AP PHOTOS: Ukrainians observe pagan-rooted new year festival; MALANKA

By ETHAN SWOPE

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A villager, dressed in a traditional bear costume, celebrates the Malanka festival in the village of Krasnoilsk, Ukraine, Friday, Jan. 14, 2022. Dressed as goats, bears, oxen and cranes, many Ukrainians rang in the new year last week in the colorful rituals of the Malanka holiday. Malanka, which draws on pagan folk tales, marks the new year according to the Julian calendar, meaning it falls on Jan. 13-14. In the festivities, celebrants go from house to house, where the dwellers offer them food. 

(AP Photo/Ethan Swope)


KRASNOILSK, Ukraine (AP) — Dressed as goats, bears, oxen and cranes, many Ukrainians ring in the new year in the colorful rituals of the Malanka holiday.

Malanka, which draws on pagan folk tales, marks the new year according to the Julian calendar, meaning it falls on Jan. 13-14.

In the festivities, celebrants go from house to house, where the dwellers offer them food. According to tradition, a household should have 12 dishes on offer — one for each month of the year. Pancakes, pies and cheese dumplings are common dishes for the holiday.

The celebrations stem from a pagan myth about Malanka, a daughter of the Slavic deity Lada, who was once kidnapped by an evil snake and locked up in the underworld before being rescued.

One of the most famous rituals is the driving of a man dressed as a goat, symbolizing a dying and resurrecting deity. In some areas, homeowners will burn straw and a didukh — a decoration made from a sheaf of wheat — to symbolize the death of everything bad.

Seoul says it paid Iran’s delinquent UN dues to restore vote

By ISABEL DEBRE

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Using Iranian bank funds freed from American sanctions, South Korea has paid Iran’s $18 million in delinquent dues owed to the United Nations, Seoul said Sunday. The step was apparently approved by Washington to restore Tehran’s suspended voting rights at the world body.

The South Korean Foreign Ministry said Seoul had paid the sum using Iranian assets frozen in the country after consulting with the United States Treasury — a potential signal of flexibility amid floundering nuclear negotiations.

The ministry said it expected Iran’s voting rights to be restored immediately after their suspension earlier this month for delinquent dues.

Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But Iran state television’s English-language arm Press TV quoted Iran’s permanent representative to the U.N. as confirming that the dues had been paid and Iran’s voting rights would soon be restored. He did not specify how the money had been paid.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran, as an active member of the United Nations, has always been committed to paying its membership dues on time,” Majid Takht-e Ravanchi said. He expressed outrage at the U.S. for what he called its “brutal and unilateral sanctions against Iran” that have prevented Tehran from gaining access to funds to pay the arrears for the past two years.

The funds had been impounded at Korean banks under sanctions imposed by former President Donald Trump after he withdrew the U.S. from Tehran’s landmark nuclear deal with world powers. The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control must grant a license for these transactions under the American banking sanctions imposed on Iran. The Treasury did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the unfrozen funds.

The Biden administration wants to restore the 2015 nuclear deal, which granted Iran sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program.

Diplomats are now engaged in delicate negotiations to revive the accord in Vienna, although a breakthrough remains elusive as Iran abandons every limitation the deal imposed on its nuclear enrichment. The country now enriches a small amount of to 60% purity — a short, technical step away from weapons grade levels — and spins far more advanced centrifuges than allowed.

Under the United Nations Charter, a nation that owes the previous two full years’ worth of dues loses its voting rights at the General Assembly.

A letter from Secretary-General Antonio Guterres circulated earlier this month revealed that Iran was among several delinquent countries on that list, which also includes Venezuela and Sudan. The General Assembly can make exceptions to the rule, determining that some countries face circumstances “beyond the control of the member.”

According to the secretary-general’s letter, Iran needed to pay a minimum of $18.4 million to restore its voting rights.

Iran also lost its voting rights in January of last year, prompting Tehran to lash out at the U.S. for imposing crushing sanctions that froze billions of dollars in Iranian funds in banks around the world. Tehran regained voting rights last June after making the minimum payment on its dues.

Iran over the past few years has pressured Seoul to release about $7 billion in revenues from oil sales that remain frozen in South Korean banks since the Trump administration tightened sanctions on Iran.

The frozen funds hang in the balance as diplomats struggle to revive the nuclear deal. Senior South Korean diplomats including Choi Jong Kun, the first vice foreign minister, flew to Vienna this month to discuss the fate of the assets with their Iranian counterparts.

