Monolith ‘appears’ in India, finally! What’s exactly the monolith mystery and what’s buzz around it- Explained

By: FE Online | January 1, 2021

A monolith has been spotted in a park in Ahmedabad and local residents are going gaga over it.

The artist who installed the monolith wanted to stay anonymous and is expecting the beauty of the sculpture to evoke conversations. Image: Symphony Forest Park

A monolith has been spotted in a park in Ahmedabad and local residents are going gaga over it. Across many locations in the world, monoliths have been spotted and it’s the first time a monolith has been reported in India.

What exactly is a monolith?

A monolith is said to be a geological feature that has only a single massive stone or rock. It could be a mountain, or in fact a large and single piece of rock which is placed as or within a building or a monument. Many metallic monoliths have been spotted across countries. The one in India too has a metallic sculpture.

Where is it found in India and how does it look?

The monolith reportedly can be seen at the Symphony Forest Park which is in Thaltej region of Ahmedabad. The structure is said to be surrounded by various urban development projects. It has a shiny metal surface and the sides have formed a three-sided structure. According to a report by The Indian Express, one of the sides has some numbers on it that can only be seen if observed carefully. It is likely that these numbers have some clue towards protection of wildlife and nature, the report noted. But the exact meaning of these numbers will only be revealed with time.

Who put up the monolith?

Citing Dilipbhai Patel, Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation’s assistant director of parks and gardens, the report said that the park was developed and is maintained by a private firm and it was put there by the firm only. The firm completed work on the park three months back. The artist who installed the monolith wanted to stay anonymous and is expecting the beauty of the sculpture to evoke conversations and understanding the essence of it. It is also expected to engage thinking.

Where else do these kinds of monoliths have surfaced?

Similar sculptures have been reported in more that 30 countries and that Colombia, the United Kingdom, France, Romania and even near a remote canyon in Utah. According to media reports, these structures appear and disappear mysteriously. Many people have tossed multiple stories in order to give a meaning to such existences. While some have suggested these to be put by artists but there are other mysterious hypotheses linking metallic monoliths to the presence of aliens.

CANADA POST SHOULD BE A SAVINGS BANK
Post Office Savings Bank likely to be interconnected with other banks by April

India Post serves more than 50 crore Post Office Savings Bank (POSB) customers through 1.56 lakh post offices across the country. It has an outstanding balance of Rs 10.81 crore under POSB schemes.

By: PTI | December 31, 2020 

All POSB accounts can be linked to the India Post Payments Bank (IPPB) accounts and can be operated through mobile app DakPay.

India Post expects to make the Post Office Savings Bank interoperable with other bank accounts by April and will focus on enhancing digitisation of all services in 2021, a senior official of the department said.

The postal department during the lockdown was at the frontline to deliver essential parcels when rail, road and air traffic were grounded and continues to enhance capacity as trains are not fully operational yet, Department of Posts Secretary Pradipta Kumar Bisoi told PTI.

“We will enhance our focus on digitising services and delivery of service at doorstep in the coming year. Our banking and financial services have been digitised already. We expect to make Post Office Savings Bank also directly interoperable with accounts of other banks by April,” Bisoi said.

The Post Office Core Banking Solution (CBS) system is the largest in the world with 23,483 post offices already on this network.

India Post serves more than 50 crore Post Office Savings Bank (POSB) customers through 1.56 lakh post offices across the country. It has an outstanding balance of Rs 10.81 crore under POSB schemes.

All POSB accounts can be linked to the India Post Payments Bank (IPPB) accounts and can be operated through mobile app DakPay.

“Besides making services digitally accessible to people, we are focussing on doorstep delivery of services. This year we remitted Rs 900 crore money through around 85 lakh transactions and verified 3 lakh pensioners on their doorstep,” Bisoi said.

India Post had to suddenly handle responsibility of delivery of essential articles during the lockdown when all the modes of transport were grounded.

The Department of Posts (DoP) started a national level dedicated ‘Road Transport Network’ on 56 routes touching 80 cities and carried approximately 15,000 bags containing 75 tonnes of parcels daily through the network.

“We now have a parcel handling capacity of 9 crore articles per annum. Average transit time of Speed Post reduced from 105 hours in July 2019 to 81 hours in February 2020,” Bisoi said.

