Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited by Fedot Streletsky
See more about the aftermath of the Venice Film Festival here.
[Regnum] The world of high-end cinema is once again in turmoil. The Venice Film Festival, which recently concluded—one of the most prestigious in the world—wasn't rich in truly noteworthy premieres (with a couple of exceptions, like Martin McDonagh's new film ), but it broke all records for scandals.
It all began with dissatisfaction among progressives about the lack of gender diversity. It turned out that of the 21 films in the main competition, only one was directed by a woman. This led to an open letter with the premise that if female directors weren't "good enough" for the competition, the problem wasn't with the women, but with the selection criteria.
To which festival director Alberto Barbera responded: the only criterion is quality, and selecting based on gender is nonsense. And, in fact, since 2000, Venice has awarded first prizes to more women directors than Cannes or Berlin.
Be that as it may, the main prize ultimately went to the only film in the competition directed by a woman, Danish filmmaker Mai El Touky. Characteristically, it was titled "The Unknown Woman." It's also worth noting that this year's jury was also chaired by a woman: Maggie Gyllenhaal.
But this was only a teaser, a warm-up for truly powerful storms. One of which was triggered by the inclusion of Ilya Khrzhanovsky's film "Dau" in the program. But first, it's necessary to at least briefly explain or remind those who have forgotten what this even is.
Broadly speaking, "Dau" is a socio-cinematic experiment consisting of several separate films, the goal of which was to create a biographical drama about the Soviet physicist Lev Landau. To this end, considerable resources were deployed, and a massive model of a Soviet research institute was built in Kharkiv, where everything was subject to the laws of a totalitarian dystopia.
Filming continued for several years, during which all sorts of rumors circulated about the abominations taking place on set (violence, debauchery, and other immoral practices). When the results of this long work were finally revealed to the public in 2019, the rumors were confirmed.
Particularly strong reactions were provoked by the scene in which the Nazi Maxim Martsinkevich (also known as Tesak), who confessed to murder, deals with a pig, and the scene in which the main character, whose actress Khrzhanovsky called "just a prostitute," is raped with a bottle - without editing or special effects.
All this and much more provoked not only debates about ethical boundaries in art but also the initiation of actual criminal cases. Among other things, these cases involved the exploitation of child labor. Khrzhanovsky himself either denied it all or justified it by claiming it was part of his creative method and necessary to expose the "horrors of the Soviet system."
It's telling that the international trade press, thoroughly hyped by the pompous conceptual presentations, was generally delighted and approved of the creative approach. How, then, can the "horrors of the Soviet system" be exposed without rapes by the bottle and the brutal slaughter of animals, demonstrated in detail on camera?
Now, at the 2026 Venice Film Festival, the project's main film, the very reason for the whole thing, has been shown. Consequently, debates about ethical boundaries have flared up again, but less heatedly. The film itself was generally well-received—because it deals with Soviet totalitarianism and has the right kind of allusion. And Khrzhanovsky was awarded the Silver Lion for Best Director.
In response, he said the "right" words from the stage, dedicating his victory to Kharkiv and the Ukrainians. Even though those same Ukrainians were fundamentally opposed to the Russian Khrzhanovsky ("good" or "bad"—as they've long known, it makes no difference) and his "Dau" participating in the festival. The Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Culture announced this in advance in a joint statement.
Khrzhanovsky had to write an explanatory note in three languages, including Russian for some reason, and refute in detail every accusation brought against him (that DAU was financed by the Kremlin, serves as an instrument of Russian cultural policy, and other similar accusations).
In any case, the impact of this ponderous pseudo-biopic about the misery of fictional people in a fictional USSR is incomparable to the furor created by the premiere of NAZA's film. After the screening, the audience gave it a standing ovation for 25 minutes. In other words, everyone loved it (so much so that the jury awarded it a special prize). Except for the Israelis and their sympathizers.
The thing is, NAZA isn't exactly a film. It's more like a journalistic investigation.
Like being the key word, because what it actually is is slick exercise in anti-Israel propaganda.
Produced by the British newspaper The Guardian,
…which equally hates Israel, America, and the common people of a Britain, except when exploring their more picturesque native customs…
it's a compilation of interviews with Israeli soldiers describing their bombing of Gaza.
The acronym used for the title is a military term used by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and means "collateral damage." This is the subject of an investigation that concludes that the Israeli military is indeed aware that its strikes are killing innocent people, including children.
Because innocents have never, ever been harmed in the entire history of war. Especially when Hamas, the elected government of Gaza, deliberately employs human shields. Ugh.
How can artistic works seriously compete with a completely different kind of product in the same competition at a prestigious festival is a question that, of course, interests no one. Like the question of whether Israeli troops are deliberately killing civilians in Gaza (the answer is already well-known).
But everyone is interested in other questions. For example: what to do with the authors of NAZA now? Their names, by the way, are Yuval Abraham and Rachel Shor. And they are Israeli citizens. But this will likely not last long. Because Israeli Culture Minister Micky Zohar has already initiated proceedings to revoke their Israeli passports.
"I also demanded an investigation: how the materials were obtained, who was behind them, and whether the actions taken to obtain or publish them constituted aid to the enemy during wartime," Zohar added. He also added much more, including accusing the authors of "treason against the state."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for his part, was deeply upset. "We're fighting global incitement to anti-Semitism, and yet two Israeli filmmakers are portraying the Israel Defense Forces as war criminals and drawing applause in Venice," he fumed.
The IDF itself also commented on the situation. They said it was all a lie. Moreover, all the testimony presented was anonymous: the speakers' faces were obscured and their voices altered, making it impossible to identify them. Therefore, perhaps they weren't actually Israeli soldiers, but anti-Semitic troll provocateurs.
IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir even instructed the Military Attorney General to "thoroughly examine the matter and propose possible measures regarding the film and those involved." Despite the fact that the Military Attorney General's authority extends exclusively to the armed forces.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the barricades, people weren't sitting idle either. Some of the world's creative elite spoke out against Israeli lawlessness and the Palestinian genocide, organizing the Venice4Palestine campaign. It was joined by musician Roger Waters, actor Guy Pearce, and more than 200 other prominent figures.
They all signed a collective letter demanding that the festival publicly support Palestine and sever ties with Israeli institutions. This, according to the global creative elite, is bound to bring Israel to its senses and stop the genocide.
Incidentally, Abraham and Shore's previous film, "No Other Land," also fell squarely within the realm of "betrayal of the state": it dealt with the destruction of Palestinian villages in the West Bank and the mass forced displacement of their inhabitants. And it ended up winning an Oscar.
And Palestine enjoys widespread cultural support: Hollywood stars regularly express it through public statements and signatures on those same collective letters. And the British make films about Israel's behavior.
Incidentally, Andrey Khrzhanovsky, the son of Ilya Khrzhanovsky the director of "Dau," also supports Palestine. He attended the NAZA premiere wearing a T-shirt with the corresponding slogan. Incidentally, the son of a foreign agent was detained in Israel back in 2024, and, ironically, on suspicion of "working for Russian-Iranian agents," according to local media.
However, among Russian-speaking people living abroad (particularly "in a country that doesn't fight its neighbors"), who possess "good faces" and left-liberal views, the younger Khrzhanovsky's antics provoked shock and cognitive dissonance. In particular, Bozhena Rynska, a once-successful TV presenter convicted in Russia of inciting hatred, condemned him.
She also asked that "the hatred of Ilya Khrzhanovsky be stopped," as he "doesn't share his son's views," and that "the carpenter Joseph also had problems with his son." But she drew a categorical moral from the incident: "For supporting Palestine, one should be stripped of acquired citizenship."
Thus, a single cultural event, the essence of which is to showcase the cutting-edge achievements of world cinema, managed to deeply offend several social groups at once: radical women's rights activists, Ukrainians and Ukrainian-oriented people, Israelis led by Netanyahu, and, in addition, Russian relocates.
It turns out that cinema still has the capacity to evoke truly powerful emotions. Although sometimes this becomes a byproduct of showing outright trash, hyping it up with primitive shock value. But there's always been plenty of that—even without years of cumbersome experimentation.
[FoxNews] The Progressive Policy Institute found eight of the 10 lowest-scoring states for reading had strong labor unions
States with stronger teachers' unions tend to have weaker literacy performance and have adopted fewer of the policies credited with improving reading outcomes, according to a new analysis from a center-left think tank.
Eight of the 10 states to score among the worst in the Progressive Policy Institute’s (PPI) assessment of early-literacy policies were home to powerful teachers' unions. Among the top 60% of states in terms of early-literacy policy scores, only four had strong teachers' unions.
Mississippi, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina and Indiana, all Republican-leaning states with weak unions, were among the states with the best literacy outcomes. Maine, New York, Illinois, Hawaii, Washington and Rhode Island, blue states, were among the worst.
