Swedish voters boost anti-immigration party amid high crime

The leader of the Sweden Democrats Jimmie Akesson delivers a speech in Nacka, near Stockholm, Sweden, on Sept. 11, 2022.

 (Stefan Jerrevang / TT News Agency via AP)

Vanessa Gera, Jan M. Olsen and James Brooks
The Associated Press
Published Sept. 12, 2022 


STOCKHOLM -

A populist anti-immigration party has surged to become Sweden's second-largest political force after a national election dominated by fears of gang violence, which has given the once-safe Scandinavian country one of Europe's highest levels of gun violence.

Overall, a conservative opposition bloc including the anti-immigration party, the Sweden Democrats, had an extremely narrow lead over the incumbent centre-left with 94% of the votes counted. Download 

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Swedish right opposition inches ahead in election cliff-hanger

Analysts expect the final tally will confirm a conservative bloc win, but the election was so close that electoral officials said they would not have the final result until outstanding postal votes and votes from abroad are counted.

With eight parties contending for seats in the 349-member Riksdag, Sweden's parliament, none can secure a majority of 175 seats, meaning that laws can only be passed with different parties working together. The parties campaigned under two general blocs, one conservative and the other a centre-left group headed by Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson, Sweden's first female prime minister.

The not-yet-final count indicated that the conservative bloc would have 175 seats and the centre-left would have 174.

"It is extremely close. Things can change, but I doubt it," said Zeth Isaksson, a sociologist at Stockholm University, who added that votes from abroad are traditionally conservative. "As it is now, it is more likely that the right side will win."

One certainty, however, is that the result marked a success for the right-wing populist Sweden Democrats, which won its best result since entering parliament in 2010. The party's founders in the 1980s had links to fascist and neo-Nazi movements but over the past two decades it has worked to move to the mainstream under its 43-year-old leader Jimmie Akesson.

Its transformation included changing its official logo from a torch to a flower and expelling the most radical members.

Those who support it like its tough vows to crack down on crime and strictly limit immigration, while opponents fear that its historic roots make it a threat to Sweden's democratic identity.

Mark Johnson, a 50-year-old Swedish finance worker, said while the party's strong showing was expected, it is still shocking for many Swedes because "it's hard to understand that we would be taking such an obvious turn to the right, to the far-right even."

The Sweden Democrats, which won 20.6% support in Sunday's vote, according to preliminary figures, up from 17.5% four years ago, gained on the rising fears of crime in largely immigrant neighbourhoods.

This year so far there have been 273 shootings, 47 of them fatal, according to police statistics. Those shootings also wounded 74 people, including innocent bystanders.

Andersson's Social Democrats, who have been in power in Sweden since 2014, remain the largest party, even gaining slightly to take 30.5% of the vote Sunday, according to the incomplete results. Andersson said Sunday night it was obvious that the social democratic movement, which is based on ideals of creating an equal society and a strong welfare state, remains strong in Sweden.

The Sweden Democrats wants to be part of a government, but this is unlikely to happen because there are parties in the centre-right bloc that oppose it, Isaksson said.

Richard Jomshof, the Sweden Democrats' party secretary, said Monday: "It is clear that we must be able to discuss ministerial posts. It is clear that we must be able to talk about the position of prime minister, speaker of parliament and the presidium positions in the various Riksdag committees."

But a senior member of the centre-right Liberals told Swedish radio Monday that it cannot allow the Sweden Democrats to be part of a government.

Still, if the right prevails, the Sweden Democrats will have "very strong leverage" and will push for some of its issues, like tightening immigration laws, Isaksson said. He said a likely outcome could be for the Sweden Democrats to end up outside a government but as supporters of it.

In Germany, the far-right Alternative for Germany party congratulated the Sweden Democrats on "their sensational success in the parliamentary elections." France's far-right leader Marine Pen also tweeted her congratulations to the "patriotic" Swedish party, saying: "Everywhere in Europe, people aspire to take their destiny back into their own hands!"

Isaksson also ruled out a governing coalition combining the centre-right Moderates, which have been leading the centre-right bloc, and the Social Democrats. Such a coalition has not occurred since the Second World War.

The Moderates dropped to become Sweden's third-largest party and won 19% support, based on the incomplete vote tally. However, party leader Ulf Kristersson on Monday appeared to be the most likely candidate to be the next prime minister. He told his supporters that he stands ready to try to create a stable and effective government.

