Global

I hold this truth to be self-evident: That all plays are NOT created equal. I’ve reviewed around 10 shows at La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts and its revival of the 1969 Tony Award-winning Broadway musical 1776 is probably the best play I’ve ever seen there. Not only owing to pleasurable songs composed by Sherman Edwards (accompanied at the La Mirada by a live eight piece orchestra conducted by Jeff Rizzo), along with enjoyable acting, but because it is a rarity from the Great White Way: A historical, fact-based musical explicitly about U.S. politics, insurrection and philosophy.

– Order of the Judicial Council of the US Tenth Circuit, December 18, 2018

hat is the sound that eight federal judges make when they know full well they’re doing something rotten but can’t bring themselves to defend the integrity of their own judicial system.

Donald Trump’s campaign and presidency have been marked by extreme controversy, divisiveness, and partisan polarization. Many contend America hasn’t been this divided since the Civil War. Shortly after 2016’s election, comedian Cecily Strong played CNN’s chief political analyst Gloria Borger in an SNL skit, repeatedly complaining Trump “is not normal.”

In fact, one of the rare things an overwhelming majority of Americans can agree on nowadays is that Trump and his reign are outside of the presidential norm. Whether you voted for him or not, are a Republican, Democrat, or independent, love him, hate him, or are neutral, there is general consensus among the electorate, media and punditocracy that Trump and his governing style are different from anything we’ve seen before.

War is the most underrated danger, crisis, and moral outrage to be dealt with.

Trump is the most antiwar president the United States has seen in decades.

As a dedicated peace activist, I believe Trump needs to be removed from office immediately.

How can this be so?

First, becoming a relatively antiwar U.S. president is an extremely low bar to clear. Trump has increased weapons sales, demanded that NATO members increase weapons spending, increased U.S. military spending, increased base construction, increased drone murders, increased nuclear weapons construction, threatened nuclear weapons use, fueled hostility with Iran and China and (with a big push from Democrats) with Russia, armed Ukraine, sabotaged longstanding disarmament treaties, exacerbated the worst humanitarian crisis in Yemen, surrounded himself with hardcore warmongers, celebrated warrior culture, built up the racism and xenophobia and blind subservience that can make wars easier to start, bombed nine nations, not actually ended any wars anywhere, and scared the living hell out of half the globe with his unpredictability.

Following is my response to an average American, of average intelligence and gullibility, who is also a brain-washed “true believer” in Big Pharma’s propagandistic “Big Lie” (that the pharmaceutical/vaccine industry’s obvious over-vaccination agenda is safe or even effective in preventing so-called childhood “vaccine-preventable infectious diseases”. Below is an email message that I received awhile ago - and my response to it (October 2018):

Hi Gary,

As for the alarmist anti vaccination rhetoric expressed in this and other emails you've sent warning people of the dangers of vaccinations of seemingly all types, I wonder how you discount the success of the vaccines that reduced so many formerly fatal childhood diseases and others like polio. 

People who've accepted "information" such as is expressed here have gotten these preventable diseases because they've refused vaccinations for their children.  The more people who refuse vaccinations the more likely they are to contract the formerly preventable diseases and bring back the threat of another wider spread problem.

Donald Trump and his base — the leftover scraps of Jim Crow, the broken shards of racist hatred that once were the American mainstream and made the country seem “great” to those who weren’t its victims — have, it appears, a crucial role to play in our future.

President Trump is the increasingly naked truth. He’s what we have wound up with: a raw, uncensored scapegoating and fear-mongering that’s too much for most of the American public. And thus the political center, the military-industrial-media consensus that has ruled the country for the past four and a half decades, pushing progressive values to the margins of American politics, is unraveling. Centrist compromise, which birthed the Trump presidency, can’t mask the truth anymore.

It’s time to evolve.

If we don’t, we’re stuck in the mire of racism, exploitation, empire and war. We’re stuck in the dead past, which has given us the current state of Planet Earth: a planet at war with itself in multiple ways. We’re stuck in a dead past and a dying future.

(Why? Because they have 1) actually looked at the overwhelming evidence disproving the official story and 2) they automatically distrust the US Government (and Big Business’s war-related industries) when they try to create fear and war hysteria)

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50902.htm

A major story across Japanese media (links below) is an event that occurred in Washington D.C. on Monday, January 7th at 11 a.m.

Opponents of military base construction in Okinawa gathered in front of the White House in Washington, D.C., in support of a petition which has gathered well over 100,000 signatures.

Against the wishes of the people of Okinawa and massive nonviolent resistance, on December 14 the United States began filling in land for the construction of yet another military base on this already heavily militarized island.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- The United Nations granted refugee status January
9 to a Saudi teenager who fled her country and barricaded herself in
Bangkok's international airport, claiming she would be executed for
renouncing her belief in Islam, disobeying her brutal family, and
trying to fly to Australia.

Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun's repeated statements that she had renounced
her belief in Islam may have been the strongest reason for her to
qualify as a refugee because punishment in Saudi Arabia could result
in lengthy imprisonment or execution by beheading.

"She said she has made a decision to renounce Islam. And I knew once
she said that, she is in serious trouble," Human Rights Watch's
Bangkok-based representative Phil Robertson tweeted.

"It's confirmed #UNHCR has determined #Rahaf is a refugee, & her case
has been referred to #Australia for protection & resettlement," Mr.
Robertson tweeted on January 9.

Australia's Foreign Minister Marise Payne was scheduled to arrive in
Bangkok on January 10 to discuss a similar asylum case involving
Hakeem al-Arabi from Bahrain.