Global

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 Pan African Virtual Film + Arts Festival is taking place from Feb. 28 – March 14.

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 Pan African Virtual Film + Arts Festival is taking place from Feb. 28 – March 14.

Abby Ginzberg’s Truth to Power: Barbara Lee Speaks for Me is a star-studded nonfiction biopic about the title character, who was the only member of Congress to have the courage and foresight to vote against the post-9/11 Authorization for Use of Military Force bill granting Pres. George W. Bush and all future presidents what Lee criticized as war-making powers that were “too broad… crazy.”

The United States of America was redefined on January 5th and 6th, 2021. Never underestimate the pivotal power of these two dates in our nation’s history. And do not believe that a likely Senate failure to convict Donald Trump will change any of it.

On January 5th, the voters of Georgia chose a black preacher and a Jewish filmmaker to successfully flip the empowered majority of the United States Senate. No one died. But the vote merged an epic demographic shift with a massive grassroots election protection movement to remake our nation.

The next day, Donald Trump incited an armed, violent mob to invade the US Capitol and kill his Republican Vice President, Mike Pence, before Pence could certify the nation’s choice for a new president. Five people died. The mission failed.

And it left intact nationwide what we had won in Georgia the day before … a demographically remade America, the real enemy of the Trump mob.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Myanmar's coup leader may be lucky his Southeast Asian country is wedged among authoritarian regimes which are interested in making money by accessing its natural resources and strategic geography, instead of condemning the destruction of its fledgling democracy.

Nearby key investors, including China and Thailand, muted their responses to the coup in Myanmar, a France-sized nation also known as Burma.

But the U.S., Europe, Australia and several other more distant lands denounced Commander-in-Chief Senior General Min Aung's bloodless coup at dawn on February 1.

"We call upon the military to immediately end the State of Emergency, restore power to the democratically-elected government, to release all those unjustly detained, and to respect human rights and the rule of law," the Group of Seven major economic powers said after the coup.

The G7 comprises the U.S., Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the U.K.

In contrast, China did not support a UN Security Council's effort on February 2 to produce a joint statement condemning the putsch.

Imagine a “USA!” that has truly outgrown – transcended – racism. Would it still have a Republican Party?

One recent and shocking – but hardly surprising – piece of news is the huge scramble in legislatures, especially the Republican-controlled ones, all across the country to draft and pass legislation restricting the ability of Americans (some of them, anyway) to vote. It’s as though there’s a national effort going on to repeal the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and return to a happier time: Let’s make America great again!

he Republican Party’s post 2020 state-by-state assault on voting rights has begun with the demand that all mailed-in paper ballots include photo ID.

The Jim Crow racism is beyond obvious. Instead of having to guess, mailed-in photo ID lets election officials quickly identify which ballots came from citizens of color … and then pitch them on the spot. By banning student IDs, they can also eliminate ballots coming from college campuses.

Thus the Nixon-Trump/Atwater-Rove-Bannon Republicans have picked up the KKK burning cross straight from hands of the Jim Crow Democrats.

They’re flooding at least 28 state legislatures with more than a hundred laws meant to undermine American democracy. 2020 taught them that, in Trump’s own words, if people of youth and color could cast ballots and have them reliably counted, “you’d never have another Republican elected again.”

Claims made by Democratic New York City mayoral candidate, Andrew Yang, in a recent op-ed in the Jewish weekly, ‘The Forward’, point to the prevailing ignorance that continues to dominate the US discourse on Palestine and Israel. 

My father, Richard Rampell, was a photographer who used to exhibit his artsy black and white pictures in Manhattan’s top photo galleries. Always a good provider, Dad supported our family by teaching at Boys High in Bed Stuy, explaining: “All artists require patrons. Even Michelangelo needed patrons. By working as a teacher, I can support myself and be my own patron – and therefore just shoot whatever I want.” In this way Dad was immune from the ups and downs of the marketplace for artistes, was unfailingly able to pay our monthly bills, but was still able to exhibit his pictures alongside the greats of the photography world, such as the abstract lens meister Minor White, social realist Cornell Capa and Arthur Rothstein, that Dust Bowl poet.

Impeachment dramas on Capitol Hill have routinely skipped over a question that we should be willing to ask even if Congress won’t: “What about a president’s unimpeachable offenses?”

The question is the flip side of one that Republican Gerald Ford candidly addressedwhen he was the House minority leader 50 years ago: “What, then, is an impeachable offense? The only honest answer is that an impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.”

By narrowly defining which offenses are impeachable, political elites are implicitly telling us which offenses aren’t.

So, when the House approved two articles of impeachment on Donald Trump in December 2019 and one impeachment article last month, the actions were much too late and much too little.

The Pakistani government should never, under any circumstances and no matter the pressure, normalize with Israel. Doing so is not only dangerous - as it will embolden an already vile, racist, violent apartheid Israel - but it would also be considered a betrayal of a historic legacy of mutual solidarity, collective affinity and brotherhood that have bonded Palestinians and Pakistanis for many generations.