By Jessie Seigel / Washington, D.C. Ken Starr Through the Years It is customary to forego speaking ill of the dead. So when Ken Starr, best known for his role in former President Bill Clinton’s impeachment—and most recently for his defense of former President Donald Trump at his first impeachment trial—died last Tuesday (Sept. 13) at 76, he got a sugar-coated sendoff. The New York Times’ usually hard-hitting coverage was nowhere in sight. The paper instead spotlighted an email Mrs. Starr sent to colleagues and friends last week, describing her husband as a “brilliant, kind and loving” man who “did not have a mean bone in his body,” and who “felt compelled to always respond to the call to serve his country, even when it meant enduring harsh criticism for his service.” Elizabeth M. Locke, a lawyer and protégée, gushed that Starr was “one of the most ethical lawyers I have ever met.” Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who worked for Starr in the Reagan Administration and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who worked for Starr during the latter’s investigation of President Clinton, both sang their former boss’ praises. Even Monica Lewinsky, who was persecuted by Starr and his prosecutorial investigators during the Clinton investigation to the point where she was later diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, graciously, if circumspectly, tweeted only that thoughts of Mr. Starr “bring up complicated feelings,” but that it was a “painful loss for those who love him.” I, however, do not feel bound by this custom. As Shakespeare’s Marc Antony opined in Julius Caesar, “The evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones.” Sadly, Ken Starr’s evil will not be interred with his bones but lives on and proliferates in the hypocrisy of the current Republican Party. Starr’s major claim to fame (or infamy, depending on one’s point of view) was his investigation of Bill Clinton’s possible connection, when Clinton was the governor of Arkansas, to fraud at a savings and loan association operated by James McDougal. Though Hillary Clinton had done some legal work for the savings and loan association, the Clintons’ only real connection was that they joined in a partnership with James and his wife, Susan McDougal, to form the Whitewater Development Corporation. That partnership bought 220 acres of riverfront land to sell as vacation lots. But the partnership did badly and dissolved in 1992, leaving the Clintons with a net loss of more than $40,000. After Starr was named as the Whitewater Independent Counsel, he ultimately found that the evidence based on the original Whitewater inquiry was insufficient to support an impeachment referral against President Clinton. Yet, with the zeal of a Joseph McCarthy, he expanded that investigation to include a potpourri of other spurious claims, ranging from the inappropriate firing of White House travel office staff and the collection of confidential FBI files on Republican administration officials, to the outlandishly contrived rumor that the Clintons were involved in Deputy White House Counsel Vince W. Foster Jr.’s suicide. Starr eventually cleared Clinton of all these allegations. But he obsessively continued his investigation, focusing on private matters. Starr finally made an impeachment referral based on Bill Clinton’s lie under oath that he had not had a sexual relationship with the then 21-year-old Lewinsky, who had been working as an intern at the White House and later in the Office of Legislative Affairs. Starr’s voyeuristic report making the referral to the House detailed Clinton’s encounters with Lewinsky. It contained what the New York Times described as “explicit, even excruciating detail.” Ironically, that section of the report was written by now-Justice Kavanaugh, who, at his own Supreme Court confirmation hearing in 2018, was the subject of far more serious allegations. Starr, who supposedly “did not have a mean bone in his body,” not only forced Lewinsky to reveal every lurid detail of her intimacies with the President during hours of interrogation and threats of prison if she did not cooperate, but did nothing to prevent Congress from releasing the report to the public unredacted. Let’s humiliate the little lady further. To add insult to injury, in his memoir, Contempt, a Memoir of the Clinton Investigation, Starr blamed Lewinsky for her plight, writing that she “allowed herself to become the tragic figure of late twentieth-century America.” Based on Starr’s sensationalized report, the House of Representatives impeached President Clinton in December 1998. The Senate acquitted Clinton in February 1999, concluding that his wrongdoing did not justify removing him from office. Ultimately, the chastened President was found in contempt of court and fined. He admitted not telling the truth under oath and surrendered his law license. Starr’s bottom line was that Clinton believed he was above the law and was just lucky: “An indulgent and prosperous nation readily forgave Bill Clinton and instead blamed the prosecutor. That would be me,” he later complained. This statement by Starr was the ultimate in rationalization combined with self-pity for any bad press the relentless independent counsel got. Bill Clinton’s behavior was unseemly and extremely immature. And it was clearly wrong and illegal to lie under oath about it. However, he was lying about a purely personal matter which had nothing to do with Whitewater and was of no other consequence to the nation. So, one must wonder why Starr was expanding that investigation in the first place. Ken Starr often told reporters and pundits that he was compelled to take the Whitewater appointment because of principle, and that: "Truth is a bedrock concept in morality and law." But as Starr’s later career revealed, he only cared about truth and law when it was convenient. His guiding star was realpolitik. In 2010, Starr became the president of Baylor University and oversaw the opening of its $250 million football stadium. Starr was removed as president in 2016 when, as described by Rolling Stone, an investigation determined that he and other administrators “mishandled numerous accusations of sexual assault—including multiple