The World After Us (2021)
Le Monde après nous is both a modern love story and a generational portrait with autobiographical overtones. Louda Ben Salah-Cazanas observes a disoriented youth trying to find their own path in an overwhelming and suffocating reality. The film is also a critique of life in contemporary Paris (which could be any cosmopolitan city) and a look at the difficulties young artists have to face in a consumerist society that prioritises the utilitarian. Labidi, the protagonist, is the voice of the first generation sons and daughters of immigrants trying to succeed and leave their mark on this world.
The World After Us (2021)
For the ten people out there, who would like to see what if a late Garrel movie take place in our world. The answer is that the grounded concrete place and the intimate emotions make for a rough pairing, as it remains very much of the moment while the main relationship is complete out of it and fights hard to reconcile that. Director Louda Ben Salah-Cazanas does give it a good try and there's some strong scenes and a couple of fine lead performances. Far from perfect, but European cinema can use more movies like this and less Dardennes clones.
Narrative therapy argues that so much of what we suffer emotionally and psychologically comes from the stories we believe about our place in the world and our ability to influence it. White shows how addiction, mental illness or trauma prevents some people from returning to their lives. Narrative therapy can help in these situations and others. It has people retell their own stories until they understand them differently. Once people can reframe who they were in the past, they can have a better chance of charting their course in the future.
With the U.S. rate of inflation running higher than it has at any time since the end of the Cold War, Pew Research Center decided to compare the U.S. experience to those of other countries, especially its peers in the developed world.
Regardless of the absolute level of inflation in each country, many show variations on the same pattern: relatively low inflation before the COVID-19 pandemic struck in the first quarter of 2020; flat or falling inflation for the rest of that year and into 2021, as many governments sharply curtailed most economic activity; and rising inflation in the second and third quarters of this year, as the world struggled to get back to something approaching normal.
After more than four decades of conflict and instability in Afghanistan, an estimated 24 million Afghans are in need of humanitarian assistance. Of the more than 6 million Afghans who were forcibly displaced from their homes by the end of 2021, 3.5 million were displaced within Afghanistan while 2.6 million were hosted as refugees, accounting for one of the largest protracted refugee situations in the world.
While a majority of Afghans are internally displaced, at least 2.7 million are forced across borders and live as refugees across 98 different countries. Afghan refugees are the third-largest displaced population in the world after Syrian refugees and displaced Venezuelans. The vast majority of refugees from Afghanistan are living in Pakistan and Iran, which continue to host more than 1.3 million and 780,000 registered Afghan refugees respectively.
COVID-19 has fast become one of the ultimate stressors on our already fragile international system, exposing vulnerabilities, magnifying weaknesses, and exacerbating long-festering issues. At the most basic level, this difficult moment has highlighted just how ill-equipped our global health systems are, forcing many countries to make devastating ethical decisions to determine who among their citizenry is most deserving to receive medical care. Furthermore, rather than build a renewed global coalition to fight this awful disease, many countries have instead relied on isolationist policies. This has resulted in piecemeal, ineffectual responses as cases once again spike wildly all over the world, the United States being one of the worst examples.
There will be losers. The dire economic consequences of the pandemic have left millions of people bitter, resentful, and likely to blame foreign competitors for their plights. Global health and humanitarian institutions are being severely challenged by rising nationalism and difficulties in raising financial support. As a result, one long-term effect of this pandemic may be that it has made the world less resilient for the next one.
As expected, COVID-19 has accelerated the shift in power from West to East and put further limits on globalization, leading to a world less open and prosperous. But the pandemic has not ended traditional geopolitics or national rivalries, nor did it usher in a new era of global cooperation.Populists have lost ground, and autocrats are under greater pressure after mishandling the pandemic.
The pandemic has deepened the U.S.-China rift and stimulated a rethinking of supply chains. Europe looks stronger now that Germany and France are working together and both the European Central Bank and the European Commission have carved out a larger writ. By eviscerating economic growth and forcing countries to enact fiscal stimulus on an unprecedented scale, the pandemic has led to a stunning increase in debt throughout the world.
Our first survey following the attacks went into the field just days after 9/11, from Sept. 13-17, 2001. A sizable majority of adults (71%) said they felt depressed, nearly half (49%) had difficulty concentrating and a third said they had trouble sleeping.
Americans were enraged by the attacks, too. Three weeks after 9/11, even as the psychological stress began to ease somewhat, 87% said they felt angry about the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
Fear was widespread, not just in the days immediately after the attacks, but throughout the fall of 2001. Most Americans said they were very (28%) or somewhat (45%) worried about another attack. When asked a year later to describe how their lives changed in a major way, about half of adults said they felt more afraid, more careful, more distrustful or more vulnerable as a result of the attacks.
It is difficult to think of an event that so profoundly transformed U.S. public opinion across so many dimensions as the 9/11 attacks. While Americans had a shared sense of anguish after Sept. 11, the months that followed also were marked by rare spirit of public unity.
Patriotic sentiment surged in the aftermath of 9/11. After the U.S. and its allies launched airstrikes against Taliban and al-Qaida forces in early October 2001, 79% of adults said they had displayed an American flag. A year later, a 62% majority said they had often felt patriotic as a result of the 9/11 attacks.
Support for the war in Afghanistan continued at a high level for several years to come. In a survey conducted in early 2002, a few months after the start of the war, 83% of Americans said they approved of the U.S.-led military campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan. In 2006, several years after the United States began combat operations in Afghanistan, 69% of adults said the U.S. made the right decision in using military force in Afghanistan. Only two-in-ten said it was the wrong decision.
The rise of anti-Muslim sentiment in the aftermath of 9/11 has had a profound effect on the growing number of Muslims living in the United States. Surveys of U.S. Muslims from 2007-2017 found increasing shares saying they have personally experienced discrimination and received public expression of support.
For most who are old enough to remember, it is a day that is impossible to forget. In many ways, 9/11 reshaped how Americans think of war and peace, their own personal safety and their fellow citizens. And today, the violence and chaos in a country half a world away brings with it the opening of an uncertain new chapter in the post-9/11 era.
A recovery in global trade after the recession last year offers an opportunity for emerging market and developing economies to bolster economic growth. Trade costs are on average one-half higher among emerging market and developing economies than advanced economies and lowering them could boost trade and stimulate investment and growth.
Germany, the most populous nation in the European Union, possesses one of the largest economies in the world and has seen its role in the international community grow steadily since reunification. The Central European country borders nine nations, and its landscape varies, from the northern plains that reach to the North and Baltic seas to the Bavarian Alps in the south.
Blind Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng escapes house arrest in Shandong province on April 22 and flees to the U.S. embassy in Beijing. U.S. diplomats negotiate an agreement with Chinese officials allowing Chen to stay in China and study law in a city close to the capital. However, after Chen moves to Beijing, he changes his mind and asks to take shelter in the United States. The development threatens to undermine U.S.-China diplomatic ties, but both sides avert a crisis by allowing Chen to visit the United States as a student, rather than as an asylum seeker.
The first in-person meeting between top Biden administration officials and Chinese officials, in Anchorage, Alaska, reflects deep disagreements between the two sides and ends without a joint statement. In the months after the meeting, the Biden administration continues some Trump administration policies, although it places more emphasis on coordinating its actions with allies. It maintains tariffs on Chinese imports, sanctions Chinese officials over policies in Hong Kong and Xinjiang, blacklists dozens of Chinese companies, and expands a Trump-era ban on American investment in Chinese firms with ties to the military. In his first speech to Congress, in April, President Biden stresses the importance of boosting investment in U.S. infrastructure and technology to compete with China. 041b061a72