The Weekly Lift - April 21, 2022

This week's selection of positive headlines and articles*:

Ukraine Crisis: For Patriotism And Profit, Ukrainians Line Up To Buy Wartime Stamp

The Globe and Mail (Canada) reports that "the crowd of hundreds outside Kyiv’s Central Post Office was growing restless. Some of them had been standing in line for more than eight hours – just to buy a stamp.

Not just any stamp. A stamp depicting a lone Ukrainian soldier flipping the bird at a grey Russian warship, perfectly capturing this country’s spirit of defiance through one of the iconic moments of this 56-day-old war.

The image is based on the response of Roman Hrybov, the commander of a State Border Guard Service unit of 19 who were stationed on Snake Island, a Ukrainian outpost in the Black Sea, at the start of the war.

On Feb. 25, the second day of the war, the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, the guided-missile cruiser Moskva, approached the island and demanded that the Ukrainian garrison capitulate.

“This is a Russian warship,” someone says in an audio recording of the exchange between Cdr. Hrybov and the Moskva that quickly went viral in Ukraine and beyond. “I ask you to lay down your arms and surrender to avoid bloodshed and unnecessary deaths. Otherwise, you will be bombed.”

Cdr. Hrybov can be heard playfully asking a member of his unit if he should make his position clear. He then responds with a line that is now on billboards and bumper stickers all over this war-ravaged country: “Russian warship, go fuck yourself.”

Cdr. Hrybov and the other guards were initially believed to have been immediately killed, though it turned out they had been taken prisoner. All 19 returned to Ukraine in a prisoner swap late last month, and Cdr. Hrybov was awarded a medal.

The episode grew even more famous after the Moskva, which had fired cruise missiles at Ukrainian cities throughout the first seven weeks of the war, sank on April 14. Though Russia claims the warship accidentally caught fire and then sank while being towed to dock for repairs, Ukraine says it went down after being struck by two anti-ship missiles.

Among the hundreds in line outside Kyiv’s main post office were people who saw buying one of the commemorative stamps as part patriotic duty, part souvenir collecting. A million copies of the flipping-off-the-warship stamp were printed, and more than 700,000 have already been sold.

“Maybe it’s our patriotism. We want to help. The money will go to support the army, as far as we know,” said Anna Kobushkina, a 25-year-old surgeon who said she had been in line for an hour.

Each stamp costs 24 Ukrainian hryvnya, with four going to the country’s armed forces. “I will buy as many as they give me,” she said.

With hundreds of people ahead of her, and those at the front starting to shove and jostle, Ms. Kobushkina looked to have little chance of reaching the post office before the end of the business day.

She said Cdr. Hrybov’s act was “a beautiful moment” that captured the country’s fight for independence, adding that she hoped to one day pass the stamps on to her grandchildren.

“By their actions they demonstrated that even a small group of Ukrainian people are not willing to surrender,” Ihor Krupsky, a 56-year-old pharmacist who had also been in line for an hour, said of the soldiers who defied the Moskva. “For me personally, this means that even though Ukraine is not a big country, we will resist the Russian aggressor by any means possible.”

Some believe the Snake Island guards’ defiance has helped inspire Ukraine’s broader war effort, which has seen the country’s smaller military defy predictions by holding off one of the largest armies in the world. Earlier this month, Russia was forced to abandon – at least temporarily – its attempt to seize Kyiv in order to focus its forces on a smaller battleground in the east.

But in a country that has taken a catastrophic economic hit since the start of the war, many who were lined up to buy stamps Wednesday were doing so less out of patriotism than a need to make some money. The International Monetary Fund predicted this week that Ukraine’s gross domestic product would fall 35 per cent this year, almost entirely as a result of the war.

The stamps cost the equivalent of about $1 each at the post office, but packs of 12 were selling for several thousand dollars on eBay and other websites Wednesday.

For the most part, people want to buy them and then just sell them, said Oleksey Oleksandrovich, a 22-year-old who gave only his first and patronymic names and said he had been in line since 5 a.m. He planned to immediately sell any stamps he was able to purchase to a friend, who intended to hold on to them a little longer to see if prices continued to rise.

Ihor Smilyanskyi, the chief executive officer of the national postal service, Ukrposhta, was mobbed by stamp seekers when he arrived outside the main post office – which is on Kyiv’s central Independence Square – Wednesday afternoon. Some demanded that volunteers helping the country’s military be given priority access to the stamps.

Mr. Smilyanskyi told The Globe and Mail that, even if most of the people lined up at the post office were trying to make some money, the prices being paid for the stamp elsewhere spoke for themselves.

