As humanity bubbled in prison

Jawed Naqvi

Published July 6, 2021 -

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.


“THEY killed Stan Swamy.” Fellow journalist John Dayal’s Facebook message startled me. The 84-year-old Jesuit priest was put on the ventilator two days ago after weeks of fighting Covid at a private hospital in Mumbai. Although denied bail, a judge permitted him to be treated for the virus contracted in prison.

Swamy was suffering from Parkinson’s when he was thrown into prison in October last year, and was slapped with outrageous terror charges. Nothing better can be expected, of course, from India’s palpably communal rulers. They thrive on a blend of hate and ignorance. It was early in Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s innings that a Hindutva fanatic murdered an Australian missionary and his two young sons in an Orissa village by setting their jeep on fire. Vajpayee was at least contrite and condemned the crime publicly. That was a different stage in the steady journey of Hindutva.

Acknowledged to be a member of the saffron family, the killer of Graham Staines and his sons is serving a life sentence. Who is responsible for Swamy’s needless and cruel death, which his supporters say is nothing short of murder?

Hindutva’s hatred of Muslims and fear of Christian missionaries is legendary. But the 1950s movie that L.K. Advani screened on Doordarshan in his avatar as information minister soon after the defeat of Indira Gandhi in 1977 takes the cake. A helpless Hindu woman in an Indian village approaches the temple priest to cure her mute husband. The priest prescribes an amazing cure — to throw out Christian missionaries from the village. The woman musters support and violently evicts the missionaries thereby finding that her husband is miraculously cured of his ailment. Difficult to forget watching Swayamsiddha on a stunned neighbour’s black-and-white TV set in Delhi.

India’s palpably communal rulers thrive on a blend of hate and ignorance.

Much like the Staines family who were selflessly devoted to the treatment of leprosy stalking a village, Indian Jesuit and Catholic priests have worked among the poor for over a century. Swamy lived and worked for around six decades with the most marginalised tribal communities in the Bihar and Jharkhand belt. A social worker, activist and educator, his life is what legends are made of.

Swamy’s arrest by the National Investigation Agency was always suspicious, but it acquired a more dubious ring after an NIA court last week released Akhil Gogoi, a social activist and recently elected MLA in Assam. Gogoi told the media that instead of pressing charges against him, the NIA seemed more interested in recruiting him as a member of the BJP and its sister organisations. The claim deserves to be probed, of course, but Gogoi was lucky to get away. Others have not been as lucky.

Swamy’s arrest did mobilise opposition parties to demand that the draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, which is being liberally used by the NIA, be repealed. Recently, the Delhi High Court also raised questions about the use of the law.

Pope Francis on his part questioned the arrest. Human rights groups, Catholic and Jesuit associations across the world, the UN’s human rights wing, students, intellectuals and the Adivasi communities Swamy worked with have been protesting against the arrest in several countries. However, when did anyone see the Modi government rowing back from its mission to wipe out critics and ordinary opponents?

Father Swamy was always at loggerheads with the government over tribal rights. His focus on empowering exploited Adivasis was a thorn in the flesh for a government wanting private companies to exploit the virgin forests and abundant natural resources of Jharkhand. Evidently, the government decided to deal with the man they saw as blocking ‘development’ in the region.

Read: Furore after Modi critic quits top Indian university 'under political pressure'

After arresting him on Oct 8 last year, alleging he had links with banned Maoist groups, the NIA brought Swamy to Mumbai. His name was included in the NIA’s 10,000-page charge sheet along with 15 activists it accuses of involvement in what has come to be known as the Elgar Parishad/Bhima Koregaon incident. ‘Elgar’ here appears to be a corruption of ‘yalghaar’, Urdu for attack, expressing Dalit anger.

The case relates to caste violence on Jan 1, 2018, at Bhima Koregaon in Maharashtra. The Elgar Parishad was an event held the previous evening to commemorate 200 years of the Battle of Koregaon Bhima in which Dalit soldiers jointly with the British forces defeated the Brahmin peshwa’s army.

Named as an accomplice with another person who was arrested, Swamy was bracketed with other intellectual activists, including radical poet Varavara Rao. Other idealists and activists languishing in prison include Gautam Navlakha, Anand Teltumbde, Shoma Sen, Sudha Bharadwaj, Vernon Gonsalves, Arun Ferreira, Sudhir Dhawale, Surendra Gadling, Mahesh Raut, Rona Wilson, Hany Babu Tharayil, Sagar Gorkhe, Ramesh Gaichor and Jyoti Jagtap. Wheelchair-bound Prof Saibaba, a 90 per cent paralysed teacher from Delhi University is rotting in solitary confinement in Nagpur.

Susan Abraham, Swamy’s defence lawyer, said the priest could barely stand and could not sign documents clearly when he was arrested. His supporters say the issues Stan Swamy was involved in were the reason why the government found him a threat. For one, he relentlessly pressed for the implementation of panchayati rights for the tribespeople under the Fifth Schedule of the constitution, which protects tribal interests. He always crossed swords with the state over the lack of action on the Forest Rights Act. But Father Swamy bore no grudge against his tormentors.

In a letter from prison, the octogenarian priest already troubled by Parkinson’s disease, described Mumbai’s Taloja prison in indelibly affectionate words.

In his letter, Swamy lauded Ferreira for helping him eat his meals and Gonsalves for bathing him. “My two inmates help out during supper, in washing my clothes and giving massage to my knee joints,” he wrote. “They are from very poor families. Please remember my inmates and my colleagues in your prayers. Despite all odds, humanity is bubbling in Taloja prison.”

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.

jawednaqvi@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, July 6th, 2021

Anger grows over Indian priest's death in detention

Issued on: 07/07/2021 

Students protest in New Delhi over the death of rights activist and priest Stan Swamy Sajjad HUSSAIN AFP

New Delhi (AFP)

Anger over the death in custody of an 84-year-old Indian priest who had been charged with terrorism offences grew Wednesday as 10 activists arrested in the same case went on hunger strike.