rape allegations—against the school’s football players.” Investigators said the university leadership had “created a perception that football was above the rules.” I guess a $250 million football stadium would be a waste if your players might get expelled or go to jail. Rolling Stone also reported that Starr played an important part in pressuring the Justice Department to drop its sex-trafficking case against financier Jeffrey Epstein when Epstein was accused of sex crimes against young girls in Florida. The 2008 deal Starr procured put Epstein in prison for only 18 months and effectively ensured him immunity from future prosecution. And last, but definitely not least, in January 2020, Starr joined the defense of President Trump in his first impeachment trial in the Senate. According to Fox News, Starr claimed at the time that he was “pushed to take the job because of the politicization of the impeachment process by congressional Democrats.” During that trial, Starr condemned what he called ‘the Age of Impeachment’ as a weapon in partisan wars—this from the man who had, 21 years before, wielded his impeachment inquiry against Clinton with the fervor of the Spanish Grand Inquisitor Torquemada. Ken Starr’s moral and legal righteousness depended upon who was his target. He felt no compunctions about pursuing the impeachment of Bill Clinton for lying about a private, consensual peccadillo. And yet, Starr was against impeachment of Donald Trump, who attempted to extort the leader of a foreign nation (Ukraine’s President Zelensky) into framing a political opponent (Joe Biden) in order to win an election—a lie that has affected every American citizen. Clearly, Starr’s prosecutorial chutzpah knew no bounds. His gall was only exceeded by his callous hypocrisy. If Dante’s Inferno exists, Ken Starr better beware. Dante’s eighth circle of hell is reserved for hypocrites. 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 Andy Borowitz September 13, 2022 HELL (The Borowitz Report)—In a rare public statement, the late Benedict Arnold said that he would never have been remembered as the worst traitor in American history if he had had the benefit of a special master. The disgraced military officer called his switching sides in the Revolutionary War “the kind of evidence that any special master worth his salt would have ruled out.” “I think a special master would have taken a look at that and said, ‘Hold on, here—switching sides is a personal decision, so that’s privileged,’ ” he said. “That would have been a game changer for me.” “I would have gone from ‘Benedict Arnold, notorious traitor,’ to ‘Benedict Arnold, victim of government witch hunt,’ ” he said. Arnold added that, over the past few centuries in Hell, he has had ample time to ruminate about another event that occurred before he switched sides: his 1779 court-martial. “That would have played out differently if I had gotten to appoint the judge,” he said. 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 Bonnie Fishman / San Francisco Bay Area I’m telling you, there was never a truer saying than the one above. Billions of people worldwide have been experiencing heat wave upon heat wave. It’s especially bad for folks already living in hot climates. Can it get any hotter? You betcha! I personally did not take this latest California heat wave lightly. It hit me really hard, day after day. But it’s dry heat, and people say that’s not as hot. Sorry buddy, 110° is 110°. Yes, a lower humidity is the one little blessing for us here in an arid climate. I’m going to come right out and say it: I am a first-world weenie when it comes to intense heat. There, get that out of the way. I would almost rather be too cold because you can always put on more layers. With heat, there’s only so much you can take off. Bare naked doesn’t even work. I feel like I lost a week of living. I laid around for days, total inertia, no cooking, no eating, no doing. I felt like a potato latke on a grill. I don’t know how outdoor workers manage to do their jobs in this kind of heat. God bless them. Folks who have access to lakes, rivers, oceans or swimming pools are fortunate to have outdoor recreation. Two things have made my hot week worse than I could have expected. First, the aquatic center where I swim every day has been closed for repairs. In the middle of a hot spell? Who could have predicted. Second, our off-the-grid solar power system has been engaged in a struggle with our air conditioner. What does that mean? The a/c won’t kick on without the generator and when it does, it shorts out the whole system. No electricity at all. Not being hooked up to city electric services is not for the faint of heart. I’m thrilled that we use solar power for everything, but clearly there are glitches. When we do get the air working, it’s still quite warm in our house. I’ve been outside twice all week, first to go to Costco. From the looks of things, many folks don’t have air conditioning because there were crowds of people languishing in the warehouse for an inordinate amount of time. My other excursion was to sit in a hot barn at my niece’s ranch meditating with Thai monks (don’t ask, a story for another column!). I was so focused on my discomfort that the meditation felt like a marathon instead of a sprint. While I was at the ranch, the normal lively chicken coop was unusually quiet. My niece’s chickens roasted from the heat, literally. None of them made it. I don’t think chickens adapt well to extreme heat. Dogs pant. Many animals are nocturnal in hot climates, such as desert rodents, foxes and mountain lions. They move about when it’s cooler during the night. Some are active at dawn and dusk, but lay in the shade during the hottest hours. Others, such as snakes and crocodiles, bask in the heat of the day. Humans, not so much. We try to go and do despite the heat. We sweat from our pores. We cover our heads. In many cultures, they cover their whole bodies with loose fitting clothes to keep the sun rays from baking their skin. Humans have adapted anthropologically over millennia. Joel Allen, an American zoologist and Carl Bergmann, a German biologist, have concluded that larger, stouter peoples live in cold climates and smaller, lankier