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katrin jakobsdottir
Tens of Thousands of Women Strike in Iceland Over Pay Gap, Gender-Based Violence
"An 'equality paradise' should not have a 21% wage gap and 40% of women experiencing gender-based or sexual violence in their lifetime," said one organizer.
Oct 24, 2023
Schools, health systems, and television broadcasters in Iceland were among the businesses that said they would have to close or reduce services on Tuesday due to the country's first full-day women's strike in nearly 50 years—potentially helping to prove the point that tens of thousands of women and non-binary workers are hoping to make by demonstrating that their labor is vital and must be paid accordingly.
Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir is among the women taking part in the "kvennafrí," or "women's day off," and told reporters she expects women in her cabinet to strike as well, as organizers push to close Iceland's gender pay gap and end gender-based violence.
While Iceland has been recognized for 14 straight years as having the smallest gap in gender equality among the countries in the World Economic Forum's annual rankings, strike organizer Freyja Steingrímsdóttir told The Guardian it is hardly an "equality paradise," and women are demanding greater action from the government to ensure true parity.
On average, Icelandic women still earn about 10% less than men, and as much as 21% less in some professions. Forty percent of women report experiencing gender-based violence.
"An 'equality paradise' should not have a 21% wage gap and 40% of women experiencing gender-based or sexual violence in their lifetime," said Steingrímsdóttir, communications director for the Icelandic Federation for Public Workers. "That's not what women around the world are striving for."
Taking place 48 years after the last full-day women's strike, in which 25,000 people rallied in Reykjavík and 90% of women staged a work stoppage affecting paid and unpaid labor, this year's protest has adopted the slogan, "Kallarðu þetta jafnrétti?" or "You call this equality?"
Icelandic President Gudni Th. Johannesson expressed his support for the strike, saying women's "activism for equality has changed Icelandic society for the better and continues to do so today."
The country's trade unions—which count 90% of Icelandic workers as members—are key organizers of the action and are calling on women and nonbinary workers to join the strike.
The 1975 action was tied to passage of an equal rights law the following year and the election of the country's first female president—the first woman to be democratically elected president in any country—in 1980. Other successes have followed in recent years, such as the passage of a law that requires some companies to prove they're paying people of different genders equally for equal work.
Former Climate Minister Kolbrún Halldórsdóttir told The Guardian that men continue to fail to take responsibility for domestic labor, leaving unpaid work such as childcare to women who are also attempting to succeed in the workplace.
"If you look at it economically women seem to be punished for taking these extra burdens, which is not righteous," Halldórsdóttir told the outlet. "It's something that we need to look into and need to change."
Organizers are calling for the wages of workers in female-dominated professions to be made public and for the federal government to take greater action against gender-based violence, ensuring perpetrators are held accountable. One 2018 University of Iceland study found that only 12% of survivors of sexual assault press charges, and those who do have their cases dismissed nearly 75% of the time. Women told researchers they feared the "shame, guilt, and condemnation" that would come with having their cases tried in the justice system.
"We are now trying to connect the dots, saying that violence against women and undervalued work of women in the labor market are two sides of the same coin and have an effect on each other," Drífa Snædal, spokesperson for Stígamót, an anti-sexual violence group, told The Guardian.
Kate Jarman, a director of corporate affairs at a National Health Service hospital in the United Kingdom, said a similar women's strike in the U.K. would force numerous workplaces with majority-female staff to "recognize our worth."
The Left in the European Parliament also expressed support for the action.
" Solidarity with the strikers," the progressive political party said.
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The World Not Only Needs Women Leaders--It Needs Feminist Leaders
"Because gender equality not only serves to advance the cause of women—a fairer society benefits us all."
Mar 07, 2021
International Women's Day pays tribute to the achievements of women worldwide and reminds us what still needs to be done for full gender equality. In 2021, we are taking stock of the many ways in which Covid-19 has disproportionately affected women and girls around the world.
"Let us support these feminist leaders, from all walks of life. Let us take action so that women can affirm their leadership and be powerful role models for generations to come."
The pandemic has created a new landscape. Although women have played a key role in responding to the crisis, gender inequalities have widened across the board. In education, 767 million women and girls were impacted by school closures. Eleven million may never return to class, joining the 132 million already out of school before the crisis struck. From the economic perspective, the recession is pushing 47 million more women and girls into poverty, destroying their economic independence and making them more vulnerable to gender-based discrimination and violence.
As we look at this landscape, we have to ask ourselves: if gender equality is our goal, what kind of leadership will the world need moving forward?
It is not enough to just count the number of women in the highest positions of power. No single person at the top of the pyramid can repair the damage being done to the progress that has been made in gender equality since the world adopted the Beijing Declaration on women's rights 25 years ago.
What we need are leaders for gender equality--and we need them everywhere in our societal structures. Leaders of all ages, all gender identities, and from all backgrounds. These leaders are not just agents of change, but designers of change. They lead through their example and engagement. They expose injustices and unequal opportunities. They know that gender inequalities stem from discrimination and exclusion and that it is only by lifting these barriers that real change can happen. This is feminist leadership.
