JACQUES PAUWELS—Ever since the epoch of the French Revolution, the noble (and conservative) elite had never dissimulated its antipathy towards the idea of liberty and progress for the benefit of the masses. The haute bourgeoisie was liberal by conviction and therefore partial to the concepts of liberty and progress, in theory for everybody, but in reality for itself; it detested the idea of democracy, which it perceived not as an ideal but a nightmare, the rule by the stupid and cruel “masses.”
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LARRY C JOHNSON—I am not suggesting that the United States is on the verge of a collapse akin to what happened to the Third Reich in May 1945, but I do believe that the era of the United States invading other countries at will and overthrowing governments not willing to genuflect at the altar of U.S. power is over. The war in Ukraine has laid bare the weakness of the United States to control the international arena.
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JOHN RACHEL—Prior to the military operation initiated by Vladimir Putin on February 24, approximately 14,000 Ukrainian citizens in the breakaway republics of Donbas had been killed by the Ukrainian army. Immediately after the 2014 Euromaidan insurrection February 14, which overthrew a democratically elected government, persecution of those living in this region began. The population there is of Russian extraction, speak Russian, were actually a part of Russia for centuries. Indiscriminate bombing of schools, neighborhoods, hospitals, killing innocent women and children never let up for eight years. Though a path for peaceful resolution of the conflict was put in place in 2015 in the form of the Minsk II Agreement, the government in Kiev ignored it, making its focus on a military solution evident.
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V. GOLSTEIN—What do I hear? All Russia, all of the time. At the top of the hour, the announcer declares their top stories: Russia, Putin, Ukraine, Russian Invasion, Russian figure skater and Olympics, Russian doping scandals and it goes on and on. Are there any other news in this world? When fifteen year old Russian figure skater steals the thunder from LA Rams winning the Super Bowl, and the Great Half Time Rap Show that the Organizers have put on, that tells you something. Valieva crushes Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre, while Leaving Eminem in the Shadow. That would be a better announcement.
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The crowning triumph of a career cut tragically short, the final film from Larisa Shepitko won the Golden Bear at the 1977 Berlin Film Festival and went on to be hailed as one of the finest works of late Soviet cinema. In the darkest days of World War II, two partisans set out for supplies to sustain their beleaguered outfit, braving the blizzard-swept landscape of Nazi-occupied Belorussia. When they fall into the hands of German forces and come face-to-face with death, each must choose between martyrdom and betrayal, in a spiritual ordeal that lifts the film’s earthy drama to the plane of religious allegory.