peoples live in hot climates. This is because the first group can retain body heat more easily and the second group has more surface area to sweat and cool off. An oversimplified explanation, but it gets the point across. It’s commonly known that really spicy foods are eaten in very hot climates: India, Southeast Asia, Africa, and other countries along the equator. Hot foods make you sweat, which causes a person to cool off faster. It seems counter-intuitive to eat hot food when you’re already hot; I want to reach for ice cream, but it’s not an effective way to cool down. In the spirit of spicy food, this week I’m offering Spicy Chinese Noodle Salad with Wilted Cabbage. The good news is that there is very little cooking so your kitchen will not heat up. Also, the dish keeps for several days. You can add protein to the noodles if you want the dish to be more substantial. I recommend cooked chicken, tofu or sautéed shrimp. Tell us here at The Insider how you like it hot! Spicy Chinese Noodle Salad with Wilted Cabbage Yield: 8-10 servings 1 8-10 oz. package Chinese lo mein noodles 1/4 c. vegetable oil 8 c. finely shredded cabbage 6 oz. fresh mini corn on the cob (or 1 can, drained) 1 lg. carrot, peeled, diagonally cut into thin julienne 1 jalapeño, seeded, finely diced 2 Tbsp. finely chopped ginger 1-1 1/2 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes (1 tsp. is mildly spicy, more is spicy spicy!) 1/4 c. fresh lime juice 1/4 c. sugar 3 Tbsp. soy sauce 2 Tbsp. rice wine vinegar 2 tsp. toasted sesame seed oil 1/2 c. chopped fresh cilantro 1/4 c. chopped fresh Italian parsley 2 Tbsp. sesame seeds In a 4-quart pot, bring salted water to a boil. Cook the noodles for 5 minutes. Drain in a colander. Rinse with cold water.  Drain very well. Place in a large bowl. In a large skillet, heat the oil over moderately high heat.  Add the cabbage, corn, carrot, jalapeño, ginger and red pepper flakes.  Sauté until the cabbage is just wilted.  Add the lime juice, sugar, soy sauce, vinegar, and sesame oil.  Turn down to medium heat. Cook for 5 minutes more.  Combine with the noodles. Cool to room temperature.  Blend in the fresh herbs and sesame seeds.  Season with salt and fresh ground black pepper, if needed.  Serve at room temperature. Bonnie Fishman attended the Cordon Bleu Cookery School in London. Later, she owned and operated Bonnie’s Patisserie in Southfield, Mich. and Bonnie’s Kitchen and Catering in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. She has taught cooking for over 35 years and created hundreds of recipes. She is now living in Northern California.

By Emmy Serviss / Boston The last time I owned a car, it was 2010. I was living in Portland, Ore. at the time and had just traded in my 1995 Saturn for a new (ish) 2009 Toyota Corolla. My brother had named my Saturn "Wheelio Estevez," and that car served me well for four years in Los Angeles, and another two years in Portland. But eventually the wear and tear became too expensive to maintain, and I had to bid Wheely a fond farewell. There was no way to know that my ex would total my new car, less than six months later. I wasn't with my ex when the accident occurred, so I'll never know what REALLY happened. My best guess is that he was on the highway speeding, (because he told me that he drove faster when I wasn’t in the car with him) and he either hit a puddle and skidded or couldn't stop in time to avoid traffic. Ultimately, he was the middle car in a three-car pileup. My ex and I were already in the process of splitting up, so this did not help at all. Our amicable split turned sour as my ex cost me thousands of dollars with regards to paying the difference left on the loan and a rental car for the last month I was in Oregon. (Pro-tip: always add Gap Insurance to your policy.) As bummed as I was that I didn't have a car anymore, I was moving to Boston, where the public transportation was pretty good compared to the other cities where I had lived. I wouldn't be able to go on long drives down the winding canyons to clear my head, like I did in Los Angeles. And I wouldn't be able to take a spontaneous day trip to Cannon Beach or a visit to the Goonies house in Astoria, like I did in Portland. But, saving money on gas, insurance, parking, and car repairs...that was a good consolation prize, right? So I gave back the rental car and moved to Boston. I lived here for 10 years without a car, and it was mostly easy. Sometimes it was a headache, since the last two apartments I've lived in haven't had laundry in the building. And some days it was frustrating to try and commute from Somerville to Roslindale in a timely manner. But overall, I was able to make do. And then 2020 and the Pandemic happened. At first it didn't matter, because no one was going anywhere anyway. The only commuting I was doing was back and forth from my apartment to my ex's apartment every couple of weeks. (a different ex –the Portland ex I haven't spoken to in at least five years and that's how I prefer to keep it) But spending $40 on an Uber a couple times every few weeks wasn't a huge problem. The problem arose, however, in 2021 when Covid started becoming less of a concern and mask mandates loosened up. People started using the T and buses again, but every time I thought I was ready to start using public transportation, a new variant emerged. I was working from home, so the amount of commuting was still minimal. But the Ubers got more and more expensive, and as our performances at The Rozzie Square Theater started ramping back up again, the number of trips from Somerville to Roslindale increased. I was SO happy to be performing with ComedySportz and SUZZY again, but quickly discovered that travel to and from the theater were now much trickier than in the Before Times. I got rides from friends whenever possible, but before long, the $40 spent every few weeks was turning into $40 for a one-way trip. I finally sat down and totaled up the amount that I was spending on Ubers to and from the theater each month. It was...a lot. I was spending so much money on Ubers that it made me start to wonder if it made more sense financially to just get a car again. I hemmed and hawed for a few months and started "looking" at cars online. 