The pattern isn't universal. Maryland, a blue state with a strong teachers' union, has posted strong reading results, while South Dakota, a red state with a weaker union, has struggled. The differences suggest union strength and party control alone don't explain states' reading performance.
Rachel Canter, PPI’s director of education policy, conducted the analysis with colleagues by comparing teacher-union strength rankings with states’ early-literacy policy scores. Canter is also one of the people behind the slate of educational reforms in Mississippi that propelled the state from among the worst in the country for educational outcomes to among the best.
"Democrats, however, don’t often ask me how to replicate Mississippi’s success," Canter said. "They ask if it’s possible at all, given the power of teachers’ unions in their home states."
Teachers' unions, according to Canter, exert massive amounts of influence over both educational policies and how those policies are implemented in the classroom. This can make schools in states with stronger unions slower to adapt to challenges or to adopt new, better methods.
Mississippi’s reforms, among other things, added kindergarten-through-third-grade screenings, literacy coaches, individual reading plans and held back third-graders who failed the state reading test. The state reinforced those measures with science-based reading instruction, increased teacher training and tougher licensing requirements.
Tweaks to teaching like these can be difficult to achieve in states with influential teachers' unions, with labor reps arguing that the changes place undue burdens on educators.
Many of the states that underperformed in the Progressive Policy Institute’s study also have Democratic leadership. Teachers’ unions spend hundreds of millions of dollars every electoral cycle on electing Democrats and pushing left-of-center policies.
"States dominated by Democrats have been slower to embrace similar reforms," Canter said. "Organized labor might explain some of this gap."
Multiple GOP-led Southern states have adopted educational reforms similar to those introduced in Mississippi. Those same states dominated the Progressive Policy Institute’s rankings of the states with the best student literacy.
#2
In my experience: teaching high-school math, chemistry, and biology in Israel (child support is a bitch) - teacher college graduates with a degree in "something"-education, know zip about that something, and even less about education.
Things work out because private tutoring is one of biggest industries in Israel.
#3
Grom, the teachers just out of college here are unable to teach anything of substance. They pretty much rely on 'canned' curriculum (pre-made by the usual suspects) and perform more as presenters rather than actual teachers.
As old habits die hard, many are doing the same thing twenty years later.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
09/18/2026 10:52 Comments ||
Top||
President Donald Trump is planning to hold a state dinner next week to mark a visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping, and several tech industry leaders are expected to attend.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Apple Executive Chairman Tim Cook are both reportedly planning to attend the state dinner.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is also expected to attend the event, a person familiar with the matter told FOX Business.
The tech leaders' anticipated attendance at the Trump-Xi state dinner comes at a time of geopolitical tensions, including over the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and access to both models and the chips that power them.
The U.S. and China are locked in a competition in which the two world powers are racing to develop more capable AI tools, which have been a source of tension between the countries.
China's access to specialized chips that power advanced AI models has been restricted through the U.S. government's use of export controls on advanced semiconductors, like those made by Nvidia.
Huang has been critical of those restrictions and said in May that China has "all the chips they need" despite the U.S. restrictions.
American companies like OpenAI and Anthropic have relied on using frontier models, which are proprietary and not available for use without purchasing a license, to gain their edge in the AI race. Chinese tech companies have used distillation as a means of using open-weight models to keep up with U.S. firms' frontier models.
Altman and other tech leaders have recently been discussing steps to rein in AI development to ensure the safety and alignment of those models amid concerns about their potential impact on humanity.
"It is the responsibility of the AI companies ourselves to develop the technology safely and to properly test it," Huang told reporters. "If it's not ready, just hold it back. You should go as fast as you can, but no faster than that."
#3
As I recall, one result of Reagan's approach is that the US went from being a creditor nation to a debtor nation. Since this time around, we're already deep in the hole, I'm not sure his methods will work.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited by Kirill Zolotarev
[Regnum] On September 17, 1948, four months after the proclamation of the State of Israel, Count Folke Bernadotte, nephew of the then Swedish king, godfather of the current monarch and a high-ranking UN official, was shot dead in Jerusalem.
A few months earlier, the Swedish diplomat had brokered the first truce between Israel and the Arab states. Earlier, during World War II, he had participated in the rescue of European Jews imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps.
But for Israeli radicals, the peacemaker proved more dangerous than the British colonial officials against whom the underground had fought for years.
