DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Saudi Arabia’s state-backed oil giant Aramco announced Sunday that its profits fell sharply in 2020 to $49 billion, a big drop that came as the coronavirus...

The spirit and appearance of Jesus Christ and of Pinocchio, two figures who are rarely found in the same sentence, both can be felt in Salman Toor’s paintings, currently the subject of a show at the Whitney Museum of American Art. These deliciously painted and mostly small-to-medium-size pictures, done in the past few years, seem to follow the doings and observations of one young man, though many of the figures in the scenes, which might be set in a bar, on a stoop, or in an apartment, are young men who resemble one another in build. They are willowy and they often sport scraggly dark hair. Many exude a gentleness and sweetness, a demeanor that, along with the shoulder-length hair of some of them, recalls the young Christ in certain canvases by Rembrandt. Oddly, most have long and pronounced noses, which can make us think of Pinocchio even if it is hard to see a link between Carlo Collodi’s mischievous, mishap-prone boy hero and the “boys,” as Toor calls them in his titles. But then surprising associations with current and past artists, and an unusual predilection for a single color, are also part of the rich and quirky experience that is Toor’s exhibition. Entitled “How Will I Know,” which derives from the popular Whitney Houston song of the same name, it is the first museum show of a relatively young artist who has been exhibiting in New York in recent years but who seems to be barely known even by viewers who keep up with the latest developments. This makes all the more substantial what Toor—who was born in Pakistan in 1983, came to this country for college, and has lived since 2006 in New York City—has accomplished. His subject in the broadest sense is gay life: its pleasures, tensions, small moments, and realizations. The fifteen paintings in the show are loosely structured around our young man, who is dark-complexioned (and whom we might think of as the artist). In a few pictures he is merely one of the figures in the scene, some of whom also have brown skin, though others appear white. In other works he has the presence more of the protagonist. Whatever this character’s significance, Toor’s pictures form a kind of overview of the situations that many gay men enjoy or endure. Four Friends, for instance, presents two young men dancing in a city apartment. Our man, who is wearing light-colored pants and doing the twist, stands out in the dimly lit, largely green room, while two other friends snuggle on a nearby sofa. Puppy Play Date takes us into another living room, where two rather thin young men watch as their dogs are entangled with each other. Elsewhere, Toor looks at the hazards of being openly gay in some circumstances. Car Boys gives us two fellows in a car at night who have had their privacy invaded by policemen; one, leaning in, shines a bright light at them. And in The Smokers, some men outside what might be a gay bar, clearly happy and assured in being together, don’t see a wary-looking policeman who is coming their way. Toor does not shy away from private moments, either. Bedroom Boy gives us a nude young man on a bed who is taking a photograph of himself with a smartphone, while in Sleeping Boy a male nude, adorned with jewelry and languorously stretched out on a voluptuous mound of bedding—a male odalisque, in effect—has fallen asleep with a nearby computer on, light streaming forth from it. What makes these pictures distinctive and absorbing is that while homosexuality is hardly new to art, Toor brings a sense of soft-spoken, ingenuous, everyday intimacy to this material that feels new. At the same time, for all his contemporary candor about showing men in love with each other, and despite the up-to-the-minuteness of the smartphones and computers that his characters regularly use, Toor’s way of painting is familiar. It is a kind of straightforward representational art—one that, to my eye, seems to echo aspects of classic French painting. The young man at the right side of The Smokers, for example, who wears a hat and looks questioningly up into the scene, recalls one or two similar observers in paintings by Renoir. The sometimes swarthy fellows in Toor’s pictures, with shawls over their shoulders and kerchiefs around their necks, could be stepping out as well from Delacroix’s Middle Eastern hothouse world. In its romantic celebration of sensuality, Sleeping Boy also has more life in it than Delacroix generally achieved. And the mysterious prevalence of green—green on the walls and floors and suffusing tables and lampshades—made me think not only of Vuillard’s green-filled 1891 interior The Flowered Dress but of how Vuillard could make the colors of a room into part of a picture’s story. A wall