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Associated Press writers Kim Tong-hyung in Seoul, South Korea, and Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.

UNESCO lists Viking-era wooden sailboats on heritage list

By JAMES BROOKS

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A man repairs a 10-meter wooden row boat, built in the Nordic clinker boat tradition, at the Viking Ship Museum's boatyard. Roskilde, Denmark, Monday, Jan. 17, 2022. For thousands of years, wooden sail boats, best known for having been in use during the Viking-era, allowed the peoples of northern Europe to spread trade, influence and -- in some cases war — across the seas and rivers. In December, UNESCO, the U.N.’s culture agency, added the “clinker’ boat traditions to its list of “Intangible Cultural Heritage,” the result of the first joint nomination from the whole Nordic region.

 (AP Photo/James Brooks)


ROSKILDE, Denmark (AP) — For thousands of years, wooden sailboats allowed the peoples of Northern Europe to spread trade, influence and sometimes war across seas and continents.

In December, the U.N.’s culture agency added Nordic “clinker boats” to its list of traditions that represent the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden jointly sought the UNESCO designation.

The term “clinker” is thought to refer to the way the boat’s wooden boards were fastened together.

Supporters of the successful nomination hope it will safeguard and preserve the boat-building techniques that drove the Viking era for future generations as the number of active clinker craftsmen fades and fishermen and others opt for vessels with cheaper glass fiber hulls.

“We can see that the skills of building them, the skills of sailing the boats, the knowledge of people who are sailing … it goes down and it disappears,” said Søren Nielsen, head of boatyard at the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde, west of Copenhagen.

The museum not only exhibits the remains of wooden vessels built 1,000 years ago, but also works to rebuild and reconstruct other Viking boats. The process involves using experimental archaeological methods to gain a deeper, more practical understanding of the Viking Age, such as how quickly the vessels sailed and how many people they carried.

Nielsen, who oversees the construction and repair of wooden boats built in the clinker tradition, said there are only about 20 practicing clinker boat craftsmen in Denmark, perhaps 200 across all of northern Europe.

“We think it’s a tradition we have to show off, and we have to tell people this was a part of our background,” he told The Associated Press.

Wooden clinker boats are characterized by the use of overlapping longitudinal wooden hull planks that are sewn or riveted together.

Builders strengthen the boats internally by additional wooden components, mainly tall oak trees, which constitute the ribs of the vessel. They stuff the gaps in between with tar or tallow mixed with animal hair, wool and moss.

“When you build it with these overlaps within it, you get a hull that’s quite flexible but at the same time, incredibly strong,” explained Triona Sørensen, curator at Roskilde’s Viking Ship Museum, which is home to to the remains of five 11th-century Viking boats built with clinker methods.

Nielsen said there is evidence the clinker technique first appeared thousands of years ago, during the Bronze Age.

But it was during the Viking Age that clinker boats had their zenith, according to Sørensen. The era, from 793 to 1066, is when Norsemen, or Vikings, undertook large-scale raiding, colonizing, conquest and trading voyages throughout Europe. They also reached North America.

Their light, strong and swift ships were unsurpassed in their time and provided the foundations for kingdoms in Denmark, Norway and Sweden.

If “you hadn’t had any ships, you wouldn’t have had any Viking Age,” said Sørensen. “It just literally made it possible for them to expand that kind of horizon to become a more global people.”

While the clinker boat tradition in Northern Europe remains to this day, the ships are used by hobbyists, for festivities, regattas and sporting events, rather than raiding and conquest seen 1,000 years ago.

The UNESCO nomination was signed by around 200 communities and cultural bearers in the field of construction and traditional clinker boat craftsmanship, including Sami communities.

The inscription on the Intangible Cultural Heritage list obliges the Nordic countries to try to preserve what remains of the fading tradition.

“You cannot read how to build a boat in a book, so if you want to be a good boat builder, you have to build a lot of boats,” the Viking Ship Museum’s Nielsen said. “If you want to keep these skills alive, you have to keep them going.”

Farmers’ protest in Spain highlights rural concerns


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People on horseback follow a tractor during a march in defence of Spanish rural areas during a protest in Madrid, Spain, Sunday, Jan. 23, 2022. Members of rural community are demanding solutions by the government for problems and crisis in the Rural sector. (AP Photo/Paul White)


MADRID (AP) — Farmers, cattle-breeders, hunters and opposition supporters descended Sunday on the Spanish capital of Madrid to protest environmental and economic policies by Spain’s left-of-center government that they say are hurting rural communities.

Sunday’s protest was organized by Alma Rural 2021, a platform representing over 500 rural organizations from all corners of Spain. Members of opposition parties, ranging from centrists to far-right supporters, also attended.

The demonstration came as Spanish politicians are campaigning before an early election in Castilla-Leon, a vast region northeast of Madrid where proposals against depopulation and agricultural policies are taking center stage.

Carlos Bueno, head of Alma Rural 2021, said the protest aimed to highlight rural concerns amid what he called “ideological” attacks from the government. Concerns ranged from regulating prices for agricultural products to protections for those who breed cattle for bullfights and more subsidies for rural industries.



Tractors and bull carts headed the march along a Madrid thoroughfare, with protesters walking from the gates of the Ecology Transition Ministry — the previous Environment Ministry — to the Agriculture Ministry. Among the many banners held by protesters, one read: “Farmers speak. Who’s listening?”

Spain’s Ecological Transition Ministry said the country’s budget for 2022 includes 4.2 billion euros ($4.7 billion) to fight the depopulation of rural areas. Spain’s rural world “doesn’t need populist slogans but political involvement and resource to solve historical problems,” it said in a statement.

A spat over industrial livestock farming has dominated headlines for the past month since Consumer Minister Alberto Garzón, a member of the far-left junior partner of the Socialist-led administration, criticized big cattle operations for damaging the environment and producing poor quality food for export.

His remarks caused a political storm, created divisions within the ruling coalition and led to calls by right-wing opposition parties for Garzón to resign.

END WAR ON DRUGS

Youth’s overdose death renews pleas for Narcan in schools

By DAVE COLLINS

Students at Sport and Medical Sciences Academy return to school, Jan. 19, 2022 in Hartford, Conn. The school has been closed since last week after a student died from a fentanyl overdose. The death of the seventh grader has renewed calls for schools to carry the opioid antidote naloxone. The 13-year-old student in Hartford died after falling ill in school two days earlier. The school did not have naloxone, which is known by the brand name Narcan. But now city officials are vowing to put it in all schools. Fatal overdoses among young people in the U.S. have been increasing amid the opioid epidemic but remain relatively uncommon. (Mark Mirko/ The Hartford Courant via AP)


HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — The death of a 13-year-old student who apparently overdosed on fentanyl at his Connecticut school has drawn renewed pleas for schools to stock the opioid antidote naloxone, as well as for training of both staffers and children on how to recognize and respond to overdoses.

The seventh grader was hospitalized Jan. 13 after falling ill at a Hartford school that did not have naloxone on hand. City officials vowed Wednesday to put the antidote in all city schools, as part of a wider drug use and overdose prevention strategy.

“Naloxone should be available in all schools, and there should be education on signs and symptoms of overdose and how to use this,” said Dr. Craig Allen, vice president of addiction services for Hartford HealthCare’s Behavioral Health Network. “Unfortunately, a horrible incident like this happens and suddenly everyone’s vision is 20/20.”

Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin said that because of the student’s young age, an opioid overdose did not immediately come to mind when the school nurse and first responders, who did have naloxone, treated him.

That’s why city officials are also proposing more training and curriculum changes aimed at educating staffers, students and community members in substance use awareness and prevention, he said.

In response to the student’s death, advocacy groups are repeating calls they’ve made for several years for schools to stock naloxone — often delivered as a nasal spray under the brand name Narcan — and train educators, support staff and students to recognize signs of opioid use and overdoses, especially because younger people are falling victim more frequently.

The powerful opioid fentanyl has been showing up in marijuana, illicit pills and other substances accessible to school-age children, experts say. Fatal overdoses in the U.S. are at record levels, fueled by fentanyl, and have been increasing among younger people, national data shows.

The National Association of School Nurses has advocated for naloxone to be in all schools since 2015 and for school nurses to help educate their communities about the signs and symptoms of substance abuse.

“It’s a very unfortunate outcome,” Linda Mendonca, the association’s president, said about the Hartford student’s death. “It brings us back to school preparedness and response plans. Having those in place is really critical.”

The association created a “tool kit” for school nurses that includes information on administering naloxone and educating the community about opioid problems. The kit has been downloaded from its website more than 49,000 times, the group said.

