Sat, Aug 6, 6-8pm, University Baptist Church, 50 W. Lane Ave.

This concert will commemorate the 71st anniversary of the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

Rocco Di Pietro, a local composer and a Columbus State Community College faculty member, has created a new piece entitled “Smiles and Screams: Love to Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” a concert with Taubes (an artistic rendering of how life and art interplay), that, along with community voices, will raise the vision of a world less violence and without nuclear weapons.

The goal of this project is to create a community wide expression of the 71st anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. Through the use of artistic and cultural performances, Central Ohio residents will explore visions of a future free of nuclear weapons, war, and violence.

In measuring the success of this project, the organizers seek to achieve: 1) deepened organizational partnerships furthering a vision of a world free of nuclear weapons; and 2) a musical composition that reflects and commits to a world less violent.

After a Donald Trump town hall reached capacity Monday afternoon, about 150 Trump supporters who had been turned away milled around the vendors of campaign merchandise outside the Columbus Convention Center. Trump falsely told his supporters that thousands were turned away “for political reasons.”

One merchandise hawker tried to turn the setback into an opportunity. “$5 off all Trump gear if you couldn’t get in!” he shouted over a bullhorn. Then he started to heckle protesters across the street who held signs saying “Wall off Trump,”  “Love Not Hate,” “Black Lives Matter,” and “No Más Trump.”

Protest organizer Rubén Castilla Herrera also had a bullhorn. “We’re black, brown, white, queer, straight, immigrants, women, men,” he said. “We’re a diverse community, and we’re to tell you that Trump is not welcome here!”

A Trump supporter grabbed the hawker’s megaphone. “How can you say that black lives matter?” she said. “All lives matter!”

Jason Bourne is the fifth installment in the Bourne film franchise derived from Robert Ludlum’s espionage novels that began with 2002’s The Bourne Identity. Ludlum’s original Bourne trilogy began in 1980 but didn’t reach the big screen until shortly after 9/11, when the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies turned to what author Jane Mayer called The Dark Side. The latest sequel continues the Bourne formula of nonstop action combined with criticism of the Central Intelligence Agency and is the fourth movie starring Matt Damon as the title character and the series’ third feature helmed by British director Paul Greengrass, starting with 2004’s The Bourne Supremacy.

The last time a Clinton tried to get into the White House, his campaign motto was "It's the economy, stupid!"

If you engage with peace organizations, you will very quickly be told repeatedly that nobody gives a damn about distant mass murder, and that consequently a smart organizer will talk to them about something local, such as the local impact of the financial burden of war, or perhaps the militarization of the police, or local recruitment, or local environmental damage from military bases, etc., but mostly the financial cost.

The reasoning behind all such thinking is that people are often busy, overworked, overstressed, concerned with their day-to-day struggles, etc., and so, while some of them might occasionally also take a mild interest in the affairs of others in distant corners of the globe, virtually everyone can be appealed to using local community concerns and, in particular, economic concerns related to their own needs and greed.

The evidence that this line of thinking misses something includes the following:

The New York Times published an astonishing article last week that blames green power for difficulties countries are facing to mitigate climate change.

The article by Eduardo Porter, How Renewable Energy is Blowing Climate Change Efforts Off Course, serves as a flagship for an on-going attack on the growth of renewables. It is so convoluted and inaccurate that it requires a detailed response.

As Mark Jacobson, director of Atmosphere/Energy Program at Stanford University, pointed out to me via email: