Feminist Art
Frida Kahlo and Georgia O’Keeffe’s Formative Friendship
Karen Chernick
Mar 20, 2020 


Imogen Cunningham
Frida Kahlo Rivera, 1931
Atlas Gallery£2,500 - 5,000


Alfred Stieglitz
Georgia O'Keeffe: A Portrait, 1920–1922
Christie's


Frustrated, Frida Kahlo was finding that none of the letters she was writing felt quite right, and she tore them up, one by one. The young Mexican artist was penning a note to Georgia O’Keeffe—an artistic rock star nearly twice her age, whom she’d befriended while living briefly in New York about a year before. “I can’t write in English all I would like to tell, especially to you,” reads the two-page letter Kahlo ultimately deemed worthy of sending. “I thought of you a lot and never forget your wonderful hands and the color of your eyes. I will see you soon.”

That letter, sent on March 1, 1933, is currently housed at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University and is the sole document filed in the Alfred Stieglitz/Georgia O’Keeffe archive’s Kahlo folder. 

But Frida in America(2020), a new book about the Mexican painter’s first trip to the United States—from 1930 to 1933, accompanying her husband Diego Rivera on multiple mural commissions—reveals more details about the friendship between a 24-year-old Kahlo, then barely known as a painter, and a venerated and successful 44-year-old O’Keeffe.

Frida Kahlo
Diego on my mind (Self-portrait as Tehuana), 1943
Art Gallery of New South Wales


Georgia O’Keeffe
White Iris , 1930
"Georgia O'Keeffe" at Tate Modern, London


Imagining the unibrowed self-portraitist hobnobbing with the eccentric painter of abstracted flora is a fantastic and downright fun image. Understanding Kahlo’s friendship with O’Keeffe also helps flesh out the impact these formative American years had on the budding artist, as she bounced between San Francisco, New York, and Detroit. “It’s important to understand more about this relationship between Frida and Georgia because it provides a fuller context, at least for Frida’s creative development,” says Celia Stahr, author of Frida in America. “What did Frida see while she was in the United States, what did she experience?”

Lucienne Bloch
1909–1999

The two painters met in December 1931, at the opening of Rivera’s big solo exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. According to Lucienne Bloch, one of Rivera’s assistants, the famed muralist later bragged that his wife had been flirting with O’Keeffe (O’Keeffe already owned a Rivera painting, Seated Woman, making it likely that she and Stieglitz were on the list of people Kahlo felt she should chat up).


Frida Kahlo
Portrait of Diego Rivera, 1937
Art Gallery of New South Wales

Diego Rivera
Man Carrying Calla Lilies, 2000
ArtWiseSold

Bloch’s mostly unpublished journal, which Stahr accessed while researching her book, was a window into how Kahlo filled her days in the early 1930s. “I was able to get a much clearer sense of Frida’s social world,” notes Stahr. “Little by little, I was able to piece out that yes, Frida’s hanging out with Georgia.”

Sometimes they went on double dates with their husbands, and sometimes the two of them, plus Bloch, ventured out. “I love this one scene [from the journal] where Frida, Georgia, and Lucienne go to a Mexican restaurant together. They drink tequila, and then they end up getting tipsy and singing in the toilet,” recalls Stahr. “I just think that’s an amazing image.”

Frida Kahlo
Frida and Diego Rivera, 1931
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)Permanent collection


Georgia O’Keeffe
Birch and Pine Trees - Pink, 1925
Colby College Museum of Art

But their friendship wasn’t all flirtations and tequila. The two women were quite similar in many ways—both played with fashion, dressing themselves in striking ways outside the mainstream feminine vogue; both pursued careers of their own while married to older, unfaithful, and powerful male artists. “Both were fearless, flamboyant, and very powerful personalities,” explains Linda Grasso, author of Equal under the Sky: Georgia O’Keeffe and Twentieth-Century Feminism (2017). “They automatically would have been attracted to each other.”

In addition, Kahlo was looking closely at O’Keeffe’s paintings. In the spring of 1932, Kahlo and Rivera left New York for Detroit, where Kahlo painted Self-Portrait on the Border Line Between Mexico and the United States (1932)—a canvas depicting the artist in a pink gown, dividing a bleak landscape of American industry on the right and ancient Mexican ruins on the left.
On the Mexican side, a few jack-in-the-pulpit flowers sprout between other plants—a flower that O’Keeffe devoted an entire series to just two years earlier and which isn’t indigenous to Mexico. “You see not just one but three. You see the growth of it, the process—one’s fully closed, one’s open,” Stahr observes. “That’s what Georgia showed in her series, this whole process of growth, and from different perspectives.”

