** "JJ and I have been on a long journey together - what we ended up doing and what we hope to continue to do, is expose cracks within the system that we're taught to trust..."

The Sing Sing Chronicles: One of the year's most award winning dramatic films about a man imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit, 'Sing Sing' stars that prisoner turned actor, Jon-Adrian 'JJ' Velazquez, exonerated after nearly 24 years behind bars - and co-starring other incarcerated men as well, staging Shakespeare there as an emotional bid to preserve their humanity behind bars.

But today we're taking a look at another production, the investigative doc series The Sing Sing Chronicles, with guests JJ and Dateline NBC journalist Dan Slepian - who fought alongside JJ for his eventual exoneration and release.

And, including a discussion about the Biden connection to the draconian 1994 Crime Bill's mass incarceration. Plus, Dan on what's going down with MSNBC's post-election shakeup.

** "How exactly do you choose which acts of depraved violence you decide are alarming..."

PTSD Is Political, Not Just Medical. Detroit expatriate Shahid Bolsen sorts it all out, drawn from his analysis touching on New Orleans, Las Vegas, Gaza, terrorism - and when it comes to a destroyed military mind 'you trained him, you created him, your military indoctrinated him...'

** "Lost at his post, unable to say in which direction to look for an enemy's approach, Private Grayrock was profoundly disquieted, nor was he given time to recover his tranquility - for almost at the moment that he realized his awkward predicament, he heard a stir of leaves..."

Arts Express Playhouse: The Mocking-Bird. A solo performance of the work of Ambrose Bierce, short story writer, journalist, poet, and US Civil War soldier, esteemed for his psychological crafting of the supernatural.

Bierce, whose death remains a mystery to this day, likewise penned The Devil's Dictionary, named 'one of the 100 Greatest Masterpieces of American Literature.' Stay tuned, and all will be revealed...

** "We're diving into the mind and oddly enough the carpet of Dr. Matthew Alford, a man who has spent years analyzing war, propaganda, and the end of days - and tales of domestic peril..."

UK Desk: A discussion with the self-proclaimed idealist anti-celebrity, reflecting on the past year's 'geo-political crisis key moments.' With connections to satire, laughter, vacuum cleaners - and 'four reasons why a nuclear weapon has not gone off as yet...' 

Number 24 Review: Past And Present Battle Of Soil And Soul War Movie

Based on the true story of Norwegian resistance fighter, Gunna 'Kjakan' Sonsteby, considered the country's most prominent WW II hero, Number 24 typical of war movies, ventures into the past while inevitably and in this case incidentally reflecting on troubling moral alongside military implications - and no less so in the case of Norway's past and conflicted, simultaneous battle of soil and soul present moment in time.

A page to screen biography of the same name penned by Peter Ringen Johannessen and Arnfinn Moland, and directed by John Andreas Andersen, the title Number 24 was one of Sonsteby's Norway resistance code names. The film moves back and forth between German occupied Norway, and Sonsteby as elderly man today, delivering a lecture about his heroism during the war to a reverential student gathering.

Except for one young woman, persistent in questioning how he felt emotionally about involvement in killing, of Nazis and domestic traitors alike. Rather than offended, Sonsteby is intrigued by the dilemma she raises. And though openly expressing  misgivings about murder as an abstraction, however politically necessary at the time, he is clearly more psychologically torn than expressed, by the moral conflicts she is raising - not unrelated to a close friend he had been forced to eliminate back then as a Nazi informant. And he invites her to meet together following the lecture - while at the same time, without giving too much away, her concern is connected personally in the present time, haunted by persistent ghosts from the past.

And what appears to be at play here, concealed beneath the curtain of a mixed heralding of WW II patriotism with personal survivor's remorse over killing no matter how politically justified, is a cinematic window into the conflicted history of Norway, and no matter how unintentional. Namely, a country that officially declared neutrality during both World Wars, while fiercely struggling against Nazi occupation. And then joining NATO following that war, in effect aligning with the former Nazi enemy and against Russia - which essentially had been on their side in opposing and struggling for survival against Germany. 

And in the present moment in time, an even further web of contradictions, as Norway is not only aligning itself with declared Ukrainian Nazis against Russia - but as a NATO member has joined in the endless conflicts enriching military corporations in imperialist ventures that destroyed Yugoslavia in 1999, Libya in 2011 and more recently among those endless wars for two decades in Afghanistan. Which would indicate an accidental narrative premise still lingering from the past in this problematic and unresolved moment in the real world.

Prairie Miller