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2019年12月20日

Johnson, Clinton … Trump? A short history of impeachment

Trump is on the precipice of becoming the third president in US history to be impeached – with one near-miss

Tom McCarthyWed 18 Dec 2019 08.30 GMT

Left to right, former US presidents Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton. Photograph: Paul J Richards/AFP/Getty Images

Donald Trump is on the precipice of becoming the third president in US history to be impeached. It’s an exclusive club that no one wants to join – but who else is in it, and why?

Here’s a look back at the two prior impeachments and a third near-miss case.

Impeachment #1: Andrew Johnson (1868)

The assassination of Abraham Lincoln in April 1865 unexpectedly elevated his vice-president, Johnson, an outspoken white supremacist but strong anti-secessionist, to the White House. With the aftershocks of the civil war manifesting in bloody voter suppression and racially motivated terrorism across the South, Johnson’s presidency was immediately thrown into tumult by demands that the new president take steps to cement the war’s promise of racial equality. But Johnson vetoed civil rights legislation, unilaterally pardoned hundreds of former Confederate leaders and called for the murder of his political enemies.

Johnson was in essence impeached for undermining the cause of racial equality, the historian Brenda Wineapple wrote in her book The Impeachers.

But the bulk of the impeachment clauses against him were predicated on a relatively narrow charge of violating a contemporary “tenure of office” law (repealed soon thereafter) by removing his secretary of war, Edwin Stanton, who was instrumental in opposing racist attacks on suffrage for former slaves.

Trump: I take zero responsibility for impeachment – video

Johnson remained in office after being acquitted in the Senate by one vote – a bribed victory, historians have speculated.

Impeachment #2: Bill Clinton (1998)

While the Clinton impeachment is linked in popular memory to his relationship with the White House intern Monica Lewinsky, he was impeached for lying to a grand jury in a separate case, brought by a former Arkansas state employee, Paula Jones.

In response to a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by Jones, Clinton denied in a sworn deposition and a later video interview that he had a sexual relationship with Lewinsky. That assertion was contradicted by a report submitted to Congress by independent counsel Kenneth Starr, who documented Clinton’s relationship with Lewinsky in lurid detail.

Impeachment proceedings against Clinton were opened in October 1998, and the House of Representatives approved two articles of impeachment against him, for perjury and obstruction of justice, in December. Two other proposed articles – for abuse of power and perjury a second time – were voted down.

The Republican-led Senate – stronger than today’s, with a 55-seat majority at the time – acquitted Clinton easily on both counts, with the closer case drawing only 50 votes out of 67 needed.

Near-miss: Richard Nixon (1974)

In November 1972, Nixon won re-election by what was then the largest margin of victory in the history of US presidential elections. But five months earlier, a burglary at Democratic offices in the Watergate hotel complex had set in motion a chain of events that would end his presidency.

In his investigation of the burglaries, special prosecutor Archibald Cox uncovered a dirty campaign to attack Nixon’s political opponents, financed by a secret slush fund and directed by Nixon himself. For months, Nixon publicly denied all involvement.

But an impeachment inquiry was opened in October 1973, after Nixon fired the top two officials in the justice department for their refusal to fire Cox. A fight over evidence ensued, including tapes of Nixon’s Oval Office conversations.

In late July 1974, a third of elected Republicans on the House judiciary committee joined Democrats to approve three articles of impeachment, for obstruction of justice, abuse of power and contempt of Congress. The release of a “smoking gun” tape a week later, fixing Nixon at the center of the conspiracy, sealed the president’s fate.

Under pressure from fellow Republicans, Nixon resigned on 9 August 1974, before the full House could vote on impeachment.

Source Link: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/18/trump-impeachment-history-andrew-johnson-bill-clinton-richard-nixon

2019年12月17日

What’s Lost When a Language Disappears

A third of the Indigenous languages used in America two decades ago have gone extinct, and Congress isn’t doing enough to preserve what remains.

Nick MartinDecember 12, 2019

The cultural practices and locales that define the hundreds of Native communities dotting the North American landscape are grounded in languages. Each is unique, with distinct dialects, accents, and slang. There are words, phrases, and concepts that do not exist in the American English lexicon, that confounding colonizer speech that Native Americans were forced to adopt and master. And nearly all of them are in danger of going extinct. In 1998, there were 175 Indigenous languages still in use within the United States. Today, there are 115. With each passing year, as elders are laid to rest and new babies are born, Native people lose their tongue.

Even though the English language was violently imposed, Native people have used it as a tool of struggle and beauty—as poet Tommy Pico said at a speaking engagement last month: “We didn’t ask for English, but it’s ours now, and look what we’re doing with it. You’re welcome.” While true, it still does not replace what is swiftly evaporating. As a Native person whose language was decimated and is only recently beginning to be stitched back together, I know the intangible feeling of hearing my own language through an elder’s voice on the phone or a cousin’s patient assistance in navigating a difficult pronunciation. It’s an experience of kinship that cannot fully be replicated in this second tongue. Learning a Native language is not only about knowledge or authenticity; it extends a symbol of a thriving and unique culture to the rising generation. It’s the cadence of survival. And if it goes silent, a great tradition is broken.

On Monday, in a small step to preserve this tradition, the House passed the Esther Martinez Native American Languages Programs Reauthorization Act, named after the legendary Tewa linguist. With the Senate vote already in the bank, the measure is headed to President Trump’s desk. Like a variety of other set-term appropriation bills, the legislation, which was first passed under George W. Bush in 2006, has to be renewed by Congress every five years to maintain the funding. And like so many other necessary pieces of legislation, it is still deficient.

The latest version of the bill, coming at the tail end of what the United Nations has dubbed the Year of Indigenous Language, will seek to lower the bill’s previous class-size restrictions, which were preventing tribes from obtaining federal grants to establish their own language programs because many smaller tribes had lower enrollment numbers than what the grant applications required. The need to lower that threshold speaks to the dire state of Indigenous languages in America.

The Department of the Interior approves applications for federal recognition based in part on whether a tribe has a distinct political system, land claim, and shared set of cultural practices, among other signifiers. That is to say, the federal government—the same body that sought to raze our speech, snuff out our religions, steal our land, and effectively end our various ways of life—is now in charge of determining who is Native enough to be considered a sovereign nation.

Writing for High Country News in November, Cherokee Nation podcast host and writer Rebecca Nagle, who also works as an apprentice in the Nation’s Cherokee Language Master Apprentice Program, laid bare the historical roots and modern reality of endangered Native languages. The American government, for part of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, attempted to eliminate any and all Native languages through federally funded boarding schools, where Native children were compelled to act as American citizens and nothing else. This included punishing students who dared speak their Native language, with some reports detailing kids having their mouths washed out with soap any time they uttered a word in the language they grew up hearing in their home.

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The boarding school era and its erasure of language is a blot on the nation’s record, and one that too few non-Natives have been forced to reckon with. But this cultural genocide did not begin with the Carlisle Indian School in 1879: Carlisle and the copycats it spawned were just the mass institutionalization of a practice that had been underway for centuries.

As the colonizers first washed over the continent and its people, the various European governments and the churches they brought with them understood what Captain Richard Pratt, the U.S. military leader and Carlisle founder, meant when he said that he sought to “kill the Indian … and save the man.” As long as Natives could communicate in a tongue that colonizers could not penetrate, their cultural and spiritual practices would continue, and as a result, so too would their claim to independent nationhood and the land they’d stewarded for centuries. So, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the early peddlersof organized religion, most of them Christian, set up shop on Native land along the East Coast and worked their way west.

From the early forts to Carlisle to the Termination Era, assimilation was all a means to an end—namely land and capital—and language was always among the first things the colonizer sought to rip out. It stood as the most important barrier between the Indigenous nations and the Europeans (and eventually the Americans), so they were determined to demolish it.

The general experience of losing one’s language to American preference is not unique to being Indigenous. It’s an American philosophy, one that is echoed in the experience of the children of immigrants whose parents do not teach them their language, in an attempt to shield them from racism. The president enforces a regime of assimilation when he declares, “This is a country where we speak English. It’s English. You have to speak English!” Racist law enforcementdoes the same when officers treat the sound of another language as pretext for a stop or search. It is present in mundane interactions in which one’s own language is treated by others as a signal of danger.

