Coronavirus pandemic leads to rise in FGM across Africa

Campaigners against Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) say that the coronavirus pandemic has had a negative impact on efforts to curb the practice. FGM remains common despite being criminalized in many countries.

Domtila Chesang is from West Pokot County in northwestern Kenya, a region where Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is still common practice. She became a campaigner against FGM and child marriage after witnessing her cousin be subjected to the practice. The nightmarish experience made her not anxious, but determined: In 2017, she received a Queen's Young Leaders Award at Buckingham Palace in London for her work raising awareness.

"I use my voice and my influence to fight for the rights of girls and against gender-based violence," she told DW.

Long-term psychological and physical damage

But Chesang's work has become all the harder since the coronavirus pandemic struck. "Our campaigns are not very effective," she said. "We can't move freely because Kenya is in lockdown and also has a nighttime curfew."

"The focus is on COVID-19. That's what most funding is going towards. So, there are more girls who are being subjected to harmful cultural practices in their communities."

She said that over 500 girls had been subjected to FGM in the months of April, May and June, when the lockdown measures were at their strictest. This was a major setback: "The girls will suffer their whole lives, both psychologically and physically."

Girls are sometimes married off as young as 12 or 14 and thus robbed of any chance of making their own decisions. FGM is considered by some communities to be a necessary rite of passage before a woman marries.


Education and outreach has come to a near-complete standstill due to the pandemic.

Read more: Russia's first trial on female genital mutilation restarts after coronavirus lockdown

Marriage seen as path out of poverty

Daniela Gierschmann from the women's rights organization Medica Mondiale said that the coronavirus pandemic had led to a similar situation in West Africa, particularly in Liberia, Sierra Leone and the Ivory Coast: "Such crises are particularly difficult for girls and women. They exacerbate already existing inequalities," she told DW.

"There is less protection from institutions and a significant rise in sexual and domestic violence. Teenage pregnancies and FGM are increasing."

Gierschmann explained that families were more likely to try to marry off a daughter in difficult times when it became harder to feed all children — and FGM was part of the marriage ritual.

"COVID-19 has had a negative effect on human rights," agreed Asita Maria Scherrieb from the women's rights organization Terre des Femmes. "We've seen that in West Africa. Because of the coronavirus, there are no more awareness-raising campaigns in schools and nobody is keeping an eye on the girls. It doesn't get noticed if they don't turn up," she told DW. She also explained that healthcare was limited because COVID-19 patients were being prioritized, and that distancing regulations meant there were fewer spots in protective institutions than usual.


Despite being criminalized, FGM is still practiced in many countries.

Read more: Sierra Leone anti-FGM activist wins German human rights prize

Human rights violation

"FGM is a grievous violation of human rights and considered a crime by international law," she added. It is actually prohibited in many countries but according to the World Health Organization, the practice continues to exist in almost 30 African countries. Across the world, over 200 million girls and women are thought to have been subjected to the practice. Schierrieb estimated that the figure might well have increased by two million during the coronavirus pandemic alone.

Nonetheless, there was a small flicker of light in the parts of West Africa which had learned from prior epidemics, said Gierschmann from Medica Mondiale: "Many women have used their experience from the Ebola outbreak and set up decentralized telephone hotlines for girls and women at risk." She also said that though women's refuges were offering more protection and some extracurricular classes, these measures did not suffice.


It is estimated that around 200 million girls and women are victims of female genital mutilation

Domtila Chesang doubts that Kenya will be able to put an end to FGM by 2022 as the president has pledged. She is very worried about the future of all the girls who "have been married off by force, cut off from education and are now completely dependent on their husbands."

"They have no voice and nobody hears them."

Belgium's COVID-19 health care collapse: 'It will happen in 10 days'

More than 300,000 of Belgium's 11 million people have COVID-19 right now. The president of Belgium's medical union tells DW how desperate and precarious the country's health system has become.

Listen to audio11:17

https://p.dw.com/p/3kfX4
Belgium's COVID-19 collapse 'will happen in 10 days'

On October 29, Belgium recorded its highest daily infection number on record: more than 20,000. The epicenter is Liege, where surrounding boroughs have seen more than 10% of the population infected. DW spoke with Philippe Devos, the president of Belgium's association of medical unions, who works as an intensivist in the critical care unit at the CHC Montlegia hospital (pictured).

DW: Dr. Devos, how many people have COVID-19 at CHC Montlegia?

Devos: Around 250.

And how many doctors are in there treating them?

More than 100. We have to do shifts, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

And how many of those doctors have the coronavirus right now?

