It's A Sin: A series that will tug on your heartstrings

By KARINA SHAH

An unknown virus, misinformation and uncertainty about the future. No, we’re not talking about coronavirus for once. It’s A Sin, a new five-part miniseries from Channel 4, delicately tackles the HIV and AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, with the backdrop of queer London.

Created by Russell T Davies, who was also behind the series Queer as Folk and Years and Years, the show chronicles the lives of three gay men who set off from their hometowns to begin new lives at university. A seemingly light set-up, the story takes a turn for the worse as a deadly new virus is on the rise.

It’s A Sin opens in September 1981, with an outwardly perfect nuclear family sat around their dimly lit dining table, surrounded by retro lampshades and boldly printed curtains. We are introduced to 18-year-old Ritchie (Olly Alexander), the show’s protagonist, who is about to move to the big city: London.

His story really begins when he meets Roscoe (Omari Douglas) and Colin (Callum Scott Howells). As the three young men navigate the capital’s gay scene and university life in general, as members of a new family of their own choice,  they are introduced to a mysterious disease that seems to disproportionately affect gay men.

In the early 1980s, reports of severe immune deficiency began to rise around the world. Scientists were dumbfounded by this new disease, which worked by attacking the body’s immune system, weakening its ability to fight infections.

Navigating an increasingly homophobic society, Ritchie initially responds to this disease with denial. “I don’t believe it, I don’t believe a word of it,” he says in a monologue of denial, while the camera pans to him on the dance floor of Heaven, the iconic gay club in London. As the shadow of AIDS closes in, Ritchie and his friends tackle misinformation and stigma.

The miniseries scarily mirrors our current reality. Much like today’s coronavirus, there were many rumours circulating about HIV and AIDS, due to fear of the unknown. One of the most common misconceptions was that only gay people could contract the virus – it was even labelled the “gay plague”. This stigma cast a large shadow on the gay community, meaning that many people suffered in silence until their last days of life, as shown in It’s A Sin.

It’s A Sin presents a candid authenticity that could only be achieved by someone who has lived through and experienced the events themselves, which Russell T Davies did. The soundtrack especially gets an honourable mention – it features some of the biggest smash hits of the decade, including Blondie, Wham! Pet Shop Boys and Queen. Paired with the impeccable acting of the young and upcoming actors, many of whom weren’t even alive in the 1980s, we are transported back in time.

Davies preserves the joyous scenes of 1980s London, all while sensitively portraying the realities of the disease’s devastating progression. We see how HIV and AIDS affected the individuals themselves, their social circle and even families who discover their son’s sexuality through the most haunting circumstances. No spoilers, but keep your box of tissues close to hand. HIV and AIDS have claimed the lives of millions of people across the world – and this fictional telling is no exception.

It’s A Sin serves as a perfect reminder of the not-so-distant-past that burdened thousands of gay men. It is a poignant love letter to all those lost during the AIDS epidemic, and to those allies who unconditionally supported them.

Available worldwide on HBO.

The Carbon Footprint Explained

Frank Sinatra's songs + lyrics

OM SINATRA is a very enjoyable section of an Argentinian website for learners of English. Frank Sinatra's voice and his clear diction are perfect ingredients for practising English, so this section provides wide possibilities for ESL students and teachers. Here you will find 50 best lyrics, together with audios, some videos, glossaries and explanations. Choose your favourite song with on-screen original lyrics. Enjoy timeless classics such as My Way, New York, New York, or Strangers in the Night!

Amazon is a disaster for workers

Amazon is a disaster for workers. Film Nomadland glosses over that.

By Jessa Crispin, The Guardian, 23 March 2021

This article is more than 2 months ol

‘Amazon is putting cameras in the trucks of its delivery drivers, monitors on the bodies of its warehouse workers, and security cameras both inside and outside its facilities.’ Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

Tue 23 Mar 2021 14.15 GMT

The new movie Nomadland may have received six nominations for the Academy Awards this year, but it’s also been met with its fair share of controversy. Telling the story of Fern (played by Frances McDormand), a woman who lives an itinerant life, moving from state to state to follow work, sleeping in her van modified into cramped living quarters, the depiction is, some critics say, too cheery. She lives this life because she chooses to, hitting the road after a tragedy, not because she has to. And the work she does supports her lifestyle and she wants for nothing more.

