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Housing
Why is housing so expensive, whether to buy or rent? Why are people forced to pay when “the right to housing is a human right.” With limited financial means, it’s hard to find affordable, good-quality housing. (https://www.humanrights.ch/fr/nouvelles/droit-humain-logement) In the cities, prices have skyrocketed. They have become inaccessible to part of the population. And the countryside…
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Drugs
At the end of the 1970s, the neo-liberal idea developed that if you work hard you can succeed, but if you fail it’s because you haven’t given yourself the means. In the 1980s, under the Thatcher/Reagan era, Western countries became deindustrialised and mass unemployment emerged. In the 1990s, the “cool Britannia” left-wingers such as Tony…
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Saving the language
Language is above all a means of communication. “People need other people to live. So that we can exchange and support each other, we communicate with each other. Communication in the broadest sense takes many forms: we exchange information, share feelings, show affection and sometimes create situations of conflict. We use communication to develop our…
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The moral compass
All the world’s major powers have spent the whole week preventing the Israelis from entering Gaza. What would happen if Israel entered Gaza? The number of civilian victims would soar. It is highly unlikely that the Arab countries would be able to hold back their opinion any longer. They would have to get involved in…
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The power of a King’s Speech
“King Charles III is a constitutional monarch, meaning that he is Head of State. Although his political and executive powers are limited, the Monarch plays a central role in the life of the nation and has a lot of important responsibilities”. (The Role of the Monarch: https://ndla.no/subject:1:9b93cd9e-a45c-428c-a8fb-b4955169efdf/topic:0b7ab7e5-14c7-4118-b81e-c7d27df3aa6d/resource:ad73b390-5142-49e7-ba86-ef25c74d2e28) But what are these responsibilities? What is this…
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Cut out the middleman
Four traders, suppliers of raw materials supply 90% of food for humans and livestock: Cargill, ADM, Louis Dreyfus Commodities and Bunge. They supply cereals, cocoa, cotton, oil, eggs, flour, meat, peanuts, rubber, salt, wool, chemicals and vitamins. The biggest of these, CARGILL, is the largest private company in the United States and controls a quarter…
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Immigration
The images are frightening. We see caravans of migrants crossing Central America on their way to the United States. We see boats filled to the brim off the coast of Florida or in the Mediterranean. In border towns, we see hordes of young men on the streets, destitute, jumping the barriers of detention centres, living…
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Organic mass production has no future
Over the last three years, Europe has seen crop failures due to drought and invasive species. Farmers can’t beat the price of grain from Ukraine, which is in desperate straits. One hectare of arable land disappears every second in the world, and soil is a non-renewable resource. (La disparition des terres agricoles: https://www.planetoscope.com/sols/1175-disparition-de-surfaces-agricoles-dans-le-monde.html) By the…
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Restricting personal wealth
The Gracchus brothers, Gaius and Tiberius, were tribunes, the equivalent of our deputies, and they wanted to tackle the problems of the time. The rich were few in number but owned almost all the land. As they produced all the cereals, they agreed among themselves to set a high price and brought in foreigners to…
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Freedom and coexistence
The philosophers of the Enlightenment and the liberals of the French Revolution wanted three things above all: bread, freedom of conscience and the abolition of privileges. The right to a decent life should not be merchandised. Having a roof over your head and bread should not be monetized. Revolutionaries marched for bread. It was the…