Category Archives: Economics

” Wunderbar Together”?

The New Yorker: How Trump Made War on Angela Merkel and Europe. “The German Chancellor and other European leaders have run out of patience with the President.”

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“Europe has had many fights with American Presidents over the years, but never in the seven decades since the end of the Second World War has it confronted one so openly hostile to its core institutions. Since Trump’s election, Europe’s leaders have feared that it would come to this, but they have disagreed about how to respond to him. Many hoped to wait Trump out. A few urged confrontation. Others, especially in nations more vulnerable to Russia, urged accommodation. (Poland offered to name a new military base Fort Trump.) Macron tried flattery, and then, when that failed, he reverted to public criticism of Trump-style nationalism.

The challenge from Trump has been especially personal for Germans, whose close relationship with the United States has defined their nation’s postwar renaissance. Merkel grew up in Communist East Germany and credits the United States as essential to the liberation of the East and to German reunification. As the head of Europe’s largest and wealthiest nation, she has sought to guide the Continent through the standoff with Trump, but has struggled, because the President’s harsh words reflect a painful truth: Europeans are dependent on the United States for their security and increasingly divided as Putin’s Russia threatens the nations in the east.

Zwischen zwei Welten

Deutsche Welle: Donata – Einmal pflegen und zurück. “Donata ist eine von vielen tausend polnischen Frauen, die im fortgeschrittenen Alter noch in der Pflege in Deutschland arbeiten: Deutschland – Polen, hin und zurück. Arbeit in Deutschland, Familie in Polen.” (Video, 12:02min)

“Zwei bis drei Monate lang pflegt Donata den 80-jährigen, dementen Adolf Faulhammer in Baden-Württemberg, rund um die Uhr. Dann steigt sie wieder in den Bus und fährt 17 Stunden lang zurück nach Cestochowa nahe Krakau. Dort wartet bereits ihr Mann – er ist ebenso ein Pflegefall. Und auch der 19-jährige Sohn Alexander, der während Donatas Abwesenheit den Vater pflegt, ist froh, wenn sie wieder da ist. Ein Leben für die Pflege in zwei Ländern. Eine Reportage von Almut Röhrl.”

A picture-perfect Hebridean island

The Economist: Scottish islanders are buying out their lairds. “But remote settlements will need more than new owners to survive.”

“In June Ulva was bought by its residents, a result of sweeping land reform by the Scottish government. “For the first time, the people who live on the island will get to decide what happens to it,“ declared Rebecca Munro, an islander.

When Ulva was put on the market last year, Mrs Munro and her family feared that a new landlord might terminate their tenancies. A brochure portrayed the island as a private playground, they said, listing the dates when tenants could be evicted. Community ownership, by contrast, suggests security and self-determination. But the fate of fragile and marginal places depends on more than land changing hands.

Who owns what, and why, has a particular emotional pull in Scotland. Half the country’s private land is owned by fewer than 500 people. Nationalists view this as a legacy of English colonialism, which saw the appropriation of land that under the clan system had been mutually owned. The clearances of the 18th and 19th centuries, when rich landowners forcibly evicted poor tenants to make way for sheep farming, loom large in the cultural imagination.”

Huffington Post: Meet The Island Communities Fighting Back Against Wealthy, Absent Landlords. “These tiny Scottish communities are taking control of their own destinies.” (Includes a 10min video worth watching.)

“Eigg is one of the Scottish Small Isles, an archipelago of islands a few miles off the country’s west coast, and when Fyffe arrived, the population was at an all-time low of 39.

The island was owned by businessman and former Olympic bobsleigher Keith Schellenberg. Schellenberg had bought Eigg in 1975 for the equivalent of $360,000 (274,000 pounds), and despite some initial investment, things had progressively declined. In an interview with the West Highland Free Press in 1991, he enthused that under his ownership the island had kept its “slightly rundown … Hebridean feel.“

Fyffe and her neighbors saw it differently. “We were in extreme circumstances,“ she says. “With no security of tenure, no one was investing; the community hall was falling apart; the only shop was in a corrugated shed with no water or electricity.“

Fed up and desperate for change, the community decided to do something about it. When Schellenberg’s divorce led to the island being put on the market, Eigg passed briefly to a German artist, before the newly formed Isle of Eigg Trust raised $1.97 million to buy it ― one-third from hundreds of small donations and two-thirds from a woman who has remained anonymous to this day. Last year, Eigg celebrated its 20th anniversary of community ownership.”

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Da bleiben einem Nutella, Rocher und Küsschen im Halse stecken…

Deutsche Welle: Haselnüsse für Nutella vergiften Chile. “Eine der wichtigsten Zutaten für die Produkte des Süßwarenherstellers Ferrero sind Haselnüsse. Die werden unter anderem in Chile angebaut – unter fragwürdigen Bedingungen.”

“Ein Grund für die steigende Produktion von Haselnüssen in Chile ist vermutlich die lasche Umweltgesetzgebung. Die fehlenden Regulierungen beim Einsatz von Pflanzenschutzmitteln machen den Anbau kostengünstiger und effizienter. Auf den Haselnuss-Plantagen wird das wahrscheinlich krebserregende Glyphosat eingesetzt. Agrichile steht außerdem unter dem Verdacht, das giftige Pflanzenschutzmittel Paraquat zu verwenden. Paraquat wurde von der englischen Firma Imperial Chemical Industries entwickelt, deren Agrarsparte heute Teil des Schweizer Unternehmens Syngenta ist. In Chile wird das Umweltgift von Arysta und Anasac vermarktet.

Untersuchungen des Pestizd-Aktion-Netzwerks in Chile RAP (Red de Acción en Plaguicidas y sus Alternativas en Chile) warnen vor Gesundheitsschäden durch den Einsatz von Paraquat wie Nierenversagen, Atemnot, Lungenschmerzen, Seh- und Leberschäden, schweren Hautverletzungen, Todesfällen sowie Embryoschädigung. In der Europäischen Union ist Paraquat verboten, in Chile nicht.”