Feminist leaders tackle power structures. They name and deconstruct all forms of exclusion and marginalization. They empathize with the vulnerable and voiceless, and champion their causes. They open new doors and take risks, courageously blowing the whistle on hidden injustice, and unmasking structural barriers perpetuating inequalities. They are all around us. Be it the activist defending an indigenous community, the schoolgirl mobilizing her generation to save the climate, or the poet raising her voice to promote social justice.
Feminist leaders have the courage to create, report, educate, experiment. Think about Azata Soro, actress, film director and producer who broke her silence on sexual harassment and violence in the African film industry. Think about Maria Ressa, risking jail for her brave investigative journalism. Think about Yande Banda, a tireless advocate for girls' education in Zambia and beyond. Think about Katalin Kariko, who overcame the many challenges faced by women in science and was instrumental in developing the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine. As stories like these become known, they challenge people's intimate convictions of what is achievable and by whom. These women are, in all their diversity, feminist leaders.
However, feminist leadership is not the prerogative of women alone. Gender equality isn't just a women's fight, it's a fight for social justice. Men also need to be involved in the construction of a fairer society. Many of them are showing the way. The Congolese gynecologist, Dr. Denis Mukwege, won a Nobel Peace Prize for his advocacy to stop rape from being used as a "strategy of war." And there are many others like him, all over the world. On this International Women's Day, we stand committed to building future generations of feminist leaders through education. We support women who dare to create and do what is necessary to prevent them from censorship and attacks. We call on the international community to ensure the safety of women journalists who address gender inequalities through their reporting. We also stand side by side with men who dare to care and reject toxic masculinities and behaviors and open up spaces for women to influence decision-making or participate in scientific discovery and innovation.
Let us support these feminist leaders, from all walks of life. Let us take action so that women can affirm their leadership and be powerful role models for generations to come. Because gender equality not only serves to advance the cause of women--a fairer society benefits us all.
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Getting Trumped by Covid-19
A journal of the onset of the plague year.
May 07, 2020
Donald Trump is not a president. He can't even play one on TV. He's a corrupt and dangerous braggart with ill-concealed aspirations for a Crown and, with an election coming up, he's been monopolizing prime time every day, spouting self-congratulation and misinformation. (No, don't inject that Lysol!) His never-ending absurd performances play out as farce against the tragic background of the Covid-19 pandemic sweeping the nation. If we had a real president, which is to say, almost anybody else, things would be different. We would have seen the pandemic coming. It would not have attacked me in my old age. And most of the dead might still be alive.
The records of other countries make this clear. South Korea, Taiwan, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, New Zealand, and Norway have all had commendable success in protecting their people. Could it be by chance that seven out of eight of the most successful nations in combating the Covid-19 pandemic are headed by women?
The records of other countries make this clear. South Korea, Taiwan, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, New Zealand, and Norway have all had commendable success in protecting their people. Could it be by chance that seven out of eight of the most successful nations in combating the Covid-19 pandemic are headed by women? Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan, Mette Frederiksen of Denmark, Sanni Marin of Finland, Angela Merkel of Germany, Katrin Jakobsdottir of Iceland, Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand, and Erna Solberg of Norway have all been described in similar terms: as calm, confident, and compassionate leaders. All of them have been commended for thorough preparations, quick decisive action, and clear, empathic communication. Erna Solberg has even been hailed as the "landetsmor," the mother of her country.
Perhaps in such disturbing times as these we feel some primal yearning for a capable, comforting mother, but we need not resort to such psychological speculation. The fortunate countries turn out to be those with the fairness and foresight to have welcomed women into government decades ago.
What seems anachronistic in this critical time is the presence in leadership posts of so many self-aggrandizing, sociopathic male autocrats: Jair Bolsinaro of Brazil, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, Viktor Orban of Hungary, Vladimir Putin of Russia, Donald Trump of the United States, and more. Faced with the pandemic, none of these "powerful" men had a clue. They encountered an invader that could not be bullied, bribed, banished, or bombed. And for their ignorance and vanity, the people pay (and pay and pay).
Lessons in Leadership
I know something about the difference good leadership makes because I've been locked down now in two different countries. One kept me safe, the other nearly killed me. I happened to be in Norway when the virus arrived and saw firsthand what a well-run government can actually do. (Yes, I know Norway seems small indeed when compared to the United States, but both of the governments that locked me down, Norway and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, where I now reside, represent roughly 5.5-6.5 million people, and Norway's capital, Oslo, is only slightly more populous than Boston. So some comparisons may be revelatory.)
More to the point, with any population, the difference between success and failure is preparation, swift action, and the techniques applied to overcome the pandemic. On February 26th, the Norwegian Institute of Public Health announced the first case of Covid-19: a woman who had returned a week earlier from China. The next day, it reported two cases in travelers returning from Italy and another from Iran. After that came two skiers also back from Italy. One of them, an employee of Oslo's largest hospital, went right back to work, where tracers would soon witness just how fast the unseen virus could move.
And here's the key that escapes political leaders in America: in Norway, testers and tracers were on the job from the start. As February rolled into March, they were already testing and tracking some 500 Norwegian skiers returning from the Austrian Alps and northern Italy. Some had frequented convivial apres-ski taverns there and, once back home, were quick to catch up with friends. One Norwegian tracer labeled such skiers "very sociable people."
