WAIKIKI: LAAPFF FILM REVIEWS
America is currently experiencing a historic surge of protests igniting a cultural awakening and racial reckoning. As what has been called “Columbus Day” arrives, shorts, documentaries and features by and about the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Islands are being given their day in the sun as part of the 36th annual Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival (https://festival.vcmedia.org/2020/). Since 1983 Visual Communications, a nonprofit organization, has presented LAAPFF, dedicated to its mission “to develop and support the voices of Asian American and Pacific Islander filmmakers and media artists who empower communities and challenge perspectives.” This year due to the pandemic the Festival is online.
Black Lives Should Always Matter: Delinking Social Justice from Seasonal US Politics
After viewing the first US Presidential debate on September 29, one is left with no doubt about the degenerating political discourse among America’s ruling elites.
Following the debate between US President, Donald Trump, and Democratic Presidential nominee, Joe Biden, most analyses focused mainly on the personal insults and name-calling, which, deservedly, earned the event the title ‘worst Presidential debate in recent memory’.
Supporters of both parties, however, rushed to minimize the damage inflicted by the poor performance of their candidate, elevating certain points and conveniently omitting others.
However, some issues were thoroughly discussed, thus allowing us to formulate educated opinions on both candidates’ stances on certain subjects, such as racism and police brutality.
What comes next is up to us
What if we stopped separating the looming national chaos into separate categories —racism, climate change, war, vote suppression, election theft, pandemic, science denial, white supremacy, police brutality, etc. — and tried looking at it all at once?
This may be the legacy of Donald Trump, our first corkscrew-in-chief: He has popped the cork on who we are and reality, so it seems, is gushing uncontrollably like never before. Trump, with his defiance of political correctness and the norms of the status quo, not to mention his desire to be the American Mussolini — unchallenged in his leadership either by election results or medical consensus — has created much of the chaos on his own. But the bulk of the chaos is simply America the Terrible emerging from the shadows: our real history suddenly visible.
How About We Vote Blue/Biden in the Swing States & Green/Hawkins in the Safe Ones
Here’s the deal:
If you’re a Green, voting in a purple swing state, preparing to vote for Howie Hawkins… how about asking a Dem in a safe state to vote green while you vote blue?
If you’re a Dem, voting in a safe blue state, preparing to vote for Joe Biden… how about asking a Green in a critical swing state to vote blue while you vote green?
How about we at last use the Electoral College to end the circular firing squad and get the best of both worlds
Preventing a Trump dictatorship in 2020 will ultimately hinge on how well we protect this election from stripped voter rolls, trashed ballots, armed intimidation, insider manipulation, deleted ballot images, a Supreme Court coup, and so much more.
For all that, please see our grassrootsep.org website and join our Monday zooms on how to protect this election.
A Green Vote is an Anti-Trump Vote, Too
This statement also has its priorities straight. Election protection to stop Trump from stealing the election is what we have to do to send Trump packing from the White House to his waiting prison cell. Scapegoating the Greens is a diversion from this top priority.
Green presidential campaigns bring new voters to the polls who are disgusted with both corporate parties. 2016 exit polls showed that 61% of Jill Stein voters would have stayed home had she not been on the ballot.
Plug that percentage into Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania and the outcome would not have changed in 2016. It has been Black voter suppression and the Electoral College, not the Green Party, that has put Republican popular-vote losers in the presidency in the 21st century.
The Man Who Would Be President: Mike Pence, Corporate Theocrat
If President Trump dies from the coronavirus that has killed more than 200,000 Americans largely due to his deliberate negligence, the man replacing him will be no less dangerous. While Mike Pence has eluded tough media scrutiny -- in part because he exhibits such a low-key style in contrast to Trump -- the pair has been a good fit for an administration that exemplifies the partnership of religious fundamentalism and corporate power.
The vice president, a former Indiana talk-show host who went on to become a six-term congressman and then governor, has described himself as “a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican, in that order.” But he remains at cross-purposes with the biblical admonition (Matthew 6:24) that “you cannot serve both God and money.” Whether Pence has truly served God is a subjective matter, but his massive service to money -- big money -- is incontrovertible.
FBI Busts Tibetan-American NY Police "Spy" For China
BANGKOK, Thailand -- The U.S. Justice Department arrested and charged
a Tibetan-American New York City police officer as an "illegal agent"
involved in "intelligence gathering" for China during the past six
years, after he fought as a U.S. Marine against the Taliban in
Afghanistan.
Baimadajie Angwang, 33, reportedly told China's consulate in New York
that local Tibetans who did not believe in the Dalai Lama or Tibetan
Buddhism would collaborate with Beijing.
After serving in Afghanistan in 2013 and 2014, Mr. Angwang became an
Army Reserve staff sergeant at Fort Dix, New Jersey, and received
"secret" security clearance from the Pentagon.
The criminal complaint was unsealed on Sept. 21. in a New York federal court.
If convicted, Mr. Angwang could be imprisoned for 55 years.
His arrest and federal detention in New York comes amid worsening
U.S.-China relations, with both nations suspicious of each other for
alleged spying, propaganda attacks, unfair commercial competition and
other abuses.
Similar allegations involving various nationalities and ethnicities
Will Trump Collect His Pardon and Flee Like a Virus?
macho cult leader can’t seem a mere mortal.
As a dictator-to-be, Trump may be done.
He’s the second White Supremacist president brought down by a virus he helped spread. He’s the second mobster-in-chief desperate for a pardon to stay out of prison.
If the Election Protection movement continues to fight, the election Trump has planned to steal or ignore may now be beyond him. Shy of staying in the White House, only a Mike Pence pardon can keep Trump out of the Big House.
He’s a morbidly obese 74-year-old, precisely the COVID’s favorite demographic.
His Evangelical Death Cult loves his rapist, mobster self as a Lordly trickster, sent down to shutter the feminist uterus and shoot infidels of color.
Both Britain’s Boris Johnson and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro got through the virus. Both were weakened. Neither faced an election 33 days away.
Trump could survive.
He still must answer to the 207,000 humans he helped kill, the millions he got infected, and the countless more he personally sickened (as at his recent rally in Cleveland) by refusing to wear a mask and trashing those who do.
Our World is Burning
Two time scales
The central problem which the world faces in its attempts to avoid catastrophic climate change is a contrast of time scales. In order to save human civilization and the biosphere from the most catastrophic effects of climate change we need to act immediately. Fossil fuels must be left in the ground. Forests must be saved from destruction by beef or palm oil production.
These vitally necessary actions are opposed by powerful economic interests, by powerful fossil fuel corporations desperate to monetize their underground “assets”, and by corrupt politicians receiving money the beef or palm oil industries.
However, although some disastrous effects climate change are already visible, the worst of these calamities lie in the distant future. Therefore it is difficult to mobilize the political will for quick action. We need to act immediately, because of the danger of passing tipping points beyond which climate change will become irreversible despite human efforts to control it.