Stan Swamy, who suffered from Parkinson's disease and had multiple bail applications rejected, died in hospital on Monday nine months after being arrested under anti-terrorism legislation.

In a statement released through family members, 10 people in prison over the same case blamed his death on "systematic torture" by India's National Investigation Agency (NIA) and the former head of the jail where Swamy was held.


The 10 are mainly academics and activists.

The priest, who campaigned for marginalised tribal communities, and the others were arrested for allegedly inciting violence between different Indian castes in 2018.

He was accused by authorities of having links to Maoist militants, an allegation he had denied.

Swamy was detained under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, which allows people to be held without trial indefinitely and where bail applications are hard.

On Tuesday the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights -- which had pressed for Swamy's release -- said it was "deeply saddened and disturbed" by his death.

India's government responded by saying Swamy's bail was rejected because of the "specific nature of charges against him".

"India remains committed to promotion and protection of human rights of all its citizens," foreign ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said.

But Human Rights Watch's South Asia director Meenakshi Ganguly told AFP that the death "has exposed the extreme failure of the criminal justice system in India to ensure impartial free speech rights protections".

"Whether it is the investigations, the arrests, allegations filed under draconian laws, the mistreatment in jail or repeatedly opposing bail, the authorities seemed determined to target peaceful dissent," she added.

The Times of India said in an editorial that Swamy's death was an "entirely avoidable tragedy", slamming the "freewheeling way serious charges like terrorism are being filed".

On Tuesday, 10 opposition leaders including Sonia Gandhi from the Congress party and three state premiers implored President Ram Nath Kovind to direct the government to take action against those responsible for Swamy's "inhuman treatment".

Sri Lanka marks Chinese party century with costliest gold coin

Issued on: 07/07/2021 - 

The commemorative coin will be sold for 222,000 rupees - SRI LANKAN PRESIDENT'S OFFICE/AFP

Colombo (AFP)

Sri Lanka on Wednesday issued its most expensive gold coin ever to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party, underscoring the close ties between the countries.

The commemorative 1,000-rupee ($5) coin will be sold for 222,000 rupees from Monday, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka said.

"The coins have been issued at the request of the government of Sri Lanka as an accolade for long-standing friendship and mutual trust between the two countries," the bank said.

Sri Lanka has increasingly turned to China for financing and diplomatic support in recent years, prompting India and the United States to express concern.

One side of the 12-gram (0.42 ounces) coin marks the Chinese party's anniversary while the other celebrates 65 years of diplomatic ties between the two nations and depicts a Colombo theatre built with Chinese financing.

Sri Lanka released its last gold coin to mark 50 years of independence from Britain in 1998, but that one was only two thirds the weight of the Chinese anniversary coin.

Colombo had also never before issued a coin to commemorate a political party.

Beijing has made increasing trade and diplomatic inroads in South Asia in recent years.

In 2017, unable to repay a huge Chinese loan, Sri Lanka allowed China Merchants Port Holdings to take over Hambantota port, which straddles the world's busiest east-west shipping route, on a 99-year lease.

© 2021 AFP

‘It shakes you to your core’: the anti-abortion extremists gaining ground on the right

A member Operation Save America protests against abortion outside Camelback Family Planning in Phoenix on 24 June. Photograph: Caitlin O'Hara/The Guardian

Operation Save America opposes Covid vaccination, women in power and same-sex marriage – and allies are making inroads among legislators


Jessica Glenza in Phoenix, Arizona
@JessicaGlenza

THE GUARDIAN
Tue 6 Jul 2021 08.30 BST

Hundreds of anti-abortion protesters lined blocks along a four-lane thoroughfare called Indian School Road in Phoenix, Arizona, enduring the suck of whooshing cars and blistering late June desert heat to advocate for their cause – effectively, theocracy in America.

Rising temperatures promised a sweaty, nauseous apex of 104F for the protest in front of Camelback Family Planning and abortion clinic. Their ranks were defined by gruesome and bloody signs, some taller than the protesters who held them, a microphone and an amplifier.

Anti-abortion movement bullish as legal campaign reaches US supreme court


“This is a slaughterhouse!” a man’s voice growled. Some protesters leaned into car windows going into the clinic parking lot. “This is unnatural for a mother to do this to a child!” one cried.

This is the national conference for Operation Save America (OSA), one in a network of extreme anti-abortion groups gaining increasing sway with rightwing lawmakers. In some sense, they’re not news – their homophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic, misogynist leadership has harassed abortion providers for decades.

But, like the world around them, they’ve evolved.

New millennial leadership built a social media infrastructure on YouTube, Facebook and Gab. Their protests have moved from streets to city council chambers and state capitols. A book published by one of their leaders has become an underground hit. And the government response to Covid-19 has provided a new form of “tyranny” against which to lobby.

Members of the pro-choice group We Engage argue with members of Operation Save America outside Camelback Family Planning. Photograph: Caitlin O'Hara/The Guardian

“All murderers forfeit their right to live,” said a protester. He gives his name only as “preacher man”, but he is easy to identify. He is Ante Pavkovic, a Charlotte, North Carolina-based protester whose antics have led to arrests.

A woman’s right to choose is “Marxist cliche sloganeering”, Pavkovic said. In 2018, Pavkovic was convicted of resisting arrest while breaking Charlotte’s noise ordinance outside an abortion clinic. Although the noise ordinance charge was dropped, an appellate court affirmed an order that barred him from protesting within 1,500 feet of a clinic.

“This group is very close to each other,” said Shawn Cox, a 19-year-old protester with glasses and a DSLR camera with a colorful strap. Her family goes to an OSA event “at least once a year”.

The supreme court legalized abortion in 1973 in the landmark case Roe v Wade, and the majority of Americans still support the ruling in remarkably stable public opinion polls. But in the decades since, as evangelical Christians and Catholics gained increasing power in the Republican party, lawmakers have worked to obstruct that right.

