Overlooked in Ridley Scott’s biopic is Napoleon’s role in trying to reintroduce slavery into Haiti, but then the world often forgets the chaos it has helped introduce there for over two centuries.

With a 100% accuracy rate in Russian election forecasts, Tinatin Japaridze discussed what comes next for Russia and its neighbors in our next FPA briefing. How will the ghost of Stalin continue to shape Putin’s worldview, dreams of empire, and his willingness to light a fire under the current geopolitical world order?

With Trump Republicans withholding military support to Ukraine, former National Security Advisor & UN Ambassador John Bolton made headlines with his straight talking- there will be “celebrations in the Kremlin if Trump is re-elected”.

FPA’s briefing with Chris Gunness, former BBC UN World Correspondent and later UNRWA Spokesperson, and Ben Armbruster, Quincy Institute, on UNRWA considered the questions that far too many media failed to ask.

Weeks after too many governments cut funding to UNRWA - in defiance of the ICJ’s admonitions - Israel has not offered the media, or the governments, any evidence for their allegations of UNRWA complicity in the events of October 7. None of the governments claim seeing any evidence, and Israel has not claimed to offer anything more than an empty ‘dodgy dossier’ relaying old and discredited allegations from UNWatch, an Israeli backed pseudo NGO.

Some “respected” newspapers had furloughed IDF service members working on their story which in the case of the New York Times was given equal front page prominence with the ICJ verdict. And when it came time for its big podcast launch, they have now walked it back for justified fear of reputational damage.

The shoot-first approach to coverage of this story and to firing UNWRA employees represent failures of elementary journalistic, employer, and government process to determine the veracity of the serious allegations made by Israel that resulted in cutting off cut funds for food health and education for millions in Gaza and elsewhere. It affects millions in the West Bank, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon - where there is no sign of Hamas.

While UNWRA is conducting an investigation, a fundamental question remains - if a dozen people in an organization of 13,000 participated in the October 7 attacks on Israel – is it an appropriate response to try to shut down the whole organization and starve millions as a form of collective punishment?

Watch the full briefing which was moderated by FPA President, Ian Williams, and Al Jazeera NY Correspondent and FPA Board Member, Kristen Saloomey.

Children account for 13% of all AIDS-related deaths even though they comprise 4% of all people living with HIV globally. For over 35 years, the Elizabeth Glaser AIDS Foundation (EGPAF) has championed the needs of children and their families in the global efforts to eliminate AIDS. EGPAF has reached over 35 million pregnant women with services to prevent transmission of HIV to their babies.
Furthermore, EGPAF’s global political and advocacy teams work to safeguard programs such as PEPFAR, which is mission critical to end AIDS in children, youth and families. EGPAF offers HIV counseling, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment services in 15,000 sites across 17 different countries in sub-Saharan Africa where the burden of pediatric AIDS is highest.
Join us for a conversation with EGPAF’s President and CEO, Charles “Chip” Lyons where we talk about EGPAF’s work, the state of the global pediatric AIDS crisis, and the need to remain vigilant in the fight to end pediatric AIDS.

With more than 20,000 Palestinians dead, areas of Gaza turned to rubble, ICC prosecutor Karim Khan has yet to investigate either Israel or Hamas for the deaths on and after 7 October– despite his exemplary hair trigger speed against Vladimir Putin for war crimes committed in Ukraine.

Antonio Guterres has invoked his little used powers to convene a Security Council meeting on Gaza and the US vetoed it. Ironically the day after, 9th December, was the International Day of Commemoration & Dignity of Victims of the Crime of Genocide & Prevention of this Crime. This past week also saw the 75th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights!

George Orwell practiced what many journalists preach, truth-telling in the face of pressure.
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But decades later it’s like Groundhog Day. Perennially, politicians stage a new "deja vu all over again" action replay of Animal Farm and 1984. As Masha Karp points out, the second translation of Orwell’s fable was into Ukrainian - and thousands of copies were confiscated by the American Occupation authorities in Germany! Karp, former features editor for the BBC Russian Service goes into the Russian origins of Orwell’s worldview and reveals the author’s family connection with the Soviets and  Esperanto, the artificial language that preceded Newspeak!

https://neweasterneurope.eu/2023/09/11/orwells-warning-of-totalitarianism-for-today/ 
https://www.historytoday.com/archive/review/george-orwell-and-russia-masha-karp-review 
https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/george-orwell-and-russia-9781788317139/
Masha Karp is a leading scholar on the work of George Orwell.  Born in Leningrad, USSR (now St Petersburg, Russia), she also translated George Orwell’s Animal Farm and its original preface ‘The Freedom of the Press’.In 1991 she moved to London to work first as a producer  (1991-1997) and then as Russian Features editor (1997-2009) for the BBC World Service. Her biography of Orwell was the first to be published in Russia.

Eric Alterman's We Are Not One: A History of America's Fight Over Israel is a very timely, critical examination of how the "pro-Israel" side has dominated public discourse in the US  to the point that  for many decades only one side of the argument could be heard by all but the most specialized of audiences.

Today that has changed considerably, and Israel is at the center of ferocious debate in a multi-sided argument characterized largely by intense emotion, character assassination and an insistence on rewriting history, with a commitment to emotional “certainties” that have little patience for the complexity of the history that they evoke. 

Thursday 11 am the FPA hosts Alterman on his book and dissects the current mismatch between the US/Israel relations while exploring how Israel loses support from American Jews as it gains support from GOP Christian fundamentalists.

https://bookshop.org/p/books/we-are-not-one-a-history-of-america-s-fight-over-israel-eric-alterman/18334624?ean=9780465096312&ref=&source=IndieBound&title=We+Are+Not+One%3A+A+History+of+America%E2%80%99s+Fight+Over+Israel

Alterman is contributing writer to the Nation and to The American Prospect. In the past, he has been a senior fellow of the Center for American Progress, the World Policy Institute and The Nation Institute, a columnist for Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, The Guardian, The Daily Beast, MSNBC.com, The Forward, Moment and the Sunday Express (London) as well as a contributor to The New Yorker, The Atlantic and Le Monde Diplomatique, among other publications.

The US’s flyover country is taking off, boosted by technology. Previously known for industry and agriculture, decline and decay, heartland cities are being revived as technology companies move in and investors widen their focus from the coasts to fund entrepreneurs in America’s Heartland.