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From New York and Los Angeles, this is Democracy Now.
I'm demanding that these companies come in and protect their own territory because
it is their territory. It's the place from which they get their energy and they should come
and they should help us protect them. As the U.S. and Israeli war on Iran extends into a third
week, President Trump is demanding other countries send warships to force open the
strait of Hormuz as oil prices keep rising. We'll speak to the Iranian Israeli journalist
Orli Neu in Jerusalem and two Iranian American professors who are closely following how Iranians
are responding to the war. And then to the Oscars, Mr. Nobody versus Putin has won the Academy
Award for Best Documentary. Mr. Nobody against Putin is about how you lose your country.
And what we saw when working with this footage, it's that you lose it through countless small
little acts of complicity. We'll speak to the film's director David Baranstein and the subject
of the film, the Russian school teacher Pavel Pasha Talenkin, who personally documented Russia's
use of wartime propaganda. All that and more coming up.
Welcome to democracy now, democracynow.org, the war in peace report. I'm Narmine Sheikh.
The U.S. is really war on Iran has now entered its third week. On Friday, President Trump
ordered strikes on military installations on Iran's Hyrog Island, which handles 90 percent of the
country's crude oil exports. In a phone call with NBC News journalist Kristen Welker on Saturday,
President Trump said U.S. strikes had, quote, totally demolished much of the island and warned
of more, saying, quote, we may hit it a few more times just for fun. President Trump also claimed
that Iran wanted a ceasefire, which Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araxi flatly denied.
No, we never asked for a ceasefire and we have never asked even for negotiation.
We are ready to defend ourselves as long as it takes and this is what we have done so far and
we continue to do that until President Trump comes to the point that this is an illegal war
with no victory. Reuters reports that President Trump has ignored attempts by allies in the
Middle East to start negotiations aimed at ending the Iran war. Over the weekend, U.S. and
Israeli forces continued to bombard Iran, hitting cities such as Tehran, Hamadan, and Isfahan.
Iranian media says that the U.S. is really strike killed 15 people at a factory in Isfahan.
Iran's cultural heritage and tourism ministry said Saturday that at least 56 museums and
historic sites have been damaged. At least 1348 civilians in Iran have been killed
since the start of the war, according to Iran's UN Ambassador. Meanwhile, Iran's police chief says
that the country has arrested 500 people accused of sharing information with enemies.
This is Muhammad Tahiri whose home was damaged in the U.S. Israeli strike.
It's a terrible incident, very bitter. Many people have been killed and so many have lost
their homes and lives. However, because of that heroic spirit that has arisen among all the people
of Iran, it is now bearable. That is, that sense of resistance within us has grown, strengthened and mature.
For that reason, we are trying to get through these days and God willing, we will rebuild
everything better from the start, just as we are rebuilding our country and moving closer to our
ideals. Iran continued to launch retaliatory strikes at Israel as Iranian rumours spread that
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was killed in an Iranian strike. In response, Netanyahu
posted a video of himself getting coffee and chatting with an aide in Jerusalem on Sunday.
Over the weekend, Iran launched multiple ballistic missiles at Israel carrying cluster bombs,
injuring at least eight people across the country. In Iraq, six U.S. service members were killed
when their military refueling plane crashed while taking part in Iran war operations last week.
Overall, 12 U.S. service members have been killed since that Iran war began on February 28th.
Another service member died of a medical issue. This comes as the U.S. State Department
issued a warning telling U.S. citizens to leave Iraq immediately. Meanwhile, Italy's military
said on Sunday there had been a drone attack on the Ali al-Salam, airbase in Kuwait hosting Italian
and U.S. forces. This comes as Iran continues to attack infrastructure in the United Arab Emirates,
urging people to evacuate three major ports. Iranian state media claimed, without evidence,
that U.S. forces are located in the civilian ports of Jebel Ali, Halifa, and Fajera in the UAE.
Authorities in the UAE say a drone attack sparked a fire near the Bay airport while another drone
attack has also been reported at Fajera's industrial area. Meanwhile, Iran's revolutionary
guard corps has warned major U.S. corporations in the region to evacuate.
President Trump is calling for a coalition of countries to send warships to secure the
state of Hormuz, which is responsible for 20% of the world's oil supply. Japan and Australia
said they were not planning on sending naval vessels to escort ships through the strait.
This comes as Brent Crude oil is trading near $105 a barrel today. According to Triple A,
the average price for a gallon of gas in the U.S. has hit $3.70 up from $3.45 a week ago
and $2.93 a month ago. Meanwhile, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on Sunday that they
were, quote, no guarantees that oil prices would fall soon. Newt Gingrich, the former Republican
House Speaker, urged the U.S. to conduct, quote, a dozen thermonuclear detonations to reopen
the strait of Hormuz. Israel says its troops have begun ground operations in southern Lebanon.
