Barack Obama: president, Nobel laureate, and now an Emmy winner



Issued on: 04/09/2022 - 

A TOUCH OF GREY

Former US president Barack Obama attends the premiere of the Netflix film "Descendant," which his production company helped finance, during the Martha's Vineyard African-American Film Festival on August 05, 2022 

Arturo Holmes GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File

Washington (AFP) – Hollywood newcomer Barack Obama was awarded an Emmy for narrating his Netflix documentary series "Our Great National Parks," the Television Academy announced Saturday.

The former two-term US president had already won a pair of Grammy Awards -- for audio versions of his memoirs "The Audacity of Hope" and "Dreams from My Father" -- so he now only needs an Oscar and a Tony to complete the estimable EGOT.

According to an Entertainment Weekly tracker, only 17 people have achieved an EGOT, including Mel Brooks, Whoopie Goldberg, Audrey Hepburn and -- most recently -- Jennifer Hudson.

One other president had already been awarded an Emmy -- Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956 -- although his was an honorary award.

After leaving office in 2017, both Obama and his wife Michelle have each written best-selling memoirs, and in addition to their non-profit foundation, have established a production company which has inked a major deal with Netflix, reportedly worth tens of millions of dollars.

Their company's first documentary for the streaming service, "American Factory," won the Oscar for best documentary feature and an Emmy for directing, though the awards went to the filmmakers and not to the Obamas themselves.

Obama's successor to the presidency, Donald Trump, did not win an Emmy for his reality competition show "The Apprentice," although he was nominated twice.

Obama also received the Nobel Peace Prize after his 2008 presidential election win, for his "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."

© 2022 AFP

Film opens debate on spy who leaked US nuke plans to Russia

Sat, September 3, 2022 


The little-known story of a teenage scientist who passed US nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union is the subject of a new documentary that premiered at the Venice Film Festival this week.

"A Compassionate Spy", by celebrated US filmmaker Steve James, hopes to reignite debate about nuclear weapons at a time of rising geopolitical tensions.

"Climate change and other issues have taken our attention away from that threat but it's always been there and it's coming back," James told AFP in Venice.

Ted Hall was just 19 when he was recruited to work on the top-secret Manhattan Project during World War II that led to the creation of the world's first nuclear weapon.

Sympathetic to the Communist cause, and fearing a future in which only the US had the bomb, Hall decided to pass designs to Moscow.

The story has been largely forgotten, even though Hall came clean in the last years of his life in the 1990s.

"Many people will no doubt conclude that he should not have done it, that his fears of the US becoming fascist or the US pre-emptively striking the Soviet Union were not grounded," said James, who is known especially for his landmark 1994 documentary "Hoop Dreams".

"But there's no question he did it for the right reasons -- he didn't do it for profit or fame, he did it because he had a genuine fear of what the US is capable of.

"And ultimately, we're the only ones who have dropped a nuclear bomb so it's not an unreasonable fear."

Although the FBI long suspected Hall of espionage, they were never able to find conclusive evidence.

But the tension for him and his family was almost unbearable, especially when two other spies, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, were executed in the US in 1953.

The film makes clear the vastly different attitudes towards Russians in 1944, when the Soviet Union was a wartime ally, seen as heroically standing up to Nazism.

Hall later said he would not have done it had he known about the crimes of Joseph Stalin at the time.

"Maybe he was wilfully naive," said James. "But we have to remember, he was so young."

er/gw

‘A period of repression’: Iran’s crackdown on filmmakers escalates

Bahar MAKOOI - Yesterday 

One year after ultraconservative President Ebrahim Raisi came to power, Iranian authorities are targeting the country's cinema, an industry that includes directors Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof who are both icons abroad. Their arrests in July reflect the pressure that filmmakers and actors are under.

The Iranian film community has been asking "who will be next?" ever since Panahi and Rasoulof were arrested in July in Tehran.

Panahi, who was sentenced to six years in prison in 2010 for "spreading anti-regime propaganda", is one of Iran’s most celebrated filmmakers. Most notably, he won the Golden Bear in Berlin for "Taxi Tehran" in 2015 and three years later, the screenplay prize at Cannes for "3 Faces". For his part, Rasoulof won the Golden Bear in 2020 for "There is no evil", and the prize in the "Un Certain Regard" category in Cannes for his feature "A Man of Integrity" in 2017. Both filmmakers are very well known and their arrests have been publicised abroad, but other directors have also been touched by the wave of repression that has hit Iranian cinema in recent months.

"This wave of arrests did not start with Panahi and Rasoulof," says Asal Bagheri, a teacher-researcher at Cergy-Paris University and a specialist in Iranian cinema. A few days before the Cannes festival in May, a dozen documentary filmmakers were arrested, including Mina Keshavarz and Firouzeh Khosravani, two directors who are regularly invited to France and awarded prizes at international festivals.

Bagheri fears that "this is only the beginning", as other filmmakers have also been put under pressure. Majid Barzegar and Mohsen Amir-Yousefi, two documentary filmmakers, received a summons from the Iranian justice system at the end of August.

"We are entering a period of repression that is damaging to culture," says the Iranian film specialist.

The team behind "Leila’s Brothers" under pressure

The team behind Saeed Roostaee's film, "Leila’s Brothers", which was well received at the festival and is currently showing in French cinemas, found itself in trouble following its return from Cannes.

Not only has the film, which takes a no-holds-barred look at the ravages of Iran's economic crisis, been banned in the country, but its cast and crew have also been under duress. One of the lead actors, Navid Mohammadzadeh, has had several plays suspended.

"In his film, Saeed Roostaee managed to play very intelligently with the red lines, but the film’s release at Cannes, at a time when the country has been going through a serious social crisis, has put the Iranian authorities on edge," says Bagheri.

Beyond the film's political aspect, "certain behaviour at Cannes displeased the authorities" adds the researcher. "In Iran, when a film is judged for its morality, this not only includes the film’s content but also everything that happens around it, including the attitude and statements of actors and directors in the media, especially abroad."

A joyful Mohammadzadeh kissed his wife on the steps of Cannes in front of the cameras, for the whole world to see. The Iranian authorities saw this sign of affection as immoral, even though the two artists are married.

Actress Taraneh Alidoosti, famous for her roles in several films by Asghar Farhadi, is another member of the cast of "Leila’s Brothers" whom authorities targeted. "Extremely popular in Iran, she is one of the leading figures of the #MeToo movement in the Iranian film industry and has a sharp tongue," says Bagheri.

A list of banned filmmakers

The Cinema Organisation of Iran, a body under the authority of the ministry of culture, announced on August 16 that, for the first time, a list of banned filmmakers would soon be made public. Although nothing has been decided yet, Alidoosti, whose name may be on the blacklist, has already addressed authorities in a letter posted on Instagram. The actress called the publication of such a list "unfortunate" and "illegal".

Bans were previously imposed on a case-by-case basis, according to judicial convictions of the filmmakers, or, sometimes, unofficially. "But never before have the authorities talked about an official list. This marks a repressive turning point," says Bagheri.

The arrival of Ebrahim Raisi, an ultraconservative cleric who was elected president in June 2021, has a lot to do with this. "The cultural community knew that repressive measures would increase once the ultraconservative government was in place. This is reminiscent of the darkest hours of the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad era (2005-2013), during which many documentary filmmakers were arrested."

A cinematic reflection of a society on the verge of implosion

Relations between the authorities and Iranian filmmakers are also tense because the country is currently experiencing one of the worst economic crises in its history with high inflation. Iranians protested en masse in June, accusing the authorities of incompetence and corruption in the city of Abadan after a building collapsed.

"Iranian society has become increasingly vocal and bold," says Bagheri. "But the work of this wave of directors, who constitute a form of 'social cinema', reflects society’s ills. They are simply a reflection of this anger."

Filmmakers are now showing solidarity with the protesters. Some 100 leading Iranian figures, including Panahi, Rasoulof and many artists, signed a letter in June calling on the authorities to "put down their arms" in the face of the Abadan protests.

This is one of the reasons the authorities give for the recent arrests. "Some people are still under pressure and being held accountable. They are being asked to publicly withdraw their support for the petition," says Bagheri. However, none of them have yet agreed to do so.

This article is a translation of the original in French.

Argentina's 'Dirty War' trial on screen at Venice

Issued on: 03/09/2022 - 

'Argentina 1985' star Ricardo Darin and director Santiago Mitre presented their film in competition at the Venice Film Festival

 Tiziana FABI AFP

Venice (AFP) – Argentine director Santiago Mitre still has vivid memories of the 1985 trial that put the country's repressive military junta on the stand for the disappearances of tens of thousands of citizens.

That historic episode -- and the success of Prosecutor Julio Strassera in winning guilty verdicts for many of those responsible -- is now the subject of Mitre's latest film that premiered at the Venice Film Festival Saturday, "Argentina, 1985".

"I still remember the day Strassera read his indictment: the commotion in the courtroom, the emotion of my parents, the streets finally able to celebrate something that wasn't a soccer game, the idea of justice as an act of healing," said Mitre.

An estimated 30,000 people disappeared during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship, whose "Dirty War" against opponents unleashed a wave of kidnappings, torture, rapes and murder.

The film traces the prosecutors as they take on the uphill challenge of putting the military ringleaders on trial, relying on an energetic team of idealistic novices while facing intimidation and threats.

"This story touched me deeply and gave me the desire to make a film about justice... based on facts that really happened," said Mitre.

The film, in which moments of droll humour interrupt its more serious subject matter, is at its most moving when witnesses take the stand, one by one, to testify to the horrors they suffered in secret torture centres across Argentina.

Among the most atrocious, one woman testifies how she was forced to give birth handcuffed and blindfolded in the car of her torturers, her baby tumbling to the car's floor after delivery.

Some 400 babies were born in captivity and illegally handed over to others, according to the rights organisation Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo.

Since the resumption of the dictatorship's trials in the mid-2000s -- after more than a decade of amnesty laws and other controversial measures -- some 1,060 people have been convicted of crimes against humanity.

Most recently in July, the Argentine judiciary sentenced 10 former military and police officers to life imprisonment for homicide, kidnapping, torture and rape.

