Opinion

When I suggest not stealing billions of dollars from Afghanistan, and thereby not causing mass starvation and death, otherwise intelligent and informed people tell me that human rights demands that theft. Starving people to death is a means of protecting their “human rights,” in fact. How else can you (or the U.S. government) stop Taliban executions?

When I respond that you (the U.S. government) could ban capital punishment, stop arming and funding the world’s top executioners from Saudi Arabia on down, join the world’s major human rights treaties, sign onto and support the International Criminal Court, and then — from a credible position — seek to impose the rule of law in Afghanistan, sometimes people think that over as if none of it had ever occurred to them, as if basic logical steps had been literally unthinkable, whereas starving millions of little kids to death for their human rights had somehow made sense.

Academy Award-winning Danish director Bille August’s screen adaptation of Thorkild Bjørnvig’s (played by Simon Bennebjerg) memoir The Pact, about his experiences with the celebrated Out of Africa novelist Karen Blixen (who was portrayed by Meryl Streep in the 1985 Sydney Pollack-directed film of the same name, but is here played by the Copenhagen-born actress Birthe Neumann), is a movie meditation on the nature of celebrity, wealth, power and how they affect (and afflict) artists. Endowed with fame, Blixen, a baroness ​whose pen name is Isak Dinesen, takes Thorkild – who’s less than half her age – under her wings, arranging for businessman Knud Jensen (Anders Heinrichsen) to subsidize the handsome aspiring writer.

As part of his eponymous “pact” with Blixen Thorkild moves from his home to reside at the famous authoress’ estate so he can pursue his writing, unobstructed – and so the lonely Blixen can have a young male companion. But not necessarily a lover per se, as Blixen has been afflicted by venereal disease that causes her great pain and rendered her, alas, apparently unable to consummate her amorous longings.

A succession of events in recent weeks all point to the inescapable fact that nearly 75 years of Israel’s painstaking efforts aimed at hiding the truth about its origins and its current racially-driven apartheid regime are failing miserably. The world is finally waking up, and Israel is losing ground quicker than its ability to gain new supporters, or to whitewash its past or ongoing crimes. 

Sometimes you need a reminder that human beings are capable of kindness. Come From Away—a touring production of which is now playing Columbus’s Ohio Theatre—is just such a reminder.

The Irene Sankoff/David Hein musical is a breezy and heartwarming account of what happened in Gander, Newfoundland, following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

When commercial airlines were ordered to land their planes out of fear that more could be commandeered and turned into flying bombs, the small Canadian community was forced to accept 38 or them. That nearly doubled its population and presented it with the sudden need to feed and house 7,000 strangers, many of whom didn’t even speak English.

As the musical reveals, the Newfoundlanders responded with ingenuity and generosity, providing food, shelter, clothes and other necessities. Even more importantly, they made the waylaid passengers feel safe and welcome in a world that suddenly seemed more dangerous than ever.

Community Festival (ComFest) has announced that ComFest will return live to its home in Goodale Park on June 24, 25 and 26, 2022. 

Celebrating 50 years of community, social activism and education, ComFest will again feature live local music and other entertainment, workshops, street fair and much more.

Applications are now available for performers, workshops, speakers and more. 

More information about ComFest 50 and applications may be found at www.comfest.com.

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ComFest is an independent, volunteer-driven celebration of creativity and activism in Columbus, OH. Founded in 1972, its purpose is to build bridges between progressive non-profit organizations, artists, activists and volunteers to raise awareness and promote change within our community.

By Dave Meserve, February 8, 2022

Here in Arcata, California, we are working to introduce and pass a ballot initiative ordinance that will require the City of Arcata to fly the Earth flag at the top of all city owned flagpoles, above the United States and the California flags.

Arcata is a city of about 18,000 people on the north coast of California. Home to Humboldt State University (now Cal Poly Humboldt), Arcata is known as a very progressive community, with a long-time focus on the environment, peace, and social justice.

The Earth flag flies on the Arcata Plaza. That is good. Not many town squares include it.

But wait! The Plaza flagpole order is not logical. The American flag flies at the top, the California flag beneath it, and the Earth flag at the bottom.

Doesn’t the Earth encompass all nations and all states? Isn’t the well being of the Earth essential to all life? Aren’t global issues more important to our healthy survival than nationalism?

It’s time to recognize the primacy of the Earth over nations and states when we fly their symbols on our town squares. We cannot have a healthy nation without a healthy Earth.

Today’s largely incoherent and distorted clashes over teaching about race—teaching the inclusive, factual history of the United States as opposed to a largely fictionalized version—are unusual in instructive ways.

This year’s effective nondebate over the radically distorted and misrepresented critical race theory is a stunning indictment of contemporary American print and broadcast journalism. (On the nondebate over the Second Big Lie, see links to my essays below.) The failing crosses political and ideological lines; local and national coverage; and different media platforms.

A scheme is underway to withhold or to reduce payments made by the Palestinian Authority to the families of Palestinian prisoners. According to Israeli media, the Biden Administration has requested that the PA entirely overhauls its support system of Palestinian prisoners. The Palestinian leadership had already expressed willingness to engage the US in a ‘discussion’.

Smedley Butler is generally left out of U.S. history. If you bring up a guy who prevented a Wall Street coup against FDR, you do real damage to the tale of peaceful respect for government from the beginning of time up through January 6, 2021. If you mention the scandal that erupted when he recounted how Mussolini had run over a little girl with his car, it’s hard to leave out the U.S. government’s friendly relations with Mussolini.

Interestingly, it was Cornelius Vanderbilt IV, who had been in the car with Mussolini and who had told his friend Smedley Butler about it, who later recounted in his autobiography a second Wall Street coup plot that he said he had exposed to Eleanor Roosevelt and thereby her husband, and successfully put a stop to. For some reason we never celebrate Vanderbilt as the savior of the U.S. government in the way that those of us who’ve heard of him do Smedley Butler, even though Vanderbilt turned against oligarchs as Butler turned against warmakers.

Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, is leading his country’s anti-Palestinian propaganda, this time engaging in pre-emptive hasbara in anticipation of a Palestinian response to the ongoing evictions in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.

“Would you consider it a terror attack if a rock like this was thrown at your car while driving with your children?” Erdan asked the United Nations Security Council members, while holding the rock in his hands. “Would you, at the very least, condemn these brutal terror attacks carried out against Israeli civilians by Palestinians?”