March 10, 2022

Austria abandons its sweeping vaccine mandate, citing milder Omicron symptoms.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/03/09/world/covid-19-mandates-cases-vaccine/austria-abandons-its-sweeping-vaccine-mandate-citing-milder-omicron-symptoms



Four months ago, Austria made headlines when it announced plans to become the first Western democracy to impose a general vaccine mandate to fight the coronavirus, a measure that would have hit adults who refused to be inoculated with fines of up to 3,600 euros (about $4,000).

That was a different time, one before the highly contagious Omicron variant of the coronavirus became seemingly omnipresent.

Calling the law “not proportionate” given the relatively mild symptoms experienced by most people with the variant, Karoline Edtstadler, the minister responsible for Austria’s constitutional affairs, said the country was doing a U-turn on its policy.

The mandate for Austria, where about 74 percent of the population has received at least two doses, officially took effect early last month, but enforcement was not scheduled to begin until next Tuesday.

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March 10, 2022

A Brutally Honest Conversation on the Metaverse

https://www.highsnobiety.com/p/fashion-metaverse-analysis/



You can’t turn anywhere without hearing about ‘the Metaverse’ these days. Why it has planted itself so firmly in our reality at this moment in time comes down to a perfect storm: Firstly, the global lockdown meant everyone started living digitally. And additionally, technological advancements and the mainstreaming of hardware and peer to peer platforms like Roblox and The Sandbox are driving new ways to connect, create and, ultimately, earn. It didn’t take long for the industry to press GO: Roblox launched music, Nike acquired Rtfkt, adidas and Prada partnered on an NFT, and Balenciaga launched merch on Fortnite. By the time you read this, 1000+ other projects will have minted themselves into existence. In this unfiltered discussion, curated and hosted by Leila Fataar, we explore the ultimate question: How can we stay human in the face of this virtual world?



https://www.instagram.com/reel/CYTW7PNF34B/





LEILA FATAAR: The Metaverse is happening… fast. It feels like the metaverse is ‘new’, but Galit, tell me, have we been here before?

GALIT ARIEL: It's not new. During my college days in London, I almost failed my degree because I was in Second Life, and that was the '90s, right? We're seeing similar discussions and similar, I want to say, challenges, to what was happening then. The idea of Web 3.0 or the metaverse isn’t new at all.

FATAAR: Let’s discuss the differences between Web 2.0 and Web 3.0…

WILSON ORYEMA: Web 2.0 is, basically, a few centralized systems controlling the source of information and the removal of agency from the individual, so that most people's opportunities and experiences are limited by the big platforms. Web 3.0 is decentralization of the internet, or the mobile internet, that we've come to know before, so that individuals have their start point and that they can interact on any level with any individual or organization that they choose to.

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long article. much more at the link

March 10, 2022

Federal Judge Dismisses Claims That Congressman Helped Incite Capitol Riot

https://www.thedailybeast.com/federal-judge-dismisses-claims-that-republican-representative-mo-brooks-helped-incite-capitol-riots



Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) has been acquitted of civil claims alleging he incited rioters during the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol last year by giving a speech. U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta said Wednesday that the speech Brooks gave to the crowd was protected by the First Amendment as free speech.

Mehta’s ruling has thrown a wrench in House Democrats’ efforts to sue former President Donald Trump and his allies for inciting the crowd during the riot. This isn’t the first ruling of its kind by Mehta—in February, he dismissed civil claims against Brooks’ co-defendants, including Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump Jr., but told the plaintiffs to continue their claims against the former president.

Mehta has already stated that Trump wasn’t immune from lawsuits filed against him and that the speech he gave on the day of the riot—in which he told supporters to “fight like hell” to “stop the steal”—was not within his official duties as president.


https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-judge-dismisses-claims-alleging-congressman-incited-capitol-riots-2022-03-09/

March 10, 2022

Biden Exploring Creation of Crypto-Like 'Digital Dollar,' Says Report

https://www.thedailybeast.com/biden-exploring-creation-of-crypto-like-digital-dollar-says-report



Who would’ve guessed that President Joe Biden is a crypto bro? According to reports, Biden will announce Wednesday that he’s setting up a group to explore if the U.S. should have its own crypto-like “digital dollar.”

The president will reportedly sign an executive order telling the Treasury Department, the Commerce Department, and other agencies to report back to him on the future of money and whether the U.S. should create a digital currency.

However, according to CBS News, the “digital dollar” would be different from cryptocurrency because it would have to be regulated by central banks. Even if the project gets the green light, it doesn’t sound like anyone will be spending digital dollars soon.

An unnamed official told Reuters: “We’ve got to be very, very deliberate about that analysis because the implications of our moving in this direction are profound for the country that issues the world’s primary reserve currency.”