Nomadland shows Fern working in an Amazon warehouse; the makers of the film received permission from Amazon to film on location. The work that Fern does looks tedious and difficult, but let’s just say there are no labor violations shown on screen. Fern does this menial labor to remain true to herself and the life she wants to lead, and Amazon essentially funds her authenticity.

Meanwhile, in the real world, Amazon is putting cameras in the trucks of its delivery drivers, monitors on the bodies of its warehouse workers, and security cameras inside and outside its facilities. It creates heat maps to detect if too many employees are gathering in the same place at the same time to discourage both fraternization and discussions of forming a union. And the company touts all of this, as effective methods for boosting productivity and profit margins.

The horrors of working at Amazon warehouse facilities have been circulating for some time. Employees, not granted long enough bathroom breaks that allow them to travel all the way from their position to the facilities and back, have reported peeing in bottles. They have said they are sometimes forced to stand in line after work for security screenings to make sure no one is smuggling out product, time they are not compensated for. Warehouses are often not temperature controlled, meaning employees have to work in sweltering conditions in the summer and in cold temperatures in the winter.

But the increased surveillance is a new level of indignity. The pandemic has increased the volume of packages being handled by Amazon delivery drivers, in some regions doubling their workload. Workers have complained about having to work at backbreaking speeds to meet their quotas, about injuries and exhaustion. These workers are often contractors, meaning they are working without the protections or benefits that come with full-time employment.

Instead of giving their overloaded workers a pay raise to match the increased labor, or hiring them full-time so they can receive health insurance to cover their repetitive strain injuries, Amazon has responded by putting cameras in the delivery vans to carefully monitor performance. The cameras attach to the ceiling of the van, with one lens pointed directly at the driver’s face. Now if a driver cuts corners in order to meet their impossible quotas for the day – running a stop sign here, peeing in a bottle to avoid having to stop to find a public restroom there – it will be reported immediately to Amazon headquarters. Even things like U-turns, braking too quickly, and other minor traffic issues are automatically reported without notifying the driver. Human beings are being expected to reach the performance levels of machines, and to go without basic human needs like food, bathroom breaks, sleep and leisure time.

Amazon trots out the usual answers when questioned about the increased monitoring: they are concerned with safety and fulfillment. They have delivery promises to keep, as their Prime customers expect their orders to magically appear on their doorsteps the day after, or even hours later, their orders are made. It’s about customer satisfaction and keeping the streets safe. (It’s not clear how Amazon’s failed plan to spy on its employees’ social media presence, including communications and posts made off hours, was about customer satisfaction, but I’m sure they will figure out a way to explain it eventually.)

We can debate whether Nomadland deserves the criticism it is receiving – it is, after all, a fictional film and not a documentary about the labor conditions of the working class. But it’s undeniably useful to Amazon right now to have a prestigious film providing cover for its abuses. Then again, the working conditions of its employees and contract workers have been well-known and reported for years, but the company keeps increasing its market share. Amazon doubled its profit during the pandemic, and the gap in pay between its executives and its warehouse workers continues to grow. Also the company doesn’t pay taxes. Amazon’s founder and chief executive, Jeff Bezos, saw his personal net worth grow a staggering $75bn in 2020.

Amazon can get away with it because there is an underclass of insecure workers who rely on even this underpaid, dangerous work to make ends meet. It’s not the narrative failures of one film, or even the moral failings of one CEO, that got us here; it’s the inevitable result of a society which wants to squeeze every dollar and every hour of productivity out of human beings to benefit the few. Each worker who gets fired because they ran one too many stop signs can easily be replaced by another desperate soul.

