Innehållsförteckning för 3 February 2023 från Guardian Weekly

The Guardian Weekly Founded in Manchester, England 4 July 1919 Vol208 | Issue№ 5 Guardian Weekly is an edited selection of some of the best journalism found in the Guardian and Observer newspapers in the UK and the Guardian’s digital editions in the UK, US and Australia. The weekly magazine has an international focus and three editions: global, Australia and North America. The Guardian was founded in 1821, and Guardian Weekly in 1919. We exist to hold power to account in the name of the public interest, to uphold liberal and progressive values, to fight for the common good, and to build hope. Our values, as laid out by editor CP Scott in 1921, are honesty, integrity, courage, fairness, and a sense of duty to the reader and the community. The Guardian…

Jan-Philipp Hein Germany’s reluctant U-turn Page 14 → In the clear sky over the winter-yellowed marsh on the outskirts of the town of Huliaipole, the bang and crump of artillery picked up pace like the thunderclaps of a distant but approaching storm. The Russian armed forces declared on 22 January that they had launched a new offensive in Zaporizhzhia region, but the Ukrainian soldiers seemed unperturbed. The frontline here has not moved for 10 months, and the Russians are hunkered in their trenches, which run across the rolling black-soil farmland. They were not going anywhere soon, the soldiers said. “There is more activity in these past couple of weeks with shelling from artillery and even from tanks, but they don’t send infantry over the line because they’re scared,” said Vitaly,…

Legal experts and civil rights advocates have said harrowing video footage showing a group of Memphis police officers delivering blow after blow to Tyre Nichols underscores the need for broad reforms of policing in the US. Experts said body-worn and surveillance footage was integral in revealing what unfolded – but are not a panacea. “At the end of the day, that final video shows someone being beaten and abused like he’s in a pinball game. It’s like the ball is just being knocked from one end to the other,” said Randolph McLaughlin, professor at the Elisabeth Haub School of Law and co-chair of the Newman Ferrara civil rights practice. “What’s most shocking about it all is the brutality and then at the end, the complete dehumanisation of this man,” McLaughlin…

Net gains Aryna Sabalenka falls to the ground after triumphing over Elena Rybakina of Kazakhstan in the Australian Open women’s singles final in Melbourne. Sabalenka, from Belarus, became the first neutral athlete to win a singles grand slam tournament since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Asked if not having the flag associated with her name took away from her victory, Sabalenka shrugged: “I think everyone still knows that I’m a Belarusian player. That’s it.” With her first major title, the fifth seed returns to No 2 in the world rankings, equalling her career-high placing. She is unbeaten in 2023, winning her first 11 matches of the season with two titles to her name. Last year, Sabalenka arrived in Australia in one of the most difficult periods of her career. Her serve…

Fumio Kishida is not a politician given to dramatic pronouncements. But last week he issued a stark warning to the Japanese people: have more children, or risk dragging the country into deep dysfunction. His shift from bland career politician to doomsayer in chief is a reflection of the demographic crisis facing Japan, one of the fastestageing countries on earth. As he pointed out in a speech to parliament last Monday, the number of births in Japan is estimated to have sunk below 800,000 last year. “Japan is on the verge of whether we can continue to function as a society,” he said, adding that addressing the low birthrate “cannot wait and cannot be postponed”. Overcoming Japan’s demographic crisis has proved insurmountable for occupants of the Kantei – the prime minister’s…

The leader of Zimbabwe’s main opposition party has warned of violence and repression by the ruling Zanu-PF party to ensure victory in elections scheduled for later this year. Nelson Chamisa, president of the Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC), called on the international community to have “eyes on” the struggling southern African country despite other crises around the world and to “offer solidarity” to those fighting for change there. “Here too, people are being killed for their opinions. Zimbabweans want to see change and want to see a transformation,” Chamisa said. The elections, set to be held in July or August, will be the second after the military takeover that ended the rule of veteran leader Robert Mugabe in 2017 and brought Emmerson Mnangagwa, one of the former dictator’s chief lieutenants,…