Georgia O’Keeffe
Jack-in-the-Pulpit No. IV, 1930
"O'Keeffe, Stettheimer, Torr, Zorach: Women Modernists in New York" at …

Frida Kahlo
Self-Portrait on the Border Line Between Mexico and the United States, 1932
"Paint the Revolution: Mexican Modernism, 1910–1950" at Philadelphia Museum of Art

And so even in Detroit, when it was unclear whether she’d ever see O’Keeffe again, the older artist’s influence lingered. Their next known contact was when Kahlo phoned O’Keeffe sometime in late 1932, after learning that she’d suffered a nervous breakdown. When Kahlo mailed her letter to O’Keeffe in 1933, she was hospitalized.

“If you [sic] still in the Hospital when I come back I will bring you flowers, but it is so difficult to find the ones I would like for you,” Kahlo wrote at the end of her note. “I like you very much Georgia.” Kahlo returned to New York two weeks later, and visited her friend right before O’Keeffe left for Bermuda to continue her recovery.

Philippe Halsman
Georgia O'Keeffe, in Abiquiu, New Mexico, unique vintage print, 1948
°CLAIRbyKahn GalerieContact for price


Frida Kahlo
Arbol de la Esperanza (Tree of Hope), 1946
MCA Chicago

Kahlo rehashed the reunion in a letter to Clifford Wight, one of Rivera’s assistants. “She didn’t make love to me that time,” she lamented. “I think on account of her weakness. Too bad.” Kahlo’s wording implies that O’Keeffe had made love to her before, but it’s unclear what she meant exactly. While some scholars argue that O’Keeffe had romantic relationships with women, the official line from the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum and major O’Keeffe scholars is that there’s no evidence. “The term ‘make love’ had a variety of meanings,” offers Grasso. “It might have just meant flirting.”

The story of Kahlo and O’Keeffe’s friendship is fairly one-sided, with most of the records coming from Kahlo (to whom the relationship likely meant more). No letters have been identified, to date, from O’Keeffe, and it doesn’t look like she kept any mementos.

Antonio Kahlo
Frida Kahlo, 1949
Matthew Liu Fine ArtsContact for price

Georgia O’Keeffe
Black Iris VI, 1936
Seattle Art Museum

One small trace, which Grasso identified recently in an O’Keeffe address book from the early 1930s, is a Chicago address for Frida Rivera (the artist’s married name). When Kahlo was in New York in 1933, her next scheduled destination was Chicago (where Rivera was commissioned to paint a mural for the World’s Fair, which fell through after the controversy surrounding his Rockefeller Center mural).

O’Keeffe probably never used that Chicago address, but when the Mexican painter came to New York in November 1938 for her first solo exhibition, at the Julien Levy Gallery, O’Keeffe was there on opening night. Stahr thinks this was deliberate, since by this point she was spending July through December in New Mexico, and could have easily missed Kahlo.
“It’s possible they saw each other other times,” Stahr adds. “Frida did visit New York on different occasions.” And when O’Keeffe traveled to Mexico in 1951, she visited Kahlo twice at her home, the Casa Azul.

Todd Webb
Georgia O'Keeffe Pouring Tea at the Ghost Ranch, 1962
Scheinbaum & Russek Ltd.Contact for price

Frida Kahlo
Autorretrato con chango y loro, 1942
MALBA Permanent collection


That last time, it was Kahlo who was confined to bed, recovering from recent operations. She must have been thrilled to see her old pal, who showed her what being a successful woman artist could look like. “O’Keeffe was the woman artist…the representative, the token, the exemplar,” Grasso says. “You can think about how much O’Keeffe—as a person, as a friend, as a woman, and as an artist—might be absolutely fascinating and important to her.”

Maybe O’Keeffe brought Kahlo flowers, and maybe Kahlo offered her friend some local tequila. The two were different people than when they first met, two decades earlier, and they hadn’t been permanent fixtures in each other’s lives. Their bond, however loose, was still there.

Karen Chernick

Swedish runestones open gateway to ancient Viking civilization
Justin Calderon, CNN • Updated 26th November 2020













Rune Kingdom: The Jarlabanke Bridge is a common starting point for a tour of Runriket, a collection of ancient runestones in Sweden that sheds light on the country's Viking past. The original bridge once helped Vikings cross over a bog.

