It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Friday, November 04, 2022
Iraq landslide disaster throws spotlight on informal shrines
AFP - Yesterday
When a landslide buried part of an Islamic shrine in Iraq this summer, killing eight pilgrims, sorrow quickly turned to anger because the site was run without oversight from state or religious authorities.
The deadly disaster struck in August near Karbala when tonnes of soggy earth and rock collapsed onto the Shiite shrine Qattarat al-Imam Ali, dedicated to the imam's journey on his way to battle in AD 657.
By the time the search-and-rescue effort was over, three trapped children had been brought out alive -- but the bodies of two men, five women and one child had also been pulled from the rubble.
The shared grief quickly gave way to public fury when Iraqi government and religious officials said they were not responsible for the site, or for policing its building and safety standards.
The shrine was one of hundreds that are being run privately and are therefore unregulated -- many of which, some critics charge, operate with profit rather than piety as the main motive.
Karbala resident Maitham Abbas lashed out at what he called a "fake shrine", dismissing it as a money-making scheme.
Since the tragedy, politicians, clerics and religious officials have acknowledged the need to better enforce building standards in a war-scarred country generally plagued by crumbling infrastructure.
Iraq's Waqf, the body in charge of managing Shiite mosques, tombs and other places of worship, reports that only 135 out of Iraq's 664 known sanctuaries are formally registered.
The others are beyond Waqf's remit and derive their legitimacy from the faith invested in them by flocks of visiting pilgrims, many of whom give what they can in donations.
There are "around 100 shrines dedicated to the daughters of Imam Hassan", who passed only briefly through Iraq, said Hashem al-Awadi, deputy head of the government department responsible for Shiite shrines.
"Where does all this offspring come from?" he asked incredulously.
- Informal pilgrimage sites -
Most Iraqis follow Shiism, a strand of Islam that was long suppressed under dictator Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Muslim, before his secular Ba'athist regime was toppled by the US-led invasion of 2003.
Under Saddam, "an informal approach was cultivated by the people, indeed by the Shiite institutions, to avoid being attached to the state", said Sabrina Mervin, a historian specialising in Shiism.
The post-Saddam years were marred by sectarian violence but also saw a Shiite revival as millions of faithful once more flocked to their holy sites, especially the Shiite shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala.
Hundreds of smaller shrines opened up -- many outside the purview of the religious authorities, which are often reluctant to proactively check building standards for fear of offending believers.
The Shiite revival was driven not by institutions but by "pilgrim practices which evolve from the grassroots, from the religiosity of the faithful", said Mervin, of the French National Centre for Scientific Research.
"If there are pilgrims... there is necessarily a foundation story that makes a place a holy place," she said.
"The religious authorities have no arguments to prevent pilgrims from showing their attachment and devotion to major Shiite figures, even in places that are unrecognised." - Registration can be tricky -
Most such sites are dedicated to relatives or descendants of Imam Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammed and the founder of the Shiite strand of Islam.
One is located on the side of a motorway south of Baghdad, dating back to the 1980s and not registered by the Waqf, where faithful offer chocolate snacks and small cash donations.
Pilgrim Kamel Rahim, 78, was praying to be healed from sickness at the graves of three distant descendants of Imam Ali -- Sayyed Ahmed, Sayyed Ali and their father Al-Mozher.
Rahim explained that local residents had "discovered stones on which their names were inscribed. They dug and found two graves."
Awadi, the state official, said more shrines should seek official recognition, which offers them "legal weight and stature" as well as state development funding, and grants their guardians the status of civil servants.
But the process of authenticating and approving a shrine is protracted, he said, as it involves an assessment of its founding story and "a lineage investigation" of the deceased who is revered there.
This, he explained, can be a sensitive subject, especially if the request is denied.
"If you report a fake shrine," he said, "how many people do you think will believe you, and how many will accuse you of straying from the path of religion?"
ak/tgg/gde/dwo/fz/smw
ISRAEL FASCISTS SCARE BEJESUS OUTTA ZIONISTS
Israel vote cements rise of extreme right
Rosie SCAMMELL
Thu, November 3, 2022
Israel's election this week cemented the rise of the country's extreme right, with firebrand Itamar Ben-Gvir set to gain a powerful position in government.
