Advertisement

Big brick building with rounded top and lots of people out front and words on it Nationwide Arena

Wednesday, October 17, 11am
Studio 35, 3055 Indianola Ave.

This is a press conference to kick off a coalition, Advocates for Responsible Taxation (ART). ART is a coalition of community leaders and organizers.  ART is a grass roots consortium that includes the Green Party, Libertarians, Republicans, Democrats, Tea Party, inner-city organizers, and corporations that oppose the proposed ticket tax for another arena bailout.

The ticket tax is being proposed to apply to all tickets and memberships in the city of Columbus with a large percentage to be paid for another bail out of nationwide arena.  ART. is opposed to imposing another tax on the citizens of central Ohio for the bailout of Nationwide Arena.  Making citizens pay more taxes for Nationwide Arena should be a decision left in the hands of the voters. 

Think about the implications of this. If all you have to do is make a complaint and the next day the headlines are ‘Someone is unethical,’ think about what’s going to happen to politics in Vermont…. It seems suspect to me that a powerful political organization makes a complaint during October of an election year.

– Vermont Governor Phil Scott, Republican, at press conference October 5

efore you start feeling sorry for the governor of Vermont, whose comment above is fundamentally deceitful, you should probably be aware that he is being criticized for an arrangement he created for his own benefit.  

With thousands killed and millions on the brink of starvation, the war in Yemen has led to what human rights experts have called the “world’s worst humanitarian crisis.” And the United States is helping to fuel it.  For over three years, the US has contributed to the devastation wrought by the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen by refueling aircraft, selling weapons, and sharing intelligence—all without Congressional approval.   Luckily, there’s a movement pushing back. A bipartisan group of representatives led by Ro Khanna, Mark Pocan, and Thomas Massie recently introduced a bill that would invoke the War Powers Resolution of 1973 to end US support for the war.


One should not sell bombs to a government that abuses human rights, which means murders a man without using one of the bombs.

If Saudi Arabia had murdered a man using a bomb, it would be fine to sell Saudi Arabia more bombs.

But Saudi Arabia murdered with a non-bomb weapon, and so shouldn’t have bombs anymore.

One should, in fact, bomb people whose government abuses human rights, which means murders children without using bombs.

Syria allegedly killed children using chemical weapons, and so Syrian men, women, and children should be bombed.

Killing millions of people in wars, year after year, as long as it’s with bombs, is justifiable because the Good War was justifiable because although the war killed some 80 million people, about 13 million of them were killed in German camps which doesn’t really count as war and is therefore not justifiable, especially for 6 to 9 million of them, although those are precisely the ones who could have been very easily spared by permitting Germany to expel them, something none of the governments whose warmaking justifies all future wars would agree to.

 

 

Remarks at Fellowship Hall at Berkeley, Calif., October 13, 2018.

Video here.

Slogans and headlines and haikus and other short combinations of words are tricky things. I wrote a book looking at many of the themes in how people commonly talk about war, and I found them all without exception — and the marketing campaigns before, during, and after every past war without exception — to be dishonest. So I called the book War Is A Lie. And then people who misunderstood my meaning started insisting to me that I was wrong, that war really does exist.

1. What would you like the U.S. discretionary budget to look like? With 60% now going to militarism, what percentage would you like that to be?

2. What program of economic conversion to peaceful enterprises would you support?

3. Would you end, continue, or escalate U.S. war making in: Afghanistan? Iraq? Syria? Yemen? Pakistan? Libya? Somalia?

4. Would you end the exemption for militarism in Kyoto, Paris, and other climate agreements?

 

 

Remarks at the Resource Center for Nonviolence in Santa Cruz, Calif., on October 12, 2018.

Video slowly uploading will be at https://youtu.be/jKhnteeo4k8

Exactly at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, in 1918, 100 years ago this coming November 11th, people across Europe suddenly stopped shooting guns at each other. Up until that moment, they were killing and taking bullets, falling and screaming, moaning and dying, from bullets and from poison gas.

Wilfred Owen put it this way:

Blue backgrouond with hummingbird art at a flower and words Gift to be Simple, and words Come together break through

Sunday, October 14, 5-8pm, TRISM, 1636 N. High St.

Gift to Be Simple is Simply Living’s premier annual fundraiser, but it is more than that. It is an opportunity to learn, to share, and to enjoy healthy, quality food together. The chefs of TRISM, an A&R Creative Group enterprise well known for The Crest Gastropubs, will prepare a variety of appetizers; desserts will be provided by Cornucopia and there will be a cash bar. Anna and The Consequences will entertain us again with their jazz, pop, and blues music.

Tickets for the event are $50 and include an annual membership. For those who are unable to attend or who want to make an additional donation to their ticket purchase, please note the “Donation” option. To pay for tickets at the door, go to the “Ticket” button, select “Payment,” use the drop-down menu and select “Pay at the door.” This helps TRISM so that they will prepare the correct amount of food!

There were two simultaneous Brett Kavanaugh stories. Together, as part of the confirmation process regarding his nomination as Supreme Court Justice, they revealed how political discourse in the United States has reached a new low, with debate over the man’s possible predilection to make judgments based on his own preferences rather than the US Constitution being ignored in favor of the politically motivated kabuki theater that was deliberately arranged to avoid that issue and instead go after his character.

Director Damien Chazelle has had a meteoric rise in the Hollywood firmament. His 2014 hit Whiplash had a $3.3 million production budget and earned more than $13 million at the box office, while 2016’s La La Land cost $30 million. Presumably because that musical scored five times its costs, Chazelle’s latest movie, First Man, almost doubled La La Land’s budget. I usually don’t dwell on film finances and focus instead on cinematic aesthetics, social commentary, film history and the like, but in the case of First Man the movie’s money matters have impacted upon its style - and in a mostly negative way.

 

The film’s title character is Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling), the first man to step foot on the moon. Like Miles Teller’s wannabe drummer in Whiplash and Emma Stone’s aspiring actress and Gosling’s striving jazz pianist in La La Land, First Man’s protagonist is - in this case, literally - reaching for the stars, against impossible odds.

 

Pages

Subscribe to Freepress.org RSS