“I think the popularity of the stamp across the world is sending the message to the Russian army where it needs to go. And I’m happy this message will be sent more than one million times.”

He said Ukrposhta was already designing more limited-edition patriotic stamps. He even hinted that the Moskva might again feature on one, since it is now a “submarine.”

Global Development: Europe’s Phase-Out Of Russian Energy Over the Ukraine Crisis Could Mean Opportunity For African Countries

The Washington Post (US) reports that "N.J. Ayuk tried for years to tout African oil and gas projects to European governments and companies.

“I used to beg for them to take my calls,” said Ayuk, the executive chairman of the African Energy Chamber. But with oil price volatility shaking global markets amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and fears of fuel shortages, European nations are looking more closely at Africa’s abundant natural gas as a potential new source of energy, he said.

“Right now, I think they have me on speed dial,” Ayuk said. The change reflects the shifting geopolitical landscape in Europe, with ripple effects around the world, from the Russian invasion. Economic sanctions by the European Union, the?United States and Japan have hobbled long-standing Russian trade ties.

That means suppliers such as the underdeveloped frontier energy markets of Africa may find new energy sector investors in Europe who can no longer rely on Russian natural gas, which has long been their dominant source.

Ayuk and other African energy officials head this week to the European Commission in Brussels, followed by Berlin, for talks on Africa’s role in Europe’s energy transition. The African Energy Chamber is the continent’s largest energy advocacy group representing private companies.

“We want to see things signed. We want to see them commit to bringing in technology, funding and financing to get things done,” Ayuk said. “If we don’t have a fierce urgency of now, we are going to lose this moment.”

The E.U. buys?45 percent?of its imported gas from Russia, according to the International Energy Agency. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on March 11 that the E.U. would outline proposals by mid-May to phase out the E.U.’s dependency on Russian fossil fuels by 2027.

That means opportunity for Africa, which has some of the world’s largest natural gas reserves. The African supply could replace some of the 155 billion cubic meters that Europe imported from Russia last year.

Tim McPhie, European Commission spokesman, confirmed meetings starting Tuesday in Brussels with several African energy delegations. “When it comes to finding alternative gas suppliers, the E.U. is in discussion with a very wide range of potential exporters — including a number of countries in Africa,” McPhie said.

“The E.U. has a clear objective to diversify our gas suppliers in the short term, while retaining our focus on boosting renewables and phasing out fossil fuels to meet our climate goals,” the spokesperson said. “At present, [liquefied natural gas] offers the fastest option to diversify our gas supplies.”

The shift in global energy markets raises questions about how countries can meet their climate goals under the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. Europe has said it wants to reduce imports of natural gas from 2030 and move toward green energy alternatives such as renewable hydrogen.

Vincent Obisie-Orlu, a natural resource researcher at Good Governance Africa, a nonprofit organization, said Europe had long discouraged Africa from expanding its oil and gas exports and encouraged a move toward more renewable energy resources.

Now, he said, there is a risk that a rush to help Europe could push aside climate ambitions.“It is going to be a challenge, but this may be an opportunity for Europe and Africa to collaborate on the energy transition on the continent,” Obisie-Orlu said. “It’s going to mean Europe will be able to help and support African countries develop new renewable energy resources.”

Another question for Africa is how quickly gas can flow north to Europe after years of underinvestment in the sector amid demand and price fluctuations, and growing pressure on companies and banks to stop investing in carbon-intensive oil and gas projects. “Africa can’t just turn on the tap and gas will see Europe,” Ayuk said. “There are a lot of things that have to happen.”

An example of the changing dynamics is the proposed Trans-Saharan gas pipeline?recently resurrected by the Algerian government, which could send up to 30 billion cubic meters a year from Nigeria to Algeria via Niger and on to Europe.

In February, the three countries agreed to resume the 2,565-mile project that will link Warri in Nigeria to Hassi R’Mel in Algeria, transiting Niger. Algeria could also build upon its existing links through Italy.

“The big question is how are you going to fund it, how are you going to finance it, to drive that gas into Europe?” said Ayuk of the estimated $12-to-$15-billion project. “It could be a game-changer for Africa and for Europe.”

However, European countries have signaled they favor supporting existing energy infrastructure instead of building costly new pipelines. Countries that could benefit would be Nigeria, Angola, Senegal, Mauritania and Mozambique.