Andersson, a 55-year-old economist, became Sweden's first female prime minister less than a year ago and led Sweden's historic bid to join NATO following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February.

------

Olsen reported from Copenhagen, Denmark. Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed

GEOLOGY/GEMOLOGY/ALCHEMY

Diamond-formation process inside earth’s core unveiled

Staff Writer | September 11, 2022 |

Diamond. (Image by Swamibu, Wikimedia Commons.)

Researchers at Arizona State University conducted a series of experiments where they compressed an iron-carbon alloy and water together to the pressure and temperature expected at the earth’s core-mantle boundary, melting the iron-carbon alloy.


They found that water and metal react and make iron oxides and iron hydroxides, just like what happens with rusting on the earth’s surface. However, they also noticed that due to the conditions of the core-mantle boundary, carbon comes out of the liquid iron-metal alloy and forms diamonds.

“Temperature at the boundary between the silicate mantle and the metallic core at 3,000 km depth reaches to roughly 7,000 F, which is sufficiently high for most minerals to lose water captured in their atomic-scale structures,” Dan Shim, one of the scientists involved in the study, said in a media statement. “In fact, the temperature is high enough that some minerals should melt at such conditions.”

Shim explained that because carbon is an iron-loving element, significant carbon is expected to exist in the core, while the mantle is thought to have relatively low carbon. However, scientists have found that much more carbon exists in the mantle than expected.

“At the pressures expected for the earth’s core-mantle boundary, hydrogen alloying with iron metal liquid appears to reduce the solubility of other light elements in the core,” the researcher said. “Therefore, the solubility of carbon, which likely exists in the earth’s core, decreases locally where hydrogen enters into the core from the mantle (through dehydration).

The stable form of carbon at the pressure-temperature conditions of earth’s core-mantle boundary is diamond. So the carbon escaping from the liquid outer core would become diamond when it enters into the mantle.”

According to Byeongkwan Ko, who led the Geophysical Research Letters paper that presents these findings, the new discovery of a carbon transfer mechanism from the core to the mantle helps shed light on the understanding of the carbon cycle in the earth’s deep interior.

“This is even more exciting given that the diamond formation at the core-mantle boundary might have been going on for billions of years since the initiation of subduction on the planet,” he said.

Ko’s study shows that carbon leaking from the core into the mantle by this diamond formation process may supply enough carbon to explain the elevated carbon amounts in the mantle.

He and his collaborators also predicted that diamond-rich structures can exist at the core-mantle boundary and that seismic studies might detect them because seismic waves should travel unusually fast through the structures.

“The reason that seismic waves should propagate exceptionally fast through diamond-rich structures at the core-mantle boundary is because diamond is extremely incompressible and less dense than other materials at the core-mantle boundary,” Shim said.

Ko, Shim and the rest of the team now plan to continue investigating how the reaction can also change the concentration of other light elements in the core, such as silicon, sulphur and oxygen, and how such changes can impact the mineralogy of the deep mantle.

 For the first time, a university offers a degree program in chess

CECIL ROSNER

SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL

As university classes resume across North America, one institution is offering a unique opportunity for students to earn a minor in chess education.

Webster University in St. Louis is renowned for attracting top-notch chess talent to its school, and now its School of Education is offering a minor degree focused on the game. Core courses range from chess in history to the psychology and strategy of the game.

“It’s the first time in history that chess has been put into a formal program in education in a university,” says Liem Le, Webster’s chess coach and an international grandmaster.

While there was pushback from some people who were skeptical that chess belonged in the academy, Le said the university administration was supportive.

“We were able to convince them many students would benefit from this,” he said.

Although Webster has a small enrolment of fewer than 7,000 students, chess has been a big part of its campus culture for years. It has one of the best collegiate teams in the country.

Le, the top grandmaster to come out of Vietnam, was a student himself at Webster and a member of the university chess team when it won four national championship titles. He became the university’s chess coach last year.

Liem Le v. Parham Maghsoodloo, Isle of Man, 2019

HANDOUT

How does White deliver a finishing blow?

Le played 34.Rf6+ gxf6 35.Qxf6+ and Black resigned, because after Kg8 36.Qh8+ Kf7 39.Qh7+ the Black Queen falls.

ANALYSIS-Pyrenees pipeline puts EU energy divisions in stark relief

CONTRIBUTORS
Andreas Rinke Reuters
Belén Carreño Reuters
Michel Rose Reuters

PUBLISHED SEP 12, 2022

 

CREDIT: REUTERS/ALBERT GEA

French scepticism about a new gas pipeline across the Pyrenees highlights the competing visions for Europe's future energy mix as the continent urgently confronts a power crisis.

