Journalists Killed or Silenced for Environmental Reporting

OCCRP and Forbidden Stories – a consortium of 40 journalists in 15 countries – takes a look at examples from three continents, in Guatemala, Tanzania, and India.

Farmers must change to feed world up to 2050

Last summer Europe was abnormally hot, with temperatures topping 30°C in the Arctic Circle

Even the unrealistic best-case scenario of 1.5°C of warming by 2100 will see extreme temperatures in many regions and leave disadvantaged populations with food insecurity, lost incomes, and worse health. 

Poem from Princess Nunakawa to Okuninusho

Come in the dark, 

When the sun has disappeared

And the night emerges

Behind the green hills.

Come smiling, like the morning sun

In all its glory,

And take in your embrace

My arms white as 

Ropes of Taku fiber,

My breasts, young and soft,

In 1920, The Hogarth Press, founded by Virginia Woolf and her husband, published Paris: A Poem by Hope Mirrlees

it seems an unlikely coincidence that one of the most striking lines of Paris refers to “The wicked April moon” and that Eliot’s Wasteland should commence in the “cruellest” month of April.

The Tibetan Buddhist Canon

The Tibetan canon is divided into two parts, called the Kangyur and the Tengyur. 

The Poetess

Apart from her fascination with the theme of love, Sappho contributed in other ways to the conventions of the lyric genre. Her emphasis on emotion, on subjective experience, and on the individual marks a stark contrast between her work and the epic, liturgical, or dramatic poetry of the period.

"The stars are sinking; the watch goes by; I lie alone."

Ruth Padel, prizewinning poet and former chair of the UK Poetry Society, chooses her favourite poets who happen to be women.

Big black holes can settle in the outskirts of small galaxies

Surprisingly, some of those potential black holes aren’t at their galaxy’s center, but instead appear to roam the outskirts, astronomer Amy Reines said 

Twilight I

Banned CFCs traced to China say scientists

it took many decades for scientists to discover that when CFCs break down in the atmosphere, they release chlorine atoms that are able to rapidly destroy the ozone layer which protects us from ultraviolet light. A gaping hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica was discovered in the mid 1980s.

The museum that hid art banned by Stalin

Savitsky risked everything for this collection. Some of these painters were tortured or murdered or spent long years in the gulags. The work collected is of both Russian and Uzbek artists who painted after the 30s, when all work that wasn’t socialist realism was banned by Stalin. Any other styles of the time – the emerging cubism, futurism, even impressionism – were deemed criminal. Formalism, as it was called, was punishable. 

Nightwithsculpture

"Église catholique: ça suffit!"

En matière de droits, il n’y a pas de complémentarité, pas de différence, il n’y a que l’égalité, une égalité originelle : « Dieu créa l’humain à son image, homme et femme, il les créa.»

Lutz Bacher: Magic Mountain

Fragmentation, interruption and fog

Of course there are precise moments – the moment in Schoenberg's Second String Quartet when the music abandons tonality altogether and a soprano sings of 'the air of other planets'; or Picasso's Demoiselle's D'Avignon where the prettiness of the acrobats and lovers of his blue and pink periods is abandoned for something at once harsh, archaic and foreign. 

Sculpturebridgeriver

Harvard Thucydides’s Trap Project

the execution of King Louis XVI in January 1793 was the final straw, galvanizing the British to action and prompting Britain to “engineer a grand anti-French coalition.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

In 2004 Ayaan gained international attention following the murder of Theo van Gogh. Van Gogh had directed her short film Submission, a film about the oppression of women under Islam. The assassin, a radical Muslim, left a death threat for her pinned to Van Gogh's chest.

Artists of the Tao Dance Theater

Installation by Anthea Hamilton

DUNE

DUNE will also help us work out whether neutrinos and their anti-matter equivalent, anti-neutrinos, behave identically, providing further evidence for matter’s dominance.

Shervone Neckles: Provenance 1

How a Chinese venture in Venezuela made millions while locals grew hungry

Venezuela and China agreed to hundreds of projects to kickstart growth in the South American country. After billions in investments, however, little materialized. A $200 million rice plant illustrates the graft and incompetence that opponents say crippled development by Venezuela's leftist regime.

Police investigating disappearance of Madeleine McCann unmask 'German paedophile and triple child killer

Ney was jailed for killing Stefan Jahr, 13, in 1992, Dennis Rostel, eight, in 1995, and Dennis Klein, nine, in 2001. 

Note: it is ethically and morally mandatory to reenacte the death penalty for monsters like that one.