Against this climate of hostility, learning one’s Indigenous language serves a purpose that is bigger than what is transactional or academic. While it is dangerous to ascribe broadly painted features to the hundreds of tribes in America, reciprocity constitutes a great deal of the Native experience from nation to nation, and this extends to language. It is gifted to us with the hope and expectation that it will be passed down to the next generation, so that they too may withstand the tricks and brute force of colonization. The work that the Esther Martinez Act will accomplish is obviously crucial, but it is difficult to look beyond the transactional nature of the bill and the programs that it establishes.

The rescue of Indigenous language by way of the federal government may be too little, too late. I’m saying this not out of defeatism, but because it will in all likelihood be the efforts of tribal nations, and not the U.S., that saves Native languages. As Nagle pointed out, the Department of Health and Human Services, in addition to a handful of other federal agencies, approved just 29 percent of tribal applications in 2018, and its funding is minuscule in comparison to the nation’s previous erasure campaign. “For every dollar the U.S. government spent on eradicating Native languages in previous centuries, it spent less than 7 cents on revitalizing them in this one,” Nagle wrote.

Many of these languages are not even a full lifetime away from disappearing. They exist for as long as the heart of the elder who carries the words continues to beat. One day, that heart will stop, and so too will the language. Without the immediate funding of these programs, the expedient approval by Trump and then by HHS and other agencies, and the active increase in participation by Native youth, it stands to reason that the number of surviving languages will drop further by 2050. Seminole Nation citizen and Creek language teacher Jade Osceola best articulated the stakes when speaking about the eighth-grade language program she’s helped keep alive:

Language is what makes you different from all other Native Americans across the country. It’s not your food. It’s not your clothing. It’s not any of that, and you can’t do your ceremonies without language. That’s what makes us different. That’s what puts us on the map.

There is a narrow timeline to correct course, which tracks similarly existential struggles playing out in parallel. In order to prevent the worst possible outcome—the extinction of Native languages—the state’s response, to merely acknowledge its role in causing the problem and make funds more easily available, is a useful but inadequate solution on its own. That’s why it’s important to remember that the push to rescue these languages did not come solely from the American government; it is happening because nations and elders and youth are rising up and resisting the slow but steady turn toward assimilation. The process of learning a language can be arduous, but in crafting a way forward, Native people have always managed to make the process more often joyful and engaging—such as the efforts of Constance Owl, an Eastern Band of Cherokee Nation citizen, to translate the Cherokee Phoenix archives, or the Navajo Nation’s recent youth-aimed recording of “Baby Shark” in Diné.

Even on the best of days, fostering these Native languages will still be costly and require persistence. But it’s worth it, to reclaim and pass down one’s Native language. When your time comes, what will be the last words you utter? More to the point, how will you say them?

Source Link: https://newrepublic.com/article/155913/native-american-languages-disappearing-reauthorization-act-congress

2019年12月17日2019年12月17日

Will AI Take Your Job—or Make It Better?

Governments need to plan now for the day automation makes many workplace skills obsolete.

Tom Simonite

12.16.2019 08:00 AM

Wally Kankowski owns a pool repair business in Florida and likes 12 creams in his McDonald’s coffee each morning. What he doesn’t like is the way the company is pushing him to place his order via a touchscreen kiosk instead of talking with counter staff, some of whom he has known for years. “The thing is knocking someone out of a job,” he says.

Wally is one of several humans who discuss the present and future of workplace automation in the seventh installment of the Sleepwalkers podcast, which offers an atlas of the artificial intelligence revolution. The episode explores how work and society will change as AI begins to take over more tasks that people currently do, whether in apple orchards or psychiatry offices.

Some of the portents are scary. Kai-Fu Lee, an AI investor and formerly Google’s top executive in China, warns that AI advances will be much more disruptive to workers than other recent technologies. He predicts that 40 percent of the world’s jobs will be lost to automation in the next 15 years.

The latest on artificial intelligence, from machine learning to computer vision and more

“AI will make phenomenal companies and tycoons faster, and it will also displace jobs faster, than computers and the internet,” Lee says. He advises governments to start thinking now about how to support the large numbers of people who will be unable to work because automation has made their skills obsolete. “It’s going to be a serious matter for social stability,” he adds.

The episode also looks at how automation could be designed to assist humans, not replace them—and to narrow divisions in society, not widen them.

Toyota is working on autonomous driving technology designed to make driving safer and more fun, not replace the need for a driver altogether.

George Kantor from Carnegie Mellon University describes his hope that plant-breeding robots will help develop better crop varieties, easing the impacts of climate change and heading off humanitarian crises. “Better seeds means better crops, and that could ultimately lead to a more well-nourished world,” he says.

Kantor and Lee both argue that thinking about the positive outcomes of automation is necessary to fending off the bad ones. “Whether we point at a future that is utopia or dystopia, if everybody believes in it, then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Lee says. “I’d like to be part of that force which points toward a utopian direction, even though I fully recognize the possibility and risks of the negative ending.”

A preview of the Beethoven 2020 anniversary events

Concerts, exhibitions, city tours and performances: For an entire year, Germany will celebrate one of its most famous citizens, Ludwig van Beethoven, on the 250th anniversary of his birth.

Around 1,000 concerts, opera performances, festivals and exhibitions are expected throughout Germany to underline the 250th anniversary of the birth of composer Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), arguably Germany’s most famous citizen, as said Commissioner for Culture and the Media Monika Grütters on Friday at a press presentation for the upcoming anniversary year, also known as BTHVN2020 .

The city of Bonn, where the composer was born and lived until he moved to Vienna at the age of 22, will play a central role in the anniversary year’s program, added North Rhine-Westphalia’s Minister President Armin Laschet.

Sir Simon Rattle will be among the conductors who will celebrate Beethoven’s big birthday year

Highlights include a concert by the London Symphony Orchestra with Simon Rattle and violinist Lisa Batiashvili as well as the premiere of the commissioned work “The Nine” by Chinese composer Tan Dun.

The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is planning a 24-hour Beethoven marathon on April 25.

The German-French cultural channel Arte will be broadcasting live the performance of all nine Beethoven symphonies from different cities.

Daniel Barenboim will be closing the event on December 17, 2020 with a performance of the Ninth Symphony with his West-Eastern Divan Orchestra in Bonn.

The German federal government is funding the anniversary to the tune of €27 million ($33 million), the City of Bonn is contributing €5 million and the Rhein-Sieg-Kreis rural district is adding another €1.5 million.

FROM REVOLUTIONARY TO POP IDOL

Charistimatic, but tempermental

A serious look, slightly grim face and a lion’s mane: images of Ludwig van Beethoven have imprinted themselves into the collective imagination arguably moreso than any other composer. Yet, it’s mainly the late portraits that have shaped today’s notions of the revolutionary, combative and difficult artist.FROM REVOLUTIONARY TO POP IDOL

A shooting star in Vienna

Forceful, yet with a hint of smile, a young Beethoven looks out at the viewer in this painting from 1803. By that time, he had already attracted some of the most influential music patrons of the Viennese aristocracy.FROM REVOLUTIONARY TO POP IDOL

Visiting the prince

Prince Carl von Lichnowsky was one of Beethoven’s first supporters, with whom he later had a falling-out. In this picture by Julius Schmid from 1900, “Beethoven plays at Lichnowsky,” the dispute between the prince and the composer seems to be already underway.

