Global
How did Benjamin Netanyahu manage to serve as Israel’s longest-serving Prime Minister? With a total of 15 years in office, Netanyahu surpassed the 12-year leadership of Israel's founding father, David Ben Gurion. The answer to this question will become particularly critical for future Israeli leaders who hope to emulate Netanyahu’s legacy, now that his historic leadership is likely to end.
Well, for the first time since the lockdown began, after about 15 months of streaming cinema online, your peripatetic film critic finally attended his first screening in person. The event took place June 3 at the Landmark Pico Theater, a major West Los Angeles theatrical venue where arthouse and blockbuster movies alike are shown. The occasion was the directorial debut by Ensenada-born actress Magi Avila, Altitude Not Attitude, which was preceded by a red carpet in the Landmark’s lobby. The celebs who walked the red carpet included supermodel/actress Kelly LeBrock, who was the titular The Woman in Red in that 1984 Gene Wilder romcom.
This was followed by a well-attended reception inside one of the multiplex’s theaters, where a bartender provided libations and servers made the rounds with delicious appetizers that were each adorned by mini-flags from the countries of origin for the hors d’oeuvres, catered by Chef Stacie Rauch of The Personal Palate. For instance, chocolatey mini-mousses were topped by diminutive French Tricolours.
Why does the US advocate a free market while doing its utmost to stifle it? The current US-China economic war is a perfect example of this perplexing question.
The legacy of Milton Friedman, the founder of America’s modern political economy, was a representation of this very dichotomy: the use, misuse and manipulation of the concept of the free market.
Through the Chicago School of Economics, whose disciples have proved most consequential in the formation of the American approach to foreign policy, especially in South America, Milton constantly championed the virtues of the free market, emphasizing a supposed link between freedom and capitalism and insisting that governments should not micromanage markets.
Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 feature Apocalypse Now depicted war crimes committed by U.S. troops against Vietnamese people: An unforgettable, operatic, bone chilling chopper air raid attacking a Viet Cong village set to Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” so a surfer whose name is initialed “LBJ” can ride the gnarly waves there (Ride of the Valkyries - Apocalypse Now (3/8) Movie CLIP (1979) HD - YouTube); a Yankee patrol boat opens fire on a traditional Vietnamese craft after a woman tries to protect a puppy (APOCALYPSE NOW - I told you don´t stop - YouTube); and so on.
The political discourse of Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, is similar to that of an ineffectual king who has been isolated in his palace for far too long. The king speaks of prosperity and peace, and tirelessly counts his innumerable achievements, while his people are dying of starvation outside and pointlessly begging for his attention.
But Abbas is no ordinary king. He is a ‘president’ by name only, a designated ‘leader’ simply because Israel and the US-led international political system insist on recognizing him as such. Not only had the man’s political mandate expired in 2009, it was quite limited even prior to that date. At no point in his career did Abbas ever represent the entire Palestinian people. Now, at 85 years, chances are Abbas will never serve this role.
he Palestinian-Israeli nightmare has a solution: men must exit the process.
The blood rivalry is deepening. It’s being used to fuel anti-Jewish/anti-Muslim hatred, spiraling into an epic abyss extending far beyond the Middle East. Global catastrophe stares us in the face.
Parallel disputes have been mitigated, including Northern Ireland’s unhinged 350-year Catholic-Protestant civil war, where women played a key role in bringing about peace.
But this one stands alone. It demands a game-changer.
As everywhere, men are responsible for nearly all the violence. We must now defer to the ultimate arbiters of birth and survival — women.
Only those who bear the first joy and pain of childbirth can grasp the magnitude of this situation.
Here’s how it can go:
Simultaneous referenda must be staged within the Israeli and Palestinian communities.
BANGKOK, Thailand -- Some of Biden's and Trump's most active boosters
here in Southeast Asia have joined forces, demanding the State
Department vaccinate all American expats in Thailand, as a model for
international distribution, instead of discriminating against them.
"Biden has publicly announced that all Americans now have access to
vaccines, but the government and State seem to have forgotten about us
Americans living abroad," said the chair of Democrats Abroad in
Thailand, Paul Risley, in an interview.
"What are we, chopped liver?
"These are vaccines, offered for free to all in the U.S., and most of
them have been manufactured with taxpayer dollars."
Some worried American expats plan "to fly back to the U.S. -- costly
and risky travel that might bring variants back to the U.S," Mr.
Risley said.
Americans arriving in the U.S. on flights from Bangkok may "have to
stay in the U.S. for at least a month, to get two shots of an approved
vaccine.
"Some Americans may simply be too old to make the long flights, and
journey, back to the U.S," he said.
I would like to announce the publication of a book which discusses the duty of scientists and engineers to try to prevent the catastrophes that currently threaten human society and the biosphere. The book may be freely downloaded and circulated from the following link:
Three major threats to human society
Science and technology have conferred many benefits on human society, but as we start the 21st century, most thoughtful observers believe that our science-driven and information-driven industrial civilization has entered a period of crisis.
The ceasefire on May 21 has, for now, brought the Israeli war on Gaza to an end. However, this ceasefire is not permanent and constant Israeli provocations anywhere in Palestine could reignite the bloody cycle all over again.
As those individuals aware of it will have observed, presumably with deep regret, the latest ‘International Day for Biological Diversity’ passed on 22 May with the bulk of the human population continuing to act in ways that destroy Earth’s biosphere at an ever-accelerating rate.
Unaware that many authors continue to report the ongoing destruction of Earth’s biodiversity, which is under siege on a range of fronts by unchecked human destruction of Earth’s biosphere as well as particular assaults on Earth’s living creatures, responses to this ‘hidden’ path to human extinction continue to waver between non-existent and token.
Consequently, in such circumstances, the destruction of biodiversity might yet become the means by which Homo sapiens is consigned to the fossil record ‘beating’ nuclear war, the climate catastrophe and electromagnetic radiation as the fundamental driver of extinction.