The Guardian: Why exercise alone won’t save us

Technological innovations have led to countless minor reductions of movement. To clean a rug in the 1940s, most people took it into their yard and whacked the bejeezus out of it for 20 minutes. Fast-forward a few decades and we can set robot vacuum cleaners to wander about our living rooms as we order up some shopping to be delivered, put on the dishwasher, cram a load into the washer-dryer, admire the self-cleaning oven, stack some machine-cut logs in the grate, pour a glass of milk from the frost-free fridge or thumb a capsule into the coffee maker. Each of these devices and behaviours is making it a bit more difficult for us to keep moving regularly throughout our day.

Advertisement As we step through various innovations, we tend to think of the work that is no longer required as “saved”. Cleaning a rug once burned about 200 calories, while activating a robo-vac uses about 0.2 – an activity drop of a thousandfold, with nothing to replace it. Nobody, when they buy a labour-saving device, thinks: “How am I going to replace that movement I have saved?”[...]

The rise of exercise is synonymous with the rise of leisure. We associate this with the start of the Industrial Revolution, but in fact it dates from much earlier. Once humans settled and began to build, several thousand years ago, hierarchies began to form, particularly in cities, as did the gap between master and servant. To be one of the elite meant others were doing the physical work for you. For the masters, there was time to fill, and into this space grew the idea of leisure. Exercise also emerges here, in the imbalance created in the spread of labour performed across a population. Ever since, we have seen a powerful link between exercise and inequality. [...]

Advertisement Pes has recently been studying workers in one of the island’s regions of longevity, Seulo (population around 1,000). He discovered one group of women who had spent their working lives seated, but nonetheless reached a great age. They had been working treadles (pedal-powered sewing machines), which meant they had regularly burned sufficient calories to derive the longevity benefits of remaining active. (Lowndes’ Gymnasticon, which works like a treadle, is starting to look a little less ridiculous as a solution for sedentary workers.)

read the article or listen to the podcast

Al Jazeera: Spain's far-right hates not only immigrants, but also women

The party's nationwide goal is to transform Spain's current system of devolved regional power into a single government and parliament for all of Spain. Their slogans, similar to those of other right-wing populist parties across the West, are "España primero" and "Los españoles primero", that is, "Spain first", "Spaniards first". Steve Bannon has obviously endorsed them.[...]

Like the Northern League in Italy, the National Rally in France and the Alternative for Germany, Vox also wants to shut down mosques, erect walls and deport immigrants. While the party's political and economic proposals are similar to those of other extreme parties throughout Europe, they include another alarming feature: hate for gender equality movements.

Vox, like Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro, denounces "gender ideology" as a threat to heteronormative, Christian, and white family values. According to the party programme, men and woman are already equal and so there is no need for specials laws against domestic violence to protect women's rights. Measures to fight gender violence are "ideological" and "discriminatory" against men. These measures - introduced by the Socialist Party government of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero in 2004 to crack down on gender-based violence - offer free legal aid and established special courts for victims. [...]

But Vox wants not only to repeal these gender measures, but also to eliminate subsidised feminist groups, create a Ministry of the Family and introduce "an organic law protecting the natural family, which shall be recognised as an institution that came before the State". While they also seek to abolish laws protecting abortion and gay marriage, their goal, as veteran Spanish feminist Ana Maria Perez del Campo said, is to "stop in the advance of women's rights". It should not come as a surprise that their regional leader, Francisco Serrano, a former judge, was suspended by the Supreme Court after altering visitation arrangements in a custody case in favour of the father without calling the mother to the hearing. As a radical opponent of feminism, Serrano considers himself "a victim of gender-based jihadism".

read the article

openDemocracy: Pro-Europe and anti-EU? Reviewing the far right’s view of Europe

Firstly, far right parties have not always been anti-EU. While many of them converged on anti-EU positions, they did not start from there. Both the Italian Social Movement (MSI), a neo-fascist party founded by supporters of Mussolini’s regime in 1946 and which transformed into the conservative Alleanza Nazionale in the mid-90s, and the French Front National (FN, now Rassemblement National), were broadly in favour of European integration in the 1980s, although they were sceptical about the form it took.