Those efforts have accelerated in the last decade, as anti-abortion fundraising fueled an entire cottage industry of lawyers, lobbyists and single-issue alternative news sources devoted to advancing secular arguments to obstruct abortion access.


‘Unique problem’: Catholic bishops split over Biden’s support for abortion rights

Once at the fringes, but moving into legislative efforts are protesters like these, abortion “abolitionists” who advocate for women and doctors to be prosecuted under murder statutes. Their name is an appropriation of a term used by anti-slavery organizers before the American civil war.

Their views are extreme. Anyone who has an abortion “should be prosecuted for murder”, Cox said. And she adds about the case that is the foundation of abortion rights in America: “Roe v Wade is not law.”

Their guiding texts, such as the Doctrine of Lesser Magistrates, by the leader of the affiliated group Defy Tyrants, Matt Trewhella, argues “Christians” should defy laws with which zealots disagree. Trewhella was among a notorious group of anti-abortion advocates who, in the 1990s, signed a letter declaring the murder of abortion providers “justifiable homicide”. The letter was also joined by a man convicted of firebombing a Cincinnati, Ohio, abortion clinic and planning an attack on another in Florida, John Brockhoeft.

Far-right groups display literature and shirts for sale at the Operation Save America Conference at Desert Hills Bible church in Phoenix. Photograph: Caitlin O'Hara/The Guardian

Here in Arizona, OSA has just crowned a new leader, Jason Storms. “What the abolitionists have done is bring clarity to the [anti-abortion] movement,” said Storms. Storms and OSA’s followers want their Christian ideology to be the basis of American law. Otherwise, Storms argued, “we are heading for cultural suicide”.

A tall man with a pinched gait, thick black glasses and an Operation Save America shirt walked up to Storms: “God bless you as you transition to leadership.” He shook Storms’s hand, turned to the wind and wetly uttered, “Where’s the mill?” referring to the clinic. His red shirt read “Abortion is murder”.

Across the gauntlet of cars from the anti-abortion protests, Storms mocked a counter-protester. “Tough guy,” said Storms, as he mimicked her stance and derided her silence.

This woman, however, is part of a counter-protest organized by Abortion Access Front (AAF), a female-led comedy group who have become the unlikely antagonists of these extremists.

On another day and in another part of town, clinic escorts, legal observers, nurses and volunteers gather under the high ceilings of the Duce, a warehouse turned bar where a rainbow of color seems to ricochet around the room. Abortion Access Front has gathered this crowd for a moment of joy, hosting a happy hour.

“It shakes you to your core,” said Lizz Winstead, the founder of AAF, about Operation Save America’s protests, and perhaps its ideology writ large. “It’s hard to explain to people until you see it.”

OSA’s leaders and adherents oppose not only abortion, but homosexuality and same-sex marriage, in vitro fertilization, Islam, Covid-19 vaccines and masks. At times, they appear to be opposed to the modern world, railing against public school, women in positions of power, sex before marriage and birth control.

Lizz Winstead and Sarah Silverman bang on pots and pans in New York in May 2020, after Silverman said abortion providers were ‘essential frontline workers who get harassed every day’. Photograph: Startraks Photo/Rex/Shutterstock

Opposing them is the AAF, which started as a traveling standup comedy show in 2015 led by Winstead, a former writer at Comedy Central’s The Daily Show. Initially, it was called the Lady Parts Justice League. But it quickly became a mutual aid, counter-protest and intelligence gathering organization. It describes itself as a “media hub” that uses “humor to bust stigma”.

Anti-abortion protesters had made it impossible for clinics to get even basic maintenance done on their buildings. Protesters would call and harass contractors who showed up to work. AAF organized local supporters to plant bushes, paint or provide basic supplies like heating pads to clinics.
Advertisement


Following events organized by OSA, AAF believed someone needed to show people that the majority of Americans support the right to abortion. They started protests meant to disrupt and frustrate street preachers. In Arizona, one AAF organizer repeatedly interrupted a street preacher, following him with a camera and ridiculing his shorts.

“Witch!” he snorted at the AAF organizer, prompting the entire AAF group to break into a chant: “Witch! Witch! You’re a witch!”

Most notably, they have also developed detailed knowledge of the anti-abortion protesters themselves, tracking their whereabouts with a camera once devoted to making television.

The AAF managing director, Kat Green, said she began “recreationally” tracking extremists, sharing intel with local escorts and clinic security teams. AAF identified and collected evidence of at least 15 anti-abortion leaders among those at the Capitol insurrection, including Storms and the Arizona-based pastor Jeff Durbin, who runs the “abolitionist” social media presence.

In a three-minute video posted to Facebook, Storms shows himself astride scaffolding surrounding the Capitol, woooo!-ing and calling the insurrection “Revolution 2.0”. Another person in the crowd calls out “hang ’em high!” in reference to members of Congress.

A counter-protest truck displays photos of members of Operation Save America as the group protests outside Camelback Family Planning. Photograph: Caitlin O'Hara/The Guardian



Nevertheless, at the protest, Storms said: “January 6th was a non-issue,” and added: “There was no insurrection.” He called the insurrection “1 million unarmed people”.

AAF also began to understand the connections between groups like Operation Save America and other militant religious groups. Operation Save America leaders appeared on the podcast of the former Washington state representative Matt Shea, and Shea appeared at protests in support of “abolitionists”.

Shea opted not to run for re-election after it was revealed he had “participated in an act of domestic of terrorism” and distributed a document that outlined abortion and same-sex marriage as justification for a “Biblical basis for war”.

“The reason they’re different – and it’s important – is they are not interested in incremental change. They’re not interested in using regulations. They’re not even that interested in Roe,” said Anu Kumar, president and CEO of Ipas, an international non-profit that works to expand abortion access. “What they’re militant about is defying the courts, defying the constitution, and defying the rule of law.”


At least 10 states divert federal welfare funding to anti-abortion clinics

They are pro-gun, and though they did not appear to be carrying weapons at the Arizona protest, they advertise their armaments and argue Christians should be trained in “trench warfare”. They want to save “our constitutional republic” by making American law “Mirror the Law and Justice of God”. They support Donald Trump.

