NAZA

While a student at Yale, I took Charlie Musser’s seminar on documentary films on a whim, after having taken two courses oriented to film narrative (not screenwriting). Because my studies were mainly in philosophy of religion, historical theology, and history at Yale, I think neither Charlie nor I knew quite why I was taking his course. At the time, I would not have thought that I would be writing on the genre thirty years later. The film, NAZA (2026), makes my earlier endeavor entirely worthwhile, and integrated into my main academic areas of study and research, which include ethics and political theory. The documentary “examines ‘the systems behind the mass killing of Palestinian civilians’” in Gaza, and as of October, the theatrical release was being extended due to so many sold-out showings.[1] The Venice Film Festival awarded the film with the Special Jury Prize, and the two filmmakers, Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham, “received a record-breaking 25-minute standing ovation at the festival.”[2] The film can be interpreted as documenting the magnified harsh effects that unchecked power over other people can have when those others are dehumanized. It is interesting how close “NAZA” is to another word, NAZI.

The full essay is at "NAZA."

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1. David Mouriquand, “Gaza Documentary ‘NAZA’ Beating ‘Avengers Endgame” Encore’ at Box Office,” Euronews.com, 1 October 2026.

2.Ibid.

Russian Bombs Usher Ukraine’s UN Address

Human nature itself must be attuned to walking out before a speech by political leaders who intentionally have enemy civilians killed and severely injured, and to being attracted to hear leaders who represent the victims. So, at the UN in September, 2026, many delegates at the UN’s General Assembly walked out before a speech by Israel’s Netanyahu, who was wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity in Gaza (and arguably even in the West Bank), and Russia’s Putin did not even attend the opening session of speeches, whereas the address by Ukraine’s President Zelensky was to a full room. The contrast between Zelensky and the other two men could not be starker, and yet the UN was open to all three, serial violations of the UN Charter notwithstanding. The international organization can be said to have its legs wide open, and paradoxically to be impotent even with regard to enforcing its own charter. As a visiting research scholar at Harvard in 2025, I had the opportunity to speak personally with former UN officials, all of whom admitted that, given the vetoes in the Security Council, the UN itself could not even be reformed so the organization could even pass meaningful resolutions against a powerful member’s ally; something stronger at the global level would be needed if international law stood a chance of being enforced rather than merely given lip service. In 2026, even the notion of international law risked being relegated as an oxymoron, assuming that law itself—to be considered law rather than guideline or policy—requires a viable enforcement mechanism. To say that something is a law but is not enforced is to say that something really isn’t a law.

The full essay is at "Russian Bombs Usher Ukraine's UN Address."

Murder on the Orient Express

If viewers can get past Hercule Poirot’s extraordinarily long (and awful) mustache in the 2017 film, Murder on the Orient Express, listening closely to some of the detective’s choice observations on human nature and ethics can deliver philosophical dividends. Indeed, Poirot admits to being able to see the world only as it should be, which enables him to detect even small physical (and psychological) aberrations, even concerning eggs for breakfast, and so he has become, as he unabashedly states, the world’s best detective. After having solved the case on the stopped train, however, he realizes that even his “gift” at detection is not fully in line with how things should be, and so he compromises with his austere ethical standards because he finds himself in a “gray area,” ethically speaking.

The full essay is at "Murder on the Orient Express."

Castigating NGO’s: An American Israeli-Surrogate on Gaza Reconstruction

Besides international law, international organizations, or NGOs, function internationally beyond the reach of the nation-state. From the standpoint of national sovereignty, the sheer existence of the NGO as an institutional arrangement can be viewed as a potential threat and thus smartly to be expunged. One strategy that a country’s government bent on protecting national sovereignty could use to discredit NGOs is to label them using the turbo-charged “T” word, even in the case of an NGO that is oriented exclusively to providing humanitarian aid. By 2026, Israel had decimated the infrastructure and buildings in its occupied Gaza strip, and Russia had been bombing residential buildings in Kiev and other large cities in Ukraine for four years, so it could not be said that humanitarian aid was not needed in the world. Parts of Africa ravaged by draught and war, such as in Somalia, were also in vital need of humanitarian aid. To discredit NGOs providing such assistance, whether in terms of shelter, food, or medicine, meant being open to the charge of callous disregard for the suffering of very large numbers of people.  The case of Gaza—in particular, the position of the Trump administration on NGO’s being involved in the reconstruction of the strip—demonstrates the harm that is involved in turning the NGO institution-type into a controversial and even suspicious thing in order to do the bidding of a belligerent ally while removing a potential external threat to national sovereignty.

The full essay is at "Castigating NGO's."

