Plans for Thursday’s executions reportedly began after the United Nations convened in April for a special meeting aimed at shaping global drug policy. The gap between nations that want to embrace more progressive harm reduction policies and those who want to maintain focus on criminalization of drugs became clear at that gathering. A delegate from Indonesia was reportedly booed when he defended his country’s use of the death penalty for drug offenses, calling it an “important component” of the nation’s drug policy.

Indonesia authorities maintain that the country is under siege by the illicit drug trade and that the use of the death penalty is part of their war against a “narcotics emergency.”

But the notion that the death penalty has a useful deterrent effect has been debunked. Just last year, the U.N.’s Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Ivan Šimonović noted that while several countries continue to use capital punishment for drug-related offenses, “there is no evidence that the death penalty deters any crime.” Even when it comes to murder, a recent study concluded that the death penalty does not deter the crime “to a marginally greater extent than does the threat and application of the supposedly lesser punishment of life imprisonment.”

“There is no credible evidence that the presence or absence of the death penalty has any effect on drug use or drug availability in a country,” Rick Lines, executive director for Harm Reduction International who wrote an extensive report on the use of the death penalty for drug crimes, said in a statement. “Capital punishment has always had much more to do with flexing state power than it does with crime control or prevention.”

Earlier this week the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, urged Indonesia to end the practice. Under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Indonesia has ratified, countries that continue to use the death penalty must apply it to only “the most serious crimes,” Zeid said. Drug-related offenses do not meet that threshold, the high commissioner said. 

His office has also expressed “deep concern” about what it described as a lack of transparency and uncertainty around whether death row inmates receive fair trials in Indonesia.

The executions are expected to be carried out at a high security prison on Nusa Kambangan island in central Java.

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Recently a lot of people have quoted Protestant pastor Martin Niemöller, who wrote:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out–
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out–
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out–
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me–and there was no one left to speak for me.

His words were written in the context of the Holocaust, yet they are chilling today as they’ve become a refrain of protest to the Donald Trump campaign for U.S. President.

And even so, Trump continues to gain momentum. A USC/Los Angeles Times poll published yesterday has Trump almost seven points ahead of Hillary Clinton. Clinton would not be my first choice for president. But when I think of Donald Trump’s promises to this country and the number of people who support his values, I am overcome with a feeling of darkness that was only hinted at by the Republican National Convention.

Have you thought about the reality of Donald Trump’s promises? If he gets his way–if American people give him his way–this is what will happen in our country.

‘Humane’ Deportation of Undocumented People

Last November, Trump said that he would create a “deportation force” that would target undocumented people and remove them from the country.

“You’re going to have a deportation force, and you’re going to do it humanely and you’re going to bring the country — and, frankly, the people, because you have some excellent, wonderful people, some fantastic people that have been here for a long period of time,” the real-estate mogul replied.

Trump promises a “humane” approach at the outset–yet he refers to it as a force. Is this actionable? Yes: Although the U.S. Census Bureau denied it for years, in 2007 the agency was forced to admit when a statute of limitations expired that it assisted the U.S. government in identifying and rounding up Japanese Americans–legal citizens in most cases–and relocating them to internment camps. Although (undoubtedly due to national pride and denial of our country’s shameful history) we remember these camps as a protective measure and not anything like what the German Nazi regime enforced, our “internment camps” were essentially the same as Nazi concentration camps. Donald Trump’s roundup of so-called illegal human beings would need to place them in holding at least temporarily. Trump, given his way, would bring concentration camps to the United States of America. And anyone who is not a natural-born or naturalized citizen would be, by his terms, eligible for the roundup. Are you ready?

Inching Even More Closely to Naziism–Really

Not satisfied with his roundup of “illegals,” Trump has proposed creating a national registered database of Muslims–American or not. “I would certainly implement that, absolutely,” he said in November. This proposal mimics the Nazi’s method for identifying Jewish and other “problematic” people. From the New York Times:

Asked later, as he signed autographs, how such a database would be different from Jews having to register in Nazi Germany, Mr. Trump repeatedly said, “You tell me,” until he stopped responding to the question.

