Haaretz: 'I’m Not Sure It’s Possible to Have Democracy in a Jewish State' read more: http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/holylandings/.premium-1.781780

China is influencing democratization in the world, but thedemocracies themselves are focusing increasingly on security. Theyare showing a priority for security over human rights. Globalterrorism has made democracy more challenging. [...]

I didn’t speak to many people here, but it seems that people herefeel that democracy in the country is in decline. Maybe becausetoday there is less pressure from international players to behavedemocratically. If politicians once took that pressure into account,today the global norms have changed. There’s less push fordemocracy all over the world. That’s how I’d explain what’shappening in Israel. It’s a global trend. [...]

On the positive side. You have a parliament, there are Arab partiesand Arab citizens who can vote, and you have a constitutional court.On the other hand, there are more problematic issues relating tohuman rights that stem mainly from the balance between religionand state. The connection between Israel and a Jewish state makesit problematic. I’m not sure it’s possible to be a democracy whenthere’s a Jewish state: Religion creates a separationist system, andthat’s dangerous. Do you know the French term laicite?

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Political Critique: Sex Worker’s March in Ukraine: “We have the right to work”

March 3 has been recognized as International Sex Worker’s Day. The day became widely known after 2001, when more than 25,000 sex workers in India assembled to participate in a festival organized by Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee, which took place despite the efforts of prohibitionist groups to make authorities revoke their permission to hold the event.

This year, Ukrainians celebrated the day for the first time in history. The All-Ukrainian Legalife League, in participation with the Public Health Alliance, organized a demonstration in Kyiv to march along a route that passes three main governmental buildings in Kyiv: the Parliament, the Cabinet of Ministers, and the President’s Administration. The main demand of protest participants was to decriminalize sex work in Ukraine, or more specifically, to revoke the administrative punishment for prostitution provided in the Article 181-1 of the Administrative Code of Ukraine. [...]

Although the demand of this year’s march was to decriminalize sex work, the organizers and the participants, when asked about legalization, answer, “We will see.” It does seem, however, that legalization is the ultimate goal for them, with decriminalization only being the first step towards achieving it.

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Vox: Is 100% renewable energy realistic? Here’s what we know.

We know that deep decarbonization is going to involve an enormous amount of electrification. As we push carbon out of the electricity sector, we pull other energy services like transportation and heating into it. (My slogan for this: electrify everything.) This means lots more demand for electricity, even as electricity decarbonizes.

The sources of carbon-free electricity with the most potential, sun and wind, are variable. They come and go on their own schedule. They are not “dispatchable,” i.e., grid operators can’t turn them on and off as needed. To balance out variations in sun and wind (both short-term and long-term), grid operators need dispatchable carbon-free resources.

Deep decarbonization of the electricity sector, then, is a dual challenge: rapidly ramping up the amount of variable renewable energy (VRE) on the system, while also ramping up carbon-free dispatchable resources that can balance out that VRE and ensure reliability. [...]

Today’s models, at least, appear to agree that “a diversified mix of low-CO2 generation resources” add up to a more cost-effective path to deep decarbonization than 100 percent renewables. This is particularly true above 60 or 80 percent decarbonization, when the costs of the renewables-only option rise sharply.

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Jakub Marian: Fertility rate by region in Europe

The total fertility rate is defined as the average number of children a woman would have over her lifetime if she were to survive from birth through the end of her reproductive life and experience the exact current age-specific fertility rates through her lifetime. This is a rather technical definition, so to put it bluntly: The total fertility rate tells us how many children per woman will be born, on average, if everyone keeps trying to have children at the same rate as they do now, according to their age.

The most important figure to keep in mind when discussing fertility rates is the so-called replacement rate (or “replacement-level fertility”). It is the fertility rate at which the size of the entire population will remain stable, when mortality is taken into account and migration ignored. The replacement rate is approximately 2.1 in most developed countries (that is, 9 out of 10 women should have two children and 1 out of 10 women should have three), but it is somewhat higher in developing countries due to higher mortality rates.

As you can see on the map below, the situation in Europe does not look very bright. Most of Europe is dying out—some regions, such as Galicia in Spain and Sardinia in Italy at extraordinarily low fertility rates close to 1 child per woman:

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Land of Maps: Mapping the Empires of History

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