FROM REVOLUTIONARY TO POP IDOL

Proud and confident
Beethoven not only met Goethe in Teplitz, Bohemia, in 1812, but a legendary and scandalous snub also took place: While the poet bowed reverently before the prince, composer Beethoven walked right by him with his head held high. That, at least, is the way Carl Rohling imagined the revolutionary scene.FROM REVOLUTIONARY TO POP IDOL

Revolutionary composer

Beethoven was not only enthused by the ideas of the French Revolution, but also by new methods of composition. Here, in this image by Willibrord Joseph Mähler from 1804, he seems to be giving expression to them with a wide, sweeping gesture.FROM REVOLUTIONARY TO POP IDOL

The original

There’s no doubt that Beethoven was one of the most popular artists of his time – which the countless portraits of him demonstrate. One of the best known is this image created by Joseph Karl Stieler in 1820.FROM REVOLUTIONARY TO POP IDOL

Going pop

Compared to other artists, Stieler portrayed Beethoven less realistically, but instead, in a more idealized fashion. Later, the painting was used as a template for engravings in which the contours became even more pronounced. It is surely no coincidence that Andy Warhol chose this image for his own renditions.FROM REVOLUTIONARY TO POP IDOL

Sprayed on

Bonn – Beethoven’s birthplace – is also home to several variations of Stieler’s image: as a stone sculpture in front of the Beethoven Hall, sometimes – especially during the Beethovenfest in September – as a painting on the pavement, or as graffiti on a wall – such as here near the Beethoven House, where the composer was born.FROM REVOLUTIONARY TO POP IDOL

Wrestling with each note

The fact that Beethoven did not make it easy on himself while composing was something the music world learned only after his death in 1827. Descriptions by his contemporaries who saw him at work surely influenced the romantic image of the maestro, who worked relentlessly and uncompromisingly in search of musical perfection.FROM REVOLUTIONARY TO POP IDOL

Genius and mania

Contemporaries marveled at Beethoven’s works of genius. Subsequent generations of composers, however, were intimidated by them – and afraid they could not live up to Beethoven’s standard. This image by Hermann Torggler from 1902 shows the composer in almost demonic fashion – created based on the composer’s death mask.FROM REVOLUTIONARY TO POP IDOL

The pop idol

Hardly a composer today is as famous the world over as Ludwig van Beethoven – thanks in no small part to his piano piece “Für Elise.” His life has been rendered in film several times, and has even been turned into cartoons and comics.

Author: Klaus Gehrke / als

Five pillars

The letters in the anniversary year’s logo “BTHVN2020” stand for the German words for five key aspects, or “pillars,” of the composer’s character: Beethoven as a citizen, as a composer, a humanist, a visionary and a nature lover.

The planned events will correspond to these five pillars. Some examples:

“B” for Bürger (citizen): These events include the “Beethoven Bürgerfest” (people’s party), a Beethoven procession tracing his life in Bonn and the surrounding area, the illumination of the city in sound and light, as well as the new presentation and extension of Bonn’s Beethoven House — the house where the composer was born.

“T” for Tonkünstler (composer): during the anniversary year, the complete works of the extremely productive composer will be presented. The Beethovenfest, which normally takes place in September, will have an extra season early in the year. New music will be commissioned and jazz, rock, pop and club music will be given a Beethoven twist.

“H” for Humanist: A citizens’ initiative in the anniversary will seek to organize 2,500 concerts in private households throughout Germany. An exhibition on the subject of Music and Politics is planned, and the significance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in various cultures in the world will be illuminated. The art of dance is represented in “Beethoven MOVES,” a choreography project.

“V” for Visionary: In a project named FUTURA, a “concert barge” is to travel the waterways from Bonn to Vienna and perform experimental music. In the “New Music Base Camp,” young people will learn the basics of music composition. A festival with 21st century music as well as virtual sound environments and musical experiments in internal spaces are to round out the theme.

“N” for Nature: In the, Beethoven Pastoral Project, concerts and performances will take place in a world-spanning network on World Environment Day 2020. Excursions to the countryside and picnics are also planned.

Young Beethoven’s stomping grounds
Bonn around 1790
The city had a vibrant music life from the early 18th century onwards. Its court orchestra and chorus were the object of these words of praise by the music journalist Carl Ludwig Junker: “It’s rare to find a musical ensemble with such a harmonious confluence of sound. The tone quality in particular has a high degree of truth and perfection that one only very rarely encounters.”

Source Link: https://www.dw.com/en/a-preview-of-the-beethoven-2020-anniversary-events/a-51473663

2019年12月12日2019年12月16日

Greta Thunberg Is The ‘Time’ Person Of The Year For 2019

Greta Thunberg, the activist who has quickly become a leading voice on climate change, is Time’s Person of the Year for 2019. At 16, she is the youngest person to earn the title in the magazine’s 92-year history.

Thunberg burst onto the world stage in the past year, organizing school strikes and protest marches to call attention to a climate crisis that she says older generations are not taking seriously enough.

She has famously called out world leaders for debating scientific facts and failing to stop a global warming trend that will affect the world’s children more than it affects anyone who’s currently in power.

Reacting to the honor, Thunberg said she is “a bit surprised” to be chosen, according to The Associated Press, which adds that Thunberg dedicated her recognition to other young activists.

Thunberg is currently in Madrid, where she delivered a speech at a U.N. climate conference Wednesday morning.

“Well, I am telling you there is hope. I have seen it,” she told the audience. “But it does not come from the governments or corporations. It comes from the people.”

Source Link: https://www.npr.org/2019/12/11/787026271/greta-thunberg-is-time-magazine-s-person-of-the-year-for-2019

2019年12月10日

Lovers in Auschwitz, Reunited 72 Years Later. He Had One Question.

By Keren Blankfeld

Published Dec. 8, 2019

David Wisnia at his home in Pennsylvania.Danna Singer for The New York Times

The first time he spoke to her, in 1943, by the Auschwitz crematory, David Wisnia realized that Helen Spitzer was no regular inmate. Zippi, as she was known, was clean, always neat. She wore a jacket and smelled good. They were introduced by a fellow inmate, at her request.

Her presence was unusual in itself: a woman outside the women’s quarters, speaking with a male prisoner. Before Mr. Wisnia knew it, they were alone, all the prisoners around them gone. This wasn’t a coincidence, he later realized. They made a plan to meet again in a week.

On their set date, Mr. Wisnia went as planned to meet at the barracks between crematories 4 and 5. He climbed on top of a makeshift ladder made up of packages of prisoners’ clothing. Ms. Spitzer had arranged it, a space amid hundreds of piles, just large enough to fit the two of them. Mr. Wisnia was 17 years old; she was 25.

“I had no knowledge of what, when, where,” Mr. Wisnia recently reminisced at age 93. “She taught me everything.”

They were both Jewish inmates in Auschwitz, both privileged prisoners. Mr. Wisnia, initially forced to collect the bodies of prisoners who committed suicide, had been chosen to entertain his Nazi captors when they discovered he was a talented singer.

Ms. Spitzer held the more high-powered position: She was the camp’s graphic designer. They became lovers, meeting in their nook at a prescribed time about once a month. After the initial fears of knowing they were putting their lives in danger, they began to look forward to their dates. Mr. Wisnia felt special. “She chose me,” he recalled.

They didn’t talk much. When they did, they told each other brief snippets of their past. Mr. Wisnia had an opera-loving father who’d inspired his singing, and who’d perished with the rest of his family at the Warsaw ghetto. Ms. Spitzer, who also loved music — she played the piano and the mandolin — taught Mr. Wisnia a Hungarian song. Below the boxes of clothing, fellow prisoners stood guard, prepared to warn them if an SS officer was approaching.

For a few months, they managed to be each other’s escape, but they knew these visits wouldn’t last. Around them, death was everywhere. Still, the lovers planned a life together, a future outside of Auschwitz. They knew they would be separated, but they had a plan, after the fighting was done, to reunite.

It took them 72 years.

On a recent afternoon this fall, Mr. Wisnia sat in his house of 67 years in his adopted hometown in Levittown, Pa., looking through old photographs. Still a passionate singer, Mr. Wisnia spent decades as a cantor at the local congregation. Now, about once a month, he gives speeches where he tells war stories, usually to students and sometimes at libraries or congregations.

“There are few people left who know the details,” he said.

In January, Mr. Wisnia plans to fly with his family to Auschwitz, where he has been invited to sing at the 75th anniversary of the camp’s liberation. He expects to recognize only one fellow survivor there. The last big anniversary, five years ago, which he attended, included about 300 Holocaust survivors. The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany estimates that only 2,000 survivors of Auschwitz are alive today.

As the Holocaust fades from public memory and anti-Semitism is once again on the rise, Mr. Wisnia finds himself speaking about his past with more urgency. This is quite a turn for a man who spent most of his adult life trying not to look back. Mr. Wisnia’s oldest son learned only as a teenager that his father wasn’t born in America. (His father worked hard to lose his European accent.)

Mr. Wisnia’s children and grandchildren coaxed him to talk about his past. Gradually, he opened up. Once he started sharing his story, others convinced him to speak publicly. In 2015, he published a memoir, “One Voice, Two Lives: From Auschwitz Prisoner to 101st Airborne Trooper.” That was when his family first learned about his Auschwitz girlfriend. He referred to Ms. Spitzer under a pseudonym, Rose. Their reunion, as it turns out, hadn’t gone quite as planned. By the time he and Ms. Spitzer met again, they both had already married other people.

“How do you share such a story with your family?” Mr. Wisnia wondered.