© 2022 AFP


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Money transfer firms replace banks in crisis-hit Lebanon


Elie Wehbe and Jonathan Sawaya
Sat, September 3, 2022 


Like many people in crisis-hit Lebanon, Elias Skaff used to wait for hours to withdraw cash at the bank but now prefers money transfer companies as trust in lenders has evaporated.

Anyone who relies on traditional banks to receive their money "will die 100 times before cashing it", said Skaff, 50, who has survived Lebanon's three-year-old economic downturn with the help of US dollar payments from a relative abroad.

Once the flagship of Lebanon's economy, the banking sector is now widely despised and avoided after banks barred depositors from accessing their savings, stopped offering loans and closed hundreds of branches and slashed thousands of jobs.

Last month, a local man was widely cheered as a folk hero after he stormed a Beirut bank with a rifle and held employees and customers hostage for hours to demand some of his $200,000 in frozen savings to pay hospital bills for his sick father.

Increasingly, as Lebanon's deep crisis shows no sign of abating, money transfer agencies are filling the gap, also offering currency exchange, credit card and tax payment services and even setting up wedding gift registries.

Skaff said he now receives his money via a Beirut branch of Western Union's Lebanese agent OMT, which says it operates more than 1,200 branches nationwide and handles 80 percent of money transfers outside the Lebanese banking sector.

"We create services similar to those that banks provide at the request of our customers," said OMT spokesman Naji Abou Zeid.

Lebanon has been battered by its worst-ever economic crisis since the financial sector went into meltdown in 2019. The local currency has lost more than 90 percent of its value on the black market, as poverty and unemployment have soared.

Angry protesters have often targeted banks, trashing their ATM machines with rocks and spray cans.

"We can't even withdraw a penny" from the bank, said 45-year-old Alaa Sheikhani, a customer standing in line at an OMT branch.

"How are we supposed to trust them with our money?"

- Surviving on remittances -

Elie, 36, who recently got married, said he used Whish Money, a Lebanese money transfer firm, to set up his wedding gift registry, something he said saved wedding guests time, hassle and money in fees.

"Rather than waiting for hours at the bank, which is often crowded, they can hand over the money to an agency," said the man who asked not to be fully named. "In terms of time saved and costs, it's incomparable."

Whish Money's marketing director Dina Daher said the company is winning customers by charging "zero fees" on Lebanese pound transfers.

Some companies are now even paying salaries through money transfer companies instead of banks.

"When the crisis began, we were forced to pay salaries in cash, and it was a waste of time," because accountants had to count out large bundles of banknotes, said Rachelle Bou Nader, a human resources manager.

But now her firm, sporting goods retailer Mike Sport, pays its employees through Whish, allowing them to "withdraw their salary easily, in instalments, and free of charge", said Bou Nader.

Sami Nader, director of the Levant Institute for Strategic Affairs, said remittances from the Lebanese diaspora have become crucial to help families weather the crushing economic crisis.

"Today, a young Lebanese employee living abroad won't hesitate to send $100 to his parents because this sum now makes a difference," he said.

Lebanese banks have drastically increased fees on the few services they still offer -- including foreign currency transfers, now their only meaningful source of income -- said Nader, who added that this has further fuelled the exodus to money transfer companies.

About 250,000 residents of Lebanon received remittances in the first half of 2022, according to OMT, up eight percent from the same period last year.

The World Bank has reported that Lebanon received $6.6 billion in remittances in 2021, one of the highest levels in the Middle East and North Africa.

elw-jos/aya/dwo/fz/lg

Norway’s future CO2 cemetery takes shape

A photo taken on April 24, 2022 in Oygarden near Bergen, Norway, shows the construction site for a terminal which will collect liquefied carbon dioxide CO2. (AFP)

The future terminal is to pump tons of liquefied carbon dioxide captured from the top of factory chimneys across Europe into cavities deep below the seabed

Climate experts see the technique, called carbon capture and storage, as a means to partially reduce emissions from fossil-fuel-based industries

OYGARDEN, Norway: On the shores of an island off Norway’s North Sea coast, engineers are building a burial ground for unwanted greenhouse gas.

The future terminal is to pump tons of liquefied carbon dioxide captured from the top of factory chimneys across Europe into cavities deep below the seabed.

The project in the western municipality of Oygarden aims to prevent the gas from entering the atmosphere and contributing to global warming.

It “is the world’s first open-access transport and storage infrastructure, allowing any emitter that has captured his CO2 emissions to deliver that CO2 for safe handling, transport and then permanent storage,” project manager Sverre Overa told AFP.

As the planet struggles to meet its climate targets, some climate experts see the technique, called carbon capture and storage, or CCS, as a means to partially reduce emissions from fossil-fuel-based industries.

FRACKING BY ANY OTHER NAME
Norway is the biggest hydrocarbon producer in Western Europe, but it also boasts the best CO2 storage prospects on the continent, especially in its depleted North Sea oil fields.

The government has financed 80 percent of the infrastructure, putting 1.7 billion euros ($1.7 billion) on the table as part of a wider state plan to develop the technology.

A cement factory and a waste-to-energy plant in the Oslo region are set to send their CO2 to the site.
But the most original feature of the project is on the commercial side: inviting foreign firms to send their CO2 pollution to be buried out of harm’s way.

