
April 23, 2014
Strong foreground, nice depth of field, striking colors, llamas ... What more could you ask for in a picture?
Strong foreground, nice depth of field, striking colors, llamas ... What more could you ask for in a picture?
A Canadian protestor in Montreal, dressed as a “handmaid” holds a sign reading “This is no longer fiction” to denounce the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Welcome to Monday, where Volodymyr Zelensky addresses G7 leaders as strikes hit Kyiv, reverberations continue after the end of U.S. federal protection for abortion rights, and Japan asks 37 million citizens to turn the lights off. Meanwhile, for French economic daily Les Échos, Benjamin Quénelle looks at the “inevitable” recession around the corner for Russia, despite its apparent resilience to Western sanctions.
[*Swabian - Germany]
With the complicity of leftist rulers in Venezuela, Bolivia and even Argentina, Iran's sanction-ridden regime is spreading its tentacles in South America, and could even undermine democracies, writes Julio Borges for El Espectador.
The dangers posed by Venezuela's relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran is something we've warned about before. Though not new, the dangers have changed considerably in recent years.
They began under Venezuela's late leader, Hugo Chávez , when he decided to turn his back on the West and move closer to countries outside our geopolitical sphere. In 2005, Chávez and Iran's then president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, signed collaborative agreements in areas beyond the economy, with goals that included challenging the West and spreading Iran's presence in Latin America.
That never immediately yielded initiatives, but in the past three years Chávez's successor, Venezuela's President Nicolás Maduro, has breathed new life into the ties as part of his bid to retain power at any cost.
To get a glance of the depth of Maduro's relations with Iran, one need only see the Iranians now busy repairing refineries, guiding sanction-evading policies, exerting undue influence on the defense sector and even opening supermarkets in Caracas.
Their presence in Venezuela as a consequential political actor is real, and certainly related to Maduro's trip earlier in June to the Middle East, which included a stop in Tehran to meet with the regime's top leaders. After the meetings, the Iranian and Venezuelan presidents held a press conference to announce the agreements signed in the visit, though strangely, said nothing about defense, where Iran has gained relevance.
As late as 2021 the Iranians were reported to have shown Venezuela their prototype for a rocket-launching drone.
Maduro's trip to Tehran also coincided with a disturbing report on a suspicious plane landing in Argentina, with a crew of 14 Venezuelans and five Iranians. The plane and its departure point have raised all manner of questions, but information confirmed in Argentina so far suggests it was a grave threat to hemispheric security.
Firstly, we know it was owned by Mahan Air, an Iranian carrier previously sanctioned for taking arms and supplies to extremists or militants in the Middle East. Five months ago, this plane was transferred to Conviasa, an airline owned by the Venezuelan regime and also subject to sanctions.
Secondly, at least one of the crew members was duly identified as a member of the Quds Force, a commando unit of the Iranian Revolutionary guards. The group are listed as active collaborators of international terrorism.
The plane was reported to have traveled to Uruguay to refuel before returning to Venezuela, but Uruguay's government banned it from its airspace following information it had received on its movements. Its flight path was anything but anodyne, having stopped in Ciudad del Este in Paraguay, a hotbed of continental crime and trafficking, and suspected operating zone for Hezbollah, the Lebanese terror group long linked to the Iranian regime.
The Argentine judiciary is now investigating the plane, and its crew and suspect connections. As Argentina has already suffered the terrorism of Iran-linked elements in the past, this incident cannot be underestimated. Faced with a threat to the peace and security of Argentines, the government of President Alberto Fernández should fully probe the plane's mission. Did elements in the Argentine government know about it, its crew members and foreign ties? The public has a right to know and must force the Argentine authorities to provide plausible explanations.
Unfortunately, Fernández, like his Mexican counterpart, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has become an unstinting apologist for Maduro. With a conniving, cynical and inhumane discourse, Fernández has whitewashed dictatorial practices and state violence exerted by Maduro and certain other strongmen.
Still, one thing is ideological sympathies, and another the security of Argentines and the region's inhabitants.
