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The Ukrainian government says the rich are taking advantage – but poorer people are likely to lose the most

In the reboot of David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers, Rachel Weisz plays twin gynecologists slowly unraveling. The gorgeous, chilly atmosphere — and Weisz’s double performance — are mesmerizing.

Rachel Weisz stars as twins Elliot and Beverly Mantle in the TV reboot of Dead Ringers. (Amazon Prime)

I was surprised that the new Dead Ringers, a six-episode miniseries running on Amazon Prime, was able to find a way forward from the 1988 horror classic. And even more surprised that it was actually good.

The engine driving David Cronenberg’s original film was body horror trained on the female reproductive system from a voyeuristic male point of view (codependent twin doctors both played by Jeremy Irons), culminating in a grisly gynecological exam using shiny instruments of torture designed for gory invasive probing.

There’s plenty of gore in this version too, with a maximum use of blood red not only in the actual copious spilling of bodily fluids, but in clothing and the overall color scheme. The new state-of-the-art birthing center, which realizes the ambitions of the Mantle twins, Beverly and Elliot (Rachel Weisz), to revolutionize the reproductive industry — including the ways fertility, pregnancy, birthing, and aftercare are handled — features the same ghastly red scrubs worn by medical personnel in the original film.

The material has been reconceived by writer Alice Birch (Succession, Normal People, The Wonder) and star Rachel Weisz (The Favourite, The Constant Gardener, the Mummy franchise), who share executive producing credits, working with an all-female writing team. The new Dead Ringers approaches from a, shall we say, “insider’s perspective,” on such topical issues as infertility treatments, infant mortality, postpartum depression, and menopause, which are rarely depicted in mainstream media. Though some of this is engrossing, it also creates a narrative that has a schematic quality, as if positions on these topics related to reproduction came first and characters were designed second in order to articulate them.

Yet at the same time there are the lurid plot moves of Old Hollywood good-versus-evil twin melodramas that once starred Bette Davis (A Stolen Life, Dead Ringer) and Olivia de Havilland (Dark Mirror). They make for an odd combination, and Rachel Weisz does all that a talented actor can do in punching it across. She plays both tendencies well, throwing herself into the finer details, but not at all above relishing the cruder joys of traditional twin narratives, like the simple yet dramatic change in hairstyle that allows one twin to pass as the other with nobody able to detect the difference — not parents, not longtime lovers, and certainly not viewers if we weren’t tipped off.

Beverly, the “baby sister” by a few minutes, is the quiet, serious, proper one with idealistic dreams of making the reproductive experience natural and healthy for all women. She wears her hair parted in the middle and pulled back tightly in a bun, the hairstyle of prim types since the days of D. W. Griffith. Elliot, the wilder one defined by her voracious appetites and ethical shadiness, wears her shoulder-length mane of hair side-parted and swinging free. She’s always offering to procure lovers for the shyer twin Beverly (“Shall I get her for you?”), generally after initiating the sexual relationship that Beverly then has the option to continue. But Elliot’s boldness suggesting an apparently greater strength of character is an illusion — she’s the more dependent twin. She nearly has a psychotic breakdown when Beverly begins a lasting affair with an actor, Genevieve Cotard (Britne Oldford).

As many critics have noted, playing twins means twice as much Rachel Weisz, which is great. Maybe she could play quadruplets sometime and really fill the screen. Weisz has always been a lovely presence, but especially since her thrilling performance as the formidable Duchess of Marlborough, lover and chief advisor to Olivia Colman’s addled Queen Anne, in The Favourite (2018), Weisz now has a compelling woman-of-a-certain-age heartthrob status ideal for Dead Ringers. Mainly because the miniseries is too long at six one-hour episodes, and watching Weisz makes the excess length endurable.

Jennifer Ehle also scores playing icy, deadpan Rebecca Parker, scion of a billionaire family who funds start-ups. She’s an intelligent monster, who hosts the twins in a series of nightmarish dinners with her entourage of horrible toadies. Over one such meal she baits Beverly’s shaky ideals with sardonic lines like, “Ohhh, is capitalism bad?”