Systematically, Norway would test all its returning travelers (every one of them!), then track down all the contacts of those who had tested positive and test them and their contacts as well, and so on down the line. Working with remarkable speed, the tracers used immediate test results -- a tool apparently available in the U.S. only to the rich and famous -- to track the trajectories of the virus as it spread. When cases began to multiply without known contacts, the tracers knew that the virus had begun to hitchhike through an unwitting community and were quick to surround it and shut it down.
In response to the pandemic, the government gradually closed down the capital and other centers of contagion. In Oslo, places of assembly went first: theaters, cinemas, concert halls. Norwegians were even asked to stay away from the World Cup Ski Championships being held at Holmenkollen, on the edge of Oslo.
Universities and schools moved online, while offices of all sorts soon followed suit. Restaurants and bars shut their doors. By March 12th, only two weeks after the first reported case, the capital and much of the country had closed down. On that day, in fact, officials reported the death of an elderly man, the first Norwegian casualty of Covid-19.
By mid-April, some five weeks after the shutdown went into effect, the government began to open up public life again, proceeding carefully step by step. Toddlers were the first to return to their preschools on April 20th, with grade schoolers to follow. By April 30th, Norway had administered 172,586 tests and recorded 7,667 positive cases of the coranavirus, 2,221 of them in Oslo. The dead numbered 207, suggesting a per capita mortality rate lower than that of any other European country and far from America's tragic loss of life. But how to explain this Norwegian record?
Experts attribute it to the government's early and deep preparations, enabling it to respond immediately to the very first case to appear in the country and, after that, to its quick, unrelenting testing and tracing of the contagion. This painstaking effort, backed by Norway's universal health care system, enabled the state to get ahead of the virus, save lives, and stop the pandemic short.
The country's remarkably effective welfare system has bolstered its population throughout the shutdown. Furloughed workers drew full pay from the government for 20 days, and about 62% of their full salaries after that. They'll return to their jobs ready for work in factories, shops, and businesses as the quarantine is lifted. The government's effective and well-targeted expenditures are ensuring smooth transitions; a quick return to production; and, best of all in this troubled time, some peace of mind for employers, workers, and families. The shutdown is bound to be costly, perhaps the worst blow to the economy since World War II, but such thoroughgoing, bottom-up arrangements are less expensive -- in both financial and human terms -- than America's striking neglect of marginal (aka "essential") workers, thrown under the bus of crony capitalism with nothing but lectures on the overrated American freedom to fend for yourself.
In Norway, the invasion of Covid-19 was seen from the outset as a national problem and part of a global emergency. It was never politicized. Norway's conservative prime minister, Erna Solberg, is now receiving high marks indeed, even from opposition parties, for her calm leadership. Children like her too. During the crisis, she gave two nationwide "press conferences" to children to answer questions they submitted about the pandemic. ("Can I have a birthday party?" "How long does it take to make a vaccine?") From the outset, she told them it was okay to be scared. And then she set an example of what a smart, hard-working leader and a collaborative, many-partied parliament can do for all the people, even in scary times.
Remarkably, Norway very quickly achieved the lowest rate of contagion in Europe. From the start, it aimed to stifle the virus to the point where one infected person might infect only one more. In scientific terms, it aimed for an R-0 rate (a rate of reproduction) of 1.0. By the time Solberg announced that goal on March 24th, however, the magic number had already fallen to 0.71. Today, with only 81 Covid-19 patients hospitalized and their contacts already traced and tested, Norwegians can begin to return with considerable confidence to something that edges ever closer to normal life.
Amateur Night
The United States has become an example for the world of just the opposite: a corrupt government unprepared for and even in denial of warnings from within and without. Years ago, President Obama created within the National Security Council a directorate for global health security and bio-defense to prepare for the pandemics sure to come. That directorate even briefed the incoming Trump team on the urgency of pandemic preparations before the president's inauguration. But on taking office, Trump eliminated the threat by eliminating the directorate.
As president, he was also informed of a viral outbreak in Wuhan, China, in early January of this year, but he ignored the message. As has been widely reported, he wasted at least two months in self-serving fantasies, claiming the pandemic would disappear of its own accord, or was Fake News, or a "new hoax" of Democrats plotting his downfall. By March, his conduct had become increasingly erratic, obtuse, combative, and often just flat-out nasty. In April, he abandoned altogether his most pressing presidential duty, first claiming "total power" as president and then shifting the job of testing and protecting the people from an unrestrained pandemic onto state governors already struggling to find basic medical supplies for front-line health care personnel in their own states.
Worse, he roused his most militant followers, some heavily armed, to defy the emergency directives of several states led by Democratic governors. In short, he first unloaded the responsibilities of his office onto state governors, then made it his mission to undermine and threaten some of them. For good measure, he cut off U.S. funding for the World Health Organization, the single U.N. agency best equipped to deal with global health emergencies. Trump already had a proud record of getting away with highly offensive, even criminal, acts in plain sight. Now, through egotism, bravado, and just plain ignorance he's made an epidemic great again (MEGA!), for Covid-19 cases and fatalities in the United States have by now far outstripped those anywhere else on Earth.