New English Words

Language is alive and forever changing. English is, by far, the fastest-growing language in the world. Reports say that ten new words, expressions or acronyms are coined every day in English. Here are some I have compiled recently. If you know of a new term and want to contribute to this list, post a comment below.

shit storm =perverse consequence of cyber bullying.

staycation =a holiday spent in one's home country rather than abroad, or one spent at home and involving day trips to local attractions.

nomophobia =panic of not having your mobile phone near you.

mumager =when a young artist's mother acts as his/her manager.

FOMO =Fear Of Missing Out any information or development when part of a social network.

infomania =the compulsive desire to check or accumulate news and information, typically via mobile phone or computer.

infoxication =information overdose as a result of infomania.

unfriend =remove someone from a list of friends or contacts on a social networking site.

oversharing =disclosing too much personal information or too many details about oneself online.

e-quaintance =a person who you only "know" through online networking.

cyberchondriac =one who imagines he/she is ill, having just read about the symptoms on the Internet.

flash mob =a large public gathering at which people perform an unusual or seemingly random act and then disperse, typically organized by means of the internet or social media.

crowdsourcing =letting the public make decisions when organizing events.

photobomb =to intrude into the background of a photograph without the subject's knowledge.

President Zelensky & The Spirit of Ukraine

 

The Ruination of Britain

By Peter Oborne

The New York Times, 21 October, 2022 

LONDON — Until very recently the British Conservative Party was able to claim, with a great deal of credibility, that it was the most successful political party in the Western world.

The party of Benjamin Disraeli, Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher has governed Britain for most of the last 200 years. Through much of that time the Conservatives have been synonymous with good sense, financial sobriety and cautious pragmatism. Despised by progressive elites, allergic to ideology, provincial rather than metropolitan, the Conservative Party rejoiced in being the stolid party of the boring middle ground. Not anymore. Today, the Conservatives are synonymous with chaos.

Liz Truss, the latest Tory prime minister to crash and burn, must bear her share of the blame. There are sound reasons for why she was forced to resign after just 44 days, the shortest term in history. It was a foolish notion to suppose that she could sack the most senior Treasury official, reinvent the laws of economic management and defy the collective wisdom of the financial markets. There was going to be only one result.

But the bigger truth is that the hapless Ms. Truss is a symptom rather than the cause of Britain’s chronic crisis of governance, which has reduced the country — once respected around the world — to a global laughingstock. The Conservative Party chose her, remember, even though she was obviously not up to the job. You didn’t need the foresight of Nostradamus to know she would fail. For the fiasco of her premiership and the disastrous state of the country, the Conservative Party must collectively take responsibility.

Oscar Wilde once wrote that to lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune, but to lose both looked like carelessness. For the Tories to lose two prime ministers in the space of three months shows, more than carelessness, that they are out of control. The government is already on its fourth finance minister this year; one of them, Kwasi Kwarteng, crashed the pound and ruined the party’s reputation for good financial management.

Like the Republicans in the United States, the Conservatives are detached from reality. In a generation, they have become a party of monomaniacs, incompetents and ideologues. Like a thoroughbred that has run one race too many, it needs putting out to grass. After a decade or two in the wilderness, perhaps the party can recover — though let’s not rule out the possibility it is finished once and for all.

That’s still a way off. In the wake of Ms. Truss’s resignation, the party announced plans to hold another leadership election, its second in three months. As with the contests that anointed Boris Johnson and Ms. Truss as prime minister, the choice will be made jointly by Tory lawmakers and party members. Even if, by some fluke, a half decent candidate won, it would not help their fortunes. The party is so riven by internal feuds, personal hatred and ideological disagreements that it has become ungovernable.

This is a perilous time. Britain is facing perhaps its biggest economic, political and even constitutional crisis since World War II. It’s daft to expect that the Conservative Party, which has done such damage over the past decade, might at last be about to govern sensibly. Two years could pass before the next general election. But Britain needs one now.

