By Sienna Beck / New York City Hey there, Readers! Remember me? I’m Sienna Beck, Future President. (Have I told you that already?) It’s Women’s History Month, and of course I’m gonna be part of it someday because I am a woman (or a growing young lady of nine, anyway). One reason I want to be president is because look at the world right now. Trash in the oceans…Covid…global warming. Picture a world where all that stuff is far behind us. That’s what I’m aiming for. I’ve got to admit that another reason is that you get so many privileges but that’s last on my list of one trillion reasons. Also, I’m excited to be the first female president (if possible). Everybody’s counting on me, so I’m taking the risk. Let’s hope I succeed, though… I’ve only met one politician, Mia Amor Mottley, the Prime Minister of Barbados. I met her in the summer of 2021. She and my grandfather, Jeffrey Sachs, were making a long presentation about fairness and climate change. After an hour and a half of the presentation, it was time for lunch. My grandfather, my grandmother and I led the parade of people into the lunch area. He and my grandmother sat at the "important people" table so I sat with two very nice people nearby. Before the lunch started, Prime Minister Mottley sat down next to me. When we first arrived at Barbados with my grandparents and my family, P.M. Mottley sent us envelopes with cards that said, "Enjoy your stay/vacation!" and added three Barbados purses for me and my two sisters. I brought mine with me everywhere, and as Prime Minister Mottley and I chatted, I showed her the bag and the envelope. She acted surprised that I brought the card with me. Soon, when the serving started, she had to go to the table with my grandpa and grandma. One of PM Mottley's staff members sat down in her place. We had so much fun that we exchanged email addresses. I enjoyed chicken, rice, and a kind of tiramisu truffle for dessert. When we went home, I had so much to tell everyone! People who inspire me to keep going are Kamala Harris, who shows girls that running for office is possible and as long as you try, you can succeed; and Mia Amor Mottley, who taught me that when hardships are tripled, stay strong. I love to hear these lessons and to be taught how to follow your dream. I’m also going to meet the French Ambassador to the U.S. in May (Do I have to wait?). I thank all my fans on The Insider who urge me to keep going and for all your wonderful comments. I hope this article helps you follow your dreams and to learn who you truly are. Most of all, I hope you find your own wonderful talents. Sienna Beck is a 9-year-old author who loves writing short stories. She goes to a camp called Writopia, and once entered a play contest and was selected to have her play professionally performed by trained actors. Sienna has two sisters, Willa and Olive, and they all go to P.S. 87 in New York City. Sienna likes animals, including pets and mostly dogs. She also wants to be THE PRESIDENT when she grows up.

By John Rolfe / Red Hook, N.Y. “The future’s uncertain and the end is always near.” –The Doors, “Roadhouse Blues” In January, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set its Doomsday Clock (which metaphorically records the time left until the end of the world) at 100 seconds to midnight for the third year in a row, the closest to Armageddon it has ever been. I’m afraid to ponder where it would be set now that Russian President Vladimir Putin is waving his nuclear weapons in Ukraine. A Dr. Strangelove-ian fever had already gripped other world leaders such as North Korea’s Kim Jong-un and our very own Donald Trump. While running for president in 2016, Trump reportedly asked a foreign policy expert three times why we can’t use nukes. He’s since floated the idea of using them on ISIS and even hurricanes. Most recently, Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity that if he were still president, he would be reminding Putin that America has the biggest and best nuclear arsenal. It does not bode well for the human race that Pope Francis recently felt compelled to say in his weekly address, "Our imagination appears increasingly concentrated on the representation of a final catastrophe that will extinguish us, such as that which would happen with an eventual atomic war." There are more than 13,000 nuclear warheads on the planet, 90% of them held by the United States or Russia, according to the Arms Control Association. Both countries reserve the right to use them first in order to gain a battlefield advantage or to avoid a major military defeat. It’s painfully easy to picture a deluded narcissistic megalomaniac like Putin or Trump pushing the button to soothe a bruised ego. Just look at how far into unreality both of them have already gone to justify invading Ukraine and subverting the 2020 American presidential election, respectively. If you need a miracle to cling to in these obsidian times, consider that nukes have only been used twice (Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 1945) while mankind has been working steadily to make them more, shall we say, handy. For example, a “tactical” or "battlefield" nuke is much smaller than the warheads designed to destroy entire cities, but the smallest can create an explosion and 300-foot-wide fireball that levels buildings and severely burns anyone within about 1,000 feet while spraying a lethal dose of radiation about 2,000 feet. This is the kind of toy Putin is most likely to employ in Ukraine and no one knows what will happen after that. I recently heard an NPR interview with Fred Kaplan, author of The Bomb: Presidents, Generals and the Secret History of Nuclear War. He described an unsettling war game conducted by the Obama Administration in which Russia invades a Baltic state. The U.S. responds militarily and, while winning, is hit on the battlefield by a Russian tactical nuke. The question was: What do we do? Some officials proposed continuing to fight with conventional weapons and letting world condemnation ruin Russia. Most of the others thought that decision would be folly. So they all played with the idea of firing a couple of tactical nukes at military targets in Belarus, a Russian ally. Then the game was stopped. “Nobody wanted to play ‘what happens next?’” Kaplan said. “People have been writing about nuclear strategy since a few weeks after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. People have written out scenarios. Despite this, for decades, nobody has the slightest idea what would happen after one nuclear weapon is used. Even if there are the finest tuned intentions of keeping the war limited and not hitting population centers and so forth, the effects of nuclear weapons … are much greater than any think tank playing a war game has ever been able to anticipate.” It’s a crying shame that at times like these, human beings can’t just grab the idiots who are perpetrating and perpetuating a nuclear crisis and say, “O.K., that’s enough out of you. Have a seat in this cell.” But no. Too many among us will rationalize and justify demented so-called “leadership.” Here’s a comforting thought: A 2003 report showed that if just 300 of Russia’s approximately 1,500 nukes were used on U.S. cities, 75 to 100 million people would die the first day. Temperatures worldwide would plummet with 150 million tons of soot tossed into the upper atmosphere, triggering a "nuclear winter," global famine and likely the end of civilization as we know it. "The 'day after’', if there will still be days and human beings — we will have to start again from nothing," the Pope said in his recent address. Well, not everyone will start with nothing. The ultra-wealthy have been building luxe bunkers for surviving Armageddon in style. Mother Nature will take a royal beating but cockroaches will supposedly go about their business as usual. The rest of us wretches will have to make do in a Walking Dead scenario where competing bands of humans attack each other for food, resources, territory and, of course, political power. And if we think Covid lockdowns are the height of intolerable inconvenience, consider that the half-life of radioactive fallout is 30 years. I’m sorry, but that kind of existence doesn’t hold much appeal for me. I’m 64 and would be very strongly inclined to off myself rather than spend my remaining (surely declining) years in a pointless hell. But the human spirit doesn’t go down without a fight. Potassium iodide pills, which offer limited protection against radiation poisoning (never mind the gnarly side effects if used incorrectly), are now a hot item. Naturally they are being soaked in the milk of human kindness: price gouging. This reminds me of the pathetic run on plastic sheeting and duct tape for windows in the wake of the 9/11 anthrax attacks, and the pitches on right-wing talk shows for stocking up on survival rations, gold bars and firearms. Not go morbid on you, but I have long suspected that I was put on Earth to witness the end of human civilization. I’m not religious, mind you. It just seems like a likely event when one of my first memories is the Cuban Missile Crisis. I was barely five years old, but I can recall hearing news reports on the transistor radios people carried in my neighborhood and sensing that something was terribly wrong. It feels the same way now, as Ukraine is destroyed and humanity fails to halt the ravages of climate change. Back in my salad days, the specter of nuclear war became a normal part of life with grade-school kids like me hiding under desks or lining up in a hallway away from windows in case Russia or China dropped The Big One on us. I’m amazed we’ve all survived this long, especially when the reality of nuclear apocalypse is a mere abstraction to those who would trigger it and then ride it out in deluxe accommodations. There’s something ironically fitting about humans transforming this beautiful planet into a world where only cockroaches and the ultra-rich, like Putin and Trump, will thrive. Count me out. John Rolfe is a former senior editor for Sports Illustrated for Kids, a longtime columnist for the Poughkeepsie Journal/USA Today Network, and author of The Goose in the Bathroom: Stirring Tales of Family Life. His school bus drivin’ blog “Hellions, Mayhem and Brake Failure” is parked on his website Celestialchuckle.com (https://celestialchuckle.com) with the meter running.

By Russell Bikoff / Washington, D.C. The Russian military’s assault on Ukraine has had more success in committing war crimes than it has had in attaining its military objectives. It is almost as though Russia’s military machine is designed to commit war crimes, or at least cannot operate without committing them. More than three weeks into the conflict, since Russia’s attack began on February 24, each day seems to bring new outrages, with threats of a broader conflict. Just in recent days, Russian forces have kidnapped the mayor of a town in southern Ukraine (who was released days later in a reported prisoner exchange), killed journalists for Western media (journalists are protected under the Geneva Conventions as civilians), laid the propaganda groundwork for using prohibited chemical weapons (although it is a party to the Chemical Weapons Convention, which became effective in 1997), bombed military and civilian targets near Ukraine’s western border with NATO countries, and threatened to “interdict” NATO military supplies to Ukraine’s army. With the exception of a few far-right political and media figures who seem to admire Vladimir Putin, most Americans now would love to see Putin sitting in a dank cell in the U.K. or the Netherlands, serving a life sentence for the atrocities his forces are committing in Ukraine. The prospects of him doing so, however, are low and we are unlikely to have that satisfaction in the foreseeable future. Nonetheless, there is a strong case to be made for ramping up war crimes investigations and a tribunal with a prosecutorial arm, as well as filing indictments against Putin, his top henchman, his military high command, and Russian troops on the ground who can be identified as war criminals. The International Criminal Court (ICC), based at The Hague, has announced it has opened investigations, and the U.N.’s Human Rights Council has set up a commission to investigate abuses in Ukraine. Ukraine’s government has brought a case against Russia in the International Court of Justice (the “World Court,” also located at The Hague). On March 16, that court rejected Russia’s efforts to justify its invasion as an exercise of “self-defense” under Article 51 of the U.N. Charter to prevent “genocide” against Russian-speakers living in the separatist-controlled areas of the Donbas. The court ordered Russia, as part of a “provisional remedy” granted to Ukraine, to “immediately suspend” its military operations in Ukraine and ensure that the forces it controls in the breakaway “republics” of Donetsk and Lugansk also cease military operations in Ukraine. Furthermore, Ukraine and its citizens have made heroic efforts to document Russian atrocities. The Biden Administration has begun to use the term “war crimes,” as President Biden, on March 16, the day President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine addressed Congress remotely, finally called Putin a war criminal. With countries obligated to arrest and extradite accused war criminals, war crimes charges can be another tool in building pressure on Putin’s regime for a cessation of hostilities and the withdrawal of Russian forces before Ukraine is erased from the map and its precious population further brutalized. Given the immense scale of destruction in Ukraine, war crimes convictions of individuals can achieve important purposes. Also, fixing state responsibility on Russia for damages to Ukraine’s people, property, and civilian infrastructure is possible. International law arguably provides remedies for reparation to the Ukrainian people and nation, including restitution, rehabilitation, and compensation. Putin's Hitler-like rampage through Ukraine raises important questions for international criminal law. Are war crimes trials only for small countries or defeated countries, or should larger powers like Russia (as well as the U.S. and China) be constrained by international law? Should the possession of nuclear weapons privilege such a country’s leaders to immunity from criminal responsibility? If so, then leaders of the first five declared nuclear powers (the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council: the U.S., U.K., Russia, France, and China) and newer nuclear powers (Pakistan, India, North Korea), as well as undeclared nuclear powers (Israel) and those wishing to finalize their programs (Iran), would have a nuclear shield protecting them from legal accountability. Also, is regime change the only way to get a national leader like Putin and his top lieutenants to answer at a war crimes trial? Some of these questions will be presented to the world in the coming years as we grapple with the consequences of Putin’s war on Ukraine. There is recent precedent for convicting a head of state on international crimes. The former president of Liberia, Charles Taylor, was convicted in the U.N. Special Court for Sierra Leone, sitting in the Netherlands. Also, the Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) charged the political leaders of Serbia and the Bosnian Serb entity, Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic, respectively, as well as the Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic, with genocide, crimes against humanity, and violations of the laws and customs of war (war crimes). Both Karadzic and Mladic were convicted and are now serving life sentences. Milosevic died in detention during his trial. Finally, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) from 1995 to 2012 conducted trials and sentenced a former acting prime minister, other officials, private persons, and military commanders for acts of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. The ICC has also issued arrest warrants for heads of state for international crimes. In 2005, the U.N. Security Council referred the case of then-President Omar Al Bashir of Sudan to the ICC for investigation. In 2009 and 2010, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Al Bashir for acts of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes committed in the Sudanese region of Darfur between 2003 and 2008. Since Al Bashir’s fall from power in 2019, Sudan’s new governments have failed to surrender him to the ICC but reportedly have imprisoned him after convictions on local crimes in Sudan. In 2011, the ICC issued an arrest warrant against Muammar Gaddafi, the ruler of Libya, charging him with crimes against humanity for attacks on demonstrators opposed to his regime. Several months later, after Gaddafi was killed during a rebellion, the ICC withdrew the warrant on grounds of his death. The Nuremberg Trials, 1945-1946. (left) The 21 defendants. The Tribunal acquitted three and sentenced seven others to prison. Eleven were sentenced to hang, although two (including Hermann Goering, in the first row, extreme left, in the defendant's dock) managed to commit suicide before their date with the executioner. (right) The four voting judges and four alternate judges from the Allied powers: the U.S., U.K., France and the U.S.S.R. 1) Why Putin is guilty of crimes against the peace Crimes against the peace or waging aggressive war is a relatively new crime established by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg (the main Nuremberg trial, which took place between 1945 and 1946), which convicted the leading Nazi war criminals of this crime and established a new precedent. Putin's attack on Ukraine is clearly a violation of this crime and is stronger even than historical examples such as North Korea's invasion of the South in 1950, the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, and Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990. In discussing these examples of aggression, former U.S. Nuremberg prosecutor Telford Taylor noted in 1992 that while some may argue that the U.S. wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan also violated the U.N. Charter as wars of aggression, the case should be made that in all three wars, the U.S. was legally responding to the aggression of the other parties to the hostilities who were themselves in violation of the Charter and international law. The legal basis for the crime is the early recognition in 1946 by the U.N. of the validity of the Nuremberg precedent, and its likely acceptance as a principle of customary international law. Even though the Russian Federation, like the U. S., is not a party to the International Criminal Court’s statute (the “Rome statute”), which took effect in 2002, the nations adhering to the ICC have recognized the crime of aggression. In 2010, the ICC parties defined aggression as “the use of armed force by a state against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Charter of the United Nations.” The perpetrator must have “planned, prepared, initiated or executed an act of aggression.” Also, the perpetrator was “a person in a position effectively to exercise control over or to direct the political or military action of the state which committed the act of aggression.” Other elements of the crime require the perpetrator’s awareness that the use of armed force was inconsistent with the U.N. Charter. The crime applies to individuals, not just state parties. And it is independent of war crimes, so that defendants can be convicted of crimes against the peace by undertaking a war, even if they then wage it lawfully. The idea is that war as an institution in human affairs is so bad that it should be discouraged except in limited circumstances, such as in self-defense, and wars of aggression should not occur. Although Putin attempted to hide his intentions behind a veil of obfuscations and false denials, even an announced, non-surprise attack on Ukraine would constitute a violation. Moreover, various international agreements and declarations dating back to Ukraine’s independence in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed, in which Russia assured Ukraine that it would respect Ukraine’s right to live in peace, were violated by the military invasion that began on February 24. Just as Hitler's attack on Poland on September 1, 1939, was a crime against peace, so was Putin’s attack on Ukraine. His possible defense, that he believed that Ukraine was planning to attack Russia or was planning to join NATO so all could attack Russia, and therefore Russia attacked in self-defense, will be dismissed by international judges as completely lacking evidence in support. A future attempt by Putin to have a puppet Ukrainian regime invite the Russian army in and provide an ex post-facto legal justification will also be a stratagem that fails. And it's not only Putin. His top lieutenants, both civilian and military, who planned this attack and engaged in a conspiracy to carry it out, are also at risk of being charged and convicted for crimes against the peace. It seems that in the approximately three-quarters of a century since Nuremburg, no national leaders or their top assistants have been convicted of this crime. Given the limitations of the International Criminal Court’s jurisdiction over Russia and its leaders, if circumstances change in Russia, the U.N. Security Council or a set of the leading world powers may need to establish a special tribunal for charges of engaging in crimes against the peace. Putin richly deserves conviction on this charge and a conviction should break this record of impunity. 2) Why Putin’s military is committing grave breaches of the laws and customs of war and why he is criminally responsible for war crimes News reports from Ukraine daily are showing horrifying scenes of Russian bombings, such as the destruction of a maternity hospital in Mariupol with deaths and casualties. Other scenes and reports are of people fleeing in private cars shot dead by Russian troops and others killed with their families while crossing underneath a destroyed bridge northwest of Kyiv. Some of these actions could be considered war crimes and punished as such. Putin, his military and civilian staff, and his officers in the field, as well as ordinary soldiers, are all subject to the laws and customs of war. The protection of civilians caught in an international armed conflict is governed by the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 (the “Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War”), one of four such conventions protecting, besides civilians, wounded and sick soldiers and seamen, and prisoners of war. (Incidentally, mercenaries do not receive the protections of the first three Geneva conventions, since they are not combatants or prisoners of war. Foreign volunteers, such as people largely from Western countries entering Ukraine to fight, are not mercenaries if they become members of the armed forces of a party to the conflict or receive pay equivalent to members of such armed forces.) While that treaty contains an expansive definition of protected persons (as those caught in a conflict or occupation and “in the hands of” a foreign country’s armed forces) and gives robust protections to medical facilities and personnel, and the transport of wounded and sick persons, including pregnant women, its specific protections for the civilian population at large during a conflict are limited. Thus, the Additional Protocol I of 1977, relating to international armed conflict, substantially fleshed out protections for the civilian population during hostilities. Both Russia and Ukraine are parties to the 1949 Convention and the 1977 Additional Protocol. (The U.S. is a party only to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and not to the 1977 protocol. A second Additional Protocol applies to conflicts not of an international character, meaning insurgencies, rebellions, and civil wars within countries. Additional Protocol II does not apply currently to the war in Ukraine.) The Fourth Geneva Convention is not self-enforcing and instead calls on the Parties to enact penal legislation to enforce penalties against grave breaches in trials in its own courts or those of another Party. The 1977 Additional Protocol I defines grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and the Protocol as war crimes. Ukrainian civilians are protected by these instruments. The Additional Protocol applies to the types of indiscriminate attacks we have seen Russia engage in, including bombardments and the destruction of hospitals, schools and universities, churches, sections of cities and towns with large apartment blocks, neighborhoods with houses, and so on (See article 51). The Additional Protocol also covers such Russian conduct as starving civilians and any destruction of or attacks against “objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population,” which includes food, agriculture, and drinking water. Finally, the Additional Protocol covers the Russian attacks on the decommissioned nuclear plant in Chernobyl and the operating nuclear plants elsewhere in Ukraine, since these places may not be attacked if “such attack may cause the release of dangerous forces and consequent severe losses among the civilian population.” Neither Russia nor Ukraine (nor the United States) is a party to the ICC statute, although Ukraine, after making constitutional changes effective in 2019, can ratify the treaty and join any time. The war will make that difficult and perhaps impossible. Nevertheless, because Ukraine filed “declarations” with the ICC in 2014 and 2015, the ICC has jurisdiction to investigate all acts of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity occurring on its territory, and Ukraine has the obligation to cooperate with the court. The crime of aggression is not covered, so the ICC does not have jurisdiction for investigating whether Russia’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine constitutes that crime. As Human Rights Watch explains, the “referral” by 38 ICC member countries in February and March 2022 provided the basis for the ICC prosecutor to open an investigation in Ukraine without the need for him to apply to the ICC judges for permission. A crucial feature is that all individuals, no matter of which countries they are nationals, committing crimes on the territory of Ukraine are within the ICC’s jurisdiction. Therefore, the absence of Russia as a party to the Rome Statute does not insulate the members of its military in Ukraine, as well as Putin and others from afar, from ICC scrutiny. As a non-party to the ICC, Russia is not legally obligated to cooperate with the ICC investigations. This raises the question of how the ICC prosecutor and court will gain personal jurisdiction (custody) over those members of the Russian military who are credibly suspected of engaging in war crimes. It should be possible for Ukraine, while it complies with its obligations under the Third Geneva Convention of 1949, relating to prisoners of war, to detain members of the Russian military whom it holds as POWs while preliminary war crimes investigations proceed. For Russian soldiers whom the evidence implicates as war criminals, rather than return them to Russia when hostilities conclude, Ukraine and the ICC prosecution should have the legal right, even duty, to transfer them to the ICC’s custody in The Netherlands for legal proceedings to go forward. This same argument would apply to soldiers from any of Russia’s allies, like Belarus or Syria, captured in Ukraine and suspected to have committed war crimes. The ICC statute codifies at length a long list of war crimes, and its later resolution in 2010 defines the legal elements of these crimes. The statute covers many of the atrocities the world has seen Russian forces commit since the invasion began. The statute contains preexisting crimes from the Geneva Conventions. Thus, even where ICC jurisdiction runs into limits, the laws of war should be applied under those conventions, the Additional Protocol, and customary law to Russian military forces. The ICC statute lists eight war crimes that arise from grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions. The subsequent ICC resolution detailing elements of these war crimes lists 11 such crimes. These include: Willful killing Willfully causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or health Extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly Depriving a prisoner of war or a civilian (“protected person”) of the rights of a fair and regular trial The unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement of protected persons; and the taking of hostages These are all grave breaches of the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention for protecting civilians. Other war crimes listed in the ICC statute derive not from “grave breaches,” but from “serious violations of the law and customs” of war. These serious violations are also derived from the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocol I of 1977. The ICC statute lists these crimes in 26 sections and the 2010 ICC resolution provides specific definitions and elements for 35 such war crimes. These include: Intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population as such or against individual civilians not taking direct part in hostilities Intentionally directing attacks against civilian objects, that is, objects which are not military objectives Intentionally directing attacks against personnel, installations, material, units or vehicles involved in a humanitarian assistance or peacekeeping mission in accordance with the Charter of the [UN] Intentionally launching an attack in the knowledge that such attack will cause incidental loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects or widespread, long term and severe damage to the natural environment which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated Some or all the above appear to apply to Russia’s indiscriminate shelling and bombing, including attacks on neutral or humanitarian routes for the evacuation of civilians. If there are legally recognized efforts to deliver humanitarian assistance to besieged cities and towns, Russian attacks on such assistance should also be punished as war crimes. Proving intent should not be difficult for international prosecutors, since the ICC statute’s definition of that term is in accord with ordinary criminal law principles. The statute provides that a person has intent when, in relation to conduct, that person “means to engage in the conduct.” In relation to a consequence, the person has intent when he “means to cause that consequence or is aware that it will occur in the ordinary course of events.” Russian destruction of Ukraine’s cities through artillery and missile strikes are quite clearly intentional; particular attacks on certain buildings or sections of cities will easily be shown as intentional. Further war crimes under the Geneva Conventions, the Additional Protocol, and customary international law, spelled out in the Rome (ICC) statute, include: Attacking or bombarding, by whatever means, towns, villages, dwellings or buildings which are undefended and which are not military objectives The deportation or transfer “of all or parts of the population of the occupied territory within or outside this territory" Intentional “attacks against buildings dedicated to religion, education, arts, science or charitable purpose, historic monuments, hospitals and places where the sick and wounded are collected, provided they are not military objectives" These specified crimes appear to cover the Russian military’s destruction of urban neighborhoods, as well as entire towns and villages, and its apparently intentional bombing of hospitals, schools, churches, and other civilian buildings. Even more possible war crimes that we have seen being committed or have been threatened by Putin and Russian troops are: Pillaging (looting) a town or place, even when taken by assault Destroying or seizing Ukrainian property, without the imperative demands of the necessities of war Employing poison or poison weapons or poison gas Employing weapons, projectiles and material and methods of warfare which are of a nature to cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering or which are inherently indiscriminate in violation of the international law of armed conflict (provided that such weapons have previously been outlawed under the ICC process) This last category of crimes conceivably would include Russian rockets, missiles, cruise missiles, Grad multi-launch missiles, and dumb bombs. There are also reports that Russia has used thermobaric bombs and cluster bombs, which may be covered by this comprehensive prohibition and included in the ICC statute. Certain types of expanding bullets are also prohibited, so any Russian use of those munitions would also be war crimes. Reports of Russian soldiers seizing Ukrainian local officials in towns occupied by the Russian military, and the possibility of transfer to the Donbas “republics” where these officials may be placed on trial would trigger other Russian war crimes. These include the prohibition on hostage-taking, a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions. Show trials or kangaroo courts on Russian charges of “terrorism” would be a serious violation of the prohibition on abolishing or suspending “in a court of law the rights and actions of the [Ukrainian] nationals.” Moreover, Article 75 of Additional Protocol I requires that all trials of “penal offenses” be conducted by “impartial and regularly constituted court[s]” using “generally recognized principles of regular judicial procedure,” and lists a panoply of procedural rights familiar to Americans, including due process, the presumption of innocence, and the right against self- incrimination. Any Russian attempt to try Ukrainian officials for “war crimes,” whether grave breaches or lesser crimes, will trigger the protections of Article 75, or “more favorable treatment under the [Geneva] Conventions or this Protocol,” and the requirement that such trials must be conducted “in accordance with the applicable rules of international law.” Finally, it is also a crime of war to intentionally use “starvation of civilians as a method of warfare by depriving them of objects indispensable to survival, including willfully impeding relief supplies as provided for under the Geneva Conventions.” We have seen evidence of this in the besieged city of Mariupol on the sea of Azov, and to judge by past Russian behavior in Chechnya and Syria, starvation will likely be employed by Russian forces as they encircle and besiege other towns and cities, including Kyiv and Kharkiv, if Russian forces succeed in overcoming the fierce resistance of the Ukrainian armed forces. We have been focusing on how the law of armed conflict protects civilians. Key concepts are the principles of military necessity and proportionality. As applied in Ukraine, this means that Russia must only attack targets with military value and ascertain whether civilians are likely to be killed or injured. The attack must not take place unless the expected “collateral damage” to civilians and their objects is proportionate to the military advantage to be gained. This is clearly not happening in Ukraine. Indiscriminate attacks on civilians and civilian institutions and infrastructure are outlawed. Commentators on U.S. media have noted that after Russia was thwarted from its planned blitzkrieg and decapitation of the Ukrainian government, it reverted to its traditional tactics of standing at a distance and pummeling urban centers with explosives, whether from artillery, rockets, or munitions dropped from planes. This does not relieve the Russian military of its legal obligations to only target military objects. To the contrary, the Russian military’s indiscriminate bombardments destroying cities, designed to terrorize the civilian population, will support many war crimes charges. The Rome statute also restates and applies general principles of international criminal law. These include such concepts as attempts, aiding and abetting, joint conduct, acting with a common purpose (akin to conspiracy), and ordering or soliciting war crimes. The principle of individual accountability means that ordinary soldiers and commanders engaged in hostilities are accountable, if there is proof of their individual conduct and their mental state, usually an intent to commit such conduct and knowledge of the circumstances or consequences, as specified in the elements of the particular war crime charged. There is no defense of superior orders for a soldier or civilian, even for one under a legal duty to comply with the orders of his government or superiors, when the accused knew that the order was unlawful or it was “manifestly unlawful.” (All orders to commit genocide or crimes against humanity are manifestly unlawful.) Significantly, the principle of command responsibility reaches the entire chain of command, where military commanders or civilian leaders knew or “should have known” that their forces were committing such crimes and failed to take “all necessary and reasonable measures” to prevent their commission. A superior officer (military or civilian) is also responsible for crimes committed by his subordinates when the superior knew or “consciously disregarded” indications that the subordinates were committing crimes, they were within his “effective responsibility and control,” and he failed to take all “necessary and reasonable measures” within his power to prevent their commission. For the highest government officials, including heads of state and government, the statute is explicit that such high office “shall in no case exempt a person from criminal responsibility.” The convictions not long ago of the leaders of Serbia and the Bosnian Serbs for war crimes are an example of command responsibility and might serve as a model for holding Putin and his closest aides accountable. 3) Why Putin and the Russian military are committing crimes against humanity and how to hold them accountable Crimes against humanity are another large category of crimes against the rules and customs of war. These are patterns of war crimes, characterized as “widespread and systemic,” involving multiple criminal acts directed at civilians. As the Russian attack on Ukraine continues, perhaps for weeks and months to come, new patterns of atrocities directed against the civilian population will continue to emerge. The Nuremberg tribunal was the first modern progenitor of this category, based on Nazi outrages that shocked the conscience of humankind. The Geneva Conventions of 1949 and Additional Protocol I of 1977 (which Russia and Ukraine, although not the United States, have ratified,) list “grave breaches” of obligations of international humanitarian law. These grave breaches involve causing death or serious injury to the body or health of the civilian population or other protected persons, including prisoners of war, refugees, and stateless persons. Attacking the civilian population or individual civilians through a pattern of indiscriminate attacks, knowing that such attacks will cause excessive loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects, is a crime against humanity. The ICC (Rome) statute makes clear that crimes against humanity are a matter of international criminal law and entail individual criminal responsibility. There are 16 separately defined crimes against humanity (CAH), not all of which are likely to apply to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (for example, the crime of apartheid). For all 16, there is a required element that “the conduct was committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population.” The definition of an “attack directed against any civilian population” involves “a course of conduct involving the multiple commission of acts.” The first CAH listed in the statute is murder. Persecution (defined as “the intentional and severe deprivation of fundamental rights contrary to international law by reason of the identity of the group or collectivity”) against an identifiable group or collectivity on grounds that include national, ethnic, and cultural identity is another CAH. Extermination, defined as “the intentional infliction of conditions of life, inter alia the deprivation of access to food and medicine, calculated to bring about the destruction of part of the population” is also listed. The deportation or forcible transfer of population, defined as “forced displacement of the persons concerned by expulsion or other coercive acts from the area in which they are lawfully present, without grounds permitted under international law” is another specifically defined CAH. Finally, there is a catchall CAH of “other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.” Should Russian brutality continue and overwhelm the Ukrainian defense, there may well arise other patterns of criminal acts. For example, torture, imprisonment, enslavement, rape and sexual slavery, and the enforced disappearance of persons, during a period of Russian occupation may lead to additional charges of these specific crimes against humanity. Russian conduct that amounts to ethnic cleansing, which is not a legal term, of cities or regions of Ukraine, its treatment of prisoners of war, and its failures to meet the needs for food, water, health, medical care, and the security of civilian populations under Russian military control can all lead to charges of crimes against humanity. Recent reports of Russia targeting Ukrainian officials in towns under its control and threatening to break up Ukraine into different “people’s republics” will also require investigation and perhaps lead to charges. 4) Why Putin and Russia may be guilty of genocide and how to punish the perpetrators Before starting hostilities in late February, Putin had made statements in which he denied the national rights of the Ukrainian nation and people. He appeared to consider them either unworthy of having their own nation- state or simply as a part of a larger Russian nation and people. Having denied them agency and identity, perhaps it was easier for Putin to launch a massive invasion of Ukraine. The main Nuremberg trial did not employ and did not lead to any development of the crime of genocide. There was no progress until 1951 when the Genocide Convention came into force. (The United States did not ratify this convention until 1988.) Depending on what the future holds, both in terms of the political structures in place in Ukraine when the war concludes or a political settlement is reached, Putin could be charged with genocide. The crime is defined in the Genocide Convention and in the ICC statute, which is drawn word-for-word from the Convention. It begins with an “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group” by means of different actions. The actions are killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. Each of these is a different way in which to commit the crime of genocide. The ICC’s elements of crimes adopted in 2010 spell out for each of these methods specific elements that must be proved against a perpetrator to obtain that person’s conviction of the crime of genocide. Genocide has universal jurisdiction, meaning that all the nations of the world are obligated to put on trial or send to another state for trial a person they apprehend who is credibly believed to have committed that crime. The International Criminal tribunal for Rwanda and the tribunal for Yugoslavia both produced convictions on charges of genocide. 5) How can we see Putin and his top henchman put in the dock? It can admittedly take years and even decades for legal authorities from an international criminal tribunal to gain custody of indicted war criminals. Current international law and any new agreement or international statute that creates a special tribunal would obligate all countries to assist by arresting and extraditing the defendants. It is impossible to calculate the chances and predict the series of events by which Putin and his subordinates could be taken into custody. One possibility is for Russia to be ejected from Interpol, as some have proposed. This would permit the arrests when they travel outside of Russia on red notices of suspected war criminals under indictments by international tribunals, or even by Ukraine, should that country keep its independence. Putin, as a head of state, and his diplomats, like foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, would be immune from arrest. Should Putin fall from power, however, he would be subject to arrest if he leaves Russia. As with Serbia, a new Russian government could decide on its own to either try him in their courts or extradite him to a tribunal. 6) Final Thoughts A few years ago, much was made of the “responsibility to protect,” called R2P, a doctrine that has been institutionalized within the U.N, system. It refers to humanitarian interventions, by force if necessary, to protect civilian populations, usually from their own governments. In this case, any intervention would be to protect Ukraine’s civilians against Russian forces. There is presently no appetite in the West for engaging in a humanitarian intervention, let alone one that is accomplished using military force. Under the Fourth Geneva Convention the parties to the conflict are encouraged to establish neutral zones, in which civilians can shelter in safety or escape from the hostilities. Until now, Russia and Ukraine have made fitful attempts for temporary neutral zones, so that food and medical supplies can be delivered to trapped civilians, as well as establish corridors so that civilians may escape the hostilities. News reports of Russian shooting and bombardments of evacuation corridors have shown Russia violating these agreements and preventing many civilians from getting to relative safety. Fortunately, in some locations in recent days these agreements have appeared to hold, and thousands of civilians have been able to leave for safer locations within Ukraine. However, should Russia continue to block implementing of agreements that would provide relief to besieged Ukrainian populations, the U.S. and its NATO allies, in cooperation with international relief organizations, may need to undertake humanitarian interventions, even ones requiring the threat or use of force. Given what the world is witnessing, it is positive to see the International Criminal Court, the UN, and Ukraine’s government, with the support of other governments, launch war crimes investigations. In the future, without ICC jurisdiction over nationals of non-members, the nations of the world may need to create a special tribunal to solely address the charges of Russian crimes in Ukraine. Some difficult hurdles will need to be overcome to create such a tribunal. Perhaps Russia can be suspended from the U.N. Security Council or its veto can be taken away during these hostilities. Or, if a new Russian government comes to power, that might permit the creation of a new tribunal. It is almost certainly the case that we will not see anything like the Nuremberg tribunal, because that was created by the victorious Allied powers that defeated and occupied Nazi Germany. Any new tribunal will need to have both a trial and appellate chamber of judges, and a strong staff of prosecutors and investigators. The longer the conflict in Ukraine goes on, with a growing number of violations of humanitarian and international criminal law that accompany the destruction and violence, the greater the urgency will be to find an appropriate tribunal to build upon the investigations currently underway. The prospects of war crimes charges and trials can help to relieve human suffering and destruction in Ukraine and can complicate the war calculations in the Kremlin by Putin and his military. These prospects are also a potential tool of diplomacy that may lead to negotiations, not only between Russia and Ukraine, but also with other interested parties in the world community, to achieve a settlement. Such a settlement will need to ensure, among many other things, individual accountability for violations of the laws of war and the foreclosure of impunity for those in Russia who caused this atrocious and unnecessary war and are conducting it with extraordinary barbarity and criminality. Russell Bikoff has been a prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office and a federal official in the foreign affairs community and the U.S. Department of Justice. In the mid-1990s, he helped create the first-ever class in conflict resolution at the Foreign Service Institute, an arm of the U.S. Department of State. For the past 15 years, he has practiced law in Washington, D.C., focusing on criminal defense, civil litigation, and other civil matters.

By Jessie Seigel / Washington, D.C. Promise made. Promise kept. On February 25, President Biden fulfilled his campaign pledge to appoint a Black woman to the Supreme Court, announcing his nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to replace Justice Stephen Breyer when he retires at the end of this term. If confirmed, Judge Jackson, currently on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, will be the first Black woman to sit on the court, an historical landmark that carries with it important symbolism. In announcing the nomination, the president said, “For too long, our government, our courts, haven't looked like America.” He added, “I believe it's time that we have a court that reflects the full talents and greatness of our nation with a nominee of extraordinary qualifications, and that we inspire all young people to believe that they can one day serve their country at the highest level.” Sheryl Guinn, president of the NAACP Nashville Chapter, addressed the symbolic importance of Jackson’s nomination, telling Nashville News Channel 5, "It was literally illegal for us to read and now we're sitting on the highest court of the land... and making decisions that you and all of your family have to follow." Guinn added, "When you see someone that looks like you in places it reminds you that I really can get to those other places. Those really can be goals for me. It's not something that's off limits." Judge Jackson’s nomination has led me to reflect on my own legal career. I started law school in 1974, two decades before Judge Jackson, when it was much harder for women to enter the legal profession. If I remember correctly, in my first year, only 18 percent of my entering class at the University of Michigan Law School were female. Some third-year male students observed at the time that when they had started, three years before that, there had been only three women in their class. And though I am not Black, given the dearth of women in the profession at the time, one would expect that I would have had reactions, similar to those Guinn describes, about legal role models for women. But, while growing up, it never occurred to me that because Clarence Darrow (my initial inspiration) was male, he was not a model for my aspirations. I even took the unequal accommodations in the law quad—the law school’s version of dormitories—in stride. In my first year there, we women had to walk through a large men’s restroom containing urinals to get to the laundry room. Some women felt embarrassed by this. My own reaction was, I’m fully dressed. If some guy is not—he’s the one who should be embarrassed. By the time we graduated, there were separate restrooms for men and women and a hall between the two, leading to the laundry room. Progress! Perhaps the complete sense of equality within my family made me oblivious to the reality that discrimination against women would be an obstacle for me. Although my brother recently told me that my mother worried for me and thought me very brave to pursue a legal career, the only things she said to me were, “You know it’s going to be harder because you’re a woman,” and “are you sure? It sounds so boring.” Both cautions went in one of my ears and right out the other. By that time, I had not only Clarence Darrow but such TV shows as the flashy Judd for the Defense and the idealistic The Young Lawyers dancing through my head. But my nearly 30-year career was spent at administrative agencies, not in the courtroom. I began my legal work at the Interstate Commerce Commission, regulating railroads and the rates they could charge for transporting goods. There, I discovered that legal analysis could be complex, intellectually challenging, and deadly boring at the same time. Most of my career, however, was spent at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, regulating hydroelectric projects. This was a bit more interesting since it largely involved environmental issues. Nevertheless, one point goes to my mother for her perspicacity about the nature of law. As for her other point… I was very lucky that the women’s movement came along, changing the country, just as I was coming of age to apply to law school—or I probably would have had a rude awakening. I remember one female classmate telling me that she had originally become a teacher rather than pursue her dream of being an attorney, because the University of Michigan Law School, for the main part, did not admit women. She was 35 years old before our law school finally was forced to let women in, allowing her to fulfill her dream. In my personal reaction to the uneven situation in the profession, I am likely an outlier as relates to the need for role models who are of one’s own race, gender, or background. But for those who need such examples in order to aspire to great things—what a model Ketanji Brown Jackson is already! I was a good attorney—very good at my work—but comparing myself to Jackson would be like comparing a housepainter to Leonardo da Vinci. It troubles me to see more emphasis on her being a first than on her brilliance. So, let’s introduce ourselves to this amazing person in all her breadth. Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Background Judge Jackson was both gracious and modest in her acceptance of the Supreme Court nomination. She said she was “humbled by the extraordinary honor.” She also praised the soon-to-depart Justice Breyer, for whom she clerked in 1999, saying that he “exemplified every day in every way that a Supreme Court justice can perform at the highest level of skill and integrity, while also being guided by civility, grace, pragmatism and generosity of spirit.” Furthermore, addressing him directly, she said: "Justice Breyer, the members of the Senate will decide if I fill your seat. But please know that I could never fill your shoes." I disagree. I think that Ketanji Brown Jackson has a perception grounded in a variety of family influences and legal experience that will see her more than fill Breyer’s shoes. I predict that if Jackson is confirmed, through her understanding of humanity and of law, this comparatively young 51-year-old justice will, in the course of her career, surpass Breyer. In 2013, when Justice Breyer honored Judge Jackson by swearing her in as a federal district court judge, he said, “She sees things from different points of view, and she sees somebody else’s point of view and understands it.” It is likely Jackson’s breadth of experience that enables her to see things from those different viewpoints. Jackson was born in Washington D.C. but raised in Miami. Her parents were schoolteachers. Her father later went to law school and became an attorney with the Miami-Dade County School Board, and her mother became a principal at a public magnet school. According to The New York Times, “One of young Ketanji’s earliest memories was sitting side by side in the evenings with her father when he was in law school — him with law books, her with coloring books.” In her acceptance of Biden’s nomination, Judge Jackson said, "I watched him study and he became my first professional role model." One of Judge Jackson’s uncles was Miami’s police chief; another was a sex crimes detective; and her younger brother, now an attorney, worked for the Baltimore police in undercover drug stings, and served in Iraq following 9-11. On the other hand, her uncle, (her father’s older brother) was sentenced to life in prison in October 1989 for possession of cocaine with intent to distribute. According to Scotus Blog, while Jackson was working as a public defender, he asked her for help and Jackson referred him to the law firm of WilmerHale, which was handling clemency cases free of charge. The firm filed a clemency petition on his behalf and in 2016, President Barack Obama commuted his sentence along with a number of other nonviolent drug offenders. He died soon after his release. Jackson is married; her husband, Patrick Jackson, is a gastrointestinal surgeon at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, D.C., and the couple have two daughters. Judge Jackson graduated from Harvard College magna cum laude in 1992 and from Harvard Law School in 1996. During her time in law school, she was a supervising editor for the Harvard Law Review. (President Obama was the first black president of the law review in 1990.) Jackson’s legal career has been diverse—more so than those currently on the Supreme Court. Before becoming a federal judge, she spent time as a private-practice attorney, an assistant federal public defender, and vice chair of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, an independent agency that provides sentencing guidelines for federal courts. While on the Sentencing Commission, Jackson and other commissioners voted in 2011 to apply a law easing penalties for crack cocaine possession retroactively. According to The Wall Street Journal, “At the meeting taking up the vote, she spoke at length at what she described as the gross injustice of the prior policy of treating offenders trafficking in powder cocaine more leniently.” Likely an awareness of her uncle’s situation gave Jackson an added insight into the importance of her fairness argument. Last year, during her confirmation hearing for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, Jackson said that, as a trial judge, she took care to make sure that defendants understood what was happening in the legal process: “I think that’s really important for our entire justice system because it’s only if people understand what they’ve done, why it’s wrong, and what will happen to them if they do it again that they can really start to rehabilitate.” This supremely intelligent, down-to-earth understanding of the effect of our justice system would be a tremendous boon to Supreme Court considerations. In her eight years as a U.S. District Court federal trial judge in Washington, D.C., Jackson wrote more than 550 opinions. Among these was the 2019 opinion in which she ruled that former White House counsel Don McGahn did not have immunity from testifying in a congressional investigation of then President Donald Trump. This was the decision in which Jackson famously wrote “Presidents are not kings.” In addition, since joining the appellate court last June, Jackson was part of a three-judge panel that denied Trump’s challenge to a congressional subpoena for White House records related to the Capitol insurrection. Neither of these decisions will endear Judge Jackson to Republican senators. Confirmation—A Race Against Time Since Jackson was vetted only last year for her position on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and confirmed in a bipartisan 53-44 vote, one would expect that her nomination to the Supreme Court would go forward smoothly. But think again. Former Congressman and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, a conservative Republican, gave Jackson an unqualified endorsement, tweeting: “Our politics may differ, but my praise for Ketanji’s intellect, for her character, and for her integrity, is unequivocal.” And Ryan would have personal reason to know something of Jackson’s character since he is related to her by marriage. The twin brother of Jackson’s husband is married to the sister of Paul Ryan’s wife. But Ryan is no longer in the House and was never in the Senate. True to form, the three Senate Republicans—Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska—who only last June joined Democrats in voting to confirm Jackson for the appellate court, are backtracking on her nomination to the Supreme Court. Senator Murkowski is suddenly without opinion. According to the Wall Street Journal, she said she is “committed to doing my due diligence before making a final decision on this nominee.” And though Senator Collins praised Judge Jackson’s credentials, she said she would be thoroughly vetting her. Senator Graham, who had signaled he would consider voting for his home state’s contender, Judge Michele Childs, churlishly tweeted: “The attacks by the Left on Judge Childs from South Carolina apparently worked.” But there were no “attacks by the Left.” Childs and Jackson are well within the same ballpark when it comes to their judicial philosophy. Apparently, having no other way to cast aspersions on Jackson, Graham also tweeted: “The Harvard-Yale train to the Supreme Court continues to run unabated.” Judge Childs did not attend an Ivy-League law school; Judge Jackson did. I feel sure this fact was not the basis for President Biden’s decision. In any event, for Graham to complain about that is the height of hypocrisy considering that five of the six Republican appointees on the Supreme Court attended either Harvard or Yale. And if Jackson had not attended Harvard or Yale, Graham would probably be using that to claim she’s not qualified. Senate Minority Leader and Chief Obstructionist Mitch McConnell, of Kentucky, issued a statement saying: “The Senate must conduct a rigorous, exhaustive review of Judge Jackson’s nomination as befits a lifetime appointment to our highest court.” One wants to yell, “Like you did for Amy Coney Barrett? “ But, fortunately, since confirmation now only requires 50 votes plus that of the vice president—so long as nominally Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema do not insist on so-called bipartisanship in order to get their votes—Republicans should not be able to obstruct. And so far as timing goes, what is good for the goose is good for the gander. Given that the Democrats could lose control of the Senate in the November 2022 midterm elections, there is need to act on Judge Jackson’s nomination quickly. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is said to be treating the Amy Coney Barrett timeline as a model. Once the president sends her nomination to the Senate, the Democratic leadership plans to hold a prompt hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee followed by a request to the Senate as a whole to immediately confirm her to the Supreme Court. They hope to have the confirmation vote by mid-April. Will spring leave Judge Jackson merely sitting on the bench, or promoted to the highest one? Female members of the bar like me will be watching closely. 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 Marieke Slovin Lewis / Prescott, Ariz. “What’s all this fuss I have been making about, thought I to myself—the man’s a human being just as I am: he has just as much reason to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him.” -Herman Melville, Moby Dick In my experience, one of life’s great challenges is talking (as opposed to shouting) with people who hold different world views. It’s easy to get into an altercation even with someone holding similar beliefs. When I was teaching in France in 2004, I met another American teacher after an orientation training. We got to talking about the upcoming Bush-Gore election. We were chatting as chums until she said she was voting for Nader. We were both environmentalists, but I believed that voting for Nader would take votes away from Gore. Pretty much the interchange unraveled from there. The dialogue became so heated we had to stop talking and part ways. In the years since, I have studied nonviolent communication, meditation, yoga, and sustainability. I have worked a great deal on my own communication skills, and I have lived all over the country and the world. My husband and I left the United States five years ago, spending that time living in Brussels, Belgium and Bailleul, France. We met people from all over the world. My husband studied for his doctorate at a Flemish university. I studied yoga at a studio where the regular clientele were like a United Nations of countries represented by men and women in multicolored yoga pants. I also volunteered every Monday afternoon at the Fedasil Arrival Centre, the first port of call for people registering for asylum in Belgium, where I led weekly songwriting workshops for refugees to write songs from their migration stories. When my husband and I arrived in Belgium mere months before the 2016 presidential election, we joked that at least if Donald Trump were elected, we would be safely ensconced in Europe. We went to bed the night of the election with Hillary in the lead and were shocked to wake up to four years of Trump. In the years since his election, there has been a domino effect from more outspoken bigotry, misogyny, and racism. This has led to escalating tensions and an ever-increasing divide both in the United States and in Europe. Populism and conservative movements are on the rise and discrimination and intolerance along with them. This past summer, we returned from Europe to our home in Prescott, Arizona, a place where we quite literally experience this divide every time we leave the house. If we are not careful, and get sucked into the dark vortex of social media, we are not even safe from intolerance and ignorance in our own home. Prescott is a quirky kind of community. We joke that there are people from all walks of life and everyone meets at the dog park. Before we moved to Europe from Arizona, a man at the dog park told me he wouldn’t move there without his gun. He also suggested that I have someone from Arizona mail me a box with Stetson hat in it and then to be sure to open it in front of all the Belgians. He didn’t make any suggestions of what to do after opening the box. My husband works at Prescott College, a private liberal arts school with a focus on social justice and sustainability. There are yoga teachers and cowboys in Prescott, along with an annual rodeo people celebrate as the world’s oldest. There is a large VA hospital and retired vets. Embry-Riddle University draws many pilots, many slated for the military. There are signs around the town center that read, “Prescott, Everyone’s Hometown.” But the happy inclusivity suggested in this sign is not part of the reality for everyone in Prescott. We know many left-minded folk, LGBTQ+, and people of color who have left Prescott because they did not feel welcome. Nearly a year since our return, we are wondering what we are doing back here instead of in Europe, where people are not armed and have access to high quality, affordable healthcare. Soon after our return, we met a young woman and her puppy while we were out walking with our own dog along one of the trails by our house. Our dog is a husky and instantly took a liking to her puppy, a husky-lab mix. Huskies have a particular way of playing similar to that of wolves. Lots of vocalizations and chewing on ears and neck. It can alarming to people who are not familiar with the breed. Huskies all play this way, and it is especially fun for them to play together. We agreed that it would fun for the dogs to get to play together periodically, and we began walking in the mornings several times a week. The young woman—I will call her Rachel—would text me when she and Zeus were headed our way. As soon as my dog, Atticus, got wind of Zeus, he was overcome with excitement. I would attempt to get him to sit before taking his leash off. He would instantly set off at a sprint to greet his best friend. We spent a half hour, walking a loop around the neighborhood. Then the dogs would play in my yard before we parted ways for the day. The encounters were pleasant. I learned that Rachel was originally from the Southeast and now worked at a smoke shop in town. Her go-to outfits were leggings, sneakers without socks, and hooded sweatshirts. We chitchatted, exchanging small-talk pleasantries. I made assumptions from our conversations about her worldview and values. She described the unfolding of the pandemic in this area, and I talked about my experiences in Europe. She mentioned at one point that there was a strict masking up policy in a town called Jerome, an artist enclave on Mingus Mountain, not far from Prescott. Since she didn’t say anything at that point about not masking up, I assumed this was her own protocol. I am not much of a small talk kind of person. I like to share elements of my life and experience. And it’s challenging to keep the conversation limited to the weather when you spend 30 minutes with a person several times a week. So our conversations naturally began to evolve. She shared challenges she was facing at her work, and I talked about Buddhist philosophy and the teachings of Thich Nath Hahn. It wasn’t until we had been walking for several months later that I learned that she was not vaccinated and that she believed the pandemic was a conspiracy put forward by the government. This was revealed when I mentioned being happy to be teaching yoga in a studio again but also nervous to be in a space where no one was wearing a mask, even though I was vaccinated and boosted. I’m sure you know I am not vaccinated, she said to me. I recall nodding in response, too nonplussed to say anything. I understand when people have legitimate health concerns surrounding the vaccine. I have trouble with people protesting