Welcome to America
On March 11th, as Oslo was shutting down, President Trump issued an order to take effect in 72 hours: no one flying from Europe would be allowed to enter the United States. It sounded crazy, but -- worried about worse to come -- I changed my flight home to meet the deadline. The next day, the American embassy clarified the president's ultimatum: the travel ban did not apply to U.S. citizens. By that time, of course, it was impossible for me to change my ticket back.
So I left Oslo on March 14th, after assuring friends that I would be okay because Massachusetts, home of Elizabeth Warren, is a progressive state.
Hah!
Changing planes in London, I found myself in a different world: packed into the tail section of that flight among a crowd of American students summoned home from European universities by their anxious parents. Some were in transit from northern Italy, already the heartland of the European Covid-19 outbreak. From the seats behind me came insistent sounds of boys coughing. The flight attendants wore rubber gloves and made themselves scarce. I wrapped a long scarf round and round my face, feeling as if somehow I'd been suckered into a trap.
Seven hours later, we stumbled into Boston's Logan Airport, destined to spend a few more all-too-intimate hours together. I crept along a zigzag trail, amid those coughing boys, with no way of putting distance between us, to the passport inspectors and then beyond. Finally, one by one, we were ushered into a curtained area to experience that airport's first night of official "screening."
I was pleased to think that we were all, at least, to be tested for the virus. But no such luck. When my turn came, the official screener voiced no greetings, asked no questions, offered nothing but a single order: "Go home and take your temperature." Had I been held all that time among those coughing boys for this? Later that week, a local paper reported approvingly that the new airport screening, the first line of defense against the foreign plague, took "less than a minute."
I was angry to have been forced onto that dangerous flight by the president's arbitrary edict and doubly angry that he had terminated travel from Europe without consulting any of his European counterparts. By the look of things that evening, no one from his administration had even informed key American airports receiving flights from Europe until the last minute. I saw a bunch of those coughing boys board a Silver Line bus into Boston and others grabbing taxis. And so we all went off into the night, apparently leaving behind no trace of the state of our health or where we were headed. Some days later, I was not merely angry but very ill.
Ten days after that, in a hospital parking garage, a masked nurse worked a giant Q-tip up my nose. A doctor told me to quarantine myself at home (as I had been doing anyway) until I got the test results in about 5 days. But why should it take so long? Wasn't the whole point of a test to learn what was going on as quickly as possible? The speed of the test result had been the very point in Norway. Combined with the immediate work of the tracers, it enabled the National Health Service to stay ahead of the pandemic and, in the end, essentially, to shut it down.
I went home and got worse. Five days passed with no word. On the 12th day, I felt well enough to call my doctor, who tracked down the result of my test ("just in"). It was positive, but almost two weeks old. So, over the telephone, the doctor gave me the all-clear to put on my mask (a souvenir of my trip to the ER) and go forth to shop. Knowing no Norwegian doctor would turn me loose so soon without another test, I asked for one. Sorry, short supply, only one to a customer. I've kept myself in quarantine at home ever since.
Covid-19 Hitches a Ride in America
On April 10th, came news of the death of 59-year-old Vitalina Williams, an immigrant from Guatemala, who worked a full-time job at a Walmart in Lynn, Massachusetts, as well as a part-time job at a supermarket in Salem. Like the nurse and doctor in the ER, this cashier was an "essential worker," the first grocery store employee in Massachusetts to work herself to death. Here's an immense difference between Massachusetts and Norway. In that country, one job would have paid her a good wage and also given her paid leave to see her own doctor in the National Health Service when she first felt ill. She would have been taken in, diagnosed, cared for, and very likely saved. That is simply how a national health care system works in a social democracy.
So what was my Covid-19 test for? What useful information did it give anyone? I had walked home from the ER in the dark (so as not to endanger others by taking a bus) and gone to bed. Nobody checked up on me because nobody knew my test was positive -- something I, of course, didn't know either. And throughout those nearly two weeks of waiting for the test results, no tracer called to learn if I lived with other people who might be endangered and available for testing. (There were, in fact, no tracers then.) No one asked me a single question about my family, friends, or others I might have contacted since that "screening" at the airport. And had I died in my bed, no one would or could have traced that bright red line between me, those coughing boys, and Donald Trump's compulsory flight to a state caught totally off guard in a country both dysfunctional and unprepared.
On April 20th, five weeks after I returned to Boston, Massachusetts was designated a Covid-19 "hot spot." With 38,077 cases and 1,706 deaths at that time, the state stood in third place behind New York and New Jersey. This was not an honor, but it may be what prompted Governor Charlie Baker to turn to testing -- and belatedly to tracing.
The number of new cases in this state was rising every day, as it has from the first reported case in February. The governor, who also holds a press conference every day, explained that we are now "right in the middle of an expected surge," apparently unaware that a "surge" is what you get when you have missed the moment for preventative testing and tracing. (This is also what you get when, as in the nation's capital, politicians rather than scientists run the show.)
Belatedly, Massachusetts started testing people at the rate of about 9,000 per day, while private agencies funded by the state are in the process of hiring perhaps 1,000 tracers to conduct phone interviews with the contacts of all Massachusetts residents who have already tested positive. Today, May 6th, we official "positives" number 70,271, though 4,212 of us are already dead.
In the first few days of May, the number of positive patients hospitalized fell slightly and state officials adopted an attitude of "cautious optimism." Presumably, something of importance will be learned from those belated tests. As Norway recognized, however, if you don't jump on this virus fast, it rapidly disperses beyond simple person-to-person contacts. It spreads out sociably like so many Norwegian skiers -- or American students. It rides the chairlift and the bus. It gets on the plane. It hangs out at the airport. It hitches a ride with someone stopping at the grocery store. To tally its contacts may become simply a matter of counting the dead.
Tracers in Norway have already moved on to other tests to find asymptomatic carriers who may be contagious or perhaps have developed antibodies. Anyone in that country with even the mildest symptoms may ask for a test. These precautionary studies are essential in case the virus should find new life as the quarantine is lifted. What scientists might learn from such studies, like the new tracing one in Massachusetts, remains to be seen, but surely one inescapable conclusion is that this virus is smarter, more agile, and faster on its feet than any of its associates we've met before or, for that matter, than most of our public officials, from a failed president on down. And for any readers who believe in politics more than science, let me just say that without science you won't even know what hit you.
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Icelanders Hold Funeral for Okjukull, Country's First Glacier to Die From the Climate Crisis
"This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done."
Aug 19, 2019
Gathering on a vast rocky landscape which until recent years was covered in a thick sheet of ice, Icelanders on Sunday took part in what was both a show of mourning and a call to action as they held a funeral for the country's first glacier to be lost to the climate crisis.
About 100 people marched to the top of what used to be the Okjokull glacier, commonly called Ok, led by the country's president and a number of climate researchers who have warned that the loss of the glacier is a sign of things to come if world governments fail to stop the planet's temperature from warming.
"The symbolic death of a glacier is a warning to us, and we need action," former Irish president Mary Robinson said at the event.
Alongside a group of climate action advocates carrying signs reading, "Pull the emergency brake" and "Not OK," President Katrin Jakobsdottir, Robinson, and Icelandic geologist Oddur Sigurdsson helped to place a plaque on a formerly-icy rock, commemorating Okjokull.
Speaking to Time, Jakobsdottir pointed out how the loss of glaciers may be destructive to the burgeoning renewable energy sector--which climate action groups are pushing governments to shift towards in order to cut carbon emissions to net zero in the coming decades.
"If the predictions of the scientists, if we see them happening, we will see other glaciers disappear in the next decades and centuries," said Jakobsdottir, "which is obviously a very big thing for our landscape, nature, ecosystems, but also our energy system, because we produce renewable energies from the glacial rivers."
As Common Dreams reported last month, the text on the plaque was written by Icelandic author Andri Snaer Magnason.
"This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done," reads the plaque, addressed to those who may come across it in future centuries. "Only you know if we did it."
The rock is now also labeled with the measurement "415 ppm CO2"--the level of carbon that was detected in the Earth's atmosphere in May.
At the time, one journalist at TechCrunch wrote that the record-breaking level of CO2 was "yet another indication of the unprecedented territory humanity is now charting as it blazes new trails toward environmental catastrophe."
Okjokull's funeral was held days after the U.S. weather and atmospheric monitoring agency NOAA reported that July 2019 was the hottest month on record, since it began recording global temperatures in 1880.
Scientists announced in 2014 that Okjokull would no longer be considered a glacier, after its size measured at less than half of one square mile. In 1890, the glacier covered more than six square miles.
Glacier experts say that at the current rate of global warming, Iceland could lose the more than 400 glaciers which cover over 10 percent of the country by 2200.
"I hope this ceremony will be an inspiration not only to us here in Iceland but also for the rest of the world," Jakobsdottir told AFP, "because what we are seeing here is just one face of the climate crisis."
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'We Are Watching the Ice Sheet Hit a Tipping Point': Greenland Melting Even Faster Than Feared
"The only thing we can do is adapt and mitigate further global warming—it's too late for there to be no effect."
Jan 21, 2019
While climate scientists have repeatedly raised alarm about the how human-caused global warming is driving "off the charts" ice loss in Greenland that will contribute to devastating sea level rise, a new analysis of a less studied region has ramped up those concerns, revealing that Greenland's ice sheet is melting even faster than previously thought.
"We're going to see faster and faster sea level rise for the foreseeable future."
--Michael Bevis, Ohio State University
"We are watching the ice sheet hit a tipping point," warned lead author Michael Bevis, a geodynamics professor at Ohio State University. "We're going to see faster and faster sea level rise for the foreseeable future."
Researchers often look at ice loss from large glaciers in Greenland's southeast and northwest regions. However, this study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), found that the most sustained ice loss during the decade following 2003 was in the island's southwest region.
"Whatever this was, it couldn't be explained by glaciers, because there aren't many there," noted Bevis. "It had to be the surface mass--the ice was melting inland from the coastline."
Using data from satellites and GPS stations across Greenland, his team found that by 2012, Greenland was losing ice at four times the rate it was in 2003, and that acceleration was focused in the southwest region. The cause of this unprecedented ice loss, they concluded, was global atmospheric warming from human activities coupled with a natural phenomenon that brings warmer air to West Greenland.
