BBC4 Analysis: Brexit: What Europe Wants

How political forces in other countries will shape any future UK-EU deal.

As a younger man, Anand Menon spent a care-free summer Inter-railing around Europe. Some decades later, and now a professor of European politics, he's taking to the rails again - this time with a more specific purpose. While British ministers squabble over what they want for a post-Brexit UK, less attention is paid to the other 27 countries in the negotiations. Each can veto any long-term deal between Britain and the European Union. And each, critically, has its own politics to worry about. Professor Menon visits four European countries where politicians will face their electorates next year. What forces will decide their political survival? And how will those forces shape the EU's future relationship with the UK?

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Jacobin Magazine: Listening to Trump

It has become apparent that very few coastal lefties, progressives, or liberals actually watched any full-length Trump speeches. I have a different problem: I may have watched too many. During early spring I went down a multi-week-long, late-night, Trump YouTube rabbit hole. I found myself watching hours of raw video feed of Trump campaign speeches. Insomnia got me there but I stayed for the mesmerizing dada quality of the Trump show, and for the mind-bending experience of watching a reality TV freak articulate surprisingly subversive political truths about the economy and America’s role in the world.

Contrary to how he was portrayed in the mainstream media Trump did not talk only of walls, immigration bans, and deportations. In fact he usually didn’t spend much time on those themes. Don’t get me wrong, Trump is a racist, misogynist, and confessed sexual predator who has legitimized dangerous street-level hate. Most of all, Trump is a fraud. And his administration will almost certainly be a terrible new low in the evolution of American authoritarianism. [...]

In Trump’s discourse A does not necessarily connect to B. If you don’t like A, just focus on B. The structure of Trump’s discourse will never demand that all the pieces be connected. That, in part, is what he meant with the Orwellian phrase “truthful hyperbole.” He has even described his own statements as mere “opening bids” in a negotiation. [...]

Often Trump’s sentences were just distinct phrases strung together. The lack of structure, far from boring, gave his stump talks an almost hypnotic quality. The listener could relax and just let it flow. In this regard Trump seems to a have stepped from the pages of Neil Postman’s old book Amusing Ourselves To Death, in that he personified the cut-up dada style assault on coherent thought that is the essence of television.

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Nautilus Magazine: Why Abstract Art Stirs Creativity in Our Brains

In his most recent book, Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures, published this year, the Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel argues that such a separation no longer exists. The best-known abstractionists, like Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Dan Flavin, and Willem de Kooning, Kandel writes, effectively created “new rules for visual processing.” Abstract art, says Kandel, is therefore the key to understanding both how art and science inform one another, and together, they might open up entirely new ways of seeing and imagining. Where figurative painting provides the human brain with clear visual information—images of a person, a house, a boat, etc.—abstract art reduces, he says, “the complex visual world around us to its essence of form, line, color, and light.”

In doing so, Kandel noted in our conversation, abstract art engages different parts of our minds, conjures more visceral responses, and just might make us more creative. [...]

Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz supplied that information when he pointed out that, in addition to the light bouncing off the face, there are bottom-up and top-down processes. The bottom-up processes are built into the brain. The human brain has evolved over thousands of years, so it has built-in mechanisms that make very good guesses from incomplete information. If they see a source of light, they guess it’s from above because the sun is above. That’s the major source of light for us. If they see one person is much larger than any other, they assume he’s standing closer, in front of the other person. There are lots of clues that we take that are imperfect, but put them together and they give you 98-percent accuracy. That’s what gets us through life. The brain has evolved to make these very, very great guesses based on minimum information that turn out to be very effective.

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Politico: For EU, Poland is not yet lost

To be sure, things are looking up for the conservative nationalist. Under President Barack Obama, the United States joined the EU in criticizing the weakening of the rule of law in Poland. His successor, Donald Trump, is more likely to give a pass to Kaczyński, a fellow anti-establishment nativist.

Yet Europe has plenty of tools it could use to help Poles resist a dismantling of their liberal democracy without having to resort to the implausible “nuclear weapon” of suspending Warsaw’s EU voting rights.

The parliamentary opposition may be divided and poorly led, but something of the spirit of Solidarity — the grassroots movement that overcame Communist repression — is reawakening to protect civil rights, freedom of speech and diversity. [...]

That creates a dilemma for Commission officials. The next step the Commission can take in the legal procedure against countries that breach fundamental rights is to recommend sanctions. But this would require the unanimous consent of the other members, and is likely to be vetoed by Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Kaczyński’s Central European partner in majoritarian autocracy.

The Polish leader could also turn such a move to domestic advantage, denouncing Eurocrats bent on thwarting the will of the people. Similarly, if the EU were to withhold funds for economic development and agriculture, he could blame Brussels, rather than his cronyism and unorthodox policies, for causing economic havoc. [...]

In crafting their response, European leaders should listen to Polish intellectuals who are urging EU action to raise pressure on Kaczyński, sustain civil society and prepare for a restoration of liberalism when he eventually loses power.