PARIS/MADRID/BERLIN, Sept 12 (Reuters) - French scepticism about a new gas pipeline across the Pyrenees highlights the competing visions for Europe's future energy mix as the continent urgently confronts a power crisis.

MidCat would be a third gas connection between France and Spain which its main backers, Madrid, Lisbon and more recently Berlin, say would help Europe reduce its Russian gas reliance.

But French President Emmanuel Macron has bluntly told his partners he sees no case for the multi-billion euro project.

France says MidCat would take too long to build to ease the looming energy crunch, be costly for France and go against ambitions to shift towards a green economy.


Officials in Spain and Germany, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters they believe that France is acting to protect its own ailing nuclear industry and fend off competition from Spain as a staging post for imported gas.

"Macron is under pressure at home from different groups, which don't like the pipeline project, the biggest is surely the nuclear power sector," a senior German government source said.

Spokespersons for the French energy ministry and EDF, which operates France's nuclear reactors, declined to comment.

Russia supplied 40% of Europe's gas before its invasion of Ukraine. Now, the region is scrambling to diversify its energy sources and MidCat was one of the projects EU ministers discussed at an emergency meeting in Brussels last week.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz last month described the pipeline as "dramatically missing" from Europe's network, and last week raised the issue with Macron during a videocall.

Immediately afterwards, Macron said there was spare capacity in the pipes already linking Spain and France and MidCat could not be constructed swiftly enough to ease this winter's crisis.

"I do not understand what short-term problem this would solve," Macron said.

But while it may not provide immediate relief, Spain and Portugal say they have a solution with new gas routes and Madrid said it was ready to persuade Macron over MidCat.

Both have a large gas import capacity, with seven LNG terminals which convert tankers of liquefied natural gas (LNG) back into vapour form for use by industry and households if the infrastructure was in place for it to be piped to other countries such as Germany via France.

The French president has said he does not get all the fuss around MidCat, telling reporters last week: "I do not understand why we would jump around like Pyrenees goats on this topic".

This has led officials in Madrid to question if Macron may be angling for something in return, whether EU financing or backing for another project. And despite Macron's statements, French officials have left the door ajar to further discussions.

But in a sign of Spanish frustration, one source said France needed to demonstrate how it was contributing to European "energy solidarity", given half of its nuclear reactors are offline and it is relying on others to provide it with power.

Macron, however, has said that plans to reactivate a disused interconnector in eastern France so that Paris can pipe its own gas direct to Germany if required is evidence of its commitment.

It will allow France to deliver Germany up to 20 terawatt hours (TWh) of gas over the winter, roughly 2% of the gas needs of Europe's largest economy. A German official said the deal would not fix Germany's crunch but sent markets a message.

COMPETING INTERESTS

A joint proposal for a new trans-Pyrenees pipeline that would have a capacity to more than double the volume of gas piped between Spain and France was rejected by energy regulators for both countries in 2019.

The project was proposed by Terega, a gas grid company owned partly by Italy's Snam SRG.MI and EDF EDF.PA, and its Spanish counterpart Enagas ENAG.MC at an estimated cost of 3 billion euros.

While the French regulator said the economic benefits would be tilted towards Spain, Madrid says Russian moves to cut gas supplies mean that the upside of MidCat would now extend far beyond Spain's own borders.

However, France has terminals on its Atlantic and Channel shores and it too wants a slice of LNG imports.

"France has (LNG terminals) that can process gas for the whole of Europe," a French government source said.

But longer term, France is betting heavily on reviving its troubled nuclear industry in its drive for carbon neutrality, and Paris has questioned MidCat's green credentials.

It would be at least the end of the decade before MidCat could be finished, French energy ministry officials say.

"By that point, the priority will be de-carbonising the economy, not using more gas. So we're somewhat puzzled," one ministry official told Reuters.

HYDROGEN OPTION

Berlin's primary interest in MidCat lies in green hydrogen rather than near-term LNG supplies, two senior German officials told Reuters.

Officials in Madrid and Berlin argue the pipeline could be repurposed to carry zero-emission hydrogen fuel made in the Sahara desert or elsewhere to Europe's industrial heartland.

But France would rather produce hydrogen locally than rely on imports. And it doubts the short-term feasibility, a French government source said, of Germany's vision for hydrogen, which is notoriously more difficult to transport than natural gas.