We have around 10% of doctors and nurses that are symptomatic, and they're at home, sick. At other hospitals in Liege, we have around 25% of doctors and nurses who are symptomatic. So we are lucky in my hospital compared to the other ones in the city. And for this reason, we are forced to use asymptomatic doctors and nurses in the COVID-19 wards.

So you have doctors, right now, in hospitals here in Liege, who are working — even though they have the coronavirus?

Yes, they are infected, but not sick. So they don't have COVID-19 disease. They are like you and me, asymptomatic. But we don't have any solution anymore. We are forced to ask them to work, if they agree, only in COVID-19 wards in order not to infect other patients. And it's now the rule in the whole country. The ministry of health passed this rule yesterday.

So even though these doctors and nurses are asymptomatic, doesn't that mean they can increase the viral load of the patients they're caring for?

Actually, they're authorized to work only if their own viral load is low. So they must be asymptomatic with a low viral load. This means that they cannot increase the viral load of a patient.

Are you sure about that? What is the risk if I'm a patient with COVID-19 and my doctor or nurse comes in to treat me, and even though they're asymptomatic, they're breathing out virus (maybe through their mask somehow). Couldn't I get more of a viral load that way?

So we are not silly. They are using FFP2 masks, and they know how to wear them to not let the virus get out. So they use protection everywhere they go in the hospital. And when they have to remove their mask for eating, for example, they have to do it in a specific room that is washed every hour – to not disseminate their own virus. The only other solution is not to admit a patient into the hospital. They are forced to choose between dying, or being treated by a "positive" doctor. All the patients are choosing not to die.


Devos is the president of Belgium's medical union

Are you and your colleagues afraid for your lives?

For my own life, of course not. Because I was infected in April. But some of my colleagues are frightened for their own lives. And it's a problem, because we have many doctors that are more than 60 years old. They are very frightened about that. So we try to send them in non-COVID wards, and to send younger doctors in COVID wards.

If I'm sick, or in need of medical attention here in Belgium, is it possible that I can't come to a hospital right now because of this situation?

Last Monday, there was a medical helicopter that came to a car crash. And he asked for a place in a hospital. And all the hospitals refused to receive him. So he decided to go to the closest hospital, and he gave the patient without authorization. He was forced to do it. So we are in a very difficult situation at this time in Belgium.

The numbers are going up, they will probably continue to go up when it comes to COVID-19 infections. When will this implode?

Mathematical models are saying that it will happen in 10 days. So, in 10 days, we will have only two choices available: Transfer patients to Germany and hope we won't do triage…. or we'll have to do triage. [That means] there will be only one bed remaining, and two patients. And the doctors will have to choose which one of the two patients will be able to be in the only bed we have. That's triage. Usually, it's done in terrorism, in war, in catastrophes like a nuclear explosion.

You've been working for many years, in your position. Now you're confronted with… this. How do you feel?

Sad. Sad because I've hoped now, for six months, that it would never happen. That people would have understood the risk. And that people would have changed their habits for one year. Just to avoid that. But it's a failure of the solidarity between people in Belgium — and a question of balance between solidarity and individual rights. Some people choose their own rights compared to solidarity. And the result is now here. I've seen people dying and regretting that they didn't wear the mask. I saw that. I saw families that had big parties with all the family members. And all the family members were infected. And I've got a family right now where 80% of the family is in the beds here. Right now, just after a birthday party. That's what I'm seeing now. But the danger now in Europe is everywhere. If people don't take hard measures soon, then you will live a nightmare like we are living right now.

What are you going to do when Germany says, "We don't have space anymore."

We will work until we run out of nurses.

Philippe Devos is the president of the medical union of Belgium. He works at the CHC Montlegia hospital as an intensivist in the critical care unit. He is also a member of the Standing Committee of European Doctors.

Listen to the full interview on DW's podcast Science unscripted on Apple Podcasts or Spotify

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US election: Climate crisis struggles to influence voters

Despite raging wildfires and a historically destructive hurricane season, the climate crisis ranks low as an election issue, way behind the economy and COVID-19. But could climate yet decide the vote?

A day after voters go to the polls to elect the next president, the US will officially withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement. With Joe Biden pledging to immediately reverse Donald Trump's exit from the landmark climate accord, the stage had been set for climate to define the election. But then came COVID-19.

Though the presidential candidates sparred on climate change during their final debate, only 42% of voters say climate will be very important to their vote, well behind the economy (79%), health care (68%) and the coronavirus pandemic (62%), according to a Pew Research poll.
A marginalized issue that could yet decide the election

As the pandemic worsens, these interconnected issues have distracted from the existential threat of the climate crisis, even in regions affected by extreme fires and a record hurricane season. A University of Southern California poll published in September, at the peak of the West Coast wildfires, found that only 4% of eligible voters considered climate change to be their biggest concern when voting — in contrast to 33% of respondents who said the coronavirus crisis-hit economy was their top voting priority.

