Democracy Now! Audio - Democracy Now! 2026-03-16 Monday

Episode Date: March 16, 2026

Democracy Now! Monday, March 16, 2026

From New York and Los Angeles, this is Democracy Now. 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, or Illinois, 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 Bornstein, and the subject of the film, the Russian school teacher Pavel Pasha Talenkin, who personally documented Russia's use of war. time propaganda. All that and more coming up. Welcome to Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Narmine Sheikh. The U.S. Israeli war on Iran has now entered its third week. On Friday, President Trump ordered strikes on military installations on Iran's Kharg 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 Arachshi 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. 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 continue to bombard Iran, hitting cities such as Tehran, Hamadan, and Isfahan. Iranian media says that a U.S. Israeli 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 1,348 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 Mohamed Tahrir, whose home. was damaged in a 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 matured.

For that reason, we're 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 rumors 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 aid 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 the 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-Salem. Air Base 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, Khalifa, and Fujaira 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 Fujaira'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 Strait of Hormuz, which is responsible for 20 percent 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 Brett crude oil is trading near $105 a barrel today.

According to AAA, 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 one million people have been forced to flee their homes, according to the UN. This is Fulhat Othman, who fled southern Lebanon to Saida, just south of Beirut. I swear, I came from the south, from the district of Tari. 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 broadcaster's licenses over their coverage of the U.S. Israeli war on Iran. Carr shared a true social post by President Trump in which he criticized U.S. media.

coverage of the Iran war, writing on X, 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 cars, 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 totalian 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 deal 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 Khalid Bani Ode and his wife, Wad, and two of their children, Muhammad and Othman, were each shot in the head in the village of Tammoon.

Two other children managed to survive. This is one of them recounting how Israeli soldiers attacked his family. We were leaving Nablus from Al-Nablusi restaurant. 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 Hottadam. No one has been arrested for the attack in Amsterdam. In Venezuela, the Trump administration has reopened the U.S. embassy in the capital 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 Delsi Rodriguez, 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 Moran 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-Canel 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-Pensilvania bus shelter days after being released from jail and placed under ICE supervision. The Haitian Bridge Alliance says 31-year-old Daffi-Michel had reportedly been jailed for months, and was released after a judge dismissed misdemeanor charges against her. Michel 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 Ivak, Mohamed Nazir Pakkiewal, 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. Pactiawal 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. 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, an immigration judge on Friday ordered the release of Palestinian activist 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 Durald Arcapon 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 Smoke and Stack, while the film's director, Ryan Coogler, 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. Note to war on free Palestine. The Palestinian actor Motaz Malhees, who had a starring role in the Oscar-nominated foreign film, the voice of Hind Rajab, was unable to attend the ceremony after his U.S. 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, Democracy Now.org, the War and 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, Nirmine. As the U.S. and Israeli war on Iran extends into a third week, President Trump is demanding other countries send warships to force.

opened the strait of Hormuz, which has been largely shut due to threats from Iran. President Trump spoke aboard Air Force One. 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 trade. This comes as the U.S. 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. Naghme Sahrabi is a professor of Middle East history at Brandeis University. Earlier this year, she began to be a year. 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 Ahmadine-Oryan, 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. Narmé, 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. So 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. 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 siding 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 wars have after the bombs have stopped right the shock waves 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 and it's and 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 wind 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, in 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 protests. 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, I mean, out of this 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 Ahmadi Aran 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 U.S. 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 12-day war. But yet, that was something, it was almost like a switch in my head, that, you know, when we talk about a country, you know, and the metaphor often used is a country as your parent.

When we use terms like fatherland, motherland, in Persian, we say momavatan or Sarasamina Pedari. So there is like a parental relationship when one's homeland. And there's this expectation that our country, protect us, nurture us, prepare us for the future and so on. This is, you know, I think this is an expectation most people on the planet take for granted. You see it in the U.S. 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, you know, grew up during the Iran-Iraq war on the front line, and my mom was a nurse in frontline 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, I found this shift in my relationship, in my perspective,

that this didn't look like a parent anymore. You know, someone is strong. can rely on, but a child that needs some sort of a 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 a 12-day 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

that with 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 American left and right lines. If you look at the, you know, the lefties, they have 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, the regime brutalities, uh, over time and showing that, you know, the damage it has caused have 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 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, 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 precise, so-called precise attacks on military or government targets in Iran, they, you know, they cause very severe civilian casualty, you know, the damage to cultural heritage, the environmental effects of that. We just saw what happened in Tehran after they bombed the old refiners and oil depots. So I think it's pretty clear to anyone who knows anything about a 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 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 discontent with the state, any stage, any sort of protest or celebrate the death of Ali Khomeini, which a lot of people did, they're going to come after them and kill them. I mean, they did that the day after Khomeini died. They shot a bunch of people, and we had casualties. They even shot at the windows of the houses where people were celebrating.