During the lockdown, the postal network carried over 10 lakh medical articles across the country, including boxes of medical equipment, ventilators, PPE kits and medicines.

Around 36,000 tonnes of material were delivered through postal channels which also include use of parcel trains.

Not only medicines, India Post also delivered Gangajal to 2.37 lakh homes between April-November 2020.

Bisoi further said the business of India Post was down during the first six month of the current fiscal but it is now getting back to normal.

Moderna COVID-19 vaccine shows 94.1 per cent efficacy in trial: Study
By: PTI |
December 31, 2020 

Results from the primary analysis of the ongoing phase 3 clinical trial of US biotechnology company Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine have revealed 94.1 per cent efficacy of the therapeutic in preventing symptomatic infections and severe illness, according to a peer-reviewed study.

Baden said while these results are encouraging, they are limited by the short duration of follow-up so far.

Results from the primary analysis of the ongoing phase 3 clinical trial of US biotechnology company Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine have revealed 94.1 per cent efficacy of the therapeutic in preventing symptomatic infections and severe illness, according to a peer-reviewed study. The study, published on Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, found that among over 30,000 participants randomised to receive the vaccine or a placebo, 11 in the vaccine group developed symptomatic COVID-19 compared to 185 participants who received the placebo.

The researchers said this demonstrates 94.1 per cent efficacy in preventing symptomatic COVID-19, adding that cases of severe disease occurred only in participants who received the placebo. “Our work continues. Over the next months, we’ll have increasing amounts of data to better define how this vaccine works, but the results so far show a 94.1 per cent efficacy. These numbers are compelling,” said Lindsey Baden, an infectious diseases specialist at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in the US where the trial took place.

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“And, importantly, the data suggest protection from severe illness, indicating that the vaccine could have an impact on preventing hospitalisations and deaths, at least in the first several months post-vaccination,” said Baden, co-principal investigator for the study, and lead author of the paper. The study enrolled 30,420 adult participants at 99 sites in the US, including over 600 participants enrolled at the Brigham.

Eligible participants were 18 years old or more with no known history of SARS-CoV-2 infection, and whose locations or circumstances put them at appreciable risk of the infection and high risk of severe COVID-19, the researchers said.
They noted that the race and ethnicity proportion of the trial was 79 per cent white, 10 per cent Black or African American, and 20 per cent Hispanic or Latino participants. The participants received their first injection between July 27 and October 23, followed by a second shot 28 days later.

Each jab, given intramuscularly, had a volume of 0.5 millilitres (mL), containing 100 micrograms (g) of mRNA-1273 vaccine or saline placebo. In the placebo group, 185 participants developed symptomatic COVID-19 illness whereas in the vaccine group, only 11 participants did. In secondary analyses, the vaccine’s efficacy was similar across groups of key interest, including those who already had antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 at the time of enrolment, and among those who were 65 years of age or older, the researchers said.

Thirty participants had severe COVID-19 — all in the placebo group, they said. They were closely monitored for adverse events in the weeks following their injection. The researchers said overall, reactions to the vaccine were mild — about half of recipients experienced fatigue, muscle aches, joint pain and headaches, more so after the second dose.

Baden said while these results are encouraging, they are limited by the short duration of follow-up so far. “Longer term data from the ongoing study may allow us to more carefully evaluate the vaccine’s efficacy among different groups, determine the impact on asymptomatic infection, understand when immunity wanes, and determine whether vaccines affect infectiousness,” she added.

How Diamonds Can Help Power Electric Vehicles

By MINING.com - Dec 29, 2020

Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US published a study in Applied Physics Letters where they present the idea of using diamonds as ultra-wide bandgap semiconductors to more effectively power the electrical grid, locomotives and even electric cars.

In their paper, the researchers said that diamonds have been shown to have superior carrier mobility, breakdown electric field and thermal conductivity, the most important properties to power electronic devices. The gems also became especially desirable after the development of a chemical vapor deposition process for the growth of high-quality single crystals.

Based on this previous knowledge, the team at the LLNL explored properties of synthetically made diamonds that are of higher quality than naturally occurring ones.

“We said to ourselves ‘let’s take this pure high-quality CVD diamond and irradiate it to see if we can tailor the carrier lifetime,’” Paulius Grivickas, lead author of a paper, said in a media statement.

