At the time of writing (April 2022) the Ocean Cleanup project continues to divide opinion. The project has had successes at stopping plastic pollution from reaching the sea with its Interceptor™ devices, but the organisation’s attempts to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch appear to have failed. In retrospect, its plans for renewable-powered sixty-mile long floating booms which removed debris from the sea and then store it away using conveyor belts were wildly unrealistic, and even scaled-down attempts to passively collect plastic pollution have ended in failure. The Ocean Cleanup has now been reduced to using fossil fuel-powered ships to tow nets through the sea to collect plastic – something which could have been done at the outset and saved tens of millions of dollars. Furthermore, Ocean Cleanup has never fully engaged with the criticisms which have been levelled at the organisation or admitted that the regression from a hi-tech boom system to a towed net represents a failure of its initial aims. Instead, a relentlessly positive and upbeat picture of what the project can achieve has been presented at all times, even though the whole project is likely to only achieve a fraction of the success it initially promised.

https://britishseafishing.co.uk/the-troubles-of-the-ocean-cleanup-project/

"The so-called patch isn’t so much an island as it is a soup, however, in which broken-down bits of plastic are like pepper flakes. Much of the waste is pea-sized or smaller and floats below the surface. That explains why, when you’re there, “it just looks like ocean,” said Melanie Bergmann, a marine biologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Germany, who last visited the region in 2019. The same is true for a handful of other marine garbage patches, which form around gyres — systems of rotating currents.

This is one reason why ambitious ocean cleanup efforts are often inefficient, said Richards, the marine scientist at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography; the large pieces of plastic are spread out and much of the rest is impossible to retrieve. Plus, only about 1 percent of the plastic we dump into our oceans ends up in these kinds of patches (it’s still somewhat of a mystery where the rest goes). So even if ocean cleanups were more efficient, they wouldn’t make a significant dent in the overall waste problem."

https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/22949475/ocean-plastic-pollution-cleanup

The origin story for Vienna becoming the world’s most celebrated example of social housing began after World War I. In the postwar elections, the Social Democratic Workers’ Party gained power, ushering in an era known as “Red Vienna.” The new government leaders inherited a housing crisis so dire that overcrowding forced 170,000 Vienna residents to become what were called “bed-goers,” leasing sleeping space in shifts while still paying extremely high rents. Often, a single sink and toilet were shared by dozens of strangers. Tuberculosis spread so readily in these cramped quarters that it was known across Europe as “the Viennese disease.”

So the new Viennese government devoted its resources to building municipal housing complexes named after figures like Karl Marx and George Washington, demonstrating the ruling party’s commitment to both its “social” and “democratic” missions.

[...] Today, that housing is created mostly by limited-profit associations, organizations that often receive public support in return for tight government restrictions on rent charged and a requirement that any profits be put back into more social housing construction. Many of these limited-profit associations are operated by labor unions.

In these social housing communities, tenants’ long-term tenure in their apartments is guaranteed under the law. Apartments can be passed down among generations under the original terms. The tying of rent charged to a percentage of household income means that renters in Vienna are protected from losing their home when illness or job loss occurs.

[...] As a result, half of the city’s residents live in social housing, which creates a price-dampening effect on for-profit housing that is forced to compete with high-quality subsidized housing. That competitive pressure combines with vigorous rent control on private housing to make Vienna one of the cheapest renting cities in all of Europe, even on the for-profit market. Given the fact that good housing is central to both a household’s and a city’s well-being, it is no surprise that Vienna is frequently ranked the most livable city in the world.

[...] Tight regulation of privately held land in Vienna ensures that social housing construction is ongoing. At least two-thirds of any private land sold must be diverted to rent-limited housing. “Since the ground that can be built on is a limited resource, we don’t see housing as a fit for the private market,” Maltschnig says. The result: anyone with an urgent housing need gets immediate shelter and prompt placement in a municipal apartment. Vienna has virtually no visible homeless population and no slum areas of low-quality housing and concentrated poverty. And Vienna is not alone: several other nations, like Singapore and Finland and Sweden, have followed a similar blueprint in achieving remarkable social housing success, too.

https://jacobin.com/2023/10/red-vienna-public-affordable-housing-homelessness-matthew-yglesias/

What is less obvious and yet just as damaging is the hyped coverage of the threat. Milei and Wilders are not “shocks”. The resurgence of reactionary politics is entirely predictable and has been traced for a long time. Yet every victory or rise is analysed as new and unexpected rather than part of a longer, wider process in which we are all implicated.

The same goes for “populism”. All serious research on the matter points to the populist nature of these parties being secondary at best, compared to their far-right qualities. Yet, whether in the media or academia, populism is generally used carelessly as a key defining feature.

Using “populist” instead of more accurate but also stigmatising terms such as “far-right” or “racist” acts as a key legitimiser of far-right politics. It lends these parties and politicians a veneer of democratic support through the etymological link to the people and erases their deeply elitist nature – what my co-author Aaron Winter and I have termed “reactionary democracy”.

[...] This could not have been clearer than when the Guardian launched a lengthy series on “the new populism” in 2018, headlining its opening editorial with: “Why is populism suddenly all the rage? In 1998, about 300 Guardian articles mentioned populism. In 2016, 2,000 did. What happened?”. At no point did any of the articles in the series reflect upon the simple fact that the decisions of Guardian editors may have played a role in the increased use of the term.