"Global warming has brought summertime temperatures in a significant portion of Greenland close to the melting point," Bevis explained, "and the North Atlantic Oscillation has provided the extra push that caused large areas of ice to melt."
This new study follows several others published in the past few months that show across the globe, but especially near the poles, ice is melting and oceans are warming even more rapidly than experts once feared, which could lead to worldwide sea level rise of more than 10 feet within this century alone.
"Once you hit that tipping point, the only question is: How severe does it get?"
--Bevis
Given the ongoing ice loss in Greenland and elsewhere, what's clear, according to Bevis, is that "the only thing we can do is adapt and mitigate further global warming--it's too late for there to be no effect."
However, the degree of devastation is still variable. The more rapidly that world leaders comply with mounting public demands for bold climate action and implement the systemic changes that scientists say are necessary to avert climate catastrophe--most notably, immediately phasing out fossil fuels--the better off we will be.
As Bevis put it, "Once you hit that tipping point, the only question is: How severe does it get?"
Responding to the study, Icelandic Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir declared, "We must fight climate change together, the threat is real and we are reaching the tipping point."
U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who recently confirmed she's considering a run for president in 2020, tweeted: "I've seen this ice sheet and it is truly massive. We must take action now to reverse climate change."
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Iceland's "Anti-Trump" Prime Minister Joins Sanders-Varoufakis Open Call for Global Progressive Alliance
The Progressive International's open call was just revealed at the first-ever Sanders Institute Gathering
Dec 04, 2018
Icelandic Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir this week announced her support for Progressive International--the just-launched global movement calling for all progressives to fight together for a "shared vision of democracy, prosperity, sustainability, and solidarity."
A brainchild of the U.S.-based Sanders Institute and Europe's DiEM25--groups founded by Jane O'Meara Sanders and former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, respectively--the Progressive International's open call was unveiled Friday at the inaugural Sanders Institute Gathering, a three-day congregation of hundreds of progressive leaders tackling issues including "full-throated economic populism," Medicare for All, and a vision "for a world that works for the children of this world, not for a handful of billionaires."
The feminist and environmentalist Jakobsdottir, who's been described as "the anti-Trump," wrote on her Facebook page that the Progressive International represented "the struggle for general welfare, security, and dignity for all people," and that a trans-border network of those on the left would help "alleviate social and economic inequality, make changes to the global financial system, turn away from the arms race, and stop climate change," according to a Google translation of her post.
The open call from the Progressive International warns of a "network of right-wing factions [that] is spreading across borders, working to erode human rights, silence dissent, and promote intolerance."
"Not since the 1930 has humanity faced such an existential threat," it continues. "To defeat this Nationalist International, we cannot simply go back to the failed status quo." Rather, "The time has come for progressives to form a grassroots movement for global justice: to mobilize workers, women and the disenfranchised all around the world behind a shared vision of democracy, prosperity, sustainability, and solidarity."
To hear more about the Progressive International, watch the following video released by the group, which declares, "It is time for progressives of the world to unite. Let us begin today building a better tomorrow."
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Why Is the Radical Right Still Winning?
What that Protestant Reformation can teach us about the durability of far-right movements — and the order they seek to replace
Oct 11, 2018
Less than a month ago, the candidate leading in the polls in the Brazilian presidential election was a jailed ex-politician who technically couldn't even run for office.
It gets even weirder. Brazilian voters have put corruption near the top of the list of their concerns this political season. Yet Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the country's most popular politician, has been jailed on corruption charges. And because of a law that Lula himself signed into law, politicians charged with crimes upheld by an appeals court can't run again for eight years.
Weirder still, in a country where only 14 percent of the population has any confidence at all in Donald Trump's global leadership, the voters have rallied around a candidate who's often tagged the Trump of the Tropics.
When Brazilians went to the polls this Sunday, nearly half of them voted for this pro-Trump and anti-Lula candidate. Jair Bolsonaro is a free-market ideologue who frequently goes on homophobic, misogynist, and racist rants. He loves guns, torture, and autocracy. Brazilians who fear a return to military rule refer to Bolsonaro as "the Thing."
Bolsonaro nearly won the race in the first round, coming only a few percentage points from capturing the simple majority required to declare outright victory. It's remotely possible that the opposition could pull together for the second round, scheduled for October 28, just as the French did to deprive Marine Le Pen of the presidency last year.
But I doubt it.
Brazil is on the verge of being Trumped. And given the perilous state of the country's economy -- unemployment over 12 percent, extreme poverty on the rise, widening gap between rich and poor -- Bolsonaro will wreak even greater devastation in Brazil than his gringo inspiration has already done in the United States.
The Thing's political success in Brazil demonstrates that the radical right is far from peaking in its global influence.
Elsewhere in the world, the right has certainly mobilized resentment against neoliberal globalization. But that doesn't explain the situation in Brazil. After all, Bolsonaro's chief economic advisor, banker Paulo Guedes, adheres to the same University of Chicago philosophy that gave the world Augusto Pinochet's brave new Chile in the 1970s. Thanks to Guedes, Bolsonaro has reversed his previously anti-liberal positions on economics. Now he promises widespread privatization and cuts in government spending, while also calling for fewer taxes.