And there are a few other memorable turns by character actors in a generally excellent cast, including Susan Blommaert as an elderly, spiky, unapologetic, drug-addicted street person who has a memorable conversation with Elliot while she’s unraveling. Kevin McNally and Suzanne Bertish play the working-class parents of the highly accomplished twins, who show up for a visit that’s a cornucopia of nervous tension and half-buried resentments. And Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine underplays nicely as a Pulitzer-winning ex-writer and professor brought low by his alcoholism and sexual transgressions, who revives his career reporting on the secretly scandalous twins.

Unfortunately, the storyline involving the twins’ housekeeper Greta (Poppy Liu of Hacks) starts off interestingly sinister and winds up veering off into an odd, unlikely development that seems half-baked at best. The whole last episode is beset by narrative implausibility.

The high production values of this “prestige TV” series help create an atmosphere of dread about all the ways that motherhood and family and reproduction and human relationships in general can and will go wrong through chilly, inhuman environments. There are lots of mirrors and reflective surfaces, many extreme, dissociative high-angle shots that reduce people to rats in a maze, an elaborate color scheme full of uneasy-making combinations of “wrong” colors, and lighting so remarkably dark and shadowy in spots, you can hardly see what’s going on.

As nakedly ideological TV goes, it’s at least ambitious. And if it doesn’t altogether work, you can always enjoy the simple pleasures of watching double Rachel Weiszes and wondering which sister will have to die to allow the other one to live a full life, as always happens in the old twin melodramas.

The U.S. has reduced the amount of ammunition stored at warehouses in Israel, redirecting it in recent months to the war effort in Ukraine. But amid concerns of a possible multifront war in Israel, security officials are pressing the Pentagon on its plans to resupply the stores.

The post IMMINENT WAR? Israel complains to U.S. about reduction of ammunition stores appeared first on World Israel News.

Cheat sheet reveals vetted press questions in the president’s first media event since announcing his 2024 run for reelection.

The post ‘BUSTED’: Biden caught using cheat sheet during press conference appeared first on World Israel News.

Zephyr said her initial “blood on your hands” remark and subsequent decision to thrust a microphone into the air toward protesters were an effort to stand up for the LGBTQ+ community and her constituents.

By Associated Press

Montana Republicans barred transgender lawmaker Zooey Zephyr from the House floor on Wednesday, wielding “decorum” rules after she rebuked colleagues supporting a ban on gender-affirming care for children and protested their efforts to silence her.

The punishment marks the first time in nearly half a century that Montana lawmakers have sought such disciplinary action against one of their own. It caps a weeklong standoff between Zephyr and House Republican leaders and formalizes their decision to silence her for saying that those voting in favor of the ban would have blood on their hands.

Zephyr will still be able to vote and participate in committees, but not discuss proposals and amendments under consideration in the full House. The legislative session is set to end in early May.

The fight over Zephyr’s remarks has brought the nationwide debate over protest’s role in democracy to Montana.

Supporting Zephyr’s attempts to regain her voice, protesters interrupted proceedings earlier this week by chanting “Let her Speak” in a boisterous rally that came after they protested outside the Capitol and unfurled a banner that read “Democracy Dies Here.”

After days of rebuffing Zephyr’s request to speak, Republican leaders finally granted her the floor to give a statement before they ultimately voted to discipline her Wednesday. She said her initial “blood on your hands” remark and subsequent decision to thrust a microphone into the air toward protesters in the House gallery were an effort to stand up for the LGBTQ+ community and her constituents in Missoula.

Montana State Rep. Zooey Zephyr (D) ahead of vote to bar her from the state House for the rest of the session:

“I have had friends who have taken their lives because of these bills … When I rose up and said, ‘There is blood on your hands,’ I was not being hyperbolic.” pic.twitter.com/cNZ3nTAVIx

— The Recount (@therecount) April 26, 2023

House Speaker Matt Regier’s decision to turn off her microphone, she said, was an attempt to drive “a nail in the coffin of democracy.”

“If you use decorum to silence people who hold you accountable, then all you’re doing is using decorum as a tool of oppression,” Zephyr told her colleagues.

House Republicans who supported barring Zephyr from the floor have accused her of placing lawmakers and staff at risk of harm for disrupting House proceedings and inciting protests in the chamber on Monday.

