Innholdsfortegnelse for 10th September 2021 i Guardian Weekly

The Guardian Weekly Founded in Manchester, England 4 July 1919 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 is wholly…

On the morning of 11 September 2001, an 18-year-old was driving his white Honda Civic on the way to work as a freelance web designer. It was a beautiful day, and as he sped down Maryland’s Route 32 with the window down and radio blasting, the teenager was sure it was going to be a lucky day. Soon after 8.46am the radio cut to news that a plane had crashed into one of the Twin Towers in New York City. At 9.03am, by now at his desk, he was stunned to hear that a second plane had crashed into the other tower, followed half an hour later by similar catastrophe at the Pentagon in Washington. He leapt back into his car, only to find himself stuck in traffic sandwiched between…

The shutters have been down all along Kharabat Street, the storied heart of Afghan musical life, since the Taliban swept into Kabul in mid-August Musicians have taken their instruments home, or crammed them into store rooms, waiting to see if the group will do the unthinkable again, and ban music as they did 25 years ago. With no work, and no official diktats from the Taliban, they still gather on the street that for generations has been an informal conservatoire for the country’s musical stars. Here they discuss pictures shared by the famous singer Aryan Khan, of a damaged piano and shattered drums in his Kabul office, and the murder of folk musician Fawad Andarabi in his rural home. And they wonder if they will be next. “We are going…

Animal magic From lynx making a comeback to a striking ecological disaster and narwhal shrimp communicating at great depths, the images in the forthcoming 2021 wildlife photographer of the year competition capture an incredible range The photographs are a compelling reminder of the importance of the variety and variability of life on Earth in securing the future of our planet and were revealed just ahead of the first phase of the global UN conference of COP15 on biodiversity. This year’s competition – in its 57th year – saw a record number of entries, and these are a selection of highly commended images that have been released in advance of the full exhibition, which opens on 15 October at London’s Natural History Museum.…

Nizar Banat knew he was going to die. As he grew bolder in calling out corrupt members of Fatah, the party that controls the Palestinian Authority (PA), the death threats mounted. In May, his home near Hebron was attacked by masked gunmen in an incident that left his children traumatised. The political activist decided it was not safe to stay home. “He went to his cousin’s house in H2 [an area of Hebron controlled by the Israeli military] because he hoped Fatah and the PA could not reach him there, but he knew they were coming for him,” said Jihan, Banat’s widow. “He said: ‘I don’t want to be killed in front of the children’.” On 24 June, Jihan received the news she had dreaded. According to two cousins, Nizar…

Anti-abortion bounty hunters began calling Amy Hagstrom Miller’s chain of four independent abortion clinics in Texas just hours after the supreme court issued a two-paragraph order that effectively ended access to 85% of abortion services in the state. Their apparent hope is to make an appointment for an illegal abortion, catch out the clinic and sue for a $10,000 reward, the bounty Texas lawmakers have placed on the heads of anyone – from cab drivers to clergy – who dare aid a woman in obtaining an abortion past six weeks gestation, before most know they are pregnant. For clinic workers, as well as so many other people, a climate of fear has now descended on Texas. Before the stunning order, women nationally in the US had a constitutional right to…

Advancing Panzer tanks and Wehrmacht divisions once symbolised German ambitions to dominate Europe. Eighty years on, the position is wholly reversed. Blitzkrieg has been replaced by snooze-krieg as the leading candidates to succeed Angela Merkel in this month’s safety-first federal election seek to perpetuate modern-day Germany’s ingrained reluctance to lead Europe on the global stage. Whether the challenge is an accelerating climate crisis, crumbling EU unity, China’s abusive authoritarianism, a collapsing US security umbrella or bottomless Russian malevolence, Europe’s most powerful country too often fails to take a stand. Germany’s first female leader is viewed as a competent, reassuring, trustworthy figure who eschewed the histrionics and gaffes of male politicians. Her courageous response to the Syrian refugee crisis and personal handling of the terrible twins – chauvinist ogres Donald Trump…

Away from the sulphurous world of Twitter, the feminist campaigner and journalist Julie Bindel is best known as the co-founder of Justice for Women, an organisation that, since 1990, has advocated for those convicted of murder after having experienced violence by men; JfW campaigned successfully for the release of Emma Humphreys, who killed her violent pimp, Trevor Armitage, in 1985, and more recently for Sally Challen, who was convicted of the murder of her abusive husband, Richard, in 2010. Bindel also has expertise in the areas of porn, prostitution and sex trafficking; she was one of those who helped to break the story of the grooming gangs in the north of England, an investigation that would lead to the independent inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Rotherham in 2013. All…