Admittedly Keir Starmer, leader of the Labour opposition, lacks charisma. Though far from brilliant, he conforms to a recent pattern of global leaders — Joe Biden in the United States and Anthony Albanese in Australia are two examples — who are reassuring even if they don’t set the world on fire. His frontline lawmakers, too, look more competent than the Tory shambles. Nor are they scarred by defeat or compromised by failure.

A growing number of Tory voters, let alone the rest of the country, are prepared to give them the time of day. That’s why a general election is in the national interest. It might seem foolhardy to expect the Conservative Party, staring down almost certain defeat, to call an election. But one of the glories of the traditional Conservative Party used to be its readiness to place country before party.

This doctrine was set out by — who else? — Winston Churchill in one of his last acts before standing down as prime minister in 1955. “The first duty of a member of Parliament,” he told an audience at his constituency of Woodford, “is to do what he thinks in his faithful and disinterested judgment is right and necessary for the honor and safety of Great Britain.”

This rhetoric may be orotund, but the argument is irrefutable. It would have been well understood by the patriotic and fair-minded Conservative Party that governed Britain with such wisdom 70 years ago. Today’s Conservatives, by contrast, cling to power for power’s sake. Besides doing further damage to the long-term reputation of their own party, their obstinacy is ensuring the ruination of Britain.

Mr. Oborne is a British journalist, broadcaster and former political commentator for The Spectator, The Daily Telegraph and The Daily Mail.

Difficulty levels and impact of climate-friendly decisions

 

We Stand With Salman Rushdie

Today, outside the New York Public Library, defending freedom of speech.

"Somebody To Love" / George Michael + Queen at Wembley Stadium 1992

Oh, those analogical times when singer and audiences would interact clapping hands together! No mobiles glued to their hands like synthetic prosthesis. What an emotional, unforgettable moment George Michael left for posterity with this electrifying rendition of "Somebody To Love". How well I remember showing my B2 students this video over the years! A musical jewel from the 90s, for sure.

New law in Spain could help families in their search for long lost relatives

Spain’s Law of Democratic Memory would condemn the regime of Francisco Franco and create a national DNA bank to help search for the disappeared.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY SANTI DONAIRE

TEXT BY JORDAN SALAMA

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, JULY 26, 2022

Well into her nineties, Rosa Coscollá still remembered with perfect clarity the day that two policemen entered her house and took away her father. The year was 1939, near the end of the Spanish Civil War. She was just 15 at the time, living in the rural town of Xeraco, south of the city of Valencia.

When she saw her father for the next and last time, he was in jail—badly wounded, malnourished, a political prisoner. Vicente Coscollá Ibáñez was soon executed, and Rosa spent the rest of her life hoping for the day when DNA samples would be obtained from the mass grave to confirm where her father was supposedly buried.

"In her final years, she was obsessed with her father's case," says Jaume Coscollá Ferrer, Rosa's nephew. "She wanted to bring her father back and bury him—even a piece of his body, a bone, anything—with her."

Rosa died last year at 98, but her family’s situation is far from unique. Thousands living in Spain today lost relatives between 1939 and 1975, when Francisco Franco’s brutal military dictatorship killed or disappeared more than 114,000 people.

This week, the country is expected to pass a new law: Ley de Memoria Democrática (Law of Democratic Memory). It will declare that the Franco regime and its politically-motivated criminal sentences were illegal, and make the Spanish government legally responsible for recovering the bodies of the disappeared.

In 1977, two years after Franco’s death, Spain’s parliament passed an amnesty law. It declared that members of the regime could not be prosecuted for crimes committed during the dictator’s rule—or during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), which saw more than half a million deaths and led to Franco’s rise to power. The law became known as El Pacto del Olvido — The Pact of Forgetting. Franco officials and allies reintegrated into public and private spheres of influence without much, if any, retribution for the human rights violations they committed.