This comes as the World Health Organization says it has verified that 12 doctors, paramedics
and nurses were killed in an Israeli strike on a health care center in southern Lebanon on Friday.
According to the Lebanese health ministry, Israeli attacks have killed at least 850 people,
including 107 children. Nearly 1 million people have been forced to flee their homes,
according to the UN. This is Fuhat Othman, who fled southern Lebanon to say the
just south of Barut. I swear, I came from the south from the district of Tiree.
The situation is just as you can see. Sometimes the tent gets blown away by the wind. Sometimes
there is rain. Sometimes water. The blankets are soaked with water. As they say, even the
rugs are full of water. Everything is wet, as you can see. We have a cold from the wind
and we are waiting for God's mercy. FCC chair Brenton Carr is threatening to revoke broadcasters
licenses over their coverage of the U.S. Israeli war on Iran. Carr shared a truth social post
by President Trump in which he criticized U.S. media coverage of the Iran war, writing on ex
quote, broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions, also known as the fake news,
have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up. The law is clear.
Broadcasters must operate in the public interest and they will lose their licenses if they do not.
Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut blasted Carr saying quote,
this is the federal government telling news stations to provide favorable coverage of the war
or their licenses will be pulled. A truly extraordinary moment. We aren't on the verge of a
Italian takeover. We are in the middle of it. Israel continues to violate the U.S.
brokered so-called ceasefire in Gaza killing 12 people, including two children and a pregnant
woman on Sunday. Since the ceasefire, the last October, Israeli forces have killed more than 650
Palestinians according to Gaza health officials. Meanwhile, in the occupied West Bank,
Israeli forces killed a Palestinian father, mother, and two of their children in their car on Sunday.
37-year-old Ali Khaled Bani Odeh and his wife Wad and two of their children,
Muhammad and Othman, were each shot in the head in the village of Tamoon.
Two other children managed to survive. This is one of them recounting how Israeli soldiers attacked
his family. We were leaving Nablus from Al-Nublasi restaurant. All of a sudden, we came under direct
fire. We didn't know the source. Everyone in the car was martyred, except for my brother Mustafa and
me. A soldier came and pulled me out of the car. They started beating me. They pulled out my brother
Mustafa. They tried to beat him, but I stood in front of them. They pushed me to the ground and
started beating me on the back with their boots. The Israeli soldiers started to say, we killed dogs.
In the Netherlands, authorities are denouncing what they described as anti-Semitic attacks on two
Jewish institutions this weekend. The mayor of Amsterdam said an overnight blast Saturday
damaged the outside of a Jewish school in a, quote, targeted attack against the Jewish community.
The day before, four teenagers were taken into police custody, accused of starting a fire at a
synagogue in Hothadam. No one has been arrested for the attack in Amsterdam. In Venezuela,
the Trump administration has reopened the U.S. Embassy in the Capitol Caracas for the first time
since 2019. The U.S. flag was raised over the embassy Saturday as Trump has touted the
resumption of diplomatic relations with Venezuela after a deadly U.S. military strike led to the
abduction of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Celia Flores, in early January.
Venezuela's interim government, led by Del Ciro de Riguez, has agreed to several of Trump's
demands, including granting the U.S. access to Venezuela's vast oil reserves and other
natural resources. In Cuba, protesters reportedly torched a local communist party office in the city
of Mohan, as people express a growing frustration over food shortages and massive blackouts across
the island. A U.S. oil blockade has cut off Cuba from accessing desperately needed fuel as the
Trump administration intensifies pressure to topple the Cuban government. Cuban president Miguel
Diaz Canal said Friday he had held talks with U.S. officials stating Cuba had not received oil
shipments in at least three months. The island had already been devastated by decades of U.S. sanctions.
Advocates are demanding an investigation after the mysterious death of a Haitian asylum seeker,
who was found unresponsive at a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania bus shelter days after being released
from jail and placed under ICE supervision. The Haitian bridge alliance says 31-year-old Daffy
Michelle had reportedly been jailed for months and was released after a judge dismissed
misdemeanor charges against her. Michelle was processed into ICE's so-called alternatives
to detention program and fitted with an electronic ankle monitor shortly before her death,
according to the Haitian bridge alliance. Ahead of her time in jail, Michelle had reportedly been
experiencing mental health episodes. This comes as an Afghan asylum seeker died in ICE custody
this weekend, less than 24 hours after being detained in Texas. According to the Veteran-led
Advocacy Group, Afghan Yvac, Muhammad Nazir Bakqewal worked alongside U.S. Special Forces
in Afghanistan during the U.S. invasion. He was reportedly arrested Friday outside his home as
he got ready to drop off his children at school. Bakqewal lived with his wife and six children
in Dallas. He's at least the 12th immigrant to die in ICE custody since the beginning of the year.