No booths, no dealers

Perhaps even more radical is the absence of dealers and gallery representatives all together. Sales are facilitated by Object & Thing staff, who are stationed, iPads in hand, around the 15 “islands” at which works are displayed.

"He wants to be Velazquez so he paints stripes"

To our right was a copper painting by Frank Stella, its surface burnished by the light which flooded the room. A Harvard student who had entered the gallery approached us. With his left arm raised and his finger pointing to the Stella, he confronted Michael Fried. ‘What’s so good about that?’

Beijing’s deterrence fleet is up to six ballistic missile subs

China is becoming a rising power not only in consumer technology and artificial intelligence but also in Arctic military operations and nuclear submarine construction, 

Does poverty cause terrorism?

close inspection of recent terrorist attacks — including the Easter Sunday suicide bombings in Sri Lanka — finds that perpetrators often come from relatively affluent and well-resourced backgrounds, creating doubt over the credibility of the “poverty-terrorism nexus.” 

What might trigger the collapse of the EU?

“the expected success of the far-right and far-left in the European parliamentary election in May this year augurs the beginning of the end for the currency union”.

Note: I'm neither from the far-right nor from the far-left but I think that the EU must collapse. The sonner the better [the political correct aberrations must be stopped and any credit for the purchasing of German cars (submarines and so on) will go to a definitely end].

Artists are turning their attention to contemporary social and political issues that have global relevance

Ai made international headlines when he reported on the discrepancies in the official number of deaths caused by the 2008 Sichuan earthquake in China. After the quake, Ai visited the region, interviewed families, and began recording the actual number of people who were missing. He found that thousands of children had died in the collapse of poorly constructed public schools, a fact that the Chinese authorities had not wanted to make public. He documented his findings on his social media feeds for all the world to see and made artworks to commemorate the thousands of missing children. The Chinese government responded to Ai’s exposé with a beating, imprisonment, and charges of tax evasion

Njideka Akunyili Crosby: And We Begin To Let Go

How an Elaborate Plan to Topple Venezuela’s Dictator Went Wrong

if the campaign to dethrone Maduro fails, Venezuela could “sink into a dictatorship from which there are very few possible alternatives.”

As the Venezuelan opposition again struggles to topple Maduro, the few hundred soldiers here who have switched sides wonder why they’ve been ignored by Guaidó.

Chiharu Shiota: Crossroads

Juan Guaidó posts a video of himself flanked by armed forces claiming he is ‘starting the final phase of Operation Liberty’

“Today it is clear to us that the Armed Forces are with the people and not with the dictator,” Guaidó told the crowd. “We know that all Venezuelans are in favor of change and the Constitution“

Ming Smith: Masque

'Biodegradable' plastic bags survive three years in soil and sea

After three years the “biodegradable” bags that had been buried in the soil and the sea were able to carry shopping. The compostable bag was present in the soil 27 months after being buried, but when tested with shopping was unable to hold any weight without tearing.

El Anatsui: Earth-Moon Connexions

Nusrat Jahan Rafi was doused with kerosene and set on fire at her school in Bangladesh

Many girls and young women in Bangladesh choose to keep their experiences of sexual harassment or abuse secret for fear of being shamed by society or their families. What made Nusrat Jahan different is that she didn't just speak out - she went to the police with the help of her family on the day the alleged abuse happened.

"Civil disobedience is necessary to create attention to the ongoing climate and ecological crisis"

“It is impossible to exaggerate the awesome nature of the challenge we face: to determine, within the next few years, whether organised human society can survive in anything like its present form,” he said. “The activists of Extinction Rebellion are leading the way in confronting this immense challenge, with courage and integrity, an achievement of historic significance that must be amplified with urgency.”

Europe Needs a Global Strategy

Europe’s leaders must recognize that China is rapidly building an alternative political system in which a single party digitally controls the masses. 

The dreadful Notre Dame Fire in Paris on Monday 15th April at 5.50pm local time, was predicted by Nostradamus

A quatrain written 500 years ago by the French astrologer anticipated it

‘The wicked April moon’

‘April is the cruellest month.’ The opening line (although it’s worth remembering that ‘April is the cruellest month’ is not the full line) of T. S. Eliot’s 1922 poem The Waste Land is often quoted, especially every time that spring month comes around again. But three years before the publication of Eliot’s poem, a woman named Helen Hope Mirrlees was writing a poem, simply titled Paris: A Poem, which strikingly anticipates many elements of The Waste Land, including the focus on April not as a month of hope and rebirth, but as a time of cruelty and wickedness. 