label at “How Will I Know” calls the paintings “cartoony,” and a cartoon style partially explains the elongated and seemingly boneless nature of the bodies we see (and their noses). Hands, elbows, and arms in particular can be rubbery, though they are nevertheless at home with the rhythmic curves of the nearby forms. But cartoons do not account for the liquid, restless, and quietly luscious nature of Toor’s oil-paint surfaces. Whether he is showing blue jeans, a martini glass, or a person’s hair, Toor makes it seem as if he has brushed it in just a moment before. If he wants to show light descending from a lamp, he paints it in so many white, vertical, parallel strokes. If our sleeping nude has hairy legs, black flecks here and there will suffice. Every aspect of a given picture seems to breathe a little. Even walls look as if they have a pulse, and with certain figures—say, the shy, Christlike young man at the door in The Arrival—the light in the background, coalescing around his head, forms a kind of halo. There are unexpected notes in many of the pictures. One of the cops in Car Boys, for example, has a big belly, which he sticks toward the boys in the car. This ought to be menacing, but his threat is mitigated by the un-cop-like way he frames his paunch, with his hands turned backwards on his hips. (It put me in mind of a matriarch coming out of her kitchen to survey the feast she has made for her family.) Stoop, a five-foot-high vertical painting, makes us pause and wonder what it is about. It shows a young man descending the steps of the sort of anonymous downtown rowhouse that suggests the era of the Ashcan School artists. A dropped ice cream cone is melting on the sidewalk and a cat is in the window. At the base of the steps there are two men who are lovingly touching each other. With their costumed appearance, they need only a guitar to become wandering troubadours in an operetta. One of them is capturing their romance with his smartphone. There is a possibility, though, that the figure coming down the steps, who is probably our main man and who eyes the lovers as he descends, is imagining them. The thought gives the picture a second life, and it occurs to the viewer because other pictures have a dreamlike uncertainty, too. This is the case with Tea, one of Toor’s most engrossing works. In it, a young man comes upon his family (or so we assume) having tea at a table. We believe that this man is the fellow we have been following all along, except that his hair, which generally has had a roughened look, is now plastered down and parted. He stands ramrod straight, perhaps acting out being brave, or at least impassive. He faces his parents and two sisters, and the way he seems to have materialized out of the wall behind him makes one wonder whether the scene might be his dream. Each of the family members is registering another feeling, and Toor’s sense of characterization, done with the slightest means, is amazing. One sister, looking at her brother, is noncommittal but might be quietly happy for him. Her sister, her eyes down, probably wishes the moment were over. Father (or possibly a visitor) is turned inward and not connecting with anyone. Mother is beautifully realized. She has been part of the tea party and is now reaching out for the fruit. To see her son, who has just arrived, she also turns toward him, which means she is seeing him sideways. It is a particular twist that indicates that she is in two camps at once. Her body language says either “Dear, here you have come” or, coolly, “Oh, it is you.” Her turned body, with its implication of strife, encapsulates the entire moment. Inventing it, Toor joins the company of Mark Greenwold and Eric Fischl, long-standing masters of picturing familial and domestic crises. Bar Boy takes viewers aloft in another way. At four feet high by five feet across, it is the largest work in the show and a feat of planning and design. The bar boy is presumably the fellow who stands by himself in a space in the center, communing with his smartphone, which beams light out at him. On either side are people, primarily men, who are conversing, looking into one another’s eyes, sleeping, biding their time, or about to kiss. Most of the picture is in shades of green, and our eyes eat up Toor’s phenomenal skill in two things at once: making one color have such variety, and creating some sixteen separate figures, almost all his or her distinctly own person, with bodily shapes and haircuts to match. The only weak link is the young man with the phone. As the picture’s centerpiece, he is a little lacking in presence, and the space around him feels blank. But if this section of the picture is not quite right artistically, it possibly adds a note to the show as a whole. Maybe our man is being carried along by “How Will I Know” and, traveling on the song’s wavelength, has left this scene entirely.