Helen Spitzer, from Mr. Wisnia’s copy of the book devoted to interviews with the woman he knew as Zippi.Danna Singer for The New York Times

Ms. Spitzer was among the first Jewish women to arrive in Auschwitz in March of 1942. She came from Slovakia, where she attended a technical college and said she was the first woman in the region to finish an apprenticeship as a graphic artist. In Auschwitz, she arrived with 2,000 unmarried women.

At first, she was assigned grueling demolition work at the sub-camp, Birkenau. She was malnourished and perpetually ill with typhus, malaria and diarrhea. She persisted as a laborer until a chimney collapsed on her, injuring her back. Through her connections, her ability to speak German, her graphic design skills and sheer luck, Ms. Spitzer secured an office job.

Her initial assignments included mixing red powder paint with varnish to draw a vertical stripe on female prisoners’ uniforms. Eventually, she started registering all female arrivals in camp, she said in 1946 testimony documented by the psychologist David Boder, who recorded the first interviews with survivors after the war.

By the time Ms. Spitzer met Mr. Wisnia, she was working from a shared office. Together with another Jewish woman, she was responsible for organizing Nazi paperwork. She made monthly charts of the camp’s labor force.

As Ms. Spitzer’s responsibilities grew, she was free to move around within parts of the camp and sometimes was allowed excursions outside. She showered regularly and didn’t have to wear an armband. She used her extensive knowledge of the grounds to build a 3-D model of the camp. Ms. Spitzer’s privileges were such that she managed to correspond with her only surviving brother in Slovakia through coded postcards.

Yet Ms. Spitzer was never a Nazi collaborator or a kapo, an inmate assigned to oversee other prisoners. Instead, she used her position to help inmates and allies. She used her design skills to manipulate paperwork and reassign prisoners to different job assignments and barracks. She had access to official camp reports, which she shared with various resistance groups, according to Konrad Kwiet, a professor at the University of Sydney.

Dr. Kwiet interviewed Ms. Spitzer for an essay published in the book “Approaching an Auschwitz Survivor.” In the book, edited by Jürgen Matthäus, director of applied research at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Ms. Spitzer was interviewed by five different historians, each chronicling her life from a different perspective.

“It’s certainly not surprising to me that people in Zippi’s position would have lovers and they would try to use their influence to save people,” said Atina Grossmann, a professor at the Cooper Union in New York, who interviewed Ms. Spitzer for the book.

“For everybody you saved, you were condemning someone else,” Dr. Grossmann said. “You had to be very precise, and that’s how you kept the Germans at bay.”

Mr. Wisnia was assigned to the “corpse unit” when he arrived. His job was to collect bodies of prisoners who’d flung themselves against the electric fence surrounding the camp. He dragged those corpses to a barrack, where they were hauled off by trucks.

Within months word got around that Mr. Wisnia was a gifted singer. He started singing regularly to Nazi guards and was assigned a new job at a building the SS called the Sauna. He disinfected the clothing of new arrivals with the same Zyklon B pellets used to murder prisoners in the gas chamber.

Ms. Spitzer, who’d noticed Mr. Wisnia at the Sauna, began making special visits. Once they’d established contact, she paid off inmates with food to keep watch for 30 minutes to an hour each time they met.

Their relationship lasted several months. One afternoon in 1944 they realized it would probably be their final climb up to their nook. The Nazis were transporting the last of the camp prisoners on death marches and destroying evidence of their crimes.

As crematories were demolished, there were whispers within the camp that the Soviets were advancing. The war might end soon. Mr. Wisnia and Ms. Spitzer had survived Auschwitz for more than two years while most prisoners never made it past a few months. In Auschwitz alone, 1.1 million people were murdered.

During their last rendezvous they made a plan. They would meet in Warsaw when the war was over, at a community center. It was a promise.

Mr. Wisnia left before Ms. Spitzer on one of the last transports out of Auschwitz. He was transferred to the Dachau concentration camp in December 1944. Soon after, during a death march from Dachau, he happened upon a hand shovel. He struck an SS guard and ran. The next day, while hiding in a barn, he heard what he thought were Soviet troops approaching. He ran to the tanks and hoped for the best. It turned out to be Americans.

He couldn’t believe his good fortune. Since he was 10 years old, Mr. Wisnia had dreamed of singing opera in New York. Before the war, he’d written a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt requesting a visa so he could study music in America. His mother’s two sisters had emigrated to the Bronx in the 1930s, and he’d memorized their address. Throughout his ordeal in Auschwitz, that address had become a sort of prayer for him, a guidepost.

Now, faced with soldiers from the 101st Airborne, he was beyond relieved. The troops adopted him after hearing his tale, told in fragments of the little English he spoke, some German, Yiddish and Polish. They fed him Spam, he said, gave him a uniform, handed him a machine gun and taught him to use it. Europe would be his past, he decided. “I didn’t want anything to do with anything European,” he said. “I became 110 percent American.”

In his capacity with the American Army, Mr. Wisnia became “Little Davey,” an interpreter and civilian aide. Now he got to interrogate the Germans and confiscate their weapons. Now he took prisoners of war.

“Our boys were not so nice to the SS,” Mr. Wisnia said.

His unit trekked south to Austria, liberating towns along the way. The troops protected Mr. Wisnia, and he in turn transformed himself into an American. By the end of the war, they made it to Hitler’s mountain retreat in Berchtesgaden. Here, they helped themselves to Hitler’s wine and myriad treasures. Mr. Wisnia took a Walther gun, a Baldur camera and a semiautomatic pistol.

Even though, as a Pole, he never could become a full-fledged G.I., Mr. Wisnia performed numerous jobs after the war with the American Army. He worked at the Army Post Exchange, which provided basic supplies to soldiers. He also sometimes drove to the displaced persons camp in the city of Feldafing to deliver supplies. Once he’d joined the Americans, his plan to meet Zippi in Warsaw was no longer even a consideration. America was his future.

Ms. Spitzer was among the last to leave the camp alive. She was sent to the women’s camp at Ravensbrück and a sub-camp in Malchow before being evacuated in a death march. She and a friend escaped the march by removing the red stripe she had painted on their uniforms, allowing them to blend with the local population that was fleeing.

As the Red Army advanced and the Nazis surrendered, Ms. Spitzer made her way to her childhood home in Bratislava, Slovakia. Her parents and siblings were gone, save for one brother, who’d just gotten married. She decided to leave him unburdened to start his new life.

According to Dr. Grossmann, the historian, Ms. Spitzer’s account of her journey immediately after the war was deliberately vague. She alluded to smuggling Jews across borders through the Bricha, an underground movement that helped refugees move illegally across Eastern Europe and into Palestine.

Millions of survivors were displaced, and Europe was teeming with displaced persons camps. Some 500 such camps materialized in Germany. Amid the chaos, Ms. Spitzer made it to the first all-Jewish displaced persons camp in the American zone of occupied Germany, which in the spring of 1945 housed at least 4,000 survivors. It was called Feldafing, the same camp that Mr. Wisnia would deliver supplies to.

The odds they would be in the same place were remarkable. “I would drive over there to Feldafing, but I had no idea she was there,” Mr. Wisnia said.

Soon after she arrived in Feldafing in September of 1945, Ms. Spitzer married Erwin Tichauer, the camp’s acting police chief and a United Nations security officer, roles that allowed him to work closely with the American military. Once again, Ms. Spitzer, now known as Ms. Tichauer, was in a privileged position. Although they, too, were displaced persons, the Tichauers lived outside the camp.

Ms. Tichauer, then 27, was among the oldest of the survivors in Feldafing. Because of her husband’s position, she told Dr. Grossmann, she was considered “top management” at the camp. As such, she distributed food among the refugees, particularly the booming population of pregnant women. In the fall of 1945, she accompanied her husband when Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower and Gen. George S. Patton came for a tour of the camp.

Ms. Tichauer and her husband devoted years of their lives to humanitarian causes. They went on missions through the United Nations to Peru and Bolivia and Indonesia. In between, Dr. Tichauer taught bioengineering at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.

Throughout their travels, Ms. Tichauer continued to learn new languages and use her design skills to help populations in need, particularly pregnant women and new mothers. Her existence was not defined by her experience as a Holocaust survivor, said Dr. Matthäus. “She had a much richer life,” he said. “There was a lot that she achieved with her husband.”

