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Wednesday, March 6th, 2019

What’s behind Europe’s surge in anti-Semitism?

WILLIAM ECHIKSON ,  Director of the European Union of Progressive Judaism Brussels Office and an Associate Senior Fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies.  -  Politico

Stephan:  In my opinion, Anti-semitism is a religious social disease, a kind of emotional gonorrhea. Jews as a group constitute 0.2% of the world population, and half of them live in Israel, and most of the other half live in the U.S. An interesting fact about this tiny community: as of 2017, 902 individuals have been awarded the Nobel Prize, 203 of them have been Jews. A wildly disproportion distribution, and the Nobel committees are overwhelmingly Christian, so this is not bias. What it tells us is that much of the world's major advances in science and medicine have been made possible by Jews. So when anti-semitism climbs out of the psychological cesspool where it lives it is clear that a major social disorder is occurring in the society where it is happening, and nowhere is this affliction clearer than in Europe as this report describes.

Many factors have contributed toward an increase in European anti-Semitism
Credit: Frederick Florin/AFP/ Getty

Anti-Semitism is back in Europe. Cries of “dirty Jew” during Yellow Jackets protests in France, anti-Semitic posters condemning Hungarian-American philanthropist George Soros in Hungary, a row over anti-Semitic remarks that threatens to tear the Labour Party apart in the U.K. — these are all part of the same worrying trend.

This particularly European pathology never truly went away, of course, but it had been confined, after the Holocaust, to the far-right fringes of society. Now the numbers of high-profile incidents and violent attacks are multiplying. Not only is this disease back; it is being weaponized by nationalist governments and parties on both sides of the political spectrum.

The collapse of Europe’s center-right, center-left political consensus plays an important role. As the center has dissolved, the fringes have expanded. The rise of extremist parties has acted like a green light for the Continent’s anti-Semitism, much like U.S. President Donald […]

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Wednesday, March 6th, 2019

Only six countries have equal rights for men and women, World Bank finds

Rob Picheta and Kieron Mirchandani,    -  CNN

Stephan:  I have always considered gender equality a foundational premise of any true modern democracy and have believed that equal pay was the corollary to that. Over the years I have had several heated arguments on this issue and once, when I was in my early twenties, it became physical. That said, I recognize that until recently mine was a minority view. But the trend is clearly moving in that direction in developed nations. However, we are far from achieving it. Would it surprise you to learn that when it comes to gender equality the U.S. is not even in the top 50 nations and that in only six countries in the world do women and men enjoy equal rights? As this report describes only "Belgium, Denmark, France, Latvia, Luxembourg and."Sweden scored full marks of 100 in the bank's "Women, Business and the Law 2019" report."

#MeToo demonstration in Los Angeles

LONDON — The world is moving towards legal gender equality — but it’s moving very, very slowly.

Only six countries currently give women and men equal rights, a major report from the World Bank has found.
That’s an increase — from zero — compared to a decade ago, when the organization started measuring countries by how effectively they guarantee legal and economic equality between the genders.
But the rate of progress means that, by CNN calculations, women won’t achieve full equality in the areas studied by the World Bank until 2073.
Belgium, Denmark, France, Latvia, Luxembourg and Sweden scored full marks of 100 in the bank’s “Women, Business and the Law 2019” report.
Of those nations, France saw the biggest improvement over the past decade for implementing a domestic violence law, providing criminal penalties for workplace sexual harassment and introducing paid parental leave.
Women could boost the global economy, [...] </p> <div class=Read the Full Article
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Wednesday, March 6th, 2019

EVmatch: A Creative Solution To Increase Electric Vehicle Charging Access For Everyone

William Truesdell,    -  Clean Technica

Stephan:  In spite of the billions of dollars of subsidies given to the carbon industries, the trend is against them. The big issue in the transition is the availability of charging stations. Here is the latest on this.

 

EVmatch integrates with eMotorWerks JuiceNet-enabled EV chargers for access control. Credit: Electric Motor Werks, Inc.

Electric vehicles (EVs) aren’t just for the rich and famous. Sure, you may have seen the occasional Tesla and thought, “I could never afford one of those.” But the truth is, there are many affordable EV options, as well as rebates from utilities, car dealerships, and the federal government that make EVs cost competitive with traditional gasoline vehicles right now. (And the Tesla Model 3 is now essentially unbeatable in the $25,000–60,000 range.) Also, remember, there’s no contest when it comes to the low operating cost to fuel and maintain an EV. In some states it’s twice as expensive to fuel with gasoline, and if you’re charging your EV on solar, you’ll save both your wallet and the environment.

There’s clearly an economic incentive to drive an EV, but you might be thinking, “I don’t want to end up stranded on the side of the road with a dead battery.” […]

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Wednesday, March 6th, 2019

9 Pesticide-filled Teas You Should Never Buy (and the Kind You Should!)

,    -  Daily Health Post

Stephan:  The article I published on glyphosates in beer and wine is the most read story I have published in over 20 years. Clearly, there is an enormous interest in toxins in food. So here is a follow-up, this time about tea.

Tea is one of the most popular drinks enjoyed around the world. Americans drink up to 80 billion cups of teaa year while their Canadian neighbors drink almost 10 billion cups of tea a year (1,2).

Since tea is often praised as a healthy drink, The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) decided to investigate whether or not the most popular tea brands contained traces of pesticides in their products that could undermine the health benefits of the tea.

They found out that an inspection done by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) three years ago concluded that 1 in 4 teas contained pesticide residue far above the safety limit set by Health Canada. Both the dry leaves and steeped tea contained these traces.

To find out if the worst offenders are still on the market, CBC hired an accredited lab to retest some of Canada’s most popular brands, including Lipton, Red Rose, Tetley, and Twinings.

The full list includes:

Tuesday, March 5th, 2019

World’s food supply under ‘severe threat’ from loss of biodiversity

Jonathan Watts,  Global Environment Editor  -  The Guardian (U.K.)

Stephan:  Western culture because it is based on the dominionist Abrahamic separation worldview, in which the world is other than humans, and exploitable, has produced a series of technologies, for instance, carbon energy, and chemical industrial monoculture agriculture. These technologies are literally destroying the earth ecosystems, and putting human civilization at risk. Here is the latest on agriculture.

Organic carrot harvest in Germany. Organic agriculture makes up just 1% of global farmland.
Credit: Julian Stratenschulte/EPA

The world’s capacity to produce food is being undermined by humanity’s failure to protect biodiversity, according to the first UN study of the plants, animals and micro-organisms that help to put meals on our plates.

The stark warning was issued by the Food and Agriculture Organisation after scientists found evidence the natural support systems that underpin the human diet are deteriorating around the world as farms, cities and factories gobble up land and pump out chemicals.

Over the last two decades, approximately 20% of the earth’s vegetated surface has become less productive, said the report, launched on Friday.

It noted a “debilitating” loss of soil biodiversity, forests, grasslands, coral reefs, mangroves, seagrass beds and genetic diversity in crop and livestock species. In the oceans, a third of fishing areas are being overharvested.

Many species that are indirectly involved in food production, such as birds that eat crop pests and mangrove trees that help to purify […]

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