Justin Calderon

Vallentuna, Sweden (CNN) — Drive north of the Swedish capital for about half an hour and you'll reach the lakeside district of Vallentuna, a pleasant community with cobblestone churches, picnic areas and playgrounds.

It's also a journey deep into Sweden's ancient Viking past.

Scattered among Vallentuna's greenery are dozens of mystical runestones that form the gateway to a 1,000-year-old Viking civilization now believed to be one of Scandinavia's most significant historic sites.

Known as Runriket, or Rune Kingdom, this collection of more than 100 Viking age runestones -- ancient lichen-crusted slabs of Old Norse inscriptions -- are beautiful relics that shine a light on modern Sweden's past, revealing surprising truths about its ancestors.

Vikings are often depicted as brutish Odin-worshippers who pillaged, drank and made blood sacrifices. While there's truth to the stereotype, the relics of Rune Kingdom actually paint a picture of devote Christian settlers on the cusp of embracing medieval lifestyles.

Among them, one man stands out -- an 11th-century Viking ruler named Jarlabanke who appears in more runic inscriptions here than anyone else -- largely because he seems to have been colossally self-important.

"He had many runestones made, both after others but more famously after himself, something that was quite rare," says Eric Östergren, a guide at Stockholm's Viking Museum whose own long auburn beard and gray-blue eyes have a flavor of Old Norse about them.

"From these runestones, we can assume Jarlabanke's power grew and he changed the local political landscape," Östergren adds.

Jarlabanke's gargantuan ego -- big enough to echo through the ages -- has left precious archaeological evidence of a civilization which, because Vikings mostly used wood for construction, is otherwise scarce.

The runestones created by Jarlabanke reveal the influence of his dynasty across five generations and archaeologists have been able to use them to piece together a key chapter for Viking society little known outside of Scandinavia -- the arrival of Christianity.

Sweden's first Christians

Norse code: The runestones of Runriket shed light on a little-understood chapter of Sweden's ancient past.

Arash Bahrehmand

On the east side of Vallentuna Lake stand two formidable granite runestones that bear identical inscriptions and face each other. Measuring about 1.65 meters (5 ft, 5 in), their etchings claim they mark the original location of a bridge built by Jarlabanke.

Archaeologists believe this ancient structure was raised as a passage over marshland to a church.

The bridge -- locally known as "Jarlabanke bro" -- is the most common starting point to conduct a tour of Runriket, which can be done by car or on foot.

As is common with stones connected to Jarlabanke, Old Norse letters are written within the winding tail of a mythical serpent that frames a large, artistically drawn cross.

Many of the runestones at Runriket are carved with these unmistakably Christian crosses, some elaborate in design, like the two at Jarlabanke Bridge, and others with simple, shallowly engraved lines.

These are among the first Christian symbols found in Sweden. In fact, archaeologists have linked the arrival of Christianity in Sweden directly to Jarlabanke through the stones at Runriket.

"We know that they (Jarlabanke and his family) must have been the earliest Christians in this area and that Jarlabanke's grandfather Östen traveled all the way to Jerusalem on a pilgrimage as early as the first half of the 11th century," says Magnus Källström, a researcher at the Swedish National Heritage Board and one of Sweden's most sought-after runologists.

The stones also tell us of an important transition in funeral practices, signaling the departure of pagan rituals in exchange for Christian burials.

"In Vallentuna's runestones, we can document a change of culture, from a time when a burial mound was built to an embrace of more medieval customs," Östergren says.

'He alone owned all'

Jarlabanke's imposing presence can still be felt across Vallentuna. If he were around today, Östergren likes to joke to visitors to his museum, the Viking "would probably upload selfies every day" to Facebook.

While there are missing pieces to the puzzle, everything known about Jarlabanke has come from the runic inscriptions on the stones.

"Jarlabanke must have been a very important and wealthy person in the vicinity of Vallentuna Lake," observes Källström. "He built his impressive bridge and he arranged an assembly place probably close to where Vallentuna church stands today."

Källström points to a two-sided runestone that sits alongside the Vallentuna church on a sunny hillside over the lake. It provides a fundamental clue to understanding Jarlabanke's power.

Tracing his finger across runes partially obscured by gray and brown moss, he reads out the inscription in Old Norse, which to the untrained ear sounds a lot like a mystical spell from a J.R.R. Tolkien novel.

"Jarlabanki let ræisa stæin þenn at sik kvikvan," he recites. "Jarlabanke had this stone raised in memory of himself while alive.

"And made this assembly place, and alone owned all of this hundred."

