Global

Sometimes one decision speaks volumes. And so it was when the Congressional Progressive Caucus -- with 98 members in the House -- recently chose to have its PAC endorse a corporate “moderate” against the strong progressive candidate Nina Turner. In the process, the Progressive Caucus underscored its loyalty to establishment Democrats while damaging its credibility among progressives nationwide.

As the war in Ukraine makes front page news, a new documentary and film festival are shining a spotlight on this Eastern European nation that has been the setting for three of the greatest productions of all time. Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 Battleship Potemkin (https://www.imdb.com/video/vi1065917209?playlistId=tt0015648&ref_=tt_ov_vi), about the mutiny aboard one of the warships in the czar’s Black Sea fleet and the mass strike in the port city of Odessa during the 1905 Revolution was shot and set in Ukraine. The famed “Odessa Steps sequence” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xP-8r7tygo), which still jolts the senses, with the senseless barbaric cruelty of the czarist troops and Cossacks massacring frenzied, fleeing, unarmed civilians – baby carriages, amputees, stone lions and all.

A friend, a young journalist in Gaza, Mohammed Rafik Mhawesh, told me that food prices in the besieged Strip have skyrocketed in recent weeks and that many already impoverished families are struggling to put food on the table. 

 “Food prices are dramatically surging,” he said, “particularly since the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war.” Essential food prices, like wheat and meat, have nearly doubled. The price of a chicken, for example, which was only accessible to a small segment of Gaza’s population, has increased from 20 shekels (approx. $6) to 45 (approx. $14).

 These price hikes may seem manageable in some parts of the world but in an already impoverished place, which has been under a hermetic Israeli military siege for 15 years, a humanitarian crisis of great proportions is certainly forthcoming. 

As wars rage, as cruelty shatters lives across the planet — as nuclear Armageddon remains a viable option for all of us — I think it’s time to claim some stunning awareness in this regard.

The human race is evolving in spite of itself — evolving beyond war, beyond empire, beyond dominance and conquest, and toward an uncertain but collective future. Indeed, I think most of us already know this, but only at a level so deep, so vague it feels like nothing more than “hope.”

The war in Ukraine rages on, and the war mentality, promoted by propaganda on all sides, generates ever more devotion to keeping it going, even escalating it, even considering repeating it in Finland or elsewhere based on having “learned” precisely the wrong “lesson.” The bodies pile up. The threat of famine looms over many countries. The risk of nuclear apocalypse grows. The impediments to positive action for the climate are strengthened. Militarization expands.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Moscow is trying to profit by offering weapons, investment, tourism and diplomatic support to Thailand and other best friends in Southeast Asia, to buffer Russia's international losses caused by U.S.-led sanctions against its invasion of Ukraine.

Russia's latest success appeared April 7 when Bangkok joined 57 other nations and abstained from voting at the United Nations General Assembly when it suspended Moscow from the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC).

"Thailand is deeply sorry about the loss of life, and is gravely concerned about the escalating conflict and humanitarian crisis in Ukraine, and believes urgent actions are needed to address the allegations about human rights violations," by Russia during its war in Ukraine, said Thailand's Ambassador to the UN Suriya Chindawongse.

Other Southeast Asian abstentions included Cambodia, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia.

Thailand -- a non-NATO U.S. treaty ally -- declined on February 28 to obey an unusually pointed, public demand by 25 Bangkok-based European ambassadors telling the government to condemn the invasion.

The meeting between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, in the Chinese eastern city of Huangshan on March 30, is likely to go down in history as a decisive meeting in the relations between the two Asian giants. 

 The meeting was not only important due to its timing or the fact that it reaffirmed the growing ties between Moscow and Beijing, but because of the resolute political discourse articulated by the two top diplomats. 

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As that sixties’ saying puts it, “the personal is political.” In the case of The Last Boy, which is being presented April 27 on Holocaust Remembrance Day at the renowned Town Hall in Midtown Manhattan’s Theater District, the personal is political and also theatrical to me. That’s because this timely fact-based anti-Nazi drama stars my 21-year-old cousin, who is making an auspicious Broadway debut.

Bret Sherman portrays the title character in The Last Boy, which is “about a group of seven boys who are in the Terezin camp in Czechoslovakia,” notes Sherman. “They are living through this terrible, dark time. But the playwright/director, Steve Fisher, does a really great job of not dwelling on that too much, of the miserable atmosphere they’re a part of. Because at the end of the day, while we can look back at it now and realize that was such a terrible time, and I’m sure the boys realized they were being mistreated, but they obviously didn’t have a ton of information and I don’t think they understood the scope of what was happening,” as Hitler’s “final solution” exterminated millions of Jews and others during World War II.

Like other nationalities, Hollywood has manufactured cinematic stereotypes of the French. Unlike Tinseltown movies such as 1951’s An American in Paris, 1954’s The Last Time I saw Paris, 1964’s Audrey Hepburn-William Holden comedy Paris When It Sizzles, and 1972’s Last Tango in Paris, there are no berets, brioches, baguettes, accordions or on location (or B unit) shots of urban landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower or Montmartre’s Sacré-Coeur Basilica to be found in Parisian Jacques Audiard’s Paris, 13th District. Indeed, the long shots of this arrondissement (district) on the Seine’s left bank consist mostly of hideous high rises – not the charming architecture often associated with the City of Lights.

There is a reason why Israel is insistent on linking the series of attacks carried out by Palestinians recently to a specific location, namely the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank. By doing so, the embattled Naftali Bennett’s government can simply order another deadly military operation in Jenin to reassure its citizens that the situation is under control. 

 Indeed, on April 9, the Israeli army has stormed the Jenin refugee camp, killing a Palestinian and wounding ten others. However, Israel’s problem is much bigger than Jenin.