Secretary of State Jon Husted:

Ohio has a long and unfortunate history of election irregularities. In recent years millions of Ohio citizens have been purged from the voter rolls. Large numbers of electronic voting machines have yielded dubious results that indicate manipulation and hacking.

In light of this, a number of serious issues have arisen surrounding this year’s special election in the 12th Congressional District.

First, let us consider that Ohio, and U.S. elections in general, are undemocratic. They fail the basic tests of transparency by allowing private, partisan, for-profit companies to secretly program the computer voting machines.

In all seven counties that comprise the 12th Congressional District in Ohio, easily hackable Direct-Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines were used. Many of the counties used the notoriously rigged Diebold AccuVote TS touchscreen voting machines.

It’s funny how pure chance can affect things. I usually make it a point to attend the premieres of every play at my favorite theatre, Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum. Thus I greatly looked forward to driving out to the splendid amphitheater in Topanga Canyon on July 26 for the opening night of the first revival of the 1938 revolutionary play Haiti, A Drama of the Black Napoleon. But it was not to be - the road from Pacific Coast Highway up from Malibu to Topanga was closed, alas.

The following Saturday my disappointment turned into a piece of colossal luck, as I attended the next performance in the repertory season of Haiti - as did that courageous Congresswoman Maxine Waters, in order to receive The Will Geer Humanitarian Award. Before the show began, Congresswoman Waters joined the costumed actors onstage to be presented with the award by WGTB Artistic Director Ellen Geer to an ovation from the audience and cast.

“A lie told once remains a lie, but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth.” – A truism attributed to Dr Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment.

“I saw thousands who could’ve overcome the darkness, but for the love of a lousy buck I watched them die.” – Bob Dylan

Myth # 1:

“The FDA (US Food and Drug Administration) tests all new psychiatric drugs”

False. Actually, the FDA only reviews studies that were designed, administered, secretly performed and paid for by profit-driven, multinational pharmaceutical companies or farmed out by those companies to private research firms, in whose interest it is to find positive results for their employers. Unsurprisingly, such collaborations virtually guarantee fraudulent results.

Myth # 2:

“FDA approval means that a psychotropic drug is effective long-term”

It is said in China, that a popular curse is to tell a person “may you live in interesting times.” Given the history of the world for roughly the past few centuries, mankind appears to be, not merely cursed, but damned. And in our present, things have become even more “interesting.”

Particularly in the years since 1945, the world has been almost literally burning, even given the end of the Second World War. The Cold War and its insane nuclear arms race, the proxy wars of the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s and, most especially, the quagmire that most people refer to simply as the Middle East. It is this last subject that I will address here.

As an American Jew born in the early 1950s, I have watched the progress of things Middle Eastern, with interest and, often, horror. It wasn’t until recently, however, that I really explored, considered and, finally understood, how things got to be as bad as they are.          

AUGUST 6, 2018—On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, followed three days later by an attack on Nagasaki. Tens of thousands perished within seconds. For some who died, the only evidence they existed was a radiation shadow found on a concrete wall. The stated justification for this horrific crime was the need to hasten the end of World War II. But not only was Japan already attempting to surrender, it made the final decision to do so because the Soviet Union declared war—Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not need to be bombed.