Using CCS to curb carbon pollution is not a new idea, but despite generous subsidies the technology has never taken off, mainly because it is so costly.

One of the world’s largest carbon capture facilities, at the Petra Nova coal-fired plant in Texas, was mothballed in 2020 because it was not economical.

There are only a couple of dozen operational CCS projects around the world, according to the industry-run Global CCS Institute.

But the failure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in line with Paris Agreement goals and a massive influx of government subsidies have breathed new life into the technology.

Energy giants Equinor, TotalEnergies and Shell have set up a partnership — dubbed Northern Lights — which will be the world’s first cross-border CO2 transport and storage service at its scheduled launch in 2024.

A pipeline will inject the liquefied CO2 into geological pockets 2,600 meters below the ocean floor, and the idea is that it will remain there for good.

On Monday, the Northern Lights partners announced a first cross-border commercial agreement.

From 2025, it is to ensure 800,000 tons of CO2 are captured each year at a plant in the Netherlands owned by Norwegian fertilizer manufacturer Yara, then shipped to Oygarden and stored there.

On Tuesday, two energy firms — Norway’s oil and gas giant Equinor and Germany’s Wintershall Dea — announced a project to take carbon dioxide captured in Germany to the Norwegian offshore storage site.

If confirmed, the partnership between Equinor and Wintershall Dea could involve building a 900-kilometer (560-mile) pipeline connecting a CO2 collection facility in northern Germany with storage sites in Norway by 2032.

A similar project with Belgium is already in the works.

In its first phase, the Northern Lights scheme will be able to process 1.5 million tons of CO2 per year, then later between five and six million tons.

But that is just a tiny fraction of annual carbon emissions across Europe.

The European Union emitted 3.7 billion tons of greenhouse gases in 2020, according to the European Environment Agency.

Many climate experts warn carbon capture is no silver bullet for the climate crisis.

Critics caution that CCS could prolong fossil fuel extraction just as the world is trying to turn toward clean and renewable energy.

Greenpeace Norway’s Halvard Raavand said the campaign group had always opposed the practice.

“In the beginning it was very easy to oppose all kinds of CCS (carbon capture and storage) and now because of the lack of climate action it’s of course a more difficult debate to be in,” he said.

“This money should instead be spent on developing (a) proper solution that we know (works) and that could reduce the electricity bills for regular people, such as insulating homes or solar panels.”

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for CCS 

‘They would have preferred hell’: The Battle of Stalingrad, 80 years on

Stéphanie TROUILLARD - 22 Aug, 2022

The Second World War’s deadliest battle – and one of the most brutal of all time – started on August 23, 1942, when Adolf Hitler’s forces went all out to seize the city bearing Joseph Stalin’s name. If ever a battle was like an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object, it was Stalingrad. The USSR finally prevailed amid inhuman circumstances, setting the stage for the moment three years later when Soviet troops raised their flag over the Reichstag as Berlin smouldered.


‘They would have preferred hell’: The Battle of Stalingrad, 80 years on© AP

The most vivid chronicler of Stalingrad was the Soviet novelist and journalist Vasily Grossman, especially in his Tolstoyan epic Life and Fate. Countless lines jump from the pages of Grossman’s masterpiece, but the starkest phrase leaps from his diary: “It is like Pompeii”.

Even for people unfamiliar with the details of World War II, the battle’s ferocity and consequence give the word Stalingrad an “electric charge”, as British historian Dominic Sandbrook put it on the podcast The Rest is History.

There were two other pivotal moments in 1942, the year the Second World War’s dynamic shifted in the Allies’ favour. The British turned the tide for the Western Allies against Nazi Germany when Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery’s forces smashed Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps in the Battle of El Alamein in Egypt in October-November. The US turned the tide against Japan in the Battle of Midway in June. But neither El Alamein nor Midway quite carries the electrifying resonance of Stalingrad.

It was not the first time a brutal battle was waged for control of this city, a vital port on the banks of Russia’s national river, the Volga. During the Russian Civil War, Red and White Russian forces waged a two-year tussle for control of the city, then named Tsaritsyn. Such was its significance that a senior Bolshevik, one Joseph Stalin, was sent to ensure victory for the Red Army. Tsaritsyn fell to the White Army in 1919. But strengthened by supplies from Moscow, the Red Army launched a fierce onslaught to retake the city and sent their enemies fleeing to Crimea – playing a key role in the Bolsheviks' eventual victory in the war.

Wehrmacht troops approach one of the industrial suburbs of Stalingrad, Russia on October 9, 1942. © AP

‘War of annihilation’

The city was renamed in 1925 to honour Stalin for his role in that pivotal victory. Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, his “war of annihilation”, in June 1941. The Nazis seized colossal amounts of Soviet territory in a short period of time. They trapped its second city, Leningrad, in a brutal siege starting in September 1941, which its residents would suffer under for more than two years and two months. They attempted to capture Moscow in October 1941 and January 1942, in vicious battles that nonetheless set the stage for Soviet counteroffensives.

The most obvious course of action for any invading army is to devote as many resources as possible to capturing a country’s capital. But in the summer of 1942, Hitler sent the Wehrmacht to the south.