Eventually, the Tichauers moved to America, first to Austin, Tex., and then in 1967 they settled in New York, where Dr. Tichauer became a bioengineering professor at New York University. In their apartment, surrounded by books about the Holocaust, Ms. Tichauer spoke regularly with historians. She never gave speeches and said she despised the concept of the Holocaust as a business. The historians she entrusted with her story became part of her family. Dr. Kwiet, who called her from Australia every Friday, saw Ms. Tichauer as a mother figure.

“Her duty was not to be a professional survivor,” said Dr. Grossmann. “Her job was to be the historian’s historian. She was committed to this very sober, almost technical rendition of what happened.”

Yet throughout the many hours she devoted to detailing the horrors of Auschwitz to a number of historians, Ms. Tichauer never once mentioned Mr. Wisnia.

Sometime after the war ended, Mr. Wisnia heard from a former Auschwitz inmate that Ms. Tichauer was alive. By then he was deeply enmeshed with the American Army, based in Versailles, France, where he waited until he could finally emigrate to the United States.

When his aunt and uncle picked him up at the port in Hoboken in February 1946, they couldn’t believe the 19-year-old in a G.I. uniform was the little David they last saw in Warsaw.

In a rush to make up for lost time, Mr. Wisnia plunged into New York City life, going to dances and parties. He rode the subway from his aunt’s house in the Bronx to anywhere around Manhattan. He answered an ad in a local paper and got a job selling encyclopedias.

In 1947, at a wedding, he met his future wife, Hope. Five years later, the couple moved to Philadelphia. He became a vice president of sales for Wonderland of Knowledge Corporation, the encyclopedia company, until his career as a cantor took off.

Years after he’d settled down with his wife in Levittown, a friend of the lovers told Mr. Wisnia that Zippi was in New York City. Mr. Wisnia, who had told his wife about his former girlfriend, thought this would be an opportunity to reconnect, and he could finally ask how he had managed to survive Auschwitz.

Their friend arranged a meeting. Mr. Wisnia drove the two hours from Levittown to Manhattan and waited at a hotel lobby across from Central Park.

“She never showed up,” said Mr. Wisnia. “I found out after that she decided it wouldn’t be smart. She was married; she had a husband.”

Over the years, Mr. Wisnia kept tabs on Ms. Tichauer through their mutual friend. Meanwhile, his family grew — he had four children and six grandchildren. In 2016 Mr. Wisnia decided to try again to reach out to Zippi. He’d shared the story with his family. His son, who was now a rabbi at a Reform synagogue in Princeton, N.J., initiated contact for him. Finally, she agreed to a visit.

In August 2016, Mr. Wisnia took two of his grandchildren with him to the reunion with Ms. Tichauer. He was silent during most of the car ride from Levittown to Manhattan. He didn’t know what to expect. It had been 72 years since he’d last seen his former girlfriend. He’d heard she was in poor health but knew very little about her life. He suspected she’d helped to keep him alive and wanted to know if this was true.

When Mr. Wisnia and his grandchildren arrived at her apartment in the East 30s, they found Ms. Tichauer lying in a hospital bed, surrounded by shelves filled with books. She had been alone since her husband died in 1996, and they’d never had any children. Over the years, bed-bound, she’d gone increasingly blind and deaf. She had an aide looking after her, and the telephone had become her lifeline to the world.

At first, she didn’t recognize him. Then Mr. Wisnia leaned in close.

“Her eyes went wide, almost like life came back to her,” said Mr. Wisnia’s grandson Avi Wisnia, 37. “It took us all aback.”

Suddenly there was a flow of words between Mr. Wisnia and Ms. Tichauer, all in their adopted English tongue.

“She said to me in front of my grandchildren, she said, ‘Did you tell your wife what we did?’” Mr. Wisnia remembered, chuckling, shaking his head. “I said, ‘Zippi!’”

Mr. Wisnia talked about his children, his time in the American Army. Ms. Tichauer spoke about her humanitarian work after the war and her husband. She marveled at Mr. Wisnia’s perfect English. “My God,” she said. “I never thought that we would see each other again — and in New York.”

The reunion lasted about two hours. He finally had to ask: Did she have something to do with the fact that he’d managed to survive in Auschwitz all that time?

She held up her hand to display five fingers. Her voice was loud, her Slovakian accent deep. “I saved you five times from bad shipment,” she said.

“I knew she would do that,” said Mr. Wisnia to his grandchildren. “It’s absolutely amazing. Amazing.”

There was more. “I was waiting for you,” Ms. Tichauer said. Mr. Wisnia was astonished. After she escaped the death march, she had waited for him in Warsaw. She’d followed the plan. But he never came.

She had loved him, she told him quietly. He had loved her, too, he said.

Mr. Wisnia and Ms. Tichauer never saw each other again. She died last year at age 100. On their last afternoon together, before Mr. Wisnia left her apartment, she asked him to sing to her. He took her hand and sang her the Hungarian song she taught him in Auschwitz. He wanted to show her that he remembered the words.

Source Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/08/nyregion/auschwitz-love-story.html

2019年12月10日

Golden Globes nominations 2020: It’s Marriage Story v The Irishman

Catherine ShoardMon 9 Dec 2019 13.37 GMT

Being nominated … Adam Driver in Marriage Story. Photograph: Landmark Media/Alamy Stock Photo

Marriage Story, Noah Baumbach’s acclaimed divorce drama, and Martin Scorsese’s mob epic The Irishman are set to do battle at next year’s Golden Globes awards. Only one will prove victorious, but the distributor of both – Netflix – has already emerged triumphant.

This year’s nominations are an extraordinary validation of the streaming-service-turned-studio, which only received its first Globes nomination five years ago, and which had never before scored a best film drama nomination from the awards body.

This year, Netflix racked up a total of 17 nominations in the film categories – nine more than Sony Pictures, its nearest competitor among the Hollywood studios – thanks to Marriage Story, The Irishman, The Two Popes and Dolemite Is My Name.

It also leads the pack of TV networks, again taking 17 nominations – two more than runner-up HBO. Netflix’s dominance here is down to a spread of prestige shows including The Crown, Unbelievable, The Kominsky Method and The Politician.

Marriage Story, which tells the story of a separating couple played by Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson, squeaks into frontrunner position for the film gongs with six nominations – for drama, screenplay, actor, actress, score (for Randy Newman) and best supporting actress (Laura Dern).

Baumbach was not recognised for his direction whereas Scorsese did get a directing nomination for The Irishman, alongside supporting actors Al Pacino and Joe Pesci, and screenwriter Steven Zaillian. The film is also up for best drama; leading actor Robert de Niro failed to make the cut – Adam Sandler was another surprise snub in the same category for Uncut Gems.

Also getting five nods was Quentin Tarantino’s history-busting hymn to Tinseltown, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which is up for best film (comedy or musical), best actor in a comedy or musical (for Leonardo DiCaprio), best supporting actor (Brad Pitt), best director and best screenplay.

The Two Popes was among the films which performed better than expected at Monday’s announcement, earning acclaim for actors Jonathan Pryce and Anthony Hopkins, as well as screenwriter Anthony McCarten. Rounding out the best drama shortlist is Joker, Todd Phillips’s box office record-breaking origins story about Batman’s cackling nemesis. That film got four nominations – for best actor for Joaquin Phoenix, for its director Phillips and for Hildur Guðnadóttir’s score.

British talent once again punched above its weight on both the big and small screens, with Olivia Colman, Helena Bonham Carter and Tobias Menzies all up for awards for their work on the third series of stately royal series The Crown. Fleabag’s Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Andrew Scott are also in contention, likewise Jodie Comer for Killing Eve, Helen Mirren for Catherine the Great and Chernobyl’s Emily Watson and Jared Harris.

Olivia Colman as Queen Elizabeth II and Tobias Menzies as The Duke of Edinburgh in The Crown. — Olivia Colman as Elizabeth II and Tobias Menzies as the Duke of Edinburgh in The Crown. Photograph: Des Willie/Netflix/PA

Kit Harington is in the running for the final series of Game of Thrones, as is Brian Cox for his role in Succession. Sacha Baron Cohen is again nominated, although not for his comedy work but his role as an undercover Mossad agent in The Spy.

Daniel Craig and Taron Egerton made the comedy film actor shortlist for their work on Knives Out and Rocketman, respectively; also in the running are DiCaprio, Jojo Rabbit’s child star Roman Griffin Davis, and Eddie Murphy for his comeback role in Dolemite Is My Name.