‘Combustion is the problem – when you’re continuing to burn something, that’s not solving the problem,” according to Prof Mark Jacobson. The Stanford University academic has a compelling pitch: the world can rapidly get all its energy from renewable sources with, as the title of his new book says, “no miracles needed”. Wind, water and solar can provide plentiful and cheap power, he argues, ending the carbon emissions driving the climate crisis, slashing deadly air pollution and ensuring energy security. Carbon capture and storage, biofuels and other technologies are expensive wastes of time, he argues. “Bill Gates said we have to put a lot of money into miracle technologies,” Jacobson said. “But we don’t – we have the technologies that we need. We have wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, electric cars.…

AT THE HEIGHT OF RUSSIA’S FIRST, COVERT INVASION OF EASTERN UKRAINE, in summer 2014, a group of senior Russian officials gathered at the defence ministry’s headquarters, an imposing Stalin-era building on the banks of the Moskva River. They were there to meet Yevgeny Prigozhin, a middle-aged man with a shaven head and a coarse tone whom many in the room knew only as the person responsible for army catering contracts. Prigozhin came with a different kind of demand. He wanted land from the defence ministry that he could use for the training of “volunteers” who would have no official links to the Russian army but could still be used to fight Russia’s wars. Many in the ministry did not like Prigozhin’s manner, but he made it clear that this was…

For a film that has, if you want to be blunt about it, tanked at the box office, Tár has provoked a disproportionate amount of conversation. It’s possible that the discourse around the film – about a powerful, highly successful and extremely problematic conductor called Lydia Tár, played by Cate Blanchett – is as interesting as the film itself. I’ve heard multiple, conflicting interpretations of Tár: that it’s a disgraceful misrepresentation of the field of classical music; that it’s all too real; that it’s all too surreal; that it carries an intellectual heft that is rare at the movies; that it’s not half as clever as it thinks it is; that it’s not about conducting, it’s about power; that it’s not about power, it’s about narcissism; that it’s a fascinating,…

Modern New Zealand is widely hailed as home to a progressive government, a hi-tech film and TV industry and formidable wineries, alongside much else. It’s a far cry from the 1960s when a conservative government ruled, entertainment was imported and popular musicians tended to replicate stars of the British charts. But towards the end of that decade a homegrown counterculture sprang up thanks to the government’s support for the US war in Vietnam. Rock music developed into a vehicle for dissent. For a nation attuned to re-evaluating its postcolonial history, there has been little attention paid to this period when youthful energy disrupted society via protest, humour, poetry and music. A new book, Jumping Sundays: The Rise and Fall of the Counterculture in Aotearoa New Zealand, documents the first stirrings…

Aleksandar Hemon’s new novel is immense. Not because it is inordinately long – it isn’t – but because it contains almost as much as its title promises: journeys that take years, and lives that span continents; falling empires and storied cities; so many wars they blur and merge in the characters’ memories; indelible loves, unbearable losses; dreams and songs and megalomaniac delusions; witty allusions, rude jokes. By turns lyrical and sardonic, it is as emotionally compelling as it is clever. I’ll be surprised if I enjoy a novel more this year. It begins in Sarajevo. Hemon, a Bosnian now living in the US, has written in several genres about the 1990s siege of that city. This book, though, takes us back to 1914, when it was the setting for the…

3 February 2023 War nears new phase, Sunak under pressure and a divisive drug In the trenches of eastern Ukraine, much of the conflict with Russia has been frozen for several months now. But, as the northern winter moves on, that could be about to change. Military activity is increasing steadily and it is assumed that, sooner or later, one side will try to break the deadlock. The question, as Julian Borger writes for this week’s big story, is who will strike first and where? Germany’s decision to send its Leopard tanks to Ukraine last week may prove decisive in the battle to push Russian forces back, but as German journalist Jan-Philipp Hein points out, Berlin’s military support for Kyiv remains far from wholehearted. The big story Page 10 → In the UK, the…

If the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, chose to upgrade Germany’s military assistance to Ukraine last week, it was only as a result of the extreme pressure that had been building up. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has thrust upon Germany the necessity of some serious selfanalysis. It has shattered many certainties, including even that most iron-clad tenet of postwar German history, which maintained that no conflict could ever be resolved militarily. Germany’s creed “Wandel durch Handel”, change through trade, was directly derived from this thinking that had permeated virtually every part of its society. Keep this in mind when remembering that Germany maintained its lonely support for the highly controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline project until days before Russia’s invasion began, casting aside repeated criticisms from other countries even as…