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Politico: Barcelona’s war on tourists

Colau made her name campaigning against the increasing number of evictions and foreclosures in Spain after the financial crisis, before turning her sights on the tourism industry. Her local election campaign examined the “tourist bubble” and promised to bring the situation under control, propelling her leftist coalition — Barcelona en Comú (Barcelona in Common) — to victory.

It’s a difficult game to play. Barcelona gets around 30 million visitors a year, according to local government figures, bringing in a huge amount of money to the city of 1.6 million. The impact those tourists are having on rental prices, however, is a major concern for locals, with opinion polls ranking it the second biggest problem for residents, after unemployment. [...]

Colau approved a series of controversial measures after taking power: She froze handing out licenses for all new hospitality establishments, including hotels and private apartments — despite 15,000 pending requests — and launched an assault on short-term rentals through sites such as Airbnb, which she blames for the lack of affordable housing in the city. [...]

The effect of these measures is yet to be seen. The number of hotel guests in Barcelona grew by 5.4 percent in 2015 and long-term rental prices have increased by 30 percent since Colau became mayor. The growth in Madrid, where no such measures have been introduced, was 19 percent over the same period, according to the real estate website Idealista.

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BuzzFeed: There’s A Plan For California To Secede From The US, But It Probably Won’t Work

Members of the “Yes California” initiative filed a proposed ballot measure Monday that would let California residents vote on whether the state should try to break away from the rest of the country. The goal is to get the measure on the ballot in 2018 — something that will happen if organizers collect more than half a million signatures.

If the measure passes at the ballot box, it would eliminate part of the state constitution describing California as an “an inseparable part of the United States of America.”

Passing the measure would then lead to a special election in 2019 where voters would decide if they want to leave the United States and become their own country. [...]

Daniel Farber, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, described the odds of California breaking away from the United States as “one in a billion.” Farber said the Golden State would face an array of challenges if it seceded, including deals over everything from trade to energy to copyrights on Hollywood films. [...]

Instead, he explained, California would need the consent of other states to leave the US. How exactly that consent could be given is unclear — this particular issue hasn’t come up before — though it could ultimately require a constitutional amendment. And either way, it would require the very lawmakers Californians want to break away from to get on board with the plan.

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The Guardian: 'It's not all anal sex': the German schools exploring love, equality and LGBT issues

Despite their fears, anal sex is not being snuck into lessons. What schools are being asked to do is encourage acceptance of different lifestyles and identities. The Hessian ministry of education has said that, from this autumn, teachers must have conversations about sexual and gender diversity with children – not only in sex education classes, which are mandatory in Germany, but in subjects like English and maths too.

“The idea is to show children that there are different ways to love and live,” says Markus Ulrich, of the German LGBT rights group Lesben und Schwulenverband (LSVD). The issue is brought in on a day-to-day basis. “For example, in maths, a teacher could set a question that includes a gay family,” says Ulrich. “Or in English when they study Romeo and Juliet, they could ask about other types of relationships that are sometimes disapproved of.” [...]

Klauenflügel says this cannot happen. “It’s very necessary to connect LGBT acceptance with an acceptance of all different diverse ways of living,” she says. “I think it’s particularly important to teach diversity in schools now – it’s a human rights issue and is about accepting people with different lifestyles, religious beliefs, sexual orientations, genders and backgrounds. It’s a kind of diversity competence that we really need in our society right now.”

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Business Insider: 'This is no longer amusing:' EU officials have lost patience with Boris Johnson

May's decision to appoint Johnson as foreign secretary when she became prime minister surprised many, given the latter's history of gaffes relating to other countries and their leaders. It is a move that looks be backfiring, with Johnson's reputation among his European counterparts seemingly getting worse with each week that passes.

"This is no longer amusing. It is serious stuff," a European ambassador told the Times. Research group British influence has spoken to ambassadors from all 27 EU member states and concluded that Johnson has a "wit that does not always travel well across the Channel."

Last week, Italian minister Carlo Calenda said he felt insulted by Johnson after the Tory MP suggested Italy should push for Britain to remain in the European Single Market otherwise it would be forced to sell less prosecco. Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Johnson's German counterpart, told colleagues that he couldn't stand to be in the same room as the British minister, according to a Financial Times report.

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Los Angeles Times: Britain's sweeping surveillance powers act raises concerns for human rights activists

“It defies common sense,” said Carlo, policy officer at human rights organization Liberty. “We are very, very resolutely in opposition to mass surveillance, which can never be considered proportionate or necessary in a democracy.”

But after a year of debate, the Investigatory Powers Bill was approved by Parliament last week and is expected to be ratified into law by the end of the year. The bill includes measures that will force Internet and phone companies to keep a record of the complete Web browsing history of British citizens for up to 12 months, in case they need to be accessed by government agencies.

It also allows the government to obtain “bulk personal data sets,” even if most of the individuals are not suspected of any wrongdoing. [...]

In essence, the bill will force Internet and phone companies to keep records of all users for up to a year, including every website visited and every phone call made, including duration, date and time.

Such surveillance does not have to be targeted or based on any reasonable suspicion and this personal data can be accessed without a warrant in some instances.

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