On paper, the Community Safety Initiative is supposed to make Columbus residents safer in the summer months. Police officers go into neighborhoods identified as “crime hot spots” to seize illegal firearms and arrest people who sell drugs or commit violent crimes.

 

In what's being called the worst mass killing by the United States in the past six months, numerous mentally disturbed individuals, with the extensive backing of a well-financed terrorist organization, and support from a growing circle of allied gang members, have gruesomely slaughtered 1,110 to 1,558 innocent men, women, and children.

This incident, which has left shocked and speechless a handful of people who've heard and thought about it, took place between December 1, 2015, and May 31, 2016, during which interval the killers got off 4,087 airstrikes, including 3,010 over Iraq and 1,077 over Syria.

Aiding and abetting the slaughter, and now also being sought by law enforcement, are France, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Netherlands, Australia, Denmark, and Canada. In what is widely understood as an appeal for judicial mercy, Canada has expressed remorse. None of the other alleged perpetrators has done so. Several have openly acknowledged their participation, including by displaying the gang symbol of a U.S. flag tattooed on their glutei maximi.

One of the film capital’s top movie-paloozas, LA Film Festival, has taken place near Culver Studios, where Gone With the Wind’s Atlanta set was burned down and giants like Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles made movie history. From June 1-9 LAFF screened scores of Hollywood features, foreign films, indies, shorts and documentaries. For the first time the U.S. State Department co-presented a roundtable discussion of Global Media Makers, featuring filmmakers from Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon Morocco and Turkey.

The filmfest’s more commercial popcorn-munching fare included The Conjuring 2, a horror flick starring Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga projected at what had been Grauman’s Chinese Theatre - where stars’ footprints are enshrined in concrete - on Hollywood Boulevard. As their reboots prepared to launch, the original Ghostbusters and Independence Day were shown in Downtown L.A., while 2001’s Shrek was screened at Culver City’s ArcLight Cinemas in Los Angeles, where most Festival movies were presented.

This won’t be the last.

Half a week into the Orlando tragedy, this reality remains pretty much unacknowledged, as cause-seekers focus on security and ISIS and the specific mental instability of Omar Mateen, who, as the world knows, took 49 precious lives and injured 53 others at the nightclub Pulse in the early hours of June 12.

Was it terrorism? Was it a hate crime? Apparently there’s a media obsession with categorizing murder. No, this was faux-war, as all our mass killings are, waged by an army of one or two or a few. And it won’t be the last. Mass killings are part of the social fabric – still shocking, still horrifying, but becoming more and more . . . “normal.”

Tighter security won’t stop them. Destroying ISIS won’t stop them. Banning immigrants won’t stop them. Maybe nothing will – though I don’t believe that. I do believe in karma, which is to say, the idea that what goes around comes around. If we act with violence, violence will come back to haunt us.

Young viewers can learn valuable lessons from Finding Dory: lessons about perseverance and learning to celebrate their individuality. Let’s just hope these future drivers don’t pick up any ideas about traffic safety.

A climactic scene has Dory, the blue tang fish, and Hank, her octopus pal, driving a truck the wrong way down a freeway while other vehicles swerve frantically to avoid them. Funny? Maybe for the kids in the audience, but adults’ enjoyment might be tempered by memories of the countless tragedies wrong-way drivers have caused in real life.

Beyond teaching the dubious message that reckless driving is harmless fun, the scene may strike some as odd for another reason. Namely, it places two marine animals in an environment where they’re completely out of their element. And it’s far from the only scene where this is the case.

Beginning around the halfway point or sooner, the plot takes the plucky but forgetful Dory (Ellen DeGeneres) to the human-run Monterey Marine Life Institute. As a result, she spends most of her time hopping from one water receptacle to the next rather than swimming around in the deep blue sea.