ANTI-VAXXERS 

YOU HAVE TO BREATHE TO LIVE

'I don't like being told what I have to do': Libertarian explains vaccine refusal as he struggles to breathe

Alex Henderson, AlterNet
August 24, 2021

Depiction of a COVID-19 patient in the hospital. (Shutterstock.com)

Although the COVID-19 Delta variant is potentially deadly all over the United States, the areas that are being hit especially hard tend to be Republican-leaning areas with low vaccination rates — areas like the one that New York Times reporter Alexander Stockton examines in a video that has been posted on YouTube.

The Ozarks, Stockton notes in the video, has some of the United States' lowest COVID-19 vaccination rates as well as what the reporter describes as "one of the worst COVID case rates in the country."

"I wanted to find out why residents here aren't getting vaccinated," Stockton explains.

The video shows Ozark residents expressing anti-vaxxer views as well as unvaccinated patients who have been hospitalized with COVID-19. One of them, 53-year-old Christopher Green, is "fighting for his life," Stockton notes. And Green is hardly unique in that regard.

"Like 90% of the patients in this packed hospital, he's unvaccinated," Stockton reports.

Asked why he refused to be vaccinated for COVID-19, Green — obviously struggling to breathe — told Stockton, "I'm more of a libertarian, and I don't like being told what I have to do." Green died 9 days after the interview, at age 53, the video explained.

The COVID-19 vaccinate rate is so low in Mountain Home, Arkansas, Stockton reports, that at a local hospital — Baxter Regional Medical Center — only half of the staff has been vaccinated.

A nurse working in that hospital, interviewed by Stockton, laments, "There are just a lot of people that you cannot convince to get vaccinated: patients, employees. It's very frustrating."

Watch the video below:

Dying in the Name of Vaccine Freedom | NYT Opinion

www.youtube.com   

Individualistic COVID-19 vaccine messages

had best effect in US study

Peer-Reviewed Publication

WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY

PULLMAN, Wash. – Emphasizing individual rather than community health risks from COVID-19, appeared to create more vaccine acceptance among participants in a study led by Washington State University researcher Porismita Borah.

The study, published in the Journal of Health Communication, tested messages on nearly 400 participants from across the United States in July 2020 before COVID-19 vaccines were available—and before misinformation on them was widespread. The researchers also found that “loss” framing, highlighting the potential health problems from not getting a vaccine, was slightly more effective than the positive “gain” framing that stresses the benefits.

“It's really interesting to see that individual frames were more persuasive,” said Borah, an associate professor in WSU’s Murrow College of Communications. “It’s hard to say exactly why, but it's possible that it is because culturally the United States is more individualistic in nature. It's also possible that because this pandemic situation is unprecedented, people were more concerned about individual consequences.”

The study showed that the wording of the content matters, Borah said and advised that public officials should pay attention to the content and use many different messages.

“There should not be just one type of message for promoting COVID-19 vaccines because again and again, we see that different messages resonate with different people,” said Borah. “At this point in time, with the dire situation we are in, we really need people to be vaccinated, and a variety of messages to reach specific groups of people could be beneficial.”

For this study, Borah tested four messages on equal sized groups of about 100 participants each, who were recruited through Amazon’s crowdsourcing site Mechanical Turk. The average age of the participants was 37; 57% were male; and 66.7% were white with 47.5% identifying as politically conservative.

The participants were first asked questions about how they felt about the benefits of vaccines, and then exposed to one of four screenshots of messages made to look like real Facebook posts from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention.

The message that had an “individual loss framing,” wording that emphasized the potential personal health problems of not getting a COVID-19 vaccine, appeared to resonate the most. The findings were moderated by the participants’ perceptions of vaccine benefits. In other words, if their prior notions of vaccines were already positive, the more likely they were to be positively impacted by the messages.

This study was conducted before misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines had started circulating widely, and Borah is currently investigating how vaccine messaging might have an impact in this misinformation-filled environment.

“Now that there is so much misinformation particularly about the COVID-19 vaccines, it’s important to see how messaging interacts with people who hold those misperceptions – if they perceive these messages differently or if the messages resonate with them at all,” she said.

---

JOURNAL

Journal of Health Communication

DOI

10.1080/10810730.2021.1966687 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

COVID-19 Vaccination Attitudes and Intention: Message Framing and the Moderating Role of Perceived Vaccine Benefits

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

23-Aug-2021

Droughts Push More People to Migrate Than Floods

World Bank report sheds light on the nuanced connections between “water shocks” and human migration.

Indications of migration due to water scarcity and groundwater depletion came as early as 2006 in Mexico’s Tehuacán Valley where a combination of declining rainfall and factory farms caused community wells to go dry. Francisca Rosas Valencia dabs away tears while praying for her son, Florentine, who left home to work in Los Angeles. “It is not easy to be outside of one’s homeland,” she told Circle of Blue in 2006. “That is what makes me sad. I fear that in the future my children and grandchildren and the families of my neighbors will be forced to leave.” Photo: Brent Stirton/Getty Images Reportage for Circle of Blue

People are five times as likely to move following drought conditions as they are after floods or periods of excess water.

Most people in a drought-stricken region do not migrate, either because they do not want to or they cannot afford to.

The greatest environmental pressures are exerted on people in rural areas who rely on farming for their livelihood.

By Brett Walton, Circle of Blue – August 24, 2021

After a year of extreme weather, people in the drylands of northern California and the hurricane-drenched bayous of southern Louisiana are brooding on the same question: should we leave?

New global research suggests that one of these “water shock” scenarios is more likely to result in migration. World Bank researchers found that people are five times as likely to move following drought conditions as they are after floods or periods of excess water.

The finding is part of a lengthy report on water and migration released on Monday during the opening day of World Water Week, an annual conference. The report details the nuanced relationship between changes in water availability and the movement of people.

“Water has the power to shape these migration patterns, perhaps more than you think,” said the World Bank’s Esha Zaveri, the lead author on the report. People have always settled near rivers, lakes, oases, and coasts. It makes sense, she said, that lack of water in a place would drive people away.

