Bob Schwartz

“Cinema can protect memory and can keep Palestinians on the ground because films are like dreams, ideas. Nobody can occupy dreams. Nobody can occupy ideas. Nobody can occupy memory … Nobody can occupy your imagination.”
Director Rashid Masharawi

From Ground Zero (streaming) is a collection of 22 short films made in Gaza. Initiated by Palestinian director Rashid Masharawi, the project was born to give a voice to 22 Gazan filmmakers to tell the untold stories of the current war on film. It was Palestine’s entry to the 2025 Academy Awards.

The Guardian reports:

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‘Nobody can occupy your imagination’: From Ground Zero’s producer on documenting his native Palestine

Rashid Masharawi, who produced the anthology of 22 films that was Palestine’s official entry to the Academy Awards, has remarkable optimism about the future of Gaza

Being a Palestinian under Israeli occupation will not help someone make a good film, according to Rashid Masharawi, but a good film-maker will help Palestine.

With his anthology film From Ground Zero (in Arabic: From Zero Distance) he attempts to do just that by bridging the space between the Palestinians in Gaza who have endured a campaign of annihilation behind closed doors to those around the world watching as an incomprehensibly vast tragedy unfolds in real time.

The result is a collection of 22 shorts by Palestinian film-makers, ranging from documentary to vignettes and animation, which turns our attention not only to the past – and to the unrelenting violence of the present, when the death toll in Gaza continues to climb – but also to the future and what cannot be taken.

“Cinema can protect memory and can keep Palestinians on the ground because films are like dreams, ideas. Nobody can occupy dreams. Nobody can occupy ideas. Nobody can occupy memory … Nobody can occupy your imagination,” said Masharawi in an interview in London ahead of the film’s release in UK cinemas on 12 September.

“We have to be optimistic. We have to tell the people: ‘Tomorrow it’s a better day. Keep dancing, keep creating, keep making films, because it means you have the future.’”

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Personal transformation is not about changing what you do or what you say. It is about changing what and how you think, thinking that leads to the what you do and say. It is about changing who you are.

It has been going on as long as there have been people. It is unique to people. Other beings act according to their nature, and can respond to circumstances and environment according to their nature and experience. But only people can explore that nature and make a choice to follow it or to transform it, or at least to try.

Changing circumstances and environment are challenges and catalysts for personal transformation. When those changes happen, people may act in different and adaptive (or non-adaptive) ways. Some people will conclude that changing what we do will never go far enough, and changing who we are is needed.

Again and again, the twentieth century threw new circumstances at us. While every earlier era had done the same, this time seemed different. For just one example, three times, in the course of thirty years, global warfare and destruction climbed to heights and descended to depths once only imagined in fiction.

Sometime around the 1950s and 1960s, two intertwined movements emerged. One strand was cultural, social and political, that is, external, a movement that came to be tagged a counterculture. At the same time, not entirely unrelated to psychoactive agents, a spiritual and transformative movement emerged. Down the road, we see that leaving two legacies. Practices like yoga exploded on the transformative side. On the other hand, while drugs as transformative tools never left, there was/is a lot of getting wasted up/down/sideways.

Starting around 1980, the transformative counterculture morphed into what has been called the New Age movement. In essence, we are at a new era, where we recognize that changing ourselves and changing things—which are increasingly challenging—are inextricably linked. If we don’t change, things won’t change, whatever well-meaning strategies and initiatives we try.

The current complexity needs no recap. There has never been a time like this. Whatever we think about the New Age movement, an interesting little moment in cultural history or a still much needed development, remember: If we don’t change things won’t change.

Clouds in the east, sun setting in the west. We are not surprised.

© 2025 by Bob Schwartz

The similarities between Israel and America are so striking that they might as well be twin nations.

Israel and America have stopped caring, to the extent they ever did, about what the world or their neighbors think.

Israel and America believe the whole world is against them.

Israel and America have stopped behaving according to the established conventions of statecraft or the rule of law, national or international.

The leadership of Israel and America is supported by a minority of the citizenry and the majority of the citizenry oppose the regimes.

The leadership of Israel and America use real emergencies (Israel) and pretext pretend emergencies (America) to justify their agenda, maintain office and extend power.

A tree that grows clouds! IT’S TRUE!

Self-portraits, of which selfies are a modern version, are nothing new. Whether by words or images, telling and showing about yourself is as old as telling and showing.

Selfies can be viewed different ways. They say: I was here, in this place, with this person or these people. They might also say, in the same breath: Here I am, not just in the picture but essential to the picture, the most important thing in the picture.

What do selfies mean?

When the following note was written, Trump was still in the first year of his first term. So much has happened since that we may forget that Trump 1.0 was just an earlier model of Trump 2.0. I was then speculating that things could be worse with a smarter and more skilled demagogue. What I didn’t imagine was that the next demagogue wouldn’t be smart, skilled, knowledgeable, attractive, or capable, but would be Trump himself.

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Donald Trump thinks of himself as the greatest demagogue America has ever seen, a popular savior and Supreme Leader at a time of widespread dissatisfaction, whose loyal cult of personality allows him to get away with anything.

He has turned out to be wrong, for the simple reasons that he has no real governing skills, that he is psychologically unstable, narcissistic and childish, and that he is monumentally ignorant of national and world affairs.

Some think that once this peculiar chapter is over, and a potentially tragic and dangerous chapter it still may be, America will choose to swing back to stability, sanity, intelligence, competence and moderation in its leader.