Maduro's relations with Iran have acquired another dimension. It is no longer about Right and Left and who is right, but about the future of Western, liberal-democratic values in our region. The anti-Western powers are working on a new order, and regional democracies should see the Argentine affair as an alarm bell.
For such incidents will surreptitiously undermine security until it is blown up, as it was in the Middle East. Maduro has become a firm ally of anti-Western powers like Russia, China, Cuba and Iran. And they are using him as their foothold to destabilize the region. It is time to draw a line and thwart Maduro's spiraling ties with this axis of chaos.
— Julio Borges / El Espectador
• Zelensky addresses G7, Russia defaults: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the G7 summit via video-call today, where he reportedly asked the leaders of Western nations for anti-aircraft defense systems, more sanctions on Russia, security guarantees, and help to export grain from Ukraine. Meanwhile, Russia has defaulted on its foreign debt for the first time in more than a century as Western sanctions continue to isolate the country from much of the world economy.
• Post-Roe protests continue as more states move to restrict abortions: Mass protests are taking place across the United States following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the precedent setting case on abortion rights Roe v. Wade. Eighteen states have already effectively banned abortions, and many have severely restricted access to them. The ACLU plans to sue the states of Kentucky and Florida over their abortion bans, and abortion pill manufacturers have announced that they are prepared for a surge in nationwide demmand.
• Suspect named in case of Oslo gay bar shooting:Norwegian authorities have named the suspect in a deadly shooting at a popular LGBTQ+ bar in Oslo as a 42-year-old Norwegian citizen of Iranian origin. The shooting, which killed two and injured 21, is being treated as an act of Islamic terrorism.
• Saudi Arabia changes Hajj overnight: The travel plans of Muslims across the West have been disturbed after Saudi Arabia suddenly instated a lottery system and demanded that all Westerners who plan to make the pilgrimage cancel prior travel arrangements and use the new system. British Muslim travel agencies say they may go out of buisiness, and thousands of travelers will be forced to pay more than expected to make the pilgrimage this year.
• 22 bodies found at South African bar: At least 21 young people have been confirmed dead after 22 bodies with no visible wounds were found at a nightclub in East London, South Africa. The cause of death is unknown and the bodies are being submitted for autopsies.
• Colombia bullfight stand collapses: At least six people were killed and 100 more were injured after a stand collapsed at a bullfight in Espinal, Colombia. The new president-elect of Colombia Gustavo Petro released a statement demanding that events which involve the death of people or animals should be outlawed.
• Luxottica founder dies at age 87: Leonardo Del Vecchio, the Milan-born founder of the world’s largest eyewear company Luxottica has died at age 87. Del Vecchio started Luxottica as a tiny eyeglass shop in Italy’s Dolomite mountains. The conglomerate now produces frames for many of the world’s top eyewear brands, including Armani, Prada, Ray-ban, and Oakley.
“A very, very strong signal of unity,” titles German daily Die Welt, quoting Germany’s chancellor Olaf Scholz who is hosting the annual G7 summit in the Bavarian Alps with U.S. President Joe Biden. The war in Ukraine, food insecurity and the looming economic crisis are on the agenda of the world leaders who are gathering until Tuesday. “The West demonstrates unity but the challenges are huge,” writes the daily.
As an unusual heat wave is hitting the country, Japan topped its highest temperatures ever recorded in June with 40.2°C in the city of Isesaki. Government officials have urged up to 37 million Japanese to reduce their consumption of energy in the afternoons and to switch off their lights in order to avoid potential power shortages.
Vladimir Putin boasted at the recent forum in St. Petersburg International Economic Forum about Russia’s economic resilience against Western sanctions. But behind the scenes, Russian business leaders tell a different story, reports Benjamin Quénelle for French daily Les Échos.
💰 Officially called the "International" Economic Forum, the annual event organized by Putin is meant to attract foreign investors — but this year, the elite of the national business community were cut off from the rest of the world. "Just among Russians... And forced to line up behind the regime and its economic strategies that lead us to a dead end,"a Russian manager in one of the main state-owned companies says.
