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State and nationally recognized election transparency and integrity advocates were threatened with arrest and prevented from observing routine election administration activities by Wake County election administrator Gary Sims, in violation of North Carolina State Election Law. North Carolina’s 2005 “Confidence in ElectionsAct”1 protects the rights of the public to observe election counting, stating: “Any member of the public wishing to witness the vote count at any level shall be allowed to do so.”

On May 14, Sims directed law enforcement to cite Lynn Bernstein, the founder of Transparent Elections North Carolina, and John Brakey, director of AUDIT USA, with trespassing. Sims threatened Bernstein and Brakey with arrest if they attended the public meeting at the Board of Elections on May 17. Bernstein was told by the law enforcement officer that she was banned from the premises “forever.” (Hear audio of the conversation with the law enforcement officials at this link: https://bit.ly/3LoclIU)

There have been countless productions of William Shakespeare’s masterpiece King Lear, since it premiered circa 1606 at London’s Globe Theatre. The Bard reportedly wrote the lead role for his troupe’s top tragedian, Richard Burbage, but since then many stage and screen stalwarts have portrayed the title character, including Laurence Olivier, Paul Scofield, Anthony Hopkins, Ian McKellan, Al Pacino and but of course, Orson Welles. The first motion picture iteration was lensed by 1909, a 16-minute silent film starring William V. Ranous.

A variety of countries and ethnicities have tackled Lear. The veteran Soviet helmer Grigoriy Kozintsev’s (who co-directed the 1926 adaptation of Gogol’s novel The Overcoat, 1929’s Paris Commune drama The New Babylon and 1964’s Hamlet) final film was a version of Lear made in 1970. In 1974 African American actor James Earl Jones starred in a small screen version that was broadcast by PBS’ Great Performances series. In 2018 the TV movie The Yiddish King Lear was aired, and so on.

So what’s left to say about this oft-produced Shakespearian tragedy?

Our brilliant, intense, path-breaking hour-long exploration of the imminent demise of Roe v. Wade is led by the great Christian Nunes, President of the National Organization for Women.  

Christian’s incisive, uncompromising view of this latest Puritan attack on women sets the tone for an important examination of Calvinist fascism and its heartless autocracy, especially as they come with the race-based slaughter of 10 African-Americans in Buffalo.

As this 95th Green Grassroots Emergency Election Protection (GREE-GREE) zoom unfolds, we also discuss the INDIGENOUS ORIGINALISM of thousands of years of tribal law in which a woman’s ability to control her own body was never questioned.

In the course of our discussion we hear further from MARY BUTLER-STONEWALL, CHARLOTTE DENNETT, DENNIS BERNSTEIN, JOEL SEGAL, NEIL PENN, DR. RUTH STRAUSS, MICHAEL BRACKNEY and many more.

JULIE WEINER tells us about the fight over voting machines in New York, which has also had big news about Gerrymandering.

If it’s true, as General William Tecumseh Sherman reputedly observed during America’s Civil War, that “war is hell,” according to Kyiv-born Maryna Er Gorbach’s Klondike, the “hottest seat in hell” (to paraphrase Dante) seems reserved for those ensnared in the civil war in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region. One of the grimmest films I’ve ever seen, Klondike is so bleak in its realistic depiction of warfare that it almost makes two antiwar classics that won Best Picture and Best Director Oscars – Lewis Milestone’s1930 All Quiet on the Western Front and Oliver Stone’s 1986 Platoon – look like musical comedies in comparison.

As Oksana Cherkashyna, who stars as Irka, told the audience after a SEEfest screening at the Lumiere Cinema in Beverly Hills, Klondike dramatizes actual events that took place when the war between Russia and Ukraine really “started eight years ago” in 2014, with armed conflict in the Donbas, while what we’re witnessing now is “a full-scale invasion” by the Russian Federation of Ukraine.

 Indeed, there is a growing sense that a new global agenda is forthcoming, one that could unite Russia and China and, to a degree, India and others, under the same banner. This is evident, not only by the succession of the earth-shattering events underway, but, equally important, the language employed to describe these events. 

The medieval demand that women be denied power over their own bodies has prompted one of GREE-GREE’s most powerful zooms ever.

Beginning with the great MIMI KENNEDY, we said through a full hour of powerful discussion about what the back-stabbing assault on Roe v. Wade really means and how it will affect our upcoming elections.

Plunging to the core of this horrific landmark, we also hear from LYNN FEINERMAN, DR. RUTH STRAUSS, MARY STONEWALL-BUTLER, MYLA RESON, WENDI LEDERMAN, JOEL SEGAL, JUSTIN LEBLANC, JULIE WEINER, ERIC LAZARUS, NANCY NIPARKO, TATANKA BRICCA and more.

We then get a devastating report from climate scientist DR. CAROLYN ORR on the killer impacts of global warming and the pollution of our air.

RON LEONARD updates on the grid in Puerto Rico, just recently the subject of an in-depth energy report in the New York Times.  

Next week, we do yet another full hour on Roe, this time with the great CHRISTIAN NUNES of the National Organization for Women.  See you then!!!

“Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.’” — Genesis 2:18. RSV

One chapter later, after Eve was held responsible for the First Sin (Adam, the submissive male, just did what she told him to), we have this:

“To the woman he said, ‘I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be contrary for your husband, and he shall rule over you.’” — Genesis 3:16

Some people are able to liberate the creation story from its theological misogyny, but for most believers (especially the male ones), it’s pretty clear: Women are commanded, indeed, they were created, to do what they’re told. This is our cultural infrastructure — a.k.a., the patriarchy — ten thousand or so years in the making.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- In a stunning victory, Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. won the Philippines' presidential election, bringing him to the frontlines of U.S.-China confrontations in the South China Sea amid denials that he is Beijing's puppet "Manchurian candidate".

Mr. Marcos Jr.'s election advantage was that he is the son of his "idol," the somewhat popular, late U.S.-backed dictatorial president Ferdinand Marcos Sr. and his flamboyant wife Imelda who is now 92.

"When I miss the precious presence of [husband] Ferdinand, I call, 'Bongbong' and ask him to come," Imelda Marcos told me in a 1991 interview when she and her children were permitted to return to the Philippines from exile, two years after her husband died in Hawaii.

"He sounds like his father. I listen to Bongbong, it's eerie.  Like Ferdinand was there. Even in his mannerisms.  His voice.  His movements.  His hand movements.  When he walks.

"I feel surely Ferdinand the First was born again in Ferdinand the Second."

More than 18,000 positions were decided in the polls including senators, city councilors and others.

Hawaiian Soul was screened on the opening day of the 38th annual Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, which provides a launching pad for Indigenous Pacific Islander productions in Hollywood. Shorts, documentaries, animation and features by and about the Native peoples of Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia, as well as by Asian and Asian-American filmmakers, are being screened at various venues in the world’s movie capital by this filmfest that spotlights South Seas Cinema, taking place May 5-13.

Since 1983 Visual Communications, a nonprofit organization, has presented LAAPFF, dedicated “to develop and support the voices of Asian American and Pacific Islander filmmakers and media artists who empower communities and challenge perspectives.” The L.A. presentation of the outstanding Hawaiian Soul is a perfect onscreen expression of this mission statement by LAAPFF, which provides a perch for works by and about Oceanic talents and topics in Los Angeles. The below is the first in a series of reviews of selections from this year’s Pacific Islander works at LAAPFF.

HAWAIIAN SOUL: ACTIVIST/MUSICIAN GEORGE HELM AND HELMER ʻĀINA PAIKAI