Ethan’s Run Against Addiction is one of many advocacy groups that weighed in on social media about the Hartford student’s death. It is named after Ethan Monson-Dupuis, a 25-year-old Wisconsin man who died of a heroin overdose in 2016

“This tragedy is unbearable. Our nation’s opioid crisis has reached into the lives of children, into places where we want to assume that they are safe,” the group said in a Facebook post Thursday. “ALL public places, including schools, must have Narcan available. We need to educate kids on how to recognize someone who is overdosing and how to use Narcan.”

In addition to a nasal spray, naloxone can also be given as an injection. The National Institute on Drug Abuse says it is a safe medicine and side effects are rare but warns it doesn’t reverse overdoses from other drugs. Training is needed, the agency says, because sometimes more than one dose needs to be given and people who receive the drug can experience immediate withdrawal symptoms.

It’s not clear how often overdoses happen in U.S. schools, but experts and advocates say they are not common.

In late November, two school resource officers and a school nurse were given naloxone after being exposed to the synthetic opioid carfentanil, which was in a piece of paper found in a student’s vape pen at Sequoyah High School in Madisonville, Tennessee, according to local media reports. The officers and nurse became lightheaded but recovered.

In 2019, high schools in the Tucson, Arizona, area began stocking naloxone in response to a student overdosing on opioids while in school. Emergency responders, who were carrying the antidote, revived the student, media reports said.

There also is no national data on how many schools have naloxone or drug use awareness training programs that include recognizing the signs of an overdose.

In a survey of Pennsylvania school nurses conducted in 2018 and published in 2020, more than half the 362 nurses who responded reported having naloxone in their schools, according to the journal Public Health Nursing.

About 5% of the nurses said naloxone had been administered in their school or at a school-sponsored activity. The most common reason for not having naloxone in schools included a lack of support and the belief it was not needed, the survey showed.

Drug use prevention is taught in many schools. And there are an array of overdose awareness and naloxone administration programs offered by local health departments and advocacy groups.

In eastern Tennessee, the Carter County Drug Prevention group has trained hundreds of children, some as young as 6, on how to use naloxone via after-school programs and other extracurricular gatherings, in response to rising overdoses, The New York Times reported.

Twenty states had laws allowing schools to possess and administer naloxone, and seven others required schools to have naloxone-use policies as of August 2020, according to the Legislative Analysis and Public Policy Association, a nonprofit research and policy advocacy group. Most of the laws require training on administering the antidote.

In response to record drug overdoses, the national Office of National Drug Control Policy in November released a model law for states to consider, aimed at expanding access to naloxone, including in schools.

The Hartford student fell ill at the Sport and Medical Sciences Academy and died at a hospital two days later, on Jan. 15. The teenager’s name was not released. Two other students recovered after apparently being exposed to fentanyl and becoming ill, officials said.

Hartford police said they found about 40 small bags containing fentanyl in the school. Police are still investigating the overdose, and the fentanyl’s source remains unclear.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the 15-to-24 age group saw the largest percentage increase in drug overdose death rates from 2019 to 2020, at 49%, but had the second-lowest overall rates among age groups.

For the first time last year, U.S. overdoses deaths topped an estimated 100,000 in a one-year period, with many of the deaths linked to illicit fentanyl.

New conservative target: Race as factor in COVID treatment
By TODD RICHMOND

 Nurse manager Edgar Ramirez checks on IV fluids while talking to a COVID-19 patient at Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in Los Angeles, Dec. 13, 2021. Some conservatives are taking aim at policies that allow doctors to consider race as a risk factor when allocating scarce COVID-19 treatments, saying the protocols discriminate against white people. Medical experts say the opposition is misleading. 

(AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Some conservatives are taking aim at policies that allow doctors to consider race as a risk factor when allocating scarce COVID-19 treatments, saying the protocols discriminate against white people.

The wave of infections brought on by the omicron variant and a shortage of treatments have focused attention on the policies.

Medical experts say the opposition is misleading. Health officials have long said there is a strong case for considering race as one of many risk factors in treatment decisions. And there is no evidence that race alone is being used to decide who gets medicine.

The issue came to the forefront last week after Fox News host Tucker Carlson, former President Donald Trump and Republican Sen. Marco Rubio jumped on the policies. In recent days, conservative law firms have pressured a Missouri-based health care system, Minnesota and Utah to drop their protocols and sued New York state over allocation guidelines or scoring systems that include race as a risk factor.

JP Leider, a senior fellow in the Division of Health Policy and Management at the University of Minnesota who helped develop that state’s allocation criteria, noted that prioritization has been going on for some time because there aren’t enough treatments to go around.