🇷🇺 🙅 At the beginning of the Kremlin’s “special operation” conducted in Ukraine, many top business leaders were shocked and did not hide their disapproval of the military offensive. Four months later, the successive series of sanctions are making it impossible for them to leave Russia. Departures that, on the contrary, would have weakened the Kremlin and its economic strategy.
📉 The first real damages to the economy, the performance of Russian companies' earnings, are expected to arrive in the fall. Recession looks inevitable. But, defying earlier forecasts, the gross domestic product drop is likely to be closer to 15% than to 25%. Because the very structure of Russia’s economy helps it to cope. Moscow's state aid and intervention has thus helped with short-term resilience, but the false picture of an invincible Russian economy in the face of Western pressures is bound to backlash among a bewildered middle class.
➡️ Read more on Worldcrunch.com
“I think it’s better to tell him to his face what we think of him.”
— In an interview with German broadcaster ZDF, European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said the potential presence of Russian president Vladimir Putin at November’s G20 shouldn’t be a reason for Western leaders to boycott the summit. The Russian leader has been invited to the meeting by Indonesia’s president Joko Widodo, who has also extended an invitation to his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky, although Ukraine isn’t a G20 country.
A Canadian protestor in Montreal, dressed as a “handmaid” (a woman forced to bear children) from Margaret Atwood’s dystopian book series turned popular TV show “The Handmaid’s Tale,” holds a sign reading “This is no longer fiction” to denounce the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. — Photo: Graham Hughes/TheCanadianPress/ZUMA
✍️ Newsletter by Joel Silvestri, Lisa Berdet, Lila Paulou and Anne-Sophie Goninet
Let us know what’s happening in your corner of the world!
Among the most immediate effects of the overturning of Roe v. Wade is that women who find themselves in states where abortion is outlawed will travel to where it is legal. But that of course requires the right information and economic means to do so.
Trained practitioners warn that unregulated yoga can be detrimental to people's health. The government in India, where the ancient practice was invented, knows this very well — yet continues to postpone regulation.
The head of the Kremlin boasted at the recent forum in St. Petersburg International Economic Forum about Russia’s economic resilience against Western sanctions. But behind the scenes, Russian business leaders tell a different story.
Central to the tragic absurdity of this war is the question of language. Vladimir Putin has repeated that protecting ethnic Russians and the Russian-speaking populations of Ukraine was a driving motivation for his invasion.
Yet one month on, a quick look at the map shows that many of the worst-hit cities are those where Russian is the predominant language: Kharkiv, Odesa, Kherson.
Then there is Mariupol, under siege and symbol of Putin’s cruelty. In the largest city on the Azov Sea, with a population of half a million people, Ukrainians make up slightly less than half of the city's population, and Mariupol's second-largest national ethnicity is Russians. As of 2001, when the last census was conducted, 89.5% of the city's population identified Russian as their mother tongue.
Between 2018 and 2019, I spent several months in Mariupol. It is a rugged but beautiful city dotted with Soviet-era architecture, featuring wide avenues and hillside parks, and an extensive industrial zone stretching along the shoreline. There was a vibrant youth culture and art scene, with students developing projects to turn their city into a regional cultural center with an international photography festival.
There were also many offices of international NGOs and human rights organizations, a consequence of the fact that Mariupol was the last major city before entering the occupied zone of Donbas. Many natives of the contested regions of Luhansk and Donetsk had moved there, taking jobs in restaurants and hospitals. I had fond memories of the welcoming from locals who were quicker to smile than in some other parts of Ukraine. All of this is gone.
Putin is bombing the very people he has claimed to want to rescue.
According to the latest data from the local authorities, 80% of the port city has been destroyed by Russian bombs, artillery fire and missile attacks, with particularly egregious targeting of civilians, including a maternity hospital, a theater where more than 1,000 people had taken shelter and a school where some 400 others were hiding.
The official civilian death toll of Mariupol is estimated at more than 3,000. There are no language or ethnic-based statistics of the victims, but it’s likely the majority were Russian speakers.