Grivickas explained that in photoconductive devices, the best combination of conductivity and frequency response is achieved by introducing impurities, which control carrier recombination lifetimes. In diamonds, a cheap and easy alternative to this approach is electron irradiation where recombination defects are created by knocking the lattice atoms out of place.

“Eventually, we nailed down the understanding of which irradiation defect is responsible for carrier lifetimes and how does the defect behave under annealing at technologically relevant temperatures,” the researcher said.

Photoconductive diamond switches produced this way can be used, for example, in the power grid to control current and voltage surges, which can fry out equipment. “Current silicon switches are big and bulky, but the diamond-based ones can accomplish the same thing with a device that could fit on the tip of a finger,” Grivickas said.

The scientist pointed out that his findings also have applications in energy delivery systems where there is a possibility of a megawatt-class radio frequency power generation, which requires optimization of diamonds’ high-frequency response.

By Mining.com

Nobel laureate Paul Krugman predicts a swift, sustained economic recovery once vaccines are rolled out

© REUTERS/Brendan McDermid REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

Paul Krugman expects the US economic recovery from the pandemic to be "much faster and continue much longer than many people expect," he said in a recent New York Times column

.
The Nobel Prize-winning economist predicts mass vaccination, pent-up demand, greater household savings, technological progress, and the Biden administration's backing to fuel a jobs boom.

Americans grew their personal savings by 173% year-on-year between March and November last year, as disposable incomes ballooned by $1 trillion and household spending tumbled by $535 billion, a New York Times analysis shows.

"I'm in the camp that expects rapid growth once people feel safe going out and spending money," Krugman said.

Nobel laureate Paul Krugman predicts the US economy will enjoy a strong, sustained recovery once the pandemic threat recedes

Krugman, who won the Nobel Prize for economics in 2008, warned in a recent New York Times column that the next few months "will be hell in terms of politics, epidemiology, and economics." However, he expects the economic rebound to be "much faster and continue much longer than many people expect."

The economics professor and writer anticipates that once vaccines are rolled out nationwide, a combination of pent-up demand, increased household savings, technological advances, and the Biden administration's support will underpin a jobs boom.

Krugman laid out a "clear case for optimism" in his column, arguing the US economy will bounce back much faster than it did from the financial crisis.

There was a "Wile E. Coyote moment" in 2007 when consumers and businesses woke up to sky-high house prices and vast sums of household debt that promptly tanked the economy, he said. However, the private sector doesn't appear significantly overextended this time around, he added.

Indeed, a New York Times analysis found that Americans' personal savings grew by $1.6 trillion or 173% year-on-year between March and November last year, as disposable incomes rose by $1 trillion and household spending fell by $535 billion.

Unemployment insurance benefits, stimulus checks boosted savings, and the Payment Protection Program shoring up incomes, while lockdowns and virus fears hammered spending on flights, cruises, and other services.

"I'm in the camp that expects rapid growth once people feel safe going out and spending money," Krugman said. While the pandemic has devastated the livelihoods of millions, the average American has been "saving like crazy," he added.

Krugman doesn't expect the economy to require as much support as it did under President Obama. Moreover, he predicts technological advances in sectors such as biotech and renewable energy, coupled with a president who is "actually interested in doing his job" and not anti-science or obsessed with fossil fuels, to drive growth.

The economist also took a parting shot at Republicans for undermining the legitimacy of the recent presidential election.

The party's members "keep demonstrating that they're worse than you could possibly have imagined, even when you tried to take into account the fact that they're worse than you could possibly have imagined," he said.

Read the original article on Business Insider

Pakistan: Gunmen kill 11 minority Hazara coal miners in Baluchistan

The victims were from the minority Shiite Hazara community. Pakistan's prime minister, Imran Khan, condemned the attack as a "cowardly inhumane act of terrorism."

Many ethnic Hazara live in Pakistan's Baluchistan region

Attackers in southwestern Pakistan have killed at least 11 workers at a remote coal mine, officials said Sunday.

The victims were from the minority Shiite Hazara community, Khalid Durrani, a government official, told French news agency AFP.

The Islamic State extremist group later claimed responsibility for the attack, which took place in the mountainous Machh area of Baluchistan province.

Ethnic Hazara make up most of the Shiite population in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan.