While the standard decennial United States Census cannot by law mandate that religious affiliation be reported, “in some person or household surveys, however, the U.S. Census Bureau may collect information about religious practices, on a voluntary basis. Yet there has been a great deal of criticism that so-called voluntary Census surveys, such as the National Health Interview Survey and the American Community Survey, are conducted in such a way as to intimidate those who attempt to exercise the “voluntary” aspect and decline to participate. In such cases of harassment, the Census field workers frequently insist either that responses are required by law, or that even though they are not technically legally required, “they won’t take no for an answer.”  Given that the Census Bureau provided its confidential findings about American people to the federal government for the sake of locating and forcing Japanese Americans out of their homes, and then lied about this for 50 years, there is no reason to assume that federal agencies would not comply with the Commander in Chief’s orders to identify and round up every undocumented immigrant and every Muslim American in its records.

This could be reality.

Stop and think about this. This is your country. It is your United States of America. How many of us are willing to surf this unconscionable tsunami, assuming that we will stay afloat while others are knocked down and dragged off not to be seen again?

When Trump’s uniformed men knock on your door brandishing firearms and ask you which of your neighbors you suspect of being “illegal,” or of being Muslim, are you going to point out those people? 

What about when they finish disposing of those unwanted people and move along to the next group. By his record, we can imagine that Mike Pence, swept up in the opportunity to eradicate those who don’t fit within our newly narrowed national identity, might come for LGBT people. Are you, as I am, one of these undesirables? Are you ready to lose your home? Your rights? Maybe even your life?

If you’re not Muslim, not a recent immigrant, not gay, are you going to point out those who you know are to save your hide? 

Or maybe not to save your hide. Are you be so transformed by the time these events manifest that you yourself will have come to hate non-native, nonwhite, straight American people? To hate them so much that you’ll be happy to help make them disappear? 

And then who is next? Because, believe it or not, once one perceived enemy is vanquished in such a mad way, there’s always another around the corner–at some point it will be you or someone you love. Are you ready?

The United Soviet States of Russia and America

Donald Trump yesterday called on the Russian government–ostensibly, a bureaucratic extension of the wants and whims of Vladimir Putin, a dictator whom Donald Trump gives “an A for leadership,” to hack into the United States State Department files to find dirt on Hillary Clinton and, if he gets his way, to hand Donald Trump the American presidency by way of a democratic election. Democracies have a bad habit of electing dictators. Are we that stupid as a nation? I never thought so. Now I fear we are. 

Your future president has asked the Russian government to illegally hack into top-top-secret American security records. Are you ready to be Russian? 

The Russian government unabashedly rejects all the values that have defined the United States of America since our founding: There is no right to free speech in Russia–dissenters disappear with alarming frequency, whether they are high-profile journalists or private citizens. There is no privacy–and even though we in the United States arguably have no individual privacy left, we have some freedom to think and say what we believe. At least for now. 

If you think this sounds unlikely, recall our history with the USSR and Russia, and recognize the significance of the potential future president of the United States authorizing that country to hack into our highest-level secrets. Think about what this means. Really think about it.

Trump’s Admiration for Putin-style Leadership Could Mean the Death of Sacred American Guns 

The right to bear arms that so many American people hold as their greatest sacrament is an old-fashioned American value that, should Donald Trump take control in the image of his friend Vladimir Putin, most likely would disappear along with all the brown people who trouble him so greatly. In Russia, “individuals are not allowed to carry guns acquired for self-defense.” 

