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My readers (hiya Ma!) know I’m usually very careful regarding plot spoilers, either completely avoiding or clearly labeling them, so as not to ruin the element of surprise for theatergoers. This is actually the first time I’ve reviewed a play when critics and ticket buyers are not given the program until after the play and reviewers are admonished in a press kit disclaimer printed in boldface to “not give away details of the plot.” So, to paraphrase Teddy Roosevelt, your reviewer will make it a point to “talk softly, but carry a big Bic” in this critique.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Thailand's authoritarian coup leader Prime
Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha said Tuesday (May 2) he expects to enjoy a
much-needed boost to his military regime thanks to President Donald
Trump's surprise invitation to the White House.
   "The U.S. president said that we are their good ally, and he
assured me that although we have been rather distant recently,
Thai-U.S. relations will now be closer than ever," Mr. Prayuth told
reporters on Tuesday (May 2).
   While speaking with President Trump, Mr. Prayuth "affirmed that
Thailand stands ready to support and promote bilateral cooperation in
all fields, particularly trade, investment and security," announced
Deputy Government Spokesman Lt. Gen. Werachon Sukondhapatipak.
   Mr. Prayuth will "support the constructive role of the United
States in maintaining peace and security in the region," Lt. Gen.
Werachon said.
   Mr. Prayuth accepted the White House invitation and asked the U.S.
president to come to Bangkok.
   No dates were announced for either visit.

For the last several years, Marvel Comics has been getting things (mostly) right. While DC has been stopping lesbian marriages and wallowing in nostalgia for the days when Batgirl was assaulted and crippled just to make Batman mad, Marvel has been putting out some relatively progressive books. But now, after years of popular additions to their character lineup, they’ve decided it’s time to walk that back. Because, according to Marvel’s Senior Vice President David Gabriel at the recent Marvel Retailer Summit, “What we heard was that people didn’t want any more diversity.”

That’s come as a surprise to anybody who has been watching the internet embrace characters like Kamala Khan, a Muslim girl who took on the mantle of Ms Marvel and whose book is written by an actual Muslim woman, and Miles Morales, a Black Hispanic boy whose run as Spider-Man in the alternate Ultimate universe was so popular he was brought into the mainstream continuity.

A new book about Hillary Clinton’s last campaign for president -- “Shattered,” by journalists Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes -- has gotten a lot of publicity since it appeared two weeks ago. But major media have ignored a revealing passage near the end of the book.

Soon after Clinton’s defeat, top strategists decided where to place the blame. “Within 24 hours of her concession speech,” the authors report, campaign manager Robby Mook and campaign chair John Podesta “assembled her communications team at the Brooklyn headquarters to engineer the case that the election wasn’t entirely on the up-and-up. For a couple of hours, with Shake Shack containers littering the room, they went over the script they would pitch to the press and the public. Already, Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument.”

Six months later, that centerpiece of the argument is rampant -- with claims often lurching from unsubstantiated overreach to outright demagoguery.

The 12th annual South East European Film Festival kicked off with a gala screening at the Writers Guild Theater in Beverly Hills of writer/ director Rajko Grlić’s The Constitution, a stellar must-see movie full of humor and humanity that set the tone for this filmfest. I say that because sometimes cinefiles “suffer” through specialty cinema (especially those bearing English subtitles), but The Constitution reminded me of the joy of discovering those “foreign” films by Luis Bunuel, Francois Truffaut, Ingmar Bergman, Jean-Luc Godard, et al, at an arthouse that transported us beyond Hollywood glitz and glamour to a more “sophisticated” cinematic view of the world beyond our shores.

Most countries on earth have the U.S. military in them.

Most countries on earth burn less fossil fuel than does the U.S. military.

And that's without even calculating how much worse for the climate jet fuel is than other fossil fuels.

And it's without even considering the fossil fuel consumption of the world's leading weapons makers, or the pollution caused by the use of those weapons all over the world.

The U.S. is the top weapons dealer to the world, and has weapons on multiple sides of most wars.

The U.S. military created 69% of super fund environmental disaster sites and is the third leading polluter of U.S. waterways.

When the British first developed an obsession with the Middle East, passed along to the United States, the desire was to fuel the British Navy.

What came first? The wars or the oil? It was the wars.

Wars and the preparations for more wars consume a huge amount of oil.

I imagine I’m not the only political and media observer sickened by the dominant (“mainstream”) corporate media’s habitual reference to xenophobic, right-wing, white-nationalist, and neo-fascist politicians like Donald Trump, Geert Wilders, Nigel Farage, and Marine Le Pen as “populists.”  Populism properly understood is about popular and democratic opposition to the rule of the money power – to the reign of concentrated wealth. It emerged from radical farmers’ fight for social and economic justice and democracy against the plutocracy of the nation’s Robber Baron capitalists during the late 19th century.  It was a movement of the left.  As the left author and journalist Harvey Wasserman notes:

Dear brothers and sisters of Ireland, your ambassador to the United States Anne Anderson spoke at the University of Virginia Tuesday afternoon.

After consulting one of your fine citizens named Barry Sweeney, I asked her this: “Since the U.S. government assures the Irish government that all U.S. military aircraft being refueled at Shannon are not on military operations and are not carrying weapons or munitions, and since the Irish government insists on this in order to comply with Ireland’s traditional policy of neutrality, why does the Irish department of transportation almost daily approve civilian aircraft on contract to the U.S. military to carry armed U.S. troops on military operations, weapons, and munitions through Shannon Airport in clear breach of international laws on neutrality?”

Ambassador Anderson replied that the U.S. government at the “highest levels” had informed Ireland that it was in compliance with the law, and Ireland accepted that.