Sunday, January 05, 2020

Videos show homophobic attack on three LGBTQ Palestinians in the West Bank


Screengrabs of videos showing a homophobic attack that took place on December 2 in Ramallah (Credit: Twitter)\
GAY RIGHTS / HOMOPHOBIA - 12/17/2019

Videos show homophobic attack on three LGBTQ Palestinians in the West Bank

People reacted in shock and outrage to a series of videos that appeared on social media in Israel and the Palestinian Territories in early December, showing an attack on a transgender woman and two other members of the LGBTQ community on a street in Ramallah, in the West Bank. These videos shine a light on how hard life can be for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Palestinians, many of whom end up seeking refuge in Israel.

Several videos uploaded to Facebook and Twitter on December 2 show a group of at least six men beating up three people. The footage shows at least four of the men punching and kicking the victims.

According to Israeli media outlet Ynet, the incident took place in the Kafr 'Aqab neighbourhood, which is about two kilometres from the West Bank town of Ramallah. The assailants were alleged to be men living in the Kalandia refugee camp, which is located in this neighbourhood.


The first video shows a young man being violently punched. The second video shows the group insulting and verbally abusing a transgender woman in a clothing store. The third video shows the group of assaillants searching and then damaging the victims’ car before shoving the three of them into a van, kicking and punching them all the while .


The incidents likely occurred on Ramallah Street, the main street in the neighbourhood. If you check out Ramallah Street on Google Street View, you can see the same concrete median strip as shown in the video, as well as the same kind of billboards located in the middle of the road. That said, the France 24 Observers team was not able to identify the exact location where the video was filmed, as Google Street View does not cover that area.



One of the three survivors of the violence is a transgender person who calls herself Mira and who originally hails from the Palestinian town of Hebron but is now living in the Jaffa neighborhood in Tel Aviv where she is in regular contact with the local LGBT centre. France 24 spoke with the director of the centre, Avihu Mizan:
She is doing well now. She was able to see a doctor here (in Israel) and lives in Jaffa. She went to Ramallah for a nose operation because it is cheaper there. The assaillants broke her nose during the attack but she didn’t have any more serious injuries. Our social workers are in contact with her as well as with the hundreds of other people who we watch over.

"They said that they were going to take us away to kill us, to execute us”

The day after the attack Mira and another victim, Daniel, were interviewed by Israeli public television channel Kan. Mira appeared on screen with a bandaged nose. Daniel explained what happened:

They told us that they were going to take us away to kill us, to execute us. They said, “You won’t be able to go home” and then they threatened us with their weapons…

On the same day, Mira posted a video on her Tik Tok account of herself, Daniel and the third victim, a young man who also had a broken nose. Since then, Mira has posted many more videos which show that her nose is healing.




The image on the left shows Mira in a video posted on December 3. The image on the right shows her in a video posted on December 12.
Same-sex sexual relations are illegal in the Gaza Strip but not in the West Bank, which is the larger of the territories governed by the Palestinian Authority. In general, Palestinian society remains intolerant to same-sex relationships.

In 2013, an Israeli lawyer specialised in LGBTQ rights said that more than 2,000 LGBTQ Palestinians had found refuge in Tel Aviv, a coastal Israeli city which is known for its vibrant and established gay culture and community.

However, most of them will struggle to get legal status in Israel, especially because many are too afraid to seek asylum for their sexual orientation. A 2013 article published by Vice explained that many Palestinians fear that their identity will be revealed during the administrative process. If this happens, they may be accused of collaborating with the Israeli government and risk being targeted or even killed.








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Carbon Based Lifeforms - World Of Sleepers (24-bit 2015 Remaster) [Full Album]


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BACKGROUNDER AUSTRALIAN FIRES

 Firestorms and flaming tornadoes: how bushfires create their own ferocious weather systems

A firestorm on Mirror Plateau Yellowstone Park, 1988.
Jim Peaco/US National Park Service

Author
Rachel Badlan
November, 2019

As the east coast bushfire crisis unfolds, New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian and Rural Fire Service operational officer Brett Taylor have each warned residents bushfires can create their own weather systems.

