REST IN POWER

Thich Nhat Hanh: Influential Zen Buddhist monk dies at 95

A pioneer of the concept of mindfulness in the West, Thich Nhat Hanh was one of the world's most influential Buddhist monks. He died in Vietnam after years of living in exile.

  

Thich Nhat Hanh (center) spent his final years at the Tu Hieu temple in Vietnam

One of the world's most influential Buddhist monks, Thich Nhat Hanh, died in Vietnam on Saturday. He was 95.

Nhat Hanh "passed away peacefully" at the Tu Hie Temple, the Plum Village Community of Engaged Buddhism said.

"We invite our beloved global spiritual family to take a few moments to be still, to come back to our mindful breathing, as we together hold [Nhat Hanh] in our hearts," the organization said on his Twitter account.

Who was Thich Nhat Hanh?

Nhat Hanh was a pioneer of Buddhism in the West, forming the "Plum Village" monastery in France. He spoke regularly on the practice of mindfulness.

"You learn how to suffer. If you know how to suffer, you suffer much, much less. And then you know how to make good use of suffering to create joy and happiness," he said in a 2013 lecture.

In the early 1960s, he lectured at Princeton and Columbia universities in the United States. Then he returned to Vietnam to join opposition to the US-Vietnam war.

Thich Nhat Hanh was known for spreading the practice of mindfulness

Toward the height of the Vietnam War, he met American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, who nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize. "I do not personally know of anyone more worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize than this gentle Buddhist monk from Vietnam," King wrote.

Fellow monk Haenim Sunim said Nhat Hanh was calm, attentive and loving.

"He was like a large pine tree, allowing many people to rest under his branches with his wonderful teaching of mindfulness and compassion," Haemin Sunim told Reuters news agency.

The Plum Village organization Nhat Hanh originally established in France has a number

 of branches around the world, including in Thailand (pictured)

Why was Nhat Hanh in exile?

The South Vietnamese government had banned Nhat Hanh from returning home due to his opposition to the war.

In 2014, Nhat Hanh suffered a stroke, which left him unable to speak. Four years later, he returned to his place of birth, Vietnam's central city of Hue, after having spent much of his adult life in exile.

Nhat Hanh was permitted by Vietnam's authorities to return, but was closely monitored by plainclothes police who kept vigil outside his gated compound.

sdi/fb (AFP, AP, Reuters)

GOD'S ROTWEILLER LED THE INQUISITION
Opinion: Pope Benedict's defense is outrageous and tragic

A report about how the archdiocese of Munich handled cases of sexual abuse by priests makes for devastating reading and tarnishes the image of the retired Pope Benedict XVI, says DW’s Christoph Strack.


Cardinal Reinhard Marx, right, has been the archbishop of Munich since 2007, while retired Pope Benedict XVI was in that position from 1977 until 1982

Before Joseph Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI in April 2005, critics called him the "Panzerkardinal," or "tank cardinal," in reference to his sharp, dogmatic views: someone who uncompromisingly defended the church's traditional doctrine. Soon after his election to pontiff, there were reports that the reportedly tough ex-cardinal was capable of laughter and was even a softie, to everyone's surprise.

Now, Joseph Ratzinger is being described in a new way. One of the lawyers, whose office spent many months investigating abuse in Ratzinger's former diocese of Munich, said he had a "very rocklike way of dealing with things" — in reference to the accusation that he covered up abuse in the church.

A 'catalog of horrors'

The approximately 1,900 pages that a Munich law firm has compiled on the archdiocese of Munich-Freising's handling of sexual abuse cases are a "catalog of horrors."

One of the lawyers says so literally, several times. The thick volumes are also a document of church history — they represent a new dimension, a new stage in the investigation of sexual abuse.

DW's Christoph Strack

Since 1952, six archbishops headed the archdiocese in Munich. All of them had been cardinals before or were elevated to cardinals while in office. All six, without exception, were guilty, to varying degrees, of clear misconduct in dealing with sexual abuse cases. Three of the six are still alive.

And from 1977 to 1982, that same Joseph Ratzinger was archbishop of Munich, who then continued his career in Rome and ascended to the top of the Catholic Church as Pope Benedict XVI in 2005. That's why the global Catholic community watched with bated breath the events in Munich on Thursday this week.

With regard to the five years that Ratzinger spent in Munich, the experts speak of four cases of misconduct in which the archbishop should have acted against abusive priests but did not. For example in the case of priests, whose acts of abuse were known, but who nevertheless continued with pastoral work.

Ratzinger himself reacted to the allegations in an 82-page written statement. In it, he rejects "allegations," claims ignorance of certain events or even says he does not remember them at all. He also firmly denies having attended a committee meeting at which a particularly nasty case of a cover-up was discussed. The experts from the law firm, however, prove with credible details that Ratzinger was there after all.
Church can't deal with the past on its own

Ratzinger's letter is an outrageous, and at the same time, tragic document. It's hard to read when this great theologian explains that for a canonical judicial procedure to be opened would have required "an offense directed at the arousal of sexual desire.” Let's not forget, we're talking here about minors!

In light of the report by the Munich law firm, there are four points worth holding on to:

1) It's important that the lawyers repeatedly and explicitly addressed the importance of the victims and the survivors of sexual violence and thanked them, appreciated their courage and their openness. That's something they didn't attribute to any clergyman. And they are right to demand that an ombudsman's office be set up to represent their interests. This is about dealing appropriately with victims, which the church can hardly do itself.

2) It is important to look at the parishes where abusive priests worked and which the church should be monitoring more closely. Entire communities, friendships and families have already been divided over allegations, assumptions and disappointments. Here, too, the church is sinning against its base.

3) The church obviously cannot deal with the past by itself — the state judiciary must intervene more decisively. That is evident, and not just because of Joseph Ratzinger's coldly worded statement. Two days before the publication of the Munich report, an archbishop stood trial for the first time in Cologne ⁠— another hotspot of church cover-ups and appeasement ⁠— as a witness in the proceedings against a priest and alleged sexual offender. The dignitary, Archbishop Stefan Hesse of Hamburg, suddenly stood before the judge and had to answer concisely, precisely and — ⁠ according to those present ⁠— meekly. This demonstrates that state prosecutors or judges should be pushing the legal process forward. The state, if it wants to at all, should take over prosecuting the crimes. This would also mean that victims would no longer have to face the perpetrators or their organizations.

4) And finally, the fourth point is that this clerical and episcopal-driven church that elevates itself and tries to cover up its filth is no longer the church of the present. If one can at all sense a line in Pope Francis' occasionally strange-sounding statements, it is the effort to keep alive the longing for God. And the church? Comes up somehow, too. But the exaltation of the past is over. The question is whether the Catholic Church will be able to cope with this.

Benedict XVI: ‘Rottweiler’ who resigned scandal-dogged papacy

By AFP
Published January 20, 2022

THE FACE OF EVIL

Benedict XVI resigned nearly eight years into a papacy beset by toxic infighting within the Church - Copyright POOL/AFP ANDY BUCHANAN

Ella IDE

Benedict XVI, accused of failing to act in German sex abuse cases, was the first pope to resign since the Middle Ages after presiding over a papacy beset by Church infighting and outcry over paedophilia.

The 94-year-old German, known for his conservative views, has lived a quiet life within the Vatican since his shock resignation in February 2013, and is said to be in shaky health.

But the issue of clerical sex abuse has cast long shadows over his retirement and on Thursday he was thrust back into the limelight when a report commissioned by the German church said he failed to stop four clerics accused of abuse.

A German law firm said Benedict failed to take action to stop the priests accused of child sex abuse when he was the archbishop of Munich and Freising from 1977 to 1982.

The former pope has “strictly” denied any responsibility, said lawyer Martin Pusch of Westpfahl Spilker Wastl, which carried out the probe.

Benedict had a troubled term in St Peter’s, when he often appeared overwhelmed by the challenges facing a Church that was losing influence and followers.

He came under fire for a string of PR blunders, a perceived lack of charisma and most importantly, his failure to act decisively to end Church cover-ups of clerical sex abuse.

In recent years, an ever-growing number of victims has come forward with testimonies of their suffering, mostly as children, at the hands of priests.

In 2010, he admitted that the Church “did not act quickly or firmly enough to take the necessary action” on an issue that severely tarnished its image.

– Two popes –

The Vatican turmoil took its toll on Benedict’s mental and physical state and culminated in his shock resignation announcement, delivered to cardinals in Latin.

“The strength of mind and body… has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognise my incapacity to adequately fulfil the ministry,” said Benedict, then 85.

Becoming Pope Emeritus, the soft-spoken Joseph Ratzinger still wears papal white but is rarely seen or heard in public.

Eclipsed by the dynamism and popularity of his successor Francis, Benedict was quoted a year after his resignation as saying that the decision was the result of a mystical experience.

He added that Francis’s strengths had helped him understand that it was God’s will for him to step aside.

In an interview in March 2021, he said “fanatical” Catholics have repeatedly voiced doubts about whether he stepped down willingly, with some even refusing to accept he’s no longer the head of the church.

But he insisted: “There is only one pope”.

– ‘God’s Rottweiler’ –

Ratzinger was born on April 16, 1927, in Marktl am Inn, in Bavaria. In 1941, he became a member of the Hitler Youth, as was compulsory for all 14-year-olds under the Nazis.

The future pope was ordained a priest in 1951 and was made a cardinal by 1977.

In 1981, Pope John Paul II asked him to head the Vatican’s doctrinal congregation — once known as the Holy Office of the Inquisition — a post which gave him ultimate responsibility to investigate abuse cases.

He went on to serve as the Church’s chief doctrinal enforcer, earning the nickname “God’s Rottweiler” and a reputation as a generally conservative thinker on theological issues.

Benedict was 78 when he succeeded the long-reigning and popular John Paul II in April 2005 — and almost eight years later, became the first pope since 1415 to resign.

He fought to stem growing secularism in the West and staunchly defended traditional Catholic teaching on abortion, euthanasia and gay marriage.

He angered the Muslim world with a speech in 2006 in which he appeared to endorse the view that Islam is inherently violent, sparking deadly protests in several countries as well as attacks on Christians.

His papacy was also marred by a money-laundering scandal at the Vatican bank, which exposed infighting among Benedict’s closest allies.

The pontiff also appeared to have lost control of his household: in 2012, his butler Paolo Gabriele leaked secret papers to the media, an act of betrayal which profoundly saddened the then pontiff.

Benedict as pope “was not really a dogmatic man, but rather a man who was disconnected from the real world,” said Jeffrey Klaiber, a religion professor at Lima’s Universidad Catolica.

Pope Francis vows 'justice' for church abuse victims after damning report

More needs to be done to enforce rules against perpetrators of sexual abuse, Pope Francis has said. Public prosecutors in Munich have also said they will investigate dozens of cases outlined in a scathing report.

  

The Pope has called for a stricter enforcement of the Church's canonical law against abusers

Pope Francis on Friday pledged to apply justice for the victims of sexual abuse by members of the Catholic Church a day after a report revealed that former Pope Benedict XVI had failed to act in four cases of abuse prior to becoming pope.

Thursday's report looked into sexual abuse cases by members of the clergy in the Munich archdiocese between 1945 and 2019. Ex-Pope Benedict XVI — known as Joseph Ratzinger at the time — was archbishop there between 1977 and 1985.

Pope Francis did not explicitly mention the report in his address. 

"The church, with God's help, is carrying out the commitment with firm determination to do justice to the victims of abuse by its members, applying with particular attention and rigor to the canonical legislation envisaged," the Pope said in his speech on Friday.

What did Pope Francis say?

Pope Francis was speaking from the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican City to representatives from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is the Vatican authority charged with dealing with abuse allegations.

Ratzinger — who has resided in Vatican City since stepping down as pope — headed up the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for over 20 years before being elected as pope in 2005.

Francis highlighted the recent reforms to the canon law that aim to enable the Church to hold abusers to account better. He called for its strict application.

"This alone cannot be enough to curb the phenomenon, but it is an important step towards restoring justice, making amends for the scandal and changing a perpetrator," the 85-year-old pontiff said.

Two of the cases mentioned in the report pointed to perpetrators who had been punished by the German judicial system, but we're allegedly allowed to continue their work for the Church, thus avoiding consequences under canonical law.

Police open investigations into abuse

Public prosecutors in Munich also responded to the allegations in Thursday's report, announcing on Friday that they were opening investigations in 42 cases of alleged misconduct by leading members of the Catholic Church in Germany.

