Politico: The great nutrient collapse

What Loladze found is that scientists simply didn’t know. It was already well documented that CO2 levels were rising in the atmosphere, but he was astonished at how little research had been done on how it affected the quality of the plants we eat. For the next 17 years, as he pursued his math career, Loladze scoured the scientific literature for any studies and data he could find. The results, as he collected them, all seemed to point in the same direction: The junk-food effect he had learned about in that Arizona lab also appeared to be occurring in fields and forests around the world. “Every leaf and every grass blade on earth makes more and more sugars as CO2 levels keep rising,” Loladze said. “We are witnessing the greatest injection of carbohydrates into the biosphere in human history―[an] injection that dilutes other nutrients in our food supply.” [...]

Part of the problem, Loladze was finding, lay in the research world itself. Answering the question required an understanding of plant physiology, agriculture and nutrition―as well as a healthy dollop of math. He could do the math, but he was a young academic trying to establish himself, and math departments weren't especially interested in solving problems in farming and human health. Loladze struggled to get funding to generate new data and continued to obsessively collect published data from researchers across the globe. He headed to the heartland to take an assistant professor position at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. It was a major agricultural school, which seemed like a good sign, but Loladze was still a math professor. He was told he could pursue his research interests as long as he brought in funding, but he struggled. Biology grant makers said his proposals were too math-heavy; math grant makers said his proposals contained too much biology. [...]

These experiments and others like them have shown scientists that plants change in important ways when they’re grown at elevated CO2 levels. Within the category of plants known as “C3”―which includes approximately 95 percent of plant species on earth, including ones we eat like wheat, rice, barley and potatoes―elevated CO2 has been shown to drive down important minerals like calcium, potassium, zinc and iron. The data we have, which look at how plants would respond to the kind of CO2 concentrations we may see in our lifetimes, show these important minerals drop by 8 percent, on average. The same conditions have been shown to drive down the protein content of C3 crops, in some cases significantly, with wheat and rice dropping 6 percent and 8 percent, respectively.

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Haaretz; Netanyahu, Sole Leader to Endorse Independent Kurdistan, Hits Back at Erdogan for Supporting Hamas

Israel’s support for Kurdish independence is not new; Netanyahu has made similar declarations as far back as 2014. But the timing, less than two weeks before a September 25 referendum slated to be held in Iraqi Kurdistan, makes the Israeli message more than just moral support for the Kurdish people’s desire for an independent state. The statement, the first of its kind to be made by any world leader, is a dagger right in the eyes of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is ideologically and strategically opposed to the establishment of a Kurdish state. [...]

What the Kurdish official means is that Israel’s public statements could portray the Kurds as collaborating with a country defined as an enemy by Iran while they are trying to gain international legitimacy for their cause. “If Israel really wanted to help, it could promote the issue in the White House and get the administration to declare its support for an independent state,” the official said. The White House opposes the referendum as being badly timed. [...]

The war against ISIS has reordered the Kurds’ priorities. If after the second Gulf War their great achievements were joining the Iraqi government, the naming of a Kurdish president for the entire country and a fair share of government budgets, the war against ISIS has fed and nurtured the opposite process – that of separating from the mother country. The Kurds would see independence as worthy historic and national compensation for its large contribution to the war against a terror group that threatens the West.

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Politico: Juncker’s great leap forward

In practical terms, that means resolving differences over the posting of workers, the settlement of refugees, membership of the eurozone and the Schengen zone. Put in other terms, he is trying to preserve the legacy of Helmut Kohl, the long-time chancellor of Germany who was Juncker’s mentor and who took political risks in order to reconcile east and west. [...]

But even if Juncker is thwarted in his ambitions to bind the EU27 closer together after Brexit, even if his impassioned defense of European values and the rule of law makes no impact in Poland and Hungary, his speech may yet prove to be a landmark in the EU’s evolution because of what it said about reform of the bloc’s institutions. [...]

The Spitzenkandidaten process is open to criticism. Whatever the pretense, the Parliament’s elections are an agglomeration of national contests; so Juncker’s name did not appear on ballot papers outside Luxembourg and nobody could cast a vote for Schulz outside Germany. Not all political groups fielded candidates in all countries. The contest was billed as a popular vote, but was decided by the number of seats won, not the number of votes cast (the S&D won more votes than the EPP).

Nevertheless, the Spitzenkandidaten contest will be repeated in 2019. Although championed by the European Parliament (which wanted to give its own electoral contests a focus and significance they had previously lacked), no major national figure in Europe is prepared to stand up and say that the Spitzenkandidaten process should not happen next time round. In the meantime, the expectations for 2019 are gaining in momentum — witness Juncker saying in his speech this week that European electoral campaigns should start earlier and there should be transnational lists of candidates. [...]

Juncker’s suggestion that the presidencies of the Commission and the European Council should be combined would be a step toward a more recognizable structure. It would benefit the Parliament, which would be able to portray itself as the directly elected legislature, and to portray the Commission and Council as the executive/government, supported by their respective administrations. Furthermore, the president of that government would owe his or her mandate to the Spitzenkandidaten contest, to the European Parliament elections, rather than, as in the past, to the collective decision of nationally elected governments.

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Jacobin Magazine: Capitalism and Poverty

What this graph shows is how much people receive from earnings (wages, salaries, self-employment income, and farm income) at each percentile of the earnings distribution. As you move from left to right on the graph, you notice that every percentile has zero dollars in earnings until you get to the forty-ninth percentile. This means that around 49 percent of people in society have no labor income. That is, they are nonearners. [...]

Around 46 percent of nonearners are children below the age of eighteen. Another 24 percent are elderly people aged sixty-five and above. Ten percent are disabled. Six percent are students. Eight percent are family caregivers. With some exceptions, these are not people who could or should be activated into the labor force. [...]

In both graphs, children, elderly, disabled people, and students make up around 70 percent of the poor. If you add in carers and those already fully employed, the number goes to around 90 percent. There is room to activate some of these folks into the labor market, especially carers through the provision of child care and paid leave benefits. But for the most part, the poor are people who cannot and should not work.

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The New Yorker: Aung San Suu Kyi, the Ignoble Laureate

The most urgent and powerful appeals to Aung San Suu Kyi have come from her fellow Nobel laureates. The Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai, who won the prize for her advocacy of girls’ education, condemned the “tragic and shameful treatment” of the Rohingya. “I am still waiting for my fellow Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi to do the same.” Addressing a letter to his “dear sister,” the anti-apartheid activist Desmond Tutu wrote of his “profound sadness” and called on Aung San Suu Kyi to end the military-led operations. “If the political price of your ascension to the highest office in Myanmar is your silence, the price is surely too steep,” he wrote. The Dalai Lama subsequently urged her to find a peaceful solution to the humanitarian crisis, saying that Buddha would have “definitely helped those poor Muslims.”

This is not the first time that laureates have spoken of their displeasure with Aung San Suu Kyi. In December last year, when the military conducted another brutal offensive against the Rohingya, thirteen Nobel winners, including Muhammad Yunus, Shirin Ebadi, and Leymah Gbowee, signed an open letter deploring the Army’s use of helicopter gunships, arbitrary arrests, and the rape of women. “Despite repeated appeals to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi,” they concluded, using her honorific, “we are frustrated that she has not taken any initiative to ensure full and equal citizenship rights of the Rohingyas. Daw Suu Kyi is the leader and is the one with primary responsibility to lead, and lead with courage, humanity and compassion.” [...]

There’s no evidence that the laureates’ chorus of indignation has any bearing on Aung San Suu Kyi, or whether their declarations can break the spell of isolation and bring her back to the outside world. The only response she has made to the present crisis in Rakhine was a Facebook post, detailing a phone conversation she had with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. In it, she criticized the “huge iceberg of misinformation calculated to create a lot of problems between different communities and with the aim of promoting the interest of the terrorists.” While Aung San Suu Kyi has remained silent, the offices and ministries under her charge have not, describing the Rohingya as Bengalis and publicly advocating the use of force in certain situations. “If they are going to harm you, you can shoot them,” Aung San Suu Kyi’s spokesman, U Zaw Htay, said. The most egregious case of the recklessness of Aung San Suu Kyi’s government came last month, when it accused international aid workers of supporting terrorists, prompting fears for the safety of thousands of people in Myanmar employed by charities and N.G.O.s. There have been demands that the U.S. government stop using the name “Rohingya”, and when a Rohingya women gave details of an alleged gang rape, Aung San Suu Kyi’s office dismissed it as “fake rape.”

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Deutsche Welle: Brexit: Japanese companies set to leave London

The timing of the announcements by Toyota Motor Corp and the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ is unfortunate given that Theresa May, the British prime minister, was in Japan in late August on a mission specifically to reassure Japanese businesses that they will not lose out in the EU market place should they choose to keep their European headquarters in the UK after Brexit. [...]

"A few months ago, the UK government was saying 'We're sure we'll be able to negotiate [a deal] without any trade tax'," he said. "They are not saying that any more." [...]

"Britain leaving the European single market is becoming a clear disadvantage for Japanese companies with operations across the continent there, although there is still an expectation among most that the UK will remain at least closely connected to the European market," Martin Schulz, a senior economist with the Fujitsu Research Institute, told DW. [...]

Underlining the importance of Japanese companies to the broader British economy, a steady stream of government ministers have been in Japan in recent months, including Philip Hammond, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Foreign Minister Boris Johnson.

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Quartz: One Italian city’s ingenious plan to combat xenophobia with design

This is Talking Hands, a migrant-run design workshop where asylum seekers make and sell furniture, embroidery and textiles. Similar initiatives are popping up around Europe; Green Light in Wien and Venice and Cucula in Berlin are two of them. But Talking Hands defies prejudice and puts forward a grassroots solution to the immigration crisis in one of the most xenophobic areas of Italy.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, in the first half of 2017, more than 80,000 migrants arrived on the coasts of Italy fleeing war, poverty and persecution in their home countries. Due to the number of asylum-seekers and the bureaucracy involved in evaluating their cases, the majority of those asking for refugee status end up waiting for months— sometimes years—in overcrowded, privately run “temporary hospitality centers,” some of which take the concept of hospitality to extreme lengths. [...]

Located just outside Treviso, the center where Yaya resides currently hosts 800 migrants, both men and women. Each person there receives a monthly allowance of 75 euros, plus food and accommodation. The worst thing for Yaya is sitting around all day, with nothing to do, a psychological burden he shares with many other migrants, according to a 2016 dossier that Doctor Without Borders released in temporary hospitality centers across Italy. [...]

Talking Hands typically make 500 to 700 euros each time the group participates in a local market. Part of the money from the sales gets reinvested in tools and materials for the workshop. Another part is used to buy food for collective meals, which are also available to undocumented immigrants who don’t receive the monthly allowance from the Italian government. A third portion of the money is designated for those who need to send money home for family emergencies.

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Social Europe: Schrödinger’s Immigrant

When Central and Eastern European leaders try to explain why they do not want to accept refugees, they tend to contradict one another. Some insist that refugees take jobs from natives, which implies that refugees are hard workers; others complain that refugees rely on welfare benefits, which suggests that they work too little. [...]

According to the European Social Survey, there is little agreement in Europe about whether refugees and migrants take existing jobs, or actually create new ones (see chart above). At Odlišnost (Distinction), a collective of academics and journalists, we have reviewed 20 empirical studies to determine the effect that immigrants had on native workers in Europe and the Middle East between 1990 and 2015. All told, we found little evidence to support the claim that accepting a reasonable number of refugees and migrants from developing countries deprives native-born workers of employment. [...]

But high- and low-skill migrants alike contribute to the efficient division of labor in their host countries, because language and other differences make it harder for them to compete with locals. The studies we examined show that, in terms of wages, immigrants from close neighboring countries put a small amount of downward pressure on the wages of low-skill natives. With immigrants from afar, however, this negative effect disappears. [...]

It turns out that asylum applicants typically have little to no knowledge of a country’s labor-market conditions or welfare benefits before they arrive. Rather, they are usually guided by the circumstances of their journey. And when they do consciously choose a country, they tend to look for places where their compatriots or relatives already live, or where they already know the language, owing to past colonial ties.

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