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President Obama may want us to sympathize with patriotic torturers, he may turn on whistleblowers like a flesh-eating zombie, he may have lost all ability to think an authentic thought, but I will say this for him: He knows how to mark the 50th anniversary of the Gulf of Tonkin fraud like a champion.

A new film called Wisconsin Rising is screening around the country, the subject, of course, being the activism surrounding the mass occupation of the Wisconsin Capitol in 2011.  I recommend attending a planned screening or setting up a new one, and discussing the film collectively upon its conclusion.  For all the flaws in Wisconsin's activism in 2011 and since, other states haven't even come close -- most have a great deal to learn.

The film tells a story of one state, where, long ago, many workers' rights originated or found early support, and where, many years later, threats to workers' rights, wages, and benefits, and to what those workers produce including education in public schools, were aggressively initiated by the state's right-wing governor, Scott Walker. 

Before nuclear weapons, after nuclear weapons . . .

“The latter era, of course,” writes Noam Chomsky, “opened on August 6, 1945, the first day of the countdown to what may be the inglorious end of this strange species, which attained the intelligence to discover the effective means to destroy itself, but — so the evidence suggests — not the moral and intellectual capacity to control its worst instincts.”

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of the United States is a full blown oxymoron when it comes to protecting U.S. residents from the danger of increased exposure to ionizing radiation. That’s the kind of radiation that comes from natural sources like Uranium and the sun, as well as unnatural sources like Uranium mines, nuclear weapons, and nuclear power plants (even when they haven’t melted down like Fukushima). The EPA is presently considering allowing everyone in the U.S. to be exposed to higher levels of ionizing radiation.  

TOLEDO OH – Ironically, although this city is affixed to the shore of a Great Lake, we’ve given a new meaning to what a “dry” town is. We learned it’s one thing to go without beer; quite another to go without water.

For three days, some 500,000 people avoided almost all bodily contact with water that came out of their faucets. No drinking, cooking, dish-washing, teeth-brushing. Boiling didn’t help. Bathing was OK except for small children, pets and those with compromised immune systems.

Algae blooms in Lake Erie caused by excessive phosphorus and nitrogen from sewage – from humans and animal feedlots – and large scale farming are not new. For years, algae has leached microcystin bacteria into Lake Erie, but literally overnight three days ago, the health of Lake Erie and a long-delayed overhaul of our aging water treatment plant are top priority.

August releases aren’t a sign of confidence in the Summer Blockbuster Movie business. Studios usually schedule their tentpole action movies for May or June, with Oscar wannabes showing up in the fall. But Guardians of the Galaxy has been all about chances for Marvel Studios — a $175 million action-comedy based on a Marvel comic that non-comic nerds had never even heard of until movie trailers started showing up earlier this year — and the movie’s August 1st release date seemed less an early concession of defeat against a summer with multiple movies fighting for that elusive $100 million opening weekend and more of a gambit to give them time to sell audiences on the idea of a superhero movie in space. But the risk there was potential burnout and overhype: Could this movie really live up to an entire summer’s movie season worth of build-up? Could it be as good as the hotly-anticipated trailers promised with their strangely fitting 70s-pop soundtracks and their talking raccoon?

It turns out it really can be that good.