Month: October 2022

Thousands of demonstrators defied an official ban to march Saturday against the deployment of new water storage infrastructure for agricultural irrigation in western France, some clashing with police.

Clashes between paramilitary gendarmes and demonstrators erupted with Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin reporting that 61 officers had been hurt, 22 seriously.

“Bassines Non Merci,” which organized the protest, said around 30 demonstrators had been injured. Of them, 10 had to seek medical treatment and three were hospitalized.

The group brings together environmental associations, trade unions and anti-capitalist groups against what it claims is a “water grab” by the “agro-industry” in western France.

Local officials said six people were arrested during the protest and that 4,000 people had turned up for the banned demonstration. Organizers put the turnout at 7,000.

The deployment of giant water “basins” is underway in the village of Sainte-Soline, in the Deux-Sevres department, to irrigate crops, which opponents claim distorts access to water amid drought conditions.

Around 1,500 police were deployed, according to the prefect of the Deux-Sevres department Emmanuelle Dubee.

Dubee said Friday she had wanted to limit possible “acts of violence,” referring to the clashes between demonstrators and security forces that marred a previous rally in March.

The Sainte-Soline water reserve is the second of 16 such installations, part of a project developed by a group of 400 farmers organized in a water cooperative to significantly reduce water usage in the summer.

The open-air craters, covered with a plastic tarpaulin, are filled by pumping water from surface groundwater in winter and can store up to 650,000 square meters of water.

This water is used for irrigation in summer, when rainfall is scarcer.

Opponents claim the “mega-basins” are wrongly reserved for large export-oriented grain farms and deprive the community of access to essential resources.

Source: Voice of America

A battle is brewing around Europe’s rooftop over the planet’s most precious resource.

The crystal-clear waters from the Alps could become increasingly contested as the effects of climate change and glacier melt become more apparent. Italy wants them for crop irrigation in the spring and summer. Swiss authorities want to hold up flows to help hydroelectric plants rev up, when needed.

For the first time in four years, government envoys from eight Alpine countries — big, small and tiny — were meeting under a grouping known as the Alpine Convention, which was set up 30 years ago to help coordinate life, leisure and the limited resources from Europe’s most celebrated peaks.

The envoys in Brig, Switzerland, representing pint-sized principality Monaco and small Slovenia as well as powerhouses like France, Germany and Italy, focused attention Thursday on what’s known as the Simplon Alliance. Named after an Alpine pass between Italy and Switzerland, it aims to make transportation in the mountains eco-friendly, such as by favoring rail over roads, electric vehicles and public transportation over private cars.

But with global warming causing a worrying shrinkage in Alpine glaciers this year, the issue of water frozen up in the mountains, or showered and snowed on them, is growing in importance. Environmental advocates say jockeying for water isn’t being addressed with enough urgency; they want the Alpine countries to do more to secure the future of the resource that’s been bountiful for centuries.

While many parts of the world have grappled with water woes, well-irrigated and relatively rich Europe has been largely spared so far. Droughts and wildfires raise seasonal worries, but there typically is enough water for agriculture, hydropower, ski resorts, and human consumption. Swiss children were once taught their country was home to the continent’s “water tower,” according to Maria Lezzi, head of Switzerland’s territorial development office.

However, factors like global warming, the fallout from Russia’s war in Ukraine on energy supplies and economic demands have made the issue more pressing.

Last month, Swiss authorities authorized a seven-month increase in the amount of water available for electricity generation from 45 of Switzerland’s 1,500 hydraulic plants — hoping to churn out up to 150 gigawatts more power. Alluding to the possible knock-on effect, the Swiss said the move could temporarily affect fish migration, “which could make replenishing fish populations more difficult in 2023.”

Meanwhile, sparse summer rainfall and a punishing heat wave in northern Italy — which melted snowfields and glaciers in the area — dried up the Po River, jeopardized drinking water and threatened irrigation in what’s known as the Italian food valley.

The “9th report on the State of the Alps” — drafted by the Swiss hosts — notes that water supply is a “particularly pressing issue” because the Alps are a huge reservoir of water, which ultimately flows to the benefit of 170 million people along some of Europe’s most famous rivers, including the Danube, Po, Rhine and Rhone.

A draft of the report, obtained by The Associated Press, noted the need for “consistent availability of Alpine water” for industry, agriculture, hydropower and other uses, adding: “Climate change puts these functions under pressure, as glaciers are receding, and precipitation regimes are constantly changing.”

“Reduced quantities of water and limited reliability of water supply will be a major issue in the coming decades,” it added.

Kaspar Schuler, director of CIPRA International, a commission devoted to protecting the Alps based in tiny Liechtenstein, said governments have done well to put water on the agenda but stopped short of steps to tackle the issue — by setting up working groups, expanding research, or coming up with ways that water can be better shared in the future.