Finally, at the end of May 2022, I bought a car. 
My brother named her "Alloy McWheel." Originally, I was looking to buy another Corolla, but when the car I was looking at was no longer available, I was shown a 2010 Lexus Hybrid. I never thought I was fancy enough to own a Lexus, but since the car was over 10 years old, I was pleasantly surprised to find it within my price range. Part of me wasn’t sure if I should buy a car so quickly. After all, wasn’t it prudent to shop around a little before committing to a big purchase? But at the same time, hybrid cars were exceptionally hard to come by. This car was actually so new to the lot that they didn’t even have the registration yet. I had a thought in the back of my head, that if I left the lot without the car, someone else would scoop it up immediately. I trusted my gut, and I bought the car. I knew that owning a car again would be an adjustment, after not having one for over a decade. For example, I learned the hard way that I need to actually pay attention to street cleaning signs now. But instead of spending $50 on Ubers two to three times a week to get to Roslindale, I am now spending about $50 a month on gas. Even though gas prices are high right now, so far it seems I only have to fill up my gas tank once a month! Hybrids really are a good investment! The rest of the money that I'm saving on Ubers, goes toward my car payments. Having a car again makes getting to and from the theater easier, which I expected.
 But having a car again has also greatly improved my mental health, which I did NOT expect. I didn't realize how much I missed being able to jump in my car at a moment's notice, and not have to rely on someone else being on time. I didn't realize how much I missed the freedom of being able to take a spontaneous day trip. And I didn't realize how much I missed singing in my car. I've never been much of a shower singer, and since I've always had roommates in Boston, I didn't like to sing around the apartment, for fear of being annoying. It wasn't until I started driving again and belting out to my favorite show tunes in the car, that I realized how much I missed it. Within one month of having a car again, I felt lighter – dare I say happier? I fully acknowledge that when winter rolls around and I have to deal with snow tires and frozen windshield wipers and fighting with Bostonians over space savers, I may be singing a different tune. But I'll be singing that tune from inside my car. Which has seat warmers. ♫ I've been searchin' my soul tonight, I know there's so much more to life, Now I know I can shine a light, To find my way back home ♫ Emmy Serviss is a Boston-based writer, actor and video editor. Once it is safe to return to live theater, you can find her performing with ComedySportz Boston and the sketch group SUZZY. When not on the stage, Emmy enjoys indulging in her new pandemic hobbies, laughing way too loudly and counting the days until Halloween.

By Andy Borowitz September 15, 2022 WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—The Federal Bureau of Investigation has seized the cell phone of Mike Lindell, better known as the MyPillow guy, in the belief that he may have “committed crimes beyond selling shitty pillows,” an F.B.I. spokesman has confirmed. Although the F.B.I. took custody of Lindell’s phone, they did not seize any of his pillows. “Nobody wanted those,” the spokesman said. Shortly after the seizure, Republicans claimed that the Attorney General, Merrick Garland, was acting out of a personal vendetta because he had purchased a MyPillow and had been upset by how shitty it was. “I did not purchase a MyPillow,” Garland clarified in a prepared statement. “However, I have heard that they suck.” Lindell received vehement support from another Republican luminary, Don Bolduc, the G.O.P. nominee for U.S. Senate in New Hampshire. “This is a rigged witch hunt,” Bolduc said. “The MyPillow guy has never sold a pillow.” 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.