But lawmakers were on the floor Monday when protesters were in the gallery, and there have been no reports of damage to the building.

“Freedom in this body involves obedience to all the rules of this body, including the rules of decorum,” House Majority Leader Sue Vinton said.

Authorities arrested seven people in the confrontation, who Zephyr said were defending democracy. Her opponents said ensuring government can conduct business on behalf of the people without interruption was a critical precedent to set.

“This is an assault on our representative democracy, spirited debate, and the free expression of ideas cannot flourish in an atmosphere of turmoil and incivility,” Republican David Bedey said on the House floor.

In Missoula, the county Democratic Party Chair Andy Nelson said Zephyr’s constituents and supporters were disheartened to see her disciplined.

“What it comes down to is the silencing of not just Rep. Zephyr, but the 11,000 people she serves,” he said after the decision.

The punishment comes two days after protesters later packed into the gallery at the Statehouse and brought House proceedings to a halt chanting “Let her speak” as Zephyr lifted her microphone toward them. Seven subsequent arrests galvanized both her supporters and those saying Zephyr’s actions constitute an unacceptable attack on civil discourse.

‘An ego trip’

The Montana Freedom Caucus, which had pushed for Zephyr to be censured, said in a statement that her actions in support of the protesters were “nothing more than an ego trip.” The caucus again on Wednesday deliberately misgendered Zephyr by using incorrect pronouns when referring to her.

“There needs to be some consequences for what he has been doing,” said Rep. Joe Read, a member of the caucus who frequently and inconsistently used incorrect pronouns for Zephyr.

He claimed Zephyr gave a signal to her supporters just before Monday’s session was disrupted. He declined to say what that was other than a “strange movement.”

“When she gave the signal for protesters to go into action, I would say that’s when decorum was incredibly broken,” Read added.

Zephyr told the AP that she felt the moment was calling on her to stand up for democracy.

“Every time that one of these votes came; every time the speaker refused to allow me to speak; when the protesters came and demanded, my thought was twofold,” she said.

“Pride in those who stood up to defend democracy and a hope that in some small way, I could rise to that moment individually and do the work they sent me to do.”

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If Erdogan leaves office (one way or the other), the US will be more than happy to expand its support for “freedom and democracy” efforts in not only the Southern Caucasus, but (even more disturbingly) in Central Asia as well. This would not only (re)ignite additional hotspots in the region, but could very likely spill over to China’s Xinjiang province.

Necessity was the mother of invention in Israel, leading the Jewish state to become an innovation powerhouse.

The post WATCH: How Israel became the ‘Innovation Nation’ appeared first on World Israel News.

Team at Hebrew University isolate tomato genes, allowing for development of drought-resistant, high-yield tomato variety.

By TPS

Tomato varieties that require less water and produce a high yield, even in extreme drought conditions, have been developed by researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

The study, recently published in the peer-reviewed journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was led by doctoral student Shai Torgeman and professor Dani Zamir from the Hebrew University Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment.

The researchers identified interactions between two regions of the tomato genome that resulted in a 20% to 50% increase in the overall yield under irrigated conditions, as well as in droughts.

“The unique structure of the new population, which enables precise mapping of the tomato genes, has the potential for extensive application in other plants and could increase productivity,” the researchers say.

Tomatoes grown in open field conditions need protection from pests and fertilization, and must be watered over time. However, the climate crisis and the severe water shortages around the world require alternative varieties and new cultivation methods that also guarantee adequate profits for farmers.

The researchers crossbred two tomato species—a wild tomato from the deserts of western Peru and the cultivated tomato—to identify which regions of the genome affect important agricultural traits, such as yields.

Individually, one genome didn’t affect the crop, but when these genome regions appeared together, there was a significant contribution to fertility even in dry conditions.

“Studies of complex traits in plants, such as yield and resistance to drought conditions, have been based on significantly smaller populations of 200-plus species,” Torgeman explained.

“This makes it impossible to identify all the interactions (epistasis) between the genes, as well as their influence on important agricultural traits. In this study, we genetically crossed two different species of tomato, and proved that by using a larger population and a genetic map that includes thousands of markers, it is possible to identify interactions that increase the yield,” he said.