H.D.’s oeuvre spans five decades of the 20th century, 1911-1961

She is known primarily as a poet, but she also wrote novels, memoirs, and essays and did a number of translations from the Greek. Her work is consistently innovative and experimental, both reflecting and contributing to the avant-garde milieu that dominated the arts in London and Paris until the end of World War II. 

Dead Souls

“Don’t Be Evil”

A Look Back Through Pictures at the Once-Forgotten Young Women of the Bauhaus

Collusion, cut-outs and covert ops; the dangerous ambiguities on which intelligence agencies thrive

Both Barr’s letter and Mueller’s indictments make clear Russian intelligence services aimed to disrupt the 2016 election. Those intelligence operations against our democratic institutions, which persist, operate in similar ways to the aforementioned covert action. They are designed to support and advance Russia’s foreign-policy agenda while hiding the hand of the Russian government.

By approving Articles 11 and 13

the EU Parliament not only rubber stamped bad legislation, but also ignored the voices of millions of its own concerned constituents. The EU Parliament has sided with lobbyists, and ignored the needs of creators and Internet users. This Directive only further entrenches the largest platforms like Facebook and YouTube – the only ones with the resources to actually comply to these dramatic regulations. The ramifications of this decision will be felt for years to come.

Norway’s giant oil fund dives into renewables

“These actions by the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund are noticed and contribute to reducing the cost for renewables, whilst accelerating the global shift away from coal.”

1959 / 2019 - 60 Years of Resistance

A Show of More Than 130 Women Artists From California Is Bringing a Once Sidelined Group Into the Spotlight

The Jokhang fire six months on

Despite the seemingly clear evidence of the fire, the events of that evening quickly became contested, with a range of competing claims over the location of the fire and its effects on the Jokhang. Information about the incident was quickly suppressed by the Chinese authorities and has been restricted ever since, apparently in the hope that the official narrative would be adopted: that there was a fire, but it was quickly contained and that no lasting harm was caused to the site or any of the historical and cultural artefacts within.  In practice, the secrecy around the fire and its aftermath has served to sow further doubt.

Seven EU Countries Labeled ‘Tax Havens’ in Parliament Report

The MEPs found that seven of the EU’s 28 member states — Belgium, Cyprus, Hungary, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta and The Netherlands — “display traits of a tax haven and facilitate aggressive tax planning.”

Following increased pressure by the Finnish Government for Portugal to ratify the revised treaty between the two countries, on April 30, 2018 the Finnish Parliament voted in favor of denouncing the Portugal-Finland tax treaty signed on April 27, 1970 (the Old Treaty). As a result the Old Treaty will be terminated effective as of January 1, 2019, in accordance with article 30.º of that treaty. If Portugal does not ratify the revised treaty by December 1, 2018, Finnish domestic legislation will apply, and private sector pensions sourced in Finland and paid to Portuguese residents will be subject to tax in Finland from January 1, 2019.

Dutch bank stocks, Austria's Raiffeisen fall on money laundering report

Shares in two Dutch banks and Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) fell on Tuesday after media reports about a money laundering network alleged to have channeled billions of euros from Russia.

The Troika Laundromat

Portuguese judge wants to sue who criticized his decisions

Neto de Moura made public with controversial arguments. The mind-set was exposed to a man who had attacked his wife with a nail because she was unfaithful. "The adultery of a woman is a very grave attack on the honor and dignity of the husband" and there are, as the judge stated, societies "in which the adulterous wife is stoned to death." For Neto de Moura, the aggression in question was not serious enough in this judgment, because "in the Bible we can read that the adulteress should be punished with death."

In an Effort to Fight Money Laundering, the EU Parliament Wants to Scrap the Freeport System Beloved by Billionaire Art Collectors

The revelations laid bare more than 300 secret tax deals that Luxembourg had struck with global businesses, including Disney, Skype, GlaxoSmithKline, Koch Industries and Black & Decker. In several cases, the deals — known as “tax rulings” — allowed firms to pay less than 1 percent tax in Luxembourg

The European Commission has opened an investigation into one of the 546 secret Luxembourg tax deals exposed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ Lux Leaks project almost five years ago.

In March, Juncker dismissed the claims about Le Freeport, saying there was “no evidence showing that free zones in the EU are systematically used to commit fraud.” The final report from TAX3 notes that the committee “deeply regrets” the lack of progress on major initiatives that have not been finalized due to “the lack of genuine political will.”

Year 2146

Zuckerberg’s new privacy essay shows why Facebook needs to be broken up

Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t understand what privacy means—he can’t be trusted to define it for the rest of us.

How the Mafias Came to Slovakia

The slain Slovak journalist was investigating the Calabrian and his connections to then-Prime Minister Fico when he was killed.