So you've got to be able to square this kind of contradictory situation. You've 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 its own against its own. population are included or incorporated. It's very difficult and honestly I am 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 protest movement in Iran, you know, I know from personal experience, even though I was very small, but 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 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 brutal by the state, by the sanction, and so on, and so forth. It's a long story. The exhaustion that it will cause, the sense of draining and despair than 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 mode as long as the war

goes on. And after the bombing stops, which 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, participate in any kind of political process. Professor Ryan, I'm afraid we're going to have to leave it there. Thank you so much for joining us, Professor Amir Ahmadi Oryan. 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 Nagme 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, Orly, Noi. 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 Narmine 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 Orly Noi. She's an Iranian-Israeli political activist and editor of the Hebrew-language news site Local Call.

She's also the chair of Bet Selim's executive board. Her new piece for the New York Review of Books is headlined, longing for my Tehran. O'I, 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 sing

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 whose 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, so I. So I. 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. Orley, you have talked about the majority of Israelis supporting the war at the moment. But there is opposition. Can you talk about the Israeli objective? And at 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 protests and of objection. It's not small, but it exists. This time, any attempt, 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 Khanist, Itamar Bank, It is not against the law. It is not illegal to protest. Still, it is not illegal to protest in Israel against the war. But trying to please the Kahanist minister, the police very brutally dispersed these protests 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 Bani'o, the family, including two parents and two very young kids in the village of Tammoon. 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, Orly, we're going to have to leave it there.

Thank you so much for joining us. Orly, No, is an Iranian-Israeli political activist. An editor of the Hebrew language news site local call, she's also the chair of Betzelam'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.

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I'm Fenn Nih Nih Sifu. Bofu-Safu. Can I care Bofu Saffi, man, I'm not going to Bofu Saffo. Bofu Saffu by Amadu and Mariam, performing in our Democracy Now studio. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org. I'm Narmine Sheikh 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 Theater. The film tells the story of Pavel Pasha Telanken, a Russian primary school teacher and videographer who becomes an international whistleblower. After being reluctantly drawn into President Putin's propaganda machine, Telenken 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 Borenstein. Pasha Telenkin is credited as co-director, cinematographer, narrator of the film. This is Telenkin and Borenstein last night at the account.

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 Tolunkin, the main character of our film. Thank you. For four years, we've seen on the Zvezna Nebba and we've got to make the most important for four years we look at the sky for shooting stars to make a very important wish. But there are... There are countries where, where from the skyb up not stars, but

rockets and drones. But there are countries where instead of shooting stars, they have shooting bombs and shooting drones. In name our future, in name of our future, stop all of

the wariness, in the name of our children, stop all of these wars now. Thank you. agreeing with everything you're saying. David Barnstein, 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 Karabash Primary School Number 1. 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. Present the flag. Are we completely fucked up? I was instructed to shoot all the events.

I'm these kids propagandists. I love my job, but I don't want to be a pawn with 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 abyss the school is sinking into.

It's the perfect cover. Never clasp your helmet. It will break your neck if you get shot in the head. Bravo. 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. Commanders don't win wars. A school teachers win worse. 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 Telanken. 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 of immediately. Some might sign a contract, but others are drafted. And they all go off to war. 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, how they had to read directives to the children and they started marching around the school and more than that. So really just the month, 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 upload it 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. as there could be fines or things a lot more serious, too. So despite understanding this is nothing to do with their jobs as pedagogues, they had no choice. David Barnes-die. There was even, you know, this situation that 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 Bornstein 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, ah, maybe Pasha can contribute to this project, and then he can stay in Russia. Those first months of the war was a period where he was a period where he was.

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, 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 a 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 until 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 command. commencement ceremony and then leaving how you left with your film. I had a suit. I was going as 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 and I mean, because how could I've explained it? I'm supposedly going on a vacation and all I have is this equipment, I don't even have a bathing suit with me. And then when I got to the other side in the symbol, 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 Pascheltenken, and David Borenstein. They won an Oscar last night for their documentary, Mr. Nobody Against Putin.

To see the whole interview, go to Democracy Now.org. In another notable moment from Sunday's Oscars, Autumn Duralda Arkopal became the first woman to win the Oscar for best cinematography. She won it for sinners, which is directed by Ryan Cougler. 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 that they could do anything, had to meet Ryan. That girl also had to look up Ellen Kuros's 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. Note to war on free Palestine. And that does it for today's show.

Democracy Now is produced with Mike Burke, Dina Guster, Messiah Rhodes, Maria Tarasena, Nicole Salazar, Sarah Nasir, Trina Nudura, Sam Alcoff, Taymarie, Astud, John Hamilton, Robbie Karen, Hani Masood, and Safwat Nasal. Our executive director is Julie Crosby. Special thanks to Becca St.aley, John Randolph, Paul Powell, Mike DiPilippo, Miguel Noggera, Hugh Grant, Carl Marxor, Dennis Moines, David Pruitt, Matt Ely, Anna Osbeck, Emily Anderson, Dante Torrety, and Buffy St. Marie Hernandez. I'm Narmine 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 Coogler, the Oscar winning director of sinners. Thank you.