“What’s hard for Americans to understand is the actions by these extremists seem very hyperlocal,” said Kumar. “These are connected movements and the rightwing extremism is actually transnational.”

Pro-choice activists talk with members of Operation Save America in Phoenix. Photograph: Caitlin O'Hara/The Guardian


At the same time, they have seen increasing success introducing legislation to prosecute abortion as murder, as they did in Oklahoma, Texas and most recently Arizona.

These state efforts to narrow legal access to abortion threaten to make America an outlier. The past 50 years have been defined by “an unmistakable trend toward the liberalization of abortion laws”, the Council on Foreign Relations wrote. Twenty-eight countries have liberalized abortion access since 2000, and only one has legally restricted abortion – Nicaragua.

“Yes, they are definitely anti-abortion, they are misogynist, they are anti-immigrant as well. But fundamentally, they are about democracy,” said Kumar. “They are anti-democratic zealots,” she added, and in that sense, “this is not about abortion at all”.

At a later OSA-sponsored worship service, a man named Ken greeted outsiders at the edge of the Desert Hills Bible church and ambled slowly to the entrance as he described the joy he felt that reporters would “hear the word of God”. Certainly, he emphasized, he would not want anyone to be cast into hell.

Inside, a crowd probably vulnerable to Covid-19 filled the hall’s stuffy still air with song and inestimable respiratory droplets. Trewhella, one of the leaders of the affiliated group Defy Tyrants, has repeatedly urged congregants to “never” get vaccinated, claiming the life-saving drugs are government “tyranny”.

Durbin, who also leads the local Apologia church, said he chose not to attend the evening because he and his daughter contracted “the rona” at the Southern Baptist Convention about a week prior.

The outgoing leader of OSA and a longtime menace to abortion clinics, Rusty Thomas, stepped to the dais to rally the flock. He called abortion a “pagan nightmare” that “assaulted the nation”. He illustrated his points with a story of how he hit his children.

Rusty Thomas rallies attendees at Desert Hills Bible church on 24 June. Photograph: Caitlin O'Hara/The Guardian

Shirts for sale at the OSA Conference at Desert Hills Bible church. Photograph: Caitlin O'Hara/The Guardian

“All that anger, all that frustration, and I pummeled my own children,” he said. Then he begged for their forgiveness. “And I said, let me get on my knees in front of my kids and said, ‘Would you please forgive your father?’ And I tell you that won them over more than any of my teachings.”

OSA was a family, leaders said, a “rock” in its members’ lives, the way a church “should work”. And they believe their efforts, no matter how extreme, are altering the fabric of American society.

On this point, experts agree.

“Most Americans do not actually support these radical extreme points of view and yet we have elected officials who do,” said Kumar. “Our politics have become extreme, and these groups are responsible.”

Richard Donner obituary
Director who enjoyed huge success in the 1970s with the hit films The Omen and Superman: The Movie

Richard Donner in 1992. He was a director who knew how to give the audience pleasure, and how to take some for himself. Photograph: Columbia/Kobal/Rex/Shutterstock


Ryan Gilbey
Tue 6 Jul 2021 15.58 BST

Richard Donner, who has died aged 91, was a journeyman director, a specialist in hokum and a Hollywood stalwart. Such was his effective- ness that he made two of the most popular films of the 1970s, The Omen and Superman: The Movie, in both cases kickstarting profitable franchises.

In the 1980s he scored a third hit, Lethal Weapon, beginning his collaboration with the actor Mel Gibson. He was a director who knew how to give the audience pleasure, and how to take some for himself. “When it’s not [great], I’m splitting,” he said in 2006. “As soon as I realise I’m not having fun, I’m on the beach in Maui, baby.”

When Donner first read the screenplay of The Omen, under its original title The Anti-Christ, it had been rejected by every studio in Hollywood. “I started to read it, and I couldn’t put it down. I got all turned on by it. It had covens and devil gods and cloven hoofs and bloodbaths … but I thought if you could get rid of all that you would end up with a good mystery-suspense thriller.”

Harvey Spencer Stephens as Damian, the devil child in The Omen, 1976, directed by Richard Donner. Photograph: Kobal/Rex/Shutterstock/20th Century Fox

The film tells the story of the devil, born in the form of a child, and planted in the family of the US ambassador in Britain. Although it was peppered with bizarre, spectacular death scenes – one man is skewered by a lightning rod, another is decapitated by a sheet of glass – Donner played the horror straight, even po-faced. “We treated the story as a coincidence … We treated it like [Gregory Peck, the film’s star] was surrounded by total insanity. I mean, coincidence after coincidence after coincidence until it drove him insane. And I think that was the success of the picture.”

As The Omen dominated the box office in 1976, Donner received a call from the producers of Superman, offering him $1m to replace their original director, Guy Hamilton. He agreed on the condition that he could bring in Tom Mankiewicz to rewrite what he felt was a frivolous screenplay, the better to accentuate the superhero’s mythical properties.

With only 11 weeks to prepare, Donner hired new crew members, and cast Christopher Reeve in the lead. He also had to cope with the demands of DC Comics and interference by the producers, Alexander and Ilya Salkind and Pierre Spengler, not to mention the eccentricities of Marlon Brando, who announced at the outset that he would play Superman’s father as either a green suitcase or a bagel.
Advertisement


Donner also had to solve the problem of making Superman convincingly airborne (“You’ll believe a man can fly” ran the picture’s memorable poster copy). “Nobody knew how to go about it,” he confessed. “It was the blind leading the blind, all experimentation … One of my greatest attributes on the picture was I knew what I wanted. I didn’t know how to get it, but I wouldn’t accept anything until I saw it.”

Christopher Reeve in Superman: The Movie, 1978, directed by Richard Donner. Photograph: Warner Bros/Allstar

The project’s technical difficulties were compounded by the producers’ somewhat foolhardy decision to shoot both Superman and its sequel concurrently. During the mammoth production, Donner shot an estimated three-quarters of Superman II, only to be removed from his duties on the sequel after persistent disagreements with the producers over the film’s tone.

