'Not a god': Filmmakers dissect Leonard Cohen through 'Hallelujah'

'A POET, LIKE DAVID'

Author: AFP|Update: 06.09.2022 

Cohen's 'Hallelujah', ignored at first, eventually became a global hit / © AFP/File

A filmmaker duo retracing Leonard Cohen's life through his legendary anthem "Hallelujah" said they were so in awe of the Canadian singer that it took them years of preparation before tackling the documentary.

Presenting "Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song" at the American Film Festival that opened at the weekend in Deauville, France, Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine told AFP they studied Cohen's personal notebooks, rare footage and even his selfies for eight years before making the film.

"When we first thought about the project, and then even when we were first embarking upon it, my feelings about Leonard were that he was a god. You know, it was the great Leonard Cohen," Goldfine said.

"How were we possibly going to do justice to this god?"

Geller and Goldfine approached the life of the singer -- who gave his blessing to the project two years before he died aged 82 in 2016 -- through "Hallelujah", his most famous song, which has acquired cult status in the world of rock.

When Cohen first released the song, tucked away on the "Various Positions" album from 1984, it went almost unnoticed.

But then Bob Dylan performed a cover, followed by The Velvet Underground's John Cale, and Jeff Buckley, and then some 300 artists recording their own versions of "Hallelujah".

"It's looking at Leonard Cohen through the prism of his most famous song," Goldfine said.

- 'He's a human being' -

Focusing on the one song relieved the filmmakers of "the burden of having to do like a cradle to grave by a biography", she said.

Instead, they highlighted "his influences and the parts of Leonard's spiritual journey that illuminated why he was the only person in the universe who could have possibly written 'Hallelujah'", Goldfine said, adding: "The song is so much about everyone's spiritual journey."

Geller and Goldfine, based in San Francisco and whose previous work includes "Ballet Russes" and "Isadora Duncan," acknowledged that obtaining Cohen's blessing was crucial.

"Without that, we would have gotten nowhere," Geller said.

It still took the duo years to access Cohen's notebooks, now owned by his family, which contain detailed insights into the several years it took the singer to get "Hallelujah" right.

As they studied the archives, they also discovered that Cohen had developed an early knack for photographic self-portraits.

"We like to say Leonard was the first selfie taker because he was way ahead of his time, he started taking selfies of himself using this old Polaroid camera, probably going back to the 70s," Goldfine said.

The film also contains a moving scene when a young, nervous Cohen broke off a performance of his first hit "Suzanne" in 1967, choking with stage fright, only to be coaxed back onto the stage by his duet partner, US singer Judy Collins.

The incident added to the filmmakers' growing realisation that even the great Cohen was only human.

"He's a man. He's not a god," Goldfine said. "He's a human being who worked very hard on himself. Every day of his life."

Filtered ferry engines hailed for tackling air pollution

Author: AFP|Update: 06.09.2022 

The ferry will link Marseille and the French island of Corsica / © AFP

A French ferry company has launched what it claims is the first vessel that uses filters to capture almost all air pollutants from the boat's exhaust fumes, sparking praise from campaigners and local authorities.

La Meridionale, based in the southern French port of Marseille, showed off its innovative ship on Monday to the media.

"It's an unprecedented solution, a world first," company chairman Marc Reverchon told reporters on board the blue-and white Piana which sails between Marseille and the French island of Corsica.

The company said the filters captured 99 percent of sulphur oxides emitted by the ferry's four engines, as well as 99.9 percent of particulate matter created from the burning of its heavy fuel.

The filters use technology already found in power stations or incineration plants in which sodium bicarbonate is injected into the exhaust fumes, causing a chemical reaction with the tiny particles produced during the combustion process.

The pollutants can then be captured by a type of industrial air filter that has been around for more than 30 years, company technical director Christophe Seguinot told reporters.

"We didn't have to look too far. We didn't invent anything," Seguinot explained. "The challenge for us was to make it suitable for a marine setting."

The ferry group has an agreement with chemicals supplier Solvay, which will dispose of the toxic filter residue -- with a view to recycling it in the future, Seguinot said.

Heavy fuel oil, also known as bunker fuel, is one of the cheapest but most polluting transportation fuels, resulting in the thick plumes of dirty brown smoke seen above most ships.

It is also high in sulphur which can cause respiratory problems and acid rain.

- Regulation -

Regulations on the amount of sulphur authorised vary, with ultra-clean fuel mandated in areas such as the North Sea and Baltic Sea in Europe, as well as around North American ports.

Marseille, which hosts cruise and container ships as well as ferries, has struggled with increased smog in recent years and the shipping sector is thought to be responsible for a large part of the problem.

"Let's hope that the big polluters follow the example of La Meridionale," Marseille's Socialist mayor Benoit Payan tweeted on Monday after attending the company event.

