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Undaunted, the pandemic can’t stop the Pan African Film Festival and in that immortal show biz tradition, the show must go on! Albeit virtually, as this year in order to stay cinematically safe, America’s largest and best yearly Black-themed filmfest since 1992 is moving online and starting later than usual, kicking off on the last day of Black History Month. 2021’s 29th annual Pan African Virtual Film + Arts Festival is taking place from Feb. 28 – March 14.

I am a big fan of the work by actor/director/writer Nate Parker, which powerfully expresses Black consciousness and militancy in movies such as: 2012’s Red Tails about the heroic Tuskegee Airmen who were antifascists before Antifa; 2007’s fact-based The Great Debaters, which proved Blacks can excel academically and Denzel played a suspected Communist; and 2016’s The Birth of a Nation, which Parker directed, co-wrote and starred in as Nat Turner, who led America’s bloodiest uprising against slavery (see: The Last Shall Be First in "The Birth of a Nation" - Progressive.org).

“The United States of America has open wounds.”

Ever since its founding, the United States has been attempting to build a society around those wounds, on the belief that hyped-up language — “all men are created equal,” and so forth — can paper over deep wrongs. If you put the ideal in writing, you can ignore its absence in real life.

Fukushima Daiichi’s multiple nuclear reactor meltdowns started ten years ago. They are not over. They are not even close to over. Nuclear disasters don’t ever end. The radioactive danger slowly decays over decades, during which it needs constant safety management until radiation measurements are below “acceptable levels.” That’s still not safe.

Fukushima continues to be a low-level nuclear disaster, as it has been for ten years. The initial explosive accident has been mitigated, but the danger has never been fully contained. Recent news from Fukushima is hardly reassuring.

COVID-19 has diminished the average U.S. lifespan by an entire year, but Black Americans and those of Latin American origin have lost 2.7 and 1.9 years respectively, according to the CDC. Overrepresented in essential occupations, these workers are still not being prioritized for vaccines even though one in 10 are being exposed to the virus at least once per week, while many white Americans who work at home have already been vaccinated.

In February, Essential Ohio sent a letter to Gov. DeWine and Ohio Health Department Director Stephanie McCloud urging them to prioritize essential workers for COVID-19 vaccines. Essential Ohio is still awaiting an answer from DeWine and McCloud.

There are over 15,000 undocumented workers in the food supply chain in Ohio, for example, and that’s only a portion of our undocumented essential workforce in this state. Ohio’s agricultural industry, which relies on a historically marginalized and vulnerable migrant workforce, has continued to employ and bring in thousands of workers to ensure that Ohioans and the rest of the country have food on their plates during this dangerous and challenging time.

It is now going on a year and a half since “financier” and pedophile Jeffrey Epstein died, allegedly by hanging himself in a New York City prison. Since that time it has surfaced that there were a number of “administrative” errors in the jail, meaning that Epstein was not being observed or on suicide watch even though he had reportedly attempted to kill himself previously. The suspicion that Epstein was working for Israel’s external intelligence agency Mossad or for its military intelligence counterpart also seemed confirmed through both Israeli and American sources.

“That's certainly our goal and our intention.” This was the non-committal answer given by White House Press Secretary, Jen Psaki, when, on February 12, she was asked by a reporter whether the new Joe Biden Administration intends to shut down the notorious Guantánamo Bay Prison by the end of the president’s first term in office.

Psaki’s answer may have seemed reassuring, that the untold suffering experienced by hundreds of men in this American gulag - many of whom were surely innocent – would be finally coming to an end. However, considering the history of Guantánamo and the trail of broken promises by the Barack Obama Administration, the new administration’s pledge is hardly encouraging.

Undaunted, the pandemic can’t stop the Pan African Film Festival and in that immortal show biz tradition, the show must go on! Albeit virtually, as this year in order to stay cinematically safe, America’s largest and best annual Black-themed filmfest since 1992 is moving online and starting later than usual, kicking off on the last day of Black History Month. 2021’s 29th annual Pan African Virtual Film + Arts Festival is taking place from Feb. 28 – March 14.

Like love, film is a many splendored thing for PAFF. This unique filmfest screens productions in various formats and mediums – including features, documentaries, studio blockbusters like Coming 2 America, indies and animation – and also in a variety of lengths. The common thread PAFF weaves is a tapestry of works regarding the Black experience, from Timbuktu to Papua New Guinea to the Caribbean to L.A. and beyond, by and about Blacks. And often PAFF presents films that Angeleno moviegoers may never otherwise have an opportunity to view (and gives them a foothold in a world movie capital). So thanks to PAFF, I was able to behold two worthy short films.

CELESTE’S DREAM: GOOD GRIEF!

At a glance, it may appear that the split of Arab political parties in Israel is consistent with a typical pattern of political and ideological divisions which have afflicted the Arab body politic for many years. This time, however, the reasons behind the split are quite different.

On February 4, representatives from the Palestinian Movement, Hamas, visited Moscow to inform the Russian government of the latest development on the unity talks between the Islamic Movement and its Palestinian counterparts, especially Fatah.

 This was not the first time that Hamas’s officials traveled to Moscow on similar missions. In fact, Moscow continues to represent an important political breathing space for Hamas, which has been isolated by Israel's Western benefactors. Involved in this isolation are also several Arab governments which, undoubtedly, have done very little to break the Israeli siege on Gaza. 

“For Washington, it seems that whatever the problem is, the answer is bombing.”

So wrote Stephen Zunes, in the wake of Joe Biden’s first act of murder as president . . . excuse me, his first act of defensive military action: bombing a border post in Syria last week, killing 22 of our enemies. This action, of course, will quickly be forgotten. “The United States has bombed Syria more than 20,000 times over the past eight years,” Zunes notes, adding: