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LA Phil and its Music & Art Director, Gustavo Dudamel, are taking Richard Wagner’s Das Rheingold out of the opera house and into the concert hall to present Das Rheingold, the first of the ambitious librettist/composer’s mammoth, marathon 17-hour, musical/ theatrical, four-opera extravaganza known as The Ring Cycle or Der Ring des Nibelungen. Das Rheingold – which refers to the gold of the Rhine River, not to the official beer of the N.Y. Mets – is set in primeval Germany, its characters and story  derived from Northern European mythology.

Wagner’s magisterial, majestic, moody music is perfect for evoking these mythic gods, giants, dwarves, trolls, nymphs, Valkyries and other figures, plus tales, from lore that existed centuries before Christianity spread to Europe and Wagner wrought his “Bühnenfestspiel” (stage festival play) about the epic quest and struggle for a magical golden ring that endows its bearer with omnipotent powers.  

The first and the last time I met John Pilger in person was in 2018. 

 I was invited to deliver a speech at the NSW Parliament in Sydney, Australia. Among the large crowd were many that I knew and respected - a former foreign minister, socially conscientious MPs, morally driven intellectuals and activists, and so on. 

 As I stood at the podium, glancing at the crowd, I saw John Pilger. He had a big smile on his face, as if he was in great anticipation to hear me talk. 

 The reality was entirely different. I would have rather listened to John than to lecture before him. 

 As I expressed my many “thank yous”, I made a point of emphasizing that I have modeled my journalism around that of John Pilger. 

Law number one in the ‘law of holes’, is that “if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.” Law number two, “if you are not digging, you are still in a hole”. 

 These adages sum up Israel’s ongoing political, military and strategic crises, 100 days following the start of the war on Gaza. 

 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was faced by the unprecedented challenge of having to react to a major attack launched by Palestinian Resistance in southern Israel on October 7. 

 This single event is already proving to be a game changer in the relationship between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Its impact will be felt for many years, if not generations, to come.

 Netanyahu was already in a hole long before the Al-Aqsa Flood operation took place, and he has no one else to blame but himself. 

John Colella’s An Extraordinary Ordinary Man is a paean to the writer/actor’s dad and his
Italian-American clan. In his autobiographical one-man show Colella lovingly, vividly brings his
family alive onstage, regaling the audience with vignettes from his youth, growing up amidst the
family business in Chicago. Claudio Pastry was established by Colella’s immigrant grandfather,
who arrived penniless from the Mother Country and created an enduring, thriving business that
was passed down to the playwright’s father.
The bakery became the center of the family’s existence. When John was a child, he relished
learning all of the tricks of the baker’s trade, as well as devouring delicious desserts baked right
on the premises. In the play, indulging in paisano pastries such as cannolis and eclairs, little John
amusingly muses that it was as if he had his own private, personal “Willy Wonka.” He also
idolized his dad, a baker so skillful that to his son, his pop was a three-star-plus Michelin chef,
imbued with mystical flour power.
However, to his son’s surprise, John Sr. would repeatedly counsel his lad to “be anything but a

Thursday 18 January 2024 3PM EST (10 PM Palestine) Professor Mazin
Qumsiyeh  Talk "Under the gun in Palestine: Genocide, ethnic cleansing, and
resistance."  The War Industry Resisters Network. Register here:
https://secure.everyaction.com/r4R08jSFrUmIft6bA4uxxQ2

Also For those who speak arabic: talk Thursday 18 January 11 AM Palestine
time on environmental impact of war (email me for link)

Saturday Jan 20, 2024 11:00 AM Arizona Time (8 AM Palestine time)
Topic: Resistance in the time of Apartheid & Genocide with Drs. Mazin
Qumsiyeh & Jeff Halper: Via Zoom

“And some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak.”

Take a day, pore over a few of his words. I’m talking about Martin Luther King, of course. His “day” is over, but his message still pulsates. We must speak! The world is bleeding with the wounds of war and poverty and racism, just as it was 57 years ago, when he spoke — infamously, you might say — at Riverside Church in New York City. He defied LBJ and stared directly into the muzzle of the Vietnam war, declaring it to be moral savagery, declaring the United States to be “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”