These stay-or-go decisions are troubling not just rich-world Californians and Louisianans. Climate change is making rainfall more variable across the planet. In the Mediterranean, southern Africa, the southwestern United States and Mexico, droughts are already more severe than they were six decades ago. If society continues to burn fossil fuels and clear forests, those dry cycles are expected to intensify and spread across wetter areas like the Caribbean and Amazon, potentially affecting hundreds of millions of people a year. Meanwhile, diversions for agriculture, industry, or fast-growing cities can end up being a hydrological own goal, contributing to local water deficits.

Tempting as it is to blame climate change alone for the mass movement of Central Americans northward into Mexico or the exodus of Yemenis, the report urges restraint when it comes to attributing causes. There is a lot of variation across countries and regions and migration has not only environmental roots, but political and social ones as well. The distinction between a climate migrant and a migrant is often quite blurry. “This really cautions against making any sweeping conclusions,” Zaveri said.

Even so, the researchers sought to answer three questions related to water shocks: Why do people migrate? Who migrates? Where do they migrate to?

To answer these questions, they assembled a database showing the in-country movements of hundreds of millions of people in 150 countries over three decades. To that trove they added data on precipitation patterns, urban drinking water sources, and demographics.

People move because they feel their lives will improve and they have the means to do so. Usually migration occurs within a country and not across international borders. The greatest environmental pressures are exerted on people in rural areas who rely on farming for their livelihood. After a few failed harvests, migration can be perceived an exit ramp to a better life.

But that exit ramp is not available to everyone. Rainfall affects income, but income also influences migration. Zaveri notes that, in low-income countries, most people in a drought-stricken region do not migrate, either because they do not want to or they cannot afford to. More often than not it is the poorest who remain, stuck in a place with diminished economic prospects.

“These populations who are left behind are often omitted from media headlines, yet they represent a policy concern that is just as serious,” Zaveri said.

Flooding was not as likely to induce migration as drought for several potential reasons. Communities may be more capable of adapting to periodic inundation. Or, flooding seeds fields with the prospect of better future harvests.

Richard Elelman, head of politics at Eurecat, the Technology Center of Catalonia, said that the report raises key questions about whether migration is a survival mechanism that is open only to a privileged few and what happens to those who can’t leave. “These are essential issues which need to be addressed, which, I think, this report brings to light really effectively,” he said.

Ana María Ibáñez, principal economic adviser for the Interamerican Development Bank, reacted similarly, if not more poetically, about the migration field’s blind spots: “The research concentrates on the movers and we need to know about the stayers.”
Big City Lights

The answer to the third question — where people migrate to — is more straightforward. Cities are often the destination. The life that awaits them, though, may not match the skills they have. Farmers generally are displaced in droughts and their field-honed labor and fewer educational credentials are a bad pairing for the urban jobs market. The study found that they face not only lower wages once they move to cities, but also less access to housing and basic social services.

To stem migration, rural areas could be fortified, the report argues. Building water storage to smooth peaks and troughs in rainfall is a form of insurance, as is irrigation. Restoring forests and preserving wetlands can buffer an ecosystem in dry times. Another option, Zaveri said, are safety net programs like crop insurance or food aid. To ease the transition for those who move to urban areas, there ought to be investments in education, infrastructure, and services.

The options have drawbacks, though. Water storage can lure people to ecologically risky areas and potentially stretch local supplies, upsetting an already tenuous resource balance and spurring conflict. For migrants fleeing rural drought, cities themselves are not immune to water shortages. They might trade one bad situation for another.

“What we find is that such water shortages can significantly slow urban growth, compounding the vulnerability of migrants,” Zaveri said. Sharp droughts in Cape Town and Chennai in recent years show that, just like their rural counterparts, urban areas are subjected to stressful water crises. “Paradoxically, migrants who travel to cities to avoid the impacts of rainfall variability may in fact find themselves in cities that offer fewer economic opportunities and critical services due to these deficits.”

The challenge ahead, Zaveri said, is to recognize the complexity of human migration and acknowledge that the ebb and flow of people, always in search of water, binds the future of rural and urban areas.

Brett Walton
Brett writes about agriculture, energy, infrastructure, and the politics and economics of water in the United States. He also writes the Federal Water Tap, Circle of Blue’s weekly digest of U.S. government water news. He is the winner of two Society of Environmental Journalists reporting awards, one of the top honors in American environmental journalism: first place for explanatory reporting for a series on septic system pollution in the United States(2016) and third place for beat reporting in a small market (2014). He received the Sierra Club’s Distinguished Service Award in 2018. Brett lives in Seattle, where he hikes the mountains and bakes pies. Contact Brett Walton

 

Finally, We Have Learned What Amazon’s HQ2 Is Supposed to Resemble

Is the Helix actually just a giant ice cream cone?

WRITTEN BY JESSICA SIDMAN 

 

 | PUBLISHED ON AUGUST 20, 2021

Amazon HQ2's Helix building and a delicious cone from Bon Matcha.

Today in news you probably didn’t need to know but that we’re going to tell you anyway: Jeff Bezos has installed an artisan soft-serve ice cream tap in one of his many homes, the New York Post reports.

The Los Angeles-based company behind the ice cream machine, CVT Soft Serve, boasted on Instagram about installing one of its specialty dispensers, which delivers chocolate, vanilla, and twist flavors. We don’t know for sure which of Bezos’s homes received the new toy, though presumably it was his Beverly Hills compound and not his DC mansion in Kalorama.

Still, all of this reminds us of something else belonging to Bezos… oh yeah, that glass and grass architectural swirl headed for National Landing. Locals have suggested that the “Helix” tower, which will be central to Amazon’s HQ2, resembles a seashell, a corkscrew, or—most popularly—a poop emoji. But the answer is clear now—it’s actually just a billionaire’s very elaborate ode to ice cream.