But here is a different thought. What if America still has a passion for radical change in its government, and the next time chooses a real demagogue who is everything Trump is not, someone smart, knowledgeable, attractive, and actually capable of running the government? You know how people say that with Trump, the old rules of politics don’t seem to apply? What if that is true even after Trump, and what if we haven’t seen anything yet?

August 10, 2017

“Something that would dramatize for them and for their people the seriousness of the situation.”

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951 original) from director Robert Wise is a significant science fiction movie.

In it, Klaatu arrives from a distant world to warn people of earth that their selfish destructive ways threaten the order of the entire universe, and they must stop.

He asks Professor Barnhardt (a stand-in for Albert Einstein) to help. Klaatu is to address an assembly of all world leaders. He says that if people of earth don’t change their ways, the earth will be destroyed.

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KLAATU
I came here to warn you that, by threatening danger, your planet faces danger — very grave danger. I am prepared, however, to offer a solution.

BARNHARDT
Would you care to be more specific?

KLAATU
What I have to say must be said to all concerned.It is too important to be entrusted to any individual.

BARNHARDT
I gather that your efforts on the official level were not entirely successful.

KLAATU
I come to you as a last resort — and I confess that my patience is wearing thin.Must I take drastic action in order to get a hearing?

BARNHARDT
What — what sort of action do you mean?

KLAATU
Violent action — since that seems to be the only thing you people understand.Leveling the island of Manhattan, perhaps — or dropping the Rock of Gibraltar into the sea.

BARNHARDT
Would you be willing to meet with the group of scientists I am calling together?. Perhaps you could explain your mission to them, and they in turn could present it to their various peoples.

KLAATU
That’s what I came to see you about.

BARNHARDT
It is not enough to have men of science. We scientists are too easily ignored — or misunderstood. We must get important men from every field. Educators — philosophers — church leaders — men of vision and imagination — the finest minds in the world.

KLAATU
I leave that in your hands.

BARNHARDT
You’d have no objection to revealing yourself at this meeting?

KLAATU
No — not at all.

BARNHARDT
What about your personal safety in the meantime? What about the Army — and the police?

KLAATU
My name is Carpenter and I’m a very earthy character living in a respectable boarding house.

BARNHARDT
I’m afraid I can’t offer you any real protection. I have no influence in cases of inter-planetary conspiracy.

KLAATU
I’m sure I’ll be quite safe until the meeting.

BARNHARDT
One thing, Mr. Klaatu. Suppose this group should reject your proposals. What is the alternative?

KLAATU
I’m afraid you have no alternative. In such, a case the planet Earth would have to be — eliminated.

BARNHARDT
Such power exists?

KLAATU
I assure you such power exists.

BARNHARDT
The people who came to the meeting must be made to realize this. They must understand what is at stake.You mentioned a demonstration of force–

KLAATU
Yes.

BARNHARDT
Would such, a demonstration be possible before the meeting?

KLAATU
Yes — of course.

BARNHARDT
Something that would dramatize for them and for their people the seriousness of the situation. Something that would affect the entire planet.

KLAATU
That can easily be arranged.

BARNHARDT
I wouldn’t want you to harm anybody — or destroy anything.

KLAATU
Why don’t you leave it to me? I’ll think of something.

BARNHARDT
Maybe a little demonstration.

KLAATU
Something dramatic — but not destructive.It’s quite an interesting problem.Would day after tomorrow be all right? Say about noon?

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The dramatic demonstration he arranges is to stop all power in the world, with the exception of that needed for health and safety. Normal life is brought to a standstill.

People of America are concerned. Maybe those who are concerned can borrow an idea from Klaatu. Maybe we can stop all that we are doing—with the exception of health and safety—for an hour at noon. Maybe that will be a demonstration of our concern that won’t be ignored.

Let’s assume Trump is a problem—for democracy, for the rule of law, for the economy, for the world order. If that seems like a big problem, yeah, so it seems.

What to do? What for us to do? What for you to do?

It is counterintuitive, even dangerous, to stop in the face of an emergency. Better to do something than do nothing. But is it better to do anything than nothing?

It is unnatural not to yell, criticize and curse in the face of a crisis. It seems cathartic to pile on and inspire others to resistance. But if it only adds to the environment of dark negativity, having little practical beneficial effect, are we poisoning ourselves?

Thinking is hardest of all, which seems a luxury as things get worse by the day. But before acting and speaking, think independently and fully, if you can, free of ideology and influence. If there is a solution, in the near term, midterm, long term, investigate and act. And as a bonus, enjoy the moments of quiet contemplation and stillness within which the solutions will be born.

Few sports feats are more complicated than pitching a baseball. There are just so many ways to throw a football. There are infinite ways for a pitcher to grip a baseball and move his hand, wrist, arm, body, all with the intent of fooling a batter or getting contact that leads to outs. That’s why great pitchers are rare, and great or good pitchers may have bad games or bad seasons. It’s that hard.

Mordecai “Three Finger” Brown played in the major leagues from 1903 to 1916. His record of 239 wins–130 losses, with a 2.06 Earned Run Average, puts him in the elite of all-time pitchers. He did this with a pitching hand, due to youthful accidents, that had just three fully-working fingers. He adjusted his grip, in a way that gave him a unique curve ball.

We all have three working fingers on our pitching hand, however it happened, whether or not we know or acknowledge it. Rather than delude ourselves, we can practice a different grip that takes advantage of it, leaving batters perplexed and fans amazed.

© 2025 by Bob Schwartz