After leading an energetic campaign centred on security and Jewish identity, Ben-Gvir celebrated as his Religious Zionism alliance achieved third place -- and likely kingmaker status -- in the November 1 vote.
"It's time that we returned to be the masters of our house in our country," he told cheering supporters Wednesday, after exit polls showed the nationalist bloc more than doubling its parliamentary seats.
Religious Zionism is expected to play a central role in a new coalition led by Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's veteran leader whose right-wing Likud won the most votes.
Securing the premiership for Netanyahu -- who faces corruption charges he denies -- is impossible without the backing of Ben-Gvir and his Religious Zionism ally, the more discreet Bezalel Smotrich.
According to the electoral commission in results issued late Thursday, the right-wing bloc won a clear majority of 64 seats -- made up of 32 seats for Netanyahu's Likud party, 18 for ultra-Orthodox parties and 14 for Religious Zionism.
This gives the extreme right unprecedented influence, securing Ben-Gvir's transformation from political pariah to powerbroker.
Such a shift was orchestrated by political puppeteer Netanyahu, according to researcher Yossi Klein Halevi.
"Netanyahu whitewashed the far right, which he needed for his coalition, and so many Israelis saw it as simply a tougher version of the Likud," said Halevi, from Jerusalem's Shalom Hartman Institute.
- Religious hardliners -
Ben-Gvir lives in a settlement of religious hardliners in Hebron, in the occupied West Bank, but has attempted to moderate his public appearance in the run-up to elections.
"When I said 20 years ago that I wanted to expel all the Arabs, I don't think that anymore. But I will not apologise," he told AFP ahead of the vote.
Before entering the political mainstream, Ben-Gvir hung a portrait in his living room of Baruch Goldstein, the Israeli who killed 29 Palestinian worshippers at a Hebron mosque in 1994.
The picture was taken down before he entered parliament last year, but Ben-Gvir still regularly shows up at flashpoint sites in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
As a policymaker, his sights are set on annexing the West Bank and ensuring Israel's security services use more force in countering Palestinian unrest.
The United Nations says recent months have been the deadliest period in years in the West Bank, with near daily army raids and an increase in clashes and attacks on Israeli forces.
Regardless of whether such steps receive support from Likud or their other coalition allies, ultra-Orthodox parties, Netanyahu will have to make some concessions to Religious Zionism to maintain their support.
"Netanyahu will have a hard time controlling his new partners," said Halevi.
"Because he will be beholden to them to pass legislation that would extricate him from his corruption trial," added the researcher, who authored a book about his own attraction to Jewish extremism as a teenager.
- 'More violence and humiliation' -
For Shlomo Fischer, a sociologist at Jerusalem's Jewish People Policy Institute, the poll results follow a long-term phenomenon.
"Israeli society is becoming more right-wing and in certain ways more traditional, more ethno-religious, nationalist," he said.
The electoral success of Religious Zionism has raised fears among political opponents and Arab-Israelis, who for years have been at the receiving end of Ben-Gvir's vitriol.
Jaafar Farah, head of the Mossawa Center that campaigns for the rights of Arab-Israelis, said "people are afraid of the measures they are going to put in place".
"There is anger here because of the fragmentation of Arab parties," he added, which represent 20 percent of the population.
Four Arab-led parties united in 2020 but have since split into three, with one failing to make it into parliament in the latest election.
Mansour Abbas, whose Raam party joined the outgoing coalition, blamed inaction for the emergence of the right-wing government.
"We're bringing him (Netanyahu) back to power, we're offering him this gift, because we're being passive," he said Wednesday.
Raam will sit firmly in opposition along with the Arab-led Hadash-Taal alliance, whose activist Feda Tabouni warned Israel was becoming "a more racist, fascist state".
