FRED PLOTKIN is one of America’s foremost experts on opera and has distinguished himself in many fields as a writer, speaker, consultant and as a compelling teacher. He is an expert on everything Italian, the person other so-called Italy experts turn to for definitive information.  Fred discovered the concept of "The Renaissance Man" as a small child and has devoted himself to pursuing that ideal as the central role of his life. In a “Public Lives” profile in The New York Times on August 30, 2002, Plotkin was described as "one of those New York word-of-mouth legends, known by the cognoscenti for his renaissance mastery of two seemingly separate disciplines: music and the food of Italy." In the same publication, on May 11, 2006, it was written that "Fred is a New Yorker, but has the soul of an Italian."

By Andy Borowitz August 23, 2021 WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Explaining that it was taking the action “out of an abundance of caution,” the Food and Drug Administration has withdrawn its approval from “whatever drug Rand Paul is on.” The agency emphasized that it did not know what drug the senator was taking, or whether he was taking any drug at all, but asserted that it was withdrawing its approval out of a concern for public safety. “If, in fact, Rand Paul is on something, we want to protect the American people from experiencing the same side effects that he appears to be exhibiting, such as irrationality, irritability, and difficulty processing information,” an F.D.A. spokesperson said. The F.D.A.’s action drew a swift rebuke from Paul, who accused the agency of overreach and declared, “This is my brain on no drugs whatsoever.” Responding to the Kentucky senator’s statement, the F.D.A. said that it was reversing its earlier decision but would refer Paul for further clinical study. Andy Borowitz is a Times best-selling author and a comedian who has written for The New Yorker since 1998. He writes The Borowitz Report, a satirical column on the news.

By Naomi Serviss In 1971, I graduated from the first alternative high school without walls. Philadelphia’s Parkway Program was the brainchild of top educators who thought high school should be a nurturing environment that would inspire curiosity and spark creative imagination. They envisioned a non-traditional, spread-out school where students would traverse the city to learn from professionals in fields of their own interest. Students and teachers would reflect the region’s multiethnic, diverse population. Despite intense criticism, it came to pass. It was the perfect moment for future Baby Boomers! And it was so much fun! We were left to work out class schedules with advisors who were essentially our guidance counselors. I wasn’t laser-focused on a career path, but I knew it would involve writing. My generation was already in the woes and throes of adolescence. We hated everything. Except for certain bands and anything hippie-oriented. The Vietnam War, the military industrial complex, Nixon, blue-chip polluters, political corruption, hypocrisy, lousy teachers and our disaffected parents. Parkway attracted over-and under-achievers, slipping through the cracked school system. Lucky suburban students won admission through a lottery. I was one of the lucky ones. It helped steer my life’s trajectory. Parkway garnered a flood of media attention. It was featured in magazines, on national, international and local news. Like anything, it had its good parts and its bad parts. Good parts: I became a free-range 12th grader and learned how to navigate public transportation. I honed my observational skills on the subway. Classes covered traditional classes required to graduate. My classes included literature, philosophy, economics, social science and broadcast journalism. I needed a language to graduate. I’d plateaued on four years of conversational French. The only thing I recall is a bland white family having a weirdly formal conversation with each other. Lessons began with students stammering “Voila Monsieur Thibaud. Voila Madame Thibaud.” You get the gist. The plots of those stories were wanting. I sought a fresh challenge and chose Esperanto. It didn’t take. Local politicians like Thacher Longstreth taught civics. He ran for mayor and lost to Frank Rizzo. Longstreth was a famous blue blood, 6’6”, liberalish Republican Philadelphian. He served decades on City Council. And famous for his argyle socks and bow ties. A foreign diplomat who lived in my Elkins Park neighborhood taught diplomacy. John Kenneth Galbraith tried to explain economics. Didn’t take, either. Very Bad Part: A jazz professor with gapped front teeth and hundreds of records in his apartment, taught me more than he should have. I felt unfettered joy for the first time in my life when I scored an internship at the CBS affiliate station, WCAU. A Sixties Musical Hippie Trifecta: The Moody Blues, Woodstock and The Grateful Dead That year launched my Inner Journalist. Here’s what I recall: I entered the squat, unimaginative building on City Line Avenue and got vetted by a guard. Then on to the assignment desk where I was sent off with a two-or three-person news crew for an evening story. I kept a journal in a 39-cent stenographer’s notebook As The Roving Reporter. My first entry was December, 1970. Ron Miller was the reporter. “Tonight I accompanied a crew to a suburb (Media) where a man who initiated ‘Brotherhood Day’ was interviewed. Ron was extremely courteous and respectful. This was very exciting as it was the first time I went out on a story.” Some reporters’ names might ring a bell with fellow 1971 grads in my CHS Zoom group, which is one of my pandemic highlights! I accompanied reporter Hugh Gannon and soundman Phil Carroll to a workplace shooting by a disgruntled former employee of Publicker’s Distillery. It was chilling and shocking because it rarely happened 50 years ago. I rode in a van with a young Marjorie Margolies to the Roosevelt Boulevard Mall for an ambulance exhibit. They can’t all be show bizzy. Another entry: “A volunteer fireman turned out to be someone I used to go to school with. People people people life life life.” I had an English literature class in Ralph’s aesthetically pleasing townhouse. I sat on his expensive carpet and tried not to break anything. Don’t remember what we studied, but he served Bigelow’s Constant Comment tea. The aroma of its je ne sais quoi (can’t say it in Esperanto) is a madeleine. After graduating, I attended Temple University on full scholarship. Which probably cost $2,000 a year in the ‘70s. I found my way to the student publications offices and was hired, for actual money!, as an entertainment columnist for the daily Temple News, where copy editors used lead pencils, erasers and glue pots. When “cut and paste” was literally “cut and paste.” Photographers developed their photos on site, where editors and reporters swapped insight. A handful of journalism classes were worthwhile. Copy-editing class was a dud. Taught by a veteran copy editor, who insisted we read aloud from the textbook every class. Now I think of students returning to campuses and public schools with fear and a little loathing of current dictates. The days of free-ranging public school students is passé, or strongly curtailed. Frankly, if my kids had been tempted by a free-range high school opportunity in the ‘90s, I know how they would have responded. They had pretty crappy Long Island experiences. But that’s not my story to tell. Naomi Serviss is a New York-based award-winning journalist whose work has been published in The New York Times, Newsday, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Highroads (AAA magazine), in-flight publications, spa and travel magazines and websites, including BroadwayWorld.com

By Jessie Seigel / Washington, D.C. Dear Mr. President: Where is your characteristic empathy? What happened to your usually straightforward explanations that face up to difficulties and lay out a best-effort strategy to address them? That’s what we needed from you last week. Not simply your oft-repeated defense of withdrawing from Afghanistan—a decision with which most of us agree—but a sense that you are leading us in a sincere all-out effort to evacuate not only all Americans, but the Afghan allies who have stood with our soldiers during the last 20 years, and the female Afghan leaders whose lives are now in grave danger. Whether we should withdraw from Afghanistan and how we should do it are two separate questions. Both needed to be fully addressed. You have defended the need to withdraw well—pointing out that we initially went into Afghanistan to “bring Osama bin Laden to the gates of hell;” and to eliminate Al Qaeda’s ability to conduct more attacks on the U.S. from that country. As you have said, we accomplished those missions long ago. Concerning the limitations on when we withdraw, you have explained you inherited a deal that former President Trump negotiated with the Taliban for U.S. forces to leave by May 1, 2021—only a little over three months into your term of office. Apparently, this agreement originally included a ceasefire that was to end on that date, after which our soldiers would be fair game for attack again. Trump drew down U.S. forces from about 15,500 to 2,500 troops, hugely increasing their vulnerability. This presented you