Global
Oh, how the simplistic certainty resonates.
Russsiagate, recently stoked by Hillary Clinton, comes saturated in ironies, which are usually media-invisible.
The Democrats’ winning-but-nonetheless-losing presidential candidate of 2016 loosed some pent-up fury at democracy the other day, as well as annoyance with those who challenge the sacred status quo of the American governing process, when she tried to re-marginalize Tulsi Gabbard and Jill Stein, along with the generic concept of, good Lord, third parties.
1984 Theater Review
Watch Big Brother Watching You: Actors’ Gang Stages Oracle Orwell’s Prophetic Thought Crime
By Ed Rampell
[NOTE: This review may contain plot spoilers for those unfamiliar with 1984.]
Halloween is the spookiest time of the year, when scary shows are de rigueur on stage and screen. For example, Oct. 25-31 Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 scream-fest Psycho is being screamed - uh, I mean screened - in Downtown L.A.’s ornate Theatre at Ace Hotel, accompanied by LA Opera Orchestra performing live Bernard Herrmann’s hair-raising score. (See: https://www.laopera.org/performances/201920-season/psycho/.)
BANGKOK, Thailand -- Army Chief Gen. Apirat Kongsompong has announced
a communist conspiracy is plotting to seize power in Thailand, led by
elderly politicians and academics who had "implanted communist chips"
in their brains.
These secretive Thai communists have allied with Hong Kong's new
generation of protesters and could lure Thai youths to unleash an
insurrection in Bangkok, he warned.
Gen. Apirat's speech came after the military spent more than $480
million in recent purchases of U.S. weaponry including eight attack
reconnaissance helicopters, 50 Hellfire missiles, 60 Stryker infantry
carrier vehicles, 200 Advance Precision Kill Weapon System rockets,
plus .50 caliber machine guns, grenade launchers and other arms and
ammunition.
The general's 90-minute speech at the Royal Thai Army Headquarters on
October 11 was titled "Our Land From a Security Perspective." The
audience of 500 included university students, academics, local leaders
and the media.
While speaking, Gen. Apirat -- who trained in the U.S. -- appeared on
the verge of tears.
Pete Buttigieg burst on the national scene early this year as a new sort of presidential candidate. But it turns out he’s a very old kind—a glib ally of corporate America posing as an advocate for working people and their families. That has become apparent this fall as Buttigieg escalates his offensive against Medicare for All.
There was what might be described as an extraordinary amount of nonsense being promoted by last week’s media. Unfortunately, some of it was quite dangerous. Admiral William McRaven, who commanded the Navy Seals when Osama bin Laden was captured and killed and who has been riding that horse ever since, announced that if Donald Trump continues to fail to provide the type of leadership the country needs, he should be replaced by whatever means are necessary. The op-ed entitled “Our Republic is Under Attack by the President” with the subtitle “If President Trump doesn’t demonstrate the leadership that America needs, then it is time for a new person in the Oval Office” was featured in the New York Times, suggesting that the Gray Lady was providing its newspaper of record seal of approval for what might well be regarded as a call for a military coup.
Maori moviemaker Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit is in the tradition of Charlie Chaplin’s 1940 anti-Nazi masterpiece The Great Dictator. Rabbit blasts off with a laugh-out-loud sequence comparing Beatle-mania-like celebrity worship to the Third Reich’s cult of personality for the Führer. In this tragic-comic satire Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis) is a boy growing up during World War II who fantasizes that Adolph Hitler (Waititi, who also wrote and directed) is his best friend.
The picaresque picture follows Jojo’s misadventures in wartime Germany (but actually shot in the Czech Republic), where he joins the Hitler Youth, the Nazis’ militaristic counterpart to the Boy Scouts. Aided by goofy true believer Fraulein Rahm (Rebel Wilson), the Hitler-Jugend unit is commanded by Captain Klenzendorf (Sam Rockwell), a wounded soldier transferred from the frontlines back to the homeland to train the Aryan youngsters for combat. As they blunder through exercises such as tossing grenades, Rockwell slyly portrays the one-eyed officer as realizing that the Hitler Youth are, like National Socialism and the war effort, futile and farcical.
LA Opera’s latest star-studded production, The Light in the Piazza, is a version of the musical that opened on Broadway in 2005, based on the 1960 novella by Elizabeth Spencer. This love story about an American mother and daughter, Margaret Johnson (legendary Renée Fleming) and Clara (Disney actress Dove Cameron), visiting Florence has a unique twist: Clara is developmentally challenged. While in Italy she falls in love with the Florentine Fabrizio Naccarelli (English actor Rob Houchen, a Les Mis co-star of a West End show production), son of a shopkeeper (two-time Tony Award-winner Brian Stokes Mitchell and Tony-nommed in 1998 for Ragtime; Mitchell’s film/TV work includes playing Hawaiian surfer Duke Kahanamoku in the 1999 TV-movie Too Rich).
A terrifying series of gestapo-style assaults, petition buying, bribery, mass media manipulation and systematic intimidation has smacked into the attempt of Ohio citizens to repeal a billion-dollar bailout for two dangerously failing atomic reactors on Lake Erie.
The unprecedented assault threatens the referendum process in Ohio and across the nation.
It also threatens to keep on line two very old, dangerously decayed reactors where melt-downs and explosions could forever contaminate the Great Lakes region and more. (For a full explanation, hear this one-hour discussion at:
The story may end Monday, October 21, when signatures are due to qualify an anti-nuclear referendum for the fall 2020 ballot.
The discussion, if one might even call it that, regarding the apparent President Donald Trump decision to withdraw at least some American soldiers from Syria has predictably developed along partisan, ideologically fueled lines. Trump has inevitably muddied the waters by engaging in his usual confusing explanations coupled with piles of invective heaped upon critics. The decision reportedly came after a telephone call with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, but what exactly was agreed upon and who else might have been present in the room to report back to the intelligence community remains uncertain. Trump clearly believed that he had obtained some assurances regarding limits to any proposed Turkish military action from Erdogan, who almost immediately launched air attacks followed by ground troop incursions against the former U.S. supported Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).