Quartz: Mozambique’s forgotten “East Germans” are still fighting for their communist payday

“We were going to create a society outside capitalism”, Jose, fifteen at independence in 1975, recalls Frelimo’s aim to create a non-tribal, non-racial, non-capitalist Mozambique. And to achieve this, the party sought not only to recreate the country but its citizens too, to fashion the homen novo: a new man, modern, skilled, secular and socialist; free from African backwardness, traditions and superstitions. [...]

But it was also a country to which Mozambique owed a large debt. And here was a more hard-edged reason for Frelimo sending Jose, and 20 000 others, to its communist ally over the 1980s: to help pay off the 200 million marks (approximately US $110 million) owed to an East Germany itself short of labour. And here too the terms of their migration were set: workers would receive 40% of their salary in Germany; the rest would automatically be transferred back to the government in Maputo, to be paid out in Mozambican meticais on their return. [...]

It wasn’t, of course, to last. For amidst all the euphoria around the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, there were thousands of Mozambicans in Rostock, Leipzig, Dresden and Berlin itself both fearful for their immediate safety—some remember roving gangs shouting ‘foreigners go home”—and worried over their long-term future. In the end, at their places of work, they were offered a choice. “Each one of us had to decide in that moment”, Jose remembers: they could stay, but would have to leave their jobs and support themselves; or they could return to Mozambique and pick up the 60% of their wages that had always been sent to their government. “We were tied”, he says, ruefully, as the vast majority opted to go home to claim what they were owed.  [...]

Yet for the magermans, history did not end, moving frictionlessly from a failed socialist past to a prosperous capitalist present. Rather, they are stuck in it. Jose is visited every year by Birgit, his enamorada from Dresden; others have half-Mozambican sons and daughters they cannot see for the lack of a visa; and they are all united by the dwindling hope that, one day, they will receive the life-changing amount they are rightfully owed. For now, admirably and without expectation, Jose and the rest will carry on their protest to a government and country that no longer seem to care: “We have nothing else. They take away your rights. You have no job. It’s the only thing you can do.”

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The Atlantic: Imagining the Future Is Just Another Form of Memory

The first clue that memory and imagining the future might go hand in hand came from amnesia patients. When they lost their pasts, it seemed, they lost their futures as well. This was the case with the famous patient known by his initials, “H.M.” H.M. had epilepsy, and to treat it, he received an experimental surgery in 1953 that removed several portions of his brain, including almost his entire hippocampus, which is a vital brain structure for memory. After the surgery, H.M. had severe amnesia, and also appeared to struggle with the future. A researcher once asked H.M., “What do you think you’ll do tomorrow?” He replied, “Whatever is beneficial.”

Since then, functional MRI scans have allowed researchers to determine that many of the same brain structures are indeed involved in both remembering and forecasting. In a study Szpunar did, he and his colleagues looked at activity in the brain’s default network, which includes the hippocampus as well as regions that involve processing personal information, spatial navigation, and sensory information. They found that activity in many of these regions was “almost completely overlapping” when people remembered and imagined future events, Szpunar says.

Researchers are still trying to pin down exactly how different brain regions are involved in these processes, but much of it has to do with the construction of scenes. You can remember facts, sure, and you can make purely informational predictions—“We will have jet packs by 2050”—but often, when you remember, you are reliving a scene from your memory. You have a mental map of the space; you can “hear” what’s being said and “smell” smells and “taste” flavors; you can feel your emotions from that moment anew. Similarly, when you imagine something you might experience in the future, you are essentially “pre-living” that scene. And just as memories are more detailed the more recent they are, imagined future scenes are more detailed the nearer in the future they are. [...]

“We can’t really imagine or think that far into the future, and we can’t remember that far back, if we don’t have this cultural life script as a kind of skeleton for our life story,” says Annette Bohn, a professor of psychology at Aarhus University in Denmark. In studies Bohn has done with adolescents, their conception of a script seemed to develop in parallel with their ability to remember the past and imagine the future. (At the other end of the life course, older people’s ability to imagine the future declines in tandem with their memory.)

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Social Europe: Schäuble’s Poisoned Parting Gift To The Eurozone

At his last Eurogroup meeting the departing German finance minister left a chilling message of his own in the form of a short non-paper on European economic policy. I will go through point by point, but the spoiler is simple: it represents a doubling down of believers in Maastricht and a complete rejection of all the risk-sharing and stability-promoting ideas tabled by the European authorities and, most vividly, by French President Macron.

The non-paper enunciates three basic principles: fiscal responsibilities and control must be kept together (aka avoid moral hazard); Member states need to be forced more effectively to implement structural reforms; and credible stabilization functions are needed to deal with global or domestic shocks. There is not so much wrong with the principles themselves; it is the ends to which they are put and the way they are operationalised. [...]

First, in a very real sense it effectively abandons elements of monetary union altogether and brings back characteristics of the previous European Monetary System (EMS). Even in relatively stable times countries perceived as weak would pay an interest premium over “hard-currency” countries, just as they did in the EMS; it would just reflect the probability of default rather than depreciation. This would, by itself, tend to perpetuate and even exacerbate income differentials within the monetary union. A key incentive for former “soft currency” countries to sign up to the Euro would be removed. (It is true that the substantial lowering of interest rate differentials on joining monetary union, created some problems for periphery countries, but the answer would have been tighter fiscal policy and/or macroprudential policies). German economists tend to emphasise incentive compatibility: but they have failed to consider (or maybe simply do not care about) the incentives of the majority of Euro Area members, who would be effectively tied into a system that, for them, combines the disadvantages of the EMS and the EMU. [...]

To sum up the above analysis, Wolfgang Schäuble’s parting gift to the Euro Area is a recommendation, first, to destabilize the Euro Area through measures (sovereign debt restructuring) designed to remove moral hazard, second to reject the most prominent various measures on the table in the direction of a deepening of economic policy integration and, third, instead to rely on “structural reforms”, a deepening of the Single market including a true banking and capital union to bolster resilience. There is nothing on the table here to encourage crisis-hit countries to see their future and economic advantage firmly in continued Euro Area membership. And nothing to indicate to the European institutions – who have jointly signed up to the idea of deepening EMU – and the new French President that Germany is willing to jump over its own shadow,m despite some warm words from the Chancellory in recent weeks.

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The Atlantic: The Loudest Underwater Sound Ever Recorded Has No Scientific Explanation

 In 1997, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recorded from deep in the ocean one of the loudest sounds ever detected. No known animal could make it and no man-made source was ever found.  Documentary by Cara Cusumano.

Quartz: Your five-minute summary of Xi Jinping’s three-hour Communist Party congress speech

In his speech, Xi for the first time outlined a specific timetable for reaching the second centennial goal. He said the party will first lead China to “basically realize socialist modernization” by 2035, when, among other things, the nation will have narrowed its wealth gap and improved its environment significantly. And the second stage will last from 2035-2050, during which China will become a leading global power and the Chinese people will basically enjoy “common property.” By then, Xi said, “the Chinese nation will stand with a more high-spirited image in the family of nations.” [...]

Prominently, Xi rolled out his thinking for the country in the years to come. It’s called “Thought on socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era,” which takes a well-worn phrase and tacks a few extra words on it to make it his own. Xi explained the notion in 14 bullet points that basically say “the party leads everything, everywhere,” as he noted in the first point. The bullet points cover everything from national security to elder care to reform, which includes “the determination to get rid of all outdated thinking and ideas and all institutional ailments.” [...]

But Xi also said China’s political model can make a contribution to the world. He said the political system of “socialism with Chinese characteristics” is a path that can be replicated by other developing nations seeking to grow economically while maintaining their independence.

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CityLab: Breaking Down the Many Ways Europe's City-Dwellers Get to Work

Perhaps what’s most striking here is how much higher the levels of public transit commuting are in capital cities than in regional cities. This might seem an obvious phenomenon—generally less populous second-tier cities seem less likely to have the sort of snarled up roads that propel commuters towards public transit. Still, some capitals post a relatively poor showing, with less than 30 percent of commuters using public transit in Lisbon, Dublin, Vilnius, and Riga.

Some outliers suggest that investment, not size, is the key issue. Modestly sized Zurich (whose population is just over 400,000) shows public transit commuting rates of over 60 percent, considerably higher than the 40 to 50 percent share for far larger Rome (population 2.88 million). And the city with the highest rate of public transit commuting—Vienna, at 74 percent of all commuters—isn’t even in Europe’s top 20 metro areas. The map implies, without explicitly confirming, that it is a combination of wealth and closeness to power that gets a city endowed with a public transit system good enough to attract large majorities of workers to use them for their daily commutes. [...]

Amsterdam and Copenhagen have a justified reputation as Europe’s most bike-friendly capitals. As the table above makes clear, they may also be Europe’s only bike-friendly capitals, at least to an extent. According to Eurostat’s figures, only in these two cities does bike commuting exceed 50 percent of modal share—although even this is contradicted by figures from Copenhagen Municipality quoted in Danish newspaper Politiken this week which suggest bike commuting has dropped to 41 percent. [...]

Paris is the only city where a (very narrow) majority walk for at least a portion of their journey to and from their workplace—an impressive number given that public transit commuting is also especially high in the city. At the other end of the scale, the city with the lowest number of walking commuters surveyed is actually Copenhagen. So why are the rates so different?

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Politico: Why Europe isn’t worried by Austria’s right tilt (but should be)

Sebastian Kurz — the 31-year-old leader of the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) — is set to lead a right-leaning coalition that includes the far-right Freedom Party. The last time Austria’s populists won more than a quarter of the vote and played kingmaker, in 1999, the other EU members isolated Vienna through bilateral sanctions. But what shocked EU leaders then is barely causing a stir now.

In part, this is simply because the inclusion of the far right is not as shocking as it was 20 years ago. Since then, governments across Europe — from Hungary to Italy — have turned rightward and a host of mainstream political leaders have adopted anti-immigrant rhetoric in an effort to keep the political fringes at bay. [...]

Sebastian Kurz’s campaign rhetoric was barely distinguishable from that of far-right FPÖ leader Heinz-Christian Strache, according to Ruth Wodak, a veteran discourse analyst of the far right. In his speeches and statements, the young ÖVP leader referred only to “migrants” and chose not to mention those fleeing persecution and deserving protection under asylum law. [...]

The next Austrian government may be unlikely to go the way of Hungary — where the government used a referendum in 2016 to spend an unprecedented amount of public money on a campaign against migration that caused public support for asylum to drop by half. But a new spate of referendums in Austria could slow down EU decision-making and block progress in Brussels.  

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Politico: Britain thinks Germans care about Brexit — they don’t

Brexit is not a political issue in Germany. No election will be won or lost because of it. Angela Merkel’s position — to walk in lock-step with France and the Commission — is not controversial, it is consensus across the political landscape. [...]

A prominent German commentator recently compared May to “a beetle lying on its back, kicking its legs in desperation.” Germany’s politicians have shown little inclination to help turn her back over. May’s failed back-channel effort to convince Berlin to push Michel Barnier to move Brexit talks to the next phase is only the latest example of Germany’s unwillingness to help. [...]

British hopes that Berlin would eventually intervene to try and protect Germany’s industrial interests in the U.K. have proved misplaced. German auto companies are likely to take a Brexit hit. But the growth in migration of financial firms to Frankfurt has convinced Berlin that Brexit might not be as bad as many feared.

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Quartz: A hepatitis A outbreak is killing California’s homeless population

In the past 11 months, 569 people have been infected and 17 have died of the virus in southern California. The US Centers for Disease Control reported that in 2015, there were a total (pdf) of 1,390 country-wide. This is now the second-largest outbreak in the US in the last 20 years. (The largest was over 10 years ago in Pennsylvania due to contaminated onions.)

Hepatitis A is a virus that damages the liver and causes it to swell. Many of the initial symptoms look like a stomach flu, but hep A can also cause the skin and the whites of your eyes to turn yellow, because the liver stops being able to filter out toxins in the blood. It spreads easily between people—especially through shared needles—or through contaminated food or drinking water. It’s an unpleasant virus whose symptoms usually last up to two months, but is only fatal about 1% of the time. [...]

Brown declared a state of emergency in part to increase the supply of vaccines available to the homeless, and other efforts to curb the outbreak are already underway. Last month, San Diego started bleaching city streets to try to disinfect them, and city councilmen have also called for testing to ensure drinking water isn’t being contaminated with feces. In other cities affected by the outbreak, local government representatives have put in requests for port-a-potties as a way of improving sanitation on the streets to stop the spread of the virus.

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