He has been battling ship operators over the summer with a petition calling for the dirtiest vessels to be barred during peak pollution times.

Shipping companies are under pressure from regulators and tightening industry standards to tackle their emissions of greenhouse gases as well as atmospheric pollutants, but campaigners want faster action.

La Meridionale "is going much further than current regulations require by treating all of their particulate matter," Damien Piga from Atmosud, a regional air quality surveillance group, told AFP.

Some ship owners favour the use of so-called "scrubbing" technology which sees water sprayed into the exhaust fumes, which captures some of the pollutants.

Environmentalists point out that in many cases the water is then discharged into the sea, however.

Other groups are experimenting with engines that run on cleaner liquefied natural gas (LNG) or methanol, while electric and sail powered vessels are also being developed.

Uganda bans 'immoral' festival linked to sex, drugs, LGBTQ

Author: AFP|

Update: 06.09.2022 


The four-day festival brings together artists from across Africa / © AFP/File

Uganda's parliament on Tuesday slapped a ban on a popular music festival, the second time that authorities have taken steps against the annual event over accusations that it promotes sex, drugs and homosexuality.

The four-day Nyege Nyege festival on the banks of the Nile in the southern town of Jinja brings together artists from across Africa to entertain around 10,000 revellers and is usually held in September.

But nine days days before the event was due to resume -- following a pandemic-induced shutdown since 2020 -- parliament said on Twitter that it had "stopped the 'Nyege Nyege' festival, an annual social event scheduled to take place next week".

Uganda's ethics and integrity minister Rose Lilly Akello told reporters that the festival "promotes a lot of immorality and this immorality is something which is not wanted in our country."

Uganda's state minister for tourism, Martin Mugarura, told AFP that the ban would have a destructive impact on the economy, as the travel industry limps back to life after the Covid-19 pandemic.

"Over 8,000 foreign tourists have already booked tickets and were to stay in the country during the duration of the festival and even beyond," he said.

"We hope there is a reversal of this decision," he added.

The festival was banned in 2018 by former ethics minister Simon Lokodo, a fervent Christian and outspoken homophobe, who described it as an orgy of homosexuality, nudity and drugs akin to "devil worship".

But he was forced to lift the ban barely a day later, following outrage on social media.

Lokodo, who died in January, said at the time that the event encouraged "the celebration and recruitment of young people into homosexuality".

"The very name of the festival is provocative. It means 'sex, sex' or urge for sex," he said.

Nyege Nyege means an irresistible urge to dance in the local Luganda language, but it can have a sexual connotation in other languages in the region.

Uganda is notorious for its intolerance of homosexuality -- which is criminalised in the country -- and strict Christian views on sexuality in general.

In 2013 Ugandan lawmakers passed a bill that called for life in prison for people caught having gay sex, although a court later struck down the law.

Last month the government suspended the country's leading gay rights organisation, Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG), accusing it of operating illegally in the East African nation.

Roots rock: Chimpanzees drum to their own signature beats

AFP - 26m ago


The drummers puff out their chests, let out a guttural yell, then step up to their kits and furiously pound out their signature beat so that everyone within earshot can tell who is playing.


Not beating about the bush: Chimpanzees have signature styles when they drum on tree roots, researchers have found© Adrian Soldati

The drum kit is the giant gnarled root of a tree in the Ugandan rainforest -- and the drummer is a chimpanzee.

A new study published Tuesday found that not only do chimpanzees have their own styles -- some preferring straightforward rock beats while others groove to more freeform jazz -- they can also hide their signature sound if they do not want to reveal their location.

The researchers followed the Waibira chimpanzee group in western Uganda's Budongo Forest, recording the drum sessions of seven male chimps and analysing the intervals between beats.

The chimps mostly use their feet, but also their hands to make the sound, which carries more than a kilometre through the dense rainforest.

The drumming serves as a kind of social media, allowing travelling chimpanzees to communicate with each other, said Vesta Eleuteri, the lead author of the study published in the journal Animal Behaviour.

The PhD student said that after just a few weeks in the rainforest she was able to recognise exactly who was drumming.

"Tristan -- the John Bonham of the forest -- makes very fast drums with many evenly separated beats," she said, referring to the legendarily hard-hitting drummer of rock band Led Zeppelin.

Tristan's drumming "is so fast that you can barely see his hands", Eleuteri said.

- Hiding their style -

But other chimps like Alf or Ila make a more syncopated rhythm using a technique in which both their feet hit a root at almost the same time, said British primatologist Catherine Hobaiter, the study's senior author.

The research team was lead by scientists from Scotland's University of St Andrews, and several of the chimpanzees are named after Scottish single malt whiskies, including Ila -- for Caol Ila -- and fellow chimp Talisker.

Hobaiter, who started the habituation of the Waibira group in 2011, said it long been known that chimpanzees drummed.