In the face of French resistance, Madrid and Berlin are exploring alternatives. Plan B could bypass France altogether and build a pipeline under the Mediterranean to Italy.

Madrid is accelerating a feasibility study for a pipeline from Barcelona to Livorno on the Tuscan coast. A Spanish official said it would take longer to build, but had the political backing of the outgoing Italian government.

A senior official from Spain's autonomous Catalonia region, a backer of MidCat, said a submarine pipeline to Italy would be more costly and carry greater environmental and other risks.

One problem is the flammability of hydrogen, which also leaks more easily than gas because its molecules are smaller, while it can make also some grades of steel brittle, the official said.

Spain chides French reluctance on gas pipeline

Enagas says Spain-France gas link could be ready in 2 1/2 years

EU readies energy package, countries split over gas price cap

(Reporting by Michel Rose and Elizabeth Pineau in Paris, Andreas Rinke in Berlin, Belen Carreno in Madrid and Joan Faus in Barcelona; Writing by Michel Rose; Editing by Richard Lough and Alexander Smith)

Changes to Alberta government RESIDE program will fail to woo rural doctors: NDP

Lisa Johnson - Edmonton Journal

NDP health critic David Shepherd.

A $6-million recruitment program that secured just one physician in rural Alberta is failing the long list of residents without a family doctor, charges the NDP Opposition.

First announced in late January, the Rural Education Supplement and Integrated Doctor Experience (RESIDE) program offered up to 20 new family physicians bonuses of up to $100,000 to work in rural communities, in exchange for a three-year work commitment.

While around 20 physicians applied, only one is set to enter a practice in Cold Lake in January.

THERE ARE NO MINISTERS IN THE UCP GOVERNMENT THEY ARE ALL PRESS SECRETARIES

On Monday, Steve Buick, Health Minister Jason Copping’s press secretary, said in a statement to Postmedia the ministry is working with partners including Alberta Health Services (AHS) to recruit physicians, and seeing success in spite of the pandemic.

“Since Jan. 1, AHS has announced 20 new physicians in rural communities, in addition to 11 physicians who have committed to enter practice in Lethbridge,” Buick said.

Since most applicants didn’t meet the criteria for RESIDE, Copping has approved changes to the program, administered by the Rural Health Professions Action Plan (RhPAP).

Those include expanding the list of eligible communities beyond the initial 15, expanding the eligibility criteria to include family physicians who completed their residency in Canada within the last five years, and allowing doctors to serve in communities for a minimum of two years instead of three. Those applications are now open, and RhPAP said they’ll be continuous to allow for flexibility.

NDP health critic David Shepherd said Monday with the program failing to place any new doctors on the ground this year, many of the 15 communities originally eligible continue to face a staffing crisis.

Shepherd said he’s skeptical tweaks to the financial incentive program will address staffing issues long-term.

“You can adjust these parameters in the program. You can shorten timeframes, you can increase the dollars, but that ultimately is not what’s going to solve the problem,” he said, acknowledging that staffing is a challenge across the country, particularly following the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“What no one in the UCP can fix is that frontline health-care professionals know they cannot trust the UCP,” Shepherd said.

The government and the Alberta Medical Association haven’t had a master agreement since early 2020, after the UCP’s Bill 21 gave the province the authority to unilaterally cancel its deal with doctors.

Members are set to vote on a tentative new deal between Tuesday and Sept. 28.

In the latest 2022-23 budget, the UCP budgeted $90 million per year to attract new family physicians to practice in rural and remote communities, spending Buick said offered “the country’s most generous incentives for rural practice.”

Shepherd suggested the government could better work with post-secondary institutions to offer experience for doctors in rural communities, collaborate with municipalities and streamline the process for bringing international medical graduates to the province.

“Three years of hostility and threats and harassment is not going to be erased with a slightly different program,” he said.

Buick responded by calling the NDP’s comments “overblown and distorted by politics.”

RENT IS INFLATIONARY

Canadian students pay 25% more for rent than the general population, new survey says 

NEWS PROVIDED BY

UTILE - Unité de travail pour l'implantation de logement étudiant
Sep 02, 2022,

MONTREAL, Sept. 2, 2022 /CNW Telbec/ - The Fostering Learning and Awareness on Student Housing (FLASH) survey, the largest statistical study ever conducted on the residential situation of Canada's student population, paints a bleak picture of the housing conditions of the country's 1.5 million student renters.