Trade or Foreign Policy: The E.U. on Illegal Israeli Settlements

During the summer of 2026, the E.U. found itself at one point trying to make the unnecessarily arduous and utterly artificial distinction between trade and foreign policy as if they were mutually exclusive. This task was foisted on the Council of Ministers due to the domain-specific application of the state veto, which is to say, the requirement of unanimity. The sheer artificiality was outdone only by the absurdity of any of 27 states still being able to veto proposed federal law and policy in some but not all policy domains, and thus hamstring the E.U. even when the good of the whole, supported by the vast majority of states and E.U. citizens, supported action on the federal level. The global context at the time with respect to international relations belied a stark separation of trade from foreign policy.

The full essay is at "Trade or Foreign Policy."

Ben-Hur

By 2026, the world hardly needed any convincing regarding the strident zeal for endless vengeance in the Middle East, given the genocide still occurring in Gaza against the Palestinian people. In 1945, the world had needed no convincing on just how severe, and at what tremendous scale, state-sponsored (and engineered) hatred against a people deemed “subhuman” could be. The 1959 film-version of Ben-Hur is saturated with the desire for vengeance, with the antipodal motive of forgiveness only being shown as  a more powerful, and thus stronger, phenomenon at the end of the film when Judah Ben-Hur’s mother and sister are spontaneously cured of leprosy at the very moment in which Jesus dies on the Cross. Only in aiding Jesus with water on his arduous way to the Cross does the Jewish man, Judah, realize the value of the suffering man’s righteous, unmerited suffering, especially relative to the value of even satisfied vengeance. At the moment of his death, Jesus, freed of a mortal body, cures the two women as a result of Judah’s change of heart. The message is that forgiveness wins over resentment and vengeance from a spiritual standpoint.

The full essay is at "Ben-Hur."

Holding a Congressman at Gunpoint: Israeli Settlers Backed by the IDF

An old saying advises against “looking a gift-horse in the mouth.” Another says, “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.” At least as of mid-June, 2026, Israel had not received either memo, because the country’s military, the IDF backed up the position of Israeli settlers who had just illegally detained—technically “kidnapped”—Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) while he was on a trip in the West Bank. U.S. President Trump had recently told the media that without the United States, Israel would not exist. The lack of gratitude shown to the U.S. by making sure that a visiting Congressman was treated well during his visit was palpable.

The full essay is at "Israeli Settlers Hold a Congressman at Gunpoint."

Eichmann

There comes a point in the film, Eichmann (2007), which is based on Avner Less’s series of interviews with Adolf Eichmann in an Israeli jail, when the man who was in charge of transport to the Nazi death camps realizes that he will lose the upcoming trial and be hanged; the hitherto unemotional Eichmann instantly tears up in front of Avner Less in the small, windowless room and laments never being able to see his children again. Less points out that Eichmann has sent many children to their deaths, “but they were Jews,” Eichmann counters. The inroads into the psyche that Nazi propaganda reached was suddenly obvious, even odd. Ideology with the machinery of state as a proponent and enforcer can short-circuit the human mind without the mind being aware of its own cognitive distortions. Eichmann states, “but they were Jews” as if anyone would understand because he takes the validity of the statement as a given. Translation: Jews were not only enemies of the state; they were also subhuman. In an earlier interview, Eichmann disclaimed being antisemitic with a tone that conveys to the audience that he really believes his statement. At the very least, the mental pathology of disassociation seems to have been caused by the earlier Nazi propaganda. State ideology can indeed be mentally invasive, and this may say as much about the vulnerabilities of the human brain as the danger latent in political power than can manifest in massive states as not only war crimes, but also the more severe crimes against humanity.

The full essay is at "Eichmann."

Starmer Resigns as British Prime Minister: A Post-Mortem

Two years after winning in a landslide, with his Labour group being given its largest majority in Parliament in decades, PM Starmer found himself polling as the least favored PM on record and was forced by the political reality of his political group to resign. Why? I contend that the actual reason, behind and obfuscated by the headlines, is rather basic, or fundamental.

The full essay is at "Starmer Resigns as British Prime Minister."

On the Politics of International Real-Estate Projects: The Case of Albania

During times of global peace, it is easy to suppose that increased economic interdependency between countries reduce the likelihood of war due to the ramifications on the business projects. By a similar logic by analogy, a couple could suppose that by getting married, the increased interdependence would make breaking up more difficult, and thus less likely. What is overlooked here is that emotions, whether in a romantic relationship or between governments, can, if allowed to go unchecked, break through the parchment barriers that we set up as if they could constrain even intense, ongoing emotions. A couple using marriage as a substitute for going to couples-counseling could actually make a break-up more likely once in the marriage. Similarly, peace abroad and domestic tranquility can be thwarted by international real-estate development projects themselves. Such a situation was unfolding in Albania in mid-2026.

