Tagesspiegel on the Berlinale win: ‘Sanchez congratulated the success of the ‘Spanish film’, not mentioning it was in Catalan. Spain has systematically since forever nullified the successes of Catalans’
(Photo: Carla Simon wins the Berlinale’s Golden Bear with Alcarras)/
TAGESSPIEGEL SOBRE EL TRIOMF A LA BERLINALE: ‘SÁNCHEZ HA FELICITAT L’ÈXIT DE LA ‘PEL.LÍCULA ESPANYOLA’, SENSE CITAR QUE ERA EN CATALÀ. ESPANYA SISTEMÀTICAMENT DES DE SEMPRE HA ANUL.LAT ELS ÈXITS DELS CATALANS’
(Photo: Carla Simón guanya l’ós d’or de la Berlinale amb Alcarràs)
Our successor to This Week in the Guardian, This Week in the New Normal is our weekly chart of the progress of autocracy, authoritarianism and economic restructuring around the world.
1. The Munich Security Conference 2022 and the future global government
Bill Gates is still really unsettling Not exactly news, but with his Covid grand plan fragmenting in his hands, it might be time to check in on Bill and see what’s going on with him.
Here he is, for example, on a panel at this years Munich Security Conference:
Now, I’m not sadistic enough to suggest you spend your Sunday evening subjecting yourself to the whole hour-plus of shills spouting nonsense, so I’ve taken the liberty of pointing out a choice quote.
Starting at 6:47 [emphasis added]:
With vaccines it took us two years to be at oversupply. Today there are more vaccines than there is demand for vaccines […] Next time, instead of two years, we should make it six months.“
I find this interesting, not just because of his uncontested assumption that there will be a “next time”, but because willingly or unwillingly he has identified one problem with the Covid narrative: It was too slow.
By the time the “vaccines” were ready the initial waves of fear were dying down and enough people were waking up to form a solid band of resistance. “Next time” they will move faster.
He is joined on the panel by Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly who talks up the multi-lateral efforts to beat the virus, and repeats Bill in stating that new developments in technology means that “next time” we’ll be able to get a vaccine produces in six months rather than two years. (She also spends several minutes talking up the “foreign interference” and “overseas funding” of the Freedom Convoy).
It’s interesting that both Bill and Joly mention the improved technology making vaccine production faster because, in an odd coincidence, The Guardian’s got a long article about just that which was published today.
Clearly laying the groundwork for explaining even faster vaccine production “next time”.
To go along with this, Anne Linde – a third member of the panel and Sweden’s Foreign Minister – discusses how Covid was solved by multi-lateralism eventually, that the organizations like the EU, UN and WHO were not empowered enough to act swiftly to solve the situation, and that Covid has “exposed holes” in the international system.
To translate all of this: This “pandemic” might be waning, but “next time” the vaccines will be faster, and the international governmental organisations will be more empowered.
Ukraine has received a plane load of machine guns, surveillance gear and rifles as part of a Canadian military assistance package, Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov said on Saturday.
“We received military aid in the form of rifles, machine guns with optical sights, night vision & surveillance devices & military equipment. Thank you for this important & timely decision,” Reznikov wrote in a tweet.
Canada’s lethal military aid for Ukraine has arrived. In the face of unwarranted Russian aggression, we stand with Ukraine.
For years, we have provided comprehensive aid to support Ukraine, and we will continue to assist our Ukrainian partners as they defend their sovereignty. https://t.co/Xm5BCeT4h5
People rally to protest against the Japanese government’s decision to discharge contaminated radioactive wastewater in Fukushima Prefecture into the sea, in Tokyo, Japan, on April 13, 2021.
Protests have been held in Japan’s Fukushima Prefecture against the government’s controversial plan to release contaminated water from the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean.
Dozens of local residents gatheredin front of the Fukushima prefectural government office building on Tuesday, calling for the cancellation of the move, while also demanding protection for the ocean, as they waved banners with slogans written in several languages in a bid to bring international attention to their concerns.
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, located on Japan’s northeast coast, was crippled after going into meltdown following an earthquake and tsunami in 2011.
Around 1.25 million tons of water, used to cool the reactors after the meltdown, are currently stored in tanks in and around the plant.
Local polls have shown that more than 70 percent of non-governmental organizations in Fukushima object to the plan of releasing the radioactive water into the ocean. Many people worry the plan will cause great harm to their health.
“If nuclear contaminated water is discharged into the sea, people may be affected by eating fish or other sea food. This may bring sustained harm to people’s health. Since the release plan will take a long time to complete, I am worried the harm will increase day by day,” said a local resident.
“I want to protect the health and future of younger generations, so I oppose dumping the contaminated water into the ocean,” said another local resident.
