Latest news with #GDR
The Hindu
a day ago
- Business
- The Hindu
Kerala's internal revenue generation tipped to cross ₹1 lakh crore in 2025-26, says Finance Minister
Kerala's own revenue is projected to cross the ₹ 1 lakh crore-mark in 2025-26, signalling that State finances will continue in recovery mode despite severe challenges on the fiscal front, Finance Minister K.N. Balagopal has said. Mr. Balagopal said the Finance department expected internal revenue generation, from both own tax and non-tax sources, to touch ₹1.05 lakh crore in the current fiscal. The estimated growth, he said, was the outcome of improved efficiency in tax collection enabled by a comprehensive overhaul of the Taxes department in the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime. Under the present Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Democratic Front government, the State's own tax revenues (SOTR) had steadily improved from ₹47,661 crore in 2020-21 to ₹76,656 crore in 2024-25. Non-tax revenues grew from ₹7,327 crore to ₹16,568 crore during the same period. The government, Mr. Balagopal said, had succeeded in pulling up the State from a Central policies-induced 'nosedive' to a position where it was equipped for 'take-off' to the next phase. 'We have achieved this in a situation where Kerala was deprived of about ₹50,000 crore annually due to the shrinkage of borrowing space and discontinuation of the revenue deficit grant and GST compensation,' he said. Mr. Balagopal said there was continued scope for finetuning tax collection. On the Integrated GST (IGST) front, systemic issues in the mechanism of its settlement with all States had deprived Kerala of ₹956.16 crore. Kerala had taken up the matter with the Centre, Mr. Balagopal said. Mr. Balagopal said the State expected to allocate ₹600 crore this year towards the Guarantee Redemption Fund (GDR). The GDR was meant to cover government guarantees offered for loans availed by public sector entities and cooperatives. According to Kerala, the Centre had reduced the State's borrowing limit by a further ₹3,300 this year citing the GDR as a requirement. Mr. Balagopal also swept aside reports that the State's debt would touch ₹6 lakh crore this year-end. It would increase to about ₹4.7 lakh crore, but the State had been able to reverse the previous trend where debt doubled every five years. As part of the drive against tax evasion, the State GST department was planning action against traders/businesses who evaded taxation by deploying street vendors to sell their products, the Minister said. 'Such practices take unfair advantage of the benefits enjoyed by genuine street vendors,' he said. In May, the SGST department had busted an organised racket engaged in the manufacture and sale of spurious diesel, he said.
The South African
4 days ago
- Politics
- The South African
SA Gamechangers: SA High Commissioner, Kingsley Mamabolo on Fighting for Freedom, Peace, and the African Future
Interview by Gordon Glyn-Jones | Part of the SA Gamechangers series Born in Soweto, his journey began in the burning streets of 1976 and led through ANC training camps in Angola and the GDR, to global diplomacy with the African Union and United Nations. Now South Africa's High Commissioner to the UK, he reflects on decades in service to the continent and on the release of his new memoir, which launched this year in London and will soon be available in South Africa. In this wide-ranging conversation, he talks about exile, justice, rebuilding South Africa, and what the next generation needs to know. You describe your early years in Soweto as being marked by both hardship and political awakening. What first drew you towards the liberation movement? For anyone who grew up under apartheid, the wrongness of the system was obvious. You didn't need to read philosophy to see it. The signs were everywhere: 'Whites Only' and 'Non-Whites.' You'd go to the park, the hospital, or a restaurant. Everywhere was divided. I remember reading a story in a local paper about an abandoned baby. The child's race couldn't be determined immediately and there was this whole debate: do we send a black ambulance or a white ambulance? And then should we admit them to a white hospital? All while the child was possibly dying. That kind of thing really showed the insanity of apartheid. Then there were people like Mandela. Though his name was banned, his words moved around underground. I remember reading his speech from the Rivonia Trial, 'I