"But it wasn't until this study that we understood they're using these signature styles when they're potentially looking for other individuals -- when they're travelling, when they're on their own or in a small group," she told AFP.

The researchers also discovered that the chimps sometimes choose not to drum in their signature beat, to avoid revealing their location or identity.

"They have this wonderful flexibility to express their identity and their style, but also to sometimes keep that hidden," Hobaiter said.

- 'A sense of music' -

While plenty of animals produce sounds we think of as music -- such as birdsong -- the research could open the door to the possibility that chimpanzees enjoy music on a level generally thought to only be possible for humans.

"I do think that chimpanzees, like us, potentially have a sense of rhythmicity, a sense of music, something that touches them on an almost emotional level, in the way that we might have a sense of awe when we hear an amazing drum solo or another kind of dramatic musical sound," Hobaiter said.

Most research on the culture of chimpanzees has looked at their tools or food, she said.

"But if we think about human culture we don't think about the tools we use -- we think about how we dress, the music we listen to," she added.

Next the researchers plan to investigate how neighbouring and far-off communities of chimpanzees drum in their own differing styles.

Hobaiter has already been looking at chimpanzees in Guinea, where there are very few trees to drum in the open savannah.

"We've got early hints that they might be throwing rocks against rocks" to make sound, she said.

"Literal rock music in this case."

dl/jv

 

ALBERTA
Blood Tribe study examines impact of racism


The Blood Tribe is releasing a study addressing racism in the area.

The study was conducted by Dr. Gabrielle Lindstrom of Mount Royal University and a Kainai member. It was achieved through the tribal government application for funding from the Alberta Human Rights Commission’s Human Rights Education and Multiculturism Fund to conduct a research project examining the effects of racism on members of the Blood Tribe Community.

The study was conducted over a two-year period with Indigenous and non-Indigenous participants from southern Alberta with assistance from tribal government staff.

The project shows how the issue of racism is complex and deep-rooted, having lasting generational effects, and how steps need to be taken to address the issues many Indigenous people are facing.

“The difficulty with addressing racism is partly due to how it is defined which shapes how it is both talked about and taught about. The definition of racism has typically been controlled by the dominant settler society. However, this research defines racism from a lens of deep experience consistent with a Kainai worldview,” said Lindstrom in a news release.

The Blood Tribe will be working on an implementation plan, Kimmapiiyipitssini – Moving Forward, that will work on external and internal strategies for reaching out to the community for input. Neighbouring communities and municipalities will be provided an opportunity to participate in the work as they address the harmful effects of racism.

“With the implementation plan, hopefully people will not be reluctant. By people, I mean with our neighbours, the municipalities, cities, and the services providers,” said Dorothy First Rider, chair for tribal government and member of the Blood Tribe chief and council.

“They will be able to reflect on what has happened in the past, maybe what they themselves have contributed towards the issue of racism, beginning to address it and say we need to change our outlook on this. Because if somebody isn’t the same colour as us, doesn’t mean that they’re inferior to us. “

First Rider notes that part of the plan will work towards the future through how children are exposed to race and racism.

“One of the prominent factors that was identified in this study was the need to be able to introduce these frank discussions within the school system,” said First Rider.

“We have to quit stereotyping other people. A lot of that, unfortunately, rests on the educational system. Because if we can assist those upcoming students that are going to then transition into the institutions and become professionals, they will be able to assist in changing the worldview,”

First Rider says racism’s history within the Indigenous community has existed since the eras when treaties were signed, the whiskey traders plied their trade, and residential schools operated, and is not something that is just now emerging.

She notes the lasting effects have generational consequences to the growth of a person as a human being.

“Unfortunately, when our people continue to experience racism, that leads to a lack of self-confidence and self-motivation because they themselves will start to see themselves as being inferior,” said First Rider.

“In order to thrive in society and be successful, people need to be able to have support. Building up their confidence and being told, yes you can do this.”

Ryan Clarke, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Lethbridge Herald

On Colombia’s San Andres, a historic church’s roots run deep

By LUIS ANDRES HENAO

yesterday

1 of 11

A man stands at the entrance of First Baptist Church on Colombia's San Andres Island on Sunday, Aug. 21, 2022. The church is a symbol of emancipation and a source of pride for the Raizals, the English-speaking, mostly Protestant inhabitants of San Andres and smaller islands that form an archipelago in the western Caribbean. (AP Photo/Luis Andres Henao)


SAN ANDRES, Colombia (AP) — First Baptist Church was born by a tamarind tree perched on a hill overlooking the turquoise waters of the Caribbean.

Under the tree’s shade, First Baptist’s founder taught English-speaking former slaves and their descendants how to read using the Bible. The tree still stands more than 175 years later — even if crooked after surviving devastating hurricanes.