The full essay is at "On the Politics of International Real-Estate Projects."

Vendetta Violence: Israeli Settlers Sanctioned by the E.U.

What a difference even just a month can make. On 11 May, 2026, the E.U. enacted sanctions against “Israeli settlers over their violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, a move enabled by backing from Hungary’s incoming government.”[1] A month earlier, Viktor Orbán was the sitting prime minister of the E.U. state of Hungary. As a supporter of U.S. President Trump, who in turn supported Israel even in its decimation of Gaza razing entire cities into leveled ground for real estate “properties,” Orbán would have wielded Hungary’s veto in the European Council.

The full essay is at "Vendetta Violence."

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1. Maia de la Baume, “E.U. Approves Sanctions on Israeli Settlers after Hungarian Backing,” Euronews.com, 11 May, 2026.

Security Council Vetoes Styme the UN: Oil in the Strait of Hormuz

The United Nations was intended to obviate war, and failing in that mission, at least to safeguard economic trade especially if doing so staves off anticipated belligerent action by countries seeking to restore compromised trade. In 2026, when Iran’s stoppage of the one-fifth of the world’s oil that would otherwise go through the Strait of Hormuz triggered a military threat by the U.S., Russia and China vetoes a resolution in the Security Council aimed at reopening the strait and thereby obviating an escalation in the military fighting between the U.S. and Iran. Because not even a lopsided vote in favor—11 in favor, two against, and two abstentions—could activate the U.N. in its principle role of peremptorily obviating war by protecting trade, we can conclude that the organization had indeed effectively collapsed and could not be reformed from within, given that five members of the Security Council retained veto power. Meanwhile, military aggressors in the world were able to fill in the power-void left by the collapsing post-World War II world order to render might-makes-right the status quo in the twenty-first century.

The full essay is at "Security Council Vetoes Styme the UN."

Nuremberg

It is said that history is written by the victors. The film, Nuremberg (2025), bears that out. Even though Justice Robert Jackson, the American prosecutor at the Nuremberg Nazi trial, compromises its integrity and thus breaches due process by pressuring Douglas Kelley, the psychiatrist assigned to the Nazi prisoners (most notably Goring), to obtain and pass on the defense’s strategy to Jackson, which Kelley does, the trial is presented nonetheless as legitimate and the Nazi prisoners as even deserving an unfair trial. Nevertheless, nations governed by the rule of law are never justified in putting on corrupt trials, or skewing them to push a particular ideology. The film itself is skewed to highlight the Nazi crimes against the Jews at the expense of delving more into the distinctly war crimes even though those crimes were just as important in the charges in the actual trial.

The full essay is at "Nuremberg."

On America’s Dominance in NATO: The E.U. as a Contributory Factor

Just after the E.U. had successfully negotiated (mostly) free-trade treaties with India and a few South American state-level countries, the E.U. and U.S. were at odds on the ownership and control of Greenland to such an extent that the NATO alliance was strained if not fraught. The resulting power-vacuum with respect to military alliances could be filled by the E.U. strengthening its federal foreign policy and defense powers and forming a military alliance with India and even South America in order to put less reliance and thus pressure on the weakened NATO alliance.  This is not to say that new military alliances would necessarily or even probably form; rather, such alliances would be in line with the dynamics and logic of power itself at the international level. I contend that the unbalanced balance of federal-state power in foreign policy and defense in the E.U. was a major contributory factor of the dominance of the U.S. in NATO.

The full essay is at "On America's Dominance in NATO."

On the Global Order: Experts Missing the Big Picture

Although the reasoning of government officials in foreign policy can be impeccable, they are susceptible to being so oriented to the intricacies of the “chess” playing that they may actually be rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, a ship that sank in the icy Atlantic in 1912. At a talk by American foreign-policy experts at Yale’s School of Global Affairs in March, 2025, Ely Ratner, who served as an assistant secretary of defense, and Celeste Wallander, who was also an assistant secretary, joined Andrea Kendall-Taylor of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) to speak mainly on U.S. foreign policy in regard to Russia and China; only scant mention was made of the situation in Gaza even though a holocaustic genocide was well underway there. What the speakers said about the post-World War II world order was most telling; what they did not say, however, spoke volumes.

The full essay is at "On the Global Order."