The drive for greater gender representation in the film industry was dealt a blow by the lack of any women on the best director list, despite Greta Gerwig and Lulu Wang being tipped for a spot. The former’s film, Little Women, only got two nods: best actress for Saoirse Ronan, and best score for Alexandre Desplat, meaning Gerwig’s screenplay was also locked out.

Wang’s The Farewell, meanwhile, will compete against frontrunner Parasite for the best foreign language film prize, while Awkwafina battles some unexpected foes – Late Night’s Emma Thompson, Knives Out’s Ana De Armas, Booksmart’s Beanie Feldstein and Cate Blanchett for Where’d You Go, Bernadette – for best actress in a comedy or musical.

A number of films not yet released feature on the list, including Sam Mendes’s first world war drama 1917, which has three nominations; sexual assault drama Bombshell, which has best actress in a drama and best supporting actress nods for Charlize Theron and Margot Robbie respectively; and Cats, for the new song Beautiful Ghosts – a collaboration between Taylor Swift and Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Cats has not yet been screened for critics; its lack of inclusion other than for best original song does not bode well for reviews. Bombshell co-star Nicole Kidman did not pick up a nomination for her portrayal of Gretchen Carlson – although her work on Big Little Lies means she will compete with Colman, Comer and The Morning Show’s Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon for best actress in a TV drama.

The nominations for the 77th awards were announced in Los Angeles by Dakota Fanning, Susan Kelechi Watson and Tim Allen alongside this year’s Golden Globe ambassadors Dylan and Paris Brosnan (children of Pierce).

Dakota Johnson, Susan Kelechi Watson, Tim Allen, Paris Brosnan and Dylan Brosnan at the announcement. Photograph: Matt Baron/REX/Shutterstock

Unlike the Oscars or Baftas, the Golden Globes are voted for by a small – and fairly secretive – group of international journalists working in the entertainment sphere and living in Los Angeles. The identities of the 90-strong group are not widely known, although one former president, Aida Takla O’Reilly, shot to fame following the publication in Egypt Air’s inflight magazine of a bizarre interview with Drew Barrymore. The interview, which was written by O’Reilly, included unfortunate phrasings and quotes that the actor was swift to dismiss as inaccurate.

This year’s ceremony will be held on 5 January 2020, with Ricky Gervaisreturning as host for a record fifth time. The comedian, who hosted the show between 2010 and 2012 and again in 2016, has again protested this will be his final stand at the podium. Announcing his change of heart last month, Gervais said that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association had “made me an offer I can’t refuse. But this is the very last time I’m doing this, which could make for a fun evening”.

The Academy Awards, which are given out a month later, are expected to proceed without a host, following a warm reception for the ceremony in February, when a succession of guest presenters led proceedings.

Source Link: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/dec/09/golden-globes-nominations-2020-marriage-story-and-the-irishman-set-for-battle

2019年12月6日2019年12月6日

A fan’s-eye view at the football – a photo essay

Photographer and lifelong Tottenham Hotspur fan Martin Andersen has turned his camera on fellow fans to create an intimate and often visceral collection of images taken at home, away, and across Europe from
2013 until the last game played at White Hart Lane in 2017. Interview by Felix Petty

Martin AndersenThu 5 Dec 2019 07.00 GMT

My first game at White Hart Lane was Tottenham v Wimbledon on Saturday 10 November 1990. We won the game 4–2. I sat in Park Lane watching a Spurs side featuring Gazza, Lineker, Mabbutt, Walsh … But my love for Tottenham started long before that. We all have our stories as to why we support the club. Mine might be a little different to most, having grown up in Denmark.

Tottenham Hotspur – Arsenal (0–1), 16 March 2014, White Hart Lane. Attendance: 35,711.
Right: Middlesbrough – Tottenham Hotspur (1–2), 24 September 2016, Riverside Stadium. Att: 32,703.
Far right: Tottenham Hotspur – Hull (2–0), 16 May 2015, White Hart Lane. Att: 35,857

Tottenham Hotspur – Hull (2–0), 16 May 2015, White Hart Lane. Att: 35,857.

The first ever game I remember watching on TV was the 1978 World Cup final between Argentina and Holland. I was six years old and watched the game with my parents. I remember taking an instant liking to the Argentina kits, the blue and white stripes and the black shorts. I was blown away by the atmosphere and celebrations and instantly fell in love with football. After that summer I started following the English games on TV and as the recent World Cup winners Osvaldo Ardiles and Ricardo Villa had signed for Spurs, I decided Tottenham was going to be my team. I watched as many games as I could on TV before I finally moved to London in 1993 and was from then on finally able to visit White Hart Lane on a regular basis.

Tottenham Hotspur – Newcastle United (1–2), 26 October 2014, White Hart Lane, Att: 35,650.

I’ve been supporting Tottenham most of my life and seen us in good and bad times. Seen players and managers come and go, and it can be frustrating, even heartbreaking, when they leave for another team. Sometimes it can feel like there’s little loyalty in football. One day you are Spurs, the next day you can go play for a rival. The focus is always on the players and the manager. I was interested in making a project about the fans. The fans never switch allegiances, they are here forever and I felt that needed to be documented and celebrated.

Top: Tottenham Hotspur – Chelsea (1–1), 28 September 2013, White Hart Lane. Att: 35,857.
Above left: Chelsea – Tottenham Hotspur (2–0), 1 March 2015, EFLC Final. Wembley. Att: 89,294.
Above right: Tottenham Hotspur – Arsenal (0–1), 16 March 2014, White Hart Lane. Att: 35,711.

I started bringing my camera to the games and photographed the atmosphere on the streets and in the pubs before and after. It ended up growing into an obsession, and after three years I realised that I was beginning to document a piece of our history – the last seasons at White Hart Lane. I decided that our last game at White Hart Lane should be the endpoint of this project. I went to, and photographed, over 100 home and away games between 2013 and 2017.

Southampton – Tottenham Hotspur (0–2), 19 December 2015, St Mary’s stadium. Att: 31,636.

I wanted to capture different generations of fans, the camaraderie, the banter, the songs in the pubs, the madness. Travelling up and down the country and the long away trips in Europe. I wasn’t interested in making a chronological “football fan” book covering all the games with numerous pictures on each page. I wanted the book to have some artistic merit in terms of photography. I am interested in people and I’ve always been more interested in photography that is open-ended, pictures that are suggestive and open to interpretation, rather than pictures that are descriptive.

Tottenham Hotspur – Liverpool (0–3), 31 August 2014, White Hart Lane. Att: 36,130.
Right and far right: Chelsea – Tottenham Hotspur (2–0), 1 March 2015, EFLC Final, Wembley. Att: 89,294.

Chelsea – Tottenham Hotspur (2–0), 1 March 2015, EFLC Final, Wembley, Att: 89,294.

The Arsenal derbies are always memorable, something every fan looks forward to. It’s an early start and you can feel the tension and excitement in the atmosphere all over north London. I also used to love the trips to Upton Park, which are now sadly also part of history. The European away trips are fantastic. There is something special about going abroad with Tottenham. Being in a different country, putting our flags and banners up and taking over a pub with all the familiar faces. The last game at White Hart Lane was emotional and beautiful. When we beat Manchester City away in 2016, when Eriksen scored the winner in the 83rd minute, and of course our 3-1 win against Real Madrid at Wembley, these were all very special moments.

Tottenham Hotspur – West Ham United (1–2), 18 December 2013, White Hart Lane. Att: 34,080.

There’s something about going to all those games, travelling home and away, which forms bonds between people, and over the past five years I have met so many fantastic characters and heard many Tottenham stories. There is something fascinating about meeting and talking to lifelong fans, those who have been there since the glory days – there’s a real link to the history of the club in their memories. It’s important to memorialise that.

Tottenham Hotspur – Arsenal (2–1), 7 February 2015, White Hart Lane. Att: 35,659.
Right: West Ham United – Tottenham Hotspur (0–1), 16 August 2014, Boleyn Ground. Att: 34,977.

Borussia Dortmund – Tottenham Hotspur (3–0), 10 March 2016, Uefa EL, Signal Iduna Park. Att: 65,848.

I was interested in capturing characters, emotions and expressions and also the dynamics of the group. I kept an instinctive approach throughout and often shot from the hip. Nothing was planned or staged. It was all about capturing those little moments – a feeling that could so often get lost if I’d spent time framing the shots.