 This is not just a figure of speech or a general warning about the unpredictability of intense fires. Bushfires genuinely can create their own weather systems: a phenomenon known variously as firestorms, pyroclouds or, in meteorology-speak, pyrocumulonimbus.

 Read more: Firestorms: the bushfire/thunderstorm hybrids we urgently need to understand

 The occurrence of firestorms is increasing in Australia; there have been more than 50 in the period 2001-18. During a six-week period earlier this year, 18 confirmed pyrocumulonimbus formed, mainly over the Victorian High Country.
 
A pyrocumulonimbus cloud generated by a bushfire in Licola,Victoria, on March 2, 2019. Elliot Leventhal, Author provided

Its not clear whether the current bushfires will spawn any firestorms. But with the frequency of extreme fires set to increase due to hotter and drier conditions, it’s worth taking a closer look at how firestorms happen, and what effects they produce.
What is a firestorm?

 The term “firestorm” is a contraction of “fire thunderstorm”. In simple terms, they are thunderstorms generated by the heat from a bushfire.

 In stark contrast to typical bushfires, which are relatively easy to predict and are driven by the prevailing wind, firestorms tend to form above unusually large and intense fires.

 If a fire encompasses a large enough area (called “deep flaming”), the upward movement of hot air can cause the fire to interact with the atmosphere above it, potentially forming a pyrocloud. This consists of smoke and ash in the smoke plume, and water vapour in the cloud above.

 If the conditions are not too severe, the fire may produce a cloud called a pyrocumulus, which is simply a cloud that forms over the fire. These are typically benign and do not affect conditions on the ground.

 But if the fire is particularly large or intense, or if the atmosphere above it is unstable, this process can give birth to a pyrocumulonimbus – and that is an entirely more malevolent beast.
What effects do firestorms produce?

 A pyrocumulonibus cloud is much like a normal thunderstorm that forms on a hot summer’s day. The crucial difference here is that this upward movement is caused by the heat from the fire, rather than simply heat radiating from the ground.

 Conventional thunderclouds and pyrocumulonimbus share similar characteristics. Both form an anvil-shaped cloud that extends high into the troposphere (the lower 10-15km of the atmosphere) and may even reach into the stratosphere beyond.
NASA image of pyrocumulonimbus formation in Argentina, January 2018. NASA

 The weather underneath these clouds can be fierce. As the cloud forms, the circulating air creates strong winds with dangerous, erratic “downbursts” – vertical blasts of air that hit the ground and scatter in all directions.

 In the case of a pyrocumulonimbus, these downbursts have the added effect of bringing dry air down to the surface beneath the fire. The swirling winds can also carry embers over huge distances. Ember attack has been identified as the main cause of property loss in bushfires, and the unpredictable downbursts make it impossible to determine which direction the wind will blow across the ground. The wind direction may suddenly change, catching people off guard.

 Firestorms also produce dry lightning, potentially sparking new fires, which may then merge or coalesce into a larger flaming zone.

 In rare cases, a firestorm can even morph into a “fire tornado”. This is formed from the rotating winds in the convective column of a pyrocumulonimbus. They are attached to the firestorm and can therefore lift off the ground.

 Read more: Turn and burn: the strange world of fire tornadoes

 This happened during the infamous January 2003 Canberra bushfires, when a pyrotornado tore a path near Mount Arawang in the suburb of Kambah.
A fire tornado in Kambah, Canberra, 2003 (contains strong language).

 Understandably, firestorms are the most dangerous and unpredictable manifestations of a bushfire, and are impossible to suppress or control. As such, it is vital to evacuate these areas early, to avoid sending fire personnel into extremely dangerous areas.

 The challenge is to identify the triggers that cause fires to develop into firestorms. Our research at UNSW, in collaboration with fire agencies, has made considerable progress in identifying these factors. They include “eruptive fire behaviour”, where instead of a steady rate of fire spread, once a fire interacts with a slope, the plume may attach to the ground and rapidly accelerate up the hill.

 Another process, called “vorticity-driven lateral spread”, has also been recognised as a good indicator of potential fire blow-up. This occurs when a fire spreads laterally along a ridge line instead of following the direction of the wind.

 Although further refinement is still needed, this kind of knowledge could greatly improve decision-making processes on when and where to deploy on-ground fire crews, and when to evacuate before the situation turns deadly.