He was replaced by Richard Lester, who oversaw extensive reshoots, although the completed sequel still included around 35% of Donner’s footage.

In 2006, Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut was released on DVD. Pieced together over the course of a year from an estimated six tons of negative found in the Warner Bros vaults, it restored Donner’s more serious-minded vision, and included a scene between Reeve and Brando that had been reshot by Lester with Susannah York, as Superman’s mother, in place of Brando.

“These two years took everything out of me,” Donner complained afterwards. “It even took the enjoyment out of film-making. It was such a trying period … I’d sometimes go home and dream about doing a two-character love story, set in one room.”

Mel Gibson, left, and Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon 2, 1989, directed by Richard Donner. Photograph: Warner Bros/Allstar

Born Richard Schwartzberg, he was raised in New York by his parents, Hattie (nee Horowitz), a secretary, and Fred Schwartzberg, who owned a furniture business. He first studied business at New York University then switched to acting. He performed with amateur companies in what he called “five-line parts” off-Broadway.
Advertisement


Eventually he landed an acting job on a live TV show. Its director, Martin Ritt, was unimpressed when Donner questioned a decision he had made. According to Donner, Ritt told him: “Your problem is that you can’t take direction. You ought to be a director.” Ritt hired him as an assistant, after which Donner moved on to directing commercials and established his own production company for them.

When the future movie producers Martin Ransohoff and John Calley bought the company in 1958, they invited Donner to come to California to continue directing. It was while filming a commercial there that he got his first TV directing gig – for Wanted: Dead or Alive, a series that began in 1960 about a wild west bounty hunter played by Steve McQueen, with whom Donner had acted in New York. In 1961, he was hired to direct second-unit on the film X-15, starring Charles Bronson as the first man in space, but when the project found itself without a director, Donner stepped in and finished shooting in 12 days. He then worked on many notable US TV series of the 60s, including Perry Mason, The Fugitive, Get Smart, Gilligan’s Island, The Man from UNCLE, Have Gun Will Travel and even the children’s show The Banana Splits.

His most enduring television work was one of a number of episodes of The Twilight Zone entitled Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, starring William Shatner as a plane passenger convinced that he can see a monster on the wing. (It was later remade by George Miller as part of the 1983 portmanteau film Twilight Zone: The Movie.)

Seven years after X-15, Donner directed his second picture. But Salt and Pepper (1968), a comic thriller filmed at Shepperton starring Sammy Davis Jr and Peter Lawford as co-owners of a London nightclub, was edited by the producers against Donner’s wishes. After a third unsuccessful picture, Twinky (1970, also known as Lola and London Affair), a poor man’s Lolita starring Bronson as a writer involved romantically with a 15-year-old girl (Susan George), Donner began another long stint in TV.
Advertisement


Although he remained proud of his TV work – “I feel I owe TV everything,” he said in 1981 – he found it hard returning to the medium for a second time: “I went back to TV again,” he recalled, “and it was a whole new regime and nobody knew who I was, so I had to start all over again.” His work in the first half of the 70s included episodes of The Streets of San Francisco and Kojak. Then Donner received the screenplay that would rehabilitate his cinematic career.

The Goonies, 1985, directed by Richard Donner. It was a a Steven Spielberg-produced ripping yarn with a predominantly adolescent cast. Photograph: Allstar/Warner Bros

His next film after The Omen and Superman was Inside Moves (1980). It concerned a man (John Savage), disabled after a suicide attempt, who finds friendship with other disabled people, including a basketball player (David Morse), at a neighbourhood bar. But the picture was characterised by an intimacy that would have been impossible to achieve in a blockbuster.

Donner followed this with The Toy (1982), arguably the worst in a series of attempts by Hollywood studios to find a mainstream vehicle for Richard Pryor, and the medieval adventure Ladyhawke (1985). He was hired to direct the latter by the producer Lauren Shuler, whom he married in the year of the film’s release.

Donner also enjoyed a popular hit in 1985 with The Goonies, a ripping yarn with a predominantly adolescent cast, but was fully returned to his 70s standing with the thriller Lethal Weapon in 1987. The film was an old-fashioned buddy movie, pairing a renegade white cop (Mel Gibson) with an avuncular African-American partner (Danny Glover), but it was soaked in 80s violence.

“I had been offered a lot of action films and most of them were just plain gratuitous action,” he said in 2006. “What [the writer Shane Black] had written into it was this evolution, this arc of a very dark character who found the light.” Audiences responded to the chemistry between Gibson and Glover and Donner returned for Lethal Weapon 2 in 1989 after first making the agreeably prickly Scrooged (1988), a Dickens update starring Bill Murray.
Advertisement


Lethal Weapon 2 proved to be an interesting case of “It ain’t broke but let’s fix it anyway,” with the punishing brutality of the original swapped for a lighter tone. “I realised [Gibson and Glover] had this wonderful sense of humour and great respect for each other, almost coy,” said Donner. “So when the second one came around, knowing their humour, I decided I wanted to bring some of that humour into the piece.” There were to be two further, inferior, Lethal Weapons, in 1992 and 1998, but Donner expressed particular pride about smuggling serious themes into this series of popcorn pictures including arguments against apartheid and gun ownership.

Donner continued working steadily: he directed the child- hood drama Radio Flyer (1992), the strangely subdued Assassins (1995) with Sylvester Stallone, Antonio Banderas and Julianne Moore, the time-travel fantasy Timeline (2003), and the Bruce Willis action thriller 16 Blocks (2006); he also co-founded his own production company, the Donners’ Company, with his wife, and acted as producer or executive producer on films including The Lost Boys (1987), Free Willy (1993), Any Given Sunday (1999) and X-Men (2000).

But he rarely experienced commercial success in the latter stages of his directing career when not working with Gibson. As well as their four Lethal Weapon outings, they collaborated on Maverick (1994), a comic western, and Conspiracy Theory (1997), an underappreciated thriller in which Gibson played an unusually vulnerable hero.

