Global

“Everyone wants to play with the big boys, and the only way to become one of the big boys is to have nuclear toys.”

Attention Planet Earth! Attention Planet Earth! It is time to grow up.

For many decades, any politician daring to fight for economic justice was liable to be denounced for engaging in “class warfare.” It was always a grimly laughable accusation, coming from wealthy elites as well as their functionaries in corporate media and elective office. In the real world, class warfare—or whatever you want to call it—has always been an economic and political reality.

In recent decades, class war in the USA has become increasingly lopsided. The steady decline in union membership, the worsening of income inequality and the hollowing out of the public sector have been some results of ongoing assaults on social decency and countess human lives. Corporate power has run amuck.

Now, the billionaire class is worried. For the first time in memory, there’s a real chance that the next president could threaten the very existence of billionaires—or at least significantly reduce their unconscionable rate of wealth accumulation—in a country and on a planet with so much human misery due to extreme economic disparities.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), the President of Mexico, was not eager to accept Donald Trump’s offer to fight a war against drug dealers. In fact, AMLO replied as follows (in so far as I’m able to translate; see the video below to verify, and please send me your translations):

The worst that could be, the worst thing we could see, would be war.

Those who have read about war, or those who have suffered from a war, know what war means.

War is the opposite of politics. I have always said that politics was invented to avoid war.

War is synonymous with irrationality. War is irrational.

We are for peace. Peace is a principle of this new government.

Authoritarians have no place in this government that I represent.

It should be written out 100 times as punishment: we declared war and it did not work.

That is not an option. That strategy failed. We will not be a part of that. . . .

The 11th annual DTLA Film Festival took place Oct. 23-27. According to the Festival’s website: “Our programming reflects downtown L.A.’s vibrant new urbanism, the unique ethnic and cultural diversity of its neighborhoods, its burgeoning independent film community, its singular blend of late 19th and 20th century architecture, and the seminal role it played in the early days of American cinema (epitomized by the world’s largest group of vintage movie palaces located in the Broadway Theater District).”

DTLAFF screened features, shorts, documentaries etc., at two primary locations: Regal L.A. LIVE1000 West Olympic Blvd., L.A., CA 90015 while the Dome Series is at the Wisdome Immersive Art Park in DTLA’s Arts District, 1147 Palmetto St., L.A. or the Vortex Dome Theater at L.A. Center Studios.Panels, parties, etc., were presented at various Downtown L.A. locations. For info on the DTLA Film Festival see: https://www.dtlaff.com/.

KATHY GRIFFIN: A HELL OF A STORY

The Head of Her Comic Class: Doc Mocks Trump

One of my big bugaboos as a cultural historian and critic is originality, and today’s spate of sequels, remakes and copycatting of content from one medium to another usually rubs me the wrong way. But as soon as the proverbial curtain lifts at the Skylight Theatre The 7 Stages of Grieving kicks off with something most American audiences are likely to have never seen before in all of their theatergoing. Phosphorescent rocks glowing in the dark are poured onstage, the only thing visible onstage in the gloom, forming a circle around a mound of dirt which we glimpse, once the lights are turned on.

We also see our storyteller, Chenoa Deemal, a full-figured, pretty, youthful brown-skinned woman with long straight hair in a colorful dress. A sort of Down Under counterpart to African griots, Ms. Deemal proceeds to lead us through seven vignettes that shed light on the Aboriginal experience, after she has recognized the Traditional Custodians of the land here in Los Angeles - the Gabrielina, Tongva and Kich tribal peoples.

In spite of the fact that Israeli snipers continue to shoot scores of unarmed protesting Gazans every Friday with virtually no coverage from the media, there are some signs that the ability of Israel and its friends to control the narrative regarding the Jewish state’s appalling human rights violations is beginning to weaken. To be sure, The Lobby still has sharp teeth and is prepared to use them as in last week’s report of a Florida high school principal with 26 years of experience and an otherwise impeccable record who was fired because he said that “Not everyone believes in the holocaust.”

The 11th annual DTLA Film Festival took place Oct. 23-27. According to the Festival’s website: “Our programming reflects downtown L.A.’s vibrant new urbanism, the unique ethnic and cultural diversity of its neighborhoods, its burgeoning independent film community, its singular blend of late 19th and 20th century architecture, and the seminal role it played in the early days of American cinema (epitomized by the world’s largest group of vintage movie palaces located in the Broadway Theater District).”

DTLAFF screened features, shorts, documentaries etc., at two primary locations: Regal L.A. LIVE 1000 West Olympic Blvd., L.A., CA 90015 while the Dome Series is at the Wisdome Immersive Art Park in DTLA’s Arts District, 1147 Palmetto St., L.A. or the Vortex Dome Theater at L.A. Center Studios. Panels, parties, etc., were being presented at various Downtown L.A. locations. For info on the DTLA Film Festival see: https://www.dtlaff.com/.

POISONING PARADISE

007 Fights the Ultimate Bond Villain: The Agrichemical Industry

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There is a certain irony in President Donald Trump’s frequently expressed desire to withdraw from the endless wars that have characterized the so-called “global war on terror” initiated by George W. Bush in 2001. The problem is that Trump has expressed such sentiments both when he was running for office and also as recently as last week without actually doing anything to bring about change. In fact, the greatly ballyhooed “withdrawal” from Syria turned out to be more like a relocation of existing military assets, with soldiers moving from Syria’s northern border to take up new positions to continue control of the Iraqi oil fields in the country’s southeast. Indeed, the number of American soldiers in Syria may have actually been increased with armor units being transferred from their base in Iraq.

Let me just start by clarifying that this review of Psycho should not be confused with a biopic somebody’s bound to make about Trump called Psychopath. Rather, this is a review of an exceptional Halloween screening of the 1960 classic movie Psycho directed by Alfred Hitchcock, accompanied by LA Opera Orchestra performing composer Bernard Herrmann’s eerie, sometimes screeching score.

Psycho is widely considered to be a movie masterpiece, largely because of its striking visuals organically linked to Herrmann’s music which brilliantly (and terrifyingly!) expresses the story of psychotic mama’s boy Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) running amok at a moody motel and California Gothic house of horrors (which you can actually see at the Universal Studios tour). According to LA Opera’s publicist Vanessa Flores Waite, the Orchestra (which has up to 61 core members) performed Herrmann’s chilling score live as a “special version of the film that doesn’t include the soundtrack” was projected onto the screen above the dimly lit stage of the Theatre at Ace Hotel where Louis Lohraseb conducted his “macabre” musicians.