More and more young people go to university. But what those who don't? Paul Johnson investigates why this group's further education has been neglected.
12 July 2019
99 Percent Invisible: Depave Paradise
Back in the 1940s, this unusual landscape became a source of inspiration for Mexican Modernist architect Luis Barragán. Famous for his bold uses of color and careful integration of natural light, he designed a number of homes among the rocks of El Pedregal. In attempting to build harmoniously with this volcanic landscape, however, Barragán may have accidentally contributed to an ecological crisis that’s playing out in Mexico City today. [...]
When Spanish conquistadors sacked Tenochtitlan, they rebuilt a modern city with a grid. This new metropolis, however, would flood regularly, eventually leading to efforts to drain the former lakes of the basin. Over the course of the next several centuries, Mexico City built an elaborate system of tunnels designed to evacuate rainwater out of the basin and preventing flooding. Little by little, the city drained the lakes and expanded out over the dry lakebed.
Mexico City still has major flooding issues to this day, but it also faces a seemingly paradoxical problem: it’s running out of water. All of the infrastructure aimed at draining the rainwater from the basin works against efforts to retain water for human consumption. Today, many neighborhoods in Mexico City don’t have reliable running water — and when the rainy season comes, those same neighborhoods get far too much water all at once.
UnHerd: No, my marriage is not a “second holocaust”
So too was my reaction to the latest comments of the newly appointed Israeli education minister, Rafi Peretz that intermarriage – Jews ‘marrying out’ – “is like a second holocaust”. His comment, made last week, during a government cabinet meeting is indicative of a growing rift between hard line Israeli nationalists and the increasingly liberal Jewish diaspora, especially in places like the United States. Peretz was commenting on a briefing given to the Netanyahu government by Dennis Ross, formerly a senior official in the Obama administration, on recent trends in Jewish communities around the world. Peretz pointedly commented that over the last 70 years, the Jewish community has “lost six million people” – a figure that is commonly understood to be the number of Jews that were murdered in the Shoah. [...]
My wife and I decided that our boys – both Jews on account of their mother – ought probably to get their Israeli passports. But the conversation with the Israeli embassy didn’t go well. It seems that our boys will not be allowed to have Fraser on their Israeli passports – though that is their name. The embassy official needed proof that ours was not a sham marriage – or indeed any sort of marriage at all. They demanded Facebook photographs of us together throughout the year before our marriage. Bizarrely, being properly married in a Register Office – with documentary evidence – and living together for three years and having two children didn’t count as sufficient evidence that ours isn’t a sham marriage. But Facebook photos would do. In the face of all this ridiculous officialdom, Mrs Fraser – who is really not to be messed with – is no longer minded to continue with the process of application. [...]
But seeing past my anger, the minister’s statement is indicative of the changing nature of Jewish identity. In 2017, the Jerusalem-based Jewish People Policy Institute published a study that found that – excluding the Heredi community – close to 60% of US Jews are married to non-Jews and only 15% are married to other Jews and raising their children as Jewish. It is probably these statistics – far more than the sort of shabby, low grade prejudice that currently lurks within the Labour Party – that really bothers those who are looking long-term at the future existence of the Jewish people. For the more conservatively-minded, assimilation constitutes a deeper existential threat.
TED-Ed: How close are we to eradicating HIV? - Philip A. Chan
Can we end HIV? Find out how medications like PrEP are helping to prevent the transmission and spread of HIV, and possibly leading to its eradication.
The world is getting closer to achieving one of the most important public health goals of our time: eradicating HIV. And to do this, we won’t even have to cure the disease. We simply have to stop HIV from being transmitted until eventually it fizzles out. Philip A. Chan explores the preventive strategies helping us tackle HIV and the possibility of ending the epidemic.
VICE: Indonesian Prison Officials Believe Inmates Are 'Turning Gay' After Sleeping Next To The Same Sex
The latest bout of LGBTQ discrimination is ongoing in West Java’s prisons. District office head of Indonesia’s Ministry of Law and Human Rights, Liberti Sitinjak, claims “deviant sexual acts” are becoming more rampant among prisoners in his area. This allegation is based on the discovery of same-sex relationships in detention centers. [...]
Sitinjak said the solution to overcapacity is to stop incarcerating people for minor offenses, like drug use. Send them to rehab instead, he suggested. Sounds pretty progressive, right? Not so fast. His aims are conservative at their core, because with less prisoners and more space in cells, inmates won’t have to sleep so close to each other, which according to Sitinjak, means less homosexuality. [...]
Sitinjak did get one thing right: there are too many offenders in West Javanese jails and prisons. In fact, 60 percent of inmates in West Java are incarcerated for drug use. Indonesia’s criminal law needs an update, considering minor drug offenses can earn you a three-year sentence.
Bloomberg: Donald Trump Throws a Tax Bomb at Emmanuel Macron
Now U.S. officials have found a new angle of attack: European digital taxes, specifically France’s. The French are about to impose a 3% levy on sales made in the country by tech companies with more than 750 million euros ($845 million) of global revenue. The likes of Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Apple Inc. have been up in arms about what they describe as an unfair tariff on Silicon Valley. And now they’ve been joined by their government, which is starting a probe of the French tax under Section 301 of the U.S. Trade Act, alleging harm against American interests. [...]
While the French initiative certainly has flaws, Paris is also being singled out for political and tactical reasons. Several other countries are introducing a digital tax too, and France would happily ditch its levy in favor of an OECD solution. What’s really motivating Trump’s team is the chance to drive a wedge between the French president Emmanuel Macron and his euro zone partners. Germany has held back from introducing a tech tax of its own, no doubt fearful of U.S. retaliation, while Ireland – whose low corporate tax rates are a magnet for tech giants – has fought hard against the idea. [...]
Zaki Laidi, an international relations professor at Sciences Po in Paris, has called for a “Euro-Pacific Partnership,” bringing together Canada, the EU, and the remaining countries in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. This would support the WTO (which is under siege by the Americans), comply with the Paris climate accords, and reform dispute settlement procedures rather than rip them up. As for tech, an EU or OECD agreement on digital taxes would make more sense than messy national solutions – and would avoid Trump’s opportunistic singling out of individual victims.
Bloomberg: Turkey’s President Doubles Down After Defeat
You can’t keep a good autocrat down. After his humiliation in the Istanbul mayoral election last month, Recep Tayyip Erdogan seemed chastened. Speaking to legislators of his AK Party, Turkey’s president said, “We don’t have the luxury of turning a deaf ear and ignoring the messages given by the people.”
He since seems to have changed his mind. Notwithstanding an election result that most analysts agree was a vote of no confidence in his management of Turkey’s economy, which is in acute crisis, the president has decided that Turks want more of the same. [...]
Babacan’s defection is potentially the most damaging: he was minister of economic affairs during 2002-07, when he steered the country out of an economic crisis. He is credited with the huge growth that followed. He has been muted in his criticism of Erdogan’s more recent economic policies, but will now feel free to open up. Like Davutoglu, he is thought to be especially critical of Erdogan’s decision to appoint his son-in-law, Berat Albayrak, as treasury and finance minister, a year ago.
Politico: Johnson finds it ‘hard to disagree’ with Trump’s verdict on May
“He has strong views about Brexit and he has strong views about the deal. Probably, from the point of view of those of us who want to get Brexit done and make a great success of it, it would be fair to say this is a debate that’s best conducted within the U.K.," Johnson added. "But you know — the president has his style and his approach.”
Pressed repeatedly by POLITICO on whether it is right for a foreign leader to criticize a British prime minister in this way, Johnson eventually said: "I think most people feel … I don’t want anybody else telling us what to do. Or anybody else criticizing our government, I suppose is my feeling. But if you ask me whether I think the Brexit negotiations have been brilliantly handled, I don’t think so.”[...]
Johnson denied his unpopularity with EU leaders would be a problem when negotiating an improved deal. “It’s not true. I had great friends in Brussels, I had great relations with people around the table at the European Council.”
Asked what would be his message to Germany's Angela Merkel, outgoing European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker, and other EU leaders, he said: “The United Kingdom is passionately pro-European, but we do not seek continued membership of the EU institutions and we want to leave.
The Guardian: Kim Darroch has resigned. Now Britain risks becoming a vassal of the US
What precedent was there, the foreign affairs committee chair Tom Tugendhat asked McDonald straight off, for the head of state of a friendly government to do what Donald Trump has done this week and make it impossible for Britain’s senior representative in that country to do his job? McDonald’s answer was monosyllabic, crisp and explosive. “None,” he said.
Labour’s Chris Bryant followed up. Surely there were precedents from unfriendly countries such as Venezuela? “I know of none,” McDonald replied again. Not even hostile states have behaved like Trump, he insisted. Had there been some distant occasion when a British ambassador fell foul of the White House in such a way? There was, McDonald admitted, a “difficulty” in 1856, when President Franklin Pierce accused the British ambassador of recruiting Americans to fight in the Crimean war. The listeners in committee room 16 laughed, but McDonald did not.[...]
Yet it is increasingly hard to take this view seriously. Too much is changing on too many fronts. Trumpism may not be temporary. He may well be re-elected next year (as Darroch himself pointed out in a memo). The underpinnings of Trumpism, in the shape of populist nationalism and contempt for other countries, alliances and accords, go much deeper, both in the US and in Brexit Britain. If Johnson, or any other Brexiter leader, gets his way, Britain may once again embrace the US. But the America they embrace will not be the outward-looking republic of presidents from Eisenhower to Obama but an inward-looking exceptionalist country that seeks to disrupt everything about the international order. In such a world, Britain risks becoming the vassal of a capricious unilateralist state. Johnson or his successor would be Britain’s Carrie Lam to Washington’s Xi Jinping.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)