The church is so crucial to the history of the Colombian island of San Andres that detailed record of births and deaths are kept here in crumbling books that date back nearly two centuries.

The “mother church,” as it is often called, is a source of pride for the Raizals, the English-speaking, mostly Protestant inhabitants of San Andres, Providencia and the smaller islands and keys that form an archipelago in the western Caribbean near Nicaragua, about 440 miles (710 kilometers) from the Colombian mainland.

“For a young person like me, it’s finding my roots — it’s good to know where we come from,” said the Rev. Shuanon Hudgson, 26, the church’s associate pastor.

“It’s like Marcus Garvey says,” quoting the Jamaica-born, early 20th-century Black nationalist: “‘A people without knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.’ And this church has been a pillar.”

Under the tree, a stone plaque commemorates the birth of the congregation: “Baptist work was established here by Rev. Phillip Beekman Livingston (Jr.) in 1844.”

Three years later the congregation began to meet nearby under a thatched hut.

It kept growing, and a building made in the style of the large Anglican churches of Jamaica was ordered. First built in the late 19th century in Mobile, Alabama, and then moved to New York City, the white-walled church was disassembled and shipped to the island piece by piece.

Parishioners carried the foundations on their backs from the port to one of the highest points on the island, a neighborhood known as the Hill, said Lastenia Herrera May, the wife of the current lead pastor, the Rev. Ronald Hooker, and the church was dedicated on Feb. 2, 1896.

A scenic overlook more than 100 feet up in the steeple offers some of the best views of San Andres.

Over a century after being claimed by Spain, the island was first settled in the 1630s by English Puritans. It later became an outpost for pirates and today is home to many descendants of Puritans and African slaves, and also large numbers of more recent arrivals from mainland Colombia.

Sharika Crawford, a professor of history at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, whose research focuses on Colombia and its African-descended peoples, said First Baptist “was the bedrock of the Raizal community” and “the most important social institution” in the archipelago.

From its founding until 1913, she said, its pastors held great authority over the community in shaping islanders’ values and behavior.

“Before the church was formed, the island population lived without a church or religious establishment. Efforts to bring a Catholic priest never materialized,” Crawford said. “Thus, First Baptist Church and its satellite churches across San Andres and Providencia Islands had the advantage over other Christian communities such as the Catholics and Seventh-day Adventists.”

“The church had glorious moments,” Herrera May said. “By the 1900s, thousands had converted.”

Livingston, the founder, first evangelized among enslaved and freed people of San Andres, Crawford said, and the church remains a symbol of the anti-slavery struggle. Each year people from congregations across the islands gather here Aug. 1 to celebrate events commemorating emancipation.

During a recent Sunday service, Lucia Barker, 83, and other women in the choir, clothed in bright pink shirts, sang hymns. Parishioners in wooden pews, illuminated by sunlight from stained-glass windows, swayed, lifted their arms and sang along to songs infused with Calypso beats.

“This church is my life,” Barker said of the sanctuary where she was baptized, married and has worshipped for more than seven decades.

In his homily, Hudgson, the associate pastor, asked congregants to remember the sacrifice of their enslaved ancestors. He called on them to be resilient against adversity, just as the tree and the church, and listed by name and year the many hurricanes that both survived.

“Here we get the knowledge about our land, our history, how we started by this tamarind tree, how we have a church,” choir member Marjeen Martínez said. “It’s very important to maintain our roots alive.”

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Octogenarian brothers make popular hand-drawn posters

By CLAUDIA TORRENS

September 3, 2022

1 of 8

Octogenarian brothers from Ecuador, Carlos Cevallos, left, and Miguel Cevallos, together during a press meeting, Monday Aug. 29, 2022, in New York. For years the Cevallos brothers made a living drawing posters for nightclubs, taco trucks and restaurants, attracting clients by word of mouth, but an Instagram account changed a lot of that. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)


NEW YORK (AP) — For years, Miguel and Carlos Cevallos made a living by drawing posters for neighborhood nightclubs, taco trucks and restaurants in Queens, painting in the businesses’ basements or on their tables and attracting clients by word of mouth.

Until an Instagram account changed a lot of that.

Now, hip Brooklyn ice cream shops and Manhattan retro diners wait their turn to get one of the brothers’ colorful signs. They’re in demand in San Francisco music stores, national restaurant chains, bars in Belgium and bakeries in South Korea.

It doesn’t matter that the brothers are more than 80 years old or that the two, born in Ecuador and raised in Colombia, speak limited English. They have embraced their new customers and draw all day in the Manhattan apartment they have shared for nearly 20 years.

“Destiny is like this. Sometimes one finds success later in life,” Carlos Cevallos said recently, while sipping a tea in an empty Manhattan diner. Dressed in suits and ties, as they are every day, the brothers shared a muffin.