“The description of the difficulties is well done by the Swiss, but they have still no courage to really address the elephant in the room,” said Schuler.

While Alpine resorts and villages rely on water, the major upstream users are Switzerland’s hydropower plants, which want to hold on to the water until it’s most needed to power turbines that provide some 60% of the country’s electricity.

But the biggest consumers of the water are downstream — industrial areas like Grenoble and Annecy in France, Austria’s capital Vienna, and areas around Bolzano in Italy’s South Tyrol are likely to feel an impact.

The southern Alpine towns, especially in France and Italy with their drier climates, are more likely to undergo water shortages than the northern towns, the report said. “This is particularly true of inner-Alpine dry valleys such as the Aosta Valley in northwestern Italy, already affected by significant water stress.”

CIPRA’s Schuler suggested that many have become too complacent about the Alps’ bountiful waters — and those days may be over soon.

“Until now, all the non-Alpine countries — the lowlands — were happy that the Alps have been providing so much: landscape for leisure and sports, ski resorts, and the water as much as everybody needs,” he said. “So far, everybody was happy, and the Alps delivered.”

“In future it will be a battle … about these resources because especially the lack of water can really harm a lot of people,” he said.

Environment Minister Uros Brezan of Slovenia, which is set to take over the Alpine Convention’s presidency, said regional authorities were not taking the issue lightly.

“I think the member states of the European Union and also members of the Alpine Convention are well aware that [the] water scarcity problem cannot be solved only within the national borders, but has to be addressed internationally,” he said.

Source: Voice of America        

Jerry Lee Lewis, the untamable rock ‘n’ roll pioneer whose outrageous talent, energy and ego collided on such definitive records as “Great Balls of Fire” and “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” and sustained a career otherwise upended by personal scandal, died Friday morning at 87.

The last survivor of a generation of groundbreaking performers that included Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry and Little Richard, Lewis died at his Mississippi home, south of Memphis, Tennessee, representative Zach Farnum said in a release. The news came two days after the publication of an erroneous TMZ report of his death, later retracted.

Of all the rock rebels to emerge in the 1950s, few captured the new genre’s attraction and danger as unforgettably as the Louisiana-born piano player who called himself “The Killer.”Tender ballads were best left to the old folks. Lewis was all about lust and gratification, with his leering tenor and demanding asides, violent tempos and brash glissandi, cocky sneer and crazy blond hair. He was a one-man stampede who made the fans scream and the keyboards swear, his live act so combustible that during a 1957 performance of “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” on “The Steve Allen Show,” chairs were thrown at him like buckets of water on an inferno.

“There was rockabilly. There was Elvis. But there was no pure rock ’n ’roll before Jerry Lee Lewis kicked in the door,” a Lewis admirer once observed. That admirer was Jerry Lee Lewis.

But in his private life, he raged in ways that nearly ended his career.

For a brief time, in 1958, he was a contender to replace Presley as rock’s prime hit maker after the latter was drafted into the Army. But while Lewis toured in England, the press learned three damaging things: He was married to 13-year-old (possibly even 12-year-old) Myra Gale Brown, she was his cousin, and he was still married to his previous wife. His tour was canceled, he was blacklisted from the radio and his earnings dropped overnight to virtually nothing.

“I probably would have rearranged my life a little bit different, but I never did hide anything from people,” Lewis told The Wall Street Journal in 2014 when asked about the marriage. “I just went on with my life as usual.”

Struggles

Over the following decades, Lewis struggled with drug and alcohol abuse, legal disputes and physical illness. Two of his many marriages ended in his wives’ early deaths. Brown herself divorced him in the early 1970s and would later allege physical and mental cruelty that nearly drove her to suicide.

“If I was still married to Jerry, I’d probably be dead by now,” she told People magazine in 1989.

Lewis reinvented himself as a country performer in the 1960s, and the music industry eventually forgave him, long after he stopped having hits. He won three Grammys, and he recorded with some of the industry’s greatest stars. In 2006, Lewis came out with “Last Man Standing,” featuring Mick Jagger, Bruce Springsteen, B.B. King and George Jones. In 2010, Lewis brought in Jagger, Keith Richards, Sheryl Crow, Tim McGraw and others for the album “Mean Old Man.”

In “The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll,” first published in 1975, he recalled how he convinced disc jockeys to give him a second chance.

“This time I said, ‘Look, man, let’s get together and draw a line on this stuff — a peace treaty, you know,’ ” he explained. Lewis would still play the old hits on stage, but on the radio he would sing country.Lewis had a run of top 10 country hits between 1967 and 1970, and hardly mellowed at all. He performed drinking songs such as “What’s Made Milwaukee Famous (Has Made a Loser Out of Me),” the roving eye confessions of “She Still Comes Around” and a dry-eyed cover of a classic ballad of abandonment, “She Even Woke Me Up to Say Goodbye.” He had remained popular in Europe, and a 1964 album, “Live at the Star Club, Hamburg,” is widely regarded as one of the greatest concert records.