Ex-Pope Benedict XVI (L) and the current Archbishop of Munich, Cardinal Reinhard Marx (R)

 were both mentioned in the report

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's government spokeswoman, Christiane Hoffmann, said on Friday it was "urgent that these matters be fully investigated and a comprehensive reappraisal be carried out."

The report makes "the extent of the abuse and breach of duty by church dignitaries shockingly clear," she said, adding that: "It is crucial that confidence in the process of coming to terms with the past is strengthened in the Catholic Church and by individual dignitaries."

Ratzinger and his successor as archbishop in the diocese of Munich and Freising, Friedrich Wetter, are both accused of direct and personal misconduct in the report.

While four cases relate to the time when Ratzinger held the role, another 21 have been connected to Wetter while yet another two have been connected to the current Archbishop of Munich, Cardinal Reinhard Marx.

ab/wmr (dpa, AP, AFP)

Farmers could forgo harmful fertilisers by growing black-eyed peas, scientists say

Lamiat Sabin
Thu, January 20, 2022

Joel Sachs, UCR professor of evolution and ecology, with black-eyed peas crops (Joel Sachs/UCR)

Growing black-eyed peas could eradicate the need for expensive and environmentally-damaging fertilisers for gardening, research from a US university has confirmed.

Legumes such as black-eyed peas, also known as cowpeas, are a unique category of crops in that they attract “substantial amounts” of nitrogen that is essential for also growing other plants.

They do this by forming a symbiotic relationship with nitrogen-fixing soil bacteria called rhizobia.

Rhizobia is attracted to the plant through chemicals the legumes crop emits through the roots. Then the roots form tumour-like nodules that protect the bacteria and supply them with carbon, for which the plant receives nitrogen to turn into ammonia.

The most prominent black scientist of the early 20th century – agriculturalist and inventor George Washington Carver – had popularised, researched, and taught on the growing of black-eyed peas, peanuts, soybeans, and sweet potatoes to improve soil conditions.

George Washington Carver in 1910 (WikiCommons)

Now, scientists led by plant pathologist Gabriel Ortiz, of University of California Riverside (UCR), have said that modern-day farmers could forgo the use of costly and environmentally-damaging fertilisers by planting legumes.

Dr Ortiz said: “When the plant senses it is going to die, it releases the bacteria into the soil, replenishing it.

“Growers could alternate seasons of legumes with other crops, leaving the soil full of nitrogen-fixing bacteria that reduce the need for fertiliser.”

A black-eyed peas plant’s ability to attract the beneficial bacteria isn’t diminished by modern farming practices, the UCR research shows.

Joel Sachs, UCR professor of evolution and ecology, said: “In fact, some of the strains in the experiment appear to have gained more benefit from bacteria than their wild ancestors.”

He added: “To make agriculture more sustainable, one of the things we need to do is focus on the plant’s ability to get services from microbes already in the soil, rather than trying to get those services by dumping chemicals.”

When already-madenitrogen fertiliser is applied to plants at a rate faster than it can be used, the excess can end up in the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas or washed out into lakes, rivers and seas.

In the aquatic system, nitrogen feeds “harmful algal blooms” – rapid accumulations of algae that typically turn the water green – that use up all the oxygen and end up killing fish.

The UCR experiments involved 20 different types of black-eyed peas, and “point toward a genetic basis for their symbiotic abilities” – the researchers said.

The research results have been published in the biology journal Evolution.

KURGAN CIVILIZATION

Ancient 'scepters' were actually straws for communal boozing, researchers say

Tom Metcalfe
Tue, January 18, 2022

Silver and gold tubes unearthed in an ancient tomb in southern Russia and long thought to be ceremonial staffs were, in fact, the earliest-known drinking straws, used by people 5,000 years ago to sip beer from a communal jar, according to research published Tuesday.

The practice mirrors a ceremonial method of drinking beer used by the Sumerians in ancient Mesopotamia, a thousand miles to the south from where they were found, and it suggests that trade in the early Bronze Age included ideas as well as commodities, archaeologists say. The discovery also underlines the importance of beer to ancient peoples.

The objects were discovered more than 100 years ago during excavations of a burial mound near the Russian city of Maikop, just north of the Caucasus Mountains, but no one had advanced the idea that they were ancient drinking tubes before now.


“It never occurred to anyone,” said Viktor Trifonov, an archaeologist at the Institute for the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences, based in St. Petersburg, who is the lead author of a study of the objects published Tuesday in the journal Antiquity.

Schematic drawing of the set of

The ornate tubes, four of them decorated with bull figurines, were unearthed in 1897 from a large “kurgan” — a type of burial mound — beside the remains of a man thought to have been a king. The kurgan was filled with riches, including what was left of a garment decorated with semiprecious stones and gold, precious metal cups, weapons and tools. The remains of two women were also found in chambers of the tomb.

The objects now revealed to be drinking tubes were found lying beside the man’s body; the other items were lined up against the walls of the burial chamber.

The archaeologist who led the 19th century excavation described the mysterious objects as “scepters” — ceremonial staffs wielded by rulers — and they were put on display at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg with other finds from the Maikop kurgan.

Later, archaeologists theorized that they might be poles for a canopy held by servants during a funeral procession; another speculated that they might symbolize arrows that had killed a mythical bull, which was represented by the figurines.

But none of the explanations sounded right to Trifonov, who knew about the Sumerian practice of drinking beer through long tubes and had a hunch that these might have been used for the same purpose.

“The idea of reinterpreting the ‘scepters’ first came to me about a decade ago,” he said in an email. His initial suggestions, however, found no support, so he started the latest study a few years ago to see whether he could find more evidence.

His team focused its attention on what looked like a “strainer” of narrow slits in the ends of each of the tubes. Some Sumerian drinking tubes unearthed at archaeological sites had similar strainers made of small perforations at the end to filter out chaff and other impurities.

So when analysis of a residue found in the slits of one of the Maikop tubes revealed ancient barley starch, as well as pollen grains and phytoliths — microscopic deposits of silica from plant cells — Trifonov and his colleagues knew for sure that the “scepters” were, in fact, tubes for drinking beer.

“Everything else fell into place,” he said.

Trifonov and his team suggest that the Maikop people who built the kurgan used the tubes to drink beer from a communal vessel. A pottery jar was also found in the kurgan, large enough to provide each of eight drinkers — there are eight tubes — with about seven pints of beer.