with a stark choice between following through on Trump’s withdrawal agreement, albeit at a slightly later exit date, or sending thousands more U.S. troops back to war with the Taliban. As you have wisely said, you are not willing to “send another generation of Americans to war in Afghanistan with no reasonable expectation of achieving a different outcome.” From the 19th century “Great Game” between Britain and Russia (a subject of Rudyard Kipling’s novel Kim), to the later doomed Soviet-Afghan war from 1979-1989, to our invasion and 20-year stay, Afghanistan has earned its title as the “graveyard of empires.” The majority of Americans agree with your decision to withdraw. And so do I. However, your initial failure and subsequent delay in addressing the critical challenges obstructing a safe exit for Americans and Afghans who aided the U.S. armed forces has been perplexing and deeply disappointing. Not to mention the fact that the impending fate of Afghan women has barely been addressed at all, let alone adequately. First, you disappeared at Camp David and said nothing for days. Then, at your first briefing on the Afghan evacuation crisis on Monday, August 16th , you all but ignored the plight of the Afghans who aided our forces. In your interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos two days later, while we still had pictures in our heads of panicked multitudes mobbing planes at the Kabul airport, you said, “…the idea that somehow, there’s a way to have gotten out without chaos ensuing, I don't know how that happens.” Mr. President, I understand that the important thing now is to get people out. It is not yet time to do an autopsy of what could have or should have been done to prepare for our exit. But to keep public confidence, we needed you to acknowledge the situation and tell us what is currently being done to improve it, including getting out our Afghan allies. Instead, you seemed to throw up your hands, maintaining it couldn’t have been avoided, thus suggesting there’s nothing to be done about the situation. By the time you finally gave us some feedback on mitigation measures last week on Friday, August 20th, it became difficult to regain faith that we were getting more than empty words. Thousands of Afghan translators, drivers, and others who assisted the U.S. armed forces may be murdered by the Taliban after we leave. These people risked their lives for us and it is imperative that we get them out. In July, you stated that 2500 Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs) for such Afghans had been approved since January, but fewer than half that number had exercised their right to come to the United States. You’ve suggested, therefore, that our government didn’t begin evacuating most Afghan civilians before August because many of them did not want to leave earlier. But individual veterans, veteran organizations, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have been trying every avenue for months—even years—to help the interpreters and others eligible for SIVs to obtain them. Some veterans maintain they have been banging on a closed door for months, trying to get your administration to see the urgency of getting these people out of the Taliban’s reach—to no avail. According to retired Army Colonel Steven M. Miska, director of the organization First Amendment Voice, hundreds of veterans are in contact with Afghans who aided the U.S. mission, and are desperately trying to find a way out. Last week, the Wilson Center reported that, since August, there has been an 18,000-person backlog for the SIVs. Lawrence Montreuil, the current legislative director of the American Legion and a retired Marine Corp officer, said last week that there was a backlog of about 20,000 applicants—and once one adds their families, about 70,000 men, women and children needing evacuation. The veterans working to rescue the Afghans who fought beside them are moved by a noble desire to save those who saved them. Montreuil, speaking from personal experience, told Air Force Magazine, “I was an Afghan National Army advisor in southern Afghanistan, and I can tell you that they were essential to not only mission accomplishment but our survival on a daily basis. So I think it’s that moral necessity that veterans feel.” Given the large visa backlog and the veterans’ Herculean efforts, your statement that few eligible Afghans were relocated earlier because they weren’t interested earlier sounds like a lame excuse. And with at least 18,000-plus families waiting for visa processing, only 2,500 by July was, frankly, pathetic. When a member of the press asked why the U.S. can’t evacuate Afghan translators to the United States to await their visa processing, you responded only: “Because the law doesn’t allow that to happen.” I assume you were referring to the law establishing the SIV program for Afghans. I am surprised you didn’t explain how our government’s ability to timely act under that program was hampered by your predecessor. Afghan war veteran and former CIA analyst Matt Zeller, whose life was saved by an interpreter, and who has strived during several presidencies to bring Afghan interpreters and support personnel to the U.S., recently told The Daily Beast, “The visa program created to get them here, it was purposely shut down by the Trump Administration for the last four years.” Zeller said he’d had meetings with Trump aide Stephen Miller, who told him that he, Zeller, was doing nothing but letting Islamic fundamentalist terrorists into our country, and that it was the Trump Administration’s job to stop him. Furthermore, as reported by Stars and Stripes in July 2020, a State Department Inspector General (IG) determined that the Afghan SIV program was understaffed, uncoordinated and reliant on outdated technology. The IG’s report said staffing levels hadn’t changed since 2016 when Trump was elected, despite a 50% increase in the number of visa applicants, and that at least 50 more staffers were urgently needed. There was only one analyst in Trump’s State Department to conduct all the security checks on applicants, along with that person’s other duties. In addition, the position meant to oversee the program was left unfilled from January, 2017—the beginning of Trump’s term—until March, 2020. Perhaps, President Biden, the eight months you had until the planned exit from Afghanistan were not enough time to repair the damage Trump did to that program. But what was done? Were employees added to process visas? Could the forms have been simplified? Under the current exigent circumstances, could the forms have been bypassed in favor of soldiers or veterans vouching for the Afghans with whom they had worked? And why, when a full withdrawal by September 11 was announced in April, did your Administration seemingly do nothing to prepare in advance, but wait until the last minute? Preparations were needed regardless of whether or not the Taliban took over. Finally, the women of Afghanistan are in as great danger as those who worked with the American armed forces. When the Taliban previously controlled the country, women were banned from receiving an education after age eight, from working, or even leaving the home unless accompanied by a male family member. Punishment for disobeying these rules ranged from beatings and mutilation to execution. Over the last 20 years, under U.S. auspices, many Afghan women have been able to get an education, and have become lawyers, doctors, scientists, journalists, and politicians. Thirty percent of Afghanistan’s civil servants are women, and women have been actively serving in the Afghan Parliament. With the return of the Taliban, women—in particular, educated, professional women—are in grave danger. The Taliban’s propaganda arm now claims that under its new regime, “no prejudice against women will be allowed, but the Islamic values are our framework,” and that “women will be allowed to participate in society within the bounds of Islamic law.” But if its recent moves in Herat, Kandahar and Kabul are any indication, by “Islamic law,” the Taliban really means its same old reactionary version of Sharia law. The Taliban’s actions in those cities are surely a harbinger of what is to come. There are reports that in Herat, gunmen have prevented female students and instructors from entering its university. In Kandahar, women’s health care clinics have been shut down. And at Kabul University, women students have been told they are not allowed to leave their dorm rooms unless accompanied by a male guardian. According to the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security, the physical survival of female leaders is under threat. We—the United States—raised their expectations. We encouraged Afghan women to become open activists for their rights and to participate fully in Afghan society. To leave them at the mercy of the Taliban at this point would be a deadly bait-and-switch. But since the SIV program applies only to Afghan allies who worked directly with the U.S. armed forces or at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, these brave women do not appear to be eligible for visas under this program. Mr. President, you have insisted that “human rights must be the center of our foreign policy.” These words will ring hollow if our country effectively abandons these