Conducted by the Unité de travail pour l'implantation de logement étudiant (UTILE), a Québec non-profit specializing in affordable student housing, the FLASH surveyed 18,000 students across the country. The data reveals that the median student rent paid in Canada in 2021 was $1250, 25% higher than the median cost of all rental units in the country. Seven out of ten students spend more than 30% of their total income on rent, exceeding the shelter-cost-to-income threshold generally considered critical for housing expenses.

"What we're seeing is that across the country the lack of affordable housing near educational institutions is forcing students to rent apartments which exceed their ability to pay," says Laurent Levesque, executive director of UTILE. "This drastically increases student debt and threatens accessibility to higher education."

The situation is particularly dire in the Greater Toronto Area and Vancouver, where the median student rent is $1,800, forcing student renters to allocate, on average, over half of their budget to housing alone.

Canada's appeal to international students in jeopardy

In recent years,federal and provincial governments as well as higher education institutions in Canada have made considerable efforts in order to attract international students. These endeavors have been largely successful: the international student population in Canada tripled between 2009 and 2021, reaching 620,000 students last year, adding to the already growing domestic student population.

"While attracting international students to Canada is great for our country's economic and scientific vitality, we have built nowhere near enough student apartments in the past decade to accommodate 400,000 additional students," Levesque observes. "In the absence of an adequate supply of student apartments to welcome them, these students have turned to the private rental market, creating significant pressure on the housing market in the process."

As increasing numbers of international students struggle to find affordable housing near Canadian universities, the appeal of Canadian institutions to prospective students decreases, thus hurting the country's international competitiveness.

Impacts beyond the student population

According to Levesque, the consequences of the student housing crisis are felt by everyone, not just the student community. "A common strategy used by students to reduce their housing costs is to rent larger apartments alongside more roommates; only 24% of students live by themselves. By doing so, they unintentionally compete with households with children, who are also looking to rent affordable units with multiple bedrooms. Therefore, building affordable student housing not only helps reduce student indebtedness, but it also frees up large apartments on the rental markets for families who wish to live near city centers."

See full report : utile.org/nouvelles/flash-2021.

SOURCE UTILE - Unité de travail pour l'implantation de logement étudiant

Organization Profile

UTILE - Unité de travail pour l'implantation de logement étudiant

Barbados ditched the Crown last year. Now that the Queen is gone, could Canada do the same?