The work day in Fangshan starts before dawn and finishes at midday, when fishers or farmers of mango and onion sit together in the shade, sharing a bucket of cooked prawns and bottles of Taiwan beer. The hometown of Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, Fangshan’s borders encompass a long stretch of coast and four villages, home to around 5,500 people, sandwiched between mountains and oceans. Quiet and picturesque, it’s left off most tourist trails, which instead focus on Kenting national park to the south. But over the past few months something remarkable has happened here. The community, one of the poorest in Taiwan’s poorest county, has beaten the Delta variant. How it did so offers lessons for other countries struggling to suppress an outbreak. In June, midway through Taiwan’s worst Covid…

While Paris’s winding Seine has been an inspiration for some of the greatest works of romantic art and literature, the unloved Senne running through Brussels has been buried away under concrete for the last 150 years, condemned by locals as little more than a sewer and cause of disease and unhappiness. As a constant flood risk and source of cholera, it was vaulted in, built over and hidden from sight. Now, however, Belgium’s capital is preparing to stage an inauguration ceremony that officials hope will help force a rethink among Bruxellois about their centuries-held prejudices against the waterway. After the removal of 1,966 tonnes of concrete, a 200-metre stretch of the Senne near the Buda suburb in north Brussels will be formally opened to the elements, with new banks built…

For decades the aim in China has been the pursuit of economic growth, building the world’s second largest economy from a relative backwater on the international stage. Now, the promise from Beijing is both to grow the economic pie and divide it well. President Xi Jinping announced plans last month to spread “common prosperity” in what is one of the most unequal major economies, signalling a shift from his predecessors’ pursuit of growth and heralding a tough crackdown on wealthy elites – including China’s burgeoning group of technology billionaires. Yet the shift comes at a delicate moment. Signs of pressure are emerging in the economy as it embarks on Xi’s mission, fuelled by the coronavirus Delta variant and raw material shortages. Figures published last Wednesday show factory output went into…

The theme of last Sunday’s Paralympics closing ceremony was “harmonious cacophony”. It’s the sort of phrase you might find on a T-shirt in Tokyo’s bustling Harajuku district, one that is just about in English but doesn’t quite feel like it. But in the bowl of Tokyo’s Olympic Stadium, it all made sense. Bright discordant lights, loud technicolour music (including some from a man with a prosthetic synthesiser arm), they all came together in a manner that was stirring. There was also a gaudy papier-mache city being assembled at the same time; although, to be fair, that bit was confusing. Beyond making for a modern, digital spectacle, the theme had a broader point. It was one the Paralympics have been trying to make from the start: there are great differences in…

The American right has been drunk on its freedom from two kinds of inhibition since Donald Trump appeared to guide them into the promised land of their unleashed ids. One is the inhibition from lies, the other from violence. Both are ways members of civil society normally limit their own actions out of respect for the rights of others and the collective good. Those already strained limits have snapped for leading Republican figures, from Tucker Carlson on Fox News to Ted Cruz in the Senate and for their followers. We’ve watched those followers gulp down delusions from Pizzagate to Qanon to covid-denialism to Trump’s election lies. And rough up journalists, crash vehicles into and wave weapons at Black Lives Matter and other antiracist protestors at least since Charlottesville, menace statehouses,…

Something has become clear. I need to face up to my face. I’ve taken precisely two selfies in my life, and have long shunned mirrors. The world’s self-image has been dramatically knocked by technology, by filters and apps that allow portraits to be edited smooth and slippery but, while I don’t want to boast, my personal shame was already fully bedded in long before I got a phone. For many years, I was upset at not being pretty, feeling alternately cheated and sad, but over time I came to terms with it, deciding to avoid mirrors, photos, and to store that prickly energy elsewhere. I look in the mirror once a day, to draw on eyeliner, which establishes a boundary and also nods to heroines, and to paint over blemishes,…

1 UNITED STATES Texas abortion law is sex discrimination, says UN United Nations human rights monitors condemned Texas for its new anti-abortion legislation, which they say violates international law. Melissa Upreti, the chair of the UN’s working group on discrimination against women and girls, said the new law was “structural sex and gender-based discrimination at its worst”. She warned that the legislation, which bans abortions at about six weeks, could force abortion providers underground and drive women to seek unsafe procedures that could prove fatal. “This new law will make abortion unsafe and deadly, and create a whole new set of risks for women and girls. It is profoundly discriminatory and violates a number of rights guaranteed under international law,” she said. Upreti, one of five independent experts charged by the…

