Global

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.

Utter chaos in Ohio’s gerrymandering war and the California’s big green shift define our GREE-GREE zoom #90.

We are now officially the GREEN GRASSROOTS EMERGENCY ELECTION PROTECTION Coalition.  Saving the planet is inseparable from saving our elections.  

Today’s amazing gathering deals with the blood war over Ohio’s Congressional and Legislative districts, now being sabotaged by a GOP determined to trash the will of the Buckeye State as expressed by two popular referenda demanding a fair districting process.

We hear from COMMON CAUSE, the LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS, INDIVISIBLE and more on a battle that could determine control of the US House, the Ohio Legislature and thus our future.  JOEL SEGAL fills us in on the Constitutional legalities.

ANDREA MILLER briefs us on grassroots organizing for 2022.

Then we hear from TATANKA BRICCA and SARA NELSON and more on fight to take California—and thus the United States and the world—to green power.  WENDI LEDERMAN fills in from Florida.  

This is a powerful, packed excursion in the election and energy democracy.  Don’t miss it!
 

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. 

Nuclear sanity: ultimate (or, God help us, immediate) disarmament.

Nuclear insanity: ongoing development and deployment, endless investment, eventual (either accidental or intentional) use.

Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., addressing Congress several weeks ago, made a heartfelt and powerful case for nuclear sanity, for a revamping of the system of mutually assured destruction, which gives certain national leaders “Godlike powers known as sole authority to end life on the planet as we know it . . .”

When Russian and Ukrainian delegations meeting in Turkey on March 29 reached an initial understanding regarding a list of countries that could serve as security guarantors for Kyiv should an agreement be struck, Israel appeared on the list. The other countries included the US, the UK, China, Russia, France, Turkey, Germany, Canada, Italy and Poland.

For our meeting #89 we announce the GREEN-GREEP (Gree-Gree)…the Greening of the Grassroots Emergency Election Protection Coalition to conjoin the battle for grassroots democracy with renewables and saving our planet from King CONG (Coal, Oil, Nukes & Gas).

We’re first joined by BISI WILLIAMS, BRUCE MAU & AMARIS GALEA-ORBE,  who introduce us to the Massive Change Network.

We then enter the deep mists of the nationwide Gerrymandering fiasco, starting with Ohio’s Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor.  A veritable Profile in Courage, O’Connor has single-handed blocked four versions of an outrageous attempt by Buckeye Republicans to yet again hijack the state’s Congressional and State House districts.  Now (of course) her fellow Republicans want to impeach her.

The Ohio war is being duplicated in New York, North Carolina, Alabama, Texas, Nevada and everywhere else one of the major parties thinks it can steal a few Congressional/Legislative seats.

The soul of humanity cries out from the crowded streets of Moscow, from steps near the Kremlin, as a man — an artist in the deepest sense — brings the slaughter of civilians in Bucha back to the home country . . . not by killing a bunch of Russians, but by posing, publicly, as dead himself, with his hands tied behind his back.

Let this man’s spirit flow across the whole planet.

War is hell, and when we wage it — when we dehumanize an enemy, thus allowing ourselves to commit mass murder — we dehumanize ourselves. This unknown Russian man, in posing as someone killed in Ukraine, is bringing awareness home: Look what we’re doing! Let us reclaim our humanity.

When a gruesome six-minute video of Ukrainian soldiers shooting and torturing handcuffed and tied up Russian soldiers circulated online, outraged people on social media and elsewhere compared this barbaric behavior to that of Daesh. 

 In a rare admission of moral responsibility, Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to the Ukrainian President, quickly reminded Ukrainian fighters of their responsibility under international law. “I would like to remind all our military, civilian and defense forces, once again, that the abuse of prisoners is a war crime that has no amnesty under military law and has no statute of limitations,” he said, asserting that “We are a European army”, as if the latter is synonymous with civilized behavior.