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Accident or sabotage? What we know of deadly explosion at Iran's Natanz nuclear site

Issued on: 07/07/2020 -

A handout picture provided by Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation shows a damaged warehouse at the Natanz nuclear facility on July 2, 2020. © Handout Iran Atomic Organization, AFP

Text by:FRANCE 24

Two people died and another three were injured Tuesday when an explosion rocked the factory south of Tehran, Iran's official IRNA agency reported, blaming human error.

The blast in "a completely industrial zone" of Baqershahr, 23 kilometres (14 miles) from the capital, was caused by "workers being negligent whilst filling oxygen tanks", IRNA quoted the town's governor as saying.

Iran's atomic energy agency first reported that an "accident" had damaged warehouses under construction at the Natanz site, some 250 kilometres (150 miles) south of Tehran, in a confusing statement on the morning after the incident.

There were no casualties, "no nuclear material (on site) and no potential of pollution", the agency's spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi told state television.

The organisation released a photo of a damaged building: a long, one-storey brick structure with few openings, part of an exterior wall blackened by fire, a collapsed section of roof and doors that appeared to have been blown outwards.

State TV showed several images of the building's exterior, but none of the inside.

On Sunday evening, Kamalvandi acknowledged to the IRNA state news agency that the incident had caused "significant financial damage", without elaborating.

But he said the damaged building had been designed to produce "advanced centrifuges", hinting that their assembly had begun prior to the "accident".

What is the Natanz nuclear complex?

The complex is central to Iran's nuclear programme and is kept under very tight security.

Israel and the United States accuse their arch-foe Iran of trying to build an atomic bomb — a charge the Islamic Republic has always denied.

Under the terms of its 2015 nuclear accord with world powers, Tehran had agreed to cap its enrichment of uranium — measured by the presence of fissile isotope Uranium-235 — to 3.67 percent.

It also limited the number of so called first-generation enrichment centrifuges to 5,060.

But a year after Washington unilaterally abandoned the pact and reimposed crushing sanctions, Iran began progressively stepping away from its commitments.

Since mid-2019 it has enriched uranium to 4.5 percent — reactor-grade but still far from the 90 percent required for military use.

Iran has also announced that it is working on developing more efficient centrifuges, without limits.

'Accurately determined'

The incident came at the end of a week marked by two explosions in Tehran, including one near a military site. Officials said the blasts were accidents, but many Iranians suspected covert Israeli operations were responsible.

On Friday, Iran's Supreme National Security Council announced that the "cause of the accident" at Natanz had been "accurately determined".

But it declined to release details, citing security reasons.

On the evening of July 2, IRNA published an editorial warning Iran's arch-foes against hostile actions, saying unnamed Israeli social media accounts had claimed the Jewish state was behind the incident.

The editorial warned Israel and the US against any attack on Iran's "security" and "interests".

A Twitter account linked to an Israeli analyst claimed in Arabic on July 1 that Israel had attacked an Iranian uranium enrichment plant.

The BBC's Persian service, which Iranian authorities consider hostile, said it received a statement "hours before" the incident from a group called the "Homeland Cheetahs" who claimed responsibility.

They claimed to be "dissidents present in Iran's security apparatus" and said the location was targeted as it was not "underground" and that therefore the alleged attack could not be denied.

Iran's civil defence chief, Brigadier General Gholam Reza Jalali, told state TV on Thursday night that any proven cyberattack against Iran would elicit "a response".

Israel's Defence Minister and Alternate Prime Minister Benny Gantz stayed ambiguous on the events.

"Iran is aiming for nuclear [weapons], we can't let it get there," he said Sunday, though adding that "not every event taking place in Iran is necessarily connected to us."

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

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NYT: Israel planted bomb at Iran nuclear site

July 6, 2020

The groundbreaking ceremony of Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, held in Bushehr, Iran on November 10, 2019 [Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu Agency]

July 6, 2020 

Israel was behind an explosion at an Iranian nuclear facility last week caused by a powerful bomb, according to a report in the New York Times.

Citing an unidentified “Middle Eastern intelligence official”, the report alleges that Israel was responsible for the attack on the Natanz nuclear plant on Thursday, this claim was also made by a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) who said an explosive was used.

However, Israel has not admitted its role in the attack, with Defence Minister Benny Gantz stating yesterday during a radio interview: “Everyone can suspect us in everything and all the time, but I don’t think that’s correct.”

The incident was the third of its kind in a week, including a major explosion reported near Parchin military site in north-east Tehran and an explosion at a Tehran clinic which killed 19.

READ: Israeli jets strike targets in Gaza Strip

Iran, for its part, has already threatened retaliation after what it initially labelled a cyber-attack, although the latest incident in Iran, could possibly be in response to Iran’s sophisticated, but failed cyber-attack on Israeli water systems in April, which according to the Times of Israel, aimed to increase chlorine levels in water flowing to residential areas. The head of Israel’s National Cyber Directorate, Yigal Unna, described the incident as “a point of change in the history of modern cyberwars”.

An Israeli retaliation previously took place two weeks later, in the form of a cyber strike temporarily disrupting operations at a busy Iranian port.

Last month, the Strategist said Iran is unlikely to be deterred from carrying out future attacks and it was likely that adversaries attempting to attack one another’s civilian infrastructure through cyber-attacks will become more common and sophisticated, in particular between Iran and Israel.

THE ISRAELI MEDIA REPORTED ON THIS BOMBING BEFORE THE IRANIAN PRESS DID

Africa locust plague: New app launched to battle swarms

Issued on: 07/07/2020 -

Locusts on a tree in the Turkana region of northern Kenya on July 2, 2O2O.
 © Reuters / France 24 Text by:FRANCE 24  Video by:Sam BALL

Vast numbers of locusts have been swarming across East Africa in recent months, devastating crops and threatening food security in the region. Now, authorities are hoping a new app could help them gain the upper hand in their battle against the pests.

Called E-Locusts, the app allows a team of ‘locust scouts’ to track the swarms and provide real-time information on their size and location.

“I go look for locusts where they are, I report, I take pictures, I upload videos of their movement and also advise them which kind of control can be used,” Achilo Christopher, a locust scout in the Turkana region of northern Kenya, told Reuters.

The information is logged in a central database and analysed by technical teams who can then decide what action to take including whether to spray pesticides either by plane or with ground teams.

The app was launched by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation in response to growing fears the locust infestations are threatening food security in the region.

The current locust infestation is the worst that's been seen for three generations, with unseasonably wet weather helping them to breed in greater numbers than usual.

Since late 2019, billions of the insects have ravaged crops in countries including Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia and spread into India, Pakistan and the Red Sea region.

An average locust swarm of around 40 million insects can travel up to 150 km a day and consume enough food in that time to feed 35,000 people.

Breaking the silence on China’s ‘two-faced’ campaign against UighursIssued on: 01/07/2020

Mamat Abdullah poses before the White House during a June 2015 trip to the US. © Handout via Subi Mamat Yuksel

Text by:Leela JACINTO

More than three years after her father, a retired government official in China’s Uighur region, was arrested, Subi Mamat Yuksel finally spoke up about her family’s ordeal. The violations may have followed official Chinese directives, but the abuse was so severe that Beijing’s use of fear as a tool to silence Uighur families has backfired.

On April 29, 2017, Subi Mamat Yuksel’s parents were at home in Urumqi, the main city in the Uighur region of northwestern China, packing for their flight to the US the next day. Her father, a retired government official, told his wife he was just stepping out to buy last-minute gifts for their grandchildren in the Virginia area. He never returned.

It was the start of an Orwellian ordeal that would plunge the family into a trauma of existential proportions, a nightmare that is likely being shared by millions of people of Chinese Uighur descent across the world as Beijing conducts a crushing human and cultural reordering in Xinjiang, China’s largest province, which borders eight countries.

Yuksel’s father, Mamat Abdullah, 75, was a longtime forestry department chief in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Zone (XUAR) and a public figure in the Uighur community, a majority Muslim, Turkic-speaking minority. His four-decades in the XUAR administrative service included a posting as mayor of Korla, Xinjiang’s second largest city.

Mamat Abdullah is also a talented musician and painter. © Handout via Subi Mamat Yuksel

Two of his three children – Yuksel and her elder brother, Iskandar Mamat – had studied and settled in the US. Ever since their children arrived in America in 2007, the couple visited frequently, bearing gifts and local delicacies for family events.

Mamat Abdullah at his youngest daughters wedding in June 2013 in the US. © Handout via Subi Mamat Yuksel

The April 2017 trip was to see the latest addition to the family, Iskandar’s newborn son, and it was not expected to be any different from past visits. Little did the family know that they were about to embark on a long, dark journey that would test their resilience and relations.

“When my Dad didn’t return, my Mum tried calling him, but there was no answer and she started worrying,” recounted the 31-year-old mother of three in a phone interview with FRANCE 24 from Virginia. “Hours later, two security officers came home and said my Dad was with them. They took my parents’ passports and told my Mum they were not going anywhere. They knew my parents were leaving for the US.”

China’s crackdown on the Uighurs and other minority ethnic groups in Xinjiang has been systematically targeted at different demographic groups since the clampdown began in 2014 following deadly attacks in the region, which Chinese authorities blamed on Uighur militants.

The Uighur crackdown intensified in 2017 – the year of Abdullah’s arrest – with mass detentions in sprawling internment camps in the remote region. Experts such as Adrian Zenz, a leading researcher on the Uighur crisis, describe the incarceration of over a million people as “probably the world’s largest internment of a ethno-religious minority group since the Holocaust”.

‘A form of demographic genocide’

Beijing initially denied the existence of the camps and later euphemistically described them as “reeducation centres”. But the real intent of China’s pacification operation has emerged in chilling detail over the past few months with the publication of leaks and open source official documents by investigative news teams.

Earlier this week, an AP investigation based on Zenz’s analysis of government statistics and documents revealed China’s measures to slash birth rates among Uighurs and other ethnic minorities using forced contraception in what experts call “a form of demographic genocide”.

In November, the New York Times published a detailed report of the orchestrated crackdown based on 403 documents leaked from inside China’s ruling Communist Party. They included an official booklet on how to deceive Uighur family members living outside the region who inquire about disappeared relatives.

The directives appear to have been systematically followed in Abdullah’s case, including the use of surveillance, fake news and fear as a tool to try to stop the Uighur diaspora from speaking out.

We can’t really chat on WeChat

Yuksel’s personal nightmare began before dawn on April 29, 2017, when her brother knocked on her door in Manassas, Virginia, to inform her their parents weren’t going to make it to the US. The details were sketchy: their older sister in Urumqi had called Iskandar and only told him to cancel the flight tickets.

“He noticed from her voice that something was wrong, but my sister couldn’t talk about the real situation and he didn’t ask much,” said Yuksel.

The family uses WeChat, the do-everything app described as “the Chinese Facebook, Twitter, Google, WhatsApp, Tinder all rolled in one”. Users know the app is a giant Communist Party surveillance tool, but they have little choice since most apps are banned in China.

Under the circumstances, communication with China-based family members is fraught with silences, blather to ward off suspicions, facial signs and codes created on the fly.

But when Yuksel finally got through to her then 61-year-old mother, there was no hiding the distress.

“My mother was sobbing. She was so scared, she was shivering,” said Yuksel, her voice quivering with the recollection. “She was shaking, she was showing me her arms, she was holding her wrists together,” to signal her husband had been arrested.

“It was 2017, we already knew things were going bad for Uighurs in the area. But we tried to stay calm. My father had worked for the government for more than 40 years, we knew the news of former department chiefs getting arrested in corruption cases. My father had retired almost 10 years ago, but my brother said may be they’re investigating something and want to question him and will then release him,” she said.

‘Two-faced’, three charges

But the accusations were a lot more serious. Abdullah – or Maimaiti Abudula in Mandarin – was charged with bribery, being “two-faced” and a separatist, Yuksel explained.

Bribery is a common accusation against Chinese government officials under President Xi Jinping’s sweeping anti-corruption drive. Since Abdullah had retired nearly a decade before the charges were filed, the family believed it was the least serious.

“Two-faced” is a term frequently used by authorities for Uighur cadres and intellectuals who have lost their old role as mediators between the Communist Party and the community. Over the past three years, several Xinjiang university professors and presidents have been fired and put into “reeducation” camps for being “two-faced” or paying lip service to the ruling party while their loyalties lie with their ethnic group.

The separatist charge, Yuksel notes was “because of me and my brother. We live in Virginia, there’s a large Uighur community here, it’s close to Washington DC, all the protests are in this area and China doesn’t like this area,” she explained.

Nowhere safe: silencing the diaspora

China’s targeting of the diaspora has been documented in an Amnesty report, “Nowhere Feels Safe”, which noted that several Uighurs abroad said they were “warned that family members would be detained if they did not return to Xinjiang or that they would not be able to see their family again if they did not provide information on other Uyghurs [sic] living in their community”.

Information on family members in the US appeared to be the focus of the questioning Yuksel’s mother and sister were subjected to for months for Abdullah’s arrest.

“For the first two months, my mother and sister were taken for questioning almost every single day for eight straight hours,” she said. “My mother and sister didn’t tell me exactly what happened, but they were mad at us because the brainwashing there is so strong. They [Chinese security officials] tell you it’s because your son and daughter abroad are enemies of the Chinese government. I cannot blame my mother and sister,” she insisted. “I could sense the questioning was so intense, they couldn’t bear it. Instead of getting angry with their interrogators, they got angry with us.”

A letter from her father in an unknown detention camp, a photograph of which was sent to Yuksel, had clearer signs of intimidation.

“My Dad is known for his beautiful handwriting in Han Chinese and our Uighur language. The letter started with his beautiful writing. But in the parts he accused us and told us to come back and apologise to the country, the handwriting was so bad, it was obvious they forced my Dad to write that letter to us,” she explained.

Guilty as planned, sentenced to life

The family in Urumqi meanwhile were not given access to Abdullah or told of his whereabouts. They only saw him more than two years later, at his first court hearing in September 2019.

It was a traumatic experience.

Yuksel’s mother was denied access into the court, but her elder sister was allowed in after kicking up a fuss. “My mother was sitting on a bench outside and she saw my Dad being taken into court in chains with other prisoners. They tried to make eye contact, but the police pushed him. He had lost weight and couldn’t balance himself. That broke my Mum’s heart seeing Dad in that state,” explained Yuksel. “My poor sister had to stay calm in court. She had to stay strong, silently, trying to make eye contact with my Dad, trying not to cry.”

The verdict was delivered at the end of the court session that barely granted her father’s lawyer the opportunity to defend his client. Abdullah was found guilty on all counts.

The family filed an appeal but heard nothing until the lawyer phoned to inform them a follow-up trial had been held in December 2019. The guilty verdict was upheld. Abdullah was sentenced to life in prison, the family was informed.