tracking devices being slipped into vaccines while they simultaneously post selfies of their whereabouts on social media. Another morning, we spoke at length about the importance of kindness. For me, kindness is thinking about other people’s wellbeing and not just my own. This includes getting vaccinated. I think being able to find common ground and engage in dialogue even when our beliefs might be very different is what will save the world, I said. She agreed. Back at the house, our conversation turned toward politics and conspiracy theory. It turned out that she was a Trump supporter. This was revealed when I mentioned that at least Biden was better than Trump in response to one of her comments. She did not agree and proceeded to talk about how Trump had done much more for the country than Biden and that the media vilified the former President every step of the way. She went on to say that governments had gone to great lengths to convince people there was a pandemic rocking the globe. To avoid conflict, I didn’t add anything further than to say that I did not agree, and we soon parted ways. The shock waves from this conversation left me feeling unsettled, disappointed, and physically ill. It took a lot of cleaning house to rid myself of the vestiges of nausea from hearing someone I had come to care about claim that Trump and the Republicans were well-intentioned. It seemed unconscionable that anyone could actually make this claim. I just assume that people who are kind and care about helping other people will agree that overall, the Democrats do more for the many than the Republicans. My thoughts and emotions spiraled into a dark, ethical place as I contemplated ad nauseum the many questions, rhetorical and specific, this interchange raised in my heart and mind. If she supports Trump, how does she feel about Jews? Homosexuals and transgenders? Black Americans? Refugees? Does she refer to people fleeing unsafe situations as refugees, undocumented immigrants, or flat out illegal? Such is my discomfort with conflict and confrontation that I thought about simply ghosting her without explanation and avoiding walking with her anymore. I definitely did not relish the idea of an actual in-person dialogue to explain how I had been affected by her words. Instead, I took the route of written communication and sent a text that I would be happy to continue walking with her but that I did not want to talk about politics. I added that I was saddened and pained by the way Trump and Republicans had treated women, refugees, people of color, LGBTQ+, and minorities. Rachel: Of course we can still walk together, I’m not hateful like that. The one thing I’ll say, for your own sanity, is I would definitely educate yourself a little more if you’re open to it because a lot of the “liberal” side is just as against the same things as “Republicans” and in worse ways sometimes, they just hide it. But we can most definitely still walk together and definitely not talk about politics. Me: Honestly, I don’t think there’s a huge difference between Democrats and Republicans, but Democrats tend to try to put forward efforts that help people. I’m not a big fan of politicians in general. We texted back and forth and eventually we decided that we preferred the company of our huskies to that of most people. With this detente I felt some relief, but there was one comment that continued to concern me over the course of the next several days. The one thing I’ll say, for your own sanity, is I would definitely educate yourself a little bit more… I have learned that it’s best not to respond when you are triggered. I also know from experience that written communication about difficult matters can lead to all kinds of interpretation and misunderstanding. I learned this the hard way when my husband and I were long distance for four years. Now if I text him about a topic that could lead to miscommunication if we text about it, he will usually respond, Can we talk about this when I get home? With all of this in mind, I did not respond right away and instead sent her response to my husband and a couple of close friends to get their thoughts and advice. Friend: It seems to me that she's genuine and doing the best she can. Me: I don’t know. She was not at all open to hearing different views. I mean, maybe that is the best she can do. My husband: I think you should stop texting about it and probably not walk with her anymore if it was causing this much duress. Life is too short. Another friend suggested that there were other dogs in Prescott that my dog could play with. She told me there is a Facebook group called “Inclusive Prescott.” She suggested that I could join and share a post, Seeking open-minded people and their dogs to walk with….. I wanted to be able to find a resolution and continue to walk with them. Part of this was because I agreed with my friend who thought Rachel was being genuine and trying. I also did not want to have a conflict with a person whom I might pass on a regular basis, walking in our neighborhood. Finally, I wanted to be the kind of person who could find a way to be amicable and friendly with someone, even if they held different beliefs. Wasn’t that an integral element of diversity in action? I also wanted to alleviate the unresolved feelings of discomfort I was continuing to experience, and so I decided to communicate about how I was affected by her words. Rachel texted me the following Monday morning to walk. Me: We have painters coming. I am also still feeling bummed out about your comment that I need to educate myself. Rachel: I do apologize for offending you, but I do wish you would have said something the other day so I could have explained and not stewed on it for days staying upset about. I didn't mean it as you are uneducated, just maybe not as open to hearing things that don't fit your beliefs/views as I am, which again isn't a bad thing. In my experience, a lot of people have formed opinions/views and aren't ever willing to even see another perspective or what is actually the truth is all and that's part of what's wrong with the world right now. Again, I apologize for offending you and hope you have a great day 🤓👋 Was I really not open to hearing different beliefs? Was I a metaphor for the division and intolerance in the world? I reflected on this, reminding myself that miscommunication and interpretation run rampant in written communication. Me: Thanks. I think we both seem pretty set on the truth we see. It would be nice for people to be more open, I agree. Sending you both love on this chilly morning. ❤️ Rachel: I am 1000% open to hearing other truths and perspectives actually, I welcome it. I often ask people how our current administration is helping this country and its citizens and no one can seem to give me an actual answer is all lol but I would still welcome the conversation and listen to what that person had to say and if it was something I'd never heard before, I would look into it further. These are the difficult conversations that our nation does not seem to be engaging with. Politics and beliefs are ever more binary. Tempers and stress are at an all-time high. And dialogue has become even more challenging. With all of this in mind, I tried to judiciously share a modicum of information with Rachel. Me: That’s great. I can certainly send you information. I honestly don’t love politicians, but I think overall the Democrats do try to help the many. Trying to protect voting rights, for example, as opposed to making it more difficult for minorities to vote. Trying to help people have affordable healthcare. It just didn’t seem like you were open to any critique about the Republicans or Trump. She did not reply to the examples I shared. Rachel: Evil doesn't choose sides and it's everywhere right now. At this point, the ultimate battle is good vs evil and that's all I focus on. I am always open for conversation, I create a very safe space for people bc that's what I would want. I just can't always guarantee that the conversation is going to cater to their feelings and not just be a real, truthful conversation. One of the reasons I don't have many serious conversations with people these days, I'm not going to sugarcoat the truth just to avoid conflict, and people can't handle that. I think the key word here is “truth.” It’s a slippery term, especially because pretty much any truth you want to believe can be justified through interpretation of religious texts, information online, and views shared by friends, family, and politicians. I still felt that she was embracing a fairly myopic perspective on what might be considered “truth,” but I also recognized that this may come more from being limited in her life experiences and role models. I have been privileged to live and travel all over the world. I have witnessed firsthand the long-term, often devastating effects of poor international policies and national policies. I have also intentionally worked with people with very different backgrounds from my own. Me: I think there are many promises made and a lot of time spent on making people afraid or like they need a person or group of people to blame. Not much accountability. I also think truth is a tricky thing and there is so much information online and information presented in nuanced ways (and incompletely) so that any truth an individual, politician, or corporation wants to present is possible. She didn’t respond to any of my reflections on truth or ways the Democrats were attempting to help the many as opposed to Republicans, who I see consistently opposing any actions that might help those in the greatest need. She did seem to want to be able to keep trying to communicate, and this was what I found most hopeful. Rachel: Having difficult conversations that don't actually end in a horrific fight is a good thing I think. For me at least, helps restore my faith in humanity a little. Just hard to stay a good person when there's so much evil in the world, but that's how we'll win this 💕 As children we learn that if we don’t have anything nice to say we shouldn’t say anything at all. I agree with this to an extent. There are zealots and extremists with whom it is a complete waste of energy to try to engage in any kind of dialogue. On the other hand, when a person is coming from a place of wanting to embody compassion, I will try to meet them halfway. My husband suggests that when we come up against people with closed minds or hatred in their heart it is because they are living in their own nightmare, and this can stem from all kinds of life experiences and choices in how they view the world. My husband will often suggest that instead of sending ire or wrath, I can send blessings. So this is what I did. Me: You are a GREAT person!❤️ Rachel: Thanks, so are you! I may not have saved humanity from itself just yet, but at least I was able to keep an open heart. In a place like Arizona, this is no small feat. And if we don’t have anything nice to say, we can always send an emoji heart. Marieke Slovin Lewis is a writer, musician, singer-songwriter, yoga teacher, and editor. She holds a Ph.D. in Sustainability Education and writes music from people's life stories, using a method called Story-to-Song that she developed with a fellow doctoral student. She was recently recognized as a finalist for the 2021 Amateo Award for arts participation projects in Europe for her project, "On the Move: Poems and Songs of Migration," for which she wrote songs with refugees and asylum seekers in Brussels, Belgium about their migration experiences. Marieke is a wandering soul and has lived all over the world. She is currently living with her husband, three cats, and a big white husky in Prescott, Arizona.

By Carly Mitchell / New York City (The author, a public-school teacher, is using a pseudonym for professional reasons) All year, I have been reminding my seventh graders in Brooklyn to pull up their masks. I would estimate that I have uttered the phrase “I don’t want to see your noses!” thousands of times. (Okay, maybe that is a bit hyperbolic, but you get the point.) I have never had a student refuse to wear his or her mask. Sometimes they just forget or simply need a mask break, which I completely understand. After I became sick with Covid during the Omicron surge in December, I became especially adamant about the need for students to wear their masks properly. I was candid with them. “Trust me guys,” I would say, “I got sick, I brought it home to my family, and I do not want that to ever happen again. I know a lot of us are tired of covering our faces and I know we aren’t always comfortable, but we have to wear our masks, and wear them properly.” To be completely honest, wearing a mask while teaching has had its challenges. My “teacher look,” which I felt I had perfected, is not quite as powerful when the lower half of my face is covered. (The teacher look is exactly what it sounds like– a look of disdain that involves narrowing your eyes and pursing your lips and, if the behavior is especially inappropriate, flaring your nostrils.) I never realized until the pandemic how much silent communication happens in the classroom. For example, pre-Covid, it was easier to tell if students did or did not understand something by judging their facial expressions. And while our eyes communicate plenty– so does the rest of our face–I also found that it took me a bit longer to create emotional connections with some of my students because I could not always tell how they were feeling (and seventh graders are feeling a lot– believe me). Another difficult part of teaching with a mask on is speaking clearly. To remedy this, many teachers with whom I work purchased microphones early on in the pandemic so that students could hear them better. While I did not do this myself (I have a fairly loud voice already), I saw how helpful it was for teachers who were tired of straining their voices. So when the official citywide school mask mandate was on Monday, March 7th,, I was surprised to see most of my homeroom students were still wearing their masks when they entered my classroom (albeit many still wearing it incorrectly). I wondered if they had forgotten. Then, my principal, Ms. J., made an announcement on the loudspeaker about masks being optional and the importance of respecting one another’s personal decision whether to wear or to forgo a mask. I looked around the classroom to see if any students had a reaction to her announcement. Would there be a dramatic gesture of some sort? Students peeling their masks off their faces and stomping on them? An excited stampede to the garbage can to toss away their facial coverings? To my surprise, there was barely an acknowledgement of my principal’s speech. As the day pressed on, I took note of how many students were maskless. I would guess that out of an average class of 18 students, only four or five students opted to pass on the mask. At one point, I even heard a student admonish another for not wearing her mask: “Yo! Pull your mask up!” (though in retrospect ,this was probably his way of asking his peer to stop talking and to leave him alone– ahh, seventh-grade drama!). By Friday, not much had changed. Most students were still donning their masks. Now, I have some theories as to why so many students are reluctant to ditch their facial coverings. To start, many of my students live with older or immuno-compromised family members. I figure they may still be worried about getting a loved one sick. There are also many students in my urban school who are not vaccinated. While I am not privy to these numbers, I have overheard many conversations between students who have expressed their hesitation to get vaccinated (or more accurately, their parents’ or guardians' hesitation to vaccinate them). In one such conversation, a student mentioned the United States’ troubling history of medical racism and explained that this contributed to her fear of the vaccine. Other students take issue with the fact that the vaccine is mandated by the government. Because the vaccine is so politicized, though, I cannot encourage my students to get vaccinated, I can only ‘strongly suggest’ it. I have another theory as to why so many students are leaving their masks on: they are young and impressionable and the past two years have seriously imprinted them in a way that is not easily shaken off. They are so used to wearing their masks that it is almost as if these pieces of cloth have become a protective layer of sorts– a thin barrier that helps them to maintain some sense of privacy and protection in such a tumultuous world. Then again, some are probably just looking to see what their classmates will do. Maybe once more masks come off, others will follow. This is seventh grade after all. 