“You have to pick who comes first,” Leider said. “The problem is we have extremely conclusive evidence that (minorities) across the United States are having worse COVID outcomes compared to white folks. ... Sometimes it’s acceptable to consider things like race and ethnicity when making decisions about when resources get allocated at a societal level.”

Since the pandemic began, health care systems and states have been grappling with how to best distribute treatments. The problem has only grown worse as the omicron variant has packed hospitals with COVID-19 patients.

Considerable evidence suggests that COVID-19 has hit certain racial and ethnic groups harder than whites. Research shows that people of color are at a higher risk of severe illness, are more likely to be hospitalized and are dying from COVID-19 at younger ages.

Data also show that minorities have been missing out on treatments. Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published an analysis of 41 health care systems that found that Black, Asian and Hispanic patients are less likely than whites to receive outpatient antibody treatment.

Omicron has rendered two widely available antibody treatments ineffective, leaving only one, which is in short supply.

The Food and Drug Administration has given health care providers guidance on when that treatment, sotrovimab, should be used, including a list of medical conditions that put patients at high risk of severe outcomes from COVID-19. The FDA’s guidance says other factors such as race or ethnicity might also put patients at higher risk.

The CDC’s list of high-risk underlying conditions notes that age is the strongest risk factor for severe disease and lists more than a dozen medical conditions. It also suggests that doctors and nurses “carefully consider potential additional risks of COVID-19 illness for patients who are members of certain racial and ethnic minority groups.”

State guidelines generally recommend that doctors give priority for the drugs to those at the highest risk, including cancer patients, transplant recipients and people who have lung disease or are pregnant. Some states, including Wisconsin, have implemented policies that bar race as a factor, but others have allowed it.

St. Louis-based SSM Health, which serves patients in Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma and Wisconsin, required patients to score 20 points on a risk calculator to qualify for COVID-19 antibody treatment. Non-whites automatically got seven points.

State health officials in Utah adopted a similar risk calculator that grants people two points if they’re not white. Minnesota’s health department guidelines automatically assigned two points to minorities. Four points was enough to qualify for treatment.

New York state health officials’ guidelines authorize antiviral treatments if patients meet five criteria. One is having “a medical condition or other factors that increase their risk for severe illness.” One of those factors is being a minority, according to the guidelines.

The protocols have become a talking point for Republicans after The Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed by political commentators John Judis and Ruy Teixeira this month complaining that New York’s policy is unfair, unjustified and possibly illegal. Carlson jumped on Utah’s and Minnesota’s policies last week, saying “you win if you’re not white.”

Alvin Tillery, a political scientist at Northwestern University, called the issue a winning political strategy for Trump and Republicans looking to motivate their predominantly white base ahead of midterm elections in November. He said conservatives are twisting the narrative, noting that race is only one of a multitude of factors in every allocation policy.

“It does gin up their people, gives them a chance in elections,” Tillery said.

After the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, a conservative law firm based in Madison, sent a letter to SSM Health on Friday demanding that it drop race from its risk calculator, SSM responded that it already did so last year as health experts’ understanding of COVID-19 evolved.

“While early versions of risk calculators across the nation appropriately included race and gender criteria based on initial outcomes, SSM Health has continued to evaluate and update our protocols weekly to reflect the most up-to-date clinical evidence available,” the company said in a statement. “As a result, race and gender criteria are no longer utilized.”

America First Legal, a conservative-leaning law firm based in Washington, D.C., filed a federal lawsuit Sunday against New York demanding that the state remove race from its allocation criteria. The same firm warned Minnesota and Utah last week that they should drop race from their preference factors or face lawsuits.

Erin Silk, a spokeswoman for New York state’s health department, declined to comment on the lawsuit. She said the state’s guidance is based on CDC guidelines and that race is one of many factors that doctors should consider when deciding who gets treatment. She stressed that doctors should consider a patient’s total medical history and that no one is refused treatment because of race or any other demographic qualifier.

Minnesota health officials dropped race from the state’s criteria a day or two before receiving America Legal First’s demands, Leider said. They said in a statement that they’re committed to serving all Minnesotans equitably and are constantly reviewing their policies. The statement did not mention the letter from America Legal First. Leider said the state is now picking treatment recipients through a lottery.

Utah dropped race and ethnicity from its risk score calculator on Friday, among other changes, citing new federal guidance and the need to make sure classifications comply with federal law. The state’s health department said that instead of using those as factors in eligibility for treatments, it would “work with communities of color to improve access to treatments” in other ways.

Leider finds the criticism of the race-inclusive policies disingenuous.