Spotlight Europe Nadhim Zahawi’s sacking as Conservative party chairman last Sunday caps an extraordinary downfall for a man who less than a year ago ran to be Conservative party leader and, with it, prime minister of the UK. Zahawi is, by some measures, one of the most remarkable politicians of his generation. Born in Iraqi Kurdistan, he came to England in 1978 when his family fled Saddam Hussein’s regime. The “boy from Baghdad”, as Zahawi calls himself, initially struggled to settle in and his parents were warned he may suffer from learning difficulties due to his initial inability to speak English. He overcame those setbacks and entered politics, serving for 12 years as a borough councillor in Wandsworth, south-west London. In 2000, Zahawi co-founded the polling company YouGov with fellow Conservative…

Sifting through construction debris on the traffic intersection in occupied East Jerusalem where seven Israelis were killed by a Palestinian gunman last Friday night, three emergency response volunteers wearing plastic gloves and hi-vis vests scraped up handfuls of blood-stained earth, placing it in a bag. After sunset last Saturday, the end of Shabbat, they arrived equipped with torches, trowels and putty knives. Their task was to ensure every drop of spilled blood was collected for proper Jewish burial. Members of the local ultra-Orthodox community looked on as the men worked beneath the red flash of police and ambulance lights. Some people sang, prayed and chanted “death to terrorists”. A group of children lit memorial candles. Last Friday evening, a Palestinian identified as 21-year-old Alqam Khayri drove to Neve Yaakov, a…

‘We need to stop the lying,” Prof Marcia Langton, a Yiman and Bidjara woman, said last Thursday, as tens of thousands of people attended protest rallies in cities across the country, amid a rising political and social reckoning with the country’s colonial history. “The biggest lie, of course, is Australia Day.” The day – 26 January – commemorates the landing of the first British fleet of convicts at Sydney Cove in 1788, the beginning of the settlement that entrenched European colonisation of the Australian continent. But Langton argues that Australia’s national day should not be one that commemorates colonisation: “I think we can find an inclusive date and I think we can start to tell the truth about Australia’s history and show some respect for all the survivors of the…

Bolivia’s salt flats have long been a tourist draw. But in recent years visitors may have glimpsed excavators on the horizon – a hint of the industrial future that awaits. The brine beneath the salt flats contains lithium, essential for electric batteries. Last month, Bolivia announced it would partner with a Chinese consortium to extract it, reviving dreams of a lithium-powered economy. Surging demand for lithium has caused prices to increase more than 10-fold since 2020, to record highs of almost $85,000 per tonne. And according to the United States Geological Survey, Bolivia has 21m tonnes of the metal, more than any other country in the world. It is yet to extract a significant quantity, but the country may yet have time to join the market while high prices last.…

Donald Trump, the former US president, tried to get his spluttering White House bid off the launchpad last Saturday, declaring himself “more angry” than ever as he became the first candidate to hit the 2024 election campaign trail. Trump swung through New Hampshire and South Carolina, looking to shake off concerns about a lacklustre campaign and “ Trump fatigue” among voters. “We need a president who’s ready to hit the ground running on day one and boy, am I hitting the ground,” he told the New Hampshire state Republican party’s annual meeting. “They [the media] said, ‘He’s not doing rallies! He’s not campaigning! Maybe he’s lost that step.’ I’m more angry now and I’m more committed now than I ever was.” Trump, now 76, entered the New Hampshire event to…

You could see Covid-19 as an empathy test. Who was prepared to suffer disruption and inconvenience for the sake of others, and who was not? The answer was often surprising. I can think, for instance, of five prominent environmentalists who denounced lockdowns, vaccines and even masks as intolerable intrusions on our liberties, while proposing no meaningful measures to prevent transmission of the virus. Four of them became active spreaders of disinformation. If environmentalism means anything, it’s that our damaging gratifications should take second place to the interests of others. Yet these people placed their own convenience above the health and lives of others. Now there are even fewer excuses, as we are more aware of the costs of inaction. One of the justifications for selfishness was that liberating the virus…