Biden issues executive order to explore cryptocurrency-like digital dollar

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cryptocurrency-biden-executive-order-digital-dollar/

March 10, 2022

Democrats scrap a $15.6 billion Covid response package meant to help fund a new Biden strategy

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/03/09/world/covid-19-mandates-cases-vaccine/the-house-is-working-to-pass-a-sprawling-spending-bill-with-15-6-billion-in-emergency-covid-response-money



Democrats on Wednesday abruptly jettisoned a $15.6 billion package to fight Covid-19 from a sprawling federal spending bill that includes a huge infusion of aid for war-torn Ukraine and money to keep the government funded through September.

The decision to strip out the coronavirus money came amid disputes about its cost and was aimed at salvaging the $1.5 trillion funding measure before a Friday deadline to avoid a government shutdown. It cleared the way for expected House passage Wednesday night of the first major government spending legislation of the Biden presidency, allowing Democrats to fund their priorities, including climate resilience, public education and child care.

But the demise of the pandemic aid infuriated the White House and frustrated Democratic leaders, leaving the fate of President Biden’s new coronavirus strategy uncertain.

Administration officials have said they are in urgent need of funding for testing, therapeutics, vaccines and efforts to stop new variants. They had initially suggested they needed as much as $30 billion before requesting $22.5 billion, an amount that got whittled down in negotiations with Republicans, who resisted spending any new federal money on the pandemic.



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March 10, 2022

How the West Undermines Its Own Sanctions

The Western sanctions in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have been far broader than many experts anticipated. But there’s a catch.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/03/russia-oligarchs-evade-sanctions-anonymous/626968/



As Russian troops bulldoze and bludgeon Ukraine, the West has begun implementing one of the few tools in its arsenal: sanctions. The United States blacklisted multiple Russian oligarchs and banks, and the United Kingdom followed suit by blocking Russian banks and barring Russian companies from raising money on British markets. The European Union issued what its foreign-policy chief, Josep Borrell, dubbed the “harshest package of sanctions” in the bloc’s history, targeting energy, trade, and a group of Russian oligarchs long thought untouchable.

The Western response has been far broader than most experts anticipated, and threatens to throw the Russian economy into chaos. Yet there’s a catch. Absent significant domestic reforms in the West—reforms that should have been enacted long ago—sanctions targeted at the oligarchic and official figures close to Russian President Vladmir Putin risk inflicting little more than a flesh wound on Russia’s imperial kleptocracy.

Rampant financial anonymity in places like the U.S. makes it relatively easy for powerful rich people to evade sanctions. A Russian oligarch may have multimillion-dollar mansions in Washington, D.C.; or multiple steel plants across the Rust Belt; or a controlling stake in a hedge fund in Greenwich, Connecticut; or an entire fleet of private jets in California; or an array of lawyers setting up purchases at art houses around the country. And all of that wealth can be hidden—perfectly legally—behind anonymous shell companies and trusts that are enormously difficult to penetrate.

If Western policy makers hope to hold Putin’s cronies truly accountable, sanctions will have to be paired with pro-transparency reforms that can disassemble this web of secrecy. Western governments should start by ending anonymity in shell companies and trusts; demanding basic anti-money-laundering checks for lawyers, art gallerists, and auction-house managers; and closing loopholes that allow anonymity in the real-estate, private-equity, and hedge-fund industries. That is, if the sanctions are to retain their bite, the entire counter-kleptocracy playbook needs to be implemented—immediately.

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March 10, 2022

EU says Russia reports of biolabs in Ukraine likely disinformation

https://www.reuters.com/world/eu-says-russia-reports-biolabs-ukraine-likely-disinformation-2022-03-09/

BRUSSELS, March 9 (Reuters) - The European Union said on Wednesday it doubted the credibility of Russian government claims it had uncovered a military biological programme in Ukraine, saying that Moscow had a history of spreading disinformation about biological weapons. read more

"The credibility of information provided by Kremlin is in general very doubtful and low," EU foreign affairs spokesman Peter Stano said.

"Russian disinformation has a track record of promoting manipulative narratives about biological weapons and alleged 'secret labs'," he said, adding that the EU was not aware of any Ukrainian laboratories not in line with international law.

In recent days, Russia has accused Ukraine of having tried to develop biological or nuclear weapons. On Wednesday, the Kremlin said Washington must explain "Ukrainian biological weapons labs". A Ukrainian presidential spokesperson said: "Ukraine strictly denies any such allegation."

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March 10, 2022

International Women's Day: top universities led by women

Only 43 of the top 200 universities in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings are run by women

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/student/best-universities/top-10-universities-led-women



​It is striking that still only a few of the world’s top universities are led by women. In fact, analysis of the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2022 reveals that just 43 of the top 200 institutions are currently led by women. What is promising is that this is an increase from the 41 universities led by women last year and now amounts to a fifth of the top 200 universities in the world. The current number one institution (the University of Oxford) is led by political scientist Louise Richardson, while three of the prestigious Ivy League institutions in the US, the University of Pennsylvania, Cornell University and Brown University, have female leaders. The US, France, Netherlands and the UK are some of the countries with high numbers of female-led institutions. Below, we take a look at the achievements of the female vice-chancellors of the top 10 universities and the journeys that brought them to where they are now.