 Drought and climate change were the kindling, and now the east coast is ablaze

November 11, 2019 


Last week saw an unprecedented outbreak of large, intense fires stretching from the mid-north coast of New South Wales into central Queensland.

 The most tragic losses are concentrated in northern NSW, where 970,000 hectares have been burned, three people have died, and at least 150 homes have been destroyed.

 A catastrophic fire warning for Tuesday has been issued for the Greater Sydney, Greater Hunter, Shoalhaven and Illawarra areas. It is the first time Sydney has received a catastrophic rating since the rating system was developed in 2009.
No relief is in sight from this extremely hot, dry and windy weather, and the extraordinary magnitude of these fires is likely to increase in the coming week. Alarmingly, as Australians increasingly seek a sea-change or tree-change, more people are living in the path of these destructive fires.

 Read more: It's only October, so what's with all these bushfires? New research explains it
Unprecedented state of emergency

 Large fires have happened before in northern NSW and southern Queensland during spring and early summer (for example in 1994, 1997, 2000, 2002, and 2018 in northern NSW). But this latest extraordinary situation raises many questions.

 It is as if many of the major fires in the past are now being rerun concurrently. What is unprecedented is the size and number of fires rather than the seasonal timing.

 The potential for large, intense fires is determined by four fundamental ingredients: a continuous expanse of fuel; extensive and continuous dryness of that fuel; weather conditions conducive to the rapid spread of fire; and ignitions, either human or lightning. These act as a set of switches, in series: all must be “on” for major fires to occur.
Live fuel moisture content in late October 2019. The ‘dry’ and ‘transitional’ moisture categories correspond to conditions associated with over 95% of historical area burned by bushfire. Estimated from MODIS satellite imagery for the Sydney basin Bioregion.

 The NSW north coast and tablelands, along with much of the southern coastal regions of Queensland are famous for their diverse range of eucalypt forest, heathlands and rainforests, which flourish in the warm temperate to subtropical climate.

 Read more: Climate change is bringing a new world of bushfires
These forests and shrublands can rapidly accumulate bushfire fuels such as leaf litter, twigs and grasses. The unprecedented drought across much of Australia has created exceptional dryness, including high-altitude areas and places like gullies, water courses, swamps and steep south-facing slopes that are normally too wet to burn.
These typically wet parts of the landscape have literally evaporated, allowing fire to spread unimpeded. The drought has been particularly acute in northern NSW where record low rainfall has led to widespread defoliation and tree death. It is no coincidence current fires correspond directly with hotspots of record low rainfall and above-average temperatures.


Annual trends in live fuel moisture. The horizontal line represents the threshold for the critical ‘dry’ fuel category, which corresponds to the historical occurrence of most major wildfires in the Bioregion. Estimated from MODIS imagery for the Sydney basin Bioregion

 Thus, the North Coast and northern ranges of NSW as well as much of southern and central Queensland have been primed for major fires. A continuous swathe of critically dry fuels across these diverse landscapes existed well before last week, as shown by damaging fires in September and October.

 High temperatures and wind speeds, low humidity, and a wave of new ignitions on top of pre-existing fires has created an unprecedented situation of multiple large, intense fires stretching from the coast to the tablelands and parts of the interior.
More people in harm’s way

 Many parts of the NSW north coast, southern Queensland and adjacent hinterlands have seen population growth around major towns and cities, as people look for pleasant coastal and rural homes away from the capital cities.

 The extraordinary number and ferocity of these fires, plus the increased exposure of people and property, have contributed to the tragic results of the past few days.

 Read more: How a bushfire can destroy a home

 Communities flanked by forests along the coast and ranges are highly vulnerable because of the way fires spread under the influence of strong westerly winds. Coastal communities wedged between highly flammable forests and heathlands and the sea, are particularly at risk.

 As a full picture of the extent and location of losses and damage becomes available, we will see the extent to which planning, building regulations, and fire preparation has mitigated losses and damage.
 
A firefighter defends a property in Torrington, near Glen Innes, 
Sunday, November 10, 2019. There are more than 80 fires 
burning around the state, with about half of those uncontained. 
AAP Image/Dan Peled

 These unprecedented fires are an indication that a much-feared future under climate change may have arrived earlier than predicted. The week ahead will present high-stakes new challenges.