Prized for his populist sensibility, Donner largely resisted cinema’s increasing reliance on special effects, favouring good writing above all else. “I’m still an old fart who feels that unless you really have to do it computer-wise, you should do it for real,” he said in 2004. “When I work, story is totally important. Anything I’ve been involved with or have been surrounded by, it’s about story.”

He is survived by Lauren.


Richard Donner (Richard Donald Schwartzberg), film director, born 24 April 1930; died 5 July 2021

Back to nature: the story of one family’s retreat into the Amazon forest to escape Covid

New film charts the journey of the Kichwa people deeper into the Ecuadorian Amazon and the lessons they drew from reconnecting with nature




16:52 The Return: a family reconnects with the Amazon as Covid threatens their village – video



Patrick Greenfield
@pgreenfielduk
Tue 6 Jul 2021 12.00 BST

As billions of people isolated around the world in 2020, villagers from Sarayaku , a Kichwa community in the Ecuadorian Amazon, headed deeper into the forest to escape the coronavirus pandemic. The journey, documented in a new short film called The Return, reaffirmed the bond the community has had with the forest for generations, protecting ancestors from missionaries, militias and emerging diseases such as measles and smallpox, as well as sustaining life.

Eriberto with some of the crew and villagers in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Photograph: Selvas Producciones


Directed by the indigenous film-maker Eriberto Gualinga and co-produced by his niece and environmental defender Nina Gualinga, both from Sarayaku, alongside British film-maker Marc Silver, the Guardian documentary had its premiere at the Sheffield DocFest in June. The Kichwa community has gained international acclaim for its environmental activism, successfully defending its ancestral lands in the Bobonaza river basin against an oil company looking to drill, and winning a case against the Ecuadorian government at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) in 2012 for not respecting the right to life, safety and land.

The Guardian spoke with Eriberto and Nina about the message of The Return and their work as defenders of the forest.

Eriberto and The Return crew filming in the Amazon. Photograph: Selvas Producciones


When did you realise the pandemic was coming?

Eriberto: “On 17 March 2020 there was terrible flooding in our village, Sarayaku, and other communities. It reached a height we’d never seen before, covering the roofs of homes and tearing down bridges. It left us with nothing, without food, nothing. We were reconstructing our homes and replanting crops when we heard on the radio that Covid had arrived in the nearest city. We’d already heard about the virus in February. When we were completely physically exhausted, Covid attacked us.”

The village lies in the middle of the Amazon forest in Ecuador. Photograph: Selvas Producciones

Some villagers headed deeper into the forest. Why did you want to document this journey?
Eriberto: “I wanted the world to also return to the forest. The forest is important. That is where life is. It is the lungs of the world. I imagined people isolating in the city in the pandemic – being stuck in four walls alone in a house – and all the problems that can bring.
Isolating in the forest is different. It is freedom, fishing, collecting fruit and medicinal plantsEriberto Gualinga

“Isolating in the forest is completely different. It is freedom, fishing, collecting fruit, long walks, sharing knowledge with parents, collecting medicinal plants … I wanted to show how important the forest is for the world and why we should reconnect with her. In Kichwa, the film is called Tiam which means ‘look back’. It’s about reconnecting with and respecting nature.”

In the film, it’s clear this is not the first time Kichwa community members have sought the protection of the forest.
Eriberto: “This is something our grandparents told us they and their ancestors did to escape the army, missionaries and illnesses such as measles and smallpox. Without making a noise, they’d confine themselves to the forest. They’d tell us about it as if it were a story, but it was reality, it actually happened. Now we’ve had to do it, too: escape to the middle of the forest, but evidently this time with technology by our side. The radio was telling us what was happening in the world.”

The family went further into the forest to isolate and seek safety as news of the spread of coronavirus reached the village. Photograph: Selvas Producciones

Sarayaku is a small village but its impact on the world has been mighty. What is it about people from Sarayaku?

Nina: “From the beginning, the Sarayaku people has been very clear with our vision for the future, our culture and our identity. We know what we are defending. I think that’s reflected in the decisions and creativity of young people, my uncle and myself. It’s not only Sarayaku, but I think the victory against the Ecuadorian government set a precedent internationally.”

Eriberto working behind the scenes with the Sarayaku people. Photograph: Selvas Producciones

Can you tell me about the Sarayaku’s living forest proposal, which seeks the protection of indigenous lands around the world?
Nina: “It’s very interconnected with what The Return is about and what it means. It’s a way to explain the indigenous view on how we as humans are part of this Earth, this living being, and all of these different ecosystems. It recognises life in the forest as a collective and individual: the plants, the trees, the stones, the spirits. That’s how Sarayaku understands the world.

‘I wanted to show how important the forest is for the world and why we should reconnect with her’ – Eriberto Gualinga. Photograph: Selvas Producciones

“The living forest proposal is about recognising that. And reframing the mechanisms we have constructed around us, such as laws and the economic system, to rethink what we actually value. Everything is recognised as a living being, beyond what our eyes can see in the Amazon rainforest and everywhere else. Perhaps it sounds complex and far away for many, but I think it’s really necessary right now.”

Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on Twitter for all the latest news and features

Trump told chief of staff Hitler ‘did a lot of good things’, book says

OF COURSE HE DID

Remark shocked John Kelly, author Michael Bender reports

Book details former president’s ‘stunning disregard for history’

John Kelly listens as Donald Trump talks to the media beside Air Force One

. Photograph: Carlos Barría/Reuter

Martin Pengelly in Washington
@MartinPengelly

THE GUARDIAN
Wed 7 Jul 2021

On a visit to Europe to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of the first world war, Donald Trump insisted to his then chief of staff, John Kelly: “Well, Hitler did a lot of good things.”

The remark from the former US president on the 2018 trip, which reportedly “stunned” Kelly, a retired US Marine Corps general, is reported in a new book by Michael Bender of the Wall Street Journal.