“It’s easy to bring in identity politics and set up choices between really wealthy folks of one type and folks of other types,” he said. “It’s hard to take seriously those kinds of comparisons. They don’t seem very fair to reality.”

Why some German church windows depict Hitler

Devil or fool? Several churches in Germany have stained-glass windows portraying Adolf Hitler. Who were the artists and what are the artworks all about?


Hitler, the devil tempting Jesus

Weil der Stadt is a town of about 20,000 people in southwestern Germany, west of Stuttgart. At the Catholic church of St. Peter and Paul, pastor Anton Gruber has been welcoming his congregation as well as many curious visitors for the past 11 years.

Some people stop by the church because it is right on a popular bike path, while others have come to peer at one particular stained-glass window. They often say "the features of Hitler are recognizable," Gruber told DW. "Most people are simply curious, no more and no less," the clergyman says about the pane that dates from 1939/40.
Personified evil

It is part of a larger window of nine panels depicting scenes from the life of Jesus. The pane on the far upper right depicts temptation, with the devil testing Jesus' faith — and the artist JoKarl Huber has clearly given Hitler's facial features to his depiction of the devil. The devil's outfit is yellow, a color that stands for envy and possession.

Getting rid of idols: A stained-glass window in Vasperviller, France

Most visitors have no problem understanding and contextualizing the depiction of the dictator as evil personified, Gruber says, adding that the artist never commented on his work, so one can only assume that he wanted to portray Hitler as a figure of evil. The artwork was created in 1939, at the height of the Nazi regime.

Knowing the artist's story helps understand the imagery, Gruber argues. "In 1936, the Nazis labeled JoKarl Huber's art as 'degenerate,' and he was no longer allowed to work," he says.

St. Peter and Paul's priest at the time, August Uhl, granted the artist asylum, along with a commission for renovation. Uhl's sermons tended to be in opposition to the Nazis, which is why the Gestapo allegedly often showed up at his home, Gruber says.

HOW HITLER AND THE NAZIS DEFAMED ART

Degenerate art

Modern art works whose style, artist or subject did not meet with the approval of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialists were labeled "degenerate art." From 1937, the Nazis confiscated such works from German museums. In a traveling exhibition, "degenerate art" was held up for public ridicule. Here we see Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and Hitler at the original exhibition in Munich.

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Controversial artworks

There is no doubt "the stained glass window represents an unequivocal and courageous statement against National Socialism and its leaders," German historian Michael Kuderna told DW. His most recent book is about Hitler images in churches.

In the course of his research, he found five images of Hitler that predate 1945 and nine that date to after 1945. With the early images, it can be difficult to prove they really show the dictator, but the later images clearly show Hitler, for instance as an executioner, or a villain burning in hell.

"After the war, depicting Hitler in churches was no longer as problematic as before 1945, when people feared retribution," the historian explains.

As time passed, the imagery changed: "Hitler was increasingly shown in other contexts, treated in a more distanced way, even to the point of caricature," Kuderna adds.

His research started 20 years ago at the church in Vasperviller. Created after 1945, a stained-glass window shows a biblical story from the Old Testament: Rachel, Laban's daughter, steals her father's household idols.

The artist, Gabriele Kütemeyer, gave one of the idols Hitler's face. "The artist's father was a staunch opponent of the Nazis; he was in Gestapo custody in Berlin for a time," Kuderna explains, adding that the artist often heard her father say the Germans followed false idols. "That gave her the idea to look for that connection in the artwork."

The fools of the world: An artwork on an altar in the church of St. Peter and Paul

Among the 14 illustrations Kuderna identified as clearly depicting Hitler, one of them — showing Hitler with Paul von Hindenburg, the German president who played a key role in the Nazi seizure of power — was removed after 1945.

The historian points out that right after war, "people didn't like to talk about these things, they felt embarrassed." As a result, some of the images were hidden away while others were vandalized.
Difficult mission

Kuderna mentions one case of a window in Munich by artist Max Lacher that portrays Hitler as a kind of torturer. Early on, it was splashed with ink but later got protected with a barrier.

The same artist created a much more famous image in the town of Landshut, a stained-glass window in St. Martin church that shows Hitler and fellow Nazi rulers Goebbels and Göring torturing St. Castulus.

After World War II, the Americans demanded its removal, but had a change of heart when told that the artist was a resistance fighter in the last weeks of the war.

Clearly, such images should not be hidden, or removed, Kuderna argues— they can serve as a basis to deal with the past. "Even if it's difficult, because to this day, there is a lot that we haven't processed."