am prepared to die.' That line hit hard. And on shortwave radio I once stumbled on a Zanla broadcast from Mozambique. The announcer's voice said, 'People of Zimbabwe, you will break the chains of slavery.' I thought, why not us too? Some people might agree with a cause in life, but wouldn't be brave enough to take action. What made you take the leap to risking arrest, going into exile, even taking up arms? It builds up. Slowly, you realise no, this is unacceptable. And once you see it, you can't unsee it. Eventually I was being pursued by the security police. I was part of the student movement after the 1976 uprising. We all knew what would happen if we got caught. So I left, no passport, just a will to get out and the help from ANC operatives who smuggled me through Swaziland into Mozambique, and eventually Angola. We believed we were going into exile briefly, just to train and come back. But I ended up being out of my country for almost 20 years. What surprised you most when you got to exile? One of the first things that struck me was the ANC's policy: South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white. Coming from a Black Consciousness background, that was a real jolt. We'd only known whites as the face of our oppression and here we were, being told we'd one day live together. There were other movements like the PAC who said the opposite, blacks only. But when we looked closer, the ANC was more organised, more disciplined. And then we started to meet white comrades who had given up everything. Ronnie Kasrils, Joe Slovo, Albie Sachs. These were people who had lost family, been jailed or exiled, just like us. You trained in the GDR. What was that experience like? Ah, the GDR. They were extremely disciplined, very serious people. The training was intense. And no excuses were accepted. You were being prepared for life and death situations. Failure wasn't tolerated. But the cultural adjustment? Huge. When we arrived, they gave us winter clothes, including the long thermal underwear (which we jokingly called 'Vasco-pyjamas'). And they told us, 'Just throw your laundry, including underwear, into these big baskets.' Old white ladies would come collect them, wash them and return them folded. Now, imagine us, from apartheid South Africa, where white women wouldn't even speak to us. Suddenly they're washing our underwear? I couldn't handle it. None of us could. I used to sneak out late at night, wash my own clothes in the dark. One night I'm crouched at the basin, and I hear someone behind me, two of my comrades doing the exact same thing. No one had talked about it. We just couldn't bring ourselves to hand over our underwear to old white women. That's how deep apartheid had scarred our minds. What helped shift that mindset? It was seeing white comrades take the same risks we did, and sometimes more. Some had their families killed. They were jailed. We saw them suffer for the same cause. That changed us. Also, the support we received across Africa, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia, Angola, showed us that solidarity wasn't about colour. It was about justice. Even in the West, where governments sometimes called us terrorists, ordinary people supported us in their millions. The UK had the biggest anti-apartheid movement in Europe. The American supporter numbers were also vast. People defied their own governments to support us. 'We broke the back of apartheid. That was the big obstacle. Now the struggle is to make sure we don't leave anyone behind, not black, not white. The fight continues.' What was it like returning to South Africa after nearly 20 years in exile? We weren't sure it was real. I thought we'd be in exile for a short time, but it became decades. When the call came that we could go home, it felt sudden and surreal. We had fought for a democratic South Africa, political freedom. But once we got it, I think we made a mistake. We relaxed. We thought the fight was over. But political freedom doesn't automatically bring economic justice. That's where we faltered. We had leaders like Mandela, Mbeki, people with real vision. But eventually, the movement lost its way somewhat. What would you say to an 18-year-old South African today who wants to build a better future? I'd say, we broke the big obstacle. Apartheid laws are gone. Now the fight is about inclusion and opportunity. The country has so much: minerals, tourism, technology. But we must think bigger. And we must think together. The future isn't black or white. It's South African. These two worlds, the privileged and the deprived, must come together. If we don't create a society that includes everyone, we'll face another kind of explosion. Not a racial one, a social one. 