EDITOR—The repugnant lack of balance in this panel comprised exclusively of Zionists and imperialist apologists, and the host’s outspoken Islamophobia at a moment when Israel and the US are committing genocide in Gaza, certifies the bankruptcy of US media and Maher’s own moral degeneracy as an artist.
ARTS & FILM
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EDITOR—1943, the Great Patriotic War, territory of Belarus. The 16-year-old boy Flera, having dug out a carbine among scraps of barbed wire, rusty machine-gun belts and shot-through helmets, goes into the forest to join the ranks of the partisans. This film, like no other, shows the tragedy of a child on a battlefield. At the beginning of the picture Flera is just a teenager. But In the end, having gone through horror and fear, child becomes an adult, frighteningly adult – his face is distorted by senile wrinkles, and there is no room for love in his soul…
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DEBORAH L. ARMSTRONG—Alexander Zavaly grew up in the Ukrainian Republic of the Soviet Union, in the town of Alexandria (Ukrainian: Oleksandriia), about an hour’s drive west of the Dnieper River and five hours’ drive southeast of Kiev. He lived there from the age of six, when his family first relocated there, far from the icy mining town of Vorkuta, above the arctic circle, where he had lived since his birth in 1955. As a child, he was gifted with the ability to draw, but had little opportunity to develop his budding talent. Alexandria was another mining town and his father worked the mines like most of the men in his family, who had no real connection to the world of art.
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The Batman: Decadent Ordure Hailed as Artistic Accomplishment.
16 minutes readP. GREANVILLE—The latest iteration of the saga of the cape crusader, an improbable, immature billionaire bent on vigilantism, is 100% typical of this crushingly tedious genre’s DNA: exploitative (but elaborately produced) action films based on comic strips once designed to entertain subteens but now widely marketed to much broader audiences. The latter sorry fact is itself proof of the deliberate infantilisation and depoliticization of the masses, which have become stupid enough to thirst for this kind of decadent and vacuous entertainment.
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Museums: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
5 minutes readJohn Oliver discusses some of the world’s most prestigious museums, why they contain so many stolen goods, the market that continues to illegally trade antiquities, and a pretty solid blueprint for revenge.