Elon Musk is not a racist, and he has publicly confirmed it with evidence. So, when he protested the casting of a non-white actress to play Helen of Troy and offers Mel Gibson 100MM to remake The Odyssey to reflect whiteness in the story because it was a story about the Greeks, it has nothing to do with racism. He is just being righteous and indignant and wants to take a firm stand against Hollywood’s pervert tendency of stretching the facts when it comes to adapting historical stories.

    Set aside for now that Helen was a mythological character, probably fictionalized by Homer and other writers, with no genetic trait linked to any race. Homer did not give any description in his novels of her physical features leaving other authors after him the liberty of describing her whatever way they wanted. An English writer even rhapsodized her with Was this the face that launched a thousand ships. Some authors pictured her hair as blonde; others described it as black. History noted that the Greeks had mingled extensively with the North Africans especially the Egyptians, so casting a black actress to play Helen is as reasonable as casting Elizabeth Taylor to play Cleopatra (regardless of her lineage, she was born in Egypt and had lived there all her life, her skin under the scorching sun could not have been as white as Ms. Taylor’s. Given that two powerful guys of the time, Caesar and Antony, madly fell for her, it is reasonable to deduce that Cleopatra was exotic and non-white). Therefore, if Helen were a real Greek, her skin could probably have been exotically honey or dark.

    My real concern for Mr. Musk is that his crusade may cost him a whole lot more than a few hundred million dollars.

    To correct Hollywood’s past sins, he must pay Mr. Gibson another 100MM to remake his own movie Passion of Christ to cast a middle Eastern actor to play Christ. Jim Caviezel, an American, was offensively miscast.  Then, many more 100MM to replace Robert Powell in Jesus of Nazareth Remake, Willem Dafoe in The Last Temptation of Christ Remake, Diogo Morgado in Son of God Remake, Ted Neeley in Jesus Christ Superstar Remake, Oscar Isaac in The Nativity Story, and Tobias Menzies in The Nativity.

    Don’t forget Moses, the famous biblical Jew, played by the whitest of white actors Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments. Another role of his must also be recast with a darker skinned actor to play Ben Hur.

    There are many other miscast movies that must be corrected. Exodus: Gods and Kings and Moses the Lawgiver must also be remade to replace Christian Bale and Burt Lancaster. These are epic movies; a remake would require twice or three time the amount Mr. Musk offers Mr. Gibson. Then Russell Crowe must be replaced in Noah Remake, and Jon Voight in Noah’s Ark. Then, Richard Gere in King David, Finlay Currie in David and Bathsheba, Langley Kirkwood in The Bible, Victor Mature in Samson and Delilah, Taylor James in Samson, Yul Brynner in Solomon and Sheba, and Ben Cross in Solomon.

    Of course, Mr. Musk must not forget the movies about one of the most revere biblical characters on earth, Mary, Mother of Jesus. So, Maia Morgenstern in The Passion of the Christ and Keisha Castle-Hughes in The Nativity Story must be replaced.

    Hollywood has also made movies about the East with slanted eyed historical figures but cast real blue-eyed cousins of Helen to play them. More money is needed to finance the remaking to replace them with actors more representative of the characters and throw out John Wayne from the “The Conqueror”, and Omar Sharif, James Mason, and Telly Savalas from “Genghis Khan”. Then, Mr. Musk must look into Attila the Hun movies to clean up the casting to take Gerard Butler, Anthony Quinn, Jack Palance out.

    There are hundreds or more such movies or shows committing the worse sin of casting blond-haired and blue-eyed actors to play real, not fictitious, historical characters with darker skin, true black hair, and slanted eyes.

    His crusade is truly noble. Conservatively estimated, however, he is looking at an expense of at least ten billion dollars upfront.

JOHN P. LE PHONG

(This article appears on X, thelephongjournal.com, and Facebook)

    The history of the Jews is full of mind-boggling, heartbreaking, irrational, inhuman, and irrationally and inhumanly brutal oppressions by others. All the catastrophes that have befallen them were caused by men – other men, other races. It is understandable that they are always wearied, anxious, nervous, permanently on the alert for bad deeds from others.

    After WWII, the UN took an overdue step to allow and help the Jews to form a country on the ancient land they had claimed to be their own since biblical time, a piece of land about less than 300 miles long and 75 miles wide. But a huge portion in the middle of it was ceded to the Palestinians to form their own territory, the West Bank, that reduces the central part of Israel to about 6 miles wide, making it one of the smallest nations on earth, but the most vulnerable because of where it sits. A few thousand Palestinians could join hands from the border of the West Bank to the Mediterranean and cut Israel in half.

    Whether it was a Machiavelli scheme by the world powers to keep Israel in check considering its citizens’ out-of-this-world brain power but that, the small size of their country, has been the deep cause of Israel’s anxiety and nervousness. The size of a nation’s territory contributes tremendously to its national defense. If anyone is still in doubt, ask the Russian president. Russia is about 765 times larger than Israel spanning over 40% of European landmass and 30% of Asia. But Mr. Putin was so worried about its security that he felt the need to enter a war against its tiny neighbor, killing hundreds of thousands of people, just to take more land from it.

    Therefore, it is not bombing, assassination, or killing other countries’ leadership. The landmass is its best defense: when an enemy see the big size of a country, it must have a second thought about picking a fight with it.

