Global

When I first sat down to write this week’s article, I could only think of two or three stories worthy of mention. I had fallen behind with my email newsletters, and family commitments drastically reduced my already limited time spent on social media and various websites. As I quickly caught up with the news and did my research, I realized last week was full of stories on which people needed to be informed. I spoke to friends and family who do not have a consistent interest in politics and they were all surprised by most of what happened last week. Had I not subscribed to multiple political news emails, been acquainted with many activists, and had the time to do my research, I would have had no idea what was going on in this country.

– Vermont Governor Phil Scott, Republican, at press conference October 5

efore you start feeling sorry for the governor of Vermont, whose comment above is fundamentally deceitful, you should probably be aware that he is being criticized for an arrangement he created for his own benefit.  

One should not sell bombs to a government that abuses human rights, which means murders a man without using one of the bombs.

If Saudi Arabia had murdered a man using a bomb, it would be fine to sell Saudi Arabia more bombs.

But Saudi Arabia murdered with a non-bomb weapon, and so shouldn’t have bombs anymore.

One should, in fact, bomb people whose government abuses human rights, which means murders children without using bombs.

Syria allegedly killed children using chemical weapons, and so Syrian men, women, and children should be bombed.

Killing millions of people in wars, year after year, as long as it’s with bombs, is justifiable because the Good War was justifiable because although the war killed some 80 million people, about 13 million of them were killed in German camps which doesn’t really count as war and is therefore not justifiable, especially for 6 to 9 million of them, although those are precisely the ones who could have been very easily spared by permitting Germany to expel them, something none of the governments whose warmaking justifies all future wars would agree to.

Remarks at Fellowship Hall at Berkeley, Calif., October 13, 2018.

Video here.

Slogans and headlines and haikus and other short combinations of words are tricky things. I wrote a book looking at many of the themes in how people commonly talk about war, and I found them all without exception — and the marketing campaigns before, during, and after every past war without exception — to be dishonest. So I called the book War Is A Lie. And then people who misunderstood my meaning started insisting to me that I was wrong, that war really does exist.

1. What would you like the U.S. discretionary budget to look like? With 60% now going to militarism, what percentage would you like that to be?

2. What program of economic conversion to peaceful enterprises would you support?

3. Would you end, continue, or escalate U.S. war making in: Afghanistan? Iraq? Syria? Yemen? Pakistan? Libya? Somalia?

4. Would you end the exemption for militarism in Kyoto, Paris, and other climate agreements?

Remarks at the Resource Center for Nonviolence in Santa Cruz, Calif., on October 12, 2018.

Video slowly uploading will be at https://youtu.be/jKhnteeo4k8

Exactly at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, in 1918, 100 years ago this coming November 11th, people across Europe suddenly stopped shooting guns at each other. Up until that moment, they were killing and taking bullets, falling and screaming, moaning and dying, from bullets and from poison gas.

Wilfred Owen put it this way:

There were two simultaneous Brett Kavanaugh stories. Together, as part of the confirmation process regarding his nomination as Supreme Court Justice, they revealed how political discourse in the United States has reached a new low, with debate over the man’s possible predilection to make judgments based on his own preferences rather than the US Constitution being ignored in favor of the politically motivated kabuki theater that was deliberately arranged to avoid that issue and instead go after his character.

Director Damien Chazelle has had a meteoric rise in the Hollywood firmament. His 2014 hit Whiplash had a $3.3 million production budget and earned more than $13 million at the box office, while 2016’s La La Land cost $30 million. Presumably because that musical scored five times its costs, Chazelle’s latest movie, First Man, almost doubled La La Land’s budget. I usually don’t dwell on film finances and focus instead on cinematic aesthetics, social commentary, film history and the like, but in the case of First Man the movie’s money matters have impacted upon its style - and in a mostly negative way.

The film’s title character is Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling), the first man to step foot on the moon. Like Miles Teller’s wannabe drummer in Whiplash and Emma Stone’s aspiring actress and Gosling’s striving jazz pianist in La La Land, First Man’s protagonist is - in this case, literally - reaching for the stars, against impossible odds.

In Dubious Battle - More militant than and written before The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck depicted a bitter Red-led strike in California’s orchards in his 1936 novel. James Franco stars in and directed this neglected 2016 gem with Selena Gomez, Robert Duvall, Ed Harris, Bryan Cranston (who previously portrayed blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo), Vincent D’Onofrio.

WHAT: Screening of In Dubious Battle; 113 minutess. Film historian/critic Ed Rampell intros the film, followed by Q&A.

WHEN: Doors open 7:00 p.m., program starts by 7:30 p.m., on Thursday, Oct. 25.

Where: The L.A. Workers Center, 1251 S. St. Andrews Place, L.A., CA 90019. Refreshments served. Donations requested.