Boris Johnson told mutinous MPs that the healthcare system is in crisis and they “cannot expect it to recover alone” as he faced a rebellion over tax rises. One Conservative frontbencher told the Guardian they were considering their position over a planned rise in national insurance contributions (NICs). They questioned the point of serving a government that was not pursuing the 2019 Tory manifesto, with a second pledge – on the pensions triple lock – also set to be broken. A series of MPs from former Labour red wall seats complained that the tax increase would hit workers in their constituencies. On Tuesday the prime minister framed the tax increase, which could raise up to £10bn ($13.8bn) a year with a 1.25% rise in NICs for employers and employees, as…

When Taliban fighters moved into Herat city in western Afghanistan last month, one thing mattered more to some of them than the battle itself. As gunmen faced off around the governor’s office, a group of militants came to Shogofa’s workplace and ordered the women home. “They hadn’t even taken all the city, but they came to our headquarters. The manager called an emergency meeting and they told all the women to leave,” she said. As the main breadwinner for her widowed mother and disabled brother, losing her job means destitution. So last week she decided to challenge Afghanistan’s new rulers. With about 40 or 50 other women, she walked to the seat of city government chanting: “No fear, we are united.” “We hoped we could tell the governor how we…

Of all the posters and billboards that line the streets of German towns and cities, the ones most likely to stop commuters in their tracks are those bathed in traffic-light red. Using a stark colour scheme usually exclusive to the Marxist-Leninist parties on the fringe of the German left, the posters are surprising in more ways than one: in the centre sits a bald, suited man who looks less like a leftwing rabble-rouser than a middle manager at a regional building society The bureaucrat-on-the-barricades act seems to have worked: just weeks before Germany heads to the polls on 26 September, the grey man in the suit, Social Democrat Olaf Scholz, has jostled himself into pole position to succeed chancellor Angela Merkel. Vice-chancellor in Germany’s coalition government for the last four…

One Sunday afternoon this month, a small group will gather at the Whisby nature reserve near Lincoln to explore its trails and spot wildlife. Before they set off, they may enjoy a hot drink from the cafe or apply sunscreen but one thing they are certain to do is join together in prayer. This is Lincoln Forest Church, part of a growing network of Christian communities that meet outdoors to worship and engage with the natural world. “We are a church without walls,” said Melanie Carroll, who started the group five years ago. The Church of England plans to set up 10,000 new Christian communities over the next 10 years, many led by lay people and based in village halls, cafes, warehouses, empty shops and other unconventional venues. But not…

Aviation tanked in 2020. The number of people taking flights fell three-quarters compared with 2019 levels and, as a result, there was a significant drop in associated greenhouse gas emissions. But as countries open up and people begin to fly again, aviation is expected to see a slow return to previous levels. The industry expects a return to 2019 passenger numbers globally by 2023 and to be back on track with previous growth projections within a couple of decades. All this is bad news for global heating. CO2 emissions from the industry are likely to triple by 2050. But if the world is to limit global heating to 1.5C, it needs to have hit net-zero emissions by this time. Aviation is a complicated sector to decarbonise. It has some prickly…

He wanted to be Franklin Roosevelt; he ended up as Jimmy Carter. That’s the conventional conservative wisdom on Joe Biden and his handling of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. “The Afghan debacle will destroy the Biden presidency,” declared one longtime Republican pollster, confident that Kabul 2021 will do to Biden what Tehran 1979 did to Carter. The assumption is that those initial, chaotic scenes at Kabul airport, with desperate Afghans clinging to planes as they took off, the heartrending stories of faithful servants of the US left to the mercies of the Taliban, and the sight of Afghanistan’s new masters posing with abandoned US military hardware worth billions, will add up to a humiliation that the American public will not forgive. The assumption is that defeat is unpalatable – and…

In his hospital records, the esteemed actor David Harewood is described as a “large Black man”. This means that during his stay on a psychiatric ward, aged 23, he was administered diazepam (to manage anxiety) and haloperidol (used to treat schizophrenia, delirium and agitation) at four times the recommended level. “Were they afraid of me?” he asks upon reading the files that detail the breakdown he had more than 30 years ago. There’s a racist history of classifying black men as “giant” or “superhuman”. Their perceived size has long been used as a justification for brutality. Think of the 2014 murder of Michael Brown, shot dead by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. Wilson described himself as “like a five-year-old holding on to [wrestler] Hulk Hogan”. “I’m absolutely convinced…