So let’s be clear, Putin is bombing the very people he has claimed to want to rescue.
Putin’s Public Enemy No. 1, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, is a mother-tongue Russian speaker who’d made a successful acting and comedy career in Russian-language broadcasting, having extensively toured Russian cities for years.
Rescuers carry a person injured during a shelling by Russian troops of Kharkiv, northeastern Ukraine.
Yes, the official language of Ukraine is Ukrainian, and a 2019 law aimed to ensure that it is used in public discourse, but no one has ever sought to abolish the Russian language in everyday life. In none of the cities that are now being bombed by the Russian army to supposedly liberate them has the Russian language been suppressed or have the Russian-speaking population been discriminated against.
Sociologist Mikhail Mishchenko explains that studies have found that the vast majority of Ukrainians don’t consider language a political issue. For reasons of history, culture and the similarities of the two languages, Ukraine is effectively a bilingual nation.
"The overwhelming majority of the population speaks both languages, Russian and Ukrainian,” Mishchenko explains. “Those who say they understand Russian poorly and have difficulty communicating in it are just over 4% percent. Approximately the same number of people say the same about Ukrainian.”
In general, there is no problem of communication and understanding. Often there will be conversations where one person speaks Ukrainian, and the other responds in Russian. Geographically, the Russian language is more dominant in the eastern and central parts of Ukraine, and Ukrainian in the west.
Like most central Ukrainians I am perfectly bilingual: for me, Ukrainian and Russian are both native languages that I have used since childhood in Kyiv. My generation grew up on Russian rock, post-Soviet cinema, and translations of foreign literature into Russian. I communicate in Russian with my sister, and with my mother and daughter in Ukrainian. I write professionally in three languages: Ukrainian, Russian and English, and can also speak Polish, French, and a bit Japanese. My mother taught me that the more languages I know the more human I am.
At the same time, I am not Russian — nor British or Polish. I am Ukrainian. Ours is a nation with a long history and culture of its own, which has always included a multi-ethnic population: Russians, Belarusians, Moldovans, Crimean Tatars, Bulgarians, Romanians, Hungarians, Poles, Jews, Greeks. We all, they all, have found our place on Ukrainian soil. We speak different languages, pray in different churches, we have different traditions, clothes, and cuisine.
My mother taught me that the more languages I know the more human I am.
Like in other countries, these differences have been the source of conflict in our past. But it is who we are and will always be, and real progress has been made over the past three decades to embrace our multitudes. Our Jewish, Russian-speaking president is the most visible proof of that — and is in fact part of what our soldiers are fighting for.
Many in Moscow were convinced that Russian troops would be welcomed in Ukraine as liberating heroes by Russian speakers. Instead, young soldiers are forced to shoot at people who scream in their native language.
Starving people ina street of Kharkiv in 1933, during the famine
Diocesan Archive of Vienna (Diözesanarchiv Wien)/BA Innitzer
Putin has tried to rally the troops by warning that in Ukraine a “genocide” of ethnic Russians is being carried out by a government that must be “de-nazified.”
These are, of course, words with specific definitions that carry the full weight of history. The Ukrainian people know what genocide is not from books. In my hometown of Kyiv, German soldiers massacred Jews en masse. My grandfather survived the Buchenwald concentration camp, liberated by the U.S. army. My great-grandmother, who died at the age of 95, survived the 1932-33 famine when the Red Army carried out the genocide of the Ukrainian middle class, and her sister disappeared in the camps of Siberia, convicted for defying rationing to try to feed her children during the famine.
On Tuesday, came a notable report of one of the latest civilian deaths in the besieged Russian-speaking city of Kharkiv: a 96-year-old had been killed when shelling hit his apartment building. The victim’s name was Boris Romanchenko; he had survived Buchenwald and two other Nazi concentration camps during World War II. As President Zelensky noted: Hitler didn’t manage to kill him, but Putin did.
Genocide has returned to Ukraine, from Kharkiv to Kherson to Mariupol, as Vladimir Putin had warned. But it is his own genocide against the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine.