Bloomberg: Central Asia Is Less Stable than It Looks

"Fasten your seatbelts," Gleb Pavlovsky, a former policy adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin who is now one of his opponents, posted on Facebook after Karimov was reported dead on Monday night. The reports, which first surfaced on the Fergana News portal -- a Russian-language site that is probably the best source of day-to-day information on the authoritarian black-box state -- were later denied by the Uzbek authorities. The latest available official information is from the presidential press service, which says that Karimov is in the hospital, and from Karimov's younger daughter Lola's Instagram account, which says he's had a stroke and is in intensive care.  [...]

According to the Soufan Group, about 500 Uzbek citizens were fighting with Islamic State in Syria and Iraq late last year. That's the highest number of all ex-Soviet republics except Russia, and it doesn't include the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan since most of its fighters have long lost any ties to Uzbekistan. [...]

Karimov kept Uzbekistan secular by the sheer force of his security apparatus and military, which is, depending on the source, either the strongest in Central Asia or the second strongest after Kazakhstan's. Russia has been aiding Uzbekistan, training its officers and providing its military with modern weapons, because the country is an important buffer between the boiling cauldron of Afghanistan and Russia's sphere of immediate interests. Now that Karimov's grip on power is weakening and succession is not assured, all the pent-up tension -- some of it of the jihadist kind -- may erupt in violence that could involve some of Russia's Uzbek population. If Uzbekistan becomes unstable, Islamic State will be encouraged and empowered. [...]

Beyond these obvious tactical considerations, though, the tension accompanying Karimov's stroke is a reminder that in a large part of the former Soviet Union, including Russia's two major allies, Kazakhstan and Belarus, there are no reliable democratic methods of power transfer. In Russia itself, should Putin fall seriously ill or die, the transition is unlikely to be smooth. The whole vast region is kept relatively peaceful by a handful of aging men, most with Soviet leadership experience, who have turned into authoritarian nationalist leaders. Should any of them go, instability arises immediately. The bloodless revolution of 1991, which destroyed the Soviet Union, is unfinished in many ways, but perhaps primarily in this one: The current regimes are placeholders for true statehood and, as such, ticking time bombs.

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CityLab: Farming for Their Lives

Though farming has long been a part of the fabric of this city, its popularity has soared over the last decade and a half. In 2000, there were about 80 farms within city limits; now, there are 1,400.

These spaces are diverse in nearly every sense imaginable: they’re scattered across the city in every direction; they include for-profit and non-profit operations; the farmers themselves cut across races, sexes, and socio-economic standings. Farmers work the soil for many reasons, too—among them, to brighten their blocks, feed their families healthier food, and earn an income. But for many of the farmers I visited over the course of a busy summer week in Detroit, undergirding those commitments is a common and deep-seated conviction: Opaque, inscrutable city agencies have let them down again and again, and radical self-sufficiency is the only way to survive.

At 139 square miles, Detroit is a sprawling city. It was once home to 2 million residents, but evaporating jobs, flight to the suburbs, and decades of foreclosures shrunk the population and blighted the landscape. As of the last Census, the population now hovers around 688,000.

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The Telegraph: Why we should all be working a 3-day week (and why it's good for business too)

The Mexican telecom tycoon Carlos Slim, worth over $80 billion, recently called for a “radical overhaul” in our working lives, coming out in support of a three-day working week, made viable by 11-hour working days (instead of eight) and a later retirement age of 75.  [....]

Sweden is already moving towards a six-hour working day across a number of sectors because of clear business benefits.

A recent experiment among care workers there showed that nurses who worked six hour days took half as much sick time as those in the control group, and were three times less likely to take time off. The nurses were also 20 percent happier and had more energy at work and in their spare time, allowing them to do 64 percent more activities with elderly residents, therefore increasing productivity. [...]

The growing evidence being that working in excess of eight hours a day is pointless; productivity plateaus as our focus slips. Not to mention Parkinson’s Law – work expands to fill the time available for its completion – meaning that if you give yourself 12 hours to do a six-hour task, the task will increase in complexity so as to fill that entire day.

A recent study found that only half of British workers spend six hours or more productively working on an average day, with one third admitting to wasting up to three hours a day by being unable to concentrate or distracted by chatter.

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Jacobin Magazine: The Roots of Islamophobia in France

The French state has excluded and exploited Muslims for decades. The intensity of this assault varies, but the jihadist attacks in Paris in January and November of last year, and in Nice and Rouen in 2016, have sent it to fever pitch.

Of the 3,500 raids conducted since the start of that period, only six have led to investigations. In December, authorities in Eure et Loire admitted that they were targeting Muslims on a purely “preventive” basis, without any specific evidence against them. [...]

In pursuing these policies, French politicians have knowingly ignored the fact that long-standing and state-sponsored Islamophobia, combined with military activity in Muslim countries, has only encouraged extremism. The political classes have refused to recognize how their economic and social policies fuel the alienation that drives people to join groups like ISIS. [...]

In fact, many Muslims supported the Popular Front government in the 1930s. Today, Muslims still hold progressive views on most social questions (social welfare, redistribution, racism, and xenophobia) and are a left-of-center voting bloc. [...]

In 1982, Islam came to the forefront of French political life in the context of strikes against mass redundancies in the car industry. Immigrant workers initiated a major industrial conflict when they occupied the Citroën and Talbot factories in Aulnay and Poissy, more or less with the unions’ backing.

The factory owners believed the immigrant workers were being manipulated by unions, and pressed for police intervention and their employees’ expulsion.

This marked the first time the word “Muslim” entered public discourse as a standard label for a segment of the population, replacing class-based descriptors. Its emergence is sometimes seen as concomitant with the arrival of neoliberal political ideas in France.

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Kartografia ekstremalna: Support for Same-Sex Marriage in Europe

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Vox: What I learned about Trumpism from reading 50 Breitbart articles about immigration

Regardless of this possible policy flip-flop, Trump’s fundamental tone on immigration has not changed, because ultimately his argument — that immigrants disrupt the American identity — is not based in policy, it’s based in sentiment. [...]

Here’s what I found: Though Breitbart weaves in some traditional economic anxieties over immigrants stealing Americans’ jobs, the core of its coverage of immigration paints a picture of fear. Immigration is a threat to the literal safety of Americans, and, more importantly, the national and religious identity of white, Christian Americans. This worldview has distinguished Trump from opposing GOP candidates. Even as policies have shifted, he remains true to his messaging that white America’s national identity is at stake. [...]

The anti-immigration wing of the Republican Party’s message was once primarily economic. They argued that immigrants, willing to work for lesser wages and dependent on welfare programs, are taking American jobs and disrupting the fabric of United States’ work force.

Fundamentally this sentiment still exists — and Breitbart has a fair number of articles articulating the economic costs. But it’s clear that Breitbart doesn’t see the fight over immigration just in terms of economics. Rather, the economic impact has almost become an afterthought, used to strengthen the main argument that immigrants threaten the safety and identity of Americans. [...]

Between Trump and Breitbart’s worldview it’s clear that immigration as discussed in the Republican Party is no longer a policy issue; it’s about the fear of losing a white national identity.

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