Jarlabanke image by Eric Östergren

Here, the word "hundred" refers to a large administrative region. According to Källström, it's debatable whether Jarlabanke was merely a powerful landowner, or played another more significant role.

"This is a very large area and it seems impossible that all this land was in Jarlabanke's private possession. Most probably, the verb æiga -- 'to own' -- means something different here: that he was the chieftain for this hundred, or the law speaker or judge."

The amount of times Jarlabanke writes his name in Vallentuna also suggests that he was quite powerful, and wanted to make sure everyone knew it.

Källström also suggests that there could have been a power struggle with his half-brother, which would explain why Jarlabanke took pains to clearly state that "he alone" ruled the area.
Still, other researchers like Östergren say that the ruthless nature of Viking politics combined with a narcissistic personality would make for a ruler that was likely more "mafia boss" than simple adjudicator.

"Jarlabanke is mentioned on 10 of these stones, and six of these he has put up in memory of himself!" Källström excitedly points out.

Related contentArchaeologists expected a routine dig in Sweden, but they uncovered two rare Viking burial boats

Messages from the past

Experts say the runestones partly represent a Viking ego trip.
Arash Bahrehmand

Moreover, Jarlabanke's love of runestones likely inspired many others in the area to follow suit in seeking political influence by paying for a craftsman to raise a runestone.

Whatever the motivation, the result was the creation of a kingdom of late Viking Age inscriptions that would endure through the centuries.

Reading the russet-colored Runic letters -- some of which are similar to Latin -- is one thing. Decoding the meaning of an Old Norse message is another. For this reason, there are still many mysteries left in Viking runestones still to be understood.

This year, for instance, runologists finally managed to decipher the Rok stone, Sweden's most famous runestone.

An inscription that famously mentions Ragnarok, the Viking apocalypse, the Rok's inscription is written in the form of a riddle that tells of a climate change event that impacted the Vikings of the ninth century.

Östergren says that Runriket is a portal through which countless more mysteries may yet be solved.

"Runriket is both a road to further knowledge for those who want to go in depth, but also for those that are just starting to scratch the surface of understanding who the Vikings really were."

Egypt; camel roams hospital after escaping slaughterhouse

A camel in Egypt can be seen roaming around a hospital after escaping slaughterhouse

December 8,2020

Footage of a camel wandering the corridors of an Egyptian hospital on Sunday after evading security guards has gone viral on social media.

The video, filmed by a nurse at the Awsim Central Hospital in Giza, shows doctors and nurses trying to lead the animal outside.

According to the National, the camel was en route to a nearby slaughterhouse when it escaped and ran into the hospital grounds.

       GIMEL (CAMEL) ALEISTER CROWLEY, THE BOOK OF LIES (SO CALLED)

73

ΚΕΦΑΛΗ ΟΓ

THE DEVIL, THE OSTRICH, AND THE ORPHAN CHILD Death rides the Camel of Initiation.36 Thou humped and stiff-necked one that groanest in Thine Asana, death will relieve thee! Bite not, Zelator dear, but bide! Ten days didst thou go with water in thy belly? Thou shalt go twenty more with a firebrand at thy rump! Ay! all thine aspiration is to death: death is the crown of all thine aspiration. Triple is the cord of silver moonlight; it shall hang thee, O Holy One, O Hanged Man, O Camel-Termination-of-the-third-person-plural for thy multiplicity, thou Ghost of a Non-Ego! Could but Thy mother behold the, O thou UNT!37 The Infinite Snake Ananta that surroundeth the Universe is but the Coffin-Worm!

