Indholdsfortegnelse for 22 March 2024 i Guardian Weekly

Scenes of unrest in Haiti, as Ariel Henry announced his resignation as prime minister last week amid a violent gang uprising, have brought a strong sense of deja vu. An international proposal for a transitional council to rule the country appears to have crumbled. But those jostling for influence are familiar figures associated with political parties, coalitions and the tiny oligarchic business elite that have been key players in the country’s long-running crisis of political legitimacy. Haiti has been here before, repeatedly, in the turbulent decades since the 1986 fall of the Duvalier dictatorship. There have been coups, transitional governments (sometimes military), ineffectual leaders and politicians who have cynically employed criminal gangs to pursue power. The leftwing president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a former parish priest and anti-poverty champion, employed armed gangs…

Omer Shita does not want another war, but thinks Israel may need one if his family are ever going to return to their home on the country’s northern border. He has put his life on hold – living a long way from his wife and children, working part-time from a laptop – so he can patrol the empty streets of Snir kibbutz, set in green hills with views of the first villages inside Lebanon. But he is no longer sure the rest of Israel shares his commitment to bringing the evacuated community back. On a recent patrol he stopped to tease a friend weeding the front garden of his abandoned house for having too much hope. “Safi still thinks he has a future here,” Shita said with a laugh, pointing…

It was a crude and violent assault, but as a bloody message, it was chillingly effective. An attacker ambushed Leonid Volkov, a close adviser to the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Nalvany, outside his home on the outskirts of Vilnius, Lithuania. The assailant smashed open the car window and blasted Volkov with teargas, then repeatedly struck him with a hammer, breaking his left arm before fleeing the scene. It was, Volkov said in the aftermath, “an obvious, characteristic, typical, gangster-style greeting from Putin” and the assault reflected an emerging truth: Russian intelligence operations in Europe are back. Lithuanian intelligence said the plot “seems to be the work of the Russian special services”, though Darius Jauniskis, the director of state security, said Moscow had apparently using a hired hand to carry…

On the fringes of cabinet last Tuesday, ministers chatted in hushed tones about Tory mega-donor Frank Hester’s “clearly racist” remarks about Diane Abbott, but concluded that “we’ve got to get the money in”. It took No 10 until the end of the day to condemn his words as “racist and wrong”; Rishi Sunak didn’t comment until prime minister’s questions the next day. It was not the only difficult moment for Sunak in what was one of the most troubled weeks since he become prime minister, and which followed a budget that failed to deliver any shift in the polls. The former Tory deputy chair Lee Anderson defected to Reform, angering the right of the party, who felt he should not have been stripped of the whip, and the rest, who…

Three months ago, a high court judge in Chhattisgarh, hearing a divorce petition by a husband whose wife said he humiliated her for her dark skin, said it was time Indian society changed its “dialogue at home” to eradicate prejudice. As if on cue, a new social comedy, Tera Kya Hoga Lovely (Unfair & Lovely), tackles this issue in the hope of nudging Indians into examining the longstanding preference for light skin. Directed by Balwinder Singh Janjua, it depicts a woman called Lovely, played by Ileana D’Cruz, who is unable to get married because of her dark skin. Prospective grooms and their families turn up at her home to inspect the bride. On seeing her, they beat a hasty retreat. One family condescends to considering a marriage but demands double…

The world’s two superpowers are so intricately linked that it’s hard to think of a pillar of the economy that hasn’t been strained by tensions between the US and China. And the next frontline in the economic conflict may be the most fundamental yet: a fight for power itself. A Chinese company that most people have never heard of is at the heart of the global race to store the clean energy needed to power the green transition in the US and the rest of the world. China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Limited, or CATL, is an energy storage specialist that is the world’s largest battery maker for electric vehicles (EVs). But despite the fact that the company controls nearly two-fifths of the world’s EV battery market – and has…

Vladimir Putin has been “re-elected” president of Russia. In truth, Russian voters had no genuine choice last weekend, since Putin has killed his most formidable opponent, Alexei Navalny, and ordered the disqualification of any other candidate who presented even a small chance of genuine competition. This plebiscitary legitimating procedure – familiar from the history of other dictatorships – was also implemented in some parts of eastern Ukraine, which Russian official sources describe as the New Territories. Large percentages for turnout were no more accurate than Putin’s historical essays on Russo-Ukrainian relations. Encouraged by signs of western weakness such as the refusal of the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, to send Taurus missiles to Ukraine and Pope Francis’s recommendation for Ukraine to hoist the white flag, Russia’s brutal dictator will continue to…

As you can’t have failed to notice, it was reported this month that Taylor Swift and Emily Dickinson are sixth cousins three times removed. Ancestry.com shared the news – in no way, I am certain, prompted by team Swift as promo for her forthcoming album, The Tortured Poets Department. Call it the Tortured Promo Department – fans who crunched the numbers worked out that Swift probably has 3.3 million sixth cousins thrice removed. She is just as likely to be related to Ayn Rand, enslavers or any number of unsavoury people but there’s no Today Show exclusive on those links. “How’s this for a coincidence?” the broadcaster asked. Telling, and not in the way the Swift operation would doubtless like you to think: less indicative of a lineage of literary…

