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Sometimes when a mask comes off, the face you see is not pretty. Wendy — the cute, freckled, red-haired symbol of the international hamburger chain — has developed a split personality in the years since founder Dave Thomas ran the company.

So South Carolina has a special crime category called “disturbing schools,” which seems to be creating just that: disturbing schools. Very disturbing schools.

Not that I need to single out South Carolina. In my brief stint teaching writing as an outside consultant in several Chicago high schools, some 20 years ago, I was smacked broadside with the observation that the city’s educational system exhibited the behavior of an occupying army, at least in its low-income neighborhoods. Education was something imposed from above and force-fed to the students like bad-tasting medicine. It didn’t honor the students’ own culture.

What the kids needed was a generosity of understanding that the education system had no interest in giving them, preferring to help them along on their journey to adulthood with zero tolerance and metal detectors.

What has happened to our national intelligence, not to mention our national values? In the era of cellphone accountability, our lack thereof has a new poster boy: Officer Slam. Throw the insolent kid across the floor, break her arm if necessary, slap her in cuffs.

This is how we teach respect. This is how we teach math.

“These are people who had been working hard for months, non-stop for the past week. They had not gone home, they had not seen their families, they had just been working in the hospital to help people... and now they are dead. These people are friends, close friends. I have no words to express this. It is unspeakable.

“The hospital, it has been my workplace and home for several months. Yes, it is just a building. But it is so much more than that. It is healthcare for Kunduz. Now it is gone.

“What is in my heart since this morning is that this is completely unacceptable. How can this happen? What is the benefit of this? Destroying a hospital and so many lives, for nothing. I cannot find words for this.” - Lajos Zoltan Jecs

 

Okinawa--In late October 2015, I was with 3 Okinawa peace activists and a British solidarity activist on a tour of local resistance to U.S. military bases. After an hour of driving north from the city of Nago, crossing deep ravines and shimmering blue bays, we approached a dense forest, where the U.S. military’s only jungle warfare training center is situated, way up in the northernmost section of the island of Okinawa.

As we continued driving, the highway was suddenly blocked by some large, camouflage military vehicles, and we got out to investigate. One of the vehicles was an armored personnel carrier with what looked to be about 25 soldiers inside, some of them looking out at us quizzically. I waved and a few of them waved back. We watched two soldiers get out and direct traffic around their convoy, while they waited to enter the training center’s main gate. For a few minutes we chanted and banged our drums at the gate. Once the first vehicle cleared whatever impasse they had at the gate, all the vehicles soon vacated the highway and disappeared into the training center.

When you are lazy, ignorant and not willing to do research – accuse your more-informed opponents of being “conspiracy theorists.” A recent Columbus Dispatch editorial utilized this technique in its defense of Ohio’s antiquated and easily hacked voting apparatus.

  The Dispatch, with few facts or statistics, stated that, “Secretary of State Jon Husted claims ‘…Ohio’s current voting equipment should be in fine shape through the 2016 election.’” In a subhead, the Big D also claimed “Transparent bipartisan approach should head off conspiracy theorists.”

  Here are some points to consider.

  In 2005, highly-regarded scholar Tracy Campbell published Deliver the Vote: A History of Election Fraud, and American Political Tradition 1742-2004. The book makes a solid case detailing that election fraud is the norm throughout U.S. history.

Expert Tele-Briefing 2 pm (Eastern), Tues., Oct. 27 (See end of press release for call-in details)

Washington, D.C. – Thousands to tens of thousands of high-level radioactive waste shipments would cross through 45 states and the District of Columbia, if plans for the country’s first nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada move forward. Today, Beyond Nuclear, in coalition with NIRS and dozens of grassroots groups nationwide, released maps of the likely routes radioactive waste shipments would use. The groups want residents in these corridor communities across the country to weigh in with Congress about the dangers.

The Drug War has been a forty-year lynching….
…the corporate/GOP response to the peace and civil rights movements.  

It’s used the Drug Enforcement Administration and other policing operations as a high-tech Ku Klux Klan, meant to gut America’s communities of youth and color.  

It has never been about suppressing drugs. Quite the opposite.

And now that it may be winding down, the focus on suppressing minority votes will shift even stronger to electronic election theft.

The Drug War was officially born June 17, 1971, (http://www.drugpolicy.org/new-solutions-drug-policy/brief-history-drug-war) when Richard Nixon pronounced drugs to be “Public Enemy Number One.” In a nation wracked by poverty, racial tension, injustice, civil strife, ecological disaster, corporate domination, a hated Vietnam War and much more, drugs seemed an odd choice.
In fact, the Drug War’s primary target was black and young voters.

Fireworks and a guy in cowboy hat

Are you kicking yourself for missing this year’s Telluride Film Festival? Not to mention Sundance, Tribeca and Cannes?

  Have no fear. You can still catch a film festival—in fact, two of them. And you don’t even have to leave town to do it.

  Every November, a pair of festivals vie for local film lovers’ attention. True, you aren’t likely to see Hollywood celebs at either of them, but if you happen to like non-mainstream films—especially those with a Jewish, LGBT and/or Ohio connection—you’re in luck.

  First up is the Columbus Jewish Film Festival, running Nov. 1-15 at various venues. Just how Jewish is it?

  “We don’t really have strict criteria,” said festival director Emily Schuss, explaining that a film might be chosen simply because it has a Jewish director or touches on Jewish themes.

  Schuss noted that one film has little Jewish connection but is interesting because it focuses on the ever-controversial issue of gun control. Titled The Armor of Light, it’s a documentary about a prominent evangelical minister who has decided being pro-gun is inconsistent with being pro-life.

Arcade sign

Like Transformers, skinny jeans and Donald Trump, something else that was popular in the 1980s is making a big comeback: the arcade. And the new arcades — often in the form of games-and-beer “barcades” — are bringing back the neighborhood feel of the original urban video game centers.

The barcade concept isn’t entirely new, even to Columbus. Though GameWorks closed its Easton location years ago, there are still two Dave & Buster’s in town. But their big-box chain style is a far cry from the genuine arcade experience, less of a bar-cade than a TGI Friday’s-cade, and inflation has made per-play arcade games ridiculously expensive.

Photo of band

People say to me, write some damn previews. Spread the word. These are music events that Columbus will be hosting in the next month.


The Game

Xclusive Elite

October 31st

$30-50

  The Game just dropped the Documentary 2 and The Documentary 2.5 for the 10 Year history of his classic album the documentary. The Game is known to be hyper-referential in his lyrics.

  Well,the Documentary 2 both shows that  1) Game has personal history that can be -self-referenced and 2) also takes routes into 91-96 East Coast Hip Hop in addition to Game’s usual Dr. Dre’s cultural impact in the flesh existence.
   “The Documentary 2” allows a slew of guests like Diddy, Kanye, Will-Iam, Dre, Kendrick Lamar and others to present a history of “Hip Hop” through a Compton lens, then and now.

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