In Texas, the federal jury on Friday convicted eight anti-ice protesters on terrorism charges
in a closely watched trial that raised fears over the Trump administration's intensifying
crackdown on activists and First Amendment rights. This marked the first time terrorism charges
were successfully brought against activists by the Justice Department as federal prosecutors
accused the protesters of being members of Antifa. The trial focused on a reported shooting
that happened during a protest outside the Prairie Land ICE jail in Alvarado last year.
The Coalition DFW Support Committee said, quote, this is a sham trial built on political
persecution and ideological attacks coming from the top. In more related news and immigration judge
on Friday ordered the release of Palestinian activists, Lika Cordia, who has been detained by ICE
for over a year. This was Cordia's third bond hearing with Trump officials repeatedly refusing
to release her from custody to see our coverage of her case go to democracy now.org.
And the Academy Awards were held in Los Angeles Sunday, where sinners made history with
autumn-duraled archipelm becoming the first woman to win in the best cinematography category.
Michael B. Jordan took home the Oscar for Best Actor for his portrayal of twin brothers,
and Stark, while the film's director, Ryan Kugler, won for Best Original Screenplay.
Mr. Nobody Against Putin won for Best Documentary Feature, meanwhile actor and presenter Javier
Bardem called for a free Palestine on stage. Not to work on free Palestine.
The Palestinian actor, Mottaz Malheese, who had a starring role in the Oscar-nominated foreign film,
The Voice of Hind Rajab, was unable to attend the ceremony after his US visa was denied.
He said on Instagram, quote, I am not allowed to enter the United States because of my Palestinian
citizenship. To see our coverage of many of these films, please go to our website. We'll have
more on the Academy Awards later in the broadcast. And those are some of the headlines. This is
democracy now, democracynow.org, the Warren Peace Report. I'm Narmine Sheikh in New York.
And I'm Amy Goodman in Los Angeles, where I attended the Oscars last night.
I had a chance recently to speak with the winners of the Documentary Feature Award,
Mr. Nobody Against Putin, and we'll play that later. But first, we go to Iran news with three
people who were born in Iran, Narmine. As the US and Israeli war on Iran extends into a third week,
President Trump is demanding other countries send warships to force open the strait of Hormuz,
which has been largely shot due to threats from Iran. President Trump spoke aboard Air Force One.
I'm demanding that these countries come in and protect their own territory because it is their
territory. It's the place from which they get their energy. And they should come and they should
help us protect them. Trump told the financial times, it would be, quote, very bad for the future of
NATO if allies don't help secure the critical waterway. In recent weeks, global oil prices have
jumped over 40 percent as Iran has blocked the flow of oil through the strait. This comes as the
US and Israel continue to launch major strikes on Iran, while Iran has retaliated by repeatedly
striking Israel and U.S. allies in the Gulf, including the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia,
Kuwait, and Bahrain. Meanwhile, the Lebanese Red Cross reports Israel's attacks on Lebanon have
now displaced more than 900,000 people. The death toll in Lebanon has topped 850.
We begin now with two guests. Nakhmer Sahrabi is a professor of Middle East history at Brandeis
University. Earlier this year, she began translating articles from Persian to English by writers
inside the country. Her recent piece for equator is headlined Iran's fearless intellectuals.
She's written extensively on Iranian history and politics and was previously the president of
the Association for Iranian Studies. We're also joined by professor Amir Ahmadiy Arayin,
an Iranian-American novelist and journalist. He left Iran 15 years ago. He's a creative writing
professor at Binghamton University. His most recent piece for the New York Review of Books is
Headlined of Fire and Rain. Welcome both of you to Democracy Now. Nakhmer, let's begin with you.
If you could talk about the articles that you've been translating since earlier this year and
what people in Iran are telling you about the situation on the ground.