"The expected scenario is that there will be more laws issued, more violence and humiliation of people in the West Bank and the occupied (Palestinian) territories," she told AFP.
bur-rsc/bs/noc/pjm/smw
Escape from Foxconn: Workers recount Covid chaos at iPhone factory
Zhang Yao recalls the moment he realised something had gone deeply wrong at the Chinese mega-factory where he and hundreds of thousands of other workers assembled iPhones and other high-end electronics.
In early October, supervisors suddenly warned him that 3,000 colleagues had been taken into quarantine after someone tested positive for Covid-19 at the factory.
"They told us not to take our masks off," Zhang, speaking under a pseudonym for fear of retaliation, told AFP by telephone.
What followed was a weeks-long ordeal including food shortages and the ever-present fear of infection, before he finally escaped on Tuesday.
Zhang's employer, Taiwanese tech giant Foxconn, has said it faces a "protracted battle" against infections and imposed a "closed loop" bubble around its sprawling campus in central China's Zhengzhou city.
Local authorities locked down the area surrounding the major Apple supplier's factory on Wednesday, but not before reports emerged of employees fleeing on foot and a lack of adequate medical care at the plant.
China is the last major economy committed to a zero-Covid strategy, persisting with snap lockdowns, mass testing and lengthy quarantines in a bid to stamp out emerging outbreaks.
But new variants have tested officials' ability to snuff out flare-ups and dragged down economic activity with the threat of sudden disruptions.
- Desperation -
Multiple workers have recounted scenes of chaos and increasing disorganisation at Foxconn's complex of workshops and dormitories, which form a city-within-a-city near Zhengzhou's airport.
Zhang told AFP that "positive tests and double lines (on antigen tests) had become a common sight" in his workshop before he left.
"Of course we were scared, it was so close to us."
"People with fevers are not guaranteed to receive medicine," another Foxconn worker, a 30-year-old man who also asked to remain anonymous, told AFP.
"We are drowning," he said.
Those who decided to stop working were not offered meals at their dormitories, Zhang said, adding that some were able to survive on personal stockpiles of instant noodles.
Kai, a worker at in the complex who gave an interview to state-owned Sanlian Lifeweek, told the magazine Foxconn's "closed loop" involved cordoning off paths between dormitory compounds and the factory, and complained he was left to his own devices after being thrown in quarantine.
TikTok videos geolocated by AFP showed mounds of uncollected rubbish outside buildings in late October, while employees in N95 masks squeezed onto packed shuttle buses taking them from dormitories to their work stations.
A 27-year-old woman working at Foxconn, who asked not to be named, told AFP a roommate who tested positive for Covid was sent back to her dormitory on Thursday morning, crying, after she decided to hand in her notice while in quarantine.
"Now the three of us are living in the same room: one a confirmed case and two of us testing positive on the rapid test, still waiting for our nucleic acid test results," the worker told AFP.
Many became so desperate by the end of last month that they attempted to walk back to their hometowns to get around Covid transport curbs.
As videos of people dragging their suitcases down motorways and struggling up hills spread on Chinese social media, the authorities rushed in to do damage control.
The Zhengzhou city government on Sunday said it had arranged for special buses to take employees back to their hometowns.
Surrounding Henan province has officially reported a spike of more than 600 Covid cases since the start of this week.
- Distrust -
When Zhang finally attempted to leave the Foxconn campus on Tuesday, he found the company had set up obstacle after obstacle.
"There were people with loudspeakers advertising the latest Foxconn policy, saying that each day there would be a 400 yuan ($55) bonus," Zhang told AFP.
A crowd of employees gathered at a pick-up point in front of empty buses but were not let on.
People in hazmat suits, known colloquially as "big whites" in China, claimed they had been sent by the city government.
"They tried to persuade people to stay in Zhengzhou... and avoid going home," Zhang said.
"But when we asked to see their work ID, they had nothing to show us, so we suspected they were actually from Foxconn."
Foxconn pointed to the local government's lockdown orders from Wednesday when asked by AFP if it attempted to stop employees from leaving, without giving any further response.
The company had on Sunday said it was "providing employees with complimentary three meals a day" and cooperating with the government to provide transport home.
Eventually, the crowd of unhappy workers who had gathered decided to take matters into their own hands and walked over seven kilometres on foot to the nearest highway entry ramp.