Donald Trump gives Putin an A for leadership. Donald Trump calls on this man and his country to hack into our country’s most secret and secure information for the sake of winning his campaign. Here, Trump paradoxically has exploited his very American freedom to say what he thinks, no matter the cost to anyone, as he makes a treasonous plea to the dictator of a country that suppresses speech under threat, and enforcement, of imprisonment, work camps, and death. Donald Trump assigns this type of governmental body an A. This is a man who is thisclose to becoming our next president, and who has amassed riotous, mad-dog support by half of American voters. We are standing on the precipice of a decision that could forever redefine who we are as a country, and who lives here, and possibly who lives and who dies. Donald Trump is not afraid to address death; in fact, he calls for it: as his regime systematically eliminates people who practice the Muslim faith in this country, he would be authorizing and overseeing the intentional extermination of entire families, men, women and children alike, in the Middle East. “You have to take out their families.”

Anyone, anyone who believes that the Islamic State and its disparate followers are a threat to this country, just wait until Donald Trump authorizes the systematic hunting and slaughtering of their families by American military forces. People who vote for Donald Trump are willing on a war perhaps unlike anything we have recorded in our history books, and quite possibly one that would discontinue the publication of any further history books if we don’t win a war against an enemy with no borders and no obvious identification.

What happens when Trump’s armed, uniformed men come knocking on your door? If you’re Muslim, American citizen or not, you’ll be swept away. (What if Muslim people convert to Christianity to preserve their safety and their American citizenship? Would this forced conversion be good enough? How far are American people willing to foster a modern religious crusade? To the death?) 

If you’ve come to this country as part of the fabled huddled masses yearning to breathe free among whom almost all of us can count our ancestors who first arrived here, and you don’t have papers that assign you what our Constitution calls God-given rights, then you’ll be swept away, too. What if you’re not one of these people? Are you satisfied with this scenario? Because it’s the scenario that Donald Trump represents–in a very real way–for this country of which we have all been so proud for so long, despite our problems. 

It’s 2020, four years from now, and there’s a little girl living next door to you. 

She’s quiet, but you saw her go in and haven’t seen her come out. She’s probably hiding, as you suspect others are. She has dark hair, dark eyes, formidable brows. When they come to your door in their boots with their guns, and your guns have been taken away by the man who promised he would not, and you tell them about the little girl next door, you guess when asked that her name might be Maria–she could be Mexican. Or she could be Mariam, a Middle Eastern girl. Her name, all things being the same, is Anne Frank, and you, as one of the participants in an unholy cultural movement, have just ended her story.

Are you ready to be part of the darkest chapter of American history? This foreboding future is dangerously close to becoming a reality.

I am not stumping for a political candidate. I am looking at an unimaginable and yet, by all accounts, likely outcome of a Donald Trump presidency. I am not ready, and I have a sickening feeling that I would not last long in his world.

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AARP’s Kevin Donnellan Exclusive Ideagen Global Thought Leader Interview (Part II) with Ideagen’s George Sifakis

Kevin: I worked on Capitol Hill before coming to AARP. When I worked on the Hill, I
spent a lot of time focusing on aging issues. Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro’s congressional district had one of the oldest aging populations in the country. We spent a lot of time working on aging issues. That’s where I got into aging issues. When I decided to leave the Hill, I was attracted to AARP because of their mission. I have to say, when I got here I thought, I’ll do this for a couple of years and then I’ll try something else. Here I am now, 30 years later, still at
AARP.

The main reason I’m here … Well, there are actually two. One is, again, the mission of
the organization. It’s a fantastic mission. As I said earlier, I love what I do and I think
that’s important. I think you have to believe in what you do and want to get up and go
to work every day and feel like you’re making a difference, and I do.
Secondly, we have an absolutely fantastic staff here at AARP. Unbelievable
professionals who are all very much dedicated to the mission of the organization and
that makes this a great organization. That’s why I joined AARP. That’s why I was
inspired to join here, and it’s why I’ve been inspired to stay.

George: Kevin, that’s amazing. You know, 30 years later, that’s an inspiration at its best.

Kevin: The gentleman that hired me at the time, I said, “Two years. I’ll give you two years.”
Here I am, 30 years later.

George: That is incredible. A perfect segue again into, how did your role as the chief
communications officer at AARP prepare you to become the executive vice president
and now chief of staff. What key lessons and vantage points helped you to carry out
this successful mission?