Thank you for having me. I started translating these articles after the January brutality and
atrocity of the state towards the protesters. There's been a whole series of events and articles
about that, but specifically about what is going now. There's been a trickle coming through,
but what has really been interesting has been two things. One is the way in which a lot of these
writers are articulating how stuck many people are in between a repressive regime and a war. In
other words, rather than trying to say they're either against the Islamic Republic and therefore
pro-war or against the war. Therefore, citing on the Islamic Republic, a lot of people have been
trying to understand and express what it means to be neither of these two things in a society
and in a world in which is very, very polarized. In addition to that, a lot of people have been
writing those who can get it out and we can talk a little bit later about the communications
difficulties, have been writing about what remains after the war have, after the bombs have
stopped, the shockwaves that go through neighborhoods, the everyday life, people going to the store,
people having to deal with their children, people having to deal with work. It's very important
to keep these in mind because we do have a tendency in times of war to focus on the dead and on
the destruction and we tend to forget that there are people who after the bombs fall have to go about
some kind of life and I'll just give you a small example of details that come out when we listen
to voices on the ground, which is about there being now a glass shortage in Tehran. So even though
these are technically surgical strikes and they're hitting buildings and then the shockwaves are
going through the neighborhood and pulling down a wall or shattering constantly glasses and so people
have had to go and try to, if there's not enough glass to repair these glasses so people are
basically sitting in these half destroyed homes trying to protect their properties as when comes
and goes through the building. So the situation becomes a lot more complicated when we listen to them.
Professor Sarabi, you write in your piece about how people are feeling completely crushed by two
forces, by the pro-war movement in the diaspora of Iranians outside of Iran and the crushing
assault of the regime. If you can explain. Yes, I will explain but I'll expand what you're saying
to say it's really important to remember that the pro-war voices are definitely in the diaspora
and very strong but they also exist inside Iran and they are very strong though we don't know
majority not majority it actually doesn't matter and the reason that's important is because what
a lot of people inside Iran have to contend with is the environment in which they're living in
and what that has done for people who feel they are neither for this war because of the immense
level of destruction that's taking place in it nor for the Islamic Republic because of all the
years of repression and brutality that they have had to experience. There's a sense of isolation
that is developing among that segment of the population, a sense of withdrawal. Somebody said to
me very recently, I've just stopped talking to anybody. I can't talk to anyone because it's either
this one or that one and another intellectual that I was speaking to talked about the fact that
there's a sense of despair on top of everything else because they feel like they
failed in trying to get people in their world and their environment to understand that despite
everything that's going on in Iran, the war was not going to help them transition out of this
government. The last thing I will say about this is that I'm very interested in ideas that are
coming out of Iran. I think we all have a tendency to treat the Middle East in general, but Iran also
as a cause and not as a generator of ideas. We talk about Iranians or the region when they come out
to protest. We talk about them when they're casualties of war, but they're also trying to create
ideas out of this, what you just talked about, and the Arabis really intense pressure from
multiple sides, and it's important to keep these ideas at the forefront of our own analysis. In
other words, don't treat the Middle East or Iran just as a cause, but as people who are thinking
through and incorporating these thoughts into our own analyses of what's going on.
So I'd like to bring Professor Amir Amadi Arain into the conversation too. In your piece
in the New York Review of Books, Headlined of Fire and Rain, you write that despite being a vocal
critic of the Iranian regime that once the US and Israel began bombing Iran, you felt towards
the country as you do towards your children. If you could elaborate on that.
Yeah, actually it was in reference to the previous war, to the toolday war, but yet that was
something that was almost like a switch in my head, that what we talk about in the metaphor
often used is a country as your parent. When we use terms like fatherland, motherland,
in Persian, we say mom of a tan, or says, I mean, the pedati. So there is a parental relationship
when one's a homeland, and there's this expectation that our country protects us,
nurture us, prepare us for the future, and so on. This is, I think this is an expectation.
Most people on the planet take for granted. You see it in the US all the time if you talk to Americans,
you know, a lot of times you hear about how their country has let them down. So I had that
relationship with Iran too. And even though I grew up during the Iranian Iraq war on the front line,
and my mom was a nurse in front line hospital. So I in my entire childhood, all the eight years,
I live very close to the front line of that war. Because I was so small, I forgot what the war does,
you know, to your relationship to your homeland. And then last year when those attacks started,
all of a sudden I found this switch, you know, found this shift in my relationship, in my perspective,
that this didn't look like a parent anymore. You know, someone as strong you can rely on
but a child that, you know, needs some sort of protection. And, you know, it felt like I was
watching a volatile fragile being, you know, being sort of battered by a bunch of strangers.
And that's a feeling that has been intensified over the year. You know, it started with the 12-year war,
a 12-day war, then really intensified during the January massacre, you know, which in which the Islamic
Republic basically declared war on Iranian people and killed tens of thousands of them on streets
of Iran. And now we are in a new phase of the another round of bombing and assault by two,
you know, armed to teeth government at the same time, while the threat of the Islamic Republic
hasn't abated at all. So this is, you know, the psychological pressure of that for, especially for
those of us in diaspora living in the safety. And in our particular case living in the United States,
where, you know, our tax money, it's substantial portion of it is going to the U.S. Army.
All of these contradictory feelings and, you know, perceptions of reality really takes a toll.
