Al Jazeera: The Death of Fear

In an exclusive documentary Rageh Omaar traces the roots and repercussions of the uprising in Tunisia - a revolution which ended half a century of autocratic rule and inspired a wave of public protest that swept across the Arab world. [...]

Mohammed Bouazizi's self-immolation and the demonstrations which followed might have caught the public imagination, but protest in Tunis remained unthinkable for most. Ben Ali's interior ministry, the headquarters of a police state of more than 200,000 agents, was still in control.

Further demonstrations in the south led to the shooting dead of several protesters and ultimately to people coming out on to the streets of the capital. It was at this point that Ben Ali decided it was time to apply his personal touch.  [...]

Ben Ali recognised that the population were losing their fear and decided to deliver a lesson in terror. He deployed sniper units in the southern town of Kasserine, it seems with orders to shoot to kill. There are still no accurate casualty figures but at least 20 people were shot dead and the injuries caused by the use of military weaponry were horrific.

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openDemocracy: Why Colombia is still living in the shadows of war

In spite of the advances in the implementation of the peace agreement with the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), Colombia continues living in the shadows of war. Civil society is finding itself in the midst of disputes between armed groups such as criminal gangs, the ELN (the National Liberation Army) and dissidents from the FARC, which has been demonstrated in the figures of the RUV (Single Register of Victims). Throughout December 2017, around 56,000 people were affected by armed conflict according to the RUV. [...]

The RUV shows that forced displacement was the issue that mostly affected Colombians throughout 2017.  This is followed by threats, loss of goods or property at the hands of armed groups, and offences against freedom and sexual identity. Here we identify some of the issues to be worked on throughout 2018. 

During the year of 2017, the RUV recorded 54 thousand cases of forced displacement, which represents 79% of all victims in the last year. The most affected regions are Chocó (with 9684 cases), Nariño (with 7776 cases), Norte de Santander (5512) and Antioquia (5904). [...]

Delinquents and armed groups have taken advantage of the post-conflict situation to carry out their land-grabs. It was only in September of 2017 when the government managed to take down a criminal gang dedicated to the theft of hectares of land that were due to be returned to victims. Through corruption, the capturers became creditors of more than 10 plots of land whose collective value exceeded 120 thousand million Colombian pesos.

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FiveThirtyEight: Trumpism Works Better Without Trump

Kentucky last week became the first state, with the Trump administration’s blessing, to take Medicaid benefits away from people who are working-age and not-disabled but don’t have jobs. This was an initiative of Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin, who FiveThirtyEight wrote a long feature about in October. As the article below shows, this move both fits with Bevin’s conservatism and, perhaps, his national ambitions. [...]

And Bevin seemed out of central casting for the role. His personal background was ideal for a Republican candidate: Army veteran; father of nine children, four of whom he and his wife adopted from Ethiopia; a member of one of Kentucky’s (and the nation’s) largest Christian churches. He had millions in personal wealth from his businesses and was willing to put some of that money into his campaign. And Bevin, with his booming speaking voice, relative youth and easy, glad-handing manner with voters, seemed the perfect contrast to McConnell, who had been in the Senate for nearly three decades, is 25 years older than Bevin, and lacks charisma. [...]

Bevin and the legislature enacted seven new laws in the first week that the Kentucky legislature met this year, including a requirement that, before a woman can have an abortion, she must be presented with an ultrasound of the unborn fetus and listen to a doctor describe the image; a ban on all abortions after the first 20 weeks of a pregnancy; “right to work” legislation; and a requirement that employees formally “opt in” to the union before their pay is withheld for dues. [...]

But even if Bevin does not go national, his strategies and style could. There were worries early in Trump’s term that he would create something akin to an autocracy in the United States. At this moment, those seem overstated. Trump is struggling to enact his agenda and remains deeply unpopular. But Bevin, who is up for reelection in 2019, could eventually have a state legislature dominated by his own party; courts, boards and universities packed with his allies; a business community beholden to him; and an even more diminished press corps, both shrunken by the bad economics of the local news industry and discredited by Bevin spending years attacking it.

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CityLab: Great Cities Enable You to Live Longer

The most interesting result of this paper is the strong, consistent positive contribution of several community level variables to life expectancy. Poor people tend to live longer in places with more immigrants, more expensive housing, higher local government spending, more density, and a better educated population. Consider each of the five characteristics in the category “Other factors” at the bottom of Chetty’s table above. [...]

The strongest pattern in the data was that low-income individuals tend to live longest (and have more healthful behaviors) in cities with highly educated populations, high incomes, and high levels of government expenditures, such as New York, New York, and San Francisco, California. In these cities, life expectancy for individuals in the bottom 5% of the income distribution was approximately 80 years. In contrast, in cities such as Gary, Indiana, and Detroit, Michigan, the expected age at death for individuals in the bottom 5% of the income distribution was approximately 75 years. Low-income individuals living in cities with highly educated populations and high incomes also experienced the largest gains in life expectancy during the 2000s. 

As noted, these correlations don’t show causation; some of the effect may have something to do with those—like immigrants—who self-select to move to cities. But the strength of these correlations (and their absence for other variables like access to medical care) signals a need for further scrutiny. As always, this kind of broad statistical work comes with caveats: the paper takes only a first-pass, high-level look at correlations between geographic variables and life expectancy. This analysis shows the simple and direct relationship between each tested variable and life expectancy—but doesn’t measure any interactions among variables. And the standard caveat applies: correlation doesn’t prove causation. Still, by examining the correlation between selected local characteristics and life expectancy, we can begin to answer some of our questions about what aspects of place affect this aspect of quality of life.

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Politico: Brussels goes to war against plastic garbage

The Commission certainly is. The strategy includes new requirements to design products that are recyclable, and EU-wide quality standards for plastic waste, which can then be more easily plugged back into the production chain. It will also encourage producers to use as much recycled material as possible. To help, Brussels will spend €100 million a year on plastics recycling and clean-up research.

A surprise proposal last week by Budget Commissioner Günther Oettinger to bring in a plastic tax — aimed both at shoring up the bloc’s finances after Brexit and making it more expensive to litter and widely resisted by industry and some NGOs — managed to get a mention in the strategy. [...]

The Commission also focused on seas, where each year between 150,000 and 500,000 tons of plastic waste enters the oceans. The strategy calls marine litter — debris from items such as plastic products and abandoned fishing gear — a “visible and alarming” sign of the problem of waste.

The EU also wants to crack down on microplastics — minuscule bits of plastic less than 5 millimeters in size. Brussels is considering a ban on intentionally added microplastics found in cosmetics, body washes and paints. It also wants to carry out more research into unintentional microplastics, like the rubber worn off tires.

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The Guardian: Brexit Britain will have to get used to life as a ‘third country’

Once upon a time there was a creature called Brussels that ate national sovereignty. This monster had a special hunger for Britishness, feasting on the independence of that nation, while its neighbours were mysteriously undiminished. France never became less French, despite dwelling closer to the beast’s lair. Prime ministers were forced to pay tribute to Brussels. They defended themselves with magical red lines, but the monster was too powerful. It had to be slain. [...]

David Davis, for one, does not fancy life in a third country. We know this because he was stupid enough to write it down. In a memo leaked last week, the Brexit secretary complained that “some EU agencies have published guidance to business outlining that the UK will become a third country when we stop being a member state”. This, he said, was spooking investors. But being a third country and not being a member state are the same thing. Davis is unhappy that Brexit means Brexit.  [...]

Still, it is jarring for EU leaders to hear Britain ask for special deals when its membership package was the most bespoke of the lot: outside the euro; outside the Schengen border-free zone; treaty opt-outs on social protection and criminal justice; a budget rebate. Those concessions were won from a seat in the room. Once on the outside, the question is not what new favours are available, but how much it costs to restore old privileges.

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The Guardian: What happens when the jobs dry up in the new world? The left must have an answer

f modern Britain has a defining problem, it boils down to an across-the-board failure to leave the past behind. Brexit, self-evidently, is a profoundly retrogressive project, helmed by Tory politicians split between continuity Thatcherites and devotees of a supposed one-nation Conservatism who still yearn for a quiet, sepia-tinted England. The latter are personified, in her own shaky way, by the prime minister. Labour, meanwhile, has a clear set of moral responses to an obvious social crisis, and the first stirrings of a convincing programme for government. But it, too, has a tendency to take refuge in fuzzy dreams of yesteryear: 1945, old flags and banners, the idea that a dependable job in a factory is still a byword for emancipation.

And all the time, the future takes shape. Academics at Oxford University’s Martin School say that as automation gains pace, even work in retail – which is all many places currently have left – “is likely to vanish, as it has done in manufacturing, mining and agriculture”. The era of driverless transport will soon be here. Even for the labour market’s winners, a digitised economy’s quickfire cycles and ever-changing demands are steadily killing job security.  [...]

So what might the progressive politics of the 2020s and 2030s look like? Clearly, our most glaring inequalities call for action that only a powerful central state can carry out. We should start, at long last, to move tax policy towards concentrations of wealth and assets, not least land and property. The line should be redrawn between what ought to be considered public services and utilities, and things best left to the private sector, a point underlined by the nightmarish collapse of the outsourcing giant Carillion. Investment needs to be forcibly pushed into places long deprived of it.

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Quartz: Europe’s central banks are starting to replace dollar reserves with the yuan

For the past 70 years, the US dollar has been the world’s dominant currency. Two-thirds of the world’s $6.9 trillion allocated foreign exchange reserves are held in US dollars. The yuan took a major step towards broader international adoption in 2016 when the IMF decided to include it in the basket of currencies that make up the Special Drawing Right, an alternative reserve asset to the dollar. [...]

The Chinese yuan hit a two-year high against the US dollar this week, after the German Bundesbank said that it would include the yuan in its reserves for the first time. “The notable development from the European point of view over the past few years has been the growing international role of the renminbi in global financial markets,” Andreas Dombret, a member of the central bank’s executive board, reportedly said at a conference in Hong Kong (paywall). The decision was made last year and no investments have been made yet, as preparations are still in process. The French central bank then revealed that it already held some reserves in yuan.

As most central banks’ reserves are held in dollars, any shift into other currencies, such as the yuan, will come at the expense of the greenback. In June, the European Central Bank announced that it had exchanged €500 million ($611 million) worth of US dollar reserves into yuan securities. This was a small shift—the ECB has €44 billion in foreign exchange reserves—but nonetheless it reflects China’s growing prominence in the global financial system.

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Al Jazeera: India ends government subsidies for Hajj pilgrimage

The decision followed a 2012 ruling by the country's Supreme Court, which had directed the government to gradually reduce the subsidy and abolish it by 2022.

The move was welcomed by many Muslim groups in the country.

"This has been a long-standing demand of the Muslim community in India," Navaid Hamid, president of the All India Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat, an umbrella organisation of several Muslim groups, told Al Jazeera. [...]

Starting in 1954, the Indian government has for decades offered subsidies amounting to billions of rupees to poor Muslims wanting to perform Hajj. In 2016, the sum was about $75m, down from about $100m in 2013, according to official data.

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