“For Hitler the priority was not Moscow, which might not have led to Soviet defeat, but the resources of southern Ukraine and the oil of the Caucasus region,” explained Richard Overy, a professor of history at Exeter University and the author of several books on World War II, including Russia’s War. “Hitler insisted against the instinct of his generals, because he saw economics as critical in warfare. Germany would gain essential resources, while the Red Army would be cut off from production and oil and could then be defeated more easily.”

Stalin was convinced the Nazis would go for Moscow again after their failure the previous winter. So he concentrated the Red Army around the capital, leaving them outnumbered in the south where the Wehrmacht pushed on.

On August 23, 1942, German soldiers reached the north of Stalingrad, the smoking industrial city stretching for miles down the banks of the Volga. They bombarded the city into rubble. But this hindered their attempts to take the whole city, explained French historian François Kersaudy, author of Stalingrad: “A city in ruins is actually a lot easier to defend than a city where all the buildings are still standing; the Germans found it increasingly difficult to dislodge the Soviets from their positions in this landscape of rubble.”

The desolation at Stalingrad, Russia on November 22, 1942, where, with the coming of winter, Russian defenders started making local counterattacks. © AP

‘Soviet strategic cunning’

The Wehrmacht took 90 percent of the city, but the Soviets held on to Stalingrad’s industrial district in the north as the Germans struggled with urban warfare. “The German troops had never fought in cities before; they were used to large manoeuvres in open terrain,” Kersaudy noted. “And they faced two more big problems throughout the battle: the Red Army could supply their positions through tunnels and sewers, while the Soviets kept pummelling German positions with artillery from the other side of the Volga – which the Wehrmacht was unable to cross.”

The carnage inflicted horrendous suffering on civilians and soldiers alike. “Conditions for civilians were indeed dire, though many were evacuated as the battle continued, or trekked out to the surrounding rural areas,” Overy noted. “Fear was greater on the German side,” he continued, “as the Soviet opponent struck at night or hid in ambush. Soviet soldiers certainly feared their own side if they faltered, but for them there was only the savage defence of the city while many German soldiers understood they were invaders trapped by their leader’s strategic incompetence.”

Indeed, Hitler persisted in his push to take the city bearing Stalin’s name – a colossal symbolic prize – but the Wehrmacht was suffering from poor co-ordination between different units and supply lines stretched to breaking point, more than a thousand miles across interminable steppes away from Germany. In November 1942, the Soviets seized the advantage with their counteroffensive, Operation Uranus, orchestrated by Red Army Chief of Staff Georgy Zhukov and Deputy Defence Minister Aleksandr Vasilevsky. It was a classic pincer movement, trapping the Wehrmacht in the city they had destroyed, hemming them in from the northwest and southeast.

On November 23, 1942, the two Red Army pincers met at Kalach, west of Stalingrad. German General Friedrich Paulus’s 6th Army was trapped. But Hitler refused to let the 300,000 exhausted soldiers retreat. “They were caught there in absolute hell, in the cold, completely unprovided for,” Kersaudy said. “The Germans tried to supply them via land routes from the south and even by plane, but it didn’t work.”

“The battle was won not just because the Germans had weak and long supply lines and a shortage of equipment, but because of Soviet strategic cunning,” Overy pointed out. “Operation Uranus, cutting through the stretched German lines in November to encircle Stalingrad was the first time in the war that the Red Army had got the strategy right. The Germans in winter weather were too weak to respond and had to retreat. Paulus was left to himself with no hope. The Soviets also much improved their use of air power and radio communication, and were already outproducing the Germans by a wide margin. Hitler underestimated all this and assumed the Red Army was on its last legs.”

A picture taken in 1942 of Soviet soldiers during the Battle of Stalingrad. AFP

‘The border of icy death’

But the Wehrmacht was on its last legs. It is astonishing that it lasted in Stalingrad as long as it did. German writer Heinrich Gerlach described the extreme conditions the 6th Army suffered in his autobiographical novel The Forsaken Army: “Walking mechanically, like ghosts, they skirt along the border of icy death. Here and there, one of them crosses it, with a wobbly step, falling without a sound. The torso tries to straighten up one last time, then collapses, as the hand that limply supports the heavy head falls. The body does not move any more. The others stumble over it.”

For all their exhaustion, and despite their weak and overextended supply lines, the Wehrmacht clung on ferociously in Stalingrad. It took another Soviet offensive, launched in January 1943, to finish off the 6th Army. Paulus surrendered on January 31, the day after he was appointed field marshal. In some 200 days, the battle claimed more than 2 million lives. Along with the British victory at El Alamein, Stalingrad was one of two battles that robbed the Wehrmacht of their momentum and turned it back on them, as the Allies charged like a juggernaut to that moment when the red flag was hoisted above the Reichstag and Nazism was consigned to history.

A picture taken in December 1942 in Khutor Orehovo, northwest of Stalingrad, of the cemetery of German soldiers killed during the battle. AFP

The USSR’s communist tyranny would soon be anathema to the Western Allies, once the common Nazi enemy was out of the way. But the significance of the victory and the heroism and suffering of the Red Army mean that “electric charge” of the name Stalingrad still coruscates in the minds of everyone interested in World War II. At the time, King George VI honoured the Red Army’s lionhearted victory by sending Stalin a “Sword of Stalingrad” as a British tribute.

