Quartz: Harvard research suggests that an entire global generation has lost faith in democracy

People everywhere are down on democracy. Especially young people. In fact, so rampant is democratic indifference and disengagement among millennials that a shocking share of them are open to trying something new—like, say, government by military coup.

That’s according to research by Yascha Mounk, a Harvard University researcher, and Roberto Stefan Foa, a political scientist at the University of Melbourne. The remit of their study, which the Journal of Democracy will publish in January, analyzes historical data on attitudes toward government that spans various generations in North America, Western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. They find that, across the board, citizens of stable liberal democracies have grown jaded about their government, say Mounk and Foa—and worse. [...]

Not really. For instance, in 1995, only 16% of American youngsters—those in their late teens and early 20s—thought democracy was a “bad” political system for their nation. In 2011, nearly a quarter of millennials did. Though the increase among European youth was less marked, it was still significant, say the researchers.

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Political Critique: Maidan showed that Kyiv is another centre of Europe [Interview]

Of course Maidan has its local Ukrainian specificity, but at the same time events of this kind had been happening and have been happening in different countries throughout the world. Maidan as an Ukrainian political phenomenon is inscribed in the global political agenda. It has lots of similarities with the Arab Spring, with the Indignados movement in Europe, and with the Occupy movement in the US and other countries.

This similarity extends to a lot of instruments, methodologies, practices on the everyday level, framing of the movement and spreading the ideas that it had produced. All these events have much in common, which means that we are in the middle of some process. We have been observing really crucial shifts throughout the world during recent years. Maidan, both for the EU construction and for the European idea, was just the starting point, a sort of a political a priori. [...]

It’s legitimate to call Maidan a revolution, first of all in a political sense. When we refer to Marxist classics, however, and talk about revolution in an economic sense, unfortunately it didn’t work out that way. Maidan didn’t change the social and economic order, although Maidan as such was in general against oligarchy. It had a lot of potential to develop this dimension, but it’s probably the hardest dimension to overcome. [...]

If you look at Maidan, at some of its images and flags, it seemed to be a nationalist revolution. This is why the Kremlin propaganda or rather its media war has had some success throughout Europe. These nationalist images, however, were just a rhetorical wrapping, it demonstrates that people don’t have another, proper, political language to express their real views.This lack of a proper vocabulary caused people to refer back to established political symbols, like the national flag or the national anthem. The symbols which are officially guaranteed. They can rely on them to inspire them and stop them from running away in the face of mass violence.

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Al Jazeera: Why Chomsky and Zizek are wrong on the US elections

The choice of not voting for Clinton, which I among millions of other Sanders' supporters made, was not out of any political piety to refrain from getting my hands dirty but to help put the factual evidence of a changing political culture electorally on the map. My not voting for Clinton in New York did not cost her anything - she won New York and all its electoral college counts. [...]

In opting for Clinton or Trump, Chomsky and Zizek both avoid the crucial question of actual voters and how and why they voted the way they did, and are fixated on the abstract illusion of being on the left or right side of a vacuous argument.

Contrary to Chomsky's high moral horse, it is immoral to vote for a corrupt warmonger who is partially responsible for a pernicious war that has destroyed the entire nation-state of Iraq and murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings, a close partner of Barack Obama in the nearly total destruction of Libya, and deeply in the pocket of the notorious Zionist billionaire supporter of racially profiling Muslims, Haim Saban, and therefore the closest bosom buddy of the nefarious Benjamin Netanyahu, and who as a result even more adamantly than Chomsky himself is dead against BDS, a peaceful act of civil disobedience against the murderous occupiers of Palestine.

From the comfort of an armchair in front of Mehdi Hassan it is of course easy to moralise about the lesser or greater evil. But not if you are at the receiving end of the US or Israeli military rage.

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Quartz: The EU just knocked the UK back to reality with one open letter

“In your letter you state that the European commission, and in particular [Michel] Barnier, are attempting to prevent negotiations, thereby creating ‘anxiety and uncertainty for the UK and EU citizens living in one another’s territories’,” he wrote.“It is a very interesting argument; the only problem being that it had nothing to do with reality.”

Tusk suggests the only source for these anxieties and uncertainty is Britain’s decision to leave the EU. He pointed out that the rights British politicians are calling on the EU to guarantee—the free movement of people—was largely rejected by Britain, which voted for Brexit. Tusk reaffirmed that the EU will not begin negotiations until Britain invokes Article 50; the legal process that starts a country’s withdrawal from the EU.

The initial letter to Tusk was signed by 80 British MPs, including leading members of the leave campaign Michael Gove and Iain Duncan Smith, which called on the EU to discuss the issue of reciprocal rights before Article 50 was invoked. But since voting to leave the EU, British calls for preparatory talks have largely been ignored.

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CityLab: Paris's Groundbreaking Car Bans Face a Backlash

On one hand, locals are preparing for the mid-January arrival of one of the strongest car-control measures yet: a weekday driving ban on cars built before 1997. On the other hand, the city’s Mayor Anne Hidalgo, known as a promoter of pro-green policies, is facing a fierce backlash against one of her key anti-pollution measures: banning all cars from a central section of the right bank of the Seine. On Wednesday morning, 168 mayors from the Greater Paris region condemned the move in an open letter to Le Figaro, demanding its repeal. So is Paris taking a step forward or a step back?