Kuciak found that a young female assistant of Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico had once co-owned a business with Vadalà — and that the Italian had allegedly scammed the European Union out of 120,000 euros in agricultural subsidies.


Fico has ties to organized criminal groups Kuciak was investigating; Krajmer was inexplicably present at the murder scene shortly after the bodies were found; Fico, Krajmer and Kočner were connected to one another in various ways

Lithuania Detains 26, Including Top Judges, for Corruption

Lithuanian authorities detained on Wednesday 26 people, including judges and lawyers, in a large-scale anti-corruption probe of the judiciary. The suspects are accused of large-scale bribery, trading in influence and abuse of powers.

Imagine

being snatched from the street or even your home. You are loaded into a police car and driven to an unknown location. Your friends, colleagues and family don’t know where you are. Nor do you. It is like you have disappeared from the face of the earth.

Jean Guillou (18 April 1930 – 26 January 2019)

Governments are concerned that cryptocurrencies can undermine anti-money-laundering and sanctions-enforcement regimes

Drug trafficking organizations operating as far apart as Colombia and China, and even blacklisted nations such as North Korea, Venezuela, and Iran, have made headlines for their clandestine crypto maneuvers.

Antarctic model raises prospect of unstoppable ice collapse

Before the last ice age began 130,000–115,000 years ago, for instance, sea levels were 6–9 metres higher than today — yet atmospheric carbon-dioxide levels were about 30% lower. And 3 million years ago, when CO2 levels roughly equalled today’s, the oceans may have been 10–30 metres higher.

EU warns Romania over corruption amnesty

EU commission president Jean-Claude Juncker on Friday (11 January) warned the Romanian government not to press ahead with a planned law that would grant amnesty for corruption offences, undermining such EU "essentials", such as rule of law.

Europe’s Copyright Rules Will Stifle Free Expression

Even if you think the internet’s main function is to serve up entertainment and news, these rules are still a bad idea. But the internet is more than that: it’s our new global nervous system. These rules will affect education, civic and political engagement, family life, employment, and a thousand other fields of human endeavor. To pass them would be an act of gross regulatory malpractice in a parliament charged with the orderly governance of more than 508,000,000 people.

CPJ's 2018 Global Impunity Index spotlights countries where journalists are slain and their killers go free

Impunity is entrenched in 14 nations, according to CPJ's 2018 Global Impunity Index, which ranks states with the worst records of prosecuting the killers of journalists.

There were 251 journalists jailed for doing their jobs as of Dec. 1, the Committee to Protect Journalists said in an annual study. For the third consecutive year, more than half are in Turkey, China and Egypt, where authorities have accused reporters of anti-governmental activities. 

[The total does not take into account journalists who have disappeared or are being held by non-state actors. The CPJ said there are dozens of reporters missing or kidnapped in the Middle East and North Africa, including several held by Houthi rebels in Yemen.]

Murdered in Europe: Daphne Galizia (Malta), Kuciak and Kusnirova (Slovakia), Viktoria Marinova (Bulgaria).

Life in Deep Earth Totals 15 to 23 Billion Tonnes of Carbon—Hundreds of Times More than Humans

Barely living “zombie” bacteria and other forms of life constitute an immense amount of carbon deep within Earth’s subsurface—245 to 385 times greater than the carbon mass of all humans on the surface, according to scientists nearing the end of a 10-year international collaboration to reveal Earth’s innermost secrets.

“Depravity toward one is a sure sign of willingness to do much more harm”

whenever people feel stripped of freedom and opportunity, they instinctively challenge their government in order to reclaim control over their lives. “And if a government doesn’t value human life,” she said, “then they will do something to their people that the whole world will have to pay attention to.”

[The secret of Saudi is that they rely almost entirely on our governments -- to sell them weapons, buy their oil, and give them legitimacy. But the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi -- and the tragic death of Amal, a starving 7-year-old Yemeni girl whose picture appeared in the New York Times -- have those same governments wavering in their devoted support.]

We’re Asleep to Technology’s March & That’s Dangerous

the big tech companies are cornering the market that is humanity.

Google has been working on a top secret project that will aid China’s oppression in Tibet

Named ‘Dragonfly’, the search engine will comply with Beijing’s notoriously repressive censorship regime. It will restrict or completely block searches for “human rights”, “democracy”, “Dalai Lama” and “Tibet”. 

"A very particular kind of people, with expensive perfumes and makeup, looking really expensive and unapproachable"

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided

to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2018 to Denis Mukwege and Nadia Murad for their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict.

Allison Zuckerman: Jilted Lover