Kevin: I think part of what prepared me actually, I guess, to be chief of staff for the
organization is I have worked in and managed many parts of the organization over my
30 years here. I have a very good perspective on the breadth of work, at least I think I
do, that AARP is engaged with. Then again, having been the chief communications
officer, there are certain skills and disciplines that are there that I think are very
successful for me in carrying out this role as well.

There really, I guess, three that come to mind. One is the need to integrate. When I
was our chief communications officer, the group that I helped build there was an
integrated communications team. Most of our communications and communications
related functions in the organization prior to that had been spread out all over the
organization and they weren’t terribly integrated. It was to really build the strong
integrated communications team and to bring it into the 21st century, which I think
we did and we’ve done fairly successfully. So integration’s a big part of that, getting all
sorts of folks to work together.

The other is to really focus on the mission. I am very much a mission-driven individual
and this is very much a mission-driven organization. Making sure that everything
we’re doing is about the mission … If it’s not helping to drive the mission, questioning
why are we doing it? Should we be doing it? If not, how do we stop it?
The other piece of that, which sort of relates to that focus on the mission, but it’s also
message discipline. As any good communicator knows, you’ve got to be pretty
disciplined in your messages if you’re going to be successful in getting them out, being
clear so that people understand what it is you’re doing.

I think it’s those three skills, particularly that I bring that our helping me in this role
and hopefully making me successful in this role.

Abigail: Kevin, that’s an incredible perspective. I think it’s very interesting to hear how you’ve
worked in so many different parts of AARP. That leads me into my next question
which is, how does AARP effectively reach and positively affect the more than 37
million members?

Kevin: We reach our members through a variety of methods. First of all, we have world class
publications here, the AARP Magazine and the AARP Bulletin. They are truly award
winning publications that have enormous reach. AARP has upwards of 38 million
members and our publications go to all 38 million. According to the MRI numbers,
which is the industry standard for measuring readership, we have a little over 36
million readers of our publications, which is, at least I always find when I really step
back and think about that, somewhat mind-boggling. Those are two very effective
tools that we have to reach them.

We don’t limit with that. We obviously use a lot of social media and web and what
have you also to reach not only our members, but the broader population. We have a
membership, as I said, of a little over 38 million, but we serve the entire 50-plus
population. That’s who we view as the people we serve, is those 50-plus and frankly
and their families. We’re not limited just by our membership.

Our publications, our online work, and then we also do a tremendous amount in
community. AARP likes to view itself not so much as a national organization, but a
nationwide organization. By that we mean, we’re in every community across the
country and we have lots of active volunteers and staff in communities across the
country. We have offices in all of the states and a lot of the major cities across the
country so we do a lot of face-to-face with folks as well.

We reach them basically through the breadth of communication channels. We also
use direct mail and other venues like that. We have a pretty strong brand and we
have a pretty strong trust with our members. When we send them information
materials, they will often … Not only do they read it, but they act on it.

To be continued with Part III of the Exclusive Ideagen Interview Series.

For more information on Ideagen, visit: www.Idea-gen.com
For more information on AARP, visit: www.AARP.org

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Andrew Garfield has shed his British accent in the past, playing Spider-Man and, in “99 Homes,” a father battling real-estate corruption. Now, he is portraying another American hero in “Hacksaw Ridge,” this time with a Southern drawl that is so earnest you’ll just want to squeeze his dainty, heroic little body. 

In Mel Gibson’s new movie, Garfield plays Desmond Doss, the religious conscientious objector who saved 75 comrades in a World War II battle without carrying a single gun. President Harry Truman awarded Doss a Medal of Freedom, and Robert Schenkkan (”All the Way”) and Randall Wallace (”Braveheart”) awarded him with a screenplay about his life. The movie, which also stars Vince Vaughn and Sam Worthington, opens Nov. 4, smack-dab in the war zone that is Oscar season. Watch the trailer below.

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