Climate skeptics such as Fox News commentator Steve Milloy have rejoiced in the seeming drop-off in climate concern.

Though climate may not be a key election issue, there has in fact been a broader growth in concern about the climate in the United States. A Pew Research Center poll conducted in summer found that 62% of Americans see climate change as a major threat, up from 44% who said that in 2009 and marking a 2 point rise since January — despite the pandemic.

For this reason Edward Maibach, the director of George Mason University's Center for Climate Change Communication in Washington, DC, is hopeful that climate will have more influence on the election than polls suggest.

"An increasing number of American voters say that the candidate’s positions on climate change will influence their vote for president this year," he told DW, referring to a near 10 percentage points increase since the 2016 election.

Though climate is not dominating the actual election issue agenda, Maibach believes it could yet decide the next president.

"It’s true that while only a minority of voters say climate change will be important in determining their vote this year, even a tiny fraction of that minority have the potential to determine the outcome of the election," he said, a reference to the razor-thin margins in swing states that decided the 2016 election.

Indeed, despite the glee among Trump-supporting climate deniers that global heating is a minor election issue, Joe Biden is contrasting his commitment to strong climate action as a way to sway votes in the final days of the election. 

Climate skeptics such as Fox News commentator Steve Milloy have rejoiced in the seeming drop-off in climate concern.   

Communicating climate during a pandemic

Since the coronavirus outbreak, climate campaigners around the world have been bracing for a declining focus on the climate crisis issue.

"Campaigners face a constrained ability to protest, a delayed policy process, and crucially, citizens overwhelmed by more immediate concerns of health, jobs and livelihoods," state Climate Outreach in its report, Communicating climate change during the COVID-19 crisis.

Released in May by the UK climate communications group, the report also pointed out that "citizens who are already struggling emotionally, socially or financially are not likely to have the capacity to think about another problem."

Edward Maibach disagrees with this view, saying that "most people are fully capable of dealing with more than one concern at a time."

A survey in April by Maibach's own George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication and the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication confirmed overwhelming voter concern about global warming, concluding that there is not a "finite pool of worry," as social scientists have suggested.

Why then is climate not registering as a very important election issue in these polls? The answer might lie in America's extreme two-party tribalism.

'The most polarized country in the world on climate change'

The 2020 US election is the most polarized in terms of climate change concern, says Alec Tyson, associate director of research at Pew Research Center. Only 11% of Trump supporters say climate change is very important to their vote, the issue ranking last in importance out of 12 issues. This compares to 68% of Biden voters — though climate is outranked by racial and ethnic inequality (76%), among other concerns.

The widespread lack of concern about climate change among Trump supporters has helped sideline the issue, Tyson argues. "Issues that are important to both campaigns, where they are vigorously engaged with one another, are going to get more visibility," he said.

Climate is far less polarized in Britain, for example, and even Germany — despite a rising tide of climate denialism pushed by far right political parties like the Alternative for Germany (AfD) — according to Susie Wang, a researcher at Climate Outreach. After over a decade of work communicating climate change issues to center-right and conservative voters in the UK to avoid polarization, the broad British political spectrum that was so divided on the issue of Brexit is more unified on climate action.

By contrast, the climate message in the US can fall victim to a stark political partisanship that "pushes people apart rather than bring them together," Wang told DW. This ideological divide "doesn't leave any space" for conservatives to state their support for climate change action.

"The US is probably the most polarized country in the world on climate change," said Wang.



Climate polarization: Climate deniers gather in Oregon to oppose climate change legislation


Meanwhile, former President Barack Obama meets with climate activist Greta Thunberg as a symbol of climate change's importance for Democratic voters
Could bipartisanship on climate be possible?

Nonetheless, Tyson says that Republicans and Democrats do in fact cross over on some environmental issues. The plan to give a tax credit to businesses for developing carbon capture and storage, for example, has 70% and 90% support among Republicans and Democrats respectively, he explains.

Yet extreme polarization continues to limit the impact of a climate issue that also needs to overcome broader anxieties.

"While people are still concerned about climate change, they are now understandably also concerned about other issues — health, whether they have a job, ongoing pressures of lockdown such as social isolation", said Susie Wang. "In this context, their sense of efficacy — the sense that they can do something that makes a difference — might drop."

Based on recent polls in the UK and other countries, Wang also speculates that the pandemic response might reshape how people view the climate crisis.

"Because of COVID-19, people may realize that together, individual actions can make a difference, and governments can mobilize quickly to address a global problem," she said.

However, given the discord in mobilization efforts on both COVID-19 and the climate crisis, it remains to be seen whether a divided America can unite post-election to address either of these crises.

Watch video 26:04
https://www.dw.com/en/us-election-climate-crisis-struggles-to-influence-voters/a-55437637
Tackling climate change: is corona a blueprint?

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Southern Africa faces new locust plague

Biblical locust swarms are laying waste to southern Africa's crops. But lessons learnt from a similar plague in East Africa show that regional cooperation and early detection are key to avoiding an equally big disaster.


As the rainy season approaches in southern Africa, fears are rising of a locust infestation. This year, a similar plague swept through East Africa, with swarms decimating grasslands and trees.

Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia and most recently Angola have already been affected. The livelihoods of farmers and cattle herders, who are already dealing with food shortages caused by a crippling drought, are at stake.

Read more: East Africa: Why are locusts so destructive?

According to Mathew Abang, southern Africa's Crop Production Officer for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the effects in rural areas is already substantial. In Zambia alone, locusts have already infested some 300,000 hectares (741,000 hectares). Meanwhile, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) reports 45 million people could be facing food shortages.

Experience of the locust plague in East Africa has shown that both regional cooperation and finances are lacking, making it even more difficult to stop the insatiable swarms.


Kenya was badly hit by a locust plague earlier this year
Insecticides in short supply

As farmers prepare to plant their crops ahead of the November rainy season, newly hatched locusts are lying in wait. This means the already strained humanitarian situation in Zimbabwe is likely to get even worse.

"The harvests in May were bad," Regina Feindt from the German NGO Welthungerhilfe told DW from Zimbabwe. "The country has been going through a two-year long drought, and the economy is on its knees."

The lockdown measures implemented to stem the coronavirus pandemic have not helped matters, either.

"The Ministry of Agriculture does not have enough insecticides and has already asked us if we can deliver these," Feindt adds.

The locusts have already infested previously unaffected areas in Zimbabwe's southern and western regions.

Read more: Tiny bugs with destructive powers

Meanwhile in neighboring Zambia, the locust infestation has spiralled. The FAO emergency plan involves Zambia and affected neighboring countries identifying and monitoring hotspots better. This includes killing the locusts before they can gather in swarms.

The FAO has made technology and funds available so that the locust swarms can be subdued with chemicals. However, topping-up stocks of insecticide remains a major challenge.

Adult locusts can eat can eat three times their own body-weight per day and travel hundreds of kilometers

Namibia also urgently needs insecticides, says Farayi Zimudzi, leader of the FAO-bureau in Windhoek. Because most of southern Africa buys insecticides from the same supplier, deliveries have been delayed. But time is running out, particularly in Namibia's eastern Kavango and Zambezi regions.

"Food security will be seriously impacted because newly planted crops and any crops that are currently standing in the fields right now are at risk of being totally annihilated," Zimudzi told DW.

Read more: How East Africa is fighting locusts and coronavirus

An early warning system would be a major weapon against locust invasions, but monitoring is difficult in remote areas, Zimudzi adds.
Lack of membership payments stunt monitoring efforts

Frances Duncan, head of the University of Witwatersrand's Institute for Animal, Plants and Environmental Sciences in Johannesburg, sees the situation more critically.

Theoretically, FAO member states pay scientists over time to monitor rural and farming areas. The body of work produced is used to create models which monitor climate, rainfall and cyclones.

This information is vital in predicting the probability of locust plagues. However, "when there are no locusts around, governments tend to forget that this is a problem," Duncan told DW.

"Recently member countries have actually not paid and there's no money to have people surveilling," she explains.


Pick-up trucks modified to spray insecticides have helped slow locust invasions, but they are in short supply

This cost-cutting can prove expensive in the long run. Detecting locust swarms early and taking action means swarms can be destroyed in their infancy when the hatchlings can only hop, covering just two or three kilometers a day. This is a far cry from the capabilities of adult flying locusts, which can cover hundreds of kilometers.

"When we have people on the ground looking to see what the local populations are doing, then we can try and chemically control them before they actually reach plague status," says Duncan.

This would require farmers to develop a centralised system where observations from remote rural areas can be shared quickly and action can be taken.
More regional cooperation needed

For Duncan, the lesson from East Africa is clear: Regional cooperation across borders is essential to stamping out locust infestations.

Atinkut Mezgebu Wubneh speaks from experience. The head of Agriculture and Rural Development of Tigray in northern Ethiopia has first hand knowledge of coordinating an inter-regional effort to stop a locust plague

"The sustainable solution is that the remedial measures can't be done separately. The countries should come together and act in a well-organised way," he told DW. "Otherwise it is difficult to combat the desert locust as the insect moves across countries."

This article was translated from German by Cai Nebe.

Watch video06:17
Why we're seeing the worst locust invasion in decades
https://www.dw.com/en/southern-africa-faces-new-locust-plague/a-55435551

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World in Progress: Fears mount as locust swarms reach Uganda

Keith Jarrett, a much beloved jazz legend ends an era

Keith Jarrett has brought his live career to an end, releasing a final live album, "Budapest Concert." A tribute to an extraordinary artist.


A man sits alone on a concert hall stage, his head lowered, focused on the black and white grand piano keys in front of him: this was the final live performance from revered pianist, Keith Jarrett.

On July 3, 2016, he gave a concert at the Bela Bartok Concert Hall in Budapest. He had barely changed in the 41 years since he put on the now famous improvised hour and a half concert at the Cologne Opera on January 24, 1975. The recording of that show, the "Köln Concert" album, went on to become the best-selling solo-artist jazz record of all time. It catapulted Jarrett to the status of jazz legend.

The pianist was born on May 8, 1945, the day WWII ended in Europe, in the eponymous town of Billy Joel's song "Allentown", an industrial city in the US state of Pennsylvania. Jarrett, the oldest of five sons from a Christian family, began playing the piano at the age of three. To the delight of his grandparents, immigrants from Eastern Europe, he picked up a classical repertoire, playing Bach, Brahms, Beethoven and Mussorgsky.
From Mussorgsky to Miles Davis

On April 12, 1953, at three o'clock in the afternoon, as his biographer Wolfgang Sandner wrote, the child prodigy climbed onto the stage of a community center in Allentown and held a solo concert, displaying his ability for the classical baroque and romantic works.


Keith Jarrett at a concert in 1972

And then came jazz. Jarrett's career skyrocketed into the world of jazz, via gigs in bars and at major jazz festivals, finally landing him the place as a side pianist next to the jazz titan Miles Davis in 1969.

But that collaboration didn't last long, Jarrett had set out to be a solo artist. He toured the world until 1975 and gave numerous solo concerts, including the "Köln Concert" that his like-minded producer Manfred Eicher released with the label ECM, which went on to become one of the albums of the century. For a while, the The "Köln Concert" was a must-have in many record collections.
Keith Jarrett — critics and fans in awe

Music critics agreed about Keith Jarrett's talent, regardless of the fact that his Cologne recording demonstrated a suitability for mass audiences. This accessibility proved a major contribution to the democratization of jazz.


Keith Jarrett's album "The Köln Concert"

He is "like a centaur — half man, half piano," the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung recently wrote about Jarrett's solo concerts, adding that he "melted into the instrument and bent the keys to make them wail like an old blues guitar." According to his biographer Wolfgang Sandner, he is the "greatest piano improviser of our time."

Anecdotes from the Cologne concert abound which shed light on the artist's demanding attitude with regards to both concert organizers and audiences alike. Reportedly, three grand pianos had to be placed at his disposal for every concert. Jarrett was also known to have interrupted concerts if someone in the audience coughed.

His unique demands also disrupted his status at Italy's largest jazz festival in Perugia, where Jarrett was for a long time a permanent fixture. In 2007, Jarrett insulted his audience and warned them to not even think about taking a picture. Furthermore, the stage had to be almost completely dark throughout the show, the audience sat in the dark too. As a result the festival organizers in Perugia dropped him from the line-up, and he was not invited back until 2013.
Farewell to the stage with the 'Budapest Concert'

A quieter phase followed, and fans were electrified when his label ECM announced a European tour for 2016. A tour which also took him to Budapest where the "Budapest Concert" album was recorded. Jarrett, who returned to his grandparents' native country for the concert, described the Budapest Concert as the "gold standard" by which all of his solo concerts to date would have to be measured.


Keith Jarrett's new album "Budapest Concert" was released on 30.10.2020.

A week before its release, the 75-year-old said in an interview with the New York Times that he is not likely to play live on stage ever again. After two strokes within three months in 2018, he said the left side of his body was paralyzed and the most he could do with his left hand was to maybe hold a cup. It seems like this live album will be his final farewell from the stage.

This article has been adapted by Dagmar Breitenbach.

Helmut Newton: women, power and photography

The superstar photographer was born 100 years ago. A Berlin exhibition is celebrating the controversial career of the creator of "Big Nudes."

Born on October 31, 1920 in Berlin, Helmut Newton was one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century. From refugee to superstar, he was renowned as the portraitist of different German chancellors, and, more controversially, of nude models.

Newton's shoots were planned down to the last detail: he used analogue and hated wasting film.

Escaping the Nazis

Born Helmut Neustädter into a German Jewish family, he decided early that he wanted to become a photographer, against the will of his father, an affluent button-maker. In 1936, at the age of 16, Helmut took up an apprenticeship under the successful fashion photographer Yva (real name: Elsa Ernestine Neuländer-Simon).

Two years later he was forced to flee Germany as the Nazis carried out the "Kristallnacht" pogrom. With two cameras in his luggage, he fled to Australia via Singapore. He would never see his parents again.

Upon arriving in Australia, he worked for five years as a simple soldier and truck driver for the army. Newton, as he was now called, opened a small photography studio in Melbourne and in 1947 he met the actress June Brunell. One year later they got married.
Newton's photography career takes off

His portrait and fashion photography was in ever greater demand. In the 1950s he traveled through Europe and worked for several magazines, including the British, Australian and finally in 1961, the French Vogue fashion magazine.

Newton often depicted his models as cold, female icons, as seen in his piece "Charlotte Rampling as Venus in Fur."

By now he was a successful photographer in advertising, portraits and fashion, but he was not yet the icon he would later become. "Before he got the young things to take their clothes off," said his wife June in 2016, "he was a fashion photographer, a picture taker you could hire. This whole nudity thing that he's famous for today, that all came later."
Nude photography brings fame — and critique

As June pointed out, the deciding moment in Newton's rise came in the 1970s. Following the sexual revolution, he turned increasingly to nude photography and depicted his models with controversial ambivalence.

On the one hand his models appeared as self-confident, powerful icons — tall, strong women, captured in black and white, with imposing shadows. He made no secret of his fascination with the Nazi sympathizing film director Leni Riefenstahl

Bis heute beeinflussen die Kompositionen von Newton Fotografen auf der ganzen Welt. Aber auch für einen schnellen Schnappschuss sind sie geeignet. Newton's compositions influence photographers around the world to this day. But they're also good for a quick snap.

At the same time, however, his pictures repeatedly showed stories of female subjugation. He brought back the male gaze over newly empowered women for an increasingly insecure male audience.

It was for this reason that feminist Alice Schwarzer accused Newton of getting off on "breaking a strong woman."

Timeless photographs expose their audience

One thing is obvious, Newton's work dealt with power over the human body. The story behind his most famous photography project "Big Nudes" makes this clear. Inspired by reports of life-sized photographs of members of the left-wing militant Red Army Faction (RAF) in the rooms of an anti-terrorism unit, he launched "The Terrorists," a working title, in 1982. The pictures showed naked women in martial poses from a slightly lower, and thus imposing, angle. The larger-than-life presentation of the nude pictures was enthusiastically received as a new concept.

Newton's appeal came from the fact that his photographs eluded classification — exploitation and emancipation, voyeurism and eroticism, subjugation and empowerment were constantly invoked together.

Newton was not only courting controversy with his depictions of the dynamics of sex and gender. On a more abstract level his photographs are timeless precisely because they force the viewer to grapple with the themes. As such, the concrete evaluations of Newton's work perhaps say more about the audience than the artist himself.
Superstar of the photography world

For Newton, who had spent a lifetime cultivating non-conformity and indifference, such discussions came in handy. He rose to superstar status among photographers and took up residence in Monaco and Hollywood.

The portrait of singer David Bowie was taken in 1983 in Monte Carlo and now hangs in the Photography Museum of the Helmut Newton Foundation in Berlin.

In the meantime, his daily rates are said to have reached 10,000 Marks (roughly €5,000 or $5,800). He took portraits of rock stars David Bowie and Mick Jagger, actresses Anita Ekberg and Catherine Deneuve and even the then chancellor of Germany, Gerhard Schröder.

When the enthusiastic collector of luxury cars died at the age of 83 in a car accident in Los Angeles on January 23, 2004, the outpouring of sympathy worldwide was immense. During the funeral procession to Newton's grave of honor in Berlin, his widow June was accompanied by the capital's governing mayor, Klaus Wowereit, and Chancellor Schröder.

Several months before his death, Newton bequeathed his works to the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation in Berlin. Newton once said that although he had never missed Germany, he never got over his homesickness for Berlin.

This article has been adapted by Alex Berry.

'Time for Outrage!': an art exhibition in challenging times

The exhibition "Time for Outrage!" at the Kunstpalast Düsseldorf shows works by 35 artists that reflect on anger and rage in today's society.


'TIME FOR OUTRAGE!' ART EXHIBITION ECHOES UNCERTAIN TIMES
Signe Pierce and Alli Coates: 'American Reflexxx'

The short film "American Reflexxx" depicts a social experiment. In it, a person who cannot be clearly defined as a man or woman walks through the streets of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, wearing a dress and a reflective mask. The viewer watches the individual as they put up with misogynistic and transphobic slogans and even physical violence.

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Anger and hatred are intense human feelings, yet these negative emotions are clearly shaping our current social interactions to an ever greater extent — conspiracy theories, extremist terrorism and violent hate speech have become commonplace.

The exhibition "Time for Outrage! Art in Times of Social Anger" at the Kunstpalast museum in Düsseldorf is a response to the "social upheavals of our time," said Kunstpalast director Felix Krämer.

The showcased works by 35 clearly political artists and art activists illustrate and reflect on notions of anger in our challenging times.

The exhibits reflect art as a political space, said curator Linda Peitz, adding that the artists urge "solidarity, empathy and humanism, who point out, analyze or ironically break down the injustices in our society."


The inscription over the artist's photo is a quote from graffiti
'Outrage does not equal hatred'

This also reveals an implicit but important distinction between hate and anger on the one hand, and outrage and rage on the other. While anger is undirected, indignation and rage refer to concrete events. The suspense that marks the exhibition is founded on this semantic difference.

Particularly impressive: a work by the Bosnian artist Sejla Kameric, originally conceived as a poster but wallpapered on a 12-meter high wall in Düsseldorf. It shows the artist and the words of a Dutch NATO soldier, who in 1994 or 1995 wrote on a barracks wall in the village of Potocari near Srebrenica: "No teeth? A moustache? Smells like shit? Bosnian girl!"

Kameric reminds us of the war in former Yugoslavia and the genocide of thousands of Bosnians in Srebrenica but she also links the soldier's cruel graffito with her portrait, which makes it more personal. In the photo she looks straight at the visitors, forcing them to evaluate the work.
Observers can't avoid taking a stance

Many of the exhibits, for the most part photographs, video installations and films, work along those lines. What initially comes across as more of a documentary form helps juxtapose the two defining levels of the exhibition — hate and, as a result, outrage. The audience must draw its own conclusions from these juxtapositions.

At times, it is perspective that forces the viewer to take on an active role, for instance in Signe Pierce and Alli Coates' experimental setups.
What is private, what is political?

Yoshinori Niwa, a conceptual artist from Japan, set up a container in front of the musem where people can get rid of Nazi memorabilia. Ads in the local newspaper urged citizens to participate in the project named "Withdrawing Hitler from a private space" and to drop off any such artifacts so they can be destroyed at the end of the exhibition.


Feminist artist Judith Bernstein evokes 'Trump horror'

A video by French artist Kader Attia also focuses on how private becomes political if you have the 'wrong' origin. In "The Body's Legacies Pt. 2: The Post-Colonial Body," he interviews descendants of colonized people and slaves, showing how colonial violence and racism still influence the perception of the body and the behavior of people in public space today.
Reclaim outrage

It is no coincidence that the title of the exhibition refers to the title of a well-known essay published in 2010 by the late Stephane Hessel, a French essayist and political activist who was a resistance fighter in the Nazi era. The exhibition echoes issues that were pressing even then, including the meaning of human rights, how we treat refugees and social inequality.

The show that was a year and a half in the making is surprisingly topical, and the coronavirus pandemic has even worsened many of the global injustices addressed. In recent months in particular, conspiracy theorists have dangerously often misappropriated his words. To a degree, the exhibition corrects the discourse by looking at overarching issues that have long been toxic, while also recapturing Hessel's basic ideas behind his call for outrage.



This article has been adapted from German by Dagmar Breitenbach

HAPPY HALLOWEEN MEMES

 

Blue moon to appear at Halloween for first time in 76 years

October 31 will be a blue moon, meaning it is the second full moon to occur in the same month

A 'supermoon' pictured over Dubai in April 2020. Antonie Robertson / The National








It is said weird things happen when it is a full moon and Saturday’s one is right on time – falling on Halloween night.

But this one is extra special.

Not only is it a full moon tonight, it is a blue moon and a particularly rare one at that.

The National explains what a blue moon is and why it is special.
What is a blue moon?

Normally there is only one full moon a month. A blue moon is the second full moon to be seen in the same month.

The first full moon of October happened on October 1-2. This one occurs on the night of October 31.
Why is this moon even more special?

Because it coincides with Halloween, and full moons on October 31 do not happen often.

The last time it happened was almost 20 years ago, in 2001. And it will not occur again for another 19 years.

But the extra special thing about this full moon is it can be seen across all time zones in the world – something that has not happened since 1944, and will not happen again until 2039.

It will, however, look a little bit smaller than usual, as it is further from the Earth, making it a micro moon, which is the opposite of a super moon, that is around 14 per cent larger and 30 per cent brighter in comparison.

Is the moon actually blue?

No the moon will not actually be a blue colour.

It is an expression to describe an event that is not exactly rare, but not common either – exactly like a blue moon, which happen every two and a half years or so.

However, the moon can on occasion appear blue when there is dust or smoke high in the Earth’s atmosphere.

That happened almost every night in the late 1800s, when Krakatoa, a volcano, exploded in Indonesia.

According to Nasa, some of the ash-clouds were filled with particles about one millionth of a meter wide, changing the colour of moonbeams shining through the clouds that emerged as blue, and sometimes green.

Blue coloured moons – and lavender suns – persisted for years after the eruption due to the phenomenon, said the space agency.

Sometimes the sunsets were so vivid fire engines were erroneously called out in the US to fight phantom fires.


Updated: October 31, 2020 04:18 PM


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QUE CNTU RAIDS OPSEU 

Fierce fight brewing as unhappy jail guards in Ontario seek to form new union

TORONTO — Disaffected Ontario correctional officers are pushing for their own union in an increasingly bitter battle to win the hearts and cards of thousands of front-line jail workers.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Backed by a well-heeled Quebec-based labour organization, the raid on the Ontario Public Service Employees Union has laid bare a litany of long-standing grievances and seems destined for a major showdown in the coming months.

Barry Roy, president of the recently formed Ontario Association of Correctional Employees, said a new union in the corrections sector is long overdue given, in his view, OPSEU's many failings.

"I was an OPSEU soldier," said Roy, a 27-year guard and union activist. "Now, you can't get me to even talk about it without my blood pressure boiling."

Currently, OPSEU counts about 9,000 officers and related workers in its Correctional Bargaining Unit. The dissident association argues its members have been poorly served by the union, which represents about 170,000 public-sector employees across the province.

Roy, who works at the Ontario Correctional Institute in Brampton, Ont., accuses the OPSEU leadership among other things of being self-serving, cozying up to the provincial government, and intimidating members deemed disloyal.

For its part, union leaders deny doing anything other than look out for the well-being of their members.

“OPSEU has some of the lowest dues and the best pension plan in the country,” longtime president Warren (Smokey) Thomas has told members. “"We have a long and successful track record of real wins with the provincial government."

Bankrolling and logistically supporting the breakaway drive is the Quebec-based Confederation of National Trade Unions, the province's second-largest labour group with about 300,000 members. The umbrella organization counts the union representing federal prison workers, who once belonged to the Public Service Alliance of Canada, among its affiliates.

OPSEU's leadership has fired back, warning of chaos and paralysis if the "scam" drive succeeds. The union has issued several warnings about of the perils of signing onto the association.

The confederation, one posting warns, is trying to get members to sign a card "by hook or by crook." Another communique brands the raiding tour of Ontario jails as "dangerous" and "socially irresponsible" in light of the COVID-19 epidemic.

“Meetings by a union that’s losing members and losing money in a doomed attempt to raid our union places unnecessary risks on our correctional members, their families and our communities," Thomas warns in one post.

OPSEU also warns its corrections workers would put their pensions in jeopardy and pay higher dues because, it says, the confederation is losing members and bleeding revenue.

"They're getting desperate," Thomas says.

Just how successful the raid has been to this point — it began in earnest in June and runs until the end of December — is difficult to verify independently. The association refuses to say how many OPSEU members have signed up but says they number in the thousands.

"People are very excited about being able to choose," said Agnes Ogle, a rehabilitation officer at the Central North Correctional Centre in Penetanguishene, Ont. "A lot of people feel that they're being noticed for the first time in a very long time."

Ogle, the association's vice-president, said her activism has sparked OPSEU's wrath, despite the union's contention that people have a right to choose their affiliation.

"I've been put in bad standing with OPSEU," Ogle said. "That's not something that worries me."

The association is hoping to gather signed cards from at least 40 per cent of OPSEU's correctional members which would force an automatic certification vote under the auspices of the Ontario labour board early in the new year. However, even if a majority were then to vote in favour of secession, OPSEU warns the fight would be far from over.

A key hurdle, the union points out, is provincial law that establishes OPSEU as the bargaining agent. A court battle, it warns, would paralyze any collective bargaining.

"The Corrections Bargaining Unit will be left out in the cold," OPSEU says. "Our contract will be frozen for years."

The association, on the other hand, said it was confident constitutional free association rights would ultimately trump the legislation. It points to a similar battle involving RCMP officers, who won the right at the Supreme Court of Canada in 2015 to unionize despite a law to the contrary.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 30, 2020.

Colin Perkel, The Canadian Press