“The gas producers have some real opportunities if they can seize it in time,” said J. Peter Pham, former U.S. special envoy for the Sahel. “Certainly, this vulnerability in Europe and America’s desire to help the Europeans cope with this has made it a friendlier environment to at least talk about rational investment in fossil fuel, both for Europe’s energy security but also for Africa’s energy transition.”

Still, developing such projects as the Saharan pipeline from Nigeria also comes with security challenges, Pham cautioned. Militant groups in Nigeria’s oil-producing Niger Delta region have threatened to resume attacks amid disagreements over the share of oil wealth. The country has also grappled with kidnappings for ransom and deadly Islamist insurgencies.

“As attractive of a proposal as it may seem these days, the flow of energy to Europe via a Nigeria-Niger-Algeria corridor will remain — no pun intended — a pipe dream unless security is established along the entire route,” Pham said. “As things currently stand, it’s hard to imagine construction, much less actual deliveries being made through the Sahel.”

Similar security questions threaten a project in Mozambique, which has about 2.8 trillion cubic meters of natural gas reserves, or almost 1 percent of the world’s total reserves. An insurgency by Islamic State-linked militants in the northern Cabo Delgado province suspended a multibillion-dollar liquefied natural gas project by France’s TotalEnergies in April.

Next door, Tanzania has the sixth-largest gas reserves in Africa, estimated at 1.6 billion cubic meters, and is scheduled to begin construction on a $30 billion liquefied natural gas project in 2023.

Tanzanian Energy Minister January Makamba said interest in developing the country’s deep-water gas fields had picked up during global climate negotiations last year, with some considering gas as a bridging fuel between hydrocarbons and renewables. Further momentum came after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he said.

Some international oil companies “have abandoned their production source in Russia, and they have market commitments in which Tanzanian gas would cover those commitments,” he said in an interview.

“We have gas, and if geopolitical developments somehow created an opportunity for us, we’re not going to complain about it,” Makamba said. “That said, we don’t want to be seen as war profiteers.”

Society: Acts Of Benevolence Rise Amid COVID-19, Boosting Happiness - UN

The Jerusalem Post (Israel) reports that "the?COVID-19 pandemic has led to increases in acts of benevolence, which are thought to increase people’s overall happiness. Happiness is low, however, in countries that experience violent conflict and extreme poverty. These are key findings of this year’s World Happiness Report, published the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network on March 18.

Marking its 10th anniversary, the 2022 World Happiness Report examines factors that tend to lead to greater happiness, and measures happiness in 146 countries and territories around the world, giving each one a happiness score based on six key variables: GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity, and freedom from corruption. These are scored mainly based on the results of a Gallup World Poll, which asks respondents core questions in 14 areas: business & economic, citizen engagement, communications & technology, diversity (social issues), education & families, emotions (well-being), environment & energy, food & shelter, government and politics, law & order (safety), health, religion & ethics, transportation, and work.

The World Happiness Report for 2022 put special emphasis on the far-ranging effects of COVID-19 on happiness. The team of researchers examined how life under COVID-19 has changed for people in different circumstances and found that the pandemic brought not only pain and suffering but also an increase in social support and benevolence.

“COVID-19 is the biggest health crisis we’ve seen in more than a century,” said Professor John Helliwell of the University of British Columbia, one of the lead researchers behind the report. “Now that we have two years of evidence, we are able to assess not just the importance of benevolence and trust, but to see how they have contributed to well-being during the pandemic.”

According to the report, “A central finding continues to be the extent to which the quality of the social context, especially the extent to which people trust their governments and have trust in the benevolence of others, supports their happiness before, during, and likely after the pandemic.”

Trust in?government and the benevolence of others not only correlates with happiness but also with a reduced death toll from the disease. “Countries where people trusted their governments and each other experienced lower COVID-19 death tolls and set the stage for maintaining or rebuilding a sense of common purpose to deliver happier, healthier, and more sustainable lives,” the researchers reported.

Helliwell, added “We found during 2021 remarkable worldwide growth in all three acts of kindness monitored in the Gallup World Poll. Helping strangers, volunteering, and donations in 2021 were strongly up in every part of the world, reaching levels almost 25% above their pre-pandemic prevalence. This surge of benevolence, which was especially great for the helping of strangers, provides powerful evidence that people respond to help others in need, creating in the process more happiness for the beneficiaries, good examples for others to follow, and better lives for themselves.”

While trust and acts of kindness correlate with a high degree of happiness, “at the very bottom of the ranking we find societies that suffer from conflict and extreme poverty, notably we find that people in Afghanistan evaluate the quality of their own lives as merely 2.4 out of 10,” notes another lead researcher on the team, Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, the director of the Wellbeing Research Center at the University of Oxford. “This presents a stark reminder of the material and immaterial damage that war does to its many victims and the fundamental importance of peace and stability for human wellbeing.”

