Political Critique: Adjust to Eviction

While it is within the rights of the buildings’ owner not to prolong the tenants‘ leases, the situation is further complicated by the fact the tenants in question are Roma. There are over two hundred thousand Romani living in the Czech Republic, and roughly half of them are “integrated“, meaning they have a home, have graduated school and have a stable income. Nevertheless, they still face racism on a daily basis. The remaining half is deemed “maladjusted“, ‘inadaptable“ ‘uncivilized”, or, in more accurate terms, socially marginalized.

The City Council has outright stated that Brno lacks the capacity to accommodate dozens of large families and the chances of a Roma family being able to find accommodation in a privately owned building are essentially non-existent. As is, curiously enough, any initiative aimed at actually solving the problem: according to Czech TV, the City Hall claims it contacted the real estate agent while the company in question, Dolfin Real Estate, stated it was never approached. What we have here is a paradoxical dance; the two bodies’ movements are perfectly choreographed to avoid any contact whatsoever, possibly in the hope that the rapidly approaching winter will solve the problem for them, or at least allow the considerably less crowded cemeteries and crematoriums to take part in resolving this housing crisis. The imagery is, obviously, absurd (especially considering the temperature during an average Czech winter) but it shows the typical official response to the problem: close your eyes and hope it goes away. [...]

The leitmotif resounding throughout the Romani housing issues is the omnipresence of racism in our culture. We are not talking about just a couple hundred extremist crackpots or some kind of faceless ignorant mass: racism is prevalent in the system itself. We live in a country where the Vice Premier, who just happens to be one of the most popular politicians and quite possibly the most powerful man in the country, openly denied the Roma holocaust, a country where the deputy ombudsman, of all people, states that refusing to employ the Roma is not discrimination but simply the result of past experience , a country that sends Romani children to practical and special schools for no reason other than „normal“ parents of „normal“ kids not wanting their little darlings threatened by those mean, nasty ethnic minorities. In short, being racist in the Czech Republic is not only perfectly OK, but also fashionable, as it clearly deals a blow in the on-going war against the scourge of political correctness, whatever it may be.

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The Intercept: Growing Far-Right Nationalistic Movements Are Dangerously Anti-Muslim — and Pro-Israel

THE SPECTER OF a growing far-right nationalism anywhere, but particularly in Central Europe, immediately — and for good and obvious reasons — raises fears of an anti-Semitism revival. But at least thus far, the leaders of most of these nationalistic parties — increasingly inspired and fueled by one another’s success — have showcased dangerous animosity toward Muslims, accompanied by strong policy support for Israel and a rhetorical repudiation of anti-Semitism.

Whether from cynical tactical considerations or actual conviction, the most successful leaders of this emerging movement — while unrestrained with their reckless anti-Muslim fearmongering — not only repudiate anti-Semitism in words but are incorporating steadfast support for Israel as part of their policy agenda. And in many cases, the Israeli government — which itself exhibits many of the same far-right attributes as these movements — is expressing support in return. [...]

The same dynamic is seen even more remarkably in France, where Marine Le Pen’s National Front Party — founded by her Holocaust-minimizing father and long filled with overt Nazi sympathizers — has not only purged anti-Semites from its ranks but declared itself steadfastly pro-Israel. For years she has been re-casting her far-right party as pro-Israel based on shared antipathy toward “Muslim extremists,” and news reports in both Israeli and Jewish journals are increasingly describing the receptiveness of French Jews toward voting for her, in large part due to their shared fear of, and animosity toward, French Muslims. These far-right parties are uniformly opposed to any boycott movement aimed at ending Israeli settlements. [...]

Moreover, it is certainly possible for a group or individual to be simultaneously pro-Israel and anti-Semitic. The cynical, grotesque alliance between pro-Israel Americans such as Joe Lieberman, and Jews-are-going-to-hell-once-the-Rapture-comes evangelicals such as the vehemently pro-Israel John Hagee, highlights that paradox. In the wake of the Bannon controversy, The Forward’s Naomi Zeveloff examined this increasingly common dynamic, arguing that “Breitbart News isn’t the only place where anti-Semitism and Zionism go hand in hand. Anti-Semitic attitudes abound in Poland, for example, even as Poland has a strong diplomatic relationship with Israel.” Some Israel defenders are willing to make common cause with potential or even clear-cut anti-Semites if they are also — for geopolitical, religious, or political reasons — pro-Israel.

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Politico: Why Raul Castro is happy Fidel is gone

So what will the newly liberated Raul look like as a leader? He remains as poorly understood today as at any time in his more than 60 years in public life, in large part because he has existed in the shadow of his more charismatic brother. For decades there have been contradictory images of the dogmatic enforcer and the overly sensitive patsy, but the strongest clue as to what kind of leader Raul would be emerged when he took nominal control of the country after Fidel’s illness in 2006. It has been a challenging decade for Raul who often found that his boldest reform initiatives were undermined by his weakened but still meddlesome brother who demanded until the end fidelity to his decades-long revolution. But the economic and social pressures facing Cuba give Raul little choice except to make the dramatic changes that he has long wanted to enact. [...]