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 Bonnie Fishman / San Francisco Bay Area I would be remiss if I didn’t write a column about our contractor and friend, Javier, known to his inside circle of friends as Vince. Vince is a true Renaissance man. According to Merriam-Webster, that’s the proper way to describe a person who has wide interests and is expert in many areas. There was never a truer statement about anyone I know. Building? Plumbing and electrical? Solar energy? Car repair? Motorcycles (he has 7)? Flying his own plane? Fishing? Hunting? Gardening? Cooking? A little history to further illuminate Vince’s amazing abilities: He and his family escaped from Cuba when it was obvious that it was going to be unbearable to live there with Fidel Castro in charge. They “illegally” went to Madrid first, then moved to New Jersey. Picture this: Vince arrived in a new country, age 12, during the dead of winter, and was sent off to school even though he didn’t speak English. This did not go well. Ultimately, Vince was sent to live in California where he learned English from his cousins. He never left the state. Fast forward. Vince is now 65 and a licensed contractor. He has created a successful building business. He literally can do anything. Or he’s “got a guy.” Vince built our whole Fishman Family compound from the ground up. It was fascinating and fun to collaborate with him daily on the project during my house construction. Did we talk about the house all the time? Heck no! We talked FOOD! Vince is my cooking muse. We share recipes, cooking techniques, and ingredient procurements. Do you want fresh milk to make cheese? No problem, Vince knows where one of the few certified dairy farms is located that sells unpasteurized milk, which he buys weekly. Is the milk for morning cereal? Heck no. He makes his own herb cheese, butter and buttermilk, and uses the whey to make his bread. Vince is so inventive, he decided he wanted to make salted butter. Regular salt, you ask? Heck, no. He smoked his own Himalayan sea salt before blending it into the butter. How many people do you know who raise their own meat? Vince. He has had goats, rabbits, chickens, lambs. I was complaining one day how hard it was to find lamb stew meat around here. He pipes in “I got one up in my field that I can have butchered. You can have as much as you want.” Geez. One of my favorite stories about our friend still makes me laugh out loud. Last year during bird migration, flocks of geese were consistently flying over his ranch. He decided to keep a two-gauge shotgun by the back door. One morning, he hears the geese approaching. Vince grabs the shotgun, takes aim and BOOM! A goose lands 10 feet from his BBQ grill. He slaps that puppy on the grill for dinner that night. What a guy, so resourceful. Vince also owns an ocean-worthy fishing boat, moored in Monterey Bay. One time, he calls us up at the compound to ask if we like to eat sand dabs. Sand dabs are small fish that thrive in the waters off the West Coast. We all say, “sure!” Within an hour, Vince is sitting on an overturned bucket in our driveway with a small table and his trusty knife, scaling and gutting sand dabs for our dinner. Resourceful. If there’s one word that I would use to describe Vince, it would be “generous.” To quote Theodore Roosevelt “Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.” That is our family friend. Besides his breadth of knowledge, Vince is a deeply caring person. But don’t tell him that! As a gesture, when my husband Bob and I were back in Michigan for three months last year, Vince built us a raised cedar box vegetable garden, fully planted and irrigated. We came back to California to a lush variety of veggies. In the spirit of his generosity, Vince provided me with a classic Cuban recipe of black beans and rice. He takes great care in making this dish and hovered over me to make sure I got it right. The dish is usually served as the major portion of your dinner plate, with a small side of protein, such as pork, chicken, beef, or fish. Often you see fried plantains next to it. There are no short cuts in making these beans–you must use dried black beans, not canned. Look for shiny, even-sized, small ones. Whatever you do, do NOT salt the water when cooking the beans or they will take forever to soften. Feel free to use this versatile dish as an accompaniment to anything you see fit. This week I paired it with Tajin sautéed shrimp and an avocado, mango, lime and cilantro salad. Delicious! Let us know at The Insider what you come up with. Buen provecho! Cuban Black Beans on Rice Yield: 8-10 servings 1 lb. dried black beans 1 green pepper, seeded and cored, quartered 1 bay leaf Sofrito: 1/3 c. olive oil 1 lg. onion, finely chopped 7 garlic cloves, minced 1 green pepper, seeded, cored, finely chopped 1 Tbsp. ground cumin 1 tsp. ground oregano 1 tsp. salt 1 Tbsp. white vinegar 6 oz. Golden cooking wine, Edmundo or Goya (substitute white wine with a good pinch of salt) 1 Tbsp. sugar Put the beans in a 5-6 qt. pot. Cover with 2” of water. Allow the beans to soak overnight. Add the quartered green pepper and bay leaf to the pot. Add additional water to cover by 2”. Bring to a boil; turn down to a simmer. Cook for about 1 1/2 hours, adding more water if needed. When the beans are barely soft but not split, remove from heat. Make the sofrito: In a large skillet, heat the oil over moderate. Add the onions, garlic, and green pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the onions are translucent, about 10 minutes. Add the cumin, oregano, salt, and vinegar. Turn down to low and cook 5 more minutes. Take 2 ladles of beans from the pot and put them in the skillet. Using a meat pounder or a potato masher, mash the beans into the sofrito until they are broken up. Transfer the contents of the pan back into the beans. Add the wine and sugar. Return the beans to a boil. Turn down to simmer. Cook for another 30 minutes or so until the beans are tender. Stir often. You want to have some liquid in with the beans so they soak into the rice. Adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper. White Rice Yield: 7 cups 3 c. long grain white rice 4 c. water 1 1/2 tsp. salt Put the rice in a fine strainer and rinse under running cold water until the water runs clear. Put the rice, water, and salt in a saucepan. Cover. Bring to a boil; turn down to a low simmer. Cook for 20 minutes or until the water is absorbed. Fluff with a fork before serving. 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 John Rolfe / Red Hook, N.Y. When gas prices hit record highs in the U.S. last week, Americans were well into their customary moaning and groaning about “pain at the pump.” Never mind that in the best of times, Europeans generally pay much higher prices than we do, or that World War III is brewing in Ukraine. We are too busy indignantly seeking a scapegoat. As usual, it is the President. Donald Trump and the GOP should thank their lucky stars that they aren’t in power right now or the unfair blame would be on their heads. Most Americans are woefully ignorant about how the price of oil and gas is determined, so political parties continually make hay off of hideous geopolitical-economic situations like the one we’re in now. In the interests of enlightenment, here’s a little primer on oil prices from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) I encourage you to read it. It lays bare the utter nonsense politicians and media talking heads always spew when your fuel tab rises. Basically, anything that affects the supply of crude oil and refined petroleum products — war, weather, demand, labor and shipping costs, deliberate production targets (higher or lower in order to regulate prices) set by producers such as the OPEC countries (which control 71% of the world’s crude reserves) — will affect what gasoline, heating oil and other commodities cost you. News Flash: Crude oil is a commodity bought and sold by various entities (companies, traders, etc.) with an eye to future profit, not to supply you with cheap gasoline and heating fuel. According to the EIA, “Crude oil and petroleum product prices are the result of thousands of transactions taking place simultaneously around the world at all levels of the supply chain, from the crude oil producer to the individual consumer. Oil markets are essentially a global auction — the highest bidder will win the available supply.” Throw in global supply chain disruptions caused by the pandemic and the labor shortage it has created, and you have a recipe for the pain we are feeling now, even without a war in Eastern Europe. But decade after decade, millions of Americans set themselves up for a pummeling at the pump by flocking to gas-guzzling vehicles when fuel prices are low. (Remember the Humvee craze?) Trump sure looks like a stable genius now after calling on auto makers to lower fuel efficiency standards in 2020, doesn’t he? It doesn’t seem to occur to some people that with better gas mileage, you can actually go farther on a tank of gas, so you are actually paying less. We also pay little or no heed to how much we actually drive. We’ll make several trips to the store for eggs or milk or chips instead of one weekly trek for everything we need, and we hate doing sensible things like carpooling. No, we’d rather take to the road on our own whenever the whim strikes. It’s our birthright as Americans, right? Look, I’m just a crusty old scold who drives a sporty red 2012 Ford Fiesta midlife crisis car with 130,000 miles on the odometer. It has a stick shift and gets 39 miles per gallon. Granted it’s barely the size of a Matchbox car, but I mainly use it to drive my carcass to and from work. It’s perfect for its purpose and I don’t feel I need a second mortgage every time I go to fill it up, even now. Neither does my wife, who drives a light green 2017 Subaru Forester (30 mpg). Anything bigger for either of us would be a waste of space. And when I look at an SUV, what I see is mostly wasted space taken up by a big thirsty engine. Same with pickup trucks, which are apparently mainly used to fly huge Trump and F**k Biden flags. Biden is naturally taking a public opinion beating for finally nixing the Keystone XL Pipeline (a move that merely eliminated a supply artery for Canadian tar sands crude oil en route to Texas refineries and the global market) and curbing environmentally unfriendly fracking and offshore drilling. (Hey, who needs clean water at a time like this?) It’s amazing how many people refuse to recognize or acknowledge that the pandemic (not Biden or Trump) lowered demand for gas because people stayed home more. Low demand (not Biden or Trump) made the supply go up, which made prices come down. When demand went back up because people started to travel more, the supply was still low (OPEC is intentionally trying to keep it low) and that (not Biden) made prices go up. That’s what you call your law of supply and demand. As the EIA notes, “It takes time to develop new supply sources or to vary production, and when prices rise, switching to other fuels or increasing equipment fuel efficiency in the near term is challenging for consumers to do. These conditions may require a large price change to rebalance physical supply and demand.” Most people can’t or refuse to wrap their minds around that concept. “Well, American oil companies should pump more oil and make more gas and sell it cheaper here!” is the kneejerk demand. News Flash: American oil companies are capitalist enterprises that sell their products on the global market. As economist and conservative/libertarian icon Milton Friedman asserts, corporations have no moral obligation to help their countries. Their main goal and obligation is to maximize profits for their shareholders. That’s why big oil companies are charging $5+ a gallon now for products they produced from crude that was bought much more cheaply weeks ago. Surely Republicans aren’t suggesting that our government order these companies to sell us cheap gas or that the oil industry be nationalized. Egads, that would be socialism, wouldn’t it? Surely those who feel that being required to wear a mask during a pandemic is the height of tyranny will staunchly object to corporations being required to sell their products here for much less than they can get elsewhere, right? Of course, the sooner mankind weens itself off costly petro poison, the better off we and the planet will be. Then again, the green that matters most to humans is money. So fork over more dough and be glad that you’re doing your patriotic duty by making your piggy bank squeal for the greater glory of the fossil-fuel industry and the free market. John Rolfe is a former senior editor for Sports Illustrated for Kids, a longtime columnist for the Poughkeepsie Journal/USA Today Network, and author of The Goose in the Bathroom: Stirring Tales of Family Life. His school bus drivin’ blog “Hellions, Mayhem and Brake Failure” is parked on his website Celestialchuckle.com (https://celestialchuckle.com) with the meter running.