Afghan women and girls to the Taliban. A solution beyond speaking out for them must be found. In your Friday briefing, you finally gave us more information about what is being done—or at least, attempted. You not only said that you will mobilize every source necessary to get Americans home, you committed to bringing out Afghans who assisted in the war effort. You added that you’re trying to get out as many NGOs and women’s organizations as you can. I hope you will be as good as your words. As far as ending the current chaos, you informed us that the U.S. is working in close operational coordination with NATO on the evacuation. You noted that 6,000 troops have been added to provide security at the Kabul airport, to guard its perimeter, and to assist civilian departures. You stated that 13,000 people have been evacuated since the military airlift began on August 14, and that thousands more have been evacuated on private charter flights facilitated by the U.S. government. You claimed these numbers include American citizens, permanent residents and their families, and SIV applicants and their families. But you also said, with commendable bluntness, “Make no mistake. This evacuation mission is dangerous. It involves risks to armed forces and it’s being conducted under difficult circumstances. I cannot promise what the final outcome will be or that it will be without risk of loss.” That is what the nation wants from you, President Biden—plain statements acknowledging the difficulties we face and your best effort to address them. We can’t know whether this evacuation is a success or failure until it is over. But I hope that our country’s action will not be a case of “too little, too late,” but of “better late than never.” Those of us who support your decision to end our military involvement in Afghanistan fervently hope that your administration will recover from its initial, seriously mishandled effort and rise to the occasion. Many lives depend upon it. Political columnist Jessie Seigel had a long career as a government attorney in which she honed her analytic skills. She has also twice received an Artist’s Fellowship from the Washington, D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities for her fiction, and has been a finalist for a number of literary awards. In addition, Seigel is an associate editor at the Potomac Review, a reviewer for The Washington Independent Review of Books, and a dabbler in political cartoons at Daily Kos. Of this balance in her work between the analytic and the imaginative, Seigel jokes, “I guess my right and left brains are well-balanced.” More on and from Seigel can be found at The Adventurous Writer, https://www.jessieseigel.com.

One film journalist’s stream-of-consciousness cinematic journey through the pandemic, Part 47 By Laurence Lerman If you’ve ever watched any Japanese martial arts movies from the Seventies, then you’ve probably seen one starring Sonny Chiba. Not the mainstream and relatively tame movies featuring American-born Chinese star Bruce Lee that rolled out to local cinemas and daytime television, mind you, but rather the violent and bloody ones that played in Asian theaters, on the American midnight and college circuit and on late-night TV. The ones where neither the good guys nor the bad ones were in the habit of showing their adversaries any mercy. Those were the ones with actor and martial artist Chiba. A prolific performer who amassed more than 200 credits over the course a career spanning some six decades, Chiba died last Thursday, August 18, in a hospital in Kimitsu, Japan, at the age of 82. The cause was complications related to Covid-19. It’s both sad and startling that a ferocious presence like Chiba, whose strength and fury were evident in countless roles as an assassin, samurai, superhero, terrorist, soldier, emperor, cop and even a space alien, could fall prey to so silent and unseen an enemy. Chiba was born Sadaho Maeda in Fukuoka, Japan in 1939, decades before he began using the stage name Shin’ichi Chiba and, later, Sonny Chiba. He began studying martial arts as a teen under the renowned karate master Masutatsu Oyama (whom he later portrayed in a trilogy of films), earning a first-degree black belt in karate in 1965. It was the first of a remarkable six black belts he held in six martial arts, including kendo, judo and ninjutsu. Chiba got his start in entertainment as a leading costumed character in the 1959 Japanese superhero television show Seven Color Mask. His natural physicality and hard-boiled attitude, unique for a kids’ program at the time, quickly led to starring role roles in all manner of low-budget films. Within no time at all, Chiba was popping up in crime movies, thrillers, comedies and sci-fi action flicks, like 1961’s Invasion of the Neptune Men, his first big screen outing. The work kept coming, and by 1970, Chiba had started his own training school for aspiring martial arts actors and stunt performers, which helped to raise the level of the techniques that were used in Japanese film and television. Chiba’s skills and style didn’t embody the kind of graceful and fluid motions that at the time were elevating Bruce Lee to stardom; Chiba’s approach was far more savage, more furious, with fists and feet flying all about as enemies big and small were taken down for the count, with a final blow usually administered while they were on their backs. This was the no-prisoners persona he bought to 1974’s The Street Fighter, directed by Shigehiro Ozawa. In it, Chiba is martial arts expert Takuma “Terry” Tsurugi, a professional mercenary who doesn’t hesitate to unleash a deadly “oxygen coma punch” on an opponent or rip out the vocal cords of a particularly talky one. Oh, and he generally does it all with a nasty grimace of self-satisfaction. The Street Fighter was released in the U.S. by fledgling New Line Cinema and became one of its first commercial successes. Notably, it was also the first film to ever receive an “X” rating in the U.S. solely for violence, a classification that was changed to “R” several years later. That same year, Japan’s Toei Company Ltd. quickly banged out a pair of sequels also starring Chiba, Return of the Street Fighter and The Street Fighter’s Last Revenge, as well as a spin-off, Sister Street Fighter, which also yielded sequels. All were picked up for distribution in the U.S. and around the world and Chiba quickly became an international star, easily identified as the seething dark flipside of Bruce Lee and his shining box office grosses. Dozens of films followed over the next 25 years, primarily produced in Chiba’s native Japan. A number of them, including the Dirty Harry-ish crime thriller Doberman Cop (1977), the time-travel action-adventure G.I. Samurai (1979) and the one-final-heist aging criminal saga Triple Cross (1992) are routinely shown in rep houses and continue to be discovered by new generations of martial arts fans. Chiba also scored in the U.S.’s thriving straight-to-tape action era of the Nineties, appearing in such genre chewers as Aces: Iron Eagle III (1992), Immortal Combat (1994) and Body Count. Forgettable cheapies all, but you can bet that as viewers were rewinding their tapes prior to returning them to Blockbuster, they still had Chiba’s formidable presence in mind. Chiba still remains best known in the West for his role as Hattori Hanzo, legendary swordsmith who crafts the ultimate weapon for Uma Thurman in Quentin Tarantino’s 2003 slash-a-thon Kill Bill, Vol. 1 (2003). Tarantino had previously paid homage to Chiba in his script for Tony Scott’s 1993 True Romance, wherein Christian Slater’s character attempts to wangle a date to accompany him to a late-night Sonny Chiba triple feature. More respect was paid when Chiba appeared as a yakuza kingpin in the wildly popular 2006 action-adventure The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift and then in the 2012 revenge thriller Sushi Girl as a chef whose knife-work isn’t limited to slicing you-know-what. Both the franchise favorite and the arthouse entry introduced Chiba to yet another potential wave of action lovers, who probably noted the older and tougher guy sharing the screen with either Vin Diesel or a gal draped in sashimi. Prior to the outbreak of the pandemic and a subsequent deluge of production delays, Chiba had been signed to appear in the zombie action thriller Outbreak Z alongside Jesse Ventura and Wesley Snipes, a project that still remains in pre-production limbo. The complete story line hasn’t been announced and I’m not sure what characters Ventura or Snipes were down for, but I’d like to imagine that Sonny would have kicked both their asses. Laurence Lerman is a film journalist, former editor of Video Business--Variety's DVD trade publication--and husband to The Insider's own Gwen Cooper. Over the course of his career he has conducted one-on-one interviews with just about every major director working today, including Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Clint Eastwood, Kathryn Bigelow, Ridley Scott, Walter Hill, Spike Lee, and Werner Herzog, among numerous others. Once James Cameron specifically requested an interview with Laurence by name, which his wife still likes to brag about. Most recently, he is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the online review site DiscDish.com.