Zamir’s lab has conducted DNA sequencing and extensive data analysis of 1,400 plants over the past four years. The researchers are seeking to commercialize these new tomato varieties.

“With global warming, farmers need tomatoes that can cope with changing weather conditions,” Torgeman said. “Global warming does not only cause higher temperatures but also extreme weather like sudden torrential downpours or drought, so we need plants that have improved capabilities.”

The research was conducted as part of the scientific cooperation with the European Union in the “Horizon 2020” program.

The post Israeli researchers develop drought-resistant tomato appeared first on World Israel News.

More than 56,000 new citizens over past year marked themselves as having ‘no religion.’

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

A report by the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) showed a drop in the Jewish majority in Israel since last Independence Day and pointed to the phenomenon of non-Jewish immigration as the cause, Israel National News reported Thursday.

While last year, Jews made up 73.9% of the population, by April 2023 the percentage dropped to 73.5%. The CBS report showed that some 56,000 immigrants who came since Israel’s 74th Independence Day had marked “other” in the religion box of their entry records. This non-Jewish population currently stands at 534,000, or 5.5% of those living in Israel. The rest of the population, 21%, is Muslim.

Many of these newcomers came from Ukraine and Russia, following Russia’s invasion of its smaller neighbor in February 2022, which has no end in sight as yet.

The phenomenon of growing non-Jewish immigration is not new.

According to the Population and Immigration Authority’s statistics, from 2012-2019, out of some 180,000 people who immigrated via the Law of Return, only 14% of them were recognized as being Jewish according to halachah, Jewish law.

Out of those coming from the former Soviet Union, who make up the majority of the immigrants in absolute numbers, it was even less, with only 4.3% of immigrants from Russia being Jews.

A study published last August by the Knesset’s Research and Information Center, based on CBS data, showed that the percentage of Jews coming from that region has steadily fallen over the last 20 years.

Dr. Yona Cherki of the Israeli Immigration Policy Center (IPC) that promotes an immigration policy which serves the strategic interests of the State of Israel as a Jewish, democratic state, said the data was a cause for concern.

“The dramatic trends of the reduction of the Jewish majority in Israel in favor of increasing the population of the “others,” who are not Arabs and are not Jewish, are very worrying,” he told INN.

Wednesday’s celebration of Israeli Independence Day, Cherki added, “serves as a reminder of the basis of the existence” of the state, as well as of “its purpose [to be] the state of the Jewish people.”

Yet, he said, “The accelerated demographic trends that we have witnessed in recent decades, and especially in recent years, place the vision of the identity of the State of Israel in tangible danger.”

There is a solution at hand, he said.

“The main non-Jewish immigration to Israel is immigration according to the Law of Return, which receives support from the official aliya bodies…. As long as the elected representatives do not act actively and determinedly to amend the Law of Return, [this] trend… will only grow.”

Emendation of the Law of Return has been proposed by members of Israel’s current government, with Orthodox members of the coalition having already talked about repealing the “grandchild clause,” which allows non-Jewish children and even grandchildren of a Jew to become citizens. As it currently stands, the law also gives rights of citizenship to the non-Jewish spouses of those up to the third generation.

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Enough with the dumb jokes about crystals. You should take Marianne Williamson and her politics seriously.

Marianne Williamson speaking on February 23, 2020 in Austin, Texas. (Drew Angerer / Getty Images)

The first thing I notice over tea in Tribeca last week with the author and presidential candidate Marianne Williamson is that there’s nothing silly about her. Williamson speaks bluntly, laser-focused on the dangers that American-style capitalism poses to our planet, our lives, and our well-being.

During our interview, her answers are sometimes so concise and on point they seem to challenge my questions. As soon as we sit down, I ask her what experiences convinced her that our current spiritual crisis was a collective one, a social disease.

“I never thought it wasn’t,” she says, looking almost annoyed.

Williamson is serious. This must be said, because the Democratic Party’s gatekeepers are doing their best to marginalize and mock her. When asked if the president was annoyed that Williamson had announced her primary run, White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre had a mean-girl moment: “I’m not tracking that. I mean, if I had a, what is it called? A little globe here, a crystal ball… if I could feel her aura.”