Testimony to contemporary history

Pastor Anton Gruber also favors an open and transparent discussion of such depictions. "The images that were created during the Nazi era are a testimony to history," he says.

Gruber thinks it is important that the church is alive and well, and presents works of art from different eras; it should not just be a museum of the past. "In my church, for example, we have items from 1500, 1750, from 1939/40, but also artworks from 2020."

One of the more recent depictions of Hitler in Gruber's church is a painting by Dieter Gross added in 2018 to the back of the wings of the Epiphany altar. It shows Jesus Christ surrounded by a crowd of people supposed to represent the fools of the world. They include Donald Trump and, further in the back, Adolf Hitler.

"The question is, how can I represent Hitler as a simple fool among many, next to all the others?" the pastor asks. "This is about giving people food for thought: Where would I stand in the crowd of fools in the picture? How much of a fool am I?"

Historian Kuderna says that this last depiction of Hitler is the strangest he has encountered in his research. "It's funny and beautiful, but it makes you think." He is still not sure though whether the image works or whether such a depiction does not ultimately trivialize Hitler.

Anton Gruber, the church's pastor, leaves the interpretation and discussion to his congregation and the visitors.

Why carbon offsets are worse than you think

Jan 21, 2022
DW Planet A

Carbon offsets sound so promising: If you emit some CO2, you can just pay someone else to reduce that amount somewhere else, and you’re good! But is it too good to be true? Reporter: Kiyo Dörrer Camera: Henning Goll Video Editor: David Jacobi Supervising Editor: Joanna Gottschalk We're destroying our environment at an alarming rate. But it doesn't need to be this way. 

Our new channel Planet A explores the shift towards an eco-friendly world — and challenges our ideas about what dealing with climate change means. We look at the big and the small: What we can do and how the system needs to change. Every Friday we'll take a truly global look at how to get us out of this mess.

UK lawmaker says she was sacked from government over her 'Muslimness'

A former minister in Britain’s Conservative government says she was told her Muslim faith was a reason she was fired, a claim that has deepened the rifts roiling Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s governing party.

© Justin Tallis, AFP file photo

Former transport minister Nusrat Ghani told the Sunday Times that when she was demoted in 2020, a government whip said her “Muslimness” was “making colleagues uncomfortable.”

She said she was told “there were concerns ‘that I wasn’t loyal to the party as I didn’t do enough to defend the party against Islamophobia allegations.’

“It was very clear to me that the whips and No. 10 (Downing St.) were holding me to a higher threshold of loyalty than others because of my background and faith,” Ghani said.

Chief Whip Mark Spencer said he was the person Ghani was talking about, but strongly denied her allegation.

“These accusations are completely false and I consider them to be defamatory,” he wrote on Twitter. “I have never used those words attributed to me.”

Several Conservative lawmakers spoke up to support Ghani. Caroline Nokes, who heads Parliament’s Women and Equalities Committee, said Ghani’s treatment had been “appalling” and she was brave to speak out.

Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi tweeted that Ghani’s allegations must be “investigated properly & racism routed out.” His tweet ended with the hashtag “standwithNus.”

When Ghani was made a minister in 2015, her boss, then Transport Secretary Chris Grayling, said it was proof the Conservatives “were a party of opportunity.” But some have accused the party of failing to stamp out anti-Muslim prejudice under Johnson, who in 2018 compared women who wear face-covering veils to “letter boxes.”

Ghani's allegation comes after another Conservative legislator, William Wragg, accused party whips of intimidating and blackmailing members of Parliament to ensure they supported the government. Wragg says he is meeting police this week to discuss his claims.

Internal rifts in the Conservative Party have been blown open by allegations that Johnson and his staff held lockdown-flouting parties while Britain was under coronavirus restrictions.

A handful of Conservative lawmakers have called for Johnson to resign. Others are awaiting a report by Sue Gray, a senior civil servant appointed to investigate claims that government staff held late-night soirees, “bring your own booze” parties and “wine time Fridays” while Britain was under coronavirus restrictions in 2020 and 2021.

Gray’s findings are expected to be published next week. If Gray criticizes Johnson, more Conservative lawmakers may be emboldened to call for a no-confidence vote in Johnson that could result in his ouster.

(AP)

Examining the poor reputation of Africa's armies

African armies are perceived as underfunded, underequipped, and ineffective. There is a long history of coups and human rights violations. Twenty sub-Saharan militaries were involved in armed conflicts in 2020.



