March 17, 2022

Freedom and Security in a Complex World

https://gef.eu/publication/freedom-security-2021/

https://gef.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/GEF_ECOPROFramingPaper-Print-2021-EN-5-280421.pdf



People all over the world are taking their future back into their hands. Together, they are taking initiatives in the fields of renewable energy, local food production, sharing tools and so forth. This is the most hopeful movement of our time. Where the market and state fail, people are taking action. As free citizens, they are reinventing the collective, with open partnerships where personal development and social engagement go hand in hand.

This observation seems to contradict what we experience every day. The system errors of our society model fill the newspapers: climate crisis, unstable banks, refugee flows. Accepted wisdom is that uncertainty is increasing. But both trends are happening, not by coincidence, at the same time. It’s time to wake up. For 30 years, we have believed in the fiction that the era of the Grand Narratives is over: the fall of the Berlin Wall made ideologies useless. Meanwhile we know better. After three decades of economic globalisation, we are seeing more losers than winners. Progressive politics without a passionate story for the future has driven the losers into the arms of right-wing nationalists, who feed the illusion that folding back on ourselves can be a fruitful form of cooperation.

We have to dare to rewrite history. In the 20th century, the welfare state developed from the progressive response to an industrial free-market economy. From the 1950s, citizens in the west enjoyed increased freedom while the government established social security. After 30 years, the economic engine broke down, which led to the neoliberal period for the next 30 or so years. In this period, a specific ‘Constitution of Liberty’ (Hayek, 1978) was implemented, in which the market again became the dominant way to organise. This has led to a more unstable world with extreme inequality and a deepening ecological crisis. The answer we have to develop in the 21st century is the socioecological society, a project that strives for equal freedom for all people to flourish in security, within the boundaries of the planet.

It’s not a simple project because it takes on the paradox of our time. Certainty has little to do with the preservation of our present world. To build a certain future, we must change everything. In order for us to be able to develop freely, we need sustainable systems. In the future how we produce food, produce energy, work and earn an income will all be different. We need new social institutions and a cultural change about what we consider to be ‘the good life’. Fortunately, this is not a distant future dream. While most governments are sleepwalking towards disaster, more and more citizens are taking power into their own hands. Although they are rarely featured in the news, they are the growing and positive counter-current of our society. Together with progressive local governments, they are incubating a new socioecological society. How we can make it happen is the subject of this essay, with freedom and security at centre stage.

March 17, 2022

Florida Pol Offers Half-Assed Apology for Ugly Comment on 'Don't Say Gay' Bill

https://www.thedailybeast.com/florida-senator-ileana-garcia-offers-half-assed-apology-for-homophobic-comment-on-dont-say-gay-bill



Florida state Republican Senator Ileana Garcia offered something of an apology on Thursday after she said earlier this month that being LGBT “is not a permanent thing.” Her crude comment came as she was arguing in favor of the state’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, specifically the ban on teaching K-3 kids about sexual orientation.

While she admitted her comment was a poorly articulated attempt “to explain my very personal life experiences,” Garcia painted herself as the victim, complaining about people making “offensive comments” to her in the aftermath. “I would hope we can elevate our public debate to a level that allows us to have a productive exchange of ideas and views without making assumptions, characterizations or waiting for an anticipated gotcha moment,” she said in a statement posted to Twitter. Garcia switched off comments on her post, and has previously shut her Twitter down entirely, preventing any kind of “productive” debate.

https://twitter.com/IleanaGarciaUSA/status/1504511095511388163
Read it at Florida Politics

March 17, 2022

Everywhere You Can Get Free & Cheap Food for St. Patrick's Day

St. Patrick's Day is for more than Guinness and green rivers. There are lots of food deals.

https://www.thrillist.com/news/nation/st-patricks-day-free-food-deals



It’s that time of year when beers and rivers turn green in recognition of St. Patrick and his day, despite the fact that he most likely never dyed a beer or river green himself. (Also, donuts and milkshakes and bagels and anything else within reach might turn green.)

Whether it’s a burger with a green bun or just a normal meal that hasn’t been dyed green, March 17 brings with it a significant pile of food deals. The day isn’t exclusively cabbage-based dishes, shots of Jameson, and pints of Guinness. Restaurants across the US will be offering deals in recognition of the day. You’re going to find offers at Wendy's, Noodles & Co., Krispy Kreme, and many other restaurants. Here are the best food deals you’ll find on St. Patrick’s Day.

Free Food on St. Patrick's Day





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March 17, 2022

Russian Model Who Criticized Putin Found Dead in a Suitcase

Gretta Vedler drew attention when she called the Russian president a psychopath. Now her boyfriend has confessed to killing her and hiding her body in a car trunk for a year.



https://www.thedailybeast.com/gretta-vedlers-boyfriend-confesses-to-killing-model-critic-of-putin-and-stuffing-her-in-a-suitcase



The clearly deranged boyfriend of Gretta Vedler, a Russian model who famously accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of being a “psychopath,” has reportedly confessed to murdering her and keeping her corpse hidden for a year inside a suitcase, according to Russian media reports. Vedler, 23, vanished soon after criticizing Putin in January 2021, and friends quickly grew concerned for her safety after she continued to post on her social media account without responding to their calls.