Queen Elizabeth’s death this week has already sparked many important questions: What kind of King will Charles be , when will the money change, even, what will happen to the corgis ? But one of the most controversial ones, with the passing of the popular monarch, is: Could this be the time to cut ties with the royals? Or at least to re-examine those ties? It’s something the Caribbean nation of Barbados has recently done, severing its connections to the Crown and shifting from constitutional monarchy to republic in November 2021. Experts say this moment will open up conversations here in Canada about making a similar move but practically, it would be messy to unravel these long-standing relationships. Melanie Newton, an associate professor of history at the University of Toronto, who grew up in Barbados and served as a youth representative on the Barbados Constitution Review Commission in the late 1990s, said there was “overwhelming” public opinion that country should become a republic. “And then in 2020 after the killing of George Floyd and at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, the government of (Prime Minister) Mia Mottley ... decided that this was really the moment,” she said. “The time to finally figure out a path to do this.” The country gained independence in 1966, after a colonial history stretching back to the 17th century. But like Canada, Barbados remained a constitutional monarchy, with the Queen as its head of state. It remains a part of the Commonwealth — a loose collection of countries that are mostly former territories of the British Empire, including Kenya, Bangladesh and Australia. The nation’s first president and new head of state, Sandra Mason, was sworn in at a ceremony in the capital of Bridgetown on Nov. 30, 2021, attended by both then-prince Charles and the most famous living Barbadian, Rihanna (the singer was declared a national hero during the transition). In his speech at that ceremony Charles acknowledged the “appalling atrocity of slavery,” and the country’s role as a hub for the slave trade, under British rule. This history of colonialism and slavery, as well as Brexit, and the Windrush scandal — when many older people who’d come from the Caribbean to work in Britain decades before were stripped of their rights — all played a part in this wave of public sentiment toward ditching the Crown, Newton said. As well, there were not very many Barbadians left who remembered colonialism and “no longer any kind of tie there.” The island side-stepped a public referendum on the matter — a handful of other nations, including Australia, have had them and failed to win support for severing royal ties. This was partly because Barbados had a framework for the transition, Newton said, but also because the issue had already been “litigated in court of public opinion.” On Friday, in his first speech to his subjects as monarch, King Charles III did not address the possibility of further fracturing under his reign. But he did address the “deep sense of gratitude” his family shares with those in the United Kingdom, and alongside all the countries where the Queen was Head of State, in the Commonwealth and across the world, “for the more than 70 years in which my Mother, as Queen, served the people of so many nations.” Jonathan Malloy, a professor of political science at Carleton University, said Elizabeth’s death has opened up space for questions on the future of the monarchy in Canada that had been put off. “The longevity of the Queen allowed a lot of pent-up conversations to say, well, wait until the Queen goes ... Well, the Queen’s gone,” he said. “A lot of people are saying this is now a time to change, but although the person, the monarch, has changed, the system is completely the same as it was yesterday.” It would be possible, but tough practically for Canada to follow in the footsteps of Barbados, said Malloy. “It’s simply a massive job,” he said, likening connections with the monarchy to a computer operating system. “You don’t really think about it, but everything, particularly the legal system, is just based on this Crown.” It would require the agreement of all the provinces — and the “unspoken question,” said Malloy, is what does “agreement” even mean. “It would be hard to see us moving away from the monarchy without a national referendum at least,” he said, and individual provinces might also want them. Such a change would require strong political will, driven by public opinion. Unlike in places such as Australia — or Jamaica , whose government announced an intent to remove the crown as the head of state earlier this year — Malloy just doesn’t see this in Canada at the moment. Newton, however, said the Queen’s death could spark such discussions. “I think it certainly opens up really important conversations here and I think it’s a real chance for public education about what the concept of the Crown actually means.” There’s a “mythology” particularly among white Canadians about the “Crown as benign institution,” which is rooted in the belief that slavery did not exist in this country, she said. When in reality it was “a very important part of Canada’s economic and political history,” and “a foundation to the order of racial inequality here.” At the same time, as someone who lost her own grandmother during the pandemic, Newton recognizes that this is a sad moment for many. “I think her death is immensely significant,” she said. “And I think the conversation about a republic is really a separate one, from really thinking through what the legacy of Queen Elizabeth is.” May Warren is a Toronto-based breaking news reporter for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @maywarren11

History will judge Republicans who stay silent about the big lie

Robert Reich

If the democratic experiment called America continues to unravel because of what Republicans did or failed to do, they will live in infamy

‘When the history of this trying time is written, future generations of

 Americans will judge their actions and silences harshly.’

 Photograph: Octavio Jones/Reuters

Sun 11 Sep 2022 

I have a serious question for people who have power in America, and who continue to deny the outcome of the 2020 election and enable Trump’s big lie: what are you saying to yourself in private? How are you justifying yourself in your own mind?

I don’t mean to be snide or snarky. I’m genuinely curious.

If you hold public office and deny the outcome of the 2020 election, are you telling yourself that despite the overwhelming evidence that Biden won and the lack of evidence of fraud, you still genuinely doubt the outcome?

But you must know that 60 federal courts have found no basis in Trump’s claim, nor have any so-called state “audits” and even Trump’s own attorney general found the claim baseless.

Or are you telling yourself that it will soon be over – that Trump will fade, that the big lie will disappear, that your party and America will soon move on?

But you must know you’re wrong. The big lie is growing. It has metastasized into a cancer that’s dividing the nation and devouring our democracy.

Or are you telling yourself that you have no real choice but to support the lie if you want to keep or obtain political power?

Even if true, is power so intoxicating to you – so important as an end in itself – that you’ll do anything for it?

Where will you draw the line? If Trump is reelected and imposes martial law? If he or another Republican president forbids public criticism of his administration? If he calls for violence against those who oppose him?

And what do you tell yourself about the measures your party is taking based on the big lie: suppression of votes, takeovers of election machinery, assertions that state legislatures can overturn voter preferences in the certification process, rejection of the January 6 committee’s findings?

You have sworn an oath to uphold the constitution. How do you defend yourself in your own mind?

I’m asking you, Kevin McCarthy. And you, Lindsey Graham, and Marco Rubio, and Rick Scott and Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz and Ron Johnson. And others.
The big lie is growing. It has metastasized into a cancer that’s dividing the nation and devouring our democracy

And I’m asking those of you with significant power in the Republican party who have remained silent in the face of all this – such as you, Mitch McConnell, and you, Mitt Romney: how do you justify your silence?