September 13, 2022 Jeffrey D. Sachs | Project Syndicate Too often, rich countries deny their historical responsibilities, whether it be for colonialism, slavery, or today's mounting climate damage. But the developing world will not forget the leading role that industrialized economies have played in permanently altering the climate and making catastrophic events more likely. NEW YORK – Around the world, 2022 has been a year of climate catastrophes, including droughts, floods, mega-fires, typhoons, and more. Among the hardest-hit countries is Pakistan. With torrential monsoon rainfall almost 190% above its 30-year average, extraordinary flooding has submerged one-third of the country and killed 1,400 people so far. But make no mistake: this is not only a “natural disaster”; rather, it is also the result of malfeasance for which high-income countries must bear major financial responsibility. Pakistan’s floods can be clearly linked to human-induced climate change. Because warmer air holds more moisture, higher temperatures generally mean heavier monsoons. While monsoons have a natural year-to-year variation (being strong in some years and weak in others), the probability distribution is shifting toward heavier rainfall. The melting of Himalayan glaciers due to rising temperatures may also be contributing to increased flooding, and the same is likely true of land-use changes, including deforestation and poorly designed infrastructure. The costs of the Pakistan floods will be enormous. Early estimates put the damage at more than $30 billion, and the coming months will bring increased hunger, disease, poverty, and massive rebuilding costs, now that more than one million homes have been damaged or destroyed. Scientists will likely come up with careful estimates of attribution for Pakistan’s floods in the months ahead (examples of previous attribution studies can be found at worldweatherattribution.org). Suppose, hypothetically, that half of Pakistan’s losses are ultimately attributed to long-term climate change, and the other half to random year-to-year variation and local land-use practices. That would mean that around $15 billion of the estimated losses resulted from climate change. The question then would turn to allocating responsibility for these climate-attributable costs. Under current global arrangements, the financial responsibility falls almost totally on Pakistan. To be sure, the United States has pledged around $50 million in relief, Canada has committed $5 million, and other countries are likely to join in. But even if total relief to Pakistan reached $150 million, that would cover 1% of the attributable losses in this scenario. Now, consider an alternative way of assigning responsibility, based on countries’ respective contributions to climate change. This is how liability in the US and other countries generally works. If your neighbor damages your property through reckless behavior, you can sue for damages (compensation); and if a nearby factory pollutes an entire community, that community can sue as a group (through a class-action lawsuit, in the case of the US). The world’s rich countries are like that polluting factory. They have deprived Pakistan of the long-term climatic conditions on which it has built its economy, homes, farms, and infrastructure. If there was a global climate court, Pakistan’s government would have a strong case against the US and other high-income countries for failing to limit climate-changing greenhouse-gas emissions (GHGs). But since there is no global climate court (yet), governments should act like one and allocate the attributable climate losses and damages to those countries that are historically responsible for them. Pakistan (and its neighbors in the Himalayas) would of course have the core responsibility for sustainable management of the land, including reforestation and climate-safe infrastructure. The biggest single source of human-induced climate change is the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide emissions resulting from the combustion of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas). Because some CO2 molecules emitted into the atmosphere remain there for centuries, focusing on cumulative emissions over long periods of time is crucial. Between 1850 and 2020, the burning of fossil fuels resulted in cumulative emissions of 1.69 trillion tons of CO2. Of that total, the US accounts for roughly 24.6% – 417 billion tons – which is much greater than its share of the 2021 world population: roughly 4.2%. Similarly, high-income countries combined (including the US, Europe, Japan, and a few others) account for around 58.7% of cumulative CO2 emissions, but only 15% of today’s world population. By contrast, Pakistan contributed roughly 5.2 billion tons of CO2 between 1850 and 2020 – roughly what the US emits each year. Its share of historical responsibility is therefore around 0.3% – far below its share of the global population (2.9%) and its burden of climate-related damage. While the US and other high-income countries are “net exporters of climate damages,” Pakistan and most other low-income and lower-middle-income countries are unwilling net importers. True, there is some debate over what dates to use when assessing historical responsibilities. According to one view, cumulative emissions should be counted from around 1850, because that is when worldwide fossil-fuel use surged with early US and European industrialization. But another camp would start the clock much later, such as in 1992, when the world’s governments adopted the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and committed to stabilizing atmospheric GHG concentrations “at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic (human induced) interference with the climate system.” But this debate hardly affects the apportionment of responsibility. Even if we measure cumulative emissions just from the 1992-2020 period, the US share is 19.6%, the high-income group’s share is 46.9%, and Pakistan’s share is 0.4%. Either way, rich countries should bear their fair share of the attributable costs of climate adaptation, emergency response, and recovery in countries that played little to no role in causing today’s calamities. As climate damages increase, so, too, does the need for large-scale, costly investments (including massive reforestation, flood control infrastructure, freshwater storage, and others) to protect societies against floods, droughts, wildfires, high-intensity typhoons, and other climate-related disasters. Climate-related tragedies such as Pakistan’s flooding are occurring with increasing frequency and intensity worldwide, in rich and poor countries alike. The current disasters are just a preview of what awaits us in the coming years and decades. Too often, rich and powerful countries deny their historical