Professor Ryan, if you can talk about the impact of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran on the protest
movements within Iran, and then also talk about your critique of the Western media coverage,
what we're learning here in the United States. I think my critique of the Western media coverage
is very much, you know, aligned with what Professor Sorabi just said, that you see it is pretty divided
along, you know, like the left and right, at least the American left and right lines. If you look at
the, you know, the lefties, they are very much focused on an anti-war agenda. They want the bombing
to stop and so on. And if you look at the right, they look at, they sort of present this war as a
sort of a liberation operation and point out the, you know, regime brutalities over time and
showing that, you know, the damage it has caused has been much more severe than, you know, even this
intense bombing so far. I mean, this simplification, I think, is understandable because this is a
situation that is very complicated and difficult to grasp. I think the fact of the matter is that
if you live in Iran right now, you've got to square two sort of contradictory, you know, ideas about
the future. I think most Iranians want this war to end as soon as possible and at the same time,
they fear nothing more than the day after the war if this regime remains, you know, intact.
So, you know, there's nothing, I think it's anyone who has been in a war zone at any point in their
lives. I think they know, you know, without a shadow of doubt that nothing good comes out of
any war, you know, there's no clean war, there's no clean bombing, even, you know, this like precise
so-called precise attacks on military or government targets in Iran, they, you know, they cause
various severe civilian casualties, you know, the damage to cultural heritage, the environmental
effects of that, we just saw what happened in Iran after they bombed the oil refineries and
oil depots. So, I think it's pretty clear to anyone who knows anything about the war that the
path to a better society, a more prosperous or more democratic society never goes through a war.
And on the other side, the fact is that, you know, the regime in Iran, and I call it the regime
because it's been reduced to its, you know, security forces, oppression forces. They have
shed all pretenses of governance. So, they are, they are also looking at the Iranian people as
their enemy, and they've been very clear about that. If you look at the state media, they're frequently
threatening them that if they go out into the street and show any sign of, you know, discontent
with the state, any stage, any sort of protest or celebrate the death of Ali Hamane, which a lot
of people did, they're going to come after them and kill them. I mean, they did that the day after
how many died. They shot a bunch of people and we had casualties. They even shot at the windows of
the, you know, houses where people were celebrating. So, you got to be able to square this kind of
contradictory, you know, situation. You got to find a framework in which both the U.S.
Israeli bombing of Iran and the war that the regime in Iran is waging against its own population
are included or incorporated. It's very difficult and honestly, I'm not sure if I can do it,
but this is the only honest and, you know, sincere take on Iran, which is largely absent from
the coverage in the Western media. As for your first question about the impact of that on the,
you know, protest movement in Iran, you know, I know from personal experience, even though I was
very small, but, you know, that that that that war lasted long enough for me to sort of have a
pretty good sense of what it does to a civilian population. When the war ends, it doesn't end.
I mean, it lives with you for the rest of your life. I still, you know, have nightmares about
the events that I experienced when I was five years old. And, you know, a war of that magnitude
on a country that has been so weakened and so brutalized by the state, by the sanctions,
and so on and so forth. It's a long story. The exhaustion that it will cause the sense of
draining and despair, then it will cause it has caused already after two weeks is, you know,
it's so profound and so, you know, paralyzing than the expectation that people come out of this war
and organize a political movement to start even think about doing anything that will lead
to a meaningful change in the political status quo. It's a fantasy, you know, right now,
you know, as soon as the bombs start to fall, people's survival instinct kick in. They look for
shelter, they look for water and food, they want to protect their family, especially their kids,
and they're going to stay in the survival, you know, mode as long as the war goes on.
And after the bombing stops, which, you know, none of us knows when that will happen,
it takes months to, you know, to kind of process this situation, to kind of live with this trauma
or incorporate that trauma into their life and even start thinking about doing sort of anything
else to organizing or going out or, you know, participating in any kind of political process. Professor
I'm afraid we're going to have to leave it there. Thank you so much for joining us. Professor Amir
Ahmadi Aureian, Iranian-American, novelist and journalist. He left Iran 15 years ago. He's a creative
writing professor at Binghamton University. We'll link to your recent piece for the New York review
of books of Fire and Rain. And Professor Naghmeh Sarabi, Middle East professor of history at Brandeis
University, we'll link to your piece in the Equator Iran's fearless intellectuals. Coming up,
we go to Jerusalem to speak with the Iranian-Israeli journalist Orli Noyes. Stay with us.