And I ask those of you now running for office who are denying the 2020 election results and pushing other aspects of Republican authoritarianism – such as you, JD Vance, and Blake Masters, Mehmet Oz, Herschel Walker, Doug Mastriano, and Kari Lake: what are you telling yourself in private? How are you excusing yourself? Why are you even running?

And I ask the billionaires and CEOs who are bankrolling these people: how do you rationalize spending millions, even tens of millions, helping them get or remain elected?

I’m asking you, Peter Thiel, and you, Stephen Schwarzman, and Ken Griffin and Steve Wynn and Mike Lindell and Patrick Byrne and others: is this really the way you want to spend your fortune? Is this your legacy to the nation?

And I ask all the people making money off this rot – the TV hosts and producers and media moguls who are raking it in while poisoning the minds of America with bald-faced lies – what are you telling yourself in private?

I’m asking you, Rupert Murdoch, and you, Tucker Carlson, and you, Sean Hannity, and you, Laura Ingraham: how are you defending yourself to yourself?

I don’t expect you to answer me. This is a question for you to answer to yourself, alone and in private.

But before you do, may I have a confidential word?

Whether you’re a politician supporting the big lie, a billionaire backer of it, or a broadcaster who’s pushing it, it is not too late for you to get off the road you are on.

Yet if you continue to promote or enable this lie, you are undermining our democracy. The crisis you have helped create is worsening. You bear part of the responsibility for what comes next.

When the history of this trying time is written, future generations of Americans will judge your actions and your silences harshly.

They will recall your cowardice and your self-justifications. They will remember your lust for power and your moral blindness. They will recollect your unwitting ignorance or your witting failure to come to democracy’s defense in this perilous time.

Generations to come will sit in judgment about what you have wrought. And if the democratic experiment called America continues to unravel because of what you did or failed to do, you will live in infamy.



Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com.

Robots Chop a Few Bucks off the Price of Lunch at This Fully Automated Restaurant

ByVanessa Bates Ramirez
August 31, 2022



Even before labor shortages and supply chain issues began plaguing the economy, the food service industry was bringing in robots. From flipping burgers to making pizzas, automation has been taking over a variety of food preparation tasks. A San Francisco restaurant has now taken it to the next level, opening what it claims is the world’s first fully autonomous restaurant this past weekend (though the “world’s first” title is likely not accurate; Pazzi Pizzeria in Paris, for one, has been serving up robot-made pies for just over a year).

The restaurant is located in an outdoor food court in San Francisco’s Mission Bay neighborhood, alongside similar businesses. The similar businesses are namely food trucks, which is probably a more accurate label for Mezli than “restaurant,” except for the important detail that it’s not a truck. It is a lot like a shipping container in shape and size, though.

Here’s how it works. Customers place orders on a touch screen kiosk on the container’s side or from a smartphone app. Inside the container, which is refrigerated, robots select ingredients from bins of prepared items, transferring those that need to be cooked or heated to a smart oven. Once all the ingredients are ready to go, additional robots mix and box them. Completed orders are transferred to designated windows, where waiting customers pick them up on the other side.

True to its Mediterranean-ish name, Mezli serves “fresh, healthy Mediterranean bowls” that include options like falafel, roasted vegetables, spiced lamb or chicken, tzatziki, turmeric rice, hummus, etc. (I mean, you had me at falafel).

Mezli says it can whip up about 75 meals in an hour; probably not quite the scale of your neighborhood Chipotle or Roti, but getting there. The company was started by three graduate students from Stanford University, who started working on the concept in January 2021 at startup accelerator Y Combinator. During their first year of research and development, the team opened a pop-up restaurant, built a prototype robot, and got investors and a few new employees on board.

Focusing exclusively on the tech side of things wouldn’t get them very far once lunch time rolled around, though—in the end, food service comes down to one key question: does it taste good? So Mezli’s founders hired Bay Area fine dining chef Eric Minnich, a veteran of Michelin-starred establishments, to help perfect their recipes and menu.

To be fair, Mezli can only be called “fully automated” because the food served there is prepared by humans in a commercial kitchen then transferred to the robo-restaurant; machines aren’t cooking food so much as selecting and mixing it.

However, it’s automated enough to offer prices slightly lower than those of comparable competitors. The lowest-priced option is a roasted carrot and cauliflower bowl with red rice, hummus, and veggie garnishes, which goes for $6.99. The highest price point is $11.99, which is what you’ll pay for bowls that include chicken or lamb.