There, more people claiming to be government officials pleaded with the employees to wait for the bus.
The crowd had no choice as the road was blocked.
Buses eventually arrived at five in the afternoon -- nearly nine hours after Zhang had begun his attempt to secure transport.
"They were trying to grind us down," he said.
Back in his hometown, Zhang is now waiting out the home quarantine period required by the local government.
"All I feel is, I've finally left Zhengzhou," he told AFP.
iPhone factory lockdown shows risks
of China dependence, analysts say
Sébastien RICCI
Thu, November 3, 2022
The lockdown of Foxconn's Zhengzhou factory, the world's biggest producer of iPhones, has highlighted some of the risks of relying on zero-Covid China's manufacturing sector, analysts told AFP.
Foxconn, Apple's principal subcontractor, has seen a surge in Covid-19 cases at its Zhengzhou site, leading the company to lock down the vast complex in a bid to keep the virus in check.
Images then emerged of panicking workers fleeing the site on foot in the wake of allegations of poor conditions at the facility, which employs hundreds of thousands of workers.
Foxconn is China's biggest private sector employer, with over a million people working across the country in its around thirty factories and research institutes.
But Zhengzhou is the Taiwanese giant's crown jewel, churning out iPhones in quantities not seen anywhere else.
"In a normal situation, almost all the iPhone production is happening in Zhengzhou," said Ivan Lam, an analyst with specialist firm Counterpoint.
- Risk of 'strong dependence' -
Apple manufactures more than 90 percent of its products in China, which is also one of its most important markets.
"For Apple, it is once again a bad example in terms of the stability of production chains," Alicia Garcia Herrero, Asia-Pacific manager for Natixis bank, told AFP.
Experts say the company’s heavy dependence on China "brings potential risks, especially when the US-China trade war shows no signs of de-escalating," according to Dezan Shira & Associates, a consulting firm.
Opened in 2010, the Zhengzhou factory employs up to 300,000 people who live on-site all year round -- creating a sprawling tech hub known as "iPhone city".
It is made up of three factories, one of which produces the iPhone 14 -- Apple's newest handset model.
Apple did not respond to AFP's request for comment on how exactly the lockdown will affect its production.
Analyst Lam estimates the partial stopping of work at the site resulted in a loss of "10 to 30 percent" of output, but said part of the production has also been temporarily moved to other Foxconn sites in China.
According to Foxconn, the site is currently operating a "closed loop" with the workers avoiding all contact with the outside world, while their daily bonuses have been quadrupled.
"This incident may have a limited impact," on worldwide iPhone production, estimated analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who specialises in Apple products.
"But suppliers in China must learn to improve closed-loop production efficiency in response to the zero-Covid policy," he added.
- Looking elsewhere -
China is the last major economy committed to a zero-Covid strategy, persisting with snap lockdowns, mass testing and lengthy quarantines in a bid to stamp out emerging outbreaks.
But new variants have tested local officials' ability to snuff out flare-ups faster than they can spread, causing much of the country to live under an ever-changing mosaic of Covid curbs.
Apple has already begun outsourcing part of its production to India and is eyeing Vietnam in a bid to wean itself off Chinese manufacturing -- a trend accelerated by Covid.
But that's not so simple -- last year, nearly 7.5 million iPhones were made in India, just three percent of Apple's total production.
"Increasing the capacity of factories (in India) is difficult," Lam said.
The biggest iPhone factory in the world just got locked down, but some workers managed to escape days ago
The lockdown announcement comes days after reports that several workers have fled for fear of getting trapped. One worker identified by Zhuo by the Washington Post said that he and 200 other people made a break for it while the company was still operating as a “closed loop,” or contained bubbles to minimize virus exposure, but not fully locked down. He climbed a seven-foot wall and walked several miles before someone gave him a ride home.
Foxconn quadrupled daily bonuses for those deployed at the factory to 400 yuan ($55) a day from 100 yuan in an effort to get them to stay, Reuters reported Tuesday, citing Foxconn’s official WeChat account.