Tottenham Hotspur – Brighton (2–0), 29 October 2014, White Hart Lane. Att: 33,537.

It definitely helped being a Spurs boy, but you don’t just turn up and get invited in and start taking pictures. In the beginning there were certainly a few people who questioned what I was doing pointing a camera in their face. I knew from the beginning that I had to take my time. It was important for me to get to know people first, find out what they are doing and just go with the flow. It might sound like a cliché, but you can’t make images happen when you want them to – the images will come to you. It’s a little bit like fishing – sometimes you catch something and sometimes you come home empty-handed.

Top: Aston Villa – Tottenham Hotspur (1–2), 2 November 2014, Villa Park. Att: 32,049.
Above: Chelsea – Tottenham Hotspur (3–0), 3 December 2014, Stamford Bridge. Att: 41,518.

Top: Manchester City – Tottenham Hotspur (1–2), 14 February 2016, Etihad stadium. Att: 54,551.
Above left: Southampton – Tottenham Hotspur (0–2), 19 December 2015, St Mary’s stadium. Att: 31,636.
Above right: Liverpool – Tottenham Hotspur (2–0), 11 February 2017, Anfield. Att: 53,159.

I like using my camera as a tool to meet other people. It can help break down boundaries. I always treat everyone with respect – if they didn’t want to be photographed I wouldn’t photograph them. I am always modest and interested in what other people are doing and thinking. I take better pictures when I feel a connection with others. Once you are accepted and you are part of the same dynamic you feel that you belong to something special and it becomes easier to take pictures.

Tottenham Hotspur – Arsenal (2–0), 30 April 2017, White Hart Lane. Att: 31,811.

Can’t Smile Without You by Martin Andersen is published by AMS and available at https://www.shop.martinandersen.co.uk/products/cant-smile-without-you. Anderson’s work will be exhibited at Pocko, London N1 4NH, in March 2020.

Source Link: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/dec/05/a-fans-eye-view-at-the-football-a-photo-essay

2019年12月3日

7 wars that defined the decade and changed how we fight around the world

Soldiers secure an area in view of the aurora borealis during night live-fire training as part of Exercise Spartan Cerberus at Fort Greely, Alaska, October 25, 2016.US Department of Defense

The past decade has tested military alliances and brought on threats few could have imagined.
ISIS’s use of social media to recruit fighters and disseminate propaganda was unprecedented, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte’s government has relied on Facebook disinformation to bolster support for his drug war and disparage his enemies.
Russia has used both Syria and Ukraine as testing fields for hardware and propaganda campaigns.

The past decade has tested military alliances and brought 0n threats few could have imagined.

In many ways, the principles of conflict never change — there is always an enemy to be vanquished, and the consequences are always tragic. But in the past decade, technology re-defined how we fight most of our conflicts.

Whether it’s artificial intelligence, disinformation, or hypersonic missiles, this decade’s conflicts have been defined by rapid technological advances — and the manipulation of technologies built for civilian use.

From North Korea’s nuclear threats to Syria’s chaotic battlefield, here are the conflicts that have defined our decade.

Ukraine has become a laboratory for Russia’s advanced warfare.

A pro-Russian soldier is back dropped by Russia’s flag while manning a machine-gun outside an Ukrainian military base in Perevalne, Ukraine.AP

George Kent, the State Department official who testified during an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump’s allegedly pressuring Ukraine for political dirt, told Military Times in July that Russia tests much of its battlefield equipment and tactics right next door in Ukraine.

“Ukraine is a laboratory of techniques and procedures,” Kent said.

Kent, the deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, described a sniper “school” on the frontlines of the Ukraine-Russia conflict.

“They just do on the front lines with Ukraine. Much of the equipment that they are developing that shows up elsewhere, including in Syria, they try out first in Ukraine.”

Dispatches from Vice chronicled Russia’s incursion into Ukraine starting in 2014. At the time, a popular revolution had toppled the pro-Russia leadership in Kyiv, which alarmed Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, and supports separatist militias in the Donbass region, on the border between Ukraine and Russia. It even has some of its own fighters mixed in with the troops, The Washington Post reports.

Russia has deployed Wagner Group mercenaries to fight in Ukraine, a tactic that it’s strategically utilizing and spreading to enhance its influence in Africa and the Middle East. The Wagner Group is now reportedly operating in Syria, Libya, Sudan, and the Central African Republic.

Russia also used hybrid warfare tactics like social media disinformation to foment distrust in the government and to generate support for Russian control of contested areas, which foretold the interference campaign Russia would run in the 2016 US presidential elecion, The Washington Post reported last year.

Syria’s longstanding quagmire of a civil war has gone through several battlefield iterations.

U.S. forces patrol Syrian oil fields, in eastern Syria, in late October.Associated Press

The Syrian conflict has stretched on for eight years, pulling in players as disparate as Russia, Iran, Turkey, Israel, and the US, as well as creating the ideal conditions for the rise of ISIS.

It’s also become another testing ground for tactics and technology.

As Russia, backing the Assad regime, asserts more power in Syria, it’s also become a proving ground for new Russian technologies.

“Syria is not a shooting range for Russian weapons, but we are still using them there, our new weapons,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a public address last year.

“When we started to use these modern weapons, including missiles, whole teams from our defense industry companies went to Syria, and worked there on-site — it is extremely important for us — to finalize them and figure out what we can count on when using them in combat conditions.”

Russian state media outlet TASS reported in 2018 that Russia had tested 210 weapons in Syria. In December of that year. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yury Borisov told Russian media that the Russian military had begun using the Tupolev Tu-160 supersonic stretegic bombers, the Iskander-M ballistic missile system, and the Pantsir S1 anti-aircraft missile in Syria.

But innovation has gone the other way, too — the Russian military has started developing small drones equipped with ordnance after seeing ISIS deploy them in Syria.

And in the conflict that’s morphed from a popular uprising against a dictatorial dynasty, swelling in the intoxicating first flush of the Arab Spring, to become synonymous with desperation, despair, displacement, and brutality. Bashar al-Assad, whose regime is consistently plumbing the depths of inhumanity, is still in power; and astoundingly, due to the latest failure in American policy, stands to regain control of much of what his regime lost, first to rebels, then to ISIS, then to Kurdish-led forces backed by US troops.

ISIS changed the game with its social media recruiting strategy.

In this March 30, 2014 photo, Islamic State group militants hold up their flag as they patrol in a commandeered Iraqi military vehicle in Fallujah, Iraq.Associated Press

Although ISIS is determined to force its followers back into the Middle Ages, it has employed a strikingly 21st-century approach to recruitment, depending heavily on social media to reach followers, especially those from the west.

Larger social media companies like Twitter have cracked down on the group’s accounts since it first rose to prominence in 2014. But the group moved on to encrypted social networks like Telegram, the encrypted chat platform. CBS reported in 2019 that the 2015 Paris terror attacks were planned using the messaging app.

It’s popular because it claims to be secure, and “Telegram is less likely to crack down” on ISIS groups or members than other social companies, according to Daniel Byman, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Middle East Policy and the author of “Road Warriors: Foreign Fighters in the Armies of Jihad.”

There has been a coordinated effort to remove ISIS channels from Telegram, which has had limited success, according to a new piece in Wired. Researchers Charlie Winter and Amarnath Amarsingham describe the shell ISIS networks that have popped up after the European Union’s Internet Referral Unit (IRU) blitzed the main ISIS propaganda and foll0wer accounts over the weekend, and at least some ISIS accounts have shown up on the network TamTam.

Speaking to Wired in 2016, New York Times reporter Rukmini Callimachi described how she tracks stories about ISIS and its members online, saying that the group pushed out information on multiple channels simultaneously to reach potential jihadis, or to push out their gruesome propaganda videos. “They’ve become so good at it, it’s unbelievable.”

President Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war in the Philippines has killed thousands and shocked human rights advocates.

Then-presidential candidate Rodrigo “Digong” Duterte talks to the media before casting his vote at a polling precinct for national elections at Daniel Aguinaldo National High School in Davao city in southern Philippines, May 9, 2016.Erik De Castro/Reuters

Duterte propelled himself to the presidency in 2016 by promising an end to the drug problem in the Philippines. But his method — thousands of extrajudicial killings — elicited a response from the UN, calling for an investigation into his government’s brutal methods.