Trifonov said it seems likely that this way of drinking beer was part of aristocratic ceremonies the Maikop people had adopted from Mesopotamia. Although the Maikop tubes are the earliest to have been found, the practice is shown on Sumerian seals that are at least 1,000 years older.

Archaeologist Mara Horowitz, an assistant professor at Purchase College in New York who was not involved in the latest study, broadly agreed with the interpretation by Trifonov and his colleagues.

“Having a whole set of metal straws placed in the Maikop kurgan is an extraordinary find,” she said.

The discovery shows how such practices could spread between ancient people who were great distances apart, she said.

“It’s very exciting to see the degree of connectivity across the Caucasus at this early date,” she said. “It is in the 3rd millennium B.C. that we have movements of culture and people across the Caucusus in both directions, with major effect on regional cultures.”

Horowitz also said the bull figurines on four of the drinking tubes could have been positioned so that the drinkers saw each figurine from the side.

“With four bulls on straws in the jar at once ... it would look like a procession of little bulls going around in a circle,” she said. “That’s really kind of adorable.”

Image: alamy.com

KURGAN PEOPLE CULTURE The Kurgan people culture existed during the fifth, fourth, and third millennia BC, they lived in northern Europe, from N.Pontic across Central Europe. The word “kurgan” means a mound or a barrow in Türkic. Kurgan culture is characterized by pit-graves or barrows, a particular method of burial.

KURGAN PEOPLE CULTURE | DENEMELER

esvat.wordpress.com/2009/07/06/kurgan-people-culture/

US-backed fighters chase IS gunmen near prison in Syria



SyriaThis photo provided by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces shows some Islamic State group fighters, who were arrested by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces after they attacked Gweiran Prison, in Hassakeh, northeast Syria, Friday, Jan. 21, 2022. IS attacks have been on the rise in recent months in both Iraq and neighboring Syria, where the group once set up a self-styled Islamic caliphate before being defeated by an international coalition. 

(Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, via AP)More

BASSEM MROUE
Sat, January 22, 2022

BEIRUT (AP) — Kurdish-led fighters advanced slowly Saturday under the cover of U.S.-led coalition air power in Syria's northeast. Intense clashes with Islamic State group militants took place around a prison where thousands of extremists were held, officials said.

Fighting broke out Thursday night when IS unleashed its biggest attack in Syria since the fall of its “caliphate” three years ago. More than 100 militants assaulted the main prison holding suspected extremists in the northeastern city of Hassakeh, sparking a battle with U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters that has so far left dozens dead.

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces lost 17 fighters killed and 23 wounded since the fighting began, spokesman Farhad Shami tweeted Saturday. Dozens of IS gunmen were also killed.


Despite their defeat in Syria nearly three years ago, IS sleeper cells have carried out deadly attacks against SDF as well as government forces on the west bank of the Tigris River in eastern Syria.

The group’s territorial control in Syria and Iraq, where they once declared their “caliphate” was crushed by a years-long U.S.-backed campaign. But its fighters continued with sleeper cells that have increasingly killed scores of Iraqis and Syrians in past months.

The U.S.-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces brought more reinforcements into Hassakeh in an attempt to regain control of areas taken by IS, residents said. More civilians fled the areas of fighting as sounds of explosions echoed in the city and black smoke billowed from the Gweiran Prison area on the southern edge of Hassakeh.

Hassakeh Gov. Ghassan Khalil told Syrian state media that some 4,000 civilians have fled to areas controlled by Syrian government forces in the city and its suburbs. He told state TV that authorities set up three shelters for the displaced and mosques were also asked to open their doors for those who were forced to leave their homes.

Hassakeh-based journalist Adnan Hassan said in the early afternoon, a large SDF force consisting of scores of fighters, Humvees and vehicles carrying heavy machineguns arrived in the areas to boost the anti-IS operations.

SDF fighters “succeeded in thwarting the attempt to free the prisoners but it is not clear when they will have the situation under full control,” Hassan said.

Gweiran Prison is the largest of around a dozen facilities run by U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish forces holding suspected IS fighters. Gweiran holds more than 3,000 inmates, including IS commanders and figures considered among the most dangerous.

“The battles are taking place on the edge of the prison,” SDF spokesman Siamand Ali told The Associated Press, adding that most of the prison is under their control apart from a small part that is held by rioting prisoners. He added that fighting is also ongoing in the nearby Zuhour neighborhood, where IS fighters were holed up.

Ali said SDF fighters and U.S.-led coalition aircraft targeted a technical academy building where dozens of "Daesh terrorists took positions.” Ali, who used an Arabic acronym to refer to IS, said SDF fighters are advancing slowly in order to protect the lives of civilians as IS gunmen are holed up in alleys and in residential homes.

He said the SDF's elite anti-terrorism unit and commandos are leading the operations that intensified Saturday night in neighborhoods east of the prison, where scores of IS fighters are holed up. He said SDF officials are at the same time trying to convince rioting detainees to surrender, because a confrontation inside the prison "could have grave consequences” due to the large numbers of detainees.

Ali said some 45 IS gunmen were killed in the fighting and dozens of prisoners who fled were recaptured.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, said that since Thursday night, 89 people have been killed, including 56 IS gunmen, 28 Kurdish fighters and five civilians. The Observatory added that SDF fighters were using loud speakers to call on IS fighters to surrender but the extremists refused.

On Friday, the SDF’s top military commander, Mazloum Abadi, said IS mobilized “most of its sleeper cells” to organize the prison break.

The militants, armed with heavy machine guns and vehicles rigged with explosives, attacked Thursday evening, aiming to free their comrades.

Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said Friday the U.S. used airstrikes to support the SDF.

On Friday an SDF spokesman said they recaptured 104 militants who escaped from the prison. But he said the total number who had broken out was not determined.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the prison break on its Aamaq news service Friday, describing it as ongoing. Freeing convicts and imprisoned comrades has been a main tactic of the group. During their 2014 surge that overwhelmed territory in Iraq and Syria, IS carried out multiple prison breaks.

At its height, the Islamic State group’s self-styled caliphate covered a third of both of Iraq and Syria. The ensuing war against them lasted several years, killed thousands, and left large parts of the two neighboring countries in ruins. It also left U.S.-allied Kurdish authorities in control of eastern and northeastern Syria, with a small presence of several hundred American forces still deployed.

Afghanistan: UN pressures Taliban over missing women's activists

One of the two women who went missing in Afghanistan had posted a video of herself as men, allegedly from the Taliban's intelligence department, are heard pounding on her door. But the Taliban say the video is fake.


Afghan women's rights activists continued to fight for their rights under the Taliban regime

The United Nations said it was concerned about the disappearance of two Afghan women's rights activists. Taman Zaryabi Paryani and Parawana Ibrahimkhel were reportedly abducted from their homes by the Taliban on Wednesday night.

"We urge Taliban to provide information on their whereabouts & to protect rights of all Afghans," the UN's Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said in a statement on Twitter.

Activist films distressing video

One of the activists managed to film a harrowing video apparently from her home in Kabul.

The video shows a visibly scared Paryani, as men claiming to be from the Taliban's intelligence department, pound on the front door.

According to local broadcaster Aamaj News, Paryani was disconnected shortly after sharing the video with the network.

Ibrahimkhel apparently went missing on the same night.

Paryani was among a group of women who had protested the forced wearing of the hijab.

A witness told the AP news agency that ten armed men had carried out the nighttime raid. The witness said that four people were taken, including Paryani.

The Taliban have dismissed Paryani 's video as a fake, with a spokesman for police in Kabul, Mobin Khan, saying it was a "manufactured drama."

UN experts say women are being 'erased'

On Monday, a panel of UN human rights experts said the Taliban's leadership was "institutionalizing large-scale and systemic gender-based discrimination and violence against women and girls."

According to the panel, there have been a series of restrictive measures that target women since the militant group's takeover of Afghanistan.

"Today, we are witnessing the attempt to steadily erase women and girls from public life in Afghanistan, including in institutions and mechanisms that had been previously set up to assist and protect those women and girls who are most at risk," the panel of experts said in a statement.

On Friday, two local employees of NGOs operating in rural Afghanistan told the AFP news agency that the Taliban threatened to shoot them if they did not wear burqas.

The Taliban had given its assurances they would uphold women's rights shortly after seizing power. The Islamist group has continued trying to garner recognition from the global community. To date, no country has recognized its government.

Taliban storm Kabul apartment, arrest activist, her sisters

KATHY GANNON
Thu, January 20, 2022

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The Taliban stormed an apartment in Kabul, smashing the door in rresting a woman rights activist and her three sisters, an eyewitness said Thursday. A Taliban statement appeared to blame the incident on a recent women's protest, saying insulting Afghan values will no longer be tolerated.

The activist, Tamana Zaryabi Paryani, was among about 25 women who took part in an anti-Taliban protest on Sunday against the compulsory Islamic headscarf, or hijab, for women. A person from the neighborhood who witnessed the arrest said about 10 armed men, claiming to be from the Taliban intelligence department, carried out the raid on Wednesday night.

Shortly before she and her sisters were taken away, footage of Paryani was posted on social media, showing her frightened and breathless and screaming for help, saying the Taliban were banging on her door.

“Help please, the Taliban have come to our home . . . only my sisters are home,” she is heard saying in the footage. There are other female voices in the background, crying. “I can’t open the door. Please . . . help!”

Associated Press footage from the scene on Thursday showed the apartment's front door, made of metal and painted reddish brown, dented and left slightly ajar. The occupants of a neighboring apartment ran inside their home, not wanting to talk to reporters. An outer security door of steel slats was shut and padlocked, making it impossible to enter Paryani’s apartment.

The witness said the raid took place around 8 p.m. The armed men went up to the third floor of the Kabul apartment complex where Paryani lives and began pounding on the front door ordering her to open the door.

When she refused, they kicked the door repeatedly until it opened, the witness said. “They took four females away, all of them were sisters,” the witness said, adding that one of the four was Paryani, the activist.

The witness spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing Taliban reprisal.

The spokesman for the Taliban-appointed police in Kabul, Gen. Mobin Khan, tweeted that Paryani's social video post was a manufactured drama. A spokesman for the Taliban intelligence, Khalid Hamraz, would neither confirm nor deny the arrest.

However, he tweeted that “insulting the religious and national values of the Afghan people is not tolerated anymore” — a reference to Sunday's protest during which the protesters appeared to burn a white burqa, the all-encompassing traditional head-to-toe female garment that only leaves a mesh opening for the eyes.

Hamraz accused rights activists of maligning Afghanistan's new Taliban rulers and their security forces to gain asylum in the West.

Since sweeping to power in mid-August, the Taliban have imposed widespread restrictions, many of them directed at women. Women have been banned from many jobs, outside the health and education field, their access to education has been restricted beyond sixth grade and they have been ordered to wear the hijab. The Taliban have, however, stopped short of imposing the burqa, which was compulsory when they previously ruled Afghanistan in the 1990s.

At Sunday's demonstration in Kabul, women carried placards demanding equal rights and shouted: “Justice!” They burned a white burqa and said they cannot be forced to wear the hijab. Organizers of the demonstration said Paryani attended the protest, which was dispersed after the Taliban fired tear gas into the crowd of women.

Paryani belongs to a rights group known as “Seekers of Justice," which organized several demonstrations in Kabul, including Sunday's. The group's members have not spoken publicly of her arrest but have been sharing the video of Paryani.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch criticized the crackdown, saying that since taking over Afghanistan five months ago, the Taliban “have rolled back the rights of women and girls, including blocking access to education and employment for many."

“Women’s rights activists have staged a series of protests; the Taliban has responded by banning unauthorized protests,” the watchdog said in a statement after Sunday's protest.

The Taliban have increasingly targeted Afghanistan's beleaguered rights groups, as well as journalists, with local and international television crews covering demonstration often detained and sometimes beaten.

Also Thursday, the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a statement asking the Taliban to investigate a recent attack on a documentary film maker Zaki Qais who said two armed men, who identified themselves as Kabul police officials, entered his home and beat him. One tried to stab him, according to Steven Butler, the CPJ's Asia program coordinator.

"Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers must immediately launch an investigation to identify and bring to justice those who attacked journalist Zaki Qais,” said Butler. “The Taliban’s continued silence on these repeated attacks on journalists undermines any remaining credibility of pledges to allow independent media to continue operating.”

Last week the CPJ sought information on an attack on another Kabul-based journalist, Noor Mohammad Hashemi, deputy director for the non profit Salam Afghanistan Media Organization, who was beaten up by three unidentified men.

This Year Marks the 75th Anniversary Since Former Scientists Created the Doomsday Clock

David Grossman, Courtney Linder
Fri, January 21, 2022

Photo credit: Tony Craddock - Getty Images

For the third year in a row, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has decided to keep its Doomsday Clock at 100 seconds to midnight.

The Doomsday Clock isn't updated on a set time frame, but rather, as events dictate. You can thank the pandemic, climate change, the rise of misinformation, and the threat of nuclear war for this update.

This year marks the 75th anniversary since former Manhattan Project scientists created the Doomsday Clock in 1947.

Life as we know it is still on the brink of disaster.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a nonprofit organization made up of scientists and global security experts, has published a new statement deriding the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic and expressing concern about nuclear weapons, misinformation, and climate change.

☢️ You like nuclear. So do we. Let's nerd out over it together.

The organization announced for the third year in a row that it is keeping its figurative Doomsday Clock at 100 seconds to midnight—the closest we've come to a symbolic apocalypse since the first tests of the hydrogen bomb in 1953. This year also marks 75 years since the organization began tracking our inevitable demise.

"Steady is not good news," Sharon Squassoni, a research professor at George Washington University's Institute for International Science and Technology Policy and a co-chair on the Bulletin's Science and Security Board, said during a press briefing on Thursday. "In fact, it reflects the judgment of the board that we are stuck in a perilous moment, one that brings neither stability nor security."

The experts cited a lack of progress and coordination in the fight against climate change, the ongoing pandemic and evolution of troubling new variants, and North Korea's continued efforts to develop nuclear weapons. They also blamed use of technology in misinformation and disinformation campaigns; the development of hypersonic weapons by the United States, Russia, and China; recent space junk-generating ASAT tests; and deteriorating talks between the world's superpowers.

Photo credit: EVA HAMBACH - Getty Images

Still, the 2022 statement from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists did offer up a few positive developments, citing a return to the Paris Climate Accord and the Iran Nuclear Deal, and the extension of New START arms control agreement. "A more moderate and predictable approach to leadership and the control of one of the two largest nuclear arsenals of the world marked a welcome change from the previous four years," they wrote.

But it was not enough to move the dial backward. While the reason for the Doomsday Clock's slow march toward societal ruin is, frankly, pretty obvious, there's another question you may have. What is this metaphorical clock all about, anyway?
Enter the Atomic Era

The year was 1945, and the atomic bomb had just changed the boundaries of science forever. Like the advent of the machine gun, tank and airplane, the atomic bomb changed the shape of warfare. Unlike previous weapons, however, the bomb threatened to destroy the whole human race.

There was no concrete way to measure or or explain the atomic bomb in comparison to more traditional arms, so a group of scientists—among them, Albert Einstein, Hy Goldsmith and Manhattan Project alums J. Robert Oppenheimer and Eugene Rabinowitch—determined the public needed a nontechnical magazine to become fully aware of such dangers. Enter the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. "To say the Bulletin was founded on a shoestring would be to describe it as overdressed at birth," declared a 1949 issue of the magazine.

The transition from government scientists working with a wartime budget to struggling magazine editors was not an easy one. The magazine started as a six-page black-and-white newsletter, and by 1947, its publishers had come up with enough funds—by taking on debt and taking donations—to print a full issue.

To actually put the magazine out, Goldsmith turned to Martyl Langsdorf, the wife of fellow Manhattan Project veteran Alexander Langsdorf. Speaking to the History Channel for an episode of Modern Marvels, Langsdorf recalled that "he gave no instructions, except that it can't cost much ... All the scientists felt an urgency to explain what had happened with the bomb, and because of the extreme urgency, I remember, a clock seemed to be important."

Photo credit: Bulletin of Atomic Scientists

"The hands of the clock of doom have moved again," wrote Rabinowitch in 1953. "Only a few more swings of the pendulum, and, from Moscow to Chicago, atomic explosions will strike midnight for Western civilization." Rabinowitch's writing has a style of tension and doom fitting the atomic era, and the name stuck.

The Doomsday Clock isn't updated on a set time frame, but rather, as events dictate. In fact, the most recent move is only the 23rd in the clock's 70-year history. When Rabinowitch wrote those fateful words in 1953, he placed the clock at 2 minutes to midnight, the closest it had ever been.

The Doomsday Clock went backwards when the SALT and ABM treaties were signed in 1972, and then forward again in 1998, when both India and Pakistan tested nuclear weapons. The clock moved as far back as 17 minutes in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union, almost enough time to squeeze a TV show before the end of the world.

This focus on nuclear came about because, current publisher Rachel Bronson notes, in "1947 there was one technology with the potential to destroy the planet, and that was nuclear power." The ways humanity has invented to destroy itself have multiplied since then, and in 2007, the Doomsday Clock began to consider climate change as "a dire challenge to humanity."

The Doomsday Clock is one of the rarest things available to scientists: an easily recognizable icon that can grab a passerby with no scientific background. In short, it's exactly what Rabinowitch and Goldsmith wanted.

Inside Finland's Plan to End All Waste by 2050

Lisa Abend
Thu, January 20, 2022

A scene at Fortum Waste Solutions Oy's circular economy facility in Häme, Finland on Dec. 14. In the facility, waste material collected from regular households is converted to clean plastic through Fortum’s Eco Refinery—an automated sorting plant 

Credit - Ingmar Björn Nolting for TIME

On a drizzly December morning that turned Helsinki’s ice-slicked streets even more treacherous, 11-year-old Minh Anh Ho sat safely indoors, hunched over a microscope. The rest of her classmates were occupied with different tasks: interviewing the mayor for the local news station, overseeing the electric company, stocking the shelves of the local grocery store. But as a researcher for a company called Borealis that repurposes plastic, she was busy analyzing the sheet of cling film that lay beneath her lens. “I think it’s a really important job,” she said. “Plastic takes a really long time to disappear, so it would be good to come up with something else to do with it and not just throw it away.”

Yrityskyla, the learning center where Ho and her class were spending the day, is designed to introduce Finnish schoolchildren to working life. In one of 13 centers spread throughout the country and sponsored by a consortium that includes the Confederation of Finnish Industries and the Finnish government, they run a simulacrum of a town, with each student performing a job in a different business (all of them based on real-life companies), from banking to health care to fashion design. The program was launched in 2010, and today roughly 83% of all sixth-graders go through it each year. And since 2017, their day at Yrityskyla has included not just experiential lessons on entrepreneurship and progressive taxation but also, as Ho’s “job” makes clear, the circular economy.