“Given the fact that Putin went through a lot of humiliation in childhood, he could not stand up for himself due to his [slight] physical form, it is not surprising that he left after law school and joined the KGB,” Vedler wrote in a now-removed social media post, according to the Mirror. “Such people are timid and fearful from childhood, afraid of noise and darkness, strangers, so traits such as caution, restraint, and lack of communication are developed early in their character. I can only assume, in my opinion, a clear psychopathy or sociopathy is seen in him.”



She disappeared shortly after the post, which was apparently removed by Russian censors. This week, Vedler’s erstwhile boyfriend, Dmitry Korovin, confessed to strangling her to death after the two argued not over politics but over money in Moscow in February 2021. He said he continued to post old photos on her social accounts to not arouse suspicion that she might be dead, according to authorities.

Since her disappearance, many Russian activists expressed concern that she was either taken into custody or worse after her anti-Putin post, which coincided with a crackdown on dissidents in the country. Her friend Evgeniy Foster, a Ukrainian blogger who lives in Kharkiv, was fearful that Putin had ordered her demise, posting a number of accusations on his Instagram account.

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March 17, 2022

A deep dive into GORE-TEX - An editorial project by Document Studios for SNS

https://www.sneakersnstuff.com/en/page/a-deep-dive-into-gore-tex



Take one part New York City, add a chunk of the 1990s and sprinkle it with GORE-TEX. I bet what happens next is one of two things: either you recall a music video or a specific lyric from one of many possible hip hop artists working out of Brooklyn at that time, or you think of George Costanza and that coat. For me, it’s all about Georgie.

Seminal Seinfeld episode ‘The Dinner Party’ was aired in February 1994, set in a freezing cold Manhattan, and features George in a massive winter coat, hardly able to move through doors because of its comedic size. In the episode George only explains the coat with “It’s GORE-TEX” when questioned about it by Jerry and Elaine. That was enough, no other facts – not even the brand name – was information deemed necessary. Fiction though it might be, I can’t think of any other pop-cultural seal of approval of that calibre.

I would have watched that episode in rural Sweden, probably a couple of years after it was originally aired, and though I can’t be 100% sure, it was most likely my first interaction with GORE-TEX. And the fact that the fabric technology has such pop-cultural reach is the entire point of this project. There are no doubts about GORE-TEX’s technological accomplishments, its popularity among global brands needing waterproof and windproof capabilities and the trust it enjoys among the end consumer – and this piece celebrates that aspect of GORE-TEX, too, through words of wisdom from various designers working with the technology – but it’s that name recognition and that ability to instil immediate confidence that transforms the GORE-TEX logo into a badge of honour.

Since watching that Seinfeld episode my own relationship with GORE-TEX has evolved and not long after that – thanks to the wet and windy climate in Scandinavia – it was centred around getting weather-appropriate gear rather than what George Costanza was able to buy from his father’s friend, at discounted prices. Nevertheless, my affection for GORE-TEX is still based on those two wardrobe pillars: technological quality and pop-cultural prowess. And it appears to be same but different for other as well, as attested to by this mixed bunch of young gun talent, established design icons, birdwatching hikers and graffiti artists. Hope you enjoy this deep dive into what GORE-TEX means to different people, both personally and professionally.

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March 17, 2022

The obsession to 'complete the single market'

Multinationals are pushing to open new frontiers in the single market with a deregulatory agenda.

https://socialeurope.eu/completing-the-single-market-a-dangerous-obsession


Smog over Naples—the European Round Table opposes municipal initiatives for zero-emissions zones

The pandemic has shown just how important public institutions are for societal wellbeing—particularly properly-funded healthcare and a welfare state that protects against economic shocks and hardship. It is no longer accepted, as over the last three decades in Europe, that social and environmental challenges should be left to markets and giant corporations; rather, governments must take a powerful leadership role in securing social and environmental outcomes.

Yet announcing the ‘death of neoliberalism’ would be premature: more than just a set of ideas born among ‘Chicago school’ economists it has become deeply embedded in Europe’s political establishment, firmly anchored in European Union treaties and key legislation. Powerful forces, notably the European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT) corporate lobby, not only continue to defend neoliberal doctrines but seek to tighten their stranglehold on European societies.

A key instance is the obsession with ‘completing the single market’, launched in 1993 and allowing the unrestricted movement of goods and services across the EU member states. The European Commission (notably its DG GROW department) constantly seeks to expand single-market rules to all areas of society while tightening their enforcement. The logical endpoint would be a Europe where even water, healthcare and education would be opened up for privatisation and corporate expansion, while public authorities enjoyed ever-decreasing room to regulate the economy in the public interest.

Services directive

Exemplary is the ‘reform of services notification procedure’ which the commission proposed in 2017. Its innocuous-sounding name belied major potential social impacts. It would have enforced much more strongly the 2006 directive on services in the internal market (the ‘Bolkestein directive’), which had aimed at big-bang marketisation, outlawing obstacles to ‘freedom of establishment’ and to the ‘freedom to provide services’ across the EU.

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March 17, 2022

The Eiffel Tower Just Got 20 Feet Taller -- Here's How

An antenna was installed with the help of a helicopter on Tuesday morning in an effort to improve digital radio coverage.

https://www.travelandleisure.com/travel-news/eiffel-tower-just-got-taller



A 6-meter-high antenna was installed on top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris this week, making the iconic landmark just a little bit taller. The antenna, which is just under 20 feet high, was installed with the help of a helicopter on Tuesday morning in an effort to improve digital radio coverage, according to a statement from the landmark. It brings the total height of the tower to about 1,083 feet.

"March 15, 2022, marks a historic date for the Eiffel Tower, which has always played its part in major innovations in radio and television," the statement said.

The Eiffel Tower has grown since it was first built in 1889 and dubbed the "300m Tower," coming in at 1,024 feet thanks to a large flagpole placed on top flying the French flag. By 1924, the flag pole had changed to television antennas and meteorology equipment, and in 1957, new live broadcasting dishes and transmitters were added to bring the tower to 1,050 feet.

Then in 2000, an Ultra High Frequency antenna was installed, changing the height of the tower again and bringing it to 1,063 feet high.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CbLDZ0uoP_Q (video)

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March 17, 2022

Sweden 'to deepen defence cooperation with UK': PM in London

Sweden has agreed to "deepen defence cooperation with the UK", Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson has said after her first bilateral meeting with her British counterpart, Boris Johnson.

https://www.thelocal.se/20220316/sweden-to-deepen-defence-cooperation-with-uk-pm-in-london/



“We have agreed to deepen the bilateral defence cooperation between Sweden and Great Britain. That is an important assurance,” Andersson said after the meeting, according to a report in the Dagens Nyheter newspaper. “This is something our defence and foreign ministers will now start to work on in more detail.”

Andersson met Johnson during a gathering of leaders from the countries in the UK-led Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF). JEF brings together Sweden and Finland, which are both outside the Nato security alliance, with eight Nato countries in the Nordic, Baltic, and northern European regions.

The UK’s defence minister, Ben Wallace, gave assurances at the start of this month that the UK would aid Sweden if it were attacked by Russia. But he gave few details of what form this aid would take, and, crucially, whether the UK would send troops, ships or fighter planes to help repel an attack. After the meeting in London, there was still no clarification on what sort of military aid the UK was promising.

“We heard the UK’s defence minister who last week was clear that the UK would show solidarity with Sweden in such a situation,” Andersson told journalists after the meeting. The JEF meeting, in itself, sent an important signal about the high level of defence cooperation in the region, she argued.

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March 17, 2022

Civil society's shrinking space

Amid the argument over the rule of law in certain EU member states, civil society needs strengthening as an embodiment of European values.

https://socialeurope.eu/civil-societys-shrinking-space



The European Union is built on democracy, the rule of law and fundamental rights—three mutually reinforcing pillars. At the heart of democracy, freedom of thought, freedom of expression and critical thinking shape the functioning of our societies. What makes a democracy vibrant is public debate: ideas are articulated and confront each other. And one of the important sources of this articulation of ideas is civil society.

Civil society not only nurtures freedom of expression and association as intrinsic values but relies on these rights to function properly. The work of civil-society organisations (CSOs), often seen (or made to be seen) as controversial, is an essential ingredient of democracy, just as are free speech and elections free from interference. But civil society needs a safe and enabling environment. That civic space has been shrinking in parts of Europe was widely documented even before the pandemic hit. The adoption this month by the European Parliament of my report on this theme is crucial in the current political environment. We need to act now—or some countries might divert way too far from the path of European values.

Key role

When fundamental rights, democratic principles or the rule of law are eroded or even under attack, CSOs play a key role in raising awareness, advocating for their protection and mobilising in their defence. Civil society is thus critical to realising the values underpinning the European Union, as enshrined in article 2 of the Treaty on European Union. Yet in acting to defend or elaborate these values, CSOs often become the targets of policies and measures trying to limit the space in which they operate. This shrinking of civic space has many forms and takes place at many levels—from unintended administrative obstructions to deliberate assaults on the very existence of civil society and its representatives.

Time and time again, CSOs have stood up when democracy has been under threat. We have seen their resilience in Hungary or Poland or wherever democratic backsliding has happened in the EU. This role in defending our democracies cannot however be taken for granted: some governments continue to pursue policies fundamentally at odds with European values and can marginalise the most vulnerable groups in our societies—just by introducing discriminatory laws or decisions, or initiating smear campaigns against organisations that dare to speak up for these groups.

Shy in standing up.........

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March 17, 2022

Anti democratic attitudes: The influence of work, digital transformation and climate change

https://www.boeckler.de/en/faust-detail.htm?sync_id=HBS-008228



https://www.boeckler.de/fpdf/HBS-008228/p_wsi_pb_66_2022.pdf


SOURCE
Hövermann, Andreas; Kohlrausch, Bettina; Voss, Dorothea: Anti-democratic attitudes

WSI Policy Brief, Düsseldorf, 18 pages