It is hard to describe the cumulative effect this devastating chronicle has over 280 pages. It describes a mounting toll of death and destruction, with each day bringing more heartrending news of homes demolished and relatives and colleagues killed. Gradually, it makes it clear that there is no safe place in the Gaza Strip. Danger is everywhere, like the low hum of a mosquito. Atef Abu Saif is an acclaimed Palestinian author and journalist as well as being minister for culture in the Palestinian Authority. On 7 October he found himself in Gaza purely by chance. He was due to speak at a cultural event in Khan Younis to celebrate Palestinian Heritage Day, but found himself instead at the centre of a war. Abu Saif lives with his family in…

In the districts surrounding Lake Kariba in Zimbabwe, most people have little idea their villages were at the centre of a multimillion-dollar carbon boom. Punctuated by straw-thatched mud houses, the woodlands on the edge of the enormous artificial lake are mostly home to smallholder farmers. The gravel roads are full of potholes; cars are infrequent, as are medical facilities and internet connections. Data on the region is patchy, but Hurungwe district, which covers a number of the villages has an average poverty rate of 88%. These communities fall within the vast, lucrative Kariba conservation project, encompassing an area almost the size of Puerto Rico. It is among the largest in a portfolio of forest offsetting schemes approved by Verra, the world’s largest certifier. Since 2011, this project alone has generated…

In their last stronghold, these endangered birds are under threat from logging, hunting and militant armed groups Christian Daug whistles with all the spirit he can muster. “The male and female were perched there yesterday,” he says, pointing to a dead tree amid the sea of flora that smothers the tallest mountain on the Philippine archipelago. He whistles again as we look out over the jungle from a wooden observation post. This area is one of the last remaining strongholds of Pithecophaga jefferyi: one of the world’s largest and rarest eagles. Measuring about a metre in height when perched, with a wingspan that can reach more than 2 metres, it is known locally as the “monkey-eating eagle”. The enormous raptors prey primarily on macaques, but also feed on pythons, chickens,…

Armed only with vacuum cleaners, scientists hope that a hunt for extraterrestrial particles will help suck up clues about the universe On the roof of Canterbury Cathedral, in the south-east of England, two planetary scientists are searching for cosmic dust. While the red brick parapet hides the streets far below, only wispy clouds block the deep blue sky that extends into outer space. The roaring of a vacuum cleaner breaks the silence and researcher Dr Penny Wozniakiewicz, dressed in hazmat suit with a bulky vacuum backpack, carefully traces a gutter with the tube of the suction machine. “We’re looking for tiny microscopic spheres,” explained her colleague, Dr Matthias van Ginneken from the University of Kent, also clad in protective gear. “Right now, we are collecting thousands and thousands of dust…

On Valentine’s Day this year, a lawsuit was brought by six people in the US against Match Group, the company behind dating apps such as Tinder, Hinge and Match. The suit blames dating apps for game-like tactics that, they say, contribute to addictive behaviour, making miserable swiping addicts of us all. Match Group denies this, calling the claims “ridiculous”. But anyone who, like me, has spent years on and off the apps knows that there are clear parallels between love algorithms and online gaming – only with dating apps, we are the commodities. Addiction may have been baked into these apps from creation. Tinder’s co-founder, Jonathan Badeen, confessed to being inspired by psychology experiments on pigeons. Experts have highlighted how the gamification of dating apps releases neurochemicals such as dopamine…

Things have come a long way since the 2004 Guardian article credited with coining the term “podcast”. That piece describes a new format that combines “the intimacy of voice, the interactivity of a weblog, and the convenience and portability of an MP3 download”, before speculating that “one might soon be able to make a living doing this”. Twenty years later, the hosts of the SmartLess podcast, actors Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett, just signed a $100m deal with American radio network Sirius XM to host the podcast on the network for three years. Joe Rogan has renewed a deal with Spotify for an estimated $250m to host his podcast on its platform. The world’s biggest tech companies are willing to stump up for anything that seems like a…

Have you ever seen the “green flash”? If not, don’t be discouraged. I’ve witnessed this rare meteorological phenomenon on only three occasions. As with so much evanescence in nature, attempt to hunt an experience down and you must be prepared for disappointment. I was reminded of my encounters with it, both here and on top of Mowing Word in Pembroke, through reading Kai Bird’s biography of Robert Oppenheimer. The author describes the atomic physicist inviting a companion one brilliant sunset to take a walk at Cruz Bay in the US Virgin Islands: “Sure enough, just as the sun sank below the horizon, [they] saw a flash of green light. Robert quietly explained the physics behind what [they’d] seen … layers in the Earth’s atmosphere functioned like a prism, creating just…