'We broke the back of apartheid. That was the big obstacle. Now the struggle is to make sure we don't leave anyone behind, not black, not white. The fight continues.' Telling the story You've just written a book. What made you want to tell your story now? At first I asked myself, who am I to write a book? I'm not Mandela. But I realised every story matters. People today forget what was sacrificed. The youth must know, what they enjoy now came at a cost. People died. Others were exiled or jailed. That can't be forgotten. Also, I've been lucky. I served under every democratic South African president, from Mandela appointing me as High Commissioner to Zimbabwe, to Mbeki sending me to the AU, Zuma to the UN, and now Ramaphosa to the UK. I wanted to document those moments, mediating in the Congo, leading UN missions in Darfur, helping shape African Union policies like NEPAD and the Peace and Security Architecture. We laid a vision for Africa. Now we must ask: are we implementing it? Do you have a next mission, or are you retiring? Retirement? No such thing. Maybe I'll step back from formal roles, but I'll never stop contributing. The continent still needs us. Africa has the youngest population on Earth. We have minerals, intellect, and talent. What we lack isn't vision, it's implementation. We need leadership that thinks beyond national borders. South Africa can't go it alone. Africa must act collectively. That's the only way forward. Where can people get your book? The book is called: Let Not The Sun Set On You: The Journey from Anti-Apartheid Activist to Seasoned Diplomat. It's available on Amazon UK now, and will soon be out in South Africa through Exclusive Books. A more affordable softcover version is coming in the next few months. For more SA Gamechangers, click here.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Bunker Talk: Memorial Day Weekend Edition Part 1
Welcome to Bunker Talk, Memorial Day Weekend Edition Part 1. For all our American readers/commenters, I hope you have a great Memorial Day weekend. And, of course, I want to give a huge thanks to all of those who paid the ultimate sacrifice for our country. No words are enough. No debt of gratitude can ever be paid off. We are going to break up the long Memorial Day weekend Bunker into two parts so we don't end up with 6,000 comments on a single post. The caption to this week's top shot reads: 06 April 2019, Brandenburg, Prötzel Ot Harnekop: A general's jacket hangs in the Harnekop bunker in the army command room. On three floors 30 meters below the ground, the GDR defense minister and his high-ranking commanders wanted to entrench themselves in the event of war. The current owner has assigned the site and the bunker to various leaseholders who are in dispute over the rights of use. Photo: Bernd Settnik/dpa-Zentralbild/dpa (Photo by Bernd Settnik/picture alliance via Getty Images) Also, a reminder: If you want to talk politics, do so respectfully and know that there's always somebody that isn't going to agree with you. If you have political differences, hash it out respectfully, stick to the facts, and no childish name-calling or personal attacks of any kind. If you can't handle yourself in that manner, then please, discuss virtually anything else. No drive-by garbage political memes. No conspiracy theory rants. Links to crackpot sites will be axed, too. Trolling and shitposting will not be tolerated. No obsessive behavior about other users. Just don't interact with folks you don't like. Do not be a sucker and feed trolls! That's as much on you as on them. Use the mute button if you don't like what you see. So unless you have something of quality to say, know how to treat people with respect, understand that everyone isn't going to subscribe to your exact same worldview, and have come to terms with the reality that there is no perfect solution when it comes to moderation of a community like this, it's probably best to just move on. Finally, as always, report offenders, please. This doesn't mean reporting people who don't share your political views, but we really need your help in this regard. The Bunker is open! Contact the editor: tyler@
New European
20-05-2025
- General
- New European