Liberal media outlets have dismissed Williamson as “quirky” and identified her as “Oprah Winfrey’s spiritual adviser.” Much has been made of the fact that she once lived in a geodesic dome. More inexplicably, centrist and progressive pundits have been dismissing her ideas. Slate denigrated Williamson’s speeches as “the ramblings of an inspirational speaker . . . devoid of meaning.”

Seeking is not my vibe, and I mistrust gurus. I was prepared to roll my eyes at least a little bit at Williamson. But a few minutes into conversation with this author of thirteen books, seven of them bestsellers, I realized the media portrayal of her was propagandistic nonsense. I had to wonder who the mainstream media has been describing: not the smart, well-spoken, righteously outraged woman sitting across from me.

Williamson, now seventy, was raised on left-wing values. Her father, a World War II veteran and an immigration lawyer, was a United Auto Workers organizer in the 1930s. When he was a child, his own father, a railroad worker, took him to hear Eugene Debs speak. While for decades she has been a writer and speaker on spiritual matters, Williamson has recently begun taking a more political approach to our collective malaise, as she did in the 2019 book A Politics of Love: A Handbook for a New American Revolution and in her 2020 Democratic primary campaign.

It’s a chilly spring day, but we sit outside because the cafe is closing. Williamson isn’t warmly dressed but graciously adapts to our situation, ordering a hot tea and sitting in the fading late afternoon sun. She explains her shift from spiritual teacher to political candidate by describing the distress she’s witnessed in recent decades. As someone people turn to when they’re in trouble — a clergyperson for the unchurched — she has seen up close how neoliberalism is “devastating people’s lives,” she says.

‘Neoliberalism weakened our immune system,’ Williamson says, using a metaphor she invokes often, ‘making us more vulnerable to the forces of fascism.’

“I began to meet people in my [spiritual] work whose despair was not because the test results came back and it was cancer, which I was used to. Or their spouse left them, which I was used to. Or their child was on heroin, which I was used to. Their despair was irrefutably because of bad policy.”

“Hardworking people,” she stresses, “good people trying to do their best, living in a society where they didn’t have health care, unions were being squashed, benefits taken away. They didn’t know how they were going to send their kids to college.”

Williamson points out that in the 1970s, when she was in her twenties, the average American could still afford to buy a home and a car. They could afford a yearly vacation and college tuition for their kids. That’s no longer true.

Williamson acts out a little dialogue, with hand gestures and earnest voices, to explain her disaffection with the party establishment.

“So I’d go to my Democratic friends and say, ‘We have to do something.’ And they’d say,” — here she enacts a dramatically pseudo-empathetic tone — “‘Yeah, we really should.’ Five years later: ‘We haven’t done anything. But we really should.’ Ten years later: ‘Well, we did a little bit.’ Then I began to see the game.”

She pauses, looking at me intently. “And it’s a deadly game.”

That “something” Williamson advocates, in her written platform and in conversation, is essentially the Bernie Sanders 2016 and 2020 agenda. She favors socialized medicine, free college, an end to college loan debt, paid family leave, guaranteed sick pay, and a guaranteed livable wage. She supports the PRO Act along with even stronger labor protections.

All of this, Williamson points out, is mainstream policy in every other advanced democracy. “More and more [Americans] are waking up to that,” she emphasizes. “That’s why an inflection moment is possible.”

That moment would, however, never have been possible without Bernie Sanders and his last two presidential campaigns, Williamson emphasizes. Of Sanders, she says, “He will be remembered. When all of us are gone, they’ll still be talking about Bernie Sanders.”

In 2016, she observes, “two candidates spoke to people in a way that validated their rage. Two people said, ‘You are right to be so angry, the system is rigged against you.’ One of them meant it.” While both Trump and Sanders spoke to ordinary people’s anger, she says, only Sanders came from “a place of care and concern and had a plan to ameliorate that pain.”

Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, went out of her way to invalidate that rage. Her approach, Williamson recalls, was to say, “Let’s continue the success of the last eight years. Millions of people said, ‘What success? I’m drowning,’ and were resentful that their pain was not seen. Or acknowledged.”