Armies in West and Central Africa are notorius for staging coups


According to a study by the Stockholm-based International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), out of a total of 49 sub-Saharan African states, at least 20 were involved in some armed conflict in 2020. This places African armies at the center of events — and under scrutiny.

Many African armies suffer from a bad reputation. They are often poorly trained and ineffective. The reasons are manifold, including underfunding, which is often revealed when armies need to combat insurgents, as seen in Nigeria and Mozambique. In addition, armies are to blame for military coups backed by political actors, as happened in Mali, Guinea, and Sudan.

Some armies are accused of corruption and misuse of resources, Nan Tian, a senior researcher at SIPRI, told DW. "This is, however, a false representation. In general, African militaries are not like this." One example is the Rwandan army, which has won international respect for its discipline and efficiency.

There is also a perception that African armies are outsize and eat up too much of the state budgets. "Both the relative number of personnel per inhabitants and the relative size of the budgets for the military are small in Africa in general," said Matthias Basedau, director of the GIGA Institute for African Affairs in Hamburg.

Fighting corruption in the army

Nigeria, for example, has the second biggest sub-Saharan army after South Africa. But, with more than 150 million inhabitants, it has a comparatively modest number of 200,000 enlisted personnel. Russia, a country of 140 million, has more than 1 million soldiers.

African armies are also associated with a lack of transparency and corruption. "Much of this is a structural problem. The lack of financial resources in the country means that the military and other state actors are all competing for a very small slice of the pie," Tian said.

In Angola, several high-ranking army officers were detained and sued for embezzlement in 2021 in an anti-corruption drive launched by President Joao Lourenco. The president is also trying to dismantle a system of patronage put in place by his long-serving predecessor, Jose Eduardo dos Santos.

Rwandan troops have been praised for helping to quell an Islamic uprising in northern Mozambique

The army as a political actor

Owing to Africa's colonial history, the military in many countries assumed a political role from the start. "Once the genie is released from the bottle, it's hard to put it back in," Basedau said.

In Angola, some top combatants were compensated for the fight for independence from Portugal and their participation in the ensuing decades of civil war. Such an arrangement offered an opportunity to those well placed to get rich quickly. General Manuel Helder Vieira Dias Jr., nicknamed "Kopelipa," for instance, was estimated in 2014 to be worth $3 billion (€2.64 billion). Though Lourenco's government has since removed Dias from powerful positions following the departure of former dos Santos, the general has been able to keep his wealth.

Though Angola is rich in oil and diamonds, most of its 32 million people live in poverty.

As in Angola, the governments of many countries have included the military "in corrupt practices to keep them happy and to keep them in line," Basedau said. It is often a tactic to gain the military's support.

Military coups on the rise again

Since the mid-1950s, Africa has averaged four coups per year. The number of attempted or successful coups declined from 2010 to 2019, according to a recent study called "Global Instances of Coups From 1950 to 2010: A New Dataset" found. But, in 2021, their number suddenly grew to six, a worrying trend for many analysts.

The threat of a military coup is never far, especially in West and Central Africa. "When we encounter weak states that have more unaccountable and weak political institutions, we can also bet that their armies are going to be unaccountable and probably fragmented," Benjamin Petrini, a research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies who focuses on security, conflict, and development in Africa, told DW:

Petrini said the erosion of democratic norms, including in the US and the European Union, is a major contributing factor "to a feeling that a military coup does not carry the same consequences as it used to."


The German Bundeswehr has been helping train the Malian army for almost 10 years
Crimes against humanity

This has also increased the feeling of impunity among some armies notorious for committing crimes against humanity. Sexual violence against women and girls and other human rights abuses "are not just incidents, but are, in effect, tactics of war," Petrini said.

This seems to be more of an issue for is far from being a specific African problem. "The disregard of human rights in warfare is a universal feature," researcher Basedau maintains.

The coronavirus pandemic, which laid bare many institutional deficits, has increased the threat of coups. "In several countries, the military had to step in," fueling the perception of a failure of the democratic state, Petrini says. He calls for an increase of pressure on coup leaders and lauded the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) for slapping strict sanctions on Mali's junta.

Analysts warn that interference in Africa from outside could be a double-edged sword. China and Russia, increasingly at loggerheads with the West, are becoming significant players in the continent. "If you have these international rivalries and they happen to meddle with domestic conflicts in African countries, of course, it's a great risk that these conflicts will become more intense and more protracted," Basedau said.