The 2022 report scores and ranks countries based on average life evaluation scores over a three-year period, 2019-2021. For the fifth year in a row, Finland takes the top position in the rankings. It is followed by seven additional Northern European countries: Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Sweden, and Norway. The top-ranking non-European country on the happiness scale is Israel, which takes the ninth spot. The next country in the Middle East and North Africa region on the list, Bahrain, ranks 21 st overall.

Among the countries where happiness is lowest and declined the most since last year, are two MENA countries: War-torn Afghanistan, where the Taliban took control of the government as US forces withdrew, is ranked 146, the absolute bottom of the list.

Lebanon, amid one of the largest financial crises in modern history, is ranked next to the lowest, at 145th on the list. The 146 countries scored and ranked in the World Happiness Report include 21 from the MENA region. Data was not available from Djibouti, Oman, Qatar, Somalia, Sudan, or Syria."

Gender Development: This Venice Biennale Has A New Star: Women

The New York Times (US) writes that "the?Venice Biennale, the world’s longest-running major survey of contemporary art, will reconvene this weekend after a yearlong postponement because of the pandemic. Barring another coronavirus surge, the 59th edition of the world’s oldest international exhibition, which opens to the public on Saturday and runs through Nov. 27, should attract hundreds of thousands of visitors.

But while the Biennale’s popularity is beyond dispute, its track record in terms of gender representation has been lackluster. For the last 127 years, its flagship show — the International Art Exhibition — has been curated mainly by men, and has featured a predominantly male roster of artists. As recently as 1995, roughly nine out of 10 artists in the exhibition, curated by Jean Clair, were men. It was not until 2019, under the artistic director Ralph Rugoff, that gender parity was achieved for the first time.

This year, the male-female ratio is being radically reversed. The Biennale’s Italian-born artistic director, Cecilia Alemani, the director and chief curator of New York’s High Line Art, has chosen 213 artists for the central exhibition — and roughly nine out of 10 are women.

Ms. Alemani, the first Italian woman to curate the event, is making up for more than a century of low female visibility by filling her show with female artists, most of whom have never shown work at the Biennale. Her title for the exhibition, “The Milk of Dreams" is borrowed from that of a book by the British-born Mexican Surrealist painter Leonora Carrington (1917-2011), one of the many overlooked women whose contribution to art history will be honored.

“We have been obscuring the work of women artists in an unfortunately dramatic way,” Ms. Alemani said in a recent video interview. She added that, despite the “radical changes” brought by the #MeToo movement in the last few years, her native country, Italy, remained “very, very sexist.” The Biennale, she said, was “not a representation of our society anymore.” “It’s important to call these things out,” she said.

Art-world insiders have applauded Ms. Alemani’s women-dominated Biennale. “It is bold and smart and overdue,” said Allan Schwartzman, a New York-based art adviser and the principal of Schwartzman&. “She’s breaking a mold.”

He said that though feminism has affected art more “than virtually anything in the postwar period” — introducing a more intimate scale and brighter colors to painting and sculpture, as well as opening a path for the “personal and diaristic” — its impact has not been sufficiently acknowledged by scholars, museums and the art market. He said he hoped this year’s Biennale would present the work of women “as forming a somewhat different history.”

Male artists exhibiting in Venice this year have embraced the influx of women. “I have been fascinated to see the art world become more open over the years,” said Raqib Shaw, an Indian-born artist based in London who is exhibiting new work inspired by Italian masterpieces at the International Gallery of Modern Art at the Ca’ Pesaro in Venice. “It is great that the majority of artists are women — long overdue.”

The Biennale takes place on two sprawling sites: the Giardini, Venice’s public park, and the Arsenale, the former shipyards and armories that provided the Venetian Republic with its naval power for centuries. Both sites are speckled with national pavilions that serve as cultural outposts for the countries they represent. There are a total of 80 national pavilions this year, with five countries participating for the first time: Cameroon, Namibia, Nepal, Oman and Uganda.

The pavilions always reflect the global geopolitical situation, and this year, all eyes will be on the Ukrainian pavilion and its artist, Pavlo Makov, who will present a version of his work “The Fountain of Exhaustion,” an installation of bronze funnels spouting water that he conceived in 1995 but never fully realized.