I'm not sure that Bolsonaro's supporters, aside from the very wealthy ones, are paying much attention to his economic program. What Brazilians are disgusted with is the status quo, which is corrupt and economically unsustainable. They don't just want reform.
They want a Reformation.
Against the Globalists
In the sixteenth century, the Catholic Church aspired to control the world. Its influence spread well beyond Europe to the New World and, thanks to Jesuit missionaries, to Asia as well. Orthodox Christianity was well ensconced in Russia, and Islam controlled the Middle East and North Africa. But Rome was powerful, wealthy, and corrupt enough to compete with these rivals. The Pope commanded no armies, but he still claimed the allegiance of millions of people, including any number of kings and queens.
And then along came Martin Luther.
As a young monk and then a theologian, Luther absorbed the teachings of the Vatican. But he grew to despise what he saw as the corruptions of Catholicism, chiefly the sale of indulgences as a method of buying one's way into heaven. His attacks on the Catholic order attracted a flock of like-minded protesters and reformers. And thus was born Protestant theology and the Reformation.
Luther challenged the globalists of his era, a political order based on a bogus and highly polarizing economic system (the sale of indulgences). He assailed the bureaucracy of this order, asserting instead that individuals could have a personal relationship with God without the mediation of the priests. He preferred the language of the people, rather than Latin, and translated the Bible into German.
Even before nationalism became a coherent ideology, Luther was asserting national prerogatives against the demands of the global (Catholic) order. He wasn't a big fan of minorities either, considering the anti-Semitism of his treatise, "On the Jews and Their Lies."
Luther also effectively deployed the technology of the era. The printing press, invented in Europe by Johannes Gutenberg around 1439, had become a tool of mass production by the early sixteenth century. Thanks to this new technology, Luther's tracts and his German-language bible spread rapidly around Europe, undermining the Holy See's authority.
Protestantism has proven to be an enduring phenomenon. As a schism, it has itself broken into dozens of denominations. But Catholicism, too, has endured. It has instituted some reforms, like Vatican II, and has become even more globalized since Luther's time.
The Populist Reformation follows the same pattern as Luther's earlier revolution. It targets a global elite. It criticizes a corrupt economic order. It speaks in a national language that the average person can understand. It uses the latest technologies -- social media -- to spread its message. It is full of fire and fury. And with Donald Trump's victory in the 2016 presidential elections, it has spread to the very nerve center of the global order.
If it continues to follow the earlier example, this Populist Reformation will establish a powerful rival "church" that survives past the next election cycle. It may force some changes in the global order, but that order will survive as well. Protestants and Catholics generated one war after another in Europe. The current era looks to be equally contentious.
Modern Day Protestants
The modern-day Luthers are everywhere, railing against the globalists and tweeting their 95 theses around the world.
Eastern Europe is the center of this Reformation.
Poland's Law and Justice Party and Hungary's Fidesz are in firm control of their countries. In the Czech Republic, Prime Minister Andrej Babis, a corrupt media mogul, is trying to Berlusconi his country into submission, with the help of former leftist and current Islamophobe President Milos Zeman. In Bulgaria, the far right-wing United Patriots coalition named six ministerial positions as a reward for helping Prime Minister Boyko Borisov form a government. In Bosnia, the ultra-nationalist Miroslav Dodik was just elected as the Serbian member of the country's unwieldy three-person presidency.
Elsewhere in Europe, the right wing is also on the rise -- in control in Austria, sharing power in Italy, and racking up significant parliamentary numbers in Germany and Sweden. These insurgents are gearing up for the 2019 European Parliament elections in the hopes of securing a large enough minority to block legislation. "We are not fighting against Europe, but against the EU, which has become a totalitarian system," the National Front's Marine Le Pen has said. In France, the National Front polls just a fraction behind Emmanuel Macron's ruling party.
On the borders of Europe, Turkey has been ruled for 15 years by a right-wing autocrat with an Islamist cast -- Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, has been in charge in Russia for nearly two decades. This oligarch masquerading as a president aspires to create a vast conservative network -- corrupt, anti-liberal, nationalist, and anti-immigrant -- with Moscow at its center.
In Asia, right-wing nationalist Shinzo Abe is on track to become Japan's longest serving prime minister. After winning his party's presidency last month, Abe is expected to go after his long-sought prize: dismantling the country's "peace constitution."
Southeast Asia is full of right-wing militarists: in Thailand, Cambodia, and Myanmar. Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines has a predilection for extrajudicial murder and other authoritarian policies that place him firmly among right-wing populists. The surprise presidential victory of 92-year-old Mahathir Mohamad in Malaysia in May suggests that this former authoritarian leader has figured out how to reinvent himself along populist lines. And, of course, Narendra Modi has been busy imposing his Hindu nationalism-inflected right-wing approach in India.
In Latin America, Bolsonaro is not alone. In Colombia, Ivan Duque won the presidential election last June. Like Bolsonaro, Duque embraces a neoliberal economic program of tax cuts and a pro-military approach to security. Daniel Ortega, though he started out as a leftist, has moved further and further toward right-wing clerical militarism in Nicaragua.
The wave of right-wing populism hasn't completely covered the world. Mexico took a long-heralded turn to the left with the election of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. South Korean progressive Moon Jae-in is charting a new course for his country after 10 years of conservative rule. Jacinda Ardern is doing great things in New Zealand as is Katrin Jakobsdottir in Iceland. More traditional conservative parties, like the Christian Democrats in Germany, are holding the line against the far right.