How to get the tang of citrus in your cooking without taking the pith I have a citrus intolerance, so an awful lot of recipes are off limits. What can I substitute for it? Jane, Chester, England, UK Citrus brings welcome sharpness, sweetness and freshness to food, cutting through the rich, buttery dishes that winter so often calls for. But when life doesn’t give you lemons (or limes, oranges and grapefruit), Ravinder Bhogal looks to the Middle Eastern spice sumac (above). “It’s sharp and sherbetty,” says the chef-patron of Jikoni in London. “If you were making a dip, for example, and couldn’t use lemon, finish it with sumac and you’ll get the same level of acidity.” Peter Sanchez-Iglesias, the chef-founder of Casa and Paco Tapas in Bristol, and executive chef at…

What was that? A tiny flash of russet, nearly under my feet, just vanished into the long grass. Far too small for a stoat or weasel. Surely too auburn for a mouse. What then? “A harvest mouse,” Dad confidently tells me when I phone. “Have a look in the undergrowth for nests.” Once home, I find out it’s the ideal time of year to survey harvest mice. Micromys minutus is on the red list for Britain’s mammals, and the last widespread study was in 2013-14, so the Mammal Society has launched a new national survey. It’s the UK’s smallest mouse, measuring 5-8cm from nose to tail base. Surveying doesn’t require finding these micro mice – I was lucky to glimpse one – but rather recording their nests. Over winter, the…

1 UNITED STATES End to Trump’s Facebook ban attracts criticism Politicians and civil rights advocates have weighed in on Meta’s decision to allow the former president Donald Trump to return to Facebook and Instagram, stating that his presence on the platforms will “fan the flames of hatred and division”. The social media company has lifted a ban imposed on Trump after the January 6 Capitol attack. Experts in online hate speech say there is no reason to believe Trump will not resume using his social media accounts to post divisive material. “Giving Donald Trump access to his Facebook account allows him to once again use his platform as a megaphone to spread misinformation about the integrity of our elections, incite violence and stoke the flames of white supremacy,” said Mariana Ruiz…

POLITICS PM ‘will restore integrity’ after sacking Zahawi Rishi Sunak insisted he could “restore the integrity back into politics” as he began a fightback against the political damage from sacking Nadhim Zahawi as Conservative party chair for breaches of the ministerial code over his tax affairs. The prime minister, answering questions at Teesside University in Darlington, said he had acted “decisively” to dismiss Zahawi last Sunday after receiving the findings of an investigation by his ethics adviser, Laurie Magnus. Magnus’s conclusions meant he was “able to make a very quick decision that it was no longer appropriate for Nadhim Zahawi to continue in government”, Sunak said. “It relates to things that happened well before I was prime minister, so unfortunately I can’t change what happened in the past. What you…

ISRAEL Anger after synagogue attack Page 22 → As Nyliayh Stewart marched along Interstate 55 alongside protesters last Friday night, the moment of sorrow and anger felt familiar. Nearly a decade ago, in 2015, Stewart had been a teenager in Mississippi when she received word in the middle of the night that her cousin Darrius had been killed by a white Memphis police officer during a traffic stop while he was running away, according to witnesses at the time. They had grown up like siblings. Stewart, now 24, heard the chants calling for justice for Tyre Nichols, the latest Black man killed by police in America, and felt the anger and anguish for his family. Unlike the five Black Memphis officers charged with Nichols’s killing, the cop who shot and…

Rishi Sunak was in his sprawling constituency home in North Yorkshire when just after 7am on Sunday he received the report by Sir Laurie Magnus, his new ethics adviser, on whether Nadhim Zahawi had broken the ministerial code over his tax affairs. The four-page document was damning, finding that the Tory party chair had breached the code on seven occasions, including by failing to declare the HMRC investigation into his finances and subsequent £5m ($6.2m) settlement including a penalty, even though they could have given rise to conflicts of interests. Magnus’s inquiry, which took six days to complete, also found that Zahawi had failed to be “as open as possible with parliament and the public” when he dismissed media reports last July about the HMRC investigation as “inaccurate”, “unfair” and…