“Stalingrad was unique in the Second World War, in terms of duration, the number of soldiers killed, the relentlessness, the significance,” Kersaudy put it. “It was terrifying on both sides. They both had to carry on fighting until the very end. The people present there would have preferred hell itself.”

Russia bids farewell to Gorbachev in low-key funeral snubbed by Putin

Issued on: 03/09/2022

05:56 Honour guards stand by the coffin of Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, during a memorial service at the Column Hall of the House of Unions in Moscow on September 3, 2022. 

 Alexander Nemenov/Pool, Reuters

Text by: NEWS WIRES

Muscovites lined up near the Kremlin on Saturday to pay their respects to Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet leader who was widely admired in the West for his reforms and who lived long enough to see Russia's leadership roll back much of that change.

Gorbachev, who died on Tuesday aged 91, was set to be buried without state honours or President Vladimir Putin in attendance.

He was however granted a public send-off, with authorities allowing Russians to view his coffin in the imposing Hall of Columns, within sight of the Kremlin, where previous Soviet leaders have been mourned.

Pallbearers hoisted Gorbachev's wooden coffin, covered in a tricolour Russian flag, and placed it in the centre of the hall, where a soft recording of melancholic music from the film "Schindler's List" played in the background.

It was little surprise that Putin, a long-time KGB intelligence officer who has called the Soviet Union's collapse a "geopolitical catastrophe", denied Gorbachev full state honours and said his schedule did not allow him to attend the funeral.

Putin, however, paid his respects to Gorbachev alone on Thursday and the Kremlin said its guard of honour would provide an "element" of a state occasion at the funeral for Gorbachev, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 for his role in ending the Cold War.

01:46

Gorbachev became a hero to many in the West for allowing eastern Europe to shake off more than four decades of Soviet communist control, letting East and West Germany reunite, and forging arms control treaties with the United States.

But when the 15 Soviet republics seized on the same freedoms to demand their independence, Gorbachev was powerless to prevent the collapse of the Union in 1991, six years after he had become its leader.

For that, and the economic chaos that his "perestroika" liberalisation programme unleashed, many Russians could not forgive him.

Hungary's Orban to attend

The many Western heads of state and government who normally would have attended will be absent on Saturday, kept away by the chasm in relations between Moscow and the West opened up by Putin's move to send troops into Ukraine in February.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a conservative nationalist and one of the few European leaders to have good relations with Putin, will attend the funeral, spokesman Zoltan Kovacs wrote on Twitter.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told RIA news agency that Putin had no plans to meet with Orban during his visit to Moscow.

Several Russian officials and cultural figures, including senior lawmaker Konstantin Kosachyov and singer Alla Pugachyova, also paid their respects to Gorbachev's family, who were seated left of his open coffin.

Gorbachev's funeral strikes a sharp contrast with the national day of mourning and state funeral in Moscow's principal cathedral that was granted in 2007 to former Russian President Boris Yeltsin, who was instrumental in sidelining Gorbachev as the Soviet Union fell apart and who later hand-picked Putin as his own successor.

After the ceremony Gorbachev will, however, be buried like Yeltsin in Moscow's Novodevichy cemetery, alongside his adored wife Raisa, who died 23 years ago.

On entering the Kremlin in 2000, Putin wasted little time in rolling back the political plurality that had developed from Gorbachev's policy of "glasnost", or openness, and slowly began rebuilding Moscow's influence over many of its lost republics.

Gorbachev's long-time interpreter and aide said this week that Russia's actions in Ukraine had left the former leader "shocked and bewildered" in the final months of his life.

"It's not just the operation that started on Feb. 24, but the entire evolution of relations between Russia and Ukraine over the past years that was really, really a big blow to him. It really crushed him, emotionally and psychologically," Pavel Palazhchenko told Reuters in an interview.

(REUTERS)

Mikhail Gorbachev funeral draws thousands in Moscow

Scores of mourners streamed into central Moscow on Saturday to bid farewell to Mikhail Gorbachev. Though admired in the West, the late Soviet leader is far less popular in his home country.

A long line of people began forming in central Moscow on Saturday morning, past the city's famous Bolshoi theater and leading into the House of the Unions' Hall of Columns, where mourners paid their respects to the last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev. Ceremonial guards watched over Gorbachev's open casket as they filed past.

Though no state funeral, the ceremony certainly felt like one. And indeed, previous leaders received similarly opulent funerals in the Hall of Columns, near the Kremlin, since the end of the Soviet Union.  

No state burial

Many of those who come to pay their respects hold Gorbachev in high esteem. Viktoria, a 49-year-old Muscovite, says his tenure represented the best six years of her life. "We came to expect freedom, and the best possible outcome; unfortunately, we could not make use of all this, as they took away all those freedoms." An elderly man nearby agreed, telling DW: "Sadly, we were unable to preserve his legacy. Everything went wrong. This pains everyone who reveres Mikhail Gorbachev."

