Opinion

This whole two-week effort has been a calculated and orchestrated political hit, fueled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election, fear that has been unfairly stoked about my judicial record, revenge on behalf of the Clintons and millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups.
 

he integrity of the US judicial system is actively, albeit quietly, in play. A sitting federal judge, or more likely a panel of sitting federal judges, will be required in the near future to render an assessment of the honesty, integrity, and fitness of a Supreme Court justice to retain his lifetime appointment. The process and the result of the federal judges’ decision will, together, render a judgment as to the integrity of not just one Supreme Court justice but the federal courts as a national institution.

America has never been as divided as it is today - except, perhaps, for that little kerfuffle called the Civil War and maybe that hawks-versus- doves dustup over the Vietnam War. Conflict makes for good drama - but it just may be that it makes for even better comedy. The whole Red State versus Blue State clash now dividing the USA between conservatives and liberals (and beyond), pro- and anti-Trumpers, etc., has been finding its way into our comedies, like sitcoms such as the Murphy Brown reboot and Roseanne-cum-The Connors. On the big screen, The Oath is a left-versus-right laugh riot.

I am Constance Gadell-Newton and I am running for Governor as the Green party candidate. I am running on a platform of clean water, with an immediate moratorium on fracking and injection wells in Ohio, a living wage, and single payer, universal healthcare, or Medicare for all. Although we are known for our environmental stance, we are not a one-issue party. We stand for social justice, the peace movement, legalized and decriminalized marijuana, and grassroots democracy. We are a people-powered party and do not take corporate donations. I want to represent the people, and to give the voters of Ohio a choice and a voice in our democracy.

Recently, the Ohio Debate Commission announced a debate schedule for the two major parties, which did not include me as the Green party candidate or Travis Irvine, the Libertarian. Although my name will appear on the ballot this fall, voters may have a hard time getting information about me because of unequal treatment in the media and debates.

Getting to the bottom of the Jamal Khashoggi disappearance is a bit like peeling an onion. It is known that Khashoggi entered the Saudi Arabian Consulate in Istanbul on October 2nd to get a document that would enable him to marry a Turkish woman. It is also known, from surveillance cameras situated outside the building, that he never came out walking the same way he entered. The presumption is that he was either killed inside or abducted, though the abduction theory would have to be based on a Consulate vehicle leaving the building with him presumably concealed inside, something that has not been confirmed by the Turks. If he was killed inside the building and dismembered, as seems likely, he could have had his body parts removed in the suitcases carried by the alleged fifteen official Saudis who had arrived that morning by private jet and left that afternoon the same way. The supposition is that the fifteen men, which may have included some members of Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman’s bodyguard as well as a physician skilled in autopsies who was carrying a bone saw, constituted the execution party for Khashoggi.

“Itis the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship…Voice or no voice the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.” -- Hermann Goering,head of the Nazi army’s equivalent of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Head of the Luftwaffe (April 18, 1946).

"Today Christians stand at the head of our country. We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit. We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theatre, and in the press-- in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of LIBERAL excess during the past years." -- Adolf Hitler

Unforgettable. That’s the best word to describe Joan Baez’s recent show in Cleveland. The setlist consisted of socially conscious songs spanning nearly 60 years and topics from the Civil Rights movement to women’s rights and labor activism. Her voice was as clear and beautiful as it was at Woodstock and she surrounded herself with gifted musicians and singers. As sonically pleasing as the concert was, it was so much more.

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.

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:

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.