August 23, 2021 Jeffrey D. Sachs | Project Syndicate When G7 leaders convene this week to discuss Afghanistan, they should be clear about the core goals: extricate their nationals and Afghan partners, and then work constructively with China, Russia, and other interested parties to end the country's 40-year downward spiral. Enough of destruction; it is time to build. NEW YORK – This week, G7 leaders will convene to discuss Afghanistan. It’s crucial that the G7 leaders think clearly about the important objectives for Afghanistan in order to avoid adding yet another cycle of misery, bloodshed, and mass refugee flows. Above all, they should use the meeting merely to coordinate policies among the seven countries in preparation for actions by the far more important venue, the United Nations Security Council. Without China and Russia at the table, there is no possibility of a coherent international approach to Afghanistan. With this in mind, the G7 should aim to engage with Afghanistan under the Taliban, not isolate or starve the country. This is important not only as a short-run tactic to help get Westerners and vulnerable Afghans out of the country peacefully, but also to avoid future bloodbaths, humanitarian crises, and refugee surges. As tempting as it will be for the United States and its G7 allies to put a long-term hold on Afghanistan’s foreign-exchange reserves, freeze development aid, and intensify US (and possibly UN) sanctions, such an approach is doomed to fail, just as predictably as the 20-year NATO mission has just failed. The US knows a lot about punishing other countries, but it doesn’t know much – or perhaps care much – about fixing them. Many in the US political class are loudly calling for punishment of the Taliban. After all, the US has been deeply humiliated. But the rest of the G7, and the rest of the world, should reject calls for revenge from the same US politicians and strategists who did so much to get the US and NATO into this 40-year mess (US intervention in Afghanistan, we must remember, started in 1979, not 2001). These are the people who championed the initial US support for the mujahideen, which later became the Taliban and al-Qaeda. These are the people who favored the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. And these are the people who believed that a troop surge in the early Obama years would do the trick. These people should be ignored. If the Taliban refrains from vengeance killings against its foes or a brutal crackdown on women and girls, the G7 countries, the UN agencies, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) should be ready to continue, and indeed to increase, financial support to Afghanistan. Yes, the US right will scream and label President Joe Biden a traitor. But the US right detests all foreign assistance, which is why the US has been incapable of helping poor countries to stabilize. The right wants to conquer countries, not help them to develop. There is more that the G7 should do. First, it should commission an independent study of why its development program during 2001-20 did not help Afghanistan to stabilize and improve sufficiently to enable the government and its military forces to resist the Taliban’s reconquest of the country. (Hint: Look at the lopsided spending on security rather than development; the chronically inadequate funding of social programs and infrastructure; the disjointed approach lacking an overarching strategy; the corruption among US contractors, not just Afghans; and the lack of clear and ambitious sustainable development benchmarks and targets.) Second, the G7 should call on the UN Security Council to integrate economic and sustainable development thinking into its future actions and planning vis-à-vis Afghanistan, with regular reporting from UN officials in Afghanistan. The Security Council should learn quarterly whether children, including girls, are in school (with supplies and teachers for them); whether clinics are functioning; whether villages have access to water and electricity; whether mothers can obtain neonatal and obstetrical care; whether there is enough food to eat; and, finally, whether there are sufficient development funds to cover these essential needs. Such benchmarks are all part of the Sustainable Development Goals, and the SDGs should apply to a Taliban-led government in Afghanistan just as they should have applied to the NATO-backed government. Unfortunately, it was the NATO mission that didn’t take the SDGs seriously. In 2019, for example, the total donor aid to Afghanistan for educational programs came to a measly $312 million (see data here), or a meager $20 per child for Afghanistan’s 15 million school-aged children (ages 5-19). By contrast, the US spent around $1 million per year per soldier for the thousands of US soldiers in Afghanistan. Of that paltry sum given for education, none of the aid was channeled through the government budget. Instead, it came in the form of projects implemented directly by NGOs and other outsiders. It’s not surprising that the Afghan people thought very little of their government. It was playing no role in educating their children (or in other core social functions), and the donors were not helping the government to play any consequential role other than providing security. Some US politicians will probably be tempted to support new insurgent groups to fight the Taliban, ostensibly as a way to pressure the Taliban at the negotiating table. This is a typical US recipe, but it invariably leads to open-ended warfare. Fortunately, the US probably lacks the logistical means to support an insurgency, and it’s very hard to see China or Russia favoring such a naive approach. Barring support for insurgents, the US and even the G7 will be tempted to refuse to recognize any Taliban-led government, denying that it has legitimacy. Such a move would then be used as a legal basis to continue to freeze Afghanistan’s foreign-exchange reserves at the US Federal Reserve, and to put a hold on any new financing for Afghanistan from the IMF, World Bank, and the ADB. The US and its allies would thereby foment a deeper economic and humanitarian crisis. But to what end? Even crippling US sanctions rarely dislodge governments, and are very unlikely to do so in Afghanistan, just as they have failed to do so in recent years in Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela. The G7’s leaders should be clear about the core goals in Afghanistan: extricate their nationals and Afghan partners, and then work constructively with China, Russia, and other interested countries to end Afghanistan’s 40-year downward spiral that the US helped to initiate back in 1979. Enough of destruction. It is time to build. https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/us-and-allies-should-support-afghanistan-development-aid-by-jeffrey-d-sachs-2021-08 Jeffrey D. Sachs, University Professor at Columbia University, is Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University and President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. He has served as adviser to three UN Secretaries-General, and currently serves as an SDG Advocate under Secretary-General António Guterres. His books include The End of Poverty, Common Wealth, The Age of Sustainable Development, Building the New American Economy, A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism, and, most recently, The Ages of Globalization.

