Global
Industrial production in the United States grew by leaps and bounds after the Civil War in the 1860s. Chicago was one of those major industrial centers where factory hands labored a six day work week, Monday through Saturday, putting in a bit over 60 hours weekly.
Like most times throughout U.S. history, bosses nurtured immigration to keep wages low and complaints in check. Thousands of Chicago’s immigrants in those days hailed from Germany and Bohemia, responsive to unionization thanks to their backgrounds in anarchy and socialism from their home countries — some had read the recent writings of Marx and Engels, for instance.
The 17th annual South East European Film Festival kicked off with Croatian co-writer/director Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic’s film Murina, which reminded me of Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1960 L’Avventura. While Antonioni’s classic won Cannes’ Jury Prize, Murina scored the renowned French film fete’s Caméra d’Or (Golden Camera) accolade for best first feature film. If Antonioni’s masterpiece about alienation is largely set in the Mediterranean off of the Italian coast and was shot in black and white, Kusijanovic’s directorial debut of a full-length production was lensed in stunning color in the Adriatic Sea and at remote Croatian isles, located in what had been part of former Yugoslavia.
Starting on April 15, the Israeli occupation army and police raided Al-Aqsa Mosque in Occupied East Jerusalem on a daily basis.
BANGKOK, Thailand -- A Las Vegas-based cannabis company has become the first foreign franchise to jointly open a medical marijuana clinic in Thailand, treating Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, cancer, eating disorders and insomnia in Bangkok's flashy tourist zone.
"I hope that Thailand becomes the Silicon Valley of Cannabis for Asia," the clinic's Thai partner Julpas Kruesopon -- "or as most people in Thailand call me now, 'Mister Weed'" -- said in an interview.
"I welcome Israeli companies. I welcome European companies. The key is to grow the industry," Mr. Julpas said.
The Herbidus Medical Center opened in March along Bangkok's main Sukhumvit Road which is lined with restaurants, hotels, massage parlors, sex bars, and extravagant shopping malls amid exotic sleaze and 5-star venues.
The U.S.-Thai joint venture "makes us, to the best of our knowledge, the first international company with an operational presence in the Asian legal cannabis market," Audacious CEO Terry Booth said in a statement.
Mr. Julpas said theirs was "absolutely" the first joint cannabis clinic with a foreign company in Thailand.
Thousands of out-of-towners and Angelenos flocked to attend the 13th annual Turner Classic Movies Classic Film Festival, which featured a panoply of motion pictures from across the decades, talents, parties and panels celebrating – and analyzing – the cinema as an art form and “that screwy ballyhooey Hollywood,” where the fete took place on location April 21-24.
The cornucopia of screenings included 1982’s E.T. The Extraterrestrial at TCL Chinese Theatre IMAX, with the Turner Classic Movies channel’s host Ben Mankiewicz interviewing director Steven Spielberg onstage at the fabled movie palace, renowned for its courtyard with stars’ footprints/handprints in cement, where Lily Tomlin was thus immortalized at a Festival ceremony attended by her co-star Jane Fonda. Other extravaganzas shown on the big screen at this venerable venue formerly known as Grauman’s Chinese Theatre included: 1956’s Giant, starring James Dean, Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson; 1939’s The Wizard of Oz with Judy Garland; 1952’s Singin’ in the Rain starring Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds; and 1973’s The Sting, featuring Paul Newman and Robert Redford.
#92 GreeGree Zoom April 25, 2022
Violence v. Election Workers & Ohio Madness w. Nina Turner et. al.
Our action-packed GREE-GREE #92 begins with a devastating view from JOEL SEGAL of violence being perpetrated against poll workers, a direct assault on our democracy.
We hear from HAL GINSBERG of Our Revolution on the move to prevent 1/6 Insurrectionists from taking over Congress at the polls.
PAT MARIDA of Ohio fills us in on the state’s pro-nuke scam, while TATANKA BRICCA and RON LEONARD update us on the war against rooftop solar.
Then the legendary NINA TURNER tells of her race to represent Cleveland in the US Congress.
Ohio’s RACHEL COYLE explains the insane Gerrymandering disaster there, while NICOLE SANDLER and WENDI LEDERMAN do the same from Florida.We also hear from election protection greats JOHN BRAKEY and MIMI KENNEDY.
This is a completely jammed two hours. Don’t miss it!
https://youtu.be/da3wUGaqy3I
Sometimes one decision speaks volumes. And so it was when the Congressional Progressive Caucus -- with 98 members in the House -- recently chose to have its PAC endorse a corporate “moderate” against the strong progressive candidate Nina Turner. In the process, the Progressive Caucus underscored its loyalty to establishment Democrats while damaging its credibility among progressives nationwide.
As the war in Ukraine makes front page news, a new documentary and film festival are shining a spotlight on this Eastern European nation that has been the setting for three of the greatest productions of all time. Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 Battleship Potemkin (https://www.imdb.com/video/vi1065917209?playlistId=tt0015648&ref_=tt_ov_vi), about the mutiny aboard one of the warships in the czar’s Black Sea fleet and the mass strike in the port city of Odessa during the 1905 Revolution was shot and set in Ukraine. The famed “Odessa Steps sequence” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xP-8r7tygo), which still jolts the senses, with the senseless barbaric cruelty of the czarist troops and Cossacks massacring frenzied, fleeing, unarmed civilians – baby carriages, amputees, stone lions and all.
A friend, a young journalist in Gaza, Mohammed Rafik Mhawesh, told me that food prices in the besieged Strip have skyrocketed in recent weeks and that many already impoverished families are struggling to put food on the table.
“Food prices are dramatically surging,” he said, “particularly since the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war.” Essential food prices, like wheat and meat, have nearly doubled. The price of a chicken, for example, which was only accessible to a small segment of Gaza’s population, has increased from 20 shekels (approx. $6) to 45 (approx. $14).
These price hikes may seem manageable in some parts of the world but in an already impoverished place, which has been under a hermetic Israeli military siege for 15 years, a humanitarian crisis of great proportions is certainly forthcoming.
As wars rage, as cruelty shatters lives across the planet — as nuclear Armageddon remains a viable option for all of us — I think it’s time to claim some stunning awareness in this regard.
The human race is evolving in spite of itself — evolving beyond war, beyond empire, beyond dominance and conquest, and toward an uncertain but collective future. Indeed, I think most of us already know this, but only at a level so deep, so vague it feels like nothing more than “hope.”