As we talk, a young man walks by and waves at Williamson. He says he recognizes her from Kyle Kulinski’s YouTube channel. “I watch him every night. I’m gonna tell him I saw you,” he exults. Williamson waves and looks delighted.

We’re sitting on a busy stretch of Broadway. As the Kulinski fan continues along, smiling and posting on his phone, Williamson muses on the enduring phenomenon of Kulinski.

“He has such an important role in the lives of so many young men,” she says. “I had no idea until I ran [for president].” Reflecting on the alarming ability of right-wing charlatans to speak to young white men’s anger, often on YouTube, we share a moment of gratitude for Kulinski.

Jacobin readers might not love everything about Marianne Williamson. Like many ambitious people who run for office, she has been accused of being an abusive boss. She has denied these reports. As well, Williamson told me she isn’t a socialist. She doesn’t like labels but insists that Nordic-style capitalism would be a huge improvement on our current situation.

The only way to defeat the fascists is through a radical commitment to democracy and a radical commitment to the unequivocal support of the working people.

Some Democrats have chided Williamson for challenging Joe Biden, asking, why not unify against the neo-fascist threat, whether Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis? But the vulnerabilities of centrists like Biden to far-right challenges are precisely what trouble Williamson.

“Franklin Roosevelt said we wouldn’t have to worry about a fascist takeover as long as democracy delivered on its blessings,” she says. “Democracy has not delivered on its blessings.”

“Large groups of desperate people should be considered a national security risk,” she adds. “They become a Petri dish out of which all manner of societal dysfunction is almost inevitable, more vulnerable to ideological capture by genuinely psychotic forces, such as fascism.”

Williamson does not think the centrist Democrats are prepared for 2024.

“They keep thinking that it’s going to be enough to just say, oh, but we’re not misogynist, we’re not racist, we’re not homophobic,” she explains. “They’re going to be throwing some very big lies our way in ’24. And the only way to override that, which means electorally to defeat that, is through big truths. And the neoliberal crowd doesn’t want to speak big truth . . . because they, too, conspire with the underlying corporate forces that make the return of people’s pain inevitable.”

“The only way to defeat the fascists is through a radical commitment to democracy and a radical commitment to the unequivocal support of the working people. Neoliberalism weakened our immune system,” Williamson says, using a metaphor she invokes often, “making us more vulnerable to the forces of fascism.”

She brings up the Willow Project by way of example. In approving a massive, decades-long oil drilling project by ConocoPhillips in Northern Alaska, which will add 9.2 million metric tons of carbon to the earth every year, Biden broke a campaign promise to end new oil and gas drilling on public lands and waters. He may also have risked electoral defeat, Williamson suggests.

“The young people of America are not going to go to war in ’24 for the man who approved the Willow Project. And [establishment Democrats] think I’m not taking the fascist seriously,” she muses.

Again evoking the corporate Democrats, she asks, in a stern, mocking voice, “‘Does she not realize the fascists are at the door?’” She answers, in exasperation: “No, you are the ones who don’t realize fascism is at the door.”

“It’s not like it’s working, guys! That’s what kills me about the neoliberal establishment,” she continues with indignation. “They’re so self-congratulatory. What are they so freaking proud of? We are six inches from the cliff, in terms of the state of our democracy, the state of our environment, and the state of our economy. And they’re so proud. They have dinners and congratulate each other, and call anyone not playing their game unserious.”

The reception of Williamson reminds me of how journalist Matt Taibbi described the pundits’ attitude in the early 2000s toward Dennis Kucinich, who had many ideas in common with Williamson, including the creation of a Department of Peace. In 2003, Taibbi wrote, “Welcome to the Dennis Kucinich paradox. The congressman is not serious precisely because he is serious.”

We’ve reached a similar paradox: it is precisely because Williamson is so serious that they must insist so loudly that she is unserious.

“They’re not serious,” she insists of the respectable Democrats dismissing her campaign, “About 68,000 people dying every year of lack of health care. They’re not serious about one in four Americans living in medical debt. They’re not serious about people rationing their insulin. They’re not serious about twelve million children living in poverty. But anyone not playing their game is unserious.”