Global

War Is Love

MAY 17, 2018 BY DAVIDSWANSON

 

Photo by Truthdig.

On Monday I was arrested along with many other people in the street in front of the U.S. Capitol, participating in the new Poor People’s Campaign, the first multi-issue coalition we’ve seen in years that properly takes on militarism rather than indulging the fantasy of a $1 trillion a year military coexisting with decent humanitarian and environmental policies.

Yet it was hard at this peaceful gathering and in the “training” before it not to notice people’s habitual shouts of “fight back!” and “go to war!” and “we must be warriors!” — not to mention the handing out of U.S. flags.

Tim Kaine’s War Scam Hits a Speed Bump

By David Swanson

 

Virginia ought to be in the running for worst U.S. senators in the country, a couple of walking catastrophes empowered in part by their status as Democrats and, in one case, the status of rightful Vice President if not for various outrages, real (the Electoral College, vote suppression) and imagined (Vladimir Putin’s evil manipulation of the time-space continuum). While Senator Mark Warner loves him some torturers he can confirm to high office, Tim Kaine has bigger plans.

The NNV (Number Needed to Vaccinate) and the NNT (Number Needed to Treat):

It has been over a decade since I came to the realization that the entire profession of medicine had been bamboozled by the propaganda coming from the Big Pharma drug and vaccine maker Merck & Company that its so-called “fracture-preventative” drug Fosamax had defrauded us doctors and our patients by falsely claiming a “50% efficacy rate” in the prevention of bone fractures in osteopenic/osteoporotic women.

 

I had always been suspicious of pharmaceutical sales reps and the Big Pharma corporations that they worked for, and I had wondered exactly where they got the 50% effectiveness figure. So I finally got around to actually digging into and studying the clinical study statistics that were in the FDA-approved product insert that all drug and vaccine makers are forced to publish and include with the product (and which only a few physicians ever take the time or inclination to read).

 

Walk Softly and Carry a Big Shtick

Brad Zimmerman’s My Son the Waiter, which “Zimmy” wrote and stars in, opens with a string of Borscht Belt jokes. They’re funny, especially for those members of the tribe who grew up with this ethnic humor. Along with much of this show, these one-liners, quips, witticisms, etc., provide a red carpet for strolling down a mirthful memory lane back to when Jewish comics such as Shecky Greene and Buddy Hackett regaled mostly urban audiences vacationing at hotels in the mountains of upstate New York. 

 

The comedian/actor/auteur also good-naturedly kibitzes with ticket buyers. But after about 10 or 15 minutes of Zimmerman’s shtick the nostalgic spell begins to wear off, and we shift gears from high hilarity down to the mildly entertaining. Some may enjoy Zimmy’s zingers and amusing anecdotes. Others might find them to be “Meh.”

 

The NNV (Number Needed to Vaccinate) and the NNT (Number Needed to Treat): Truth-telling Statistics that Big Pharma and the CDC Never Report to us Physicians or our Patients

It has been over a decade since I came to the realization that the entire profession of medicine had been bamboozled by the propaganda coming from the Big Pharma drug and vaccine maker Merck & Company that its so-called “fracture-preventative” drug Fosamax had defrauded us doctors and our patients by falsely claiming a “50% efficacy rate” in the prevention of bone fractures in osteopenic/osteoporotic women.

 

I had always been suspicious of pharmaceutical sales reps and the Big Pharma corporations that they worked for, and I had wondered exactly where they got the 50% effectiveness figure. So I finally got around to actually digging into and studying the clinical study statistics that were in the FDA-approved product insert that all drug and vaccine makers are forced topublish and include with the product (and which only a few physicians ever take the time or inclination to read).

 

FOR THE LOVE OF (OR, THE ROLLER DERBY PLAY) Theatre Review

 

While there have been some roller derby movies, notably in the 1970s with Raquel Welch’s 1972 Kansas City Bomber and the 1975 sci fi pic Rollerball, and more recently with Ellen Page, Drew Barrymore and Juliette Lewis in 2009’s Whip It, this fast moving sport on wheels is a unique, daunting setting for a live stage show. Somehow director and choreographer Rhonda Kohl and her gifted cast manage to pull it off with some imaginative “roll playing”, bringing Gina Femia’s For the Love Of frenetically and fully alive on the Theatre of NOTE’s boards.

 

SEX Theater Review

Around 90 years before Stormy Daniels burst onto the scene, Mae West shook vaudeville, Broadway, Hollywood and then Las Vegas. Buzzworks Theater Company’s Sex is a buzzworthy revival of West’s play. After Sex’s 1926 Broadway premiere, the comedy’s playwright/star “was arrested, fined $500, and sentenced to ten days in prison,” according to Gregory D. Black, author of Hollywood Censored, which features a picture of West from her 1933 movie She Done Him Wrong on the book’s cover.

 

A faux radio news bulletin about West’s bust (no pun intended - the actress was so well-endowed she gave her name to life preserver jackets) cleverly opens Buzzworks’ production of Sex. While the two-acter’s dialogue may have seemed cutting edge during the Roaring Twenties, to 21st century ears used to a discourse continuously coarsened, from pop culture to the presidency, many of the lines today sound corny and campy.

 

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