It is the country's largest and poorest region, rife with ethnic, sectarian and separatist insurgencies.

Hazara are often targeted by Sunni militants, who consider them heretics.

Watch video 00:36 Hazara rally blast in Kabul

What do we know about the attack?

The attack took place before dawn on Sunday near the Machh coal field, about 60 kilometers (37 miles) southeast of Quetta.

Moazzam Ali Jatoi, an official with the Levies Force, a paramilitary gendarmerie, said armed men took the coal miners to nearby mountains before shooting them. He said six of the miners died at the scene, while another five died of critical injuries on the way to hospital.


Hazara are often targeted by Sunni militants, who consider them heretics

The assailants fled after the attack. Officials said police and members of the local paramilitary force were on the scene, where a search operation had been launched to trace the attackers.

It remains unclear why the mine was targeted. Though Pakistan's mines are notorious for poor safety standards, such attacks against miners are rare.

In a tweet, Prime Minister Imran Khan condemned "the killing of 11 innocent coal miners in Machh" as a "cowardly inhumane act of terrorism."

"The families of the victims will not be left abandoned by the government," he added.

News of the killings prompted members of the Hazara community to take the streets of Quetta in protest. Shiite cleric Nasir Abbas said demonstrations against the incident would be organized across the country. 

kmm/nm (AP, AFP)

IS gunmen kill 11 minority Shiite coal miners in SW Pakistan

QUETTA, Pakistan — Gunmen opened fire on a group of minority Shiite Hazara coal miners after abducting them, killing 11 in southwestern Baluchistan province early Sunday, a Pakistani official said.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The Islamic State group later claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement on its website. The Sunni militant group has repeatedly targeted Pakistan’s minority Shiites in recent years.

Moazzam Ali Jatoi, an official with the Levies Force, which serves as police and paramilitary in the area, said the attackers identified the miners as being from the Shiite Hazara community and took them to up into nearby mountains for execution, leaving others unharmed. He said six of the miners died at the scene, and five who were critically wounded died on the way to a hospital.

Police video of the bodies revealed the miners were blindfolded and had their hands tied behind their backs before being shot. The attack took place near the Machh coal field, about 48 kilometres (30 miles) east of the provincial capital Quetta.

News of the killings quickly spread among the Hazara community and members took to the streets in Quetta and surrounding areas to protest, blocking highways with burning tires and tree trunks. Officials closed the affected roads to traffic.

The violence was largely condemned across the country, with Prime Minister Imran Khan saying the perpetrators would be taken to task and the affected families would be cared for.

Shiite cleric Nasir Abbas said protests over the incident would be organized nationwide. Political and religious leaders from different segments of the population also expressed their grief and sorrow over the killings.

Pakistan’s Hazara community has been targeted many times in recent years by Sunni militant groups, including the Islamic State group. IS has also declared war on minority Shiites in neighbouring Afghanistan, and has claimed a number of vicious attacks since emerging there in 2014.

A suicide bombing at an open-air market in Quetta in April 2019 killed twenty people. At the time, IS said it had targeted Shiites and elements of the Pakistani army.

Last January, IS claimed responsibility for a powerful explosion that ripped through a mosque in Quetta during evening prayers. The blast killed a senior police officer and 13 others, and wounded another 20 worshipers.

Baluchistan is the scene of a low level insurgency by Baluch separatist groups who also have targeted non-Baluch labourers, but they have no history of attacks on the minority Shiite community.

Abdul Sattar, The Associated Press

PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY
Germany approves over €1 billion in arms deals to Middle East

Last year, the German government signed off on weapons exports to countries involved in the deadly conflicts in Yemen and Libya. Germany is among the world's top five weapons exporters.


Germany is signing off on arms deals to countries that are backing deadly conflicts in Yemen and Libya


The German government approved a total of €1.16 billion ($1.41 billion) in arms exports during 2020 to countries involved in both the Yemen and Libya conflicts, reported news agency dpa citing the country's Economy Ministry.

Germany, by December 17, had signed off on permissions to export weapons and military equipment worth €752 million to Egypt.

Permission was also granted to German arms companies for deals worth over €305.1 million to Qatar, over €51 million to the United Arab Emirates, €23.4 million for Kuwait and around €22.9 million to Turkey.