The control room inside Fortum Waste Solutions Oy's circular economy facility

Ingmar Björn Nolting for TIME

As natural resources diminish and the climate crisis grows more acute, the notion of a circular economy has been gaining traction around the globe. Most modern economies are linear—they rest on a “take, make, waste” model in which natural resources are extracted, their valuable elements are transformed into products, and anything left over (along with the products themselves when they are no longer useful) is discarded as waste. In contrast, a circular economy replaces the extraction of resources with the transformation of existing products and essentially does away with the notion of waste altogether.

Read More: Could Amsterdam’s New Economic Theory Replace Capitalism?

A growing number of governments, from the municipal to the international, have thrown their weight behind the idea. The E.U. launched its action plan for the transition to a circular economy in 2015, then updated it in 2020 as part of the Green Deal to include initiatives that encourage companies to design products—from laptops to jeans—so that they last longer and can be more easily repaired. In February, the European Parliament passed a resolution demanding additional measures that would allow it to adopt a fully circular carbon-neutral economy by 2050. Some member states, including the Netherlands, have also drafted similar plans at the national level.

Among them, Finland stands out for the comprehensiveness of its approach. Back in 2016, it became the first to adopt a national “road map” to a circular economy—a commitment it reaffirmed last year by setting targeted caps on natural-resource extraction. Like other nations, Finland supports entrepreneurship in creative reuse, or upcycling (especially in its important forestry industry), urges public procurements that rely on recycled and repurposed materials, and seeks to curb dramatically the amount of waste going to landfill.

Marja Oesch practices regeneration on her Finnish farm, with the help of cattle.

 She hopes to put back as much into the land as she takes out

Ingmar Björn Nolting for TIME

But from the beginning, the country of 5.5 million has also focused closely on education, training its younger generations to think of the economy differently than their parents and grandparents do. “People think it’s just about recycling,” says Nani Pajunen, a sustainability expert at Sitra, the public innovation fund that has spearheaded Finland’s circular conversion. “But really, it’s about rethinking everything—products, material development, how we consume.” To make changes at every level of society, Pajunen argues, education is key—getting every Finn to understand the need for a circular economy, and how they can be part of it.

A pilot program to help teachers incorporate the notion into curriculums in 2017 “just snowballed,” says Pajunen. “By the end of the two years, 2,500 teachers around the country had joined the network—far more than we had directly funded.”

Since then, studying the circular economy has taken on a life of its own, starting with the youngest. In December, Neulanen kindergarten director Liisa Woitsch sat on the floor with some of her young charges, a broken wooden chair and a large cartoon cutout of a fox. Unscrewing a dangling leg from the chair, Woitsch asked the children, “Do we just throw it away now, or can you think of anything else that can be done with it?” One boy clamored to the seat and, pounding rhythmically, declared it a drum. Another brought the detached leg to his lips. “It can be a trumpet!”

It’s an uplifting change from the catastrophe and dystopia that often characterizes education about sustainable development, says Anssi Almgren, who helped design the curriculum for the city of Helsinki. “Children have so many great ideas, and we wanted to enable them to think about solutions.”

In a nation whose education system, considered by many to be the best in the world, rests heavily on experiential learning (and not at all on homework, which is practically nonexistent), the solutions-based approach of studying circular economy adapts to all levels of formal education. In one online course developed for high school, for example, students engage in an advanced version of Woitsch’s kindergarten class, taking apart broken items like ballpoint pens or electronics and mulling over new purposes for their materials.

By the time kids reach university, their grounding in circularity is strong enough that they can apply the principle to advanced research. At Metropolia University of Applied Sciences, students collaborate on projects designed to solve real-world problems. One group on an engineering course spent the fall investigating how Helsinki could foster neighborhoods where individual blocks could—by establishing repair workshops, gardens and composting sites—build their own mini circular economies.

University students in Helsinki present research on new business 

models for energy company St1, during a Dec. 14 class

Ingmar Björn Nolting for TIME

The concept is also making its way into adult education. In 2018 Marja Oesch was trying to figure out what to do with her life. She had grown up on a farm 88 km north of Helsinki, and wasn’t convinced that farming held much opportunity, either for herself or for the environment. “It was basically a monoculture,” the 26-year-old says of her family’s 100-hectare farm, where they primarily grew grain, having previously raised cattle. “The soil had become more compacted, and we were using more and more fertilizers. I could see the problem, but I didn’t know how to solve it.”

When she learned of a course in regenerative agriculture organized by an environmental NGO called the Baltic Sea Action Group, she enrolled. She soon realized she could help tackle the climate crisis and biodiversity loss on the farm itself.

A year ago, she bought out her parents and began changing the farm’s model. She still grows wheat and barley, but when she plants those grains in the spring, she seeds them with 15 varieties of cover crops to help rebuild the depleted soil and support biodiversity on the farm. She’s also introducing new crops into rotation, and recently added six cows whose only job at present is to eat: by grazing and fertilizing the soil with their manure, they too contribute to the health of the land. “Before, I was only thinking about yield—how much can I harvest in this one field,” she says. But now her perspective has broadened to include putting back as much as taking out. “Every time I have to make a decision now,” Oesch says, “I think about how it affects the soil and the organisms in it, and down the line that will bring other changes that I think will make the farm healthier. But the most important change is your mindset.”

Is Finland as a whole achieving that particular transformation? By some measures, yes: a recent poll showed that 82% of Finns believe the circular economy creates new jobs, and several Finnish cities have developed road maps of their own. Its forestry industry has taken steps to reinvent itself, a key move as a full 28% of domestic energy consumption now comes from wood-based fuels. Renewables—including wood, though burning it does release carbon—surpassed fossil fuels for the first time in 2020.

Students at Yrityskylä Learning Environment in Helsinki on Dec. 13. Through the tablets, students are able to access their schedules and job tasks

Ingmar Björn Nolting for TIME

Meanwhile, the number of successful young companies employing circular measures seems to expand every month. Many are working to convert sidestreams from the forestry industry into new materials like bioplastics, paperboard and textiles. But in the birthplace of Nokia, just as many seem to be aimed at tech. Swappie, a company that refurbishes iPhones, for example, is one of Finland’s most successful recent startups. In 2016, its founders, then all in their 20s, embarked on a mission to make used phones—which then made up only 5% of the global market—as common as used cars (which make up 50% of all cars sold). “After researching the market, we realized that the main obstacle was quality,” CEO Sami Marttinen explains. “People didn’t trust the quality of refurbishers. So that’s what we built the company on.”