Recent commissions have come from a bagel shop in Manhattan’s Little Italy neighborhood, a newsstand in Manhattan’s West Village, an Oregon-based restaurant chain and a Los Angeles pop-up veggie burger shop. NYCgo, the city’s official guide for tourists and New Yorkers, recently asked the brothers to draw Queens’ iconic Unisphere, the giant metal globe built for the 1964 World’s Fair.

“They have a special touch, so nice and colorful,” said Marina Cortes, manager of the West Village diner La Bonbonniere. The brothers’ “Breakfast All Day!” sign is displayed on the restaurant’s terrace.

“A Life Without Anything Good, Is Bad” reads a poster the brothers drew for Van Leeuwen Ice Cream. “Daily Special. Pick Any Two Sandwiches and Pay For Both!” reads another they did for Regina’s Grocery on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

Done with acrylic paints, the Cevallos brothers’ playful, childlike posters have big letters and a nostalgic look. Miguel does the drawings and Carlos the coloring, together crafting about six posters per week.

The brothers field five to 20 requests weekly for their work.

The family moved from Ecuador to Colombia to follow an uncle who was a Catholic priest and worked in Bogota. Used to drawing since they were kids, Carlos, Miguel and their oldest brother, Victor, opened an art studio and poster shop in Bogota’s Chapinero neighborhood.

Victor moved to New York in 1969, and Carlos joined him in 1974. For years, they worked at a studio in Times Square until rent increases prompted a shift to Queens.



In the 1980s, they drew posters that announced performances at a Queens club called La Esmeralda.

“They would pay so little per poster. It was sad,” Carlos said. The posters featured such artists as Mexican singer Armando Manzanero and Chilean Lucho Gatica.

Miguel, meanwhile, took care of their mother until she died at age 101. He moved to New York in 2005 to join his siblings. Victor, a mentor to his younger brothers, died in 2012.

Eventually, Aviram Cohen, who builds and installs audiovisual art at museums, saw the brothers’ posters in Queens and tracked them down to request one for his wife’s new yoga studio. In 2018, he opened their Instagram account, @cevallos_bros, which became a lifeline for the brothers after the coronavirus pandemic hit.

“I did it out of admiration for their work, and after meeting them, I understood that it would all disappear. Most of the businesses would throw away the posters,” said Cohen, 42. “I felt strongly that different kinds of people and subcultures could enjoy their art.”

He was right. The account now has more than 25,000 followers and has become an archive of their work, as well as a source of orders.



“I just love their story,” said Happy David, who manages the Instagram accounts of La Bonbonniere and Casa Magazines, a Manhattan newsstand for which she has also commissioned the brothers’ work. It reminds her of signs seen in her native Philippines.

In a digital world, “a lot of people are going back to craft,” David said. “We want to connect, and we want to feel that there are hands that made these.”

When asked whether they plan to retire soon, the Cevallos brothers answer with a quick “no.”

Where do they get their energy from?

“We eat healthy,” they respond with a smile.

Artist Ai Weiwei warns against hubris in ‘troublesome’ times

By COLLEEN BARRY

September 3, 2022

1 of 12

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei poses in front of his unveil glass body of work 'La Commedia Umana' a huge hanging glass sculpture otherwise referred to as a 'chandelier' at the San Giorgio deconsecrated church in Venice, Italy, Friday, Aug. 26, 2022. Chinese artist Ai Weiwei lampoons the surveillance culture and social media with his first ever glass sculpture, made on the Venetian island of Murano, that stands as a warning to the world: "Memento Mori,'' or Latin for "Remember You Must Die." (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)


VENICE, Italy (AP) — Chinese dissident and artist Ai Weiwei warns against hubris in what he calls “such a troublesome time” with his first glass sculpture, made on the Venetian island of Murano, with the foreboding subtitle: “Memento Mori,” Latin for “Remember You Must Die.”

Russian bombs fall on Ukraine. China is flexing its military muscle in the Taiwan Strait. Migrants die repeatedly at sea as smugglers’ boats sink. The Earth warms, creating drought, collapsing glaciers and triggering violent storms. The pandemic lingers.

“We are talking about many, many things. We are talking about immigrants, about deaths, about the war, about many, many issues,″ Ai told The Associated Press in Venice on Friday.

He stands by his 9-meter (29.5-foot), nearly 3-ton black glass sculpture, which is suspended over the central nave of the church of San Giorgio Maggiore, located opposite Venice’s St. Mark’s Square. Titled “The Human Comedy: Memento Mori,” the sculpture is the centerpiece of an Ai exhibit at the church that opens Sunday.

The huge hanging artwork is part chandelier, part ossuary, with intricately hung molded glass skeletons and skulls, both human and animal, balanced with glass-blown human organs and scattered likenesses of the Twitter bird logo and surveillance cameras, hinting at the darker side of technology.

