Global

We will not evolve into the future with closed minds.

And nothing closes the human mind – either individually or collectively – like the weapons of war . . . and the freedom to use them. Step one: Dehumanize those you’re about to kill (i.e., accuse them of being who you are, as exemplified by, among so many others, our old pal George W. Bush, who declared that America’s enemies “view the entire world as a battlefield” and proceed to turn the entire world into a battlefield).

But there’s a far deeper irony here as well – a positive irony, according to Martin Luther King. Consider the fourth of his six principles of nonviolence:

Inadvertently, Israel has pressed the reset button on its war with the Palestinian people, taking back the so-called conflict to square one.

 Save a few self-serving Palestinian officials affiliated with the Palestinian Authority (PA), most Palestinians do not seem consumed with the return to the peace process, or even engaged in discussions about two state solutions.

 The conversation among Palestinians is now mostly concerned with all aspects of the Palestinian struggle, starting with the ethnic cleansing of Palestine 76 years ago, an event known as the Nakba, or Catastrophe.

 The Nakba is commemorated on May 15 of each year. The nature of the annual event, however, changes from one stage of the Palestinian struggle to the next.  Indeed, the Nakba anniversary acquires its meaning from the political context of the time – it is elevated during times of hope, demoted during times of despair, defeat and infighting.

In an informal conversation following Topsy Turvy’s premiere during the reception in the backyard of The Actors’ Gang’s Culver City citadel of stage, Artistic Director Tim Robbins flashed that still boyish grin of his and confessed Dionysus was his favorite deity. “That’s my god!” the Oscar winner gushed. Dionysus, of course, is (among other things) the Greek god of theater, and one of Athens’ amphitheaters (near the Acropolis), as well as a 5th century B.C. theatrical Festival, were named after this artsy son of Zeus and a female mortal. 

Dionysus (portrayed by Gang veteran Scott Harris in a snazzy suit) makes a special guest appearance in Topsy Turvy, a one-act, 105-ish-minute-long play performed without intermission, written and directed by Robbins. It is among the first fictional stage or screen productions to dare to dramatize one of the thorniest phenomena of our times: The Covid-19 pandemic, which is here simply referred to as “the plague.” (In 2021, playwright Willard Manus adapted Daniel Defoe’s 1722 nonfiction account A Journal of the Plague Year at the Brickhouse Theatre in North Hollywood.)

Our astoundingly dense GREEP Zoom #178 starts with VINNIE DESTEFANO giving us some rare but important good news on JULIAN ASSANGE & his ridiculous victimization by the US government.

In this case a British court has ruled that the US cannot guarantee him a fair trial, and that he therefore has the right to appeal against extradition. Hopefully he’ll soon be free!!!

We follow with the great peace activist DAVID SWANSON and his illustrious cohort DAVID HARTSOUGH.

David Swanson tells us about his magnificent BEYOND WAR campaigns against the senseless militarism that plagues our species.

David Hartsough narrates some of his fantastic stories of peace activism, including an amazing moment when seven saDORilors jumped off a warship rather than deliver weapons to destroy Vietnam.

DAVID SALTMAN informs us that AMAL CLOONEY has had a helping hand in issuing the indictments to Netanyahu and Sinwar.

MYLA RESON and TATANKA BRICCA join PAUL NEWMAN in raising important questions about the war in Ukraine.

Dear AG Dave Yost,

Ohio AG Dave Yost wants to criminalize free speech. Last week, he issued a "legal fatwa" where he threatened to invoke a 1953 law better known as "anti-KKK" against 41 brave OSU students and faculty who were arrested last April 25. Reason? The protesters were calling for their university to divest from Israel and an end to the Israeli genocide and starvation in Gaza. Simply put, he will charge OSU students & faculties fourth degree felony charge under his silly unheard-of law.
 

By cracking down on OSU students for protesting against genocide after 14,500+ slaughtered Palestinian children and billions in US aid, weapons, and political cover, that makes AG Yost as complicit.

Contrary to AG Yost "Yo Yost" TV campaign commercial in which he promised to protect Ohioans' religious freedom, AG Yost ordered his troops to attack students while they were praying and violate Muslim students' religious rights as they were exercising their First Amendment's rights at OSU campus. Furthermore, students and faculties who were arrested were subjected to illegal, inhumane, and degrading treatments such as: 

In 2014, we wrote an article titled “The Blind Alley of J Street and Liberal American Zionism.” At the time, Benjamin Netanyahu was in his sixth continuous year as Israel’s prime minister, while President Obama was well into his second term. And J Street, an emerging organization of Jews aligned with the Democratic administration, had momentum as “the political home for pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans.”

 From the outset, ever since its founding in 2007, J Street has implicitly offered itself as a liberal alternative to the hardline American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which was established more than four decades earlier. An avowed purpose of J Street has been to seek a humane resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict while maintaining fervent allegiance to Israel as “the Jewish state.”