Licenses were granted to Jordan totaling €1.7 million and Bahrain amounting to €1.5 million.

The breakdown was provided by the ministry in response to a request from lower house parliament member Omid Nouripour from Germany's Green Party.
Ties to Yemen, Libya

The countries mentioned are all involved in either or both of the years-long conflicts in Yemen and Libya.

In Yemen, a Saudi Arabia-led alliance has been fighting the Iran-backed Houthi rebels alongside the government since late 2014. The alliance includes the UAE, Egypt, Kuwait, Jordan and Bahrain.

The United Nations humanitarian office puts the number of those who have died as a result of the 6-year-old war in Yemen at an estimated 233,000.

Watch video 03:24 German weapons for Saudi-Arabia

This includes 131,000 from indirect causes such as lack of food, health services and infrastructure.

Meanwhile, the Libyan civil war has been raging since 2014 and thousands have died. Qatar and Turkey are intervening on the side of the internationally-recognized Government of National Accord led by Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj in Tripoli.

Rival military strongman General Khalifa Haftar is supported by the UAE and Egypt. Currently, there is a cease-fire in Libya, raising hopes for an end to the conflict.
Germany among top weapons exporters

Germany is one of the top five arms exporters worldwide, along with the US, Russia, France and China, according to new data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

Together, they accounted for 76% of all arms exports in 2015–19, SIPRI reports.

500 years after Martin Luther's excommunication: 

A chance for ecumenical Christianity

The first major schism of the Catholic Church was made official in 1521. The pope excommunicated the initiator of the Reformation, Martin Luther. The monk had referred to the pontiff as the "Antichrist."



The German city of Worms is scheduled to become the setting for multimedia events throughout the year marking 'The Luther Moment'

The German city of Worms is preparing for a major centennial. To mark the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther's appearance at the Diet of Worms on the night of April 17/18 1521, the southern German town on the banks of the Rhine is planning an extensive commemorative program in conjunction with the Lutheran Church. More than 80 events are scheduled, despite COVID-19. The only item to fall victim to the pandemic so far is the central exhibition entitled "Hier stehe ich. Gewissen und Protest — 1521 bis 2021" (Here I Stand. Conscience and Protest — 1521 to Today), which was postponed from April to July.

The title is a reference to the words with which, according to popular legend, Luther concluded his defense at Worms: "Here I stand. I can do no other."

To mark these historic days of April 17 to 18, a church in Worms will become the setting for multimedia events throughout the year marking "The Luther Moment." The title is intended as a projection of key moments in everyday people's lives, a reflection of courage and integrity. This key moment in European history in mid-April 1521 continues to reverberate to this day, not least among Catholic and Protestant theologians.


This room in the Wartburg in Eisenach is where Martin Luther translated the New Testament into German

The Church in crisis

It was in the early months of 1521 that the criticism of Martin Luther, an Augustinian monk born in Eisleben in the region of Wittenberg on the banks of the Elbe in 1483 — excoriating the Church practice of selling indulgences — resulted in a full-blown schism of Christianity in Germany. To this day, Christianity is marked by two central pillars of the dispute: On January 3, 1521, Pope Leo X issued a papal bull in Rome excommunicating Martin Luther and his supporters. Luther, for his part, had referred to the pope as the "Antichrist."

At the Diet of Worms, Luther was given an opportunity to recant his criticism of the pope and the synod in the presence of his contemporary political leaders. Yet, he risked his life by sticking to his criticism and escaped the following night while the deliberations continued, ultimately taking refuge in Wartburg Castle, near Eisenach.

Over the years, decades, and centuries, theologians of all Christian denominations have discussed and debated the schism. Many differences have been settled but the core divisions remain: The excommunication of Luther and his followers by the Catholic Church and the designation of the pope by Lutheran dogma as the "Antichrist."

Watch video 04:42 Luther in Eisenach and at Wartburg Castle

'The time is ripe'

In 2020, some 30 theologians who formed a group founded in 1999 calling itself the Altenberg Ecumenical Roundtable, presented a plea covering just a few pages: It called for a revocation of the excommunication bull by the pope and a statement that the allegations against Luther contained therein "do not apply to members of today's PfLinkrotestant and Lutheran Churches." In return, they called on the Lutheran World Federation to abolish Luther's designation of the pope as the Antichrist — on the grounds that it no longer applies to the current papacy and those who hold the office. "The time for this is ripe," read the appeal.