    That chance came to Israel in 1956 when Israel took over the Sinai Peninsular when the president of Egypt, which straddles the Suez Canal, decided to nationalize the Canal. Israel had to leave Sinai because, as strange as it might seem, it allied itself with France and England, two small potatoes compared to the other alliance of two gigantic potatoes, the U.S.A. and the Soviet Union, which opposed its occupation.

    The Vietnamese have a saying fortune does not come twice. But it did about 10 years later in 1967 to the Israelis thanks to the follies of the same people, theEgyptians who challenged the Western world, again.

    Unlike the first time, Israel’s occupation of the peninsular this time lasted 15 years. Then again, it was forced to return the land, strategically crucial to its security, prosperity, and peace, to Egypt for world peace.

    But now things have changed, earthshakingly so, but in the Israelis’ favor – big favor.

    In Ankara, the President of the United States of America proclaimed a new doctrine, let’s call it the Trump Territory Doctrine:

             “We took Greenland and then stupidly we gave it back. We shouldn’t have given it back to them because we’re the ones that need it. We need it for the protection of the world — not just the United States.”

    Interpretation: If one country occupied a parcel of land of another for a period of time, the former would have the right to claim that land as its own.

    The president uses the doctrine to claim Greenland even though the U.S. took Greenland from Germany during WWII, not from Denmark to which Greenland had belonged. And its presence in Greenland was with the agreement of the Danish government that, the agreement, “fully recognizes the sovereignty” of Denmark over Greenland.

    Under this doctrine, Israel has a better and more solid ground to claim Sinai as its own because it took over Sinai in a military conflict with Egypt which, this must be emphasized, was the aggressor.

    The TTD is a God given legality for Israel – that could be short-lived but will last at least until 2029 – to correct the mistakes made by political leaders including its own former prime minister, Menachem Begin, when it was established, in 1957, and in 1979. Just like the Monroe Doctrine, which is still enforceable and unopposed in modern times, the TTD is backed by the U.S.A. with an action president.

    What that means is nobody would dare to oppose Israel’s application of the TTD to take back Sinai when it is still fresh in their mind that the U.S. has just picked up at midnight the leader of one country and his wife and transported them to a prison in New York – nobody dare say a word – and, in one swoop, killed the supreme leader of another and his entourage – and nobody dare say a word.

JOHN P. LE PHONG                                                                                                     (This Article appears on thelephongjournal.com, Facebook, and X)

    Fareed Zakaria is a journalist and political commentator I have greatly admired and respected. I have watched his broadcast as faithfully and frequently as possible. In one of his broadcasts, he observed that Putin’s premises for success in the Ukrainian war, Ukraine’s weakness and the West was tired of the war, have collapsed. He suggested that this is an opportunity for the U.S. to intervene (review his show) with its ability of sanctions and military aids to Ukraine that would probably lead to a peace deal.

    It is a wise suggestion to the Trump administration. But should or would Europe completely agree?

    The Americans’ decision to side with Putin in the Ukrainian war, criticism of the Europeans on immigrants’ issues, openly siding with extremists in Europe, withdrawal from the Western Front …, if not a betrayal from Europe’s point of view, is a clear signal that the two Atlantic allies are no longer aligned, and the new world order does not find the U.S. to be the leader of the free world willing to provide a security umbrella for Europe. America clearly wants to pursue a path different if not far away from Western traditional human ideals. Even if the diversion would probably be short termed for as long as MAGA is in power, Europe must now make a choice between an independent center of world power or remaining vassal to the U.S.

    The world has already formed clusters of power centers. That is a good thing as peace and Democracy prevail when there are opposing forces tugging at one another and balancing out their excesses. But the forces must be strong enough to execute such balancing.

    Europe has been a beacon of high road politics, a political shining light on the hill for centuries. It can be relevant and matters again in world politics if it could find the will to turn itself into a significant power center to be reckoned with on its own. It could wean itself off the U.S. instead of leaning on it. The day of relying on others for its stability and for making decisions for itself should be left behind. Ukraine would not have suffered this disastrous war if Europe were strong. A strong and militarily consequential Europe would contribute tremendously to world peace. One could imagine that the Iranian nuclear weapon issue and the disastrous confrontation in the Strait of Hormuz could have been avoided.

    When MAGA displays its heavy-handed attitude toward its allies, revealing its new direction in sending its vice president – representing not just one political party’s policy but the political tendency of the majority of the country – to campaign for Viktor Orban the dictator wannabe of Hungary universally disliked and distrusted by the European Union, Canada shows a stiffer backbone than Europe in dealing with them. It was a strange spectacle witnessing MAGA lecturing Europe on racism and Europe listening not just politely but at times submissively and even fawningly. France, despite its innate sense of Gaullist hauteur, has bent. The English suddenly love to dine at the White House. The old but wise saying “with friends like that, who needs enemies” must and should have come to the European mind when the U.S. wants to take over Greenland.

    Europe cannot live on the belief that without the USA, it may not sustain its security against foreign forces and even internal conflicts, minding its swashbuckling spirit of some of its people that might lead to disaster such as WWI and II (75 years should be long enough to find a mechanism to prevent it from happening again). The new U.S. foreign affair policy should serve as a wake-up call. Ukraine is the case in point. The whole idea of creating, building, and maintaining NATO was to deter foreign aggressors. Russia’s attack and invasion of Ukraine, an affront not just to the core Democratic principles but also to world peace, should have been a call to action by Europe even if Ukraine was not its member.

    In fact, an independent Europe would be good for a Democratic U.S.A.

JOHN P. LE PHONG

(This article appears on X, Facebook, and thelephongjournal.com)