COMMENTARY (ΟΓ) The Hebrew letter Gimel adds up to 73; it means a camel. The title of the chapter is borrowed from the well-known lines of Rudyard Kipling: "But the commissariat camel, when all is said and done, 'E's a devil and an awstridge and an orphan-child in one." Paragraph 1 may imply a dogma of death as the highest form of initiation. Initiation is not a simple phenomenon. Any given initiation must take place on several planes, and is not always conferred on all of these simultaneously. Intellectual and moral perception of truth often, one might almost say usually, precedes spiritual and physical perceptions. One would be foolish to claim initiation unless it were complete on every plane. Paragraph 2 will easily be understood by those who have practiced Asana. There is perhaps a sardonic reference to rigor mortis, and certainly one conceives the half-humorous attitude of the expert towards the beginner. Paragraph 3 is a comment in the same tone of rough good nature. The word Zelator is used because the Zelator of the A⁂A⁂ has to pass an examination in Asana before he becomes eligible for the grade of Practicus. The ten days allude merely to the tradition about the camel, that he can go ten days without water. Paragraph 4 identifies the reward of initiation with death; it is a cessation of all that we call life, in a way in which what we call death is not. 3, silver and the moon, are all correspondences of Gimel, the letter of the Aspiration, since Gimel is the Path that leads from the microcosm in Tiphareth to the Macrocosm in Kether. The epithets are far too complex to explain in detail, but Mem, the Hanged Man, has a close affinity for Gimel, as will be seen by a study of Liber 418. Unt is not only the Hindustani for Camel, but the usual termination of the third person plural of the present tense of Latin words of the Third and Fourth Conjugations. The reason for thus addressing the reader is that he has now transcended the first and second persons. Cf. Liber LXV, Chapter III, vv. 21 - 24, and FitzGerald's Omar Khayyam: "Some talk there was of Thee and Me There seemed; and then no more of Thee and Me.") The third person plural must be used, because he has now perceived himself to be a bundle of impressions. For this is the point on the Path of Gimel when he is actually crossing the Abyss; the student must consult the account of this given in "The Temple of Solomon the King". The Ego is but "the ghost of a non-Ego", the imaginary focus at which the non-Ego becomes sensible. Paragraph 5 expresses the wish of the Guru that his Chela may attain safely to Binah, the Mother. Paragraph 6 whispers the ultimate and dread secret of initiation into his ear, identifying the vastness of the Most Holy with the obscene worm that gnaws the bowels of the damned. NOTES (36) Death is said by the Arabs to ride a Camel. The Path of Gimel (which means a Camel) leads from Tiphareth to Kether, and its Tarot trump is "The High Priestess". (37) UNT, Hindustani for Camel. I.e. would that BABALON might look on thee with favour.

 

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Israel football club UAE co-owner opens door to Arab players

Stadium security remove a fan during a friendly football match between Beitar Jerusalem and Atletico Madrid at the Teddy Stadium in Jerusalem on May 21, 2019 [JACK GUEZ/AFP via Getty Images]

December 8, 2020 at 8:46 pm

Beitar Jerusalem's new Emirati co-owner said on Tuesday the Israeli soccer club was open to recruiting Arab players, a step likely to stir anger among its anti-Arab fan base.

Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Nahyan, a member of the Abu Dhabi ruling family, this week bought a 50% stake in the club where a group of supporters, known as "La Familia", have been openly racist towards Israel's Arab minority.

Beitar has never fielded an Arab player since its founding in 1936, and Muslim players who played for the club in the past had been the target of racist abuse.

"We are open. Our door is open to all the talent. No matter what is his religion or wherever he comes from," said Sheikh Hamad, sitting alongside co-owner Moshe Hogeg in an online media briefing.

Arab citizens make up around 21 per cent of Israel's population of around 9 million and Arab players feature at Israel's other clubs and in the national team.

Sheikh Hamad and Hogeg said they believed Beitar's racist fans had been brainwashed and that they hoped the club would show that Jews and Muslims can work together.

Hogeg, co-founder of tech firm Sirin Labs, hailed Sheikh Hamad's investment as a "great moment" for the club, while warning, if necessary, that it would take legal measures, including suing fans, to stop "extreme racism" at its games.

"We are not afraid of the racists. We have a plan on how to deal with that," he said.

Sheikh Hamad bought into Beitar four months after the United Arab Emirates, breaking with decades of Arab policy, agreed to establish relations with Israel, a move that angered Palestinians and some Muslim states and communities. Bahrain and Sudan have since followed suit.

UAE royal buys Israel football club as fans react with 'F*** Dubai'
\

Fans of the Israeli Premier League football team Beitar Jerusalem wait for the kick-off in Hungary on 6 July 2017 [Laszlo Szirtesi/Getty Images]

December 8, 2020 at 1:51 pm

A member of the UAE royal family, Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Nahyan, has purchased a 50 per cent stake in Israeli Premier League football team Beitar Jerusalem, a club notorious for its racist chants against Palestinians.

Details of the purchase were announced by the Israeli club on its website and social media. "A historic and exciting day for Beitar Jerusalem. This afternoon (monday) a partnership agreement was signed between Mr. Moshe Hogeg and Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Nahyan," said the Israeli club on its Twitter account.

In an announcement posted on their website, Beitar said Hamad Bin Khalifa's purchase also included a commitment to invest more than 300 million shekels ($92.18 million) in the club over the next ten years.

