Global

I honestly believe that Cirque du Soleil’s official motto is “gravity is for sissies” – or, if it isn’t, it really should be. This psychedelic circus, which had been wowing audiences for almost 40 years, has returned to Los Angeles with Corteo, a show that premiered in 2005. The barebones plot is that Mauro, the so-called Dreamer Clown, imagines his funeral procession to be a phantasmagorical parade inhabited by uninhibited free spirits and angels who form his cortege (or eponymous Corteo) as they run wild, celebrating joie de vivre.

The scene of Israeli Ambassador, Sharon Bar-Li, along with other Israeli delegates, being escorted out of the opening ceremony of the African Union Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on February 18, was historic. The very moment that was meant to crown twenty years of Israeli diplomacy on the African continent, in a few seconds, turned to represent Israel’s failure in Africa.

 Unable to fathom the breakdown of its diplomatic and political efforts, Tel Aviv responded to Bar-Li's removal by waging a war of words against African countries, accusing them of spearheading a campaign aimed at blocking Israel's observer status. 

The 2024 races for the White House and Congress may be decided Tuesday, April 4, in Wisconsin.

And the Democrats may be set to blow it by spending millions on media buys while ignoring grassroots organizing.

The hotly contested election is for the vacant swing seat on the Wisconsin state Supreme Court.  The outcome could ride on how many voters of youth and color turn out to cast ballots.

And while the Democrats have so far outspent the Republicans on media advertising, their general unwillingness to support grassroots organizing could easily lose the seat….and much more.

That puts this race at Ground Zero in the bitter dispute about where progressive should focus their electoral efforts leading up to 2024—-by sending money and other support to the Democratic Party and its candidates…or by directly supporting grassroots groups focussed on getting out the vote, as they did in creating the “Georgia Miracle” that secured two very unlikely US Senate seats in 2020-2.

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In its home-page on World Water Day, 2021, the United Nations pointed out the following facts:

Today, 1 in 3 people live without safe drinking water.

By 2050, up to 5.7 billion people could be living in areas where water is scarce for at least one month a year.

Climate-resilient water supply and sanitation could save the lives of more than 360,000 infants every year.

If we limit global warming to 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels, we could cut climate-induced water stress by up to 50%.

Extreme weather has caused more than 90% of major disasters over the last decade.

By 2040, global energy demand is projected to increase by over 25% and water demand is expected to increase by more than 50%.

Clearly, water is a crucial resource, and the future well-being of human society depends on how well we manage our global supply of fresh water. This will require a high level of international cooperation and social justice.

Maude Barlow: water as a human right

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu left Tel Aviv for Rome on March 9, he was flown to Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv by a helicopter because anti-government protesters blocked all the roads around it. 

I read the news – invasion of Iraq! twentieth anniversary! – and struggle to transcend the abstraction of my remorse. A million killed? Half a million? The mortality stats vary depending on the source’s politics.

But beyond the numbers looms an indifference that defines what is called “news.”

“Today, 20 years after the president ordered the airstrikes that rained down on Baghdad on the night of March 20, 2003, the war is widely seen in Washington’s power centers as a lesson in failed policymaking, one deeply absorbed if not thoroughly learned.”

Just reading those words – a paragraph in a New York Times analysis of the invasion, two decades later – instantly turns a citizen into a spectator. A lesson of failed policymaking! We’re talking about murdering children, for God’s sake, annihilating a social structure, driving millions of people out of their homes and shattering their lives. Somehow the term “failed policymaking” doesn’t do it justice.