The protesters also voiced concern that Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the operator of the nuclear power plant, had failed to fully disclose information about the Fukushima nuclear disaster or verify the data about the nuclear contaminated water.
“Although the release plan says the radioactive water will be diluted before being discharged into the sea, the total amount of nuclear elements in the water will not change at all. So I think it’s not right to dump the wastewater into the ocean and spread contamination,” said a local resident.
Tuesday’s protest took place as a team from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was slated to conduct safety reviews at the plant.
The 15-member team arrived in Japan on Monday to review the government’s plan to release the treated radioactive water into the ocean from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant — a review that Tokyo hopes will instill confidence in the plan, which is opposed by neighboring countries.
The task force, headed by Gustavo Caruso, director of the IAEA’s Office of Safety and Security Coordination, is due to stay in Japan through Friday.
Japan and the IAEA have agreed to compile an interim report on the review later this year.
Last April, the then-Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said TEPCO would be allowed to release nuclear contaminated water from Fukushima into the Pacific Ocean starting in 2023, leading to a massive outcry from both local residents and the international community.
Local fishing communities expressed opposition as well, saying that the water discharge would undermine years of work to restore confidence in seafood from the region.
The radioactive water, which increases in quantity by about 140 tons a day, is now being stored in more than 1,000 tanks, and space at the site is expected to run out around next autumn.
To meet international standards before disposal, the nuclear wastewater, however, needs to be filtered to remove harmful isotopes. The process, however, cannot remove tritium, an isotope of hydrogen that experts say will be harmful to human health in large doses.
Today I have this piece by war reporter Alexander Kots. He set out to find human interest stories among the over 10,000 refugees who have crossed over from the Donbass region into Russia, just in the past couple of days.
Roughly half of these refugees are technically Russian citizens already, holding Russian passports. The other half being Ukrainian citizens who are resident in the Separatist-controlled Donetsk Peoples Republic (DPR) and Luhansk Peoples Republic (LPR).
The order (issued by the leaders of those republics) to evacuate women, children, and elderly was given this past Thursday, after the Ukrainian army opened massive artillery barrages on the line of demarcation, threatening massive damage and loss of life to the residential communities.
War correspondent Alexander Kotz
Kots: “How many of you are Russian citizens?” I asked, of the people in one of the 30 buses, parked on the side of the road in the village of Red Landing, near Taganrog.
A full half of the people (in the bus) raise their hands. The other half admit that they are in the process of obtaining Russian passports. I see merry toddlers wearing bright outfits, who manage to find ways to have fun even in these circumstances. And here are their mamas, who worry their babies will freeze on the way to Russia.
And they have been waiting here for quite a long time, and nobody knows what is going to happen next, in regard to their resettlement. I see grandmothers who pop into the village store to buy sweets for their grandchildren.
note: while The Guardian here publishes good info (see below) on ‘the Network’, they have also, for example, led the news slanders and smears sabotaging the defence of Julian Assange against the US state and CIA, an issue that prejudices free reporting worldwide. Although this news below appears correct and the comrades need support it also comes just at the height of Anti Russian war hysteria in the UK, openly fannedand financed by the Tory Government and not opposed by The Guardian.
A Russian court has issued harsh sentences to seven antifascist and anarchist activists in a controversial domestic terrorism case marred by claims that investigators tortured the defendants to elicit confessions.
The court in Penza, a city about 390 miles (630km) south-east of Moscow, sentenced the men to terms of six to 18 years in penal colonies for allegedly forming an organisation called Set, which translates as the Network, which prosecutors said planned to carry out future attacks inside Russia to overthrow the government. The men were also charged with an assortment of weapons and drugs charges.
Influential human rights groups have called the case fabricated and said the men may have been targeted for their political activism. Four of the men on trial said they had been tortured with beatings and electrocution during the investigation. In December, Memorial human rights centre, one of Russia’s oldest civil rights organisations, had called for the charges to be dropped.
“It is obvious that the prosecution of the antifascist activists in Penza, part of ongoing repressive measures against anarchists and antifascists that sharply increased in 2017–2018, is politically motivated,” the organisation wrote.
On Monday, supporters of the men shouted “shame” at the Penza courthouse where the verdicts were delivered. The prominent (neo.nazi..ed) opposition figure Alexei Navalny called the sentences “horrific.”
Oleg Orlov of Memorial said: “This is a monstrously harsh verdict, but we didn’t expect anything else.”
The prosecution accused the men of allegedly planning attacks, but gave little concrete detail about when or where they would take place. Investigators originally claimed that the men planned to target the 2018 World Cup or the presidential elections, but those charges were not reflected in the final criminal case.
The men had played airsoft together, an activity which the prosecution said was training for attacks. In 2019, the Network was named an extremist organisation, alongside groups like Islamic State.
The Free 