Raul was content to be cast by his brother as a cruel hard liner, “more radical than I,” as Fidel once propounded. In fact, Raul was long an admirer of Stalin and Soviet communism; he enjoyed vacationing in the Soviet Union, and made many friends there in military and security circles. At home, in a booming baritone, and at Fidel’s urging, he periodically delivered jeremiads meant to instill fear in the Cuban populace. He was a dependably stern player in every one of Fidel’s political purges. It is also known that Raul presided over executions during the guerrilla years in Cuba in the 1950s, and another, a gangland-style murder by his own hand, in Mexico. [...]

His own term in power after 2006, with the ailing Fidel monitoring and second-guessing his decisions, provides useful clues to how he will assert his power now that he is unencumbered by the lurking threat of his brother’s interference. Raul set out almost immediately to put some distance between himself and his brother. He pontificated publicly about the need for the regime to implement “conceptual and structural” changes. Breaking with one of Fidel’s shibboleths, he told the Cuban people that the American economic embargo was not the source of all the country’s severe economic problems; the Cubans had caused the problems themselves. During his first few years at the helm Raul often complained about Cuba’s gross inefficiencies in agriculture, and hinted that serious reforms would be implemented. [...]

What else might he have in mind? He will likely now seek to definitively implement wider market-friendly economic reforms and government sector efficiencies, while trying to forge an independent legacy. He may revert to emphasizing major agricultural reforms by empowering farmers to enjoy profits. The number of trades and professions permitted to open small businesses may well be expanded. Larger numbers of government workers may now be let go, although for security reasons that will always be risky.

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Atlas Obscura: When Americans Embraced the Bob, This New England Town Had To Make Something Besides a Comb. Enter the Pink Flamingo

It wasn’t always that way. Leominster, a proud town of some 40,000 people, was once the hub of a hugely practical industry: combs. From the time the visionary combmaker, Obidiah Hills, founded his first business there in 1774, Leominster was a hub for this essential item of personal hygiene. In the days before shampoo and indoor plumbing, a Leominster comb, hand-carved out of animal horn and hooves, was only chance many people had to look halfway presentable. Each day thousands of Americans ran Leominster’s finest fine-toothed creations through their oil-spattered, flea-infested scalps. By 1845 there were 24 comb factories within the town’s limits. It swiftly became known as “Comb City.” [...]

In ancient Egypt, the flamingo was considered to be the living representation of the sun god Ra. Whether the ancient god was working through Featherstone is hard to verify, but there was something almost supernatural about the popularity of his creation. Using images plucked from a copy of National Geographic, Featherstone created a plastic bird that was three feet high in hot pink plastic. Typically sold as a pair—with one bird standing upright, the other with its head down—the flamingos became a national obsession. Up until this point the most popular lawn ornament had been the garden gnome. But while the gnome harked backed to the dark fairy-tale forests of Europe, the pink flamingo was an icon of the New World, promising eternal summer and endless sunshine. Perhaps Ra was involved after all. [...]

When Union Products eventually closed down in 2006 it was estimated that they had manufactured over 20 million pink flamingos. Leominster, meanwhile, had been transformed into the capital of the collectible debris of our mass-market culture, the spiritual birthplace of all gimcracks, knickknacks and doodads.

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Wired: Photos of Brooklyn Before and After the Hipsters

Chatelain moved to the Brooklyn neighborhood of Greenpoint in 2006 and fell in love with all the Polish mom-and-pop shops that lined its streets. She’s a history geek as well as a photographer, and she loved how the past seemed to permeate every building facade and sidewalk crack. “I’m drawn to the idea that other people have been there and have left something visually interesting behind,” she says. “Back in the day, those streets would have been busy with all kinds of maritime and industrial activity, and now so many of the buildings sit empty and the streets are broken up with glass bottles and trash.”

She knew change was coming, and started documenting her favorite locations in Greenpoint and neighboring Williamsburg to “see how long they would last.” On sunny afternoons, she wandered around with her Canon 5D, looking for doorways and building facades with a unique combination of light, color, and texture—places she knew she’d miss if they disappeared. They often did. Bodegas closed, replaced by third-wave coffee shops. Storefronts that once housed family businesses became bars serving $18 cocktails prepared by mixologists who use artisanal ice. Rents got so expensive that even some of the designer boutiques closed. “Some people blame Girls,” she says of the gentrification. “But who knows?”

Chatelain captured locations again whenever she noticed they had changed. Some were utterly remade within months; others transformed over years. In a few cases, Chatelain couldn’t recognize locations she’d already photographed. She’d been visiting Brooklyn Winery—which offers “gourmet nibbles”—for months before realizing she’d photographed it before the renovation. Her excitement about the neighborhood fell in direct proportion to rents rising.

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Quartz: Scientists just observed chimpanzees doing something we’ve never seen them do: going fishing

Scientists have observed chimpanzees doing something we’ve never seen them do before: going fishing.