Scores of mourners wait to pay their respects to Gorbachev

Not everyone in Russia, however, feels such admiration for the late leader. It was in Gorbachev's time in office, after all, that the Soviet Union collapsed. This tension became clear when one mourner told DW that one should not speak ill of the dead, and that "not everything was bad during Gorbachev's rule."

Many Russians across the nation feel conflicted about Gorbachev. They appreciate that he granted them freedoms they could previously only dream of, opened up the Soviet Union and changed many people's lives for the better. And yet, many believe this came at too great a cost. Indeed, the vast majority of mourners DW spoke to said Gorbachev had allowed their "good old" Soviet Union fall apart.

While many Russians feel nostalgic about the Soviet Union and blame Gorbachev for its demise, people in the former Soviet satellite states accuse him of having refused them independence for too long.  

Many remember how the Soviet leader suppressed pro-independence movements in Georgia, Latvia, and above all Lithuania in the early 1990s. It was there, on January 13, 1991, that Soviet forces killed 13 people and injured hundreds in what became known as Lithuania's Bloody Sunday. Until recently, Lithuanian prosecutors were still trying to bring Gorbachev to justice, though the trial has now been shelved.

Gorbachev likened to prison warden

Lithuania's Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis drew attention to this grim chapter when he tweeted: "Lithuanians will not glorify Gorbachev. We will never forget the simple fact that his army murdered civilians to prolong his regime's occupation of our country. His soldiers fired on our unarmed protestors and crushed them under his tanks. That is how we will remember him."

Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda compared the late Soviet leader to a prison warden who wanted to implemented minor reforms instead of overseeing a major overhaul.

Gorbachev is fondly remembered in Germany

He said these small reforms were not enough, as "prisoners wanted to break free. They did that but against the will of Mikhail Gorbachev."

In Latvia, Gorbachev's death sparked similarly critical reactions. Several people were killed in January 1991 in the capital Riga, when Soviet police prevented protesters from storming the government building.

On Twitter, Latvian President Egils Levits said his country had gained independence from the Soviet Union against Gorbachev's will. This was echoed by Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics, who tweeted that the "collapse of the USSR was the best moment of the 20th century. The end of the Cold War was great but the killing of people in Tbilisi, Vilnius, Riga is also part of his [Gorbachev's] legacy. It is up to the History to judge him."

Gorbachev evidently continues to divide opinions, with some seeing him as a visionary, others as the destroyer of the Soviet Union - and still others as a tragic hero.

This article was translated from German.

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By:Samuel Bernard|Hannane FERDJANI

In June 2020, a military base was attacked by jihadists in Kafolo, in north-eastern Ivory Coast near the border with Burkina Faso, leaving 14 soldiers dead. Other attacks followed and the Ivorian authorities have been working to improve the security situation. Our correspondent Samuel Bernard was able to join the army on anti-terror patrols and meet local residents. In this border region, the Fulani people claim to be subject to special surveillance and denounce what they consider discriminatory measures. Security forces deny targeting any specific group in their fight against terrorism.

Chile expected to reject overhaul of dictatorship-era constitution


Paulina ABRAMOVICH, Paula BUSTAMANTE
Sun, September 4, 2022 


Chileans head to the polls on Sunday to choose whether to adopt a new constitution that aims to shift its market-driven society into one that is more welfare-based, while enacting broad institutional reforms.

Although Chileans previously voted in droves for a rewrite of the current constitution -- adopted in 1980 during Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship -- opinion polls suggest the new text will be rejected.

Social upheaval that began in 2019 as tens of thousands of people demanded a more equitable society provided the impulse to overhaul the constitution, but several clauses of the 388-article proposed draft have proved controversial.

"I will reject it because it was a constitution that started badly," Maria Angelica Ebnes, a 66-year-old homemaker, told AFP in Santiago.

"It was forced, through violence."

In October 2019, protests sprung up mostly in the capital led by students initially angered by a proposed metro fare hike.

Those demonstrations spiraled into wider discontent with the country's neoliberal economic system as well as growing inequality.

Although polls predict the new constitution will be rejected, those in favor are still holding out hope, not least because of what they see on the streets.

On Thursday night, an estimated 500,000 people turned out for the official closing of the "approve" campaign in Santiago, whereas no more than 500 people did so for the "reject" gathering.

"People will go out to vote en masse and the polls will be wrong once again," said Juan Carlos Latorre, a legislator in the ruling coalition of leftist President Gabriel Boric, who supports the new text.

More than 15 million Chileans are eligible to vote in the compulsory referendum.

Chief among their concerns is the prominence given to the country's Indigenous peoples, who make up close to 13 percent of the 19 million population.

Proposals to legalize abortion and protect the environment as well as natural resources like water, which some say is exploited by private mining companies, have also garnered much attention.


The new constitution would also overhaul Chile's government, replacing the Senate with a less powerful "chamber of regions," and requiring women to hold at least half of positions in public institutions.

- 5% possibility of 'approve' -

While recent polls have had the "reject" vote leading by as much as 10 percentage points, sociologist Marta Lagos believes "approve" may yet carry the day.

In the vast Santiago metropolitan area, the majority of people appear likely to vote in favor of the new constitution, even though some parts of the city -- particularly in northern and southern areas -- are largely against the changes, Lagos said.