Guided by their opposition to the Soviet Union and their distrust of American power, the parties saw European unity as a means to defend their homelands and remain relevant in a bipolar world. At the same time, they opposed the primarily economic nature of the European project. Thus, they advocated in favour of a European common defence and a stronger European foreign policy. While for both parties this appeared to be a way to pursue the national interest by European means, it still translated into a form of support for the EEC. [...]

Second, even if far right parties do oppose the European Union, this does not imply that they all oppose it in the same way. If we consider the example of exit from the European Union, this remains a rather marginal position across the European far right. While PVV leader Geert Wilders has famously advocated in favour of ‘Nexit’ (albeit tuning it down in the 2017 elections), the League’s Matteo Salvini has most recently argued for the need to ‘reform Europe from within’ and take back control of the ‘beautiful European dream’. [...]

On one side, it is used as a form of ‘civilisationism’ to recreate the image of a unified European civilisation typically opposed to Islam, and on the other side, to oppose the European Union in the name of ‘Europe’. This is well exemplified in the claim made by Marine Le Pen that ‘For us, Europe is not an idea. Europe is a culture, it’s a civilization with its values […] I believe in the need for a European organisation in the great uproar of the world and of globalisation, but in no case can this construction provoke the disappearance of the nations that form it. Our European project will be that of the Nations and peoples, their diversity and their respect.’

read the article

CBS News: Catholic nuns accused of sexual misconduct

CBS News correspondent Nikki Battiste joined CBSN to discuss new sexual abuse allegations in the Catholic Church. At least 18 people have come forward to say they were sexually abused by nuns. The alleged victims said they felt compelled to talk after a Pennsylvania grand jury identified hundreds of "pedophile priests."

The Guardian: Nancy Pelosi hands Donald Trump a lesson in the art of politics

He has come up with “Crooked Hillary”, “Little Marco”, “Lyin’ Ted”, “Crazy Bernie”, “Sloppy Steve” and “Cryin’ Chuck”. Donald Trump is the master of branding his opponents with crude names that somehow paint them into a corner. But so far one has eluded him: the woman he calls only “Nancy”.[...]

“One is she knows how to count votes. That’s how she got healthcare through, that’s how she got the speakership back and that’s how she’ll get impeachment through. She stays in touch with every one of the Democrats and most of the Republicans. She knows when she has to compromise and when to hold the line.

“Second, she knows how to take advantage of the process. She knows that every day the shutdown goes on, she and the Democrats gain and Trump and the Republicans lose. She’s going to deny him TV time: she really knows how to jab him with a needle.”[...]

As the stalemate continues, Pelosi seems to be winning in the court of public opinion. An NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll found Trump’s approval rating stands at 39% approve, 53% disapprove, a seven-point net change from December. Pelosi’s favorability rating, meanwhile, is up 13% among Democrats since the midterms (59% to 72%) in Civiqs polls, with virtually no shift among Republicans.

read the article

Deutsche Welle: Trump hasn't been all bad for the EU

Trump's stances have ensured European solidarity and progress in many areas. Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) among EU members in foreign and security policy, for example, would not exist as it does now without Trump.

Ever since Trump's election, the popularity of the bloc has been on the rise — at least on the continent's mainland. In Brussels, some may even say — behind closed doors — that Trump is the best thing that could happen to the EU. [...]

Instead, it is because even within the borders of the EU, Trump is garnering support among the population and politicians. They don't necessarily admire the president for his tantrums, insolence and insults, but they appreciate his disregard for political correctness and that he addresses truths often swept under the rug. [...]

Juncker's experience and cleverness make him one of the few European politicians who seem to have found a successful strategy on how to deal with Trump. In trade policy, he offers simple and clear compromises, the game of simple give and take that the "businessman" Trump can apparently make sense of.

read the article

The Guardian: ‘We feel orphaned’: Polish city mourns Paweł Adamowicz

The murder of Adamowicz, a staunch defender of minority rights at a time of rising levels of hate crime and an ardent liberal critic of the ruling conservative party’s anti-immigrant politics, has provoked an anguished and often ill-tempered national debate about hate speech and polarisation in Poland’s deeply divided society. [...]