 The most heavily populated region of the nation is now at critically dry levels of fuel moisture, below those at the time of the disastrous Christmas fires of 2001 and 2013. Climate change has been predicted to strongly increase the chance of large fires across this region. The conditions for Tuesday are a real and more extreme manifestation of these longstanding predictions.

 Read more: Where to take refuge in your home during a bushfire

 Whatever the successes and failures in this crisis, it is likely that we will have to rethink the way we plan and prepare for wildfires in a hotter, drier and more flammable world.

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THE INTERVIEW: KATE RAWORTH

As ecological collapse looms, our growth-at-all costs economic system urgently requires a different vision. Renegade economist Kate Raworth is preaching a new mindset fit for the challenges ahead. She spoke to Hazel Healy.


Hazel Healy: You’ve worked up a blueprint for the world we want to create, one that offers humanity a new ‘compass for prosperity’. Can you explain the concept of Doughnut Economics that lies at the heart of this?

Kate Raworth: The question I seek to answer is: how do we meet the needs of all people within the means of the planet?

My big – but simple – vision is this idea of a doughnut. In the middle, there’s a hole where people are falling short on the essentials of life – food, healthcare, education and housing. The outer ring is the ecological ceiling of resource use: climate change, freshwater stress, biodiversity loss. The doughnut is the ‘safe space’ in between these two.

The University of Leeds has modelled national doughnuts for 150 countries. It shows how a low-income country like Zambia is hardly overshooting any biophysical boundaries but massively falling short on meeting almost all people’s essential needs.

Then you have China, Turkey, Egypt, already overshooting planetary boundaries and still falling short on essential needs. And then you’ve got a country like Belgium, which is almost meeting the basic needs of all (on a very low threshold – there’s huge inequality and deprivation in Belgium) while massively overshooting those planetary boundaries.

So, the doughnut framing is really about coming back into balance. The planet cannot take the aggregate effect of all of us overshooting. Progress can no longer be endless growth, a line going upwards.

You wrote Doughnut Economics in 2017 with students in mind. But the book became a surprise hit: a Sunday Times bestseller and Forbes' Book of the Year. Its success has led to invites to speak at the World Economic Forum and ‘high-yield finance’ conferences of major banks. Why do you think they are picking up on your ideas?

Well, it’s fascinating, isn’t it? The interest is coming from the heart of the places that you expect most to resist. I think it’s partly because the one per cent are interested in the backlash against them. But also, that there’s a growing recognition from the very heart of business that it is destroying the living planet, which underpins humanity – and business itself.

And while of course many people working in banks, insurance, pensions and government treasuries are hugely resistant to my ideas, there’s always someone who is trying to bring about change from the inside.
‘There’s always someone who is trying to bring about change from the inside’

I’ve been amazed by the level of interest from governments – from across the political spectrum. At an event in the Netherlands, I gave a talk to the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Change, and the room was overflowing. The organizer put it down to there being a real hunt for new ideas: ‘It’s like rain falling on barren land’, they said.

It’s not easy for someone to tell you why the doughnut is wrong. People find it compelling. They understand that there are tipping points because we are seeing, witnessing and living through them. They recognize that people have essential human needs – the inheritance of 70 years of human rights work at the UN. People agree with those fundamentals.

And the question is, can those policymakers and civil servants actually translate these ideas into policies? Where do they get stuck?

Engineers have told me change is blocked as soon as treasuries start talking about ‘optimal cost’. Can you expand on this and explain how we go about persuading economists to think differently?

Yes, treasuries are where things are getting stopped. In the UK there’s something called The Green Book, which is the set of rules by which Treasury logic runs. And it discounts away the future, and uses cost-benefit analysis.

It’s based on an economics of incrementalism, which says we must always spend our time looking for the optimal. So, by that logic, we want to pay the least amount of money for the greatest amount of effect, to not be wasting money.

But we’re operating in a world of irreversible, catastrophic possible changes, which science tells us are very close. So, the whole machinery, mindset and tools are just not fit. But treasuries and mainstream economic analysis have built themselves up around them.