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Congresswoman Lauren Boebert put a Q-flavored cherry atop an already controversial town hall last Monday night, when she claimed to have insider knowledge of a QAnon-linked conspiracy theory promoted by The Epoch Times that secret documents declassified in the final days of the Trump administration will expose wrongdoing by Trump’s enemies and lead to resignations and arrests, allowing Republicans to gain a majority in the U.S. House and Senate prior to the 2022 election. Boebert, a Republican, claims her sources for this are close to Trump. “And this is my opinion with that information that I have, I believe we will see resignations begin to take place. And I think we can take back the majority in the House and the Senate before 2022 when all of this is ended,” Boebert said at the Montrose event. Her startling claim, first reported by Dennis Anderson of the Delta County Independent, came in response to the last question of the evening. An unidentified man wanted to know if there will ever be “perp walks” for Hillary Clinton and high-level officials like the former heads of the FBI and CIA. Listen to the question at the Montrose town hall and Boebert’s answer, in audio recorded by Anderson, here: Boebert’s belief that a wave of resignations from Congress will allow Republicans to reclaim power before the next election is sure to raise some eyebrows. The Epoch Times, identified as “a leading purveyor of right-wing misinformation” by the New York Times, exploded in size and influence during the Trump administration both by embracing the President and promoting innumerable conspiracy theories, many of which are linked to QAnon. The narrative referenced by Boebert appears to rooted in the “Spygate” and “Russiagate” conspiracy theories, of which The Epoch Times is a huge proponent of both. Per the New York Times: “The publication has been one of the most prominent promoters of “Spygate,” a baseless conspiracy theory involving claims that Obama administration officials illegally spied on Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign. Publications and shows linked to The Epoch Times have promoted the QAnon conspiracy theory and spread distorted claims about voter fraud…” Russiagate is a disinformation campaign denying Russian election meddling and falsely claiming that such accusation of such were created by former President Obama and Hillary Clinton to discredit Trump. Neither it nor “Spygate” is factual. Full transcript of Boebert’s answer: “So we are seeing a lot of ugliness uncovered, a lot of corruption exposed. But I believe that we are going to start seeing gifts and callings of righteous men and women exposed to counter all of this. Gifts that have remained dormant on the inside of people are going to start rising up. People are going to start filling these positions that they never saw themselves in, doing their part to serve their country. Now, I want to tell you, I heard someone who is in very close contact with President Trump and the ins and outs of the White House under that administration talk to the owners of Epoch Times. They talked to the owners of Epoch Times and they said: “don’t change anything. You are right over the target.” So anyone who tries to tell you that this is a fringe newspaper/media don’t listen to them. I have very good sources to say this is really good information. Is it a hundred percent? I don’t know. But it’s really good information. And we all know that there was information that was declassified just a few days before President Trump left office. And I know someone who is involved in declassifying that. And this person is getting very tired of waiting on the DOJ to do something about it. And we will be hearing about it very, very soon. And this is my opinion with that information that I have, I believe we will see resignations begin to take place. And I think we can take back the majority in the House and the Senate before 2022 when all of this is ended.” RELATED: A Brief History of Boebert’s Ties to Extremist and Conspiracy Groups Before this video emerged, Boebert’s event in Montrose had already made headlines, and they haven’t been good. First, her campaign only announced the meeting to local Republicans and asked them not to share the invite publicly. Then a video, recorded by the Montrose Daily Press, showed her appearing to defend the extremists who stormed the U.S. Capitol, saying they were trying to petition their government. Boebert’s office denies she was speaking about the Jan. 6 insurrectionists but instead meant that the security fence in place since then, which prevents the public from accessing congressional offices, shows that Democrats believe anyone trying to petition their government is an insurrectionist. 27.9k Shares facebook sharing buttontwitter sharing buttonreddit sharing buttonemail sharing buttonflipboard sharing buttonsharethis sharing button TAGGED IN CONSPIRACY THEORYLAUREN BOEBERTQANON avatar Erik Maulbetsch Home › Forums › Promoting QAnon-linked Conspiracy, Boebert Says Resignations Will Soon Allow GOP to Control Congress Author Posts March 19, 2021 at 12:12 pm#35276 Erik Maulbetsch Posted a new article: Promoting QAnon-linked Conspiracy, Boebert Says Resignations Will Soon Allow GOP to Control Congress SIGN UP FOR OUR WEEKLY NEWSLETTER Email address: Your email address Promoting QAnon-linked Conspiracy, Boebert Says Resignations Will Soon Allow GOP to Control Congress 3 hours ago CO Republican Speaks Out Against Racially Biased Crime Following Atlanta Attack 5 hours ago Gardner Could Have Won By Attacking Undocumented Immigrants, Claims Radio Host 23 hours ago ABOUT CONTACT BIG MEDIA BLOG PRIVACY POLICY © 2021 Colorado Times Recorder BACK TO TOP CLOSE HOME ABOUT NEWS OPINIONS CONTRIBUTE SUBMIT A TIP Congresswoman Lauren Boebert put a Q-flavored cherry atop an already controversial town hall last Monday night, when she claimed to have insider knowledge of a QAnon-linked conspiracy theory promoted by The Epoch Times that secret documents declassified in the final days of the Trump administration will