Mr Nobody Against Putin won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature on Sunday. Democracy Now! recently spoke with co-director David Borenstein and the subject of the film, the Russian teacher Pavel “Pasha” Talankin, who personally documented Russia’s use of wartime propaganda. “I need for as many people as possible to see what is happening inside of Russian schools,” says Talankin. “Putin is forcing propaganda into their schools, and [the children are] absorbing all of this.”
Borenstein says the film is also a reflection on “the value of one person’s resistance, about how much one person can do, about how much we can overcome complicity while the systems around us are succumbing to authoritarianism.”
Democracy Now! speaks with Iranian Israeli political activist Orly Noy about her recent piece, “Longing for My Tehran.” “It’s been a very emotional time since the beginning of the war, not just because we are constantly running in and out of shelters,” says Noy, “but because this time, the footage of the bombing that I grew accustomed to seeing for over two years from the genocide in Gaza was now coming from my homeland.”
Noy also comments on Israeli political support for the war on Iran, saying “the very few attempts to protest against the war were brutally crushed by the Israeli police.” Israeli violence against Palestinians in the West Bank is also increasing. “Up until now, our worry was about the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank. Now it is just about executing Palestinians, both by the army and by the settlers,” says Noy.
As the U.S. and Israeli war on Iran extends into a third week, President Trump is demanding other countries send warships to the Strait of Hormuz, which has been largely shut, as oil prices keep rising. This comes as the U.S. and Israel continue to launch major strikes on Iran, while Iran has retaliated by repeatedly striking Israel and U.S. allies in the Gulf, including the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain. Despite the violence in Iran, “pro-war voices are definitely in the diaspora and very strong, but they also exist inside Iran,” says Naghmeh Sohrabi, professor of Middle East history at Brandeis University.
“I think most Iranians want this war to end as soon as possible, and at the same time, they fear nothing more than the day after the war, if this regime remains intact,” says Iranian American novelist Amir Ahmadi Arian.
Team Trump are now begging the allies they’ve bullied to ‘die for him in the Strait of Hormuz,’ as Trump's PAC fundraises off of dead troops. Plus, Javier Bardem says 'Free Palestine' at the Oscars.