responsibilities – whether for colonialism, slavery, or climate damage. All countries are responsible for decarbonizing their energy systems and managing their land and ecosystems responsibly and sustainably. Yet the developing world will not forget the leading role that rich countries have played in creating today’s worldwide climate disasters. As climate-related losses rapidly mount, global demands for climate justice will only grow. https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/pakistan-flooding-climate-justice-rich-countries-should-bear-cost-by-jeffrey-d-sachs-2022-09 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 Laurence Lerman / New York City Provocative, prolific, innovative and indispensable, filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard was nearly as well known for his clever comments on the art of cinema as he was for the groundbreaking contributions he brought to the form: “The cinema is truth 24 frames-per-second.” “A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end, but not necessarily in that order.” Every edit is a lie." All you need for a movie is a girl and a gun” (a quote that Godard himself attributed to the pioneering director D.W. Griffith). Godard spoke a mouthful in his pithy asides, while also creating a filmography over 60 years to illustrate what he meant. The filmmaker died on Tuesday, Sept. 13, at his home in Rolle, Switzerland. He was 91. According to his legal adviser Patrick Jeanneret, Godard died by assisted suicide, suffering from what Jeanneret described as “multiple disabling pathologies.” Said Jeanneret, “He could not live like you and me, so he decided with a great lucidity, as he had all his life, to say, ‘Now, it’s enough.’” Beginning as a film critic in 1950s France alongside such fellow soon-to-be-famous filmmaking writers as François Truffaut, Jacques Rivette, Eric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol, Paris-born Jean-Luc Godard rebelled against traditional European cinema in favor of a fresher and hipper style of filmmaking, much of it inspired by the popular American cinema of those years. Watching countless movies and then writing about them in the influential French film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma, Godard soon took a seat in the director’s chair and, after a handful of shorts, directed his first feature film, 1960’s Breathless. An energetic tale about the romantic entanglement between a small-time Parisian hoodlum with a penchant for Humphrey Bogart (Jean-Paul Belmondo), and an ambivalent American journalism student (Jean Seberg), Breathless was an eye-opener. Embracing a radical visual style that included dynamic, handheld camera work and jittery jump-cut editing that soon influenced everyone from Bertolucci to Scorsese to Tarantino, as well as a reportage approach to storytelling, Breathless’ immediate approval and the repercussions of it being the coolest new film in the world were extraordinary. The French press labeled the movement, which included Breathless and other films by Godard’s colleagues, as “La Nouvelle Vague,” or as it was known on English-speaking shores, “The French New Wave.” The movement was to dominate French cinema throughout the Sixties, while its youthful spirit spread to filmmakers around the world. Godard, like other great artists of the 20th Century who went through a number of experimental and formal periods (Pablo Picasso and Miles Davis immediately come to mind), changed his style, focus and vocabulary as the years rolled by. It was his first eight years of feature filmmaking and the dozen or so films he produced that would remain his most exciting and influential, and the ones I enjoyed the most. The comedic heist thriller Band of Outsiders (1964), the lovers on the run crime-romance Pierrot le fou (1965) and the dystopian sci-fier Alphaville (1965) are the finest of these. And the 1966 romance Masculin Féminin and surreal middle-class couple road-trip adventure Week-End (1967) are right behind them. They're all a blast--and quite different from one another, to boot. Following Week-End and his sweeping impact on cinema, Godard shifted gears and became obsessed with revolutionary politics, virtually abandoning the kind of commercial cinema that he had altered over the previous decade. In May, 1968, he joined other filmmakers in protesting the Cannes Film Festival to show solidarity with France’s striking students and workers. By that time, he had begun making what he described as “revolutionary films for revolutionary audiences.” Though many of his films of that era, which include Vladimir and Rosa (1970), Numéro Deux (1975) and Here and Elsewhere (1976) didn’t make much noise, their very existence confirmed the power of cinema to promote political ideologies and personal freedoms. More changes were to come over the next decades, with Godard later backing away from his politics and philosophy of that period and partially finding his way back to the kind of cinema that established his legend in the Sixties. Having derailed his commercial prospects in the Seventies, he rarely found it easy to get these later, far less accessible films any significant distribution opportunities around the world. But Godard was still capable of an occasional shock or smile, even as most of his later works—features, shorts and TV projects shot on both film and video—failed to find large audiences and seemed to baffle those who actually saw them. His 1995 drama Hail Mary, which depicts an occasionally nude Virgin Mary as a gas station attendant, opened to protests around the world, including outside Lincoln Center during its U.S. premiere at that year’s New York Film Festival. (Nearly 40 years later, the film isn’t nearly as shocking as it was considered to be then.) And his expressionistic, mostly silent 2014 fantasia Goodbye to Language, uses 3D technology to dazzling effect as it offers a dog’s-eye view of the world. One of Godard’s most ambitious and fascinating projects was the TV mini-series Histoire(s) du Cinéma, which he began in 1988 and took a decade to complete. Set to an off-and-on score of classical music with occasional commentary by Godard, Histoire(s) is filled with clips from all manner of films—Hollywood classics, documentaries, animation, pornography and so on—as it chronicles the history of cinema, not chronologically, but conceptually and emotionally, and as the world’s best vehicle for the possibility of real-life storytelling. At one point in this dense, nearly five-hour whirl of images, a few moments of Nazi death camp footage pop up next to Rita Hayworth singing “Put the Blame on Mame” from 1946’s Gilda. Some might question the filmmaker’s editorial and structural choices, but for Godard, it was simply all about the movies. 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.