I speak to civil servants and the economics research teams in banks – the holders of this logic. I try to bring in a different logic that introduces a new set of metrics that can’t just be reduced to finance.

I do think it’s important to step out of the neoclassical frame. Some streams of environmental economics try – with the best intent – to take ecosystems, society and human wellbeing and add them up as forms of wealth. But the danger is, while you may win a battle over one forest, you reinforce the framing of the living world as a balance-sheet asset.

How does the doughnut theory apply to low-income countries, which are still struggling to get anywhere near that safe space – the first ring of the doughnut – where their citizens’ needs are met?

I strongly believe that today’s low-income countries absolutely will and must and need to see more of what we call ‘economic growth’ to thrive. There will be more market activity, more things bought and sold and more state activity to provide healthcare, education, housing, roads, energy and transport. That’s precisely why high-income economies need to get out of the way and make ecological space for others. So, I say we’re all developing countries now – with very different trajectories. How can you claim to be a developed country if you meet people’s needs yet massively exceed the capacity of the planet in the way you do it?

It’s a deeply undesirable form [of development] to pursue. We need emerging economies to take a different trajectory.
The Doughnut of social and planetary boundaries (2017)

Can you paint a picture of what life would be like in a circular, redistributive ‘doughnut economy, powered by sunlight’? Would people have ‘jobs’ as we understand them now?

I think one of the tasks of the 21st-century economist is to help design institutions so that people are remunerated where they need to be remunerated. This is a great big redesign challenge.

Work happens in four spaces: the market, the state, household and the commons. They are all really valuable ways in which we organize to produce goods and services that we want and need.

Now, economics today starts, on day one, with supply and demand: with the market mechanism. But we also have the state. It hires people to produce the things that the market will often fail to produce – such as vaccines, roads or education.

Another form of work is the household, where each of us starts our day. Caring work is essential; so much of human wellbeing relies on it. But it’s been left invisible in economics because it’s unpaid, falls outside the market and is done by women.

The fourth space is the commons, which many people don’t understand because it’s so deeply neglected. This is where people come together as a community and co-create valuable things – whether that’s Wikipedia on the web or a community garden in a neighbourhood.

So, in a doughnut economy, the idea is that people can collaborate and work, whether they are paid a wage through the market, or work together to create free goods and services, or care for others, or are employed directly by the state. But we’ll need a shift in the balance between these four spaces. If we think about the economy we have, and where we want to get to, there’s a lot to be done.

Do you see any signs, or trends, that we are moving in a doughnut direction?

The great news – and we really need to help people see the positive possibilities here – is that new technologies are completely transforming how we organize and produce things.

In the 21st century, the core technologies: (i) how we produce energy, (ii) how we make things (iii) how we communicate, and (iv) how we create shared knowledge are asking to be distributive by design. So, you can go from a massive oil rig to a solar panel on the roof of every home; from production in a massive factory owned by corporations to desktop manufacturing with 3D printers; from a centralized switchboard to mobile phones in every pocket; from patents and copyright to Creative Commons licensing.

If you put all those technologies together, you get an economy ‘powered by sunlight’ where production is distributed: small, local-scale using both the communications platform of the internet and knowledge that’s open source and shared.

Take community-owned energy – it’s popping up all over. Then there’s the rise of employee-owned enterprises, the return of co-ops, the rise of new business models: new, regulatory legal forms such as Community Interest Companies in the UK. And then you have governments like Wales that has passed a ‘Well-Being of Future Generations Act’.

Can you name any concrete, fiscal policies that would push things towards the doughnut?

The obvious shift would be to stop taxing labour and tax resource use instead. It’s a no-brainer. It would make companies completely reorientate, kickstart far more effective use of resources and probably lead to the employment of more people to do labour-intensive work instead of wasting energy and materials. So yes, that would push things towards the doughnut.

I was talking to some of the people working on the Green New Deal in the US. We had long conversations and yes – it combines social justice with ecological integrity. It’s saying we can do both together, in fact we can’t do them separately. So, I’m absolutely for that.

And then we also need to tackle the current finance industry – which is designed to grow exponentially, endlessly, within a delicately balanced living planet: that needs questioning the most.

Is there a role for markets in this transition?