“We see the environment completely disappearing, being destroyed by humans’ effort ... and that will create a much bigger disaster or famine. Or war, there’s a possible political struggle between China and the West″ as China asserts greater control over Hong Kong and threatens control over Taiwan, Ai said.

“We have to rethink about humans and legitimacy in the environment. Do we really deserve this planet, or are we just being so short-sighted and racist? And very, very just self-demanding, selfishness,″ the artist added.

The exhibit also features smaller glass sculptures. One depicts Ai himself as a prisoner, a reference to his months in a Chinese prison in 2011. Another imposes his distorted face on a replica of an 18th-century statue titled “Allegory of Envy.″ A wooden sculpture of a tree trunk fills a sacristy. Colored glass hard hats save places in the choir. Lego-brick portrait replicas of famous paintings and the Chinese zodiac line the walls of adjacent rooms.

Ai said he thinks Russia’s invasion of Ukraine gave Chinese authorities a “potential model” to understand how such an operation might play out in Taiwan, without serving either as encouragement or warning.

“I think China is part of the global power struggle that reflects our modern understanding and the classic notion about territory and who has the right to do what,″ he said. ”What what happens in the Russian and Ukraine conflict gives China a clear maybe mental exercise about what they want to do in Taiwan, if it is needed.″

But the artist says any Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be a mistake and a misunderstanding of Taiwan’s history.

“The Chinese think that Taiwan belongs to China, but in reality China and Taiwan have been apart for over 70 years. They have their own social structure, which is more democratic and more peaceful than in China,″ he said. Any moves by China to claim Taiwan by force will result “in the ultimate struggle.″

He sees the struggle in China as one for legitimacy of authorities’ control, while the challenge in the West is the continual need to defend democracy and with it freedom of speech. The West’s Achille’s heel is its economic dependency on China’s cheap manufacturing, he said.

“That is why China is so confident,″ Ai said. ”They know the West cannot live without China.”

He cited instances of Western hypocrisy, including the rejection by festivals in Europe and the United States of films he made during the pandemic depicting Wuhan’s first lockdown and the struggles in Hong Kong.

After praising the films, festivals ultimately give “the last words, we cannot show it,″ out of fear of losing access to the Chinese market, Ai said.

His artworks travel more smoothly, he said, because his artistic language is harder to interpret.

“My work is about a new vocabulary, so it is difficult for somebody who has completely no knowledge. It requires study,″ Ai said. ”I don’t make some piece to please the audience. But I always want to say something that is necessary.”

Tourists wandering in from the water bus were delighted that they had stumbled into an exhibit by the renowned dissident artist.

“It is metal? When I first saw this I thought it represented hell,″ Kenneth Cheung, a Hong Kong native now living in Toronto, Canada, said as he checked out the imposing glass sculpture. “Being in a church, it is even stronger, more powerful.”

The main sculpture took three years to realize with assistance from artists at a glass studio on Murano employing three techniques: traditional Murano blown glass, wax molds and injection molds. Studio owner Adriano Berengo said he pursued Ai for years to secure a collaboration with an artist he admires for his strong political beliefs.

“He shows his face. He doesn’t hide. He is ready to risk his life, and he did in China,″ Berengo said.

The exhibit runs through Nov. 27 in Venice. From there, the hanging sculpture will go to the Design Museum in London and then, hopefully a buyer, Berengo said.

“It has to be a big museum. Otherwise, how can you keep an artwork like that?” he said.

___

This story has been corrected to show that the church of San Giorgio Maggiore is a working church, not deconsecrated.

17 states weigh adopting California’s electric car mandate
By STEVE KARNOWSKI

September 3, 2022

A Chevrolet Volt hybrid car is seen charging at a ChargePoint charging station at a parking garage in Los Angeles, Oct. 17, 2018. Sixteen states across the country that have tied their vehicle emission standards to California's now face weighty decisions on whether to follow that state's strictest-in-the nation new rules and require that all new cars, pickups and SUVs be electric or hydrogen powered by 2035. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel, File)

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Seventeen states with vehicle emission standards tied to rules established in California face weighty decisions on whether to follow that state’s strictest-in-the nation new rules that require all new cars, pickups and SUVs to be electric or hydrogen powered by 2035.

Under the Clean Air Act, states must abide by the federal government’s standard vehicle emissions standards unless they at least partially opt to follow California’s stricter requirements.

Among them, Washington, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon and Vermont are expected to adopt California’s ban on new gasoline-fueled vehicles. Colorado and Pennsylvania are among the states that probably won’t. The legal ground is a bit murkier in Minnesota, where the state’s “Clean Cars” rule has been a political minefield and the subject of a legal fight. Meanwhile, Republicans are rebelling in Virginia.

The Minnesota Auto Dealers Association says its reading of state and federal law is that the new California rules kick in automatically in the state, and it’s making that case in court as it tries to block them.