By Jeffrey D. Sachs / New York City / Project Syndicate For decades, the American political class has intervened relentlessly and recklessly in countries whose people they hold in contempt. And once again they are being aided by America’s credulous mass media, which is uniformly blaming the Taliban victory on Afghanistan’s incorrigible corruption. The magnitude of the United States’ failure in Afghanistan is breathtaking. It is not a failure of Democrats or Republicans, but an abiding failure of American political culture, reflected in US policymakers’ lack of interest in understanding different societies. And it is all too typical. Almost every modern US military intervention in the developing world has come to rot. It’s hard to think of an exception since the Korean War. In the 1960s and first half of the 1970s, the US fought in Indochina – Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia – eventually withdrawing in defeat after a decade of grotesque carnage. President Lyndon B. Johnson, a Democrat, and his successor, the Republican Richard Nixon, share the blame. In roughly the same years, the US installed dictators throughout Latin America and parts of Africa, with disastrous consequences that lasted decades. Think of the Mobutu dictatorship in the Democratic Republic of Congo after the CIA-backed assassination of Patrice Lumumba in early 1961, or of General Augusto Pinochet’s murderous military junta in Chile after the US-backed overthrow of Salvador Allende in 1973. In the 1980s, the US under Ronald Reagan ravaged Central America in proxy wars to forestall or topple leftist governments. The region still has not healed. Since 1979, the Middle East and Western Asia have felt the brunt of US foreign policy’s foolishness and cruelty. The Afghanistan war started 42 years ago, in 1979, when President Jimmy Carter’s administration covertly supported Islamic jihadists to fight a Soviet-backed regime. Soon, the CIA-backed mujahedeen helped to provoke a Soviet invasion, trapping the Soviet Union in a debilitating conflict, while pushing Afghanistan into what became a forty-year-long downward spiral of violence and bloodshed. Across the region, US foreign policy produced growing mayhem. In response to the 1979 toppling of the Shah of Iran (another US-installed dictator), the Reagan administration armed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in his war on Iran’s fledgling Islamic Republic. Mass bloodshed and US-backed chemical warfare ensued. This bloody episode was followed by Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, and then two US-led Gulf Wars, in 1990 and 2003. The latest round of the Afghan tragedy began in 2001. Barely a month after the terror attacks of September 11, President George W. Bush ordered a US-led invasion to overthrow the Islamic jihadists that the US had backed previously. His Democratic successor, President Barack Obama, not only continued the war and added more troops, but also ordered the CIA to work with Saudi Arabia to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, leading to a vicious Syrian civil war that continues to this day. As if that was not enough, Obama ordered NATO to oust Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi, inciting a decade of instability in that country and its neighbors (including Mali, which has been destabilized by inflows of fighters and weapons from Libya). What these cases have in common is not just policy failure. Underlying all of them is the US foreign-policy establishment’s belief that the solution to every political challenge is military intervention or CIA-backed destabilization. That belief speaks to the US foreign-policy elite’s utter disregard of other countries’ desire to escape grinding poverty. Most US military and CIA interventions have occurred in countries that are struggling to overcome severe economic deprivation. Yet instead of alleviating suffering and winning public support, the US typically blows up the small amount of infrastructure the country possesses, while causing the educated professionals to flee for their lives. Even a cursory look at America’s spending in Afghanistan reveals the stupidity of its policy there. According to a recent report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, the US invested roughly $946 billion between 2001 and 2021. Yet almost $1 trillion in outlays won the US few hearts and minds. Here’s why. Of that $946 billion, fully $816 billion, or 86%, went to military outlays for US troops. And the Afghan people saw little of the remaining $130 billion, with $83 billion going to the Afghan Security Forces. Another $10 billion or so was spent on drug interdiction operations, while $15 billion was for US agencies operating in Afghanistan. That left a meager $21 billion in “economic support” funding. Yet even much of this spending left little if any development on the ground, because the programs actually “support counterterrorism; bolster national economies; and assist in the development of effective, accessible, and independent legal systems.” In short, less than 2% of the US spending on Afghanistan, and probably far less than 2%, reached the Afghan people in the form of basic infrastructure or poverty-reducing services. The US could have invested in clean water and sanitation, school buildings, clinics, digital connectivity, agricultural equipment and extension, nutrition programs, and many other programs to lift the country from economic deprivation. Instead, it leaves behind a country with a life expectancy of 63 years, a maternal mortality rate of 638 per 100,000 births, and a child stunting rate of 38%. The US should never have intervened militarily in Afghanistan – not in 1979, nor in 2001, and not for the 20 years since. But once there, the US could and should have fostered a more stable and prosperous Afghanistan by investing in maternal health, schools, safe water, nutrition, and the like. Such humane investments – especially financed together with other countries through institutions such as the Asian Development Bank – would have helped to end the bloodshed in Afghanistan, and in other impoverished regions, forestalling future wars. Yet American leaders go out of their way to emphasize to the American public that we won’t waste money on such trivialities. The sad truth is that the American political class and mass media hold the people of poorer nations in contempt, even as they intervene relentlessly and recklessly in those countries. Of course, much of America’s elite holds America’s own poor in similar contempt. In the aftermath of the fall of Kabul, the US mass media is, predictably, blaming the US failure on Afghanistan’s incorrigible corruption. The lack of American self-awareness is startling. It’s no surprise that after trillions of dollars spent on wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and beyond, the US has nothing to show for its efforts but blood in the sand. https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/afghanistan-latest-debacle-of-us-foreign-policy-by-jeffrey-d-sachs-2021-08 Jeffrey D. Sachs, University Professor at Columbia University, is Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University and President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. He has served as adviser to three UN Secretaries-General, and currently serves as an SDG Advocate under Secretary-General António Guterres. His books include The End of Poverty, Common Wealth, The Age of Sustainable Development, Building the New American Economy, A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism, and, most recently, The Ages of Globalization.

By Jessie Seigel / Washington, D.C. The Me Too movement can add another notch to its belt. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo stepped down a week after a detailed investigation by New York’s attorney general’s office found that he sexually harassed at least 11 women. Cuomo announced his resignation on August 10, to become effective within 14 days. Even while resigning, Cuomo defiantly protested that his behavior, while perhaps sometimes “too familiar,” had been used against him in a political world where “rashness has replaced reasonableness.” While the sexual harassment case against Cuomo appears well supported by the evidence, I can’t help being reminded—by contrast—of Me Too’s earlier victim, Minnesota Senator Al Franken, who was forced to resign in December 2017 after charges of sexual misconduct. There, the rush to judgment was entirely rash, unreasoned, and unfair. Now, Franken is reentering the public sphere. In September, he will begin a 15-city tour dubbed “The Only Former U.S. Senator Currently on Tour Tour.” Since Franken is about to resurface, we will soon have the opportunity, and I would argue the obligation, to reassess his case. Whether his tour represents a more substantial return to public political life for Franken is too early to tell. But that promising possibility warrants revisiting the Franken debacle, especially in light of the Cuomo findings. Governor Cuomo was in a position of power over those he allegedly abused; and he received due process through an extensive investigation. The investigation determined that Cuomo had committed serious harassment of women working for him. This included: making suggestive remarks about their appearance and sex lives; kissing them; groping their breasts or buttocks; and running a hand across a female state trooper’s stomach from belly button to hip while she held a door open for him. It also included using suggestive questions and intimate comments in an attempt to manipulate a female aide who had previously been a survivor of sexual assault; and using his power to retaliate against his female deputy