A recently published book about the schism features a historic image of the young Luther beside a photograph of a smiling Pope Francis. The book, entitled "In alle Ewigkeit verdammt?" (Damned for all eternity?) was edited by two members of the group, the Lutheran priest Hans-Georg Link (81), long-serving secretary of the Commission for Faith and Church Dogma in Geneva and Josef Wohlmuth (82), a retired theologian based in Bonn. They agree that "this burning point of contention still requires urgent treatment to this day, so that ecumenical faith can become a reality, hopefully not in the all-too-distant future."

The Altenberg Ecumenical Round Table calls on religious communities in Germany to take a stand, for example, through ecumenical services on the first weekend in January or joint prayers calling for divine intercession on behalf of reconciliation. And all this in the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic.


The city of Worms you can find images of Luther everywhere

'Stand together for faith'

The pandemic, however, is not only getting in the way of ecumenical efforts. "In this year 2020, it once again became clear how important it is to take a stand for the joint faith in God made human through Christ, for neighborly love and the protection of the weak," said Thies Gundlach, one of the leading theologians of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), in an interview with Deutsche Welle. He added, "We are grateful for the positive developments towards ecumenism between the Evangelical and Catholic churches, which have led to a deeper sense of community between them in recent years."

For Gundlach, the events surrounding the Diet of Worms "are of great relevance to Church history and the history of the Reformation. With regard to modern ecumenism, we are grateful that the disputes of the past have been overcome." He went on to say that the ecumenical movement had made great contributions to mutual understanding and reconciliation in recent years through constructive theological deliberations.



REBEL OR RUFFIAN: WHO WAS MARTIN LUTHER?
Luther with hammer and nails
Did Luther really nail his 95 theses to the main door of the Wittenberg Castle church? Reformation historians are still discussing this point 500 years later. In fact, Luther himself never mentioned the theses. Belgian historical painter Ferdinand Pauwels didn't seem to care - he painted Luther with hammer and nails anyway. PHOTOS 1234567

Hans-Georg Link, the Protestant priest who has devoted so many decades to ecumenism, warned, however: "Without eliminating the issues of the excommunication and the designation as Antichrist, a closer community between the Evangelical and Catholic churches is unthinkable. The year 2021, 500 years after the schism, would be a good juncture for officials on both sides to draw a line under the dispute."

The ball is now on both sides of the court at once. Both the pope in Rome and the Lutheran World Federation in Geneva must move toward each other. Meanwhile, in Germany, where it all began, the Churches are planning — to the extent that existing dogmatic regulations allow it — to hold a joint open-air service on Sunday, April 18, on the market square in Worms, under the motto "Here I Stand." The service will be led by the chair of the Council of the German Evangelical Church, Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, and the head of the German Catholic Bishops' Conference, Georg Bätzing.

This text was translated from German.

The Peasant War in Germany by Frederick Engels 1850

www.marxists.org › archive › marx › works › peasant-...

Jul 15, 2020 — The Peasant War in Germany was the first history book to assert that the real motivating force behind the Reformation and 16th-century peasant ...

‎The Twelve Articles · ‎Comments by D. Riazanov · ‎Notes

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Jewish heritage along the Rhine might be named a World Cultural Heritage

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Wartburg Castle

Tracing Luther's footsteps in Thuringia

AFRICA
Female genital mutilation: The woman fighting Sierra Leone's ritual

Sierra Leone has one of the highest rates of female genital mutilation in Africa. Despite decades of campaigns, the traditional practice has hardly declined. This doesn't deter Rugiatu Turay from fighting cutting.

Rugiatu Turay has been campaigning against FGM since 2002

Campaigner Rugiatu Turay sets up the film screen and projector in the dusty meeting center of Magbanabon village about 40 kilometers (25 miles) from Matotoka Town in the north of Sierra Leone.

She's here to screen a documentary about female genital mutilation (FGM), commonly known as "cutting" in the region.

As night falls, around a hundred men, women and children from the village seat themselves for the screening under the community center's thatched roof.

Many in the audience scream in shock at a scene detailing the cutting, which is normally done without anesthetic using knives, razor blades or even pieces of glass.