Al-Rais Ali, heads held high, performed at a Gaza-benefit concert here in New York by the New York
City, Palestinian Youth Choir. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org. I'm Naghmeen Sheikh
with Amy Goodman. As we continue to look at the U.S. and Israel War on Iran and Israel's attacks
on Lebanon, we go now to Jerusalem where we're joined by Orli Noyes. She's an Iranian-Israeli
political activist and editor of the Hebrew Language New Site Local Call. She's also the chair of
Beth Selam's executive board. Her new piece for the New York Review of Books is headlined Longing
for my Tehran. Orli, welcome back to Democracy Now. If you could talk about this piece you've written
and why you chose to write it now, Longing for my Tehran.
Yeah, it's, I mean, as you can imagine, it's been a very emotional time since the beginning of
the war, not just because we are constantly running in and out of shelters, but because this time
the footage of the bombing that I grew accustomed to seeing for over two years from the Genocide
in Gaza was now coming from my homeland, from my hometown Tehran, the city where I was born and grew
up in. The cries of people were in Farsi this time, which was, which hit, you know, much closer
to my heart. And for me as a writer, as someone who's main tools to understand the world
are words, I started writing mainly in order to make some sense of this madness first of all
to myself. And then I was asked to publish something, so I sent this, but this was really an attempt to,
you know, bring some sense into this chaos that is now our lives here.
Orally, you have talked about the majority of Israelis supporting the war at the moment.
What, but there is opposition. Can you talk about the Israeli objective and the same time this
threat to turn Iran into Gaza and this increasing violence against Palestinians in the West
Bank? Yeah, so there is, I mean, like every circle of violence that Israel initiates mostly against
Palestinians, there is always a margin of protest and of objection. It's not small, but it exists
this time. The very few attempts to protest against the war were brutally crushed and
dispersed by the Israeli police, which now became almost entirely almost like the private militia
of the minister for Homeland Security, the Kahnist, Itamar Bangvier, it is not against the law,
it is not illegal to protest, still it is not illegal to protest in Israel again against the war,
but trying to please the Kahnist minister, the police very brutally dispersed these protests
that they almost immediately after they began. In the West Bank, the situation is beyond,
I mean, it's terrifying beyond anything that word can express. You mentioned in your opening
the execution of the four members of the Baniode family, including two parents and two very
young kids in the village of Tammun. We published yesterday a heartbreaking, really disturbing one
of the most disturbing pieces I've edited in my entire career as a journalist, where in one of
the villages in the north of the Jordan Valley settlers gathered the entire inhabitants of
this Palestinian little village in one tent and tormented them brutally, hit them severely
sexually abused one of the Palestinian men and all the while forcing the children to
watch them as they torture the older members of the community. These things turned almost
into daily events Palestinians are now really, I mean, you know, up until now our worry was about
the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank. Now it is just about executing Palestinians both by the army
and by the settlers. This is the reality now. They are just executing Palestinians in broad daylight
and nothing is being done about it. Well, I'm afraid early we're going to have to leave it.
There, thank you so much for joining us. Orly Neu is an Iranian Israeli political activist
and editor of the Hebrew language new site local call. She's also the chair of Beth Selam's executive
board. Her new piece, which we'll link to in the New York Review of Books, is headlined Longing
for my Tehran. Coming up, Mr. Nobody Against Putin has won the Academy Award for Best Documentary.
We'll play our interview with the directors.
Shook, shook, shook, shook, shook.
Buffles are full, can I get off with stuff through the air? Can I?
Buffles are full, I can I get off with stuff through the air? Can I?
Buffles are full, can I get off with stuff through the air? Can I?
Buffles are full, can I get off with stuff through the air? Can I get off with stuff through the air?
Buffles are full, can I get off with stuff through the air?
Buffles are full, by Amadou and Mariam performing in our Democracy Now studio.
I'm Narmine Schich in New York with Amy Goodman in Los Angeles.
Yes, I'm in Los Angeles because I attended the Oscars last night.
And so today we're going to start by looking at Mr. Nobody Against Putin.
The film that won the Academy Award for Best Documentary at the Oscars here at the Dolby Theatre.
The film tells the story of Pavel Pasha Telenkin, a Russian primary school teacher and videographer who becomes an international whistleblower after being reluctantly drawn into President Putin's propaganda machine.
Telenkin starts secretly documenting how ordinary Russians were being indoctrinated with pro-war messages following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Which began four years ago last month. Telenkin's footage forms the basis of the film, which was directed by David Borinstein.
Pasha Telenkin is credited as co-director cinematographer and narrator of the film. This is Telenkin and Borinstein last night at the Academy Awards.
Mr. Nobody Against Putin is about how you lose your country.
And what we saw when working with this footage, it's that you lose it through countless small little acts of complicity.
When we act complicit, when a government murders people on the streets of our major cities.
When we don't say anything, when oligarchs take over the media and control how we could produce it and consume it.
We all face a moral choice, but luckily, even a nobody is more powerful than you think.