‘Nowhere is safe’ – lethal floods in Europe were at least 20pc more likely to happen due to global climate change, say scientists

Destroyed houses are seen close to the Ahr river in Schuld, Germany last month
Isla Binnie

August 25 2021

Climate change has made extreme rainfall events of the kind that sent lethal torrents of water hurtling through parts of Germany and Belgium last month at least 20pc more likely to happen in the region, scientists have said.

The downpour was likely made heavier by climate change as well.

A day of rainfall can now be up to 19pc more intense in the region than it would have been had global atmospheric temperatures not risen by 1.2C above pre-industrial temperatures, according to research by the World Weather Attribution (WWA) scientific consortium.

“We will definitely get more of this in a warming climate,” said the group’s co-leader Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at the University of Oxford.

Recalling that she urgently contacted relatives living in the affected areas to make sure they were safe when the floods hit, Dr Otto added: “Extreme weather is deadly. For me it was very close to home.”

With extreme weather events dominating headlines in recent years, scientists have been under pressure to determine how much climate change is to blame.

In the past year alone, scientists found that US drought, a deadly Canadian heatwave and wildfires across the Siberian Arctic have been worsened by a warming atmosphere.

The July 12 to 15 rainfall over Europe triggered flooding that swept away houses and left more than 200 people dead in Germany and Belgium.

Thousands were forced to flee their homes in the Netherlands.

o“The fact that people are losing their lives in one of the richest countries in the world – that is truly shocking,” said climate scientist Ralf Toumi at the Grantham Institute, Imperial College London, who was not involved in the study. “Nowhere is safe.”

Although the deluge was unprecedented, the 39 WWA scientists found local rainfall patterns are highly variable.

They conducted their analysis over a wider area spanning parts of France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Switzerland and used local records and computer simulations to compare the July flooding event with what might have been expected in a world unaffected by climate change.

Because warmer air holds more moisture, summer downpours in this region are now 3pv to 19pc heavier than they would be without global warming, the scientists found.

The event itself was anywhere from 1.2 to 9 times – or 20pc to 800pc – more likely to have occurred.

That broad range of uncertainty was partly explained by a lack of historical records and worsened by the floods destroying equipment that monitored river conditions.

 CLIMATE CHANGE MADE GERMAN EU FLOODING WORSE

  

Climate change has made extreme rainfall events of the kind that sent lethal torrents of water hurtling through parts of Germany and Belgium last month at least 20% more likely to happen in the region, according to an international study published Tuesday (August 24).

Germany floods were up to 9 times more likely because of climate change, study estimates

By Angela Dewan, CNN 

Record rainfall that triggered deadly floods in Western Europe in July was made between 1.2 and 9 times more likely by human-caused climate change, according to a new study.

© Michael Probst/AP The Ahr River in Insul, Germany, on July 15, 2021 after heavy rainfall.

At least 220 people were killed between July 12 and 15 -- mostly in Germany, though dozens also died in Belgium -- and homes and other buildings were destroyed in flash flooding that followed heavy rainfall. Some parts of the region experienced more rain in a single day than they would typically expect in a whole month.

The study, conducted by 39 scientists and researchers with the World Weather Attribution (WWA) project, also found that the most extreme rain was a once-in-400-year event, and that climate change increased the intensity of daily extreme rainfall by 3% to 19%.

"These floods have shown us that even developed countries are not safe from severe impacts of extreme weather that we have seen and known to get worse with climate change," Friederike Otto, the associate director of the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford, said in a statement. "This is an urgent global challenge and we need to step up to it. The science is clear and has been for years.

The one-in-400-year frequency only refers to the particular region studied and does not mean it will be another 400 years until other parts of Europe, or the world, will see a similar weather event, explained Maarten van Aalst, a professor of climate and disaster resilience from the University of Twente in the Netherlands.

"In this case, [the projection for next year is] possibly worse because, year by year, if the trend so far is that the climate is increasing, the risk will continue to grow. So, if anything, we're expecting a higher chance of this happening next year than this year. But it's basically a one-over-400 chance every single year," van Aalst said at a news conference.

The scientists focused on the areas around the Ahr and Erft rivers in Germany and the Meuse in Belgium, where rainfall records were broken. But they also took into account what was happening across a larger region, including parts of France, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Switzerland, to establish how the extreme weather event had been influenced by increasing global temperatures.

The scientists looked at weather records and used computer simulations to compare the picture today -- in a world that is 1.2 degrees Celsius warmer than it was in pre-industrial times -- to that of the late 1800s.

They warned that the warmer Earth gets, the more frequent and intense these rain events will be. Specifically, if global temperatures rose to 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels, the intensity of rain in a single day would increase by a further 0.8 to 6% and would be between 1.2 and 1.4 times more likely to happen, their models project.

River measurement stations destroyed

Van Aalst said that the findings should be a "wake-up call" for governments and local leaders to improve their preparedness for extreme weather events, including looking at how homes are constructed so that children, the elderly and people with disabilities can reach safety in events like floods or fires.

"I hope it's a wake-up call also to people that have not just been affected by this one, but also people elsewhere -- because it's been heatwaves elsewhere, where I could tell a similar story," he said. "We are just facing more extreme events of many kinds, and the only thing we can do is, on the one hand, closing the tap off the increase in greenhouse gases to avoid the risk of getting further out of hand, and on the other hand, preparing for that more extreme climate."

The scientists acknowledged their estimate -- 1.2 to 9 times more likely, due to climate change -- was a wide range, and explained that the models they used and the data available to them around such localized events prevented them from narrowing their findings down further.

They were also missing crucial data, as some measurement stations were destroyed by the floods.

The study acknowledged that a number of conditions had worsened the severity of the floods, including that the soil in the region was already saturated, and that the terrain in some locations, with narrow valleys and steep sloping mountains, led "to funnel-like effects in the event of extreme floods." Those factors were taken into account in their models.

This summer, the Northern Hemisphere has experienced wide range of extreme weather events beyond deadly flooding, including record-breaking temperatures that in some instances have triggered wildfires in the US, Canada, Siberia, Algeria and southern Europe.

On August 14, rain fell on the summit of Greenland for the first time on record, as temperatures there rose above freezing for the third time in less than a decade. The warm air fueled an extreme rain event that dumped 7 billion tons of water on the ice sheet.

The US state of Tennessee is now experiencing heavy rains and deadly floods, as the National Weather Service in Nashville reported more than 17 inches of rain in the city of McEwen, possibly setting a new state record for 24-hour rainfall. If verified, it would smash the previous state record set in September 1982 with 13.6 inches of rain the city of Milan.

© Thomas Frey/picture alliance/Getty Images Flooding in July damaged the main road leading through the Ahr river valley in Germany.

LITHIUM BATTERIES OVERHEAT
Smartphone fire on Alaska Airlines passenger jet prompts evacuation

By Trevor Mogg

August 24, 2021 


A smartphone caught fire on an Alaska Airline passenger plane at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on Monday night, prompting an emergency evacuation of the jet.

All 128 passengers and six crew members on Flight 751 were transported by bus to the airport terminal, with two passengers taken to hospital for treatment, a spokesperson for the carrier told the Seattle Times. The aircraft had just landed after flying from New Orleans.

The phone at the center of the incident is reported to be a Samsung Galaxy A21, according to Perry Cooper, a spokesman for the Port of Seattle.

“After much digging, I can tell you that the phone was burned beyond recognition,” Cooper told the Times. “However, during an interview with one of our Port of Seattle police officers, the passenger volunteered the phone was a Samsung Galaxy A21. Again, we could not confirm it by looking at the remains of the device.”

A message posted on Twitter by passenger Maddy Harrison said the person whose phone caught fire was sitting a couple of rows behind her. Harrison said the device “was like a smoke machine” when it combusted, adding that “flight attendants did an excellent job and all passengers were very calm.”

While the incident may surface memories of the battery issue that brought down the Galaxy Note 7 in 2016 following reports of overheating and fires, there’s absolutely no suggestion that Monday’s incident points to a widespread problem with the Galaxy A21, if indeed it’s confirmed that it was the particular model that caught fire.

The A21 launched in April 2020 and no widespread safety issue regarding its battery has been reported up till now. Still, the Korean tech company likely be gathering more information about the incident, which could determine whether it needs to launch an investigation.

Digital Trends has reached out to Samsung for comment on the incident and we will update this article if we hear back.

UNION NEWS

'No Dash, no deal': Striking De Havilland workers rally to get aircraft made in GTA

TORONTO — Union leader Jerry Dias returned to the north Toronto aircraft manufacturing plant where he worked almost 45 years ago to press owner de Havilland into ending an ongoing labour dispute on Tuesday.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

As striking workers rallied outside the Downsview plant, Unifor's national president called on de Havilland Canada and its parent company Longview Aviation Capital Corp. to return to the bargaining table with an agreement that is fair to staff and vowed that he will keep fighting for employee rights.

"This plant is a part of who we all are because I was hired here with 1,500 other people for the Dash 7 program," said Dias, who in 1987 was president of one of the local units representing the workers he spoke to and whose father held the position before him.

"This is personal because you trusted me ... and I'll be damned if I am going to let you down today."

Dias was pledging his support to 700 workers represented by Unifor Local 673 and 112, who have been on strike since July 27 over the future location of the Dash 8 turboprop program.

De Havilland told workers earlier this year that it would no longer produce new Q400 aircraft at the Downsview facility beyond currently confirmed orders, and said two years ago that work will end at the site once lease agreements for the land expire.

The union has since been pushing de Havilland to commit to making the Dash 8 somewhere in the Greater Toronto Area when production resumes.

The company has refused to negotiate any scope clauses that would limit production to somewhere in the GTA and Dias has said he expects it to be moved to Alberta.

De Havilland did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the rally, behind which Ontario Premier Doug Ford threw his support during a visit to an Alstom facility in Thunder Bay, Ont.

Ford said he is disappointed that the Dash 8 program may leave because the provincial government has spent hundreds of millions on de Havilland and aircraft production.

"All of a sudden this big billionaire comes along and says, 'I'm taking (Dash 8 production) out of Toronto, and taking it out of Ontario, and we're shipping it to another province just because the billionaire lives in that province," said Ford in a reference to de Havilland owner Sherry Brydson, a member of the Thomson family.

"They take the money and then they leave. I think it's disgusting. We have to fight."

Earlier in the bargaining process, de Havilland said it was "eager to collaborate" with the union "as we chart a sustainable long-term future for aircraft manufacturing and the skilled employment it supports. But the ability to work together toward a long-term future relies on a concerted effort to transform the business to the circumstances we are facing.”

The aviation industry has been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic.

As people try to avoid contracting the virus, many are forgoing travelling. Airlines were forced to ground planes for much of last year and early this year, when COVID-19 case counts were high.

It has had a trickle-down effect on sales for aircraft manufacturers like De Havilland.

"When it comes to pinching the nerve that connects their wallet to their brain, we are not in a good situation," Dias said.

The stakes are high for the company's workers, who want to hold onto their jobs and chanted "No Dash, no deal" during the rally.

"I am struggling to look after my family without a paycheque. I don't have the benefits of a second income," said Donna Day, a single mother, who has worked at the plant for 35 years.

"To have jobs ripped out form underneath you is devastating and many of us have had to visit food banks for the first time. Many of us are depressed and struggling not knowing if we will be back at our jobs one day."

Connie Wright, who has worked at the plant for more than 36 years, is equally impassioned.

She took the stage after Day, her voice wavering as she described the plant as her "home."

"Every time I fly up the 400 (highway) and see those Dash 8's, I know a little part of me is in that aircraft," she said, noting she even wrote her name between the skins of some planes on the last of the 300 series.

"Every single aircraft that I have worked on has my blood, sweat and tears from this job...but we need Longview to get back to the table."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 24, 2021.

Tara Deschamps, The Canadian Press

DUTY TO ACCOMODATE
Disney reaches vaccination agreement with unionized employees
2021/8/23 
©Orlando Sentinel

A Disney employee draws a cold beer at Disney Springs in Orlando, Fla., on May 20, 2020. - Stephen M. Dowell/TNS

Disney reached an agreement with unions representing its workers Monday requiring all on-site employees to be fully vaccinated by late October, excluding specific exemptions.

Under an agreement signed Monday, on-site employees will have to be fully vaccinated — at least two weeks out from completing the course of their COVID-19 shot — and provide proof of their vaccination by Oct. 22.

Employees can request exemptions from receiving the vaccine for medical or religious reasons, under the terms of the agreement.

In late July, The Walt Disney Company announced it would require all non-union hourly and salaried employees to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. The company gave on-site employees 60 days starting from July 30 to complete their round of vaccinations and asked employees working from home to provide proof of vaccination before they could return to work.

“This means to work at Walt Disney World, unless you have a medical or religious accommodation need, that you will be required to be vaccinated,” Unite Here Local 362 president Eric Clinton said. “Vaccines are the best way to protect all of us, and Disney will be requiring it of its cast members.”

Those seeking medical accommodations need to have a note from their doctor detailing the disability or medical condition, its duration and limitations and explaining how the disability or condition prevents the employee from receiving the vaccine.

Employees who ask for religious accommodations have to explain how their religious beliefs or practices specifically prevent them from getting vaccinated.

Under either situation, Disney can contact the employees’ physicians or spiritual leaders and discuss vaccination within the context of the employees’ limitations, according to the contract.

Disney will then meet with employees on a case-by-case basis to discuss their circumstances and determine if the company can accommodate their request through measures like face coverings, alternative roles or additional safety measures, it read.

If Disney and employees cannot reach accommodations in the employee’s current position, the employee will be eligible to transfer to another open qualified position. If an employee cannot be accommodated in their position, they could be terminated but would be eligible for rehire.

A spokesperson for Disney did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday afternoon.

Clinton, whose union represents workers in capacities like attractions and custodial across the resort, said the Local 362 union was satisfied with the terms of the contract, adding the majority of members are already vaccinated.

“Our major concern going into this was making sure that people who needed an accommodation would be able to get one, and get one in a timely fashion that would not have them lose employment for a long period of time, and I believe that we’ve successfully accomplished that in partnership with the company,” he said.

Met strikes union deal with musicians, set to reopen next month

Issued on: 25/08/2021 - 

Demonstrators at a May 2021 rally supporting workers in labor disputes with the Metropolitan Opera, which on August 24 announced it had reached a deal with orchestra members Angela Weiss AFP/File

New York (AFP)

After months of uncertainty members of the Metropolitan Opera orchestra on Tuesday announced they'd ratified their contract with management, setting the stage for the largest US performing arts organization to reopen next month.

"We are thrilled to be returning to regular performances very soon, and look forward to reconnecting with our audiences," said the local 802 branch president Adam Krauthamer and the Met Orchestra Committee in a joint statement.

The collective bargaining agreement follows months of often heated labor talks including pay cuts for musicians, who for nearly a year during the pandemic went unpaid.

"The members of the Met's great orchestra have been through Herculean challenges during the sixteen months of the shutdown, as we struggled to keep the company intact," said Met general manager Peter Gelb, the Met's General Manager.

"Now, we look forward to rebuilding and returning to action."

Terms of the agreement were not made public, but according to documents reported by The New York Times musicians and management struck a four-year deal including pay cuts of 3.7 percent, with vows to restore some of that pay once box office revenues hit 90 percent of pre-pandemic levels.

The lack of a deal had threatened the Met's 2021-22 season set to open in September, at which point its famed house will have been shuttered 18 months.

The orchestra shop is the last of three major Met unions to reach an deal, though several smaller unions have yet to find agreements.

The Times also said much of Met's savings will come from reducing the company's full-time orchestra to 83 from the previously required 90; a number of musicians retired during the pandemic, some of whom management is now allowed to not replace.

The Met aims to reopen on September 27 with "Fire Shut Up In My Bones" by Terence Blanchard, the first Black composer to stage a production at the esteemed venue.

In July Met management said all customers and staff along with orchestra and chorus members would need to show proof of vaccination against Covid-19 during the 2021-22 season.

Children under the age of 12, a group currently ineligible for vaccines, will not be allowed to enter the Met even if the adults accompanying them are vaccinated.

© 2021 AFP

Giant blue marlin nets fishermen $1.167M in MidAtlantic tournament

Dan Radel, Asbury Park Press 

The 2021 MidAtlantic tournament held in Cape May, New Jersey and Ocean City, Maryland was one for the ages. When the dust settled, a record 1,135-pound blue marlin caught Friday, the last day of the contest, on Jon Duffie's Billfisher took home the top purse of $1.167 million in winnings.

The marlin was so big its tail hung through Billfisher’s transom door as she sat at the scale. A skiff was needed to assist with pulling the fish from the boat through the door so it could be hoisted to the scale, which took eight men to do, according to the tournament's spokespeople.

The remarkable catch, which angler Billy Gurlach battled for 3½ hours on an 80-pound outfit, ousted from the lead a 985-pound blue marlin that was landed the day before on the boat Wolverine, from Beaufort, North Carolina. That marlin was, for a fleeting moment, the largest blue marlin ever landed in the tournament's 30-year history.

That prestigious distinction now belongs to the Billfisher out of Ocean City, Maryland. The blue marlin is also a pending new Maryland state record, eclipsing the 1,062 pounds set by Robert Farris in 2009. For the record, the Billfisher's marlin was over 11 feet long from bill to tail.

All that came after Larry Hesse’s Goin’ in Deep out of Manasquan got the tournament started last Monday, day one of the 5-day tournament, with a 681-pound blue marlin. That fish would have won 22 out of 30 years of the big game tournament that draws sport fishermen from all around the world to compete for millions of dollars in cash.

© MidAtlantic Tournament A 1,135-pound blue marlin landed on the boat Billfisher makes it way to scale at the 30th Annual MidAtlantic Tournament. The fish won first place and netted the fishermen over $1 million in tournament winnings.

Hesse and his team still took home $412,237 because of all the calcuttas, or side bets, they entered.

The blue marlin was not the only fish to net $1 million in prize money. Anthony Martina’s Sea Wolf from Middletown, Delaware, took the top prize of $1.017M for his 82-pound white marlin weighed on Wednesday, day three.

Chip Caruso of Colts Neck, New Jersey aboard his Pipe Dreamer, raked in just over $1 million with a pair of bigeye tuna at 235 and 227 pounds to take first and second place in the tuna category.

By the numbers, the 30th annual MidAtlantic set a new mark for the number of boats entered at 203, breaking its previous record of 183 set last year.

The total purse of $5,929,050 eclipsed the tournament's previous high mark of just over $4 million set last year as well.

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Giant blue marlin nets fishermen $1.167M in MidAtlantic tournament

 

THE GNOMES OF ZURICH CLONE THEMSELVES

Switzerland is a haven for the super rich and more are on their way

Christiane Oelrich

 Aug 12, 2021

© picture alliance / Michael Kappeler/dpa

More millionaires live in Switzerland than in any other country, thanks to snow-capped mountains, turquoise lakes and low tax rates. The number of wealthy people seeking to live there continues to rise, partly due to the pandemic and a growing desire for security.

Geneva (dpa) – Switzerland has been attracting the world’s super rich for decades.

The country's famous banks, discretion, security - along with breath-taking scenery - are just some of the reasons why millionaires from around the world are drawn to the small Alpine nation.

The pandemic has further fuelled the run on luxury properties in Switzerland, according to UBS bank.

Property prices are soaring, with the highest recorded in the municipality of Cologny near Geneva, where real estate costs some 33,000 euros (39,000 dollars) per square metre.

That is partly because the outbreak of the coronavirus has increased people's longing for security, according to analysts at UBS.

They also note that in Switzerland, the risk of higher taxes for top earners is - unlike in some places abroad - manageable "thanks to a stable fiscal position.”

Switzerland's debt ratio is 40 per cent of gross domestic product. In comparison, this rises to around 70 per cent in Germany, and above 100 per cent in France.

In 2020, the list of Switzerland’s 300 richest people was topped by the heirs of late Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad, according to Bilanz magazine.

The list also includes many others from abroad, such as Belarusian billionaire Andrey Melnichenko, and French entrepreneur Gerard Wertheimer, who holds the majority of shares at Chanel, together with his brother. Then there's Dutch entrepreneur Charlene Carvalho-Heineken, whose father founded the Heineken brewery.

Credit Suisse estimates that 14.9 per cent of the population were millionaires in 2020, meaning every sixth inhabitant in the country of some 8.5 million. That gives the country the greatest concentration of millionaires worldwide, aside from small states such as Monaco.

Switzerland also has 135 billionaires, according to Bilanz.

Meanwhile, more wealthy people are heading to Switzerland, it seems. Lawyer Enzo Caputo, who focuses on foreign clients who are seeking to start a life in Switzerland, says the number of queries from clients has grown by 25 per cent. Other lawyers suggest the figure has risen by 40 per cent.

These numbers are impossible to verify, however, as discretion is key among such circles.

Caputo negotiates contracts with Switzerland’s cantons on taxation to enable clients to pay a lump sum, he tells dpa. That means new arrivals do not have to declare their assets at all.

That comes at a price: a residence permit and flat-rate tax package was available in the canton of Jura for an unmarried non-European for the equivalent of around 135,000 euros a year, according to broadcaster RTS.

But even without these kinds of deals, the conditions are more than favourable in Switzerland. Depending on the canton, the income tax rate of around 22 per cent is only half the level in many other countries.

People tend to plan a move to Switzerland a long time in advance, says Caputo, listing the steps. “First, the assets are placed in a Swiss bank with a good asset manager. Then the family arrives, followed by the head of the family.”

According to analyses by the Boston Consulting Group, no other country in the world has so much wealth held by foreigners who do not live in the country - some 2.4 billion dollars. This amounts to a quarter of all global foreign assets, and more than in Hong Kong and Singapore.

Real estate agents are also seeing a surge in interest. “Especially in the luxury segment, demand has increased enormously since the summer of 2020,” Franko Giovanoli, who is responsible for the exclusive St Moritz region at his firm Ginesta, tells dpa.

What people are looking for is a secure investment, he says.

That could be a 'modest' three-bedroom holiday apartment, for example. Prices start at 1 to 2 million Swiss francs (1.1 to 2.2 million dollars).

When The World Changed

Elite Self-Interest and Economic Decline in Early Modern Europe 

Richard Lachmann 

Why does the leading economic power of its time lose its dominance? Competing theories are tested through a comparison of four historical cases-the Florentine city-state, the Spanish empire, and the Dutch and British nation-states. Institutional context determined social actors' capacities to apply their polities' human and material resources to foreign economic competition. Specifically, the dominant elites in each polity established the social relations and institutions that protected them from domestic challenges from rival elites and classes. But these relations and institutions had the effect of limiting elites' capacities to adapt to foreign economic rivals: Elites acting locally determined their capacities to act globally. From comparative historical analysis to “local theory”: The Italian city-state route to the modern state Many explanations have been offered for why the dominant city-states of Italy declined, giving way to the larger, national states of Western Europe. Some, like World Systems theorists, have seen the decline of the Italian city-states as the result of the shift of trade from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, while others, like Richard Lachmann, have focused on institutional arrangements that rendered these systems less resilient when faced by external threats. This article focuses on the relations of local institutions with the interests of capital, and on the role of contentious politics within the city-state that developed as a result of this interaction. Taking as my starting point the comparative historical analysis of statebuilding in the work of Charles Tilly, in Coercion, Capital and European States, the article places contentious politics as a bridge between the Tillian categories of capital-domination and statebuilding, using the case of Florence in the late 14th and early 15th centuries to etch the skeleton of that bridge. With Tilly, I argue that the class interests of the urban elites that were built directly into the mechanisms of city-state politics worked at cross-purposes to the collective requirements of statebuilding. Next, I argue that Tilly pays too little attention to the specificities of the Italian case and gives short shrift to its internal political processes. Finally, I argue that class domination working through institutional conflicts led to periodic outbursts of conflict and built a lack of trust into the structure of governance. I conclude by suggesting why the Italian city-states, at least, were inhibited from taking the nation-state route to the modern world until quite late in their histories. 

Historicizing the Secularization Debate: Church, State, and Society in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ca. 1300 to 1700 

Philip S. Gorski

 In recent years, the sociology of religion has been consumed by a debate over secularization that pits advocates of a new, rational-choice paradigm (the so-called religious economies model) against defenders of classical secularization theory. According to the old paradigm, the Western world has become increasingly secular since the Middle Ages; according to the new paradigm, it has become increasingly religious. I put these two images of religious development to the test through a detailed examination of religious life in Western Europe before and after the Reformation. I conclude that the changes in social structure and religious experience that occurred during this period were considerably more complex than either the old or new paradigms suggest and, indeed, that the two paradigms are neither so opposed nor so irreconcilable as many of their defenders contend. It is possible, indeed probable, that Western society has become more secular without becoming less religious. I discuss the limitations of the two competing paradigms and sketch the outlines of a more adequate theory of religious change. Medievalists for some time now have been about the business of questioning the traditional boundaries between the medieval and early modern periods. What these scholars have wrought in the areas of cultural, political, technological, and religious history,the eminent historian Christopher Dyer (University of Leicester) has accomplished in the area of English socio-economic history. Originally delivered as the Ford Lectures (University of Oxford, Hilary Term 2001), this book's fundamental thesis is"that many of the tendencies of the end of the Middle Ages had their roots in a much earlier period ... [and that] the advance of commercialization, as towns grew and markets multiplied in the thirteenth century, has led to doubts about whether the changes of the long fifteenth century were of much significance" (p. 3). He continues on to assert that "Just as the commercial growth of the thirteenth century prepared the way for the structural changes of the fifteenth, so developments before 1500 can be connected with the trends of the early modern period" (p. 3). Prosperous rural yeomen, wage laborers, innovative farming techniques, occupational specialization, and the rise of a consumer economy were not the turning points of the early modern period but rather quite typical of England before 1500. These scholars have produced ground-breaking evidence of a rapidly commercializing economy in thirteenth-century England -- a trend overlooked in the past because it was hidden in the local and regional economies of towns rather than documented in multiple metropolitan areas as one finds on the continent. Based on this relatively recent scholarship, the picture of England's socio-economic development looks much more matured before 1500 than previously believed and the crisis of the fourteenth century proved to be a period of economic innovation and advancement by the lower ranks of society even though the aristocracy experienced decline

Cities, Constitutions, and Sovereign Borrowing in Europe, 1274–1785

This article investigates the politics of sovereign borrowing in Europe over the very long run. I consider three alternative hypotheses regarding the sources of borrower credibility. According to the first, European states with constitutional checks on executive authority found it easier to obtain credit at low interest rates than did states that lacked such constraints. My second hypothesis focuses on state type (city-state versus territorial state) and the way in which this may have influenced the balance of political power between owners of land and owners of capital in a society. This hypothesis suggests that after controlling for other factors, one should observe that city-states in Europe found it easier to borrow than did larger territorial states, and that these city-states paid lower interest rates on their debt. Finally, my third hypothesis suggests that borrower credibility depended on the simultaneous presence of both constitutional checks and balances and a city-state. When one considers a broad sample of cases over a long time span there is strong support for the proposition involving city-states and merchant power, but less support for the argument that constitutional checks influenced credibility regardless of state type (city-state or territorial state). There is, however, some empirical evidence of an interaction effect whereby constitutional constraints on rulers made city-states particularly credible as borrowers.

'Republics by Contract': Civil Society, Social Capital, and the 'Putnam Thesis' in the Papal State

In the decades after 1506, and building largely on pre-existing institutions, Bologna developed what was arguably the most extensive network of social service institutions in Italy. Some of its benefits were similar to what we find emerging elsewhere in 15th and 16th century Europe, and have been described in studies by Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli, Gianna Pomata, Lucia Ferrante, Luisa Ciammitti, Massimo Fornasari, Gabriela Zarri, myself and others: extensive organized food distribution to poor on the basis of a preliminary census of need; a large foundling home; 7 orphanages for girls and boys that work actively to educate, train, and return orphaned and abandoned children to society as workers and parents; shelters for battered women and for prostitutes seeking to leave the profession; 2 major hospitals; a shelter for the mentally ill, a syphilitics hospital; a large centralized shelter and workhouse for the poor; a large public pawn bank, the Monte della Pietà, giving low cost loans to the poor; and a system of city doctors who are paid only upon completion of a course of treatment, and then only if there is a cure.

These institutions are not all unique, though I would argue that the level of benefits seems higher here than elsewhere in Italy. Beyond these institutions, there are other elements as well, particularly services for the working poor who constituted such a large part of the urban community. A key area of need for this group was dowries, and here we see that Bologna developed an innovative dowry fund from 1583 that was unlike any other in Italy. It was open only to small investors and gradually developed into something like a credit union or savings bank; deposits doubled in about 10 years. Here again, Mauro Carboni’s work provides relevant statistics and analysis.

Whereas Florence's Monte delle Dote was a public enterprise, run by its oligarchy and offering an attractive investment to wealthy families, Bologna's Monte was privately operated by the investors themselves, and attracted mostly small deposits. Families of modest and moderate means accounted for about 1/3rd of all deposits. The remaining 2/3rds were employers, private benefactors, and institutions that offered dowries to servants, or to needy girls out of charity.

Bologna’s Monte actively discouraged investments by wealthy families by imposing a relatively low ceiling on deposits. Only Bolognese residents could own Monte credits. The minimum amount to open an account was set at 25 lire, a sum equal to about two-month’s salary of a menial worker, and the maximum deposit was 500 lire, raised to 800 lire in 1627. From 1583 and 1620, 847 accounts were opened on behalf of young girls belonging to 649 families. We know the father’s profession for 182 of those families. None represented leading aristocratic families, 21 were urban professionals (notaries, doctors); 157 represented modest mechanical trades (hemp weavers, silk weavers, carpenters, tailors, porters, bricklayers and so on); 4 were sharecroppers.

Beyond the scope and level of benefits, what was significant about Bologna’s system of civic charity was how it balanced broad administration with close ties to the civic government to create an interconnected network that focused deliberately on the urban population. All of the charitable institutions were run by large confraternities or companies who cycled scores of volunteers through administrative positions for limited terms. Moreover, some of the key charitable institutions deliberately aimed to recruit their boards across representative categories, ensuring that these include nobles, gentlemen, merchants, and superior artisans. The senatorial oligarchy promoted this. It kept its finger on charitable institutions in a period of reforms of the 1550s, when most of the key institutions wrote or rewrote their statutes along a roughly uniform model that other charitable institutions subsequently adopted in the decades that follow. A key feature in the new statutes is that these charitable confraternities all chose their governing Rector from the Senate. There emerged a core of Senators who rotated from one institution to another, giving it an informal co-ordination. This was precisely the period when the Senate was establishing its assunterie to expand its administrative capacities, and when it was bleeding power from the Anziani. At the same time, the Monte della Pietà became the financial administrator of a number of the key charitable institutions.

These two factors – Senatorial rectors and centralized financial administration – took the plethora of individual charitable institutions and consolidated them into a working civic network of charity: Bologna deliberately chose not to follow other cities like Florence that entrusted these social charities to smaller and often hand-picked administrative boards serving life terms. Power was shared and decentralized though a broader mass of the citizens who rotated through appointments, increasing the level of civil engagement. A further key characteristic is that benefits were largely for citizens only – not for transients or visitors. This was commonly found in statutes elsewhere, but seems to have been policed more rigorously here.

Moving from charity to employment, we find that Bologna’s guilds retained more authority in regulating professional behaviour and directing the local economy. An earlier economic historiography saw guilds as brakes on early modern economy, but this is being revised by the current generation of Italian economic historians. Alberto Guenzi finds that guilds certainly defend their interests, but also often push innovation in methods and production techniques. Raffaella Sarti has shown that the guild model was so strong locally that it moved beyond productive industries into the service sector: in the 17th century, servants formed a guild to defend their interests, and managed to keep it operative into the 18th century. This suggests that the model of collective organization and a regulated economy was still compelling locally.

Civic Charity in a Golden Age: Orphan Care in Early Modern Amsterdam.

By Anne E. C. McCants (Urban, University of Illinois Press, 1997)

From Civilitas To Civility: Codes Of Manners In Medieval And Early Modern England Argues that to see the contrasts between late medieval `courtesy books' and early modern manuals of manners as markers of changing ideals of social conduct in England is an interpretation too narrowly based on works written in English. Examination of Latin and Anglo-Norman literature shows that the ideal of the urbane gentleman can be traced back at least as far as the most comprehensive of all courtesy books, the twelfth-century Liber Urbani of Daniel of Beccles, and was itself underpinned by the commonplace secular morality of the much older Distichs of Cato.

Peter Scott: Ethics “in” and “for” Higher Education

The university first developed as a distinctive institution in Southern and Western Europe in the high Middle Ages. The qualifier ‘distinctive’ is important in two senses. First, there had been ‘academic’ institutions in Europe before the emergence of the university (or stadium general) - in 7^th century North Umbria (Bead) or at the court of Charlemagne (Albumin). But they had been monastic or court schools, organizational elements within much larger configurations. Second, ‘academic’ institutions also flourished in the Byzantine east, where institutions close to universities did emerge, and in the Islamic world, where the unity of religion and state made it more difficult for distinctive institutions to emerge. So, although the structural differentiation of the medieval university was decisive in terms of future evolution, its significance can be exaggerated in intellectual and normative terms. The university did provide a separate organizational basis for the emergence of a distinctive value system, scholasticism. But the degree to which scholasticism could really be distinguished from the wider culture of medieval Catholicism and feudal society was limited.

Only with the coming of the Renaissance - and especially the Reformation - did the organizational (semi) independence of the universities become significant. Once the unity of medieval Europe had been shattered, universities played a crucial role in state-building. They educated new (and more secular) bureaucratic elites, bridged or brokered between mercantile and court cultures, and promoted new intellectual values by providing ideological justifications for the new politico-religious order and proto-scientific culture. Many universities, of course, were founded between 1500 and 1700. One indicator of the importance of universities during this period is their social penetration. In England the so-called ‘Long Parliament’, which was first elected in 1641 and went on to wage war against King Charles I, contained more graduates than any English (by then United Kingdom) Parliament before 1945.

Yet in some respects this second flourishing of the European university was a false dawn. From the mid 17th to the late 18th centuries universities stagnated both in terms of student numbers and of intellectual engagement (- this statement remains broadly valid despite recent studies that suggest universities were not as stagnant during this period as was once supposed) (Porter 1996). In fact the new Academies of Science, ‘practical’ engineers, Enlightenment illuminati, the first stirrings of the dominant media and publishing industries, radical thought and revolutionary politics - these were the channels through which intellectual and scientific innovation flowed for more than a century. While the university played some part in the scientific revolution, its role in the Enlightenment was tangential, even accidental and value systems evolved independently. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that by 1800 the university had become a threatened species, at risk of being superseded by other more ‘modern’ academic institutions (de Ridder-Symeons 1996).