Global

 Ignorance might be bliss, arguably in some situations, but not in this case. Here, ignorance can be catastrophic as western audiences are denied access to information about a critical situation that is affecting them in profound ways and will most certainly impact the world’s geopolitics for generations to come. 

The Palestine National Football Team has, once more, done the seemingly impossible by qualifying for the 2023 AFC Asian Cup. By any standards, this is a great achievement, especially as the Palestinians have done it with style and convincing victories over Mongolia, Yemen and the Philippines, without conceding a single goal. However, for Palestinians, this is hardly about sports. 

This accomplishment can only be appreciated within the larger context of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. 

ON JUNETEENTH WE VISIT AUSTRALIA, DEFUND THE FASCISTS & SAVE PACIFICA RADIO

We open the GREE-GREE zoom #99 with CLAIRE ATKIN of Check My Ads and its brilliant, cutting-edge campaign to strip internet-based income from fascist media mavens like Steve Bannon.

Launched in early June, Claire’s pathbreaking strategy includes grassroots campaigning against the violent-laced hate-mongering of the extreme right  wing.

Claire is followed by LEHMAN WEISCHSELBAUM’s call for whistleblowers to unearth fraud and theft in the 2016 election that put Donald Trump in the White House.

While it is true that Zionism is a modern political ideology that has exploited religion to achieve specific colonial objectives in Palestine, prophecies continue to be a critical component of Israel’s perception of itself, and of the state’s relationship to other groups, especially Christian messianic groups in the United States and worldwide. 

The Department of Justice and Attorney General Merrick Garland must do their sworn duty to uphold the Constitution and charge Donald Trump with the extremely serious crimes the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol has documented and alleges that the ex-president committed in order to subvert democracy. The DOJ, AG Garland and Biden administration must not make the same mistake that Pres. Gerald Ford did when he granted a full and unconditional pardon to Richard Nixon on Sept. 8, 1974, shortly after Tricky Dick resigned the presidency. Not prosecuting Trump for the heinous crimes he purportedly perpetrated will, in effect, be the same as Ford’s Proclamation 4311, which let Nixon get off Scot free for the crimes he committed as part of the Watergate Scandal and set a deplorable precedent of unaccountability.

The rich, powerful and famous must be held to account, the same as the rest of us. They must pay the consequences for their actions, just like ordinary people are expected to. There must not be a double standard for the high and mighty; NOBODY is above the law, not even a president or ex-president.

“Just imagine for once if we led the world in funding peace and not wars.”

Just imagine! The words are those of Robert Weissman, president of the organization Public Citizen, in response to the legislative efforts of Reps. Barbara Lee and Mark Pocan, who are the co-chairs of — glory hallelujah! — the Defense Spending Reduction Caucus. They recently introduced legislation that would cut Pentagon spending by $100 billion and divert the money to programs that actually helped the country . . . e.g., universal health care, ending child poverty, saving the environment.

Sir John Falstaff is arguably William Shakespeare’s greatest comic character. The ribald, oversized skirt chaser appears in three of the Bard of Stratford-upon-Avon’s plays, including Henry IV, Part 1 and Part 2. According to Director’s Notes in the program, Queen Elizabeth enjoyed this roguish character so much that Her Majesty commanded the playwright to write another comedy featuring Falstaff. That third Falstaffian play, The Merry Wives of Windsor, is now the summer season opener of Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum at Topanga Canyon.

However, this version is the Bard with (literally) a twist: WGTB Artistic Director Ellen Geer has transported the Elizabethan-era, Windsor, England-set play to small town USA in Connecticut, during the1950s. Not only that, but a score of period music has been interjected into the madcap merriment of this modern dress revival, with songs from musicals such as My Fair Lady, South Pacific and Bye Bye Birdie, plus rock ‘’n’ roll hits such as “Rock Around the Clock.”

Pretty much anything that complicates the story of a person is a good corrective to the tendency to simplify and caricature. So, one has to welcome Craig McNamara’s book, Because Our Fathers Lied: A Memoir of Truth and Family, from Vietnam to Today. Craig’s father, Robert McNamara was Secretary of War (“Defense”) for much of the war on Vietnam. He’d been offered the choice of that or Secretary of the Treasury, with no requirement that he know anything about either job, and of course no requirement to have the slightest notion that the study of making and maintaining peace even existed.

“They were at places that seemed safe — but few spaces in America are guaranteed safe anymore.”

This is CNN, doing its best to stay atop America’s mass shootings and keep the survivors (by which I mean us) informed. Yeah, 13 gun massacres this past weekend, at strip malls, nightclubs, graduation parties — with 16 people dying, many more injured — and the total number of such shootings so far in 2022 is 246.

“The country is on pace to match or surpass last year's total, which is the worst on record . . .”