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As blackface, KKK and noose racist imagery and scandals involving Jussie Smollett, R. Kelley, etc., threatened to overshadow the yearly Black History Month celebrations, the L.A.-based Pan African Film Festival continued to emit a dazzling light of brilliant positivity and hope. Billing itself as America’s biggest Black-themed filmfest, from Feb. 7-18 PAFF screened more than 100 fiction, documentary, animated and short productions, plus workshops, panels and an art expo, all highlighting the history and experiences of people of African ancestry. Superstars, such as rapper/actor Common (who wrote the lyrics for the short Hats) and actor Danny Glover (who narrated and appeared in the documentaries Power to Heal and The Robeson Effect, also shown at PAFF), made personal appearances at Cinemark Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza and the Directors Guild of America Theater, where the opening night gala screening of the Aretha Franklin film Amazing Grace took place.

By David Swanson, Director of World BEYOND War

When I was a kid there was a local basketball team called the Washington Bullets. The team changed its name when “bullets” became offensive due to the high rate of gun murders in Washington, D.C. This is the same city that to this day has a football team called the Washington Redskins. What offends is not, perhaps, violence, but violence directed at people who matter. (Compare: tens of thousands of Yemenis vs. one Washington Post reporter.)

The U.S. State Department uses public funds and public employees to market private products designed for mass killing to foreign governments. Few corporations have benefitted more from this socialism for the oligarchs than Boeing. In one recent example, the U.S. government has persuaded the New Zealand government to buy four “Poseidon” planes from Boeing that are designed for working with submarines, of which New Zealand possesses zero.

The purchase price of $2.3 billion in New Zealand dollars, $1.6 billion in U.S. dollars, may be too small for White House occupant Donald Trump to hold an illustration-enhanced media event about. And “at least they buy our instruments of death” is not a case that needs to be made for New Zealand in the way that it apparently does for Saudi Arabia. Still, the deal is troubling to people in both countries, and they are speaking out.

Ok let's get one thing straight: Bernie Sanders was my kind of candidate, but if he had really wanted to win in 2016 he would have challenged the primary election results ten ways to Sunday. In Massachusetts, Bill Clinton illegally campaigned inside the polling wire, glad-handing and back-slapping as Secretary of State William J. Galvin looked the other way, merely issuing a "reminder" later to everyone that electioneering inside the wire was illegal.

"In modern times, an increase in chemical production has led to widespread environmental chemical contamination that can affect normal hormone function in those exposed, particularly in vulnerable populations, such as children and pregnant women. Many of these identified endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), which include pesticides and substances used in manufacturing a multitude of products, have been reported to interfere with thyroid hormone function, yet public health policy does not fully address the risks to vulnerable populations."

Brain disorders in children linked to common environmental toxin exposures https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/03/180324103152.htm

Psychosexual outcome of gender-dysphoric children https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18981931

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Medical marijuana and kratom became legal in
Thailand on February 18 after the king signed a royal decree allowing
doctors, patients, schools, farmers, entrepreneurs and exporters to
cultivate, possess and dispense both drugs.

The move raised hopes among many that it paves the way for legalizing
recreational marijuana soon.

King Maha Vajiralongkorn signed the medical law February 18, two
months after the military government's parliament unanimously approved
it, a legislative sequence required by the constitution.

The decree was published, as required, in the Royal Gazette and said
the Narcotics Act of 1979 was amended to make medical marijuana legal.

Patients with prescriptions can receive medical marijuana and kratom.
Farmers need a Narcotics Control Board permit.

Recreational use of both drugs is still illegal. Possession of illegal
cannabis is punishable by up to 15 years in jail under the amended
law.

Most of Thailand's medical marijuana and kratom is initially expected

Director of World BEYOND War

The New York Times and the people it gives voice to are very worried that Donald Trump may be too much in favor of peace in Korea, more in favor of peace than of disarming North Korea prior to peace — a sure recipe, of course, for never arriving at peace.

North Korea has disarmed in the past when there were real steps toward peace from both sides.

North Korea is no threat to the United States — the actual United States, not its mission of global domination.

The United States has no business in Korea and would facilitate peace and disarmament, make itself better liked around the world, and save many billions of dollars by getting out.

By William Boardman, Reader Supported News

19 February 19

Inside the government, some officials called her “Wayward Storm.” Her real name was Monica Elfriede Witt, an exemplary Air Force counterintelligence agent who had studied Persian and carried out covert missions in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. 

– New York Times lede, February 13, 2019

… American authorities have struggled to conclude exactly why she turned on her country.

– New York Times “think piece,” February 16, 2019

I served in the Air Force for 10 years and participated in both the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars. After viewing so much corruption and the damage we were doing both to Iraq/Afghanistan and to the perception of the U.S., I decided I needed to do as much as I could to help rectify the situation.

– Monica Witt’s undated post on Iraq Veterans Against the War