Global
ntrigued by the controversy that erupted over Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s speech before the American Association of Christian Counselors last week in Nashville — it was titled “Being a Christian Leader” and was eventually removed from the State Department website — I wound up reading the whole speech. And I actually found one paragraph that I liked.
I’ll get to that in a moment, but first, ta tum, the controversy:
The Democratic Party's most powerful donors are running out of options in the presidential race. Their warhorse Joe Biden is stumbling, while the other corporate-minded candidates lag far behind. For party elites, with less than four months to go before voting starts in caucuses and primaries, 2020 looks like Biden or bust.
A key problem for the Democratic establishment is that the "electability" argument is vaporizing in the political heat. Biden's shaky performances on the campaign trail during the last few months have undermined the notion that he's the best bet to defeat Donald Trump. The latest polling matchups say that Biden and his two strong rivals for the nomination, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, would each hypothetically beat Trump by around 10 points.
The committee that awards the Nobel Peace Prize was right not to give the prize to Greta Thunberg, who deserves the highest prizes available, but not one created to fund the work of abolishing war and militaries. That cause ought to be central to the work of protecting the climate, but it is not. The question of why no young person working to abolish war is given access to television networks ought to be raised.
The vision that Bertha von Suttner and Alfred Nobel had for the peace prize — the promotion of fraternity between nations, the advancement of disarmament and arms control and the holding and promotion of peace congresses — has not yet been fully grasped by the committee, but it is making progress.
Abiy Ahmed has worked for peace in his and neighboring countries, ending a war and establishing structures aimed at maintaining a just and sustainable peace. His peace efforts have included environmental protection.
Relationships are like apparel in that one size does not fit all. For centuries in American patriarchal society marriages were between one male and one female, and this heterosexual norm was widely expected to be the standard in premarital romances, too. Of course, just as the customary view as to whether straight people could have sex outside of marriage has shifted the entire notion of gender and more has radically changed over the years.
Enter writer/director Brian Reynolds, who tackles the notions of these altering societal norms by injecting how sexual partnerships and marriage are evolving into his subversive take on romantic comedy (complete with “cute meets”) in Mono/Poly. The title is clever as it refers to not only the real estate board game but to the idea that monogamy is a form of monopoly in the sense of ownership.
Violence is pervasive throughout human society and it has a vast range of manifestations. Moreover, some of these manifestations – particularly the threat of nuclear war (which might start regionally), the climate catastrophe and the ongoing ecological devastation, as well as geoengineering and the deployment of 5G – threaten imminent human extinction if not contained. Separately from these extinction-threatening manifestations, however, violence occurs in a huge range of other contexts denying many people the freedom, human rights and opportunities necessary for a meaningful life. Moreover, human violence is now driving 200 species of life on Earth to extinction daily with another 1,000,000 species under threat.
“What do you get when you cross a mentally ill loner with a society who abandons him and treats him like trash?” asks Joker. Directed by Todd Philips and starring Joaquin Phoenix, Joker was a sweaty and melancholy telling of how Batman’s most iconic nemesis came to be. We’re not here for spoilers though, although I strongly recommend the reader to go and find the punchline of this joke. Too often in reality we see mentally ill loners being abandoned and treated like trash.
Saturday, October 12, 6:30-11pm
1021 E. Broad St., Columbus
Parking inside driveway, on street or rear parking lot
Free, no RSVP required.
614-253-2571, colsfreepress@gmail.com
columbusfreepress.org
Come to network and socialize with progressive friends with refreshments, live music and a presentation by Dr. Bridget Williams and Emilie Ramach.
Despite the corporate hype, Democratic Socialism and Social Democracy are deeply rooted in the mainstream of our nation’s history.
The lie that they’re “foreign ideologies” starts with the fascist assault Woodrow Wilson waged against them during and after
World War 1.
Their marginalization today by corporate Democrats and Trump Republicans is itself profoundly unAmerican.
Here’s the reality (as explained in greater length in my new People’s Spiral of US History):
In the decades after the Civil War, Robber Baron corporations captured the core of the American economy. Led by JP Morgan and John Rockefeller, they pushed family farmers and urban workers deep into the depths of poverty.
In the west and south, agrarian activists formed the People’s (Populist) Party to demand public control over the monopoly capitalist forces that were destroying their lives. Their socialistic platforms demanded democratic rule over the money supply, banks, railroads, telecommunications and much more. They wanted female suffrage, direct election of Senators, referendum and recall.
By World BEYOND War, October 8, 2019
The fourth annual conference of World BEYOND War, which was held on October 4th and 5th in Limerick, Ireland, produced this letter, which is being delivered to Julian Assange.
We are grateful to you for the work you have done exposing criminal activities and abuses of power by militaries and governments. We believe that governments’ (monstrous and criminal) behavior should not be secret. People should know what their government is doing, and what a powerful foreign government is doing to their own countries. The actual results of the work of WikiLeaks have been hugely beneficial.
It is outrageous that you are behind bars for exposing actions far more serious than a recent phone call between Donald Trump and the President of Ukraine, which has political opponents of Trump suddenly claiming to support whistleblowers.