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In December 1914, the USS Machias dropped anchor in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Eight US marines disembarked, sauntered to the Banque National de la République d’Haïti (BNRH), removed $500,000 worth of gold belonging to the Haitian government – $15m in today’s money – packed it in wooden crates to carry back to the ship and thence to New York, where it was deposited in the vaults of the investment bank, Hallgarten & Co. The BNRH was Haiti’s central bank. It was also a foreign private corporation. Originally set up in 1880 through a concession granted to a French bank, pressure from America brought in US investors. By 1920, the BNRH was wholly owned by the American National City Bank. Haiti’s central bank it may have been but the Haitian government was charged…

In the wake of St Patrick’s Day, Ireland’s annual celebration of its diaspora, a new online archive has given voice to the human cost paid by generations of emigrants. More than 7,000 letters from emigrants to North America spanning four centuries have been collected and digitised, giving poignant insight into the homesickness, tribulations and occasional triumphs of those who crossed the Atlantic. They tell of Pennsylvania coalmines, Minnesota winters, Boston slums and the desperate struggle to adapt and survive – as well as the likelihood of never seeing home again. Kerby Miller, a US historian, amassed the trove over nearly 60 years by combing archives and private collections, and making appeals for letters, memoirs and other documents in trunks, drawers and attics, yielding more than 150,000 pages spanning the late…

The 12 ultramarathons that Deo Kato has completed in recent years look modest compared with his current challenge to run from Cape Town to London. The aim of his journey is equally ambitious: Kato wants to high-light the parallels between the millions of people forced to leave their homes today for a better life and the earliest movement of humans from Africa. “The Khoisan people in South Africa, for example, are moving based on climate. They migrate to find a better environment that they can live in. So we’re moving for the same reasons that [anthropologists believe early humans] used to move for back then,” said Kato. In highlighting the origins of migration, he also hopes to work towards ending racism. “I know that Africa is the origin of humanity,…

There is a growing rift in the long marriage between anti-abortion activists and Republican lawmakers. The problem came into view last month, after a bombshell decision from the Alabama supreme court temporarily halted in vitro fertilisation (IVF). The ruling, which described frozen embryos as “extrauterine children”, unravelled when the Republican-controlled legislature passed shortterm protections for IVF providers. Under a new law signed last week by Republican governor Kay Ivey, IVF providers are temporarily protected from civil litigation and criminal prosecution in the event of “damage or death of an embryo” during treatment. “In our state, we work to foster a culture of life,” the governor said. “This includes some couples hoping and praying to be parents who utilise IVF.” The new law does not refute the Alabama supreme court’s controversial…

ON A GLORIOUS SPRING DAY IN PHOENIX, in an atrium beneath the majestic cupola of the old state Capitol, secretary of state Adrian Fontes is celebrating Arizona’s 112th birthday. He solemnly recites President William Howard Taft’s proclamation welcoming Arizona as the 48th state of the union. Speeches fete the state’s landscapes, from the Grand Canyon to the deserts of Yuma and lush green forests of Coconino, then a cake iced with the state seal is cut into 112 pieces and devoured in the sun-dappled Rose Garden. There is only one discordant note on this otherwise joyous day. Who is that person standing silently and alert behind Fontes? Why is Arizona’s chief election administrator, responsible for the smooth operation of November’s presidential election, in need of a bodyguard? “It’s very sad,”…

‘The very serious function of racism is distraction,” Toni Morrison argued in a lecture in Portland, Oregon, in 1975. “It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and so you spend 20 years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is … Somebody says that you have no kingdoms, and so you dredge that up. None of that is necessary. There will always be one more thing.” So, in the furore over Frank Hester’s comments, let us not be distracted by the question of whether they were racist. Let us not demean ourselves by explaining why the statement “you…

In an industry known for its ruthless search for the next big thing, Adrianne Lenker is in it for the long haul. The 32-year-old American musician speaks as though she is in the early stages of a marathon: she is a “craftsperson”, who wrote her first song aged eight, and recorded her debut album at 13. “I still consider myself a beginner,” she says. “I have so many years left to work on writing songs.” But the pace she is going at is closer to a sprint. Lenker is the lead singer, primary songwriter and guitarist of acclaimed folk rock band Big Thief; their fifth album, Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You, was a sprawling 20-track release described by the Observer as “wonderful … their most varied and…

Chickpeas, beans and pulses don’t agree with me – what can I use instead? It really depends on the time of year and what you’re making, but as Itamar Srulovich, chef/co-owner of the Honey & Co group of restaurants, cafes and delis in London, sees it, we’re talking about “soupy, stewy situations, or a dippy situation”; perhaps salads, maybe falafel. The nice thing about soups and stews made with beans or chickpeas is their texture, so in this scenario Srulovich would turn to “lentils if you eat them, and otherwise something along the lines of maftoul or fregola”. Marie Mitchell, chef and author of Kin (published in June), is also in camp carb: “Orzo is always a good shout in soups, to get a bit more oomph, but if you’re…

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