On Yale’s Anti-Conservative Ideological Faculty

In 2025, “Yale professors made 1,099 donations to federal political campaigns and partisan groups . . . Not one of the recipients was Republican.”[1] Other than the 2.4% of the donations that went to independent candidates or groups, the rest—97.6%—went to Democrats. In that same year, U.S. President Trump became very publicly critical of elite private universities receiving federal research dollars while being so partisan (i.e., Democrat-leaning). Trump may have been more concerned that the universities benefit by receiving the indirect-expenses portions of federal research-grants while the professors infuse their personal ideologies, which are in conflict with conservatism, into their lectures. I took many, many courses, including at Yale, in my formal and post-doctoral education, and the infusion of a professor’s ideology—nearly always progressive—was not uncommon, especially at Yale.

The full essay is at "On Yale's Anti-Conservative Ideological Faculty."

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1. Jaeha Jang, “Yale Professors Donated Overwhelmingly to Democrats in 2025,” The Yale Daily News, January 14, 2026.

Distortions of Political Perspective in Foreign Affairs

When the human mind becomes too affixed to a political ideology, rather it is “right,” “center,” or “left,” one way that the excessive attachment can be seen by other people is by perspectival distortion. A very basic illustration of this cognitive-perceptional lapse is when someone claims that only X but not Y is problematic even though both X and Y can be criticized using the same or even related criteria. Besides the fact that ideology is inherently partial rather than wholistic, “sins of omission” concerning X or Y (but not both) due to a cognitive-perspectival distortion, which in turn comes from the partiality of any ideology, can easily be viewed as unethical in virtue of being patently unfair as well as self-serving, ideologically. This very abstract paragraph sprang from news reports of U.S. Senator Linsey Graham referring to Iran’s Khamenei as a Hitler-figure while giving Israel’s Netanyahu a pass even though by January 11, 2026 when Graham spoke, the large-scale killing and suffering of a people had easily dwarfed the few thousand Iranian protesters who had been killed on the street. Even mentioning an equivalence would have been sufficient in terms of which leader comes closer to being a 21^st century Hitler. As a result, the U.S. senator’s credibility undoubtedly took a hit—except, interestingly, to people sharing the senator’s foreign-policy ideology. This too flags political ideology itself as problematic for the human mind.

The full essay is at "Distortions of Political Perspective." 

A Hobbesian World of Might-Makes-Right

In his famous text, Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes describes the state of nature as one of might, or raw force, being the decider of what is rightly and determinatively so. If one person physically harms another person such that the latter’s food may be taken by the former, then that food belongs to the victor even without any overarching normative, or moral, constraint that says that the food still belongs to the vanquished. If Trump's statement that Putin has "won" some regions of Ukraine by military means is correct, then those occupied lands will have been decided by might as if that constitutes right. That Israel has physically decimated Gaza's cities and placed its indigenous residents in concentration camps without enough food or access to medical care with impunity means that the plight of the Palestianians has been decided by might, not right. 

The full essay is at "A Hobbesian World of Might-Makes-Right."

Dying

As a Jewish kid in Nazi Germany, Michael Roemer, a filmmaker who went on to teach documentary at Yale (I took Charles Musser’s seminar a semester after Roemer left), had to lie in order to survive. In making the film, Pilgrims Farewell, he wanted to get as close to the truth as a human can. He didn’t want to lie anymore. He wanted to deal with the real thing. In making the documentary, Dying (1976), he realized that the people whom he documented as they were dying were more real that what he was going through in his family in New York. Artists and their families pay, he remarked decades later at Yale. “I neglected my family; I was always working. Once I started, I had to make the film,” he said after a presentation of the film on dying. “The people dying knew something we didn’t know,” he added. The prospect of death apparently makes things incredibly real, before they’re not.

The full essay is at "Dying."

President Nicolás Maduro: Captured by the U.S.

In the early hours of January 3, 2026, the sitting president of Venezuela was captured by the U.S. military and sent to New York, where he would face a federal indictment involving the trafficking of narcotics to the United States. President Trump’s decision to go forward with the military plan no doubt had to do with the South American state’s tremendous oil reserves, just as President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq surely had something to do with that Middle Eastern state’s oil fields. Elected representatives at the federal level of the U.S. have known since 1974 that skyrocketing gas prices could easily result in voter-resentment. Whether the capture of Maduro was motivated by his drug activity reaching the U.S. or Venezuela’s oil, the invasion and capture by U.S. forces is in line with the Hobbesian notion that might makes right, and even that 90% of ownership of property lies in possession. Lest it be thought that President Trump broke with precedent internationally in capturing the sitting president of another country, his strategy can be understood as being along the trend that had been gaining traction because the post-World War II international order had become hamstrung in the impotence of international bodies including the International Criminal Court and the United Nations.

The full essay is at "President Nicolás Maduro."