Both upcoming laws impose tighter control on cars than you’ll find in almost any other city. Paris’s new emissions control system will require all cars driving inside the Boulevard Périphérique beltway between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. to display one of five special badges detailing its age and the emissions category it falls into. One badge, for example, is for cars constructed after January 2011 that perform to the top two tiers of the European Emissions Standards. Large trucks in the same category, meanwhile, must conform to the top tier and have been constructed since January 2014. Older cars, trucks, and motorbikes constructed to lower emissions standards are grouped in subsequent categories, until they reach cars built before 1997 or motorbikes built before 2000, which aren’t eligible for a badge at all. Any vehicle caught driving in Paris during work hours without a badge faces a €68 ($72) fine, rising to €135 ($143) for trucks. [...]

It’s too early to see how much kickback there will be against that law, which was officially introduced in July with an agreement not to levy any fines until January 16, 2017. Paris City Hall insists that only 1 percent of drivers will be affected, suggesting that the law change is mainly about introducing the principle of the weekday driving ban, in order to tighten it further later with less resistance. If their estimates are correct, January 16 may end up passing fairly quietly. [...]

Dig a little deeper and you’ll see that part of the conflict comes partly from a lack of an overarching body covering all of Greater Paris. While some mayors of inner Paris boroughs signed the letter, the great majority of mayor signatories represent commuter towns. Their immediate concern is making their voters’ commutes a little easier, not improving the air quality in a district they don’t represent. For Hidalgo, the situation is the opposite. Angry commuters and their representatives can make her life difficult to an extent, but they aren’t the voters she has to answer to. This places inner and outer Paris in an inevitable stand-off, at least when it comes to roads.

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Al Jazeera: EU survey: 27% say rape sometimes acceptable

Overall, 27 percent of 27,818 EU citizens who participated in the survey thought forced sexual intercourse was acceptable in at least one set of circumstances.

Some 12 percent of respondents, who were selected from different social and demographic backgrounds, said forced sexual intercourse was acceptable if the victim was "drunk or on drugs".

Eleven percent said it was acceptable if the victim "voluntarily went home with someone" and 10 percent said it was acceptable if they didn’t "clearly say no or physically fight back".

Respondents in Romania and Hungary were consistently among the most likely to say each situation may be a justification for sex without consent, while those in Sweden and Spain were consistently among the least likely to say so.

Seventy percent of respondents said that sexual harassment of women was common in their country. 

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Al Jazeera: Let women drive, says Saudi prince

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal is an unusually forthright member of Saudi Arabia's extensive royal family.

He holds no political posts but chairs Kingdom Holding Co that has interests including in US banking giant Citigroup and the Euro Disney theme park.

He is a longtime advocate of women's rights in the conservative Islamic kingdom, which has some of the world's tightest restrictions on women and is the only country where they are not allowed to drive.

After his short tweet, Prince Alwaleed's office issued an uncharacteristically long statement in English and Arabic outlining his reasons for supporting an end to the ban. [...]

Using foreign drivers drains billions of dollars from the Saudi economy, Alwaleed said. He calculated families spend an average of $1,000 a month on a driver, money that otherwise could help household income at a time when many are making do with less. 

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Motherboard: Fidel Castro: Tyrant, Revolutionary, and Environmental Crusader

In 1992, Fidel Castro spoke about a radical new idea. During the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit, Cuba’s president lamented the destruction of nature at the hand of humankind. Less than a decade after scientists had reached a consensus on climate change, Castro was already urging the world to start an environmental revolution. [...]

Since his death last week at the age of 90, Cuba’s late-patriarch has been called many things: revolutionary, dictator, savior, and tyrant. And there is evidence for each. But he also seems to have a lesser-known legacy as an environmentalist. [...]

And while Cuba’s wildness can reasonably be attributed to its economic isolation, Castro’s strong influence on the country’s environmental legislation has arguably helped to preserve its splendor.

In the eyes of Castro, environmental destruction was one of the evils of capitalism. He blamed consumer societies for the desecration of nature that disproportionately harmed the poor and disenfranchised. During a speech on climate change in 2002, Castro regarded Cuba as an example of how humanity’s needs can be met “without destroying nature and basic human values.” (It’s important to note here that many Cubans would not agree that their needs are met given the country’s food insecurity and other limited resources.)

After Castro’s Rio de Janeiro speech, Cuba’s government amended its constitution to include sweeping environmental provisions that would safeguard land, air, and water resources. In 1994, the Ministry of Science, Technology and the Environment—the country’s first cabinet-level institution given jurisdiction over environmental issues—was established. Three years later, Cuba’s Law 81 of the Environment was decreed to provide a framework for sustainable socioeconomic development.

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Independent:British man might be first in the world to be cured of HIV after 'breakthrough' treatment

A 44-year-old British man may have become the first person in the world to be cured of HIV.

Tests showed the virus had become undetectable in the blood of the previously HIV-positive man, after he was treated with a pioneering new therapy designed to eradicate the virus.

Researchers have cautioned that it is too early to tell if the treatment has really worked but said the man, a social worker, had made "remarkable progress". 

The patient was the first of 50 people to complete a trial of the ambitious treatment which launches a two-stage “kick and kill” attack on the virus.

The new therapy is unique in that it tracks down and destroy HIV in every part of the body —including in the dormant cells that evade current treatments.  [...]

Antiretroviral therapies target and suppress active infected cells but they leave millions of dormant infected T-cells lying in wait throughout the body. This means existing treatments can effectively control HIV but do not cure the disease. 

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