Germansplaining: The House of Hohenzollern, a dynasty fit for a Netflix drama
This near-century-long dispute could be a Netflix series featuring imperial palaces, royal corpses, Spanish snuff, a Prussian prince, the Nazis and commies, and a few plot twists. Some conflicts last for ever. One has just been wrapped up after only 99 years: German authorities and the noble House of Hohenzollern have buried the hatchet, though not in each other, which is progress. Previously on Hohenzollern Unrestored: from the 18th century, the dynasty supplied Prussia with monarchs, and from 1871 it also provided the new Reich with a few Kaisers. That all came to a screeching halt when the Weimar Republic was declared, and Wilhelm II flounced off into exile in the Netherlands. Family assets were confiscated. A 1926 law settled who got what, but legal ambiguities remained. They wrangled through the Third Reich, then through the GDR, and even persisted in reunified Germany, long after Prussia itself had been officially dissolved by the allies in 1947. Prussia, which had made up two-thirds of German territory before the war, remained a historical problem area. At last, this month the federal culture secretary and Prinz Georg Friedrich von Preussen, great-great-grandson of the last emperor Wilhelm II, announced an agreement. The saga, it seems, has a finale. Georg Friedrich had inherited the legal headache in 1994, aged just 18, when he became head of the once-royal house. By that point, the family had spent decades trying to claw back property and compensation. They even asked the GDR for the right to reside in Potsdam's Cecilienhof Palace (as if the Berlin Wall was just a garden fence). And communist-in-chief Erich Honecker offered 'His Imperial Highness' a proper burial for the Prussian kings Frederick William I and his son, Frederick II 'The Great', at Schloss Sanssouci. The royal coffins had been taken from Potsdam in 1943, stored in a potash mine in Thuringia, then transferred to Marburg in Hesse (West Germany) and finally to Hechingen near Stuttgart, to the ancestral castle of the Hohenzollern. For the corpses, considering the bumpy journey, RIP must have stood for 'rest in one piece'. In the end, it was chancellor Helmut Kohl (and not Honecker) who attended the final burial of 'Old Fritz', aka Friedrich II, on the terrace of Sanssouci Palace. The public authorities refused to pay compensation for Hohenzollern palaces expropriated under Soviet rule – as this is legally denied to anyone who 'significantly aided and abetted' the Nazis. And, well, Kaiser Wilhelm II's oldest son, another Wilhelm, wasn't exactly resistance material. To bolster their claim, the Hohenzollern family commissioned an expert report from Cambridge historian Christopher Clark. According to Clark, Wilhelm Jr had expressed admiration for Hitler and the Nazis. The ex-crown prince was, however, too insignificant to have 'significantly supported' them. 'As if!', thought the Bundesrepublik, and provided two counter-experts. Both added incriminating facts to Clark's list, emphasizing Wilhelm's enthusiasm for Italian fascism and his PR for the regime. A fourth historian – Team Prussia again – came up with the creative twist that supporting the Nazis may have just been a ruse to restore the monarchy. A draw. And in 2023, the Hohenzollern finally dropped the lawsuits and returned to negotiations, focusing on movable goods – 27,000 of them, to be precise – including memorabilia, furniture, textiles, paintings, library and archive collections, some of considerable value and historical significance. Most have been in public museums in Berlin and Brandenburg. And thanks to the new deal, the majority will stay there. Highlights include a Lucas Cranach the Elder portrait of Joachim I of Brandenburg, baroque ivory furniture and the table service for the Breslau City Palace, acquired by Frederick II in 1750. A newly created non-profit, Hohenzollern Art Foundation, will oversee the collection. The family gets three board seats, but the public sector has a majority say. Some disputed pieces are returned to Hohenzollern property, however, including seven tabatiers – fancy tobacco tins Frederick the Great used for Spanish snuff. One of them, legend has it, saved his life in the seven years' war by deflecting an enemy bullet. Two tabatiers will remain in museums on permanent loan, but the other five may soon appear at auctions. So if you've got a few million pounds lying around and a taste for fancy antiques, you're in luck.