I absolutely see a role for markets. Right now, you have got market prices that are starting to reward renewable energy in more and more national markets.

You’ve got a whole raft of countries, sitting underneath the doughnut – many of them are very, very sunny countries. When they come to invest in their energy systems, they’re going to invest in renewables. So that is very positive.

But we will also need a moral drive. The pressure that started in the fossil-fuel divestment movement in universities and foundations is now moving through into the very mainstream heart of finance of banks and insurers.

It seems like every fortnight a new bank, a new lender says, ‘We’re going to stop funding coal.’ Now, some of them are saying that because they see it in terms of market-based returns – a fear of stranded assets. But I know – from people inside the industry – that it can be a principled position. They’re saying, ‘We just shouldn’t be doing this.’

They have older investors who are reaching the legacy stage of life and saying: ‘Actually, I want to divest from damaging industries.’ And then there are the millennial inheritors who say, ‘Dammit, Grandpa, what were you doing? I’m going to invest this completely differently!’

These three things – morality, the pricing, the value shift between the generations – will be key.

This article is from the January-February 2020 issue of New Internationalist.
You can access the entire archive of over 500 issues with a digital subscription. 
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GROSSMUTTERKRIEG

 German grandmothers clash over viral song

A satirical song about grandmothers and the environment has sparked protests outside German public broadcaster WDR. People joined the protest on both sides in a debate over the role of state-funded media.

Protesters and counterprotesters demonstrated outside German regional broadcaster WDR's headquarters in Cologne on Saturday, as the viral controversy over a song about grandmas and the environment that ignited #Omagate continued to rage.

A heavy and active police presence kept apart about 30 people protesting against WDR — some of whom were members of far-right groups — and a larger crowd of mostly more youthful counterdemonstrators, with some waving banners showing allegiance to Fridays for Futures offshoot groups — Parents and Grandparents for Futures.

Among the protest groups were grandparents, the intended targets of the WDR satirical song which calls them "old environmental pigs," and later the target of a comment from WDR journalist Danny Hollek who suggested that grandmothers were "Nazi pigs." Hollek has since retracted his comment and apologized, but not before receiving death threats. Members of far-right groups also met in front of his home.

Grandmas were present at both the right-wing aligned and counterprotest and their comments and opinions on the song and subsequent fallout cut to the heart of a debate over the role of state-funded media.


Heidrun Genutt was annoyed at being called a 'Nazi pig'

'My grandma helped rebuild Germany'

For Heidrun Genutt, a 58-year-old grandmother who has a 1-year-old grandchild, the follow-up comment from Hollek was why she joined the protest on Saturday.

Holding a sign that read "my grandma was a Trümmerfrau (rubble woman)" — a German term referring to women who were seen as the driving force to rebuild Germany after World War II — Genutt said she was protesting because she objected to the comment that anyone who disagreed with the contentious WDR song was a Nazi pig.

"We are completely normal people, we just want to carry on living a normal life and also for our children and grandchildren," she said. She added that she had originally taken offense to the song because she always separates her rubbish and she's the type of person that cuts open a toothpaste tube to use the last bit.

Yadranka, 70, agreed, saying that the "grandma is a Nazi pig comment really annoyed me," adding "I don't want support programs like this financially."

Yadranka said state media "doesn't report neutrally anymore" and said that "they don't represent the interests of the people that they finance." She thought it was important to protest "to show a sign that you've crossed a line."


Some grandmas think the far right has instrumentalized their status as grandparents

'I don't need protection from' the far right

Over in the counterprotest, 67-sear-old Martina, who has two grandchildren "aged 7 1/2 and 4 3/4" said "I honestly didn't like the term 'sau' because I'm not a pig, I'm a person, but the content of the song is completely right and people ought to be able to express that. I find everything in the song correct except the 'pig' bit. Clearly you need to have different opinions, but when it's against the right-wing you should only have one opinion."

And 69-year-old Christa, who is grandmother to three grandchildren aged 1 1/2, 4 and 5, said that although she wasn't particularly impressed by the song, she thought it was "ridiculous" that she might feel personally insulted by the song.

