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George Lakey’s new book is called How We Win: A Guide to Nonviolent Direct Action Campaigning. On its cover is a drawing of a hand holding up two fingers in what is more often considered a peace sign than a victory sign, but I suppose it is meant as both.

Perhaps nobody is better qualified to write such a book, and it’s hard to imagine one better written. Lakey co-wrote a similar book in the 1960s and has been studying the matter ever since. He doesn’t just draw lessons from the Civil Rights movement, wasn’t just there at the time, but was applying lessons from earlier actions to training activists at the time. His new book provides — at least for me — new insights even about the very most familiar and often discussed nonviolent actions of the past (as well as lots of new rarely discussed actions). I’d recommend that anyone interested in a better world get this book immediately.

Soon after his distant third-place finish in the Nevada caucuses, Pete Buttigieg sent out a mass email saying that “Senator Sanders believes in an inflexible, ideological revolution that leaves out most Democrats, not to mention most Americans.” The blast depicted “the choice before us” in stark terms: “We can prioritize either ideological purity or inclusive victory. We can either call people names online or we can call them into our movement. We can either tighten a narrow and hardcore base or open the tent to a new, broad, big-hearted American coalition.”

The bizarre accusations of being “narrow” and not “inclusive” were aimed at a candidate who’d just won a historic victory with one of the broadest coalitions in recent Democratic Party history.

Enhanced Medicare for All — that wild scheme that Michael Bloomberg calls “untried” because it’s only been tested for decades in virtually every wealthy nation on earth — would cost $450 billion a year less than the current U.S. system. In the usual propaganda terms (in which you multiply by ten and then — if asked — admit that you’re talking about ten years) that’s a savings of $4.5 trillion! Let’s be honest and call it $450 billion a year.

The health coverage debate has gone on for the past century in the United States, during which numerous other studies have reached similar conclusions. The massive savings that awaits us according to these studies, does not include the potential healthcare savings of greater, more reliable preventive care, or of the reduced stress of guaranteed coverage, or the economic benefits of investing in Medicare For All.

A review of Michael Bloomberg’s political career should not be limited, I think, to the fact that he has the debating skills of a baked potato. Nor does it matter much that he focuses his sales pitch on being a great “manager” but clearly can’t manage to hire anyone to tell him he has to prepare for a debate. His use of non-disclosure agreements to hide undesirable stories deserves the criticism it’s getting, but just begins to scrape the toxic moldy surface.

My colleagues at RootsAction.org have looked into Bloomberg’s record in some depth and are organizing against his campaign in early primary states. Let’s review just a few of the facts.

One of the top ways to celebrate Black History Month - and the movie going experience in general - is to attend the Los Angeles-based 28th Annual Pan African Film & Arts Festival. PAFF focuses on Black-themed films, ranging from studio pictures to indie productions, with works from Hollywood, the USA, Mother Africa, the Caribbean, Melanesia (the Black South Pacific Islands, such as Fiji), Australia (this fest remembers that Down Under’s indigenous people, the Aborigines, are also Black) and beyond. The features, documentaries, shorts, animated pictures, etc., from Africa and the Black Diaspora provide movie fans an opportunity to see independent and international films in the world’s entertainment capital that Angelenos may otherwise never get an opportunity to view. This yearly cultural gemstone includes workshops and panels presented by the PAFF Institute, plus an ArtFest centered at Cinemark’s Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza and the adjoining shopping complex.

If there’s anything that’s going to shatter national borders and force humanity to reorganize itself, it’s climate change.

But as long as we look at this looming planetary unraveling from within the cage of nationalism — especially “white nationalism,” which quietly remains the full meaning of the term — we simply see the natural world as another potential enemy: a threat to “national security.”

[NOTE: This review may contain plot spoilers for those unfamiliar with this 2,600 myth.]

LA Opera’s world premiere of composer Matthew Aucoin and librettist Sarah Ruhl’s sublime Eurydice is an optically and aurally stunning reinterpretation of the ancient Greek myth about Orpheus (Canadian baritone Joshua Hopkins) and the title character (depicted by Angeleno soprano Danielle de Niese and at the performance I experienced, by Rhode Island soprano Erica Petrocelli). Like Romeo and Juliet - consider that Shakespeare’s tragedy inspired the beloved stage and screen adaptations of West Side Story in 1957 and 1961, with a new iteration opening on Broadway this week, with a Steven Spielberg movie remake waiting in the wings - there have been many versions of this immortal romance derived from Grecian mythology.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- More than 5,000 U.S. troops begin training
Thailand's military on February 22, coinciding with demands for the
army's chief to resign and alleged financial corruption within the
military be investigated after an army officer massacred 29 people in
a shopping mall.

Dramatically weeping during a televised news conference, Army Chief
Gen. Apirat Kongsompong said on February 11, "Don't blame the army"
for Sgt. Jakrapanth Tomma's 17-hour rampage in Korat, a northeast city
also known as Nakorn Ratchasima.

"Blame me, General Apirat."

Sgt. Jakrapanth's bloody spree ended on February 9 when security
forces shot him dead in the mall after he killed 29 people.

"Throughout the whole incident, there were only criticisms of the
army. I want you to know that the army is a national security
organization, a sacred organization," Gen. Apirat said.

Gen. Apirat's use of the Thai word "saksit," which means "sacred,"
angered critics.

"He used the Thai word 'saksit', the supernatural powers that demand

The Actors’ Gang’s production of Can’t Pay? Don’t Pay! is a synergy of Hollywood slapstick a la the Three Stooges and American TV show s like I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners and Roseanne crossed by and infused with the anarchist and socialist politics of Mikhail Bakunin, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Karl Marx. This merry madcap Marxist mash-up puts the “commie” into sitcom. To paraphrase the Stooges’ Curley: “Moe! Larry! Che!”