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In early May of 2021, the Department of Justice released 10 pages of their FBI file on former Nirvana singer-songwriter Kurt Cobain. Since the rock icon’s death in 1994, mainstream media has mostly repeated police statements that Cobain killed himself with a shotgun. FBI statements and a mass of accumulated evidence suggest that they purposely avoided looking into the radical activist musician’s death due to U.S. intelligence involvement.
Cobain’s Radical Left Politics
One of the reasons the FBI may have had for participating in and/or covering up Kurt Cobain’s murder is their history of targeting political leftists. In 1971, activists broke into an FBI office and revealed its Counter-Intelligence Program (Cointelpro), which started in the 1950s and targeted anti-war and Civil Rights activists.
We are led to believe that history is being made in Israel following the formation of an ideologically diverse government coalition which, for the first time, includes an Arab party, Ra’am, or the United Arab List.
If we are to accept this logic, the leader of Ra’am, Mansour Abbas, is a mover and shaker of history, the same way that Naftali Bennett of the far-right Yamina Party, and Yair Lapid, the supposed ‘centrist’ of Yesh Atid, are also history makers. How bizarre!
Sensational media headlines and hyperboles aside, Israel’s new government was a desperate attempt by Israeli politicians to dislodge Benjamin Netanyahu, the country’s longest-serving Prime Minister, from power. While Lapid is fairly new to Israel’s contentious politics, Bennett and Abbas are opportunists, par excellence.
How did Benjamin Netanyahu manage to serve as Israel’s longest-serving Prime Minister? With a total of 15 years in office, Netanyahu surpassed the 12-year leadership of Israel's founding father, David Ben Gurion. The answer to this question will become particularly critical for future Israeli leaders who hope to emulate Netanyahu’s legacy, now that his historic leadership is likely to end.
Well, for the first time since the lockdown began, after about 15 months of streaming cinema online, your peripatetic film critic finally attended his first screening in person. The event took place June 3 at the Landmark Pico Theater, a major West Los Angeles theatrical venue where arthouse and blockbuster movies alike are shown. The occasion was the directorial debut by Ensenada-born actress Magi Avila, Altitude Not Attitude, which was preceded by a red carpet in the Landmark’s lobby. The celebs who walked the red carpet included supermodel/actress Kelly LeBrock, who was the titular The Woman in Red in that 1984 Gene Wilder romcom.
This was followed by a well-attended reception inside one of the multiplex’s theaters, where a bartender provided libations and servers made the rounds with delicious appetizers that were each adorned by mini-flags from the countries of origin for the hors d’oeuvres, catered by Chef Stacie Rauch of The Personal Palate. For instance, chocolatey mini-mousses were topped by diminutive French Tricolours.
Why does the US advocate a free market while doing its utmost to stifle it? The current US-China economic war is a perfect example of this perplexing question.
The legacy of Milton Friedman, the founder of America’s modern political economy, was a representation of this very dichotomy: the use, misuse and manipulation of the concept of the free market.
Through the Chicago School of Economics, whose disciples have proved most consequential in the formation of the American approach to foreign policy, especially in South America, Milton constantly championed the virtues of the free market, emphasizing a supposed link between freedom and capitalism and insisting that governments should not micromanage markets.
Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 feature Apocalypse Now depicted war crimes committed by U.S. troops against Vietnamese people: An unforgettable, operatic, bone chilling chopper air raid attacking a Viet Cong village set to Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” so a surfer whose name is initialed “LBJ” can ride the gnarly waves there (Ride of the Valkyries - Apocalypse Now (3/8) Movie CLIP (1979) HD - YouTube); a Yankee patrol boat opens fire on a traditional Vietnamese craft after a woman tries to protect a puppy (APOCALYPSE NOW - I told you don´t stop - YouTube); and so on.
The political discourse of Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, is similar to that of an ineffectual king who has been isolated in his palace for far too long. The king speaks of prosperity and peace, and tirelessly counts his innumerable achievements, while his people are dying of starvation outside and pointlessly begging for his attention.
But Abbas is no ordinary king. He is a ‘president’ by name only, a designated ‘leader’ simply because Israel and the US-led international political system insist on recognizing him as such. Not only had the man’s political mandate expired in 2009, it was quite limited even prior to that date. At no point in his career did Abbas ever represent the entire Palestinian people. Now, at 85 years, chances are Abbas will never serve this role.
he Palestinian-Israeli nightmare has a solution: men must exit the process.
The blood rivalry is deepening. It’s being used to fuel anti-Jewish/anti-Muslim hatred, spiraling into an epic abyss extending far beyond the Middle East. Global catastrophe stares us in the face.
Parallel disputes have been mitigated, including Northern Ireland’s unhinged 350-year Catholic-Protestant civil war, where women played a key role in bringing about peace.
But this one stands alone. It demands a game-changer.
As everywhere, men are responsible for nearly all the violence. We must now defer to the ultimate arbiters of birth and survival — women.
Only those who bear the first joy and pain of childbirth can grasp the magnitude of this situation.
Here’s how it can go:
Simultaneous referenda must be staged within the Israeli and Palestinian communities.
BANGKOK, Thailand -- Some of Biden's and Trump's most active boosters
here in Southeast Asia have joined forces, demanding the State
Department vaccinate all American expats in Thailand, as a model for
international distribution, instead of discriminating against them.
"Biden has publicly announced that all Americans now have access to
vaccines, but the government and State seem to have forgotten about us
Americans living abroad," said the chair of Democrats Abroad in
Thailand, Paul Risley, in an interview.
"What are we, chopped liver?
"These are vaccines, offered for free to all in the U.S., and most of
them have been manufactured with taxpayer dollars."
Some worried American expats plan "to fly back to the U.S. -- costly
and risky travel that might bring variants back to the U.S," Mr.
Risley said.
Americans arriving in the U.S. on flights from Bangkok may "have to
stay in the U.S. for at least a month, to get two shots of an approved
vaccine.
"Some Americans may simply be too old to make the long flights, and
journey, back to the U.S," he said.
I would like to announce the publication of a book which discusses the duty of scientists and engineers to try to prevent the catastrophes that currently threaten human society and the biosphere. The book may be freely downloaded and circulated from the following link:
Three major threats to human society
Science and technology have conferred many benefits on human society, but as we start the 21st century, most thoughtful observers believe that our science-driven and information-driven industrial civilization has entered a period of crisis.