The factory employs 200,000 people, earning it the nickname “iPhone city,” and workers who test positive for COVID will be forced into mandatory isolation, Bloomberg reported.
The area near Foxconn Technology’s plant in Zhengzhou has been cleared of vehicles and people who were not medical or other essential workers. The city reported 359 cases on Tuesday—a threefold jump from a day earlier.
A lockdown means that Foxconn employees will not be allowed to go in and out of the factory for work until at least Nov. 9. The plant will continue to operate in a bubble, according to Bloomberg. However, it is unclear how Foxconn will facilitate production with fewer workers than usual.
Foxconn did not immediately return Fortune’s request for comment.
The Taiwanese company Hon Hai Precision Industry owns the Zhengzhou plant, which alone produces four out of five of Apple’s most recent iPhone models.
The lockdown will likely hurt the production and shipment of iPhones in the lead-up to the holiday season. In September, Apple also launched its new line of handsets, the iPhone 14. During its fourth-quarter earnings call last Thursday, the company said the supply for its new model was constrained. The upcoming holidays will be critical for Apple as more consumers seek to buy gadgets at this time of year.
To address the gap in supply, Foxconn is reportedly increasing production at another factory in Shenzhen, according to Reuters. It has implemented closed loops to minimize virus exposure in March and July this year at another factory location in China.
Workers have been frustrated with the strict measures; many have taken to social media to talk about it. Foxconn denied rumors about the death of its employees in its dormitory, Bloomberg reported Tuesday.
The industrial park that houses Foxconn’s main iPhone plant in China’s Zhengzhou is going into a strict lockdown for a week.
As covid-19 cases rise in and around the iPhone maker’s factory, the government is barring citizens from leaving their homes from Nov. 2-9. No vehicles, except those ferrying essentials, will be allowed on the road.
Technically, the iPhone factory can’t let workers or parts for assembly in and out.
The measure isn’t entirely surprising: Curbs to contain covid-19 have been closing in on the industrial area for weeks now. Any signs of restrictions lifting in the capital of the Henan province have been dismissed as performative by locals who have been grappling with violent enforcement, inadequate health care, and mental stress.
But Foxconn has tried to maintain the illusion that it’s been business as usual. Workers, equipped with masks and sanitizers, continue their work under a “closed-loop” management system—they live and work in the factory complex. But is it really working?
Foxconn’s workers are in distress
The larger sacrifice of residing and working on site wasn’t the end of workers’ woes:
🍲For a couple weeks, Foxconn banned all dine-in at canteens, requiring workers to take their meals in their dormitories. It provided three meals free of charge daily, but it wasn’t always in prime condition
🚪Workers could only take a few routes across the complex since many entrances were shut
🤒Foxconn apparently didn’t pay much heed to those affected by the virus. There was no food or medicine provided, and employees who tested positive were isolated in nearby unfinished apartment buildings, according to China Labor Watch
🏃While the factory claims it has been arranging transport for workers who want to go home, videos on social media show employees lugging suitcases and jumping fences. The fear of lockdown and unsafe working conditions has been compelling thousands to flee.
Foxconn’s Zhengzhou iPhone factory, by the digits
200,000: Workers in the Zhengzhou plant; the largest iPhone production site in the world, of which around have have reportedly left
45%: Share of Foxconn’s revenues that come from Apple
80%: Foxconn’s Zhengzhou facility is responsible for the bulk of the iPhone 14 series production, according to Counterpoint senior analyst Ivan Lam.
10%: Share of global iPhone production hit when the Zhengzhou factory abruptly adopted its “closed-loop” strategy, according to TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo
30%: Apple’s iPhone production to slump in November due to lockdown restrictions
400 yuan ($55): Daily bonuses for Foxconn employees have quadrupled from 100 yuan, according to the official WeChat account of Foxconn’s Zhengzhou plant
25 miles: How far one worker walked to flee the lockdown
Unknown: How many employees have been infected, how many new cases are occuring in the factory, and how many—if any—have received treatment
China’s zero-covid strategy is hurting business
To contain the resurgence of Covid, the Chinese government has given cities the power to adopt snap lockdowns, mass testing, and lengthy quarantines. To reduce the impact of the sudden and drastic measures, several businesses from battery factories to ports have adopted closed loop systems. Drone maker DJI and automaker BYD also jumped on the bandwagon. Ahead of the holiday season, Foxconn has adopted the strategy to keep production running, too.