Swappie handles every step in-house at its Helsinki facility, from receiving the used phones to diagnosing and repairing them to sending out the perfectly functioning refurbished ones and marketing them through traditional advertising and a well-targeted influencer campaign. The company’s holistic approach is working: it has increased its revenue from half a million euros in its first year to 98 million in 2020, and augmented its capacity with a second factory in Estonia. Many of its 1,100 employees come from around the world, drawn, Marttinen says, “by the sense of purpose.” And although the company’s research suggests that many of its customers buy Swappies simply because they get guaranteed quality for a lower price, for some of its clientele that same sense of purpose has made owning a Swappie cooler than getting a new phone.

It’s not all small startups either. The state-owned Fortum—the country’s leading energy producer and, by revenue, Finland’s largest company—is already working within a circular model. It transforms waste into energy through incineration, as well as into new materials: discarded household plastic, for example, is processed at its plant in Riihimaki into clean pellets that can be remade into any kind of plastic.

The company currently is a major greenhouse-gas emitter, largely due to its fossil-fuel-energy subsidiary, Uniper, but is looking ahead to the endgame of the transition to a carbon-neutral economy. Once fossil fuels are phased out and replaced with renewables, Kalle Saarimaa, vice president of Fortum Recycling and Waste, explains, the raw materials for energy will no longer be scarce; sun and wind, unlike coal and oil, are free. But something that is abundant today—cheap plastic and other hydrocarbons made from petroleum—will then become scarce. “Where are those hydrocarbons going to come from when fossil fuels are phased out?” he asks. “A lot of people right now are working to replace them with bioplastics. But what happens to bio if you do that? There won’t be any trees left on the planet.” (Wood is a leading source of bioplastic.) Instead, the company is developing innovative technology to generate those hydrocarbons from the carbon dioxide emitted in the energy-production process. “We see it as the future of recycling,” Saarimaa says—“the way to get carbon circular.”

Finland still has a long way to go. Although the amount of waste going to landfill has decreased so dramatically in the past two decades as to be almost negligible, Finns are actually producing more waste per capita than they were a few years ago—they’re just turning it into something else. “In that sense, we are still living in the linear model,” says Sitra’s project director for circular economy, Kari Herlevi. “We’re better at recycling, but we have not been able to turn the tide fully.”

The Yrityskylä learning program was launched in 2010, and today roughly 83% of all sixth-graders go through it each year for experiential lessons on the circular economy. Pictured in blue is the town hall, next to "Think Corner"

Ingmar Björn Nolting for TIME

In downtown Helsinki, the three chef-owners of Nolla have discovered much the same. When they first opened the restaurant in 2018, they trumpeted its zero-waste philosophy, with drinking glasses made from elegantly repurposed juice bottles and a popular dip flavored with a syrup made from the kitchen’s vegetable trim. Cooks had to track any discard that couldn’t be repurposed—including food that came back from the dining room uneaten on each plate—before emptying it into the composter. But they discovered that the public wasn’t necessarily with them. “They would think that we were cooking with waste, or that we were going to feed them food that had gone bad,” co-owner Luka Balac says. “So now we’re just a restaurant. We are still doing all the same things, but if you don’t know about it”—gesturing around the packed dining room, Balac estimates that only about 60% of their guests do—“you’re just going to think you had a nice meal.”

Entrepreneur Amanda Rejstrom has seen a major recent shift toward the idea of a circular economy, but notes that older Finns can be more skeptical. “Finland was very poor well into the 1950s, but it developed very quickly after that,” she says, with generations of Finns focused on expanding industry. “It’s very hard for people to understand that their lives’ work, or the life’s work of their parents, could in any way be a bad thing.”

Rejstrom inhabits the dilemma: she sits on the board of her family’s company, which produces injection molding. But she is also the founder and CEO of Spark Sustainability, which a few months ago launched an app called Carbon Donut. It allows users to track their carbon footprint, tailors suggestions to them for how to curb it, and links them to circular businesses that can help. The app so far has 15,000 users, most of whom, she says, are urban, highly educated and in their 20s. “They are the generation that learned about circular economy and climate change and all the other environmental problems in school, and have a different approach to nature than older generations who saw it more in terms of its monetary potential.”

Finland is seeking to position itself as a model for other countries; to that end, Sitra has published guidelines to help other nations develop their own circular-economy road maps, and has begun collaborating with the African Development Bank to further steps toward circularity across that continent. But its unique combination of small population, political will, a muscular entrepreneurial culture and that strong education system suggests that any country seeking to follow in its footsteps is going to need to look beyond merely phasing out landfills and funding cool startups to a bigger, more holistic picture. “From the feedback we’ve received, it’s clear that the education part resonates internationally,” says Sitra’s Herlevi. “And from the beginning we have thought of it as the backbone of our strategy. But [education] is part of the overall Finnish way of operating, and it’s not like you can just take it and implement it as a separate thing.”

Nor is it a strategy that works overnight. Even in Finland, the focus on changing a society by educating its young takes time. It worked that way for Tina and Karin Harms. A lawyer who identifies herself as “very aware of sustainability issues,” Tina, 47, was unfamiliar with the term circular economy, even though, as someone who restores furniture as a hobby and has long tried to reduce her family’s consumption, she was already practicing it in some ways.

Her middle child Karin, age 19, on the other hand, says she has been familiar with the circular “practically all my life.” She first learned of it in primary school and had the message reinforced in middle school—her class went to Yrityskyla, for one—and it forms part of the curriculum at her current high school. Like most of her friends, she has a refurbished phone and buys most of her clothes at secondhand shops. She’s also vegan, and has persuaded the rest of the family to recycle. “We started five years ago, and before that we weren’t doing it,” Karin says. “But then I said we really need to, we all need to contribute to fighting climate change.”

Tina recalls balking at first. Although the family did recycle its newspaper and bottles, separating plastics required an extra effort that she found inconvenient. But today, they have what she laughingly describes as “virtually a plastic recycling center” in their basement. “I think that if you have a teenager with very strong feelings about something,” she reflects, “it’s very demotivating if we older ones don’t show that we’re ready to make the extra effort to change.”

—With reporting by Eloise Barry/London