Frankly, We Did Win This Election has been widely trailed ahead of publication next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.

Bender reports that Trump made the remark during an impromptu history lesson in which Kelly “reminded the president which countries were on which side during the conflict” and “connected the dots from the first world war to the second world war and all of Hitler’s atrocities”.

Bender is one of a number of authors to have interviewed Trump since he was ejected from power.

He reports that Trump denied making the remark about Hitler.

But Bender says unnamed sources reported that Kelly “told the president that he was wrong, but Trump was undeterred”, emphasizing German economic recovery under Hitler during the 1930s.

“Kelly pushed back again,” Bender writes, “and argued that the German people would have been better off poor than subjected to the Nazi genocide.”

Bender adds that Kelly told Trump that even if his claim about the German economy under the Nazis after 1933 were true, “you cannot ever say anything supportive of Adolf Hitler. You just can’t.”

Trump ran into considerable trouble on the centennial trip to Europe, even beyond his usual conflicts with other world leaders.

A decision to cancel a visit to an American cemetery proved controversial. Trump was later reported to have called US soldiers who died in the war “losers” and “suckers”.

Kelly, whose son was killed in Afghanistan in 2010, left the White House in early 2019. He has spoken critically of Trump since, reportedly telling friends the president he served was “the most flawed person I have ever met in my life”.

Bender writes that Kelly did his best to overcome Trump’s “stunning disregard for history”.

“Senior officials described his understanding of slavery, Jim Crow, or the Black experience in general post-civil war as vague to nonexistent,” he writes. “But Trump’s indifference to Black history was similar to his disregard for the history of any race, religion or creed.”

Concern over the rise of the far right in the US grew during Trump’s time in power and continues, as he maintains a grip on a Republican party determined to obstruct investigations of the deadly 6 January assault on the US Capitol by supporters seeking to overturn his election defeat.

Trump has made positive remarks about far-right and white supremacist groups.

During a presidential debate in 2020, Trump was asked if he would denounce white supremacists and militia groups. He struggled with the answer and eventually told the far-right Proud Boys group to “stand back and stand by”.

In 2017, in the aftermath of a neo-Nazi march in Virginia which earned supportive remarks from Trump, the German magazine Stern used on its cover an illustration of Trump giving a Nazi salute while wrapped in the US flag. Its headline: “Sein Kampf” – his struggle.

America's longest war, in pictures

The war in Afghanistan has seen trillions of dollars squandered in what has largely been deemed a failed nation-building project.

AFP  Published about 20 hours ago

America's longest war has all but ended.

Launched in the wake of the September 11 attacks, the war in Afghanistan has claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Afghans along with around 2,400 US soldiers, and seen trillions of dollars squandered in what has largely been deemed a failed nation-building project.

Although the Taliban's hardline regime fell within a matter of weeks after the United States unleashed a ferocious bombing campaign and incited tribal uprisings, the conflict festered.

The initial celebratory images of men shaving their beards and women re-entering the workforce gave way to suicide bombings, mounting civilian casualties, and the resurrection of a Taliban movement hell-bent on ejecting foreign forces from Afghanistan.

What began as a mission to dismantle Al Qaeda's training camps in Afghanistan evolved over the years into a full-scale war against their Taliban hosts, triggering an insurgency that the US military's enormous firepower was unable to quell.

 

 

MORE PICTURES: America's longest war, in pictures - World - DAWN.COM

Inside Afghanistan’s looted Bagram airbase after US departure – in pictures

 ‘In one night, they lost all the goodwill of 20 years by leaving the way they did, in the night, without telling the Afghan soldiers who were outside,’ 

 Bagram airbase after all US and Nato troops left 

After nearly two decades, the US military has left Bagram, now Afghan forces have invited the press inside the huge, eerily quiet facility

Matt Fidler and Associated Press

Tue 6 Jul 2021 

Items left behind include thousands of civilian vehicles, many of them without keys to start them. Before the Afghan army could take control of the airfield, it was invaded by a small army of looters, who ransacked barracks and storage tents before being evicted, according to Afghan military officials.

Photograph: Hedayatullah Amid/EPA

An Afghan soldier at the base. Gen Mir Asadullah Kohistani, Bagram’s new commander, said the US left behind 3.5m items, all itemised by the departing military. They include tens of thousands of bottles of water, energy drinks and military ready-made meals.

Photograph: Hedayatullah Amid/EPA

An Afghan soldier plays a guitar that was left behind. ‘In one night, they lost all the goodwill of 20 years by leaving the way they did, in the night, without telling the Afghan soldiers who were outside,’ said Naematullah, an Afghan soldier who asked that only his one name be used.

Photograph: Rahmat Gul/AP

Afghan scrap dealers buy items which were discarded by the US forces outside Bagram.

Photograph: Hedayatullah Amid/EPA

An Afghan man rests in his shop as he sell US secondhand goods outside the base.

Photograph: Mohammad Ismail/Reuters

Mine Resistant Ambush Protection vehicles left at the base.

Photograph: Wakil Kohsar/AFP/Getty Images

MORE PHOTOS HERE

Inside Afghanistan’s looted Bagram airbase after US departure – in pictures | World news | The Guardian

Republicans’ effort to deny the Capitol attack is working – and it’s dangerous

Six months on, as politicians and the rightwing media downplay the attack or shift the blame, fears of a replay grow

A mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building to disrupt the confirmation of Joe Biden’s election victory on 6 January 2021. Photograph: Alex Edelman/AFP/Getty Images


David Smith Washington bureau chief

THE GUARDIAN
Tue 6 Jul 2021 


It has been described as America’s darkest day since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. But whereas 9/11 is solemnly memorialised in stone, a concerted effort is under way to airbrush the US Capitol insurrection from history.

Six months on from the mayhem on 6 January, when a mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed the heart of American democracy to disrupt the confirmation of Joe Biden’s election victory, Republicans and rightwing media have variously attempted to downplay the attack or blame it on leftwing infiltrators and the FBI.

