** "America is a capitalistic society, the one thing that America understands is money - and if you can make them pay, they will stop killing black people..."

Civil: A Conversation With Ben Crump: A new documentary about the acclaimed civil rights attorney's activism, his denunciation by Fox News as 'the most dangerous man in America,' and victories against racist, class and workplace discrimination across the country. And about him as well - what has led Crump personally down that path and mission of persistent struggle, and why.

Along with what all this has to do with Crump's own working class roots as the child of a single factory worker mother - and what he refers to as the collective weapon of 'the black imagination' as a key component of struggle - even as "there will be times when our hearts will be broken..."

** Bro On The Global Television Beat: The Lincoln Lawyer And Snowpiercer, While The Planet Burns.

Arts Express Paris Correspondent Professor Dennis Broe on ecology at the movies and gas guzzlers. With connections to the world gas crisis, product placement, class, gas, race and cultural props - Tequila versus Scotch, and stopping by a taco stand.

* "We live today in a society awash in debt - egged on by propaganda and advertising."

Deep Dive: The Destiny Of Civilization - Finance Capitalism, Industrial Capitalism Or Socialism. Michael Hudson, an economist, professor, former Wall Street analyst and contributor to the podcast Left Out, exposes the parasitic, co-conspiratorial entities that are destroying the economy here and around the world - namely landlords and banks.

Hudson's theory is a warning to China about the dangerous designs of predatory capitalism on their country. But Mao seems to have gotten that right, well, some time ago... 

The Forgiven: Ugly Americans Galore Update On Steroids

Though UK writer/director John Michael McDonagh may have embarked with this page to screen venture into the legacy of colonialism laid bare, establishing a decidedly warped inside looking out cultural perspective tends not to be a good idea. Say, like peering out your window to get a definitive glimpse on the current state of the economic crisis. 

The 'forgiven' one in this instance, is David (Ralph Fiennes) a disgruntled alcoholic embarking from the UK with his cynical spouse Jo (Jessica Chastain) to a remote desert in Morocco - where impossibly wealthy and extravagant friends are staging a massive, raucous decadent party with global jetsetter pals. While driving there across the night terrain, David runs over a Moroccan boy standing in the road. What ensues are attempts at a coverup, or to pay off the destitute family if all else fails. 

But when the boy's father turns up and insists that David accompany him to the burial, he agrees in the hope of some sort of absolution. Meanwhile, Jo takes the opportunity to immerse herself in the gated fanfare, and a lusty interlude with a stranger.

What results is a kind of circular narrative, ending where it began and essentially conveying little insight or closure - and McDonagh seemingly trapped in the befuddled, tragic figure of David, as both his designated character and persona. Which concludes with a perplexing entrenched, fortified colonial glimpse into a troubled, still inscrutable world - that both narratively and symbolically has been created, destroyed and rendered ultimately indifferent to decipher.

Prairie Miller