Leaders Waffle on the possible Ukraine Peace Deal

What do they mean? Starmer and the rest of the western leaders who are not actually involved in the negotiations over peace between the US, Russia and Ukraine, and obviously sore about this, say they want security guarantees for Ukraine to ensure the peace deal with Russia, which has not happened yet, and which is currently winning on the battlefield. One supposes that they must look as if they are having something to do with it. Yet it is the security guarantee that would be provided by Ukraine joining Nato which has been a big factor in sparking this war. Zelensky constantly demands this membership from the west, ignoring the fact that this would, if Nato worked as it should, automatically spark WWIII. Like it or not, the Russians regard being encircled by a military alliance of western powers as aggressive, and particularly Ukraine, which has the history of being an avenue for the invasion of Russia/Soviet Union and has a legacy of fascism amongst a proportion of its leadership. So how could these leader’s demand for security guarantees ever be a factor that could help bring about peace? In fact, they cannot be, they are really a demand for more of the same war, if they are not just waffle, hot air, bluster, which they are.

It has become at least obvious with US president Trump, who needs some recognition for trying to save lives with a peace deal, that there are two imperialist ambitions at work on this battleground, fighting over resources and security positions, and Ukraine does not have much say in this, only those of its leaders who seek to sell out entirely to the US, that is, if it can be cajoled into entirely destroying Russia. On both sides working class people are being killed just to achieve certain objectives of their respective ruling classes.

Review of The French Connection by Iona Singh

The French Connection 1975 

Director William Friedkin

With his passing, the anonymity and mediocrity of Gene Hackman's character in The French Connection in a dirty, pulpous, frozen-concrete, neon-signed, car dominated America springs to mind. The annoying ambient background noises, the rumble of the traffic, the wind, hard to hear conversations and finally Hackman and Schneider as the human center pieces that lend narrative to the chaos. These very ‘unfilm star type’ actors, are prefect as 'nonentities with a mission' in the gigantic monster city scape. 

Nothing here looks film-set controlled. Open spaces foreigners have never seen - rubbish strewn and unpeopled, are home-turf to the slightly silly Popeye Doyle, with his comical neurosis about "feet picking" and no concept of ‘upstanding’, going about roughing 'em up and half-frozen on a slice of pizza and horrid coffee. From across the street he can see the drug runners, (equally de-centred actors from European cinema) Fernando Rey and Pierre Nicoli, feasting on delicacies in a carpeted restaurant, which raises his desire to catch them to insane levels. No apologies are made for this hyperactive 'hero', a slob, a bit nasty, plugged in and energized by the city streets to fuel the magnificent chase scenes. While the bad guys are polite, 'middle-class' in twee attire and genuinely so very cruel, Popeye's ridiculous anti-conformist little hat is a great big finger to 'respectability'.

This cursory style of filming of New York City and its inhabitants lets us overhear incidental 'snippets' of a standard narrative plot from the midst of this bustle, boosted by theme music from the great jazz trumpeter Don Ellis, and the major performances as well as non-actor real people in a number of supporting roles and of course usually in the background. The homogeneity of it all, the communication between the various departments, the Director, technicians, wardrobe, sound, whatever, is wonderful.

The French Connection is a great example from a number of films at the time that owe their existence to 20th century street photographers like Winogrand, Gordon Parks, and Neil Libbert, Lawrence Shustak and others.

Gene Hackman in The French Connection

 

Still from The French Connection

Neil Libbert, 42 Street 1960

 Garry Winogrand, Utah (Wyoming), 1964