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Artists Rise Up Los Angeles returned to the stage on August 27 at The Federal NoHo in order to raise consciousness and cash for a cause. The live performance also raised lots of laughter, as the show was co-presented by Minority Reportz, a comedy “consortium” that highlights mostly non-white, female comics who are often underrepresented by the “mainstream” comedy club scene.
ARULA founding executive producer and artistic director Sue Hamilton kicked off the fun- and fundraiser, taking the mic on the stage of the upstairs space within the North Hollywood eatery and nightclub to welcome the capacity crowd and introduce speakers and entertainers. The day after 2016’s presidential election, Hamilton, an L.A. theater director and acting teacher, resolved to “take our emotions and our art and put it onstage and to give the proceeds to” progressive groups. By January 31, 2017, ARULA was on the boards, raising hell and money.
Progressive activists often see a frustrating pattern. Many Democrats in office are good at liberal platitudes but don’t really fight for what we need. Even when constituents organize to lobby or protest, they have little leverage compared to big campaign donors, party leaders and corporate media spin. Activist efforts routinely fall short because -- while propelled by facts and passion -- they lack power.
Right now, in dozens of Democratic congressional districts, the most effective way for progressives to “lobby” their inadequate representatives would be to “primary” them. Activists may flatter themselves into believing that they have the most influence by seeking warm personal relationships with a Democratic lawmaker. But a credible primary campaign is likely to change an elected official’s behavior far more quickly and extensively.
In short, all too often, progressive activists are routinely just too frigging nice -- without galvanizing major grassroots power.
There have been several interesting developments in the United States government’s war on free speech and privacy. First of all, the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Customs and Border Protection Agency (CBP), which is responsible for actual entry of travelers into the country, has now declared that it can legally access phones and computers at ports of entry to determine if there is any subversive content which might impact on national security. “Subversive content” is, of course, subjective, but those seeking entry can be turned back based on how a border control agent perceives what he is perusing on electronic media.
BANGKOK, Thailand -- Cambodia's fugitive opposition leader Sam Rainsy
says he will return from France on November 9 to his Southeast Asian
homeland, where he faces at least 15 years imprisonment.
Not many people expect Mr. Rainsy, 70, to arrive in the capital Phnom
Penh after authorities warned they have "prepared handcuffs" for him.
"I don't see how Sam Rainsy braves the risks on his own and returns to
Cambodia unless he is well-protected diplomatically and well-escorted
physically, like a puppet to someone," Chhang Song said in an
interview.
Mr. Chhang was former Washington-backed President Lon Nol's
information minister before they fled together to America in 1975 when
the U.S. lost its wars in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.
"Though having been initially strongly popular, Sam Rainsy is an
aristocrat to the teeth and is losing considerably his support from
the Cambodian people as he has failed many of his promises," said Mr.
Chhang, who recently retired as advisor to Cambodia's authoritarian
Prime Minister Hun Sen.
In the abandoned hinterlands of Stripmallovia, aka the outskirts of Columbus near Reynoldsburg, a group of artists have transformed an empty big box store into a sprawling interactive weird choose-your-own-adventure art exhibit you can explore. I finally got a chance to visit this weekend with my family and teenage stepson. I found it to be a pretty cool experience and certainly an improvement over its previous use as a Sports Authority.
First, when driving in you are reminded of the decline of the American dream, as you see a huge decaying parking lot and numerous big box stores that their corporate builders have abandoned for greener or, should we say, virtual pastures. But Otherworld sticks out as quite a few people are parked in front of it. Walking in behind dark curtains and a giant projector, you do feel like you are leaving the reality you entered from, as you see what seems like a giant window on the all-black background.
“It is my firm belief that 9/11 skeptics—and true skeptics of any paradigm-shifting and taboo subject—who publicly expose lies and ‘naked emperors’ are heroes …They have suffered the ridicule and wrath of those emperors, their minions, and the just plain frightened…In our American society, many of our authority figures routinely lie to us, but nonetheless, many citizens continue to look to them for truth and safety—especially when fear is heightened. This strong tendency to believe and obey authority is another obstacle with which skeptics of the official 9/11 account must contend…By unquestioningly believing and obeying authority, we make very bad decisions, which often negatively affect others. This can be equally true for the four human proclivities studied by social psychologists: doublethink, cognitive dissonance, conformity, and groupthink.” – Frances Shure, clinical psychologist and early skeptic of the official 9/11 Conspiracy Theory that two hi-jacked commercial jet planes caused three concrete, steel-reinforced towers to explode into fine dust and collapse into their own footprints in less than 12 seconds.
It is not often that one hears anything like the truth in today’s Washington, a city where the art of dissimulation has reached new heights among both Democrats and Republicans. Everyone who has not been asleep like Rip Van Winkle for the past twenty years knows that the most powerful foreign lobby operating in the United States is that of the state of Israel. Indeed, by some measures it just might be the most powerful lobby period, given the fact that it has now succeeded in extending its tentacles into state and local levels with its largely successful campaigns to punish criticism or boycotting of Israel while also infiltrating boards of education to require Holocaust education and textbooks that reflect favorably on the Jewish state.
“All things are interrelated. Everything in the universe is part of a single whole. Everything is connected in some way to everything else. It is therefore possible to understand something only if we can understand how it is connected to everything else.”
These words, the first of the Twelve Teachings of the Sacred Tree, quoted by Rupert Ross in his extraordinary book, Returning to the Teachings, begin to open the biggest truth of all about the burning rainforests of Planet Earth.
For plutocrats, this summer has gotten a bit scary. Two feared candidates are rising. Trusted candidates are underperforming. The 2020 presidential election could turn out to be a real-life horror movie: A Nightmare on Wall Street.
“Wall Street executives who want Trump out,” Politico reported in January, “list a consistent roster of appealing nominees that includes former Vice President Joe Biden and Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Kamala Harris of California.”