“The technology is such that the vehicles just don’t perform that well in cold weather,” said Scott Lambert, the trade group’s president. “We don’t all live in southern California.”

Minnesota Pollution Control Agency officials say the state would have to launch an entirely new rulemaking process to adopt California’s changes. And in court filings and legislative hearings, they’ve said they are not planning to do that now.

“We are not California. Minnesota has its own plan,” Gov. Tim Walz said in a statement. He called Minnesota’s program “a smart way to increase, rather than decrease, options for consumers. Our priority is to lower costs and increase choices so Minnesotans can drive whatever vehicle suits them.”

Oregon regulators are taking public comments through Sept. 7 on whether to adopt the new California standards. Colorado regulators, who adopted California’s older rules, won’t follow California’s new ones, the administration of Democratic Gov. Jared Polis said.

“While the governor shares the goal of rapidly moving towards electric vehicles, he is skeptical about requiring 100% of cars sold to be electric by a certain date as technology is rapidly changing,” the Colorado Energy Office said in a statement.

Regulators in Pennsylvania, which only partially adopted California’s older standards, said they won’t automatically follow its new rules. Under Democratic Governor Tom Wolf, Pennsylvania started the regulatory process last year to fully conform with California’s rules, but abandoned it.

Virginia had been on a path to adopting California’s rules under legislation that passed last year when Democrats were in full control of Virginia’s government. But Republicans who control the House of Delegates and GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin say they’ll push to unlink their state.

Minnesota’s auto dealers are trying to make their state’s current rules — and the possibility that they could tighten to incorporate California’s new restrictions — an issue for the fall elections. Control of the Legislature and governor’s office are up for grabs, and the dealers hope to persuade the 2023 Legislature to roll back the regulations unless they win in court first, Lambert said.

The MPCA, with Walz’s support, adopted California’s existing standards through administrative rulemaking last year amid a bitter fight with Republican lawmakers who were upset that the Legislature was cut out of the decision. Legislators even tried unsuccessfully to withhold funding from Minnesota’s environmental agencies. One casualty was Laura Bishop, who resigned as MPCA commissioner after it became apparent that she lacked the votes in the GOP-controlled Senate to win confirmation.

Walz and his administration have framed Minnesota’s Clean Cars rule as a fairly painless way to increase the availability of electric vehicles and help the state meet its greenhouse gas reduction goals. The rule seeks to increase the offerings of battery-powered and hybrid vehicles starting with the 2025 model year by requiring manufacturers to comply with California standards currently in force for low- and zero-emission vehicles.

Lambert said the state’s auto dealers don’t oppose electric vehicles. They currently make up 2.3% of new vehicle sales in Minnesota and he expects consumer interest to continue to grow. But the reduced range of battery-powered vehicles in cold weather makes them less attractive in northern tier states, he said. Minnesota’s rules already threaten to saddle dealers with more electric vehicles than their customers will buy, he said, and adopting the California ban would make things worse.

Under federal law, by Lambert’s reading, states have to either adopt California’s rules in full or follow less stringent federal emission standards. He said they can’t pick and choose from parts of each. And that effectively means there’s a “ban on the books” in Minnesota for sales of new conventionally fueled vehicles starting with the 2035 model year, he said.

Lambert’s association was already fighting Minnesota’s existing Clean Car rules in the Minnesota Court of Appeals, and its petition foresaw that California would make the changes it announced late last month. A key issue in whether “any future amendments to the incorporated California regulations automatically become part of Minnesota rules,” as the dealers argue.

The MPCA’s attorneys assert that they don’t, and have asked the court to dismiss the challenge. MPCA Commissioner Katrina Kessler has made similar arguments for months, including before a skeptical state Senate committee last March.

Aaron Klemz, chief strategy officer for the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, which will be filing its own arguments against the dealers in court, acknowledged that the legal landscape is confusing. And he said it’s not clear whether his group will eventually call for Minnesota to follow California’s new ban.

“We haven’t done enough analysis of the California rule to know if we’re going to push for its adoption in Minnesota,” Klemz said. He noted that other issues are coming into play, including incentives for electric vehicles in the Inflation Reduction Act that President Joe Biden recently signed, and the stated intentions by some of the major automakers to go all-electric.

___

Associated Press reporters Jim Anderson in Denver; Gillian Flaccus in Portland, Oregon; and Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, contributed to this story.

 

U$A
Fight over future of library that sparked civil rights ideas
By TRAVIS LOLLER

September 3, 2022

1 of 10

In this undated photo provided by the Nashville Banner Archives, Nashville Public Library, Special Collections, Rosa Parks, center, and Myles Horton, right, meet at the Highlander Library in Monteagle, Tenn. The library building where Rosa Parks, John Lewis and other civil rights leaders forged strategies that would change the world is mired in controversy over who gets to tell its story.