Some of the knives used to perform female genital mutilation in Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone has one of the highest rates of FGM in Africa. According to UNICEF figures from 2017, the practice has been performed on an estimated 86% of women and girls in the country. FGM involves the partial or total removal of the female genital organs, such as the clitoris or labia.

Besides severe bleeding, FGM can cause a variety of health issues from infections and cysts to infertility and complications in childbirth.

Among those in Magbanabon watching the documentary are soweis, elderly women who carry out the circumcision as part of girls' initiation into the Bondo society, a secret women's society with an entrenched role in the county's tribal and political life.

Some soweis scream at the cutting scene, others look away, placing their heads in their hands to avoid the graphic footage.

After the screening, Turay sounded out the community's views on what they had seen and offered men and women the opportunity to ask questions and discuss the way forward.
Tackling FGM by listening with respect

Turay is one of Sierra Leone's most well-known anti-FGM campaigners. She founded the grassroots anti-FGM group the Amazonian Initiative Movement in 2002, is a former deputy minister of social welfare, gender and children's affairs and in 2020 won a German human rights prize, the Theodor Haecker award, for her work.

Above all, she has a reputation for talking to all of those involved in cutting, including the soweis, parents, girls and village chiefs.

"One of the things you always have to do as a campaigner is to make sure you are honest to yourself, speak frankly and give respect to people," Turay told DW. "You can see that they look at me as any one of them. I behave like them."

Magbanabon Town Chief PaKapri Kargbo, who attended the documentary screening, said he appreciates Turay's message.

"She didn't threaten us," Kargbo told DW, instead she "simply explained what we didn't know in the past."

But he still questions what comes next for the soweis, who depend on the ritual cutting for their livelihoods.

Finding alternative incomes for elderly cutters

Girls' families supply the soweis with food, clothing, cloth, jewelry and money during the initiation period and still give them occasional gifts long after that.

"If our people eventually agree with her ideas, what would the repercussion be or what would be done for the soweis?" Kargbo asked.

Turay is keenly aware that fighting FGM also means finding alternative sources of income for the soweis.

Her experience being cut as a girl made Rugiatu Turay determined to fight the traditional practice

Later in the week, Turay meets with a group of soweis who have promised to stop practicing FGM during a special Bondo initiation she organized in 2019 that didn't involve any cutting.

The Bondo initiation rituals, which confer womanhood on girls, often occur in isolated forested areas referred to as a Bondo bush. As well as being cut, young girls are taught ritual dances and chants and how to confront spirits, as well as learning how to do domestic chores and be prepared for a husband.

Now, Turay wants to hear how the former soweis are getting on.

She always loved the drumming, dancing and singing part of the Bondo bush, admits former solwei Salamatu Kanu. But over time, she came to dread doing the circumcision, she said, and had to "be highly intoxicated to do the cutting."

"Now that I have experienced Turay's campaign and the effects it is having on me and my peers, there's no reason to return to our old habits," Kanu told DW. "Some of us are now training in tailoring [through Turay's organization] and I consider that more beneficial than what we were engaged in."

Creating new, bloodless Bondo rituals

To break to cycle of FGM, Turay wants to create alternative Bondo rituals to cutting.

"The challenge is to eliminate female genital mutilation but not the Bondo culture, which plays an important role in society," Turay told DW.

Around 100 girls took part in Turay's first "No Blade, No Blood, No Pain" Bondo. One of them was Ramatu S. Bangura, who was 19 at the time.


Ramatu Bangura went through Rugiatu Turay’s 'No Blade, No Blood, No Pain' Bondo bush initiation

Bangura had previously refused to take part in the Bondo bush because she didn't want to endure FGM. This led to enormous teasing from her friends at school and in her community for not being an initiate, she said.

But she jumped at the chance to be part of Turay's special Bondo, she told DW, "because they are not dealing with blood."

"The same people who used to mock at me now think that we are the same because I'm now a member of the Bondo society."

Aminata M. Kamara, who lives in the Port Loko District in Sierra Leone's north, also took part. She is outspoken in what she sees as the advantages of not having endured FGM.

"Most of our female parents went through that society," she explained to DW. "Some of them weren't able to give birth anymore. Some of their husbands left them because they were not able to enjoy their sex life anymore, because they had removed their clitoris."

"Any man that I have sex with, that man will really enjoy me. And as time goes on, when I get my own pregnancy, I'll be able to give birth easily."