And here's Pasha Telenkin, the main character of our film.
Thank you.
For four years, we look at the sky for shooting stars to make a very important wish.
But there are countries where instead of shooting stars, they have shooting bombs and shooting drones.
In the name of our future, in the name of all of our children, stop all of these wars now.
Thank you.
I'm agreeing with everything you're saying.
David Borinstein, speaking at the Oscars last night, after their film Mr. Nobody Against Putin won the Academy Award for Best Documentary.
In a moment, we'll air a recent interview with them. But first, let's go to the film's trailer.
Hello, this is me.
I'm the event coordinator at Carbash Primary School number one.
I'm also the school videographer.
Wave to the camera.
This office here is a pillar of democracy.
I'm giving them the space to be kids.
In this moment, I have no idea the amount of trouble I'm about to cause for myself.
I decided to conduct a special military operation.
We need to get the kids to recite some patriotic songs and speeches.
Well, I present the flag.
Are we completely fucked up?
I was instructed to shoot all the events.
I'm these kids propaganda.
Yeah.
I love my job, but I don't want to be a part of the regime.
Do you want to go to prison?
What she will tell you, she is forced to say.
If you live in our country and don't love it, then you're a parasite.
Leave.
I'll use my camera to film the best the school is sinking into.
It is the perfect cover.
Never clasp your helmet.
It will break your neck if you get shot in the head.
No, Pasha, don't do this.
Go ahead.
Film the flag.
Hero.
I think what you've done is going to make a big impact.
Teacher.
The way you go.
Commanders don't win wars.
I'm calling them teachers win wars.
Marching steps and march.
That's the trailer to the film, Mr. Nobody Against Putin.
I recently spoke to the film's director, David Borenstein,
and the subject of the film, the Russian school teacher, Pavel Pasha Telenkin.
I asked Pasha to talk about what motivated him to go from being a school teacher,
a videographer at the school, to being a whistleblower.
I need for as many people as possible to see what is happening inside of Russian schools.
It all began when the first directives from the government came into the school
with requirements of what lessons to teach, and that's when I got really angry
and knew that people needed to know what was going on,
and that's what led to the film.
So really my motivation was that people know that what these children
are being forced to hear, that Putin is forcing propaganda into their schools
and they're absorbing all of this, and we'll see what kind of generation
winds up in five or ten years after they've been learning this every day.
Also talk about the casualties.
This horror of the kids as they get older, this war is now,
it's the fourth anniversary of the Russian invasion,
becoming old enough to go to Ukraine, to attack Ukraine.
Mostly the kids are just kids.
They graduate from high school, and those that haven't gotten into university
or have been dropped out or kicked out of university,
they really are called immediately some might sign a contract,
but others are drafted.
And they all go off to war, and they're really young.
And it's a horrible tragedy, and many of them don't come back as you see in the film.
So explain when you talk about the directive,
how it changed also the teachers, and you were one of them.
So they had to read directives to the children,
and they started marching around the school, and more than that.
So really, just after the war started in 2022,
on the 14th of March, the directive started coming into the school,
and they were sheaves and sheaves of paper with photos,
and lesson plans, and videos, and very complete instructions and curriculums
of what the teachers were supposed to do and say about the war,
how they were supposed to talk about Ukraine,
and part of my job as the school's videographer was to film all of this,
and then uploaded to prove to the government that we were fulfilling all of their requirements.
And of course, a lot of the teachers understood that these things have nothing to do
with their actual academic subjects that they have to teach,
but they were forced to do this, and if they had resisted,
there were all kinds of disciplinary consequences there could be fines
or things a lot more serious, too.
So despite understanding this has nothing to do with their jobs,
as pedagogues, they had no choice.
David Barnes dies.
Now we give you a second.
There was even, you know, this situation,
because so much of the lesson time was taken up by these propaganda lessons,
the kids didn't have enough time to actually learn the curriculum,
and so their grades kept falling,
and their understanding of their subjects kept falling,
and the teachers were protesting saying, look, we just don't have time to teach everything.
Let's just stop or reduce the time of all of this other, you know, material,
and they said, we can't, we can't, because we'll all be fired if we do.
Let me bring David Barnes down back into this discussion.
Talk about what you saw as you were following the video,
was Pasha uploading the video to you,
and then you're increasing concern for Pasha himself being arrested.
Yeah, so in the beginning, we set up a system where footage would be sent to me
via an encrypted FTP server.
There was a lot of security protocols in this production.
It was really, really daunting,
but it got more daunting over time.
Because when we first started, we thought, oh, maybe Pasha can contribute to this project,
and then he can stay in Russia.
Those first months of the war was a period where people thought they could still go out and protest,
and things would be okay.
Well, soon, they learned that that wasn't the case.