expose wrongdoing by Trump’s enemies and lead to resignations and arrests, allowing Republicans to gain a majority in the U.S. House and Senate prior to the 2022 election. Boebert, a Republican, claims her sources for this are close to Trump. “And this is my opinion with that information that I have, I believe we will see resignations begin to take place. And I think we can take back the majority in the House and the Senate before 2022 when all of this is ended,” Boebert said at the Montrose event. Her startling claim, first reported by Dennis Anderson of the Delta County Independent, came in response to the last question of the evening. An unidentified man wanted to know if there will ever be “perp walks” for Hillary Clinton and high-level officials like the former heads of the FBI and CIA. Listen to the question at the Montrose town hall and Boebert’s answer, in audio recorded by Anderson, here: Boebert’s belief that a wave of resignations from Congress will allow Republicans to reclaim power before the next election is sure to raise some eyebrows. The Epoch Times, identified as “a leading purveyor of right-wing misinformation” by the New York Times, exploded in size and influence during the Trump administration both by embracing the President and promoting innumerable conspiracy theories, many of which are linked to QAnon. The narrative referenced by Boebert appears to rooted in the “Spygate” and “Russiagate” conspiracy theories, of which The Epoch Times is a huge proponent of both. Per the New York Times: “The publication has been one of the most prominent promoters of “Spygate,” a baseless conspiracy theory involving claims that Obama administration officials illegally spied on Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign. Publications and shows linked to The Epoch Times have promoted the QAnon conspiracy theory and spread distorted claims about voter fraud…” Russiagate is a disinformation campaign denying Russian election meddling and falsely claiming that such accusation of such were created by former President Obama and Hillary Clinton to discredit Trump. Neither it nor “Spygate” is factual. Full transcript of Boebert’s answer: “So we are seeing a lot of ugliness uncovered, a lot of corruption exposed. But I believe that we are going to start seeing gifts and callings of righteous men and women exposed to counter all of this. Gifts that have remained dormant on the inside of people are going to start rising up. People are going to start filling these positions that they never saw themselves in, doing their part to serve their country. Now, I want to tell you, I heard someone who is in very close contact with President Trump and the ins and outs of the White House under that administration talk to the owners of Epoch Times. They talked to the owners of Epoch Times and they said: “don’t change anything. You are right over the target.” So anyone who tries to tell you that this is a fringe newspaper/media don’t listen to them. I have very good sources to say this is really good information. Is it a hundred percent? I don’t know. But it’s really good information. And we all know that there was information that was declassified just a few days before President Trump left office. And I know someone who is involved in declassifying that. And this person is getting very tired of waiting on the DOJ to do something about it. And we will be hearing about it very, very soon. And this is my opinion with that information that I have, I believe we will see resignations begin to take place. And I think we can take back the majority in the House and the Senate before 2022 when all of this is ended.” RELATED: A Brief History of Boebert’s Ties to Extremist and Conspiracy Groups Before this video emerged, Boebert’s event in Montrose had already made headlines, and they haven’t been good. First, her campaign only announced the meeting to local Republicans and asked them not to share the invite publicly. Then a video, recorded by the Montrose Daily Press, showed her appearing to defend the extremists who stormed the U.S. Capitol, saying they were trying to petition their government. Boebert’s office denies she was speaking about the Jan. 6 insurrectionists but instead meant that the security fence in place since then, which prevents the public from accessing congressional offices, shows that Democrats believe anyone trying to petition their government is an insurrectionist.

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Wall Street is greenwashing the financial world, making sustainable investing merely PR, which is a distraction from the problem of climate change. The financial services industry is duping the American public with its pro-environment, sustainable investing practices. This multitrillion dollar arena of socially conscious investing is being presented as something it's not. In essence, Wall Street is greenwashing the economic system and, in the process, creating a deadly distraction. I should know; I was at the heart of it. As the former chief investment officer of Sustainable Investing at BlackRock, the largest asset manager in the world with $8.7 trillion in assets, I led the charge to incorporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) into our global investments. In fact, our messaging helped mainstream the concept that pursuing social good was also good for the bottom line. Sadly, that's all it is, a hopeful idea. In truth, sustainable investing boils down to little more than marketing hype, PR spin and disingenuous promises from the investment community. Imagine the planet is a cancer patient, and climate change is the cancer. Wall Street is prescribing wheatgrass: A well-marketed, profitable idea that has no chance of curing or even slowing down the cancer. In this scenario, wheatgrass is the deadly distraction, misleading the public and delaying lifesaving measures like chemotherapy. But like giving false hope to unproven cures in the midst of a pandemic, the consequences of such irresponsibility are all too obvious. And motivation for why the industry continues to greenwash is all too obvious.