FROM THE WHITE BUSES TO PALESTINE
Folke Bernadotte might have been in line for the Swedish throne had his father, Prince Oscar, not married morganatically. The count's family, however, was extremely close to the court of "Uncle Gustav," King Gustav V. Young Count Folke received an excellent military education, but pursued a career in politics and diplomacy. From 1943, Bernadotte served as vice president of the Swedish Red Cross, but his role in the "shadow history" of World War II was far more important.
In 1943-44, members of the Third Reich leadership approached a relative of the royal family, secretly testing the waters for Adolf Hitler. First, about the possibility of transporting supplies through neutral Sweden, and then about unilateral surrender to the Anglo-Americans.
In the spring of 1945, Bernadotte proved to be a key figure in the story chronicled in "Seventeen Moments of Spring"—it was through him that Heinrich Himmler's men conveyed proposals for a speedy separate peace. Soon after, the Swedish diplomat secretly met with the Reichsführer—a contact arranged by Himmler's masseur.
Despite the dubious nature of these contacts (which modern Swedish historians cautiously call "delicate diplomatic missions"), Bernadotte tried to act for the greater good. He set a condition for the Germans: organize the release and transport of prisoners from Nazi concentration camps to neutral countries. This was a chance for salvation, since as the Red Army and the Allies approached, the Nazis destroyed the prisons along with the prisoners.
In March–April 1945, more than 7,000 citizens of occupied Norway and Denmark, including more than 400 Danish Jews, were liberated from the Theresienstadt camp. Simultaneously, several thousand Jewish women were liberated from the Ravensbrück concentration camp.
Thus began Operation White Buses. Red Cross vehicles, painted white, transported people from the camps to Sweden. Among those rescued were not only Scandinavians, but also prisoners from Poland, France, and Czechoslovakia.
In total, thanks to Bernadotte's operation, 21 thousand people were transported across the front line, including more than 1,600 Jews.
Out of six million Jews but it’s something.
The Count's reputation was comparable to that of another Swedish diplomat, Raoul Wallenberg, who saved tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust. It's no surprise that the newly formed UN entrusted Folke Bernadotte with an important mission in the then-burgeoning Middle East conflict.
On May 14, 1948, Israel declared independence. The very next day, armies from neighboring Arab states entered Palestine.
Five Arab armies, plus units and volunteers from elsewhere in the Moslem world, Pakistan is particularly proud of their small contingent.
The UN attempted to stop the fighting and, on May 20, appointed Bernadotte as mediator.
He achieved his first significant results quickly. With the participation of Bernadotte and his assistant, Ralph Bunche, a four-week ceasefire went into effect on June 11. A new round of fighting was followed by a second ceasefire on July 18.
But reaching an agreement on the future of Palestine was much more difficult than forcing the warring parties to a ceasefire.
What future? In those days all the talk was of the pan-Arab nation. The local Arabs insisted repeatedly they were only a small part of the entire Arab nation, no different than the Arabs of the surrounding nations. And that their goal remained the eradication of the Jewish nation in rivers of blood. The whole point of a ceasefire is to continue the war later, and by gum the Arabs fully intended to take their war to victory. It was only after the KGB had trained Yasser Arafat that the tune suddenly changed, almost two decades later.
THE PLAN DIDN'T SUIT ANYONE.
Bernadotte was not an opponent of Israel itself. In his final report, he openly acknowledged that the Jewish state already exists and there is no reason to believe it will disappear.
The dispute began further - with the question of borders.
The mediator proposed securing Galilee for Israel and handing the Negev over to the Arab side. Haifa was to become a free port, and Lydda Airport, a free international airport.
The Split The Difference philosophy of mediation, deliberately ignoring questions like what the original plan had been, and who had accepted the proposal who had rejected it, who had started the war, and what they claimed their goal was. An approach repeated by outside mediators after each war since, to the joy of the Arabs and the dismay of the Israelis.
Bernadotte proposed removing Jerusalem from the sovereignty of both sides and transferring it under the effective control of the UN, with broad autonomy for the Arab and Jewish communities.
Looking at history since, especially the tone of the UN, shall we guess what the outcome would have been, had that particular bit of nonsense become reality?
The refugee issue was even more sensitive for Tel Aviv. Bernadotte insisted on recognizing the right of Palestinian Arabs who fled their homes during the war to return to Israeli-controlled territory, and on compensating those who did not.
But did anyone insist on the same for the Jews when they were driven out a few years later with only what they could carry? At that time Jews owned about a third of Baghdad, for instance, for which they have never received compensation, nor any hint that they have a right to return to the place where their history goes back to a few decades after the Babylonian Exile in 586 BC.