 (Nashville Banner Archives, Nashville Public Library, Special Collections via AP)


A library where Rosa Parks, John Lewis and other civil rights leaders forged strategies that would change the world is mired in controversy over who gets to tell its story.

On one side are preservationists who want to turn the Highlander Folk School library into a historic site. On the other, political organizers say Highlander never stopped pursuing social justice and should recover the building as a stolen part of its legacy.

Enraged by race-mixing at the Highlander Folk School in the 1950s, Tennessee officials confiscated the property and auctioned it off in pieces in a vain attempt at stifling the civil rights movement. The library is one of the few remaining campus buildings.

But Highlander as an institution never really closed — it just moved locations. It lives on today as the Highlander Research and Education Center, whose leaders are rallying opposition to listing the library in the National Register of Historic Places, saying they were frozen out of the process.

David Currey, a board member at the Tennessee Preservation Trust, has managed the library’s restoration since the trust bought the site in 2014, saving it from redevelopment. He said his goal has always been to preserve the site so that visitors can learn about the momentous events that happened there in the first half of the 20th Century. There would be few books or movies if stories could only be told by those directly involved, he said, and “Nobody owns the past.”

“It’s a myth that they are best suited to tell our history,” said Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson, Highlander’s first Black co-director. “People who made that history are still alive.”

A letter Highlander sent to the historic registry says the Trust is not fit to serve as stewards, stoking racial tension over a place that promoted a shared struggle for interracial harmony.

“Approving the nomination of the Highlander Folk School Library in its current form will allow an elite, white-led institution to coopt and control the historical narrative of a site most significant for its work with Black, multiracial, poor and working-class communities,” states the letter, which also accuses trust members of having glorified the Confederacy.

Currey, who is white, frames the issue much differently. He says the trust stepped in to preserve the property when no one else would, and plans to celebrate Highlander’s past accomplishments.

“Our cause from the start has been an honorable endeavor to recognize and pay tribute to the history and legacy of the early 20th century’s social justice movements in Tennessee, including labor struggles and Civil Rights, and its leaders,” Currey wrote in an email to the AP.

Founded in the 1930s as a center for union organizing, the school in Monteagle, Tenn., counted first lady Eleanor Roosevelt among its early supporters. Protest music was integral to its work, with Woody Guthrie leading singalongs to inspire future demonstrations, and Pete Seeger workshopping “We Shall Overcome” into an anthem sung by activists ever since.

Highlander’s co-founder and longtime leader, Myles Horton, a white man, created a space almost unique in the Jim Crow South, where activists white and Black could build and strengthen alliances.

Parks attended a Highlander workshop a few months before refusing to move to the back of a segregated city bus in Montgomery, Alabama. “It was one of the few times in my life up to that point when I did not feel hostility from white people,” she wrote in her autobiography.

Lewis had a similar experience, long before he became a civil rights icon and congressman. Highlander “was the first time in my life that I saw black people and white people not just sitting down together at long tables for shared meals, but also cleaning up together afterward, doing the dishes together, gathering together late into the night in deep discussion,” he wrote in a memoir.

The school’s success made it a target — labeled communist, investigated by the FBI and raided by the state of Tennessee, which eventually revoked its charter. Original buildings were destroyed. The library was converted to a single-family home.

But Highlander didn’t disappear — it just moved three hours northeast to New Market, Tenn., near Knoxville.

“The property was stolen from us because it was bringing Black and white people together to preserve democracy,” Henderson said. “The land should be repatriated, back to the Highlander Folk School, which is now the Highlander Research and Education Center.”

The trust has spent seven years restoring the library to its original form. Local Grundy County donors contributed most of the funding, but Currey said he’s also spent thousands of his own dollars. His vision is to spin off a nonprofit, separate from the trust, that would own and operate the library as both a historic site and community resource, and Highlander could run a program explaining its ongoing justice and education work.

Henderson said she’s grateful the trust stepped in when the center couldn’t afford to, but she doesn’t see the old Folk School as separate from Highlander now, which is celebrating 90 years of organizing with a homecoming later this month. She said the center recently offered to buy the library from the trust, but got no definitive answer.

“If there’s going to be a transfer, why wouldn’t it be to Highlander?” Co-director Allyn Maxfield-Steele asked. If Highlander controlled the building, it would develop a plan for its use together with “folks on the ground in Grundy County,” he said.

Currey still hopes the trust and center can work together to promote the legacy of a building both organizations see as incredibly important.

Getting listed in the National Registry would open up new sources of funding in a state that doesn’t provide tax incentives for historic preservation, Currey said. He worries that the controversy over Highlander will make preservationists less likely to take on a similar project in the future.

“It’s already so difficult in Tennessee to save some of our historic resources,” Currey said. “This may be one of the most high-profile civil rights sites — as John Lewis told me — in the nation.”