The right-wing Franco regime targeted not only members of the political opposition, but also unionists, members of the LGBT community, Romani people, and anyone else deemed enemies of the state. Some 2,500 mass graves are now thought to be scattered throughout the country; of the tens of thousands of bodies, they may hold, only a fraction have been identified.

In addition, for the first time, all assets that were seized by the military during the dictatorship will be investigated, and any titles of nobility granted by Franco will be eliminated. The new law will also establish a State Prosecutors’ Office for Human Rights and Democratic Memory, to create a national DNA bank and to investigate cases of human rights violations during the war and the dictatorship.

Though it has faced steep political hurdles, the 2022 Law of Democratic Memory would not the first of its kind to be passed. It builds upon the country’s 2007 Law of Historical Memory, which expanded rights for victims of the war and the dictatorship but was largely criticized for falling short in its scope.

The new law brings renewed hope to families whose relatives’ disappearances have loomed over the past 80 years. “There are so many families who, disgracefully, still can’t find their relatives,” says Laura Martín, whose great-grandfather, a town mayor, was assassinated for his left-wing politics and recently exhumed from a mass grave in Paterna, Valencia.

In addition, Martín sees a need to revisit the legal cases surrounding the assassinations. Many were marred by corrupt trials, she says, and justice never was served. “This new law supports the reality of those trials, which were completely unjust.”

Spanish photographer Santi Donaire has spent the past six years documenting the exhumation of mass graves and visiting the homes of these families whose relatives were murdered during the dictatorship. His black-and-white photographs are poignant reminders of the long-lasting wounds of political violence. “This is a project about a society that tries to repair its wounds, seek justice and rediscover its past,” he says.

Donaire’s project began in 2016, when he joined a search for the still-missing remains of the Federico García Lorca. The renowned Spanish poet was executed near the city of Granada by Nationalist forces at the start of the Spanish Civil War in 1936—allegedly for his socialist political beliefs and then-rumored identity as a gay man.

“What surprised me the most was the absence of any television or newspaper media, and the lack of institutional help in the search for one of the most important authors of Western literature,” Donaire says. If there was so little interest in the search for Lorca, Donaire thought, there would be even less effort to track down regular, anonymous people who had been disappeared.

But historical and societal trauma does not easily fade with the passage of time. Often this trauma is passed down through the generations, and many families resolve themselves to silence—out of shame or fear, or in order to shield younger members from the painful past. Some descendants, like Rosa, die waiting for closure.

Others have formed associations to continue the search for traces of their lost relatives. Even those who have succeeded in properly burying their relatives, such as Martín’s great-grandfather, say that the significance of the law stretches far beyond individual families, and requires a national reckoning of memory and justice.

“The country needs this reparation, this revelation, this realization that the Spanish government committed a very large error and we cannot forget it,” Martín says. “In 80 years, time has cured absolutely nothing. We need to recognize this history in order to bury it as it deserves.”

Photojournalist Santi Donaire began documenting the excavation of mass graves in 2016, during several months as a freelancer with the ArqueoAntro Scientific Association, which was investigating the disappearance of people during the Francisco Franco regime. Donaire has continued to document cases of the disappeared on his own. Follow him on Instagram @esedonaire.

Welcome to California

 

Published in 2018 by the Guttmacher Institute in New York, Abortion Worldwide: Uneven Progress and Unequal Access provides the most current information on the incidence of abortion and unintended pregnancy worldwide, as well as trends since 1990, as women and couples increasingly want smaller families. It examines laws that regulate abortion and how they have evolved, and the current safety of abortion provision. It documents the barriers women face to preventing unintended pregnancies and obtaining safe abortions, and the impacts of unsafe abortion on women’s well-being. This study provides a comprehensive update to findings from the 2009 Abortion Worldwide: A Decade of Uneven Progress.

The situation of induced abortion has changed markedly over the past few decades. This report provides updated information on the incidence of abortion worldwide, the laws that regulate abortion and the safety of its provision. It also looks at unintended pregnancy, its relationship to abortion, and the impact that both have on women and couples who increasingly want smaller families and more control over the timing of their births.