Global

Director/co-writer/co-star Dennis Dugan’s Love, Weddings & Other Disasters is a mildly amusing romcom mainly distinguished by the presence of two superb thespians: Oscar winners Diane Keaton (she was awarded the Best Actress Academy Award for 1977’s Annie Hall and of course starred in many other Woody Allen classic comedies) and Jeremy Irons (1990’s Reversal of Fortune, for which he scored that coveted golden statuette for Best Actor). The proverbial curtain lifts on Disasters with an eye-grabbing, death defying opening reminiscent of James Bond films, as well as with a knowing wink to the movie’s title. However, the aptly named Disasters rapidly descends downhill from there, literally (if you watch this flick you’ll see what I mean, but I don’t want to commit that critical capital offense of plot spoiling).

In a few words, a close associate of Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, summed up the logic behind the ongoing frenzy to expand illegal Jewish settlements in Israel.

“These days are an irreplaceable opportunity to establish our hold on the Land of Israel, and I’m sure that our friend, President (Donald) Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu will be able to take advantage,” Miki Zohar, a member of the Likud Party was quoted in the Christian Science Monitor. 

Step one: Defeat Trump. OK, now comes the hard part.

We have to take back the country, and what I really mean is take it “forward,” beyond situation normal — endless war, structural racism, consumer culture and ecological devastation — and into what one might call planetary stewardship.

This sounds, of course, absurd, as though there’s any facet of the American status quo, political or economic, that would abandon its interests and embrace a vision-in-progress: of a world that has transcended nationalism, borders and war . . . of a world that has transcended us-vs.-them thinking and dominion over Planet Earth.

Idealism, man! There’s nothing Americans are better at than mocking it. Nonetheless, beyond the mockery, I believe there is an enormous segment of the population that understands the need to create real peace and believes — or wants to believe — in a future that is not caged in the past. Does such a movement have any resonance, any hope of political traction?

This we know for sure about Chicago ’68:

Mayor Richard J. “Boss/Big Dick” Daley was 100% responsible for the “police riots” at the pivotal Democratic Convention that helped elect Richard Nixon and prolong the war in Vietnam for an inexcusable 7 more years.

Daley did this by denying our Constitutional rights — some 15,000 of us, who came to “peaceably assemble” demanding a “redress of grievances” from the war’s prime perpetrators.

Had Daley acted with any sense or grace, he’d have granted our legal right to a daily march/rally permit, plus the ability to camp in Grant and Lincoln Parks (where else were we supposed to go?).

Certainly some among us might’ve broken a few windows and caused some havoc anyway. Certainly some among us were agents paid to do just that.

But mostly we were in Chicago to peacefully march, make our points against that horrible war in Vietnam, tell the Democratic party to CEASE AND DESIST. We figured also to smoke some dope, hear some music, and then go back home to work for peace, justice, and a totally transformed American way.

By all accounts, the frontrunner to be Joe Biden’s pick for Secretary of Defense is Michèle Flournoy. It’s a prospect that should do more than set off alarm bells -- it should be understood as a scenario for the president-elect to stick his middle fingers in the eyes of Americans who are fed up with endless war and ongoing militarism.

Warning and petitioningBiden to dissuade him from a Flournoy nomination probably have scant chances of success. But if Biden puts her name forward, activists should quickly launch an all-out effort to block Senate confirmation.

Antony Blinken is not the Secretary of State the United States or the world needs, and the U.S. Senate should reject his nomination. Here are 10 reasons:

1. A president elect who has been part of every disastrous war for decades should not be nominating for Secretary of State a key advisor who helped him get numerous critical decisions wrong. Biden was the committee chair who guided the Iraq war authorization through the Senate with Blinken’s help. Blinken helped Biden into catastrophe after catastrophe in Libya, Syria, Ukraine, and elsewhere. If Biden claims to have regrets or to have learned anything, he’s not yet showing it.

2. Blinken has been part even of Biden’s hairbrained schemes that weren’t acted on, such as the plan to divide Iraq into three separate puppet states.

3. Blinken has supported Trump’s bombings in Syria and arming of Ukrainians, militarism that went beyond Obama-Biden policies.

4. Blinken has urged that campaign promises of ending endless wars not be taken too seriously.

Trump changed many things.

U.S. media outlets will now point out when a president is lying. If that policy holds consistently, we’ll never have a war again.

Congress will now vote to end a war (Yemen) and a president will veto it. If Congress can repeat that on a monthly basis, and the president not veto, we’ll end a lot of wars.

Top military officials will openly laugh about tricking a president into believing he’d withdrawn more troops than he really had from a war (Syria). If presidents or Congress or the public should develop any outrage over that, we might be in good shape. If not, we could be in trouble.

The world can no longer as easily deny the selfish, destructive motivations behind U.S. imperialistic behavior, even if a new president dresses it up more politely.

A new term has imposed itself on the conversation regarding the impending presidency of US President-elect, Joe Biden: “The Total Reset”. Many headlines have already promised that the Biden Presidency is ready to ‘reset’ US foreign policy across the globe, as if the matter is dependent solely on an American desire and decision.

While a ‘total reset’ is, perhaps, possible in some aspects of US policies - for example, a reversal of the Donald Trump Administration’s decision to abandon the Paris Agreement on climate change - it is highly unlikely that the US can simply reclaim its position in many other geopolitical battles around the globe. 

I’ve been a movie fan since childhood and by the time I got to Manhattan’s Hunter College, I’d already seen countless pictures. Majoring in cinema there I devoured copious amounts of cinematic offerings, and then as a professional critic and film historian I’ve gone on to watch an incalculable number of movies. I mention this because there are scenes in ​writer/ director Sergei Loznitsa’s Donbass – for which he was awarded the Cannes Film Festival’s “Un Certain Regard” accolade – that in all likelihood I’ve never ever seen before on the silver screen.

Thus far, people in 187 countries have signed this pledge: