Haaretz: Results Are In: The Nation-state Law Is Self-defeating and anti-Zionist

The Knesset’s passage of the nation-state bill last month surely ranks as one the most self-defeating moves in Israel’s history. Its passage was unnecessary, but the damage it has wrought, one can safely say now, is incalculable. The law is anti-Zionist in its essence: It has sowed division, spread venom, tainted Israel’s image and weakened its national resolve. If the Knesset’s intent was to bolster the ties between the Jewish nation and its land, the results have been exactly the opposite: The Zionist hold on the State of Israel has never seemed more dubious. [...]

And even that wasn’t enough for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: To justify his pre-planned ambush of the Druze leadership in their meeting last week, the Prime Minister’s Office falsely disseminated the claim that retired Israeli General Amal Assad had described Israel as an apartheid state, so that the whole world, and not just his followers on Facebook, would know about the comparison. Coming from a retired Druze combat brigadier-general, a supposed symbol of equality and integration, the apartheid analogy sounded like reliable testimony from an expert witness.[...]

The law has cast a dark shadow over Israel’s attitude, not only for the future but in the present and past as well. It revealed that even today, Israeli Arabs are cast to the sidelines, that the Druze suffer discrimination, despite their loyalty, and that the sentiments and sensibilities of non-Jews as a whole are bypassed and ignored. The new law has shown that it’s not enough for the Jews to be lords of the land. They insist on flaunting their superiority, for the entire world to see. If minorities don’t like it, the Knesset said, they can lump it.

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CityLab: The Global Tourism Backlash

The past decade or so has seen a surge in tourism, driven by a rising middle class across the world, especially in large emerging economies like China. Tourism has also become more affordable and accessible, with cheaper airfares and accommodations made possible through online booking services such as Airbnb. International tourism rose from fewer than 300 million trips in 1980 to some 500 million in 1995, before exploding to 1.3 billion trips in 2017—a number that’s expected to rise to 1.8 billion in 2030. [...]

Tourism is highly concentrated in a handful of destination cities around the world. Today, roughly half (46 percent) of all global tourism is concentrated in the top 100 cities, where tourism grew almost 25 percent faster than the worldwide rate. The world’s leading hotspots include Hong Kong, Bangkok, London, Singapore, Paris, Dubai, Istanbul, and New York. In 2016, New York City hosted more than 60 million tourists, up from 35 million in 2002. Tourism in London has also grown by 20 percent over the past several years, while tourism in Berlin more than doubled from 2005 (15 million) to 2016 (31 million). [...]

In truth, scapegoating tourism deflects attention away from the realities of the new urban crisis. Restricting the number of tourists or tourism-related activities will do little to solve the root problem of inequality. And on the most basic level, tourism and hospitality are a huge source of low-skill, port-of-entry jobs. Tourism accounts for roughly 10 percent of the world’s economic output. In many smaller and struggling places, it brings badly needed resources. This financial stimulus often comes in the form of hard currency, which can help alleviate distressed economic conditions.

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The New York Review of Books: What’s the Right Way to Legalize Prostitution?: An Exchange

As in most service jobs, the women working in Nevada’s brothels endure better and worse bosses, good and bad customers, and selling sexual services is not for everyone. But the thirty-eight women we interviewed in one multiyear study told us these jobs had far more advantages than their previous straight jobs in restaurants, office management, or medical services. One woman came to the brothels to pay for medicine for her autistic child; another was the first in her family to own a house. One third of the women we interviewed had previously sold sex in underground markets, and they found Nevada’s system to be a far safer option, and were happy to have the police on their side. One woman told us she was able to leave an abusive pimp thanks to the legal brothels. [...]

Peer-reviewed research certainly does not find that all prostitution is “empowering.” But the overwhelming body of global evidence shows that workers are better protected from exploitation and trafficking in systems, like Nevada’s, where prostitution is decriminalized and/or regulated. Health professionals in the British Medical Journal and The Lancet and organizations including Amnesty International, the United Nations, and the World Health Organization have recommended decriminalization. A wide range of scholars, sex workers, and politicians in Bindel’s home country also support decriminalization, including the Liberal Democrats (a mainstream political party) and a parliamentary report co-authored with the English Collective of Prostitutes. In New Zealand, where prostitution is not a crime and brothels are regulated, bad behavior by brothel owners is subject to disciplinary action, and one brothel worker won a sexual harassment case against her employer. [...]

The only way that the women in Nevada brothels are safer is that they are not arrested by law enforcement for prostitution. That is a good thing. Brents dismisses Farley’s study as self-published, but her survey, which involved interviewing forty-five women, remains one of the largest surveys to date of Nevada’s legal brothels. Farley found that 81 percent of the women interviewed said they wanted to escape prostitution but could not, often because of poverty or homelessness (almost half reported having been homeless); nearly a quarter had entered prostitution as children. [...]

Brents’s insistence upon the prevalence of condom use is also misleading. In Nevada, and everywhere else, men who buy sex pay extra for sex acts without a condom. Several Canadian studies found that about 50 percent of all sex buyers report non-condom use with women in prostitution, endangering the women’s health. Women from the Lyon County brothels reported that it is common to agree not to use a condom in exchange for a generous tip, according to Melissa Holland of Awaken in Reno, an agency that offers services to women exiting and thinking about exiting prostitution. The State Department of Public Health may never see a positive test for a sexually-transmitted disease, since the brothels can use private labs for testing and are essentially on an “honors system” to let the licensing boards know if they have prostituted women who have tested positive.

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The Atlantic: Photos of Abandoned Russia

Across the vastness of Russia—the world’s largest country, at some 6.6 million square miles—and over the span of its long history, countless houses, factories, churches, villages, military bases, and other structures have been built and then left behind: imperial-era palaces, log cabins of pioneers in the Far East, Christian cathedrals, massive Soviet blocks of concrete, speculative-mining camps, and more. For years now, photographers have traveled across Russia finding and photographing these intriguing ghost towns, empty Soviet factories, toppling houses, and crumbling chapels.

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The Guardian: Universal basic income hasn’t made me rich. But my life is more enriching

The Finnish basic income trial, of which I am part, finishes at the end of the year. Having been interviewed by nearly 70 separate media outlets, from the BBC to Le Figaro, the question I have been asked most often has been: how has the basic income trial changed my life? My answer is simple. In money terms, my life has not changed at all. However, the psychological effects of this human experiment have been transformative. I vastly prefer basic income to a benefits system fraught with complicated forms, mandatory courses and pointless obligations. [...]

The idea is that temporary and part-time work is becoming increasingly common, which may mean there is also a growing interest in social security models that support the acceptance of such work. The basic income trial has indeed resulted in work for myself and many other participants, from IT experts, artists and commerce professionals to new graduates. And there is little doubt that the trial benefits people in creative fields, freelancers, people doing expert work and project workers – an ever-increasing number of people. [...]

Basic income models do come with a small increase in taxation. For a large number of employed people this will, however, be compensated for by the basic income. As more people manage to find work while supported by basic income, taxation for everyone can be eased. In terms of purchasing power, basic income would have a predominantly positive effect as it would help people in low-income jobs the most. The critics fear that basic income will make people lazy. However, limited evidence from several basic-income trials from around the world prove that people use basic income to improve their quality of life and not as a licence to do nothing. Research has shown that unemployed people do not have a low motivation for work. Neither is it justified to say that unemployment on a large scale is the result of an unwillingness to work. The isolated cases of lazy, work-averse individuals so eagerly highlighted by the media do not represent the situation accurately.

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