The Philippines, a US ally in the South China Sea, is killing its civilians without a fair trial. The government acknowledges killing roughly 5,000 people in this effort, but human rights groups say the real number is many times that.

Authorities also arrest those who are critical. Maria Ressa, of the news organization Rappler, has been arrested multiple times coming to and from the Philippines after critical reporting on the Duterte government and its drug war.

Ressa herself uncovered Facebook disinformation campaigns against her, which were tied to Duterte’s government, The Washington Post reported earlier this year.

In the Philippines, where about 95% of citizens who are online use Facebook, the ability to spread misinformation and target specific individuals like Ressa and other journalists is heightened.

Facebook has become an increasingly powerful weapon in Duterte’s war on drugs, and his war against the truth. As BuzzFeed reported last year, many Filipinos use Facebook for news because it’s free; Duterte and his government have used that to their advantage to drum up spport for his brutal policies and ruin his opponents.

China’s well on its way to surpassing the US military, thanks to technological investment — and good, old-fashioned intellectual property theft.

Jon Woo/Reuters

China has emerged as a significant rival to the US on the battlefield. While the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) doesn’t have quite as much firepower as the US military — it’s ranked third on Global Firepower’s list of the most powerful militaries, while the US is first — experts are warning that China is quickly catching up to the US, and set to overtake the military technologically.

Speaking at an event at the Council on Foreign Relations in September, retired Adm. William McRaven, who oversaw the SEAL raid on Osama bin Laden’s Abbottabad, Pakistan compound, said that the US is facing a “holy s— moment” because of China’s rapid and expansive technological buildup. It’s dominating in the fields of 5G and artificial intelligence (AI), and advancing in the development of hypersonic weapons.

China’s rise on the battlefield coincides with its economic dominance and an aggressive strategy that incorporates significant state funding into research and development. But China has also been accused of stealing classified national security informaiton from the US.

“The biggest intellectual property theft in human history” is how Defense Secretary Mark Esper put China’s strategy of allegedly stealing or copying the plans for weapons like the F-35 stealth fighter.

North Korea has amped up its weapons testing under Kim Jong Un, pushing it closer to the brink of war with the US.

US President Donald Trump and North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un talk before a meeting in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) on June 30, 2019, in Panmunjom, Korea.BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images

Since Kim Jong Un came to power in 2011, succeeding his father Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leader has sent increasingly threatening signals to the US by developing and testing nuclear weapons.

Kim has overseen four nuclear weapons tests during his tenure, as well as significant and rapid reported developments in its nuclear programs, includng the reported ability to miniaturize warheads and the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles (IBCMs) that could, the country claims, strike the continental United States.

As talks between the US and North Korea have broken down under Trump, North Korea has sent threatening messages to the US, indicating that time is running out for the US to offer North Korea something it wants — like the easing of sanctions, or a promise to decrease its military presence on the Korean peninsula — before the hermit kingdom resumes ever more threatening weapons testing.

Iran’s strategy of employing proxy militias in wars throughout the Middle East has helped destabilize the region and fueled some of the worst conflicts there.

Members of the Iranian revolutionary guard march during a parade to commemorate the anniversary of the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88), in Tehran September 22, 2011.REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo

Hezbollah, the most well-known Iranian proxy militia, has been operating in Lebanon since the 1980s, where they wield undeniable influence in the government and in conflict with neighboring Israel.

But in the past decade, Iran has been inserting itself into devastating regional conflicts to cement its influence and engage in proxy conflicts with its regional foes, Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Hezbollah militants begam streaming into Syria mostly in 2013 and 2014 in support of the Assad regime, which serves as a “vital conduit between Iran and Hezbollah,” allowing for Iranian cash and materiel to get to Hezbollah, but also providing a safe location for training and weapons storage, according to a 2014 report from the Institute for the Study of War.

In Yemen, Iran supports the Houthi rebels against the Saudi-backed, internationally-recognized government, in a five-year civil war that has become a humanitarian catastrophe, with the death toll around 100,000 and disease, starvation, and poverty racking the population.

And in Iraq, Shia militias with ties to Iran fight under the banner of the Popular Mobilization Forces, or PMF. There have been some attempts to integrate the PMF into the regular Iraqi forces, but they are as yet unsuccessful, or only marginally so.

The PMF — and therefore Iran — also has outsize influence in Iraqi politics, which is troubling to many Iraqi citizens and has inflamed protests all over the country since October.

Source Link: https://www.businessinsider.com/7-wars-defined-decade-changed-what-it-means-to-fight-2019-11?international=true&r=US&IR=T#irans-strategy-of-employing-proxy-militias-in-wars-throughout-the-middle-east-has-helped-destabilize-the-region-and-fueled-some-of-the-worst-conflicts-there-7

2019年12月3日2019年12月3日

Amazon fires are causing glaciers in the Andes to melt even faster

If you have turned on a TV or read the news during the past few months, you have probably heard of the widespread fires that wrought havoc on the Amazon rainforest this year. Fires occur in the rainforest every year, but the past 11 months saw the number of fires increase by more than 70% when compared with 2018, indicating a major acceleration in land clearing by the country’s logging and farming industries.

The smoke from the fires rose high into the atmosphere and could be seen from space. Some regions of Brazil became covered in thick smoke that closed airports and darkened city skies.

As the rainforest burns, it releases enormous amounts of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and larger particles of so-called “black carbon” (smoke and soot). The phrase “enormous amounts” hardly does the numbers justice – in any given year, the burning of forests and grasslands in South America emits a whopping 800,000 tonnes of black carbon into the atmosphere.

This truly astounding amount is almost double the black carbon produced by all combined energy use in Europe over 12 months. Not only does this absurd amount of smoke cause health issuesand contribute to global warming but, as a growing number of scientific studies are showing, it also more directly contributes to the melting of glaciers.

In a new paper published in the journal Scientific Reports, a team of researchers has outlined how smoke from fires in the Amazon in 2010 made glaciers in the Andes melt more quickly.South America: the Andes mountains run along the western edge of the Amazon basin (centre). AridOcean / shutterstock

When fires in the Amazon emit black carbon during the peak burning season (August to October), winds carry these clouds of smoke to Andean glaciers, which can sit higher than 5,000 metres above sea level.

Despite being invisible to the naked eye, black carbon particles affect the ability of the snow to reflect incoming sunlight, a phenomenon known as “albedo”. Similar to how a dark-coloured car will heat up more quickly in direct sunlight when compared with a light-coloured one, glaciers covered by black carbon particles will absorb more heat, and thus melt faster.

By using a computer simulation of how particles move through the atmosphere, known as HYSPLIT, the team was able to show that smoke plumes from the Amazon are carried by winds to the Andes, where they fall as an invisible mist across glaciers. Altogether, they found that fires in the Amazon in 2010 caused a 4.5% increase in water runoff from Zongo Glacier in Bolivia.The Zongo glacier is found on the slopes of Huayna Potosi, one of Bolivia’s highest mountains. Ryan Michael Wilson / shutterstock

Crucially, the authors also found that the effect of black carbon depends on the amount of dust covering a glacier – if the amount of dust is higher, then the glacier will already be absorbing most of the heat that might have been absorbed by the black carbon. Land clearing is one of the reasons that dust levels over South America doubled during the 20th century.

Glaciers are some of the most important natural resources on the planet. Himalayan glaciers provide drinking water for 240m people, and 1.9 billion rely on them for food. In South America, glaciers are crucial for water supply – in some towns, including Huaraz in Peru, more than 85% of drinking water comes from glaciers during times of drought. However, these truly vital sources of water are increasingly under threat as the planet feels the effects of global warming. Glaciers in the Andes have been receding rapidly for the last 50 years.

The tropical belt of South America is predicted to become more dry and arid as the climate changes. A drier climate means more dust, and more fires. It also means more droughts, which make towns more reliant on glaciers for water.

Unfortunately, as the above study shows, the fires assisted by dry conditions help to make these vital sources of water vanish more quickly. The role of black carbon in glacier melting is an exceedingly complex process – currently, the climate models used to predict the future melting of glaciers in the Andes do not incorporate black carbon. As the authors of this new study show, this is likely causing the rate of glacial melt to be underestimated in many current assessments.

With communities reliant on glaciers for water, and these same glaciers likely to melt faster as the climate warms, work examining complex forces like black carbon and albedo changes is needed more now than ever before.

Source Link: https://theconversation.com/amazon-fires-are-causing-glaciers-in-the-andes-to-melt-even-faster-128023