Global
By Nicolas J S Davies, World BEYOND War
The world faces many overlapping crises: regional political crises from Kashmir to Venezuela; brutal wars that rage on in Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Somalia; and the existential dangers of nuclear weapons, climate change, and mass extinction.
But beneath the surface of all these crises, human society faces an underlying, unresolved conflict about who or what governs our world and who must make the critical decisions about how to tackle all these problems — or whether we will tackle them at all. The underlying crisis of legitimacy and authority that makes so many of our problems almost impossible to solve is the conflict between U.S. imperialism and the rule of law.
Imperialism means that one dominant government exercises sovereignty over other countries and people across the world, and makes critical decisions about how they are to be governed and under what kind of economic system they are to live.
Some people are attached to the idea that the Democratic National Committee will “rig” the presidential nomination against Bernie Sanders. The meme encourages the belief that the Bernie 2020 campaign is futile because of powerful corporate Democrats. But such fatalism should be discarded.
As Frederick Douglass said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” Of course top Democratic Party officials don’t intend to give up control. It has to be taken from them. And the conditions for doing that are now more favorable than ever.
The effects of mobilized demands for change in the Democratic presidential nominating process have been major -- not out of the goodness of any power broker’s heart, but because progressives have organized effectively during the last two years.
Ancient History Sonorously, Sensually Brought Back to Life
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s The Clemency of Titus (La Clemenza di Tito), dramatizes part of the life and reign of the Emperor Titus Flavius Caesar Vespasianus Augustus, who ruled the Roman Empire from 79 to 81 A.D. This work of historically-inspired fiction with a libretto by Caterino Mazzola, based on an earlier libretto by Pietro Metastasio, vividly brings ancient Rome alive with exquisite costumes by Mattie Ullrich (which much to my sheer delight include, at long last, togas!) and stellar sets by Thaddeus Strassberger, who also expertly helms this colossal epic about the emperor who, among other things, completed the Colosseum. So let the operatic games begin!
U.S. military spending eight years ago was at $1.2 trillion per year, when one added in the nukes in the Energy Department, the Homeland Security Department, the CIA, interest on debt, veterans’ care, etc.
Schiff has Apparently Forgotten the Bill of Rights as well as the History of the Anti-Jewish Book-burnings in Nazi Germany that some of his Ancestors Surely Must Have Experienced
By Gary G. Kohls, MD – March 5, 2019 (4,248 words)
“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and you can fool all of the people some of the time; but you can’t fool all the people all the time.” -- Attributed to Abraham Lincoln
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a developmental disability that affects about one percent of the global population. Children can fall anywhere on the spectrum, which ranges from mild to severe. All kids with ASD have some level of social, behavioral, and communication challenges. Getting children with ASD to engage with others and understand social cues is challenging for parents, teachers, and counselors.
Fortunately, virtual reality technology is showing promise in changing how children with ASD interact with the world around them.
Despite claims by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to have defeated its own troops using Facebook (and, really, what plot to take over a high school hasn’t done that?), the biggest challenge NATO will face this year will probably not be nefarious Russian social media posts.
Nor will it be the dreaded Russian military, now sucking down 6 percent as many dollars each year as the war machines of the NATO nations.
Nor is NATO terribly threatened by a U.S. president who demands that its members spend more, that more nations join, that the North Atlantic nation of Colombia partner up, and that the war games and weapons deals and expansion eastward press ahead, but who once blurted out obvious stuff his handlers would never allow him to act on, such as that NATO serves no good purpose. (Which of his projects does serve any good purpose?)
Tax havens are locations around the world where wealthy individuals, criminals and terrorists, as well as governments and government agencies (such as the CIA), banks, corporations, hedge funds, international organizations (such as the Vatican) and crime syndicates (such as the Mafia), can stash their money so that they can avoid regulation and oversight and, very often, evade tax. According to Nicholas Shaxson: ‘Tax havens are now at the heart of the global economy.’