secretary for economic development and special advisor, who had made a public allegation of sexual harassment against him. By contrast, the worst of Franken’s alleged actions would constitute a comedian’s silly tomfoolery. And Franken requested an official independent investigation—which his fellow Democratic senators refused to grant him. Furthermore, Franken was not in any kind of power-position related to his female accusers. They were free to tell him off or engage in some other form of self-help in response to any inappropriate behavior. The Franken Accusations In July 2019, The New Yorker published Jane Mayer’s superb article on the accusations against Al Franken, in which Mayer not only extensively interviewed the former senator, but comprehensively examined the facts surrounding the accusers’ allegations against him, exposing—Émile Zola-style—how lacking in merit they were. The allegations of Franken’s main accuser, Leeann Tweeden, not raised until 2017, were built on distortions and fabrications, using the kinds of claims often legitimately raised by Me Too harassment victims. Tweeden, a fellow volunteer in a 2006 USO tour, claimed Franken had written a skit with a kissing scene specifically in order to kiss her. She alleged he aggressively pestered her to practice, forcibly kissed her during a rehearsal, sticking his tongue in her mouth, and that she pushed him off with her hands. Tweeden claimed she didn’t report the alleged incident to military authorities because she felt powerless, but told others on the tour. However, she did not provide any names of those she claimed to have told. Mayer spoke with eight participants in that 2006 USO tour, including Julie Dintleman, the military escort whose assignment was to accompany Tweeden at all times other than bedtime—which would include rehearsals. No one, including Dintleman, observed Tweeden being upset with Franken. Furthermore, Franken wrote the skit in 2003, before he ever met Tweeden, and performed it on numerous other USO tours with other actresses. And Tweeden’s claim about Franken’s real life actions so closely paralleled the skit as to read like she was plagiarizing it. Tweeden also produced a photo taken onboard a military plane while she was asleep. In the photo, Franken had his hands out as if he were going to grab her breasts. Tweeden professed outrage, claiming Franken did this to humiliate her. But, the photo was a play upon a “breast exam” skit they had performed multiple times, including the day before, one of many farcical photos taken of Franken on the plane by a military photographer, and one of a group sent to everyone by the military—not just her—and not by Franken. When I first saw the photo—long before I knew any of these details, it was obvious to me that Franken was being silly, mugging for the camera. His hands were not touching Tweeden’s person, but miming an approach to it. I could almost see his eyebrows going up and down as if he were Groucho Marx—satirizing the lecher, not the object of the lechery—a woman wearing a helmet, fatigues and a bullet-proof vest that prevented him from achieving his goal. Most telling, in preparing to go public, Tweeden didn’t sit down with a lawyer. She sat down with representatives of the right-wing conservative KABC-AM radio station. They didn’t bother with even the most minimal fact-checking, and no one contacted Franken for a reaction before they posted her accusations. But, based on that post, Tweeden subsequently appeared for interviews with CNN’s Jake Tapper, and Fox’s Sean Hannity—with whom Tweeden was friends. Fox had sued Franken in 2003 because he had attacked the network, Bill O’Reilly, and Sean Hannity in his book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. The network dropped the suit, but according to The New Yorker, when Andrea Mackris later sued O’Reilly for sexual harassment, he told her that if one crossed the Fox News Channel, the then-head of the network, Roger Ailes would destroy you from behind the scenes: “The person gets what’s coming to them but never sees it coming. Look at Al Franken, one day he’s going to get a knock on his door and life as he’s known it will change forever. That day will happen, trust me.” According to extremist radio host Alex Jones, Trump’s right-wing operative, Roger Stone, told him before Tweeden went on Fox, “Get ready. Franken’s next.” Stone told Mayer that an executive at Fox had tipped him off. That a victim is of an opposing political persuasion from the accused is no reason to ignore sexual harassment. But the involvement of political operatives with little regard for truth and an agenda to destroy their political opponent should have raised red flags. After Tweeden, seven even more minor claims surfaced. Most were alleged to occur at crowded venues, posing for photographs. All but two were alleged to occur before Franken was elected to the Senate. One woman claimed that when her husband took a photo of her with Franken at the 2010 Minnesota State Fair, Franken grabbed her bottom while posing. One had asked Franken to pose with her at a 2009 inaugural party for President Obama and posted the photo on a website with the message, “Totally stoked…” She told Jane Mayer that though she’d been excited in the moment, she later felt upset because Franken had squeezed her waist. Apparently, the turning point for Franken’s Democratic colleagues was a Politico article noting a former Senate staffer’s statement that in 2006, when Franken was still a comedian, he had made her uneasy by looking as if he planned to kiss her. She said she had accompanied her boss to a taping of Franken’s Air America show. After the senator left, Franken allegedly came at her to kiss her, and she ducked. She claimed Franken said it was his right as an entertainer. Franken told Mayer that “was something I would never do or say.” He added, “Maybe it could have been a misunderstanding. If she seemed freaked out or something, I may have said, ‘Sorry, I was just trying to give you a hug, and that’s what we do in show business.’ Or something like that.” Mayer later asked the woman if she thought that Franken had been making a sexual advance or a clumsy thank-you gesture. She replied, “Is there a difference? If someone tries to do something to you unwanted?” My answer to that question: There is a big difference between a sexual advance and a clumsy thank-you gesture. That failure to see or acknowledge the difference speaks to the myopic rigidity of some in the Me Too movement. And perhaps to some Senate Democrats as well. The Democratic Caucus—Et Tu Brute? The various allegations about Franken, even if correct, would be de minimis, nowhere near the same category as the misdeeds of Andrew Cuomo—or those of Brett Kavanaugh, Donald Trump, Matt Gaetz, or numerous Republicans who have committed extremely serious acts of sexual harassment and actual assault without them or their party paying any price for it—yet, anyway. But New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, the Puritan, touts a “zero tolerance” policy for “sexual impropriety.” Let’s not deal in nuance. Let’s not even bother to investigate the facts. According to The New Yorker, within minutes after the Politico article was posted, Gillibrand’s Chief of Staff called Franken to inform him she was going to demand his resignation. Gillibrand then posted that demand on Facebook, writing, “Enough is enough. The women who have come forward are brave and I believe them.” Gillibrand later told The New Yorker, “We had eight credible allegations, and they had been corroborated…by the press corps.” However, some of press—in particular those publishing Tweeden’s claims—had made no attempt to assess credibility. Nor did Gillibrand feel the need to bother speaking to any of the accusers to assess their credibility herself. Her view: “…the women who came forward felt it was sexual harassment. So it was.” When women claim harassment, their allegations should be heard, taken seriously, and investigated, not dismissed. But in Gillibrand’s world, there is no objective truth or fact to be found. Denouncement alone is sufficient to send one’s career and reputation to the guillotine. Gillibrand would have made a terrific Robespierre if she’d lived during the French Revolution. On December 1, 2017, soon after Gillibrand demanded that Franken resign, she and six other Democratic female senators–Kamala Harris, Claire McCaskill, Maisie Hirono, Patty Murray, Maggie Hassan, and Catherine Cortez Masto—met with Chuck Schumer to say that they were about to demand Franken’s resignation. Despite the fact Franken had almost immediately asked for an investigation and hearing before the Senate Ethics Committee, and Chuck Schumer had initially endorsed that request, Schumer caved in to those demanding Franken’s ouster. Five days later, he gave Franken an ultimatum requiring him to announce his resignation by 5 pm. According to Schumer’s spokesperson, Schumer told Franken that if he didn’t resign, he could be censured and stripped of all committee assignments. The Republicans never say die. Regardless of what malfeasance they commit, they will fight for their own to the bitter end. The Democrats, on the other hand, frequently seem to give up before their interests are even truly attacked. One must wonder how, with that approach, they ever obtain power or manage to keep it for any length of time. In this instance, at least 34 members of the Senate’s Democratic Caucus—spineless wonders all—jumped on Gillibrand’s wagon, demanding Franken’s resignation without permitting him any forum in which to defend himself. After Franken was no longer in the Senate, numerous former colleagues expressed regrets. Patrick Leahy told The New Yorker that calling for the resignation without having all the facts was one of his biggest mistakes as a senator. Tom Udall said he had second thoughts shortly after Franken stepped down, and that he “really believes in due process.” However, if Udall “really” believed in due process, he would have spoken up to afford it to Al Franken, not give his belief lip service once Franken was gone from the Senate. Heitkamp acknowledged that her decision was “made in the heat of the moment without concern for exactly what this was.” Duckworth said “That due process didn’t happen isn’t good for our democracy.” Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley admitted, “I took the judgement of my peers rather than independently examining the circumstances. In my heart, I’ve not felt right about it.” How kind of them to express their regrets after their damage has been done. How very disappointing to find that these particular senators are not the thoughtful and reasoned individuals I had considered them, but elected leaders who, at best, lack the courage of their convictions and, at worst, even before push came to shove, reacted like startled, unthinking sheep. Franken in the Senate—Will He Run Again? For three of the crucial Trump years, we were deprived of one of our most effective senators. Franken was one of the strongest supporters of a single-payer system for healthcare. Among his many accomplishments, he wrote an amendment to the Affordable Care Act that required insurance companies to spend at least 80 percent of premiums on healthcare costs. He opposed privatizing Social Security or cutting benefits, advocated cutting subsidies to oil companies, and supported cutting interest rates on student loans. Franken, along with Senators Hank Johnson and Patrick Leahy, introduced legislation to ban mandatory arbitration of sexual harassment claims. But ironically, worried that this legislation might be endangered by the harassment accusations against him, Franken gave it to Gillibrand to sponsor. She gave him no credit or acknowledgement. On committees, Franken asked intelligent, incisive questions. And of course, he is well known for his very pointed questioning of Trump’s Attorney General Jeff Sessions concerning the truthfulness of his testimony before the Senate. Since being unceremoniously ousted from the Senate by his Democratic colleagues, Franken has continued his devotion to the progressive principles that drew him into politics, trying to further them from the sidelines. He uses interviews on his podcast to educate his listeners on a variety of public issues. He has been using the Midwest Values PAC he founded in 2005 to help elect Democrats in local and down-ballot races. Prior to his nine years in the Senate, Franken had been a prominent author, actor, comedian, and host of a political radio show on Air America. Since leaving the Senate, he has edged back towards being a cultural personality. In 2020, in addition to his podcast, Franken began appearing on cable news, on the radio, and writing op-eds. He told The Daily Beast, “I want to have my voice heard so I can keep fighting for the things that I care about and the people I care about.” I hope that Franken’s 15-city tour this fall is a step towards his running again for office. If his voice can again be heard in the Senate, our country will be the better for it. Political columnist Jessie Seigel had a long career as a government attorney in which she honed her analytic skills. She has also twice received an Artist’s Fellowship from the Washington, D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities for her fiction, and has been a finalist for a number of literary awards. In addition, Seigel is an associate editor at the Potomac Review, a reviewer for The Washington Independent Review of Books, and a dabbler in political cartoons at Daily Kos. Of this balance in her work between the analytic and the imaginative, Seigel jokes, “I guess my right and left brains are well-balanced.” More on and from Seigel can be found at The Adventurous Writer, https://www.jessieseigel.com.

By Naomi Serviss Last week, Lew and I boarded an Indiana-bound Delta flight. Sanitized wipes in impossible-to-open packets were handed out to each passenger. I squelched my inner guffaw. It was wishful thinking that wiping down our tray tables and arm rests would save us from the virus. I wiped everything down, anyway. It couldn’t hurt. I even flew on Delta Air Lines and didn’t think that was a bad omen. I still mask sensibly and carry a spare. Because, why not? It couldn’t hurt! Pronounced: “It couldn’t hoit.” Rim shot! That perfect riposte, a punchline for many a Borscht Belt comic, has long been woven into the Serviss nomenclature. It’s a great tagline, suitable for any occasion. Here’s something I’ve learned recently: Don’t argue with people who dismiss mask-wearing. Even if one is my walking partner and the other is my sister. Kurt Vonnegut’s omniscient brilliance illuminated my sepia life when I was 15. His words echoed bits of my world in tone, subject and biting sarcastic wit. Vonnegut’s artful prose sparked wild curiosity and unhinged imagination. Player Piano, his earliest novel, was published 69 years ago. In it, Vonnegut savagely constructs a dehumanized world. The computers won after all! It holds up well today. Next year will be its 70th publication anniversary! It will be celebrated In Indianapolis, his hometown, and throughout the literary world. In Player Piano, computers have overpowered humanity. Not a surprise, considering. Picture Orwell’s Animal Farm time warping with Alice in Wonderland. I still have my original 95-cent copy, yellowed around the edges. The cover is taped to the paperback. This ancient novel survived more than a dozen moves crisscrossing the country. Cat’s Cradle, Slaughterhouse-Five and Sirens of Titan devastated and enlightened. Vonnegut wrote more than 120 stories, dozens of essays and penned ink drawings for fun and profit. He survived WWII as a 22-year-old POW during the horrifying firebombing of Dresden. Slaughterhouse-Five still ranks among the top antiwar books. In the late ‘60s, viewers watched the Vietnam War news on television during dinner time. We rode buses to Washington to protest. Slaughterhouse-Five was, in 1969 parlance, “heavy.” It was being read on college campuses and shared the pre-social media way, with an actual book! And banned! Vonnegut was a free-speech champion and tirelessly used language to debunk censors and hypocrites. He’s an icon to aficionados. And very quotable. My kids know how much I value Vonnegut’s art and social commentary. Last Friday, my son Ben steered the family to the quirkily astonishing Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Museum, in Indianapolis! Who knew? Vonnegut was born into wealth in a land of cornfields and dreams. His family helped put the city on the map. The museum operated a lending library of worldwide censored books. Then the pandemic happened. The lending stopped. Now the operators are eager for visitors. Virus-wise, I’m feeling a little looser these days. Delta and other mutations have me concerned, but not worried. Coming back to LaGuardia Airport after our flight last week was just as torturous as pre-pandemic. Over-crowded, claustrophobic and anxiety-triggering. Construction equipment and confusing signage everywhere. The usual. A surprisingly high percentage of travelers were masked. That was comforting. But the screaming toddlers and strollered babies were a familiar downer. Decades ago, Lew and I flew to California with two-year-old Emily and months-old Benjamin. We had wisely reserved the bulkhead, where kids could play games on the floor and fill coloring books. Flying was a positive experience then. That six-hour trip ended as begun: peacefully. I credit the dozen toddler and baby books brought to ensure a pleasantly tolerable excursion. Spalding Gray, another favorite writer, reflected on life’s unpredictable perfect moments. Indescribable, but you know it when you’re having one. Our family shared a perfect four days in the Midwest, meeting new relatives, blowing bubbles and watching rainbow confetti waft through a summer’s breeze. So it goes. https://www.vonnegutlibrary.org/ Naomi Serviss is a New York-based award-winning journalist whose work has been published in The New York Times, Newsday, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Highroads (AAA magazine), in-flight publications, spa and travel magazines and websites, including BroadwayWorld.com

By Andy Borowitz August 11, 2021 WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In a new health advisory, the nation’s leading epidemiologist, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said that it is “perfectly safe” for Americans to watch YouTube, following news that Senator Rand Paul had been suspended from the platform. “In the past, I’ve warned about the health consequences of listening to Rand Paul,” he said. “People experience headaches and nausea. Sometimes, they feel like their brain cells are actually leaking straight out of their heads. That’s why I’ve consistently urged people to limit their exposure to this guy.” Fauci said that, given Paul’s suspension from the site, previous health advisories regarding YouTube “no longer apply.” “I think that this would be an excellent time for every American to enjoy YouTube,” he said. “Watch some funny cat videos, or maybe some kooky skateboard stunts that went awry. Rand Paul’s suspended for only seven days, so watch as much YouTube as you can while it’s still safe.” Andy Borowitz is a Times best-selling author and a comedian who has written for The New Yorker since 1998. He writes The Borowitz Report, a satirical column on the news.

