Global

Assassins, with music/lyrics by the legendary Stephen Sondheim, book by John Weidman, based on a concept by Charles Gilbert Jr., is a bold choice for the venerable East West Players to reopen with after having been shuttered due to the you-know-what for almost two years. Staged with a loose revue format, Assassins is about most of the men and women who successfully or unsuccessfully attempted to kill a sitting US president.

The über-assassin highly esteemed by the other trigger-happy members of this (as depicted) kooky club of ludicrous if deadly misfits is the granddaddy of them all, John Wilkes Booth (Trance Thompson), who literally shot Pres. Lincoln in 1865 while he was sitting (in a box seat at Ford’s Theatre watching Our American Cousin). In chronological order when they committed their crimes (although the freewheeling musical isn’t sequential per se), the other title characters are:

There are a number of things that have to be said first. They have to be said because virtually no U.S. television viewer knows or is likely ever to know them. They have to be said because if I’m going to suggest any flaws in the actions of the Russian government, I have to establish at least the possibility of doubt that I’m bought and owned by NATO or the Pentagon. Here are those things:

Ukraine has in common with Yemen, Iran, Taiwan, Korea, Syria, and every other global hotspot, a central role by the U.S. military.

The U.S. globally dominates weapons sales, base building, military alliance building, dictator-arming, coup-facilitating, and war launching.

Russia’s military costs 8% what the U.S. military does.

The U.S.-driven expansion of NATO and militarization of Eastern Europe is at the root of the crisis.

The new U.S. bases in Slovakia, tank sales to Poland, and giant weapons sales to Ukraine and throughout Eastern Europe are not incidental here.

I left the Geffen Playhouse feeling exhilarated, not only because I saw my first play in months since the you-know-what returned, but due to the fact that Power of Sail is a very timely one-act play with a stellar cast that dramatizes an urgent issue America is grappling with. The play asks: Does hate speech have the right to free speech? Here’s playwright Paul Grellong’s story in a nutshell (and I warn you, Dear Theatergoer, there may be some plot spoilers in this critique):

WASPy Charles Nichols (Tony and Emmy award winner Bryan Cranston, who scored an Oscar nom for depicting that freedom of speech champion Dalton Trumbo in the 2015 biopic Trumbo) is a fifth generation Harvard student and/or professor, an author of arcane, obscure, unread tomes who teaches history and presents a prestigious symposium there annually. The secret list of invitees Nichols has selected for Fall 2019 has been leaked – and one of Prof. Nichols’ choices has triggered heated protests on campus.

The current split in the African Union (AU) over Israel’s Observer membership status is emblematic of a larger conflict that could potentially split the African continent’s largest political institutions. 

This story starts in June 2021 when on a premonition at the Assange event I told Victor Nieto I may be active again politically in Miami, this was while Saab was held in Cape Verde. I had been living a 6 hour drive away in Jacksonville, Florida since May 2020 at the time, where I still reside. Victor was one of my old contacts from when I lived in South Florida. We had lost touch and was happy to see him at the event. I let him know, as the left is very divided, that I wanted to mend fences with people in the movement I had differences within the community, and Victor being a man of influence said he would talk to people. I did not take his number down and did not see him again till yesterday as I engage in activism again in the community, but things have progressed.

Gay rights, women’s rights — in reality, these are a nuisance to many U.S. conservatives, but purporting to protect these rights on the other side of the world is a great excuse to play war.

And you don’t need bombs to play. All you need is the will to dominate and the ability to dehumanize “the enemy,” so that their lives can be trashed if (and when) necessary.

I have to confess a stunned speechlessness as I learn about the looming fate of Afghanistan, if President Biden refuses to release $9.4 billion of its assets to the country’s central bank, which it had deposited abroad, primarily at the U.S. Federal Reserve, during the 20-year war. With the Taliban reclaiming power after the U.S. withdrawal last August, the president seized control of these assets, potentially plunging Afghanistan into economic freefall, and . . . oh God . . .

“United Nations officials are warning that millions of Afghans could run out of food before winter, with 1 million children at risk of starvation. . . .

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Hun Manet, trained by the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, may become Cambodia's next leader after his pro-China father Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen recently anointed him, prompting scrutiny about how the heir apparent would deal with Washington and Beijing.

Prime Minister Hun Sen, 69, is often scathing in his criticism of the U.S.  He favors China's deepening economic and strategic relationship with Cambodia which is bordered by Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam, and opens toward the South China Sea where the U.S. and Beijing compete for access.

"Cambodia is far too deep in with China to be able to rebalance quickly," if Hun Manet becomes prime minister, said Sophal Ear, an Arizona State University associate dean and professor for global development who co-authored the book, "The Hungry Dragon: How China's Resource Quest Is Reshaping the World."

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.