1. University of Oxford, Louise Richardson

Louise Richardson has been vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford since January 2016. She was previously principal of the University of St Andrews for seven years – the first woman to occupy this position. Richardson’s academic focus has been on international security with an emphasis on terrorism, and has taught the world-renowned Harvard undergraduate course in terrorist movements in international relations. She has received teaching awards from the American Political Science Association and from Pi Sigma Alpha for outstanding teaching in political science. Richardson will be leaving her position at the University of Oxford in December 2022 and will take up the position of president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York in January 2023.




2. University of California, Berkeley, Carol Christ

Carol Christ is the first female chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, having replaced Nicholas B. Dirks in July 2017. She was previously the executive vice-chancellor and provost of Berkeley between 1994 and 2000. She then became president of liberal arts institution Smith College for more than a decade before returning to Berkeley. She is a celebrated scholar of Victorian literature. Since taking on the presidential role at Berkeley, she has worked to target sexual violence and sexual harassment on campus and to create a long-term housing plan for students.




3. Imperial College London, Alice Gast

Alice Gast is originally from Houston, Texas, and completed her undergraduate degree in chemical engineering at the University of Southern California and her postgraduate degree at Princeton University. She was named president of Imperial College London in 2014 and has led the university for the past seven years. Prior to this she was the president of Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. In 2008, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers named Gast one of the top 100 “Modern Era” engineers in the US in the “Leadership” category. Hugh Brady, the vice-chancellor of the University of Bristol, will be taking over the position from August 2022.



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March 8, 2022

Covid-19 didn't cause the care crisis--privatisation did

The scandal of Europe’s biggest eldercare operator highlights how a public good has been turned into a private asset class.

https://socialeurope.eu/covid-19-didnt-cause-the-care-crisis-privatisation-did

Imagine discovering your elderly loved ones in a care home were receiving half-portions of meals, just so a corporation could cut costs and pump up profits. This is just one of many disturbing revelations by the French journalist Victor Castanet from his three-year investigation into Europe’s largest care operator, Orpea.

Yet not only patients are paying the price. A report released last month by the Center for Investigative Corporate Tax Accountability and Research (CICTAR) exposes how Orpea has siphoned taxpayers’ money through subsidiary companies in Luxembourg, a renowned tax haven, to fuel an expansive property empire. Meanwhile, workers at Orpea’s facilities across the continent have raised the alarm over the company’s appalling record on workers’ rights, understaffing and safety.

Care-industry lobbyists will claim that these are isolated incidents—while doing all they can to water down any meaningful regulatory reform—and that governments are not paying private providers enough. But as the leader of Public Services International, the global union federation for public-service workers, I’ve heard more than enough horror stories to know that Orpea is not an exception: these practices are all too common.

Across the world, public funding is extracted from our care systems and diverted into offshore bank accounts or transformed into massive dividends—while patients suffer and workers are left exhausted, under-resourced and unable to do their jobs properly. Pumping more money into this broken system won’t solve the problem. Revaluing care as a public good will.

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March 8, 2022

Rebutting the assaults on gender equality

Tackling gender-based violence, on which an EU directive proposal is expected today, is key to restoring momentum to the feminist cause.

https://socialeurope.eu/rebutting-the-assaults-on-gender-equality


This year Spain will be the first European country to record all femicides as such

On International Women’s Day, it is opportune to recall its origins more than a hundred years ago, when it was closely tied to its socialist roots. It was to establish itself as a day of activism under the impulse of feminist ‘second-wavers’ in the 1960s. Their claims still loom large: tackling persistent gender-blindness across policy domains, economic empowerment, reproductive autonomy and the elimination of violence against women.

It’s a legitimate question to ask, over half a century and a devastating pandemic later, where we stand on gender equality in the European Union. Taking stock in 2022, progress has recently stalled, with serious risks of regression.

According to the Gender Equality Index 2021, compiled by the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE), the fragile gains Europe has made are imperilled. Far from being able to rest on one’s laurels, given some seeming advances, the data indicate that the EU gender pay gap has only marginally decreased, from 16 per cent in 2010 to 13 per cent in 2020. Indeed, it has even increased in some central- and eastern-European countries, due to deeply-rooted patriarchal social norms and stereotypes.

Unlike the 2008 financial crisis, the pandemic provoked a widespread ‘she-cession’, placing women at much higher and more immediate risk of job and income loss, while precipitating an alarming surge in gender-based violence. Lockdowns created enabling environments for physical, psychological, sexual and economic violence against women and girls, with limited access for victims to support services. The restrictions and economic uncertainties however merely compounded existing inequalities between women and men, with enduring consequences likely to outlive the pandemic.

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