By Laurence Lerman / New York City Actor William Hurt was the leading man in American cinema of the 1980s, shooting to stardom in his film debut in 1980 and appearing in an assorment of Hollywood films over the subsequent decade, many accompanied by critical or commercial success along with numerous awards and accolades. Hurt died on Sunday, March 13, at the age of 71. The cause was complications of prostate cancer. A Washington, D.C. native, Hurt graduated from the Juilliard School before joining New York City’s respected Circle Repertory Company, He acted in a handful of notable Off-Broadway productions prior to being cast as the lead in Altered States, a trippy, science fiction thriller directed by Ken Russell and written by Paddy Chayefsky from his 1978 novel of the same name. In his role as a troubled Harvard scientist dangerously experimenting with expanding states of conscious via isolation tanks and psychedelic drugs, Hurt’s measured, cerebral rendering of his character’s heightened mumbo-jumbo dialogue serves as the perfect complement to Russell’s flamboyant visual style. One early monologue in the film finds Hurt’s Ivy League egghead waxing messianic on the powers of the inner self: “Everybody's looking for their true selves. We're all trying to fulfill ourselves, understand ourselves, get in touch with ourselves, face the reality of ourselves, explore ourselves, expand ourselves. Ever since we dispensed with God, we’ve got nothing but ourselves to explain this meaningly horror of life. And I think that that true self—that original self, that first self—is a real, mensurate, quantifiable thing. Tangible and incarnate. And I’m going to find the fucker.” Heady stuff, huh? But it sounds great in Hurt’s very modern-sounding cadence. A prolific film career as a leading man quickly followed, with a wave of well-received films, including the murder mysteries Eyewitness (1981) and Gorky Park (1983), the TV news dramedy Broadcast News (1987) and the romantic drama Children of a Lesser God (1986). Hurt worked with a number of the era’s leading filmmakers, including writer-director Lawrence Kasdan, with whom he collaborated four times on such movies as The Big Chill (1983), The Accidental Tourist (1988) and, most alluringly, 1981’s Body Heat. The latter, an erotically-charged neo-noir, found Hurt’s seedy lawyer falling in deep with femme fatale Kathleen Turner. It was one of the decade’s sexiest adult offerings. Hurt garnered three Academy Awards nominations for Best Actor that decade, bringing home the prize for his portrayal of a gay inmate sharing a Brazilian prison cell with a revolutionary in 1985’s Kiss of the Spider Woman, directed by Hector Babenco from the novel by Manuel Puig. Hurt also won Best Actor honors for the role at that year’s Cannes Film Festival and British Academy Film Awards. That same year, he was nominated for a Tony Award for his one and only Broadway star turn in David Rabe’s darkly funny Hollywood takedown Hurlyburly. By the late 1990s, following a spate of portrayals as professors, doctors, and other intelligent professionals, Hurt moved from leading parts to supporting roles in both films and prestigious television productions, where he flourished for the next two decades. These included juicy characters in Alex Proyas’s sci-fi noir Dark City (1998), Robert De Niro’s C.I.A chronicle The Good Shepherd (2006), Ridley Scott’s period adventure Robin Hood (2010) and David Cronenberg’s crime thriller A History of Violence (2005), for which Hurt picked up another Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. That was followed by a pair of Emmy nominations for his work in the TV series Damages (2009) and as Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson in the HBO production Too Big To Fail (2011). Hurt also maintained an ongoing presence in the Marvel Comics Universe as General Thaddeus Ross in a handful of blockbusters, from The Incredible Hulk (2008) through last year’s Black Widow. In his small but critical role in Steven Spielberg’s 2001 sci-fi drama A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Hurt portrays a forward-thinking scientist who creates a breed of complex but emotionally stunted humanoid robots. That’s okay, though, because just as he did in Altered States two decades earlier, Hurt makes the feelings real with his own modulated erudition. 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 Jessie Seigel / Washington, D.C. When it comes to broadcast news coverage, I am a high-maintenance gal. I have high standards and, fair or not, I do not suffer fools gladly. I do not grade on a curve. When TV or radio news hosts ask shallow questions and their talking-head pundits pontificate in a pro forma manner, or their interviewees provide evasive answers and the hosts don’t pursue obvious follow-up questions, I’m apt to get irritated. When I hear numerous commentators parrot each other, stating the same conclusions in identical words without any serious analysis, I become disgusted. And I neither forget nor forgive. For example, I still recall that, during the George W. Bush administration, the White House press pool behaved like servile lackeys, more interested in keeping their place in the briefing room than challenging that administration’s lies and evasions. Not to mention that it later took several years for the media to straightforwardly call Trump’s lies “lies.” Those criticisms aside, as relates to the invasion of Ukraine, the television networks have stepped up and done themselves proud. This is true of both the news show hosts and the reporters on the ground in Ukraine and in NATO countries along its borders, who are risking their lives to get information to us–as well as their photographers and camera crews–who are unseen but risk their lives just as much if not more so since they must keep pace while carrying heavy cameras and other equipment. Just this week, Brent Renaud, a Peabody Award-winning documentary filmmaker, producer, and journalist was killed and photojournalist Juan Arrendondo injured when they were shot by Russian troops outside of Kyiv. Ari Melber, Ali Velshi, Lawrence O'Donnell, Chris Hayes (clockwise from top) In my own editorial experiment, I decided to spend an evening with my broadcast buddies at MSNBC. Last Thursday, March 10, I was glued to the tube for four hours, watching their coverage from 6:00 to 11:00 pm. That included The Beat with Ari Melber; All In with Chris Hayes; Ali Velshi (in Rachel Maddow’s time slot); and Lawrence O’Donnell’s The Last Word. (I did take a break between 7:00 and 8:00 pm. Sorry, Joy Reid--my apologies to you.) The factual coverage and analysis on the four shows was comprehensive. The topics were myriad, but they incisively addressed them: the NATO and U.S. move to stronger sanctions on Putin and his oligarchs; the departure from Russia of private foreign industry; the Zelensky government’s repeated requests for fighter planes; and the ways in which Ukrainian civilians are both digging in and fleeing. Most impressive was the war coverage by journalists physically in or near it. Ali Velshi was covering the war from a refugee transit point in Hungary. Cal Perry was reporting from Lviv, Ukraine, a major point at which desperate citizens gather to leave the country. And Richard Engel was reporting as he and his cameraman hurried with Ukrainian troops along a road on the outskirts of Kyiv that could have been bombed at any moment. Two things about the journalists I was watching struck me most. First is the courage of those risking their lives to get information to us on this important struggle. Second, and even more important in a broader, societal sense, is the stark contrast between the freedom of our journalists to report their views of the story and the suppression in Russia of any news other than the state’s propaganda. Vladimir Kara-Murza, vice-chairman of Open Russia, and an opposition democracy activist who twice survived being poisoned by Russia’s federal security service appeared on Ali Velshi’s program. Kara-Murza told the host that every independent media outlet in Russia has been shut down in the last two weeks and that dozens of people have been indicted under a new law that makes even use of the word “war” in reference to Ukraine, punishable by up to 15 years in prison. Thousands of Russians have protested the war in Ukraine and have been arrested and imprisoned. Nevertheless, according to Kara-Murza, under the current circumstances, in which state television is the only source, “most people don’t even know there is a war.” He added that with Russian state television, “you live in this imagined reality” in which it is the West and Ukraine who are to blame; Russia is conducting only a “targeted special operation that does not in any way affect civilians.” According to the network, the Russian government has also cut off access to Facebook and Twitter. Police are even stopping people to check their cell phones for dissemination of prohibited information. Meanwhile, Putin has moved on from his ridiculous claim that Ukraine is run by Nazis to the assertion that the United States and Ukraine have developed biological and chemical weapons. If one pretext for invasion does not work, try another. And—because the United States, unlike Russia, has a free press—Fox News Russia propagandist Tucker “Tucky-O-Rose” Carlson is free to spread Putin’s lies and is doing so. But fortunately, at the moment—unlike Russia—the United States has an abundance of news sources to counter that disinformation. As Rep. Adam Schiff of California, Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, told Lawrence O’Donnell during his hour, it is Russian tradecraft to blame the other side for what they plan to do. Thus, it is quite likely that Putin himself may be planning to use chemical weapons against the Ukrainian population. Accusing your opponent of doing what you are doing or plan to do? Creating an “imagined reality?” If that sounds familiar, it should. We’ve just had five years of that from Donald Trump and his cronies—backed by the Fox News propaganda machine. It is continuing even as I write this, and still accomplishing its propagandist effect on many. Trump and his minions have been the students, but Putin is the master. If we wish to understand the methods and goals of Trumpists, and where we are headed if we don’t pay attention, we have only to look at what Trump’s teacher is doing in Russia today. As imperfect as some members of our media are, our multifarious free press is still our nation’s main bulwark against Russia’s fate. And as long as it remains so, I’ll keep hanging out with my friends on MSNBC. 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 / New York City Overwhelming sadness slammed me when I learned that Emilio Delgado, Sesame Street’s Luis, had died last week from cancer at 81. Luis was a rarity on television— a Mexican-American Fix-It shop owner for 44 years in the Sesame Street nabe. Sometimes he would play his guitar and sing songs of his childhood. How many kids (and their parents) learned Spanish in their jammies? Millions. His friends and neighbors included Big Bird, Mr. Hooper, (whose death was incorporated into the show), Maria, Susan, Gordon, Oscar the Grouch, Cookie Monster, Elmo (I can go on) and Broadway actors, musicians and artists. He often played his guitar and sang in English and Spanish. Luis was the longest running role for a Mexican-American in a TV series. I could watch Mr. Noodle (Broadway veteran Bill Irwin) in sketch after sketch. Ben and Emily memorized classic songs from worn vinyl records. Muppet lore is part of my nomenclature. Generation after generation of viewers learned about kindness, compassion and love through the antics of furry Muppets and their humans. Plenty of jokes, puns and satire kept parents entertained and appreciative of witty scripts. It was a peppy Laugh-In for four-year-olds. We learned sign language from Linda, the alphabet from William Wegman’s flexible Weimaraners, and numbers from the Count. Our toddlers (and we) were nurtured by a kid’s show that wasn’t treacly junk food. We noticed Maria and Luis falling in love. And when marriage was proposed, there was a joyful noise. Maria and Luis tied the proverbial knot in a televised wedding ceremony on May 13, 1988. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house. My house. I was hosting a 9:00 a.m. wedding viewing party attended by a small circle of Sesame Street-crazed mom friends and their kids. We had known each other since joining a two-year-old’s Mommy & Me playgroup at Harborfields Library. My husband and I had just moved from Florida after Long Island’s Newsday made Lew an offer he couldn’t refuse. Escaping Orlando’s life-zapping humidity and flying roaches (palmetto bugs) felt like winning the lottery. Central Florida, where dog racing was a sport, was not a good fit for two Philadelphia natives with a Manhattan jones. We were reluctant only to leave our best friends Sandy and Jim. Maybe the Altamonte Mall for an Orange Julius. But that’s about it. Saving the best for last. Emily. Born in Orlando Hospital. We counted our blessings and skedaddled. Once on the island, I networked to find women friends. An assignment self-directed. Like a job quest. I was on the lookout for interesting moms with small kids who lived nearby and wanted to socialize. I was a breast-feeding mom, lonely and isolated. My husband worked full-time. We had one car. I found a La Leche League chapter and met Claudia, my first Long Island friend. She was a passionate advocate and encouraged me. We became lasting friends to this day. Emboldened, I signed up for a Mommy & Me group that met at the library. One mom, Emily, was Nina’s parent. Nina was striking, with dark features that recalled Leslie Caron. When the group ended, we decided to continue meeting. As the group grew, our friendships blossomed. We were all Sesame Street fangirls, crushing on Luis and admiring Maria’s wit and compassion. Luis and Maria, portrayed by Sonia Manzano, were the heart of the series. Parents tuned in daily for clever Muppet and human repartee (that wasn’t sappy or insipid like Barney), celebrities reciting the alphabet or Big Bird’s dilemma du jour. Sesame Street, created during the late 60s, recalled an iconoclastic, racially integrated urban landscape. Episodes addressed tough issues like disability, home eviction and racism. When my friends gathered for Maria and Luis’ wedding, we knew we were sharing a watershed moment. Emotionally invested in their happiness, we teared up throughout the ceremony. When they promised to love each other forever and sealed the deal with a kiss, we lost it. Our kids were jubilant. We moms shed happy tears, relieved things went smoothly, with nary a hitch. Our celebration continued with a feast of bagels, strong coffee, and a homemade chocolate sheet cake. It was a frozen-in-amber moment. Six-year-olds Emily and Alex bickered like cranky spouses as usual. They hugged it out reluctantly. Moms gathered up their kids' stuff, split the leftover cake and headed off into the sunny day. 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