"There's always the possibility that all the polls are wrong and effectively the advantage for 'approve' in Santiago could compensate for the disadvantage in the north and south," Lagos told AFP.

"I don't think this possibility is more than five percent, and 'reject' is 95 percent likely to win."

But what she is certain about is that "the gap will not be 10 points like the three polls published in the last two weeks say."

Only a simple majority is required for the new constitution to be adopted.

Around 40 world-renowned economists and political scientists expressed their support for the new constitution in the last week.

Yet some fear the new text would generate instability and uncertainty, which could then harm the economy.

"What you can see is a certain conservatism in the Chilean electorate that we haven't seen for years," said Lagos.

It was certainly muted last December when millennial Boric was elected president.
- Controversial Indigenous clauses -

Those in favor of the new constitution say it will prompt major changes in a conservative country marked by social and ethnic tensions and lay the foundation for a more egalitarian society.

They say the current constitution gave private enterprise free reign over crucial industries and created a fertile breeding ground for the rich to prosper and the poor to struggle.

Although the 1980 constitution has undergone several reforms since it was adopted, it retains the stigma of having been introduced during a dictatorship.

Chileans have already voted once to rewrite the constitution and then again to elect the representatives to do so, making Sunday's vote the third time in just two years that they have gone to the polls over this issue.

The new text was drawn up by a constitutional convention made up of 154 members -- mostly with no political affiliation -- split equally between men and women and with 17 places reserved for Indigenous people.

The resulting proposal recognizes 11 Indigenous peoples and offers them greater autonomy, particularly on judicial issues.

It is the most controversial clause, with some critics accusing the authors of trying to turn the traditionally marginalized Indigenous people into a higher class of citizens.

If accepted, Chile's congress will then start deciding how to apply the new laws.

If the new text is rejected, the current constitution will remain in place.

pb/pa/bc/des/mca/aha

Chile at historic crossroads as country votes on new constitution

Issued on: 04/09/2022 -

01:56A woman casts a sample ballot at a school used as a polling station in a trial vote ahead of the September 4th constitutional referendum in Santiago, Chile September 2, 2022. © Ivan Alvarado, Reuters

Text by: NEWS WIRES


Chileans are set for a historic decision on Sunday: stick with a market-friendly constitution dating back to military dictator Augusto Pinochet or approve a progressive new text that promises to shake up the Andean country's political and social fabric.

The copper-rich country is sharply divided, with polls indicating that the new text will get rejected, despite huge popular support for tearing up the Pinochet-era constitution two years ago in the wake of months of fiery protests against inequality.

The vote is a crossroads for Chile, long seen as a bastion of conservatism and market-orientated economic policy, which underpinned decades of growth and stability that also created stark inequality between rich and poor.

"This is about settling a historical debt in Chile, because despite economic growth and lower poverty, we have outstanding debts to do with inequality and social welfare," said Vlado Mirosevic, spokesperson for the approve campaign.

Mirosevic said the new constitution was key to overturning decades of inequality and put progressive rights and the environment at the heart of the country's social fabric.

Nearly 80% of Chileans voted to draft a new constitution in October 2020. An elected 155-member assembly, consisting of mostly independent and progressive constituents, then began drafting it the following May, completing it earlier this year.

But enthusiasm has waned as Chile's economy has felt the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, spiraling inflation and the currency hitting historic lows. That's hurt support for the constitution and its backer, progressive President Gabriel Boric.

Polls indicate the reject camp holding a near 10 percentage point lead of around 46% to 37%, according to the most recent surveys. Some 17% remain undecided.

Ximena Rincon, a conservative senator campaigning against the new constitution, said people had lost faith in the assembly responsible for drafting the text. Lots of uncertainty and disinformation has bogged down the constitution also.

"The assembly wasn't representative of society," she said, calling for a smaller, more representative assembly to be elected if the new constitution was rejected on Sunday.

'I vote no'

Kenneth Bunker, a political analyst, said Sunday's vote might also act as a referendum on Boric, a young former student protest leader who took office in March and has supported the new constitution.

"There will be people who see the price of gasoline and food, and blame the government over the economy and say that they're the same ones who made the constitution, and so decide 'I vote no'," Bunker said.

Unpredictability remains, however, given the number of undecided voters and a mandatory vote as opposed to previous elections where voting was voluntary.

"That's probably the biggest uncertainty, a lot of people like to extrapolate results from polls," said Rossana Castiglioni, a professor of political science at Diego Portales University.

"But the truth is we know relatively little from this 50%, from this half of the population that abstains from electoral processes."

Boric has said he would launch a new process to draft another constitution if the current one fails on Sunday, while other political factions want to amend the current text. Regardless of the result, experts say Chileans still want the change that they clamored for in 2019-2020.

"People are still waiting for the social agenda that was outlined after the (2019) social uprising, a trend that brought Boric to the presidency," said Axel Callis, a political analyst for pollster TuInfluyes, adding protest anger could be reignited.

"If this doesn't lead to deep changes in terms of social rights, health and pensions, then we're going to be left with an explosive atmosphere."

(REUTERS)