“My sister went to the lawyer and tried to get a copy or at least take a photograph of the order. But the lawyer refused, she kept pleading, ‘How can I remember this’? But the lawyer was very rude. He’s Han Chinese, there’s really no law there, it’s useless even hiring a lawyer,” she sighed.

Hunger in the Covid-19 era

The life in prison sentence, with no further course of repeal, was the final straw for Yuksel and her brother in Virginia. “For three years, we said nothing. We felt guilty, but we didn’t want to do anything that would endanger him. My mother and sister said it would be used as evidence against him. We were so afraid,” Yuksel explained.

With the sentencing, Yuksel and Iskandar concluded they had nothing left to lose. The coronavirus outbreak had by then shut down parts of China. Concerns over the spread of the disease in crowded detention camps were mounting.

The complete media blackout made it impossible to ascertain the situation inside the camps. But on the streets, the distress could not be hidden. Video clips emerged of residents screaming at officials that their families were starving. Old Uighur men caught on the streets flouting lockdown rules calmly asked officials if they were supposed to eat buildings.

On February 26, Yuksel broke her silence and spoke at a Uyghur Human Rights Project press conference in the US capital. The experience was life-changing. “I was so nervous. But after I finished, I cannot explain how I felt. It was like... it felt like a window had opened and the wind was on my chest, that I could finally breathe from my chest and not my mouth. I’m sorry, I have goosebumps, I can’t express it,” she apologised.

Subi Mamat Yuksel campaigning for her father's release in February 2020 in Washington DC. © Handout via Subi Mamat Yuksel

The trauma of Uighur families across the world silenced by fear, crushed by survivor’s guilt, cowered by an all-seeing, all-powerful state and helpless against the injustice is an overlooked aspect of China’s oppressive operations in Xinjiang.

Yuksel’s private nightmare raged as she finished her studies in business administration and coped, with her husband, with three young children. “What can I even tell people? They won’t believe such things are happening in the 21st century,” she explained.

State pushes back, but fails to intimidate

Speaking up in such cases is calculated to let oppressors know the abuse will not go unnoticed and designed to save loved ones from gross violations. But it also captures attention and in China’s case, the onslaught of the state’s aggressive “wolf warrior” push-back, including denials, deceptions and fake news campaigns.

>> Read more on China’s ‘wolf warriors’

Yuksel realised she was in the Orwellian propaganda machine’s sights last month, when the state-owned Global Times published a piece rejecting “rumors” about her testimony in “some US media reports”.

Abdullah, the article claimed, had been imprisoned for “bribery and the abuse of power” and not “for being two-faced person” [sic].

His daughter’s “accusation was completely fabricated and aimed at misleading international opinion,” said the Global Times, noting that “Corruption is a tumor to social development and is detested by people.”

Corruption is also a tool used by the Xi administration as “an effective method of pursuing political goals,” according to experts. Between 2012, when Xi came to power, and 2018, more than 1.5 million Chinese government officials were found guilty of “a variety of corruption-related charges”.

The state-owned Global Times is also led by an outspoken chief editor, Hu Xinjin, who has gained notoriety for his tirades and trolls against Beijing’s critics on Twitter – an app banned inside China.

VIDEO
https://youtu.be/wdcNHKr7dAU

But for Yuksel, a newcomer to the personalised world of Chinese propaganda, the experience was initially rattling. “We were so shocked. No two-faced, no separatist charges? I tried to call reporters to find out what’s going on. I contacted my mother and explained it carefully and she was shocked. My brother called the lawyer and asked for the final verdict but the lawyer hung up. I didn’t know what to do,” she recounted.

The Virginia mother is now wiser to the ways of the Chinese state. “They’re lying. They do anything to try to discredit you, they’re so shameless. Now the government is lying about their own lies,” she dismissed.

But while she’s happy with her decision to speak out, Yuksel is still unsure of how to proceed. “So they said it was only corruption, not “two-faced”. But they’ve also made it tricky to react. I don’t want it to just settle and for the state to have its way, which is just keeping the situation as it is,” she explained.

For now, Yuksel is sticking on-message, trying to get her father released. On Father’s Day, the young woman from Urumqi who confessed, “I wish I didn’t have to do this. I’m not a person who can speak easily in public, it’s so scary” released a video clip on Twitter asking, once again, for Abdullah’s release.

It’s been 3 long yrs I have been unable to say Happy Father’s Day to my dad #freemamatabdullah. I wanna hear his voice, I want to tell him I miss you! #China release him #FoxNews @SecPompeo @SenRubioPress @ChineseEmbinUS @ChinaDaily @StateDept @SpokespersonCHN @AmbCuiTiankai @UN pic.twitter.com/QQxGkgYpXl— Subi Mamat Yuksel (@SubiMamat) June 21, 2020

“He would always tell me, no matter what, always seek the light at the end of the tunnel,” she said looking directly at the camera. “As I face difficulties today, this is what I remember. Happy Father’s Day, Dad. I miss you so much. I will see you soon at the end of the tunnel.

Israeli historian Zeev Sternhell, advocate for Palestinian rights, dies at 85

Issued on: 21/06/2020

Israeli academic Zeev Sternhell poses at home in Jerusalem in this file photo taken on February 2, 2015. © Thomas Coex, AFP Text by:NEWS WIRES

Israeli historian and political scientist Zeev Sternhell, a peace activist and one of the leading thinkers of the country's left, has died aged 85, Jerusalem's Hebrew University said Sunday.

Polish-born Sternhell, head of the university's political science department, was an outspoken champion of Palestinian rights who strongly criticised Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Hebrew University president Asher Cohen hailed Sternhell, a professor emeritus there who was awarded the prestigious Israel Prize for political science in 2008, as "among the most important researchers" to emerge from the institution.

"His innovative political science research, which was translated into many languages, brought a deep change in the academic perception of ideological movements, specifically radical movements," Cohen said.

Ayman Odeh, head of the Arab-led Joint List in Israel's parliament, wrote that "during his childhood in Poland, Sternhell experienced the terrible results of fascism, and throughout his life had the courage and strength to research and fight it.

"For decades he was a significant voice for Palestinian human rights and against the occupation in the territories."

Survived Second World War

Born to a Jewish family in 1935, Sternhell survived the Second World War disguised as a Catholic. His mother and sister were murdered by the Nazis.

He moved to France after the war, then to Israel upon its creation in 1948.

Sternhell served as an Israeli soldier in the country's wars over four decades and believed in the necessity of a Jewish state, despite his opposition to Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

He was a longtime activist in the Israeli Peace Now movement, founding member Janet Aviad told AFP.

"He was a very strong and credible Zionist whose message was that we have one land for two people," she said. "That was the message he delivered in very humanistic, egalitarian, universal terms".

His academic work also delved into the "French roots of fascism" and stirred lively debate and controversy, according to former student Denis Charbit, now a lecturer at the Open University of Israel.

Sternhell was a "very demanding" professor, but also one "attentive" to his best students, Charbit told AFP.

In addition to academic writing and books, he regularly published opinion pieces in Israeli newspapers, most notably Haaretz, many of which were critical of settlers.

On one occasion Sternhell called the settlement movement a "cancer" in Israeli society, and in another instance said a settlement should be attacked with tanks.

'Fragility' of democracy

After receiving the Israel Prize in 2008, he was wounded the same year by a bomb planted outside his house by a right-wing extremist.

Sternhell himself said the attack was testimony to the "fragility" of Israeli democracy.

In an interview with Haaretz later that year, he warned of the ongoing occupation of Palestinian territories and the condition of Israel "not respecting the national rights of others".