Ukraine’s inclusion in the 2022 Biennale was nearly compromised by Russia’s invasion of the country on Feb. 24. But then, hours after the invasion, a curator of the Ukrainian pavilion, Maria Lanko, a founder and curator of the Naked Room gallery in Kyiv, loaded the work’s main components into the trunk of her car and set off on the long drive to Venice.

“We started a new calendar that day,” Ms. Lanko said at the Talking Galleries conference in New York this month. “Now, we only count the days of the war.”

The invasion ended Russia’s own participation in the Biennale after the Russian pavilion’s Lithuanian curator — and the artists who were set to show work — walked out on Feb. 27, effectively shuttering the space. The next day, the Biennale issued a statement noting that the curator and artists had resigned, “thereby canceling the participation in the 59th International Art Exhibition.”

Other national pavilions will be making history in quieter ways. The United States will be represented for the first time by a Black woman, Simone Leigh. And the United Kingdom will be represented for the first time by a Black woman, Sonia Boyce.

Though Ms. Boyce welcomed the accolade, she said it was something of a mixed blessing.“I’m very fortunate to be recognized for the work I’ve been doing,” she said in a phone interview. “But, in terms of being first, it really does speak of the large-scale inequities that there are in the visual arts.”

Ms. Boyce also questioned the notion of being identified as a “representative,” because she said her selection might be viewed as “not a question of individual merits, but of representative merits.”

Over the last few decades, in tandem with the art market explosion, Venice has become a place to see and to be seen, a stomping ground for the extremely rich, who moor their glimmering yachts in the Grand Canal. The preview days at the Biennale have turned into such a parade of wealth and glitter that some art lovers — like Mr. Schwartzman — skip them altogether.

“What’s changed with the Biennale, particularly at the opening, is the extent to which it’s become as much about a fashion and celebrity world as an art world,” he said. Some of the artists exhibiting at this year’s event acknowledged that the wealth and glamour swirling around Venice could be intoxicating.

“As an artist, it always takes resilience and clarity not to be seduced by success or big money, whether in Venice or elsewhere,” said the German artist Katharina Grosse, who will be exhibiting a site-specific work inside the Espace Louis Vuitton in Venice that consists of an image of her hands printed on a mesh metal fabric.

Still, she wrote in an email, the Biennale has, for a century, been a “dynamic and revelatory environment” for the arts — and it remains so. “If Venice were only to be about collectors on yachts,” she added, “nobody would come.”

Solidarity: In Kharkiv, Damascus Or Beirut, Concerts In The Middle Of The Ruins

Le Monde (France) reports that "around him, on Victory Square in Kharkiv, the buildings are ripped and the streets deserted. Alone in the middle of the ruins, Ukrainian Dionysys Karachevtsev interprets the prelude to?Suite No. 5?for solo cello by Johann Sebastian Bach. Seen hundreds of thousands of times on YouTube, this video is not the only one posted by this professional cellist.?"I am launching my project in the streets of Kharkiv to raise funds for humanitarian aid and the restoration of the city's architecture," he explained in one of his videos.?Let's unite to revive our city together!"

Shortly before Dionysyoshev, it was violinist Vera Lytovchenko, a refugee in the basement of Ukraine's second largest city, who played for her fellow citizens by broadcasting a video on social networks. Very attached to her city - she is a music teacher at the college and soloist of the opera orchestra - she chose to perform a Ukrainian folk song by composer Mykola Lysenko:?"To make people forget the war for a few minutes."

In early summer 2021, South Africa experienced?a wave of riots and violence following the imprisonment of Jacob Zuma, who presided over the country from 2009 to 2018. In Durban, a city hard hit by events, a piano teacher, Jenny Bowes, found an abandoned instrument in the middle of a crossroads. She settled down on the keyboard and started playing. His interpretation of the South African national anthem, filmed by his brother, quickly went viral.

The day after?explosion on the port of Beirut that devastated the city on August 4, May Melki sits in front of her piano, intact, and puts her fingers on the keys. In her destroyed living room, filmed by her granddaughter, she plays?Auld Lang Syne?("it's only a goodbye") and several pieces of Arabic music. The emotion aroused by this video has led to a surge of solidarity among many musicians around the world, some of whom have launched fundraising campaigns to help disaster victims.

Now known as "the Pianist of Yarmouk" (his nickname and the title of his autobiography, published in La Découverte in 2018),?musician Aeham Ahmad, now 34, lives in Europe, far from the Yarmouk neighborhood of Damascus, where he grew up and gave street concerts, in the middle of the ruins, at the beginning of the war in Syria. His piano, which he moved through the streets with a trailer, was destroyed by Daesh in the spring of 2015."

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