Adamowicz rose to prominence in 1988 as a law student at the University of Gdańsk, where he led a student strike in solidarity with workers striking in the city’s shipyard. “It was a period when people were tired of communism but they were also tired of fighting communism,” recalled Wojciech Szeląg, now a broadcaster, who participated in the strike. “It wasn’t a time of hope, it was a time you could paint only in grey. But I remember thinking that if people like Adamowicz were involved, it was worth it.” [...]

A committed Catholic with a background in conservative politics, he frequently defended his robust stance on minority rights in religious terms, incensing many on the Polish right, including elements of the Polish Catholic church. “In this festive season, I will try to explain to my compatriots in Gdańsk that the arrival of Christ was the very example of migration,” he told a meeting of the European Committee of the Regions in December 2016.

“It is very rare to challenge the church but it is even more rare to challenge the church on the basis of its own social teachings,” said Marta Abramowicz, an LGBT activist and co-founder of Poland’s Campaign Against Homophobia, who moved to Gdańsk from Warsaw in 2010. “He didn’t just support us, he supported us proudly and openly, he said that it was important that we were a part of Gdańsk.”

read the article

The Guardian: The Tories now treat the nation as they have long treated the poor

In truth, universal credit was doomed from the start. The right failed to see the poor as they were rather than as they wanted them to be. People are losing tenancies and going without food not only because universal credit is underfunded but because it imposes delays of five weeks or more before it pays anything at all to claimants. The delays are a matter of deliberate policy. In 2010, rightwingers wanted poverty to be the result of chaotic lives, alcoholism, drug addiction and, above all, for this is was what got the religious right’s rocks off, the breakdown of traditional families. They blamed individuals, not the system. A month’s wait for money would make the feckless pull themselves together and learn to live like members of the respectable middle class, who must wait a month for their first salary cheques when they take new jobs. [...]

A second delusion flowed from the first: that the countries of the European Union would quail before the newly resurgent British as we awoke like lions from their slumber and scramble to meet our demands. This is what David Davis meant when he said British negotiators would be striking deals in Berlin rather than Brussels. As it is, the supposedly squabbling nations of the EU have held together, while the British political system has imploded. [...]

Now Norman sits in a “Conservative” party surrounded by immodest men and women who prefer to wreck the nation’s finances and threaten the peace in Ireland and the union with Scotland rather than consider, even for a moment, that they might be wrong. Whether the Conservative party can survive the loss of its Burkean tradition is a question that will worry only Tories. Whether Britain can is the only pressing concern for the rest of us.

read the article

Atlas Obscura: How a Guatemalan Town Tackled Its Plastic Problem

Before 2016, San Pedro La Laguna was drowning in plastic pollution that was threatening the fragile ecosystem of Lake Atitlán. The dire need for change crystallized when a solid waste disposal processing plant that was expected to manage a decade of waste was halfway full within six months, mostly with single-use plastics. Rather than build a larger plant—which would’ve been an enormous financial burden on the town and further polluted the lake with debris—Mayor Mauricio Méndez decided to implement a stringent municipal law to encourage lasting, sustainable change. [...]

Villagers initially resisted, as they’d become accustomed to using materials that were now outlawed. To get rid of the single-use plastics already in circulation, leaders of the 13,000-person town went from house to house to talk with villagers about waste management. Residents were wary because they couldn’t afford to purchase biodegradable replacements. The government relieved the community members’ financial burden by collecting all plastic and styrofoam items and trading them for reusable or biodegradable alternatives, completely free-of-charge. [...]

Economic sanctions punish anyone who breaks the law. Individuals must pay 300 GTQ ($40)—a hefty amount considering Guatemala’s average lower-middle-class annual income is $1,619. Companies that use the banned materials face a fine of 15,000 GTQ ($1,940).

read the article