Besides siloing off workers in covid-hit areas, Foxconn is also trying to make up for the loss in production in Zhengzhou with its factories elsewhere, like Shenzhen. Foxconn’s India plant could’ve been another option, but it’s a much smaller-scale operation.
Regardless, Apple, a trillion dollar behemoth, can likely stomach the production slowdown. But not all businesses can.
Several companies are bogged down by productivity losses. The world’s factory keeps shutting and reopening parts, hurting economic activity across industries and across the world. Players in retail, food and beverage, tourism, and more, are suffering because of the constant uncertainty, too.
Solar power, farming revive Tunisia school as social enterprise
Friday 4 November 2022 The project at Tunisia's Makhtar boarding school is aimed at generating income and opening pupils' minds to the outside world AFP | FETHI BELAID
MAKTHAR - Most Tunisian schools are cash-strapped and run down, but an innovative project has allowed one to become self-sustaining by generating its own solar power and growing its own food.
Today the man behind the initiative hopes the success of the rural Makthar boarding school can serve as a model to improve the crumbling public school sector in the small North African nation.
Entrepreneur Lotfi Hamadi, 46, founder of the "Wallah (Swear to God) We Can" non-profit group, grew up in France but moved to Tunisia after the 2011 revolution that overthrew dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
Based in Tunis, the hospitality consultant set his sights on the school, located in a remote and poor region 170 kilometres (100 miles) southwest of the capital and close to his parents' hometown of Kesra.
"I wanted to take what works in the business world and turn schools into social enterprises," said Hamadi, whose parents were economic migrants to France who could not read or write.
"We're not trying to fill the gap left by the education system but to compensate them a bit, teach them to learn, give them the curiosity to open up to the world," he said about the school's 565 students, most of whom are boarders.
Hamadi started a decade ago by gathering donations to buy 50 solar water heaters -- allowing regular hot showers for the students for the first time -- and 140 photovoltaic panels that produce four times the power consumed on site.
By selling one-third of the surplus back to the national power company, the school could pay back debts to utilities and fund site improvements and extra-curricular activities.
The remaining extra power is distributed for free to three other nearby schools.
Last year, Hamadi's group launched Kidchen, a farmers' cooperative that grows vegetables on around eight hectares (20 acres) of nearby land.
While some produce goes to the school canteen, 90 percent has been sold since this summer, with the profits helping to pay for school activities.
Kidchen is staffed by six school parents, formerly unemployed, and an agricultural engineer, who receive stable incomes and a share of the equity and dividends.
"That pushes us to work harder and produce more," said chief gardener Chayeb Chayeb, a 44-year-old father of three.
"It's a project for ourselves." - 'Discover opportunities' -
Hamadi said better schooling is urgently needed in the country gripped by years of political instability and economic woes since the revolution.
The situation now is a far cry from the era of Habib Bourguiba, Tunisia's first president after independence from France in 1956, who strongly promoted primary education.
Initially the Arab Spring uprising inspired hopes of greater social and economic rights, but today "75 percent of pupils leave primary school without being able to write two sentences", Hamadi said.
"The education system has been suffering since the revolution... because every government has caved in to pressure from the unions," he said.
As a result, over 95 percent of the ministry's budget goes to paying staff salaries, leaving little for maintenance, schoolbooks and teacher training.
Some 100,000 pupils drop out of the Tunisian school system every year, and many parents, worried about low academic standards in state schools, opt for expensive private tuition.
Chayeb, the chief farmer, said the Makthar model had helped his family and given his children better school meals and activities ranging from business skills and foreign languages to robotics and drama.
"Before, I was a seasonal worker on five- or six-month contracts, always somewhere different," he said. "Now I work near where I live."
Former student Chaima Rhouma, 21 and studying law with a view to becoming a diplomat, said the project had completely revitalised the school, replacing a garbage-strewn yard with a sports field and garden.