In a 2014 interview with Haaretz, during Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza, Sternhell warned that the Jewish state's democracy was "facing collapse".

"The Israeli democracy is eroding, and the signs (of emerging fascism) exist," he said.

Tamar Zandberg, of left-wing party Meretz, said Sternhell's lasting legacy would be his work towards "a strong and not occupying Israeli democracy".

Communication Minister Yoaz Hendel offered his condolences to the Sternhell family, noting that while he didn't share many of Sternhell's opinions, "prominent intellectuals like him, from right and left, are the foundation to our existence as the people of the book".

According to Haaretz, Sternhell died as a result of complications following surgery.

He is survived by his wife, two daughters and several grandchildren.

(AFP)

Netanyahu’s annexation plan threatens Palestinian, Israeli economies already struggling after Covid-19
Issued on: 29/06/2020 -

A labourer puts up banners depicting US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, bearing the words in Hebrew, "No to a Palestinian State" and "Sovereignty Do it right!" as part of a new anti-annexation campaign by the far-right Yesha Jewish settler council, in Jerusalem, on June 10, 2020. © Ammar Awad, Reuters

Text by:Tamar SHILOH VIDON

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to begin annexing parts of the West Bank as soon as July 1 threatens to have severe repercussions on both the Palestinian and Israeli economies, which are already struggling from the effects of a global pandemic.
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The annexation – part of a peace plan unveiled by US President Donald Trump and Netanyahu at the White House in January – could mean imposing Israeli sovereignty on up to 30 percent of West Bank territory, although a final plan has not yet been unveiled.

“Truthfully, I think no one knows what will happen on July 1 or any day after. Not even Netanyahu himself,” said Elias Zananiri, vice chairman of the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organisation) Committee for Interaction with the Israeli Society. “One thing is clear. The Palestinians will in no way accept any form of annexation,” he told FRANCE 24 on Sunday.

The plan’s opponents, in Israel and abroad, warn that it will end any chance of bringing a lasting peace to the region. The plan has also been rejected by members of Israel’s far right, who argue that it does not go far enough and that by annexing only 30 percent of the West Bank Netanyahu is setting the stage for the establishment of a Palestinian state in the rest of the territory, which they oppose.

But the territory that would be left to the Palestinians could make it impossible to establish a viable state, with isolated pockets of land disconnected from one another and Israel controlling the contour of the territory.


“No matter whether the annexation is marginal or grandiose – whoever in Israel or elsewhere tries to sell the idea of a ‘marginal annexation’, as though it is in line with previous understandings between the Palestinians and Israel on a land swap, is misleading everyone. [A] land swap should be the outcome of a mutual agreement and not a unilateral move by Israel,” Zananiri said.

Economic implications

The annexation could lead to an eruption of violence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, end Israel’s budding cooperation with the Gulf States and bring on painful sanctions by its European trade partners – all at a time when the Israeli economy is already reeling from the effects of the coronavirus crisis.

Netanyahu has said that the plan would include only areas with Jewish settlements, and that the Palestinians would continue to be governed by the Palestinian Authority (PA).

But it is unclear how this can be achieved, when imposing Israeli sovereignty on even some of the 2.3 million West Bank inhabitants would entail extensive and immediate judicial and administrative changes that would affect both the Israeli and Palestinian economies in the long term.

“The Palestinian economy is vastly dependent on Israel's, not only since the Oslo Accord was signed in 1993 but throughout the years of occupation that started in 1967. The annexation will only exacerbate the conditions for the Palestinian economy,” Zananiri said.

In the short term, the move could lead to violent clashes and political ramifications that would also hurt Israel.

Unilateral annexation “runs the risk of a confrontation between Israelis and Palestinians”, according to analysts from the Adva Center, a Tel Aviv-based progressive think-tank, writing in a position paper published on June 17. “Such a confrontation may further exacerbate the economic crisis caused by the corona epidemic, just as the second intifada exacerbated the crisis that accompanied the bursting of the high-tech bubble in 2000.”

They noted that the economic recession that followed the second intifada was described by Israel's central bank as the longest in the country’s history.

“During the second intifada, the number of tourists entering Israel declined to fewer than a million,” according to the Adva Center analysts.

In the past few months, Israeli tourism – booming before the health crisis, with 4.6 million overseas visitors in 2019 – ground to a halt. Unemployment also spiked to 18 percent from 3.4 percent before the pandemic.

“To regain the losses caused by the corona epidemic, Israel needs not only to beat the Covid-19 virus but also to remain free of conflict,” they wrote.

Zananiri said he did not believe the Israeli move would lead to a new intifada but warned that “the future after annexation will look significantly different”.

“I do not think we will see Palestinians resort to armed struggle or attacks on Israel, but we also do not know what will happen if the PA loses control over the crowd. People are hungry for a normal life but never at the expense of national independence.”

Writing on the Ynet Israeli news website on Friday, veteran Israeli war correspondent Ron Ben-Yishai agreed. “What worries Israel the most is that Abu Mazen (Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas) will decide to react to the annexation by fully or partially halting the civilian services provided by the Palestinian Authority”, something he has threatened to do as part of a pressure campaign on Israel.

“In such a situation, according to international law, Israel will be directly responsible for the day-to-day lives of Palestinians – their health, safety and welfare.”

“The financial burden on Israel will be enormous, as will be the effort to set up the mechanisms necessary for governing 2.6 million Palestinians during the coronavirus crisis,” Ben-Yishai added.

Political repercussions

The Hamas movement has said it would consider an annexation a “declaration of war”.

“The resistance (Hamas) considers this decision to be a declaration of war upon the Palestinian people. The resistance will be the loyal and dutiful guard of the people throughout this war, acting in defence of our people, our land, and our holy sites,” a spokesman, known by his nom de guerre Abu Obeida, said in a speech on Thursday.

World leaders have also exhorted the Israeli government to abandon the plan.

“We are at a watershed moment,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres told a virtual meeting of the UN Security Council on Wednesday.

“If implemented, annexation would constitute a most serious violation of international law, grievously harm the prospect of a two-state solution and undercut the possibilities of a renewal of negotiations. I call on the Israeli government to abandon its annexation plans,” he said.

And 1,080 members of parliament from 25 European countries published an open letter on Wednesday expressing strong opposition to annexation, calling the move “fatal to the prospects of Israeli-Palestinian peace” and saying it would “challenge the most basic norms guiding international relations”.

“We are profoundly concerned about the impact of annexation on the lives of Israelis and Palestinians, as well as its destabilising potential in a region on our continent’s doorstep. These concerns are no less serious at a time when the world is struggling with the Covid-19 pandemic,” they wrote.

The letter called on European leaders “to act decisively in response to this challenge”.

“We fully support this: acquisition of territory by force has no place in 2020 and must have commensurate consequences. Failure to adequately respond would encourage other states with territorial claims to disregard basic principles of international law,” they wrote.

Europe was the single largest market for Israeli exports in 2019, accounting for 43 percent of total exports, according to the Adva Center paper. If European leaders were to act in concert, they could exert enough economic leverage to undermine the Israeli economy.

Netanyahu’s window of opportunity

Some say Netanyahu regards the annexation of the Jordan Valley and the Jewish settlements in the West Bank as his historic legacy, now made possible thanks to the support of the Trump administration.

“Earlier annexations of East Jerusalem (1967) and the Golan Heights (1981) were seen as historic moves by previous heads of government,” writes Israeli journalist Sever Plocker in a Ynet op-ed. “This latest move, Netanyahu believes, will solidify Israel's hold on parts of the biblical land of Israel and ensure defensible borders for the state.”