For her, the most important reason she decided to join the protest on Saturday was that she didn't like how her status as grandmother had been used by the far right. "They say we are protecting the German grandmothers — I don't need protection from them," she said. "I do that well enough myself."
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Irmela Mensah-Schramm has been found guilty of property damage for painting over neo-Nazi slogans. Many Germans were outraged that she was fined on the same day as a deadly anti-Semitic attack in the city of Halle. (11.10.2019)

#Omagate: Kids' song inflames German culture wars
Controversy continues over the satirical version of a children's song broadcast after Christmas. A ditty about a fictional grandmother's environmentally unfriendly habits has struck an inter-generational nerve. (02.01.2020)

'Grandma is an old environmental pig': German broadcaster deletes children's song remake
A public broadcaster has justified removing the video, saying allegations it had politically manipulated the children were unbearable for editorial staff. However, one news editor called the clip "scandalously good." (28.12.2019)
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Singular 'they' crowned word of the decade by US linguists

US LINGUIST IS THAT LIKE A CUNNING LINGUIST
DIALECTS IS NOT DIALECTICS AND OTHER PUNS
Singular 'they' crowned word of the decade by US linguists

US linguists have picked the gender-neutral pronoun "they" as their word of the decade. The term beat a list of contenders that included "meme," "#BlackLivesMatter" and "'MeToo" to win the crown.

The American Dialect Society has named "they" as the word of the decade, recognizing the plural pronoun's growing use as a singular form to refer to people with a non-binary gender identity.

The winner was decided in a vote by the body's 350 members at an annual gathering on Friday.

"People want to choose something that stands the test of time and sums up the decade as a whole," said linguist and lexicographer Ben Zimmer.


The word of the year was "(my) pronouns" — a nod to the increasingly popular practice of specifying the perferred personal pronouns one would like to be called by, for example she/her.

The society said in a statement that the top picks showed "how the personal expression of gender identity has become an increasing part of our shared discourse."


Other words on the list for word of the decade included "meme," which came in second place, followed by "climate," "#BlackLivesMatter," "woke" and "MeToo."

"They" was also crowned word of the year by US dictionary Merriam-Webster in 2019.

The American Dialect Society was founded in 1889 and started selecting its word of the year in 1991. Since then, the only two previous decade winners have been "web" for the 1990s, and "Google" as a verb for the 2000s.

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Beauty and the Beast: Brutalist architecture in former Yugoslavia


OK, I AM A BIG FAN

AND THIS GOES SOME WAY TO EXPLAINING SLAVOJ ZIZEK 

CULTURE



Beauty and the Beast: Brutalist architecture in the former Yugoslavia

Eyesore or iconic architecture? Brutalism blossomed under Yugoslavia's communist leader, Marshal Tito. The epic concrete housing towers and civic buildings are still in use today and have become Instagram stars.
Aviation Museum, Belgrade
Josip Broz Tito became leader of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslav in 1945 in the aftermath of World War Two. Faced with the task of rebuilding the cities devastated during the war, Tito often opted to create a concrete utopia of the future via massive Brutalist structures that would symbolize a virile new communist state. The above Aviation Museum was built in Belgrade in 1969.
Bizarre memorial
This memorial built on the highest peak of the Petrova Gora mountain range in central Croatia is in danger of falling into disrepair. The monument to the uprising of the people of Kordun and Banija celebrates the resistance of the civilian population against the Nazi regime.
Industrial aesthetics
The New York Museum of Modern Art dedicated an exhibition to photographs to Brutalist architecture in 2018, in effect rehabilitating a style of building that many would rather see disappear. The Clinical Hospital Dubrava building in the Croatian capital Zagreb has decidedly industrial overtones. The clinic has a trauma center and functions as a teaching hospital.
War memorial
The concrete monument on the Sutjeska River in Bosnia and Herzegovina commemorates one of the bloodiest battles of the Second World War. Known as the Tjentiste memorial, it commemorates the killing of 7,000 members of the Yugoslav army by Nazis bombers in 1943. Like other Brutalist relics in the region, the memorial was in a state of disrepair until it was renovated in 2018.
Huge cupola
Hall 1 of the Belgrade Fair grounds was opened to the public in 1957 — at the time, its dome was the largest in the world. It remains a testimony to the architectural adventurism of the postwar modernists, another massive Brutalist structure that has piqued the interest of Instagram users globally, with #brutalism offering fresh perspectives on these 20th century concrete monoliths.