Cuba: Church opens its doors to LGBTQI+ people

Being part of the LGBTQI+ community and a church congregation at the same time is not accepted everywhere, and particularly not in Cuba. But one church there is breaking new ground.

Many LGBTQI+ people are rejected by churches

While most churches in Germany, the US and other Western countries now welcome gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersexual people, that is an exception in Cuba. And that exception is called Iglesia de la Comunidad Metropolitana, a Protestant free church.

"Once I went to a Reformed Church in which they kept talking about homosexuality as a sin," recounts Fernando Cepero Romero in the congregation's social media network. "But as a homosexual, I have never seen it that way. For me, it has always been about love."

He relates that he had heard about the free church from his friends and that he thanks God for it.

His statement forms part of the church's advertising campaign "Christ loves my colors." The congregation forms part of the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC), which was founded at the end of the 1960s in Los Angeles as somewhere for the gay and lesbian scene to find a spiritual refuge. At that time, people who did not correspond to the heterosexual norm were badly discriminated against even in California.

Now, almost all major Protestant communities of faith recognize same-sex partnerships in one way or another, granting them their blessing or placing them on a par with a heterosexual marriage. In Germany, homosexual couples can have their partnership blessed in almost all churches belonging to the national Protestant Church (EKD). In about half of the EKD's regional branches, homosexuals can marry in church just like heterosexuals.

The Catholic Church retains great influence in Cuba

A difficult relationship

In Cuba, it is a different matter. For centuries, the religions followed by indigenous peoples and African slaves mixed with the Catholicism of the Spanish rulers. This occurred more strongly in Cuba than in most other countries in Latin America. Under the influence of the US, the role of Protestant churches also grew.

When Fidel Castro was in power, the practice of religion was initially banned. It was not until 1992 that the communist regime enshrined religious freedom in the constitution.

But even today, many believers feel they are being patronized. At the same time, the Catholic Church in Cuba is seen as an important bridge builder between Cuban civil society and the regime.

But the Vatican still views homosexuality as a sin, despite the presence of Pope Francis, who is seen as much more liberal than his predecessors. And other communities of faith in Cuba, too, are far less open to the LGBTQI+ community than elsewhere.

But even in Cuba, the MCC remains faithful to its worldwide credo of providing people with a spiritual home regardless of their sexual orientation or identity, as the chair of the Cuban MMCC branch, Yivi Cruz, told DW. "Our church is open to all people, but above all to those who have been excluded from or even hurt by other churches," she said.

According to the parent organization, there are MCC congregations in 37 countries on all the inhabited continents. In Cuba, there are three, with the first established in 2015. The only condition that members have to fulfil to be accepted into the congregation is baptism.

But at the MCC church, even people who are unbaptized can take part in Communion, the main sacrament of Protestant communities of faith. In Cuba, these are mostly adherents of African Cuban faiths like Santeria, a widespread religion that has roots in voodoo. "We are a radically inclusive church," says Cruz. "We don't exclude anyone — not because of their gender, not because of their skin color and not because of their religion, either."


The Santeria religion combines Christian elements with African spiritism

Going against the political tide

"I believe that the MCC is an example of respect and community spirit in society even beyond religious issues," said the Cuban journalist Eileen Sosin Martinez, who has written about the MCC in Cuba for the government-critical website openDemocracy. "It offers a space for resistance and hope by including all people" at a time when religious fundamentalism is experiencing a boom in Cuba, she told DW.

Martinez was alluding to the debate about same-sex marriage that is currently going on in Cuba. Before the reform of the constitution in 2019, the Cuban LGBTQI+ community had hoped that the Havana regime would make marriage for all a constitutional right. Various churches objected to the idea; the MCC supported it. In the end, the issue was not included in the constitution. Now the community hopes that same-sex marriage will be enshrined in the Family Code, which is to be amended in 2021.

Whatever decision is taken, the MCC will not let itself be restricted, says Yivi Cruz. "We celebrate weddings for all those who want them, because love must not be a privilege," the pastor says. The congregation also campaigns on other social and political issues, such as education on sexual health and environmental protection.

Cruz says the aim is to found more congregations in Cuba. "We want to be present wherever our liberating theology is needed," she said.

This article was adapted from German