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With American elections only months away and Trump doing poorly in the polls, the window of opportunity is small. The Democratic Party and its presumed presidential candidate, Joe Biden, have strongly criticised the plan and will not support it if they take over the White House in January.

Netanyahu’s legal troubles might also be adding to the urgency of implementing the plan. One way to deflect talk of his indictment on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust is by annexing Palestinian territories. And indeed, since the beginning of his trial on May 24, headlines on the coronavirus and impending annexation have overshadowed news about the hearings.

Netanyahu might also be wagering that opposition criticism and international pressure to stop the annexation will give credence to his claim – made in front of the courthouse on the day his trial began – that the proceedings were, in fact, a ploy against the entire Israeli right. “What is on trial today is an effort to frustrate the will of the people – the attempt to bring me down along with the right-wing flank,” he declared.

“I am not willing to adjust my policies to receive better media coverage, I am not prepared to uproot settlements, I am not willing to do all sorts of other things, and therefore I must be removed by any means,” he said.

Zananiri called for swift action from the international community. “I believe it is the duty of the international community to step in and, for once, shake the stick at Israel and tell the incumbent government that it cannot continue to behave and act above international law,” he said.

Malnutrition in poorer nations costs firms up to $850 bln: study

Issued on: 08/07/2020 - 

The pandemic is increasing the number of people at risk of acute hunger 

NARINDER NANU AFP/File

Paris (AFP)

Hunger, poor nutrition and obesity not only present a health burden in developing countries but carry a hidden economic penalty that costs businesses up to $850 billion a year, according to a new report published Wednesday.

Researchers said malnutrition reduces the resilience of populations to risks such as infectious disease outbreaks and extreme climate events, as well as causing a reduction in productivity and earnings.

With the coronavirus pandemic expected to drive millions more into hunger and poverty, they called for governments and businesses alike to focus on nutrition as part of recovery efforts.

"While the costs of undernutrition and overweight/obesity to societies and governments are well explored, the costs and risks to companies created by malnutrition in the workforce and the wider community have remained under the radar," said lead researchers Laura Wellesley, a senior research fellow at Chatham House.

"We show that the costs and risks are significant and that it is in the interests of businesses to take action."

The report, which was compiled with the Vivid Economics group, defined malnutrition as both undernutrition and overnutrition -- encompassing conditions from stunting and anaemia to being overweight and obese.

In developing nations where the prevalence of malnutrition is high, researchers estimated that the direct costs of productivity loss would total between $130 billion and $850 billion a year.

That is equivalent to between 0.4 per cent and 2.9 percent of the combined gross domestic product of those countries.

The report extrapolated the results from modelling 19 lower- and middle-income countries in Asia, Africa, Central America and Europe.

According to the 2020 Global Nutrition Report, around one in nine people globally are hungry or undernourished, while one in three people are overweight or obese. Almost a quarter of children under five are stunted.

- Poverty warning -

Problems that once existed at opposite ends of the wealth spectrum are increasingly converging in poor and middle-income countries as populations, households and even individuals face a "double burden" of being overweight and undernourished.

"Both obesity and undernutrition are outcomes of poor nutrition, and both should be tackled together if we're to ease the malnutrition burden on companies and societies," Wellesley said.

She called for efforts to reduce both problems, such as paying a fair living wage, subsidising nutritious food for staff, providing breastfeeding support for mothers and education on how to eat healthily.

The report stressed that action to tackle malnutrition is in businesses' best interests.

Direct costs for companies include the reduction in productivity associated with staff ill-health and limits to workers' physical and cognitive capacity, Wellesley said.

It also traps households into poverty meaning, they have less money to spend as consumers, thus impeding the development of a healthy workforce.

The report comes as Philip Alston, the former United Nations envoy on extreme poverty and human rights, slammed the international community for fostering a misleading narrative that global poverty is being eradicated when in fact he said it is rising.

He warned that the pandemic is expected to push hundreds of millions into unemployment and poverty, while increasing the number at risk of acute hunger by more than 250 million.

"Even before COVID-19, we squandered a decade in the fight against poverty with misplaced triumphalism blocking the very reforms that could have prevented the worst impacts of the pandemic," he said.

Alston criticised the use of the World Bank's international poverty line -- currently $1.90 per day -- as "flawed", saying it gives a deceptively positive picture.

© 2020 AFP

WHO reviewing study on concerns over airborne spread of Covid-19
Issued on: 07/07/2020 -

World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus attends a news conference organized by Geneva Association of United Nations Correspondents (ACANU) amid the COVID-19 outbreak in Geneva Switzerland July 3, 2020. © Fabrice Coffrini/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo Text by:NEWS WIRES

The World Health Organization (WHO) is reviewing a report urging it to update guidance on the novel coronavirus after more than 200 scientists, in a letter to the health agency, outlined evidence the virus can spread in tiny airborne particles.

The WHO says SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, spreads primarily through small droplets expelled from the nose and mouth of an infected person that quickly sink to the ground.

But in an open letter to the Geneva-based agency, published on Monday in the Clinical Infectious Diseases journal, 239 scientists in 32 countries outlined evidence that they say shows floating virus particles can infect people who breathe them in.

Because those smaller particles can linger in the air, the scientists are urging WHO to update its guidance.

"We are aware of the article and are reviewing its contents with our technical experts," WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said on Monday in an email.

How frequently the coronavirus can spread by the airborne or aerosol route - as opposed to by larger droplets in coughs and sneezes - is not clear.

Any change in the WHO's assessment of risk of transmission could affect its current advice on keeping 1-metre (3.3 feet) of physical distancing. Governments, which rely on the agency for guidance policy, may also have to adjust public health measures aimed at curbing the spread of the virus.

Although the WHO has said it is considering aerosols as a possible route of transmission, it has yet to be convinced that the evidence warrants a change in guidance.

Dr. Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota, said the WHO has long been reluctant to acknowledge aerosol transmission of influenza, "in spite of compelling data," and sees the current controversy as part of that simmering debate.

"I think the frustration level has finally boiled over with regard to the role that airborne transmission plays in diseases like influenza and SARS-CoV-2," Osterholm said.

Professor Babak Javid, an infectious disease consultant at Cambridge University Hospitals, said airborne transmission of the virus is possible and even likely, but said evidence over how long the virus stays airborne is lacking.

If it can hang in the air for long periods of time, even after an infected person leaves that space, that could affect the measures healthcare workers and others take to protect themselves.

WHO guidance to health workers, dated June 29, says SARS-CoV-2 is primarily transmitted through respiratory droplets and on surfaces.

But airborne transmission is possible in some circumstances, such as when performing intubation and aerosol-generating procedures, the WHO says. They advise medical workers performing such procedures to wear heavy duty N95 respiratory masks and other protective equipment in an adequately ventilated room.

Dr. William Hanage, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said the report under review at the WHO "makes many reasonable points about the evidence that this mode of transmission can happen, and they should be taken seriously."

But how often airborne transmission happens, which is unknown, also matters.

"If airborne transmission is possible but rare, then eliminating it wouldn’t have a huge impact," he said in emailed comments.

Officials at South Korea's Centers for Disease Control said on Monday they were continuing to discuss various issues about Covid-19, including the possibility of airborne transmission. They said more investigations and evidence were needed.

(REUTERS)

UPDATED 

Ennio Morricone, the Oscar-winning composer, has 

died at the age of 91.


GREATEST FILM SCORE COMPOSER EVER

The Italian musician, who scored more than 400 films, died on Monday (6 July) at the Campus Bio-Medico in Rome, a week after suffering a fall in which he broke his femur.

He scored seven for his fellow countryman Sergio Leone after they had met as kids in elementary school.

Born in 1928, Morricone began his career as a trumpet player before turning to film composition in 1961, going on to create music for more than 70 award-winning movies.

In 1966, Morricone composed the iconic soundtrack to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, a score so influential it earned him a spot in the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2009.

Biography:
Ennio Morricone, (born 10 November 1928) was an Italian composer, orchestrator, conductor, and former trumpet player, writing in a wide range of musical styles. Since 1961, Morricone has composed over 400 scores for cinema and television, as well as over 100 classical works. His score to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) is considered one of the most influential soundtracks in history and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. His filmography includes over 70 award-winning films, including all Sergio Leone films (since A Fistful of Dollars), all Giuseppe Tornatore films (since Cinema Paradiso), The Battle of Algiers, Dario Argentos Animal Trilogy, 1900, Exorcist II, Days of Heaven, several major films in French cinema, in particular the comedy trilogy La Cage aux Folles I, II, III and Le Professionnel, as well as The Thing, The Mission, The Untouchables, Mission to Mars, Bugsy, Disclosure, In the Line of Fire, Bulworth, Ripley's Game and The Hateful Eight.

After playing the trumpet in jazz bands in the 1940s, he became a studio arranger for RCA Victor and in 1955 started ghost writing for film and theatre. Throughout his career, he has composed music for artists such as Paul Anka, Mina, Milva, Zucchero and Andrea Bocelli. From 1960 to 1975, Morricone gained international fame for composing music for Westerns and—with an estimated 10 million copies sold—Once Upon a Time in the West is one of the best-selling scores worldwide. From 1966 to 1980, he was a main member of Il Gruppo, one of the first experimental composers collectives, and in 1969 he co-founded Forum Music Village, a prestigious recording studio. From the 1970s, Morricone excelled in Hollywood, composing for prolific American directors such as Don Siegel, Mike Nichols, Brian De Palma, Barry Levinson, Oliver Stone, Warren Beatty, John Carpenter and Quentin Tarantino. In 1977, he composed the official theme for the 1978 FIFA World Cup. He continued to compose music for European productions, such as Marco Polo, La piovra, Nostromo, Fateless, Karol and En mai, fais ce qu'il te plait. Morricone's music has been reused in television series, including The Simpsons and The Sopranos, and in many films, including Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained. He also scored seven Westerns for Sergio Corbucci, Duccio Tessari's Ringo duology and Sergio Sollima's The Big Gundown and Face to Face. Morricone worked extensively for other film genres with directors such as Bernardo Bertolucci, Mauro Bolognini, Giuliano Montaldo, Roland Joffé, Roman Polanski and Henri Verneuil. His acclaimed soundtrack for The Mission (1986)[7] was certified gold in the United States. The album Yo-Yo Ma Plays Ennio Morricone stayed 105 weeks on the Billboard Top Classical Albums.

Morricone's best-known compositions include "The Ecstasy of Gold", "Se Telefonando", "Man with a Harmonica", "Here's to You", the UK No. 2 single "Chi Mai", "Gabriel's Oboe" and "E Più Ti Penso". In 1971, he received a "Targa d'Oro" for worldwide sales of 22 million, and by 2016 Morricone had sold over 70 million records worldwide. In 2007, he received the Academy Honorary Award "for his magnificent and multifaceted contributions to the art of film music." He has been nominated for a further six Oscars. In 2016, Morricone received his first competitive Academy Award for his score to Quentin Tarantinos film The Hateful Eight, at the time becoming the oldest person ever to win a competitive Oscar. His other achievements include three Grammy Awards, three Golden Globes, six BAFTAs, ten David di Donatello, eleven Nastro d'Argento, two European Film Awards, the Golden Lion Honorary Award and the Polar Music Prize in 2010.

Morricone has influenced many artists from film scoring to other styles and genres, including Hans Zimmer, Danger Mouse, Dire Straits, Muse, Metallica, and Radiohead.
R.I.P.






Ennio Morricone, Oscar-Winning ‘Hateful Eight’ 

Composer, Dies at 91


By Carmel Dagan

Courtesy of Muthmedia GmbH

Oscar winner Ennio Morricone, composer of “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” and “The Mission” and among the most prolific and admired composers in film history, has died. He was 91.

Morricone died early Monday in a Rome clinic, where he was taken shortly after suffering a fall that caused a hip fracture, his lawyer Giorgio Asumma told Italian news agency ANSA.

Shortly after Morricone’s death was confirmed, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte tweeted: “We will always remember, with infinite gratitude, the artistic genius of the Maestro #EnnioMorricone. It made us dream, feel excited, reflect, writing memorable notes that will remain indelible in the history of music and cinema.”

The Italian maestro’s estimated 500 scores for films and television, composed over more than 50 years, are believed to constitute a record in Western cinema for sheer quantity of music.

At least a dozen of them became film-score classics, from the so-called spaghetti Westerns of the 1960s, including “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” and “Once Upon a Time in the West” to the widely acclaimed “The Mission” and “Cinema Paradiso” of the 1980s.

ENNIO MORRICONE CHANNEL ON YOU TUBE

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUAwOBo-ZZ8S8cIH0SGoXpg

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He was nominated six times for Oscars — for “Days of Heaven,” “The Mission,” “The Untouchables,” “Bugsy,” “Malena” and “The Hateful Eight,” winning for the last of these — and in 2006 the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences presented him with an honorary Oscar for “his magnificent and multifaceted contributions to the art of film music.” He was only the second composer in Oscar history to receive an honorary award for his body of work.

He contributed the original score to Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight” in 2015 after having made some earlier comments about being unhappy with the way his music, originally composed for other movies, had been used in earlier Tarantino films.

Their collaboration on “Hateful Eight,” first announced by Variety in June 2015, took place rapidly, with Morricone working from Tarantino’s screenplay, rather than scoring specific scenes, similarly to his technique on “Once Upon a Time in the West.”

Although he preferred to work in Rome — and famously refused to speak any language other than Italian — he worked with a wide range of filmmakers on both sides of the Atlantic, including Sergio Leone (“Once Upon a Time in America”), Gillo Pontecorvo (“The Battle of Algiers”), Bernardo Bertolucci (“1900”), Terence Malick (“Days of Heaven”), William Friedkin (“Rampage”), Roman Polanski (“Frantic”), Brian De Palma (“The Untouchables”), Barry Levinson (“Disclosure”), Mike Nichols (“Wolf”) and Giuseppe Tornatore (“Cinema Paradiso”).

He was classically trained and insisted upon personally orchestrating every note of his scores, unlike many of his contemporaries. The sound he achieved was often unique and innovative, as in the Western scores that featured whistling, bells, electric guitars, wordless soprano vocals and full choirs.





Morricone was so busy in the 1960s and 1970s that he often didn’t conduct his own music. From 1965-73, he wrote nearly 150 scores, more than many composers create in a lifetime. Many were for films never released in the U.S., which led to a small but passionate cult of record buyers who didn’t see the films but doted on the music.

While he is often remembered for his often wildly romantic themes (notably for such 1970s European films as “Metti, una sera a cena” and “Maddalena”), he also excelled at crime dramas (“Revolver”) and enjoyed indulging his passion for dissonance and improvisatory music, especially in the Italian “giallo” thriller films of the 1970s (such as Dario Argento’s “The Bird With the Crystal Plumage”).

Morricone had enjoyed a top-10 hit with the theme for “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” but it was “The Mission” that brought him worldwide acclaim in 1986. His alternately primitive and sophisticated, choral and orchestral music for Roland Joffe’s epic set in 18th century South America won BAFTA and Golden Globe awards but lost the Oscar to “Round Midnight,” a jazz score that wasn’t entirely original.

The loss — which outraged Oscar observers and disappointed Morricone in his best-ever shot at Oscar glory — resulted in modification to Academy rules and, eventually, the honorary Oscar as a 20-years-late consolation prize.

But in general, Morricone devoted more time In later years to classical composition, writing more than 50 works for chamber groups, symphony orchestra, solo voice and choral ensembles. Appearing in concert at the United Nations in early 2007, he conducted his “Voci Dal Silencio,” a cantata in memory of those killed in 9/11 and other terrorist attacks.

He launched a film-scoring career with “Il Federale” in 1961. The Leone films of the 1960s — notably the Clint Eastwood “Man With No Name” trilogy that started with “Fistful of Dollars” in 1964 — ensured his future in movies, although in later years he would regularly remind interviewers that he had worked in every genre, not just Westerns. Director Quentin Tarantino used obscure Morricone tracks in several of his films, including “Kill Bill,” “Inglourious Basterds” and “Django Unchained,” and Morricone composed an original song for “Django Unchained,” “Ancora Qui.”
Morricone was born in Rome. He took up the trumpet at an early age and studied music at Italy’s famed Santa Cecilia conservatory under composer Goffredo Petrassi. Although he initially preferred writing for the concert hall, he began to arrange and conduct for pop singers in the late 1950s as a means of earning a living. His pop song “Se Telefonando” was one of Italy’s big hits of 1966.

Artists in every genre of music-making have paid tribute to the maestro, including cellist Yo-Yo Ma in a bestselling 2004 classical album and the all-star 2007 tribute “We All Love Ennio Morricone” that featured Celine Dion, Bruce Springsteen and Metallica.

His albums have sold, it is estimated, more than 50 million units worldwide.

In addition to his honorary Oscar, he received seven of Italy’s David di Donatello awards, another Golden Globe for “The Legend of 1900,” a Grammy and another BAFTA for “The Untouchables,” ASCAP’s Golden Soundtrack Award and the career achievement award of the Film Music Society.

In recent years he had conducted concerts of his own music around the world, including a notable American debut at New York’s Radio City Music Hall in 2007. Although he was scheduled to conduct at the Hollywood Bowl in 2009, the event was cancelled and he never returned to L.A.

Morricone is survived by wife Maria Travia and their four children.


A FAVE OF MINE

 



Oscar-winning Italian composer Ennio Morricone 

dies at 91



Ennio Morricone at the 2016 Oscars, where he won the award for best original score for Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight.” (Jordan Strauss / Invision/ Associated Press)

By DAVID COLKER
JULY 6, 2020
12:46 AM

Oscar-winning film composer Ennio Morricone, who came to prominence with the Italian western “A Fistful of Dollars” and went on to write some of the most celebrated movie scores of all time, has died. He was 91.

Morricone’s longtime lawyer, Giorgio Assumma, told the Associated Press that the composer died early Monday in a Rome hospital of complications following a fall, in which he broke a leg.

A native of the Italian capital, Morricone composed music for more than 500 films and television shows in a career that spanned more than 50 years. At first he was closely associated with “A Fistful of Dollars” director Sergio Leone, for whom he scored six films, including “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” and “Once Upon a Time in America.” Established in his own right, Morricone turned out classic scores for films such as “Days of Heaven,” “Bugsy,” “Cinema Paradiso,” “The Untouchables,” “La Cage aux Folles” and “Battle of Algiers.”

A favorite of critics, directors and other composers, Morricone’s score to the 1986 film “The Mission” was voted best film score of all time in a 2012 Variety poll. On his sixth nomination, he finally won a competitive Oscar, in 2016, for his score for Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight.” The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had awarded Morricone an honorary Oscar in 2007.

He also occasionally did live performances in which he conducted orchestra and choruses in both his film music and concert pieces he composed.

It was a 1960s recording made in Rome of the Woody Guthrie song “Pastures of Plenty” that launched Morricone’s international career. The seemingly incongruous mixture of sounds in the orchestration — surging violins, the crack of a whip, church bells, an electric guitar, an acoustic guitar, chimes and a chanting male chorus — so entranced Leone that he ditched his original choice of composer and hired Morricone to score what became 1964’s “A Fistful of Dollars.”

Morricone’s music, like the man who wrote it, was never shy.

“The best film music is music that you can hear,” he said in a 1995 BBC documentary about his life and work. “Music you can’t hear, no matter how good, is bad film music.”

Although Morricone scored several Hollywood movies, he usually did so from his home city of Rome and seldom traveled to Los Angeles. He never learned more than a handful of phrases in English and even refused an offer from a studio to buy him a house in L.A. His absence didn’t diminish his popularity among high-profile U.S. musicians — the 2007 tribute album “We All Love Ennio Morricone” featured performers as varied as opera soprano Renee Fleming, rocker Bruce Springsteen, cellist Yo-Yo Ma and the heavy metal band Metallica.

“He has taken so many risks, and his music is not polished whatsoever,” said Metallica lead singer James Hetfield in a 1977 New York Times interview. The band regularly used a theme from the western “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” in its concerts. “It’s very rude and blatant,” Hetfield said of Morricone’s music. “ All of a sudden a Mexican horn will come blasting through and just take over the melody. It’s just so raw, really raw, and it feels real, unpolished.”

Addressing the more melodic side of Morricone, film music composer and former rock musician Danny Elfman said in a 1999 Los Angeles Times interview, “Anyone who’s ever written any kind of romantic score has been influenced by him.”

If there is a common thread to Morricone’s work, it’s the mixing of that raw and romantic, expressed with a blend of unlikely instruments to create excitement, suspense, joy and pathos — sometimes all in the same film.

That was never more true than in “The Mission” (1986), set in 18th-century South America, in which a tune played on the oboe has a key role in the plot. In the movie, the oboe player is a Jesuit priest who is accepted, in part because of the music he makes, by a native tribe deep in the jungle. The score, which ranges from ominously dissident to celebratory tonal, features pan pipes and drums of various types to represent tribal sounds, plus an orchestra, chorus and child singers. As the action culminates near the end of the film, all these sounds can be heard fitting together like a puzzle that suddenly gets solved.

“These three elements: the oboe, the native music and Western music taught by the Jesuits had to be combined into a whole,” Morricone said in an English translation on the BBC program. “The union of these elements is very important. In them I see myself, spiritually and technically.”

Morricone was born Nov. 10, 1928, in a working-class neighborhood in Rome. His father, Mario, was a musician who played trumpet in night clubs and taught his son to play the instrument at an early age. Ennio did his first composing at age 6. “I wrote silly bits of music,” he said in a 1989 interview with British author Christopher Frayling. “They were hunting themes. I destroyed them.”

He enrolled at age 14 in the Santa Cecilia Conservatory, where he studied classical music, including works by contemporary composers. But at night he often subbed for his unwell father, playing trumpet in clubs. Graduating from the conservatory in 1954, he went on to compose several serious pieces. He married Maria Travia in 1956 and the following year they had a son.

“Little by little I realized that I couldn’t live on the very meager income from composing contemporary music,” Morricone told Frayling. He turned to arranging pop tunes and in just a few years became quite successful, working on songs for television variety shows and for famed stars such as Mario Lanza. The first film score for which he received a credit was for director Luciano Salce’s 1961 “Il Federale” (“The Fascist”).

Morricone soon found himself in demand as a film composer. Able to work fast, he picked up several more credits over the next couple years, including for two westerns. Those led to his being considered for the Leone film and when the two men met, Morrisone had a surprise for the director. He told him they had met before, more than 30 years ago in third grade and Morricone had the picture to prove it. The class photo, from an school in Rome, showed the two boys sitting just one student apart from each other, although back then they were not close friends.

The recording of “Pastures of Plenty” sealed the deal for Morricone to write the music for “Fistful of Dollars,” and his unorthodox, upfront score for the film starring Clint Eastwood was credited with helping it become a worldwide success.

“I think the music of Ennio becomes almost visible, becomes almost a visual element in the film,” the late director Bernardo Bertolucci said in the BBC documentary.

Morricone and Leone teamed again for two more films in what came to be known as the “Dollars” trilogy of westerns starring Eastwood: “For a Few Dollars More” (1965) and “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” (1966), which is likely the composer’s best known work.

In a 2007 tribute to Morricone, Los Angeles Times critic Mark Swed called it “audacious” music. “The whistle, the whoop, the ‘60s rock guitar, the ocarina, the quick-tongued trumpets, the simple harmonies, the catchy melody are a combination never before associated with the American West or anyplace or anything else,” Swed said.

The working relationship between the director and composer was so close that Leone sometimes had Morricone compose and record the music before the film was shot. Leone would play the music on the set to help set the mood for actors, and at times he would shoot the film to go with the music instead of the usual other way around.

In all, they did six films together, ending with “Once Upon A Time in America” (1984), which had one of Morricone’s most melodic scores. Leone died in 1989.

Among other directors that Morricone worked with multiple times were Bertolucci, Federico Fellini, Brian De Palma and Roland Joffe.

After finishing the 1976 Bertolucci epic “1900,” Morricone cut back a bit on film and TV composing to spend more time writing orchestra works. He stoped working on U.S. films entirely, but for a different reason. “I was being paid no more than the worst American composers,” he said in the BBC documentary. “So I decided to stop working for the Americans.”

English producer David Puttnam broke that logjam by paying him what he wanted for the Warner Bros.-financed “The Mission.” “He doesn’t sell himself cheaply,” Puttnam said in the BBC documentary, “but he does give you everything.”

The one thing that Morricone did not get out of “The Mission” was an Oscar, though he was nominated. At the awards ceremony in 1987, the winner, instead, was Herbie Hancock for “’Round Midnight.”

Morricone did not hide his disappointment. “Despite all the prizes and awards throughout Europe, the thing not fulfilled is the Oscar,” he said in a 1999 Los Angeles Times interview. “I feel there is a hole in me. I just don’t understand it.”

That hole was partially filled in 2007, when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave him an honorary Oscar for “his magnificent and multifaceted contributions to the art of film music.” Although the composer was visibly moved when he received the award from Clint Eastwood, he could not help but remind the Academy that it had passed him over for a competitive award.

In 2016, at age 87, he finally took home a competitive Oscar, for the score of “The Hateful Eight.” In his acceptance speech, he thanked the other nominated composers as a group but gave a special shout-out to John Williams, the “Star Wars” composer, perennial academy favorite and fellow octogenarian who had been working nearly as long as he had.

In his later years, Morricone conducted highly popular performances of his works with large orchestras and choruses massed especially for the occasions.

Still, he kept on composing for film and television, with total credits surpassing 520. But taking a stance that was uncharacteristically modest, Morricone said his output was slight compared to at least one classical composer.

“If you think about it, Bach, for example, used to compose one cantata a week. He had to compose the music in time for it to be performed in church on Sunday,” Morricone said in a 2010 interview with the Quietus online arts site. “So if you just consider Bach, you will see that I’m practically unemployed.”


David Colker

David Colker previously wrote and edited obituaries – a beat perhaps foreshadowed by being on the Timothy Leary death watch in 1996 when he took the assignment so seriously he was at Leary’s bedside when he died. He left The Times in 2015. 

Art world, politicians salute talent of Morricone

Issued on: 07/07/2020 -

Ennio Morricone, the iconic composer, died aged 91 TIZIANA FABI AFP

Rome (AFP)

Big names from Hollywood, music and politics lined up on Monday to praise the talent and the legacy of Italian maestro Ennio Morricone, after the iconic composer died aged 91, with Antonio Banderas saluting "a big master of cinema."

- Antonio Banderas -

"With great sadness, we say goodbye to a big master of cinema. His music will keep playing in our memories. Rest in peace #EnnioMorricone."


- Monica Bellucci -

"There are people who have the ability to make the world better because they know how to create beauty".

- Riccardo Muti, Italian conductor -

Morricone was "a master for whom I nurtured friendship and admiration."

- Metallica -

"Your career was legendary, your compositions were timeless. Thank you for setting the mood for so many of our shows since 1983," when the rock band started using "The Ecstasy of Gold" from the score for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly as its walk-on music.

- Edgar Wright, British screenwriter and producer -

"He could make an average movie into a must see, a good movie into art, and a great movie into legend."

- Hans Zimmer, German composer -

"Ennio was an icon and icons just don't go away, icons are forever."

- John Carpenter -

"A friend and collaborator, his talent was inestimable. I will miss him."

- Goldfrapp -

"Sad to hear about the passing of Ennio Morricone today. He was a huge inspiration for Goldfrapp too, in particular Felt Mountain."

- Yo-Yo Ma -

"I'll never forget the way Ennio Morricone described music as 'energy, space, and time.' It is, perhaps, the most concise and accurate description I've ever heard. We'll truly miss him."

- Britain's Royal Philharmonic Society -

"If proof were needed of orchestral music's enduring power and currency, imagine so many of the all-time great films without Ennio Morricone's colossal scores, giving so many of them their soul."

- Jean-Michel Jarre, French musician -

"Ennio Morricone was a source of constant inspiration, like a member of my family... he was omnipresent in my life."

- Giuseppe Conte, Italian prime minister -

"He made us dream, he moved us and made us think, writing unforgettable notes that will remain forever in the history of music and cinema."

© 2020 AFP

In Canada, Montreal moves to make masks obligatory in public places

Issued on: 07/07/2020 -

Montreal is going to require masks in all indoor public places such as stores, restaurants, bars and sports facilities Sebastien St-Jean AFP/File

Montreal (AFP)

The Canadian city of Montreal, one of the country's virus hotspots, will make wearing face masks in indoor public places mandatory in the coming weeks, Mayor Valerie Plante said Monday.

Montreal, Canada's second-largest city, follows in the footsteps of Toronto and the capital Ottawa, where masks will be obligatory from Tuesday.

Plante said the move, to come into effect from July 27, was in response to the "emergence of some outbreaks in the suburbs... which could undermine the efforts we have been making since the beginning of this pandemic."

  The measure will apply to shops, sports facilities, bars and restaurants, she said.

Last week, Quebec's provincial government said masks would be mandatory on public transport from July 13.

Plante said that some business owners had struggled "in ensuring that the rules of hygiene and distancing are respected in their establishments."

"For many, a loosening leading to eventual reconfinement would simply mean putting the key under the door," she said in a statement.

"A setback would be a disaster for human lives and for our economy."

Plante said there would be a grace period so everyone could be prepared, but warned that she would not hesitate to "crack down on offenders in the long run."

Quebec accounts for more than half of Canada's roughly 105,000 coronavirus cases, and nearly two-thirds of the 8,700 deaths -- most of them in the greater Montreal area.

© 2020 AFP