[...] My analysis of the noscripts and abstracts of over 2,500 academic articles in the field over the past five years showed that academics choose to frame their research away from such issues. Instead, we witness either a euphemisation or exceptionalisation of far-right politics, through a focus on topics such as elections and immigration rather than the wider structures at play.

This therefore leaves us with the need to reckon with the crucial role the mainstream plays in mainstreaming. Elite actors with privileged access to shaping public discourse through the media, politics and academia are not sitting within the ramparts of a mainstream fortress of good and justice besieged by growing waves of populism.

They are participating in an arena where power is deeply unevenly distributed, where the structural inequalities the far right wants to strengthen are also often core to our systems and where the rights of minoritised communities are precarious and unfulfilled. They have therefore a particular responsibility towards democracy and cannot blame the situation we all find ourselves in on others – whether it be the far right, fantasised silent majorities or minoritised communities.

https://theconversation.com/look-to-the-mainstream-to-explain-the-rise-of-the-far-right-218536

Zionism as a Fascist Ideology and Movement: Zionist Relations with Nazi Germany by Faris Yahya Glubb

https://liberatedtexts.com/reviews/zionism-as-a-fascist-ideology-zionist-relations-with-nazi-germany-by-faris-glubb/

After World War II, Finland’s militant trade unions created one of the world’s strongest welfare states. Today, the country spends more on the welfare state than any other OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) country, at around a quarter of GDP. Finland regularly tops the rankings of the happiest countries in the world and is arguably one of the most successful examples of the social democratic model.

At the heart of the Finnish class compromise is the tradition of social dialogue between unions, employers, and the government, which has led to annual nationwide and sectoral negotiations on wage setting for all union members, tripartite negotiations on new legislative proposals, and the expansion of the welfare state. But this social contract is about to be torn apart by a newly elected right-wing government.

While Finnish politics made international headlines in recent years with a center-left coalition led by five women and headed by the young social democrat Sanna Marin, a radicalized right won a majority in the last parliamentary election in April 2023. As a result, the conservatives, the Christian Democrats, a Swedish minority party, and the far-right Finns Party formed a government. Since then, the coalition has launched the strongest attack on workers’ rights and social security in the history of the Finnish welfare state.

https://jacobin.com/2023/10/finland-true-finn-far-right-wing-welfare-state-workers-rights/

Mercoledì 22 novembre il Parlamento europeo ha approvato con 305 voti favorevoli, 276 contrari e 29 astensioni una proposta che, nascendo direttamente dalla Conferenza sul Futuro dell'Europa, richiede la modifica dei Trattati dell'Unione europea e che chiede al Consiglio europeo di convocare una Convenzione di riforma dei Trattati.

La proposta mira da un lato a rafforzare la capacità dell'UE di operare e dall'altro ad aumentare il peso della voce delle cittadine e dei cittadini. In particolare, la proposta di riforma prevede un sistema "più bicamerale" per evitare situazioni di stallo, attraverso il voto a maggioranza qualificata e l'uso della procedura legislativa ordinaria; il riconoscimento al Parlamento di un pieno diritto di iniziativa legislativa e del ruolo di colegislatore per il bilancio a lungo termine e una revisione delle norme sulla composizione della Commissione (rinominata "esecutivo europeo").

Il Presidente della Commissione, che dovrebbe ricevere la nomina del Parlamento e l'approvazione del Consiglio (contrariamente a quanto avviene oggi), potrà scegliere i propri Commissari sulla base di preferenze politiche, tenendo conto dell'equilibrio geografico e demografico, e avrà la possibilità di presentare una mozione di censura sui singoli Commissari. Sono proposte inoltre la pubblicazione delle posizioni degli Stati membri dell'UE su questioni legislative, per garantire una maggiore trasparenza in seno al Consiglio e la creazione di meccanismi di partecipazione adeguati e il rafforzamento del ruolo dei partiti politici europei, per dare più voce ai cittadini.

Sempre nell'ottica del rafforzamento degli strumenti democratici, la proposta prevede l'introduzione del pieno diritto di iniziativa legislativa per il Parlamento e di strumenti di democrazia diretta, inclusa la possibilità di avere dei referendum europei.

Altro elemento cruciale della proposta del Parlamento è l'aumento significativo del numero di decisioni prese a maggioranza qualificata (ad esempio in caso decisioni di sanzioni) e la sostituzione del metodo dell'unanimità con quello della maggioranza rafforzata (almeno quattro quinti dei membri del Consiglio che rappresentano gli Stati membri e che riuniscono almeno il 50% della popolazione europea) da utilizzare per le decisioni in materia fiscale.

Inoltre i deputati chiedono un maggiore spazio di manovra e soprattutto di rendere condivise le competenze su temi importanti come salute pubblica, protezione civile, industria e istruzione, mentre attualmente sono di competenza esclusiva degli Stati membri.

https://euroeconomie.it/blog-detail/post/215982/riforma-dei-trattati-ue:-il-parlamento-europeo-approva-la-proposta

This campaign came about because the current poverty index tends to look at mid-range luxury items, the price of which is often less affected by inflation, rather than the bottom-of-the-range necessities that the poorest in society actually rely on, and which have been massively hit by inflation.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/jan/26/terry-pratchett-jack-monroe-vimes-boots-poverty-index

Release of 11000 people from prison during Covid led to only 17 of them committing new crimes, only one of which was violent

https://twitter.com/dustinbpalmer/status/1590879271605923840