FRED PLOTKIN is one of America’s foremost experts on opera and has distinguished himself in many fields as a writer, speaker, consultant and as a compelling teacher. He is an expert on everything Italian, the person other so-called Italy experts turn to for definitive information.  Fred discovered the concept of "The Renaissance Man" as a small child and has devoted himself to pursuing that ideal as the central role of his life. In a “Public Lives” profile in The New York Times on August 30, 2002, Plotkin was described as "one of those New York word-of-mouth legends, known by the cognoscenti for his renaissance mastery of two seemingly separate disciplines: music and the food of Italy." In the same publication, on May 11, 2006, it was written that "Fred is a New Yorker, but has the soul of an Italian."

One film journalist’s stream-of-consciousness cinematic journey through the pandemic, Part 46 By Laurence Lerman This does not look good. With the rise of the Delta variant, which has emerged with frightening precipitance after the supposed taming of the Covid-19 virus, the nation’s first tentative steps forward toward a life of post-pandemic normalcy have been curtailed with nearly the same degree of suddenness. Theaters and concert halls are once again looking unappealing, indoor restaurant dining is being shunned, health officials are advising new mask mandates for both indoors and out, a possible second round of vaccinations is on the horizon (or, remarkably, a first round for some!) and another shutdown is being considered. Covid-19 is playing like some kind of Möbius strip. It’s looping around, paralleling a time and events that have already occurred and reflecting it all right back at us. And a Möbius strip, at least as proposed by German mathematicians Johann Benedict Listing and August Ferdinand Möbius, is infinite, spiraling around itself so that it ends at the exact point where it first began, before starting again. Swell. Covid and its effects are going Möbius on us, a weary and worried population that’s looking for renewed relief and hope as the summer enters its final month. And that served as a signal to me to start streaming a couple of movies that ape Covid’s cyclical existence, ones that begin on unsettling footing and end on the same shaky ground where they began. So bring on David Lynch, whose deliciously surreal neo-noir mysteries Lost Highway (1997) and Mulholland Dr. (2001) embrace a Möbius strip style of storytelling, where the ending takes us right back to the beginning. Oh, there may be new information, changes of perspective and unpredictable detours provided along the way—like our own perceptions of the Covid virus and how we’ve been handling its effects over the past 18 months—but right now, it feels like we’re headed right back to where we started from. The first half of Lost Highway lays out the relatively straight-forward story of a jazz musician (Bill Pullman) who appears to violently kill his subdued and possibly unfaithful wife (a dark-haired Patricia Arquette), a crime for which he is immediately jailed. While incarcerated, the musician transforms into somebody else: a young mechanic (Balthazar Getty) who gets lustily involved with the murdered woman’s doppelgänger (Arquette again, as a blonde), the girlfriend of a nasty gangster (Robert Loggia) who is himself connected to a bizarre associate known as the Mystery Man, played by a creepy-as-all-get-out Robert Blake. It’s Blake’s Mystery Man, dressed in black with kabuki-white makeup and toting an ever-present video camera, who provides the bridge between the two stories. Prompting some voyeuristically engaging nastiness, violence and pornography among the players, the Mystery Man’s mysterious presence returns Pullman’s character to his apartment’s front door and a final snatch of dialogue that’s identical to the film’s opening line, thus beginning the story once again. Though he’s famously tight-lipped when it comes to talking about his work, Lynch once cryptically remarked that “the beauty of an abstract film is that it’s open to interpretation” when asked to describe Lost Highway. But it’s worth noting the film’s screenwriter, Barry Gifford, described its structure as “a Möbius strip…the story folds back underneath itself and continues.” That said, Lynch has offered that Lost Highway is a kind of “psychogenic fugue” that unspools “just on the border of consciousness—or on the other side of that border.” The same might also be said of Lynch’s Mulholland Dr., his greatest accomplishment since 1986’s Blue Velvet and, at this point, one of the best and most original films of the 21st Century. Not unlike 1950’s Sunset Blvd., another dark classic named after one of Hollywood’s vehicular arteries, Mulholland Dr. baroquely speaks of the seamy underside that subsists beneath the movie-making capital’s glittery and alluring façade. Mulholland Dr. offers us three Hollywood archetypes: Betty (Naomi Watts in a star-making performance), a fresh-faced young woman who comes to town wanting to become an actress; Adam (Justin Theroux), an up-and-coming director whose latest movie is being taken over by its shark-suited producers; and Rita (Laura Haring), an exotic, dark-haired beauty suffering from that most Hollywood of maladies, amnesia. It’s Rita (a name she’s given herself after spotting a poster of 1946’s Gilda starring Rita Hayworth) who splits the film’s narrative into two when she brings her new lover Betty to the spooky, blue-lit Club Silencio late one night—after they’ve consummated their relationship. And there, as singer Rebecca Del Rio croons a Spanish version of “Crying” on stage, the two begin to transmogrify into each other in a sequence that’s as striking as it is bewildering. From that point on, the narrative—which has been playing out like a Hollywood fairy tale about the new kid in town achieving her dream—loops around and begins again, an altered version repeating itself, but this time as a horrifying nightmare, with Betty scraping by as an embittered, failed actress. The characters are shifted around a bit and the settings are subtly altered, but it’s the same story with an infinitely darker tone. And as an age-old Hollywood tale, it’s fated to repeat itself over and over. Four years elapsed between Lost Highway and Mulholland Dr., with Lynch directing 1999’s The Straight Story in the interim. Another kind of road movie, this one based on a true story about an elderly WWII veteran driving his tractor across from Iowa to Wisconsin to visit his dying estranged brother, The Straight Story was released by Walt Disney Pictures and remains Lynch’s only G-rated film. That it’s rated G elevates it to another level of weird, but The Straight Story, as its title implies, resists any kind of a Möbius-like interpretation. Filled with expansive shots of the great American Midwest and a solitary figure chug-chugging his John Deere along barren stretches of highway, it’s a handsome and chronologically sound if low-key panoramic adventure best served up on the big screen. But, once again, as the Delta variant continues its rise, the odds of catching The Straight Story or anything else in the Lynch filmography at a repertory theater are taking a nosedive. This does not look good. Laurence Lerman is a film journalist, former editor of Video Business--Variety's DVD trade publication--and husband to The Insider's own Gwen Cooper. Over the course of his career he has conducted one-on-one interviews with just about every major director working today, including Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Clint Eastwood, Kathryn Bigelow, Ridley Scott, Walter Hill, Spike Lee, and Werner Herzog, among numerous others. Once James Cameron specifically requested an interview with Laurence by name, which his wife still likes to brag about. Most recently, he is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the online review site DiscDish.com.