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Australia wildfires: Disaster escalates to ‘entirely new level’ as angry firefighter vents rage at PM

Firefighter who lost home refuses to shake Australian PM’s hand

‘Go tell the prime minister to get f*****,’ says firefighter

“People beg us to save their horses, their cows, their dogs. There are burned animals piled against the remnants of the barbed wire fences. The f****** cattle dogs will not leave the livestock they cared for. They die with the cows. I am crying now.”

Kate Ng

A change of weather on Sunday brought some respite for fire-ravaged southeastern Australia after a day of blazes that killed two people and injured four firefighters, although authorities warned the worst is yet to come.

A southerly change that came through on Saturday night brought cooler temperatures, after they topped 40C (104F) in many areas, and there was even the prospect of some light rain in coastal areas in the coming days.

But high temperatures and strong winds earlier on Saturday fuelled fires burning on “an entirely new level” along Australia’s east coast.


Prime minister Scott Morrison is facing criticism for his handling of the disaster, with one firefighter telling 7NEWS Sydney: “Go tell the prime minister to get f*****.”

He confirmed two more people died on Saturday, pushing the death toll up to 23, and has called up around 3,000 army reservists to help battle the fires.


Mr Morrison told a news conference: “We are facing another extremely difficult next 24 hours.

“In recent times, particularly over the course of the balance of this week, we have seen this disaster escalate to an entirely new level.”

Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures
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A father and son who had been battling flames for two days became the latest victims of the worst wildfire in Australian history on Saturday.

The bodies of ​Dick Lang, 78, an acclaimed bush pilot and outback safari operator, and his 43-year-old son Clayton Lang were found on a highway on Kangaroo Island.

Their family said their losses left them “heartbroken and reeling from this double tragedy”.

Temperatures rose to record levels across the country, hitting 43C in Canberra and 48.9C in Penrith, resulting in increased fire danger.

By Saturday evening, 3,600 firefighters were battling blazes across New South Wales (NSW).
Power was lost in some areas as fires downed transmission lines, and residents were warned that the worst may be yet to come.

NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian said: ​“We are now in a position where we are saying to people it’s not safe to move, it’s not safe to leave these areas,

“We are in for a long night and I make no bones about that. We are still yet to hit the worst of it.”

Mr Morrison said the governor general had signed off on the calling up of reserves “to search and bring every possible capability to bear by deploying army brigades to fire-affected communities”.

According to defence minister Linda Reynolds, it is the first time reservists have been called up “in this way in living memory and, in fact, I believe for the first time in our nation’s history”.

More than 130 fires are burning in NSW, with at least half of them out of control.

Firefighters are battling 53 fires across Victoria state, and conditions are expected to worsen with a southerly wind change.

The Bureau of Meteorology warned conditions would deteriorate rapidly as strong winds and smoke plumes from the fires triggered dry lightning storms and fire tornadoes.

Authorities have been urging people to leave their homes in at-risk areas throughout the week.

But on Saturday, the NSW Rural Fire Service advised those still in certain high-risk areas: “It is too late to leave. Seek shelter as the fire approaches. Protect yourself from the heat of the fire.”

Scores of homes have been lost to the fires, which have razed over 5.25 million hectares (13 million acres) of land since they began in September.

Emotions were running high among firefighters who feel powerless to stop the raging fires. One firefighter who lost his home was filmed refusing to shake Mr Morrison’s hand on Friday when the prime minister visited Cobargo, NSW, where a father and son were killed by fires earlier in the week.

On Twitter, author Matthew Battles said a firefighter friend wrote to him: “Fighting the fires has been very upsetting… I have never had a shift go less than 16 hours and once we went for 21 hours without a break.

“My emotions are always only millimetres from the surface. I cry at the drop of a hat. I keep crying, because we cannot save all of the houses and people.

“People beg us to save their horses, their cows, their dogs. There are burned animals piled against the remnants of the barbed wire fences. The f****** cattle dogs will not leave the livestock they cared for. They die with the cows. I am crying now.”
Additional reporting by agencies
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