But globally speaking, that's a drop in the bucket compared to the influence of the right-wing populists.
The Roots of Right-Wing Radicalism
Some of the countries that have shifted hard to the right have done pretty well economically in recent years, like Poland and the Czech Republic. But the populist parties that did well at the polls still managed to mobilize the resentment of those who didn't benefit from that economic success. The task of appealing to the disgruntled is even easier in countries that haven't recovered fully from the financial crisis of a decade ago.
The actual economic programs of the populists are largely immaterial. They might advocate some kind of welfare state. They might prefer, as in Brazil, the same kind of neoliberal nostrums that pass for orthodoxy among international financial institutions.
In general, however, the populists are interested in state capture: using the mechanisms of state power to enrich themselves and their circle of supporters. It's crony capitalism raised to the nth degree.
Politically, the new right-wing populists are taking advantage of a widespread disgust for political elites. This disgust has been focused in particular on the corruption scandals that have engulfed so many countries. Because they're focused on corruption, voters are willing to embrace candidates who are also members of the political elite and personally corrupt to boot -- as long as these firebrands promise to "drain the swamp."
But it's perhaps hot-button cultural issues that provide the most direct method by which the right-wing populists can distinguish themselves from the competition.
Obviously this cultural populism takes different forms around the world. Duterte challenges the Catholic Church in the Philippines while Ortega embraces it in Nicaragua. But a common denominator is nationalism. It's not just an outward-facing nationalism against globalists and immigrations. These right-wing populists deliberately stoke the anger of majority populations who somehow feel left behind by a world of greater equality and diversity.
Martin Luther King Jr. once envisioned a Poor People's Campaign that brought together a rainbow coalition of the dispossessed. Right-wing populists have discovered an equally powerful coalition: the Privileged People's Campaign that brings together rich and poor on the basis of the color of their skin, not the content of their character. King emphasized the importance of dignity. The insurgent populists make a similar appeal but to the dignity of the dominant race, class, or gender.
The left is compromised on all three grounds. It remains committed to multiculturalism. Once in office, it has often proven just as corrupt (or, at least, status-quo-oriented) as any other political bloc. And left parties have pushed forward economic globalization as vigorously as the right, if not more so -- the Democrats under Clinton, Labor under Blair, the French Socialists under Mitterand, former Communist parties in Eastern Europe, and so on. No surprise, then, that None of the Above has become so popular.
What's remarkable about many of the new right-wing populists is how long they've managed to hold onto power through the ballot box. Putin, Erdogan, Ortega: They've all been in charge for more than a decade apiece. Viktor Orban's been the head of Hungary since 2010, Abe the head of Japan since 2012. Zeman has been the Czech president since 2013.
This Populist Reformation is no recent or temporary blip. Let that be a warning to the U.S. electorate. Even if Donald Trump manages to lose his reelection bid, the populist fury that produced his improbable 2016 victory is not going away any time soon.
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Iceland Becomes First Country to Punish Companies for Paying Women Less Than Men
"In Iceland, an example of what happens if you actually elect women."
Jan 02, 2018
Iceland began the new year by becoming the first country in the world to mandate that all its companies must pay men and women equally. Following years of passing legislation promoting equal pay, employers that fail to ensure pay parity will now be subject to fines, thanks to a law passed last spring that went into effect Monday.
"We have had legislation saying that pay should be equal for men and women for decades now but we still have a pay gap," Dagny Osk Aradottir Pind of the Icelandic Women's Rights Association told Al Jazeera. "We have managed to raise awareness, and we have managed to get to the point that people realize that the legislation we have had in place is not working, and we need to do something more."
Under the new law, companies that employ more than 25 people will have to prove to the government that they're paying men and women equally. Officials hope the move will help Iceland to completely close its gender wage gap by 2020.
Iceland has long been admired by progressives as a model of gender equality, filling nearly 50 percent of its parliament seats with women. Supporters of the new law say it couldn't have been put into action without the strong presence of female lawmakers.
For the past nine years, the small island country has been the world's highest-ranking nation in terms of gender equality according to the World Economic Forum's (WEF) Global Gender Gap Report. Iceland has managed to close its gender gap by about 10 percent since the report was first compiled in 2006, according to the WEF's markers which include political empowerment, economic opportunity, and education access as well as compensation.
As Iceland makes strides in its gender equality goals, the United States' gender wage gap has been narrowing slowly, with women earning 83 percent of men's salaries. The U.S. ranks at number 49 on the WEF's list; less than 20 percent of members of Congress are women.
According to the American Association of University Women, at the wage gap's current rate of narrowing, American women would have to wait until 2119 to be paid equally to their male counterparts. The Trump administration has shown little interest in improving the gap, with the president suspending an Obama-era rule which required employers to provide the government with pay equity data.
Supporters congratulated Iceland on its new system while lamenting the United States' failure to take similar steps.
"We must follow the example of our brothers and sisters in Iceland and demand equal pay for equal work now, regardless of gender, ethnicity, sexuality or nationality," said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on his Facebook page.
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