Global

As her hometown is devastated by Hurricane Harvey, A Night With Janis Joplin, featuring Port Arthur’s most famous “native” daughter, has blown into the Laguna Playhouse. This isn’t a bioplay, as Kelly McIntyre belts out the raspy-voiced Texan’s tunes, accompanied by a rocking eight piece band performing many of Joplin’s greatest hits. Instead of a plot on Brian Prather’s nightclub-like set McIntyre delivers a series of rambling ruminations on fame, fortune, life, etc., in between songs.

I saw Janis perform live twice and McIntyre does a creditable job incarnating the singer - her swagger, swigs, twang and tonality. Like Joplin, the lead performer is not a conventional beauty, although both certainly had/have their own appeal. Costume designer Amy Clark cloaks McIntyre and the other singers with the period panache of sixties’ psychedelic spectacle. Most importantly, McIntyre holds her own with her vocals, which range from angsty to poignancy.

I’ve written before about the importance of practicing good information security habits to the politically-minded who are also Good With Computers, but for the most part, it’s been just that – practice – to most of us unless we’re out actively protesting. We’ve been concerned about what a Department of Justice under the draconian hand of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions the Third might look like, but all we could do was cover our tracks as best we could and wait for the DoJ to make a move.

Now they have, and just like the rest of this administration, it’s as bad as we could have feared.

In August, web hosting service DreamHost revealed a Department of Justice warrant requesting information about a site they hosted, disruptj20.org, that had organized protests of the inauguration of Donald Trump. But they didn’t only ask for information about the site’s owners. The warrant also requested emails, photos, and contact information for the site’s users as well as the IP addresses of the 1.3 million people who had visited the site.

o watch America’s structural racism at work, one need look no further than the National Football League (NFL) and its treatment of nonviolent unorthodoxy as expressed by Colin Kaepernick going to one knee during the national anthem in support of the unacceptable thought that black lives should matter as much as anyone else’s. Of course, that’s still a relatively new idea in the United States, dating from 1863 in law and still not fully accepted in much of the country.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra's
"Great Escape" from Thailand last week allows her to dodge a possible
10-year prison sentence and enjoy a billionaire's international
lifestyle, but she gave the military government, which toppled her in
a 2014 coup, a surprise victory.
   Her sudden, secret flight overseas means the junta will not be
troubled by her supporters' scenario of a Ms. Yingluck cast as a
woeful, politically victimized, jailed martyr for democracy.
   Her absence also decapitates her shocked Pheu Thai ("For Thais")
opposition party which attracted millions of "Red Shirt" voters.
   Today, the two biggest questions in this Southeast Asian country were:
   Who enabled Ms. Yingluck to become a mysterious fugitive hours or
days before the Supreme Court's verdict was to be announced on August
25?
   And will Ms. Yingluck, 50, ask for political asylum in England if
she goes there?
   Thai media, investigating her escape, splashed accusations and

When politicians are feeling the heat, they start a war and their popularity goes up even if the war is unnecessary or completely ridiculous. Donald Trump, the presidential candidate who promised that he would not take the nation into another Middle Eastern war, did so when he launched a fifty-nine cruise missile barrage against a Syrian Air Base even before he knew for sure what had happened on the ground. It was totally stupid but proved to be popular, even among talking heads and Congressmen, some of whom described his action as “presidential” in the best sense of the word.

The Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum production of Alice Childress’ Trouble in Mind came to me as a theatrical revelation. It is a classic “the worm turns” tale: Manners (Mark Lewis) is a big shot white liberal Hollywood producer who is making his Broadway stage debut in order to make “serious art” with a play-within-the-play (likewise written by a Caucasian). Manners sincerely believes it’s a powerful, searing social statement about and indictment of racism. Trouble, which is set in the 1950s, also hints that Manners may have fled Tinseltown to escape what is euphemistically called “the investigation”: the Hollywood Blacklist and House Un-American Activities Committees’ purging of so-called subversives (like WGTB founder Will Geer, who was blacklisted).

Willetta (the venerable Earnestine Phillips) plays an African American actress who, in scene one, Act I, seems to pooh-pooh the notion of theater as high art with a mission, as advocated by enthusiastic Broadway newcomer John (Max Lawrence who also does a superlative job portraying the workaholic steed Boxer in WGTB’s Animal Farm).

Tempting as it is to isolate Donald Trump as the worst president in history (and “worst” is putting it mildly . . . more like the most narcissistically infantile, the most Nazi-friendly), doing so achieves nothing beyond a fleeting sense of satisfaction.

Yeah, he’s scary. His supporters are scary. But he comes in a context.

Whether or not he’s impeached, or removed from office via the 25th Amendment, his effect on the country won’t go away. Trump can’t be undone, any more than an act of terror — or war — can be undone.

But maybe Trump can be addressed beyond a sense of outrage. Maybe he can foment, in spite of himself, not simply change, but national transformation. Realizing this, and seizing hold of the moment he has created, may be a far more effective way of dealing with his unhinged presidency than merely exuding endless shock.

This, of course, is how the mainstream media is dealing with the situation. Journalism has never been so yellow. Extra! Extra! Trump tweets a whopper! Read all about it!

Washington, D.C., needs a three-dimensional, sculptural Guernica dedicated to and with explanatory information about the victims of U.S. bombings in over 30 countries that the United States has bombed.

And it needs such a monument to the victims of wars now, to help move the country away from war. We can’t wait to create the monument after having achieved a society willing to make room for it among the war-glorification monstrosities gobbling up more and more space in the U.S. capital.

With land unavailable for peace in the land of war temples, the obvious solution is a rooftop. The Methodist Building across from the Capitol and the Supreme Court, or the nearby FCNL building, or any other prominent building with a roof could radically alter the DC skyline and worldview.

Bureacratic hurdles would have to be cleared, height kept below that of the Capitol dome, etc. But a rooftop could make a monument more visible, not less. An external elevator could take people close-up to view, learn more, and photograph.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- A Supreme Court verdict on August 25 could
imprison former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra for 10 years for
alleged "negligence" after she paid multi-billion dollar subsidies to
rice farmers before the military toppled her government in a 2014
coup.
   Weeping, wealthy and worried, Ms. Yingluck, 50, said she was
innocent of all allegations.
   Ms. Yingluck's case has gripped this Southeast Asian country
because a ruling either way could determine Thailand's future
stability under a junta trying to justify its regime and control her
supporters and opponents.
   The National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) charged Ms. Yingluck
for allegedly failing to stop massive financial losses after her
government paid farmers -- her key constituents -- much more than the
international price for 20 million tons of rice, to boost their living
standards.
   During her 2011-14 administration, Ms. Yingluck hoped to sell that
rice at a profit after predicting the international price would zoom
higher, but prices dropped.