Literature, theatre and cinema clubs had filled her with "good vibes", she said. "I've become more curious, I'm always looking for new things. Here you can study by having fun."
The school has gained a reputation in the region and is in high demand, with 80 children now on the waiting list, said its director Taher Meterfi.
Hamadi is meanwhile forging ahead with his next project -- a largely organic 40-hectare farm project to supply the city's 23 schools with energy and food for some 3,500 students.
At a time when Tunisia's crisis is driving many young people to emigrate, he hopes to help children "come to terms with their country and discover the opportunities it has to offer them".
New Millennium book brings Nordic noir even further north
Viken Kantarci and Alma Cohen Thu, November 3, 2022
The latest instalment in the Nordic crime saga Millennium hits Swedish bookstores Friday, with a new author seeking to shift the story's focus to the far north of the country.
Karin Smirnoff, who already had four novels under her belt, is continuing the celebrated series originally created by Stieg Larsson.
His fame came posthumously -- he died in 2004, a year before the release of the first book in the saga, "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo".
"It was quite easy to say yes to the project," Smirnoff told AFP, adding she had a special fondness for rogue hacker Lisbeth Salander, one of the main characters.
The Millennium books were some of the breakout hits of the 21st century. More than 100 million copies were sold, with the titles published in over 50 countries and adapted several times for the cinema.
Larsson, an investigative journalist specialising in extreme right-wing movements, died of a heart attack just after submitting his first three manuscripts.
He would never know the success of his work or enjoy the fortune it generated. - Controversy -
His partner, Eva Gabrielsson, found herself excluded from the proceeds because they were not married.
The controversy over the inheritance reared its head again years later when the decision was made to write a first batch of sequels after Larsson's death, consisting of three novels by the best-selling author David Lagercrantz.
The author wrote the books with the blessing of Larsson's brother and father, the heirs to his work.
Another two books are planned, but for Smirnoff the goal wasn't to reinvent Larsson's work in the new trilogy.
"I'm trying to continue this with respect to what's been done before," the 58-year-old author said.
But she still aims to put her "own point of view" forward while exploring themes of violence, politics and abuse of power present in the series.
In her opinion, works of art by necessity transcend their creators.
"I don't think that art belongs to anyone in that sense. Because if it was like that, art wouldn't progress at all," she said.
Picking up the pen was to continue "a project which is huge", she said, admitting the mission was "quite a task".
"I know a lot of people, they're thinking that this is only done for money. I don't think that David Lagercrantz did this only for money. I'm not doing it" for money, she said. - Far north -
The seventh instalment of the grim series, "Havsornens skrik" ("The Cry of the White-tailed Eagle"), is set in Sweden's far north where the adventures of Salander and Mikael Blomkvist will continue.
"I live up in the north of Sweden, so I wanted it to take place here," Smirnoff explained.
Setting the story more than a thousand kilometres north of the capital Stockholm, where most of the previous books have taken place, was also an opportunity to point out the injustices suffered by the region.
The ancestral land of the indigenous Sami people, which holds much of Sweden's natural resources, has been undergoing an industrial boom in recent decades.
Smirnoff notes the region "has a history of people from the south coming here", exploiting its resources and disappearing with the spoils.
Billions are also currently being pumped into the region in so-called green industries.
"With the billions come the problems as well," she told AFP.
Now, Smirnoff awaits readers' judgements.
"It's only like three weeks ago I wrote the last word. So for me, it's too close. I can't decide whether it's a good book," she said.
"It's going to be quite exciting when it's coming out to hear what other people think."
vk-aco/jll/lcm/smw
Gentrification fuels ire in iconic Athens neighbourhood
John HADOULIS Fri, November 4, 2022
The historic Athens district of Exarcheia has been a famed anti-establishment haven to some and a hideout for firebomb-wielding anarchists and drug dealers to others.
Now two regeneration projects are sparking controversy, protests and fears that a gentrification drive will forever alter the 19th century district's bohemian character.