Within the first year of working on this project together,
there was a foreign agent law that completely criminalized the way we worked together,
and then even more concerningly, there was this treason law
that basically completely criminalized everything he's saying inside the film.
So if Pasha were to get caught filming and sending the footage to me,
he could end up in prison for a very, very long time,
potentially for the rest of his life.
And David, if you can explain how you encouraged and you set up this ending of Pasha leaving
how he got out of the country, and I'll ask him to tell us that story as well.
When the treason law really kicked in, we had this realization,
Pasha, if you want to get this stuff out to the world,
you're going to have to leave Russia.
You're going to have to leave Russia, and we can potentially help you do that,
but is this something that you want to do?
And the kind of conversations and discussions that we had around that really big decision
ended up helping us find out what the story of the film is,
because we had so many discussions.
Is this the right thing to do?
Would showing the world this footage make big enough of the difference?
Can one person, one Mr. Nobody, really go up against someone like Putin
or a regime as big and oppressive as Russia?
Would it all be worth it if it meant leaving your students?
Because you're the only teacher they can really rely on.
So we had all of these discussions and we realized that these questions about
the value of one person's resistance, about how much one person can do,
about how much we can overcome complicity while the systems around us
are succumbing to authoritarianism.
These discussions and this decision, do I leave, do I sacrifice my life in Russia
to make this, do I take a giant leap into the unknown
for the small chance of this film making some difference?
These discussions ended up being the plot of the film,
and so we helped him figure out a way to leave Russia,
and then kind of over the next year and a half,
we followed this process of him going through this transformation
from teacher trapped in this Kafka-esque brutal absurd propaganda system
that's creating death and destruction in Ukraine and within Russia,
and following him till he leaves, and he makes this fateful decision.
Talk about that, Pasha, how you got out of Russia,
because of course David was way beyond that border,
but what it meant for you organizing a commencement ceremony
and then leaving, how you left with your film.
I had a suit, if I was going to Istanbul for seven days for vacation,
but I had a suitcase that was filled with hard drives and memory cards
and the laptop and it was all filled with equipment
and I knew that I was going to have to go through security
and go through customs and my bag was going to be open
and I was really scared.
I mean, how could I hide any of this?
And so I grit my teeth and I put my suitcase on the belt
and I was lucky, because how could I have explained it?
I'm supposedly going on vacation and all I have is this equipment
and I don't even have a bathing suit with me.
Because many of these situations will stop me.
And then when I got to the other side of Istanbul,
people said to me just how lucky I was
because it really could have been bad.
That's the Russian school teacher turned whistleblower,
Pavel Paschal Telenkin and David Borinstein.
They won an Oscar last night for their documentary.
Mr. Nobody against Putin to see the whole interview
go to democracynow.org.
In another notable moment from Sunday's Oscars,
Autumn Derral, the Archipel...
became the first woman to win the Oscar for best cinematography.
She won it for sinners, which is directed by Ryan Kugler.
Whenever I say thank you to Ryan, he replies and says,
no, thank you, thank you for believing in me
and thank you for trusting me.
And that's the kind of guy that I get to make films with.
It's a very, very honorable person.
And he means it, and he really, truly means it.
And I feel like I had to meet him, like this little girl,
that their mother who's over there told them
to do anything had to meet Ryan.
That girl also had to look up Ellen Kross' name,
who's also in this room today.
And that girl also had to meet Rachel Morrison.
I'm so honored to be here,
and I really want all the women in the room to stand up,
because I feel like I don't get here without you guys.
And there was the Oscar presenter and actor Javier Bardem,
who called for no war from the stage,
and also talked about a free Palestine.
Not to war on free Palestine.
And that does it for today's show.
Democracy now is produced with Mike Burke,
Dina Ghazdher, Messiah Rhodes, Maria Tarasena,
Nicole Salazar, Sarah Nasir.
Trina Nadura Sam, Alkoff Tamari,
a studio, John Hamilton, Robbie Karen,
Hany Masuth, and Safwat Nazal.
Our Executive Director is Julie Krossby,
special thanks to Becca Staley,
John Randolph, Paul Powell, Mike DeFilippo, Miguel Nogera,
Hugh Grant, Kyle Markser, Dennis Moynahan, David Prude,
Dennis McCormack, Matt Ely, Anna Osbeck, Emily Anderson,
Dante Toreri, and Buffy St. Marie Hernandez.
I'm Nermine Sheikh with Amy Goodman, Amy.
And I just want to say, for people to watch our Oscar interviews
over these last months, you can go to democracynow.org.
They're a fantastic array, especially around the documentary category,
both the short and long category, as well as our interview
with Ryan Kugler, the Oscar-winning director of Centers.