Beitar's announcement quoted Hamad Bin Khalifa as saying: "I am thrilled to be a partner in such a glorious club that I have heard so much of and in such a great city, the capital of Israel and one of the holiest cities in the world."

While the deal to purchase stakes in an Israeli football club may itself raise some eyebrows, Hamad Bin Khalifa's reference to Jerusalem as Israel's capital is likely to prove controversial given the city's status as one of the core issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Despite normalising relations with the occupying state, the UAE has not officially recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Beitar Jerusalem is a bastion of Israel's political right-wing and a group of supporters known as "La Familia" has been openly abusive towards Israel's Arab minority. The club has faced several penalties as a result of its fans chanting racist slogans and its opposition to bringing Palestinian citizens of Israel into the team.

Its hardcore fan base is notoriously abusive towards opposing players, routinely taunting them with racist and anti-Arab chants. One chant goes: "Here we are, the most racist team in the country."

While a banner was set up outside Beitar Jerusalem's stadium praising Hamad Bin Khalifa and welcoming him to Jerusalem, some of the club's fans sprayed offensive and racist graffiti on the outer wall of Beitar Jerusalem's stadium, saying: "Mohammed is Dead", "Death to Arabs", "Fuck Dubai", and "You can't buy us!!! $ Don't fuck with us!

Reports: Dr Hanan Ashrawi resigns from PLO committee


Member of PLO’s Executive Committee Hanan Ashrawi, 28 December 2018 [Wikipedia]

December 8, 2020 

Dr Hanan Ashrawi, a senior member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation's (PLO) Executive Committee, has reportedly resigned.

She submitted her resignation to Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas sometime in "the past few days", reports in Al-Araby Al-Jadeed and Al-Quds Al-Arabi reveal. Abbas has yet to respond.

According to Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, her resignation is due to the PA resuming security coordination and other diplomatic relations with Israel after suspending the policy in May in protest of Tel Aviv's plans to annex some 30 per cent of the occupied West Bank including the Jordan Valley.

The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed that Ashrawi "was angry with how the issue was handled."

Severing security and civil coordination with Israel earlier this year, Palestine said plans to annex parts of the occupied West Bank would make a two-state solution impossible.

However, it resumed coordination activities with Israel last month, after it said the United States had assured it that Israel would respect existing agreements with the Palestinians.

READ: Abbas facilitates Israel's 'no preconditions' condition for negotiations

Appointed to the PLO's executive committee in 2007, 74-year-old Ashrawi is the PA's highest-ranking female politician.

In 1994, she founded the Palestinian Independent Commission for Human Rights.

She has recently contracted coronavirus, but this is not believed to be linked to her resignation.

The sources added: "There are those who will promote that Ashrawi is no longer able to fulfill her duties because of her age and infection from two months ago, but this is not true."

Ashrawi is still yet to make an official statement on the matter

As Lebanon subsidy crunch looms, UN agencies warn of social catastrophe


A Lebanese flag flutters amid billowing smoke as firefighters (unseen) extinguish the remaining flames at the seaport of Beirut, on September 11, 2020

 [ANWAR AMRO/AFP via Getty Images]

December 7, 2020 at 8:50 pm

The removal of subsidies in Lebanon without guarantees to protect the vulnerable would amount to a social catastrophe, two UN agencies said on Monday, warning there is no parachute to soften the blow.

With Lebanon deep in financial crisis, the central bank has been subsidising basic goods by providing hard currency to importers at the old exchange rate of 1,500 Lebanese pounds to the dollar even as the currency fell by 80% from the peg.

Central bank governor Riad Salameh said last week the subsidies could be kept for only two more months, urging the state should come up with a plan.

Though Lebanon faces the gravest crisis since the 1975-90 civil war, policymaking has been crippled by old rivalries between fractious politicians. Saad al-Hariri was nominated to form a new government in October but one has yet to be agreed upon.

"The impact of removing price subsidies on the country's most vulnerable households will be tremendous and yet there is almost nothing in place to help soften the fall," the UNICEF'S Lebanon country representative and the ILO's regional director wrote in an op-ed.

"It is critical to realise that for Lebanon to fly off another cliff now, without first putting in place an inclusive system of social guarantees, would be to inflict a social catastrophe on the country's most vulnerable people, sacrificing their wellbeing, and that of the country as a whole, for many years to come," they wrote.




Lebanon is one long tale of disaster and crisis – Cartoon [Sabaaneh/MiddleEastMonitor]

The universal way in which Lebanon has been subsidising basic goods including fuel, wheat, and medicine has been widely criticised, including by senior politicians from ruling parties, because it does not target those most in need.