A 1973 performance proved more troublesome: Lewis sang for the Grand Ole Opry and broke two long-standing rules — no swearing and no non-country songs.

Lewis married seven times and was rarely far from trouble or death. His fourth wife, Jaren Elizabeth Gunn Pate, drowned in a swimming pool in 1982 while suing for divorce. His fifth wife, Shawn Stephens, 23 years his junior, died of an apparent drug overdose in 1983. Within a year, Lewis had married Kerrie McCarver, then 21. She filed for divorce in 1986, accusing him of physical abuse and infidelity. He countersued, but both petitions eventually were dropped. They finally divorced in 2005 after several years of separation. The couple had one child, Jerry Lee III. Another son by a previous marriage, Steve Allen Lewis, 3, drowned in a swimming pool in 1962, and son Jerry Lee Jr. died in a traffic accident at 19 in 1973.

His finances were also chaotic. Lewis made millions, but he liked his money in cash and ended up owing hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Internal Revenue Service. When he began welcoming tourists in 1994 to his longtime residence near Nesbit, Mississippi — complete with a piano-shaped swimming pool — he set up a 900 phone number fans could call for a recorded message at $2.75 a minute.

First piano

The son of one-time bootlegger Elmo Lewis and the cousin of TV evangelist Jimmy Swaggart and country star Mickey Gilley, Lewis was born in Ferriday, Louisiana. As a boy, he first learned to play guitar, but found the instrument too confining and longed for an instrument that only the rich people in his town could afford: a piano. His life changed when his father pulled up in his truck one day and presented him with one.

“My eyes almost fell out of my head,” Lewis recalled in “Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story,” written by Rick Bragg and published in 2014.

He took to the piano immediately and began sneaking off to Black juke joints and absorbing everything from gospel to boogie-woogie. Conflicted early on between secular and scared music, he quit school at 16, with plans of becoming a piano-playing preacher. Lewis briefly attended Southwestern Assemblies of God University in Waxahachie, Texas, a fundamentalist Bible college, but was expelled, reportedly, for playing the “wrong” kind of music.

“Great Balls of Fire,” a sexualized take on biblical imagery that Lewis initially refused to record, and “Whole Lotta Shakin’ ” were his most enduring songs and performance pieces. Lewis had only a handful of other pop hits, including “High School Confidential” and “Breathless,” but they were enough to ensure his place as a rock ‘n’ roll architect.

“No group, be it [the] Beatles, Dylan or Stones, have ever improved on ‘Whole Lotta Shakin’ ‘ for my money,” John Lennon would tell Rolling Stone in 1970.

A roadhouse veteran by his early 20s, Lewis took off for Memphis in 1956 and showed up at the studios of Sun Records, the musical home of Presley, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash. Told by company founder Sam Phillips to go learn some rock ‘n’ roll, Lewis returned and soon hurried off “Whole Lotta Shakin’ ” in a single take.

“I knew it was a hit when I cut it,” he later said. “Sam Phillips thought it was gonna be too risque, it couldn’t make it. If that’s risque, well, I’m sorry.”In 1986, along with Presley, Berry and others, he made the inaugural class of inductees for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and joined the Country Hall of Fame this year. The Killer not only outlasted his contemporaries but saw his life and music periodically reintroduced to younger fans, including in the 1989 biopic “Great Balls of Fire,” starring Dennis Quaid, and Ethan Coen’s 2022 documentary “Trouble in Mind.” A 2010 Broadway musical, “Million Dollar Quartet,” was inspired by a recording session that featured Lewis, Presley, Perkins and Cash.

He won a Grammy in 1987 as part of an interview album that was cited for best spoken word recording, and he received a lifetime achievement Grammy in 2005. The following year, “Whole Lotta Shakin’ ” was selected for the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry, whose board praised the “propulsive boogie piano that was perfectly complemented by the drive of J.M. Van Eaton’s energetic drumming. The listeners to the recording, like Lewis himself, had a hard time remaining seated during the performance.”

A classmate at Bible school, Pearry Green, remembered meeting Lewis years later and asking if he was still playing the devil’s music.

“Yes, I am,” Lewis answered. “But you know it’s strange, the same music that they kicked me out of school for is the same kind of music they play in their churches today. The difference is, I know I am playing for the devil, and they don’t.”

Lewis is survived by his wife, Judith; children Jerry Lee III, Ronnie Lewis, Phoebe Lewis and Lori Lancaster; a sister; and many grandchildren.

Source: Voice of America