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Sound of Falling' Review: A Haunting Meditation on Womanhood and Rural Strife That Heralds the Arrival of a Bold New Talent
It's not every day you see a movie that resembles nothing you've quite seen before, making you question the very notion of what a movie can be. And yet German director Mascha Schilinski's bold second feature, Sound of Falling (In Die Sonne Schauen), is just that: a transfixing chronicle in which the lives of four girls are fused into one long cinematic tone poem, hopping between different epochs without warning, painting a portrait of budding womanhood and rural strife through the ages. The closest thing that comes to mind is probably Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life, although this is Malick by way of Jane Campion and Michael Haneke, shifting between fleeting coming-of-age moments and scenes of resolute darkness and human cruelty. At two and a half hours, and without an easily discernible narrative throughline, Sound of Falling is arthouse filmmaking with a capital A that will best appeal to patient audiences. They will be rewarded by a work that reminds us how the cinema can still reinvent itself, as long as there are directors like Schilinski audacious enough to try. More from The Hollywood Reporter Lynne Ramsay, Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson Toast 'Die, My Love' at Cannes Dinner Hosted by The Hollywood Reporter and Longines Can Cannes Help California Get Its Groove Back? Cannes: 'The Creep' Remake Sells for U.K. (Exclusive) Co-written with Louise Peter, the movie's collage-like structure tells four simultaneous stories though a series of fragments or snaphots (cameras of all types are depicted and used on screen), spanning a timeframe from the early 20th century all the way to the present. Set in the same massive farmhouse that passes down from one family to another, the film never strays too far from its main location, venturing out to wander the nearby fields or dip into a picturesque river separating East and West Germany. Characters come and go over the years, as cinematographer Fabian Gamper (shooting in the box-like 1:1.37 format) creeps around the house like a ghost discreetly recording events as they happen, catching moments of torment and flashes of occasional humor. Scenes become memories in other scenes, passed on from the living to the dead and back again, cut together by editor Evelyn Rack so that they resonate more as time goes by. The effect can be disorienting at first, and Sound of Falling is a film whose power slowly accumulates as it progresses. The quartet of girls we follow — Alma (Hanna Heckt) after the turn of the last century, Erika (Lea Drinda) after WWII, Angelika (Lena Urzendowsky) in the GDR of the 1980s and Lenka (Laeni Geiseler) in the present — are not all related, though they share a common history that hangs over the house as both a blessing and a curse. There is trauma in their lives — sometimes deep unforgettable trauma that never seems to leave the Altmark region where their farm is located. But there is also beauty and self-discovery. Schilinski has essentially made four bildungsroman movies at once, each of them about young women awakening to the possibilities, as well as to the limits, that life has to offer them. The scenes involving Alma and Erika, both of whom grow up in worlds dominated by a solemn patriarchy and plagued by hardship, feel like they were drawn from period horror movies. The pale blonde Alma is obsessed by a dead sibling whose portrait rests on a mantle honoring the family dead. In the picture, the girl's corpse is propped up on a sofa alongside some of her favorite toys, in a style of post-mortem photography popular at the time. Decades later, Erika bears a carnal attraction to her Uncle Fritz (Martin Rother), an amputee who lies withering in pain in his bedroom. Much later we learn how he lost his leg as a teenager, in a startling scene of parental savagery. At first blush, the stories of Angelika and Lenka seem altogether more pleasant, revealing how life in their agricultural community did grow somewhat easier over time. This doesn't mean the girls don't have their own demons to face, whether it's Angelika's burgeoning sexuality and disturbing relationship with her uncle (Konstantin Lindhorst), or the melancholic Lenka's friendship with a neighboring girl (Zoë Baier) trying to get over the death of her mother. Schilinski finds powerful visual hooks to connect the characters across the decades. They make the same gestures, witness the same things — many scenes are shot from their POVs, through windows, doorways and keyholes — and sometimes live out parallel stories, as if their bodies were marked by the wounds and revelations of earlier times. With its epic scope and precisely drawn figures in the countryside, the film has the weight of a hefty 19th century agrarian novel. But it's told as a pure work of stream of consciousness, as if Virginia Woolf had decided to rewrite a book by Thomas Hardy. This could prove frustrating for viewers looking to latch on to a single plotline, or even multiple plotlines that merge together seamlessly as an ensemble piece. Sound of Falling (whose German title translates to Looking into the Sun) offers up an altogether different kind of storytelling, made up of momentary sensations, images, emotions and sounds that gradually form a bigger picture. That picture depicts a world where young women face untold obstacles from one epoch to another, including rape, the death of loved ones, forced sterilization, incest, and a form of rural slavery and prostitution, yet eventually emerge as arbiters of their own fates. Schilinski doesn't spare us all their pain and suffering, nor does she hide the joy and wonder they sometimes experience. Her brave girls carry their forebearers within them from one generation to the next, surging toward the future both damaged and victorious. Best of The Hollywood Reporter 'The Goonies' Cast, Then and Now "A Nutless Monkey Could Do Your Job": From Abusive to Angst-Ridden, 16 Memorable Studio Exec Portrayals in Film and TV The 10 Best Baseball Movies of All Time, Ranked