A rough analysis shows up to 80% of the subsidies may actually be benefiting the wealthiest 50% with only 20% going to the poorer half, UNICEF Representative Yukie Mokuo and ILO Regional Director Ruba Jaradat wrote in their op-ed.

The caretaker government is due to meet Salameh on Monday to discuss the subsidies.

The World Bank has said poverty is likely to continue to worsen and engulf more than half the population by 2021.

New Israeli ambassador in Britain describes Nakba as 'Arab lie'

Israeli Ambassador to the UK Tzipi Hotovely in the West Bank on 3 November 2015 [MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP/Getty Images]

December 8, 2020

Israel's new Ambassador to the United Kingdom, 42-year-old Tzipi Hotovely has used her first speech during an event organised by the Board of Deputies of British Jews to describe the Nakba as "a very strong and very popular Arab lie." She added that the displacement of Palestinians since 1948, when Israel was created in their land, is "a made up story".

The far-right politician has a track record of making remarks about the Palestinians which are perceived to be racist and inflammatory. Her latest comments can be viewed on Twitter in a short video clip of the recent online meeting. It was uploaded by British Jews Against Occupation.

The organisation condemned the Board of Deputies' decision to host Hotovely. "We will never defeat racism while our communal organisations are giving it a platform," it told the Board. "Hotovely's views cannot be allowed to be normalised in our community with invites to celebratory events."

Hotovely's remarks have sparked outrage, not only because of their racism but also because an organisation recognised by the government as representative of mainstream Jewish thought in Britain provided a platform for such views.

British Jews Against Occupation has circulated a petition urging Jews in Britain to write to the Foreign Office to reject her accreditation. "Hotovely has demonstrated a complete disregard for international law throughout her political career, and has an appalling record of racist and inflammatory behaviour," it explains. "This includes inviting the far-right organisation Lehava to speak in the Knesset, supporting campaigns to prevent relationships between Jews and Arabs, and referring to Israeli human rights activists as 'war criminals'" and 'an enemy within'."

READ: It is time to make it official and brand Israel as an apartheid state

Senior Reform Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner also criticised Hotovely's record. "Her political views on Palestinians, annexation and religious pluralism clash with our core values," she told the Guardian. Labour peer Lord Jeremy Beecham told the Jewish Chronicle that, "The appointment of an ultra-right wing ambassador, while typical of the present government of Israel, will do nothing to win friends in the UK – or indeed any other reasonable country."

In June, when Hotovely's appointment was first announced, it looked as though her views were too extreme even for the Board of Deputies. According to the Jewish Chronicle, she launched an outspoken attack on the Board over its support for a Palestinian state in its 2019 Jewish Manifesto. She accused the 260-year-old body of failing to consult "Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, our ambassador, [or] any other political authority" ahead of the manifesto's release.

Despite the apparent disagreement, the Board has tended to support the views of the Israeli far-right in opposition to internationally accepted positions. A recent example was to put pressure on the British government to change the status of Jerusalem.

The Nakba describes the forced expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians by Zionist paramilitary groups from 1947 onwards. Around 600 Palestinian villages have since been wiped off the map in order to create a Jewish majority in Israel. Israeli historians have called this process "ethnic cleansing". Despite volumes of evidence, Nakba denial has been mainstreamed by far-right Zionist groups.

READ: Racism in Israel isn't going away, it's getting worse

PAPERTIGER 

ICC finds UK committed war crimes but won't prosecute

Building of the International Criminal Court, in Hague on 23 December 2019 [Wikipedia]

December 9, 2020 

The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court on Wednesday said she was dropping a preliminary probe into alleged war crimes by British troops in Iraq, even though she found a reasonable basis to believe they committed atrocities, Reuters reports.

The probe never rose to the level of a full investigation and Fatou Bensouda's office concluded that British authorities had examined the allegations.

The ICC only intervenes when it finds that a state is unable or unwilling to take action against alleged atrocities.

In a final report, Bensouda wrote that her office had found a reasonable basis to believe that in 2003 British soldiers in Iraq carried out the war crime of willful killing or murder against at least seven Iraqi detainees. They also believed there were credible allegations of torture and rape.

"The preliminary examination has found that there is a reasonable basis to believe that various forms of abuse were committed by members of UK armed forces against Iraqi civilians in detention," it said.

However, the United Kingdom had taken genuine action to investigate the crimes itself, prosecutors found.

In June, British independent investigators looking into allegations of war crimes committed in Iraq told the BBC that of the thousands of complaints they had investigated all but one had been dismissed.

Despite this outcome, which Bensouda said deprived the victims of justice, the ICC prosecutor concluded that British authorities had not been unwilling to carry out investigations or prosecutions and closed the ICC probe.

The ICC has been under fire by Washington for opening a full-fledged investigation into war crimes allegedly committed by U.S. troops on the territory of ICC member Afghanistan. The government of President Donald Trump this year imposed sanctions on Bensouda because of the probe.

Last month, a report by Australian authorities said the country's special forces allegedly killed 39 unarmed prisoners and civilians in Afghanistan between 2005 and 2016, leading other countries to re-examine the conduct of their troops.

Australia said 19 current and former soldiers would be referred for potential criminal prosecution.

Saudi Arabia accuses Loujain Al-Hathloul of collaborating with enemy states

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal Bin Farhan said detained human rights activist Loujain Al-Hathloul is accused of "communicating with countries that are not friendly with the kingdom and passing classified information to them".

December 7, 2020 

Saudi activist Loujain Al-Hathloul was arrested by Saudi forces in 2018 [Prisoners of Conscience/Twitter]

December 7, 2020

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal Bin Farhan said detained human rights activist Loujain Al-Hathloul is accused of "communicating with countries that are not friendly with the kingdom and passing classified information to them".

Speaking on the sidelines of the Manama Dialogue conference, Bin Farhan told AFP that "it is up to the courts to decide (…) what the facts are".

However, the Saudi minister said the kingdom rejects international pressure when it comes to "internal issues that are related to our national security, and we will deal with them in an appropriate manner through our judicial system".

Al-Hathloul was arrested along with about a dozen other female activists in May 2018, just weeks before Saudi Arabia lifted a decades-old ban on female drivers. She went on a hunger strike in October for several weeks to protest against her prison conditions. A report realised earlier this month alleged that she was amongst a number of female activists that were being tortured and forced to carry out "sex acts" while in detention.

At the end of last month, authorities referred Al-Hathloul's case to a court specialised in terrorism, according to her family, which raised the possibility of a long prison sentence, despite international pressure for her release.

Human rights organisations have condemned authorities' treatment of Al-Hathloul, while hersister Lina explained that during her three years pre-trial detention no evidence had been presented to support the allegations against her.

"The accusations against Loujain do not mention any contact with unfriendly countries, (…) and they clearly indicate her contact with the European Union, Britain and the Netherlands. Does Saudi Arabia consider these countries an enemy?" she said, adding that the accusations also do not mention anything related to passing confidential information.

"They accuse her of talking about the human rights situation in Saudi Arabia in international conferences and with non-governmental organizations," she said, stressing that Loujain was not aware that the information is confidential.

READ: Trial of Saudi activist Loujain Al-Hathloul to resume

 

Beyond Borders: International map of Cuban medical cooperation

Publisher

MEMO Publishers

Published

September 2020

Language

English pages

ISBN

 978-1-907433-46-7

Download Now

“The sun has spots. The ungrateful speak only of the spots. The grateful speak of light” José Martí

Before the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, on 1 January 1959, there were 6,250 doctors on the island; about half of them left the country after that date. In addition, more than 63.2% of those were located in Havana, where public hospitals, clinics and private health centres were accessible only to those who had the resources to access them and could pay for these services. Medical assistance hardly arrived in the countryside and more isolated parts. Public health from the first years of the Revolution became a priority for the Cuban State, who - from the beginning - understood it as a right of the people. The government works to create the infrastructure necessary to offer everyone the services free of charge.

They began to fight diseases, allocating a budget of 22,670,965 pesos to finance the health of the population. These figures have been increasing over time. In 2019, 10,662,200,000 pesos were allocated, and in 2020, 12,740,000,000 ($530 million). This represents 28% of the total budget and, together with that destined to education, makes up more than 50% of it. Both spheres complement each other in the Cuban health system (Portal, 2019). This year’s budget will allow the provision of more than 200 million medical consultations. It will also serve to guarantee the medical 10 THE CUBAN DOCTORS IN CUBA AND THE WORLD services provided in hospitals and institutes, as well as primary health care. This financial coverage will provide 1.4 million hospital admissions and the necessary medications (Portal, 2019). It is also important to take into account the expenses associated with the Covid-19 pandemic, a health emergency that has shaken the world and from which Cuba has been exempt, and has become a champion in its combat and in many other countries.