At a recent campaign stop, Peter Obi responded to a regular criticism. Bola Tinubu, a rival candidate in next month’s presidential elections in Nigeria, had called him stingy. Obi told a crowd of supporters that yes, he has been stingy with public funds, and that made him a better fit for the country’s top job. Nigerians go to the polls on 25 February to choose a replacement for Muhammadu Buhari, whose eightyear rule has been sharply criticised for failing to get to grips with rampant insecurity and a cost of living crisis. A former state governor running for the Labour party, Obi is the first third-party candidate to present a real challenge to the dominance of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and its main opposition, the People’s Democratic Party…

In the Colón Free Trade Zone, near the Caribbean entrance to the Panama Canal, the dated Perspex and glass buildings are emblazoned with brand names for electronics, perfumes and textiles. Behind loom vast warehouses and dozens of port cranes, while on the street, shop owners unload merchandise from shipping containers. Established in 1948, the world’s second largest free-trade zone was envisioned as a wholesale redistribution centre for Latin America and the Caribbean, but it has become a global hub of counterfeiting, contraband and cocaine. In November, Europol arrested 49 members of a super-cartel centred on Dubai and accounting for a third of Europe’s cocaine supply. One of those arrested was Anthony Martínez Meza, son of a director of the Colón Free Trade Zone, and suspected of organising shipments from Colón.…

GEORGE MONBIOT Why we are all playing Covid roulette Page 48 → The old boys’ club. We don’t hear about it as much as we used to, do we? The phrase seems a little dusty, a bit of a throwback. Harrovians, Etonians, Wykehamists and other privately educated politicians may constitute 80% of Britain’s prime ministers so far; but they increasingly sit cheek by jowl in parliament with others who did not go to fee-paying schools, are not male, not white – and not only did not go to Oxbridge, but are not university educated at all. And yet here we are, riffling through the seedy dealings of a small connected group of people at the top. The past few weeks of Conservative scandals are proof that this network is still…

Whatever else he leaves behind, Sam Bankman-Fried, the crypto-whiz charged with multiple counts of fraud, has bequeathed a lasting gift to the publishing business. “I don’t want to say no book is ever worth reading, but I actually do believe something pretty close to that,” mused SBF to an interviewer. “If you wrote a book, you fucked up and it should have been a six-paragraph blog post.” Of course, most literary types would dismiss those as the words of a barbarian. But they could serve as an initial hurdle any would-be author must clear, if only with their own conscience: does this warrant a book – or could you boil it down to six paragraphs in a blog? That’s especially applicable to a nonfiction work of argument such as the…

There’s Nothing Faster Than a Cheetah By Tom Nicoll, illustrated by Ross Collins Cocky Cheetah is confident she can’t be caught by rhinos on roller skates or a rocket-powered rabbit. But will the snails surprise her? This Wacky Races-style riot of a picture book features the deliciously unexpected. Blue By Sarah Christou Sweet and welcomingly simple, this picture book emphasises the healing power of shared words. Protecting the Planet: Emperor of the Ice By Nicola Davies, illustrated by Catherine Rayner For 5+ readers, breathtaking images and powerful words tell the story of the emperor penguin’s struggle to adapt to the changing climate. Arthur Who Wrote Sherlock By Linda Bailey, illustrated by Isabelle Follath The true story of the man and the imagination behind the world’s most famous detective, superbly told…

Across 1 Share (10) 7 Moment in time (7) 8 Hopping mad (5) 10 X or Y (anag) (4) 11 To Attlee (anag) (8) 13 Barefoot? (6) 15 Strangers (from outer space?) (6) 17 Alpha to omega? (8) 18 Hairy creature said to live in the Himalayas (4) 21 Devour — mock (5) 22 Sunshade (7) 23 One of the many things the Walrus wanted to talk about with the Oysters (7,3) Down 1 Annoying (5) 2 Bellow (4) 3 Dish served before the main course (6) 4 Grass (8) 5 French 18th-century dance (7) 6 Field glasses (10) 9 Boring town? (10) 12 Extremely unpleasant (informal) (3-5) 14 Imagine (7) 16 Skittle (6) 19 Chelmsford is its county town (5) 20 Black bird (4)…