The Persian Gulf nation of Qatar has been held in a weird kind of hostage situation since June 5. That’s when Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and a few other countries decided to try to isolate and manipulate Qatar by cutting diplomatic relations and imposing an embargo and something of a blockade. A blockade is, by definition, an act of war, but the blockaders didn’t actually declare war, or send troops, or even make a clear statement of casus belli at the time. Qatar has long been a scapegoat for hardliners devoted to regional stability on their own terms only.

John Kiriakou led the CIA operation that arrested, or rather, kidnapped without charge, Abu Zubaydah. Joseph Hickman helped imprison Abu Zubaydah as a guard at Guantanamo and was later the lead researcher for Zubaydah’s habeas defense team.

Here are some highlights of a tale of crackpot criminality recounted by Hickman and Kiriakou in their jointly authored new book, The Convenient Terrorist:

Maher Abu Zubayda and Zain Abidin Mohammed Husain aka Abu Zubaydah are two completely different people. They and many other people use the name Abu Zubayda, with various spellings in English transliterations from Arabic. The Zubaydah family was evicted from a Palestinian village during the Nakba. The CIA, employing more torturers than Arab speakers, confused the two Zubaydahs. When the basic facts that the CIA had about the life of the man it imprisoned and tortured turned out to all be wrong, the CIA paid no attention.

America serves up its news in a caldron from hell, or so it sometimes seems. The fragments are all simmering in the same juice: bombs and drones and travel bans, slashed health care, police shootings, the Confederate flag.

Double, double, toil and trouble . . .

With Robert Xavier Rodríguez’s Frida Long Beach Opera has presented its second socially conscious, 21st century bio-op premiere of the season, solidifying its stature as a cutting edge operatic force to be reckoned with. LBO’s first biographical opera was composer Philip Glass and librettist Rudolph Wurlitzer’s highly critical look at the beloved Walt Disney (baritone Justin Ryan), The Perfect American - who as the scathing opera showed, with flaws and all, was anything but. While the latter enjoyed its U.S. debut at LBO, Frida had its SoCal premiere courtesy of LBO. Interestingly, both of these real life historical figures - animator and theme park innovator “Uncle Walt” and Mexican painter Frida Kahlo (Puerto Rican mezzo-soprano Laura Virella) - are icons in Southern California.

Filmfest’s often include a stinkeroo, and Opuntia is arguably LAFF 2017’s most-must-miss movie. In his defense, writer/director David Fenster’s 60 minute pseudo-doc does have some interesting things about it. Opuntia (which translates as “prickly pear”) is a movie meditation on 16th century Spanish explorer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and his peregrinations across much of what whitey now calls America. So viewers can learn a bit of history and particularly, in keeping with LAFF’s multi-culti leanings, about this European’s early contact with our continent’s indigenous people.

Fenster’s film form is also interesting as he attempts to combine the documentary with the poetic in an effort to create what LAFF’s program guide dubs a “visual essay.” But in doing so, Fenster fails to create either a doc per se (although he does use actuality footage) or a motion picture poem. Many of his interview subjects are inherently incredible airy fairy New Age types - to give you an idea of Fenster’s fringe fixations, he previously helmed cinema about Sasquatch called Bigfoot Museum (methinks the name says it all).