Global

America, America . . . God kicks thee in the head.

The twisted irony here — the irony of the brutal murder of Tyre Nichols in Memphis, Tennessee last month — is that his killers were the ones hired and trained to keep the city safe. Instead, they created half an hour of hell for the young man, kicking and beating and tasing him to death a short distance away from his mother’s house, after a random, and perhaps unjustified, traffic stop.

One of the last words he uttered, as recorded on a pole-mounted police surveillance video of the incident, was a desperate cry: “Mom-m-m-m-m!”

Should we outlaw hell? Or maybe at least defund it?

On January 19, during one of its raids in the Occupied West Bank, the Israeli military arrested a Palestinian journalist, Abdul Muhsen Shalaldeh, near the town of Al-Khalil (Hebron). This is just the latest of a staggering number of violations against Palestinian journalists, and  against freedom of expression. 

A few days earlier, the head of the Palestinian Journalist Syndicate (PJS), Naser Abu Baker, shared some tragic numbers during a press conference in Ramallah. “Fifty-five reporters have been killed, either by Israeli fire or bombardment since 2000,” he said. Hundreds more were wounded, arrested or detained. Although shocking, much of this reality is censored in mainstream media. 

“For how long will I be in captivity? After so many years, where are the state and the people of Israel?” These were the words, uttered in Hebrew, of a person believed to be Avera Mengistu, an Israeli soldier of Ethiopian origin who was captured and held in Gaza in 2014. 

 Footage of Mengistu, looking nervous but also somewhat defiant, calling on his countrymen to end his 9-year incarceration, mostly ended speculation in Israel on whether the soldier was alive or dead. 

Neil Young rocked America with his anthem “Southern Man” on his 1970 album “After the Gold Rush.” Similarly, the Black and white bards Sheri Bailey and Dura Temple struck gold with their outstanding Southern Girls drama, which was first mounted during the Reagan era and is, happily, being revived at the Hudson Backstage Theatre with an all-female cast and a woman director, Zadia Ife.
Set like To Kill a Mockingbird in smalltown Alabama, three of the eponymous females are white, two are Black and one is biracial. The play’s trajectory follows them from small kid days, when they played girlish games in the Jim Crow South, through the Civil Rights era, the Black Power movement and beyond. Southern Girls is exemplary in how it rather perfectly dramatizes how world historical events – from American apartheid to assassinations, et al – deeply impact individuals in their daily lives and the choices they do – and cannot – make.  

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Muslim-majority Malaysia's newly elected Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who was jailed twice for homosexual sodomy, is warning lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders (LGBT) that they, along with communism and secularism, "would never be recognized" by his administration.

Mr. Anwar made the remarks after a popular hardline Pan-Islamic Party (PAS) official, Razman Zakaria, claimed Mr. Anwar and his allies would legalize same-sex marriage in the Southeast Asian country.

“Sometimes these [rival] politicians say if Anwar becomes prime minister, then Islam will be destroyed, secularism and communism will be established, and LGBT will be recognized,” Mr. Anwar said on January 6.

“This is just a delusion. Of course it will never happen and, God willing, under my administration it is unlikely to happen," the prime minister said.

"Such anti-LGBT sentiments, coupled with scapegoating for political expediency and survival, are dangerous," responded Thilaga Sulathireh, co-founder of Justice for Sisters.

"It has effectively increased LGBT-related misinformation and bias."

There were a couple of interesting articles that have appeared in the past several weeks that illustrate inter alia how the Israel Lobby operates when anyone dares to challenge America’s wag-the-dog relationship with the Jewish state. To be sure, the labels antisemite and holocaust denier are flung about with wild abandon as a first step, but there is a level of viciousness that goes well beyond that as the Zionists seek to ruin the reputations and employment prospects of those whom they target.

Nobody with a sane perspective of reality can deny that the Republican Party has become a cesspool of nefarious qualities like white supremacy, Christian nationalism, homophobia, antisemitism, QAnon conspiracy theories and unbridled greed amongst other character deficiencies mixed together looking for a leader that will allow unbridled greed to properly use the other nefarious "qualities" to maintain itself in the leading role.

Florida’s sane people are in a deep quagmire. We not only have Donald Trump as resident of the State, but worst yet, we have Ron DeSantis as governor. DeSantis working in conjunction with an inept Democratic Party, (sometimes the Dems are so inept that it makes it difficult not to believe they are working in conjunction), has been able to convey the image that Florida is going to be in the Republican camp for a long haul. All because while DeSantis is busy implementing Fascism many of the Democratic leaders are more concerned about “encroaching socialism.”

The California Energy Commission has made it clear that their reason for advocating keeping the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Station open an extra five years (or perhaps 20 extra years) has to do with rare, short-lived, peak load periods that can last from mere moments to perhaps a few hours and, very rarely, for a day or so.

The best solutions for these temporary fluctuations in power requirements are those solutions which can ramp up and down quickly. Nuclear power is not one of them.

"Baseload power refers to the minimum amount of electric power needed to be supplied to the electrical grid at any given time...Baseload power must be supplied by constant and reliable sources of electricity."
-- Source: https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Baseload_power

As I write this (late January, 2023), more than half of Pakistan is without electricity -- approximately 220 million people. It's the third time in as many years that a widespread blackout has hit that country.

I had a passing moment of wonder the other day – as I read about the latest . . . you know, mass shootings.

Troubled souls with guns. Big problem.

My thought was simply this: What if . . .? And then I lapsed into uncertainty. What if    . . . violence were not the simplistic and obvious – and only – solution to so many problems? Violence presents itself, in our imaginations (and in our games, in our movies, in our defense budget), as consequence-free, instantaneous and, for God’s sake, necessary. It’s the essence – it’s the definition – of empowerment.

And then the headlines scream about crazy guys grabbing hold of that empowerment to escape their personal cages, their crises on the moment: Yeah, it’s the fault of . . . whoever, and then another dozen people are dead.