Interviews with diehard Trump fans suggest that the riot denialism is working. Many refuse to condemn the insurrectionists who beat police officers, smashed windows and called for then Vice-President Mike Pence to be hanged. The swirl of conspiracy theories, combined with Trump’s deluded claims of a stole election, raise fears of a replay that could be even more violent.

“Rightwing media and some Republicans, including Republicans in the Senate and the House, are trying to make it seem as though what was a siege on the Capitol was not actually a siege on the Capitol,” said Monika McDermott, a political science professor at Fordham University in New York.

“We all saw it. We saw them breaking down doors. We saw our members of Congress running for cover and trying to get away. We saw Mike Pence being shuttled out of the chamber. All of these frightening things that we saw happen are now being denied or being or being laid at the feet of Antifa or the FBI or some other source, which just seems at this point ludicrous.”

Pro-Trump rioters clash with Capitol police on 6 January. Photograph: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

Hours after the insurrection in Washington, members of Congress returned to the chambers to complete the certification of Biden’s electoral college win. Some Republicans did seem shaken and aware that a new, dangerous line had been crossed. Yet 147 still voted to overturn the election outcome, an ultimately futile gesture.

A month later a minority also voted to impeach and convict Trump for his role in sparking the insurrection, but not enough to stop him being acquitted. Since then, many party members have been eager to “move on” and minimize the events of that day.

Senator Ron Johnson told Fox News: “We’ve seen plenty of video of people in the Capitol, and they weren’t rioting. It doesn’t look like an armed insurrection when you have people that breach the Capitol – and I don’t condone it – but they’re staying within the rope lines in the rotunda. That’s not what armed insurrection would look like.”

Capitol attack: what Pelosi’s select committee is likely to investigate

Read more

Congressman Andrew Clyde – who was photographed barricading the House of Representatives chamber – told a hearing that, based on TV footage, “you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit”. His colleague Louie Gohmert added: “I just want the president to understand. There have been things worse than people without any firearms coming into a building.”

Even Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader who had said the former president “bears responsibility” for the attack, ultimately bent to Trump’s will and backed the removal of congresswoman Liz Cheney – who was clear-eyed and outspoken about the gravity of the assault – from House leadership.
Advertisement


Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader who also condemned Trump’s role in the insurrection, nevertheless ensured that Republicans deployed a procedural rule known as the filibuster to block the creation of a 9/11-style bipartisan commission to investigate it. This was despite the justice department warning that domestic terrorism now poses a bigger threat than attacks from overseas.

Kurt Bardella, a former Republican congressional aide who is now a Democrat, said: “I’m old enough to remember when the Republican party was willing to launch this country into a global war, fought on multiple fronts over the course of many years, because of what happened on September 11. And yet here we are just six months removed from something that happened on our own soil and on our own Capitol and Republicans are actively trying to rewrite history to make it out to be something that it wasn’t.”

Bardella, a contributor to the Los Angeles Times and USA Today newspapers, added: “If those who would deny the gravity of what happened on January 6 achieved a position of power, it is almost a guarantee that this will happen again, only it will be even more violent and more deadly.

“The Republican party is creating a construct in which they are giving permission to their supporters to view any election that doesn’t result in them winning as illegitimate and that is a very dangerous and destabilizing position that will have violent consequences.”

Not for the first time, Republicans are being aided and abetted by rightwing media personalities amplifying their message, not necessarily to change minds but to muddy the waters, leave the events of 6 January open to speculation and give Trump supporters a way to rationalize and justify them.

Laura Ingraham, seen here at a Trump rally last year, said the Capitol attack was ‘not an insurrection’. Photograph: Carlos Barría/Reuters

Conservative television, fringe website and rightwing podcasts are pumping out the propaganda and disinformation. Laura Ingraham, a Fox News host, has told viewers flatly: “It was not an insurrection.”

Her colleague Tucker Carlson, who has a huge following, floated the groundless “false flag” theory that the FBI secretly orchestrated the riot. As he was speaking, a banner appeared on screen that said: “The left wants new information on Jan 6 to go away.”

Chris Hayes, a host on the rival MSNBC network, commented: “The purpose here is not for communicating information. It’s to break the consensus of reality so that people can be manipulated and radicalised. And it is incredibly dangerous. And it is working.”

It is indeed working. Riot denialism was rife at Trump’s first post-presidential rally in Wellington, Ohio, on 26 June, where supporters began from the premise that the election had been stolen.


‘I need a drink’ after Republican talks, says officer beaten in Capitol attack

Gary Sherrill, 65, a concrete mixer driver wearing a “Make America great again” cap, said the insurrection was justified. “They said those people were invading but they own the building. The people inside work for them.”

Rose Kidd, 63, a retired nurse, made the evidence-free claim: “That was all staged. [House speaker Nancy] Pelosi knew. Antifa and BLM [Black Lives Matter] were all bussed in. Video shows it was they who broke the windows. Patriots don’t do that.”

And Gary Bartlett, 65, a retired manual worker at a car manufacturer, added: “99% of the people there were peaceful. The ones who went inside, I don’t know if they were Trump supporters or Antifa who infiltrated. Most of them walked in and walked back out.”

Democrats are working to understand 6 January and ensure it takes it rightful place in the history books. On Wednesday the House passed a resolution to form a select committee to investigate the carnage, with Pelosi appointing eight members and McCarthy appointing five. Many believe that such a reckoning is necessary for a national catharsis and healing – the struggle of memory against forgetting.

McDermott, the political scientist at Fordham, commented: “This was an unprecedented historic event and it is not one that should be wiped off of the history books or hidden away as though it didn’t happen or be minimised in any way. What happened was very real.

“It’s something that the country has to come to terms with, which I don’t see happening right now. We’re in very real danger of forgetting that there is a part of our society that is willing to use violence to get what they want out of the government. And I’ve done polling on this myself and those people are out there. They do think violence is a legitimate way to go and, by giving them cover, this is a very dangerous precedent we’re setting.”