For the first few weeks of its operation, Mezli will have employees onsite to answer questions from customers and field any unexpected issues that may pop up. But eventually the restaurant will operate unsupervised, with customers’ only recourse after a botched meal to reach out to the company via phone or email.

Mezli had its grand opening on Sunday, and its founders’ ultimate goal is to scale their idea and mass-produce the robotic container restaurants; they have thus far raised about $3.5 million in seed funding from venture capitalists.

A food writer for The Spoon who sampled Mezli’s food said his falafel platter was “pretty good” and noted the generous portion size for the price. Alex Kolchinski, Mezli’s CEO and co-founder, said “People have generally been a combination of surprised and pleased” after trying the food.

However, there’s no guarantee Mezli will have more success getting off the ground (and staying there) than its robo-restaurant predecessors. As much as people like affordable food, maybe they also like that food to have a (more visible) human touch.

We’ll soon find out whether it really does come down to taste and price, as Mezli is likely one of the first in an imminent line of restaurants serving up dishes made by robots.

Image Credit: Mezli

Why we should forget about the 1.5C global heating target

Bill McGuire

The goal of 1.5C by 2030 is arbitrary and now unachievable – yet working to prevent every 0.1C rise can still give us hope

‘The 33 million people displaced from their homes in Pakistan might justifiably say climate change has already become dangerous.’ 

Photograph: Akram Shahid/AFP/Getty Images

Mon 12 Sep 2022

Keeping the global average temperature rise (since pre-industrial times) below 1.5C is widely regarded as critical if we are to sidestep dangerous, all-pervasive climate change.

This idea of a 1.5C temperature threshold is in the news again because just-published research has revealed that several catastrophic climate tipping points are in danger of being crossed at around this level of warming, including collapse of the Greenland and west Antarctic ice sheets, which would lock in about 12 metres of sea-level rise.

To have a fair chance of keeping this side of 1.5C, emissions have to fall by 45% in little more than 90 months, and I am on record as saying that this is practically impossible. But it’s worse than that. It is perfectly feasible that we will crash through the 1.5C guardrail even earlier.

The UK Met Office, for one, forecast in 2021 that there was at least a 40% chance that 1.5C would be breached temporarily at least once in the following five years. This means the average temperature would be above 1.5C one year, but likely return below it the next – and we will fluctuate around that number before crossing it permanently some time in the future.

In both 2016 and 2020, the Earth was 1.36C hotter than during pre-industrial times, so we are already getting disturbingly close. The development of El Niño conditions in the Pacific Ocean in the next year or two, which typically ramps up the level of global heat, could well provide the final push that breaches the threshold.

The idea of breaching “temporarily” opens a whole can of worms. Does one year of 1.5C mean we have breached the barrier or not? How many years of 1.5C or more of heating does there need to be before we have officially crashed through the guardrail? And how critical would this really be, anyway, in terms of real-world consequences??

Maybe we are too fixated with this precise temperature rise. The fact is, while not exactly picked out of a hat, the 1.5C figure is an arbitrary one. The exact level of temperature rise at which climate change becomes dangerous is simply not known. Indeed, the 33 million people displaced from their homes in Pakistan might justifiably say we have reached it already. As for tipping points, any or all of those flagged in the new research could happen at some point below 1.5C, so we may have crossed one or more already – only time will tell. Just as easily, we might need a 1.6C, 1.7C or even higher rise before the first runaway impacts of global heating are encountered.

The key point, then, is not the precise value of the global average temperature rise, but the simple fact that it is continuing to rise.


World on brink of five ‘disastrous’ climate tipping points, study finds

The climate system is so sensitive to additional heating that every fraction of a degree rise counts, so that every 0.1C rise is just as important as every other. Global heating is now translating into extreme weather rapidly: there has been a huge hike in these events over the last few years, during which time the global average temperature climbed by one- or two-tenths of a degree at most.

The bottom line is that 1.5C is not sacred. Whether we crash through it or – by some miracle – stay below it, we cannot be certain what the consequences will be. The number has been a useful metric in the global heating story, marking a somewhat concrete focal point. But we mustn’t become obsessed with a single target figure. On the contrary, we need to knuckle down as much as we can to prevent every 0.1C rise, both below this figure and above, in order to rein in climate breakdown as best we can.

 You never know, we might just get lucky.

Bill McGuire is professor emeritus of geophysical and climate hazards at UCL, and the author of Hothouse Earth: an Inhabitant’s Guide