Global
So first of all, let me get this out of the way: I really enjoyed the annual experience of watching an ancient Grecian play performed under the stars at the Getty Villa, seeing and hearing it in an amphitheater the way Greek audiences did when Euripides’ Bacchae opened in 405 BC. The drama pits Dionysus (a whimsical Ellen Lauren) - who, according to press notes, is “the god of divine ecstasy, fertility, wine and harvest… [and] theater” - against Pentheus (Eric Berryman), king of Thebes (the dramatist’s birthplace).
I’m certainly no expert on Greek drama but it seems to me that what Euripides, the playwright of antiquity, was getting at is what Sigmund Freud, the 19th century founder of psychoanalysis, would much later describe in works such as 1930’s Civilization and Its Discontents. That is, the struggle between the id - the unrestrained, instinctual, inner self - and the superego, from whence rules and regulations emanate. Out of this epic clash and collision Classical tragedy is born - and borne.
“This isn’t rocket science,” Jackie Ingram said, humorously downplaying her involvement in the Restorative Justice Community Court, a pilot project of the Cook County Circuit Court, which has brought a new, healing-focused system of justice to her community this past year.
My thought in that moment was: She’s right. Saving kids and reclaiming a troubled, broken community may be more complex than rocket science.
And more crucial.
“This is basic,” she went on. “Give them hope that they have a future.”
Jackie, who lives in the Chicago neighborhood of North Lawndale, is one of the community members involved in the experimental court, which addresses some of the worst failings of the country’s criminal justice system.
The University of Virginia’s Miller Center caught flak for appointing Trumpian Marc Short, but has now announced the appointment of John Negroponte, presumably hoping for little resistance since Negroponte’s not a Trumpman.
But shouldn’t morality still matter? Shouldn’t a center that has yet to ever feature an opponent of war but keeps inviting mercenaries and soldiers and warmongers to speak have to have some limits?
The United States spends about five times what China does on its military. And it spends more just on its military bases in other people’s countries than any country other than itself or China spends on its entire military. The United States keeps troops in almost every country on earth, including in 800 to 1,000 major military bases outside the United States. The rest of the world’s nations combined (most of them U.S. allies and weapons customers) keep a couple of dozen foreign bases total. Imperialism is a uniquely U.S. illness, although everybody suffers the damage.
The following article comes, slightly edited and re-formatted, from a 2015 Frontiers in Neurology Review Article. It was authored byRomain Kroum Gherardi, Housam Eidi, Guillemette Crépeaux, François Jerome Authier and Josette Cadusseau (of the Faculté de Médecine and Faculté des Sciences et Technologie, INSERM U955 Team 10, Université Paris Est-Créteil, Créteil, France)
(The original English journal article is available online at https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fneur.2015.00004/full)
Following are two important passages from the article plus a note from the Duty to Warn editor prefacing the article:
Two recent local news stories offer compelling, if baffling, insight into the priorities of the media in and around Columbus. On August 22, the media descended on Ohio State University to learn the future of Urban Meyer following the football coach’s handling of a domestic abuse scandal involving one of his assistants.
Two days later, the same news outlets failed to appear at the Franklin County Board of Elections to learn the fate of a citizens’ initiative to protect Columbus, and thus Central Ohio, from the toxic and radioactive dangers of fracking. During this hearing, the board would decide whether to place on the ballot the Columbus Community Bill of Rights (CCBOR) proposal to “establish a community bill of rights for water, soil and air protection” from fracking operations and its waste. Strangely, the same media that comprehensively covered Meyer and his football program demonstrated little interest in an issue that affects the health of all Central Ohioans and their environment.
Ayanna Pressley just won a Democratic Primary in a Democratic Congressional District in Massachusetts.
While most candidates for Congress have websites completely devoid of any mention of foreign policy whatsoever, Pressley has one with a substantive position on foreign policy.
Over the past 17 years since 9/11/01, the title question has plagued the tens of thousands of committed groups of highly intelligent and thorough truth-seeking scientists, physicists, architects, engineers, pilots, ex-military officers, ex-intelligence agents, firefighters, demolition experts, psychologists, medical professionals, etc, etc who have absolute proof that the official Cheney/Bush White House story about what happened on 9/11/01 was a “Big Lie”, that was so easily perpetrated on a fearful, gullible and mainstream media-saturated public that was very willing to suspend their critical thinking skills and throw their trust onto authority figures that would tell them what they were supposed to believe, even if it was contrary to what they actually saw with their own eyes. Unfortunately, those pseudo-authority figures that have the power to dominate the media, also have a long history of being serial liars - and they have hidden ulterior motives and a willing mainstream media machine on which to perpetuate the lies.