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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. ((Le droit au logement est un droit humain– Human Rights: https://www.humanrights.ch/fr/nouvelles/droit-humain-logement) In the cities, prices have skyrocketed. They have…
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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
Since the Hamas massacres of Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023, the Israeli government has broken every moral rule and international norm. Its army has entered Gaza and bombed civilians. The Israeli government has accelerated settlement on the West Bank, invaded southern Lebanon and bombed Syria. Hezbollah and Iran responded by launching missiles against Israeli…
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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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Zero emission transport
Producing hydrogen by electrolysis of water using various primary sources of carbon-free energy (wind, sun, water) could prove useful for trucks (which contribute 25% of CO2 emissions in the transport sector), public transport and boats. Unlike electric cars, which consume lithium, the use of which is harmful to the environment, hydrogen produced by electrolysis of…
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Fashion
On average, it takes 10,000 litres of water to produce 1 kilo of cotton, or 2,500 to 3,000 litres for a standard T-shirt (250 to 300 grams of cotton). That’s a lot of water consumption for such a small piece of fabric! 4% of the world’s drinking water is used to produce our clothes. The…
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Peru, biodiversity in danger
The biodiversity in Peru is enormous and unique, 3000 to 4000 varieties of potatoes, 52 varieties of corn, 163 varieties of tomatoes, 7590 varieties of flowers that exist only there, 4400 varieties of butterflies, 3 varieties of cocoa, avocados, cotton. We use only a few varieties of each crop in Europe. If these were to…