By Andy Borowitz September 9, 2022 MOSCOW (The Borowitz Report)—Amid reports that the Russian front has collapsed near Kharkiv, Vladimir Putin complained that the only reason he is losing the war in Ukraine is that the F.B.I. recently seized stuff he needed. “I’m not going to go into detail, but there were things I needed, very important things, that the F.B.I. has confiscated that should have been sent to me,” the Russian President said. “If I had those things right now, I wouldn’t be getting my ass kicked all over Kharkiv.” The fact that materials intended for him are in the hands of the F.B.I. has made him question “whether America is really a democracy,” he said. “I think if you pay for something—and I mean pay in cash—it should be sent to you,” he said. “Hopefully the special master will straighten all this out.” 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 Carly Mitchell / New York City (The author, a public-school teacher, is using a pseudonym for professional reasons) Last Thursday (Sept. 8) marked the first day back to school for New York City public-school students. And for this teacher, it was glorious! This is my second year teaching seventh grade English at a Title 1 school in Brooklyn. Before that, I taught high school for three years at a small Title 1 charter school in Brooklyn. Title 1 simply means a school in which the majority of students come from low-income families. Roughly 85 percent of students at my middle school qualify for free or reduced lunch. Fall of 2021 was chaotic. Many students and teachers had not been in a school building for over a year, and lots of kids were rusty when it came to socializing with peers. There were physical fights, and a need to constantly remind students to pull up their masks (“I should only see your eyes!”). On top of that, a whopping 75 percent of my seventh graders were reading below grade level. It was difficult because of masks to get to know my new students and colleagues without being able to see their faces, and folks were stressed out about getting themselves and others sick. It was intense. Their worries were not misplaced, I was one of many people in my school who contracted Covid. Twice. I am vaccinated and boosted and therefore was not too sick either time, but I certainly didn’t feel fabulous. The first time I tested positive was Christmas Eve, in the midst of a citywide Covid breakout that rocked schools across all five boroughs. The second time was in late April. Mercifully. this first week back at school was a whole different story. The atmosphere on Thursday was lighter. Teachers and students seemed genuinely happy to be back after two uneasy and unpredictable years. There were plenty of smiles to go around. Masks are no longer mandatory and while some students and teachers are still choosing to wear them, I would estimate that about 85-90 percent of the staff and student body are opting to go maskless. Personally, I am opting to go maskless. I feel comfortable enough now to begin the year without a face covering. For the most part, things felt somewhat “normal,” a word that has come to signify a pandemically altered lifestyle these days. The first group of students I saw were my homeroom students, a large group of 28 who would also be my first class of the day. Only 18 of them showed up on the first day, which is sadly predictable. Most of the kids who were present appeared eager and energetic, happy to be back in the school with a bit more clout now that they aren’t the youngest anymore. There were, of course, a few who were nervous, but after I showed them a goofy picture of myself in the seventh grade (always a great icebreaker) and played some fun introductory games with them, the vibe was looser and I could tell students felt more comfortable. Conversations with fellow teachers revealed that many felt the same way that I do. In general, folks were pretty happy to be back. Colleagues told me about their summers, spending time with their families, vacationing in places like Atlantic City and the Poconos. Even the few brave souls who taught summer school were in high spirits. This year I am teaching three sections (classes) of English Language Arts. Class sizes overall are bigger this year. My largest two classes have 28 and 27 students each, while my smallest has 17. This is unfortunately not due to increasing enrollment. New York City public schools are actually rapidly losing students to charter schools. This is a nuanced issue, but the pandemic exposed many issues that public schools face, like being bombarded by frequent budget cuts. More on this in future columns! Larger class sizes can be a challenge because sometimes the bigger the group, the more likely there are to be behavioral issues. But that is not what worries me. What I am fretting about is supplies. On Thursday, the teachers in my department were told that we would not have enough workbooks for each child in our classes because of budgeting wars that are being fought among city officials. This means, for example, that for my class of 28 students, I will receive only 20 workbooks. This is not a new problem–there have always been budgeting issues started by the people at the top who don’t seem to think about the ways in which their juvenile debates trickle down into city classrooms. But it is a difficult situation that will involve some creative solutions (feel free to email me if you have any). Nevertheless, I remain optimistic about the pending school year. My students are ready to learn. They have already asked me to teach them script, which is no longer taught in the lower grades. And many of them have told me that they want to become better at writing essays. Joy!! One more thing to be happy about? The air conditioning unit in my classroom is finally working. This may not seem like a very big deal, but in a school like mine with an ancient infrastructure, this is something to celebrate. My running joke last year with students was that our air conditioning unit doubled as a water park. That is how much water spurted from the damn thing whenever it was turned on. Well, it is a water park no more! Celebrate the small wins. Hip hip HOORAY! Carly Mitchell (a pseudonym) is a public-school teacher in Brooklyn N.Y. who loves to learn, to educate, and to expose the hypocrisy of New York City politicians.