The Israeli leadership considered the abandonment of the Negev unacceptable. The Arab states, for their part, were unwilling to accept Israel's very existence. Therefore, Bernadotte's proposals were unacceptable to either side.
But for one political force, the problem wasn't that the plan was difficult to implement. They considered the mediator himself a threat.
SHOTS FIRED IN KATAMON
This was the organization "Lohamei Herut Yisrael" (LEHI)—"Fighters for the Freedom of Israel." During the British occupation of Palestine, the group was one of the most radical fighters for a Jewish state from the Mediterranean to the Jordan.
Many of the activists subsequently received high positions in the Israeli army, and one of the leaders, Yitzhak Shamir, became prime minister.
During World War II (when other Zionist groups “paused” their fight against Britain, and many activists even joined its army), LEHI made contact with the Germans – according to the principle “the enemy of my enemy…”.
To be fair, the group only knew about state anti-Semitism in Germany (which would allegedly encourage Jews to repatriate to Palestine), but did not know about the “final solution to the Jewish question.”
Unlike more widespread Jewish armed groups, such as the Haganah (which became the core of the Israeli army), Lehi relied for years on individual assassinations and high-profile assassination attempts. This group was not alone in engaging in such "actions." In 1946, the Irgun Zvai Leumi (National Military Organization) carried out the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, killing 91 people.
In September 1948, LEHI militants openly attacked Bernadotte in their leaflets. A UN report later noted that, several days before his assassination, the underground activists effectively called for the expulsion of the mediator and his observers.
On September 16, Bernadotte signed the final report to the UN. The next day, he arrived in Jerusalem.
Around 5:00 PM local time, a convoy of three vehicles was driving through the Katamon neighborhood, which was under IDF control. An army jeep blocked the road. Its occupants were wearing uniforms similar to those of the Israeli army.
One of the attackers approached the UN vehicle and opened fire at point-blank range. Bernadotte was fatally wounded. A French UN military observer sitting nearby was also killed.
An organization calling itself the "Fatherland Front" publicly claimed responsibility. An Israeli investigation soon concluded that the organization behind this name belonged to Lehi or members of the underground organization closely associated with it. Lehi's involvement in the assassination was subsequently no longer disputed.
The radicals rushed to eliminate Bernadotte, fearing the acceptance of his plan, although the Israeli leadership itself was no longer prepared to agree to the abandonment of the Negev.
EVERYONE COME OUT OF HIDING
The murder of the mediator sparked the first political crisis in the newly formed Israel and at the same time accelerated the construction of the Jewish state – precisely as a state where only the authorities have a monopoly on violence.
In 1948, a significant portion of the former underground fighters and militants from the Haganah, Palmach, Etzel, and Lehi groups had already joined the army, but individual cells operated without regard for the authorities, especially in Jerusalem.
The first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, himself a recent prominent figure in the Hgana, used the Bernadotte incident to put an end to the unrest.
He ordered the arrest of Lehi members, the confiscation of weapons, and the dismantling of the organization's bases. Within the first 24 hours, dozens of underground members were detained in Tel Aviv and over a hundred in Jerusalem. Soon, the authorities took extreme measures against terrorist organizations, and Lehi was effectively crushed.
But the case never reached a full trial of Bernadotte's killers.
The deed was done—in place of the various "liberation fronts" and "combat groups," a proper army and special services emerged. Therefore, the commanders and militants—recent comrades in the common struggle—could be spared harsh punishment.
The underground leaders were tried for belonging to an armed organization, but the authorities did not officially present evidence to indict the specific perpetrators of the murder.
One of Lehi's leaders, Natan Yellin-Mor, received an eight-year prison sentence, but was soon amnestied. Even during his trial, he was elected to the first Knesset. Yitzhak Shamir escaped arrest entirely.
This circumstance gave the story of Bernadotte's assassination a particularly inconvenient tint for Israeli politics.
The calculation of the radical part of the Zionist movement that the externally imposed settlement would disappear along with Bernadotte did not come true.
American diplomat Ralph Bunche continued his work as a mediator. In 1949, through his mediation, Israel concluded armistice agreements with Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. For this work, Bunche received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950.
Bernadotte's plan was not fully realized either.
And thank goodness for that.
Israel retained the Negev. Jerusalem did not come under UN administration. The Palestinian refugee issue, which the mediator considered a central one back in 1948, remains unresolved to this day.
He meant well. But that was only the first time the world protected the Arabs from the consequences of attacking the Jews of Israel with genocidal intent.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