This footage of chimpanzees fishing for algae was captured in a remote part of Guinea. It’s from a research project called ‘The Pan-African Programme: The Cultured Chimpanzee,” where scientists have recorded thousands of hours of footage of chimpanzee habitats in remote parts of Africa.

Scientists believe there’s a lot to learn from chimpanzees about human evolution. Like people, the animals have advanced problem-solving skills and can adapt tools for different circumstances. Scientists are trying to gather as much information as possible, noting that chimpanzees are endangered.

They have so much footage to sort through, that they’re asking the internet to help. Visitors to the site Chimp & See can assist in research by sorting through, identifying, and tagging the different animals in the videos.

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Mic: What the fight against AIDS looks like around the world

In June, President Barack Obama made a speech on the anniversary of the first AIDS diagnosis in the United States, which made news 35 years ago. While at the time, the HIV/AIDS crisis was exactly that — a crisis — over the past three decades, the country has made strides in prevention and education (though African-Americans, and especially gay black men, are still being diagnosed with the virus at alarming rates), in addition to having improved the quality of life for many of the 1.2 million Americans who live with what remains an incurable disease.

"We've seen that testing, treatment, education and acceptance can not only save and extend lives, but fight the discrimination that halted progress for too long," Obama said at the time. He pledged his commitment to ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic by 2030.

The fight against the spread of HIV in the United States, though, is just the tip of the iceberg. As of the end of 2015, a staggering 36.7 million people worldwide live with the virus, many in places with fewer resources and where people have less access to health care. In those countries, the fight against HIV/AIDS can look a little different. 

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CityLab: How Sacramento Rolled Out a Mobile Restroom for the Homeless

Until recently, that is. This past June, Harris spearheaded a six-month pilot project called Pit Stop that put a portable bathroom for the homeless population at a River District intersection close to organizations that serve them, such as Women’s Empowerment. A truck brings the three-stall unit to the location every day at 8 a.m. and hauls it away at 6 p.m. Two attendants staff the bathroom, which also functions as a collection site for needles and dog waste.

Culp says that since the program began, she and her staff have seen a 90 percent decrease in the amount of waste around their building. City statistics support her anecdotal evidence. In the first four months of the project, people used the facility more than 9,000 times, and over 600 used needles were collected. [...]

The pilot program has cost the city close to $175,000: $75,000 more than was budgeted. As a result, the city council has agreed to explore less expensive ways of maintaining the project, such as partnering with organizations in the River District to use their existing restrooms. [...]

Most of Sacramento’s funding for the homeless goes towards programs with longer-term objectives, such as “rapid rehousing,” in which those in need receive rental subsidies for a number of months until they’re able to pay on their own. “Pit Stop addresses a short-term, urgent crisis,” Halcon says. “The idea is that it’s a type of program that will no longer be necessary in the future.”

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The Guardian: Brexit chaos could change the political map of Britain

The Lib Dems had run their entire campaign in this wealthy part of west London suburbia, in which 72% of people had voted Remain on June 23, on an anti hard-Brexit message. “For the first time I can remember we were not the pot-hole party. We were promoting our views on the EU, on internationalism, tolerance, what sort of country we want to be,” said one party insider. [...]

Later voters began to explain why they had switched from Goldsmith to the unknown politically inexperienced accountant Sarah Olney. “It was a shame, really. Zac was always really diligent,” said Susannah, a young mother who did not not give surname, on the school run in Mortlake. “But the Brexit stuff was the most important issue. Lots of people here still can’t really believe Brexit is happening. It was much harder to vote for Zac knowing he’d supported the people who got us here. It’s made a lot of people like me change our votes.” [...]

For Theresa May and the Tories, despite their assertion that Richmond changes nothing, it is a warning shot that Brexit is shifting the landscape, in profound, if very different, ways across the country. May’s already wafer-thin Commons majority has been cut to just 14, and if more byelection losses were to follow, her ability to govern effectively would be called ever more into doubt. Today, a group of former Tory ministers and senior MPs warn that if the prime minister panders too much to anti-EU hardliners, the party will lose middle ground voters en masse as they did in Richmond, and risk defeat at the next general election.

The tactical counter to that is that a soft Brexit will deliver ammunition to Ukip, under its new leader Paul Nuttall, particularly in the Midlands and the north where they pose a threat to both the Tories and Labour. For Labour the dilemmas are just as acute. They were never expected to do well in Richmond, but their miserable tally of votes there has sounded loud alarm bells nonetheless. The fear among Labour MPs is that the party led by Jeremy Corbyn, a lukewarm supporter of the EU but a keen advocate of free movement and defender of immigration, risks being trampled between a newly resurgent Lib Dem party in pro-Remain seats in urban areas and the south, and Ukip in Leave strongholds. As one senior Labour MP put it: “Our leader seems to be anti-markets and lukewarm about the EU on the one hand, yet gives an unqualified pro-immigration message on the other. It is the worst of both worlds electorally.” Yesterday, in a speech in Prague, Corbyn said it was vital that parties on the left did not respond to the surge of rightwing populism by scapegoating refugees and migrant workers, again refusing to be allied to those in his party who argue it is a problem that needs addressing.

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