Construction is underway on a new metro station on Exarcheia Square -- for years iconic as the culmination point of countless demonstrations in the volatile political culture of the Greek capital.
There is also an ongoing makeover of nearby Strefi Hill, a rare, albeit run-down spot of greenery in congested Athens with a panoramic view.
Protesters say the two projects combined will "kill off" Exarcheia's libertarian spirit.
With discontent bubbling under the surface, multi-million-euro investments at stake and demonstrations, locals now complain that Exarcheia has more police guarding its streets than outside parliament or government offices.
City and government officials are taking no chances in a neighbourhood synonymous to most Greeks with far-left unrest.
Under Strefi Hill, motorcycle police watch a group of teenagers shoot hoops at an outdoor basketball court. Others stand guard around the metro construction site.
- 'Political obsession' -
"We have more police than the prime minister's office," quips 66-year-old Thodoris Kokkinakis, a lifelong Exarcheia resident who says he sees around 200 officers in his neighbourhood at any given time of the day.
Residents accuse city officials of neglecting the heavily graffitied Strefi Hill for over two decades. The local playground is gutted, pathways are eroding, fire hydrants are faulty and there is no garbage collection.
Residents have often banded together in the past to clean up garbage, douse fires and discourage drug trading, Kokkinakis told AFP.
"We would repeatedly call the police. They claimed not to know where the hill was... or never turn up," he said.
While the metro station project has been on the drawing board for over a decade, opponents accuse the conservative government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis of weaponising the project as part of its law-and-order agenda.
"The government has a political obsession, a vendetta towards youths living or enjoying themselves in this historic district," wrote Nikos Belavilas, an architecture professor at the National Technical University of Athens, on Facebook.
After police in October beat up a protesting resident in front of his children, Greece's main opposition Syriza party said there was an "explosive mix" of "chronic neglect, unchecked real estate and police barbarity" in Exarcheia.
Yet others welcome the extension of the metro line.
- 'Nihilists' -
"The nearest stations are too far to walk," said a 75-year-old Exarcheia pensioner.
"A lot of people here want the metro" but are reluctant to speak openly, she added, declining to give her name to avoid antagonising neighbours who disagree.
Athens Mayor Kostas Bakoyannis, whose office did not respond to an AFP request for an interview, has dismissed protesters as "a few dozen" wandering "nihilists" in comments to Skai TV last August.
He told the municipal council last month that the regeneration project was aimed at "mums with prams".
Greece is banking hard on tourism to shore up its economy ahead of a tough winter compounded by soaring energy prices.
After slashing most of its coronavirus restrictions, tourism arrivals more than doubled year-on-year in the first eight months of 2022, to over 19 million.
But residents fear Exarcheia may soon follow the fate of Koukaki, another historic Athens district that saw rents skyrocket due to short-term property rentals and holiday lets owing to its proximity to the Acropolis.
A study by the Greek realtor group Remax last month showed Exarcheia rents rising on average 18 percent since last year.
- Rent hikes -
"The shop next door had to shut down after the landlord hiked the rent from 600 to 900 euros," says Angelos, a bookstore owner a short distance from Exarcheia Square.
Critics also view with suspicion the awarding, without tender, of the Strefi works to a major Greek real estate investment company.
Athens' mayor -- a nephew of Mitsotakis -- has also drawn fire and comparisons to France's 16th and 17th century spendthrift King Louis XIV over an ambitious pedestrianisation project.
A key part of the 50-million-euro ($49 million) Great Walk project, sold as "Europe's loveliest promenade", involved sealing off a lane on one of Athens' busiest avenues with large palm trees, flower planters and benches.
The mayor has promoted the project, which began in 2020, as necessary to modernise and revitalise downtown Athens. "Fewer cars, more greenery, less noise, more pedestrians and cyclists," he told Kathimerini newspaper last month.
But a year into the four-year project, a survey found in 2021 that over 85 percent of residents and local business owners were dissatisfied with the initiative.
Much of the criticism has been levelled at the cost. According to a municipal budget sheet published at the time, some six-metre palm trees cost 3,200 euros each and the largest planters a hefty 5,000 euros.