By Naomi Serviss / New York City Poof, this summer’s history. Not a moment too soon. An unbearably sweltering July and August inspired neighbors to bounce upstate to second homes, or venture to Montreal and Tahiti. To escape from New York, recharge, and breathe invisible air. So Lew and I planned a dreamy one-day “voyage” (even though it meant sacrificing matinee tickets for an off-Broadway show about two geezers shooting the breeze.) We looked forward to our brief escape from daily urban insults such as: Gnawed open garbage bags Rat residents Sirens Bus exhaust Air horns Car horns Can collectors Wackadoodle homeless folk (armed?) Sticky street tar Sweaty, maskless midtown mobs Yes, that’s summer in this dirty city. I’m not kvetching for nothing. After 11 years, sensory overstimulation remains an insult to the nervous system. Humidity thickens the gritty air. I continue to mask not only to virus-protect, but to prevent inhaling the soot. Temperatures blaze into the 90s. Frizzing my over-stressed tresses. Not an opportune time for our worn-out bedroom air conditioner to blow. Which harshed my Buddha Buzz. We were jones-ing for a “Serenity Now!” moment. Peaceful. Pigeon-free Pronto. “When in doubt, get out,” is our family’s modus operandi. We (my husband Lew and I) had both been brain-zapped with the same favored destination. Planting Fields Arboretum, on Long Island, our happy place. Second only to Long Beach Island’s Beach Haven. Carless, we needed to rent one. Avis is around the corner. A modest car was prepaid for and reserved ahead of time. The below-ground parking garage was a sauna. We were fourth in line. Didn’t get the small car, or any other vehicle. Why? The excuse given by the youthfully unpleasant, nose-pierced agent, sounded unbelievable. “Thing is, we don’t have any small cars. I can give you a pick-up truck or a Tahoe.” She called other locations. Nada. Her nose piercing doodad wouldn’t have bothered me except for what appeared to be a large white mucus blog inside her right nostril. It was hurl-worthy. Thwarted plans, morning shot, we trudged back up the Avis driveway and sweated our way back home, dodging the ubiquitous, threatening scaffolding. Once back under the air conditioner’s spell, I made the choice not to waste time scrolling Twitter or reloading the Broadway lottery I entered (Into the Woods). Instead, I meditated, drifting on my breath as season’s end reflections buzzed my brain. Seasons cycle, leaves melancholy, mocha-colored dried out and dying in still unbearable temperatures. Summer flew too fast. And couldn’t go quickly enough. Death claimed some in our family. Illness taxed young and old and Covid’s variants threatened all. August slipped away like a fever dream, ending with the gut-wrenching 25th anniversary of the death of Princess Diana. September foreshadows cooler (hopefully) days ahead. Lew and I talked our dreams out loud, aware that Rosh Hashanah approaches. I’m not an overtly observant Jew, but respect and enjoy holiday songs and cheer. More Buddhist in temperament, so I’m a Jewdhist Meanwhile, the weekend was not lost. Our matinee! It turned out to be a hoot, (if you’re a Borscht Belt aficionado) with 91-year-old Hal Linden! He’s starring off-Broadway with fellow old-timer Bernie Kopell, 89. The esteemed thespians knew the play cold and every groaner pun was appreciated. These cronies never stopped yakking and a great time was had by all. Oh, the name of the play? Two Jews Talking. We blew a tranquil outing to Planting Fields Arboretum, but we ended the season with a hearty laugh. And the reassuring knowledge that Hal and Bernie are still alive and well! I’m squeezing the last sweaty days out of August. September can’t ring in fast enough. 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

Fred Plotkin, a pleasure activist and passionate Italy and culinary expert, speaks each Friday with leading people in the arts 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."